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

[Rizen]

On the topic of walking, Link has a great walk. It's fast and his Hylian shield is active. Blocking projectiles with the H shield is faster than with the game's shield.

 

[Pazzo.]

Is this your first fighting game ever? Someone is always going to be at the top, the trick is making the top not too far from the bottom.

edit: and buffing everyone to abusive levels is not the answer to fixing that.

Example: See Brawl Minus for the 5,000th time people.

 

[G. Stache]

Changing to a topic that interests me: what's the general opinion of Samus at this point? Is she still considered bottom tier, or has the recent patch + other factors changed the view of her. I was watching replays of Chozox (or whatever his name was) get into top 8 at Paragon and it made me realize how many things Samus has at her disposal. Obviously not Sheik or ZSS rank tools, but pretty good ones nonetheless. Thoughts on her?

Why not? Would the game not be more balanced?

Or to put the question another way, by disagreeing with him, are you saying it's okay for 2 characters to just be superior to 53 others?

Or are we arguing that Zero Suit and Sheik are actually not the best characters in the game, dominating the top 3 spots of every major?

responding to this because why not (besides the fact that I wanted to change topics)? Smash is a video game that's never going to be completely balanced. Question is: is it alright? Well, I've been playing it for a good few years now and at least this time around it isn't nearly as bad as brawl MK. While I'd prefer minor nerfs to the two big names to help round them out a bit, someone's always going to be at the top, and some are going to be bottom. Thing is, if this isn't your first smash game, then the balance in this game shouldn't be a complaint of such magnitude that some of you are making it out to be. Smash 4 does the amazing thing of doing a decent balancing act while having a gigantic roster of fighters. Seriously, we have 55 fighters, it's quite the feat that no character is so polarizing only the upper half of the cast can be used effectively (greetings from melee and brawl). I'd say that if smash 4 received no more patches, then I'd be perfectly fine with this state.

 

[LightLV]

Is this your first fighting game ever? Someone is always going to be at the top, the trick is making the top not too far from the bottom.

edit: and buffing everyone to abusive levels is not the answer to fixing that.

Sooo..buffing everyone to the level of the top characters is not the same as making the top not too far from the bottom? It may not be the most elegant form of balance, but I think it's funny how people are somehow suggesting it's better than the way it currently is, where the vast majority of the roster is just outclassed from the start.

I never said that's how i would personally do it. I was just saying the guy made a logical point. This forum's kneejerk reaction is to dismiss such a silly idea. But like I said....:

Nobody is going to put up a compelling argument to prove him wrong.

Because he isn't wrong.

Fox is not as good as ZSS. He's clearly a Fox player, and he is angry that his character is not as good as Zero Suit Samus is.

And he is right. Fox is NOT as good as Zero Suit Samus is, and i'd like to think nobody here is going to even argue that.

Sooo, is he wrong for wishing Fox would be buffed to ZSS level? By that logic, should anyone?

I don't see why people are calling him a troll.

 

[LancerStaff]

Smash 4 is only marginally more fair than Brawl at this point.

I'm starting to wonder who's actually trolling here...

 

[DunnoBro]

I'm starting to wonder who's actually trolling here...

The guy claiming it's true because of sheik fair jokes?

...Ah, that's me.

 

[wedl!!]

Most people who play this game have never played a fighting game before that isn't Smash.

Sooo, is he wrong for wishing Fox would be buffed to ZSS level? By that logic, should anyone?

I don't see why people are calling him a troll.

I think rambling about how Fox is a terrible character (which he is far from) without any real reasoning, just asinine statements about "THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF FOX", is enough evidence to suspect he's a troll.

Anyways, back to an actually important subject: Samus! Not very good character. Has some interesting tools but suffers from bad disadvantage, only ok neutral and lacking something that really stands out to make her better then most of the roster (other than a long combo tree, but a lot of characters do it better). She's kind of relegated to low tier by being just "ok" in general.

 

[Thinkaman]

If we sit around getting indignant that everyone isn't a top 2 character, we're gonna have a bad time.

I like the idea of hearing more about Samus. Like Peach, I think she's unconventional and hard to pick up or casually understand. Can anyone easily articulate how Samus "works"? (Yeah yeah, bad hitboxes, we know.)

 

[Wintropy]

Changing to a topic that interests me: what's the general opinion of Samus at this point? Is she still considered bottom tier, or has the recent patch + other factors changed the view of her. I was watching replays of Chozox (or whatever his name was) get into top 8 at Paragon and it made me realize how many things Samus has at her disposal. Obviously not Sheik or ZSS rank tools, but pretty good ones nonetheless. Thoughts on her?

