Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[KakuCP9]

This is how I'm currently feeling about "top tier MUs" atm:

+1:
0:
-1:

I feel that in the long run, Ike and Cloud's positions will switch in terms of matchups. Cloud's mobility allows him to keep up with Greninja while throwing out large hitboxes that do respectable damage. While he'll often have little room to charge limit in neutral, he can still do grab-> charge Limit afterwards to build it and limit Cloud is still really dangerous in spite of the time limit (also limit Up-b is still an OD out of shield option). Ike on the other hand has a really weak ground game due to his run speed and committal buttons which often forces him to rely on aerials (or at least meme air) to fight Gren in the neutral. Aside from generally being vulnerable to parries, having to rely on a single aerial to do the heavy lifting can lead into being predictable with the range he can threaten. For what its worth, I can see Gren's shield weakness biting him in the butt in terms of dealing with nair, though Ike's mobility will have trouble dealing with full-hop-> hydro pump away.
I also think Greninja has a winning match-up against Palu since alot of her kit revolves either not being able to deal with her neutral-b (and to a lesser extent nair) or already winning neutral and extending advantage with side-b and such. Gren on the other hand rarely cares about neutral-b and can dance around nair and punish with dash attack/grab. He can also overwhelm Palu with his ground buttons due f-tilt being laggy af or snipe her with aerials if she relies on using d-tilt.

 

[AndrewtheAmericanDude]

Y2Kay This is a bit of a general question, but in terms of the hardly ever shielding thing, do u believe that's more of a playstyle or a luxury afforded to really fast characters like Greninja? I'm curious how much of that is applicable to Greninja's anti zoning and how that could differ from a time when some think parrying will be pretty important.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I don't understand why you are so conservative with the number of characters that are high tier. Throughout all the smash games, the number of top and high tier characters have been made up of 40% of the roster.

Not true, Brawl had 10 characters in high+top tier, out of 38, which is more like 26.3%, so by that metric Ultimate would have around 18 high tier characters. Anyway, the amount of top/high/mid/low/bottom tier characters depends heavily on the balance of the game, and can vary between games. I do not think, for instance, that Ultimate has more top tier characters than Smash 4, despite having a larger roster. I also do not think that Ultimate has more low tiers. I think Smash 4 had around 20 or so high/top tiers, and Ultimate has maybe 22-25 or so. Ultimate has a huge mid tier (if we consider high-mid, mid-mid and low-mid as one tier), I have around 60% of the cast in some form of mid tier.

Even if you only consider high and top tiers viable, having 22-25 viable characters is great, few games manage that. I don't think high-mid tiers are necessarily not viable either, though it's certainly harder, which is why we don't see Ness mains or Mario mains or Yoshi mains or Belmont mains etc. at top 8 majors all that often (it doesn't help that the top players generally tend to main top 15 characters).

I think it's perfectly plausible that Ultimate only has, say, 8 top tiers this time, which is a much smaller % compared to previous Smash games. That's fine.

 

[Ffamran]

So, the people working on the Japanese spreadsheet have started adding hit angle, knockback, and shield damage values. Of note, Ridley's and Sheik's since Kurogane's site doesn't have their data yet. Both the Japanese spreadsheet and Kurogane's site have Richter's data, but not Simon for whatever reason on the Japanese spreadsheet.

Ridley's page: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...nf1GGIteH35UX3IM7-mnbdG6eE/edit#gid=899732416.

Sheik's page: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...f1GGIteH35UX3IM7-mnbdG6eE/edit#gid=1204670300.

 

[Rizen]

Ike on the other hand has a really weak ground game due to his run speed and committal buttons which often forces him to rely on aerials (or at least meme air) to fight Gren in the neutral.

I don't agree with this. Ike's f4 jab steps forward and is great for controlling space. It gives him a good alternative to his other slow buttons. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he has combos off grab and Dtilt so it's dangerous to shield vs him. He also commands a lot of power in F/Utilts and DA. Smashes are slow but have huge areas of effect so he can pivot or catch landings with them. His mobility hurts but his ground game isn't bad.

