Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[meleebrawler]

ROB I'm not sure what say...is a more CQC playstyle more optimal than walling out with lasers and gyros?

You're darn right it is. He's not zoning out anyone with at least a semi-workable approach with a laser that requires charge time and a gyro that can be stolen outside For Laggy. Gyros work better when used to restrict movement near the ledge or z-dropping.

It's kinda funny that a character like has better frame data than .
Shulk is almost invalidated.
Shulk should be less laggy.

Most people forget that, at the very least on paper, arts allow him to deal more damage or kill earlier than either heavy swordsman. 'Tis the design philosophy, now if he just had a faster frame data art...

 

[Pancracio17]

its only her spotdodge and airdodge (this one is pretty huge) that are frame 1, rolls are just bad.

 

[The Revolutionary Cafe]

its only her spotdodge and airdodge (this one is pretty huge) that are frame 1, rolls are just bad.

Still relevant for the Sheik 50/50 (or most in general but this especially)

 

[FullMoon]

On the topic of Sheik's 50/50


This is probably one of the things Greninja mains need to start doing so that the Sheik MU becomes more bearable

 

[Deleted member]

I feel like that there should be some insight on a character we don't talk about too often, and that's. Even after what Nairo did at MLG it seems like most of the hype for him has died off, even if he still has 2ManyCooks repping him. How do you guys feel about Doc's position in the meta currently?

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Great research ya did there buddy

As if bat within needs further research. It's not like I'm talking about a whole character.


A frame 1 activated counter that comes from air dodges and rolling, and the duration is how long (legitimate question)? Can't be super long is my guess.

 

[Sonicninja115]

As if bat within needs further research. It's not like I'm talking about a whole character.


A frame 1 activated counter that comes from air dodges and rolling, and the duration is how long (legitimate question)? Can't be super long is my guess.

1-3 on airdodges and spot dodge.
3-5 on rolls.
19?-37? In time.

 

[The Revolutionary Cafe]

A frame 1 activated counter that comes from air dodges and rolling, and the duration is how long (legitimate question)? Can't be super long is my guess.

Spot dodge and air dodge are 4 frames roll is 2.
EDIT: oops lol

 

[BananaBake]

As if bat within needs further research. It's not like I'm talking about a whole character.


A frame 1 activated counter that comes from air dodges and rolling, and the duration is how long (legitimate question)? Can't be super long is my guess.

Okay, but still, no one take seriously the research of a couple minutes, no matter the topic. If after three minutes I can't master any character, does it make the character impossible?

 

[C0rvus]

On the topic of Sheik's 50/50


This is probably one of the things Greninja mains need to start doing so that the Sheik MU becomes more bearable

I take it you didn't see the response to that Vine where the same situation happens, and Sheik kills Greninja with sweet spot up smash while he's still in lag from Shadow Sneak. Can't find it for the life of me.

 

[L9999]

It's kinda funny that a character like has better frame data than .
Shulk is almost invalidated.
Shulk should be less laggy.

Oh, the 2014 memories. "There is no reason to play Ike over Shulk." Shulk only works on For Laggy IMO.

 

[FullMoon]

I take it you didn't see the response to that Vine where the same situation happens, and Sheik kills Greninja with sweet spot up smash while he's still in lag from Shadow Sneak. Can't find it for the life of me.

That was one that was made before this one. I think with a combination of SDI and Shadow Sneak you can be launched at an angle where you can act before Sheik can get you with something like that. You can even see in that one that Sheik tries to F-Air Greninja and he airdodges in time and F-Air, even with jumpsquat added, comes out earlier than Up-Smash.

 

[R3D3MON]

@Feelicks

Dr. Mario has some very good tools. Great Kill confirm on fast fallers that are much more dangerous and consistent than Mario's kill confirm (which only works at the ledge and with no DI). Good CQC options. A properly working and highly damaging OOS options that can also kill at relevant % (his up smash buff really helped out the character's OOS option because before the buff the Up-smash did not link properly for some reason). Overall better damage output on all of his attacks and kills much earlier in general than Mario.

