Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[PK Bash]

To be fair to Greninja, we should apply some context here.

IStudying's set with MVD was 3-2 MVD's favour. It could easily have gone the other way and Greninja at 5th place could be the talk of the town instead. When iStudying and MVD played before (in Smash 4), that was another close set which iStudying just about won despite a) the bad matchup and b) MVD being a top 20ish player. Whilst there probably is merit to discussing this matchup (though I would think Greninja has an easy time catching Snake landings even despite nades, due to his disjointed up smash and low dash attack, and Hydro Pump being a huge threat to Snake going high as well as being a great landing tool for Ninja himself - this mu seems fine to me on the face of it) there is clearly some intense player Vs player with regards to iStudying Vs MVD - it would be wise not to dismiss that.
I'll say it again: that set could feasibly have gone the other way.

IStudying's other loss was to Mr R, another player matchup with a lot of history and I think we can call this loss a fair enough.

As for Elexiao, probably the second best Ninja here, he got 49th. That's "disappointing" (lol?) on the face of it but let's look closer.
He lost to Greward, the Piranha Plant, and S1 (Ness obviously). These are two matchups that Greninja's actually wins (Shurikens and Hydro Pump can seriously screw with Plant's primary tools and objectives; Ness is a closer MU but ultimately, Greninja's tempo control and easy edgeguarding give him an advantage) - Elexiao was just an unfortunate casualty of two of the most impressive runs of the whole tournament, matchups be damned.
Elexiao is still a top 5 player in France iirc (and France is GOOD) and could feasibly have achieved top 16 or higher imo if luck didn't turn against him.

Context is something we should all pay more attention to, I think.

 

[Rizen]

Rizen it would appear that Mr. R is planning on co-maining Chrom and Young Link, keeping Snake as just a secondary

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Direct link: https://twitter.com/Mr_RSmash/status/1148707220927987712
Hopefully means more results and high level play overall for Young Link. And since you're the resident YL main, I'll also ask what you think of the combination, if Chrom and YL cover each other well MU wise and such.

And if Mr. R having a YL is old news then my b~ I'm only used to seeing his name tied to Chrom when it comes to Ultimate.

I originally wanted 's secondary to be , who Chrom is similar to. YL needs someone to cover these MUs: although he can overcome them by outplaying the opponent. IDK who Chrom struggles against. Chrom and YL have opposet playing styles so they're good for mixing things up and covering stage weaknesses; YL wants to avoid BF and Lylat where Chrom shines. I think they're a good pairing, especially after Olimar got nerfed who was a better partner than YL. Snake being likely the best character in the game is better than YL but they play differently enough that Snake doesn't outclass him in every regard. If Mr.R wants to get good with YL he could add a lot to his character team.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I originally wanted 's secondary to be , who Chrom is similar to. YL needs someone to cover these MUs: although he can overcome them by outplaying the opponent. IDK who Chrom struggles against. Chrom and YL have opposet playing styles so they're good for mixing things up and covering stage weaknesses; YL wants to avoid BF and Lylat where Chrom shines. I think they're a good pairing, especially after Olimar got nerfed who was a better partner than YL. Snake being likely the best character in the game is better than YL but they play differently enough that Snake doesn't outclass him in every regard. If Mr.R wants to get good with YL he could add a lot to his character team.

I noticed you left out . I recall you said that was pretty bad MU for YL in the past here. Well I guess that Tink is prety uncommon pick, and you really rarely see him. Well..unless you live in Japan where Tink is surpsingly popular and gets pretty good results.

 

[Rizen]

I noticed you left out . I recall you said that was pretty bad MU for YL in the past here. Well I guess that Tink is prety uncommon pick, and you really rarely see him. Well..unless you live in Japan where Tink is surpsingly popular and gets pretty good results.

I recently figured out that if YL focuses on spamming fire arrows he can outspam TL. Their projectile frame data is:
...............YL/TL
Arrows: start f14-FAF37/ 18-39 and TL's arrows move slower
boomerang: start 27-FAF45 all 3 Links
bomb pull: FAF39/FAF36

So YL will lose if he uses a lot of bombs but fire arrows are faster than TL's options (considering how it takes time to throw bombs after pulling them) and they move faster than TL's slow projectiles. YL wins on most stages except smaller ones with more vertical layouts where arrows are less effective (BF). TL can't really force encounters if YL plays passively. TL still kills earlier but he takes damage faster so it evens out.

