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Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

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A2ZOMG

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Wa usually means Wario.

Anyways Doc might have OK recovery, but you have to compare it to others. His recovery is pretty bad when you compare him to pretty much anyone in mid or higher tier.

About Wario... He is really hard to edgeguard if he has the bike available, but without the Bike his recovery turns from "Brah don't even bother" to "WHERE THE **** IS MY BIKE?!?". Only couple of characters can edgeguard Wario well (mainly Shulk and Ike). This is why Wario should never ever leave his Bike on stage.
I previously could name about 16 or so characters who Doc explicitly has a better recovery than.

Doc's recovery may technically be within the bottom half of the cast if you care to argue that, but more accurately, his recovery is comparably as effective as about 80% of most characters. A very small percentage of the cast has either a top tier recovery or a bad recovery. Everything else is average.

Almost all the times I actually get killed offstage as Doc in competitive matches, it's generally something that would happen to almost any other non-top tier character.

It's important to also note that on the 3DS, shorter recoveries are also a bigger liability, so I'm assuming part of the reason people rag on Doc's recovery is because of 3DS blastzones, while on the Wii-U this really doesn't matter much at all when you assume good players aren't screwing up DI.
 
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Jehtt

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Tornado is multihit, disjointed, and fast. The way you defend against that is literally SITTING STILL AND SHIELDING.
Or, you know, moving outside of it's range and then coming back in for a punish? Which is especially easy for a character who was one of the best dance trots in the entire game?
Also, doesn't sitting and shielding being the counterplay make it incredibly easy counterplay? 42 frames of lag and all that.
In fact, wouldn't the move be not so difficult to react to? I know it starts on frame 11 but it's only going to hit on frame 11 if you're right next to your opponent (I.E. not in neutral).
I feel like what you're trying to say is that you can condition your opponent to shield with the move but that honestly sounds like a terrible idea when you can do it much more practically and safely with moves like back air. Tornado doesn't travel fast enough to be a viable option in the neutral. It's a punish move, and not even a very good one at that. Its best use if off-stage. Speaking of which...

The fact of the matter is Doc has a legitimately good momentum mixup that actually a lot of characters would kill for in their offstage options. Tornado is a good stalling tool you can use to move forwards, backwards, AND gain height. Anyone who denies this is an amazing momentum mixup especially for recovery situations is a fool.

Meaning, as I've been constantly stating, at a high level where good players rarely mess up DI and leave options open to recover high, Doc's recovery is generally speaking not even a relevant weakness for him. Tornado by itself is such a robust momentum mixup, and that matters by far MUCH more than what more than overkill distance Doc supposedly is missing on his recovery.
Please, stop. Doctor Mario does not have a good recovery not matter how much you cite DI. Everyone can DI. If he's in a position where he has to recover with tornado, it isn't going to send him high enough to avoid being hit. Most characters can reach him easily. If Doc is recovering at or above stage height you can just wait for the tornado (it is active for 22 frames) and easily react and punish its 42 frame end lag. If he can make it back without tornado then he miiiight be able to use tornado as a mixup against an opponent trying to attack his recovery but it only takes one bad move and he is sent by a bair too far to make it back.
And that's the thing. Doctor Mario has to rely on mixup to get back to the stage with any semblance of reliability. Most good characters in this game has a recovery that either has a large hitbox that is difficult to challenge (Mario, Pikachu), has a lot of invincibility (Sheik, Sonic), or several good mixup options that won't leave you dead if you pick the wrong one (ZSS, Fox).
Doc has a few of those properties (his up b is sort of hard to challenge and he does have a bit of mixup) but the overall range is poor and the mixup is not nearly as good as you are making it out to be.
I am not saying his recovery is not salvageable, but you are making it out to be way more potent than it actually is.
 

A2ZOMG

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Or, you know, moving outside of it's range and then coming back in for a punish? Which is especially easy for a character who was one of the best dance trots in the entire game?
Also, doesn't sitting and shielding being the counterplay make it incredibly easy counterplay? 42 frames of lag and all that.
In fact, wouldn't the move be not so difficult to react to? I know it starts on frame 11 but it's only going to hit on frame 11 if you're right next to your opponent (I.E. not in neutral).
I feel like what you're trying to say is that you can condition your opponent to shield with the move but that honestly sounds like a terrible idea when you can do it much more practically and safely with moves like back air. Tornado doesn't travel fast enough to be a viable option in the neutral. It's a punish move, and not even a very good one at that. Its best use if off-stage. Speaking of which...
f I'm forcing you to shield in neutral, then I have the advantage. Falcon doesn't just have the freedom to expect Doc to Tornado like an idiot when he has to find ways past Doc's powerful SHAC B-air, grab game, and other things. Tornado clinches things by preventing Falcon from simply aggressively walling Doc out given he cannot beat that move directly.

You really don't understand how conditioning works. The fact is Falcon's ONLY response to Tornado is not abusing his mobility and hitboxes and shielding it. If Falcon is read playing respectfully vs Tornado, Doc gets in. I will gladly eat a few Falcon F-smashes to throw Falcon off balance, get him offstage, and gimp him, and Tornado is very good for this purpose since the move almost guaranteed puts Falcon offstage when it hits.

Please, stop. Doctor Mario does not have a good recovery not matter how much you cite DI. Everyone can DI. If he's in a position where he has to recover with tornado, it isn't going to send him high enough to avoid being hit. Most characters can reach him easily. If Doc is recovering at or above stage height you can just wait for the tornado (it is active for 22 frames) and easily react and punish its 42 frame end lag. If he can make it back without tornado then he miiiight be able to use tornado as a mixup against an opponent trying to attack his recovery but it only takes one bad move and he is sent by a bair too far to make it back.
And that's the thing. Doctor Mario has to rely on mixup to get back to the stage with any semblance of reliability. Most good characters in this game has a recovery that either has a large hitbox that is difficult to challenge (Mario, Pikachu), has a lot of invincibility (Sheik, Sonic), or several good mixup options that won't leave you dead if you pick the wrong one (ZSS, Fox).
Doc has a few of those properties (his up b is sort of hard to challenge and he does have a bit of mixup) but the overall range is poor and the mixup is not nearly as good as you are making it out to be.
I am not saying his recovery is not salvageable, but you are making it out to be way more potent than it actually is.
The fact everyone can DI is important. It means the distance on Doc's recovery is mostly irrelevant when good players usually leave the option open to recover high.

Mario's Up-B is easily challenged, people just have to learn the matchup. And the few other recoveries you mentioned belong to a minority of top tier characters.

Most of the cast does not have as good of a recovery as the characters you just mentioned, and Doc is about as effective at recovery as most of the cast.

I actually play Doc in tournament and almost never get gimped. In SoCal, one of the most stacked regions in the USA, and my PR rarely ever gimps me. I also have really bad reaction time, meaning I go for very general conservative options when recovering. Where are your grounds to argue that Doc's recovery is bad?

If I, a mere mid level player rarely ever get gimped offstage by players with considerably superior mechanics and reactions, I can safely confirm Doc's recovery is not a relevant weakness competitively.
 
