Character Competitive Impressions

[ChronoPenguin]

Shulk can't use Nair off-stage generally because of its high frame count. Excluding back slash its probably the least safe option he has off stage except for maybe counter.

Fair is satisfactory and I don't think there's anything outside of a projectile that outranges his back air...maybe aura Lucario force palm. Also note Fair is frame 14 some characters can deal with it (puff and pit for instance)

 

[NairWizard]

Shulk can't use Nair off-stage generally because of its high frame count. Excluding back slash its probably the least safe option he has off stage except for maybe counter.

Fair is satisfactory and I don't think there's anything outside of a projectile that outranges his back air...maybe aura Lucario force palm.

Offstage Power Vision is legitimate, though.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

sniff dk getting no love xd.
lol does not matter hes been placing well at tournys.
love watching that green machine at work. gotta love dk will for his preformances.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Power vision is viable everywhere. Move is bloated on power I'm half surprised it wasn't nerfed. You shouldn't scare essentially everyone on the cast at the threat of early death like that. K.O punch is less obnoxious.
Your at 40% I made a prediction you die? Its kind of dumb, especially given the practicality of counters and the probability of success. The Risk/Reward is heavily in his favor half the time. Even worse given you can process it off a projectile and slide to them on stage. Only Luc/Greninja have similar nonsense but you seemingly can't block vision.

 

[NairWizard]

sniff dk getting no love xd.
lol does not matter hes been placing well at tournys.
love watching that green machine at work. gotta love dk will for his preformances.

Every time I watch Will I feel like I'm watching Ganon, where he's making reads but isn't doing anything that would make me go, "DK is really strong!" I kind of want to see Will use DK's customs, though; there's so much potential there, especially on Battlefield with that up-b (I guess people would just ban Battlefield against DK).

 

[Terotrous]

-I'm posting about Pikachu because I want to stress that he's very good. It has nothing to do with the tier list. I've been posting about him since the invitational.

Perhaps, but I think when most of us are posting about characters it's because we think they're underrated or there's something people don't know about them. Most of us have been posting about characters since before the tier list, too, it kind of just re-energized it.

I don't think that he has problems with killing. f-smash is disjointed and reads are hard to punish (his smashes all have quick recoveries). Up-smash is as good as it ever was. Dash attack now kills, albeit at high percents. Thunder kills, you just have to make it hit Pikachu's body. f-air is often a kill confirm.

I've generally found FSmash to be somewhat lacklustre as a kill move, mostly because of the sweetspot. If spaced perfectly, sure, it's pretty strong, but it has pretty weak kill power if not aimed perfectly and it's also a lot more punishable at those ranges (since less damage = less shield stun = less safe). Of course, any time you miss the sweetspot you're also staling it and that makes it harder to kill with it next time.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, he's the same character except for a few things:
1) Quick Attack now hits you and hurts, so it's a good approach that isn't reactable
2) Better offstage game, if you can believe it
3) Ice Climbers, Olimar, and Meta Knight are essentially gone, and Diddy Kong has lost his double transcendant bananas, which is huge, as they all had unique mechanics that shut Pikachu down in various ways (MK was OK though, in fairness).

Sure, all of this is true. I think Pika's neutral is actually quite strong, at least except against people with big disjoints.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Bold statement: Mario theoretically benefits from rage more than most characters. That is, if he ever actually lives long enough to take advantage of it.

Mario is not super light, but he's still an easily killed character mostly because his options to escape juggles and edgeguards are really REALLY bad. But when you actually don't get gimped, you can do things like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBXLYm4xCOA&t=2m40s

I can't tell if that's partly the result of bad DI, so someone can correct me there. Anyhow, even though Sheik is a lightweight, the simple fact that Mario actually might be able to directly KO with something like B-air is a massive gamechanger, rather than be always forced into making hard reads with Smashes and gimps.

ALSO when you have rage as Mario, this almost certainly makes your combos at 0% more reliable, meaning when you have a stock lead and get a grab, you have a much better chance of snowballing into a decisive lead.

