Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[sedrf]

A: disadvantage
B; even
C: slight advantage
D:advantage
etc.

 

[FullMoon]

Oh ok that makes a lot more sense.

 

[sedrf]

A Japanese guide on Bayo's side and up-b hitboxes was recently made the English translation found herehttps://twitter.com/uekibachii/status/723157343651811328

Notice how it says "You cannot DI for 2nd Witch Twist"? According to Kurogane there is a way to disable the ability to DI on certain moves in Smash 4 https://twitter.com/KuroganeHammer/status/723216697998483456

So what does this mean? Well, if Bayo hits you with the second Witch Twist or late hit of ABK, no matter how you tilt your control stick you will always be sent in the same direction.

Can someone verify this for me?
Sorry for double posting

 

[my_T]

All of Cloud's grounded normals are better than Shulk's equivalents except Utilt and maybe FSmash, and those aren't by much. Shulk needs Speed Monado active for this to even be a discussion worth considering.

Shulk's offensive buttons are also on the slow side.

with the use of perfect pivoting + speed art shulks ground game is significantly better.

General perfect pivot stuff: empty PP, PP into shield, PP into grab, dtilt, utilt, jab, usmash, fsmash

also, i would say shulks dtilt is better in neutral because its safe when spaced well. Clouds on the other hand is punishable on shield and only truly safe in tech chase and landing punish situations.

shulks ground game is a LITTLE BIT BETTER because of speed alone. Speed makes it to where shulks ground game is actually good at certain points of the match where as clouds is always mediocre all the time, including limit form. Without speed art they're ground game is more or less even. Clouds mobility is better than shulks without speed art. Shulks grab is a lot more threatening in speed and buster though

 

[LancerStaff]

Whether you charge them or not, they're going to lose to shield anyway. Robin has 6 or 8 minutes on the clock and Pit doesn't have a burst option to get himself to the other side, he can wait.

Pit Fair I can see outranging Levin Fair, but with how Robin wants to hit with it, I don't think those two moves will meet each other. That hitbox is straight horizontal, iirc?, and Robin likes to be either slightly above or slightly below his target when he throws out his own Fair. And its autocanceling property makes Fair a good consistent bait to force bad spacing against the move. Fair's an approach tool but it's also an advancing tool, forcing opponents to deal with it in ways Robin wants them to.

Checkmate works on every character, and with the exception of Charizard (because of invincible Fly and SA Rock Smash) kills for a % range at least 25% wide. In Pit's case, it's killing from 95% to 128%. That's without rage, so with a few arrows tacked on, it's killing sooner.

When you shield and Pit's still holding an arrow he's at the advantage... Everything you can do out of shield has endlag, and even hitting a normal shield drop isn't all that uncommon. Shield too much and then Pit can aim for Robin's head or toes easily. Fully charged it's 8.5%, meanwhile Robin isn't getting anything out of the exchange.

Pit's Fair and Bair are straight horizontal, yeah, but Fair has some height too (being a spinning bow and all) and with both moves Pit's body goes mostly horizontal.

 

[Trunks159]

When you shield and Pit's still holding an arrow he's at the advantage... Everything you can do out of shield has endlag, and even hitting a normal shield drop isn't all that uncommon. Shield too much and then Pit can aim for Robin's head or toes easily. Fully charged it's 8.5%, meanwhile Robin isn't getting anything out of the exchange.

Pit's Fair and Bair are straight horizontal, yeah, but Fair has some height too (being a spinning bow and all) and with both moves Pit's body goes mostly horizontal.

I don't think arrows effect the onstage matchup at all really. You should probably be arguing about "s burst options.

 

[Ninety]

Honestly, gauging matchups between mid-low tiers without extremely clear faults and virtues is a little bit of a fool's game. Considering the sheer amount of characters, with only a third or so being frequently seen in high-level play, there just isn't that much data to measure every matchup for lesser seen characters. Like, look at the response to the Robin matchup spread these last couple pages. The top Robins think Robin beats mid/low tiers A, B and C, because Robin can do X, Y and Z. Meanwhile, mains of A, B and C think that the matchup is squarely in their favor because their main can do P, Q and R really well. And in all likelihood, both sides may have a point, but there will very often simply not be enough data from high-level play in order to conclusively support either side. (Not to mention mid/low tier mains often being somewhat prickly about their characters' standing, but that's another topic.)