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bc1910

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Robin's recovery is fine. Another thing that people should stop doing is claiming that you can react to moves that you clearly can't react to. Whenever people say you can react to ~15 frame moves for instance, that's realistic in optimal conditions yes, but only if you're ready for them and not focusing on anything else, and that's just with a frame 1-3 actions like shields, spotdodges and airdodges. People can't even react to rolls if they're not already anticipating them, and those are around 30 frames. Say you're offstage and a Peach is about to throw out a fair, that's definitely reactable because you don't have to focus on anything but avoiding that. If you're playing the neutral and a Samus throws out her 16 frame grab, you're not going to react to that if there's anything else on your mind at all at the time she throws it out.
Thank. You.

This "reactable" BS is getting seriously old. I couldn't have said it better myself; people can't even react to rolls until they're almost over. This is one reason why they're so strong in this game (if their frame data was a little bit worse or everyone had Samus' roll reactive dashgrab punishes would be fairly easy).

Between a move having a subtle startup animation, 1-3 frames of controller lag and the fact you absolutely cannot focus solely on one option vs a good player, you are almost never going to react to a 16-frame move.

You know what Zero, the best player in the world and oft-praised "reaction God", got hit by MORE THAN ONCE in his set vs Nairo? Jab grab. ZSS' jab grab. In super theorycraft fun land, that isn't possible! Every single grab ZSS throws out or uses as a mixup can be spotdodged and hard punished!

No. This is real life. The fact that Zero is susceptible to mixups from a 16-frame move speaks for itself. Keyword, mixups. Yes, you might be able to react to these moves if you literally stand there in training mode waiting for your friend to press the button. But that is not a realistic scenario. There is a lot going on in a game of Smash Bros and perfect reaction times are not something that anyone can aspire to.
 

Jehtt

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I do understand how conditioning works, and I also understand how reacting works. Fighting games are not just all guessing what your opponent is going to, reaction is a huge part of the game. Doc's tornado is react-able if you aren't doing it close-up. Why on earth would you use a move with, and I emphasize this again, 42 frames of ending lag when Dr. Mario is graced with other good moves that are safe on shield to condition your opponent with that also require far less commitment? I mean, geez, there's a reason you don't see top level Sheik players just go for random bouncing fishes or Ryu's go for random tatsu's. Even if it can condition shield, it is way less safe and not worth the risk when you have better options.

Frankly, I don't care about your anecdotal experiences. Perhaps your local players don't know how gimpable Doc is. Perhaps they don't bother risking it because they figure they will win anyway. Perhaps they are used to regular Mario who, despite your outrageous claims, is in fact very difficult to challenge once he is in Up B range of the stage. Perhaps they think you're free so they don't even need to edge guard you. I don't know, but anecdotes from a mid-level player mean nothing in the place of actual analysis and high level gameplay.
 

Fox Is Openly Deceptive

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Fox Is Openly Deceptive Fox Is Openly Deceptive
What do you think? Radical Larry above apparently thinks Link is better then Tink in a lot of ways, I'm sure your a notable Tink or so, whatcha got to say about that? Is it true that Link as better combos and setups and possible zoning game?
When talking about high level play, mobility and speed become very important attributes for any character. The better the player, the more they'll be able to squeeze out of a character with higher mobility/speed. Some people, for some reason or other, don't seem to appreciate the widespread significance of this, hence them thinking that e.g. Link is amazing, and no amount of arguing will change their mind. Having literally just said that...

Link has more setups from Bombs than Toon Link does and dishes out more damage from said setups. While Toon Link has F-Air/U-Air setups, Link can set up from his bombs on opponents with ALL of his aerials, even B-Air and Spin Attack.
This is just incorrect. They can both do Bomb to any aerial, and their aerials will tend to do around the same damage, though arguably Toon's will do more damage overall, seeing as the most common setup will be Bomb to Fair, and Link will stop hitting with both hits of Fair early on i.e. around about the time that your standard Bomb to Fair is even possible, leading to Toon's Bomb to aerials doing more damage overall per stock. [Though many Toons will do Bomb to U-smash at low to medium percents, dealing the same damage as Fair and keeping the Fair fresh for kills.] And let's not forget the whole mobility thing (which will be popping up a lot). Mobility allows Toon to get the aerial [or U-smash] combo far more frequently and reliably than Link does because Toon can be further away and still get the follow up to combo, but perhaps even more significantly, he'll be more likely to already be approaching in this scenario because with greater mobility comes the option of pulling out more effectively if the bomb doesn't connect etc. Beginning to approach with Toon is far safer than it is for Link.
Link also has far better combo setups than Toon Link, with Link being able to D-Throw > U-Tilt/U-Smash/U-Air, with the U-Air being able to kill reliably off of a good and quick double jump.
You know what else combos into 'U-tilt/U-Smash/U-Air'? Toon's U-tilt. At low percents U-tilt strings and the ensuing combos that follow can rack up far more damage than Link's D-throw to U-tilt setup can. It's only at mid to high-percents that Link will be realistically getting more damage (character dependant as always). The trouble of course is in how reliable and how risky the setups are, and when comparing Toon's quick U-tilt with Link's laggy grab, well. Link's grab may be easier to land in the sense that it has amazing range and can be used out of a run (and be pivoted), but then in a game where other characters can potentially combo you to death, not leaving yourself open to being hit is very important, which brings us back to the importance of move speed and mobility.
Oh and the thing about U-air kills is they work better the higher up you get and the more knockback you inflict, both of which Toon is better at.
Link's also a better character with his edge-rising (when you let go of a ledge, jump and use an attack to get back up) aerials with his F-Air, which leads to good shield poking.
lol, no. Why would you do this? It doesn't even autocancel anymore like it did in Brawl. So risky. Ok so you'll want to say that there are certain scenarios where you'd do this, and that's fair enough I guess, but then what makes you think that those certain scenarios where Ledgehop Fairs are safe for Link are an issue for Toon, one that is significant enough to bring up?
If you play with Link too, you know that his N-Air dirty late hitbox will cause the opponent to tumble at certain damages into an untechable spot. This can allow Link to follow up with F-Tilt, Dash Attack or even F-Smash. Toon Link can't do the same thing with any of his aerials.
Ok not even I know what you're talking about here. Either you're talking about making people fall backwards off a platform or you're talking about Nair locking (which works up to around 45% give or take). In either case, Toon technically has moves that can do this too, and also so what? (Toon's moves that can potentially lock are normal arrows, returning custom 3 boomerang, F-tilt, D-tilt, Nair, and Dair, and there is in fact a possible setup where at like zero percent Toon can bomb/u-tilt to footstool to Dair lock to X, just ftr).
Of course you could just be talking about scenarios that actually are techable...
Link's got the better footsies game with the range
Mobility and move speed are required for a good footsies game. It also doesn't hurt to have a move with burst speed for confirming punishes like Toon's dash attack, which Link very much lacks. (It's actually a bit of a problem.)
has the better edge-guarding game with multiple attacks,
I'll give you that.
better combo game
I went over this earlier with Toon's U-tilt, and then just factor in his reliable confirms out of bomb/boomerang made better due to Toon being more likely to be in a position where he's able to combo out of his spam due to his mobility and due to the fact that he's more free to attempt approaches which I'll cover in a moment. I'm well aware of Link's combo game though so I'm certainly not saying you don't have a point here if looking at combos in a vacuum.
kill game
Toon's kill game is more reliable than Link's and is surprisingly just as if not more deadly. When you're killing mid-weights outright with a Bomb to Fair potentially below 100% (depending on how fresh Fair is and assuming average rage), that's no laughing matter. You can't just be like 'oh but F-smash' because that's not even close to comparable in terms of reliability, safety, and viability.
and arguably a better projectile [game]
No not really. You'll probably say that Link's arrows and bomb throws travel faster, do like 1% more damage and mention some gimmick to do with the gale boomerang right? Projectiles/obstacles don't need to travel fast in order to hit you; it's called 'bullet hell' XD. Toon will tend to have more obstacles on screen at any one time when he's in spam mode, which for the record, against faster characters, is ill-advised anyway. What you want to be doing in that case is using projectiles more cautiously and more for the purposes of stifling approaches while retreating, something that Toon does better because of, among other things, mobility. If the opponent shields one of Link's bombs, that's it. It's no longer a threat until the timer runs out (assuming it wasn't randomly powershielded). With Toon's bombs however, if they hit the opponent's shield they have until the bomb hits the ground to catch it (risking being hit by something else during this short period), otherwise the bomb will explode upon hitting the ground creating another hitbox which can hinder approaches when under pressure.
They both have their useful bomb techs e.g. soft throwing and bombsliding for Link and all the variations of BFO for Toon. In the end though Link can't effectively run away or approach while spamming the way that Toon can because of his lack of mobility. Link's bombslide used as an approach is a very committed approach, and then Toon can approach just as fast as the bombslide by simply running which leaves him free to do other things, like stop approaching.
Having faster moving and longer reaching projectiles might be useful for chip damage, long-range spam and maintainig pressure when the opponent has been hit far away, but that is less important than being able to transition from spam game to sword game (due to the poor damage output their projectiles have) or being able to effectively run away, and these are Toon's specialties. Because mobility.
Heck, Toon Link's aerials have more endlag and landing lag in general than Link's. That isn't good for a character with better mobility, that just hinders him.
Right, assuming you're in the business of landing with aerials (which btw, Toon's Nair isn't terrible at) and don't care about rising/retreating aerials that autocancel or end before you land out of a SH (Toon's Nair, Bair and Fair, Link's Bair).
 
