Official 4BR Tier List V3 - Competitive Insight & Analysis

[Heracr055]

Mars 3-0 CaptainZack !

I believe this is backwards, Zack 3-0'ed Marss

 

[Deleted member]

Das Koopa

What was that comment you made a few months back about Fatality only being a mid level player? :eyes:

 

[Skeeter Mania]

I believe this is backwards, Zack 3-0'ed Marss

Yeah, I meant the other way around. Thanks for the correction!

 

[Das Koopa]

Das Koopa

What was that comment you made a few months back about Fatality only being a mid level player? :eyes:

hey man that was a long time ago :eyes:

 

[C0rvus]

I'm just going to preemptively summon the prophet himself. @Radical Larry

What a time to be alive.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

Who would have thunk. A Captain Falcon and a Link in top 3 of the most stacked tournament to have ever existed.

History in the making.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

FALCON IN GRANDS, I REPEAT, CAPTAIN FALCON IS IN GRAND FINALS AT CIVIL WAR.

This game is crazy.

 

[The-Technique]

"Falcon is not that good" LUL

"X character will never top 8 a major" LUL

This is Smash 4, don't sleep on anyone.

 

[Peppermint1201]

"Falcon is not that good" LUL

"X character will never top 8 a major" LUL

This is Smash 4, don't sleep on anyone.

Me sleeping on Jigglypuff and 1111 Brawler:

 

[-Tornado-]

Where were you when Donkey Kong, Link, and Ryu made Top 8?
Where were you when Esam outplaced Ally and ZeRo?
Where were you when DABUZ WON A MAJOR

 

[Aaron1997]

The Winners and Losers of 2gg Civil war

Winners


Losers

 

[Skeeter Mania]

Where were you when DABUZ WON A MAJOR

Supermajor is more like it.

 

[Heracr055]

I wouldn't call it a stretch for Ryu to get into Top 8, at least relative to DK and Link. Hikaru and T definitely were dominated by Kirahara and Fatality, in their respective sets, because those characters' faults. The Marss & Locus match, by contrast, was down to the wire. Locus proves his run in Zero Saga wasn't a fluke, and I expect great things from him & Ryu in the future.
Mad props to all top 8 players! And congrats to Dabuz

 

[Jjab430]

Fatality's body count:
Trela
Komorikiri
Nairo
Kirihara
Captain Zack
T

Only to lose what looked like a very winnable set against Dabuz's Rosa
And I bet y'all are still gonna go back to calling an overrated mid tier within a week

 

[Nathan Richardson]

It also shows just how scary Rosa is. The strategy should be 'kill luma' but several times that's easier said then done. Heck I heard of some players getting rid of luma and still getting swatted aside by Rosa anyways yeesh.

 

[Lord Dio]

The Winners and Losers of 2gg Civil war

Winners


Losers

Forgot to add Luigi to Losers. If not, he came pretty close to being with the other losers of the day. Elegant and ConCon both got 33rd.

Fatality's body count:
Trela
Komorikiri
Nairo
Kirihara
Captain Zack
T

Only to lose what looked like a very winnable set against Dabuz's Rosa
And I bet y'all are still gonna go back to calling an overrated mid tier within a week

And that is why he is the world's best Captain Falcon. God I love watching Fatality go to town on someone. He took down the best ZSS and #3 on the PGR, one of the three best Clouds, the first Rosa to win a major and probably the second best rosa in the world right now, and the bayo player many see as the best bayo in the world.
In a tournament filled with upsets he rammed through people to get to top 8, and then steamrolled Zack and T to get to GFs. It's just so incredible.

 

[TDK]

2GGC: Civil War (753 Entrants)

1st: Dabuz
2nd: Fatality
3rd: T (!!!)
4th: Captain Zack
5th: Kirihara
5th: Marss
7th: HIKARU
7th: Locus
9th: Larry Lurr
9th: Mr. R
9th: Nairo
9th: Abadango
13th: 9B
13th: Tsu-
13th: Shuton
13th: Falln
17th: Komorikiri
17th: Ranai
17th: ESAM
17th: Zinoto
17th: Trela
17th: Samsora
17th: Nietono Nietono
17th: Earth
25th: Mr. E
25th: FOW
25th: Ally
25th: Salem
25th: Ac
25th: ANTi
25th: Tweek
25th: Shope/Wrath

