Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Radical Larry]

From what I am reading, you aren't understanding what Trifroze is referring to. He's referring to OoS Nair. Assuming Link is already airborne, Nair would come out on frame 7. However, in this situation, we're talking about him using Nair straight out of shield. If I am remembering specifics right, and my maths is correct, Trifroze is correct. You have 1 frame of the shield dropping, 7 frames of Link's jumpsquat, and 7 frames before Nair's first hitbox comes out. 1+7+7 = 15.

In this situation, Nair OoS is indeed 15 frames. Nair while already airborne of course is frame 7.

Well look at his first sentence. Now I can see by the mention of OoS he means it F15, but regardless, why use N-Air as an OoS option if it's that predictable? I'd rather use N-Air like a different option that isn't OoS if that happens. As of now, I can understand what he meant, but it's not like he couldn't have just put OoS as a starter. I thought he was referring to something else because his speaking of OoS came later on.

Also, I remember Link doing well at some European tournaments, but not much more. Do you have somewhere I can look at his competitive results?

http://smashboards.com/threads/link-tournament-results-thread-25th-october.404196/

Just look at the last page alone and you'll see some impressive results at least.

 

[Zelder]

It is often considered polite to apologize when someone points out that you made a mistake, rather than double down on your ignorance.

 

[Nobie]

Mega Man is a funny character, especially because people have rated him all over the map. He's gone from perceived high tier to low tier to mid tier and is now moving back up the ranks... and keep in mind that he's barely been touched by patches, at least directly.

I think the assumption is that a character as purposefully polarized in their design as Mega Man has to have huge exploitable holes in their gameplay. Little Mac's lack of air presence is the prime example. However, Mega Man's weaknesses are shored up fairly well by other qualities the character has. As @Greward mentioned, despite being combo food he's also heavy which helps him survive longer than other characters. Similarly, a lack of amazing frame data in general is offset by the best aerial juking in the game: Mega Man can be where he wants and it's difficult for opponents to stop him.

One thing I noticed with bout ScAtt and Kamemushi is their nair usage. It's basically a way to push the opponent off the edge with little trouble, and while Mega Man's nair is relatively slow it doesn't matter when you're barraging them with pellets, and stunning them long enough to get up close and use the closer hitbox. ScAtt's signature IMO is the ftilt -> ftilt -> close range nair combo, while Kamemushi will often do nair -> close range nair.

Also, I learned that while in the English-speaking world we call Mega Man's pellets lemons, Japan calls them beans. Cultural differences!

Re: Link

Link is the only character that can "transform" from medium speed faller to fast faller, and I still think it holds the key to the character's growth.

 

[TheGoodGuava]

Link has a better (if not better, different, but im saying better) grab game. A vertical kill throw is a stronger asset than a ledge kill throw, his grab is longer ranged by a very significant margin, and he gets better combo's at almost all percentages. I believe that dthrow uair is a kill confirm on certain characters, but I am not sure on the details. Its a pretty hard confirm to get down pat, but its pretty good in his metagame. Bair is an interesting combo move that can have setups using only a single hit ala melee falcon nair. Don't quote me on this, but I think 1 hit bair -> spin attack is a confirm he has. Uair is a pretty cool move, it can be an airdodge trap by itself (but Link's speed makes this less useful than it would be).


In general, he is pretty damn different from Tink. Fair is a 2 hit with crazy power, range, and low landing lag. He has Zair that is much longer... his bombs are more for zoning and trapping than confirms. His nair is a really good edgeguarding tool, and the huge difference in his regular and fastfalling speed gives him good mixups offstage. His Dair is also way better, I think? If you are pinned in shield it is a great pressure tool compared to a meh stall-n-fall, and it really hurts when it hits. Spotdodge hurts it, but if you time that wrong you take a hard hit.

