Official 4BR Tier List v2.0 - Competitive Impressions

[my_T]

What are the difference between Brawl Ness and Smash 4 Ness?

 

[Krysco]

What are the difference between Brawl Ness and Smash 4 Ness?

Not losing to one of the best characters just for getting grabbed is a good start. Also, not dying off stage immediately for having an opponent above his head. Rage making bthrow even more threatening also comes to mind. Last major thing that comes to mind is fair having a consistent hitbox rather than a shrinking, approaching one and an increasing, retreating one.

 

[Nu~]

Neither of his grabs work OOS. Pretty much every character w/ a tether grab that isn't really a tether grab has to make up for their horrible grabs in unique ways in order to do anything. Yoshi and Link's can force approaches and pressure with eggs. Villager's jab is safe on shield and in the random event that he does land a grab you're going for a ride.

When you look to the mid and low tiers w/ pseudo-tethers you start to get a better idea of how horrible not being able to grab OOS.

Pacman has guaranteed shieldbreak setups, water to move people in shield around, true blockchains into grab, and a frame 1 option OOS that beats shield, and he's still "bad" because of his grab. Imagine how terrifying it would be if someone viable like Mario got hydrant and gained the ability to do drive by up smash's.

BJR can cross people up on shields with his side b and down air, but that's about it. His disadvantage against shield, the limitations of his item relative to everyone else, and his poor recovery hold him down when pretty much any top tier in the game would take his forward or down airs.

Ehhh...

You're kinda trivializing what makes Pacman bad here. There's a heavy catch to every shield option you listed for Pac-Man that has nothing to do with his ****ty grab.

 

[my_T]

Not losing to one of the best characters just for getting grabbed is a good start. Also, not dying off stage immediately for having an opponent above his head. Rage making bthrow even more threatening also comes to mind. Last major thing that comes to mind is fair having a consistent hitbox rather than a shrinking, approaching one and an increasing, retreating one.

Thanks. A little more detail would be nice though.

What other differences are there between the two iterations besides the Fair buff?

 

[Deleted member]

What are the difference between Brawl Ness and Smash 4 Ness?

Not having to deal with 10 extra frames of grab release was a huge buff in of itself.

Better hitboxes overall (bair, uair, PK Thunder) and a much better dsmash. He also gained a reliable combo throw and like Krysco mentioned Rage and the removal of momentum canceling made bthrow much better. Removal of ledgehogging also benefitted his recovery (it did for everyone's really, but at least Ness isn't as doomed offstage).

 

[irokex13]

Yoshi having a "poor grab game" is about as much a meme as Bayonetta's "bad neutral". There are few - I'd personally argue no - better grabs in smash 4 than Yoshi's neutral B.

all have arguably better command grabs than . And Yoshi's neutral B isn't all that terrifying yo begin with, unless I'm missing something huge here. I fail to see how he has a better grab than something like 's dash grab. Also, Yoshi doesn't get much reward off of it either. I'm much more afraid of someone like grabbing me than Yoshi landing a neutral B.

 

[my_T]

Not having to deal with 10 extra frames of grab release was a huge buff in of itself.

Better hitboxes overall (bair, uair, PK Thunder) and a much better dsmash. He also gained a reliable combo throw and like Krysco mentioned Rage and the removal of momentum canceling made bthrow much better. Removal of ledgehogging also benefitted his recovery (it did for everyone's really, but at least Ness isn't as doomed offstage).

Most of this stuff seems like universal improvements through transitioning between Brawl mechanics and Smash 4 mechanics.

correct me if i'm wrong

I heard most characters if not all lacked combos in Brawl where as in Smash 4 a large majority of the roster has grab combos or combos off of normals/specials now. The removal of ledge hogging makes everybody's recovery better. Doesn't the removal of momentum canceling help make everybody's kill moves more reliable now? Plenty of characters benefit from rage, not just Ness.

So he got some hitbox buffs on bair, fair, uair, PKT, grab release (was this exclusive to him?) and a better dsmash. Anything else?

