Official 4BR Tier List v2.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Bowserboy3]

If Brawl can manage to overcome Meta Knight, I'm pretty sure we can overcome a character that is no where near dominating the metagame right now. Yes, perhaps Bayonetta has time to develop further, but again, at the same time, we're seeing counterplay. There is absolutely no way to predict the future in Smash, ever.

Bayonetta might break some of Smash's design rules (don't know who even said there were outright rules in the first place, but w/e), but at least she doesn't have options you outright can't challenge, or the best attacks in almost all situations (transcendent moves, no cooldown moves etc).

I can see the argument of "Brawl is a different game to Smash 4", and yes, this is true. However, what was true in Brawl is that from the get go, it became clear that Meta Knight was far and away the best character, dominating every level of play, and the counterplay was not coming to fruition as planned. This isn't the case with Bayonetta, where there are at least two or three characters on an arguably equal footing at the top of the list, she is not dominating any level of play right now, and the counterplay has shown to be effective to those who can utilise it.

What's more, Smash 4 has many factors than Brawl that make it hard for any character to be overly dominant; you could lose at any moment thanks to Rage, and overall game balance.

Perhaps it's just differing opinions, but I fail to see how we can say "X character will be banned later down the line", especially when said character isn't dominating. Everything now is currently "if's" and "when's"; we're playing a guessing game in a metagame that is proving otherwise basically. It's like trying to say "my sports team is the best in the league" when they haven't won a game all season.

But alas, opinions will differ, as always; nobody's right here.

 

[FeelMeUp]

Sheik's not immune to ledgetrapping.
She's extremely hard to ledgetrap with most of the cast because of the absurd amount of recovery and offledge mixups she has, but it's still possible.
7/10 times you should cover the jump airdodge or ledgejump options.
Sheiks don't often choose roll or standard getup, as she doesn't have an extremely strong option for afterwards like Luigi's jab or Ryu's Shoryuken.

 

[Bowserboy3]

Marth ledgetrapping Sheik is a possibility. That said, his Nair is still one of his single best moves at catching both jump getups and regular getups simultaneously. Having a sword to discourage Sheik's Nair as a getup is also beneficial.

What are Sheik's best getup options actually FeelMeUp ? Merely curious, that's all.

 

[FeelMeUp]

Ledgejump airdodge, ledge drop airdodge bair shield, ledgedrop fair, ledgejump double jump bouncing fish, maybe shino stalling if they're too close for cheesing kills, etc.
Then there's the standard stuff.
There are other things as well but they're either stage specific, gimmicky, or too complicated to explain

 

[Mr. Johan]

Brawl never did overcome Meta Knight. Nearly every top player had an MK pocket just in case near the end of its lifespan, for the MK ditto and the ICs pick.

Sm4sh could quickly degenerate into Bayo pockets. It's already started anyway somewhat.

 

[blackghost]

I've been saying Bayo has a high chance of getting herself banned for a while now. Has (basically) nothing to do with her new tech, I ain't expecting much out of it myself.

She just breaks too many of Smash's general design rules, clearly didn't spend enough time in development, with too high of reward for too little of risk. Yes Sheiks are figuring out more and more stuff, as are Diddy's. Bayo is at their level with a fraction of the invested time and total play time in tournaments due to being DLC + set of nerfs. Just, think about that for a moment. How many total man hours Sheik and Diddy have had invested into them: in tournaments, in friendlies, in the lab. Think about how little Bayo has in comparison. And then look at the fact you could very easily say those three are in a class of their own.

I'm certainly not saying she's about to get banned right now, she ain't even #1 atm. I'm saying at the rate things are going, I would completely expect her to get banned in the future unless the Switch version hits her with the nerf hammer again. Just needs the man hours put into her combined with breaking the character design mold.

your argument is flawed. i think the bayo community pushed itself extrrnely hard (partly due to being called fake by a large piece of this population) not all characters require an equal amount of work but bayo os on the harder end to use effectively. shes not a "cloud". also keep in mind diddy and shiek had to be relearned die to nerfs. the argument that her mains learned the character too quickly is poor.
outside of that what "rules" is she breaking? its not like she doesnt die when you throw her into the blastzone.

 

[Mr. Johan]

She technically breaks her own rule about having landing lag for her specials now, thanks to frame canceling.

