Official 4BR Tier List v2.0 - Competitive Impressions

[TDK]

Whenever someone says Rosa isn't top tier/rosa should move down a puppy gets timed out by Wrath's sonic.

 

[blackghost]

we need to stop obsessing over this top 5. figure out tier placings first. but i think we only care about a top 5 because of melee and brawl being so top heavy.
no other community ive seen lists top five its always "top tier" instead. top 5 is a very flawed way of looking at this game. way too many charcaters are threats abd we are STILL in a stage of the gane were a majority of players havent even faced a good user of most of the cast.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Sorry if this is off-topic but with all the questioning about tier placements does anyone have an MU chart for zard? I couldn't find one on his character discussion page!

 

[ARISTOS]

Top 10 (or 11) is useful as those 11 have proven to be whom the meta centralizes around, with everything following them being a response to that.

I do think at least // are stronger than the others and that / are the weakest links in this bunch

 

[Yonder]

Interesting. I personally think Mewtwo is near the bottom of top tier, perhaps even at #10 (that's where he ended up in the last 4BR tier list).

Where is Ryu these days? #12?

Kinda agree with Mewtwo. You can say until you're blue in the face that M2's weight doesn't hold him back too much, but it really does. He is just too light in a game where rage is determining games. Fortunately, he does have the best air dodge, mobility, landing options, and camping prowess to help mitigate it more than say light characters like Jigglypuff, G dub.

If Mewtwo had just an average air dodge and no teleport cancelling, I'd say he wouldn't be top tier. More like high.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

https://twitter.com/Ambler3/status/823312480751468544

I don't mean to distract from the Marth discussion, but seriously, what happened here?

ZeRo totally knew about this too, I feel like he definitely would have grabbed the banana if he hadn't, and after it happened he kept doing it.
What I wonder though is how many other characters this happens to.

How in the world is Cloud now back in Top 4 again?
He still loses solidly to Sheik and Bayo and slightly to Diddy, our more or less accepted top 3 at the moment (or more important, some of the most common threats at tournaments right now).

No character can be considered top 5 with that spread.

Why?

At top level, we don't see Cloud get destroyed by Sheik. Komorikiri has beat VoiD several times.
All we have of Cloud vs Bayo at the very top is Tweek vs Salem.

You site these match ups as reasons why Cloud can't be top 5, yet Diddy Kong loses to Luigi, Mega Man, Olimar, Rosalina, Marth, and it's starting to look like he loses to Mario too, as well as others that I may be forgetting because I don't use Diddy Kong.

Tell me why a character that barely loses two match ups, three at best, cannot be right below those that he loses to when he either goes even with a small number of those around him, and is the gatekeeper of the majority of characters below him.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

As far as the next tier list which I do recall is supposed to be coming out soon my predictions

On the rise: Nario has shown Bowser is probably better than his current 32nd place and with other top players giving him praise like Mr. R he should make a decent jump.

- Obvious reasons


-Way better then the worst of low tier and his results have started to pick up a bit with more usage from Ryo in particular who thinks he's as high as top 25.

- Not to be knee jerking or have recent bias but I think the Japanese Dogs have shown people have slept on the Dog a bit much I don't expect a large bump up but he's going to go up.

Will probably take Cloud's spot for two, is going to get bumped up appropriately, will get a nice bump as the nerf midset in people has worn down.

Going down:

- Just slightly she's still bonkers tho thier are better contenders for Top 5.

- As good as this character looks on paper he still isn't getting results of best of Mid tier character

- Might be more related to Ranai not being at a bunch of tournaments but this is another character that has kinda just stagnanted a bit. Not a large drop by any means but a drop still

- Not by a lot, when your two top level reps disappear for long times drops will happen (and even then his results have not dropped significantly 18th in the results thread is 2 spots lower than his current tier list placing). With them returning FOW getting 17th and Zero Saga and then 49th at G4 and Shaky 33rd at G4 I hope they can keep attending tournaments and pushing Ness. I think he will finally get set in that 20-25 range that I've always thought he should be at.

Just a few thoughts

 

[Poisonous]

Dude, Leo used Cloud for most of his matches. Did he use Marth at all prior to top 8?

