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

[LancerStaff]

He wouldn't be broken in FFAs/doubles. He's a major glass cannon in those modes because of how he gets gimped fairly easily due to stray hits. In singles Ganondorf in most MUs can generally avoid getting gimped at cripplingly low %s by saving his double jump and threatening Uair to repel edgeguarders, but in doubles he can easily die to a stray hit that you can't avoid or you DI wrong far more often. He's not better than midtier in doubles, and someone like Ike basically outclasses him for the most part, nevermind borked characters like Cloud. It wouldn't break anything in doubles/FFAs. Wizkick is supposed to punish back rolls. It is very poor at doing so.

Cloud ain't borked lmao. Nothing wrong with Dorf being a glass cannon either... If you think characters like Ike and Cloud are just upgrades to him then you're missing the whole point of FFA Dorf in the first place, or at least playing stocks for some reason.

 

[Halifax?]

~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Seagull Joe]

I am doing work, but it's not going to be some immediate thing. Sometimes I might go to Anther's, other times I'll be joining in this Bi-Weekly or some tournaments I'm near in my state. I am starting slowly with Link first before anything, then I'll make my way to the next immensely large national or international. I'm starting off small and swaying peoples' opinions little by little IRL, even improving as I go along. The thing with me is that it takes me some time, because I'm still trying to find things out about Link.

This is true; just because we have some viability in characters right now doesn't mean that they'll be as viable in the future. If the next patch gives Link more mobility or faster attacks, or makes Meta Knight's Shuttle Loop have more start-up or less height, or even removes some of Sheik's mobility or throw setups, there'd be no telling where they'd be.

We've seen this happen to Luigi...twice. He went high and then he started dipping from patches along the course of time. This has also happened to Diddy Kong, and he even started dipping just a little. So we have no set-in-stone knowledge of characters as new ones come out and patches come out alongside them. Things can always come out unpredictably and suddenly, so you're right in saying giving it in time. So far as of now, even with as much time as we have had, we cannot have a set-in-stone anything of tiers until later.

is possibly top 5 still.

How are people gonna call Tink viable NOW, when Hyuga was literally getting top results at every Mexican national usually losing to the best player there? Results such as him doing well vs Mr R and sending Vinnie to losers was overlooked for no reason other than people not considering Mexico to be a strong region.

Thankfully G3 showed that Mexico isn't weak, the truth would get out sooner or later.

Most people who post here aren't top/high level players or pay attention to tons of results. is the top of mid tier or the bottom of high tier. It's always been that way. His gameplay hasn't changed in 8 years.

I've put in B/C tier every single tier list lol.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Cloud ain't borked lmao. Nothing wrong with Dorf being a glass cannon either... If you think characters like Ike and Cloud are just upgrades to him then you're missing the whole point of FFA Dorf in the first place, or at least playing stocks for some reason.

Who actually plays time battles? And also I say that Ike is an upgrade to Dorf in dubs because I actually play both characters and have experience with them in dubs. Whatever power you give up tends to be fairly minimal compared to the big advantage in survivability Ike has. Why play a glass cannon when you can just play a cannon?

 

[Yikarur]

Time Battles are the better FFA Version. Stock FFA is stupid.

 

[LancerStaff]

Who actually plays time battles? And also I say that Ike is an upgrade to Dorf in dubs because I actually play both characters and have experience with them in dubs. Whatever power you give up tends to be fairly minimal compared to the big advantage in survivability Ike has. Why play a glass cannon when you can just play a cannon?

Time objectively works better in FFAs, that's why. There's a reason it's the default setting... Stocks puts an extreme emphasis on survival above all else, and as a result all of the glass cannons fall significantly while characters with powerful run away games (like Cloud) are that much better.

In doubles, yeah Dorf's probably outclassed. FFAs, no.

 

[aεrgiα]

It's arguably too early to improve a character on the tier list without more fundamental results all-around. I just want people to go further in time, not do some instantaneous switch like we've always had. Hyuga doing how they did in G3 shouldn't affect the viability of Toon Link that much for now, because give Toon Link more time afterwards and maybe there'd be compelling arguments.