 

[Egghead]

Shiddy is probably the best character combo because of how well they cover each other's annoying/bad matchups and how similar their playstyles are.
Diddy beats Sheik's even-ish matchups () while Sheik trounces his hard or unfavourable ones(). Diddy beats Sheik's stressful matchups more easily( ) as well.
They also simultaneously cover each other's spreads for more convincing wins.
Give a sigh of relief if a player of one doesn't counterpick to the other, because they're kinda gimping themselves if they don't open up the option.
or you can just pick cloud i guess

Shiddy is a terrible combination, there are like ZeRo good shiddy mains

 

[Das Koopa]

Brawl never did overcome Meta Knight. Nearly every top player had an MK pocket just in case near the end of its lifespan, for the MK ditto and the ICs pick.

Sm4sh could quickly degenerate into Bayo pockets. It's already started anyway somewhat.

I can't think of a ton of instances of Bayo pocketing, let alone successful ones. Dabuz pulled out one against WaDi and got stomped and Mr. R's Bayo picks never seem to work out. In fact, he's on record stating that he believe Sheik is the best character, is underdeveloped, and that he wants to put more time into her.

This game just doesn't cater well to pockets. You need to dedicate enough time to make a character a secondary otherwise you'll just be exploited. "Pocket Cloud" is bad at the top level because people at that level likely have Tweek/M2K/Komo experience and know what a real, dangerous Cloud looks like/can do. Mr. R grinded Cloud experience with Kirihara and in Europe for an extended period of time seemingly just to have a good answer to Dabuz.

Showdown was a pretty bad showing for pockets. Marss' wasn't that good, Ally's was laughable, Mr. R's wasn't bad but it just didn't work very well, and the past has shown us that, outside of ANTi, unexpected "Oh, and I have one of THESE" picks don't usually work.

 

[ARGHETH]

the past has shown us that, outside of ANTi, unexpected "Oh, and I have one of THESE" picks don't usually work.

There's Nairo, but yeah.

 

[blackghost]

the only times this game has game has seen massive pocket use is cloud month one and diddy prepatch.
bayo isnt a character you can pocket.shes too complex. an unrefined bayo routinely gets picked apart. heck outside of three players bayo mains still arent a threat to top 8 at majors. there are way more sonics and diddies and even globally more couds that continue to outplace her.

 

[TDK]

IIRC only Nairo and ANTi have pulled out random characters and won with them in the last while. Unless we count ZeRo's sheik.

 

[L9999]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39FODsEvehk

I remembered the Greninja talk. According to istudying:
Bad MUs: . has a lot of 50:50s.

 

[Jaguar360]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39FODsEvehk

I remembered the Greninja talk. According to istudying:
Bad MUs: . has a lot of 50:50s.

He also mentioned Fox as a bad matchup, but he says it could also be 50:50. He thinks of Bayo similarly, but is leaning towards disadvantage atm.

I'm surprised that he didn't mention Diddy Kong, but then again, the best Diddy Kong he's faced so far has been MVD, who he beat at B.E.A.S.T. 6. I can't recall him having many sets against Cyve, Marcbri or Phogos in European tourneys. I also found it interesting that he didn't mention Corrin, but I'd guess that he views him/her in a similar light as Mewtwo where he feels that he needs more experience to make a better judgement.

 

[Y2Kay]

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree on with Ryu being a bad MU for greninja. It's not bad at all once you respect his anti-airs.

I also disagree with and being bad MU's but these are much more understandable.

 

[my_T]

IIRC only Nairo and ANTi have pulled out random characters and won with them in the last while. Unless we count ZeRo's sheik.

You can add:

Mr R beat Dabuz with
I believe Dabuz has had some success with
ZeRo beat Concon with
What about Leo's ? I would consider him a secondary.
Earth beat Hikaru, Paseriman and possibly others with
Ron has always had some success in offline tournies with his pocket against Hikaru and Shuton

This all happened throughout the year. Some very recently

 

[L9999]

You can add:

Mr R beat Dabuz with
I believe Dabuz has had some success with
ZeRo beat Concon with
What about Leo's ? I would consider him a secondary.
Earth beat Hikaru, Paseriman and possibly others with
Ron has always had some success in offline tournies with his pocket against Hikaru and Shuton

This all happened throughout the year. Some very recently

Mr R came to this thread and told us that he played a lot of Cloud. Not random. Cloud beats Rosalina anyways.
Dabuz has played Olimar since Brawl and has used him more recently, so you cannot call it random. He even joked Olimar is his main.
Leo dual mains Cloud and Marth. Uses them with mostly equal rate.
ZeRo mained Sheik and he is ZeRo, he would totally wreck ConCon with Sheik.

