Official 4BR Tier List v2.0 - Competitive Impressions

[Y2Kay]

We finally got the replay of the Some vs Abadango.

It's just the same old, same old: Abadango get's bodied for his bad habits. He keeps using Air dodges like get out of jail free cards, doesn't mix up his ledge get up options/ ledge cancels, and was not selective enough about where and when he threw shadow balls.

(I'm happy Some won tho)

 

[UberMadman]

UberMadman

Since we are in a multi-char meta more and more every day... what MUs could a pocket BowJ come into play? I really like the character, so a few top or high tier MUs that validate him might give him a powerful niche. Id imagine mechakoopa ground contr and fsmash might hurt marth? But SHAD and edgeguarding... idk. Thoughts?

As a dedicated Jr. player, my opinion right now is not many, sadly. To figure out what matchups Jr. would be good in, first we have to look at what his major strengths are:

+ Great juggling ability
+ Strong edgeguarding
+ Disjoints w/good hitboxes (mostly)

So the kind of characters Jr. excels at are characters with lackluster disadvantage states, limited or predictable recovery, and lack of disjoints/projectiles to compete against Jr.'s. Unfortunately, most of the top tier characters in Smash 4 tend to have good-to-nonexistent disadvantage states, strong recoveries, and oppressively good hitboxes themselves, lending Jr's positives moot in a lot of matchups against high-to-top tier characters. There are, however, a couple of exceptions of course.

Ryu

Compared to most top and high tiers in Smash 4, Ryu has a very honest neutral and disadvantage state, making his claim to fame lie in his solid frame data, high damage, and reliable kill confirms, (which is probably why he doesn't do as amazingly well as the top tier characters in this primarily neutral based metagame, but that's another topic entirely.) In the neutral, Bowser Jr. can compete against Ryu because his disjoints beat out almost all of Ryu's buttons and allow him to stay just out of Ryu's ideal range. Mechakoopa ground control is especially annoying for Ryu too, as he has very committal jump arcs, so it's easy to punish his attempts to avoid Mechakoopa. Ryu's weight and falling speed also make him more susceptible to juggles as well, (though he can FADC past pretty much all of Jr.'s aerials,) and his very linear recovery is easily intercepted by Bowser Jr. I'm not sure the exact matchup ratio, but it's not that bad a matchup at all, and can easily be won if the Ryu player lacks experience.

Here's the infamous set between Jade's Bowser Jr. and Trela's Ryu. Of course, Trela makes a lot of mistakes in this set which clearly stem from him not knowing the matchup that well, but I think it's still a good example of how the two cjaracters interact in neutral.

Captain Falcon

At this time, I still think this matchup is slightly in Falcon's favor simply due to his better mobility and overall frame data, but even so it's relatively close to even and I might even call it in Jr.'s favor if I got more Falcon experience myself... anyway, my point is it's definitely doable for both parties. Like Ryu, Falcon dislikes disjoints, is juggled easily, and has an even easier to ruin recovery, and Mechakoopa restricts his amazing options out of dash, though it can be hard to get one out on the field against him sometimes. A well practiced Jr. might serve as a good Falcon counterpick, though there are almost definitely better ones.

Finally, he has one more surprisingly decent relevant matchup, at least in my experience...

Cloud

For the longest time, I couldn't comprehend why I had a good success rate against Cloud with my Jr. One time in bracket, I encountered a Cloud who I won a game against with my Jr., counterpicked to Mewtwo against figuring my win was a fluke, lost against with Mewtwo, counterpicked back to Jr., and won against a second time to advance. I started thinking about all the aspects of the matchup to find out why I was able to win at all, and now I think I have a *decent* idea why this is a doable matchup for Jr. Not winning, just... doable.

To begin with, let's tackle the obvious: Cloud's recovery is ass. Not every character can exploit this because his nair is really hard to challenge, but Bowser Jr. has descending fastfall fair/dair and Mechakoopa to pretty safely gimp Cloud with limited risk. I struggled to understand why Jr. has any chance in all in neutral though, but I believe it's that because Cloud tends to approach with short hop or full hop aerials, he tends to struggle with Jr.'s fair and bair a lot, which tend hits him under his nair, through his dair, and well before his fair unless he spaces it perfectly, so he can't afford to be lazy in neutral and plan his approaches carefully. However, unlike a lot of swordsmen, a lot of his grounded buttons hit Jr. at kart height, meaning he gets less reward off of them. Finally, though Jr. struggles a lot vs. shield, Cloud does not get very good reward on his grab, (but Limit is always a pain,) so it's not too risky for Jr. to play a bit aggressively against his shield compared to most top tiers. So basically, Mechakoopa forces aerial approach that Jr. can win if he plays well, Cloud lacks good grounded buttons v. Jr., Jr. can afford to pressure his shield, and he is very easily edgeguarded. I still feel he wins the matchup handily, and Jr. is not a Cloud counterpick by any means, but it's workable with Jr.

That's about it as far as top/high tiers are concerned, almost all of the other ones beat Jr. pretty handily. His other positive matchups tend to include characters like and who aren't that relevant in the metagame anyway, so I can't really recommend Jr. as a counterpick unless you really want to play off of matchup inexperience.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

Captain Falcon

At this time, I still think this matchup is slightly in Falcon's favor simply due to his better mobility and overall frame data, but even so it's relatively close to even and I might even call it in Jr.'s favor if I got more Falcon experience myself... anyway, my point is it's definitely doable for both parties. Like Ryu, Falcon dislikes disjoints, is juggled easily, and has an even easier to ruin recovery, and Mechakoopa restricts his amazing options out of dash, though it can be hard to get one out on the field against him sometimes. A well practiced Jr. might serve as a good Falcon counterpick, though there are almost definitely better ones.

Finally, he has one more surprisingly decent relevant matchup, at least in my experience...

