Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[FullMoon]

I'm a bit on the fence regarding Fox vs Greninja. I could see it as a slightly bad MU or even. Out of all the MUs I consider difficult for Greninja, I think he's the easiest.

 

[Vinnie]

Don't tell us not to overhype ****.

By the way, Venia has beaten Vinnie in bracket.

(Also I don't mean this post to sound aggressive! But no-one is gonna bring us down right now.)

I get that you are hype, but please don't spread misinformation. We never played in bracket

Edit: dang, it's all over smashboards that I lost, even though I never did. LMAO. Venia is a great player but when we played friendlies it was rough. Not entirely because of him either. But because that matchup is so ass. 65 35 imo.

 

[C0rvus]

What makes you think that all the characters are as developed as the will ever be i.e that we have the final game. (Correct me if I misunderstood though).

Oh no, my only implication with the "final game" bit was that we have the whole roster, and likely no more patches.

 

[FullMoon]

I get that you are hype, but please don't spread misinformation. We never played in bracket

Edit: dang, it's all over smashboards that I lost, even though I never did. LMAO. Venia is a great player but when we played friendlies it was rough. Not entirely because of him either. But because that matchup is so ***. 65 35 imo.

I was wondering about that myself, I had heard that you were impressed by his play or something but never that you were beaten by him in tourney.

I knew there was something odd about it lol

 

[Mazdamaxsti]

Someone mentioned earlier that X character most likely performs best against Sheik in their tier, and that got me thinking. Could these 'Best MU in their tier against this top tier" make them underlooked? For example, Kirby (for the sake of argument, this can go for any character in the same situation) easily has the best ZSS match-up out of the low tiers (even or slight disadvantage) of the low tiers (and possibly the mid-ish tiers) of the official tier list. Would that be enough to place that character not in that tier?

Low tier represents a certain category of viability, and if one character does significantly better in an MU than the other characters in their tier, that wouldn't make them the same viability wise. Another good argument is for Lucario who has arguably the best Sheik MU in the game, wouldn't that make him among the high tiers viability wise, for doing the best out of any other characters in his tier against the best?

 

[ItsRainingGravy]

Not meaning to derail the topic, but I wish to post this here since some members use their phones to browse the website.

http://smashboards.com/threads/comp...e-and-disadvantage-character-rankings.429320/

If you want to, please visit my topic, and discuss the three states of the competitive metagame. Your help/participation would be greatly appreciated. And hopefully, it can become something to help future tier lists, and vice-versa.


This will be my only post about this in this topic. Please don't reply to it here. I'm just looking for more participants, is all. Thank you.

 

[valakmtnsmash4]

Oh hi vinnie
If you read this, can you look at this set?

In this set, a player named Nicko who is 18th in SoCal pr beats k9 Bruce SHIEK. This is not a lack of MU knowledge, because Bruce wins the set later on by beating his Shulk. Fast forward to about 6:40 to see the match. Any input is appreciated.
Also notice the cringe commentary.

 

[Wintermelon43]

Oh hi vinnie
If you read this, can you look at this set?

In this set, a player named Nicko who is 18th in SoCal pr beats k9 Bruce SHIEK. This is not a lack of MU knowledge, because Bruce wins the set later on by beating his Shulk. Fast forward to about 6:40 to see the match. Any input is appreciated.
Also notice the cringe commentary.

Hey look, Y2Kay your brother just posted.

Also, didn't a Shulk beat Tyrant too or something?

Edit:Wait, didn't Vinnie place shulk in mid tier though?

 

[C0rvus]

Someone mentioned earlier that X character most likely performs best against Sheik in their tier, and that got me thinking. Could these 'Best MU in their tier against this top tier" make them underlooked? For example, Kirby (for the sake of argument, this can go for any character in the same situation) easily has the best ZSS match-up out of the low tiers (even or slight disadvantage) of the low tiers (and possibly the mid-ish tiers) of the official tier list. Would that be enough to place that character not in that tier?

Low tier represents a certain category of viability, and if one character does significantly better in an MU than the other characters in their tier, that wouldn't make them the same viability wise. Another good argument is for Lucario who has arguably the best Sheik MU in the game, wouldn't that make him among the high tiers viability wise, for doing the best out of any other characters in his tier against the best?

