Official Character Competitive Impressions - Tourneys, Tiers, Theories, Tactics

[TTTTTsd]

Edgeguarding with grenades?!

Nah, dude. Edgeguarding with the weak hit of Vanish! That was dope.

Smooth Criminal

All things considered Cloud did pretty well in Singles for a 1-2 month old character though, I must say! Komorikiri used him a LOT and Rain pulled him out a good deal too.

Not bad for a first supermajor considering he outpaced every other DLC character including Ryu (who I was hoping would make Top 8 this time, not gonna lie). Can't wait to see if the character develops further or not, it's quite exciting.

And yeah, Mr. R's edgeguarding was immaculate. Cloud is def not the answer to Sheik (who legitimately thought that though?)

 

[Charoite]

My thoughts in the Marss vs Hyuga is that unlike nario Marss really abuse Up, not only in Oos options, but in neutral, like the 3/4 of hyuga stocks was because of that move, marss was more punished by failed grabs than failed Ups, i think that is the key difference in the sets vs both ZSS. Nairo panicked and eat a lot of bombs and smashes. i think the MU is in ZSS but not something unwinnable, well congrats Hyuga for putting work.

 

[19_]

also no in top 8 if anyone noticed.

I feel like I just keep getting reminded that Leo not being at G3 probably changed the outcome of this tournament.

anyways night everyone

 

[Lavani]

Mr. R's use of Bouncing Fish to land in front of his opponent and go into another option rather than aiming to directly attack or go for the ledge was rather interesting to me. Not a way I've seen it utilized before, and going by both commentator reactions and how well it was working for him I'm guessing that wasn't just me. I thought the landing lag would make it undesirable but it still seemed to be a fairly effective mixup.

I noticed Komorikiri go for dtilt to try to catch the snap a few times even when Mr. R was using Vanish from above the ledge. Still not commonly known that snapping high is invincible, I guess?

 

[Nobie]

I thought it sad that Mewtwo didn't get any sort of rep in Top 32...

Then I noticed that outside of Abadango (who didn't use Mewtwo at all), pretty much none of the notable Mewtwo players even went to Genesis 3.

I don't know how it is for other characters, but might that not explain the lack of presence of at least a few others?

Also, real question: Has everyone else been playing Villager wrong?

 

[Fatmanonice]

I'd argue that it's still too early for to be making waves because their major buffs are only a month old. Their buffs practically turned them into new characters and almost no one except the people who were already playing as them have picked them up so people need time to adjust to the changes.

 

[ARISTOS]

With top 8 rounded out, some cursory thoughts. A bit drunk rn, so these will be filled out later tomorrow.

lacks a full gameplan; like others have said, he's a bag of tools that look good on paper but end up not being coherent once put together. While no top player is playing him, he doesn't seem to have what it takes to make it once people are wise to his tricks. This character is going to fall with time.

has been almost entirely figured out; Fatality got ****ed being sent to losers in R1 but I feel this character is doomed to remain like his Melee Counterpart; always a good character, but terrible matchups against top tiers will render him a niche pick. Outside of , I don't think he beats any top tier.

Abadango is trying to skate by on learning 's neutral. Abadango's punish + Ito's neutral is one hell of a character

looks incredibly dangerous for a month old character. However, if his Sheik MU looks that bad he's gonna have serious trouble in the meta.

is good when things get going for her (ie she gets an opening, can punish misspacings). Consistently winning with her seems hard and / seem like consistent roadblocks. are also hard, so avoiding all of these are necessary to surviving. Do feel like she can deal with the rest, though.

has failed to show up again. I think this character is good enough to go far, and I'm not too sure why more don't play this character. Thoughts?

got ****ed up by an extremely hard bracket. Don't take it to heart, with an easier time Earth would have definitely pushed further.

is overrated in the West. ESAM has been underpeforming for quite some time and the character's frailness bites him back a lot when getting kills are as complicated as it is.

