Character Competitive Impressions

[Shaya]

This thread is all about comparisons.

Having read all your/others thoughts on him already plus whatever his experiences currently have led him towards, he's giving that information that people can actually agree/disagree with in a more holistic way.

 

[X3I]

Well, that's what I meant... There is no comparison in his post.
For exemple, why is Wario that high ? "Need no explainations", for sure...
He's just saying: "Ike is solid... So he's probably better than G&W." > That's not a comparison at all !

In the "CHARACTERS THAT ARE DEFINITELY BETTER" list, there is some positive match-ups for G&W.
Lucario is 7-3 (G&W is probably one of his worst match-up), Pikachu, Rosalina, Greninja, Sheik are imo 6-4...
Most of the others are even (Sonic, Wario, Yoshi...), Marth is 4-6 and Diddy/Wario may be 4-6 too, but that's all.

You really underestimate the character, because you don't even try to understand what's good on him. G&W has:
-One of the best edgeguard game (even/better than Pikachu) ;
-He's fast (godlike foxtrot <3) and small, so it's not an easy target.
-Has range and priorities (Ftilt and Bair closes a lot of match-ups) ;
-The best recovery, by far, allowing him to be very mobile even on stage ;
-Ans is NOT predictable (was one of his flaw in Brawl, but the gamestyle changed).

He's light, so mistakes are not allowed. That's probably why no one plays him, and why he seems weak.
But in good hands, he just have all the tools needed to control a game.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Its not a MU list or an in depth analysis. Its an overall impression of a characters state among the cast relative to G&W.

Hence the probably better and unsure categories.
He minimizes the amount of absolutes.

 

[X3I]

So, that impression is based on what ?
If it's not on the tools, it must be on the opponents you have faced... right ?

As I said, no one plays him. So your impressions are biased.

 

[Kofu]

Don't tell me that I don't know the character; I've used him more online than any other character except perhaps Villager. Though do elaborate on the Lucario matchup (Shaya can help too <3) because I'm not getting it at all. I probably just need to space better.

Anyway, I did specify that the "characters that are definitely better" list was not indicative of MUs that Game & Watch won or lost, but rather how they fared against the cast in general.

And I feel that it's hard to directly compare characters in Smash. For the most part each character has such unique attacks and attributes that it's hard to quantify one as strictly better than the other by those alone. You can make comparisons of empirical data, like run speed or fast fall speed and even in some cases like grab range. But for the most part it's impossible to compare the whole cast and say "this character's FAir is better than all these other characters.'" That works in individual MUs but not for the cast as a whole. And for the most part, I feel that the characteristics of the characters (lol) that I put above Game & Watch are simply more solid and effective than his.

Some of his weaknesses are the added lag on most of his aerials from Brawl; it makes what is the most potent part of his game a lot riskier. He's smaller and I feel as a side-effect of that his moves have slightly shorter range, another hit to his effectiveness. His ground game is better than Brawl between his dash attack, high-priority FTilt, DThrow, fast Jab, and well-spaced smashes, but he lacks quick, exceptionally long ground moves, something that I feel would be a great asset to his game. One of they few moveset comparisons that I feel can be quantified, at least a little, is projectiles, and Game & Watch's projectile is... not great. It's probably better in this game than Melee or Brawl but you definitely can't camp with it.

His recovery is great and his edgeguarding game is superb, but those things alone don't make a character. I believe Dedede also shares those attributes (back me up on this @ Smooth Criminal @Jabejazz ) but most people still don't consider him a great character. The comparison is a little flawed (Game & Watch's mobility and size helps him a lot, crouch is love) but you can't discount his lack of a flexible ground game. Honestly I dislike For Glory because Game & Watch simply doesn't do as well on stages without platforms.

I can add an explanation on Wario, not a problem. And as a side note, you'll notice I used the default icons for all characters except Wario. That's because Wario Ware Wario isn't the real Wario, I don't care what you think.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Lucario is 7-3 (G&W is probably one of his worst match-up), Pikachu, Rosalina, Greninja, Sheik are imo 6-4...
Most of the others are even (Sonic, Wario, Yoshi...), Marth is 4-6 and Diddy/Wario may be 4-6 too, but that's all.

Is that so?