I think she's in that weird indefinite state of being where she's not the worst by a fair margin, and she does have some good things going for her, especially after the recent patch and people still trying to figure out things with her, but she still has the stigma of being irredeemable bottom-tier refuse and people seem hesitant to shake off that sentiment.

It's been said before, but she's the kind of character where there isn't much inherently...wrong with her. She doesn't have one big weakness that keeps her tethered to the low tiers (Mac's inability to recover efficiently, Palutena's entire gameplan being centralised around a so-so grab game, Duck Hunt's wonky smashes that make killing unnecessarily difficult, Dedede's abysmal frame data, etc). She just has nothing much going for her. There's really no reason why you'd pick her over better characters if your intention is to win. A few subtle tweaks here and there and she'd probably be a functional character with definite strengths (hello Ike and Meta Knight), but right now, she's just...mediocre in every way.

 

[Man Li Gi]

I can't wait for the two page back and forth where someone clearly lists out all the reasons that Fox is amazing in Smash 4, which will be responded to with "nuh uh"

It's happened. Apocalypse. Two pages (called out on page 62, now page 64) with people biting the bait.

Anyway, bored in my classes, I see there was a standing shield drop video on Tourney Locator's Channel. It seems pretty interesting.

https://youtu.be/uEjcrlk-u8s

 

[Pazzo.]

I wonder how Sakurai considered Samus "Strongest in the Game" at the Smash Invitational.

Perhaps it was an average of 1V1 + FFA? Or perhaps she was nerfed heavily...?

Does 1.1.2 Samus show any sort of underlying design that would warrant such a comment?

 

[LightLV]

I'm starting to wonder who's actually trolling here...

Edit:

Nevermind. I don't even know why i respond to Lancerstaff.

I think rambling about how Fox is a terrible character (which he is far from) without any real reasoning, just asinine statements about "THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF FOX", is enough evidence to suspect he's a troll.

He never said he's terrible, he said he's not ZSS, and he isn't. People are calling him a troll specifically for suggesting Fox should be put on ZSS's level, and still, nobody has articulated yet why this is an issue. They'd rather just attack the person.

And if he did call Fox terrible, shame on him. He's a good character.

responding to this because why not (besides the fact that I wanted to change topics)? Smash is a video game that's never going to be completely balanced. Question is: is it alright? Well, I've been playing it for a good few years now and at least this time around it isn't early as bad as brawl MK. While I'd prefer minor nerfs to the two big names to help round them out a bit, someone's always going to be at the top, and some are going to be bottom. Thing is, if this isn't your first smash game, then the balance in this game shouldn't be a complaint of such magnitude that some of you are making it out to be. Smash 4 does the amazing thing of doing a decent balancing act while having a gigantic roster of fighters. Seriously, we have 55 fighters, it's quite the feat that no character is so polarizing only the upper half of the cast can be used effectively (greetings from melee and brawl). I'd say that if smash 4 received no more patches, then I'd be perfectly fine with this state.

Question: Is it alright?

Depends on who you are and which character you decided to main, honestly...which only circles around to the original question i guess. I dont think it's that huge of an issue, it doesn't bother me that much. But I do think it's interesting the amount of extremes people go to in order to dismiss the idea that some characters are just objectively better than others.

We can sit and have discussions about how dominate ZSS and Sheik are with no qualms, about how terrible Zelda and Samus are, nobody bats an eye. But the moment anyone suggests the IDEA (lets be honest, it aint happening) that other characters should be buffed, people get defensive...?? It's crazy.

 

[DunnoBro]

If we sit around getting indignant that everyone isn't a top 2 character, we're gonna have a bad time.

I like the idea of hearing more about Samus. Like PEach, I think she's unconventional and hard to pick up or casually understand. Can anyone easily articulate how Samus "works"? (Yeah yeah, bad hitboxes, we know.)

Honestly I'd say she's designed like pacman/villager/yoshi, but loyalty to her consistently losing formula kept her from being actually relevant.

Also, their big thing is that they can camp and actually lose neutral a lot due to being small, floaty, and having great pressure breakers via nairs, and stuff like hydrant/lloid/egg toss. So they need to get read pretty hard to take substantial losses for losing neutral.

