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

[David Viran]

ZSS could be toned down with a bit of endlag on some of her moves and reducing the KB of boost kick, really (though the best Bowser's agree that she's Bowser's worst matchup, by far).

The fact that you want boost kicks kb nerfed makes me think you don't understand how the stair case of death combo works. That combo does not really kill because boost kick has good kb but because zss can take you so close to the top of the screen that up b will kill you no matter what. I would agree to nerf boost kick if it hit at a true vertical angle. Nerfing kb will not stop the death combo killing the way it does with good DI.

 

[S_B]

The fact that you want boost kicks kb nerfed makes me think you don't understand how the stair case of death combo works.

It kills extremely well from the ground, though, comes out almost instantly, and is still relatively safe, especially if you have a platform to land on that you use it under.

Doesn't even need to be used in the staircase to get the job done.

I think a better nerf would be to make it rise half as high if someone is caught in it (like Ness' PK2), but that'd be a much harder change to implement.

 

[BJN39]

Totally just dropping in, but Boost Kick is a fine design imo. It can be DI'ed like crazy, which you have to follow. So, a good opponent will have to be on their toes to get out, AND the user has to follow the opponent's DI to get the rewarding kick at the end. It's kind of like a 50/50 Dthrow kill combo.

Also it gets more difficult/less doable when rage is involved, which is the opposite of the benefit good KO moves generally get.


Alternatively they could have gone with the "less risk, less reward" design, where the move connects really well (Probably would take some hefty tweaking tbh) but has less KB. I personally like the higher risk/reward it has, I see it as rewarding better players who are good at following DI.

 

[ZSaberLink]

Honestly, I think the method the Smash team is taking right now is the best one. Boost the lower tier characters until you have a more balanced game. As good as Sheik is, she requires a lot of skill to string together combos and so forth. Sheik's lack of easy kill power does hamper even the best of players at times, and definitely hampers the lesser skilled ones. If anything, I'd prefer modifying characters whose gameplan = one very simple strategy. Metaknight's death combo is honestly super boring. Diddy UAirs were the same way, yet they nerfed that and managed to make a much more intricate and interesting character imo.

Agreed about boost kick. Sure Nairo makes it look insane, but there are a ton of times he ends up missing it and pays dearly for it. Honestly, apart from Nairo and Mars at Genesis, who really places with ZSS in the national competitive scene? Nick Riddle occasionally?

 

[Megamang]

Yea, her having that combo doesnt irk me as much as dying from her pulling it out raw and catching me / calling my airdodge that was forced by her uair. The drag up AND extreme knockback is what makes it seem so silly. You get snagged at 60 near the edge and die, while the 'power' characters need a harder read to kill later in the same spot.


Edit: others said it better. Either way, im more concerned with shiek's MU spread if patches stop. ZSS feels like she can be overcome more reasonably, and the ones with major zss problems can be boosted to kill her better and be fine.

 

[S_B]

Totally just dropping in, but Boost Kick is a fine design imo. It can be DI'ed like crazy, which you have to follow. So, a good opponent will have to be on their toes to get out, AND the user has to follow the opponent's DI to get the rewarding kick at the end. It's kind of like a 50/50 Dthrow kill combo.

...Unless you're a heavy character, in which case she's basically boost kicking the side of a barn.

I personally like the higher risk/reward it has, I see it as rewarding better players who are good at following DI.

The risk isn't THAT high, especially considering it has next to no landing lag, can land on a platform to be safer, and has high aerial mobility so that you can drift back and forth to avoid the most powerful punish (aka charged smash attacks). The best most characters can do is hit her with an aerial, so if she's not in KO range, she can throw out boost kick without much concern.

She can't outcamp the campers like Sheik, but she's arguably an even worse matchup for HWs because of how crazily good her kill confirms are. Even Sheik has a slightly harder time killing most HWs because she needs to get them to a much higher %.

 

[Megamang]

Not to mention if you survive it through DI at high rage situations, you get launched too far to punish if youre not a fastfaller.

 

[S_B]

Not to mention if you survive it through DI at high rage situations, you get launched too far to punish if youre not a fastfaller.

And if you're not a fast character in general, ZSS can kinda do this to you with impunity, given the landing lag is so brief...

There's really nothing more that needs to be said on the matter except for this:

 

[Big-Cat]

Boost Kick is not and never has been the issue. The issue has been her UAir's combo potential. While we're at it, there's her safe aerials even if they're not Sheik safe.

One thing that's always irked me is why is her DThrow so much better than her other throws that it makes them pointless? They don't even have much in the way of positioning value like Cloud who can't really combo out of them.