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Trifroze

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D-throw F-air true combos Falcon somewhere around like 100%-130% no rage factored. Even though Rage makes it harder to KO confirm with D-throw F-air, it still can KO Falcon at a pretty generous range.

I've landed this in real games, and it cannot be airdodged if Doc does it at the right percents (it's very character specific though).

D-throw F-air and superior Cape and Tornado edgeguards, plus Tornado being one of few attacks that Falcon cannot autopilot wall in neutral gives him a very good matchup against Falcon.
I could see Doc being a better pick than Mario for some matchups where dthrow to fair is a thing, but I can definitely just barely airdodge it in time everywhere between 60 to 130% when I try it on Falcon with 1/4 speed in training mode, with or without DI, and after that he starts popping too high. It's a weight dependent throw so it doesn't work on someone as heavy as Falcon despite him usually being a complete sandbag for things like these.

Thus, for example, it works on Fox until like 90% at which point he can start DI'ing too far for you to connect in time. Same with ZSS, and on Pikachu it works until about 100% because his tail is a huge hurtbox. It seems to stop working somewhere after Sheik's weight, and super floaties like Rosalina seem to be able to DI up and away and avoid the sweetspot at kill percents.

The chart I saw had percents that were way overblown, probably measured with the training mode combo counter, but it's unreliable because it counts combos even after you can airdodge but before you can attack or jump.

EDIT:

My stance on Ganon is that he's difficult to codify because he's, by his nature, an inconsistent character. I see a lot of parallels between him and Seth in Street Fighter, in that which, though Seth has much stronger overall tools than Ganon, he still ultimately suffers a similar fate: his success is predicated on guessing. It's hard to ignore his ability to completely reverse a game, but his high reward is imbalanced by his low success rate. That's why I find myself violently oscillating between "yeah, Ganon's way viable" to "who the **** designed this character?" :p A lot of his success depends on how well he can manipulate people, and unlike, say, Sheik, whose tools permit success regardless of manipulation, Ganon's tools have variable efficacy depending on the playstyle of the person you're fighting. I think you'll see no other character (if not none, then few) whose performance is so dramatically affected by different playstyles than Ganon.

If I had to place him in terms of viability, it'd be low C. I think that even in worst-case scenarios, he's capable of winning, in that no character -- not even Sheik, though barely so -- invalidates him (and I say this with great elation given that I <was> a lifelong Brawl Ganon main), but some very choice variables must line up.
Although viability presumes equal skill between both players, I think that Ganondorf is a special case in the sense that his ability pretty much exponentially skyrockets as the skill advantage for the player using him increases, whereas typically characters would only benefit from this at a gradual pace. Sadly I don't think that a skill difference like this is very practical on the top level or in the future where players get closer to the theoretical skill cap of the game. Ganondorf's own tools for reaching situations where he can get things done to the opponent are anything but potent, instead he thrives on his player making reads and on his opponent making mistakes with the highest reward in the game for succeeding at that (after arguably ZSS, Ryu and MK), but the better the players get the less mistakes they will make. As the Ganondorf player gets better he will have better reads, but the opponent will be equally good at avoiding those reads if he's on the same level as you. This way punishes aren't a sustainable source of character strength, and reads cancel themselves out between the players. It's the tools that matter, and I'm going back and forth on Ganondorf, questioning whether he has enough of them to not get completely shut down as the meta progresses. Honestly he most likely does have enough to not be absolute bottom especially if he keeps getting small buffs, but I highly doubt that he's better than a considerable amount of characters right now.
 
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FallofBrawl

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I think the whole Doc down throw to fair is guaranteed when the player double sticks and forces the aerial to come out a frame after jump squat.
 

meleebrawler

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My stance on Ganon is that he's difficult to codify because he's, by his nature, an inconsistent character. I see a lot of parallels between him and Seth in Street Fighter, in that which, though Seth has much stronger overall tools than Ganon, he still ultimately suffers a similar fate: his success is predicated on guessing. It's hard to ignore his ability to completely reverse a game, but his high reward is imbalanced by his low success rate. That's why I find myself violently oscillating between "yeah, Ganon's way viable" to "who the **** designed this character?" :p A lot of his success depends on how well he can manipulate people, and unlike, say, Sheik, whose tools permit success regardless of manipulation, Ganon's tools have variable efficacy depending on the playstyle of the person you're fighting. I think you'll see no other character (if not none, then few) whose performance is so dramatically affected by different playstyles than Ganon.

