Tier List Speculation

[Overswarm]

I disagree about gimping tethers. You just have to really go in on them in a way that requires more commitment than it did in Melee.

Yerp.

Do you know if there are vulnerable frames from Ivysaur's up+b once it connects? I know if I'm hanging on the edge and they don't immediately attempt to "snap" to the edge I can often bair with sheik and kill them that way, but I've also whiffed a lot when they attempt to grab the edge ASAP. I'm just wondering if that's something I can even punish after their up+b comes out.



Also lol @ whoever said there was nothing like "bomb jumping" in Brawl. That was how Snake survived. o_O

 

[TheReflexWonder]

It's something like 1-3 frames as it is, depending on length. As a result, you have to be in certain parts of the distance with your hitbox, like 1/3, 2/3, etc.

 

[Overswarm]

Interesting. I guess that means I'll have to stick to going deep or hitting them after they pop back on the stage.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

She's pretty ineffective on the ledge, IMO. Either option would suffice.

 

[Overswarm]

I always end up getting hit by fair off the ledge. I shouldn't, but I do. I just stubbornly challenge it too much.

 

[DMG]

TL recovery is decent, just all depends on how far you get sent out and how high you were able to DI. If you have to do multiple bomb jumps or AGT to recover though, there's a pretty solid chance one of the easier edge guarding characters will smack you out of it. The variety of changing your momentum + covering yourself with bombs is the real draw: any lengthy applications of his recovery are asking for trouble.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Keep in mind that it's crouch-cancelable until higher percents. She should be taking a big risk when she swings at you like that.

 

[Overswarm]

Keep in mind that it's crouch-cancelable until higher percents. She should be taking a big risk when she swings at you like that.

Definitely is, just bad practice on my part and attempting to beat it on reaction.

 

[Oro?!]

I feel like I finally have enough of an understanding of the entire cast to take a shot at this. There is no particular ordering in the tiers.

S Tier- Best of the best and possible outliers.
Fox
Falco

A Tier- Very strong characters and contend for tournament victories.
Sheik
Donkey Kong
Bowser
Marth
Sonic
Charizard
Peach
Ike
Wolf
Mario

B Tier- Tournament Viable and have few flaws or bad matchups.
Pit
ROB
Diddy Kong
Jigglypuff
Snake
Link
Wario
Lucario
Captain Falcon
Ganondorf

C Tier- Hardly viable as a solo tournament character. Many hard matchups.
Lucas
ZSS
Luigi
Toon Link
DDD
Pikachu
Zelda
Ivysaur

D Tier- Needs help! PMBR Pls!!!!
Ness
GnW
Squirtle

Noted the surface of many characters metagames have hardly been scratched, so this list is of course subject to change. This list is based entirely off of tournament play and tournament level players using these characters. : )

 

[TheReflexWonder]

What Fox and Falco players have been dominating tournament results...?

 

[Oracle]

Kels and mdz have been tearing up chicago for a while (though I took them both out this past weekend), as well as m2k winning whenever he feels like entering. Its worth noting that the players I just listed barely even play pm, just using melee pressure and tactics to beat people, rather than matchup knowledge or adaptation.

I like oro's list for the most part, partially because its the first one i've seen that accurately places characters like rob, dk, boozer and zard. Although with the games ridiculous level of balance these tier lists are basically amounting to rankings based on how easy it is to play the characters rather than actual viability

 

[Oro?!]

Yeah that's basically the case... People that have been playing Melee for years and have all the spacie practice in the world, as well as play PM exclusively ex( developing their characters and strategies to deal with spacies, as well as gimmicks and so on) still lose or have the potential to lose to high-top tier Melee players who run Fox/Falco. If Fox/Falco can allow you to contend for tournament victories while not having any matchup knowledge just based off of nairing and lasering people then I'm terrified what happens when people put in time (if they put in time).

I don't see M2K for example losing to any high end PM player just playing his standard Fox. Mango lost to Metroid, but that was a far stronger iteration of Ike, and well... he was being Mango. From 1st hand experience he didn't look like he cared at all, except when he was playing Hbox in PM lol.

 

[JOE!]

read as:

melee tops are still lol

 

[Oro?!]

What Fox and Falco players have been dominating tournament results...?

