Official 4BR Tier List V3 - Competitive Insight & Analysis

[Kofu]

Speaking of Ike, Nojinko better SDI his way out of pools or I'll be upset

 

[jet56]

Idk nojinko has a really hard pool. Both Salem, stroder and xzax play characters that really beat Ike and then you have to deal with potential team kills in Ike Tyson and promealia. It's gonna be a tough pool all around (promealia can potentially upset Salem, if cosmos Salem at big house is enough to go off of, and stroder xzax could go either way.)

 

[TDK]

Speaking of Ike, Nojinko better SDI his way out of pools or I'll be upset

if he upsets Promaelia he fights Salem in semis, which promises to be interesting.

If only he didn't have to beat Promaelia to get there.

 

[Das Koopa]

SEPTEMBER DATA WRITE-UP

Monthly changes:

Fox +2.2%
Mario +1.4%
Captain Falcon +1.2%
Luigi +1.2%
Greninja +1.1%
Sonic +1.1%
Toon Link +1%
Link +0.6%
Ness +0.5%
Rosalina & Luma +0.4%
Meta Knight +0.3%
Sheik +0.3%
Yoshi +0.2%
Mewtwo +0.2%
Roy +0.2%
Samus +0.1%
Olimar = 0.9%
Cloud -0.1%
Mega Man -0.1%
Lucas -0.2%
Villager -0.2%
Ryu -0.2%
Diddy King -0.3%
R.O.B. -0.3%
Peach -0.3%
Pikachu -0.3%
Lucina -0.5%
Bayonetta -0.5%
Donkey Kong -0.7%
Marth -0.8%
Bowser -0.9%
Zero Suit Samus -1.3%
Corrin -1.9%
Other -2.2%

WELL this is wacky. No real idea to make of this, will have to see what happens in the next month. Some characters are severely understated due to lack of attendance by mains, but Corrin (the prime example here) will recover significantly between TBH7 and Fire Emblem Saga.

We're left with a pretty perplexing gap between Sonic/Mewtwo (50ish points) that I can't really explain beyond potential consolidation among the high tiers, which oddly includes Mario. ZSS is low, but a lot of this will be made up for pretty quickly for similar reasons to Corrin (TBH7, potentially FE Saga assuming Nairo does well)

Spoiler: Full Results, September 2017

Bayonetta: 147
Diddy Kong: 146.75
Cloud: 131.5
Fox: 121.25
Mario: 111.75
Sheik: 105
Sonic: 103
Mewtwo: 51
Rosalina & Luma: 50
Ryu: 49.5
Zero Suit Samus: 49
Captain Falcon: 48.5
Luigi: 42.5
Greninja: 42
Toon Link: 35
Meta Knight: 34
Ness: 33.5
Pikachu: 26.5
Peach: 23
Mega Man: 19
Donkey Kong: 18.5
Villager: 18
Marth: 17.25
Yoshi: 16
Link: 15.5
Samus: 14
Olimar: 14
Corrin: 14
Roy: 12.5
R.O.B.: 12.25
Mr. Game & Watch: 11
Lucas: 11
Ike: 10
Lucario: 10
Lucina: 10
Bowser: 8.5
Shulk: 8
Little Mac: 7
Wario: 6
Duck Hunt: 5
Falco: 5
Ganondorf: 4
Wii Fit Trainer: 3
Palutena: 3
Robin: 3
King Dedede: 2
Zelda: 2
Pit: 2
Bowser Jr.: 2
Charizard: 1
Pac-Man: 1
Kirby: 0.5
Jigglypuff: 0.25

I will be updating with tourney info pretty shortly. Pardon the delay, I'll cover the last two weeks.

Results Thread: https://smashboards.com/threads/tournament-placing-database-scoring-project.437773/

Methodology: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Jks0EtmeNemKsm2rXzYf8RB3D43-Ru23ypx_DOnQPDY/edit#

Previous month(s): https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...nsight-analysis.445990/page-165#post-21832510

 

[origamiscienceguy]

Does anybody think the TGG curse will finally be broken? I can only really see Nairo stopping that from happening.

 

[ARGHETH]

(promealia can potentially upset Salem, if cosmos Salem at big house is enough to go off of

I really doubt it. Salem is a whole other level from other Bayo mains, and Cosmos barely beat Salem, even through all the SDs.

 

[Rizen]

I guess blowing T away at Civil War convinced Dabuz that Link is booty in the MU lol. I know T has sets off Kirihara though. Pretty sure that MU changes wildly based on how both players play.

IMO Rosa wins but it's not horrible for Link. Link's vulnerable to "rosa things" because rings are disjointed enough to stop Link's upB, bombs from above and make landings hell. Very few characters can harass Link like her. But Rosa is feather weight and vulnerable to Dthrow combos. Bombs allow Link to camp through gravitational pull and Link has strong attacks. It seems bad for Link but if Rosa messes up she's in a heap of trouble.

