Character Competitive Impressions

[KenMeister]

On the topic of Kirby players, the only good ones I've seen are usually Japanese players who play their footsies rather well. Once again, much like the Yoshi players, Japan continues to show us up. lol

 

[ChronoPenguin]

I feel dirty whenever I fight a Kirby who spams Stone during a sudden match. All you have to do is bait, grab, and throw. No mind games, no reads, nothing, but bait, grab, and throw.

Dash attack?
I use F-air, and fake jumps Which are primarily my best result, other than a cross-over roll, and well...walking. Otherwise its Shield/Spot-dodge all day and hope im not forced to approach.
Its still bs because his range and air/ground speed are so slow, but meh. At least jumping inhale ignores shields but serious.
Need a real kind of approach.
Crouch goes under Super Missile, Needles, lasers and a couple other notable straight projectiles (not water shurikens). So against Sheik/Fox I don't feel any need to approach as their projectiles are as effective as them spamming a jab from the other side of FD.

 

[Ffamran]

Dash attack?
I use F-air, and fake jumps Which are primarily my best result, other than a cross-over roll, and well...walking.
Its still bs because his range and air/ground speed are so slow, but meh. At least jumping inhale ignores shields but serious.
Need a real kind of approach.

I said a Kirby who spams Stone. All you have to do is just move away and grab the little, pink puffball and be done.

I don't play as Kirby much in any of the SSB's, so I don't know much about him. All I know is that there are a ton of spammers, but Kirby spammers takes the cake of easy to counter unlike Little Mac who's sheer speed and power makes it difficult sometimes especially with lag. The game's still new and for some, the 3DS's control layout is not suited for hardcore SSB, so, it won't be a while until stuff happens. It also doesn't help that there's this huge concentration of like, 8 fighters, while the rest are just there and/or bashed on.

 

[InfinityCollision]

Palutena should be at least one tier higher due to Aerolink, there's at least 20 matches of his Palutena on TourneyLocator.

Almost all of them feature her default moveset, which only advances her meta so far.

You have to already be in the Lightweight state or the negative state it has.
Be standing on a platform.
Attempt to fall through the platform, I think this is the case.
Then really quickly, like you only have a couple of frames to do it I think, preform Lightweight while in the Lightweight state or negative state and she will preform the move again either resetting her time allowed to remain in Lightweight and putting her in the Lightweight state while still in the negative state.

That's the easiest I know how to explain it.

So uh, yeah. The timing's tight but easy to do consistently once you get the feel for it and turning Palutena into a hypermobile engine of destruction 100% of the time is obviously pretty amazing. The low tier talk was already nonsense but Shaya's on point here, I can't see her anywhere below high tier now.

 

[san.]

2 months, more like negative 2 weeks, am I right? Palutena looking even better Now we have to assume lightweight is active a majority of the time when it's advantageous for her. Is the only downside to lightweight increased knockback on yourself?

I at least have an inkling on Ike that seems to correspond to some tournament stuff. A character with 3 frames less landing lag on all of his aerials bar neutral air in a game where landing lag on good characters was doubled, Ike's obviously multiple degrees of awesome in terms of comparative buffing. I can look at pure numbers to ascertain this and justify my raised opinion of him. I don't have any numbers on Link. Do you?

The lag on Ike's bair was the only thing preventing him from spamming it against other opponents since it was punishable on whiff to land with it, along with missing against air dodges. Now, it has a pretty high damage-to-lag ratio for a 7-frame(feels as fast as Brawl) disjointed attack. Donkey Kong's 7 frame bair, for instance, had landing lag increased from 15 to 18. Other similar changes make it an additional indirect buff to him. Ike's bair was nerfed in IASA frames, though. You can't double jump after a full hop bair, but you fall faster anyways, making the fast fall more viable.

The autocancel margin is also very user friendly, allowing you to use bair with a lagless landing most of the time. Ike can full hop bair on BF's platforms with near optimal timing. Ike's double jump height was also doubled (seriously was close to Ganondorf double jump height in Brawl) and is now as high as a full hop. This allows for very easy autocancels with all of his aerials outside of dair.

