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Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

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~ Gheb ~

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overrated*

Nitpicking here, but it's a big difference. No-one in their right mind thinks she's bad.
Even the argument that she's overrated hasn't proven true though, especially not recently. Three different Rosalina players placing top 5 at huge international tourneys within one or two months is ridiculous. And if we neglect the probably entirely insignificant usage of secondary characters in case of dabuz and Ray then we're essentially talking about solo-achievements here.

That's nearly on par with ZSS in terms of results and not that far off of Sheik either.

:059:
 

wedl!!

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ROB got hit pretty hard by the patch I feel. It became quite a lot harder for him to secure stocks because of the shield nerf. Hail Mary Usmash OOS doesn't work as reliably anymore, and his already poor grab that he thrived off of got worse. His projectiles didn't really benefit from the change that much (although I don't have the numbers).

I was already pretty pessimistic about this character but he sits in the dead middle to me right now.
 
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C0rvus

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Rosalina is just an anti-meta character. She gets by without top tier movement or kill setups, I guess because her neutral and brick walling are so good. On paper, she seems kinda bad. Super tall and floaty? Recovery without a hitbox? But Luma is just so good, and Dabuz is gahlike.
 

Ghostbone

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Rosalina is just an anti-meta character. She gets by without top tier movement or kill setups, I guess because her neutral and brick walling are so good. On paper, she seems kinda bad. Super tall and floaty? Recovery without a hitbox? But Luma is just so good, and Dabuz is gahlike.
Rosalina has amazing kill setups/air-dodge 50/50's that will end your stock sub-80%.

We saw that repeatedly at TBH5
 

Zelder

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Yeah I still feel pretty confident that the top 3 is the blonde trio (:4sheik::4zss::rosalina:)


And if we had gotten Ken instead of :4ryu: he'd be #4, I guarantee it.
 

PUK

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ROB got hit pretty hard by the patch I feel. It became quite a lot harder for him to secure stocks because of the shield nerf. Hail Mary Usmash OOS doesn't work as reliably anymore, and his already poor grab that he thrived off of got worse. His projectiles didn't really benefit from the change that much (although I don't have the numbers).

I was already pretty pessimistic about this character but he sits in the dead middle to me right now.
More shieldstun when you have a 12% damage item to toss is a big buff.
 

Amadeus9

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More shieldstun when you have a 12% damage item to toss is a big buff.
...Well apparently shield stun on projectiles uses the equation /3.5 +2 instead of /1.75+2, so some projectiles are actually worse this patch than last patch, depending on shield stun multiplier. I'm not sure how ROB's projectiles fit into this.
 

Nidtendofreak

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Well, with BH5 done now, I think I'll throw my hat into the ring in terms of guessing what the new meta is going to look like with the latest patch.

Note that if characters are in ()s, that means realistically they could be in any order within those ()s because there isn't enough data/they're too close to really call. Given that this is going to be a mixture of both results before the newest patch and known information about the changes from the patch, this going to be a mixture of results and theorycraft. This is also all considering solo only (no secondaries accounted for in ability to climb at internationals) and doesn't include Japan's results.

S (Can win internationals): :4sheik::4zss:(:rosalina::4pikachu:)
A+ (Can win nationals/top 8 at internationals): (:4ryu::4sonic:)(:4metaknight::4mario:)(:4fox::4diddy:)
A (Can win majors/make some serious noise at internationals): :4falcon:(:4pacman::4ness::4wario:)(:4yoshi::4luigi:)
A- (Can win regionals/top 32 at internationals, not a shock if they managed to hit 16th): (:4olimar::4greninja:):4lucario::4pit:/:4darkpit:(:4myfriends::4dk::4peach::4megaman::4villager:):4tlink:
B+ (Specialist tier: would expect one, at most two, people with these characters to be able to crack top 32 at internationals over the course of the game's life if no more patches came out): :4rob::4feroy::4robinm::4gaw::4marth:?/:4lucina:?

