Are tiers less important than in melee?

[Station]

Many of the top tier character in melee are there because they're the best at exploiting that games advanced techniques, Donkey Kong players don't have a chance in hell against Fox players in melee, is brawl equally as unbalanced where only the top 8 characters or so can be considered viable in competitive play.

 

[Volt_Storm_7]

Brawl is uniquely its own game. Yes, there are characters that exceed because many use and do well with, but Brawl is not like Melee, where a character who is low in tier cannot win, although that a narrow statement. Brawl is unbalanced, but much of the characters can beat high tier characters if played correctly.

In the tier list, some consider, some don't. Just depends on what you subscribe to.

I personally don't because I believe any character can exceed if you know the MU right.

 

[Strong Badam]

What? I **** Fox players.

Brawl's less balanced so yeah tiers do matter. You guys are banning one of your characters, even.

 

[-LzR-]

Inb4hugemeleevsbrawl

Brawl only had a single obstacle which was MK but he is gone so Brawl is now much more balanced than Melee.

 

[Dre89]

Brawl is uniquely its own game. Yes, there are characters that exceed because many use and do well with, but Brawl is not like Melee, where a character who is low in tier cannot win, although that a narrow statement. Brawl is unbalanced, but much of the characters can beat high tier characters if played correctly.

In the tier list, some consider, some don't. Just depends on what you subscribe to.

I personally don't because I believe any character can exceed if you know the MU right.

I'd love to see you use DK and beat a D3 with the infinite legal. Or use Ganondorf and beat an ICs who knows how to desynch blizzard walls.

Some matchups are unwinnable at high levels of play. The tier list refers to high levels of play

 

[♡ⓛⓞⓥⓔ♡]

Many of the top tier character in melee are there because they're the best at exploiting that games advanced techniques, Donkey Kong players don't have a chance in hell against Fox players in melee, is brawl equally as unbalanced where only the top 8 characters or so can be considered viable in competitive play.

AFAIK the matchup is like even on FD, see here why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCdgk1hHAVM

The good thing in melee is that top tier fastfallers can be comboed to death by almost any character so it evens things out a bit.

 

[-LzR-]

Yes, just like almost everyone can infinite Diddy Kong but he is still currently the best character in the game.

 

[Flayl]

Short answer to original post: No.

 

[Juushichi]

People are willing to argue that Fox to about Luigi (I think A-C tier?).

Originally Posted by: TheCrimsonBlur
The 8 top tiers - everyone ICs and up
The 6 super viables (characters you can make your main without any real need of a secondary) - everyone Luigi and up
The 7 "specialists" (characters who have major flaws overall but are still great at certain matchups; ex: Y.L v. Puff, Link v. Marth/Samus, Zelda v. ICs, Roy v. Falcon, etc) - Yoshi and up
The 5 at the bottom (characters that struggle, and struggle hard, at just about every matchup) - Kirby, Pichu, Bowser, Ness, and G&W

Nearly every national has one player or more of each of the top 14 make bracket. Those are the core matchups that every tournament player can expect the face often. The next 7 after that are used selectively but are still seen in bracket, usually as a surprise secondary, so they are still relevant to know but much less so. You can just **** around and press buttons to beat the bottom 5.
Quoting an old post of mine.

A lot of current theory places Doc in the top tiers and Yoshi among the super viables though so take that as you will.

---

So that's like 21/26 that can be played towards a viable level. There are some rarely winnables thrown in there with some unwinnables in the bottom level, but at the same time... you have outliers like Triple R (Kirby main in Melee/Brawl) are extremely good with bad characters. Brawl "viable" tiers go about down to current low tiers as well, though some mids are more viable currently than others.

Both games kind of have a good balance.

 

[Doc King]

This is actually hard to tell. I wish Melee had a matchup chart so it will be a lot easier to compare the 2 games. For this, we are gonna need to compare tourney results (Nationals and other important tourneys are the best), matchup imformation, and tier list information. I'm just gonna start with some sides towards the 2 games (Please forgive and mention if these are wrong). We should make this a good debate and I think it would be an interesting topic to debate about.

