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Characters With REAL Potential to Move Up

Kholdstare

Nightmare Weaver
Joined
Oct 10, 2008
Messages
1,439
There is a lot of hate towards Zelda. I don't know why, but she's actually a decent character. I tried her once or twice, and was pretty good with her. So I made her one of my thirds.
 

Rawnie

Smash Champion
Joined
Nov 10, 2008
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Albuquerque, NM
ok i know this is going to be biased coming from a someone who uses this character but ive noticed that nobody has brought up Marth. i feel like he has has potential (just like other characters as well)

Anyway, Marth has 3 bad match-ups (2 of which are nearly even, 45:55) and his only real bad match up is MK.
Marth is also tied with falco in tourney rankings for 4th beating out the some top tier characters like g&w and ROB.

With all of this alone, i believe that Marth should move into the bottom of the Top Tier.

Also this was metioned earlier. i believe Zelda/Sheik should be have a spot. not very many smashers use the duo but they deserve it.
They balance out. sheik builds up damage and zelda kills. Could u ask for a better duo? and when everyone says transforming in a match is an issue, its really not. transform to zelda when u knock your opponent of the stage and back to sheik after u kill them.

this is just my input, but does anyone else agree with me?
 

M@v

Subarashii!
Joined
Oct 13, 2007
Messages
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Location
Pittsburgh, PA
According to this topic, the tiers would end up looking like this:


TOP TIER:

Meta Knight
Snake
King Dedede
Mr. Game & Watch
Falco
R.O.B.
Marth
Wario
Lucario
Donkey Kong
Diddy
Pikachu
Ice Climbers
Kirby
Pit
Wolf
Toon Link
Olimar
Fox
Zelda
Zero Suit Samus
Bowser
Luigi
Peach
Ike
Sheik
Lucas
Ness
Mario
Pokémon Trainer
Samus
Yoshi
Sonic
Jigglypuff
Ganondorf
Link

BOTTOM TIER:

Captain Falcon (There is no hope)


Yhallothar bias.

You sir, win this thread. I cant show it any clearer than that. If bias could fly, this place would be an airport.
that was a really corny joke...
 

$haDy

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Dec 9, 2008
Messages
142
Hmm, mayb lucas too, I believe the best brawler in Europe mains Lucas so thats either saying something about Europe's ability as a whole or its saying something about the potential ability of lucas when played at his best. Im hoping its the second one, but lucas does take quite a long time to learn due to a ridiculous number of ATs.
.
Europe's best player mains snake and his secondry is lucas.
 

Brinzy

Godfather of the Crimean Mafia
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There is a lot of hate towards Zelda. I don't know why, but she's actually a decent character. I tried her once or twice, and was pretty good with her. So I made her one of my thirds.
I don't hate her. I just think her Up B is ****ing terrible, and it's probably the main reason as to why she's limited.

Only time she is anywhere near useful is in doubles when both people on the other team have 100% +
lol @ Zelda being useless.
 

Nybb

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Aug 16, 2007
Messages
399
Location
Victoria, BC
Everyone knows Marth and Rob are switching places. I wouldn't call that huge potential for a move up for Marth though. I don't see him getting past Gdub/DDD.

But yeah, this thread is pretty much fail. I will try to at least back up my opinions instead of just jumping in and saying my main will move up.

Diddy with his bananas alone has tons of potential. His problem is getting them set up, and to some extent getting kills, as his Dsmash is too good to not abuse (and therefore stale). If quicker characters (Marth, Kirby, Pika, MK come to mind) can get inside of his bananas and keep the pressure on, or just get that pressure on before he can get them set up, he starts to be shaky. It doesn't help that one of his best gtfo moves is that Dsmash, also one of his best finishers. He might go to top of High Tier-ish, but I don't think he'll get into Top any time soon.

I think Olimar will be moving up the most; just look at his tourney results. He ***** so hard at everything but recovering. I do think that that recovery issue will keep him from Top Tier, but IMO he will be saying goodbye to Mid Tier very soon.
 

-Mars-

Smash Hero
Joined
Jul 26, 2007
Messages
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UTAH
The first post flame on the Fox boards is humorous to me. Especially after the garbage I read on the first post. No one on the Fox boards thinks Fox is top-tier.......no one ever said that. We think Fox goes even with Snake and a couple Fox players were making Foxs' case against MK.........God forbid anyone say anything against those two characters.

