Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Baby_Sneak]

How else would you explain the fact that a bunch of players who struggled to make top8 are suddenly having top placements beating other top players?
The only thing all these players share in common is the fact that they picked up bayonetta

MU inexperience and cheesy setups are abundant with bayonetta. Learning MUs isn't a "I played with this one guy who plays with bayonetta for a while so I know the MU!" Or it isn't "I've studied the MU for a while so I know the MU even though I've never actually played it" (Cuz that's theory-craft). Bottom line, could you guys please give counter play time to develop?

EDIT: why did nobody catch the fact that Greward just called the man who won apex 2013 in brawl with ZSS against top top tier MKs a mid-tier player? Salem is a Beast that's just not heavily focused on smash 4.

 

[DblCrest]

Cap'nChreest
Your chart initially confused me. I thought with the ratio being 65:35 that the 65 was Palutenas or I've been reading them wrong from the beginning.

Honestly her match up spread in terms of size for characters she goes even with and has a slight advantage over is quite similar to Kirby's. (the chart @KenMeister put up some pages back)
But still ,all of those disadvantage match ups are against top tiers. Ouch...

 

[wm1026]

When recovering low enough that dair becomes an option against Pit, any smart Pit will keep his jumps to jump away from it, I mean Dair doesn't have the fastest startup and it's pretty obvious when a Bayonetta will go for it. Also I'm pretty sure Pit can dip deeper than the vertical distance Bayonetta's dair covers. Another option (although it's risky below stage level) is to Side B the dair on reaction, take the hit and hit bayonetta instead, possibly stagespiking in Dark Pit's case. Forces bayonetta to think twice about trying to Dair Pit. I need to test if Pit's uair beats Bayonetta's dair, does her dair have a larger hitbox than Link or Cloud? If not Uair can probably beat it when spaced.

Well to be fair any smart Bayo would just wait till either the pits run out of jumps or react to the up special start up. Depending on where pit is I feel like side b is a death sentience. Plus Bayo can always just tech it. Interested in if uair beats her dair though. If not then I'm pretty sure Bayo poops on a pit that recovers low.

 

[ReRaze]

Well to be fair any smart Bayo would just wait till either the pits run out of jumps or react to the up special start up. Depending on where pit is I feel like side b is a death sentience. Plus Bayo can always just tech it. Interested in if uair beats her dair though. If not then I'm pretty sure Bayo poops on a pit that recovers low.

If you're gonna wait there aren't gonna be much if any situations where a Pit is forced to recover low, his jumps and side B can generally get him back to the ledge if launched from the stage unless he gets spiked in the first place..... the only times I use Up B is, well for one example after pressing an advantage like fast fall fair or dair offstage and wanting to quickly get back, in these situations the opponent is in no position to pressure my Up B anyway.

Bayo can tech it but at least Pit doesn't die and she is put into the same position as him i.e. no advantage.

 

[wm1026]

If you're gonna wait there aren't gonna be much if any situations where a Pit is forced to recover low, his jumps and side B can generally get him back to the ledge if launched from the stage unless he gets spiked in the first place..... the only times I use Up B is, well for one example after pressing an advantage like fast fall fair or dair offstage and wanting to quickly get back, in these situations the opponent is in no position to pressure my Up B anyway.

Bayo can tech it but at least Pit doesn't die and she is put into the same position as him i.e. no advantage.

Bayo still has her guns that shoot at an upward angle to cover a higher recovery. Curious to know if Pits down b reflects them back to actually hit Bayo or not. If not then Bayo could use the end lag of the move to go for a spike. The more I think about it, I feel like each character has an answer to each other. I guess a big factor would be if Pits side b triggers witch time or not.

 

[Greward]

MU inexperience and cheesy setups are abundant with bayonetta. Learning MUs isn't a "I played with this one guy who plays with bayonetta for a while so I know the MU!" Or it isn't "I've studied the MU for a while so I know the MU even though I've never actually played it" (Cuz that's theory-craft). Bottom line, could you guys please give counter play time to develop?

EDIT: why did nobody catch the fact that Greward just called the man who won apex 2013 in brawl with ZSS against top top tier MKs a mid-tier player? Salem is a Beast that's just not heavily focused on smash 4.

So what about his brawl results. We're talking smash4 here, and in Smash4 he has been far from winning majors. Just fyi I am more than aware about Salem results in Brawl because I already was an active player at that point.

Well, I guess "bayo still has no consistent results" and "nobody knows the matchup" are okish arguments since it's only been a month. We'll see in just a while.