A bit late, but he pulled Marth out vs Raffi X, a NE ROB main, after losing with Cloud.

 

[arbustopachon]

Im pretty sure zard will rise up to low tier now that he has some results. Bowser will probs go up too.

 

[Goombo]

Why?

At top level, we don't see Cloud get destroyed by Sheik. Komorikiri has beat VoiD several times.

Did you ever watch Mr R vs any Cloud? He is significantly better than Void (who also never lost to a lesser Cloud than Komo) at the matchup and destroyed every Cloud so far. Komo going Sonic vs him first of the top Sheiks tells something.
And by the way, Void forced Komo off Cloud last time they played, too.

All we have of Cloud vs Bayo at the very top is Tweek vs Salem.

No we don't?
There is massive footage of M2K, Leo, Komo and Tweek losing to Bayos all over the world compared to only a few wins against not-quite-toplevel Bayos and one against Salem.

You site these match ups as reasons why Cloud can't be top 5, yet Diddy Kong loses to Luigi, Mega Man, Olimar, Rosalina, Marth, and it's starting to look like he loses to Mario too, as well as others that I may be forgetting because I don't use Diddy Kong.

First of all none of these matchups are nearly as relevant compared to Sheik, Diddy and Bayo. Second none looked really problematic over the last year, it is still considered a bigger upset if any player of these charakters (bar Kameme) beats Zinoto and they just don't beat Zero at all.

Also putting Marth there sounds a bit knee-jerky and I don't see Rosa still winning against Diddy.

Tell me why a character that barely loses two match ups, three at best, cannot be right below those that he loses to when he either goes even with a small number of those around him, and is the gatekeeper of the majority of characters below him.

Three at best? We forgetting Pikachu still exists again? Bowser and Charizard having a positive record at this moment also should be mentioned.

And being gatekeeper doesn't make up for bad top tier matchups at all.

 

[Deleted member]

I think Shulk could rise from where he is right now. Maybe around 40-38th if I'm being realistic. The character has put in a good amount of work the past year or so and with Kome coming to the States soon it'll be exciting to see what direction his meta will be heading.

 

[The-Technique]

Kinda agree with Mewtwo. You can say until you're blue in the face that M2's weight doesn't hold him back too much, but it really does. He is just too light in a game where rage is determining games. Fortunately, he does have the best air dodge, mobility, landing options, and camping prowess to help mitigate it more than say light characters like Jigglypuff, G dub.

If Mewtwo had just an average air dodge and no teleport cancelling, I'd say he wouldn't be top tier. More like high.

Amidst all the cynicism, I think people still forget that Abadango took 5th place at Genesis 4...just saying

 

[Nidtendofreak]

There will be some shuffling in low tier but I don't see anyone leaving it unless the voting period happens too soon to G4 and the voters are still high on DHD hype.

+ Marth, Luigi, Bowser, Bayonetta, Robin, Lucina
- Pit, Ryu, Cloud, Ness, Yoshi, maybe Corrin and Villager

 

[Frihetsanka]

Some of my thoughts:

Characters that likely will rise a bit:

for obvious reasons, #11 is too low.
will at least be top 15, probably top 13 even, #19 is too low.
will rise a few spots thanks to Nairo and some Bowser mains getting some results. ZeRo's video might also influence opinions, I suppose?
will probably move up a few spots.
is likely to move up a lot, I guess.
Obviously.
6th worst in the game? I think Ryo proves that Roy is a bit better than that.

Characters that likely will drop a bit:

is not bad, but #9? Probably more around #11-13.
#12? Naw.
#16 with that MU chart? I doubt it.
I think Ike is a bit too high on the tier list, he should be moved down a few spots.
Is mainly a counter-pick character, solo Kirby is worse than many G tier characters.

 

[Vyrnx]

Cloud getting "destroyed" by Sheik and Diddy was a myth invented by this thread in early-mid 2016.

All of Cloud's MUs look better and better. This game has become more ledge trap centric with characters like Cloud and Marth especially excelling at those with strong, sweeping moves. Ledge trapping and generally better conversions have forced the ZSS MU to be seriously reevaluated. Even ZSS, a character widely regarded as having one of the best disadvantage states, does not have a way to consistently get off the ledge vs Cloud. For a long time, this MU was considered 60:40 ZSS with Nairo and Marss' ridiculously winning records against Tweek and M2K. Now Nairo and Marss both consider the MU slightly losing.

