Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Minordeth]

Falco up B apparently has more offensive, albeit somewhat situational, uses for lots of damage. If only it has actual recovering abilities...

I mean, this is cool, and makes Fire Bird seem not quite as much of a straight downgrade but, like, great?

I’ll take this opportunity to look at Falco in the current meta.

Please note: reading just the bold reveals powerful hidden messages.

The bird is a collection of paradoxes for a new player:

- You have some of the highest damage output in the game via flashy combo vortexes, but in order to access it, you have to deal with an awkward neutral that relies on patience and playing lame.

- You have one of the most accessible kill confirms in a game lacking them across the cast, but if you miss the window your risk of Marthritis increases 300%.

- You have a frame 1 reflector that can act as a long range hitbox, and a transcendent projectile, but you have no solid pokes on shield other than an Ftilt that leads to almost nothing besides your opponents annoyance.

- You are a bird, but you apparently only learned how to effectively fly vertically.

- Your worst match up is a traditional prey item (a rat) that you literally eat for lunch, IRL.

- Your Japanese VA is among the best in the game, and yet you have to change the entire system language in order to access it.

- You have very fast and powerful OoS options, and they either don’t work when ascending (Nair) or don’t hit almost any character shorter than you (Usmash).

- You can murder almost every character off stage with ease, but your Up-B recovery is almost a meme.

- You struggle less with top tier match-ups and more with maintaining patience while trying to counter-camp and bait your opponent.

To summarize: It’s not a surprise Falco isn’t picked up more frequently.

 

[Guido65]

Could you go into detail on why you think incineroars overrated? Seeing as a lot of top players think rather poorly of him I don't see it at all unless I'm missing something.

 

[ZephyrZ]

Bowser's up special is a really bad recovery against disjoints and the main reason he isn't constantly dying earlier because of it is because he's so heavy it's hard to force him to recover from far out. It moves slowly and has little in the ways of mix ups, which makes it super easy for a character like Lucina or Peach (with her turnips) to go challenge. If he's forced far out enough edgeguarding is basically free for some characters.

Outside of recovering though I don't really see swordies being a huge issue for Bowser (or most superheavies in general). Between his massive hitboxes and Fire Breath, the guy isn't exactly lacking in range. He's got a good shield grab range too, as well as a frame 6 OoS option if he manages to break their space. Sure they bully him in disadvantage but he bullies them in disadvantage as well.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Could you go into detail on why you think incineroars overrated? Seeing as a lot of top players think rather poorly of him I don't see it at all unless I'm missing something.

He's slow. Way, way, way too slow. He's a grab based character who can't really chase people. His recovery is also below average and he doesn't really have the range of the other heavies like Bowser. He can always clutch out a game with revenge, f-smash, or side-b but it's kind of hard when you can't really catch people very much. He's a high low tier IMO. His frame data and kill power save him from being lower.

 

[DelugeFGC]

You can say what you want about Incineroar, but I really fail to see how his recovery is so terrible. Also not every grab based character needs to rush everyone down like they're Sm4sh Falcon.

Please explain why you think a recovery that has the horizontal gain of BZ > Stage bundled in with an Up-B that's difficult to contest and can kill you if you don't respect it is 'below average'. I could kind of see the arguments against his recovery pre-patch, but not now. I genuinely feel most of the people saying his recovery is bad flat out do not know how to recover with him. If he gets semi-spiked off at a low angle it can be difficult, yes, but Incineroar is by NO means unique in this problem.. and other characters with this issue don't get their recovery ragged on nearly as hard. BOTH aspects of his recovery (Side and Up B) are aspects that can and WILL kill you if you don't respect them during an edge guard, and moves like NAir have the frame data to be thrown out defensively without dooming his recovery timing.. his DAD also isn't horrible. Top tier recovery? Hell no, but it's not the mediocre thing it's made out to be either.

Incineroar has tools that can discourage camping, he doesn't even need to approach when he can play the bait game (something he is far better at than other superheavies due in large part to again, his frame data and certain options) in a lot of MU's. His low speed is actually bolstered by his frame data, and with tools such as down and side special a lot of his speed issues are negated to a point.

I can understand the character is flawed and not a serious tournament threat, but a lot of the arguments against him seem to be coming from people who don't have much experience actually using the character and it bleeds through in their reasoning. He has some pretty bad MU's, but the rest of the time this character has a ton going for him and putting him down in low tier with the likes of Little Mac is just memeulous to me.

Then again, this is a character with fairly low representation that was chucked into the trash bin by many in the period shortly after the game released when people were quick to assume things. So all said, maybe it really isn't the surprising he's thought so low of. I don't see how you could call him overrated, though, as I'm one of the only defenders of the WWE Cat around these parts and he's not super well represented / ranked high on most tier lists.

 

[Rizen]

This brings up the question: who has an "average" recovery? ?

 

[Ziodyne 21]

This brings up the question: who has an "average" recovery? ?

Id say Mario is actullay considered "good" . He has great airspeed, can stall/mixup a bit with tools like cape and FLUDD and his actual Up-B travels a fair distance and has a big ol' disjointed hitbox that makes it almost impossible to challenge while active.