But samus doesn't have anything like that. She loses neutral once and gets bodied. She doesn't have anything to compensate for that, either.

Duck Hunt's wonky smashes that make killing unnecessarily difficult

Fun fact: The other day this jigglypuff techrolled my dsmash in and rested me.

And by total coincidence, absolutely not related to that at all in any way, this was the same day I decided to main sheik.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Changing to a topic that interests me: what's the general opinion of Samus at this point? Is she still considered bottom tier, or has the recent patch + other factors changed the view of her. I was watching replays of Chozox (or whatever his name was) get into top 8 at Paragon and it made me realize how many things Samus has at her disposal. Obviously not Sheik or ZSS rank tools, but pretty good ones nonetheless. Thoughts on her?

Samus' metagame progressed very rapidly, and unfortunately she's a very complex character. Even the best Samus players are not masters of every aspect yet, so she's not at full power yet.
Regardless, there are several strong Samus players taking locals and regionals and competing at nationals just shy of top 10 placements, but quite respectable overall.
The consensus is a few additional fixes to certain moves, as detailed in the community patch request video, and the character will be a respectable threat.
Her metagame is always progressing, we find new things almost every week, even a year on. I hope to produce something in the near future that boosts our dedicated fanbase, particularly the chaining of narrow-window combos of which Samus has tons.

 

[Mario766]

The Samus thing is based on a chunk of nerfs to the character from the E3 version used, which were very substantial.

 

[Drarky]

Rising NAir (cannon hitbox) is not safe on shield. No.


Sidenote: I can't believe I just read that walking is not important. Top players walk ALL the time. Esam walks so that he can always shield needles vs Sheik. Rosa players walk so they have access to dtilt/jab at any moment. Sheik players walk backwards a lot (because her walk speed is 5th fastest and comparable to slower runs).

It's not just good for neutral, Zero does jct banana forward > walk> dsmash a lot. Walking is so important... Especially when jumping is such a commitment.

For some reason I feel really bad about giving miss information, so I apologize.

 

[DunnoBro]

Personally, I think the biggest thing for her would be the ability to charge while in the air. And allow airdodge-special canceling like sheik's needles do.

She needs a better disadvantage and pseudo-advantage state. (Ex. tried to bait and air dodge but they jumped away. If she could just charge while landing she could still apply pressure)

I just think it'd be dope as hell to throw someone, charge in their face and punish an air dodge straight up or pressure a jump with an airdodge canceled homing missile.

She's a fine character when she has that charge, she just needs to be able to get it more.

(Would probably need to weaken it a bit though. Otherwise she'd get a full charge everytime you knock her offstage by charge > bomb cancel)

The Samus thing is based on a chunk of nerfs to the character from the E3 version used, which were very substantial.

As substantial as they might've been, no competitive players actually thought she was anywhere near the best in the game at the E3 event.

 

[Mario766]

I've never seen Sakurai or anyone from Nintendo to be a good judge of how to balance a game or talk about competitive gaming in general

- Nerfing Little Mac
- Nerfing Samus
- Items on, Customs On, Equipment On FFA Tournaments

I could continue, I won't.

From what I've heard though, Samus was definitely a lot stronger than she is even now. A lot of the changes she got were unnerfs but they haven't changed them all. They kinda gave her the Ike treatment in that they nerfed things from Brawl, but didn't give any compensation until patches came out.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Can anyone easily articulate how Samus "works"? (Yeah yeah, bad hitboxes, we know.)

My take on Samus in smash 4 is that she's a hybrid character.
She can manage some limited situational zoning, some rushdown, some mixup and respectable edgeguards.
There are better characters in all of those specific aspects, you cannot play a completely traditional projectile zoning game for instance, you are not link, or duck-hunt with frame 40 FAF projectiles, yours are frame 60.
You have to use z-air and the dash and grab combos that flow from an advancing z-air, sit and spam = death.
Likewise your jab does not come online until you've landed a big combo, and certain basic elements of rushdown like tomohawks are out of the question. So the decision to go aggressive must be calculated.
You can't simply spam dash attack, grab, and hope you get the big follow ups from those combos, those become predictable and so you have to know and use the lesser known up-tilt and n-air combo trees as mixup.
Tech chasing is paramount, tons of her moves lead to tech chases, so you have be be able to recognize, and capitalize on the tech chases.
Her entire kit can edgeguard, when you can reach them offstage, every effort should be thrown into keeping them there. F-air specifically for hard-to-predict low-recoveries, n-air for early horizontal gimps, bombs to cover ledge-grab options.
She a hybrid character can do a bit of everything, a mid-range specialist with extremely damaging combos and tech chase follow ups. She can totally wreck you in just a handful of hit confirms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er3eVCqVu80
It can be a lot of fun to play Samus, if they don't know the matchup, woebetide.