 

[Smooth Criminal]

His recovery is great and his edgeguarding game is superb, but those things alone don't make a character. I believe Dedede also shares those attributes (back me up on this @ Smooth Criminal @Jabejazz ) but most people still don't consider him a great character. The comparison is a little flawed (Game & Watch's mobility and size helps him a lot, crouch is love) but you can't discount his lack of a flexible ground game. Honestly I dislike For Glory because Game & Watch simply doesn't do as well on stages without platforms.

I pretty much agree with @Jabejazz's blanket summation for D3 on the whole. To paraphrase, he more or less said that D3 suffers from a lacking neutral game. Sure, he's got a lot of great tools otherwise, but once you're up in his **** and you start overwhelming him, it's more or less over. He just can't compete with characters that can outbox/outfox him in close quarters. I believe D3 can keep people out very well by counterpoking and playing reactionary, but that's a whole other mess all together with its share of goods and a whole lot of bads.

So, yeah, D3 isn't that great, but at least he isn't completely helpless. He's a very polarizing character.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Nu~]

: The dot-muncher is another character that I have mixed feelings on. His ground game is solid but his air game is... a little lacking. Not bad, but not exceptional by any means. A lot of his attacks are somewhat unique and gimmicky, but that isn't necessarily bad (Game & Watch himself is a pretty gimmicky character). Bonus Fruit alone adds a lot of depth to his playstyle, not even getting into the bizarre customs for the move. One thing that might hold him back is that his specials can all be used against him in some way (or they leave him open to counterattacks).

Lacking Air game?
...What??
Pac-Man has one of the best air games in ssb4. All of his aerials have low landing lag, disjointed hitboxes, and they all link together extremely well.
With a nair with the rediculous priority and high knockback, a ridiculously fast fair that combos into itself, a uair that beats and out ranges almost all dair, and a bair with rediculous knockback, his air game is nothing short of superb. I'll give you his dair though, that move isn't very good.
However, that's what a hydrant is for. You can't juggle this man.
His hydrant can be blasted by sn opponent, but a smart pacman player can always use his hydrant to their advantage. Stage control for dayz, Mindgames, and you can punish the opponent fot trying to destroy your hydrant. The list of possibilities goes on. Side B only leaves him open if you spam it like a madman and use it as an approach. Otherwise, it's the perfect edgeguarding tool and kill move.
Now his up B is probably one of his best moves. It completely destroys a rush down character's momentum if you leave it on the stage (it even stops spin dash!)
It doesn't matter if someone can gimp it by jumping on it, since the side B already gives Pacman more than enough distance Pacman is arguably one of the best and most unique character in this game, and you're short-selling him. Now if only he had a better grab.,.

 

[SonicZeroX]

A new teleportation glitch has been found with Bowser Jr lol

 

[Kofu]

Lacking Air game?
...What??
Pac-Man has one of the best air games in ssb4. All of his aerials have low landing lag, disjointed hitboxes, and they all link together extremely well.
With a nair with the rediculous priority and high knockback, a ridiculously fast fair that combos into itself, a uair that beats and out ranges almost all dair, and a bair with rediculous knockback, his air game is nothing short of superb. I'll give you his dair though, that move isn't very good.
However, that's what a hydrant is for. You can't juggle this man.
His hydrant can be blasted by sn opponent, but a smart pacman player can always use his hydrant to their advantage. Stage control for dayz, Mindgames, and you can punish the opponent fot trying to destroy your hydrant. The list of possibilities goes on. Side B only leaves him open if you spam it like a madman and use it as an approach. Otherwise, it's the perfect edgeguarding tool and kill move.
Now his up B is probably one of his best moves. It completely destroys a rush down character's momentum if you leave it on the stage (it even stops spin dash!)
It doesn't matter if someone can gimp it by jumping on it, since the side B already gives Pacman more than enough distance Pacman is arguably one of the best and most unique character in this game, and you're short-selling him. Now if only he had a better grab.,.

I'll be honest, I wrote that up mainly from my own (limited) experience using Pac-Man and how I generally felt his aerials were pretty short-ranged (probably a side-effect of his body being so big). BAir's the only one that stood out to me. That, and most Pac-Man players I've faced haven't gone aerial against me much. Thinking about it, I don't believe I even know what his UAir and FAir look like!

Might change that in the future, lol. I'm still learning these newcomers.

 

[Ffamran]

A new teleportation glitch has been found with Bowser Jr lol

Do the Yoshi glitches still exist? 'Cause if they don't, then we found our new Yoshi.