While it isn't really dominating, this is taken directly from Overswarm's tournament analytics thread. Fox and Falco being 2 of the top 3 most consistent placers in top 5 means something. They might not be winning every tournament, but there aren't many top tier spacie players entering PM regularly either. Silent Wolf is probably the best player that uses Fox and enters PM frequently. That being said, SW fits the current conversation topic which is spacies not putting any time or effort into PM and showing good results.

 

[V-K]

I think PM Ness is potentially a monstrous being, too bad nobody really takes some time maining him.
Hbox where u at?

 

[BTmoney]

That's a good list Oro other than DK being too high. DK is actually decent/good but not that good.
However if the characters are placed in no order within the tiers then it's not saying all that much.

Edit:
Bowser is not in that company of great characters IMO.

They are still easily gimp able and limited in their ground games. I say mid to low B tier placement for them is fine with DK being higher than Bowser.

 

[Overswarm]

While it isn't really dominating, this is taken directly from Overswarm's tournament analytics thread. Fox and Falco being 2 of the top 3 most consistent placers in top 5 means something. They might not be winning every tournament, but there aren't many top tier spacie players entering PM regularly either. Silent Wolf is probably the best player that uses Fox and enters PM frequently. That being said, SW fits the current conversation topic which is spacies not putting any time or effort into PM and showing good results.

It's important to note that none of this is weighted in the slightest; I'll be making a new thread with a lot more information in the future once I set up a spreadsheet.

 

[Airrider]

I feel like I finally have enough of an understanding of the entire cast to take a shot at this. There is no particular ordering in the tiers.

S Tier- Best of the best and possible outliers.
Fox
Falco

A Tier- Very strong characters and contend for tournament victories.
Sheik
Donkey Kong
Bowser
Marth
Sonic
Charizard
Peach
Ike
Wolf
Mario

B Tier- Tournament Viable and have few flaws or bad matchups.
Pit
ROB
Diddy Kong
Jigglypuff
Snake
Link
Wario
Lucario
Captain Falcon
Ganondorf

C Tier- Hardly viable as a solo tournament character. Many hard matchups.
Lucas
ZSS
Luigi
Toon Link
DDD
Pikachu
Zelda
Ivysaur

D Tier- Needs help! PMBR Pls!!!!
Ness
GnW
Squirtle

Noted the surface of many characters metagames have hardly been scratched, so this list is of course subject to change. This list is based entirely off of tournament play and tournament level players using these characters. : )

Has Jiggs changed much? Shouldn't she otherwise be in the top? HBox has been doing great with PM Puff.

 

[V-K]

Jiggs feels worse imo but I can't tell for sure why.

 

[Oro?!]

It's more so that Puff as a character has many more tough matchups to deal with. I thought Wizzrobe won the majority of FL PM tournaments as well? With every character getting so much stronger, especially characters with massive hitboxes or options to beat bair, I don't see Jiggs getting away without having some counterpicks anymore.

The category I put Jiggs in is labeled as "Tournament viable with few counters or flaws". That doesn't mean Jiggs is bad at all, and she might even be A tier in the end on my list. Hbox is really the only Puff that gets results in the first place, so I would need his input on Jiggs matchups to reliably place her.

@Tactician- I really wonder why you think DK is "DK being too high. DK is actually decent/good but not that good." and why you think Bowser is bad. I am especially concerned about Bowser. A character with such little representation places so consistently in 2 seperate regions.

@OS- I do take those results with a grain of salt, but it is a foundation to at least speculate on.

 

[JOE!]

Read:

Characters that can get around JigglyBair make her slightly worse than she was in melee, while still being meleepuff

 

[DMG]

It's the combination of that, AND that other Melee characters are handling the Brawl cast better. Jiggs imo is struggling the most out of the former top 5-6 characters (not counting Falcon, because everyone hates him )

People like Marth and Sheik seem veryyy solid and very geared towards handling the new characters. Buffs and stuff that new characters got, Jiggs tends to actually have to play around it. Like if someone is decent at camping, that probably won't phase Sheik Fox Marth etc, but it might be lame for Jiggs. If someone got a range buff, but isn't too hot up close, that might not change much for the characters that get in easily but it could make it much harder for Jiggs to deal with. If the characters are kinda floaty and have good recoveries, it will probably be harder for Jiggs to edge guard them than another edge guarding "champ". Etc


Take Bowser as a niche example. Despite the buffs he got, if you're a grabbing/DD/Baiting kinda guy, you'll probably have a good time. If you're Jiggs, I dunno how much fun you're going to have trying to approach that behemoth.