And I'm arguing that we need to actually go in-depth in characters who don't even have much tournament results. If we don't do that, then we do NOT have a clear understanding of the objective we're trying to do and we're literally just ending up with just results making this or that character viable. Link might not get as much results as Toon Link, but if people started picking Link up instead of shoving him aside, maybe Link would get more development. Maybe if people started picking up lower tiered characters and actually did stuff, maybe the characters wouldn't be considered lower tier for any matter.

i completely agree with this, a lot of people need to actually look into a character before labeling them off as bad/meh etc. its not just the recent examples of tl and megaman etc. its also true for characters like samus, mewtwo, zelda etc. but thats not the point, this whole thing started from the claim "link isnt bad, just unexplored". that statement would be fine, if there were arguments to back up why this is the case... but just that statement on its own is just as bad as people saying "link(insert character of choice here) is absolute trash and unviable" because both are opinions with absolutely no persuasive power or solid reasoning behind them :/

 

[Radical Larry]

i completely agree with this, a lot of people need to actually look into a character before labeling them off as bad/meh etc. its not just the recent examples of tl and megaman etc. its also true for characters like samus, mewtwo, zelda etc. but thats not the point, this whole thing started from the claim "link isnt bad, just unexplored". that statement would be fine, if there were arguments to back up why this is the case... but just that statement on its own is just as bad as people saying "link(insert character of choice here) is absolute trash and unviable" because both are opinions with absolutely no persuasive power or solid reasoning behind them :/

You know, I guess I'll just try and get my Link to the top to show (instead of saying) that he's still somewhat unexplored in the sense that not many people know about him in a match-up and just go off by tidbits of info. The same thing happened with TL, so it can happen with Link.

 

[Nah]

You know, I guess I'll just try and get my Link to the top to show (instead of saying) that he's still somewhat unexplored in the sense that not many people know about him in a match-up and just go off by tidbits of info. The same thing happened with TL, so it can happen with Link.

Now yer gettin' it

 

[Radical Larry]

Now yer gettin' it

Again I'm going to start off slowly and then spike it up when I get the chance or see a potentially huge tournament come.

 

[Pazzo.]

So this was posted on the Smash reddit.

Looks like the Pikachu - Doc matchup could get even better for our PHD Plumber.

 

[Nu~]

So this was posted on the Smash reddit.

Looks like the Pikachu - Doc matchup could get even better for our PHD Plumber.

It's things like this that make me love smash 4

 

[Radical Larry]

So this was posted on the Smash reddit.

Looks like the Pikachu - Doc matchup could get even better for our PHD Plumber.

Ah, but even though this seems like an amazing combo, this might be harder to pull of than needed, and it does affect only a select few amount of characters (why not Ryu?). I find it interesting, yes, but it might be extremely hard to perform. Otherwise, I hope that some more testing is done.

 

[Yikarur]

I think it's a misconception that Dr. Mario or Mario beats Pikachu.
esam himself said "I love to play aggressive, I don't play optimal, but thats fine"
Mario is a character that can punishes you hard if you play too aggressive and I guess esam was on the losing edge multiple times against Mario because of this.

If you have watched esam vs. teb you clearly see that esam didn't lose because the MU is disadvantagous. (he lost game 1 with Yoshi, he bodied him game 2 and played clearly far worse game 3)

 

[Zelder]

- esam has never taken a set off Ally
- esam said on his twitter that he was looking for a new character (other than Yoshi) to deal with the Mario matchup
- Nairo's Dr. Mario vs esam's pikachu
- esam losing to Teb, a relatively unheard of Mario main

I think there's enough evidence there that Mario beats Pikachu. It's a bit lacking, because we only have one Pikachu as evidence, but I can't really name any other top level Pikachu users besides NAKAT.

 

[Yikarur]

- esam has never taken a set off Ally
- esam said on his twitter that he was looking for a new character (other than Yoshi) to deal with the Mario matchup

I've already said that it's most likely because of his playing style.

