Character Competitive Impressions

[Shaya]

Browny, you have your own biases and convictions. But player skill means a lot in Smash 4, weighing heavier than character choice through many fair anecdotes thus far. Trela has strong results in a region with numerous characters people consider "hard" / low tier: Mewtwo, Mii Swordfighter, Robin.... earlier on Charizard too. How many of these has he maintained? Well Zard and Robin are dead in the water. He hasn't been playing Mewtwo in tournament since (he only used him due to a pot bonus by Xyro for "no other character usage highest placing mewtwo will get $X") from what I gather.
There are good results for almost every character at local / semi-regional level thus far. Kirby doing well since game release in NY even though we all felt he was trash pre-buff. Funnily enough, the results for MikeKirby haven't really gotten any better since the patch, I wonder what that implies.
Nairo has better results with Zelda (in my book of who he beat/etc) than all these low tier heroes, yet (although he does think she's mid tier+) you aren't here to defend her from the preconceived notion she's bottom tier/worst in the game.

In Brawl, a very hard to use character (a reflection of player base with success) with results was enough to get a character out of low tier. Sonic, Ness, Pokemon Trainer, Lucas to some extent. All essentially 1 hero which could rarely if ever produce national results (Espy at MLG on a stormfront run against SoCal is the only one I can think of) but still had great names defeated in their resumes. While Espy or X had better results than most individual Donkey Kongs, Donkey Kong shared success over a multitude of mains at multiple different points in the games life time and his strengths could be understood enough to quantify.

You don't need to basically start flaming someone or a community for a normal position to take (in and with everything in life; even if it does seem unfair, but I can't help but dislike your tone as the point being made is always hypocritical).
If we're going to be stuck in your Brawl era argumentative state of "anyone disagreeing with me is biased towards preconceptions from day 1 of the game" (and anyone who agrees is super smart and should be in the BBR over who's in there now) then I'm not really looking forward to it.
Let's not go there again, all it does is ostracize people from being comfortable in discussion.

 

[DunnoBro]

So now that has DI-dependent HSB setups that kill ~40% near the ledge, I don't ever want anyone to claim tiny is the best customs character again. Pikachu has arguably comparably ridiculous burst mobility (QA vs. Feint Jump...hmm), is more versatile securing high-% KOs because more of his regular moves start killing, and is stronger in the neutral position thanks to a strong ground game + real projectile. Brawler has better survivability and normal air speed, but I don't think that's enough to make up the difference. Of course, none of this means that Pika is the best with customs on (though I think he is), but I think it does mean that Brawler has to be below him.

The fact people have more mobility options, better recoveries, and much more consistent kill combos is what doesn't let me see pikachu as the best character, even in customs. Hell, custom pikachu will still get bodied by luigi. (also the custom jolt seems really bad against certain characters, like fox or other chars with good punishes off a powershield since it has enough endlag that powershielding translates to an actual punish. All the killing upbs apply here, too)

I only lost once to custom pikachu, but it was cause I used mega gunmen and forgot only 1/5 of the gunmen can even shoot pikachu. (Duck hunt falls apart without a usable gunmen)

I won whenever I used 3111 though.

Custom pika has potential, more than I likely currently understand, but I think QA is more broken than HSB by far. Aside from ESAM, I don't really fear pikachu in customs.

And yea, I will openly admit to being wrong about mii brawler. He isn't nearly as broke as I thought and is extremely unwieldy in a tournament setting, if they know how he works, and you're having difficulty getting the set-ups... He's a really subpar character.

 

[PUK]

Crispytacoz uses Shulk and I believe Luigi. Not the best, but a known Shulk user in CA. Also, wasn't there a dude named SilentDoom or something who used Shulk?

Scarhi placed in top 8 at offthelan

 

[Emblem Lord]

This is the same crap that happened with brawl

Smash is so stupid like this.

Everyone was like 'Sonic is bottom 5 trash' (which he was in first tier list) he will never do anything.
*Espy places really high in regionals going solo Sonic*
"Thats just one player being really good, character is still bad"
*X starts dominating as well*
"But theyll never beat top players"
*Espy and X both beat top players*
"Yeah well they will never win a national tournament!"

You start by saying the character is garbage, and then in a few years you still say the character is garbage because they cant solo win a national despite winning locals and placing high in regionals. That would make them high tier if that was the case.

Classic 'moving the goal post' behaviour that infests the smash community, all to support the status quo because people dont want to believe that something other than their 5-minute impression is true.

That pretty much sums up this entire thread actually. Its all about setting pre-conceptions and picking arguments to support those point of views only.

Lack of matchup johns are literally the worst. Ally is one of the best players in the world, he doesnt have an excuse for matchup johns. There is NO REASON why sparky cant pull the same matchup johns saying hes never played a good marth in smash 4 because really, who has? Serious question. The kid isnt even old enough to rely on brawl marth matchup knowledge while Ally would know of what melee mewtwo could do.

Yeah I didn't say any of that garbage about Sonic or any other low tier in the past soooooooo yeah.

