Official 4BR Tier List v2.0 - Competitive Impressions

[EternalFlare]

This thread's gotten lax.

IMO Diddy has the best neutral. Transcendent bananas are incredibly versatile and dangerous in neutral. Even when not holding one Diddy has a command grab monkey flip, a combo starting low commitment Dtilt, good SH Fair and is generally quick.

Those transcendent (which they aren't if you mean they don't have hurtboxes) bananas lose to most well timed hitboxes, can be caught and most importantly disappear after one use. At which point Diddy needs time and space to safely pluck another one. Sonic however, always has access to an invincible, unreactable SpinDash. You never get to make him "waste" his spindash and then go in.

I do think Diddy is a better overall character though. But in terms of neutral I think Diddy is 3rd, I'd rank Sonic and Sheik's neutral above him. Possibly Cloud as well. As of now most Clouds don't even utilize his amazing dash dance in a game where most dash dances are pretty mediocre. Dash dance LCS is terrifying.

 

[soniczx123]

Those transcendent bananas lose to most well timed hitboxes, can be caught and most importantly disappear after one use. At which point Diddy needs time and space to safely pluck another one. Sonic however, always has access to an invincible, unreactable SpinDash. You never get to make him "waste" his spindash and then go in.

Wait, you can't react to a SpinDash from across the stage?? are you serious??

Also the invincibility only lasts through the intial shorthop

 

[|ven|]

We dont need footage to prove that cloud is a positive MU over zelda. We can objectively argue all the reasons his kit is better.

-greater range, frame data, and priority on all of his moves

-more reliable combos and KO confirms

-cloud has a very strong juggle game, zelda has a nonexistent one

-cloud also has a much stronger edge guard, which is important because clouds main disadvantage is his recovery. Cloud can two frame zeldas recovery with Dtilt, dair, and limit cross slash

-There's not much zelda can do to counter clouds limit camping (because she has no long range pressure options. No, side special doesn't count because it can be easily easily shielded). To make things worse, zelda has no real approach options to get in on a campy cloud.

-once limit is charged, zelda cant do much besides hold shield

The simple fact is that cloud's kit clearly outclasses zelda's in almost every way

I'm here to counter everything you said lol

- "-greater range, frame data, and priority on all of his moves"
Zelda literally just has to wait for an opening. Majority of clouds I see and have played approach with a lot of things that zelda can easily counter if we just shield and wait it out.

- "more reliable combos and KO confirms"
If I get a grab, read your airdodge, get a gimp, get you off stage, nair off stage, or get a reset, I can easily get at least 50% on you. Not to mention I can kill with any of the following options too.

- "cloud has a very strong juggle game, zelda has a nonexistent one"
You only juggle us in the air. We literally just have to avoid being in the air. And with your air game, we literally just have to shield your landings or challenge it properly.

- "cloud also has a much stronger edge guard, which is important because clouds main disadvantage is his recovery. Cloud can two frame zeldas recovery with Dtilt, dair, and limit cross slash"
The only way you can get the 2 frame is if we recover low. We don't always have to do that lol that's why for this MU I recover high. And it's not the easiest thing to do but we can edgeguard you like we do to ikes. We either throw out a phantom who's windbox can push you away from the ledge, or we can properly time a dair who's sour spot can hit you which can lead to another sour spot or a perfect spike. Same thing with Spike.


- "There's not much zelda can do to counter clouds limit camping (because she has no long range pressure options. No, side special doesn't count because it can be easily easily shielded). To make things worse, zelda has no real approach options to get in on a campy cloud." "once limit is charged, zelda cant do much besides hold shield"

Okay? Zelda can camp too? We have our knight our side b which you left out of the equation for some reason. Even if you shield it, it brings down your shield a lot eventually forcing you to approach. And who said we have no other choice but to shield once you have limit? Lmao you must know a lot about Zelda if you claim this. In reality I'm not afraid of cloud having limit because zelda has a lot of obscure hit boxes which can easily get rid of it if you use it at the wrong time.

 

[EternalFlare]

Wait, you can't react to a SpinDash from across the stage?? are you serious??

