Official 4BR Tier List V3 - Competitive Insight & Analysis

[Floor]

While I truly appreciate the effort Reddit put into making that list (kinda sorta not really) there's plenty of obvious flaws. Of course the underrepresented characters get left out (MU charts are usually optimistic, so fewer Bowser Jr. Charts makes a worse case for the character) and some of these charts are super old. Looking at the results... a +2 Marth advantage over DK but a -1 for Lucina? I'll spare for Lucina opinions for now but does anyone honestly for a second believe a difference of 3? Didn't think so.

This is why I go with Smashboards over Reddit. Thanks, but no thanks.

EDIT: wow not to mention they used C-lu's 1.1.4 MU chart for Lucina over NAKAT's that came out in March.

 

[sleepy_Nex]

While i agree that you shouldn't use charts from even before 1.1.6. i must say that this data is pretty interesting and it probably was a large amount of work to put that together.

It's not like you have to take that like "Oh so this is absolute and anything other is wrong"

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

Jtails just posted this video and it could be helpful for everyone.

He shows one flaw he finds in the setup at the end of the video too.

 

[Das Koopa]

Part 3 of 5 of OrionRank is up

https://intheloop837.wordpress.com/2017/09/07/orionrank-late-summer-30-21/

https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/6ypi6a/orionrank_late_summer_3021/

 

[OverTime]

Not trying to start anything but what major Tournaments has a Cloud main won? Drawing a huge blank.

 

[Skeeter Mania]

Not trying to start anything but what major Tournaments has a Cloud main won? Drawing a huge blank.

Not quite a major (though considered a national):

Low Tier City (won by Tweek upon defeating ZeRo in GF)

 

[verbatim]

Not trying to start anything but what major Tournaments has a Cloud main won? Drawing a huge blank.

All of them since he came out except for Smashcon 2016.

 

[sleepy_Nex]

While I truly appreciate the effort Reddit put into making that list (kinda sorta not really) there's plenty of obvious flaws. Of course the underrepresented characters get left out (MU charts are usually optimistic, so fewer Bowser Jr. Charts makes a worse case for the character) and some of these charts are super old. Looking at the results... a +2 Marth advantage over DK but a -1 for Lucina? I'll spare for Lucina opinions for now but does anyone honestly for a second believe a difference of 3? Didn't think so.

This is why I go with Smashboards over Reddit. Thanks, but no thanks.

EDIT: wow not to mention they used C-lu's 1.1.4 MU chart for Lucina over NAKAT's that came out in March.

All of them since he came out except for Smashcon 2016.

Doesn't he mean singles? Zero being really good at the mu probably doesn't help clouds success to win major things.

 

[|RK|]

Oh, a Kirby (Silverbean) beat Javi at a SoCal local.

Kirby/Sheik I figure, but it's one of those things that went under the radar. IIRC, Javi got him in the runback.

 

[TDK]

The last time Cloud won a big event would've been MKLeo's G4 run, where he was used as a secondary to his Marth at the time. A Cloud main has never won a singles major.

EDIT: West Side Saga pools are out! Three advance, one through winners and two in losers.

B1: ZeRo vs Aperture , Tyrant in losers (tfw Tyrant gets to fight two Rosas in a row in losers)
B2: Nairo vs K9Sbruce , PiXL in losers
B3: Tweek vs Stroder , Mr. Con Con in losers
B4: VoiD vs Aarvark , Trevonte in losers
B5: KEN vs SS , Jtails in losers (For what it's worth, Ven's in here)
B6: Elegant vs Luthie , Zan in losers
B7: Tsu- vs Zenyou , Vermillion in losers
B8: NAKAT vs Javi , Zex in losers
C1: Abadango vs Xzax , TLTC in losers
C2: Kirihara vs DSS ( ;~; ), Brosinex in losers
C3: Falln vs Rich Brown , Saiki in losers
C4: Shuton vs Eon , Soulimar in losers
C5: Lima vs Legit , Phoenix in losers
C6: JK vs Charliedaking , Vash in losers
C7: Zinoto vs T , Teb in losers
C8: Locus vs Konga , S2H in losers

 

[Bowserboy3]

NINTENDO Galaxy posted this video just above, but it doesn't look like many noticed it.

