Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

[Konneh]

Hi J. Miller vs cyve.

Source on cyve playing Sheik vs. J. Miller, at all?
The dude lives in my region and his Diddy Kong forced the other contestants off of Luigi picks in my regional, that's why I'm curious.

 

[TriTails]

So the best examples you can come up with are two non-top level players from Europe having had a close set more than half a year ago [which may have included cyve using Diddy as well?] and CC doing well during one stock against Zero?

Color me unconvinced, entirely.

J. Miller got like 17th at Apex.

IDK on what you meant when you say J. Miller isn't a top-level player.

If Luigi is REALLY helpless against Sheik, you wouldn't be seeing Mr. CC taking a stock off the best player and the best Sheik in the world, at. all. He also does well in the first game of the GF in which he took off ZeRo's stock while his is 100%.

If Luigi can't beat Sheik, those feats wouldn't even exist.

Hitting harder than Sonic and having a move beat spindash is hardly unique to luigi. Almost everyone does that stuff. Sonic just runs around until you did the right thing at the wrong time and picks away at you.

The ability to consistently firing projectile while hindering Sonic's movements are quite rare. And in case you haven't noticed, Luigi hits harder and faster. Out of all normals Sonic only literally beat him in F-air speed. And that's only by 2 frames. Sure. They may be a thing most characters have. But Luigi does them (one of) the best.

Source on cyve playing Sheik vs. J. Miller, at all?
The dude lives in my region and his Diddy Kong forced the other contestants off of Luigi picks in my regional, that's why I'm curious.

YouTube.

 

[Woohoo982]

also Greninja is not in Ubers what sorcery is this.

it is the sorcery of smogon wisening up.

Anyways, on to Luigi: I get why many people think he isn't a top tier because Sheik bodies him hard, and he loses the MU against G&W(well according to our MU sheet anyways) but losing against Sheik and a mistier doesn't exactly mean you're top 5 material, but it just means that the character(Luigi) performs well enough to be high-tier and has a few bad matchups.

 

[bc1910]

Jmiller is the best player in the UK and easily a top level worldwide player.

To say otherwise suggests you don't know or care to know about the European scene.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I might be oversimplifying what it takes to out camp Rosalina, but what characters easily pump out projectiles that have low cool down AND aren't easily beaten by jab/tilts.

I can only think of a handful characters that really fall into this category though. Mewtwo, Mii Gunner and the Links. Maybe Lucas/Ryu?

Megaman and Villager probably get around needing priority by stacking up projectiles so well.

I actually wonder how Greninja and Robin do in this area with endlag reduces on their projectiles in 1.10.


edit: I too am unconvinced that speedy characters like Sonic and Diddy lose to Luigi if they really lame it out.

Generally time a GP so that the last few frames absorb something (for minimal end lag) then move in with Luma attached to take a hit if necessary.

 

[Jabejazz]

For this thread, if people are so enclined to talk in tiers, could we establish a clear definition of what is top/high/mid/low etc.? Or if there's already one, can someone please direct me to it?

At this point, I'm not even sure Top tier draws a line a top 3, 10 or 500.

 

[PUK]

Jmiller is the best player in the UK and easily a top level worldwide player.

To say otherwise suggests you don't know or care to know about the European scene.

I say otherwise. J. Miller didn't shine lately with his results out of england. And england is, outside of J.Miller, completely free.
We need to stop taking Apex into account when it come to results, mostly because the metagame is completely different now.

 

[Routa]

For this thread, if people are so enclined to talk in tiers, could we establish a clear definition of what is top/high/mid/low etc.? Or if there's already one, can someone please direct me to it?

At this point, I'm not even sure Top tier draws a line a top 3, 10 or 500.

Or we could throw outdated tier system out of the window. I mean why do we even use this system? Only thing that it brings is tier ... which is a bad thing. I know people who main top tier characters only cause they are top tier (even tho they dislike the character they main).

 

[Zelder]

Or we could throw outdated tier system out of the window. I mean why do we even use this system? Only thing that it brings is tier ... which is a bad thing. I know people who main top tier characters only cause they are top tier (even tho they dislike the character they main).

Tiers aren't a bad thing, they're a natural result of competitive video game characters having different abilities compared to each other. Tiers, and knowing who is top tier, can be extremely useful for people looking to break into the competitive scene.

 

[Wintermelon43]

For this thread, if people are so enclined to talk in tiers, could we establish a clear definition of what is top/high/mid/low etc.? Or if there's already one, can someone please direct me to it?

