Character Competitive Impressions

[The Real Gamer]

I usually get a good laugh out of these "tier lists" but I'd be interested in your opinions @ Amazing Ampharos

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Mario is just...okay with customs at best. They make him viable. On default settings, you're talking a character who can't afford to trade hits, is terrible in mid range, can't KO with aerials, and also is easily juggled and edgeguarded. And he has to hard read you to make his "combo" game work, and while his FLUDD is significantly better in this game, it at best only just enables Mario to make reads, rather than getting him anything seriously guaranteed

Both characters are very significantly overrated. Nobody seems to want to acknowledge the ways these characters get trolled in both neutral and negative state. Bowser at least has good pokes and great damage per hit. Mario doesn't even get much of anything.

Nah, Bowser is great and so is Mario. Mario leads people off-stage with bair chains which is killing with aerials in my book, has a dangerous dair that makes juggling him scary, his combos work just fine with reads that are anything but hard (easier than comboing with any other character!), his limbs are "long enough", and his moves are all around generally safe to throw out. The character has a great blend of speed and power without having range that's "too bad" and has so many other nice tools between the projectile, the f1 invincible OoS, or the cape. His customs are great and make him a truly good character, but he's decent regardless. You've been driving me crazy this whole topic being so down on Mario; he can deal with every match-up and wins a lot of them. My internal list puts him at B+ which is "upper mid" if mid is acutally the half-way mark of the cast (a lot of smash tier lists put mid at like the 2/3 point in the cast, silly thing to do; Mario is around the 1/3 mark of the cast if character #1 is the best). Yeah, FLUDD is kinda bad, very niche move. It doesn't really matter.

All the imagined problems with Bowser's neutral go away if you jab more and use either custom side special. Bowser can do everything in this game; he truly does solve the classic heavy problems, and I actually expect us to see this character more as people really figure that out.

Great points. If you could just break up the lines and do some general formatting to make it easier on the eyes, that'd be great. Keep it up!

Are you reading on a phone? I've done that once, and my posts scared me a lot. I try to paragraph break topically, but it's a tought balance when I end up having a lot to say like I did about Ness...

 

[HeavyLobster]

I think DDD should almost always take Gordo Toss 3.

Absolutely agree. Dedede needs stage control more than he needs edgeguarding, as his edgeguarding is already pretty good. I will say that Bouncing Gordo's utility is pretty stage dependent, as it's amazing on BF but not really anything too special on FD. I get the feeling that Dedede's viability will be heavily influenced by the stage list, as he's going to struggle mightily on large, flat stages against strong projectile characters, since he's a huge target, probably has the worst overall mobility in the game, and can't outcamp anyone with Gordos. On smaller stages with lots of platforms Dedede can control lots of space with his hammer and Gordos and be very effective. Since FD and BF(or stages strongly resembling either of them) will likely be the most polarizing stages in many matchups and therefore banned, the stages that are actually played most frequently will likely make a lot of difference as to how effective Dedede is.

 

[DeViSION]

What are people thoughts on Robin? He/She was the 1st character I picked up. IMO he/she is slow with a sub par dash attack but his/ her Dsmash with the Levin Sword is arguably one of the best in the game and his/her SideTilts too. The Air's are decent. Uair and Fair seems like the most useful. Not a fan of his/her Ssmash tho, its too slow.

 

[san.]

IMO this is Ike's least important slot as all three Eruption variants are kinda trashy... This is true for most characters, but on slots where all three options are kinda bad moves, it's mostly that you pick a move you can imagine yourself using sometime and run with it. I like Eruption 1 entirely for the armor to escape very niche juggle situations... which come up so rarely I haven't even really made use of it, but I never use any version of this move with Ike anyway. Eruption 2 is a very difficult gimp move to land, and I'm not sure it really meaningfully helps his recovery but if you can make real use of it in-game definitely go for it. Eruption 3 just seems horrible to me. Bigger hitbox sure, but it does less damage unless you charge it to the point of self-damage which comes way sooner than default and does more self-damage which for a move you'll land so rarely anyway isn't exactly the most desirable property, and even for a broken shield punish (not that Ike pops shields), Ike is usually more than happy with fully charged and properly spaced fsmash

I think you need to look at his eruptions a bit more if you're using it for juggle situations, the worst time to ever consider using it out. Ike also never really fsmashes, Usmash is where it's at.

Eruption is an edgeguarding move in this game, period, and it covers most angles to the edge as well as getup options. What gives eruption 2 the edge over the others against a good portion of the cast that go into freefall with their recovery is that it delivers the most powerful, spammable horizontal windbox in the game. You can charge it onstage to blow away any non-sweetspotting recovery, or use it offstage to complement or replace aerials since it lifts you up. There's also no use attacking it since it gets to the portion with super armor relatively quickly. Unlike the other horizontal windbox customs, it's a sphere around Ike and *much* stronger.

 

[TTTTTsd]

His customs are great and make him a truly good character, but he's decent regardless. You've been driving me crazy this whole topic being so down on Mario; he can deal with every match-up and wins a lot of them. My internal list puts him at B+ which is "upper mid" if mid is acutally the half-way mark of the cast

On that note, can I ask about your thoughts on Dr. Mario? I've been curious myself since your analysis of Mario pretty much matches mine.