So yeah. tl;dr Mario NEEDS Gust Cape. And Rage is mostly a good mechanic, because it does actually have the potential to balance out unfavorable matchups.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Every time I watch Will I feel like I'm watching Ganon, where he's making reads but isn't doing anything that would make me go, "DK is really strong!" I kind of want to see Will use DK's customs, though; there's so much potential there, especially on Battlefield with that up-b (I guess people would just ban Battlefield against DK).

considering that battlefield is already in dks favour most of the time yeah lol.
but yeah i mostly love watching characters that capitalize on other mistakes. basically every heavy. so there is some bais there but some thing just clicks with me when these suposed un threating characters come out and do some work. ryugas ike pre patch was also very exciting.
theres slmething just so brain numbing about watching diddys.
rosalina i grew to appreciate after i figured out the mu.

sniff also the no ganon love.

 

[NairWizard]

Perhaps, but I think when most of us are posting about characters it's because we think they're underrated or there's something people don't know about them. Most of us have been posting about characters since before the tier list, too, it kind of just re-energized it.



I've generally found FSmash to be somewhat lacklustre as a kill move, mostly because of the sweetspot. If spaced perfectly, sure, it's pretty strong, but it has pretty weak kill power if not aimed perfectly and it's also a lot more punishable at those ranges (since less damage = less shield stun = less safe). Of course, any time you miss the sweetspot you're also staling it and that makes it harder to kill with it next time.



Sure, all of this is true. I think Pika's neutral is actually quite strong, at least except against people with big disjoints.

Well, I mean more that we're discussing how this particular tier list underrates a character, rather than that a character is underrated in general with explanations. But that was only the trend for a page or so so we're probably past that now.

Also, knockback staling isn't as strong in this game as in Brawl I believe. I may be mistaken but that's been my general observation.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Well, I mean more that we're discussing how this particular tier list underrates a character, rather than that a character is underrated in general with explanations. But that was only the trend for a page or so so we're probably past that now.

Also, knockback staling isn't as strong in this game as in Brawl I believe. I may be mistaken but that's been my general observation.

I'd say the real reason it feels that way is most likely due to Rage counterbalancing it. In terms of what I've actually seen though, I have found enough instances of Mario failing KOs repeatedly due to stale moves in this game when he goes for U-smash too early, still is in a good position to set up a juggle, and fails again to KO with U-smash. Stale moves most likely is probably about the same, just Rage also makes KOing easier.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Doesn't shock cape have high base knock back?
Regular cape doesn't have anything to it's name compares to customs but shock is still a disjointed kill move.

 

[Locke 06]

Bold statement: Mario theoretically benefits from rage more than most characters. And Rage is mostly a good mechanic, because it does actually have the potential to balance out unfavorable matchups.

Gonna go out and say it. Why don't you wait until the current discussion on pikachu /DK is over before changing the topic? (Also, I find it funny that the discussion has been focused on Pikachu because Solid Sense talked about how unfocused the discussion was and mentioned his character. Well played)

Also, "Rage is mostly a good mechanic because it helps Mario in this way" is basically what you just said.


On topic of DK, Will is a monster that I've dealt with during a long online friendly set. Showed me his potential, but DK suffers from the same problems he always has. He's a middle character that a few people have played really well, but I'm curious to see how his shield breaking game evolves to see if it boosts him up a little more.

 

[NairWizard]

To maybe shift the topic away from Pikachu, how would you guys balance largeness in general?

It seems like a big frame kills the viability of otherwise good characters like Bowser, Charizard, and DK. What would you give them to balance their games against small characters with combos? They already have Rage working in their favor in this game, they've always killed super early, some of them are fast and strong and have huge range--all of that *still* is not enough to make up for the weakness of being big.

Is it even a balance-able trait?

 

[Terotrous]

Also, knockback staling isn't as strong in this game as in Brawl I believe. I may be mistaken but that's been my general observation.

From what I've heard staleness is unchanged since Brawl, except that items no longer stale.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Gonna go out and say it. Why don't you wait until the current discussion on pikachu /DK is over before changing the topic? (Also, I find it funny that the discussion has been focused on Pikachu because Solid Sense talked about how unfocused the discussion was and mentioned his character. Well played)

Also, "Rage is mostly a good mechanic because it helps Mario in this way" is basically what you just said.


