Character Competitive Impressions

[HeroMystic]

The more I look at the brackets/pools, the uglier Apex's seeding looks.

Still, I guess I can still appreciate Mario reaching Top 16, but the results in general I feel shouldn't be taken too seriously because it's still super early in the meta. There were obvious cases where players had no idea to fight against a certain character (it was super duper obvious in Ally vs amsa's Greninja and Nintendo vs 6WX's Sonic). Which only supports what I said pages ago that early in the meta, character diversity should be expected. It's years down the line is the scenario we should be thinking about.

 

[Tristan_win]

Yun never yielded results in early builds of USF4. Just saiyan. Sometimes a character IS good but nobody good is playing it. That really messes with some people's perspective of a "tier list". Same when someone does well with a character who isn't so good. I still think ZSS is among the best in the game on paper and that no players are the absolute top are playing her, sheer coincidence.

I actually think it's more among the line that there's so many good characters in this game that it's not surprising a few didn't make it due to the limited amount of space 'top 8' 16 players have.

Diddy kong, Rosalina, olimar, Sheik, Captain Falcon, Sonic, Pac man, Duck hunt, Pit, Robin, Greninja, Fox, Mario, Luigi, mega man, little mac

That's 16 characters and only 5 of the 16 players really had secondaries.

edit for the mac.

 

[webbedspace]

I actually think it's more among the line that there's so many good characters in this game that it's not surprising a few didn't make it due to the limited amount of space 'top 8' 16 players have.

Diddy kong, Rosalina, olimar, Sheik, Captain Falcon, Sonic, Pac man, Duck hunt, Pit, Robin, Greninja, Fox, Mario, Luigi, mega man, little mac

That's 16 characters and only 5 of the 16 players really had secondaries.

edit for the mac.

(The Luigi and the pocket Falcons lost every top-16 game they appeared in.)

 

[Diddy Kong]

I actually think it's more among the line that there's so many good characters in this game that it's not surprising a few didn't make it due to the limited amount of space 'top 8' 16 players have.

Diddy kong, Rosalina, olimar, Sheik, Captain Falcon, Sonic, Pac man, Duck hunt, Pit, Robin, Greninja, Fox, Mario, Luigi, mega man, little mac

That's 16 characters and only 5 of the 16 players really had secondaries.

edit for the mac.

Out of those, we didn't even see other viable characters as .

Another reason to laugh at all the haters. This game has about as many viable characters as Melee has as total playable characters.

Get gud.

 

[Tagxy]

Luigisama said that cause of poor apex seeding (as per usual for most national tournaments these days) they all took each other out or just deathpools.
Pikachu only rep is ESAM (cudn't go because gf sick) and NAKAT (who mains fox/ness mostly yet oddly didn't use any pika after testing it against ally in a recent tournament)
While Yoshi mains simply don't have the $300+ to toss away to enter a tournament and hopefully get out of round 1 pools. From what we saw there was only 3 and all of em are meh, robotnik seel(?) and Sky.

What about Delta-Cod? NAKAT did use pikachu recently, he randomly beat Mr. R 2-0 at a tournament a couple days ago. It was a bit sad actually.

Props to dabuz for doing well, but he'll definitely be seen as more of a villain if his style continues on his path. Well it is what it is, I didnt really mind too much nor am I worried. Many of his sets were very close and he clutched it out, and at that same tournament a few days ago he beat Mr. R but was double eliminated by nietono soundly. While everyone earned their placing, many results were a split hair away from being shaken up.

 

[Shaya]

Just because you didn't see his ZSS on his stream, does not mean it wasn't a character Nairo used on the road to top 16.

I was at apex myself, close to front row for all the later Smash 4 singles matches and Melee too.
It was exciting the entire way, although obviously Melee with it's highly polished players + close matches which we only really saw glimmers of with Ramin vs ZeRo, and 6wx vs Nietono.