Ike's aerial speed also feels more buffed compared to other characters as well. http://supersmashbros.wikia.com/wiki/Air_speed Ike was around average in Brawl, but he feels close to marth and other somewhat "quick" aerial characters when I use him in this game.

I think that by design that Ike just isn't too great on stages without platforms in this iteration, especially with the way all of his attacks induce so much hitstun. I guess it's a little better with nerfed projectiles and his custom piercing side B.

 

[Tristan_win]

@ san.

Edit: Lightweight doesn't appear to reduce Palutena's weight at all...........

It increases damage, but Palutena's weight stays the same. Bowser Fsmash did 26% instead of the normal 22-23%

 

[Djent]

It's a 20%ish increase IIRC, so yeah those numbers look right.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

GG guys Palutena confirmed for insane tier. Her recovery will be nuts with this too since Lightweight boosts her jump height.

 

[InfinityCollision]

Lightweight multiplies all damage taken by 1.2x.

The implications of being able to disregard Lightweight cooldown are huge. Combined with all the **** she could already do with Super Speed etc...

 

[Mr. Johan]

Wonder what the odds are of this Lightweight bug finding its way to Sm4sh U and its longer debugging process.

There's really no reason to not run Lightweight now.

#SheAintCalledTheGoddessOfLightForNothing

 

[Shaya]

Light weight was already extremely stupid (seriously, pick a character, any character, and tell me if they'll take 20% more received damage for having Sonic level of mobility: jumps, run, walk, dash, aerial mobility, etc; everyone's going to say YES YES YES*). Play some Palutena's who know what they're doing with light weight + super speed.
Ban FD, now what?

Although she's pretty good on FD already, there's a reason Sonic is good on FD.
I preferred fighting her on non-FD stages against Palutena already, now it's... less appetizing.

*

 

[Smooth Criminal]

I'd rather take a temporary speed boost than an indefinite one.

brb CPing FD

Smooth Criminal

 

[Shaya]

The move itself is still laggy/start up, you can't just do it in front of someone's face and expect to get away with it.
Just means that Palutena with stage control on Battlefield can throw out her **** and likely still maintain a position where she can reset her light weight.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

The move itself is still laggy/start up, you can't just do it in front of someone's face and expect to get away with it.
Just means that Palutena with stage control on Battlefield can throw out her **** and likely still maintain a position where she can reset her light weight.

Shaya, look at the character I'm playing.

Look.

I'm boned.

(to clarify, I am joking)

Smooth Criminal

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Light weight was already extremely stupid (seriously, pick a character, any character, and tell me if they'll take 20% more received damage for having Sonic level of mobility: jumps, run, walk, dash, aerial mobility, etc; everyone's going to say YES YES YES*). Play some Palutena's who know what they're doing with light weight + super speed.
Ban FD, now what?

Although she's pretty good on FD already, there's a reason Sonic is good on FD.
I preferred fighting her on non-FD stages against Palutena already, now it's... less appetizing.

View attachment 29246 *

A good question though. With this Lightweight find, is Super Speed still...I guess "necessary" is the closest term I can think of? In other words, would stacking Super Speed + Lightweight onto the same moveset help Palutena or are they redundant?

 

[Shaya]

light weight is everything shulk wants from monado stances, it turns Palutena into Sonic.
super speed is a jump cancel-able (including all the moves that you can do out of a jump) rush down move that has many use cases/cancel opportunities (i.e. into grab) akin to sonic's side b/down b... you can glide with it though...

They're clearly completely different, except for the part where Palutena is just a big fat green haired Sonic, but better.

 

[InfinityCollision]

Super Speed is still relevant. The two synergize very well, and Super Speed lets you do a number of things at full tilt that aren't possible out of a run. Super Speed also has a momentum storage tech that occasionally gives you yet another way to fling yourself across the stage, so that's cool.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

light weight is everything shulk wants from monado stances, it turns Palutena into Sonic.
super speed is a jump cancel-able (including all the moves that you can do out of a jump) rush down move that has many use cases/cancel opportunities (i.e. into grab) akin to sonic's side b/down b... you can glide with it though...