The only character who appears to have good ledge get up options against even the top ledge trapping characters is Bayo. Characters with otherwise good disadvantage states like ZSS, Sheik, etc get ledge trapped consistently by players like Leo.

Cloud competes in neutral perfectly well with Sheik, and combos, ledge traps, kill power, and general ability to go extremely far off of a single winning interaction, this can't possibly be a MU where Sheik "destroys" him. Of course, the reverse can happen and is why the MU is seen as a slight disadvantage for Cloud (or at least it is in almost all top player MU charts).

Sheik players dominated the MU in the early months of Cloud, which is totally expected, but Cloud has become so much more optimized lately. This thread just left it at, "This June 2016 tournament once again proves Cloud solidly loses to Sheik," and then the issue was never revisited.

Also an FYI, a player not opting for a character in a particular MU doesn't say nearly as much about a MU as people always want it to, what really says something about a matchup is how the matchup plays out when it is actually played...

 

[Dre89]

Might as well just call it a results-based chart at this point. Results are the only things that influence people's opinions now. We need to stop clinging to the delusion that theorycraft is apart of the process anymore.

 

[ARISTOS]

Might as well just call it a results-based chart at this point. Results are the only things that influence people's opinions now. We need to stop clinging to the delusion that theorycraft is apart of the process anymore.

I mean

You can still theorycraft. Good theorycraft is always valued.

But theorycraft in general should be supported by information, whether its things like frame data, etc. or tournament placings.

 

[Floor]

My predictions for V. 3.0
top 10, probably around 8 while is around 15-20 for some dumb reason ( I think she's 10-15 but w/e).
top 5
up a bit; not much
> I thought this way for a while and I think Nairo will convince others to join me. Maybe top 20, probs top 25 for Bowser.
down just a tad to make room for newer faces like Marth and Lucina.

also think will drop a few

 

[blackghost]

Kinda agree with Mewtwo. You can say until you're blue in the face that M2's weight doesn't hold him back too much, but it really does. He is just too light in a game where rage is determining games. .
.

im following this logic the problem is among the top tiers who isnt a light character? shiek, bayo, rosa, mario(?), zss
these characters are all light and all die early as a result it really doesnt seem to hurt them all that much. i understand that mewtwo is larger and personally id contribute that more to him having a hard time rather than him being light.

on a different note....
with this past tournament im ready to say zach is the best bayo as well. conversions, punishes, wt, edgegaurds, and new dtilt shenangans (lol). he did the best job fighting her as well. he's just isn't quite ready for zero yet if he had payed almost anyone else i'd have expected him to win.
that sonc match is exactly how you should fight sonic. 1. get lead 2. stand back and wait. people like to fight with "honor" instead of winning. sonic is a character (like bayo) that feels entirely different to use and play against when you are winning versus when you are losing. zach exploited that fact as wrath and other sonics have been for months now.

and on the horizon (i know its early) in terms of evo placement and/or inclusion we are in trouble. not because the community hates us or doesnt care but because of the new lineup injustice 2, a final bow for umvc 3, sf v season 2, kof, melee, blaze blue, and guilty gear our inclusion on sunday (if we make it in) is VERY unlikely at this point. just a heads up.

 

[TDK]

Isn't the heaviest top tier, like, Cloud?

 

[Hippieslayer]

Rosa is the most overrated charter in the game. Its weird how people still think she rocks when she's been carried by Dabuz forever and Dabuz struggles more and more, and is working on another alt to make her work. Or they think she's just a little bit lower than her position on the tier list. She really aint all that.

Its not just her most infamous matchups. Matchup knownledge and clever disposal of Luma makes every matchup a lot harder for her. She will struggle more and more. The fact that she has something of a killing issue vs non lightweights is also getting more and more apparent.

She isnt what she was. When Dabuz wins its more because of him than her. The gap between his Rosa and Olimar really isnt big. And her representation is lacklustre apart from Dabuz.

Can someone explain why she doesnt deserve to drop like a rock on the tier list?

