Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Thinkaman]

I'd love to hear his rationales for his character selections.

 

[The_Bookworm]

The tournament The Kid, The Goat, The MangO, is surprisingly stacked. The tourney is essentially Japan vs SoCal. lol


Already in winner's top 8:
Kamame vs Abadango
Elegant vs Raito


Fighting for a spot in loser's top 8:
Tsu vs (Winner of K9sbruce vs Xzax)
Larry Lurr vs (Winner of Leaf FC vs SweetT)
Charlie vs (Winner of ven vs Zenyou)
Nicko vs (Winner of Eon vs Cyro)


Notable players out earlier than 13th place:
17th: Mr ConCon
17th: Kiraflax
17th: S2H
17th: Light (Ger)
25th: Ketchup
25th: cookieslayer
25th: Kswz(?)
33rd: KOrean

 

[$.A.F.]

I'd love to hear his rationales for his character selections.

On Twitter he said using the crowd to his advantage.

 

[KakuCP9]

I'd love to hear his rationales for his character selections.

I think its a fun factor if nothing else since with a massive cast, alot more characters fit his fancy and thus he developed all of them enough for tournament level. Or its the sheer fact that he can use all those characters so does like how Serge basically mained all the Pokemon+ Roy back in Smash 4 or how even MkLeo cycled through a bunch of characters with varying skillsets/power levels to a respectable degree of success.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

I'd love to hear his rationales for his character selections.

From reviewing the tournament result thread he just pretty much just plays whoever he wants and why not when no one else at the tournament can beat you?

 

[The_Bookworm]

Here is top 8 for The Kid, the Goat, and the MangO


Winner's
Kamame vs Abadango
Elegant vs Raito

Loser's
Zenyou vs Nicko
Tsu vs Larry Lurr



Notable players out earlier:
9th: Charliedaking
9th: Eon
9th: SweetT
9th: Xzax
13th: K9sbruce
13th: Leaf FC
13th: ven
13th: Cyro
17th: Mr ConCon
17th: Kiraflax
17th: S2H
17th: Light (Ger)
25th: Ketchup
25th: cookieslayer
25th: Kswz(?)
33rd: KOrean


Pretty fresh variety of characters in top 8. Elegant's months of training has recently shown pretty big pay-off and his performance here is showing. Now he is up against the man who eliminated him at EVO 2018 in an entirely new game.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

9

Here is top 8 for The Kid, the Goat, and the MangO


Winner's
Kamame vs Abadango
Elegant vs Raito

Loser's
Zenyou vs Nicko
Tsu vs Larry Lurr



Notable players out earlier:
9th: Charliedaking
9th: Eon
9th: SweetT
9th: Xzax
13th: K9sbruce
13th: Leaf FC
13th: ven
13th: Cyro
17th: Mr ConCon
17th: Kiraflax
17th: S2H
17th: Light (Ger)
25th: Ketchup
25th: cookieslayer
25th: Kswz(?)
33rd: KOrean


Pretty fresh variety of characters in top 8. Elegant's months of training has recently shown pretty big pay-off and his performance. here is showing. Now he is up against the man who eliminated him at EVO 2018 in an entirely new game.

Abadango has mostly been using thoughout the tourament. I do not think he has used Inkling at all, yet.

Also It has been pretty impressive showing for this week too

 

[Repli.Cant]

...

1st: Stroder (I'm not even kidding lol)

Was waiting for something like this to show up; I wanted to ask a question. Do you guys think playing several characters will be worth it in the long run? I'm sure this is a question that's been asked before, but when this happens, among others like Zackray using 6 or 7 characters in a tournament at one point, I'm left wondering.

Or maybe it's just a one-off thing they decided to do... just because.

 

[Bobert]

I'm not too big a fan of this type of "I see something I disagree with, so I'm going to try to discredit the entire thread/the "smash community" (i.e. "everyone else")" post--for instance, in this case, the supposedly widespread trend is really not at all widespread as far as I can tell--so I'm assuming it should be read as "joker isn't that good/top tier/whatever."

A totally okay position to have (as much as I may disagree), I just don't see the need to weirdly call out 'everyone else' over something that only a few may or may not be saying--it doesn't really add much.

