Tier List Speculation

[Frost | Odds]

That sounds fun.

It's only invincible on startup, and Bowser gets hosed pretty hard if you just clank with the upB, but it looks really nasty.

 

[JOE!]

So, any opinions on Zard?

 

[DrinkingFood]

Character is good

 

[DMG]

Hold down, win big dollars

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

So, any opinions on Zard?

Elevator combos

Good edgeguards

Lovely spacing tools

Very unique design with how a large character with mostly slow start-up moves has such quick ground speed

Very fun to fights and has all the tools for success with reasonable weaknesses

Might be even with spacies

Great throw game

Well designed character, more should be like this.

 

[Ogopogo]

Well designed character, more should be like this.

Cue image of nair's (aka the world-destroyer's) hitbox

But really. Charizard is pretty alright. And I agree that he's probably even with spacies.

 

[Blank Mauser]

Nair isn't even a defining part of his kit anymore in my opinion. Just crouch or dash under it on most stages.

Learn to bait anti-air jabs or shield DI + punish everything he has and hes done. Though I will agree the matchups that he won in 3.02 haven't changed much. Some of them just became even.

I know most the good Zard's, and I'd have confidence challenging all except one with my basic Fox/Marth. I don't think he does well in the space animal match-up at all. People just don't know the match-up.

 

[mimgrim]

Honestly think Charizard is really good in 3.5, like high tier good.

I still think people complaining about nerfs and the like and how character x is now bad are still living in a 3.02 world and not looking through the 3.5 world. :/

 

[Blank Mauser]

The 3.5 world where all the characters that beat Zard barely got touched? And the ones that did now edgegaurd him just as well if not way better now?

Yeah okay. Zard was high tier in 3.02 already, he got his nerfs for a reason. But he is definitely relatively worse in this version.

 

[B.W.]

Can we talk about how bad Up-b Tethers character's recoveries are now? Out of Olimar, Ivy, and ZSS, only ZSS even has the ability to mix-up and recovery high with down-b. The other two are either forced to get close and air dodge onto the stage, or just die because tethers are obscenely easy to punish now. You just have to grab the ledge before they up-b, then wait until they are forced to pull up (because they cant tether cancel anymore) then ledge hop and throw out a strong move that covers all their drift options, which either kills them or resets the situation. If you dont kill them, you just do it one more time and they cant actually recovery.

Its stupid how bad these recoveries are because they are too easy to edge guard. They have only one option to go for, and it can be covered easily with no real ability for them to mix it up. These recoveries are almost melee Doc levels of bad.

I was saying this before 3.5 even dropped. The Z tethers I can get behind, but mandatory Up-B tethers are terrible.

Olimar and Ivysaur legit have the worst recoveries in the game now. It's funny too, because they all had their recoveries super nerfed but they weren't even hard to edgeguard before.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Might be even with spacies

Absolutely not; not even in 3.0.

Zard isn't terrible, but he's always basically been a worse Marth, and the last patch hit him pretty hard. Maybe Mask or Zen or John #s will be able to make some magic happen with him, but I highly, highly doubt that he's a sleeper top tier or anything like that.

 

[mimgrim]

How is Zard a worse Marth exactly? Aside from disjoints they seem like entirely different characters to me. I mean, if you are trying to play Zard like Marth then you are probably doing something wrong.

 

[Blank Mauser]

Uhh they both want to space with tippers and have above average grab ranges and dash dances. Zard isn't even really that disjointed now btw.

Zard can't do what Marth does because his attacks aren't nearly as safe. Hes basically a constant 50/50 risk-taker with a good crouch cancel. But he wins against people who primarily have to approach from jab angle.

 

[Frost | Odds]

@ mimgrim Fast characters with huge air combos, enormous attacks, neutral games/low % combos highly dependent on grabs/tech chases, etc. Hell, Zard even has a dunk and a pseudo Ken combo.

Obviously any analogy breaks down at some point, but their play is actually pretty similar in a lot of respects. I've played both quite a bit.

 

[DMG]

Absolutely not; not even in 3.0.

Zard isn't terrible, but he's always basically been a worse Marth, and the last patch hit him pretty hard. Maybe Mask or Zen or John #s will be able to make some magic happen with him, but I highly, highly doubt that he's a sleeper top tier or anything like that.

That's not entirely true. Zard has some fantastic traits that Marth would love to borrow: Zard Dthrow, Jab, Zard's CC capability are the main 3.