I'm just trying to figure out what it was that made him bad in previous smashes and why people think he's so much better in Smash 4

 

[Krysco]

Looking at the list of changes from Brawl on SmashWiki, the jist of it seems to be that he runs and walks faster, has more range on certain moves, more power on things like fsmash and PK Thunder 2 and the universal buffs like rage, momentum cancelling being gone, combos becoming a thing etc. Also, grab release also applied to Lucas and DK although DK suffered less lag than everyone else in Brawl while the PK kids suffered more.

 

[BunbUn129]

Most of this stuff seems like universal improvements through transitioning between Brawl mechanics and Smash 4 mechanics.

correct me if i'm wrong

I heard most characters if not all lacked combos in Brawl where as in Smash 4 a large majority of the roster has grab combos or combos off of normals/specials now. The removal of ledge hogging makes everybody's recovery better. Doesn't the removal of momentum canceling help make everybody's kill moves more reliable now? Plenty of characters benefit from rage, not just Ness.

So he got some hitbox buffs on bair, fair, uair, PKT, grab release (was this exclusive to him?) and a better dsmash. Anything else?

I'm just trying to figure out what it was that made him bad in previous smashes and why people think he's so much better in Smash 4

The fix to his grab release animation went a long way. It was a major reason for his abysmal MU against Marth in Brawl, and Marth being a common top-tier didn't help. In fact, the grab release weakness was so abusable that he was at a significant disadvantage vs Donkey Kong, who wasn't even considered that much better than Ness. Ness's floatiness should've made it difficult to rack up damage on him, but grab release exploits nullified this.

Ness has historically struggled against disjoints, which Smash 4 toned down heavily, as seen with the nerfs to Marth and MK. Since we've talked frequently about Ness' decline in Smash 4's metagame, disjoints tie into that topic. Sword characters were a mess at release, aside from the Pits and Tink (the latter of whom doesn't even play like your typical swordie). Patches slowly fixed them and one became dominant (MK, who's still quite good), another became decent (Ike), and one is now very good and is only getting better (Marth). Corrin and more notably Cloud were added. Over the course of the game's lifespan sword characters have improved as a whole significantly, and this most likely correlates with Ness's decline.

So, when it comes to buffs specific to Ness, the fix to his grab release animation, and to a lesser extent, the nerfs to disjoints.

Edit: a bit off topic, but MK would make a very good secondary for Ness, no? MK has an easier time against Cloud, Sheik, ZSS, Marth, Villager and likely Mario, and most importantly counters Rosalina. But MK isn't an easy character to play so he might not be that useful to Ness outside of dealing with Rosa.

 

[NairWizard]

Very few, if any, characters have bad designs, it's just a matter of undertuned reward. Mario is good in smash 4 because his reward relative to the cast is good, and bad in previous games because his reward relative to the cast is average/bad.

If you doubled the damage on all of Ganondorf's attacks in smash 4, he'd be a safe-on-shield monster who KO'ed characters with 2 hits. Easily top tier, better neutrals be damned. It's not about his design at all, it's just that he doesn't quite have the reward he needs on his moves.

Now, you can say that a design is toxic or unhealthy because the Ganondorf outlined above would be annoying at best and hilariously polarizing at worst.

Bad, though? I wouldn't say any design in this game is bad.

 

[adom4]

Very few, if any, characters have bad designs, it's just a matter of undertuned reward. Mario is good in smash 4 because his reward relative to the cast is good, and bad in previous games because his reward relative to the cast is average/bad.

If you doubled the damage on all of Ganondorf's attacks in smash 4, he'd be a safe-on-shield monster who KO'ed characters with 2 hits. Easily top tier, better neutrals be damned. It's not about his design at all, it's just that he doesn't quite have the reward he needs on his moves.

Now, you can say that a design is toxic or unhealthy because the Ganondorf outlined above would be annoying at best and hilariously polarizing at worst.

Bad, though? I wouldn't say any design in this game is bad.

Ganon is well designed for the most part, his moves work how they should (except D-smash which has that stupid thigh hitbox) & his hitboxes on his normals are good.
His problem is that his grab & specials are undertuned & it hurts him bad, untechable flame choke would do wonders for him.

 

[Ulevo]

Very few, if any, characters have bad designs, it's just a matter of undertuned reward. Mario is good in smash 4 because his reward relative to the cast is good, and bad in previous games because his reward relative to the cast is average/bad.