I highly recommend you all give this a watch, whether you use Diddy or not. It goes into the strengths AND weaknesses of ZeRo's ledge trapping style, and something very important in regards to getting around it. Said important thing is at around the 2 minute mark if you're lazy and just want to get to the good bit, but watching it all helps you understand your options from the ledge etc.

In short, just watch this.

-----

And also, what's up with Dabuz these days? Doesn't seem to be attending much...

 

[FeelMeUp]

I made a post about that over 6 months ago. Odd to see people only catching on now.
Diddy has a terrible time ledge trapping people that wait for him to commit.
https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...ive-impressions.440784/page-249#post-21650640

 

[|RK|]

I made a post about that over 6 months ago. Odd to see people only catching on now.
Diddy has a terrible time ledge trapping people that wait for him to commit.
https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...ive-impressions.440784/page-249#post-21650640

Which is interesting, considering Diddy has, potentially, one of the strongest ledge trump punishes.

 

[Skeeter Mania]

I made a post about that over 6 months ago. Odd to see people only catching on now.
Diddy has a terrible time ledge trapping people that wait for him to commit.
https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...ive-impressions.440784/page-249#post-21650640

Could I ask how to get past? Eventually the ledge invulnerability won't be enough to get past the setup.

 

[OverTime]

I made a post about that over 6 months ago. Odd to see people only catching on now.
Diddy has a terrible time ledge trapping people that wait for him to commit.
https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...ive-impressions.440784/page-249#post-21650640

Would that mean a Sheik doing that dumb hard invincible ledge vanish tech should be the best defence against Diddy ledge trapping? Cuz I hate that tech.

 

[Skeeter Mania]

Would that mean a Sheik doing that dumb hard invincible ledge vanish tech should be the best defence against Diddy ledge trapping? Cuz I hate that tech.

How does she become invincible?

 

[HoSmash4]

Vanish begins invincibility on frame 19. In order to regain ledge invulnerability the method cause her to put her vulnerable body onstage. It loses to the diddy ledgetrap if they reactionary fair

 

[TriTails]

Can't Diddy just put banana in the place where you'll end up if you ledgeroll, and then shield at the ledge?

If you neutral getup, Diddy can grab you.
If you jump, Diddy can SH F-air you.
If you roll, you'll trip.
If you drop ledge into jump, it's a bad idea in general unless you're a command grabber.
If you wait, you'll get shield drop -> D-tilt -> GG.

Basically what Zenyou do with Mario, except much better since you don't have to react to the ledge roll and Diddy's aerial frontal coverage is miles better than Mario's. This won't work against the likes of Mewtwo or Wario but I can see this working against most others.

...Although I've only seen this ledge coverage strategy vs Luigi so this may contain a flaw that is exploitable by others. Just putting this out here since I've been wondering why no one thought of this.

 

[Das Koopa]

https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/6yvtxn/orionrank_late_summer_2011/

https://intheloop837.wordpress.com/2017/09/08/orionrank-late-summer-20-11/

Part 4 of 5 of OrionRank Late Summer is here, a little bit earlier today.

 

[|RK|]

So... topic on Reddit about who the best character at edgeguarding is.

Lot of expected answers, like Bayo, Sheik, and Pika...

But someone mentioned Luigi was underrated, and not only do I agree - I think he's easily the best. The other characters are great at hitting their opponents offstage, but unless their opponent has a legitimately terrible recovery, they'll often survive. Even watching ESAM edgeguard Cloud - there are so many things that go into it. If he messes up, Cloud gets back.

Meanwhile, Luigi runs off the stage, presses down b... And I'll bet everyone here has seen Luigi take more stocks with that than any of the other three. And at lower percents.

 

[PK Bash]

So... topic on Reddit about who the best character at edgeguarding is.

Lot of expected answers, like Bayo, Sheik, and Pika...