In Melee's Favor of being less Tier important:

1. Melee never needed to ban a character to get diversity (Unlike Brawl where we needed to ban mk).

2. A Young Link secondary (Armada) has been recently winning against nationals against a Puff player (Hungry Box).

3. A Peach (Who is not in S Tier) won Genesis 2 (National) against a Fox (Who's the best character in the game).

In Brawl's favor of being less Tier important:

1. A Ganon (Worst character) won a MK banned tournament (The fact that it's mk banned will probably weaken the favor).

 

[Steam]

Brawl is a lot more balanced with MK banned. with MK legal melee has better balance in the top tiers. Low tiers in brawl stand a much better chance usually.

 

[Marc]

I think it's more or less the same and it seems like in both games roughly 25% of the cast is tournament viable in the sense that they actually stand a chance of winning something big and consistently so. Major Melee tournaments are exclusively won by characters in the top 6 of the tier list, though you see the occasional lower tier performance as a co-main. Brawl has a significantly bigger cast and you see more diversity in characters that break top 8, but when it comes to actually winning tournaments it's still mostly top tiers and the occasional high tier. This is the case regardless of MK, it's not like low tiers win tournaments when he's banned or in regions where he's not that dominant. In Europe Marth wins most tournaments, in Japan it's ICs, which so happen to be the other two top 3 characters when you consider the matchup chart.

Smash games in general seem fairly balanced and it seems like in all three games you can win with worse characters if you're just that much better than your opponent (or if he doesn't know the matchup ). Brawl does have the problem of having some extremely lopsided matchup that come down to easy infinites though. I would say that at the top tier side of things there are very clear best choices in all three games (Pikachu in 64, Fox/Puff in Melee and MK in Brawl), but in practice you don't see just 1/2 characters getting top placings.

 

[Doc King]

Brawl is a lot more balanced with MK banned. with MK legal melee has better balance in the top tiers. Low tiers in brawl stand a much better chance usually.

Well Melee, they have Armada's Young Link (E Tier) beating the third best character in the game called Puff (S Tier) at 2 National Tournaments. Melee even had a Mewtwo (7th Worst Character) at a Winners Finals against a Peach (6th Best Character), even though Mewtwo lost, it was a pretty close game. Melee also has AXE with his Pikachu (D Tier) and he's been doing very well against ppl (Even the best character in the game). Also, Melee had scorpion master (Mango ) who beat like the S and A tier characters with a D Tier character.

Melee even had major changes to it's tier list like Puff who was originally a mid tier going to high tier and then going to being the third best character in the game. Also, Marth being like one of the best to like not even being in the best tier anymore (Went down from 2nd best to 5th best).

At this point, it looks like Melee is a much more balanced and less tier related game. (Unless if you Brawl guys wanna point something out to continue the debate)

In Melee's Favor of being less Tier important:

1. Melee never needed to ban a character to get diversity (Unlike Brawl where we needed to ban mk).

2. A Young Link secondary (Armada) has been recently winning against nationals against a Puff player (Hungry Box).

3. A Peach (Who is not in S Tier) won Genesis 2 (National) against a Fox (Who's the best character in the game).

4. A Mewtwo (7th Worst Character) in winners finals.

5. A Mario that placed high in tournaments.

6. Big Tier list changes like Puff going from mid tier to high tier to becoming the 3rd best in Melee, Marth dropping from 2nd best and best tier to 5th and 2nd best tier, Best character changing from Sheik to Fox.

7. Axe (D Tier character) doing pretty well.

In Brawl's favor of being less Tier important:

1. A Ganon (Worst character) won a MK banned tournament (The fact that it's mk banned will probably weaken the favor).

2. Mekos (Best low tier character) doing pretty well.

 

[-LzR-]

The Young Link thing isn't really relevant when talking about balance, YL just happens to do well against that one character in toptier. Just because another character is better doesn't mean they won't be able to beat them.

 

[John12346]

Iunno, I've seen enough Melee results threads, and it is really rare to see any character below the Top 8 showing up in the money making positions, although not all Melee results threads list out character usage, so perhaps I'm mistaken.

You do see "bad" characters placing in the money here and there in Brawl, though. A lot more than Melee, I think.

 

[Marc]

I wonder how well that holds up when you account for cast size.

 

[SaveMeJebus]

Brawl with MK legal is pretty balanced and gets pretty consistent results. Brawl with MK banned becomes a pretty unbalanced game and very inconsistent. There are more double blind character picks with MK banned (at least from the tournaments I've seen) and choosing the wrong character first round can cost you the entire set

 

[Doc King]

The Young Link thing isn't really relevant when talking about balance, YL just happens to do well against that one character in toptier. Just because another character is better doesn't mean they won't be able to beat them.