If you doubled the damage on all of Ganondorf's attacks in smash 4, he'd be a safe-on-shield monster who KO'ed characters with 2 hits. Easily top tier, better neutrals be damned. It's not about his design at all, it's just that he doesn't quite have the reward he needs on his moves.

Now, you can say that a design is toxic or unhealthy because the Ganondorf outlined above would be annoying at best and hilariously polarizing at worst.

Bad, though? I wouldn't say any design in this game is bad.

I think you are preying on semantics here. When people label a character's design as bad, they are doing so under specific criteria. Being unhealthy or toxic are some of the criteria people choose to use. Bad is a pretty straight forward word. It's the opposite of good, and unhealthy or toxic designs cannot be considered good game design.

Characters in this game are usually not bad because they have under tuned reward. It is usually because they lack options, either because they do not have depth to their tool kit, or because the options they have are shut down by other, more oppressive options from opposing characters. Characters are also usually bad because relatively speaking, other characters have over tuned rewards or options.

As for your main statement, there are many characters in this game with bad design.

 

[BTVolta]

Most of this stuff seems like universal improvements through transitioning between Brawl mechanics and Smash 4 mechanics.
[...]
I'm just trying to figure out what it was that made him bad in previous smashes and why people think he's so much better in Smash 4

His short range, bad approach option, terrible recovery are usually what have held him down in every smash game despite having great reward when he gets in. In 64 his recovery is laughable and his approaches are generally bad even with DJCs and platforms. In melee he gets some disjoint on some moves(dash attack and Fair) and has great grab reward, but his grab range is garbage, his approach is still awful and his recovery is so easy to intercept that you can do it blindfolded. Brawl he still has good damage, but has all the same issues on top of grab release killing his viability and SDI negating one of his main combo tools(Fair). Other brawl shenanigans didn't really help him out either.

Enter smash 4 where his recovery is still bad, but given many buffs to make it more threatening to intercept(more kill power), harder to gimp(PK thunder piercing in the first few frames), and a bit more reliable to when further down(can restart it if you hit a wall). Ledge Hogging being removed also greatly aids hims. His approach is still generally bad, but that's a characteristic trait at this point. He has the tools and hitboxes to corner people , walk through their walls and make them make mistakes to eventually get his reward. Ness also is functionally a grappler, so he benefits from rage similarly to other heavy weights due to getting walled out similarly, but only needs to get in a few times where his potent kill moves can end stocks fast(Bthrow, Bair, Uair, Nair, Fsmash, Dsmash).

 

[NairWizard]

I think you are preying on semantics here. When people label a character's design as bad, they are doing so under specific criteria. Being unhealthy or toxic are some of the criteria people choose to use. Bad is a pretty straight forward word. It's the opposite of good, and unhealthy or toxic designs cannot be considered good game design.

?

This has nothing to do with semantics. I was replying to Das Koopa's posts, which seemed to be saying that there were certain character designs doomed to be bad throughout smash as a series (Ganondorf, Zelda, etc.). I'm saying that the designs are not doomed to be bad; it's the reward relative to the rest of the cast that makes the characters bad.

Your post discusses the semantic meaning of unhealthy, toxic, and bad, but my point isn't about the labels. It's about the implication.

Characters in this game are usually not bad because they have under tuned reward.

Increase the reward of any character in this game sufficiently and you have a good character relative to the cast.

This is the case for almost every design. The only questionable one is really Zelda's. Even if you doubled the damage on all of her attacks, her hitboxes might just be poor enough that she'd still not be top tier. That's a possibility.

But other than her, I don't see a design so fatally flawed in this game that better reward wouldn't make it viable.

 

[The-Technique]

Zelda already has decent reward (hit her shield wrong? die from Up B at 80%) a decent combo game (can deal 0-53% in one string) and an OK grab game (die at 90% from d-throw uair). The main thing that holds Zelda back is having god awful projectiles, slug-like mobility, and of course terrible hitboxes.

I don't think increasing reward is enough to make a character good though. Look at Bowser who has the dumbest u-throw in the game. It gives him a niche against characters like Mario but every other high/top tier still gives him hell.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Very few, if any, characters have bad designs, it's just a matter of undertuned reward.

