Official 4BR Tier List v2.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Funtroon]

I find it interesting that Hungrybox approaches Melee and Smash 4 differently in terms of playing to win.

In Melee, he's all about striving to be the best in the world, using the character that suits him best.

In Smash 4, he's all about being the best in the world for his character, despite Jigglypuff being low to bottom tier.

I don't think he plays the character seriously. All he does is spot dodge, roll and rests randomly. I don't even consider him a Smash 4 player, much less a the best Smash 4 Puff.

 

[Rizen]

T beating Ranai

'Video removed by user'

 

[LancerStaff]

Marth's top level results are much better than Pit's. Sorry to say, but one has 3-4 amazing players backing him and Pit has 1-2.
But results aside, I'll be frank with you.
Pit doesn't have a bunch of stupid **** in his gameplan. To be a good character, you need to have dumb stuff that can outright win games or seal out matchups. Pit is too fair, therefore he is not amazing. Character's just okay, and there's nothing wrong with that.
You shouldn't be fighting to improve people's opinion on your character. Let people think they're trash then get the wins because they were too dumb to study the MU.

There's no such thing as being too honest. If all you need is bull**** to win then Mac and Lucario would be top tier.

Either the character is good, or they're not.

It's not even about the character, it's about not doing stupid things like putting Yoshi above him.

https://smashboards.com/threads/tournament-placing-database-scoring-project.437773/
Based on Das Koopa's awesome thread, 's results are lacking. He's under Mac in the top 8/16s. I'm not saying results are the end-all decider but I'm not seeing why Pit's better than mid-tiers like .
What makes Pit a high tier?

Das Koopa's thread is biased against Japan because he can't find the results all the time.

Pit has a ton of really good things going for him... For example if you've ever listened to a good Marth in even in Brawl you've probably heard that he struggles with perfect shielding. Pit doesn't because multihits can't be perfect shielded and he has a really good grab and throw game. Pit lacks any kind of fundamental collapse or easily exploitable weaknesses at any level that mid tiers have, and still has very strong advantage, disadvantage, and neutral states.

 

[FeelMeUp]

It's not about just having stupid ****. It's about having stupid **** with as few weaknesses as possible.
Sheik, for example, is safe on block for her 3 normal aerials that all combo into each other or a kill move. That's stupid as hell.
Pit has nothing anywhere near on that level. He's just alright.
Lucario and Mac both have very obvious glaring weaknesses.

 

[teddystalin]

Das Koopa's thread is biased against Japan because he can't find the results all the time.

If only there were some database, maybe a compendium, of these results, that Koopa could use...

Wait, there is, and he does.

Shoutouts to @Djent , @juddy96 , and @Jucchan for being awesome people

 

[Shady Shaymin]

Something I've noticed during character discussions: people talk about "the neutral" and "killing" as two entirely separate things a lot. Like the most common one, Sheik has a stellar neutral, but when it comes time to kill, she comes up short. This is obviously true to an extent, but the way this is constantly discussed makes it sound like "the neutral" is over after both characters rack up some damage, after that it's a new phase of the battle called "killing" where all of your character's mobility, hurtbox, pokes and shield safety just go away and now it's an empirical contest of who kills earlier and who kills more consistently.

Obviously it doesn't work that way in practice. Even if one character has better traditional "killing" methods via smash attacks or guaranteed setups, having the maneuverability to travel the stage, the shield frame advantage to play safely and all the other things that constitute a "good neutral" are just as important if not more important.

You don't just end stocks by having good kill power. You land kills from winning the neutral. That's why Sheik is top 3 and Ryu isn't.

 

[TheGoodGuava]

LancerStaff I don't think you've given an explanation as to why you think Pit is above the other characters. So far you've only told us pits options are, but what makes them better?

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Das Koopa's thread is biased against Japan because he can't find the results all the time.

If only there were some database, maybe a compendium, of these results, that Koopa could use...

Wait, there is, and he does.

Shoutouts to @Djent , @juddy96 , and @Jucchan for being awesome people

Not only do us people that "inhabitate" the japanese result compendium [which also includes our friend @Tetra-76!] regularly tag Koopa to keep him informed on what's going on but he also tends to be pretty generous towards western japan, where Earth attends most of his tournaments. The truth is that most of these 'sumabato' tournaments are mid-tier fests - if you check out their results you'll see that their top 8s are loaded with mid-tier or lower characters like Greninja, Peach, ROB, Ludwig, Lucas, DK ... or Pit. Their best player by far is Komorikiri who failed to place within top 8 at Umebura SAT or any of the US tourmaments he attended so far. And yet Koopa consistently gives those local tournaments a C2 rating, which I doubt is something a lot of other people would be willing to do.

He also has not missed any of their results that qualify so your complaint is frankly pure BS.

 

[Nu~]

There's no such thing as being too honest. If all you need is bull**** to win then Mac and Lucario would be top tier.

Either the character is good, or they're not.

It's not even about the character, it's about not doing stupid things like putting Yoshi above him.



Das Koopa's thread is biased against Japan because he can't find the results all the time.

Pit has a ton of really good things going for him... For example if you've ever listened to a good Marth in even in Brawl you've probably heard that he struggles with perfect shielding. Pit doesn't because multihits can't be perfect shielded and he has a really good grab and throw game. Pit lacks any kind of fundamental collapse or easily exploitable weaknesses at any level that mid tiers have, and still has very strong advantage, disadvantage, and neutral states.

You do realize that pit's multi hit attacks can still be power shielded right?

Just ask @Lavani because I'm pretty sure you're incorrect on that notion. The sheild stun patch made it so that most multi hit attacks will lock you in shield (unless the multi hit has a lot of space in between attacks like ZSS fair) The power sheild remains until your multi hit attack is over.

