Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[ArnoldPalmer]

have you heard of Sol?

I actually talked to Sol about a month ago, one of my favorite players. He convinced me the Little Mac vs Sheik MU prepatch was a 45:55, I wonder how it is now?

Ain't that the truth...last local I went to with him,he was playing with random the whole tourney. His real mains are DDD, Mario, and Falcon if i had to say 3 though.



You didn't mention his recovery. Obviously worst in game and may not even warrent mentioning as it is an assumably large weakness on all accounts. But it's actually SO bad it always deserves the note when listing weaknesses. This character will never be high tier with his recovery. He doesn't have the air speed or vertical recovery like Cloud either to not be gimped. As people play more and more lame, he will get more walled out. He can be counterpicked harder than anyone else in the game. Oh they picked Duck Hunt as a counterpick? You might as well no contest and go to game 3. Granted he does well on FD and benefits from For Glory being FD only, other projectile characters I feel can abuse it even more. Mac does have nice techs and options out of a Perfect shield though. He could be lower mid. But not much more.

While his recovery is a glaring weakness, it is extremely hard to actually beat Little Mac in the neutral. As long as he decides to not do anything stupid and stay where he belongs its going to take a lot of work to actually get him offstage in the first place. Certain frame traps with character that have low FAF aerials are super annoying onstage though
He also does well on T&C, Lylat, BF, and in certain situations DH. He does bad against zoners but great against characters that need to go in, even the Sheik MU feels kinda funny

 

[Red Stache]

It's like saying if M2K played Pichu, he'd do a lot worse)

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Anyway, about Mac.
I think he is a character, who is the most effected by what stage he is fighting on.
I know someone pointed it out already, but almost all stages cause Mac to be easily camped and baited out.
Stages can turn a winning MU for Mac, into a losing MU. Especially with characters who have projectiles.

I mean, every opponent Mac faces, does better then him on all stages.
(Final Destination/Omegas are probably his only good stage.)

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Anyway, about Mac.
I think he is a character, who is the most effected by what stage he is fighting on.
I know someone pointed it out already, but almost all stages cause Mac to be easily camped and baited out.
Stages can turn a winning MU for Mac, into a losing MU. Especially with characters who have projectiles.

I mean, every opponent Mac faces, does better then him on all stages.
(Final Destination/Omegas are probably his only good stage.)

There are a few stages I pointed out that you see mac players go to, really the only stage I see that's "bad" for him is smashville

also, jfc that last game with Riot vs Sol
https://www.twitch.tv/polaritygg

EDIT: all of these games are fast as hell jfc

 

[Trifroze]

Little Mac's ground game might be the best if he had an actual aerial game to complement it, but as things are he can be pretty predictable plus you can get some breathing room whenever you want if there are any high platforms. I'm more scared of Ryu and Diddy on the ground because they have good aerials to mix it up with (the latter's banana alone creates a better ground game than probably more than half the cast). Shield is decent against Mac as well provided you always retreat or run away for a while after shielding something heavy, which you can quite easily do on most stages.

 

[Lavani]

Is it worth the risk trying to contest it with an aerial or nah? Something like a disjoint?

In theory, if the Cloud isn't spacing away from the ledge the move should actually lose to nearly anything from directly below as his leg reaches lower than the hitbox (though it also looks kinda deep in the Z-axis, might be a problem). Cloud's ledge snap range is longer than the hitbox though, so that should only happen against a sloppy upB but is still probably worth noting just in case.

If you don't have to put yourself in a position to get spiked to challenge it, it's worth trying to trade with considering it only does 3.5%.

Wasn't sure if D3 could outspace the move, I wasn't sure about the disjoint

arm yourselves with knowledge, etc.

 

[TriTails]

Little Mac's ground game might be the best if he had an actual aerial game to complement it, but as things are he can be pretty predictable plus you can get some breathing room whenever you want if there are any high platforms. I'm more scared of Ryu and Diddy on the ground because they have good aerials to mix it up with (the latter's banana alone creates a better ground game than probably more than half the cast). Shield is decent against Mac as well provided you always retreat or run away for a while after shielding something heavy, which you can quite easily do on most stages.

Mac's ground game would benefit from a better grab. Doesn't really matter if he can't do heavy followups out of throws. Positional advantage is probably more than enough.

Stronger tomahawks and not having to punch shields 'till they break sound pretty promising.