There's a great deal of value in this thread, but there is (on another note) an odd way in which sometimes valuable things are easily labeled negatively--for example, "(pure) theorycraft", or especially "narrative pushing." I'd like to know what exactly constitutes "narrative pushing"--like, I think it obviously includes multiple posts by a user (or users) supporting a particular position. But past that? Definitely the most important contributing factor is whether or not the labeler agrees with the position--if it's disagreement, it's more likely going to be labeled "narrative pushing". And also the aggressiveness of a post probably plays some role in whether or not something gets called "narrative pushing."

But with aggressiveness, there are a few possibilities to keep in mind: The user could be young, like many (or most) users here. The user may not speak English as their first language, or maybe they just didn't preface (every single) somewhat argumentative thing with "I think" or "in my opinion"--I wouldn't confuse this with aggression. Or maybe the user was in fact, intentionally or not, overly aggressive.

So then what's wrong with so-called narrative pushing? It's just having a particular position that you argue for. Or basically, my point is that the value of a post can't be discredited just by calling it narrative pushing since its negative connotation, in the context of this thread, doesn't make much sense--arguments with so-called narrative pushers are more valuable than talking to a brick wall or having unanimous agreement. I don't know how many people would actually still come here and read this thread if there weren't well reasoned posts that they disagree with.

I wasn't trying to discredit the whole thread or "the whole community". I was pretty much implying that maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions because somebody does well with said character. You don't have to look around very hard to see people suggesting nerfs on Joker(specifically Arsene and his meter). If you go back a bit, the same thing happened when Ally won Pound with Snake and we had people suggesting nerfs for Snake.

 

[Y2Kay]

I'd love to hear his rationales for his character selections.

He said that he tried to make Greninja work for every game 1, and if it didn’t, he’d switch to a more rare pocket of his. In his set with Pandarian, he explicitly said he picked Mac to make the crowd go wild and throw him off,

 

[The_Bookworm]

The Kid, the Goat, and the MangO


1st: Kameme
2nd: Elegant
3rd: Raito
4th: Tsu (Yes, Tsu has an Isabelle. Not sure when he used her this tourney, but still.)
5th: Abadango
5th: Nicko
7th: Zenyou
7th: Larry Lurr
9th: Charliedaking
9th: Eon
9th: SweetT
9th: Xzax
13th: K9sbruce
13th: Leaf FC
13th: ven
13th: Cyro


Other notable players out earlier:
17th: Mr ConCon
17th: Kiraflax
17th: S2H
17th: Light (Ger)
25th: Ketchup
25th: cookieslayer
25th: Kswz(?)
33rd: KOrean

 

[KakuCP9]

Tsu used her in a match with Elegant and even took a game off him

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[sedrf]

cyroo used roy and chrom too I believe

 

[Ark of Silence101]

cyroo used roy and chrom too I believe

According to results posted on reddit, that's all he used.

Could we talk about Mr. R? Like what is happening with him? It kinda feels odd to not see him consistenly at top 25, 16 and even top 8 at US majors.

 

[Vyrnx]

I wasn't trying to discredit the whole thread or "the whole community". I was pretty much implying that maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions because somebody does well with said character. You don't have to look around very hard to see people suggesting nerfs on Joker(specifically Arsene and his meter). If you go back a bit, the same thing happened when Ally won Pound with Snake and we had people suggesting nerfs for Snake.

My bad, the "community" thing was actually referencing another post. This was just a collection of random thoughts over the last several pages (in fact kind of a silly post in general, not sure why I made it lol), I probably shouldn't have quoted your post at all. Regardless, I don't feel that the 'collectively' perceived top character changes frequently in this thread or that users call for nerfs to those characters particularly often, but there are some exceptions.

 

[Vyrnx]

edit: deleted

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Ok.....*sighs* I want to talk about pokemon trainer and their (yes 'they' I don't know why they keep calling ivysaur a 'she' when it can clearly be male or female. Wishful thinking maybe?) Matchups against all characters as a group. With three characters all with their own stats where do you think pokemon trainer fits? The results aren't neccessarily high with pokemon trainer despite supposedly being able to handle any character in any situation.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Between this and a few of his more recent tournaments, Elegant has been improving a lot with lately; the dude straight up massacred Raito in one of their games during Loser's Finals.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[ZephyrZ]

Ok.....*sighs* I want to talk about pokemon trainer and their (yes 'they' I don't know why they keep calling ivysaur a 'she' when it can clearly be male or female. Wishful thinking maybe?) Matchups against all characters as a group. With three characters all with their own stats where do you think pokemon trainer fits? The results aren't neccessarily high with pokemon trainer despite supposedly being able to handle any character in any situation.