 

[popsofctown]

Is Pac man's backair actually disjoint??

 

[TTTTTsd]

From being able to handle Dr. Mario on wiiU

- Recovery is still the same but mashing B on WiiU is a LOT better, trust me.
- Shorthop Fastfall UpAir after D-Throw is basically free damage and perfect neutral position if you shield, followups are really easy too.
- Blastzones being smaller is nice for Doc because he already killed really easy.
- Controlling him in general feels smoother

Yeah, I'm liking this a lot more.

 

[Nu~]

Is Pac man's backair actually disjoint??

It's more of the fact that his legs stretch really far when he uses it

From being able to handle Dr. Mario on wiiU

- Recovery is still the same but mashing B on WiiU is a LOT better, trust me.
- Shorthop Fastfall UpAir after D-Throw is basically free damage and perfect neutral position if you shield, followups are really easy too.
- Blastzones being smaller is nice for Doc because he already killed really easy.
- Controlling him in general feels smoother

Yeah, I'm liking this a lot more.

Thank goodness. The only complaint I had was how clunky he felt

 

[deepseadiva]

Pac-Man has one of the best air games in ssb4.

One day I'll search this thread for variations of "best ____ in the game" just too see how many EXAGGERATORS post in here.

 

[Flamecircle]

Blastzones are smaller? Explain, please.

 

[Conda]

Blastzones are smaller? Explain, please.

I don't believe they are, that's an error. VI vertically is removed which makes vertical kills happen sooner since you can't reduce vertical knockback anymore.

 

[LiteralGrill]

Okay, can we talk about Olimar again? The Pikmin AI seem to be a lot better. Having been playing on the Wii U since midnight release there's just something about him that has attracted me. If you really watch which Pikmin you have you can really set up good traps now and then and punish. A lot of times you can get decent grab combos too. Plus Solimar (no pikmin) can actually put up a halfway decent fight to be able to pluck more Pikmin. His F-Tilt has even KOd for me at some decent percents.

Does Olimar have some better chances now with decent Pikmin? I don't think he's crazy top tier or anything, but could he find a place higher then the bottom where I see him on everyone's list?

BTW I could have sworn when a Peach pulled a Mr. Saturn they brought it to me <3

 

[warriorman222]

Okay, can we talk about Olimar again? The Pikmin AI seem to be a lot better. Having been playing on the Wii U since midnight release there's just something about him that has attracted me. If you really watch which Pikmin you have you can really set up good traps now and then and punish. A lot of times you can get decent grab combos too. Plus Solimar (no pikmin) can actually put up a halfway decent fight to be able to pluck more Pikmin. His F-Tilt has even KOd for me at some decent percents.

Does Olimar have some better chances now with decent Pikmin? I don't think he's crazy top tier or anything, but could he find a place higher then the bottom where I see him on everyone's list?

BTW I could have sworn when a Peach pulled a Mr. Saturn they brought it to me <3

I agree. The main thing anchoring him in bottom tier on the 3DS was a constant lack of Pikmin. Turn too fast, and you end up with an empty Smash attack, and 3 pikmin right next to you that can now be hurt. You can't even call them if they fall off now, which is the stupidest nerf ever and on the 3DS version, would probably make him far worse than Brawldorf.

 

[Nu~]

One day I'll search this thread for variations of "best ____ in the game" just too see how many EXAGGERATORS post in here.

What was your purpose in quoting me anyway? Did you think your opinion held water over mine?
Every post on a character can be seen as an exaggeration based on perception.
...yeah

 

[ChronoPenguin]

If his Pikmin are reliable or well reliable enough he'll move in with others.

 

[Kofu]

Is there any character in the game without a good projectile who IS good in neutral? Serious question here. People talk all the time about "character X has a bad neutral game" (I'm guilty of this as well) but don't really give an example of one which a good one.

As a side note, what are the different "games" or "states" in Smash? We've got neutral, approaching, footies/poking, camping/turtling, zoning, resetting to neutral, punishing, edgeguarding, recovering, juggling, escaping from juggles...

Maybe defining some of these would.be good for standardizing discussion.

 

[deepseadiva]

Every post on a character be seen as an exaggeration based on perception?

Kinda. There's a difference between impressions and factual statements like "Pacman has one of the best airgames".