 

[ARGHETH]

Bayo still has her guns that shoot at an upward angle to cover a higher recovery. Curious to know if Pits down b reflects them back to actually hit Bayo or not.

Pit will be using Side B to snap to the ledge, though, so Bullet Climax shouldn't be hitting due to the upward angle. If WT works, then she should just use that. If it doesn't, she can try Dsmash of something to see if you can hit him outside of the superarmor.

 

[ReRaze]

Bayo still has her guns that shoot at an upward angle to cover a higher recovery. Curious to know if Pits down b reflects them back to actually hit Bayo or not. If not then Bayo could use the end lag of the move to go for a spike. The more I think about it, I feel like each character has an answer to each other. I guess a big factor would be if Pits side b triggers witch time or not.

Pit will be using Side B to snap to the ledge, though, so Bullet Climax shouldn't be hitting due to the upward angle. If WT works, then she should just use that. If it doesn't, she can try Dsmash of something to see if you can hit him outside of the superarmor.

This ^
also Lol I wouldn't try reflecting bullet arts offstsge with orbitars. Rather, why not airdodge then recover at a completely horizontal trajectory under her bullet arts? I don't see any reason not to, also with every jump Pit can fire an arrow to keep Bayonetta welll...at bay.

True witch time may be an issue to the side b but I can afford to wait it out, Dsmash 2 frame may also an issue

 

[wm1026]

This ^
also Lol I wouldn't try reflecting bullet arts offstsge with orbitars. Rather, why not airdodge then recover at a completely horizontal trajectory under her bullet arts? I don't see any reason not to, also with every jump Pit can fire an arrow to keep Bayonetta welll...at bay.

True witch time may be an issue to the side b but I can afford to wait it out, Dsmash 2 frame may also an issue

I guess we won't really know for sure till we have it played out at high level. I'm sure there will be an abundance of Bayo for Earth to fight. Until then though we won't really know anything. It's all theory craft right now really.

 

[HoSmash4]

So what about his brawl results. We're talking smash4 here, and in Smash4 he has been far from winning majors. Just fyi I am more than aware about Salem results in Brawl because I already was an active player at that point.

Well, I guess "bayo still has no consistent results" and "nobody knows the matchup" are okish arguments since it's only been a month. We'll see in just a while.

Yep, this exactly he basically picked up a character and placed 2nd in one of the best regions in the world. Baynetta was like 10 days old at this point.

 

[ReRaze]

I guess we won't really know for sure till we have it played out at high level. I'm sure there will be an abundance of Bayo for Earth to fight. Until then though we won't really know anything. It's all theory craft right now really.

True I'm speaking from my experience, but my experience with Bayonetta well....I haven't played any amazing ones.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

So what about his brawl results. We're talking smash4 here, and in Smash4 he has been far from winning majors. Just fyi I am more than aware about Salem results in Brawl because I already was an active player at that point.

Well, I guess "bayo still has no consistent results" and "nobody knows the matchup" are okish arguments since it's only been a month. We'll see in just a while.

Salem has amazing fundamentals that he developed from brawl so I dont see how this is an example of bayonetta giving a nobody some results.

 

[Cap'nChreest]

Cap'nChreest
Your chart initially confused me. I thought with the ratio being 65:35 that the 65 was Palutenas or I've been reaidng them wrong from the beginning.

Honestly her match up spread in terms of size for characters she goes even with and has a slight advantage over is quite similar in to Kirby's. (the chart @KenMeister put up some pages back)
But still ,all of those disadvantage match ups are against top tiers. Ouch...

Yea some top tiers are annoying. But the only real issues I think are Sheik, Diddy, Pikachu, and MK. Those are personally my worst matchups for her. All the others I think are reasonably doable.

 

[ReRaze]

How does bat within work, is it a separate mechanic from the airdodge? Does Bat within only react to hitboxes? So bat within wouldn't help her escape from footstools in say, greninja combos right?

 

[L9999]

Yea some top tiers are annoying. But the only real issues I think are Sheik, Diddy, Pikachu, and MK. Those are personally my worst matchups for her. All the others I think are reasonably doable.

While matchup charts derail the thread, it's nice to see opinions on how trash tier characters do and which ones are truly bad or how they stack up.

 

[Greward]

Salem has amazing fundamentals that he developed from brawl so I dont see how this is an example of bayonetta giving a nobody some results.

then, why couldn't he do this with zss? it's because zss is bad?

