Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Lacrimosa]

Pretty precise video from Larry about how good ZSS is in the game. Video is pretty short, so I guess it's worth watching it, clickbait thumbnail aside.
Now, he doesn't really go over the flaws she has but focusses instead of her strengths and how she actually got better from Sm4sh to Ultimate.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I dont really think ZSS is broken, no one in Ultimate . "Broken" is what Brawl MK was, or Smash 4 Bayo if you want to strech it . But not even the very best characters in Ultimate currently are anywhere close to their levels.

I do think ZSS is top-tier, whatevet that counts for as the list just seems to keep growing. Just about every pro-player under the sun (besides Marss still meming it up) is calling her like a top 5 character now it seems. Seriously search "ZSS" on Twitter and you will get comments from dozens on notable Smash players sayimg how amazing she is now. Funny how no one is calling PT broken now after Tweeks LTC7 run.

 

[Thinkaman]

Pichu is still a very, very good character. The risk is not that Pichu becomes low tier, the risk is that Pichu becomes Marth.

 

[KakuCP9]

Pichu is still a very, very good character. The risk is not that Pichu becomes low tier, the risk is that Pichu becomes Marth.

In a sense maybe, but I think Marth's issue is that he is (slightly) 'weaker' AND harder to use. Pichu on the other hand may be forced to take higher risks in certain MUs on top of being squisher, but her easy confirms and damage per hit make her easier to pick up in contrast to Pika who needs heavily optimized combos to get good damage. Couple that with her goofy meme status and she'll still have a healthy player-base (at least outside of the top level).

 

[Rizen]

got hit by the nerfs hard: bigger hurtbox, 1.5x the self damage and his best kill move Ftilt was made much weaker. But Pichu still has crazy vortexes, intercepting and early kills. It's either Pichu is killing you or you're killing Pichu, no third way about it. In many ways he's still better than Pikachu but with higher risk.

This does not mean imediately moves to top tier. However Pikachu did suffer from living in Pichu's shadow so now he'll probably see increased results. Top tier's power level is also lower so it's possible Pika will move to top tier if Void and others keep playing him. Or maybe not and people will prefer Pichu's sudden death style over Pikachu's consistency.

 

[DungeonMaster]

I really want palu nerfed. This character is busted. I haven't looked over the orion stats since the other top tiers were nerfed, but on paper I still can't agree with the design.

This character online is absolutely oppressive. It gets better offline but not much. I can't believe as a Samus main that I'de want something other then fox nerfed but after many months now it's true. She's a gatekeeper, the combination of idiotic easy throw combos, frame 5 nair combo starter, invincible shield, completely safe on shield aerials, reflector and counter, disjointed tilts (albeit slow, they're still very disjointed) and up-air, teleport recovery, and a deceptive projectile animation is just murder. More then half the cast is just negated by some combination of those elements. She has answers for everything except *maybe* swords and that's dumb design.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I really want palu nerfed. This character is busted. I haven't looked over the orion stats since the other top tiers were nerfed, but on paper I still can't agree with the design.

This character online is absolutely oppressive. It gets better offline but not much. I can't believe as a Samus main that I'de want something other then fox nerfed but after many months now it's true. She's a gatekeeper, the combination of idiotic easy throw combos, frame 5 nair combo starter, invincible shield, completely safe on shield aerials, reflector and counter, disjointed tilts (albeit slow, they're still very disjointed) and up-air, teleport recovery, and a deceptive projectile animation is just murder. More then half the cast is just negated by some combination of those elements. She has answers for everything except *maybe* swords and that's dumb design.

Swords are not Palutena's issue. She does pretty well vs most sword characters. What she does stuggle with are speedy rushdown/vortex characters. such as , or characters that genretally have good mobility / evasivness that can easilty bait and punish her moves like . Due to her bad Oos options and pretty lackluster ground moves outside of dash attack and that they can ignore her projectile game. She is a very strong character, but she has legit counterplay vs her in this game

The only characters that possibly get negated by her are superheavies, I admit her kit is nearly tailor-made to give them a bad time. So yeah I can understand hating her if you main any of them. But then again a character like Pikachu also wrecks them just as hard

 

[Anomika]

According to MKLeo: https://twitter.com/Mkleosb/status/1150829803530010629?s=19

He doesn't think Palu is top 5, though... she might get nerfed anyway, but the outcome is still unpredictable. Some top tiers / high tiers got buffs even if they were fine without them, so yeah...