I don't think the first two need much discussion: Sheik is obvious, ZSS is obvious. The first question that pops up is how does Luma's minor nerfs due to the newest patch stack up to Pika's potentially quite substantial buffs? I give Rosalina the nod for 3rd simply due to having more people using her. Pika is really just propped up by ESAM, but propped up to an amazing level and is only going to do better now. Rosalina easily has 3 people who can show up in top 8 if not potentially win the thing depending on how the chips fall.

In A+ tier, Ryu has obviously gotten some very major buffs from the patch and was already considered a potential top 10. I don't think him squeezing into 5th is unreasonable, the dude is just plain old scary in both killing and destroying shields. Could move into S tier, not enough data right now for me to do that. After that we have Sonic, who's game plan can either be super aggro or super campy. With projectiles overall getting nerfed against shields, Sonics options if anything have slightly improved and he was almost always showing up in top 8 of internationals (I think BH5 is the first time he failed to do so?). Meta Knight is obviously very scary in terms of kill potential. Its a limited range where it works, but where it works is simply insane. Time will have to tell how much the shield changes help or hurt his approaching options, but he's a character to keep a very close eye one. Mario... to me is like Brawl Marth. You look at the character's data and go "He's good but not amazing, should probably be lower by a bit", but then you look at his results and just kinda shut up. Can't argue much with his amount of top 8 placings, particularly since its no longer just Ally. Fox and Diddy are characters with very obvious amazing tools, but are almost certainly at the weakest end of the top 8 range due to more noticeable weaknesses. You expect them to hit 8th, but stop there.

In A tier we have the ever frustrating Falcon to start it off. His dash grab stuff is just stupid good. He has an amazing amount of strength and speed. But his frame data is not as good as you'd expect and he had obvious problems getting out of juggles. Fatality has done good work with him, and I think the weakening of projectiles is going to give Falcon a boost. After that we have the trio of characters where it's pretty much "they should be really good but nobody is really doing much with them". Pac-Man and Wario both have Abadango as reps, but it would appear that he may be moving on more to Meta Knight and Rosalina. Ness has shown up once or twice but nothing particularly consistent and Rosalina is always going to be an issue for him even if its not an auto-loss. Yoshi has been proven over time to have some flaws that hold him back. For all of the hype he got early on, nothing has panned out for him. The shield changes might help him, certainly makes landing his Dair more rewarding, but it also hurts his egg game a bit so we'll have to see. Luigi, to be quite frank, has always been mad overrated ever since the removal of vectoring. For all of the hyping and screaming about him being a top 5 character, Luigi simply cannot do well without a secondary. He will always run into MUs where he just suffers too much because of his mobility and shield issues, and the removal of kill confirms is a potential death blow. The only things keeping him out of A- are the small army of people that use him, and the fact he still has really good damage wracking abilities. He might ultimately survive as a lessor, different Mario.

Top of the A- pack are the characters that people keep insisting are good, but have even less representation than some of the others. Olimar I remember as having at least one really bad match up at the top tiers (might have been Sheik? He's used so little nowadays I can't remember), and Greninja still has his Sheik problems as well. Both have more strengths than the other A- characters however, and they have potential to move up to A tier after this patch. Lucario will always be a threat because Aura is stupid. That's basically what it boils down to for him: you can never count him out. The Pits are simply solid characters lacking anything to make them particularly stand out. After that you get to the sea of "Obvious strengths, obvious weaknesses, mixed or almost no results but the ones that are in are good" characters. Of the lot, Ike has the most results as of late. Villager and MegaMan are question marks now due to the most recent patch and how it interacts with shields. DK's new game is still being fleshed out, Peach is on the radar and could be potentially benefiting quite a bit from the increased shield stun with her aerials. Toon Link is at the bottom because well, they just made top 32 and has done well in Mexico as well so I can't justify him being B+ by my criteria. Don't expect to ever see many of him though.

After that we are no longer in high tier. The B+ characters are characters I feel are just too fundamentally flawed in some way to ever consistently make an impact baring future buffs, but I could see a really really dedicated specialist breaking through with the right pools and brackets. A few of them like ROB and G&W have shown flashes of this before as well, though I'm not confident in how the new shield mechanics effects them. Marth and Lucina are wildcards: its just really hard to pin those two down, they're all over the map and occasionally pop up in high levels of play but not as solos so I can't get a good read on them but I could theoretically see them being at that level maybe?