Also an interesting thing is YL's boomerang doesn't get the distance of the other 2 Links' but it has steeper angles and combos for a much wider % range.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

@bc1910 I feel like Snake is one of those MUs that be described as “fine on paper, iffy in practice,” similar to . Theoretically, neutral is fine, getting your advantage state going is fine, etc. The issue is they both can instantly reverse your advantage state, or you just make only one or two mistakes, and you’re suddenly dead, completely nullifying all the times you won neutral against them. From there, especially because of rage (terrible mechanic by the way), it can just snowball. Those two characters have specific attributes and can play it safe enough to the point where they just won’t die if they don’t want to, for different reasons.

Our record against Snake is extremely bad, but I’m not quite sure if anyone of us are ready to call it losing yet since, like I said, the MU is fine theoretically. In practice, though, he’s quite polarizing. The meta is still young and anti-Snake strategies will only get better with time.

Not calling you out specifically, just commenting on this for the general community:

If time after time theory is not lining up with reality, it may be time to accept that you're generating the theory incorrectly.

At this point, with the track record available, there is no logical way to not call Greninja's MU against Snake losing. It's pretty decisive. Both can reverse advantage states on each other, but Snake is doing it a lot more often on top of having a better punish game against mistakes. There's no shame in going "yeah its a losing MU" and then trying to tackle it as such instead of standing around going "Its evenish, not sure why we're getting slaughtered because the paper says we shouldn't be". Better mindset for actually figuring things out and all of that. Mindset can matter a lot.

 

[DelugeFGC]

Fatality released part 1 of the post-3.0.0 MU chart.. also goes into detail about what to do in the MU's so, overall one of the more solid examples of a MU chart I've seen posed for a character. Certainly one ups his older one.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Fatality might even go too deep into detail at some point. I felt like switching to another video in the meantime because it dragged on after some time.
Still better than MU charts released by other people that are just "Oh, that's character XY, it's a +2 for my character" and move on.
If they do something like this, they should give us the general gameplan of these characters and how your character can abuse it in the MU or gets abused by the other character.

 

[blackghost]

Light placed 17th in Albion while using Sheik in some sets alongside Palutena like for example against Whoophee. But lack of Sheiks is understandable when you have to dedicate a lot of time to get the things rolling and in tournament settings you aren't allowed to mess up without getting punished from it hard.

people can deal with getting punished. shiek's fundamental issues boil down to the fact everyone (except one) has better frame data and the game is packed with characters that get 30 to 80 percent in a full optimal combo/punish. Shiek gets maybe 30 to 40 percent. its frustrating playing a character that feels like they are playing at .75 percent damage of everyone else. most players dont want to deal with that. honestly, people are more fine with playing a character that has issues confirmingkills than a character that can confirm kills but cannot deal enough damage.

 

[$.A.F.]

Great News! (For Me at least). Larry Lurr May be trying to pick up Plant as a secondary. Just saw this on my timeline:

 

[Allkings]

who can really be considered low tier apart from ?

 

[Ziodyne 21]

who can really be considered low tier apart from ?

are usuaully considered among the weakest charactets right now by most people
. However dont forget that a Bowser Junior just recently got top 8 at Albion 4, and there was that big tbinj a while ago with Bocchi taking a set of a top-tier player using a top-tier character. It goes to show you cant really count any character out from a competitive standpoint even if they are "low tier"

 

[Deathcarter]

who can really be considered low tier apart from ?

is pretty trash despite that one K. Rool player winning that Australian major. I want to say as well but I have absolutely no idea on how that character works in the meta.

 

[Rizen]

who can really be considered low tier apart from ?

Low tier's harder to assess because the characters are rarely seen. They're not terrible characters but it boils down to "someone has to be weaker than everyone else". It's easy to see Bowser Jr get 7th at Albion 4 and say "no way he's a low tier" but how many characters are actually worse than him? Low tier's going to be subjective, largely due to lack of data and experience. If I had to pick low tiers, take this with a grain of salt, they would be:

and possibly the Miis too.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Low tier's harder to assess because the characters are rarely seen. They're not terrible characters but it boils down to "someone has to be weaker than everyone else". It's easy to see Bowser Jr get 7th at Albion 4 and say "no way he's a low tier" but how many characters are actually worse than him? Low tier's going to be subjective, largely due to lack of data and experience. If I had to pick low tiers, take this with a grain of salt, they would be:

and possibly the Miis too.