I think it's very much in Falcon's favor. Falcon combos Jr. for years, has a much better neutral, better mobility, and just as potent, if not more potent, edge guards simply due to how Jr's up b works when he gets knocked into free fall and the fact that Falcon's rather good off stage himself. Getting rid of mecha koopa is as simple as timing a dash attack and throwing it somewhere else (at jr., offstage, z drop it above him) and just avoiding it entirely with basic movement options like jumping or rolling isn't exactly hard. BJr.'s side b is already a rather ineffective gimmick and it's mix up is completely destroyed by simply standing and holding jab and shielding/spot dodging if you think their going to attack or continuing to abuse your crazy jab if you think they're going to tomahawk grab. Or even just smacking the jump with your own aerials. And Falcon doesn't really care all that much about disjoint unless it's on a stupidly quick move that combos into itself and everything else (hello Sheik fair). Disjoint allows characters to wall Ryu out because he struggles more at closing the gap. Falcon is great at closing those gaps, he's the second fastest character in the game when it comes to grounded mobility.
In fact, Bowser Jr. is one of my favorite match ups as Falcon because Jr.'s a great punching bag and it's such an up hill battle for him.

 

[Luigi player]

We finally got the replay of the Some vs Abadango.

It's just the same old, same old: Abadango get's bodied for his bad habits. He keeps using Air dodges like get out of jail free cards, doesn't mix up his ledge get up options/ ledge cancels, and was not selective enough about where and when he threw shadow balls.

(I'm happy Some won tho)

While Aba did make mistakes and sometimes got predictable it's not like Mewtwo can do much more out of getting hit than airdodge. I often try doing a fair or nair and get combo'd over half the stage because of it, even though there would've been time for an airdodge. Mewtwos aerials all have a bit of startup and even though fair and nair are somewhat fast, fair has to have the opponent at the exact right spot to hit, while nair is prone to trading (obviously a bad thing for Mewtwo). Mewtwo doesn't have too many options besides airdodge to get out of combo-/50:50 stuff. Though the airdodge is super good because of immediately getting its mobility with it so it's oftentimes hard to follow and you have to predict where it goes (of course this also helps in getting too airdodge-happy and making it a bad habit to always do it immediately or something).

Getting back onto the stage can be pretty difficult for Mewtwo as well, so it doesn't surprise me he seems to be doing the same stuff over and over. You definitely don't want to hover above Greninja with Mewtwos floatiness, and normal getup/roll/getupattack can all get punished badly so they're always risky too (dropping down and doublejumping back is the most save option imo, since you can threaten with a fair, doublejump through, or some other stuff, but at least you can control your movement as well with it (this can be risky depending on the rest of the characters options / attributes of course).

I think he could've survived the stagespike if he used sideB first to get further to the stage and then upB, but he probably "panick-button'd" with the upB, which wouldn't have reached because of maybe too much hitstun than he would've hoped for / expected.

It's scary to see all these Greninja combos he has with rage. One rollread and you eat a lot while also losing stagecontrol. It's not like players are always going to play perfectly and Greninja has scary tools, he also makes you (at least myself) wanna roll in on him, but he has such great mobility that it doesn't even work, even though in my mind it would seem to, lol.


Btw, on the topic of . I think he's is a little underrated. Just lost to one in tourney with Mewtwo/Luigi. It's kinda annoying that he can just hover above you all day while you are either standing on the ground and get threatened by bair or something, while if you try to catch him in the air he also threatens a lot with his bair (which even moves his body back a bit to avoid attacks). It's so hard to catch this character it's really unfunny... and Gordos are always more scary than everyone seems to be saying (not that I didn't know that already - it's not like I had no D3 experience, but my stuff did work worse against this player who was pretty good), I'm trading with them all day which is not what I wanna do. Of course Luigi doesn't have too much range and Mewtwo's stuff is kinda slow and not too disjointed, but it's still more difficult than people make it out to be. They cover him up really well, he can catch and throw them back (it was my fault I wasn't ready for those tho), and he can even catch a lot of approaches with SideB which somehow shrinks his hurtbox like it's not there anymore, lol (where he will hit the Gordo).

Good thing I tried Diddy in my losers set against him after I lost with Mewtwo game 1 again, since I could camp him out with peanuts (who throw back Gordos)/bananas, fair-wall him, punish stuff with banana combos, sideB grab him (this was the main reason I wanted to try Diddy since the moving grab is so useful in the MU) etc. Even though it was still scary sometimes since one mistake that get's you into a bad position and one good read of him and the stock can be gone super fast. You also have to be vary of his transcendant super strong dashattack all the time so you can't just throw something risky out.

 

[TheGoodGuava]

He has very very average mobility if not below. Poor air speed and average run speed, total lack of burst mobilty unlike DK or Bowser with their dash attacks. Edgeguarding is mediocre too. Just because he can put out hitboxes offstage doesn't make him good at edgeguarding.

The total inability to actually go offstage himself without huuuge risk and little reward leaves his edgeguarding only about as good as link, or diddy's. He can do it if he has too, but he'll get far more mileage out of establishing stage control.

I wouldn't really call an air speed of 1.1 low, even with an average air accel. His running speed is pretty average at 1.63, his walk speed is just a tiny bit above average at 1.155. His grounded mobility is average while his aerial mobility is strong, especially mixed with his b reverses

Its not that he can put out hitboxes while offstage that makes him good at edgeguarding, its that he can force options with cans and then punish them without almost no risk. His ledge trapping is also pretty damn good

 

[FeelMeUp]

D3 loses really badly to you not taking his baits. If he's floating in the air he'll try to bair you on landing. There is NO mixup potential. He won't land and tilt/smash or grab. He can only fair or bair. Wait until he does it then punish the landing lag(If he doesn't AC the bair).
If a D3 tosses a Gordo at midrange his data is often too slow to play tennis with you. If he throws a Gordo at the edge and does anything but charge fsmash to the point where it can hit the lip, just pull what you should against ROB and wait.
He preys on people that don't know how to deal with his massive range or weird "lack" of endlag on certain moves(fsmash dsmash) and almost all of his wins come from lack of MU experience. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the character drops to bottom 1-2 below Zelda.

 

[DunnoBro]

I wouldn't really call an air speed of 1.1 low, even with an average air accel. His running speed is pretty average at 1.63, his walk speed is just a tiny bit above average at 1.155. His grounded mobility is average while his aerial mobility is strong, especially mixed with his b reverses

Its not that he can put out hitboxes while offstage that makes him good at edgeguarding, its that he can force options with cans and then punish them without almost no risk. His ledge trapping is also pretty damn good

Like I said, his mobility is either average or low. Low if you include burst mobility options. (Options that accelerate a character momentarily. Bouncing fish, flip kick, certain DAs, etc) Of which he has none.

