Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Mr. Johan]

The only reason Zard should ever do FB on the ground is to power through Robin's Arcfire pillar in time to punish before he can pull shield up.

I may or may not have experience on the matter.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Flare Blitz's lad on the ground is atrocious.

That's why you do it above the ground. You get a fraction of the lag.

Flare Blitz either goes to the ledge or above the ground. If you have the option to land on a platform that can be nice too. Flare Blitzing straight to the stage is the stuff Warlock Punch punishes are made of.

 

[Shaya]

Dash attack though, it's actually kind of bad except purely as a punish option when nothing else is fast enough from that distance. I guess slow characters can have trouble punishing it, but the endlag is ridiculous compared to how unrewarding it is. Though, along with her dtilt, this is mostly just a personal complaint from someone who wants his character to have a perfect moveset.

Well, they're kinda just "out of place" moves, DA is one thing in terms of niche (it's cooldown does seem to expect you to catch people with it's late hitboxes though :<), but down tilt has the "style" of Captain Falcon's down tilt, yet has the feather weight specifics for damage/hitboxes. That disunity makes sense for say, up tilt, which has intangibility, kills, insane start up but lolworthy end lag, however when down tilt has a weak tipper hit that has combo specs like Sheik, Fox, Falco, etc but with it's range and massive cool down could only be used as a poke that gives little and is terrible on block it seems design wise they didn't know what they were aiming for. But let's say if they swapped the hitbox placement and/or upped it's damage, then we could see it make "sense", although obviously we'd just want 5 frames lag off of it and then we'd be sitting with a solid "standard feather weight" down tilt.

But yeah, the counterplay to ZSS is to play reactive and patient. The counter-counterplay is probably just mix ups to mess with those reactions and trying to read and react to the opponent's defensive patterns. Hey, that sounds like actual effort, maybe ZSS isn't a top tier anymore?

ZSS was always a lot of effort to succeed with as I'm sure you know (it's not like that counter play wasn't just as difficult to deal with before the nerfs); it is a bit grating they hurt the reward of her grab significantly and overall kinda gut the (already one of the worst in the game) grabs as well and this has loomed over my thoughts for a while now too ("isn't that a bit much? this is the move with 50 frames of cool down..." [now effectively +4 extra frames of CD]).
Anecdotal, and I didn't sit down to test it properly to see, but those grab duration nerfs are apart of the tether animation where she 'curls' it around - I don't believe ZSS can grab crouching Kirby from max range like she used to be able to anymore (and others similar) edit: was made considerably harder (but still possible) - which is pretty balls. We got mild compensation against that binary interaction with side-b cool down reduction (but that's a 30 frame max range hitbox that only hits them at max range) and the outer hitbox of nair reaching lower (but not low enough to hit the likes of Kirby I don't think).

But I think the fairer assertion here would be that perhaps there aren't really "top tiers" in this game anymore, perhaps with Bayo (+ Cloud) as an exception. Sheik is still good, but all of her active mains have shown struggle and many frauds jumped ship, we still overly rate Rosa high despite so few being able to succeed with her, no other feasible contender has suddenly jumped up the charts in strengths to compensate with the readjustments - it's fairer to observe that the power/viability has been shared across the entire cast.

ZSS still is difficult to see not as roughly top 5 (personally).
But yeah, this character was walking a wire tightrope where her risk and reward roughly balanced out - they reduced her reward sizably and increased her risk [with the way we currently 'play her'] noticeably. I'm kinda hopeful they don't just leave her as is, but it likely wouldn't be too bad if they did - her necessitating a secondary just to cover obnoxious binary design oversights doesn't really detract from her overall strength.

But as heralded since the dawn of newcomer DLC, a character with a lot more risk but similar reward to characters without the risk is going to struggle in the long term. Maybe the end is nigh.

 

[AxelVDP]

Interesting placings there. Btw, any thoughts on regular Link? I feel like he's generally dismissed as a worse version of Toon Link rather than talking about him as his own character which is quite different. Like imo the last tier list had characters with far less results (Roy, Shulk, Falco) over Link just because he's Link and has generally been bad in previous games.

BlueLink actually believes Link to be (overall) the better one of the two (depends from MU to MU), as I previously stated in this thread quite a while back (the reasoning being something like: Link has a comparable camping game but with better/stronger mid range options)
and by seeing what he does with the character and by actually playing with him I'd be inclined to agree
but it's really hard to state these kind of things out loud because [worldwide] Link lacks results compared to ToonLink and it kinda makes you look like a fool
MY personal opinion is that Link is (slightly) underrated while ToonLink is slightly overrated, and that they should probably be put in roughly the same viability tier
reasons:
Link has comparable camping capabilities as his cartoony version, the former has way better bombs (and arrows too but I don't feel like they are all that important) that can be used to control portions of the stage by simply laying them down, the latter has better mobility (which offsets his worse bombs) and a slightly better boomerang
also, Link has way better range on his normals and a bigger reward for landing his grab at lowish%s
this means that it can actually be HARDER to break Link's zoning game in respect to ToonLink
ToonLink's extra mobility kinda offsets that and it also aids him in his disadvantaged state by making it easier to reset to neutral, whereas Link struggles a bit more in this area
both characters also have similar frame data (actually, iirc Link's might be slightly better !_!) with the difference that Link has overall better dammage per hit
their advantaged states are also roughly on the same level, they both have bomb confirms, they both cover the opponents defensive options with the same kind of strategies BUT while ToonLink may have the slight edge to convert stray hits into dammage thanks to his superior mobility, Link has a better trap game and has a really high fast fall speed to help him baiting out things

