Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[JustSomeScrub]

I don't get how Ganon specifically is supposed to be better in this game.

The only thing that makes him seem better is his worst matchups from Brawl getting nerfed and no ledge hogging and that applies to a ton of characters, not just Ganon.

He lost his autocancel dair and nair for instance. And I don't see how he's been buffed in any way to make up for that.

I think he's a terribly designed character. Take his side B for instance. Even if lands, now he has to tech chase (and he's far too slow to tech chase rolls on reaction especially in this game). Other characters net way more guaranteed reward with far safer moves.

He seems very high risk, low reward. He has to rely on his opponents constantly messing up badly and being too scared to edge guard him to stand a chance.


Edit:

I think Ganon should get a complete moveset overhaul in the next Smash game. His moveset beyond having too many issues in competitive play is just lazy and uninspired.

 

[Patriarachnid]

I don't get how Ganon specifically is supposed to be better in this game.

The only thing that makes him seem better is his worst matchups from Brawl getting nerfed and no ledge hogging and that applies to a ton of characters, not just Ganon.

He lost his autocancel dair and nair for instance. And I don't see how he's been buffed in any way to make up for that.

I think he's a terribly designed character. Take his side B for instance. Even if lands, now he has to tech chase (and he's far too slow to tech chase rolls on reaction especially in this game). Other characters net way more guaranteed reward with far safer moves.

He seems very high risk, low reward. He has to rely on his opponents constantly messing up badly and being too scared to edge guard him to stand a chance.

I actually think Ganon is one of the better designed characters, because he's exactly what he's supposed to be. He has trouble landing hits, but he only needs to land like 3 before your stock is gone. And also has a lot of very stupid stuff like sideB offstage and uptilt.

Well designed != high tier, mind. He's a character built around getting huge punishes off of stupid mistakes, and obviously that's less of a selling point in an environment where people don't make many mistakes. But in low/mid-level play, where people aren't as good, he's pretty good (and also very fun).

 

[L9999]

Ganon's design philosophy isn't bad, and right now he's just a bit undertuned in a couple of key areas, namely mobility, OOS game, and recovery. One more well-designed patch buffing him along with maybe 6-8 other chars would help this game's balance a lot. It is kind of tough to maintain a good skill curve with his archetype, though.

Undertuned, thank you. Going with what you said. It's no news that Ganon's mobility is garbage. On the ground he is super slow and his only method of burst mobility is a laggy kick that only works this way if the opponent is far away. Other characters have garbage ground mobility () but they have something silly so having bad mobility restricts abuse of said silly thing or it makes up for the mobility. (Ness grab, Ike huge sword, Robin spells, Killager rocket). Ganon, doesn't have much to justify being horribly slow in the ground. Yes, his aerials hit like a truck, but they are laggy and are not disjointed like Ike's. And air mobility, that one is garbage as well. A Down Smash that sends at a decent angle can kill him at mid % because the air mobility is so bad he won't make it back. And if he gets aggresively carried offstage he is most likely dead. Screw that, a single touch after burning his 2nd jump is almost always a guaranteed death sentence because he doesn't move enough. If Falcon Kick gave him back his 2nd jump back he would kinda have a chance, but sadly it is not here. Both mobilities being bad makes it difficult for to approach and he doesn't have projectiles, so he is forced to approach. And if someone has the mentality of playing Brawl (aka, ultra super campy) they give Ganon a hard time. Up B is really weak and puts Ganon in a disadvantageous position is he gets the grab. (Who designed this move?). Another thing that is undertuned about Ganondorf is his grab game. It's bad. With that mobility he won't get many grabs, and the grab range, it rivals on usability. I know it is more plausible for Ganon to grab than those last 2, but case in point is that Ganon's grab sucks. And when he does grab you what happens? Just some damage, some combo at low % and that's it. No kill throws, combo throws, no unfavorable angles. The damage is nice but it doesn't contribute to much.

A kill throw, his Melee mobility, 2nd jump restoring Falcon Kick, and something about Up B would be a blessing for Dorf and wouldn't break him in low level or suddenly make him rise 7 tiers. But, just an opinion.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

We really don't have anyone with a bad design philosophy in this game.

Just undertuned characters.

Every character in this game has a good design on paper. Nothing that really needs to be scrapped. Everyone has a purpose and have what they need to do that.

They just need tweaks to be able to do that purpose more effectively.

 

[Nobie]

Roy I think is purposely designed to be a "dysfunctional" character of sorts, a kind of jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't quite match up, and you have to learn to play around that.