I literally said when Mewtwo does stuff consistently we can talk and I MEANT it. Whether that entails him placing well or winning, either way let's talk when we see more results. But based on his toolset and him playing a similar game to Ganon, his placing doesnt seem that far fetched as Ganon has also been doing well and we all still accept him as low tier. Both chars have high reward and are never out of a game.

I cannot speak for the ignorant masses. This man speaks only for himself.

 

[migul]

The fact people have more mobility options, better recoveries, and much more consistent kill combos is what doesn't let me see pikachu as the best character, even in customs. Hell, custom pikachu will still get bodied by luigi. (also the custom jolt seems really bad against certain characters, like fox or other chars with good punishes off a powershield since it has enough endlag that powershielding translates to an actual punish. All the killing upbs apply here, too)

I only lost once to custom pikachu, but it was cause I used mega gunmen and forgot only 1/5 of the gunmen can even shoot pikachu. (Duck hunt falls apart without a usable gunmen)

I won whenever I used 3111 though.

Custom pika has potential, more than I likely currently understand, but I think QA is more broken than HSB by far. Aside from ESAM, I don't really fear pikachu in customs.

And yea, I will openly admit to being wrong about mii brawler. He isn't nearly as broke as I thought and is extremely unwieldy in a tournament setting, if they know how he works, and you're having difficulty getting the set-ups... He's a really subpar character.

Better recoveries? Did you forget how broken QA is? How many mixups it has? How it's nearly ungimpable? How he is at the top of that obscure ass recovery tier list? And having the whole momentum glitch whit HSB? The rest of your points are valid, (although I think he's the best.) but saying that anyone has a better recovery than Pikachu I think is a little far fetched, don't ya think? Also, remember that Pikachu infinite? The fact that uncharged HSB can kill at 70%? I think Pikachu's potential is being very slept on.

 

[TriTails]

I don't get the whole 'Luigi bodies Pika'. That basically means Luigi has 7:3 advantage, which currently does not exist in any of Luigi's MUs (Not even Ganon). Luigi has an advantage? Okay. He ROTFL Pika? Nah. Too gud to be true. Aside from lightweight, how is the MU is in Luigi's favor?

And by the way, if any of you all care... I've been looking at custom Luigi since almost nobody talks about him, but what I found...
- All variants of SJPs seem to have a 'Jumped version'. Use them after you gain momentum (Roughly half to 3/4th of the rising) from your double jump and they'll go higher. Fiery Jump Punch jumps about the same height of Super Jump Punch, and Burial Header is insane.

- Speaking of Fiery Jump Punch, it's still totally worthless. The sweetspot change is almost unnoticeable, and the fact it sacrifices power, damage, height, and bleeping knockback angle just for a worthless 'twice as big the sweetspot' thing is ridiculous.

- And Burial Header, finally a decent custom. It goes higher than the usual SJP and the burying effect is nice. Unless I'm looking at things wrong, you can't mash out of burying right (Or you can?). I can see some potential to connect with a fully charged F-smash for kills (Though, the knockback is reduced, I know that), and can potentially lead into grabs and puts them in disadvantaged position. This one's also a hell to juggle with unless you are named Rosalina with her disjointed and lingering things, or just people who has really spot on accuracy, but I might want to see some vids about this.

- Mach Cyclone buffs Luigi's recovery from 'Really gimpable' to something like 'Zelda tier'. The windbox push is great, and the height you rise... is insane. The ending act like Doc Tornado, sending people to the side and can actually be sued to edgeguard. Though, good luck with the awkward rising with this thing. But this destroys HooHahNado. I can see this being an alternate option to fast-fallers such as Fox who falls out Cyclone really fast, or D3 who dies at about 1238729874983274839% vertically, or people who excels at edgeguarding in general.

- Cholest...whatever Cyclone sucks. You have to mash at Jumpless Cyclone tier to gain REAAAAAAALLLYYY short height, and guess what? You must also do the Jumped version to get a height, the rest you'll fall. Though, this move's powerful, but not really worth it since it destroys a lot of Luigi's techs. Oh and it deals 8% without almost any comboing ability because of the knockback, and the finsiher is REALLY strong as a result. Please understand (Shaya don't hurt me).

Seems like custom Luigi gets a pretty lot from Iceballs, Burial Header, and Quick/Floating Missile.

 

[PUK]

- And Burial Header, finally a decent custom. It goes higher than the usual SJP and the burying effect is nice. Unless I'm looking at things wrong, you can't mash out of burying right (Or you can?). I can see some potential to connect with a fully charged F-smash for kills (Though, the knockback is reduced, I know that), and can potentially lead into grabs and puts them in disadvantaged position. This one's also a hell to juggle with unless you are named Rosalina with her disjointed and lingering things, or just people who has really spot on accuracy, but I might want to see some vids about this.

- Mach Cyclone buffs Luigi's recovery from 'Really gimpable' to something like 'Zelda tier'. The windbox push is great, and the height you rise... is insane. The ending act like Doc Tornado, sending people to the side and can actually be sued to edgeguard. Though, good luck with the awkward rising with this thing. But this destroys HooHahNado. I can see this being an alternate option to fast-fallers such as Fox who falls out Cyclone really fast, or D3 who dies at about 1238729874983274839% vertically, or people who excels at edgeguarding in general.

