Character Competitive Impressions

[TheReflexWonder]

Don't buffer options like you're trying to momentum cancel in Brawl.

 

[Vipermoon]

Don't buffer options like you're trying to momentum cancel in Brawl.

But does double jump work?

In my experience it lets you live longer but I have nothing to back that up.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

But does double jump work?

In my experience it lets you live longer but I have nothing to back that up.

It didn't seem to help when I played with it, but I didn't try every character or knockback angle.

 

[GeneralLedge]

depends on the other matchups. if its say something like....>, wouldnt get that much of a bump since his other matchups are pretty bad(plenty other low tiers in other games have niche uses as counterpicks against higher/top tiers). but if its something like >, wouldnt get much of a bump either since she has great matchups all around. might get a slight downgrade, but it wouldnt be too much since he has great matchups all around, too.

Well, I'll use a previous hypothetical MU I made earlier in the topic.

Let's say, purely hypothetical for sake of streamlining the argument, that wins the MU.

Does Dedede raise on the list because of this niche MU, and/or does Shiek drop because of it?

Additionally, how much does the specific adv/dis score apply to these placement exchanges? Indulging that has 55:45's across the board, if were (still hypothetically), 20:80 for (*hold laughter*), does it undo the rest of her MU advantages enough to shake the tier?

Of course, I'm sure these such things are rare, but I'm curious what the consensus would be in handling them.


Meanwhile, with Customs, if we ever have a proper tier list at a point in the future with Customs inclusive, would it be better or worse to include vanilla sets of the same character on the list? ie. Airdonger vs vanilla DK? Or does a MU chart with over a hundred 'characters' become too unruly to determine?

 

[Luco]

Good spot indeed. But what I'm trying to say is that he might not get his *** handed to him by some characters, but he still lacks favourable MUs (most of them are 50:50). And we must remember that other characters got buffed. I mean Falco got as good buffs as Ike, but they didn't improve his game that much that he would have jumped into B tier like Ike. Most of people overreacted about Ike's buffs if you ask me.

(Also sorry for my bad english)

To be fair, quite a few high and even top tiers have a majority of even-ish MUs them apart is the other top tiers fall into their even spread and they tend to have a couple disadvantaged ones either around or below them whilst the lower tiers have disadvantaged MUs against more of the top tiers.

 

[warionumbah2]

But does double jump work?

In my experience it lets you live longer but I have nothing to back that up.

Tested it with MK in T-mode.

MKs f smash kills MK on the edge of FD at 60% with DI, if he uses his 2nd jump he dies at 63%

 

[Luco]

Well, I'll use a previous hypothetical MU I made earlier in the topic.

Let's say, purely hypothetical for sake of streamlining the argument, that wins the MU.

Does Dedede raise on the list because of this niche MU, and/or does Shiek drop because of it?

Additionally, how much does the specific adv/dis score apply to these placement exchanges? Indulging that has 55:45's across the board, if were (still hypothetically), 20:80 for (*hold laughter*), does it undo the rest of her MU advantages enough to shake the tier?

Of course, I'm sure these such things are rare, but I'm curious what the consensus would be in handling them.


Meanwhile, with Customs, if we ever have a proper tier list at a point in the future with Customs inclusive, would it be better or worse to include vanilla sets of the same character on the list? ie. Airdonger vs vanilla DK? Or does a MU chart with over a hundred 'characters' become too unruly to determine?

So the way I see it, would become an 'anti-meta' character. Whilst not being particularly high tier himself due to losing many other MUs, most players would have a pocket DDD just for because he wins so hard. Because of this, Sheik would drop a lot, because suddenly she has a hard counter that is being used against her a lot. It would be a weird balance in terms of CP-ing wars on the immediate scale, and then on a long term scale whether people are using DDD enough to stop the Sheiks dominating at tournaments or not. However, whilst DDD will in actuality only maybe raise very slightly, it would cripple Sheik the most - in other words, it would be promoting the idea of 2 'flawed' characters that both can't compete at top level.

Tested it with MK in T-mode.

MKs f smash kills MK on the edge of FD at 60% with DI, if he uses his 2nd jump he dies at 63%

I'd love to know if the characters with strange DJ properties (such as the Psychics and their DJ that pulles them back slightly at the beginning) are affected at all, that'd be really interesting to see.

 

[FullMoon]

Using double jump for that might not be the best idea though, since that is going to make your recovery a lot more predictable and easier to edgeguard unless you have multiple jumps.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Well, I'll use a previous hypothetical MU I made earlier in the topic.

Let's say, purely hypothetical for sake of streamlining the argument, that wins the MU.