tl;dr
Neutral state: Link (slightly) > ToonLink
Advantaged state: Link = ToonLink
Disadvantaged state: Link < ToonLink

again, this is just my opinion, I might very well be wrong, especially considering that I don't actually play these characters

 

[rrrRandy]

RE: Chad the Lizard

Charizard is a character that will not consistently win things without significant buffs. He does have most of a functional gameplan, with a few strong options in various situations if applied perfectly, but the problem is just how punishable everything Charizard does if he makes any mistake. The real issue is that the gameplan of properly spacing to bait and punish bad approaches becomes really difficult against characters with better mobility and safer moves. In a lot of matchups, the onus is instead on Charizard to mount a counteroffensive and instead snuff out the opponent's approaches before they happen, because he can't easily punish them once they've already started. And while he generally does have the tools to do so, winning in these situations is heavily reliant on reads, and as I mentioned earlier, if Charizard makes a mistake he generally gets punished a lot harder than he can punish the character he's fighting. To paraphrase, in many matchups Charizard is forced to play the opponent's game and win. And while he generally will have the potential to do so, it could be argued that winning in those situations is more of a testament to the players' abilities (and the difference between them) than the characters'. Charizard could be really powerful in the hands of an omniscient being, but for humans he just ends up being a character that needs to put in a lot more work mentally to keep things even.

Though conversely, in matchups where Charizard doesn't have to deal with mobility or safe approaches, suddenly things become extremely easy. There are a few matchups here and there where Charizard just gets to do Charizard things with very little respect for the opponent's options. He generally does at least decently in matchups against other spacing-based (generally sword-wielding) characters due to being more, uh, spacey than them in neutral with generally better damage per hit (Ryu makes me cry), and also matchups where winning neutral isn't quite as breezy but the juggle and edgeguard situations following could often be reason for a bit of a cheeky evil grin. And then there's Luigi, who struggles against everything Charizard could possibly excel at; that matchup is so free, wow. Basically, matchups where the risk/reward ratio somehow isn't massively skewed in the opponent's favour are pretty good. Makes sense, right? The problem is really how the number of those isn't very big.

The most recent buffs to Charizard's aerials and the knockback on Flare Blitz did a decent amount in terms of helping the reward half of things a little, but safety in neutral is still severely lacking, so his poor escape options in disadvantage hurt the character way more than they need to. Tweaking a few moves to make them a tiny bit safer or faster could really carry the character a long way. Or they could just keep increasing his damage, maybe restore Rock Smash to its Brawl glory so he could join the rest of the heavies in the "Press down-B to break shields" club (I can't tell if I'm joking about this).

tl;dr: gib safe pokes pls b0ss
P.S.: Charizard's hurtbox on his head and neck both effectively reduces the disjointedness of his moves and makes powershielding things way more risky than it is for other characters. They're probably never going to change this, but man does it make this character suck way more than he should.

 

[Trifroze]

ZSS was always a lot of effort to succeed with as I'm sure you know (it's not like that counter play wasn't just as difficult to deal with before the nerfs); it is a bit grating they hurt the reward of her grab significantly and overall kinda gut the (already one of the worst in the game) grabs as well and this has loomed over my thoughts for a while now too ("isn't that a bit much? this is the move with 50 frames of cool down..." [now effectively +4 extra frames of CD]).

Regarding the effort, yeah took me more than 2 months for her neutral not to feel completely awkward.

now after 9 months it's only awkward versus the characters it's never going to stop being that way (◔ ‿ゝ◔)

I do hope they make up for the grab box duration reduction by also reducing the cooldown of all grab variations by that same amount, but this is probably best to acknowledge as wishful thinking. Then again I was also hoping for side b buffs since late summer and it eventually happened, so nothing is impossible. That feel when side b tip suddenly registered as 7% on training mode, then the full move as 13%, and in the end the tipper turned out to be an actual 7.5%.

Like, anecdotal and I didn't sit down to test it properly to see, but those grab duration nerfs are apart of the tether animation where she 'curls' it around - I don't believe ZSS can grab crouching Kirby from max range like she used to be able to anymore (and others similar) which is pretty balls. We got mild compensation against that binary interaction with side-b cool down reduction (but that's a 30 frame max range hitbox that only hits them at max range) and the outer hitbox of nair reaching lower (but not low enough to hit the likes of Kirby I don't think).