On topic of DK, Will is a monster that I've dealt with during a long online friendly set. Showed me his potential, but DK suffers from the same problems he always has. He's a middle character that a few people have played really well, but I'm curious to see how his shield breaking game evolves to see if it boosts him up a little more.

I didn't mean to derail the discussion. I just had new impressions to make.

I don't really know much about DK minus SideB Shield Breaks, custom Up-B, and nerfs to edge trapping are the biggest buffs to him. I feel like nerfed MK funny enough still likely beats him pretty convincingly because D-throw -> lolNado is just...like 30 damage for free that you get to do over and over until he can be KOed by basically anything.

Doesn't shock cape have high base knock back?
Regular cape doesn't have anything to it's name compares to customs but shock is still a disjointed kill move.

Maybe. I am slightly interested in its potential with Super Jump custom. More importantly...I would go out and test this myself, but I have my suspicions that it does interesting things to your momentum when B reversed. But I'd need someone else to tell me...unless you wait at least a week for me to get back on this subject.

 

[Terotrous]

To maybe shift the topic away from Pikachu, how would you guys balance largeness in general?

It seems like a big frame kills the viability of otherwise good characters like Bowser, Charizard, and DK. What would you give them to balance their games against small characters with combos? They already have Rage working in their favor in this game, they've always killed super early, some of them are fast and strong and have huge range--all of that *still* is not enough to make up for the weakness of being big.

Is it even a balance-able trait?

I think how you balance it is quite simple, though difficult in execution.

Heavies, due to their large size and general lack of mobility, have to take a certain amount of damage to get in. To make this balanced, once they get in, they should be able to deal an equal amount of damage.

In general, in Smash the amount of damage they can deal when they get in isn't equivalent to the damage they take getting in, so they tend to be bad. However, it's clearly possible to reverse this by just making them more powerful.

Earlier in the thread I posted about Ganon's reward after landing Flame Choke. Right now, the best reward he gets is some damage and a potential tech chase (though it's quite possible that backwards tech is totally safe if not in the corner). Personally, I feel this is not enough for how hard he has to work to land it. IMO, Flame choke should be an untechable knockdown and he should always get a free hit afterwards, probably dtilt after grounded flame choke and ftilt after aerial flame choke. Of course, going for a tech chase would remain possible. If a character like Diddy always gets a free aerial after a grab, surely someone like Ganon should too.

A lot of the problem is that in Smash, the characters with the best speed also tend to have the best combos and thus the best offense. In order to make this not be the case they have to give Heavies more moves with static knockback and other guaranteed combos.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

To maybe shift the topic away from Pikachu, how would you guys balance largeness in general?

It seems like a big frame kills the viability of otherwise good characters like Bowser, Charizard, and DK. What would you give them to balance their games against small characters with combos? They already have Rage working in their favor in this game, they've always killed super early, some of them are fast and strong and have huge range--all of that *still* is not enough to make up for the weakness of being big.

Is it even a balance-able trait?

There isn't much to balance? Its about RvR.
Lemme put it this way heavies don't have a problem if their reward on hit is proportionate to their ability to get hit.

This is fanfic but I feel like if Ganon had peaches float and B was a projectile, any projectile he'd probably be top.

Basically given heavies live longer and higher base KB rage balances it out given you don't survive to high rages as a light/mid weight vs heavies.
If using MMo terms, the effective health of heavies is high to diminish their hurtbox sizes. So since you often need 120+% to kill and they need 80-90% its a wash. If it wasn't for heavies in general having lack luster recoveries they'd be extremely dominant. Eg. Ganon with Pits recov or Villagers or peaches float.

If I was buffing heavies it be their recovery first so you almost have to deal with rage instead of just gimping. The way they are now ATM is rather fruitful so I'd be wary on actually doing anything.

If you can't gimp them then you have to really play their game with rage. We see this blatantly with Lucario. You really think Lucario would be this threat without a strong recovery? We would gimp before Aura+rage got absurd.

 

[Iron Kraken]

@ NairWizard , @Ray_Kalm and I haven't squared off yet, it's my fault because I went home for Thanksgiving week and didn't have my Wii U with me. Also I've been studying for exams, so yeah. But I definitely want to play soon.