 

[Nobie]

I know people can get a little over-enthusiastic with their mains, but I actually like it more when people have some faith in their characters. I'm not saying that players should just pretend their characters have no flaws, or assume they're actually ultra top tiers when there's plenty of evidence to the contrary, but this game is still so young that I'd rather folks encourage the growth of a character's meta instead of lamenting that Wolf or Pichu or Lucina can do things easily and effectively.

For that matter, why are people constantly surprised that old, safe pokes don't combo into things as effectively anymore? Low risk, low reward. High risk, high reward. It's a simple concept, but I swear that Smash players only think of " low risk, high reward."

 

[Nocally]

Awestin living up to his home-field advantage, Ness is definetly viable currently.

 

[MG_3989]

Awestin living up to his home-field advantage, Ness is definetly viable currently.

It’s funny how ESAM was just hyping him in his tier list video then he loses to him. I wish Awestin travelled, he’s no doubt a top player and he would legitmize Ness on tier lists (not that he needs to be). FOW, BestNess, and Shaky are all good but Awestin is on another level and I have no doubt he’d perform at majors. He beats top players all the time

 

[N8than]

Not true, Brawl had 10 characters in high+top tier, out of 38, which is more like 26.3%, so by that metric Ultimate would have around 18 high tier characters. Anyway, the amount of top/high/mid/low/bottom tier characters depends heavily on the balance of the game, and can vary between games. I do not think, for instance, that Ultimate has more top tier characters than Smash 4, despite having a larger roster. I also do not think that Ultimate has more low tiers. I think Smash 4 had around 20 or so high/top tiers, and Ultimate has maybe 22-25 or so. Ultimate has a huge mid tier (if we consider high-mid, mid-mid and low-mid as one tier), I have around 60% of the cast in some form of mid tier.

Even if you only consider high and top tiers viable, having 22-25 viable characters is great, few games manage that. I don't think high-mid tiers are necessarily not viable either, though it's certainly harder, which is why we don't see Ness mains or Mario mains or Yoshi mains or Belmont mains etc. at top 8 majors all that often (it doesn't help that the top players generally tend to main top 15 characters).

I think it's perfectly plausible that Ultimate only has, say, 8 top tiers this time, which is a much smaller % compared to previous Smash games. That's fine.

Brawl is an anomaly though. The best characters were defined by how well they did against Meta Knight, or by a handful of broken tools at their disposal. If you look at every other smash game, they all have around 40% of their characters as top and high tier. Also the term "mid tier" implied mediocrity and irrelevance, so excuse me if I'm a little touchy about you calling Ness (who already had a trend of players calling him mid tier despite a resurgence of results in 2017 and 2018) a mid tier.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

I think trying to tie a certain number of characters per tier is rather arbitrary and a bit disingenuous. I've never really subscribed to "someone has to be "x" tier when they really aren't for the sake of numbers. If the game is balanced enough, and it shows in matchups and results then why can you not have a top/high tier with 40 characters? Why can you not have the lowest tier be low-mid instead of low or bottom tier? If we really believe Ultimate to be better balanced then it should show with greater numbers in the higher tiers and less numbers in the lower ones. When I look at Ultimate I can't think of but only a very few characters I would place in a "low tier" and I don't see a problem with that.

 

[DJ3DS]

It really feels like this is turning into a semantics argument.

Tiers are by definitions levels, regardless of how you label them. We've unfortunately had a shift towards "Top/High/Mid/Low/Bottom" rather than the lettered systems of old, but in any event they are a way of comparing the characters relative to one another. Having 40 characters in one tier is not a useful comparison. My viewpoint regarding the balance of the game is that, as always, there are clearly better characters and clearly worse characters. The differences, the levels between, still exist. The only difference is that (on our limited impressions thus far) the gap between them is closer than it was previously.

With that established, lets just realise that there is less of a difference between high and medium and view them as purely levels between the characters, and argue based on that. If you want to argue that Ness is high tier this is a statement relative to the rest of the cast. Better yet, let's just stop arguing Ness, because it's a broken record at this point that neither side is going to reconcile on.



There you go. Someone new to discuss, which hasn't popped up in a while, initially had a ton of hype and has died down. What are the Belmonts current placings like? Notable players? Tournaments to look out for them at?

 

[Jotun873]

I personally feel the belmonts are going to be rare to see unless the MU benefits them, they are easy to gimp, have a predictable zoning game and little tools to get someone out of their face. I could see them potentially being a threat though i doubt that due to the current top tiers.