Wind boomerang is a pretty cool tool as well. You can really do a number on someone, and it synergizes well with his ranged usmash. He also is heavier, which is something I particularly enjoy in my characters =P

I'm no link expert, and im sure I just scratched the surface, but they are very very different characters. Pretty much every move is significantly different in their use. If I was pressed to say a random, important reason why you would choose slow link, I would say that it would be his dashgrab. That is an amazing midrange dominance tool, and it really has some painful followups. Zair is bretty cool as well.


EDIT: Reading this, I know someone is going to say it: Yes, Link has confirms from his bombs much like Tink. But for reasons often discussed in this thread, they aren't as large a part of his gameplan. Tink is likely to come in throwing a bomb, being all floaty and trying to confirm it to a fair at the ledge for a kill. Link can do this, but it carries all kinds of different risks and isn't as much a staple of his play, from what I understand.

His bombs can also be soft thrown for stage control, similar to Diddy and ROB. A lot of people seem to forget about this even though its an amazing neutral tool and great for getting in and doing damage

 

[Macedonian]

We have been discussing link a lot? Does he have any good relevant MUs with top tiers? Or just what does his speed look like

 

[C3CC]

So I just made the top 8 fighters duke it out on an 8-player Smash on Battlefield and Rosalina won, so, like I've been saying over the past few months, she is obviously #1.

Spoiler

It's a joke, just in case.

 

[Trunks159]

So I just made the top 8 fighters duke it out on an 8-player Smash on Battlefield and Rosalina won, so, like I've been saying over the past few months, she is obviously #1.

Spoiler

It's a joke, just in case.

Well when you're right you're right.

 

[TheGoodGuava]

We have been discussing link a lot? Does he have any good relevant MUs with top tiers? Or just what does his speed look like

He does well against Diddy, other zoners, Ryu, and Rosa from what I've seen (swords in general do good against her). I also feel like Mario and Ness could be good for him

 

[Illuminose]

Mega Man looks like a top 15 character on paper. His Sheik matchup is no longer that bad (likely only a slight disadvantage, which results also prove so...) and he doesn't really have other majorly egregious matchups (-2 or worse), apart from Pikachu and perhaps Mario, the latter of which we really have yet to see in action, in fact Scatt was able to take a game against Anti and Kamemushi has decisively beat Japan's high level Marios. His results are crazy at this point too...the best player in Japan right now is a Mega Man main (uses secondaries sometimes, but Mega Man in a large majority of cases). This is no worse than a character like Villager or Corrin or certainly Ness. Who can we claim better than Mega Man when you take into account both results and matchups?

...Mega Man is probably in the same are as characters like ...even if all 3 are better than him he's top 15 on the tier list. Mainly just a thought, interested in responses.

edit @below yeah fixed lol

 

[C0rvus]

psst

you forgot this:

carry on.

 

[Luco]

Except Villager probably isn't top 15, and neither is Pikachu.

Also Radical Larry Results, like theory, exist in relativity to one another and not in a vacuum. Link getting top 32, top 16, top 8 at a set of tournaments is good, and I was pleasantly surprised looking at that results page. The thing is, other characters get results too. We established that around 40 different characters made it to top 16 of different stacked tournaments over the past few months (or maybe year?), so it's not like Link is the only one with this claim. I need to be convinced that he's better than some of those other 39 characters, both in terms of results, and of theory.

I don't know if I'm ready to put Link up there with the likes of Kirby or Robin just yet, but I'm open as I usually try to be.

 

[Trifroze]

Yeah, Link's jumpsquat + nair hits on frame 14. There's no extra frame for dropping shield if you jump OoS though, I just accidentally said 15 because I remembered Link's jump squat being 8 frames instead of 7. I don't check frame data every time I post because I have most things memorized pretty well (maybe I have to start double checking though). Also, whether or not an attack comes out of shield, jump squat is always important.

Two, a character who's started frequently getting top 32, 16 and 8 results at tournaments that are regionals, majors and nationals, even, is totally a character unlikely to do well competitively. I mean, why look at all the tournaments so far that Link has just gotten good in when you can just post nonsense against him? He's not fundamentally unlikely, he's fundamentally infrequent for now.

