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

[SubconsciousRose]

Using the oft-used criteria for Top 10 (Sheik, ZSS, Rosa, Pika, Ryu, Mario, Sonic, Fox, Ness, MK, Diddy), I'll give exactly my opinions on these MUs.

Loses to Sheik (duh, who doesn't?)
ZSS is thrown around the bush, though I think this could be slightly in ZSS's favor
Beats Rosa probably (though with Raptor vs Dabuz at SSC, maybe we were wrong)
Goes even with Pika (initially I believed this to be Yoshi's second worst MU, but in recent days, I may have been thinking too pessimistically).
Beats Ryu (hold no regrets)
Goes even with Mario
Seagull thinks Yoshi beats Sonic, though I don't know what to say for myself
Beats Fox
Goes even with Ness
Ghostbone is such a soul-crusher
Loses to Diddy

I mean, with a spread like this, I see no reason why he would fall into obscurity results not withstanding. All I would like to see is more rep and better play.

Ooh
I kinda want to add to this a bit since I main Rosa and secondary Fox and have played Raptor's Yoshi irl in tourney bracket on multiple occasions and in some friendlies and have taken games off of him somewhat consistently with both Rosalina and Fox.

vs

To start with Rosa vs Yoshi, I hear a lot of conflicting feelings from Rosa and Yoshi players on this MU with both character players stating its a hard MU for them. Honestly I'm inclined to believe on personal experience that it's a pretty evenish MU and actually slighly in Rosa's favor when she plays the neutral properly.

Rosa can safely tack percent onto Yoshi a bit more easily than he can to us because many of his options are somewhat limited against her. Eggs, which are a huge part of Yoshi's game-plan, lose to Gravitational Pull at long/mid range, and Rosa's dash attack lowers herself and covers a good distance which can punish eggs thrown when she is pretty close to him. Also with Yoshi's fair, the move extends his hurtbox, and Rosa can easily beat the move completely with a well timed up smash because of her head invincibility so spacing with this move against her needs to be done very cautiously if used.

Most of Yoshi's options are limited against shield and this still holds true and with Yoshi's slow grab that yields very little reward, this only adds to his issues against her. Even Egg Lay is limited as potential followups are hindered by the presence of Luma because buffered options can knock Yoshi away before he can capitalize for much.

Rosa also beats Yoshi pretty well if we manage to get him up in the air as disjointed uair can give him a hard time landing and it easily beats mixup options such as down b or b reverse Egg Lay provided spacing is proper, and even the aforementioned dash attack which covers a lot of ground can just pop him back up or off the stage completely. I've talked to Yoshis about the Rosa MU and have been told by many that it can be very difficult for Yoshi to land against her.

While Yoshi does possess tools that can get ride of Luma pretty well such as dash attack, these options are generally not without some form of punishment from Rosa as many are unsafe on shield. And then it just stems back to the issue of what Yoshi can do to a shielding Rosa without Luma is pretty limited in itself.

I can definitely understand Rosa mains finding this MU a bit hard if they don't fully understand it and even I don't think I have all of its quirks known, but I think if Rosa plays to her defensive strengths, this MU is definitely doable and even good for her.

vs

Now this MU is definitely one that based on my own experience REALLY comes down to patience from both players. Overall I think this MU is in Yoshi's favor by a bit but not by a significant margin.

Similarly to the Rosa and Yoshi MU, Yoshi's use of egg is a bit limited onstage because of Fox's fantastic movement. But offstage the move can seriously threaten Fox's recoveries due to how linear side b is and how we don't like having to use Fire Fox because of its startup and susceptibility to edge-guarding. So this is definitely something for Fox to be cautious of in the MU.

For the onstage game and neutral, Fox can tact on damage pretty well with his combos and utilt (baiting for Yoshi to nair by mixing shield after utilt at low % is a good idea from my experience) but Fox's by virtue of fast fallers also gets combo'd pretty hard by Yoshi and as a featherweight character, this can be pretty scary as Yoshi's weight and survivability outdoes our own so keeping a good % lead over him is definitely gonna be needed.

Now when I said the MU has to be played very patiently, I specifically mean once we start reaching kill percents. We all know Fox has a multitude of kill setups and kill confirms but the thing is none of these come off of grabs and he has no kill throws. So we need to be able to find an opportunity for something like soft nair or landing dair but this can be rather difficult against patient players and the risk of getting up smashed OoS by a rage Yoshi when Fox is so light is very high.

Yoshi also doesn't have the most simple of ways with killing against patient players as he has no kill throws and no combos into kill moves off of throws afaik. (is rage dthrow>uair a thing on Fox?) So ultimately every time I play this MU the most difficult part on both ends tends to be killing but I feel that Yoshi's weight and use of rage and ability to edgeguard Fox pretty hard is what ultimately gives him the slight edge in this MU.

And that's my take on these MUs based on my own experience playing these characters against Raptor's Yoshi.

 

[Planty]

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.

So really nice post. I've never really understood the stigma around Samus too much. I see that she has problems, but I always felt like people exaggerated them. I also had no idea jab could be used like that (but I did know it was quick) .

I just want to know: Where exactly would you put her on a tier list?

 

[TTTTTsd]

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.

Tekken does not have jumping, a vast multitude of game modes, and all the other features Smash has. That's nice, a button per limb? They balance it around one game mode. A bunch of strings? Also nice, where's the movement, where's the shield mechanics? What about DI? You barely JUMP in Tekken, for god's sakes! The balance is different on that level alone for SO MANY REASONS. You don't have to worry about legal stages, variable blastzones, CHARACTER SPECIFIC COMBOS (if they are a thing it's usually generic tall characters), variable fall speeds in most instances are not applicable, gravity is generally the same....if it was such a natural transition we'd see more people bleed over into our game, and we haven't seen that. It certainly exists, mind you, but there's a reason our top Smash players are just that. Top SMASH players.