 

[Yonder]

Speaking of blatantly absent characters, there's no either but we all know support for him pretty much flattened like a tent in a wind storm after his last set of nerfs. Still, in top 32 is nice.

There was ConCon in the top 32 for Luigi. Only one rep, but it's better than a huge portion of characters, sadly [Big D beating M2K though not top 32]...I could throw down many icons. So yeah, goes to show that Luigi is still good, not great. Still a low/bottom high tier.

Looking at the top 8 though, kind of disappointed for character spread. All of those characters are definitely upper high/top tiers no question, so really we just gotta hope someone whips out a surprise pocket like [Nairo] to spice things up.

I was really rooting for Hyuga and Regi, the most hype inducing players I found in terms of upsets, moreso Regi. And Big D, although I hear that one wasn't streamed.

Surprised at no at all in the top 8, he was my personal prediction for the new character in the top 8 character.

 

[Gunla]

has failed to show up again. I think this character is good enough to go far, and I'm not too sure why more don't play this character. Thoughts?

iStudying, aMSa, Venia, Shiki, NinjaLink, and a handful of other higher level Greninjas didn't show up to G3.

The notables who did show up, like Techei and Knife, mostly drowned in pools. There were a few other Greninjas that appeared, but nothing of real significance.

 

[SubconsciousRose]

Mr. R's use of Bouncing Fish to land in front of his opponent and go into another option rather than aiming to directly attack or go for the ledge was rather interesting to me. Not a way I've seen it utilized before, and going by both commentator reactions and how well it was working for him I'm guessing that wasn't just me. I thought the landing lag would make it undesirable but it still seemed to be a fairly effective mixup.

I noticed Komorikiri go for dtilt to try to catch the snap a few times even when Mr. R was using Vanish from above the ledge. Still not commonly known that snapping high is invincible, I guess?

Watching the set live got me very excited as this was the first time I've ever seen a Sheik implement this technique effectively in tourney and at such a clutch moment nonetheless!

It's something that's been known about for such a long time but it really helped Mr. R out of a very tight spot today. Can't ever recall an instance of this being used so effectively as it was today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZYyPd-jloM

 

[webbedspace]

Any thoughts on both of the US's top Ness mains making it to top 12? Apart from "a lucky bracket featuring a noted absence of That Woman"?

 

[Fatmanonice]

Ness is still great and people who think he's going to have a huge fall from grace are just wishful thinking out loud. The character has too good of tool kit to ever fall out of high tier. I do, however, wonder if Lucas will eventually outclass him but I think Ness will stay as a staple of the competitive scene until Smash 5 unless he has his legs cut off by nerfs in the future.

 

[Kofu]

Ness is still great and people who think he's going to have a huge fall from grace are just wishful thinking out loud. The character has too good of tool kit to ever fall out of high tier. I do, however, wonder if Lucas will eventually outclass him but I think Ness will stay as a staple of the competitive scene until Smash 5 unless he has his legs cut off by nerfs in the future.

Even if his legs were cut off he's still have his back throw so he'd still be good.

Both Cloud and Ness are rather braindead characters to use effectively. Their tools are straightforward, for the most part, and they both have a very powerful trump card that can turn the tides at any given moment (BThrow for Ness and Limit Break/Finishing Touch for Cloud). They also botb happen to share a weakness in recovery. I mean, there's always room for optimization, something that will help the great players of these characters stand out from the good, but if you want a simple character to pick up either one is a good choice.

 

[Fatmanonice]

I'd say his PKT2 is a better comparison to Finishing Touch because it can kill even earlier if it hits point blank. Still, bthrow, uair, bair, and even nair are good kill options, PKT is still one of the best and safest ways to harass people off stage, PK fire is still super annoying, his fair is pretty much second only to Sheik's, dthrow is still one of the best set up throws in the game, and fsmash and PKT2 can get some very early kills. Ness is very solid and the character would have to be gutted to lose his viability.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Cloud is def not the answer to Sheik (who legitimately thought that though?)