 

[FullMoon]

Outside of Ryu, iStudying's opinion is pretty in line with most, with Bayonetta and Cloud being the only ones people might find themselves on the fence about.

But yeah, I don't think Greninja really wins many relevant MUs.

 

[Browny]

If Brawl can manage to overcome Meta Knight

Brawl did NOT overcome Metaknight. Where were you when Brawl was kill?

The character caused a significant amount of people to quit the game and when so many top players all switched to him it just made it even worse. He was basically soft-banned when he wasn't hard-banned because the sheer hate people got for playing him, making even MK mains quit the game! Personally MK had a lot to do with me quitting tournaments (when I was the #1 player in my state) because every single goddam person I played against would counterpick MK after losing the first match until people no longer used their mains. Every tournament was nothing but MK.

The damage MK did to Brawl with regards to stream audiences and the FGC mocking smash players for crying about him can not be understated.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

You can add:

Mr R beat Dabuz with
I believe Dabuz has had some success with
ZeRo beat Concon with
What about Leo's ? I would consider him a secondary.
Earth beat Hikaru, Paseriman and possibly others with
Ron has always had some success in offline tournies with his pocket against Hikaru and Shuton

This all happened throughout the year. Some very recently

These are hardly random.

I wouldn't really call ANTi or Nairo's picks random either. The two of them are so fundamentally solid I don't really think it matters much which character they pick, rather picking what character can the most abuse a hole in the opposite player's style. Mr. E wasn't landing safely a lot, so he got grabbed by Bowser. If he had put more effort into landing safely in a way that makes it hard for Bowser to punish and walled Bowser out more in neutral rather than approaching as much as he did, I think it's entirely possible the set could have stayed in his favor. There were some pretty crazy punishes from Mr. E too (chaining 4 tipper fairs starting at around 26% or so and getting a kill out of it was hype af)

 

[NairWizard]

As bad as Meta Knight was, he didn't kill Brawl. Ice Climbers did.

It's not always the most overpowered strategy that kills a game. It's the most degenerate one.

 

[SaltyKracka]

As bad as Meta Knight was, he didn't kill Brawl. Ice Climbers did.

It's not always the most overpowered strategy that kills a game. It's the most degenerate one.

It was a game that included both of them. And Diddy, and Falco, and DDD, and Olimar, and Snake, and... It had no chance to survive, so most of us decided to make our time elsewhere.

 

[DanGR]

Calling any of these players' character picks "random" is disrespectful, to say the least. Regardless of what you think about their character choice, you probably don't know how often they practice/study that character, and you also probably don't know why they decided to use that character other than the obvious conclusion that their main didn't work out.

Regarding evaluating the worth of 'having a secondary character'- you can't do it just by looking at win rates. There are so many factors you can't possibly take into account unless you ask both players involved in a set, directly.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

As bad as Meta Knight was, he didn't kill Brawl. Ice Climbers did.

It's not always the most overpowered strategy that kills a game. It's the most degenerate one.

So much truth here.

Remember Marvel vs Capcom 2 was one of the most popular games for a loooong time and it had Magneto, Storm and Sentinal.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

I know I'm late but D3 gives Shiek a hard time? I'm curious as to how, I know it probably takes a year to kill D3 for Shiek but I can't imagine D3 even touching Shiek. Do I need to invest in a pocket D3 to cover Shiek lol?

I'm curious now, what are some MUs you just wouldn't expect a character to do bad (or good) against? Things like Falco-Mewtwo come to mind

 

[Deleted member]

I know I'm late but D3 gives Shiek a hard time? I'm curious as to how, I know it probably takes a year to kill D3 for Shiek but I can't imagine D3 even touching Shiek. Do I need to invest in a pocket D3 to cover Shiek lol?

