Official 4BR Tier List v2.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Nidtendofreak]

I wonder if we can consider



UGC has made me kind of reconsider if can be considered top 3-5 .

ESAM finally showed how having master SDI with the right character can seriously screw her over. Just after he placed her in the top 2 of his own tier list.

Then again ESAM's perforace was just pain nuts at UGC peroid

And in previous tournaments, Bayonettas have shown that SDI doesn't mean much because they have options to follow up your SDI.

Could be that Pika's SDI is particularly good due to being such small target so he gets out faster + is harder to target with follow ups.

 

[Das Koopa]

I'm curious as to what people think of the 11-15 character rankings. I guess it would be some combination of and maybe a few other contenders?

I don't mean to inject a tier list, but I think things will look something like this:

1: Gr8 m8


2: Just short of the above


3: Pronounced weaknesses but still really good


4: Pronounced weaknesses to the point of being heavily flawed


5: Heavily flawed outright


I don't see Lucario as top 15 material at all. I don't see what's special about him besides how dumb has the potential to be. It has the potential to Aura Charge > UpSmash ZeRo at 30%, but I constantly see Lucarios just getting outplayed and unable to get in, having trouble maintaining an advantage, etc.

I agree with the other 5, though, except Marth might be higher than 11th. At some point, results aren't going to tell the full story if a bunch of characters mesh together with numbers that could simply be differentiated by attendance. Every time it seems like a character is having a slump, some success story happens in that top 10-15 area that just isn't as consistently matched by other areas on this list I made.

idklol where Lucina ranks. Absolutely solo-viable but it's a matter of determining what metric to use to see how many characters are in between her and Marth on the basis of different sword mechanics. We'll probably never know.

 

[TDK]

So are you counting Reflex's Wario and Glutonny's Wario as two different entities? They do play pretty differently.

 

[The-Technique]

...he only got one utilt because he went for jab afterwards, probably going for what he got at the beginning of the second game. He had 60% rage, though, so it didn't work.

i saw that too. its incredible isnt it? its almost like mario isnt a black and white character who's optimal followups from grabs work at all percents on all characters regardless of their weight, percentage, and mario's rage.

dare i say, mario is a character that requires...skill? nah thats just crazy talk, mario really is just a character that can run up and grab someone, grab *anyone*, and deal 50-60 damage easily, at any point. regardless of stage positioning, regardless of the presence of platforms, regardless of the opponent's attributes, regardless of the opponent's DI and inputs, its just *that* easy. i mean when has mario ever had to mixup his options during a high level match?

 

[verbatim]

I feel like once you get past the established top 9 (and then maybe Marth and Meta Knight for 11), characters are generally argued to be in the top 15 based on individual player's placings.

 

[Rizen]

My Smash corner made a good video on why or why not things are banned in fighting games.

 

[ARGHETH]

i saw that too. its incredible isnt it? its almost like mario isnt a black and white character who's optimal followups from grabs work at all percents on all characters regardless of their weight, percentage, and mario's rage.

First, stop talking like that, it's annoying. Second, since when was Utilt->jab the optimal followup, or the simple followup, or anything but an alternate low-risk combo that the one player decided to go for?
Like, I somewhat agree with you, but this is a terrible example, since utilt->jab isn't really a thing. Here's Ally's set against a Corrin at CEO, and Ally doesn't get anything more than two Utilts off of Dthrow. He does get a bunch of %, but only by reading the opponent and doing Ally things.

 

[The-Technique]

First, stop talking like that, it's annoying. Second, since when was Utilt->jab the optimal followup, or the simple followup, or anything but an alternate low-risk combo that the one player decided to go for?
Like, I somewhat agree with you, but this is a terrible example, since utilt->jab isn't really a thing. Here's Ally's set against a Corrin at CEO, and Ally doesn't get anything more than two Utilts off of Dthrow. He does get a bunch of %, but only by reading the opponent and doing Ally things.

Sorry, I just get heavily miffed by the notion that Mario gets huge guaranteed reward from grabs with no effort on the part of the player. And you're right I didn't pull up a very good example of what I was explaining (which is weird since i have whole playlists of matchups saved, ill chalk this up to laziness on my part as well)

 

[Fenny]

The events that transpired at UGC has made me kind of reconsider if can be considered top 3-5 .