Seems like custom Luigi gets a pretty lot from Iceballs, Burial Header, and Quick/Floating Missile.

You can mash to get out of the ground, but predictible mashing at high percent is punishable.

And one of the issues cyclone has as a recovery is the end lag and the non ledge sweetspot. So you're not in Zelda tier sorry, even with a lot of speed and whatever custom give you

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I think Luigi will end up facing similar issues as he did in Brawl aka everybody just starts to camp the living **** out of this character and suddenly a lot of matchups that seems to be solidly in his favor will actually turn out to be pretty evenish. That's mainly regarding Pikachu and Fox whom I don't believe to actually lose against Luigi.

Luigi's reward is still pretty dumb though and so are his options in neutral [kinda] so he's still good. But top 5 seems like a stretch to me, I think he's just outside of top 10.

 

[DunnoBro]

Better recoveries? Did you forget how broken QA is? How many mixups it has? How it's nearly ungimpable? How he is at the top of that obscure *** recovery tier list? And having the whole momentum glitch whit HSB? The rest of your points are valid, (although I think he's the best.) but saying that anyone has a better recovery than Pikachu I think is a little far fetched, don't ya think? Also, remember that Pikachu infinite? The fact that uncharged HSB can kill at 70%? I think Pikachu's potential is being very slept on.

By better recoveries being an issue, I mean pikachu's great edgeguarding game is less potent, not that his recovery is worse than others.

Also the infinite is almost entirely pointless, the jolt already kill combos into HSB at like 10% after the infinite can even be attempted.

I think Luigi will end up facing similar issues as he did in Brawl aka everybody just starts to camp the living **** out of this character and suddenly a lot of matchups that seems to be solidly in his favor will actually turn out to be pretty evenish. That's mainly regarding Pikachu and Fox whom I don't believe to actually lose against Luigi.

Luigi's reward is still pretty dumb though and so are his options in neutral [kinda] so he's still good. But top 5 seems like a stretch to me, I think he's just outside of top 10.

There's absolutely no way luigi is outside top 10 what the hell lmao

He has the absolute best combo and punish game among the cast. (taking consistency and reliability/safeness into account)

So only characters like sheik, rosalina, and apparently megaman/pacman/villager with absurdly strong neutral and anti-grab games can contend with him.

Pikachu and fox can camp all they want, but one mistake and as much as half their stock is gone. Perfect play be damned.

 

[Browny]

Browny, you have your own biases and convictions. But player skill means a lot in Smash 4, weighing heavier than character choice through many fair anecdotes thus far. Trela has strong results in a region with numerous characters people consider "hard" / low tier: Mewtwo, Mii Swordfighter, Robin.... earlier on Charizard too. How many of these has he maintained? Well Zard and Robin are dead in the water. He hasn't been playing Mewtwo in tournament since (he only used him due to a pot bonus by Xyro for "no other character usage highest placing mewtwo will get $X") from what I gather.
There are good results for almost every character at local / semi-regional level thus far. Kirby doing well since game release in NY even though we all felt he was trash pre-buff. Funnily enough, the results for MikeKirby haven't really gotten any better since the patch, I wonder what that implies.
Nairo has better results with Zelda (in my book of who he beat/etc) than all these low tier heroes, yet (although he does think she's mid tier+) you aren't here to defend her from the preconceived notion she's bottom tier/worst in the game.

In Brawl, a very hard to use character (a reflection of player base with success) with results was enough to get a character out of low tier. Sonic, Ness, Pokemon Trainer, Lucas to some extent. All essentially 1 hero which could rarely if ever produce national results (Espy at MLG on a stormfront run against SoCal is the only one I can think of) but still had great names defeated in their resumes. While Espy or X had better results than most individual Donkey Kongs, Donkey Kong shared success over a multitude of mains at multiple different points in the games life time and his strengths could be understood enough to quantify.

You don't need to basically start flaming someone or a community for a normal position to take (in and with everything in life; even if it does seem unfair, but I can't help but dislike your tone as the point being made is always hypocritical).
If we're going to be stuck in your Brawl era argumentative state of "anyone disagreeing with me is biased towards preconceptions from day 1 of the game" (and anyone who agrees is super smart and should be in the BBR over who's in there now) then I'm not really looking forward to it.
Let's not go there again, all it does is ostracize people from being comfortable in discussion.

I dont have any opinion on Zelda because there isnt remotely anywhere near enough evidence to prove she is mid, low or anywhere else.

Let me get something straight, my attitude has and always will be that in the absence of hard data proving a point, we should always favour the limited evidence that we HAVE that a character is viable over the theoretical evidence that we DONT have that they are unviable. You can literally have all of this evidence stacked against you but some people utterly discount it in favour of their theoretical evidence as to why a character is bad.