 

[TDK]

If your lowest placing ever is 13th and you didn't place below 9th for the entire 2016 and that's called "struggling" it's amazing the high standard we hold Dabuz to. Additionally, Dabuz's Olimar gets a lot of attention for being used about as frequently as Nairo's Bowser (And Nairo's bowser has a higher winrate), yet nobody question's Nairo's bowser being a crutch. Also, there's actually quite a lot of solid Rosas outside of Dabuz, such as Kirihara, Falln, Atelier, and Xaltis, and additionally there's others that have done notable things like DOOM, Rayquaza, and Yuzu. The "Rosa has only dabuz" is decently wrong.

If you want chars with actually 1-2 top players and no other notables look at , all of who have much less rep and results than Rosa, even if you only count Dabuz.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

If zard moves up where will that leave him....? Does anyone have an old character tier list to review everyone's current tier standings?

 

[GoombaWarrior]

It's pretty clear that MKLeo is #3 or #2 at this point.

Hmmm I wouldn't say that's "clear". Top 5 is likely; top 10 is clear if you ask me. Saying #2 or 3 means denying Ally and Nairo's long standing dominance imo

 

[arbustopachon]

If zard moves up where will that leave him....? Does anyone have an old character tier list to review everyone's current tier standings?

The current tier list can be seen at the start of this thread, the first tier list can be seen here.

 

[GoombaWarrior]

Two of the top Melee players (Hungrybox and Armada) use high tier* characters (Jigglypuff and Peach, respectively) and still win tournaments. It's not like you need a 55/45 or 60/40 MU ratio to win games, if you have a 50/50 MU ratio and simply play better you'll likely win. Even if you have a 45:55 MU ratio you could simply win by playing better. If MkLeo is the 3rd or 2nd best player in the world, then he should be able to win games even against hard characters.

I personally think that if Marth is to be top tier, then his current MU charts have to be wrong. A top tier character does not lose that many matchups 40/60 (or 45-55, in Pugwest's case).

Mr.E's MU chart: https://twitter.com/SS_MrE/status/740988384181637120
Pugwest's MU chart: https://twitter.com/Pugwest/status/786741022923616257
false's MU chart: https://twitter.com/fals1fy/status/740923629483986948

If Mr.E's MU chart is correct, then Marth is clearly not top tier (and arguably not even top of high tier). Losing 40:60 to common characters like is pretty bad, as well as . Losing 45:55 against as well as 10 (!) other characters is pretty bad as well. Mr.E's MU chart makes Marth look like a high-mid tier character at best. With that being said, I don't believe it's actually correct, I think Mr.E underrated Marth back then (it's a rather old MU chart, from June).
Pugwest's MU chart has no 40:60 MUs, which is good for Marth. He still loses 45:55 against and the only top and high tiers he wins against (55:45) are . Still not quite a top tier.
false's MU chart has two bad 40:60 MUs, , and five 45:55, . The only top tier he wins against is (45:55).

These MU charts would all have to be flawed in order for Marth to be top tier. It would be interesting to see what proponents of Marth as a top tier think this MU chart looks like. If he truly is a top tier then his MU chart needs to back that up.

*According to the 2015 tier list. Perhaps they have moved up to top tier at this point?

Those charts are pretty outdated too to be honest. Not to mention Mr. E Pug and False aren't stellar; they could struggle with certain MUs more than MKleo would

 

[Nobie]

Here's the deal with Cloud: The guy doesn't lose badly to any character in theory, but he CAN lose badly to anyone in practice.

Let's look at a few characters and compare some of their key weaknesses.

First is Mewtwo, who's been brought up. Being super light is a real flaw. Mewtwo can play around this with an excellent kit, but what it means is that Mewtwo is often 4-5 hits away from being in a real danger zone. However, outside of ceiling kills, which are somewhat uncommon, or rage, which is brought about through hitting the opponent, Mewtwo isn't in danger unless it makes those 4-5 errors.

Fox has the weakness of being a very fast faller, meaning certain characters can combo him for huge damage at lower percents. However, once Fox hits a certain damage threshold, those fastfaller combos begin to mean less. He's light, so he starts to enter death territory, but it also means he's looking out for different things.

