Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Swamp Sensei]

I don't think Charizard's tail has a hurtbox for some of his animations. If you pause at 1:59, you can see where Charizard is positioned before the stomp.

Even then, doesn't Cross Slash have invincibility frames at the start?

 

[Djmarcus44]

Even then, doesn't Cross Slash have invincibility frames at the start?

Yes. The invincibility frames of Cloud's limit cross slash are from frames 6-11. Once Cloud started the animation for the second hit of limit cross slash, he was no longer invincible.

 

[ReRaze]

I think marth definitely has a higher cap and more depth than lucina and is definitely a better character, but whether that cap can be reached and marth played to his full potential is another story. Being able to switch between tippers and sourspots on the fly sounds great on paper but in an actual match, at higher levels of play all that gets thrown out the window when you have characters like shiek and fox running circles around you with their better frame data and mobility, you don't even have time to microspace, your full attention is most likely devoted to trying to fend off the pressure from the opponent and keep them out of your space. At that level of play unless you have insane reaction times and precision that question of "Should I tipper or not" is more likely to change to "Can I land the hit". Sure good Marth's may be able to do this to a certain extent but until they can do so with relative consistency, what Marth has over Lucina in depth (the option of spacing a tipper to kill or using a sourspot to combo) and therefore potential reward is more or less evened out with Lucina's consistency, especially so after the current patch now that she, as many people put it, "is a real character".

 

[NairWizard]

The fundamental problem with most of Marth theory dating back as far as early Brawl is that it revolves around and depends on having a 8-10 frame reaction time and powershielding everything.

Where is Mikeneko when you need him?

 

[Rizen]

Being able to switch between tippers and sourspots on the fly sounds great on paper but in an actual match, at higher levels of play all that gets thrown out the window when you have characters like shiek and fox running circles around you with their better frame data and mobility, you don't even have time to microspace, your full attention is most likely devoted to trying to fend off the pressure from the opponent and keep them out of your space.

The thing is, a zoning character who isn't effectively zoning is losing the game. Sheik wins because she breaks zoning and combos so safely and well. Ideally Marth, Lucina and other zoners will keep the opponent in their preferred spacing. Lucina does better with bad spacing but it's still bad spacing.

 

[ReRaze]

The thing is, a zoning character who isn't effectively zoning is losing the game. Sheik wins because she breaks zoning and combos so safely and well. Ideally Marth, Lucina and other zoners will keep the opponent in their preferred spacing. Lucina does better with bad spacing but it's still bad spacing.

Agreed but my point was reality isn't always ideal. Like you said Shiek easily breaks zoning. And the fact that Marth isn't always going to get his sweetspot or sourspot is what evens out his reward with Lucina more or less (The sheer absurd power of some tipper moves like fsmash or nair may be a different story). Besides I pretty much said the question of trying to space tippers or not more often than not comes down to whether you can actually land the hit, With lucina there is no 'bad spacing' if she lands the hit, the same can't be said for Marth depending on what the Marth wanted.
I wasn't talking about spacing on shield btw, but if that's what you are talking about, it's bad for both characters to mispace on shield, I can't think of a situation where mispacing on shield with Lucina will let her off better than marth.

 

[Rizen]

Agreed but my point was reality isn't always ideal. Like you said Shiek easily breaks zoning. And the fact that Marth isn't always going to get his sweetspot or sourspot is what evens out his reward with Lucina more or less (The sheer absurd power of some tipper moves like fsmash or nair may be a different story). Besides I pretty much said the question of trying to space more often than not comes down to whether you can actually land the hit, With lucina there is no 'bad spacing' if she lands the hit, the same can't be said for Marth depending on what the Marth wanted.

Lucina's bad spacing is when she isn't abusing her reach to safely attack and not be attacked in return.

 

[ReRaze]

Lucina's bad spacing is when she isn't abusing her reach to safely attack and not be attacked in return.

if she lands the hit, in general, it will launch the same distance and giver her the same reward no matter which part of the blade she hits with, if you see the opprtunity to land a hit then why bother spacing with her. If she mispaces on shield, (I should have said) spot dodge, whiff, etc, it means she's not spacing properly and that she will get attacked in return. I never said she shouldn't be abusing her reach to safely attack and not be attacked in return like in these situations.