There is extremely little evidence out there proving the viability of Mewtwo at this stage. We have the anecdotal evidence of his users saying he is hard to win with and some top level players saying he can not be a tournament threat for as long as falcon, fox and rosalina exist. On the for side, we have Trela pulling in results that not only show he is viable, the results show he is more viable than a solid half of the cast, going solo.

So we have theoretical evidence backed by opinions of pro players vs limited evidence of the character actually being good.

Believe it or not, I actually do put weight on the opinions of top level players. Those that actually talk about the game properly and aren't dumbass trolls where every comment is a joke.

This is where the theory comes in. So far we have anecdotes (which I never said arent worth anything, I agree they are useful) vs results where the results to me, seem even. The score is 1-1. It is then up to the theory to sway general opinion one way or the other giving one side a 2-1 advantage.

My gigantic issue with everything in this thread is that people will literally choose a side of the argument based on what appears to be nothing at all and state that the theory agrees with that side, so it is 2:1 in their favour. I could just as easily state that in fact no, the theory DOES NOT suggest Mewtwo is low tier, and his intrinsic character properties, his traits and attributes, all theoretically prove he is infact a viable character.

Here's the thing.... I never do that! Wouldnt it be obnoxious if you tried to debate with me and all I said was 'Mewtwo is high tier because hes not garbage'. That is EXACTLY how I see this thread when people say any character, not just Mewtwo, is bad because they think so.

I never insinuated that people have to agree with me or they are wrong. Since day 1 my mission has always been to challenge peoples preconceptions and to promote the idea that if the evidence doesnt follow the theory, then the theory might in fact be wrong.

Regarding Mewtwo I believe that the theory against him is very flawed and full of people complaining about his weight. If you saw Earl at BAM Shaya you might see things differently too. The theory of Little Mac being garbage because of his awful recovery means nothing if the player adapts a playstyle that reduces that weakness. Just like how X adapted a playstyle with sonic that seriously reduced his weakness in Sonic' inability to KO (consistently combo-ing bair from spindash). Thats the deal with Mewtwo. Players will adapt a playstyle that is far more careful and consistently getting low % kills.

Of course I am theorycrafting there by suggesting that is even possible, but the point is I am leaving ample room for the theory to develop until such a time when we can all feel somewhat certain of where he lies as a viable character.

 

[Shaya]

Well, low tier in this game doesn't mean nonviable, was a bit of my point. Smash 4's balance makes it very hard to pinpoint characters unless they're blatantly strong.
There was such a disparity in viability in brawl due to chain grabs and range differences (simplest way to put it) that low tier was a lower sect of characters that realistically couldn't function against any of the upper half of the cast. What we really could be seeing in this game is a tier list defined by relative ease of use.

Weighing specs up Mewtwo seems to be of a low tier disposition, in my opinion, currently. Trela has succeeded with numerous characters, and he has been using Mewtwo on occasion at locals and revolving around top 3, but has consistent first placements with Swordfighter with more frequency of use.

Mewtwo got second at a huge regional within 2 weeks of his release from a well known high level player. How could this result that came so early be an accurate representation of his metagame / potential and not more so the player? That to me doesn't make much sense. Ally hasn't really played Melee competitively (from what I know) nor has barely anyone ever played a competent Mewtwo either, and I don't know if PM Mewtwo (he's definitely played against that) gives any good bearing to him now. I'm not going to discount any Mewtwo result, but at the same time I'm going to always be looking to remove the player factor within a single instance.

The other part of my point is that a great player can compete with almost any character they've worked on within their peers. Those are the anecdotes we keep seeing. Now the opposing factor of an unknown player doing well, which can justify a character being definitively strong (*cough Luigi atm cough*) needs consistency before there's agreement.

For the record I don't think Little Mac is bad.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

There's absolutely no way luigi is outside top 10 what the hell lmao

He has the absolute best combo and punish game among the cast. (taking consistency and reliability/safeness into account)

So only characters like sheik, rosalina, and apparently megaman/pacman/villager with absurdly strong neutral and anti-grab games can contend with him.

Pikachu and fox can camp all they want, but one mistake and as much as half their stock is gone. Perfect play be damned.

If the character loses to Sheik, Rosalina, Megaman, Pac-Man and Villager while not having an advantage against most top tiers then how the hell is that supposed to add up to top 5. Unless he has positive matchups against Yoshi, ZSS, Sonic, Ness, Diddy and Wario all at the same time then his matchups simply aren't good enough for a top spot.

There's still mid tier-ish characters left where it's quite unclear how Luigi performs. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if somebody like Ike ends up giving Luigi a hard time.

 

[Djent]

I agree with @ ~ Gheb ~ about vs. . I was actually going to post something about this a few days ago, but my mobile phone was being awful and BPC beat me to the punch:

I actually used to believe this. Then I remembered one important mantra: "Luigi can't approach", based my entire gameplan on that, and went from getting 3-stocked by the best German Luigi to beating him solidly. Run away, throw out thunder jolts, abuse his abysmal air movement, and the moment you get an opening, get him offstage and gimp him. Sure, Luigi gets a ton of reward off getting in, and it's a pain to work back from that, but he shouldn't be catching you. Camp that smashville platform all day, son.

