Character Competitive Impressions

[xenodroid]

If Diddy gets patched I guarantee he's going straight down to high tier.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Lucario is overrated and people still rate him too high.

But what defines a bad one from a good one more in this game is how much they can play around at early percents and deal with the worse range than from in Brawl.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Lucario is so bad their best player in Brawl switched to Monado Boy and Charizard over Lucario.

 

[Shaya]

Range is an iffy thing in this game, mobility is more important and fake disjoints from limb intangibility are pretty common (maybe Lucario is some unlucky 'melee' character without them).

The recovery nerf has given lucario risk, and that's both good and bad. Now he has a weakness and a punishment window that can be capitalised on when he had such a great recovery (super pit basically, with close to no landing lag before), but how you dealt with him before (+ vectoring allowing him longer survival) was quite bull **** so my soul and mind are clear; but his aura game play is still quite bogus so maybe I'm hypocritical

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Agreed, his aura mechanic is pure bull****, but at least the glaring faults in his kit keep it in check.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Iron Kraken]

Lucario is overrated and people still rate him too high.

Umm... what?

 

[Nysyr]

Lucario is actually in a really bad spot right now, and his success comes from people completely misunderstanding the matchup.

He's actually really easy to edge-guard, as Espeed ledge-snaps slower than other recoveries and often bounces off the stage resulting in near SDs for Lucario. Stuff that hits under the ledge like Marth/Lucina Fsmash (holy **** is the Lucina MU ********, that upsmash tho) will absolutely murder any chance for Lucario to recover safely.

Due to the insane Espeed recovery time nerf (seriously, it's totally dumb) recovery onstage is extremely unsafe unless you opponent tried to get you offstage with chasing (which you should rarely do unless your name is shiek/diddy).

Combine these 2 and you have a recipe for getting 2 stocked if the opponent doesn't go on autopilot because they think they are "outplaying" you due to getting a % lead.

tl;dr play safe, don't get punished; space yourself on his shield cuz FP grab is the best kill move but a frame 9 rest basically; just ledge-camp for e z 2 stocking.

I can guarantee you every Lucario main would take evened out Aura scaling for a better neutral game and a recovery that doesn't mean you die whenever you are offstage to someone not name Ganondorf.

 

[Jabejazz]

Lucario is overrated and people still rate him too high.

That's how I feel as well. Too inconsistent of a character to really belong at the top of the cast

Top 10?
Maybe.
10th. And I find it a stretch.

He seems way too inconsistent to me. His aura just means he punishes you harder if you mess up, which happens often when you're too eager to land that kill move to get rid of his aura. I don't know exactly by how much his range increases with aura (and I'd like to know if we have data on this), but I feel I don't have to respect it more than I already do.

Makes me wonder what was wrong with Brawl Lucario to begin with to warrant such extreme changes.

If Diddy gets patched I guarantee he's going straight down to high tier.

That really depends what gets patched.

If Dedede gets patched, I guarantee he's going straight up to high tier. (???)

 

[Nysyr]

His range doesn't increase with aura at all, only FP flame and Up-B get the boost in range.

 

[Jabejazz]

Funny, I assumed he gained marginal range on his normals. Poor guy.

 

[|RK|]

Funny, I assumed he gained marginal range on his normals. Poor guy.

If only, lol. Would trade rage for range, personally.

 

[Iron Kraken]

Alright, so if most people think Lucario isn't top 10, then I really want to see people stop complaining when Lucario does win.

People go ape **** when Lucario's KOs kill at 40%, or when Luma hits you when you were working on a follow up. But a Sheik Bouncing Fish? That's totally cool... because although Sheik is absurdly good, at least she wins in the way that a character is supposed to win.

In general the Smash community just seems to have a certain character archetype which it prefers, and looks skeptically upon characters who win by less traditional methods. Just one man's opinion.