Recoveries cannot be judged in a vacum. Since you also have to look at the characters other offstage attriubes . Its somewhat easy to judge if a character is "good" or "bad" or recovering taking all that in. An "average recovery" is a bit harder to pinpoint

I mean Chrom's recovery technically very bad. But the fact he is really opressive in the air in all other areas makes it workable for him

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Overrated:
- I get some strong vibes on how strong the divide this dude's viability is and yeah I'm picking the "Just High Tier" side.

With Arsene. Best in the game.

On his own. Pretty decent but nothing huge.

His meta seems very focused on keeping his persona and obviously top players utilizes his abilities to the highest power.
But there's many methods of dealing with Arsene that we simply haven't seen or even have a chance to develop on how to beat him.

So he might be top tier later on if the counterplay doesn't affect him.
But as of now, people are pushing him up too early.


- IMO, he's just another case of good players showing off his potential early on.

Yeah I acknowledge the death combos killing you at 50% with WAFT.

But without 'em, Wario's killing ability is kind of eh...

He doesn't really have many safe and/or consistent kill options below 120%.

Plus he still has the issue of mediocre range which always handicaps him with disjoints and the biker timer nerf kept his stalling and disadvantage in check, so running away and camping for WAFT is less helpful nor common.

Solid High Tier, but still below . (Sorry Wario)


I'll get to underrated another time.

 

[DelugeFGC]

If we're still on this..

Underrated:

: This character isn't easy, this isn't a character anybody with 'decent fundamentals' can go pick up and immediately see mileage with. The Captain is demanding of his player. He demands you have intricate knowledge of multiple MU's, he demands you know his strict (But DEADLY) punish game, he demands you have the execution and timing for his combos / confirms (of which he has NO shortage of) on lock.. he demands spacing, patience and many other things. He's not 100% perfect yet, as Fatality mentioned in a recent video there's still some stuff about his initial dash / turnaround limiting his mobility.. but how some people still shove this character down in mid tier is truly beyond me. This character can basically 0-death you all 3 stocks in a match if he has the right momentum and reads you correctly. This is a character who consistently gets high percentage rewards off of landing his more desirable moves. Raptor Boost is an extremely useful tool in neutral now, it's wonderful for contesting other moves / armoring through and it starts combos and such of its own.. I mean ffs you can sometimes get a true knee out of it at low %'s. Falcon isn't an 'easy' character, thus he's not well represented (Fatality and Nick C are the only two bigger Falcon players who come to mind who show any real skill with him in Ult) and he isn't easy to pick up.. so I DO see why people think he's overrated. I still think they're very wrong, though. He also basically has an aerial smash attack (Knee) that is actually pretty decent to land now, and can even be used as a reliable punish sometimes, ffs.

: This one is beyond me. I mean yes he isn't Sm4sh Cloud, but the amount of people shoving this character down into low/mid tier tells me most people truly just don't pay attention to characters who aren't obvious top tier contenders a lot of times. Cloud actually has combo game that can put out 30-50% at lower percentages if you know how to follow up, and he's not totally lacking in kill confirms either. His recovery isn't great, until he has limit, and then it's amazing.. but he can suicide you with it, has a wall jump and overall isn't as shafted as some other characters in this department. With Limit his mobility buffs can be used in some pretty interesting ways that not many players seem to be interested in going for, even if it only lasts for 15 seconds. I think if Cloud's NAir was made slightly larger and his Limit was pushed to 30 sec over 15, there wouldn't be anyone ignoring this character. What other swordie has a tool comparable to his BAir? His FAir while slow, has a disjoint on it the size of Texas and can start combos / confirm into things such as Limit Side B. Grounded Finishing Touch can kill disgustingly early. Blade beam is by NO means the worst projectile out there.. and it's on a swordie to boot. Falling UAir, while harder to pull off, is absolutely still a thing.. and his FSmash is one of the best in the game so if you get a read near the edge with it at mid percents or higher that stock is just deleted from the other player. Otherwise, the low startup on his USmash makes it a very useful tool for catching landings / antiairs and his DSmash is a wonderful parry punish a lot of the time. FTilt, LOL FTilt. DTilt crosses up shields sometimes and is a wonderful low profile move with many uses. UTilt is good for obvious reasons and his jab is a wonderful mixup. Cloud isn't perfect, but how so many shove him into low / mid tier is just.. lunacy to me.

 

[Y2Kay]

Incineroar's recovery is most definitely bad. His air speed is poor, Alolan Whip is not that hard to stuff (it's not active till frame 18), and the hit boxes of Cross Chop are not disjointed at all, so it's not that hard to challenge if you have some sort of disjoint yourself. Cross Chop on stage is abysmally unsafe on whiff and block so he's almost always forced to go low or Alolan Whip to the ledge.

The more important thing to understand is how strong his disadvantage is outside of recovering. Neutral Air comes out fast and is active as hell. Darkest Lariat is intangible starting on frame 5, and Cross Chop is invincible on frame 4. Revenge is a very high reward counter as well. All these respectable options in disadvantage keeps him from getting snowballed on in comparison to, say, Bowser or Donkey Kong.