 

[Lag Chan]

I'm all for praising this game, and I agree its a lot more balanced then other games I've played, but you guys are taking it way too far when you say characters that are bottom tier are not unplayable garbage.

If you do anything with bottom tier characters like Mii Swordfighter and Zelda you either need to be a top tier player like Trela or Nairo, be at a tournament that's completely free, or you can be like Serynder, who is known for taking Jigglypuff to her limits, but is still never going to do anything meaningful using that character. (No disrespect to Serynder, but I'm sure he is 100% aware he is purposefully handicapping the **** out of himself and he knows it. Of course you can still be a fantastic player choosing to use a **** character)

Mid tiers? Yes, you can do fine with a meh character like Olimar. Low tiers? Eh, you can do some things with Roy for sure if you're skilled, but bottom tier exists for a reason. If you solo Zelda through a tournament and win, everyone there sucked. At some point, skill can only do so much for you. If ZeRo started entering tournaments playing Dedede only he would win a lot less, a looooot less.

The only reason Swordfighter is bottom tier is because of an extreme lack of results from the Mii rulings, which in turn have made it very hard for people to seriously pick up Miis as mains or even secondaries. Of course, I'm not saying that Swordfighter is a secret S tier or anything, just that it's pretty dismissive to call Swordfighter a bottom tier because of something that isn't related to the character's attributes and instead based solely on rulesets.

 

[Nobie]

I've been hearing this for a while now but I really don't understand why... Ftilt is faster but still f10. Uair is bigger and more powerful (iirc) but still not a true combo at kill percents. She still doesn't have much of anything as far as I can tell... Like, legit question, who loses to Zelda?

Just for comparison, Zelda's ftilt is just as fast, recovers more quickly, does more damage, and hits harder than Pit's ftilt (but has fewer active frames). I don't know, that sounds like a really good attack to me.

 

[ARGHETH]

And by fewer active frames, we mean one frame (10) to Pit's five(10-14).

 

[~ Gheb ~]

You're wrong if you think Nasubi's recent performances somehow prove that Wario is an underrated character. Much like istudy at Beast, Nasubi has simply confirmed things we have already 'known' about Wario for a while anyway. Yes, Wario does well against Rosalina and reasonably well against Sonic - we already knew that those two characters are his best high/top tier matchups [not accounting for Bayonetta and Mewtwo yet]. Wario doing well against small, zoning based characters, including [but not limited to] Mega Man is also something I've been pointing out pretty much every time I've talked about the character. It's a good thing that Nasubi provides results to back up such things but it doesn't tell us anything about Wario we didn't know before.

The rest of Wario's high- and top tier matchups are still a problem, ranging from somewhat unfavorable [Fox, Sheik, ZSS] and bad [Mario, Diddy] to very bad [Cloud] ... and that's just the good characters; Wario still has a tough time against the rest of the sword users, against Yoshi and against Captain Falcon at least. Those are the matchups that Nasubi, or any Wario player for that matter, needs to start winning or at least doing better in than expected to prove that Wario is better than your random mid tier character. Right now that's not the case and until that happens I don't see why Wario of all characters should be in contention for the title of an underrated character. Olimar, Mega Man and Duck Hunt have done more impressive things in the last few weeks.

I just love how everyone went crazy about MM placing high... And how people forget that characters like Link and Mii Brawler are placing very high in Europe.

Oh wait. Europe is full of casuals. We only care about Japan and North America when it comes to results 'cause they Esports. Hurr durr.

Why does this argument still exist? Europe is clearly and objectively a weaker region than Japan or the regions of the USA that are usually talked about in here [aka Tristate, SoCal, Michigan] and therefore you have to be a lot more selective about which results you can use for your arguments and which not. For instance, Yikarur busting out his Mii Brawler every now and then in a few matchups really doesn't give us a reason to pay specific attention to the character.

 

[Vyrnx]

Zelda isn't even close to being a bottom tier character (if she ever was) since the buffs.

How is Zelda not bottom tier.

 

[BunbUn129]

How is Zelda not bottom tier.

Down b...oh wait

I'm sorry, guys, I couldn't resist...

 

[Nobie]

One of the arguments I saw earlier is that "bottom tier exists for a reason" as if the designation were an inevitability that a game has to have a bottom tier.

It isn't.

A game will have better and worse characters, but the designation of "bottom tier" is very subjective depending on how you differentiate between viability of characters, and if there's even enough of a cut-off point to actually say that x or y character is bottom tier as opposed to just low tier. Plenty of fighting games just group everyone under a certain point into low tier and call it a day.

