Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Megamang]

You've all heard that if you leave monkeys banging away randomly on typewriters for an infinite amount of time, you'd eventually get Shakespeare? Well, similarly, if you leave dumb Twitch monsters to their own devices, every possible stupid thing that can be said about the game will be said. Everyone has been called braindead, easy, difficult, top tier, high tier, bottom tier, the most difficult to master, overrated, underrated, secret top tier, secret DLC tier, dumb, too fast, too slow, etc etc etc.


Anyways, I believe @Dabuz has said Rosa/Mewtwo is even? I'd believe it, its a glass cannon MU with a heavy emphasis on correct footsies/zoning. Mewtwo being light and huge is naturally Luma food, while his powerful moves make quick work of Luma and his strong strings and kill throws can make Rosalina die in the interrim of Luma's death and life cycle. Its a fun MU that probably isn't too stage dependent, since a lower ceiling is just going to make them kill eachother faster. I'd probably take the lower ceiling as M2 tough, that kill throw and usmash is sooo good. At the same time, M2 can actually edgeguard Rosalina but can't be edgeguarded too easily by her. Having a powerful spike with the most active frames (used to be, not sure if it changed or if Bayonetta's BS counts...) is a great tool to assure you can seal the stock before some TomLumary begins.

Mewtwo's dash attack is a nice zone breaker, and sends luma flying pretty easily. Also, while Gpull is always a thing in projectile matchups, the shadow ball is really nice for when Rosalina and Luma make a misstep in footsies, since its basically curtains for Luma even behind a shield.

I'd need to play a better Rosalina than my friends' casual ones, since I haven't played one since I picked up M2, but its a MU im very interested in. Megaman kinda... struggles? Its not that bad a MU, but its really not a fun one. I'd rather go in full glass cannon mode and end the game rather than playing dance around luma for 18 minutes. Whether that is the most effective route, we will come to see, but I somehow believe it is better than letting Rosalina play her game.

 

[sedrf]

midwest mayhem has ally and mr r.
ally apparently claims mario beats sheik now.
things got interesting.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

I feel like every Mega Man believes they beat Captain Falcon, and every Captain Falcon believes they beat Mega Man.

Spacing bairs and nairs and dash dancing doesn't exactly get around pellets though.

By dash dancing I mean dance trotting by the way, it's essentially just the Smash 4 version of Melee dash dancing so it's easier to call it dash dancing since Smash 4 dash dancing isn't exactly the most useful thing.
It does get around it because the point of it is that you will not get hit by lemons. You avoid them entirely the best you can until you can get in. Mega Man can only shoot three at a time, once that's done, you rush in. Lemons are pretty not threatening to Falcon. You can actually just stand there and take the three hits, which does 6%, and just Falcon Kick after the third lemon which does 11%. I'm fine with taking 6% to be honest.

He can edgeguard megaman about as well as we edgeguard him, but you have to hit falcon a lot to get him to finally die offstage (unless you hit a dair, which isn't a good risk/reward against falcon. Its slow enough that he can reasonably expect to dodge it frequently, whereas bair should rarely miss, so its highly suggested to go for bair). Nair sends him at a bad angle and is usually a great edgeguard due to pellet protection

I'd say Falcon probably edge guards slightly better than Mega Man, tbh. Bair is pretty good against most characters, and I'd be more inclined to use that over dair against Mega Man just to avoid the potential of spiking him into Rush Coil, but it's probably harder to avoid than Mega Man's and can be set up into on the ledge from falling uair. Not to mention that sometimes the gimp won't even matter, the bair will just straight up kill. And you've pretty much hit the nail on the head on Falcon vs Mega Man dair. If Falcon gets hit by that, frankly, it's his own fault. Just some small things that give a slight edge to Falcon when it comes to edge guarding.

To me it just seems that Falcon's neutral and advantage are better than Mega Man's, thus putting it in his favor. Metal Blades are easy enough to perfect shield or jump around, I'm okay with just running through a few crash bombs here and there to get in, and just stay out of lemon range until you get in and do your stuff.

 

[Trifroze]

Regarding Diddy, am I the only one who thinks that lacking killing aerials is kind of a big deal, as well as lacking any sort of real kill potential off of grabs? Yeah, he has a banana and dtilt into stuff so he's not as bad as Pikachu when it comes to killing, but I'd say Diddy kinda needs those things as much as I'd say that they make him a solid character.

also what is up with his nair

 

[sedrf]

he has f-throw at later percents,but yeah i notice that.
at the same time **** hoo-hah

 

[juddy96]

This weekend

Midwest Mayhem: Mr. R, Ally, Hyuga, Zinoto, MJG, Chicago people
The FBC Presents: Come to Papa: Florida people https://smash.gg/tournament/the-fbc-presents-come-to-papa-1/brackets/10857/19345
Final Round 19: ANTi, Fatality, Reflex, ScAtt, Rango, Day, Georgia people

Next weekend

Outfoxx'd
2GGT: FOW Saga
NorCal Regionals
Battlegrounds 2
MARS 2016
Bunch of regionals

 

[DanGR]

Regarding Diddy, am I the only one who thinks that lacking killing aerials is kind of a big deal, as well as lacking any sort of real kill potential off of grabs? Yeah, he has a banana and dtilt into stuff so he's not as bad as Pikachu when it comes to killing, but I'd say Diddy kinda needs those things as much as I'd say that they make him a solid character.

also what is up with his nair

Considering how effective Diddy's anti-air trap game is in advantaged states + it being relatively risky for him to go offstage, a lot of Diddy's advantage states end in the opponent simply going for the ledge. I'd say he covers getup options pretty well though- enough that it grants him a couple opportunities per stock to kill at reasonable percents with bair near the ledge or score a kill confirm with bananas or dtilt. Upb has some tricky uses onstage as well. It's "eeh." He probably kills later than most characters, but also wins neutral so decisively that I don't see it being a huge issue. Pikachu can't say the same about his neutral.