I'm sure I'll have more to say later.

Also at the very least ZSS, Ness and Villager showed representation in Doubles =)
Lucario isn't good, I'm surprised how many times I heard it over the weekend; I then went on the pursuit! Mostly successful IMO.
Aura is cool, but so is having moves that have less than 10 frames start up.

 

[Sinister Slush]

What about Delta-Cod? NAKAT did use pikachu recently, he randomly beat Mr. R 2-0 at a tournament a couple days ago. It was a bit sad actually.

That's the tournament I was mentioning.
As for Delta he's in college at Chicago I believe, so he couldn't attend APEX while over there it's Melee centric so he won't be joining many smash 4 tournaments anytime soon.

Our most active Yoshi reps honestly is Raptor Slice Yika Robotnik Dren me and some others, otherwise 95% of yoshi mains barely submit results or even post on smashboards much.

 

[Antonykun]

I just realized Abadango was sent to losers by Zero, who won apex, and then lost the tour to Dabuz who got second. Talk about going in style.

 

[Nu~]

I just realized Abadango was sent to losers by Zero, who won apex, and then lost the tour to Dabuz who got second. Talk about going in style.

Actually he started in losers

 

[RobinOnDrugs]

What other characters do you all hope to see be brought out in a tournament?

I'd like to see someone whip out DeDeDe at one point.

 

[Thinkaman]

Actually he started in losers

I mean, someone had to put him there at some point. He didn't emerge from the womb to "Hey, here's a controller, you have to play the loser of FOW and NAKAT."

 

[Nu~]

I mean, someone had to put him there at some point. He didn't emerge from the womb to "Hey, here's a controller, you have to play the loser of FOW and NAKAT."

I could have sworn that they put half of the top 16 in losers due to time constraints. But ah well

 

[⑨ball]

That's pretty good diversity? Anyone wanna talk about DHD/Little Mac?

The matches were pretty exciting. The Little Mac v Greninja was especially hype and seemed to be a way for MVD to download Amsa before he took the set.

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

I really want the vids to go on youtube because I didn't get to see most of it. Had to work. The singles I saw earlier in the day and the bit of 6wx I got to see was awesome. I really need to see what happened. With that kind of character diversity like...how could people hate?

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Apex was pretty disappointing to watch tbqh. There were some pretty amazing moments - especially dabuz reverse 3-0'ing M2K - but between the truly dreadful seeding and all smash games not named melee being treated as inferior rejections most of the tournament's potential excitement got completely butchered for me.

Chances are, Evo won't be much better. The only way for a Brawl, Smash 4 and even smash 64 event to turn out satisfactory is when Melee is not on the schedule. SKTAR is gonna be where it's at.

 

[A Lucky Person]

How many times did Mr. R bust out C. Falcon, and did it impress?

 

[HeroMystic]

He only pulled it out once and it died immediately against Dabuz's Rosalina.

 

[OmegaSorin]

ZeRo taking the cup was pretty cool, and as far as I know Mr R pulled Cap out once. It was overall pretty awesome.

Seeing ZeRo play Diddy Kong against Mr. R's Sheik was pretty ridiculous.

I didn't get to come in until late so I missed both of M2K's performances... Bah.

Then I turned and began getting into [A]rmada in Melee, only for him to lose against Leffen after a 2-0 start XD

I have a bad time choosing people to root for... D:

Overall it was fun though watching Apex, was my first one actually.

 

[Sinister Slush]

He only pulled it out once and it died immediately against Dabuz's Rosalina.

Which is why I asked previously if any of the secondaries people pulled earlier they won on.
TO's have a tendency to slap characters on people if they even used them instead of winning.

Works both ways for, Ex: Mains Falcon but occasionally switches to Sheik for bad MU, 95% C. Falcon matches, 5% sheik matches but TO will put Sheik above C. Falcon to show people that "he's a dirty sheik main" since the player most likely on stream (winners semis and higher) went Sheik a tad bit more than falcon to cover those diddy or projectile/zoning characters.

