Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Cutie Gwen]

I'm not presenting my opinions as fact. I'm using facts to back up my opinions.

Nope, I've always used Kurogane hammer whenever I need to talk frame data. Pit's arrows have a FAF of 43 btw, which absolutely and positively means that they're one less frame of commitment then Luigi's fireballs. If you don't believe it then chat up Kuroganehammer, don't believe me and ask Shaya if I'm reading Kurogane right. Though I've tested it myself to my best ability and I'm pretty darned sure it's correct.

Anybody can observe and interpret data. If somebody says something weird or unbelievable when we have objective data everywhere then look it up yourself before assuming they're a kook, it'll save you some lectures that way.



Haven't complained about Ike, actually. For the record I've played, beaten, and enjoyed his game on the GC. The sequel? Ehhhhh.

Not in the BBS example, which had the implications. And you said 'garbage walk' instead of 'walk that has pisspoor acceleration' or something

I'm certain I remember a while ago you were off 6 frames on something, I think it was Pit's dtilt
Speaking of Pit, I have a question. Why constantly compare everyone to Pit? Marth and Pit are 2 characters who have different tools, different playstales and statistics. They can't be compared in that regard, as Pit's a jack of all trades but doesn't master anything, whereas Marth relies on playing spacies for extra damage and early kills

 

[Ax^2]

Ok i hope this isnt off topic, but a tweet made by ally stated that there was a patch coming up on july 17th. I know that that my not be true but i was wondering if anyone knows about the odds of one coming out, or if you have heard something about that then how trusted can that info be?

 

[ARGHETH]

Pit's arrows have a FAF of 43 btw, which absolutely and positively means that they're one less frame of commitment then Luigi's fireballs.

Pit's aerial arrows. Kind of an important detail.

Speaking of Pit, I have a question. Why constantly compare everyone to Pit? Marth and Pit are 2 characters who have different tools, different playstales and statistics. They can't be compared in that regard, as Pit's a jack of all trades but doesn't master anything, whereas Marth relies on playing spacies for extra damage and early kills

Because he plays Pit, mainly. Better to talk about what you know, which in this case would be sticking to Pit talk but comparisons to Pit all the time is okay I guess.

Ok i hope this isnt off topic, but a tweet made by ally stated that there was a patch coming up on july 17th.

Apparently his brother told him...no idea why he'd know, so we should probably just ignore it.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

Pit's aerial arrows. Kind of an important detail.

Because he plays Pit, mainly. Better to talk about what you know, which in this case would be sticking to Pit talk but comparisons to Pit all the time is okay I guess.

Apparently his brother told him...no idea why he'd know, so we should probably just ignore it.

I just think it's foolish to compare characters unless they're clone-ish, like Mario, Dr. Mario and arguably Luigi

 

[DanGR]

So now that everyone is talking about how having multiple characters is a necessity in tourney, what lesser characters can be used to cp right now? One character I predict will become big as a secondary again will be dr.mario, his mu against pika, Fox, and Mario are pretty good, and he is a really good secondary to add into a character coverage core.

In my opinion, the best CP characters are those that give you an edge immediately while not being a big liability in the next match. Reason being you're often times forced to go blind into game 3/3 with your CP character (after losing game 1) and be at the mercy of your opponent's character pool. It's difficult having a secondary with a lot of atrocious matchups. Characters with several matchups worse than 6:4 are risky.

On the other hand, if you win game 1/3, you don't have to worry about your secondary's bad matchups. Though, I'd personally rather not invest time into a character I can only reliably use as a CP if I win game 1. I expect a bit more flexibility than that.

That's not say you can't use whatever character you want to take advantage of specific players' character pools. We see this more at top levels of play, and locally. Be careful about choosing a secondary like Doc if you're doing so simply because it worked against ESAM and you have trouble with Pikachu. Other players have different character pools, and you might just get clobbered game 3.


That all said, @Trifroze made a good point earlier about Cloud, Diddy, and Fox being the characters players are most likely to switch to as their mains in the future, among the high/top tiers. I think the same reasoning he used can be applied to why players will opt to use them as secondaries as well. Perhaps above all other considerations, it's good to choose your best possible answer to these 3, at least.

 

[StarshipGroove]

Haven't complained about Ike, actually

hol up

Ike was garbage in every gamemode initially, and right now he still has typical heavy problems that lead to him being juggled the majority of the match. He lacks anything ridiculously powerful not stuck behind five years of startup, endlag, and sourspots.

Idk if there's more instances but this is you complaining about Ike.
I'm out before the mods chokeslam me, toodles

 

[Wintermelon43]

Ok i hope this isnt off topic, but a tweet made by ally stated that there was a patch coming up on july 17th. I know that that my not be true but i was wondering if anyone knows about the odds of one coming out, or if you have heard something about that then how trusted can that info be?

Ally's infamous for saying random crap on his twitter, so I doubt that is true.

 

[Locke 06]

1st paragraph:
You are missing my point... My point all along was that Mewtwo has to take a risk in order to get the base Dtilt. Now, spaced Dtilt on Shield is extremely safe, just like a lot of other moves. However, it has low reward. Good, but it isn't nearly as rewarding as Base Dtilt. Tipper usually doesn't even give Mewtwo advantage. Another thing, why would you take the risk of entering that zone in the first place? You have so many other options besides "Oooh, I should go into an unsafe zone and shield in order to get the shieldgrab!" If Mewtwo tries to punish you and you shield the Base Dtilt punish, you can shieldgrab him. That is the only appropriate time in which to go for it. Otherwise, you are putting yourself at an extreme disadvantage during NEUTRAL for a small punish.