And cans only force out options of recoveries without a hitbox. Otherwise, the general hitbox of their recovery will protect them. (And I wouldn't consider being good vs already bad recoveries 'good at edgeguarding')

Trick shot also won't even kill offstage 150+ either. It sends them more up than away, so it won't be getting any low % kills that makes edgeguarding so valuable.

I get it though, it SEEMS like he's good at edgeguarding. Can put out a lot of hitboxes offstage, but everything is so weak and the angles aren't good for edgeguarding. (Lots of 'saving' upward diagonal angles') He can hit you, but it doesn't really matter. Often, they'll make it back before he does at lower percent.

 

[Bowserboy3]

I'm not sure whether this was bought up here, but I thought I would at least share it, just in case.

Abadango's Top 24 Characters: https://twitter.com/Abadango_/status/773772665731416064

Spoiler: For Lazy Folk

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There's one character on here that might be worth discussing. I'm pretty sure you can all see who it is.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

D3 loses really badly to you not taking his baits. If he's floating in the air he'll try to bair you on landing. There is NO mixup potential.

DDD's landing options are pretty good and underappreciated. He can't just "only bair at landing". He can also use reverse Inhale, Gordo Toss or empty landing -> roll away. Not many characters have four options upon landing that are really viable in most situations. What makes matters even worse is that DDD has insanely high fast falling speed which makes it quite hard to predict what he's actually gonna do. Against certain characters DDD should be able to cover himself pretty nicely - challenging his bair head-on is already not worth it for just about anybody ... not many characters can navigate around it as easily as Fox or Sonic do.

Best thing you can do is get a lead on DDD and simply refuse to engage him in his walling game alltogether and then give him a taste of his own medicine. Not all characters can do that easily or reliably though.

 

[Yonder]

I'm not sure whether this was bought up here, but I thought I would at least share it, just in case.

Abadango's Top 24 Characters: https://twitter.com/Abadango_/status/773772665731416064

Spoiler: For Lazy Folk

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There's one character on here that might be worth discussing. I'm pretty sure you can all see who it is.

Sonic in his OWN TIER?!? Well I don't agree with that, but if the metagame regressed to a 100% camp fest and running the clock then maybe. By that point I'll have probably quit Smash 4.

That's who we were insinuating, right? Right?

Spoiler

Link. I'll let Radical Larry handle this one.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

If somebody actually thinks Sonic is the best character in the game it'd have to be mostly, if not entirely, based on KEN's performance at Umebura SAT. That has been the most dominant showing of the character by far. It also has virtually nothing to do with camping, running away or going for the time out but everything with movement optimization, precise punishment and consistency. In other words: pretty much what people want to see.

 

[Wintermelon43]

I'm not sure whether this was bought up here, but I thought I would at least share it, just in case.

Abadango's Top 24 Characters: https://twitter.com/Abadango_/status/773772665731416064

Spoiler: For Lazy Folk

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-,,
-,,,
-,,,
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There's one character on here that might be worth discussing. I'm pretty sure you can all see who it is.

I don't really hate Link anymore, in fact, I think he might even be low mid now, but that is still ridiculous. I'm sure this is because of T getting good results, but Kamemushi has been getting better results and is still below him? Weird.

Marth and Corrin definitely aren't that high either. Pit, Lucas, and Lucario at least have good rep in Japan so I'm not surprised they got placed there, but what the heck are Marth and Corrin doing up there? Doesn't Marth just have Fuwa and Corrin just have YOC?

 

[ShadowGuy1]

I don't really hate Link anymore, in fact, I think he might even be low mid now, but that is still ridiculous. I'm sure this is because of T getting good results, but Kamemushi has been getting better results and is still below him? Weird.

Marth and Corrin definitely aren't that high either. Pit, Lucas, and Lucario at least have good rep in Japan so I'm not surprised they got placed there, but what the heck are Marth and Corrin doing up there? Doesn't Marth just have Fuwa and Corrin just have YOC?

It's called opeenions my good Watson. I do agree Corrin is not that high, but I don't see how Corrin is worse than pit. Why do people always think that when a Japanese player makes a tier lists it's always about results. And also to clarify that Link MegaMan thing, characters within tiers are not ordered, so I'm sure he has mega man higher than link.

 

[Wintermelon43]

It's called opeenions my good Watson. I do agree Corrin is not that high, but I don't see how Corrin is worse than pit. Why do people always think that when a Japanese player makes a tier lists it's always about results. And also to clarify that Link MegaMan thing, characters within tiers are not ordered, so I'm sure he has mega man higher than link.

Yea, Corrin is better than Pit. The problem is that if he's gonna put characters like Link, Pit, and Lucas so high due to japanese results, it doesn't make logical sense to put Corrin or Marth that high (Or Mega Man that low)

 

[ShadowGuy1]

Yea, Corrin is better than Pit. The problem is that if he's gonna put characters like Link, Pit, and Lucas so high due to japanese results, it doesn't make logical sense to put Corrin or Marth that high (Or Mega Man that low)

He's probably using the best of both America and Japan. Marths results are great in America, so maybe he used that over his results in Japan, and use Japanese results more than the American fir the other two. However yeah j do agree with you if Abadango had been like Komo or KEN, rarely traveling to the US

 

[Bowserboy3]

At this point in time, there is no reason to say that Marth is too high on Abadango's list. Sure, if his tiers were ordered, you could maybe say 16th place is too high, but by what, around 2 or 3 spaces too high.

 

[FamilyTeam]

I think Marth is 15th and Lucina is 23rd, right now. Depending on what may or may not happen in the metagame I might shove them back to 20-28 respectively, but now, I think they're really proving their worth.
Thought it was an interesting observation made earlier about how people respect Marth's range but don't respect Lucina's at all, and how if you didn't respect neither maybe people would have an easier time fighting Marth. I have watched matches in the past where you can really screw a Marth up by challenging his range, so maybe it really is something that should be done more often?

 

[FallofBrawl]

DDD can empty jump into up tilt, it's invincible with a really good and deceptive horizontal hitbox in the front. But other than that yea his mix up potential isn't great (his standing grab goes really far though)

More people need to utilize dair autocancels, especially with Link and Falco. T autocancels dair regularly in match and Falco has some nice and safe cross up potential with his.