 

[Thinkaman]

• Lucina and Dr. Mario not as good at their originals but not bottom tier; news at 11.
• LM is surprisingly okay at fighting fast-falling lightweight linear-attack-pattern character Sheik; Sol is dead on.
• Palutena rewards patience without imposing any threat. Like Zelda, she is structurally stunted. I doubt she has any truly dismal matchups though.
• Contrast with the likes of Bowser Jr, DHD, Link, Samus, and even Shulk or Ganon; these characters drew the short end of the stick, but still have a cohesive and unique-if-disadvantaged path to success that scales to top-level play. Yes, "getting lots of hard reads" is a scalable paradigm.
• Everyone finally realized Mewtwo is good. Spoilers: Lucas is next.
• The bulk of Cloud's success comes not at the hands of Limit Break, but rather that his uair and dair have a unique property called "being really stupid."
• If a tree falls in the woods, but no one plays Peach, is she still high-tier?
• Whoa, are you guys trying to tell me that ESAM posted something on the Internet in which he overrated Pikachu???
• I wish people would talk about Corrin a tenth as much as Bayo; God knows Corrin has won far more than that share of placements, relatively speaking.
• Endless blabber-prattle about the True Meaning of Matchup Ratios is marked as a Red Topic in the thread rules and grounds for moderation. It's an endless rabbit hole, and I won't hesitate to be the guy who floods it with acid.

 

[meleebrawler]

There's at least two characters like to list as disadvantaged by default without significant analysis: Mewtwo and Ganondorf. The reasons are almost the exact opposites: Ganondorf because of his poor neutral, and Mewtwo due to his light weight.

Two controversial Mewtwo matchups in particular that I consider not disadvantaged are Ness and Pikachu. Mewtwo heavily outmaneuvers and outspaces Ness, and gimps him fairly easily; only Ness's PSI Magnet and raw kill power keep it even.

Pikachu is tiny and agile, two things Mewtwo dislikes, but Pikachu's issues with killing come to the fore since gimping Mewtwo is very difficult, letting Mewtwo accumulate significant rage, and again, Mewtwo can space Pikachu out.

As for clone characters or others getting shafted in tier lists, it's simple: no one person can create a perfectly accurate one (the "good" ones posted mainly follow the consensus of multiple users).

 

[ぱみゅ]

Since I started the topic I guess I'll have something to say.
RE: Lucina
I don't disagree that Marth has better hitboxes, reward, and his gameplan is overall better, I never said, insinuated or pretended that she outperformed him.

My main concern is that people just put her in the Bottom 10 for no other reason than saying Marth is better.
Like, can we look at her OWN performance against the rest of the cast, and how she (imo) beats or goes even against the huge majority of the Bottom 15? If so, why would she be grouped with them?
Being overshadowed doesn't mean she is bottom 10 by default.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

The whole Marth vs Lucina argument is pretty counter-productive at this point. Just look at them as individual characters with individual matchup spreads and then compare them like you'd compare any two characters.

 

[BunbUn129]

Since I started the topic I guess I'll have something to say.
RE: Lucina
I don't disagree that Marth has better hitboxes, reward, and his gameplan is overall better, I never said, insinuated or pretended that she outperformed him.

My main concern is that people just put her in the Bottom 10 for no other reason than saying Marth is better.
Like, can we look at her OWN performance against the rest of the cast, and how she (imo) beats or goes even against the huge majority of the Bottom 15? If so, why would she be grouped with them?
Being overshadowed doesn't mean she is bottom 10 by default.

It's the same story with Marth's and Roy's placements. At first, some people were saying Roy was high tier, and even ZeRo was saying he was the best sword character. Why? Because "Roy is better than Marth," they were saying. Even though you'll now be laughed at for saying those things about Roy, those sentiments are reflected in the 4BR tier list: how the **** is Roy 9 spots ahead of Marth and in another full tier? Because, to be fair, the American smash community is still viewing Roy's viability in tandem with Marth. Many people are saying "Roy seems to be a better character than Marth," without taking Roy's theory, MU's, and results (or lack thereof) into account. If one was to look at Roy relative to the entire cast and not solely Marth, taking theory, MU's, and the lack of results into account, Roy should not be above Marth.