They're clearly completely different, except for the part where Palutena is just a big fat green haired Sonic, but better.

Hmm? As far as Lightweight vs Speed goes we're pretty much talking 1.2x more damage recieved + Jump vs 28% less damage dealth & shorter jumps.

Extreme & Decisive Monado's are fast, regular is what in the top 4 of character speed.

Granted I think Lightweight has less punishments given this platform advantage but on F.D the negative state Id say is worse off.
Then again comparing X-Y isn't all that effective given the significant differences of overall Kit between Paletuna & Shulk.

 

[san.]

@ san.

Thanks. I knew it didn't change weight, but I forgot the specifics of whether it was more knockback or damage or something.

 

[Luco]

I'm thinking that if lightweight is one of those moves that will be OP on BF but not on say, FD (to the point where it would be worth switching it out otherwise), then CPing customs before stages will really make Palutena players hate you.

 

[kyxsune]

two questions heavily disjointed from the thread:

So are we assuming customs will be legal, and what do you think about zelda?

I feel as though, Zelda is a mid tier or high mid tier because of the benefits she gets from some AT (fox trot and her enhanced roll cancel grab).

 

[ChronoPenguin]

I believe we're all operating under customs are legal.
Innocent until banned or something like that, + a lot of the scene is trying to go with customs legal with their tourneys.
I believe only the japanese are rather anti-custom right now.

 

[Shaya]

A character's strength/viability is in a round about way a measure of how many options a character has, before how potent those options are.
An AT rarely benefits a character by so much that that singular thing propels them into the upper echelons, it gives them more options or makes other options more potent. An AT available on only one character turns their 100 options into 101 options, unless that 101st option is balls-to-the-walls amazing, everyone else still has 100 options too.

In the case of fox trots or roll cancelled grabs, every character gets to use them, everyone gets their 101st option. Perhaps its potency on a character is a lot more than others, but majority of the time these rarely make them considerably stronger.

 

[kyxsune]

In the case of fox trots or roll cancelled grabs, every character gets to use them, everyone gets their 101st option. Perhaps its potency on a character is a lot more than others, but majority of the time these rarely make them considerably stronger.

Good point, Some characters are much easier to get a hang of their AT on the 3DS. Guess we have to wait for the wii u version to see the effect on the full roster.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

A character's strength/viability is in a round about way a measure of how many options a character has, before how potent those options are.
An AT rarely benefits a character by so much that that singular thing propels them into the upper echelons, it gives them more options or makes other options more potent. An AT available on only one character turns their 100 options into 101 options, unless that 101st option is balls-to-the-walls amazing, everyone else still has 100 options too.

In the case of fox trots or roll cancelled grabs, every character gets to use them, everyone gets their 101st option. Perhaps its potency on a character is a lot more than others, but majority of the time these rarely make them considerably stronger.

untrue in melee any character that could not utilize wave dashing was quickly thrown away

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Melee Sheik would like to have a word with you, Death Wheel. Same with Melee Falcon.

...same with quite a few characters, actually. As a matter of fact, the ability to wavedash isn't what makes a character's kit so damn good. It's, y'know, the rest of their movepool. Having a ****ty wavedash certainly didn't help, sure, I'll give you that, but it didn't make or break characters on the whole.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Shaya]

untrue in melee any character that could not utilize wave dashing was quickly thrown away

Uhh, "wave dashing" was only useless if for some reason your jump squat was horrendous.
It universally made everyone better because it was faster than shield dropping. Shield drop as an option was replaced by wave dashing on the spot, realistically, add some sliding backwards and forwards and you usually had an OoS option that covered the shield knockback most moves had (which wasn't much, and the characters with long wave dashes actually got the short end of the stick with this a bit).

The distance traveled part is really a minor "tidbit" to the actual GOD TIER amazingness of that AT was for every character. Furthermore wave dashing hardly caught on for the majority of early melee, and the tier list barely changed even once they were augmented into every character's game plan. Bad characters stayed bad, and good characters got better

In short, be careful what you say about games you probably haven't got a technical grasp on.