It's like, imagine if you've got a horse and unfortunately it's a runt. So in order to make it compete better, you slap on some spikes, put rockets on its legs, and maybe an air horn for good measure.

The result is kind of a mess, but that's also the beauty of the character. His design involves making up for contradictions in his way of being with sheer brute force and numbers. If you wanted someone who flows together perfectly, you wouldn't play Roy.

In a way, Roy is like Melee itself, a character whose good and bad bits are cobbled together and it's up to the player to make sense of it.

As for Ganondorf, he's designed to be a character that thrives on hard reads, and in this respect his design is successful. The issue is that at low levels it's easier to get a hard read on someone, and at high levels it's much more difficult. However, you don't want to make the low level players just get dunked on by Ganon all the time to allow Ganon to succeed at top level play.

Also, as good as Ganondorf is for getting reads, he sometimes doesn't stand a chance against those who don't need to play that game at all.

Though I do find it funny that even as Ganondorf overall does better against the entire cast, people STILL miss his Thunderstomp. It's like you say to people, "Ganondorf got wrecked in Brawl, isn't it okay that he doesn't get this one thing back," and they say, "Well yeah he was by far the worst character in the game, but for those brief 2 seconds of thunderstomping, you felt like a god."

I guess some people like being a god for a minute more than being a strong man for a lifetime.

 

[Joey T.]

We really don't have anyone with a bad design philosophy in this game.

Just undertuned characters.

Every character in this game has a good design on paper. Nothing that really needs to be scrapped. Everyone has a purpose and have what they need to do that.

They just need tweaks to be able to do that purpose more effectively.

What about Lucario? A character whose mindset is to get stomped so he can do in 3 hits the same amount of damage that his opponent did through all the stock? Surely the devs had some design philosophy in mind, but I fail to see it.

 

[Nobie]

What about Lucario? A character whose mindset is to get stomped so he can do in 3 hits the same amount of damage that his opponent did through all the stock? Surely the devs had some design philosophy in mind, but I fail to see it.

"A character that gets stronger as he takes more damage. He's at his best when he's closest to death."

 

[Emblem Lord]

Lucario is the epitome of poor design. He is literally a comeback mechanic, with really no other redeeming qualities. His neutral is not impressive and he relies purely on aura stacking with rage.

 

[Lunanix]

While I do agree that Lucario isn't the best design, I can see the devs point here. He's meant to be a true glass canon character, I really dislike the fact that any character benefits from taking hits, I think that design in itself is bad but since Lucario was built around that in mind I am a little more understanding of it as there is obvious downsides such as low attack early game and the extreme risk of dying late game. The idea behind something like Clouds limit though is something I highly disagree with, it has two options for charging, down special and taking damage. I really dislike the taking damage part since I really think the move has so much potential without it and the fact that it opens up so many options. Having just a down special charge would add a little more risk for charging it but I think it would make it much more tactical than having it also charge through damage.

 

[bc1910]

What about Lucario? A character whose mindset is to get stomped so he can do in 3 hits the same amount of damage that his opponent did through all the stock? Surely the devs had some design philosophy in mind, but I fail to see it.

There is a very clear design philosophy behind Lucario. It's just magnificently flawed. Behind making a character intentionally dysfunctional, his design is probably the worst possible.

What could have been a workable design (Lucario could quite easily get stronger as he deals damage) was sacrificed under the guise of forcing characters to be "unique", which definitely seems like the highest priority.

 

[Dr.Megaman]

Did you guys talk about Mac, Megaman and Ryu's design philosophy yet? If not I'd like to here everyone's opinions on them.

 

[Lunanix]

Did you guys talk about Mac, Megaman and Ryu's design philosophy yet? If not I'd like to here everyone's opinions on them.

I quite like Mac as a character, my best friend use to play Mac a lot so I've had my fair experience with him. From a design point of view he has clear cut goals, Raw power and speed. With this comes the lack of aerial mobility and recovery, although it really does impact Mac with his recovery I think they way they designed him really captures exactly who Mac is as a character and what he is meant to represent. i.e he's a Boxer, they are fast and powerful and obviously hes designed on a real life human, we don't exactly jump much. To represent this he loses power on all of his moves in the air whereas they are full power whilst on the floor. All this because in boxing there is a lot of emphasis on the use of legs for power!

In terms of game play I think he strikes a nice balance and is quite unique, if there are 3 main attributes to the game, Mobility, Aerial and Damage, he strikes two and clearly lacks the other although I don't really think this makes him a bad character which I like, you play him correctly and he can be devastating.

