Character Competitive Impressions

[Trifroze]

Falcon like the other heavies in the game, have lack luster neutral games and because they can't just throw out attacks and hope they hit, have to try to bait out reactions and punish with dash attacks, dash grabs, SHFF uairs, and maybe SHFF nairs (those are pretty much everything Falcon can do safely).

I disagree about his neutral being lackluster, even though it's fairly simple.

Gotta point out you forgot bair and jab which are really good defensive options. Jab also catches grab attempts after whiffing attacks on shield, and bair is safe on shield provided you hit with the stronger hitbox. Dash attack and dash grab combined with his speed effectively create a 50:50 approach game where the opponent either shields and gets grabbed or throws out a move / spotdodges and gets dash attacked or clashed. Uair works as an extremely good punish for jumping and creating possibilities for further follow-ups. Pivot dashing / fox trotting combined with all this also gives him some Sonic-like annoyance without the need to commit to spin dash, although I would like to see Falcon trying that.

 

[mimgrim]

Lacking a projectile isn't an inherent weakness. Same as having a projectile isn't an inherent advantage. However these things can be advantageous/disadvantageous in specific instances. A projectile is simply another tool some characters have and some don't. However the ones who don't have a projectile, on a general standard, still have the same amount tools as a projectile user. Character who don't have a projectile aren't actually lacking, as in have less, a tool, they just have a different kind of tool to use. And, just like every other other tool, projectiles have ways to be worked around.

On the other hand something like range or disjoints are inherent weaknesses/advantages. This is because these aren't an inherent tool but are rather a part of a tool and a tool that out ranges another tool clearly has the advantage.

At least, that's my look on the matter.

 

[PK Gaming]

No, but it's a weakness in the sense that you can abuse his lack of projectile by forcing an approach. Regardless of whether he can move around enemy projectiles easily or not, he is the one that has to play around them. His lack of projectile is not necessarily a crippling weakness by any means, but it's one, regardless of how you see it. As soon as you can abuse something, from a marginal to an impactful extent, it is a weakness.

Sure, but I think it's something that varies from matchup to matchup. Furthermore, lots of projectile users can force other projectile users to approach, so it's not even a given that having a projectile would necessarily defend against that sort of thing. In any case I don't want to get bogged in semantics. This was about Diddy anyhow.

 

[Vengeance_NS]

Someone on smash studios tonight again is claiming he's under contract and can't talk about the next patch but it's suppsoed to come out before apex. I hope this is a troll. I don't want any more patches esp this close to a major. To many patches will kill this game. He is claiming there is a ton of nerfs and game play mechanic changes that's going to upset the competitive community. This better be a troll. What do you guys think it is. Change ledge mechanics , roll mechanics, make it so you can jump out of shield. This has me nervous. Patches will ruin this game.

 

[Spirst]

At this point, speculatory discussion seems pointless to me considering we have no evidence upon which to base anything. Just wait and see what happens.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Someone on smash studios tonight again is claiming he's under contract and can't talk about the next patch but it's suppsoed to come out before apex. I hope this is a troll. I don't want any more patches esp this close to a major. To many patches will kill this game. He is claiming there is a ton of nerfs and game play mechanic changes that's going to upset the competitive community. This better be a troll. What do you guys think it is. Change ledge mechanics , roll mechanics, make it so you can jump out of shield. This has me nervous. Patches will ruin this game.

I think a patch before Apex would be a serious problem. Especially for the competitive scene. Apex is the biggest smash tourney and would be silly to do such massive changes before such a big event.

 

[Tobi_Whatever]

Someone on smash studios tonight again is claiming he's under contract and can't talk about the next patch but it's suppsoed to come out before apex. I hope this is a troll. I don't want any more patches esp this close to a major. To many patches will kill this game. He is claiming there is a ton of nerfs and game play mechanic changes that's going to upset the competitive community. This better be a troll. What do you guys think it is. Change ledge mechanics , roll mechanics, make it so you can jump out of shield. This has me nervous. Patches will ruin this game.

Why would Ninty sabotage an event they sponsored anyway?
Time to drink some tea and wait.

