Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[ReVerbIsSuperb]

Speaking of Zelda (Palutena too go figure), I just watched a recently close set on stream at GOML 2019 between Raykushi and Gen that I think showcased a lot of interesting uses of her tools (All throughout, but particularly in Game 3). While I'm too tired to analyze it on any deeper level, what really stood out to me was Ray's movement and phantom placements in particular. He was able to cut off a lot of options and demand a little more respect from his part than you'd normally expect to have to give. Alongside this was a solid mix of evasiveness and zone-breaking that kept Gen off-guard. Was really nice to see. Still don't know what to think of this character overall but I'm at least happy to see she's in a better place now.

 

[Nah]

I personally believe she's high tier and I think Ven and Mystearica feel the same way.

You mind explaining this one?

Like, I can buy Zelda being mid tier (this is clearly the best version of her we've ever had), but I'm skeptical of claims that a character that has been historically bad and does not have the obvious signs of a good character is suddenly good. High and top tier are not realms one so easily enters, and some designs are just not cut out to be good in this series.

 

[Justin Allen Goldschmidt]

You mind explaining this one?

Like, I can buy Zelda being mid tier (this is clearly the best version of her we've ever had), but I'm skeptical of claims that a character that has been historically bad and does not have the obvious signs of a good character is suddenly good. High and top tier are not realms one so easily enters, and some designs are just not cut out to be good in this series.

To be fair, back in Brawl Snake didn't show any obvious signs of a good Smash character, due to his completely off the wall playstyle and game plan. There hadn't really been an effective trap character (or any at all afaik) in the series up to that point. His frame data was mostly not that great outside of very very few moves, he was slow, and his recovery looked pretty bad. Perhaps characters like Zelda have something about them that's just very different from how we're used to judging a character. This is all just food for thought btw, I don't know if I'd actually call her a high tier or not. I don't have a concrete opinion on most characters at this point in the meta.

 

[Rizen]

I got revenge on the Ganon who beat me. It's like Shaya said, you cannot play this game reactionary. That was my big mistake in the past. I do much better with safe strings as predictions. I've also been working on using safe options rather than trying to optimize combos.

I played around with several characters and will probably use Link as a secondary. Secondaries are great for mixing up playstyles no matter who you use.

Lucina is just a stupidly good character. I suck with her but still won because her option coverage is so freaking good. She doesn't need to be complex with fast curving swings like that. Top tier.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Speaking of Zelda (Palutena too go figure), I just watched a recently close set on stream at GOML 2019 between Raykushi and Gen that I think showcased a lot of interesting uses of her tools (All throughout, but particularly in Game 3). While I'm too tired to analyze it on any deeper level, what really stood out to me was Ray's movement and phantom placements in particular. He was able to cut off a lot of options and demand a little more respect from his part than you'd normally expect to have to give. Alongside this was a solid mix of evasiveness and zone-breaking that kept Gen off-guard. Was really nice to see. Still don't know what to think of this character overall but I'm at least happy to see she's in a better place now.

There are definitely some things in this match where I wondered what he's doing and then some things that I don't even see Ven doing that much.
Anyway, pretty solid showing but he lost the next match to Brandon (I think a Donkey Kong?). So definitely not the best Zelda out there, but it also shows that this character needs some optimization and that it's possible to optimize her further.

 

[KirbySquad101]

I do think that it might be too early to consider characters like , , , , , and to some extent high tier until there are more placements of them in the future.

I feel like characters like ,,, and generally come to mind when thinking about characters who have enough placements to be considered high tier threats.

 

[StoicPhantom]

You mind explaining this one?

Like, I can buy Zelda being mid tier (this is clearly the best version of her we've ever had), but I'm skeptical of claims that a character that has been historically bad and does not have the obvious signs of a good character is suddenly good. High and top tier are not realms one so easily enters, and some designs are just not cut out to be good in this series.

I guess that would depend on what you consider the qualifications of high tier are and what you mean by "does not have the obvious signs of a good character". What are the signs of a good character exactly? I can't speak for Ven or Mystearica, but why I think she's high tier is:

1.Having things that are considered strong in Ultimate.

Disjoints seem to be strong in this game and nearly every one of Zelda's moves are disjointed or intangible. They may not be particularly large and require some precision, but that can sometimes work in Zelda's favor and allow her to micro space around larger disjoints. She also has significant disjoints such as Up-air and a unique projectile in Phantom, that features a variety of massive disjoints, targeting different areas of space. This alone, puts her over a good chunk of the cast, that lacks versatile disjoints or doesn't have them at all.

2. Has the ability to take advantage of the new engine and its features, while not being any worse by the changes than before.

Zelda is largely a punish based character with tremendous power and now has a significant trapping element added to her, with the Phantom redesign. If disadvantage is significant in Ultimate, then a character that can both target that disadvantage well and severely punish any bad options or landings, would naturally do well. A poster above me brought up Snake, which I think is a good example of this. Disadvantage and the changes to off stage and defensive options, allow options like Nikita and his grenades to be very powerful and he can easily edgeguard a large chunk of the cast safely with Nikita and ledge trap with both of those options.

I feel Zelda is similar, in that she has a wide variety of options to harass off stage like Phantom, Din's Fire, an intangible Dair, Fair/Bair which breaks super armor, a Nair that has significant knockback at higher percents, while being a multi hit, fast, and disjointed, and Nayru's Love which is significantly disjointed, intangible at the start, and has an omnidirectional hitbox.

Snake may have a good all purpose edgeguarding tool in Nikita, but Zelda can also cover a myriad of options and recoveries with the above mentioned. And like Snake, if the opponent does happen to make it back, she has a very good ledge trapping tool in Phantom, which will pretty much guarantee a 50-50 with the correct timing, the vast majority of the time. Even if she guessed wrong, the opponent is often still in disadvantage, and any correct read, will have Zelda's powerful moves KO or send the opponent back in disadvantage.

