Official 4BR Tier List V4 - Competitive Insight & Analysis

[Myollnir]

If we ban Bayo, we're going to have to get rid of Cloud and Diddy as well.

Bayo isn't the only character to be above the rest, she's just the most hated because your average mid-level player has absolutely no idea what her moves do and it's just easier to hate on her. You think a character like Cloud, Sonic or ZSS can't run away with a lead? That's just Salem being extremely good at this. Why do you think other Bayos don't do that? You genuinely think they don't want to win? The truth is that camping requires a very strong mindset that only a few people can maintain at top level.

Diddy and Cloud are absolutely on par with Bayonetta. Banning her without banning those two would be ridiculous, and if any ban happen, it's just going to be on Bayonetta thanks to top players like ZeRo using the hate on Bayonetta to gain popularity. Lost a lot of my respect for the guy when he encouraged his viewers to hate on Bayo.
It's perfectly fine to dislike her, but telling people that it's good to hate on her is one other thing. Especially when it comes with hypocrisy - he litterally said that bat within saved Bayonetta from death after a Mario D-air, when we just saw Ryu and even Rosa get out of it (for those who don't know, without X amount of rage, the final hit of Mario's D-air can be avoided by all the cast except Bowser). And considering the amount of knowledge he had shown on his stream, there's absolutely no way that he wasn't aware. But now that ZeRo's won everything, he just needs to be able to make a living off of his stream.
The guy is (very) smart, he knows how to gain popularity, I just don't like when it's based on hating like that (it's gotta be either on Bayo or on Trump if you want to be popular lmao).

Anyways, back to Bayo. If you ban her, you really think the game will stop dying? People just want novelty, and banning one character will not make their Yoshi or Pac-Man magically viable. What do you think will happen? Bayo players will either quit or play Cloud. We ban Cloud too? Sure, now Diddy is absolutely alone in S tier. Ban him? Great, now who's preventing ZSS from winning everything, she just lost her 3 bad match-ups. Oh but ZSS is fine since Nairo plays her, killing by hitting a N-air/Grab at 20% is now completely ok, thank you Naifus for reminding me. /s

The truth is that we know no patches are coming, lower mid tier characters and below are becoming less and less relevant (like in every game) as time goes on, the game has been out for 3 years, people's interest in the game is decreasing since there is no patch, and they want something to blame it on.

 

[MercuryPenny]

First off, no. He's about to play against Leffen in winners semis right now as I type this- aaaand it's started. Second, that's melee, this is smash 4. Not really important given this context.

hbox has entered smash 4 brackets at multi-event regionals several times in the past and usually drowns in pools

you can even find the vod bruh https://youtu.be/Os_phcqdELs

 

[TDK]

I'm not taking a side in this bayo debate here, but...

After playing Salem's Bayo for three hours with half the cast, I understand. Unless your playing a specific handful of characters the matchup feel impossible vs. optimized shenanigans

— Liquid | Dabuz (@DabuzSenpai) January 22, 2018

I'm quite curious about which characters Dabuz tried that did well.

 

[The-Technique]

Ike should not lose to Bayonetta. The matchup is Ike's absolute worst, which is saying something since Ike is not good.

"But how did it happen?" I don't know and I didn't watch, but Ike is invalidated by Bayonetta and partially why some Ike mains no longer exist.

I think there's a typo in your post, you mean to say "Bayonetta should not lose to Ike", correct? And the matchup is one of Ike's hardest ones but it isn't impossible, if Ike can bait and punish with bread and butter conversions off of d-tilt and grab, while outspacing her gigantic hitbubbles, he can win. Still a tremendously difficult matchup, but a lot characters in this game in general have a hard time against her.

Anyhow, SM is a longtime Ike main and he beat Pink Fresh 2-0, shouldn't that alone show that he isn't completely invalidated?

 

[Locke 06]

I don't care about her being the best. I care about the game being played. If you read "I don't like her because she wins!" From my post, you did not read it.

https://twitter.com/blacktwins13/status/954906225887518720

Games 4&5 of this set, the game of smash brothers that people of the community enjoy playing is not played. Same with captain L vs Salem.

Losing matchups can be fun. Peach vs MK is exciting and fun because MK tries to win neutral once to ladder peach, but she can fight back. Bayo doesn't win neutral in these matchups. Neutral simply does not exist, and that is what sucks the fun and "bans" these characters from competitive play.

 

[Myollnir]

Salem would've probably said the same thing if he played "half the cast" against Dabuz's Rosalina.
What do you think happens when you play a character you don't main against the N°2 on the PGR playing as his S tier main?
Top tiers invalidate lower characters at very high level. That's why they're at the top. Nothing new here.

 

[Minordeth]

Bayo should be banned. Mistake platform camped Konga offstream and abused her risk reward. She wins the game by not playing the game and that is why she should be banned. Captain L got platform camped as well on stream. By not banning her, you are banning all characters who cannot deal with this overpowered strategy because her risk/reward for not playing smash is so strong.

These are just examples, obviously close to my heart examples due to my pnw relationship, but this is how I feel about her. She is poorly designed, like Miis, and negatively hurts the experience of the smash community. Banning things always faces uproar in the moment, but once things are banned everyone just accepts it and moves on. Nobody talks about duck hunt anymore, despite how much uproar there was about changing the stage list.

I see why things happen. And I don't like it. Yes, top tiers have tools to beat her and I don't necessarily think she's #1 tbh, but she negatively affects the community. People will say "pick a better character" but people will never say "pick a worse character." Bayo mains will move on to a different character if we banned her or quit just as many mid tiers have done while we have not banned her.

Most characters are vulnerable to platform camping. We went over this in this very thread; it’s a powerful strategy that doesn’t get used much. But other characters can also do it and be successful as hell. But apparently only Salem is willing to do it. Good for him. I’m not sold that platform camping is an invincible strategy, tho, especially when it’s underutilized and not common.

Platform camping may, in general, end up being the degenerative gameplay people fear in Smash, but it ain’t there yet.

Besides that, appealing to a ban based on nebulous community feelings is short sighted. At this point, there’s nothing about Bayo, competitively, that warrants a ban.