They play similar, but it's not all poop for Zard! (Maybe in this patch it is, all hail Marth THE NEXT TOP TIER!)

Oh yeah @ DrinkingFood my jiggz post was not aimed at you. I'm 100% dead serious that's how you can fix Jiggs. I offered my opinion

 

[Blank Mauser]

Zard Dthrow dun matter cuz no one DI's Bthrow and gets hit for free combos anyways. @ DrinkingFood pls T_T

 

[MLGF]

So, any opinions on Zard?

Nair got nerfed, lost his main tool against swordies.

Probably got indirectly buffed, but he's now losing to swordies, as compared to before.

 

[Blank Mauser]

Hes always lost to them. Marth, Ike, Pit, Link etc. have always been dragonslayers imo. His main tools against them were f-tilt and glair. Both getting nerfed much more heavily than nair.

 

[DMG]

>Doesn't talk about Zard holding down vs chars like Marth or Roy





>>>>>>>>>>>>What the **** am I reading<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

 

[MLGF]

Hes always lost to them. Marth, Ike, Pit, Link etc. have always been dragonslayers imo. His main tools against them were f-tilt and glair. Both getting nerfed much more heavily than nair.

Yeah, OK. Here's how our Zard handles the matchup, he's way better at it now, but it gets the point across.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

I mean, there are giffs of Marth doing it. He really has no frames to work with, after you do the Hax dash tho. @ Chesstiger2612 has posted on the MK boards about mk doing the Hax dash. Mk actually has frames to pull **** out. I forgot how much mario has in PM, but doc could like dsmash. i forget

I am unsure if MK is capable of doing it still, his first air jump now has more height so that makes more frames to wait before you are on a decent height to do the WD back. Just from my intuition it is still possible, but has to be done riskier by aiming at the exact corner with an airdodge, and is therefore riskier. Might also be possible with the normal method, but I can't confirm right now.

Will test sonner or later...

 

[JOE!]

Zard's CC dtilt is simply bufftastic now

 

[trash?]

does charizard still CC knees from falcon, speaking of?

because that would say all you need to know about his CC ability

 

[Blank Mauser]

>Doesn't talk about Zard holding down vs chars like Marth or Roy





>>>>>>>>>>>>What the **** am I reading<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Even if you somehow scared Marth into limiting himself into just grab, dtilt, and retreating fair, I still think he'd win in neutral. This isn't even taking into account how punishable Zard is if he pre-emptively tries to take advantage of crouch bait, nor how good PM Marth's dair is.

Yeah, OK. Here's how our Zard handles the matchup, he's way better at it now, but it gets the point across.

I didn't even have to watch the video to know it would be platform camp nair spam. This is literally what happens in every match where people don't know how to deal with Zard. Been there, done that.

Zard's CC dtilt is simply bufftastic now

But the move got nerfed...and is crouch cancelable itself now.

 

[DrinkingFood]

does charizard still CC knees from falcon, speaking of?

because that would say all you need to know about his CC ability

Almost any character can do that.

Zard Dthrow dun matter cuz no one DI's Bthrow and gets hit for free combos anyways. @ DrinkingFood pls T_T

I had never even known it was a thing until I played oracle. Don't think I've even played a good zard besides him. Has remarkably low endlag, and zard's a very fast character. It's a very cool design I think. Does it DI mix-up with anything?

 

[DMG]

Fthrow, sorta. Fthrow is not very fast (in comparison at least), so it's more about being aware.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Seems like you could just hold down and cover both options anyways. Not perfect DI for either throw, but like half DI; probably stops the follow-ups, depending on character. CCing- now applies to throws

 

[DMG]

"Half DI" won't save too many chars from Bthrow. Maybe Spacies or people that touch the ground quicker to begin with: you'll probably want the full angle

 

[Mera Mera]

Seems like you could just hold down and cover both options anyways. Not perfect DI for either throw, but like half DI; probably stops the follow-ups, depending on character. CCing- now applies to throws

At some (low) percents zard can dash -> reverse nair the good DI on b-throw (which is a weaker punish than fair, but it's something). I think you would want down and away DI to avoid a hit at all percents... I haven't tested it, but I'd be surprised if holding down was enough to get away, though it might be at higher percent. Zard f-throw is slow and different enough of an animation for you to change DI on reaction and obviously the same is true for down and up throw, so this seems like the most reliable strategy imo.