It's already bad enough that pit lacks the overall sheild safety that most sword characters have...

 

[Illuminose]

I don't really get the Pit hate or why ZeRo's opinion of Pit is being bashed. Personally I have Pit and Dark Pit at 17/18 on my tier list, which is like a 5 spot difference from what ZeRo has. It's also another tier up but realistically the borderline between low high tier and high mid tier is all semantics. But here's the thing: how is a character with a solid neutral, insanely strong advantage state, and pretty good disadvantage not that good? Just because Pit lacks an obvious broken/abusable tool doesn't mean that the character is lacking, just that he isn't a top tier. This is why the comparison to Sheik boggles my mind -- why are you going to compare probably the best character in the game (matchup-wise it's not close) to a character who is somewhere within like, the 16-25 range? That makes no sense at all. Pit is a well-rounded character who performs well in the hands of players with a good grasp of the game. And now I'll go over the things that make Pit good because people want specifics (analyzed some Earth and Kuro videos to check/make sure I don't miss important aspects).

Solid Neutral
Pit has a few things that make his neutral good, primarily his dash game. With a good dash->shield, dash speed, roll, perfect pivot, and foxtrot as well as a fantastic dash attack and dash grab, Pit can mix up his ground game quite effectively to force his way in or play reactive/patient. This is typically mixed in with safe neutral airs to catch any button, especially a jump and occasional spaced forward airs or back airs. Pit can also use his incredibly quick and relatively safe down smash and jab to mix up his ground game further. And when he's far away, he can pressure with an arrow or two to bait out an approach and then cover that. Between all these options, Pit can keep his neutral non-linear and get a read on his opponent's habits to find openings. It's efficient and effective, a neutral that can compete with top tiers but just requires a bit more effort than they do.

Incredible Advantage State
Pit's lack of clean reward is often lamented. Pretty much his two options to start combos are grab (down throw) and short hop neutral air. His down air also works well for combos but it's a bit harder to land raw in neutral. These combos aren't anything great though, just little combos in a similar way to Diddy throw combos (except Diddy's uthrow bair bair Pit has similar guaranteed reward off grabs). However, what Pit has that is insanely underrated is what he can do in advantage state.

Pit's ability to maintain advantage is incredible and consistently executed by Earth--Kuro's advantage is good but Earth has better control of arrows so that's that. Pit can throw you up or throw you offstage and just pile more damage. For juggles specifically, Pit can use a variety of options between arrows, up smash, up air, dash attack, and even neutral air to cover landings. These are all fantastic landing coverage options that fit together cohesively and enable to Pit to extend juggles very effectively. When his opponent is offstage, Pit can pelt them with arrows to either secure an edgeguard or at the least put on some more damage then create a ledge situation. Options like neutral air, down smash, forward tilt, up smash, and reactive dash attacks/grabs can cover multiple options at once (other moves make appearances but those are the main ones) and reset ledge situations over and over, which you see all the time in both the play of Earth and Kuro. At high percents, Pit can turn these situations into kills with fthrow, a smash attack, or ftilt. So Pit has both really good juggling and a great ledge game, giving him more 'reward' than most people think he has.

Lack of Glaring Flaws
This is the obvious one. The biggest thing you can call a major weakness is Pit's up b, but between multiple jumps and the side b it's not like you can't mix up timing, and the best you are going to do against up b is rack some damage on him because he'll make it back anyways. Multiple jumps and an aerial that hits under him make landing quite manageable. Ledge options are fine. Not having an abusable top tier tool isn't a real weakness, it just means the character isn't top tier which no one is contesting.

Lack of Oppressively Bad Matchups
Not every top tier matchup is great, but mostly evenish matchups against all of them and no character that definitively bodies Pit (-2 or worse) is extremely significant in a tier where most characters tend to have matchups like that. What this means is that there isn't much value in counterpicking Pit, but he can contend with any character and thus is for all intents and purposes solo viable.

Interested to see what people have to say because this discussion appears to be fueled by lack of knowledge.

 

[Ethan7]

 

[Joey T.]

Question regarding the four characters in A tier (): who is the best candidate to reach S tier?

 

[Das Koopa]

Das Koopa's thread is biased against Japan because he can't find the results all the time..

I'm not. Pit has good results, but it's impossible to reflect this in-score when said good results come up once every 1-2 months when Earth or Kuro decide to attend something. This is used to be applicable to Villager (not anymore), but Pit was generally cited as a unique case of a character that almost nobody uses.

 

[blackghost]

Question regarding the four characters in A tier (): who is the best candidate to reach S tier?

It's either bayo or mewtwo. easily. but both need more results at this point. it's also interesting to note that the average player in smash 4 has no clue how to fight bayo or mewtwo so that could be inflating Thier position as well even now

 

[TheGoodGuava]

Question regarding the four characters in A tier (): who is the best candidate to reach S tier?

Easily Mewtwo. Best neutral of the 4, second best in terms of killing, potentially the best combo game, and very few bad matchups other than Diddy (which I can see becoming even if the mewtwo is willing to camp the **** out of him). He is potentially the only character in the game to beat Sheik and he also beats or goes even with the other 3 in a tier

Random question here but I just have to ask. Is anyone else pissed about Ikes position?

 

[Emblem Lord]

Something I've noticed during character discussions: people talk about "the neutral" and "killing" as two entirely separate things a lot. Like the most common one, Sheik has a stellar neutral, but when it comes time to kill, she comes up short. This is obviously true to an extent, but the way this is constantly discussed makes it sound like "the neutral" is over after both characters rack up some damage, after that it's a new phase of the battle called "killing" where all of your character's mobility, hurtbox, pokes and shield safety just go away and now it's an empirical contest of who kills earlier and who kills more consistently.