Komorikiri must've thought it. He does 'opt' to go Cloud over Sonic against Sheik on a regular basis after all. It's very strange though considering Sonic actually has a slightly favorable record against Sheik in tournament. But it seems like Komorikiri personally struggles with the matchup having lost to Aki among other japanese Sheik players.

also no in top 8 if anyone noticed.

At a tournament like this top 8 is an extremely high standard for nearly any character. Tyrant placed what? 13th? Abadango and Ito both got 33rd? That's 3 MK players in top 50 and one in top 20. That's actually a very respectable result, especially if you factor in Leo's absence - seeing how well Hyuga is performing one can only guess what he could've been able to pull off. Definitely a good showing by MK overall though, not many characters can claim to have legit outdone him at G3.

 

[warionumbah2]

Ito got 17th lost to Void and Nairo.

Zinoto used MK against Trela and took a game then went back to Diddy Kong.

 

[Dr.Smex]

it really is interesting how many different playstyles there are for the same character and how different playstyles can cause these upsets, for example; Hyuga's tl beat both nick riddle's and Nairo's aggressive methodical zss's pretty convincingly but couldn't adapt to marss zss who's willing to play back and wait for punishes with a little risky up b reads in neutral, and those oos up bs really paid of for him vs hyuga and the japanese players. I like Marss zss's playstyle really amazing to watch and it show's how these top players have weaknesses against certain playstyles. I'm really sad no ryus in top 8 but this is turning out to be my favorite sm4sh tournament so far.

 

[Emblem Lord]

im just pissed Marss and Nairo played in losers so early. **** that ****.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Yeah man, them two playing for 7th place out of 39024203984208 entrants is waaaay to early.

 

[Emblem Lord]

I get what you are saying. But I really felt like either of them could have taken it. I would have preferred if they had fought in winners finals if I had my way.

As an aside I'm very disappointed in 9B. Trelas personal demon is 6WX. I cant tell if DJ Jack is good or just lucky.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I get what you are saying. But I really felt like either of them could have taken it.

The whole tournament? Not against Zero's Diddy.

 

[Emblem Lord]

I believe in the power of ZSS.

 

[Y2Kay]

im just pissed Marss and Nairo played in losers so early. **** that ****.

Yeah, Nairo vs Earth would be more cool

I'm really sad he couldn't make it to top 8, Pit needed it so bad....

I know his current placing is good but idk if it's enough to turn some heads

 

[Das Koopa]

In general, I'm thinking that we need to change the metric a bit; We've used Top 8 as the metric of National-viable for ages because of Melee, but Melee has 13-14 viable characters in a 26 character roster and Smash 4 has probably somewhere around half of its own cast viable out of a soon-to-be 58 character roster.

The main issue is that Sm4sh Top 8s are so varied that the information supplied is almost useless in certain cases because you have a large number of Top 8s with lone Peach/Yoshi/whatever tops whereas a Top 16 count could better help determine a meta placing/community-based tier list.

Basically, I feel like we should start treating Top 8s how Melee players treat Top 4s and treat Top 16s how they treat Top 8s as a better way to gather data on characters. I'll probably try this post-Genesis, but finding bracket info on Top 16s is harder in some cases.

 

[Tizio Random]

If we look at Top 16 we see that there are 13 unique characters:

x3
x2
x1

Which is more than the WHOLE Melee bracket with 12 characters. That's really good.

 

[Mili]

If we look at Top 16 we see that there are 13 unique characters:

x3
x2
x1

Which is more than the WHOLE Melee bracket with 12 characters. That's really good.

To be fair, Smash 4 has over 50 characters and Melee has 26. It is natural for Smash 4 to have more characters that are viable.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

G3 has 13 different individual characters in top 16. Since some characters have two or more world-class representants I think top 32 is a reasonable benchmark for practical analytical purposes. 33rd-48th can provide additional insight in some cases too.


