Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Thinkaman]

Something that developed from the Leffen/Wishes days and I think is the reason of 's rise is the use of .

I actually think that Tweek's optimization of Squirtle was as big of a deal as people starting to figure out Charizard.

And you are dead on about the psychological aspect. I have posted here before about the seemingly magical ability to land moves way more consistently immediately after a Pokemon Change. (Most rewarding with Charizard, but it applies to all 3.) It's just super hard, mentally, to suddenly shift gears on your neutral game that hard.

I think PT had a bit of an odd curve, where the character is super fun and popular to pick up, but pretty taxing to master. (And demanding that a player be able to play 3 different archetypes well at that...) It does seem that we are starting to arrive over the hump.

 

[Tri Knight]

think is the reason of 's rise is the use of . do most of the work, but at high % the most threatening without a question is ,

Best thing about Charizard is he'll usually never have to experience being combo food and having the usual issues that heavies would have vs the smaller characters. Charizard always has squirtle and bulbasaur to do his dirty work in early to late percents.

When you think about it, Charizard is technically a heavy that has none of the weaknesses of a heavy and that makes him terrifying.

 

[Das Koopa]

joker climbed about 50 points on the tts while Trainer climbed nearly 100

more things to come soon but yeah lol maybe we should be talking about trainer instead of joker

 

[Minordeth]

Some quick thoughts:

In Ultimate, due to the reduced power gap between tiers, relatively balanced cast, and exceptionally large cast, top tier player character adoption impacts character results far to an unprecedented degree. Naturally, attempting to draw firm conclusions about relative character strengths is going to be confounded by this dependency to a similar degree.

- This likely explains most of the new disparity between and as the latter has experienced more top player adoption than the former. Of course, top players could be choosing Chrom because they feel he is a better character, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is a real difference.

- Two players attempted to go clutch on the journey to and in top 8. In his 3-0 loss to Shuton, Light switched off of and Lui$ attempted to reverse his odds against Nairo’s .

Both lost. Of course, you could jump straight to “Lol Falco the worst spacie” but I think that is premature.

- Light did the best against Shuton’s monster Olimar with his Falco, and while it could be MU inexperience on Shuton’s part, Light rarely plays Falco, making that argument a bit of a wash. Falco has the tool set and advantage state to make the MU annoying for Olimar to navigate.

- Lui$ might not have known Nairo has some experience against Keitaro’s Falco, making the competitive bar to clear a bit higher. Palu is a weird MU for Falco, and despite the NYC Palu’s hating it, birds in other regions think Palu is losing.

- Unfortunately, during their respective games, both Lui$ and Light missed multiple Uptilt conversions, which is Falco’s main combo starter. And at the top player level, how often you get to miss key conversions is extremely low.

And Now, A Brief Dissertation on why Pikachu is Overrated​

- Perhaps unsurprisingly, has results one would expect of a high tier character. That Bowser’s results are within grab range is telling.

- Pikachu has top player rep, and a devoted player base. but I’ve become less convinced he is a secret candidate for #1, and more convinced he is just a really good character in a sea of really good characters.

Some counter arguments:

Pika is busted, the only reason he doesn’t have top tier results is:

1.) He takes a lot of skill to use, and people don’t want to invest that kind of time when they could just play [insert example of popular “braindead” character].

Megaman and Peach also take a lot of skill to use. Why do their results seem to more accurately reflect their strengths as characters?

2.) He takes a lot of time to optimize, even for top level players!

That seems more appropriately fitting of Pokemon Trainer than Pikachu, at this point. This argument also applies to other high skill ceiling characters, and yet they also have better results.

3.) He only loses to like, two non-top tier characters!

Does he? Really?

4.) Yeah! And a bunch of characters have him listed as one of their worst MUs!

They do, but that could also be because he is a rare character that also happens to be pretty good, and nobody likes to feel like they got bodied, so a -2 MU it is!

 

[Tri Knight]

joker climbed about 50 points on the tts while Trainer climbed nearly 100

more things to come soon but yeah lol maybe we should be talking about trainer instead of joker

I fully believe that Joker is a great character. But I also fully believe that in light of Joker's top tier presence, MkLeo is the one carrying Joker there. I'm confident that man could take my main and wipe the floor with me on first try, take him to top 8 even.

PT though? A character that can switch the match flow with the push of a button, exploit enemy weaknesses while also avoiding its own individual weaknesses? Yeah, the trio is absolutely terrifying. PT is a character that can probably cover just about every, if not all, match ups in the game. That's a top 3 character imo.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Just in case PT didn't even have ENOUGH rep already:

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There's a strong chance Sparg0's gonna be picking up PT as a secondary.

If Salem and Ryuga do continue to stick with , we could see him in a pretty good spot for Phase 2; somewhere around 40~50 area, perhaps? He does have some catching up to do. Apparently Pandarian tried to pick him up, but he feels the character is extremely weak right now.

Jeez, that happened much sooner than I expected; still, it's crazy to see that already has more points than over 20 characters so far (ranked #49 so far on the TTS).

 

[The_Bookworm]

Jeez, that happened much sooner than I expected; still, it's crazy to see that already has more points than over 20 characters so far (ranked #49 so far on the TTS).

Not sure where exactly he is getting all of those points. There hasn't been really any notable events between his release and Smash Con, or at least any of them with notable Hero placements as far as I can tell.

I think his already decently high amount of points right now has to do with newcomer excitement, especially with a character as unique (and obnoxious/powerful at low-level play) as Hero.

 

[NotLiquid]

Not sure where exactly he is getting all of those points. There hasn't been really any notable events between his release and Smash Con, or at least any of them with notable Hero placements as far as I can tell.

Salem and Ryuga placed 49th and 65th respectively at Smash Con - a Category 6 tournament - using Hero as their mains. Based on the Tournament Results thread, Zackray used Hero at least once to win a set during Smash Con as well. Furthermore, Glutonny placed 1st at a Category 1 using Hero as a secondary, and Zaki also used a Hero secondary to place 7th at Sumaboto SP7, a Category 3. That constitutes pretty much all of Hero's points over the last two weeks.

 

[Megamang]

Some people hate dittos, including me. Something about fighting games being about utilizing your advantages while minimizing your disadvantages makes me feel that dittos are frustrating. They are entirely their own thing. Your spacing tools, combo starters, etc being the same just does a number on my psyche. Matter of fact, i'd probably switch to a -.5 MU rather than play a ditto.


All this to say... PT never really HAS to ditto, though if they switch into your character, switching out may hurt. Speaking of that, I see pokemon switch as the next rebels guard, eg a good tool that has uses but currently people get away with wayyy too much. Especially switching off Charizard, you should be dying if it gets read. I know its a smaller window by far, but its still something you can reasonably pressure out of someone. We already see the top level players punishing tweek when they call it out. That said, the fast invuln can be very useful if they commit to something that is kinda laggy, especially if you come out the other side as a good pokemon choice.


How do you all feel the ditto matches look like? I'd guess Ivysaur does pretty well vs charizard, but at the same time his speed might be useful to get around the zoning more than squirtle's lacking range. PT having a bad disadvantage seems like something that makes the ditto very swingy.


Lastly... holy cow Tweek utilizing Bullet Seed! Huge commitment and sometimes I just assumed it was a mistake... but hitting both sides quickly is pretty useful, it does good damage, and if they jump over it you can still get some hits. That said if you misspace and they get to punish for free, its gonna hurt.

 

[Das Koopa]

Not sure where exactly he is getting all of those points. There hasn't been really any notable events between his release and Smash Con, or at least any of them with notable Hero placements as far as I can tell.

I think his already decently high amount of points right now has to do with newcomer excitement, especially with a character as unique (and obnoxious/powerful at low-level play) as Hero.

The values were from Glutonny, Salem, Parappa, Zaki (secondary) and Ryuga

I think Zackray ran Hero in pools but I generally omit one-time Round 1 pools usage characters so his wasn't counted

A better start than Plant for sure but a lot of those results are lower in bracket. Glutonny had the best result co-maining Hero with Wario at a French event, but it's very common for him to use Europe as a training ground for secondaries

 

[BlackInk]

Looks like isn't a problem after all.