 

[IsmaR]

I wonder how Sakurai considered Samus "Strongest in the Game" at the Smash Invitational.

Perhaps it was an average of 1V1 + FFA? Or perhaps she was nerfed heavily...?

Does 1.1.2 Samus show any sort of underlying design that would warrant such a comment?

Alternatively, it could have just been that Bill was the only member of the Treehouse/play test group that wasn't completely awful.

 

[LancerStaff]

I wonder how Sakurai considered Samus "Strongest in the Game" at the Smash Invitational.

Perhaps it was an average of 1V1 + FFA? Or perhaps she was nerfed heavily...?

Does 1.1.2 Samus show any sort of underlying design that would warrant such a comment?

I remember hearing most of her attacks did more damage then, so probably.

Also there was a lot of weird junk like Luigi walljumping and ZSS with a mini Peach float so the meta then would of been completely different from what we have now, and remember this is the consensus of a microscopic community consisting of NoA, E and J plus Namco.

 

[Sonicninja115]

It's happened. Apocalypse. Two pages (called out on page 62, now page 64) with people biting the bait.

Anyway, bored in my classes, I see there was a standing shield drop video on Tourney Locator's Channel. It seems pretty interesting.

https://youtu.be/uEjcrlk-u8s

It is really good with Shulk and Diddy, as well as the other spin Dsmash characters. But I think it isn't that great with most.

 

[thehard]

I've never seen Sakurai or anyone from Nintendo to be a good judge of how to balance a game or talk about competitive gaming in general

- Nerfing Little Mac
- Nerfing Samus
- Items on, Customs On, Equipment On FFA Tournaments

Hosting items/customs/equipment FFA tournaments is a way of showing off the full capabilities of the game, not an attempt at a "competitive" ruleset. Please, have a little faith in the designers. Not everything is about us.

Little Mac's nerfs were done to make him more Little Mac-like and cap the power level of some overtuned moves. I imagine Samus' were much the same.

Also, it's disingeneous to act like nerfing two non-top tiers makes the designers somehow bad at their job. We have a huge cast of characters and most of them are good in this very specific ruleset we play in. Nintendo has an excellent track record in the way of improving this game.

Removing abusive options + making characters more robust consistently every patch counts for more points than the occasional "controversial" nerf of my favorite character (most of which were done a year ago and still have some underlying reasoning behind them)

Also, Bill Trinen would like a word with you.

 

[Nu~]

It's happened. Apocalypse. Two pages (called out on page 62, now page 64) with people biting the bait.

Anyway, bored in my classes, I see there was a standing shield drop video on Tourney Locator's Channel. It seems pretty interesting.

https://youtu.be/uEjcrlk-u8s

I guess it's a good thing that pacman can already jump cancel hydrant OoS.

Mastering frame 1 tech? Not my forte

 

[Nobie]

What is this BS about Sakurai/the balance team not knowing anything about competitive Smash? Did people have a brain fart and forget every patch that's come out so far?

Diddy got nerfed but remains strong, his niche being more a tricky trap and combo game than "kill everyone earlier."

Sheik arguably isn't nerfed enough but has plenty of changes over the past year that do have an effect on her gameplay.

Falco went from mid tier at best to solid all around character, and all it took was making one or two multihits link better.

Meta Knight, Robin, DK, and many more are in a better place than they used to be.

Just because YOUR character wasn't boosted to high tier doesn't mean that the developers are asleep at the wheel.

There are 50+ characters, geez. Patches take time and even the best competitive games don't always get it right.

 

[Thinkaman]

Pretty sure NoA has next to zero impact on balance. Sakurai has written publicly about using a 12-man "monitor team" of the strongest players at Namco, who play a mix of 1v1s and FFAs nightly and record all results. He described how he meets/plays with them two nights a week, and defers to their expertise as to power levels. ("Because they beat me every time; they are real experts.") They then check their data against both For Glory win rates and chatter on Japanese message boards, but it was implied that they take both sources with a grain of salt.

What is explicit, is that all balanced changes are proposals submitted by the monitor team and personally accepted by Sakurai.