Everything that makes Smash nuanced is a step away from other 2D Fighting games and that is exactly why it has the playerbase it has. Not only do they control entirely different, they play entirely different and their design goals are ALSO entirely different. Tekken can have as many buttons and strings as it wants, it's a very much controlled environment compared to this game. I love fighting games and drawing comparisons between them and Smash but outside of a handful of fundamental things it's very much different. It's why balancing Smash is hard if not impossible and it's also why we're always going to have obvious best characters. Given our prior obvious best characters I think the direction this game has taken following the Diddy nerfs has been rather commendable.

 

[Vyrnx]

So really nice post. I've never really understood the stigma around Samus too much. I see that she has problems, but I always felt like people exaggerated them. I also had no idea jab could be used like that (but I did know it was quick) .

I just want to know: Where exactly would you put her on a tier list?

I'll be straightforward even though few will agree, if you asked me most days I'd say low mid tier. She has the results to back this up, too.

 

[predator_21476]

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.

Ike Already has though. He went from being one of the worst characters in the game to a high tier with the balance patches. They are helping the balance alot. Also the original best character diddy Kong got nerfed to the point where he is no longer the best.

 

[Planty]

Also the original best character diddy Kong got nerfed to the point where he is no longer the best.

Is not the original best character? I never played the game during 1.0.0 but I'm pretty sure that's the case.

And nerfing Diddy from being the best to being top 10 at worst is not such an amazing achievement. The way it was done is remarkable, forcing creativity by the players, but making him not be the best could have been done by anyone slightly lowering some values. And you forget that with the fall of Diddy, Sheik just took his place. So sure, the former best characters are no longer the best characters, but do we not still have a best character?

 

[meleebrawler]

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 concencus" 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 con census," 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. 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.

A lot of this can be said about Mewtwo as well. People just have a hard time maintaining their safe, chipping gameplan when they take some damage, feeling the need to deal the damage back in interest, only to take even more damage.

If I could compare Samus to Mewtwo, the former definitely takes more from the Brawler archetype with more efficient frame data and combos, whereas Mewtwo is more of a Swordfighter intent on spacing out his opponent with disjoints.

Where Samus actively pressures her opponent into making mistakes she can capitalize on, Mewtwo is content to let his defensive options passively let the opponent do so on their own.

 

[predator_21476]

Is not the original best character? I never played the game during 1.0.0 but I'm pretty sure that's the case.

And nerfing Diddy from being the best to being top 10 at worst is not such an amazing achievement. The way it was done is remarkable, forcing creativity by the players, but maing him not the best could have been done by anyone slightly lowering some values. And you forget that with the fall of Diddy, Sheik just took his place. So sure, the former best characters are no longer the best characters, but do we not still have a best character?

That is true forgot about the 3ds version for a bit. However there will always be a best character in a game that is unavoidable. The balance team just has to make the gap between low and high as small as possible. Also sheik is not a very dominating top tier compared to other ones in the series.

 

[bc1910]

Also, I disagree with the last statement you made. Using ROB as a reference, ledge jump is vulnerable from frames 11 to 16; taking airdodge startup frames into consideration, it will be vulnerable until 18+ (no buffering after a ledge jump except item drop IIRC, so players will probably be vulnerable for longer than the optimal scenario). On the other hand, neutral getup is 35 frames and vulnerable on frame 35. This leaves 10+ frames between the time ledge jump is last vulnerable and neutral getup is vulnerable. To my knowledge this data is pretty standardized among the cast with the exception of Miis, which have a noticeably longer neutral getup. Only long lingering hitboxes can reliably cover such a large window. In most cases you will usually be covering either ledge jump or regular getup, not both.

You've misunderstood. I'm not saying you can cover both options at the same time. I'm saying that you can use the same move to cover both options, with different timing on the same move. i.e. Charizard charges down smash by the ledge, if he reads ledge jump (or attack) he releases the charge, if he reads neutral getup he holds the charge a bit longer then releases.

 

[Yikarur]

Powershielding, in terms of reflecting projectiles in Melee, is a 2 frame window. Perfect Shielding is 4 frames in Melee/Brawl and 3 in Smash 4.

Powershielding is 3 frames in Brawl.

. Hell even when people complain about Fair being big (when realistically it's the same size as brawl's) he also extends his hurtbox too, so it's possible to trade smashes with this move that's most likely just gonna stage bounce you.

Yoshis Range on fair is about twice as much as it was in Brawl. You probably don't remember correctly. In Brawl Yoshis Head didn't scretch.

 

[LancerStaff]

• 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.

Second best DA probably goes to Fox... Pit's I know is pretty much a straight upgrade of Samus's, and there's plenty of similar DAs such as ZSS's, Falcon's, G&W's, and maybe Dorf's even which would contend.

I still don't get why Samus's in specific gets flack for having bad hitboxes though, when all of them (and presumably Fox and MK's) also have deadzones. Her's is noticably bigger then Pit's, but then again Pit has a big honking sword slash travelling through the opponent doing 0%.

And again, I don't think having poor hitboxes is a death sentence. Well yeah, if you just randomly played a character like this you'd probably notice pretty quick (Pit took us a half a year to find it all lolol) but in the context of each of these characters it's a minor detail and probably not holding them back enough to matter as far as I can tell.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Yoshis Range on fair is about twice as much as it was in Brawl. You probably don't remember correctly. In Brawl Yoshis Head didn't scretch.

They both felt the same to me, but it most likely was just me only. Yoshi's nose is big in all games so that's prolly why it feels the same.

 

[Ffamran]

ZeRo has his analysis of Falco up and it features Keitaro: https://youtu.be/ES8uLKMZ-E0. I haven't watched it, so I don't know if he has or not and I know I ask for a lot, but I kind of wished he also got at least Larry and FOW's opinions even if they were just written text he reads off.