As it happens, I watched some of Kalm's matches. His Ganondorf is really good, I don't think he'd have all that much trouble beating my Rosalina. But I do think my Rosalina would perform admirably purely based on the match up advantage (Kalm is clearly the superior player).

I saw Kalm square up against a Rosalina in several matches, and one thing that happened in that match over and over again is something I am always able to do when I play Ganondorf: gimp, gimp, gimp. Kalm's extremely good Ganondorf wasn't able to avoid this either. If Rosalina gets Ganondorf even slightly off the stage, it's extremely difficult for Ganondorf to avoid being gimped. Many characters have this same issue against Rosalina, but Ganondorf is a particularly bad case.

 

[slimjim]

Longpost.

I just want to mention that giving each of the heavies a kill throw would go a long, long way towards making them more viable in general. And it would make sense considering you know...they're supposed to be strong.

 

[RIP_Lucas]

To maybe shift the topic away from Pikachu, how would you guys balance largeness in general?

It seems like a big frame kills the viability of otherwise good characters like Bowser, Charizard, and DK. What would you give them to balance their games against small characters with combos? They already have Rage working in their favor in this game, they've always killed super early, some of them are fast and strong and have huge range--all of that *still* is not enough to make up for the weakness of being big.

Is it even a balance-able trait?

I've always felt the problem isn't how easily they get hit, their launch resistance makes up for that, it's the predictability of their moves. The combination of being slow and having large start up lag makes approach very easy to counter, but I don't expect anything about that to change so it's pointless to talk about

 

[A2ZOMG]

To maybe shift the topic away from Pikachu, how would you guys balance largeness in general?

It seems like a big frame kills the viability of otherwise good characters like Bowser, Charizard, and DK. What would you give them to balance their games against small characters with combos? They already have Rage working in their favor in this game, they've always killed super early, some of them are fast and strong and have huge range--all of that *still* is not enough to make up for the weakness of being big.

Is it even a balance-able trait?

More aggressively implemented armor frames are a good solution. I would argue that armor frames have been implemented too conservatively in this game. Armored moves can still be countered by very good spacing and grabs, but would be valuable for limiting specific types of aggression that typically give large characters a very bad time.

Mostly, these types of characters at least should generally have good armored aerial options of some sort.

Charizard actually I believe is mostly fine in terms of negative state, but even though his attacks are overall pretty good, his stronger ones tend to leave him very open and his setups are not amazing.

King DeDeDe also somewhat dodges a bullet by having multiple midair jumps, though I believe he has other problems, just to prevent misconceptions.

 

[Terotrous]

I just want to mention that giving each of the heavies a kill throw would go a long, long way towards making them more viable in general. And it would make sense considering you know...they're supposed to be strong.

Yeah, that's a good idea too. In general, once they get in, they should have a myriad of good options that should all be dangerous, so you really don't want to let them in.

 

[Frostav]

Smash is literally the only fighting game where heavy = trash, I dunno how Sakurai can mess it up four times in a row.

Heavies need to be able to kill really early. REALLY early. Either that or they need to be able to live to absurd percentages.

 

[slimjim]

Yeah, that's a good idea too. In general, once they get in, they should have a myriad of good options that should all be dangerous, so you really don't want to let them in.

Exactly. Right now, shield --> punish anything they do strat beats heavies because so what if you get grabbed at mid-high percents by D3, ganon, charizard, or bowser (excluding side-B command grab)? Nothing will really come of it besides some extra percent and a reset to neutral. Heavies need to have an option to beat shield spam, and a kill throw would be an excellent way to do that especially as it's canon with their strength.

 

[RIP_Lucas]

Smash is literally the only fighting game where heavy = trash, I dunno how Sakurai can mess it up four times in a row.

Heavies need to be able to kill really early. REALLY early. Either that or they need to be able to live to absurd percentages.

They can live to absurd percentages, assuming you know hire to avoid gimps, the problem is how easy they get to those percentages

 

[Terotrous]

Smash is literally the only fighting game where heavy = trash, I dunno how Sakurai can mess it up four times in a row.