While Incineroar is bad in the grand scheme, he defintely definitely demands attention, respect, and counterplay. He also completely explodes auto piloting players. Would like to seem more low tiers like him tbh.

 

[DunnoBro]

Id say Mario is actullay considered "good" . He has great airspeed, can stall/mixup a bit with tools like cape and FLUDD and his actual Up-B travels a fair distance and has a big ol' disjointed hitbox that makes it almost impossible to challenge while active.

Recoveries cannot be judged in a vacum. Since you also have to look at the characters other offstage attriubes . Its somewhat easy to judge if a character is "good" or "bad" or recovering taking all that in. An "average recovery" is a bit harder to pinpoint

I mean Chrom's recovery technically very bad. But the fact he is really opressive in the air in all other areas makes it workable for him

FLUDD isn't a real mix-up. The 'boost' it gives is an illusion. It just kills mario's momentum totally at first, and then gives it back on release plus a little extra if fully charged, but the end result is actually less distance than if he just drifted in normally. The endlag is also horrible, and usually requires caping away first.

Mario's recovery is definitely 'average' in this game imo.

Air speed, cape, fireballs, and high priority upspecial give him a lot of options and mix-ups to the point you can't just throw him off and get an edgeguard unless you can just cover all those options (Any large arcing fair) but he does have poor enough range that catching him without his jump, or just at a bad enough angle he'll die. Even weak 2-frames can kill him due to how reliant he is on his jump to sweetspot unlike in smash 4 where he effectively had an extra half mario's height worth of distance both vertically and horizontally.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Would you still say Ken's better than Ryu?

Finally responding to this.

There are only about 5 or so matches I think is the better pick. That is Ganondorf, Bowser, Megaman, Snake, and maaaybe Ness. Might be some others, but those are the main ones off the top of my head.

But on the flip side, any character with a reflector and Ryu is instantly worse vs that character compared to Ken. The vs match is...well, a joke.

Overall yes I think Ken is stronger as he can put you in very scary scramble situations where you have to choose an option and if you choose wrong you either take even way more damage or you die. And if you choose right then Ken is not in danger, unless he overextended. Which he really does not need to do. Ryu does not really do that. He is more about slowing the game down and frustrating you.

has been shown even in his small showings that there are certain actions he will punish you hard for. Such as trying to jump past him when he has you cornered. Normally this is a fairly safe option, but Ken can just reactively Shoryu and end a stock. This means you are forced to engage him where even though he is outranged often times, risk vs reward favors him heavily. It only takes a simple dash back, dash back in for him to get huge damage off a simple sh Nair or U-tilt.

Ken is not the only "Vortex" type character. Sheik, Fox, Greninja and Joker all do this stuff too. But their vortexes are much more based on Uair into option coverage. Ken's vortex is based on his Crescent Kick and light tatsu causing tech chase and low to the ground air trap scenarios which is different from what we usually see.

I do not think Ken is S tier. Ken cannot just run off stage and go ham. He has an ACTUAL disadvantage state. He has no unga "press this to win neutral" option. Let's keep it real, most top tiers in this game are not galaxy brain at all. They are just completely and utterly abusive. I do not get that vibe from Ken. He is simply rewarded well for doing what he does.

Also I think Trela just won a huge local in texas with him. 82 entrants? So yeah, it seems Trela and Locus are slowly getting their groove back.

 

[ElectricBlade]

Frankly, watching Locus and Trela play Ken makes me want to pick up the character. The way they move around and poke, anti air, whiff punish, etc. just all looks incredibly fun to play as. I admittedly don't have much knowledge on them but I'm currently looking for a character that is exceptionally good at whiff punishing and anti airing and this one seems it chief (They also have micro spacing movement options which is my biggest gripe with this game, I want to accurately move around threat ranges and I just can't do that and it's causing a lot of moves to be annoying as hell to deal with, with Ken it seems like if I practice hard enough I can out maneuver and absolutely maul someone for any whiff or jump).

I'm not going to overhype them but damn do they seem good, not broken and inhabiting unga bunga buttons but I'll definitely give them a try.

 

[DavemanCozy]

Trela just won a huge local in texas with him. 82 entrants? So yeah, it seems Trela and Locus are slowly getting their groove back.

That is great to hear that the buffs were not just overhype.

On another topic; I think Joker's S tier, but recently I've heard complaints, mostly from spectators and low level players, saying MKLeo is carried by him (I won't link, but it's easy to find these posts in Twitter). Which is beyond silly to me lol, and I just want to get this out there:

Reminder he was doing well with Ike before. Of course picking a better character and getting good with said character is bound to make his results better, but it's unfair to Leo's skill to say he's carried by Joker.

 

[Kiligar]

Does anyone remember Melee players complaining about Smash Ultimate not having enough ‘technical depth’? I believe that claim is false. While sure, the classic smash mechanics are nothing new, there are a few new techniques such as Pivot Cancel and Attack Cancel. Regardless, the real place where the game’s depth comes in is the characters. Some characters are simple, such as Lucina and Ike, but there are a variety of characters with plenty of technical depth. At the base level you have the Links, with BOTW link in particular able to continually interest a technical player.