Also the invincibility only lasts through the intial shorthop

Why would Sonic spin dash at you from full stage when he can wait until you are close enough to where it's unreactable before releasing the charge? Which is still a decent amount of distance mind you. Then add the fact that he can cancel it and it easily becomes one of the best neutral tools in the game, I'd argue it's the best period.

 

[soniczx123]

Why would Sonic spin dash at you from full stage when he can wait until you are close enough to where it's unreactable before releasing the charge? Which is still a decent amount of distance mind you. Then add the fact that he can cancel it and it easily becomes one of the best neutral tools in the game, I'd argue it's the best period.

If Sonic wants to release it at an unreactable speeds, he would have to full charge it or spin charge, which both can't be shield cancelled. They require a full commitment.

Half stage length is easily reactable. Or, you know, just bait it out and punish afterwards.

Spindash puts Sonic in a way worse position than Banana if it messes up.

 

[EternalFlare]

If Sonic wants to release it at an unreactable speeds, he would have to full charge it or spin charge, which both can't be shield cancelled. They require a full commitment.

Half stage length is easily reactable. Or, you know, just bait it out and punish afterwards.

Spindash puts Sonic in a way worse position than Banana if it messes up.

By the time it's fully charged you don't need to cancel it, even at near half stage length it becomes largely unreactable. Especially when you factor in Smash 4's native input lag+the startup of the move you are trying to challenge it with. It's not just about reacting either, to actually beat it you had to have reacted with the perfect timing, not too fast and not too late making it even harder. Plus even with a full charge Sonic can still jump out of it even if he can't shield.

Top players have repeatedly lost to Sonic because they couldn't deal with Spin Dash. A good example is Ally. No top player has lost to Diddy because banana was too polarizing in this game. If this was Brawl you might have an argument.

With that said the rest of Diddy's toolkit is definitely superior, especially his kill confirms and he has better landing options (Sonics aren't bad though). Which is why I think he's a better character overall (but again the top tiers in this game are so close it's debatable). But as far as neutral goes, Sonic wins.

 

[Rizen]

Those transcendent bananas lose to most well timed hitboxes, can be caught and most importantly disappear after one use. At which point Diddy needs time and space to safely pluck another one. Sonic however, always has access to an invincible, unreactable SpinDash. You never get to make him "waste" his spindash and then go in.

I do think Diddy is a better overall character though. But in terms of neutral I think Diddy is 3rd, I'd rank Sonic and Sheik's neutral above him. Possibly Cloud as well. As of now most Clouds don't even utilize his amazing dash dance in a game where most dash dances are pretty mediocre. Dash dance LCS is terrifying.

Yeah I was thinking of Brawl. Diddy's banana aren't transcendent. My bad.

 

[NinjaLink]

This thread's gotten lax.

IMO Diddy has the best neutral. Transcendent bananas are incredibly versatile and dangerous in neutral. Even when not holding one Diddy has a command grab monkey flip, a combo starting low commitment Dtilt, good SH Fair and is generally quick.

except his bananas arent transcendent in smash 4.....not even gonna go into 'diddy best neutral lol'

 

[Rizen]

except his bananas arent transcendent in smash 4.....not even gonna go into 'diddy best neutral lol'

Yeah I goofed, see the previous post. Diddy's neutral is still really good though not the best. What would you say are its downfalls?

 

[EternalFlare]

Can we talk about Little Mac for a bit?

Am I the only one that thinks he'd be top 15 if FD was the only legal stage?

He's probably the scariest character up close with his ridiculous frame data, hitboxes and super armour. His angled Fsmash also destroys shields and he downtilt is fairly safe on block so even if his grab game isn't great, he's still not a character you want to block much against.

Sure he has a bad recovery. So does Cloud and even by the most conservative opinions he's still top 10 in the game. So that clearly isn't enough to make a character irrelevant. Plus his recovery is a bit underrated. He has side B, up B, counter and a wall jump. With good DI and mixups, edge guarding him isn't nearly as free as you'd expect.

I think the bigger issue with Little Mac is platforms. He can't deal with platform camping at all. If characters want to run away all day and charge their resource or just constantly retreat to platforms in general whenever pressured, he can't do anything safely but wait.

So of course, with FD not giving any place to retreat to, Little Mac shines a lot more.

