Character Competitive Impressions

[Luco]

Their buffed recovery does make them slightly more usable but for the most part they still have enough cooldown that you should really only be using them for punishes and hard reads. So if you whiff them then it's not quite as bad but it probably only reduces your chances of getting hit by like... 1 in 3 or 4 times.

It's definitely an improvement but it's probably not a game changer in a major way. Still nice though.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I think all Marth needs is AC Nair back and maybe slight landing lag reductions (it's kinda silly Ike's landing lag is pretty much the same as Marth's). As much as I dreaded his Nair, I was legit sad at how neutered it was lol. Anything that makes my friend go back to Marth over Rosalina (blegh) would be welcome.

Lucina just needs a little bit more damage, a little bit more knockback growth, and a little less hitlag. Then she will be a viable alternative instead of a slight handicap.

Personally, I feel actually a really simple way to differentiate Marth and Lucina meaningfully is different throw properties, by for instance focusing the advantages of their grab games. Marth can keep throws that are better for putting people offstage, while Lucina probably would make more sense with throws that have better low percent followup potential.

How are we feeling about TETHER GRABS in smash 4? They seems to be heavily buffed in speed and recovery, so are TLink and Samus able to utilize grabs more reliably do we think? Hypothetical of course, since there aren't (afaik) top players championing them at tournaments yet.

I feel like having a tether grab is still mostly not preferable for characters, but more reasonable risk/reward from tether throws being punished less severely means tether characters with good movepools aren't blatantly crapped on. Means using them offensively to demand honesty from your opponent isn't totally bad.

I think having a tether grab mostly hurts Pac Man if anyone. While he's really hard to capitalize on, not having a good grab makes him considerably less scary offensively. TL and Link don't mind it quite as much due to getting Z-air, though Link wishes his actual throws were better. Samus probably by design cares more about her unreliable Jab than her tether grab when factoring how good Bombs and Z-air are. ZSS seems to be falling very slightly off the radar because we acknowledge tether grab prevents her offense from being completely broken, though her Z-air for some reason doesn't get talked about a lot even though it does have a very viable hitbox from what I've seen. Yoshi might be very slightly overrated because he's a tether grabber that doesn't get a Z-air, though he gets Egg Lay instead.

 

[YeahVeryeah]

I suggested on the Zard boards that perhaps Flare Blitz only has armor towards the beginning of the animation now but it's just a guess.

Nobody really knows what's going on.

to be fair, you're like 1/3 of the charizard board and i'm another 1/10th. with our mascot mia again we don't have anyone working on frame data it seems.

Are we sure Flare blitz didn't have late blitz vulnerability already? When I was spamming flare blitz early on, more often i noticed it felt more vulnerable near the end.

 

[Flamecircle]

Samus was mentioned, and I'd like to talk about her. Samus is a case of character that I really wanted to be good and good at, but failed.

Here are my impressions:
I have no problem with her B moves. All of them are pretty good. Down b is ehhh, but it works for spacing/neutral play.

Tilts are slow and unsafe. Jab is crap. Smashes are meh. I think on the ground she can kill with the utilt and the fsmash at best, and the Usmash if the enemy is tall enough.

Aerials are decent, but are nearly impossible to make work because of how high they are making them difficult to land, and how floaty she is making all of them unsafe.

So Zair, her best move in brawl, needs to redeem her. In a way, it does- She can shut down aerial approaches so well. Problem is, all it does is put the opponent back in neutral. If it did any damage it would be worth it, but It's particularly unrewarding, doing like 2%. So while it helps, it doesn't do much.

Overall I think she's probably one of the worst characters, as her only strengths are projectiles which lose out to any reflector character. Everything else is just... bad. Tall, floaty, flawed attacks all around.

Mii gunner feels basically better than her in every way minus the Zair.

Could be wrong though, if theres anything I'm wrong about please let me know.

 

[Luco]

Poor Samus, i've actually always wanted Zairs to be a big deal and an invaluable asset for characters who might otherwise be weaker. Imagine if Zairs had no landing lag and actually did some damage, or at least on some characters. That'd be hectic, I think.

In any case, what about her custom B moves? Can these make up for her (frankly speaking) weak kill power?