Like do you really think his aerials beat out all if not most of the following characters?:



I didn't mean to particularly point you out, but the constant hyperbole in this thread is tiresome.

 

[deepseadiva]

Is there any character in the game without a good projectile who IS good in neutral? Serious question here. People talk all the time about "character X has a bad neutral game" (I'm guilty of this as well) but don't really give an example of one which a good one.

As a side note, what are the different "games" or "states" in Smash? We've got neutral, approaching, footies/poking, camping/turtling, zoning, resetting to neutral, punishing, edgeguarding, recovering, juggling, escaping from juggles...

Maybe defining some of these would.be good for standardizing discussion.

This is something I've been thinking about as well. I've simplified three different scenarios.

"Neutral" aka both characters are at a far distance.

"Zoning" aka both characters are closer, capable of landing dash attacks, fairs, etc.

"Footsies" aka both characters are inside and can jab and grab etc.

I think Smash is a repeated cycle of weaving in and out of these three basic scenarios until we reach the ledge. From the ledge and past that we have the opposite roles of defending the hill, and recovering.

At neutral, the characters with projectiles have a distinct advantage. They can make hits at these distances (some better than others), and if their opponent has a worse projectiles, or has no projectile, they create an incentive to approach.

When zoning, the character with the faster, larger hitbox is going to likely win. This scenario is exciting and challenging when both characters have opportunities to hit each other, and this is when "the punish" happens. Someone makes a mistake, the other capitalizes. The reward for this punish varies of course; some characters can get a juggle, or combo, others only a little hit, at best certain characters can take a stock.

Footsies is then probably the quickest interations that happen in this game. Once inside each other, the characters have to choose between jabs, grabs, shields, and dodges. Characters with great jabs love this situation, while other - more campy based characters fear this entirely.

Projectiles do play a major role in this game simply because characters both begin at a starting distance. They immediately have an advantage to build damage, and they create the incentive to approach. Being able to cause the opponent to act is HUGE.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Is there any character in the game without a good projectile who IS good in neutral? Serious question here. People talk all the time about "character X has a bad neutral game" (I'm guilty of this as well) but don't really give an example of one which a good one.

As a side note, what are the different "games" or "states" in Smash? We've got neutral, approaching, footies/poking, camping/turtling, zoning, resetting to neutral, punishing, edgeguarding, recovering, juggling, escaping from juggles...

Maybe defining some of these would.be good for standardizing discussion.

Sonic has by far one of the best neutral games in this game. Virtually everyone that lacks a very extremely safe and quick projectile is forced to play very conservatively against him due to the options he has to completely ignore midrange.

Bowser is technically very strong in neutral in that he has a lot of options that need to be respected. Just his size is a very massive disadvantage against projectiles and in the negative state.

Falco also is very strong in neutral in spite of nerfs to lasers making them impractical to use outside of very long distance or for followups.

Good neutral is easy to define. How much nonsense does your opponent have to respect before attacking you, and how much can you get away with unpunished? And then after that, how much reward do you get for just landing random hits? Neutral is largely pretty homogonized in this game, meaning the emphasis on reward in neutral is actually pretty significant in this game, but the above examples are characters that are defined very clearly by strong non-projectile oriented neutral games.

 

[TTTTTsd]

No I'm pretty darn sure the blastzones on the WiiU version are a bit smaller, on specific stages.

Did some testing.

Doc Fsmash(With Doc at 0%) kills yoshi on Battlefield at the edge on WiiU with Yoshi at 76%.
On 3DS, it knocks him into the blastzone or around there but does not kill.

I am POSITIVE they are smaller. Unless you get Fresh bonus in training or there's some sort of damage deviance? I still feel like you kill earlier in WiiU, regardless of vectoring or not, but it could be placebo, could not be, maybe? No idea.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Kinda. There's a difference between impressions and factual statements like "Pacman has one of the best airgames".

Like do you really think his aerials beat out all if not most of the following characters?:



I didn't mean to particularly point you out, but the constant hyperbole in this thread is tiresome.

I wouldn't be surprised if anyone (including Pacman) beats ZSS' aerials. They aren't nearly as ridiculous as they were in brawl in terms of speed and coverage.

 

[Radical Larry]

I feel Link is still a high tier character, maybe around Mid to Lower A Tier.