Does Dedede raise on the list because of this niche MU, and/or does Shiek drop because of it?

Additionally, how much does the specific adv/dis score apply to these placement exchanges? Indulging that has 55:45's across the board, if were (still hypothetically), 20:80 for (*hold laughter*), does it undo the rest of her MU advantages enough to shake the tier?

Of course, I'm sure these such things are rare, but I'm curious what the consensus would be in handling them.


Meanwhile, with Customs, if we ever have a proper tier list at a point in the future with Customs inclusive, would it be better or worse to include vanilla sets of the same character on the list? ie. Airdonger vs vanilla DK? Or does a MU chart with over a hundred 'characters' become too unruly to determine?

Based on what I can remember back in Brawl, one good MU with a high tier if you're fairly far down doesn't help the lower tier character much.

Back in Brawl, Ike had a 45:55 MU against the Ice Climbers, which is better than what most characters can say. People find that hard to believe but it was generally agreed on by both sides (Due to how Ike's pummel worked, he could safely grab Popo, pummel once to knock Nana out of any of her attempts to free Popo, and then Bthrow -> Dash Attack which was a true combo for a long period of time. Nana could do jack squat about it between the pummel and Ike moving away during Bthrow, frequently lead Popo into a very bad situation and if he ended up off stage and Nana followed him, she was almost guaranteed to die. And Jab broke up a lot of their game plan and could combo into grab. And Ike's Fair could [barely] outrange Blizzard which was also very rare in Brawl). This oddly good MU against the ICs didn't help his position much even during the time when MK was banned and ICs started to take over.

For a more extreme situation like 80:20, I don't know. Would probably depend on other factors, like if D3 had a counter so bad that any Sheik player could just mindlessly grab said counter and win.

 

[Lavani]

Using double jump for that might not be the best idea though, since that is going to make your recovery a lot more predictable and easier to edgeguard unless you have multiple jumps.

So instead of making your recovery predictable you should just drop the stock and have no chance of recovering at all?

When it's the difference between life and death, you take what you can get.

 

[A_Kae]

So instead of making your recovery predictable you should just drop the stock and have no chance of recovering at all?

When it's the difference between life and death, you take what you can get.

It can be difficult to know if jumping will be the difference between losing a stock and having a predictable recovery.

Making yourself easy to edgeguard could also be a stock, of course.

 

[Luigi player]

But does double jump work?

In my experience it lets you live longer but I have nothing to back that up.

In this thread you can look at the horizontal survival ranking to see how much some moves help to survive longer:
http://smashboards.com/threads/character-survival-rankings.400617/

For some characters the doublejump let's them survive a few % longer, sometimes a special move helps more.

 

[Asdioh]

Yeah, we're really ought to look into matchups if we want to have an even remotely accurate tier list. Especially if we have tourney results to back up stuff.

Should probably take a look at Sheik's individual matchups first. A lot of a character's viability will depend on the direct matchup against her.

Alright, but how to we go about it? Who knows Sheik's matchups best, who do we trust to have the correct information? I gave up on Kirby matchups a while ago because a lot of it was theorycraft by people who don't actually go to tournaments.

Customs will die after EVO. It won't be necessary.

Then there's this sentiment again, and I'm still not sure where it's coming from.

Don't buffer options like you're trying to momentum cancel in Brawl.

Interesting. I still have a habit of doing that from Brawl sometimes. This should be pretty easy to test.

 

[FullMoon]

So instead of making your recovery predictable you should just drop the stock and have no chance of recovering at all?

When it's the difference between life and death, you take what you can get.

From the looks of it the difference is like 5% at most, it's going to be pretty hard to know if a double jump is going to save you or not when we have to factor things such as rage and stale moves so I'd just try to save my double jump in case that if I do survive I can safely make it back if I do survive.

I mean I do see your point, but I think trying to preserve your double jump is better just because in most cases you probably won't be able to tell if double jumping is going to help you anyway, some characters with bad recoveries like Little Mac, Dr.Mario and Ganondorf or characters that rely a lot on their double jump to recover like Yoshi and Ness probably can't afford to waste their double jump too early because if they do that to survive being sent to the blast zone, well, they're likely going to die anyway.

In any case according to Luigi Player's data double jumping doesn't do a thing for Greninja anyway so further reason for me to not waste my double jump lol.

 

[Blobface]

Then there's this sentiment again, and I'm still not sure where it's coming from.

What we do need to do after evo is have a proper ruleset discussion in the competitive smash rulest discussion (CSRD). Any discussion on this thread usually gets too heated not to mention being off-topic, and most discussions on CSRD involve too few people to matter.