I'm pretty sure it'll wind up being a highly volatile even MU rather than an advantage to either character.

 

[GeneralLedge]

tbh talk to @ GeneralLedge about mii sword and reditt and he'll tell how much he knows about moving the goalposts

I'll summarize the short version:

Most people on Reddit, excluding the screen names for already-established tournament-placing players, is for lack of a better term, a 'wannabe'. They want to affect the meta, so very badly, that they just parrot as many smart-sounding people as they can, so they themselves can sound smart. This has the stunning repercussion of very few people on Reddit actually knowing what they're talking about.

The long version:

Spoiler

I'll take the full fall for possibly being hypocritical in saying it (since, technically, fighting vs meta-wannabes is itself being a meta-wannabe in the opposite sense), but it's very clear to me that so few of them actually care about the game as a game you play, and instead care about the game as a hypothetical betting pool.

If we hypothetically imagine Reddit and/or twitch having a back-door betting pool regarding their statistics and evidence-less "facts", things suddenly make much more sense in the way they behave. Like if you inject something that changes the betting statistics in a way that makes them angry, there's a sudden ****storm trying to kill off that thing, via 'bans'. On the other hand, perhaps exactly one "respectable" player says something off-hand, and it blows up way out of proportion into something nobody tests themselves, and they just parrot and point to the original tweet or comment for a source. Even if it's wholly incorrect, such as 'Pacman's grab is faster' -- until the source admits they were wrong, any other person debunking the idea is wrong. Even with visual side-by-side comparative evidence.

Exceedingly frustrating is I don't even know any TO opinions personally on some of these matters. But I do know (or strongly assume, from watching many things on the internet get blown out of proportion,) that if enough people cry and scream about it like infants about something, TO's are inclined to cater to them. Because TO's, if nobody else, do care about the game itself and the players; and any number of the crybabies could be locals, or potential participants. Watching them simply get exploited via Reddit is exceedingly frustrating (although, again, I don't even know if this is true or not since I haven't seen TO's go "I'm a TO, please lemme know why xxxx kthx"), even though I've never actually gone to a tournament. See my earlier paragraph about being a hypocrite; but at the very least I know this approach is laughably wrong and exceedingly exploitative. But I don't know who or what may or may not have been fallen for (Although 'Miis are limited to 1111' is a pretty obscene one).

A part of me wishes the subreddit distributed a little emblem of some sort next to usernames so we can know whether or not a user has actually played the game at a tournament, and let those people have a say in the matter much more directly. It might not even change the type of ****flinging that goes on there, but at the very least the anonymous pranksters and the actual people-who-participate wouldn't blend together as a collective hive-mind, backing eachother up.

And quite honestly, Reddit has f'd me up to the point where I don't even know if all of the above is true or not. I could be talking out my rear for all I know, and maybe the pessimistic "x character has a slow y. x character is bad." comments are a big ol' in-joke. I've beyond given up and removed Reddit from my bookmarks.

 

[wedl!!]

wait, people are now figuring out reddit is a hivemind? is it 2012?

i literally could never figure out how would even lose to a character with such poor mobility as . like, what does it matter if he's lightweight when isn't going to get to him anyways? qa and thunderjolt exist.

speaking of mus, i think he goes even with or even have a slight disadvantage (barely, like 55:45 maybe). he loses neutral super hard because she doesn't care about fireballs, and she can challenge his recovery. is mobility challenged but it really doesn't matter when has it way worse. if gets grabs is pretty screwed due to losing frame 3 nair. *cries*

i'm not the most informed on , so i'm hoping someone like @ TriTails can help me with this.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Did people seriously go to leddit thinking they'd find deep intricate discussion on characters matchups tier lists and all that?
That subreddit is slow and dead as hell, and 80% of the stuff that hits the front page is basically 10 or so second combos, or stuff like this lol

As for twitch chat, Nobody has ever read the twitch chat and said their lives are better. I feel like I lose brain cells trying to argue with people on leddit.

 

[GeneralLedge]

Did people seriously go to leddit thinking they'd find deep intricate discussion on characters matchups tier lists and all that?

Honestly no; but it's a bit jarring seeing a collective of people excuse skill as player-specific (ie. Trela w/Mii Sword), while simultaneously citing player skill as character-specific (ie. Boss w/Luigi), and then misunderstanding that both instances are locals, while trying to undermine the former as 'just a local'.

I'm honestly rather amazed Mii Sword isn't still in dead last.

 

[wedl!!]

stomping locals matters after the first few months of release, r-right? because we all know stomping locals has totally impacted the tier list in the last few years, right?

 

[DunnoBro]

edit: oh my god i can't quote for a damn

 

[Thinkaman]

I want to talk about Lateral Kick and Shooting Star Kick ZSS!

On one hand, 1X32 ZSS suffers the same question as most of Sheik's customs: "Wow, these moves are incredible, but why on God's green Earth would I ever give up Needles, Vanish, Bouncing Fish, Boost Kick, and Flip Jump?" (Also see: Quick Attack)

On the other hand, Lateral Kick:

• 16% damage, frame 4 OoS option, extremely early KO power: The same absurd numbers as Boost Kick.
• Kills horizontally--so it kills later than Boost Kick in general, but earlier in preferred conditions. (Potentially much earlier)
• Gives ZSS absurd diagonal recovery, letting her safely expend both down-b and double jump to aggress super deep.