Sheik: I don't think Zero has used her yet. If he ends up going all Diddy then Void will be the best placing Sheik at 7th or better. Mr-r adds in a 9th place, Cacogen adds another top 20 - I'm not counting Tyrant's Sheik because he didn't win important matches with her. Rain and Trevonte contribute some Sheik usage within top 32. That's actually a good bit less then one would've expected though things can change if Zero or Larry feel the need to bust out their Sheiks. She'll stay #1 either way.

ZSS: two players in top 8 despite the absence of a top 3 ZSS player. Diddy has turned out to be a troublesome matchup but the results definitely confirm her as the #2 character right.

Diddy Kong: Might actually snatch a solo victory which would be huge. Nietono and Zinoto add two top 32 spots and Angel Cortez another one at 48th. With his strong performances against ZSS [and pretty even record against Sheik] it looks increasingly likely that Diddy is in fact a top 5 character. Even top 3 is not entirely out of the question.

Fox: One top 8, one top 20 and a top 33 secondary. Nothing surprising but it confirms Fox as a top tier threat.

MK: Two top 20 placings, a 33rd place as a secondary and a 48th place. Respectable performance despite the best MK player not being present. It's very likely that we're looking at a top 8 character here.

Sonic: Three top 20 placings + a 48th by Seagull Joe I think. Komorikiri lost his winner set with Cloud and the loser set to a somewhat well established soft-counter to Sonic. Despite people having had higher expectations of Komorikiri Sonic's overall G3 performance is still that of a top 5 character imo.

Ness: Two players placing in single digits with solo Ness is a strong counter-argument to the [not so] recent downward trend on people's tier lists. I think Fow hasn't even lost a single game on his way to winner's quarter finals!


Other characters are mostly carried by individual players and their G3 performance is harder to evaluate: Villager, Rosalina, Toon Link, Mario and to a lesser extent Peach and Pikachu.

 

[Tizio Random]

To be fair, Smash 4 has over 50 characters and Melee has 26. It is natural for Smash 4 to have more characters that are viable.

Yeah, the point of the post was to stress how many characters are unique at top level that can make good results. I wasn't trying to ridicule Melee which is an amazing competitive game.

 

[HFlash]

To add to the top 16, if we look at the top 32, we can also add: . Smash 4 may not only have more viable characters, but with additional patches, a higher proportion of the staff being viable when compared to melee.

And

Sheik: I don't think Zero has used her yet.

He used Shiek vs Earth's pit and won 3-1 pretty convincingly.

Edit: My bad, Earth made it to top 16. Removed from list I made.

 

[FlynnCL]

However, I think it is also good to stress the value of Top 8, especially considering it paints a different picture compared to the Top 32. Those who reach Top 8 are there because played the most games, so unless you get extremely lucky in bracket you're guaranteed to fight many top tiers which could be bad match-ups. That is probably why most of the more unique character choices in Top 32 were not able to make it.

Top 8 is full of fighters we already know can reach Top 8 and there really isn't any outlier. It's nice to focus on Top 32 and its viable choices but I do think Top 8 really is its own beast.

I'm also really sad Hyuga couldn't make it. His Toon Link was very interesting.

 

[Y2Kay]

G3 has 13 different individual characters in top 16. Since some characters have two or more world-class representants I think top 32 is a reasonable benchmark for practical analytical purposes. 33rd-48th can provide additional insight in some cases too.


Sheik: I don't think Zero has used her yet. If he ends up going all Diddy then Void will be the best placing Sheik at 7th or better. Mr-r adds in a 9th place, Cacogen adds another top 20 - I'm not counting Tyrant's Sheik because he didn't win important matches with her. Rain and Trevonte contribute some Sheik usage within top 32. That's actually a good bit less then one would've expected though things can change if Zero or Larry feel the need to bust out their Sheiks. She'll stay #1 either way.

Actually, ZeRo has used Sheik some. I remember him beating Earth with her

 

[Browny]

I like how G3 has seen more and more anti-MK strategies of camping the ledge and the commentators are making note of it as well.

