Official 4BR Tier List v1.0 - Competitive Impressions

[MachoCheeze]

Mewtwo's nair is anything but autopilot, c'Mon.

It is frame 7, so slow for a nair, has small hitboxes that lose to just about any attack, and require precise fastball timing to combo into reliably. If someone is throwing out nairs willy nilly, then they're bad. If they're winning like that, it means their opponent is worse.

It's like people see a move and just guess how it works instead of looking at the data.

God, homie you don't even know. My friends kept trying to tell me his nair is a combo breaker. People think Mewtwo's nair is some godly do everything move, but it's really hard to use correctly.

 

[verbatim]

Slightly personal but how many characters have demonstrated a good record against cloud at high to top level play? So far all I can think of is M2 and Sheik, and neither of those characters are exactly easy to pick up as a secondary.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Spoiler: Mario

Mario:
Mario beats:
Mario goes even with:
Mario loses to:

Is this accurate?

I don't think so.

Mario beating Diddy and going even with ZSS and Sonic is very debatable / optimistic and he most certainly doesn't beat Sheik. That's a bit too generous in my book.

Excellent theory, fair results, currently sitting at ~20th in Koopa's rankings after a recent slump.

It's easy to have 'excellent theory' though when you have some five representants in this thread that will at just about any opportunity point out every little thing that Greninja does in tournament. Not that I have a problem with that, it just inflates the amount of exposure Greninja gets, especially since people tend to focus more on the positives when it comes to 'their' character.

Case in point: ROB and Peach keep placing very solidly on Koopa's rankings but since nobody really seems to take note of it these characters aren't talked about and thus seen as having 'poor theory'. Honestly, citing "good theory" at this point looks very much like a cop-out for not having better arguments. I think his ~20th place on Koopa's rankings give us a much better idea on where to place the frog: somewhere barely within or outside of top 20, which is well into mid-tier teritory, admittedly somewhere close to the upper end of it but still.

 

[bc1910]

It's easy to have 'excellent theory' though when you have some five representants in this thread that will at just about any opportunity point out every little thing that Greninja does in tournament. Not that I have a problem with that, it just inflates the amount of exposure Greninja gets, especially since people tend to focus more on the positives when it comes to 'their' character.

Case in point: ROB and Peach keep placing very solidly on Koopa's rankings but since nobody really seems to take note of it these characters aren't talked about and thus seen as having 'poor theory'. Honestly, citing "good theory" at this point looks very much like a cop-out for not having better arguments. I think his ~20th place on Koopa's rankings give us a much better idea on where to place the frog: somewhere barely within or outside of top 20, which is well into mid-tier teritory, admittedly somewhere close to the upper end of it but still.

The concept of Greninja's good theory goes FAR outside this thread's jurisdiction. He is widely recognised as being a strong character with excellent mobility and a strong combo game, but some key weaknesses. I don't think many would argue that he's built in the typical mold of a top tier, held back to high/mid by some problematic frame/block advantage data.

Whether you think top 20 is high or mid tier largely comes down to personal semantics and I favour the former, but can see arguments for both. I'm a big supporter of keeping the rough high tier ratio we had in previous games, of around 1/3rd of the cast.

 

[FullMoon]

What Top 20 means doesn't really matter, whether it's high tier, high-mid tier or just mid, let's not delve into that because it's not really gonna get anywhere.

Greninja has solid results, nothing particularly amazing but nothing bad either. Elexiao, iStudy and Eddy are all doing work with him in Europe and Venia, while not having taken part in any big tournament yet, has at least shown that he (the player, not the charater) is pretty capable.

Meanwhile he also kinda disappeared from Japan since Some hasn't really attended anything and still has kind of a lack of presence in the US.

Greninja's main results come from an area that is considered to be weaker than the US and Japan, so it can be kinda hard to judge how well exactly he's doing.

 

[conTAgi0n]

If anything I think that isn't a real problem. I think it's pretty clutch and pretty cool when it happens. It also makes him immediately use his charge, so I really don't see what the problem is here.

I think I agree with the idea that characters that are strong on the ground are good against Cloud because they contest him in likely his weakest area. Which I guess would explain why I think Bowser does surprisingly well against Cloud. It's also a case of both characters mess each other up pretty badly in general, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was near even. Bowser pretty much just does normal Bowser things and his reward and decent ledge game mostly bridges the gap against Cloud's very very strong juggling game. ...Mostly.