At this point, I'm not even sure Top tier draws a line a top 3, 10 or 500.

Yeah, the forums should make a tier list voting thread,and make it the official tier list. That's what they did for the last 64 tier list,and the next Melee list is doing this too.

 

[Xeze]

It's difficult to establish a tier list when there are constant balance patches.

 

[bc1910]

I say otherwise. J. Miller didn't shine lately with his results out of england. And england is, outside of J.Miller, completely free.
We need to stop taking Apex into account when it come to results, mostly because the metagame is completely different now.

Free is an exaggeration although I agree that the UK doesn't have many great players, but there are a few here.

And I could go ahead and call France free. Outside the UK I am by far the most impressed by German players, followed by Italians.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

It's difficult to establish a tier list when there are constant balance patches.

It's really not. Falcon is practically as good as he was regardless of whether or not his B-Air deals 1% less damage, and few of the biggest winners in the patches have really flown to significantly greater heights.

 

[J.Miller]

I say otherwise. J. Miller didn't shine lately with his results out of england. And england is, outside of J.Miller, completely free.
We need to stop taking Apex into account when it come to results, mostly because the metagame is completely different now.

I
England is free, OK... I do wish there was a proving ground because online hype pisses me off tbh.
Apex is a different time I can agree to that, funny how people still complain about Luigi despite him not placing in America the game is different but not that different.
In terms of my tournament placings outside of England I got 4th of 50- something entrants in Holland.
I don't mind being slept on or my region being labelled free especially when most don't even see me and my region play often at all, the next time I'm out in America I'll go there with something to prove to myself as I did before.

 

[Coffee™]

Meanwhile, having an advantage against Fox is HUGE.

I always see people mentioning Fox vs Luigi like its straight up terrible for Fox, which really isnt the case. That matchup is honestly pretty close to even.

 

[NachoOfCheese]

Yeah, the forums should make a tier list voting thread,and make it the official tier list. That's what they did for the last 64 tier list,and the next Melee list is doing this too.

The problem I have with that is that if anyone can vote then you'll have people who don't know **** voting among people who do, which skews the results.
Also there's character bias. But it's an idea.

 

[Wintermelon43]

The problem I have with that is that if anyone can vote then you'll have people who don't know **** voting among people who do, which skews the results.
Also there's character bias. But it's an idea.

Yeah, the random people who don't know anything would be a problem, but otherwiseit would be good, for character bias we could have seperate threads in each character forum instead of one on this forum so that each character is biased on.

 

[K3H]

what characters do you all feel should get the treatment, in descending order?

Shulk and Lucas (mainly his grab)

 

[PUK]

Free is an exaggeration although I agree that the UK doesn't have many great players, but there are a few here.

And I could go ahead and call France free. I am by far the most impressed by German players, followed by Italians.

I was trolling :-(. France is totally free, come take our money (i'm going to change it in pounds right now)

Shulk and Lucas (mainly his grab)

You know giving ike treatment to anyone better than better than jigglypuff will result in an OP character right?

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Jmiller is the best player in the UK and easily a top level worldwide player.

To say otherwise suggests you don't know or care to know about the European scene.

Bro, I've been an active part of the EU community since 2009. I know just about every top player from Germany/Austria personally, I know many dudes from France and the Netherlands, bunch of dudes from Scandinavia and I've met some from the UK as well.

J Miller is a good player. Is he a top player? By my definition he's not. Mr r is the only european player that deserves that title imo. Below that there's a ton of HIGH level players like Lp, Semifer, cyve, Miller, people from France ... you name it. But if you call him a "top player" worlwide then you basically imply that he's on a level with the likes of Nairo, Zero, Rain, Ranai, ESAM ... and that's just not the case, let's not kid ourselves there.

Free is an exaggeration although I agree that the UK doesn't have many great players, but there are a few here.

And I could go ahead and call France free. Outside the UK I am by far the most impressed by German players, followed by Italians.

France isn't free dude. Germany, France and Spain are pretty good and probably not worse than some of the more competent regions within the USA. Not comparing them to the likes of NJ/NY, FL or SoCal but yeah, they're not free by any stretch of the imagination. They're good in the same way that a region like Mexico is good.

...

Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that Miller vs cyve isn't a good example for Sheik vs Luigi. First, the set is quite old. Second, cyve hadn't played against a good Luigi before. Thrid, cyve was switching back and forth between Diddy and Sheik.