Also, Ganondorf outranges Mario a lot, and fireballs are nowhere near good enough to make up for it. Mario's recovery vs Ganon is surprisingly bad while Ganon can recover fairly easily by just going low and hugging the stage. @ A2ZOMG would know the most about this since he mains both characters though.

I think it's a good testament to this games balance that every top tier (except maybe Sheik and Rosalina) have a few disadvantageous matchups.

 

[Lavani]

It can be difficult to know if jumping will be the difference between losing a stock and having a predictable recovery.

Making yourself easy to edgeguard could also be a stock, of course.

I'd probably agree in other games, but this game gives us a visual indicator (lightning effect) when a move should kill you. If you're familiar with kill percents and know your DI as well you should have a pretty good idea of when it's worth it to attempt to double jump.

 

[Hippieslayer]

So Samus has an extremely powerful custom up-b which while it only hits at the beginning and end of the move and is slightly harder to land kills so goddamn early it compensates for those minor drawbacks ten times over; why haven't this gotten mentioned? Samus doesn't exactly have an easy time killing and this **** will kill below 100 from the ground.

 

[GeneralLedge]

Honestly both of Samus's custom Screw Attacks hit really effing hard and are individually awesome in their own way. One just KB's horizontally instead of vertically (and is subsequently harder to use for recovery).

 

[Routa]

It is good, but it isn't Dong Cyclone good. It does not remove her bad MUs unlike Dong's (40:60 MU becomes 60:40). But it is indeed one of the best customs.

 

[Wintropy]

So Samus has an extremely powerful custom up-b which while it only hits at the beginning and end of the move and is slightly harder to land kills so goddamn early it compensates for those minor drawbacks ten times over; why haven't this gotten mentioned? Samus doesn't exactly have an easy time killing and this **** will kill below 100 from the ground.

Apex Screw Attack? As I understand, isn't it akin to Ganondorf's Dark Fists, i.e. you have to be hugging the opponent's hurtbox to even connect with it?

Not that that diminishes its value, just that it comes across as highly situational.

 

[Zelder]

It is good, but it isn't Dong Cyclone good. It does not remove her bad MUs unlike Dong's (40:60 MU becomes 60:40). But it is indeed one of the best customs.

I had a really snarky response written up to this but I'm going to drop it because I'm tired. That being said, Dong Cyclone is not powerful enough to flip bad matchups into his favor. That doesn't even make sense.

 

[Lavani]

Apex Screw Attack does carry quite a bit of kill power compared to the default Screw Attack. It also increases the startup 5f→15f, is the only variant of Screw attack that is weaker in the air (2% less on the final hit, knockback is reduced accordingly as a result), and sacrifices the big shield damage multipliers that Screw Attack/Rush carry (Screw Attack will shred even a fresh shield, not sure if Rush's movement permits it to do the same but it has the modifiers for it as well).

Its kill power is definitely something, but it has nontrivial tradeoffs that keep it from being a clearcut number one choice for Samus.

 

[Routa]

I had a really snarky response written up to this but I'm going to drop it because I'm tired. That being said, Dong Cyclone is not powerful enough to flip bad matchups into his favor. That doesn't even make sense.

It was mostly a joke (most of people have overreacted to Dong Cyclone). But yeah what I ment was it is very good but it does not improve her game as much as Dong's Cyclone (it does improve his game a lot but it wont make him jump like 3 tiers).

 

[Zelder]

Okay that's fair. I'm probably on edge because I have a single hour of sleep in me right now.

 

[Hippieslayer]

Okay so the startup and reduced aerial damage and risk of whiffing suck. But it still is kinda easy to land as a punish or by catching a landing IMO, it didn't seen to require you to stand that much closer than regular screw attack but I only tried it out today so I dunno.

Thing is its killpower is ridiculous. I don't have access to a wii u until tomorrow but I dare you to check out just how darn early this kills, you will be surprised.

If there are ways to guarantee landing it via combos (which there should be) its nothing short of sick.

It's so strong it will gimp at stupid percents in the air easily despite reduced damage.

Also customs won't die after EVO. Not for certain anyway, they'll definitely see drastically reduced usage, but theres a chance people might actually miss them now that they've seen some usage.

 

[bc1910]

ZeRo's top 5 characters that he hopes get buffed.

Marth and Link are in this video.

Marth.

And Link.

Two characters who are knocking on the door of high tier and are the best they've ever been in Sm4sh.

If anyone was still doubtful, this should prove ZeRo's deep understanding of top tiers does not extend to the rest of the cast.

I know it's just his opinion, and he probably just wants them buffed because he likes them, but seriously. Marth and Link in the same "buff pls" video as Samus and Robin.