If I had to place him in terms of viability, it'd be low C. I think that even in worst-case scenarios, he's capable of winning, in that no character -- not even Sheik, though barely so -- invalidates him (and I say this with great elation given that I <was> a lifelong Brawl Ganon main), but some very choice variables must line up.
Mewtwo's kinda similar to Seth in that way too. Though strangely in response to your earlier post about campy, safe players being more difficult to deal with as Ganon than aggro ones, Mewtwo's kind of the opposite; he thrives when the opponent gives him time to charge and space properly since he is mobile enough to not be lamed out into unsafe approaches.

Although viability presumes equal skill between both players, I think that Ganondorf is a special case in the sense that his ability pretty much exponentially skyrockets as the skill advantage for the player using him increases, whereas typically characters would only benefit from this at a gradual pace. Sadly I don't think that a skill difference like this is very practical on the top level or in the future where players get closer to the theoretical skill cap of the game. Ganondorf's own tools for reaching situations where he can get things done to the opponent are anything but potent, instead he thrives on his player making reads and on his opponent making mistakes with the highest reward in the game for succeeding at that (after arguably ZSS, Ryu and MK), but the better the players get the less mistakes they will make. As the Ganondorf player gets better he will have better reads, but the opponent will be equally good at avoiding those reads if he's on the same level as you. This way punishes aren't a sustainable source of character strength, and reads cancel themselves out between the players. It's the tools that matter, and I'm going back and forth on Ganondorf, questioning whether he has enough of them to not get completely shut down as the meta progresses. Honestly he most likely does have enough to not be absolute bottom especially if he keeps getting small buffs, but I highly doubt that he's better than a considerable amount of characters right now.
There's a similar, if less extreme version of "gets exponentially better with player skill difference" with Mewtwo as well. Obviously he can't close stocks nearly as quickly as Ganondorf with successive reads, but he does definitely have more tools that prevent him from being shut down.
 

Smog Frog

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the seth analogy perplexed me with :4ganondorf: but it makes more sense with :4mewtwo:. :4ganondorf: is probably much more similar to hugo than he is to seth.
 

Trifroze

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I think the whole Doc down throw to fair is guaranteed when the player double sticks and forces the aerial to come out a frame after jump squat.
I did buffer my inputs if that's what you're doubting. I've tested things before.
 

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I think optimal Ganondorf is very scary in theory, but I have to agree that it's a good case of diminishing returns when you reach the top. The amount of effort you need to put in to compete with other characters disturbs what I think is otherwise good potential.

I don't know, I don't play Ganondorf. I don't think he's the worst by any stretch of the imagination, and optimal Ganon is probably mid-tier rather than bottom, but I don't know how sustainable that kind of intensive read-heavy game is in a meta dominated by safe characters.

Even so, he's not bad for a "perceived underwhelming" character. Can't deny the fact that he can turn the tables with one good hit.
 

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Jehtt Jehtt The last hit is on frame 40. So that's 35 frames of end lag. Still a lot though.
 

Trifroze

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It's pretty hard to be a superheavy. Even DK is considered just barely viable if even that, depending on who you ask, despite possessing all of these attributes:

- Second heaviest in the game and above average fall speed
- Pretty good recovery
- By far the most mobile superheavy, probably top 15 most mobile in the game overall (combined with the above two points and his safety this roughly amounts to what might be the best survivability in the game, sorta like he was in Brawl)
- Reliable kill setup at 70-90%
- Pseudo kill throw (ledge) at 120%+
- Several safe / pretty safe kill options outside of throws (uair, bair, utilt sweetspot, fsmash, punch)
- Very high damage per hit like all superheavies
- Good edgeguarding with bair, nair and up b, can go horizontally as deep as he wants
- Frame 3 aerial combobreaker in up b and does 20-32% if the opponent overextends
- Rising SH bair hits short characters and can be used a second time before landing
- Unpunishable attacks on shield: dtilt, bair, nair, punch
- Very safe attacks on shield: jab 1, fsmash (thank you 1.1.1, check it out)

Yet DK somewhat struggles because of his size and landing options. Now look at Dedede, Bowser, Charizard and Ganondorf all of whom have poor overall mobility, no reliable early kill setups, no quick ways to break combos and nowhere near the same amount of safe options as DK. Whether they have powerful kill moves or throws, DK kills earlier, and whether they have high damage output once they get in, DK does more damage. Mobility aids at relieving pressure, getting grabs, approaches and recovery, and DK gets the most out of rage even among these characters because he combines really high weight, above average fall speed, decent safety and a quite reliable recovery. Ganondorf is arguably not a superheavy though, he doesn't make the jank sound effect when he lands. Still, it's easy to see why they'd all eventually cluster into bottom tier while DK keeps doing DK things well above them, his design is competitively so much more forgiving.

People say that DK is bottom tier without cargo uthrow to uair and mid tier with it, but to me it seems he's mid tier without it and high tier with it. He dies to Sheik and ZSS but what else?
 
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Amadeus9

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People say that DK is bottom tier without cargo uthrow to uair and mid tier with it, but to me it seems he's mid tier without it and high tier with it. He dies to Sheik and ZSS but what else?
MK makes DK really sad
 

A2ZOMG

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I do understand how conditioning works, and I also understand how reacting works. Fighting games are not just all guessing what your opponent is going to, reaction is a huge part of the game. Doc's tornado is react-able if you aren't doing it close-up. Why on earth would you use a move with, and I emphasize this again, 42 frames of ending lag when Dr. Mario is graced with other good moves that are safe on shield to condition your opponent with that also require far less commitment? I mean, geez, there's a reason you don't see top level Sheik players just go for random bouncing fishes or Ryu's go for random tatsu's. Even if it can condition shield, it is way less safe and not worth the risk when you have better options.

Frankly, I don't care about your anecdotal experiences. Perhaps your local players don't know how gimpable Doc is. Perhaps they don't bother risking it because they figure they will win anyway. Perhaps they are used to regular Mario who, despite your outrageous claims, is in fact very difficult to challenge once he is in Up B range of the stage. Perhaps they think you're free so they don't even need to edge guard you. I don't know, but anecdotes from a mid-level player mean nothing in the place of actual analysis and high level gameplay.
Same reason why Captain Falcon uses Falcon Kick, Ganondorf uses Wizkick, and Fox uses Dash Attack. Good players go for risky zone breaking to force respect to condition more favorable responses. Also random Ryu tatsu is EXTREMELY underrated in neutral, and someone like Emblem Lord will even go for things like random TSRK in neutral when he knows it will kill. Frankly, you don't understand neutral if you don't understand that risk taking is a VERY big part of how neutral works.

Sheik is not the best example when she already has plenty of safe tools at every single zone, which makes her clearly the best charter, though she does sport a strong DA that has to be respected in neutral just like any other zone breaker.