 

[Smog Frog]

i still demand an explanation as to why is perceived bottom tier, he's a solid mid to me.

 

[DeViSION]

Nah, Bowser is great and so is Mario. Mario leads people off-stage with bair chains which is killing with aerials in my book, has a dangerous dair that makes juggling him scary, his combos work just fine with reads that are anything but hard (easier than comboing with any other character!), his limbs are "long enough", and his moves are all around generally safe to throw out. The character has a great blend of speed and power without having range that's "too bad" and has so many other nice tools between the projectile, the f1 invincible OoS, or the cape. His customs are great and make him a truly good character, but he's decent regardless. You've been driving me crazy this whole topic being so down on Mario; he can deal with every match-up and wins a lot of them. My internal list puts him at B+ which is "upper mid" if mid is acutally the half-way mark of the cast (a lot of smash tier lists put mid at like the 2/3 point in the cast, silly thing to do; Mario is around the 1/3 mark of the cast if character #1 is the best). Yeah, FLUDD is kinda bad, very niche move. It doesn't really matter.

All the imagined problems with Bowser's neutral go away if you jab more and use either custom side special. Bowser can do everything in this game; he truly does solve the classic heavy problems, and I actually expect us to see this character more as people really figure that out.



Are you reading on a phone? I've done that once, and my posts scared me a lot. I try to paragraph break topically, but it's a tought balance when I end up having a lot to say like I did about Ness...

yes......Mario is like 5/5 against almost all the others characters..... He doesn't have bad matchups

 

[A2ZOMG]

And I have an aneurism every time I see Ike in bottom tier.

Here's a hint: stop trying to space with Fairs with Ike in SSB4.

@ Eruption: Eruption 3's larger hitbox = great for punishing recovery attempts. I don't find Eruption 1's super armour to be useful, they nerfed its frame count.

Considering that Eruption 1's hitbox is barely large enough to beat some ledge sweetspots with perfect timing, Eruption 3 with both its larger hitbox and longer active frames is pretty useful.

And generally speaking, I'd say having superior tilts overall more than compensates for more situational F-air. I think the main issue with Ike as I've stated before is mostly his reward is a bit on the low side since he doesn't get too many other options for edgeguarding, which is somewhat unfortunate because Ike's moves can easily put people offstage. But customs overall seem to address a lot of his big problems.

Nah, Bowser is great and so is Mario. Mario leads people off-stage with bair chains which is killing with aerials in my book, has a dangerous dair that makes juggling him scary, his combos work just fine with reads that are anything but hard (easier than comboing with any other character!), his limbs are "long enough", and his moves are all around generally safe to throw out. The character has a great blend of speed and power without having range that's "too bad" and has so many other nice tools between the projectile, the f1 invincible OoS, or the cape. His customs are great and make him a truly good character, but he's decent regardless. You've been driving me crazy this whole topic being so down on Mario; he can deal with every match-up and wins a lot of them. My internal list puts him at B+ which is "upper mid" if mid is acutally the half-way mark of the cast (a lot of smash tier lists put mid at like the 2/3 point in the cast, silly thing to do; Mario is around the 1/3 mark of the cast if character #1 is the best). Yeah, FLUDD is kinda bad, very niche move. It doesn't really matter.

All the imagined problems with Bowser's neutral go away if you jab more and use either custom side special. Bowser can do everything in this game; he truly does solve the classic heavy problems, and I actually expect us to see this character more as people really figure that out..

I concede that Bowser is probably a competitive threat with custom specials, which do fill in some big holes in his gameplan.

Mario can't chain B-airs past 60% most of the time, so I am not really sure where you're getting this idea that Mario gets people offstage and gimps them easily with B-airs.

Mario's D-air is good, but not actually very good for hitting below him. It is primarily a PRESSURE TOOL first and foremost. I can't count the number of times I've seen SH D-air whiff on characters on the ground. As I've stated, it's not actually very good at hitting things below him. The hits before the last hit are primarily in Mario's hands, while only the last hit actually hits a larger area around Mario.

The problem with Mario's reads is his damage output is awful. Mario's U-air only does 7% this game, and his B-air only does 10%. Even factoring that most things got universal damage nerfs, Mario's damage in comparison to other characters is noticeably below average. It's much more noticeable in this game compared to say...Brawl. Mario doing 1% less damage per hit than some characters is a much smaller difference in Brawl than in this game, where it's a bigger fraction of total difference in damage per hit. But then you have situations where Yoshi at low percents can get 25% with two U-airs in a combo. For Mario to do that much damage, he has to hit you no less than three times in succession, and in order for him to do that in the first place, he has to actually first make sure you aren't just randomly N-airing out of his strings.

And let me reiterate, Mario absolutely can't afford to trade, when he's a character that doesn't have much in the way of survivability. It's not the same as Brawl Mario who potentially did over 60% in 2 reads, which is almost enough to kill somebody with F-smash, and Brawl Mario also had Jab cancels and Cape Stalling.