Salem is trying to pull a MKleo with Hero just like Tweek did with Pokémon trainer. Not necessarily to win but to learn.

The problem with the pocket desperation pick is two fold. You only go with it when you are desperate (duh), in other words the other player has a read on you. And, you are probably much less practiced and warmed up with the pocket character. Smash 4 Cloud was nice to have in the pocket for his simplicity and ability to force you onto his gameplan, I don't think ult has any character that quite fits that descrption easily. Some come close, but even the characters that force their gameplan tend to have more holes. So it comes out when you are getting beaten, which makes it look worse.

MKLeo talked about a hidden secondary swordsman, and he is the swordsman master... yet we didn't see it yet. He keeps trying Joker, he knows it can work and he needs to adapt as a player.


Time will tell, I really want to see it simply because when MKLeo plays a character I get twice as good with that character immediately due to his depth of knowledge. If I was a betting man, I would wager it is Marth. He is the kind of player that could easily really pull out the differences from Lucina, and i have seen some stuff where MK was hype about the tipper mechanic on dancing blade.


The only thing is, I would think Marth does pretty well vs Peach (then again I thought the same about Joker at SnS)... Perhaps MK presumes he will make it to finals and wants to keep the surprise factor.


Let me know if this belongs in the dedicated SSC thread. I thought the first part was meta relevant, and wanted to give my opinion on this impending secondary based game....

There are advantages, if you really feel they have a download on your character, the changing it up from what you are 'warmed up' on can be exactly what you need to take the set. It doesn't never work. And again, its hard to have numbers because its more rare to pull it out after a close game or even after a win. I personally like that choice, keep it mixed up and you can play to the stage a bit more... but, its hard to argue you should switch when you just won, lol.

No, Leo is more likely to using Roy because he is Ultimate’s version of Marth while Marth is ultimate’s version of Roy.

 

[Minordeth]

No, Leo is more likely to using Roy because he is Ultimate’s version of Marth while Marth is ultimate’s version of Roy.

...It’s Chrom.

Speaking of poor recoveries, once again, the weight given to “bad” recoveries in determining either match-ups, or tier position, is vastly overblown.

I do realize even high and top level players overrate recovery as a factor in the effectiveness of a character. However, barring something truly subpar, a bad recovery has had little correlation with whether or not character is top tier in Smash as a series.

In the meta’s infancy, overrating the importance of recovery was understandable. We are quickly coming up to a year of the Ultimate meta, and citing recovery as something overwhelmingly important betrays a lack of knowledge of the game.

I will never let these examples go:
Wolf’s bad recovery was commonly cited as a reason he lost certain MUs or was seen as mid to high tier.

Fox’s “better” recovery, in contrast, was cited as a driving reason he as to why was the best spacie.

Chrom was relegated to “mid tier at best” for quite a while, due in part to his limited recovery options. A lesser Roy with none of the flexibility of Ike’s recovery.

Of course, this always discounts the fact that you have to get that character off the stage in order to take advantage of that recovery. Stuff like “neutral options” and the evaluation of those strengths and weaknesses gets glossed over in favor of “lol Wolf’s up-B.”

 

[**Gilgamesh**]

is so strong because they can change the MU on the fly. You know that thing when top players pick random characters (ehem) in an attempt to shift their opponent's mind? does that without switching in the CSS, and they can do it multiple times per game.

Something that developed from the Leffen/Wishes days and I think is the reason of 's rise is the use of . do most of the work, but at high % the most threatening without a question is , with his meaty hitboxes that hit really freaking hard, Puppeh beat Samsora with a Bair at 45%. also preys on the negative associations given to characters his type (fat, can't land, slow). also has psychological factor because its Dair is still really stupid. You can see from every video with that players take awkward recovery options to not get Dair'd, which gives it an easier time edgeguarding people. Uair does the same but for juggle situations, its hitbox is gigantic and hits like a truck, so players tend to take suboptimal landings and get hit by Nair, only to got sideways up where likes its victims.

A lot of the top tiers have psychological factors that make them as strong as they are.

touches you? You eat 40-70% and likely end in a horrible position.

denies leads with Arsene and his comebacks are really demoralizing because Arsene is inevitable.

Waft is pretty much Arsene.

Not that any of this characters are broken or whatever, but they play with your mind.

I think the biggest perk Joker has is when you die to him and he just got a full gauge of Arsene and he's up a stock. Your mentality just drops after that. He's extremely good at breaking you down mentally imo.

 

[Spinosaurus]

Joker's also arbitrarily better on his 2nd and 3rd stock for some reason. I never quite got why he spawns with 15-20% of his meter already filled.

 

[bc1910]

It was nice to see two Zeldas in the Top 48 (33rd with Ven and 25th with Aikota's secondary).
But judging from Ven's Twitter it seems that he will most likely take a break from Smash now and given how rare she is in competitive play I doubt she'Ll appear in future S-tiers, even less than in season 1. But she still gets decent results and is able to fight against super bad MUs, like .

Zelda’s MU against Greninja isn’t that bad. She’s explosive as hell, she can easily catch careless movement with random aerials that take his stock sub 80. She has a strong defensive game, highly punishing (if risky) oos options and a recovery that all but bypasses Greninja’s usually strong edge guarding. Nayru’s also nullifies the charged shuriken completely. Source: have played Danford a lot, one of the stronger Zeldas in our region (London).

I’m not saying Greninja doesn’t win it but it’s not super bad for Zelda. Watch Greninja against any heavy if you want to see what a super bad MU against him really looks like.

On a more interesting topic, someone convince me that PT is not the best in the game?

People talk about Hero being a privileged character but PT gets similar, arguably more meaningful benefits which are not locked behind RNG. PT is allowed to benefit from being a character with Pichu-esque size, frame data and combo ability, a swordie/zoner hybrid with some ludicrously big and powerful hit boxes, and a heavy with great kill power even for that archetype AND an actual workable recovery. It’s also worth noting that all three Pokemon have an incredibly good grab game. PT gets to benefit from all of this while the associated weaknesses with each character archetype are greatly diminished due to the ability to pick and choose when and where each set of skills would be best put to use. The one weakness that they all share, mediocre disadvantage, is aided by a f1 escape option with only ~15 frames of ending lag which stalls in the air.

As a whole the character has arguably the most tools in the game, with the fewest effective weaknesses as they can all be mitigated by MU knowledge and smart switching.

I don’t mean to detract from PT’s difficulty of use. All three Pokemon are good; you really do have to know when and how to use all three. When optimised I think PT has a very strong case for #1.

I'm gonna go lab and see if there are other characters with guaranteed stuff like that, just messing around I know that Peach has grabs and probably nair, shiek gets f-smash (which she desperately needs), the aforementioned ROB, Greninja gets some nasty techchase scenarios... but is there much in the way of guaranteed kills?

Greninja can use the dash forward tech found by Gimr to get 50/50s into Dtilt Usmash or Dtilt Fair which are both true kill confirms. You can also go for hard reads straight into smash attacks of course, which Joker cannot do since the opponent can just shield.

On floaties, Greninja can combo the dragdown straight into Dtilt without them having to touch the ground which leads into the same guaranteed kill confirms. He can loop dragdown Uair and Utilt on floaties without forcing a tech chase. He can also combo dragdown Uair into Dtilt on any character if he can drag them off the edge of a platform or the stage. Dtilt to Fsmash is a true kill combo at various percent ranges in this case since the Dtilt hits them while they are below ground level. This works particularly well on stages like Battlefield where Greninja can drag opponents off platforms and off the edge of the stage.

In general Greninja’s dragdowns are less consistent than Joker’s but more devastating when they actually land. The exceptions are Arsene dragdown Uair to Usmash on a platform and Greninja dragdown Dtilt Usmash/Fair on floaties, which are consistent and devastating for both characters.

Yeah, it is a little "Um, okay, but why?"

But again, I don't want us to run down these train tracks any more. Yes, Joker isn't broken. Yes, there are plenty of small, reasonable nerfs he could potentially get one day (that he might sort of deserve--or not!) and will no way ruin the character, MKLeo, or the global economy.


