Character Competitive Impressions

[ParanoidDrone]

what is smooth lander?

Equipment can have the Smooth Lander prefix, which reduces landing lag of aerials by 2/3. The game provides a Smooth Lander Attack Badge (+36 A/-35 D) as a reward for unlocking all customs, so there's a new push to have it standardized since it's feasible for everyone to have it.

Personally I don't see the point, especially this early in the game where it comes off as trying to force a Melee-esque meta more than anything else.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

lol the people who are saying rage reward u for playing worse are freaking cray cray.
if that person has managed to survive at high percents. enough so to 2 stock someone else. all that means is that you suck at killing ur opponent. bowsers moves dont become any more safe and shield stun does not become longer. rage is just a comback mechanic that rewards adaption. and help every character quite equaly.
but ness and lucario
and sonic lol.

 

[Nabbitnator]

Equipment can have the Smooth Lander prefix, which reduces landing lag of aerials by 2/3. The game provides a Smooth Lander Attack Badge (+36 A/-35 D) as a reward for unlocking all customs, so there's a new push to have it standardized since it's feasible for everyone to have it.

Personally I don't see the point, especially this early in the game where it comes off as trying to force a Melee-esque meta more than anything else.

I guess I should unlock all the customs for now then. I need to see this for myself. thank you for explaining this to me.

 

[Big O]

I guess I've grown to become ambivalent about rage over time. At first I hated it because of the way I played naturally, people were living to 130+% all the time against me and killing me with random kill throws/smash attacks boosted by rage. Then after hearing people describe it as a snowball mechanic, I realized that it could go both ways.

Instead of thinking about it rewarding you for being bad or playing poorly, it is more accurate to say that it rewards you for surviving. I just needed to adapt and factor in rage into my decision making. I also realized that I probably noticed when the opponent KO'd me earlier due to rage more often than when I KO'd them earlier due to rage.

In theory, it helps to equalize the playing field for the slower heavyweights who traditionally struggle in competitive smash. They tend to live longer and KO opponents earlier in contrast to the more nimble fighters who don't live as long and need more damage to KO.

In practice, it probably doesn't work quite as nicely since survivability and KO %'s can vary drastically due to insane recovery options also boosting survivability and gimp/edgeguarding potential also affecting KO %'s. The more nimble characters tend to be better at those sorts of things so it's hard to say how much heavyweights are really benefiting from rage. I think a better understanding of rage as a whole is important to discussing its effect on the game.

Since rage seems to be a flat % boost to all knockback, it scales best with high base knockback moves. The difference in KO %'s between moves with high base kb and low kb growth due to rage is pretty large. The difference in KO %'s between moves with low base kb and high kb growth due to rage are much smaller in comparison.

As far as rage's effect on combos, a safe thing to say would be that combos start and end at earlier %'s based on how much rage you have. Because of this there are combos that might not be possible anymore with rage, and there are also some combos that are only possible with rage. This is probably easiest to illustrate with jabs.

Rage allows some characters to combo with jabs much earlier than normal. Characters with jabs that suck at linking until higher %'s like Samus can work much earlier (also becoming safer much earlier too) as a result. Jabs that don't combo into anything until mid-high %'s can combo into stuff even at 0% as a result of rage. Even jabs with fixed kb get boosted by rage, possibly allowing for greater frame advantages on hit.

I feel like rage needs to be explored more before writing it off completely. Perhaps the game would be better without it, but since it is already in the game it is probably better to just learn to use/abuse/deal with it.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I feel like rage needs to be explored more before writing it off completely. Perhaps the game would be better without it, but since it is already in the game it is probably better to just learn to use/abuse/deal with it.

Basically this. It's all well and good to debate the merits of rage vs. no rage, but in the short term at least we need to put our big boy pants on and deal with it.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

How is the crowd in this thread feeling about Smooth Lander being welcomed into the competitive ruleset? If we can achieve neutral stats, hypothetically (but somewhat realistically) speaking.

rediculous this will mess with balance way to much. 0 to death was a thing with peach before. with smooth lander expect everybody to be pulling some really stupid stuff.
besides the random nature of of what smooth lader can be equiped by some or another plus trying trying to get equalizing and equipable by that certain character seem almost impossible. its no very realistic at all.
Plus i really doubt we will ever have strong balance when we continue to use tools that the dev team is not balancing for.
sorry but i have a strong gut feeling that mii's and custom moves wont ever be tweaked by the dev team. so custom moves is already pushing it.