I dont see how anyone could say that Pikachu or Ryu are top 4 tbh. All the best players of the characters there and only one got anywhere

Seems to me like Diddy would round out the top 4 of sheik, rosa, zss and diddy
with the next best characters being mario, sonic, cloud, pikachu, ryu, fox, ness, mk, villager in no particular order

 

[HFlash]

FlynnCL You do make a good case for some of the top 32 MUs that lost (like DK losing to MK and Luigi losing ZSS), but at least for Falcon, Fatality's Falcon lost to Larry, not Fox the MU. The Fox and Falcon MU is pretty even imo, but can snowball easily one way or the other. Larry went ahead and also beat 6WX and even more impressingly, vs a shiek (Mr. R), a character Fox for sure has a negative MU on, which further proves the point that Larry just out right outplayed Fatality. Falcon's viability is probably similar to Greninja's that he is pretty good, but not soloviable (aka, top 16 character or so). Their viability is hindered by pretty much one character (Shiek) due to at least now, the lack of counterplay (in Falcon's case) to recover against her. Not saying we shouldn't look at top 8, but ignoring top 32 would be putting our analysis in a vacuum imo. For example, ignoring top 32 would ignore WFT who literally has only one notable representative (John Numbers) and most likely has little representation because she isn't an intuitive to play character, and is perceived as bad, so no one plays her. For those of you that know more of the other top 32 characters that aren't getting enough attention, please chime in.

 

[Smog Frog]

i dont think is as much a roadblock to as people think she is. he should be getting blown up every time he goes offstage. what people need to focus on instead is how they interact onstage, which isn't really that tilted in either characters favor. has early killing options on her that are very easy to get without setups(uair, bthrow, etc.) and she has very good normals to contest with his aerials. now the advantage state for either character is bonkers. he blows her up offstage almost as hard as she does(vulnerable linear recoveries in general get demolished) and because she's light bair should ko offstage at about 70%~. his killing options on her are in general gross. its still clear advantage but it's still very doable for .

speaking of , don't the japanese have a low opinion of him? i wonder how this will affect their perceptions, with him in top 8.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I dont see how anyone could say that Pikachu or Ryu are top 4 tbh. All the best players of the characters there and only one got anywhere

Seems to me like Diddy would round out the top 4 of sheik, rosa, zss and diddy

I agree that you can't argue Ryu to be top 4 right now but why do you think Rosalina is top 4? I think Sonic has a stronger claim to that position.

The Fox and Falcon MU is pretty even imo, but can snowball easily one way or the other. Larry went ahead and also beat 6WX and even more impressingly, vs a shiek (Mr. R), a character Fox for sure has a negative MU on, which further proves the point that Larry just out right outplayed Fatality.

Ewww, Fox definitely wins the matchup against Falcon. Between SH vs Sayia/Souther, Megafox vs GrimTurtle and Larry beating Fatality now there are way too many wins for Fox in that matchup. I don't think Falcon has any notable wins yet ... it's clearly not an even matchup.

Larry beating Ramin ... has nothing to do with it. Fox has always been able to take on Sheik, that's old news. It may be a "negative" matchup but it's closer to even than Fox vs Falcon is.

 

[TMNTSSB4]

With top 8 rounded out, some cursory thoughts. A bit drunk rn, so these will be filled out later tomorrow.

lacks a full gameplan; like others have said, he's a bag of tools that look good on paper but end up not being coherent once put together. While no top player is playing him, he doesn't seem to have what it takes to make it once people are wise to his tricks. This character is going to fall with time.

has been almost entirely figured out; Fatality got ****ed being sent to losers in R1 but I feel this character is doomed to remain like his Melee Counterpart; always a good character, but terrible matchups against top tiers will render him a niche pick. Outside of , I don't think he beats any top tier.