And Shooting Star Kick:

• Both the jump and the kick can be angled either direction (independently), like Mii Brawler's.
• But unlike Brawler's piddly 8% tickle, SSK touts a 17% low-horizontal startup hitbox that kills Mario on 3DS FD at ~55%.
• ...and a respectable 14% hitbox for the rest of its duration.
• The 17% hit is guaranteed on ranged full-charge paralyzer, and guaranteed (reverse direction) on high-% (or mid-% charged) d-smash.
• Those are possibly ZSS's optimal shield break options, for both damage and KO power?

You'll note the two moves cover each other's drawbacks to some extent. SSK is normally devastating but suicidal to use offensively off-stage, but Lateral Kick lets ZSS still recover--trivially, in fact.

Meanwhile, off a high-% d-smash, you have the option of Lateral Kick to KO forward, or reverse SSK to KO backwards; this addresses some of the reward consistency cost of giving up Boost Kick's vertical kills.


I don't suspect that giving up Boost Kick and Flip Jump will ever become stylish propositions, anymore than people will decide that Bouncing Fish is overrated. But even if Kickmaster Zamus is not as good as her default set, she is still probably a top-X-calibur character in her own right with some very unique and compelling options to offer. Go try her, she's fun.

 

[Browny]

Most people on Reddit, excluding the screen names for already-established tournament-placing players, is for lack of a better term, a 'wannabe'. They want to affect the meta, so very badly, that they just parrot as many smart-sounding people as they can, so they themselves can sound smart. This has the stunning repercussion of very few people on Reddit actually knowing what they're talking about.

I only go to r/smashbros to break up circlejerk sessions, I'm probably on net -200 karma on the smashbros reddit by simply telling people that smash isn't a career for 99.9999% of players and to stay in school.

Your short version is exactly it. I dont let it get to me since I'm the one getting people all stirred up over there, but I agree that it actually has an annoying effect with rulesets being changed by public opinion which is often just a bandwagon on one top player saying something once.

Then we have to put up with commentators calling certain characters gimmicks, janky or imbalanced just because zero had a twitter meltdown over losing a for glory match and suddenly thats the 'pro' opinion that everyone has to have.

 

[GeneralLedge]

Then we have to put up with commentators calling certain characters gimmicks, janky or imbalanced just because zero had a twitter meltdown over losing a for glory match and suddenly thats the 'pro' opinion that everyone has to have.

Suddenly I wonder how much of the inflated trite is actually relevant vs how much is just ZeRo being upset about not winning 100% of the time.

...Who am I kidding, I know that answer.

 

[Fatmanonice]

Did it ever occur to anyone that being garbage in THIS game isn't as terrible as being garbage in 99% of other fighters?

What the ****

Agreed. Low tier isn't as much of a Burmese tiger trap this time around as it was in Brawl or Melee, where if your character was low tier that fighting most if not all of the top/high tier characters was essentially a conga line of shame. Most of the cast actually feels competent even if realistically they can't all be viable. Nobody really has that "oh god, why..." feel that Brawl Ganondorf and Zelda had, you know? Granted, it's still early but I feel like only a few characters are just sitting around waiting for patches to become "okay." Not a lot of no hopers as far as I'm concerned.

It's amazing just how underdeveloped Greninja is in the west compared to Japan.

That Hydro Pump ledge trump was sick af.

are underrated characters that I believe are utterly terrifying in the right hands. I've really enjoyed watching these characters develop so far and I'm curious to see just how good they'll get in the long run.

 

[GeneralLedge]

The underlining trick to Bowser Jr, I feel, is just using the mechakoopa almost exclusively as bait. The moment they pick it up, they've zoned themselves. It's amazing.

No comment on the other three.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Learning the right way to respond after powershielding makes me really scared of Little Mac all of a sudden. If people get really good at it, he suddenly has option selects for many of his best moves, including KO Punch.

 

[Thinkaman]

Learning the right way to respond after powershielding makes me really scared of Little Mac all of a sudden. If people get really good at it, he suddenly has option selects for many of his best moves, including KO Punch.

Details? This sounds exciting!

 

[Ikes]

any thoughts on ?

 

[Impax]

Is there a section where there the best and worst characters at certain aspects of the game. If not, would it be something this community would be open to making? I know it wouldn't be exact but I think it would be helpful for players not involved in the competitive scene to have a general idea when you can use your character in a certain way.

I main wii fit trainer and jiggly puff. I know both characters are good off stage, but I know better than to use Jigglypuffs ground game or to land on stage with wii fit trainer(when in air I almost always push my self off stage. But there may be characters I shouldn't challenge offstage or times where Jigglypuff could on occasion fight on ground(with fast jab and headbutt) or characters I don't have to worry Wii Fit trainer being punished against. I don't know, just think it could be informative/helpful.

