Character Competitive Impressions

[Gard]

I'm only going to muse about the characters I think are different from popular opinion.
Mario - Interesting how he's not actually winning a lot, especially for how much he's used. I don't know what to make of this.
Luigi - Okay, this can't all just be Boss. I mean really, I think Luigi is super super undervalued, even at the top.
Ness - His approach and range seem like they're problematic... I dunno.
Yoshi - Okay, the contrast between amount played and results are huge. I haven't played many Yoshi's (or much Smash 4) but he feels much stronger than this. 4% sucks.
Pika - Same with Yoshi. And didn't ESAM do really well? I dunno.
Rosalina - Given how Dabuz is doing, this is weird. I mean, not very low, but lower than I though. Some characters seem to have more defensive playstyles than is common in Smash - I would say Rosalina is the biggest example.
Villager - Whoa. Um. Okay, no idea what happened here. Poor little guy just doesn't win.
Toon Lonk - Same deal as villager. But he doesn't feel super strong so that makes some sense.
Lonk - Same as Toon Lonk.
Shulk - So I was aware that people had changed opinion of him, but this backs it up pretty well. That's a lot of wins.
Little Mac - This is interesting. people cite his aerial game as a reason not to play him, and to some extent I agree, but it seems like too much is being made of previous Smash games. The ledge mechanics are wildly different, and his terrible recovery and air game are not as bad as they seem, maybe. I mean, in any other game, with an air game like that, he would be dead. But... in Smash 4 it may be different. I don't know.
Wario - Not many people play him, but he does win a lot.
Olimar - Same as Wario.
Palutena - I'm betting most of these are customs on victories, but given that customs seem to be how the community is going, that's worth thinking about.
Mewtwo - I've heard a lot of complaints, and honestly hardly anybody is playing him so it could just be unfamiliarity, but this is cool.
Robin - Also don't know what to think. But those are some wins.
Bowser Jr - Same deal as Robin. He seems to play a lot like Villager, who people like.
Mii... freaking... Brawler - Obviously this is skewed. Nobody wants to play a Mii, but apparently he wins all. The. Time. It's kind of completely ridiculous and this is twice what anyone else has, and again it's skewed but I'm curious about results if more people wanted to put time into him.

 

[Terios the Hedgehog]

Nice tier list.


This isn't online stats is it? I don't even know how you would get that. Tourney results?

 

[Luco]

@ bc1910 and @ FullMoon That's quite interesting. I heard you guys had put Ness at 50:50 but a lot of Ness mains felt it was in our favour and that Hydro Pump had been over-rated as a gimping tool against us. I'd like to discuss it more with you guys at some point, just because the conversation was so recent (like yesterday). I'd like to tag @Noa. here because I know he often looks at the thread and could probably give some interesting input.

As a general rule though, most character boards (especially high/top tiers tiers) tend to feel like they have 4 or 5 losing MUs and the rest are even-ish or in their favour. I understand this is why many see them as unreliable sources of information, and of course I think a lot of people are scared that other will under-rate the strengths of their main or over-emphasise their weaknesses. This is certainly the case with the Ness boards; a lot of our members feel as though other boards over-rate gimping tools against Ness, and I'm sure other boards feel similarly about their character's weakness.

I can't wait until the character boards really start to get together more and these things get worked out. In the meantime, MU discussions are hard, so when people are asked what they feel about their character's MUs, you're likely to get an answer that reflects the sentiment of the person towards their character (optimistic vs pessimistic). This is why I found your answers interesting, because I see Ness as having 4 or 5 negative MUs and still being higher on a tier list than Greninja (I'm also a very optimistic Ness main so there may be a few more). In other words, I'm not trying to call you out, because your answers are totally fine, but the discrepancy in our thought processes got me thinking, thus this post.

I hope what I'm saying isn't too convoluted haha.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Greninja 3 losing MU's......*sigh* That'd make him one of the best charactwrs in the game right? Where the greninja mains at though? Other than Apex I haven't seen anything from any greninja. But hey 3 bad MU's...

 

[FullMoon]

The people at the Greninja boards are very aware of Greninja's weaknesses and I at least always try my best to be as unbiased as possible about what I say about MUs.

The things that make a MU hard for Greninja is if the opponent can keep up with his mobility and also forces him to approach, which is why Sheik, Fox and Sonic are so annoying for him to deal with.

Ness... I don't think he has any of that. B-Throw is super dangerous, yes, but Ness can get badly juggled by Greninja and he doesn't even need to rely on Hydro Pump to gimp him, he can just B-Air him away too. No matter how you look at it you can't say Greninja doesn't have the advantage when it comes to edgeguarding.

