Character Competitive Impressions

[A2ZOMG]

Last time I saw Holy play Smash 4 he completely thrashed Kalm in tourney. I would not be so confident that Ganon wins that MU if I were you. He might be Ganon's worst non-top tier MU outside of Villager. Not impossible, but not fun against a good one either.

Kalm is weird when it comes to matchups. I honestly don't agree with a lot of his playstyle personally. Look at the recent highlights featuring him doing amazing things in tournament. I don't think Kalm's playstyle is highly representative of what happens in a lot of matchups...outside of the fact that Ganon has a lot of comeback potential.

Nothing against him given he's definitely really skilled, but a lot of the time he wins, I feel he gets away with shenanigans, and when he doesn't he tends to do noticeably worse given his general playstyle tends to be really risky and volatile. Especially compared to other strong Ganon mains like GanonTB and Vermanubis.

That's one reason I mostly ignored when people posted Kalm's tournament results not long ago.

As for the Villager matchup, it's totally winnable for Ganon. Even in customs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRlpY0DG_ck

 

[adom4]

Oh my goodness this is too much.

I have a lot of respect for Shulk, dat berserker influence rubbing off. He has range going for him, and Shulk mains have put a lot of work into his stances but it obviously hasn't paid off/there's still more floors Shulk mains need to breach first to see any real success, or Shulk is seeing certain higher-tiered MUs he simply can't deal with. That said, I'm pretty sure Trela used Shulk at CEO(?) , which is a nice placement for him.

Also Israel's top player uses Shulk and consistently gets results with him, so he's seeing success in some areas. It's an intriguing idea to give a character top range and bottom frame data specs though, so it'd be a shame to see that ratio minimised in order to improve Shulk but ultimately it might be worth it.

I switched Shulk out for Roy, i'm not really feeling the character that much anymore :/

 

[A2ZOMG]

Random: I thought of an easy way to buff Jigglypuff that would be pretty unique. Increase the hitbox duration of her D-smash.

I just realized that this move is amazingly good for edgeguarding because it actually can hit the 1 frame ledge vulnerability window. But it only lasts 2 frames, which is only just barely enough to time it with any consistency competitively. They should increase the hitbox duration to something like 6 frames imo. This would be in line with how Jigglypuff plays in general (get people offstage, and edgeguard) and more or less complete her options for edgeguarding different types of recoveries.

She doesn't need much more in neutral, but sometimes she needs more options to finish stocks reliably, so I believe this may actually be the perfect buff for Jigglypuff, if she only gets one thing.

 

[TriTails]

Random: I thought of an easy way to buff Jigglypuff that would be pretty unique. Increase the hitbox duration of her D-smash.

I just realized that this move is amazingly good for edgeguarding because it actually can hit the 1 frame ledge vulnerability window. But it only lasts 2 frames, which is only just barely enough to time it with any consistency competitively. They should increase the hitbox duration to something like 6 frames imo. This would be in line with how Jigglypuff plays in general (get people offstage, and edgeguard) and more or less complete her options for edgeguarding different types of recoveries.

She doesn't need much more in neutral, but sometimes she needs more options to finish stocks reliably, so I believe this may actually be the perfect buff for Jigglypuff, if she only gets one thing.

She also needs a Rest that doesn't punish her for landing it when people don't get a Star/Screen KO.

 

[A2ZOMG]

She also needs a Rest that doesn't punish her for landing it when people don't get a Star/Screen KO.

I could be wrong, but I swear that Sakurai said they originally planned to make it so that only on the last stock or last minute, there would be no Star/Screen KOs.

Dunno what happened there...I fail to understand why it's random (didn't it actually swing a doubles set once involving M2K?).

 

[A_Kae]

I could be wrong, but I swear that Sakurai said they originally planned to make it so that only on the last stock or last minute, there would be no Star/Screen KOs.

Dunno what happened there...I fail to understand why it's random (didn't it actually swing a doubles set once involving M2K?).

I think during the last few seconds of a time match, (5? 10? something like that) no star or screen KOs occur. I don't remember anything about stock matches being planned to have that. Could be wrong though.

It would be great if that was a thing in stock matches.