 

[TurboLink]

DDD can empty jump into up tilt, it's invincible with a really good and deceptive horizontal hitbox in the front. But other than that yea his mix up potential isn't great (his standing grab goes really far though)

More people need to utilize dair autocancels, especially with Link and Falco. T autocancels dair regularly in match and Falco has some nice and safe cross up potential with his.

Link's auto-cancel on his dair is not good. It auto-cancels on the 65th frame and his dair ends on the 64th frame (And of course it can auto-cancel on the first 9 frames). Trying to use the auto-cancel on Link's dair in the neutral (unless you mean something else) will only telegraph your intentions and likely get you punish.
Quite frankly Link's auto-cancels are **** (Not Shulk levels of ****.) because Sakurai decided to put Link's best auto-cancels on his safest aerials (Bair and Nair.) instead of putting better auto-cancels on his forward aerial, down aerial,and up aerial. But if Link's dair could auto-cancel out of a short-hop then Link's shield pressure would be pretty dang good. And it's not like Link's dair would be easy to challenge. Especially if used unpredictably in the neutral.

tl;dr The auto-cancel on Link's dair is not really good in the neutral and should probably only be used for edgeguarding and trying to prevent yourself from being juggled.

Source: http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/Link

P.S. Why do aerial tethers have so much end lag?

 

[Luigi player]

DDD's landing options are pretty good and underappreciated. He can't just "only bair at landing". He can also use reverse Inhale, Gordo Toss or empty landing -> roll away. Not many characters have four options upon landing that are really viable in most situations. What makes matters even worse is that DDD has insanely high fast falling speed which makes it quite hard to predict what he's actually gonna do. Against certain characters DDD should be able to cover himself pretty nicely - challenging his bair head-on is already not worth it for just about anybody ... not many characters can navigate around it as easily as Fox or Sonic do.

Best thing you can do is get a lead on DDD and simply refuse to engage him in his walling game alltogether and then give him a taste of his own medicine. Not all characters can do that easily or reliably though.

To add onto this, D3 can also just float around all day while you basically have to stay in your shield. I tried this and my shield got smaller and smaller, so I had to run away sometimes after I stayed in it too long. When I try to camp him he throws up Gordos and floats around near me so that I have to react somehow to it, because he could come down suddenly without being able to react to it. Oftentimes I was near the edge, because of keeping my distance, but this is a bad thing, because it corners you hard. Unless you're Sonic or someone with really great ground or airspeed this is a super scary position to be in. His nair has superlittle lag, and his bair (or sweetspot dair too?) should have enough shieldstun that he's save as well.

I also often tried to spotdodge out of shield on reaction when he finally comes down. Most of the time I got hit with bair at the startup frames of my spotdodge, lol. And once I even stayed in shield, because of reacting too slowly (I was glad I stayed in shield and didn't get hit again, lol).

 

[Bowserboy3]

Though it was an interesting observation made earlier about how people respect Marth's range but don't respect Lucina's at all, and how if you didn't respect neither maybe people would have an easier time fighting Marth. I have watched matches in the past where you can really screw a Marth up by challenging his range, so maybe it really is something that should be done more often?

The reason people don't challenge Marth's range, is because it's actually quite hard to do, because, in short his range is so good, it's hard for most characters in the cast to challenge it. Sure, if you can get in close to him, it can create a little problem for him, but how do you challenge his range to give him something to think about when he outranges almost all of your options? The same can be said for Lucina, but I'll get onto why people don't respect her range as much later...

Just popping this quote here, from the Marth General, which explains it pretty well.

he (Marth) sits in a pretty oppressive point of balance with nearly no one in the cast matching his range while cleanly outdisjointing basically everyone; this is a dangerous combination which he didn't possess in Brawl, he could outdisjoint most of everyone [including MK due to vertical considerations] but a third of the cast or more could legit compete with his range

And continuing, when asked in comparison to Brawl...

Marth's abilities allowed him to slow the pace of the game, but it was (at least in Brawl) through really precise timing and reaction - he needed to be on point to be safe as everything he had was reasonably whiff punishable.
He isn't as whiff punishable in this game as he is in Melee (against high tiers+) or Brawl. he dictates pace for "free" rather than through the pressure of smart attack usage.

Now, going onto your point about why people respect Marth's range and not Lucina's, despite it being almost identical, it probably just has to do with his tipper, of course. The old example of, "you're at 110%, and you are head to head with Marth in the air. He Fairs you, and it tippers, and you lose your stock... now compare to Lucina, and you wouldn't have been KO'd", is a good example.

Sure, you can say in some rare situations that Lucina's moves would KO a earlier than Marth's, or are more dangerous than Marth's, her Fsmash as opposed to Marth's sourspot Fsmash, being an example, but the point is, it's a seldom used move for both characters. If both of them used a move as powerful as their Fsmashes in their neutral or spacing games, I could see Lucina's range being respected as much, if not more than Marth's. The fact likely is, that because both characters adopt the same playstyle, and because moves such as Fair, Ftilt and Nair are pivotal to their game, the fact that Marth can KO with them far earlier makes it much more of a risk to actually challenge his range. If he hits you with a sourspot, you don't you don't get KO'd, no big deal, because chances are, unless you are close to the blast line, Lucina's wouldn't have KO'd either. Remember we aren't always playing near the ledge, and very few of Lucina's standard/neutral moves can KO before Up Throw can unless somewhat near the ledge. Marth's similar moves, can.

And of course, Marth isn't going to land that tipper every time, but in short, I think because the risk is there, you have to respect it more. It's this reason why Lucario grants so much respect when he has high Aura, because the risk of losing a stock early is there. Stocks win games, and the more bigger the chances a character has to take those stocks (safely) away from the opponent, the better.

Though I must say, I don't think I have ever actually seen people say they outright don't respect Lucina's range. Lucina's range is still hard to challenge. Sure, the overall risk for when you get hit is usually lower, but how do you challenge such a long, disjointed, quick weapon easily? You don't. You have to be really careful.