Further up in technical skill you have Duck Hunt and Peach. There are plenty of precise shenanigans one can pull off with these characters. With Peach being a powerful character in the meta.

Finally, you have the peak of technical skill with four characters: Ryu, Ken, Ice Climbers and Rosalina and Luma. All four of these characters have been getting better since release, with Ice Climbers’ primary improvement in tech. The Shotos are looking really good right now after their buffs. Rosalina and Luma arguably have the highest skill ceiling in the game between the most optimal Attack Cancel options, Lunar Landing, Luma Desyncs and Rosalina/Luma team combos. So as far as technical skill goes, there are low skill options for simple players, and high skill options for technical players. (Wish the low skill options weren’t so good sometimes).

 

[blackghost]

ignore this

 

[|RK|]

Does anyone remember Melee players complaining about Smash Ultimate not having enough ‘technical depth’? I believe that claim is false. While sure, the classic smash mechanics are nothing new, there are a few new techniques such as Pivot Cancel and Attack Cancel. Regardless, the real place where the game’s depth comes in is the characters. Some characters are simple, such as Lucina and Ike, but there are a variety of characters with plenty of technical depth. At the base level you have the Links, with BOTW link in particular able to continually interest a technical player.

Further up in technical skill you have Duck Hunt and Peach. There are plenty of precise shenanigans one can pull off with these characters. With Peach being a powerful character in the meta.

Finally, you have the peak of technical skill with four characters: Ryu, Ken, Ice Climbers and Rosalina and Luma. All four of these characters have been getting better since release, with Ice Climbers’ primary improvement in tech. The Shotos are looking really good right now after their buffs. Rosalina and Luma arguably have the highest skill ceiling in the game between the most optimal Attack Cancel options, Lunar Landing, Luma Desyncs and Rosalina/Luma team combos. So as far as technical skill goes, there are low skill options for simple players, and high skill options for technical players. (Wish the low skill options weren’t so good sometimes).

Eh, to be fair, it's Melee. You have to have some level of tech skill just to play, much of the time. And that tech skill is universal, on top of character-specific stuff.

Ultimate really doesn't compare in that regard.

 

[Tri Knight]

Does anyone remember Melee players complaining about Smash Ultimate not having enough ‘technical depth’? I believe that claim is false. While sure, the classic smash mechanics are nothing new, there are a few new techniques such as Pivot Cancel and Attack Cancel. Regardless, the real place where the game’s depth comes in is the characters. Some characters are simple, such as Lucina and Ike, but there are a variety of characters with plenty of technical depth. At the base level you have the Links, with BOTW link in particular able to continually interest a technical player.

Further up in technical skill you have Duck Hunt and Peach. There are plenty of precise shenanigans one can pull off with these characters. With Peach being a powerful character in the meta.

Finally, you have the peak of technical skill with four characters: Ryu, Ken, Ice Climbers and Rosalina and Luma. All four of these characters have been getting better since release, with Ice Climbers’ primary improvement in tech. The Shotos are looking really good right now after their buffs. Rosalina and Luma arguably have the highest skill ceiling in the game between the most optimal Attack Cancel options, Lunar Landing, Luma Desyncs and Rosalina/Luma team combos. So as far as technical skill goes, there are low skill options for simple players, and high skill options for technical players. (Wish the low skill options weren’t so good sometimes).

In fact, the reason I prefer Adult Link over the other Links is because of that extra layer of technicality with bomb stuff and even some of the little gimmicks he's got. Hated them at first but now I love it. It adds to the fun of using him. That feeling when you trick someone by using boomerang to bounce the bomb to catch their hop to blow them offstage or KO is the best. Not saying it happens every time but it's awesome when stuff like that happens. I dont think you have to be a genius to use Link effectively but utilizing his bombs in that way is a lot harder than using Young or Toon Link's bombs to get a F-air combo. Theres other technical aspects to the Links of course, but I'm rambling.

But it's also that extra layer that can push players towards the other Links, or just in general, even less technical, more straightforward characters who just perform in a more consistent manner. I think there's always sweet spots in how hard a character is to use vs how effective they can be. That doesnt mean the easiest character to use in the game needs to suck of course, but it may also mean that the ceiling isnt as high.

 

[Sean²]

Does anyone remember Melee players complaining about Smash Ultimate not having enough ‘technical depth’? I believe that claim is false. While sure, the classic smash mechanics are nothing new, there are a few new techniques such as Pivot Cancel and Attack Cancel. Regardless, the real place where the game’s depth comes in is the characters. Some characters are simple, such as Lucina and Ike, but there are a variety of characters with plenty of technical depth. At the base level you have the Links, with BOTW link in particular able to continually interest a technical player.

Further up in technical skill you have Duck Hunt and Peach. There are plenty of precise shenanigans one can pull off with these characters. With Peach being a powerful character in the meta.

Finally, you have the peak of technical skill with four characters: Ryu, Ken, Ice Climbers and Rosalina and Luma. All four of these characters have been getting better since release, with Ice Climbers’ primary improvement in tech. The Shotos are looking really good right now after their buffs. Rosalina and Luma arguably have the highest skill ceiling in the game between the most optimal Attack Cancel options, Lunar Landing, Luma Desyncs and Rosalina/Luma team combos. So as far as technical skill goes, there are low skill options for simple players, and high skill options for technical players. (Wish the low skill options weren’t so good sometimes).