I say has enough proven resutls tp maybe be at least low-mid tier. I think he is similar to where despite his obvious flaws seems to have a bit more going for him than the characters you listed

 

[$.A.F.]

Imo there are characters that are low tiers, but none that are unviable

 

[Rizen]

I say has enough proven resutls tp maybe be at least low-mid tier. I think he is similar to where despite his obvious flaws seems to have a bit more going for him than the characters you listed

That's fair. Incineroar can be scary and revenge is a good move that helps negate some of his problems.

 

[meleebrawler]

King K. Rool gets hit with a double whammy of negative stigma because he isn't just a low-tier, he's a low tier superheavy, the very first thing that likely crosses people's minds when you think of things less viable in 1v1s.

In a lot of ways he plays similarly to Ridley, namely in having to vary his playstyle greatly from matchup to player. Main difference of course is he has far more margin for error, but has generally less potent offence. He too, will likely remain unpopular to use even with significant buffing, though perhaps slightly less than Ridley since high weight and good-distance recovery make him less stressful to learn.

 

[blackghost]

King K. Rool gets hit with a double whammy of negative stigma because he isn't just a low-tier, he's a low tier superheavy, the very first thing that likely crosses people's minds when you think of things less viable in 1v1s.

In a lot of ways he plays similarly to Ridley, namely in having to vary his playstyle greatly from matchup to player. Main difference of course is he has far more margin for error, but has generally less potent offence. He too, will likely remain unpopular to use even with significant buffing, though perhaps slightly less than Ridley since high weight and good-distance recovery make him less stressful to learn.

if ridely was actually a superheavy he'd be better. thats one of his main issues. his weight and hurtbox size are so out of balance that his fundamental design as a character makes no sense.

 

[DJ3DS]

is pretty trash despite that one K. Rool player winning that Australian major. I want to say as well but I have absolutely no idea on how that character works in the meta.

The short answer is that puff doesn't. The long answer is as follows:

- she can't gimp as reliably due to vastly improved recoveries
- she struggles to kill outside of rest and raw smash attacks / bairs
- she dies super easily
- she struggles to get in, especially against disjoints
- she has a terrible grab game with no way of threatening a shielding opponent

This isn't melee, where her bair is ridiculously good, recoveries are bad, edgehogging exists and she is actually scary to shield against (due to her ability to gimp, or the threat of upthrow rest). Playing her against any defensive player is honestly a nightmare.

 

[meleebrawler]

if ridely was actually a superheavy he'd be better. thats one of his main issues. his weight and hurtbox size are so out of balance that his fundamental design as a character makes no sense.

I thought proved a character with such unfavourable physical attributes can still be good. He did start out mediocre until he got buffs, but not for his weight. It was mobility that pushed him to the top. A middleweight Mewtwo with middling movement would still have been underwhelming.

Buffing Ridley's weight would be a negligible impact, surviving one or two hits more at best with how bad his disadvantage is. Better to focus on his aerial mobility where he excels.

Weight may be good for making a character less scary to pick up, but ultimately it's a weak factor in affecting viability.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

The short answer is that puff doesn't. The long answer is as follows:

- she can't gimp as reliably due to vastly improved recoveries
- she struggles to kill outside of rest and raw smash attacks / bairs
- she dies super easily
- she struggles to get in, especially against disjoints
- she has a terrible grab game with no way of threatening a shielding opponent

This isn't melee, where her bair is ridiculously good, recoveries are bad, edgehogging exists and she is actually scary to shield against (due to her ability to gimp, or the threat of upthrow rest). Playing her against any defensive player is honestly a nightmare.

Actullay many notable characters recoveries were "nerfed" from Smash 4. That combined with this games better edgeguarding gave the impression that Jigglypuff would do a lot better in this game. Unfortunately Puff still looks like she will fall behind do the the power creep

 

[Frihetsanka]

If I had to pick low tiers, take this with a grain of salt, they would be:

and possibly the Miis too.

I'm going to have to disagree with Wii Fit, Lucas, Mewtwo, and Villager, I don't think any of them is bottom 20. I don't think any of them is top 20 either, they're probably mid tiers.

Ganondorf should be added to the list though, he's probably bottom 10, he can't deal with Inkling/Pikachu/Pichu at top levels of play very well at all.