 

[NairWizard]

Samus' custom specials are amazing, and I think they make her a high tier character, at least on flat stages (she struggles a lot on Battlefield I think, but the missiles that home are very good there). If you haven't tried them out for yourself yet, I really suggest that you do so, because they are the kinds of customs that have to be seen and experienced (a youtube video will probably suffice, though). The slow charge shot (Dense Charge Shot, I believe standard 2) and slow missiles (Relentless Missiles? I believe standard 2 as well) combine very well: you can have 3 projectiles + charge shot on the screen at once, and then SAMUS flies at you on top of all of that with a huge-range z-air and a long-range grab. The missiles are homing misiles, so your opponent will be coerced into blocking--and that's when you GRAB, mwahahahahahaha. How deliciously SINISTER.

Up-b 3 (whatever it's called) kills quite early and functions kind of like Marth's up-b from Brawl--a great, quick option OOS that sends the opponent to the blastzone.

 

[IsmaR]

Z-airs are amazing, regardless of what shells they are compared to their Brawl counterparts. They're better used for punishing short hops and clipping large/tall characters. The key with Samus' in particular being that it's only one of many tools you should be actively using at the same time. Z-air > missile > Z-air (especially with customs) give you so much stage control that it hurts.

Alternatively, using it to either gimp or put people in a really bad position off stage. Returning from the stage (Z-airing just over the ledge) still gets decent results, however the way Z-airs work not means hitting any platform/surface while descending means your active attack animation will end preemptively, while still doing the "retracting" end lag.

Could be wrong though, if theres anything I'm wrong about please let me know.

Only wrong about everything.

But that's usual/par course for characters hardly anyone touches (especially since the demo) or that feel completely different than previous iterations.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

@ IsmaR , could you say some more about Samus? I find her kinda hard to wrap my head around. I'm getting a sense she's probably in the top 5 of "characters who will be really screwed if we decide to play a worse game and don't use custom moves" since she has some really fantastic options that would seem to open lots of gameplay doors for her, but even with that, I've never been a fan of her basic character design, and while my intuition tells me she's midish, I find it hard to talk about her strengths and weaknesses without feeling like I'm just making stuff up.

 

[A2ZOMG]

My personal opinion is if Samus's Jab properly linked, she would be high tier with a reliable tool to build damage and just generally hit people and force them into positions where they then have to deal with Samus's strong ranged pressure. I mean, you can argue that Samus suffers from being kinda very obviously reliant on a single move to make her punish game scary (Charge Shot), but that doesn't really change that Charge Shot covers a LOT of options and does LUDICROUS damage.

I mean yeah, customs are great and all for her, but the one thing that would REALLY bring this character up VERY NOTICEABLY would be a reliable Jab. I mean, it's a great move in terms of hitbox and speed, but the hitstun sucks until relatively high percents.

 

[sunset_raven]

I really don't get Samus. Wish I did because I truly like her as a character. Slow homing missiles just seem to make default missiles useless, but they have too much startup to begin with. Dense Charge Shot is a completely different monster than Charge Short. What I fear when picking Dense is losing a really solid KO option.

How would you go about reseting to neutral with her? I used to think that I could use upb1 as a gtfo move, but it doesn't seem reliable...

 

[DavemanCozy]

If Samus's jab wasn't punishable, it would be good, period.

Seriously, why is her jab punishable? Who decided that would be a good idea?

 

[Shaya]

Can't you jab 1 mix up ?

Like, don't do the second hit of jab??

Seems to me you start getting the second hit of jab as a response to them trying to avoid your jab1 mix ups (such as grab, dash attack, down tilt, jab1 again!, shield, forward roll; list goes on)

It seems practically the same as Zero Suit Samus' jab from Brawl. Watch videos of Salem and try to pay attention to what he does with her jab if you want to get a better idea (Jab1 -> forward roll is text book salem/god amazing)

 

[IsmaR]

F-tilt or even D-tilt are usually preferable in any given situation, either way.

I suppose the Spamus boards have been advocating recently for retreating Bomb > jab. But again, better for resetting/poking.

 

[KenMeister]

Just out of curiousity (and forgive if I wouldn't know, I didn't enjoy playing Samus in SSB4 either), but couldn't you jab cancel into a down tilt or something, or would that not realistically work? Like jab1>Dtilt?

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Can't you jab 1 mix up ?

For what it's worth, I've yet to see anybody pulling off jab 1 mix-ups nor have I been able to pull off one myself. Jab 2 mix-ups seem to work for some characters though. I know they work out very nicely for the space animals at the very least.