Wouldn't that be the same thing from a competitive player's point of view? If a character's risk / reward ratio is skewed in either direction that'd be considered poor character design. What makes Ganondorf such a bad choice for competitive play is the disproportion between risk, which is extremely high in his case, and reward. If the risk aspect of Ganon's character design were as low as Sheik's nobody would think about calling his reward "undertuned".

So yes, there are badly designed characters. Jigglypuff, Zelda, Ganondorf, Doctor Mario, Falco, Roy, King DDD, Bowser Jr are among the characters that have insufficient reward to justify the risks they have to take.

 

[NairWizard]

Wouldn't that be the same thing from a competitive player's point of view? If a character's risk / reward ratio is skewed in either direction that'd be considered poor character design. What makes Ganondorf such a bad choice for competitive play is the disproportion between risk, which is extremely high in his case, and reward. If the risk aspect of Ganon's character design were as low as Sheik's nobody would think about calling his reward "undertuned".

So yes, there are badly designed characters. Jigglypuff, Zelda, Ganondorf, Doctor Mario, Falco, Roy, King DDD, Bowser Jr are among the characters that have insufficient reward to justify the risks they have to take.

I think you're talking about character balance rather than character design. Ganondorf's design is fine, it's just that his single heavy hits don't do enough damage to justify his lack of combos, mobility, and recovery, which means that his balance is not right.

It's important to distinguish between the tuning of the kit and the design of the kit.

Fixing Ganondorf by giving him a frame 2 escape option from all non-true-combo strings is a change to his design. It gives him the ability to do something that his kit obviously wasn't designed to do.

Fixing Ganondorf by adjusting his damage numbers is just fine-tuning the design without changing it. If he still has no way to break free from strings but can now do twice as much damage when he actually does hit you, he retains his intended design (gets hit a lot when he gets hit, but hurts a lot when he hits), but he is obviously now a very good character.

This is a fundamental topic in fighting game design. @Thinkaman is probably better suited to commenting on it than I am given his background in the field, so I'll let my point stand there.

 

[Jaguar360]

All of this hype for Ness mains attending...there just a lot of Ness mains/supporters or is he kinda like an underdog character? I know opinions of him tend to go down every now and then but he is still a high tier. Meanwhile, no hype for ESAM or Captain L~ I'd be hyped myself but I'll wait till top 16 comes and I see a Pika head pop up. Also, Esam has a Mewtwo now? Did Corrin not work out for him?

Something I find interesting is how this thread just got done discussing Pit and now Yoshi came up...they're both at the very top of mid tier. Meanwhile, Luigi is barely in the upper half of it. I'm wondering if Luigi will ever crawl up into the lower ends of high tier or at the very least the top of mid tier. He seems to have the results for it.

Looking at the G4 notable players, there's a surprising lack of Megaman, (outside of Abadango who seems to fall flat when he switches off Mewtwo) Greninja and Lucario. No Venia or Some or iStudying or Day. That's the only notable Lucario name that comes to mind...

Shiki from Japan is going to Genesis 4. He's no Some, Oisiitofu or Lea, but is probably capable of making top 64. Stroder could also attend since he's kind of in the region, but hasn't registered to my knowledge.

Neither of his grabs work OOS. Pretty much every character w/ a tether grab that isn't really a tether grab has to make up for their horrible grabs in unique ways in order to do anything. Yoshi and Link's can force approaches and pressure with eggs. Villager's jab is safe on shield and in the random event that he does land a grab you're going for a ride.

When you look to the mid and low tiers w/ pseudo-tethers you start to get a better idea of how horrible not being able to grab OOS.

I agree with all this, but it's also important to mention that Yoshi has a 3 frame n-air he can use out of shield. Other characters with poor or slow grabs like Mewtwo and Greninja don't have this fortune.

I also agree with the general sentiment in this thread about Yoshi's viability. A solid mid tier, who is probably not solo viable because of his Diddy and Cloud struggles. The Sheik and Bayonetta matchups aren't so great either, which holds Yoshi back even more.