 

[Megamang]

Well, some people would look at a list, and say there must be a bottom, right?


It just doesn't have to mean 'disfunctional garbage' like it has in the past.

---

Red topics aside, who has the best confirms when they take Diddy's banana? Mega and Ryu get Shoryukens which kill the chimp wayyyy before he can hope to kill you. Does anyone have something better? Maybe a confirm to spike at the ledge?

 

[Blobface]

One of the arguments I saw earlier is that "bottom tier exists for a reason" as if the designation were an inevitability that a game has to have a bottom tier.

It isn't.

A game will have better and worse characters, but the designation of "bottom tier" is very subjective depending on how you differentiate between viability of characters, and if there's even enough of a cut-off point to actually say that x or y character is bottom tier as opposed to just low tier. Plenty of fighting games just group everyone under a certain point into low tier and call it a day.

If this is referring to my post, what I meant was that the designation of bottom tier is an arbitrary technicality, as in, the only way to defend it is to say that there just physically has to be one. It's really a pointless distinction.

Megamang I'm pretty sure most of the heavies can confirm into their really strong smash attacks.

 

[arbustopachon]

Zard gets a guaranteed rocksmash out of banana, at low percents it will be hitting for 29%
(or just fsmash him or something)

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Well, some people would look at a list, and say there must be a bottom, right?


It just doesn't have to mean 'disfunctional garbage' like it has in the past.

---

Red topics aside, who has the best confirms when they take Diddy's banana? Mega and Ryu get Shoryukens which kill the chimp wayyyy before he can hope to kill you. Does anyone have something better? Maybe a confirm to spike at the ledge?

I suspect the answer to this will simply be whoever has the most damaging hit or combo that is normally infeasible to land due to startup on the initial move.

Although, with that said, if you're hit by the banana, how many frames are you vulnerable for?

 

[Megamang]

I do know getting hit directly with the banana is worse ('hard trip') than just walking on it ('soft trip'). Not sure on the frames.


I ask because other things matter, such as glide distance. Megaman's huge DICIT means he can banana utilt or banana dair you from as far as you can throw the banana.

 

[TriTails]

Red topics aside, who has the best confirms when they take Diddy's banana? Mega and Ryu get Shoryukens which kill the chimp wayyyy before he can hope to kill you. Does anyone have something better? Maybe a confirm to spike at the ledge?

FJP kills earlier than practically anything else that is possible. I'm skeptical Rest can land considering Jiggs' run speed but I'm absolutely theorycrafting here so I don't know for sure. Rest kills even earlier than FJP FYI.

 

[Routa]

Why does this argument still exist? Europe is clearly and objectively a weaker region than Japan or the regions of the USA that are usually talked about in here [aka Tristate, SoCal, Michigan] and therefore you have to be a lot more selective about which results you can use for your arguments and which not. For instance, Yikarur busting out his Mii Brawler every now and then in a few matchups really doesn't give us a reason to pay specific attention to the character.

This brings up the question: "What makes a strong region?"

Is it the amount of good players/amount of people attending in general? Is is how many top players there are?
Does a specific type of ruleset have an impact to how strong the region is in comparison to other regions?

I am aware that Europe is seen as ez money region in comparison to almighty Triforce of 'Murica and Germany's perverted uncle, but that doesn't mean we should not talk about characters doing well there.

Also I have noticed that europeans don't take Smash as seriously as 'Muricans (on average). Could this also explain why Europe is weaker region in comparison to others?

 

[Poisonous]

You're wrong if you think Nasubi's recent performances somehow prove that Wario is an underrated character. Much like istudy at Beast, Nasubi has simply confirmed things we have already 'known' about Wario for a while anyway. Yes, Wario does well against Rosalina and reasonably well against Sonic - we already knew that those two characters are his best high/top tier matchups [not accounting for Bayonetta and Mewtwo yet]. Wario doing well against small, zoning based characters, including [but not limited to] Mega Man is also something I've been pointing out pretty much every time I've talked about the character. It's a good thing that Nasubi provides results to back up such things but it doesn't tell us anything about Wario we didn't know before.