But most of all, really, neither of them are top level players. Stuff like CC vs Zero is far more recent and far more relevant to this discussion.

 

[Routa]

Tiers aren't a bad thing, they're a natural result of competitive video game characters having different abilities compared to each other. Tiers, and knowing who is top tier, can be extremely useful for people looking to break into the competitive scene.

The issue comes with using the data in the tier list. Is character X top tier 'cause he has the theory, results or/and awesome MU spread? Should we ignore results while making tier list? I must remind that in the end player skill and MU knowledge matter far more than piece of theory in practice. Should tier list be made by pure theory? If we cannot even agree how the tier list should be build, why should we try to use tier system? Atm theorized MU spread is our best option, but no one wants to use that kind of system, 'cause they cannot see if they character is OP or not easily.

 

[Illuminose]

@Cassio mentioned some things but the big thing he forgot to mention was that Pikachu outpunishes Sheik and has great combos on Sheik in general.

Part of why ESAM lost is because he wasn't dealing with Sheik's down throw properly. Almost all of his stocks were to that. DI away, learning when you can jump out (Pikachu is light and can jump outin a lot of situations), these are things that you just need to do against Sheik when you're at down throw up air kill percent. Otherwise, he was keeping up fine.

 

[bc1910]

I was trolling :-(. France is totally free, come take our money (i'm going to change it in pounds right now)

You know giving ike treatment to anyone better than better than jigglypuff will result in an OP character right?

My point was that it means nothing to call another scene "completely free" when you're not part of it and haven't really experienced it. So to call France free is just as meaningless as your comment about the UK.

I do think the Germans are the best in Europe though.

 

[Kaladin]

@Cassio mentioned some things but the big thing he forgot to mention was that Pikachu outpunishes Sheik and has great combos on Sheik in general.

Part of why ESAM lost is because he wasn't dealing with Sheik's down throw properly. Almost all of his stocks were to that. DI away, learning when you can jump out (Pikachu is light and can jump outin a lot of situations), these are things that you just need to do against Sheik when you're at down throw up air kill percent. Otherwise, he was keeping up fine.

Yup. If ESAM jumped out optimally, or even mashed thunder at the correct times, he would have won game 5. Really, I think Pika shines in the Sheik matchup in his punishes/combos. Remember when ESAM took sheik 0-70 off an up tilt and all the fair regrabs? That's not even hard. Pika's punish game on fast fallers is absurd, while Pika can thunder or just jump out of most Sheik combos.

Everyone says we shouldn't be using this one set as an example... But a matchup ratio assumes that the p,ayers aren't significantly outplaying one another, right? ZeRo was not outplaying ESAM, thus making it the clearest indicator of the matchup to date.

 

[K3H]

What Diddy players are still placing well now besides MVD and Zinoto? I'm surprised everyone seems to agree this character is still top 5 over other characters such as Rosalina, Sonic, or even Ness. His representation has dropped off pretty significantly since 1.0.4.

But I feel that it's mainly because he isn't as easy to use as before. It's no longer "grab, Dthrow, Uair to win." If we used the logic of "How can X be top Y if their representation isn't good/plentiful?" Then Pikachu, Wario, and Villager wouldn't be where they're at.

 

[Jabejazz]

Or we could throw outdated tier system out of the window. I mean why do we even use this system? Only thing that it brings is tier ... which is a bad thing. I know people who main top tier characters only cause they are top tier (even tho they dislike the character they main).

I don't think Smashboards is going to hatch a tier list any time soon. That being said, I wouldn't call the system "outdated". It's a useful tool. The problem is people have differing opinions and views on what makes a top tier character. Some people place Sheik in her own tier, others group her with ZSS and Rosa. Where do we draw the line?

I'm not sure it's that big of a deal, but it'd probably cut a few pointless arguments.

 

[NachoOfCheese]

Or we could throw outdated tier system out of the window. I mean why do we even use this system? Only thing that it brings is tier ... which is a bad thing. I know people who main top tier characters only cause they are top tier (even tho they dislike the character they main).

Not having a tier list will not eliminate that.

 

[Trifroze]

It's really not. Falcon is practically as good as he was regardless of whether or not his B-Air deals 1% less damage, and few of the biggest winners in the patches have really flown to significantly greater heights.