I don't think Fox is moving up, but he's not dropping more than a couple spots.
 

She-Geek

Smash Cadet
Joined
Oct 20, 2008
Messages
66
If olimar hopes to move up, he's gonna have to either stay on the stage-ALWAYS, or get a better recovery method. The poor little guy fights so hard and gets gimped every stock :(
 

Mota

"The snake, knowing itself, strikes swiftly"
Joined
Jul 19, 2008
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Australia | Melb
Toon Link, Jiggs, ZSS and Diddy wil move up easily.

Mario too.

WHENS THE TIER LIST UPDATED?
 

Tenki

Smash Hero
Joined
Apr 3, 2008
Messages
6,966
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GA
hmmm..

9__9;

so many characters have developed their metagames a bit.

It's kinda weird.

If you take your character in relation to other characters during the time of the first tier list, you'd think they'd warrant a rise.

But that's not the case. Almost all characters have had some sort of improvement in their metagames.

lol. If all of them 'rise', then there might not be much change xD
 

SkylerOcon

Tiny Dancer
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Mar 21, 2008
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ATX
Yoshi and Sonic are going up for sure. Maybe Lucas, Mario, and Ness is someone could prove they're tourny viable.
Boss and tc1 are ****** a lot of top players right now with Mario. There are also a few other pretty good ones (there's one named Dory on the west coast thats looking like a new star). Mario has been proven to be tourney viable.
 

Amazing Ampharos

Balanced Brawl Designer
Writing Team
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For anyone who is middle tierish or worse, tournament results are a really awful predictor of quality because those characters doing well is almost always going to be the product of a pretty small number of players who are just random fans. It's basically luck of the draw as per which characters do better in the random fan competition...

I can almost guarantee that if Mario weren't Mario and were instead a random character (but who had all the same moves and ingame relevant properties) that his results would be worse. It's not hard to assert that most people who use Mario, including those who do well, use him because he's Mario the Nintendo character or Mario the smash series character, not Mario the brawl character. Him being the "first" and "default" character in so many random contexts also probably has an impact; if you don't know anything about the game, you are more likely to pick him first than other characters which definitely biases the pool of players in his favor.

In terms of the mainstream metagame, what actually matters for the bottom half of the cast is the following which tournaments are going to provide very limited data for.

1. Not having one (or worse, more) unwinnable matchups.
2. Not being hard countered by the best characters.
3. Having real advantages against characters who are good.


The first point is really the most important; your opponent being able to counterpick against you for free is really going to ruin you. The second point is similar but not quite getting at the same idea; it's basically the fact that you need to be at a significant disadvantage as seldom as possible when your opponent is using his main (we presume among the better characters that liklihood to be used has a good correlation to quality). The third point plays at counterpicks the other way; even if your character sucks at everything else, it still has some merit if it's a good counterpick against a high value, popular character. The reason I predict the Pokemon Trainer will rise at least somewhat is because his switching mechanic, while really limiting in most cases, does let him avoid pretty much all completely terrible matchups while significantly improving his chance at finding unlikely advantages. That's better than being stuck with a bad situation the whole time with some other character... It also helps Samus a bit in the sense that if she finds herself in a really awful matchup she can always go with plan B and switch to Zero Suit Samus (though I'm not optimistic about Samus's future in general).

Also, about the actual tier list published by the SBR, don't take too much stock in it, especially as far as characters below the halfway mark are concerned. Like I said, tournaments don't tell us much about those lower characters, and even among SBR members it's not likely that many if any of the players have deep experiences with all of the worse characters. Even more, since those characters aren't really significant factors at tournaments, there is likely not going to be a lot of concern about being accurate with exactly how good they are. You see this among random people too; I'm not trying to call out the SBR. If I take a typical tier list and move Meta Knight down to 2nd place, a lot of people are going to go nuts complaining about how wrong I am even though I'm ranking him very close to what they think he should be. On the other hand, if I move a random middle to low tier character down seven places, odds are I won't get that much complaint. Indeed among the bottom 8-9 I could probably literally randomly generate the list with very few complaints as long as I rigged it so Captain Falcon and Ganondorf were guaranteed to be within a few places of the bottom. People just don't care... It's actually a shame; a character who proves to be "better than we thought but still not good" is pretty likely to never get any recognition at all except perhaps on the extremely long term as the community as a whole grows more familiar with everything about the game.
 