 

[juddy96]

As a side note, I have brackets for all 100+ entrant tournaments in 2016 for data collecting purposes. Because of the frequency of them, I might have missed a few. Feel free to let me know. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jut4pNzh684Q9BewNJK6LVjab8nr0Gni6wY6S-mMWyY/edit?usp=sharing

 

[FallofBrawl]

After the patch, Sheik has a legitimate weakness now.

Her near lack of kill options vs shield.. Fox 2.0

 

[sedrf]

chudat is playing 4?

 

[Jaxas]

After the patch, Sheik has a legitimate weakness now.

Her near lack of kill options vs shield.. Fox 2.0

Yeah, only unlike Fox or Mario she doesn't have their Usmashes as punishes; hopefully she's just Fox/Mario 2.0 now, and not Duck Hunt v2...

 

[NairWizard]

Regarding Diddy, am I the only one who thinks that lacking killing aerials is kind of a big deal, as well as lacking any sort of real kill potential off of grabs? Yeah, he has a banana and dtilt into stuff so he's not as bad as Pikachu when it comes to killing, but I'd say Diddy kinda needs those things as much as I'd say that they make him a solid character.

also what is up with his nair

At the same time, he has an f5 up-smash that scoops you up into the hitbox, making it a good option out of dash, and reaches high enough to be an anti-air. This in combination with his high ground speed and the threat of a banana hitting you when you land makes it difficult to just stay airborne against him to avoid KOs. You also can't really shield against Diddy in the same way that you can against the likes of Fox at high %. If you allow Diddy to throw you off the stage you just give him time to pull a banana peel/set up a banana trap at the edge. And then he's also got good hard-read tools in f-smash and d-smash, which is worth something in conjunction with coveted kill confirms on safe options that you already mentioned.

Seems like he's pretty good on the KO ability to me. A far cry from Pikachu, who would love all of those things (and who incidentally is also much lighter so doesn't get the chance to build as much Rage as Diddy on average).

also his n-air isn't a good escape option since it's frame 8 but falling n-air sets up into other aerials (and d-tilt I think?), and the animation is hilarious

 

[bc1910]

@Nidtendofreak Greninja also got Bair 1 to Fsmash. It doesn't true combo until high percents but it's more reliable than the other confirms.

She's literally an RPG ninja now. High enough avoidance to mitigate damage wholly, but on the off chance someone gets the hit in, oof.

Not to mention she has to avoid damage for a long time considering how bad her kill options are now.

Sheik's not the new duck hunt (she still has some confirms into BF) but I'd say she's below average at killing.

 

[Browny]

Placebos too strong ughhhhhhhhhhhh I heard someone yesterday going on about how buffed greninja is and hes like WOW HIS DASHGRAB IS SO MUCH FASTER and about how dtilt - fair combos better despite none of those things being touched in the patch.

Also the extent of the MK nerf must not be underestimated.

MK used to only need to win neutral twice per stock in order to get a KO. ZSS. Bayonetta and Cloud were the only characters with the claim to that sort of power. Now hes gone from needing 2, to needing like, 5. He literally has to work over twice as hard to get kills as before.

The nerf is a similar extent to if any other characters' damage was almost halved on every single attack, let me explain.

MK mains didnt rely on getting 2 neutral wins to take a stock since often they would take stocks without the uair chain whatsoever so in the course of say, 3 matches it would be fair to say that they got the combo off around 3 times, where they won the set even if they didnt use the ladder combo for 4/7 stocks. In that case, losing the combo means they have to work about 42% more harder in order to get a win.

The more often an MK main relied on that ladder to take the stock, the more times they are going to have to win neutral and this can be in the order of twice as much now which is basically equivalent to having to deal twice as much damage to end the stock, what would happen if your damage was halved as you are now required to win neutral twice as much.

 

[bc1910]

I must say, I'm loving the fact that Greninja Fair > Fair does more damage than a full Sheik Fair chain.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

According to his Facebook istudy is also attending Midwest Mayhem? Not sure if that's actually happening but it would be hype af.

nicko lost, sheik is still to stronk, and shulk is a laggy mofo.
Still it's good to notice how long the shulk lived due to the sheik nerfs and was able to kill her much sooner.
nicko(the shulk player) also beat concon.

Ftr Shulk always did well enough vs Luigi to be at least even.

 

[CaptainVul]

According to his Facebook istudy is also attending Midwest Mayhem? Not sure if that's actually happening but it would be hype af.



Ftr Shulk always did well enough vs Luigi to be at least even.

iStudying is going to be at Midwest Mayhem 2 along with Abadango next month on April 30th

Midwest Mayhem 1 which is this Saturday is featuring Mr R and Hyuga

 

[Trifroze]

I wasn't really downplaying Diddy's capabilities, just saying that he's less of a solid character with a banana than he is a solid character because of the banana (although he's pretty good even without it).

I simply doubt he's going to be the best in the game despite the patch like many are hyping him up to be, since he can't truly threaten the air at kill percents, shielding is relatively good vs him and many top tiers land and get off the ledge quite easily even versus Diddy, and while this is hard to quantify without having decent firsthand experience with a character, several characters have either multiple jumps, command jumps or some sort of teleportation-esque specials, or just the mobility and falling aerials to land and get off the ledge without much trouble.

Also while Diddy's neutral game is amazing and dtilt is safe and leads into things, it's still a 4 frame move compared to 2-3 frame boxing moves of many other top tiers. This should matter because banana throw is no faster than an average standing grab either, so 4 frames is Diddy's CQC speed unless you want to be throwing out his jab.

I don't know if there's any clear archetype that Diddy loses to or beats for that matter, but he has to work pretty hard for kills compared to most top tiers so it should balance him out.