There's more to consider than the Sheik matchup. Kirby might do okay against Sheik, but he still does poorly against a number of characters below Sheik. That isn't something a tier list can ignore.
High tier isn't "who does well against Sheik tier". It's more like "non dominant meta threats tier". Doing passably against Sheik is a factor, but there's more to it. You also have to consider the three states of gameplay, and how Kirby is bad in neutral and mediocre in the other two. Theory, MU spreads, gameplay states, results, impressions and opinions; all of these are factors in a tier list.

 

[Tri Knight]

Didn't stop players from pushing characters like Greninja, Bayonetta, and Bowser despite their obvious mediocre frame data flaws.

Link's fastest grounded attack is Frame 7. I think Greninja's is like what Frame 3? Greninja at least HAS quick options.

 

[RedBeefBaron]

I'm not an expert on Kirby but I'm under the impression he's hardly mediocre at advantage. I thought he just can't get in.

 

[Mario766]

Here's a question, is there a character that benefits far more from careful defensive play than always pressing the advantage? My initial thoughts were Sheik (even though she has an extremely strong pressure game), Villager (for his zoning prowess), and Bowser (huge grab and intimidating throw game, Whirling Fortress, heavy DPH). Characters with flexible or chargeable projectiles also seem like good candidates. Optimally said character's defense would have fundamentals that can transfer to other characters as well.

You're literally giving the definition of Ike here.

 

[TurboLink]

I think if Link's jab was actually fast (not frame 7) he'd benefit a ton from it. His setups would be much easier and he'd have a better up close option.

How? He'd benefit more from having decent dash speed, air acceleration, air speed, and a boomerang that isn't so easily shielded on reaction.

He's picking up Bayo to cover certain matchups. But Link's really underrated, real talk. People always default to "nope bad at point blank, he sucks," without understanding how difficult weaving through the projectile onslaught while also avoiding the grab and other mid range options is for most characters against a top Link. Plus once you're up close if you guess wrong you're pushed out again.

His projectiles become easier to deal with once you learn how to stay on the ground.

 

[valakmtnsmash4]

So I have another Shulk vid for you all to look at

Look at nicko body this luigi with Shulk. Any thoughts?

 

[Kofu]

Thanks for the input, @Routa, @HFlash, LancerStaff , and Mario766 . It's actually for a friend who's trying to get back into Smash but is having a hard time dealing with continual offense and pressure. He asked me for a character who is gets rewarded for playing defensively and I wasn't sure of what answer to give him so I thought I'd look here for some advice. I think all these are good options and I'll let him find what best suits him.

Link's fastest grounded attack is Frame 7. I think Greninja's is like what Frame 3? Greninja at least HAS quick options.

Going from what other Greninja mains have said (see, I'm learning here) his main weakness is OoS options. His fastest OoS option is frame 9 with BAir (factoring jumpsquat and startup) and isn't real intimidating. Link's is frame 8 with Spin Attack, which IS rather impressive (though still not fast).

 

[Teshie U]

Bayo is invulnerable from frame 5-16 and most dash grabs do grab between 8-9.
Bat Within FAF is 45, most grabs end up within 36 and 39.
This would mean you have some advantage frames, but bayo will usually do the counter slightly faster than grabs so it makes up for that (since she's trying to counter something that is not a grab and usually has more range than a grab). It's a bit character dependant though.

If a dash grab does have a FAF over 38 it can effectively become a frame deficit option against a counter. Even when you get a frame advantage the back step might make up for it. It depends on the timing of both things though. But yeah, sometimes with some characters you should be able to punish it. If Bayonetta is landing after a special, you should just run up and shield because she HAS to attack or witch time. I'm doubting Nair/Bair are safe after a single special use in practice because her next options still need to be factored in to avoid grabs (her dodges are slow, so Up B at frame 4 is next).

You should be shielding then grabbing for the frame data (standing grabs have FAF around 30).

As it should be! Why are really amazing moves usually tied to speed demons in smash? Why doesn't poor ol zelda get a falco laser or a jump cancellable shine?

The deciding factor for a move to be amazing is endlag that makes it safe to throw out. This is something lightweight speedsters are designed around. Slow characters are usually packed with moves that are fun to hit with but aren't safe to try every 5 seconds.