Basically, Mewtwo can tipper Dtilt during Neutral, but only for a possible small punish. Otherwise, the only time Mewtwo is going to take the risk of a Base Dtilt is when he is going for a read. And anyways, If your opponent is spamming the move, why don't you read it? Dtilt has a very low hitbox, so any SH Fair could go over it if you read Dtilt. But that is an in-depth rabbit hole to go into. Reading, Neutral, footsies and complex strategies that have nothing to do with this argument.

2nd Paragraph:
You, again, are missing what I am saying. You cannot punish Mewtwo off of a shieldrop unless you have a frame 3 or lower grounded move. Mewtwo is 100% safe unless ZSS jabs him or something along those lines.

You can, however, punish Mewtwo if you jump out of shield. Jumping out of shield allows you to act 7 frames faster then shield dropping. So, as long as your move is below 10 frames, you can beat Dtilt. So, as long as your Jumpsquat and aerial start-up frames are under 10, you can hit Mewtwo. Only by jumping do you get this offensive advantage. So, only aerial moves are applicable. Mewtwo can hold shield in this scenario and still get hit. Your scenario applies only if the opponent drops there shield and suffers the shield drop lag.

3rd Paragraph:
Why the heck would Megaman Dtilt when he could easily SH Lemons? Shield dropping Dtilt is a horribly unsafe idea. Not only is it punishable by 90% of the cast, but Megaman has far better options. Again, Shield dropping adds 7 frames of lag, giving Mewtwo a -3. However, when you jump out of shield, you don;t suffer those 7 frames of lag, and can act immediately. Other moves that can skip shield drop lag are Grab and Roll. Please understand this mechanic...

... you're really talking to me about shield mechanics. Okay. Know that most jumpsquats are 4-6 frames and aerials, especially forward facing ones with any range (not NAirs), are slower than grounded moves.

RE Megaman: Because SH pellet comes out f11 (jumpsquat 4, pellet 7) and doesn't have a hitbox that reaches far enough to hit Mewtwo while dtilt out of shield drop comes out f12 (7+5). Because whiff punishing a 21 frame action is not easy to do when you have to avoid the hitbox and it's backed up by Mewtwo's punish game. Because jumping is a commitment.

"Tipper doesn't usually give mewtwo an advantage." You're hitting with a move that pops your opponent up. Don't talk to me about "advantages." You know what doesn't give characters advantages? Being hit by a move that pops you up.

The number of characters with f10 jumpsquat+forward facing aerial options that reach mewtwo after a spaced dtilt is... not many. Like... are you kidding me? You spout numbers, but you really don't get it. Diddy is f10 with FAir OoS. Diddy has one of the best FAir OoS' in the game. I know spaced dtilt is safe on block! That's the whole point! It's really really good!

Without getting in dtilt range, guess what? A defensive Mewtwo will never get grabbed, approached on the ground, or threatened with most of the cast's grounded pokes because Mewtwo's outranges theirs. "So many options!" pls understand.

I don't care about base dtilt. If the range on Mewtwo's dtilt was reduced by half so that base dtilt was all the move was, the move would be infinitely less "silly" imo. This conversation is done.

 

[Ffamran]

I suggest having a tab or window of this open before reading: http://smashboards.com/threads/smash-4-running-walking-speed-rankings.371564/page-2#post-18647333.

Speaking of walk accelerations... 0.1 is the normal walk acceleration. There are only 9 known characters who don't have the standard 0.1 walk acceleration: Bowser (0.05), Charizard (0), Ganondorf (0.03), Ike (0), Lucina (0), Marth (0), Robin (0), Shulk (0), and Triple D (0). Technically, 10 if you count Giga Bowser as a separate character who (obviously) shares Bowser's walk acceleration. Out of those 9 (or 10), 7 have 0 walk accelerations, 2 or 3 if you're counting Giga Bowser as a separate character have "different" lower walking speeds of 0.05 for (Giga) Bowser and 0.03 for Ganondorf, and 4 of them are Fire Emblem characters. So, it seems to be a trait Fire Emblem characters have if we ignore Corrin and Roy whose walk acceleration are unknown and something I'll address later; it's like how all Star Fox characters have high dash -- not to be confused with run speed -- speeds, high fall speeds, and generally fast startup on their normals and aerials. Anyway, the other thing is that Shulk gets lumped into with the FE characters. He possesses traits of the FE characters have like Ike and Roy's low air acceleration, but high air speed, low walk acceleration, fixed vertical recovery, and perhaps more.

In relation to walk speed, of those 9 (or 10), only 3 of them have high walk speeds, Charizard (1.2), Lucina (1.5), Marth (1.5) -- 4 if you count Giga Bowser (1.5) -- and Shulk at average, 1.1. Everyone else has walk speeds below average with the fastest being Triple D at 0.98 followed by Robin (0.891), Ike (0.869), Bowser (0.858), and Ganondorf (0.73). What does this do? Well, the easiest one is that it does give "heft" for Bowser, Charizard, and Ganondorf. Makes sense since they're all heavyweights. Also, Ike who is heavily muscled, wearing heavy armor, and carrying a longsword. From an aesthetic sense, it shows weight. From a gameplay sense, it just hurts them since they're this minority who have different, low walk accelerations to everyone's normal versus everyone has different walk speeds, but theirs are low. This goes especially for Ike, Robin, and sort of Shulk who have this "FE character trait" and have slower walk speeds. They're getting a template that while makes them feel similar, might not be a good thing in the long run e.g. Ike and Robin are already slow walkers, so why should they have slow walk accelerations too? At the same time, it's limiting and it might be a good thing for game balance. Imagine if Lucina and Marth had normal walk accelerations. It might be a bit crazy. Oh, but Fox's walk speed is the second best and his walk acceleration is normal. One question: does he have a sword? Fox can't contest mid-range like a swordsman. If he could, he'd probably be even more dangerous. Granted, because of Fox's walk attributes, he probably has the best walk in the game.