Also, “she invalidates bad characters!” isn’t reason for a ban either. Rosa ends bracket runs of certain characters like no one’s business.

Finally, the simplest answer for the game’s waning popularity is because it’s getting older and hasn’t had anything new for a while. That’s fine. If Nintendo were Arcsys, we’d be getting Super Smash Bros for Wii U: Eternal Final Smash Phantasma as an update to keep the interest going. Or a season 2, or a whatever.

EDIT:
To paraphrase Emblem Lord: you don’t play fighting games competitively for fun.

 

[|RK|]

Eh, all I see is a slightly slower trend happening in exactly the same way MK did in Brawl. But obviously significantly faster than what Ice Climbers did.

I don't foresee much of a different result.
It'll already be too late at the point it becomes obvious.

Here's the thing. I don't expect Bayonetta to ever become banworthy in terms of results. Her issue isn't that she's unbeatable or anything of that nature. She's inconsistent... but she's threatening more because she *can* win at any moment. Not because she will.

If we ban Bayo, we're going to have to get rid of Cloud and Diddy as well.

Bayo isn't the only character to be above the rest, she's just the most hated because your average mid-level player has absolutely no idea what her moves do and it's just easier to hate on her. You think a character like Cloud, Sonic or ZSS can't run away with a lead? That's just Salem being extremely good at this. Why do you think other Bayos don't do that? You genuinely think they don't want to win? The truth is that camping requires a very strong mindset that only a few people can maintain at top level.

Diddy and Cloud are absolutely on par with Bayonetta. Banning her without banning those two would be ridiculous, and if any ban happen, it's just going to be on Bayonetta thanks to top players like ZeRo using the hate on Bayonetta to gain popularity. Lost a lot of my respect for the guy when he encouraged his viewers to hate on Bayo.
It's perfectly fine to dislike her, but telling people that it's good to hate on her is one other thing. Especially when it comes with hypocrisy - he litterally said that bat within saved Bayonetta from death after a Mario D-air, when we just saw Ryu and even Rosa get out of it (for those who don't know, without X amount of rage, the final hit of Mario's D-air can be avoided by all the cast except Bowser). And considering the amount of knowledge he had shown on his stream, there's absolutely no way that he wasn't aware. But now that ZeRo's won everything, he just needs to be able to make a living off of his stream.
The guy is (very) smart, he knows how to gain popularity, I just don't like when it's based on hating like that (it's gotta be either on Bayo or on Trump if you want to be popular lmao).

Anyways, back to Bayo. If you ban her, you really think the game will stop dying? People just want novelty, and banning one character will not make their Yoshi or Pac-Man magically viable. What do you think will happen? Bayo players will either quit or play Cloud. We ban Cloud too? Sure, now Diddy is absolutely alone in S tier. Ban him? Great, now who's preventing ZSS from winning everything, she just lost her 3 bad match-ups. Oh but ZSS is fine since Nairo plays her, killing by hitting a N-air/Grab at 20% is now completely ok, thank you Naifus for reminding me. /s

The truth is that we know no patches are coming, lower mid tier characters and below are becoming less and less relevant (like in every game) as time goes on, the game has been out for 3 years, people's interest in the game is decreasing since there is no patch, and they want something to blame it on.

I also partially agree with you. But you're missing the source of peoples' frustration.

Well, at least most people. People prefer a character that beats them in every way by playing in a way that their familiar with. There won't be calls for Cloud or Diddy bans because there are situations where they feel comfortable against those characters. If you're up 150% vs a Cloud or Diddy with 10 seconds left, you're probably going to win in a way that feels like the opponent outsmarted you - even if they're using their oppressive tools to put you in a particular place.

 

[Game7a1]

Forgot to mention that Hungrybox got 257th in Genesis 5. At least he got a placing, right? Did any other Jigglypuff main place higher?
Source

Speclar, a SoCal Jigglypuff player, placed 97th. Captain L also used Jigglypuff, but I don't know if he won games with her.

 

[FeelMeUp]

do you really think diddy would be the best character in the game with bayo and cloud gone?
youre out of your mind.

 

[The-Technique]

I don't care about her being the best. I care about the game being played. If you read "I don't like her because she wins!" From my post, you did not read it.

https://twitter.com/blacktwins13/status/954906225887518720

Games 4&5 of this set, the game of smash brothers that people of the community enjoy playing is not played. Same with captain L vs Salem.

Losing matchups can be fun. Peach vs MK is exciting and fun because MK tries to win neutral once to ladder peach, but she can fight back. Bayo doesn't win neutral in these matchups. Neutral simply does not exist, and that is what sucks the fun and "bans" these characters from competitive play.

But....then you have Leo who literally stifles Bayonetta's options at every phase of the match, all while piloting a relatively honest character. I mean what exactly do you picture in your mind regarding "neutral"?

 

[Myollnir]

I also partially agree with you. But you're missing the source of peoples' frustration.

Well, at least most people. People prefer a character that beats them in every way by playing in a way that their familiar with. There won't be calls for Cloud or Diddy bans because there are situations where they feel comfortable against those characters. If you're up 150% vs a Cloud or Diddy with 10 seconds left, you're probably going to win in a way that feels like the opponent outsmarted you - even if they're using their oppressive tools to put you in a particular place.

This is true, but if ZSS, MK (both characters can kill in 10 seconds) did the same, the reactions would've been entirely different. And a 150% Cloud will kill you with 4 U-air and a DownB.
That was super BS, but a game lasts 6 minutes, not 5:50.
And there's more than one way of playing smash4. The neutral game is just a part of the game. Not everything. And if you don't like conversions you should play Brawl. Or chess.

Edit : FeelMeUp And who do you think would be the best? It's true that Diddy have good match-ups against Bayo & Cloud but I don't think that would make him go any lower.

 

[Shaya]

Not keeping up to date with the twittersphere or specific examples either,
but feels like there's a pretty amazing analog to these events to... the first genesis.
Dojo took out the two best falco players in the world, Larry Lurr/DEHF and SK92 through completely stalling them out.

