Tier List Speculation

[Soft Serve]

S tier : we're really ****ing good tier

A+ tier :we are also really damn good

A- tier: also super good, but have flaws or lose important matchups to other top characters.

B tier : rounds out the top 20 characters. Completely possible to solo main and win tourneys still, although will have to struggle through a few rough matchups.

C tier: will be difficult to win a tournament solo Maining these characters.

d tier: unlikely that a solo main of these characters could win a large tournament. Too many flaws and bad matchups.

unplayable: Olimar is bottom 5 by himself, him and 4 pickmin.



I'm very confident on my character placements for the top 20 characters. Im less sure as you hit mid and low tiers on orders within the groupings, but Ill hold to the placements until someone proves me wrong.

Also completely confident on bottom 5.

I think fox and wolf are far above every other character. Fox is better between the two, because while wolf converts harder once he does get a hit, optimally each conversions will be a stock, fox has a much better time getting conversions, and still converts very hard.
The rest of the list trickles down to both how good the character is, and how their matchups with the best characters are. For example I think Toon Link is very good, but gets ran over by competent spacies and other rush down characters, so he sits just outside of top 10.

 

[Strong Badam]

marth, peach, snake, link, lucario, samus, kirby are too low on your list, maybe yoshi too
sonic, roy & mewtwo might be too high. roy is probably top 8 but not that high imo.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Pretending we know things barely a month into the meta tier: Soft Serve, others

 

[NeonApophis]

How does Fox have a better neutral game than Wolf? Wolf's lasers are more useful in neutral since they can start combos. Wolf is almost as fast as Fox and has much better aerial mobility that helps him stay safe in neutral. Fox's only potential advantage is his nair, but Wolf has comparably good aerials even though they have different uses. I think Wolf's blaster is enough to tip it in his favor though. Plus he has a better dash attack and fsmash, and his up smash has more range. I think Wolf might also have better shine - nair shield pressure because of the landing hitbox on his nair. And Wolf's combos are slightly better, so he does get more off of a hit.

 

[Sinz]

Crouch canceling makes wolf sad.

 

[jtm94]

Speaking of GnW, his bucket kinda breaks doubles now, doesn't it
Like fox fills it stupid quick with lasers, which now does the same damage as three of any other bucketed projectile
GnW already had isolated instances of questionable design, especially the RNG kill move and frame 1 escape option/recovery move/combo extender and starter. And then I guess instead of fixing bucket's odd properties they just made it stupid for all projectiles of a certain kind and kept it useless for the rest. Not that he's an exceptionally good character outside those things, it's just weird they haven't been addressed for the sake of consistent or good design like 99% of the other things that are changed in the game.

Before you could fill it with aura spheres, shadow balls, dins, Mario fireballs and get a OHKO at 0 against almost every character. Now you get a much faster full bucket only with Fox that will KO at 35 to 40. If your opponent's are letting that happen then I don't know what they're doing... This is a little thing, but holding a full bucket makes it so he can't recover.

But RNG KO move was in Melee. We don't question it. Let's talk about something more problematic like Luigi's ridiculous misfire rate and how you can store it and recover with it. I wish I could hold 9s for whenever I line them up and they came out with invincibility and propelled me into my opponent.

Every move starts frame 1. I honestly thought they would take away the frame 1 hitbox, but then I realized he doesn't actually move until frame 8. The move hitting on frame 1 recovering means very little, and as for combo breaker it only breaks combos against characters who have no disjoint because if he escapes then why did you let him sit there for 8 frames and not hit him? He is light and suffers more hit stun with a weight that does not discourage combos against most characters. Would you rather he had invincibility on his UpB starting frame 1? I think that's more problematic. I feel dirty about UpB as a combo extender sometimes, but then I think about other characters throws into things and setups.

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

Crouch canceling makes wolf sad.

Wolf can just double shine that. Wolf has answers to cc.

Also mang
@ NeonApophis you missed that extra large convo about fox's approach game being better on skype.
@ Soft Serve probably remembers all the high points.

 

[Juushichi]

I'm not exactly buying the Wolf > Fox thing, but I will admit that I really just don't know atm.

Wolf wasn't winning anything of note before and while that may have been because of the high tiers of 3.02, I think it's going to be much the same in 3.5. I've played a few good Wolves and came away feeling that they were about as strong as another good character and that was about it. There's still some questionable design in his kit, so idk maybe he's up there.