ESAM finally showed how having master SDI with the right charactera can seriously screw her over. Kinda ironic since he just recently placed her in the top 2 of his own tier list

Then again, ESAM's performance at UGC was just friggin insane peroid

Nah, she still is . ESAM's SDI is just godlike. On top of maining a small and light character like Pikachu means that he's virtually never getting heavy-duty combo'd by her again.

I mean, he SDI'd out of Mewtwo's Usmash.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

The complete lack of Toon Link in top 15 is baffling. Character's right on par with Villager and Mega Man.

Noticing a lot of talk about Cloud and his recovery/ ease of use. Hopefully i can shed some light, as i main mac and co-main cloud.

Bro, do you even know what a recovery is?!?

 

[FeelMeUp]

I'm honestly not too surprised that people are having knee-jerk reactions and dropping their opinions of Bayo after this weekend. ESAM made the character look like garbage.

 

[Deleted member]

I don't mean to inject a tier list, but I think things will look something like this:

1: Gr8 m8


2: Just short of the above


3: Pronounced weaknesses but still really good


4: Pronounced weaknesses to the point of being heavily flawed


5: Heavily flawed outright


I don't see Lucario as top 15 material at all. I don't see what's special about him besides how dumb has the potential to be. It has the potential to Aura Charge > UpSmash ZeRo at 30%, but I constantly see Lucarios just getting outplayed and unable to get in, having trouble maintaining an advantage, etc.

I agree with the other 5, though, except Marth might be higher than 11th. At some point, results aren't going to tell the full story if a bunch of characters mesh together with numbers that could simply be differentiated by attendance. Every time it seems like a character is having a slump, some success story happens in that top 10-15 area that just isn't as consistently matched by other areas on this list I made.

idklol where Lucina ranks. Absolutely solo-viable but it's a matter of determining what metric to use to see how many characters are in between her and Marth on the basis of different sword mechanics. We'll probably never know.

Pit would fit more in what you consider tier 3. Earth's results with the character are better than what most characters in your tier 4 have done, and there isn't any matchups where Pit significantly struggles in from what I can observe. ReRaze can probably help me out on that.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

I don't mean to inject a tier list, but I think things will look something like this:

1: Gr8 m8


2: Just short of the above


3: Pronounced weaknesses but still really good


4: Pronounced weaknesses to the point of being heavily flawed


5: Heavily flawed outright


I don't see Lucario as top 15 material at all. I don't see what's special about him besides how dumb has the potential to be. It has the potential to Aura Charge > UpSmash ZeRo at 30%, but I constantly see Lucarios just getting outplayed and unable to get in, having trouble maintaining an advantage, etc.

I agree with the other 5, though, except Marth might be higher than 11th. At some point, results aren't going to tell the full story if a bunch of characters mesh together with numbers that could simply be differentiated by attendance. Every time it seems like a character is having a slump, some success story happens in that top 10-15 area that just isn't as consistently matched by other areas on this list I made.

idklol where Lucina ranks. Absolutely solo-viable but it's a matter of determining what metric to use to see how many characters are in between her and Marth on the basis of different sword mechanics. We'll probably never know.

Still no love for Captain Falcon... *sigh* alright..
Falcon's better than Peach and Greninja, but mostly Peach.

 

[Deleted member]

Still no love for Captain Falcon... *sigh* alright..
Falcon's better than Peach and Greninja, but mostly Peach.

I guess it's because Peach does better in a few key matchups that Falcon doesn't like (), but I don't know indepth about Falcon either.

 

[HoSmash4]

^ Fatalitys results at Supermajors has always been really good

 

[Krysco]

Spoiler: Characters missing from Das Koopa's 'tier list'

Most notable absences to me are Dark Pit, Lucina and to a point Mac, G&W and Roy. First 2 suffer from being deemed largely inferior to another character, last one is mostly just main bias and the other 2 are me just being surprised that they aren't listed in the last group with Link, Robin, Wario, DK etc.

And with that MSC video, I find it incredibly amusing how he mentions an issue with prematurely banning something and here we are with no customs or Mii size changing. First one, fine, argue the logistics all you want, without hacking, grinding or a copy of the 3DS version, most customs aren't going to be unlocked

Spoiler

lovely how there are so many ways to acquire coins and yet all they do is help buy trophies when there's equipment, customs, characters, stages and music to unlock.

and though are literally just pure laziness.