Greninja 3 losing MU's......*sigh* That'd make him one of the best charactwrs in the game right? Where the greninja mains at though? Other than Apex I haven't seen anything from any greninja. But hey 3 bad MU's...

I've asked this before and I'll ask it again, what other MUs does Greninja lose?

And hey ZeRo does consider Greninja to be one of the best in the game so.

 

[Appledees]

Doesn't Greninja go even with Megaman?

Been a while since I fought a really good Greninja but I always felt that Megaman can have a good solid defense of projectiles against him but Greninja's mobility makes it a bit easier to pressure Megaman. He can also combo Megaman pretty good and his kill options aren't that bad against him.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

MU's I can see greninja losing

Rosalina Pacman villager bowser pikachu lil mac kirby mario Yoshi Diddy Falcon ZSS Wario ROB and Megaman .

Sorry I'm not a greninja main I don't know his MU'S you guys claiming you lose three seems extremely suspect to me.

I don't believe what Zero said. I'll pnly believe the character he's playing is one of the best. He played MK in brawl pee patch Diddy and now shiek. Gotta believe if greninja was that good Zero would play him when there's momey on the line.

 

[mimgrim]

It would be nice to see at least one of her tilts gain the "unclankable" priority that little mac has on his ftilt. Her tilts are pretty interesting moves, but their commitment is wasted when you can just clash with them, then outspeed her.

Her tilts already work have the rebounding property on them though.

Greninja 3 losing MU's......*sigh* That'd make him one of the best charactwrs in the game right? Where the greninja mains at though? Other than Apex I haven't seen anything from any greninja. But hey 3 bad MU's...

Not necessarily. With they way you put it, sure it sounds like he should be one of the best character in the game. HOWEVER.

It depends on those 3 MUs a character loses.

If a character loses to 3 character that are considers top/high/good/popular those 3 losing MUs matter a lot more then losing like, say, 5 MUs to random low/bottom/mid-low/unpopular characters. You have to consider the weight of popularity of characters a character loses against and not just looking at the X character loses to Y number of character but also the character they lose to.

To use a comparison (since this isn't a gameplay comparison it should be fine), Toon Link in Project M loses hard (basically time to pick another character) to 5 characters in the game, has a rough (but doable) time against another 3 or so, goes even without about another 3, and beats everyone else in the game. So out of like 41 characters and in the context of P:M, this looks like a good MU spread (and it is) but 4 of those 5 horrible MUs are against some of the most popular characters in the game and is what keeps him out of top tier and ends up making him more of a gate keeper character in high tier.

Just something to keep in mind.

 

[FullMoon]

Doesn't Greninja go even with Megaman?

Been a while since I fought a really good Greninja but I always felt that Megaman can have a good solid defense of projectiles against him but Greninja's mobility makes it a bit easier to pressure Megaman. He can also combo Megaman pretty good and his kill options aren't that bad against him.

I do think Greninja goes even with Megaman, yes, I think it was placed as 55:45 in our favor in our MU thread but I don't really agree with it.

MU's I can see greninja losing

Rosalina Pacman villager bowser pikachu lil mac kirby mario Yoshi Diddy Falcon Wario ROB and Megaman .

Sorry I'm not a greninja main I don't know his MU'S you guys claiming you lose three seems extremely suspect to me.

I don't believe what Zero said. I'll pnly believe the character he's playing is one of the best. He played MK in brawl pee patch Diddy and now shiek. Gotta believe if greninja was that good Zero would play him when there's momey on the line.

One of the best is not THE best and Zero goes for THE best.

By the way a lot of the MUs you posted had their members give us input when we were discussing their characters or vice-versa.

Rosalina was even.

Pacman was even

Villager we just talked about (and are stilll talking) and the one guy who gave us input said it was in our favor

Bowser was in our favor

I particularly feel Falcon is even or slight in our favor but that's just me.

The others we still have to discuss in more depth.

Sorry if you think the character sucks but unfortunately your opinion is not a fact lol.

Greninja's bad MUs are 3 very popular characters in the meta, that alone would hold him back from being top tier

 

[Ffamran]

Now I'm curious about something and it's probably a dumb question, but let's say there's a character, we'll call him Ted, and he beats like say, 70:30 against Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon regardless if it's customs or default, but against the rest of the cast - so, 48 characters of the 53 total -, he loses hard and when I mean hard, I mean 10:90's the rest of the cast; you could cookie cut and For Glory Charizard, Samus, Link, Mario, and Little Mac and have an easy time against Ted. This is a hypothetical situation, but what would this mean for Ted? Is he basically the ultimate counterpick character against 5 top/high tiers or is Ted royally screwed and completely unviable since some random person could counterpick him with a competent Dr. Mario?