It will probably take someone winning a major to get anyone to see the belmonts as anything but noobstompers

 

[fozzy fosbourne]

They seem like they could be a good counterpick down the road once the targets are clear (and match up well)

 

[Lore]

Belmonts are the characters who most benefit from wifi lag, imo, and because of that, they were rated much higher at release.

I could see them doing better in the future, but it'll take a good player picking them up. As of right now, they have a few too many drawbacks to not be mid/upper mid tier.

 

[JustCallMeJon]

I forgot to say, but Awestin still dominates Texas.

Yesterday he beat Magister and ESAM twice (with Samus and Pika) with solo Ness and won the tournament.

 

[Omnos]

We all know awestin is the Ness god, what's really impressive though, is how good Magister is with inceneroar. Even M2K has said inceneroar is his favorite character in the game but chooses Bowser instead because of his slow speed.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

It is just semantics, the difference from high tier 29th and mid tier 30th is minimal and having tiers inflated with a ton of characters seems lazy and half hearted effort wise but if it's accurate then that's what really matters. The game has a lot of characters and a lot of them seem to be much closer to each other in viability than ever before. Some of this will fade as time goes on but it's just the reality of the current situation and I don't want to limit ourselves because we want evenly looking tier numbers. I personally think a tier list graph that a lot of tradition FGC games are using would be better for Ultimate than the old "top, high etc." system we now.

Regarding Belmonts: Definitely will be a counter pick character as time goes on. They are by no means bad but their MUs are super polarizing. The either control the pace of the game well or get blown up.

 

[Frihetsanka]

It is just semantics, the difference from high tier 29th and mid tier 30th is minimal and having tiers inflated with a ton of characters seems lazy and half hearted effort wise but if it's accurate then that's what really matters.

What I did at the end of Smash 4 was based it primarily on matchup spread. High tiers would have few or no -2 MUs, a few -1 MUs, and going even with at least a few top tiers. Meanwhile, those at the top of high-mid would likely have a few -2 MUs holding them back, and at lower ends up high-mid they'd have more -2 MUs in general.

Since I think good tier lists are primarily matchup based it also means that there will be limits to how many characters can be in each tier. Every character cannot be top tier because in order to be top tier you'll have to win against X number of characters (generally most of the non-top tier cast). I think that one of the distinctions between high tier and high-mid is that high tiers generally have 0 to 1 really bad (-2) matchups, while high-mids generally have a few.

This makes early tier lists highly speculative, since our understanding of matchups are rather limited. In a sense, results do affect tier lists, since top level results help us understand which MUs are good and which are bad. For instance, in Smash 4 it was long theorized that Corrin and Captain Falcon went even, but Fatality did incredibly well against Corrin mains, which indicates that Captain Falcon wins the matchup (and both Fatality and Cosmos admitted as much near the end of Smash 4). Another example is Rosalina vs Cloud: Early on some Cloud players claimed that they lost to Rosa, while some Rosa players claimed they lost to Cloud. In practice, it seems that Cloud does, indeed, beat Rosa slightly, in Smash 4 at least (pretty likely that he does in Ultimate too though, but I haven't studied the matchup in Ultimate).

With all this being said, is Ness high tier? It's fairly plausible that he is. His worst MUs from 4 are not as bad as they used to be, although he still has a bunch of -1 MUs at least. Does he have any -2 MUs? That's a good question, and I don't know the answer to that yet. At this point in time, we have early impressions that could turn out to be incorrect. It seems likely to me that Ness still struggles with characters like Lucina, Cloud, Rosalina & Luma, and Sonic, although whether they are -1 or -2 MUs I don't know yet. I suspect, in general, that there'll be fewer -2 MUs than before, since the game is better balanced now. Any tier list at this point in time is highly speculative anyway.

Is Ness high tier? It's plausible, but it's also plausible that he isn't. Smash 4 Olimar got good results despite being a high-mid tier character, after all, as did Toon Link, Villager, and Duck Hunt (and other characters as well, including Ness). I also know that Ness players in the past have overrated their character, in Smash 4 at least: In 2016, many thought he was top 15, in 2018 he was down to around top 30 (which I think ended up being more accurate). Wasn't his results even better early Smash 4 than they are now*?