 

[Kofu]

Jab 1 has the same stupid property as Brawl where at low percents it lacks the hitstun to properly link into jab 2. AFAIK every character can shield or attack Samus from jab 1, at least on the ground. And at higher percents it starts to knock the foe too far away. Jab mixups shouldn't really work against a competent opponent for that reason.

EDIT: actually read Shaya's post now instead of just assuming I knew what it meant, and that's actually not a bad idea, at least once the opponent has some prior damage.

 

[popsofctown]

Having a bad jab combo is more of a death knell with the removal of crouch buffering as a way to cancel jabs. Now to do any attack other than jab two you have to wait an empty frame after jab1 completes (i believe), and then input your tilt, jab, smash, or grab. And if you time it wrong wait too many empty frames instead of just one you might not have enough frame advantage or frame parity to make your other option worthwhile.

I miss Brawl jab cancels giving me more control of my character.

 

[Flamecircle]

I know Samus' projectiles are good. I know the dense charge shot is great. But the issue is none of them are reliable because extremely quick reflectors exist. Charge Shots are punishable on reaction at most distances outside of pointblank DK punch range.

I don't think a character can function on projectile power alone in this game because of such hard counters, so I'm more fishing for someone to explain the merits of her A moves, most of which feel like bad versions of other characters A - moves. The Jab linking would probably would improve her game a ton, but regardless I feel she struggles.

 

[KenMeister]

As it is though, I see Samus being better than 64 and Brawl Samus (duh), but without her balanced moveset from Melee, where just about all of her moves had a purpose (rather than Samus ignoring 60% of her moves in 4 lol), she won't even be anywhere near mid tier. She's just way too over-reliant on her nerfed projectile game and specials (which is made worse with reflectors), and while her killing issues from Brawl were fixed, she can't even space well without getting punished by a simple shield or counter-attack (looking at you, jab, ftilt and dtilt) so she has, like no way of reacting to anyone in her face the way I see it, outside of a hard-read upB OoS I guess. Oh, and people complain about Mega Man having trouble with reflectors? At least he can space with Bair and fair, all of those problems people have mentioned with her poor aerial game (none of them are safe to approach with due to her floatiness and odd hitbox placement, rest in peace Melee/Brawl Nair) and inability to react to pressure means specials are almost ALWAYS going to be required to retaliate. It sucks. She's definitely in my top 10 for characters that need to patched in order to be viable.

 

[Conda]

Z-airs are amazing, regardless of what shells they are compared to their Brawl counterparts. They're better used for punishing short hops and clipping large/tall characters. The key with Samus' in particular being that it's only one of many tools you should be actively using at the same time. Z-air > missile > Z-air (especially with customs) give you so much stage control that it hurts.

Alternatively, using it to either gimp or put people in a really bad position off stage. Returning from the stage (Z-airing just over the ledge) still gets decent results, however the way Z-airs work not means hitting any platform/surface while descending means your active attack animation will end preemptively, while still doing the "retracting" end lag.

Only wrong about everything.

But that's usual/par course for characters hardly anyone touches (especially since the demo) or that feel completely different than previous iterations.

He was correct about flawed moves though. usmash, uair, fair, etc - these attacks will miss after the first couple hits for barely any reason, leaving you open to punishment. They are often unreliable even when you land them. She hasnt been fixed in ways most other characters have been when it comes to multi hut moves like these.

F-tilt or even D-tilt are usually preferable in any given situation, either way.

I suppose the Spamus boards have been advocating recently for retreating Bomb > jab. But again, better for resetting/poking.

The point of jabs often is, if you miss, you can put on some shield pressure since there are more hits coming. Any character that cannot use jabs effectively and has to use one hit tilts instead loses shield pressure in cqc and is much easier to punish.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Can't you jab 1 mix up ?

Like, don't do the second hit of jab??

Seems to me you start getting the second hit of jab as a response to them trying to avoid your jab1 mix ups (such as grab, dash attack, down tilt, jab1 again!, shield, forward roll; list goes on)

It seems practically the same as Zero Suit Samus' jab from Brawl. Watch videos of Salem and try to pay attention to what he does with her jab if you want to get a better idea (Jab1 -> forward roll is text book salem/god amazing)

The problem with Jab mixups is you need bombs to cover you at low percents, because you're at a big enough frame disadvantage to be punished on hit for just doing Jab 1.