The other thing is where are Bayonetta, Cloud, Corrin, Lucas, Mewtwo, Roy, and Ryu? Nobody has dug up or recorded that information down, so we don't know except it could be assumed that they all have 0.1 walk accelerations except for Corrin and Roy who'd have the FE walk acceleration of 0. That doesn't work entirely... People have said and seen that when Roy walks, he slides forward. If that's true, Roy might actually be the only character with a "positive" walk acceleration i.e. he's the only character with a walk acceleration that is different, but is above 0.1 instead of below like the known different others. Could there be others? Possibly. Ryu might be one even if it's slight like his walk acceleration could be 0.13 and Corrin might be another FE character who deviates from the FE low walk acceleration trait and has a normal one. There could also be patch changes that people never picked up. Who knows, maybe Peach got a walk acceleration buff that went unnoticed.

Another topic... we might want to talk about dash / run accelerations... It might not be as vital or interesting since most people don't purposely try to slow run or turnaround much during a run, but it's something that is there. Don't get what I'm saying? Try running with Captain Falcon and turnaround to run. He takes some time to pick up speed; Capt.'s dash / run acceleration is supposedly 0.06. Meanwhile, someone else like Fox gets back to speed faster; Fox's dash / run acceleration is 0.1111.

 

[Djent]

Good on ESAM for always crediting those who beat him. But more importantly, is he serious about Bidou?

Dabuz BOPPED me, damn. Saj played incredibly well as well. 17th place isn't what I wanted, but it's what I deserve.

BIDOU TIME!!

— ESAM (Stride Esports) (@imESAM) June 26, 2016

The answer to my question is "yes." He's practicing it on his stream right now. It seems like it could be very useful for Pika because of crouch and PP shenanigans. However, he just started so it's hard to tell.

 

[Locke 06]

The answer to my question is "yes." He's practicing it on his stream right now. It seems like it could be very useful for Pika because of crouch and PP shenanigans. However, he just started so it's hard to tell.

Captain L uses Bidou and is quite natural with it. His tech skill is great from playing all the smash games and his spacing was really good before, so, honestly, it doesn't feel like it makes too much of a difference.
But he definitely does Bidou things.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

Jab, Ftilt, and Dtilt in neutral fill the same purpose

The fact that you think this really shows you don't understand what you're trying to argue against. I'm jabbing so I can try and combo them with utilt or ftilt, fsmash, a grab, an aerial, aerial dancing blade 1, or grounded dancing blade. Ftilt gets people away, dtilt pokes.

That's all fine and dandy but the point here is that Marth's stuck using each one in it's own range... His walk is so garbage it keeps him from well and truly choosing on anything but an opponent rushing straight at you.

So run. Or jump. Y'all keep bringing up his walk as if he can't run or jump and is forced to walk all the time.
Also, yeah I'm not gonna use something outside of it's range because that means it's either going to whiff or it'll be spaced incorrectly.

Marth plays like a mediocre Brawl character in terms of gameplan... Almost the literal definition of boring. This is especially a problem when he has a bunch of moves that aren't worth using and the ones he has don't make you think. Marth's design has always been terrible.

Except I'm not knocking down Marth? That's just how he is. Pit has more options because he's supposed to, he's the jack-of-all-trades. If he didn't he'd be ****. I only started this tanget because somebody asked a question.

No one cares what you find boring. That can be a reason why you don't play the character, not why the character isn't good. Pit bores the hell outta me but that doesn't mean he's not at least somewhat decent.

And a gigantic problem with Marth's offstage game is that a significant portion of the cast can just ignore it, while another sizable chunk was free anyway. This has more to do with everybody else's poor design but it still makes the one point where Marth actually feels fun, well, not, most of the time. And there's other characters with equal or better designed edgeguarding and don't play Brawl onstage.

I already said they're about as samey as you could get...

Yeah I knew but I've never seen a decent Marth attempt it, and I seem to remember that particular move being pretty lacking in the hitbox department.

No offense taken... I just don't really see how I'm at fault.

No, they can't. Characters with teleports can ignore it, Pikachu and ZSS can somewhat ignore it, no one else can. 6 characters can ignore it, the remaining 52 get pressured. No one wants to get hit off stage or countered by Marth, especially not without a jump. And characters that can ignore Marth off stage can still get 2 framed with dtilt or fsmash

There's no such thing as presenting something unbiased though... I mean, people will still insist BBS is a good game.

Acceleration is garbage and renders his high walking speed moot. Ask Shaya if you don't believe me.

See guys, this is the moronic bandwagoning I'm talking about. Do the ****ing research.

While some people need to do some frame data research, you need to do a lot of game play research. Playing Marth for an hour is not enough to know well enough how he functions or wants to fight people.

 

[Nobie]

All that's happening here with LancerStaff is that he's retaliating against the people who claim Pit to be boring.

Pit is a Jack of All Trades, a little bit of everything, and as a result some see him as not a worthwhile character to main. The fact that there are so few Pit mains kind of speaks to his, though the fact that Earth can beat just about anybody also tells me that he's never going to be worse than Mid Tier.