 

[Jaguar360]

- istudying traveled the USA for a bit during the summer. There were also more tournaments in Europe that satisifed Koopa's criteria to be considered. Istudy attended quite a bunch of them.
- Oisiitofu appeared. He competes in a very mid-tier heavy region where Sonic and Sheik are somewhat rare, especially on his level of play.
- The tournaments Oisiitofu attends are also consistently treated as Category 2 by Koopa which, as I've explained before, is generous and gives Greninja's results an additional boost.
- Some had 2 or 3 really good results, possibly at occasions where big hitters attended something in the states like CEO or EVO.
- Other people like Venia, Waveguider [?] or Illusion probably contributed a couple of points as well but I think most of Greninja's results come from istudying, Oisii and Some.

Greninja doing so well on the rankings isn't really that surprising if you think about it. The circumstances during the whole summer were just pretty much ideal for him - istudying having time and incentive to travel the states, Oisiitofu appearing in a region that's generally pretty mid-tier friendly and Some possibly gaining some sort of consistency ... all of that is pretty huge in the 15th-25th area. If something similar happened to, say, Villager ... or Pikachu ... or some other good but underplayed character we'd see something similar.

Also, I'm pretty sure Greninja won't be able to maintain these results. Now that istudying is back in Europe again he won't get to contribute as many points. The few tournaments that meet Koopa's criteria during the fall season will likely be ranked as Category 1 for the most part [the biggest upcoming tournament in Europe that I'm aware of will take place in the winter break] too. Some won't be able to benefit from Japan's general inconsistency forever [in his case it's mostly be a case of whether he can snatch some big-name wins. Abadango and Kamemushi, for instance, are not out of reach for him] so it'll be up to how well Oisiitofu does for the most part. So until winter at least, I would expect Greninja to somewhat fall off again.

You're pretty on point for the most part, but some things are off:

• Are so you sure about Sonics and Sheiks being rare in Oisiitofu's region of Japan? In his most recent tournament he had to go through two Sonic players in a row, then fight Komorikiri's Sonic after that (which sent him to losers). In addition, Some also had to go through KEN and Edge recently, both of whom he beat.
• iStudying failed to make top 16 in the American tournaments he attended I believe, except for maybe Midwest Mayhem 2 (25th at Pound, 17th at GOML), so the majority of his points were from the European tournaments he attended, namely Avalon and the most recent DAT Blastzone monthly.
• Venia hasn't really been attending much and I don't think that the NY locals that he goes to occasionally are counted on Das Koopa's rankings since they usually hover around 60 players or so in spite of the stacked talent. He got 25th at Smash Con, but that's not top 16, so he couldn't have contributed much.

Overall, I'd say that Japan and Europe were likely the biggest sources of Greninja's recent results thanks to the likes of Some, Oisii, Elexiao, Eddy and iStudying, with some splashes of American regionals and Australian tourneys with Waveguider.

It's hard to say whether or not Greninja players will be able to keep these results up in the next coming months. Some may or may not be at Umebura 25 and placings and by his track record he'll either get 5th or 17th if he goes lol. Syndicate's this weekend, so we can expect some points from iStudying and maybe Eddy alongside him. Dunno what to expect for North American results, but Venia will likely be inactive, so we may see a few splashes of players like P2P with Gibus, Darkaura, Serge and Stroder. I don't really expect any notable Greninja players to show up at Big House, so there's that.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Can someone tell me why Ike all of a sudden dropped so much?

 

[Deleted member]

Can someone tell me why Ike all of a sudden dropped so much?

and happened, basically.

That, and his reps not being able to travel as often or using their secondaries more (somebody correct me on this if needed). Waldo did get 17th at Shine recently though which is real good.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

and happened, basically.

That, and his reps not being able to travel as often or using their secondaries more (somebody correct me on this if needed). Waldo did get 17th at Shine recently though which is real good.

To give more exact details:

Cloud honestly didn't do much to Ike in terms of active mains, probably hurt the possibility of new people picking him up because on the surface Cloud is just a faster Ike. (Below the surface, fairly different but that doesn't matter as much in terms of new people)

Corrin hurt in terms of the only two Ike mains in NA who could travel frequently. Ryuga only uses Ike as an occasional counterpick now, Ryo uses uhhhh... almost the whole FE cast, Falcon, and like half of low tier now.

San and Waldo are the best dedicated Ike mains in NA. However, San is in a region where the tournaments don't quite hit the numbers for Das Koopa's rankings, and major tournaments are too far away. Would have gone to Shine, something happened with the driver and he ended up not going. Waldo has finance problems, can't travel much. But as pointed out he did get 17th as Shine so he's starting to get there. Rango is the next one I think, no clue how he's doing recently. Typically will make it out of pools at larger tournaments but not much farther than that?

There's at least one good Ike main in Europe. Tends to get 9th at the majors he goes to over there. And basically nobody in Japan uses Ike, though there is at least one that has placed well at a larger tournament once.

---

Ike's numbers are probably going to be down for a while until the metagame sorts itself out more and stabilizes even more. At that point I suspect Ike might see more work as a CP character. He's one of the few characters that can claim having the advantage over Sonic, goes even with Rosalina, and evenish (50-50 or 45-55 depending on who you ask) with Mewtwo/Cloud/Ryu/ZSS/MegaMan/Corrin/Marth. If Lucario takes off Ike has the advantage against him as well.

What hurts him a lot for solo use, is going 40-60 against Sheik/Diddy/Bayonetta/Fox/Meta Knight. All MUs are reasonably winnable but that's uh, quite a tough crowd to be frequently going up against, and at a noticeable disadvantage while doing so. In theory Sheik and Diddy could get even worse than that if they get optimized more, Diddy in particular. Bayo might be in that group as well, her nerfed metagame is too fresh to make an accurate call.

For the other high tiers: Pika is argued a lot, 55-45 to 45-55 range. Mario is 40-60 to 45-55 depending on who you ask last I checked. Others I have no clue.

---

tl:dr version: Ike's future is probably more as a key CP character against Sonic/Lucario, maybe Rosalina/Mewtwo due to being a fairly easy character to pick up. Solo wise you'll probably see him pop up a couple times a year like San did at GOML.