 

[Ryu_Ken]

First, i hear Diddy's recovery is bad in this game compared to Brawl, and now it's Lucario. Am i being misinformed? Also, while playing as little mac offline, i noticed that lots of times he gets close to the ledge when recovering, but misses. i know his recovery's bad, but does he have the lowest reach in the game?

 

[Nysyr]

Unfortunately most people take the idea that getting someone in a true combo equates to outplaying the opponent. Sure it's awesome to watch and often very hard to preform (except diddy lol), but is it really outplaying when all the opponent can do is DI out of it desperately?

 

[Shaya]

He has great grab range (standing, dashing, pivot and side-b, this is really helpful, you can standing grab OoS dash grabs and win) and his back throw does 10%+ (it's a good bthrow, dash attack + aurasphere fodder). He ledge guards like a monster. And Yes it is 'easy' to mess up his recovery to hit a wall and then not sweetspot (on some stages/angles it can kill), but I would think there's ways around it. You can time your extreme speed to have the hitbox space to around an enemy is trying to edge guard you from and still recover/sweetspot, but stuff like sheik's bair is very powerful so.... meh

Just his side-b and up-b increase in "range". Aurasphere obviously gets bigger in radius too.

He has good range on ftilt + dtilt (dtilt hits on top of him/behind him), he has up tilt and Jab 1 and jab 1/2, easy combo fodder or frame trap stuff at most percent.

We'll see how he goes, he's different from Brawl, that's for sure; he's been foxified (much like Bowser, G&W a little, Sonic, Yoshi) in many ways so he's really weirdly placed as he was much closer to a swordsman archetype in Brawl and now he's a Brawler/Precision based CQC. Inconsistency now isn't a complete indication of his future prospects, what does inconsistent even mean in this context ? By 80% he's very scary, so you have to outplay him very hard early and be able to kill him sub 100% to ignore what I would consider a consistent strength.

Attack damage on his moves allow him to be safer on shield so there's a certain point where tilts and aerials frame trap, I wonder what that is.
There is no easy ticket to Lucario this game. But his rewards are bogus.

Like, I wouldn't be surprised if Lucario has more range and general disjoints than say, Meta Knight. Meta Knight is a short-ish ranged swordsman and Lucario is perhaps around there as well still. Readjusting those technical capabilities gets time to get used to, but they aren't completely left in the dark by it.

 

[Lavani]

Regarding Lucario's recovery nerf, there's three different landing animations for the move, with roughly 28f, 35f, and 60f (the nerfed one) respectively. If you're forced to recover onstage as Lucario, you can bonk into the ground or go for a skid to minimize landing lag, and I saw Junebug making use of this last S@X.

 

[Nysyr]

Regarding Lucario's recovery nerf, there's three different landing animations for the move, with roughly 28f, 35f, and 60f (the nerfed one) respectively. If you're forced to recover onstage as Lucario, you can bonk into the ground or go for a skid to minimize landing lag, and I saw Junebug making use of this last S@X.

Indeed but aiming that from offstage is really a no-no unless you are recovering high, in which case just floating back on and using Fair to wall them out is much safer. The angle required is extremely precise.

Edit:
For clarification I'm pretty sure after the hitbox ends you will always get the 35f if you hit the ground instead of the 28f.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

If you space it properly the lag will get reduced and it is a lot harder than it was in Brawl to get it right.

 

[Nobie]

I find it somewhat funny that we still get so many questions specifically about how to beat Rosalina, and yet at the top level it seems like pretty much no one uses Rosalina.

Anyway... as far as the characters that most easily get rid of Luma, my picks are...

(Side-B), (jab, f-tilt), (jab, f-tilt), (jab, f-tilt), (big sword)

At least this is my experience, in maining the hell out of Rosalina. But despite the fact that those characters can get rid of Luma easily, I don't think Rosalina actually has a losing match up against any of them.

