Are players who use low tiers better & smarter than players who use mid tier +?

[Fatmanonice]

This is a question that really doesn't have a true answer because, obviously, not every low and high tier character player is the same. Granted, low tiers have an uphill battle but just because that's the case doesn't automatically make them more skilled than high tier character players. If anything, you have to take the player and the character's learning curve into effect and then look at things like who the player has to face on a regular basis, how often they play, their type of playstyle, etc.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Topic title is dumb. Good players learn how to adapt. This applies to any player, regardless of what character they use.

Mario won't **** the matchup unless his pilot is really good at getting the Ganon offstage.
Then it's ****.

But barring that, Mario doesn't have the tools to mop up Ganon as hard as this suggests. Since his shield grab range is so small... ... and his range is so small... he does have to take risks to hit Ganon.
And that's all Ganon needs to get rolling.

Mario vs Ganon is 65/35 Mario. I think that's a **** matchup. Not like...blatantly unwinnable ****, but Mario is just blatantly better than Ganon and Ganon has very few tools to deal with Mario.

Mario can pressure the **** out of Ganon and Ganon can do nothing about it. Ganon can do nothing when Mario D-airs his shield, or when Mario Jab cancels. Mario easily combos Ganon to 60% with U-tilt and U-air juggles, and can punish anything Ganon whiffs with a reverse F-smash. And while Mario's grab range is small, it's in fact better than Ganon's, and he's also MUCH faster, and thus can move into position better to get grabs.

Then offstage, Ganon really shouldn't be recovering against a good Mario.

 

[Sleek Media]

If a low-tier player beats a high-tier player, then there's no question - the low tier player is better. Not only is the character inherently more limited, but low-tier characters tend to have less analysis behind their game, giving the low-tier player even more of a disadvantage.

Part of the reason I support select items with low frequency in tournaments is because it greatly disrupts the tier structure, and makes the outcome more dependent on player skill and adaptability, and less on character matchups.

 

[Kitamerby]

One thing I will say I have noticed.

Many new "top players" and "good players" were low tier mains in Melee.

Take Malcolm(Zelda), Anther(Pikachu), NinjaLink(Roy), Neo(Roy), and Mew2King (Marth) for example.

 

[Skler]

Uhm, m2k didn't use mewtwo.

Low tier mains are no better than high tier mains. Low tiers are generally easier to learn than high tiers because they don't have as much they can do. It's easier to learn the low tier's few viable tactics than it is to learn all of the viable tactics a good character.

I mean...low tier mains are the best people ever and totally rule. Worship me.

 

[Kitamerby]

Uhm, m2k didn't use mewtwo.

Actually, he did, before he went competitive.

 

[DoonKoon]

Uhm, m2k didn't use mewtwo.

Low tier mains are no better than high tier mains. Low tiers are generally easier to learn than high tiers because they don't have as much they can do. It's easier to learn the low tier's few viable tactics than it is to learn all of the viable tactics a good character.

I mean...low tier mains are the best people ever and totally rule. Worship me.

It's easier to learn a "few" favorable match-up? What? What about those low tier mains who don't use anyone else besides their character in tournaments? San & RayKalm for example. From what I heard, they only use Ike & Ganon AND still place high at the end. How would using a character with much more limitability not be harder than using a character with muuuuch more better options?

:s

Do you even use (only) Link inn tournaments?

 

[swordgard]

Picking the right character is also a type of skill. In this case, we assume that whoever wins tournaments most consistently is the most skilled player. If you chose to use a low tier, you assume all the consequences and may not use this as a john to say you were a better player. If you really wanted to show you were better, just pick MK and try and go beat M2K. Once you come back with more johns after miserably failing, you can go back to rethink the purpose of this thread.

 

[Ganonsburg]

It's easier to learn a "few" favorable match-up? What? What about those low tier mains who don't use anyone else besides their character in tournaments? San & RayKalm for example. From what I heard, they only use Ike & Ganon AND still place high at the end. How would using a character with much more limitability not be harder than using a character with muuuuch more better options?

:s

Do you even use (only) Link inn tournaments?

He's saying that while low tiers have to work harder to get the win, they have to do less to learn the character and his/her quirks that will let him/her win.

The high tiers have more to learn and keep track of in a game, but those make it easier to win.

So essentially, everyone's the same in net skill.

 

[Skler]

It's much easier to learn a bad character because there's less they can do. It's very simple to learn their matchups, spam whatever good strategy they have and hope your opponent isn't able to exploit your character's flaws. It's harder to win with a low tier, it is not harder to use one.

High tiers can generally adapt to things, making them more difficult to learn.