 

[BunbUn129]

Placebos too strong ughhhhhhhhhhhh I heard someone yesterday going on about how buffed greninja is and hes like WOW HIS DASHGRAB IS SO MUCH FASTER and about how dtilt - fair combos better despite none of those things being touched in the patch.

Also the extent of the MK nerf must not be underestimated.

MK used to only need to win neutral twice per stock in order to get a KO. ZSS. Bayonetta and Cloud were the only characters with the claim to that sort of power. Now hes gone from needing 2, to needing like, 5. He literally has to work over twice as hard to get kills as before.

The nerf is a similar extent to if any other characters' damage was almost halved on every single attack, let me explain.

MK mains didnt rely on getting 2 neutral wins to take a stock since often they would take stocks without the uair chain whatsoever so in the course of say, 3 matches it would be fair to say that they got the combo off around 3 times, where they won the set even if they didnt use the ladder combo for 4/7 stocks. In that case, losing the combo means they have to work about 42% more harder in order to get a win.

The more often an MK main relied on that ladder to take the stock, the more times they are going to have to win neutral and this can be in the order of twice as much now which is basically equivalent to having to deal twice as much damage to end the stock, what would happen if your damage was halved as you are now required to win neutral twice as much.

I agree totally. I watched matches with Jband, S2H, and Ito, and let me just tell you, it was painfully unfortunate. In the previous discussions and arguments, we were mainly focused on theorycrafting. Now, after having seen 1.1.5 Meta Knight in action, we have actual evidence as to which viewpoint is correct. I take back all what I said in previous posts.

To put it bluntly: this patch has not "rebalanced" Meta Knight, nor has it "taken away one thing and given him another." This patch has dealt a serious blow to his own game plan, and in turn, his viability.

We all know how pre-patch Meta Knight worked, so I don't need to go over that, I think.

What is the new Meta Knight? Meta Knight has retained his main weaknesses, and has lost his greatest tool. I overstated the fair buff: while it is indeed safe on shield, it still suffers from 8 frames of start-up and only 3 active frames. I equate Meta Knight's new fair to Marth's fair: a poke that can be safe in neutral but must be used with extra caution. Only Marth's fair deals more damage on all hitboxes to give it more advantage on shield, while having the same amount of landing lag and the ability to AC in a short-hop, along with 3 frames less start-up.

I will say this: on paper, Meta Knight's neutral game is better post-patch. In practice, the exact opposite is true, because he no longer has the threat of killing you at 60%. Pre-patch, had to play neutral with extreme care. Now they can run circles more freely because MK's options do not demand as much respect. Overall, MK's neutral game has been hit hard with the loss of his fear-factor.


What seals it for MK is that no only does he still have issue winning in neutral, but he gets far less reward off it. While it might not seem huge, the 1.5 SDI multiplier on his up aerial, when combined with the lower angle, has an unforgiving effect on its utility. The devs (understandably) did their best to ensure people wouldn't die to it anymore, and I fail to see how they could miss a loop-hole in their changes which would make the ladder a force again.

Old Meta Knight's risk-reward was obnoxiously skewed towards reward (the only MU where the opposite was true was ). Rather than rebalancing him, the nerf means his reward does not justify the risk.

Out of all the top-tier characters who received nerfs, technically fared better. TECHNICALLY. The few nerfs Meta Knight got actually carry much heavier weight than what got.

You know what the difference between these three () and is post-patch? 's general game plans and their most essential traits are still present. Sheik still has her neutral and combos; Cloud still has his range, damage output, and LB; Bayo still has her ladders and highly damaging combo set-ups.

Meanwhile, lost his best tool (his early KO potential) and his one compensation is comparatively trivial.

You wanna know why is still great despite heavy nerfs, despite losing the Hoo-hah? Because Diddy's gameplan was never about down throw up air. Diddy's gameplan has always revolved around neutral resets.

In a similar line, 's gameplan revolved around whiff-punishing and killing early--the former still works at low percents, but the latter has been torn out, and he can't dominate in neutral to compensate. A gaping hole has appeared in his gameplan: at mid-percents, he can't force wins in neutral, nor can he punish and rack up damage reliably. Yes, guys, MK is turning out to be a .


Am I saying I want the up air? First, I understand it was bad game design, that much is true. Second, I know it wasn't the only thing that MK had in his kit. Was it overloading his playstyle? Yes, no, maybe, sort of--the answer doesn't matter, because it won't change the fact that he's drastically worse without it.

I do not mean to say nerfing him was a poor decision: what is wrong is that they significantly nerfed him without properly compensating in other areas to make him more balanced.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

I agree totally. I watched matches with Jband, S2H, and Ito, and let me just tell you, it was painfully unfortunate. In the previous discussions and arguments, we were mainly focused on theorycrafting. Now, after having seen 1.1.5 Meta Knight in action, we have actual evidence as to which viewpoint is correct. I take back all what I said in previous posts.

To put it bluntly: this patch has not "rebalanced" Meta Knight, nor has it "taken away one thing and given him another." This patch has dealt a serious blow to his own game plan, and in turn, his viability.

We all know how pre-patch Meta Knight worked, so I don't need to go over that, I think.

What is the new Meta Knight? Meta Knight has retained his main weaknesses, and has lost his greatest tool. I overstated the fair buff: while it is indeed safe on shield, it still suffers from 8 frames of start-up and only 3 active frames. I equate Meta Knight's new fair to Marth's fair: a poke that can be safe in neutral but must be used with extra caution. Only Marth's fair deals more damage on all hitboxes to give it more advantage on shield, while having the same amount of landing lag and the ability to AC in a short-hop, along with 3 frames less start-up.

I will say this: on paper, Meta Knight's neutral game is better post-patch. In practice, the exact opposite is true, because he no longer has the threat of killing you at 60%. Pre-patch, had to play neutral with extreme care. Now they can run circles more freely because MK's options do not demand as much respect. Overall, MK's neutral game has been hit hard with the loss of his fear-factor.