I feel like advantage state, will be the most important in Ultimate and the characters currently considered high and top tier, all tend to have good advantage states. Without a good advantage state, you run the risk of not being able to offset the terrible disadvantage state, that seems to be universal. Both Zelda and Snake being more trap oriented, allow them to take full advantage of the defense nerfs in Ultimate and are able to harass and severely punish disadvantage. Zelda's moves in particular, are powerful enough to send opponents deep into disadvantage early, potentially only needing a few neutral wins per game.

3. Good recovery and off stage game.

If the changes to Ultimate have been mostly defense and off stage nerfs, then having one of the better recoveries and off stage puts her over a significant amount of the cast. Landing and getting back on stage, is a major problem and her only real glaring flaw, but even being able to get to that point is significant. There are a fair amount of those considered high tier, with somewhat easy to gimp recoveries. There can be issue with being two framed, but her ability to stall and mixup her recovery can counter that. She can also easily turn the tables if an opponent goes too deep or over commits and end stocks, while still technically being in disadvantage.

There's more here and there, but those are the main ones. It doesn't matter how bad she was previously, Phantom redesign gave her a setup tool, to her punish based kit and the current engine favors her. Being able to kill early, gives her a comeback factor, of which is very strong in Ultimate and allows her to turn around large deficits, that might result from her poor disadvantage.

There's also the fact that she has been placing high and with a variety of players. And GOML has this Raykushi fellow, that I haven't heard of before, but is apparently doing some work, including beating Gen and Keitaro. He's currently at 65th at the time of this writing, which is already pretty good, so we'll see what that brings.

There are definitely some things in this match where I wondered what he's doing and then some things that I don't even see Ven doing that much.
Anyway, pretty solid showing but he lost the next match to Brandon (I think a Donkey Kong?). So definitely not the best Zelda out there, but it also shows that this character needs some optimization and that it's possible to optimize her further.

Beating Gen and 2-0ing Keitaro is no small feat. I can't really speak to much to Gen, but I know he's a pretty good player, hailing from a local filled with them and Keitaro regularly plays and hangs out with top players.

 

[ZephyrZ]

Zelda's aerials are great punishes but they're all pretty bad in neutral, aside from Nair. This leaves U-tilt as her only reliable anti-air, and while it's a pretty good one it doesn't protect her from everything. This gives her turtling a little bit of a blindspot that can be exploited, especially by characters who can approach from the air and outrange her U-tilt.

She can be oppressive when she has rime to set up phantom, but when she doesn't, she's forced to play a game of footsies. She has good enough normals to do this but not enough mobility to excel at it.

Some top/high tiers I can see her struggling with are Chroy, Wolf, Peach, PT (Ivysaur), and Shulk.

Chroy and speed/jump Shulk have the speed and disjoints to approach and get in her space. I don't know if Wolf's Fair outranges Zel's U-tilit or not but he still has the range and speed to compete with her and beat her at her own footsie game. Peach can be hard for Zelda to hit when she float camps phantom set ups and Zelda's poor mobility makes getting a Uair punish against a floating Peach difficult. Ivysaur's razor leaf pierces through phantom even if Zelda uses her displaced phantom tech, and while Zelda does have a reflector Ivy still beats Zelda in the mid-range game.

I don't think any of these match ups are hopeless for her but it is an uphill battle. I think she's mid tier at best. As oppressive as her Phantom can be, her gameplan can fall apart when she isn't able to find the time or space to set it up. She needs to maintain stage control and keep her distance or some characters will just walk right over her.

 

[Roguewolf]

I think a mindset you need to put yourself in is that midtier dosent mean bad even low tier dosent technically mean bad low tiers still can feel very good to you personally. What mid tier means is they have a good amount of matches that are an uphill battle they can stil have good mathups but they have more bad ones than hightiers.midtiers also have a sizeable amount of options that are unsafe(zeldas aerials). There still good charachters. High tiers usually have a better but still somewhat flawed matchup spread. Zelda feels like a midtier to me

 

[SwagGuy99]

So either Zelda is much better than we think, or she's punching holes in the current meta and nobody can deal with her properly yet.

I say both statements of these fit Zelda.

Good Zelda players can do some crazy stuff with her down-b and it can be hard for some characters to work around. However, as time goes on and it becomes easier for players to work around, I think she could drop down the tier lists a bit.

Also, while her really good moves in Smash 4 were heavily nerfed, she still received decent buffs to her other moves and I think that some of those moves could be being used a bit more like side-b.

As a side note, her matchup spread is also all over the place too IMO, being able to hold her own against characters like Olimar and Donkey Kong but having other horribly awful matchups in Top/High Tier as well like Pikachu, Pichu, Roy, and Marcina.

She may be considered a low tier now, but I see people's opinions being wildly conflicted on this character in the future because of these reasons.

Edit:

I feel like characters like ,,, and generally come to mind when thinking about characters who have enough placements to be considered high tier threats.

Speaking of , nobody seems to be talking about him at all. For a while people thought he could be the worse Mario and that he got hit really hard in the transition like the other Smash 4 top tiers but he honestly seems to be one of the least touched characters when you look at the changes he received (https://www.ssbwiki.com/Mario_(SSBU)#Changes_from_Super_Smash_Bros._4 ).

I kind of want to know what everyone's opinions on him are as I think that he is hardly worse than Smash 4 and probably is in a similar place in comparison to the rest of the cast tier wise as he was in Smash 4.