 

[JTsm]

Is that chart only for top 5 that placed in tournaments overall?

 

[JOE!]

The chart shows results for each character with a score of "1st = 5 pts, 2nd = 4pts, etc", so yes I believe so.

 

[DMG]

Top 5 is pretty solid, especially if we're talking about local/regional sized tournaments in the 20-30 player range. Extending further than that would be a bit misleading on how "good" characters actually are, especially for those sub 20 tourneys locally that might only have 4-5 solid players to begin with.

 

[JTsm]

So just top 5? Ok.

Well, I know this maybe a tedious task, but I would go to metroid's result thread and just count how many times a character was used and consider top 5 and all that. I was going to make a chart like that, but I wasn't sure how to represent a chart that makes sense. I might get to that later today since I have motivation. lol

Basically I just want to show how many characters were used overall, and how successful each character is. And then interpret a list from there.

 

[Overswarm]

So just top 5? Ok.

Well, I know this maybe a tedious task, but I would go to metroid's result thread and just count how many times a character was used and consider top 5 and all that. I was going to make a chart like that, but I wasn't sure how to represent a chart that makes sense. I might get to that later today since I have motivation. lol

Basically I just want to show how many characters were used overall, and how successful each character is. And then interpret a list from there.

I'd wait a bit. I'm going to have a huuuuuuge data dump on tournament stuff once I finish with the stage thread.

 

[Professor Pro]

lol Snake isn't even on that chart

 

[Oro?!]

He should be after the next update since you won that tournament Prof. Pro!

 

[KayB]

Puff is one of those characters where you have a really good match up or an absolute horrible one.

 

[Hylian]

Played against a bunch of people with Ivysaur at the chicago tournament, and played against sethlon for like 15+ hours with various characters and I was totally right about people not really being able to CC dtilt even after me specifically telling people to CC and playing people with a lot of match-up experience. All you need to do is space it above 10% and side-b/dtilt under 10% so that both hit them at the same time.

Random impressions from playing everyone:

Charizard is crazy good.
Rob is a lot better than I expected.
Sonic is exactly as good as I thought he was.
Lucas is exactly where I thought he was.
Team is way different than melee and hard to get used to(need more experience with teams!)
Overall skill level of players is surprisingly high.
This game is absurdly fun to play friendlies in at tournaments. I hardly ever play friendlies in melee/brawl at tournaments but couldn't stop playing friendlies here. There were so many good people to play with so many different characters, was awesome.

 

[JTsm]

I'd wait a bit. I'm going to have a huuuuuuge data dump on tournament stuff once I finish with the stage thread.

Ahhh gotcha. There does seem to be a lack of character usage here and there, so waiting for a good 6 months or later could be ideal to have a wide variety.

 

[Oro?!]

Yeah ggs Hylian I hope to play you guys again soon!

 

[Overswarm]

Played against a bunch of people with Ivysaur at the chicago tournament, and played against sethlon for like 15+ hours with various characters and I was totally right about people not really being able to CC dtilt even after me specifically telling people to CC and playing people with a lot of match-up experience. All you need to do is space it above 10% and side-b/dtilt under 10% so that both hit them at the same time.

Random impressions from playing everyone:

Charizard is crazy good.
Rob is a lot better than I expected.
Sonic is exactly as good as I thought he was.
Lucas is exactly where I thought he was.
Team is way different than melee and hard to get used to(need more experience with teams!)
Overall skill level of players is surprisingly high.
This game is absurdly fun to play friendlies in at tournaments. I hardly ever play friendlies in melee/brawl at tournaments but couldn't stop playing friendlies here. There were so many good people to play with so many different characters, was awesome.

I tested the CC d-tilt with Scarecrow here and we found that CCing at incorrect % nearly always lead to a u-smash or u-air depending on character/%. Did you find the same thing or do you have a different followup?

