Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Yikarur]

Those characters don't threaten 50% combos from half a stage away with just one option that's safe on shield. They have to commit a lot harder and mix up their options more to get a similar reward to what Bayo can get with just one safe button.

She's not the only character with a one-button disadvantage state. But unlike those characters, that tool is also the vast majority of her neutral and advantage too.

She just doesn't just have the best risk-reward in the game. It's also that her meta is 2-3 buttons, which almost no need for mixing up which options you use.

Her kit is conducive to not needing to be the better player to win. You don't really need fundamentals. I've already seen matches where the Bayo has taken 80% without barely laying a finger on the opponent then gets one ladder and takes the stock.

Did you even try to read the last pages?

 

[Fatmanonice]

Idk about Marth but Sheik absolutely did not hold DHD back. Before Mr. R I'd never lost to one she was actually his best top tier MU before cloud imo.

Cloud, eh? Given that you're the competitive patron saint of DHD, mind elaborating on this? I'm curious what your reasoning is.

 

[DunnoBro]

Cloud, eh? Given that you're the competitive patron saint of DHD, mind elaborating on this? I'm curious what your reasoning is.

server backup ate my reply

Essentially DHD's stage control + natural damage dealing combos putting people offstage and trick shot being a free challenge to Cloud's ridiculous landing aerials which usually mask his poor recovery.

Also, all DHD's projectiles make limit blade beam/cross slash not work properly, they either absorb em or throw DHD out of them when he's near. So DHD makes it hard for cloud to get limit and doesn't really care when he does except for ledge stuff.

Even if cloud still wins by virtue of just being a better character, on a core level duck hunt still negates a lot of cloud's strengths.

Edit: Also @Shady Penguin has better results and loyalty to the character competitively, I just get more exposure cause xanadu's my local. I don't even really practice DHD anymore.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

This community's obsession with Bayonetta is unhealthy.

> Xzax, Larry and Megafox all took 1st place at their respective tournaments with Fox this week
> Mr E wins a tournament with freaking Marth
> Still no major tournament wins for a solo-Bayonetta except like 9B and Komorikiri
> JJRockets and my BSD-homies publish thorough labwork that literally spoonfeeds you counterstrats via flowcharts and stuff
> Results nowhere near comparable to pre-patch Sheik
> People still complain about her

 

[DunnoBro]

> Results nowhere near comparable to pre-patch Sheik

That's not even close to true lol Especially considering the short time frame she's been out.

People are complaining too much, sure. But people trying to downplay how much there is to complain about isn't helping either.

 

[Nobie]

It is really easy to punish. It lasts 49 frames and you can grab their landing lag whether they witch time or not, so it's not actually a mixup that benefits her unless the opponent has no matchup experience.
It's supposed to be the best counter because it decays upon use, and its reward is heavily dependent on positioning.

This is literally how the move already works.

The only reason I mentioned the end lag increase really was because I've seen players just stand there as the opponent landed with Witch Time so I figured they weren't able to react to it (out of fear and hesitation most likely), but if what you say is true then it's only a matter of time.

 

[Peppermint1201]

> Results nowhere near comparable to pre-patch Sheik
> People still complain about her

 

[BunbUn129]

You also have to be in the crouching animation in smash 4 (I believe).

This is less useful than melee, where you could CC while you were doing anything. You could tell if someone was aware of AT's based on how your combo game at low % went against them, and against less aware players the lack of CC should have been enough to body them.


In smash 4, the coolest usefulness for CC I've heard was messing up MK's specific death conversions.

No, this won't work on Bayonetta.

Meta Knight's death combo was perhaps the only instance, and still is to a degree, where crouch-cancelling had any major use in this game. People might not believe this, but cc'ing would often send opponents too low for MK to connect his uair, so it was sort of a life-saver in that MU.

And ghostbone, why are you so adamant on defending Bayonetta's poor design? No one can deny that her risk/reward is so heavily pronounced to the point that it is poor design. I think you're getting the wrong idea: I am simply pointing out that she is poorly designed; I am not in any way trying to say she should be banned.