2 things really holding him back: his recovery is truly bad and glitched (down-b mash sometimes fail to send players upwards, even when properly mashed). His terrible jump heights for both his ground jump and double jump makes his recovery even worse. Also his cape does not stall him in the air, unlike Mario's cape (although this has benefits for approaching). Overall, his recovery is highly gimpable and gives very little distance overall. Dr. Mario's mobility is also very lackluster. Definitely cannot be overly aggressive with Dr. Mario.

Overall, I see Dr. Mario as being a good secondary for the fastfallers in high tier (Fox, Pika, etc.) because of his excellent kill confirm and ability to kill much earlier than Mario. If a person like Nairo uses the character again for specific counter against certain characters and MUs (similar to FOW and Falco for the RosaLuma matches), I can see the character taking more presence in the meta.

 

[Y2Kay]

On the topic of Sheik's 50/50


This is probably one of the things Greninja mains need to start doing so that the Sheik MU becomes more bearable

Not to sound smart or anything, but I found out about this a while ago. I had written it off as useless gimmick, since it only occurred at low percentage for me.

How do you feel about it? SDI + SSHC to get out of kill confirms is nice, but how big is this really is in your (and anyone else's) opinion?

 

[FullMoon]

Not to sound smart or anything, but I found out about this a while ago. I had written it off as useless gimmick, since it only occurred at low percentage for me.

How do you feel about it? SDI + SSHC to get out of kill confirms is nice, but how big is this really is in your (and anyone else's) opinion?

It all depends on how reliably we can do it, being able to escape Sheik's 50/50 so we can live for longer each stock gives us more time and more rage to kill Sheik with, so it would definitely help, how much I can't tell until we see it being implemented

 

[Y2Kay]

That's what I was thinking too.

Istudying was shadow sneakin' out of a lot of stuff at BEAST 6, I'm suprised he didn't go for it

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Okay, but still, no one take seriously the research of a couple minutes, no matter the topic. If after three minutes I can't master any character, does it make the character impossible?

I was wrong and you were right.


But that example isn't the best for this situation lol. I hold the L though

 

[Peppermint1201]

He double eliminated Mew2King (3-0'd his cloud, which is huge, and 3-2'd his DK on the rematch. Got 2nd to DKWill)

Also Blue beat Nairo and has done a lot better after the switch from SONIC.

Nairo 6-0ed Blue in the run-back (Grand Finals)

 

[BananaBake]

I was wrong and you were right.


But that example isn't the best for this situation lol. I hold the L though

Thanks. Also, why would anyone use Bat Within on purpose? Just curious

 

[Planty]

How does bat within invalidate Sheik 50/50? Can't Sheik just wait for the air dodge to end?

 

[Lavani]

That's what I was thinking too.

Istudying was shadow sneakin' out of a lot of stuff at BEAST 6, I'm suprised he didn't go for it

But...he did? The only successful one was in the first stock of game 3, which got punished with a fair, but you can see the smoke clouds from attempted Shadow Sneaks on other uairs.

 

[RedBeefBaron]

Diddy is way too versatile to be classified as a simple rushdown character. His greatest strength is the fact that his kit is extremely well rounded to the point that he can deal with a wide variety of situations quite well.

Sure, he wants to lay down pressure in certain situations. But he also has great mid range spacing, a great bait and switch game and decent long ranged projectiles. He's fine when played passively and patiently, just committing to defense and reacting to his opponent's pressure as well.

His mobility and his ability to confirm into damage and kills in many different ways ties it all together so nicely. Being skilled at switching between these styles, knowing what works best for a given situation and remaining consistently nonlinear in general is the way this character can edge his way even higher on the list.

And while he struggles off stage, he's got good tools for catching ledge options. He has to get in a lot to do the damage of other high tiers but his neutral allows him to do this. The outplay potential is so high despite his weaknesses.