The rest of Wario's high- and top tier matchups are still a problem, ranging from somewhat unfavorable [Fox, Sheik, ZSS] and bad [Mario, Diddy] to very bad [Cloud] ... and that's just the good characters; Wario still has a tough time against the rest of the sword users, against Yoshi and against Captain Falcon at least. Those are the matchups that Nasubi, or any Wario player for that matter, needs to start winning or at least doing better in than expected to prove that Wario is better than your random mid tier character. Right now that's not the case and until that happens I don't see why Wario of all characters should be in contention for the title of an underrated character. Olimar, Mega Man and Duck Hunt have done more impressive things in the last few weeks.

But Wario doesn't do good against Sonic, TheReflexWonder to confirm? I'm not saying Wario is some secret god, but I've seen people putting him in the bottom 20 characters recently which I disagree with heavily. For the other MUs that you want Wario plays to prove themselves in, I believe Reflex's record vs Fatality is something like 7-1? Reflex lost to Mr. R and Ally at MLG, but also took out False and Grimturtle alongside Ryo. Nasubi believes that both ZSS and Mario are even MUs for Wario, but there isn't the data to support that. The only relevant set I could find between two notable players of both characters was Tweek taking Marss to g5 with his Wario at a KTAR and Ally taking out Reflex 3-1 at MLG. You say "Wario has a tough time against sword users", but there isn't too much data for these besides Cloud and Ike (With Waymas going down to a Mexican Cloud, Reflex taking down Scatt's Cloud, Reflex taking out Ryo at MLG). They aren't in Wario's favor, but you make them sound much worse than they really are. Due to the nature of Wario's character, none of his MUs are too polarizing in either direction, he doesn't 'need' a secondary for any of them. Reflex has been busy with his new job and as such hasn't been able to travel much with is probably one reason why Wario has been slipping under the radar until people started noticing Nasubi. Waymas also manages to place very well in his region, Mexico, usually top 8ing. If people can point to the results of Earth to claim that Pit is underrated, why is the same not true for Wario who has had better results?

With people suddenly putting Greninja at top 20 after BEAST as well which was arguably less stacked and the talk about Megaman who has also had amazing results as of late with Scatt starting to travel again and Kagemushi in Japan. Isn't the point of this thread to talk about characters in the meta and isn't the point of results to provide feedback for that? I've seen a lot of talk about "X" character loses "Y" matchup, so they can't be good; but, the same people often fail to bring up proof of that unless you're going off what the SB subforums think lol. For instance, why do you say that Wario loses to Yoshi and Cpt. Falcon?

 

[Joey T.]

If I recall correctly, Chomp will always win against Spin Dash, so that must be something to consider on that MU. Not saying it makes it instant-win for Wario, though.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Sonic beats Wario solidly. Sonic Forward-B is invincible on startup and can be canceled with shield. Anytime Wario uses Chomp when Sonic has not committed, Wario gets punished. Chomp deals about 7-9% on a successful use, whereas Sonic gets at least double that by just waiting. Sonic plays the timeout game and Wario is forced to guess in an uphill battle. Sonic moves too quickly for Wario to take control of most situations.

Falcon is annoying but probably only slightly in Falcon's favor. You do a lot of waiting around and losing to enormous hitboxes until you can get a clean hit offstage.

 

[ARISTOS]

This brings up the question: "What makes a strong region?"

Is it the amount of good players/amount of people attending in general? Is is how many top players there are?
Does a specific type of ruleset have an impact to how strong the region is in comparison to other regions?

I am aware that Europe is seen as ez money region in comparison to almighty Triforce of 'Murica and Germany's perverted uncle, but that doesn't mean we should not talk about characters doing well there.

Also I have noticed that europeans don't take Smash as seriously as 'Muricans (on average). Could this also explain why Europe is weaker region in comparison to others?

Strong regions generally have deep player pools that usually do well in top level events. It can't just be one player doing well, but having several top ranked players getting results at high level tournaments. For example, we know Socal and Tristate are strong because many players from those areas go on to do incredibly well on a national level. This is compared to Texas, where Trela is seen as the primary strongest export.

It's all based on perception of strength though. If a bunch of Euro players came and started doing well at US nationals, we'd have to reconsider their standing.

 

[AxelVDP]

You didn't mention his recovery. Obviously worst in game and may not even warrent mentioning as it is an assumably large weakness on all accounts. But it's actually SO bad it always deserves the note when listing weaknesses. This character will never be high tier with his recovery. He doesn't have the air speed or vertical recovery like Cloud either to not be gimped. As people play more and more lame, he will get more walled out. He can be counterpicked harder than anyone else in the game. Oh they picked Duck Hunt as a counterpick? You might as well no contest and go to game 3. Granted he does well on FD and benefits from For Glory being FD only, other projectile characters I feel can abuse it even more. Mac does have nice techs and options out of a Perfect shield though. He could be lower mid. But not much more.