Now, take Cloud. He has one of the best tool kits in the game that any opponent must be wary of no matter their archetype. It is near perfect and gets better with Limit charged. But then you take into account his susceptibility to being edge guarded as a result of his poor recovery, and it's a perpetual weakness that can directly lead to death at 0%, 200%, high rage, low rage, against any and every character. The only thing that mitigates it is Limit.

Unlike Mewtwo, whose weakness is that it can't afford to make too many mistakes, or Fox, who is rightly scared of low percent combos but can eventually focus on other issues after taking the damage, Cloud's recovery hangs around his neck like an albatross.

Look at what just happens to Clouds. Even the best ones will just suddenly misjudge their height and fail to grab the ledge... and that's without the opponent forcing the error!

The lowest of low tiers are inferior to Cloud in multiple ways, but all of them are almost as deadly as top tiers when Cloud is offstage. Jigglypuff edgeguards, Ganondorf dunks, etc.

Cloud is basically a character who is mostly stable but has this bit of volatility that can be a game changer. Let's say he fights a bracket of all Jigglypuffs. He should win, but all it takes is enough single mistakes at any time, at any percent, for it to suddenly go south.

If Cloud needs a secondary, it's not because of any one matchup, but be because Cloud might need a stabilizing force to balance out that risk factor.

 

[Bowserboy3]

Rather than look at the whole list, I'm going to analyse just the top tier, and what my expectations will be for when the new tier list rolls around...

---

In a spoiler because it's quite a long post!

Spoiler: Tier ramblings

To start, while I agree that really isn't the 4th best character in the game, I still believe she deserves to be well within the top tier - the gap between her and other "high tiers" like Ryu, Meta Knight, Villager, Toon Link etc, is VERY noticeable, backed up by results. She deserves to be in the top tier, but closer to the bottom end, because she's still noticeably better than the high tier. What keeps her down in the top tier is the fact that the other top tiers are just performing far better than her now.

Of course, the phrase "top tier", varies by person. Some people think it's merely 3 characters, some people think it's just 10, some people think it's more (ZeRo with 13 characters for example).

Lets look at the current top tier in the current 4BR tier list:

• 

As much as I'd like to say is top tier, he's never performed quite like a top tier should, so I expect to see him drop into the high tier. I would however now start calling a top tier character, so I'd still stick with 11 characters in the top tier.

Looking at this, I'm going to break it down...

• I expect to see at the top still, of only because ZeRo has still been the most dominant player of 2016.
• Numbers 2, 3 and 4, I expect to be extremely close. I expect to see a combination of , and . This is where things get tricky and more opinionated... I truly believe Sheik is the 2nd best character in the game, but I do expect Bayonetta to be close to Sheik, so it could go either way for them. However, I do not believe Mario should be ranked higher than Sheik, but I feel it's possible he could well be ranked above Bayonetta. Basically, these three are all super close, and I think either a formation of /, or would make the most likely top 4.
• Going down to the 5th, I still expect to see there; still an incredibly powerful character. He's not as blown up as he was back in his release days, but he's still a solid pick, only echoed by his overall results total. While his top level results could still be a bit better, he still shows up very often, main or secondary (of which he's arguably one of the, if not the, best secondary character in the game, so he has that credit to his name too). A minor fall for Cloud.

This is where things get a little varied...

• The top 5 is pretty much a given IMO, in one way or another. The next bunch of characters are impossible to accurately place IMO, but if I were to order them, I'd order them in a manner similar to this: ,, then ,,and in one order or another. Fox and ZSS are still very active, but more importantly, established (and by that, they're not trying to prove something to us, like Marth is), in tournament. In terms of majors, Fox is kind of carried by Larry, but his results elsewhere are still very close to top 5 in the game. ZSS is almost the opposite; her results are not quite on the same level as Fox, though I'd put this down to her being incredibly volatile, an her requiring lots of patience and precision to play, and this keeps her back at lower level, hence a bit lower results total. Not at top level though; Nairo and Marss mean she very rarely places out of top 8 of a tournament when they're present.
  