 

[Nabbitnator]

I would assume that we would have to go through which character would actually need the equipment while other don't. If x character does well without the tool then x character will not use it.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

I would assume that we would have to go through which character would actually need the equipment while other don't. If x character does well without the tool then x character will not use it.

thats a cop out though we cant just have flip flop rules like that. its in or its out.
thats like saying since ness has a glitch in wuhu island that insta kills. we dont have it just banned for when ness is playing we ban it in general.

 

[KlefkiHolder]

My main beef with rage is that if you're in a last stock, last stock situation where both are you are at a decent percent level, you lower your own survivability by lowering theirs (dealing damage).

Idk, that just feels like a bit of rubber band mechanic. Early on in the meta, M2K said that it needlessly keeps games close and I agree 100%.

That said, I don't mind rage. I'm okay with it staying, but if I had to choose I'd get rid of it.

 

[Jabejazz]

Game isn't balanced around whether said piece of equipment is equipped or not. There are a lot of potential side effects to this.

I'd go without, I don't think it's needed, not this early, at least.

 

[Chuva]

How is the crowd in this thread feeling about Smooth Lander being welcomed into the competitive ruleset? If we can achieve neutral stats, hypothetically (but somewhat realistically) speaking.

Risk vs Reward exists for a reason and seems mostly fine in this game, so why remove smart decision-making? Why must we sacrifice fighting game fundamentals in place of reduced commitment rushdown?

If I'm playing Doc and I want to attempt an earlier K.O with his F-air, I should be aware that whiffing it means I'm vulnerable and I'm open for punishes. That's the whole point of the move. We've been praising how balanced the cast seems so far and I'm pretty sure the current values of landing lag has a part in such perceived balance.

Totally against it.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

im glad people are perceiving the potential and very real issues with smooth lander.

 

[Thinkaman]

It blows my mind that people seem to think that doing a late aerial into the ground should be a relatively safe action.

If they were demanding more liberal auto-cancel windows, I could at least follow the logic.

 

[A2ZOMG]

How is the crowd in this thread feeling about Smooth Lander being welcomed into the competitive ruleset? If we can achieve neutral stats, hypothetically (but somewhat realistically) speaking.

Bad idea. The competitive game should be balanced around default stats. I would much prefer the game developers simply deciding they universally want less landing lag on everyone, rather than an arbitrary piece of equipment for that purpose.

I guess I've grown to become ambivalent about rage over time. At first I hated it because of the way I played naturally, people were living to 130+% all the time against me and killing me with random kill throws/smash attacks boosted by rage. Then after hearing people describe it as a snowball mechanic, I realized that it could go both ways.

Instead of thinking about it rewarding you for being bad or playing poorly, it is more accurate to say that it rewards you for surviving. I just needed to adapt and factor in rage into my decision making. I also realized that I probably noticed when the opponent KO'd me earlier due to rage more often than when I KO'd them earlier due to rage.

In theory, it helps to equalize the playing field for the slower heavyweights who traditionally struggle in competitive smash. They tend to live longer and KO opponents earlier in contrast to the more nimble fighters who don't live as long and need more damage to KO.

In practice, it probably doesn't work quite as nicely since survivability and KO %'s can vary drastically due to insane recovery options also boosting survivability and gimp/edgeguarding potential also affecting KO %'s. The more nimble characters tend to be better at those sorts of things so it's hard to say how much heavyweights are really benefiting from rage. I think a better understanding of rage as a whole is important to discussing its effect on the game.

Since rage seems to be a flat % boost to all knockback, it scales best with high base knockback moves. The difference in KO %'s between moves with high base kb and low kb growth due to rage is pretty large. The difference in KO %'s between moves with low base kb and high kb growth due to rage are much smaller in comparison.

As far as rage's effect on combos, a safe thing to say would be that combos start and end at earlier %'s based on how much rage you have. Because of this there are combos that might not be possible anymore with rage, and there are also some combos that are only possible with rage. This is probably easiest to illustrate with jabs.