 

[Guido65]

I guess blowing T away at Civil War convinced Dabuz that Link is booty in the MU lol. I know T has sets off Kirihara though. Pretty sure that MU changes wildly based on how both players play.

Glentendo said that T didn't space fair at all vs him and that he choked. Good fair Spacing with link is vital in that mu. Nimious who also uses both characters did a good writeup on the mu as well.

 

[Vyrnx]

Does anybody think the TGG curse will finally be broken? I can only really see Nairo stopping that from happening.

I doubt it. If Leo fights Nairo, he will use Cloud. If Leo fights Tweek or Komo, he will use Cloud. If Leo fights KEN, he will probably play MK. If he managed to avoid these four, he has a decent chance. But then there are still other players like Larry, Salem, VoiD, and potentially ANTi, Elegant, Shuton, Kirihara, etc who could beat his FE characters.

 

[Bigbomb2]

Having half your moveset knock Luma away pretty far also helps a lot. Jab is great in this MU

 

[|RK|]

SEPTEMBER DATA WRITE-UP

Only half a point for Kirby?

 

[Illuminose]

Dabuz had a discussion recently with the Rosalina discord to try and theory craft ways to make the Fox MU more bearable in his eyes. He had a few complaints about it.

1. He finds the speed of Fox makes it extremely difficult to actually wall Fox out. Fox's moves also are particularly good at launching Luma when they are hit so it's bad to get hit even once.

2. Rosa seems to lack good Non committal options for stopping a Fox jumping in with AC Dair or SH Nair. He says his jump ins are pretty much unreactable.

3. Once Rosa is in disadvantage he really can't think of ways to escape. Recovering if extremely difficuylt, landing is extremely difficult, and getting off of the ledge is difficult.

Those were some of his bigger complaints about the MU. Granted he did find a few answers to some of these, but he thinks optimization will come from pushing the advantage like other commenters above said. He thinks disadvantage doesn't have much advancement to be made at least for now.

i was curious about how kirihara handles some of the things that you said dabuz was talking about, so i decided to take a look at larry lurr vs kirihara from civil war.

Spoiler: specific stuff from each game

game 1
- in the first 10 seconds, we already see two choices by kirihara to stuff larry jumping. the first is a nair to cover the jump-in after kirihara reacted to the full hop (basically non-committal because it covered double jump and aerial down. he covers another dair approach with a pivot ftilt.
- he later sees another jump and covers it with a nair.
- at 2:53 kirihara sees a jump and rolls behind larry (punishes the utilt on landing)
- look at 3:10 for an example of how kirihara gets out of disadvantage. he goes to the platform and then goes off the platform and does two mixups (dair and fair) to cover himself, then safely retreats to ledge and reacts to larry committing to a grab to land safely on stage.
- at 3:20 you see another disadvantage situation. kirihara does this a lot whenever larry tries to catch him with full hop air dodge, where he air dodges around the height of full hop up air and drifts to make it really hard for larry to catch.

game 2
- another early jump-in dair, another retreat back and punish by kirihara (this time, a foxtrot back turnaround jab)
- at 4:38, we finally see kirihara get opened up by a jump-in. he gets the foxtrot back, but moves a bit too slowly and gets jabbed. he does escape the jab though and gets a punish.
- at 4:56, kirihara stuffs another potential jump with nair and forces larry to corner himself.
- at 5:10, we see another landing situation that doesn't quite work out because larry powershields the lunar land nair (would have worked otherwise).
- look at 5:20. although kirihara gets hit a little bit trying to land, he eventually expends his jump and makes his drift really ambiguous so that it's hard for larry to cover his landing, then covers it with one of his aerials that has great range (back air).

game 3
- at 7:30, we see another great weave by kirihara to land without luma.
- aggressive landing at 7:35
- at 7:40, kirihara counteracts the jump in nair utilt pressure with turnaround grab oos.
- at 7:45, another air dodge and drift past where larry hits luma, then gets past larry waiting for his landing by going around the platform.
- at 7:55, we see a thing kirihara does a bit nair when larry goes for a full hop at a range where he has to double jump to get in. if larry fades back the nair is safe, if not he gets hit.
- at 8:13, we see kirihara stuck without luma, and larry is able to cover everything and kill him.
- at 8:20, larry adapts and tomahawks, recognizing that kirihara is shielding and punishing a lot his jump pressure.
- immediate aggressive fair mixup after getting hit at 8:27 to escape disadvantage state
- at 8:42, kirihara finally gets punished for attacking larry's jump-ins with nair bc larry gets a dair around the hitbox of nair.
- at 8:55, kirihara mixes up something he did earlier in the set - fades on stage with fair to escape ledge instead of going toward ledge, so larry misses the punish.
- at 9:15, kirihara uses a dair and fades back to land

game 4
- another drift at 11:45 so larry can't catch him (would have been very hard because larry was on the platform)
- at 11:58, kirihara ledge hop air dodges and fades back toward the edge of the stage to escape the ledge trap (though larry gets a roll read and kills him).