You are overrating his recovery weakness, a lot of characters still have to take a guess in order to edgeguard Mac.
Yes, his recovery moves suck in term of distance, he also does not have a great air speed and good aerials to cover himself (basically the only reason why Cloud recovery does not look as bad overall) BUT he can mix up his recovery by recovering high or "medium" with sideB, using upB early, going low and try to clip the opponent standing on the ledge, using his walljump, using sideB from under the stage, counter, etc
As I said, a lot of characters do not have attacks to cover all his options and have to commit to a guess (granted, the Mac can die by guessing wrong, but it should not happen frequently, just look at some high level Mac footage and see for yourself)
Also, you are overrating (again) his weakness to being countepicked.
Mac actually does fine on most stages, and FD isn't even Mac's best stage. His best stage is actually pretty matchup dependent, usually it's town&city, but FD and BF are pretty solid too (even FD can also be a BAD stage for Mac, again, it depends on the matchup)
The only stage that give Mac something to worry are Smashville, Duckhunt and Dreamland, but none of those are even close to an insta-loss situation and again, it depends on the matchup.
If you choose something like DH with the intent of camping him till the timeout you have things to consider:
- if you can't get a lead you can't camp Little Mac
-- and with Mac's great neutral game and dammage output it can be no easy task
- if you have good defensive options
-- if you have ass mobility or bad OOS options you can't do much to a Mac pressuring from below and will eventually lose your lead
- if you have good ways to pressure from below yourself
-- you are not the only one who can camp on the tree, Mac has a great f3 upB oos that can kill you relatively early and he can also combo into it from his jab, leading to early kills
DL is a "bad BF" but again, it's not that terrible (his usmash actually still reaches the bottom platforms but you have to be really precise, so Mac can still shark from below)
SV is probably his overall worst stage but you should ban it straight away so you don't have to play on it

Anyway, about Mac.
I think he is a character, who is the most effected by what stage he is fighting on.
yes
I know someone pointed it out already, but almost all stages cause Mac to be easily camped and baited out.
it depends, but usually: no
Stages can turn a winning MU for Mac, into a losing MU. Especially with characters who have projectiles.
actually, Mac would rather go on platform stages against some projectile users than FD
I mean, every opponent Mac faces, does better then him on all stages.
no
(Final Destination/Omegas are probably his only good stage.)
no

Little Mac's ground game might be the best if he had an actual aerial game to complement it, but as things are he can be pretty predictable plus you can get some breathing room whenever you want if there are any high platforms. I'm more scared of Ryu and Diddy on the ground because they have good aerials to mix it up with (the latter's banana alone creates a better ground game than probably more than half the cast). Shield is decent against Mac as well provided you always retreat or run away for a while after shielding something heavy, which you can quite easily do on most stages.

I don't actually disagree with what you posted but I still want to point out a few things
"shielding something heavy", actually, all of Mac's smashes (bar a properly spaced down angled fsmash) are pretty unsafe on shield, you should try to punish him if possible, but yes, as you said Mac hits really hard and you have to be wary in order to not get your shield broken
also, while it's true that Mac options while grounded are extremely limited I wouldn't call them "predictable", Mac gets a lot of mileage by being creative with his frametraps and mobility -- if a Mac walks towards you and uses his dtilt/dafsmash/jab on your shield you now have to guess what to do and quickly because Mac probably will catch you while shield dropping and punish you (and this is where his baddish grab becomes useful as a mixup tool)

but anyway
I agree that Mac has no place in high tier, I personally feel like he belongs in the ever so muddy mid tier

 

[Megamang]

Worth mentioning about comparing regions: The hypothetical EU players doing well in tournament to change things isn't an American centric viewpoint that asssumes we are stronger (as it seems alone), it is supported by American players placing comparatively better in EU regions.

 

[Yikarur]

Everything except germany is pretty weak in europe. Netherlands has S1-14, istudy and Mr-R (who is always in america lol) and the next best player is about 2 tiers lower then them. Spain wants to ban Bayonetta so that speaks for themselves but Greward got to GF at a UK national with great international presence and Rydle gets first there atm most of the time with Bayonetta afaik. But I don't know how strong their next player is.
I don't know how strong UK is at average but they don't seem too impressive.