 

[|RK|]

I think Palu is mad overrated. Besides that, idk how people can be mad about a char just being good. Like calm down, do you want a game where everyone feels like trash? Let Palu live lol

 

[MrGameguycolor]

I really want palu nerfed. This character is busted. I haven't looked over the orion stats since the other top tiers were nerfed, but on paper I still can't agree with the design.

With Palu, she's got the domain advantage state of a glass cannon with hardly none of the glass in her disadvantage...

A good weight nerf (91 > 86 for example) along with a well deserve Nair and possible Side-B nerf could keep her down well enough.

idk how people can be mad about a char just being good. Like calm down, do you want a game where everyone feels like trash? Let Palu live lol

It's been like that since the dawn of time. (People rather tear down others rather then actually try themselves)

 

[Ferox]

I really want palu nerfed. This character is busted. I haven't looked over the orion stats since the other top tiers were nerfed, but on paper I still can't agree with the design.

This character online is absolutely oppressive. It gets better offline but not much. I can't believe as a Samus main that I'de want something other then fox nerfed but after many months now it's true. She's a gatekeeper, the combination of idiotic easy throw combos, frame 5 nair combo starter, invincible shield, completely safe on shield aerials, reflector and counter, disjointed tilts (albeit slow, they're still very disjointed) and up-air, teleport recovery, and a deceptive projectile animation is just murder. More then half the cast is just negated by some combination of those elements. She has answers for everything except *maybe* swords and that's dumb design.

Share the same sentiments on a lot of these points, Palutena is hard to chase down (as Samus) while at the same time avoiding the tings she can just throw at you, the disjoints, projectiles and armored dash attack and bair. And you can't fight her with projectiles either because she has a reflector and autoreticle that will punch through weak projectiles, while explosive flame just ignores opposing projectiles entirely by teleporting an explosion up your ass. Also autoreticles lock-on is quite bull****. I remember one time being launched behind Palutena as she was casting autoreticle and it still locked on and fired diagonally up behind her. Compare that kind of tracking capability with Samus' homing missiles lol.

Swords are not Palutena's issue. She does pretty well vs most sword characters. What ahedoes stuggle with are speedy rushdown/vortex characters. such as , or characters that genretally have good mobility / evasivness that can easilty bait and punish her moves like . Due to her bad Oos options and pretty lackluster ground moves outside of dash attack and that they can ignore her projectile game. She is a very strong character, but she has legit counterplay vs her in this game

The only characters that possibly get negated by her are superheavies, I admit her kit is nearly tailor- made to give them a bad time

I just want to note that pretty much everything you just said applies to Samus as well (with the exception of swords/disjoints), but Samus does not have the same/equivalent strenght that Palutena does. Logically speaking this would mean that either Palutena is too strong, or Samus is too weak.

 

[KirbySquad101]

I really want palu nerfed. This character is busted. I haven't looked over the orion stats since the other top tiers were nerfed, but on paper I still can't agree with the design.

This character online is absolutely oppressive. It gets better offline but not much. I can't believe as a Samus main that I'de want something other then fox nerfed but after many months now it's true. She's a gatekeeper, the combination of idiotic easy throw combos, frame 5 nair combo starter, invincible shield, completely safe on shield aerials, reflector and counter, disjointed tilts (albeit slow, they're still very disjointed) and up-air, teleport recovery, and a deceptive projectile animation is just murder. More then half the cast is just negated by some combination of those elements. She has answers for everything except *maybe* swords and that's dumb design.