 

[thehard]

Her f and b-throws are pretty good mixups especially off-stage

 

[LancerStaff]

Boost Kick killing vertically wasn't just some thing they cooked up. It's a very important aspect of her character in, you guessed it, FFAs. Like, it'd literally ruin her character if they made it kill horizontally. Unless it launched backwards, which wouldn't help 1v1 balance as much as forwards...

It's hard to turn down the aspects that are overpowering in 1v1s without outright crippling the character in FFAs. Meanwhile, not sure how often screen-length needles help when there's almost always going to be somebody a third of FD away max. Edgeguarding I guess?

 

[Rizen]

Link's aerial upB launches more horizontally (why's he always get the raw deal?) and opponents usually live longer. IMO killing upBs that combo from Uairs shouldn't launch upward. It really conflicts with low ceiling stage designs. There are many ways to balance this like nerfing certain Uairs, upB angles and so on but it needs to be addressed.

 

[Megamang]

Boost Kick is not and never has been the issue. The issue has been her UAir's combo potential. While we're at it, there's her safe aerials even if they're not Sheik safe.

One thing that's always irked me is why is her DThrow so much better than her other throws that it makes them pointless? They don't even have much in the way of positioning value like Cloud who can't really combo out of them.

To be quite specific, the issue with zss is the combo of uair and boost kick, in that she carries you basically 75% of the way to the blastzone before her launcher hits. This negates a major benefit of being a heavyweight, which is reduced knockback, leaving them as big easy targets. An interesting tweak ive heard is to make her boost kick function like pkt2, where it hits and its distance is severely reduced. Rather than a straight nerf, they could up the kb very slightly so it actually kills better off of reads, but the combo doesnt take you right to the blastzone.


Theyd have much more freedom with a rage modifier on moves, or a hitstun modifier, but i digress.

Boost Kick killing vertically wasn't just some thing they cooked up. It's a very important aspect of her character in, you guessed it, FFAs. Like, it'd literally ruin her character if they made it kill horizontally. Unless it launched backwards, which wouldn't help 1v1 balance as much as forwards...

It's hard to turn down the aspects that are overpowering in 1v1s without outright crippling the character in FFAs. Meanwhile, not sure how often screen-length needles help when there's almost always going to be somebody a third of FD away max. Edgeguarding I guess?

Hop on FFAs online and abuse boost kick. She isnt just decent, she is clearly abusive in that mode due to the efficacy of boost kick (and flip kick). With her mobility and good survival skills, when you hit rage she can basically steal kills from anyone on the map. Zair is a disruption machine, dsmash safely fishes for insanely easy early kills, paralyzer is similar... she isnt just a FFA player, she is one of the best and an absolute monster with little effort or adaptation.

Edit: good survival skills refers to the player, zss is rather delicate. But good drifting makes punishing her significantly more difficult than others missing their (weaker) kill moves

Now that i say it, this might be a good way to get boost kick looked at by ninty. If you can prove its broken in practice (for FFAs), then it deserves it anyways (for FFAs).

 

[Big-Cat]

The most practical thing would be to target her UAir. Either reduce its damage and therefore it's hitstun but keep knock back growth or slow the animation for UAir. The former is more realistic.

 

[M32]

When I hear people proposing uair damage reduction I laugh pretty hard. Do you realize the staircase combo would begin to work later but also stop working later, at % where the boost kick actually kills?
I'm not even entering the debate, but I just tell you that "nerf" would actually be a pretty good buff.

 

[Zelder]

I swear to God it feels like we've been talking about nerfing Sheik and ZSS for the last 30 pages.

 

[David Viran]

There is no point in discussing nerfs/buffs when we don't have any control over that. We should discuss something that is already in the game like where does olimar stand in the meta right now?

 

[G. Stache]

There is no point in discussing nerfs/buffs when we don't have any control over that. We should discuss something that is already in the game like where does olimar stand in the meta right now?

This.
I'm actually pretty interested in Olimar. Mainly because he supposedly has an advantage against Rosalina. Anyone else notable Olimar wins against? Maybe somebody like Ryu or the Mario Bros?

 

[C0rvus]

I recall hearing that Olimar does surprisingly well against Rosalina. iirc Gravitational Pull has no effect on Pikmin. Don't think you can Pocket them either. He also does well against Diddy I would imagine. He doesn't seem bad or too good either. Like he might be invalidating to characters like Charizard and Ganon, but many characters do that. He seems to be a painful MU for a number of mid tier or lower characters. Not sure where that puts him in the meta.

 

[Sonicninja115]

I swear to God it feels like we've been talking about nerfing Sheik and ZSS for the last 30 pages.

It's because we have.