And no, you don't simply react to an 8 frame multihit move in close range. Especially if you're trying to actually punish Doc's other attacks with buffered inputs, Tornado as a tool in neutral is extremely strong for forcing people to consider sitting in shield for the threat of getting poked for dropping shield in order to pressure Doc for going for other pokes in neutral. That's why Tornado is super strong. If you do anything except literally just wait and hold shield when Doc is in range to use it, you will likely get hit by it. And Doc can then condition you into grabs or other things when he knows that you are actively trying to avoid getting hit by Tornado.

Aside from Nairo, 2manycooks demonstrates constantly in tournament that Tornado is a seriously good move because it will generally beat most options that literally aren't sit and hold shield, which is not actually what you want to do versus Doc. He's placed very high in a number of big tournaments and taken games off of players like M2K and Yoh with Doc, and he uses Tornado a lot in neutral.

This is not factoring that Tornado is a robust stalling tool for recovery, a top tier edgeguard move, a move that can autopilot ledge trap in basically every single matchup, and also a potential KO confirm out of D-throw in some matchups. The zone breaking alone is super valuable, throw in everything else you have a move that many characters legitimately would kill for, in particular Mario. Mario would be literally the best character in the game with Dr. Tornado as his Down-B.

Mario's hitboxes are small enough that generally it's not optimal to shield a lot against him, but on a character like him, the raw disjoint and versatility of Doc Tornado would quickly make him even harder to read in neutral than ever. Throw in that Mario actually really wants more reliable edgeguard and edgetrap tools, better landing options against top tier characters, all of which Tornado adds to VERY EFFECTIVELY, you would have a character with basically no weaknesses, but racks up damage faster than Sheik and can gimp people much earlier offstage.
 
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DunnoBro

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Oh my god I thought they were just glitches before but duck hunt has some REALLY good ledge coverage options. There's no way they're unintentional due to how they're all conveniently from the default trick shot position and how the character is designed to get you on the ledge.

Essentially from just the distance the can is placed at when first trick shotted, you get three ledge coverage options.

1: F-tilt (only feasible with tilt stick. Advancing even a little launches the can, so you'd need to return control stick to neutral after each ftilt otherwise)
This "flips" the can which pops it up, then back down. Letting you have the massive ftilt hitbox to cover rolls and the can to cover jump/standard get-up.
2: Smash Toss
Sends both the can and frisbee tumbling about. Frisbee relaunches the can itself by flipping it twice, or both fall straight down the ledge.
This covers high recoveries and the 2-frame ledge grab. (Two hitboxes and one extreeeemely lingering laser priority hitbox)

Neither of those reliably convert into stocks though. (If the frisbee connects first at the right time, it will carry them and the can towards the blastzone before the can detonates but it doesn't seem reliable)

The final one with the most potential is:

3: Buffered smash toss

Can is hit but is not launched (and also doesn't seem to have it's health or shot count depleted. Very important)
Frisbee launches about 3/4ths of a roll distance away, and hovers until falling.

With can at the roll distance, this covers EVERY standard option.

Both frisbee and can true combo into KO moves reliably by the ledge this way, and even characters with options to go over it like pikachu and ZSS are still susceptible to being grabbed and bthrow by the can.

Normally, throwing into the can either doesn't kill or couldn't connect. But, this is the ABSOLUTE PERFECT condition. A fresh can not completely at the ledge gives me the control to true combo f/bthrow.

In general, most good players will wait and ledge jump which does adequately avoid the projectiles. But Duck hunt's uair can react to those while grounded, and the can makes airdodging through it very unlikely. (And again, can kill combo from that position)

I showed Mr. Eric and several other xanadu players last night, maybe 1/10 attempts resulted in me not getting anything off it. I'd say 5/10 were stock taking scenarios. And DHD gets you on the ledge a LOT.

This also further concretes my theory that optimal DHD is a more aggressive one with conservative can use. You can't do this unless you spawn a can, if it's somewhere else on stage you're screwed.

risky zone breaking

Falcon Kick
Wizkick
Fox Dash Attack.

risky zone breaking
...
 
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A2ZOMG

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Fox DA is wildly unsafe on block. In fact, Fox has very limited options for approaching shield safely generally speaking, he's just good at pressuring people into grabs. Are you trying to refute that Fox DA, a great attack, isn't super risky?

Good players will DA in neutral to force people to play respectfully.
 
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DunnoBro

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re you trying to refute that Fox DA, a great attack, isn't super risky?
It's risky but nowhere near the risk of wiz/falcon kick and just really one of the safest DAs in the game by far so listing it as an example of a risky zone-breaker seemed odd to me.
 
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A2ZOMG

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It's risky but nowhere near the risk of wiz/falcon kick and just really one of the safest DAs in the game by far so listing it as an example of a risky zone-breaker seemed odd to me.
I wouldn't rank Fox's DA as being anywhere near one of the safest DAs. Ganon and Samus DA are by far much safer (Ganon DA can crossover super far easily if delayed a bit, Samus DA is fast and also crosses over at a pretty large distance limiting options to punish it significantly).

Fox DA goes like...nowhere technically, and you can basically turnaround Smash it if you react to the crossover. Falcon kick is slightly less risky because most characters can only really punish it with DA or dashgrab reliably, while Ganon Wizkick definitely is more risky. The main advantage to Fox DA is being a frame 4 move that has insane positional advantage on hit.
 
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Man Li Gi

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It's pretty hard to be a superheavy. Even DK is considered just barely viable if even that, depending on who you ask, despite possessing all of these attributes:

- Second heaviest in the game and above average fall speed
- Pretty good recovery
- By far the most mobile superheavy, probably top 15 most mobile in the game overall (combined with the above two points and his safety this roughly amounts to what might be the best survivability in the game, sorta like he was in Brawl)
- Reliable kill setup at 70-90%
- Pseudo kill throw (ledge) at 120%+
- Several safe / pretty safe kill options outside of throws (uair, bair, utilt sweetspot, fsmash, punch)
- Very high damage per hit like all superheavies
- Good edgeguarding with bair, nair and up b, can go horizontally as deep as he wants
- Frame 3 aerial combobreaker in up b and does 20-32% if the opponent overextends
- Rising SH bair hits short characters and can be used a second time before landing
- Unpunishable attacks on shield: dtilt, bair, nair, punch
- Very safe attacks on shield: jab 1, fsmash (thank you 1.1.1, check it out)

Yet DK somewhat struggles because of his size and landing options. Now look at Dedede, Bowser, Charizard and Ganondorf all of whom have poor overall mobility, no reliable early kill setups, no quick ways to break combos and nowhere near the same amount of safe options as DK. Whether they have powerful kill moves or throws, DK kills earlier, and whether they have high damage output once they get in, DK does more damage. Mobility aids at relieving pressure, getting grabs, approaches and recovery, and DK gets the most out of rage even among these characters because he combines really high weight, above average fall speed, decent safety and a quite reliable recovery. Ganondorf is arguably not a superheavy though, he doesn't make the jank sound effect when he lands. Still, it's easy to see why they'd all eventually cluster into bottom tier while DK keeps doing DK things well above them, his design is competitively so much more forgiving.