"Git gud" I have a feeling you're gonna tell me; but guess what, I can learn an MU and point out a character's issues. THESE TWO THINGS ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. "Git gud" is not a magical solution to these issues.

The people who are calling for bans so early are harmful to the competitive scene, but your delusional defense of a character who is obviously unbalanced is just as bad.

 

[Ghostbone]

And ghostbone, why are you so adamant on defending Bayonetta's poor design? No one can deny that her risk/reward is so heavily pronounced to the point that it is poor design. I think you're getting the wrong idea: I am simply pointing out that she is poorly designed; I am not in any way trying to say she should be banned.

Because all the evidence that bayo is "poorly designed" comes from people saying players shouldn't have to bother learning how to play the game.

Playing against Bayo literally teaches you how to bait and punish, how to properly play footsies, how to not get predictable with your DI.
And she's a top 3 character on top of all that, that's not a poor design, that's an excellent design ruined by a community too lazy to adapt.

 

[DunnoBro]

This reminds me of when people defended prepatch luigi by insisting people just needed to learn to "play anti-grab."

 

[BunbUn129]

Because all the evidence that bayo is "poorly designed" comes from people saying players shouldn't have to bother learning how to play the game.

Playing against Bayo literally teaches you how to bait and punish, how to properly play footsies, how to not get predictable with your DI.
And she's a top 3 character on top of all that, that's not a poor design, that's an excellent design ruined by a community too lazy to adapt.

Huge damage off of combos + frame 1 air dodge + Witch Time + frame 4 combo starter + excellent recovery = a character who deals the most damage and gets a basically free pass out of her disadvantaged state.

You can outplay Bayo really hard, but all it takes is a few mistakes and you're gone. And everyone, low or top level, makes mistakes. The only counter-play that would be fully effective against Bayonetta is, from Isai's book, "don't get hit." And that is counter-play that is impossible to achieve.

Pre patch Sheik, Diddy, and Meta Knight had unjustifiably good KO set-ups, but these weren't a threat outside of specific percent ranges. Bayonetta's design issues manifest themselves at every phase of the match. It's not like Cloud who actually has a bad disadvantage state: you have to respect Bayonetta in all three states, while the respect she gives you is minimal by comparison.

This reminds me of when people defended prepatch luigi by insisting people just needed to learn to "play anti-grab."

People also used ledge-camping against Meta Knight. And let me tell you, it was sad how overall ineffective it was. Ledge-camping was only an issue in the Sheik MU (among a few others), because Meta Knight couldn't touch her offstage. Almost every other character had to highly respect Meta Knight's offstage edge-guarding and ability to cover the ledge, and if they chose to recover high, they had to contend with his landing option coverage, so getting knocked offstage was still pretty bad for most of them, even if it meant they could avoid his death combo. The Meta Knight counter play did not solve the problem of his over powering KO set up; it simply dragged out most of his MU's.

On a side not, what I mentioned above factors in to how significant the uair nerf was. It directly harmed him by toning down his early KO potential, but it also indirectly harmed him by making fighting center-stage far safer--in fact, there is little reason now for non-floaties (eg Rosa) to ledge-camp.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Which part of "pre-patch Sheik" was too hard for you to understand?

 

[Browny]

Because all the evidence that bayo is "poorly designed" comes from people saying players shouldn't have to bother learning how to play the game.

Playing against Bayo literally teaches you how to bait and punish, how to properly play footsies, how to not get predictable with your DI.
And she's a top 3 character on top of all that, that's not a poor design, that's an excellent design ruined by a community too lazy to adapt.

http://oddshot.tv/shot/vgbootcamp2-2016040313139328

A most excellent design where a dtilt in neutral = death. Sorry Mr R, but do you even DI? Does adapt have no translation into dutch?

Pre-patch sheik was utter garbage design in comparison. A character that needs combos/strings to rack up damage before using reads/traps to get kills? No wonder why they called this game tr4sh.

I used to care about ranting on bayo, mostly because it was fun triggering people. But shes gonna get nerfed hard so I'll just wait and let sakurai do the triggering for me.