"No character can just avoid witch time"
^This might be Sonic. The character thrives on grabbing landings and witch time is nearly useless vs spindash and Uair. All 3 of these are good in neutral and have airtight kill confirms to avoid bat within.

 

[Luig]

"No character can just avoid witch time"
^This might be Sonic. The character thrives on grabbing landings and witch time is nearly useless vs spindash and Uair. All 3 of these are good in neutral and have airtight kill confirms to avoid bat within.

Not exactly.

 

[valakmtnsmash4]

So what did you guys think of the two Shulk matches I posted? Any thoughts about him?

 

[C0rvus]

So I have another Shulk vid for you all to look at

Look at nicko body this luigi with Shulk. Any thoughts?

I want to believe that Shulk is good. I really do. Such an interesting and challenging character.

 

[Y2Kay]

Greninja doesn't go even with Fox. Give it some time until counterplay envolves.

I wasn't trying to be definitive. There has been a minority of greninja players that say it was even before this, and I was pretty skeptical at first. Fox is faster and has better frame data, that's pretty ludicrous. It was at the time, at least.

But when I see istudying and Some edgeguard Foxes, it really doesn't seem that crazy. I'll tell you now, for the most part, Greninjas aren't usually that aggressive at edguarding, or at least they weren't. Usually they just splash a little water and pray like he did against ESAM. But against Sodrek he was doing stuff like snatching double jumps with water Shurikens. I've never seen him be that vicious offstage before. I think it's fair to suggest that istudying has developed some counter play for the matchup already.

Considering we have some good matches to go off of, I don't think it's too crazy to suggest it that it is even now. I'm not for sure about it, but it's worth considering and not outside the realm of possibility.

Hey look, Y2Kay your brother just posted.

Also, didn't a Shulk beat Tyrant too or something?

Edit:Wait, didn't Vinnie place shulk in mid tier though?

Wait I'm confused

 

[UberMadman]

The more I see and play of Shulk, the more I think he's... somewhat underrated. Somewhat.

Hacing the worst frame data in the game is obviously terrible, but people tend to shrug off the massive disjoints he has compared to most sword characters when they really help accommodate for what otherwise would be a terrible neutral. If you play him like Marth, and aim for the tip of the monado, you'd be surprised how hard it is to punish Shulk for a large portion of the cast. Landing back-air has a lot of lag, but because of its disjoint you can effectively space it without getting punish. Nair is safe on shield now when properly spaced iirc because of the damage increase and the landing lag reductions, (though I may be wrong on that,) and his tilts are actually relatively safe for their startup. I can't exactly call him viable or amazing especially without results, but I think that his positive traits are often understated. Not to the degree of Mewtwo or anything, but sometimes it feels like too many people haven't sinked time into this character; they just heard OTHER people sank time into him without success and gave up on him.

 

[Teshie U]

Not exactly.

This video explains how Bayonetta can narrowly avoid getting hit again anyway. At the end it points out how hard it is to punish a move with 8 invincibility frames during witch time, but doesn't point out Sonic can just throw out one of the best airdodges in the game for 24 (x 4?) invincible frames as soon as he gets snared by witch time. If she witch times and autocancel Uair, he just shields and roll away (for an eternity). He can still be punished, but likely a mundane one.

 

[KenMeister]

I'm not an expert on Kirby but I'm under the impression he's hardly mediocre at advantage. I thought he just can't get in.

His advantage is only really good vs super fast fallers (Falcon, Fox, ZSS, etc) put him up against a floaty and you'll realize his damage output is only.....honest. I don't think his alright advantage is enough to redeem his ****ty neutral game.

 

[epicnights]

How? He'd benefit more from having decent dash speed, air acceleration, air speed, and a boomerang that isn't so easily shielded on reaction.

average mobility is easily dealt with by projectiles and disjoint. poor CQC options is not.

 

[AnEventHorizon]

The more I see and play of Shulk, the more I think he's... somewhat underrated. Somewhat.