Lastly, with the discussion on Mario from earlier, when it comes to his usmash, most Mario's approach with it by doing a turn around usmash out of a run, yes? I remember testing before and there isn't a single character that can duck under it (though some can duck under the front hitbox), it comes out frame 9 with an faf of 40 and I'm not sure how to calculate its safety on shield entirely but it also does 14% and has intangibility on the head. That intangibility makes it safe vs a number of aerials and I believe the clank threshold is 7-8% so a ground attack that does at least 21-22% is needed to outright beat it and it outright beats anything dealing 6-7% or lower. Not saying it's unbeatable but it is a damn good move.

 

[jespoke]

is really hard to gauge for a tier list. On one side he can never really get to play the game on his own terms. On the other side he is the razor blade pillow, who can net massive reward if you align his stars.

I think that a good opponent has too much control of those stars for me to rank him high.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I'm honestly not too surprised that people are having knee-jerk reactions and dropping their opinions of Bayo after this weekend. ESAM made the character look like garbage.

I guess time and future competitions would tell. We can't formulate a full opinion by the results of a single touament. Besides ESAM was playing godlike during UGC as a whole. Wasn't just Bayo players he was beating down. Sending even Nairo and Void to losers

 

[ReRaze]

I don't mean to inject a tier list, but I think things will look something like this:

1: Gr8 m8


2: Just short of the above


3: Pronounced weaknesses but still really good


4: Pronounced weaknesses to the point of being heavily flawed


5: Heavily flawed outright


I don't see Lucario as top 15 material at all. I don't see what's special about him besides how dumb has the potential to be. It has the potential to Aura Charge > UpSmash ZeRo at 30%, but I constantly see Lucarios just getting outplayed and unable to get in, having trouble maintaining an advantage, etc.

I agree with the other 5, though, except Marth might be higher than 11th. At some point, results aren't going to tell the full story if a bunch of characters mesh together with numbers that could simply be differentiated by attendance. Every time it seems like a character is having a slump, some success story happens in that top 10-15 area that just isn't as consistently matched by other areas on this list I made.

idklol where Lucina ranks. Absolutely solo-viable but it's a matter of determining what metric to use to see how many characters are in between her and Marth on the basis of different sword mechanics. We'll probably never know.

Tbh that's probably not the best way to categorize those characters, e.g could also be described as someone who has pronounced weaknesses but is still really good.
And I don't think is heavily flawed. Thought part of the reason he was actually good is because he doesn't have any pronounced weaknesses. Unless you coun't not having any bs a weakness in this game.
I think not having any prominent flaws is one of the reasons Earth can do so consistently well at high level play, where top players know and will exploit your characters flaws to the fullest, kinda makes up for Pit not offering his players any significant offensive boons like powerful combo or kill options.

But I get the placings and can understand why you'd put them where they are~

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

I guess it's because Peach does better in a few key matchups that Falcon doesn't like (), but I don't know indepth about Falcon either.

Fox and Mario are fine match ups. Sheik, obviously isn't but I'd' still argue that Peach has a worse match up spread.
Falcon loses 3:7 to Sheik & Bayo, 6:4 to Pikachu, a couple of 55:45, then a bunch of evens and some advantages. Not a lot of bad match ups at all, it's just that Sheik and Bayo - mostly Sheik - are reeaaallly bad.

Peach gets destroyed by Meta Knight, and has very bad MUs against Cloud and Diddy Kong, doesn't like Marth or Corrin, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had some Mewtwo troubles as well.

Plus Falcon's results have always been rather consistent, Peach's have not, and there are a lot more higher places in bigger tournaments. When was the last time Peach placed high at a notable tournament? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only thing that comes to mind for me right now is SlayerZ at Paragon Los Angeles 2015.

I won't go into Greninja much because we've already discussed his results just recently, and I think they're kind of similar in a tier list sense. In fact, if I were to rank them they'd be right next to each other.

 

[Deleted member]

Fox and Mario are fine match ups. Sheik, obviously isn't but I'd' still argue that Peach has a worse match up spread.
Falcon loses 3:7 to Sheik & Bayo, 6:4 to Pikachu, a couple of 55:45, then a bunch of evens and some advantages. Not a lot of bad match ups at all, it's just that Sheik and Bayo - mostly Sheik - are reeaaallly bad.

Peach gets destroyed by Meta Knight, and has very bad MUs against Cloud and Diddy Kong, doesn't like Marth or Corrin, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had some Mewtwo troubles as well.

