Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[UberMadman]

You can't post this without telling us what he actually said :V

Sorry, I fell asleep after posting this. He's played with them both and he feels that both are viable but Bayo is more viable, though he thinks that both will need time to unleash their full potential. He thinks Corrin is better than Robin but worse than Ike viability wise.

Neither apparently have combo throws, but Corrin can kill with Up-Throw around 150+ like Marth/Roy and Bayo can kill with F-Throw at 150-ish at the ledge, (needs more testing.) Corrin's fair, bair, and nair autocancel from a shorthop, while everything Bayo does except dair can autocancel, though dair can actually kill with its landing hitbox. Corrin can also kill with bair and up-air, which are two of his better killing moves.

Corrin's Side-B is interesting, but you can't jab lock with it after you cancel it nor can you do anything immediately out of it, (even jump, which you have to wait for the full jump animation before you can do an aerial.) It can also stick into the side of the stage to act as a Wall Cling/Jump. Speaking of those, Bayonetta can to both naturally.

Bayo's smashes have some really weird properties too. They are massively powerful and big but apparently inflict limited shieldstun and trade with almost everything. He mentioned he got a Witch Time off on a Sheik nair and tried to Up-Smash her but the nair's still active hitbox traded with Bayo's Up-Smash. That said, apparently Bayo can easily kill at 70 if she gets a Witch Time off with her fully charged Smashes, (it lasts about 6 seconds or so,) and the F-Smash to Down-Smash spike seen in the trailer on Palutena is not only easy but practical. Oh, and Corrin's F-Smash and Down-Smash are good, but Up-Smash has a garbage hitbox that doesn't really hit to the sides.

Bayo's neutral-B is alright but Corrin's is legitimately good, somewhat. He didn't talk too much about Bullet Arts though.

Finally, he also says that he believes Umbra Clock Tower should be a counterpick.

 

[Xandercosm]

This tier list is quite upsetting.

 

[Radical Larry]

This tier list is quite upsetting.

First tier lists are always going to have massive upsets.

 

[Amadeus9]

He thinks Corrin is better than Robin but worse than Ike viability wise.

heh

We shall see, Nairo. We shall see. I've been right on my assessments of DLC fighters thus far, and I don't plan on being wrong starting now >: )

 

[Yikarur]

Then uh

Why include them at all

Just a thought

Personally I would've left them out because of that. It just gives a false impression.

 

[Mazdamaxsti]

This tier list is quite upsetting.

This tier list is amazing

See how far we get without backing up our thoughts?

 

[Xandercosm]

This tier list is amazing

See how far we get without backing up our thoughts?

Yeah. Pretty far.

 

[Big-Cat]

The first few pages of this thread are going to literally be about comedy and the tier list.
You might call it the perfect plan.

But the Perfect plan would be to halt the production of another tier list for about seven months after Corrinetta's releases. We don't want ANOTHER Cloud.



Well, we could discuss having it in 5 tiers instead of down to J tier. Since we have 58 characters in the long run, would it not be best to have it as such:

Top Tier
High Tier
Middle Tier
Low Tier
Neo Low Tier

And if we go from that, we can categorize them into Upper, Center and Lower sub-categories, too! This would have more organization and a less clunky nature.

That would be reasonable, no?

The standard FGC tier list does just that but it's usually four tiers instead of the proposed five hence my example.

 

[-crump-]

For the most part, this list looks good to me. There are a few things that look odd here and there (Zelda and Jiggs are clearly too high), but overall I think it's a fantastic starting point.

Also, just for fun, I found this old tier list from when Smash 3DS had just released:

Spoiler

Oh, how times have changed.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

"I CAN'T TELL IF IT IS RESULTS OR MATCH UP BASED TIER LIST!"

Results become more obvious basis for tiers in the long term. Match ups become more universally understood over time. Neither of these are even a fraction as extensive as Melee and Brawl (+64) with their many years of history. People naturally come closer to a consensus with these ideas through reinforcement and clarification. Until then, a single person's rhetoric may be a lot more influential on opinions than we'd hope.
This is where at least having a tier list is nice. When you can start to say to people who think X is a lot lower than they should be, "look at Y,Z,M,A,R,T,H; you think they're all as good? wow, look at these results" and it's pretty effective.