While other way is the person "Mains" a low tier, but goes 99.99% Top tier character and maybe pulled their secondary for a glimmer of hope to win but still lost (alsm)

 

[⑨ball]

-snip-

I was thinking about this while looking at the top 16 too as I don't even remember seeing Aerolink's Palutena.

 

[Sinister Slush]

He used it against Abadango but lost.
Generally a character should not be added next to someone if they didn't take a game off anyone.

 

[webbedspace]

In a way I feel like the "narrative" of this Apex was pretty good considering the possibilities. Dabuz ousting M2K (preventing a much-anticipated grand final Diddy ditto), as well as Abadango ousting Aerolink, has for the time being dented the idea that top Diddys are insurmountable beasts that can clean the full cast (and, importantly, helped distinguish ZeRo as being the champ for his own merits, not Diddy's). The appearance of Pac-Man, Megaman, DHD and Greninja has also lit small torches for four characters that hadn't been seeing much acclaim (torches that characters like ZSS, Ness, Mario and Luigi arguably needed less).

Of course, most all of these events resulted from peculiarities in pools and rules (in particular, had quarters not been 3-out-of-5, Dabuz may well have finished there) and of course the Rosalina fear from the 3DS has apparently been revived, but as a sign-of-the-times in the minds of the community it's at least a more positive message than many had been expecting.

 

[Thinkaman]

He used it against Abadango but lost.
Generally a character should not be added next to someone if they didn't take a game off anyone.

Sort of.

There is something to be said though, for a top-16 player at an international event truly believing their best hope to play-to-win is choosing that character. It's not a random instance.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Abadango winning against alsm isn't really an amazing feat.

Sort of.

There is something to be said though, for a top-16 player at an international event truly believing their best hope to play-to-win is choosing that character. It's not a random instance.

I mean no, it's not a random instance. But if it didn't take games off, it shouldn't be worth noting. Otherwise people like Ally back in brawl would prolly have 3-5 characters next to his name.
He's also already playing Diddy kong, if he honestly can't win with that character there's very likely little hope for his secondary.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Did anybody actually expect a Diddy Kong GFs? With 2 of the top 3 Diddy players not in attendance that was a pretty unrealistic assumption to make. A Sheik ditto GF between Nietono and Mr-r was actually more likely than a Diddy ditto GF between Zero and M2K tbqh.

Also, does anybody know the details of that Japan roundtrip that the top 2 teams won?

 

[Terotrous]

Not reading 30 pages of Apex discussion but I'll give my thoughts.

Apart from venue madness, this was a pretty by-the-numbers Apex. The results were exactly what we thought they were going to be, and there were generally very few surprises. Nevertheless here's my quick analysis and thoughts.

First of all, I'd like to give a shoutout to Dabuz, who is easily the player's champion of Apex. Dabuz vs Abadango and Dabuz vs Mew2King were easily the two best matches of the finals, and he did it using a bizarre combination of Rosalina and Olimar. From Dabuz's performance, I think we can conclude that Rosalina is definitely still a threat. Olimar isn't as clear, I buy that his matchup vs Diddy is not terrible, but as a character I still don't think he's that solid.

It was really unfortunate that Abadango and Dabuz met up as early as they did. Pac vs Rosa is clearly an atrocious matchup for Pac, likely -3 or maybe even -4, if played properly she just shuts down everything he can do and even uses it against him. This reinforces my belief that Pac-Man is kinda mid tier and likely can't be played without a secondary, a few of his matchups are just too bad. Still, props to Abadango for making it that far. Pac buffs plz Sakurai, likely some kind of improvement to his grab.

I think any claims that Zero is just a smash god who would win with any character can be laid to rest after this tournament. Yes, he is amazing with Diddy, but his Falcon didn't look nearly as good and it's pretty clear he would not have won if he was using Falcon exclusively. He might be the best Smash 4 player, but if so it's not by that much and a lot of it is indeed the power of Diddy Kong.