Plus Falcon's results have always been rather consistent, Peach's have not, and there are a lot more higher places in bigger tournaments. When was the last time Peach placed high at a notable tournament? Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only thing that comes to mind for me right now is SlayerZ at Paragon Los Angeles 2015.

I won't go into Greninja much because we've already discussed his results just recently, and I think they're kind of similar in a tier list sense. In fact, if I were to rank them they'd be right next to each other.

Samsora's results speak for themselves, and SlayerZ also got top 5 at FOW Saga (even beating Rich Brown at said tournament). Umeki also placed rather well at BAM8 and tournaments in Japan.

 

[Luco]

Was just gonna say Samsora literally beating Ally at Clutch City Clash and making top 8 was kinda borked.

In fact, Peach has a really large bastion of high / top level mains putting in work with her - Slayerz, Umeki, Kie, Samsora, Lingling are just a few that come to mind off the top of my head.

I would argue Falcon's the more inconsistent character right now.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Umeki's results aren't even that great. I don't know why people keep bringing him up - his placings are inconsistent, he doesn't have a whole lot of wins against top level players and he's just generally not on the same level as Kie or Sam.

Peach just has a lot of very dedicated mains with tons of individual skill.

 

[HoSmash4]

In smash 4, not having any toxic/polarising tools is definitely a weakness in smash 4 ReRaze at least when it comes to competing with the top characters.

I don't know why Grenjnja and Luigi are so in the tier above Falcon, they're all solid though.

 

[Sleek Media]

My thoughts on this:

's projectiles have similar frame data to shurikens and needles.
Shuriken uncharged: starts frame 20, FAF 46, damage 3. Charged fully 60-100 FAF 86.

Needles generate frames 1-98 for all six. Throwing them: hitbox frame 11 FAF is 54 for a full charge, or 5 FAF 48 for 5 or less (if I'm reading this right).

Link's bow uncharged: 18 FAF 47 damage 5. Full charge 54 FAF 83. Can be held infinitely but not stored.
Boomerang: 27-63 hitbox then wind FAF 46. The early 27 hit is +/- 0 on shield drop and gets better the longer the hitbox is out. Angling throws while hopping around is very useful.
Bomb pull FAF 40 frames. Forward throw is thrown frame 7 FAF 21. Bombs are sheer awesome in many ways like comboing into Fair, planting for stage control, aiding recoveries by refreshing upB and Z drop comboes.

Link has good projectiles, although not killing with them directly like shuriken is a big downside. Not holding a charge and not being transcendent like needles is bad too. I just wanted to point out that Link has projectiles with good frame data and stats.

It's not the frame data on ws and needles that makes them good. It is the high mobility of allowing them to easily take a favorable position when you react to the projectile. If you shield, they can get that much more stage control. If you jump, they can get under you from further away. has some very good projectiles, but he can't take advantage of an arrow the same way can take advantage of a shuriken. This is why simply analyzing frame data isn't good enough.

 

[Routa]

But then again "op"/"toxic"/"polarising" tools do not make character's flaws go away. Most notable example is Mii Brawler with PP (Piston Punch which is Up-B3).
PP is perhaps most broken move in the game currently. A move which is able to kill below 60% is bonkers as ****. A simple D-throw -> PP will end Kirby's stock in T&C at 45%. And I'm not joking. Yeah Kirby ain't fat and T&C has low ceiling, but the move starts killing on average at 70% (60% with rage).
So why isn't Brawler a top tier? He still lacks neutral, has poor recovery and has hard time killing outside that move. No tool can fix all thous issues.

What character needs is both a good neutral and good advantage state. Having only one of thous will keep your character from being a great character.

 

[HoSmash4]

Brawler pretty much has bottom tier specs without customs so I think he is an exception.

Pretty much every mid tier above is fundamentally solid but from high tier above how polarising you can be to dictate the game will become a lot more significant.

 

[Mr. Johan]

Is there really anything polarizing about Marth or Tink though?

They're considered high tier, but are also considered "merely" very solid.

 

[ReRaze]

In smash 4, not having any toxic/polarising tools is definitely a weakness in smash 4 ReRaze

I mean that's kinda debatable from its entirety to the specifics of what would be considered "toxic/polar". Either way it's not a weakness in the sense that it's something the opponent can exploit. In my opinion not having any polarising tools doesnt really detract from the character as long as their current tools get the job done. A dagger will kill just as well as a sword if it finds its mark ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's having weaknesses or flaws in that can be used against you that really hold back characters. If your gameplan is susceptible to camping or you are very easily edgeguarded then that's gonna be a bigger pain than not having LCS at your disposal. Especially in higher levels of play where its not just simple interactions of "my tools beat your tools".