 

[Pazx]

Enough to make him actually viable and not just "secretly top 5 but actually barely, maybe viable"

The main things are:

Fair can't be punished OoS by stuff like sheik/diddy fair or mario usmash.
Dair can't be shield dropped. (allows for breaks on 85~% shields)
Egg Roll can't be punished oos by as many characters. Making it a good landing coverage option vs the majority of the cast. (Avoid absurd dash attackers or high travel speed projectiles)

From my testing of the Diddy glitch I'm like 90% sure you can jump OoS against a Yoshi Dair to allow yourself to get hit by it, but I could be wrong. That's pretty significant if it's true, because it means Yoshi still sucks (shieldstun helping fair is very true though).

 

[Fatmanonice]

Lamenting the past just slows people down. If you think about the original cast, they've been in different spots in most games:

- mid - mid - low - high
- low - low - mid - mid
- top - bottom - mid - low mid
- high - top - high mid - high
- top - mid - high - high
- bottom - mid - low mid -high
- high - high - low - high
-low - bottom - low mid -high
- mid - high - bottom - low
- high - low - low mid - high
- low - mid - low - low
- low - low - bottom -low mid

Things just change with each game and sometimes you just have to lump it. For example, when this game first came out there were WAY too many people lamenting how some characters had changed. The prime examples were , two characters who had their buttcheeks firmly planted in the top tiers for 12 years and one who almost became the first broken character in Smash history. Honestly, there's kind of an eb and flow to this stuff and I feel like some characters are knocked down a peg between installments and it's hardly the end of the world. You either adjust to the changes or you pick up someone else. That's all there is to it. Yeah, it sucks when you're character is no longer on top but that's just kind of how it goes. I guess this sort of thing is easier to deal with if you've ever stuck with a "bad" character just out of favoritism (Mario's always one of my mains no matter what) but it just all boils down to what your goals as a competitive player are: to win tournaments, expand a character, or both but there's many times where you have to wind up settling for one.

 

[Dre89]

i know i'm biting bait but is far more consistent at getting grabs than , so having a early % kill confirm out of a grab means more for him than it does for her

honestly if he got an early % kill combo out of a grab we'd be back to pre 4/15/15 days

It's easy to get grabs as ZSS since it beats every single option in the game except pre-emptive jumping.

People who think it's hard to get grabs as her probably don't have experience playing characters who use tethers and/or long range dash/pivot grabs in neutral. It's not hard at all.

 

[thehard]

IMO, almost all of the veterans feel like the "definitive" versions of themselves in Smash 4, regardless of viability. Some of the old animations/models look quite archaic in comparison.

 

[LightLV]

What is this BS about Sakurai/the balance team not knowing anything about competitive Smash? Did people have a brain fart and forget every patch that's come out so far?

Diddy got nerfed but remains strong, his niche being more a tricky trap and combo game than "kill everyone earlier."

Sheik arguably isn't nerfed enough but has plenty of changes over the past year that do have an effect on her gameplay.

Falco went from mid tier at best to solid all around character, and all it took was making one or two multihits link better.

Meta Knight, Robin, DK, and many more are in a better place than they used to be.

Just because YOUR character wasn't boosted to high tier doesn't mean that the developers are asleep at the wheel.

There are 50+ characters, geez. Patches take time and even the best competitive games don't always get it right.

Tekken Tag 2 (namco) released with around the same number of characters and is considered a pretty well-balanced fighter. And we're talking an actual 3D, technical fighting game. Roster size isn't an excuse. It's all about the development team's experience.

And to be completely fair, we're talking about balancing. "Just because YOUR character wasn't boosted" is a terrible place to start by defending bad character balance. Sakurai appears to be terrified of the competitive atmosphere of gaming. All of Nintendo is, as a matter of fact, and are showing few signs of letting up this generation either.

And IMO, the balance patches of this game only help to drive the point home that the balancing team of this game could use some work. ZSS/Sheik are still Stier, Zelda/Samus are still Asstier, have been for pretty much the whole game now. In most of the extreme cases, the tweaks take them out of the zone of completely dominating / completely garbage, but isn't really making any real strides anywhere.

IMO, almost all of the veterans feel like the "definitive" versions of themselves in Smash 4, regardless of viability. Some of the old animations/models look quite archaic in comparison.