His ground and air game are solid and balanced with each other, his Zoning game is great, Footsies is decent and his Neutral is among the best. His grab game is among the more decent ones, landing in solid combos, such as the D-Throw > B-Air > B-Air, or his D-Throw > SH B-Air > SH F-Air. His combo game is great as well, and his U-Air is a great Upward Zoning, since it has a glorious disjointed hitbox (the third biggest, after Dedede's F-Smash and his [Link's] Dash). The U-Air's duration is also good for U-Air > Fast-Fall on air dodging characters, for if an opponent air dodges, they will get hit (tested on Ganondorf, Donkey Kong and Samus). His recovery, while it was once one of the worst in Brawl, is now one of the best in this game.

In summary:
-Great Zoning
-Decent Footsies
-Amazing Neutral
-Decent Grab Game
-Good Combo Game, Great Combo Game against Heavyweights
-Decent Juggling
-Great Recovery
-Amazing KO abilities

From what I've experienced as well:

7:3
8:2
6:4
7:3
4:6
5:5
5:5
6:4
7:3
5:5

The reason I feel he has very favoring Match-ups on Bowser, Donkey Kong, Little Mac and Charizard, are because he can quite easily out-range them. He can also combo them because they all have heavy weight against them, and not the range to help them out of Link's combos and juggles.

With Rosalina and Dedede, he has slightly favorable matchups, but with Rosalina, before the patch, I wasn't so sure. If Link gets rid of Luma (of which he's very capable of doing), he will be able to target Rosalina very easily, as his attacks all come out faster and end faster than Rosalina. Sure, he might not have his projectiles to help, since Rosalina has Gravitational Pull, but Link still has the range against Rosalina.

With Link and Dedede, they're very close, but Link favors this as he can safely knock the Gordo back to King Dedede. As well, due to Dedede's large weight and again, Link out-ranging him in most attacks. However, Dedede does win Footsies and Zoning game, but his Neutral is beaten by Link.

For Doc, Diddy and Marth, they are quite even with Link, with Marth having great Footsies with Link, as well as equal Zoning, but no favorable Neutral or Spacing against Link. With Doc, he render's Link's projectiles useless, but Link has great Footsies and Zoning against Doc. With Diddy Kong, Diddy lacks out-ranging Link, as well as Neutral and Spacing, but Diddy Kong can get in on Link with grabs and Side-B; the one thing, however, Diddy players need to avoid off the edge, is recovering, because an accurate Link player can either stage-spike or meteor Diddy.

With Mario, Mario can trump him in almost every corner, giving a soft counter against Link. It's only minor advantages against Link that Mario can win against him with.

Of course, I can't explain what Link can/can't do altogether, but I feel he's really amazing in this game, and doesn't belong in lower tiers this time.

 

[HeavyLobster]

No I'm pretty darn sure the blastzones on the WiiU version are a bit smaller, on specific stages.

Did some testing.

Doc Fsmash(With Doc at 0%) kills yoshi on Battlefield at the edge on WiiU with Yoshi at 76%.
On 3DS, it knocks him into the blastzone or around there but does not kill.

I am POSITIVE they are smaller. Unless you get Fresh bonus in training or there's some sort of damage deviance? I still feel like you kill earlier in WiiU, regardless of vectoring or not, but it could be placebo, could not be, maybe? No idea.

Just tested that on 3DS, and I can kill Yoshi at 76% if Doc is right on top of him. Apparently there's a sweetspot on his F-Smash that can do that, as F-Smash doesn't kill if there's a bit of space. So I guess the blastzone for BF is the same.

 

[TTTTTsd]

Doc has a sweetspot on his FSmash? That's....new. I honestly had no idea, that's pretty fascinating.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

7:3
8:2
6:4
7:3
4:6
5:5
5:5
6:4
7:3
5:5

wat

 

[Kofu]

Doc has a sweetspot on his FSmash? That's....new. I honestly had no idea, that's pretty fascinating.

Mario does too, or at least he did in Brawl. IIRC the sweetspot (the elemental area) does less damage but more knockback.

 

[NairWizard]

I feel Link is still a high tier character, maybe around Mid to Lower A Tier.