But I think the fairer assertion here would be that perhaps there aren't really "top tiers" in this game anymore, perhaps with Bayo (+ Cloud) as an exception. Sheik is still good, but all of her active mains have shown struggle and many frauds jumped ship, we still overly rate Rosa high despite so few being able to succeed with her, no other feasible contender has suddenly jumped up the charts in strengths to compensate with the readjustments - it's fairer to observe that the power/viability has been shared across the entire cast.

ZSS still is difficult to see not as roughly top 5 (personally).
But yeah, this character was walking a wire tightrope where her risk and reward roughly balanced out - they reduced her reward sizably and increased her risk noticeably. I'm kinda hopeful they don't just leave her as is, but it likely wouldn't be too bad if they did - her necessitating a secondary just to cover obnoxious binary design oversights doesn't really detract from her overall strength.

But as heralded since the dawn of newcomer DLC, a character with a lot more risk but similar reward to characters without the risk is going to struggle in the long term. Maybe the end is nigh.

Max range grab definitely still works on low crouches (done this in matches post patch), although I'm not sure if it ever worked on Kirby if he did the crouch reactively, since for some reason his hurtbox is apparently lower in the first few frames of his crouch even though the animation looks exactly the same for a long time before actual idle animations begin. Nair hits Puff and G&W if frame perfect (luckily G&W's crouch always starts with the animation that has the higher hurtbox, doesn't work on the lower one).

What comes to weaknesses, I'd like to think that from where we stand now, Bayonetta counterplay has way more room to develop than Bayonetta's meta, and for Cloud it's almost certainly the case considering how his weaknesses are basically powershield, relatively precise spacing and his recovery (+ ledgesnap importantly for some MUs). Dair basically embodies the effectiveness of Cloud when you don't know how to fight against him vs when you do, and recovery is always pretty hard to truly abuse without experience because even if it's a literal 50:50 (i.e. Mac in most offstage scenarios) the gimp requires higher level concepts to consistently pull off.

I'd also like to think those two are next in line for bops if anyone is at all anymore, and I'm sure every other popular top tier candidate has their own clear weaknesses now which hold them back in one considerable way or another like you pretty much said (though these weaknesses would be easier to pinpoint if I actually played them).

I'm leaning on ZSS having the niche of the best character with (considerable) disjoints though if nothing else. Cloud contests but from an outsider perspective he seems more like a sword brawler with a charge thing than a zoner (and I think he's more likely to experience an uphill in the long run).

 

[HeavyLobster]

Tweaking a few moves to make them a tiny bit safer or faster could really carry the character a long way. Or they could just keep increasing his damage, maybe restore Rock Smash to its Brawl glory so he could join the rest of the heavies in the "Press down-B to break shields" club (I can't tell if I'm joking about this).

tl;dr: gib safe pokes pls b0ss

Yeah. -3 frames of landing lag on Fair and Nair, along with -3 frames of endlag on Ftilt, would help him out a lot. Just enough to let him space some stuff while being actually safe. You still have to be careful, but being able to space things without getting punished and not having to worry about autocancel windows all the time would make things a lot easier for him. Zard is generally pretty strong at edgeguarding and juggling foes, but getting into that advantaged state is really hard, and losing neutral is bad because he has a hard time landing due to his physics and poor landing options. Even a lot of other low tiers have safer poke options to work with.

 

[Yonder]

Yeah. -3 frames of landing lag on Fair and Nair, along with -3 frames of endlag on Ftilt, would help him out a lot. Just enough to let him space some stuff while being actually safe. You still have to be careful, but being able to space things without getting punished and not having to worry about autocancel windows all the time would make things a lot easier for him. Zard is generally pretty strong at edgeguarding and juggling foes, but getting into that advantaged state is really hard, and losing neutral is bad because he has a hard time landing due to his physics and poor landing options. Even a lot of other low tiers have safer poke options to work with.

Nair could use some shaved frames I agree. Using a falling nair from above as Charizard is just asking for a shield grab. (Same with Luigi falling nair but we all know its uses as a frame 3 combo breaker.

Charizard does have fantastic specials, jab, and bair at least. Imagine how much better someone like Palutena would be if she swapped specials with Zard. Um, how ever demented that would look.

 

[C0rvus]

Well, they're kinda just "out of place" moves, DA is one thing in terms of niche (it's cooldown does seem to expect you to catch people with it's late hitboxes though :<), but down tilt has the "style" of Captain Falcon's down tilt, yet has the feather weight specifics for damage/hitboxes. That disunity makes sense for say, up tilt, which has intangibility, kills, insane start up but lolworthy end lag, however when down tilt has a weak tipper hit that has combo specs like Sheik, Fox, Falco, etc but with it's range and massive cool down could only be used as a poke that gives little and is terrible on block it seems design wise they didn't know what they were aiming for. But let's say if they swapped the hitbox placement and/or upped it's damage, then we could see it make "sense", although obviously we'd just want 5 frames lag off of it and then we'd be sitting with a solid "standard feather weight" down tilt.