 

[TriTails]

Rest needs an exception. Make it always Star/Screen KO, or decrease the end lag (VERY unlikely tho). Or Jiggs users will never rest easy.

Pun not intended.

 

[FlynnCL]

I could be in my own little world here, but I always think that one of the best (or most dumb) buffs Jigglypuff could ever get would be an irreversible hitbox on down-aerial. As of now you're usually forced to ruin your aerial momentum in order to get your desired trajectory, yet even with that it still has very solid combo potential.

 

[bc1910]

The issue with making Jiggs better is that she's already very good at what she does. It's just a lot of characters can handle what she does pretty easily. Still I think her range and a few moves like Uair could be buffed pretty safely. And of course Sing being terrible and Rest allowing her to be punished on hit should be fixed but they probably never will.

Not sure about giving her good throws since her tomahawk game would end up rivalling like, Ness', only she'd still have exponentially better shield pressure abilities from the air.

She also needs some way to combat backwards rolling on reaction. She is among the worst in the game at punishing them if not THE worst. I don't know how to fix this without, like, totally changing how Rollout works though, her dash attack is good enough already and increasing her dash speed kind of defeats the point of Jigglypuff. Making her dashgrab better wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, either with more range, making her launch forward more or some combination of both.

 

[TriTails]

Not sure about giving her good throws since her tomahawk game would end up rivalling like, Ness', only she'd still have exponentially better shield pressure abilities from the air.

I'm pretty sure all of her throws do 10% or more and put people to the air, which means disadvantage. While none of them guarantee a followup, they are good throws in their own right.

 

[Kofu]

I'm pretty sure all of her throws do 10% or more and put people to the air, which means disadvantage. While none of them guarantee a followup, they are good throws in their own right.

Basically this. All her throws deal a flat 10%. Add to the fact that Jigglypuff has a 3% pummel that is pretty fast and she can get good damage from throws even without followups. Plus her grab range is inexplicably large.

 

[Fatmanonice]

Feels like these two are the least talked about nowadays.

Did the patch aid them in any way? Either directly or by top-tier shuffling?

Both win the award for "Zomg so much potential technical character that no one uses properly but are secret high tiers"

Or more so Peach. Shulk has bad frame data. But Zero kind of believes in him so there's that...I think Shulk is interesting to say the least. I'd love to see a good Shulk player make it far.

What Yonder said. Peach has always sort of been overrated. Both her and Bowser have always had their legion of people who insist that people aren't playing them to their full potential. Peach doesn't suffer from Special Snowflake Syndrome (mediocre stats + high learning curve) nearly as bad as a lot of other characters but something about her playstyle makes her somebody that not a lot of people pick up. I suppose you can compare her to Jigglypuff, somebody who was pretty good in Melee and has rode the coattails of their success in that game ever since. Like Brawl, she's likely to stay as a solid mid-tier unless she gets some major buffs in the future.

I still believe Shulk could be really good, even if it meant resorting to his customs. I think of him like Brawl Olimar, a character that it took people forever to really get down but, once people did, he became a force to be reckoned with. The character can literally change his stats with a button push so, aside from Robin, he definitely takes the cake for this game's biggest Special Snowflake addition. The problem with Special Snowflake characters is that they usually don't have a lot of people that support them so, until they get results, they develop at a much slower pace compared to everyone else. Shulk has potential but I don't think it'll really be tapped into for another year or two.

 

[Firefoxx]

The #SuperSwordBoyz patch came and Shulk got nothing. That hurts pretty bad. Range doesn't mean much when 5-6 characters have the same thing and are now just flat out better than you.

 

[Shaya]

For what it's worth, Shulk still wins the Marth/Lucina match up. I couldn't see why Roy would do any better either.

 

[mimgrim]

Ryu and Roy go into freeze frames when activating Marth's counter because of their elongated hit lag.

Ryu cannot recover vertically against Marth whatsoever. Nair will beat spinny spin (I need more coffee the names completely slipped my mind).
Marth can also dolphin slash through shield hits and hit Ryu in his elongated hit lag limbs. It's stupid.

He can outspace FA while also covering forward dash cancels with it.

I think you got vertically and horizontally mixed up here.