 

[Steam]

I truly hope there are no more patches in the near future, Fighting games need to be balanced in big patches spaced out by long periods of time, frequent patching stifles metagame development. I think sakurai/namco understand this and won't make huge changes, Even the wiiU launch patch contained mostly bugfixes and tweaking.

 

[KirbyandSonicrock14]

All I know is that Mac isn't bad after the patch. You're a fool to think this. He is still very solid. I wonder what is his answer is going to be against characters who can just float in the air after being knock off.

 

[Jabejazz]

Someone on smash studios tonight again is claiming he's under contract and can't talk about the next patch but it's suppsoed to come out before apex. I hope this is a troll. I don't want any more patches esp this close to a major. To many patches will kill this game. He is claiming there is a ton of nerfs and game play mechanic changes that's going to upset the competitive community. This better be a troll. What do you guys think it is. Change ledge mechanics , roll mechanics, make it so you can jump out of shield. This has me nervous. Patches will ruin this game.

My dad works at Nintendo, he said Diddy was going to get nerfed.
Diddy will no longer shoot peanuts, because some people are allergic.

EDIT : I really shouldn't do this, but I have here a letter signed by Sakurai himself claiming he knew Diddy was a current issue.

This is absolutely classified information.

 

[HeavyLobster]

My dad works at Nintendo, he said Diddy was going to get nerfed.
Diddy will no longer shoot peanuts, because some people are allergic.

Indeed. My best friend is Sakurai's cat, who has informed me that Zelda will get a complete overhaul, with all of her moves now being laggy multi-hit attacks where people automatically fall out before the strong hit connects. I also heard Ganondorf is getting his sword and a projectile, rolls and shields are getting nerfed, and dashdancing, wavedashing, and l-cancelling are all making a comeback.

 

[Deathcarter]

All I know is that Mac isn't bad after the patch. You're a fool to think this. He is still very solid. I wonder what is his answer is going to be against characters who can just float in the air after being knock off.

When compared to the other characters in a vacuum he isn't horrible but he doesn't forgive mistakes at all. He has the best footsies in the game but there are just way too many viable characters who can effectively play the neutral game against him and put him in a VERY bad spot if they get in on him. The stage selection however royally screws him over in comparison to the rest of the cast with things like Duck Hunt, Delfino, Wuhu Island, and Town and City being legal. I would dare to say he is legitimately bad on those stages.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Where is Zero suit samus atm? I've heard shes good but I haven't really seen her all that much.

Top-ish part of high tier IMO

She has everything but a good grab. She can be safe on shield but it can still be exploited. Good damage, good approaches, reasonably reliable kill moves in back air, up-b, and fsmash. Fsmash is stage dependent but it's better on Wii U than it was on the 3DS due to the seemingly smaller blast zones. Pretty good off-stage, very difficult to gimp and can combo into her spike if she gets a mid-% backthrow near the edge.

 

[David Viran]

Top-ish part of high tier IMO

She has everything but a good grab. She can be safe on shield but it can still be exploited. Good damage, good approaches, reasonably reliable kill moves in back air, up-b, and fsmash. Fsmash is stage dependent but it's better on Wii U than it was on the 3DS due to the seemingly smaller blast zones. Pretty good off-stage, very difficult to gimp and can combo into her spike if she gets a mid-% backthrow near the edge.

A dsmash, fully charged paralyzer, or at mid percents nair near the ledge is a free spike.

 

[KirbyandSonicrock14]

When compared to the other characters in a vacuum he isn't horrible but he doesn't forgive mistakes at all. He has the best footsies in the game but there are just way too many viable characters who can effectively play the neutral game against him and put him in a VERY bad spot if they get in on him. The stage selection however royally screws him over in comparison to the rest of the cast with things like Duck Hunt, Delfino, Wuhu Island, and Town and City being legal. I would dare to say he is legitimately bad on those stages.

and that is why my cps for him are just omega stages.