With the exception of maybe Bowser, Falcon and maybe the Mario Brothers, and I don't think a single character particularly feels more definitive than they did in Brawl or Melee. Everyone has lost a ton of ATs and options that gave them identity. Just look at characters like Falco, Toon Link, Pit and Samus. Or Lucas...Peach especially...they've all lost buckets worth of stuff.

They do feel more streamlined though.

 

[Sonicninja115]

There are still a couple more patches. We have cloud and whoever the smash ballot elected. We can expect two major patches then.

 

[TTTTTsd]

I don't think it's very fair to compare Tekken Tag 2 to this game. There are a TON more variables when it comes to balancing a Smash game than there are when it comes to balancing a Tekken game, let alone making the entire roster viable which is unfortunately a pipe dream that will never come true no matter how we speculate it because the minute you go over 35 characters and want to make them all unique, it's inevitable it's going to be imbalanced in some way, shape or form. It's just how matchups go.

I don't see the issue with ZSS and Sheik being good, they could use like, very minor tone downs but I personally think we're at an ok point and the only thing that's really needed is some pickups on the bottom 5 of the roster because most every other character has seen relevant tournament use (whether it be secondary or not, doesn't matter).

And while everything could be better, I'm glad they're not radically changing characters per patch and opting to take it slow otherwise you get stuff like Netherrealm Studios where your metagame shifts way more than it should. And that's just....no good.

 

[LancerStaff]

Tekken Tag 2 (namco) released with around the same number of characters and is considered a pretty well-balanced fighter. And we're talking an actual 3D, technical fighting game. Roster size isn't an excuse. It's all about the development team's experience.

And to be completely fair, we're talking about balancing. "Just because YOUR character wasn't boosted" is a terrible place to start by defending bad character balance. Sakurai appears to be terrified of the competitive atmosphere of gaming. All of Nintendo is, as a matter of fact, and are showing few signs of letting up this generation either.


And IMO, the balance patches of this game only help to drive the point home that the balancing team of this game could use some work. ZSS/Sheik are still Stier, Zelda/Samus are still Asstier, have been for pretty much the whole game now.

Smash isn't balanced around one single mode of play though. It's balanced around two at minimum, and they're completely different at that.

There's been a lot more emphasis on competitive play from Nintendo as a whole lately too, such as Splatoon in general, what appears to be a 180 on how Smash is handled, Pokemon's continued advancements to the speed at which you breed competitive mons, and generally being nice about patching things in Zelda re-releases off the top of my head.

 

[Vyrnx]

This post is probably going to be long (EDIT: OH MY GOD IT IS, sorry lol) but I've been wanting to make a post about Samus here for a while and haven't found the right time. I would really appreciate if people read this though; I know long posts tend to get lost but I have a lot of thoughts on Samus. I think about Samus' place in the game all the time, and sometimes I have trouble organizing my thoughts because I have so many, but I will at least try.

There are so many misconceptions about Samus, and all of these misconceptions have sort of molded to form this "forum concensus" that Samus is somehow irreparably damaged, and it can be a challenging opinion to argue because it's firmly supported by so many. But I might add, as respectfully as I can, that Samus is an incredibly challenging character to understand (I have trouble stressing this enough) and many make posts that oversimplify her or try to point to one problem that holds her back, when it can never be that simple in Samus' case. These posts often come off as credible and people cling to them, further deepening many misconceptions about her. I have a lot of respect for many of the established users of this forum, but the opinion I've formed is that a person can know way more about this game than 95% of people who play it, but understand Samus less than 100% of the people who have put months into her.

Truthfully I rarely challenge this "forum concensus," although I will definitely argue with anyone who calls Samus the worst in the game. But I feel like I BS my opinion of Samus all the time for the sake of my own credibility, which somehow is a very precious thing easily lost on these forums because of a few conflicting views with others. I often list all these things Samus can do, and then end my post with one of my own oversimplifications and say, "But that is why Samus is bad," when I don't even think Samus is bad. But I want to lay out my opinions in this post, and if you disagree that's fine, but understand that I understand Samus well after over a year, and at least let that give me some credibility.