Lancer, in response, flips the script and says, "Rather than a character that can do everything decently being boring, it's the character with the most focused skill set that's boring!" Hence, Marth, who's the purest swordsman in Smash 4. The fact that Pit falls into the Swordsman category as well is no coincidence.

It's like someone who's a fan of a KFC Famous Bowl trying to trash talk an All-You-Can-Eat Fried Chicken buffet.

Moving on to a better topic, the notion of a counterpick metagame as a RESULT of the balance being so good intrigues me quite a bit. I think normally when people envision a counterpick metagame, they think it's because all of the character's strengths are so polarized that it becomes like a rock-paper-scissors that's ultimately bad for the game. However, with Smash 4 it seems to stem more from the fact that pretty much every character can put up a fight and therefore you can't sleep on anyone. If you've never fought a decent Kirby, and suddenly your opponent pulls one out along with the experience to match, it can be a scary situation because character interaction knowledge is spread across a cast of 58 characters. Do you REALLY know how to fight each and every one with your main?

 

[FeelMeUp]

All the talks of counterpicks and viability made me realize something that I'd like you guys' opinions on.
I think a large amount of a character's success can be pulled from how well you can do with them off of your own fundamentals completely disregarding matchup experience. This is most likely a HUGE component of why ZeRo dominated the scene for so long while playing 80% Sheik. If he didn't know the nuances of a matchup it most likely did not matter because his fundamental skill and neutral game were both that much better than the opponents. Those that did have similar skill or strong enough gimmicks at the time(Larry/Dabuz/Nairo/ESAM/Vinnie etc for the former, Shiny's Lucario for the latter) could successfully break that gap and force him to play his own character's skill rather than playing his own dominant game.

This is also a big reason I feel he played so much more Sheik. 1.1.4 Sheik was the only character that could completely ignore almost all matchups and use her dominating tools to play at her own pace with her own game.
To give a more specific character example, Rosalina can skirt by without matchup experience for a large majority of the cast. Luma's properties, uair and jab can dominate the so much that characters like DK, Bowser and Kirby can't actually do anything regardless of how much they know about the specific matchup(hence the phrase "Just do Rosa things and you'll win")
Now that it isn't the case anymore, ZeRo isn't anywhere near as dominant and you see many more characters pop up in the top placings for tournaments.

I'll use Sheik as an example once again, as she's my main. I'd say these are the matchups a Sheik player actually has to know the nuances of in order to win, rather than being carried by their own personal knowledge of the character and her tools. Made this in a few minutes so I didn't think a ton on it. Feel free to point out disagreements if you have any.

 

[Nu~]

All the talks of counterpicks and viability made me realize something that I'd like you guys' opinions on.
I think a large amount of a character's success can be pulled from how well you can do with them off of your own fundamentals completely disregarding matchup experience. This is most likely a HUGE component of why ZeRo dominated the scene for so long while playing 80% Sheik. If he didn't know the nuances of a matchup it most likely did not matter because his fundamental skill and neutral game were both that much better than the opponents. Those that did have similar skill or strong enough gimmicks at the time(Larry/Dabuz/Nairo/ESAM/Vinnie etc for the former, Shiny's Lucario for the latter) could successfully break that gap and force him to play his own character's skill rather than playing his own dominant game.

This is also a big reason I feel he played so much more Sheik. 1.1.4 Sheik was the only character that could completely ignore almost all matchups and use her dominating tools to play at her own pace with her own game.
To give a more specific character example, Rosalina can skirt by without matchup experience for a large majority of the cast. Luma's properties, uair and jab can dominate the so much that characters like DK, Bowser and Kirby can't actually do anything regardless of how much they know about the specific matchup(hence the phrase "Just do Rosa things and you'll win")
Now that it isn't the case anymore, ZeRo isn't anywhere near as dominant and you see many more characters pop up in the top placings for tournaments.

I'll use Sheik as an example once again, as she's my main. I'd say these are the matchups a Sheik player actually has to know the nuances of in order to win, rather than being carried by their own personal knowledge of the character and her tools. Made this in a few minutes so I didn't think a ton on it. Feel free to point out disagreements if you have any.

While I agree with your post overall, you're going to get bodied by any pacman worth their salt if you don't know the matchup.

That goes for pretty much any matchup with pac and why it's going to be a while before his place in the meta settles.

 

[FeelMeUp]

While I agree with your post overall, you're going to get bodied by any pacman worth their salt if you don't know the matchup.

That goes for pretty much any matchup with pac and why it's going to be a while before his place in the meta settles.

I agree with that, actually. I had Pac and MM next to each other in my head but rushed and dropped him in the bigger group.

 

[Mr. Johan]

The premier Sheik would have lost to the premier Robin at CEO had the latter not SD'd Game 3, so I'll have to disagree on "just doing Sheik things" being enough to get by there.

 

[FeelMeUp]

The premier Sheik would have lost to the premier Robin at CEO had the latter not SD'd Game 3, so I'll have to disagree on "just doing Sheik things" being enough to get by there.

"just doing Sheik things" includes not letting the character with one of the worst recoveries come back for free almost every single time, you know.

 

[Jaxas]

The biggest problem with the character remains hurtbox extension and/or by correlary small hitboxes - i.e. the moves don't trade you get hit or they whiff.
You can cope with the worst grab, up-smash, basic projectile (h.missile) in the game, and a specific application jab (which is not that bad actually) but the hurtbox to hitbox ratio is the real killer.

Just as a quick reference...

 

[Das Koopa]

I'll be posting everything pertinent early in the morning. In the meantime, I've updated my region map.