Germany has the strongest average players in europe. Jbandrew just moved here and got third and fourth at a german tournament where not even half of german good ppayers have been present.
I think you should not talk bad about europe as long as germany (+austria) and Mr.R exists.

 

[Megamang]

Mr.R was forged in America though...

Another thing, skilled regions breed higher and higher skill levels as the players learn from eachother. Its a reason why Korea is so damn good at SC2, because alost everyone is clos enough to compete at LAN, visit/live in a team house, etc etc.

And yea, taking something seriously is also a big factor. You can postpone manditory military service in Korea if you are a competitive sc2 player, for example. Lots of things effect skill pools. I'm sure top sc2/CSGO talent could make europe strong as ****, probably stronger than USA, if those games weren't taking them away. This is because being a career pro in those games is actually a living, so they don't have to focus on much else.

 

[Luco]

Eh, it makes me feel sick. Like, I'm not horrified or anything, and I don't necessarily disagree, it's just coming to the sad reality that 70% of the world is probably doomed to fall behind in the meta like it did with Brawl and create the environment where it really is only America and Japan that have the say anymore.

I just feel sad watching the same history repeat itself and knowing logistically there's very little we can do.

 

[Lag Chan]

It's no secret that the UK smash scene is pretty poor, very Melee dominated. Locals are pretty hard to find for Smash 4 and the big tournies usually get swept by the same familiar faces every time since there's so little competition. At the very least the character diversity is pretty good, considering at Hypespotting the most common characters I could see being used were and

 

[Luco]

It's no secret that the UK smash scene is pretty poor, very Melee dominated. Locals are pretty hard to find for Smash 4 and the big tournies usually get swept by the same familiar faces every time since there's so little competition. At the very least the character diversity is pretty good, considering at Hypespotting the most common characters I could see being used were and

UK's top players are pretty decent but it's fair to say they've been the top players for a while and probably will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Peeps like Ixis, Poptart, J Miller (although he's taking a break for SF V right?), and the like are pretty dominant there overall and have been for some time. That being said Ixis made top 64 at G3 so that's pretty decent.

 

[Megamang]

Being in a meta where you can reasonably improve enough to top 8 between tournaments doesn't seem like a depressing or sad reality. If you really care about being the best in the world, you can travel. Otherwise, unless you are the best in your scene, you have room to improve.

Moving to a college campus has made my local results fall, and while I enjoy the competition, I did enjoy placing well in Brawl.


Getting into opinion zone here, but I think a lack of support/balance and a boring meta killed brawl more than skill density differences. If anything, a worse region had less ICs/MK.

 

[HoSmash4]

It's no secret that the UK smash scene is pretty poor, very Melee dominated. Locals are pretty hard to find for Smash 4 and the big tournies usually get swept by the same familiar faces every time since there's so little competition. At the very least the character diversity is pretty good, considering at Hypespotting the most common characters I could see being used were and

Its actually the opposite down in the south.

Although the average level in UK is probably 5th/6th in EU behind france germany/aus, spain and NL

 

[Luco]

Being in a meta where you can reasonably improve enough to top 8 between tournaments doesn't seem like a depressing or sad reality. If you really care about being the best in the world, you can travel. Otherwise, unless you are the best in your scene, you have room to improve.

Moving to a college campus has made my local results fall, and while I enjoy the competition, I did enjoy placing well in Brawl.


Getting into opinion zone here, but I think a lack of support/balance and a boring meta killed brawl more than skill density differences. If anything, a worse region had less ICs/MK.

The bolded is a naive but privileged thing to say, unfortunately.

At the end of the day if you're not there you're just not there and you're limited. And you can improve in your local scene, but wouldn't it be better if you were just lucky to have been born in the tristate region where being a random makes you a better player than 85% of the rest of the world? Or even just born in America where travelling to good regions isn't a journey comparable to going on some gap year program?

With all due respect, I think you're being a little blind here. If one of the biggest points of competition is to be better (personal relationships aside, because social groups are a thing too) then it's kind of lame to find a boundary that you're probably just not going to be able to cross within reason and you'd be better off saving the money to buy a car or pay the rent or something. We all have our limits that we just can't cross in the name of competition, and unfortunately that boundary is, on average, a lot closer for us here in Australia than it is for you in the US. Compound that tenfold for each scene that finds itself less powerful than the next and especially the ones that are remote.