Beyond that are characters that just don't really have a chance and I don't feel like sorting them out.
 

Rikkhan

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One thing more about TBH5 is that people are finally taking advantage of the ledge 2 frame vulnerability, I finally see ZSS flip jump punish, there was also Rosalina dair, pikachu nair and dtilt and many others, there's still a long way to go before it becomes a staple but still very nice.

Also another random video of me having fun with the 2 frame punish :p

 

Nidtendofreak

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Did the yoshis beat anyone good though? "Placing well" isn't serious noise.
Placing well is serious noise. 9th out of almost 750 people? Also PAX has no bracket posted. Smash Con does but no pools posted. Didn't take out any international level names in bracket but I'm not familiar nearly as much with regional names.

My criteria is mainly around results in terms of old stuff. Doesn't really matter if you somehow managed to get an easy bracket up to 7th for example, you'd happily take the money regardless. Results are results.
 
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DunnoBro

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Placing well is serious noise. 9th out of almost 750 people? Also PAX has no bracket posted. Smash Con does but no pools posted. Didn't take out any international level names in bracket but I'm not familiar nearly as much with regional names.

My criteria is mainly around results in terms of old stuff. Doesn't really matter if you somehow managed to get an easy bracket up to 7th for example, you'd happily take the money regardless. Results are results.
I mean his results still aren't even that good. That's about the best AND all of it for yoshi. ROB has way more stellar results and consistency than Yoshi. (Way more regional wins and consistency, actually beating good players too) And all other characters you have paired with yoshi have wayyyy better results across the board.

At absolute best "can win regionals" tier, but he hasn't even done that. (Unless you count the double yoshi xanadu GFs but that was an arcadian)
 
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bc1910

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Most of that list looks good though there's a few things I'd change. Comparing your list to my own meta predictions:

Diddy and Fox are too low, I think both deserve to be higher than Ryu and Sonic. Meta Knight is a tad high and should probably be at the top of your A tier.

It's a bit early to say but I think Luigi should definitely go down to A-. At this point I have less confidence in him than I do in at least Lucario, and probably Peach/DK. Luigi struggled to make a splash even at nationals pre-patch and his kill power has been significantly weakened. Doesn't belong in a tier that suggests he's likely to win majors or make a splash at internationals.

Pac-Man's placement is fine for now (a tad ambitious maybe) but I can see him plummeting if Abadango drops him and Dee continues to play online only.

Agreeing with Yoshi being too high and more on the specialist side, but he'd still be fine in A- and I think he's really just waiting for *that* player to come along now that his Dair is actually good against shields.

ROB is too low, he's somewhere in A-. Don't know what Lucina's doing there at the end, Marth is still a lot better.

There would be more changes if Japan's results were being included but I understand you didn't, so I won't touch on that.
 

Crudele

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Am I the only one who noticed how frequently people went for (and pulled off) jab resets throughout TBH5? Quick list off the top of my head:
:4myfriends: Ryo's dthrow > footstool > sourspot dair
:4pikachu: Esam's dair > 3 jab resets against Zero
:4mario: Anti and Zenyou both pulled off bair ff pivot jab
:4metaknight: Abadango got a bair ff pivot dtilt that I'm pretty sure ended a stock, since MK kills at like 10%

Is it just me or did this tournament realllly display the potential in reset combos
 

kj22

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In one of the Esam vs Zero games where Esam one, I remember as Sheik recovered from the left side of FD she upb'd from above the ledge to the ledge but still got hit by one of pika's moves? Wasn't there a video by Trifroze showing how if you snap from anywhere above the ledge to the ledge you were fully invincible? If anybody has the twitch link I can see if I can find the timestamp.
 