 

[Deleted member]

I'm going to have to disagree with Wii Fit, Lucas, Mewtwo, and Villager, I don't think any of them is bottom 20. I don't think any of them is top 20 either, they're probably mid tiers.

Ganondorf should be added to the list though, he's probably bottom 10, he can't deal with Inkling/Pikachu/Pichu at top levels of play very well at all.

I think Ganon's are noticeably better than 4 attributes wise, but somehow he's even less popular than 4. Other than Nairo's victory against Light (and I'm pretty sure Nairo thinks of him as a "fun" character"), it's a bit hard to find surprising results. While his matchups are clearly better than his previous two incarnations, they're still poor. His slow speed, awful recovery, lack of projectile, and high susceptibility can still be exploited upon. I haven't heard much from players like Gungnir, GanontheBeast and Pon... but Ganon has a good shot of surprising people, there's still many opportunities to see awesome upsets over top players. Probably not going to significantly change most people's perceptions, but it's still noteworthy to consider.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I think Ganon's are noticeably better than 4 attributes wise, but somehow he's even less popular than 4.

You must not play online too often..

 

[Spinosaurus]

One thing about Puff in this game is that her air dodge is absolutely, completely horrendous. It takes ridiculously long for her to recover from it on top of being floaty. Makes her disadvantage worse than it should be, imo. There's also bair turning her around now, so bair stalling's much harder.

She's got the same issues as the past two games where she's just pretty much outclassed by Wario in what she wants to do. They have very fundamentally similar neutrals in playing footsies with air pokes and weaving in and out with their air mobility, the big difference is that Wario's much more threatening because of his much superior damage output and waft just being outright better than rest. This is just simplifying it, but basically Puff doesn't really make up for her shortcomings in comparison.

 

[Shaya]

Problem with Jigglypuff, Kirby to some extent, Isabelle and Villager is their reliance of being airborne for pressure and general movement/neutral.

With the new parry system, the Animal Crossers are losing a lot of the potency of mid-range strength. Breaking through their zoning is all too easy, and their reward for hits are generally tiny and underwhelming. Compare their fair/bair to say Megaman's pellets, both somewhat achieving similar levels of potency in S4 but now look at the difference (Megaman's ranged was buffed and the breaking through from a parry against him consistently requires the megaman player to stop thinking).

In contrast to the crossers, the pink-balls have abysmal mid-range capabilities (Kirby's dash attack isn't "bad", but it's not gluing his kit together; his and Jigglypuff's are both kinda great in a vacuum but it still doesn't work out).

None of them seem to have a coherent gameplan or win condition that doesn't rely on the faults of the opponent or niche match up applications ("IM SMOL, HA HA").

Jigglypuff is not really a difficult character to make top tier, as we know, and we see a "less" polarizing version existing within Wario. Wario is provided the privileges of intangible limbs/very sneaky-good hurtbox shifting animations, a much higher weight and speedy start up and cooldown tilts/combo starters with competitive range across the board.
Give Jiggs one of or a bit more of any of those things and we probably have a high tier.
But again, a character who wants to spend a year in the air, and hopes to bait responses she can whiff punish with jumps, in a game of a 6 frame parry window with similar amounts of frames of vulnerability in shield drop, whilst lacking any BIG win landing aerial like falcon's nair is a risk/reward factor that shouldn't ever play in Jiggs favour.

I don't want to talk about Little Mac right now

The rest of the cast, maybe arguably not Piranha Plant, all have varying access to both ground and air game plans that IMO can be worked with.
Robin's reward can be pretty strong, but also might kinda fall short in the grander scheme too.


In the long term, staple low tiers of Smash might end up being the same again - you can't really buff ganondorf that much more lest you suffer the same fate of QQ like Little Mac at the beginning of S4, while almost the rest of the chars we feel are low tier are generally safe to give more to.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Problem with Jigglypuff, Kirby to some extent, Isabelle and Villager is their reliance of being airborne for pressure and general movement/neutral.

With the new parry system, the Animal Crossers are losing a lot of the potency of mid-range strength. Breaking through their zoning is all too easy, and their reward for hits are generally tiny and underwhelming. Compare their fair/bair to say Megaman's pellets, both somewhat achieving similar levels of potency in S4 but now look at the difference (Megaman's ranged was buffed and the breaking through from a parry against him consistently requires the megaman player to stop thinking).

