Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[jespoke]

Also "who the hell is Corrin" if we're assuming all the DLC is there.

That would be a Roy situation re-run, just 10 months early instead of 4, but with actual plans to bring it to the west

 

[Blobface]

Duck hunt kills fine, it's just the risk involved with him trying to kill is absurd. Laggy smashes that don't always work, laggy projectile that also doesn't always work and fails if the opponent just hits a button.

Dair, frisbee, gunmen, and ledge dthrow (Due to decreased knockback. He gets these easily with ledge can + his amazing grab) all true combo into kills or 50/50 consistently.

The issue is all these lose to attacks, he has no way to kill a button hitter safely + even the smallest punish of getting grabbed + thrown offstage probably means death. Any character landing one of their horizontal dsmashes (sonic, fox, mario) ensure dhd can't use the can to cover himself so he should die.

D-throw Knockback is decreased by the ledge?

 

[ParanoidDrone]

D-throw Knockback is decreased by the ledge?

I'm speculating wildly but the throw may position the opponent just right so that if done at the ledge they get an automatic bounce off the stage or something like that.

 

[Red Stache]

I wanna see what the game would've been like if Cloud and Bayo were included in the initial release to add to the unpatched nonsense that was there.

While interesting, Pre-patch Diddy and Sheik, would be too much for either Cloud or Bayonetta to handle.
Diddy and Sheik (Plus Pre-patch Rosalina) would have grown even better as time marched on and their metas developed even more.

By the time, Cloud and Bayonetta would get into the game, there would be Diddy players everywhere with a few Sheiks and Rosalinas sprinkled around.

Other characters, would have very little-to-none of their metas developed, and both Could and Bayonetta would share the same fate.

Because even them, pale in comparison to Pre-patched Diddy, Shiek, and Rosalina.

But at least people would still be excited to see some new characters added to the game.

 

[Jalil]

I don't play duck hunt but I'm guessing at high percents when down throw up air kills, some people di towards the stage cuz they were expecting an fthrow. Dthrow combo's with bad di and if you fthrow while they were expecting dthrow, they're sent further off stage.

 

[Yonder]

D-throw Knockback is decreased by the ledge?

Same deal with Luigi too actually. Maybe it applies to an even wider spectrum of D throws?

 

[LancerStaff]

Some Dthrows just have reduced KB right on the ledge, usually ones that involve the opponent hitting the ground. Another one is Marth.

 

[Asdioh]

I've actually been meaning to ask about that. Kirby's Fthrow at the ledge sends people at a significantly shallower angle, allowing for followups at higher percentages. I'd post a picture comparing knockback, but maybe some other time. I wanted to ask if anybody else had throws that did that, but apparently it's more common than I thought. Is it generally beneficial for your character?

 

[Shady Shaymin]

Judging by this past week's results and general theory, I would say the top 10 looks something like this

With the top 20 looking like

1.1.5. has been out for a reasonable amount of time and I think we can all agree that something along these lines is representative of our high tier meta, give or take a few placements. And of course, the cacophony of semi-viable mid and low tiers will continue to be a mess while the meta tries to settle. Jiggs and Ganon are booty, everyone else, it's a bunch of unremarkable "honest" characters that no one can agree on a placement for because, quite frankly, they're all kind of in the same meh category and are much closer to one another in viability than the high/top tiers.

 

[Wintermelon43]

Judging by this past week's results and general theory, I would say the top 10 looks something like this

With the top 20 looking like

1.1.5. has been out for a reasonable amount of time and I think we can all agree that something along these lines is representative of our high tier meta, give or take a few placements. And of course, the cacophony of semi-viable mid and low tiers will continue to be a mess while the meta tries to settle. Jiggs and Ganon are booty, everyone else, it's a bunch of unremarkable "honest" characters that no one can agree on a placement for because, quite frankly, they're all kind of in the same meh category and are much closer to one another in viability than the high/top tiers.

You only listed 9 characters for top 10. I assume you meant to place Villager there since you didn't place him in top 20?

 

[Pancracio17]

i feel like corrin and lucario and villy are missing from the list, and ike, gren and megaman i find guestionable.
i agree with top 10 but top 20 should imo be more like this (unordered)


edit: apparently it was a top 9

 

[Shady Shaymin]

You only listed 9 characters for top 10. I assume you meant to place Villager there since you didn't place him in top 20?