His ground and air game are solid and balanced with each other, his Zoning game is great, Footsies is decent and his Neutral is among the best. His grab game is among the more decent ones, landing in solid combos, such as the D-Throw > B-Air > B-Air, or his D-Throw > SH B-Air > SH F-Air. His combo game is great as well, and his U-Air is a great Upward Zoning, since it has a glorious disjointed hitbox (the third biggest, after Dedede's F-Smash and his [Link's] Dash). The U-Air's duration is also good for U-Air > Fast-Fall on air dodging characters, for if an opponent air dodges, they will get hit (tested on Ganondorf, Donkey Kong and Samus). His recovery, while it was once one of the worst in Brawl, is now one of the best in this game.

In summary:
-Great Zoning
-Decent Footsies
-Amazing Neutral
-Decent Grab Game
-Good Combo Game, Great Combo Game against Heavyweights
-Decent Juggling
-Great Recovery
-Amazing KO abilities

From what I've experienced as well:

7:3
8:2
6:4
7:3
4:6
5:5
5:5
6:4
7:3
5:5

The reason I feel he has very favoring Match-ups on Bowser, Donkey Kong, Little Mac and Charizard, are because he can quite easily out-range them. He can also combo them because they all have heavy weight against them, and not the range to help them out of Link's combos and juggles.

With Rosalina and Dedede, he has slightly favorable matchups, but with Rosalina, before the patch, I wasn't so sure. If Link gets rid of Luma (of which he's very capable of doing), he will be able to target Rosalina very easily, as his attacks all come out faster and end faster than Rosalina. Sure, he might not have his projectiles to help, since Rosalina has Gravitational Pull, but Link still has the range against Rosalina.

With Link and Dedede, they're very close, but Link favors this as he can safely knock the Gordo back to King Dedede. As well, due to Dedede's large weight and again, Link out-ranging him in most attacks. However, Dedede does win Footsies and Zoning game, but his Neutral is beaten by Link.

For Doc, Diddy and Marth, they are quite even with Link, with Marth having great Footsies with Link, as well as equal Zoning, but no favorable Neutral or Spacing against Link. With Doc, he render's Link's projectiles useless, but Link has great Footsies and Zoning against Doc. With Diddy Kong, Diddy lacks out-ranging Link, as well as Neutral and Spacing, but Diddy Kong can get in on Link with grabs and Side-B; the one thing, however, Diddy players need to avoid off the edge, is recovering, because an accurate Link player can either stage-spike or meteor Diddy.

With Mario, Mario can trump him in almost every corner, giving a soft counter against Link. It's only minor advantages against Link that Mario can win against him with.

Of course, I can't explain what Link can/can't do altogether, but I feel he's really amazing in this game, and doesn't belong in lower tiers this time.

You can't stagespike Diddy easily as Link *at all*. Link doesn't have the aerial mobility to get around side-b and angled up-bs. How in the world does Mario beat Link but Diddy doesn't? Diddy is basically a better version of Mario. Even his hat is better.

 

[meleebrawler]

Doc has a sweetspot on his FSmash? That's....new. I honestly had no idea, that's pretty fascinating.

In Melee, Mario's Fsmash was stronger further away, as opposed
to Doc's which was stronger when closer to the enemy.
I imagine that would be true here too.

 

[Luco]

Is there any character in the game without a good projectile who IS good in neutral? Serious question here. People talk all the time about "character X has a bad neutral game" (I'm guilty of this as well) but don't really give an example of one which a good one.

As a side note, what are the different "games" or "states" in Smash? We've got neutral, approaching, footies/poking, camping/turtling, zoning, resetting to neutral, punishing, edgeguarding, recovering, juggling, escaping from juggles...

Maybe defining some of these would.be good for standardizing discussion.

This is something i've thought about. Whilst using most of these terms as seperate ideas that go between the borders of how I view the game, I thought it might be nice to clarify those borders.

The way I see the game is in roughly 3 major states - onstage, aerial and offstage and its within these 3 major states of gameplay that all the action happens - Juggling, edge-guarding, camping, etc.... In my ground game especially however, I have 3 sub-states which I simply refer to as long-range (basically two characters at starting/far positions), mid-range (Ness' PK Fire distance or so ) and close range (where both characters can hit each other). In my ground game I also include SH aerials and such because they're used for grounded opponents and whatnot.