RE:ZSS Nerf

If they nerf Uair damage reduction, then it will be like CFs. CF's Uair was a kill option, with okay combo ability. Now it doesn't really kill, but it has good combo ability. I think it will just make her better to nerf that

 

[adom4]

I recall hearing that Olimar does surprisingly well against Rosalina. iirc Gravitational Pull has no effect on Pikmin. Don't think you can Pocket them either. He also does well against Diddy I would imagine. He doesn't seem bad or too good either. Like he might be invalidating to characters like Charizard and Ganon, but many characters do that. He seems to be a painful MU for a number of mid tier or lower characters. Not sure where that puts him in the meta.

Ganondorf can actually handle Olimar quite decently, it's hard getting in but the reward is absolutely huge.
Flame choke absolutely murders Olimar, he's the only character in the game that gets D-smashed out of a choke & even if he techs his tech roll is awful so he's easy to chase.
even without choke Olimar has trouble landing against Dorf & the moment Dorf gets him above him he has a rough time landing.
I don't think Dorf wins against him be he definitely doesn't get destroyed.

 

[Wintropy]

I tend to think of Olimar as one of those high mid-tier, verging on high-tier characters: the kind of character that doesn't really decimate anybody in the upper tiers, but who doesn't have much trouble with the lower tiers and has decent matchups with a few high and top-tiers. I think he goes even with Pit or is very slightly disadvantaged. It's not much, but it's something.

For what it's worth, I think we don't know enough about him because he's still relatively underrepresented. I know guys like Myran and occasionally Dabuz and others put in the work, but I'd say public perception of Olimar isn't very high because not many people really know what he can do at top-level play.

 

[Man Li Gi]

LancerStaff
I have a legit question here. Why do you make someone's proposed idea or opinion contort and change into something for FFA?Almost every post I see from you is regarding FFAs. Now, we have seen buffs/nerfs that have been for things FFA don't mind. Honestly, I've always wondered how if you balance for 1v1, almost every other mode would follow for being balanced. Saying that this one mode is the end all be all (or even implying it) is misleading.

 

[Luco]

Before I tried to create a mid-tier tier list with the top tier chars and bottom tier chars just not listed, and I put Olimar right below the level of Wario, TL, Ike and friends, he seems like he should be pretty decent but I barely see him used to any real effect.

 

[Dabuz]

This.
I'm actually pretty interested in Olimar. Mainly because he supposedly has an advantage against Rosalina. Anyone else notable Olimar wins against? Maybe somebody like Ryu or the Mario Bros?

Recently I learned how to play the MU and Olimar DEFINITELY loses hard to Rosa...Olimar just sucks against every high/ top tier.

 

[adom4]

Recently I learned how to play the MU and Olimar DEFINITELY loses hard to Rosa...Olimar just sucks against every high/ top tier.

What made you change your mind?

 

[LancerStaff]

Hop on FFAs online and abuse boost kick. She isnt just decent, she is clearly abusive in that mode due to the efficacy of boost kick (and flip kick). With her mobility and good survival skills, when you hit rage she can basically steal kills from anyone on the map. Zair is a disruption machine, dsmash safely fishes for insanely easy early kills, paralyzer is similar... she isnt just a FFA player, she is one of the best and an absolute monster with little effort or adaptation.

Edit: good survival skills refers to the player, zss is rather delicate. But good drifting makes punishing her significantly more difficult than others missing their (weaker) kill moves

Now that i say it, this might be a good way to get boost kick looked at by ninty. If you can prove its broken in practice (for FFAs), then it deserves it anyways (for FFAs).

Uairs > Boost Kick is balanced by the fact that you're eating a partly charged Usmash on the way down and ZSS is light. If you pull it off in rage you're probably going to die for it. Flip Kick is nowhere near as effective because usually it just takes you from one bad situation to another...

If she was that broken in FFAs you'd see a lot more of her. People always try to find an easy way out, or at least some kind of "best" character. Judging from the apparent dearth of ZSSes in FFAs, she's not either.

LancerStaff
I have a legit question here. Why do you make someone's proposed idea or opinion contort and change into something for FFA?Almost every post I see from you is regarding FFAs. Now, we have seen buffs/nerfs that have been for things FFA don't mind. Honestly, I've always wondered how if you balance for 1v1, almost every other mode would follow for being balanced. Saying that this one mode is the end all be all (or even implying it) is misleading.

Just answering the age old question... Why does blah blah on XYZ get to avoid nerfs? What doesn't make sense about what I said?

Project M answers your question. It's absolutely not balanced for FFAs. I haven't played much of it, FFAs or otherwise, but what I did didn't exactly feel balanced.