I'm an effing idiot, both were only 9 spots. Thank you for pointing that out.

 

[KamikazePotato]

Ike, Greninja, and Mega Man have all been putting on very good results recently. They're more than deserving of High Tier. As-is Captain Falcon, which the lists kinda forgot to include.

 

[Shady Shaymin]

i feel like corrin and lucario and villy are missing from the list, and ike, gren and megaman i find guestionable.
i agree with top 10 but top 20 should imo be more like this (unordered)


edit: apparently it was a top 9

I think corrin has the potential to be top 15, but she hasn't been rising at the pace of gren, ike, or mm. That could easily change. As for rob and luc, I don't know. They've placed well recently but I can't see them above tink or falcon who imo are more deserving of that spot in top 20. Both are deadly in their own right, but I don't think their gameplan will be as consistent down the road as the ones I put in top 20, ESPECIALLY the latter.

 

[Pancracio17]

Ike, Greninja, and Mega Man have all been putting on very good results recently. They're more than deserving of High Tier. As-is Captain Falcon, which the lists kinda forgot to include.

yeah i was looking at that thing koopa posted for reference and i was kinda surprised to cap doing so well. But i still believe that corrin, lucario and rob are better chars. Only corrin im iffy on since a lot of her top players have secondaries but is till regarded as top 15 for a lot of top players. Lucario is there because Japan holds lucario up very highly and he gets results often over there apparently, but id like to double check and i dont know where.

edit: as for rob, I used the thing koopa posted as reference and that ive seen him a lot recently in tourney results after the weekend

 

[KamikazePotato]

In fact, I feel like confining High Tier to just 10 characters isn't right. There's a lot of characters in this game that are really solid, I'd go with something more like:

Top Tier:


High Tier:



I think all these characters are solidly High Tier. Borderline cases are:
The theory is strong, and people have been putting in some work with him, but results are surprisingly weak so far. I think he's high tier but the strong evidence just isn't there yet.
Same deal. People are catching on to how much he's improved, but the proof just isn't quite there yet.
Everyone thinks these guys are good, but no one ever uses them, so it's hard to say.

 

[Pancracio17]

thank you for excluding the pits, they havent done anything in a loooong while.
as for marth, he has been getting really good results if i remember correctly, i think he is either in or borderline

 

[Illuminose]

In fact, I feel like confining High Tier to just 10 characters isn't right. There's a lot of characters in this game that are really solid, I'd go with something more like:

Top Tier:


High Tier:



I think all these characters are solidly High Tier. Borderline cases are:
The theory is strong, and people have been putting in some work with him, but results are surprisingly weak so far. I think he's high tier but the strong evidence just isn't there yet.
Same deal. People are catching on to how much he's improved, but the proof just isn't quite there yet.
Everyone thinks these guys are good, but no one ever uses them, so it's hard to say.

Is this in order? Please tell me no...

 

[KamikazePotato]

No. I think outside of maybe agreeing on a general top 4 of Bayo/Cloud/Sheik/Diddy, ordering within the tiers is pretty much impossible.

 

[Shady Shaymin]

thank you for excluding the pits, they havent done anything in a loooong while.
as for marth, he has been getting really good results if i remember correctly, i think he is either in or borderline

Something not oft discussed here is the concept of being outclassed. Everyone likes talking about their mid tier's strengths and how great they'd be if some top player put in the work. That's honestly great, but when you're a top player looking for someone to get results with, you see shulk and you think "he's got potential, but why put in the work to learn all his monado tech when cloud has the same strengths with overall less drawbacks?" There are a few "pichu" characters in this roster who are essentially inferior competitive versions of their top tier counterpart, in exchange for some gimmick. Falco, Ganondorf, Link...you get the idea.

 

[NairWizard]

There was a time in the game's lifespan where the ability to kill early via some kind of quick grounded confirm (throw or tilt) defined your value as a character. You used to be able to look at Mario at that time and say, "yeah, Mario has some issues with killing, because he's got to use a smash for a kill, and while his up-smash is safeish, it's not totally safe, so he still has to take some risk." But now the meta's at a point where you can just respond to that with: doesn't everyone have to make a read to get a kill?