This is a huge cast. For many voters this was the first time they had created a tier list earnestly and we tried to keep the format as easy to tackle for our voters as possible. We didn't strong arm anyone over whether they thought that X is overrated due to how their match ups have personally gone at majors within the last 3 months.

I can understand that

However, if you look at it that way... it just makes Ike's placement even more baffling. Particularly with the part in bold. Ike just... kinda crushes E tier in results. And most of D tier. Arguably edging out C tier as well, or at least sitting around the same area. Really out of Mid Tier as a whole, you could put only Toon Link, and maybe Falcon above him in terms of recent results for sure. I'll go out on a limb and say probably the Pits as well. Which puts him in the Peach/ROB/Pit range, which is accurate assuming you swap Toon Link and Luigi around.

Its just... wrong. There's no other way to say it: its just wrong. The moment you seriously compare the results in mid tier to each other, Ike's placement is just blatantly wrong. And it kinda needs an explanation because its kinda silly.

Would I be correct in betting that all of the Japanese players' votes had Ike even lower than his current placement? By a noticeable margin?

 

[LancerStaff]

Dark Pit and Pit were separate entities and they ended up one after the other.
Going back to the voting process, hyper majority of voters felt there was no reason to have them in different groupings; however some put Pit one division down (or DP 1 up) on occasion due to how they felt about the recent specific buffs DP received.

Good to know. Just... Kinda silly for Dark Pit to be higher when there's a ton of characters easily edgeguarded with Pit's arrows. At least Pit didn't end up a whole tier lower or something.

So, what's the odds that they'd get ranked together in the future? They were in that preliminary tier list thing a while back.

 

[Amadeus9]

I can understand that

However, if you look at it that way... it just makes Ike's placement even more baffling. Particularly with the part in bold. Ike just... kinda crushes E tier in results. And most of D tier. Arguably edging out C tier as well, or at least sitting around the same area. Really out of Mid Tier as a whole, you could put only Toon Link, and maybe Falcon above him in terms of recent results for sure. I'll go out on a limb and say probably the Pits as well. Which puts him in the Peach/ROB/Pit range, which is accurate assuming you swap Toon Link and Luigi around.

Its just... wrong. There's no other way to say it: its just wrong. The moment you seriously compare the results in mid tier to each other, Ike's placement is just blatantly wrong. And it kinda needs an explanation because its kinda silly.

Would I be correct in betting that all of the Japanese players' votes had Ike even lower than his current placement? By a noticeable margin?

Of everything to complain about, you're complaining about Ike

I can't even complain about where he is, and I complain a lot . He was FOTM like 4 months ago. Now he's kind of just faded away. Being where he is, is pretty justified to me.

 

[Mo433]

Sad to see Mewtwo barely move even though he got some massive buffs.

Honestly, I feel like this list has way to many categories. I get that this game has a lot of characters, but this list makes it difficult to establish how viable characters are.

 

[Flux0r]

Sad to see Mewtwo barely move even though he got some massive buffs.

Honestly, I feel like this list has way to many categories. I get that this game has a lot of characters, but this list makes it difficult to establish how viable characters are.

"Massive" is a really exaggerated way of describing Mewtwo's buffs.

He's still stuck with the same crippling issues from before. He's still bad and will most likely never win anything noteworthy with such stark errors in his overall character design.

 

[Amadeus9]

"Massive" is a really exaggerated way of describing Mewtwo's buffs.

He's still stuck with the same crippling issues from before. He's still bad and will most likely never win anything noteworthy with such stark errors in his overall character design.

I find it hard to call Mewtwo's buffs anything short of massive.

 

[Yikarur]

Mewtwo is pretty good post patch. His fair buffs and overall hitboxes changes do a looot for him.

 

[Spinosaurus]

Mewtwo got landing lag reduction across all his aerials, a very significant mobility buff to his ground speed, hitbox fixes and other QoL changes.

That's pretty massive.

 

[Sonicninja115]

Sad to see Mewtwo barely move even though he got some massive buffs.

Honestly, I feel like this list has way to many categories. I get that this game has a lot of characters, but this list makes it difficult to establish how viable characters are.

Expect him to move up in the next patch. This list is mainly a 2015 list, and not really 1.1.3, except for Cloud.