Speaking of Diddy, I think it's fairly clear that he is definitely the best character in the game. I would say Diddy is about 15% better than Sheik, who is about 15% better than the next set of characters (the rest of high tier). If he didn't get adjusted, some kind of soft ban would likely eventually be necessary, though it's pretty clear that he will get some kind of tonedown eventually because even Japan has figured out how broken this character is.

Oh well, so begins the long road to EVO. Anyone want to predict how broken or weak M2 will be?

 

[Rockaphin]

What other characters do you all hope to see be brought out in a tournament?

I'd like to see someone whip out DeDeDe at one point.

Villager and Charizard. I really want to believe that Charizard has the potential. I forgot the guy's name, Bloodcross? Something like that. He has a good 'Zard.


I think there's someone doing well with Ike, Ryo I believe. Fun stuff to watch and I'd like to see more.

 

[NachoOfCheese]

I'm really happy to see all the character variety in the top 16, including Olimar, Little Mac, Pac-man, Greninja, and (my personal favorite) Robin!

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Eh, I think Rosalina is the only matchup that's really THAT bad for Pacman. She is the only character that can render both bonus fruit and the hydrant useless at the same time while also being incredibly hard to approach. Most of Pacman's other moves [except upB] are solid, straightforward bread and butter moves that serve their purpose in according situations. Not enough to deal with a brickwall of a character like Rosalina. She just entirely neutrtalizes him.

Fox is probably the next worst matchup after that because bonus fruit and hydrant are unreliable against him and Fox' damage output and KO power are generally problematic for most chracters. Pacman can't slow down Fox like most other characters but everything else looks pretty winnable for Pac-Man.

Speaking of Diddy, I think it's fairly clear that he is definitely the best character in the game. I would say Diddy is about 15% better than Sheik, who is about 15% better than the next set of characters (the rest of high tier). If he didn't get adjusted, some kind of soft ban would likely eventually be necessary, though it's pretty clear that he will get some kind of tonedown eventually because even Japan has figured out how broken this character is.

Sheik probably isn't better than Sonic though. Sonic is actually doing phenominally well despite only like 2-3 players WORLDWIDE being competent with him and people are only starting to catch a glimpse of what that character is capable of.

 

[Terotrous]

Eh, I think Rosalina is the only matchup that's really THAT bad for Pacman. She is the only character that can render both bonus fruit and the hydrant useless at the same time while also being incredibly hard to approach. Most of Pacman's other moves [except upB] are solid, straightforward bread and butter moves that serve their purpose in according situations. Not enough to deal with a brickwall of a character like Rosalina. She just entirely neutrtalizes him.

Rosalina definitely seems like the worst one, but any character who has really strong anti-zoning capabilities is going to be a problem.

Sheik probably isn't better than Sonic though. Sonic is actually doing phenominally well despite only like 2-3 players WORLDWIDE being competent with him and people are only starting to catch a glimpse of what that character is capable of.

I'm not quite convinced of this yet (Sonic doesn't quite have the results to back it up at this point), but looking at what he has on paper I wouldn't be shocked.

 

[HeavyLobster]

Apex was pretty disappointing to watch tbqh. There were some pretty amazing moments - especially dabuz reverse 3-0'ing M2K - but between the truly dreadful seeding and all smash games not named melee being treated as inferior rejections most of the tournament's potential excitement got completely butchered for me.

Chances are, Evo won't be much better. The only way for a Brawl, Smash 4 and even smash 64 event to turn out satisfactory is when Melee is not on the schedule. SKTAR is gonna be where it's at.