- Nairo's Dr. Mario vs esam's pikachu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibTa8s4dAww

- esam losing to Teb, a relatively unheard of Mario main

Like I said:

If you have watched esam vs. teb you clearly see that esam didn't lose because the MU is disadvantagous. (he lost game 1 with Yoshi, he bodied him game 2 and played clearly far worse game 3)

I think there's enough evidence there that Mario solidly beats Pikachu. It's a bit lacking, because we only have one Pikachu as evidence, but I can't really name any other top level Pikachu users besides NAKAT.

The same guy losing that one MU over and over is not an evidence. It's most likely a player problem and cannot be used as an evidence if the player himself admits that his playstyle is not optimal.

To be honest, I personally don't see the advantage Mario has in this MU and the matches I've seen don't make it seem like it either.

 

[JesterJaded]

Is it Footstool variety hour? Because this seems to be a thing.

 

[Y2Kay]

So this was posted on the Smash reddit.

Looks like the Pikachu - Doc matchup could get even better for our PHD Plumber.

This combo is kinda practical, actually. Where I was intrigued by was the video quality . Some pretty nice stuff!

 

[Vyrnx]

Maybe I shouldn't go back to this

I havn't even heard about most of the stuff here, just proves even more that Link is low-bottom, not joking

If any of you want reasons, I can do that

Then stop posting about Link if you have no knowledge of him.

You act as though people are listing unheard of, impractical Link techs. This discussion has involved primarily some of Link's bread and butter stuff, dthrow combos, bomb to fair, etc. What on earth are you referring to here? This leaves me thinking you know nothing about Link, especially since the things you, "haven't heard of," are his basics. And then you add this little sentence saying you have reasons, like a challenge--reasons don't mean as much when you have no credibility. Your other contributions were bad jokes and bad posts with no reasoning, such as just plain, "Link sucks," or when someone said Link and speed don't belong in the same sentence, you said, "What about, 'Link has bad speed?'"

Most of us agree Link is lackluster. I'm not gonna care if people say that. I only care that people say garbage like this.

I could go on and on about how that quote is horribly flawed logic, how it incorrectly applies to other characters, or how it is dumb, but it's pretty apparent. Characters only come up every once in a while in a cycle on this thread, if a character comes up that you don't know about, refrain from posting unless you have extensive experience or other interesting info about them. Especially characters like Link who rarely get talked about here and consequentially deserve good conversation (made even more evident by the many misconceptions here, which is fine, because it's part of discussion).

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Again I'm going to start off slowly and then spike it up when I get the chance or see a potentially huge tournament come.

You're going to need a guide for that journey (take this).

And what's the general consensus of WFT? I literally know Nothing about her .

 

[Sneak Sneaks]

I've already said that it's most likely because of his playing style.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibTa8s4dAww



Like I said:




The same guy losing that one MU over and over is not an evidence. It's most likely a player problem and cannot be used as an evidence if the player himself admits that his playstyle is not optimal.

To be honest, I personally don't see the advantage Mario has in this MU and the matches I've seen don't make it seem like it either.

I also can't see any advantage on Mario, Pikachu's Fsmash can challenge his smashes since it is disjointed and reach farther, and we dont get comboed for days (say like heavy weigth fastfallers, thunderjolt is very slow to be a threat while caped and we can challenge Marios recovery, we just need to get better at it

 

[Wintropy]

Just gonna chime in here and say that, ever since I really sat down and thought about it, I've been of the opinion that Tink's a decent character. It's not an overnight change of opinion that's encouraged us to say "Tink may be high-tier", it's just that people who were sitting on the fence or otherwise didn't know about his potential got a wake-up call recently. It just helped confirm what most people were thinking or had good reason to believe.