Spoiler: rest of top 64

33rd: Zenyou
33rd: ImHip
33rd: MVD
33rd: Vinnie
33rd: Xzax
33rd: Kameme
33rd: Mr. Con con
33rd: Luhtie
33rd: Javi
33rd: 6WX
33rd: Lycan
33rd: Kome
33rd: NAKAT
33rd: Nicko
33rd: VoiD
33rd: Elegant
49th: Konga
49th: SS
49th: DSS
49th: Shaky
49th: Dath
49th: Day
49th: S1
49th: Meteor
49th: Charliedaking
49th: Aarvark
49th: Tyroy
49th: 8BitMan
49th: WaDi
49th: Mew2King
49th: Eon
49th: ZeRo

Link post coming soon, maybe. Might take a while.

 

[Das Koopa]

Yooo I tied for 9th on Fantasy League lol

I should've written a fantasy guide called "pick Japan"

 

[L9999]

The Winners and Losers of 2gg Civil war

Winners


Losers

I would add Lucina to winners since Mr E made most of his losers run with her.

 

[FeelMeUp]

The game's punishes and advantage state grew much faster than the format did, and a lot of eyebrow-raising stocks(and eventual set wins) came out of it.
If you get WT'd by Bayo and die before top 16/32 of most tourneys, you just lost 25% of your Winner's/Loser's bracket life.
If you SD, that's another 25%.
A DK reads your airdodge on uthrow at 33% and regrabs you on the top of BF's platform, a comeback is nigh impossible. Too many characters can kill off setups from 25-65, and these aren't as anomalous as the dreaded "watching Sonic/Rosa/Villager in 3 stock" everyone whines about. Doesn't help that most of the characters with super early death setups have means to survive extremely long periods of time.
and are really fat. The former is a floaty so your advantage state often doesn't extend too long, and the latter falls relatively fast so he survives much longer off the top.
is both a heavy and a fastfaller.
is extremely heavy and confirms off of safe moves you can throw out in neutral.
is Bayo.
can't be edgeguarded too well.

Upsets may be hype to watch, but getting cheesed makes you feel cheated at times.
Hope this tournament makes people rethink 2 stock vs 3. You may say 2 stock Bo5 is a better alternative, but all that does is give you more games to try again. Not make Rage less threatening in each individual game.

 

[ARISTOS]

The game's punishes and advantage state grew much faster than the format did, and a lot of eyebrow-raising stocks(and eventual set wins) came out of it.
If you get WT'd by Bayo and die before top 16/32 of most tourneys, you just lost 25% of your Winner's/Loser's bracket life.
If you SD, that's another 25%.
A DK reads your airdodge on uthrow at 33% and regrabs you on the top of BF's platform, a comeback is nigh impossible. Too many characters can kill off setups from 25-65, and these aren't as anomalous as the dreaded "watching Sonic/Rosa/Villager in 3 stock" everyone whines about. Doesn't help that most of the characters with super early death setups have means to survive extremely long periods of time.
and are really fat. The former is a floaty so your advantage state often doesn't extend too long, and the latter falls relatively fast so he survives much longer off the top.
is both a heavy and a fastfaller.
is extremely heavy and confirms off of safe moves you can throw out in neutral.
is Bayo.
can't be edgeguarded too well.

Upsets may be hype to watch, but getting cheesed makes you feel cheated at times.
Hope this tournament makes people rethink 2 stock vs 3. You may say 2 stock Bo5 is a better alternative, but all that does is give you more games to try again. Not make Rage less threatening in each individual game.

I ran a small experiment about a year ago that tested whether 3 stocks led to more consistency/more adaptation of behalf of the better player.

https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/3xmp4o/looking_into_the_2stock_versus_3stock_debate/

I didn't find any significant change in adaptation; the better player usually won no matter the stock count.

/u/Pee_Gee did the same experiment (maybe diff methods) and came out with the same conclusion: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/5yz6s4/2_stock3_stock_does_the_better_player_always_win/

Of course, none of this accounts for player satisfaction

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

To piggyback off this because I've seen it stated a few times more often than usual lately but it does seem like the meta is shifting towards aggro or rather like FeelMeUp stated capitalization of punish games and advantage state. We saw characters who on paper get eaten alive in disadvantage like DK and Falcon dominate because thier players have started optimizing thier advantage states even really bad MUs like Void's Fox vs Hikaru's DK for example, Void was taking Hikaru from zero to eighty in seconds but Hikaru made the most of the times he won neutral and was able to cleaning convert all his wins to stocks. Zero vs Luhtie even tho Zero wasn't playing his best he still was winning neutral during his set more but what he wasn't doing was maximizing those wins and Luhtie when he did win neutral was.

