Official 4BR Tier List V3 - Competitive Insight & Analysis

[Nobie]

Controversialish Statement?: If pre-patch Diddy still existed (meaning before even the first hoo-hah nerf) and fought pre-patch Bayonetta, Diddy would beat Bayonetta more often than not.

Someone earlier said that Bayonetta combines the best elements of various characters, and mentioned Sonic. I think the comparison to Sonic is apt, but not for purely positive reasons. Sonic basically uses a lot of smokescreen to do damage, his fast movements and his various spins are a constant mixup. The way Bayonetta plays the neutral seems similar to me, with a lot of burst movement (but each option has limitations), except with potentially much higher reward.

 

[Minordeth]

Dabuz has given Kirihara notes on how to fight Bayo, and he seems to have not implimented them into his play. Hopefully he is at least practicing them.

That being said, Regardless of character, there's probably something you can learn from watching Dabuz fight Bayo, since he's definitely the best at it.

Dabuz has gotten quite good at knowing when and how to pressure Bayo with or without Luma.

Ironically, some of the most aggressive play you will see from Dabuz is when he is up against Bayo when he is just cutting off options (see his last set with Salem).

 

[TDK]

Mega Smash Mondays 105 (89 Entrants) (SoCal)

1st: Falln
2nd: Elegant
3rd: Phantom
4th: Nicko
5th: K9Sbruce
5th: Phoenix
7th: NCJacobT
7th: Razo

Phantom, from Chile, beats Razo 2-0, K9 2-0, and Nicko 3-1 before losing 3-1 to Elegant in LFs. Makes me wonder how good South America really is.

 

[The-Technique]

Mega Smash Mondays 105 (89 Entrants) (SoCal)

1st: Falln
2nd: Elegant
3rd: Phantom
4th: Nicko
5th: K9Sbruce
5th: Phoenix
7th: NCJacobT
7th: Razo

Phantom, from Chile, beats Razo 2-0, K9 2-0, and Nicko 3-1 before losing 3-1 to Elegant in LFs. Makes me wonder how good South America really is.

There's a mistake there. Elegant sadly couldn't attend, but this mask wearing rando named Cyclone really showed up tonight.

/s

But jeez the Luigi Rosa matchup looks like absolute hell, yet Elegant managed to keep every game somewhat close (that prepatch cyclone KO on Rosa at 40% on Dream Land)

 

[Bigbomb2]

Can we stop with the Bayonetta arguments for a while and talk about ? Now that EVO is over Hyuga should be back to competing, will he remain as clean as he was last year or is Tink simply not that good anymore?

Probably will see a bit of a resurgence, but nothing huge (watch me eat those words). He never got really worse, he's not super rare, and he still can take names. He just sort of stagnated in the Meta. He's still solid, but his meta probably needs a kick start.

 

[Amadeus9]

"ban bayonetta" got old in 1.1.4

Why are we talking about this now

The character is 100% fine. Dare anyone to come up with a legitimate reason why she's not besides "muh feels"

The only thing upsetting about bayonetta to me is that shes the main reason duck hunt was removed as a stage. And I hate that duck hunt was banned.

 

[Bowserboy3]

"ban bayonetta" got old in 1.1.4

Why are we talking about this now

The character is 100% fine. Dare anyone to come up with a legitimate reason why she's not besides "muh feels"

The only thing upsetting about bayonetta to me is that shes the main reason duck hunt was removed as a stage. And I hate that duck hunt was banned.

To be fair, if your "Wii U Main" is anything to go by, I can see why you hate that Duck Hunt was banned lol (Up Throw early kills amirite?).

---

I was going back through the 1.1.6 patch thread earlier today, and it's funny seeing how people (myself included) overacted to Bayonetta's nerfs. Some people even went as far to say she'd be mid tier.

Oh how far we've come, lmao.

 

[Amadeus9]

To be fair, if your "Wii U Main" is anything to go by, I can see why you hate that Duck Hunt was banned lol (Up Throw early kills amirite?).

---

I was going back through the 1.1.6 patch thread earlier today, and it's funny seeing how people (myself included) overacted to Bayonetta's nerfs. Some people even went as far to say she'd be mid tier.

Oh how far we've come, lmao.