a basic takeaway from this set is that larry wasn't generally getting too much from jump-ins. in fact, kirihara was often reacting to/anticipating his jumps by either stuffing the jump with a nair or retreating and punishing it. larry was actually getting the most effectiveness off dash attack approaches because kirihara couldn't necessarily react to them and stuff them out. compare that to dabuz vs larry from dh mtl. most of the times where dabuz gets caught with jump-ins, it's because he gets caught staying still and committing to jab or something, which fox can just jump over and punish with a down air. kirihara wasn't letting himself get stuck in those situations and thus wasn't getting opened up so much by the jump-ins. at the end of the set, dabuz commits to an approaching nair into a grab that larry can just punish with a jump dair oos into up smash.

also, although disadvantage state could be pretty bad for kirihara at times, he was escaping a lot of situations by utilizing his air dodge+drift well, mixing in some aggressive aerial options. kirihara was typically maneuvering disadvantage state well enough that he wasn't just getting pummeled over and over. something that shouldn't be ignored is that rosa's advantage state is better than fox's. kirihara missed a lot of edgeguards and was struggling to stuff side b from ledge (both of which are reasonable things to get better at) and still was able to find solid juggles/edgeguards that made a huge difference in the set. again, compared to the dabuz vs larry set, it did not feel like dabuz had the same depth in his landing/ledge mixups. this resulted in him getting stuck worse in advantage state.

essentially, yes, it's hard to just wall out fox, but rosa still has good options to win neutral against fox and abuses his disadvantage even harder than fox abuses hers. i can't see how this matchup is worse than even, and i'd still put it in rosa's favor before fox's.

 

[RonNewcomb]

Ike's down tilt is pretty good, m8.

A poke is an attack you'd use in neutral without caring if it hits your opponent's shield or not, or even if it whiffs entirely, because it's safe at most ranges due to its own disjointed range + a decent cooldown.

Smash also has aerial pokes that use aerial deceleration in place of range: forward-jumps at his opponent with f-air, and immediately holds back so when his attack is no longer active, his hurtbox is already drifting away from any attempted retaliation.

The reward for landing a poke in neutral is more neutral, not a combo, and certainly not a big-damage combo.

 

[Skeeter Mania]

A poke is an attack you'd use in neutral without caring if it hits your opponent's shield or not, or even if it whiffs entirely, because it's safe at most ranges due to its own disjointed range + a decent cooldown.

Smash also has aerial pokes that use aerial deceleration in place of range: forward-jumps at his opponent with f-air, and immediately holds back so when his attack is no longer active, his hurtbox is already drifting away from any attempted retaliation.

The reward for landing a poke in neutral is more neutral, not a combo, and certainly not a big-damage combo.

Thanks, didn't need to hear your life story...

 

[ElectricBlade]

That was very good, however something that Dabuz mentioned that I forgot about is that he's really uncomfortable using SH Nairin neutral since Fox can just dash attack it? Otherwise, great write up.

i was curious about how kirihara handles some of the things that you said dabuz was talking about, so i decided to take a look at larry lurr vs kirihara from civil war.

Spoiler: specific stuff from each game

game 1
- in the first 10 seconds, we already see two choices by kirihara to stuff larry jumping. the first is a nair to cover the jump-in after kirihara reacted to the full hop (basically non-committal because it covered double jump and aerial down. he covers another dair approach with a pivot ftilt.
- he later sees another jump and covers it with a nair.
- at 2:53 kirihara sees a jump and rolls behind larry (punishes the utilt on landing)
- look at 3:10 for an example of how kirihara gets out of disadvantage. he goes to the platform and then goes off the platform and does two mixups (dair and fair) to cover himself, then safely retreats to ledge and reacts to larry committing to a grab to land safely on stage.
- at 3:20 you see another disadvantage situation. kirihara does this a lot whenever larry tries to catch him with full hop air dodge, where he air dodges around the height of full hop up air and drifts to make it really hard for larry to catch.

game 2
- another early jump-in dair, another retreat back and punish by kirihara (this time, a foxtrot back turnaround jab)
- at 4:38, we finally see kirihara get opened up by a jump-in. he gets the foxtrot back, but moves a bit too slowly and gets jabbed. he does escape the jab though and gets a punish.
- at 4:56, kirihara stuffs another potential jump with nair and forces larry to corner himself.
- at 5:10, we see another landing situation that doesn't quite work out because larry powershields the lunar land nair (would have worked otherwise).
- look at 5:20. although kirihara gets hit a little bit trying to land, he eventually expends his jump and makes his drift really ambiguous so that it's hard for larry to cover his landing, then covers it with one of his aerials that has great range (back air).