Rage allows some characters to combo with jabs much earlier than normal. Characters with jabs that suck at linking until higher %'s like Samus can work much earlier (also becoming safer much earlier too) as a result. Jabs that don't combo into anything until mid-high %'s can combo into stuff even at 0% as a result of rage. Even jabs with fixed kb get boosted by rage, possibly allowing for greater frame advantages on hit.

I feel like rage needs to be explored more before writing it off completely. Perhaps the game would be better without it, but since it is already in the game it is probably better to just learn to use/abuse/deal with it.

Rage is like 1/4 the reason why Ganondorf is a legitimate threat in this game. Half of it is universal damage nerfs to everyone else. The remaining 1/4 is ledge and shieldstun mechanics and minor buffs.

But seriously, without rage, Ganondorf would be considerably less scary, when you consider how much Ganondorf dislikes stale moves.

 

[Thinkaman]

when you consider how much Ganondorf dislikes stale moves.

Whoa I totally disagree on this. Ganon probably benefits more from Stale Moves as a system than anyone.

Not only does he kill with few hits and his kill move damages all outscale the stale moves curve, but Ganon more than any other character except maybe DDD suffer most the the hands of certain fast, repetitive moves or projectiles. Stales moves' primary purpose is to mitigate the negative effect of abusive moves, which Ganon is on the receiving end of frequently.

Also, this is sort of recapping the first point, but Ganon's hard-read playstyle means that he actually uses a wide variety of moves. Uair probably isn't fresh, but nair, wizkick, f-tilt, and jab are as likely to be fresh as they are not. F-smash loves stales moves.

Edit: I have always beleieved that the character hindered most by stale moves is Jigglypuff. (She fights with a constrained aerial moveset that is very hard to kill with when not fresh.) This is less true in this game, since bair can kill quite well and her ground game seems a little better, plus Rest. However, she's still my default guess for biggest stale moves loser.

 

[HeroMystic]

How is the crowd in this thread feeling about Smooth Lander being welcomed into the competitive ruleset? If we can achieve neutral stats, hypothetically (but somewhat realistically) speaking.

I already placed my two cents about Smooth Lander, but I'll make a short reiteration by saying until we say the game is unworthy as a competitive fighter, we should allow the game to play as it is without complication.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Whoa I totally disagree on this. Ganon probably benefits more from Stale Moves as a system than anyone.

Not only does he kill with few hits and his kill move damages all outscale the stale moves curve, but Ganon more than any other character except maybe DDD suffer most the the hands of certain fast, repetitive moves or projectiles. Stales moves' primary purpose is to mitigate the negative effect of abusive moves, which Ganon is on the receiving end of frequently.

Also, this is sort of recapping the first point, but Ganon's hard-read playstyle means that he actually uses a wide variety of moves. Uair probably isn't fresh, but nair, wizkick, f-tilt, and jab are as likely to be fresh as they are not. F-smash loves stales moves.

Edit: I have always beleieved that the character hindered most by stale moves is Jigglypuff. (She fights with a constrained aerial moveset that is very hard to kill with when not fresh.) This is less true in this game, since bair can kill quite well and her ground game seems a little better, plus Rest. However, she's still my default guess for biggest stale moves loser.

What? im sure didy kong is the biggest stale move loser witb up air. *troll face*

 

[Thinkaman]

What about Sonic? There's a bug where all of his moves stale separately, even though they are the same.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

What about Sonic? There's a bug where all of his moves stale separately, even though they are the same.

sorry i dont understand. like he down b and attack than down b jump and land then attack and there both seperate stales?

 

[Thinkaman]

Sonic has all these moves where he curls up into a ball and hits you, but they stale differently. Clearly a bug.

I suggest he be removed; safest option.

 

[MuraRengan]

Disclaimer because my experience with the game so far has been 100% online, but the rage mechanic seems to be incredibly detrimental to characters who lack moves/setups. Of course, there's always an element of player skill in actually securing a kill, but on the other end of the spectrum, there is also always an element of skill in terms of not getting killed. The meta has never been one where being a good player meant being equally good at all aspects of the game (think of Azen in Melee, who could read his opponents incredibly well, but was lacking in the ability to combo or improvise).