I've heard someone else put it pretty eloquently in the past - Optimally playing Melee without learning the tech is a ton harder than just learning the tech and implementing it. You have wild stories of players like Borp from Pittsburgh, and Masashi, who don't really use any tech skill, but what they do is very difficult and can become predictable and exploitable by someone who can adapt to unfamiliar playstyles quickly. The balance between tech skill and fundamentals is fairly balanced in Melee - because there is universal, necessary tech that the entire roster can utilize to a certain degree in addition to the character specific tech.

You can still get away with utilizing a lot less tech in Ultimate, and your growth as a player won't be quite as stunted, because the balance between tech and fundamentals still tilts heavily in favor of fundamentals. There's character specific tech, and some universal tech, but said universal tech isn't super amazing for the entire roster, so you don't really need to learn all of it if you don't play certain characters.

'Technical depth' stacks onto other areas of depth, too. If you have two evenly skilled players who are both very good with using the game's universal tech, you have to be mentally prepared for how to react in an exponentially higher number of situations than you do without said tech. This adds depth in the mental game. Ultimate has a lot of stuff that covers everything with one button press, so you have to be prepared to react in maybe one to three situations instead of twenty. I'm willing to argue that whichever Melee players have said that are ones that would likely prefer more universal and movement tech. Because - why learn the most technical character in the game if they aren't even close to being potentially better than some of the simplest characters?

 

[Kiligar]

Mew2King released another joke tier list. Why do I say joke? He provides basically no reason for plopping Pit, Mewtwo, Meta Knight, Sheik, Rosalina, CLOUD, and Donkey Kong as low tier. Their explanations are 15-30 seconds. His last tier list was awful, this one is even worse. Just because of his fame in the past doesn’t give him knowledge of Smash Ultimate.

 

[Sean²]

He focuses too much on results/lack thereof. His Cloud placements have always been biased, probably because it was his Smash 4 main and all the original Cloud mains have moved onto greener pastures. I won't lie, he's not super far off with the others you mentioned though. A lot of them got buffs, but their biggest problems are still mostly unresolved. I'd be willing to bet he still knows more about the game than a majority of the people who post in this thread.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Tier-lists are always opinions. M2K just thinks that results matter over everything and honestly: He isn't that wrong because a tier-list should be two-sided: Results + opinion. Maybe he puts his focus too much on the result part, that's true.
I could also flame against Armada's tierlist (Zelda two-tiers below chars that have way less results than her) but that's also his opinion in the end. However, if someone hasn't much to say about a character then you put this char into the "I don't know category". I think it's fairly detrimental when you then place a character you don't know at an E-tier. It would be much more accurate to leave the character unranked. That way no wrong bias is formed amongst the community but it also shows you as the tier-list maker what characters are still flying under your radar.

Don't know why everyone has to rank every character in their tier-lists this early on. As much as Leffen's tier-list was hated, I think he did that fairly well: He wasn't afraid to leave characters unranked but the way he did it was a bit iffy. But that's still better than spreading misinformation.

 

[KirbySquad101]

To be honest, I don't find many of M2K's placements to be that puzzling (except Cloud, but that's not really anything new), but I'd say his list is the worst just based on explanations on well. When he put in high tier, it's like he didn't even know why he did and was just like "Maister is pretty cool, I guess lol". He didn't even give an explanation for's high tier placement, he just started listed buffs Marth needs, which... if you're a high tier, you really shouldn't need buffs.


On side note... did 's Master Sword get longer in between games? The SmashWiki states that he just leads in further for many of his attacks, which is why his range is better, but when I was checking the animation comparison video for Link, his sword looks about 15~20% longer than before, while also looking a little thinner. Maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me, which is why I wanted to check to be sure or not.

EDIT: Here's a screenshot I took for anyone who might not understand what I'm getting at:

 

[Rizen]

On side note... did 's Master Sword get longer in between games? The SmashWiki states that he just leads in further for many of his attacks, which is his range looks better, but when I was checking the animation comparison video for Link, his sword looks about 15~20% longer than before, while also looking a little thinner. Maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me, which is why I wanted to check to be sure or not.

It's definitely longer, about comparable to Ike's sword but at the cost of worse frame data.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Instead of discussing tier lists made for views and twitch subscribers, the Orion Rank Top 100 is out. No real surprises imo from what we have seen so far in the game.

https://intheloop837.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/orionrank-ultimate-six-months-in-top-100/

 

[Lacrimosa]

I don't quite get this. How can someone like Ven or Nicko be so low when they are constantly breaking Top 32 or even better (Prime Saga is even a super-major here) and someone like Fatality that high in comparison? I mean, there are a lot of top-players but some placements seem odd and I really don't want to downplay Fatality (hell, no) but aren't the two I mentioned outranking him pretty much everytime? Just interested in the math behind this.