Could you elaborate on this a little bit? You aren't the first person I've seen suggest that Bowser might do well against Cloud, or at least go even, and yet I have always perceived the matchup to be quite bad for Bowser.

The obvious strong point for Bowser in this matchup is that his ledge game can mess Cloud up pretty bad. However Cloud is also great at edgeguarding Bowser. Bowser's aerials and up b all lose to fair/dair/nair/LCS and Bowser is big target who is vulnerable to all of those moves when using his up b.

You say that Bowser can contest Cloud's ground game but to me it feels more like Cloud can contest Bowser's ground game while dominating him in the air. Cloud can camp Bowser and is good at stuffing/punishing Bowser's approaches. Cloud has good tools for CQC with Bowser (particularly his jab). Once Cloud gets Bowser into the air, Cloud's godlike juggling and landing punishes are misery for Bowser with his famous landing troubles and susceptibility to juggling. Cloud actually has a very threatening grab in this matchup because uthrow -> juggle situation is at least as scary as the average combo throw for Bowser.

Cloud is also great at killing, so this is not a matchup where Bowser can count on living forever and building rage.

That more or less sums up my impression of the matchup. I am honestly hoping that you can explain to me that I am completely wrong, because I would love to learn of a better approach to this matchup for Bowser.

 

[TheGoodGuava]

Why Link though?

Mostly because I have a Link bias, I do really think that he needs a faster nair or better jumpsquat or a faster jab, maybe a higher air speed like he had in melee/smash64

I also forgot to add Falco to that list

 

[Shady Shaymin]

"Why Smash 4 is Different" -imESAM https://youtu.be/qd2kXwG7G04

Thoughts?

 

[Emblem Lord]

He is talking about match-ups.

Which are determined by a character's toolkit.

So...I mean....yes?

I mean...no?

Wait.....what?

Edit: Ok serious post time. What he is talking about is a metagame based more so on counter play, rather then just abusing *insert overtuned option* or *standard flowchart that destroys most of the cast*

ESAM proving yet again, that when NOT discussing Pikachu he is more or less a Smash genius.

Definitely do not agree with him saying other FG's aren't about counter play, because many are. But then you have Third Strike and Marvel 2 which is ALL about char abuse and playing the char's toolkit and you can DEFINITELY lose at the character select screen in those games.

BTW this is why imo Smash 4 is the BEST smash game despite the issue have with it.

A fighting game that forces more thinking about how and when to interact is a good fighting game.

 

[ARISTOS]

"Why Smash 4 is Different" -imESAM https://youtu.be/qd2kXwG7G04

Thoughts?

Not sure what he is trying to say here. Is he saying that you have to play differently depending on the opposition?

If so... duh? How you play against Ryu should be different from how you play MK. Strategies should change based on the opposition, I would be worried if a character could just run through the opposition using the same strats.

 

[LancerStaff]

The TLDR version is that Smash 4 is very "press X to not die." Stay away from Ryu, stay away from Ness's grab, stay away from Witch Time, stay away from random low tier Fsmash, so on and so forth.

 

[Mario766]

Oh boy people arguing Ike.

Ike's weird.

He's got huge range, slow start-up but some quick normals. Jab is fantastic, frame 4, good range. Jab 2 is even better. It out-ranges most tilts and spaces on the ground, it has the range of d-tilt with less recovery and almost the same range as f-tilt.

D-Tilt is good as a combo starter, but the recovery on the move is less than stellar, faster characters can heavily abuse this move on whiff (ex: Fox) and the move can't be heavily used on shield due to recovery, but the move is amazing on hit as a pop-up into an aerial combo starter, with B-Air and F-Air respectively comboing out of it, and even footstools.

But then there are fundamental issues with Ike's kit.

NO. HITBOXES. IN FRONT. FOR 13 FRAMES. IN THE AIR.

This SUCKS. If Ike jumps at you with his back turned away, you have 13 frames before he can threaten you with a hitbox. The only exception to this is a body b-air hitbox, but that's not gonna hit anytime soon. Compare this to the other huge sword user, Cloud (I'll just assume Shulk is not in the game because y not). Frame ~6, that's his first hitbox in front of him. That's a drastic difference and can lead to a lot of problems. Characters can straight up just rising aerial through Ike and win because Ike just can't put out a hitbox. This is changed with spacing, N-Air and F-Air are fantastic against shield. N-Air is +0 and F-Air is -2 when spaced. This is fantastic, and can start conditioning OoS options because of how safe they are.