 

[FullMoon]

But...he did? The only successful one was in the first stock of game 3, which got punished with a fair, but you can see the smoke clouds from attempted Shadow Sneaks on other uairs.

Yeah that's what made me start looking into if it was possible to get out of it consistently. I don't really understand the physics of the hitstun cancel though, it seems to sometime send Greninja flying really far in one direction and others he barely goes up and falls like a rock. Is that where SDI comes in?

 

[C0rvus]

How does bat within invalidate Sheik 50/50? Can't Sheik just wait for the air dodge to end?

I guess you can, but then it's not a 50/50 anymore, is it?

 

[Jehtt]

Sheik's 50/50 is based around the air dodge. Either Sheik up airs as soon as possible to punish the opponent for not air dodging, or kills the opponent for air dodging by delaying up air (or doing up b). I don't see why Bayo's air dodge would make this different.

 

[Y2Kay]

But...he did? The only successful one was in the first stock of game 3, which got punished with a fair, but you can see the smoke clouds from attempted Shadow Sneaks on other uairs.

TBH that whole tourney run felt like a distant dream the gods sent to me to appease my suffering as a greninja main

yeah it doesn't seem too useful to me right now

 

[Strong-Arm]

So what are the thoughts on Zelda? (Not joking btw) Genuinely curious

 

[ARGHETH]

So what are the thoughts on Zelda? (Not joking btw) Genuinely curious

Around here it's that she's held back by bad design carried over from when she was tied to Sheik.

 

[C0rvus]

So what are the thoughts on Zelda? (Not joking btw) Genuinely curious

She seems like a lovely lady, but she's not my type really.


You know, because she's really bad?


I know I'm not funny, it's okay.

 

[Seagull Joe]

A character can be poorly designed and bad for the game without being the best character, pre-patch Luigi is a good example of this, maybe Bayonetta is too. Time will tell.

Just a few hours before Larry busted out the DK, Cyve and Zinoto both won large regional tournaments beating players like Ally, Yika, Light and V115. Cyve busted out the Bayonetta in GF2 but I'm pretty sure he could have done it with Diddy, having already beaten Light - he lost set 1 after MULTIPLE SD's, low % gimps and getting killed by dthrow uair on Delfino. Zinoto's win over Aba (who is not the 4th best MK, what sort of notion is that? PS. We win that matchup convincingly) was already mentioned as well as his double elimination of Dabuz just a week ago, and we still have ZeRo consistently bringing out his Diddy for the Sheik matchup which we see almost every week at 2GGT, as well as other matchups like Peach and Lucario. IC also attended 2GGT, I'm not sure how well he placed but I saw him performing admirably (got 2-0'd tho) against K9. MVD regularly takes sets off of Florida's best, I'm pretty sure he's beaten ESAM at least once. Jtails is apparently back on the come up, C3PO is definitely on the come up (and Seagull has apparently picked up Diddy?), JJ still does well in his little pocket of the world, and I don't really know what Angel has been up to lately but I believe he's still pulling some results in a fairly stacked region. The only "bad news" for the Diddy meta I can see at the moment is Nietono apparently putting the character on the backburner in favour of Sheik (again).

Edit: This is an aside, but I would have really liked to see ZeRo's Diddy against Larry's Fox.

Maybe I should start a Diddy Kong results thread, I know a few other character boards have them. Hmm...

Co-main with now. Done solo maining. is great, but some matchups are just such a hassle when I could just use another character. Mainly .

Doesn't Seagull Joe still play him? I'm not sure.