I just think Duck Hunt is a fine stage. Bayonetta IS oppressive on it, so there is some justification to banning it, but its kind of annoying. Also yeah MK is a worse character without Duck hunt as a CP xd

but im in the process of dropping mk anyways so whatever

 

[FeelMeUp]

dh was not a fine stage if you enjoy 75% of the top tiers not having autowin counterpicks

 

[blackghost]

i was watching some gameplay and breakdown from ninjalink today and a numbe rof things happen accross alll the bayonetta matches
1. people dont know her attack angles. safe places around here include directly in front of her (outside fair range) and directly beneath her. bayo can do nothing to pressure you if you are beneath her
2. count her special usage. in the set afgainst larry lurr (both of them) salem uses sometimes 2-3 specials and larry punishes by grabbing. she has more than 30 frames of recovery charge a smash attack. zero also missed easy smash attack kills against salem.
3. people dont know how to deal with abk at the ledge you want to be a little further back from the edge and duck under abk you dont want to shield it because then shegets another.
4. if you see bayo sh or full hop get under her and anti air her sh is horrific its way too high much like zss.

bayo is a hard charatcer to fight but until people routinely fight her correctly her matchups and results are inflated. zero is considered by many to be the best player i the world at this game. please explain to me how he got hit with dABK>dABK. we can complain all we want about bayo but players top all the way down aren't doing what needs to be done to bea her and that means more traiing mode and practice and less keybaord warriors. because if anti bayo tech isn't progessing then i can promise you bayo players are improving. Lima, mistake, and others are getting better. ya'll better get ready.
ninjalink evo breakdown: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/159873811

 

[ARISTOS]

I just think Duck Hunt is a fine stage. Bayonetta IS oppressive on it, so there is some justification to banning it, but its kind of annoying. Also yeah MK is a worse character without Duck hunt as a CP xd

but im in the process of dropping mk anyways so whatever

Duck Hunt sucks.

dh was not a fine stage if you enjoy 75% of the top tiers not having autowin counterpicks

I want to like this but I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say

 

[Minordeth]

blackghost -
Yeah I was watching that yesterday. Honestly, watch some sets with Dabuz, I was in the process of going through some of his Bayo matches, and it seemed like he was throwing out upsmashes to catch Zack and Salem hard - he didn't necessarily only throw it out with Luma either.

Also, for as ironic as his Evo run went, Fatality's video is really good and not really wrong. He also freely admitted that he didn't prepare at all against the players he went out to, so go figure, got overly focused on Zack and Salem.

Like, literally the embodiment of not counting your chickens...

 

[FeelMeUp]

if im playing and deal the first chunk of damage on duck hunt, you lose the game. that's an autowin counterpick.

 

[kynlem]

I haven't seen anything that dissuades me from the impression that she has losing MUs with Diddy, Rosa, and Sheik.

??????
Bit of a late response, but Salem defeating Zero, not only the best Diddy but also the best player in the world, has done nothing to dissuade you that she doesn't lose that match up? Not to mention Abadango's relatively still new Bayonetta taking out MVD.

What then, if anything, would convince you that match up is even by now?

 

[sleepy_Nex]

blackghost Actually it isn't such a bad idea to shield a abk. Characters with quick bairs can hit her out of it after she crosses the shield.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRB1JYAAjBM&feature=youtu.be Like you can see in that set. I Don't know if obarin is the only player who does that tough.

 

[ぱみゅ]

So the other day I kinda overreacted a bit, called hypocritical arguments when I shouldn't and stated few poorly worded points.
I apologize for that, it was a pretty long stressful day, running 3 tournaments with about 60 people present, all watching EVO Finals at a point and hearing first hand cries to ban Bayonetta where almost literally everyone is against you, sure wears you down. I think I simply gave up on defending the character and go with what the people yelling at me wanted.


But just something to keep in the back of our minds is that if a single character is filling 1/4 of the bracket, actively and explicitly hurts attendance, viewership, and now even the worldwide records of events and players, is worth looking back and consider to take actions. Maybe not now (hopefully never), but let's at least not ignore that before it becomes so big we can't do anything anymore.

As for the Duckhunt point, it isn't as black-and-white. Top Tiers don't auto-win against Top Tiers. Neither do Mid Tiers against Mid Tiers. Its circle camping isn't *that* obvious and powerful in a vast majority of matchups.


EDIT: To clarify, I'm not saying than banning her is the right thing to do. It is far from that. But a lot of ruleset changes were not made due to them being fair, but them following a majority's outcries.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I was going back through the 1.1.6 patch thread earlier today, and it's funny seeing how people (myself included) overacted to Bayonetta's nerfs. Some people even went as far to say she'd be mid tier.

I think I considered Bayonetta still top 11 after the nerfs. At the very least I considered her top 15 (as per a post from 2 months after the 1.1.6 patch).

When reading some of my old posts, I found something interesting:

Both Diddy Kong and Sheik have been #1 in the past. They've been out for longer too, giving players more time to practice them. Cloud is fairly new, and he faced serious competition in the first few months of the game, with a dominant Sheik before 1.15 and a dominant Bayonetta before 1.16. I suspect that more and more players at a top level will pick up Cloud and do well with him.

Will Sheik and Diddy Kong be as prominent in a year from now, or will Cloud catch up (assuming no patches)?