But someone mentioned Luigi was underrated, and not only do I agree - I think he's easily the best. The other characters are great at hitting their opponents offstage, but unless their opponent has a legitimately terrible recovery, they'll often survive. Even watching ESAM edgeguard Cloud - there are so many things that go into it. If he messes up, Cloud gets back.

Meanwhile, Luigi runs off the stage, presses down b... And I'll bet everyone here has seen Luigi take more stocks with that than any of the other three. And at lower percents.

Issue with Luigi is he has to go deep offstage in order to do it. Which sucks for him if he screws it up, not to mention it's hard as hell to do properly. Brilliantly effective when it works though, and a terrifying prospect when you don't have a jump.
Good shout, mind, Cyclone gimps are legit but are often just sort of cast over as the sort of thing you only see from the top Luigis, and because they're few and far between and only Elegant is getting major exposure currently, it's something people seem to forget about. Which is a shame.

On this topic, here's the traditional PKBash reminder that Ness isn't totally ****. Ness edgeguarding is really good. PKT tailwhipping and dsmash two frames are pretty free ways to gimp most characters or just tack on some good damage. Puts a lot of pressure on the opponent with potentially high reward and minimal risk to Ness himself. Obviously there's aerials to send people miles and often kill them. Some people rate PK Fire very highly as well - I don't personally, but the practical uses of it have been proven in practice so yeah he's got that too. And obviously grabs, down smash, nair and up air will cover higher recoveries.
Shame about that useless spike though...

 

[my_T]

So... topic on Reddit about who the best character at edgeguarding is.

Lot of expected answers, like Bayo, Sheik, and Pika...

But someone mentioned Luigi was underrated, and not only do I agree - I think he's easily the best. The other characters are great at hitting their opponents offstage, but unless their opponent has a legitimately terrible recovery, they'll often survive. Even watching ESAM edgeguard Cloud - there are so many things that go into it. If he messes up, Cloud gets back.

Meanwhile, Luigi runs off the stage, presses down b... And I'll bet everyone here has seen Luigi take more stocks with that than any of the other three. And at lower percents.

Luigi is good off stage but not the best. At the very least I'd say Bayo, Sheik, Pika, and ZSS are better simply because they have more versatile edge guarding tools. They all have pretty good air mobility where as Luigis is kinda bad. They have good answers for every angle that you can recover from, Luigi does not. Luigis' poor air speed makes it difficult for him to cover deep horizontally. Also, cyclone is pretty laggy and if he misses it's not much of a problem for most characters to get back to the stage. And even though they don't have anything as deadly as cyclone they all still have options that can kill very early.

 

[|RK|]

Luigi is good off stage but not the best. At the very least I'd say Bayo, Sheik, Pika, and ZSS are better simply because they have more versatile edge guarding tools. They all have pretty good air mobility where as Luigis is kinda bad. They have good answers for every angle that you can recover from, Luigi does not. Luigis' poor air speed makes it difficult for him to cover deep horizontally. Also, cyclone is pretty laggy and if he misses it's not much of a problem for most characters to get back to the stage. And even though they don't have anything as deadly as cyclone they all still have options that can kill very early.

The problem with that is this - for all the great tools those characters have, they don't get edgeguards as often as top Luigi players do (mainly Elegant). Yeah, they can cover all sorts of angles, but how often do you see their edgeguards actually seal a stock?

If Pika and Sheik got as many gimps as Luigi does in the average top-level set, they wouldn't have nearly as much of an issue killing. Bayo and ZSS? Primarily ladder kills, and past a certain percent, they often struggle.

Actually, on the subject of Bayo - one of the biggest reasons she was believed to beat Cloud was because of her many options for edgeguarding. But in practice, Sheik and Luigi have shown to be able to edgeguard him more effectively.

 

[blackghost]

Actually, on the subject of Bayo - one of the biggest reasons she was believed to beat Cloud was because of her many options for edgeguarding. But in practice, Sheik and Luigi have shown to be able to edgeguard him more effectively.