Calling Ivysaur a "she" is what you'd call a headcanon. It doesn't really matter if you call Ivy he/she/it, although it's funny to me though that so many people get upset when Ivy is called a she but no one cares when any of the three pokemon is called a "he".

Anyway Pokemon Trainer is a high tier with a fairly good match up spread. I believe they're versatile enough to deal with bad match ups and are thus solo-viable, but I don't think they're truly oppressive in the sense that a top tier would be expected to be. Still though, Wishes and Pandarian have both made big enough names of themselves that I feel pretty confident about PT's overall viability.

 

[Lacrimosa]

The_Bookworm I thought Leaf_FC used ?

Anyway, I noticed something about Ven's playstyle with at the end of each game. This is especially notable versus Larry, i.e. when the opponent is on his level or maybe slightly above: He pretty much abandons all gameplan with her when Larry was on his last stock. There was no reason behind his movements and attacks anymore. Yes, Larry played way more defensive but you can see that this is kinda getting onto Ven. That's also visible when he fights Fow. I wish he can get his nerves together when he's about to beat someone like Larry fairly solidly (was two stocks ahead with Larry sitting on his last stock at nearly/over 100% I think).
Still, fairly good showing of her but he really needs to be more consistent in his play. Then I could imagine that he'll break Top 16 in some future tournament that's more stacked than this.

On the other hand, there is Elegant who always played through his thing and only fell against Raito (that was later bodied by him) and Kameme. Really good showing of what Luigi can do and I think Elegant will push his meta even further. There is "potencial" about this character (maybe he should be top-tier because of this :3).

 

[bc1910]

You will not see a display of how devastating Greninja’s frame trapping is better than this:

https://clips.twitch.tv/NastyVibrantWeaselOSsloth

Greninja’s tech chasing is pretty incredible when the stars align. I think more lab work needs to be done on exactly how reactionary these chases can be. Covering dragdown Uair with a buffered jab works well on some characters to get a guaranteed lock if they don’t tech but it depends on fall speed. Stroder probably didn’t go for it because Mario is too floaty and the jab would hit him in the air, or possible he just wanted more time to raw react to Prodigy’s tech option.

The scary thing is that Greninja doesn’t even need these tech chases to keep up with the damage output of top tiers currently. Optimisation could be a frightening prospect.

Ok.....*sighs* I want to talk about pokemon trainer and their (yes 'they' I don't know why they keep calling ivysaur a 'she' when it can clearly be male or female. Wishful thinking maybe?) Matchups against all characters as a group. With three characters all with their own stats where do you think pokemon trainer fits? The results aren't neccessarily high with pokemon trainer despite supposedly being able to handle any character in any situation.

They have good MUs against most characters, the iffy ones come from characters that the three Pokemon share weaknesses against. They all lose somewhat to heavy zoners (Snake is the exception as specific properties on Ivy’s moves are really good at dealing with him) and they all have pretty bad disadvantage states. Characters who can outbutton all three like Ness, Inkling and maybe Diddy Kong seem troublesome as well.

I think they’re top 15ish overall, a solid high tier, but not one I see as being in contention for top tier.

 

[$.A.F.]

Ok.....*sighs* I want to talk about pokemon trainer and their (yes 'they' I don't know why they keep calling ivysaur a 'she' when it can clearly be male or female. Wishful thinking maybe?) Matchups against all characters as a group. With three characters all with their own stats where do you think pokemon trainer fits? The results aren't neccessarily high with pokemon trainer despite supposedly being able to handle any character in any situation.

What’s your issue with Ivysaur being called she? I’ve seen you take no issue with other Pokémon being called he. Why is this a problem? Personally I think high tier. Squirtle has an amazing combo game, Ivysaur is ridiculously stupid in almost every aspect, and Charizard......recovers. Nerf Ivy buff Zard.

 

[DelugeFGC]

PT has all the factors to be a top tier between the parts (Squirt, Ivy and Zard) but they don't get top tier results in the grand scheme.

I still think they're top tier. Ivysaur and that UAir / DAir is still a thing after all. Ivy's DAir spikes people through the ledge, consistently, without Ivy even being near it. Like what.