Heavies need to be able to kill really early. REALLY early. Either that or they need to be able to live to absurd percentages.

In fairness, this is the first Smash Bros game where they ever actually even tried to balance it. Sakurai has admitted that he did all of the balancing on the first 3 games himself (which explains a heck of a lot, really).

 

[NairWizard]

There are some design problems with just increasing their damage or kill power though, in that it's very unsatisfying to play against for the most part (though it's similarly unsatisfying to get combo'd to 150 as a big character). It lets heavies play a high-risk, high-reward game (one that they already have to kind of play right now, except that it would be even more potent). It's probably not fun playing against a character who will just take all the hits you can dish out and then beat you in 2-3 moves. Just see how many people are complaining about Lucario for much the same reason--you get him up to 110, then he destroys you because he's got more range and is stronger. Similar concept.

Or let's take Little Mac as a reference point for balance. Little Mac is probably not balanced right now. His recovery is too poor for his strengths to justify. But he already has a frame 1 jab that does tons of damage, super armor on all of his smashes, and some of the best footsies in the game overall (d-tilt combos into KO punch). Assuming that you keep his recovery as garbage as it is now, what can you do to him to make him more viable? If you increase his strengths even more (increase the range and damage of his attacks, say, or make them even safer on block), he becomes kind of ridiculous to play against, because you have to camp him out until he makes a mistake and you can throw him off the stage and gimp him.

So maybe having a big frame in smash is just a bad decision choice in the first place, though it makes sense thematically.

 

[Iron Kraken]

Smash is literally the only fighting game where heavy = trash, I dunno how Sakurai can mess it up four times in a row.

Heavies need to be able to kill really early. REALLY early. Either that or they need to be able to live to absurd percentages.

One thing to consider is that Sakurai doesn't only take 1v1's into account, but also 2v2's and 4-player free-for-alls. And not just for stock battles, but also for timed battles in which netting KOs matters.

Characters like Bowser and Ike are already pretty damn good in 4-player free-for-alls. Now imagine how good they would be if they were significantly buffed.

For the majority of the casual Smash crowd, there would pretty much be no reason to pick anything other than one of these buffed heavy characters.

I am sure Sakurai is well aware that with his current game design, speedy characters will always have at least a slight advantage over heavy characters in 1v1, and he's probably okay with this. At least it's much closer in this game than it has been in past Smash games.

 

[Chuva]

Mario is not super light, but he's still an easily killed character mostly because his options to escape juggles and edgeguards are really REALLY bad. But when you actually don't get gimped, you can do things like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBXLYm4xCOA&t=2m40s

Tried to replicate that and it was bad DI indeed (only kills if holding up and back, Bair still relatively fresh). I agree with your observation though.

 

[Terotrous]

It lets heavies play a high-risk, high-reward game (one that they already have to kind of play right now, except that it would be even more potent). It's probably not fun playing against a character who will just take all the hits you can dish out and then beat you in 2-3 moves.

Welcome to Zangief / Hugo / Tager / every heavy character ever.

Oh you took off 60% of my health on the way in? Let me Final Atomic Buster you real quick and make it back to even.


Whether or not it's fun to play against is another issue, but when you have a character who has very bad mobility it's really the only way to make them viable.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Take any Heavy except maybe DDD and notably boost their recovery and I don't mean through customs.
Watch how much harder they are to kill, how much more rage they'll build up and how scary their edge guards become. I believe DDD's quirk is something else.

Charizard, with a stronger recovery will do straight out stupid ****. His grab game is good, and his D-throw does kill for the whole "give heavies a kill throw" deal. Hell Bowser can kill with his command grab.

I'll use shulk again (sorry).
Hit shield shulk off-stage. What happens? Jump monado comes up and he tries to recover. It's stronger than any heavies recovery. If they had similar recovery distance and speed, they'd be monsters.

Even still, so far they're all doing alright for themselves so it looks like their rewards are in the right place.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Smash is literally the only fighting game where heavy = trash, I dunno how Sakurai can mess it up four times in a row.

Heavies need to be able to kill really early. REALLY early. Either that or they need to be able to live to absurd percentages.