I'll likely create another version later once I find a better map program. There are a few other nuances and details I'll like to set up, including a NorCal/SoCal separation and an emphasis of adding El Paso to the Southwest.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Moving on to a better topic, the notion of a counterpick metagame as a RESULT of the balance being so good intrigues me quite a bit. I think normally when people envision a counterpick metagame, they think it's because all of the character's strengths are so polarized that it becomes like a rock-paper-scissors that's ultimately bad for the game. However, with Smash 4 it seems to stem more from the fact that pretty much every character can put up a fight and therefore you can't sleep on anyone. If you've never fought a decent Kirby, and suddenly your opponent pulls one out along with the experience to match, it can be a scary situation because character interaction knowledge is spread across a cast of 58 characters. Do you REALLY know how to fight each and every one with your main?

All the talks of counterpicks and viability made me realize something that I'd like you guys' opinions on.
I think a large amount of a character's success can be pulled from how well you can do with them off of your own fundamentals completely disregarding matchup experience. This is most likely a HUGE component of why ZeRo dominated the scene for so long while playing 80% Sheik. If he didn't know the nuances of a matchup it most likely did not matter because his fundamental skill and neutral game were both that much better than the opponents. Those that did have similar skill or strong enough gimmicks at the time(Larry/Dabuz/Nairo/ESAM/Vinnie etc for the former, Shiny's Lucario for the latter) could successfully break that gap and force him to play his own character's skill rather than playing his own dominant game.

This is also a big reason I feel he played so much more Sheik. 1.1.4 Sheik was the only character that could completely ignore almost all matchups and use her dominating tools to play at her own pace with her own game.
To give a more specific character example, Rosalina can skirt by without matchup experience for a large majority of the cast. Luma's properties, uair and jab can dominate the so much that characters like DK, Bowser and Kirby can't actually do anything regardless of how much they know about the specific matchup(hence the phrase "Just do Rosa things and you'll win")
Now that it isn't the case anymore, ZeRo isn't anywhere near as dominant and you see many more characters pop up in the top placings for tournaments.

I'll use Sheik as an example once again, as she's my main. I'd say these are the matchups a Sheik player actually has to know the nuances of in order to win, rather than being carried by their own personal knowledge of the character and her tools. Made this in a few minutes so I didn't think a ton on it. Feel free to point out disagreements if you have any.

I'm inclined to agree with both of these posts. Matchup inexperience is a valid card to play if you happen to be competent with a rarely-seen character, and characters that can ignore this factor better than the rest will probably rise to the top as a result.

Oddly enough, I think there are even some high tier characters that fit this mold. Specifically, Rosalina and (to a lesser extent) Bayonetta. Rosalina has Luma, which is unique and powerful enough that you really can't afford to skate by without giving it some serious thought. Bayonetta is a bit of a harder sell here, but Witch Time and Bat Within both give a giant middle finger to pressing buttons in neutral for pressure and fishing for pseudo-combos that aren't technically combos. I think this had a lot to do with the hate she generated pre-nerf, not even taking her absurd combo reward into account. Palutena and Bowser Jr. are also easy to argue here, at least for right now, if only because they were responsible for two huge upsets recently.

Of course, Rosalina has been high-profile for ages now so it's relatively easy to pick up anti-Rosalina tactics by simple osmosis.

 

[LancerStaff]

Not in the BBS example, which had the implications. And you said 'garbage walk' instead of 'walk that has pisspoor acceleration' or something

I'm certain I remember a while ago you were off 6 frames on something, I think it was Pit's dtilt
Speaking of Pit, I have a question. Why constantly compare everyone to Pit? Marth and Pit are 2 characters who have different tools, different playstales and statistics. They can't be compared in that regard, as Pit's a jack of all trades but doesn't master anything, whereas Marth relies on playing spacies for extra damage and early kills

The KH fanbase has certainly turned on BBS after 2.5HD...

Garbage walk because of his walking acceleration. Top speed means nothing if you can't ever reach it.

That was Xacer actually...

He's what I know. All there is to it. Somebody asked me to compare them.

Pit's aerial arrows. Kind of an important detail.

For Dark Pit yes. Pit really shouldn't be shooting on the ground ever.

hol up


Idk if there's more instances but this is you complaining about Ike.
I'm out before the mods chokeslam me, toodles

That was about how he works in FFAs mate. Probably in regards to how he's not OP there. Less **** smearing, more context, okay?

The fact that you think this really shows you don't understand what you're trying to argue against. I'm jabbing so I can try and combo them with utilt or ftilt, fsmash, a grab, an aerial, aerial dancing blade 1, or grounded dancing blade. Ftilt gets people away, dtilt pokes.

So run. Or jump. Y'all keep bringing up his walk as if he can't run or jump and is forced to walk all the time.
Also, yeah I'm not gonna use something outside of it's range because that means it's either going to whiff or it'll be spaced incorrectly.

No one cares what you find boring. That can be a reason why you don't play the character, not why the character isn't good. Pit bores the hell outta me but that doesn't mean he's not at least somewhat decent.

No, they can't. Characters with teleports can ignore it, Pikachu and ZSS can somewhat ignore it, no one else can. 6 characters can ignore it, the remaining 52 get pressured. No one wants to get hit off stage or countered by Marth, especially not without a jump. And characters that can ignore Marth off stage can still get 2 framed with dtilt or fsmash

While some people need to do some frame data research, you need to do a lot of game play research. Playing Marth for an hour is not enough to know well enough how he functions or wants to fight people.

I've explained this before... They're as similar as they can reasonably be.

Marth's dash options are garbage and his aerial options are even more samey then his ground moves.