At this point in time, most seem to consider top 4 to be Bayonetta, Diddy Kong, Sheik, and... Cloud. Seems Cloud has caught up, and most people seem to agree that he's top 5 now (back then many argued that he wasn't top 5).

 

[ARGHETH]

??????
Bit of a late response, but Salem defeating Zero, not only the best Diddy but also the best player in the world, has done nothing to dissuade you that she doesn't lose that match up? Not to mention Abadango's relatively still new Bayonetta taking out MVD.

What then, if anything, would convince you that match up is even by now?

Salem's beat Zero in one tournament. Can we at least wait for two before we decide to start using these for MUs?

 

[Rizen]

Salem's beat Zero in one tournament. Can we at least wait for two before we decide to start using these for MUs?

Salem has beat Zero in 2 tournaments. With that said, Zero probably has a winning record overall :/

Edit,
Evo 2017 and Collision XIV (September 3rd) (Tristate) (147 Entrants) (Category 2).

 

[NotLiquid]

Salem's beat Zero in one tournament. Can we at least wait for two before we decide to start using these for MUs?

Salem was the first person to double eliminate ZeRo in a tournament outside of Grand Final resets. This is his second time beating ZeRo in a tournament, arguably third even.

 

[Gunla]

Just gonna nip this in the bud:

As most of you are aware, the new amiibo of the final 3 DLC will be coming out this Friday in most territories; however, it's been noted that neither Corrin amiibo has data for Smash for Wii U or 3DS (meaning that they would not be compatible), which was recently brought back into the light via Source Gaming and various Smash 4 modders (EDIT: Based on additional reports, Bayonetta's Player 2 verison does not work as well). As a result there's a bit of speculation on the fact that there might be a patch for the game, a theoretical "1.1.7". The new Wii U update that happened yesterday, after over a year and a half of no updates to the system, also puts some indication towards a potential update for the game. The most likely scenario is that this will just be adding amiibo functionality for those final amiibo, and likely not balance changes.

That being said...

If there are balance changes, there will be a patch notes thread. If it's major notes, it will likely follow the style seen before 1.1.6, but if it's minor, it will likely be in one thread (as seen with 1.1.6's patch notes thread). However, again, the most likely scenario is no update (meaning the amiibo stay incompatible) or an update with only amiibo functionality for these last amiibo, so I wouldn't get your hopes up.

 

[Rizen]

InB4 Cloud's wrist is slapped and his limit takes half a second longer to charge.

 

[blackghost]

blackghost Actually it isn't such a bad idea to shield a abk. Characters with quick bairs can hit her out of it after she crosses the shield.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRB1JYAAjBM&feature=youtu.be Like you can see in that set. I Don't know if obarin is the only player who does that tough.

at the ledge its better to not shield it. she cannot easily escape as she wont have a second abk. its actually an easy punish for most characters to upsmash. the keywith bayo isnt just to get a punish its to get the BEST punish. in traditional fighting games best punish is either getting a mixup setup or just going for straight damage. in smash its a little more complicated. a good punish can: straight kill, gain stage positioning, or do the most damage. if you are playing fox and bayo is north of 80 percent you want to punish abk at the ledge with an up smash oos. even if your bair can punish her you want the kill. this is were labwork has to come into play. as a community we have to do a better job punishing her. some charatcers: fox, luigi, and ryu have punishes that are common knowledge and are easy to see why they are the best not the case for most of the cast.

 

[|RK|]

I know we usually do character discussion, but I wanna briefly dip into player discussion.

ANTi made this:

There was a problem fetching the tweet

M2K has also been saying that Salem is potentially top 3, but hasn't proven it at a big tournament yet (before EVO and such). But now, for the past three S-tiers, Salem has come out in FORCE. Top eight at the last two, and... well, y'know, EVO. I don't want to make this like a Tsu or Kameme situation, where I overrate one win...

But it seems Salem is making enough of a portfolio for being within the top 3 players in the world, finally showing what ZeRo, M2K, and CaptainZack have said about him to be true.

 

[sleepy_Nex]

blackghost The Punish that does the most damage or kills is not always optimal. For example Obarin bair her for a clean 12% and some stagecontroll. Palu's upsmash is like a high wall to block bayos abk but you really need a read because it's a rather slow upsmash and if you don't get the read you get a abk in your face and potentially take even more damage.

Other Option would have been to wait a bit more away from the ledge for bayos ledgeoption but that won't give you a opening to do damage everytime.

I think it is a nice option and upsmash is a nice mixup.

 

[Frihetsanka]

2017 Salem reminds me a bit of 2016 Ally. I wonder if he'll end up top 5 on the next PGR? Top 10 seems pretty likely, though we'll see.