Obviously it doesn't work that way in practice. Even if one character has better traditional "killing" methods via smash attacks or guaranteed setups, having the maneuverability to travel the stage, the shield frame advantage to play safely and all the other things that constitute a "good neutral" are just as important if not more important.

You don't just end stocks by having good kill power. You land kills from winning the neutral. That's why Sheik is top 3 and Ryu isn't.

A little bit more to why Ryu isn't top 3 tho I feel where you are coming from.

 

[Nu~]

Question:
Why do most here just assume that pit has even matchups and a small handful of +1/-1s across the board without actual matchup analysis? It's gotten to the point where you have people saying "pit goes even with X because pit is balanced and has the tools..."

...and? Are you gonna explain that further?


I'm not buying the assumption that pit has a matchup spread this balanced. For example, I'm confident that pit loses hard to Fox, Falcon, and ZSS. Characters that can juggle him hard (Small-ish tangent but Pit really isn't that hard to juggle. Multiple jumps help, but airspeed that bad is crippling. Guardian orbitars are okay I suppose, but if you wait it out you get a free punish unless pit retreats to the ledge)
and characters that easily overwhelm him in nuetral with safer + faster moves crush him. He doesn't have the capabilities to slow the nuetral game down as well as most sword characters do.


Pit's nuetral is a basic 50/50 of dash grab and dash attack. Unfortunately, one half of the 50/50 doesn't lead to anything (dash attack) and the other half gives average reward (down throw to usmash/uair...yaaaay) and rare high-ish reward things that are all varying levels of inconsistent (down throw -> dair -> footstool -> dair reset is the best throw punish pit has...but it ain't reliable). His nuetral is okay, not really all that solid compared to the other high tiers.

Throwing out fairs, Bairs, and Nairs to space with are pretty unsafe against opponents with good ground speed to sheild and punish the end lag. Bair should be fast falled on sheild anyway. That's when it's most safe.

Nair is especially bad to throw out because it loses to things with as little range as Mario's Nair. It autocancels if you fast fall it a few frames after the final hit, but you should either be challenging it every time or running up to pit at a distance that you can punish him as soon as it ends. Pit can't weave well enough to escape you running in his face just outside of Nair's range and punishing it afterwards.

Honestly, it's hitboxes suck:

Spoiler: NAIR

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Random question here but I just have to ask. Is anyone else pissed about Ikes position?

Somewhat, but I'm not surprised. His results have dropped a bit due to San not being able to get to many tournaments that count for Das Koopa's rankings, Ryo and Ryuga in particular using Ike a lot less, and then the next step of Ikes are either in Europe (so people are less aware/don't give as much credit which is somewhat fair all things considered) or not quite there yet (like Waldo or Rango). Add on top that people have always been a tad unaware of how well Ike does as a character and this is the result you get.

Cloud being introduced also didn't help. Cloud took a number of Ike's niches in the swordfighters: he only has his throw combo stuff left to stand out with, as well as still having the best consistent (but not burst) KOing potential. And I guess technically the best recovery distance wise but its still not good.

LancerStaff Actually read what is being said here in this topic. You keep making baseless claims that are just getting tossed back in your face. Here is the reality.

Pit has next to no rep in NA or Europe. Earth, while amazing and nobody is denying that, only goes occasionally to tournaments in a country where there's a high overall level so nobody is super consistent. Pit has done nothing to prove that its not just one or two people being super amazing with him like how it went with Pokemon Trainer back in Brawl. Reflex made the character look borderline high tier. Didn't change the fact it was a low tier character.

Pit has no grounds to stand on for being higher. I'd be willing to bet money right now, unless some other high level player picks him up, he will drop one or two spots with each and every tier list. Most of the other mid tiers simply have more people dedicated to the character to advance their metagame. If nobody outside of a few people in Japan can get Pit's metagame moving, he will continue to drop in comparison. And rightfully so, that is reality. Even if he is a better character than the ones you listed, if nobody is using him outside of the few occasionally popping up in Japan, it will never be proven. His MUs will never be figured out. He will have nothing to show for himself. Potential is meaningless without it being applied.

You want him to move up? Get yourself to tournaments and start placing in them. That's about all there is to it.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

For example, I'm confident that pit loses hard to Fox, Falcon, and ZSS.

Pit definitely doesn't lose hard to Fox.

 

[Nu~]

Pit definitely doesn't lose hard to Fox.

How does pit survive in nuetral against fox?

And how does pit deal with up air juggles?

 

[Deleted member]

It's been a while since I've posted in this thread, but here goes nothing. What ensues will probably be just a bunch of incoherent babbles, but that's up to you.

Here's a character that's not discussed in this thread very often:



Let's talk about Shulk.

As a disclaimer, I'm not one of those Shulk mains who screams about him having potential or being a secret high tier when played "optimally" or whatever. Most people that discuss about Shulk with me know that my views on him are quite conservative. Most of Shulk's best players also share similar sentiments.

Putting that tangent aside, this post is going to be how I feel about Shulk's current position in the meta, along with attempting to open people's eyes to what tools he has.

For a while, people's negative/cynical views on Shulk were pretty warranted. For all the hype about how deep the character could be he turned in little notable results for most of last year. Thankfully, this year, he's been growing and his mains are getting more opportunities to travel, leading him to get some finally decent results. These are some of the most notable recent Shulk results that span from late 2015 to now:

• Nicko (SoCal): 65th at EVO 2016, places top 4 consistently at FAD Games weeklies and MSM, 17th at 2GGT: Mexico Saga, 1st at Los Angeles Fraud Fights
• DarkWolf (Canada): 5th at Smash Intensifies 2, 13th at GOML 2016, 9th at Nexus 2
• Scarhi (France): 7th at Neokan Party
• Kurage (Japan): 13th at Nexus 2
• Xmas (North Florida): 13th at Unrivaled
  
• TrueSapphire (Las Vegas): 17th at LVL UP EXPO 2016
• Tremendo Dude (South Florida): 13th at EagleLAN, 3rd at Glitch low-tier, 33rd at Road to Shine (wifi tournament, but still), 13th at Vitality

Looking down at his toolkit, Shulk has two obvious boons:

His range, and the Monado Arts.