*Granted, more character variety in general, but FOW got some great placings in early Smash 4, and he was ranked #12 on the first PGR, with incredible placings such as 7th at EVO 2015 and 5th at GENESIS 3. I hope we'll see some Ness players getting top 8 at majors since I find him a fun character to watch and he does seem a bit better than in Smash 4.

 

[Fatmanonice]

I agree with this. Plus wii fit can deal with puff in the air and can punish puff for pursuing her off stage

Edit: Makes me wonder though. Is puffs matchup spread really that bad?
I would of thought she would go even with more characters due to her edgeguarding prowess

Her weight, ground speed, general lack of range, instant shield break death, and no real recovery move are still big liabilities though. She still gets camped out pretty hard and she has a hard time getting in against characters with good disjoints. She's definitely at her best since Melee but, on that note, you also have to acknowledge how comically bad she was for more than a decade.

 

[N8than]

It really feels like this is turning into a semantics argument.

Tiers are by definitions levels, regardless of how you label them. We've unfortunately had a shift towards "Top/High/Mid/Low/Bottom" rather than the lettered systems of old, but in any event they are a way of comparing the characters relative to one another. Having 40 characters in one tier is not a useful comparison. My viewpoint regarding the balance of the game is that, as always, there are clearly better characters and clearly worse characters. The differences, the levels between, still exist. The only difference is that (on our limited impressions thus far) the gap between them is closer than it was previously.

With that established, lets just realise that there is less of a difference between high and medium and view them as purely levels between the characters, and argue based on that. If you want to argue that Ness is high tier this is a statement relative to the rest of the cast. Better yet, let's just stop arguing Ness, because it's a broken record at this point that neither side is going to reconcile on.



There you go. Someone new to discuss, which hasn't popped up in a while, initially had a ton of hype and has died down. What are the Belmonts current placings like? Notable players? Tournaments to look out for them at?

I said 40%, not 40 characters. 40% of the roster would be around 30 characters. I agree that we should stop talking about Ness though; I'm just tired of people underrating and belittling my character.

 

[Planty]

There's nothing wrong with having 40 high tiers in the sense that a tier is an approximate power level. If there were 5 characters that were clearly excellent, 5 that were clearly bad, and the other 65 were all around the same power level, then there's nothing wrong with a 3-tier tier list where 65 characters are mid tier. Of course, that's not the case in Ultimate, but it's to show that each tier doesn't need the same number of characters in it.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Two interesting notes: There's nothing saying a game has to have top tiers or bottom tiers. Imagine, for instance, a game with 20 characters, and the best 5 characters have like, 10 even MUs, 6 slightly winning, 3 slightly losing, or something like that. These characters would probably be considered high tiers, not top tiers, and that's fine. Additionally, bottom tier characters are generally characters so bad they have little viability. Take, for instance, Brawl Ganondorf and Jigglypuff, they were truly bottom tier characters. Smash Ultimate Little Mac or King K. Rool or Kirby? They seem more like low tier characters to me. It doesn't seem like Ultimate has a bottom tier.

How many top tiers does Ultimate have? It wouldn't surprise me if we ended up with fewer top tier characters than Smash 4, since the game is better balanced in general. None of the current top tiers seem as overpowered as Smash 4 Fox or Smash 4 Rosalina, and not even close to Smash 4 Bayonetta and Smash 4 Cloud. The game seems more balanced in general, at least for now.

 

[fozzy fosbourne]

Someone define the difference between top and high tier

 

[Lore]

Two interesting notes: There's nothing saying a game has to have top tiers or bottom tiers. Imagine, for instance, a game with 20 characters, and the best 5 characters have like, 10 even MUs, 6 slightly winning, 3 slightly losing, or something like that. These characters would probably be considered high tiers, not top tiers, and that's fine. Additionally, bottom tier characters are generally characters so bad they have little viability. Take, for instance, Brawl Ganondorf and Jigglypuff, they were truly bottom tier characters. Smash Ultimate Little Mac or King K. Rool or Kirby? They seem more like low tier characters to me. It doesn't seem like Ultimate has a bottom tier.

