Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Browny]

How much you wanna bet on that.

1.5 years Mewtwo will be considered high tier, unless more patches buff everyone around him significantly. It has literally taken almost a year for a significant amount of people to have actually played as Mewtwo just once, many dismissed him immediately.

Mewtwo will be high tier not because of main bias (I don't care about tiers when playing smash, only who can swag the most) but because he has such a high potential for his gameplay to be optimised. He has way too many mixups, kill options and pure safety to remain low, all things which can be optimised by players.

This is in contrast to a character like Ike who is pretty much pure fundamentals, he doesnt have enough options at any given time to choose the correct one and mess up the opponents predictions.

 

[Arcadenik]

The Duck Hunt buff leads me to believe they have no idea how to really fix his smashes. Or they are meant to be inaccurate by design.

Then again Dandy took top 8 so i should shut up.

I have always wondered if DHD's smashes are an intentionally accurate parody of how bad Zapper players were back in the NES days. We made DHD famous because we were poor shooters. Side Special even takes three shots to shoot a clay pigeon.

 

[bc1910]

I wonder how Pac will fare in the meta now that kill confirms aren't the norm anymore.

Kill confirms are still the norm for most of the top tiers. It's just that Sheik lost hers, and Cloud doesn't really have any (and doesn't need them since LCS is the best raw KO move in the game). ZSS still has a lot of confirms, she just lost her high percent grab confirms and her remaining confirms work at later percents. Diddy is very KC-centric, as is Bayo much of the time. Ness still slaughters you with Back Throw and Fox has plenty of kill confirms.

There are a few higher tiers who don't rely so much on KCs (Rosalina, Mario) but Pac's raw kill options aren't anywhere near as good as theirs.

His killing ability will still hold him back. But it'd be great to see Pacs start exploring him again because I honestly don't know whether we've seen most of what he can do, or have just scratched the surface.

 

[meleebrawler]

I'd like to briefly backpedal into the subject of bottom 5 contenders because there's one character that should be mentioned but hasn't been: Bowser Jr.

Seems fairly obvious to me that he's bottom 10, especially after this patch. Would not be surprised it he was actually bottom 5 now though. His neutral game is absolutely awful. Almost all of his basic grounded options are either underwhelming [projectiles, tilts, dsmash, usmash] or just straight-up dysfunctional [jab, grab, fsmash], the only consistently useful option he has in neutral is dtilt. That might just add up to be one of the worst neutral games of the whole cast now that Ganondorf, Samus and Zelda had their neutral options buffed. But Bjr also has a terrible disadvantaged state as well. He's a big target with no combo-breaking move and upB gets him out of sticky situations only temporarly as the commitment is way too high to keep him risk-free. His damage output isn't good and he has nothing to set up KOs with. The only good option he has is uair which requires the opponent to be put in very specific spots [something that Bjr is naturally not good at].

One only needs to look at how badly Tweek lost to Komorikiri's Sonic at G3 to understand how much he was held back by the character. As soon as he got his hands on somebody competent he'd take on the likes of Ranai and dabuz [#3 and #3 at G3 respectively!]. If you wanna argue Palutena, Roy or Falco to be bottom 5 then there's no way you shouldn't at least mention Bowser Jr as well. Character's terrible.

So we're just going to ignore his meaty fair and speedy ftilt in neutral then? And how is fsmash dysfunctional now, especially with it's lessened endlag making it relatively safe to throw out? Not to mention any projectile that can be picked up, and subsequently quickly tossed or z-dropped can't be that bad.

 

[WeirdChillFever]

RE: Bowser Jr:
The whole post ignores Bowser Jr's aerial game, which gives him disjoints, mulihit moves, combos and kills.
Yes, his ground game is meh (and that's not counting Side B, y'know, his bread and butter move) but his aerials keep him out of bottom tier.
Also, counting Smashes as tools in neutral is pretty funny, it's like saying Sheik has bad neutral because her FSmash sucks.

RE: Pac-Man
He has potential to develop, question is if it will be used before 20FF/20599

 

[Ninety]

Mewtwo was a glass peashooter who got turned into a plexiglass cannon.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Someone is gotta be Bottom 5 indeed, and really does fit the fill. He's got a slow and predictable projectile, he's combo food, no moves really link into each other, he cannot be on the defensive at all whilst his offense is lackluster, he's real laggy and not all too mobile outside of Side B and he pretty much has bad matchups all over the cast.