Hacing the worst frame data in the game is obviously terrible, but people tend to shrug off the massive disjoints he has compared to most sword characters when they really help accommodate for what otherwise would be a terrible neutral. If you play him like Marth, and aim for the tip of the monado, you'd be surprised how hard it is to punish Shulk for a large portion of the cast. Landing back-air has a lot of lag, but because of its disjoint you can effectively space it without getting punish. Nair is safe on shield now when properly spaced iirc because of the damage increase and the landing lag reductions, (though I may be wrong on that,) and his tilts are actually relatively safe for their startup. I can't exactly call him viable or amazing especially without results, but I think that his positive traits are often understated. Not to the degree of Mewtwo or anything, but sometimes it feels like too many people haven't sinked time into this character; they just heard OTHER people sank time into him without success and gave up on him.

valakmtnsmash4 and others.

First off, I'd argue that Shulk is the character that benefits the most from lack of matchup knowledge. Sure he took a game off of K9, but then he got 2 stocked the next game all the same. Most people also arent going to play 'optimally' against Shulk - when he's in an art you dont like, just... run away. You see K9 engaging on Shulk while he's in buster while he could simply try to needle camp to wait it out.

If you aim to use the tip of the Monado, sure you might be safer, but you're also punished for it with lower damage. All tipped attacks other than nair do noticeably less damage. Speaking of low damage - if you tipper Shulks fair you'll do a whopping 6.5%. Which is only exacerbated in speed or shield arts. If you sweetspot Shulk's fair in Buster (11.2%), you still do less damage than Ike's faster fair.

As for range, Ike's fair has more range now, and Corrin's Fsmash outrange's Shulk's bair. Not to mention the Marth/Lucina range increases. Shulks range also has the problem of having incredibly short lasting hitboxes:

The actual long range part of his Fsmash is 1 frame, the long range parts of his uair, bair, dair, and his ftilt, dtilt, each down smash hit, and dash attack are only 2 frames. Its another reason why his frame data sucks - not only do his longer range attacks have long startup, the hitboxes don't last that long.

For comparison to a more basic swordsman - the only hitboxes marth/lucina put out that are two frames or less are the hits of their down smash, dtilt, and first hit of nair.

Landing back air is actually incredibly awkward to place near the ground (you can test this for yourself) which is a problem against shorter characters - and if Shulk is jumping backwards to you, you have 20 frames before the hitbox gets out to possibly throw up a shield (If you're looking at Kurogane, the early hit on frames 18-20 are the hit in front of Shulk. Frames 21-22 is the long range hit we all know.)

This awkward spacing also makes MALLC bair more predictable (because you want to enter the landing lag asap after the hit so you want to space it as low as possible)


There are two additional important weaknesses of Shulk people often forget - He can't autocancel any aerial except fair, even with a double jump, and he cant sweetspot the ledge.

I've sunk time into him (actually brought him out to clean up a Toon Link at my last tourney when my Ryu was having a spot of trouble against his zoning) and I dont think there's much there.

 

[Mario766]

Shulk isn't underrated.


He's straight up irrelevant now.

Invalidated almost.

 

[Tri Knight]

Thanks for the input, @Routa, @HFlash, LancerStaff , and Mario766 . It's actually for a friend who's trying to get back into Smash but is having a hard time dealing with continual offense and pressure. He asked me for a character who is gets rewarded for playing defensively and I wasn't sure of what answer to give him so I thought I'd look here for some advice. I think all these are good options and I'll let him find what best suits him.


Going from what other Greninja mains have said (see, I'm learning here) his main weakness is OoS options. His fastest OoS option is frame 9 with BAir (factoring jumpsquat and startup) and isn't real intimidating. Link's is frame 8 with Spin Attack, which IS rather impressive (though still not fast).

I purposely left out OoS because Im aware of it. But in a neutral setting, he can at least defend himself better vs the cq heroes. I guess you can argue Link's neutral isn't really that bad though.

Though I do agree, his OoS were never really great. Link's never was either. Spin Attack is pretty good but just very risky to use.

 

[Smog Frog]

does anyone notice how bad characters(relative to the rest of the cast) tend to have a surprising amount of good moves( for example)?

 

[Browny]

That's what generally happens on characters with low mobility to make up for the fact they cant reliably land those hits. If Ganon was as fast as say, Mario, he'd be terrifying.