 

[Luco]

I actually love Lucario's design as a casual smash player. It's only as a competitive player that his design becomes worrisome to me. That being said, is it poor design exactly? For a character THAT under-tuned at 0% damage, it almost feels like it's less of a come-back mechanic and more of a design 'comeback' for the character to even be remotely viable.

I don't know if this really makes sense, but yeah. Personally I actually love Lucario, playing and even fighting against him (probably when it's best confined to friendlies). I have a load of fun and the matches are volatile. Kinda like versing a certain demon king.

 

[L9999]

What about Lucario? A character whose mindset is to get stomped so he can do in 3 hits the same amount of damage that his opponent did through all the stock? Surely the devs had some design philosophy in mind, but I fail to see it.

This. I got Lucario at random when I was messing around in FG and I won despite NEVER in everdom playing Lucario because I got stopped then pulled a clutch Bair and a rage Aura Sphere.

 

[Y2Kay]

I personally enjoy Lucario's design. Playing as Max Aura Luc has the kid in a candy store feeling. So much power, I love it!

Ironically what seperates the good Lucario's from the bad is how well they can fight with No aura Lucario.

Honestly feel like Lucario and his players receive way too much hate.

 

[Lunanix]

A lot of people hate the idea behind him, this is a fighting game after all and it should be "take damage, take the punishment" not "take damage, be rewarded".

I don't think Lucarios kit is to the point where it isn't playable against, he doesn't really have anything other than the rage+aura stack that points him out to be overpowered or anything so I agree he gets a lot of hate.

As I said above I do hate the "Take Damage get rewarded" ideal at any point (Not so much for rage generally since its affects everyone) but since Lucarios kit is all designed around the stacking and the high risk that comes with it, it doesn't really affect game play as much.

Personally I dislike playing against it but that's mostly because I'm a Sheik main, the character that can rack up damage like no tomorrow but struggles to kill against the character that takes damage like no tomorrow and only gets more powerful. It doesn't work out very well!

I definitely agree that they get a lot of hate for it where there really shouldn't be.

 

[PK Gaming]

I mentioned this before, but I feel like Ike has subarashii (すばらしい) design. He just epitomizes the concept of simple but effective. I think this video does a good job of showcasing what I mean.

I'm partial to Robin due to his tactical based moveset. He can fight from a range or up close, and he's got a ton of tools. On the other hand, his movement speed and recovery are abysmal. He'll never be a top tier character and he suffers so badly in certain matchups, but I at least appreciate the trade-off aspect in his design.

Sheik is pretty good post patch, now that she fulfills her intended niche.

EDIT: Tbh, I like how the majority of the cast in this game designed now. They're mostly fun, distinct and relatively balanced.

 

[Rysir]

I personally enjoy Lucario's design. Playing as Max Aura Luc has the kid in a candy store feeling. So much power, I love it!

Ironically what seperates the good Lucario's from the bad is how well they can fight with No aura Lucario.

Honestly feel like Lucario and his players receive way too much hate.

Playing at max aura is like legit worst feeling.
A. I am questioning life as to how I even made it to max aura
B. I cant use a ton of moves because they will get me killed
C. Mid aura is better as it has some room for error while still being deadly

And yes we get too much hate. People crap on us even when we LOSE!

 

[Shady Shaymin]

RE: Character design

In Smash 4, I define good character design as a character having every tool in their arsenal, every aspect of their moveset, and every stat or number centered around a cohesive, functional, and fair gameplan. Bonus points in my book go to characters whose gameplans accurately reflect the character's source material in their original games, though this one is more of a luxury than a necessity, and doesn't redeem characters who are already poorly designed.

If I had to pick one and only one character who I think reflects this design philosophy the best, I would give the cake to . Like the other heavies, Bowser has a clear gameplan: play a patient, slow paced game focused on punishing the opponent's mistakes and the mindgames that come with winning more off of neutral exchanges than your opponent. All of his moves reflect this; his normals are big and meaty, but they don't come out fast enough that you can just throw them out brainlessly in the neutral. His disadvantage is pitiful, but he lives longer than any other character in this game. Not only is his design clear and functional (for the most part), but it actually pans out just like it would in a mario platformer. Fighting Bowser in Smash actually feels like a boss fight pacing wise and strategy wise. That's just amazing.