 

[Rizen]

Instead of discussing tier lists made for views and twitch subscribers, the Orion Rank Top 100 is out. No real surprises imo from what we have seen so far in the game.

https://intheloop837.wordpress.com/2019/06/25/orionrank-ultimate-six-months-in-top-100/

Not a single and the only is Tweek's secondary (although I know Strike #88 has him as a secondary that's not listed). Talk about underrepresented.

edit
It bugs me that Strike's YL isn't listed. You can clearly see him:

 

[Lacrimosa]

Not a single and the only is Tweek's secondary (although I know Strike #88 has him as a secondary that's not listed). Talk about underrepresented.

There is still T. But how often doe he go to tournaments considering he got ouranked by Ri-Ma by a good margin.

 

[Iridium]

To be honest, I don't find many of M2K's placements to be that puzzling (except Cloud, but that's not really anything new), but I'd say his list is the worst just based on explanations on well. When he put in high tier, it's like he didn't even know why he did and was just like "Maister is pretty cool, I guess lol". He didn't even give an explanation for's high tier placement, he just started listed buffs Marth needs, which... if you're a high tier, you really shouldn't need buffs.


On side note... did 's Master Sword get longer in between games? The SmashWiki states that he just leads in further for many of his attacks, which is why his range is better, but when I was checking the animation comparison video for Link, his sword looks about 15~20% longer than before, while also looking a little thinner. Maybe it's just my mind playing tricks on me, which is why I wanted to check to be sure or not.

EDIT: Here's a screenshot I took for anyone who might not understand what I'm getting at:

Yes, the sword is a bit longer. The leaning further thing seems like a placebo.

There is still T. But how often doe he go to tournaments considering he got ouranked by Ri-Ma by a good margin.

Honestly, his attendance even at Japan's larger tourneys is relatively low compared to the others. Excluding the usual weeklies, he's only been to 2 Umeburas and 2 Sumabatos, although the latest Sumabato doesn't count for this. A lot of the other Japanese players have more results to go off of. Prime Saga would back him up more.

His list of significant wins is also not the longest, like what you would expect for Tea or Zackray. I can't name many wins he got on anybody on that top 100 at those 4 events that do count except Marss at Prime Saga.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Not a single and the only is Tweek's secondary (although I know Strike #88 has him as a secondary that's not listed). Talk about underrepresented.

Lack of T will do that, I don't follow the JP scene outside of Ness players but I don't recall him being to much at all.

Something interesting I noted was with all the Joker talk recently he's only listed twice as a primary character in the top 50. (To players known for using multiple characters to amazing success) 4 times with top 100 included as primary and 7 times total as a primary or secondary.

Out of 100 players that's a real low usage rate for a character a lot of people claim to be number one.

 

[Lavani]

I don't quite get this. How can someone like Ven or Nicko be so low when they are constantly breaking Top 32 or even better (Prime Saga is even a super-major here) and someone like Fatality that high in comparison? I mean, there are a lot of top-players but some placements seem odd and I really don't want to downplay Fatality (hell, no) but aren't the two I mentioned outranking him pretty much everytime? Just interested in the math behind this.

I'll preface this by saying I don't know how accurate ssbwiki's results listings are for this, but since OrionStats generally only looks at larger tournaments and those are also the tournaments I would expect the wiki to be updated with, it should suffice for these purposes.

Ven's results, with tournaments that aren't large enough to qualify for OrionStats crossed out:

Fatality's, again with smaller tournaments that don't qualify crossed out:

The short of it is that Fatality both frequently attends and places high in (super)majors/regionals, whereas Ven's attendance in said larger tournaments is both far less common and has only breached top 16 once (on a regional level, so worth less points than placing that well at a major still). Nicko's resume is a bit longer than Ven's, but still far shorter than Fatality's.

 

[Rizen]

^Not including smaller tournaments is why I don't completely trust Orion Stats, although I do admit they're the best we have. Sadly smash isn't an exact science with all the popularity and other factors involved. We can only get so much with data.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

^Not including smaller tournaments is why I don't completely trust Orion Stats, although I do admit they're the best we have. Sadly smash isn't an exact science with all the popularity and other factors involved. We can only get so much with data.

Smaller tournaments aren't good for this sort of thing. Generally speaking its the same handful of people in the local area always placing in the top 4 so it skews the data.

Also quite frankly: smaller tournaments are irrelevant. Its the local big fishes beating up on the minnows in the tiny pond + surrounding ponds. They could probably win with half of the characters on the roster. Needs to have big names from a large variety of regions for it to count for a lot. I mean we got locals that regularly go over 100 people nowadays, that doesn't make them useful for data.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Smaller tournaments aren't good for this sort of thing. Generally speaking its the same handful of people in the local area always placing in the top 4 so it skews the data.

Also quite frankly: smaller tournaments are irrelevant. Its the local big fishes beating up on the minnows in the tiny pond + surrounding ponds. They could probably win with half of the characters on the roster. Needs to have big names from a large variety of regions for it to count for a lot. I mean we got locals that regularly go over 100 people nowadays, that doesn't make them useful for data.