You also forgot the part where her USmash covers two getup options at once ;P

That said, while I do agree she's a top tier character, I can see people's reasonings for thinking otherwise; her ground frame data isn't exactly stellar, with only one of her ground moves coming out before frame 7 (that's almost as bad as lmao), which leads to her lacking very few out of shield options outside of just grab.


Honestly, the only thing I don't really like about her design change between Ultimate and 4 was giving her one of the strongest kill throws in the game when she already had an amazing grab; like, at least Ness has a garbage grab to balance out his obscenely powerful back throw, that one is change I just can't really wrap my head around lol

If she really needs a nerf (I don't think she needs one), maybe just a small one by cutting her weight down.

I just want to note that pretty much everything you just said applies to Samus as well (with the exception of swords/disjoints), but Samus does not have the same/equivalent strenght that Palutena does. Logically speaking this would mean that either Palutena is too strong, or Samus is too weak.

The thing is that Samus does have a few things over Palutena, however. She's much heavier than Palutena, and Screw Attack alone gives her a much better OoS game than Palutena could ever have.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

The thing is that Samus does have a few things over Palutena, however. She's much heavier than Palutena, and Screw Attack alone gives her a much better OoS game than Palutena could ever have.

Thing is, Screwattack puts you into Free-fall and is super-punishable if misses.
Palu's Nair at least is much harder to punish.

 

[Ferox]

The thing is that Samus does have a few things over Palutena, however. She's much heavier than Palutena, and Screw Attack alone gives her a much better OoS game than Palutena could ever have.

Yes, Samus does have somethings that are better, that is why I wrote "equivalent" strenght. I just do not believe that the strenghts that Samus have outweighs the strenght that Palutena have when all of the positives and negatives are summed up. Being heavy as always been a saving grace for Samus, no denying that. Screw Attack is a good OoS option, Samus would be garbage without it since we have a slooooooow ass tether grab, which Palutena does not. But it is not a solution to everything, disjoints are huge in this game meaning you can safely poke Samus' shield outside of Screw Attacks range.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

I just want to note that pretty much everything you just said applies to Samus as well (with the exception of swords/disjoints), but Samus does not have the same/equivalent strenght that Palutena does. Logically speaking this would mean that either Palutena is too strong, or Samus is too weak.

Or they've both in the wide range of acceptable power level for characters as there is always going to be a range and never everyone being equal.

That is the most likely answer.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

I just want to note that pretty much everything you just said applies to Samus as well (with the exception of swords/disjoints), but Samus does not have the same/equivalent strenght that Palutena does. Logically speaking this would mean that either Palutena is too strong, or Samus is too weak.

A bit of column A.
A bit of column B.

You get the idea.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Yes, Samus does have somethings that are better, that is why I wrote "equivalent" strenght. I just do not believe that the strenghts that Samus have outweighs the strenght that Palutena have when all of the positives and negatives are summed up. Being heavy as always been a saving grace for Samus, no denying that. Screw Attack is a good OoS option, Samus would be garbage without it since we have a slooooooow *** tether grab, which Palutena does not. But it is not a solution to everything, disjoints are huge in this game meaning you can safely poke Samus' shield outside of Screw Attacks range.

Ah, right, should've made my main point clearer, haha. But yeah Nidtendo vocalized what I was trying to get at. Samus is most likely worse than Palutena, but I don't think it's a matter of Samus being "too weak" or Palutena being "too strong". Samus has shown some pretty strong signs of viable thanks to the efforts and QuiK, YB, and now recently, Joker. Meanwhile, while Palutena has done better and has more rep, she's not really "dominating" right now: Nairo is the only who manages to consistently get into top 8 with her at supermajors after all.

Basically, both are viable characters, Palutena is just a little more viable.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Ok, Hero is pretty much confirmed for July now thanks to a new trailer from Nintendo but I don't think it'll be before July 17th, so he won't be relevant for EVO.
I don't know, maybe id he releases this Thursday, the TOs makes an exception (3 days aren't that much) but I kinda doubt it given how strict the Smash community looks.