As for absolute worst character, I say is gotta be it now. was pretty horrible before, but with her new D Throw U Air Hoo-Hah she ****s all over Jigglypuff's existance, making the matchup in her favor. She probably has the worst Match Up spread of the cast, as she likely loses to indiviuals as for example. Does she actually go even with anyone?

If I got to vote for a Bottom 5, I'd say it's .

 

[Nidtendofreak]

How much you wanna bet on that.

1.5 years Mewtwo will be considered high tier, unless more patches buff everyone around him significantly. It has literally taken almost a year for a significant amount of people to have actually played as Mewtwo just once, many dismissed him immediately.

Mewtwo will be high tier not because of main bias (I don't care about tiers when playing smash, only who can swag the most) but because he has such a high potential for his gameplay to be optimised. He has way too many mixups, kill options and pure safety to remain low, all things which can be optimised by players.

This is in contrast to a character like Ike who is pretty much pure fundamentals, he doesnt have enough options at any given time to choose the correct one and mess up the opponents predictions.

You want options/mixups along with safety?

Greninja has plenty. He ain't high tier. Peach oozes both options and potential with all of the float stuff she can do. She ain't high tier. Toon Link has buckets of options and ways to layer his tools. He ain't high tier.

On the flip side, Ness has a pretty darn straight forwards plan. He's high tier.

Its not that straight forwards and you're overestimating your character. He's not high tier.

 

[Conda]

How much you wanna bet on that.

1.5 years Mewtwo will be considered high tier, unless more patches buff everyone around him significantly. It has literally taken almost a year for a significant amount of people to have actually played as Mewtwo just once, many dismissed him immediately.

Mewtwo will be high tier not because of main bias (I don't care about tiers when playing smash, only who can swag the most) but because he has such a high potential for his gameplay to be optimised. He has way too many mixups, kill options and pure safety to remain low, all things which can be optimised by players.

This is in contrast to a character like Ike who is pretty much pure fundamentals, he doesnt have enough options at any given time to choose the correct one and mess up the opponents predictions.

Yeah, this is what Zero said recently.

 

[C0rvus]

Bowser Jr's projectile isn't a part of the neutral. You cannot list it against him when he should never be using it except in edgeguarding situations. Unless we're talking about Mechakoopa, which is a super interesting tool. If the launch didn't have so much cool down it would be very strong, but as is it's a key piece of his neutral game. It's a conditioning tool, it can create safety and is also just a projectile when needed. Not a bad move.
His moves may not link into each other THAT well, but he has a very strong juggling ability, and side-b can do quite a bit- catch landings, bait reactions, and on hit it combos into up air chains or the kill.
Not saying he's a good character, but plenty of people here judge him incorrectly. Unless he gets some meaningful buffs, he's pretty solidly low tier, but not bottom 5.

Also can't Zelda's hoo-hah be airdodged?

------
Nidtendofreak but Greninja probably is high tier now. The 4BR list is 2 patches out of date. It means very little.

And if I hear the words "Peach" and "potential" in the same sentence one more time, I'm out. She's had time, and the only potential she had was just patched out. Being high tier has little to do with potential. Peach isn't there because she isn't that good.

Mewtwo could be high tier, and it's because he's very good at footsies and has consistent kill power, all while having a surprisingly good disadvantage. He's pretty straightforward.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Yeah, this is what Zero said recently.

Zero also thinks Shulk is one of the best mid tiers when currently Shulk is looking like possibly a bottom 15 character if both Marth and Lucina move up over him due to their buffs. (Lucina probably won't because people don't tie her to Marth like they should, leaving Shulk at 16th from the bottom)

 

[bc1910]

You want options/mixups along with safety?

Greninja has plenty. He ain't high tier. Peach oozes both options and potential with all of the float stuff she can do. She ain't high tier. Toon Link has buckets of options and ways to layer his tools. He ain't high tier.

On the flip side, Ness has a pretty darn straight forwards plan. He's high tier.

Its not that straight forwards and you're overestimating your character. He's not high tier.

Greninja and Toon Link are both high tier. Ness is like, top of high/bottom of top tier.

Where is your high tier cutoff?