Shulk still having the longest range out of any character in the game still gives him a niche among the other swordfighters. As a movement-based character, the Arts are such a huge, huge deal for Shulk. The shieldstun patch has helped him out a lot considering his mediocre damage output without Buster and overall sluggishness of his moves. I'll detail what each Art advantages him with in a spoiler:

Spoiler: Shulk changes colors and things happen.

Monado Shield 盾

• If you play your cards right by not commiting and weaving between this and Jump Art, you're able to live up to 170-180%. Despite Shulk's poor mobility in this Art opponents will be naturally forced to approach you if they don't have methods of camping you out. If they do, it's back to Jump.
  
• Due to Shulk taking reduced damage/knockback in this Art, it helps certain combos not work on him (hell, it even helped him escape Bayo's 0-deaths prepatch. It's particularly helpful in the Mario, Luigi, Fox and Lucas matchups as well).

Monado Jump 翔

• Allows him to live longer vertically thanks to increased fall speed.
  
• His recovery in the high and low department become amazing, Air Slash having increased height doesn't hurt either.
• Shulk becomes a larger threat offstage than he already is without Arts thanks to the great edgeguarding capabilities of fair and bair.
• Monado Purge. It is a legit 50/50, and it works a a sizable amount of characters: Shulk is able to catch jump/DJ or airdodge if the player performs it correctly. The Shulk Discord has an entire chart of percents compiled for it.
  
• Up throw to Air Slash is a thing.

Monado Smash 撃

• Sadly the only art that doesn't do it's job. The risk/reward isn't good for Shulk. His moves are given pathetic damage output, and you'd expect more knockback for how abysmal his disadvantage state is in this Art.
• It grants Shulk three kill throws! You also gotta respect the being hit by back air and usmash at the ledge especially. The latter has the third highest knockback of any usmash in the game.

Monado Speed 疾

• DAT PIVOT GRAB.
• Dthrow and fthrow lead into nice combos, usually a fair ladder, or nair into what you please (fsmash is usually the best option, or regrab).
• His high air mobility granted here also makes him a threat offstage like Jump does. It also allows him to deal better with options he couldn't as well with his vanilla mobility (i.e. Dragon Lunge, needles).
• MONADACUS is pretty neat, if hard to perform consistently. It's only good as a mixup.

Monado Buster 斬

• This Art is so ****ing good and I'm so glad Shulk has something like it.
  
  First off, it grants Shulk much safer moves on block. Bair is especially scary. It does 17% and is basically a death sentence to characters with poor traction ().
• High af damage, low knockback. Beautiful combination. It well allows him to rack up damage and gain stock advantage in a frighteningly short about of time. If you want some perspective, pummel into back throw does a whopping 22%.
• There's also worth mentioning that moves like ftilt, dsmash at the ledge and fsmash become potent shield breaker, giving him a genuinely threatening pressure game. He has the right disadvantage state to balance it out, great Art.

To expand in general, MALLC is still very nice for Shulk to have, considering it allows him to cancel landing lag on airdodges and the activation of the Arts themselves are intangible for a period of time. And no, he doesn't have to rely on it all the time. In some matchups it's more important to use MALLC, but a lot of the time Shulk does well if a player has good fundamentals and knows how to space well, mix up well with movement options and Arts.

Shulk does have decent moves attached to him. Up tilt is reasonably fast, is a good anti-air, and is amazing for damage racking (especially against fastfallers) in Buster or killing in Smash. Neutral air has stupid low landing lag (10 frames), is a good combo starter and leads into a lot of moves. It's basically Shulk's bread a butter move. Back air despite its infamously sluggish 18-frame startup, has amazing range is good for spacing, killing and edgeguarding. If used in conjunction with MALLC it becomes quite respectable. Forward air is a great spacing tool as well, is good for combos and its wide hitbox always makes it something to fear offstage. Vision is also still the best (or at least near Corrin's level) grounded counter in the game for what it's worth. Air Vision makes me cry.

Despite everything I've talked about, Shulk still does have things that hold him back from being a real threat in the meta. His frame data is indeed a notable fundamental flaw and makes him have to work harder than a lot of matchups than other characters do, coupled with his aerials not being able to autocancel whatsoever unless a frame-perfect MALLC is performed. Without Arts he has only merely average mobility and low damage output on a good amount of his moves, namely his aerials. This means he has low shieldstun. Considering the laggy nature of his moves you always have to space carefully on shield or you can get punished hard depending on the character.

To close off this post, Shulk is in a weird spot I'd say right now. He's been growing, and I think his playerbase will allow him to go even further. Once Shulk mains utilize how strong his timeout/camping ability with Jump/Shield/Speed Art and be able to use Purge more consistently, he can rise, if albeit slightly.

As of now I see him as somebody in the upper part of low tier or bottom of mid, the 40th-35th spot (around the viability of in my eyes). I can't be arsed to place him specifically. His issues without a doubt can't allow him to be any higher than that, but I just can't see how Shulk is a bottom 10 character, or worse than characters such as or who are placed above him on the current 4BR list.

Thank you all for reading. Whether this will spark some interesting discussion, I don't know. Just a Shulk main who wanted to speak her thoughts. Have a very nice day!