Right now we're coming up to BAM, we've got a host of internationals coming like 9B, Umeki, Mr R, probably Nairo, maybe ESAM etc. And half of our scene is like "BAM's gonna be **** because we're bad and none of our top players are going to have fun getting 3-stocked and maybe making it to 7th." The sad, accepting nature of it is just depressing. And I'm not really ready to have all my problems fixed because "just be motivated." - like, we're trying lol.

It's just not easy, and so seeing "your region doesn't / isn't going to matter in the grand scheme of things." just serves as another painful reminder of what we don't have.

EDIT: This post got more depressing than I'd like. Sorry. Of course I'm going to try and be motivated. I just need someone to validate me when I say it's hard. I'll be giving it my all at BAM, and so will everyone else. Stick around and watch us, okay?

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Everything except germany is pretty weak in europe. Netherlands has S1-14, istudy and Mr-R (who is always in america lol) and the next best player is about 2 tiers lower then them. Spain wants to ban Bayonetta so that speaks for themselves but Greward got to GF at a UK national with great international presence and Rydle gets first there atm most of the time with Bayonetta afaik. But I don't know how strong their next player is.
I don't know how strong UK is at average but they don't seem too impressive.

Germany has the strongest average players in europe. Jbandrew just moved here and got third and fourth at a german tournament where not even half of german good ppayers have been present.
I think you should not talk bad about europe as long as germany (+austria) and Mr.R exists.

Out of curiosity, which region do you think is stronger? Germany/Austria or Australia?

As I see it its likely US/Canada > Japan > Mexico maybe? > (Germany/Austria and Australia) > Rest of EU > South America > Middle East is probably here?

Not to say there can't be amazing individuals in lower regions, just looking at those regions as a whole

 

[Megamang]

All i'm saying is there is a flip side. That guy who is a random, better than 85% of players, still drowns in pools and has to be even more crisp to make it into bracket.

Yea, I know there are serious downsides. I've been listening to Tastosis make fun of American Sc2 for like 5 years lol.

"Alpha:GO beat the best American GO player... so they knew it worked, then they took it to Korea to test it out for real" was one that stung while I laughed.

Regardless, its better now than it has ever been, and will continue getting better as travel gets easier and easier. Our kids might go to other continents on floating railways for $30. Then they'll be damn good at smash.

As it is, I enjoy the American Sc2 scene and beating 75%+ of people I meet in real life, but i'd be a ****ty bronzer on the KR server. At the end of the day, the enjoyment is all that I care about. I don't think that is naive. Ive lived in a 'bad' region, and a good one.

 

[LancerStaff]

Just for comparison, Zelda's ftilt is just as fast, recovers more quickly, does more damage, and hits harder than Pit's ftilt (but has fewer active frames). I don't know, that sounds like a really good attack to me.

And by fewer active frames, we mean one frame (10) to Pit's five(10-14).

Uh, I get that... Believe it or not I wasn't trying to compare a move to something of Pit's. Though Pit's has more range and Marth hitboxes while Zelda's I'm pretty sure has Roy hitboxes. If you walk into Pit's you get tippered, so the extra active frame comes in handy, not to mention the hitboxes are directly in front of Pit the entirety of the five frames.

It's good move, but it's still not really a neutral tool like she needs. It doesn't mean much for her overall.

 

[Luco]

All i'm saying is there is a flip side. That guy who is a random, better than 85% of players, still drowns in pools and has to be even more crisp to make it into bracket.

Yea, I know there are serious downsides. I've been listening to Tastosis make fun of American Sc2 for like 5 years lol.

"Alpha:GO beat the best American GO player... so they knew it worked, then they took it to Korea to test it out for real" was one that stung while I laughed.

Regardless, its better now than it has ever been, and will continue getting better as travel gets easier and easier. Our kids might go to other continents on floating railways for $30. Then they'll be damn good at smash.

As it is, I enjoy the American Sc2 scene and beating 75%+ of people I meet in real life, but i'd be a ****ty bronzer on the KR server. At the end of the day, the enjoyment is all that I care about. I don't think that is naive. Ive lived in a 'bad' region, and a good one.

In fairness, I'm not one of the players who gets down and out about BAM. I think it's going to be incredible and I'm so psyched to actually have the chance to meet 9B and Nairo and stuff. Once I'm there I'll just be swept up by it all, and in that sense the enjoyment of it will be one of the biggest defining factors for me, even if I do of course want to place decently too. :-)

 

[ARISTOS]

The bolded is a naive but privileged thing to say, unfortunately.