ZSS was always a lot of effort to succeed with as I'm sure you know (it's not like that counter play wasn't just as difficult to deal with before the nerfs); it is a bit grating they hurt the reward of her grab significantly and overall kinda gut the (already one of the worst in the game) grabs as well and this has loomed over my thoughts for a while now too ("isn't that a bit much? this is the move with 50 frames of cool down..." [now effectively +4 extra frames of CD]).
Anecdotal, and I didn't sit down to test it properly to see, but those grab duration nerfs are apart of the tether animation where she 'curls' it around - I don't believe ZSS can grab crouching Kirby from max range like she used to be able to anymore (and others similar) edit: was made considerably harder (but still possible) - which is pretty balls. We got mild compensation against that binary interaction with side-b cool down reduction (but that's a 30 frame max range hitbox that only hits them at max range) and the outer hitbox of nair reaching lower (but not low enough to hit the likes of Kirby I don't think).

But I think the fairer assertion here would be that perhaps there aren't really "top tiers" in this game anymore, perhaps with Bayo (+ Cloud) as an exception. Sheik is still good, but all of her active mains have shown struggle and many frauds jumped ship, we still overly rate Rosa high despite so few being able to succeed with her, no other feasible contender has suddenly jumped up the charts in strengths to compensate with the readjustments - it's fairer to observe that the power/viability has been shared across the entire cast.

ZSS still is difficult to see not as roughly top 5 (personally).
But yeah, this character was walking a wire tightrope where her risk and reward roughly balanced out - they reduced her reward sizably and increased her risk [with the way we currently 'play her'] noticeably. I'm kinda hopeful they don't just leave her as is, but it likely wouldn't be too bad if they did - her necessitating a secondary just to cover obnoxious binary design oversights doesn't really detract from her overall strength.

But as heralded since the dawn of newcomer DLC, a character with a lot more risk but similar reward to characters without the risk is going to struggle in the long term. Maybe the end is nigh.

You think ZSS requires a secondary? For what matchups? Would be interesting to have a game where even top tiers aren't safe from very bad MUs. But I imagine a player like Nairo will just keep on trucking with her solo anyway.

 

[ZSaberLink]

BlueLink actually believes Link to be (overall) the better one of the two (depends from MU to MU), as I previously stated in this thread quite a while back (the reasoning being something like: Link has a comparable camping game but with better/stronger mid range options)
and by seeing what he does with the character and by actually playing with him I'd be inclined to agree
but it's really hard to state these kind of things out loud because [worldwide] Link lacks results compared to ToonLink and it kinda makes you look like a fool
MY personal opinion is that Link is (slightly) underrated while ToonLink is slightly overrated, and that they should probably be put in roughly the same viability tier
reasons:
Link has comparable camping capabilities as his cartoony version, the former has way better bombs (and arrows too but I don't feel like they are all that important) that can be used to control portions of the stage by simply laying them down, the latter has better mobility (which offsets his worse bombs) and a slightly better boomerang
also, Link has way better range on his normals and a bigger reward for landing his grab at lowish%s
this means that it can actually be HARDER to break Link's zoning game in respect to ToonLink
ToonLink's extra mobility kinda offsets that and it also aids him in his disadvantaged state by making it easier to reset to neutral, whereas Link struggles a bit more in this area
both characters also have similar frame data (actually, iirc Link's might be slightly better !_!) with the difference that Link has overall better dammage per hit
their advantaged states are also roughly on the same level, they both have bomb confirms, they both cover the opponents defensive options with the same kind of strategies BUT while ToonLink may have the slight edge to convert stray hits into dammage thanks to his superior mobility, Link has a better trap game and has a really high fast fall speed to help him baiting out things

tl;dr
Neutral state: Link (slightly) > ToonLink
Advantaged state: Link = ToonLink
Disadvantaged state: Link < ToonLink

again, this is just my opinion, I might very well be wrong, especially considering that I don't actually play these characters

As a Link main, I feel like you're forgetting how much safer Toon Link's ground moves are in terms of endlag. Then again, I feel like the main weakness of Link is his inability to deal with CQC (basically if you play against a Link, manage to get right in his face and there's very little he can do), and while Toon Link likely has that same weakness, he can run away and throw bombs a lot better than Link can. Link's fastest ground move (his jab) comes out on frame 7. TLink is similar with a frame 6 jab.

Generally Link's aerials are better (especially now that Link's Fair = Toon Link's Fair in killing power pretty much), but Toon Link's mobility ends up allowing him to avoid dangerous situations easier.

Although do folks want to talk about him in a more general sense? I feel like the starting frames on most of his attacks are decent, but not amazing (Bair 6, Nair 7, Jab 7, UTilt 8, Spin Attack 8, DSmash 9, USmash 10, Dtilt - 11), a couple late starters with not much end lag (FTilt & Fair), And then some super committal on both ends (Grab or FSmash). Grab is at least rewarding now thanks to DThrow combos, and thankfully tipper FSmash 1 is not too bad when spaced right. Basically he's missing a combo breaker pretty badly (something to beat grab for example).