Thats like saying the Ganon thing doesn't matter because it's just one tourney. I dk if it was even a national or not. The young link thing was in 2 National tournaments. And YL doing well in the matchup is actually a favor for Melee being more balancing.

I've also heard that Young Link is a counter for Peach, is that true?

 

[John12346]

True, we've got... what, 37 characters in Brawl(not counting Z-Sheik), and 25 in Melee.

We can say 8/25 = 32% of the cast in Melee are viable, how about Brawl?

32% = 11.84/37, so you figure we need at least 12 viable characters in Brawl to beat that, I guess? What would we call "viable," in Brawl exactly?

 

[-LzR-]

Thats like saying the Ganon thing doesn't matter because it's just one tourney. I dk if it was even a national or not. The young link thing was in 2 National tournaments. And YL doing well in the matchup is actually a favor for Melee being more balancing.

I've also heard that Young Link is a counter for Peach, is that true?

Who said that Ganon thing even matters the slightest? Because it doesn't.
Also, I could be on the grandfinals on some big tourney against Wario and pick my Peach for the set. She still wouldn't have "won a national" or something. I just used her against a character she is good against. End.

 

[Doc King]

Brawl with MK legal is pretty balanced and gets pretty consistent results. Brawl with MK banned becomes a pretty unbalanced game and very inconsistent. There are more double blind character picks with MK banned (at least from the tournaments I've seen) and choosing the wrong character first round can cost you the entire set

Dumbest post I've ever seen. No lie!

True, we've got... what, 37 characters in Brawl(not counting Z-Sheik), and 25 in Melee.

We can say 8/25 = 32% of the cast in Melee are viable, how about Brawl?

32% = 11.84/37, so you figure we need at least 12 viable characters in Brawl to beat that, I guess? What would we call "viable," in Brawl exactly?

One thing I wanna mention is that you should include in your characters because It wouldn't be fair that Brawl can arrange stuff to make their game more balanced and Melee can't. Like Melee and Brawl can just get rid of all of their characters but one character and be 100% balanced.

So Brawl has 1 out of 37 which is about 3%, so Melee definitely wins.

Who said that Ganon thing even matters the slightest? Because it doesn't.
Also, I could be on the grandfinals on some big tourney against Wario and pick my Peach for the set. She still wouldn't have "won a national" or something. I just used her against a character she is good against. End.

I have a question, was the Ganon thing a national or not?

Who can you go against mk? No one beats him.

 

[SaveMeJebus]

Dumbest post I've ever seen. No lie!

I highly doubt that considering the fact that you are always the first person to see your own posts. I also like how you left no explanation as to why you don't agree with my post.

 

[Conviction]

Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

 

[-LzR-]

Sorry Jebus, Doc King is awesome because I agree with him for once.

 

[SaveMeJebus]

I don't know what you are talking about? You could never have a 100% balanced game unless you ban every character except the lowest tier (or highest tier)

 

[Conviction]

Or only two characters that are clones of each other.

 

[SaveMeJebus]

Even then, they would have to be perfect clones since even Fox and Falco don't go completely even against each other.

 

[John12346]

Jebus, I don't bash on most posts, but that one was kinda... really bad, I'm sorry.

You just said that Brawl w/o MK sucks because the results are less consistent and that there are more double blind picks on the first round of any set.

I read that as "results are more varied w/o MK" and "now there's some strategy before the game starts on round 1 because you can't cop out to MK."

>___>;

One thing I wanna mention is that you should include in your characters because It wouldn't be fair that Brawl can arrange stuff to make their game more balanced and Melee can't. Like Melee and Brawl can just get rid of all of their characters but one character and be 100% balanced.

So Brawl has 1 out of 37 which is about 3%, so Melee definitely wins.

I can respect that.

What would you say about Brawl w/o MK's balance compared to Melee, in that case? Better?

 

[Marc]

I've also heard that Young Link is a counter for Peach, is that true?

I think that's always been considered kind of evenish, I know ChuDat picked YL vs Peach in the past (that's years ago though). I dunno, I wouldn't consider it a counter personally.

True, we've got... what, 37 characters in Brawl(not counting Z-Sheik), and 25 in Melee.

We can say 8/25 = 32% of the cast in Melee are viable, how about Brawl?

