Official 4BR Tier List V3 - Competitive Insight & Analysis

[FullMoon]

Mid-tier? How do you figure? Greninja's results are pretty good, his MU chart is pretty good, and 4BR voted him high tier.

To be fair Greninja is just barely high tier considering he's only two spots above Ness.

Greninja has constantly been on the High/High-Mid area so the "solid mid tier" comment isn't too out there. I don't think anybody thinks the character is anything below that and Greninja has had consistent regional results towards the end of last year IIRC and took a fall during January.

It's just on a national scale that Greninja tends to disappear in a puff of smoke. Somé has done the first step towards getting good national results with the frog and, like Das Koopa, there's potential for the character to comfortably sit on High Tier if Somé and other Greninja mains can get more results like what we saw at Frostbite (or better, who knows)

I don't think we'll ever see Greninja get much better than, like, top of B tier at most though. His strengths are just not as good as the ones of A tier and above.

 

[teddystalin]

Pit would be worse than Charizard in terms of results without Earth and Kuro.

That's... kind of an accomplishment in and of itself.

(Note: Not in any way saying Pit is actually worse than Charizard, I don't think that lowly of the character)

What does this show us though? That if you remove achievements the best two players of a mid-tier, the characters get worse results in a one-month sample? That seems self-evident, and isn't solely a Pit phenomenon.

 

[verbatim]

I don't think that any other mid tier would see such a big drop if you excluded the top 2. People just don't play pit all that much.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Greninja has constantly been on the High/High-Mid area so the "solid mid tier" comment isn't too out there.

I might be nitpicking, but "solid mid tier" strikes me as someone around the middle of mid tier, not at the top.

It's just on a national scale that Greninja tends to disappear in a puff of smoke.

This is kind of true for most high tier characters in Smash 4.

 

[teddystalin]

I don't think that any other mid tier would see such a big drop if you excluded the top 2. People just don't play pit all that much.

Over a broader section of time, maybe. But this is literally just the month of February. Every character from around Luigi or so downward is propped up by 1-5 results. We can't draw useful conclusions from a sample size this small. All we can safely say is that, shocker, characters don't get results if you disregard their results.

 

[TDK]

What does this show us though? That if you remove achievements the best two players of a mid-tier, the characters get worse results in a one-month sample? That seems self-evident, and isn't solely a Pit phenomenon.

It isn't solely a Pit Phenomenon, but I don't think there's a single other character (Bar the ones with like 1-2 points) where you can say that one to two players make up over ninety percent of their results.

It's not a one-month sample, It's probably like this over Koopa's entire point ranking system. I'd be willing to bet that Earth alone counts for at least 75% of Pit's results extending back to the start of last year.

No other character outside of low/bottom tier has that much riding on one player.


EDIT: https://twitter.com/2GGaming/status/840303942131109888

EDIT2: ZeRo's Villager Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_6iqH6URUE&feature=youtu.be

 

[MistressRemilia]

Quite frankly, many factors play against Pit:
- Players don't get much exposure ( Len's a decent Pit from BC that i don't think ever travel'd yet )
- Character's about as popular as a Low Tier due to being relatively unappealing to most. He doesn't exactly strikes any player by his gameplay like gimmicky characters could, he's overly honest & his jank's not entertaining in the slightest, he's good but not good enough to be picked by s*itty players trying to get some free wins and he comes from an unpopular game series.

Fortunately Earth, and Kuro demonstrated that Pit's certainly capable of doing things on a major scale. Sometimes people need to watch the players play their character to understand that most good players would be able to learn these tricks & applicate them for a closely similar result. A bunch of -1s is certainly better than a few -2/-3s in my book, because it makes Pit's highest potential be higher than a lot of characters simply because of everything's a harsh but doable hardship at worst.
The fact that a character makes a strong impression on you does not mean they suddenly become good. If they need a certain degree of bracket luck to do anything significant, then they're simply not better than Pit, who exemplifies a character who has proven that he's capable of getting high placement in big tournaments, while not being suspect to losing to certain characters too hard to not be able to reproduce such results with a fair amount of consistency.