Not counting Miis for obvious reasons, Link's top 8 and 16 results are between bottom 10-25 in the last few months, gradually getting worse as you look at larger tournaments. You can check them on this forum. Mobility and frame data are two very broad and important areas for a character and Link is severely lacking in both.

 

[Macedonian]

He does well against Diddy, other zoners, Ryu, and Rosa from what I've seen (swords in general do good against her). I also feel like Mario and Ness could be good for him

i find that to be incredibly optimistic that he beats some of those chars, do you have any evidence for that.

 

[FallofBrawl]

He didn't say he beats them...

 

[Macedonian]

he says he does well, which i still find it hard to believe that he can do well against characters like diddy.

 

[C0rvus]

Zoning characters do well against Diddy because he's so anti-approach. But zoners are like: "Stay out? Don't mind if I do!" so Diddy usually has to mix up his gameplan.

 

[LancerStaff]

On the topic of Diddy, anybody know how fast he can toss a banana OoS?

 

[C0rvus]

His throw is 7 frames. Shield drop is how many?

 

[Krysco]

Shield drop is 8 frames I believe but couldn't you bypass that by doing a JCIT OoS? Otherwise, you could possibly throw it airborne, taking his 4 frame jumpsquat into account.

 

[Jehtt]

His throw is 7 frames. Shield drop is how many?

Items can be thrown instantly out of shield.

 

[Shady Shaymin]

I've seen people here and there suggest that diddy's gameplan is more defensive and bait/punish, but I really don't get that. I would classify diddy as an aggressive, pressure based fighter because he has fast mobility, strong approaches, and gets a lot out of rushing down. He certainly has the tools to play defensively in situations that require it between peanut popgun mixups and OOS punishes, but he doesn't capitalize off of reactionary play in the same way that ZSS or Ryu do, and he certainly can't force approaches like MM, Tink or Villy. He seems more like rushdown with also good defensive adaptations and baiting potential.

 

[Megamang]

I'd say he is pretty able to play reactionary. Banana-in-hand, he can pressure you from a range you can't effectively pressure him, which I guess is a type of zoning. Dtilt can be a rushdown type move, safely slapping at you from a range and confirming for more damage at any point it hits. His aerials can wall many characters... Diddy is just a well rounded fighter, the approach he takes to each MU could be classified in a lot of ways IMO.

 

[TheBeggingBard ~~JoMo~~]

Am I the only one who thinks that we need a heavy B+ ranked character? I'm kinda tired of the over-saturation of quick characters getting all the love (Looking at you Sheik and you too Fox) and would love to see a different meta. But one can dream

 

[dakotaisgreat]

Am I the only one who thinks that we need a heavy B+ ranked character? I'm kinda tired of the over-saturation of quick characters getting all the love (Looking at you Sheik and you too Fox) and would love to see a different meta. But one can dream

DK, Ike, and Megaman could all be classified as B+ at least. Possibly Lucario as well, who I believe is a heavyweight. Also, Ryu and Rob. There are honestly a decent number of viable heavy weights in this game.

 

[C0rvus]

Donkey Kong does quite well for himself, and is largely considered an upper mid tier character, sometimes low high tier. If you're looking at the list on the first page of this thread, you're doing yourself a disservice. It's quite out of date and in no way reflects the current meta.

Heavies generally don't work as well because mobility is king in Smash, and so is frame data. Heavies are usually compensated for their speed and/or mediocre frame data by being good at killing and being hard to kill. They are good at "the game" of Smash. So in the eyes of balance, they kinda work. In competitive, not as much. DK has pretty decent mobility and some excellent buttons, and his ability to take stocks at low percents somewhat mitigates his fatness. Bowser is in a similar situation but is less consistent and has more exaggerated weaknesses.

Also, I know it's not what you mean, but for the sake of argument, Ryu is pretty damn heavy and look at him. Brawl Snake too. In order for the super heavyweight archetype to be meta, they need to be exceptions of that archetype.