Ike also has useless moves.

F-Smash is the second slowest F-Smash in the game, does up to 22 damage at start-up and does 30 at full charge. Yet again, let's compare this to the two big sword users (Now I'm gonna include Shulk because y not).

Cloud's F-Smash is...frame 19. Does...19 damage at base charge...Okay moving on before I get salty.

Shulk's F-Smash is...frame frame 14. Does...18.5 damage sweetspot...sigh. I know both these F-Smashes have issues of their own but come on. The drastic frame speed that the two smashes boast just make them insanely better moves.

D-Smash. Hooo boy.

D-Smash is the trap move to end all trap moves. It's frame 14, does 14 damage. THAT SOUNDS GOOD...right?

Oh wait, it has almost 60 frames of endlag after the first hit. The second hit...it's frame 32. SLOWER THAN F-SMASH, hits for LESS DAMAGE. Has pitiful range, and hits insanely slow behind him. Yes it's decently strong at 17 damage base...but you're never hitting it.

Oh, and up smash has a sour spot which does 10 damage on a frame 30 move. WHAT KIND OF BULL**** IS THIS. Brawl Up Smash had a SWEET SPOT DOING F-SMASH LEVEL DAMAGE. NOT IT DOES TILT DAMAGE? Oh, and it has lower BKB/KBG for an extra slap in the face. You aren't dying to this until 160 or so. I love hitting a frame 30 move and getting punished for it.

Other than that, Ike has Aether. Hoo boy is this move insanely bad. People talk about punishing Cloud up-b? Have you SEEN AETHER?

It doesn't hit below him very well when he's starting to go down, it doesn't hit above him PERIOD. It doesn't hit behind him (The sword swings in a circle people. It SHOULD HIT BEHIND HIM AND ABOVE HIM.) and is punishable with spikes AND up-airs. Does it sound hard? Not really. Fox can run off jump up-air and beat it clean. Oh, and if you don't want to do that? Just shield grab. It's more free than Cloud because Aether is garbage.

/but it has super armor.

3 frames of it. Frame 18. The hitbox comes out then, so it's useless. I played Aerolink for an hour and he tried to witch time Aether, ONLY ONCE did the super armor help. Isn't exactly helping.

QD? QD's fine. It sends you very fast, but isn't stupid for trying to punish. It comes out frame 3 when in range, so you can kinda beat people...but it still loses to diagonal hitboxes. It also does 6 damage without charge, so it's useless as an attack option unless your opponent commits against a fully charged QD at like 120+ with rage.

Eruption is a commitment that sometimes is worth the risk, MU dependent. If you whiff...pray.

Then Ike has undertuned moves.

Up-Air starts behind him (I still don't know why), which means any combos that would work don't really because it's frame 15 or so before the forward hit comes out. But it blows up air dodges. We take those. It also kills fine due to the buff it received. I wish it did more than 11 damage though.

D-Air is hard to use. 2 frame hitbox (14 in brawl. Why Sakurai) but is fantastic for footstool combos. Too bad it can't be used in neutral due to losing 12 frames of hitboxes. 15 damage is nice.


I haven't talked about F-Air, N-Air or B-Air.

Why?

Because they are solid moves that do their job. I have no complaints I just wish N-Air was slightly faster so we could try to break out of things slightly better.

 

[Shady Shaymin]

ESAM's point is that Smash 4 matchups are generally determined by how tools interact with one another.

Instead of "X character has a higher damage output, superior mobility, and longer range then Y character," it's "since X character's fair sets up a wall that makes it hard for Y character to get in and land a grab, X character wins the neutral."

 

[Emblem Lord]

Not sure what he is trying to say here. Is he saying that you have to play differently depending on the opposition?

If so... duh? How you play against Ryu should be different from how you play MK. Strategies should change based on the opposition, I would be worried if a character could just run through the opposition using the same strats.

Spoken like someone that never played Melee or any old school fighter. At least not on a deeper level.

No, insult. Just insight.

 

[my_T]

Why do people overrate mario so much?