1% off of a move like Luigi's or Sheik's fair may not be much, but 1% off of a kill move like Falcon's bair is a somewhat bigger deal because it also affects knockback. It kills 10-15% later now, meaning you have to win 1 or 2 more exchanges before you can kill with it, putting you at more risk before you can finish off their stock. Same with uair but to a slightly larger extent as it received a 2% nerf.

What comes to tier list voting I think it's a fundamentally bad system as everyone's vote has the same value even though their experience levels can have massive differences, and it only works if some sort of a council is picked out of the top level players to do it. It's not that hard to judge the impact of patch buffs/nerfs either, and it doesn't need to be judged that accurately. The fact that SWF doesn't make a tier list every balance patch suggests to me we're all either lazy or scared to make one for whatever reason.

 

[Man Li Gi]

J. Miller's post got me thinking about something. A while back I saw a post by this guy named @Radical Larry (yes a Radical Larry shoutout). His message was that the tournaments are too concentrated in a couple areas in which some people won't be able to reach. America for the most part has it well with tourneys. Those not in America have to travel everywhere and some are just non existent. What gets me even more is that the payout is only for top 8 and then the actual money is so small/inconsequential for many. Most of the time, an international player is netting a loss from the very games they paid a flight for. See how tiring and draining that is? If the best players are centralized in one area and all the major competitions are in one area while factoring in the fact the payout is low, then I fear that we can't be big.

How does this relate to meta? I once knew a dude who is from my university. He's really good with Shulk (prolly not 9B nor Trela good lol). He couldn't go to many tourneys cause he's from Angola (they have no tourneys trust me). The ones he entered here, he made some noise.

If we have some sleeper players who have some sleeper characters, but can't go to tourneys on a regular, how accurate is our hypothesis and analysis of a character? Is it accurate to the way MOST people play in a certain region or just accurate for ALL players in ALL regions?

This isn't bashing tiers or analysis, just making you think with this post. Carry on......

 

[K3H]

I was trolling :-(. France is totally free, come take our money (i'm going to change it in pounds right now)

You know giving ike treatment to anyone better than better than jigglypuff will result in an OP character right?

If thru gave shulk a 2-3 frame reduction in some of his moves start up lag, he wouldn't be OP. Just a lot better, like Ike. And Lucas having a better grab wouldn't make him OP either. Maybe a slight reduction in the lag department, and that's all. It's not like I want Buster to do 70% more damage, or Usmash from Lucas come out on frame 1 or anything. Anyone who actually uses these two characters would agree with me.

 

[FullMoon]

What I meant to say though. Beating top tiers are more important than beating high tiers and below. Simply because top tiers are common picks for tourneys. Say, Greninja, Pac, MM and just pop out of nowhere. I would say it's fine due to those characters MUs don't really go over 40:60 (Maybe not Pac, but IDK). Meanwhile, having an advantage against Fox is HUGE. Advantage on Mario is big. Advantage on Pika and Sonic (?) are huge. Advantage against Diddy is huge.

He gets beaten by Sheik? Sure. But... who doesn't? At best, they go even, but who beats her? Almost every of the cast lose to her save for evenish MUs for some but yeah.

But well, I'm still fidgety on putting him in Top 10, due to his bad MUs are probably will be getting worse if the respective characters kept on getting buffs (Yo Greninja), and he DOES lose to Sheik, ZSS, and Rosa.

It's hard to predict where he ends up. But I'll just act like I main a mid tier character so I can finally stop getting mad at those 'Luigi is overrated' bandwagon.

You're not really going against what I was saying there.

You say that those MUs I mentioned are perfectly manageable, but it's also the case for Luigi vs Diddy or Fox or w/e. It's not like Luigi wins or loses at the character select screen (outside of maybe Sheik) but if his bad MUs become widely used, he's going to struggle more and you can't deny that would make him a less appealing choice for a main since he would be such a polarizing character, but would be very valuable as a secondary.

You can't deny that having 3 bad MUs regularly showing up in tournament is better for your viability than having 6 or 7.

My point was that Luigi does well because his bad MUs are not frequent enough to pose a significant threat to him (and even then he's not doing that well as a solo character) while he manages to beat a lot of the common picks for tournaments, thus making him a anti-meta character.

 

[SpottedCerberus]

1% off of a move like Luigi's or Sheik's fair may not be much, but 1% off of a kill move like Falcon's bair is a somewhat bigger deal because it also affects knockback. It kills 10-15% later now, meaning you have to win 1 or 2 more exchanges before you can kill with it, putting you at more risk before you can finish off their stock. Same with uair but to a slightly larger extent as it received a 2% nerf.