 

[TheGoodGuava]

You think ZSS requires a secondary? For what matchups? Would be interesting to have a game where even top tiers aren't safe from very bad MUs. But I imagine a player like Nairo will just keep on trucking with her solo anyway.

Well Ryu looks to be in his favor. Prepatch it seemed to be even, Trela vs Nairo is a great example of the matchup and after the nerfs it could quite possibly be in Ryu's favor
ESAM considers the Esam/ZSS matchup a 60:40 and considering how often he plays Nairo and his brother.... That might just be him knowing the players really well though, he did lose to Marss at Pound but that was a pretty damn close set

 

[Shaya]

I didn't use the word require.
But rather implied the situation coming to pass, likely more so on a player level than a character one.

ZSS having to curtail her entire play style if an opposing character brings together a competent non-interactive game plan (theoretical, but still binary interactions are there) then the mental and technical efforts, with which hers are extreme in contrast to most others in the cast (thin-lined attack animations with minimal active frames), are likely significantly easier to deal with using another character.
It isn't something that would actually be entirely reflective of the characters themselves but more so something which the ZSS player doesn't have the time for adapting within a single set during tournament - having a few things whiff that aren't impossible to hit with and having an enemy just hot wire their brains into doing nothing extraneous while relying on said whiffs is a very very easy way to put a Zamus player on tilt.
Any intelligent tournament player should make plans and possible concessions if this dynamic presents itself because it's just one area of the whole gamete of smash skills that are off point that could be letting you down while the rest places you well ahead of your opponent's skill level.

The last tournament I went to during my last set I couldn't space nairs against spin dash charging/releasing sonic (low to the ground, etc), kept whiffing [patch johns imo] kept getting spun into for 20%, a few frames off on several instances and that's the difference between Sonic being limited and taken advantage of or me just taking 20% and being in a juggle trap on repeat, although I'm aware of the scenario in my mind (there are easy adaptions to make here, but I was purposely lazy/not entirely caring), I'm just dealing with 2-3 frame windows total with 30 frame start up requirements for actually applying pressure so it's considerably easier to mess up something vital; but without said mess ups I'm playing an extremely strong character still who doesn't lose to Sonic (or probably anyone).

 

[Browny]

Don't let Browny see this post.

He gets triggered so hard when people think Zard's kill throw is better.

From my experience with Zard I believe his pretty decent. I don't think he's out classed by the other heavies, but his damage output is noticeably lower than DK and Bowser.

Nah its fine

They admitted Charizard benefits more from rage, which is true to the point that charizard is sometimes going to be able to KO earlier than Mewtwo with it. Granted the difference is still very significant (it takes around 130 rage on charizard AND landing on a platform to equal the strength of 80 rage mewtwos uthrow from the ground) but it can still happen

 

[|RK|]

Re: ZSS grab and Kirby's crouch - I think that's because of Kirby's breathing. He has two levels of crouching because of it, and the lowest can even duck KO punch.

 

[Game7a1]

Re: ZSS grab and Kirby's crouch - I think that's because of Kirby's breathing. He has two levels of crouching because of it, and the lowest can even duck KO punch.

It can. I've done some testing with KO Punch, and Puff, G&W, and Kirby should dodge it (I assume even Wii Fit Trainer should as well) with a duck; however, Little Mac can still hit them with correct spacing. Thankfully, the recipient will receive only 85% of the knockback. (EDIT: May do more testing with this.)
But for ZSS' grab. Doesn't the end of it even grab a ducking Puff? Wouldn't you have to be up close to ZSS to duck under the grab?

 

[Kofu]

Nair could use some shaved frames I agree. Using a falling nair from above as Charizard is just asking for a shield grab. (Same with Luigi falling nair but we all know its uses as a frame 3 combo breaker.

Charizard does have fantastic specials, jab, and bair at least. Imagine how much better someone like Palutena would be if she swapped specials with Zard. Um, how ever demented that would look.

Isn't Angelic Missile basically Flare Blitz without the recoil? Haven't used the move in forever. Might have another drawback though, don't remember. And Celestial Firework has invincibility at the start, letting it function a little like Rock Smash.

I'm probably going to bow out of the rest of the Charizard discission; I have a very low opinion of the character's apparent design philosophy. He has a few very good moves/options (jab, grab game, USmash, BAir, dash) but then a bunch of weaknesses that, instead of making his options more well-rounded to compensate, they gave him a bunch of armored moves that are fairly lenient in use. They also help him to build up rage, something that he can abuse quite well.

The character is decent, at least better than Ganon and Dedede (jab, grab game, and dash speed all cement that). But at least Ganon's design (basically bit everything really hard), while frustrating to fight against at times feels well-done overall instead of sloppily composed where they gave the character some good moves then just said, "screw it, we'll give him armor and call it a day."

 

[Swamp Sensei]

Isn't Angelic Missile basically Flare Blitz without the recoil?

Not in the slightest...

It's like comparing Flare Blitz to Green Missile. Not much in common at all.