Plus, Mewtwo is a character that is only going to go higher, especially after more people place higher. @!Blue! and @TheReflexWonder are doing really well with him.

Also, I have a lot of post patch combos on my youtube. (subtle plug)

 

[HeavyLobster]

Anything below the top 10-13 is still bound to change, and will likely change quite a bit. We know who the tourney regulars are and how they stack up with each other, but outside of that core meta things are pretty murky. Really a lot of other characters simply don't have much in the way of top representation and their MU spreads aren't really established at a high level, especially vs. each other.

 

[Amadeus9]

Anything below the top 10-13 is still bound to change, and will likely change quite a bit. We know who the tourney regulars are and how they stack up with each other, but outside of that core meta things are pretty murky. Really a lot of other characters simply don't have much in the way of top representation and their MU spreads aren't really established at a high level, especially vs. each other.

Everything in top 13, too.

 

[Mo433]

Expect him to move up in the next patch. This list is mainly a 2015 list, and not really 1.1.3, except for Cloud.

Plus, Mewtwo is a character that is only going to go higher, especially after more people place higher. @!Blue! and @TheReflexWonder are doing really well with him.

Also, I have a lot of post patch combos on my youtube. (subtle plug)

Yea. I play Mewtwo pretty well too. I managed to get 2nd with him at my last tourney.

He still gets beat by rushdown characters, but he can manage against everyone else pretty well.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I can understand that

However, if you look at it that way... it just makes Ike's placement even more baffling. Particularly with the part in bold. Ike just... kinda crushes E tier in results. And most of D tier. Arguably edging out C tier as well, or at least sitting around the same area. Really out of Mid Tier as a whole, you could put only Toon Link, and maybe Falcon above him in terms of recent results for sure. I'll go out on a limb and say probably the Pits as well. Which puts him in the Peach/ROB/Pit range, which is accurate assuming you swap Toon Link and Luigi around.

If you suggest Ike to be on par with ROB or Peach I got no complaints.

But Pit? No way dude. That character does not belong in the depths of indistinguishable mid-tier mediocricy.

 

[Radical Larry]

Let's take our bets on what changes will come to the characters before we start viability impressions tomorrow.

 

[Amadeus9]

Let's take our bets on what changes will come to the characters before we start viability impressions tomorrow.

No major nerfs to any fighters. Only minor buffs to mid tiers, no large buffs to any low tiers.

 

[Zelder]

Actually let's not take bets on random speculation because that sounds absolutely tedious.

 

[Radical Larry]

No major nerfs to any fighters. Only minor buffs to mid tiers, no large buffs to any low tiers.

Possible nerfs to Sheik and ZSS, maybe.

Actually let's not take bets on random speculation because that sounds absolutely tedious.

It kills time, okay? This thread will blow up like a bomb when the patch comes.

 

[Rizen]

The buff/nerf thing was how the last thread descended into chaos. I'd rather hear about Mewtwo and Bowser. They were raised in the tier list significantly but do they have results?

 

[Nidtendofreak]

If you suggest Ike to be on par with ROB or Peach I got no complaints.

But Pit? No way dude. That character does not belong in the depths of indistinguishable mid-tier mediocricy.

Ike's positioning based on the current list set up (top of D/that awkward C tier)

As I said before I feel that Mid Tier as a whole is a crap shoot. Luigi should be far lower, Pits should be higher, Toon Link should be higher, MegaMan should be (slightly) higher, Bowser and Robin should switch but that's more nick picky/people trying to guestimate Bowser after the latest patch, Lucario and Greninja should be switched...

Most of the other tiers I have little to no problems with. Maybe a character here or there, that's normal and not worth really complaining about (could argue that G&W/WFT/Mewtwo/Bowser Jr. need their own "half-way to proven" tier but that's not worth the effort to me). Mid Tier though? Yikes, I think the fact its a semi-international tier list kinda hurts it in that area in particular. Who is good in Mid Tier seems to vary a looooooot depending on what part of the world you're in because well, Mid Tier in general is home of the character specialists + Falcon/Pits/Ike as is. Its already a crapshoot in that regard with just US/Can/Mexico.

 

[Mo433]

The buff/nerf thing was how the last thread descended into chaos. I'd rather hear about Mewtwo and Bowser. They were raised in the tier list significantly but do they have results?