Against opponents with good DI, Zard's throws are mostly just good for positional reasons (which is still quite good).

@ DMG I don't think Zard loses to Roy and personally thought Marth vs Zard was even in 3.02 (he lost neutral though imo cause Marth's options are just safer (d-tilt, fadeback fair, better dash range)). But the other sword characters really do give Zard a lot of trouble (Pit, Metaknight, Link, Toon Link).

@ Thane of Blue Flames I think Zard hard punishes mistakes made by spacies, and mistakes against a match up you don't know are fairly common. I think Zard loses pretty badly to Falco, and does okay but loses to Fox. Wolf I'm not sure on really.

Zard's match up spread has overall gotten worse in 3.5. The Ness, Mario, and presumably Pit match ups (which were quite bad before) all got better (he still loses them at least for Ness and Mario, but Ness was a hard counter before and now it's close to even). But Ivy and Falco, who were already his two worst match ups, got worse, and the other sword characters also became harder.

Personally, I think Zard's main flaw in 3.5, which I think might need some tweaking in order for him to be competitive, is he doesn't have any safe options in neutral other than dash dance and maybe fadeback aerials in some match ups (which loses space, hits too high against a good portion of the cast, has slow horizontal aerial speed, and long commitment because of a 36 frame short hop fast fall + decently long L-canceled end lag). I'll note that these are flaws that existed in 3.02 and are fairly unaffected by the 3.5 changelist.

To elaborate, comparing Zard's neutral to Marth's: If someone is being more defensive against a Marth, Marth can dash in -> down tilt -> dash away to apply some pressure/steal some space fairly safely. If someone is being really aggressive with shffls against Marth he can preemptively start a fadeback (not on reaction) and fair (possibly on reaction), which costs some space but isn't too long of a commitment. Zard on the other hand commits to a huge amount of air time and if the person DIDN'T approach with shffl, they may now be able to dash at you and apply pressure / bait a reaction as you recover from landing lag (or possibly just straight up hit you in your ending lag). There's also the fact that, since Zard doesn't have something with low IASA, when pressure is applied in situations such as being crowded during your endlag, Zard can't do anything offensive without huge risk, where as Marth could in some circumstances still d-tilt -> dash away.

I like the nair and glair changes since those moves were a little absurd in 3.02, but Zard was lacking in neutral, and he still is... none of his changes fixed that. Imo he's good when people have low experience against him, but he's probably low tier this build, at least if you define a tier by viability of soloing that character. Though maybe it'd be best if this game required you to have secondaries? (In WI we're testing a no bans on counterpicks with a larger stage pool to choose from, which pretty clearly rewards those who play multiple characters... it's an interesting idea imo).

Regardless I still think Zard needs a slight buff to neutral personally.

Also, while I agree with removing glide breaking, I hate that you can't angle glide on start up. It takes away a lot of his ATs, which were admittedly mostly useless / hope smash tactics, but they were fun as hell and not ENTIRELY useless.

 

[leekslap]

What do you peep poles think about Pikachu? Going to be honest here, I haven't tried the new Pika yet and everything Pikachu related I know is from Brawl. If QAC is still around, then I'd imagine he'd be pretty broken. I think it isn't used to its maximum potential since you can do some very safe hit-and-run attacks with it if used well. People are too predictable with a move that is basically designed for unpredictability. If it got nerfed then I'm being an idiot again lol and I'm still curious about Zelda btw

 

[Blank Mauser]

Last time I tested Zard's bthrow, hard DI'ing left/right avoided all follow-ups besides techchases on fastfallers. Angling slightly up or down allowed him to get fair or RAR nair on some floaties. Its one of the reasons a lot of people don't DI it correctly, because its just natural to DI up/away. Fthrow takes around 20+ frames to complete. Its fairly reactable simply because the animation is kind of obvious(Zard twirls his head) so you can just mash Up, and its much slower than bthrow.

There is no doubt Zard is a cool character. I guess most Zards have always agree'd with what MeraMera is saying in that he lacks a safe offensive reward for applying pressure. But I still think hes fun and doesn't necessarily need to be shoe-horned into Marth's role. It would just be nice to amplify what aerials he currently has(Dair having super fast recovery, bair having auto cancel/waveland etc.) He will probably never have something on the level of Marth d-tilt, but his f-tilt used to be so so lovely with that head intangibility.