It's only at higher percents when Jab 1 actually becomes really good for defensive space control, and that's when Samus imo becomes significantly harder to deal with. If Samus could use Jab reliably at all percents (keeping in mind it is easily one of the better ones in terms of both speed and range), her gameplan basically wouldn't have any real holes. I feel like the only really serious weakness the character has is unreliable close range options...and then maybe things like Reflectors to a smaller extent. Customs round out her punish options, but a reliable Jab would let Samus play on her terms way more often.

I mean, look at what getting a good Jab out of shield does for Yoshi, and he doesn't even have the same pressure options Samus does in midrange (he primarily benefits from better punishes and being really hard to get in on).

 

[Conda]

The problem with Jab mixups is you need bombs to cover you at low percents, because you're at a big enough frame disadvantage to be punished on hit for just doing Jab 1.

It's only at higher percents when Jab 1 actually becomes really good for defensive space control, and that's when Samus imo becomes significantly harder to deal with. If Samus could use Jab reliably at all percents (keeping in mind it is easily one of the better ones in terms of both speed and range), her gameplan basically wouldn't have any real holes. I feel like the only really serious weakness the character has is unreliable close range options...and then maybe things like Reflectors to a smaller extent. Customs round out her punish options, but a reliable Jab would let Samus play on her terms way more often.

I mean, look at what getting a good Jab out of shield does for Yoshi, and he doesn't even have the same pressure options Samus does in midrange (he primarily benefits from better punishes and being really hard to get in on).

I think uair and usmash whiffing halfway through is a big weakness too.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I think uair and usmash whiffing halfway through is a big weakness too.

Eh, I can mostly let that slide when Samus's Up-B is still really good.

Though a long time ago, I legitimately fixed Samus's Upsmash in a Brawl hack. **** was mad complicated, but I made it so that it would absolutely never whiff except in cases of SDI. I probably still have that file on my computer somewhere.

 

[Nysyr]

@chaos_Leader: lucario shouldn't get jack for losing aura because rage+aura is insane and toning it down a bit would still leave him in a really good spot. As long as he gets better while losing he will bee crazy. His normals have melee fighter reach and solid amounts of prio on tilts

Yeah.... No.

I don't think you quite get how nerfed his hitboxes are, nor how terrible he is without Aura scaling. And you couldn't be farther off on his priority.

Bad Lucarios will still get destroyed, all of his Kill moves make heavies like Ganon look fast in comparison.

 

[Terotrous]

Bad Lucarios will still get destroyed, all of his Kill moves make heavies like Ganon look fast in comparison.

Command grab?

 

[Nysyr]

Command grab?

The range is attrocious, and its still only a frame 9 grab. By no means fast given the conditions. This move makes rest look far reaching.

Ganon ftilt will kill before this ever does and has is about the same startup.

 

[Terotrous]

The range is attrocious, and its still only a frame 9 grab. By no means fast given the conditions. This move makes rest look far reaching.

It is substantially safer than rest though. If you whiff you still get a fairly decent attack.

Of course, by virtue of being a grab it also goes through shields, which never hurts.

 

[NairWizard]

chaos_Leader: lucario shouldn't get jack for losing aura because rage+aura is insane and toning it down a bit would still leave him in a really good spot. As long as he gets better while losing he will bee crazy. His normals have melee fighter reach and solid amounts of prio on tilts

Speaking of improper use of terminology, can we please stop referring to character priority as though it were an independent value? Unless smash 4 changed the priority system (it does seem to have at least nominally, because I notice more clashes than in the past, but fundamentally it seems to be the same), priority is just a function of damage. When a grounded attack deals more damage than another grounded attack by 9% or more, the first grounded attack wins the trade. Tilts don't even do 9% for the most part, so a tilt won't be beating out another tilt. Lucario doesn't have "good priority" unless his high-aura tilts are doing like 16% (which they aren't, I think, but I haven't used Lucario a whole lot so I don't know).

 

[Nysyr]

It is substantially safer than rest though. If you whiff you still get a fairly decent attack.

Of course, by virtue of being a grab it also goes through shields, which never hurts.