I think anyone who thinks Peach is low or even mid tier is very likely incorrect. At the very least, she's easily better than characters like Falcon and Ness.

 

[Foo]

I think Fox is better than wolf, primarily because of recovery. It's just a lot easier to gimp wolf than fox in my experience.

@ Soft Serve

Why are marth and Samus so low? That really baffles me. I'm not surprised to see yoshi down there, but I can understand why. Marth and Samus just have such good matchup spreads. Roy is better than marth, but not THAT much better. Also, not sure about R.O.B. and Falco being that high. R.O.B just seems like he has so many general weaknesses. As for Falco, I think he is nerfed far too much from melee. A lot of it is just due to engine change, but you just cannot seem to pillar anymore. Maybe I'm wrong. Mostly, I think he's not top tier due to being SO easy to gimp. Other than that, maybe move falcon and lucario up one, swap ness and G&W and I don't think I'd disagree with any placements.

I also think ZSS should be moved down one solely because of your tier descriptions. If you just had S, A+,A- etc. I'd agree, but you pretty much cannot solo main ZSS. The matchup against Fox and (to a slightly lesser extent) wolf is way too hard. Most characters spacy matchups are made easier by being able to combo them super well, but ZSS has the opposite problem. She simply cannot combo fast fallers until high %s. Fox can also shine gimp you off your recovery super easily with the new tether nerfs. Basically, all you can do is space bair and the occasional yolo side-b. (I still think she's b-tier because of the rest of her matchups, but you just cannot play here against fox and wolf.)

 

[Soft Serve]

Pretending we know things barely a month into the meta tier: Soft Serve, others

Oh you're right, sorry for trying to explain my thoughts on the game and create any form of discussion in the thread.
should have said:
Fox tier: fox.
Viable tier: everyone
mid tier :rob
Olimar tier: olimar.

Edit: this came off a lot more passive agressive than I wanted lol


I could agree with me putting kirby, snake, and samus too low tier wise, but I also don't think that they are top 20 characters.

@ Foo is the general concensus that the fox MU is that bad? I find that really hard to believe after watching Leffen beat ice a while ago with the new zss. It looked like 60/40 fox. Even if she does really struggle with just those spacie MUs, that still would fit into my grouping of being good but struggling vs a couple important matchups.

 

[JOE!]

Can we talk about how charizard's grounded Up B randomly got the invincibility moved from frames 1-4 -> 3-6? Was this just to mess up UbOoS vs Spacies or something?

 

[Foo]

@ Foo is the general concensus that the fox MU is that bad? I find that really hard to believe after watching Leffen beat ice a while ago with the new zss. It looked like 60/40 fox. Even if she does really struggle with just those spacie MUs, that still would fit into my grouping of being good but struggling vs a couple important matchups.

It's very much the consensus. Most of this is from a thread where someone asked what ZSS worst matchups are so that he could counter pick her.

But to actually answer your question:
Falco and Fox.

Wolf, Fox, Falco, Falcon, Sheik, Rob in that relative order are very VERY VEEEERY difficult match ups.

Spacies are still the hardest imo.

I've struggled with pit and wolf/fox a lot.

HELP! Please?
I'm getting bodied by a a friend playing wolf who loses every other matchup to me, but god damn its such a hard matchup.

From personal experience as a ZSS main i'd say I have trouble with

Kirby, Diddy, Squirtle, Fox, Falco, Wolf, Falcon, Mario, Sonic and Pikachu (If they know how to do quick attack pressure)

Also advice against Link would be good, since Link in general is someone I struggle against, also Fox.

Don't fight fox with ZSS, get a counterpick. Mine is squirtle

It's not unwinnable vs spacies. Just prepared for a huge amount of work to take sets off of players that are of the same skill level as you.

There are lots more, I just don't feel like hunting them down. I seem to remember someone saying that fox vs zss was the worst matchup in the whole game, but I don't remember where. I'm not saying I agree with everything or anything said here, but basically everyone thinks the spacy matchup is super hard.