 

[Yikarur]

Yoshis Sheik MU is fine. Cloud is somehow managable (if cross slash didn't exist ..) but I think, Bayo and Diddy is really terrible. All 3 are most likely -2 tho.

 

[Rizen]

Zelda already has decent reward (hit her shield wrong? die from Up B at 80%)

The "elevator" 2nd hit can be DI-ed sideways. Zelda can guess the DI though and the 2nd hit of Farow's wind is very strong. I generally agree with your post.

 

[SaltyKracka]

I think you're talking about character balance rather than character design. Ganondorf's design is fine, it's just that his single heavy hits don't do enough damage to justify his lack of combos, mobility, and recovery, which means that his balance is not right.

It's important to distinguish between the tuning of the kit and the design of the kit.

Fixing Ganondorf by giving him a frame 2 escape option from all non-true-combo strings is a change to his design. It gives him the ability to do something that his kit obviously wasn't designed to do.

Fixing Ganondorf by adjusting his damage numbers is just fine-tuning the design without changing it. If he still has no way to break free from strings but can now do twice as much damage when he actually does hit you, he retains his intended design (gets hit a lot when he gets hit, but hurts a lot when he hits), but he is obviously now a very good character.

This is a fundamental topic in fighting game design. @Thinkaman is probably better suited to commenting on it than I am given his background in the field, so I'll let my point stand there.

And yet I can guarantee you that if you were to simply double the damage on all of Ganondorf's attacks and it were sufficient to make him competitively viable, he would very quickly gain a reputation as a stupid luck-based character.

Let's face facts. Ganondorf's design is ****. You can go on and on about how he doesn't have enough reward, when the plain and simple fact of it is that his design doesn't work. He loses on both offense and defense to every single tool in the game (Mobility? Yes. Disjoints? Yes. Projectiles? Yes. Rushdown? Yes.) and doesn't even get to kill well for it. You know how you can tell that Smash has some wack-ass balancing? Diddy Kong kills more consistently at earlier percents than Ganondorf does. And I could go on and on about the mess that his design is, but that wouldn't change anything.

Ganondorf has a bad design. So do his bottom tier compatriots. And nothing is going to change about it until Sakurai or his team pulls their heads out of their asses and actually looks at the game.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

A character design that is founded on extreme polarization is bad game design. These types of characters usually lack options to deal with every situation and is just about abusing their strengths to avoid the situation entirely in a linear-ish fashion.

Great example Is little mac. Throw him in the air, off the stage, or platform camp him; he has no legitimate options for any of those scenarios. He can only abuse his absurd ground game and stage selection to avoid those circumstances.

Ganon could have his damage buffed to 100000%, but still have garbage OOS options, struggles in neutral, horrible disadvantage, and other damning weaknesses.

If Ganon had better movement, faster grab, and untechable flame choke, we would be talking about a real character then. Just buffing his strengths and ignoring his weaknesses leaves him with no new tools and just reliance on old ones that didn't answer every outcome before.

 

[TDK]

A character design that is founded on extreme polarization is bad game design

 

[TheGoodGuava]

A character design that is founded on extreme polarization is bad game design

Then why is Bayonetta so good?

 

[Nobie]

Ah, I realized I made an error in translating Earth's statements. He didn't mention projectiles as one of Pit's strengths, but rather his ability to get KOs.

I don't think he means that Pit KOs quickly, but that rather that he has reliable options.

 

[SaltyKracka]

Is poorly designed, yes. Probably the most glaring example of outright bad design choices in the game.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Then why is Bayonetta so good?

Because bayo has answers for situations that may come and she actually has an array of tools to choose from.

Camping? You can counter-camp depending on the character, witch-time up-close, old-school PS and walk forward with patience, etc...

Rush down? Witch twist, Jab, witch time, bit within, Bull Climax to knock'em out the air.

Recovering? You can pretty much do w/e you want basically.

Edgeguarding? Same as recovering, but with switched roles.



Like, If i was super serious into smash again, i would solo-main bayo, sheik, fox, or someone else cuz they has options for ya boy.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

I fail to see how he [Yoshi] has a better grab than something like 's dash grab.

Tbh, does anyone have a better grab than Falcon's dash grab? Falcon can punish a mid ranged whiff with just dash grab alone, he doesn't even need to run at all because the slide he gets is so insane.