I'm curious now, what are some MUs you just wouldn't expect a character to do bad (or good) against? Things like Falco-Mewtwo come to mind

These are characters I'd say does relatively fine against:

Spoiler: boop

(know she's not the best regarded character in this thread, but w/e)

Most of these range from even to slightly losing. I'd even say Peach/TL are winning MUs for Shulk, and tournament results also support it.

 

[Juno97]

So I don't know if this was mentioned last week and I don't wanna try and dig through the past pages to find out, but in ZeRo's video with MKLeo, MKLeo gives us his opinion on tiers and listed some characters

In order from left to right:


MISC:

: He thinks Rosa isn't that good. Plus there was that Twitter post that Dabuz made saying he thinks Cloud is BS. He also noted that he played a lot of friendlies with Dabuz and used Cloud so maybe that's where Dabuz's tweet came from
: She's either a mid or high tier in his opinion
: Says he/she is top tier but didn't say what spot, only said worse than Marth

 

[my_T]

looking at the post i quoted i probably should've worded mine better. To clarify, i don't consider those character picks i listed "random". I was just pointing out other players that have had success with secondaries other than Anti and Nairo

 

[ぱみゅ]

THere's a LOT I want to say about the current topics but I might do it later when I get home (I will also read the thread more throughoutly), just two things:
1. If you guys are really interested in keep discussing stages, we have a thread dedicated to it: https://smashboards.com/threads/stage-legality-discussion-thread-mk-iii.443701/

2. Bayo's technique was already known, you can even do it with a Witch Twist instead of just Heel Slide! What Tyroy didn't mention though, is that you can only do it if you have the move available in the air (in order to Heel Slide you need to have an Afterburner Kick available, and in order yo Witch Twist you need to either have your WT1 available, or use the second jump to use WT2). I am not sure if you can buffer the Witch Twist like he said out of Bullet Arts though.

 

[InfinitySoul]

looking at the post i quoted i probably should've worded mine better. To clarify, i don't consider those character picks i listed "random". I was just pointing out other players that have had success with secondaries other than Anti and Nairo

Yes, secondaries.
People are sceptical about Pocket picks.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

As soon as ANYONE mentions bans especially in this latest installment we have easily triggered people who want the ban versus people who don't.

I'm actually wondering if the Nintendo Switch will cause ANYTHING to be banned tbh, since we don't have a specific release date or even a price! This banning speculation pretty much ground everything to a halt. Let's move on huh?

 

[ぱみゅ]

As soon as ANYONE mentions bans especially in this latest installment we have easily triggered people who want the ban versus people who don't.

That's.... how discussions work?
idk, it's been a pretty lengthy but nothing too crazy, I think it's good for people undecided or in middle ground to understand each side's positions and reasoning.

 

[FeelMeUp]

D3 doesn't give Sheik a hard time. Probably still -2. The Diddy matchup is so bad that there's no reason to incur a risk playing Sheik instead.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

That's.... how discussions work?
idk, it's been a pretty lengthy but nothing too crazy, I think it's good for people undecided or in middle ground to understand each side's positions and reasoning.

Hrmm true but then you've got people insinuating that you're using the wrong character or shouldn't use particular characters, then other people comparing this to brawl (which is understandable...I guess when online play was still an option I never saw the 'infinite cape trick' or 'wobbling' what I DID see was the 'infinite tornado trick' where meta knight spams tornado over and over again to stun lock you), then other people discounting that and bringing up that this is so much different then brawl that it doesn't matter (which again is understandable, this game certainly isn't perfect but it's a lot more balanced than the others). Thing that depresses me is the only thing I could add was what was already mentioned several pages ago about WHY things were banned (and poke floats actually being legal was an interesting tidbit. I had no clue about the fox blaster circle camping strategy)

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

Speaking of Bayonetta bans, what do you guys think about Mii Fighters besides the small Brawler piston punch arguement?

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Speaking of Bayonetta bans, what do you guys think about Mii Fighters besides the small Brawler piston punch arguement?

Can't really add too much on this since sakurai banned all three in everything except friendly matches and custom brawls but I can say this much, they all have potential. Mii gunner has excellent range especially on forward smash, mii brawler besides piston punch can surprise you with some of their other moves....not sure about swordspider.
Someone else can give much better input than I can though just wanted to contribute something.