Ninjalink has a good Bowser Jr but I've yet to see it in a tournament and Seagull Joe has a good pocket one too. As for Bowser Jr, the latest buffs were definitely needed and are very useful so I don't see the character fading into complete obscurity. The character's never been that popular to begin with so, honestly, this really isn't anything new. This might just give someone else a chance to rise up with the character. I will say that character loyalty is a lot more rewarding in this game than it has been in any other game in the series. With Brawl and Melee, people just kind of rolled their eyes at you if you mained a low tier a year into the game but, thanks to patches, there are only a handful of characters in this game who are almost entirely competitively irrelevant.

is an alt I rarely use. I still have a good one, but I don't feel the need to use him in an almost any matchup I could go or or in. Maybe in doubles or versus .

 

[Deleted member]

So what are the thoughts on Zelda? (Not joking btw) Genuinely curious

Can't see Zelda going well... anywhere, nor doing anything worthwhile. There was Ven making it through first round of pools at G3 along with Nairo making rare use of her in the 3DS/early Wii U days before dropping her like a rock, but that's as far as she's got at top level. She has barely any notable results or players and there's good reason why.

She does have some nice stuff: decent nair, dair is good for gimps even when you don't hit the sweetspot, long-distanced recovery, down tilt is still a quite good combo starter, but that's where all her solid positives end. Farore's OoS can potentially kill early but there's still a lot of risk associated with it considering she could hit somebody with the sourspot instead or somebody can just shield once she initiates the move, leaving her free to be punished.

Zelda's biggest problem is that she's designed as a defensive/glass cannon type of character, but all said defensive options are poor and she's a character with below-average mobility and outright terrible approach. Lightning Kicks having such huge sourspots that do pitiful knockback and damage while having such noticeable landing lag just isn't worth the risk of trying to throw out the move, and it denies her from having a valid spacing tool. Most of what she has is unsafe on shield bar a well-spaced forward smash, further cementing how much she has to commit to stuff due to her poor frame data and sluggish movement. Combined with being light and having almost no safe landing options she's juggle food as well.

The main reason Zelda is in the same spot as she is in previous games is because her moveset is inherently, well.. dysfunctional. Even if she got all the buffs in the world she still wouldn't any higher than low-tier because her design philosophy is so poorly executed.

 

[Smog Frog]

needs needles. has everything she needs to be decent, except some way to control/influence the pace of the match, which she lacks. also the most important thing to have! go figure.

 

[Plain Yogurt]

Oh, the 2014 memories. "There is no reason to play Ike over Shulk." Shulk only works on For Laggy IMO.

I dunno man I always feel like I do WAY worse online with him. Then again I also care less when I play online because, well, it's online.

I'm honestly having flashbacks to last summer where Shulk was still riding out his 3DS buffs and every other swordsman was slowly getting better. Is this what they call power creep? Perhaps it'd be called range creep in this case. Anyways, I still firmly believe Monado Arts is one of the strongest moves in the game, but that's about all he's got. Oh grounded Vision, UTilt, DTilt, Nair, and Bair are still okay too I guess. The whole Fair business is frustrating though. And while I initially understood (though not necessarily agreed with) why they decided to give him crummy frame data, at this point it's getting a bit silly to even try to justify it with Cloud and Corrin running around. Even just the jab would be SOMEthing.

That said I still can't convince myself to drop him. Even if they ultimately aren't strong enough to make up for his flaws I love all the different things I can do with his Arts. The properties of Art activations, dive-bombing people with Jump, pivot ANYTHING with Speed, shrugging off everything bar projectiles with Shield, the delicious damage buff of Buster, and going into Smash at 190% cause why the hell not. He just clicks for me I guess.

 

[Emblem Lord]

I though Falcon did well against . Are these now considered to be poor MUs for him now?

Fox and MK?

wtf? how? Better kill confirms, basically equal in mobility. Better recovery. MK gimps him and combos him to hell.

 

[L9999]

So what are the thoughts on Zelda? (Not joking btw) Genuinely curious

Well nothing has changed since day 1. She is trash. Her moveset has no tuning at all. The dev team doesn't care about her at all along with her best friend .