 

[PK Gaming]

Do people still consider Robin top 10? I should hope not, because that character is so far removed from top 10 it's not even funny. I'm starting to think that even top 20 is pushing it.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Robin's no good. The character is way too immobile to make effective use of her moveset. Such a good moveset but the character traits are pretty poor and don't allow for too much option coverage against characters that aren't large and / or immobile.

Top-ish part of high tier IMO

She has everything but a good grab. She can be safe on shield but it can still be exploited. Good damage, good approaches, reasonably reliable kill moves in back air, up-b, and fsmash. Fsmash is stage dependent but it's better on Wii U than it was on the 3DS due to the seemingly smaller blast zones. Pretty good off-stage, very difficult to gimp and can combo into her spike if she gets a mid-% backthrow near the edge.

She has the same problematic gimmick that WFT has where she tends to whiff against small characters with some of her moves. These moves happen to be ones that ZSS players often like to use after being hit on shield such as utilt, jab or even ftilt. The hitboxes of these moves are very high and will whiff completely if you try to punish moves like Pikachu fair or Wario nair on shield which is very annoying. I don't know what else she can do in that situation because grab has an equally high chance of whiffing and she jumps too high to punish with an aerial. UpB is extremely risky and dtilt is just a tad too slow.

I recall she had a similar problem in Brawl but it might be even worse in Smash 4 because you can buffer only one input during shield drop lag.

 

[JWrecks]

All I know is that Mac isn't bad after the patch. You're a fool to think this. He is still very solid. I wonder what is his answer is going to be against characters who can just float in the air after being knock off.

I'm a fool then, any character with any sort of gimping game gets to crush little Mac, he doesn't matchup well with any of the high tiers and he is a very predictable character.

I don't think he is absolute bottom of the barrel due to his speed and punish power but no one is going to win any major tournament with little Mac, actually I'd say no one will place top 10 in any major with Mac, the character is just too limited.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

LM will probably be an amazing pocket mid tier/bottom of high tier character. He's going to have a lot of bad match ups. But for the MUs he wins, oh boy. I'm expecting him to have at least a handful where he absolutely crushes a character.

 

[iVoltage]

LM will probably be an amazing pocket mid tier/bottom of high tier character. He's going to have a lot of bad match ups. But for the MUs he wins, oh boy. I'm expecting him to have at least a handful where he absolutely crushes a character.

And what might those MU's be? Little mac has a hell of a time with anybody if stages are in the equation as they can just hide on top of them and force mac to come to them. I don't believe many of mac's moves can shark other than like up-b but correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Bowser, Ganondorf, possibly Charizard. And if he gets the lead, he doesn't have to fear them hiding on a platform. He certainly has the tools in certain match ups to get the lead and be able to hold onto it between the frame data and super armour.

I'm no LM expert, that's just my thoughts on him.

 

[Hippieslayer]

What do you think about Palutena? If you cba it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on her. In fact it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on plenty of characters.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Bowser, Ganondorf, possibly Charizard. And if he gets the lead, he doesn't have to fear them hiding on a platform. He certainly has the tools in certain match ups to get the lead and be able to hold onto it between the frame data and super armour.

I'm no LM expert, that's just my thoughts on him.

Ganondorf either wins 55:45 or goes even with Mac because his punishes on Mac are absolutely brutal. Flame Choke -> Dtilt can only be avoided with techroll in, which makes him one of the easier characters to techchase. Choke also goes through Counter and Mac's armor, so Mac has to be very careful about this. Ftilt sends Mac at a really stupid angle and kills him really early. Mac does have the tools to play around this, but Ganondorf outranges Mac's attacks outside of maybe Dsmash, which can be punished. I find that while Mac can definitely win by playing smart, he has very little margin for error, even by Mac standards. He definitely doesn't destroy Ganondorf.

 

[Conda]

What characters do you all think don't need a secondary or pocket alongside it?

 

[iVoltage]

Off the top of my head sheik. She has so many options and doesn't really have (if any) impossible matchups like some characters.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

What do you think about Palutena? If you cba it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on her. In fact it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on plenty of characters.

I know nothing about Palutena.