 

[Solfiner]

It's been a while since I've posted in this thread, but here goes nothing. What ensues will probably be just a bunch of incoherent babbles, but that's up to you.

Here's a character that's not discussed in this thread very often:



Let's talk about Shulk.

As a disclaimer, I'm not one of those Shulk mains who screams about him having potential or being a secret high tier when played "optimally" or whatever. Most people that discuss about Shulk with me know that my views on him are quite conservative. Most of Shulk's best players also share similar sentiments.

Putting that tangent aside, this post is going to be how I feel about Shulk's current position in the meta, along with attempting to open people's eyes to what tools he has.

For a while, people's negative/cynical views on Shulk were pretty warranted. For all the hype about how deep the character could be he turned in little notable results for most of last year. Thankfully, this year, he's been growing and his mains are getting more opportunities to travel, leading him to get some finally decent results. These are some of the most notable recent Shulk results that span from late 2015 to now:

• Nicko (SoCal): 65th at EVO 2016, places top 4 consistently at FAD Games weeklies and MSM, 17th at 2GGT: Mexico Saga, 1st at Los Angeles Fraud Fights
• DarkWolf (Canada): 5th at Smash Intensifies 2, 13th at GOML 2016, 9th at Nexus 2
• Scarhi (France): 7th at Neokan Party
• Kurage (Japan): 13th at Nexus 2
• Xmas (North Florida): 13th at Unrivaled
  
• TrueSapphire (Las Vegas): 17th at LVL UP EXPO 2016
• Tremendo Dude (South Florida): 13th at EagleLAN, 3rd at Glitch low-tier, 33rd at Road to Shine (wifi tournament, but still), 13th at Vitality

Looking down at his toolkit, Shulk has two obvious boons:

His range, and the Monado Arts.

Shulk still having the longest range out of any character in the game still gives him a niche among the other swordfighters. As a movement-based character, the Arts are such a huge, huge deal for Shulk. The shieldstun patch has helped him out a lot considering his mediocre damage output without Buster and overall sluggishness of his moves. I'll detail what each Art advantages him with in a spoiler:

Spoiler: Shulk changes colors and things happen.

Monado Shield 盾

• If you play your cards right by not commiting and weaving between this and Jump Art, you're able to live up to 170-180%. Despite Shulk's poor mobility in this Art opponents will be naturally forced to approach you if they don't have methods of camping you out. If they do, it's back to Jump.

Monado Jump 翔

• Allows him to live longer vertically thanks to increased fall speed.
  
• His recovery in the high and low department become amazing, Air Slash having increased height doesn't hurt either.
• Shulk becomes a larger threat offstage than he already is without Arts thanks to the great edgeguarding capabilities of fair and bair.
• Monado Purge. It is a legit 50/50, and it works a a sizable amount of characters: Shulk is able to catch jump/DJ or airdodge if the player performs it correctly. The Shulk Discord has an entire chart of percents compiled for it.

Monado Smash 撃

• Sadly the only art that doesn't do it's job. The risk/reward isn't good for Shulk. His moves are given pathetic damage output, and you'd expect more knockback for how abysmal his disadvantage state is in this Art.
• It grants Shulk three kill throws! You also gotta respect the being hit by back air and usmash at the ledge especially. The latter has the third highest knockback of any usmash in the game.

Monado Speed 疾

• DAT PIVOT GRAB.
• Dthrow and fthrow lead into nice combos, usually a fair ladder, or nair into what you please (fsmash is usually the best option, or regrab).
• His high air mobility granted here also makes him a threat offstage like Jump does. It also allows him to deal better with options he couldn't as well with his vanilla mobility (i.e. Dragon Lunge, needles).
• MONADACUS is pretty neat, if hard to perform consistently. It's only good as a mixup.

Monado Buster 斬

• This Art is so ****ing good and I'm so glad Shulk has something like it.
  
  First off, it grants Shulk much safer moves on block. Bair is especially scary. It does 17% and is basically a death sentence to characters with poor traction ().
• High af damage, low knockback. Beautiful combination. It well allows him to rack up damage and gain stock advantage in a frighteningly short about of time. If you want some perspective, pummel into back throw does a whopping 22%.
• There's also worth mentioning that moves like ftilt, dsmash at the ledge and fsmash become potent shield breaker, giving him a genuinely threatening pressure game. He has the right disadvantage state to balance it out, great Art.

To expand in general, MALLC is still very nice for Shulk to have, considering it allows him to cancel landing lag on airdodges and the activation of the Arts themselves are intangible for a period of time. And no, he doesn't have to rely on it all the time. In some matchups it's more important to use MALLC, but a lot of the time Shulk does well if a player has good fundamentals and knows how to space well, mix up well with movement options and Arts.

Shulk does have decent moves attached to him. Up tilt is reasonably fast, is a good anti-air, and is amazing for damage racking (especially against fastfallers) in Buster or killing in Smash. Neutral air has stupid low landing lag (10 frames), is a good combo starter and leads into a lot of moves. It's basically Shulk's bread a butter move. Back air despite its infamously sluggish 18-frame startup, has amazing range is good for spacing, killing and edgeguarding. If used in conjunction with MALLC it becomes quite respectable. Forward air is a great spacing tool as well, is good for combos and its wide hitbox always makes it something to fear offstage. Vision is also still the best (or at least near Corrin's level) grounded counter in the game for what it's worth. Air Vision makes me cry.

Despite everything I've talked about, Shulk still does have things that hold him back from being a real threat in the meta. His frame data is indeed a notable fundamental flaw and makes him have to work harder than a lot of matchups than other characters do, coupled with his aerials not being able to autocancel whatsoever unless a frame-perfect MALLC is performed. Without Arts he has only merely average mobility and low damage output on a good amount of his moves, namely his aerials. This means he has low shieldstun. Considering the laggy nature of his moves you always have to space carefully on shield or you can get punished hard depending on the character.