 

[Vipermoon]

On the topic of Sheik's 50/50


This is probably one of the things Greninja mains need to start doing so that the Sheik MU becomes more bearable

As soon as I saw this I thought "the nerf DOES matter!"

For those that don't know what I'm talking about. In this final 3DS (Wii U intro) patch, Sheik got one kick's hitboxes removed from her Uair. There used to be a kick right before the last one. That's why the current Uair sound effects sound like "1 2 3... 4" instead of a continuous "1 2 3 4 5" like for Samus (Samus has a 6th but besides the point).

 

[Megamang]

Yea, approaching Zelda would be scary. But literally no one has to. Even characters without projectiles just sit in a certain safe range, punish her once, and then she has to approach.

Lightning kicks are actually pretty devastating, if you can learn to land the bair you can really do some damage. I always thought she'd be better off with the same bair to serve the purpose of crazy strong punish and precision spacing, and palutena's fair. Having a redundant fair/bair with those properties is really ****ty, as she doesn't have a proper aerial spacing tool. Most characters don't have a fair and bair which do the same thing, so why does a character with a more situational aerial get stuck with a duplicate? Its pretty silly, and I don't think Zelda's would mourn the loss of fair. If you need fair, you're better of RARing bair and getting a stronger hit anyways. And the only advantage of fair is slightly less landing lag, which is irrelevant because if you sweetspot it you'll be fine and if you don't you're gonna die...

As for Doctor Mario, he always seemed like a superior Dark Pit/Pit situation. You use Mario for most MUs, then you pull out the doctor when certain traits would benefit you in a certain MU. Those being matchups where you need superior edgeguarding, damage per hit, shorter SH, or kill setups, instead of mobility and combos. When you don't want to play a Mario ditto, Dr Mario is a great alternative because you win bair trades convincingly and the low shorthop is actually a nice advantage in a SHFF aerial battle. Much like Melee, the nonspiking fair is actually an advantage in most situations, especially clutch situations where you get a surprisingly early kill with it, as it is actually pretty damn powerful for an aerial, especially with its speed. Of course, being more different than the pits means you need to dedicate more time to learning the nuances of playing the doctor, as he plays pretty differently, but it can be rewarding. A good Dr is pretty strong, he just has problem MUs. I believe he should be higher on the tier list, definitely.

 

[busken]

Kirby's pressure game is really bad considering your throw follow-ups are too character specific/DI mix-up/read heavy and lack the reward you can get from almost any other character in the game. His aerials are also terribly slow and his best move, considered by many to be d-air is simply super telegraphed and loses to characters who have a quick horizontal aerial to cover the air and the ground like diddy, shiek, fox, etc. He is also super floaty so even without the aforementioned problems he can never be as effective as other rush down characters like falcon or fox. His ground speed is actually decent imo and his foxtrot cancels and perfect pivot isn't bad, but he lacks the punish game to abuse this and gets massively out ranged by most of the cast.

Kirby simply doesn't have any particular strength for him to be viable in competitive play despite his niches in his neutral B, u-tilt juggle game, and small hurt box.

 

[L9999]

Yea, approaching Zelda would be scary. But literally no one has to. Even characters without projectiles just sit in a certain safe range, punish her once, and then she has to approach.

Her Din's Fire clanks with everything btw. Even if you had no sense of attention, you are completely safe if you just press the A button. I once wrote an essay explaining why Din's Fire is the greatest abomination in game design history.

 

[Deleted member]

Her Din's Fire clanks with everything btw. Even if you had no sense of attention, you are completely safe if you just press the A button. I once wrote an essay explaining why Din's Fire is the greatest abomination of all time.

Never will I ever understand why Din's Fire puts her in a helpless state right after she uses it in midair. It's amazingly bad design.

But I agree, it's definitely a bad move. Worst projectile in the game, easily. Easily airdodged, sidestepped or shielded, leaves Zelda wide open, and to boot it lost most of its KOing power and maneuverability from Brawl even if it wasn't even good in that game either.