 

[StoicPhantom]

Speaking of Zelda (Palutena too go figure), I just watched a recently close set on stream at GOML 2019 between Raykushi and Gen that I think showcased a lot of interesting uses of her tools (All throughout, but particularly in Game 3). While I'm too tired to analyze it on any deeper level, what really stood out to me was Ray's movement and phantom placements in particular. He was able to cut off a lot of options and demand a little more respect from his part than you'd normally expect to have to give. Alongside this was a solid mix of evasiveness and zone-breaking that kept Gen off-guard. Was really nice to see. Still don't know what to think of this character overall but I'm at least happy to see she's in a better place now.

Finally watched this and I think is a good showcase of what I meant about Zelda's advantage being so good. Raykushi had a rough start, but was putting good Phantom pressure and punishing hard small mistakes. You can clearly see the issues Zelda has with disadvantage, but that was balanced out with her advantage. I think Raykushi was too aggressive at several points and did some weird options in general, but also did some cool things, including being the only high level Zelda I've seen, that utilizes Phantom displacement. I think if he stops being too aggressive and polishes himself a little more, he will be very good. I can't wait to see more from him.

Zelda's aerials are great punishes but they're all pretty bad in neutral, aside from Nair. This leaves U-tilt as her only reliable anti-air, and while it's a pretty good one it doesn't protect her from everything. This gives her turtling a little bit of a blindspot that can be exploited, especially by characters who can approach from the air and outrange her U-tilt.

Don't forget shields here. While it is true they've been nerfed, Zelda's OoS game is good enough, that they can still be an effective tool for her. Any misspace on shield, is going to have you eating an Up-B or LK. The above video had some good examples of this. And Zelda can cause misspaces herself, moving towards the opponent, while they're in the air and then shielding. Up-B has a very large hibox, so even cross ups aren't always safe.

I don't know if Wolf's Fair outranges Zel's U-tilit or not but he still has the range and speed to compete with her and beat her at her own footsie game.

I'm not sure that Up-Tilt will, but Fsmash can. It's not always a good idea to short hop aerial Zelda, as Fsmash has a large disjoint that can hit airborne opponents and the startup shifts her hurtbox back. The neat thing about the initial burst on her dash, is the distance can be roughly equivalent to a Smash 4 perfect pivot, so makes for easy baiting and spacing. It functions as one anyways. Mysterarica beat Seagull Joe's twice at Pound and IIRC Ven beat Karna's at prime, plus some others. I happen to feel the MU is even.

Ivysaur's razor leaf pierces through phantom even if Zelda uses her displaced phantom tech, and while Zelda does have a reflector Ivy still beats Zelda in the mid-range game.

Go watch Ven's match against SweetT at Prime. Razor Leaf isn't a problem with proper timing and spacing and Up-B can punish spam. She can also punish Ivy's disadvantage hard.

I think you have valid points on the others, although I think you're overselling Shulk too much, I just don't have a properly formed rebuttal.

I don't think any of these match ups are hopeless for her but it is an uphill battle. I think she's mid tier at best. As oppressive as her Phantom can be, her gameplan can fall apart when she isn't able to find the time or space to set it up. She needs to maintain stage control and keep her distance or some characters will just walk right over her.

Don't forget Zelda still has her original defensive base, that was the only good point about her in 4. She can hold her own up close, especially with the frame data buffs. Nayru's Love is still a very good defensive tool, she might be slow on the whole, but she has a very strong initial burst, that can let her beat out a lot of options. Up-Tilt also has a deceptively large hitbox and arcs from front to back, like Lucina's. Watch Ven's sets, he doesn't use Phantom near as much as Raykushi or I and still does very well.

I think a mindset you need to put yourself in is that midtier dosent mean bad even low tier dosent technically mean bad low tiers still can feel very good to you personally. What mid tier means is they have a good amount of matches that are an uphill battle they can stil have good mathups but they have more bad ones than hightiers.midtiers also have a sizeable amount of options that are unsafe(zeldas aerials). There still good charachters. High tiers usually have a better but still somewhat flawed matchup spread. Zelda feels like a midtier to me

I can't say low tiers feel good at all and mid tiers always feel lacking. I find Zelda's eclectic kit lends to a fairly even MU spread, not really losing to any archetype, just specific MUs. I don't think she has many bad MUs. Zelda's aerials aren't unsafe when used in the proper context and she doesn't rely on them for neutral either.

 

[Roguewolf]

Yes but zelda obviously fits your playstyle so even if she is a mixture she just feels good to you specifically just because a charachters mid tier dosent mean they can't feel the best to you specifically. K rool to me feels really good I love how he moves and how he plays. On the other ebd of the spectrum wolf is perfect for my playstyle and fits me very well. People who find that charachter to them will always say this charachters better than given credit for. I do the same thing with k rool to myself I think he's not low tier he's mid tier. Is he mid tier probably not bit he feels like one to me. Zeldas just the charachter that fits you and you know what good for you man you found your person in ultimate. But I still feel like there mid tier. Sorry for the wall of text about this or if you feel like I'm going after you and your charachter( I promise I'm not)

 

[ZephyrZ]

although I think you're overselling Shulk too much, I just don't

Alright, I'll admit was theorycrafting with Shulk match up. I don't have any experience with the Zelda vs Shulk matchup, but I think he'd give her a lot of trouble since he has the ability to maneuvers around her phantom and outrange Nayru and her normals while she doesn't have the speed to snuff out his attacks.

Go watch Ven's match against SweetT at Prime. Razor Leaf isn't a problem with proper timing and spacing and Up-B can punish spam. She can also punish Ivy's disadvantage hard.

I'll watch the match later when I have more time, but I don't think long-range camping is Ivysaur's answer to that match up. I prefer to play that match up more like a swordie and focus more on stage control and careful spacing, using Razor Leaf mainly to discourage back dashes and charged phantoms.

I can't say low tiers feel good at all and mid tiers always feel lacking.