That segues nicely into something I want to say, so I have to ask: what's with people (most noticeably off the top of my head there's ZeRo and FOW, but I've heard it mentioned a few times in this thread too) suggesting that Pit / Dark Pit are potential candidates for Top 15? Something to do with the Electroshock buff? Earth taking names in the States? Or did I just miss the memo? I mean, you all know how obsessive I am about my winged babies, and I think they're definitely strong and underrepresented characters, but there seems to have been an awakening of sorts recently and I'm wondering if something good triggered it or I'm just stupid and don't notice these things.

 

[epicnights]

If there's anything that Link has over Toon Link in terms of mobility, it's bombslides, also know as DITCIT (Dash Item Toss Canceled Item Toss). Although Toon Link excels in aerial pressure with bomb drop recatch mixups, Link has a multitude of mixups with bombslides. By using a bombslide to approach with a forward thrown bomb, Link can potentially combo into his strong tilts and smashes, as well as his newly buffed f-air. Shielding a forward thrown bombslide is also dangerous since you risk getting grabbed by Link's tether grab. And that's only with forward thrown bomb! You can bombslide while throwing the bomb in all four directions!

All of Link's pressure shines on the ground in contrast to Toon Link's aerial pressure. Adult Link wants you up in the air so he can pummel you with projectiles, and if you try to land you've got to deal with his disjointed tilts, scooping projectiles and the long claw shot of the law.

 

[Wintermelon43]

Maybe I shouldn't go back to this

Then stop posting about Link if you have no knowledge of him.

You act as though people are listing unheard of, impractical Link techs. This discussion has involved primarily some of Link's bread and butter stuff, dthrow combos, bomb to fair, etc. What on earth are you referring to here? This leaves me thinking you know nothing about Link, especially since the things you, "haven't heard of," are his basics. And then you add this little sentence saying you have reasons, like a challenge--reasons don't mean as much when you have no credibility. Your other contributions were bad jokes and bad posts with no reasoning, such as just plain, "Link sucks," or when someone said Link and speed don't belong in the same sentence, you said, "What about, 'Link has bad speed?'"

Most of us agree Link is lackluster. I'm not gonna care if people say that. I only care that people say garbage like this.

I could go on and on about how that quote is horribly flawed logic, how it incorrectly applies to other characters, or how it is dumb, but it's pretty apparent. Characters only come up every once in a while in a cycle on this thread, if a character comes up that you don't know about, refrain from posting unless you have extensive experience or other interesting info about them. Especially characters like Link who rarely get talked about here and consequentially deserve good conversation (made even more evident by the many misconceptions here, which is fine, because it's part of discussion).

........Okay then..........

Advantages:

Good projectiles (Bomb)

Great KO power

Up Smash, Forward Smash, Z-air, Up air, and down air are good

And that's about it. Whereas he has a bad matchup spread, Bad speed, terrible frame data, Many bad or useless moves, pretty poor recovery, Bad throw follow-ups (At least at low percets; I could be wrong, but doesn't one of his throws combo into up air at higher percents?) and generally bad results (except in Europe iirc)

 

[Baby_Sneak]

........Okay then..........

Advantages:

Good projectiles (Bomb)

Great KO power

Up Smash, Forward Smash, Z-air, Up air, and down air are good

And that's about it. Whereas he has terrible matchup spread, Bad speed, terrible frame data, Many bad or useless moves, pretty poor recovery, Bad throw follow-ups (At least at low percets; I could be wrong, but doesn't one of his throws combo into up air at higher percents?) and generally bad results (except in Europe iirc)

No examples of said bad moves or horrible MUs that are in 80:20/70:30 category and just very surface-level stuff. And for pros, you just said which moves are good and didn't even tell us what type of game plan link excels at. Not to attack you or anything, it's just you're not saying really anything that can spark good discussion.

 

[Wintermelon43]

No examples of said bad moves or horrible MUs that are in 80:20/70:30 category and just very surface-level stuff. And for pros, you just said which moves are good and didn't even tell us what type of game plan link excels at. Not to attack you or anything, it's just you're not saying really anything that can spark good discussion.