You can poke and play neutral/super safe all you want and it's not, not going to work against you but as our top players get better and maximizing thier reward it's going to start becoming better for you to aggro more to do the same, you kinda already see it now with Sonic with the aggressive Sonic 6WX having had more long term success than more defensive ones. I didn't get to watch top eight but I heard Dabuz was playing a lot more aggressive than he had before and it could have attributed to his success at Civil War.

And with a more aggressive, quick stock taking meta the idea of more stocks so the games don't end in a minute is definitely something I'd love to see debated on being changed. It may just been me but the few games I did see in Civil War were very quick sets.

 

[GMABreak]

Well we can safely say that Civil War was a huge success for us as a community.

 

[Laken64]

2GGC: Civil War (753 Entrants)

1st: Dabuz
2nd: Fatality
3rd: T (!!!)
4th: Captain Zack
5th: Kirihara
5th: Marss
7th: HIKARU
7th: Locus
9th: Larry Lurr
9th: Mr. R
9th: Nairo
9th: Abadango
13th: 9B
13th: Tsu-
13th: Shuton
13th: Falln
17th: Komorikiri
17th: Ranai
17th: ESAM
17th: Zinoto
17th: Trela
17th: Samsora
17th: Nietono
17th: Earth
25th: Mr. E
25th: FOW
25th: Ally
25th: Salem
25th: Ac
25th: ANTi
25th: Tweek
25th: Shope/Wrath

Spoiler: rest of top 64

33rd: Zenyou
33rd: ImHip
33rd: MVD
33rd: Vinnie
33rd: Xzax
33rd: Kameme
33rd: Mr. Con con
33rd: Luhtie
33rd: Javi
33rd: 6WX
33rd: Lycan
33rd: Kome
33rd: NAKAT
33rd: Nicko
33rd: VoiD
33rd: Elegant
49th: Konga
49th: SS
49th: DSS
49th: Shaky
49th: Dath
49th: Day
49th: S1
49th: Meteor
49th: Charliedaking
49th: Aarvark
49th: Tyroy
49th: 8BitMan
49th: WaDi
49th: Mew2King
49th: Eon
49th: ZeRo

Link post coming soon, maybe. Might take a while.

Nietono went full sheik to my Knowledge. Also can we look at the fact Rosa has won TWO majors within a single month? Remember when dabuz wanted to drop this character????

 

[Vyrnx]

There were a lot of surprisingly low placements from top players, but something else to consider is that this tournament was the best placing ever for:

Dabuz
Fatality
T
Zack
Kirihara (arguably)
Marss
Hikaru
Locus

~the entire top 8

Larry's loser's run was crazy: dkwill, Wadi, Xzax, Mr. E, Komo, and 9B (6).

Marss as well: Tweek, Nietono, Falln, Abadango, and Locus (5). I did not expect him to place as well as he did after losing in top 96.

 

[FeelMeUp]

Can anyone check out the matchups Locus, Hikaru, T, and Fatality had to get through in order to win?

 

[TDK]

Can anyone check out the matchups Locus, Hikaru, T, and Fatality had to get through in order to win?

Starting from pools winners semis for T:

K9Sbruce
Meteor
NAKAT
Tsu-
Abadango
Fatality
Dabuz

All of these except Mewtwo and posssibly Fox (I find it pretty pointless to put Lucario on Matchup chasrts) are bad matchups for Link.

 

[Laken64]

Why do you think Fox is possibly not a bad mu for link

 

[freeziebeatz]

Can anyone check out the matchups Locus, Hikaru, T, and Fatality had to get through in order to win?