I went straight Link at VLS and Pound 3, I generally do that in major tournies. Once I get used to other characters I will use them more often, I'm very comfortable with Link because I know him inside and out (there's a lot to know, but not THAT much).

Edit: Ninjas!

 

[DoonKoon]

but I don't think any low tier wants to prove their better than someone who uses a higher tier just because they placed higher..

 

[Skler]

You are only better than somebody if you place higher/beat them repeatedly/give them a swirly.

Character has nothing to do with whether you are better or not. Results are what matter, not the idea that "he did this with <bad character> so he's better than m2k because while m2k placed higher m2k uses MK who's super broken."

 

[DoonKoon]

He's saying that while low tiers have to work harder to get the win, they have to do less to learn the character and his/her quirks that will let him/her win.

The high tiers have more to learn and keep track of in a game, but those make it easier to win.

So essentially, everyone's the same in net skill.

at Ganon & Sky: but what you're saying makes no sense. A pro Fox may look more fancy than a pro Ike, but it's Ike who's working harder to get the win. and there's nothing wrong with using one move repeatively if you know that it'll eventually hit the other player at a specific moment(s). That's the major skill required for low tiers: knowing when to do what. You should see how patient pro Ganons play, they know their moves won't always work, so they wait and basically dodge till they can get one measly move in..

Tell me how that doesn't require more skill than that for mid tier + chars, or make the players better?

 

[swordgard]

at Ganon & Sky: but what you're saying makes no sense. A pro Fox may look more fancy than a pro Ike, but it's Ike who's working harder to get the win. and there's nothing wrong with using one move repeatively if you know that it'll eventually hit the other player at a specific moment(s). That's the major skill required for low tiers: knowing when to do what. You should see how patient pro Ganons play, they know their moves won't always work, so they wait and basically dodge till they can get one measly move in..

Tell me how that doesn't require more skill than that for mid tier + chars, or make the players better?

I dont recall ray kalm ever winning against m2k for example, how can you know he would be better than him with MK if he does not use him. If its only his char, he should switch and beat m2k. If he does not want to and still claims to be better, thats like saying "I was sandbagging" after every match I lose but never proving you were by stepping it up.

 

[Astartes]

this is kind of addressed to the people who argue that lower tier characters are easier to master because they have less that they can do. this might be true with F tier where the characters are the definition of terrible but the "not so bad" low tier characters often have just as many nuances as the mid+ characters. pokemon trainer being my case A.

 

[DoonKoon]

I dont recall ray kalm ever winning against m2k for example, how can you know he would be better than him with MK if he does not use him. If its only his char, he should switch and beat m2k. If he does not want to and still claims to be better, thats like saying "I was sandbagging" after every match I lose but never proving you were by stepping it up.

True enough, but I'm saying this from my perspective.

 

[Ganonsburg]

We're not arguing that they're easier. We're arguing that they're the same. I can make a chart if it helps.

Why high is easy:_________________________________Why high is hard:
More options that are viable_______________The options are difficult to learn and know when to use.

Why low is easy:__________________________________Why low is hard:
Less options to learn and know when to use___________Less ways to exploit other players

So essentially, everyone has the same overall problems winning. Lower tier players would win the same amount (more than likely) if they played a higher tier. Quite frankly, it comes down to the player's determination to win and how much effort they put into the game.

 

[Red Arremer]

No, they aren't.
If a player doesn't use a high tier, he's not smart. [/sarcasm]

In all seriousness, though, this question is answered easily: No.

Every player must know when to use what move with their character. The only thing that is different is how abusable those moves are. If you play Meta Knight and use Jab all the time, you'll lose just as bad as a Ganon who just throws out Warlock Punch.
The only thing that Low Tier players might be is more patient and knowing other characters to the point of knowing when to use their move on that certain character. They usually are used to losing, as well.

Good Low Tier players would probably do better with High or Mid Tier characters, however, that might not be true at all. There surely is a reason why these players use the Low Tiers, and one of them is that they only can succeed with that character, or only feel comfortable using them.

For instance, I play a way better Samus than I play, say, Falco. Although I played Falco at least as much as Samus in my time of playing this game. The reason for that is that Falco is not as fitting to my playstyle than Samus, whom I feel more comfortable with.

 

[¯\_S.(ツ).L.I.D._/¯]

this is kind of addressed to the people who argue that lower tier characters are easier to master because they have less that they can do. this might be true with F tier where the characters are the definition of terrible but the "not so bad" low tier characters often have just as many nuances as the mid+ characters. pokemon trainer being my case A.