That said, rage seems to give a pretty arbitrary reward to players who are good at surviving. This is problematic only where chance comes into play, where players with a below average offense have that ability boosted by their defensive ability. The two should have nothing to do with each other. I had a game just yesterday where I was marth against a link, and he was camping me with projectiles, but when he went in for a kill I was able to predict every setup and dodge it accordingly. Still, I could find no way to mount an offense against him. Eventually I was at 208% and he was at 40%, but he screwed up one time and got tipper fsmashed in the middle of the stage and died for it. I don't attribute that to being a better player, I was simply playing the waiting game and abusing my rage. Now you might say that waiting for him to make a mistake is a good play, but that is true regardless of whether or not I have an attack boost. It's a good play whether I have rage or not, and the rage itself just seems like an unwarranted steroid.
Like I said, rage is a problem only where chance comes into play. If it were the case that every player understood the game formulaically and could execute commands in the same way, then rage wouldn't be a problem because every skirmish would be 100% calculated. But irl people don't play like that (and it irks me that people try to talk about the meta as if this is actually how real-time goes). A lot of time what people call reads are actually guesses, playing the odds and whatnot. It takes time for players to learn their opponent's habits, and that time is always spent in real-time battle skirmishes. The rage mechanic makes learning your opponent the #1 priority, because if you don't know how to kill them or what they're going to do to try to stay alive, they're going to start hitting you harder for it. And this is particularly concerning in big vs small matchups like sheik vs ganon, where the sheik has the advantage in terms of speed and movement options, but the advantage she gets from being able to nickel-and-dime her heavy opponent will be cut down for no particular reason other than the fact that her moves don't kill before rage %.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Sonic has all these moves where he curls up into a ball and hits you, but they stale differently. Clearly a bug.

I suggest he be removed; safest option.

oh just caught on lol gud one

 

[ChronoPenguin]

If you had to order/group these characters based on your current thoughts.
Where you put .

 

[Shaya]

As I originally said, rage + kill throws is my issue.
I've come to mostly accept the mechanic as a coolish idea to the game. I think in the long run, rage is the mechanic which is going to decide who's the best player in tournament time and time again (and although people aren't perfectly versed in it, WiiU tournaments and videos galore showing how often a high percent player can take a stock first).

As already mentioned, rage scales with base knockback solely (or primarily?). Moves with high base knockback tend to be smash attacks, while safer kill moves like aerials usually start low but scale hard. Smash attacks are risks for just about every character to use, in my mind I think if I've gotten an opponent to like 140-150% and they hit me with a smash attack and I die at 90%, I kinda deserved it. There really is very few smash attacks in this game that anyone can use in neutral or as solid game plan, it's down to hard reads or large mess ups by the opponent (this is all player vs player still). Lucario is bogus here, we all know; but at the very least his recovery landing is so much worse now that one of his weaknesses in brawl (recovering) was no longer removed due to the new ledge mechanics (he still has to choose to recover high, or if he gets trumped needs to use his up-b anyway). Character with killing tilts/aerials are usually going to be killing you at similar percent anyway.

Now let's look at what else usually has high base knockback: Throws.
Most throws start at high base knockback, so they're always combo-able, and usually scale slowly so they stay relevant for damage/set ups for elongated periods.
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, smash attacks are risks/gambles on every character, and in the you're at a low-ish percent and they're at a fair kill percent range, your game plan (in every other smash game thus far) would be to just play a safe neutral game and wait for a kill opportunity to present itself. Why are players forced to do this? Because of Shield. When a player is at a high percent they're relying on shield a lot because they cannot die if they don't get hit and when people's "safe" kill moves are aerials or certain tilts, they can be variably telegraphed in those things, making shield even stronger. This dual state usually works kinda well in the risk/reward sense; shielding is safe but you aren't attacking your opponent/building damage yourself, shielding is good but you can just go for safe poke moves assuming shield.