Part of the problem with Smash 4 is that some top players in multiple Smash games treat Melee as their priority instead of putting their all into developing the Smash 4 meta. Both M2K and AMSA have chosen to avoid playing their Melee mains in Smash 4 even though it could be argued that both would see better results from doing so. Obviously it's their choice what characters they want to play and what games they want to emphasize, but it's disappointing to see AMSA pass up the chance to max out a high tier Yoshi for a less viable character, especially when you consider that Melee Yoshi, even in his skilled hands, simply isn't good enough to go through the "gods" of Melee and win a major tourney. I'd also rather see M2K take Sheik's gimp game to the next level as opposed to his rather uninspired Diddy, and while I think Sheik is a better fit for his skillset and believe he might do better with her, it's also true that his Diddy is still pretty effective and the situation isn't as clear-cut as AMSA's.

 

[dragontamer]

Eh, I think Rosalina is the only matchup that's really THAT bad for Pacman. She is the only character that can render both bonus fruit and the hydrant useless at the same time while also being incredibly hard to approach. Most of Pacman's other moves [except upB] are solid, straightforward bread and butter moves that serve their purpose in according situations. Not enough to deal with a brickwall of a character like Rosalina. She just entirely neutrtalizes him.

Its less about the projectile thing, and more about how Rosalina by herself beats all of PacMan's normals. Rosalina doesn't even need Luma to neutralize PacMan's approach game.

Abadango is an unusually campy PacMan. Kool-Aid's PacMan has more reads, smashes and such. There are a couple of PacMans who are convinced that he can rushdown / aggro. (PacMan's range isn't bad, and 4-frame Jab / 5-frame FTilt / 5-frame FAir / 3-frame Nair / Unblockable Up-B get the rushdown done surprisingly well). PacMan's fruit transitions well into the rushdown game, because he doesn't have much cooldown on fruit-tosses.

In particular, PacMan's invulnerability on UTilt is good vs aerials, and his range is deceptively decent. FTilt can stuff a lot of character's approaches, or provide good approach for PacMan.

With that said, none of those moves help in the Rosalina matchup. She just completely stuffs both the camp game and the approach game.

--------------------

I still make the bid that Yoshi (eggs superior to fruit) and Lucario (PacMan has a hard time killing, and high% partially-charged Aura Spheres break hydrant in one-hit and otherwise cancel out all fruit) give a rough matchup for PacMan.

Rosalina is the most obvious "bad matchup" though. But Yoshi / Lucario definitely give me a hard time.

 

[Radical Larry]

Part of the problem with Smash 4 is that some top players in multiple Smash games treat Melee as their priority instead of putting their all into developing the Smash 4 meta. Both M2K and AMSA have chosen to avoid playing their Melee mains in Smash 4 even though it could be argued that both would see better results from doing so. Obviously it's their choice what characters they want to play and what games they want to emphasize, but it's disappointing to see AMSA pass up the chance to max out a high tier Yoshi for a less viable character, especially when you consider that Melee Yoshi, even in his skilled hands, simply isn't good enough to go through the "gods" of Melee and win a major tourney. I'd also rather see M2K take Sheik's gimp game to the next level as opposed to his rather uninspired Diddy, and while I think Sheik is a better fit for his skillset and believe he might do better with her, it's also true that his Diddy is still pretty effective and the situation isn't as clear-cut as AMSA's.

The biggest example of prioritization instead of moderation; if they did choose their Melee mains, they would have still won. And people, if they chose a diverse range instead of around twenty characters, would expect to see a better meta for Smash Bros. 4 instead of just overrating certain characters. It's very unhealthy for the meta and MUs and doesn't show promise for if there's a tier list (which will probably come out after 2 years because of Mewtwo being DLC).

(Maybe it should be time that I go out and fight in tournaments to show how moderation is better than prioritization.)