 

[thehard]

Now I'm curious about something and it's probably a dumb question, but let's say there's a character, we'll call him Ted, and he beats like say, 70:30 against Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon regardless if it's customs or default, but against the rest of the cast - so, 48 characters of the 53 total -, he loses hard and when I mean hard, I mean 10:90's the rest of the cast; you could cookie cut and For Glory Charizard, Samus, Link, Mario, and Little Mac and have an easy time against Ted. This is a hypothetical situation, but what would this mean for Ted? Is he basically the ultimate counterpick character against 5 top/high tiers or is Ted royally screwed and completely unviable since some random person could counterpick him with a competent Dr. Mario?

Has there ever been a character like that in other fighting games?

 

[Teshie U]

Such a character would have to be overall terrible with some sort of niche exploit that only works on good characters.

For smash maybe someone that completely invalidates mobility and CQC?

Inkling?

 

[Ffamran]

Has there ever been a character like that in other fighting games?

Probably not, but if there was, then that character would be the most unbalanced character in the game to get bodied by like 90% of the cast. And if this character was not a joke character, then it's really, really bad game design to let that slip by. Even Brawl Ganondorf wasn't as screwed as the hypothetical Ted. Then again... Zelda's not a joke character, but she might as well be one...

In a 50+ character game, that would be a horrible situation even if Ted could body some of the top tiers. With a smaller roster, it might not be as bad. It's a major and severe exaggeration, but if such a character existed - as in a character solely for counterpicking top/high tiers and struggles with the rest of the cast, major or minor -, is that character actually useful and viable?

 

[PUK]

Now I'm curious about something and it's probably a dumb question, but let's say there's a character, we'll call him Ted, and he beats like say, 70:30 against Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon regardless if it's customs or default, but against the rest of the cast - so, 48 characters of the 53 total -, he loses hard and when I mean hard, I mean 10:90's the rest of the cast; you could cookie cut and For Glory Charizard, Samus, Link, Mario, and Little Mac and have an easy time against Ted. This is a hypothetical situation, but what would this mean for Ted? Is he basically the ultimate counterpick character against 5 top/high tiers or is Ted royally screwed and completely unviable since some random person could counterpick him with a competent Dr. Mario?

The character would be the ultimate game 3 character

 

[Luco]

The character would be the ultimate game 3 character

The fact that he'd be a CP character goes without saying, but yeah it would make the order of picking characters really important. He'd probably be an essential pocket character at first, but then because he'd be invalidating the top tiers so hard, they wouldn't be top tiers anymore, and the characters that could do well without this character in the meta would take the top spot. Like it all still depends on order of picking. If the person picks a different character then the 'top tiers' Ted beats are still relevant, but overall it would be too tumultuous for those characters to have a good chance at winning nationals, because a lot would be decided by the winner of game 1 (and thus who would be CP-ing a character first/second in games 2 and 3).

Thus he'd basically be changing who the top tiers are, because no-one would bother trying to use the old 'top tiers' to counter the new 'top tiers' for fear of getting beaten game 1 and having to face Ted and be disadvantaged in the character selection screen. Because of this kind of 'winning at character select screen' effect, Ted would basically just make those characters unviable with him, instead of raising anyone up. You could say that's more balanced, but I would argue it's too unstable for the meta to stand on. The meta as we know it would crumble and we'd probably lose a lot of players.

 

[Hippieslayer]

Not having customs be the default is going to suck in a couple of years. Whereas customs on give the meta more fertile ground to grow on, making it easier for it to continue to do so for longer. Only reason it gets wonky now is because there are a lot of custom moves people need to learn. If default meta wins out now it might not be possible to revive customs later on owing to conservatism.

Moreover not using customs is essentially alien to the logic and principles which governs the rules of competitive play.

 

[PUK]

If default meta wins out now it might not be possible to revive customs later on owing to conservatism.

not sure of that. Ultimately TOs decide of the rules, and players go to the tournaments, custom on or not, because they don't really have other options

 

[Lukingordex]

MU's I can see greninja losing

Rosalina Pacman villager bowser pikachu lil mac kirby mario Yoshi Diddy Falcon ZSS Wario ROB and Megaman .

Sorry I'm not a greninja main I don't know his MU'S you guys claiming you lose three seems extremely suspect to me.

I don't believe what Zero said. I'll pnly believe the character he's playing is one of the best. He played MK in brawl pee patch Diddy and now shiek. Gotta believe if greninja was that good Zero would play him when there's momey on the line.