I gotchu
Locus beat (these won't be in order) Ally, DJ Flipflop, Jtails, Nairo, Samsora, and Shuton
Fatality beat Captain Zack, Kirihara, komorikiri, Nairo, T, and Trela
HIKARU beat Mr.R, Tsu-, ESAM, VoiD, Konga, and Zan
T beat Fatality, Abadango, Tsu-, NAKAT, Meteor, and k9sbruce

 

[TheGoodGuava]

Starting from pools winners semis for T:

K9Sbruce
Meteor
NAKAT
Tsu-
Abadango
Fatality
Dabuz

All of these except Mewtwo and posssibly Fox (I find it pretty pointless to put Lucario on Matchup chasrts) are bad matchups for Link.

Lucario isn't very bad at all though

 

[TDK]

Lucario isn't very bad at all though

It's a personal rule of mine not to put Lucario on matchup charts, because his design doesn't lend itself to matchup numbers when the game can literally turn in a single hit.

 

[RonNewcomb]

Starting from pools winners semis for T:

K9Sbruce
Meteor
NAKAT
Tsu-
Abadango
Fatality
Dabuz

All of these except Mewtwo and posssibly Fox (I find it pretty pointless to put Lucario on Matchup chasrts) are bad matchups for Link.

And yet it was the Mewtwo match that went to last hit last game.

Not getting any high level Sheiks does wonders for one's viability.

Fox is still a bad mu for Link, it's just not his worst nor so lopsided as to be undoable.

That Reddit MU chart thingy posted in here months ago showed Link's MUs looking vaguely like a worse version of Pit's: lots of -1s and some +1s but, unlike all the other lower tiers around him, only one -2: Sheik. Sheik is literally his only gatekeeper.

 

[Das Koopa]

yo I'm serious about Tea coming out to the U.S.

Don't let your memes be dreams after T did all that

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I have a lot of thoughts about various things regarding the results of Civil War, what new insights it possibly provides and which old ideas it confirms or debunks. I'll write longer posts on that matter later.

For now I'm just glad to be able to claim I've not been among the people that have mocked Larry for his opinions about Link [though many of which I'm sure are quite wrong still] and I've often taken Link's cause in arguments - especially with regards to the vs Fox matchup. I hope that's going to be a lesson for inconsiderate people who are quick to judge to hold their tongues before talking about things they don't know the facts about.

 

[Man Li Gi]

I'm starting to think the ban of DH was a great move. It made matches never stall in a way that solely benefits one player. I just don't agree to simulban bf and dreamland. Fr fr, I don't think T would've gone far if DH was legal

 

[jet56]

Honestly, the biggest thing i learned is that one of the, if not THE most important part of this game is how well you press your advantage. Because let's face it

Rage
MU inexperience
2 stock
relatively low skill ceiling
game mechanics (untechables, weird wind and hitboxes, etc.)

these are all things that add up to this games inconsistency in general, and we saw it full bloom. So you really can't rely on your godlike neutral game from your character or player to be enough to keep you consistent. It's how much you get off of your neutral wins that really determines consistency.

Having a lot of tools is good, yeah. but if you have to win neutral way more times than your opponent, then chances are somewhere along the line in your tournament, you are gonna get cheesed the ONE TIME you lose neutral (even if you have oppressive neutral tools.)

Im honestly starting to think having a top level neutral really isn't all that important, if you have an amazing punish game to compensate for your meh or ok neutral game. it's why characters like bayo, DK, ZSS, and fox are so successful despite obvious flaws in their neutral game or disadvantage state.

The reason why dabuz is so successful and consistent is because with rosa and olimar, he denies his opponent a chance to win neutral (or if they do, it's never an exchange the can captilize off of super hard), and win he does win neutral, he is very, very, very good at optimizing his win as much as he can (typically with the stock, cause luma.)

Because the neutral game is so fluid and changes so much based on player vs player, character vs character, and more, it is incredibly difficult to be consistently better in the neutral game than your opponent. But it is much easier to optimize your punish/edgeguarding/advantage game, as that is much more static, can be practiced and committed to muscle memory, and is much less influenced by various factors. Hell, you can be on autopilot and still perform your BnB combos just fine, but if you aren't focusing in a match, your neutral game suffers a lot.

tl;dr, punish game and optimizing/pressing your advantage=consistency. just my thoughts.

 

[Bowserboy3]

While I am happy that so many different characters did so well at Civil War (Link, DK, Ryu, Samus even; good s*** ESAM!), I am more proud of Dabuz, as a player.

This man gets on the receiving end of so much unneeded hate for no reason other than people not knowing when to stop character hate overflowing on to player hate; this needs to stop. I main Rosalina, and while I can forgive people for hating on a character, it's completely unacceptable to hate on a player for it.