 

[LRodC]

Not in the slightest...

It's like comparing Flare Blitz to Green Missile. Not much in common at all.

I think it's an apt comparison. It doesn't charge like Green Missile and it has similar start up, distance, and end lag to Flare Blitz. The only difference is that Flare Blitz is much more powerful but with the added recoil.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

I think it's an apt comparison. It doesn't charge like Green Missile and it has similar start up, distance, and end lag to Flare Blitz. The only difference is that Flare Blitz is much more powerful but with the added recoil.

Angelic Missile doesn't have super armor and goes in an arc though.

Or am I wrong?

 

[ARGHETH]

Angelic Missile doesn't have super armor and goes in an arc though.

Or am I wrong?

It goes straight, and I don't think it has SA. It does have less endlag after hitting someone, though, and kills ~20% later.

 

[sedrf]

To any of you older veterans and mods.
Why were customs banned in the 1st place?
Seeing this video:

Customs palutena looks much more different

 

[bc1910]

To any of you older veterans and mods.
Why were customs banned in the 1st place?
Seeing this video:

Customs palutena looks much more different

Logistics, additional jank, perceived worse game balance, and frankly laziness on the community's part.

I also think the fact that For Glory doesn't allow customs affected things more than everyone, including top players, would like to admit.

If you could get some quick, dirty experience against a variety of custom sets (or indeed get to use them without having to arrange the match) then people wouldn't have been so scared of them.

I personally support the customs ban as I think game balance is better without customs, but I'm under no illusion that the lack of an easy online mode to practice customs in was a bigger factor than people realise.

 

[Luco]

That being said, analysing customs with the presence of Bayonetta is interesting, because customs were often cited as the source of ridiculous advantages, sometimes kill setups that were flat out unfair. Pika's T-wave and HSB were one such example, but more stuff existed. I wonder if cringing customs back would make people feel overall more powerful and more in a position to deal with stuff they couldn't before. It would probably come at the cost of balance though - DLC characters and characters with no notable customs would probably get shafted.

As for the assertion that the game's gap between top and bottom is closer than Brawl, I'm not exactly skeptical but I think people need to look at the game in a certain way before saying that. The game *feels* like its top tier is less powerful than Brawl MK and *feels* like its bottom tier is more powerful than Brawl Ganondorf but we established long ago that direct power comparisons between games mean very little. In terms of the actual power-level of this game, is the gap between Sheik, Bayo and Cloud and then Jigglypuff any less shatteringly obvious than the gap between brawl MK and brawl Ganny? Because I'd like to remind everyone that Brawl Ganny did occasionally win locals and even regionals and was able to make top 8 slightly more consistently... Which I don't know how well Smash 4 Jiggly does in comparison.

 

[Mr. Johan]

Bayonetta and Cloud make for an interesting case study in exploring customs once more.

Their crazy advantage states don't seem so crazy when you can craze them right back with Close Combat, TWave, Kong Cyclone, Thunder+, Floaty Star Bit, and so on.

Hell, Cloud vs. Wii Fit Trainer could easily skew right into the hard counter realm for Cloud if Miss Fit got Jumbo Hoop to work with.

 

[ARGHETH]

Their crazy advantage states don't seem so crazy when you can craze them right back with Close Combat, TWave, Kong Cyclone, Thunder+, Floaty Star Bit, and so on.

Thunder+?

 

[Megamang]

Luco

I don't care so much about the gap between top and bottom, but more about the amount of tournament viable characters there are at most levels.

And this isn't some ratio, I never understood that idea. I like as many characters finishing in tournaments as possible, no matter how many don't.

I do feel bad for the mains of characters that seem to be ignored in the patch cycle, but I have a feeling they will be rewarded eventually for sticking with a low tier.

 

[bc1910]

I'm not so sure any more. I can't see much being done to the characters who haven't already been tweaked.

I expect Jigglypuff plays exactly how they want and they don't intend to improve her. Something would have been done by now. I would suggest that she has been gently placed back in her original role of "joke character", but with just enough strengths to sorta-kinda compete. FWIW I expect her online win rate is higher than we might think, hitting her is not always easy.

I don't know what they're playing at with D3. Having nerfed him substantially from Brawl and then even more in 1.0.4, they've barely touched him aside from another nerf to his air speed. I can only assume he's partially atoning for his Brawl CG sins, and is a menace in FG so they're reluctant to buff him. Bear in mind that with slight lag D3 goes from being a highly punishable slug with no camping game who never dies, to an unpunishable behemoth with massive hitboxes and bouncing balls of death that do 13% (and are hard to reflect) who still never dies.

Palutena has had a bit of love, but she's clearly built around her customs and I can't see much being done to fix the fact that she's basically a skeleton character without access to all her specials.

Most of the other characters I can think of have actually been buffed in some way. Falco, Ganon, Zelda... they've all had their fair share of love. The problem is the fundamental issues that those characters have which would require extreme overtuning to make them viable (Falco used to be good because some of his tools were extremely overtuned), which the dev team seems reluctant to do.