Tl;dr please stop being ******** about characters that may be able to kill you reliably at 95%, pull off 40+% combos or have some kind of amazing trick that balance their flaws if they've not proven that these pros can actually offset the character's cons, and sometimes, horrendous matchups. Some characters may have proven themselves already & even have a reasonable matchup chart that would realistically allow them to pull such results once again, and Pit is one of these characters. I'm not saying clutch factor should be ignored, as it plays an important part in practice & actual play of our metagame, but not over consistency, and certainly not if it hasn't been proven to be efficient enough for far too long ( Hello, Ness )

 

[Das Koopa]

random civil war updates

-Sonido is attending (Won Key to Civil War)
-Mew2King is attending
-Glutonny is attending (575 reached)

 

[Ark of Silence101]

random civil war updates

-Sonido is attending (Won Key to Civil War)
-Mew2King is attending
-Glutonny is attending (575 reached)

Under who did M2K register? Last I knew he didn't want to choose between Ally or ZeRo.

 

[ShadowGuy1]

Under who did M2K register? Last I knew he didn't want to choose between Ally or ZeRo.

He is team Zero. Also, Hikaru is I believe 20 entrants from getting in the Civil War. God this tournament is so stacked.

 

[Ark of Silence101]

He is team Zero. Also, Hikaru is I believe 20 entrants from getting in the Civil War. God this tournament is so stacked.

And if 25 more register if HIKARU is unlocked, Shuton will be flown, man so many top players at once.

 

[Megamang]

Hey, back many many pages, I have a small note to add.

Platform camping Megaman isn't really a great idea. Uair pushes you off, he rises really fast and has great control over bair, and he can really pile on shield damage and cover rolls with z-drop metal blade.

If you SHFF U-airs, you can get a bunch of them out pretty quick. You have to be smart, and kinda close them off with uairs and be ready to jump up and bair them when they go across... It does take a fair amount of interaction, but you are fundamentally safe while firing the uairs and your risk-reward is pretty good. A certain Corrin has tried multiple times to platform camp me with pin tricks, but it hasn't worked.

I'd rather fight a platform camping Cloud at battlefield than SV. SV platform camping is a bit more of a problem though.

 

[Lord Dio]

1 and . IMO is better than . DDD has some ledge trap setups and can actually tank a ton of damage and recover.
2 Ganon's very fear based; you mess up vs him and you die. In that sense you sort of have to play aggressively while looking for openings or the opponents will cheese you to death. He plays very differently from Bowser, who's a grappler.
3 Ganon doesn't benefit as much from rage as he would with a better recovery. You eat a strong hit/smash and die at 130% from simply not being able to make it back to the stage. His weight does let him survive star KO moves longer than most but ladders are really good in this game too :/

1. Wasn't asking who was worse, Floor said he has the potential to not be bottom 3, my first question was askign that if he isn't bottom 3 then who is, not counting miis (should have said excluding miis earlier, it's just my personal preference)?
2. You gave the statement that is why I compared him to Bowser, you mess up against him and you die, but both can still be comboed hard and in general, cheesed out as you said. Ganon moreso than Bowser, but still.
3. True, true, just felt like it was worth making the lucario rage comparison since it's one thing he can benefit from. Wasn't really pointing out weaknesses because those aren't difficult to find.

maybe these results show evidence that he could rise one or two spots in due time.

There's a decent Ganondorf at my local who plays defensively and it's working until he has to fight a Mewtwo or a projectile/ defensive character. To be honest I didn't know others use him aggresively.

Give it time. Depending on how well Bizarro does and how well Ray kalm does this year, i would be at least half a year, in estimation.
People do use him aggressively, just gotta look in the right places.

 

[TDK]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5dyvRG3wCM

ZeRo's Lucas video. He says he's better than Ness, which I can't say I agree with, but the two are pretty close.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I guess judging by the MU spread standpoint Lucas may be theoretically better than Ness. Lucas's superior recovery and offstage game alone makes a lot of Ness's notably bad MU's more managable for Lucas. Yes that even goes for the dreaded Rosalina MU.