Larry argued that stalling rules were being broken and it was a large debacle at the venue whether or not what just happened was against the rules.
It obviously wasn't, any wise TO would've sided with Dojo.

But it was from that point where "MK is broken" started turning into "MK should be banned".
A tournament which MK didn't win, btw.
I think Ally has jokingly said in the past he regrets winning during that time period, because it gave people too much fuel to deny MK was a serious problem to the game's health.

And people today are only willing to compare the state of Brawl 3-4 years+ into it's life time (a point where it was difficult to deny the damage received wasn't already fatal) when going "Bayo's' not anything like MK! She isn't winning everything!"

 

[ぱみゅ]

Platform camping may, in general, end up being the degenerative gameplay people fear in Smash, but it ain’t there yet.

Maybe Sakurai was right all along and the future for the meta was to play only on Omega Stages.

 

[Minordeth]

Here's the thing. I don't expect Bayonetta to ever become banworthy in terms of results. Her issue isn't that she's unbeatable or anything of that nature. She's inconsistent... but she's threatening more because she *can* win at any moment. Not because she will.

I also partially agree with you. But you're missing the source of peoples' frustration.

Well, at least most people. People prefer a character that beats them in every way by playing in a way that their familiar with. There won't be calls for Cloud or Diddy bans because there are situations where they feel comfortable against those characters. If you're up 150% vs a Cloud or Diddy with 10 seconds left, you're probably going to win in a way that feels like the opponent outsmarted you - even if they're using their oppressive tools to put you in a particular place.

So, here’s the thing, most of this has to do with knowledge. Why are being in these situations okay? Because “their familiar with” these characters. Most players are not familiar with Bayo. Even now. For instance, they don’t know when to switch their SDI and DI based on her situation, just like top players still don’t know how to DI Boost Kick.

They still don’t immediately punish the “run off the ledge but ABK back” maneuver, or the ABK from the ledge in general. They still let her nairplane. They still don’t punish her landing lag when she lands right in front of them or on top of them.

This is glaringly obvious stuff that happened this tournament.

You don’t have to play perfectly to beat Bayonetta. Leo flubbed tons of stuff against Mistake. He just exploited her and Mistake’s weaknesses consistently enough. Leo absolutely got super salty about Bayo last year.

And now he makes Salem look lost.

 

[YerTheBestAROUND]

hbox has entered smash 4 brackets at multi-event regionals several times in the past and usually drowns in pools

you can even find the vod bruh https://youtu.be/Os_phcqdELs

Again, it's not really important. Plenty of people with better characters drown in pools. Who cares if a melee player playing the worst character in the game drowns in pools. Would you really expect much more out of him?

 

[FeelMeUp]

A trio of would experience the most success, with being seen as amazing but not as good as the 3 blondes.
So essentially the same as what happened pre-Bayo/Cloud.
Difference is that the characters who get crapped on by the 2 DLC characters would rise and most likely only hard lose to some 2-3 man combination of Rosa/Sonic/Fox/Diddy/Sheik.

 

[Minordeth]

Not keeping up to date with the twittersphere or specific examples either,
but feels like there's a pretty amazing analog to these events to... the first genesis.
Dojo took out the two best falco players in the world, Larry Lurr/DEHF and SK92 through completely stalling them out.

Larry argued that stalling rules were being broken and it was a large debacle at the venue whether or not what just happened was against the rules.
It obviously wasn't, any wise TO would've sided with Dojo.

But it was from that point where "MK is broken" started turning into "MK should be banned".
A tournament which MK didn't win, btw.
I think Ally has jokingly said in the past he regrets winning during that time period, because it gave people too much fuel to deny MK was a serious problem to the game's health.

I don’t think that analogy quite fits. MK stalling, and pretty much doing anything, is on a completely different level from Bayo platform camping. Salem also took out two players that are not the best reps of their characters.

Other characters can platform camp to a similar (or better even) degree of effectiveness as Bayo. Who could stall on the level of Brawl MK, in Brawl?

EDIT: I should add, I see why fundamentally, people dislike Bayo. It’s beyond the feeling of “she can always win.” It’s that she makes it look like the less skilled player won. Now, part of this is due to a lack of understanding... the other part...

Well, real talk, that’s more of a Smash 4 problem at large for a variety of reasons.

 

[Deleted member]

First off, no. He's about to play against Leffen in winners semis right now as I type this- aaaand it's started. Second, that's melee, this is smash 4. Not really important given this context.

Think you're a bit too focused on player representation and results. Especially on linking the two together and how that affects a tier list.

It takes time to see changes in a meta and a tier list. You're being a bit hasty with the character placement changes talk.

That was not Melee. First of all, Hungrybox would not get that low in Melee. It was in the Smash 4 section. You might be right, about me being too hasty, but I do get concerned a little.

do you really think diddy would be the best character in the game with bayo and cloud gone?
youre out of your mind.

This.
Sheik could have better results than Diddy Kong with ZeRo gone, ( even though they will still be strong ), and she has a really good match up spread. Arguably the third or second best match up spread in the game.

 

[Myollnir]

A trio of would experience the most success, with being seen as amazing but not as good as the 3 blondes.
So essentially the same as what happened pre-Bayo/Cloud.
Difference is that the characters who get crapped on by the 2 DLC characters would rise and most likely only hard lose to some 2-3 man combination of Rosa/Sonic/Fox/Diddy/Sheik.

Sheik would absolutely not benefit from a Bayo/Cloud ban at all. Her match-ups against them are among the best in the game. Sheik would still get janked by rage / human error.
Diddy beats ZSS and M2 easily and only loses to Rosa. He would be the most consistent character in the game. And Fox, Sonic and M2 are already considered amazing.

 

[Minordeth]

Also, what’s with this “invalidates” talk? Last I checked we don’t really have many -3 MUs (or worse) in this game.

 

[FeelMeUp]

Sheik would absolutely not benefit from a Bayo/Cloud ban at all. Her match-ups against them are among the best in the game. Sheik would still get janked by rage / human error.
Diddy beats ZSS and M2 easily and only loses to Rosa. He would be the most consistent character in the game. And Fox, Sonic and M2 are already considered amazing.