Eh what characters feel good or not is largely personal preference. High tiers are naturally going to feel better to more people then low tiers do (because doing well feels good), but people also like characters that play to their preferances and strengths.

I always thought Charizard felt good to play, even back when he was his horrible pre-patch Smash 4 self.

 

[Rizen]

I feel like people get a little too hung up on "correct ways" to play and overlook why characters are designed differently. Quite a lot of the time I hear talk about Zelda, not being able to safely spam aerials always comes up. I think people can overlook that characters can achieve the same things in different ways.

All characters are equal, but some characters are more equal than others.

 

[Lavani]

Dabuz v Hoe was an interesting showing for all characters involved.

Hoe plays a patient, aircampy Meta Knight against Olimar, hanging out in the air near the end of Olimar's fsmash range, but close enough to Dimensional Cape or land and dash in when he sees an opening. Between Olimar's ground game lacking diagonal coverage and his aerials being backed by one of the worst air speeds in the game, Dabuz was left playing guessing games with Hoe's landings, ultimately losing game 1 and clutching game 2 in a last hit scenario.

Interestingly this leads to a counterpick, which ends up working well as she can properly cover that diagonally upward space and no longer fears dying to low percent dash attacks in this game. There was some interesting Luma tech used in this match as well, which I'll have to go back and look at some more (attack cancel usage and a strange reverse hit rapid jab into dsmash combo - didn't see if this was just due to untethered luma placement or something else). Matchup inexperience was likely a factor on Hoe's end, as his Luma removal wasn't as efficient as it could've been among other things (Shuttle Looping Luma while Rosa is onstage, etc), but it was cool to see Rosa used in high level play to cover a playstyle Olimar didn't have a good answer for, and against her worst matchup from the previous game no less.

 

[DelugeFGC]

Some people might end up playing a Top Tier and actually liking the character (I am crazy over Olimar and Snake because evidently I like Smash for the wrong reasons according to half the planet) but more often than not people in the competitive scene play high and top tiers due to a combination of liking to win and meshing well with certain playstyles. Most competitive players into spacing characters and stage control would go for somebody like Marth, Cloud, Lucina.. etc.. far sooner than they went for a character like Pre-Ultimate Ike. That's just the way of the dojo in the competitive sphere.

People who play mid and low tiers are almost always doing so either out of character loyalty or because that character's playstyle simply meshes best with them, though.

 

[$.A.F.]

Smokk just got 17th at GOML as a Ganondorf main. Does this say anything about his tier placement? He also got top 16 at collision though for obvious reasons, his Ganondorf was outshined by another.

 

[StoicPhantom]

Yes but zelda obviously fits your playstyle so even if she is a mixture she just feels good to you specifically just because a charachters mid tier dosent mean they can't feel the best to you specifically. K rool to me feels really good I love how he moves and how he plays. On the other ebd of the spectrum wolf is perfect for my playstyle and fits me very well. People who find that charachter to them will always say this charachters better than given credit for. I do the same thing with k rool to myself I think he's not low tier he's mid tier. Is he mid tier probably not bit he feels like one to me. Zeldas just the charachter that fits you and you know what good for you man you found your person in ultimate. But I still feel like there mid tier. Sorry for the wall of text about this or if you feel like I'm going after you and your charachter( I promise I'm not)

Sorry, I should probably clarify what I meant when I said feel. I didn't mean I liked how she played, more so that she isn't as restricted as she previously was or Robin was. Playing them before, I felt the potential cap and how they limited what I could achieve at the time, in terms of fundamentals. I get no such feeling with Zelda now and I've had to improve my own cap a few times, just to try to find her potential cap. Why I think she isn't top tier, is because her disadvantage is a little too much and she lacks a lot of safe, easy KO options. I've played the top tiers and can feel the difference between them. Not in the sense they feel better to play, more so that I wasn't struggling to land the kill sometimes, because even if you whiff, you're still fairly safe or that I wouldn't take 70-100 just trying to get back to the stage in certain MUs/stages.

I get what you're saying though, and I do like how Zelda plays, to the point I would still main her, even if she was lower on the tier list. I just mean you can feel the restrictions that aren't possible to overcome with skill, on lower tier characters.

Alright, I'll admit was theorycrafting with Shulk match up. I don't have any experience with the Zelda vs Shulk matchup, but I think he'd give her a lot of trouble since he has the ability to maneuvers around her phantom and outrange Nayru and her normals while she doesn't have the speed to snuff out his attacks.

I talk Phantom up a lot, but the reality is, its use depends on the MU/playstyle. Like I said above, Zelda can hold her own without Phantom, it just depends on the situation. Some MUs will have little use for it, others will require lots. I hesitated to say anything before, because I haven't played or seen any Zelda play a high level Shulk, so didn't want to make assumptions. But my current thoughts on the MU, are that it is in Zelda's favor.

Why I'm not on the Shulk hype train, is because no matter how much you tweak his stats, his moves don't change. Speed Shulk, still feels like Shulk to me, just faster. Meaning his approach and neutral still feel linear. Yes he has Nair and Bair mixups, but his kit is very susceptible to parries, which is one way Zelda can get in on him. He just feels like a laggier and more telegraphed Ike at times.

One thing he does have on Zelda, is Smash Monado. That thing kills Zelda stupidly early and if he can juggle into Air Slash, she's dying at mid percents. However, the timer is short and if Zelda can carefully shield, while watching for grabs, she can usually wait it out. Otherwise, Shulk's landing options are poor and Zelda can easily get around them, his recovery is bad without Jump and can easily be exploited by Zelda. Easily parried moves, means she can land whatever she wants as a punish, the ability to fall out of Up-Smash and the linearity and lag of Fsmash, makes it so that he can't punish her landing as hard.