 

[migul]

By better recoveries being an issue, I mean pikachu's great edgeguarding game is less potent, not that his recovery is worse than others.

Also the infinite is almost entirely pointless, the jolt already kill combos into HSB at like 10% after the infinite can even be attempted.



There's absolutely no way luigi is outside top 10 what the hell lmao

He has the absolute best combo and punish game among the cast. (taking consistency and reliability/safeness into account)

So only characters like sheik, rosalina, and apparently megaman/pacman/villager with absurdly strong neutral and anti-grab games can contend with him.

Pikachu and fox can camp all they want, but one mistake and as much as half their stock is gone. Perfect play be damned.

When edgeguarding is less potent, how is it that Pikachu mains make it their main win condition? The infinite was brought up as a point because it makes Pikachu's kill options much more reliable, since it can hit confirm into all of Pikachu's kill moves. (HSB is just the most reliable of all of them.)

Why is Luigi barely top 10? Because he has 3:7 Matchups. Even Pikachu's MU with Weegee is 4:6 at worst. The reason Megaman is seen as horrendous for Luigi is because of his ability to keep Luigi out. His approach is pretty bad, and with one of his strongest tools in approach being invalidated by MM, fireball, it severely weakens Luigi's ability to get in and punish. When Luigi does get in, he's already soaked up so much damage that something like B-Air can kill him. It doesn't help that MM's N-Air is frame 2 or something ridiculous. It basically goes like that for Pacman and Villager.

 

[bc1910]

Mac is extremely good. A character with that frame data backed up by that power and ground mobility has more than enough positives to outweigh his negatives which admittedly would be crippling on a "normal" character, but Mac is not a normal character. Some don't think as highly of him as I but I don't know many people who think he's trash, or even low tier any more.

I believe good Mac players will get him to a point where he's almost impossible to touch on the ground for any character not named Sheik, and you can forget about grabbing him at all.

I could be completely wrong. I could be underestimating the fact that most of Mac's ground moves, whilst ridiculous in almost every way, are not safe on block. But I don't think I am wrong. The idea of what a top level Little Mac could and should be able to do terrifies me.

 

[DunnoBro]

When edgeguarding is less potent, how is it that Pikachu mains make it their main win condition? The infinite was brought up as a point because it makes Pikachu's kill options much more reliable, since it can hit confirm into all of Pikachu's kill moves. (HSB is just the most reliable of all of them.)

Why is Luigi barely top 10? Because he has 3:7 Matchups. Even Pikachu's MU with Weegee is 4:6 at worst. The reason Megaman is seen as horrendous for Luigi is because of his ability to keep Luigi out. His approach is pretty bad, and with one of his strongest tools in approach being invalidated by MM, fireball, it severely weakens Luigi's ability to get in and punish. When Luigi does get in, he's already soaked up so much damage that something like B-Air can kill him. It doesn't help that MM's N-Air is frame 2 or something ridiculous. It basically goes like that for Pacman and Villager.

Not sure you're understanding me. Pikachu gets a lot of mileage off edgeguarding, but if recoveries are better or chars have better offstage games, this is hindered. That's all I was saying about recoveries, not that a main win condition was removed.

Also, no. The infinite does NOT give any moderate increase to pikachu's killing ability in , the paralyzing jolt itself does, but not the infinite that requires point blank useage at specific percents. The infinite is very niche, situational, and requires taking pure guesses in a risky position with a lightweight.

I'm really hesitant to believe luigi has a 7:3 matchup vs the zoners. It doesn't seem worse than sheik v puff at least. Also, aside from sheik, most characters have a handful of bad MUs, so I'm not sure why just listing bad MUs is an argument against placing.

(I also said he wasn't outside top 10, not asking why he was barely top 10)

 

[Macedonian]

Are shulk and lil max really that underrated? I've heard about how great shulk was since release but I just don't see it. Monado really telegraphs your intentions, jab is the only quick move you have so overall pretty poor frame data.

As for lil Mac, the terrifying neutral game is something, but what really makes me second guess him being good is just don't see how he is viable for a solo main character. There are charachters that can just edgegaurding him to smithereens. I don't care how good a character is in neutral is, if you can't make one mistake, then you are out shined by so my others that don't have great reward as well with a lot more forgiveness

 

[TheReflexWonder]

As for lil Mac, the terrifying neutral game is something, but what really makes me second guess him being good is just don't see how he is viable for a solo main character. There are charachters that can just edgegaurding him to smithereens. I don't care how good a character is in neutral is, if you can't make one mistake, then you are out shined by so my others that don't have great reward as well with a lot more forgiveness

The better that players get, the fewer mistakes will be made, though.

Of course, punishment will usually become larger in that time, too, but if it only takes one mistake to lose a life already, what have you got to lose?

 

[TTTTTsd]

Well, low tier in this game doesn't mean nonviable, was a bit of my point. Smash 4's balance makes it very hard to pinpoint characters unless they're blatantly strong.
There was such a disparity in viability in brawl due to chain grabs and range differences (simplest way to put it) that low tier was a lower sect of characters that realistically couldn't function against any of the upper half of the cast. What we really could be seeing in this game is a tier list defined by relative ease of use.