Greninja does not lose to Yoshi, it's even.

 

[Ffamran]

The fact that he'd be a CP character goes without saying, but yeah it would make the order of picking characters really important. He'd probably be an essential pocket character at first, but then because he'd be invalidating the top tiers so hard, they wouldn't be top tiers anymore, and the characters that could do well without this character in the meta would take the top spot. Like it all still depends on order of picking. If the person picks a different character then the 'top tiers' Ted beats are still relevant, but overall it would be too tumultuous for those characters to have a good chance at winning nationals, because a lot would be decided by the winner of game 1 (and thus who would be CP-ing a character first/second in games 2 and 3).

Thus he'd basically be changing who the top tiers are, because no-one would bother trying to use the old 'top tiers' to counter the new 'top tiers' for fear of getting beaten game 1 and having to face Ted and be disadvantaged in the character selection screen. Because of this kind of 'winning at character select screen' effect, Ted would basically just make those characters unviable with him, instead of raising anyone up. You could say that's more balanced, but I would argue it's too unstable for the meta to stand on. The meta as we know it would crumble and we'd probably lose a lot of players.

I should probably stop this discussion since it's not really related to the topic, but it was a question that popped up after reading mimigrim's post. Specifically, this part.

It depends on those 3 MUs a character loses.

If a character loses to 3 character that are considers top/high/good/popular those 3 losing MUs matter a lot more then losing like, say, 5 MUs to random low/bottom/mid-low/unpopular characters. You have to consider the weight of popularity of characters a character loses against and not just looking at the X character loses to Y number of character but also the character they lose to.

To use a comparison (since this isn't a gameplay comparison it should be fine), Toon Link in Project M loses hard (basically time to pick another character) to 5 characters in the game, has a rough (but doable) time against another 3 or so, goes even without about another 3, and beats everyone else in the game. So out of like 41 characters and in the context of P:M, this looks like a good MU spread (and it is) but 4 of those 5 horrible MUs are against some of the most popular characters in the game and is what keeps him out of top tier and ends up making him more of a gate keeper character in high tier.

Just something to keep in mind.

My extreme example, however, has Ted losing to 90% of the cast; 48 characters left which might stop him from being used at all. Sure, he would counter Sheik, but is it really that much of a problem to just pocket a Fox and murder him? Going 10:90 would mean you could pick random and hope you don't end up playing Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon to win against him if you're competent enough with the rest of the cast. A more reasonable character would be like what mimigrim said, Toon Link, or perhaps Brawl Wolf and Brawl Triple D.

I guess my question made simpler is it possible for a bottom or low tier character to be useful only for counterpicking top tiers? Probably answerable with say, Little Mac, but he's more of stage counterpicked and just being a volatile character in general - also, I don't think Little Mac is low or bottom at all since his weaknesses or "typical For Glory Little Mac player weaknesses" undermine him as a character. Or maybe Mii Swordfighter, but that might be a character whose weaknesses are being exaggerated to the point of silliness and people are losing because they have no idea how to fight MSF. Anyway, being invalidated or struggling against 90% cast would probably land you in the bottom or low tier regardless if it's low, mid, high, or top tiers invalidating you, but the rest of the 10%? What if that is only top tiers? That's not going to shoot this character up to even low mid just because Ted wins against Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon. Just a question to ponder is all and not really relevant to this topic.

 

[Ulevo]

Ok you really need to explain yourself here. ESAM got dash grabbed at 29% to 1/4 the length of Smashville, d-thrown to 34, then got faired to 42 and Helicopter Kicked AT THE EDGE OF THE MAP for the kill. I don't know if DI would have influenced that sequence at all. But there are plenty of moves I'm sure that kill that close to the blast zone at 58%. (And it was Tiny Brawler, natch)

Your anecdote implies something wholly unnatural took place without those details.

Um, yeah.

You're not only wrong, you're missing the point. He got grabbed almost at the centre of Smashville, not 1/4th, and died for it. I do not know what Smash universe you come from, but we do not count the % after the fact when a kill occurs. He wasn't killed at the blast zone, he was dragged in to it. At 29%.

My anecdote does not imply anything. It states what happened.

Ban the dlc characters. Screw them if they don't have customs. Yes we paid money for mewtwo but most of us didn't realize we were getting a customless characters. If there's no customs for dlc characters in the future just ban them.

You're talking about lack of depth at high levels of game play but what exactly are you basing this on? Absolutely, nothing if you ask me. Just like your argument of it not promoting balance. You're literally just making things up.