I'm going to start with misconceptions:

• Samus is a projectile character: Samus may have three projectiles, one quite powerful, and bombs may seem like they fit into this projectile archetype as well, but Samus standing away from the opponent using projectiles is putting herself on the defensive, which is not the best place for Samus. I would go so far as to say that playing Samus like a projectile character will lead to losses 9/10 times.
• Samus can't fight CQC: This one will be controversial, but hear me out. Samus has some decent CQC mixups that work at low percents while jab is still dysfunctional, such as dtilt, an excellent move, or up b OOS if the opponent misspaces or incorrectly assumes Samus there is no consequence to jumping into Samus' shield and throwing a move. The single biggest misconception is that Samus' has a totally nonworking jab, when in fact Samus' has a good jab past 40% which I sincerely like. Many people don't actually know that Samus' jab combos after 40%. I used to think people knew this and didn't care, but I realized that people just... Didn't know this. Samus has a frame 3 jab and people are just starting to explore it. I've seen Depth do really cool things with it, just sort of jab 1-ing shields and waiting for reactions. It interrupts stuff effectively like a frame 3 jab should, has good enough range, and the jab combo does 11 damage. The tech chase after being hit by Samus' jab at the right percents is so tight that the CS followup might as well be considered a combo in most cases. At higher percents Jab 1 knocks people away and leads to many different mixups, but I need to move on.
• Samus loses neutral and loses the match: This is presently the most cited irreparable flaw that people try to point to. I remember saying something like this a few months ago and regretting it, but at the time I think I actually believed it. It's easy to see why--The idea that she gets juggled and juggled and never lands. This is my biggest change of heart with the character, and I have had many. When I get comboed, I just take it, DI, and wait to jump out. Resisting is where the damaging strings come into play. And then I just retreat to the ledge. I used to think, oh man, this character can never be viable with this. But the thing is, once Samus is on the ledge she will eventually get herself back into the neutral. She has enough options there that she can do it reliably, and all in all Samus will probably not end up taking that much damage from the combo. I have a lot more on this later, though.
• Samus has an awkward moveset that can't flow: Don't have much to say here lmao, except this misconception is still out there somehow.
• Samus can't compensate for her hitboxes: Still not much to say here, except I rarely notice the hitboxes anymore. When people complain about hitboxes the first one they name is dash attack, and Samus happens to have what is easily the second best dash attack in the game behind MK, so they just need to stop.
• Charge Shot is bad: This one I do not understand. No, I know, it can't be charged in the air, but it is still an excellent chargeable move. I will defend chargeable moves all day, all of them, they are amazing to have especially in the neutral. People claim they aren't scared of CS? Then why is it that I have never met anyone who doesn't either shield or jump excessively and act fidgety when I have a flashing arm cannon? CS clashes with everything? Definitely not! The three important MUs here are DHD, Olimar, and Pac. But other than that, Samus does win a lot of projectile wars. This is very important, but I'll mention it later. It's biggest distinction from other chargeable neutral B's is its ability to be used outside the neutral. When Samus can use her CS reliably in her advantage state, I kind of laugh when I see WFTs say, "But we can too!" or people say, "Samus' CS hurts her more than her opponent." I honestly cannot grasp the stigma around this move as it's just... Good. As for charging, one combo and we have room to charge.
• Samus can't kill: Samus has a limited number of killing moves but they are all effective. I rarely have opponents live past 140-150, and usually it's more like 130.

Some of these misconceptions I have more respect for than others, certainly there is room for debate on some, but for three of those listed I have little patience.

Anyway... Where next, I have so much more to say. I'll just leave it on more general stuff.

Samus is an incredibly frustrating character to fight against. The flashing arm cannon, the intense zoning, the difficulty edge guarding, the difficulty hitting her. Samus doesn't exactly fit any archetype I have seen described. If I had to make something up, maybe "aggressive zoner"... Where you feel constant pressure and the Samus is playing aggressively, and then you realize all of the pressure and aggression is really zoning. Samus can stuff any approach and beats practically everyone midrange, two of her biggest strengths. People playing her have to constantly worry about a grab (yes, while her grab is BAD, it still functions like a tether and punishes shields all the same--I think most Samus players land it pretty consistently), dash attack, or one of her combo starting hit confirms, while still worrying about CS (including you, reflectors), which may be the ground her neutral is built on. For many this means the air is a safe place, but then we have nair and can wall with fair. Samus can be hell to get in on, and then up b OOS is amazing, one of her absolute biggest saving graces--IMO it separates the good Samus players from the bad, because in this case good players will absolutely abuse this move.

They also have to worry about Samus' advantage state. It's really, well, excellent. Huge damaging combos at almost all percents, she can trap people on the ledge well, and her edge guarding is very, very good. Samus can get hugely extended combos with simple reads, because Samus is a particularly hard character to land against. This is true for most characters because being above a character is a disadvantaged state, but catching landings happens to be one of the areas Samus shines, with her dash attack, and in particular, her grab of all things.