 

[Bowserboy3]

Brawl did NOT overcome Metaknight. Where were you when Brawl was kill?

View attachment 122000

The character caused a significant amount of people to quit the game and when so many top players all switched to him it just made it even worse. He was basically soft-banned when he wasn't hard-banned because the sheer hate people got for playing him, making even MK mains quit the game! Personally MK had a lot to do with me quitting tournaments (when I was the #1 player in my state) because every single goddam person I played against would counterpick MK after losing the first match until people no longer used their mains. Every tournament was nothing but MK.

The damage MK did to Brawl with regards to stream audiences and the FGC mocking smash players for crying about hm can not be understated.

Ok, the phrase "overcome" was used to say that in the end he wasn't banned, so that's my fault for picking that word. Whether or not Meta Knight not being banned was the right decision in the end, who knows.

---

But for me, in regards to the "Bayonetta will be banned" argument, in comparison to Meta Knight in Brawl, she's nothing. Yes, there's time to develop, but in my comparison, Meta Knight was clearly the best in the game in all areas from the get go. Bayonetta really isn't now by comparison.

Characters don't need to be on equal levels of "you need to put X amount of time to get Y result". Marth in Melee is relatively easy to pick up and start using competitively, especially when compared to Fox, who requires a whole lot more effort and actual skill to use properly. Both are still incredibly hard to master properly, but from a gateway level, Marth is a lot easier to use. So what if Bayonetta is easy to use? She isn't

I suppose we're lucky that this time in Smash 4, we don't have a Meta Knight, or infinite chaingrab Ice Climbers that makes matches not very fun to watch. If Bayonetta really does end up developing into this amazing character (which I still seriously doubt anyway, but as always, I'm more than happy to be proven wrong), I doubt she'll ever have an effect on the game Meta Knight or Ice Climbers did in Brawl. There are too many factors in Smash 4 that make it hard to be always the best.

---

To try and come off of this topic a bit now, as I just mentioned Ice Climbers, I'm very interested to see how the development team balance them into the game if they come to Smash Switch. Due to how grabs work in Smash 4, chaingrabs likely won't work (which of course is great on the whole), and Ice Climbers were focused around grabs a whole lot in both Melee and Brawl. How are they going to fare overall without some amazing grab to utilise (that's assuming a different grab tech isn't discovered... oh lordy)?

Exactly how good would Ice Climbers have been in Brawl without their chaingrab? Would that hold up in Smash 4? What would need to be changed/buffed/nerfed to make them solid?

 

[soniczx123]

So I don't know if this was mentioned last week and I don't wanna try and dig through the past pages to find out, but in ZeRo's video with MKLeo, MKLeo gives us his opinion on tiers and listed some characters

In order from left to right:


MISC:

: He thinks Rosa isn't that good. Plus there was that Twitter post that Dabuz made saying he thinks Cloud is BS. He also noted that he played a lot of friendlies with Dabuz and used Cloud so maybe that's where Dabuz's tweet came from
: She's either a mid or high tier in his opinion
: Says he/she is top tier but didn't say what spot, only said worse than Marth

Sonic not top 10? Wonf hasn't made such a impression for him?? Or is MKLeo just really good at fighting Sonic?

 

[HoSmash4]

I know I'm late but D3 gives Shiek a hard time? I'm curious as to how, I know it probably takes a year to kill D3 for Shiek but I can't imagine D3 even touching Shiek. Do I need to invest in a pocket D3 to cover Shiek lol?

I'm curious now, what are some MUs you just wouldn't expect a character to do bad (or good) against? Things like Falco-Mewtwo come to mind

I had a tough time vs Masho (Midwest d3) for a bit because I didn't know the matchup but I've started winning lately.

Essientially I limited situations where he got free damage because I didn't know. Now it's easier for me but D3 still super hard to kill

 

[bc1910]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39FODsEvehk

I remembered the Greninja talk. According to istudying:
Bad MUs: . has a lot of 50:50s.

Greninja's most relevant winning MU is Mario, which iStudying recently showed once again is probably slightly in Greninja's favour.

Don't know what Ryu is doing in that list but he forgot Diddy and Rosa, both of which I'm positive are losing MUs, so whatever.