The one buff Mario ACTUALLY got on default was FLUDD. FLUDD pushes people further, and doesn't clash with hitboxes, making it actually work properly for edgeguarding and pushing people to the ledge. But again, it requires reads.

 

[ThatLunaticFeline]

i still demand an explanation as to why is perceived bottom tier, he's a solid mid to me.

Nothing he does is safe. Almost every attack he has is punishable on block or otherwise.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

I have two questions:

First, what are your impressions of ?
Second, what characters do you feel beat any of the "Big Four" ().

*Disclaimer: I do not endorse the idea that those four characters are automatically the top tier of this game, just going off of what seems to be most often cited in this thread

Yoshi does great against all four of those characters. Particularly against Rosalina because eggs wreck that Luma hard, and his speed gives her a lot of trouble. I think Yoshi beats ZSS too. Greninja and Sheik seem like even matchups with Yoshi.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

i still demand an explanation as to why is perceived bottom tier, he's a solid mid to me.

People think him hurting himself is a hurt problem, when really it's one of the best moves in the game.

A lot of it is also comparing him to Bowser which really doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Mr. Johan]

What are people thoughts on Robin? He/She was the 1st character I picked up. IMO he/she is slow with a sub par dash attack but his/ her Dsmash with the Levin Sword is arguably one of the best in the game and his/her SideTilts too. The Air's are decent. Uair and Fair seems like the most useful. Not a fan of his/her Ssmash tho, its too slow.

Uair and Ftilt are wonderful, but Dsmash is a tad too slow to be considered among the best. It and Fsmash are still decent though.

Robin's sorta got a Brawl G&W syndrome where if you're forced to play Robin's game, you're going to have a bad time, but if you can force Robin to play yours, it becomes a lot easier to handle. Anyone who can consistently get through Arcfire either by immediate reflection, deflection, or just by simply running under the fireball or jumping over (so basically all of the perceived Top 7/8, plus Ness and Falcon) strips Robin of his primary zoning and followup tool, which means he has to share stage control at all times, which doesn't work well with a character with a very slow dash and ok-at-best air-to-ground approach. And anyone who can easily outcamp him ()....well.

Robin excels at punishing auto-pilot habits, but if the character has the speed or reflector to get through it, it's not going to matter in the end.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

Yoshi lacks really safe approaches in the first place. He's not hard to turtle against. He's really really hard to approach in contrast.

I would have to disagree. Short hop air dodge to nair cancel. No lag, invincible during air dodge, nair comes out super fast and has good priority, what isn't safe about it? Due to the IASA frames on the air dodge, you can choose when to bust out the nair, so you can choose when to end the invincibility. Yoshi has very good horizontal air speed, so if you choose not to attack, you can just move far enough away from the opponent on the short hop to avoid any punishment. This is a fantastic approach on projectile users, especially those with catchable ones.

To win vs. Peach as Rosalina you need to change the style of your gameplay. You can't rely on walling her out with Luma, but you can wall her out with large, disjointed aerials and smashes. Think Marth vs. Peach in Brawl, but tone it down a bit from that because side-b can actually get through to you sometimes. Rosalina has a lot of range on her b-air, n-air, f-air, and dash attack, and with Luma by her side she has tons on her f-smash and d-smash too. That range is your primary weapon against Peach.

In some matchups it is better not to separate from Luma. That's true in this case. Peach is just going to ignore Luma/float over him, so you should use the additional range and hitboxes that he provides when he's close to you instead of sending him toward Peach.

Also, Peach is super floaty (obviously), so Rosalina's up-air and up-tilt are nice tools.

Not to say that Peach is bad -- in fact, she's great, and the fact that her dash attack kills made her a lot better in this game compared to her Brawl incarnation -- but I don't think she trumps Rosalina. It's even at the very worst.

I think what tips the matchup in her favor is that Peach can KO floaty light characters ridiculous early (at 75%) by UP B'ing them. So if Rosalina is high up and Peach reads her recovery or air dodge, and UP B's which is insanely fast, it's a KO, especially because that UP B is always going to be fresh since you are only going to throw it out for the KO. Also, only fast moving characters can punish peach for whiffing this, becuase she can fast fall into the ledge otherwise if the character doesn't have a quick movement speed like a Sheik or a Greninja. It's my KO move of choice on her.

 

[Scala]

Since we're doing hypothetical tier lists, here's my rather unconventional opinion:
(rows in no order) (only default moves taken into consideration)

Toppest


Top


Good


Average


Below Average


Undecided




edit with some observations I have:
Greninja is good but not one of the best, he has really good buttons but his zoning isn't strong enough
Marth is better than lucina in the hands of a player who can space well.
Villager has a very good juggle and zoning game which puts him higher up. Also he has some great hitboxes.
Pit is very underrated right now, arrows are nuts, his dash attack is long, his tilts are far, and his juggle game is strong.
Dark Pit gets knocked down a whole tier because his arrows are that much worse and Pit's arrows are so strong.
Bowser gets owned by zoning and careful play.
Metaknight might be a better character than people realize because of his speed and air game.
Olimar could potentially be a mid-tier but gets wrecked by reflect.