Edit: Scratch that, the "ft. Keitaro" is just a match of Keitaro vs. Mr. E... Er... Why not Skype call with Keitaro or something?

 

[meleebrawler]

Second best DA probably goes to Fox... Pit's I know is pretty much a straight upgrade of Samus's, and there's plenty of similar DAs such as ZSS's, Falcon's, G&W's, and maybe Dorf's even which would contend.

I still don't get why Samus's in specific gets flack for having bad hitboxes though, when all of them (and presumably Fox and MK's) also have deadzones. Her's is noticably bigger then Pit's, but then again Pit has a big honking sword slash travelling through the opponent doing 0%.

And again, I don't think having poor hitboxes is a death sentence. Well yeah, if you just randomly played a character like this you'd probably notice pretty quick (Pit took us a half a year to find it all lolol) but in the context of each of these characters it's a minor detail and probably not holding them back enough to matter as far as I can tell.

"Poor hitboxes" is really a "weakness" that simply goes away when you get better with the character. Learning how not whiff your moves is far more important than wishing they wouldn't in the circumstances they did.

Just today I got Mewtwo receiving flack for his usmash not hitting grounded short characters, or his dsmash not hitting quite as high as the explosion looks... I mean, really?

 

[LightLV]

Tekken does not have jumping, a vast multitude of game modes, and all the other features Smash has. That's nice, a button per limb? They balance it around one game mode. A bunch of strings? Also nice, where's the movement, where's the shield mechanics? What about DI? You barely JUMP in Tekken, for god's sakes! The balance is different on that level alone for SO MANY REASONS. You don't have to worry about legal stages, variable blastzones, CHARACTER SPECIFIC COMBOS (if they are a thing it's usually generic tall characters), variable fall speeds in most instances are not applicable, gravity is generally the same....if it was such a natural transition we'd see more people bleed over into our game, and we haven't seen that. It certainly exists, mind you, but there's a reason our top Smash players are just that. Top SMASH players.

Everything that makes Smash nuanced is a step away from other 2D Fighting games and that is exactly why it has the playerbase it has. Not only do they control entirely different, they play entirely different and their design goals are ALSO entirely different. Tekken can have as many buttons and strings as it wants, it's a very much controlled environment compared to this game. I love fighting games and drawing comparisons between them and Smash but outside of a handful of fundamental things it's very much different.

Just to clarify, nobody is saying Smash isn't complex. It's a very complex game. BUUTTTTTTT...........:

Spoiler

1) You can definitely jump in Tekken

2) Smash does have alot of modes. Competitively? It has 2. 1v1 and 2v2, which are relevant here.

3) Movement? Tekken where the term Wavedash originates, FYI. Also, Z-Axis and tracking is a thing.

4) SHIELDS? Hahaha, Smash 4 barely even HAS shield mechanics, compared to Melee/Brawl. Tekken is a fighting game. There isn't a single shield mechanic in Smash that doesn't exist in Tekken (or any other fighter). (cept shield poke i guess?)

5) But it's silly for you to bring up shield mechanics when Tekken has High/Mid/Low property attacks. Imagine if Dtilts and Dsmashes required you to duck before shielding. This is far less forgiving than even 2D fighters with High/Low mixup. And this is ignoring grab breaks, of which there are 3 types. And also, again, the Z-Axis.

6) You don't have to worry about Legal stages because there are no illegal ones. Namco takes care of that for you.

7) Smash has variable blast zones, Tekken has stages with walls and environment hazards. Fair trade, especially considering how fast you die on the wall in Tekken. Which also goes back to that whole Z-axis thing...

8) Again, Character-specific combos are not only a thing in Tekken but in literally every 2D fighter with combos.

FYI, Directional Influence and Angles aren't particularly daunting mechanics, smash just makes no effort to teach them to you. If it had a competent training mode, DI and Angles wouldn't be such a mystery, the same way practicing frame traps and safe moves on Tekken isn't a mystery because you can program the CPU in training mode to test for yourself. At the end of the day, Smash is a very unique game, but it still has solid rules and functions just the same as any other game.


And Smash Bros is a popular game because it's exceedingly easy to pick up and play, has tons of iconic characters, and allows 4-8 player couch sittings.

Ike Already has though. He went from being one of the worst characters in the game to a high tier with the balance patches. They are helping the balance alot. Also the original best character diddy Kong got nerfed to the point where he is no longer the best.

If only everyone could be like Ike.

If everyone got the Ike treatment, then they could just lightly nerf some attributes about the top 3 and then we'd be getting somewhere.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

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.)

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?

Samus strikes me as a combo/techchase heavy character with Charge Shot as her ace/lynchpin move. I suspect the devs overrate(ed) Charge Shot in this aspect, possibly either underestimating the effort needed to charge it or overestimating the reward for landing it. My biggest issue with her is how despite being touted as a projectile queen in basically every iteration, she can't really do the projectile zoning thing too well. (Seriously, her missiles need work.) It also strikes me as odd that she uses so many punches and kicks given her source material, but that's a design issue instead of a balance one.

 

[TTTTTsd]

As far as Tekken vs. Smash, I don't consider it a reasonable comparison for its more than fair share of mechanical differences and huge fundamental differences, and even past that I never will because Smash isn't solely a competitive game. Whether you like it or not we're not the big target audience but rather a sizable small part that has finally been thrown an actual bone in terms of balance patches. If this game was a Smash game made solely for the purpose of 1v1 competitive play I'd probably be more privy to agree, but it's not, and it hasn't been since the conception of the series. The fact that we even got balance patches in SMASH of all things? I consider that a bone thrown, but the fact of the matter is it's not really balanced solely on the 1v1 or the 4v4 or ONE mode in particular. It's balanced around a TON of other modes. Some changes are made in regards to modes individually, but a lot of them overlap. Some don't, that's fine, I call them outliers.