 

[soniczx123]

By the time it's fully charged you don't need to cancel it, even at near half stage length it becomes largely unreactable. Especially when you factor in Smash 4's native input lag+the startup of the move you are trying to challenge it with. It's not just about reacting either, to actually beat it you had to have reacted with the perfect timing, not too fast and not too late making it even harder. Plus even with a full charge Sonic can still jump out of it even if he can't shield.

Top players have repeatedly lost to Sonic because they couldn't deal with Spin Dash. A good example is Ally. No top player has lost to Diddy because banana was too polarizing in this game. If this was Brawl you might have an argument.

With that said the rest of Diddy's toolkit is definitely superior, especially his kill confirms and he has better landing options (Sonics aren't bad though). Which is why I think he's a better character overall (but again the top tiers in this game are so close it's debatable). But as far as neutral goes, Sonic wins.

Ally went Cloud and dealt with Spindash just fine.

Most players don't know how to deal with spindash cause it's such a unusual move in smash. Banana is a lot easier to understand due to it being an item most if not all players have experienced with before in casual play,

 

[MarshieMan]

I'm here to counter everything you said lol

- "-greater range, frame data, and priority on all of his moves"
Zelda literally just has to wait for an opening. Majority of clouds I see and have played approach with a lot of things that zelda can easily counter if we just shield and wait it out

Zelda just has to wait for an opening? Yeah, thats called playing smash. It doesnt matter who youre playing as or against, smash 4 is all about waiting for openings. Cloud should do that against zelda too, and because of his superior hitboxes, frame data, and rewards he will beat out zelda in that department. A good cloud will be patient and wont struggle with being punished by zelda. Theres a reason theyre on opposite sides of the tier list

- "more reliable combos and KO confirms"
If I get a grab, read your airdodge, get a gimp, get you off stage, nair off stage, or get a reset, I can easily get at least 50% on you. Not to mention I can kill with any of the following

Literally all of that can be said about cloud too. Im guessing youre really good with zelda and are making your opinions based off of all the scrubs youve wrecked, but its not because of your character.

Objectively speaking, cloud has a superior neutral and a worse disadvantage than zelda. This combination still favors cloud however, because if he plays properly he wont get knocked off stage and will take stage control

"cloud has a very strong juggle game, zelda has a nonexistent one"
You only juggle us in the air. We literally just have to avoid being in the air. And with your air game, we literally just have to shield your landings or challenge it properly.

"Just avoid being in the air" alright good luck with that. Zelda has poor landing options. Again, just because youve wrecked countless people with zelda doesn't mean your character is superior. Keep in mind that there are a lot of really bad clouds who cant use their character's strengths and cover his weaknesses properly.

Also shielding clouds landings is not enough, zelda doesnt have the OoS options to counter a properly spaced bair or nair from cloud, or an autocancelled dair. Most of clouds aerials are very safe on shield when spaced properly

"cloud also has a much stronger edge guard, which is important because clouds main disadvantage is his recovery. Cloud can two frame zeldas recovery with Dtilt, dair, and limit cross slash"
The only way you can get the 2 frame is if we recover low. We don't always have to do that lol that's why for this MU I recover high. And it's not the easiest thing to do but we can edgeguard you like we do to ikes. We either throw out a phantom who's windbox can push you away from the ledge, or we can properly time a dair who's sour spot can hit you which can lead to another sour spot or a perfect spike. Same thing with Spike.

I know you didnt mention holding down while using zeldas recovery to prevent getting 2 framed, but i wouldnt recommend that anyways. If cloud reads it you could eat a F-smash and die incredibly early. And yes im aware recovering from above will bypass the 2 frames of vulnerability.

Although zelda can edgeguard cloud, that can be said about anyone and if it was enough to make a difference he would be bottom tier. Also zelda has relatively poor options for edgeguarding cloud, when compared against most of the cast. Keep things in context and be honest with yourself.

Being able to edgeguard cloud doesnt matter if youre using a character with an inferior neutral, like zelda.