But he still has the things that made him so good. He has that ridiculous dash-grab, an elbow that out-ranges swords, etc. He just has to work a bit harder for his KOs now. For Falcon, 10-15% is less than he gets from one dash-grab.

 

[HeavyLobster]

But he still has the things that made him so good. He has that ridiculous dash-grab, an elbow that out-ranges swords, etc. He just has to work a bit harder for his KOs now. For Falcon, 10-15% is less than he gets from one dash-grab.

The problem with that is that Falcon's KO options at higher percents have always been a bit unreliable. He can get flashy early kills off of strings without too much trouble if he gets the right read, but at high %s it's not always easy to land his kill moves. Bair and Uair are a couple of the safer ones he has(though Uair is often stale) so Bair getting nerfed does hurt and it wasn't necessary.

 

[Greward]

I
England is free, OK... I do wish there was a proving ground because online hype pisses me off tbh.
Apex is a different time I can agree to that, funny how people still complain about Luigi despite him not placing in America the game is different but not that different.
In terms of my tournament placings outside of England I got 4th of 50- something entrants in Holland.
I don't mind being slept on or my region being labelled free especially when most don't even see me and my region play often at all, the next time I'm out in America I'll go there with something to prove to myself as I did before.

I guess it's time to do an inter-european tournament. A lot of our regions, UK and spain included, are being super slept on.

 

[Kaladin]

We're just talking in circles about solo viability now. How about we move to a different and, in my opinion, more interesting topic: niche/counterpick characters. I think these could include:
-Lucaio, MK, and Kirby vs Sheik. They all go even, or, in the case of Lucario, may win.
-Villager absolutely obliterats Weegee according to both characters' respective boards, so, yeah.
-Kirby (and arguable Wii Fit) does very well vs ZSS.
-Dabuz thinks MegaMan beats rosa, but idk...


Who else could have use as an easy to pick up effective counterpick character?

 

[Tainic]

tbh 14% for a fast, safe move, that can kill at high% and lead to tech chases at mid ones, with almost no commitment on such a speedy character such as Falcon involved was pretty absurd, I'd rather have him get buffed elsewhere than keeping it like that.

 

[Djent]

The last 5-10 pages = why I root against ESAM

J. Miller's post got me thinking about something. A while back I saw a post by this guy named @Radical Larry (yes a Radical Larry shoutout). His message was that the tournaments are too concentrated in a couple areas in which some people won't be able to reach. America for the most part has it well with tourneys. Those not in America have to travel everywhere and some are just non existent. What gets me even more is that the payout is only for top 8 and then the actual money is so small/inconsequential for many. Most of the time, an international player is netting a loss from the very games they paid a flight for. See how tiring and draining that is? If the best players are centralized in one area and all the major competitions are in one area while factoring in the fact the payout is low, then I fear that we can't be big.

It's true that tournaments don't leave us with a perfect picture of who the most talented players are, but what else are we to use in place of them?

I know of no accurate way to measure the talent of isolated players who rarely stream and/or record their sets. Whatever metric we choose will probably introduce more error in terms of subjectivity than it clears away from location bias.

 

[oldkingcroz]

@ Kaladin

What do you mean when you say "counterpick character"?
I dunno. any character could be a counterpick character, really. Some characters have decent MUs against random top tiers. Sheik beats Luigi, so does that make her a counterpick character as well, if you play Sheik to beat a Luigi main?
But a lot of the mid tier heroes play completely differently to the rest of the cast, and that is what I assume you're talking about, when you say "counterpick character" (mid tier that does well against random top/ high tier character).
Just the phrase can be interpreted in different ways, so it makes classifying X as a counterpick only character a really difficult feat. And most of the cast has had success from solo-maining, so that just makes things even more difficult.

are probably the most dynamic characters that either lose drastically or win drastically to random characters. They are probably the closest thing to counterpick character in the game.

have all had reasonable success as solo-mains (among others).

are all theory crafted to be solid characters, that could potentially be solo-mained (among others).

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Shulk? Who's been solo-maining Shulk with reasonable success?

 

[Scream]

Marth has more development then any other board only rivaled by Sheik, Pac-man and Greninja. And he wasnt doing much till the patches besides winning locals.

I think you have never visited the Samus forums, we easily rival marth players in dedicated userbase and development <3

(Also sorry for being weird and quoting from so far behind, takes a while to catch up when one has exams)