TL; DR, Roy is above Marth on the 4BR tier list because a number of players are still comparing him to Marth and ignoring everything that actually matters.

Same with Lucina, like you said: she's low tier only because "lolz girl Marth," not because they're judging her on her own merits like almost every other ****ing character.

I will lose my **** if Roy is still above Marth on the next version of the list.

 

[AnEventHorizon]

Just a few things to mention on Lucina I haven't seen explicitly stated yet.

While some of Marth's tippers are now easier, Lucina's aerial damage is now higher than Marth's average. Prior to the 1.1.4 patch, most of Lucina's attacks did the average knockback growth and damage between Marth's tipper and sourspot. Marth needed to hit 50% of the tippers on his attacks to keep up in damage. This has changed for all aerials.

For example, before the patch Lucina's fair did 8.5 damage. This was the average of marth's sour spot (7) and tipper (10). Now her fair does 10.5 damage - not only is this more damage that Marth's tipper in the past, it's more than marths new fair sour/tipper average damage (8+11.5)/2 = 9.75.

She now has greater than average damage on all aerials, and greater damage than Marth's old tippers on fair, bair, and dair sweetspot. This also allows her to pull off some things Marth has difficulty doing.

I checked a random Match of Pugwest's Marth in winners finals just to get an idea of how often Marth's hit tippers comparatively. I went to the Sheik match, since the first match had 2 SDs. He hits 2/15 (13.3%) tippers on the first stock. Next stock was 2/13 (15.4%) tippers. SD's ignored, Pugwest also hit below 20% tippers in the first Bayonetta match.

In another Winner's Quarters Match against a Lucario he hits 6/15 (40%) tippers on the first stock, and 12/31 (38.7%) tippers on the second.

So in these matches at least, less than 20% tippers versus the more in your face characters of Sheik/Bayonetta, less than 40% tippers versus a more 'average' character in Lucario. I do wonder what it would be versus a zoning character and a heavy character, but that's work for another time.

Just some things to keep in mind while thinking about Lucina. It seems like most people are placing her based on what they believe of her in theory, not in practice.

 

[Fatmanonice]

Excuse the crap formatting of my post. I really tried to make it somewhat less painful to read.

• Palutena rewards patience without imposing any threat. Like Zelda, she is structurally stunted. I doubt she has any truly dismal matchups though.

She's like the Mario of the low tiers: heavily relies on good fundamentals but doesn't have too much that's super impressive. Speaking of Mario, the character she's probably the most similar to is Brawl Mario and, in similar fashion, actually is somewhat relevant because the character still decently rewards good play but is weighed down by just being supremely "meh" in most regards.

• Contrast with the likes of Bowser Jr, DHD, Link, Samus, and even Shulk or Ganon; these characters drew the short end of the stick, but still have a cohesive and unique-if-disadvantaged path to success that scales to top-level play. Yes, "getting lots of hard reads" is a scalable paradigm.

• 
  
  I'd argue that the only characters you listed that really depend on hard reads here are DHD (because he can't kill for **** otherwise) and Ganon (because getting random early kills is like the only thing he's good at). All the others still have good set ups but I still wouldn't argue that any of them have too much potential for the future.
  
  
  

  [*]Everyone finally realized Mewtwo is good. Spoilers: Lucas is next.

Not if someone doesn't take him up. Pink Fresh dumping the character seems to have (at least momentarily) killed a lot of people's confidence in the character. I do still agree that Lucas is grossly underrated though.

• The bulk of Cloud's success comes not at the hands of Limit Break, but rather that his uair and dair have a unique property called "being really stupid."

• Slowly coming to realize that his "weaknesses" are almost as irrelevant as the Three Queens'. "But... but... his recovery sucks!" Just counterpick Smashville or Town and City to largely turn it into a non issue and since stage counterpicking is so lazy in this game, most people will just willingly go to these stages anyways.
  
  
  

  [*]If a tree falls in the woods, but no one plays Peach, is she still high-tier?