I think the BR's high tier is way too restrictive. Previous games have had about 1/3rd of the roster as high tier, I'm not entirely sure why the BR's list has only 3 top tiers and 10 high tiers when we could have a perfectly balanced tier list (as in, neither top nor bottom heavy) with ~20 high tiers. Not to mention a greater proportion of the roster than usual is viable in this game.

 

[Deleted member]

Someone is gotta be Bottom 5 indeed, and really does fit the fill. He's got a slow and predictable projectile, he's combo food, no moves really link into each other, he cannot be on the defensive at all whilst his offense is lackluster, he's real laggy and not all too mobile outside of Side B and he pretty much has bad matchups all over the cast.

As for absolute worst character, I say is gotta be it now. was pretty horrible before, but with her new D Throw U Air Hoo-Hah she ****s all over Jigglypuff's existance, making the matchup in her favor. She probably has the worst Match Up spread of the cast, as she likely loses to indiviuals as for example. Does she actually go even with anyone?

If I got to vote for a Bottom 5, I'd say it's .

Zelda's hoo-hah existed before, and she still has to read your DI to get it. It's a nice thing to have but she's still a character with rather gaping flaws such as having an awful neutral along with having a lack of landing options and poor frame data. Her risk/reward ratio is ridiculously skewed because her sourspots are so unrewarding and punishable on hit compared to her sweetspots, which have miniscule hitboxes outside dair. Even Din's has a sourspot for no good reason.

(1111 of course) are my bottom five.

 

[Das Koopa]

Bowser Jr. is extremely tricky in his movement. I know Tweek dropped him, but go watch a few matches of his and note his pretty decent results - Jr.'s not the kind of character that's bad enough to go bottom 5. Falco is worse, Roy is worse.

I'm not sure what projectile you're referencing, btw. Clown Cannon is almost never used, but Mechakoopa is pretty decent for field control.

 

[Luig]

Zelda's hoo-hah existed before, and she still has to read your DI to get it. It's a nice thing to have but she's still a character with rather gaping flaws such as having an awful neutral along with having a lack of landing options and poor frame data. Her risk/reward ratio is ridiculously skewed because her sourspots are so unrewarding and punishable on hit compared to her sweetspots, which have miniscule hitboxes outside dair. Even Din's has a sourspot for no good reason.

(1111 of course) are my bottom five.

The dev team just loves doing that for some reason.

Oh, you're low tier? Let's just give you a better hoo hah! That'll work.

They should be focusing on fixing some of the core flaws instead of just a band aid fix. I know they can do this because they've done it in earlier patches.

 

[Das Koopa]

I don't agree with the notion that Brawler is bottom 5 or worse when three changes of custom moves suddenly allow him to compete at higher levels in custom tournies. He'd need to have at least passable moveset tools that specials (his shoryuken, helicopter kick, etc) build on. Maybe an explanation on this?

 

[Deleted member]

I don't agree with the notion that Brawler is bottom 5 or worse when three changes of custom moves suddenly allow him to compete at higher levels in custom tournies. He'd need to have at least passable moveset tools that specials (his shoryuken, helicopter kick, etc) build on. Maybe an explanation on this?

I said in my post that it was 1111 Brawler. Guest size if you wanted specifics on that.

 

[Fex13]

How much you wanna bet on that.

1.5 years Mewtwo will be considered high tier, unless more patches buff everyone around him significantly. It has literally taken almost a year for a significant amount of people to have actually played as Mewtwo just once, many dismissed him immediately.

Mewtwo will be high tier not because of main bias (I don't care about tiers when playing smash, only who can swag the most) but because he has such a high potential for his gameplay to be optimised. He has way too many mixups, kill options and pure safety to remain low, all things which can be optimised by players.

This is in contrast to a character like Ike who is pretty much pure fundamentals, he doesnt have enough options at any given time to choose the correct one and mess up the opponents predictions.

EEEEEEExactly. ike is heavily overrated and i dont even know why. mewtwo is a much better character. ike is sooo damn straightforward, that if you just play patient and wait, ike doesnt have a chance to get in. his fair is nice and all, but he lacks mix ups so much. you can figure out ike extemely fast.

 

[C0rvus]

If being high tier was about mix ups, then would be God Tier. But alas.
Being good in this game has more to do with the strength of a character's gameplay states. Neutral is arguably most important, but the best of the best tend to have very strong sets in general.