As for the Ice vs Leffen game, I've watched it. I think Leffen outplayed the ever living hell out of Ice. Ice got shield grabbed almost every time he tried to pressure, he hardly ever took advantage of the tether hop, he played a really lame (and ineffective) runaway fox, missed a million and a half techs etc etc. He consistently conceded stage control to leffen, made lots of mistakes, and got read like a book over and over. It just looked like ice was really uncomfortable in PM. The fact that you saw that game and thought 60-40 fox shows how bad the matchup is. If you watch a normal ZSS matchup, you'll see lots of combos. However, I saw almost no combos by leffen because you just cannot combo fox with ZSS.

This is a fairly pointless argument anyway. I agree with where you put ZSS, I just don't see any point in the tier description, and I think it's stupid to have them. Players of a god tier character could be forced to pick up secondaries if just one matchup was bad enough.

Pretending we know things barely a month into the meta tier: Soft Serve, others

I'm sorry, after what point in time are we allowed speculate about tier lists in the tier list speculation thread? No one is throwing out tier lists like "THIS IS THE END ALL BE ALL TIER LIST THAT I AM 100% RIGHT ABOUT" It's generally more like "Here's what I think, now tell me why you think I'm wrong and I'll rebut with why I think I'm right." By that logic, there's no point in talking about any patch at all until we have it figured. It would sure take a lot longer to figure out a patch without discussing it though, wouldn't it? Your post makes me want to make a PM 4.0 tier list out of spite.

 

[Oro?!]

My bad fox would have done better vs Leffen. It is not a good matchup at all lol.

 

[TreK]

If you ask me, a tier list isn't meant to be a finished product, it's supposed to represent what the metagame is like at one point in time. If it stops changing too much, it doesn't mean it's now correct, it just means the metagame has become stale (some people might find this more interesting that way though, no negative connotation here)

I kept track of my character's position on each iteration of the Brawl tier list. We started at 14th, slowly moved to 7th, 5th, 3rd, eventually 2nd, but then Ice Climbers have stolen that spot from us. Was placing Diddy 14th a mistake ? No, at that point in time, Diddy was the 14th best character in the game. And then we discovered how to combo break with bananas, how to perform infinites, and countless other things that would take me several hours to explain to you all. Should we have waited 4 years to make a tier list where Diddy would be 3rd, where he belongs ? Heck no, that wouldn't have made any sense. The many tier lists that have been made are a testament of how this character's metagame has evolved along the years.

tl;dr : wtf are you talking about, month 1 tier lists are relevant.

 

[mimgrim]

Diddy is currently 4th on the Brawl tier list though. /nitpicking

 

[Juushichi]

I believe he alluded to that by saying that IC took 2nd on the tier list from Diddy, but did not say outright what the latest placement was.

Him leaving that out didn't really do anything to the meat of what he was arguing, you can read between the lines to exstrapolate that...

Diddy is still good in PM though.

 

[mimgrim]

There's a reason I said /nitpicking. :L

 

[TreK]

Diddy is currently 4th on the Brawl tier list though. /nitpicking

I've been away for a while, blame PM

 

[Strong Badam]

My bad fox would have done better vs Leffen. It is not a good matchup at all lol.

It's like MU knowledge is a heavily tested skill in a balanced game and thus significantly influences results or something

 

[DMG]

It's like MU knowledge is a heavily tested skill in a balanced game and thus significantly influences results or something

Matchups? Neutral Game? Learning?

I thought this was PM. I came here to not deal with those things

 

[Zoa]

Based Strong Bad saying Luc is solid? Gimme a moment to process this. FINALLY someone says he's great.

 

[Oro?!]

It's like MU knowledge is a heavily tested skill in a balanced game and thus significantly influences results or something

Or just do Fox things. Kels bopped me yesterday.

 

[Daftatt]

@ Foo regarding my quote on ZSS vs Fox, I can't say if it's good now, probably not. But I definitely would argue that the new grab has gone a long way to improving the matchup. Her recovery is still vulnerable though.

 

[Evilagram]

Thought on game and watch, have his judgment hammer increment once every time he does a B move, and it counts in a consistent order. Nerf judgment hammer a little to compensate. Now G&W has to keep track of each B move he does in order to get to 9s. Could even do consistent combos off the other hammers. Have it increment at the end of the B move's animation maybe so people could avoid him counting up by hitting him out of B moves.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

I would say (though I am by no means educated in the ways of the watch) either leave things how they are, or make the low numbers respectable (still better off to do a solid combo) and nerf 9 (maybe), then make it set order based on successful connects. So to land a 5 you have to land a 1, 2, 3, and a 4 before (hehe) you get to use 5. This would not reset each stock. The idea sounds weird to me though, I think its best to leave it the way it is.