We're in a weird situation right now. Normally, the majority of characters who the world considers "best" and the characters the top players main overlap pretty heavily--it's an exception when a top player plays a slightly less common character, or someone like Ness or Yoshi consistently pulls in strong regional results without a top player champion leading the way. Top players disproportionately innovate their characters and produce lots of high-quality VODs for study, further fueling the general competitive population of that character.

But according to OrionStats, we don't have an especially tight corrolation:

• continues to top the charts by a big margin despite limited top-level use--zackray's relative contribution to Wolf's aggregate results is smaller than that of any other top player to their main.
• didn't even make top 8 either of the last weekends, and MVD was only ("only") 17th on the PGR yet noteably underperformed at both those events. Yet Snake is still pulling in the second-highest character results overall, suggesting a very strong + consistent showing just below the water's surface.
• is the one exception to the exception; his performance is exactly where I'd expect.
• is also doing way better overall than you'd expect from just watching/following Nairo, in a case similar to Zackray.
• fits the pattern too but is a little less noteworthy--I feel like everyone knows several of the second-best Peaches, who are just a step behind Samsora.
• has been discussed. There's a huge disparity between Leo's results and what everyone else has experienced. Has anyone else who switched to Joker had an improvement in results???
• is also about where you'd expect.
• But you'd expect to be higher. It's not as extreme as it was in Phase 1, and I don't think it's strictly the nerfs to other top tiers. Are people starting to do more with this character, learning from Marss's example?
• And you'd expect to be lower (when's the last time you saw a Mario in top 8 in singles?), though like Peach a lot of us know the names of top Marios waiting just outside the peak.
• Ditto for , and .
• I'd expect to be higher, but Dabuz's recent underperformance probably contributed a lot to what we're looking at.
• While and , in a wild twist from phase 1, appear to be broadly underperforming relative to their peak results/usage. This is really unexpected to me.

In unrelated observations, there are some perhaps surprising signs of life from and . All have very quickly outperformed their rate of success in Phase 1, or in Ridley's case, the absolute standstill he converged to by the end. Part of this could just be a manifestation of @DasKoopa digging deeper into results for these ultramajors, but I don't buy that dismissive explaination. (I think top 96/128 is methodologically sound for such an event) is also doing a bit better than he was, we'll see how that holds. seems neutral, except for her that's good news because we'd sooner expect a weaker newcomer (propelled by novelty) to lose gas and crash. (Like Ridley did.)

Speaking of , gee, Magister where are you? are also showing no signs of life, buffs or not. is still an inferior being.

Bets on what percentile converges to by the end of Phase 2?

Since this post Orion has actually updated with the last week’s results. Notables:

• PT moves into second place. Not altogether unexpected given the increasingly and consistently strong performance from the terrifying trio.
• Joker manages to eke out Palutena for 4th place.
• Mario moves above Wario to 8th, showing surprisingly strong performance and consistency for a non-perceived top tier.
• Similarly, Greninja holds strong at 10th despite many predicting he would fall by now.
• Fox is hot on Greninja’s heels at 11th supported by Light’s recent results and showing a possible resurgence, certainly more than Lucina anyway.
• Inkling takes a bit of a tumble down to 15th. Perhaps the increasingly lacklustre results at top level, particularly without Cosmos, are starting to hurt.
• Pikachu moves up to 20th. Could this be the start of a meteoric rise to his perceived top 3 position? Probably not.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

...It’s Chrom.

Speaking of poor recoveries, once again, the weight given to “bad” recoveries in determining either match-ups, or tier position, is vastly overblown.

I do realize even high and top level players overrate recovery as a factor in the effectiveness of a character. However, barring something truly subpar, a bad recovery has had little correlation with whether or not character is top tier in Smash as a series.

In the meta’s infancy, overrating the importance of recovery was understandable. We are quickly coming up to a year of the Ultimate meta, and citing recovery as something overwhelmingly important betrays a lack of knowledge of the game.

I will never let these examples go:
Wolf’s bad recovery was commonly cited as a reason he lost certain MUs or was seen as mid to high tier.

Fox’s “better” recovery, in contrast, was cited as a driving reason he as to why was the best spacie.

Chrom was relegated to “mid tier at best” for quite a while, due in part to his limited recovery options. A lesser Roy with none of the flexibility of Ike’s recovery.

Of course, this always discounts the fact that you have to get that character off the stage in order to take advantage of that recovery. Stuff like “neutral options” and the evaluation of those strengths and weaknesses gets glossed over in favor of “lol Wolf’s up-B.”

People focus on disadvantage entirely too much in general. Having played Ness for years now you get used to “Yeah on stage can be hard but off stage we gimp him so winning MU for us”. If you can’t actually get the character into their bad disadvantage state frequently enough to abuse it then it’s not going to be a large part of the matchup and as it stands even Little Mac in the air has some semblance of some options to the point the entire MU can’t be summarized into “throw off stage and win”.

Though to be fair this is usually a talking point of lower level players who due to less experience or understanding will naturally gravitate to placing too much value on game states and situations more easily identifiable. Higher level players as you said still fall into this trap often but it does make sense why. It’s easier to identify Belmont off stage and realize he’s in a really really horrible spot, further emphasized if he gets gimped at 40% but it’s harder to see how Belmont can limit his chances being in that horrible spot through smart neutral play and projectile conditioning/habit recognition in each of his MUs.

Neutral is hard and not understood even at top level. It requires time, effort and intelligent theory crafting and purposeful practice to get better at. Forums like these are a great place to discuss it as they are slower moving and allow for more thoughtful posts but most of the community, understandably prefers instant messaging and limited platforms like Discord and Twitter to discuss meta elements which hurts the development of said meta.

 

[Nekoo]

Joker's also arbitrarily better on his 2nd and 3rd stock for some reason. I never quite got why he spawns with 15-20% of his meter already filled.

Joker's issue isn't that he start with 15-20% already of the gauge. But it's his "aura" mechanic that seems to be the issue and why people see him as a comeback machine.

When you have three stock, Joker needs to take 70% of damage, without rebels guard to make Arsène appears once the first time.

With Two stocks, he only needs 50% to make it appears the first time.
And with your last stocks around 30/40%.

This is a weird "Aura" comeback like mechanics, and it's the reasons why Joker summons Arsène so quickly when he just respawn after losing a stock and I still don't know why the commentator act so surprised everytime when the Character has been out for so long now and Leo abuse this "stock comeback" mechanic wonderfully.

 

[Rizen]

About nerfs: I'm not against them as Joker does get Arsene really easily and starts with 20% meter each stock but I also don't want to nerf something every time Leo or Tweek is amazing. And if it's not Leo's Joker that's "broken", who's is? Lemmon's at 17th place in SSC? Void's Joker at 25th? The character's good but Leo caused a snowball effect with him. Joker's not better than the other top tiers.

Now on my part I admit Joker (and PT) is better than I thought. IMO has a good MU vs him (why aren't people using YL as a CP character?!). YL can wall Arsene harder than almost any other character and if Arsene reflects projectiles it still eats time off his meter. Joker doesn't have what YL hates, big disjointed attacks, although Arsene does help. I've played a lot of Jokers in bracket, including someone who's won 120+ player tournaments, and YL does really well vs him.

But part of it is I'll watch videos, even of good players vs Joker and see them not optimizing the MU. Joker has unique counter play that only applies to him. You can't treat RG like any other counter because he can hold it. But it has iirc 33f lag so it's easy to charge a smash until you see the blue effects disappear. I keep seeing people use weak punishes like grab, although they are getting better.
Similarly players don't wait on the respawn platform to time out Arsene (looking at you Riddles). You can't completely avoid Arsene but you can play defensively and stall a lot of it. Watch Maister's G&W do this.
Joker's recovery is unique because he has the longest tether in the game. You can't run off and Nair it very well but all tethers swing to the side then reel in directly under the ledge every time. Several characters can pressure this area.
You have to know the MU.