With rage + kill throws, risk reward is blown out the window completely. While you're playing as you're meant to (knowing the opponent's going to shield a lot waiting for a mistake to come in to finish the stock) and tacking on extra percent, you're actually losing while applying damage. The person shielding and sometimes getting poked through has not a single change to their risk/reward pattern as the percent rises, actually all they're doing is making their high base knockback 7 frame OoS option (likely the fastest most characters have, and there's also the 8 frame dash grab which nearly all power shields punishments can get on nearly all moves; oh and grabs beat shields) even more dangerous, and when you can die to back throw (or dthrow uair; diddy's high bkb on the uair is stupid) at 90% at centre stage when they're at 120%-ish, there's just... no words I can use to describe how stupid that is.

tl;dr
characters who can rely on throws to take stocks / win > the higher their percent, the more likely they are to use shield to keep safe > the more likely they're able to find a [dash] grab opportunity that beats shields and will take the opponent's stock at half the percent you're currently sitting at

Conversely their throws are strong enough to revenge kill at 0%. Take the first stock against Diddy/Sonic/Ness and they're able to reset easily if you're at 110%+.
You cannot force kills on those characters, you likely took a large risk to finish them off before rage got in the way. Risk/Reward for those three characters is so completely over the top due to rage mechanics that I kinda don't want to play singles in this game at anything large/major.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Disclaimer because my experience with the game so far has been 100% online, but the rage mechanic seems to be incredibly detrimental to characters who lack moves/setups. Of course, there's always an element of player skill in actually securing a kill, but on the other end of the spectrum, there is also always an element of skill in terms of not getting killed. The meta has never been one where being a good player meant being equally good at all aspects of the game (think of Azen in Melee, who could read his opponents incredibly well, but was lacking in the ability to combo or improvise).

That said, rage seems to give a pretty arbitrary reward to players who are good at surviving. This is problematic only where chance comes into play, where players with a below average offense have that ability boosted by their defensive ability. The two should have nothing to do with each other. I had a game just yesterday where I was marth against a link, and he was camping me with projectiles, but when he went in for a kill I was able to predict every setup and dodge it accordingly. Still, I could find no way to mount an offense against him. Eventually I was at 208% and he was at 40%, but he screwed up one time and got tipper fsmashed in the middle of the stage and died for it. I don't attribute that to being a better player, I was simply playing the waiting game and abusing my rage. Now you might say that waiting for him to make a mistake is a good play, but that is true regardless of whether or not I have an attack boost. It's a good play whether I have rage or not, and the rage itself just seems like an unwarranted steroid.
Like I said, rage is a problem only where chance comes into play. If it were the case that every player understood the game formulaically and could execute commands in the same way, then rage wouldn't be a problem because every skirmish would be 100% calculated. But irl people don't play like that (and it irks me that people try to talk about the meta as if this is actually how real-time goes). A lot of time what people call reads are actually guesses, playing the odds and whatnot. It takes time for players to learn their opponent's habits, and that time is always spent in real-time battle skirmishes. The rage mechanic makes learning your opponent the #1 priority, because if you don't know how to kill them or what they're going to do to try to stay alive, they're going to start hitting you harder for it. And this is particularly concerning in big vs small matchups like sheik vs ganon, where the sheik has the advantage in terms of speed and movement options, but the advantage she gets from being able to nickel-and-dime her heavy opponent will be cut down for no particular reason other than the fact that her moves don't kill before rage %.

to be fair marth tippered f smash kills at 60 percent without rage.

 

[TTTTTsd]

Well @ Shaya if you think that's bad wait till they bring back Mewtwo's throws from Melee

That's gonna be funny

 

[Shaya]

Eh, there's more than just those three characters with good grab games. But those three characters have the best neutrals (or close to) in the game to cushion themselves.

Right now I believe there's close to no merit in learning any other character than Diddy/Ness/Sonic, or if you want to be anti-meta, Rosalina, or Pikachu. And it's all because of how disgusting the risk/reward skews in those characters favour, and in others case their ability to ignore/negate a lot of it.

I spent a lot of hours last night/today going through tournament streams, all the theory is already being backed up by results (I'm officially flying off to the USA again! Gotta study hard). We're dealing with similar skews in risk/reward to Ice Climbers in Brawl and that's very very distressing. Customs are looking like the only chance to save this game's "balanced" integrity that I'm near 100% certain is going to be blown completely out of the water at Apex 2015 at this rate.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Seriously, these three characters abuse rage in a way that makes the game look uncompetitive.

I am a broken Record.
Shield/Smash Monado.
A) Shield will increase the % they need.
B) If you're going to die anyways then Smash loses it's con, but if they're rage % then Smash can clean them up. In other words, whoever gets the read wins. That and Shulks own Backthrow given Rage, in Smash.

Also Charizard and Robs up throw of please go @ 100%. Given Gyro/Lasers also give Rob stage control to make that a reality.