What seals it for MK is that no only does he still have issue winning in neutral, but he gets far less reward off it. While it might not seem huge, the 1.5 SDI multiplier on his up aerial, when combined with the lower angle, has an unforgiving effect on its utility. The devs (understandably) did their best to ensure people wouldn't die to it anymore, and I fail to see how they could miss a loop-hole in their changes which would make the ladder a force again.

Old Meta Knight's risk-reward was obnoxiously skewed towards reward (the only MU where the opposite was true was ). Rather than rebalancing him, the nerf means his reward does not justify the risk.

Out of all the top-tier characters who received nerfs, technically fared better. TECHNICALLY. The few nerfs Meta Knight got actually carry much heavier weight than what got.

You know what the difference between these three () and is post-patch? 's general game plans and their most essential traits are still present. Sheik still has her neutral and combos; Cloud still has his range, damage output, and LB; Bayo still has her ladders and highly damaging combo set-ups.

Meanwhile, lost his best tool (his early KO potential) and his one compensation is comparatively trivial.

You wanna know why is still great despite heavy nerfs, despite losing the Hoo-hah? Because Diddy's gameplan was never about down throw up air. Diddy's gameplan has always revolved around neutral resets.

In a similar line, 's gameplan revolved around whiff-punishing and killing early--the former still works at low percents, but the latter has been torn out, and he can't dominate in neutral to compensate. A gaping hole has appeared in his gameplan: at mid-percents, he can't force wins in neutral, nor can he punish and rack up damage reliably. Yes, guys, MK is turning out to be a .


Am I saying I want the up air? First, I understand it was bad game design, that much is true. Second, I know it wasn't the only thing that MK had in his kit. Was it overloading his playstyle? Yes, no, maybe, sort of--the answer doesn't matter, because it won't change the fact that he's drastically worse without it.

I do not mean to say nerfing him was a poor decision: what is wrong is that they significantly nerfed him without properly compensating in other areas to make him more balanced.

Making a judgement on a character days after Their patch is bad practice. Give it time and they may create something meaningful.

Oh and his neutral got better, Reward has no place in that discussion. Bowser's neutral didn't get magically better because he has Uthrow combos. If ganondorf got a 0-death combo, his neutral wouldn't improve, he would just get more reward off of it.

 

[Shady Shaymin]

Whenever there is ever a nerf, and the question of "did this character get luigi'd or diddy'd" comes up, ask yourself: was the character a diddy, or a luigi?

Metaknight was a luigi. He had average tools that helped set up his above average win condition. His win condition is no longer above average, hell it's hardly there anymore. Now his game plan is about using those same average tools to set up some other inferior win condition.

Brawl misses you all dearly.

 

[sedrf]

never knew people were that upset over the ladder

 

[Nobie]

By dash dancing I mean dance trotting by the way, it's essentially just the Smash 4 version of Melee dash dancing so it's easier to call it dash dancing since Smash 4 dash dancing isn't exactly the most useful thing.
It does get around it because the point of it is that you will not get hit by lemons. You avoid them entirely the best you can until you can get in. Mega Man can only shoot three at a time, once that's done, you rush in. Lemons are pretty not threatening to Falcon. You can actually just stand there and take the three hits, which does 6%, and just Falcon Kick after the third lemon which does 11%. I'm fine with taking 6% to be honest.



I'd say Falcon probably edge guards slightly better than Mega Man, tbh. Bair is pretty good against most characters, and I'd be more inclined to use that over dair against Mega Man just to avoid the potential of spiking him into Rush Coil, but it's probably harder to avoid than Mega Man's and can be set up into on the ledge from falling uair. Not to mention that sometimes the gimp won't even matter, the bair will just straight up kill. And you've pretty much hit the nail on the head on Falcon vs Mega Man dair. If Falcon gets hit by that, frankly, it's his own fault. Just some small things that give a slight edge to Falcon when it comes to edge guarding.

To me it just seems that Falcon's neutral and advantage are better than Mega Man's, thus putting it in his favor. Metal Blades are easy enough to perfect shield or jump around, I'm okay with just running through a few crash bombs here and there to get in, and just stay out of lemon range until you get in and do your stuff.

To me, it seems like "waiting for Mega Man to shoot the 3rd pellet" means that whatever Mega Man you're fighting isn't varying their pellet patterns enough between stationary, moving, and jumping pellets, as well as varying firing rates (you don't HAVE to fire all 3). Same thing goes with just perfect shielding or avoiding Metal Blades, because that was pretty much a Day 1 criticism of Mega Man that turned out not to be true. Metal Blade is a space control tool and just because it's easy to shield or avoid when you know it's coming doesn't mean it's bad. Rather, that would mean it's being used badly.

Aerial mobility is also a huge factor, because while Captain Falcon has the speed advantage on the ground, Mega Man's aerial mobility is superior to Falcon's. While they share a similar top speed, Mega Man's acceleration in the air is best in the game vs. Falcon's middle of the road acceleration, which should give him an advantage whenever they take to the skies.

Also, to those talking about the difference between being a Diddy and being a Luigi, keep in mind that tons of players dropped BOTH characters when they didn't have their overpowered, centralizing tools. I think Diddy's meta might have been pushed further just because ZeRo was at the helm.

 

[Browny]

Making a judgement on a character days after Their patch is bad practice. Give it time and they may create something meaningful.

Oh and his neutral got better, Reward has no place in that discussion. Bowser's neutral didn't get magically better because he has Uthrow combos. If ganondorf got a 0-death combo, his neutral wouldn't improve, he would just get more reward off of it.

If Shoryuken KO'd 40% later would you call that a nerf that one could make a judgement on within days?