I dunno bout Bowser, but Blue has managed to place well in many tournaments using Mewtwo alone.

 

[shadowmm151]

So I think this was a pretty solid tier list. Obviously I have some issues but nothing major.

I will say, like others, that S thru J is something we should avoid. For instance, like many have already said. Ike is a solo viable character who has results. But labeling him E tier makes him sound unviable. (For the record I think Ike should be higher like upper D tier here.) That being said, this game is much more balanced than the other entries, but S thru J makes it sound the opposite. I think + and - tiers would help differentiate viable from unviable.

Okay, with that out of the way the only other issue I have is with this continued opinion that seems to be spreading about some characters.

First Ryu. Yeah, he's really good, but top 5 with results worse than 'literally brand' new Cloud?
Pikachu. Also very good, but only ESAM really plays him at a high level and the results are pretty good yes, but not top 5.
Mario. Mario literally has no bad points and does very well all the time, yet I feel everyone wants to put him down. Is it that we just don't want to consider Mario a top tier because he's Mario?
Meta Knight. Really amazing with super easy KO potential. Talks of top 5 aren't impossible, but may be a bit too early.
Captain Falcon. So much hate here. Guys he's still really really good. Everyone wants to drop him 10 spots cuz he's combo food, but they all forget he's super strong, super fast, and can absolutely wreck just as hard as he gets wrecked.
Yoshi. Yeah I literally don't know any Yoshis on a competitive level off the top of my head and while that doesn't mean there aren't any, it does mean there isn't enough impact.

Anyway here's just some thoughts. Maybe more later. I gotta get to class.

 

[Megamang]

Bowser finally has the grab reward he deserves. But he still has trouble landing. Many of the worse off characters fit this description. It not only gives you a bad disadvantage, but it gives your opponent an easy gameplan against you (get him above me). Every single character can do that with uthrow, and the best characters can directly kill you from there. Couple that with a lackluster recovery and you dont have a threatening mid tier.

Perhaps expand on tough guy? If he is gonna be so freakin slow to leave the ground, then a jab shouldn't stop him on the ground. Makes sense right?

 

[LancerStaff]

If you suggest Ike to be on par with ROB or Peach I got no complaints.

But Pit? No way dude. That character does not belong in the depths of indistinguishable mid-tier mediocricy.

I'm surprised people would put Pit above Ike... Don't disagree, but Pit's kinda lacking in the players/results category.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Captain Falcon. So much hate here. Guys he's still really really good. Everyone wants to drop him 10 spots cuz he's combo food, but they all forget he's super strong, super fast, and can absolutely wreck just as hard as he gets wrecked.

Falcon belongs in Greninja tier. You can't be top 15 with a 35-65 Sheik MU.

 

[IndigoSSB]

Falco's lower than I would have liked, but the deviation in opinions was very high so I'm fairly content with his placement. Low-tier hero has a nice ring to it.

From D-tier up I completely agree with, I feel like this list was close to perfect in the placements in the top half. I don't necessarily disagree with the bottom half, but I recognize that it gets harder to place characters when there isn't as much representation to base your opinions on. It's no coincidence that the standard deviation starts getting higher the farther down the tier list you go.

Only one that I found a bit surprising was Robin making it to Mid-tier over a lot of the characters in Low-tier.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I'm surprised people would put Pit above Ike... Don't disagree, but Pit's kinda lacking in the players/results category.

Paseriman, Nairo and especially Earth have proven what this character is capable of even on the highest level. Pit's results are far superior to those of Ike.

 

[S_B]

Bowser finally has the grab reward he deserves. But he still has trouble landing. Many of the worse off characters fit this description. It not only gives you a bad disadvantage, but it gives your opponent an easy gameplan against you (get him above me). Every single character can do that with uthrow, and the best characters can directly kill you from there. Couple that with a lackluster recovery and you dont have a threatening mid tier.

Perhaps expand on tough guy? If he is gonna be so freakin slow to leave the ground, then a jab shouldn't stop him on the ground. Makes sense right?

I think Bowser is kind of at the point where most Bowser mains feel he's balanced with appropriate weaknesses. It's just that some of the higher tiers have overtuned tools that work too well against him (tiers which most expect will be toned down).

If Bowser were buffed much further, he could be increasingly strong against lower tiers while not doing a whole lot against higher tiers. You could shave off some frames on some of his moves here and there, but nothing dramatic.