Just to clarify, this wasn't so much a "how to win against Rosalina" question as it was "which characters can actually play the 'kill Luma' game consistently." It's just something that occurred to me while messing around with Ganondorf vs. Rosalina, because while I hardly think Ganondorf counters her or whatever, it almost took me by surprise just how little Gdorf had to do to eliminate Luma from the picture.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Alright, so if most people think Lucario isn't top 10, then I really want to see people stop complaining when Lucario does win.

People go ape **** when Lucario's KOs kill at 40%, or when Luma hits you when you were working on a follow up.

Except Lucario isn't winning anything at the moment and as pointed out before the patch hurt his survivability to a notceable degree. The character is probably not one of the main threats anymore but I still think he's a potential soft-counter to Sheik who remains overrated imo.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Lucario and Yoshi get more credit then they deserve from my standpoint, yosh to a lesser degree. I rated Lucario very highly in 1.03 initially and yeah some of it was shock value. I think everyone has felt that shock with Lucario at this point and has started to move past it. Mans like a hyper carry.

I don't feel well about the bottom levels. There's back and forth with Kirby opinions. On one hand I want to feel like he's poop because no Range, no air speed, lack of disjoints, laggy specials. On the other hand... Least aerial lag. Startup on tilts, jab, dsmash is all great, aerials don't come out slowly either his average is like 10.x frames on aerials. dair is 18 b-air is 6. Sheik, fox, don't really invalidate his range. Given relative value his range is sufficient against most popular picks. Most common swordsman is Shulk but Shulk is what top 10-20 char statistically? Other long range freaks aren't all that common on a general level outside of specific regions. Hell Pikachu has about the same range. So it's more his speed that ails him. A burden but a lot of the top will engage on him or he crouches under their camping game.

Then Samus, WFT. Zard,ganon, sword fighter.I don't trust half the MU opinions on Ganon right now. Not to say their good but who's really confident about who is and who isn't? Half the thing with Sword fighter is that without cape/power thrust he lacks individuality to not just pick a Link. Effective health does actually matter and I rarely see that consider when talking about heavies. I really won't be surprised when its a lot of negative MUs for heavies that they just keep winning as the players saying they lose on paper dont realize the ease of you putting 100% in 7 reads is to make up for you dying in 4 because Ganon hits that hard and rage favors heavies.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Lucario I don't see moving out of the 8-12th range. He has too much of a comeback mechanic built into him. You can complain about his range being crap all you want, but if the dude gets rage and aura going you're going to respect what little range he has a whole lot because you don't want to die at like 40%. If that happens, Lucario just has to land a few hits on you and then he can do it again and suddenly you're behind if not out of the match if playing 2 stocks. And as pointed out by Chrono with Pikachu, short range ain't a death sentence if you have something to supplement it. Pika has mobility and combos, Lucario has very little aerial lag + insane killing potential.

I think Lucario will exist in that range as a good option against those characters with crap range and KOing power (Shiek, Pika, Sonic is a maybe that MU will have to develop before I'm willing to call it either way), while crying in terror anytime somebody with a sword and good KOing potential (Shulk, Ike, Marth) are played against him.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Determining the worst character is a matter of PoE to me ... when I look at characters that are considered to be among the worst I try to see if there are any redeeming traits to them and I always manage to find some. Except for Doctor Mario.

Edit @ above ... Sonic's range isn't crap in this game though and his KO power is actually prett good. Marth's KO potential is pretty underwhelming in contrast.

 

[Ffamran]

Determining the worst character is a matter of PoE to me ... when I look at characters that are considered to be among the worst I try to see if there are any redeeming traits to them and I always manage to find some. Except for Doctor Mario.

But as a character, Dr. Mario saves lives.

Okay... I leave now.

 

[NairWizard]

Range is an iffy thing in this game, mobility is more important

This is very true.