Like, maybe if we took Scizor and Izaw and Dath and Raziek and locked them all in a house all weekend with nothing to do but play each other, we could walk away with some meaningful data about the Link vs Robin matchup, rather than each character's mains insisting they win. But as it stands, there's for the most part only theory (which can vary wildly depending on which attributes you want to emphasize -- characters can and have been made to sound spectacular or awful depending on how you describe them) and scattered results on lower-level tournaments, which may easily be more reflective of each player's relative skill rather than each character's intrinsic strengths in the matchup. I have confidence that as the meta progresses and the scene grows, there will be more reliable data (and better theory) to support the correct conclusion, but seeing as even Melee, a game that's old enough to drive and with a stupidly deep meta, and with a cast the third of the size of 4's, has discrepancies on the matchups, it may be a very long while indeed.

Not to say that there's no place or point in matchup discussion for characters outside the top 20, of course. Just saying that theory in a vacuum and character loyalty can paint a very different picture depending on which side you take

tl;dr: my mid/low tier main can beat up your mid/Low tier main

 

[Greward]

A: disadvantage
B; even
C: slight advantage
D:advantage
etc.

Not necessarily this, but goes from hardest matchups (A tier) to easiest (F).
Similar to the ones with sheik they did back in the day (abadango's was the most famous I think).

I don't think Shu believes there is any matchup bayonetta doesn't win though.

 

[Aaron1997]

Robin perspective is gonna fluctuate based on region and exposure, really.

I find it funny that Dath has Robin over DH +2 even though he almost lost to DandyPenguin at Glitch

 

[Emblem Lord]

Which part(s) do you want me to explain?
Sorry for the double post yall. Forgot to add it to my last reply

Clouds dtilt is a straight up reactive set-play answer to SH approaches from pretty much all non sword wielders. It can also lead to conversions.

So yeah..that move kinda craps on all of Shulks buttons in terms of utility and as an anti meta tool.

 

[Djent]

It's interesting to see that Shu has / listed in the B group (slight Bayo advantage?) along with all the usual suspects. I'm guessing HIKARU's recent victory over ikep and Shu's own use of Bowser factor into his high opinions of these characters to some degree. I do wonder if people make too big a deal out of them being "combo food" in general, though the Bayo MU seems like the place that would hurt the most.

I am suspicious of the fact that he ranked Mario and Ness so low. I can't see either of those characters struggling that much vs. Bayo (though they probably lose). On the flipside, Greninja is recognized as potentially threatening to her. That's good!

 

[ParanoidDrone]

It turns out that you may not be able to DI the late hit of Bayonetta's ABK, or her second Witch Twist.

Twitter Source 1
Twitter Source 2
Reddit Thread

 

[Djmarcus44]

Dapuffster retired from Sm4sh tho. The best Brawler tittle might belong to Yikarur.

Tbh no one has any idea who is the best Swordfighter. According to reddit it could be Trela (never a serious Swordspider user). In the other hand it could be Nyani, but she has been inactive. So who are we left with? Colgate? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When it comes to Gunner... Well Chibo takes the cake when it comes to results. But skill wise San might have a better Gunner tho. Too bad he lacks results. He suffers from Ike main problems.

I'll hazard a guess at the rest of ZeRo's picks

Spoiler

: TLTC
: Pugwest
: Ryo
: Jerm
: Dandy Penguin
: MikeKirby
: Leo
: Big_D
: Larry Lurr
: Keitaro
: ESAM
: Bloodcross
: Day
: RDR7
: iStudying
: 8BitMan
: FOW
: Fatality
: Ranai
: Myran
: John Numbers
: Darkwolf
: 2manycooks
: lol i dunno
: Tea
: Scatt
: Komorikiri
: Abadango
: i dunno lol
: i dunno lol
: Trela
: Komorikiri
: 9B
: Dapuffster
: i dunno lol
: Chibo

I think that ZeRo would pick ROM as the best Mii Gunner main in the world, because of ROM's results when he came to America for Genesis 3. Although san and Chibo have gotten some good results for Gunner, they probably won't be considered for this list since they don't play 1111 gunner in tournament.

@C0rvus, Leo is considered the best MK main in the world because he is the best player in Mexico. He has also beaten Mr. R and Vinnie.