People say that DK is bottom tier without cargo uthrow to uair and mid tier with it, but to me it seems he's mid tier without it and high tier with it. He dies to Sheik and ZSS but what else?
The problem with superheavies is that they are tailored for a more defensive game plan (patiently baiting and waiting), yet DK is the only one that can kind of go in wreck shop which now that I think of it, would be ridiculous to have Brawly Kong power. Anyway, the reason DK thrives is the fact he doesn't play bait and wait, but a footsie, grappler, mixup based game meaning that he can set the tempo of the match if he needs to. If you notice the difference between play styles (most good DKs move swiftly instead of patiently) you'll see why the others are kinda invalidated in the long run.

My thing is, Sheik don't destroy an entire class of characters, but ZSS does.
DK would be higher in peeps minds if Yoshi, FOX, and ZSS weren't so hard for him. All three of those characters out class him mobility wise, have inescapable combos for a character his size, and have a projectile, which all super heavies hate. 2 of those characters are relatively common and one almost completely damns his entire existence and makes the player ask "what is life?". You might as well set your controller down and take a nap when DK is around 30-85% around ZSS.
 

Mazdamaxsti

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A2ZOMG A2ZOMG I am going to put this in a format you will understand, k?

Docs Recovery

Pros
  • Can stall with tornado
  • Tornado brings him a bit higher
  • Up-b is powerful and if they mess-up, they can be dead.
  • Same with Tornado
  • A walljump
Cons
  • Tornado has a massive amount of end-lag, if they see you use it, they have enough time to hit you and you will in fact die.
  • Up-b has horrid range
  • Doc has bad mobility in the air (40th)
  • An average double jump height
  • His recovery is more really vertical, not horizontal.
Ok, so now lets put this into real talk. Doc can raise a bit with Tornado, and walljump. His up-b is bad offstage so lets just not talk about it (and dont say its high-risk to edge-guard it so nobody does, Ness can 1 shot you if you miss but its better reward if you go for it). This means that his vertical recovering is, below average at best. Tornado has too much end lag to be used when an opponent is waiting on stage, and up-b (while better vertically) still has bad distance. This is also not helped by his average jump height.

Doc's horizontal recovery, is just bad. Bad mobility, average double jump, Tornado doesn't help much because it sends you up, not forwards. If Doc gets hit by a move that sends you horiontally, he is almost as dead as Little Mac. YOU DONT EVEN HAVE TO HIT HIM! He can maybe use tornado at the start to geta bit of distance, but he is not making it back.

This makes Doc a vertical recovering character. The thing with this though, is that he is still easily punished. IT is more likely to be hit horizontally than downwards. If the Doc DOES make it back after a vertical recovery, he is still in danger of dying to another gimp attack.

Take this is an example. Kirby can f-throw f-air right beside the edge, and then dip below and f-air again when they try to recover. DOC IS DEAD! If the Doc recovers high to avoid this, Kirby still can get under and u-air and since Doc has bad landing options, puts Kirby at a massive advantage. So here we have a situation where, to avoid being gimped in this ONE way, Doc instead gets put at a massive disadvantage onstage. If Kirby reads the high recovery he can dip out too.

Any command grabs will also destroy Doc's tornado. Oh they tornado'd? Lets go and inhale and the Doc is dead.

I can say this again and again. A person's DI is not a part of how good a recovery is. Mixups are the same. Heck, I could even argue that Falcon has a better recovery than Doc, because Falcon has good airspeed, a high double jump, and his up-b has better distance. But thats all up to debate.

Your mid-level "i dun gt gimp'd" does not prove anything. At a regional tournament in the summer, the best player in Ontario decided just to camp my friend out in pools for the fun of it, and my friend almost won. Did the Luigi player try hard and punish optimally? No. My friend isn't even a mid level player either. He is a local threat and a regional placer. You don't know how hard your opponents are trying, and I doubt they are if they don't even try to gimp you.
 

A2ZOMG

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sonicmega mains Mega Man and chases me like hell offstage, gimping the crap out of many people in my area, and I generally avoid his edgeguards with pretty high consistency. You don't know anything about how much nonsense I deal with offstage and still survive. And many players in SoCal area are very comfortable with fishing for offstage airdodge reads or hitting the 2 frame window. Let's get things straight, people do edgeguard me a lot and I DO get killed offstage. But realistically, almost all the times I get killed offstage are because they outplayed me, not because I never had options I could have played out smarter. I rarely get gimped, and usually I'm directly KOed offstage by hard reads, and frankly, almost any character in this game competitively will die to a generic airdodge read offstage.

Also in your Kirby example with the F-air shenanigans, you forgot to mention that a good player would GET HIT and DI in this situation rather than wasting their jump. Or Doc can simply not use his jump and Up-B to the ledge, and still be able to make it back. You don't understand how recovery works if you think something like that actually will kill a good player. And also it's false that command grabs beat Tornado.

DI matters a LOT because when Doc DIs, he has the option to stall ABOVE your edgeguard range and force you to basically not commit to going deep to edgeguarding him when a proper Tornado stall above an edgeguard attempt means he gets back for free.

Even if Falcon DIs well, he's still a fastfaller that does not want to airdodge offstage if he does not have to due to how it telegraphs his recovery, and his Up-B and SideB are both slow enough to reaction punish in several situations. Doc does not have the same weakness of having reaction punishable recovery moves as long as he DIs well.
 
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Trifroze

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The problem with superheavies is that they are tailored for a more defensive game plan (patiently baiting and waiting), yet DK is the only one that can kind of go in wreck shop which now that I think of it, would be ridiculous to have Brawly Kong power. Anyway, the reason DK thrives is the fact he doesn't play bait and wait, but a footsie, grappler, mixup based game meaning that he can set the tempo of the match if he needs to. If you notice the difference between play styles (most good DKs move swiftly instead of patiently) you'll see why the others are kinda invalidated in the long run.

My thing is, Sheik don't destroy an entire class of characters, but ZSS does.
DK would be higher in peeps minds if Yoshi, FOX, and ZSS weren't so hard for him. All three of those characters out class him mobility wise, have inescapable combos for a character his size, and have a projectile, which all super heavies hate. 2 of those characters are relatively common and one almost completely damns his entire existence and makes the player ask "what is life?". You might as well set your controller down and take a nap when DK is around 30-85% around ZSS.
I don't think ZSS is quite an invalidating matchup for DK, since despite her combos working on him so well they won't kill unless she gets them started near the ledge or is aided by platforms. Whiffing grabs is also pretty dangerous against DK, although zair to grab is pretty easy on him. It's probably tough but I don't think either ROB or DK have anything worse than -2 or 30:70 vs ZSS because while her bnb does about 40%, it won't kill them the large majority of the time when you consider proper DI, and after that 40% she won't be able to pull it off properly again. Sometimes though ZSS will grab them near the ledge and it's an almost guaranteed kill.
 

Mario766

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I wouldn't rank Fox's DA as being anywhere near one of the safest DAs. Ganon and Samus DA are by far much safer (Ganon DA can crossover super far easily if delayed a bit, Samus DA is fast and also crosses over at a pretty large distance limiting options to punish it significantly).