Nabbitnator

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So Big house is over and with this it ends a cycle from post diddy nerf to patch 1.1.0, so here is the final results from my tournament data ranking (well I need to verify some data but still).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dc5FhYjDliK7Eefx5W7AJruSgH6gNnWWaYn7AZCA6n0/edit#gid=0

So far the results are looking pretty much what a tier list would look like:

SS
:4sheik:

S
:4zss::rosalina:

A+

:4mario::4diddy::4sonic:

A
:4fox::4falcon::4pikachu::4luigi::4ness::4peach::4dk:

B
:4ryu::4villager::4lucario::4pacman::4yoshi::4metaknight::4rob:


Notes:
  • Ike arrived late to the party, so far is sitting at 27th place with only results at Big House 5.
  • Ryu keeps climbing I'm pretty sure he is going to be in top 10 very soon.
  • Even though most people agree that :4pit::4darkpit::4wario2::4greninja: are good characters they have almost zero representation at national level tournaments.
Patch 1.1.1 seems to bring big changes to the competitive scene so by this I think I'll make a new tounament data ranking stating the next national tournament.
I'd have Zss/Sheik at the same placement while rosa shares S with mario/diddy/sonic. I really think ryu will be up there soon because of his rewards.
 

Asdioh

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In one of the Esam vs Zero games where Esam one, I remember as Sheik recovered from the left side of FD she upb'd from above the ledge to the ledge but still got hit by one of pika's moves? Wasn't there a video by Trifroze showing how if you snap from anywhere above the ledge to the ledge you were fully invincible? If anybody has the twitch link I can see if I can find the timestamp.
http://oddshot.tv/shot/tourneylocator-20151004185825719 it looks like it was pretty even/slightly below, so yeah. It was really cool though!
 

Teshie U

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I think people were overrating Luigi and underrating him now. He just lost his easy kill setup right? He still has other ones, still has that busted nair and down B gimps? He isn't much worse than he was before.
 

bc1910

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He isn't, but considering how OVER-rated he was before, people being realistic about his tier position now makes it look like he's plummeted from top 5 and is being underrated, if that makes sense. He's probably only fallen a few spots, but it looks like he's fallen harder because of how inflated his position was prepatch.

Like, for me to say Luigi doesn't belong in a category that suggests he could win majors... I probably would have said the same thing prepatch.
 
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Teshie U

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Yea, Luigi was an upper mid tier/low high tier characters with polarizing matchups like Brawl DDD. Luigi players never placed well at big events. They pretty much only exist to ruin 1 person's tournament run before retreating back to obscurity.
 

DunnoBro

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Luigi's most BnB kill set-ups were off dthrow

It wasn't just cyclone, it was dthrow > bair/nair too.

The only way the rosa MU was doable was because if he grabbed her while luma was gone he could kill her at 60% without the need to try for any reads.

He isn't a "much worse" character, but he was already borderline Top tier and just lost the thing that made him borderline.

Overall, he was just brawl dedede. Not unhealthy in regards to top competitive play but discouraged diversity and exacerbated the issue of tiers. (Pika, Mario, Fox, and Diddy were really held back by their inability to soundly deal with luigi While others could deal with him and others and were thus considered better characters)
 
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Prometheus16

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When Smash 4 originally came out, I thought that the strengths and weaknesses of the characters as they got smoothed out would eventually make all the characters about even.

A year later, I'm starting to think the meta is too good at exploiting the weaknesses that can't be really patchd out....
 

Routa

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So... Doctor... Who? Well Doctor Doctor... Oh THE DOCTOR.

Anyways... What you think about Doc in the current patch? I have heard that he is doing rather well atm even tho his recovery is still a problem. Bair and Dair are a bit safer on shield, which can improve his approach options. What you guys think?
 

Zannabluke

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pills are still terrible, he's in pretty much the same spot he was before: a more limited mario, in terms of approach and combo game, who has a easier time closing stock

let's say he got a very slight buff from 1.1.1
 
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Zelder

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Every once in a while, during friendlies, I'll think, "Why don't I give Doc a try? Surely he's got something going for him, right?"

And then I try and jump with his insanely sluggish aerial movespeed and regret it, every single time. Doc isn't the worst character in the game, but boy does he look awful standing next to Mario.
 