 

[FeelMeUp]

Marth's jab and ftilt are both borderline broken but others may disagree. There's the obvious tipper fsmash thing but that isn't consistent. Nothing else comes to mind, really.

 

[Y2Kay]

I wouldn't advocate for a tier difference, but I think Greninja is better than Falcon. Falcon's abysmal Sheik and Bayonetta (and Pikachu too I guess) matchups are seriously hindering for Falcon. Greninja has a tough time with Sheik and Sonic, but I don't think they're quite as bad.

 

[ARISTOS]

Marth's jab and ftilt are both borderline broken but others may disagree. There's the obvious tipper fsmash thing but that isn't consistent. Nothing else comes to mind, really.

Marth's jab is so ca$h, it actually does everything and a half.

Peach gets destroyed by Meta Knight, and has very bad MUs against Cloud and Diddy Kong, doesn't like Marth or Corrin, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had some Mewtwo troubles as well.

Peach auto-losing to sword characters is a meme. are the really bad MUs out of the ones you posted

 

[Bowserboy3]

Nah, she still is . ESAM's SDI is just godlike. On top of maining a small and light character like Pikachu means that he's virtually never getting heavy-duty combo'd by her again.

As a disclaimer, this is not so much a post targeted at you, nor is it a post targeted at just SDI'ing Bayonetta's combos, but multiple things culminated into one long post.

---
And once again, we brush another pretty notable point in the anti-Bayonetta metagame under the carpet, and just continue to grovel at Bayonetta's feet.

Yes, maybe ESAM's SDI is godlike, but once again, he's not using hacks, gameshark codes etc, so anything ESAM can do, anybody else can do - it's as simple as that.

What surprises me, is the fact that you even expanded on his SDI, stating that because Pikachu is small and light, it makes it incredibly hard for Pikachu to be combo'd in general by her (that's even before we consider that Quick Attack is a fantastic move at putting Pikachu back in neutral state).

Let's consider this; how many other small and light characters are there in the game? A good portion of the cast. What's stopping those characters achieving the same thing? The way you described Pikachu's ability to get out of Bayonetta's combos makes it sound like the MU is at least decent for Pikachu. Why are we not discussing the in's and out's of that? Perhaps Pikachu could legitimately deal with Bayonetta - why is nobody talking about this? Why are we continuing to just marvel at what Bayonetta can do? (oh yeah, doesn't matter, she has Witch Time, amirite?)

We (and I use that as a collective term) need to stop giving up at the first hurdle; we need to stop brushing off the good things players are doing against Bayonetta and really take note, and perhaps delve into the "why's" and "how's" a lot more. Luckily, there are just as many people doing this as there are not, but for some reason, the ones who don't are noticed more, and that shouldn't be the case.

I'm sorry if this sounds like a rant (which is borderline is), and feel free to laugh, disagree, whatever, but it really grinds my gears when the community picks and chooses what to really focus on, as we see this all the time; Pit gets results from Earth - "Pit's not good, it's just Earth". Luigi can extend his recovery and gimp by mashing - "nope, it's just ConCon". ESAM shows us how Pikachu can deal with the Bayonetta MU - "It's just ESAM, his SDI is godlike". All these examples are players showing us in different areas the full extent of what a character can do. In the highest of top level play, if you aren't utilising all of your characters tools and options, you aren't going to win. So what if ESAM's SDI, or ConCon's mashing ability are amazing for example? There is nothing stopping other players from replicating these options. If ESAM's SDI shows us that Pikachu can deal with Bayonetta, then that signals to us that any Pikachu player should be able to deal with Bayonetta, it's as simple as that.

And for the record, before people start jumping on me saying I am being silly, or a Bayonetta pessimist, just remember that I use her myself, and I do also believe she is still very much top 3, top 5 at minimum. In no way am I trying to say she's a bad character.

It just baffles me when people say "Nah, it's X player, not the character". Please...

Rant over *proceeds to hide under rock*

---

I suppose to break my post up a bit, yes, Marth's Jab is amazing. As Shaya once described it, it's essentially a disjointed Diddy Dtilt (and I'll link the good descriptive quote when I get the chance) Couldn't find it completely, but found this instead, and it has number so w/e yay:

Jab is a brilliant move that is not that many shades worse than Diddy down tilt (but is also an anti-air and disjointed; 14f cooldown vs 20f [11f wait / 3f second hit], 4f v 5f start up).