Overall, I can't see how she loses this. She's easily better than base Shulk, and only Smash Monado is something to be feared.

I'll watch the match later when I have more time, but I don't think long-range camping is Ivysaur's answer to that match up. I prefer to play that match up more like a swordie and focus more on stage control and careful spacing, using Razor Leaf mainly to discourage back dashes and charged phantoms.

I was more referring to Razor Leaf potentially shutting down Phantom, not necessarily relying on it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ivy wants lean more towards forcing the approach, than approaching, right? Not that Fair is completely terrible as a poke, but isn't amazing either. I feel like Phantom would potentially force Ivy to approach, which Zelda can then Parry and use an OoS option. I think Ivy suffers more in disadvantage than Zelda and one neutral win, could easily force a PT to go Charizard, given how susceptible off stage Ivy can be to Din's Fire.

I'd actually have to go back and watch that video myself, now that I think about. I just don't have a problem with PT and Ven didn't seem to either. There was another Zelda who narrowly lost to SweetT in their locals, so it's not just a Ven thing either.

All characters are equal, but some characters are more equal than others.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but I mentioned how Palutena can still achieve the same thing, but easier than Zelda.

Smokk just got 17th at GOML as a Ganondorf main. Does this say anything about his tier placement? He also got top 16 at collision though for obvious reasons, his Ganondorf was outshined by another.

That's a pretty good placement, but was the other Ganondorf, the one Nairo pulled out against Light. I don't know that we can really count pocket characters, all the Zeldas I mentioned were solo.

 

[Rizen]

I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but I mentioned how Palutena can still achieve the same thing, but easier than Zelda.

Pretty much what you said, all characters can win but some have an easier game plan than others.

 

[StoicPhantom]

Pretty much what you said, all characters can win but some have an easier game plan than others.

Ah, gotcha. I guess I got a little confused for some reason.

 

[$.A.F.]

Sorry, I should probably clarify what I meant when I said feel. I didn't mean I liked how she played, more so that she isn't as restricted as she previously was or Robin was. Playing them before, I felt the potential cap and how they limited what I could achieve at the time, in terms of fundamentals. I get no such feeling with Zelda now and I've had to improve my own cap a few times, just to try to find her potential cap. Why I think she isn't top tier, is because her disadvantage is a little too much and she lacks a lot of safe, easy KO options. I've played the top tiers and can feel the difference between them. Not in the sense they feel better to play, more so that I wasn't struggling to land the kill sometimes, because even if you whiff, you're still fairly safe or that I wouldn't take 70-100 just trying to get back to the stage in certain MUs/stages.

I get what you're saying though, and I do like how Zelda plays, to the point I would still main her, even if she was lower on the tier list. I just mean you can feel the restrictions that aren't possible to overcome with skill, on lower tier characters.


I talk Phantom up a lot, but the reality is, its use depends on the MU/playstyle. Like I said above, Zelda can hold her own without Phantom, it just depends on the situation. Some MUs will have little use for it, others will require lots. I hesitated to say anything before, because I haven't played or seen any Zelda play a high level Shulk, so didn't want to make assumptions. But my current thoughts on the MU, are that it is in Zelda's favor.

Why I'm not on the Shulk hype train, is because no matter how much you tweak his stats, his moves don't change. Speed Shulk, still feels like Shulk to me, just faster. Meaning his approach and neutral still feel linear. Yes he has Nair and Bair mixups, but his kit is very susceptible to parries, which is one way Zelda can get in on him. He just feels like a laggier and more telegraphed Ike at times.

One thing he does have on Zelda, is Smash Monado. That thing kills Zelda stupidly early and if he can juggle into Air Slash, she's dying at mid percents. However, the timer is short and if Zelda can carefully shield, while watching for grabs, she can usually wait it out. Otherwise, Shulk's landing options are poor and Zelda can easily get around them, his recovery is bad without Jump and can easily be exploited by Zelda. Easily parried moves, means she can land whatever she wants as a punish, the ability to fall out of Up-Smash and the linearity and lag of Fsmash, makes it so that he can't punish her landing as hard.

Overall, I can't see how she loses this. She's easily better than base Shulk, and only Smash Monado is something to be feared.


I was more referring to Razor Leaf potentially shutting down Phantom, not necessarily relying on it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ivy wants lean more towards forcing the approach, than approaching, right? Not that Fair is completely terrible as a poke, but isn't amazing either. I feel like Phantom would potentially force Ivy to approach, which Zelda can then Parry and use an OoS option. I think Ivy suffers more in disadvantage than Zelda and one neutral win, could easily force a PT to go Charizard, given how susceptible off stage Ivy can be to Din's Fire.

I'd actually have to go back and watch that video myself, now that I think about. I just don't have a problem with PT and Ven didn't seem to either. There was another Zelda who narrowly lost to SweetT in their locals, so it's not just a Ven thing either.


I'm not sure what you're getting at here, but I mentioned how Palutena can still achieve the same thing, but easier than Zelda.


That's a pretty good placement, but was the other Ganondorf, the one Nairo pulled out against Light. I don't know that we can really count pocket characters, all the Zeldas I mentioned were solo.

Yeah I’m saying Smokk got top 16 at collision but nobody cared because Nairo’s pocket Ganondorf had more hype

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

Yeah I’m saying Smokk got top 16 at collision but nobody cared because Nairo’s pocket Ganondorf had more hype

well most people only care about what is on the stream, even videos doesn't get attention.

 

[DunnoBro]

Speaking of , nobody seems to be talking about him at all. For a while people thought he could be the worse Mario and that he got hit really hard in the transition like the other Smash 4 top tiers but he honestly seems to be one of the least touched characters when you look at the changes he received (https://www.ssbwiki.com/Mario_(SSBU)#Changes_from_Super_Smash_Bros._4 ).