To close off this post, Shulk is in a weird spot I'd say right now. He's been growing, and I think his playerbase will allow him to go even further. Once Shulk mains utilize how strong his timeout/camping ability with Jump/Shield/Speed Art and be able to use Purge more consistently, he can rise, if albeit slightly.

As of now I see him as somebody in the upper part of low tier or bottom of mid, the 40th-35th spot (around the viability of in my eyes). I can't be arsed to place him specifically. His issues without a doubt can't allow him to be any higher than that, but I just can't see how Shulk is a bottom 10 character, or worse than characters such as or who are placed above him on the current 4BR list.

Thank you all for reading. Whether this will spark some interesting discussion, I don't know. Just a Shulk main who wanted to speak her thoughts. Have a very nice day!

Also worth noting that Tremendo Dude got third to Robin and Mewtwo, both highly controversial picks for low tier at the time.

 

[PK Gaming]

T beating Ranai

Man I always did say that Link was secret mid tier.

Kidding, mostly. Shoot me if i'm off base, but Link doesn't seem like the type of character that loses too badly to top tiers (barring maybe like Sheik or Fox?).

 

[Rizen]

His issues without a doubt can't allow him to be any higher than that, but I just can't see how Shulk is a bottom 10 character, or worse than characters such as or who are placed above him on the current 4BR list.

Thank you all for reading. Whether this will spark some interesting discussion, I don't know. Just a Shulk main who wanted to speak her thoughts. Have a very nice day!

Well for why Link is better than Shulk, Link has about twice the tournament scores Shulk does
https://smashboards.com/threads/tournament-placing-database-scoring-project.437773/
Link is heavy and has power constantly, although Shulk wins for mobility. Link's frame data is better than Shulk's, Link has damage/kill throw/projectile/aerial combos and setups. What combos and kill options does Shulk have? Link has bombs to cover landings, combo from and use as a detached lingering hitbox for stage control. Link's aerials have about 1/2 the landing lag of Shulk's and start faster.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Also worth noting that Tremendo Dude got third to Robin and Mewtwo, both highly controversial picks for low tier at the time.

Speaking of which, it's a shame that Glitch 2 and Abadango Saga will both happen at the same weekend, and 2GG is gathering everybody's resources to attract more players to their event, looking like the stronger event this time, so probably Glitch will be lackluster (that would be an interesting data source otherwise for both Low Tiers and Customs).
iirc they may even get WaDi there (and he's is a regular at Xanadu, the venue for Glitch).

 

[~ Gheb ~]

How does pit survive in nuetral against fox?

And how does pit deal with up air juggles?

Fox doesn't have one specific, overwhelmingly powerful option in neutral that characters can't do much about. His strength in neutral is based on the sheer amount of options he has and on his ability to make a smooth transition from neutral into advantaged state. That's why Larry is so good with the character - he's a.) very unpredictable with what option he chooses to go in with, leaving the opponent in a guessing game that can turn out horribly wrong very fast and b.) similar to Nairo in that he's very good at turning neutral situations into advantaged ones.

Pit's strenghts just happen to work pretty well against that. Getting a Pit player, especially one of Earth's caliber, into a position where he's actually disadvantaged is a whole lot of work and until that point he can just fight back really well consistently. Pit also is not very vulnerable to juggles, mainly because of multiple mid-air jumps. Realistically Pit can juggle Fox just as good as vice versa, it's just that Pit may not get as many chances.

It's no coincidence that Pit's worst records are against characters that are often named when we talk about the best neutral games - Sheik, Sonic, Diddy Kong. That's because outdoing Pit in the neutral is exactly the way to go. There just isn't a whole lot to win against Pit in situations you'd typically consider 'advantaged'.

Edit: Link doesn't get destroyed by Fox either. People have misconceptions about the character. Fox has considerable advantages against a bunch of characters but there's only a few he has significant advantages against.

 

[FeelMeUp]

Link does very fine vs Fox, yeah.
from what I've experienced as a Fox secondary(almost equal in play amount to my Sheik now, honestly), I feel like the characters that get destroyed by him are the ones that can't exploit his disadvantage or deal with his horribly oppressive speed and frame data.
His main grounded combo/setup moves up close are f2, 3 and 4 and if you can't outrange these(Bayo, Cloud, Luigi, etc do it well then you probably lose the matchup. But there's other qualities like......
"If you can't get Fox off of you without a ton of risk" - Ryu, Yoshi, Luigi do it well
"If you can't keep up with his speed and/or frame data" - Sheik, Luigi, Ryu
"If you can't exploit his godawful advantage" - Luigi, Luigi, Luigi....Sheik.
So the characters that get destroyed by Fox are usually really flawed by design in the first place.
You'll see people that main Shulk, Superheavies, Mac, Jiggs and many others complain about the Fox matchup but it's not even a big Fox problem. Sucks to say, but it's because their character was doomed to be mediocre/bad anyway and Fox exploits the hell out of bad characters.
Unfortunately, his speed and frame data+the way he interacts with characters that have bad disadvantage states singlehandedly wins him most of the matchups in the game.
As time goes on people'll either improve their edgeguarding and make the Fox MUs better or Fox mains will optimize combos and end up getting 60% off a dair at 5.....and end up making him seem even more stupid.
We'll see.

sorry for the broken rambling, kinda exhausted

 

[Deleted member]

Well for why Link is better than Shulk, Link has about twice the tournament scores Shulk does
https://smashboards.com/threads/tournament-placing-database-scoring-project.437773/
Link is heavy and has power constantly, although Shulk wins for mobility. Link's frame data is better than Shulk's, Link has damage/kill throw/projectile/aerial combos and setups. What combos and kill options does Shulk have? Link has bombs to cover landings, combo from and use as a detached lingering hitbox for stage control. Link's aerials have about 1/2 the landing lag of Shulk's and start faster.