Legit the only reason why *good* bayo players ever lose, is because they scrubbed out. Yes in every match, the loser messed up. But with bayo, you need to mess up BAD, MULTIPLE times dropping BnB stuff to lose. So I gotta adapt to making people mess up... I see, so I need the MikeHaze Strategy. BAyo CouNTeR COnF1rMEd?

 

[BunbUn129]

http://oddshot.tv/shot/vgbootcamp2-2016040313139328

A most excellent design where a dtilt in neutral = death. Sorry Mr R, but do you even DI? Does adapt have no translation into dutch?

Pre-patch sheik was utter garbage design in comparison. A character that needs combos/strings to rack up damage before using reads/traps to get kills? No wonder why they called this game tr4sh.

I used to care about ranting on bayo, mostly because it was fun triggering people. But shes gonna get nerfed hard so I'll just wait and let sakurai do the triggering for me.

Just need a bit of clarification (call me dull lol), but when you say Sheik was "garbage," do you mean as in she was more poorly designed, or that she sucked in comparison?

 

[Browny]

I'm being extremely sarcastic that if Bayonetta is an 'excellent design' where one touch = death, regardless of DI, stage position or % then clearly the bar has been set for good design. Sheik, since she needed to win many, sometimes 10+ neutral exchanges in order to take a stock is therefore horrible by the same standard that sets Bayonetta as an excellently designed character.

 

[BunbUn129]

I'm being extremely sarcastic that if Bayonetta is an 'excellent design' where one touch = death, regardless of DI, stage position or % then clearly the bar has been set for good design. Sheik, since she needed to win many, sometimes 10+ neutral exchanges in order to take a stock is therefore horrible by the same standard that sets Bayonetta as an excellently designed character.

Well, maybe you should've mentioned neutral when you talked about Sheik. Just saying, but whatever.

 

[Nobie]

Didn't Mr. R lose that because he wasn't expecting the sideways KO (because no one had done it before) and so was DI-ing in a way that made him more susceptible to the side kill?

 

[ARISTOS]

We're going in cycles at this point, and repeating the same arguments non-stop.

TL'DR arguments

Bayo is bad:
- Easy to play
- Overwhelming conversions
- Little risk
- Unfun to play

Bayo is good:
- Teaches good fundamentals
- Strong but not OP
- People misunderstand the character

Can we move on from this? We're seeing an explosion of meta and character development (Case in point-literally everyone in NC is playing - Cat, Rat, Frog, Dog is my ranking of the mons). Who knows if it's temporary or if it's a matter of time before the Bayo-pocalypse is upon us but there is so much more to discuss than whether Bayo is just bitter medicine or an actual carcinogen.

 

[BunbUn129]

We're going in cycles at this point, and repeating the same arguments non-stop.

TL'DR arguments

Bayo is bad:
- Easy to play
- Overwhelming conversions
- Little risk
- Unfun to play

Bayo is good:
- Teaches good fundamentals
- Strong but not OP
- People misunderstand the character

Can we move on from this? We're seeing an explosion of meta and character development (Case in point-literally everyone in NC is playing - Cat, Rat, Frog, Dog is my ranking of the mons). Who knows if it's temporary or if it's a matter of time before the Bayo-pocalypse is upon us but there is so much more to discuss than whether Bayo is just bitter medicine or an actual carcinogen.

The funniest part is that I basically unwittingly sparked this whole flame war. #Totallynotintended

I was jesting, just FYI. The long post I wrote a page or so ago was to disprove the delusion that nerfing overpowered options made the game less interesting.

How on earth is a game in which the top character hard-counters 4/5's of the cast more interesting than the one we currently have?

I like to sum up Smash 4's current meta game as this: imagine we're all sitting on a porch, eagerly waiting for someone to answer and open the door. We've heard about how wonderful this house is, but we've never been able to get even a glimpse of its interior. On the inside, we have a nicely balanced fighting game. The lock on the door is Bayonetta.

We've been on a long journey. We've seen the dominions of Rosalina, Diddy, and Sheik rise and fall. We're not far from where we need to be, and Bayonetta is the final boss.

....

On the subject of "just buff everyone," this (IMO) would not be healthy for the game, because by taking this approach, the only real way to balance the game is to give everyone over-centralizing options. And giving everyone overpowering options would only result in more degenerative gameplay. But by nerfing the small number of characters with such options, you're making gameplay less cancerous and in turn giving all the other characters a better chance at success.