I know everyone here loves to use as the poster child of bad design, and I agree that his design is horrible. But if I had to pick the hands down most poorly, utterly **** designed character in the entire game, or possibly even the entire series, I'd have to go with . As polarizing as Lucario is, at least he has a gameplan. At least he is somewhat viable. At least he doesn't have an objectively superior counterpart in the roster that outclasses him in every way. Falco is the epitome of **** tier design and if I made a tier list for character designs, he'd be right in the bottom of the barrel. This guy...has absolutely no gameplan. His moves don't flow together and don't combo into each other in any meaningful ways. His mobility is slow for absolutely no reason, and he's not even compensated for being a snail whatsoever. I've never gotten into the starfox franchise myself, but I'm doubtful that his design has any relevance to a pilot in an on-rails sci-fi shooter either. It's almost disgustingly obvious how Falco was designed. The devs made Fox (and to be fair, they did an excellent job with him). Then, they looked at Fox's tools and said, "let's just make Falco have opposing strengths." So they took Fox, butchered his ground speed, butchered his autocancel aerials, neutered up smash, and compensated for all of this by giving him a higher jumps and some hitstun on his lasers. Then they made him blue, birdlike, and named him Falco.

 

[Y2Kay]

Playing at max aura is like legit worst feeling.
A. I am questioning life as to how I even made it to max aura
B. I cant use a ton of moves because they will get me killed
C. Mid aura is better as it has some room for error while still being deadly

And yes we get too much hate. People crap on us even when we LOSE!

I personally love playing as Max aura Lucario because
A. Force palm is half the length of FD
B. Aura sphere is bigger than Lucario's body
C. the evil part of me loves how salty people get when I kill them at early percents.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Undertuned, thank you. Going with what you said. It's no news that Ganon's mobility is garbage. On the ground he is super slow and his only method of burst mobility is a laggy kick that only works this way if the opponent is far away. Other characters have garbage ground mobility () but they have something silly so having bad mobility restricts abuse of said silly thing or it makes up for the mobility. (Ness grab, Ike huge sword, Robin spells, Killager rocket). Ganon, doesn't have much to justify being horribly slow in the ground. Yes, his aerials hit like a truck, but they are laggy and are not disjointed like Ike's. And air mobility, that one is garbage as well. A Down Smash that sends at a decent angle can kill him at mid % because the air mobility is so bad he won't make it back. And if he gets aggresively carried offstage he is most likely dead. Screw that, a single touch after burning his 2nd jump is almost always a guaranteed death sentence because he doesn't move enough. If Falcon Kick gave him back his 2nd jump back he would kinda have a chance, but sadly it is not here. Both mobilities being bad makes it difficult for to approach and he doesn't have projectiles, so he is forced to approach. And if someone has the mentality of playing Brawl (aka, ultra super campy) they give Ganon a hard time. Up B is really weak and puts Ganon in a disadvantageous position is he gets the grab. (Who designed this move?). Another thing that is undertuned about Ganondorf is his grab game. It's bad. With that mobility he won't get many grabs, and the grab range, it rivals on usability. I know it is more plausible for Ganon to grab than those last 2, but case in point is that Ganon's grab sucks. And when he does grab you what happens? Just some damage, some combo at low % and that's it. No kill throws, combo throws, no unfavorable angles. The damage is nice but it doesn't contribute to much.

A kill throw, his Melee mobility, 2nd jump restoring Falcon Kick, and something about Up B would be a blessing for Dorf and wouldn't break him in low level or suddenly make him rise 7 tiers. But, just an opinion.

Dorf's buttons are about as silly as Ike's overall. It's just that Ike isn't actually all that slow. There's a decently-sized list of Ganon's moves that you don't want on a mobile character, with the big ones being Nair, Uair, Bair, Dash Attack, and Flame Choke. That doesn't mean he doesn't warrant slight mobility buffs to go along with a couple of other key fixes.

 

[LancerStaff]

Falco's concept is fine, but the execution is not. The TLDR version is that he's supposed to be Luigi with a longer ranged (and good) projectile, but in practice he's a worse Ryu in almost every aspect.

How well designed these characters are... If you ask me it depends on how you're playing. In FFAs Sheik has a very clear and obvious playstyle with proper strengths and weaknesses and doesn't feel overtuned in any way. In 1v1s she has almost everything and her only weakness is a weaker killing ability that doesn't matter in most MUs. Same story with most top and bottom tiers really. They make sense in FFAs but in 1v1s they're either just too good (high mobility + limit camping) or too bad (...Zelda) inherently. Even just looking at the best and worst moves and aspects it's obvious how they're fair in FFAs and breaks/is broken by 1v1s.