Hurricane Kick goes horizontally (side to side) not vertically (up and down).

Dragon Punch is his vertical recovery, and it doesn't really spin.

 

[Djent]

I don't think we'll ever see a truly good Shulk player unless 9B makes a breakthrough with the character.

Agreed, but the fact that his results so far have been so mediocre (for a player of his caliber) is discouraging even when taking into account Shulk's high skill floor and potentially-high ceiling.

 

[Vipermoon]

I think you got vertically and horizontally mixed up here.

Hurricane Kick goes horizontally (side to side) not vertically (up and down).

Dragon Punch is his vertical recovery, and it doesn't really spin.

He didn't mix it up. He was simply starting a new sentence unrelated to the one before.

Perfect time to say that I forgot to mention Counter works great against Spinny Spin offstage.

 

[Woohoo982]

Honestly, why do people keep saying G&W is low-tier? he has decent tools he can use, a safe dash attack, a great air game and buckets give him even or at least +1 matches against anyone with a projectile. (RIP Ness,Robin,Lucas and Megaman.) So what if he's literally a piece of paper and is as light as one, with all those tools and more how can people possibly say he's C Tier? I say he's A- or B Tier.

 

[Djent]

Here are the top 16 seeds for EVO as of now, which each grouping seeding into a finals slot winners side:

Spoiler

1 Zero
16 NAKAT
8 Ally
9 Nietono

4 MVD
12 Shaky
5 ESAM
13 False

2 Nairo
15 MrConCon
7 Larry Lurr
10 Abadango

3 Dabuz
14 FOW
6 Mr.R
11 Vinnie

Looks like a combination of the CEO bracket and CEO results. Unless there's a scheduling conflict I'm pretty sure these won't change much.

 

[Nabbitnator]

What Yonder said. Peach has always sort of been overrated. Both her and Bowser have always had their legion of people who insist that people aren't playing them to their full potential. Peach doesn't suffer from Special Snowflake Syndrome (mediocre stats + high learning curve) nearly as bad as a lot of other characters but something about her playstyle makes her somebody that not a lot of people pick up. I suppose you can compare her to Jigglypuff, somebody who was pretty good in Melee and has rode the coattails of their success in that game ever since. Like Brawl, she's likely to stay as a solid mid-tier unless she gets some major buffs in the future.

I still believe Shulk could be really good, even if it meant resorting to his customs. I think of him like Brawl Olimar, a character that it took people forever to really get down but, once people did, he became a force to be reckoned with. The character can literally change his stats with a button push so, aside from Robin, he definitely takes the cake for this game's biggest Special Snowflake addition. The problem with Special Snowflake characters is that they usually don't have a lot of people that support them so, until they get results, they develop at a much slower pace compared to everyone else. Shulk has potential but I don't think it'll really be tapped into for another year or two.

I find that maybe some of her tools needs to be tweaked to be slightly faster. One of her bigger tools that got nerfed was her turnips. Its kind of hard to pick a few up and sometimes even one without worry about being grabbed now because of the end lag. I have no clue why the start up was nerfed since some of the turnips themselves have been nerfed individually as well. I also find it a little harder to edge guard successfully since a lot of recoveries have been buffed in this game.

 

[Nu~]

Honestly, why do people keep saying G&W is low-tier? he has decent tools he can use, a safe dash attack, a great air game and buckets give him even or at least +1 matches against anyone with a projectile. (RIP Ness,Robin,Lucas and Megaman.) So what if he's literally a piece of paper and is as light as one, with all those tools and more how can people possibly say he's C Tier? I say he's A- or B Tier.

A bucket just makes the opponent play smarter with their projectiles. It certainly doesn't win Mr.G&W the matchup. His dash attack is still unsafe on shield so I don't understand what you mean by "safe dash attack"

What are these decent tools? What important matchups does he win and why? He still has a poor approach and few KO confirms.

 

[kackamee]

Here are the top 16 seeds for EVO as of now, which each grouping seeding into a finals slot winners side:

Spoiler

1 Zero
16 NAKAT
8 Ally
9 Nietono

4 MVD
12 Shaky
5 ESAM
13 False

2 Nairo
15 MrConCon
7 Larry Lurr
10 Abadango

3 Dabuz
14 FOW
6 Mr.R
11 Vinnie

Looks like a combination of the CEO bracket and CEO results. Unless there's a scheduling conflict I'm pretty sure these won't change much.