Zelda could still do with being rebuilt from the ground up. Or, knowing the devs, given a better hoo hah.

Most of the other characters who have been all but ignored in the patch cycle, such as Mario, Pit and Ness, are good anyway. If I had to guess, I would say that Falco and Roy are the most likely candidates to receive substantial buffs that push them into viable territory. Potentially Bowser Jr as well, since all he really needs is a good combo throw or better kill throw.

I say all of this under the assumption that we don't have many (or any) patches left, but of course anything could happen. It's not completely out of the realm of possibility that they keep light support going for the game for the foreseeable future. Until Smash 5, even.

 

[Luco]

Luco

I don't care so much about the gap between top and bottom, but more about the amount of tournament viable characters there are at most levels.

And this isn't some ratio, I never understood that idea. I like as many characters finishing in tournaments as possible, no matter how many don't.

I do feel bad for the mains of characters that seem to be ignored in the patch cycle, but I have a feeling they will be rewarded eventually for sticking with a low tier.

It comes with the privilege of having a game that gets regularly patched, my friend. :D

The reason ratios are important is because often character usage is somewhat ratio-based too (biased towards the top tiers), so we want the biggest ratio of balance so the best ratio of players have the best chance of providing a competititve environment saturated with many different characters and players.

 

[outfoxd]

I'm not so sure any more. I can't see much being done to the characters who haven't already been tweaked.

I expect Jigglypuff plays exactly how they want and they don't intend to improve her. Something would have been done by now. I would suggest that she has been gently placed back in her original role of "joke character", but with just enough strengths to sorta-kinda compete. FWIW I expect her online win rate is higher than we might think, hitting her is not always easy.

I don't know what they're playing at with D3. Having nerfed him substantially from Brawl and then even more in 1.0.4, they've barely touched him aside from another nerf to his air speed. I can only assume he's partially atoning for his Brawl CG sins, and is a menace in FG so they're reluctant to buff him. Bear in mind that with slight lag D3 goes from being a highly punishable slug with no camping game who never dies, to an unpunishable behemoth with massive hitboxes and bouncing balls of death that do 13% (and are hard to reflect) who still never dies.

Palutena has had a bit of love, but she's clearly built around her customs and I can't see much being done to fix the fact that she's basically a skeleton character without access to all her specials.

Most of the other characters I can think of have actually been buffed in some way. Falco, Ganon, Zelda... they've all had their fair share of love. The problem is the fundamental issues that those characters have which would require extreme overtuning to make them viable (Falco used to be good because some of his tools were extremely overtuned), which the dev team seems reluctant to do.

Zelda could still do with being rebuilt from the ground up. Or, knowing the devs, given a better hoo hah.

Most of the other characters who have been all but ignored in the patch cycle, such as Mario, Pit and Ness, are good anyway. If I had to guess, I would say that Falco and Roy are the most likely candidates to receive substantial buffs that push them into viable territory. Potentially Bowser Jr as well, since all he really needs is a good combo throw or better kill throw.

I say all of this under the assumption that we don't have many (or any) patches left, but of course anything could happen. It's not completely out of the realm of possibility that they keep light support going for the game for the foreseeable future. Until Smash 5, even.

It certainly feels like some characters the balance team are comfortable with. When DH gets anything they only seem to be minor tweaks, like the mild increase in KB his smashes got. The fact they still haven't rectified his smashes leads me to believe they were always supposed to be unreliable. I figure they'd expect the dog to be able to play a trap game so well to shut down the more powerful characters, but the meta is just too full of kill confirms and heavy hits for it to work outside of outliers like Brood, Yusan and Dandy Penguin.

 

[TheGoodGuava]

I'm not so sure any more. I can't see much being done to the characters who haven't already been tweaked.

I expect Jigglypuff plays exactly how they want and they don't intend to improve her. Something would have been done by now. I would suggest that she has been gently placed back in her original role of "joke character", but with just enough strengths to sorta-kinda compete. FWIW I expect her online win rate is higher than we might think, hitting her is not always easy.

I don't know what they're playing at with D3. Having nerfed him substantially from Brawl and then even more in 1.0.4, they've barely touched him aside from another nerf to his air speed. I can only assume he's partially atoning for his Brawl CG sins, and is a menace in FG so they're reluctant to buff him. Bear in mind that with slight lag D3 goes from being a highly punishable slug with no camping game who never dies, to an unpunishable behemoth with massive hitboxes and bouncing balls of death that do 13% (and are hard to reflect) who still never dies.

Palutena has had a bit of love, but she's clearly built around her customs and I can't see much being done to fix the fact that she's basically a skeleton character without access to all her specials.

Most of the other characters I can think of have actually been buffed in some way. Falco, Ganon, Zelda... they've all had their fair share of love. The problem is the fundamental issues that those characters have which would require extreme overtuning to make them viable (Falco used to be good because some of his tools were extremely overtuned), which the dev team seems reluctant to do.

Zelda could still do with being rebuilt from the ground up. Or, knowing the devs, given a better hoo hah.