 

[Djent]

Sheik, Diddy, Pikachu, Yoshi, Sonic, Ness, Fox, RosaLuma, ZSS, Wario, Mega Man, Peach. Perhaps Mario and the Pits as well, simply because of their well-roundedness.

With customs, you can add Mii Brawler, Palutena, and Ike to that list. There may be more that I don't know of for both of these categories.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Ganondorf either wins 55:45 or goes even with Mac because his punishes on Mac are absolutely brutal. Flame Choke -> Dtilt can only be avoided with techroll in, which makes him one of the easier characters to techchase. Choke also goes through Counter and Mac's armor, so Mac has to be very careful about this. Ftilt sends Mac at a really stupid angle and kills him really early. Mac does have the tools to play around this, but Ganondorf outranges Mac's attacks outside of maybe Dsmash, which can be punished. I find that while Mac can definitely win by playing smart, he has very little margin for error, even by Mac standards. He definitely doesn't destroy Ganondorf.

LM also has brutal punishes on Ganondorf, and I'd say has an easier time landing punishes thanks to super armour abuse, while having better movement speed. Outranging doesn't matter much if its not disjointed and the other person has super armour on their side. LM also has more moves that would be safe on shield than Ganondorf. And without customs on, I feel that Ganondorf's approaches would be rather telegraphed to a LM player and something easy to weave around. Ganondorf has what, SHFF Uair/Nair as approach options without customs?

I also feel that LM gets more out of perfect pivots than Ganondorf, if only for super armour abuse again.

That's simply my perspective on it though. Video of this MU at a high level would be interesting. Realistically its going to boil down to if Ganondorf can use Flame Choke repeatedly without being predictable. I don't see him winning without being able to land that move frequently.

 

[Morbi]

What characters do you all think don't need a secondary or pocket alongside it?

I do not believe that that notion is character dependent, more so, I find that to be player preference. Hypothetically, it is always a great idea to have a secondary to cover the bad MUs and almost every character has a bad MU or two. However, in the event that a character does not, it is still feasible to have a secondary to help you adapt to your opponent and, or throw them off of their adaptation.

That being said, Sheik would probably be my answer. I adamantly believe that she can cover pretty much everything on her own with a little bit of determination and smart play.

 

[madworlder]

What characters do you all think don't need a secondary or pocket alongside it?

It'd probably be easier to answer characters that do need secondaries. Most people would say WFT is a character needing a secondary, on account of her bad matches against short characters, but I think she can still win with some work. Dedede and Little Mac are characters that would benefit from secondaries. I think Villager could be deserving of a secondary in case of facing characters with a reflector.

 

[Morbi]

It'd probably be easier to answer characters that do need secondaries. Most people would say WFT is a character needing a secondary, on account of her bad matches against short characters, but I think she can still win with some work. Dedede and Little Mac are characters that would benefit from secondaries. I think Villager could be deserving of a secondary in case of facing characters with a reflector.

Perhaps, I am not a Villager main, but can he pocket reflected projectiles? In that case, he might actually benefit from characters using reflectors under certain circumstances. He also has the tree to control space without the use of his projectiles. A character with a reflector cannot do much about his Lloid Rocket to F-air set-up either.

 

[HeavyLobster]

LM also has brutal punishes on Ganondorf, and I'd say has an easier time landing punishes thanks to super armour abuse, while having better movement speed. Outranging doesn't matter much if its not disjointed and the other person has super armour on their side. LM also has more moves that would be safe on shield than Ganondorf. And without customs on, I feel that Ganondorf's approaches would be rather telegraphed to a LM player and something easy to weave around. Ganondorf has what, SHFF Uair/Nair as approach options without customs?

I also feel that LM gets more out of perfect pivots than Ganondorf, if only for super armour abuse again.

That's simply my perspective on it though. Video of this MU at a high level would be interesting. Realistically its going to boil down to if Ganondorf can use Flame Choke repeatedly without being predictable. I don't see him winning without being able to land that move frequently.