In contrast to the crossers, the pink-balls have abysmal mid-range capabilities (Kirby's dash attack isn't "bad", but it's not gluing his kit together; his and Jigglypuff's are both kinda great in a vacuum but it still doesn't work out).

None of them seem to have a coherent gameplan or win condition that doesn't rely on the faults of the opponent or niche match up applications ("IM SMOL, HA HA").

Jigglypuff is not really a difficult character to make top tier, as we know, and we see a "less" polarizing version existing within Wario. Wario is provided the privileges of intangible limbs/very sneaky-good hurtbox shifting animations, a much higher weight and speedy start up and cooldown tilts/combo starters with competitive range across the board.
Give Jiggs one of or a bit more of any of those things and we probably have a high tier.
But again, a character who wants to spend a year in the air, and hopes to bait responses she can whiff punish with jumps, in a game of a 6 frame parry window with similar amounts of frames of vulnerability in shield drop, whilst lacking any BIG win landing aerial like falcon's nair is a risk/reward factor that shouldn't ever play in Jiggs favour.

I don't want to talk about Little Mac right now

The rest of the cast, maybe arguably not Piranha Plant, all have varying access to both ground and air game plans that IMO can be worked with.
Robin's reward can be pretty strong, but also might kinda fall short in the grander scheme too.


In the long term, staple low tiers of Smash might end up being the same again - you can't really buff ganondorf that much more lest you suffer the same fate of QQ like Little Mac at the beginning of S4, while almost the rest of the chars we feel are low tier are generally safe to give more to.

Well we at least have Roy and Palu, who were low/bottom tier staples in Smash4 who jumped the way to high to top staples in Ultimate .

 

[Shaya]

I felt neither of those two characters were even remotely bottom tier in s4.
Low mid was the floor of opinion on them, I thought?

 

[DelugeFGC]

I admit full well to not knowing a ton about Sm4sh as it's the one game in the series I almost skipped over completely outside of 100% casual play on my 3DS and on friends Wii U's.. but wasn't Roy mainly considered low tier primarily due to a startling lack of representation across the board? I know he had a ton of problems within Sm4sh and I've heard he had a lot of unsafe attacks, but the footage I've seen of Roy in Sm4sh doesn't scream 'low tier' to me. Definitely seems more like a mid tier character.

When I think 'low tier Roy' the only instance of him that pops into mind is Melee Roy.. the one with literally broken hitboxes and the worst aerials in his respective game without a doubt overall.

 

[Idon]

I admit full well to not knowing a ton about Sm4sh as it's the one game in the series I almost skipped over completely outside of 100% casual play on my 3DS and on friends Wii U's.. but wasn't Roy mainly considered low tier primarily due to a startling lack of representation across the board? I know he had a ton of problems within Sm4sh and I've heard he had a lot of unsafe attacks, but the footage I've seen of Roy in Sm4sh doesn't scream 'low tier' to me. Definitely seems more like a mid tier character.

When I think 'low tier Roy' the only instance of him that pops into mind is Melee Roy.. the one with literally broken hitboxes and the worst aerials in his respective game without a doubt overall.

Roy was most likely underrated, but he did have a ton of flaws that made him not worth playing in any "competitive" sense. He just straight up couldn't approach very well which is a problem when that was his entire shtick.

 

[DelugeFGC]

Yeah the faster, more aggressive gamestate in Ultimate has definitely done him wonders, with his speed and his current aerial properties they got him right this time for sure.

 

[KirbySquad101]

One thing to note is that a lot of characters that have made giant leaps between SSB4 and Ultimate were already on their way to slowly climbing upwards in SSB4's tier lists. has slowly made a better impression on the community thanks to Prince Ramen's efforts, started to improve near the end thanks to Gluttony, and even characters like were starting to garner a better reception because of Zaki. Meanwhile characters like , , and continued to bite the dust (aside from Komota's one upset on Ally). to can be considered an exception, but even then, Sinji had been performing well in early 2018 with him.


Which of these characters mentioned are currently be considered high/top tier right now in Ultimate and which of these characters are being considered low/bottom tier right now in Ultimate?

There is exceptions to this idea: While and have continued to remain low/bottom tier characters, and have been making far better strides and have been (mostly) solidified as mid-tier characters. I'm not advocating that all characters were equally buffed (after all, you don't see characters like and running around nearly as much as or even ), but I am suggesting the differences in buffs between lower tier characters may not be as big as we think.