Something tells me you didn't read my entire post.

I mentioned Shulk's combo starters: nair & down throw and forward throw in Speed Art are the best ones, and can usually lead into fair or nairs, or grabs.

Shulk's landing lag is pretty respectable for his range, especially with moves as massive as fair or nair. They have 16 frames and 10 frames of landing lag respectively, and bair has 19. Mobility matters in this game, and him having that advantage makes him more intimidating than Link. Shulk is also a heavyweight, for the record.

I'm not saying Link is a bad character in any capacity but I believe Shulk does edge him out. Results don't tell the whole story, even if they are indicators of a character's viability. There are many factors around Shulk for as to why he has low tournament rep, mostly because of how hard he is to play and that most other characters require much less effort to put time into.

 

[Fenny]

Question regarding the four characters in A tier (): who is the best candidate to reach S tier?

Mewtwo or Bayo. Mewtwo for overall being the most solid character in A tier IMO (great neutral, great kill options, great mobility - only downsides to him really is that he dies early and has a big frame) and Bayo for having a top tier punish game that can still be developed and owning tech that haven't been used to their full potential yet (step dash, lagless landings etc.). I think M2 will rise as more people pick him up since the only thing deterring people from him now is that he's complicated to use effectively. As for Bayo, it's again a results thing, and she has quite a few representatives at this stage (Pink Fresh, Saj, Capt. Zack, Wonf and Salem amongst others) so hopefully they'll come along eventually. Also as people start applying her tech, but that's gonna take a while to perfect.

 

[Nu~]

Fox doesn't have one specific, overwhelmingly powerful option in neutral that characters can't do much about. His strength in neutral is based on the sheer amount of options he has and on his ability to make a smooth transition from neutral into advantaged state. That's why Larry is so good with the character - he's a.) very unpredictable with what option he chooses to go in with, leaving the opponent in a guessing game that can turn out horribly wrong very fast and b.) similar to Nairo in that he's very good at turning neutral situations into advantaged ones.

Pit's strenghts just happen to work pretty well against that. Getting a Pit player, especially one of Earth's caliber, into a position where he's actually disadvantaged is a whole lot of work and until that point he can just fight back really well consistently. Pit also is not very vulnerable to juggles, mainly because of multiple mid-air jumps. Realistically Pit can juggle Fox just as good as vice versa, it's just that Pit may not get as many chances.

It's no coincidence that Pit's worst records are against characters that are often named when we talk about the best neutral games - Sheik, Sonic, Diddy Kong. That's because outdoing Pit in the neutral is exactly the way to go. There just isn't a whole lot to win against Pit in situations you'd typically consider 'advantaged'.

Edit: Link doesn't get destroyed by Fox either. People have misconceptions about the character. Fox has considerable advantages against a bunch of characters but there's only a few he has significant advantages against.

Wait, but why is it hard to put pit into a disadvantage state with fox? A character's who's deep pool of powerful options all lead into advantage situations. Honestly, it feels like every move fox has links into something else. Pit has a good amount of tools to fight back, but nearly all of them are less useful in nuetral than fox's.

I understand that multi jumps help alternate pit's landing, but I challenge the argument that it makes pit that much harder to juggle. How does a character with air speed that awful and relatively slow fall speed get back to the ground safely against fox who runs the speed of sound to where you are above him and then throws out a myriad autocanceled uairs?

 

[soniczx123]

Fox doesn't have one specific, overwhelmingly powerful option in neutral that characters can't do much about. His strength in neutral is based on the sheer amount of options he has and on his ability to make a smooth transition from neutral into advantaged state. That's why Larry is so good with the character - he's a.) very unpredictable with what option he chooses to go in with, leaving the opponent in a guessing game that can turn out horribly wrong very fast and b.) similar to Nairo in that he's very good at turning neutral situations into advantaged ones.

Pit's strenghts just happen to work pretty well against that. Getting a Pit player, especially one of Earth's caliber, into a position where he's actually disadvantaged is a whole lot of work and until that point he can just fight back really well consistently. Pit also is not very vulnerable to juggles, mainly because of multiple mid-air jumps. Realistically Pit can juggle Fox just as good as vice versa, it's just that Pit may not get as many chances.

It's no coincidence that Pit's worst records are against characters that are often named when we talk about the best neutral games - Sheik, Sonic, Diddy Kong. That's because outdoing Pit in the neutral is exactly the way to go. There just isn't a whole lot to win against Pit in situations you'd typically consider 'advantaged'.

Edit: Link doesn't get destroyed by Fox either. People have misconceptions about the character. Fox has considerable advantages against a bunch of characters but there's only a few he has significant advantages against.

>best neutral game
>Sonic

 

[FeelMeUp]

i actually missed that.
yeah, no.
Sheik and Diddy's neutrals are in a tier of their own.
Sonic's should be well below that.
I'd put Rosa(might be inflated because Dabuz has like.....the best/second best neutral I've ever seen) and MM up there before I did Sonic.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Yeah, why would a character with the best ground mobility in the whole game, one of the best grab games and freaking Spin Dash be considered to have one of the best neutral games? What an absurd thought ...

[Incidentally Rosalina probably ranks pretty high among Pit's worst matchups as well]

Wait, but why is it hard to put pit into a disadvantage state with fox? A character's who's deep pool of powerful options all lead into advantage situations. Honestly, it feels like every move fox has links into something else. Pit has a good amount of tools to fight back, but nearly all of them are less useful in nuetral than fox's.