You post is summed up to me by your point about how lazy you are. Unwilling to grind out customs. Sorry man but that's not a valid argument. Just because you're lazy doesn't mean the tournament standard shouldn't be customs. This has to be one of the most absurd things I've ever read before.

Who are you?

Half the stage in is the exaggeration here, But I don't think he made out that ESAM plainly died at centre stage at 29% from an up-b.

No, I basically did.

 

[Lukingordex]

I should probably stop this discussion since it's not really related to the topic, but it was a question that popped up after reading mimigrim's post. Specifically, this part.

My extreme example, however, has Ted losing to 90% of the cast; 48 characters left which might stop him from being used at all. Sure, he would counter Sheik, but is it really that much of a problem to just pocket a Fox and murder him? Going 10:90 would mean you could pick random and hope you don't end up playing Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon to win against him if you're competent enough with the rest of the cast. A more reasonable character would be like what mimigrim said, Toon Link, or perhaps Brawl Wolf and Brawl Triple D.

I guess my question made simpler is it possible for a bottom or low tier character to be useful only for counterpicking top tiers? Probably answerable with say, Little Mac, but he's more of stage counterpicked and just being a volatile character in general - also, I don't think Little Mac is low or bottom at all since his weaknesses or "typical For Glory Little Mac player weaknesses" undermine him as a character. Or maybe Mii Swordfighter, but that might be a character whose weaknesses are being exaggerated to the point of silliness and people are losing because they have no idea how to fight MSF. Anyway, being invalidated or struggling against 90% cast would probably land you in the bottom or low tier regardless if it's low, mid, high, or top tiers invalidating you, but the rest of the 10%? What if that is only top tiers? That's not going to shoot this character up to even low mid just because Ted wins against Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon. Just a question to ponder is all and not really relevant to this topic.

Idk if that's a good example, but Wolf and Fox had a "decent" match up against MK but they weren't alongside the top tiers of the game because of some terrible match ups they had.

 

[mimgrim]

Now I'm curious about something and it's probably a dumb question, but let's say there's a character, we'll call him Ted, and he beats like say, 70:30 against Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon regardless if it's customs or default, but against the rest of the cast - so, 48 characters of the 53 total -, he loses hard and when I mean hard, I mean 10:90's the rest of the cast; you could cookie cut and For Glory Charizard, Samus, Link, Mario, and Little Mac and have an easy time against Ted. This is a hypothetical situation, but what would this mean for Ted? Is he basically the ultimate counterpick character against 5 top/high tiers or is Ted royally screwed and completely unviable since some random person could counterpick him with a competent Dr. Mario?

Ted (you should have gone with Bob) would be the counter-pick god. He would suck as all hell as a main.

But this is also just taking the point of my post to the extreme and far beyond any logic.

Let's say the point where number of losing MUs against any characters becomes more important is more then 10 (this number is completely arbitrary and was the first one to come to my head). Now before a character hits more then 10 losing MUs the losing MUs the character loses are more dependent upon the popularity of the characters they lose to. This is because of variance.

Now generally speaking, you will obviously encounter more popular characters then others meaning a losing MU against them is generally more important to have then against more unpopular character because you'll encounter the more unpopular characters less. However once a certain threshold of losing MUs gets crossed this ends up becoming less important as it eventually get to the point where you are more likely to come upon more unpopular characters simply due to sheer number of losing MUs.

 

[FullMoon]

I think ESAM could have avoided the F-Air if he had DI'd towards Brawler.

I've played a lot of Mii Brawler and I always DI towards them when I get D-Throw'd because it makes that combo at the very least harder to do. In fact I think I only got killed by Helicopter Kick twice in all the matches I had against Mii Brawler.

 

[Steam]

My extreme example, however, has Ted losing to 90% of the cast; 48 characters left which might stop him from being used at all. Sure, he would counter Sheik, but is it really that much of a problem to just pocket a Fox and murder him? Going 10:90 would mean you could pick random and hope you don't end up playing Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon to win against him if you're competent enough with the rest of the cast. A more reasonable character would be like what mimigrim said, Toon Link, or perhaps Brawl Wolf and Brawl Triple D.

I guess my question made simpler is it possible for a bottom or low tier character to be useful only for counterpicking top tiers? Probably answerable with say, Little Mac, but he's more of stage counterpicked and just being a volatile character in general - also, I don't think Little Mac is low or bottom at all since his weaknesses or "typical For Glory Little Mac player weaknesses" undermine him as a character. Or maybe Mii Swordfighter, but that might be a character whose weaknesses are being exaggerated to the point of silliness and people are losing because they have no idea how to fight MSF. Anyway, being invalidated or struggling against 90% cast would probably land you in the bottom or low tier regardless if it's low, mid, high, or top tiers invalidating you, but the rest of the 10%? What if that is only top tiers? That's not going to shoot this character up to even low mid just because Ted wins against Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon. Just a question to ponder is all and not really relevant to this topic.

this is probably the situation with lucario. He goes even or beats sheik (and maybe rosa too) but gets completely destroyed by almost every other good character.