The thing that locals do show us are how consistent certain players are. Like, I can fully understand why FOW isn't on this list but is he actually worse than Ven. I guess not but this list makes it look like it. Same goes kinda for Awestin. We all know they are super-good players but rarely go to any big tournament. Like, all the Ness mains didn't attend any bigger tournament or only one or two. Locals are still a thing to look at, especially when the region has more than one top-player (Maryland, Ho3K, Vegas (kinda I guess?)). Should they be taken into account? I think they should but they shouldn't be valued as much as something like MomoCon but reading through their methods they ranked tournaments already.

 

[KirbySquad101]

I was initially surprised by Maister's rather low placing, but thinking about it now, it makes sense; the dude's been doing phenomenal at super-regionals (i.e. Combo Breaker, Ragnarok, Full Bloom), but he hasn't been to a lot of of majors, and the majors he has been to, he hasn't been doing all that stellar in (127th at G6 and 49th at SnS). This might change with CEO, though we'll see for sure.

On the other hand, 2 s in top 100 is good news, especially given how people's opinions of the character have seemingly dropped.

On the other OTHER hand, holy cow, 7 /'s in top 100? And that's not even including Captain Zack's Daisy; I always knew Peach was a popular top tier pick, but yeesh.

 

[Guido65]

Incineroar's recovery is most definitely bad. His air speed is poor, Alolan Whip is not that hard to stuff (it's not active till frame 18), and the hit boxes of Cross Chop are not disjointed at all, so it's not that hard to challenge if you have some sort of disjoint yourself. Cross Chop on stage is abysmally unsafe on whiff and block so he's almost always forced to go low or Alolan Whip to the ledge.

I think and even beat out Bowser in the recovery department for superheavies. His recovery is at least a notch above and is less likely to tragically lose stocks below 100% from an gettinflg edgeguarded or gimped than those 3

I don't really agree on the notion that Incineroar's recovery is bad. As many flaws as it has he has a lot of ways to mix up how he recovers including the ability to go high. Magister vs VoiD I feel demonstrates a good deal of how well his recovery can actually be mixed up.

https://youtu.be/YCie1pjsV1Q

Game 1:

• Before losing Magister had mixed his recovery up a lot by going at different heights. He did get hit a few times off stage but none of them led to him getting killed. In one instance at 0:51 he managed to up b in a way that voids fsmash didn't take his stock. At around 1:05 he gets hit by a weak nair but still wasn't enough to finish it. What ends up taking his first stock? A jolt tech chase into forward tilt at 160%.
• Stock 2 he died off a ledgetrap scenario that led into a thunderspike at around 50%.
• Lost the 3rd stock to a jab lock set up into fsmash.

Game 2:

• Recovered right on the smashville platform and got killed by a up air thunder confirm.
• At 4:09 he gets back thrown from the top platform and went into a edgeguarding situation again. He recovered high from the blastzone and voids bair edgeguard attempt didn't work this time. Side b'd successfully back on stage.
• Was on the ledge and void was trying to down tilt him on get up. He got off the ledge successfully and avoided getting a ledge trap to edgeguard kill.
• Around 4:30 void ftilted him offstage and he tried to ftilt him thinking he's go lower but went overhead and landed behind void. Got shield grabbed into an up throw thunder but revenge saved him.

Game 3:

• 5:53 Void bairs him and he goes offstage. Alolan whip landed successfully this time and he made it back.
• 6:19 VoiD down tilts him and hits him with a fsmash from an airdodge read. Now magister is offstage. Goes for a ftilt 2 frame but doesn't land it. Actually magister landed a successful back body drop from void messing up an edgeguard.
• 6:34 A down tilt back air confirm near the ledge ends magisters first stock at around 150%.
• 7:20. A ftilt from pichu sent magister off stage and sends him offstage. This is the first time void goes offstage and actually kills him for being off stage.

Game 4:

• 9:04. Gets sent offstage but comes back successfully.
• 9:46 Once again a down tilt bair from void puts him offstage but magister is able to go high enough that void wouldn't be able to get him.
• Around 10:00 he's offstage again and recovers low this time. Gets ftilted during ledge getup and died at about 140%.
• 11:02 he tries to recover but ftilt catches him. He got gimped this time but this is the 2nd time he died for being offstage.
• 11:45 void read revenge and killed him with thunders body hitbox on pichu.

Game 5

• 12:47, this time void bairs him offstage and when magister alola whips him he got dair spiked but was up too high to get killed by it.
• Not too far after this void tries to dair magister on the way down from a cross chop. Unsuccessful.
• Shortly after this he got magister offstage again and bair edgeguarded him.
• 13:29 void grabs him and down throw up airs him into thunder for a kill.
• 15:07, once again offstage and he makes it back but void ledge trump bairs him and kills him.

Summary? Most of the time magister either died from a.ledge trapping scenarios b. Hit confirms void got off of a stray hit, or c. An air dodge read. Only in a small handful of instances did he actually die from an edgeguard.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

The thing that locals do show us are how consistent certain players are. Like, I can fully understand why FOW isn't on this list but is he actually worse than Ven. I guess not but this list makes it look like it. Same goes kinda for Awestin. We all know they are super-good players but rarely go to any big tournament. Like, all the Ness mains didn't attend any bigger tournament or only one or two. Locals are still a thing to look at, especially when the region has more than one top-player (Maryland, Ho3K, Vegas (kinda I guess?)). Should they be taken into account? I think they should but they shouldn't be valued as much as something like MomoCon but reading through their methods they ranked tournaments already.