Taking a top 4 character and removing two of the threats most people put above her makes that character higher on the list by default.
Diddy doesn't beat M2 easily and the matchup against ZSS has looked closer to 55:45 than 6:4 due to how bad Diddy's disadvantage in the matchup is.
Reread the sentence. I didn't say they weren't. They're just less amazing than the 3 previously listed character.

 

[|RK|]

So, here’s the thing, most of this has to do with knowledge. Why are being in these situations okay? Because “their familiar with” these characters. Most players are not familiar with Bayo. Even now. For instance, they don’t know when to switch their SDI and DI based on her situation, just like top players still don’t know how to DI Boost Kick.

They still don’t immediately punish the “run off the ledge but ABK back” maneuver, or the ABK from the ledge in general. They still let her nairplane. They still don’t punish her landing lag when she lands right in front of them or on top of them.

This is glaringly obvious stuff that happened this tournament.

You don’t have to play perfectly to beat Bayonetta. Leo flubbed tons of stuff against Mistake. He just exploited her and Mistake’s weaknesses consistently enough. Leo absolutely got super salty about Bayo last year.

And now he makes Salem look lost.

Well, sure. But if Mistake capitalized harder on edgeguards? Predicted one of Leo's swings with a Witch Time? We could have had a different set entirely.

See, the thing about Leo's success against Bayo as of late is that I've seen it before. Dabuz and WaDi both had exceptional records against the character. They exploited her in neutral over and over again, but recently found themselves unable to counter everything thrown at them.

So I see Leo winning right now because he's flat out better than the Bayos he plays against. He knows when they'll do what. But that was WaDi. That was Dabuz. And others I'm probably forgetting. So will this last? Who knows. But the threat is still there.

This is true, but if ZSS, MK (both characters can kill in 10 seconds) did the same, the reactions would've been entirely different. And a 150% Cloud will kill you with 4 U-air and a DownB.
That was super BS, but a game lasts 6 minutes, not 5:50.
And there's more than one way of playing smash4. The neutral game is just a part of the game. Not everything. And if you don't like conversions you should play Brawl. Or chess.

Edit : FeelMeUp And who do you think would be the best? It's true that Diddy have good match-ups against Bayo & Cloud but I don't think that would make him go any lower.

ZSS and MK are good examples of the type of character that has other issues that make people less frustrated. Or even characters that can possibly counter them (even if it's still possible for them to win). Bayos issues aren't as easily exploited.

For example, Salem prefers to be last hit with ZSS so he doesn't fall prey to the early kills. You can avoid certain stages for greater effectiveness. You can hit and pressure her in neutral more easily as well.

MK has a particular percent range where he's most threatening, and camping the ledge can be pretty effective counterplay for characters who are in that window.

 

[Shaya]

I don’t think that analogy quite fits. MK stalling, and pretty much doing anything, is on a completely different level from Bayo platform camping.

At this time, while not 100% sure, there was already an LGL in place.
In this instance, I believe it was platform/'air camping' that caused the drama (MK's down air and multi jumps functioning VERY similar to nair 'plane' -> up-b)

Other characters can platform camp to a similar (or better even) degree of effectiveness as Bayo. Who could stall on the level of Brawl MK, in Brawl?

If we take away planking, then probably the only comparable character was Wario.
If we add more stages to the mix, which for a long time was the case, G&W also stifled things.

EDIT: I should add, I see why fundamentally, people dislike Bayo. It’s beyond the feeling of “she can always win.” It’s that she makes it look like the less skilled player won. Now, part of this is due to a lack of understanding... the other part...

Well, real talk, that’s more of a Smash 4 problem at large for a variety of reasons.

People have gripes with her design too. Anecdotes of 'less skilled player won' (something I tend to avoid saying, but the feeling crops up sometimes) is what gets people riled up for sure. However, falling back to a considerably difficult to overcome (impervious might be a tad much) semi-automatic flow of options most of the cast aren't designed to deal with doesn't really get denied by argument, just 'people could still get better at dealing with these obvious things' (something I heard ad infinitum during the brawl era). Yes players will have obvious holes in their anti-MK or Bayo game plans, hence those character's players abuse that until it stops being as effective, followed by an adjustment of the dynamics, and then usually a continuation of victory - rarely has a single thing ended up being enough to change the tides of a domineering character. Eventually it all just becomes apart of the mix ups that define the better players from the weaker ones; arguably advancing their dominance further.

The smash community could be seen as a bunch of whingers, but its a game (series) that contrasts starkly to the general 2D fighters; options that exist in Smash Bros, and often only to specific characters that tend towards being overtly domineering and stick out.
I much prefer comparing how Smash options work out to mobas (in my case specifically league of legends). The power of mobility, hitboxes, 'options', resound a lot closer to home than say, Street Fighter.
(specifically laning and other 1v1 dynamics, mind you).

I doubt LoL has changed much in all these years, so the extent of the whinge there is likely still similar (or imo, worse). These types of game brings those feelings out of us.
Or its just safer to say everyone, everywhere are a bunch of whiners (more commonly known as human), taking an opportunity to belittle a stance as a problem of a community rather than the game itself seems slightly unfair.
(Forgive me if I misunderstood your 'at large' line there).

 

[Myollnir]

Taking a top 4 character and removing two of the threats most people put above her makes that character higher on the list by default.

That's litterally what you did with Sheik Rosa & ZSS, you just happen to have a low opinion of Diddy.

Diddy doesn't beat M2 easily and the matchup against ZSS has looked closer to 55:45 than 6:4 due to how bad Diddy's disadvantage in the matchup is.

Easily was probably an exageration. You can't have anything more than a +1 against another top tier, usually. He still beats them, and match-up spread against other top tiers are definitely something to account for, especially when talking about a character as consistent as Diddy.

ZSS and MK are good examples of the type of character that has other issues that make people less frustrated. Or even characters that can possibly counter them (even if it's still possible for them to win). Bayos issues aren't as easily exploited.

For example, Salem prefers to be last hit with ZSS so he doesn't fall prey to the early kills. You can avoid certain stages for greater effectiveness. You can hit and pressure her in neutral more easily as well.