  Bruh... I've been saying this since Brawl. I have similar thoughts about Lucario and both will probably always be grossly overrated because of their "potential."
  
  
  

  [*]Whoa, are you guys trying to tell me that ESAM posted something on the Internet in which he overrated Pikachu???

  What kills me is that nobody seems to want to challenge it despite ESAM's recent placing inconsistency and Pikachu's tepid representation.
  
  
  

  [*]I wish people would talk about Corrin a tenth as much as Bayo; God knows Corrin has won far more than that share of placements, relatively speaking.

I feel like Bayo's talked about more because the idea of an optimized Bayo is still pretty terrifying. Like people have been saying, once a player emerges that can consistently Witch Time people's recoveries, things are going to look a lot different at the bigger tournaments. With Corrin, I don't think people are all that convinced yet that their success is based more on the character than just being new.

 

[Solfiner]

Shulk is more about the Speed and Buster frame traps than hard reads I'd say. Obviously reads benefit him greatly though, since up smash can kill really early if you read the right ledge option.

 

[Big-Cat]

Not if someone doesn't take him up. Pink Fresh dumping the character seems to have (at least momentarily) killed a lot of people's confidence in the character. I do still agree that Lucas is grossly underrated though.

This reminds me of why I dislike how Smash tiers are done - way too results based and not matchup based. To me, Smash tier lists are self fulfilling prophecies.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Results prove the theory behind matchups.

Matchups on paper can be rather all over the place. Results prove what does and doesn't actually happen in MUs.

In theory Sonic should be outrunning Ike all over the place. In reality he gets swatted down.

 

[Fatmanonice]

This reminds me of why I dislike how Smash tiers are done - way too results based and not matchup based. To me, Smash tier lists are self fulfilling prophecies.

Or sometimes it's the other way around, like in the case of Wii Fit or Doc: have results but gets repeatedly bogged down because "they suck on paper" and people can't move past this. Also like I mentioned earlier, Peach and Lucario's placements are like 85% theory craft and characters like Pikachu and Ryu have like 1 or 2 people getting a lot of mileage with them.

 

[Emblem Lord]

I don't see an MU where Marth has a significant advantage in it over Lucina.

Sure you could say "BUT MARTH'S TIPPERS AND KILLS EARLIER", but same could go for the other way, where his sourspots won't kill, one can continually airdodge into Marth and he couldn't do jack except for swing for a sourspot hit.

I'm not saying their differences are trivial, they aren't, but they have the same gameplan and the same weaknesses

The thing is...if you love FE and you want to main one of them there is no real reason to user her over Marth unless you are a beginner in which case you would move on to Marth eventually.

Also airdodge into Marth and force a sour spot?

The hell kinda ass backwards irrelevant example is this?

 

[Big-Cat]

Results prove the theory behind matchups.

Matchups on paper can be rather all over the place. Results prove what does and doesn't actually happen in MUs.

In theory Sonic should be outrunning Ike all over the place. In reality he gets swatted down.

Except you don't make matchups on theorycraft alone.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Also Lucina is not bottom ten.

Guys seriously what the ****.

 

[meleebrawler]

About Corrin... I've heard what seems to be knee-jerk reactions calling him top 10, which is of course ridiculous when the likes of Cloud is running around.

He has an interesting place in the metagame though, as playing against him is a great way to learn how to get the most out of zoning, since it is clearly his biggest weakness. Gunner-type characters which are normally ignored in the brawler-heavy top tier can have a niche against him.

Speaking of gunners, what's Villager been up to lately?

 

[BunbUn129]

Except you don't make matchups on theorycraft alone.

The greatest example is with the MK vs Sheik matchup: I find it annoying how many MK mains are willing to argue it's 55-45 for Sheik (slight advantage), and a few are even saying it's even. They're going purely off of theory: in theory, Sheik will dominate neutral, but then MK wins neutral once and kills her. Even, amirite? But just peeking at results, and they tell you the exact opposite. Aside from Leo's destruction of Mr. R and Vinnie, and Ito's and Tyrant's decent record vs Void, MK gets regularly beaten by Sheik. If you watch Abadango vs almost any Sheik, you can see why the matchup is nothing less than 60:40 for Sheik. This is probably one of the single best examples of how theorycrafting alone is heavily unreliable for determining matchups.