I understand that multi jumps help alternate pit's landing, but I challenge the argument that it makes pit that much harder to juggle. How does a character with air speed that awful and relatively slow fall speed get back to the ground safely against fox who runs the speed of sound to where you are above him and then throws out a myriad autocanceled uairs?

Double jumps don't just help alternate landing but also give you a quick, non-commiting option to avoid getting juggled. Unlike most other characters, who forfeit their best disadvantaged option by using up their mid-air jump, Pit can just use it multiple times. That's worth a lot ... especially when you don't have a huge hurtbox and high fall speed. Makes it just extremely tough to get a juggle in.

Pit isn't hard to get into disadvantaged state by Fox specifically but jut hard to get into disadvantage in general ... for every character. He's hard to approach head-on ... has a disruptive projectile, a decent keep-away game against grounded and aerial options, approaching him with dash -> shield is difficult because he has a very good grab and arrows to deal with those options. And then once you have his feet off the ground he can just jump away and alternate between going to the ledge, using down B to protect himself, using one of his multiple mid-air jumps, using an airdodge or using his pretty safe bair. So where other characters are in trouble and have to make a RPS decision between airdodging, wasting their double jump or using an aerials Pit still has a ton of options. If you just watch how Earth plays it'll actually become blatantly obvious how it works.

 

[Das Koopa]

Is Rosa really one of Pit's worst? I mean...

It starts out bad for Kuro but by the end he kinda destroyed Dabuz and shook him into switching to Olimar.

 

[PK Gaming]

So apparently ZeRo considers Shulk to be upper mid tier...? Mind you, this isn't a "look how stupid ZeRo is dohoho~" post since I actually like him, but it's still a suspect placement. Shulk is seriously lacking in terms of results, and "potential" can't justify being placed over so many solid characters. What's the dealio?

 

[Dabuz]

Is Rosa really one of Pit's worst? I mean...

It starts out bad for Kuro but by the end he kinda destroyed Dabuz and shook him into switching to Olimar.

In theory Rosa would win the matchup IMO, but Kuro has the matchup experience I don't

@TDK Diddy is easy to combo, Pikmin are good against Bananas and forcing Diddy to approach but Olimar is great at limiting his approach, and since Olimar is small, Diddy struggles to keep him in the disadvantage.

@Ulevo I have a lot of experience in the matchup; Olimar can lose a huge lead off one mistake. MK respawn invincibility is especially scary. There is also no strong way to deal with MK air camping with his multiple jumps since he can jump over pikmin and not approach until he wants.

 

[meticulousboy]

How did Pit even come up in this thread all of a sudden? All I know is that he has the Down B push effect that can gimp.

 

[C0rvus]

His placement on recent tier lists relative to older ones was brought up, and discussion about him naturally followed. Opinions of Pit seem pretty high, and I would have to agree. You can't watch Earth and Kuro go to work and think lowly of the character. His spot has gone down because top/high tier spots are more competitive now, what with every newcomer DLC and Mewtwo being up there, and patches shaking things up.

Pit's always just kind of been there, doing his thing. More or less all fundamentals. Perhaps the perfect example of an upper mid tier character. Not stupid enough to be dominant, but solid and relevant in his own right.

 

[Rizen]

Something tells me you didn't read my entire post.

I mentioned Shulk's combo starters: nair & down throw and forward throw in Speed Art are the best ones, and can usually lead into fair or nairs, or grabs.

Shulk's landing lag is pretty respectable for his range, especially with moves as massive as fair or nair. They have 16 frames and 10 frames of landing lag respectively, and bair has 19. Mobility matters in this game, and him having that advantage makes him more intimidating than Link. Shulk is also a heavyweight, for the record.

I'm not saying Link is a bad character in any capacity but I believe Shulk does edge him out. Results don't tell the whole story, even if they are indicators of a character's viability. There are many factors around Shulk for as to why he has low tournament rep, mostly because of how hard he is to play and that most other characters require much less effort to put time into.

The problem with Shulk is he doesn't have those things at once. He can't maintain speed art or any art and trades off for the advantages he gets. Shulk's heavy but in 2 of his arts he takes more damage and in one he receives move knockback, which really deters from that. When in shield art he has the weight but his mobility is terrible. The point I said was Link has power, weight and damage consistently.

Nair's landing lag is good, I admit I misread the frame data but a frame 13 combo starter isn't the best of combo starters. Mobility matters for sure but Shulk's also taking more damage or dealing less damage/knockback during his limited mobility. I'm not buying that a frame 13 Nair is more threatening than a frame 8 bomb throw/drop. Grab>Dthrow is good but then again you lose it without arts.

Link is also very hard to play but he has better results. Characters being hard to play does not give them an excuse for poor performances. Sheik is hard to play but a top 3 character because she is really good. Link is hard to play but a low tier because he's mediocre. Like I said before Link has better frame data, setups and power. There's not real evidence pointing to Shulk being better than Link.



The problem with going on potential and theory without the foundation of results is it always seems to work toward personal bias. If Pika or Ryu is a top 3 character, let them show it. Same goes for Link, Shulk, Pit, Zelda, etc, etc, in their respective tiers.

 

[Joey T.]

How did Pit even come up in this thread all of a sudden? All I know is that he has the Down B push effect that can gimp.

I know I will sound harsh, but if you cannot add anything more useful to the discussion, you should refrain yourself from posting this kind of thing.

To add to the discussion of the viability of Pit, if I recall correctly, Nairo said he stopped using him seriously because he has no quick "get off me" options when his opponent is really close. Question for the Pit experts, is that so? And it's that big of a deal?