Weighing specs up Mewtwo seems to be of a low tier disposition, in my opinion, currently. Trela has succeeded with numerous characters, and he has been using Mewtwo on occasion at locals and revolving around top 3, but has consistent first placements with Swordfighter with more frequency of use.

Mewtwo got second at a huge regional within 2 weeks of his release from a well known high level player. How could this result that came so early be an accurate representation of his metagame / potential and not more so the player? That to me doesn't make much sense. Ally hasn't really played Melee competitively (from what I know) nor has barely anyone ever played a competent Mewtwo either, and I don't know if PM Mewtwo (he's definitely played against that) gives any good bearing to him now. I'm not going to discount any Mewtwo result, but at the same time I'm going to always be looking to remove the player factor within a single instance.

The other part of my point is that a great player can compete with almost any character they've worked on within their peers. Those are the anecdotes we keep seeing. Now the opposing factor of an unknown player doing well, which can justify a character being definitively strong (*cough Luigi atm cough*) needs consistency before there's agreement.

For the record I don't think Little Mac is bad.

Quoting this just to say it's incredible that even though I know Dr. Mario is pretty lackluster in whole, I don't feel incredibly helpless with him.

He's far from amazing or even above average but I can't help but agree with this sentiment, particularly in this game. No the balance isn't perfect (far from it) but I can say that it feels like a legitimate effort was made with this game, and it kind of paid off.

Maybe once I get travel money I'll actually go out and try and do stuff, I dislike limited funding : <

 

[Macedonian]

Yea but I think that point is flawed, because macs will get better yes, but how can we say Mac is as good as a top tier if they allow for more mistakes to be made. I mean that just makes him objectively worse does it not?

I don't feel like I'm making my point as well as I'd like so ima use an example that's more generic and not smash. Say I'm playing a game with two players to choose from. One with 5 health and one with 1 health. And their offensive capabilities are pretty similar, why would I ever choose the 1 health option?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Yea but I think that point is flawed, because macs will get better yes, but how can we say Mac is as good as a top tier if they allow for more mistakes to be made. I mean that just makes him objectively worse does it not?

Well, in Brawl, as the metagame developed, guaranteed damage with chaingrabs and such shaped the game so that EVERYONE faced a "one mistake and you're dead" situation (or close to it) at high-level play. The point is, if that sort of thing happens with Smash 4, where small mistakes cost you a LOT of percent regardless of character, Mac will likely benefit from it because he didn't have a ton of staying power to begin with.

In the meantime, he's one of the only characters with a true "one mistake and you die" move of his own that works on any character, as well as multiple ways to deal with that sort of thing (loads of super armor, fast invincibility, a Counter).

 

[inconspikuous]

Learning the right way to respond after powershielding makes me really scared of Little Mac all of a sudden. If people get really good at it, he suddenly has option selects for many of his best moves, including KO Punch.

details pls lol. i don't really know how option selects work in this game so maybe i'm missing something. afaik option selects would be: A) if no attack connects with shield: shielding>roll>buffered action; or B) if attack connects with shield: shielding>buffered action. is that correct?

 

[Zelder]

The Good Doctor isn't a bad character, it's just hard to justify using him when Mario outclasses him in pretty much every relevant way. Which is karmic justice for Melee, where Dr. Mario was just...a vastly superior Mario (balance lol).

 

[FullMoon]

I think a lot of what makes Greninja hard to utilize very well is that he's a very non-standard character all things considered.

Greninja's poor OoS options means that most of the time Greninja won't want to use shield very often unless really needed. In a game where generally shields are so strong it's probably not a very easy thing to adjust to. There are some MUs where we want to shield more often (like ) but overall Greninja works better when he's moving around, and standing in shield is the opposite of that.

He has some of the most unorthodox moves as well. Substitute is a very, very unique counter (and I believe it to be very useful even if it's very flawed); Shadow Sneak is a pretty unique teleport move (plus I'm pretty sure it's the only teleport move that doesn't leave the user in helpless) that acts as a really good trapping move; Hydro Pump is so versatile it can work as a spacing, gimping and movement tool. Even his N-Air can be considered a bit odd. It can be a bit difficult to get the most out of his moves when they're a bit hard to get used to.

Plus coupled with the fact that Greninja is this ridiculously fast character but for some reason has probably some of the worst frame data in the game can make him hard to get a grip on.

Oh and he's one of the few characters that doesn't combo from D-Throw, he goes for Up-Throw instead just to be different I guess.

As Sakurai said it himself, "Greninja's sophisticated moves are extremely fun to use once you get used to how it controls!"

 

[Macedonian]

You make a good point reflex about I mistake getting closer to death as the game develops

But then can't it be argued ability to survive one mistake becomes even more important? If that's the case the mario bros and yoshi with the awesome combo breakers and better recovery would outshine Mac, as well as a lot of others. I mean this is not brawl, there are in general more options to save ourselves this game from one mistake taking us out. As well in this game almost everyone bar Mac can recover from almost everywhere