Mr. Johan , I still think that Mii Gunner beats Robin. I remember discussing this Matchup with you and a few other Robin players, and I am still not sure about checkmate's effectiveness on Mii Gunner. I still haven't gotten checkmate to true combo on Mii Gunner at any percent. Is it any different than getting checkmate to true combo on Sheik (I have been able to get the kill confirm on Sheik, but I haven't been able to get it to true combo on Mii Gunner)?

 

[Dre89]

I used to think Bowser was better than DK, but I've conformed now that I've realised how strong DK's jab and dtilt spacing is. I was taught to use rely on bair walls in neutral, which is good in some matchups, but against rushdown boxing is generally better.

It's interesting to see that Shu has / listed in the B group (slight Bayo advantage?) along with all the usual suspects. I'm guessing HIKARU's recent victory over ikep and Shu's own use of Bowser factor into his high opinions of these characters to some degree. I do wonder if people make too big a deal out of them being "combo food" in general, though the Bayo MU seems like the place that would hurt the most.

I am suspicious of the fact that he ranked Mario and Ness so low. I can't see either of those characters struggling that much vs. Bayo (though they probably lose). On the flipside, Greninja is recognized as potentially threatening to her. That's good!

There's no way that it's just a slight advantage for Bayo. It isn't just that they're easy to 0-death (I've literally died seconds into a match as DK to Bayo). The problem is that sideb is practically impossible for them to punish on block, and they don't really have the frame data and mobility to bait and punish it in other ways, or to prevent her from constantly resetting to neutral.

This is something people never mention about Bayo. People talk about playing lame against her, but never talk about Bayo doing the same. If the Bayo just constantly tries to run away and reset to the neutral, she keeps the risk/reward constantly skewed in her favour.

 

[HeavyLobster]

There's no way that it's just a slight advantage for Bayo. It isn't just that they're easy to 0-death (I've literally died seconds into a match as DK to Bayo). The problem is that sideb is practically impossible for them to punish on block, and they don't really have the frame data and mobility to bait and punish it in other ways, or to prevent her from constantly resetting to neutral.

This is something people never mention about Bayo. People talk about playing lame against her, but never talk about Bayo doing the same. If the Bayo just constantly tries to run away and reset to the neutral, she keeps the risk/reward constantly skewed in her favour.

Don't know about DK, but Bowser absolutely can punish her for Divekicking shield, as she is going to inevitably incur landing lag for doing so, and this is where Bowser uses his good dash speed and dash grab to punish her landing. If she resets to the ledge, then Bowser has very good ledge coverage options. People a lot of times screw up against Bayo because her vulnerabilities don't necessarily follow the same rules of other Smash characters.

 

[Nobie]

I think it's about as simple as the fact that grabs are crucial when fighting Bayonetta, and both Bowser and DK not only have good grabs but also reliable kill options out of throws. Bowser in particular has both up throw combos AND side b, and Tough Guy lets him charge through Bullet Arts Climax.

Also they both run faster than Bayo.

LIke, that's a low-level analysis I just made there, but I think it's absolutely relevant when talking about how well-equipped certain characters are for fighting Bayo.

 

[juddy96]

Dapuffster retired from Sm4sh tho. The best Brawler tittle might belong to Yikarur.

Tbh no one has any idea who is the best Swordfighter. According to reddit it could be Trela (never a serious Swordspider user). In the other hand it could be Nyani, but she has been inactive. So who are we left with? Colgate? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When it comes to Gunner... Well Chibo takes the cake when it comes to results. But skill wise San might have a better Gunner tho. Too bad he lacks results. He suffers from Ike main problems.

Best results for Gunner are from Rom and Flama

 

[ARGHETH]

Main suspects IMO are the Link, Samus, DK, Sonic, Fox, Lucina, Toon Link, and Greninja MUs, which make no sense to be in Robin's favor or evenly split

Raziek actually played against DKwill for a while back in August and won most of the matches, which is likely why he put it like that. The video's on Youtube.
Dath beat Static Manny in November, while Raziek lost at TBH5.

 

[Asdioh]

Shu's (Top 3 Sheik Japan) bayo matchup chart
(Him, rain and a few other sheiks switched to bayo)

So Shu thinks Kirby is utterly easy for Bayonetta, but meanwhile:

rosa bayo is mad annoying but played well i do believe it's rosa's favor. a lot of times ill play kirby in this matchup though because it is easier for me.

I think Kirby's pretty low overall, but Japan seems to think he's utter unusable garbage. I doubt they have any decent Kirby players over there.