Greward

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I think people were overrating Luigi and underrating him now. He just lost his easy kill setup right? He still has other ones, still has that busted nair and down B gimps? He isn't much worse than he was before.
From going to "I grab you at 90% and you die" to "you are at 150% and I have trouble killing" is a pretty big deal.
Yes he's notably worse than pre-nerf. I don't think he's that good of a character anymore. His selling point was his stupid easy power to get a kills at low %, now he doesn't have that and you are left with a character with good combos and frame data, but terrible mobility and recovery,
Why not play Mario instead?
 

ChronoPenguin

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Rosalina is just an anti-meta character. She gets by without top tier movement or kill setups, I guess because her neutral and brick walling are so good. On paper, she seems kinda bad. Super tall and floaty? Recovery without a hitbox? But Luma is just so good, and Dabuz is gahlike.
If Rosalina is Anti-meta I'm Jesus Christ.
You don't sit at the table with the best of the roster for a year after several meta-shifts through balance patches and get to play that card.
 
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NachoOfCheese

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So... Doctor... Who? Well Doctor Doctor... Oh THE DOCTOR.

Anyways... What you think about Doc in the current patch? I have heard that he is doing rather well atm even tho his recovery is still a problem. Bair and Dair are a bit safer on shield, which can improve his approach options. What you guys think?
His Bair is even safer now. It's actually pretty unbelievable, because his shorthop is really short, making it great for pressuring shields since Bair and Uair SH FF autocancel. His up B is also still among the best in the game for everything except recovering. Dtilt is also safer on block, and it's an extremely potent combo and string starter.
He's still Doc; he's not a good character but he functions. He has to outplay people to win (making him low tier still), but he has the tools to do so.
 

LiteralGrill

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I'm not sure it has been discussed so if so PLEASE forgive me. But soon we'll have a major that has Miis legal with all of their moves. They get to pick one set of moves per set. That's it.

With this in mind where do Miis stand on these lists of viable at majors? I'm very curious to see them discussed. Personally I'd say specialist for Mii Gunner and Sword and A+ to A for Brawler (as the few Japanese tournaments that have allowed Brawler have seen him do well).
 

wedl!!

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Every time I think of Mii Brawler I just think "Why not play MK?" MK basically does everything that Brawler does better and with way better offstage.

Not to say that Brawler is a bad character, more to say that he's overshadowed by Meta Knight.
 
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Routa

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Brawler is pretty much like Luigi in terms of viability. Without his Helicopter Kick he is... Well erm... Compare it to Pre Patch Luigi's D-throw. Get it? Good.

Dunno about the Gunner tho. Never played that one seriously.

I think Mii Swordfighter is the 3rd guy in line outside the high tier gate (when all of his moves are allowed and different sizes). He/she/it is a lot like Wario (well Wario is the closest character to Swordfighter when it comes to the FEEL of the character). The difference is that Swordfighter has hard time killing, has better edgeguarding game, has better combos and worse aerial movement. I also think Swordfighter has the most versatile kit when it comes to Miis (so much bias).

But... MM (50:50) size is not that great for any of the Miis. As Swordfighter you want to go for 75:00, 50:00, 25:00, 00:100... Well pretty much anything els than 50:50 or 100:100.
 
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C0rvus

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If Rosalina is Anti-meta I'm Jesus Christ.
You don't sit at the table with the best of the roster for a year after several meta-shifts through balance patches and get to play that card.
Well, I realize she's a good character. I just labeled her as anti meta because she is still a dominant character despite not having the desirable "meta traits" (mostly mobility, but she's outfitted strangely compared to the majority of top tiers.)
 
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Yikarur

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Mii's have been allowed with all moves in some europe countries from the beginning.
I'd rate him somewhere in high tier (like about Top15)
Mii Gunner and Swordfighter are non-existent though, but they are solid enough to be mid tier tbh.
 

DunnoBro

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Only small brawler with all customs is comparable to luigi. Take default size anywhere but smashville and he's like B-tier at best. Crappy neutral crappy disadvantage and super marth-syndrome combo game.
 
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