Im going to put this up again because no one answered me and im not testing it.
Will Megamans leaf shield prevent/Cancel a grab?

 

[NairWizard]

Well, everyone knows how I feel about kill throws. From my first post on this forum:

ZSS is overrated; I predict that she'll eventually fall to the bottom half of the high tier characters. Paralyzer/B-reverse paralyzer is great, and spaced n-airs are great, but everything else isn't really that impressive. She does have a strong dash attack, but it can be punished and relatively it isn't that great because everyone in this game was given a strong dash and a strong jab. Characters like Pikachu and Peach can actually *kill* with their dash attacks, which ZSS really wishes that she could do, because her kill power is one of her biggest problems. The side-b no longer kills, d-smash doesn't link into instant death any more, up-b can be punished extremely hard and smaller characters can pop out of it if they get hit while high up, b-air goes over smaller characters entirely and is difficult to land anyway. F-smash is surprisingly good: it can be punished because it's two hits, but it has great strength and startup speed. Her other viable option is grab to up-air, but landing ZSS' grab can be very difficult.

Which is another issue! The character's main weakness from Brawl has been mitigated (tether grabs are better; her other options are better) but not removed--she still has that long grab animation, making grabs very high-risk, low-reward for her in general. Shield beats most of her low-risk options easily; she can condition her opponent into shielding and then start to grab, but once she starts to grab, her opponent can just counter-condition and punish those whiffed grabs very hard.

It's kind of unfortunate that otherwise good characters like Pacman and ZSS are stuck with bad grab animations (Pacman's in particular is egregiously unfortunate, because he has big gloves and didn't even need to have a long grab). I'd support both for top tier if their grab animations were normal. (some others like Palutena suffer from unnaturally slow grab animations too, without even having tether grabs--really bizarre)

The characters in this game who will end up being at the top of the tier list are those who can net kills most easily while being good in other areas such as speed/spacing. Because of the Rage effect and how long stocks tend to last in this game, closing a stock gap often involves taking significant damage, so edgeguarding and/or landing easy kills/confirms is critical.

Kill throws are very important too, since shield is strong in this game. The best way to rip off stocks is to have a kill throw because your opponent can't just shield your smashes if you can grab and kill at high %.

Diddy Kong is a very strong contender for top tier because his kill options are ridiculous.

d-throw to u-air is very potent--you can vector, but you will get hit by a frame trap most of the time--and u-air kills very early (his dash grab has a little less range I think than it had in Brawl, but it's very quick, and his ground speed is good as always). At higher percents, Diddy's b-throw and f-throw can kill at the edge too. If he can't kill with his regular throws, monkey flip also kills--an aerial command grab that kills and starts from a distance away is amazing, and it can even be smash-attacked to give it extra range and strength.

His f-smash and f-air have surprisingly enormous range, and his up-smash and up-tilt (!) actually kill in this game, so this character has no shortage of non-grab kill options. Bananas are awesome for setting up kills, too, and if you use the Battering Banana opponents actually get launched *up* when landing on a banana, which makes landing an up-air or f-air easy. The nerf to airdodge makes all of this even better because if you airdodge any of these moves, Diddy is just going to fastfall f-smash you with that range (or u-smash/u-tilt for mixup), or side-b if you're far enough away.

Lucario is another obvious contender for top tier. He kills way too early once he gets to a higher percent (80 to 120). Not much to say about him: almost every single move he has can kill at some percent. Even Extremespeed.

Rosalina kills fairly early with that f-smash and up-smash with Luma, but she's top tier for other reasons instead--namely that range and all those hitboxes (there are 4 on her d-smash). Still, she might struggle against characters like Sonic who can rush her down, because she's 1) very tall, 2) very floaty, and 3) very light, not a great combination. I believe her b-throw can kill, though (lots of strong b-throws in this game).

Sheik is great, but does have some issues killing, and I think that might cut her from the very top of the list over time (or maybe not: it depends on how her matchups look). Confident use of bouncing fish (e.g., f-throw to bouncing fish) and great edgeguarding are the hallmarks of a top Sheik, because that's the best way to net kills. You can also use Vanish as a mixup to secure a kill. Up-air can kill too. So there are options. Whether or not that's enough, time will tell.