On the topic of Falcon though, the character has some absolutely insane moves. The aforementioned dash grab, a god like and simple jab that creates one of the most potent ledge traps in the game, back air, an excellent up air for juggles.

 

[JayE]

Tbh, does anyone have a better grab than Falcon's dash grab? Falcon can punish a mid ranged whiff with just dash grab alone, he doesn't even need to run at all because the slide he gets is so insane.

On the topic of Falcon though, the character has some absolutely insane moves. The aforementioned dash grab, a god like and simple jab that creates one of the most potent ledge traps in the game, back air, an excellent up air for juggles.

Falcon does have some great moves; he's lethal. His main weakness is obviously his recovery, but he is deadly. He can destroy anyone but at the same time anyone can destroy him since he's susceptible offstage and is the perfect combo weight.

 

[Sinister Slush]

As someone stated already, Yoshi's ground game is mediocre when it involves tossing fair out and hoping it lands, thus extending his hitbox massively too while using the move or just shield a move into Jab > X smash/Utilt. Egg tossing/jumping in general is a huge commitment for Yoshi and if the opponent realizes the endlag on ET they'd know to just run under the egg and punish but not many do that for some reason, so highly not recommended to do this in neutral unless you're both on opposite sides of the stage.

His floatiness is another issue with landing most of the time to the point even top yoshi's either have to pray they don't get hit offstage when slowly hovering to the ledge or if they committed to a full hop, bait them to hit you in the air only to DJ armor through it and Downb to get stage control again.
Otherwise his kill power isn't bad or non-existent, it's just super telegraphed cause it's pretty much all vertical kill options that loses to shield/good reactions (downb attempts)

His grab sucks but I wouldn't say his throws suck, Dthrow gives true dthrow Uair on some fast fallers past a certain % threshold and Uthrow can catch people off guard at low % for us to combo them, or Uthrow at mid/high % onto a platform to get a full Dair on em if they miss the tech.

all have arguably better command grabs than . And Yoshi's neutral B isn't all that terrifying yo begin with, unless I'm missing something huge here. I fail to see how he has a better grab than something like 's dash grab. Also, Yoshi doesn't get much reward off of it either. I'm much more afraid of someone like grabbing me than Yoshi landing a neutral B.

Nah it's better than Wario and Bowser for sure, but not Mewtwo and Diddy for obvious reasons. Neutral b gives decent gimmicky movement but with little reward to it when used on non fast falling characters under 100%. Otherwise if it's a fast faller and they're above even 70% they most likely just lost a stock if they got egg layed offstage unless the yoshi misses their dair/fair spike (if it's needed since people tend to not mash fast enough out of it).

The reward he gets off it is basically a stock if he guesses right.
Uair/DownB kill if they pop out of the egg onstage at a decent kill % without airdodging or expecting it, and being offstage dying by just never mashing or spiked by Yoshi.

His grab most definitely isn't as good as lucas or falcon, gheb meant his command grab being basically his "grab" and that being better than some other characters actual grab which I can agree with if you compare the neutral b to something like villager or pac-man grab.
One indirect nerf people tend to forget though through the transition from brawl to smash 4 is grab armor being gone. So Yoshi's ranged neutral B, while it's a decent move, tends to get beat out if someone just tosses a jab or anything out before or even trading/plain beating it by being faster if they expect it.

Oh and the 3 or so frame nerf they gave us hurts too.

Its a command grab that you can b-reverse and gives you insane amounts of momentum and its not to laggy, plus you can use it to cancel jump

Can't DJC anymore with neutral b, you're thinking UpB.


That aside, Diddy bayo and cloud (3 most popular characters) destroy Yoshi in 3 or 4 moves only. The Sheik MU isn't as bad as it used to be due to the nerf bat whacking her enough to the point we can kill her as early as mid 60s when we have 100+% rage and fair range nerfed so we have more of a chance trading hits with her and we always win in the long run cause 14% fair. Reverse 3-0 Raptor got on Puppeh is a recent good example of mid-high level Sheik vs Yoshi goes, slow paced but doable.