You can dissect all I said for all it's worth, I really don't mind, but it's not going to change my main point. Tekken is made for competitive play, this game is attempting to be casual with leeway for competitive play at the same time. I'm not going to elaborate further, this sentence is legitimately the most concise way I can put this.

I think Emblem Lord put it best way back in the old thread. "You are taking a house cat and trying to say it's a lion and then you get upset when you keep finding evidence, that it is indeed STILL a house cat."

That's all I have to say on this matter, I'm not moving from this position.

 

[L9999]

Second best DA probably goes to Fox... Pit's I know is pretty much a straight upgrade of Samus's, and there's plenty of similar DAs such as ZSS's, Falcon's, G&W's, and maybe Dorf's even which would contend.

I still don't get why Samus's in specific gets flack for having bad hitboxes though, when all of them (and presumably Fox and MK's) also have deadzones. Her's is noticably bigger then Pit's, but then again Pit has a big honking sword slash travelling through the opponent doing 0%.

And again, I don't think having poor hitboxes is a death sentence. Well yeah, if you just randomly played a character like this you'd probably notice pretty quick (Pit took us a half a year to find it all lolol) but in the context of each of these characters it's a minor detail and probably not holding them back enough to matter as far as I can tell.

Man, Pit really is hard to get into with his atrocious hitboxes in respect to animations. Most of the the time I miss dash grabs and dash attacks and it doesn't look like I did. He flings the damn bow through and only hits at the tip of the animation or something like that and his grab is extremely miniscule and it doesn't look like it, and I play several characters with crappy grab range (). Not a flaw in the long run because you get used to the hitboxes, but it is annoying when you start playing the character and seeing that the hitbox doesn't match the animation at all. !!!!

 

[LightLV]

Samus strikes me as a combo/techchase heavy character with Charge Shot as her ace/lynchpin move. I suspect the devs overrate(ed) Charge Shot in this aspect, possibly either underestimating the effort needed to charge it or overestimating the reward for landing it. My biggest issue with her is how despite being touted as a projectile queen in basically every iteration, she can't really do the projectile zoning thing too well. (Seriously, her missiles need work.) It also strikes me as odd that she uses so many punches and kicks given her source material, but that's a design issue instead of a balance one.

Design wise, Samus is second only to Ganon in how they butcher her representation, but i suppose it's understandable. It has always struck me as odd how ZSS is the more agile character when out of the Varia suit.

Samus' projectiles are terrible, made far worse by the removal of missile cancels, made even worse by the fact they will not KO a midweight character at 200% on the edge.

I'll be straightforward even though few will agree, if you asked me most days I'd say low mid tier. She has the results to back this up, too.

+ Post

I bash on Samus alot, mostly because it's hilarious, but (like Zelda) I feel like Samus is a character that is only a few QoL tweaks away from being dangerous.

But again this is only in relation to the middle tier and low top. Where she becomes bad is alot easier to see when you try to rate what she's good at, and then just ask who does it better and easier.

When Samus isn't fighting as an underdog warrior and becomes a respected opponent against a character who's just better equipped, then...well, you know. "Samus is ass" comes back full force

As far as Tekken vs. Smash, I don't consider it a reasonable comparison for its more than fair share of mechanical differences and huge fundamental differences, and even past that I never will because Smash isn't solely a competitive game. Whether you like it or not we're not the big target audience but rather a sizable small part that has finally been thrown an actual bone in terms of balance patches. If this game was a Smash game made solely for the purpose of 1v1 competitive play I'd probably be more privy to agree, but it's not, and it hasn't been since the conception of the series. The fact that we even got balance patches in SMASH of all things? I consider that a bone thrown, but the fact of the matter is it's not really balanced solely on the 1v1 or the 4v4 or ONE mode in particular. It's balanced around a TON of other modes. Some changes are made in regards to modes individually, but a lot of them overlap. Some don't, that's fine, I call them outliers.

You can dissect all I said for all it's worth, I really don't mind, but it's not going to change my main point. Tekken is made for competitive play, this game is attempting to be casual with leeway for competitive play at the same time. I'm not going to elaborate further, this sentence is legitimately the most concise way I can put this.

I think Emblem Lord put it best way back in the old thread. "You are taking a house cat and trying to say it's a lion and then you get upset when you keep finding evidence, that it is indeed STILL a house cat."

That's all I have to say on this matter, I'm not moving from this position.

I mean...thats cool and all dude, I can agree with you, nobody was ever saying Smash was secretly a competitive game in disguise or anything.

But you dipped into "smash is way more complex than controlled environemnt tekken" and I just didn't know where we were going with ittttt.....

I just kinda wish we can call house cats house cats and call lions lions and not have confusion pop up when someone states that house cats are cuter than lions because people actually....still think their house cat is a lion? I dont know.

 

[Skeeter Mania]

I'll be straightforward even though few will agree, if you asked me most days I'd say low mid tier. She has the results to back this up, too.

I wonder what you think her MUs are like?

 

[Wintropy]

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.

This is a great post and I wish I could like it ten times over. Thank you for detailing exactly what issues Samus has and doesn't have - it's a small step towards educating people, but if it changed the perceptions of even one or two people, I'd consider that a job well done.

What I'm interested in is your opinion on Samus going forward. Presuming she doesn't get tweaked in future balance patches, where do you see her going from here? You mentioned that new discoveries are being made constantly and that even top players don't fully understand what she can do, but do you think there's relevant depth to be found in her meta? Does she have room to grow and possibly improve as a character, or will her inherent flaws (which do exist, and I'm especially grateful that you didn't try to pretend they don't) keep her a relatively weak character while other characters improve in parallel?

I love discussing under-appreciated characters and being educated on them, so thanks for taking the opportunity to bring it up! Great to know you're doing your bit to help the Samus meta in whatever subtle ways you can.