The entire point of Flame Choke is to punish Mac for relying on Super Armor. If Mac throws out Smash attacks liberally in this matchup he is going to lose and lose hard to a good Ganon. The extent to which these characters can punish each other isn't really comparable, because Ganondorf can pretty easily kill Mac off of 1 or 2 punishes, while Mac usually needs around 4-6 to get Ganon back. Mac definitely has major CQC and footsies advantages, and I could see him maybe having a slight advantage at a high level, but he really doesn't have a major advantage here. All I know is I've played this MU on both sides, and I have a much easier time when playing as Ganondorf.

 

[Chuva]

And what might those MU's be? Little mac has a hell of a time with anybody if stages are in the equation as they can just hide on top of them and force mac to come to them. I don't believe many of mac's moves can shark other than like up-b but correct me if I'm wrong.

With the continuous rise of Fox in the current meta Mac should be at least a tempting pocket character, specially considering how generally good Fox matchups seemingly are at this point. I'm sure most Fox mains believe it's at least slightly in Mac's favor as Mac's neutral is too good against Fox's bread and butter tools and approaches to the point where risk vs reward forces Fox to change to a much more careful play.

Mac is also competent against Marcina and the Pits for similar reasons (dominant neutral, shuts down a lot of the go-to pokes and approaches). With that said, playing Mac is still a gamble since losing in the neutral only a few times can often mean losing the stock for reasons we already know.

Mac can shark with his Usmash on the lateral platforms of Battlefield and Lylat, and the super-armor against incoming aerials just makes it even better. But as expected, good luck trying to comeback from a stock deficit and your opponent decides to camp the upper platforms of Battlefield, Kongo Jungle or Duck Hunt.

 

[Makorel]

@ Morbi Villager can pocket his reflected projectiles. I've had Villagers pocket their trees and Lloids after I've reflected them. There's also the invincibility frames pocket gives even if it doesn't grab anything so it's potentially useful against characters without projectiles. You might even say that because of his pockets Villager doesn't need pockets.

 

[Trifroze]

Sheik, Diddy, Pikachu, Yoshi, Sonic, Ness, Fox, RosaLuma, ZSS, Wario, Mega Man, Peach. Perhaps Mario and the Pits as well, simply because of their well-roundedness.

With customs, you can add Mii Brawler, Palutena, and Ike to that list. There may be more that I don't know of for both of these categories.

Considering that the strategical point of secondaries is to cover the disadvantageous matchups of your main, I would say that the only characters who don't need secondaries alongside them are ones who either have no bad matchups or whose only bad matchups are characters who have no bad matchups themselves. It's too early to say if there are any of those, but someone like Ness definitely isn't one of them because, while he's really good, I could see his recovery easily abused by characters such as Rosalina, Villager or anyone with a good counter. It's also hard to see Mega Man not getting some polarized matchups with his style of play. I do agree the others are pretty versatile though, but as said I think whether or not you need secondaries isn't about that in the end.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Ness will probably need a anti-G&W secondary between G&W's bucket and dtilt.

 

[Antonykun]

I think Villager could be deserving of a secondary in case of facing characters with a reflector.

As a villager main I can attest to you that if you think you need a pocket character to deal with reflectors then you are relying too much on your projectiles and need to make friends with n-air and d-air fast.

 

[Djent]

Stuff

Oh, I totally agree that you want a secondary if you have any noticeably bad matchups, but wanting is not the same as needing. I took @ Conda 's question to be about minimal solo-viability, not necessarily about which characters are optimal to solo-main.

 

[Conda]

Just got bodied by a Bowser Jr player. Felt like I couldnt do anything as Pit/Dpit. Really surprised but yeah, nothing seemed to work when he was played optimally and did the right thing each time after reading me.

 

[KirbyandSonicrock14]

I'm a fool then, any character with any sort of gimping game gets to crush little Mac, he doesn't matchup well with any of the high tiers and he is a very predictable character.

I don't think he is absolute bottom of the barrel due to his speed and punish power but no one is going to win any major tournament with little Mac, actually I'd say no one will place top 10 in any major with Mac, the character is just too limited.

That is the same thing people said about Jax in MK9(he went on to be top 10). He has bad Mus yes, but I feel you can main and win with Mac. It will be hard, but I feel perfect pivoting will be a huge x factor for him.