 

[NairWizard]

Politely requesting that people stop posting full tier lists without nearly as full (or any) explanation. It's really detracting from the discussion, imo: most people don't have anything to say about a series of pictures this early in the game. There are too many characters and the metagame is too undeveloped for this kind of at-a-glance pictorial representation to mean anything substantial. Just my opinion.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I would have to disagree. Short hop air dodge to nair cancel. No lag, invincible during air dodge, nair comes out super fast and has good priority, what isn't safe about it? Due to the IASA frames on the air dodge, you can choose when to bust out the nair, so you can choose when to end the invincibility. Yoshi has very good horizontal air speed, so if you choose not to attack, you can just move far enough away from the opponent on the short hop to avoid any punishment. This is a fantastic approach on projectile users, especially those with catchable ones.

That is neither a safe approach, nor does it beat turtling. SH airdodging is punished by an opponent who waits and does nothing before you dodge, unless you were doing it defensively and not as an approach.

And I'm pretty sure you're spouting nonsense by stating you can do aerials while airdodging, when Yoshi does not have the ability to Z-air.

Your point being?

 

[PKNintendo]

Sure!

Thanks for that thorough response. I guess I was looking at Thoron+ the wrong way; I suppose it's the one move that makes Robin a contender in competitive play, due to how absurd it is. I struggled to used it against more agile opponents and deemed it as overrated, but I suppose that was my confirmation bias in effect. Perhaps I should focus on getting good reads to land it (I should also be careful about whiffed attacks, as the recovery is annoying). At least it instantly causes your tomb to break, so don't have to keep track of Thunder+'s health. I've been desperately trying to find a use for his Down B, so to hear that it's trashy is somewhat relieving. I suppose it might be better in the Wii U version due to more precise controls, but as it stands it's too risky.

You're pretty much on point with Ness.

 

[ItsRainingGravy]

I think the main thing I have to complain about in the above list is that most of us generally believe Bowser isn't high tier, simply because his weakness of being huge makes him too easily countered by a lot of things. Specifically projectiles and strong fullhop spacing games. He's a good character when those things aren't an issue, but when they are, he struggles a lot. He's still one of those characters that also happens to be terrible enough in the negative state that his huge weight is somewhat trivialized when his ability to avoid many popular KO setups is weak.

Hmm. Yes, Bowser was a character I wasn't too sure on. I merely put him there due to how his percieved buffs feel great on paper, though I admit I have had little practice with him in Smash 4 so far. I had put them there mainly due to the impressions other people have had with him, though I have no qualms with dropping him a tier lower. Mid tier seems better for him anyways.

Dash Side B Grab is, however, quite amazing. That may make him a bit better, though I am not sure if that will help him break Mid tier.

I'd say as a personal aside, even though it's a fairly liberal approximation, I feel like Ness is a lot more around the lower-high than lower-mid. He's incredibly well-rounded and some of his aerials are godlike, as well as some of the best out-of-shield options. His recovery is one of the few things holding him back

Yeah, his recovery is pretty terrible still. Custom 3 (Lucas Up B) does help with that, but a character like Rosalina can eat his recovery for breakfast. He's still a good character, though I feel as though his ground attacks are still not that great and his recovery definitely holds him back. So, as a Ness main myself, I am a bit skeptical/pessimistic about placing him too high on the tier list. Plus, I am still quite salty about what they did with his Dair.

After seeing his recent tournament winnings though, I am having a slight change of heart. So I might have him swap places with Bowser on my current tier list.

It's sad to see that Kirby is getting the shaft again. Even numbered smash bros seem to be bad for Kirby.

Yeah. Unfortunately for Kirby, a ton of his moves have too much startup lag, and not enough utility to warrant the lag on his moves. All of his special moves are worse, most notably hammer and stone, both of which being slower and losing versatility. And the fact that his Dsmash sends up instead of horizontally, he can't really combo out of throws, he can't really combo off of Utilt because his aerials are so slow, and his light weight all hinder his ability to really shine in Smash 4. I haven't really tried his customs, but I've heard that they're not all that great either. So I can only see Kirby's potential dropping instead of rising.

I will say I disagree very heavily with every tier list posted on this page; seeing someone as fundamentally good as Mario in the low tiers is just... not right, among the myriad other issues I could raise with these lists.

I have a stroke everytime I see these pro bowser and anti Mario lists.

I have to agree with @A2ZOMG in regards to Mario not being good. You have to note that both I and A2ZOMG are people who main Mario. So it's not as though we are being biased towards Mario or anything like that: Both of us genuinely like Mario as a character, and are quite disappointed with his performance in Smash 4. And in regards to myself, I have played Mario ever since Smash 64. So I will say that I am quite sure that Mario is not nearly as good as a lot of people think that he is right now.

Mario can't chain B-airs past 60% most of the time, so I am not really sure where you're getting this idea that Mario gets people offstage and gimps them easily with B-airs.