Sonic's had his smashes and kill throw nerfed and can struggle unless he gets a spindash confirm, Sheik doesn't have easymode d-throw 50:50s, Diddy and Luigi don't have throw or combo confirms any more, ZSS's guaranteed death situations from grab are now closer to 50:50s usually, Fox lost his jab-jab shenanigans (I don't care what anyone says about his rapid jab being amazing now; Fox with the ability to set characters to death % with just his jab alone was top 5 easily, even if it didn't outright kill many characters), MK lost his stairway against most of the cast, even Cloud lost his super low% up-air kills from onstage and can struggle to find a kill outside of Limit.

Basically most characters now struggle vs. shield to some extent and just dashing and rolling around shielding and whiff punishing OOS at high % is a valid strategy. The shield stun patch prevented this strategy from becoming degenerate, which demonstrates remarkable foresight from Nintendo, but it's nevertheless quite strong at all levels of play. Anti's entire playstyle with almost all of his characters revolves around this simple concept (dash and shield -> wait for a whiff or commitment -> roll or punish on reaction).

There are of course some characters who manage to have easy, safe kill confirms in this flick-the-C-stick-to-kill environment. Ryu, DK, Mewtwo, Rosalina, Diddy still, Bayonetta, Limit Cloud, Robin, Lucas, Ness, Falcon, and a handful of others. But most of these confirms are situational or are placed on characters who have a hard time engaging at the range that's necessary to execute them consistently while keeping other options available.

Ryu can confirm off of his aerials and up-tilt but since he commits to jumping at you, his being in the air is a problem, and his up-tilt can be difficult to land since it requires being close to the other character, which is a problem since other characters are incentivized to keep Ryu away anyway. DK is generally an awkward character who takes a mountain of percent whenever he gets hit so his KO power is purely symmetrical with the reward he offers his opponent just by being so big. Ditto for Falcon, who is less awkward but has a worse recovery.

Limit Cloud obviously needs to be in Limit to use LCS and that's provided that he doesn't need to hold on to Limit to recover (I think many of us underestimated the effects of the previous patch's nerfs on Cloud; they may have been slaps on the wrist but it's evident that Cloud has a little more trouble now creating openings to kill which prevents him from being fully broken). Mewtwo's grab data is a little poor, and missing isn't exactly shrugworthy for Mewtwo given how light he is. Robin's gameplan doesn't really lend itself to grabs although this is somewhat debatable since Arcthunder leads to grab opportunities. Ness' recovery is getting exploited more consistently at all levels, and being hard-core bopped by Rosalina doesn't exactly help his case.

I would say that Bayonetta, Rosalina, and Diddy are basically the only good characters in the game for whom killing safely falls in line with their natural gameplan, and they don't have large weaknesses in disadvantage to compensate their opponents for it. Diddy's banana peel effect is somewhat symmetrical as it does give his opponent a confirm too, which would wipe him off the list if not for how easy it is to set up situations where the opponent doesn't have the banana, coupled with how good and safe d-tilt to up-smash is, so he manages to secure a spot on the list regardless.

Honorable mentions go out to MK and Lucas. MK's gameplan is a little too one-dimensional, so avoiding his KO setups is easier by corollary, and Lucas' tether grab (although very good) may hold him back since he doesn't quite have prepatch ZSS levels of confirms.

If I had to pick a top 3, though, the 3 mentioned above would be it. Safety killing is a big deal. Safety killing on an otherwise good character with a decent disadvantaged state is just straight up insane.

 

[Blobface]

NairWizard is Rosalina's safe killing just Luma being Luma rather than any sort of confirm?

 

[Asdioh]

Ha. I was thinking "this is a good post" and then I got to the end, and realized it was SolidSense who wrote it, only with a different avatar and name color. That explains it!

NairWizard is Rosalina's safe killing just Luma being Luma rather than any sort of confirm?

Luma can kill you with Jab while Rosalina's halfway across the stage, I think that qualifies as safe

So what exactly has done so far to be consistently listed as well-established top 3 material with little to no contradiction?