Of course you could. MK's nerfs are severe and anyone who thinks getting 3 frames less lag off one of his worst moves makes up for his devastating ladder combo is in ultra denial.

Bunbun is right, prior to the patch when people played against MK they had to play at the ledge until like 50% giving MK tons of free pressure and easy edgeguard opportunities because if they didnt, they died. Now people no longer have to worry about that, they can freely fight MK anywhere they want and not get KO'd from 0% because of it.

MK had without a doubt, the strongest fear factor in the game. His dash attack gave people nightmares and stole their money. Now hes just honest. A good, but honest character that doesnt make people play like idiots against them. And being honest in smash 4 is not how you be a top-level tournament threat.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

If Shoryuken KO'd 40% later would you call that a nerf that one could make a judgement on within days?

Of course you could. MK's nerfs are severe and anyone who thinks getting 3 frames less lag off one of his worst moves makes up for his devastating ladder combo is in ultra denial.

Bunbun is right, prior to the patch when people played against MK they had to play at the ledge until like 50% giving MK tons of free pressure and easy edgeguard opportunities because if they didnt, they died. Now people no longer have to worry about that, they can freely fight MK anywhere they want and not get KO'd from 0% because of it.

MK had without a doubt, the strongest fear factor in the game. His dash attack gave people nightmares and stole their money. Now hes just honest. A good, but honest character that doesnt make people play like idiots against them. And being honest in smash 4 is not how you be a top-level tournament threat.

Except the angle was changed More horizontally. That's more ambiguous than a straight up KB nerf on a one-purpose kill move.

 

[sedrf]

How do you think pikachu will fair in the new meta?
Another question, is why does the smash community puts so much emphasis on results than most other fgc games/tiers?

 

[Luco]

Oh and his neutral got better, Reward has no place in that discussion. Bowser's neutral didn't get magically better because he has Uthrow combos. If ganondorf got a 0-death combo, his neutral wouldn't improve, he would just get more reward off of it.

That's... Incorrect, sorry. Not to be mean, I'm generally interested in your posts, but this is something that should be clarified.

Neutral is all about threat, and how you're conditioned to react against those threats. Fox isn't terrifying in neutral (especially at high percents) because he doesn't have the same threat against shield as someone like Ness, thus should you decide to commit to something in neutral you know shield might be one of those options in order to bait out a Usmash and punish.

I need to be careful about shielding against Luigi in neutral because commiting to that action of shielding has the inherent risk of 30% and being in disadvantage state trying to land near him.

And yes, my neutral has DEFINITELY changed vs competent Bowser mains since his Hoo-hah, because I need to play in a certain way in neutral to avoid dying at 70% when previous I would have been fine with taking the damage and resetting to the ledge ---> finding ways to land from there in a worst case scenario VS the reward of punishing one of Bowser's many other options while approaching.

I might be defining myself incorrectly but what I'm trying to say is threat has everything to do with neutral because neutral includes a whole set of weighing up options and possible scenarios to decide what you will do: "If I do this, they could do that... But are they likely to? And does it mean much for me if they do? So then should I do that option, or should I do this one with its various consequence trees?"

randomguy1235 - That's a little insensitive mate, people pour thousands of hours into their characters and while it might be a good change for those of us who struggled with that design concept previously, it's hard for the mains of those characters to find their hours of hard work bear no fruits, and I'm frankly really impressed by those who are willing to admit their losses.

 

[randomguy1235]

So I am seeing a lot of pretty goofy talk about Meta Knight since the patch hit. I had my initial impressions but I have had a chance to play him and have collected my thoughts after labbing and playtesting.

Meta Knight is objectively worse as a character. Anyone believing otherwise is delusional. I will elaborate as to the exact reasons.

The way that Meta Knight operated pre-patch was to use specific set ups or combos at 0% to damage the opponent into a true kill window so that when a confirm was hit, Meta Knight would instantly kill them. People had some misconceptions about this combo so I will provide some insight.

Using Sheik as an example, she died to dash attack 1 (sweet spot) at exactly 31-32 on a Final Destination ceiling. She died to dash attack 3 (the tail end) at 28. From up tilt 2 (the hilt) it was 33-35. If the Meta Knight ever attempted the combo outside these windows, it would fail, or succeed because the opponent was bad.

As a general rule, this combo never worked in these windows if the initial confirm was DI'd in any way. This is why up tilt 2 as a confirm, or any confirm out of down tilt locks, were not reliable. It also almost never worked on Battlefield ceilings without the assistance of platforms, and Town & City would either extend the window slightly or patch up 'holes' in percentages the combo would fail at.

To give an example of this, Sheik would never die on Battlefield from dash attack 1 if proper DI was used. In contrast, using Rosalina, she would die to dash attack 1 on Final Destination from 8-9, and 11-15, but would only die at 10 if she held away. This is because you could no longer connect 6 up airs, and 5 was not enough to kill if you held away on the 5th up air. Town & City remedied this, making the true window 8-15.

So the goal before would be to use confirms and optimal or sub optimal combos to get these characters into these ranges. The issue is that if the opponent knew the windows, like my local players do, it could be quite difficult to land the kill confirm because the options on what tools you choose become limited to one or two options.

People perceived this combo to be stronger than it was because people looked at threads like this and assumed they were real, or would watch Abadango body people on stream who have clearly never labbed against this combo before. The truth of the matter is that against most characters, the window was often 1%, sometimes 2-3%. i.e. Zero Suit should only ever die to dash attack 1 at 39, Fox at 35, Luigi at 22, Mario at 32-33. Et cetera.

This make successful use of this combo at high level play difficult should the player be informed. For example, if I was ever in a ditto, I knew that if I was hit with a sweet spot dash attack from 30 or less, holding away would allow me to escape. 34 or later, all I needed to do was hold in, and DI the Shuttle Loop and last up air away, and I would survive.