Mario's D-air is good, but not actually very good for hitting below him. It is primarily a PRESSURE TOOL first and foremost. I can't count the number of times I've seen SH D-air whiff on characters on the ground. As I've stated, it's not actually very good at hitting things below him. The hits before the last hit are primarily in Mario's hands, while only the last hit actually hits a larger area around Mario.

The problem with Mario's reads is his damage output is awful. Mario's U-air only does 7% this game, and his B-air only does 10%. Even factoring that most things got universal damage nerfs, Mario's damage in comparison to other characters is noticeably below average. It's much more noticeable in this game compared to say...Brawl. Mario doing 1% less damage per hit than some characters is a much smaller difference in Brawl than in this game, where it's a bigger fraction of total difference in damage per hit. But then you have situations where Yoshi at low percents can get 25% with two U-airs in a combo. For Mario to do that much damage, he has to hit you no less than three times in succession, and in order for him to do that in the first place, he has to actually first make sure you aren't just randomly N-airing out of his strings.

And let me reiterate, Mario absolutely can't afford to trade, when he's a character that doesn't have much in the way of survivability. It's not the same as Brawl Mario who potentially did over 60% in 2 reads, which is almost enough to kill somebody with F-smash, and Brawl Mario also had Jab cancels and Cape Stalling.

The one buff Mario ACTUALLY got on default was FLUDD. FLUDD pushes people further, and doesn't clash with hitboxes, making it actually work properly for edgeguarding and pushing people to the ledge. But again, it requires reads

I am pretty much in compliance with everything stated above.

- Mario has incredibly pitiful damage output.
- Mario's combos aren't NEARLY as good as people think they are. Utilt can NEVER be a true combo into another Utilt, if I am not mistaken.
- Mario's Dthrow is also overrated by people as well. He can only really follow it up with Up B/Jab at low percents, Utilt at mid percents, or Uair at high percents. And while that's all fine and dandy...these combos only usually do 17% or less damage.
- His recovery is one of the worst in the game now. Customs help this a little bit, but the loss of Cape Stalling on default hurts. Really hurts.
- He has really bad problems killing, due to aerials not hitting hard enough and his Smash attacks being quite predictable (Fsmash) or simply not good enough (Dsmash does 10% damage).
- You can solve his problems with killing opponents by giving him his Explosive Jump Punch custom, but you know what else happens when he does that? He loses combos and has a worse recovery than Marth now. Sure, 21% damage with high knockback is nothing to scoff at. But neither is being thrown off the stage and gimped to oblivion at like 50%. Not to mention, Mario sometimes absolutely relies on his Up B for a lot of his true combos in Smash 4...for him to do any sort of decent damage whatsoever.
- Slower fireball in this game due to endlag, which hurts his ability to zone.
- Poor range due to almost all of his attacks being melee-oriented.
- Like A2ZOMG said, his only real buff is that FLUDD is better now. People are underrating it. But even then, it isn't a cure-all to Mario's other problems. So this minor buff is vastly outclassed by everything else weighing Mario down. So other than FLUDD, Mario has little landing lag on most of his aerials? And pretty decent/good attack speed barring Fair and Fsmash? And that's really all he has.
- Characters like Sheik and Diddy pretty much do what Mario does, only better.

yes......Mario is like 5/5 against almost all the others characters..... He doesn't have bad matchups

No, not really. It's more-so 6/4 against Mario in regards to most matchups. With some 5/5's and maybe a 7/3 against him somewhere.

That's not to say that Mario is completely bad. He does have a pretty good chance at winning most fights...but it's almost always not really in his favor, and he has to really earn his wins in Smash 4.

He's a lot like Dan Hibiki in Street Fighter 4. You can definitely still win with him, and he can still be viable. But he's still a character whom feels quite hindered in his options in comparison to the rest of the cast.

Note that, while this might not exactly be positive for Mario, it is a positive sign for the game's balance in general. At least, in the early stages I have seen and played Smash 4, almost every character feels like they have a chance to win against every other character. So while this may change over time, I can say with confidence that Smash 4 is probably the most balanced (official) Smash game since Smash 64.


...Rosalina's shenanigans are quite silly however. She is the only character whom feels as though she could break the game's balance. Only time will tell, though.

 

[Spinosaurus]

Sure!

I'm curious on your thoughts on Wario's and ROB's customs. Really enjoy these write ups, by the way.

 

[DeViSION]

Uair and Ftilt are wonderful, but Dsmash is a tad too slow to be considered among the best. It and Fsmash are still decent though.

Robin's sorta got a Brawl G&W syndrome where if you're forced to play Robin's game, you're going to have a bad time, but if you can force Robin to play yours, it becomes a lot easier to handle. Anyone who can consistently get through Arcfire either by immediate reflection, deflection, or just by simply running under the fireball or jumping over (so basically all of the perceived Top 7/8, plus Ness and Falcon) strips Robin of his primary zoning and followup tool, which means he has to share stage control at all times, which doesn't work well with a character with a very slow dash (why are you slower than Ganondorf dammit) and ok-at-best air-to-ground approach. And anyone who can easily outcamp him ()....well.