Going back to this, I think Cloud is obviously extremely good, but as time goes on I can see him dropping at least a little. Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina immediately come to mind as more likely top 3s. Bayonetta I'm still not sure about. ZSS has seemed like a mixed bag lately, but I could see her being top 5, and still above Cloud.

This game is good. It makes me pretty happy to see people talking about what characters are top 20, and it actually matters because even as far down as 20, and possibly beyond, you still see those characters winning tournaments, or at least placing top 4/8.

 

[NairWizard]

Dabuz has shown that jab->jab->reaction up-smash is a great way to seal the stock as Rosalina. You just anticipate shield drop. That and up-air stuff alone is probably sufficient, but then she also has pretty safe edgeguarding (you play Ganon, you should know how safe Rosalina is when edgeguarding--probably safer than Sheik!).

And then on top of that, you have just how safe Luma is. The onus of caution at KO %s is always on Rosalina's opponent, who has to play around Luma if the Rosalina player has good Luma placement. Watch some Dabuz matches and take note of how often he has trouble sealing stocks. It's very rare.

 

[KamikazePotato]

Something not oft discussed here is the concept of being outclassed. Everyone likes talking about their mid tier's strengths and how great they'd be if some top player put in the work. That's honestly great, but when you're a top player looking for someone to get results with, you see shulk and you think "he's got potential, but why put in the work to learn all his monado tech when cloud has the same strengths with overall less drawbacks?" There are a few "pichu" characters in this roster who are essentially inferior competitive versions of their top tier counterpart, in exchange for some gimmick. Falco, Ganondorf, Link...you get the idea.

Well, I feel like most of the pushback from the people that play characters outside of Top/High Tier is mostly in the vein of 'our character isn't garbage' rather than 'our character is really good'. The Smash community tends to be hyperbolic about the weaker characters in this game. Most everyone is guilty of acting that way one time or another, including me.

Like, for example, people often say that Ganondorf is an unusable character in a bottom tier of his own. Despite this, there were statistics posted a couple pages ago that show him to be in the upper-half of overall tournament match victories, with a winning percentage to boot, and recently GanonTheBeast won a tournament with a decent number of people in it. That stuff pretty much gets ignored if you're a Mid/Low tier, though, so it's easy to see why people can tend to overrate their characters in an attempt to get some sense of recognition.

 

[Aaron1997]

Abadango's match-up chart

 

[KamikazePotato]

That's one very optimistic chart.

 

[Ulevo]

View attachment 105750

Abadango's match-up chart

After having played the Meta Knight vs Mewtwo match up, I feel there is a possibility Mewtwo might be slightly in favor. It isn't like it was pre-patch. Meta Knight cannot reliably kill combo Mewtwo without rage. While Mewtwo dies earlier than most characters Meta Knight has to fight, Mewtwo has some serious fire power. He never has to approach thanks to Shadow Ball, down tilt and up tilt are huge disjoints, and the ability to move while air dodging makes Meta Knight's juggle reads much harder. Add to that how good forward air is in neutral and how fast Mewtwo is post patch, I think this is even at best.

 

[Ninety]

That's one very optimistic chart.

Welcome to basically every matchup chart made by a character's mains.

 

[Megamang]

I'd believe it with Mewtwo. That character is damn scary now. It is just hard to be consistent when you are super light, especially when you have really committal moves like nair, confusion, and his pretty bad grab.

That said, he does have a lot of non-committal spacing moves. Fair freakin kills all the time, regardless of how stale it is. That move alone could make some character's neutral, but he also gets a nair that nets him followups up until it can straight up give him a kill. It doesn't seem like Mewtwo fails often so much as the other player makes some good reads that make Mewtwo regret being aggressive.

I still think Greninja beats Mewtwo, the slow double jump away and the lightness together make usmash terrifying, and shurikans can actually compete with shadow ball for forcing approaches, if you are clever with your charge

 

[FullMoon]

Welcome to basically every matchup chart made by a character's mains.

You must have missed DK Will's MU chart lol

 

[ARGHETH]

You must have missed DK Will's MU chart lol

And Mr. II's.
Robin only has two good MUs yay!

