What if every character was as optimized as possible in 20XX?

[Habilecho]

20XX is the year everyone mains fox, but say every character in this game was as optimized as fox would be. Every character does everything optimally and has perfect execution. What would the tier list be?

My friends and I discussed this a little and we figured the first two spots would be fox and yoshi (he would parry everything). There was still some debate about the order of the two - but leaned towards yoshi because fox would still have to approach to get the kill. But what about everyone else?

 

[Dolla Pills]

Probably Yoshi first then Fox then Falco I guess cause he's still got a shine. After that I have no idea, but characters with quick invincible options would be good and most of the characters would be tied I assume.

 

[SSG SAX GAMER]

In my opinion, the tier list wouldn't be much different because the tier list is based on the assumption that every character is being played as well as they can be(as far as everything we know about the character). The match ups would still pretty much be the same. I think that the only variation would come from if a character is really underrated and for some reason no one realized it and the meta for that specific character is really undeveloped. Or if there is a tech that we don't know about like wobbling that exists for certain characters that hasn't been discovered yet.

 

[The Young Izzy Iz]

More room at the top of the tier list for faster characters, lag on projectiles means characters that could do well traditionally like Samus and to a lesser extent Link + Young Link are headed for the bottom. Pichu is going to be surprisingly high simply based on movement speed. Grab range is also going to play a huge role because with TAS every frame/pixel is going to count. Yoshi and Marth are going to be high because of their grab ranges. Characters that can be chainthrown by a large number of the cast are going to get wrecked because a single grab will mean death every time no exceptions. Shiek is going to be godlike with the ability to techchase/chainthrow most of the cast until death. Certain advanced techniques like dash-dancing won't exist as we concieve of them. The only reason to DD will be so that you can quickly pivot to avoid attacks so you'll likely see more frame-perfect pivot options from single-frame dash dances instead of DD being used to bait like it is right now. Wave-dashing won't really be used as much because the aforementioned perfect DDing will replace it all but completely (jump frames on WD make it slower/worse).

TL;DR Melee will look far, far different than it does now. Sheik will be the best. Only things that will matter are movement speed, grab range, and susceptibility to chain-throws/character specific shennanigans.

EDIT:

Tier list might look something like this:
1. Shiek (Movement Speed, Tech Chasing, Inescapable Chain Grabs on Everyone, Invincible Recovery)
2. Yoshi (Parry, Grab Range)
3. Fox (Shine)
4. Falco (Shine) Could be lower due to less defensive options
5. Marth (Movement Speed, DD, Grab Range) Could be lower due to lag frames on attacks.
6. Falcon (Movement Speed, Tech Chasing Until Death, Punishes) Could be swayed either way, real reason he's on here is his speed
6. Pichu (Movement Speed, Low Lag Frames) Bottom of the top tiers, definitely arguable.

Other low tiers might be higher if I know about specific gimmicks/tech they have that are powerful but hard to pull off.

 

[Dolla Pills]

Are we talking about the realm of possibility here or are we talking about like what if humans had no delay on their reactions? Because that would make a difference

And regardless I can't see Sheik at the top. No fast invincible options and is too slow on the ground to counter a Fox, and nothing that compares to shine or like power shield shine out of shield which would lead to death for the entire cast (grab is a 7 frame move).

 

[Comet7]

1. Fox
2. Yoshi
3. Falco
4. anyone with invincible ledge stalls that can't be interrupted fast enough to hit them
5. everyone else

 

[The Young Izzy Iz]

Are we talking about the realm of possibility here or are we talking about like what if humans had no delay on their reactions? Because that would make a difference

And regardless I can't see Sheik at the top. No fast invincible options and is too slow on the ground to counter a Fox, and nothing that compares to shine or like power shield shine out of shield which would lead to death for the entire cast (grab is a 7 frame move).

I don't know what the OP originally intended but my answers are assuming computer's are operating the characters under maximum efficiency with the sole goal of winning the game regardless of what methods that requires (Stalling, infinites, etc)

My initial placement of Sheik is mostly due to her possession of infinites on basically the entire cast. Some of her aspects aren't great, true, but I think they're overshadowed by the power of her versatility. I could probably be convinced to drop her a few spots if it could be shown that this versatility is not quite as useful as I originally believed (i.e. more characters have infinites/chain throws I'm not aware of, more characters have unbreakable kill setups against the entire cast I don't know about).

You're mention of power-shield shine intrigues me though, I hadn't even considered the place of power-shielding in the metagame but I think you're right that it's going to play a huge part, especially if certain character's have quick OoS options.

4. anyone with invincible ledge stalls that can't be interrupted fast enough to hit them

Didn't even think about that. Yeah, definitely a high possibility for fully invincible stalling. If we leave stalling as a possibility it'd probably be something like Fox powershield -> Shine -> invincible ledge stall until the game times out.

Again, I just want to reiterate that fully TAS'd Melee would look nothing like what we play. Simple things like SDI into Teching are going to be huge and allow characters to live situations they otherwise wouldn't. Stage spikes and metoer's are going to be basically useless unless part of a larger setup.

Visual Representation of SDI -> Tech Canceling Multiple Spikes

 

[Comet7]

Fox's ledge stall wouldn't work, the ledge can be grabbed and then he can be hit. He can just use shine to beat everything as a better powershield and never lose. Falco is similar, but Yoshi can parry and nair him out of his multishines.

Link might have some potential since he can have two hitboxes out at once.

 

[The Young Izzy Iz]

Link might have some potential since he can have two hitboxes out at once.

What move are you referring too? Sadly my Link Hitbox/Frame knowledge is not great.

 

[Comet7]

What move are you referring too? Sadly my Link Hitbox/Frame knowledge is not great.

nair's hitbox lasts until frame 39 and it can be autocanceled 7 frames before then.

edit: whoa i can't believe i guessed only one frame off

 

[Habilecho]

Something I thought of would be Marth and Roy's counter. Not sure how much would change things but it basically acts as a parry (but can be countered by grab so not as effective).

Also peach would rng stitches/bombs/beam swords, G&W would get 9's and luigi would missfire every time he wanted to. That would be funny.

I think maybe consider a fox > sheik > yoshi > fox triangle though since needles act as a way to counter the parry due to the multihit. Unlike fox's dair, this would work all the time because of the projectile game.

Also if we want to be completely real fox would beat yoshi ever time if he lasered once and then timer stalled for 8 minutes, but hey let's assume that isn't a thing at that level.

I think the whole movement thing is really important here.

So now I'm thinking

1-3: Fox, Yoshi, Sheik
4: Marth
5-6: Falco, Luigi
7: Peach

Roy somewhere in there???

 

[Dolla Pills]

I don't think counter is quick enough in startup and cooldown to be useful on a tas level.

Also parrying beats out frame perfect multishines, and yoshi can just avoid the lasers or egg stall so I don't see how fox wins that

 

[Habilecho]

What about sheik yoshi?

 

[Dolla Pills]

I don't know if just seems like a stale mate to me. I don't know how any character could approach another if they had perfect reaction speeds except for Fox (just walk up/shine once in range)