The two DLC characters can also hard abuse Yoshi offstage by throwing Nair out or witch twist sending Yoshi down at ugly angles that spells death if he doesn't have his DJ or egg tosses anymore, whichever he's keeping at the back burner.
Honestly Yoshi just has too many even matchups in this game as well, and for smash 4 even means you can lose to pretty much anyone because of rage MU inexperience or other added/removed mechanics.

Used to think Yoshi was like a top 25 character but overtime I think he's advanced a bit... to top 20 at least lol
Only problem being not all the Yoshi's can travel as much as they like, they tend to sometimes just be limited to doing well in their region with a big regional or one national every 5+ months.

 

[Rizen]

I think some characters were originally designed for party modes like FFAs rather than competitive 1vs1 format. 's the best example with Din's, Phantom and Farow's wind warps. might fit in that category too. seems like only FD was considered as competitive when he was planned.

PS
If had all his damage doubled he'd break shields super easily then KO in one hit. It wouldn't be luck based but still annoying as heck to play against and he'd dominate bad characters.

 

[verbatim]

And yet I can guarantee you that if you were to simply double the damage on all of Ganondorf's attacks and it were sufficient to make him competitively viable, he would very quickly gain a reputation as a stupid luck-based character.

Let's face facts. Ganondorf's design is ****. You can go on and on about how he doesn't have enough reward, when the plain and simple fact of it is that his design doesn't work. He loses on both offense and defense to every single tool in the game (Mobility? Yes. Disjoints? Yes. Projectiles? Yes. Rushdown? Yes.) and doesn't even get to kill well for it. You know how you can tell that Smash has some wack-*** balancing? Diddy Kong kills more consistently at earlier percents than Ganondorf does. And I could go on and on about the mess that his design is, but that wouldn't change anything.

Ganondorf has a bad design. So do his bottom tier compatriots. And nothing is going to change about it until Sakurai or his team pulls their heads out of their ***** and actually looks at the game.

If you watch competitive Ganondorf's play, they're actually very good at landing grabs. The thing is that doing so doesn't give anywhere near as good of a reward as it should. In comparison to the other magic/psychic users (Ness/Lucas/M2) and to the other heavyweights (Bowser/DK/Charizard) Ganondorf has almost nothing off of grab reward. If he got the heavyweight grab fix treatment it would help a lot more than people might think.

 

[Luco]

It's worth keeping in mind about Ness that stuff like the grab release issue and all the other bull that kept him down in previous smash games (64's lack of AD made his linear recovery even more linear, Melee Ness had NO GRAB RANGE and THE WORST RUNNING GRAB THANKS GUYS) were oddly specific things that kept him from being good, but it wasn't really his intrinsic design. In fact, in Brawl it was pretty commonly accepted that Ness would have been like an upper mid or higher were GRs not an issue, and this was shown in his oddly good MUs versus characters like Olimar (even) and Olimar was able to gimp Ness easily too.

Ness traditionally functions as a defensive grappler and that's not a bad playstyle in a game where shield is strong. The reason he's so much better in smash 4 were that the mechanics allowed him to actually play the game he's been trying to play for 15 years without having to deal with the ridiculous crap he's had in every other game and also severely lessening his other weaknesses (adding ADs, removing ledge-hogging, adding invincibility on PKT1 startup and making it MUCH quicker, etc etc).

Well, kind of. I would be willing to admit that his intrinsic design was screwed over by the kind of playstyle Melee's mechanics ended up cultivating. But yeah.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Tbh, does anyone have a better grab than Falcon's dash grab? Falcon can punish a mid ranged whiff with just dash grab alone, he doesn't even need to run at all because the slide he gets is so insane.



On the topic of Falcon though, the character has some absolutely insane moves. The aforementioned dash grab, a god like and simple jab that creates one of the most potent ledge traps in the game, back air, an excellent up air for juggles.

Tbh, does anyone have a better grab than Falcon's dash grab? Falcon can punish a mid ranged whiff with just dash grab alone, he doesn't even need to run at all because the slide he gets is so insane.

On the topic of Falcon though, the character has some absolutely insane moves. The aforementioned dash grab, a god like and simple jab that creates one of the most potent ledge traps in the game, back air, an excellent up air for juggles.