So many characters have been relieved by the nerfs to Sheik and MK, and this improved balance would be hard to achieve by just buffing everyone else. Because by giving only more overpowering options, the game becomes less about skill and fundamentals and more about "who can land their broken set-up first?"

Remember the early days of Smash 4 when people complained there weren't enough combos? Well, look where we are now...

 

[NotLiquid]

http://oddshot.tv/shot/vgbootcamp2-2016040313139328

A most excellent design where a dtilt in neutral = death. Sorry Mr R, but do you even DI? Does adapt have no translation into dutch?

I think this is the first time I've seen anyone use this particular instance as an example of why Bayonetta is a badly designed character.

Like, you could have gone for literally every other Oddshot out there, chances being I'd most likely agree with you (or at least that the design itself is poorly executed by the developers), but you had to use this one - the one where Pink Fresh managed to read Mr. R's DI, and carry Sheik to the upper corner blast zone with some of the most demanding levels of finesse.

 

[Deleted member]

We're going in cycles at this point, and repeating the same arguments non-stop.

TL'DR arguments

Bayo is bad:
- Easy to play
- Overwhelming conversions
- Little risk
- Unfun to play

Bayo is good:
- Teaches good fundamentals
- Strong but not OP
- People misunderstand the character

Can we move on from this? We're seeing an explosion of meta and character development (Case in point-literally everyone in NC is playing - Cat, Rat, Frog, Dog is my ranking of the mons). Who knows if it's temporary or if it's a matter of time before the Bayo-pocalypse is upon us but there is so much more to discuss than whether Bayo is just bitter medicine or an actual carcinogen.

This thread seems to revolve around most of the same subjects. It's pretty tedious. I agree we should focus on talking about something new, especially with what advancements are currently happening in the meta. Everytime I come in here it's always some prolonged Bayonetta debate or some **** about Pikachu.

 

[Ghostbone]

I'm being extremely sarcastic that if Bayonetta is an 'excellent design' where one touch = death, regardless of DI, stage position or % then clearly the bar has been set for good design. Sheik, since she needed to win many, sometimes 10+ neutral exchanges in order to take a stock is therefore horrible by the same standard that sets Bayonetta as an excellently designed character.

I mean you can keep exaggerating and spewing nonsense, it doesn't actually help your argument tho.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Because all the evidence that bayo is "poorly designed" comes from people saying players shouldn't have to bother learning how to play the game.

Playing against Bayo literally teaches you how to bait and punish, how to properly play footsies, how to not get predictable with your DI.
And she's a top 3 character on top of all that, that's not a poor design, that's an excellent design ruined by a community too lazy to adapt.

Obviously a good number of people are stupid for complaining about Bayo after jumping into Divekick multiple times and getting killed for it, but that doesn't mean that move is good game design. She's one of those characters you could nerf heavily and still have her be good. Nobody's even really touched her excellent edgeguarding because of those ceiling combos. The risk/reward on some of her moves is simply bonkers, and ought to be changed so her design can actually be a good one.

 

[BunbUn129]

I mean you can keep exaggerating and spewing nonsense, it doesn't actually help your argument tho.

And what have you been doing this whole time?

Seriously, I'm sorry guys, I shouldn't have said anything before. Heaven forbid I mention that rebalancing a character would be good for the meta.

Let's move on.

Bayo will be nerfed, and then we'll look back and laugh at ourselves.

 

[MistressRemilia]

Can we move on & talk about another character, please? These Bayonetta discussions are as pointless as they could get, and if i had to say one thing about Bayonetta myself, it's that i don't really care about her, i just let things happen & try to do my best to deal with her myself. In terms of watching Bayo though, i think she's extremely uninteresting & kind of an extreme where " combos to answer the game promoting defensive play " is too much, akin to Prepatch Luigi.