In strictly 1v1s the game has a ton of design flaws and failures. Even if you say it's unbalanced because of the huge cast or because they were targeting a lower skill level I'd say they still could be doing a much better job then they've been doing.

 

[Lunanix]

Sheik is pretty good post patch, now that she fulfills her intended niche.

Although she does struggle killing and that really affects me as I suck generally. But I also really like the way she plays, shes meant to struggle and really rely on hard reads to kill rather than being able to solidly kill. It makes playing her so satisfying and really rewarding in the end!

 

[TDK]

Re: Lucario

My issue with Lucario isn't that he needs Aura stacking with rage to be more effective, it's that he needs aura stacking with rage to be effective at all. Lucario is a pathetic character without aura/rage, and that's why he doesn't work unless you magically live to 180% every stock and kill people at 30. But that's a lot harder when you pretty much have to drop your controller and say "hey, come hit me". If Lucario had Brawl Lucario's base moveset, he would be a lot better.

 

[dakotaisgreat]

How is talking about whether or not a character in this game is poorly designed anything but your own subjective opinions?

 

[TDK]

How is talking about whether or not a character in this game is poorly designed anything but your own subjective opinions?

Considering most of this thread is subjective opinion, I wouldn't be too concerned about it.

 

[-Tornado-]

Well
ZeRo 2-0'd by Prince Ramen
CEO's lookin good
(probably the wrong thread for this)

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Palutena's still a pretty bad character in my book. Still a hype result for sure.

 

[blackghost]

Palutena's still a pretty bad character in my book. Still a hype result for sure.

a lot of characters look good when you punish airdodges well. zero got read like a book multiple times.

 

[Ninety]

Ganon's design as a whole makes sense, but he's so undertuned that several parts of his design do not. His grab game being so damn bad and Flame Choke being techable are just utter travesties.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Ganon's design as a whole makes sense, but he's so undertuned that several parts of his design do not. His grab game being so damn bad and Flame Choke being techable are just utter travesties.

Really the issues with his grab game and Flame Choke are that they only work effectively on certain kinds of characters. His grab game is fairly effective against fastfallers, and Choke's overall utility is heavily affected by whether or not he gets guaranteed followups off missed techs and how good the opponent's techrolls are. It's why Zelda is really annoying for him even though he actually wins neutral.

 

[Yonder]

I see a metagame where matchup inexperience is a more powerful factor than ever before. With so many characters, naturally your mind is going to forgot about the irrelevant info. In this case,the low tiers. Now take Abadango's Mewtwo for example. He was amazing in Pound 2016 no doubt, but matchup inexperience (and a buttload of buffs but still matchup inexperience) played a huge role. No one really knew how to tackle this relatively mid/low tier prior. Now, since Mewtwo won, people are prepared and consider Mewtwo relavent info. I honestly think Aba will not get those kind of results again unless he switches to another underused wild card and trains like crazy by innovating their game (Mewtwo footstool disable for example, unheard of before).

Moving onto Zero vs Prince ramen, who the heck really plays normal Palutena besides AeroLink I think? Yeah, no one is going to know how to combat her and she is going to be one hell of a wildcard.

I think all players should secretly train a wildcard character. Really, make it someone who is relatively unused, then put lots of work into them. I mean lots. You have to make up for prominent character yet faults too. I think Zero for example, should do so with Shulk. If he masters him...no one will know how to fight back, until they process Shulk as relevant info.

So yeah, I think using unknown characters if you can make up for their faults and it fits your playstyle, is a more fantastic form of tactics in this game that should be utilised. We have 58 characters on the roster. Do some research, who have people never fought and know nothing off?

Which leaves us with the Miis. Now they can't be used online. Double edged sword. Harder to practice , but less people have experience against them. I mean, I've versed about 2 miis in my life, both swordsman. Yet to play a human brawler or gunner. And i would probably get wrecked for it. They would have the matchup knowledge on say, Mewtwo or Luigi but I would have none of them (granted I would use Mewtwo in this one for approach reasons vs a gunner, Luigi for Brawler)

I have heard things about default brawlers specials being the worst in the game, idk. And swordsman has a bad rep that i know nothing about but had Trela before...

Really, with this whole post...i think Mii gunner has the most hidden potential, played to the fullest extent of their projectile game. I look at them and see a fantastic ranged fair, uair, and f smash too. Perfect subjects for my matchup inexperience theory.