Is this subject to change at all? Like for instance, since Rain is now confirmed, could he knock #16 out of his spot?

 

[hypersonicJD]

I'm currently of the opinion sonic + sheik is the strongest combination in our meta. While perhaps in an ideal meta they wouldn't be, when everyone starts on smashville and it's essentially FD lite for sonic, that's pretty big. This is likely why sonic is considered top 2 in Japan, due to their stagelist letting him play on FD or Smashville 90% of the time.

Then, not only do you have sheik for other stages, but you also have good matchup coverage. Though, while sheik has little to no BAD matchups, she does have to adapt pretty hard to a good few of them. Sonic however tends to play most of his good/even matchups the same way, keeping the skill investment low enough so you only need to practice sheik for sonic's truly bad MUs.

Sonic + Mario seems pretty good too, and possibly a better choice in the long run if the running theme of sheik nerfs keeps up.

Thank you for the recomendations dude. If Sheik gets nerfed, I could go with Yoshi or Mario.

About Shulk. I think he does have potential to be Top Tier. But you need to play him perfectly fine. One mistake and he's gone.

 

[wedl!!]

umm

the only way that i could be persuaded into saying peach is top 15 as opposed to being under it is if they made her tools faster (melee turnip pull and nair pls) otherwise the character is great.
sidenote: i can see the zss matchup being a problem in the future, she gets zoned by zair hard.

shulk reminds me a lot of falcon/roy in the way he plays (great advantage, horrible disadvantage) except less well-rounded and more bursty. he's really hard to place in the vanilla meta but with customs on he gets a lot better and is at the top of the mid tier (i don't use "high/low mid")

im bad at writeups

 

[Djent]

Is this subject to change at all? Like for instance, since Rain is now confirmed, could he knock #16 out of his spot?

OH **** SINCE WHEN?!?

Brackets are not final but I kind of doubt they'll seed him; late registrants usually get put into Bye slots.

 

[Firefoxx]

Here are the top 16 seeds for EVO as of now, which each grouping seeding into a finals slot winners side:

Spoiler

1 Zero
16 NAKAT
8 Ally
9 Nietono

4 MVD
12 Shaky
5 ESAM
13 False

2 Nairo
15 MrConCon
7 Larry Lurr
10 Abadango

3 Dabuz
14 FOW
6 Mr.R
11 Vinnie

Looks like a combination of the CEO bracket and CEO results. Unless there's a scheduling conflict I'm pretty sure these won't change much.

Glad to see MVD getting the respect he deserves.

He's only placed worse than 5th at 2 reported tournaments he's entered in Smash 4 (7th at APEX, 17th at Final Battle). Dude has put in serious work.

 

[Djent]

@ kackamee Okay I found Rain, he's unseeded and projected to fight ConCon in quarters. So he could face Nairo in Semis.

 

[Luco]

That's pretty interesting! So how many will there be in each pool then?

Pun not intended.

I just refuse to believe that.

Honestly, why do people keep saying G&W is low-tier? he has decent tools he can use, a safe dash attack, a great air game and buckets give him even or at least +1 matches against anyone with a projectile. (RIP Ness,Robin,Lucas and Megaman.) So what if he's literally a piece of paper and is as light as one, with all those tools and more how can people possibly say he's C Tier? I say he's A- or B Tier.

I don't know, I remember playing @ Kofu ages back (who should know more about this than I do) and our matches were quite volatile. While it's true that G&W has some polarising strengths against some characters, for the most part he's just so light that he doesn't need to take much damage back in return before being killed. Also most of his kill options are very linear and telegraphed.

 

[warionumbah2]

. (RIP Megaman.)

Edit this out pls.

 

[Appledees]

Honestly, why do people keep saying G&W is low-tier? he has decent tools he can use, a safe dash attack, a great air game and buckets give him even or at least +1 matches against anyone with a projectile. (RIP Megaman.)