32% = 11.84/37, so you figure we need at least 12 viable characters in Brawl to beat that, I guess? What would we call "viable," in Brawl exactly?

Melee has 26 characters, I'd say Fox, Jigglypuff, Falco, Sheik, Marth and Peach all have reasonable shots at winning tournaments (though in reality Marth isn't doing that well at the moment and Peach is really only Armada). You might want to consider characters like Captain Falcon and ICs also, but it gets kind of gray area with characters that can place, but won't win.

Brawl has 37 characters without Sheilda. If you look worldwide I'd say the 9 characters in S-B stand a chance of winning tournaments, though some characters have the same problem of mostly riding on one main (Pikachu for example). You could maybe stretch this to include some C tier characters, but that's also similar to Melee in that those characters can place, but aren't going to win APEX.

Considering this my estimate of ~25% seems to hold up fairly well. All characters with a significant pool of players will have outlier placings at some point and Brawl having more characters leads to seemingly more diversity. *shrug* I'm more concerned about top characters being able to operate on their own, without character choice being more important than player skill by virtue of RPS mechanics.

 

[Doc King]

I highly doubt that considering the fact that you are always the first person to see your own posts. I also like how you left no explanation as to why you don't agree with my post.

My post are so much better than your posts.

Without mk, there can be some diversity (Similar to Melee) like where loses to however loses to and . losses to , , and . losses to . losses to and so on.

With mk, no one beats him so theirs no point in playing as anyone else. It's and only. Tourneys prove that like pretty much every Grand Finals in nationals were dittos.

I don't know what you are talking about? You could never have a 100% balanced game unless you ban every character except the lowest tier (or highest tier)

Yes, that's what I mentioned with including mk in so it's fair to both games.

Or only two characters that are clones of each other.

So you're saying goes even with ?

If one clone is better than another than that clone will win.

 

[John12346]

Melee has 26 characters, I'd say Fox, Jigglypuff, Falco, Sheik, Marth and Peach all have reasonable shots at winning tournaments (though in reality Marth isn't doing that well at the moment and Peach is really only Armada). You might want to consider characters like Captain Falcon and ICs also, but it gets kind of gray area with characters that can place, but won't win.

Brawl has 37 characters without Sheilda. If you look worldwide I'd say the 9 characters in S-B stand a chance of winning tournaments, though some characters have the same problem of mostly riding on one main (Pikachu for example). You could maybe stretch this to include some C tier characters, but that's also similar to Melee in that those characters can place, but aren't going to win APEX.

Considering this my estimate of ~25% seems to hold up fairly well. All characters with a significant pool of players will have outlier placings at some point and Brawl having more characters leads to seemingly more diversity. *shrug* I'm more concerned about top characters being able to operate on their own, without character choice being more important than player skill by virtue of RPS mechanics.

That all makes some good sense, actually.

I think what's causing this phenomenon is that we're seeing bad characters in Brawl place better in relative comparison to how bad characters to Melee are placing. I can say for sure that I tend to see mid/low tiers littered around the higher placings, while I almost never see that happen for Melee.

Like, even if said bad characters denoted to a certain tier area in Brawl aren't placing well, per se, they seem to be placing, overall, a lot better than their proportional equivalent in the Melee tier list.

 

[SaveMeJebus]

Jebus, I don't bash on most posts, but that one was kinda... really bad, I'm sorry.

You just said that Brawl w/o MK sucks because the results are less consistent and that there are more double blind picks on the first round of any set.

I read that as "results are more varied w/o MK" and "now there's some strategy before the game starts on round 1 because you can't cop out to MK."

>___>;

Sure you get more character variety (banning ant top tier in any game would do this), but you end up losing a lot of player consistency. What we are basically doing is replacing pocket MKs with pocket DDDs, ICs and Falcos.

 

[MEOW1337KITTEH]

Well also, melee has been out for twice as long as brawl has (correct me if I'm wrong, I think it's 10 and 5 iirc) so the metagame has been able to advance much more. MK is obviously a problem in brawl, but the metagame changed and has decided to remove him. Who knows what would have happened if MK stayed legal, in 5 years, I'm sure someone would have found a way to beat him and possibly take him from his throne, he would stay #1 I'm sure, but perhaps not by as much. In both games the only thing that matters is skill (and avoiding hard counters). And like I've always said, if a debate is even, then maybe both sides are correct. And it's not to say Brawl's tier list hasn't changed, look from #1 to #6, and then from Melee's #1 to #11, they are both very different from each other. Jiggz went from 17/18 to 4 in Melee. In Brawl, Diddy went from 11 to 2. And D3 went from 3 to 11. The changes have been pretty strong in both. If anything I would say they are both very close in balance to each other.