"There's not much zelda can do to counter clouds limit camping (because she has no long range pressure options. No, side special doesn't count because it can be easily easily shielded). To make things worse, zelda has no real approach options to get in on a campy cloud." "once limit is charged, zelda cant do much besides hold shield"

Okay? Zelda can camp too? We have our knight our side b which you left out of the equation for some reason. Even if you shield it, it brings down your shield a lot eventually forcing you to approach.And who said we have no other choice but to shield once you have limit? Lmao you must know a lot about Zelda if you claim this. In reality I'm not afraid of cloud having limit because zelda has a lot of obscure hit boxes which can easily get rid of it if you use it at the wrong time.

Well now i know you didnt even read my post completely. Look at the area with green text. Zelda is not good for forcing approaches, in fact, nobody is as good at forcing people to approach as cloud. If cloud is charging limit you can either wait for him to finish, or approach(and Zelda doesnt have good approach options) plus cloud can cancel out of his limit charge.

Also you didnt really give a reason for how zelda can deal with limit, you just said "weird hotboxes" hmm

 

[|ven|]

Zelda just has to wait for an opening? Yeah, thats called playing smash. It doesnt matter who youre playing as or against, smash 4 is all about waiting for openings. Cloud should do that against zelda too, and because of his superior hitboxes, frame data, and rewards he will beat out zelda in that department. A good cloud will be patient and wont struggle with being punished by zelda. Theres a reason theyre on opposite sides of the tier list

Literally all of that can be said about cloud too. Im guessing youre really good with zelda and are making your opinions based off of all the scrubs youve wrecked, but its not because of your character.

Objectively speaking, cloud has a superior neutral and a worse disadvantage than zelda. This combination still favors cloud however, because if he plays properly he wont get knocked off stage and will take stage control

"Just avoid being in the air" alright good luck with that. Zelda has poor landing options. Again, just because youve wrecked countless people with zelda doesn't mean your character is superior. Keep in mind that there are a lot of really bad clouds who cant use their character's strengths and cover his weaknesses properly.

Also shielding clouds landings is not enough, zelda doesnt have the OoS options to counter a properly spaced bair or nair from cloud, or an autocancelled dair. Most of clouds aerials are very safe on shield when spaced properly

I know you didnt mention holding down while using zeldas recovery to prevent getting 2 framed, but i wouldnt recommend that anyways. If cloud reads it you could eat a F-smash and die incredibly early. And yes im aware recovering from above will bypass the 2 frames of vulnerability.

Although zelda can edgeguard cloud, that can be said about anyone and if it was enough to make a difference he would be bottom tier. Also zelda has relatively poor options for edgeguarding cloud, when compared against most of the cast. Keep things in context and be honest with yourself.

Being able to edgeguard cloud doesnt matter if youre using a character with an inferior neutral, like zelda.

Well now i know you didnt even read my post completely. Look at the area with green text. Zelda is not good for forcing approaches, in fact, nobody is as good at forcing people to approach as cloud. If cloud is charging limit you can either wait for him to finish, or approach(and Zelda doesnt have good approach options) plus cloud can cancel out of his limit charge.

Also you didnt really give a reason for how zelda can deal with limit, you just said "weird hotboxes" hmm

Let me ask you something though, have you actually played a Zelda with your cloud or have seen that. I'm aware there's a match against me and rain on youtube where he used cloud but that was when he barely came out so I don't use it to draw any conclusions.

 

[MarshieMan]

Let me ask you something though, have you actually played a Zelda with your cloud or have seen that. I'm aware there's a match against me and rain on youtube where he used cloud but that was when he barely came out so I don't use it to draw any conclusions.

Im not going to lie, im no pro with zelda. But that doesnt make my points any less valid. Its fallacious to disregard my arguments for that reason alone. I have played against many zeldas though, both in tournament and online. Im not really using that to back my arguments though, i personally feel like the best way to present and justify arguments like this is with both theory and practice, neither of which seem to support the claim that zelda is superior to cloud.

 

[|RK|]

I learned Phantom had a windbox the hard way. Can confirm it wrecks Final Cutter, too (but what doesn't?).

E EternalFlare I thought Little Mac liked some platforms? Not like Duck Hunt, but more SV to help ease his disadvantage state.