 

[ReRaze]

Just a couple of nitpicks~

Sure, you can say in some rare situations that Lucina's moves would KO a earlier than Marth's, or are more dangerous than Marth's, her Fsmash as opposed to Marth's sourspot Fsmash, being an example, but the point is, it's a seldom used move for both characters. If both of them used a move as powerful as their Fsmashes in their neutral or spacing games,

It may be seldom used for Marth but for Lucina it is a staple of her gameplay, simply because it is a far more usable punish option than Marth's for obvious reasons.

^ There really is more to this than just humour, her fsmash is no joke.

and because moves such as Fair, Ftilt and Nair are pivotal to their game, the fact that Marth can KO with them far earlier makes it much more of a risk to actually challenge his range. If he hits you with a sourspot, you don't you don't get KO'd, no big deal, because chances are, unless you are close to the blast line, Lucina's wouldn't have KO'd either. Remember we aren't always playing near the ledge, and very few of Lucina's standard/neutral moves can KO before Up Throw can unless somewhat near the ledge. Marth's similar moves, can.

And of course, Marth isn't going to land that tipper every time, but in short, I think because the risk is there, you have to respect it more. It's this reason why Lucario grants so much respect when he has high Aura, because the risk of losing a stock early is there. Stocks win games, and the more bigger the chances a character has to take those stocks (safely) away from the opponent, the better.

Yeah people probably do respect Marth more due to the KO potential of moves he uses so commonly in neutral but......the thing is, his normals aren't exactly too strong either, no where near as powerful Lucario's. Lucario demands respect because he can and will kill you easily at center stage at absurdly low percents (I've seen Aura Sphere > Usmash kill at 40%).
The only move Marth has that can even compare to that is tipper Fsmash....as for his normals according to the guide by FamilyTeam , @Smudges and you yourself.
Ftilt kills midweights at about 147% without rage, Fair at 152% and Nair at 136% at centre stage so basically neutral.
Rage will only help so much. The only place these moves are scary are near the ledge or offstage where arguably few if any are in a position to challenge Marth or Lucina. That raises the question, then why do, or rather why would people respect Marth more than Lucina in neutral or at any percent below say ~110? it can't be because of tippered normals.

Something that should be noted is that losing stage control may very well lead to the end of your stock especially at higher percents, the move doesn't have to kill, just being at the ledge or offstage especially vs Marcina is a very daunting position to be in, unless you're sheik or something.

Again we could say that Marth's tippers launch the opponent a little further and so they lose more stage control but I really don't think that's enough justification to demand more respect. Is it?

Thought it was an interesting observation made earlier about how people respect Marth's range but don't respect Lucina's at all, and how if you didn't respect neither maybe people would have an easier time fighting Marth. I have watched matches in the past where you can really screw a Marth up by challenging his range, so maybe it really is something that should be done more often?

Also where did you base your statement that people respect Lucina's range less? Was it from Kogarasuma's recent gameplay? or....because not respecting Lucina's range either would be foolish and only lead to you getting outspaced and punished, after all they share the same archetype and play almost identically, if you are fighting one differently to the other you are doing something wrong.

but forget about the comparison between Marth and Lucina.

Though I must say, I don't think I have ever actually seen people say they outright don't respect Lucina's range. Lucina's range is still hard to challenge. Sure, the overall risk for when you get hit is usually lower, but how do you challenge such a long, disjointed, quick weapon easily? You don't. You have to be really careful.

I think this sums it up beautifully, I don't think it's just the tipper that demands respect but the sword itself after all it is the legendary falchion~

 

[FamilyTeam]

Also where did you base your statement that people respect Lucina's range less? Was it from Kogarasuma's recent gameplay? or....because not respecting Lucina's range either would be foolish and only lead to you getting outspaced and punished, after all they share the same archetype and play almost identically, if you are fighting one differently to the other you are doing something wrong.

Someone made a statement like that earlier (it probably wasn't phrased like "doesn't respect the range"), and I was just basing it off of that.

 

[Radical Larry]

Sonic in his OWN TIER?!? Well I don't agree with that, but if the metagame regressed to a 100% camp fest and running the clock then maybe. By that point I'll have probably quit Smash 4.

That's who we were insinuating, right? Right?

Spoiler

Link. I'll let Radical Larry handle this one.

It's not the answer you're expecting.

I'm not sure whether this was bought up here, but I thought I would at least share it, just in case.

Abadango's Top 24 Characters: https://twitter.com/Abadango_/status/773772665731416064

Spoiler: For Lazy Folk

-
-,,
-,,,
-,,,
-,,,,
-,,,,,,

There's one character on here that might be worth discussing. I'm pretty sure you can all see who it is.

You're expecting me to agree with Link's placement here or go ballistic about this, right?

Ehh...I don't necessarily agree with this, really. I'm actually wondering if anyone can ask Abadango why Link is so high on his own list; it could be because of T, or it could be due to Izaw, but I legitimately want to know why Abadango put Link where he is on his list. And this goes double for Lucas being in top 15.

Look, I just consider him 27th to 32nd by potential, so either upper mid or mid tier. Even I'm not convinced he's a top 20 character, and unless Link players begin winning major tournaments around the world, I don't think he'll hit top 20.

 

[FeelMeUp]

To add onto this, D3 can also just float around all day while you basically have to stay in your shield. I tried this and my shield got smaller and smaller, so I had to run away sometimes after I stayed in it too long. When I try to camp him he throws up Gordos and floats around near me so that I have to react somehow to it, because he could come down suddenly without being able to react to it. Oftentimes I was near the edge, because of keeping my distance, but this is a bad thing, because it corners you hard. Unless you're Sonic or someone with really great ground or airspeed this is a super scary position to be in. His nair has superlittle lag, and his bair (or sweetspot dair too?) should have enough shieldstun that he's save as well.

I also often tried to spotdodge out of shield on reaction when he finally comes down. Most of the time I got hit with bair at the startup frames of my spotdodge, lol. And once I even stayed in shield, because of reacting too slowly (I was glad I stayed in shield and didn't get hit again, lol).

Maybe I'm just saying this because fast character privilege, but I really see no reason to not wait for him to land while staying out of range of his bair. When outside of bair range you can react to gordo and should also be outside of the range of Inhale, and if he lands then rolls he loses the stage. Holding shield is a bad idea because it lets him smack you for free. Just walk around and react to his landing option. The only one you can't react to is bair, which you have no reason to challenge with most characters anyway.