MK has a particular percent range where he's most threatening, and camping the ledge can be pretty effective counterplay for characters who are in that window.

MK could've set up a kill with B-Throw against ledge camping. If you can chose to go "last hit", then why are you not doing it against Bayo? ZSS kills slightly better than Bayo at very high %. It's not rare to reach above 200% against Bayo (180 for lighter characters)

 

[Krysco]

I'm not taking a side in this bayo debate here, but...

After playing Salem's Bayo for three hours with half the cast, I understand. Unless your playing a specific handful of characters the matchup feel impossible vs. optimized shenanigans

— Liquid | Dabuz (@DabuzSenpai) January 22, 2018

I'm quite curious about which characters Dabuz tried that did well.

A quick look at the comments below the main tweet, Dabuz says Luigi and Marth felt nice against Salem's Bayo. Said he felt he could generally control the pace. Mentioned as well that characters like Mewtwo and Sonic have to play at her pace.

 

[Rizen]

Bayo should be banned. Mistake platform camped Konga offstream and abused her risk reward. She wins the game by not playing the game and that is why she should be banned. Captain L got platform camped as well on stream. By not banning her, you are banning all characters who cannot deal with this overpowered strategy because her risk/reward for not playing smash is so strong.

These are just examples, obviously close to my heart examples due to my pnw relationship, but this is how I feel about her. She is poorly designed, like Miis, and negatively hurts the experience of the smash community. Banning things always faces uproar in the moment, but once things are banned everyone just accepts it and moves on. Nobody talks about duck hunt anymore, despite how much uproar there was about changing the stage list.

I see why things happen. And I don't like it. Yes, top tiers have tools to beat her and I don't necessarily think she's #1 tbh, but she negatively affects the community. People will say "pick a better character" but people will never say "pick a worse character." Bayo mains will move on to a different character if we banned her or quit just as many mid tiers have done while we have not banned her.

I didn't see it but couldn't Bayo's platform camping be negated by striking TnC vs her? The other stages aren't that bad.

 

[Illusion.]

I’ll be honest here: despite me absolutely despising her, I’ve been against the whole idea of banning Bayonetta simply because she currently doesn’t have the results/meta dominance to warrant it, but just seeing how the community, including top players, is now so incredibly divided and how they loathe just looking at or playing against her, it might just be for the best to get rid of her.

•The best player in the world quit because he does not enjoy “current Smash 4” (we all know what he meant).
•We lost a valuable asset in data collection (Tetra) simply due to how she saw the character impact the meta negatively from a data standpoint
•We’ve seen the amount of sheer hatred that players, especially top ones, have expressed towards her even by straight-up claiming that she kills the game.
•I’m not a fan of using anecdotes for arguments, but I’ve met top Brawl veterans that feel Bayonetta is way more toxic than Brawl MK and no longer play Smash 4. That is not okay.
•Even people who started with Smash 4 competitively, such as myself, have now stopped enjoying the game.
•Just look at her bonkers theory... I don’t need to elaborate on this any further because you all know how ridiculously risk-free and unfair she is.
•Having to look at data myself when I help create these tier lists, her results are actually getting more and more dominant. She, along with Cloud, makes up 10% of results... in a game with 58 characters.

I really can’t see how keeping her here any longer would be healthy. I just can’t. She’s by no means unbeatable, not even Brawl MK was, but it’s very obvious she is negatively impacting both the community and the game significantly.

 

[Minordeth]

Well, sure. But if Mistake capitalized harder on edgeguards? Predicted one of Leo's swings with a Witch Time? We could have had a different set entirely.

These things that you mentioned require conditioning, which any character can do. My point is that Leo is taking advantage of Bayo specific weaknesses. Yeah, he clearly outplayed Mistake, but a lot of what Leo was exploiting is hard for Bayo to avoid.

See, the thing about Leo's success against Bayo as of late is that I've seen it before. Dabuz and WaDi both had exceptional records against the character. They exploited her in neutral over and over again, but recently found themselves unable to counter everything thrown at them.

So I see Leo winning right now because he's flat out better than the Bayos he plays against. He knows when they'll do what. But that was WaDi. That was Dabuz. And others I'm probably forgetting. So will this last? Who knows. But the threat is still there.

I mean, Dabuz still beats Bayos regularly. He annihilated Chag at the very same tournament. He also failed to do much of what he does so well when he fought Mistake. Including taking massive risks.

You are making it sound like the top Bayos are instituting new counter play that they didn’t before. They aren’t.

WaDi basically hasn’t been playing as well, across the board. Mistake didn’t play any better than when he got beaten by WaDi the last time.

Like, man, our top players are not consistent because our top level does not have a developed understanding of this game.

In summation:
Mistake tried to Witch Time Rosa’s recovery.
Mistake got 2nd at Genesis 5.

 

[Kofu]

To continue your point, Minordeth , Dabuz is as consistent as he is because he is (seemingly, at least) more studious about the game than many other top players, and makes a point to implement his knowledge.

Though he lost to Mistake, he notably gave Leo the hardest fight of any player this tournament. By far.

 

[Minordeth]

At this time, while not 100% sure, there was already an LGL in place.
In this instance, I believe it was platform/'air camping' that caused the drama (MK's down air and multi jumps functioning VERY similar to nair 'plane' -> up-b)

Bayo’s Nair with BA extension is weak, trades, and gets outright beaten by a host of anti-airs. Which people don’t do, because they don’t know how their characters tools interact with it and they don’t know when Nair ends and get afraid of WTi.

MKs Dair is frame four, transcendent, semi-spikes, and actually hits below him. Counterplay’s an actually order of magnitude harder.

If we take away planking, then probably the only comparable character was Wario.
If we add more stages to the mix, which for a long time was the case, G&W also stifled things.

That sounds about right.