However, even in high level play, this string was vital. Why? Because it meant Meta Knight did not have to rely on his Shuttle Loop as a form of damage and could get consistent damage off in the mid game.

Meta Knight has four main kill confirms at higher percents: dash attack/forward throw, down tilt, Shuttle Loop, and up smash. They kill in that proceeding order.

If I want to kill Sheik, pre-patch, I would play out the neutral and try and get her to about 28-35 and land the appropriate confirm based on which % she was in. Preferably sweet spot dash attack since this was the safest, so 31-32. From there, if the combo failed, I would tack on at least 40%, and she would be at roughly 70%. Sheik dies to dash attack to Shuttle Loop starting at 90%, so basically I would just need to tack on 20% and she was ready to die.

The problem now is you cannot link up airs anymore. People are saying you can, but they're wrong and train against CPU's and toddlers. The only characters you can link consecutive up airs against are characters like Rosalina, Pit, Olimar, Peach, etc. Floaties that do not go into tumble animation when their true window hits. These characters will still die. However, characters like Fox, Mario, Zero Suit, Cloud, Bayonetta (i.e. Most of the best characters) literally hold down or down and away after getting hit with dash attack and you can only confirm one up air. The gifys you're seeing with this down air to down air crap are nonsense.

So why is this important? Basically players now need to use one up air to Shuttle Loop as their primary source of damage. Dash attack, up air, Shuttle Loop does 22%, while previously it did 40%+. That is a huge damage nerf. The biggest issue is that when Sheik finally gets to 90%, and Shuttle Loop is in the stale move que several times, she likely will not die at 90%. The window for this confirm is narrow, about 15% or so, so Meta Knight cannot afford to use it at the wrong time or percent because if he does he is now past that window and has to fish for down tilt set ups which can be teched and raw up smashes.

The combos @Amadeus9 posted are just signs of community optimism, but these were never combos Meta Knight could not do before, and they do not solve the problem that now Meta Knight does not have a reliable means to damage the opponent post 35% without staling Shuttle Loop. He could always manage early % damage fine.

The other problem is that now Shuttle Loop as a kill from up air is very inconsistent. Because of the angle the up air sends opponents at, and the large area the Shuttle Loop sweet spot occupies, it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to land a Shuttle Loop without hitting the sweet spot. This is bad because since the base knock back on the sweet spot is so strong, the opponent simply DI's the Shuttle Loop and they fly away from the 2nd hit. Basically, you are punished for landing your combo. And since Meta Knight goes into special fall, and many of these characters are fast fallers, he is going to eat some damage or die much of the time.

This was quite frankly a very poor change. The characters that got ***** by Meta Knight are still going to get ***** by Meta Knight because they do not go into tumble animation, meanwhile Meta Knight's gameplay has become less rewarding and inconsistent. To top it off, his RCO lag on Shuttle Loop is still not fixed.

The major benefits of this patch are that Sheik is no longer a problem (6-4 pre-patch) and Battlefield is a very good stage now. But this does not mean he came out ahead. Most of the cast are now much better against him, and he has likely acquired new bad match ups. i.e. The reason Ryu was even before was because it was feast or famine. If Ryu did not get you to 76 and kill you with TSRK, he was dying at 35-36. Now, Meta Knight has to get him 102/68 and fear a move that does 18% and is invincible.

Is he bad? Nah. Are people being dumb when talking about him? Yeah, pretty much.

Cry some more bud. Point is that a degenerate strategy/string was removed and can no longer be exploited for free damage and potential kills. Meta Knight still has his incredible frame data, recovery, and combos that will ensure he remains a top threat.

 

[sedrf]

not sure that'a the greatest response.

 

[G. Stache]

In a similar line, 's gameplan revolved around whiff-punishing and killing early--the former still works at low percents, but the latter has been torn out, and he can't dominate in neutral to compensate. A gaping hole has appeared in his gameplan: at mid-percents, he can't force wins in neutral, nor can he punish and rack up damage reliably. Yes, guys, MK is turning out to be a .

Didn't read the entire post, but in my opinion the biggest thing that killed Luigi (and Diddy for a tiny bit) was the fact that a huge amount of players dropped those two characters. If Twitter is anything to go by, at least some of the top MK players are still using him at this point. Playerbase definitely has a big effect on tier position. Depending on which people ditch MK, his fall from grace will range from fairly small (still top 10 or 15) to 'we mid tier now'. It's the playerbase AND the character that determine if the character is relevant. Just bear in mind that Luigi was killed because nobody wanted to put in work with the character, they wanted d throw -> lol at you living past 130%. MK mains already had to put in work to execute the character properly. I'm guessing at least a few top level MK mains want to stick with him after all the work they put into him already.

Branching off from that point, I'm calling it now: if people like Void and Zero keep on keeping on with Sheik, she's still going to be considered a top 5 threat. And the inverse is true with Zard: if nobody picks him up in the near future, he's staying around the bottom 10 ~ 15 area.

 

[BunbUn129]

That's... Incorrect, sorry. Not to be mean, I'm generally interested in your posts, but this is something that should be clarified.

Neutral is all about threat, and how you're conditioned to react against those threats. Fox isn't terrifying in neutral (especially at high percents) because he doesn't have the same threat against shield as someone like Ness, thus should you decide to commit to something in neutral you know shield might be one of those options in order to bait out a Usmash and punish.

I need to be careful about shielding against Luigi in neutral because commiting to that action of shielding has the inherent risk of 30% and being in disadvantage state trying to land near him.

And yes, my neutral has DEFINITELY changed vs competent Bowser mains since his Hoo-hah, because I need to play in a certain way in neutral to avoid dying at 70% when previous I would have been fine with taking the damage and resetting to the ledge ---> finding ways to land from there in a worst case scenario VS the reward of punishing one of Bowser's many other options while approaching.