 

[meleebrawler]

"Design" is a stupid term to throw around, because it's actually a blanket that covers both the concept and the execution of said concept. It's all too easy to just slam a low-tier for being "badly designed", because it is in some ways, technically correct, without actually covering the cause of said defects.

Design is two parts: concept/philosophy and execution, the distinction is important. Even outside of characters, like the game Paper Mario: Sticker Star (the whole point of Colour Splash being to see if Sticker Star's ideas can be better executed. But fans are too close-minded to even consider that).

If you're gonna slam something, at least slam the parts that are actually wrong about the thing, instead of just whacking the whole thing.

 

[NewZen]

Re:

His design philosophy works well for doing what he's best known for in his series, but the only issues he has are simply securing kills due to his options being limited to so few effective ones. For example, the Mega Buster must be used in the same way you would bother to use it from his series-from a distance. It stops opponents, does damage, comes out very quickly, and can be used even while moving. There's a reason people find Lemons ridiculous, and even then, his other tool set works as well as anyone who's played his games will understand (With notable exceptions, such as how Top Spin is actually now useful because it's his Dash Attack, is good for reads and tech chases, Spark Shock is reliable as close-range move versus its original counterpart). It's all about spacing yourself and going in for the kill when you know your opponent is at the kill percentage (Similar to going ham on Robot Masters when you know you have nothing to worry about), because he has so many tools that basically make approaching him a pain.

Again, the problems lie in his options for securing stocks that don't rely on either Slash Claw or Spark Shock, because the issues with his Smash Attacks and his other kill options are so apparent it hurts: F-Smash is rather weak, requires a charge, and is easy as hell to read, Flame Blast is powerful, but requires hard reads to K.O. with, etc. etc.

 

[JustSomeScrub]

Now even Zero has been upset and in pools to boot. And versus a non-top tier (last time it was against Sonic and a very notable Sonic at that, not really the same thing).

It seems because almost every character is a threat and top tiers aren't as good as previous games, match-up knowledge is more important as ever. Simply being good versus other top tiers is not enough.

Except no one is going to perfectly remember 50+ matchups on the fly. I think it's high time all top players start taking notes on the entire case and bringing the notes to all tournaments if they want to try to prevent this from happening as often.

 

[JustSomeScrub]

I actually think Ganon is one of the better designed characters, because he's exactly what he's supposed to be. He has trouble landing hits, but he only needs to land like 3 before your stock is gone. And also has a lot of very stupid stuff like sideB offstage and uptilt.

Well designed != high tier, mind. He's a character built around getting huge punishes off of stupid mistakes, and obviously that's less of a selling point in an environment where people don't make many mistakes. But in low/mid-level play, where people aren't as good, he's pretty good (and also very fun).

If a character literally relies on you being bad to win, that's not a well designed character in my book.

And only landing a few hits is a bit of an exaggeration when you consider other heavy weights/heavy hitters can kill just as early if not earlier off of things like grabs such as DK and Bowser. They don't have to be super risky or rely on huge mistakes to kill early.

 

[meleebrawler]

If a character literally relies on you being bad to win, that's not a well designed character in my book.

And only landing a few hits is a bit of an exaggeration when you consider other heavy weights/heavy hitters can kill just as early if not earlier off of things like grabs such as DK and Bowser. They don't have to be super risky or rely on huge mistakes to kill early.

Might as well call every grappler in 2D fighters bad design, sorry, philosophy, too. They almost always start their rounds on the back foot due to being at a distance and have to find holes in the opponent's defence to really begin playing.

 

[BlazGreen]

Moving onto Zero vs Prince ramen, who the heck really plays normal Palutena besides AeroLink I think? Yeah, no one is going to know how to combat her and she is going to be one hell of a wildcard.

you can add TLTC and IceNinja to that list as well. I used to think that Palutena was a flavour of the month character but she has been getting decent results for a while and is definitely better than some of the other characters around her.

 

[FullMoon]

Aerolink plays mainly Bayonetta now from what I remember. Not sure if he keeps Palutena as a second.

 

[Joey T.]

The problem with Ganon (from my point of view) is that his moveset comes from Captain Falcon's, a character intended to be both fast and powerful. To make a difference with Ganon, they took out the "fast" part and put more into the "powerful" part, resulting in the mess we have now: a slowpoke without a projectile whose gameplan consists in making three or more hard reads to take a stock with his massive damage output.

At least in Melee with wavedashing he had better mobility, but we all see how that went in Brawl and now in Smash 4.