In the face of so much negativity and hate, Dabuz still works hard, practices and studies (arguably more than any player). He's an incredibly skilled and dedicated player, only proven by him essentially being Mr Top 8 at any tournament he attends (with very rare exceptions).

And if anything, I think this solidifies that Dabuz's Rosalina can certainly still do it; he's absolutely still the best Rosalina in the world, and she isn't going anywhere. I am 100% convinced that Dabuz's post a while back about her was just a rough spot; a slump, and that allowed him to buckle down and practice hard with her again. It's showing, because he's playing the best he's ever done with her. Frankly, it would be silly for him not to use her as much now.

Of note, as D1 highlighted at one point during his set with Zack, I like how Dabuz started the game with his back turned to Zack just to protect Luma from the bullets. Who does that?!

Dabuz adapts mid set, mid game. We need this man in our community.

He absolutely deserved this win; he's been working for it for so long. I can't lie; I got a little emotional when he won. Dabuz, if you're reading this, good job man, I'm soooo f***ing proud of you! Keep at it with the Rosalina.

 

[|RK|]

Funny that Rosalina is kinda looking like the meta rn. If the meta is about powerful conversions, clutch factor, and neutral wins, what character exemplifies that better? Sheik has powerful advantage, neutral, and disadvantage... but zero jank. No ability to take your stock instantaneously. Diddy is the same way - he'll wear you down, but you're not dying early.

Then you have Rosalina and Luma - a relatively poor disadvantage state, but a top tier neutral and advantage state. And the ability to take stocks incredibly early if need be. That's not a statement on Rosalina's tier placement, mind. It's just interesting that she as a character is showing where the meta seems to be heading.

 

[Bowserboy3]

On the topic of Rosalina, here is that video I was working on:

It's very simple and basics; rocking the classic movie maker boyz (my editing skills are very lacking lol). Most of the things in the video you all have probably seen and know of, but that's ok, because it's targeted mainly at those who don't know much about the duo. Some of the colours of the text are also questionable, but it was often hard to get a colour to correctly contrast the background, so I did the best I could.

Of note, the clips of acting during no tech and tech animations are at 3:50. That might be worth looking at.

3:41 is also a notable thing they can do that is seldom talked about.

(this video was mainly an excuse to use some awesome Mario Galaxy music; Buoy Base Galaxy is suuuuuuuper underrated)

 

[Luco]

I ran a small experiment about a year ago that tested whether 3 stocks led to more consistency/more adaptation of behalf of the better player.

https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/3xmp4o/looking_into_the_2stock_versus_3stock_debate/

I didn't find any significant change in adaptation; the better player usually won no matter the stock count.

/u/Pee_Gee did the same experiment (maybe diff methods) and came out with the same conclusion: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/5yz6s4/2_stock3_stock_does_the_better_player_always_win/

Of course, none of this accounts for player satisfaction

Heyo, I don't have toooo much time to skim the data but I was wondering about your sample size in this experiment. Would be interested to see your overall percentages as well.

Keep in mind that Pee_Gee's result estimated about 7% of matches were 'swung' by the 3-stock to 2-stock switch. The sample size was relatively small when that data first came out but even then I remember thinking to myself at that point, "7 percent sounds small but in the grand scheme of things that's secretly a huge factor at tournaments with a lot of high level players." He mentions Beast top 8 would have been the same, but we don't know if that top 8 would have consisted of the same players, or whether those players would have played the same players before them, etc etc. Rulesets permeate an entire tournament, not just a section of it.

Like I said, I didn't have a massive read through your data and I will more than happily concede to your findings, I just want to point out it only takes one upset for the entire smash community to be in an uproar.

In case y'all couldn't tell I'm a big fan of getting timed out by Sonic.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Anyway something else for your plates:

This weekend is an Aussie major coming up, 'Expand Gong', it's based in Wollongong (welcome to Australia town names) which is just south of my own region and although we're not expecting everyone it should grab some names like Extra and Wave and (me! And...) the like. I'll post the stream link and times once I know what it is but once you're all done discussing how Link is top 15 and Ness probably isn't mid tier again it'd be nice if you watched us. :>

It's also the first event in a circuit greater NSW is hosting which will be sending 2 reps to EVO Japan. So that's cool.