 

[LancerStaff]

Man, Pit really is hard to get into with his atrocious hitboxes in respect to animations. Most of the the time I miss dash grabs and dash attacks and it doesn't look like I did. He flings the damn bow through and only hits at the tip of the animation or something like that and his grab is extremely miniscule and it doesn't look like it, and I play several characters with crappy grab range (). Not a flaw in the long run because you get used to the hitboxes, but it is annoying when you start playing the character and seeing that the hitbox doesn't match the animation at all. !!!!

...Dash grab being funky? Dunno about that, since you can use the initial boost like Captain Falcon does to extend Fthrow combos, or more importantly get into a better position to kill with it. Standing grab is pretty short but it's both a faster grab and he slides a ways when used out of a walk so to me it seems fine by me.

Dash attack is pretty big though. Like I said, the deadzone isn't that big compared to other DAs, and it's pretty big and disjointed already. I'll admit it's hard to hit a shield and end up behind the opponent, but in a typical punish situation you really shouldn't be missing after messing around with it for a bit.

 

[meleebrawler]

Man, Pit really is hard to get into with his atrocious hitboxes in respect to animations. Most of the the time I miss dash grabs and dash attacks and it doesn't look like I did. He flings the damn bow through and only hits at the tip of the animation or something like that and his grab is extremely miniscule and it doesn't look like it, and I play several characters with crappy grab range (). Not a flaw in the long run because you get used to the hitboxes, but it is annoying when you start playing the character and seeing that the hitbox doesn't match the animation at all. !!!!

Y'know, I think someone mentioned something about Ryu earlier about how he is the only character to have next to no trails in his moves. Makes me wonder that if Mewtwo didn't have any trails for his moves either, would people be making such a big deal about his hitboxes then?

Also about Mewtwo's grab, the standing actually has decent range, nothing to write home about, it's just a bit harder to land OOS due to low traction. There's actually a lot of characters with good-ranged standing grabs but terrible dash grabs: Lucas (actually has the lowest endlag of all tethers when standing!), Palutena, Roy and DK to a lesser extent are a few examples. And Greninja is probably the only inversion of this, having a slow normal grab but great dash grab, further discouraging shielding as an active tactic with him.

 

[Ghostbone]

Makes me wonder that if Mewtwo didn't have any trails for his moves either, would people be making such a big deal about his hitboxes then?

Probably, he's still swinging his tail and missing.

Realistically, if they ONLY had trails for the part of the tail swing that hits, that would look normal, and people wouldn't complain.

But it's like a universal smash 4 problem that trails and attack animations don't match the hitboxes (that is, attacks start later or end sooner than the animation, the hitboxes are smaller than the animation, or the hitboxes are in the z-axis like Marth's u-tilt lol), it's not Mewtwo/Samus specific as people seem to imply.

It's actually quite obnoxious and I hope the developers do something about trails coming out too soon or animations just not matching the attack duration (Dark Pit's fair is a huge offender here). It's the opposite problem Brawl had where hitbubbles where far bigger than they should be and sometimes came out before the character actually stretched their limbs lol.

 

[Rizen]

But it's like a universal smash 4 problem that trails and attack animations don't match the hitboxes (that is, attacks start later or end sooner than the animation, the hitboxes are smaller than the animation, or the hitboxes are in the z-axis like Marth's u-tilt lol), it's not Mewtwo/Samus specific as people seem to imply.

And you have characters with deceptively good range like C Falcon who's Fsmash has more range than Ike's.

 

[meleebrawler]

Probably, he's still swinging his tail and missing.

Realistically, if they ONLY had trails for the part of the tail swing that hits, that would look normal, and people wouldn't complain.

But it's like a universal smash 4 problem that trails and attack animations don't match the hitboxes (that is, attacks start later or end sooner than the animation, the hitboxes are smaller than the animation, or the hitboxes are in the z-axis like Marth's u-tilt lol), it's not Mewtwo/Samus specific as people seem to imply.

It's actually quite obnoxious and I hope the developers do something about trails coming out too soon or animations just not matching the attack duration (Dark Pit's fair is a huge offender here). It's the opposite problem Brawl had where hitbubbles where far bigger than they should be and sometimes came out before the character actually stretched their limbs lol.

I think the only instance of the developers sort of addressing this was when they tried to fix Duck Hunt's smashes; the reticles actually became bigger to reflect the bigger size of their hitboxes.

 

[Apeirohaon]

MK's trail visuals were also changed to better match the hitboxes

 

[Vyrnx]

Second best DA probably goes to Fox... Pit's I know is pretty much a straight upgrade of Samus's, and there's plenty of similar DAs such as ZSS's, Falcon's, G&W's, and maybe Dorf's even which would contend.

I kinda put that there to see what people would say, haha, I don't want to argue specific rankings too much but regardless Samus' dash attack is really good for a dash attack, and I think it might be the second best in the game. But either way it's good. It's hard to punish because it crosses up shields a really good distance without lagging as much as ZSS' or Yoshi's, for instance (pretty sure it's safe on several characters' shields). It has burst momentum, 8 active frames, and does 10 damage, but where it really shines in the damage department is its combo starting ability, with the ability to start 47+ damage combos at low percents and still combos well at higher percents, and I guess it kills pretty well, ~160ish on some characters if Samus is having trouble getting the kill. Anyway, I just kinda wanted to emphasize that it's really good.

Samus strikes me as a combo/techchase heavy character with Charge Shot as her ace/lynchpin move. I suspect the devs overrate(ed) Charge Shot in this aspect, possibly either underestimating the effort needed to charge it or overestimating the reward for landing it. My biggest issue with her is how despite being touted as a projectile queen in basically every iteration, she can't really do the projectile zoning thing too well. (Seriously, her missiles need work.) It also strikes me as odd that she uses so many punches and kicks given her source material, but that's a design issue instead of a balance one.