In fact, the MK-Sheik MU is almost a carbon copy of Falcon vs Sheik: MK gets shutdown and thrown around the stage, and has to outplay the Sheik at every turn. The only difference is that MK has the One Touch, while Falcon has to fall back to reads to get a KO, and MK's death combo is the sole reason the matchup is still doable.

 

[Smog Frog]

even in theory is iffy vs . gigantic powerful safe sword hitboxes, being able to outdamage us(or at the very least keep up) AND kill us earlier off of grabs, and being outrun doesnt really matter as much when you are a big advancing golden wall of pain.

 

[HoSmash4]

Lucas has been secretly a good character... I have a crucial question. Where are the results? I mean actual results like placing at a national or regional. Not consistent top 3 in Oklahoma or Minnesota. Heck pink fresh only sporadically got top 3 with Lucas at Xanadu.

He may be good but right now he is worse than falcon, rob, greninja, mewtwo, lucario and several borderline top 20s.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Treat matchup results from tournaments [or other competitive settings] like empirical evidence. Gather them, interpret them within their respective context and circumstances and then induce a matchup number based on it. Be as consistent as possible with your methodology and you'll eventually get a solid grasp on how the metagame works out, with or without a tier list.

 

[Vipermoon]

The whole Marth vs Lucina argument is pretty counter-productive at this point. Just look at them as individual characters with individual matchup spreads and then compare them like you'd compare any two characters.

They don't have individual match-up spreads. Theory isn't reliable enough to say that one of them does noticeably better against a character (except for special situations like Luma where Marth has EZ tipper Fair and Nair, tipper SB, and a WAY better Dash Attack).

Just a few things to mention on Lucina I haven't seen explicitly stated yet.

While some of Marth's tippers are now easier, Lucina's aerial damage is now higher than Marth's average. Prior to the 1.1.4 patch, most of Lucina's attacks did the average knockback growth and damage between Marth's tipper and sourspot. Marth needed to hit 50% of the tippers on his attacks to keep up in damage. This has changed for all aerials.

For example, before the patch Lucina's fair did 8.5 damage. This was the average of marth's sour spot (7) and tipper (10). Now her fair does 10.5 damage - not only is this more damage that Marth's tipper in the past, it's more than marths new fair sour/tipper average damage (8+11.5)/2 = 9.75.

She now has greater than average damage on all aerials, and greater damage than Marth's old tippers on fair, bair, and dair sweetspot. This also allows her to pull off some things Marth has difficulty doing.

I checked a random Match of Pugwest's Marth in winners finals just to get an idea of how often Marth's hit tippers comparatively. I went to the Sheik match, since the first match had 2 SDs. He hits 2/15 (13.3%) tippers on the first stock. Next stock was 2/13 (15.4%) tippers. SD's ignored, Pugwest also hit below 20% tippers in the first Bayonetta match.

In another Winner's Quarters Match against a Lucario he hits 6/15 (40%) tippers on the first stock, and 12/31 (38.7%) tippers on the second.

Just some things to keep in mind while thinking about Lucina. It seems like most people are placing her based on what they believe of her in theory, not in practice.

It's cool that you did this and you make some good points. I'd be willing to agree that Lucina does more damage (even though her a lot of her non-aerials still do very low damage compared to Marth).

I'd also like to say that Pugwest isn't that good at getting tippers compared to False for example.

My last point is that some non-tippers are intentional and the fact that he can work with two moves in one is still a benefit a little more than it is a detriment.

 

[Fatmanonice]

Lucas has been secretly a good character... I have a crucial question. Where are the results?

Nowhere because almost no one uses him and his most prominent player, Pink Fresh, dumped him for Bayo. How is this different from Peach and Lucario? Both of them haven't had significant changes in a long time while post Cloud patch Lucas is still largely unexplored thanks to probably being one of the worst represented characters in the game right now.

 

[HoSmash4]

Nowhere because almost no one uses him and his most prominent player, Pink Fresh, dumped him for Bayo. How is this different from Peach and Lucario? Both of them haven't had significant changes in a long time while post Cloud patch Lucas is still largely unexplored thanks to probably being one of the worst represented characters in the game right now.