It turns out that you may not be able to DI the late hit of Bayonetta's ABK, or her second Witch Twist.

Twitter Source 1
Twitter Source 2
Reddit Thread

Surprisingly nobody is replying to this post lol
If it's true, then Bayonetta is just finding as many rules to break as possible I guess.

 

[Pancracio17]

limi-err rules are meant to be broken
that means seccond wt to up air could be a legitt confirm oos.
wt1>wt2>u air. need to test how long wt1>wt2 is true for.
geez this char is bonkers

 

[Nah]

I still haven't gotten checkmate to true combo on Mii Gunner at any percent. Is it any different than getting checkmate to true combo on Sheik (I have been able to get the kill confirm on Sheik, but I haven't been able to get it to true combo on Mii Gunner)?

The ease of hitting people with Checkmate varies depending on the character. You were able to do it on Sheik since Sheik is one of the easiest characters in the game to Checkmate. All of Robin's throw's are weight-dependent, so lightweight fastfallers like are very easy to do it on. Could probably do it while drunk. The heavier and floatier the character gets the harder it is to do. Weight seems to be the more important factor though since Jiggles is floaty as **** but not terribly difficult to hit, while Dedede is fastfaller but somewhat harder to hit. Samus is a ***** to hit with Checkmate.

It's also percent specific. The general range is like ~90%-120% but that's not exactly true for all characters. For the aforementioned balloon Pokemon and fat penguin you have to do it earlier and later, respectively. With Falcon it's more like 105% when it starts true comboing. And so on. Not to mention that the execution window isn't exactly huge.

idk what Mii Gunner size you were testing on but it should be possible to true combo Checkmate on it, it just might be that there's something about Gunner's weight+physics that may make it a little tricky.

 

[Kaora]

Hey guys, I'm a player from France and I made a chart on how to di Bayonetta's combos.
I don't guarantee everything is perfect, but it's a good start I guess !

Reddit link : https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/4futcn/chart_on_how_to_di_bayonettas_combos/
Twitter link : https://twitter.com/Zachary_Kaora/status/723239473044172800

 

[san.]

The ease of hitting people with Checkmate varies depending on the character. You were able to do it on Sheik since Sheik is one of the easiest characters in the game to Checkmate. All of Robin's throw's are weight-dependent, so lightweight fastfallers like are very easy to do it on. Could probably do it while drunk. The heavier and floatier the character gets the harder it is to do. Weight seems to be the more important factor though since Jiggles is floaty as **** but not terribly difficult to hit, while Dedede is fastfaller but somewhat harder to hit. Samus is a ***** to hit with Checkmate.

It's also percent specific. The general range is like ~90%-120% but that's not exactly true for all characters. For the aforementioned balloon Pokemon and fat penguin you have to do it earlier and later, respectively. With Falcon it's more like 105% when it starts true comboing. And so on. Not to mention that the execution window isn't exactly huge.

idk what Mii Gunner size you were testing on but it should be possible to true combo Checkmate on it, it just might be that there's something about Gunner's weight+physics that may make it a little tricky.

Gunner is 100 weight and floaty. Wouldn't that mean it's pretty difficult to land?

 

[ARGHETH]

Gunner is 100 weight and floaty. Wouldn't that mean it's pretty difficult to land?

Default Gunner's Fall Speed and Weight aren't too different from Pit's (1.45/100 vs 1.489/96), so it might be kind of difficult, but shouldn't be too hard.

 

[KamikazePotato]

Based on what I've seen of GanontheBeast fighting Robin, the MU is definitely not -3 for Dorf.
Edit:
Here's some recent quality footage of the MU.

Pretty much every main of every other character in the game thinks they have a +2 or +3 matchup vs. Ganondorf. The character is weak and underrepresented but with the way people rank him you'd think that all of his matchups were as bad as fighting Bayonetta.

In general, while I enjoy seeing these ranking lists, a lot of them seem only seem to be reasonable for the higher-tier matchups that everyone gets experience with. It's not anyone's fault - there's a lot of characters in this game, and getting adequate matchup experience against all of them is nearly impossible - but you do see a lot of people seemingly defaulting to "this character is low tier, so I'll rank him low".

 

[Nah]

Gunner is 100 weight and floaty. Wouldn't that mean it's pretty difficult to land?

Yeah that'd edge Gunner towards the "not easy to do" category, though it should still be doable. I've never tried it on a Mii fighter before though so I can't say much more than that.