At the end of the day if you're not there you're just not there and you're limited. And you can improve in your local scene, but wouldn't it be better if you were just lucky to have been born in the tristate region where being a random makes you a better player than 85% of the rest of the world? Or even just born in America where travelling to good regions isn't a journey comparable to going on some gap year program?

With all due respect, I think you're being a little blind here. If one of the biggest points of competition is to be better (personal relationships aside, because social groups are a thing too) then it's kind of lame to find a boundary that you're probably just not going to be able to cross within reason and you'd be better off saving the money to buy a car or pay the rent or something. We all have our limits that we just can't cross in the name of competition, and unfortunately that boundary is, on average, a lot closer for us here in Australia than it is for you in the US. Compound that tenfold for each scene that finds itself less powerful than the next and especially the ones that are remote.

Right now we're coming up to BAM, we've got a host of internationals coming like 9B, Umeki, Mr R, probably Nairo, maybe ESAM etc. And half of our scene is like "BAM's gonna be **** because we're bad and none of our top players are going to have fun getting 3-stocked and maybe making it to 7th." The sad, accepting nature of it is just depressing. And I'm not really ready to have all my problems fixed because "just be motivated." - like, we're trying lol.

It's just not easy, and so seeing "your region doesn't / isn't going to matter in the grand scheme of things." just serves as another painful reminder of what we don't have.

EDIT: This post got more depressing than I'd like. Sorry. Of course I'm going to try and be motivated. I just need someone to validate me when I say it's hard. I'll be giving it my all at BAM, and so will everyone else. Stick around and watch us, okay?

This is all true, but I think there's plenty of room to be positive.

Look at the number of entrants for Brawl at Apex 2010 & 2012

http://www.ssbwiki.com/Apex_2010
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Apex_2012

Tournaments were capping at the 400 number mark- those were nationals at that time

Compare that to Apex 2015, the first Smash 4 national http://www.ssbwiki.com/Apex_2015. 837 entrants; we doubled Brawl's entrant total from the word GO and have never looked back.

There's so much more money and opportunity in Smash now. We're seeing scenes prop up all over the globe and new secret bosses are being found. There was a neat gfycat of a Zelda going against Mr.R from a tournament in Kuwait! That would have never happened four years prior.

All of this is to say that there's much more opportunity to expand and grow scenes. Yeah, Tristate and Socal are dominant, but we've also seen the emergence of New England. When the capacity is built and infrastructure is developed to help foster growth, you never know what might happen. And once you have someone from your region repping you nationally, that only adds to the interest and leads to the development of more superstar talent. Just think of how many more Chinese kids picked up basketball thanks to Yao, or how embedded women's soccer has become thanks to Mia Hamm and the WNT's efforts.

We gotta work on pushing our scenes forward. Yeah, maybe we'll never be better than Socal. But Leicester City also just won the Premier League; you never know what might happen.

Good luck to the Aussie's at BAM, I'm rooting for y'all, go take some names

 

[~ Gheb ~]

If people can point to the results of Earth to claim that Pit is underrated, why is the same not true for Wario who has had better results?

Fwiw I don't think the argument for Pit is valid. Earth has proved nothing in particular about the character as far as I know.

Out of curiosity, which region do you think is stronger? Germany/Austria or Australia?

As I see it its likely US/Canada > Japan > Mexico maybe? > (Germany/Austria and Australia) > Rest of EU > South America > Middle East is probably here?

My opinion may not matter as much as Yika's because I haven't traveled in ages but you may still find it interesting because I kinda know stuff about international scenes.
First, I think it's important to make a clear distinction between region and country. I wouldn't use the term "US/Canada" at all like you do in that context because the USA is a lot more heterogenous a place than germany. Germany is a country but in tandem with Austria it also qualifies as a "region" as well. It's a pretty consistent entity unlike the USA where Texas has just about nothing to do with, say, NorCal for instance. So the way I'd look at things would be something like this:

Top Tier:
SoCal ~ "Japan" [= Kansai + Kanto] => TriState

High Tier:
Michigan/Midwest => Mexiko ~ Germany [+Austria] => Texas ~ Florida


I have no idea where Australia fits in and I'd honestly surprised if Yika knew. It's also possible that some region belongs in high tier that I haven't listed or know too little about. Canada/Montreal area for example is probably good as well with people like Ally, Holy and Kels for a start.