 

[⑨ball]

Part of the problem with Smash 4 is that some top players in multiple Smash games treat Melee as their priority instead of putting their all into developing the Smash 4 meta. Both M2K and AMSA have chosen to avoid playing their Melee mains in Smash 4 even though it could be argued that both would see better results from doing so. Obviously it's their choice what characters they want to play and what games they want to emphasize, but it's disappointing to see AMSA pass up the chance to max out a high tier Yoshi for a less viable character, especially when you consider that Melee Yoshi, even in his skilled hands, simply isn't good enough to go through the "gods" of Melee and win a major tourney. I'd also rather see M2K take Sheik's gimp game to the next level as opposed to his rather uninspired Diddy, and while I think Sheik is a better fit for his skillset and believe he might do better with her, it's also true that his Diddy is still pretty effective and the situation isn't as clear-cut as AMSA's.

Mechanics of different games often make different characters. It's often not about character loyalty so much as it's about the different way characters feel. As a MK main from Brawl, I can tell you that MK and Marth/Lucina feel absolutely gross this time around to me and I only dabble in MK and Lucina for MU knowledge and friendlies as I really like their characters.

I also want to point out that when you play multiple versions of the same game, it can some times be better mentally to separate your character choices less you get mixed up on what options you have available in each iteration.

I highly doubt, for example that a player like Armada would use Peach in anything other than Melee and maybe Project M

 

[Tagxy]

I think any claims that Zero is just a smash god who would win with any character can be laid to rest after this tournament. Yes, he is amazing with Diddy, but his Falcon didn't look nearly as good and it's pretty clear he would not have won if he was using Falcon exclusively. He might be the best Smash 4 player, but if so it's not by that much and a lot of it is indeed the power of Diddy Kong.

His Falcon was definitely looking very solid for its brief appearance. Say what you want about Diddy, but Zero appears to be a smash 4 god with or without diddy. He seems the best smash 4 player by a very notable amount.

Did anybody actually expect a Diddy Kong GFs? With 2 of the top 3 Diddy players not in attendance that was a pretty unrealistic assumption to make. A Sheik ditto GF between Nietono and Mr-r was actually more likely than a Diddy ditto GF between Zero and M2K tbqh.

I disagree with this, I actually do think Mew2King has a reasonable claim to the second best diddy. Keeping in mind him and zero are the only two players who literally play as if it were a job as far as I know, and they each live a bunk bed away from each other. Mew2King might not be as solid as Zero on MU's but Zero is still solid with various characters for practice.

 

[Terotrous]

His Falcon was definitely looking very solid for its brief appearance. Say what you want about Diddy, but Zero appears to be a smash 4 god with or without diddy. He seems the best smash 4 player by a very notable amount.

Eh, while it looked good, it was by no means untouchable in the way that his Diddy is. Now, you might think he must be an amazing player to play CF at that level despite not putting as much time into him, but if he was playing CF exclusively he likely would have lost in quarterfinals or earlier.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I disagree with this, I actually do think Mew2King has a reasonable claim to the second best diddy. Keeping in mind him and zero are the only two players who literally play as if it were a job as far as I know, and they each live a bunk bed away from each other. Mew2King might not be as solid as Zero on MU's but Zero is still solid with various characters for practice.

This was actually already the case in Brawl too, more or less. And yet Nairo and Otori were the two best MK players. Rain and Edge have better placings than M2K in a tougher region, so burden of proof is on you.

 

[Firefoxx]

It seemed pretty clear that the match that Zero went Falcon in was a really clowny match. I mean, he went for a Falcon Punch and M2K punched him in real life right afterwards. I don't think that match was the best test of his skills (And his Falcon still looked better then every other Falcon I got a chance to see at Apex)

Edit: Also, we will apparently get a chance to see how good a Diddy-less Zero really is when he stops maining him and switches to Falcon/Shulk

 

[Diddy Kong]

ZeRo's Shulk huh? Will that lead to Shulk complaining / whining / wailing / ******** as with Diddy?? I wonder...

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I don't think Zero is gonna stick with Shulk for long. That character is actually hard to play.