 

[|ven|]

Im not going to lie, im no pro with zelda. But that doesnt make my points any less valid. Its fallacious to disregard my arguments for that reason alone. I have played against many zeldas though, both in tournament and online. Im not really using that to back my arguments though, i personally feel like the best way to present and justify arguments like this is with both theory and practice, neither of which seem to support the claim that zelda is superior to cloud.

I never said she was superior though. I was just showing you she had stuff to counter clouds stuff too. My MU chart says even not advantage on him.

 

[MarshieMan]

I never said she was superior though. I was just showing you she had stuff to counter clouds stuff too. My MU chart says even not advantage on him.

They aren't even. My reasons were about why the matchup favors cloud.

 

[Yonder]

Can we talk about Little Mac for a bit?

Am I the only one that thinks he'd be top 15 if FD was the only legal stage?

He's probably the scariest character up close with his ridiculous frame data, hitboxes and super armour. His angled Fsmash also destroys shields and he downtilt is fairly safe on block so even if his grab game isn't great, he's still not a character you want to block much against.

Sure he has a bad recovery. So does Cloud and even by the most conservative opinions he's still top 10 in the game. So that clearly isn't enough to make a character irrelevant. Plus his recovery is a bit underrated. He has side B, up B, counter and a wall jump. With good DI and mixups, edge guarding him isn't nearly as free as you'd expect.

I think the bigger issue with Little Mac is platforms. He can't deal with platform camping at all. If characters want to run away all day and charge their resource or just constantly retreat to platforms in general whenever pressured, he can't do anything safely but wait.

So of course, with FD not giving any place to retreat to, Little Mac shines a lot more.

Cloud's recovery is underrated in terms of how bad people say it is. Sure it's bad, but not as bad as Doc's, Duck Hunt's, Mac's obviously off the top of my head. It gets almost as much vertical as Luigi's super jump, can be fixed with limit, Cloud has good air speed, and his nair covers his whole body from attackers trying to edgeguard.Cloud's recovery is on a whole nother tier from Mac.

But still bad. I mean, look what Luigi did to M2K offstage. Crazy.

 

[Goombo]

if you buffer the uair after the dj it doesn't matter if M2 airdodges because you'll still catch him on the first frame of his jump. and m2's airdodge doesn't give him f1 invinc/intang or anything so you even have a bit of leeway with it.
sheiks like me that use L to jump generally get frame perfect aerials so jump airdodge won't save you. If it catches your jump before the airdodge comes out, it's still a 50/50
Jump airdodge is treated as the same option as jump.

Look. Mewtwo has a frame two airdogde. Lets say everyone with a normal doublejump is out of range of Sheiks upair on frame 1 of their jump (which probably isn't the case, but I have no idea to be honest) while Mewtwo will be out of danger on frame 2 with jump airdodge. Thats a one frame difference in frameadvantage. A difference in one frame doesn't suddenly give you a new killing 50/50 if it doesn't work on the rest on the cast at all.
If this 50/50 really exists (which I doubt at this point) it probably has to do something with Mewtwos physics and hurtbox shenanigans (low weight can't be the case, upthrow isn't weight dependant), but definitely not with his "slow" doublejump.

 

[Das Koopa]

Um...How is me beating Anti an upset? I'm not a random wtf lol https://twitter.com/coneyzz/status/696555250963124225

sorry m8, my bad

 

[Jams.]

Goombo IIRC Jump -> airdodge cannot be buffered in this game since you can only buffer one input, so you're almost never going to only have one extra vulnerable frame in practice. You would have to wait out the entirety of hitstun, then airdodge after the first frame of your double jump animation, which seems impossible to be consistent with in practice considering varying hitstun duration and input delay. Inputting airdodge early will just cause you to airdodge due to hitstun canceling. I'd imagine this leads to a ton of extra vulnerability in a real game.

 

[Das Koopa]

Seriously, though. I'm stuck on Zelda and Meta Knight being even. What tools does she have that Peach and Rosalina don't? How does the Uair ladder not immediately put her at least at -1? How is her neutral comparable? How are they so even when his frame data and hitboxes are strictly superior?

take me by the hand and lead me to the land where I understand this pls

 

[MarshieMan]

Seriously, though. I'm stuck on Zelda and Meta Knight being even. What tools does she have that Peach and Rosalina don't? How does the Uair ladder not immediately put her at least at -1? How is her neutral comparable? How are they so even when his frame data and hitboxes are strictly superior?

take me by the hand and lead me to the land where I understand this pls

Ven definitely has some explaining to do

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

If Zelda had that great a MU spread especially against top tiers she would be placing at majors and nationals which she rarely does, a character that great would be used a lot more often, just saying.