Only problem with that is that you can drown out weaker regions. Tristate locals have players placing outside of top eight that make waves at nationals because their local talent pool is just that good. Thoses results would drown out weaker regoisn where maybe only the top 4 can make waves a nationals.

Definitely don't think they should be completely ignored but I wouldn't included them in data.

 

[Rizen]

Maybe all tournaments over 50 players should count? There's a lot of locals with well over 100 people. They should count a little. It's still character use after all.

 

[Y2Kay]

I don't really agree on the notion that Incineroar's recovery is bad. As many flaws as it has he has a lot of ways to mix up how he recovers including the ability to go high. Magister vs VoiD I feel demonstrates a good deal of how well his recovery can actually be mixed up.

https://youtu.be/YCie1pjsV1Q

Game 1:

• Before losing Magister had mixed his recovery up a lot by going at different heights. He did get hit a few times off stage but none of them led to him getting killed. In one instance at 0:51 he managed to up b in a way that voids fsmash didn't take his stock. At around 1:05 he gets hit by a weak nair but still wasn't enough to finish it. What ends up taking his first stock? A jolt tech chase into forward tilt at 160%.
• Stock 2 he died off a ledgetrap scenario that led into a thunderspike at around 50%.
• Lost the 3rd stock to a jab lock set up into fsmash.

Game 2:

• Recovered right on the smashville platform and got killed by a up air thunder confirm.
• At 4:09 he gets back thrown from the top platform and went into a edgeguarding situation again. He recovered high from the blastzone and voids bair edgeguard attempt didn't work this time. Side b'd successfully back on stage.
• Was on the ledge and void was trying to down tilt him on get up. He got off the ledge successfully and avoided getting a ledge trap to edgeguard kill.
• Around 4:30 void ftilted him offstage and he tried to ftilt him thinking he's go lower but went overhead and landed behind void. Got shield grabbed into an up throw thunder but revenge saved him.

Game 3:

• 5:53 Void bairs him and he goes offstage. Alolan whip landed successfully this time and he made it back.
• 6:19 VoiD down tilts him and hits him with a fsmash from an airdodge read. Now magister is offstage. Goes for a ftilt 2 frame but doesn't land it. Actually magister landed a successful back body drop from void messing up an edgeguard.
• 6:34 A down tilt back air confirm near the ledge ends magisters first stock at around 150%.
• 7:20. A ftilt from pichu sent magister off stage and sends him offstage. This is the first time void goes offstage and actually kills him for being off stage.

Game 4:

• 9:04. Gets sent offstage but comes back successfully.
• 9:46 Once again a down tilt bair from void puts him offstage but magister is able to go high enough that void wouldn't be able to get him.
• Around 10:00 he's offstage again and recovers low this time. Gets ftilted during ledge getup and died at about 140%.
• 11:02 he tries to recover but ftilt catches him. He got gimped this time but this is the 2nd time he died for being offstage.
• 11:45 void read revenge and killed him with thunders body hitbox on pichu.

Game 5

• 12:47, this time void bairs him offstage and when magister alola whips him he got dair spiked but was up too high to get killed by it.
• Not too far after this void tries to dair magister on the way down from a cross chop. Unsuccessful.
• Shortly after this he got magister offstage again and bair edgeguarded him.
• 13:29 void grabs him and down throw up airs him into thunder for a kill.
• 15:07, once again offstage and he makes it back but void ledge trump bairs him and kills him.

Summary? Most of the time magister either died from a.ledge trapping scenarios b. Hit confirms void got off of a stray hit, or c. An air dodge read. Only in a small handful of instances did he actually die from an edgeguard.

I don't think this is the greatest example for a few reasons.

Pichu is the lightest char in the game, and doesn't have the range to really challenge Cross Chop or Alolan Whip safely. Pichu also had one of the easiest 2 framing moves in the game in pre-patch Forward Tilt. Void is not really incentivized to go really deep with edgeguards, especially when he's in the lead.

And just because Incineroar doesn't immediately explode when he's offstage. Even with Falcon's bad recovery, his drift is good enough to manage until his percent gets really high. Incin most of the time will be taken unnecessary damage when hie's attempting to recover.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Our locals gets over 50 players occasionally with 3 dollar brackets and people using secondaries/random occasionally. The pressure isn't there to always do your best because you are just playing with people likely your friends you see each week in a lower stakes, lower stress environment. Buster out one week because you used the random button? No worries you'll have another tournament next week. Weekly tournaments simply are too variable to be used for data for a project like this. You aren't going to sandbag and experiment at a 600 player tournament that you took hours to go to and won't get another chance at till next years

Again it also hurts weaker regions, I can usually top eight my locals but only about four to five of our scenes players can and have made waves at the national level and I am not one of them (yet). Thier exploits would get drowned out by factor of not being Tristate or SoCal.