If a character is in low tier, they're there BECAUSE THEY ARE BAD.

Besides, this argument is extremely character dependent. The term "easy to master" or "low learning curve" cannot be applied to all of a certain tier or anything like that. Kirby's like B tier or something and he has one of the lowest learning curves in the game.

 

[ssbbFICTION]

at Ganon & Sky: but what you're saying makes no sense. A pro Fox may look more fancy than a pro Ike, but it's Ike who's working harder to get the win. and there's nothing wrong with using one move repeatively if you know that it'll eventually hit the other player at a specific moment(s). That's the major skill required for low tiers: knowing when to do what. You should see how patient pro Ganons play, they know their moves won't always work, so they wait and basically dodge till they can get one measly move in..

Tell me how that doesn't require more skill than that for mid tier + chars, or make the players better?

I'm pretty sure that's an oxymoron

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

It's much easier to learn a bad character because there's less they can do. It's very simple to learn their matchups, spam whatever good strategy they have and hope your opponent isn't able to exploit your character's flaws. It's harder to win with a low tier, it is not harder to use one.

Sonic says hello.

 

[ssbbFICTION]

Sonic says hello.

But thats exactly how sonic works haha

 

[HeroMystic]

Low Tier players are not better, they're just used to working harder.

 

[PhantomX]

HOLY **** It'S FICTION!!! THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT HIM.

 

[DoonKoon]

I'm pretty sure that's an oxymoron

Then you haven't seen RayKalm, Zhouten & Ijosh play .

@Ganon: Having more options doesn't = having an harder time.

@Joe: While every player must know what to do when, and when to do what, at that same time, lower tiers have an harder time finding that "when", and that "what".

 

[Ganonsburg]

Then you haven't seen RayKalm, Zhouten & Ijosh play .

@Ganon: Having more options doesn't = having an harder time.

@Joe: While every player must know what to do when, and when to do what, at that same time, lower tiers have an harder time finding that "when", and that "what".

Most of the time it does though. You have to learn how to use it in combat under "pressure," know which ones will get what results, and which one you want to use at the right time so that you can follow up and not just blow it (like walking into a trap in chess). Even simple options that are easy to learn can be difficult to use because the opportunity to use it will arrive and leave quickly.

 

[DoonKoon]

Those are just options... nothing else. They don't relate to a skill of a player.

 

[Ganonsburg]

It takes skill to properly use options; I don't know how having skill is unrelated to having skill.

 

[Astartes]

The most hard fought and difficult battles that the pros fight r not going to be against low-tier characters. someone who mains low-tiers has to fight a lot harder and know the matchup-up really well but the height of competitive brawl occurs in the high tiers and it is there (at the pinacle of play) that people learn the most and truly showcase their skill.

 

[Sleek Media]

Interesting how "skill" and "victory" are considered synonymous. While they are related, one is not a direct representation of the other.

An interesting follow-up question would be:
"If you consider all players in a given tier, which tier will be more skillful overall?"

It's interesting to note that low tier mains never end up at the very bottom of tournament results. They always outpace at least a few players of higher tiers.

 

[Starwarrior27]

It probably would be logical to think of "skill" and "victory" to be synonymous, but I definitely agree that they truly aren't. Especially since the difference between the two was illustrated by the hypothetical example of MK and Link both placing second in the same tournament in two congruent instances. The overall consensus would be that the Link was the more skillful player because he was a lower tier. Despite this, we would have no idea how the Link would do if he went up against the MK; however, if he loses, it would be a perfect example of the difference between "skill" and "victory."

To answer Sleek's question, I could not name a specific tier, but it does appear to be agreed that the lower tiers are often the most hard working tiers. It was once said that "hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard." If we consider talent to be placement on the tier list, then it explains why some tiers do worse than the bottom. Though those tiers are technically more "talented" than the bottom tiers, they do not do as well because they feel comfortable at their level and are therefore more lazy. Of course, this is not always true, but it might serve as an explanation for Sleek's point.

Finally, to answer the initial question, it truly depends on the player not the charater being played. With your examples of Blubba & Deva, San, Rebaz, and RayKalm being able to fight amazingly well for their given main, I would say that they are good (using the trend that more positive is the same a more skillful), if not amazing, players. However, to say that a person maining a lower tier is automatically better than M2K would be false. Nevertheless, it is purely dependent on the player of the game, because it is the player who controls the character, not the character being played.

 

[ssbbFICTION]

Then you haven't seen RayKalm, Zhouten & Ijosh play .