Master Raven

Smash Master
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Messages
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Location
SFL
I'm just gonna take some guesses:

Marth
Diddy
Kirby
Toon Link
Olimar
Zero Suit Samus
Bowser
Luigi
Peach
Lucas
Ness
Mario
Pokémon Trainer
Samus
Yoshi
Sonic
Jigglypuff
Ganondorf
Link

Those are my list of characters who will probably rise in the future.
 

Browny

Smash Hater
Joined
Mar 22, 2008
Messages
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Video Games
For anyone who is middle tierish or worse, tournament results are a really awful predictor of quality because those characters doing well is almost always going to be the product of a pretty small number of players who are just random fans. It's basically luck of the draw as per which characters do better in the random fan competition...

I can almost guarantee that if Mario weren't Mario and were instead a random character (but who had all the same moves and ingame relevant properties) that his results would be worse. It's not hard to assert that most people who use Mario, including those who do well, use him because he's Mario the Nintendo character or Mario the smash series character, not Mario the brawl character. Him being the "first" and "default" character in so many random contexts also probably has an impact; if you don't know anything about the game, you are more likely to pick him first than other characters which definitely biases the pool of players in his favor.

In terms of the mainstream metagame, what actually matters for the bottom half of the cast is the following which tournaments are going to provide very limited data for.

1. Not having one (or worse, more) unwinnable matchups.
2. Not being hard countered by the best characters.
3. Having real advantages against characters who are good.

Also, about the actual tier list published by the SBR, don't take too much stock in it, especially as far as characters below the halfway mark are concerned. Like I said, tournaments don't tell us much about those lower characters, and even among SBR members it's not likely that many if any of the players have deep experiences with all of the worse characters. Even more, since those characters aren't really significant factors at tournaments, there is likely not going to be a lot of concern about being accurate with exactly how good they are. You see this among random people too; I'm not trying to call out the SBR. If I take a typical tier list and move Meta Knight down to 2nd place, a lot of people are going to go nuts complaining about how wrong I am even though I'm ranking him very close to what they think he should be. On the other hand, if I move a random middle to low tier character down seven places, odds are I won't get that much complaint. Indeed among the bottom 8-9 I could probably literally randomly generate the list with very few complaints as long as I rigged it so Captain Falcon and Ganondorf were guaranteed to be within a few places of the bottom. People just don't care... It's actually a shame; a character who proves to be "better than we thought but still not good" is pretty likely to never get any recognition at all except perhaps on the extremely long term as the community as a whole grows more familiar with everything about the game.
This is what ****s me to tears about competitve smash. It seems the people who write the tier lists like to say they are a combination of tournament results and matchups across the board, but that doesnt sit well with me. Im going to use my main Sonic as an example because he is the most blatantly misplaced character when it comes to the rankings thread and the tier list.

Tourney results are undeniable. However i understand your point about popularity skewing the results. ZSS is on the other end of the spectrum, quite a rare sight at tournaments but she has proven to be able to win tournaments, yet she remains low-ish on the rankings list. However the fact that any low-tier character user actually has the guts to use them in a tournament, with repeated sucess surely shows the viability of them at the very least. G&W is about the most unpopular high/top tier character at the moment, It will be interesting to see how he is placed. You can argue his dropping results (used to be clearly in 3rd, now 6th and dropping) are a factor of popularity, or MAYBE the people that used to main him arent finding him so viable anymore now that people have found ways to beat him (AKA, metaknigh lulz) and try other characters. how do we determine which is the case though? Its not that simple.

So since tourney results, although undeniable, may not be accurate all we are left with is matchups (dont give me some moveset potential BS, the game has been out for like 11 months, everyone knows what a character is capable of with brawls 'depth'). Prepare for opinionated rant, but Im sick of matchup threads here. On any given character board you might find 3-4 regulars who participate in a matchup thread, and its a VERY rare case indeed when the best players of any given character even bother to post in these threads (PT boards are very lucky...) And its no wonder they dont, the threads are full of nothing but what should and shouldnt work in THEORY. Beleieve me, being a sonic main ive read countless 1,000's of posts on how to deal with Sonic, the vast majority of which indictae people have NEVER played a competant user.