Robin excels at punishing auto-pilot habits, but if the character has the speed or reflector to get through it, it's not going to matter in the end.i know

lol I know skeik is a horrible match for robin.... But with the Dsmash yea its a lol slow but it has a excellent hitbox , long active frames and has a nice shield push back. I guess it depend on the playstyle. Its a beautiful whiff punisher for me lol

 

[Thinkaman]

I'm really optimistic about Distant Nosfertu in teams.

Also, a key advantage in Thoron+ is how different the opponent has to play when you have it charged. It's sort of like Bucket or KO Punch, except the impact is more useful since it has more range and thus assets more threat. It's also a useful move against off-stage opponents.

And of course, generating more books to throw (for 18%?!?) is a pretty great consolation to burning through tomes.

Palutena is a no-skill character and that's her biggest advantage.

She doesn't require any techs or high-skilled plays/combos to be useful.

So Palutena is one of the most technical characters in the game, because of Super Speed. The cancel options out of it (which are the only reason this character is good) can be some pretty difficult inputs that must be input really quickly at a precise time.

 

[TTTTTsd]

Why use D-Throw at Low %s when you can just U-Throw and then UAir, exactly? I'm honestly confused that everybody just runs right to D-Throw with Mario. U-Throw at Low %s with Mario is so much more reliable than say, D-Throw against a heavy. Also Utilt not going into Utilt isn't really a big deal. It didn't do that in any of the other games (very easily anyways, maybe in Melee on a good day but DEF not in Brawl). He has UAir strings if you pull it right (not combos, STRINGS, pretty reliable if you space Uair properly) and yes his damage is low but his reads are comparatively easier compared to other characters who have less mobility.

 

[A2ZOMG]

...Rosalina's shenanigans are quite silly however. She is the only character whom feels as though she could break the game's balance. Only time will tell, though.

Conveniently enough, she is actually one of the high tiers Mario does better against. He doesn't have the advantage on her, but he handles some of her options better than several other characters. Specifically Mario can get around Luma easily with D-air and B-throw.

 

[ItsRainingGravy]

Why use D-Throw at Low %s when you can just U-Throw and then UAir, exactly? I'm honestly confused that everybody just runs right to D-Throw with Mario. U-Throw at Low %s with Mario is so much more reliable than say, D-Throw against a heavy. Also Utilt not going into Utilt isn't really a big deal. It didn't do that in any of the other games (very easily anyways, maybe in Melee on a good day but DEF not in Brawl). He has UAir strings if you pull it right (not combos, STRINGS, pretty reliable if you space Uair properly) and yes his damage is low but his reads are comparatively easier compared to other characters who have less mobility.

Because you get Nair'd in the back of the head after the Uair, which doesn't do enough hitstun at low percents to ensure that Mario is safe. Where-as with Dthrow you can follow it up with a jab string and end up in a safer position whilist doing more damage.

And his Uair strings are nice...until you realize that two Uairs from Mario does 14% damage, whilist a single Uair from Luigi only does 3% less damage.

And Utilt not going into another Utilt is a pretty big deal considering how everyone thinks it works perfectly, when it doesn't. And with how Mario already has a problem racking up damage, he needs all the help he can get.

 

[meleebrawler]

And I have an aneurism every time I see Ike in bottom tier.

Here's a hint: stop trying to space with Fairs with Ike in SSB4.

@ Eruption: Eruption 3's larger hitbox = great for punishing recovery attempts. I don't find Eruption 1's super armour to be useful, they nerfed its frame count.

And Eruption 2 screws with recovering people's minds.

 

[Emblem Lord]

yes......Mario is like 5/5 against almost all the others characters..... He doesn't have bad matchups

Are you drunk?

 

[Dragoomba]

Politely requesting that people stop posting full tier lists without nearly as full (or any) explanation. It's really detracting from the discussion, imo: most people don't have anything to say about a series of pictures this early in the game. There are too many characters and the metagame is too undeveloped for this kind of at-a-glance pictorial representation to mean anything substantial. Just my opinion.

"Early theoretical speculation of character rankings AREN'T ALLOWED!"

There's nothing wrong with speculative tier lists.

 

[meleebrawler]

Are you drunk?

Maybe not every match is even, but a good Mario can certainly handle almost anything.

 

[DeViSION]

Are you drunk?

lol. I meant it as Mario is balanced enough to deal with all the other characters IMO. Its not that difficult to win.. What I really meant to say is that he has bad matchups, juss don't really have horrible matchups

 

[shogungari]

People think him hurting himself is a hurt problem, when really it's one of the best moves in the game.

A lot of it is also comparing him to Bowser which really doesn't make sense to me.

It's his smashes. His forward smash is strong enough to KO a Mii Fighter at 50%. And the firebreath. And the whole "a dragon but not really a dragon" thing.

 

[ChikoLad]

Yoshi does great against all four of those characters. Particularly against Rosalina because eggs wreck that Luma hard, and his speed gives her a lot of trouble.

Uh, not really.

I played tons of matches against a really good Yoshi once. So I know this match up.