Pro =/= How good they seem. Pro isn't pulling out random wins against decent people or taking actual pros to last stock. Pro is actually winning. And travelling and winning. No ganon is or ever could be pro (in brawl lool kage<3). He's an absolutely horrible character with zero potential for winning anything.

And if you don't believe me, why not try consulting his amazing matchup chart

Oh the joy of "0-100" and "5-95 matchups against the good characters and "15-85" against crap characters like samus. Ganon can't win therefore Ganon can't be pro.

THAT IS THE END OF IT

@ juan XD :D

 

[Sleek Media]

Ganon can't win therefore Ganon can't be pro.
@ juan XD :D

That was an absolutely epic job of missing the point of the discussion. We're talking about the amount of skill involved in playing low tier vs playing high tier. Nice chart, though.

 

[Dekar173]

I'm pretty sure that's an oxymoron

won the thread

 

[Kitamerby]

Picking the right character is also a type of skill. In this case, we assume that whoever wins tournaments most consistently is the most skilled player. If you chose to use a low tier, you assume all the consequences and may not use this as a john to say you were a better player. If you really wanted to show you were better, just pick MK and try and go beat M2K. Once you come back with more johns after miserably failing, you can go back to rethink the purpose of this thread.

Actually, you're probably better off with a low tier against M2K. M2K has horrid problems with characters he has no experience against. It's why you commonly see a lot of videos of X character nearly beating m2k.

 

[Dav!]

Those who play lower tier characters and expect to win have to have a much higher skill than many of the players they face because of their characters weaknesses. Lower tier characters are usually light and easier to kill (jigglypuff, luigi, ect) so even if a higher tier character is inexperienced, one mistake by the lower tier character can send them flying. Those who play lower tier characters need to have much more strategy and variety in their movesets in order to win a game, but they are not better than the higher tier because if they were better then they would have won. It all comes with how good a person knows a game, but those with lower tier characters who expect to win need to know how to play with higher tier characters in order to properly exploit a higher tiers weakness and keep themselves out of harms way at the same time.

 

[-Ran]

I'm going to say no. Low Tier characters typically have three or less options that they can use in any particular match up. This means that there's little thought that goes through the head of the player, since he already knows what moves that he has to use. However, a character such as Meta Knight has countless moves that are good in every situation, but only one correct choice for a great move in each of those situations.

For example: MK has an opponent 45 degrees above him, he's on the ground. MK can do:
1) Shuttle Loop.
2) Up Tilt.
3) Up Smash.
4) Short hop Uair.
5) Short hop Nair.
6) Full hop Dair.
7) Short up Fair.
8) Tornado.
9) Shield.
10) Spot dodge.
11) Roll.
12) Wait -> Down Smash.
13) Wait -> Forward smash.
14) Wait -> F-Tilt
Etc.

Now with Metaknight, pending on which option you pick greatly impacts everything in that match. Though all of those options would net damage, only one would be perfect in that situation which would set up consistent levels of damage strings. While other options push your opponent out of your range and reset the positioning as neutral for both characters. This process is what separates Great MKs from the average ilk. Low Tier characters do not have this level of thought involved during every instance of the game. They typically only have five [or fewer] options at any point.

 

[Zankoku]

I think it takes more skill to win by making the most out of a clearly limited set of viable options than it does to win by picking optimal solutions from a rather large set of viable options. This is because the penalty for deciding incorrectly among that small set (getting punished) is quite a bit heavier than the penalty for picking a suboptimal but still viable option (resetting the situation to neutral).

Now, losing in either situation? Don't bother differentiating. Losers are not important, and you're really reaching if you want to say that you were more skilled than Player B even though you both lost to Player A, because you were using a low tier.

 

[Red Arremer]

@Joe: While every player must know what to do when, and when to do what, at that same time, lower tiers have an harder time finding that "when", and that "what".

I didn't expect that L to be so invisible. <_<

Yes, low tier characters have less options than high tier characters. That is pretty much the pure essence of the tier system.
But just because your character is worse, it doesn't mean you're automatically smarter or better. That's very silly generalizing.

There are very skilled and smart Low Tier players, that's for sure. But they are not automatically better than players of other characters because they play a LT character. I doubt that Deva or Ray Kalm are better than, say, Mew2King or Ally. Although Deva and Ray Kalm probably would fare a lot better if they learned and played a higher tiered character.

 

[ShadowLink84]

Smarter? No. I mean, they are using low tier. Come on, dont deny it, we're all dumb for even thinking anyone outside MK and maybe Snake and Wario are worth while.

better? no.

This topic: made of marshmellows.

@Ankoku: Dodging Flandre's bullets for a minute and being unable to shoot her in the process was so sad...