game 3
- at 7:30, we see another great weave by kirihara to land without luma.
- aggressive landing at 7:35
- at 7:40, kirihara counteracts the jump in nair utilt pressure with turnaround grab oos.
- at 7:45, another air dodge and drift past where larry hits luma, then gets past larry waiting for his landing by going around the platform.
- at 7:55, we see a thing kirihara does a bit nair when larry goes for a full hop at a range where he has to double jump to get in. if larry fades back the nair is safe, if not he gets hit.
- at 8:13, we see kirihara stuck without luma, and larry is able to cover everything and kill him.
- at 8:20, larry adapts and tomahawks, recognizing that kirihara is shielding and punishing a lot his jump pressure.
- immediate aggressive fair mixup after getting hit at 8:27 to escape disadvantage state
- at 8:42, kirihara finally gets punished for attacking larry's jump-ins with nair bc larry gets a dair around the hitbox of nair.
- at 8:55, kirihara mixes up something he did earlier in the set - fades on stage with fair to escape ledge instead of going toward ledge, so larry misses the punish.
- at 9:15, kirihara uses a dair and fades back to land

game 4
- another drift at 11:45 so larry can't catch him (would have been very hard because larry was on the platform)
- at 11:58, kirihara ledge hop air dodges and fades back toward the edge of the stage to escape the ledge trap (though larry gets a roll read and kills him).

a basic takeaway from this set is that larry wasn't generally getting too much from jump-ins. in fact, kirihara was often reacting to/anticipating his jumps by either stuffing the jump with a nair or retreating and punishing it. larry was actually getting the most effectiveness off dash attack approaches because kirihara couldn't necessarily react to them and stuff them out. compare that to dabuz vs larry from dh mtl. most of the times where dabuz gets caught with jump-ins, it's because he gets caught staying still and committing to jab or something, which fox can just jump over and punish with a down air. kirihara wasn't letting himself get stuck in those situations and thus wasn't getting opened up so much by the jump-ins. at the end of the set, dabuz commits to an approaching nair into a grab that larry can just punish with a jump dair oos into up smash.

also, although disadvantage state could be pretty bad for kirihara at times, he was escaping a lot of situations by utilizing his air dodge+drift well, mixing in some aggressive aerial options. kirihara was typically maneuvering disadvantage state well enough that he wasn't just getting pummeled over and over. something that shouldn't be ignored is that rosa's advantage state is better than fox's. kirihara missed a lot of edgeguards and was struggling to stuff side b from ledge (both of which are reasonable things to get better at) and still was able to find solid juggles/edgeguards that made a huge difference in the set. again, compared to the dabuz vs larry set, it did not feel like dabuz had the same depth in his landing/ledge mixups. this resulted in him getting stuck worse in advantage state.

essentially, yes, it's hard to just wall out fox, but rosa still has good options to win neutral against fox and abuses his disadvantage even harder than fox abuses hers. i can't see how this matchup is worse than even, and i'd still put it in rosa's favor before fox's.

A poke is an attack you'd use in neutral without caring if it hits your opponent's shield or not, or even if it whiffs entirely, because it's safe at most ranges due to its own disjointed range + a decent cooldown.

Smash also has aerial pokes that use aerial deceleration in place of range: forward-jumps at his opponent with f-air, and immediately holds back so when his attack is no longer active, his hurtbox is already drifting away from any attempted retaliation.

The reward for landing a poke in neutral is more neutral, not a combo, and certainly not a big-damage combo.

Also I appreciated that. Sure I already knew what it was but that's a very good description of the concept in smash terms.

 

[Minordeth]

Hmm, so Salem made a recent tweet about Fox not being Top 3, and is overrated like Sheik. Dabuz chimed in as well.

Salem’s position is that Fox is easy to edge guard and people need to force more 50/50s with Fox “by jumping a lot” and staying near the ledge because “He’ll obviously approach like every Fox does anyway.”

He goes on to say that Fox is essentially like Sonic “but viable,” and that the optimal way to play him is campy or laser heavy, but Foxes don’t do this at all as part of the meta, so it’s pointless to bring up the idea.

Now, I get Salem’s thinking. He is concerned with winning and is focused on what works now. I agree that Fox isn’t Top 3. I also agree that most Fox players don’t play him optimally.

Where I disagree is this idea that you can discount viable options because top players do not use those options. This is the nature of the Smash 4 meta, which is slow to develop anything outside of what has been shown to “work.”

NAKAT has played a conservative Fox style before, but he subsequently forgot about it in the very same set. It just doesn’t happen because Fox gets played like his buttons are gonna beat yours every time. To a degree, that’s true. Salem is right that the Fox meta is built around impatience.