Abadango is trying to skate by on learning 's neutral. Abadango's punish + Ito's neutral is one hell of a character

looks incredibly dangerous for a month old character. However, if his Sheik MU looks that bad he's gonna have serious trouble in the meta.

is good when things get going for her (ie she gets an opening, can punish misspacings). Consistently winning with her seems hard and / seem like consistent roadblocks. are also hard, so avoiding all of these are necessary to surviving. Do feel like she can deal with the rest, though.

has failed to show up again. I think this character is good enough to go far, and I'm not too sure why more don't play this character. Thoughts?

got ****ed up by an extremely hard bracket. Don't take it to heart, with an easier time Earth would have definitely pushed further.

is overrated in the West. ESAM has been underpeforming for quite some time and the character's frailness bites him back a lot when getting kills are as complicated as it is.

The fact that Earth went through those challenges with ease(except ZeRo and Marss, buy he took a game off of both)as Pit shows how good the character really is.

With Greninja, and don't quote me on this, but I've heard some people just got tired of him(and the Nerf Greninja jokes)for no reason.

Cloud on the other hand, is a beast in doubles, and hopefully the character's mains never sees a Shiek player again

 

[HFlash]

Ewww, Fox definitely wins the matchup against Falcon. Between SH vs Sayia/Souther, Megafox vs GrimTurtle and Larry beating Fatality now there are way too many wins for Fox in that matchup. I don't think Falcon has any notable wins yet ... it's clearly not an even matchup.

Are all of these MUs in G3? I'm not familiar with how alot of the pools turned out. As far as theory, Falcon should destroy Fox offstage, but honestly didn't see that play as a factor at all in the Fatality/Larry MU. Fatality if anything seemed flustered but if there really isn't any other results to go by (from a number of nationals) then maybe you have a point. Theory and what plays out tend to be different. Sort of like how Ranai's villager in theory shouldn't consistently beat shiek yet it still happens. It would be nice for Falcon to have the same quality of representation as Fox. Fox had Xzax who freaking took a game off of Ranai! Fair enough?

 

[Y2Kay]

And we thought Cloud had a good MU against Sheik? lol guys.It seems Mr. R has figured out how to edgeguard him and now a secondary looks absolutely required.

 

[Sneak Sneaks]

What do u think of FOW fighting Ranai? I know villager is hard for Ness

 

[Asdioh]

Watching the set live got me very excited as this was the first time I've ever seen a Sheik implement this technique effectively in tourney and at such a clutch moment nonetheless!

It's something that's been known about for such a long time but it really helped Mr. R out of a very tight spot today. Can't ever recall an instance of this being used so effectively as it was today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZYyPd-jloM

Does the Bouncing Fish ledge cancel still work, after the Dreamland 64 patch that ruined B moves sliding off edges for most characters?
If it does, along with ZSS Flip Kick ledge cancel, I'm going to have to start a petition for Kirby's Stone to slide off ledges again, because that is total BS.

I'd argue that it's still too early for to be making waves because their major buffs are only a month old. Their buffs practically turned them into new characters and almost no one except the people who were already playing as them have picked them up so people need time to adjust to the changes.

Kirby has a stronger Upthrow. That's the only significant change he got, and it's not hard to make use of. Two high level Kirby players still couldn't make it out of round 1 pools, so don't expect the character to do.... anything... ever....

Any thoughts on both of the US's top Ness mains making it to top 12? Apart from "a lucky bracket featuring a noted absence of That Woman"?

I'm surprised to see FOW in top 8, winner's side no less. I know he's good, and I know Ness is pretty good, but I didn't think Ness could make it that far solo. And Shaky top 12 as well? Also impressive.

Spoilers: pay attention to Marss in singles, he's definitely going to make top 32, and after that who knows.

And then he took Ranai to last hit, beat MVD, Concon, Komo, Earth, and Hyuga, and I don't even know who else. Too bad I was sleeping for the late matches last night. Beat Zero/Nairo early in doubles, beat Hyuga/Dabuz in doubles, had an extremely close set loss with Mr R/Abadango in doubles, and ended up falling to Zero/Nairo. Now he has to play against Nairo, loser getting 7th. Also fun to note that out of all the top 8 16, he's the only one that hasn't been to a national before, unless this is also Hyuga's first national?