 

[mimgrim]

The more that is discovered about Palutena the better she gets. And I got to partake in that discovery. I feel awesome. xD

I think I'm going to end up maining Palutena after all. There is just so much you can practice with her by yourself and she just doesn't get stale to play, at all.

Still working out a pocket character but I am leaning towards Bowser because Dash Slam is a good character.

 

[Luco]

Well I think it would be valid to have said that there are exceptions to this rule. If you consider ICs Brawl chain grabs to have been an AT (lol) then yes that certainly made them as characters. To a lesser extent, you could have argued that DACUS was the thing that really kept Snake so very top tier; as it made his approaches godlike along with his incredible zoning and camping skills. I would say, though, that these were exceptions and for the most part, the AT really has to address some otherwise fundamental issue with your character/ make them ridiculously good in some area for it to really give them greater viability.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Uhh, "wave dashing" was only useless if for some reason your jump squat was horrendous.
It universally made everyone better because it was faster than shield dropping. Shield drop as an option was replaced by wave dashing on the spot, realistically, add some sliding backwards and forwards and you usually had an OoS option that covered the shield knockback most moves had (which wasn't much, and the characters with long wave dashes actually got the short end of the stick with this a bit).

The distance traveled part is really a minor "tidbit" to the actual GOD TIER amazingness of that AT was for every character. Furthermore wave dashing hardly caught on for the majority of early melee, and the tier list barely changed even once they were augmented into every character's game plan. Bad characters stayed bad, and good characters got better

In short, be careful what you say about games you probably haven't got a technical grasp on.

This is false as I recall unless you play Fox. Wavedashing isn't technically faster than shield dropping in Melee (which is 14 frames if I recall, meaning you need a jump faster than 4 frames to make wavedashing a lower frame commitment).

Also, I'm pretty sure that wavedashing is not god tier unless your name is Fox or Luigi (like...you basically never need to wavedash with Sheik or Jigglypuff, seriously). Wavelanding in contrast is really really universally strong in Melee for everyone.

 

[NairWizard]

Jumped aboard the Palutena hype train before it was even in motion (see that little Wii U "main" icon?). Robin/Palutena/Rosalina have been my mains for a while now.

Do I think that these are the top 3 characters in the game? Yes, I do, but I don't have enough substantiation to make that claim yet (especially for Robin! thanks to Nairo for working on that one though). I only make claims when I'm sure that I could convince another reasonable community veteran of them. The time has not yet come!

Leaving this post here for future reference so I can either laugh at the ignorance of my past self or rejoice in his fearsome clairvoyance.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Jumped aboard the Palutena hype train before it was even in motion (see that little Wii U "main" icon?). Robin/Palutena/Rosalina have been my mains for a while now.

Do I think that these are the top 3 characters in the game? Yes, I do, but I don't have enough substantiation to make that claim yet (especially for Robin! thanks to Nairo for working on that one though). I only make claims when I'm sure that I could convince another reasonable community veteran of them. The time has not yet come!

Leaving this post here for future reference so I can either laugh at the ignorance of my past self or rejoice in his fearsome clairvoyance.

I feel like Falco probably craps on Robin very noticeably. Doesn't care about Robin's specials, actually moves faster than Robin (which if you think about it, is usually Falco's biggest problem in neutral), and has generally faster moves. I would also believe that Pit and Dark Pit are not easy for Robin for similar reasons.

 

[Remzi]

Just died to an uncharged Lucario fsmash at 31% from center stage on battlefield, WITH PROPER VECTORING. **** that character, seriously.

And he was only at 130!

 

[Shaya]

This is false as I recall unless you play Fox. Wavedashing isn't technically faster than shield dropping in Melee (which is 14 frames if I recall, meaning you need a jump faster than 4 frames to make wavedashing a lower frame commitment).

Also, I'm pretty sure that wavedashing is not god tier unless your name is Fox or Luigi (like...you basically never need to wavedash with Sheik or Jigglypuff, seriously). Wavelanding in contrast is really really universally strong in Melee for everyone.