That said, Marth doesn't have a huge amount of legitimately "broken" tools; Jab is about it. He has some amazing tools, such as the aforementioned Ftilt, and perhaps Dancing Blade, but Marth needs that Jab. His game can be quite focused around Jab and it's follow ups, almost akin to how Diddy can utilise his Dtilt.

It's quite ironic in a sense. There have been multiple posts by various people here now, saying along the lines of "if you don't have something borderline [consistently] broken, you won't be a good character". Before 1.1.4, Marth never had this Jab, and where was he? He was anywhere from around low mid to low tier.

It's a shame Marth's moveset does still posess flaws and problems, but at least he is able to compete consistently now.

 

[Das Koopa]

^ Fatalitys results at Supermajors has always been really good

I don't really agree with this. I've looked high and low but as far as I can find the only tip-top player he's beaten in several months is Marss (who he lost to on the runback a couple of months later.)

People will gif him caping VoiD but he still lost the set and got steamrolled by Dabuz's Olimar ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think relatively speaking he's a really good mid-level player who shines against other mid-level players in losers brackets.s.

 

[Nah]

One data point is not indicative of anything and that's why people tend to say that "it's just the player". It doesn't really matter until several people start consistently doing it. I take issue with the underlined statement of "so anything ESAM can do, anybody else can do - it's as simple as that." It is indeed silly to do the complete opposite and not try at all to learn to SDI Bayo combos like ESAM apparently has, but at the same time, not everyone is capable of doing everything and believing otherwise is imo naive.

Nevermind that few things are ever so simple anyway, this is a fluid metagame, not arithmetic.

 

[Fenny]

As a disclaimer, this is not so much a post targeted at you, nor is it a post targeted at just SDI'ing Bayonetta's combos, but multiple things culminated into one long post.

---
And once again, we brush another pretty notable point in the anti-Bayonetta metagame under the carpet, and just continue to grovel at Bayonetta's feet.

Yes, maybe ESAM's SDI is godlike, but once again, he's not using hacks, gameshark codes etc, so anything ESAM can do, anybody else can do - it's as simple as that.

What surprises me, is the fact that you even expanded on his SDI, stating that because Pikachu is small and light, it makes it incredibly hard for Pikachu to be combo'd in general by her (that's even before we consider that Quick Attack is a fantastic move at putting Pikachu back in neutral state).

Let's consider this; how many other small and light characters are there in the game? A good portion of the cast. What's stopping those characters achieving the same thing? The way you described Pikachu's ability to get out of Bayonetta's combos makes it sound like the MU is at least decent for Pikachu. Why are we not discussing the in's and out's of that? Perhaps Pikachu could legitimately deal with Bayonetta - why is nobody talking about this? Why are we continuing to just marvel at what Bayonetta can do? (oh yeah, doesn't matter, she has Witch Time, amirite?)

We (and I use that as a collective term) need to stop giving up at the first hurdle; we need to stop brushing off the good things players are doing against Bayonetta and really take note, and perhaps delve into the "why's" and "how's" a lot more. Luckily, there are just as many people doing this as there are not, but for some reason, the ones who don't are noticed more, and that shouldn't be the case.

I'm sorry if this sounds like a rant (which is borderline is), and feel free to laugh, disagree, whatever, but it really grinds my gears when the community picks and chooses what to really focus on, as we see this all the time; Pit gets results from Earth - "Pit's not good, it's just Earth". Luigi can extend his recovery and gimp by mashing - "nope, it's just ConCon". ESAM shows us how Pikachu can deal with the Bayonetta MU - "It's just ESAM, his SDI is godlike". All these examples are players showing us in different areas the full extent of what a character can do. In the highest of top level play, if you aren't utilising all of your characters tools and options. So what iif ESAM's SDI, or ConCon's mashing ability are amazing for example? There is nothing stopping other players from replicating these options. If ESAM's SDI shows us that Pikachu can deal with Bayonetta, then that signals to us that any Pikachu player should be able to deal with Bayonetta, it's as simple as that.

And for the record, before people start jumping on me saying I am being silly, or a Bayonetta pessimist, just remember that I use her myself, and I do also believe she is still very much top 3, top 5 at minimum. In no way am I trying to say she's a bad character.