Results:

As far as results go the closest thing to a solo main he has is Ally who has switched off of him (rarely) in certain match-ups. Anti has been using a whole stable of characters (luigi, sheik, zss, diddy, rosa) along with mario for over a year now; all of which have contributed to some of his success in brackets. Also, what other mario mains out there actually accomplish anything significant? I'm talking about tournament wins and wins over top players with consistency.

If we're going off of results the sonic, rosa, cloud, M2, and zss match-ups appear to be in their favor even after cloud/zss nerfs.

in theory I would argue that he loses to sheik and marth and goes even or loses to DK. I think he's even with diddy, ryu, and fox

 

[|RK|]

ESAM's point is that Smash 4 matchups are generally determined by how tools interact with one another.

Instead of "X character has a higher damage output, superior mobility, and longer range then Y character," it's "since X character's fair sets up a wall that makes it hard for Y character to get in and land a grab, X character wins the neutral."

That makes a lot of sense! Using Kirby as an example... instead of "his neutral is awful," it's "his neutral is awful against X, but it doesn't matter so much against Y because of Z tools."

 

[PK Gaming]

Mewtwo's nair is anything but autopilot, c'Mon.

It is frame 7, so slow for a nair, has small hitboxes that lose to just about any attack, and require precise fastball timing to combo into reliably. If someone is throwing out nairs willy nilly, then they're bad. If they're winning like that, it means their opponent is worse.

It's like people see a move and just guess how it works instead of looking at the data.

It wasn't the crux of my argument, i'll admit I'm not that familiar with Mewtwo, so i'm willing to concede that I was off base in regards to Mewtwo's Nair.

My apologies.

 

[Ninety]

Excellent theory, fair results, currently sitting at ~20th in Koopa's rankings after a recent slump. Assuming you expand high tier past the top 12 or so (to include the next 10-12 characters who are about as strong), he's a shoe-in.

I'm not getting sucked into this though. If you disagree, fine.

For the record, he's at 29, 30 or 27 depending on which values you count as of the 1.1.5 results (1.1.6 isn't compiled yet). Which happens to be dead middle in the cast. But I don't think anyone wants to do this song and dance again.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Spoken like someone that never played Melee or any old school fighter. At least not on a deeper level.

No, insult. Just insight.

How are you going to abuse your character against another top tier?

 

[bc1910]

For the record, he's at 29, 30 or 27 depending on which values you count as of the 1.1.5 results (1.1.6 isn't compiled yet). Which happens to be dead middle in the cast. But I don't think anyone wants to do this song and dance again.

The current rankings were posted a few pages back and he was 21st I believe. Results should be considered as a rolling average, aside from certain big tournaments we don't need to get hung up on anything outside late 1.1.5.

Why do people overrate mario so much?

Results:

As far as results go the closest thing to a solo main he has is Ally who has switched off of him (rarely) in certain match-ups. Anti has been using a whole stable of characters (luigi, sheik, zss, diddy, rosa) along with mario for over a year now; all of which have contributed to some of his success in brackets. Also, what other mario mains out there actually accomplish anything significant? I'm talking about tournament wins and wins over top players with consistency.

If we're going off of results the sonic, rosa, cloud, M2, and zss match-ups appear to be in their favor even after cloud/zss nerfs.

in theory I would argue that he loses to sheik and marth and goes even or loses to DK. I think he's even with diddy, ryu, and fox

On paper, Mario's not particularly special.

But at this point, he has the results for any other conclusion to be somewhat questionable.

 

[FeelMeUp]

You can't keep saying "but results!" and use that as your reasoning for believing absurd MU ratios that are clearly proven false time and time again. Mario loses to or goes even withmost swordies, loses to Sheik/Sonic, loses to DK, etc.
No clue where you got the idea that he beats Diddy either.
Saying "X character lost to Y player using Z character" DOES NOT give MU results.
It gives player results.
Using asinine logic like that we'd have people running around saying 1.1.4 Diddy was the best character in the game and destroyed Sheik. Or even believing Fox actually beats Pikachu(LOL).
look at the character's tools for once. don't blindly follow and make assumptions based on top player losses.

 

[Locke 06]

But then there are fundamental issues with Ike's kit.

NO. HITBOXES. IN FRONT. FOR 13 FRAMES. IN THE AIR.