As for projectiles, missiles are not that good and CS isn't really used like a projectile (by which I mean it isn't used in the neutral standing across the stage). Missiles have their uses but are definitely not spammable, or really advisable to use in the neutral at all--but that's my opinion and some Samus players use missiles quite a bit. I almost never use them. Homing missiles are pretty decent for edge guarding and super missiles can catch rolls, sometimes stop approaches, that kind of thing. But I wouldn't let this discourage anyone, because Samus wasn't designed to be a long range character, definitely designed for midrange and combos.

I wonder what you think her MUs are like?

Ooh this is where people get offended most, MU ratios, so I'll talk about a few. Rough estimates:
30:70 with Pikachu and MK (MK might be even worse, but it's stage dependent. Samus' worst MU though.)
40:60 with Sheik, Mario, Fox, Diddy, ZSS, and some other outliers.
50:50 with Rosa, Falcon, Ike, Yoshi, and most unlisted or unreferred to characters.
60:40 with Luigi, Ness, Peach, DK, and most slow or big characters who can't break Samus' zoning (which is quite a few).
This is just rough, off the top of my head, so don't take my word on it. Many better Samus players probably have better charts. Since this is a rough estimate I avoided multiple of 5 MU ratios, so some MUs are more slight (dis)advantages. My opinions on MUs change a lot, too. The important takeaway would be that Samus has some truly adantaged MUs because those characters have trouble breaking her zoning and therefore have trouble dishing more damage than they take.

What I'm interested in is your opinion on Samus going forward. Presuming she doesn't get tweaked in future balance patches, where do you see her going from here? You mentioned that new discoveries are being made constantly and that even top players don't fully understand what she can do, but do you think there's relevant depth to be found in her meta? Does she have room to grow and possibly improve as a character, or will her inherent flaws (which do exist, and I'm especially grateful that you didn't try to pretend they don't) keep her a relatively weak character while other characters improve in parallel?

Samus is only going to improve, and has been improving very fast. Back when Samus was considered bottom 3 or 5, which at the time she may have been, she had by far the fastest advancing meta of almost any character. People found her combos and tech chases, improved her midrange game (all three of which are literally what Samus IS now), up b OOS potential, SHAD stuff, ledge strategies, shield breaking strategies, 0-deaths, and basically just improved everything about Samus from where we thought there was very little. I can't watch videos of Samus gameplay from a couple months after release, it makes me sick because I can't imagine playing Samus like that. But it's crazy to think that at one point I DID play Samus that way, and it's really refreshing that Samus' meta is alive, and still is.

Samus mains find new stuff all the time, find which strategies are better... At one point Samus mains rarely held CS for over twenty seconds, didn't know ANY falling uair stuff, and thought jab and nair (lol) were totally useless. Samus' neutral has become far more grinding and frustrating for the opponent as of the last few months, helped by the patch. The most recent development would be her edge guard game, which is so much better than we thought at first. She's a great edge guarder.

At this point it's a matter of playing Samus optimally. Samus may have IMO, the most variety in gameplay of anyone because she has so many different tools, it's a matter of meshing these tools and finding which are best at which times. We have work to do on that. It's also a matter of fixing misinputs. It makes me so sad when I watch amazing players like Afro Smash, Depth, Johnny Westside, or Esam lose because of misinputs. Where it wouldn't affect other characters all that much, a simple accidental SH fair can mean the stock.

But yes, Samus will definitely improve.

 

[90007000]

i think john lucena is OP plz nerf

see john lucena = op

 

[Nu~]

Just when we thought we were out of the doldrums...

Can we just stop with all the trolling?

 

[Antonykun]

and I play several characters with crappy grab range ().

Swordfailure has a bad grab range? really?
out of all the characters I play, I tend to have the easiest time landing grabs with
granted my other main is Villager whose grab's bootyness can only compared to Pac-Man

 

[Trifroze]

But he is still worse (and I think by quite a bit). If ZSS can have that kill combo, Foz can at least have uthrow uair.

It's not a kill combo you silly.

 

[Ffamran]

Design wise, Samus is second only to Ganon in how they butcher her representation, but i suppose it's understandable. It has always struck me as odd how ZSS is the more agile character when out of the Varia suit.

Off-topic wall o' text below.

Spoiler: The issues of game development

When Samus was introduced to Smash, it was 64 where the only Metroid games were 2D platformers with shooting combat resembling Contra and of course Mega Man. There was almost nothing to go off of other than Samus shoots and spawns bombs. Oh, and she can jump high. This can be applied to Captain Falcon and Fox while everyone else had some semblance of combat like you know what Ness can do and all that's left is animating him, but Captain Falcon, Fox, and Samus? Nothing. The Capt. goes fast! Whoopdie freaking doo. At least they had leftovers of Dragon Warrior to just slap onto him. Fox? Well, we could pull the classic sci-fi stuff and... oh... that's only one move: Blaster. Fire Fox could be considered a reference to space ships and jets having rockets to launch and Reflector could be considered a reference to Star Fox's barrel roll which technically isn't a barrel roll, but whatever. The rest of Fox is like a cobbled mess of Chun Li and Guile. Then we have Samus... They could have made her into what Mega Man is now, but that would mean Mega Man would be, end up as, a clone and people probably would not like a third-party, especially a beloved video game icon be a clone of another well-known video game icon. Smash 64 might not have had the capability or foresight to have crawls, so Samus ends up using her Morph Ball as a roll. Hell, she even shared moves with the Capt. since there wasn't enough to go off.