 

[The-Technique]

Salem was the first person to double eliminate ZeRo in a tournament outside of Grand Final resets. This is his second time beating ZeRo in a tournament, arguably third even.

I know we usually do character discussion, but I wanna briefly dip into player discussion.

ANTi made this:

There was a problem fetching the tweet

M2K has also been saying that Salem is potentially top 3, but hasn't proven it at a big tournament yet (before EVO and such). But now, for the past three S-tiers, Salem has come out in FORCE. Top eight at the last two, and... well, y'know, EVO. I don't want to make this like a Tsu or Kameme situation, where I overrate one win...

But it seems Salem is making enough of a portfolio for being within the top 3 players in the world, finally showing what ZeRo, M2K, and CaptainZack have said about him to be true.

Seems like a pretty knee-jerk list to cobble together, ranking yourself higher than the current top 8 players. Salem is lucky he dodged Dabuz and Nairo during EVO.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Salem didn't rank himself up there.
But he had strong performances here and at Nairo Saga worth taking into account (as well as KEN doing better and better every time).
This kind of lists can never be perfectly accurate.

 

[my_T]

Do people still think Sonic's overrated?

 

[Lord Dio]

It has started. It's available in the eShop.

 

[NairWizard]

You guys weren't all around in the Brawl era but Salem is and has always been a top 3/5 player. Results don't show the whole picture. When the man actually actively tries he's better than anyone but ZeRo or Leo. Actually I think he's even better than Leo at this point.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

Don't get your hopes up, replays still work. It's just for amiibo functionality.

 

[Gunla]

Yep, new update is live. Here's the patch notes so far:

• Added functionality for Corrin, Cloud & Bayonetta (both standard and Player 2) amiibo
• Crushed the dreams of everyone who was hoping for a balance patch

Ultimately, it's unsurprising. This game hasn't gotten an update for a long time for a reason, after all.

Let's carry on with discussion then.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Hey "The-Technique" you said that MKLeo was thinking of fully maining Bayonetta after EVO? Did he post it on Twitter or anywhere else online.


Becuase if the #2 PGR ranked player in the world stars using her. Her Tournament sucess and results are just likey going to go through the moon.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Hey "The-Technique" you said that MKLeo was thinking of fully maining Bayonetta after EVO? Did he post it on Twitter or anywhere else online.


Becuase if the #2 PGR ranked player in the world stars using her. Her Tournament sucess and results are just likey going to go through the moon.

He posted it on twitter right after losing to False so I considered it a salt-driven post, I do not think he'll use her that seriously.

 

[Minordeth]

??????
Bit of a late response, but Salem defeating Zero, not only the best Diddy but also the best player in the world, has done nothing to dissuade you that she doesn't lose that match up? Not to mention Abadango's relatively still new Bayonetta taking out MVD.

What then, if anything, would convince you that match up is even by now?

Short answer: a trend.

Less short answer: it takes more than one tourney to get a better look at an MU. Just cause Nairo 3-0'd Salem at CEO doesn't mean that ZSS wins over Bayo. Or when Mr R lost to HIKARU at Civil War, it doesn't mean DK beats Sheik, even if the top reps are playing the match.

EDIT: I'd be super surprised if Leo picks up Bayo. He is another neutral heavy monster, and I don't know if Bayo could realistically fit the bill for him.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

I'd be super surprised if Leo picks up Bayo. He is another neutral heavy monster, and I don't know if Bayo could realistically fit the bill for him.

Leo's an everything monster. All of his states of gameplay are incredibly well polished. His disadvantage state may seem a little lacking but then you look at the characters he plays and realize that it's really quite fantastic.

 

[|RK|]

Leo's an everything monster. All of his states of gameplay are incredibly well polished. His disadvantage state may seem a little lacking but then you look at the characters he plays and realize that it's really quite fantastic.

I think he means that Leo's style & characters show a preference for controlling neutral.

 

[TDK]

Yep, new update is live. Here's the patch notes so far:

• Added functionality for Corrin, Cloud & Bayonetta (both standard and Player 2) amiibo
• Crushed the dreams of everyone who was hoping for a balance patch

Ultimately, it's unsurprising. This game hasn't gotten an update for a long time for a reason, after all.

Let's carry on with discussion then.

You forgot this:

• Stops the ability to view modifications or modify the game in any way (source: Twitter)

Not that big competitively, but if you have mods it's good to know.

 

[Minordeth]

I think he means that Leo's style & characters show a preference for controlling neutral.

Yeah, basically. Also, Leo loves his frame traps, especially with Cloud. Bayo doesn't quite have the frame data to pull off the kind of stuff he did to Larry last time they met. Just filthy af.

I'd love to see a Leo Sheik or Fox for that reason, as well.