 

[John12346]

Sure you get more character variety (banning ant top tier in any game would do this), but you end up losing a lot of player consistency. What we are basically doing is replacing pocket MKs with pocket DDDs, ICs and Falcos.

But... Dedede, ICs, and Falco all can be countered.

Part of the strategy of Game 1 is figuring out what character your opponent is going to use(perhaps, determining an opponent's playstyle, as well), and then coming up with the best possible contingency plan for it. Making a matchup you're comfortable with in Game 1 takes some good strategy, and there's nothing competitively wrong with having that factor in our game.

 

[SaveMeJebus]

But... Dedede, ICs, and Falco all can be countered.

Part of the strategy of Game 1 is to figure out what character your opponent is going to use(perhaps, determining an opponent's playstyle, as well), and then come up with the best possible contingency plan for it. Coming up with a matchup you're comfortable takes some good strategy, and there's nothing competitively wrong about that.

People usually use pocket characters to counter other characters on CP stages. If you beat a player game one, you can always just hard counter them game three if it ends up going to game three.

 

[Ripple]

People usually use pocket characters to counter other characters on CP stages. If you beat a player game one, you can always just hard counter them game three if it ends up going to game three.

people who think they can just play DDD without any practice and expect to beat a veteran DK, or play pika to beat falco, DK to beat ness/lucas, is extremely mistaken.

 

[Doc King]

Jebus, I don't bash on most posts, but that one was kinda... really bad, I'm sorry.

You just said that Brawl w/o MK sucks because the results are less consistent and that there are more double blind picks on the first round of any set.

I read that as "results are more varied w/o MK" and "now there's some strategy before the game starts on round 1 because you can't cop out to MK."

>___>;


I can respect that.

What would you say about Brawl w/o MK's balance compared to Melee, in that case? Better?

Brawl without is definitely better than with him. I would probably say it would be about the same balance as melee. It looks like the top and high tiers are the most viable in Brawl.

Sure you get more character variety (banning ant top tier in any game would do this), but you end up losing a lot of player consistency. What we are basically doing is replacing pocket MKs with pocket DDDs, ICs and Falcos.

Wow, Jebus, you just completely changed the subject. We are not talking about players so stop talking about them. We are most certainly not changing pocket mk's with pocket D3's, Climbers, and Falco's. Climbers lose to Peach, Falco losses to Pika and climbers, and D3 losses to Falco, Oli, and climbers. They all have bad matchups unlike mk and they will have some difficult times with certain matchups unlike mk who doesn't have to worry about ****.

 

[John12346]

If you lost Game 1, then you deserve to be in a disadvantageous position for the set, that's simple logic. In Brawl, it translates into you having to deal with a tough match(Game 3, assuming you win Game 2), to bring it back.

And this "problem" existed while MK was legal anyway. Losing Game 1 to an MK player was essentially an auto-lose for the whole set because the MK player has Brinstar/RC/Delfino/Frigate/Smashville to **** your **** on Game 3.

 

[Juushichi]

YL is generally considered to be good vs any floaty and kind of awful against fast-fallers.

People are starting to think that Yoshi is a good character. Apparently, he's one of the most technically difficult characters in the game. Strong_Bad, am I right in saying that?

 

[SaveMeJebus]

people who think they can just play DDD without any practice and expect to beat a veteran DK, or play pika to beat falco, DK to beat ness/lucas, is extremely mistaken.

Top level players can easily do this. Do you really think Ally has a bunch of experience in the Wario/Diddy MU ? That isn't even a bad match up so I have no doubt in my mind that it will be a hell of a lot easier to do this with an actual counter character.

If you lost Game 1, then you deserve to be in a disadvantageous position for the set, that's simple logic. In Brawl, it translates into you having to deal with a tough match(Game 3, assuming you win Game 2), to bring it back.

And this "problem" existed while MK was legal anyway. Losing Game 1 to an MK player was essentially an auto-lose for the whole set because the MK player has Brinstar/RC/Delfino/Frigate/Smashville to **** your **** on Game 3.

Yeah, but that's kind of stupid considering that the first game was basically left to chance (double blind character pick)