 

[NotLiquid]

Pokémon Trainer's big problem that arguably holds them back from top 10 - let alone the top tier - is that for all the blind spots they're supposed to help cover each other on, none of them have a good disadvantage state. Their ledge getup options are all too committal, predictable or gimmicky, and if they're off-stage, their options are extremely limited - Ivy may have the best aerials of the bunch but given that having to employ them off-stage is going to mean a high chance of forcing a Charizard switch to make it back, you recover back on stage still having lost the exchange and ultimately still being in a worse position than you were before.

Ivysaur, at the very least, has decent landing options, but that's about all that sticks out. One of them is a good character, and they make for a faux-"great" one when taken as a unit, but none of them are suitably well-rounded enough - neither on their own or as a unit - and there are at least 10 characters on the roster I can name that are.

 

[Gérard Majax]

Ivysaur, at the very least, has decent landing options, but that's about all that sticks out.

What options are you talking about exactly? Because I've played this matchup a LOT, and studied the character a bit, and I would think the contrary. She is really floaty, nair doesn't cover really well below her (two common points with m2 who also can't land to safe his life, although he has hurtbox issues of his own), and dair is slow and unsafe on hit at most % anyway.
As a greninja, getting ivy in the air usually means "welcome to juggle city", whereas squirtle is harder to hit, has better aerial mobility, and has withdrawal as a mixup. Even zard has a better dair in this situation and can flareblitz to the ledge.

 

[NotLiquid]

What options are you talking about exactly? Because I've played this matchup a LOT, and studied the character a bit, and I would think the contrary. She is really floaty, nair doesn't cover really well below her (two common points with m2 who also can't land to safe his life, although he has hurtbox issues of his own), and dair is slow and unsafe on hit at most % anyway.
As a greninja, getting ivy in the air usually means "welcome to juggle city", whereas squirtle is harder to hit, has better aerial mobility, and has withdrawal as a mixup. Even zard has a better dair in this situation and can flareblitz to the ledge.

Actual mistake on my end - I meant to say Squirtle. Started that sentence about something different and lost my train of thought. Despite that, I still wouldn't claim it's good, hence me saying just decent. Squirtle's baby range makes almost everything in its toolkit built to contest rather than evade a sort of double-edged sword.

 

[The_Bookworm]

The_Bookworm I thought Leaf_FC used ?

SmashWiki just updated the results list and replaced Leaf_FC's with . I went to bed during the process of this change and didn't know about it until you mentioned it. It appears that Leaf_FC has indeed used Falcon in this tournament.

 

[NuzTheMonkey]

Mega Man won something...... in America!

Can we please talk about Mega Man now? Such an enigma of a character (in terms of what we know about him), and yet I see him in High Tier most of the time. Why is that?

 

[The_Bookworm]

Can we all agree that tether teleport glitches should be patched? Found this random moment in twitter that looks hilariously janky. lmao

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Then again, teleport glitches in general should be addressed. mains have suffered with it for far too long.

Mega Man won something...... in America!

Can we please talk about Mega Man now? Such an enigma of a character (in terms of what we know about him), and yet I see him in High Tier most of the time. Why is that?

Mega Man simply has a very solid overall toolkit that was boosted from his SSB4 iteration. The tourney Kameme won isn't the biggest out there (I would consider it a super regional or a very small major), but his wins (as well as other Mega Man mains such as yeti, Morpheus, ScAtt, etc.) overall brings out the sense that the character is simply solid. He still has his weaknesses holding him back from top tier (especially after the Leaf Shield nerfs from patches), but he has been labeled as a high tier since the beginning.

Mega Man isn't really that much of an enigma of a character anymore. He was an enigma prior to Kameme's performance at EVO 2016 in SSB4, but since then we learned so much more about the character now that we know that he is a threat if in the right hands. In Ultimate, Mega Man mains are simply picking up where they left off but with greater consistency thanks to the character getting buffed from SSB4.

 

[NotLiquid]

Mega Man won something...... in America!

Can we please talk about Mega Man now? Such an enigma of a character (in terms of what we know about him), and yet I see him in High Tier most of the time. Why is that?

I'd say yeti's 2nd place performance at Combo Breaker was more significant than TKTGTM if we're trying to make a case for Mega Man's American results. Most of the top 8 in this tourney was against Japanese players whom he has experience with, and he didn't win going purely solo Mega Man. I don't think this win really says anything about the character that hasn't been said - at least more than Kameme's win at Umebura Japan Major did, which is still his most significant placing; America or not.