Oops, should've said "Bad matchup spread" instead, I don't think he has matchups THAT bad

 

[Y2Kay]

Yikarur yeah I kinda agree with you on that one. Players being stubborn and not playing the match ups correctly and doing it there way is one of the oldest tales of player's downfall.

Just gonna chime in here and say that, ever since I really sat down and thought about it, I've been of the opinion that Tink's a decent character. It's not an overnight change of opinion that's encouraged us to say "Tink may be high-tier", it's just that people who were sitting on the fence or otherwise didn't know about his potential got a wake-up call recently. It just helped confirm what most people were thinking or had good reason to believe.

That segues nicely into something I want to say, so I have to ask: what's with people (most noticeably off the top of my head there's ZeRo and FOW, but I've heard it mentioned a few times in this thread too) suggesting that Pit / Dark Pit are potential candidates for Top 15? Something to do with the Electroshock buff? Earth taking names in the States? Or did I just miss the memo? I mean, you all know how obsessive I am about my winged babies, and I think they're definitely strong and underrepresented characters, but there seems to have been an awakening of sorts recently and I'm wondering if something good triggered it or I'm just stupid and don't notice these things.

I've noticed an alarming amount of people having pit as the best high tier character in the game (~13th best right below ness) which is really exciting! hopefully this positive opinion lasts! No luck for greninja tho ;-; He's going down in top players' eyes really fast (even tho I think they're quite similar in terms of relative strength, albeit in different ways) I wish istudying or venia come to a national soon!

How are people gonna call Tink viable NOW, when Hyuga was literally getting top results at every Mexican national usually losing to the best player there? Results such as him doing well vs Mr R and sending Vinnie to losers was overlooked for no reason other than people not considering Mexico to be a strong region.

Thankfully G3 showed that Mexico isn't weak, the truth would get out sooner or later.

So much of this. Preach, man. I remember people telling e that Ranai's carrying of Villager made him unsuitable for top tier even tho Pikachu was doing the same thing. People should definitely watch A LOT more foreign smash imo. It'll do nothing but widen your view on smash. (This happened in Melee too right?it's a trend I believe) Luckily, the Elite players of My Mains (Earth, Some [RIP], istudying) are overseas so I was kinda forced too anyhow.

 

[Dee-SmashinBoss]

So what about Peach? Who's the best Peach player and what's everyone's opinions on her.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

So what about Peach? Who's the best Peach player and what's everyone's opinions on her.

Between umeki and slayerz.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Peach is kinda overrated. A lot of people see high-tier potential in her that she doesn't have.

SlayerZ and Umeki are gdlk.

 

[Nu~]

Peach is kinda overrated. A lot of people see high-tier potential in her that she doesn't have.

SlayerZ and Umeki are gdlk.

Explain pls

 

[ShadowGuy1]

Peach is kinda overrated. A lot of people see high-tier potential in her that she doesn't have.

SlayerZ and Umeki are gdlk.

I personally think the EXACT opposite of you. Peach is a VERY underrated character who deserves more representation because she is actually an amazing character. Her floating and just game in general is REALLY good, but tough to master and that is why we don't see more Peachs around. Also, Umeki and Slayerz are probably introducing Peach to other people which i hope happens because I think Peach has potential to be high tier, 3rd highest, or potentially the 2nd highest.

 

[Y2Kay]

Peach is kinda overrated. A lot of people see high-tier potential in her that she doesn't have.

SlayerZ and Umeki are gdlk.

I think the prophecy that peach is a secret top tier that's hard to play is (maybe) undeniably false. I think people should stop preaching that.

It's undeniable though the character is strong (and scary) in the right hands, but that prophecy will (probably) never come true.

 

[Nobie]

One of the tough things about foreign tournaments or even locals/regionals is that it can be hard to tell how good players are compared to the rest of the world.

Let's look at an example. Texas has weekly tournaments, they've got strong folks playing there all the time. They look like they could contend with the rest of the world.

Then Dabuz takes 11 stocks from them in a crew battle.

 

[Megamang]

That said, only a few in the world are on dabuz's new power level.