You don't have to actively try to punish every single move that's whiffed. Some whiffed moves, like Bowser Jr. Fsmash and DDD's bair, should just be left alone. The characters give you a million opportunities to punish 80% of their laggy ass kits so I have no idea why you'd get greedy and try to add another one.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

You're pretty on point for the most part, but some things are off:

• Are so you sure about Sonics and Sheiks being rare in Oisiitofu's region of Japan? In his most recent tournament he had to go through two Sonic players in a row, then fight Komorikiri's Sonic after that (which sent him to losers). In addition, Some also had to go through KEN and Edge recently, both of whom he beat.
• iStudying failed to make top 16 in the American tournaments he attended I believe, except for maybe Midwest Mayhem 2 (25th at Pound, 17th at GOML), so the majority of his points were from the European tournaments he attended, namely Avalon and the most recent DAT Blastzone monthly.
• Venia hasn't really been attending much and I don't think that the NY locals that he goes to occasionally are counted on Das Koopa's rankings since they usually hover around 60 players or so in spite of the stacked talent. He got 25th at Smash Con, but that's not top 16, so he couldn't have contributed much.

Those are all fair points, especially on istudying.

 

[mountain_tiger]

mountain_tiger

Bad recovery can be crippling. At the very least, it means you will take lots of damage if you get knocked/thrown offstage. At worst, it means you can outright lose at any moment you lose advantage. This is really bad for progressing through a bracket. I think its the difference maker for ike. It can completely negate heavyweights having good survival, for example. Tier lists are comparing characters, and when you have things like flip kick and teleport recoveries vs a character that can die to fthrow into fair reads.. ouch.

I mean, look how good Cloud's characteristics have to be to negate his recovery, which is still a solid recovery when he has limit.

Absolutely a bad recovery can be a massive flaw - definitely not trying to downplay that. I meant more that the characters I listed are filed as garbage solely because 'lol recovery', without any attention being paid to their attributes otherwise. That said, this tends to work in their favour because it means folks don't bother to learn the matchups, so...

Now hold on a minute you can't put Link's recovery options in the same league as Dr. Mario and Little Mac's.
He has a tether grab, which is something neither of the other two have and allows him to mix up his mode of recovery. Add in his Gale Boomerang and Bombs and he has now has some sort of distraction that when used wisely make it at least slightly harder to gimp him than it was before.

Oh no, I certainly don't mean to imply Link's is as bad as theirs. I was just listing him as another example of a character where a significant faction of folks simply say 'lol recovery' and write him off completely.


On a side note, is there anyone who believes that Jigglypuff isn't bottom 5? Even Ganondorf and Zelda have the odd person claim they're, like, bottom 15 or something - Jigglypuff just doesn't have anyone rooting for her at all...

 

[Bowserboy3]

It's not the answer you're expecting.



You're expecting me to agree with Link's placement here or go ballistic about this, right?

Ehh...I don't necessarily agree with this, really. I'm actually wondering if anyone can ask Abadango why Link is so high on his own list; it could be because of T, or it could be due to Izaw, but I legitimately want to know why Abadango put Link where he is on his list. And this goes double for Lucas being in top 15.

Look, I just consider him 27th to 32nd by potential, so either upper mid or mid tier. Even I'm not convinced he's a top 20 character, and unless Link players begin winning major tournaments around the world, I don't think he'll hit top 20.

When I made that post, I wasn't calling for you at all, but I'm glad you at least shared your opinion. You're usually very optimistic about Link, so it's interesting to see your opinion to say the least.

I just want to know why Abadango puts Link that high in the first place. There must be a fantastic Link player in Japan I clearly don't know about.

 

[Wintermelon43]

When I made that post, I wasn't calling for you at all, but I'm glad you at least shared your opinion. You're usually very optimistic about Link, so it's interesting to see your opinion to say the least.

I just want to know why Abadango puts Link that high in the first place. There must be a fantastic Link player in Japan I clearly don't know about.

T. He keeps getting great results at nationals

 

[Megamang]

I think jiggly is slightly underrated. Air mobility, bair, nair, and obviously rest demand respect. She has a clear gameplan, and it functions to an extent. Her grab, dash attack, and jabs come together to form a decent ground game. The issue is, her weight and floatiness make trading with those moves terrible... and also cripples her in other ways. Mega's bair kills her sooo early, it sucks for her. But id say shes better off than characters that die to the bair because their recovery is hot garbage. And she can actually edgeguard others well. She is another character that c stick nairs are nice on, nair eats dodges and is really easy to crossup, and really abuses some 2 frames.


The issue is... you can always schlepp together a paragraph defending a character. But... she has a little results. A jiggly is PRd where i live, lol.


But yea, she has rest, which elevates her in a volatile smash environment. As long as 4 stocks can take you out of a bracket, rest will always elevate her above absolute garbage.

SHAD rest actually punishes a ton of poking tools. Too bad she dies to charged usmashes before rest actually starts killing. IMO rest could be even weaker, but have low cooldown on successful hit, and she'd be solid. However, this isnt balance wishes thread so i wont get into what she could have been.

 

[Das Koopa]

ESAM's rebuttal towards ZeRo. Worth listening to, imo, especially in regards to how important Luma pressure is and how it will evolve largely to Rosalina's detriment.

 

[DunnoBro]

Yea, he's super overrating Rosa. If it weren't for her recovery she'd be the best. It lends to inconsistency.

Bayo, Mewtwo, and Sonic have similar levels of safety in neutral without that glaring flaw.

 

[Ffamran]

More people need to utilize dair autocancels, especially with Link and Falco. T autocancels dair regularly in match and Falco has some nice and safe cross up potential with his.

Falco can't auto-cancel his Dair unless it's from his jump as Dair's auto-cancel is before frame 4 and after frame 37 -- 5 frames over his hop airtime -- which itself is a problem since he jumps very high. Add in Dair's 16 frame startup and Falco's low air speed and you have a very telegraphed action. Compare it to Cloud or Kirby who jump much lower, so jumping and auto-canceling their Dair won't be as telegraphed with Cloud being able to move fairly quickly in the air and Kirby being able to also auto-cancel Dair before it even starts from a hop to mess with people.