How many top tiers does Ultimate have? It wouldn't surprise me if we ended up with fewer top tier characters than Smash 4, since the game is better balanced in general. None of the current top tiers seem as overpowered as Smash 4 Fox or Smash 4 Rosalina, and not even close to Smash 4 Bayonetta and Smash 4 Cloud. The game seems more balanced in general, at least for now.

Yeah I'm very impressed with the balance so far. I'm curious to see how the meta looks in a year, but so far the high tier and up range feels bigger than any other Smash.

 

[Foie]

Yeah I'm very impressed with the balance so far. I'm curious to see how the meta looks in a year, but so far the high tier and up range feels bigger than any other Smash.

Yes, it will be interesting to see if this bears out. People originally thought smash 4 was super balanced, but that wasn't quite the case, especially with dlc. This time around though tourney results are actually indicating some impressive balance so far. Could it just be a longer-to-develop meta? Or maybe a combination of the two?

 

[Lore]

Probably a bit of both.

Side note, do we have any clear idea of Ridley's potential? He has had an impressive number of top 8's in the past few weeks at local events. Personally, he feels right on the border of being a great character, but I don't really have enough experience using him.

 

[bc1910]

I'd kinda disagree about marcina dair being unrewarding, the move is very similar to ike's nair with 6 more frames landing lag.
The varying angles either sets up for a tech chase, a juggle/up air confirm, or in marth's case outright kos reasonably well.
The up to 2x the damage on the move helps shield pushback/etc too, and it's relatively easy to space well due to the arc.

6 frames is a hell of a lot though, especially on repeated uses. It doesn’t carry the fear factor of “free confirms into kills at 80” for me, and I’m not sure about tech chases; seems like most characters can jump out or throw an aerial after a very specific percent window. Especially with DI up, which you might be doing already if you were trying to anti-air Marcina with Utilt, Usmash or Uair.

Y2Kay This is a bit of a general question, but in terms of the hardly ever shielding thing, do u believe that's more of a playstyle or a luxury afforded to really fast characters like Greninja? I'm curious how much of that is applicable to Greninja's anti zoning and how that could differ from a time when some think parrying will be pretty important.

I’m not Chainz, but the never shielding thing is less a luxury and more a necessity due to Greninja’s abysmal OoS punish game. He’s better off just avoiding attacks in 90% of cases. In terms of parrying as an anti-zoning tool though he’s fine at it, better than average probably because he can mobilise so quickly after a parry. It’s as viable a tool as with any character in itself, it’s just that again, avoiding projectiles altogether and not having to suffer any lag at all is often preferable.

Someone define the difference between top and high tier

On a theoretical level, MU spread is what counts. In the broadest sense a high tier is an above average character with good MUs vs most of the cast. A top tier is an above average character with better MUs than the high tiers.

“Good” is relative to the game; in a really balanced game the high tiers could have mostly even MUs and the top tiers have one or two extra advantages, probably over certain high tiers. In an unbalanced game the high tiers could destroy most of the cast but not destroy them as hard as the top tiers, or get destroyed by the top tiers themselves. Often, but not always, high tiers will lose to most of the top tiers but beat most of the mid tiers and below (it is also common for them to have a couple of good/bad MUs vs characters above/below them respectively depending on how tools interact). High tiers may or may not be mid tier gatekeepers, again depending on game balance.

Effort required to play the character is also a factor. A character that requires optimal play all the time will be less consistent and thus less effective than an easy character with simple, powerful options. As much as people like to theory craft characters on paper, we’re still human. No one is going to play perfectly all the time.

From a performance perspective top tiers simply have the best results in tournament. Whatever the reason, it’s as simple as that.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Effort required to play the character is also a factor. A character that requires optimal play all the time will be less consistent and thus less effective than an easy character with simple, powerful options.

And this is why most of the high-effort characters are worse than the low effort ones: severe lack of consistancy. The only high effort characters worth playing are the ones that can be consistent once you have learned them with and being good examples of this. The issue is that a lot of high effort characters have too much inconsistency and not enough reward so a lot of them are never going to be that good. Some examples I can think of are . These characters all require way too much effort to play compared to the reward that they get for playing good. is the only character that can be (really) inconsistent who seems to still be decent, but that's because he has a much higher reward than the most of the others and his overall attributes are much better.