  The next 4 all have something in common... like Fox, they're pretty much carried by one notable player in terms of top level results; Marth by Leo, Rosalina by Dabuz, Mewtwo by Abadango, and Sonic by Komo, who's also been using Cloud a lot more as of late. Going SOLELY off of recent top level results, I'd say it's fair to put Sonic at the 11th spot in the top tier, but that's solely off of results; his playstyle and MU spread make it difficult to reach a certain verdict, and with that in mind, I still feel uncomfortable him being merely 11th... (plus I'm from the UK and biased because Ixis is indeed a player over here). Abadango gets fantastic results with Mewtwo, but we rarely see another Mewtwo push the character as far as him. It's also been a veeeery long time since his Pound win, and no other victory since which leads me to believe that character unfamiliarity gave him a bit of a boost there. Dabuz places consistently in the top 8 of tournaments, and hasn't placed lower than 13th place. His lowest placement in all of 2016 was said 13th place, placing there twice, and 9th twice. He's placed top 8 every other tournament he's attended this year, using Rosalina outside of a few specific occasions where he broke out the Olimar (ironically, the tournaments where he placed below top 8 were all ones where he had to bring Olimar out at one point). Leo has shown us Marth can take tournaments, but I'm reluctant to say he should be much higher because of how "new" he is to the top tier. I certainly believe he could be higher, but I'd like him to establish himself within the top tier before he shoots up.
  
  The last 4 could be any combination really, but the most likely ones I feel would be , or , or , or finally //.

The reason I feel top tier is so hard to rank in the lower echelons is because no character here really deserves to drop down to the high tier due to them all being a noticable notch better than high tier, but they all have something that warrant holding them back compared to the top 5, one way or another.

---
In other tiers, I expect to see and rise up a fair bit. I also expect to see both and rise upwards. I still believe DK is better than Bowser; while Nairo seems to get more attention for his Bowser showings (as inconsistent as they are), Tweek winning that stacked MSM with solo DK is NOTHING to be sniffed at. Other notable characters who may get a bigger boost than we expect include and .

In terms of minor risers, I feel may go up a couple of places within the lower tiers. IcyMist's performances are arguably better than anything the other lower tiers have achieved as of late (apart from maybe , who will also go up a couple of spots. Ryo's showing with will probably be enough to prove he isn't the worst low tier character - he might move up a couple too).

Aside from the re-shuffling of the top tier and characters moving upwards and downwards there, I expect to see and perhaps fall a few small places. They've never really lived up to expectations as of late. is another character that has been rather underwhelming in terms of expectations and not living up to them - he also has potential to fall.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

The current tier list can be seen at the start of this thread, the first tier list can be seen here.

I saw the tier-list, it's seriously outdated, charizard being lower than all the heavyweights except ganondorf? No way, he's even lower than bowser jr!

 

[Ulevo]

Meta Knight should be expected to drop. I do not know what happened to Tyrant at Genesis but Leo is no longer using him and Ito losing to Umeki and ESAM, two match ups Meta Knight is supposed to win, does not boad well for the character in terms of results.

It will be interesting to see what happens 2017.

 

[The-Technique]

Here's the deal with Cloud: The guy doesn't lose badly to any character in theory, but he CAN lose badly to anyone in practice.

Let's look at a few characters and compare some of their key weaknesses.

First is Mewtwo, who's been brought up. Being super light is a real flaw. Mewtwo can play around this with an excellent kit, but what it means is that Mewtwo is often 4-5 hits away from being in a real danger zone. However, outside of ceiling kills, which are somewhat uncommon, or rage, which is brought about through hitting the opponent, Mewtwo isn't in danger unless it makes those 4-5 errors.

Fox has the weakness of being a very fast faller, meaning certain characters can combo him for huge damage at lower percents. However, once Fox hits a certain damage threshold, those fastfaller combos begin to mean less. He's light, so he starts to enter death territory, but it also means he's looking out for different things.

Now, take Cloud. He has one of the best tool kits in the game that any opponent must be wary of no matter their archetype. It is near perfect and gets better with Limit charged. But then you take into account his susceptibility to being edge guarded as a result of his poor recovery, and it's a perpetual weakness that can directly lead to death at 0%, 200%, high rage, low rage, against any and every character. The only thing that mitigates it is Limit.