 

[PK Bash]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5dyvRG3wCM

ZeRo's Lucas video. He says he's better than Ness, which I can't say I agree with, but the two are pretty close.

Just curious - why do you think Ness is better? It doesn't matter that much I guess because no matter which is better, the gap will always be close imo, so no pressure. But if you or anyone else wants to share I will genuinely appreciate this side of the argument.

Personally, I feel that Lucas is the more consistent character with better matchups across the board (a few weird ones like Olimar and Greninja give him trouble), and probably does better overall against the S and A tiers (not by huge amounts, although it does seem to be a common opinion across Lucas players that he beats Mario).
Kind of wish the two weren't constantly compared because aside from weight and walk/run speed there are not a lot of similarities. Though I could say that forever and it won't make much difference because nobody really knows a lot about Lucas, and for that I can't really blame them.

Problem with Lucas right now is unfortunately Lucas' best players (Taiheita, Hakadama, PK Blueberry, Mekos, Kodystri, and a few others besides) don't really get to a lot of major events which is why his results are lacking. It's possibly the biggest thing holding him back at the moment. That said, it's easy to let things like PK Blueberry nearly taking a set of Dabuz slip under the radar (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz3v3cuQmCI). It also didn't help that for a long time after release his metagame was basically stagnant, with not many serious players, those that did play him being pessimistic about him, some of his best American players dropping him (although most did pick him back up fairly quickly) and he didn't get a lot of attention from the wider community either. He was just that guy from a weird Japan-only game with nothing about him in Smash that was particularly attractive or would make you consider putting some time into him. I guess he lacked the "obvious cheese factor" a bit, especially compared to Ness and the other DLC characters released at the same time. But since patch 1.1.3 his playerbase has generally been a lot more optimistic about him, and he has been developing really well recently (although again overshadowed a bit by DLC). He's a super-solid character. He's nothing too amazing and he certainly has his problems - I would make the case that he is top of mid or low end of high at most, but unfortunately that's a bit of a hard sell when he barely has any results to his name.
He's certainly capable of a breakout performance though. Give it time.

 

[FullMoon]

Lucas overall has a better neutral than Ness and also a better disadvantaged state because of his superior recovery. Whether Lucas is better than Ness or not depends on whether you think Ness' clutch factor and consistent advantage state is enough to give him the edge.

Personally I'm leaning towards the "Lucas is better" camp, but I don't think the two are too far apart. Lucas is one character I could see moving onto High Tier eventually, once he starts making bigger splashes on a national scale. Honestly I feel like the only character in C tier that I think is clearly superior to Lucas is Olimar, who I personally feel should be in B Tier anyway.

This despite me being one of the people who voted him at around his current position but hindsight is 20/20 and all that

 

[TDK]

Karisuma 12 (72 Entrants) (Japan)

1st: 9B
2nd Earth
3rd: Nga
4th: Ikep
5th: Kuro
5th: Corrin
7th: Taiheita
7th: Ke-ya

Note: Fuwa and HIKARU placed 9th. Bracket says Earth went more Corrin than Pit.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

>A player named Corrin using Ike

-twitches-

(Though frankly I think its more shocking to see an Ike period, let alone a solo Ike, show up in a Japanese result)

Who did the Ike beat out of curiosity: Tai or Ke-ya?

 

[Laken64]

2nd Earth

5th: Corrin

Japan is a confusing place lol, also I'm curious why Earth went mostly , The only time I see it is against KEN because the mu is even for both sides

>A player named Corrin using Ike

Fun fact: Corrin is called Kamui in Japan but its still funny either way

 

[ARGHETH]

Who did the Ike beat out of curiosity: Tai or Ke-ya?

Neither, actually. He beat Hikaru and Ikep in winners, then got sent to losers by NGA and immediately got knocked out by Earth.