People have gripes with her design too. Anecdotes of 'less skilled player won' (something I tend to avoid saying, but the feeling crops up sometimes) is what gets people riled up for sure. However, falling back to a considerably difficult to overcome (impervious might be a tad much) semi-automatic flow of options most of the cast aren't designed to deal with doesn't really get denied by argument, just 'people could still get better at dealing with these obvious things' (something I heard ad infinitum during the brawl era). Yes players will have obvious holes in their anti-MK or Bayo game plans, hence those character's players abuse that until it stops being as effective, followed by an adjustment of the dynamics, and then usually a continuation of victory - rarely has a single thing ended up being enough to change the tides of a domineering character. Eventually it all just becomes apart of the mix ups that define the better players from the weaker ones; arguably advancing their dominance further.

I mean, sure, the characters before Bayo we’re not designed with her in mind. But a lot of them have tools to combat the egregious stuff that is still so popular.

As for the gradual evolution and adjustment: yeah, the excuse during the Brawl era of “could get better” is at least somewhat forgivable, even if it was wrong.
It was pre-discord, pre-Twitter. The wealth of information now is insane. And here’s the thing, Bayo has real weaknesses. They aren’t being exploited anywhere near consistently. The actualization of “better” is readily available, not a hypothetical.

The smash community could be seen as a bunch of whingers, but its a game (series) that contrasts starkly to the general 2D fighters; options that exist in Smash Bros, and often only to specific characters that tend towards being overtly domineering and stick out.
I much prefer comparing how Smash options work out to mobas (in my case specifically league of legends). The power of mobility, hitboxes, 'options', resound a lot closer to home than say, Street Fighter.
(specifically laning and other 1v1 dynamics, mind you).

I doubt LoL has changed much in all these years, so the extent of the whinge there is likely still similar (or imo, worse). These types of game brings those feelings out of us.
Or its just safer to say everyone, everywhere are a bunch of whiners (more commonly known as human), taking an opportunity to belittle a stance as a problem of a community rather than the game itself seems slightly unfair.
(Forgive me if I misunderstood your 'at large' line there).

By “at large” I mean Smash 4 itself, as a game. The awful, awful training mode and purposefully esoteric background systems actively contribute to the state the meta is in. We can’t lab like other communities in the FGC, and it’s ridiculous.

We need a mod to get basic functionality, which is just asinine.

 

[Rizen]

Myollnir covered why Diddy's not dependent on Bayo to be 3rd best. Diddy also has better results than Sheik and much better results than ZSS and Rosa. Losing ZeRo hurts but Diddy's the same neutral monster he always was. ZeRo helped but did not carry Diddy.

I've talked about how crazy bayo is in the past. And why she's nowhere near Brawl MK level broken. I haven't seen genesis 5 yet and will hold judgements until I do.


With that out of the way, let's discuss platform camping. Link's really good at it. He has bombs that combo into kill aerials, 3 safe on shield aerials with low landing lag, the only FF in the game that increases his fall speed by 90% (vs 60% on most characters), and 2 projectiles that can be curved down. IMO Link is better at platform camping on BF and SV than Bayo is; she wins on larger areas like dreamland and TnC, air burst are too good.

It's a good tactic but can't be done indefinitely. Many characters can safely poke through platforms like Marth, Corrin etc, granted Bayo's WTi beats this but that move is broken everywhere. I was playing a Bowser last Thursday who made great use of Usmash's shell invulnerability to beat bombs.
The trick to beating platform camping is to position your character in the middle of tri-plats so you can poke the side ones from the side. Move less than the camper so you can reach them and react to fakeouts; what goes up must come down. Look for double jumps and bait them with empty SHs but don't commit until they need to land. Abuse intangibility/disjoints. Projectile landins if you have one that works. Don't chase the camper! It's about controlling space and simple landing reads. BF/Dreamland- use the triplat strategy, SV- be patient and know the platform will return, Lylat plats are so close to the ground most ground moves reach through them, TnC- strike it or at least know the cycles, the camper must return to the stage sometime and you can be there to edge guard them.

Some characters just suck vs platform camping, sorry. Strike TnC, make reads and hope for the best or get a secondary. Most characters however can anti-platform camp even if the camper outspeeds them.

 

[|RK|]

That's litterally what you did with Sheik Rosa & ZSS, you just happen to have a low opinion of Diddy.


Easily was probably an exageration. You can't have anything more than a +1 against another top tier, usually. He still beats them, and match-up spread against other top tiers are definitely something to account for, especially when talking about a character as consistent as Diddy.



MK could've set up a kill with B-Throw against ledge camping. If you can chose to go "last hit", then why are you not doing it against Bayo? ZSS kills slightly better than Bayo at very high %. It's not rare to reach above 200% against Bayo (180 for lighter characters)

Sure, but MK also isn't as good at edgeguarding as Bayo. And MK is only going to set up a kill, not kill you outright.

As for going last hit vs Bayo - that's still extremely risky vs a better bair than ZSS, a better grab than ZSS, and better escape options than ZSS.

Minordeth I don't think the Bays implemented anything new. And that's part of my argument here.

BTW, though it's def no filter, ZeRo is rewatching S4 vods rn. So if you want to hear his perspective combined with memeing... There's that.

 

[Minordeth]

I’ll be honest here: despite me absolutely despising her, I’ve been against the whole idea of banning Bayonetta simply because she currently doesn’t have the results/meta dominance to warrant it, but just seeing how the community, including top players, is now so incredibly divided and how they loathe just looking at or playing against her, it might just be for the best to get rid of her.

•The best player in the world quit because he does not enjoy “current Smash 4” (we all know what he meant).
•We lost a valuable asset in data collection (Tetra) simply due to how she saw the character impact the meta negatively from a data standpoint
•We’ve seen the amount of sheer hatred that players, especially top ones, have expressed towards her even by straight-up claiming that she kills the game.
•I’m not a fan of using anecdotes for arguments, but I’ve met top Brawl veterans that feel Bayonetta is way more toxic than Brawl MK and no longer play Smash 4. That is not okay.
•Even people who started with Smash 4 competitively, such as myself, have now stopped enjoying the game.
•Just look at her bonkers theory... I don’t need to elaborate on this any further because you all know how ridiculously risk-free and unfair she is.
•Having to look at data myself when I help create these tier lists, her results are actually getting more and more dominant. She, along with Cloud, makes up 10% of results... in a game with 58 characters.