Ironically, of all the top characters to force an approach from Fox to the ledge, Bayo should not be that character. Jumping should be a bad idea against Fox because he can absolutely get in range to punish a short hop more easily than Bayo can bait to grab.

That Fox players don’t play more conservatively is on them. That they don’t incorporate lasers in key MUs is on them.

Ultimately, whenever Salem talks about this or that character is overrated, he is actually talking about the players, the meta, of that character. Fox’s tools allow for a wide range of play styles. It’s not on the character that his players don’t utilize those things differently.

 

[TDK]

What I find most interesting about Salem's opinions is that they all seem based around the idea of a timeout-based meta, but I doubt we'll ever get there because most people don't enjoy it and wouldn't do it. Only Salem really has the patience for it.

Also, if someone else could make the FE Saga thread tomorrow, please, that'd be awesome

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

FE Saga Day 0 exhibitions are live on the ESA stream

 

[NINTENDO Galaxy]

FE Saga thread
https://smashboards.com/threads/fe-saga-discussion-thread.450671/

 

[ARGHETH]

For reference, the tweet.

Fox isn't top 3 and is similarly overrated like sheik.

— Salem (@SalemBane_) October 11, 2017

Also, if someone else could make the FE Saga thread tomorrow, please, that'd be awesome

I can do it.

 

[NairWizard]

Salem's logic is internally inconsistent.

"Fox isn't top 3 because no player currently plays the Fox matchup right; if y'all were to adjust your playstyle, he'd drop"

"But what if Fox camps"

"No Fox currently camps so that's irrelevant"

Hypothetical matchup behavior only seems to matter to Salem when it favors his position.

Arguments that are clearly based on double standards and which fall apart under the tiniest bit of logical scrutiny deserve to be disregarded, whether they're made by top players or not.

 

[Rizen]

I agree with Salem that Fox should force approaches more. Fox is vulnerable offstage and has no trouble killing off the top. His advantage is explosive but lasers are free damage and every little bit adds up. Approaching generally weakens characters, forcing approaches is the main reason Link doesn't get destroyed in neutral.
Reflectors are better than they were in brawl. There were weird technicalities like bomb explosions hurt link so reflected explosions hurt fox and you could time/space bombs to explode on the ground through reflectors. Reflectors couldn't reflect upwards and link could throw bombs down on fox>they'd explode on the ground>Dair. Magnets couldn't absorb the physical bombs, only their explosions so G&W's bucket would be stopped by the bomb and the explosion 1 frame later would hit him. Characters could item Fsmash too. All that's been fixed in ssb4 .

 

[Dabuz]

Hi guys, did you know I lurk here, like, a lot? Ok bye~

 

[Lord Dio]

Hi guys, did you know I lurk here, like, a lot? Ok bye~

Yes, you're not the only one. Hi!

Imma try and dissect Minordeth's post a lil, and then I want to talk about Tipped Off.

Salem’s position is that Fox is easy to edge guard and people need to force more 50/50s with Fox “by jumping a lot” and staying near the ledge because “He’ll obviously approach like every Fox does anyway.”

Fox easy to edgeguard, coming from the best Bayonetta player in the world. Okay then.
>jumping a lot
>against Fox
Unless you have huge disjoints, you're asking to be up aired or up smashed.

He goes on to say that Fox is essentially like Sonic “but viable,” and that the optimal way to play him is campy or laser heavy, but Foxes don’t do this at all as part of the meta, so it’s pointless to bring up the idea.

Funnily enough, it's been suggested that Foxes play campy against bad mus like Ryu. Larry says he can't play campy though. Tbh it seems like a good strat against ryu.......

Okay, that should be my two cents on campy Fox, for now hopefully. Now for something that I feel is important.
So 2gg announced the iBuyPower co-op tourney Masters Showdown, which looks to be huge and apparently has a 10k pot bonus or something.....But the same weekend is Tipped Off, a really big GA-area major. Apparently this year is the third year in a row that Tipped Off has been "stepped on" by a big West Coast event. When asked why it matters, someone replied it's due to stream exposure. They gave an actually good example. There was another tournament that had it's Sm4sh top 8 taken off stream in favor of non-top 8 Melee because all the sm4sh stream exposure was on ZeRo Saga, and this exposure is necessary for players commentators, scenes, etc. being recognized.
That in itself is both sad and scary to hear, that an event loses it's stream time because the main audience is watching a bigger event. It's been suggested that there be a Smash committee to kind of plan these things out, but Bear says it likely won't be addressed until at least next year because of conflicting schedules.
So yeah, I feel like something liek this is really important to our community, and it doesn't seem to be discussed outside of the GA region......

 

[Emblem Lord]

Everybody should be camping everybody.

It physically hurts me that people do not accept this.