 

[Djent]

At least Link would get me results compared to Toon Link. And you're obviously ignoring the 3DS release; it's as if you've forgotten about it. You know, think of this, if I made one more (an accurate) tier list before G3 and put Toon Link below Link, there would be people who'd agree, but after G3, I just can't do it. There's apparently something going on that makes us suddenly think certain characters are viable when they got huge results in just ONE big tournament, bar other tournaments. What makes us do that?

Honestly, it's not just "ONE big tournament."

• Hyuga consistently does great in Mexico, and Mr-R / Vinnie + the crew battles show us that Mexico is no joke.
• Sigma placed 13th/320 at the Umebura qualifiers and 7th/250ish at the Sumabato ones.
• Zan was ranked in SoCal before becoming less active, which is notable because SoCal is easily one of the top 5 hardest regions.
• Lots of TL players do well at the regional level (Ross, DlCKS, CrazieCuban, Jash, probably others).
• Also, in regards to that "one [international] tournament," two of the top 8 seeds losing to TL is kind of unexpected and it's understandable that people would get worked up over it.

Look, think what you want about but please understand that it looks like you don't know why other people think he's good in the first place.

Most people who post here aren't top/high level players or pay attention to tons of results. is the top of mid tier or the bottom of high tier. It's always been that way. His gameplay hasn't changed in 8 years.

I've put in B/C tier every single tier list lol.

I agree but feel the need to mention that while TL has remained the same, but the game around him changed a lot (and most characters are weaker than before). That's noteworthy and the reason why I think he's at the higher end of your listed range. Hell, I've been saying for awhile now that no Brawl MK/Snake means that TL is probably solo viable. Lo and behold...

The same guy losing that one MU over and over is not an evidence. It's most likely a player problem and cannot be used as an evidence if the player himself admits that his playstyle is not optimal.

To be honest, I personally don't see the advantage Mario has in this MU and the matches I've seen don't make it seem like it either.

FWIW one guy losing the MU over and over is not strong evidence (I still think it's weak evidence, but that's not terribly important). But Mario > Pika is also the impression of other strong + knowledgeable Pika players I've spoken with. Both characters can easily rack up damage on each other, but when it comes down to killing Mario has a noticeable edge (in how many MUs can the Mario player say that?). This might cease to be the case if we start playing more grounded (i.e. more dtilt and less SH aerials) so that it's easier to avoid usmash. It also doesn't help that Mario has better airspeed and noticeably less lag on his aerials, though thankfully he is not advantaged in terms of ground move speed and endlag. But even then, it's not like Pika has easy kill confirms on Mario, and he's noticeably heavier so he's going to live a lot longer on average anyway.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Explain pls

Will do if you're more specific about what you want me to explain.

 

[Sneak Sneaks]

I think Falcon is mid-tier, he has an amazong frame data and speed overall, great damage out put, good combos etc... but being a fast fallsr heavy weight with a huge hurtbox makes him so easy to combo, also his approaches aren't that goodn, and his recovery is easy to gimp

 

[aεrgiα]

Is it Footstool variety hour? Because this seems to be a thing.

well looks like i have more footstools to practice, sadly that also uses the close hit of zair... thanks for posting this, i need to use youtube more it seems

One of the tough things about foreign tournaments or even locals/regionals is that it can be hard to tell how good players are compared to the rest of the world.

Let's look at an example. Texas has weekly tournaments, they've got strong folks playing there all the time. They look like they could contend with the rest of the world.

Then Dabuz takes 11 stocks from them in a crew battle.

to be fair though, dabuz was playing absolutely amazing, i mean unlike most people i always liked dabuz and his playstyle(i personally never found his playstyle THAT defensive or uniteresting to watch tbh, guess im just weird) but if people actually cheer him on(this is dabuz were talking about!!!) then thats gotta say something about his performance no? and i believe it wasnt just texas where he took out multiple players but i dont remember 100% :/

 

[Nu~]

Will do if you're more specific about what you want me to explain.

Well, why is peach a mid tier? What about her keeps her out of high tier?