 

[Ninety]

When people say heavies, they usually mean the superheavy weight class -- Charizard, Donkey Kong, Bowser, Ganondorf and King Dedede. Of those, the only one that really gets actually good results at high level is DK, with DKWill repping him solo and being Larry Lurr's main secondary. A 60% kill confirm out of a humongous grab will do that.

As far as the others go, Bowser hasn't really made that much of a splash despite his (later toned down) buffs and Lord Mix's pretensions, everyone loves Ganondorf but he's just too bad to get top level results, players like Big D fight the good fight for DDD but it's an uphill battle, and nobody gives a crap about Charizard.

 

[Illuminose]

Except Villager probably isn't top 15, and neither is Pikachu.

There are no characters with better matchups or even results to have even a small claim to being top 15 instead of them. I'd appreciate the argument, but...I don't see how there is a valid position to support this.

 

[Mario766]

Pikachu doesn't have the results of a top 15 character either.

 

[PJB]

Speaking of villager- what is the general consensus about him now? Is it just as simple as ranai plays street fighter and kamemushi looks like the best in Japan now so mega man took his spot as the top zoner in a defensive meta?

 

[my_T]

pikachu has a really good match-up spread though.

Villager and Ness are in question IMO. Megaman has more of a right to top 15 then those two if we're looking at both results and theory

 

[Illuminose]

Pikachu doesn't have the results of a top 15 character either.

ESAM's national level results are good enough to make the contention reasonable. Getting consistent top 8 in this game is very difficult, especially given ESAM's situation without top level practice. ESAM has numerous top 8 placings at major tournaments and wins over the best players this game has to offer. Getting 9th or 13th at a major isn't really a bad thing in this game, truthfully it's a good result. ESAM's 'inconsistency' is no different than a player like 9B or Rain, who have better mains than him and even lower performance dips.

And literally 1 matchup that is -2 or worse...with not even that many -1 matchups...

I REALLY don't want to open Pikachu discussion because this thread is cancer when that happens but...come on, him being top 15 is not a debate, not with his matchup spread. ESAM has been relatively inactive in Smash 4 since Genesis which hurts his very recent results, but you can't just ignore past results that are still relevant because you want to.

Ness isn't in contention for top 15 imo; two -3 matchups against top 5 characters alone should be a red flag (Rosa and Sheik). He relies on good brackets to make a big run, nothing more and nothing less. FOW is 'consistent' because he has been to 2 relevant majors and doesn't travel a lot. He recently lost to Saiki for 9th at LVL UP Expo, to give an idea of how much worse his consistency could look if he competed more at a national level.

Villager is questionable I suppose, but Bayo being nerfed helps him a lot...he has 1 really bad matchup (-2 or worse) and only realistically about 5 or so -1 matchups. It just so happens that his really bad matchup is Cloud, who is common and easy to play. He's still a top contender I think, just that Ranai's inactivity has hurt Villager's view in the public eye.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

don't want to open Pikachu discussion because this thread is cancer when that happens but...come on, him being top 15 is not a debate, not with his matchup spread. ESAM has been relatively inactive in Smash 4 since Genesis which hurts his very recent results, but you can't just ignore past results that are still relevant because you want to.

But why though? And don't say Uthrow Thunder since that's been debunked. So what else?

 

[C0rvus]

The character has a good MU spread. And not bad results despite low presence. I think he's up there, easily. He does lose to characters like Mario and Meta Knight, but goes even with like, Rosalina, Sheik, Cloud... What an oddball. Perhaps he's back to being an anti-meta character that works? Time will tell. If only we had a bigger pool of players to watch for.

 

[dakotaisgreat]

I think Charizard is great, but nobody plays him and nobody cares. If an amazing player picked him up I think he could easily rise on the tier list. I don't know how high he would climb, but he certainly isn't as garbage as people seem to think. I've been saying this for ages now and I still can't think of a single notable Charizard player. Even in ZeRo's best player of each character series, the guy he mentioned for Charizard is someone I've never heard of before and never heard of since.