 

[Choice Scarf]

What do you peep poles think about Pikachu? Going to be honest here, I haven't tried the new Pika yet and everything Pikachu related I know is from Brawl. If QAC is still around, then I'd imagine he'd be pretty broken. I think it isn't used to its maximum potential since you can do some very safe hit-and-run attacks with it if used well. People are too predictable with a move that is basically designed for unpredictability. If it got nerfed then I'm being an idiot again lol and I'm still curious about Zelda btw

As a general rule of thumb, nothing about Pika is safe except for Uair and d-tilt. He's throwing hurtboxes at the opponent just as much as hitboxes since all of his disjoint is in the eggs in one basket that is Thunder. That's just Pika's thing though - terribad range.

QAC can't be done out of the second zip anymore, so it's back to relying on good ol' fundamentals in neutral, which is still decent if you add in the b-reverse family tech jolts occasionally. QAC seems very good for pressure extensions and baiting opponents though, and ironically the restrictions are forcing at least me to find new creative stuff with single zip QAC, especially when combined with ledge tricks and edge cancels. Definitely has the mix-up potential, though using it in neutral was never a good idea in the first place anyway.

Combined with very good edgeguarding, Pika's probably mid tier, mid-high on larger stages. Bad range will keep him forever mid-tier though.

 

[_Chrome]

@ Blank Mauser
He doesn't have the head intangibility anymore, unfortunately for us Zarders.

 

[leekslap]

I am unsure if MK is capable of doing it still, his first air jump now has more height so that makes more frames to wait before you are on a decent height to do the WD back. Just from my intuition it is still possible, but has to be done riskier by aiming at the exact corner with an airdodge, and is therefore riskier. Might also be possible with the normal method, but I can't confirm right now.

Will test sonner or later...

He can't do it. Or at least I can't do it. If he can, it will not be nearly as safe as Falcon and probably too risky anyway.

 

[jtm94]

Lucas could hax dash in 3.0 using wavebounce magnet or some swag stuff. Nothing like using your invincibility frames to throw out a hitbox that leaves you in an advantaged edgeguarding scenario in which you can use your back air spike.

You can hax dash all day with Falcon, but that doesn't make him any better.

 

[leekslap]

Lucas could hax dash in 3.0 using wavebounce magnet or some swag stuff. Nothing like using your invincibility frames to throw out a hitbox that leaves you in an advantaged edgeguarding scenario in which you can use your back air spike.

You can hax dash all day with Falcon, but that doesn't make him any better.

Stalls don't make anyone better, but Falcon's can be used for other stuff. Falcon is primarily a bait and punish character anyway.

 

[jtm94]

Stalls don't make anyone better, but Falcon's can be used for other stuff. Falcon is primarily a bait and punish character anyway.

Sheik's is pretty good.

 

[Psyant]

What do you peep poles think about Pikachu? Going to be honest here, I haven't tried the new Pika yet and everything Pikachu related I know is from Brawl. If QAC is still around, then I'd imagine he'd be pretty broken. I think it isn't used to its maximum potential since you can do some very safe hit-and-run attacks with it if used well. People are too predictable with a move that is basically designed for unpredictability. If it got nerfed then I'm being an idiot again lol and I'm still curious about Zelda btw

People do use QAC smartly, but it's never safe. You're extremely vulnerable to just running into hitboxes, even when the opponent doesn't see the QAC coming and just happens to be threatening with spaced moves or something. The 3.5 nerf hit it pretty badly, too. It's occasionally useful but nowhere near broken.

Overall Pikachu is pretty decent imo. He doesn't really have a big advantage over many characters but doesn't get destroyed by many, either. He has some amazing perks in his up smash, edgeguarding and recovery, but is balanced by awful reach on almost all his moves, including grabs, and a weight/fallspeed combo that makes him both fragile and combo food. I'd say he's mid tier, personally.

 

[Erik Aldereguia]

Yeah the pika nerf hit pretty hard. it wasnt particularly hard to counter anyway. in fact, it was pretty unsafe honestly. now ur movement has been cut by more than half, while having small hitboxes that arent even disjointed. I completely understand why some people are leaving pika. the nerf just raises the question: Why play pika when i can play someone else who has better movement and can do everything pika is meant to do but safer. i still think pika is kinda fun and play him in friendlies sometimes but not main material. i would put him at low-mid tier.

 

[Boiko]

Regarding the Zard discussion, John Number stopped playing Zard and now has ultimately quit PM.