Don't get how it's misleading. I just can't look at the 1v1 balance and say they especially care for it over FFAs.

 

[Mr. Johan]

RE: ZSS nerfs.

Increase her landing lag on aerials. Nair, Fair, Bair, Uair, all of it.

Keeps her Uair chain itself intact, but now she can't initiate from the air from a Nair with 10 frames landing lag, or, indeed, a Uair with 9 frames landing lag. She would HAVE to get it started with a grab, and so people can commit to avoiding the grab harder, or just staying more SH minded.

This also has the added benefit of making Nair no longer safe on block or true combo into a KOing Bair or Fair because why not.

 

[JesterJaded]

RE: ZSS nerfs.

Increase her landing lag on aerials. Nair, Fair, Bair, Uair, all of it.

Keeps her Uair chain itself intact, but now she can't initiate from the air from a Nair with 10 frames landing lag, or, indeed, a Uair with 9 frames landing lag. She would HAVE to get it started with a grab, and so people can commit to avoiding the grab harder, or just staying more SH minded.

This also has the added benefit of making Nair no longer safe on block or true combo into a KOing Bair or Fair because why not.

I think the problem with this is that it will centralize ZSS's gameplay around the ladder combo, which from what I can tell is the last thing people want with any character.

 

[David Viran]

RE: ZSS nerfs.

Increase her landing lag on aerials. Nair, Fair, Bair, Uair, all of it.

Keeps her Uair chain itself intact, but now she can't initiate from the air from a Nair with 10 frames landing lag, or, indeed, a Uair with 9 frames landing lag. She would HAVE to get it started with a grab, and so people can commit to avoiding the grab harder, or just staying more SH minded.

This also has the added benefit of making Nair no longer safe on block or true combo into a KOing Bair or Fair because why not.

Are you saying you want to nerf all of zss's best neutral tools? You know the ones that take a half a second of commitment if you want to utilize them every time. Also zss's nair pre shield stun patch was -12 and considered relatively safe when spaced well. It is now -3 so if you want nair to be truly unsafe you would have to add more than 10 frames of extra landing lag.

 

[S_B]

Don't get how it's misleading. I just can't look at the 1v1 balance and say they especially care for it over FFAs.

I'm convinced they're trying to do both, which is definitely a good thing, but I feel that decision came around sometime after the game had launched which is why it may be tricky to really make good on it now.

In Brawl, Sakurai hated the competitive scene, even adding tripping so "no one would play it too seriously".

Now, he actually attends tournaments in Japan, and the way he nerfed team absorption/pocketing in doubles suggests that he is definitely balancing the game with the competitive stuff in mind because such things were entirely irrelevant in wifi. Also, Nintendo was a sponsor at G3, so they're seeing the comp aspect as worth it (or maybe they just wanted to ensure PM didn't get played).

I suspect a new SSB game built from the ground up would be extremely well balanced on both the 1v1 and FFA fronts, but I also suspect the NX's SSB game (if the rumor is true) will be SSB4 "deluxe edition" which will have all the DLC in it and maybe a few more characters and stages (and some balancing done).

 

[Djent]

RE:

Shuton, Angbad, Rich Brown, and ImHip have all had a reasonable amount of success with this character (though only the first two solo main him AFAIK). So in practice, he seems fairly viable.

He may have no "good" MUs vs. the top tiers, but that's technically true of a lot of mid tier. The remaining question is "how bad are his bad MUs?" Specifically, is Sheik still considered horrible or has that improved slightly with time?

 

[LancerStaff]

I'm convinced they're trying to do both, which is definitely a good thing, but I feel that decision came around sometime after the game had launched which is why it may be tricky to really make good on it now.

In Brawl, Sakurai hated the competitive scene, even adding tripping so "no one would play it too seriously".

Now, he actually attends tournaments in Japan, and the way he nerfed team absorption/pocketing in doubles suggests that he is definitely balancing the game with the competitive stuff in mind because such things were entirely irrelevant in wifi. Also, Nintendo was a sponsor at G3, so they're seeing the comp aspect as worth it (or maybe they just wanted to ensure PM didn't get played).

I suspect a new SSB game built from the ground up would be extremely well balanced on both the 1v1 and FFA fronts, but I also suspect the NX's SSB game (if the rumor is true) will be SSB4 "deluxe edition" which will have all the DLC in it and maybe a few more characters and stages (and some balancing done).

Not saying they don't care at all for 1v1 balance... But if they can't make it work in FFAs and 1v1s then they're just going to leave it.