 

[FullMoon]

I know it's just his opinion, and he probably just wants them buffed because he likes them, but seriously. Marth and Link in the same "buff pls" video as Samus and Bowser.

Fixed.

 

[Hippieslayer]

It is good, but it isn't Dong Cyclone good. It does not remove her bad MUs unlike Dong's (40:60 MU becomes 60:40). But it is indeed one of the best customs.

Well yeah. Slow missiles, big-bomb+apex screw attack together does a lot for her though. Enough to put her in mid tier along with most of the games characters instead of low tier garbage.

Now if only Nintendo patched her a proper fastfall and/or gave reduced her fall speed... I want to like Samus and play her, but viability aside the floatiness makes playing her boring, you can't get a nice flow going, the game is constantly interrupted by you having to wait for her to finish falling.

In any case it's absolutely horrible how so many people speak of customs being unfair when they want to remove essential parts of several characters movesets thereby removing their only way of being viable. There should be a list of all these characters which are about to be hit with a nerf-bat in the same league as the one which whacked Diddy.

Really, it's quite horrendous.

 

[Radical Larry]

@ Blobface Ganondorf has a capability to perfect shield Mario's fireballs because of his low mobility, which helps him predict the Fireball before it comes out and allows him to block it when it comes.

@ bc1910 and @ FullMoon It's unbelievable that ZeRo thinks Marth and Link, who can now be considered high tier at this point, as well as Bowser, who is considered mid-tier, should be buffed. You know, I think ZeRo's solution should be to play the characters (Link especially) to know how they really work this patch. He should have listed Wii Fit Trainer, Zelda, Samus, Doctor Mario and Mii Gunner, not...Link and Marth.

But hey, ZeRo probably wants Link and Marth to become the new Meta Knights of this game.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

But then it's inaccurate and match up speculation can be made moot with a single update. Think about it this way, would a tier list based on how the game was when the 3DS version came out be remotely accurate now? Is Greninja still a top tier threat? Should Wario and Yoshi's vectoring shenanigans still be considered when looking at match ups? You can't really ignore the DLC and patches because they throw so many more factors to consider into the mix. This, on top of the fact that there's nearly 3,000 match ups to consider, it's difficult to hit a moving target which is why it would be smart to make an official tier list until it stops or, at the very least, slows down significantly. Yes, you can walk and chew gum at the same time but this is more like painting a house for a client only for them to abruptly change their mind when you're not even half way done yet.

Matchup speculation changes as time goes on anyways. Tier list aren't set in stone and things change the more the game and players develop. The reason I say to ignore initial patches and dlc. Is because we shouldn't base tier list on knee jerk reactions. Every 6 months tiers should be updated IMHO.

 

[bc1910]

Fixed.

Complete typo. I meant Robin. And Bowser is nearly as stupid a pick for buffs as Link/Marth.

 

[FullMoon]

I just assumed you saw Zelda in the video and thought he was going to talk about her instead of Bowser without actually listening to it, I didn't even listen to anything other than who he was talking about myself.

 

[ZarroTsu]

So I had a proposal for customs post-EVO if they fail miserably in some way/shape/form, and was holding off on it until I got feedback from AA on the idea (since he's the headstone on the current operation), but he evidently either doesn't check his PMs or ignored me or didn't get a chance to respond.

The proposal is simple: Assign individual values to specific customs, and deviate legal 'sets' by a determined point total. This would alleviate the need to outright ban certain moves (ie. trip sapling, for example), by preventing them being run with equally tedious moves at the same time (ie. extreme balloon trip). It would also have a neat side-effect wherein, depending on consensus, very high-value customs may require the use of low-value customs alongside it for the set to be legal to begin with (which would have the ultimately positive side-effect of players labing custom moves that nobody would ever otherwise take a second glance at, such as Clothesline Cyclone, or Stubborn Headbutt or something).

This is a bit of a pipe dream, of course, but it would be a neat alternative if EVO gets out of hand.

 

[Routa]

I think Samu's special Up-B could be compared to Doc's fiery Up-B. They both are great punishing tools and can kill really really REALLY early, but... They suck as OoS moves and they aren't as good recovery moves when you compare to vanilla ones. So overall +-0. I think her customs in other moves improve her game far more than her custom up-b, but then again I don't main Samus so my information might not have been 100% correct.

Edit: damn I suck at english :S

 

[Smog Frog]

exactly where is this anti-custom sentiment coming from? i'd really like to know.