 

[Ffamran]

Ted (you should have gone with Bob) would be the counter-pick god. He would suck as all hell as a main.

But this is also just taking the point of my post to the extreme and far beyond any logic.

Let's say the point where number of losing MUs against any characters becomes more important is more then 10 (this number is completely arbitrary and was the first one to come to my head). Now before a character hits more then 10 losing MUs the losing MUs the character loses are more dependent upon the popularity of the characters they lose to. This is because of variance.

Now generally speaking, you will obviously encounter more popular characters then others meaning a losing MU against them is generally more important to have then against more unpopular character because you'll encounter the more unpopular characters less. However once a certain threshold of losing MUs gets crossed this ends up becoming less important as it eventually get to the point where you are more likely to come upon more unpopular characters simply due to sheer number of losing MUs.

I know, but after reading your post, I was curious if it was possible for a really messed up character to be able to be that good against a select group of top/high tiers. Here's the issue, if everyone knew that, Ted/Bob/Steve would still get wrecked because there would be the other 5 top/high tiers to murder him, popular characters like Yoshi, Mario, and Luigi to murder him, and the rest of the cast to murder him. It wouldn't be like Brawl Wolf who did well against top and high tiers while also doing well against the rest of the cast along with the usual disadvantages, Triple D shenanigans, and basically how Brawl as a game functioned - the engine and not the "play style". Also, 70:30 is rough against them and good for Ted/Bob/Steve/Jane/Mary/Josephine, but 10:90 is horrid for Ted/Bob/Steve/Jane/Mary/Josephine/Guillermo. If Ted/TOO MANY NAMES went 90:10 against Diddy, Sheik, Rosalina, Pikachu, and Captain Falcon, sure that might be okay, but having that kind of severe disadvantages against 90% of the cast would make Ted a counterpick character, but not a good one. Probably nobody would use him since he'd make Little Mac look like a stable character. Well, whatever. This discussion's over since I derailed it with this wacky question.

this is probably the situation with lucario. He goes even or beats sheik (and maybe rosa too) but gets completely destroyed by almost every other good character.

Yeah, but Lucario would be a much more stable character than Ted. Lucario could at worst end up going - I don't know much about Lucario, so this is just a random ratio - 40:60 with everyone, but Sheik, Rosalina, and whoever else, but that would be a minor struggle compared to basically dying the moment you get counter-counterpicked. Also, enjoy Falco losing to Lucario... Falco loses to everyone according to invited character boards and MU discussions... Barely scrapes evens too... (I know it's probably not true, but my morale's dead.)

 

[Steam]

Yeah, but Lucario would be a much more stable character than Ted. Lucario could at worst end up going - I don't know much about Lucario, so this is just a random ratio - 40:60 with everyone, but Sheik, Rosalina, and whoever else, but that would be a minor struggle compared to basically dying the moment you get counter-counterpicked. Also, enjoy Falco losing to Lucario... Falco loses to everyone according invited character boards... Barely scrapes evens too... (I know it's probably not true, but my morale's dead.)

Lucario gets hard countered by any character with a good neutral game and a reflector. such as fox, mario, or ness.

 

[Ffamran]

Lucario gets hard countered by any character with a good neutral game and a reflector. such as fox, mario, or ness.

Lucario also is a bit like a heavyweight; like Ganondorf and Bowser. You do something stupid and let him live way too long and Lucario's going to own you. Sheik having kill issues is just more apparent against Lucario. If she could kill 10% to 20% earlier, she probably wouldn't have a hard time against Lucario since her neutral is just stupid good. I'm not sure about Rosalina nor do I really understand Trifroze's reasoning for why Lucario gives Captain Falcon issues. Well, whatever.

 

[Trifroze]

After winning a match in a set that person would probably always switch away from their main if it was one of those characters Ted beats in fear of the opponent picking him. As such, he would probably force a lot of switches with his presence but never see any actual usage because he loses to those switches 10:90. Also those switches could still be high tier characters who don't have a particularly hard time versus top tiers either, so it's not a terrible position for the winning person. I'm glad such a presence doesn't exist though.