 

[SwagGuy99]

This does not mean imediately moves to top tier. However Pikachu did suffer from living in Pichu's shadow so now he'll probably see increased results. Top tier's power level is also lower so it's possible Pika will move to top tier if Void and others keep playing him. Or maybe not and people will prefer Pichu's sudden death style over Pikachu's consistency.

The nerfs to other characters indirectly make Pikachu better.

Pikachu can punish 's best attacks easier (f-smash, up-smash), pressure him in shield better (because Olimar's shield is almost meaningless now), and Pikachu can edgeguard Olimar for free offstage because of the recovery nerfs.

's nerfs also help slightly although it's not significant enough to go into extreme detail here.

's nerfs weren't too harmful but Nikita having a smaller hitbox helps Pikachu recover a bit easier.

Also, Pikachu has very few losing matchups and his matchup spread is that of a top tier. From what I can tell, and are probably his worst matchups post-Olimar/Pichu nerfs. From there, an argument could be made for , , , and a few others being maybe even or very, very slightly losing for Pikachu, but he loses those matchups by such an insignificant amount that it doesn't really matter that much.

 

[Lacrimosa]

The nerfs to other characters indirectly make Pikachu better.

Pikachu can punish 's best attacks easier (f-smash, up-smash), pressure him in shield better (because Olimar's shield is almost meaningless now), and Pikachu can edgeguard Olimar for free offstage because of the recovery nerfs.

's nerfs also help slightly although it's not significant enough to go into extreme detail here.

's nerfs weren't too harmful but Nikita having a smaller hitbox helps Pikachu recover a bit easier.

Also, Pikachu has very few losing matchups and his matchup spread is that of a top tier. From what I can tell, and are probably his worst matchups post-Olimar/Pichu nerfs. From there, an argument could be made for , , , and a few others being maybe even or very, very slightly losing for Pikachu, but he loses those matchups by such an insignificant amount that it doesn't really matter that much.

is probably Pikachu's biggest counter.

 

[SwagGuy99]

is probably Pikachu's biggest counter.

I almost mentioned him in that post but didn't LOL.

Yeah, I think G&W in this matchup is what it would look like if you gave Mario range and disjoints and made him more of a glass cannon type character.

Overall, G&W just has the tools to do well in this matchup. A hard to edgeguard recovery, a reflector/absorber, good OOS option, high kill power, good disjoints, and good edgeguarding.

It's not an absolutely horrible matchup for Pikachu (Pika still kills G&W early and he can still do all of the things he's known for doing) but G&W does have the tools to counterplay Pikachu very effectively..

 

[Minordeth]

I really want palu nerfed. This character is busted. I haven't looked over the orion stats since the other top tiers were nerfed, but on paper I still can't agree with the design.

This character online is absolutely oppressive. It gets better offline but not much. I can't believe as a Samus main that I'de want something other then fox nerfed but after many months now it's true. She's a gatekeeper, the combination of idiotic easy throw combos, frame 5 nair combo starter, invincible shield, completely safe on shield aerials, reflector and counter, disjointed tilts (albeit slow, they're still very disjointed) and up-air, teleport recovery, and a deceptive projectile animation is just murder. More then half the cast is just negated by some combination of those elements. She has answers for everything except *maybe* swords and that's dumb design.

Part of the issue with Palu, is that it seems like her general gameplan is pretty straightforward. Like, it should be easy to figure out and develop counter-strats for.

Is she more than half the stage away? She’ll probably use autoreticle to bait an approach.

Is she mid range? She’ll be spacing with landing fair/Bair to condition for grab and mix in empty hops for tomahawks.

Attack her shield? She’ll Nair.

Try to dash grab her, or use a grounded option? She’ll instant dash attack (or more rarely, Ftilt).

Like, on paper, it’s not rocket science. But in practice, she actually requires a bit of nuance to counter play.

As NYC’s Gen has mentioned, most of the players over there are bad at fighting Palu. They win by either being better players (Dabuz) or by having a character/gameplan that Palu can’t deal well (Venia).

The thing with Palu is that she has a relatively large gap in her strengths, followed by random small gaps. The large gap is likely tough for some characters to play with, which leaves them with trying to poke holes in her game plan through the small gaps.