At first, I had a good deal of trouble. He won the first two or three matches with a solid lead.

However, there are a few things I learned at this point that made me take the next near-20 matches:

-Gravitational Pull those Eggs. Yoshi uses them a lot to either hurt Luma, or he lobs them over Luma and at Rosalina to get a hit in on her. Since Yoshi's Egg Throw is a ranged move and it has noticeable end lag, using Gravitational Pull is almost always safe against this move, as he will rarely be able to approach before Rosalina can take another action, like shielding or attacking.

-He is surprisingly easy to hit with Luma Shot when he's off stage, since Yoshi tends to use Egg Throws when coming back to the stage, he is constantly cutting his downward momentum. However, Rosalina also does this when she begins charging a Luma Shot in mid-air. So you can easily start charging as he's using an Egg Throw, and he'll be right in line for a close up Luma Shot, and will still be in his end lag, unable to do anything (if you're up close, the eggs will not hit you at all). Luma Shot is a KO move, so getting Yoshi off stage sets him up for some easy KOs.

-Yoshi can shut down Luma, but only if you use Luma in the standard way (covering two different points of the stage). However, Yoshi cannot prevent you from using Luma in aggressive ways. Essentially, keep Luma moving while attacking. Yes, you can do this. Just shoot him out past Yoshi, and call him back. Then when Luma is on his way back to Rosalina, use Luma's Tilts. This does not stop Luma's movement, so he hits Yoshi, and arrives safely to Rosalina's side. Or, if Yoshi is getting suspect to this, use Luma's Smash attacks or Star Bits while he's on the way back to Rosalina. These briefly stop Luma's route back to her, and the Smash attacks can obviously KO easily.

-Getting Yoshi above Rosalina is also very favourable for Rosalina. He's easy to juggle, due to be heavy and floaty at the same time. And Rosalina is a juggle master, especially with Luma by her side. Once Yoshi is in the air, Rosalina can pretty much do whatever she wants to him. She can easily stop his Down B too, should he decide to use that.

I personally think Mario fares better against Rosalina than Yoshi.

 

[SonicZeroX]

Considering that Eruption 1's hitbox is barely large enough to beat some ledge sweetspots with perfect timing, Eruption 3 with both its larger hitbox and longer active frames is pretty useful.

And generally speaking, I'd say having superior tilts overall more than compensates for more situational F-air. I think the main issue with Ike as I've stated before is mostly his reward is a bit on the low side since he doesn't get too many other options for edgeguarding, which is somewhat unfortunate because Ike's moves can easily put people offstage. But customs overall seem to address a lot of his big problems.

I concede that Bowser is probably a competitive threat with custom specials, which do fill in some big holes in his gameplan.

Mario can't chain B-airs past 60% most of the time, so I am not really sure where you're getting this idea that Mario gets people offstage and gimps them easily with B-airs.

Mario's D-air is good, but not actually very good for hitting below him. It is primarily a PRESSURE TOOL first and foremost. I can't count the number of times I've seen SH D-air whiff on characters on the ground. As I've stated, it's not actually very good at hitting things below him. The hits before the last hit are primarily in Mario's hands, while only the last hit actually hits a larger area around Mario.

The problem with Mario's reads is his damage output is awful. Mario's U-air only does 7% this game, and his B-air only does 10%. Even factoring that most things got universal damage nerfs, Mario's damage in comparison to other characters is noticeably below average. It's much more noticeable in this game compared to say...Brawl. Mario doing 1% less damage per hit than some characters is a much smaller difference in Brawl than in this game, where it's a bigger fraction of total difference in damage per hit. But then you have situations where Yoshi at low percents can get 25% with two U-airs in a combo. For Mario to do that much damage, he has to hit you no less than three times in succession, and in order for him to do that in the first place, he has to actually first make sure you aren't just randomly N-airing out of his strings.

And let me reiterate, Mario absolutely can't afford to trade, when he's a character that doesn't have much in the way of survivability. It's not the same as Brawl Mario who potentially did over 60% in 2 reads, which is almost enough to kill somebody with F-smash, and Brawl Mario also had Jab cancels and Cape Stalling.

The one buff Mario ACTUALLY got on default was FLUDD. FLUDD pushes people further, and doesn't clash with hitboxes, making it actually work properly for edgeguarding and pushing people to the ledge. But again, it requires reads.

You mention a lot about how Mario always comes out on the bad end of trades, but I feel having a pure damage based advantage is not nearly as important in this game as in other games because of the rage effect. Like rage effect is strong enough in this game that if two fighters are 100% and 150%, it actually does not feel like you have the advantage if you're the 100% player because the 150% player has a huge rage boost. Even if Mario loses every trade in damage, as long as he can get trades in the first place he at least won't be shut out, unlike a character like Ganondorf who is very easy to hit without taking a hit in return.

Of course killing is another matter and yeah Mario doesn't kill that well outside of gimps, but I don't think the argument of pure damage trading is that important in Smash 4. It's more important that you can actually land hits in the first place, especially landing kill moves. Mario at least feels like a character where it's very hard to keep him away and never take any damage from, while larger slower characters like Bowser/Ganon can be walled out by certain playstyles.