 

[Wintropy]

I think Samu's special Up-B could be compared to Doc's fiery Up-B. They both are great punishing tools and can kill really really REALLY early, but... They suck as OoS moves and they aren't as good recovery moves when you compare to vanilla ones. So overall +-0. I think her customs in other moves improve her game far more than her custom up-b, but then again I don't main Samus so my information might not have been 100% correct

I feel like Doc's Soaring Tornado makes up for The Ol' One-Two's pitiful recovery.

I don't think Samus has anything like that.

 

[ZarroTsu]

exactly where is this anti-custom sentiment coming from? i'd really like to know.

I'd inject it's primarily fueled by Reddit screaming bans at every new tech, but there are undertones about it in regards to the subset to customs known as 'Mii Fighters'. As well as inevitable shaming that comes with pushing for non-1111 Miis in customs-off environments. It's... ugly.

My previous post isn't necessarily advocating the anti-customs are winning or whatever, I'm just proposing a contingency plan in the big "IF". So I don't know whether or not I'm siding with them or staying optimistic after the fact, really. Just another thought experiment to consider, at the moment.

 

[A2ZOMG]

What we do need to do after evo is have a proper ruleset discussion in the competitive smash rulest discussion (CSRD). Any discussion on this thread usually gets too heated not to mention being off-topic, and most discussions on CSRD involve too few people to matter.

Also, Ganondorf outranges Mario a lot, and fireballs are nowhere near good enough to make up for it. Mario's recovery vs Ganon is surprisingly bad while Ganon can recover fairly easily by just going low and hugging the stage. @ A2ZOMG would know the most about this since he mains both characters though.

I think it's a good testament to this games balance that every top tier (except maybe Sheik and Rosalina) have a few disadvantageous matchups.

Like all of Ganon's favorable matchups though, it's a 55/45 given Ganon suffers a lot from juggles just generally speaking and always has to pick his moves carefully.

But yeah Ganon does edgeguard Mario very well with N-air and U-air, which often forces Mario to try to recover high given his low recovery isn't getting past Ganon's aerials most of the time.

 

[Hippieslayer]

@ bc1910 and @ FullMoon It's unbelievable that ZeRo thinks Marth and Link, who can now be considered high tier at this point, as well as Bowser, who is considered mid-tier, should be buffed. You know, I think ZeRo's solution should be to play the characters (Link especially) to know how they really work this patch. He should have listed Wii Fit Trainer, Zelda, Samus, Doctor Mario and Mii Gunner, not...Link and Marth.

But hey, ZeRo probably wants Link and Marth to become the new Meta Knights of this game.

Agree.

Since Sakurai doesn't consider customs Palutena should be getting buffs as well. Also don't forget Mewtwo.. His weight needs fixing.

I dont think Wii Fit quite ranks among the worst but still.. Could def use something to amp her up. Same with GnW, if he's to be a true glass cannon he needs a better way to successfully approach, a glass cannon cannot struggle to get in the way he does, that's a typical flawed character concept.

In any case I like that you mentioned Dr Mario, ATM there is no reason to use him ever, such a pointless character, even his customs seem kinda lackluster. He doesn't do anything unique except suck.

Zelda is obvious. Still think she's the worst in the game, boy does she suck. Even when Nairo wins with her it's obvious he's only able to do it because no one knows how to fight Zelda since you don't need mu knowledge to beat her.

Samus is also obvious. Her floatiness ruins her otherwise sort of decent moveset. It's really stupid by Nintendo to make a popular and loved character who still features as the main char in games a total bore to play and a bad character at that.

Gunner similarly is boring. But is Gunner really all that bad? I'm not sure, seems sort of mid tier. Regardless gunner had too many low risk low reward spam moves. When playing as gunner there's no emotions. You're not on edge looking for a chance to land that one high risk high reward move. You're not doing anything exciting ever. Spice gunner up a bit please. Better recovery, add ammo (Akin to robins charges) so that you have to spam tactically or risk ****ing yourself, remove the absorbing vortex down-b and add a minedrop similar to snakes down-b and gunner would be much more fun.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Dr. Mario doesn't really need a lot, frankly. And 2312 is amazing on Doc and addresses a lot of his issues (midrange, options to get out of juggles, and recovery).

There's like three buffs I'd suggest for Doc. Slightly better IASA on Jab cancel (his Jab cancel is already pretty good, but a little extra frame advantage would allow him to Jab -> Up-B the entire cast rather than just floaties). More damage on the loop hitboxes of Tornado (this helps in the Sonic and ZSS matchups mostly, as it's one of his best moves for covering some of their escape options), and less landing lag on F-air (because Mario/Doc forward facing options suck, frankly.)

I think in general though for most other characters that don't already have Jab cancel combos (especially if their Jab cancel is negative on hit), I would probably suggest buffs to that universally.