Fox DA goes like...nowhere technically, and you can basically turnaround Smash it if you react to the crossover. Falcon kick is slightly less risky because most characters can only really punish it with DA or dashgrab reliably, while Ganon Wizkick definitely is more risky. The main advantage to Fox DA is being a frame 4 move that has insane positional advantage on hit.
None of those are even close to being safe, even on cross up.

Ganon's DA has 29 frames of endlag, if you're crossing up you're going almost straight into them, which is a free OoS option since your move comes out frame 10, and you're doing it late for the cross up.

Samus DA is the one more likely to be 'safe' at 20 frames of endlag. Too bad that's still punishable with a grab.

Thanks for dash attacking my shield, here's a free combo.


Having a -2 on ZSS is pretty bad for being a competitive character. I remember everyone on skype getting so hype that 8bitman won a game off Nairo. My literal words when they got hype "That MU sucks still. Just watch."

Then he gets basically 0-death'd. Multiple times. If you have no answers to ZSS juggle kills you're gonna lose the MU and have a major roadblock on any good ZSS player.
 
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DunnoBro

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The two dumb things about ZSS is that while her neutral is weak, her disadvantage is ridiculous and you have to beat her in neutral soooo much as some characters. It's why only characters that have straight kill confirms off neutral punishes can deal with her.

Also, every character that has super potent low % kill combos (DK, MK, Mario) suffers from tipping points that punishes them for not getting those. ZSS is never punished for that in any way, screw up your grab to death combo until 130% and you get a guaranteed one anyway.

Dsmash, Flip Kick, and Grab set-up for kills at 40% about as well as they do at 130%
 

Mario766

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I never care about ZSS in disadvantage.

Guess it's good to play a character who can beat flip jump consistently.
 

Man Li Gi

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I don't think ZSS is quite an invalidating matchup for DK, since despite her combos working on him so well they won't kill unless she gets them started near the ledge or is aided by platforms. Whiffing grabs is also pretty dangerous against DK, although zair to grab is pretty easy on him. It's probably tough but I don't think either ROB or DK have anything worse than -2 or 30:70 vs ZSS because while her bnb does about 40%, it won't kill them the large majority of the time when you consider proper DI, and after that 40% she won't be able to pull it off properly again. Sometimes though ZSS will grab them near the ledge and it's an almost guaranteed kill.
Yah, most of the time, ZSS aren't just throwing grabs cuz they don't need to grab to uair chain, she can just uair chain him straight. Plus most of the time, grabs are used and spaced enough so the most appropriate punishment is usually down b (14% but 43 frames of lag) or DA which is what you make of it. Good ZSS don't just throw it out in front of DK. ZSS has a lot of free options on super heavies, but DK is the best with dealing with them. Many times I find myself slowing down the game to deal with them. Waiting and baiting against ZSS is probs the best DK can do.
 

Mazdamaxsti

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sonicmega mains Mega Man and chases me like hell offstage, gimping the crap out of many people in my area, and I generally avoid his edgeguards with pretty high consistency. You don't know anything about how much nonsense I deal with offstage and still survive. And many players in SoCal area are very comfortable with fishing for offstage airdodge reads or hitting the 2 frame window. Let's get things straight, people do edgeguard me a lot and I DO get killed offstage. But realistically, almost all the times I get killed offstage are because they outplayed me, not because I never had options I could have played out smarter. I rarely get gimped, and usually I'm directly KOed offstage by hard reads, and frankly, almost any character in this game competitively will die to a generic airdodge read offstage.

Also in your Kirby example with the F-air shenanigans, you forgot to mention that a good player would GET HIT and DI in this situation rather than wasting their jump. Or Doc can simply not use his jump and Up-B to the ledge, and still be able to make it back. You don't understand how recovery works if you think something like that actually will kill a good player. And also it's false that command grabs beat Tornado.

DI matters a LOT because when Doc DIs, he has the option to stall ABOVE your edgeguard range and force you to basically not commit to going deep to edgeguarding him when a proper Tornado stall above an edgeguard attempt means he gets back for free.

Even if Falcon DIs well, he's still a fastfaller that does not want to airdodge offstage if he does not have to due to how it telegraphs his recovery, and his Up-B and SideB are both slow enough to reaction punish in several situations. Doc does not have the same weakness of having reaction punishable recovery moves as long as he DIs well.
So when you get gimped a lot offstage, it is because they outplayed you? That's called a gimp man, and it happens to you. If you play Sheik they wouldn't outplay you offstage as much.

In my Kirby example, this is with optimal DI. F-throw to F-air is true, so when they get hit offstage they don't have many options. If they recover low (like Doc would want to because he is better at vertical recovering), they die because the f-air sends them at a horizontal distance. If the Doc recovers high he will survive, but this puts him at a massive disadvantage. This is a tested example that I have used in offline tournaments and, while they don't die because they aren't Doc, it works.

You do realize that you saying "I tornado over an edge-guard attempt" is dumb, because they can just bait a tornado, grab ledge quickly, and jump back out to kill you considering the amount of time tornado takes to finish. Any character with a flip kick can do the same but about 50x more deadly.

Another thing, EVERY RECOVERY GETS BETTER WITH DI. You heard me right. DI helps every recovery in this entire game. It might not matter as much to characters like Pika, but it helps. It puts every character in a better position to recover. This keeps Doc at the same place in a recovery standpoint as before.

If the players in your region are getting fooled by a tornado then I am awestruck at how much they don't know the MU. Did you watch Nairo vs Esam? Esam didn't even go for edge-guards a lot because he didn't know the MU and didn't want to die (didn't know the timing for gimping up-b so didn't wanna risk it), but when Nairo got hit horizontally and decided to tornado to bait an edge-guard attempt, Esam destroyed him with n-air. I don't want to talk about how Esam basically failed his match vs Nairo but not edge-guarding (cuz he did), but this one time he edge-guarded is a perfect example of why you are wrong.

If you see a Falcon up-b/side-bing, you dont challenge it, simply because you can't. Human reaction time, and how fast your moves come out are not fast enough. You can read that hes gonna up-b (not hard) but you cant see him up-b and punish on start-up. Falcon's high jump and good aerial mobility makes his recovery more able to be mixed up, and he has a better time making it back to stage. It may be easier to gimp, but Doc's is also really easy to gimp.
 
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TTTTTsd

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How does Doc kill out of throws? I've seen the topic with the dthrow to fair guaranteed %s for every character, but when I've tried them they're all airdodgeable and from some you can even jump out of.
From my testing it works on fastfallers and if it doesn't work on a character it's usually a 50/50 regardless because you can fastfall as you're falling and still hit the AC window which gives you time to pick your next option.

But I've mashed airdodge with say, Fox, and when I checked the window vs. when DOc Fair hit, it didn't seem he could airdodge out.