I kind of want to know what everyone's opinions on him are as I think that he is hardly worse than Smash 4 and probably is in a similar place in comparison to the rest of the cast tier wise as he was in Smash 4.

He's mostly fine, but imo a much more technical character now. Really demanding FLUDD Jump Cancels to more effectively kill with bair/bthrow by the ledge, and spaced Fireball confirms to get stocks now. Can't just grab and usmash anymore, which is why I think most people have dropped him.

He could use a few tweaks. Like for SJP to be as safe on hit as it was in smash 4. I don't think they accounted for the Instant Knockback properly. Making it a stupid oos option. Since it'd only be safe on hit at higher percents when it's less valuable anyway.

Cape should also probably be a bigger hitbox to better attempt two-frames with. It's a really fun tool and they clearly coded it to have a specific interaction with two-frames (Doesn't reverse them, but pops them up for a combo. Only kill confirms around 120%)

But it's actually easier to just fsmash due to the bigger hitbox, and being the same speed with the preemptive charge hold.

But overall, solid character if perhaps undertuned.

 

[IsmaR]

Smokk vs Rickles was on stream, for what it's worth. VOD is here.

Spoiler

I would neither bank on nor count out Nairo going Ganon at any point tomorrow. Only Nairo knows it's time to bust him out.

 

[Browny]

A solo K.Rool just won Australia's biggest yearly major.

You all must have some inferior international version of ultimate. Or maybe the reason people think K.Rool is trash is purely because no top player is actually using him? It could simply take one single top player changing mains to drastically alter the worlds opinions. I wonder how Inklings results would look if Cosmos moved to anyone else...

 

[Lacrimosa]

A solo K.Rool just won Australia's biggest yearly major.

You all must have some inferior international version of ultimate. Or maybe the reason people think K.Rool is trash is purely because no top player is actually using him? It could simply take one single top player changing mains to drastically alter the worlds opinions. I wonder how Inklings results would look if Cosmos moved to anyone else...

I'd say the bigger reason is that Zero said he's trash and people just repeat what he says, similar to how is treated. About G&W: He got 2nd at this Australian major with Extra.
But even then: There is only one top-player that is playing with Raito. Maybe you could include Vintendo to that as well. I think this has more to do with obscurity of the character and that most people don't even bother looking into this set-up heavy characters. So they are either ignored or put into a lower tier. People are still having problems putting in high-tier as well although Tea is doing really good work with him, just like Raito with Duck Hunt.
I mean, these 3 characters, maybe even K. Rool are heavily slept on or they are just torn apart by one flaw they have (in G&W's case it's fAir).
and areprobably the exception here but at the beginning of Ultimate, people were also wary about his potential and that was mostly lead by Leffen doubting these 2 characters.

Then on the other hand you have and to some extent and in 3.0.0. that are just assumed as high/top-tier but they have the equal amount of results or less. That's probably because the majority of people can get behind their playstyle much better because they don't have to set up things and work with "gimmicks" and their are "rush down" characters: Fast and fun to watch. Maybe the fast doesn't apply to Ganondorf but the hype that character generated with Nairo is still there, although that was 2 months ago and then he got clapped by Light and Ganon was never used in a tournament by Nairo again to my knowledge. Maybe we see him at GOML later, though. And yes, I'm aware Ganon placed high at GOML which is really good for him^^.

Anyway, sorry for that little rant but I think while top-players's opinions are good to some extent, they can get in people's mind quite easily and therefore a character like G&W or Duck Hunt get doubted for a pretty long time even though they place high in tournaments.

 

[$.A.F.]

A solo K.Rool just won Australia's biggest yearly major.

You all must have some inferior international version of ultimate. Or maybe the reason people think K.Rool is trash is purely because no top player is actually using him? It could simply take one single top player changing mains to drastically alter the worlds opinions. I wonder how Inklings results would look if Cosmos moved to anyone else...

Name of the tournament/player?

 

[Lacrimosa]

Name of the tournament/player?

BAM11 and the player was called Mr.L

 

[Gleam]

One player doing good with a character says far more to the player than it does the actual character. and all these other characters need to have their victories and so called "positives" translated across the community. If someone can bring these characters to good placements but the over community can't, it means that those victories are not being translated over to other players.

If Smokk won because of the skill of the character, than respectfully, other players should utilize what allowed him to win with the character and achieve similar results. However if these results were more so on his ability as a player, not much can be done. Even the worse of character can make some good placements with enough patience, practice, game ideology and whatever the overall tournament stack up is like. Even Brawl Ganondorf made a few placements here and there by usage of very good players. But if someone won with Brawl Ganondorf, nobody says Brawl Ganon is awesome, we infer that the player was very skilled.

There's no point in the positives of a character if it can't be translated across the board.

It would be better if several Ganondorfs made decent placements in tournament than if one Ganondorf won. At least with the first, you get an idea that Ganondorf is good enough to at least make placements from several different players while the latter just seems to indicate a superiority of the player that isn't being translated to other Ganondorf players.

 

[$.A.F.]

One player doing good with a character says far more to the player than it does the actual character. and all these other characters need to have their victories and so called "positives" translated across the community. If someone can bring these characters to good placements but the over community can't, it means that those victories are not being translated over to other players.

If Smokk won because of the skill of the character, than respectfully, other players should utilize what allowed him to win with the character and achieve similar results. However if these results were more so on his ability as a player, not much can be done. Even the worse of character can make some good placements with enough patience, practice, game ideology and whatever the overall tournament stack up is like. Even Brawl Ganondorf made a few placements here and there by usage of very good players. But if someone won with Brawl Ganondorf, nobody says Brawl Ganon is awesome, we infer that the player was very skilled.

There's no point in the positives of a character if it can't be translated across the board.