It just baffles me when people say "Nah, it's X player, not the character". Please...

Rant over *proceeds to hide under rock*

In relation to what I said, this is kind of an over-exaggeration tbh.

Nobody denies that the most effective way of counterplaying Bayo in reducing her damage output is to learn proper SDI. One reason as to why Dabuz uses Olimar in the Bayo MU is because his small frame makes it easier to slip out of her combos compared to Rosa.

Doesn't change the fact that the degree to which you can get out of her stuff is notably character-dependent. It's easy to say that all people need to do is emulate ESAM's amazing SDI, but at the end of the day few people currently have his mastery over SDI, and some characters simply have a far harder time with it then the likes of Pika. It's not dismissing counter-play, it's simply the way it is on a game-mechanic level. Once the metagame progresses and more people learn to combat her (hopefully using ESAM as an example of how to do so), her current standing may change. But right now, there are too many limiting factors that prevent her from dropping significantly any time soon, especially since her silly punish game is only one part of what makes her amazing.

There's also the fact that Bayos will probably start developing ways to counterplaying that counterplay and find more answers to SDI. I think that until people can emulate ESAM's approach to the level he can, she still sits in a pretty comfortable position in top 5.

 

[Kung Fu Treachery]

https://twitter.com/LG_Abadango/status/805750173448159232

Aba wants more Mewtwo mains to go for Footstool-Disable combos out of shield. The interesting thing about this is that Mewtwo has a bit of a weakness to cross ups, but the Nair combo begins with his back facing the opponent. So if his mains can start pulling this off consistently, it could make opponents hesitant to land behind M2. Unfortunately it's not the speediest option (5 frame jumpsquat and then Nair hits on frame 7), but on the plus side, it can straight up kill you around 80%, so it's nothing to sneeze at.

Of course, the painful part of all this is that you can't Footstool-Disable Diddy. How it works on Pikachu but not Diddy is mind-bending.

On the topic of Mewtwo vs Diddy, I think it's doable, but you might have to be more of a camper than Aba is comfortable with (at least when he plays M2 -- Metaknight seems to be a different story). Of course, Aba can beat Diddy players who aren't ZeRo, so I think it's more of a player thing. Both Aba and Mr. R went in too much against ZeRo, who never seems to crack. MK was probably Aba's best bet, because he needs to win neutral way less to take a stock, which nullifies ZeRo's neutral dominance to some extent. Not to mention the extra jumps help against Zero's ledge game, which crushes Aba's Mewtwo.

 

[Goombo]

Unfortunately it's not the speediest option (5 frame jumpsquat and then Nair hits on frame 7), but on the plus side, it can straight up kill you around 80%, so it's nothing to sneeze at.

Aba is talking about footstool out of shield, not Nair, which is one of the fastest OoS-options existing.



As a gereral observation, while a lot of good characters have suffered much from Bayos and Clouds introduction to the game (rip Villager), quite the opposite seems to be true for Pikachu, who seems to have a top 5 matchup vs both of them. That's a pretty big thing to have in the current metagame.

 

[Bowserboy3]

One data point is not indicative of anything and that's why people tend to say that "it's just the player". It doesn't really matter until several people start consistently doing it. I take issue with the underlined statement of "so anything ESAM can do, anybody else can do - it's as simple as that." It is indeed silly to do the complete opposite and not try at all to learn to SDI Bayo combos like ESAM apparently has, but at the same time, not everyone is capable of doing everything and believing otherwise is imo naive.

Nevermind that few things are ever so simple anyway, this is a fluid metagame, not arithmetic.

That's a fair comment.

Perhaps my gripe is, it seems not enough people try these things in the first place.

It's simple really; if you want to get better, you practice. I still don't utilise Luma Desync or Lunar Landing enough with Rosalina, so in a way, I am preventing myself from fully maximising my winning potential with her because I am not doing this.

It's not like SDI is super hard to learn though (it's literally mashing your control stick in a desired direction). But on the other hand, knowing which ways to DI is the hard part. Even so, as ESAM showed us, actually knowing does reap some rewards.

 

[|RK|]

Tbf, even if no one else is doing it right now, I don't think any conversation about Bayo's punish game should ignore SDI anymore. Not since it's been demonstrated.

Tbh, IDK why we didn't start talking about it when Kameme was falling out of Salem's combos left and right - and he plays a fast faller.