Essentially, the large gap is her ground game. Everything she has on the ground is a hefty commitment, especially on whiff. Dash attack has invincibility, yes, and it’s fast, but it’s also not safe on block or whiff - at all.

Her tilts are not safe, and are generally relegated to SH/roll call outs or ledge trapping.

Like, at first glance, it would seem like Chrom would get bodied by Palu. She murders him offstage, and her aerial game can stuff his out through the use of Bair.

But, then you see the best Palu in the world trade games with the best Chrom. Why?

Chrom got an actual ground game which Palu has to work around. Jab and dtilt jam options like no one’s business.

Beyond that, Shoyo James takes advantage of a small gap in her gameplan: her difficulty with cross-ups. Yeah, she can Nair OoS, but a lot of aerials in this game are safe, and cross-ups on Palu’s shield are frequently free shield pressure or baits. So, Nair OoS becomes more risky, ironically.

But, taking advantage of stuff like that depends on each character’s toolset. Like, approaching the Palu MU as day, Falco, is more dependent on counter camping, crossing up, and baiting SH, because his ground game isn’t much better than Palu’s.

 

[Ferox]

Or they've both in the wide range of acceptable power level for characters as there is always going to be a range and never everyone being equal.

That is the most likely answer.

Maybe so, but the point of this thread is pretty much to speculate and argue about stuff pertaining to the characters and their performance in the game.

A bit of column A.
A bit of column B.

You get the idea.

I honestly prefer that Samus is tweaked in a few areas to perform a little better, rather than nerfing Palutena.

Ah, right, should've made my main point clearer, haha. But yeah Nidtendo vocalized what I was trying to get at. Samus is most likely worse than Palutena, but I don't think it's a matter of Samus being "too weak" or Palutena being "too strong". Samus has shown some pretty strong signs of viable thanks to the efforts and QuiK, YB, and now recently, Joker. Meanwhile, while Palutena has done better and has more rep, she's not really "dominating" right now: Nairo is the only who manages to consistently get into top 8 with her at supermajors after all.

Basically, both are viable characters, Palutena is just a little more viable.

Yeah I get it. It's just that Samus seems to be more demanding than alot of other characters, I mean just look at the way YB or Joker moves in their matches, the inputs they have to perform to be at that level, only to get clipped by a nair from Palutena or Ike and take huge damage or just outright lose a stock.
Edit: I was thinking of the match between MKLeo (Ike) vs Advo (Dark Samus) during the previous sentence.

 

[Thinkaman]

Disclaimer: I'm married to a Samus main and thus contractually obligated to be in support of any and all Samus buffs.

With that out of the way, I think Samus is one of the characters least likely to receive buffs relative to her (lacking) offline 1v1 tourney results.

• Samus, like all non-galaxy-brain projectile centric characters, is way stronger at lower levels of play than top.
• Samus is rather popular online (probably top 10...?), with YB achieving major success at the highest of levels.
• Samus is pretty nice in teams and in FFA is a beast who never dies.

1v1 offline top-level play is Samus's weakest scenario by far, and she still does okay.

I just want my dream Dark Samus echo with slow projectiles.

 

[Nebunera]

i just want them to make meta knight better i can't believe people wanted to ban him pre release

 

[Tri Knight]

Oh nice, if we're talking buffs I nominate Link to receive a buff! Frame 6 detonation. Anything but an 8 frame jab. Faster end lag on f-tilt. You know what? Better frame data all around. Sakurai plz.

On another note: To be honest, I'd love to see Samus be more relevant in top level, and not the Zero Suit kind. I just think buffing her would be way too much to handle on the online side of the coin. Especially since she's pretty decent as is.

 

[Nebunera]

but link is high tier

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Oh nice, if we're talking buffs I nominate Link to receive a buff! Frame 6 detonation. Anything but an 8 frame jab. Faster end lag on f-tilt. You know what? Better frame data all around. Sakurai plz.