Brawl is an anomaly though. The best characters were defined by how well they did against Meta Knight, or by a handful of broken tools at their disposal. If you look at every other smash game, they all have around 40% of their characters as top and high tier. Also the term "mid tier" implied mediocrity and irrelevance, so excuse me if I'm a little touchy about you calling Ness (who already had a trend of players calling him mid tier despite a resurgence of results in 2017 and 2018) a mid tier.

In Brawl, I considered the 'top tiers' to be the only viable characters. In my opinion, that list included , and everyone above him on the tier list.

I don't think that will be the case in Ultimate. A lot of not as great characters still have their niche uses like and they probably could be played as a secondary competitively. Brawl had very few characters who could even be used against the top tiers, if they weren't there themselves. I could list them all on one hand (). Suffice to say, Ultimate is a lot better than Brawl and I don't think being mid tier in Ultimate is necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

The Belmonts MU go like this. If a character does not really have to respect their projectile game easily get in and bully them in cqc and on a diffrent note you can generally avoid thier ledgetrapping. There going in the same coffin as Dracula.

Online lag is on thier side, but not that much else it seems. At least they will always be a thorn in the side for most superheavies

 

[Sean²]

Someone define the difference between top and high tier

Top tier characters have more matchup advantage against a higher percentage of the cast versus a high tier. They are as close to flawless as they can be, but still not perfect, in the best case scenario (Brawl MK was probably the closest to a perfect character they've ever created, at top level play there was literally zero reason to play any other character if you wanted the highest chances of taking 1st place). They normally have the best frame data out of all the characters in the game, as well.

A high tier character might not have not quite as many advantageous matchups, or their strengths don't quite outweigh their flaws in some way, or they may have a single flaw that is very exploitable (e.g. maybe they can be chaingrabbed or have a really exploitable recovery, think Melee Falcon, or maybe Belmonts here), etc, but are still really good against a majority of the cast. They may also just lose hard to whomever is considered a top tier, but still beat out everyone else below them hard enough to cement their spot as a high tier.

That's not a textbook definition, but that's generally how I differentiate it.

 

[Rizen]

Probably a bit of both.

Side note, do we have any clear idea of Ridley's potential? He has had an impressive number of top 8's in the past few weeks at local events. Personally, he feels right on the border of being a great character, but I don't really have enough experience using him.

IMO Ridley's a polarizing character. His advantage state is amazing with a big Utilt and some of the best offstage intercepting tools in the game. In disadvantage Ridley's a huge punching bag, even more so than other heavies, and he isn't a true heavyweight. His neutral is decent but he doesn't have a good answer to being walled. Fireballs are great at gimping and advantage but too slow to compete in neutral. He ends up winning hard and seeming like a beast or losing hard.

Middle tier.

 

[Sean²]

Does anyone else think the ordered tier list is not going to work for this game? I think there are too many characters to definitively rank, and not have ties all over the place. I feel like we almost need to be using something like one of these to objectively rank characters properly.

 

[Augi]

Does anyone else think the ordered tier list is not going to work for this game? I think there are too many characters to definitively rank, and not have ties all over the place. I feel like we almost need to be using something like one of these to objectively rank characters properly.

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View attachment 193869

I second this new chart idea. Someone plot each character on these spectrums so I can judge them and write biased, conjecture based, armchair opinions skewed to support my current favorite character and insist others don't understand...

In all honesty though, I do think going beyond the ordered tier list would be helpful in charting out each characters specific strengths. With the game feeling so balanced, we may need additional criteria to help analyze characters more effectively.

 

[StraightUpSquared]

Does anyone else think the ordered tier list is not going to work for this game? I think there are too many characters to definitively rank, and not have ties all over the place. I feel like we almost need to be using something like one of these to objectively rank characters properly.

View attachment 193870
View attachment 193869

This, i've seen this type of chart being used countless times for more traditional fighting games, and for good reason. A tier list in this style imho gives us a much less restrictive idea of where a character sits in the meta, as it boils characters down purely to their relative strengths compared to others. There's also the fact that ranking 74 characters on a chart like this, is much easier than trying to rank them all individually (into a humongous mid and high tier)

 

[Gleam]

Probably a bit of both.

Side note, do we have any clear idea of Ridley's potential? He has had an impressive number of top 8's in the past few weeks at local events. Personally, he feels right on the border of being a great character, but I don't really have enough experience using him.