Peach - 2 peaches top 32 G3 amongst many other achievements Edit: my mistake umeki got 33rd but close enough.
Lucario - Won an umebura

I don't believe in the 'no rep' talk it just sounds like pure speculation based on theory crafting. Thousands of people play this game, you'd think one of them would have fleshed out Lucas. Smash 4 meta is advancing way faster than brawl or melee when they were one year old so I don't think there will be too many drastic metagame changes from now on

 

[~ Gheb ~]

They don't have individual match-up spreads.

Every character has an individual matchup spread ...

 

[bc1910]

• Everyone finally realized Greninja is good.

This as well.

 

[Fatmanonice]

It's different when you don't have prominent players representing a character or ones that can't really travel. The "No Rep" talk is legitimate because it means that character's game develops at a much slower pace and is set back more when ranking players drop the character. Imagine how people's perspective would quickly change if Esam dropped Pikachu or Dabuz dropped Rosalina. Opinions on Bowser Jr have already sank since Tweek dropped him and Duck Hunt did the equivalent of moving back into his parent's basement when Dunnobro dropped him. Low/no rep is a real thing that impacts the metagame.

 

[san.]

Peach - 2 peaches top 32 G3 amongst many other achievements Edit: my mistake umeki got 33rd but close enough.
Lucario - Won an umebura

I don't believe in the 'no rep' talk it just sounds like pure speculation based on theory crafting. Thousands of people play this game, you'd think one of them would have fleshed out Lucas. Smash 4 meta is advancing way faster than brawl or melee when they were one year old so I don't think there will be too many drastic metagame changes from now on

You'd be surprised. It's usually only a select few players pushing things in any meaningful way for most characters that aren't near the top. What non-high level players can provide though include data charts and proof of concept videos and the like.

Many characters still have "20XX" optimal punishes that still aren't seen all that much due to execution, responding to the confirm/DI, or just a lack of knowledge of their existences/lack of practice.

 

[Blobface]

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

Yeah, he loses neutral bad against those characters, but not bad enough that he simply can't land hits. And he outrewards them so hard once he does land hits that the matchup really isn't that bad. Still, all these matchups are definitely a disadvantage.

 

[Vipermoon]

Every character has an individual matchup spread ...

Oh no! You put a "..." at the end implying that you won. Too bad for me.

I elaborated in my post. I said we can't reliably say that either character's MU ratios are different. The MUs won't be different enough and it isn't even clear which MUs those are (if there are any).

 

[Phan7om]

Lots of people lack the patience and discipline needed to push a "bad" or unexplored character's meta correctly, most players will rather just play the game and let their character's meta advance at its natural (slow) pace. Maybe they lab a few things here or there, but the character's meta still advances at a snails pace compared to the characters near the top. Then they wonder why their character continues to make less and less of an impact in the meta.

Wobbles' concept of the Local Maxima fits perfectly in this situation. Give it a read if you havent already. He talks about Melee ICs, but the overall idea still applies.

Edit: If you dont know what wobbling is, just replace that with 'x characters really good/overused strategy'.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Lots of people lack the patience and discipline needed to push a "bad" or unexplored character's meta correctly, most players will rather just play the game and let their character's meta advance at its natural (slow) pace. Maybe they lab a few things here or there, but the character's meta still advances at a snails pace compared to the characters near the top. Then they wonder why their character continues to make less and less of an impact in the meta.

Wobbles' concept of the Local Maxima fits perfectly in this situation. Give it a read if you havent already. He talks about Melee ICs, but the overall idea still applies.

Aren't you the fox player at Xanadus or tourney locator? I've think I saw you somewhere on YouTube.

And idk. Some just seems to don't have promise. DHD seems kinda maxed out with dunnobro dumping them. And he seemed to had been labbing them hard.

 

[Phan7om]

Aren't you the fox player at Xanadus or tourney locator? I've think I saw you somewhere on YouTube.

Nope lol

 

[BunbUn129]

Oh, just throwing this out there, but D3's air speed apparently got nerfed in the last update. The single most unfair nerf in the history of nerfs. Sakurai y?