PIkachu might be a surprise top tier--his edgeguarding is pretty much the best in the game. That multi-hit bair is incredible for edgeguarding now that airdodge has been nerfed, and up-air/f-air/n-air is as good as always. When a character is on the ledge you can run off and rising b-air back to the stage to cover the get-up; up-tilt and up-air will cover the ledge jump option. Thunder is now a ridiculously good spike option offstage. Outside of edgeguarding, fastfall f-air to pretty much anything can also net kills. Only thing is that Pikachu's throws aren't that great for killing iirc; if he had a good kill throw he'd be top tier for sure.

Sonic is looking to be pretty top tier. His b-throw kills even earlier than Lucario's until like 150% (when Lucario becomes a beast), and he's fast enough to get the grab most of the time. His f-smash doesn't have a whole lot of lag either, and his edgeguarding is great because of that semi-invincible up-b (you can d-air off stage and still make it back). Combined with the rest of his game, his kill potential probably makes him top 5.

Ness is really good. That b-throw kills *so* early, and it's paired with one of the fastest dash grabs in the game (though Ness' general ground mobility isn't that great). Aerials are amazing too; probably the best aerials in the game (n-air out of shield is awesome, f-air has tons of range, up-air has a HUGE MASSIVE HITBOX HOW DOES NESS' HEAD GET THAT BIG OMG WHAT THE HECK?). Ness' recovery makes me a little reserved about him, though, because Rosalina just eats it up, Dark Pit/Pit can reflector it, etc.

I think Yoshi and Greninja are worse than the above because of fewer reliable kill options (though Greninja up-smash is amazing), though they've got tools for pretty much every situation, so time will tell.

tl;dr:
-ZSS is overrated.
-Early KOs are important due to Rage; top tiers will be defined by their KO potential
-Diddy, Ness, and Sonic are great because of their kill throws
-Pikachu has the best edgeguarding in the game, and will be a surprise top tier

man it feels good to be right

 

[Shaya]

I am a broken Record.
Shield/Smash Monado.
A) Shield will increase the % they need.
B) If you're going to die anyways then Smash loses it's con, but if they're rage % then Smash can clean them up. In other words, whoever gets the read wins. That and Shulks own Backthrow given Rage, in Smash.

Also Charizard and Robs up throw of please go @ 100%. Given Gyro/Lasers also give Rob stage control to make that a reality.

Im going to put this up again because no one answered me and im not testing it.
Will Megamans leaf shield prevent/Cancel a grab?

Shulk for anti-meta. Good. Shame I don't think he holds a flame to either of those 3 in neutral though.

Charizard and ROB's kits don't revolve around giving them free grabs, they don't have great OoS options and are heavily susceptible to juggles and harsh shield pressure.

 

[Luco]

I had this discussion with my brother last night, and I remember mentioning that I certainly did feel better looking for grabs for my kills as opposed to smashes, tilts or even aerials.

I like the diversity that a kill throw can bring, in a sense, though you'd expect some kind of drawback is required. Ness in return dies stupidly early to some characters that will outright negate his recovery (@Villyness (V) and @Kofu were 2 people I played in close succession recently and Villager and G&W respectively killed me with more off-stage windboxes/pockets than I thought I would die to), so in a sense he has some polarising MUs. It's up to you to argue how severely this affects him in return and whether it's a fair investment (in all honesty it's probably not; because only some characters can really abuse this and the other half of the roster just has to put up with it).

Diddy can be like that to a lesser extent, though generally can be potentially gimped by anyone (sans a few).

Sonic, probably not.

I'll be fair though, since i've always been one to defend Ness' recovery, i'll say that kill throws + going against a character that doesn't really gimp him is probably going to = a good/decent MU, and you could argue that's... pretty overpowered, I suppose.

 

[TTTTTsd]

I'm not going to discourage anyone from learning any character right now. We're 2 months into a game with already active patching so I think people need to like, chill. Oh and try and develop counter-play, not like that's impossible.

I don't know about anyone else but saying it's only worth it to learn X character is partially insulting to the work I've put in attempting to play a character that feels right to me. Especially 2 months into a game with confirmed patches.

 

[Shaya]

I'm not going to discourage anyone from learning any character right now. We're 2 months into a game with already active patching so I think people need to like, chill. Oh and try and develop counter-play, not like that's impossible.

