TBF, Mario doesn't have the greatest MU spread of the top tiers (although losing to a ROB is kinda pathetic).
Agreed and not surprised because as others have said, Mario doesn't have a win button in neutral to just LOLwin. His player needs to know the MUand the player, otherwise he can just lose.
Sonic sucks.
In all seriousness, Sonic hasn't done so much compared to the top tiers and the rising characters in recent times. I'm not sure if it's cause of Sonic's playerbase not at the same level as the top players or Sonic has a hard time keeping in this meta which is becoming more and more based on punishes.
I know Sonic isn't bad, but I can't bring myself to play him in this game because it's such a chore. I think he's going to get worse once people start forcing him to do air to ground play once they get a lead, aka platform camping him.
What I don't agree with is that rather unfair analysis of what RK said. He said that Mario doesn't have any overwhelming strengths that allow him to squash other chars with as much ease as the other top tiers. It's his everyman nature that makes him overall less threatening. Kinda what people said about pit (but pit sucks imo)
Gotta disagree with the "Everyman" notion of Mario.
His frame data is utterly ridiculous: all tilts F5, F2 jab, and 2/3 of his smash attacks come out just as fast, if not faster than lots of characters' tilts.
He has 3 aerials that are plus on shield drop: Mario's Bair is a really stupid move to defend against and only held back by Mario's range and relative lack of mobility
And he's most definitely in the top 5 of the cast for reward on grabs. That's not a jack of all trades character if you ask me.
I also don't know where everyman Mario came from in this game, his air speed is pretty ridiculous and his frame data is really good. He's not really an everyman character, he's more of an air speedster with emphasis on getting a grab and then doing a ton of damage, then throwing out a pretty powerful, solidly invincible move that KOs at pretty good %s.
I also don't think I'd call Mario's advantaged state "not oppressive". I mean no it's not Bayonetta (whose is?) but....not oppressive? Not sure about that....it's preeeetty good. The argument that holds weight against Mario is that his neutral is probably the least explosive part of the character.
Agree with all of this.
If we're talking about mario 'solidly beating' samus he doesn't. She's a heavy floaty with a good neutral, he hates all three of these things. I won't claim he loses but it's a really annoying matchup. Like dthrow combos don't even work that well due to said weight. Can't edgeguard her, juggling is hard... (especially if she has charge shot)
Her OOS game has to be respected too. Even with how good his aerials are, Mario has to exercise caution with touching Samus' shield because of screw attack.
Salem evidently thinks Mario is 3 or 4 in the game. ESAM thinks he's #2. And many other players believe Mario is super high up as well.
This is a gross oversimplification of what I was saying. Mario's tools, while amazing, aren't oppressive in neutral. He doesn't have a Bayo dtilt or Witch Twist, he doesn't have a Mewtwo dtilt, he doesn't have needles, a massive disjoint, etc. His strength is in his insane conversions. This means that many characters can contest him even if they ultimately lose the MU. Mario puts in a lot to get his conversions started - it's not like Cloud who invalidates a number of characters by jumping and pressing a.
I watch Ally and ANTi's matches, and despite the fact that Mario has great attributes (mobility, for example), I can see the work they're putting in to body people as hard as they do.
I agree with this, and it's why I think regardless of where Mario is on the list he can still win / lose most MUs in the game regardless of what's on paper. In order for his "overwhelming" tools to become relevant (frame data and conversions), he has actually get close enough for them to matter + make reads. Like you said, pretty much anyone can contest him up until that point.
Mario can lose to any character because he doesn't have individually overwhelming tools like Diddy f-air and d-tilt and banana. Instead, he has a wide array of situationally useful tools with significant weaknesses like low range and disjoint that must be explicitly accounted for and played to and around in neutral.
The character is good but only if his player utilizes all of his tools effectively. The Mario players who succeed the most are those with high situational awareness who can improvise and choose unexpected options in different situations.
Think about his matchups across the cast and you can find a convincing theoretical argument for each matchup to be even or near even, if not in the other character's favor.
Shulk? Huge sword, keeps Mario out.
Peach? Great results from Samsora against all the top Marios, defensive tools with float.
Samus? Heavy, floaty, combos and kills Mario easily.
You can do this all the way through the cast, from Bowser to DK to Link to even Ganon.
At the same time, matchups that are thought to be difficult for Mario end up often not looking that difficult at all. Mario vs. Luigi and Mario vs. Rosalina were historically considered trash MUs for Mario, but Ally makes them look annoying at worst and easy at best.
It's difficult to evaluate Mario, but it's evident that his results are highly player-performance dependent. That is to say, I would bank on "Ally on a good day" over any other player on a good day. A player in the right mindset making crisp decisions with fluid mixups is going to enjoy a lot of success with Mario.
By the way, looking at Dabuz' play this weekend, I have to say that I was probably wrong about Rosalina. Seems to be top 5 material after all, though I'm wary of jumping ship until we see some counterplay to the ledge setups. Nice to be proven wrong, though. The character is very interesting.
Agree with this too, and we've had this conversation before. I still call it guessing XD
As for Rosalina, I would love for people to adopt a "kill Luma even if I'm going to get punished, unless said punish would kill me outright" style and see how she fares against that. As good as the character is, I have to imagine that it's troublesome to have half of your character be so vulnerable the entire time.
I feel we underrate Mario's disadvantage state.
It's not so much a bevy of escape options as much as it is constant moments of "I can't challenge this."
His disadvantage state is a ton of reversals. He can just constantly challenge most non-disjointed hitbixes. N-Air, D-Air, Up B, even Fireballs off stage command attention, because they can lead into you being in a juggle situation, getting grabbed or just straight up killed.
I disagree with a bit of this. Nair and Dair have poor coverage below Mario and are easy to outspace even if you don't have a disjoint. If you can't outspace them, a trade is probably in your character's favor too, especially with Mario's Dair. Fireballs have a ton of lag and aren't hard to eat through with aerials, or dodge them in order to hit Mario.
Airdodge -> buffered up B is a pretty good reversal though and something to worry about. Still, being forced to dodge because you can't really challenge below you + no get out of jail free card like Flip Jump isn't a disadvantage state to brag about. It's not terrible, but it's not good either when compared to what other good characters bring to the table.