Significantly easier for me to wavedash oos into a grab punish as every character I play (admittedly top tiers) than shield drop dash jump cancel grabbing as them (in particular Marth) as it didn't require you to let go of the shield button first to do it. But if it isn't technically faster (air dodging is an 8+ frame action?), it still largely replaced shield drop actions and even the shorter length characters got use out of it. I literally do not shield drop in Melee ever. In project m L/R are recognised as the same so you still have to release one shield button before being able to air dodge, so it's more finicky, but it's still practically always optimal.

So yeah, I consider it a god tier option because you're not getting better mileage out of natural shield drops than you would with wave dashing OoS.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Significantly easier for me to wavedash oos into a grab punish as every character I play (admittedly top tiers) than shield drop dash jump cancel grabbing as them (in particular Marth) as it didn't require you to let go of the shield button to do it. But if it isn't technically faster (air dodging is an 8+ frame action?), it still largely replaced shield drop actions and even the shorter length characters got use out of it.

Yeah. I mean realistically, 14 frame shield drop is TOTAL BS in Melee and the reason why bad players roll. Real talk here.

So all the complaints that shield drop is too fast in Brawl/Smash 4....I don't understand them. It keeps the game more honest and intuitive.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Uhh, "wave dashing" was only useless if for some reason your jump squat was horrendous.
It universally made everyone better because it was faster than shield dropping. Shield drop as an option was replaced by wave dashing on the spot, realistically, add some sliding backwards and forwards and you usually had an OoS option that covered the shield knockback most moves had (which wasn't much, and the characters with long wave dashes actually got the short end of the stick with this a bit).

The distance traveled part is really a minor "tidbit" to the actual GOD TIER amazingness of that AT was for every character. Furthermore wave dashing hardly caught on for the majority of early melee, and the tier list barely changed even once they were augmented into every character's game plan. Bad characters stayed bad, and good characters got better

In short, be careful what you say about games you probably haven't got a technical grasp on.

lol no need for the behind the bush ingnorance card.

 

[Thinkaman]

Lightweight is 1.1x damage, not 1.2x. Easy to test in training mode with explosives or hazards.

Also, this is ridiculous.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

i must say that i feel like bowser might have the single greatest movement option in the game ( yes trumping shiek with her crazy shinanigans cough bouncing fish) in the form of bowser custom side b dash slash.
at first it seemed better than the command grab just cuz it folloed up allot of moves. jab-side b-f tilt, f tilt- side b,
but then i used it in the air.
it did what you would expect it to do. same thing as ground side b but in the air.
but then i landed than well accidentally u tilt.
that where it all started because i noticed the side b's animation gets canceled by landing. but more than just canceled i mean it has no lag, none at all. i experimented and learned that it acts as a standard landing animation, as if bowser never attacked in the air. and so forth i was able to jump again if i wanted, f tilt, d tilt, d smash, up smash, u tilt, actually intead of just list ima litterally say you have every single option at your disposal.
you can even short hop side b then land and combo another side b!
let the testers have at it. and bowsers tier blow through the roof.
*edit* it just occurred to me that i never explained the attacks properties. it just a moving hit box slash that kinda like ganons down b but faster.

 

[Thinkaman]

After testing Lightweight exploit more, I don't think it's amazing, just really good.

Having to compulsively seek out platforms (an unsafe neutral position no doubt) like a crack addict once every 10 seconds is not a workable long-term strategy.

It's really nice to be able to refresh Lightweight in a lot of situations, but don't expect to be able to keep it up 24/7 against a human, at least not without some compromise.

(Palutena is still top 15 or even 10 imo. All you other posers can step down, I was the ORIGINAL Palutena high-tier hipster!)

 

[NairWizard]

(Palutena is still top 15 or even 10 imo. All you other posers can step down, I was the ORIGINAL Palutena high-tier hipster!)

For what it's worth, the day after the game came out in the US, my personal tier list (just from my impressions, stored in a word document) looked like this at the top:

Diddy Kong
Rosalina
Marth
Bowser
Palutena
Villager

my impressions have since changed (sorry Bowser, your fame was short-lived...), and I didn't yet main Palutena, but she was there on the list!

1v1 hipster battle here we go, I believe I still have a pair of skinny jeans and an orange jersey from my college days

p.s.: it's amusing that I have Yoshi below Ganondorf on this list