On another note: To be honest, I'd love to see Samus be more relevant in top level, and not the Zero Suit kind. I just think buffing her would be way too much to handle on the online side of the coin. Especially since she's pretty decent as is.

I think its must be Smash in-universe cannon at this point that Samus is somehow stronger without her Power Suit.
Where comically impractical rocket-powered high-heels are the strongest weapon she has ever gotten.

But in all seriousness I would not mind Samus/Dark Samus getting some buffs. But they have been proven to be fairly solid characters now.

 

[NotLiquid]

There's a relatively believable rumor going around that Hero / 4.0 is likely going to drop some time between now and tomorrow, which is only bolstered by Nintendo uploading a video of Hero in a July-centric advert and some large scale maintenance happening tonight. This is a pretty big deal since EVO's cut off date for patches is July 17th - not that I'd expect to see any surprise Hero players at EVO, but if there's any drastic balance changes like in 3.0, EVO may be our first look at a brand new meta.

 

[Nebunera]

i want the patch mainly for the balance patch, what if he comes out late july and then we gotta deal with 3.1 on evo

 

[Iridium]

Oh nice, if we're talking buffs I nominate Link to receive a buff! Frame 6 detonation. Anything but an 8 frame jab. Faster end lag on f-tilt. You know what? Better frame data all around. Sakurai plz.

On another note: To be honest, I'd love to see Samus be more relevant in top level, and not the Zero Suit kind. I just think buffing her would be way too much to handle on the online side of the coin. Especially since she's pretty decent as is.

Same for . Mostly just needs a better working f-smash, reliable combo ability from u-tilt, and bombs that don't bounce off of weak projectiles. That last part does mean a lot for his answers to tools in neutral like Fireballs.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Hmm. There uas always been some form of announcement for any updates/patches at least a couple days beforehand. A surpise patch being dropped in the next 24 hours or so would be well..a surprise

 

[Tri Knight]

but link is high tier

I'd like to say he is because of massive bias but he's in a very weird spot right now.

He was hyped up in the beginning. Salem took to him and even claimed top tier potential. But then he slowly stopped using him for someone who does the job better (Snake). And, as I predicted, so did many other players, some for Young Link, who is most definitely a much better version of the past Smash Links. There's a very minimal amount of top players using Link and it's likely because his flaws are starting to be realized.

I think he could be high tier if players really pushed him; maybe lower end of high tier. But I get the feeling he'll fall off eventually. T could prove me wrong though.

 

[KirbySquad101]

seems to have had a weird meta trend; the dude started off really strong, then sort of crash landed for a while, and when it seemed like he was going to hit rock bottom like , T comes out of nowhere, and starts putting on a good show with him. What's weird, though, is that T isn't a very active player altogether, so Link's competitive presence is sort of a rocky trend at the moment. It's gotten to a point that no one seems to know whether or not he's a high tier or a mid tier.


That said, T has been significantly improving with his Remote Bomb play ever since Prime Saga. I couldn't find his full set with zackray at Sumabato SP 5 unfortunately, but there is a small clip at the beginning of the video that highlights how strong Remote Bomb can be for both pressure and KO setups, courtesy of T (ignore the rest of the video, just not the first part):

 

[Gleam]

Tweek can sweep through brackets with any good character, same with Leo. You want to talk about long term performances?
https://smashboards.com/attachments/smash_stats_6-15-19-png.228137/
^PT has by far the most usage of any character, even more than Wolf, yet he preforms as well as characters with a fraction of that usage. Granted those results have gone up recently but that's why he's FotM.

Meanwhile 's 3rd on Orion rank, popping up multiple times in top 32s everywhere and people are saying she's worse than who has about a 3rd of her points.

I'm starting to think unless Leo or Tweek sweeps through everyone with them, some characters just won't get recognized.

I actually noticed something with Orion. The link points to the "TTS Page and Character Results-Phase 01" which I noticed had been very, stale these last couple of weeks, with no changes. If you go down to the list below where the arrows are, you can move over to "TTS Page and Character Results-Phase 02" and see some different changes.