I might be defining myself incorrectly but what I'm trying to say is threat has everything to do with neutral because neutral includes a whole set of weighing up options and possible scenarios to decide what you will do: "If I do this, they could do that... But are they likely to? And does it mean much for me if they do? So then should I do that option, or should I do this one with its various consequence trees?"

randomguy1235 - That's a little insensitive mate, people pour thousands of hours into their characters and while it might be a good change for those of us who struggled with that design concept previously, it's hard for the mains of those characters to find their hours of hard work bear no fruits, and I'm frankly really impressed by those who are willing to admit their losses.

This. A character's neutral, advantage, and disadvantage states do not operate in seperate vacuums. Captain Falcon is arguably a top-tier if you look at his neutral and/or his advantage, but when you throw his horrible disadvantage into the mix, "nah, bruh, maybe next game."

On paper, 's neutral is pretty average. But when you're sitting at 80% facing the threat of up tilt -> Shoryuken, Ryu often has the luxury of controlling neutral and conditioning you to fight defensively.

One of the biggest aspects of his neutral was that it led into one of the best punishes and a powerful advantage state. People played defensively as a result, which gave him free stage control. People are now going to play more aggressively and less cautiously because they know they can take the hits now.

randomguy1235 , if you played a character for a year and labbed them hard and took them to tournaments, and then got nerfed, you would have the same response. Writing a short post and telling them to git gud and basically say "too bad" is not the way to go, I'm sorry to say.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

How do you think pikachu will fair in the new meta?

Poorly, if ESAM continues to place outside of top 8 at major tournaments. Apart from that the character may as well not exist at all tbh and his matchups are increasingly turning out to not be as good as they once have been thought of.

Another question, is why does the smash community puts so much emphasis on results than most other fgc games/tiers?

Because what determines how matchups go is a bit of a complex affair in smash. Results of top level play are a good indicator of how specific matchups turn out and give us a way to verify / falsify things the community comes up through theorycrafting via empirical evidence.

 

[Solfiner]

Glad to see more Shulk rep. Sheik nerfs definitely help him. (It helps everyone to be real.)

 

[randomguy1235]

One of the biggest aspects of his neutral was that it led into one of the best punishes and a powerful advantage state. People played defensively as a result, which gave him free stage control. People are now going to play more aggressively and less cautiously because they know they can take the hits now.

randomguy1235 , If you played a character for a year and labbed them hard and took them to tournaments, and then got nerfed, you would have the same response. Writing a short post and telling them to git gud and basically say "too bad" is not the way to go, I'm sorry to say.

It's more to do with smashers being complacent with the status quo (even if a character has blatantly overpowered options such as MK, Shiek, ZSS, Bayo, etc) than me unfairly dismissing his argument. The game has become infinitely better due to the top tiers actually being addressed after Sakurai took a vacation. Seriously, we finally have competent decisions being implemented.

 

[TTTTTsd]

I feel like I've kind of glossed over just how much Ganon's Jab actually improved.

I mean, it's Frame 7/8 now (which is on par with Bowser's jab) but the real kicker on Ganon's jab is not only that it comes out faster but also that the recovery time is WAY WAY better. He lost SIX FRAMES of endlag on his jab, it feels AMAZING to use now and since it reaches further than Ftilt he now has a relatively non-commital (relatively, in comparison to the rest of his kit) way to directly threaten space with a button. I actually think this is massive.

Also massive is the Wizkick damage increase which lets him beat projectiles like Greninja fully charged Shuriken (!!!!), Charizard flame Breath, and more! Shoutouts to Dash Attack sourspot having more kill confirms now too.

I think the character, while still not viable (the nature of Ganon, after all) has improved significantly and probably deserves more looking into as a result.

 

[Nobie]

I think the best example of a character's threat factor affecting all stages of a game is Bayonetta's Witch Time. Think about all of the times that players have just been too afraid to go in because they'd eat a Witch Time. The result is that Bayo gets away with way more than she should.

As stated previously, Ryu's neutral is really good but it's not just because of Shoryuken. It's that people still haven't properly mastered Ryu-style neutral.

I was thinking about Abadango's rollercoaster of characters, and what this says about the characters individual players gravitate towards. Abadango is clearly a "combo optimizer" type, someone who WANTS to find the strongest, most damaging strings and combos and death ladders as possible. He used Pac-Man because Pac-Man had the potential to do some ridiculous things. Same thing went for Meta Knight. He's now considering Mewtwo because Mewtwo damage is scary.

Him dropping characters seems to be not just them being weaker due to nerfs, bu them turning out not to give him what he wants in a character.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

That's... Incorrect, sorry. Not to be mean, I'm generally interested in your posts, but this is something that should be clarified.

Neutral is all about threat, and how you're conditioned to react against those threats. Fox isn't terrifying in neutral (especially at high percents) because he doesn't have the same threat against shield as someone like Ness, thus should you decide to commit to something in neutral you know shield might be one of those options in order to bait out a Usmash and punish.

I need to be careful about shielding against Luigi in neutral because commiting to that action of shielding has the inherent risk of 30% and being in disadvantage state trying to land near him.

And yes, my neutral has DEFINITELY changed vs competent Bowser mains since his Hoo-hah, because I need to play in a certain way in neutral to avoid dying at 70% when previous I would have been fine with taking the damage and resetting to the ledge ---> finding ways to land from there in a worst case scenario VS the reward of punishing one of Bowser's many other options while approaching.

I might be defining myself incorrectly but what I'm trying to say is threat has everything to do with neutral because neutral includes a whole set of weighing up options and possible scenarios to decide what you will do: "If I do this, they could do that... But are they likely to? And does it mean much for me if they do? So then should I do that option, or should I do this one with its various consequence trees?"

randomguy1235 - That's a little insensitive mate, people pour thousands of hours into their characters and while it might be a good change for those of us who struggled with that design concept previously, it's hard for the mains of those characters to find their hours of hard work bear no fruits, and I'm frankly really impressed by those who are willing to admit their losses.