 

[TheGlove]

Well Esam just posted his Pikachu match up spread on twitter today

Of particular interest to this thread:

Lists Ike as 60:40 in Pikachu's favor. In the comments Esam stated he felt that he should be able to edgaurd Ike super hard and that Ike would be too slow to effectively catch Pikachu

Game and Watch: 45:55 in GnW's favor. Reasoning by Esam is that his hitboxes can easily challenge Pika, He cant be edge guarded and bucket can be scary.

55:45 Only Slightly in Pika's favor. Apparently he's just really hard to kill.
and 55:45 slighly in Pika's favor. No reason that I saw in the comments.

Disclaimer: I may have misinterpreted some of what Esam meant in the comments.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

then, why couldn't he do this with zss? it's because zss is bad?

Because he doesn't play the game like he did with brawl.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

55:45 Only Slightly in Pika's favor. Apparently he's just really hard to kill.

Big D pointed out on Twitter that utilizing a kinda bait-and-punish approach/stuffing over-commitment from D3 makes the MU markedly 60:40 (still don't understand the .5 ****). I agree with him. It's rough, but thankfully not horrid like ZSS is.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Djmarcus44]

Well Esam just posted his Pikachu match up spread on twitter today

Of particular interest to this thread:

Lists Ike as 60:40 in Pikachu's favor. In the comments Esam stated he felt that he should be able to edgaurd Ike super hard and that Ike would be too slow to effectively catch Pikachu

Game and Watch: 45:55 in GnW's favor. Reasoning by Esam is that his hitboxes can easily challenge Pika, He cant be edge guarded and bucket can be scary.

55:45 Only Slightly in Pika's favor. Apparently he's just really hard to kill.
and 55:45 slighly in Pika's favor. No reason that I saw in the comments.

Disclaimer: I may have misinterpreted some of what Esam meant in the comments.

I am personally not sure about Mii Gunner losing 40:60 to Pikachu. As far as I know, Mii Gunner has the advantage in tournament results with ROM beating Nitro. Are there any Pikachu players that can explain why Gunner loses this matchup 40:60?

 

[DanGR]

Because he doesn't play the game like he did with brawl.

You acknowledged that he hasn't been playing as well as he did in Brawl, and earlier in another post said he's not as focused on smash4... but you consider him a top smash4 player?

Therein lies the conundrum.

 

[Smog Frog]

wooooaaaahhhh

thats a ****in top tier matchup spread. like, top 3 material. i really hope esam elaborated, because i dont believe that spread at ALL.

 

[Pancracio17]

Yeah, beats every top tier except shiek ness and mario? No way

 

[C0rvus]

Very few 50:50's I see. I think Pika has a lot of 50:50s tbh. Very rarely when I play against a Pikachu on my level do I feel disadvantaged, mostly just annoyed. Always have to take things with a grain of salt, though. ESAM is known for being very... generous towards Pikachu.

 

[Strong-Arm]

Yeah Im not agreeing with that list. I do feel like Pikachu (similar to Falcon) is a tad overrated in a lot of areas. I see Pikachu dropping some places soon. I just dont see him being as good as like Sheik, ZSS, Bayonetta or even Diddy I think hes going to drop off within the upcoming months, maybe not that far but he will drop a little bit at least.

 

[L9999]

FOW MU chart for Ness. My opinions regarding the bad MUs.

-1
Can see why. ZSS is annoying and tough to approach and not get severely punished in the process. On positives Ness kills ZSS easily with Uair and Back Throw.
Everything I said about ZSS. At least Diddy can be gimped.
The principle of . Peach is hard to grab, and gets most of his game out his throws. And with Peach outranging Ness, good luck with aerial approaching without getting hit. And Peach doesn't give a damn about Ness offstage. Another general thing about is that she doesn't give a damn about anyone's shield. She has turnips and Dair to pressure anyone.
CQC is impossible. Period. That Bair, he refuses to die, and what has been discussed about DK here. If you mess up DK will punish you severely.
ANNOYING. Same as DK, CQC is a nightmare, and spacing is hard with that Cape and his anti-air Up Smash. And Mario juggles Ness the entire day if he wants to.
I honestly think it's -2, but I haven't played a offline Sanic in my life, so I might be wrong.
It would look lazy to copy paste everything I siad about Mario, so that's it.
Once offstage he is deader than when he goes agaisnt Killager, a little annoying to approach, and Ness is juggle food. At least Ness can do something about Bayonetta's WT since he plays by grabbing and Ness crouches really low so he doesn't care about Bullet Arts (onstage).
They outrange Ness and they edgeguard him really bad. are less annoying than the last 3 but annoying nonetheless for the same reasons.
Can see why. He cannot be PKT juggled or PK Fire'd, can't be gimped, and he can do the gravitational gimp.