So I'm glad to see Nintendo didn't nerf Joker right away because people are just starting to catch on. Maybe nerfs would be good in the future, if nothing else to bring Joker in line with how his character's supposed to function, not getting Arsene all the time. Right now though, outside of Leo destroying everyone, Joker seems fairly well balanced albeit very good.

 

[Locke 06]

Notes on the Joker (/Leo) matchup:

- The longer you stay on the angel platform, the less invincibility you have on the ground.
Leaving the platform immediately allows you to have 120f of invincibility, whereas if you wait the entire time you only have 60f of invincibility. Some of this will be spent falling from the platform, thus not very useful.
177f total invincibility (120f off the platform) vs 357f invincibility (60f off the platform) = 180 frames difference. If you can deal 15% to Arsene Joker, you've broke even, but you've probably also won neutral and put him in a position to take more damage. This should be a situational choice, not "wait every time" or "come down every time," but you are incentivized to come down from the angel platform.

- The more damage you do to Arsene Joker, the harder it is for Joker to activate Arsene later in the stock. Joker will get Arsene ~70% first stock and 60% subsequent stocks. And then he'll require another 70% afterwards to get Arsene. If you deal 30% to Arsene, that means Joker needs to survive to 170% on his first stock or 160% on later stocks to get a second Arsene. Fighting Arsene during Joker's mid%'s is very valuable towards preventing Joker from activating Arsene twice per stock, especially to avoid rage Arsene. This is a point that I never see discussed.

Leo gets two Arsenes per stock on stocks that he plays extremely well in as either base Joker (getting Rebel's Guard and/or living to high percents) or Arsene (not getting hit).


Edit: the sneaky nerf to arsene is to decrease Joker's survivability (weight decrease) or increase the vulnerability of Arsene up-B, which is safer than people give it credit for evidenced by how frequently the edgeguard is missed at the top level.

 

[The_Bookworm]

I know that this is completely out-of-the-blue and irrelevant, but do you guys remember my remark back when Hero was released?

Do you know the best thing about Hero's inclusion into Smash that no one is talking about?

THE DR. WILY SPIRIT FIGHT IS FINALLY DOABLE WITHOUT SPIRITS! YES!!!

Well, I just figured out today:

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Apparently, the developers knew that move has major cheese potential in spirit fights. No wonder I barely got Metal Slash to show up during the Dr. Wily spirit fight.

Well.... back to the drawling board.

 

[Shyy_Guy595]

So, who are the top 10 characters in terms of viability according to everyone's opinions?

 

[L9999]

So, who are the top 10 characters in terms of viability according to everyone's opinions?

Number is arbitrary, but to play devil's advocate:

Good frame data, a large collection of kill confirms, guns are stupid offstage, and Arsene is a great win condition.
Incredibly versatile and adaptable, the mons each have their individual great traits (and cheese).
His win condition is nasty, and he has good juggling and mobility on top of it.
Large disjoints, good mobility, good frame data.
A touch from her is a lot of %. Edgeguarding is REALLY nasty.
Strong traps that many can't approach well, Nikita alone flips MUs in his favor, has a lot of good buttons.
Laser forces to play his game. A lot of dumb and strong hitboxes.
Great mobility, good frame data, Zair and DSmash are fantastic, her Down B cheese is really good.
Sometimes he is a bag of potatoes, but is extremely explosive.
She has no tilts but in exchange she has really dumb aerials and great recovery. Pretty mobile too.

 

[NotLiquid]

So, who are the top 10 characters in terms of viability according to everyone's opinions?

Personally, in no particular order:
/

Despite not ranking the characters I'm dividing the top 5 from the other half because in general I feel like once you get out of those five characters, the amount of characters you can actually confidently rank in any specific order becomes kinda dicey, if not interchangeable with some characters that occupy what I'd like to think of round out into a Top 15 , but as far as the Top 10 is concerned I feel like those characters generally have some great MU spreads with no real hard counters (with possible exception to some less represented "hidden boss" picks, like Belmont being a bit of kryptonite for Olimar). The top 5 would be your S+ tier while the Top 5-10 would be the S- tier so to speak.

Olimar's shield nerfs have hurt the character, but despite Myran's objections, I don't feel like this character has gone anywhere meaningful beyond the fact that his ability to clutch last hit situations is somewhat weaker. I'm generally of the mind that he's still damn frustrating, and at least as far as pre-patch goes I very much held onto the belief that he was by far the best character in the game.

Pokémon Trainer, we've gone through that. Snake still is one of the few characters in the cast that has the liberty of having a get-out-of-combo free card button on top of his neutral and advantage-controlling kit, and we're sort of getting to a point where mediocre recoveries aren't really hurting all that many characters. ZSS may only have one player on the grand stage performing as well as they are but who are you really to deny that strength? Same goes with Joker.

Top 6-10, again, is where things get odd. Wolf could easily make a case for Top 5 but I feel like this is the one top tier MU everyone's already sort of figured out by now. Peach, similarly imo, narrowly misses out Top 5, though mainly on the back of her nerfs making her a little less perfect. The remaining three characters all have kinda some similar issues at the surface level - their neutral, advantage and disadvantage is all very well rounded and top tier in some areas more than others, but it is just really easy for them to lose momentum if they can't secure that stock. I think Wario has the least of this problem given that he has a fairly practical kill confirm and isn't that read dependent. Lucina may have to go for predictable options but her range and frame data gives her a lot of wiggle room. As for Inkling, I'm admittedly torn at their downtrend given that they're such an interesting character at a top level, and I feel Cosmos is only playing 50% of the character. Theoretically she should be doing really well in a meta that values defense, but everyone's still stuck in her autopilot ways which undermines how flexible she's allowed to be. I feel like her kit doesn't permit her to be anywhere below Top 15, but much like several characters mentioned in the whole batch there's a lot of optics that would speak against it.

I bring up an additional five characters since I genuinely believe that despite them having quite a few more pronounced flaws on paper than the top 10, I still believe they're solo viable, and I could buy an argument for any one of them finagling their way over any of the lower half of top 10 (you could argue it's more of a Top 16 since Chrom and Roy should, in my eyes, always be a dual main solution). That list probably extends into a Top 20, but we'd be here all day by doing arbitrary numbers. Ultimate has too many good characters to work with.

 

[The_Bookworm]

For me (loosely ordered):
(either or )

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To break away from the who is top 10 conversations briefly, can someone link me with all the Hero spell chance percentages, including the bonus percentage Metal Slash and Zoom gets under specific circumstances?

 

[BlackInk]

Notes on the Joker (/Leo) matchup:

- The longer you stay on the angel platform, the less invincibility you have on the ground.
Leaving the platform immediately allows you to have 120f of invincibility, whereas if you wait the entire time you only have 60f of invincibility. Some of this will be spent falling from the platform, thus not very useful.
177f total invincibility (120f off the platform) vs 357f invincibility (60f off the platform) = 180 frames difference. If you can deal 15% to Arsene Joker, you've broke even, but you've probably also won neutral and put him in a position to take more damage. This should be a situational choice, not "wait every time" or "come down every time," but you are incentivized to come down from the angel platform.

- The more damage you do to Arsene Joker, the harder it is for Joker to activate Arsene later in the stock. Joker will get Arsene ~70% first stock and 60% subsequent stocks. And then he'll require another 70% afterwards to get Arsene. If you deal 30% to Arsene, that means Joker needs to survive to 170% on his first stock or 160% on later stocks to get a second Arsene. Fighting Arsene during Joker's mid%'s is very valuable towards preventing Joker from activating Arsene twice per stock, especially to avoid rage Arsene. This is a point that I never see discussed.

Leo gets two Arsenes per stock on stocks that he plays extremely well in as either base Joker (getting Rebel's Guard and/or living to high percents) or Arsene (not getting hit).


Edit: the sneaky nerf to arsene is to decrease Joker's survivability (weight decrease) or increase the vulnerability of Arsene up-B, which is safer than people give it credit for evidenced by how frequently the edgeguard is missed at the top level.