I fail to see how Megaman loses G&W especially if you're using the bucket as an argument. Same with the other character except maybe Robin. What good Megaman is gonna throw a random Fsmash into his bucket. G&Ws that uses bucket against Megaman are silly cause Metal Blade doesn't give a **** and bucketing lemons don't really do anything for the matchup. G&W has much better options against Mega than that nonsense.

I agree that G&W is actually much better than alot of people think, but I think you're overrating him too much here

 

[Djent]

Saturday finals =( Oh well.

That's pretty interesting! So how many will there be in each pool then?

There are 16 slots but not all are full. It is slightly variable.

 

[PUK]

I fail to see how Megaman loses G&W especially if you're using the bucket as an argument. Same with the other character except maybe Robin. What good Megaman is gonna throw a random Fsmash into his bucket. G&Ws that uses bucket against Megaman are silly cause Metal Blade doesn't give a **** and bucketing lemons don't really do anything for the matchup. G&W has much better options against Mega than that nonsense.

I agree that G&W is actually much better than alot of people think, but I think you're overrating him too much here

Robin kill power and range is real though.

 

[GeneralLedge]

G&W is weird. I used to like playing as him, but found killing progressively difficult, and eventually dropped him. It's incredibly satisfying to hit a [9], of course, but relying on the hammer will get you killed, and fishing for grabs at the dthrow-into-hammer (at 15~20%), while incredible, probably itself proves I'm not capable of playing G&W, since that's far from his only setup (probably).

On the other hand, I have a friend of mine who is bonkers with G&W. Constantly using trampoline to avoid damage and offstage-followups, always using the best aerial for a given situation, somehow never getting punished for dairing, and psychic usmash invincibility every flipping time. It's jarring to me how powerful they made G&W look, when hands-on experience told me otherwise.

 

[Diddy Kong]

In what matches in CEO did ZeRo use Diddy?

 

[Ulevo]

I am beginning to rethink my position on Battlefield being Sheik's best stage. Looking at the stage blast zone data I recently collected, it definitely seems Smashville is her #1 choice. It is the smallest stage horizontally by far excluding Castle Siege 1, and the platform gives her a lot of Delfino-esque kill set ups.

Battlefield by comparison has far larger blast zones from the ledge and in the ceiling. Even if Sheik has tipper up smash opportunities and the ability to extend combos on stage, I almost think these are worth while trade offs.

It will be interesting to see if people begin striking and banning Smashville against Sheik players rather than defaulting to the stage.

 

[Firefoxx]

In what matches in CEO did ZeRo use Diddy?

none in top 8 and not against Shaky. Think he went diddy in most other matches but not sure

 

[hypersonicJD]

I am beginning to rethink my position on Battlefield being Sheik's best stage. Looking at the stage blast zone data I recently collected, it definitely seems Smashville is her #1 choice. It is the smallest stage horizontally by far excluding Castle Siege 1, and the platform gives her a lot of Delfino-esque kill set ups.

Battlefield by comparison has far larger blast zones from the ledge and in the ceiling. Even if Sheik has tipper up smash opportunities and the ability to extend combos on stage, I almost think these are worth while trade offs.

It will be interesting to see if people begin striking and banning Smashville against Sheik players rather than defaulting to the stage.

Battlefield could be a good counterpick to get rid of Sheik and have another character that uses plattaforms (Zero Suit Samus, Rosalina, the Mario Brothers, etc). I also think that Battlefield is the perfect counterpick for Sonic. This stage destroys Sonic completely. I'm saying this by experience. No guaranteed Spin Dash, no guaranteed Homing Attack and Sonic doesn't use plattaforms at all.

 

[Diddy Kong]

none in top 8 and not against Shaky. Think he went diddy in most other matches but not sure

So MVD was basically the only Diddy worth of notice it seems?

 

[Smashdude™]

I have absolutely nothing to back this up and I have no tournament experience. But I think Falco is way better than anyone thinks. Someday a Falco main will win a bunch of tournaments and then he'll jump like 20 spots. I really think he could be A-. I think he has a lot of good moves and some okay combo throws.

 

[Appledees]

If Falco had actual mobility maybe

why is this bird so damn slow