 

[Mr. Johan]

If Zelda was immediately dismissed by the population, she'd be ignored even with such a great matchup spread in theory.

Didn't we all just express shock and optimism with Dabuz's Olimar and Sharpy's Charizard's Cloud counter capabilities just a little while ago?

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

I absolutely don't believe Zelda is a bad character at all. But if theory isn't backed up with results then is it still good theory?

Granted we have little to no Zelda mains who travel to large tournaments so there is less data out there. But in a counter pick meta a character with who goes even with Cloud, beats Mario, is a floaty who doesn't get shut down by Meta Knight and only solidly loses to Diddy, Shiek and the not super common Bayonetta would be used so much more.

 

[Rizen]

Keep in mind that's just 1 Zelda main's opinion on her MUs.

 

[FamilyTeam]

I'll just go ahead and say this:
I was playing For Glory tonight and I actually ran across a pretty good Mewtwo, and with little to no lag, as well. During the third match, I was on a pretty big disadvantage and over 90% behind him when I successfully landed Lucina's uncharged Side Smash on him and KO'd him at 53% 1/4 through Omega Suzaku
Her Side Smash honestly feels a tad busted sometimes. Imagine how much earlier it'd have KO'd directly at the edge or if I had actually done a setup for it like SH DB 1>Nair 1.
It makes me wonder if we can find more setups for her Side Smash. The two current bread and butter ones are good especially with Rage and against floaties since they start working and KOing much earlier than they honestly have the right to, but it'd be nice to maybe see more. I'll lab Lucina tonight a bit and see what I can find.

I remember some people saying in the old thread that Lucina having those two confirms could actually be a big deal for her. Maybe having more ways to spice it up would make that more even more dangerous.

 

[TheGoodGuava]

Gotta love that sweet frame 10 80% kill move

Imagine if a character like Sheik or Pikachu had it

 

[PGH_Chrispy]

Since it got referenced, Ven vs. Rain at Genesis 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s7FCpXmGJ4

Rain handled Game 1 well, Ven got some clutch early kills game 2, and then prepatch Sheik wrecked her alter ego game 3. Based solely on this match, I'd be very heisitant to call it even, but Cloud v. Zelda is certainly not hopeless.

As a fellow Zelda main, I'll throw in my two cents on Zelda's matchups. Overall, the things that make Zelda worry the most in my opinion are characters who excel at safe shield pressure and escaping from above Zelda. This generally boils down to sword characters and those with extremely good aerial mobility/B moves to get out of trouble, like Wario, Yoshi, Sheik, and ZSS. When characters can't safely pummel her shield (Pac Man and Bowser Jr. are two that come to mind, ignoring BJ's Fsmash), she is able to approach close enough to put on serious pressure with her jab, nair, and of course the ever present threats of Up B and Lightning Kick.

 

[MarshieMan]

Since it got referenced, Ven vs. Rain at Genesis 3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s7FCpXmGJ4

Rain handled Game 1 well, Ven got some clutch early kills game 2, and then prepatch Sheik wrecked her alter ego game 3. Based solely on this match, I'd be very heisitant to call it even, but Cloud v. Zelda is certainly not hopeless.

As a fellow Zelda main, I'll throw in my two cents on Zelda's matchups. Overall, the things that make Zelda worry the most in my opinion are characters who excel at safe shield pressure and escaping from above Zelda. This generally boils down to sword characters and those with extremely good aerial mobility/B moves to get out of trouble, like Wario, Yoshi, Sheik, and ZSS. When characters can't safely pummel her shield (Pac Man and Bowser Jr. are two that come to mind, ignoring BJ's Fsmash), she is able to approach close enough to put on serious pressure with her jab, nair, and of course the ever present threats of Up B and Lightning Kick.