This SUCKS. If Ike jumps at you with his back turned away, you have 13 frames before he can threaten you with a hitbox. The only exception to this is a body b-air hitbox, but that's not gonna hit anytime soon. Compare this to the other huge sword user, Cloud (I'll just assume Shulk is not in the game because y not). Frame ~6, that's his first hitbox in front of him. That's a drastic difference and can lead to a lot of problems. Characters can straight up just rising aerial through Ike and win because Ike just can't put out a hitbox. This is changed with spacing, N-Air and F-Air are fantastic against shield. N-Air is +0 and F-Air is -2 when spaced. This is fantastic, and can start conditioning OoS options because of how safe they are.

Cloud's NAir is ~f9-13 in front of him. Solid, but it's not the air-air monster an f6 FAir with 4f jumpsquat would be.

The current rankings were posted a few pages back and he was 21st I believe. Results should be considered as a rolling average, aside from certain big tournaments we don't need to get hung up on anything outside late 1.1.5.



On paper, Mario's not particularly special.

But at this point, he has the results for any other conclusion to be somewhat questionable.

Mario is very special on paper. You must be looking at the wrong sheet. Just right away, how many characters can SH double aerial with 2 aerials?

 

[bc1910]

Mario is very special on paper. You must be looking at the wrong sheet. Just right away, how many characters can SH double aerial with 2 aerials?

What are you talking about? There are plenty of characters who can do that. Diddy and Luigi, off the top of my head. Save "very special" for the Diddys and Ryus of the game.

On paper, Mario does not scream "top tier" especially if you played Brawl.

Metagame development is the biggest reason why we're seeing Mario do so well today. That, and nerfs to other kill confirms creating less necessity for them.

To put it another way, the rest of the cast around Mario being nerfed has allowed him to rise. His previous killing weakness has been patched up not only by an increased focus on Usmash, but also by everyone else being worse at killing due to the best kill confirms having been nerfed or removed.

 

[Locke 06]

What are you talking about? There are plenty of characters who can do that. Diddy and Luigi, off the top of my head. Save "very special" for the Diddys and Ryus of the game.

On paper, Mario is seriously held back by a lack of kill confirms. I'd have thought that was obvious to anyone remotely well-versed in his theory (I'm not even particularly well-versed). It's also not immediately clear how far his combo game can be extended.

Metagame development is the biggest reason why we're seeing Mario do so well today.

Diddy cannot. He can only SH BAir>. Mario can SH Uair>uair/nAir/DAir/BAir and SH BAir>uair/NAir/DAir/BAir (edit : and DAir>NAir with a FF mixup to get the DAir landing hitbox). Diddy and every character you are thinking of also has significantly more landing lag than Mario.

Mario's crossup pressure is one of the strongest in the cast.

Luigi is also very special.

 

[verbatim]

Why do people overrate mario so much?

Results:

what other mario mains out there actually accomplish anything significant?

'

I dislike it when people over-focus on just the ultra top level results.

People rate Mario high because he wins consistently at the low through very high level. When I look at the current metagame as a spectator, I'll comment on who did how well out of the top 16 players in the world. When I look at it as a competitor I look at the level of competition that I will have to be facing, and I'll know that being prepared to fight against Mario is way more important than being prepared to fight Rosa, even though I think that Rosa is a better character.

 

[Greward]

Mario loses hard to Sonic, loses solidly to Rosalina and probably Cloud and Mewtwo, and there are a bunch of arguable bad matchups for him (Marth, Corrin, DK/Bowser).

The Sonic matchup is one where you should be playing another character. Oh wait, Ally already does that, and probably Anti too.

Ally beating Zero doesn't mean the diddy matchup is now in Mario's advantage, zero is just getting outplayed.

 

[Vyrnx]

Mario can also do SH dair to nair.

 

[Mr. Johan]

On paper, Mario does not scream "top tier" especially if you played Brawl.

Brawl Mario was bad because his air speed was too atrocious to complement his fast aerials.

Mario got his air speed tripled in Sm4sh with his kit barely changing a bit beyond Fsmash's flame hitbox being much stronger. Everyone can see what that one buff alone did for him.

It's easy to say that Mario lacking kill confirms sets him back, but he makes up for that with safety from getting KO'd himself, as well as suffocating you with his kit anyway. When his opponent is at kill percents, they effectively can never come in from the air again lest they risk an invincible Usmash punish with no endlag to punish it if its dodged. So they're forced to be grounded, where Mario has RAR f5 Bair, f2 Jab, and stutterstep Fsmash and Usmash to threaten.

