Top Tiers and the higher High Tiers in this game have either ridiculous killpower, overwhelming neutral game, or reliable kill setups.
No matter how much of a weakness they have, these attributes are just too good and make up for anything.
Pits lacks either of these, so I think they might be high tier at best, like Villager/Falcon tier.
I agree, Pit will never be top-tier, short of a massive buff to his kit. He doesn't have the kind of "extreme" abilities that the undisputed best characters do, and as good as his neutral and kill setups are, it
does require effort to win with them. His options are there, and they're good, but you can't force it in the same way you can with the upper echelon of characters. You have to really be on-point with his kit to get the same results.
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The following optimistic monologue is disconnected from the above statement, and is not in response to the aforementioned quote. Please understand.]
Pit's in a weird place where, at first glance, you'd probably expect him to be mid-tier just by how
overwhelmingly moderate he is. He doesn't get hard countered by anybody, but he doesn't hard counter anybody in return; he has a solid neutral game, but nothing oppressive or invalidating; he has good grounded mobility, but poor airspeed; he has a lot of disjoints and grabs setups, but his damage output and kill power is weaker than other swordies to compensate; his recovery is excellent in terms of its ability to get back to the stage, but it doesn't have a hitbox and is easy to trace. He has a plethora of strengths, but nothing overwhelming, offset by notable weaknesses, but nothing insurmountable. I would say he is among the most finely-balanced characters in the game, in that for every advantage he has, he has a comparative disadvantage to even things out. In theory, he should be a decent character that's capable of eking out a nice corner of results somewhere, but not someone that should be able to sit with the big boys. High mid-tier at best, maybe. There's a good boy, Pit, let me pat you on the head while you run off to get your local results.
Thing is...he's more than just that. When you dig a bit deeper, you start to notice tiny discrepancies; subtle details that nudge his overall potential up just a wee bit more than you'd think at first glance. Having no unwinnable matchups in a game that is defined heavily by matchup spreads is a very good advantage to have: even if he doesn't smother any of the weaker characters in the crib, he need never feel totally outdone at the character select screen. It represents something far greater than is often given credit for, the peace of mind that you
can win this matchup if you try your best. A good Pit should never feel pressured to shift the token to somebody else out of fear that they cannot and will not win. That happens, and if you want the best possible chance of winning, it's understandable why you may feel compelled to choose another character - but a dedicated Pit main, in theory, need never feel that way. Earth's recent victory over Ranai is a good demonstration of that.
Now consider his moveset. In my own opinion, what truly dominating moves Pit has are few and far between - but they exist. U-smash is a powerful kill move that excels at punishing poor landings, f-throw is a solid kill option due to the potency of his grab and neutral game, Pit's f-tilt is a strong sweetspotted disjoint that can kill out of a pivot, and Dark Pit's side-b is a roaming, armoured, reflective hitbox that can kill most opponents at 70%, can be used out of a pivot or dash and is still effective in the air. I would make the case that these are his most apparently deadly moves, and the only ones I would consider dominating to any extent. Impressive, but not quite the overwhelming toolkit of most high and top-tier characters.
Let's dig a bit deeper still, shall we? I'm going to be a bit bold here and say that Pit is not a shining diamond of a fighter, nor is he even a diamond in the proverbial high-tier rough: he is a polished seam of shiny stone with a few hidden gems buried within. Of the abilities he possesses which
do not stand out, I think these may well be his greatest strengths. Consider:
- He has a plethora of strong grab followups that offer him a potent tool in neutral, and a very good grab in itself - low-percent d-throw combos make up a good deal of Pit's gameplan, and he never really drops that ability to threaten his opponent in neutral with the myriad of options he has out of a grab for all possible percentages.
- All of his aerial autocancel out of shorthop, which makes shorthop baiting and punishing so effective and helps offset the otherwise painful landing lag he suffers.
- He has good OOS options in n-air and d-air, both of which can be used to bait or punish depending on the opponent's moves.
- He has one of the overall fastest sets of smash attacks in terms of startup, if not the fastest on average, and all but d-smash have kill potential at reasonable percents.
- He has powerful and potentially fatal options to punish landings in u-smash and u-air, and these are even more effective if the opponent is caught in a frame trap situation such as Earth's iconic u-throw -> arrow -> bait airdodge -> punish technique.
- His multiple jumps and recovery potential mean he can go very deep off-stage to secure early kills or threaten the opponent, very useful in a game where good edgeguarding potential can be a very important attribute to have.
- While he does not have top-tier advantage in neutral or kill confirms, he does have a very respectable neutral game and a playstyle that rewards patience and foresight: he may not win the stock instantly when he wins neutral, but he can consistently win neutral with most characters if he is patient, and perhaps most importantly, he is seldom at a severe disadvantage when he loses neutral himself due to his potential to reset to neutral and impressive recovery;
- Finally, both Pits have their own distinct strengths that help in their own right: Pit's arrows offer him a versatile tool that can pressure opponents both on-stage and off, zone opponents and condition them into reacting or moving in a certain way, do consistent and steady damage due to their versatile trajectory, cover his own recovery options to offset edgeguarding opponents, intercept easily traceable yet potentially deadly recoveries and catch opponents in frame trap situations, and Dark Pit has the aforementioned side-b kill option.
Very good options in themselves, and indeed, they are just that: options. Pit is never really bottlenecked into one kind of gameplan, he has a good variety of potent options in any situation, and this helps him in each of the three main game states. While he is never truly dominant or oppressive in any of these states, he is nevertheless consistent in what he can do, and short of universally-dominant top-tier options that beat everybody by definition, I can think of few situations in which he ever feels truly and incontestably helpless.
The beauty of Pit, I think, is that none of these things really stand out to the casual observer. Most people don't see Pit in bracket and think, "Oh, this is going to be good, he's definitely going to win this!" (unless, of course, the player in question is an exceptionally good Pit; but I'll get to that.) You have to dig a bit deeper into the shiny stone seam to find the buried gems within. And while these gems may not be the priceless trinkets of the top-tiers, they're impressive in their own way, and I think it's fair to say that Pit's strengths just about outdo his weaknesses and help edge him into a state where he is more universally advantageous than disadvantageous. Nothing about him is absolutely, overwhelmingly, objectively better than anybody else - yet most things about him are
good, maybe even
very good. He isn't just a boring, middle-of-the-road character with no real strengths or weaknesses: he's a character with no fatal weaknesses and quite a few impressive strengths. He's a character that is, on average, honestly pretty damn good at what he does.
Is he top-tier? No. That's a redundant question, since I've made that abundantly clear throughout this entire monologue. It's worth reaffirming, though, just to really drive the point home: Pit is not a top-tier character. He will never quite be a top-tier, or even an upper high-tier for this reason, but I think it's fair to say he is at least on the lower end of the high-tier spectrum, possibly even mid high-tier. I do think he is solidly high-tier, though, and definitely a tournament-viable character. I am very optimistic about where the Pit metagame will go from here, and I honestly think he has nowhere to go but up: with people really taking notice of what he can do and, gods willing, more players willing to pick him up and try him out, I think the future is very bright for the angels. I'm happy to be involved in it, and I'm very excited about where we go next.
EDIT: Formatting.
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