It would be better if several Ganondorfs made decent placements in tournament than if one Ganondorf won. At least with the first, you get an idea that Ganondorf is good enough to at least make placements from several different players while the latter just seems to indicate a superiority of the player that isn't being translated to other Ganondorf players.

At BAM 11 Vermanubis got 17th as Ganon. And Rickles got 4th at Ursa Minor 3. As for K. Rool, Ito got 17th at SoCal Chronicles, Muk got 9th at 3 European National Tournaments, and King Funk got 17th at Phoenix Blue 2. It’s not a one person thing. And if we want to talk about results with multiple people being the end all, then Inkling is significantly worse than Ridley no?

 

[Rizen]

https://smash.gg/tournament/bam11-battle-arena-melbourne-11/events/smash-ultimate-singles/overview

Battle Arena Melbourne #11 (337 entrants) (South Wharf, Victoria, Australia)

1) Mr. L -
2) Extra -
3) Luco -
4) Tru4 -
5) Galacticus - /(posssibly)
5) Ignis -
7) EmanSaur -
7) Joe -

-

This was the K.Rool breakout I predicted. 1st of 337 players. I agree we shouldn't have a knee jerk reaction about one placement but it does show K.Rool isn't completely free. He has the same thing as DDD going for him: he's the 2nd heaviest super heavyweight with a long recovery which makes him extremely tanky. K.Rool doesn't have the crazy power that makes Ganon stand out but he does have some really good tools in belly armor, 20% off every grab, f4 jab, a reflector/counter with f4-15 iirc invulnerability and 2 projectiles. K.Rool's a zoning/bait and punish heavyweight. He plays differently than other heavies.

Super heavies are polarizing characters but don't sleep on good ones. I think K.Rool's better than low tiers like Isabelle and Mac. Middle tier.

 

[Aquuds]

I disagree with K. Rool being a mid tier
More lIke bottom 15

 

[Lacrimosa]

At BAM 11 Vermanubis got 17th as Ganon. And Rickles got 4th at Ursa Minor 3. As for K. Rool, Ito got 17th at SoCal Chronicles, Muk got 9th at 3 European National Tournaments, and King Funk got 17th at Phoenix Blue 2. It’s not a one person thing. And if we want to talk about results with multiple people being the end all, then Inkling is significantly worse than Ridley no?

No, Inkling has Abadango and Cosmos and we know that these are two top-top players.
Cosmos did also beat Dabuz' Olimar pretty solidly at GOML.
Actually, there's no Olimar and Snake in top 8. So, are top-players finally getting a hang on those two chars?
Speaking of Olimar: Shuton won Stunfest in France where Abadango got 3rd and Glutonny got 2nd. We'll see how Smash 'n Splash will go.
That tourney will show us where multiple chars are going to.

 

[NairWizard]

A solo K.Rool just won Australia's biggest yearly major.

You all must have some inferior international version of ultimate. Or maybe the reason people think K.Rool is trash is purely because no top player is actually using him? It could simply take one single top player changing mains to drastically alter the worlds opinions. I wonder how Inklings results would look if Cosmos moved to anyone else...

I don't think that the Australian scene is a good benchmark for anything. In smash 4 Australia was dominated by a Wii Fit Trainer for a while; did that mean Wii Fit Trainer was good? (some will definitely stand up to claim that she was underrated, at least, but by how much?)

What characters did he beat? Just looking at the top 4: Game and Watch, Ness, and Shulk? All of those matchups seem fine for KRool, or at least winnable if there's a slight skill gap. I'd be more interested to see how KRool is doing against Wolf, Snake, and a handful of other top international threats played by top players.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Heh so a won a pretty large tournament.
No or made top 8 at GOML (It may not be that long since niether made a top 8 at a big major , but it SURE feels like it) Also got in top 8 but not

I give this game too little credit sometimes, yeah some characters are overtuned and can feel overwhelming. But it still feels like big surprises can happen

 

[Vyrnx]

One player doing good with a character says far more to the player than it does the actual character. and all these other characters need to have their victories and so called "positives" translated across the community. If someone can bring these characters to good placements but the over community can't, it means that those victories are not being translated over to other players.

If Smokk won because of the skill of the character, than respectfully, other players should utilize what allowed him to win with the character and achieve similar results. However if these results were more so on his ability as a player, not much can be done. Even the worse of character can make some good placements with enough patience, practice, game ideology and whatever the overall tournament stack up is like. Even Brawl Ganondorf made a few placements here and there by usage of very good players. But if someone won with Brawl Ganondorf, nobody says Brawl Ganon is awesome, we infer that the player was very skilled.

There's no point in the positives of a character if it can't be translated across the board.

It would be better if several Ganondorfs made decent placements in tournament than if one Ganondorf won. At least with the first, you get an idea that Ganondorf is good enough to at least make placements from several different players while the latter just seems to indicate a superiority of the player that isn't being translated to other Ganondorf players.

From the perspective of competitive discussion, this is the opposite of how I think results should be viewed. The focus should be on the extents of a character's competitive capabilites, something that only the best players of a character demonstrate.

If we're discussing tier lists, for instance, the first thing that has to be accepted is that there is no such thing as a tier list that is universally applicable across all skill levels. For example, a tier list constructed based on top level results and opinions won't and shouldn't carry much weight for lower levels of play--Peach being top tier doesn't mean that Peach is the best choice for a player, even if they are competitive. A competitive player's goal is virtually always 'beat other players within the space that I play'--it's how 'space' is defined that changes a player's goals. It could mean your friends, your school, online, etc. If it's something like region or larger, then Peach becomes a very good choice.