 

[Yonder]

Everybody should be camping everybody.

It physically hurts me that people do not accept this.

I agree, but only to a certain degree. If camping was amplified to 100, it could damage the smash 4 scene heavily to the point of it bring unenjoyable. Enjoyability may not mean much in context of top level play where you play to win, but viewership is that girder in the background holding the structure together. If Smash 4 became a Bayo/Sonic campfest, viewers will stop tuning, and popularity will decrease. When popularity decreases, sponserd movd in, they don't want to fund a dying game. Dying game means less entrants in tournaments, less money to be obtained by top players, and no longer a means to fund them if they are full time pro gamers. Meta Knight and a slow environment killed Brawl. If, hypothetically Smash 4 turned to camping on the other side of the stage and time outs every game, the same would happen.

That's why I see problems with intense camping on a global scale. Can't see it happening anyways when rage exists and the rage wielder gets 3-4 stray hits and kills the opponent after their minutes of camping after one mistake.
People could camp more though in this game though.

 

[Nu~]

Pretty sure E-Lord means that from a purely logical perspective, everyone should be camping. Ignoring the spectator aspect and all of that.

I'm not sure if I fully understand that point however. I ask myself "how do chars like Roy camp?" But then I realize that dash dancing outside of someone's range and then immediately punishing impatient overextensions with Roy is a form of camping...

Emblem Lord Yo, could you explain your thoughts some more? Sounds rlly interesting.

 

[Yonder]

Pretty sure E-Lord means that from a purely logical perspective, everyone should be camping. Ignoring the spectator aspect and all of that.

Of course, yeah. In the short term it makes sense, I'm just trying to see it from a long term perspective. If your game becomes so unfun that it dies, no one makes money anymore. You need newbies to expand your pot in tournaments and spectators to garner demand and sponsers/funding to fly out players.

That's not happening if they are watching Sonic vs Sonic campfest to time. No one wants to see that regularly, and it would cause a big impact on the whole economical system of Smash 4. Maybe top players keep that in the back of their minds, too. I'm sure whoever Brawl's top player was (M2K?) wasn't happy when the Brawl scene became so dull that it died. That's a source of income for M2K gone, thus having to work harder in other areas of smash (Melee mainly, 4 ain't his scene).

Brawl was an unpreventable case due to game physics benefiting camping to the max. You could have banned MK worldwide, but I think it was doomed from the start.

 

[|RK|]

Hi guys, did you know I lurk here, like, a lot? Ok bye~

Yes we do :eyes:

EDIT: Emblem Lord, didn't you discuss with Pierce or something that you need to be aggressive in this game? What's with the change of heart?

And on that note, wouldn't it be MU dependant anyways? You camp Lucario and you lose. You camp Mario and you win. So on.

 

[Yonder]

Changing subject, according to the FE Saga prelims today, not a single of the Robin's participating made top 48, inckduig Dath. Even 1 Roy got a spot. This was Robin's chance to at least make some impression and his showing is probably worse than Mac's at ARMS saga.

What do we think about Robin? Hardly any discussion about him, but arguably the worst Fire emblem character (Roy is probably better though). Personally he may dip into the top of the low tier at some point, but his leven sword/kill confirm probably keeps him in the very bottom of the low tier. Some Robin mains please let me know how he really is. I once had him as the worst pre kill confirm, then my opinion rose once he received a patch. But now, not so hot again...

 

[Emblem Lord]

You are aggressive when you get the hit or have advantage. You flow from advantage state to another.

If you have the lead you should NOT be trying to go in super hard or taking stupid risks.

Which happens WAY too much.

Y Yonder and Nu~ I see the call for less camping as appealing to E-sports. I despise E-sports. It is toxic to the purity of competition. The strong should prevail. And the strongest strategies should dominate. As the strats get figured it counter strats will evolve. But if everyone fears one strategy because of honor or w/e scrubby reasoning then how do we hit the ultimate pinnacle?

People used to ask why I give out knowledge for free or why I tell people how to crap on characters I play. This goes back to my philosophy.

The only thing I care about any fighter I play or study is seeing that ultimate metagame reached. Everything else is secondary to that. It's why I think melee is a ****ing joke. Melee SHOULD be a campfest. Camping is good in Melee and pretty much all smash games. But cry babies call foul because they do not want their precious mascot fighter to "devolve" into running away.

Defensive play is very strong in ALOT of fighters. Hell look at Tekken. 90% of any high level match is just stairstepping and alot of dancing around. But when that hit is EARNED, holy crap it looks and feels so good.