Arsene’s up-B is not that good and it’s a well-known exploit in the match-up. I would say that wolf’s pre-patch up-b recovery was far more stupid than Joker’s arsene recovery ever was because of its absurd hit-boxes. Joker’s arsene up-b was only safe as it started with i-frames but the opponent would still be in a better position as they wouldn’t worry about any hit-boxes that could spike them or somehow hit them on the stage.

 

[TimG57867]

Some notes on Super Smash Con 2019 (I would show all the placings here, but it's honestly too much of a hassle to lol):

- A lot of the more recent trends we say in EVO 2019 have sort of repeated again; both Top 8's looked very similar in terms of its character line-up, and from the looks of things, and are here to stay. The fact that we had SIX Pokemon Trainers hovering around top 64 honestly speaks for itself. Other trends include doing well, but falling just short of Top 16 again (come oooooooooonnnnnnnn, I need a breakout with this guy), being everywhere, but failing to get very far, and a major lack of in top 16 once again. I think the last trend is the most interesting to me, because I can't really pin down the prime reason for this. It could be because of Ally's absence and Salem's decision to go , but MVD is still a really good player (ranked top 20 on the PGRU for a reason), so getting 65th at two major tournaments in a row is unlike him. I think it could be a combination of less rep and players starting to figure out how to pressure Snake without getting blown up.

Bad stuff:
- After doing phenomenal at EVO 2019, Raito had a surprisingly short run at Super Smash Con 2019, failing to break top 64 with , making it his worse placement yet. I still think Duck Hunt's a high tier character, but his set with BestNess did make me realize just how stressful it can be to play the character. If you're playing that's as difficult and mind-taxing as DHD, you do NOT want to be down a stock, because all that time you're failing to take the opponent's stock with a can is time you're giving them to start snowballing a lead, and that's exactly what BestNess did.

- Lots of outside circumstances spelled trouble for characters' rep this tournament, particularly for (Cosmos), (RFang), and (Elegant); Cosmos unfortunately wasn't feeling well and couldn't get far into the tournament before resigning, RFang decided to sleep in over attending, and Elegant has been feeling down lately and most likely won't be playing Smash Ultimate for a while, which would explain why his run ended so early after Day 1. It's har to judge their place in the meta currently.

- I think is starting to miss Tea, because while Sinji did do well overall this tournament, his success hasn't been up to snuff with Pac-Man's breakouts earlier on. I think Pac-Man is a high tier character, but I also think Sinji shouldn't be afraid to take a more aggressive approach with the character like Tea has, because mixing up your play styles and going from passive to aggressive at the drop of the dime is the biggest thing this character has going for him.

- This tournament looked unfortunate for , with only Jw being able to place top 64 after Stroder was out surprisingly early against Seagull Joe and Ned (two tough competitors); and from the sounds of it, Jw didn't have much experience against (at least compared to ven's experience with Greninja), a character that punishes you HARD for not knowing the match-up, and he ended up paying the price for it against ven. Hopefully things pick up for the frog at Shine.

- Still no in top 64; fuuuuuuuuddddddgggggeeeeeeeee. Oh well, maybe at Shine.

Good stuff:

- Can someone nerf MKLeo? Because this tournament has me seriously convinced that Joker's not broken (okay, maaayyybbbeeeee Arsene might be a little overturned, particularly the ease of getting him and his DAir confirm at 50~60%, which is honestly kinda BS); but honestly, even if those things weren't a facet of Joker's gameplay, the fact that the dude was potentially at his tournament stock and the most he did was scratch his nose... HOW? How can someone remain that calm under such circumstances? That's the real mystery of Smash Ultimate right now, because anyone else would've been taking deep sighs, rolling their eyes, waving their hands, pushing back into the chair, leaning towards the screen, shaking their head, etc... but MKLeo just kept his same poker face the entire game, and guess what? He ended up winning the tournament. You can nerf Joker all you want, but unless a player out there reaches the same level of mental fortitude MKLeo has (my money's on Gluttony to do this), he's gonna keeping stealing your Grand Finals like a Phantom Thief. Oh yeah, and 's a top tier, I guess.

- After their disappointing runs at EVO, it was good to see and rising up once more; Zelda did decently well, with ven placing 33rd and Aikota placing 25th while using her as a secondary. It's good to see there's still some fight in her, which is more than what can be said for characters like , and currently. Captain Falcon also had a much better showing, with NickC placing 17th and Fatality placing 25th, with the former taking out BlazingPasta and the latter taking out Puppeh. After EVO, Fatality seems to be in a much better place mentally (though his results on Falcon are still mixed), and I'm happy to see that he's done much better overall; hopefully both players can continue to keep up their momentum. I do wish they could fix some of his more random problems (i.e. jank like his hurtbox shifting for his turnaround dash), so that he can really shine.

- Well, mains were quick to shut me up lol After what was looking to be a pipe dream, Ness had his first breakout at a major tournament, with BestNess placing 17th after losing to Riddles; despite this, he had a great run, taking out Raito and taking a game off of Samsora as well, and the more I watch him, the more well-rounded Ness feels. He may have problems with mobility and recovering, but that's mitigated by a fantastic air dodge; he may have problems with range, but that's mitigated by a disjointed forward aerial and dash attack. And the dude has kill options up the butt, with a back throw that kills, a back aerial that's safe on block and hits hard, a PSI Magnet that's now a kill confirm, and a Yo-Yo that can hog the ledge. Oh yeah, and at high percents literally everything starts killing.

- Speaking of which, it was really good to see (and Riddles for that matter) back in action again, having one of the best runs in I've seen in a long time, only losing to MKLeo and Raffi-X. The Belmonts may have problems with their close-up prowess and recovery, but again, like Ness, a lot of that can be circumvented by things like their OoS uppercut, or their long ranged tether grab, which is surprisingly hard to intercept. And this is on top of ridiculous strengths (nutty ledge trapping, a plethora of area-covering projectiles that take a dump on things like Pikmin). Oh yeah, and forget , 's the one you do NOT want to get hit by, what is up with this character's damage output and knockback? Yeesh.

- seems to be continuing to a make a name for himself, having an impressive run thanks to both WaDi and surprisingly enough, Raffi-X, who outplaced both WaDi and 8BitMan. The interesting thing is that 8BitMan's and Raffi-X's performances gave me two different stories: On one hand, 8BitMan looked absolutely hopeless against Maister , but on the other hand, Raffi-X performed very well against ESAM , bringing him to game 5 and his tournament stock. I wish I could share DJ3DS sentiments on him falling behind, because I've been believing that for a while now, but it really looks like that time won't come. I will say I'm not a big fan of R.O.B.'s design in this game; instead of making is disadvantage less bad, they decide to give him a move that takes stocks at 50%? I guess that's one way to keep a character in the meta but still, I would've preferred a more balanced approach to the character overall.

- The hype train is continuing, with kept placing a very impressive 13th after defeating Dark Wizzy, Wishes, and Puppeh to get to where he was at. One could argue that a lot of it can be chalked up to match-up inexperience, but all that tells me is that Villager is yet another character that can't be slept on; even if his zoning isn't the stuff of kings, having 8 frames of lag shaved off of his Fair and BAir and having a faster jumpsquat really helps with his zoning capabilities (can we do something about his grab range, though, it is literally sauce).

- Maister and really took their successes with Smash Factor 8 and EVO 2019 to another level, because he made a really strong performance at Smash Con, placing 5th after taking out yeti, 8BitMan, NickC, Light, and ESAM (for the 3rd time) and doing pretty well against Marss, random SDs notwithstanding. I won't go too much into this because I already talked to no end about Mr. Game and Watch, but I do find it funny that people are suddenly complaining about how broken he apparently is when not too long ago they were calling him a bottom 3 character lol. But at this point, it probably is a safe bet to consider him a high tier character, at least for now. Major props to ESAM, though, he did a really good job of taking advantage of Maister's habits and highlighted Mr. Game and Watch's problems with repeating the same moves over and over again. Fire IS punishable if you spam it too often, Chef can be rolled past at the ledge if you don't space it well enough, and USmash can be punished with a long ranged option if you try to use it constantly. Just don't jump into it like Light did. Honestly, though FAir actually looked to be the MVP of the set, Maister took quite a bit of ESAM's stocks with that move. The move isn't impressive at stages like Final Destination, but with platforms that can trigger its explosion preemptively, it's both free pressure and a kill option that you REALLY have to watch out for.