 

[my_T]

Earth uses Corrin in quite a few MU's



As far as I've seen these are the usual MU's he pulls out Corrin. Fox still looks rough for both Pit and Corrin but better for Corrin. In the case of Megaman, he has had success using Pit and Corrin in this MU but might be using Corrin because he feels Corrin is stronger in this MU than Pit.

unpopular opinion...Earth is the best Corrin

 

[my_T]

Neither, actually. He beat Hikaru and Ikep in winners, then got sent to losers by NGA and immediately got knocked out by Earth.

who did Earth use against him?

 

[ARGHETH]

who did Earth use against him?

No idea. The bracket I found says "Earth (Corrin, Pit)" the whole way.

 

[TDK]

Yeah, that's the same one I've found. Since it says "Earth (Corrin, Pit)" I've assumed that he used Corrin in more games than Pit, but this bracket is confusing so that could very well be wrong. It's not alphabetically ordered, because it says "Ke-ya (Robin, Corrin)", or, in Japanese "Ke-ya (Rufre/Reflet, Kamui)".

Japanese brackets are strange.

 

[ARGHETH]

Yeah, that's the same one I've found. Since it says "Earth (Corrin, Pit)" I've assumed that he used Corrin in more games than Pit, but this bracket is confusing so that could very well be wrong. It's not alphabetically ordered, because it says "Ke-ya (Robin, Corrin)", or, in Japanese "Ke-ya (Rufre/Reflet, Kamui)".

Japanese brackets are strange.

It's normally (Pit, Corrin) for Earth, so I assume he mostly used Corrin here.

 

[Das Koopa]

Lucas has a more versatile grab game, locks/setups, a better recovery, better spacing tools, etc. Ness has a great advantage state but I feel like the Lucas metagame has developed a lot whereas Ness' has sort of stagnated and suffered from really big weaknesses that were apparent from 2015 and only got worse as time went on.

I agree that Lucas is better but I think both are the middest of mid tier.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Neither, actually. He beat Hikaru and Ikep in winners, then got sent to losers by NGA and immediately got knocked out by Earth.

>Ike beating a good Bayo

...I don't suppose there are any vids of that particularly match?

 

[Das Koopa]

One of Japan's Ike's has obscenely good SDI. It's either A (Corrin is his new tag) or Nijinko (sp?) so that might be related.

 

[TDK]

I'm pretty sure that Ike's name started with N, I remember a twitter video of him SDIing out of Mewtwo's Usmash easily.

EDIT: SmashWiki:

"Nojinko is a smasher from Japan who mains Ike in SSB4. He is mostly known for his ability to SDI, often demonstrated through his tournament sets as well as online videos. He is currently ranked 159th on the JAPAN Power Rankings."

 

[L9999]

Earth uses Corrin in quite a few MU's



As far as I've seen these are the usual MU's he pulls out Corrin. Fox still looks rough for both Pit and Corrin but better for Corrin. In the case of Megaman, he has had success using Pit and Corrin in this MU but might be using Corrin because he feels Corrin is stronger in this MU than Pit.

unpopular opinion...Earth is the best Corrin

One thing that I notice about all of this characters is that they go against everything Pit is. is the living incarnation of "the ever-neutral syndrome," which is that you have a very good neutral there is but then killing with efficiency is a problem. don't care too much about neutral, all they need is to eat rage and then kill at mid %s to get a sick lead, and being behind is bad for Pit. deals so much damage and is so full of KO moves Pit can't keep up very well. Then there is the section of characters that force their gameplan on the other character . Out of this 4, the last three are a case of "outneutraling Pit." In the last thread, TDK commented me that Pit does bad when a character has better neutral than him, because Pit is only that. for example, deals too much damage and on top of that, his kill moves come from neutral. That's why I don't buy the comment of "Pit only has even MUs all across, and some -1s." Pit clearly has characters that dump on his gameplan, this isn't 2015.