Its hitbox isn't that great for crossing up... It's not Melee where there were 2 hitboxes, one on his leg and on his body, but a slightly smaller version of Brawl's leg-only hitbox in regards to the clean hit.

Spoiler: Falco's Dair hitbox throughout Smash

Melee.

Brawl.

Smash 4.

Can he get stuff out of it? Yeah, but like I said, it's very telegraphed and the hitbox as large / threatening as Cloud, Link, Samus, or Villager's. There's more on Oji's Twitter if anyone's curious.

着地隙出さない空下カス当て|ファルコ使いの次の課題です。当てた後は低%なら弱、中%なら下強or掴み、高%ならブラスターダウン連から横スマバースト狙えます。|めくって当てたり、ガーキャン掴み読みの弱暴れなど、ガードし... https://t.co/TTw1Knd8TD

— おじぃ@まー (@finaloji) August 8, 2016

Had Dair not been a spike, it could have had a faster startup, lower landing lag, or better auto-cancel, but another problem is the implications of a Dair like that. It would need much lower active frames at the very least and possibly a change in animation since it would be weird to have say, 6 active frames, and Falco's still spinning not to the mention the attack itself was given an animation change in Smash 4 to suggest it's a spike and not this weird, extremely fast drill kick that spikes like in Melee and Brawl.

Link's auto-cancel on his dair is not good. It auto-cancels on the 65th frame and his dair ends on the 64th frame (And of course it can auto-cancel on the first 9 frames). Trying to use the auto-cancel on Link's dair in the neutral (unless you mean something else) will only telegraph your intentions and likely get you punish.
Quite frankly Link's auto-cancels are **** (Not Shulk levels of ****.) because Sakurai decided to put Link's best auto-cancels on his safest aerials (Bair and Nair.) instead of putting better auto-cancels on his forward aerial, down aerial,and up aerial. But if Link's dair could auto-cancel out of a short-hop then Link's shield pressure would be pretty dang good. And it's not like Link's dair would be easy to challenge. Especially if used unpredictably in the neutral.

tl;dr The auto-cancel on Link's dair is not really good in the neutral and should probably only be used for edgeguarding and trying to prevent yourself from being juggled.

Source: http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/Link

P.S. Why do aerial tethers have so much end lag?

They probably didn't want an Uair and a Dair that strong in terms of damage, knockback -- mostly for Dair --, that are disjoints even if they're mostly vertical, and active frames to have the ability to auto-cancel or even have lower landing lag. Uair has a total of 30 active frames and Dair has 51 active frames. Compared to Cloud's Dair, Link's has 20 more active frames and his late hits do almost twice the amount of damage of Cloud's late hit. Uair being able to auto-cancel from a hop is also kind of pointless in my opinion... What are you really going to do? Repeatedly hop up and down with Uair? Toon Link could mess around with that, but Uair's purely vertical, forces them to commit hard, and neither of them have the air speed to make Uair be an inverse of Cloud's Dair.

For Fair, it has low landing lag which would counter its poor auto-cancel window. It doesn't have the coverage of Ike's Fair or even the speed of it, but it's basically like 2 Ike Fairs in quick succession. Being able to auto-cancel it would be really, really stupid. If Link could auto-cancel with both Fair and Dair, he would have 2 aerials to do +20% on shields and safely at that.

Similarly, Zairs have low landing lag to counter their high recovery and inability to auto-cancel? Considering their range, them being disjoints, and high active frames, Zairs with low recovery would be a bit stupid. I'm just imaging Samus having a Zair with 20-ish recovery frames and just spamming it off-stage. Poke, poke, poke, poke, gimp. Zairs also being a recovery option that was improved from past games in terms of range -- no Melee stick to any surface capability -- and having low recovery frames would be stupid too since if you miss, you can just Zair quickly again instead of you miss, you deal with recovery, and have to jump back up to Zair or use your other, vertical recovery move.

 

[TDK]

I just want to know why Abadango puts Link that high in the first place. There must be a fantastic Link player in Japan I clearly don't know about.

Meet T. Second at Umebura 24, 9th at Umebura SAT, Beaten Ranai and others, and has outplaced Abadango, Komorikiri, Earth, and more.

Here's the T vs Ranai set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSo4rfKlrHI

 

[TheGoodGuava]

Absolutely a bad recovery can be a massive flaw - definitely not trying to downplay that. I meant more that the characters I listed are filed as garbage solely because 'lol recovery', without any attention being paid to their attributes otherwise. That said, this tends to work in their favour because it means folks don't bother to learn the matchups, so...



Oh no, I certainly don't mean to imply Link's is as bad as theirs. I was just listing him as another example of a character where a significant faction of folks simply say 'lol recovery' and write him off completely.


On a side note, is there anyone who believes that Jigglypuff isn't bottom 5? Even Ganondorf and Zelda have the odd person claim they're, like, bottom 15 or something - Jigglypuff just doesn't have anyone rooting for her at all...

I don't think Jigglypuff is bottom 5, there's not a chance of her leaving low tier though. Her ledge game is decent, with practice you can punish generic ledge options like rolls and attacks with rest on reaction. Nair can be used for ledge trapping in the same way Sheik's can, and back is good for pressure. Whats hard though is actually getting them to the ledge, her neutral is pretty garbage.

 

[Ninj4pikachu]

I don't think Jigglypuff is bottom 5, there's not a chance of her leaving low tier though. Her ledge game is decent, with practice you can punish generic ledge options like rolls and attacks with rest on reaction. Nair can be used for ledge trapping in the same way Sheik's can, and back is good for pressure. Whats hard though is actually getting them to the ledge, her neutral is pretty garbage.

Her neutral is similar to peaches in the sense that it is very movement based. You are essentially weaving in and out of your opponent range and either trying to force a reaction or poking yourself with reaching moves. They are unique characters in the sense that they are meant to be in the air almost at all times. This means that you don't have shield as a defensive option most of the time which hurts their neutral, but at the same time their high mobility mitigates this well.

Where puff struggles is with any one with a sword/longer limbs than her lol. No joke though dk vs puff or cloud vs puff sucks butt in neutral. Edge guarding and rest are her best gameplans and rest ain't what it used to be. Her attacks now have too much knock back compared to what she could do in melee and this hurts her wall of pain edge guard.