What I mean to say is that trying to buff Bowser (or any character, really) to the point where they're on par with the top tiers would leave us with a balance situation that looks very much like "Brawl Minus". Better to tone down a few problem characters than try to buff EVERYONE to their level.

 

[Linkshot]

I put these thoughts on twitter before but I can rewrite them here.

Characters that I feel confident rearranging: Lucas, Palutena, Samus, Little Mac.

Let's start with putting Little Mac down into high Bottom. Little Mac is a character that is insanely hard to challenge on equal elevation, which is why he's at high bottom. On the very stark contrast, Little Mac is a character that loses to platforms. Stationary, floating floors. As long as Little Mac's opponent is comfortable banning Omegas and disengaging, they win. Period.

Next, we move Palutena up to bottom of Low. She's a character with okay tools (invincible bAir and Dash Attack, dThrow combos, good ground speed and fAir), but gets outperformed heavily in every aspect except zoning against projectiles and non-disjointed aerials. There's nothing major to exploit about her, except maybe very poor CQC and escape options, but she doesn't perform quite well enough to succeed.

Now, we move Samus up to middle of Low. I firmly believe that Samus's toolkit is strictly better than Palutena's. zAir is mighty, charging up the beam is threatening on its own, missiles force reactions, and all of this combines into the opponent either getting smacked with UpB for approaching or confirmed into charge shot for being too passive. The downfall is that any small or quick character can just stop Samus from controlling the pace and entirely overwhelm her.

Finally, I would put Lucas in high mid. While the placings don't support it, we've seen that Lucas does have very strong zoning and all the tricks, traps, and chains that Peach and Greninja have also shown off. For those reasons alone, I believe Lucas should be sitting up with the aforementioned two.

 

[MudkipUniverse]

Falcon at #14 isn´t right IMO. considering his results (fatality is the best we got) and MU´s (ZSS, sheik, pika all poop on that boii).

 

[Jams.]

Based on both matchup spread and results, should at least be above . This rarely happens on any tier list though, and lots of people are still of the opinion that Ike is overrated despite months of results now.

How is 's matchup spread with S and A tier? This is the only argument I can think of for including him in the top 5. To my knowledge, he has a great matchup spread versus the three S tiers (-1 vs Sheik, +1 vs ZSS, 0 or +1 vs Rosa). Is my understanding of his MUs outdated or incorrect?

Speaking of bottom tier characters.

What exactly is it that keeps 1111 Brawler from being the worst character? Seriously, that dude is just awful all-around and seeing him placed above characters like Charizard and Palutena looks just downright strange to me. How can the average 4BR member be of that opinion? Makes no sense to me whatsoever.

I mean, 1111 Mii Brawler probably has the worst rep in the whole game and theorycrafting with that character is a waste of time. I doubt the average 4BR member has much more experience with that character than the average Joe. The thought process probably went "Ya he sucks but he's probably better than these X characters I am certain that suck."

Mii Brawlers strength lies in his base moveset. He only loses his broken recovery (feint jump) and a strong killoption (Helicopter Kick). He is still pretty "ok" overall, because his normals are insanely good. Just his lack of recovery makes him bad.

Brawler and Doc have nothing in common. Brawler has a really good juggling game. His damage output is really strong as well. He just lacks reliable kill options and a broken recovery (his recovery in 1111 is "under average" but not completely bad)

That Free Brawler is good because of helicopter kick is a misconception. The reason he is good is because of feint jump. He would be a complete functioning character with 1112 and probably mid tier.

Could you elaborate please? I don't think Mii Brawler's normals are great. Nair and maybe jab and dash attack are great, but I can't think of another move of his that can be considered "great." His combo game falls apart after mid percent long before any of his moves beyond fsmash start killing. I don't see how his juggling is good when uair is basically just a crappy Mario uair.

 

[Terotrous]

Just a quick note, the OP should state that this tier list is for customs off, with Mii characters being restricted to 1111 movesets. It does mention this in the other article about the tierlist, but it's obviously essential context to understand why the characters are where they are.

I heavily disagree with the methodology of limiting Mii fighters to 1111, but otherwise the general placements look mostly right. I do suspect that the distinction between the sub-tiers like A and B is probably trivial right now, though.