On the other hand, a tier list (and I should clarify that a player's tier list doesn't necessarily need to be explicitly made--most players probably have some sort of 'tier list' at least internally) constructed based on extensive tournament data compilations, as is so commonly done in this thread, won't and shouldn't carry much weight for top levels of play--these tournament data compilations simply carry too many data from non-top levels of play that don't show the extent of a character's competitive capability. Even in the unlikely case that a mid-level tournament has an outstanding, top level player of a character, the results of the tournament almost certainly will not represent that character matched against other top level players. It's almost impossible for a mid-level tournament to accurately show anything about characters at the top levels of play, so a data compilation that includes the tournament is not an accurate source for a tier list that wants to be accurate for top level (at least as far as tier list 'accuracy' goes). If we accept that no tier list is equally applicable across all skill levels, it makes sense that a serious tier list should try to be representative of top levels.

G Gleam this isn't to say that the way you view results has no place. You talk about how there's no point if a character's strengths can't be translated across the board--if what matters to you is a character's performance across the board (meaning multiple regions and multiple skill levels), then you're right, and large tournament data compilations are extremely useful. But know that this sacrifices analysis of top levels of play, and that a player winning a tournament with a character is far more important to top level analysis (and thus good tier list discussion) than three players of a character placing 33rd or 17th, because one of these players is showing the competitive capabilities of the character more accurately than the other three. On the other hand, the perspective you wrote about in your post and the data compilations have been useful in the past--for instance, it showed in Smash 4 and Brawl that not only were the game's respective best characters amazing at top level, but (probably problematically) dominant at all levels of play. As far as competitive (tier list) discussion these perspectives are rarely particularly useful. The entire basis of competitive Smash is skill differentials, so it makes sense that we weight the highest echelon of play most heavily. Then the major issue is how we define 'top-level', which is a harder question. Everyone can recognize top level play when they see it--everyone knows Tweek and Samsora are top level players. But what about other players? It's not an easy thing to figure out, but I guess one idea would be to look only at tournaments at a particular 'rank' (like PGR status), and then consider only a certain cutoff (e.g. top 8, top 16, etc.). Done across a large number of tournaments across time, we'd start to get a pretty good picture.

Another point here is that a character's best performances--the ones that really matter--are very commonly written off by people because of supposedly being 'the player, not the character'. To reiterate some other posts I've made, it's absolutely impossible for a player to be better than their character. Their character is the tool through which they play the game. Everything they do in-game is only achievable because their character is capable of it. So it's really not possible to ignore a dominant result just because someone wants to--even if in time the character doesn't achieve consistency and the result is written off as an 'outlier', at the time that the result happens--for instance, K. Rool winning a major--it should at least make you think. Is it possible that this character has been viewed incorrectly? Even if the answer is probably 'no', because we should all be skeptical of a K. Rool establishing real consistency. If Tweek started maining K. Rool and winning tournaments or placing top 8, then that would show that pretty much everyone in this thread and all top players that openly share opinions had some sort of large, fundamental misunderstanding along the way. Which may or may not be a surprising revelation, but the few who really believed in him from the beginning will certainly let us know.

On the other hand, if Cosmos dropped Inkling and Inkling's results deteriorated, that would prove absolutely nothing about Inkling whatsoever, because the level of performance that we should care most about is the best seen from that character.

 

[$.A.F.]

Also Mr. L’s results have only improved. He went from 33rd at expand gong to 5th at Phantom and then 1st at BAM

 

[Justin Allen Goldschmidt]

It's nice having a game feel relatively balanced with tier gaps smaller than any I can remember in this franchise. It's only year one, so of course things will change, but for now it's really cool that things still feel fresh and interesting. I personally think the meta will stay active and keep developing for several years this time. I don't even need DLC to feel excited about this game (the DLC is nice though and I still want it). What does this thread think about running little character campaigns to help develop underutilized fighters? It's a half-baked idea, but if we could make it a community thing to kind of focus on playing and labbing one or two really unpopular characters each month or two, maybe someone could make some kind of content around it, it may jump-start interest in them. It's only one idea for helping things grow, feel free to chime in or ignore if this is the wrong place for the idea, or help flesh it out and make a separate thread for it since I'm pretty bad at this forum stuff.

 

[SwagGuy99]

I disagree with K. Rool being a mid tier
More lIke bottom 15

I compare to (who, IMO, was the worse non-Mii character in Smash 4). King K. Rool is better than Smash 4 Dedede, but not by much.

Smash 4 Dedede has some good strengths, but his weaknesses only needed to be exploited once or twice for him to lose a stock. His ledgetrapping and edgeguarding were good but because his frame data was so poor, everything he did was punishable. He was the easiest character to 0 to death in Smash 4. He was also easy to juggle and to camp.

King K. Rool is basically that, but with a few different tools that make him a bit better (like down throw).

 

[Terotrous]

I'm super late to the party as usual but wanted to chime in on

I feel like she is probably the most obviously bottom tier character in the game, save maybe for Mac. She's super stubby, she has a lot of moves that are just outright bad, her kit doesn't have much synergy, she's pretty light, and she has very little reward on her moves. She really has almost nothing going for her except fair and bair and Villager also has those. I agree with the previous statement that there's really no reason to ever feel afraid when fighting her, even as other not-that-great characters. In particular, Mac would probably butcher her because at least he hits hard and he can just swing on her without worrying too much.

I think she could be salvagable, but she needs some of her good tools buffed. Down B needs to last longer and be more threatening when it hits. I think a good option could be to have it trap you a little longer, allowing her to follow up with a Uair for a kill if she's close. Fishing Rod also needs to be a kill move, it should probably kill around 115 at ledge at the absolute latest. Also, FSmash and DSmash should both probably hit a little harder. Basically, she just needs some actual threat in her kit. I feel like her neutral could be somewhat decent if you had to keep on your toes to some degree, but as it stands you can bully her way too much.