For example Pokemon Trainer has top results along with Snake. Of course this is only a handful of data being gathered on this particular section. Little Mac is a whopping #56ish but if you were to combine his Phase 02 data with Phase 01, he'd literally jump up "a spot" on the old list. The thing is I don't know know how much of the "Phase 02 Data" if any, has been put into "Phase 01" or if Phase 02 is completely separate from the initial result data.

Some characters can make some pretty big jumps if that data is completely separate.

 

[Deathcarter]

seems to have had a weird meta trend; the dude started off really strong, then sort of crash landed for a while, and when it seemed like he was going to hit rock bottom like , T comes out of nowhere, and starts putting on a good show with him. What's weird, though, is that T isn't a very active player altogether, so Link's competitive presence is sort of a rocky trend at the moment. It's gotten to a point that no one seems to know whether or not he's a high tier or a mid tier.


That said, T has been significantly improving with his Remote Bomb play ever since Prime Saga. I couldn't find his full set with zackray at Sumabato SP 5 unfortunately, but there is a small clip at the beginning of the video that highlights how strong Remote Bomb can be for both pressure and KO setups, courtesy (ignore the rest of the video, just not the first part):

Here you go my man:

 

[Rizen]

The nerfs to other characters indirectly make Pikachu better.

Pikachu can punish 's best attacks easier (f-smash, up-smash), pressure him in shield better (because Olimar's shield is almost meaningless now), and Pikachu can edgeguard Olimar for free offstage because of the recovery nerfs.

's nerfs also help slightly although it's not significant enough to go into extreme detail here.

's nerfs weren't too harmful but Nikita having a smaller hitbox helps Pikachu recover a bit easier.

Also, Pikachu has very few losing matchups and his matchup spread is that of a top tier. From what I can tell, and are probably his worst matchups post-Olimar/Pichu nerfs. From there, an argument could be made for , , , and a few others [] being maybe even or very, very slightly losing for Pikachu, but he loses those matchups by such an insignificant amount that it doesn't really matter that much.

's nerf was probably the best thing to happen to because now he isn't outclassed by a similar character.

also has only a handful of losing MUs ( and maybe ) IMO and he's just high tier.

 

[G. Stache]

i want the patch mainly for the balance patch, what if he comes out late july and then we gotta deal with 3.1 on evo

You act as if “dealing” with arguably the most balanced version of smash bros we’ve ever seen is gonna be a problem. Let’s be real here dude, patch 3.1 is a well made and very balanced version of smash and to pretend otherwise makes me want to sit you down to smash 4 Bayonetta or brawl Ice Climbers for a bit. Those are meta ruining characters that smash ultimate has never really had. It could be a LOT worse my guy, believe me. It doesn’t matter if EVO uses 3.1 or 4.0 if it’s out by then. It’s shaping up to be a great tournament either way

 

[Thinkaman]

Oh nice, if we're talking buffs

We're not.

There's a relatively believable rumor going around that Hero / 4.0 is likely going to drop some time between now and tomorrow

No. There will always be a notification to back up replays before gameplay alterations.

Additionally, we should obviously expect Hero to have a similar gameplay reveal as Joker.

There are clear and straightforward patterns of first-order sources in place, and once again Reddit and pals chose to ignore those and instead make up their own.

You act as if “dealing” with arguably the most balanced version of smash bros we’ve ever seen is gonna be a problem. Let’s be real here dude, patch 3.1 is a well made and very balanced version of smash and to pretend otherwise makes me want to sit you down to smash 4 Bayonetta or brawl Ice Climbers for a bit. Those are meta ruining characters that smash ultimate has never really had. It could be a LOT worse my guy, believe me. It doesn’t matter if EVO uses 3.1 or 4.0 if it’s out by then. It’s shaping up to be a great tournament either way

Accept the dark truth: Perceptions of "balance" are primarily social phenomenon.

This sort of thing is true of many economic and technological affairs in our lives, tbqh.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Oh nice, if we're talking buffs.

Plant's Up-Air hitbox should actually cover the whole swing rather then ending in the middle,