This leads to her frustrating comeback factor, which brings me back to Samus' disadvantage state I mentioned a little earlier. This is my single biggest change of opinion on her. Where before I met only frustration upon being comboed, I sort of realized that, for Samus, this isn't that much damage, and I know I can come back from this. Just not resisting is important, take the 20 damage, go to the ledge, play a chippy frustrating neutral, and deal the damage back.

I used to think Samus had a ton of flaws, and now I have more and more trouble pointing to one simple problem, except small characters are really tough. I don't think, anymore, that Samus has any overwhelming problems, and where I used to be confused as to, "Then why is Samus bad?" I realized that Samus just isn't bad at all.

Samus can be frustrating to play as because she requires absolute precision, VERY little room for error, and I mean this. I see people mess up inputs in tournament play and think, "If they were Samus and inputted SH fair by accident, they'd be dead." Simple input errors can be the death of Samus, and this has caused me so much frustration. I'm not sure why she's designed this way.

I have more, but I can't remember now... Thanks to anyone who read this, I really want people to give Samus more thought and I LOVE to talk about Samus.

 

[wedl!!]

Ironic how Peach lost a lot of her toolkit in the transition but still remains one of the most depthful characters in the game and is probably better off in this game anyways, isn't it?

 

[Fatmanonice]

On the topic of patches, I don't think there are many characters that need a total overhaul, just tweaks here and there. Some knock back growth, some hitbox changes, and some ending/landing lag adjustments and most of the mid/low tier characters would have a new lease on life.

 

[Skeeter Mania]

Radical Larry is a special snowflake. Don't even compare him to those frauds.

Sometimes I'd even go as far to include A2Z despite having a much better knowledge of the game (pure theorycrafters are hard to reason with).

 

[thehard]

Since maybe we need a reminder~

...that's not to say that I don't appreciate very high-level competitive play, the type of very refined competitive gameplay that happens in other fighting games. Personally, I have a lot of experience playing in the arcade scene, and personally came out as a champion of a 100-person battle in arcade Street Fighter II.

If people want to play seriously 1v1, they should do that, and if people simply want to enjoy the game, they should do so. There might even be people who only like to play with their amiibo. I think it's good that there are so many different ways to enjoy this game.

The most important thing is that the game have breadth and depth, since we would like them to be popular with both novices and hardcore gamers.

-Sakurai in 3 separate interviews

L LightLV 's claim that grown-ass men and women who have been working in the gaming industry for years are "terrified" of competitive gaming is pretty childish. Smash is made to embrace all types of players.

And any look at major tournament results will reveal that ZSS is often unique in a top 8 or 16 and while Sheik maybe takes 3 placements max. she's not massively ballistically dominant like you're implying

 

[LightLV]

I don't think it's very fair to compare Tekken Tag 2 to this game. There are a TON more variables when it comes to balancing a Smash game than there are when it comes to balancing a Tekken game, let alone making the entire roster viable which is unfortunately a pipe dream that will never come true no matter how we speculate it because the minute you go over 35 characters and want to make them all unique, it's inevitable it's going to be imbalanced in some way, shape or form. It's just how matchups go.

I don't see the issue with ZSS and Sheik being good, they could use like, very minor tone downs but I personally think we're at an ok point and the only thing that's really needed is some pickups on the bottom 5 of the roster because most every other character has seen relevant tournament use (whether it be secondary or not, doesn't matter).

And while everything could be better, I'm glad they're not radically changing characters per patch and opting to take it slow otherwise you get stuff like Netherrealm Studios where your metagame shifts way more than it should. And that's just....no good.

It's a completely fair comparison. We're talking about a game with a Z-Axis, a button for every limb, movelists 100~200 strings long and a huge roster. Smash doesn't have as many variables as people like to think it does. It's just alot more secretive about its mechanics than actual fighting games are. It doesn't try to explicitly explain itself to you, because it doesn't expect you to care. And when you do try to learn, it makes no attempt to help you. (like giving no patch notes, or a training mode that omits key mechanics, ect)

The reason ZSS and Sheik are good are along the same lines as why Fox and Falco were good in Melee, and why Metaknight was good in brawl. It's the same trends, and it doesn't ever seem to trickle down to make a more balanced roster. Thats my only gripe with the balance in smash.

I never, ever expect the bottom 10 in this game to rise anywhere farther than the middle. But it would be nice i guess.