 

[The-Technique]

>Ike beating a good Bayo

...I don't suppose there are any vids of that particularly match?

it isn't a completely awful matchup imo, it just takes godlike patience since you can't throw out attacks carelessly, but ike's throw follow ups are 100% free (u-throw to u-air is a guaranteed KO at 90% w/o rage, and the percent window is generous)

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Fox still looks rough for both Pit and Corrin but better for Corrin.

Pit does considerably better vs Fox than Corrin does imo. It's probably more a personal preference thing for Earth to use Corrin against Fox.

 

[I speak Spanish too]

Can somebody link me to the current list of characters in the metagame based on popularity?

 

[teddystalin]

IIRC Earth went Corrin in every streamed match last night. He's mentioned not being confident in his Corrin while abroad before, so some were speculating that he was going solo to train her up in a low-pressure environment.

>Ike beating a good Bayo

...I don't suppose there are any vids of that particularly match?

Right here.

 

[Zerp]

Can somebody link me to the current list of characters in the metagame based on popularity?

There's this and this.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

it isn't a completely awful matchup imo, it just takes godlike patience since you can't throw out attacks carelessly, but ike's throw follow ups are 100% free (u-throw to u-air is a guaranteed KO at 90% w/o rage, and the percent window is generous)

Oh I was well aware of the throw stuff, I just wasn't sure how Ike did handling Bayonetta's uh, everything else.

Corrin did some impressive work with Dair. Overall the MU reminded me in some ways of the Fox MU: Fox/Bayonetta is going to be all over Ike for large periods of time, but Ike is going to keep landing stray hits/some grabs due to his large range and then once Fox/Bayonetta hit 90% a stray Fair by the ledge can kill as can a grab by the ledge. Something Fox/Bayonetta have to respect because they can't power through it... outside of Witch Time in Bayo's case.

 

[The-Technique]

Oh I was well aware of the throw stuff, I just wasn't sure how Ike did handling Bayonetta's uh, everything else.

Corrin did some impressive work with Dair. Overall the MU reminded me in some ways of the Fox MU: Fox/Bayonetta is going to be all over Ike for large periods of time, but Ike is going to keep landing stray hits/some grabs due to his large range and then once Fox/Bayonetta hit 90% a stray Fair by the ledge can kill as can a grab by the ledge. Something Fox/Bayonetta have to respect because they can't power through it... outside of Witch Time in Bayo's case.

there's also some lesser known tools like d-tilt > footstool d-air. if they di away then they're frame trapped into short hop auto cancel f-air, which they can air dodge but are forced to land on the ground where they'll get hit by another d-tilt, and so on until d-tilt true combos into f-air (works on pikachu and cloud too)

there's also the more common d-throw footstool, which is very easy to land on bayonetta regardless of her DI, if you land a grab at 0-9% it's your best punish

its definitely an annoying matchup but you can get some very heavy punishes on bayonetta when the opportunity arrives.

 

[JB333]

Amiibo Madness (53 entrants, MI) https://smash.gg/tournament/amiibo-madness/events/wii-u-singles/brackets/114463

1. Ryuga
2. Meek
3. Nero
4. LOE1

Very interesting tournament. A lot of notable players didn't even get top 8 (Smasher1001 13th, Ksev 9th).

I'd also like to point out Meek beating Nero. I used to think that Pikachu was Falcon's worst MU, but I don't feel that is the case anymore. Certain Falcon players have good records against Pikachu players (Cashmere being the most notable example). Now I still feel the MU is still in Pika's favor, but It seems that it's more along the lines of -2/-1 instead of -3.

 

[TDK]

TGL's March Monthly (73 Entrants, Florida) https://twitter.com/9Hammer/status/840754208609558528

1st: Wormynugget
2nd: MVD
3rd: 8BitMan
4th: Roguepenguin

Hope R! (43 Entrants, PGH/NEOH) https://smash.gg/tournament/hope-r-...t-tension/events/wii-u-singles/brackets/81832

1st: Tension
2nd: Seagull Joe
3rd: Colinies
4th: Midnight
Note: IcyMist dropped out of the tournament due to health reasons.