At long-range, campy characters tend to have the advantage against non-reflector (and the like) opponents. This doesn't last very long in most games because it becomes apparent to one of the two parties that approaching is necessary. This is probably rhe closest I would consider to being 'neutral'. Mid-range is where all the spacing happens. Characters will try to chuck out moves that are potentially safe on block whilst trying to get a little bit of damage on the other person. Depending on how mid-range is played, some characters will push other characters away to the edge of the stage (cause they're scary and stuff ) and have stage control which gives them a slight advantage even at this range. Close range is within range of most everything, though generally moves like rest require a whole new level of 'get in your face' to be applicable. Here, some really strange stuff can happen from both characters even at high levels of play. Grabs are very important in the close-range game because people are trying to bait and punish attacks the most at this point. To be totally honest, i'm not quite sure what defines a good close-range game aside from good OoS options and good grabs. Some characters with lingering hitboxes seem to enjoy being at close-range, others such as sheik seem to be able to play it as if it was mid range and they were spacing except now they're in your face... it's a complicated state of gameplay I think, sometimes really funny things can happen where both players will sit in shield for 3 seconds straight or whatever.

Aerial game often occurs when one character is juggling another, though if both characters just prefer to FH + aerial and this becomes their main method of playing then the aerial game can happen this way as well. This refers to on-stage aerial gameplay rather than off-stage gameplay, the main difference between them being that in offstage aerial gameplay, one or both characters have an agenda whilst fighting which is to get back onstage. This is most often where we look at what aerials outrange others, how characters avoid being juggled and which others are proficient at juggling, etc. I feel like one of the big differences between aerial and offstage games are that in aerial games, specials are used rarely in comparison to standard aerial attacks.

Offstage game is similar to the aerial game but tends to be where more specials are used, and not just because of upB. Characters with gimmicks against other characters that can lead to a stock will try to use these specials a bit more to take advantage of fragile recoveries (my own comes to mind here, even though I consider there ways to avoid these setups. Characters such as G&W, Rosaluma and Villager enjoy taking away the bolt and leaving me to die X3) and some characters will sit onstage and use projectiles to affect the recoveries of chars offstage. When discussing the viability of characters, it becomes necessary to split this category up into 'the characters that can edge-guard well' and 'the characters that can avoid being edge-guarded well'. The distinction here is obvious and I won't go into it, but generally characters that I perceive as being "good" offstage are generally characters who are at least decent at both.

So yeah, that's basically for the most part how I tend to look at the game haha. When I look at match-ups and overall character viability, my first instinct is usually to try and fit it within the framework of these states of gameplay.

Oh and btw I never found out what 'footsies' meant, i've never heard the term before this game. To me I always assumed it was an in-and-out style of play similar to how most characters space to create pressure but it looks like I was totally wrong.

 

[NairWizard]

I think of this game in 3 stages: advantage, disadvantage, and neutral.

In neutral, I am trying to get to advantage.
In advantage, I am trying to maintain my advantage.
In disadvantage, I am trying to get back to neutral.

If my opponent is in the air, off the stage, or just has far less of the stage to his back than I do to mine, I am in advantage. Being in advantage means I can make bolder plays, because the risk:reward is in my favor.
If I'm in the air, off the stage, or just have far less of the stage to my back than my opponent does to his, I am in disadvantage. Being in disadvantage means I have to make more cautious plays until I can get back in neutral. Sometimes making a bold play in disadvantage will allow me to sweep straight from disadvantage to advantage, but that's rare.

If neither of the above is true, then we're in neutral, and I'm playing footsies with my opponent (projectiles + pokes, trying to get at least one hit in so that I can get in the advantage state).

Different characters handle the states differently, and different positions are meant to be handled differently (offstage vs. onstage), but the general principle of smash and fighting games is always the above. If you are in advantage, press your advantage. If you are in disadvantage, try to reset the situation. If you are in neutral, try to get to advantage.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

6:4
7:3
5:5

lol

 

[The Real Gamer]

Anyone who thinks Zard gets juggled easily just because he's a heavyweight has clearly never played the MU before... or eaten 30% from a Rock Smash.

 

[Clemente]

What are your all opinions on Diddy Kong? He seems incredibly powerful and with these other nerfs, not much that can stand up to him.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Anyone who thinks Zard gets juggled easily just because he's a heavyweight has clearly never played the MU before... or eaten 30% from a Rock Smash.

Or we're Ike and can hit Charizard outside of his Rock Smash range with Uair/Aether. : D

Just pretend the super armour doesn't exist, but at least we can still tack on damage