Less depth is boring.

Anybody can get 2-frames on anybody besides Sheik.

Marth's not that hard to even play in general, I'm sorry. He's so easy he's one of the most common salty CPs on for Glory.

Lancer, in response, flips the script and says, "Rather than a character that can do everything decently being boring, it's the character with the most focused skill set that's boring!" Hence, Marth, who's the purest swordsman in Smash 4. The fact that Pit falls into the Swordsman category as well is no coincidence.

It's like someone who's a fan of a KFC Famous Bowl trying to trash talk an All-You-Can-Eat Fried Chicken buffet.

Not even close man. Normally what you have to say is pretty intelligent... This ain't.

Like is Nu~ in cahoots with me now?

 

[NewZen]

This post is a response in regards to what Nobie said on this page, but even under the circumstances of us simply assuming that because this game is balanced well, won't there still be CP's that largely remain dominant once people have enough time with this game's meta?

Wait, that doesn't seem to be likely given how a single patch can potentially change the stakes of how each CP works, and as such, we have people now who say Cloud is the best CP who may say that Mario will soon be the next best CP overall if he receives a significant amount of buffs whereas Cloud may get nerfed into either pure mediocrity or may just end up simply average/jack-of-all-trades like Pit/Dark Pit. Again, this is just speculation, but still, it makes you wonder. Heck, it's one of the main reasons I follow this game competitively-the wonder of who is efficient and who is not can change without a moment's notice.

 

[Shady Shaymin]

If a character has tools that are strong enough for them to consistently "play their own game" in any matchup regardless of the tools at the opponent's disposal like pre-patch Sheik, isn't that literally broken by definition?

 

[FeelMeUp]

If a character has tools that are strong enough for them to consistently "play their own game" in any matchup regardless of the tools at the opponent's disposal like pre-patch Sheik, isn't that literally broken by definition?

Sheik operated in a way that made her game plan mostly the same against all characters aside from Meta Knight and Rosalina, but was still vulnerable to some gimmicks like all other characters are. But, if they can do it in every matchup then yes. They work outside of the boundaries of a competitive game.

However, broken is a word I refuse to touch on because of the responses given when using it in the Smash community so I can't comment on that.
I'll just say that there's a reason people often used vanilla Sheik and placed highly in customs tournaments with Kong Cyclone and Trip Sapling running around.

 

[Ninety]

"just doing Sheik things" includes not letting the character with one of the worst recoveries come back for free almost every single time, you know.

So... Playing optimally?

 

[FeelMeUp]

So... Playing optimally?

I don't really like how broad that statement generally sounds.
I'd say playing optimally to your character's strengths. Why ignore a character with a bad recovery when you possess a top 3 edgeguarding kit?

 

[Strong-Arm]

So to me smash 4 looks like its going more so towards a game where a secondary is needed, even for top tiers and high tiers.

 

[HeavyLobster]

If a character has tools that are strong enough for them to consistently "play their own game" in any matchup regardless of the tools at the opponent's disposal like pre-patch Sheik, isn't that literally broken by definition?

Not necessarily. Being able to dictate the terms of the MU doesn't guarantee winning, especially if risk/reward isn't in your favor. It does make learning MUs easier, because the optimal way to play doesn't change much from MU to MU, but it doesn't guarantee that this optimal style of play will always be good or result in a favorable MU. Even now Sheik can mostly do what she wants in many of her tougher MUs, but she has to work so hard for the kill and can die so easily that it's still tough to win consistently.

 

[FeelMeUp]

A secondary isn't exactly needed for some. Just highly recommended.
i.e Diddy/Sheik don't "need" secondaries but they both operate so similarly that you'd be extremely well off playing both.

 

[Nu~]

Like is Nu~ in cahoots with me now?

I'm kinda just sitting back and enjoying the entire conversation. Seeing what I can learn from it. I find it kinda odd that some people are claiming that you called Marth bad because he's boring (where did that come from? I'm kinda curious on that one).
You did kinda call him brain dead however which I don't agree with. It's honestly kinda stressful having to maintain your perfect sword wall all match.


But on that note, I agree with your point that Marth's design is pretty boring per-say. He doesn't exactly have much variety in his moveset overall and has the same game plan every match: "oppress em' with longer buttons". An over simplification of course, but you get the idea. It's not about the move animations (where did that come from...honestly some of these arguments hurt my head), it's just that every button kinda achieves the same goal at different ranges.

I could never get behind a character that has every move tailor-made to suit one overall game plan. Variety and depth in moveset > streamlined moveset imo. Hence why I love pacman...but to be honest, I love him A LOT more in theory than in practice lol. The micromanagement to make him work ****ing sucks.


Yeah I don't think Marth is bad, just...meh to me. Not my style.
But that's okay. I understand that people love that about Marth. That he can act as a moving wall who punishes the opponent hard for messing up in footsies. That he wants to keep pushing you to the end of the stage until you die...the most basic goal of a smash bros. game.


So overall, I agree with you. But I'm still holding my judgement open for further discussion on this topic. Hoping for the Marth enthusiasts Shaya and @Emblem Lord to step in and add some of their insight.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

The KH fanbase has certainly turned on BBS after 2.5HD...

Garbage walk because of his walking acceleration. Top speed means nothing if you can't ever reach it.

That was Xacer actually...

He's what I know. All there is to it. Somebody asked me to compare them.



For Dark Pit yes. Pit really shouldn't be shooting on the ground ever.



That was about how he works in FFAs mate. Probably in regards to how he's not OP there. Less **** smearing, more context, okay?