 

[Luco]

Kind of funny that as soon as I say 'there's not a lot of people claiming Mewtwo isn't high tier', suddenly we have an argument about whether he's high tier. Commentator's Poster's curse I s'pose.

"Potential" is quite the buzzword. . and got that word attributed to them mostly for their technicality (which was supposed to be game changing, but alas), but in 's case I don't really see him being technical, I see Mewtwo's 'goodness' in his threat and neutral play. He's a character that can keep you out and then make you scared to get in. His Dtilt is honestly one of the best moves in the game IMO, stuffs so many approaches with how fast it is and leads into Fair and other things.

He also seems to have some really good MUs among the higher tiers.

The only thing lacking for Mewtwo right now is results, which is admittedly a large hole but it's being patched slowly by the up and coming success of Mewsquared, Blue and the like. Don't really see him any lower than the likes of DK.

 

[TDK]

ZeRo has a lot of strange opinions.

The reason isn't tied to is because they have to play completely differently. Marth can afford to play patiently because of his range and higher reward on hit with tippers. Lucina has to rush in to be effective.

 

[MachoCheeze]

If being high tier was about mix ups, then would be God Tier. But alas.
Being good in this game has more to do with the strength of a character's gameplay states. Neutral is arguably most important, but the best of the best tend to have very strong sets in general.

Pac's large amount of mix ups are great until your opponent realizes there's counterplay to literally everything special he's got, lived to 200%+, and lands a good hit on Pac when he's at 80% and he dies.

Pac's main strength in a MU is the opponent not knowing how to fight him. Even all these fancy z drop key shenanigans have easy counterplay to them

 

[C0rvus]

Don't I know it. Feels bad, man.
Pac might be the hardest character to start playing now. Everyone else seems to know how to snuff out my stuff before I can fully comprehend his tools for myself.

 

[Rizen]

If I had to choose candidates for low tier they would be (not ordered):
(all 1111, standard size).
Feel free to comment and correct me because I easily could not be aware of changes/results.

I'm curious what people think about now? IMO he seems underwhelming and not that much better than low tiers. What results does he have?

 

[MachoCheeze]

Don't I know it. Feels bad, man.
Pac might be the hardest character to start playing now. Everyone else seems to know how to snuff out my stuff before I can fully comprehend his tools for myself.

That's why I dropped him homie. I tired so hard to make him work. He's one of my favorite videos game characters of all time and I loved the ideas behind his playstyle.

Luckily my man Mewtwo on the come up.

 

[L9999]

ZeRo has a lot of strange opinions.

The reason isn't tied to is because they have to play completely differently. Marth can afford to play patiently because of his range and higher reward on hit with tippers. Lucina has to rush in to be effective.

With those sluggish moves Lucina cannot rush in. Lucina plays the Marth game of careful spacing, and it matters because Lucina's range is slightly smaller and she is sluggish. The only difference is that Lucina can afford throwing out Smashes and expect them to kill at any range.

 

[Amadeus9]

if anyone is interested, here is the new mk mu spread according to the mk discord/skype group

Spoiler: mu spread

I can elaborate on anything if anyone wants but i feel most of it is pretty self explanatory.

With those sluggish moves Lucina cannot rush in. Lucina plays the Marth game of careful spacing, and it matters because Lucina's range is slightly smaller and she is sluggish. The only difference is that Lucina can afford throwing out Smashes and expect them to kill at any range.

Lucina is not sluggish at all, I dont know what you are talking about. She can freely push buttons in neutral at almost all times. If you are spacing unsafe enough to get punished that is your fault as a player.

 

[FullMoon]

-2 against Greninja? What

 

[MachoCheeze]

if anyone is interested, here is the new mk mu spread according to the mk discord/skype group

Spoiler: mu spread

I can elaborate on anything if anyone wants but i feel most of it is pretty self explanatory.



Lucina is not sluggish at all, I dont know what you are talking about. She can freely push buttons in neutral at almost all times. If you are spacing unsafe enough to get punished that is your fault as a player.

I'm curious about Mewtwo tbh if you don't mind explaining.

 

[TDK]

With those sluggish moves Lucina cannot rush in. Lucina plays the Marth game of careful spacing, and it matters because Lucina's range is slightly smaller and she is sluggish. The only difference is that Lucina can afford throwing out Smashes and expect them to kill at any range.

In what MU does throwing out random smashes warrant a use of Lucina over Marth?