So matchups, a seemingly very important determining factor in tier lists, are mostly written by people who lack experience against high level opponents (dont worry im not saying I do, I work with what ive got, which isnt much in australia), and are often based on theory or a few players' experience vs one specific playstyle. So we have a choice... Work with tournament results which although may be highly skewed, prove the actual VIABILITY of a character in a tournament, or matchups which are purely opinions, although there is often a consensus amongst both sides.

Im not going to use tier list V1.0 as an example coz that was an epic failure and everyone knows it. But SURELY, the people that matter can see past this stupid notion of disregarding low-tier characters because they feel they are not important enough to warrant discussion, and come up with a decent list. I aint gonna get my hopes up though.

There should be NO EXCUSE whatsoever for the SBR not looking in-depth into the placement of low-tier characters. Its not 'a shame', it will be a sad excuse and an insult to probably half the people who care about smash. Low-tier mainers so everything possible in thier power to get REAL results while high tiers like to slap 60:40 ratios or higher on matchups with just about every single other character with almost no discussion whatsoever with other boards. yet THEY are the ones who get payed attention to?

---

Did my rant make any sense? idk :/

I should totally change my icon to snake, who i also use in tournaments, id bet people would take me more seriously LOL
 

Steeler

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lol dj your sig is GAY GAY GAY hahahahahaha good **** man

also i think i saw a reference to me in your post...i post in the matchup threads (and am in charge of pt's) because i feel its my responsibility to help trainers out. i'm wrong sometimes (often) but it's better than nothing. :\

Amazing Ampharos said:
The reason I predict the Pokemon Trainer will rise at least somewhat is because his switching mechanic, while really limiting in most cases, does let him avoid pretty much all completely terrible matchups while significantly improving his chance at finding unlikely advantages.
man i told you PT doesn't suck
 

Stevenn

Smash Cadet
Joined
Dec 28, 2008
Messages
26
Location
NewYork
nice thread :)
I think Mario, Peach, Zelda
have room to go higher also, as much as I hate this, but.. Ice climbers too, zero death chain grab c'mon ?


 

The Real Gamer

Smash Hero
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Where's the love for PT guys? :(

Being serious and all, as soon as people get REALLY good with all three and not just really good with one (like most are), then PT will rise with no question.
 

chaos11011

Smash Lord
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oh i forgot PT i used to be really good with all three but ill see if im still good with them.
 

Rawnie

Smash Champion
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honestly i dont see PT rising anytime soon.
i think he has potential but not very many people main him and he doesnt have the greatest tourney rankings. and IMO ivysaur is holding them back cuz he is so easily gimped
 

chaos11011

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TSM ivy isnt holding people back ask wario nut when i almost beat him with ivy and squrtle
mostly ivy (ivy is awsome)he is the best one out of the 3 imo

Edit oops i meant to say isnt not is
 

Brinzy

Godfather of the Crimean Mafia
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From now on, use Ivysaur at higher %s so you can DI up and not ever have to Up B.
 

Tenki

Smash Hero
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GA
honestly i dont see PT rising anytime soon.
i think he has potential but not very many people main him and he doesnt have the greatest tourney rankings. and IMO ivysaur is holding them back cuz he is so easily gimped
Olimar's easily gimped as well.

Now, go play against a skilled Olimar and get him off the stage all 3 stocks.

have fun.

The real issue is how difficult it is to get a skilled Ivysaur player off the stage. That is, they don't constantly put themselves in unnecessary landing/movelag, and they have some capability to space moves.

Alot of people who play/mess around with Pokemon Trainer don't really know how to control all 3 pokemon very well. Overall, in comparison with other people who play PT, I've got a crappy Squirtle, sub-par Ivysaur and a sub-par (but somehow, he's my best) Charizard.

I've played Squirtle and Charizard specialists (or people who are competently good with them) and I know they can give trouble, but I haven't met an Ivysaur specialist yet so I can't comment on how well Ivy can avoid attacks, but I know that it has quite the punishment and interruption game with B-air and tilts.

From now on, use Ivysaur at higher %s so you can DI up and not ever have to Up B.
:O

**** I never thought of that.

that's amazing.
 

chaos11011

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ooohh im really good with ivy but im not a specailist thiugh but im really good
 

ChronoPenguin

Smash Champion
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1. Yoshi
2.Link
3. Sonic
4. Ganonford
5. Captain Falcon

I may be joking on Ganonford and Falcon....I may be.
Anyways the above is not in an order of who has the most.
But any list for positivve potential without Yoshi can go kill itself.
 
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