 

[Steam]

Lucario also is a bit like a heavyweight; like Ganondorf and Bowser. You do something stupid and let him live way too long and Lucario's going to own you. Sheik having kill issues is just more apparent against Lucario. If she could kill 10% to 20% earlier, she probably wouldn't have a hard time against Lucario since her neutral is just stupid good. I'm not sure about Rosalina nor do I really understand Trifroze's reasoning for why Lucario gives Captain Falcon issues. Well, whatever.

he might just be saying that bc I beat M2K in the matchup, but falcon definitely still wins that matchup 6:4.

the problem with lucario is outside of sideb all of his kill options are frame 20 or later and have bad range/priority. you should pretty much never get hit by them. and sideB is a frame 9 grab with a rest hitbox making it extremely difficult to land and super punishable if you miss.

 

[Ffamran]

Can't Lucario kill with Uair and his Up Smash is decently quick for a Smash. Customs also help out his game, especially his Aura Sphere customs from what I heard. After that, I don't really know much about Lucario other than his Dair is really fast.

 

[Lavani]

his Up Smash is decently quick for a Smash

It really isn't, and its horizontal range is booty.

Can't Lucario kill with Uair

If you can get them above you and get a read, sure. Uthrow→uair is really finnicky with Aura/rage in the mix.

Customs also help out his game, especially his Aura Sphere customs from what I heard.

His Aura Sphere customs are basically the only useful customs, and they're still just sidegrades at that. He doesn't benefit a ton from customs tbh.

 

[Gard]

@ Terios the Hedgehog
Not really a tier list, but thank you. I guess as a Mewtwo/Robin main you can't be too upset, huh?
To get the stats I went to Rankings, then clicked on Characters. You can choose which placing, or general usage, from a specific date onwards.
Hope that helped!

 

[Ulevo]

Lucario's neutral gets better in some match ups thanks to Piercing Aura Sphere and Advancing Force Palm. The former is really fast and hard to adjust to for certain characters, while the latter helps Lucario punish mistakes in neutral easier than he otherwise could. The issue is that these are trade offs and even in match ups where they are the better choice, there will be times where you will think to yourself "I could have killed him there if I had my default Aura Sphere/Force Palm."

In match ups where Lucario can use his hit confirm with down air to Force Palm, it is much easier to secure stocks. In match ups where it is impossible to do or difficult to set up, like in Captain Falcon's case, you need to be rather create in how you close a game out because none of his kill options are reliable.

 

[thehard]

Um, yeah.

You're not only wrong, you're missing the point. He got grabbed almost at the centre of Smashville, not 1/4th, and died for it. I do not know what Smash universe you come from, but we do not count the % after the fact when a kill occurs. He wasn't killed at the blast zone, he was dragged in to it. At 29%.

1/3 then?

 

[Mazdamaxsti]

Falcon can murder Pikachu, Rosalina, Mewtwo, Jigglypuff, G&W and Kirby with a guaranteed dash grab dthrow to knee between about 20 to 50% and set them up for an airdodge 50:50 roughly 10-15% further until they can get away with a jump. If the dash grab is initiated slightly past the middle of the stage it kills some of them at 35-40% even with VI.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The thing is, the Kirby/Jigglypuff/G&W player just has to hold down on stage to avoid this.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[bc1910]

Greninja losing 3 MUs is not suspect at all, he was a fantastic character (considered top 5 or even top 3 by many) before his nerf and his mobility was untouched. The only nerfs that really affected him were Usmash and Shuriken getting extra ending lag, in terms of how they affect his playstyle these nerfs are comparable to Diddy losing his kill power. Instead of roflstomping half the cast he works a bit harder to get the same job done. Same goes for Greninja, though Greninja is probably harder to use. And Diddy's still considered top 5. See what I mean? Greninja's nerfs are massively overstated, though it isn't helped by the fact that half his playerbase abandoned him.

I don't like to put so much stock in one guy's opinion but I want to point out that Zero doesn't have to be playing Greninja to believe he's "that good". He just made an entire video about characters he thinks are good, yet he plays none of them. He's perfectly capable of believing Greninja is a good character without using him, 'cause he's still not top 5, but he's far from useless.

I don't blame people for sleeping on the frog because he has lackluster results. It's totally fair for people to think he's average. But I and many other players genuinely believe he is not, he is far better than that. We just need someone to prove it. I'd love to try to do it myself but I don't live in the US.

@ Luco Thanks for your insight, I'll have a proper discussion with you about this tomorrow (or maybe when the Greninja/Ness MU is being discussed on either board). We believe this MU is even at worst, some very good players (including NinjaLink) believe we beat Ness. It's not just down to gimping, Greninja has a lot of tools that help him excel in this MU.