 

[LancerStaff]

I've actually been meaning to ask about that. Kirby's Fthrow at the ledge sends people at a significantly shallower angle, allowing for followups at higher percentages. I'd post a picture comparing knockback, but maybe some other time. I wanted to ask if anybody else had throws that did that, but apparently it's more common than I thought. Is it generally beneficial for your character?

I think the Beefy Smash Doods had a video about it a while back...

Since it's usually the designated combo throw that gets the reduced knockback and/or changed angle, (thanks for reminding me lol) it's usually a good thing. If it's on certain throws it may make them unsafe on hit/throw/whatever and others may be kill throws, but I don't remember hearing that the mechanic hurts anybody.

 

[Luco]

I think most people here actually seem to have a decently well-agreed upon top 20 that even consists mostly of the same characters in roughly similar orders. Except, usually every time someone says that someone else comes in and shouts at the top of their virtual lungs "I HATE THESE LISTS!" So meah.

Kinda here thinking "Hey what if we start making lists of the top 30 now?"

Kinda digging just a little bit deeper into the tier list with every go, y'know? We could always start with 25 instead.

I'd see characters who are now trending on losing top 20 status as scraping in here. The crew. Actually Megaman has more like risen to this spot, it might be more conservative to place him just outside this range in favour of someone like or

And to answer Asdioh I've definitely seen these characters get top 8's on different occasions too. Characters such as Megaman and Tink made it to Das Koopa's top 15 in results-based listings.

Characters such as Corrin and ROB are placed in top 20 and not here because I agree with Shaya and think Corrin is kinda secretly borked and ROB is just forever punching above his weight in results strength and probably always will be you evil, evil robot.

 

[jespoke]

IIRC Charizard's d-throw to f-air can combo at kill% at the ledge by combination of the ledge being by the blastzone and the knockback reduction. Should go check when i get home.

I think lists should not be confined to arbitrary multiples of 5. Currenly having a pretty solid top 9 should not be muddled to make it sound pretty

 

[Luco]

IIRC Charizard's d-throw to f-air can combo at kill% at the ledge by combination of the ledge being by the blastzone and the knockback reduction. Should go check when i get home.

I think lists should not be confined to arbitrary multiples of 5. Currenly having a pretty solid top 9 should not be muddled to make it sound pretty

Not to arbitrary mutlipltes of 5 in order becase tier lists are split that way of course - multiples of because it's easy to work within those confines and likely suits our perceptions, habits and 'things we like' a little more. As I established I would see Toon Link in the same tier as a couple of these 5, and vice versa on the other end probably.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

IIRC Charizard's d-throw to f-air can combo at kill% at the ledge by combination of the ledge being by the blastzone and the knockback reduction. Should go check when i get home.

Does D Throw to F Air kill?

It does (early too), though hitting that combo might be tricky.

F Air starts killing when D Throw combos stop working. Granted, it can still happen but its harder.

 

[bc1910]

ROB's actually very good.

The 10 high tiers I posted are the only characters who I feel deserve to be in the same tier as characters like Ness and Ryu, hence I haven't included the ones I don't think are as good (Ike and Mega Man). I would consider adding ROB to the list though.

Honest opinion, I think Mega Man is flavour of the month. Bursts of results like this have happened before (they were from Scatt) and the character has settled down again. ROB on the other hand has shown incredible consistency from the moment the game came out.

I could be completely wrong, bursts of results happened with pre-patch MK and then he got consistent and ended up top tier. Whilst I'm confident MM isn't top tier, if the results continue he could stand with the other high tiers.

 

[Megamang]

ROB is just... consistently threatening. The fact he is really heavy, has a mediocre recovery, and has a kill throw combo that kills absurdly early with rage means he is never out of the game. Also, lasers are annoying and gyro at the ledge is freakin tough to deal with. His 'linking' hits into usmash are some of the most generous in all of smash as well, he'll grab my toe and then boom sweetspot...

 

[Jehtt]

Honest opinion, I think Mega Man is flavour of the month. Bursts of results like this have happened before (they were from Scatt) and the character has settled down again.

Mega Man gets results when ScAtt travels. Mega Man's period of no results just so happened to align with when ScAtt didn't go out of state. I highly doubt that's a coincidence.