I don't believe bayo edge guarding has even really been remotely optimized yet. Bayo players are still jumping off stage and looking for a fair string or a witch twist auto pilot edge guard. There are a lot of options such as abk/dabk back into the side of the stage for stage spikes, more abuses of witch time, ECT and stuff that still needs to be utilized more.
Bayo players are topping off results wise because defensively top players are at this point auto pilot bayo play and that includes edge guarding. The time for jump off Nair and witch twist won't be effective in top play.

 

[Pyrover]

I think the problem with Luigi's edgugard is that not only does he have to go deep, but he has to spend his Cyclone to attempt the gimp. We all know why it's a terrifying edge guard, but if he misses, he's very vulnerable to getting swatted to his death. Cyclone is laggy at the end and he is lacking one of his best recovery options once he uses it.

Don't get me wrong, he's still easily top ten for edge guards, but it's very risky for him in a lot of matchups.

 

[Kofu]

For what it's worth I don't feel like Sheik has especially strong edgeguarding. At the very least, it doesn't seem to be at the level that a lot of people put it at. She has a hard time knocking opponents away to the point where they simply can't recover because of her low knockback moves. Bouncing Fish is strong and covers a lot of options, but it's rather committal and can put her in a poor position. If she can't just love-tap characters away (see Diddy and Cloud) she doesn't seem to get a lot of kills from offstage play. Even against Fox, she can't seem to nab an easy kill.

I do want to clarify though, I feel that Sheik has a strong offstage game and is capable of racking up a LOT of percent on recovering foes. Her option coverage is pretty complete and her ledge trapping game is also very frightening.

Another little anecdote, I feel like a fast fall speed is generally a hindrance to edgeguarding. It's hard to properly address your opponent's trajectory when you're falling faster than they are. I feel like Rosalina is a bit of an underrated edgeguarder for that reason. She has large, lingering, mostly disjointed aerials, excellent aerial weaving, high jumps, and a strong recovery to make it back. She's also got Luma for good measure. I think the reason you don't see her edgeguard more is because her ledge trapping is just that strong. Villager is, of course, another potent character for edgeguarding.

 

[Nu~]

Surprised that hasn't been mentioned yet.

Big and lingering hit boxes with some of the best weaving in the game + an invincible recovery (that also can be used as a gimp tool).

Having a stall and fall dair that can spike or send horizontally AND can be recovered from helps too.

 

[Routa]

While I do agree that Luigi is great at edgeguarding I have to say he has hard time dealing with certain recovery option. That being recovering high. Luigi lacks options against characters like Wario who can just recover high when needed. Also Luigi has some trouble against opponents that can stall due to him having to commit to/time Cyclone if he wants to cover low recovery.
A good edgeguarder has multiple strong options for different situations. This is why I think that Wario and Mario don't get enough credit when it comes to edgeguarding. Then again there are a lot of scary edgeguarders like Ganondorf. I do think that Bayo has the best edgeguarding kit by far. She has strong aswer for almost every situation. I might write a lit more in depth about edgeguarding some day.

 

[Lord Dio]

while not as amazing as the ones mentioned above, I think 's edgeguarding game is better than most give him credit for.

 

[Kofu]

while not as amazing as the ones mentioned above, I think 's edgeguarding game is better than most give him credit for.

Ganon's edgeguarding is mainly held back by his awful recovery. All of his aerials are brutal offstage and he has a few suicide options to bring an opponent down too.

 

[arbustopachon]

is another low tier who is pretty good at edgeguarding.

fair, bair and dair are all really scary offstage and he gets an extra air jump to mix things up. Fair is particulary scary since it packs quite the punch for a frame 8 aerial.

Onstage he can also use d-tilt, f-tilt and D-smash to cover the ledge pretty effectively, plus he can always rack up damage with flamethrower.

His mediocre recovery and poor air speed does hurt his edgeguarding a bit tho.

 

[Lord Dio]

also, any comments on edgeguarding potential in duck hunt and villager?

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

Speaking of edgeguarding moves, Lucas has down angle forward tilt which can 2 frame opponents due the hitbox/non-clankable disjoint along with it's short endlag so you can spam it. You can even use it when the opponent's ledge invincibility is gone to knock them off the ledge.