To me, the best characters in this game are looking to be a toss up between , ,, and maaayyyybbbbeeeee (still think it's MKLeo that's mostly godtier). Samsora and BlazingPasta are really making it look like those nerfs to Peach never happened, goddamn.

Still no Kirby in Top 64? Jesuischoq got 33rd at Albion 4, remember? That's where a lot of his current Orion Stat score comes from right now. And had RK won his (quite winnable) set with Prodigy he would have gotten Top 128 at EVO.

didn't really make any splashes at Super Smash Con but that's to be expected as none of his truly big names(RK, Komota, Jesuischoq. SuperGirl Kels there but she pretty much just used her main guy for bracket. RK partaking would have been real sweet but he was burnt out from EVO.) were in attendance. Speaking of EVO, BassMage managed to get 97th with solo at that that very tournament which for a tourney of that size is hardly a small feat. Especially given common opinion of Jigglypuff these days. (Sadly can't say anything recent and notable for though which seems to line with his current 0 value on the TTS).

Poorly regarded as they are, even characters like Kirby and Jigglypuff can make surprising showings at big, stacked tournies. Unfortunately, the problem characters like them have is that on top of having small competitive playerbases in general, the skill amongst players within those already small player pools tends to be quite unevenly distributed with often literally a small handful of mains being competent enough to make notable headway at majors. And on top of THAT, you also have to hope these few capable players are super active and willing to travel to lots of majors all around instead of just going to ones in convenient locations. I am real glad Jesuischoq was able to put on a good showing at Albion 4 cause I am not sure how often Europe will be graced by supermajors of that size for the foreseeable future. Especially with the Albion series itself being concluded.

Sad fact is that not all rare/unconventional/unpopular characters are lucky enough to have somone like Maister for , Elegant for , or Raito for that are not only of high caliber but also willing to get around to all the big events they can. And even when the talent is there, you also have to hope the interest and enjoyment factor from the players is there as well. I can't help but feel that, if his desire to play prior to all his buffs hadn't waned, SDX probably could have maintained the level of results he was getting up until Frostbite which for a character as poorly regarded as Mewtwo at the time were rather solid. Heck even upper echelon characters aren't exempt from issues like this. Folks probably could have made a case for slippling out of top tier without bieng mocked to kingdom come prior to Light's recent resurgence and Lui$ really getting himself on the board not too long ago. And this is definitely owed in no small part to a lot his players like Larry Lurr and Charliedeking losing interest in Ultimate Fox and/or putting more time into other characters which leaves more burden on the ongoing players to get good placings. Just another testament to how hard it is to properly assess what a lot of the roster is capable of.

Not even patches that veritably make a character competent are a guarentee of a character's playerbase becoming more vibrant. Patch 3.1 basically smothered the previous nerfs dealt to with gorgeous buffs all around. But despite that, Tsu and Jeda continue to be only Lucarios really making consistent and major headway. As folks here often say, talent and playerbases are not equal amongst this massive roster and surely never will be. Especially when a character's raw strength isn't the only factor in their popularity. That said, it would be nice to see last patches changes make super obscure characters like and turn up more. But that can only happen if capable players actually give them a spin.

 

[Thinkaman]

Who has the best matchup against PT?

AFAIK the one dislike all 3 have in common is "people who can operate at minimal risk of being grabbed."

So ? What about ? or maybe even ?

Raito seemed bullish on vs PT but not sure how well that opinion stands--san someone remind me Raito's recent PT sets, if any?

I don't buy that or is a winning formula, but the range makes things at least interesting/different.

doesn't seem to work. I'm happy to play PT against Snake.

ESAM was always confident against PT in his initial opinions but what else is new. Still, it does make sense?

 

[BlackInk]

Who has the best matchup against PT?

AFAIK the one dislike all 3 have in common is "people who can operate at minimal risk of being grabbed."

So ? What about ? or maybe even ?

Raito seemed bullish on vs PT but not sure how well that opinion stands--san someone remind me Raito's recent PT sets, if any?

I don't buy that or is a winning formula, but the range makes things at least interesting/different.

doesn't seem to work. I'm happy to play PT against Snake.

ESAM was always confident against PT in his initial opinions but what else is new. Still, it does make sense?

The best kind of characters are the ones that can cover their landing options as that is the common weaknesses of all three PT characters. It’s why Pikachu is potentially a great match up against PT as a whole (as Pikachu has a strong ground game).

 

[KirbySquad101]

Still no Kirby in Top 64? Jesuischoq got 33rd at Albion 4, remember? That's where a lot of his current Orion Stat score comes from right now. And had RK won his (quite winnable) set with Prodigy he would have gotten Top 128 at EVO.

didn't really make any splashes at Super Smash Con but that's to be expected as none of his truly big names(RK, Komota, Jesuischoq. SuperGirl Kels there but she pretty much just used her main guy for bracket. RK partaking would have been real sweet but he was burnt out from EVO.) were in attendance. Speaking of EVO, BassMage managed to get 97th with solo at that that very tournament which for a tourney of that size is hardly a small feat. Especially given common opinion of Jigglypuff these days. (Sadly can't say anything recent and notable for though which seems to line with his current 0 value on the TTS).

Poorly regarded as they are, even characters like Kirby and Jigglypuff can make surprising showings at big, stacked tournies. Unfortunately, the problem characters like them have is that on top of having small competitive playerbases in general, the skill amongst players within those already small player pools tends to be quite unevenly distributed with often literally a small handful of mains being competent enough to make notable headway at majors. And on top of THAT, you also have to hope these few capable players are super active and willing to travel to lots of majors all around instead of just going to ones in convenient locations. I am real glad Jesuischoq was able to put on a good showing at Albion 4 cause I am not sure how often Europe will be graced by supermajors of that size for the foreseeable future. Especially with the Albion series itself being concluded.

Sad fact is that not all rare/unconventional/unpopular characters are lucky enough to have somone like Maister for , Elegant for , or Raito for that are not only of high caliber but also willing to get around to all the big events they can. And even when the talent is there, you also have to hope the interest and enjoyment factor from the players is there as well. I can't help but feel that, if his desire to play prior to all his buffs hadn't waned, SDX probably could have maintained the level of results he was getting up until Frostbite which for a character as poorly regarded as Mewtwo at the time were rather solid. Heck even upper echelon characters aren't exempt from issues like this. Folks probably could have made a case for slippling out of top tier without bieng mocked to kingdom come prior to Light's recent resurgence and Lui$ really getting himself on the board not too long ago. And this is definitely owed in no small part to a lot his players like Larry Lurr and Charliedeking losing interest in Ultimate Fox and/or putting more time into other characters which leaves more burden on the ongoing players to get good placings. Just another testament to how hard it is to properly assess what a lot of the roster is capable of.

Not even patches that veritably make a character competent are a guarentee of a character's playerbase becoming more vibrant. Patch 3.1 basically smothered the previous nerfs dealt to with gorgeous buffs all around. But despite that, Tsu and Jeda continue to be only Lucarios really making consistent and major headway. As folks here often say, talent and playerbases are not equal amongst this massive roster and surely never will be. Especially when a character's raw strength isn't the only factor in their popularity. That said, it would be nice to see last patches changes make super obscure characters like and turn up more. But that can only happen if capable players actually give them a spin.

Trying not to start anything, but it's been it's nearly 2 months since that event happened, and that event was a Season 1 PGRU event; I guess it can sound like that I'm expecting a Kirby player to always break top 64 every other event, but to me, it does feel like it's been a while since that has happened. Anyways, that bit was meant to be more of a jest than anything else, so I won't harp too much on it lol.