Huh... Let's talk about ! With Nasubi getting 2nd at Sumabato 9 recently, i think it is the perfect time to talk about him.
Wario's always been kind of interesting to me, in the way that i've heard & seen that his matchups were pretty mediocre, and only kept getting worse as a lot of patches buffs targetted the swordfighter archetype. That's also an interesting thing to note about Wario himself: He generally loses to all kins of swordfighters, even the weaker ones. While i'm talking about Nasubi, you probably noticed that Sumabato had a fair amount of Swordfighters, i think there was 3 or 4 different players of one of these characters in Top 16? ( Which is pretty surprising tbh, especially for Japan )
There's also TheReflexWonder who could potentially get great results at upcoming tournaments with a good combinaison of characters: Mewtwo & Wario, interested in seeing this as well.
So, what are everyone's thoughts on Wario?

 

[Trifroze]

Bayonetta teaching people how to play the game properly and thus being a good thing literally defeats itself as an argument for the character. If other characters don't already force you to play in this (alleged) proper way, it means Bayonetta is the only character who clearly creates that need. Therefore only Bayonetta's opponent has to play properly while she herself doesn't (unless it's a ditto). It's literally the difference between top/high tier and mid/low tier, the former can throw out options relatively freely while the latter actually has to actively think about their and their opponent's every move.

(note that I'm just explaining the flawed logic of the argument, not necessarily claiming how things are or aren't.)

Also I have to clarify I'm not on the ban dwagon *puts on shades* since she hasn't really proven to be any more ridiculous than pre-patch Sheik (frankly I don't care how much player skill something takes in the end, I care about whether or not I can do anything or not vs them), and patches should take care of things if there is a problem. If EVO and CEO have 4+ Bayos in top 8 and no patches happen though, then I will understand. Right now just trying to be on the side of reality.

 

[Kaiduru Zeta]

Can we move on & talk about another character, please? These Bayonetta discussions are as pointless as they could get, and if i had to say one thing about Bayonetta myself, it's that i don't really care about her, i just let things happen & try to do my best to deal with her myself. In terms of watching Bayo though, i think she's extremely uninteresting & kind of an extreme where " combos to answer the game promoting defensive play " is too much, akin to Prepatch Luigi.

Huh... Let's talk about ! With Nasubi getting 2nd at Sumabato 9 recently, i think it is the perfect time to talk about him.
Wario's always been kind of interesting to me, in the way that i've heard & seen that his matchups were pretty mediocre, and only kept getting worse as a lot of patches buffs targetted the swordfighter archetype. That's also an interesting thing to note about Wario himself: He generally loses to all kins of swordfighters, even the weaker ones. While i'm talking about Nasubi, you probably noticed that Sumabato had a fair amount of Swordfighters, i think there was 3 or 4 different players of one of these characters in Top 16? ( Which is pretty surprising tbh, especially for Japan )
There's also TheReflexWonder who could potentially get great results at upcoming tournaments with a good combinaison of characters: Mewtwo & Wario, interested in seeing this as well.
So, what are everyone's thoughts on Wario?

Wario is so just downright weird. He used to be thought to be of like high tier but he's slowly drifting down. He's really good with his great aerial game and bite helps somewhat with projectiles. I'd definitely say Reflex can get the results as well as Nasubi. His MUs I'm not really sure about. I just know he kind of struggles with projectile characters that his bite can't deal with. Tierwise(I know this is somewhat irrelevant but) I say high mid wise because he's really drifted down but I gotta give him credit with the amazing air game as well as Reflex. He just needs a little more oomph(meaning representation). Y'know?

 

[NotLiquid]

Can we move on & talk about another character, please? These Bayonetta discussions are as pointless as they could get, and if i had to say one thing about Bayonetta myself, it's that i don't really care about her, i just let things happen & try to do my best to deal with her myself. In terms of watching Bayo though, i think she's extremely uninteresting & kind of an extreme where " combos to answer the game promoting defensive play " is too much, akin to Prepatch Luigi.