 

[NeonApophis]

I think Fox is better than wolf, primarily because of recovery. It's just a lot easier to gimp wolf than fox in my experience.

Wat. Wolf's recovery is objectively much better than Fox's. His up b has less start up, so there's less time for opponents to edgeguard, and his side b is way better for recovering since it covers vertical distance, has multiple angle options, and has a strong hitbox at the end. Wolf's recovery is one of his most obvious advantages over the other spacies.

 

[Chevy]

Wolf also has land lag on his up-b, and no hitboxes to protect him during start-up. And while Wolf Flash is generally better than Fox Illusion, it doesn't have the mix-up of going straight horizontally to stage, which is a pretty big deal. You always know Wolf is coming from below or aiming for a platform to ledge-cancel on.

 

[Player -0]

You can still shorten the Wolf Flash to grab ledge.

The starting hitboxes don't do much for Fox or Falco, any character or player with a bit of competence can space around them.

You do have land lag but it's not CF, Sheik, or Marth level of crippling. Especially considering you can angle it down and to the ledge.

 

[Strong Badam]

The main advantages Wolf has over the other two spacies in terms of recovery are his much higher aerial speed and additional weight. Yeah his specials are more punishable when he goes onstage but he needs to do that in much fewer situations than the other two.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Wolf also has a ridiculous double jump, that **** is millimeters from being as high as falco's and ofc he's way more mobile during it

 

[Soft Serve]

Falco's Double jump is a whole spacie height higher than wolfs
wolf's is also a head shorter than Fox's
but yeah wolf's is amazing + air speed and drift.

 

[Sir Bubbles]

I've been absent in the PM community ever since PM 3.5 came out and Wolf is almost as good as Fox?


Huh.

 

[Evilagram]

I would say (though I am by no means educated in the ways of the watch) either leave things how they are, or make the low numbers respectable (still better off to do a solid combo) and nerf 9 (maybe), then make it set order based on successful connects. So to land a 5 you have to land a 1, 2, 3, and a 4 before (hehe) you get to use 5. This would not reset each stock. The idea sounds weird to me though, I think its best to leave it the way it is.

If they increment only based on successful connects, then G&W would get to 9 and keep it until he successfully hit someone, it would be like Ivysaur keeping the solar beam charge, except worse. I think it's more interesting to have them increment every B move use because then you have up Bs and neutral Bs mucking up your count. Down B probably shouldn't affect the order, though if you stick with the idea that it only changes the order when the move ends, then how fast can you really spam down B consecutively?

 

[Comprehend13]

If you increment for every b move use...wouldn't it be really easy to spam bacon and save the 9?

 

[InfinityCollision]

I feel pretty comfortable saying ZSS isn't top 15 in 3.5. Ask me again when 3.51 drops and her stuff works properly, but I suspect she'll still have some fairly ugly matchups (including but not limited to aforementioned spacies) barring yet another makeover. Speaking of which, any timeline for 3.51? Guessing at PAL release?

On the other hand, I do agree with Sonic and Mewtwo in top 10 and I think Wolf is at least top 5. Metagame advancement often proceeds along paths of low resistance... dunno about Sonic (Sonic is fundamentally crazy so w/e) but neither Mewtwo nor Wolf players are really bringing everything those characters have to the table yet. Wolf less so than Mewtwo perhaps, but he still has room to grow.

Based Strong Bad saying Luc is solid? Gimme a moment to process this. FINALLY someone says he's great.

Not the first time it's been said in 3.5. But yeah, character gets a mix of buffs and minor nerfs in a patch that nerfs most of the things that gave him trouble in 3.02? Might just be good.

 

[Hylian]

Or just do Fox things. Kels bopped me yesterday.

It's not like kels is considered a top 30 melee player in the world or anything...No, he just wins cause fox.

 

[Sinz]

It's not like kels is considered a top 30 melee player in the world or anything...No, he just wins cause fox.

At least you got it right with that last part.

:D

I think fox is a bit harder in melee than in pm. However, I think fox is one of the easiest to win with in PM.

edit: I hope you realize it was sarcasm.