To me, my biggest takeaway from big events such as these is that nothing is ever really set in stone. Contributing factors are some points you bring up, particularly an inconsistent level of player skill among the cast, but other points are some major players coming out of the wood-work (Elegant's sudden emergence, putting on the map), lack of match-up experiences leading to potential upsets (two major examples at Smash Con were kept taking out Dark Wizzy, and Maister taking out Light), character switches (Ryuga going Hero leading to a decline in s), player inactivity (Ally being banned from Smash leading to less s in Top 8 at majors), buffs leading to increased rep (this doesn't happen often, but it can happen, particularly with ), and probably 10-20 other points I'm missing. Trends are still being made on the fly, such as slowly declining, for any combination of reasons I've given. I don't think anyone ever expected to be a major player, but kept just made top 32 at two S Tier events, which speaks for itself.


It feels like it's hard to pin down the major explanation for buffs lacking a major impact in the tournament scene. It could potentially be that players feel the buffs either don't do a great enough job of either fixing the characters' issues OR spark enough interest into the character (SDX felt this way about 's buffs in patch 3.0.0, and Dabuz is starting to feel this way about 's buffs, though he still uses her as a secondary). To me, I think the bigger reason is possibly that players find it's too much of a risk to drop what they have to flock to their newly buffed characters after already making themselves comfortable with someone else (WaDi and LetsTickle may feel this way, particularly with and respectively, but I have no clue). Very few major players are willing to make the jump, and I think the biggest reason is that having to learn (or relearn) a new character runs the major risk of falling behind in major tournaments. All for a payoff that may not even click with them.

On the other hand, Plup seems like he's willing to get his hands dirty with again, so maybe the buffs could make potentially make a big impact there? We'll see.

As for thoughts who may or may not do well against , maybe is good against him? He is very good at catching landings and as for tournament sets to back that up, ZD had a really good showing against Puppeh, but I don't have too much knowledge on either character.

 

[Rizen]

Notes on the Joker (/Leo) matchup:

- The longer you stay on the angel platform, the less invincibility you have on the ground.
Leaving the platform immediately allows you to have 120f of invincibility, whereas if you wait the entire time you only have 60f of invincibility. Some of this will be spent falling from the platform, thus not very useful.
177f total invincibility (120f off the platform) vs 357f invincibility (60f off the platform) = 180 frames difference. If you can deal 15% to Arsene Joker, you've broke even, but you've probably also won neutral and put him in a position to take more damage. This should be a situational choice, not "wait every time" or "come down every time," but you are incentivized to come down from the angel platform.

- The more damage you do to Arsene Joker, the harder it is for Joker to activate Arsene later in the stock. Joker will get Arsene ~70% first stock and 60% subsequent stocks. And then he'll require another 70% afterwards to get Arsene. If you deal 30% to Arsene, that means Joker needs to survive to 170% on his first stock or 160% on later stocks to get a second Arsene. Fighting Arsene during Joker's mid%'s is very valuable towards preventing Joker from activating Arsene twice per stock, especially to avoid rage Arsene. This is a point that I never see discussed.

Leo gets two Arsenes per stock on stocks that he plays extremely well in as either base Joker (getting Rebel's Guard and/or living to high percents) or Arsene (not getting hit).


Edit: the sneaky nerf to arsene is to decrease Joker's survivability (weight decrease) or increase the vulnerability of Arsene up-B, which is safer than people give it credit for evidenced by how frequently the edgeguard is missed at the top level.

IMO players are pretty good at avoiding invincible respawning opponents so it's best to take the 3 seconds free off Arsene by staying on the platform.

________________
I think has a good MU vs PT. He beats all 3 in neutral. Squirt does the best but YL's N/Dair are very safe and good at threatening Squirt's approaches. Ivy gets out camped by fire arrows and Charizard has a lot of trouble being walled.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Joker's issue isn't that he start with 15-20% already of the gauge. But it's his "aura" mechanic that seems to be the issue and why people see him as a comeback machine.

When you have three stock, Joker needs to take 70% of damage, without rebels guard to make Arsène appears once the first time.

With Two stocks, he only needs 50% to make it appears the first time.
And with your last stocks around 30/40%.

This is a weird "Aura" comeback like mechanics, and it's the reasons why Joker summons Arsène so quickly when he just respawn after losing a stock and I still don't know why the commentator act so surprised everytime when the Character has been out for so long now and Leo abuse this "stock comeback" mechanic wonderfully.

Well, I guess it’s easy then to think of ways of nerf Joker. Or better yet: nerfs to Arsene. If there’s anything to straight up change in Joker’s moveset, it’s this. Keep everything else the same, but change this.

Also buff characters that are more complicated in their play style to promote a less brain dead Top / High Tier. Again, this is why I preferred the Top Tiers of Smash 4; Diddy, Sheik, Mewtwo, Bayonetta (even if horribly overtuned) and Rosalina all had quite something unique to them what I feel is missing in Ultimate’s meta with the sole exception of Pokémon Trainer.

Yeah Ultimate is more rush down, but it doesn’t exactly make it a better game honestly. I am starting to want Pichu buffs because of this, because Pichu was terrifyingly awesome to watch.

I want buffs to the Smash 4 Top Tiers to make them relevant again. It worked with Mario and ZSS, so no reason why we can’t see a future of a viable Diddy, Sheik, Mewtwo, Falco, Meta Knight or Bayonetta again.

 

[Spinosaurus]

Who has the best matchup against PT?

AFAIK the one dislike all 3 have in common is "people who can operate at minimal risk of being grabbed."

So ? What about ? or maybe even ?

Raito seemed bullish on vs PT but not sure how well that opinion stands--san someone remind me Raito's recent PT sets, if any?

I don't buy that or is a winning formula, but the range makes things at least interesting/different.

doesn't seem to work. I'm happy to play PT against Snake.

ESAM was always confident against PT in his initial opinions but what else is new. Still, it does make sense?

I noticed that I've seen Samus brought up a couple of times on this topic from PT mains, but that's only something I observed and I don't know the nitty gritty to it. Someone else hopefully can chime in.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Who has the best matchup against PT?

AFAIK the one dislike all 3 have in common is "people who can operate at minimal risk of being grabbed."

So ? What about ? or maybe even ?

Raito seemed bullish on vs PT but not sure how well that opinion stands--san someone remind me Raito's recent PT sets, if any?

I don't buy that or is a winning formula, but the range makes things at least interesting/different.

doesn't seem to work. I'm happy to play PT against Snake.

ESAM was always confident against PT in his initial opinions but what else is new. Still, it does make sense?

I do honestly believe that Diddy works very well against Pokémon Trainer. Said so since the beginning. Ivysaur is the one going most even against Diddy because of the Razor Leaf spam, but Squirtle also has off stage shenanigans against Diddy. However, I feel that Diddy’s neutral and stage control work real wonders against all 3, especially Charizard. Squirrel also doesn’t appreciate Diddy’s frame data being so similar to his, with added range. He also doesn’t have the lingering hit boxes as Mario has. And Squirtle is therefore quite comparable to Pichu, whom in it’s glory days I felt was still a even matchup vs Diddy who didn’t got the previous patch’s buffs yet. Diddy also has a significant better air game than all, only thing that’s working against him is his disadvantage state and exploitable recovery; then again that’s an issue in all his matchups.

I’m not saying Diddy is a counter pick to PT yet. But future patch buffs might just make that so. Diddy needs one or two significant buffs to be solo viable I believe. He also has quite a good matchup vs Joker I believe, due to Joker being quite laggy on the ground making banana punishes quite easier on Joker.

 

[Lacrimosa]

I know that this is completely out-of-the-blue and irrelevant, but do you guys remember my remark back when Hero was released?




Well, I just figured out today:

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Apparently, the developers knew that move has major cheese potential in spirit fights. No wonder I barely got Metal Slash to show up during the Dr. Wily spirit fight.

Well.... back to the drawling board.

Just use Fox's reflector in that battle. It's not that hard, just takes about 80 with no spirits :3.