 

[Gleam]

I'm going to have to disagree with Wii Fit, Lucas, Mewtwo, and Villager, I don't think any of them is bottom 20. I don't think any of them is top 20 either, they're probably mid tiers.

Ganondorf should be added to the list though, he's probably bottom 10, he can't deal with Inkling/Pikachu/Pichu at top levels of play very well at all.

It's funny, there are so many people who think is one of the best characters in the game.

"Best Ganon!"
"The Evil King Returns!"
"Top of Mid"
"High Tier"
"Nairo Naired, Top 10 characters!"
"Best Smashes in the Game"

Quotes, some of which have been stated by legit pro players. The only people who don't think Ganon is better than sliced cheese, are the people who actually use him. I legitimately think Ganon is one of the worst characters in the game. His results at best only paint him as a Bottom 20 character but comparison to his high usability means his results are even worse. He's a character who already suffers from a crash course list of problems but then gets screwed twice over by things like rockcrocking and a recovery so poor you can easily kill yourself just by bad spacing.

He is garbage. He may be slightly less garbage than other Ganons, but the stink is still real. Unfortunately as long as the community continues to huff the fumes of Ganon's U-tilt and he remains popular both offline and definitely online, there's less a chance of him getting fixed.

 

[$.A.F.]

EMG Seph of the Six just beat Tamim with Plant. EDIT: I’m quite pleasantly surprised. Obviously Tamim just came back, but he was in grands vs jw a couple days ago so he isn’t that rusty

 

[|RK|]

Quick note since he was mentioned... Kirby doesn't want to be in the air like, at all. The burst options are his super quick tilts. And he does have a pretty cohesive gameplan! It just falls apart when people realize they can just press away and also jump.

So parry isn't much an issue for him. It's mainly an inability to consistently force his strongest state. Which is a basic hallmark of a great character - being able to force others to play your game.

 

[Deleted member]

You must not play online too often..

I don’t take online that seriously since I plan to get information and take notes by other well-written resources since online can quickly chug away valuable time. The internet has a plethora of resources to help understand other bits of combos. Online I’m well aware of the popularity of superheavies (Dedede and Ganon) since they offer an easier and more damaging playstyle than a good chuck of others. However, people don’t see the full picture, and when they go to actual tournaments (local level?), their gimmicks won’t work so hot. People can easily punish predictable play styles, and it normally doesn’t end so well for the gimmicky player.

 

[Tri Knight]

Ganon is definitely a noob stomper online so I could see why hes popular. Especially against tunnel vision players. All he needs is a couple free big hits, a few good reads, and he's killing anyone early. He deals some crazy damage per hit and can take big hits as well... but that's where it ends.

He suffers hard against anyone with a good projectile, good mobility, safe moves, and/or anyone who can edgeguard. He cant handle pressure well as he simply cant escape it due to his abysmal mobility. He's forced to go super turtle against anyone with a projectile, especially if he cant close some distance. And due to his abysmal recovery and air mobility, Ganon is demolished by any decent edgeguarding to the point where he's consistently capable of dying earlier than a Pichu taking his own F-Smash. Ironically, he's likely negative against the Links while Young Link specifically seems to be one of his worst matchups overall.

But being capable of destroying people with a few good reads or some lucky hits will keep him very popular online, where reading and exploiting opponents is likely a bit easier overall.

 

[DelugeFGC]

Ganon can't really take big hits in the way other superheavies can, he's one of the few that truly can't say he lives forever.. Ganon's biggest issue imo is just how early he can bite the dust. Ganon can get gimped laughably easy due to his recovery, and he's also absolute combo food. One neutral loss and he risks eating a string with a finisher that puts him off stage and results in his death as he's damned near a free edge guard due to factors such as linearity and even rockcrocking. Due to this, Ganon is actually way more glass than he is cannon, effectively getting shut down entirely with little effort if you know the MU at all when playing against him.

He has horrible frame data and extremely laggy moves, I don't even consider his Smash attacks top 10 like some people do, they're so punishable and have absolutely no guaranteed setups. Every time I get hit by a Ganon F/USmash, I can't help but nodding and accepting it was entirely my fault. I played poorly for a second and I got punished. He also has no decent way to zonebreak (Wizard's Foot is not a good zonebreaker, I'm sorry) or close in if the opponent plays defensively and has even mediocre tools for doing so. Ganon is a pubstomper, for sure, but other than that.. he doesn't have much going for him.