If zelda struggles against sword characters the most and cloud is the best sword character, i think its safe to say its a negative MU. Also cloud is excellent at safe shield pressure

 

[blackghost]

I love that zelda has passionate players but either ya'll need to go prove this theory or its gets you doubted. just how it is.
charizard and olimar players and Robin players have worked hard and placed in events and come back with matches and evidence to back up there theories. zelda hasn't done that yet.
all I know about zelda is she cannot effectively zone nor can she effectively rushdown and her risk reward is heavily sided with risk.

 

[chaos11011]

One thing I find interesting with the match up spread posts I see.

Despite Duck Hunt always being argued to be underrated or at least "not worst character", every* match up spread I see have him lose, with the majority placing him at -2. I feel like a lot of players rank match ups against under used characters unfairly. It's like how say, if I lose to a top Mario, I'll consider him to be a bad match up, but if I never face a top Duck Hunt and I stomp mid level ones, it's suddenly a super easy match up despite the fact that there's a huge skill level gap.

It makes me wonder. Is Duck Hunt the genuine worst then? Or do players have unfair bias against low tiers? It's kind of a given to see a MU spread put a bunch of low tiers as characters who lose, given the fact they are low tiers after all, but when every single MU spread has the same 5 or 6 characters, including the MU spread of those 5 or 6 characters, is it just mob mentality that "obviously my character doesnt lose to this low tier" and less so actual match up intricacies?

* = the only MU I can think of that rates in DH's favor is the Samus one from a few pages back.

 

[PGH_Chrispy]

One thing I find interesting with the match up spread posts I see.

Despite Duck Hunt always being argued to be underrated or at least "not worst character", every* match up spread I see have him lose, with the majority placing him at -2. I feel like a lot of players rank match ups against under used characters unfairly. It's like how say, if I lose to a top Mario, I'll consider him to be a bad match up, but if I never face a top Duck Hunt and I stomp mid level ones, it's suddenly a super easy match up despite the fact that there's a huge skill level gap.

It makes me wonder. Is Duck Hunt the genuine worst then? Or do players have unfair bias against low tiers? It's kind of a given to see a MU spread put a bunch of low tiers as characters who lose, given the fact they are low tiers after all, but when every single MU spread has the same 5 or 6 characters, including the MU spread of those 5 or 6 characters, is it just mob mentality that "obviously my character doesnt lose to this low tier" and less so actual match up intricacies?

* = the only MU I can think of that rates in DH's favor is the Samus one from a few pages back.

There's a ton of characters like that. Ganondorf, Duck Hunt, Charizard, DeDeDe, Zelda - pretty much anyone looking at these characters will come to the conclusion that because they have subpar mobility and frame data, their character can take the matchup. I will admit that I do the same with the gimp factor, rating the matchups against fox, ness and cloud way higher than they should be.

As a last comment on the whole Zelda thing, different people have vastly different opinions. I think she loses to swords (and personally have Cloud as a -2 or -1), but I've seen Corrins rate the Zelda matchup as even, and you see here that Ven believes the Roy matchup to be a +2. Overall, there's still a lot if exploration to be done in the character before it's known what she can do, highlighted best by a set between Mr. R and Fairess, which ended in a 3-0, but with 3 great games and two last hit situations.

 

[Ffamran]

Keep in mind that's just 1 Zelda main's opinion on her MUs.

We could find other opinions by being a creepy snooper. I doubt whoever posted Ven's MU spread asked. Same thing when people post someone's tier list or whatever.

Eh... I did find someone's possible MU spread for Zelda, but I can't read Japanese, so... yeah... Tried to find something of Onpu's, a Japanese player. Couldn't find anything, but did find another player's, don't know who they are... Eh.