I really can’t see how keeping her here any longer would be healthy. I just can’t. She’s by no means unbeatable, not even Brawl MK was, but it’s very obvious she is negatively impacting both the community and the game significantly.

Top players and Brawl vets saying she is worse than Brawl MK is not surprising, given that a whole host of them mained MK at the end. They understand him more.

Bayo isn’t ridiculously risk free either. She has ways of reducing risk, and frequently has insane risk/reward because her reward is bananas, but her ways of mitigating risk are predictable and very punishable.

Zero quitting was due to far more reasons than a character he regularly beat.

Like, yeah, I understand. Bayo is extremely annoying to fight and not fun. I stopped maining Ike because life was hard and switched. I can’t blame people for quitting because they don’t enjoy the game anymore.

But if the community wants to decide to ban her, that’s up to them. And if they do, it will absolutely not be for competitive reasons.

Finally:

A quick look at the comments below the main tweet, Dabuz says Luigi and Marth felt nice against Salem's Bayo. Said he felt he could generally control the pace. Mentioned as well that characters like Mewtwo and Sonic have to play at her pace.

No. Dabuz is an amazing player. He is not an amazing player with half the cast, especially in the Bayo MU, against the best Bayo.

 

[Shaya]

Bayo’s Nair with BA extension is weak, trades, and gets outright beaten by a host of anti-airs. Which people don’t do, because they don’t know how their characters tools interact with it and they don’t know when Nair ends and get afraid of WTi.

MKs Dair is frame four, transcendent, semi-spikes, and actually hits below him. Counterplay’s an actually order of magnitude harder.

Meta Knight's dair is assuredly a better move than Bayo's nair terms of hitbox/disjoint, however BA impacts one's ability to time or more readily react to the option. Trading with MK's dair was kinda feasible too, but you're not getting anything out of it and horizontal semi-spike angle for it rarely meant you procured a better position by it (in fact, probably the opposite).
MK's dair being transcended was more of a bane than a boon - he could not clank with projectiles (imagine if he could though, I used to have nightmares over this) and otherwise aerials don't have priority like grounded moves or specials do either.
There were anti airs that could beat it in Brawl too, just the cast wasn't so well balanced - very few could. Also to note, Larry went on to be one of the very few players in the world who would consistently beat MKs bar Tyrant (home region/still evenish) and M2K years into the future. Obviously just that strategy wasn't enough.
But to (in a moment) echo myself a little here directly to 'gets outright beaten by a host of anti-airs', but who's in control here? How well does the Bayo player know how much control they have until they see the first layers of counter play? The game might have more anti-airs across the cast than Brawl, but does that mean it's still easy to combat considering right now it's usage seems blatant and obvious?
It's speculative, and anyone would forgive you years into the future if it goes the same way (and maybe me in a few months when suddenly Bayo's not even top 5 guys! - you never know!) - but what's stopping the character continually advancing past counterplay a lot faster than it's developed?
Right now, the risk/reward being skewed is a common opinion among many; that doesn't seem likely to shift by much. So even if players get better at beating it with their anti airs, will they actually overcome players of a similar level of skill who knows how to deal with your anti-airs? Can it still be abusive? Sure players can add another notch in their belt for a difficult niche and technical punish for something they end up losing to (hello once a fortnight new MK Tornado mix up), but how much is too much?

It was pre-discord, pre-Twitter. The wealth of information now is insane. And here’s the thing, Bayo has real weaknesses. They aren’t being exploited anywhere near consistently. The actualization of “better” is readily available, not a hypothetical.

This is slightly contentious, sure a lot more information is out there, but how easy is it to find? How much access is there to it? A different discussion for a different time.
There will always be a way to be better. In the long run, people outlived a majority of the meta MK mustred and could compete against it without trauma. Very few players could juggle more options than the counter play they had developed due to everyone and their mother having an MK. Then Ice Climbers came along.
This is not a good end game.

By “at large” I mean Smash 4 itself, as a game.

Apologies, I feel I'm too used to those types of comments, I know I shouldn't expect such things from you.
You genuinely hit me with the optimism and it resonated. But I would be making these arguments anyway, I don't want to see another Smash game go that way. Personally how I'm playing against Bayo seems to have improved rapidly lately, I am thankful to DLC/the dominance of Cloud and Bayo's options to remind me of how to play in that safer passive way to deal with them ala Brawl; but I likely won't ever truly quit, I'll only be sad if it means friends and people I respect do.
There will be a lot less argument about banning [double] Cloud if it comes to it, and doubles is all that really matters anyway.

In summation:
Mistake tried to Witch Time Rosa’s recovery.
Mistake got 2nd at Genesis 5.

That's what I first thought, but then I was like, maybe he expected jump up air from below? It was a possibility before up-b.

 

[Minordeth]

Meta Knight's dair is assuredly a better move than Bayo's nair terms of hitbox/disjoint, however BA impacts one's ability to time or more readily react to the option. Trading with MK's dair was kinda feasible too, but you're not getting anything out of it and horizontal semi-spike angle for it rarely meant you procured a better position by it (in fact, probably the opposite).
MK's dair being transcended was more of a bane than a boon - he could not clank with projectiles (imagine if he could though, I used to have nightmares over this) and otherwise aerials don't have priority like grounded moves or specials do either.
There were anti airs that could beat it in Brawl too, just the cast wasn't so well balanced - very few could. Also to note, Larry went on to be one of the very few players in the world who would consistently beat MKs bar Tyrant (home region/still evenish) and M2K years into the future. Obviously just that strategy wasn't enough.
But to (in a moment) echo myself a little here directly to 'gets outright beaten by a host of anti-airs', but who's in control here? How well does the Bayo player know how much control they have until they see the first layers of counter play? The game might have more anti-airs across the cast than Brawl, but does that mean it's still easy to combat considering right now it's usage seems blatant and obvious?
It's speculative, and anyone would forgive you years into the future if it goes the same way (and maybe me in a few months when suddenly Bayo's not even top 5 guys! - you never know!) - but what's stopping the character continually advancing past counterplay a lot faster than it's developed?
Right now, the risk/reward being skewed is a common opinion among many; that doesn't seem likely to shift by much. So even if players get better at beating it with their anti airs, will they actually overcome players of a similar level of skill who knows how to deal with your anti-airs? Can it still be abusive? Sure players can add another notch in their belt for a difficult niche and technical punish for something they end up losing to (hello once a fortnight new MK Tornado mix up), but how much is too much?