Marth, DHD, And Kirby says hi. Marth and DHD doesn't give a lot of reward yet their neutral is very good. That's because they can control space and manipulate it Better than say, Kirby who controls very little space.

 

[BunbUn129]

I think the best example of a character's threat factor affecting all stages of a game is Bayonetta's Witch Time. Think about all of the times that players have just been too afraid to go in because they'd eat a Witch Time. The result is that Bayo gets away with way more than she should.

As stated previously, Ryu's neutral is really good but it's not just because of Shoryuken. It's that people still haven't properly mastered Ryu-style neutral.

I was thinking about Abadango's rollercoaster of characters, and what this says about the characters individual players gravitate towards. Abadango is clearly a "combo optimizer" type, someone who WANTS to find the strongest, most damaging strings and combos and death ladders as possible. He used Pac-Man because Pac-Man had the potential to do some ridiculous things. Same thing went for Meta Knight. He's now considering Mewtwo because Mewtwo damage is scary.

Him dropping characters seems to be not just them being weaker due to nerfs, bu them turning out not to give him what he wants in a character.

On that, Abadango actually admitted he picked up MK only for up air combos. T_T

So it was true.

 

[bc1910]

Meta Knight was somewhere in between Luigi and Diddy. Compared to Luigi's case of being "Fireballs + Dthrow: The Character", MK has some stronger options. Dash attack is still dumb good, he's a fast character with a good grab/throw game, he has decent range with good disjoints etc. On the other hand he doesn't have the stellar neutral of Diddy, nor the versatility.

He'll end up somewhere between them on the tier list IMO, i.e. 11-15th.

 

[NairWizard]

While I'm on the subject of Diddy, it's worth mentioning that Diddy wasn't this good immediately after his nerfs; there were buffs to his kit, as far as I recall, most notably to up- and d-smash. The shield stun changes were also of incredible significance to his gameplan.

I wasn't really downplaying Diddy's capabilities, just saying that he's less of a solid character with a banana than he is a solid character because of the banana (although he's pretty good even without it).

I simply doubt he's going to be the best in the game despite the patch like many are hyping him up to be, since he can't truly threaten the air at kill percents, shielding is relatively good vs him and many top tiers land and get off the ledge quite easily even versus Diddy, and while this is hard to quantify without having decent firsthand experience with a character, several characters have either multiple jumps, command jumps or some sort of teleportation-esque specials, or just the mobility and falling aerials to land and get off the ledge without much trouble.

Also while Diddy's neutral game is amazing and dtilt is safe and leads into things, it's still a 4 frame move compared to 2-3 frame boxing moves of many other top tiers. This should matter because banana throw is no faster than an average standing grab either, so 4 frames is Diddy's CQC speed unless you want to be throwing out his jab.

I don't know if there's any clear archetype that Diddy loses to or beats for that matter, but he has to work pretty hard for kills compared to most top tiers so it should balance him out.

I'm saying that Diddy doesn't work any harder for kills than most top tiers. From a ZSS perspective this may have been the case; ZSS' forte as a character (or at least one of them) has always been taking stocks early and reliably with a variety of setups (and just plain threat presence at the blastzone because of her mobility). I'd also drop Cloud in that bucket, as opening someone up to a Limit Cloud kill is relatively easy.

But for other Top Tiers it's difficult. Even other touch of death characters like MK and Ryu who have the scary KO power (or had, in MK's case) don't necessarily have the strong neutral games to back it up. MK is good at midrange and Ryu is good at footsies, but MK's neutral is pretty linear and Ryu lacks the mobility to force close-quarters encounters. Opening someone up to get hit by their death combos is challenging, at least compared to Diddy's safe option of roll -> space d-tilt, or the ever-so-frightening "move around with a banana in hand ready to punish any commitment to motion."

Once you go beyond the touch of death characters you have the likes of Mario, Sonic, and Fox, who have a difficult time getting a stock without a read or a mixup, something which Diddy doesn't need to rely on. Even prepatch Sheik was in a dire spot if she missed her 50:50s several times in a row, which is why we often saw ZeRo switch to Diddy against Lucario, to ensure that the character died before he got to use full Rage. At Pax ZeRo dropped a game to a Lucario with Sheik and then switched to Diddy to sweep the set.

KOing doesn't seem to be Diddy's weakness; he has the consistency in neutral, the safe confirms, and the read tools to get KOs reliably at about the same percent every stock.

His actual selling point rather than banana is in my opinion his weaving. Diddy's foxtrot, roll, empty hop, etc. are just so good at putting Diddy where he needs to be (whether that's in or out) without over-commitment. In this sense he's much like Rosalina, and just like Rosalina, who has Luma to make use of this non-committal movement by punishing the opponent's movement in return, Diddy has a variety of options at different ranges to take advantage of his movement: after a roll he is often in the right position to use a safe d-tilt in shield; empty hop leaves him with the ability to Monkey Flip, b-air, or f-air on reaction; an f4 jumpsquat, good throw game, and a banana make his foxtrot terrifying; and so on. It's true that his CQC isn't so great, but Diddy is great at avoiding situations where that matters because he's usually dominating the spacing game.

But, having said all of that, I agree with your argument that he isn't clearly the best. I would be quite hesitant to assign Diddy a #1 spot, simply because he is far less dominant as a top tier than any of the other top tiers. Diddy's niche in this game seems to be to do well against the best characters in the game because of his outstanding neutral game, but he's not an oppressive force for most high and mid tiers. In fact the likes of Pacman and Megaman and even DK seem to do quite well against him.

His true weakness seems to be just the lack of an oppressive advantage state. I agree with you on that point--he's not really scary once he gets you into the air, at least at most percents. We've come a long way from the HooHah.