That said, he's really good. Nothing about him has been an enigma for the better years now; he excels at mid-range play, and in a game where at least half of the top tiers are susceptible to getting janked by mid-range walling out, he's going to be a really solid character.

 

[DelugeFGC]

What are everyone's thoughts on now after the last few patches? I think with a lot of the top tier nerfs, he's definitely a solid top-tier candidate now as he still held onto all of his good through it all.. though he didn't get anything more either. Wario has really good bread and butter options, if you can master the execution & timing on his combos (such as his fastfall UAir combos) as well as be decent at reading / following DI.. you'll often get rewards of 50% or so out of things such as NAir at 0-20% and from 20-60% you still get insane rewards if you just land the ending hit of NAir.

He has setups into grabs, guaranteed UAir's out of UThrow which becomes devastating setup on platforms.. he can frame trap / tech chase pretty damned good, waft is waft, he has good kill options / setups without waft even being a thing, his recovery is very good, he has pretty good edge guarding & ledge game, he's good OoS, he's pretty heavy while still having a smaller overall hurtbox and good mobility.. the only thing I can say bad is his approach game is a little lacking / predictable, some of what he does gets a little punishable in neutral at times and his overall gameplan doesn't seem to have tons of room for further optimization. That said, he's still extremely solid and with all he has and with what other characters have lost.. I don't see how he couldn't be considered Top Tier now.

 

[Lavani]

Ok.....*sighs* I want to talk about pokemon trainer and their (yes 'they' I don't know why they keep calling ivysaur a 'she' when it can clearly be male or female. Wishful thinking maybe?) Matchups against all characters as a group. With three characters all with their own stats where do you think pokemon trainer fits? The results aren't neccessarily high with pokemon trainer despite supposedly being able to handle any character in any situation.

Ivysaur can either have a masculine or feminine voice depending on the language you're playing the game in. English is more notably masculine, but the floral design probably biases people's perceptions toward feminine regardless. So both pronouns are valid, and as people do with Corrin/Robin they're likely to refer to the version they either play with or prefer.

As for the overall character, I don't have too much of an impression on them currently (will go on the record as seeing them as a potential #1 early on, but as time passed I started losing faith in the "3 mons = answer to any matchup" mindset and also started watching the character less), but I've been hearing more recently that disadvantage can be a problem for all three mons (I still think frame 1 intangibility on switch is really good, but stalling in air against less committal attacks and forcing yourself to a less-than-ideal next mon might not be, and it doesn't have the same sort of value at the ledge etc.), and I feel like sword characters and midrange zoners like Mega Man in particular tend to both stuff Ivy's gameplan and make things complicated for the other two.

That also said, OrionStats currently places the character at #12 based on results, which is a good deal higher than I currently see them, so maybe I'm selling them short.

 

[|RK|]

There are so many factors that go into character results, that I always have to take conversations based on that with a grain of salt.

Isabelle, for example, should not go up for being in a top 8, just because she took one game against a Luigi.

Character MUs, player MUs, and so much more come into play. So I always have to take "results-based" tier lists with mountains of salt.

 

[ARISTOS]

Yeah you should never just take data as is without trying to understand the confounding variables that are involved in the data (social scientists can spend years looking at this stuff!!!).

In any given tournament, you have to look at:

• who was there
• who wasn't,
• possible random upsets
• possible good/bad bracket luck
• possible good/bad days in the office
• how the three above affected other results
• character popularity/unpopularity
• etc etc you can keep doing this for awhile

The answer to this is to try and filter it out as much as possible by factoring it into your model as well as getting a large enough and diverse sample size that any bias attested to one or two players begins to be cleared out. That's why focusing on top 8s singularly is such a bad idea, because it's mostly dominated by the same players and whomever they choose to play. Top 32, top 64 IMO serves as a better gauge depending on the pool of players (which is why I like Das Koopa 's work so much!)

It doesn't make results bad to use though. If your favored high tier character is both a. popular and b. not doing well, you should probably reevaluate your stance lmao.