Question is: would fans have preferred it if Samus didn't make it to Smash until Brawl? This also goes to Zelda fans where Sheik made it into Melee, but not the titular princess, Zelda. By Brawl, Samus had Metroid Prime where her "roll" was a dash and she had a a 3D, albeit first-person representation of what she can do. By Brawl, Zelda was shown having a sword in Twilight Princess and although she never used it in TP, maybe the developers wanted to toy with the idea of Zelda using a sword... Or if we go even further, would Metroid fans prefer it if Samus wasn't introduced until Smash 4 and Zelda fans prefer it if Zelda never made it in until Smash 5? Why further? Metroid: Other M as much as people want to rag on it have to acknowledge it's the first game we see Samus canonically fighting hand-to-hand and although not canon, Zelda's sword and Wind Waker movesets exist in Hyrule Warriors and they could easily pull moves from both sources.

The answer to them is all subjective, but I bet no will be the common answer. Why? Because major characters aren't in Smash. Zelda not making it into Smash is like Peach not making into Smash and Samus not making into Smash is like Link not making it into Smash. Imagine if it their appearances didn't happen until decades and after several games. People would be happy that Zelda finally made it into Smash in Smash 5, but when the likes of freaking Falco, Wolf, Diddy, Bowser Jr., and even though they're famous, Cloud, Snake, Sonic, and Ryu over the freaking princess Zelda? The princess and main character of Zelda next to Ganondorf and Link?

The other option is overhauling and for whatever reason outside of having to deal with the fact you have to overhaul a character, the developers haven't done it for any character. Not Bowser, not Pit, not Fox, not Mario, not Roy, not Sheik, not anyone. The changes they did to them were at most animation and attribute modifications like making Mario weaker, but faster, changing Bowser to move like in modern Mario games, or adjusting Pit's Special animations to fit his new gear. An overhaul of Zelda would be like turning her from a sad glass wall of a magic user to a glass cannon that would make Jigglypuff look heavy and Ryu and Ganondorf combined look like Sheik. An overhaul of Samus to a Prime and Other M Samus would be like turning her into Metal Gear Solid 3 & 4 Snake in terms of having grappling and CQC capabilities, but a lot projectiles and gadgets in general like the Links or Mega Man. Will it ever happen? Other fighting games don't usually overhaul their characters unless there's a major reason like Iori was a bit too good, so they used plot to "weaken" him - debatable since Claw Iori is a beast, but a different kind of beast - and Nash became much more different in Street Fighter V to stand out against from Guile despite story-wise, he was the original. Or how Jin and Nightmare diverged, but retain some moves to their origins, Heihachi and Kazuya for Jin and Siegfried for Nightmare. It costs money and a ton of time creating movesets. An overhaul can be 50% of the character changing, but that time would be better spent working on a new character, new stage, other content, etc. instead of working in an old character.

 

[Gunla]

Just when we thought we were out of the doldrums...

Can we just stop with all the trolling?

Just carry on and ignore it; it's the respectable thing to do.

Piggybacking to further add onto the this strange topic about Tekken and Smash and draw a close to it...

Tekken is a game made solely for competitive fighting. Smash is definitely not with all of the things we have gotten for the game, what modes exist, etc. Yes, some core mechanics are still intact, such as jumping, defensive play, and so on, but that doesn't mean they are that alike in the long run. Context is important; Both are complex and require very different thought processes. When I play Tekken, I usually approach it in a competitive aspect (despite being awful at 3D fighters) and the way you play is traditionally the same when it comes to the majority of the game. I appreciate the system it has because they pour basically everything into 1v1 and how it works in Tekken. Smash, on the other hand, has many different ways to play, and it is prepared for them; it's a testament to it's depth because the system is able to adapt to playing many variations on what is perceived as the norm.

In the end, both are deep games, but you can't really compare an apple to an orange in my eyes. One was made with multiple levels (and types) of play in mind while another is competitively oriented (with a single environment where everything takes that playing field into consideration). Also, really, the two are vastly different! There's no need to go and argue which one is deeper when the two are so wildly different that it's almost impossible to really do so.

 

[Radical Larry]

L LightLV There are a lot of fundamentally flawed things with character design, like how Ganondorf isn't fast at all compared to his Twilight Princess incarnation, or how Link can't sprint in this game unlike Skyward Sword, even Mewtwo being light when he should be the heaviest or second heaviest in the game. Sakurai doesn't intend to take from the characters' respective games in terms of attributes, but rather the attacks instead. If he did it for attributes, Meta Knight would be slower (which would be good), Ganondorf would probably be the 9th fastest character in the game and Link would be the 5th fastest in the game.

 

[Trifroze]

Second best DA probably goes to Fox... Pit's I know is pretty much a straight upgrade of Samus's, and there's plenty of similar DAs such as ZSS's, Falcon's, G&W's, and maybe Dorf's even which would contend.

Samus' dash attack is very different to Pit, ZSS, Falcon, G&W and Ganondorf. ZSS' dash attack is pretty bad actually since it has a huge amount of cooldown and doesn't do that much damage, it only works as a punish when you can't make it with anything else, or as a wonky way to cover landings. The big difference in Samus' dash attack compared to all the ones you listed is that it has very little cooldown, sends the opponent right above Samus, and moves Samus forward roughly one third of an FD length. It's really safe not just because of its frame data but because of its mobility, and it does 10/8% damage so there's more shieldstun. In fact, it has less endlag after the hitbox is out than either MK's or Fox's dash attacks which also move a shorter distance and do less damage.

I've gone so far as to say that Samus has the best dash attack in the game. Meta Knight can only be put #1 because of the death combo he gets from his, but he would also get it from Samus' dash attack while doing more damage and being safer. Samus' dash attack comes out on f10 compared to the common f7 dash attacks though, but this is only relevant when using it as a punish, and just slightly so.

 

[Ffamran]

Freaking Pac-Man has the lowest recovery for dash attack... And I don't know much about his dash attack other than basic data. Nu~ ?