-2
Agree but it's doable.
I dunno since I don't play MKs often but I guess because Ness is elevator food and gets gimped hard.

-3
Finally admitted it.
I don't believe this when Ness players beat a lot of non-ZeRo/Void Sheiks consistently. The matchup of course sucks, but I rather see it as -2.

 

[Jaguar360]

ESAM's MU spread should definitely have most characters moved down a couple spots, though it seems to be in the right direction overall.

• Disadvantages seem on point.
• Miis seem to be placed pretty arbitrarily. I have little experience vs them as Pikachu or vice versa, tbh, but Gunner especially is a matchup that I don't see being that far in Pika's favor 1111 or not.
  
• Pikachu vs is probably dead even. ESAM seems to optimistic with a lot of the 55:45 matchups in general. Luigi, the Pits, Doc and Ryu stand out here as well and seem moreso like 50:50s.
  
• I agree that Pika is 55:45 against , but a lot of Fox and Pika mains think that it's even or in Fox's favor, so it's a bit of a controversial placement.
• Pika is probably not beating 60:40. A slight advantage is definitely believable seeing ESAM's record against Nairo and seeing the pressure Pika puts on ZSS, but ZSS's kill power, N-air and general range are way too good for Pika to have that much of an advantage.
• 's not that easy of a matchup when Pikachu can struggle killing so often and Bowser has that scary kill confirm with U-throw. Bowser can very easily abuse Rage in this matchup and his recovery's not that easy for Pikachu to gimp. Should be 60-40 like DK or maybe even 55-45.
• vs Pika is even or close to even for sure. Mewtwo becomes more of a cannon than a glass cannon in this matchup, can abuse Pika's own low weight with his kill throw, has better range, racks up damage more quickly, is difficult for Pika to edgeguard and has good tools to contend with Pikachu in neutral. This is probably the matchup that I most disagree with on this list.

Don't have much to say on anything else.

 

[Greward]

You acknowledged that he hasn't been playing as well as he did in Brawl, and earlier in another post said he's not as focused on smash4... but you consider him a top smash4 player?

Therein lies the conundrum.

I think he's just trolling at this point.

 

[Yikarur]

Fow's MU chart makes Ness look like low mid tier.

 

[R3D3MON]

Yikarur
Adding on to this, I thought Luigi vs. Ness was even. Luigi definitely does not have the advantages that Mario has ( L9999 he doesn't have cape or the ability to juggle Ness for days. Remember, Mario and Luigi have vastly different gameplans because of their specials, character attributes, and ground attacks, such as tilts, even though they have some similar aspects). Luigi has nice CQC options and quick aerials...but so does Ness. He has frame-3 jab, and both characters' ground attacks are comparable. Also both characters have nice aerials good for walling out each other and escaping combos. As a Luigi player, his b-throw is definitely something to be feared because Luigi can die really early to it. But Ness also has to fear Luigi's tornado gimps because tornado can easily intercept Ness's up-b.

From what I know, I think FOW has an even record against Con Con (I may be wrong on this, so please correct me).

 

[Luco]

EDIT: This v makes more sense.

 

[Shaya]

Re: Salem
From what I gather, from the sporadic appearances he makes in smash related facebook posts and otherwise;
for nearly the first year of this game he had a complicated living situation, but he always was a lab monster and near exclusively played smash4 (out of any of the smash games), I last heard about results from him just prior to EVO. Not being able to play Smash like he was used to lead him to putting more time into other games. Bayo brought out the monster within but he's genuinely wanted to return to the Smash scene for a lot of that time.

-

Re: Match up Charts; particularly FOW's (based) one.
One thing about plus and minus match ups kept to 4 on each side, is their easy to relate scaling of difficulty to the individual.
The issue with them comes primarily from matching them up to the other characters / "normalizing".
What every main of a character could agree is only a -1, the opposing character could think is +2; because all of their -2s "feel" more difficult to them from their experiences.
That tends to be why they were never meant to be comparative to ratio match ups.
We asked panels to separately talk about and classify characters based on their similar difficulties and would then have the contrasting opinion panels discuss them.