Counterplay development would be good. Even with the spectre of “God Queen Bayo” in a distant end game.

And of course, there would be some kind of counter play. I’d like to see what the Bayos could do. But really, like two or three players right now are even doing the obvious stuff. I can’t even get to the speculation level, because even basic counterplay to Bayo is not widespread among top players.

We can do some speculation based on tools though, and the Bayos that have had their Nairplanes countered generally stop doing it. Probably because Nairplaning takes away too many options and skews the risk/reward out of her favor if contended.

This is slightly contentious, sure a lot more information is out there, but how easy is it to find? How much access is there to it? A different discussion for a different time.
There will always be a way to be better. In the long run, people outlived a majority of the meta MK mustred and could compete against it without trauma. Very few players could juggle more options than the counter play they had developed due to everyone and their mother having an MK. Then Ice Climbers came along.
This is not a good end game.

Heh.

Yeah, I should say I’m mostly saying this regarding top players. Who should know. Who have their own discords. And a network of resources. Who, imo, have no excuse to be not exploiting Bayo like Leo does.

I see little bits of it here and there, and more in this last tourney. For instance, Nairo, to his credit, is getting his SDI more correct. His paralyzer zoning and Uair anti-airing against Bayo is pretty decent stuff.

Apologies, I feel I'm too used to those types of comments, I know I shouldn't expect such things from you.
You genuinely hit me with the optimism and it resonated. But I would be making these arguments anyway, I don't want to see another Smash game go that way. Personally how I'm playing against Bayo seems to have improved rapidly lately, I am thankful to DLC/the dominance of Cloud and Bayo's options to remind me of how to play in that safer passive way to deal with them ala Brawl; but I likely won't ever truly quit, I'll only be sad if it means friends and people I respect do.
There will be a lot less argument about banning [double] Cloud if it comes to it, and doubles is all that really matters anyway.

It’s all good.
I’m probably more optimistic about Bayo because I’ve already experienced things like:

How unbelievably annoying campy Chun Li is in Third Strike,

and!

The joys of making a mistake in Tekken and losing the game off of one exchange because welcome to juggles and the wall.

Bayo is annoying, tho. But there are lots of things I find annoying in this game. Rage being needlessly complex and also hidden is a big one. So are DK and Bowser’s respective throw confirms.

That's what I first thought, but then I was like, maybe he expected jump up air from below? It was a possibility before up-b.

That was my forgiving interpretation. Then he did it again, and Rosa was still on her way to the ledge iirc. And I was like, “Alright, man. Maybe this is your mind game. You do you.”

 

[Tizio Random]

Mistake expected an aggressive upair from Dabuz to challenge Bayo on the ledge.

By the way, I agree with Illusion. post. I despise the idea of a ban for Bayo because of she doesn't have the dominance or the results (even though I think they can only increase dramatically with time) but way too many players are quitting or see this game as a complete joke at this point in time. There are some character who are not fun to play, I despise playing against Yoshi yeah, but no other character is frustrating to play as much as a good Bayo because she lacks clear and exploitable weaknesses, every one of them can be bypassed by one way or another. Witch Time and Witch Twist are absolutely the worst offenders.

If you think Cloud and Diddy are on the same level as her I think you're delusional. They are bonkers, yeah, and will probably be the best characters in a metagame without Bayo but they have weaknesses. Meanwhile, she can only get better unless some gamebreaking discovery against her will be find out (like the shield thing at the ledge from MVD, can anyone please analyze that).

 

[FeelMeUp]

How does ZSS do a better job at killing than Bayo above the 100-150 range when the former no longer has any safe setups to death(besides tether trump) while the latter has multiple throws that kill, multiple aerials that kill, setups that still work true or as frametraps, and Witch Time? Genuinely curious.
ZSS's doesn't have anything outside of falling uair>stuff, sometimes Boost Kick, and bair at high %s.

 

[Rizen]

(like the shield thing at the ledge from MVD, can anyone please analyze that).

My theory is multiple hits of shield push. Unfortunately it's situational to bayo overshooting the ledge and having no remaining recovery options :/

It might be good to remember vs purely vertical recoveries like Cloud's upB>downward hit mixup, Ike, kirby and Mac's upBs if spaced from a bit to the side.

 

[Myollnir]

How does ZSS do a better job at killing than Bayo above the 100-150 range when the former no longer has any safe setups to death(besides tether trump) while the latter has multiple throws that kill, multiple aerials that kill, setups that still work true or as frametraps, and Witch Time? Genuinely curious.
ZSS's doesn't have anything outside of falling uair>stuff, sometimes Boost Kick, and bair at high %s.

Multiple throws that kill -> F-Throw only at the ledge at 170+% (with no rage), D-Throw with max rage kills a lightweight at like 190%. Needless to say you can't rely on a throw that will only kill at the ledge.
Multiple aerials that kill -> ZSS' B-air is 3 frames faster than Bayo's, as safe on block (-3) and kills earlier. Raw U-air? ZSS has it too and they kill at the same %. N-air will only kill at ridiculous % and close enough to the ledge.
Witch Time -> ??? Against a max rage opponent? You're just asking to die.
Set ups -> If they're not true, even if you frame trap, you're not going to kill most of the time. The reliable set ups are also hard to find in the neutral, as space d-tilt won't lead to anything.

ZSS has U-Tilt which is frame 3 and can be used to punish, she has a 50-50 with D-Throw U-air (similar to WTi, I wouldn't throw a ZSS grab without a set up though), her D-Smash is safe on block, Paralyzer is often safe to use as well, she can trump easily, and boost kick is frame 4 and kills quite early unless you're against Bayo, Cloud or another ZSS where they will often fall out of the move (anyone else I missed?). Her U-Smash is situational and kills late, but it's safe as an anti-air / OoS.

Not that ZSS is particularly good at killing at late %, but I just find she has an easier time than Bayo.