Mobility is more important in this game than any other metric. Second is attack speed (including endlag on attacks), third is size, and fourth is KO power. A character can have garbage damage, light weight, iffy recovery, and mediocre range and still be top tier, or even the top of top tier, with some good mobility parameters, either attack speed or the ability to net KOs (you don't need both), and a decently sized hurtbox (as in, not Bowser-level, but smaller characters still have a general advantage over larger characters, just look at ZSS vs. Pikachu). We have living proof of this in Mario.

When we say "mobility," though, we're actually talking about more than one thing. The reason that mobility is so strong is because it's an umbrella term for several stats:

• horizontal aerial acceleration and speed
• vertical aerial acceleration and speed
• jump height
• initial dash speed
• walk speed
• run speed (least important)

When a character has good stats in the above parameters, he seems to "flow" really well, and high-level players will gravitate to him. With good mobility, you can:

• Get out of bad aerial situations by drifting away. Corollary: if you're not a fast faller, you don't get combo'd as much
• Follow up on your attacks more easily both on the ground and in the air
• Be more unpredictable in general just by moving around; also, "feint" attacks, by moving in and out
• Abuse your opponent's misspacing
• Space yourself in such a way that commitment-based characters with good range are uncomfortable throwing out their attacks
• Take stage control more consistently and easily in neutral

All of these are huge. A character with good mobility can apply his mobility advantage to advantage, disadvantage, and neutral. It's not a strictly one-dimensional advantage like weight. Range is similar in that it applies to all the states, but not as blatantly as mobility (like really, how much does your range matter in disadvantage, for example? you can swat people away, but we all know how good Shulk with his 11-frame n-air is at doing that! he'd prefer to be able to jump/drift away, which he does get to do in Speed/Jump).

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Sonic, (decisive) Speed/Jump shulk, jiggly, Brawler, and Mac are probably the biggest abusers on a statistical level but then movement abilities are still rather important.

Upperdash, murder choke, bike, koopa kart, monkey flip, quick attack, etc all playing a big part outside of that given that burst movement options can be just as relevant as your stats or enhance them (hammerbash jump tornado).

Something to consider. If the cast is more solid this time around and are closer together....Lucina should be far from Marth then. If everyone is relatively close in strengths with some outliers then Lucina as a poor Marth would be poorer relative to the rest of the cast that is near Marth. Same wouldn't hold true for the copy pasted dark pit.

As for shulk Nair. That's the importance of start up more then mobility. We see that often with Luigi. Just Nair out of trouble.

 

[Jabejazz]

Mobility also (in)directly affects your effective range, since the hitbox is carried over by how/where you move.

I don't disagree that mobility is more important than range, but I feel it's important to take both into account when talking about the effective range of a move, especially aerial ones.

 

[Shaya]

Sheik overrated?

More like underrated since the patch. She's 1st at best and at worse... third maybe fourth (if you really are going to underrate everything she has over just kill power, lol)
Bouncing Fish has less kill power.
but, FORWARD AIR COMBO CHAINS FOR LONGER, HOORAY.

meta advancements for the character still go on. In my opinion Apex is going to have at least two Sheiks in the top 8, knowing who's playing who and whatnot. She may have soft counters here and there but she's ... so scary and completely bogus in movement specs and frame data.

 

[Sinister Slush]

And you will still see 0 Yoshi's in even top 33 because we never travel and the one time we did that Apex was truly horrible...

 

[Shaya]

I think a few yoshis in top 32 is mighty possible.

But he could really do for some WiiU representation hype. One pre-apex tournament with a yoshi breakout could start a shift. It's still early for some to practise a new character for apex contention.

 

[NairWizard]

Pikachu - Diddy - Sheik in some order is top 3. Sheik might be better than the other two by a bit, though all three are similar characters (Sheik and Pikachu are more similar to each other than Diddy). Diddy > Pikachu > Sheik in KO power, but Sheik > Pikachu > Diddy in safety. Those are the basic tradeoffs.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Sheik overrated?