Ganon is bad, really bad, his insane damage output saves him from the lowest echelons of the tier list but without significant buffs / a rework I don't ever see him going on the unsweep.. I imagine he'll stay on a downward trend until bottoming out in low mid / high low.

 

[Shaya]

Roy received very few literal buffs (actually, they might have adjusted the hitbox specs so he matched disjoint with Marcina? that is pretty substantial, mind you), the rest of it all is engine related.

If s4 had a longer life span I felt pretty comfortable and confident in seeing Roy continue to rise in appreciation.
The same weakness still exists for him in ultimate, just the worse shield grabbing/enhanced shieldstun mitigates it a lot.
That weakness being "rocket powered" (no weaving, they go forward and its VERY forward). That plus the engine disallowing carrying momentum of a dash forward when jumping backwards gave an unusual (in the sense that most other high-speeders had enough acceleration to weave back and still be safe although they were hurt by this too) technical barrier to him that no one in S4 bothered to implement to overcome either.

If the engine were more like Brawl, and Roy could've abused that insane dash/run speed into a retreating forward air (that at full momentum was like 1/3rd to half a stage backward - NO ONE's oos punishing that) with simple buffering inputs I'm sure most people would've maintained their high opinions of him and he would've been very popular.

At this early/low level stage of Ultimate, where buffering forward aerials causes everyone to nyoom forward, it doesn't seem so bad for Roy compared to everyone else. This in general is another tech barrier that everyone is forced to learn to break our current limitations within the engine.

Despite that, imo he was limited to not being a high/top tier threat because of poor match ups - walls like Rosa (I know some prominent Roys kinda disagreed on this), Diddy and Marth were all just too prevalent and "easy" to use in a way that made things way too tricky.

Quick note since he was mentioned... Kirby doesn't want to be in the air like, at all. The burst options are his super quick tilts. And he does have a pretty cohesive gameplan! It just falls apart when people realize they can just press away and also jump.

So parry isn't much an issue for him. It's mainly an inability to consistently force his strongest state. Which is a basic hallmark of a great character - being able to force others to play your game.

You made my point for me on the "doesn't rely on the faults of the opponents"
But you're right, Kirby is "forced" to be a ground character, but he would like to like the air, for sure - his aerials are rewarding and solid in a vacuum. Perhaps I still have a reasonable amount of PTSD over Kirby in Brawl, whom from my experience, successfully played a reaction speed test game focused on the air primarily - into grab. Apologies, I should've given a real blurb/paragraph to Kirby.

 

[Rizen]

I'm going to have to disagree with Wii Fit, Lucas, Mewtwo, and Villager, I don't think any of them is bottom 20. I don't think any of them is top 20 either, they're probably mid tiers.

Ganondorf should be added to the list though, he's probably bottom 10, he can't deal with Inkling/Pikachu/Pichu at top levels of play very well at all.

They are on the upper end, although I can't think of 20 characters they're better than.

Ganon's a weird case because he's probably the worst super heavy solo but possibly the best as a player counterpick. I've played with a Pichu player a lot with 3 super heavies, Ganon, Ridley and K.Rool and Pichu destroys big characters in general. I think Ganon does better than Ridley because at least he can kill Pichu at 60% or less of a read. Ganon gets gimped but Pichu wrecks every character offstage. Ganon would be better except for his bottom 3 recovery. I can see him being low tier but at the same time if a Ganon gets in your head he can be scary. I feel like he sucks but is just too threatening to be low tier. It's weird.

Jigglypuff is not really a difficult character to make top tier, as we know, and we see a "less" polarizing version existing within Wario. Wario is provided the privileges of intangible limbs/very sneaky-good hurtbox shifting animations, a much higher weight and speedy start up and cooldown tilts/combo starters with competitive range across the board.
Give Jiggs one of or a bit more of any of those things and we probably have a high tier..

One thing that makes Wario more threatening than Yoshi or especially Jigglypuff is he has a decent fall speed at 36th place. This lets him control the air vertically and shift between air and ground more effectively than they can. Jiggz' fall speed is ridiculously slow and I can't see her too much higher ranked unless that was addressed somehow.