 

[Player -0]

Fox is harder to play in Melee because of the SH being 1 frame stricter as well as a couple other things I think. On the other hand you get frame 1 invincibility and no decaying lasers.

Not sure if you were being sarcastic but I don't think Fox is one of the easiest characters to win with in P:M.

 

[Sinz]

Fox is harder to play in Melee because of the SH being 1 frame stricter as well as a couple other things I think. On the other hand you get frame 1 invincibility and no decaying lasers.

Not sure if you were being sarcastic but I don't think Fox is one of the easiest characters to win with in P:M.

His playstyle is fairly repetitive in pm and hard to counterplay. It's extremely linear. However, if you deviate even a little bit from that strategy you find out you also have extremely good mix ups.

For example look at Zero's Fox in 3.02. I know that's a patch behind but he played extremely linearly. SHDL to force an approach. Nair shine upsmash / upthrow uair. A combo that is extremely reliable and extremely difficult to punish because of how safe it is. When you add just a little bit of mix up into it (aka an example being just a wavedash back to counteract someone getting ready to punish your nair) you become even better with just a single mix up.

His recovery can be interrupted but by no means is it bad. It also feels like his side b trades more often than it did in melee. However, that could just be me messing up time and time again. I'm completely willing to accept that.

If I'm completely wrong on this I apologize, but it seems to be the case time and time again with fox/falco (albeit falco's recovery is worse).

In addition a lot of things that made match ups bearable against Fox were nerfed heavily. (Snake's grounded up b is the easiest example) Fox's safety on his moves weren't nerfed at all.

Spoiler

Smash
-Up Smash damage decreased 18 -> 17, BKB 30 -> 26, KBG 112 -> 108.

Aerials
-Neutral Aerial animation adjusted for right leg positioning.
-Forward Aerial damage on later hits reduced slightly to account for lack of damage staling after the first hit on multi-hit attacks.
-Up Aerial damage on 1st hit reduced by 1 to account for lack of damage staling after the first hit on multi-hit attacks.

Specials
-Neutral Special (Laser)
--Fast Fall can no longer be triggered with C-Stick input.
--Fixed bug where rear 2 hitboxed on laser were deleted.
-Up Special (Firefox)

Simply put, Firefox has been ported in every way from NTSC Super Smash Bros. Melee.
--Startup: Removed subaction 0.90x initial H multiplier.
--Dash: Decay begins 2 frames sooner from 6 to 4.
--End: Can now fastfall, animation lasts one frame longer. Grounded animation adjusted to match interrupt.
--Special Fall: Max H Mobility multiplier increased from 0.85x to 1.00x.
--Fixed a bug where Up Special hitbox terminated 3 frames too early.

Others
-Dash Attack TransN value has been matched to Melee values.
-Final Smash (Landmaster)
--Fixed bug where Landmaster warped in air.

Albeit he does kill later and do a little bit less damage on upsmash. Everything else is pretty unnoticeable from 3.02 to 3.5. Plus Fox does feel cleaner now too with the changes to make him match Melee. He is still insanely good against defensive options with shine grab from a nair. Upsmash is extremely good still. Even without using shine he is still one of the best in the game.

edit: sorry for ranting. I know I started out by saying how Fox is easiest to win with compared to most characters and then shifted in to complaining about fox changes in 3.5.

edit2: I'm also willing to clarify on anything if anyone wants. I'm also completely open to discussion. I'm not here to be defiant about things. I'm here to learn and improve as a player.

edit3: THIS IS MY OPINION.

 

[Soft Serve]

fox is still really silly and no one denys that.

Also technical difficulty isn't really a topic that should be even considered when looking at how good the character is, so easier short hops doesn't change anything for fox. Its far more about how they create openings and how much/how reliable the conversions are. Fox is great at all of those, and to create the openings and execute efficient combos you don't need to do anything more difficult than shffls and wavedashes, some of which are out of shine. yeah perfect multishines break the game, but the effort put into that doesn't net you any more than a shine grab or other shine pressure. Fox isn't hard to play or win with, his "win conditions" are consistent across the whole cast and comparatively easy to set up.

Fox got "nerfed" going in 3.5 but not like the other characters that got nerfed. Most other characters have to change they way they play to be effective. Fox just takes stocks 10% later.

Although discrediting a players skill and ability to play the game and the MU just because they played fox is horrible. The game starts at the character selection screen, don't discredit someone because they picked a better character.