And honestly camping is not THAT hard to control or limit in smash. There are some fairly easy ways to limit it. Just walking forward and being reactive with your shield is a great way to put a damper on camping strategies. No body gets full conversations from run away in smash games aside from Falco and ZSS and even their projectiles have direct counters. Check out Nu-13 from Blazblu who gets FULL SCREEN COMBOS FROM PROJECTILES. THAT is some scary camping. Camping in Melee is just annoying ultimately and imo a way to weed out the weak. But it's "boring". (Actually that is subjective. I think intelligent camping is sick as hell to watch.)

I'm all about that purity of competition. Always will be. I feel those without will should be left behind. A broken character is one thing. That is easily quantifiable. If a character goes beyond the scope of what other characters can do or stop then yea that character is nonsense and should be banned. But crying about a strategy that has DIRECT counter play? (Powershielding)
That is INSANE and comical.

 

[Illusion.]

CATI 4/Come and Take It 4 (92 entrants: Austin, Texas)

1st. Lima
2nd. SU | Megafox
3rd. GO! | Shadow_PR
4th. 4BR | Espy
5th. Jumbolias
5th. FX | Karna
7th. SaSSy
7th. GT MB | Whispy
9th. Twi
9th. Trela
9th. LightTheLantern
9th. SU | Hakii

 

[|RK|]

You are aggressive when you get the hit or have advantage. You flow from advantage state to another.

If you have the lead you should NOT be trying to go in super hard or taking stupid risks.

Which happens WAY too much.

Y Yonder and Nu~ I see the call for less camping as appealing to E-sports. I despise E-sports. It is toxic to the purity of competition. The strong should prevail. And the strongest strategies should dominate. As the strats get figured it counter strats will evolve. But if everyone fears one strategy because of honor or w/e scrubby reasoning then how do we hit the ultimate pinnacle?

People used to ask why I give out knowledge for free or why I tell people how to crap on characters I play. This goes back to my philosophy.

The only thing I care about any fighter I play or study is seeing that ultimate metagame reached. Everything else is secondary to that. It's why I think melee is a ****ing joke. Melee SHOULD be a campfest. Camping is good in Melee and pretty much all smash games. But cry babies call foul because they do not want their precious mascot fighter to "devolve" into running away.

Defensive play is very strong in ALOT of fighters. Hell look at Tekken. 90% of any high level match is just stairstepping and alot of dancing around. But when that hit is EARNED, holy crap it looks and feels so good.

And honestly camping is not THAT hard to control or limit in smash. There are some fairly easy ways to limit it. Just walking forward and being reactive with your shield is a great way to put a damper on camping strategies. No body gets full conversations from run away in smash games aside from Falco and ZSS and even their projectiles have direct counters. Check out Nu-13 from Blazblu who gets FULL SCREEN COMBOS FROM PROJECTILES. THAT is some scary camping. Camping in Melee is just annoying ultimately and imo a way to weed out the weak. But it's "boring". (Actually that is subjective. I think intelligent camping is sick as hell to watch.)

I'm all about that purity of competition. Always will be. I feel those without will should be left behind. A broken character is one thing. That is easily quantifiable. If a character goes beyond the scope of what other characters can do or stop then yea that character is nonsense and should be banned. But crying about a strategy that has DIRECT counter play? (Powershielding)
That is INSANE and comical.

Your comment about Melee is a thought I've had before...

People always say Brawl & Smash 4 are so much slower than Melee, but it occurs to me that most good offensive options are also really good defensive options. Any fast character *could* play like Sonic... Characters like Falcon can actually camp extremely hard.

And people talk about how Smash 4 is so campy because you can die from one mistake... But you can die from one mistake in Melee, too. What makes Sonic players so patient and Falcon players so aggressive?

What makes Melee players go in when they can die from messing up once, and what makes Smash 4 players hold back?

Something I've always wondered, tbh.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Well the reward for going in is HUGE in melee. So the reward pretty much equals the risk. So it creates this really high octane situation where if you mess up you could die, but if you succeed your opponent could die. Smash 4 the reward in general is lower and not every character has a safe aerial approach. Universal tech in Melee means you can apply pressure more or less the same way with every character. Jump into them with an l-cancelled aerial which is safe on block and even whiff depending on the character. And you do not need even need to have THAT much regard for your spacing because hit confirms are easy to see. If you get blocked then move away. If you get a hit then go into your combo.

Jiggz in Melee is probably the only character at high level that does not follow this rule and gets her win condition in other ways. It's one of the reasons why HBox is fun to watch. Marth is also a spacing monster, but his footsies are stupid and generally non-commital as melee top tiers tend to be.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

You are aggressive when you get the hit or have advantage. You flow from advantage state to another.

If you have the lead you should NOT be trying to go in super hard or taking stupid risks.

Which happens WAY too much.

Y Yonder and Nu~ I see the call for less camping as appealing to E-sports. I despise E-sports. It is toxic to the purity of competition. The strong should prevail. And the strongest strategies should dominate. As the strats get figured it counter strats will evolve. But if everyone fears one strategy because of honor or w/e scrubby reasoning then how do we hit the ultimate pinnacle?