Ridley's pretty much a Mid Tier who definitely has the form to be near the higher part of Mid but lacks the necessity to be considered "High Tier" directly. The thing with Ridley is that once he gets up to the characters many considered to be "high" or "Top" he starts to lose some of his primary advantages.

He can't be as aggressive, needs to be more defensive and if the characters can deal with him offstage, well might as well say you screwed. Thankfully his advantages state does help him in a lot of cases. Lucina might not be a 'favorable" match up, but its hardly the worst thing Ridley has to go through and Chrom is one of the few characters who simply does not want to be off stage when facing Ridley. However you get characters like Wario who can not only contend if not surpass Ridley's neutral game but frankly can get off stage and arguably whoop him even worse than Ridley could. The same thing can be said about characters like Inkling, Peach and Pichu.

Ridley has the tools to contend defensively in the lower areas of "High Tier" but he's going to find himself much more comfortable in the "Mid Tier" section.

And on the subject, I'd say the same thing about . A relatively solid to honestly good character who has a lot worth to him but just isn't at High Tier yet. Give him one good buff and he might darn well move up there.

 

[Lore]

I feel the same about Bowser. Both characters feel so close to being high tier, and I'm excited to see how patches change them.

 

[meleebrawler]

I feel the same about Bowser. Both characters feel so close to being high tier, and I'm excited to see how patches change them.

Improve Ridley's down air to make him scarier to juggle and Bowser's recovery/give Bowser Bomb the ability to drop through platforms, and boom.

 

[Shaya]

6 frames is a hell of a lot though, especially on repeated uses. It doesn’t carry the fear factor of “free confirms into kills at 80” for me, and I’m not sure about tech chases; seems like most characters can jump out or throw an aerial after a very specific percent window. Especially with DI up, which you might be doing already if you were trying to anti-air Marcina with Utilt, Usmash or Uair.

Was not trying to imply it was on the same level's as Ike's whatsoever, merely that 'unrewarding' seems like an underestimation of its worth considering its properties. 25% hit confirms are pretty solid, and the lack of KOing off it is more to do with how terrible their up airs are at KOing at a regular height. (however dair to bair near a ledge can indeed find itself KOing).
Ike would be getting confirms off of his nair without touching the ground within 6 frames quite frequently I would say.

 

[TheFacelessOne]

Some of this will fade as time goes on but it's just the reality of the current situation and I don't want to limit ourselves because we want evenly looking tier numbers. I personally think a tier list graph that a lot of tradition FGC games are using would be better for Ultimate than the old "top, high etc." system we now.

(directed at no one in particular)
Just to refer to this part, the problem with the current version of tier lists is that people expect them to be ORDERED. Idk if I'm alone on this but when I look at tier lists, I look to them to gauge the characters general viability on their own merits. If I wanted to find out who's the worst to the best, I'd give you a numbered list and tell you to rank them. Like, being a beginner, I wouldn't look at if a character is higher or lower in mid tier, I'd look just see them in MID tier. After that, I'd look at which characters I like and try them out, coming up with a lineup.

It's the same as hearing top 5 or top 10. In the end, I see they're still all in top tier and while talking about who's better is fun casually, when I'm serious it doesn't matter if wolf is #1 or #2, I still have to suplex 50 wolfs and lucinas to get into top 8. The only placement that matters then is mine. When I'm trying to win the tournament.

all in all, it's fine if you want to discuss who's better than who and where you personally rank characters in order. But if this isn't a watchmojo top x list, in the final tier list, just tell me where they are ok?

That's just my take on it.

 

[ZephyrZ]

Ridley actually has a fairly good neutral. Not amazing since he has a weakness to being outzoned but still a good one. A lot of the characters I see people listing him as weak to he can deal with pretty well in neutral since Nair and D-tilt are great tools for shutting own aerial or grounded approaches respectively. Good run speed also means he can sort of approach himself in a lot of match ups and use his massive hitboxes to control center stage. It's just that between his poor disadvantage and recovery, losing neutral is a much bigger deal for him compared to other characters.

I'm optimistic about him. I say he feels like a high-mid, but with significant enough weaknesses to keep him from being a dominant threat at top play.