He lacks guaranteed ways to kill, sure. But how are you going to get your kills?

 

[Zelder]

Everyone repeats that Marth is a bad match up for Mario, but I'm not so convinced. Mario vs Marth was a blowout in Brawl and Melee, but in those games Marth had bonkers frame data to go with his range (and real sick grab release stuff in Brawl, yikes). But Marth's frame data is...mortal in this game. He still has the range, but Mario's aerial movement capabilities have been healthily buffed. I dunno if it's so clear cut that it's a bad match up. I'd need to watch it played out a couple of times at a high level, but the only time I've seen it was Mr. E vs Ally at GOML, which admittedly did make Ally sweat in a close 3-2 if I remember correctly. All I know is that, personally, I don't sweat if my opponent picks Marth.

 

[Sinister Slush]

BTW this is why imo Smash 4 is the BEST smash game despite the issue have with it.

A fighting game that forces more thinking about how and when to interact is a good fighting game.

In terms of Smash, I feel like that's because there's so many busted moves you gotta respect in smash4 compared to Melee and Brawl. Especially when you account rage making moves that isn't very scary at first than all of a sudden it's even worse than KO punch or Cross Slash.

So yeah, you can't play braindead against Smash 4 moves cause they implemented a lot more BS along with rage compared to a few examples in Brawl/Melee like Shine or MK shuttle loop.

People can probably count on 2 or 3 hands the amount of dumb moves each game has but cause of Smash 4 and rage you'd need possibly double or triple the amount to count.

 

[bc1910]

Brawl Mario was bad because his air speed was too atrocious to complement his fast aerials.

Mario got his air speed tripled in Sm4sh with his kit barely changing a bit beyond Fsmash's flame hitbox being much stronger. Everyone can see what that one buff alone did for him.

It's easy to say that Mario lacking kill confirms sets him back, but he makes up for that with safety from getting KO'd himself, as well as suffocating you with his kit anyway. When his opponent is at kill percents, they effectively can never come in from the air again lest they risk an invincible Usmash punish with no endlag to punish it if its dodged. So they're forced to be grounded, where Mario has RAR f5 Bair, f2 Jab, and stutterstep Fsmash and Usmash to threaten.

He lacks guaranteed ways to kill, sure. But how are you going to get your kills?

Mario's air speed buff is important, but there are various things he lost from Brawl as well, most notably his guaranteed jab cancel Dsmash. Yes, most of the cast lost strong jab cancel options, but most of the cast also gained air speed buffs. Just so happens that Mario's frame data and combo potential benefits him the most in the new engine.

RAR Bair is effectively frame 10 (even more including the dash) which makes it much less oppressive than you're suggesting. Jab doesn't guarantee anything threatening; Luigi's is better.

I'll give you Usmash as an incredible anti-air, but otherwise Mario is less slippery at kill percent than Sheik, Diddy or even Mewtwo.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

In terms of Smash, I feel like that's because there's so many busted moves you gotta respect in smash4 compared to Melee and Brawl. Especially when you account rage making moves that isn't very scary at first than all of a sudden it's even worse than KO punch or Cross Slash.

So yeah, you can't play braindead against Smash 4 moves cause they implemented a lot more BS along with rage compared to a few examples in Brawl/Melee like Shine or MK shuttle loop.

People can probably count on 2 or 3 hands the amount of dumb moves each game has but cause of Smash 4 and rage you'd need possibly double or triple the amount to count.

More busted moves in smash 4 where patching exist? Brawl Snake probably has more busted moves by himself than all the top and high tier characters. And the degree of how busted his moves were is leaps and bounds what we have here.

 

[C0rvus]

Could you elaborate on this a little bit? You aren't the first person I've seen suggest that Bowser might do well against Cloud, or at least go even, and yet I have always perceived the matchup to be quite bad for Bowser.

The obvious strong point for Bowser in this matchup is that his ledge game can mess Cloud up pretty bad. However Cloud is also great at edgeguarding Bowser. Bowser's aerials and up b all lose to fair/dair/nair/LCS and Bowser is big target who is vulnerable to all of those moves when using his up b.