 

[popsofctown]

I hope rage doesn't make the game mean "kill moves are everything", even though I fear that could be an accurate analysis of its simplifying effect on the game.

 

[Emblem Lord]

In every fighter confirming into a huge combo/super/kill set up is the name of the game.

Why would this game be different?

 

[SonicZeroX]

I hope rage doesn't make the game mean "kill moves are everything", even though I fear that could be an accurate analysis of its simplifying effect on the game.

Nah if that was the case then Bowser and Ganondorf would be top tier.

Now being fast/high priority + having good kills moves is another thing, but when has that ever NOT been a strong combination?

 

[A2ZOMG]

You mention a lot about how Mario always comes out on the bad end of trades, but I feel having a pure damage based advantage is not nearly as important in this game as in other games because of the rage effect. Like rage effect is strong enough in this game that if two fighters are 100% and 150%, it actually does not feel like you have the advantage if you're the 100% player because the 150% player has a huge rage boost. Even if Mario loses every trade in damage, as long as he can get trades in the first place he at least won't be shut out, unlike a character like Ganondorf who is very easy to hit without taking a hit in return.

Of course killing is another matter and yeah Mario doesn't kill that well outside of gimps, but I don't think the argument of pure damage trading is that important in Smash 4. It's more important that you can actually land hits in the first place, especially landing kill moves. Mario at least feels like a character where it's very hard to keep him away and never take any damage from, while larger slower characters like Bowser/Ganon can be walled out by certain playstyles.

Let's put it this way. The risk/reward is CONSIDERABLY out of Mario's favor generally speaking in the majority of his matchups.

This is why Ganondorf is better than Mario. Sure, Ganondorf doesn't have very safe moves, and that is why he isn't high tier because the vast majority of his game hinges on risk. The thing is though all of Ganondorf's moves have to be respected, and his opponent can't just recklessly throw things out against him either when he's in range to punish. Let me point out that Ganondorf in fact has AMAZING moves. Like, "I WOULD KILL MYSELF IF A TOP TIER HAD THESE MOVES" amazing. Ganon's Dash Attack is legit broken. Frame 10 move that kills, does 14%, able to crossover on spotdodge, also allows a DACUS. I mean, it's somewhat a shame it's on Ganondorf, because if say...Mario had Ganondorf's Dash Attack, he would instantly be high tier unquestionably. If Sheik or Pikachu had Ganon's Dash attack, they would be instant WTF BAN THIS CHARACTER SSS tier.

My point is, Ganondorf actually needs to be respected because his risk/reward is actually not a joke. All the projectile camping in the world doesn't stop Ganondorf from being scary when all he needs is a good DA/dash grab, and then a D-air/F-air offstage, and you're likely dead, literally. To make my point clear, Mario can't do this. Let me also add that Ganondorf's F-air in this game is actually feasibly safe on block, and still a great KO move, which is a very non-trivial buff for Ganondorf in this game.

Mario has to give his opponents ludicrous amounts of respect in most of his matchups. He can't beat anyone in midrange, so he has to trick his way in, and then when we get to how Mario's damage per hit sucks, and his combos aren't even reliable, it's just unfair how hard Mario has to work to get anywhere. For all the trouble Mario goes through to deal 23 damage, another character making reads of similar difficulty likely would have done 28-30 damage. Ganondorf makes ONE read with F-smash and outdamages Mario furthermore.

Mario is bad in this game because his risk/reward is one of the worst in the game. On paper, Ryu can beat Dhalsim if he perfectly uppercuts Dhalsim's pokes. But the matchup is heavily out of his favor because the risk of trying to uppercut generally doesn't justify its reward. Get where I'm going?

 

[LunarWingCloud]

So.... thoughts on Pikachu from you guys?

 

[Terotrous]

Have we talked about ROB lately? He seems really really good this time around. Great projectile, amazing tilts and smash attacks, fantastic recovery, some really solid throws (+ a kill throw!) and some nice fast aerials. Everything about him that was good from Brawl stayed good, while everything that was less good got better. I think he's a solid high tier this time around.

 

[A2ZOMG]

So.... thoughts on Pikachu from you guys?

Super cancerous high tier character that is literally only held back by weak KO options. But he does have KO confirms, an unreactable approach, good projectiles, ridiculous edgeguarding, gets out of traps 100% free.

Have we talked about ROB lately? He seems really really good this time around. Great projectile, amazing tilts and smash attacks, fantastic recovery, some really solid throws (+ a kill throw!) and some nice fast aerials. Everything about him that was good from Brawl stayed good, while everything that was less good got better. I think he's a solid high tier this time around.

ROB gets crapped on by Smash 4 physics. He is not good at baiting airdodges. He can't edgeguard low recoveries well. He's one of the worst characers in the game at landing safely and his recovery is also bad. And his damage per hit and KO options aren't good. He does have alright pokes, and lasers make for good followups, and Gyro is somewhat nonsense to play around when set up correctly, but overall his reward is low, and he's easily killed.