I've explained this before... They're as similar as they can reasonably be.

Marth's dash options are garbage and his aerial options are even more samey then his ground moves.

Less depth is boring.

Anybody can get 2-frames on anybody besides Sheik.

Marth's not that hard to even play in general, I'm sorry. He's so easy he's one of the most common salty CPs on for Glory.



Not even close man. Normally what you have to say is pretty intelligent... This ain't.

Like is Nu~ in cahoots with me now?

Has nothing to do with this, and 2 is the fan favourite
I know. The problem is, you simply said Marth's walk was garbage without any explanation to why. You later said 'I'm not presenting my opinions as fact. I'm using facts to back up my opinions.' despite how you didn't say why Marth's walk is garbage. It's like if I said 'Pit isn't good'
If both characters are completely different, you don't compare them, especially as you're biased as hell with Pit

 

[Peppermint1201]

Guys, this thread is for discussing competitive viability, not how cool/uncool marth's sword is. "Good design" stuff belongs somewhere else.

 

[LancerStaff]

I'm kinda just sitting back and enjoying the entire conversation. Seeing what I can learn from it. I find it kinda odd that some people are claiming that you called Marth bad because he's boring (where did that come from? I'm kinda curious on that one).
You did kinda call him brain dead however which I don't agree with. It's honestly kinda stressful having to maintain your perfect sword wall all match.


But on that note, I agree with your point that Marth's design is pretty boring per-say. He doesn't exactly have much variety in his moveset overall and has the same game plan every match: "oppress em' with longer buttons". An over simplification of course, but you get the idea. It's not about the move animations (where did that come from...honestly some of these arguments hurt my head), it's just that every button kinda achieves the same goal at different ranges.

I could never get behind a character that has every move tailor-made to suit one overall game plan. Variety and depth in moveset > streamlined moveset imo. Hence why I love pacman...but to be honest, I love him A LOT more in theory than in practice lol. The micromanagement to make him work ****ing sucks.


Yeah I don't think Marth is bad, just...meh to me. Not my style.
But that's okay. I understand that people love that about Marth. That he can act as a moving wall who punishes the opponent hard for messing up in footsies. That he wants to keep pushing you to the end of the stage until you die...the most basic goal of a smash bros. game.


So overall, I agree with you. But I'm still holding my judgement open for further discussion on this topic. Hoping for the Marth enthusiasts Shaya and @Emblem Lord to step in and add some of their insight.

Marth's easy to play... With nothing on the line. I can sit down and be all "lol ima play murth" and do well. Marth's glassy-ness (seriously, he's lighter then Palutena) and inherently inconsistent tippers means that winning tournaments is hard. I mean, really, if people are going to call me out when I say Pit has unfound things at all (when they can't even read his frame data properly <.<) then Marth isn't much better.

Pac-Man I like, yeah. Wouldn't play him for the same reasons but I really like his design. I gush about Pit so much because he's everything I want out of a game ever. He has a ton of options, each one is radically different and he's balanced in spite of this. This is like everything every actiony game wanted to be ever. And most RPGs too... Really, what's the upside to BBS's BS boss design or completely overcentralized games like Awakening? Yeah they're easy but that's what easy mode is for. If you're not thinking in any way, anyway, then why does the hard mode even exist? They're all **** easy, and the difficulty rating is actually just a tedium rating. Usually you want that gone.

This goes back to Smash for me. I hate characters like Sheik and Cloud (this isn't some drunken sports fan level hate, really guys) because you just blow up the neutral most of the time. There's easy, then there's braindead. Easy is fine because it's usually at a cost, like ROB or Little Mac, and the cost is that when you mess up you're ****ed. Braindead is terrible design. Braindead is free or so close that it doesn't matter. Cloud is like BBS's 100% invincible dodges that do all the work against the bosses for you. Completely boring and unhype.

Hype exists outside of tournaments, and even outside of multiplayer games. Like, look at the Wii Punch-Out. (Really should if you haven't, definite 10/10 in my book.)

Spoiler: Punch Out stuff

Okay, there's only four basic attacks in different directions, three dodges, a mostly useless block, and a super move, but it makes up for the utter blandness of his moveset (which lacks even the ability to move freely, mind you,) with hype. Imagine that you're Brawl Dorf and your opponent is MK, but you only have half the stocks and deal 3% per hit. He's a dumb bot though, so you can make it by with just reacting and punishing... Well, for less then half the game anyway. You only dealing scratch damage while he eventually gets to the point where he's taking a third of your HP just won't cut it after a while. So, you need to take some risks. Big ones. You need to interrupt his attacks with your own for stars, but it can't just be any attack. That'd be too easy. You need to pick the right one out of the four on top of it, and then you get a star punch. Oh, and getting hit takes them all away and the opponent will always dodge it if he's not dizzy or punching already in the second half of the game.

You're at an absurd disadvantage by default and have to claw out each and every win. Effectively you're making the ultimate comeback to win at all. These situations happen in fighting games, though hopefully not by default. Marth is... Decidedly not hype. He presses buttons... Presses some more... And that's about it until like 170% where he Uthrows you. His ultimate goal is to kill with a tipper long before then, though. To me, this defeats the purpose of having Smash's Xtreme sumo wrestling design where you wear down the opponent and use a dedicated finisher to win. Closing out with a Smash takes work but is incredibly satisfying. ...Doing it with a tilt is like "eh, whatever, I'm a wuss." Tilts like this shouldn't kill. Something like Ryu's (on Ryu, remember) is about where I'd draw the line. As long as you don't do stupid **** you're not going to get hit.