 

[Trifroze]

The thing is, the Kirby/Jigglypuff/G&W player just has to hold down on stage to avoid this.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

If they do that in neutral they'll get hit by Falcon's dash attack every single time instead. On the other hand, as soon as they choose to use shield they'll get exposed to dash grab. It's mostly used for punishes though, i.e. when you cannot act, and it can punish pretty much everything in the game from midrange unless it's a foolproof safe move.

E: What comes to the Lucario matchup, I never called it 50:50, just "roughly even". might be 55:45 Falcon, but I doubt it's 60:40 assuming we're using these numbers in a way where 70:30 means hard counter and nothing beyond that is ever thrown out.

I've said this all a couple times before, but Falcon has to commit to his kills too. Bair and uair are the only non-committing kill moves which Lucario has as well, and although Lucario's bair is 6 frames slower it also hits almost as hard as the knee if he's at 100%+ aura and it's safe to throw out. Falcon has throw setups and juggles to force airdodges but Lucario has ASC to usmash. Falcon shuts down ledge getup options with jab but so does Lucario with ASC, and while you can gimp or punish Lucario after about 60% if you read his recovery, it's not hard for Lucario to gimp Falcon with his massive nair disjoint that up b won't grab through. Neutral is also scary at high percents when Falcon has to guess whether Lucario releases his ASC, shields your approach or just keeps charging it to punish Falcon's shorthop aerials which are his secondary approach option or pressure a possible shield dash-in. Neutral isn't free vs Lucario unless he's way below 100%, but with his survivability and defensive safety he's gonna be above 100% just as often as below that.

I don't think Lucario benefits from customs all that much, his default neutral b is just too good and his other customs don't seem good at all. Snaring Aura Sphere can be scary in disadvantage if Lucario is at high percents, but otherwise you can just shield dash into it on reaction and fsmash Lucario before you get hit by its slowly repeating hitbox. The ASC hitbox also comes out slower on it.

 

[TriTails]

And hey ZeRo does consider Greninja to be one of the best in the game so.

ZeRo does consider Luigi Top 3.

Yeahnotbelieveingonhim.

Lucario also is a bit like a heavyweight; like Ganondorf and Bowser. You do something stupid and let him live way too long and Lucario's going to own you. Sheik having kill issues is just more apparent against Lucario. If she could kill 10% to 20% earlier, she probably wouldn't have a hard time against Lucario since her neutral is just stupid good. I'm not sure about Rosalina nor do I really understand Trifroze's reasoning for why Lucario gives Captain Falcon issues. Well, whatever.

Can anyone give me some hindsights on Luigi vs Lucario? Luigi's kill setups, combos, and high damage output is a threat to Lucario in general, and Lucario can't really camp him out with AS (Basically a slower Charge Shot at certain percents. It's only when Lucario gets to 120% the move become stupid strong). Lucario is also fairly floaty and can be killed decently with D-throw Cyclone. Did I mention Fireball outprioritizes fully charged AS at 0%?

Aside from that though, Lucario has some nasty range in Force Palm, and his killing power become obnoxious at 100%. Luigi's killing power is rather average... so...

Is this another 'If Luigi can get in he win. If he can't he lose' Luigi MU?

 

[meleebrawler]

ZeRo does consider Luigi Top 3.

Yeahnotbelieveingonhim.



Can anyone give me some hindsights on Luigi vs Lucario? Luigi's kill setups, combos, and high damage output is a threat to Lucario in general, and Lucario can't really camp him out with AS (Basically a slower Charge Shot at certain percents. It's only when Lucario gets to 120% the move become stupid strong). Lucario is also fairly floaty and can be killed decently with D-throw Cyclone. Did I mention Fireball outprioritizes fully charged AS at 0%?

Aside from that though, Lucario has some nasty range in Force Palm, and his killing power become obnoxious at 100%. Luigi's killing power is rather average... so...

Is this another 'If Luigi can get in he win. If he can't he lose' Luigi MU?

More like another one of those "Lucario gets bopped in neutral until his aura is high" matchups.
No matter what percent he's at though, his disjoints aren't a big problem for Luigi aside from Force Paln.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

If they do that in neutral they'll get hit by Falcon's dash attack every single time instead. On the other hand, as soon as they choose to use shield they'll get exposed to dash grab. It's mostly used for punishes though, i.e. when you cannot act, and it can punish pretty much everything in the game from midrange unless it's a foolproof safe move.

Why do discussions here often come off so binary.

Almost like the home boy claiming Peach has 60:40 advantage because of a dtilt.