This was admittedly a pretty worthless post, if I read this from some other random stranger I didn't know I would disregard their opinion completely, so I'm by no means expecting anyone to care what *MY* thoughts are on Charizard, but I really feel this way.

Spoiler

And I already brought it up in here about 100 pages ago.

 

[Djent]

Not doing Pikachu again, but

Ness isn't in contention for top 15 imo; two -3 matchups against top 5 characters alone should be a red flag (Rosa and Sheik). He relies on good brackets to make a big run, nothing more and nothing less. FOW is 'consistent' because he has been to 2 relevant majors and doesn't travel a lot. He recently lost to Saiki for 9th at LVL UP Expo, to give an idea of how much worse his consistency could look if he competed more at a national level.

Lol @ Ness having a "-3" vs. Sheik post-1.1.5 (and even before it TBH). Dabuz's excellent post about how one or two really bad matchups are actually really easy to mitigate compared to a bunch of -1s is as relevant as ever. Ness loses horribly to Rosa, maybe Corrin too, and ... that's it. He goes even against a ton of other characters thanks to his simple and consistent game plan. Ness actually has the great results that people claim put other characters ahead of him. He lands in top 8 at most (though not all) tournaments that Shaky or FOW show up to, even when there's other great competition present. For some reason, lots of people (not just Illuminose) keep saying he's not that great. I just don't get it.

 

[my_T]

But why though? And don't say Uthrow Thunder since that's been debunked. So what else?

well it could have something to do with this myth that pika doesn't have results. People are so quick to say mario and ness have good results but this only happens when their top players show up...just like pikachu.

Ness has FOW and Shaky

Mario has Ally. I guess you can count ANTi if you want. I personally don't because he always uses a variety of characters.

Pikachu has ESAM

 

[C0rvus]

I would hardly call Charizard great, but it is true that he has very little in the way of high level rep. Hard to develop a strong opinion on him at the moment, but I do dabble in the dragon. He is pretty fundamentally flawed, but he really likes the legal stage list. (BF, DL, Duck Hunt are all very good for him, T+C is good too. Ban FD all day erry day). He's also pretty damn good out of shield in theory, but he commits a lot in general. That said, his jab and flamethrower are pretty low risk and are quite potent, and his ability to make rage-powered comebacks is pretty impressive. If his reward was a bit more in line with DK and Bowser, we'd have ourselves a solid mid tier character. But alas.

Unsure of any relevant good or passable matchups, most of his high tier ones aren't pretty. He may do well against new and arguably did passably pre-patch as well. Not that it means much anymore.

But yeah, any light shed on this character would be cool. He gets nothing at all. Perhaps for good reason, perhaps not.

 

[my_T]

Not doing Pikachu again, but
Lol @ Ness having a "-3" vs. Sheik post-1.1.5 (and even before it TBH). Dabuz's excellent post about how one or two really bad matchups are actually really easy to mitigate compared to a bunch of -1s is as relevant as ever. Ness loses horribly to Rosa, maybe Corrin too, and ... that's it. He goes even against a ton of other characters thanks to his simple and consistent game plan. Ness actually has the great results that people claim put other characters ahead of him. He lands in top 8 at most (though not all) tournaments that Shaky or FOW show up to, even when there's other great competition present. For some reason, lots of people (not just Illuminose) keep saying he's not that great. I just don't get it.

Maybe because aside from those horrible match-ups you mentioned he also loses to some other characters, just not as bad.

sonic, luigi, diddy, marth, GnW, mario, villager, MK, Cloud, and even the pits

 

[Vyrnx]

ignore post please

 

[Djent]

M my_T Some of those are doubtful and not that relevant even if true. Sonic/Diddy/Mario/Cloud matter but at least two of those (Sonic and Mario) looked pretty even last I saw them.