Its definitely not safe. Its slower than his fsmash in all aspects aside from the command grab and can whiff in between the grabbox and the projectile. It will often be stale too since this is his best spacing tool.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

****ing robin and levin sword of a million knockback. So mad at myself.

 

[Terotrous]

Speaking of improper use of terminology, can we please stop referring to character priority as though it were an independent value? Unless smash 4 changed the priority system (it does seem to have at least nominally, because I notice more clashes than in the past, but fundamentally it seems to be the same), priority is just a function of damage. When a grounded attack deals more damage than another grounded attack by 9% or more, the first grounded attack wins the trade. Tilts don't even do 9% for the most part, so a tilt won't be beating out another tilt. Lucario doesn't have "good priority" unless his high-aura tilts are doing like 16% (which they aren't, I think, but I haven't used Lucario a whole lot so I don't know).

I'm pretty sure when they say priority what they actually mean is disjointedness. Of course, a disjoint will be a non-disjoint, because the clash never even occurs.

 

[NairWizard]

I'm pretty sure when they say priority what they actually mean is disjointedness. Of course, a disjoint will be a non-disjoint, because the clash never even occurs.

Could also be attack speed, since a faster attack will beat a slower attack. This is probably where people get the idea of aerial priority too. "Oh, hey, my d-air beat this guy's up-air, my d-air must have more priority!" Or...it's just faster, y'know.

 

[Strider_123]

what do you guys think of pit?

 

[Terotrous]

Could also be attack speed, since a faster attack will beat a slower attack. This is probably where people get the idea of aerial priority too. "Oh, hey, my d-air beat this guy's up-air, my d-air must have more priority!" Or...it's just faster, y'know.

When you consider the move they're referring to it's fairly clear they mean disjointedness. Either way they're using the term incorrectly, but it's still generally possible to work out what they mean.

Whether or not it is true that Lucario's attacks are very favourable is another matter. I don't really think of his normals as being especially good in terms of spacing, it's just that his reward is so high when they land.

 

[Kinslayer]

Yeah.... No.

I don't think you quite get how nerfed his hitboxes are, nor how terrible he is without Aura scaling. And you couldn't be farther off on his priority.

Bad Lucarios will still get destroyed, all of his Kill moves make heavies like Ganon look fast in comparison.

The range is attrocious, and its still only a frame 9 grab. By no means fast given the conditions. This move makes rest look far reaching.

Ganon ftilt will kill before this ever does and has is about the same startup.

I'm looking at his tilts in the lab right now. His hitboxes are melee fighter range and his tilts aren't slow.

 

[Mr. Johan]

****ing robin and levin sword of a million knockback

Fair should never kill you until 140, and even then its from the air, Usmash should never kill you because of the hitbox, and Bair is a ***** to land right.

Can't provide a solid answer for Uair and Dsmash though. They're pretty tight.

Damage isn't quite as high as one would think though. Levin Fair only does 11% and Uair does 13. It's about average.

 

[popsofctown]

Pit made me quit Dedede. A guy kept shorthopping Pit nair and landing behind my shield, there's like almost nothing D3 can do against that sort of thing. Don't have a forward air, can't spotdodge a multihit, rolling is just a reset, damn it was ridiculous.

Pit seems ok in general. I think he probably is slightly worse at the niche filled by Sheik and Yoshi and etc, but has at least a somewhat different matchup spread from having a reflector probs so that's something. Characters like Sheik get better payoffs for doing the same things and kill a bit easier.

Dark Pit is better than Pit because a double "where's your goddess now?" after a kill basically forces your opponent to get pissed and charge into a shield grab, and you can follow that up with some other moves for a good starting combo on their second stock.

 

[Terotrous]

Pit made me quit Dedede. A guy kept shorthopping Pit nair and landing behind my shield, there's like almost nothing D3 can do against that sort of thing. Don't have a forward air, can't spotdodge a multihit, rolling is just a reset, damn it was ridiculous.

Reset the situation, spacing favours Dedede. You have to try to poke him with something before he gets that close.

 

[PK Gaming]

I don't think Pit is outright comparable to Sheik, Yoshi and the like.

For one, he's got long range disjoints, and he's more of a mid-range zoner. Down tilt and forward tilt control space very well, and jab is a solid close range punisher. He only suffers from a complete lack of aerial finishers, but all in all he's a very well rounded character.

Oh, and his spot-dodge/roll are spectacular.

 

[popsofctown]

Reset the situation, spacing favours Dedede. You have to try to poke him with something before he gets that close.

I am man enough to deem myself too weak a player to learn to "poke" effectively with D3's moveset, and that's why I quit the character.