Anyway, weird idea, but do "personal MU spreads" exist? I don't know how else to describe them, but let's take a Sonic player who has never played a good Ike player and throughout his career, has dominated Ike players. For that Sonic player, he might not see anything about Ike that even warrants being careful and just plops down Ike as a +3 for Sonic. This is in spite that whenever strong Ike players show up and fight against strong Sonic players, the Ike players tend to win. Perhaps not easily, but not in a they won everything through a fluke and the Sonic players were being idiots sort of way. Those Ike players would put Sonic as a +1 or 0 while the Sonic players might put Ike as a -1 or even MU depending on they take from it. So, question is: are those opinions valid? Technically, all MU spreads can be considered personal, especially the ones made by 1 person, and it makes sense since we're not machines. There won't be machine-like optimal Ike and Sonic players duking it out billions of times for us to gather data on and conclude that it's exactly -- nonsensical numbers being thrown here -- a +0.832 with a 37% chance of being a +1 assuming very good play and a 5.12% chance of Ike being totally destroyed through gimps for Ike. Oh, and there's a 0.003201% chance for a tornado named Ike to occur during the matches. Anyway, it also makes sense since we don't know exactly everything about a character and we frankly don't give a damn unless it's our character and our top threats. There are times when characters shoot up because miraculous discoveries are made that make them real good while other flounder away because nobody bothers and all the discoveries are like 3rd grade science experiments of watching a in a tank. Oh, look, it molted. The Life of Zelda in a nutshell. Yes, Zelda is actually a freaking crayfish. Moving on.

Ideas on this? Am I just being stupid? If so, please say so. I do feel like this is the case at times. People are like, "I've got this MU figured out", but when others look at it, the theory is so bad that pumping liquefied Big Macs into your veins is easier than attempting to win the MU. Maybe it's just pure stubbornness, optimism, idiocy, or whatnot. Or maybe they really have it figured out and we are too short-sighted and stubborn to see it.

Edit: If anyone's curious and just because I'll probably forget, this is the chart I found. If anyone can translate it, go ahead. It is a bit dated; June 9th. *kills tab*

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[blackghost]

personally mu do exist people get good facing certain characters.
or you could look at pink fresh's bayo mu spread lol.
but generally unless you are a player with a huge influence person mus aren't relevant to the meta as a whole

 

[Blobface]

Cloud's recovery is underrated in terms of how bad people say it is. Sure it's bad, but not as bad as Doc's, Duck Hunt's, Mac's obviously off the top of my head. It gets almost as much vertical as Luigi's super jump, can be fixed with limit, Cloud has good air speed, and his nair covers his whole body from attackers trying to edgeguard.Cloud's recovery is on a whole nother tier from Mac.

But still bad. I mean, look what Luigi did to M2K offstage. Crazy.

What really makes Cloud's recovery weak is that he can only really recover from a vertical area right below the edge, and only one part of that area actually ledgesnaps. Put simply, if he's not going high, you know exactly when he'll use his recovery.

I'd actually be really interested in seeing some kind of "recovery heatmap" that shows the ways a characters can recover to the edge with color, shaded based on how fast the recovery happens. Also, there could be an additional color that shows how far a character can travel after Knockback just by drifting with their double jump.

 

[Yikarur]

Cloud can delay his recovery by using his sideB, DJ and neutralB to stall. It's not really easy to know when he's going to do it and he can react to your edge guard preperation and adjust his delay accordingly. It's not that free.

 

[Luco]

Hey friends, like I said earlier OHN is starting today, will be on all weekend and includes heaps of our top talent and will (assuming by numbers) count towards Das Koopa 's rankings. Starting with crews tonight, pools tomorrow and top 32 sunday. Go check out the Summer of Smash thread for the stream link, we should be up within the next hour. Come cheer us on!

 

[Browny]

m2's double jump is too slow.
the way every normal character gets out of uthrow>followup is jumping, which gives the sheik no true followups. she normally only gets stuff like uair or tipper usmash if you airdodge like an idiot.
but since his double jump is so slow and his hurtbox is so big we get a prepatch 50/50 with a tighter window back.
gotta check discord to see if it works on ness and lucas though.
edit: might work on them, gotta test it sometime.

If this is true;

Mewtwo should always FF airdodge into a nair when uthrown around the % window.

Worst case scenario, he gets hit with a uair from significantly lower than had he jumped, hes going to be surviving that well past 100%. Now he has escaped the uthrow-uair 50/50 threshold, jumping will always escape.

Best case scenario, Mewtwo clips her with nair and she can eat anywhere up to 20% from it converting into a fair/bair.

Please someone prove me wrong because surely dismantling your theorycraft wasn't that easy?