From what you see out of FOW's match up chart is a pretty solid way of thinking "yeah, Sheik and Rosalina are Ness' hardest match ups by far" and they have consistently been the only cockblock (since Diddy's nerfs) to FOW at any tournament he's ever lost.
His -1's (by assumption) are the types of match ups many a player would consider even ("they're difficult to play against"), heck some of the hopeful/wifi-kiddies would probably think many are in their advantage!
And if we were to rate how many sets out of 100 FOW has lost to players of these characters, even the best in the world/region/USA it would likely be reflecting 75:25s or better, lol.

A notion here I commonly used to think in Brawl was
There really aren't many match ups in this game which are as difficult as the [Marth] ditto, something by all objective logic can only be 50:50 / "0". I would've rather played against 36.5/38 characters in the cast than a Marth ditto (in tournament against someone my skill level).

In a similar way, don't think ESAM's numerous positive match ups are +1s/+2s or better, but rather match ups ESAM has felt are easier than those he has after.
Normalizing his spread to our "standards" just seems a bit more silly because we think Pika sucks.
And if were to also consider out of 100sets ESAM has had against the best in the world/region/USA of various chars it would also likely be reflecting 75:25s or better, lol.

 

[ARISTOS]

ESAM thinking Ness is a -2 while FOW thinks it's even.

Not that important it's just interesting how different players think.

ESAM is probably exaggerating his MUs a little bit while I think FOW is underrating Ness a bit

 

[Baby_Sneak]

You acknowledged that he hasn't been playing as well as he did in Brawl, and earlier in another post said he's not as focused on smash4... but you consider him a top smash4 player?

Therein lies the conundrum.

No I don't. I consider Salem a top SMASH player. He hasn't done anything major in smash 4, so if we want to just ignore his history and just narrow it down to just plain results, he ain't anybody. But that's wrong on multiple levels.

Like, this is what Is being said," bayonetta gave some mid-tier player [salem] some results." Apex winning Salem is a "mid-tier" player. Like, what?

 

[L9999]

Yikarur
Adding on to this, I thought Luigi vs. Ness was even. Luigi definitely does not have the advantages that Mario has ( L9999 he doesn't have cape or the ability to juggle Ness for days. Remember, Mario and Luigi have vastly different gameplans because of their specials, character attributes, and ground attacks, such as tilts, even though they have some similar aspects). Luigi has nice CQC options and quick aerials...but so does Ness. He has frame-3 jab, and both characters' ground attacks are comparable. Also both characters have nice aerials good for walling out each other and escaping combos. As a Luigi player, his b-throw is definitely something to be feared because Luigi can die really early to it. But Ness also has to fear Luigi's tornado gimps because tornado can easily intercept Ness's up-b.

From what I know, I think FOW has an even record against Con Con (I may be wrong on this, so please correct me).

Mmm, that one slipped! What I was getting at is that a close range Luigi can mess up Ness. I personally think Luigi screw Ness more when he gets in that Ness to Luigi because Luigi is slippery and can escape combos easier, but it is just an opinion.

 

[R3D3MON]

L9999
I did mention that, but Ness also has a combo-breaking nair that is also good for edgeguarding because of the knockback and angle of the move. I agree that Luigi has little bit more options in CQC moments because of jab mixups and Luigi's smash attacks having more utility in general, but Ness's up-tilt is a good combo extender and Ness's jab is still a good GTFO move. Also his d-smash is very good for 2-frame punishes at ledge. I also agree that Luigi gets more from his grabs, but Ness's d-throw is also a very good combo starter at low-mid % (to be fair, tho, I think Luigi can actually escape ness's fair strings more easily with SDI away and DIing away in general). Also Ness can juggle Luigi better with his up-air because Ness's up-air has a huge hitbox and kills.

Overall both characters share many strengths and nobody really has a big advantage on one another. Thank you for clarifying your opinions on the MU tho.

 

[C0rvus]

Fow's MU chart makes Ness look like low mid tier.

Because he might be.

 

[Blobface]

Ganon v Ness is definitely in Ness's favor, but I wouldn't call it a +2. Ness is like Cloud and Falcon where they get way too murdered offstage for their strengths to really make Ganon suffer.

Have people been making use of Bayonetta's edgeguarding?

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Yeah, but have you seen Cloud, Ness, and Falcon in neutral against Ganon, Blobface ?

(especially Cloud, holy crow does he **** on Ganon from on high)

I feel like people (again) forget that getting people offstage is part of the game, too. Like, Ganon actually has to reliably hit these characters for the whole "they get murdered offstage!" thing to really matter.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Y2Kay]

I wonder what makes ESAM think greninja and fox are winning match ups even though he lost to istudying and got man handled by Larry Lurr in the grudge match.