I don't know about anyone else but saying it's only worth it to learn X character is partially insulting to the work I've put in attempting to play a character that feels right to me. Especially 2 months into a game with confirmed patches.

Yeah, patches are great, but time is of the essence.
Apex 2015 in 2 months time is looking to be a two to three character affair, with MANY MANY MANY top level (brawl) players I'm aware of dropping their characters for Diddy Kong, with growing numbers of people picking up Sonic.

The mentality transition is necessary sure. I think we need to adapt to this idea that you have to finish off those characters by 100%. But I don't think many characters are capable of doing such a thing while still having neutrals that can actually go remotely even with the Diddy or Sonic.

 

[TTTTTsd]

Then the best course of action isn't to just wait around and let it happen then, is it? I know CT Zero (despite wanting to ban Diddy lol) is already going through the motion of attempting to find strats, what should stop anyone else from trying to?

The last thing I advise anyone to do is lie down and let it happen. But hey, could let it stagnate!

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Then the best course of action isn't to just wait around and let it happen then, is it? I know CT Zero (despite wanting to ban Diddy lol) is already going through the motion of attempting to find strats, what should stop anyone else from trying to?

The last thing I advise anyone to do is lie down and let it happen. But hey, could let it stagnate!

He mis-spoke and then said he's starting to feel confident with Fox against diddy.
tl;dr: practice your match ups.

 

[TTTTTsd]

He mis-spoke and then said he's starting to feel confident with Fox against diddy.
tl;dr: practice your match ups.

This is exactly what I'm going to say. You could take the easy way out and, hey, pick Diddy!

Or you could buckle down, learn, and counter-play. If this behavior is not inherently encouraged who the **** is gonna do it, especially if they're new here and stumble into this thread?

 

[saltybeach]

Risk vs Reward exists for a reason and seems mostly fine in this game, so why remove smart decision-making? Why must we sacrifice fighting game fundamentals in place of reduced commitment rushdown?

If I'm playing Doc and I want to attempt an earlier K.O with his F-air, I should be aware that whiffing it means I'm vulnerable and I'm open for punishes. That's the whole point of the move. We've been praising how balanced the cast seems so far and I'm pretty sure the current values of landing lag has a part in such perceived balance.

Totally against it.

I have to disagree on this. Most of what you said can be said about brawl.

NOT saying smash 4 is going to be brawl. Some of the high-level matches I have seen have been very fun to watch, while others have been slow and boring. Six months from now, when the meta is more developed, we will truly find out which side of the scale smash 4 will be on. At which time, if things are doing poorly, people might suggest smooth lander as a new way to play.

The thing is, you can't just "try" that out after six months. Even if it catches on the community will be divided on it, and it just won't work(or if it does it will fracture the community which we know from experience causes a lot of problems).

The only time we have to test something like smooth lander is right now. In the game's infancy.

Once again, this game isn't necessarily going to be brawl, but the idea that it COULD turn into it scares me. I would rather we experiment with customs/smooth lander right now and find out if those options are real possibilities.

 

[NairWizard]

Good, let there be more and more and more Diddy. Let tournament players use so much Diddy that I can't possibly mess up the matchup as Pikachu because I've practiced it so many times. He isn't Meta Knight; his options aren't numerically superior to my options. With enough practice, all but the best Diddys will be trivial to edgeguard and defeat.

 

[TTTTTsd]

Good, let there be more and more and more Diddy. Let tournament players use so much Diddy that I can't possibly mess up the matchup as Pikachu because I've practiced it so many times. He isn't Meta Knight; his options aren't numerically superior to my options. With enough practice, all but the best Diddys will be trivial to edgeguard and defeat.

This is something else I believe in.

He's not Meta Knight, if he saturates the meta long enough he's going to get a legitimate large amount of counter-strats dedicated DIRECTLY to him (not just Pikachu, for the record!) This happens in traditional 2D fighters a lot too.

Or people are going to be lazy and disappoint me. I believe more in the former.

But quite frankly a statement that equates to "If you don't play these 3 characters you're wasting your time" is just inherently bothersome to me but also incredibly discouraging and disappointing to hear.

 

[ChampKing]

Does the Smash competitive scene always make such sweeping judgments about the game's meta while it is in infancy? Seems like a bunch of overreacting to me.