Not antagonistic, just curious.

 

[adom4]

if anyone is interested, here is the new mk mu spread according to the mk discord/skype group

Spoiler: mu spread

I can elaborate on anything if anyone wants but i feel most of it is pretty self explanatory.



Lucina is not sluggish at all, I dont know what you are talking about. She can freely push buttons in neutral at almost all times. If you are spacing unsafe enough to get punished that is your fault as a player.

Can you please elaborate more on the Ganon MU?
I always felt like it was in kind of a limbo between -1 & -2 but idk if i played good enough MKs to be entirely sure, also i'm talking more about 1.1.4 since idk how Ganon's buffs will affect the MU.
Also curious about the Mewtwo MU.

 

[Cereal Bawks]

EEEEEEExactly. ike is heavily overrated and i dont even know why.

Probably because he has good results.

 

[Amadeus9]

-2 against Greninja? What

Yeah, we lose out on our tasty combos which very much did work on Greninja before hand, even with sshc. So now we just lose to greninja playing his neutral game. Shuriken was a big issue prepatch, and it still is, plus now greninja has more damaging and more consistent combos. If you think it is still even I am all ears, however I will say that this opinion is not all based on theory. We have some very good greninja players I have been labbing with and I just dont see the mu being even anymore.

 

[busken]

Amadeus9

Totally disagree with -1 on Ike. He doesn't lose to Ike.

 

[wedl!!]

Ike beats MK? Interesting.

Also, how is Peach/MK even now? Kinda curious about that because that matchup was really, really bad before.

 

[Amadeus9]

Can you please elaborate more on the Ganon MU?
I always felt like it was in kind of a limbo between -1 & -2 but idk if i played good enough MKs to be entirely sure, also i'm talking more about 1.1.4 since idk how Ganon's buffs will affect the MU.
Also curious about the Mewtwo MU.

MK has no answers to Mewtwo charging shadow ball at ledge, plain and simple. He didnt prepatch either but now we have way less reward on confirm (mewtwo doesnt die everytime hes touched)

Ganon lost hard before because he died to uair combos. Now we feed him rage and die to random smashes early. Still positive but u have to play careful

 

[ARISTOS]

if anyone is interested, here is the new mk mu spread according to the mk discord/skype group

Spoiler: mu spread

I can elaborate on anything if anyone wants but i feel most of it is pretty self explanatory.



Lucina is not sluggish at all, I dont know what you are talking about. She can freely push buttons in neutral at almost all times. If you are spacing unsafe enough to get punished that is your fault as a player.

is even? What makes you believe that now? I thought the up air chains still worked on floaties

 

[bc1910]

Yeah, we lose out on our tasty combos which very much did work on Greninja before hand, even with sshc. So now we just lose to greninja playing his neutral game. Shuriken was a big issue prepatch, and it still is, plus now greninja has more damaging and more consistent combos. If you think it is still even I am all ears, however I will say that this opinion is not all based on theory. We have some very good greninja players I have been labbing with and I just dont see the mu being even anymore.

I can see why it would be -1 but -2 seems like a stretch.

Greninja's new combos are very unsafe to start, except Bair Fsmash which barely works on MK because he's so short. MK can get hefty punishes off Greninja trying to start a combo with Fair.

Greninja's only +2s IMO are against a few low tiers (Ganon, D3, Puff, probably Zelda) who can't handle his tools.

 

[C0rvus]

if anyone is interested, here is the new mk mu spread according to the mk discord/skype group

Spoiler: mu spread

I can elaborate on anything if anyone wants but i feel most of it is pretty self explanatory.

I see this a lot, but why do you have a +2 against DK but go even with Bowser? How is that possible when DK is seen as a better character than Bowser. I think Dabuz's Rosalina chart had a similar trend.

 

[FullMoon]

Yeah, we lose out on our tasty combos which very much did work on Greninja before hand, even with sshc. So now we just lose to greninja playing his neutral game. Shuriken was a big issue prepatch, and it still is, plus now greninja has more damaging and more consistent combos. If you think it is still even I am all ears, however I will say that this opinion is not all based on theory. We have some very good greninja players I have been labbing with and I just dont see the mu being even anymore.

I have very little MK experience so I can't say for myself, but I didn't think the nerf would affect the MU too much. Doesn't MK still have plenty of combos on us?