I dunno about you man, but last time I checked, Zangief, Iron Tager, Hugo, and Hulk were low tier characters in their respective fighting games.

So maybe having a big frame in smash is just a bad decision choice in the first place, though it makes sense thematically.

If being big actually helped you contest certain types of positive objectives, then suddenly it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

 

[NairWizard]

Mobility may not necessarily be the issue. Or perhaps that should be the fix, instead of more damage. Aerial/ground mobility that lets a heavy character escape traps. I'd certainly be terrified of a non-floaty Dedede.

Hm.

 

[Terotrous]

Mobility may not necessarily be the issue. Or perhaps that should be the fix, instead of more damage. Aerial/ground mobility that lets a heavy character escape traps. I'd certainly be terrified of a non-floaty Dedede.

Hm.

It's definitely also possible to have a heavyweight character who is either mobile or is a zoner and thus gets around some of these issues. Charizard was a mobile heavyweight in PM, and Dedede was a partial zoner in Brawl. For whatever reason they've basically all been converted to Bowser style big bruisers in Smash 4, which I'm not terribly happy about.

 

[NairWizard]

Another observation that occurs to me (could have edited it in previous post, but oh well, someone posted as I was about to): increasing damage has the unintended consequence of increasing safety on shield, so it may be a bit too much on some of these characters.

 

[san.]

Matches like this make me think that survivability:kill ratio for heavies are fine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw66-t_1spk&t=16m30s

It would be nice to give them kill throws, though. Ike has dthrow now that you can't VI downwards, but it's still not all too great, killing around the 150s. Pummel DPS makes up for it, though.

 

[Terotrous]

Another observation that occurs to me (could have edited it in previous post, but oh well, someone posted as I was about to): increasing damage has the unintended consequence of increasing safety on shield, so it may be a bit too much on some of these characters.

Super easy to fix, just add more recovery frames to the attack to balance it out.

If you're worried about being ludicrously punishable on whiff / spot dodge, I believe you can fiddle with hitlag modifiers to adjust safety when an attack hits something, but I don't actually know too much about how that works.

 

[Frostav]

I dunno about you man, but last time I checked, Zangief, Iron Tager, Hugo, and Hulk were low tier characters in their respective fighting games.

If being big actually helped you contest certain types of positive objectives, then suddenly it wouldn't be such a bad thing.

The difference is that those characters are still kind of viable, usually.

Also Hakumen and Azrael in Blazblue are viable and high-tier, I'm pretty Catherine is viable in Arcana Heart and she's HUGE (she rides a giant mecha in battle, not making this up) but everyone's viable in AH so....

In fairness, this is the first Smash Bros game where they ever actually even tried to balance it. Sakurai has admitted that he did all of the balancing on the first 3 games himself (which explains a heck of a lot, really).

He had people helping for Brawl. They didn't really help though given that he thought that giving Meta Knight all transcendent hitboxes was a good idea and NONE of them told him "no, that's really goddamn stupid"

Also the work with Namco didn't really improve the balance in this game. Game And Watch is still trash-tier. Many characters have nonsensical buffs and nerfs. It's still a kusoge, just a slightly better kusoge.

 

[Big O]

My wishlist for heavies is basically just having super good grab games. Reliable kill throws (Ness) and combo throws (Diddy) would go a long way to making the big characters good.

The followup/oki potential of Ganon's Flame Choke is probably the closest to my ideals for how scary they should be, but his T-Rex grab range is just mind boggling. DK has 8 throws, and they all are mediocre at best except Cargo Utoss. Bowser has Zangief's SPD (pivot grab), but only his command grab with 0 range is scary. I'm not too familiar with D3 or Charizard (I hear good things about their grab games), but the OG heavyweights could use some oomph in the grab game department imo.

 

[Terotrous]

Also the work with Namco didn't really improve the balance in this game. Game And Watch is still trash-tier. Many characters have nonsensical buffs and nerfs. It's still a kusoge, just a slightly better kusoge.

I don't agree. While the balance still isn't perfect, it's much better than Brawl. Even if Diddy is a clear #1 he's no MK. Also, the game actually works properly for the most part this time, which is a welcome change.