 

[meleebrawler]

I kinda put that there to see what people would say, haha, I don't want to argue specific rankings too much but regardless Samus' dash attack is really good for a dash attack, and I think it might be the second best in the game. But either way it's good. It's hard to punish because it crosses up shields a really good distance without lagging as much as ZSS' or Yoshi's, for instance (pretty sure it's safe on several characters' shields). It has burst momentum, 8 active frames, and does 10 damage, but where it really shines in the damage department is its combo starting ability, with the ability to start 47+ damage combos at low percents and still combos well at higher percents, and I guess it kills pretty well, ~160ish on some characters if Samus is having trouble getting the kill. Anyway, I just kinda wanted to emphasize that it's really good.

Jeez, the Mewtwo comparisons keep pouring in!

His dash attack basically embodies the subtle differences in playstyle he has compared to Samus: not quite as fast or good at comboing, but has very effective disjointed range with relatively little lag. A HUGE step up from Melee.

Ooh this is where people get offended most, MU ratios, so I'll talk about a few. Rough estimates:
30:70 with Pikachu and MK (MK might be even worse, but it's stage dependent. Samus' worst MU though.)
40:60 with Sheik, Mario, Fox, Diddy, ZSS, and some other outliers.
50:50 with Rosa, Falcon, Ike, Yoshi, and most unlisted or unreferred to characters.
60:40 with Luigi, Ness, Peach, DK, and most slow or big characters who can't break Samus' zoning (which is quite a few).
This is just rough, off the top of my head, so don't take my word on it. Many better Samus players probably have better charts. Since this is a rough estimate I avoided multiple of 5 MU ratios, so some MUs are more slight (dis)advantages. My opinions on MUs change a lot, too. The important takeaway would be that Samus has some truly adantaged MUs because those characters have trouble breaking her zoning and therefore have trouble dishing more damage than they take.

Even the MU spread is similar!

Samus is only going to improve, and has been improving very fast. Back when Samus was considered bottom 3 or 5, which at the time she may have been, she had by far the fastest advancing meta of almost any character. People found her combos and tech chases, improved her midrange game (all three of which are literally what Samus IS now), up b OOS potential, SHAD stuff, ledge strategies, shield breaking strategies, 0-deaths, and basically just improved everything about Samus from where we thought there was very little. I can't watch videos of Samus gameplay from a couple months after release, it makes me sick because I can't imagine playing Samus like that. But it's crazy to think that at one point I DID play Samus that way, and it's really refreshing that Samus' meta is alive, and still is.

Samus mains find new stuff all the time, find which strategies are better... At one point Samus mains rarely held CS for over twenty seconds, didn't know ANY falling uair stuff, and thought jab and nair (lol) were totally useless. Samus' neutral has become far more grinding and frustrating for the opponent as of the last few months, helped by the patch. The most recent development would be her edge guard game, which is so much better than we thought at first. She's a great edge guarder.

At this point it's a matter of playing Samus optimally. Samus may have IMO, the most variety in gameplay of anyone because she has so many different tools, it's a matter of meshing these tools and finding which are best at which times. We have work to do on that. It's also a matter of fixing misinputs. It makes me so sad when I watch amazing players like Afro Smash, Depth, Johnny Westside, or Esam lose because of misinputs. Where it wouldn't affect other characters all that much, a simple accidental SH fair can mean the stock.

But yes, Samus will definitely improve.

And yes, Mewtwo's a great edgeguarder too, as well as having an awesome SHAD.

 

[Ffamran]

I've gone so far as to say that Samus has the best dash attack in the game. Meta Knight can only be put #1 because of the death combo he gets from his, but he would also get it from Samus' dash attack while doing more damage and being safer. Samus' dash attack comes out on f10 compared to the common f7 dash attacks though, but this is only relevant when using it as a punish, and just slightly so.

What I would love to know is what frame Samus moves during dash attack. Most dash attacks just have the character hitting at whatever frame and maybe moving forward at the same time like Ganondorf, but Ike, Little Mac, and Samus stand out as characters who move first and then attack. There's also Yoshi, but I don't remember if he launches forward or when he kicks, he suddenly lurches forward sort of like how ZSS knees, but because of jet heels playing a function, she rushes forward. People have to understand that Samus's dash attack doesn't work like other dash attacks; it, along with Ike, Little Mac, and Ganondorf's Wizard's Foot are move then hit attacks. Little Mac gets a pass since he hits high to low while Ike - even though he hits low to mid -, Ganondorf, and Samus hit straight on meaning they can dash pass you with a hitbox in front of them. Because of that, you can just use their dash attack like others and you can't say their dash attacks are bad because they don't work like other dash attacks. Then there's Link and Triple D having punish dash attacks in contrast to regular dash attacks like the likes of Fox, Mario, the Pits, etc.

 

[Skeeter Mania]

Samus' dash attack is very different to Pit, ZSS, Falcon, G&W and Ganondorf. ZSS' dash attack is pretty bad actually since it has a huge amount of cooldown and doesn't do that much damage, it only works as a punish when you can't make it with anything else, or as a wonky way to cover landings. The big difference in Samus' dash attack compared to all the ones you listed is that it has very little cooldown, sends the opponent right above Samus, and moves Samus forward roughly one third of an FD length. It's really safe not just because of its frame data but because of its mobility, and it does 10/8% damage so there's more shieldstun. In fact, it has less endlag after the hitbox is out than either MK's or Fox's dash attacks which also move a shorter distance and do less damage.

I've gone so far as to say that Samus has the best dash attack in the game. Meta Knight can only be put #1 because of the death combo he gets from his, but he would also get it from Samus' dash attack while doing more damage and being safer. Samus' dash attack comes out on f10 compared to the common f7 dash attacks though, but this is only relevant when using it as a punish, and just slightly so.

I remember the early days when people said Yoshi had one of the best dash attacks. Pretty sure those days are over.