What I mean in a nutshell:

 

[G. Stache]

Very happy to see Elegant do well with Luigi again, he’s been working really hard with a character that isn’t super great in this game and it’s moments like this where you can really see that kind of hard work pay off. For all that he lost, an optimized Luigi is still one of the scariest characters to get combo’d by just because how easy it is for his moves to link into each other and then into some kind of strong combo finisher such as Bair, Cyclone or even Up B as we saw in the clip against Raito’s Duck Hunt. Very impressed with his placement this past tournament and I really hope that this is a permanent step forward for him. He’s been grinding his Luigi super hard and he’s such a fun player to watch when he’s feeling it. I just want to see his dedication to the character pay off for him

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

That's why focusing on top 8s singularly is such a bad idea, because it's mostly dominated by the same players and whomever they choose to play. Top 32, top 64 IMO serves as a better gauge depending on the pool of players.

I am so glad you said this. Something I get annoyed at is the emphasis on top 8 alone. "Oh you got 33rd at a 1600 player tournament? That's it?" Like what? How is that not impressive? That's better than 98% of the players there.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

I am so glad you said this. Something I get annoyed at is the emphasis on top 8 alone. "Oh you got 33rd at a 1600 player tournament? That's it?" Like what? How is that not impressive? That's better than 98% of the players there.

If its a 1600 tournament held at say a convention, there's probably only 50 actual professional players there: basically the normal local scene but now the numbers are heavily inflated.

Generally speaking, top 8/32 are safe cut offs for what's worth looking at. It takes something like EVO before top 64 is really worth looking at regardless of the attendance count. Need assured quality before going to 64.

 

[Lacrimosa]

I am so glad you said this. Something I get annoyed at is the emphasis on top 8 alone. "Oh you got 33rd at a 1600 player tournament? That's it?" Like what? How is that not impressive? That's better than 98% of the players there.

Yeah, especially when this happens with characters that are considered low-tier or mid-tiers, like Bowser, Zelda or Luigi.
Yes, I'm biased to some extend with at least one of the mentioned characters but if you constantly have one or more players doing work with such a character then I wonder if they shouldn't be considered high-tier or at least higher mid-tier. Of course you will still have people that are wary of a character (G&W is a really good example for this, but also Bowser, Samus and Zelda). The excuse is that only one player is pushing the character and therefore this character must be carried by the playe: "No way this character is that good because top player XYZ had this character low in their tier-list". If you have one person pushing the meta: Ok, maybe you're right. But if there are multiple persons placing well then this argument is to some degree iffy:
Samus/D.Samus with quiK and YB
Zelda with Ven and Mystearica
Luigi with Elegant and Mr. ConCon (although ConCon isn't doing all that well currently)
Bowser with LeoN, Mr. Bones and probably some more (Bowser has a lot of great results)
G&W with Maister (and maybe Kofi?)

I agree it's still early meta and things may change but for now I don't see any of these mentioned characters below at least mid-tier.

Nidtendofreak Not really. Locals have in general 2 to 5 top players that can compete that high up. Vegas has 2 with Fow (who doesn't travel :<) and Ven, Maryland has Dexter, Seagull, ZD and probably one I'm forgetting. At a 1600 stacked tournament, the best in a pool will run into the 2nd of a pool (usually) and that's already where upsets will happen. Saying that S-tier tournaments are only bloated locals is an understatement because multiple top-players from different locals are fighting things out and that amount may be even more than 64 players.

 

[blackghost]

Yeah you should never just take data as is without trying to understand the confounding variables that are involved in the data (social scientists can spend years looking at this stuff!!!).

In any given tournament, you have to look at:

• who was there
• who wasn't,
• possible random upsets
• possible good/bad bracket luck
• possible good/bad days in the office
• how the three above affected other results
• character popularity/unpopularity
• etc etc you can keep doing this for awhile

Any of those stick out to you?
for me i like to look at bracket luck to see if some of the characters that float around high mid tier and low high tier got a series of good matchups to get their results. it often gets overlooked.
asmfor random upsets, if you didnt'/dont watch the actual matches its hard to tell what happened. often in ultimate, the match set could be 2-0 or 3-0 and the matches all come down to 1 stock apiece.

 

[ProfessorVincent]

If its a 1600 tournament held at say a convention, there's probably only 50 actual professional players there: basically the normal local scene but now the numbers are heavily inflated.

Generally speaking, top 8/32 are safe cut offs for what's worth looking at. It takes something like EVO before top 64 is really worth looking at regardless of the attendance count. Need assured quality before going to 64.

This is a good rule of thumb, but it should be pointed out that it is only actually true in a world with perfect seeding and zero upsets. In practice, there are plenty of sets worth looking at even in pools. If you have two great players who are caught up with the meta development of their respective characters, I'd say their match is worth paying attention to, whenever it take place.