None too excited for SSBNX. Honestly I don't think it's even going to have any balance changes, much less new content. The most I see happening is combining SSB3D and SSBU, but only if the NX really is this hybrid thing. Knowing how backwards Nintendo can be with online stuff I can see them not even including the DLC... But hey, if they did, they might fix the CSS. Thing is that Sakurai said he wanted to get started on his next project, and this would of been in the making for some time now to secure the rights to the third parties in time for November 2016. The man's normally cryptic as heck but to be honest it seems like he should get started on something else before he gets roped into the actual new SSB.

Balancing both FFAs and 1v1s within reason without sacrificing character individuality I don't think is possible. More importantly, if they don't think it's feasible they're going to prioritize FFAs again.

 

[S_B]

RE:

Shuton, Angbad, Rich Brown, and ImHip have all had a reasonable amount of success with this character (though only the first two solo main him AFAIK). So in practice, he seems fairly viable.

He may have no "good" MUs vs. the top tiers, but that's technically true of a lot of mid tier. The remaining question is "how bad are his bad MUs?" Specifically, is Sheik still considered horrible or has that improved slightly with time?

Last I checked/heard, Sheik annihilates Olimar because she rushes him down so damn hard.

 

[Man Li Gi]

Uairs > Boost Kick is balanced by the fact that you're eating a partly charged Usmash on the way down and ZSS is light. If you pull it off in rage you're probably going to die for it. Flip Kick is nowhere near as effective because usually it just takes you from one bad situation to another...

If she was that broken in FFAs you'd see a lot more of her. People always try to find an easy way out, or at least some kind of "best" character. Judging from the apparent dearth of ZSSes in FFAs, she's not either.



Just answering the age old question... Why does blah blah on XYZ get to avoid nerfs? What doesn't make sense about what I said?

Project M answers your question. It's absolutely not balanced for FFAs. I haven't played much of it, FFAs or otherwise, but what I did didn't exactly feel balanced.

Don't get how it's misleading. I just can't look at the 1v1 balance and say they especially care for it over FFAs.

So you make an assumption on a game you admit you haven't played much to bolster your many (baseless i might add) arguments? I never said they care about it more, what I am saying is that they don't care for it exclusively and that balancing the game for 1v1 usually bodes an equally enjoyable FFA. Since there's no data supporting my claims though (and yours for that matter), I am feeling awfully reluctant to follow with more responses. You could respond if you want, but I want you to know, from this point on that any argument FOR or AGAINST the notion of FFA balance is not backed up by some serious data and hence is baseless. In other words, I hope you stop trying to shutdown responses in the future with "....but FFA this".

TL;DR
It's actually mind grating to keep seeing FFA taken seriously with not much data backing claims. Anyone and everyone should stop as I believe this thread pertains what we have or could realistically see in tourneys.

 

[S_B]

Balancing both FFAs and 1v1s within reason without sacrificing character individuality I don't think is possible. More importantly, if they don't think it's feasible they're going to prioritize FFAs again.

I think they're doing a pretty good job of it with what they have right now, and there's no character in this game that would need to be completely redesigned to either bring them up or push them down to where they need to be.

And the real beauty is that everything that would need to be balanced isn't going to affect casual play much, if at all. Would casuals notice if Sheik had more endlag on some moves? Did they notice when Bowser and DK got kill confirm followups off of grabs (none of the ones I know did)?

I think they've figured out what the game needs for better 1v1 balance. They just need to follow through in a few places and overall it would then be balanced to the point where we may actually not be sure who the "best" character in the game actually is.

 

[Mario766]

FFAs aren't what the developers are balancing for.

They are balancing for both 1v1 and Doubles, esp with the latest Bucket/PSI Magnet/Pocket nerfs only affecting Doubles.

 

[Halifax?]

I've never understood treating FFA as competitive and then assuming the players aren't competitive. If all 4 players are equally competent, the complexity of FFA just sorts itself out. You can't balance that guy who knows how to crowd control and finish his casual friends regardless of character. That guy is also why items exist.

As long as a character is balanced in singles and doubles, FFA is fine.

 

[Nu~]

http://www.gamnesia.com/news/sakura...-addressing-the-balancing-in-super-smash-bros
This may help

 

[C0rvus]

The nice thing is we know for a fact now that the developers at least care about doubles. The nerfs to team gimmicks is awesome, and it lets us know the dev team was paying attention. FFAs are unbalanced by design imo, and they also matter far less from a balance standpoint. I think Sakurai knows this by now. Brawl was balanced around FFA, and it showed. This game isn't Brawl.

This also relates to my biggest gripe with Project M. Since it was pretty clearly designed around singles, doubles feel odd and bad, at least in my experience. Smash 4 doubles are great, though.