More like underrated since the patch. She's 1st at best and at worse... third maybe fourth (if you really are going to underrate everything she has over just kill power, lol)
Bouncing Fish has less kill power.
but, FORWARD AIR COMBO CHAINS FOR LONGER, HOORAY.

meta advancements for the character still go on. In my opinion Apex is going to have at least two Sheiks in the top 8, knowing who's playing who and whatnot. She may have soft counters here and there but she's ... so scary and completely bogus in movement specs and frame data.

and the rest will be dk and diddy xd
im saying dk just because since the come up tourny hes been all over the place.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Determining the worst character is a matter of PoE to me ... when I look at characters that are considered to be among the worst I try to see if there are any redeeming traits to them and I always manage to find some. Except for Doctor Mario.

Edit @ above ... Sonic's range isn't crap in this game though and his KO power is actually prett good. Marth's KO potential is pretty underwhelming in contrast.

His range isn't good. Lots of speed to get around the issue, and he has a handful of attacks with average to above average range (Uair, Ftilt, Bair, Fsmash, Dsmash I guess). But he relies a lot of hitting you with a ball with crappy range but amazing speed.

His KOing power is a lot better than it was in Brawl, Marth still has very good KOing power in tippers. And that statement was swords AND KOing power. Marth is still the swordsmen with the third best KOing power overall. Lucina has no shot of having better KOing power, neither does Toon Link or Meta Knight. Link I'm rather doubtful but its not abysmal or anything like that.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

His range isn't good. Lots of speed to get around the issue, and he has a handful of attacks with average to above average range (Uair, Ftilt, Bair, Fsmash, Dsmash I guess). But he relies a lot of hitting you with a ball with crappy range but amazing speed.

His KOing power is a lot better than it was in Brawl, Marth still has very good KOing power in tippers. And that statement was swords AND KOing power. Marth is still the swordsmen with the third best KOing power overall. Lucina has no shot of having better KOing power, neither does Toon Link or Meta Knight. Link I'm rather doubtful but its not abysmal or anything like that.

jab cancels into up smash and d smash are rediculous for killing.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

In my opinion Apex is going to have at least two Sheiks in the top 8, knowing who's playing who and whatnot.

Ramin will be the only Sheik main to make top 8 at Apex. Every other Sheik that appears in the top 8 will at best be a secondary. Sidebets?

 

[DanGR]

I think sheik is #1 right now. If anything her kill power is underrated, considering all the 50:50 kill setups she has around 130%~. Having the title of pikachu, yoshi, and rosalina's worst matchup is no joke either.

 

[NairWizard]

Having the title of pikachu, yoshi, and rosalina's worst matchup is no joke either.

I think that Pikachu has worse matchups. Pikachu's low profile makes it hard for Sheik to do what Sheik loves to do (space f-airs, camp needles, abuse safety in general), and Sheik is tall, which leads to some easy b-airs/f-airs. Pikachu kills a bit earlier, but they rack up damage similarly otherwise. Also, Tjolts > needles in this MU.

A bit harder than Sheik imo are Pit and Shulk. Those two can both be kind of obnoxious because of the disjoints, especially in the air (though you can abuse their recoveries when they're offstage). Against Sheik you can just trade f-airs most of the time and that's good for you because you kill faster with up-smash than Sheik kills with anything. Against those other guys, trading is pretty bad, and it's kind of difficult to avoid trades as Pikachu against those swords.

Sheik MU is probably even. I'm much happier to see a Sheik (or Diddy) than a Pit or a Shulk as Pikachu.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Shulk is everyone's worst match up.

/amiseriousorkidding

 

[Emblem Lord]

Gheb_01: It's not like you to blatantly say falsehoods.

Stop that. I expect better of you. Marth's KO potential is only outdone by heavies. Now KO set-ups is something else entirely.

I will give you a pass as I consider you top 10 most intelligent posters on SWF, and you probably just mistyped or misrepresented what you were actually trying to say.

*goes back to lurking

 

[~ Gheb ~]

are you kidding me