 

[ReRaze]

That's what generally happens on characters with low mobility to make up for the fact they cant reliably land those hits. If Ganon was as fast as say, Mario, he'd be terrifying.

I tried Ganon with speed equipment, it was freaking fun, dthrow to dair spike, dthrow fair, dash attack to uair were just some of the true combos.

 

[Solfiner]

There are two additional important weaknesses of Shulk people often forget - He can't autocancel any aerial except fair, even with a double jump, and he cant sweetspot the ledge.

The first issue is why working on MALLCs is the most important part for any Shulk main.

The second issue is straight up misinformation, Shulk can sweet spot the ledge during the early frames of air slash just like Cloud.


Two of the biggest things people forget to mention regarding Shulk is that:

1. Buster aerials do really good shield stun.

2. Speed Nair is pretty much unpunishable if you space well.

 

[TurboLink]

average mobility is easily dealt with by projectiles and disjoint. poor CQC options is not.

And what do you recommend happen to improve Link's CQC? Because in case you haven't noticed, Link has never been about CQC. Yes it would be nice to not get destroyed by nearly everyone in close combat for once in a Smash game but I don't see that happening. We have no control over the balance of this game and Sakurai has already admitted that he balances this game for low and mid level play.

 

[Halifax?]

Dude the end of balance patches just started to sink in for me. Saying a character had no future didn't mean much before but now it kinda stings especially since we've had a year to play and get to know them. It's like high school friends on Facebook with ****ty jobs and marriages.

 

[Tri Knight]

And what do you recommend happen to improve Link's CQC? Because in case you haven't noticed, Link has never been about CQC. Yes it would be nice to not get destroyed by nearly everyone in close combat for once in a Smash game but I don't see that happening. We have no control over the balance of this game and Sakurai has already admitted that he balances this game for low and mid level play.

One of the biggest reasons Link suffers from lack of buffs to his cqc - at least in my opinion - is the fact that he has too many tools. Those For Gloryers usually can't handle a spam or two. Especially when it comes to his bombs.

I mean we had a confirm off of JAB at one point for god sake.

 

[Piipp]

does anyone notice how bad characters(relative to the rest of the cast) tend to have a surprising amount of good moves( for example)?

I feel like "bad" is not the right word for what you're saying. I feel that "underrated" is the word you're looking for. I'd know about underrated cuz Falco is my secondary lol.

 

[L9999]

I don't see how Link can go past low tier being so sluggish on everything and having a terrible recovery and disadvantage.

 

[Ffamran]

does anyone notice how bad characters(relative to the rest of the cast) tend to have a surprising amount of good moves( for example)?

With Zelda as the exception, they're all based on good characters, so it makes sense. Taking Fox and tweaking him a bit to make a "slower, stronger" Fox still results in a character with good moves because Fox has good moves. By "based", I mean literally clone them. Akuma, Evil Ryu, Ken, Ryu, Sean, and even Gouken are all good because they pretty much have the same moveset, but different play styles and some unique moves. One way you can really screw this up is if you intentionally make a Dan and even then, Dan's all right in Street Fighter. Pichu's the biggest example of this.

 

[Megamang]

With the old jab, link didn't have fast CQC, but he had threatening CQC. Too bad people swarmed FG abusing it to lock people who couldn't SDI, made videos calling it an infinite, and Soccer Dad took it away from us. Im glad they took it from fox, and no one should jab you to death, but if you get jabbed by link you should take 20% and large knockback imo

 

[Tri Knight]

And now instead of having a threatening cqc, Links got a very sub par one and a "decent" zoning game.

Well, I guess it's not THAT bad.

 

[LancerStaff]

does anyone notice how bad characters(relative to the rest of the cast) tend to have a surprising amount of good moves( for example)?

...Now I'm trying to think of somebody without many good moves, lol.
Maybe ? IDK, only ever fought like three of them ever.
has good aerials and Rest. Just good, though.
depending on how you look at Aura.
has a few safe moves outside of Buster but that's about it. Besides the best Nspecial in the game, anyway.
Half the moves people call bad on are actually good. Like her DA... Yeah, there's a gigantic blindspot. Same with every other DA like it.
IDK, even has stuff. has... Uh, Whirling Fortress?