You say that Bowser can contest Cloud's ground game but to me it feels more like Cloud can contest Bowser's ground game while dominating him in the air. Cloud can camp Bowser and is good at stuffing/punishing Bowser's approaches. Cloud has good tools for CQC with Bowser (particularly his jab). Once Cloud gets Bowser into the air, Cloud's godlike juggling and landing punishes are misery for Bowser with his famous landing troubles and susceptibility to juggling. Cloud actually has a very threatening grab in this matchup because uthrow -> juggle situation is at least as scary as the average combo throw for Bowser.

Cloud is also great at killing, so this is not a matchup where Bowser can count on living forever and building rage.

That more or less sums up my impression of the matchup. I am honestly hoping that you can explain to me that I am completely wrong, because I would love to learn of a better approach to this matchup for Bowser.

The thing is, I can't really elaborate on it beyond how it feels. I have played Cloud v Bowser many times (as Bowser, mind you) and it just feels like both characters mess each other up. Yes, losing neutral to Cloud can get you juggled for a painful amount of percent, but honestly, that's fairly standard when you're playing as Bowser. Cloud is easy to get up throw up air on - even more so with Limit- and his ground game outside of his sick movement and dtilt as a counterpoke isn't super good.

It's definitely Cloud favored, partially because of the nerf to up throw up air, but I can't say for sure, I don't have a big enough sample size. I know Emblem Lord and I played this matchup for a long while back when he was newly buffed/Cloud was pretty fresh. He may know more than I do.

 

[Sinister Slush]

More busted moves in smash 4 where patching exist? Brawl Snake probably has more busted moves by himself than all the top and high tier characters. And the degree of how busted his moves were is leaps and bounds what we have here.

Utilt and ftilt, everything else was ok or able to SDI out of like Nair or Dair.
Unless you mean Fsmash, you should never be getting hit by that move.

Also patching is adding things to make moves strong.
DK/Bowser Uthrow Uair setups as an example of many they've done with patches, since I guess to the balance team some characters will become monsters if they're given X throw into X aerial.

 

[BunbUn129]

Utilt and ftilt, everything else was ok or able to SDI out of like Nair or Dair.
Unless you mean Fsmash, you should never be getting hit by that move.

Also patching is adding things to make moves strong.
DK/Bowser Uthrow Uair setups as an example of many they've done with patches, since I guess to the balance team some characters will become monsters if they're given X throw into X aerial.

Patching has either made broken moves more reasonable or made undertuned moves more usable. The only examples of moves that were buffed to the point that they became problematic and had to be nerfed later on are Bowser's up throw and MK's up air.

There's nothing wrong with patches making moves "strong" as long as it's within reasonable realms.

Smash 4's hitboxes and just moves in general are tame compared to Melee/Brawl, at least in the case of the top-tiers.

For the most extreme comparison, does Smash 4 have a #1 character who has a frame-1 active and frame-1 invincible move that can be jump-cancelled?

 

[Sinister Slush]

Patches also notorious for not fixing stuff that needed fixing.
Like Luma hitboxes and Knockback.

 

[Trifroze]

Mario's grab game is what makes him so good. It's likely the best in the entire cast after DK, with all of Mario's grab variations being the fastest of their kind as well as really safe, leading into consistent 30-40% combos and back throw being a kill throw. Mario's air speed and frame data give him very viable rushdown capabilities which, along with his usmash, give the opponent incentive to shield constantly to get grabbed by him. He's also relatively hard to edgeguard and kill. His lack of overall mobility and range (especially the lack of a good forward hitting aerial) are what keep him in check.

 

[BunbUn129]

Patches also notorious for not fixing stuff that needed fixing.
Like Luma hitboxes and Knockback.

Yeah, forget the fixes to a whole lot of characters like Diddy Kong, Sheik, ZSS, MK, Rosa herself, Luigi, Bayonetta, and on the buff side DK, Bowser, Mewtwo, Ike, along with others.

Let's focus on Luma jank and maybe also the fact that D3 and Jiggs haven't gotten buffs and say that patches are "notorious for not fixing stuff that needed fixing."

Not saying I think the game's balance is perfect, but patches have done a damn good job.

 

[Sinister Slush]

I never said D3 or Jiggly didn't need buffs?
I'm honestly astonished just as much as everyone except jiggs players (if any left) that her and D3 aren't getting anything in these patches.

Nice Hyperbole though.

 

[sedrf]

I think it was the whole jigglypuff being a joke character
Also d3 is perfect-sakurai