I like to use it vs Fox Illusion since I can reliably time to to always catch Fox if he aims it directly above the ledge or right below the ledge.

Besides that Lucas can use fair, dair, bair, PK Fire, PSI Magnet (sends opponents with enough percent at a ridiculous horizontal angle towards the blast zone and it does it quite fast too), and PKT 1 & 2.

There's down smash too which can be spammed or timed properly to land the first hit with has the highest damage and knockback in regards to the three total hits of down smash.

EDIT: Forgot to include PK Freeze.

 

[Skeeter Mania]

Maybe Mario kappa

 

[Lord Dio]

Lucas and ness are kinda underrated when looking at edgeguards. PK thunder, Flash/Freeze, both have a down smash that can two-frame........

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

This just got uploaded, here ya'll go.

 

[ArnoldPalmer]

Really, REALLY, surprised that nobody has mentioned MK or Rosa's edgeguarding yet

 

[Hippieslayer]

Why are almost all Zard players seemingly fundamentally inept at using the character? Only Sharpy and Silentdoom seem able to get the character to function by using its strengths to circumvent its many weaknesses. Anti vs Ally was cringeworthy, not only did Anti completely fail to attempt spacing, he also gave up and started spamming flare blitz as if though the match was over when it wasn't, appearing unaware of the comeback potential inherent in characters possessing the jank trinity of heavy weight, rage, and ko power. Perhaps Anti, who favors top tiers and plays them in a rather standard (albeit effective and skillfully executed) fashion is the type of player who focuses on abusing strengths rather than covering weaknesses? You don't so much fish for kills or setups with zard as you stay afloat and let the kills come to you naturally, edgeguarding aside. Anti was trying way to hard to land stuff, and way too little when it came to landing, when it came to the latter he seemed utterly clueless, being as he was, nigh perpetually caught in disadvantage. His ledgetrapping and edgeguarding also sucked total dik.

Are there zards out there that I've missed? Otherwise I really don't get why so many people suck at playing him. There's literally nothing technically demanding about playing him the way Sharpy does, in fact Zard is pretty darn easy to play.

 

[Hippieslayer]

Hello Im anti Im play charizard vs ally ooops got combod into the air cuz no spacing, time 2 land wat do.. hmm lets not use zards extra jump when im close 2 the ground to mix things up by changing direction suddenly thereby throwing my opponents timing up a bit and hopefully letting me get the spacing i need to land with a safe on shield bair or a fastfall nair that might just not get shielded because my opponent will be in a rush to get to where I am because of the way i used my double jump, lets just land with dair or nair and get juggld agen, and then lets continue to not space, like lets not even use zards spacing moves to put the idea that i might space into the opponents head, lets just not do it and then spam flare blitz and die

 

[Skeeter Mania]

Why are almost all Zard players seemingly fundamentally inept at using the character? Only Sharpy and Silentdoom seem able to get the character to function by using its strengths to circumvent its many weaknesses. Anti vs Ally was cringeworthy, not only did Anti completely fail to attempt spacing, he also gave up and started spamming flare blitz as if though the match was over when it wasn't, appearing unaware of the comeback potential inherent in characters possessing the jank trinity of heavy weight, rage, and ko power. Perhaps Anti, who favors top tiers and plays them in a rather standard (albeit effective and skillfully executed) fashion is the type of player who focuses on abusing strengths rather than covering weaknesses? You don't so much fish for kills or setups with zard as you stay afloat and let the kills come to you naturally, edgeguarding aside. Anti was trying way to hard to land stuff, and way too little when it came to landing, when it came to the latter he seemed utterly clueless, being as he was, nigh perpetually caught in disadvantage. His ledgetrapping and edgeguarding also sucked total dik.

Are there zards out there that I've missed? Otherwise I really don't get why so many people suck at playing him. There's literally nothing technically demanding about playing him the way Sharpy does, in fact Zard is pretty darn easy to play.

I suppose there's also Fire, Chuck Nasty, and Serge.