Rage affects it and you have to read DI but I'm almost positive it's a 50/50 on midweights/floaties and a DI read option on fastfallers/perfect fall weights like Pika. They never actually reach tumble state before Fair connects so unless it's like this frame perfect window I'm unaware of, it's true on proper weights/fallspeeds basically. NOT ON EVERYONE LISTED IN TRC'S VID MY B. Only the fastfallers!

Also Jehtt Jehtt not to be a prude but Nado isn't really a BAD punish on-stage (it can catch spotdodges and whatnot pretty well, not exceptional but it has high knockback at the end I guess!). That's my only nitpick as I'm not really gonna involve myself in a debate about Dr. Tornado. Das all I'm gonna add in this discussion.
 
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Vermanubis

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the seth analogy perplexed me with :4ganondorf: but it makes more sense with :4mewtwo:. :4ganondorf: is probably much more similar to hugo than he is to seth.
Hugo is similar to Ganon in design, but I wasn't comparing them as characters, rather, by their critical flaw: the need to guess to meaningfully succeed. Seth has to guess -- a lot. Likewise, Ganon has to guess a lot to be effective against people who don't just present themselves to him. Guessing a consistent character does not make.
 

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I don't think ZSS is quite an invalidating matchup for DK, since despite her combos working on him so well they won't kill unless she gets them started near the ledge or is aided by platforms. Whiffing grabs is also pretty dangerous against DK, although zair to grab is pretty easy on him. It's probably tough but I don't think either ROB or DK have anything worse than -2 or 30:70 vs ZSS because while her bnb does about 40%, it won't kill them the large majority of the time when you consider proper DI, and after that 40% she won't be able to pull it off properly again. Sometimes though ZSS will grab them near the ledge and it's an almost guaranteed kill.
Yes, but consider the starter list in most regions:
FD, Smashville, Battlefield, T&C, Dreamland

ZSS bans FD and Smashville every game 1, and the matchup suddenly gets a whole lot harder. The current starter list in most regions helps her out a whole lot.
 

Sir Tundra

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People say that DK is bottom tier without cargo uthrow to uair and mid tier with it, but to me it seems he's mid tier without it and high tier with it. He dies to Sheik and ZSS but what else?
Ghee if DK dies to sheik and ZSS then i don't even wanna begin to imagine the term people will use for the fox matchup.

No seriously fox has got to be one of the worst matchups dk has if not the worst period.

I said this once and I'll it again as long as fox breathes there's no way DK will ever be close to be a solo viable character.

Not a chance in hell
 
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Trifroze

all is cheese, all is jank
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The two dumb things about ZSS is that while her neutral is weak, her disadvantage is ridiculous and you have to beat her in neutral soooo much as some characters. It's why only characters that have straight kill confirms off neutral punishes can deal with her.

Also, every character that has super potent low % kill combos (DK, MK, Mario) suffers from tipping points that punishes them for not getting those. ZSS is never punished for that in any way, screw up your grab to death combo until 130% and you get a guaranteed one anyway.

Dsmash, Flip Kick, and Grab set-up for kills at 40% about as well as they do at 130%
It is true that ZSS currently has the best down throw in the game in a vacuum, but at least now it's on a character with a grab FAF of 69 frames instead of 29. If you get your opponent to 130% and are still at a low enough percent where throwing out grabs as ZSS is a good idea, you've pretty much earned the kill. Of course you could lose a stock first and then go for it with little risk, but you can't trust on that on the next stock anymore. Ideally you always try to keep your stock and throwing out a super punishable grab isn't a good way to do that.

It's interesting how ZSS was widely considered something like 5th-8th best in the game before around late July even though everyone knew about her setups since way back. Late July however is when all the majors started happening and Nairo started placing top 3 basically everywhere. Nothing new was discovered about the character but everyone just got to see her being played by a good player over and over, and Japan jumped into it so hard that they're actually considering her to be above Sheik. A ZSS who gets most of her grab reads right is above Sheik, a ZSS who gets about half of them is probably right behind Sheik, and a ZSS who gets a realistic amount of them which is maybe one in three is more likely to be somewhere with or behind Sonic and Rosalina, maybe even Ryu depending on how far his meta can develop.

For some reason when we judge ZSS' position in tier lists, we judge her based on how consistently Nairo lands grabs with her, but this is not a fair judgment when half of those grabs and neutral wins can clearly be attributed to differences in player skill between him and his opponents and those neutral wins are all that matters. Somehow we convince ourselves that "no, even when the opponent is the same level this is exactly how well ZSS will work". It's simply false and it can be seen when other good ZSS players play her versus opponents that are roughly the same level as them.

The only reason I've personally placed ZSS 2nd lately is that I think she's right on the same level with Sonic and Rosalina but someone simply has to go first, so it might as well be the character who has a decent chance of beating everyone in every situation or just losing unconvincingly, but in retrospect someone with this sort of inconsistency shouldn't necessarily have the 2nd spot. Look at ZSS' results outside of Nairo and they aren't any better than the results of Rosalina, Sonic or even Mario, Diddy and Fox. Yet there are other good players using ZSS and getting some results, but a clutch character like her is bound to get those every now and then as is every other top tier, it's just that we should be surprised why there aren't more of that for ZSS who's supposed to be the 2nd best.
 
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ParanoidDrone

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A dual Shulk/Robin user in top 16? Be still, my heart.

So I'm not completely off topic with a late post, I think it may be worth separating a recovery into how much distance it covers vs. how exploitable it is regardless of distance. Villager, for instance, can recover from the blast line but is a sitting duck as long as there's a balloon attached to him. So is his recovery good or bad? It's amazing in one way and awful in another, so making the whole thing a binary proposition seems meaningless.
 

DunnoBro

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It is true that ZSS currently has the best down throw in the game in a vacuum, but at least now it's on a character with a grab FAF of 69 frames instead of 29. If you get your opponent to 130% and are still at a low enough percent where throwing out grabs as ZSS is a good idea, you've pretty much earned the kill.
I mean the grab combo isn't the only one. Dsmash and flip kick are still among the easiest, safest, and most consistent kill set-ups in the game.

I also don't really know if she's 2nd I just think it's poor design overall. Like, obviously her combo game is supposed to be balanced by her poor neutral game. But then they give her flip kick so when you do beat her in neutral you either gotta true combo/frame trap off that win in neutral or make a hard read to get anything off it. Characters that kill primarily off landings/edgeguards/juggle traps just don't find a reliable opening.
 

Emblem Lord

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6:4 is the closest a matchup can be without being even.
55:45 is some bs smashboards thing because people think they can analyse matchups that precisely (or even more precisely in the case of the Brawl Pikachu boards using DECIMALS). This is the reason the Brawl matchup chart used +/- 1-4 rather than traditional matchup ratios, because the traditional matchup ratios have lost all meaning here and different people see the severity of a 6:4 matchup very differently.

The guy's point was that Falcon has a slight advantage over Mario, or that the matchup was even, those two things aren't radically different and it's often hard to tell the difference between a +1 and 0. (especially only a year into a game's life, which is constantly patched)
lolwut

Go to Tekken Zaibatsu, Dustloop and SRK.

Then get back to me.

EVERYONE DOES IT
 
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