People used to ask why I give out knowledge for free or why I tell people how to crap on characters I play. This goes back to my philosophy.

The only thing I care about any fighter I play or study is seeing that ultimate metagame reached. Everything else is secondary to that. It's why I think melee is a ****ing joke. Melee SHOULD be a campfest. Camping is good in Melee and pretty much all smash games. But cry babies call foul because they do not want their precious mascot fighter to "devolve" into running away.

Defensive play is very strong in ALOT of fighters. Hell look at Tekken. 90% of any high level match is just stairstepping and alot of dancing around. But when that hit is EARNED, holy crap it looks and feels so good.

And honestly camping is not THAT hard to control or limit in smash. There are some fairly easy ways to limit it. Just walking forward and being reactive with your shield is a great way to put a damper on camping strategies. No body gets full conversations from run away in smash games aside from Falco and ZSS and even their projectiles have direct counters. Check out Nu-13 from Blazblu who gets FULL SCREEN COMBOS FROM PROJECTILES. THAT is some scary camping. Camping in Melee is just annoying ultimately and imo a way to weed out the weak. But it's "boring". (Actually that is subjective. I think intelligent camping is sick as hell to watch.)

I'm all about that purity of competition. Always will be. I feel those without will should be left behind. A broken character is one thing. That is easily quantifiable. If a character goes beyond the scope of what other characters can do or stop then yea that character is nonsense and should be banned. But crying about a strategy that has DIRECT counter play? (Powershielding)
That is INSANE and comical.

Love this post. Reason why I like watching older games.

So, Salem said fox is basically like sonic but "viable"? Since when has sonic ever been out of top tier, much less viable?

 

[Lord Dio]

You are aggressive when you get the hit or have advantage. You flow from advantage state to another.

If you have the lead you should NOT be trying to go in super hard or taking stupid risks.

Which happens WAY too much.

Y Yonder and Nu~ I see the call for less camping as appealing to E-sports. I despise E-sports. It is toxic to the purity of competition. The strong should prevail. And the strongest strategies should dominate. As the strats get figured it counter strats will evolve. But if everyone fears one strategy because of honor or w/e scrubby reasoning then how do we hit the ultimate pinnacle?

People used to ask why I give out knowledge for free or why I tell people how to crap on characters I play. This goes back to my philosophy.

The only thing I care about any fighter I play or study is seeing that ultimate metagame reached. Everything else is secondary to that. It's why I think melee is a ****ing joke. Melee SHOULD be a campfest. Camping is good in Melee and pretty much all smash games. But cry babies call foul because they do not want their precious mascot fighter to "devolve" into running away.

Defensive play is very strong in ALOT of fighters. Hell look at Tekken. 90% of any high level match is just stairstepping and alot of dancing around. But when that hit is EARNED, holy crap it looks and feels so good.

And honestly camping is not THAT hard to control or limit in smash. There are some fairly easy ways to limit it. Just walking forward and being reactive with your shield is a great way to put a damper on camping strategies. No body gets full conversations from run away in smash games aside from Falco and ZSS and even their projectiles have direct counters. Check out Nu-13 from Blazblu who gets FULL SCREEN COMBOS FROM PROJECTILES. THAT is some scary camping. Camping in Melee is just annoying ultimately and imo a way to weed out the weak. But it's "boring". (Actually that is subjective. I think intelligent camping is sick as hell to watch.)

I'm all about that purity of competition. Always will be. I feel those without will should be left behind. A broken character is one thing. That is easily quantifiable. If a character goes beyond the scope of what other characters can do or stop then yea that character is nonsense and should be banned. But crying about a strategy that has DIRECT counter play? (Powershielding)
That is INSANE and comical.

Side note, what's your opinion on Brawl then? the most naturally defensive game, but for the most part you can't really get death combos off of hits.

Love this post. Reason why I like watching older games.

Same tbh

 

[RonNewcomb]

What makes Sonic players so patient and Falcon players so aggressive?

The negative disjoint on spindash, likely.

 

[Das Koopa]

Speaking of Ike, Nojinko better SDI his way out of pools or I'll be upset

nojinko got bodied btw went 1-2

 

[TDK]

Overall, here's the number of character mains who made it out of pools for the FE cast:

4 (Possibly up to 6 with Leo and Earth's corrins)
3
2
1 (Possibly up to 3 with NAKAT and Nairo's Lucinas)
1 (Possibly up to 2 with Komorikiri's Roy)
0

Poor Robin

 

[Heracr055]

Good for the Corrins. Her players have been turning up for awhile now.
And 3 Ikes...impressive!
Too bad that Robin's been on the decline, however. It's a shame that the lowest running speed, jumpsquat and startup on her moves cause her so many issues