 

[Mr. Johan]

Who knows, maybe Gunner is uniquely naturally able to avoid the setup altogether. I wouldn't mind testing it on Gunner players.

We could also grind the matchup out so the discussion can reach a solid conclusion, lol.

 

[LancerStaff]

Isn't it gravity and not fallspeed that'd effect the combo? Then gunner would be a bit easier to do it on then Pit.

Guess that'd explain why I thought Checkmate didn't work on Pit though.

 

[Trifroze]

Pretty much every main of every other character in the game thinks they have a +2 or +3 matchup vs. Ganondorf. The character is weak and underrepresented but with the way people rank him you'd think that all of his matchups were as bad as fighting Bayonetta.

In general, while I enjoy seeing these ranking lists, a lot of them seem only seem to be reasonable for the higher-tier matchups that everyone gets experience with. It's not anyone's fault - there's a lot of characters in this game, and getting adequate matchup experience against all of them is nearly impossible - but you do see a lot of people seemingly defaulting to "this character is low tier, so I'll rank him low".

On the other hand you have to remember that the precise reason those characters are considered as low tier is those bad matchups. There are of course some exceptions, but if you have insufficient / "only decent" matchup experience versus a given low tier and you don't see any notable scenarios in your head that would suggest they do well in a given matchup, it's safest to presume they're +1 or +2 for your character because more often than not that ends up being correct.

That said I don't believe there are many +/-3 MUs in the game presuming it's considered to be the final step before a matchup is deemed unwinnable. Most characters who might have a -3 versus someone like ZSS for example (DK, Bowser, Ganondorf) have way too much comeback potential to have the odds that heavily against them.

(ROB doesn't possess quite as much comeback factor but his neutral easily saves him the -3 in my opinion, still not sure about DDD and Charizard though, and Jiggs is a contender because she legit dies to dthrow at 20-30% on FD and has to be in the air to get things done)

 

[KuroganeHammer]

Bayo vs Bowser is 70-30 at least, probably 80-20 tbh.

And that's not because Bowser is bad either, it's just because Bayo's design completely counters Bowser.

 

[Smog Frog]

can you elaborate on that? i'm not seeing that.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

can you elaborate on that? i'm not seeing that.

Can't escape her combos unless you SDI out of up b 1.

Dtilt kills you at 50-70% it's fun

 

[Smog Frog]

that applies to most of the cast, does it not?

 

[KuroganeHammer]

I suddenly remember why I don't post in this thread very much.

 

[sedrf]

except bowser is really heavy and has a large hurtbox.

 

[Emblem Lord]

that applies to most of the cast, does it not?

Bayo has to react to other chars SDI/DI

Vs Bowser she basically can flow chart him to death after that first hit.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

Weight doesn't matter because lol bayo specials, it's the giant hurtbox that's important. No matter where you DI they can kill you because it's impossible to miss him.

 

[Shaya]

There was a Xanadu where Pink Fresh was playing another pick up Bayonetta (fair to say at the time) in loser's semi or finals and they switched to Bowser (their former main). It took about half a stock for PinkFresh to figure out and then the games were white washes.

Aero, you could probably do yourself a favour and actually justify/explain your claims ever so slightly.

From what I've seen (Pugwest/Taj), between down tilt and nair (+bullet art chip damage) and fear of side-b/witch time, Bayonetta's boxing/footsie game is very very potent to the point even a character like Marth struggles to do much of anything to capitalize on it. And the reward for hitting with either of those moves is sufficiently potent if all an opponent can feasibly achieve is a single strike whiff punish. She invalidates footsie based game play, so a character like Bowser who has grab reads but otherwise boxes you has little answers when he also gets combo'd to death a lot more reliably than most.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

Aero, you could probably do yourself a favour and actually justify/explain your claims ever so slightly.

My b, honestly it should be pretty obvious though.

 

[Smog Frog]

even then, saying a character loses to another because of a combo is only one part of the picture. how often is getting a dtilt? is the question you should be asking. it's also important to ask how much she can be punished if she whiffs it in his range, and how it interacts with his hitboxes. afaik all of tilts have limb invincibility so any interactions between the two hitboxes is in favor. and witch time in anticipation of striking attacks can be punished by his great grab. reward is skewed in favor though so i'll admit it isnt even but 7:3/8:2 seems like it'd be going a little to far.