Unlike Mewtwo, whose weakness is that it can't afford to make too many mistakes, or Fox, who is rightly scared of low percent combos but can eventually focus on other issues after taking the damage, Cloud's recovery hangs around his neck like an albatross.

Look at what just happens to Clouds. Even the best ones will just suddenly misjudge their height and fail to grab the ledge... and that's without the opponent forcing the error!

The lowest of low tiers are inferior to Cloud in multiple ways, but all of them are almost as deadly as top tiers when Cloud is offstage. Jigglypuff edgeguards, Ganondorf dunks, etc.

Cloud is basically a character who is mostly stable but has this bit of volatility that can be a game changer. Let's say he fights a bracket of all Jigglypuffs. He should win, but all it takes is enough single mistakes at any time, at any percent, for it to suddenly go south.

If Cloud needs a secondary, it's not because of any one matchup, but be because Cloud might need a stabilizing force to balance out that risk factor.

I think this is generally why Leo always commits to Marth for certain matchups, for example Cloud can beat Sheik, but all it takes is losing neutral once and you're getting hit over and over and over until you're offstage, where Sheik can trap your ledge options and continually pressure you until you simply cannot recover and lose your stock.

 

[L9999]

IMO

Rise:
will rise no doubts. I hope gets properly scaled with Marth instead of being 22 spots below because why not?
top 5. Even with the "no top 8s overrated trash" vibes we can't deny Bayo is super good.
Wouldn't rise significantly like "top of mid tier because Brood beat lol!ZeRo", but the effort by the DHD trio should be acknowledged.
Roy picked up a lot of results and a little more respect.
Nairo made Bowser look incredible so it won't surprise me if he rises drastically.
Elegant put Luigi back to the spotlight. The days of "Luigi is so nerfed! Wah, wah" are over.
His playerbase has acheived so much for Shulk last year that it would be insulting to not acknowlege it.

Dropping:
Another year, another lack of Yoshi activity that is worth a damn. People need to stop upvoting Yoshi.
While he kept his results with the remnant of his players, impressions of Ness in competitive play have dropped quite a bit.
The days of Sonic hype are over. Still top tier but nothing silly like top 3/5 during the KEN hype.
While Pikachu acheived great results he also has underwhelming results that should drown him to allow more consistent characters get past him.
Rosa is not top 5, end of story.

 

[verbatim]

I
Dropping:
The days of Sonic hype are over. Still top tier but nothing silly like top 3/5 during the KEN hype.

The REEEEE train has no breaks.

 

[Floor]

At this point it seems like the "Lucina is bottom tier garbage because because no tipper" mentality has mostly died. If enough people are stunned at Marth's success (Marth results look good on Lucina) then Lucina has the potential imo to be top 20. Perhaps even higher if enough good people like ZeRo Nairo and Mr. R have their influence.

I'm expecting top tier to include about 10 characters. Bottom tier is difficult becasue, with the exception of like 4 characters, it's a huge tossup. Many people consider to be bottom 10 while others think some of them are into mid tier. Much easier to predict top 10 then bottom 10 for sure.

My thoughts on Rosa: Top 10 no question. About 50% sure she's going to be top 5 even if I don't agree. Remember ZeRo thinks she's number 1

 

[-Tornado-]

https://twitter.com/Quappo_/status/823681396959039488
A list of character usage, and their shifts in the meta.
(not entirely sure if this is appropriate here, but I thought it'd be worth mentioning)

 

[TDK]

Now this is depressing.

 

[David Viran]

Bowser has had decent results lately but is no one going to mention g1 of Nairo vs Mr. R? Nairo's bowser didn't even get to play. He was on the ledge 90% of the match. As a matter a fact, I don't think nairo landed a single grab that game. And after against zero he didn't even opt to try bowser against his diddy even tho he did against neitono's diddy earlier. It makes me wonder if his bowser is being figured out by the top players.

 

[Ethan7]

I hope gets properly scaled with Marth instead of being 22 spots below because why not?

Why should she be much closer to Marth though?

 

[Emblem Lord]

Why should she be much closer to Marth though?

The hell?

 

[Ethan7]

Emblem Lord My bad, I forgot we talked about this before.