Marth lacks widely different options, and he lacks hype to the point where it's less then the norm in Smash. This is just not fun for me, and like Awakening and BBS I cannot fathom why anybody would defend him, even. Like... Why? Why do people defend things that they can't even explain aren't bad?

Has nothing to do with this, and 2 is the fan favourite
I know. The problem is, you simply said Marth's walk was garbage without any explanation to why. You later said 'I'm not presenting my opinions as fact. I'm using facts to back up my opinions.' despite how you didn't say why Marth's walk is garbage. It's like if I said 'Pit isn't good'
If both characters are completely different, you don't compare them, especially as you're biased as hell with Pit

Do you really need to pick apart my example?

I've explained it a thousand times... I honestly thought Marth's walk being terrible was common knowledge by now. Saying Pit is bad is, well, wrong. Saying Puff is bad is a fact. This is the later.

Why shouldn't we compare characters? Yes, I'm biased. In case it wasn't obvious, everybody is biased. If we didn't try and make comparisons in spite of bias we wouldn't get anywhere ever.

Guys, this thread is for discussing competitive viability, not how cool/uncool marth's sword is. "Good design" stuff belongs somewhere else.

Good design stuffs is basically the reason Ffamram and Thinkaman exist... I'm pretty sure it has a place. More of one then debating wether or not Pikachu should be a red topic anyway.

 

[Shaya]

Lancer, you've made some grand connections without actually explaining IN REAL TERMS why ("fun", "boring" "all the options are the same"? every melee only attack character must be badly designed too ), and folks are trying to fill the gaps for you with explanations like "he's doing it to defend the HUSBANDO PIT!" or "yeah Marth isn't for me either because ..." because most are understandably bewildered by how you argue 1+1=Z.

Low level players have always tried to play Marth as a simple waller, and it's never been good at high level in prior games whatsoever. There's more to the character than that and when players get power shielding or micro-spacing down-pat it takes a lot for a Marth player to overcome that wall.

I think a large part to what makes Marth less engaging in Smash4 (and only in Smash4) are the lack of auto cancels; optimal choices based on various timings is no longer as big a part of him (having all your ACs optimized for the likes of Fox, Cloud or even Pit are fulfilling hurdles for most players). The over-the-top use of Sakurai angles in his moveset. And the standardizing of his sword disjoint; it used to be fsmash >dsmash > ftilt >= dtilt > DA > jab > nair > bair > up tilt > uair > fair > dair (rough memory, but in general all ground moves > aerial moves) in terms of sword disjoint, at S4 release jab was shorter and the smashes were larger while most of the rest were the same, that's kinda yuck and reduced a lot of the decision making process involved with him from Brawl because every single move he has is able to outspace the same things.

However, Marth is alright in this game no doubt and is still all about fundamentals - spacing, reaction, timing, movement, punishing, positioning (just like all chars, but it's basically all he has); I just believe they intended him to be more of a stepping stone character than a high-depth one in Smash 4; fortunately they patched this a bit with jab and various other things.
He's always been a simple character to understand the premise of, but he's difficult to truly master with a nice splash of high risk/high reward, he's highly recommended for teaching people fundamentals and good habits in Smash and is one of the most popular characters across all 3 games he's featured in, for a reason.

One point though, he has fantastic out of dash options (seriously, what the ****?) due to huh, a usable DP, fast start up side-b, and almost all of his aerials can be done out of a dash jump on grounded or aerial characters. That's the reason he has the worst dash to shield in the cast: his variety of strong out of dash options (the walk was likely a factor too, shame they're silly and made base/acceleration 0 #_#).
He has transcended priority specials (these are nice, screw you ganon/dk/bowser~), long range striking pokes (shieldbreaker, dtilt, nair), arcing hitboxes that emphasise variations of horizontal and vertical spacing, sweet/sour spots based on spacing rather than timing (i.e. we don't always want to tipper), and gets to live a life of punishing enemy actions once they're in disadvantage almost indefinitely (reading/positioning) but with limits, and he's particularly strong at these things.

Also when a move happens to be around -10 on block, and hence most characters best OoS punish is a grab, it's not high risk. SIGH MEWTWO MAINS.

 

[KenMeister]

Man, if we had a scale of how boring a character was, then Mario's viability would be bottom tier in the meta. looool
#SillyLancerArguments

 

[Shady Shaymin]

I think Mario is hype. The guy above me would rather watch paint dry. No one agrees on everything, can we just keep this discussion out of CCI and shift focus back on the implications of a counterpick meta, a discussion that is actually productive?

 

[L9999]

I think Mario is hype. The guy above me would rather watch paint dry. No one agrees on everything, can we just keep this discussion out of CCI and shift focus back on the implications of a counterpick meta, a discussion that is actually productive?

Speaking of and counterpicks, what happened to? He has fallen of the face of the Earth and sometimes I forget he exists.

EDIT: Watched G3 Nairo VS ESAM. Looked horrible.

 

[Joey T.]

Speaking of and counterpicks, what happened to? He has fallen of the face of the Earth and sometimes I forget he exists.

People realized that Doc wasn't that bad when Nairo pulled him out in MLG to exploit Pikachu's bad MU against plumbers with mustache, so people learnt the MU and he's not as scary as it was.

 

[|RK|]

People realized that Doc wasn't that bad when Nairo pulled him out in MLG to exploit Pikachu's bad MU against plumbers with mustache, so people learnt the MU and he's not as scary as it was.

Did they learn it? I feel like we just haven't seen high level Docs in a while. Pretty sure people will still get bodied by a great Doc should we see one at that level again.