Huh... Let's talk about ! With Nasubi getting 2nd at Sumabato 9 recently, i think it is the perfect time to talk about him.
Wario's always been kind of interesting to me, in the way that i've heard & seen that his matchups were pretty mediocre, and only kept getting worse as a lot of patches buffs targetted the swordfighter archetype. That's also an interesting thing to note about Wario himself: He generally loses to all kins of swordfighters, even the weaker ones. While i'm talking about Nasubi, you probably noticed that Sumabato had a fair amount of Swordfighters, i think there was 3 or 4 different players of one of these characters in Top 16? ( Which is pretty surprising tbh, especially for Japan )
There's also TheReflexWonder who could potentially get great results at upcoming tournaments with a good combinaison of characters: Mewtwo & Wario, interested in seeing this as well.
So, what are everyone's thoughts on Wario?

The more I actively think about it the more Wario actually seems stuck in a similar position as Pikachu and I wouldn't be surprised if both of these characters statistically are somewhere in a similar position on the tier list. His stats are theoretically all stacked in his favor; decent frame data, good mobility, solid neutral, tremendous aerial capabilities and in Wario's case, the added benefit of being a heavy on top of that. Despite his range on moves they never actively become much of a problem for him beyond certain matchups. He also has a somewhat reliable way to deal with certain projectiles, though not necessarily all of them that matter. His problem really comes down to a lack of reliable kills, though unlike Pikachu who just needs to rack up percentages really high Wario is just too read-dependent in securing stocks. I think that's the real thing holding him back since most of the Top 15 right now have far safer options to set up kills or land kill moves.

Player representation is probably the biggest hurdle he's facing. Pikachu at least had ESAM to second-guess the perception of being merely a high-mid tier. Wario doesn't.

 

[Zelder]

I think Wario's biggest problem is that Mario & Cloud, two very popular and powerful tournament characters, both give him a hard time. The Mario matchup feels solidly in Mario's favor, and the less said about the Cloud matchup, the better.

 

[Y2Kay]

I wish Reflex could travel more. I'm super biased, since we live around the same region, but Wario is still really good.

What happened to Doc? I haven't seen him touched by patches recently. And seen little of him in tournament either.

 

[Ninety]

Wario seems to be one of those characters that, for lack of a better term, got left behind by the meta. He didn't get any worse, but he hasn't gotten buffs either, while his peers do, and then some of his mains start to drop him, his tournament results disappear, and before long tier discussions end up inevitably having the phrase "oh right, and Wario" somewhere.

Does Reflex still play him? I thought he'd dropped him, but I may be thinking of Abadango.

 

[Y2Kay]

Reflex plays wario and Mewtwo

 

[NotLiquid]

Yeah at least with Mario it seemed generally closer to a Ness vs Rosalina situation where the latter's match up advantage doesn't necessarily offset the general advantages the former has in a broader sense (since Mario isn't what I'd consider as much of an all encompassing fixture). But Cloud's increasing prevalence as a meta dominating force could easily put Wario in the same position Rob had in Brawl where despite being a good character there was literally no point in using it since 60-70% of the entire player base had adopted a character that completely invalidated it (Meta Knight in that situation).

 

[Zannabluke]

wario vs cloud is horrible, you're literally fighting a blonde brawl marth without the grab release bull****

 

[Luco]

Puff's AD is f4, rest is f1. Comparing Bayo's AD to a bottom tier AD makes a difference, yeah. Next to a top tier one? Basically impossible to see or feel a difference. The window for it to make a difference would be ridiculously small... On X combo, you would need precisely Y frames of hitstun to hit the first frame of an AD with the second attack. Any more hitstun and it'll be a true combo, any less and it'd whiff against a f2 AD. What are the chances you'll use X combo when hitting her would put her in exactly Y frames of hitstun? Slim.

Idk friend, Ness' Dthrow Fair combo appears to be guaranteed at some percent range vs everyone who doesn't have a F1 option so say what you will but it seems to matter against Jiggs' rest at the very least so it would probably be similar against Bayo, at least at certain percents (usually the percents where it works are the percents where it JUST works).

 

[warionumbah2]

he hasn't gotten buffs either, while his peers do, and then some of his mains start to drop him, his tournament results disappear.

Same thing happening to MK, just an irrelevant piece of matter who's representation is slightly better or just as bad as Ryu's in terms of the number of (skilled) users backing him.

 

[williamsga555]

What happened to Doc? I haven't seen him touched by patches recently. And seen little of him in tournament either.