Is a character of extremes
Extremely good advantage state
Extremely poor disantage state

Sadly he can easily crash and burn by the likes of and who easily prey on those with bad disadvantage and offstage states like a sharks sensing blood in the ocean

 

[Aaron1997]

Waseda Festival 2016 Tokyo, Japan (128 entrants) (Cat 1)

1. KEN
2. Earth
3. Kameme
4. Tamushika
5. Fuwa
5. Eim
7. Taiheita
7. Todoman
9. Kept
9. Umeki
9. Manzoku
9. Abadango
13. Kirbus
13. Raito
13. Gomamugitya
13. Kenkenpa
33. T

Upsets

Toboman> Abadango
Tamushika> T
Tamushika>Umeki
Paseriman>T
Toboman> Raito

 

[NairWizard]

While we're discussing design, here's a little exercise for you guys.

If your main is not top tier, name the smallest possible change that you can think of that would make your main top tier.

If your main is already top tier, name the smallest possible change that could potentially knock your main out of top tier.

Also explain why the change would have such a large impact on the character's relative power.

Note that I said smallest. Nothing ridiculous like "Bowser suddenly has a kill throw starting at 20!" or "Sheik no longer has Bouncing Fish!"

I'll start with Pikachu (because I'm sure someone else will do Bayonetta anyway):
increase up-air damage to 8% (from 4) with relevant knockback adjustments

Probably an obvious one. Giving Pikachu a decent aerial KO option at reasonable percents (still nothing crazy because up-air's hitbox won't permit silliness) and also a much stronger juggling tool makes his mediocre advantage state into a pretty good one, thereby patching up the character's only real flaw.

 

[L9999]

Waseda Festival 2016 Tokyo, Japan (128 entrants) (Cat 1)

1. KEN
2. Earth
3. Kameme
4. Tamushika
5. Fuwa
5. Eim
7. Taiheita
7. Todoman
9. Kept
9. Umeki
9. Manzoku
9. Abadango
13. Kirbus
13. Raito
13. Gomamugitya
13. Kenkenpa
33. T

Upsets

Toboman> Abadango
Tamushika> T
Tamushika>Umeki
Paseriman>T
Toboman> Raito

WTH is Tamushika? Still, good to see new DHD players, too bad they are all stuck in Japan. And just as we finish discussing Pit and his "blandness" Earth gets 2nd with solo Pit. It would help Pit's reputation if more Pit players placed good solo with Earth absent, like Kuro or anyone else.

 

[Yikarur]

I'd give Yoshis pivot grab his Brawl Frame Data back.
10-20 / 65 -> 10-20 / 36

That move alone was the reason he was playable in Brawl. I really miss it.


Kameme getting third with Sheik only? Japanese are way too good

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I think you're talking about character balance rather than character design. Ganondorf's design is fine, it's just that his single heavy hits don't do enough damage to justify his lack of combos, mobility, and recovery, which means that his balance is not right.

Again: wouldn't that be one and the same thing from a competitive player's point of view?

Waseda Festival 2016 Tokyo, Japan (128 entrants) (Cat 1)

1. KEN
2. Earth
3. Kameme
4. Tamushika
5. Fuwa
5. Eim
7. Taiheita
7. Todoman
9. Kept
9. Umeki
9. Manzoku
9. Abadango
13. Kirbus
13. Raito
13. Gomamugitya
13. Kenkenpa

A few notes here:

- Earth was double eliminated by KEN who both may have used Corrin at some point.
- Earth double eliminated Kamemushi who may have used Mega Man, Yoshi or both at some point.
- Tamushika beat T, Eim, Umeki, Todoman and Fuwa!
- 4th japanese tournament in a row [not counting SE tourneys] with a Villager in top 12, contributed by 4 different Villager players! [Ranai, kept, Teppei and Yoshiaki]

Upsets

Toboman> Abadango
Tamushika> T
Tamushika>Umeki
Paseriman>T
Toboman> Raito

I have to question whether any of those are true upsets.

 

[E.D.N.D.N]

For greninja I'd say making it so that you could cancel shuriken charge with shield. Not keep the charge, just cancel it. Hit movement would be even better, and he'd be able to camp so much harder and his ledge coverage would dope