Most of the other characters who have been all but ignored in the patch cycle, such as Mario, Pit and Ness, are good anyway. If I had to guess, I would say that Falco and Roy are the most likely candidates to receive substantial buffs that push them into viable territory. Potentially Bowser Jr as well, since all he really needs is a good combo throw or better kill throw.

I say all of this under the assumption that we don't have many (or any) patches left, but of course anything could happen. It's not completely out of the realm of possibility that they keep light support going for the game for the foreseeable future. Until Smash 5, even.

I would love to see Falco buffed, but how can they buff him in a considerable way without making him almost broken? Buffing his air speed could give him dthrow -> bair -> bair combos that kill at 70, buffing his dash speed makes it so he can get in and do things hes one of the best in the game at, everything else other than SHDL (which probably won't happen) wouldn't help much

 

[Baby_Sneak]

I would love to see Falco buffed, but how can they buff him in a considerable way without making him almost broken? Buffing his air speed could give him dthrow -> bair -> bair combos that kill at 70, buffing his dash speed makes it so he can get in and do things hes one of the best in the game at, everything else other than SHDL (which probably won't happen) wouldn't help much

Just buff laser to a good state.

 

[BunbUn129]

I would love to see Falco buffed, but how can they buff him in a considerable way without making him almost broken? Buffing his air speed could give him dthrow -> bair -> bair combos that kill at 70, buffing his dash speed makes it so he can get in and do things hes one of the best in the game at, everything else other than SHDL (which probably won't happen) wouldn't help much

If you mean CQC by "one of the best in the game at," not really. Falco's CQC is good, but it certainly has flaws. Jab doesn't properly connect, down tilt and back air don't have much range, and forward air is frame 10 with heavy landing lag. With this in mind, giving Falco a decent Mario dashing speed wouldn't suddenly break him. SHDL was stupid, but lasers don't need 3 years of ending lag (they're punishable on hit by a large portion of the cast, even at max range), and--generously--taking off 5-10 frames of ending lag would make them usable but not abusable. Either decent dash speed and/or functional lasers and Falco is sitting nicely in the mid-tier. He still has to contend with a bad disadvantage state and a lack of reliable KO set-ups, and unless he receives M2/Ike levels of treatment, the buffs I mentioned won't make him oppressive any time soon.

 

[epicnights]

Just about everyone can agree that Falco lasers need some kind of upgrade. However, I've never really been able to piece together how exactly they would be made better without becoming overbearing. What are the ways you would make lasers better, and how would that change his gameplan?

 

[wedl!!]

reduce ending lag or increase hitstun so they're less punishable on hit/shield

it'd make falco actually threatening at longer ranges so he could force approaches/dictate spacing

also please don't make this into 3 pages of buff/nerf wishlisht discussion

 

[Rizen]

To buff Falco I wouldn't do much to his laser, just increase the hitstun and make the range longer. I'd improve his grab reward and give him a lesser 'Luigi syndrome': bad mobility but good combos from grabs. Also make his side B have more active frames and his UpB faster/longer.

 

[jespoke]

The reason they aren't going to increase hitstun on Flaco lasers is that they are already by far the most annoying projectile for low level players as is. Think Megamans pellets that stop your approach, eat your jumps and attacks and stuff, except with much longer range.

 

[wedl!!]

you do realize that falco is stationary during lazer and has a lot of endlag, right

 

[jespoke]

You underestimate how awful people outside the community are at this game. I have seen some ****.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Bayonetta and Cloud make for an interesting case study in exploring customs once more.

Their crazy advantage states don't seem so crazy when you can craze them right back with Close Combat, TWave, Kong Cyclone, Thunder+, Floaty Star Bit, and so on.

Hell, Cloud vs. Wii Fit Trainer could easily skew right into the hard counter realm for Cloud if Miss Fit got Jumbo Hoop to work with.

I'll always have a soft spot for Thunder+ after I got a hepta-kill with Thoron+ in 8P Smash once, but you're going to have to explain that one a bit more. Floaty Star Bit too now that I see it, since it's Shooting Star Bit everyone complains about. (Rosalina getting a long range projectile is apparently cancer incarnate to some people.)

I'm also drawing a complete blank on what Close Combat is, which is mildly embarrassing.

Lastly, a plug for the custom meta thread here.

 

[Asdioh]

Bayonetta's moveset actually included something kind of similar to what I always would've liked to see on Falco's lasers. I'm referring to the way her landing lag increases as she uses multiple specials before touching the ground. I thought it would be neat if a single Falco laser had noticeably less endlag than multiple shots. It would prevent him from safely spamming projectiles everywhere like he could do in melee and brawl, but it would allow him to use single laser more tactically for chip damage, to force/interrupt approaches, and possibly to approach. He could also choose to keep shooting, at the cost of a bit more ending lag. In their current iteration, they're only viable for... shooting offstage and hoping it gives you some free damage and maybe forces an airdodge?

So umm... bayonetta has some interesting ideas in her design, even if they're not pulled off correctly.