I don't think Doc was ever terribly popular, in fairness. He was over-stigmatized at the beginning of the game, and is now seen as underwhelming-but-not-awful. I think fairly highly of him admittedly, at least comparative to the norm, but I believe it'd be a stretch to call him solo-viable. He's one of the better pockets in the game, though, as he has some right nasty things he can do to common top tier picks.

 

[Nobie]

Bayonetta teaching people how to play the game properly and thus being a good thing literally defeats itself as an argument for the character. If other characters don't already force you to play in this (alleged) proper way, it means Bayonetta is the only character who clearly creates that need. Therefore only Bayonetta's opponent has to play properly while she herself doesn't (unless it's a ditto). It's literally the difference between top/high tier and mid/low tier, the former can throw out options relatively freely while the latter actually has to actively think about their and their opponent's every move.

Those are all skills you need to play the game successfully, it's just that in the past they weren't skills you needed when fighting low to mid level players (into which I'm including myself, so it's not like I'm talking about "those scrubs over there." The problem, as it were, is that it forces people to learn this at a lower level of play than what is normal, and that it's possibly unpleasant to do.

There seem to be two different discussions about Bayonetta (actually more, but I'm going to narrow it down): How does Bayonetta affect low to mid-level play and how does Bayonetta affect high-level play? They're both things to take into consideration, in terms of balancing, etc., because competition doesn't just consist of the best of the best players, but I think this distinction often gets blurred in arguments.

For example, over the course of Melee vs. Brawl arguments, there would be this back and forth where Brawl players would say that their game is more thoughtful, and then Melee players would say that Melee has just as, if not more, thinking involved in addition to the difficult mechanics and such. The difference was that because of Brawl's mechanics, it made being able to read and out-predict the opponent a necessity even at lower levels of tournament play, whereas, according to Tafokints, a Melee player could potentially get top 32 at a national just off of mechanical skill.

"Fighting Bayonetta" looks to be something like the equivalent of "Learn Melee tech," a barrier that presents itself at low to mid levels of tournament play that encourages some and discourages others. Thinking about it in this respect, I wouldn't begrudge someone for not wanting to bother to master all of Melee's shenanigans in order to play the "real game," so maybe I haven't considered people who don't want to deal with Bayonetta to play the "real Smash 4," whatever that means.

At the same time, I think it's weird to call Bayonetta a bad design because she was designed with very deliberate weaknesses that essentially lay a blueprint for how to defeat her, even if the blueprint isn't completely reliable at the moment because of how strong she is.

A few weeks back, I mentioned the idea that Bayo makes top tiers feel mortal, because while in the past they could get away with a lot of things due to superior frame data, Bayonetta punishes them for thinking they're 100% safe. As Trifroze says, though in a more negative light, it's something that lower tier characters have to deal with on a regular basis. Is introducing this element to more characters necessarily a bad thing then?

But what about Bayonetta? Why can she get away with so much? Isn't she just the new top tier super safe character? Even though she can do things like retreat with After Burner Kick, Dive Kick safely on shield, etc., her frame data is such that she's meant to be punishable after missing. Like I keep bringing up her rolls and dodges because they are LITERALLY the worst in the game in terms of cool down. Moving through the air with her special moves isn't just good, it's NECESSARY because her standard defensive techniques are bad.

Whether or not she needs tweaking, I think that it's clear where the design intent is for her character in terms of both offense and defense, just from seeing how her rolls and such work:

1) If you attack her too early, then she has a frame 1 semi-dodge (frame 3 for rolls), which cuts down the effectiveness of your attacks
2) However, if you anticipate her dodge/roll, then she's more vulnerable than anyone else in the game (slightly worse than Samus's)

If you don't attack her when she expects an attack, you're supposed to be able to capitalize. That means, how important should it be to Smash Bros. to have the control to not press buttons?

 

[Zannabluke]

also, is wario vs diddy that bad?

 

[bc1910]

I'm tempted to say Wario is prevented from being solo-viable purely by Cloud. A pocket Cloud can still be horrendous for him.

He doesn't convincingly win any top tier MUs but he doesn't do horribly either, so I'd rank his viability around the same as Pit's otherwise.