What did you find successful with ROB? My largest complaint of him has been his recovery and lack of approach options; as Ivysaur I'd imagine you'd only have much to say about the latter.

I've liked Charizard a lot but seem to always get comboed to hell and back whenever I play as him, but don't have as much power as some other characters. I chalk that up to inexperience on both counts, but it's just a guess. Was charizard a punching bag for you as well, and he just made up for it with his offensive capabilities? Or was he able to escape pressure easier than my limited experience allows me to see?

 

[Hylian]

I tested the CC d-tilt with Scarecrow here and we found that CCing at incorrect % nearly always lead to a u-smash or u-air depending on character/%. Did you find the same thing or do you have a different followup?

When they CC it and fall over on the ground I like to run up and sh dair as most people try to get-up attack right away. If they pop into the air I either uair them or up-b depending on %'s. Sometimes they pop behind me and I go for a bair.

What did you find successful with ROB? My largest complaint of him has been his recovery and lack of approach options; as Ivysaur I'd imagine you'd only have much to say about the latter.

Oracles rob was very slippery with movement and insane at gimping people. His offstage game when edgeguarding is what I was surprised at most. He recovered with attacks a lot and that is by far when he took the most damage and punishment, but onstage his mobility was pretty unreal. Videos will be up pretty sure I'm sure so you can take a look for yourself.

I've liked Charizard a lot but seem to always get comboed to hell and back whenever I play as him, but don't have as much power as some other characters. I chalk that up to inexperience on both counts, but it's just a guess. Was charizard a punching bag for you as well, and he just made up for it with his offensive capabilities? Or was he able to escape pressure easier than my limited experience allows me to see?

Charizard is a punching bag for sure, but his dash speed along with his grab combos really make him insane. Metroid would pretty much 0-death every single person he grabbed with INSANE combos. Like..you really just have to see it lol it's really impressive, almost unreal.

 

[Kink-Link5]

Tiers are primarily based off the success characters have vs the rest of the cast in a tournament environment, factoring in the playability of that character at higher levels of play. True, characters may not be worse. But the exploits characters have and their ability to be used at the discretion of the player has a huge role in deciding a characters tier and/or placements over time as metagame evolves.

They are not. You can check the tier list thread yourself to see that tier splits are based solely on Falcon's 7th place having a larger standard deviation of votes than Ice Climbers' 8th place. Because Ice climbers are more agreed upon to be definitely 8th place, but Falcon and Peach and Marth had votes for placings at as well as above 7th, they are grouped toegether in a tier while IC's are separated and listed as being 1 whole tier worse than Falcon. The votes are made not for tier placings, but are just a listing of characters without tier splits in the order members of the voting committee decided.

I know, or at least hope it isn't intentional, but you come off a little strong trying to talk to me like I don't know how tier lists are made or what they represent.

 

[Overswarm]

Scarecrow, my little brother, plays Charizard and Ivysaur. This is a person that doesn't wavedash or L-cancel. Despite this, he's been able to get 0-80% combos with Charizard regularly. I can believe Metroid getting 0-death combos off of one grab.

 

[Ripple]

yo, sonic is broken. S+ tier for sure

 

[DMG]

Sonic is lameeeeee

Borken idk

 

[leffen]

Sonic is CLEARLY broken. I thought so already when I played against Dev, a good melee player, who didn't use down b once (he thought it sucked) and just played on his melee skills.

Then when I played Wizzrobe, who didn't combo /use melee type skills at all, and tried it out myself, I realized how truly broken he is. Not only is he terribly designed (his neutral b is SO DUMB too) but you can just play him normally, using the fact that hes the fastest character in the game, best jump, top tier recovery and priority.

Just compare his priority to Fox/Falco/Falcons... its not even comparable. Comparing his recovery is even worse >_>

I'm probably maining him when I play project M simply because of how broken he is. Putting huge amounts effort into this game that no one takes seriously, and playing a low tier thats hard to play is just not worth it. I'd rather take the money from playing S++ tiers that require no thought.

@Overswarm: The fact that charizard can 0-death people with zero effort is nothing unique to that character. Most characters in PM have VERY easy 0-100% combos where as in melee they take insane amounts of effort. The fact that Charizard takes a little less effort doesn't make up for his other flaws, it just makes him easier in the beginning