Also I don't like this "Top 10 Character" talk because it's actually distributed around the top 10 players. If they played someone else that is considered a mid-tier I doubt they'll fall off even a bit. I think I only make a Top 6 list (because writing is hard) since I believe these characters are still better than Joker...
But ok:
high combo potential, really easy to exesute, really good edgeguarding and very oppressive aerials. Give Samsora one more tourney and he has Leo's Joker in the bag.
superbe aerial movement, really good kill confirms with uTilt->Waft or dTilt->Dash attack, hard to kill because of his air speed, generally good tilts and a command grab, hard to edgeguard if bike's there.
extremely heavy, grenades forces most opponents to play his game if done correctly (Rip Ally here), nasty edgeguarding and ledgetrapping tools, C4 is always good for a sneaky kill
no disadvantage state, nearly impossible to edgeguard and ledgetrap as well, downB does more or less everything for her despite getting nerfed from S4 afaik: Kill confirm, recovery mixup and gets you out of every dire situation
versatile, PKMN change for stalling or surprise factor, squirtle delivers easy 50%, Ivy is nerfed but Razor Leaf is still a great zoning tool and can rob stocks with upB and dAir is perfect against linear recoveries (which all of the above chars don't have except Wario without Bike) and fighting Zard at high percentage is just terrifying
(and , I guess?) Good disjoint, fastest airspeed and groundspeed combined, sideB can kill extremely early (and don't tell me your opponent doesn'Ttknow how to DI the move because they know), probably the best framedata of all characters with no laggy aerial except dAir which makes for a very bad disadvantage. If this was better then he'd be easily Top 1.


High cheese factor with Arsene which is a fairly dumb comeback mechanic (sorry, ). Moves combo into itself and they have good knockback of course. I'M still not convinved he's the best character and that Leo is carrying him, so he's there.

HM: ( I can still keep going but yeah. You see, way too many characters are very good)

 

[Thinkaman]

I noticed that I've seen Samus brought up a couple of times on this topic from PT mains, but that's only something I observed and I don't know the nitty gritty to it. Someone else hopefully can chime in.

Ivysaur is the sort of dumb, reliable wall that it's really nice to have a charge shot against. And like someone said, covering landings is golden against them.

Samus's floaty/heavy combo also means that throw -> aerial combos usually have a smaller window (or none at all) on her. You see this with Bowser sometimes too.

I think Villager/Isabelle do okay against Ivysaur. They should usually win the wall-to-wall combat--slingshot, pocket, lloid rocket, and even fishing rod are all solid options against spaced razor leaf + aerials--but don't really have much going on in the matchup beyond that. They also probably don't mind Charizard much; he's tall and they can stay a million miles away from his shield. But *boy* do I dislike Squirtle as them! (At least Isabelle's trap is an attractive trade vs. any Squirtle initiation, for what that's worth. As opposed to someone like Pikachu, where it's basically worthless.)

 

[Kokiden]

People are going to be calling for Joker nerfs until the end of time aren’t they?

People want him to be nerfed into the ground but they just won’t say it out loud for fear of backlash I take it?

I won’t forget how overjoyed people were when Olimar got wrecked, same with Pichu.

Same thing will happen with Joker, and it’ll be a sad day when it does because that just goes to show people are actively looking for, and becoming heavily reliant, on nerfs making things easier for them.

From what I’ve seen, the introduction of nerfs into the game brings out the destructive side of people who like to tear down what’s good for ****s and giggles.

People will find any excuse to justify nerfs, and once Nintendo obliged them, they’ll move onto a new target for nerfs.

God I hate this obsession and over reliance on nerfs people have ingrained into them these days.

 

[TimG57867]

Trying not to start anything, but it's been it's nearly 2 months since that event happened, and that event was a Season 1 PGRU event; I guess it can sound like that I'm expecting a Kirby player to always break top 64 every other event, but to me, it does feel like it's been a while since that has happened. Anyways, that bit was meant to be more of a jest than anything else, so I won't harp too much on it lol.


To me, my biggest takeaway from big events such as these is that nothing is ever really set in stone. Contributing factors are some points you bring up, particularly an inconsistent level of player skill among the cast, but other points are some major players coming out of the wood-work (Elegant's sudden emergence, putting on the map), lack of match-up experiences leading to potential upsets (two major examples at Smash Con were kept taking out Dark Wizzy, and Maister taking out Light), character switches (Ryuga going Hero leading to a decline in s), player inactivity (Ally being banned from Smash leading to less s in Top 8 at majors), buffs leading to increased rep (this doesn't happen often, but it can happen, particularly with ), and probably 10-20 other points I'm missing. Trends are still being made on the fly, such as slowly declining, for any combination of reasons I've given. I don't think anyone ever expected to be a major player, but kept just made top 32 at two S Tier events, which speaks for itself.


It feels like it's hard to pin down the major explanation for buffs lacking a major impact in the tournament scene. It could potentially be that players feel the buffs either don't do a great enough job of either fixing the characters' issues OR spark enough interest into the character (SDX felt this way about 's buffs in patch 3.0.0, and Dabuz is starting to feel this way about 's buffs, though he still uses her as a secondary). To me, I think the bigger reason is possibly that players find it's too much of a risk to drop what they have to flock to their newly buffed characters after already making themselves comfortable with someone else (WaDi and LetsTickle may feel this way, particularly with and respectively, but I have no clue). Very few major players are willing to make the jump, and I think the biggest reason is that having to learn (or relearn) a new character runs the major risk of falling behind in major tournaments. All for a payoff that may not even click with them.

On the other hand, Plup seems like he's willing to get his hands dirty with again, so maybe the buffs could make potentially make a big impact there? We'll see.

As for thoughts who may or may not do well against , maybe is good against him? He is very good at catching landings and as for tournament sets to back that up, ZD had a really good showing against Puppeh, but I don't have too much knowledge on either character.

Actually Albion 4 was just 1 month ago and it was literally the last PGR Season 1 event lol. (I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want him to show up even more though).

But yes, we got to take extra care in assessing results because the far bigger roster make auxiliary factors like the ones brought a lot more glaring than they ever were in SSB4. Even a lot of high and top tiers are largely having their metas/major presence being carried by 1-4 players. And on top of all the things you and I already mentioned, there’s also the risk of an unfortunate event messing a player’s arrangements. For all we know, could have done some real damage at Smash Factor 8 but Light couldn’t make. And heck we saw it just recently with not being able to smother anyone at Super Smash Con with ink due to Cosmos’s poor health forcing him to bow out before too long. SSB4 wasn’t as balanced overall and there were less characters making headway at this time in its life so it was easier for a tier list to account for such things. The one good thing though is that Ultimate seems to have grown the popularity of Smash as a whole quite considerably so events worldwide are bringing bigger numbers and happening more frequently which gives more of this massive roster a chance to shine.

On the MU question...hard to really say. Often, when just looking at the theory, a character will often do fine or even great against 2 of the Pokemon but have a sus matchup against the last one. For instance seems to rush down and combo well enough. But ’s slippery nature and particularly vivid combo game on a fast faller like her can throw her off. And this has recently made itself apparent in Tweek’s (probably the most proficient Squirtle user of the Pokemon Trainers) recent sets with Marss where Squirtle is definitely doing the heavy lifting while Ivysaur sneaks in a kill here and there and Charizard appears to be a gamble to use given his big body nature. And for that matter, I tend to here a similar story regarding amongst Pokemon Trainers. Does well enough against Ivy and Zard but Squirtle keeps him on his toes played right.

For what it's worth, Big D and his have had a rather strong track record against Pandarian as of late. And the theory is deceptively good. can't really seeem to go get much going at all. Squirtle's short range is completely stufffed by the double Hammer onslaught and Blizzard walls and Squirtle's very reliant on grabs to get his early conversions which is a very tall order against Ice Climbers who not only wall him out but also pose the risk of getting punished on grab and/or throw depending on the Climber you grab. (Nana can punish a bad throw on Popo and grabbing Nana is pretty much a death sentence). And Squirtle's light weight just exasperates the issue. He can mess them a bit with Water Gun but overall doesn't seem to very helpful here. has it a bit better with more range but like Squirtle he doesn't really have a good zoning tool to keep Ice Climbers out from a far distance and what he gains in range he loses in being a bigger target for Ice Climbers menagerie of combos and juggles and has an even rougher time getting off ledge. His OOS can be clutch in this MU though. The Pokemon that seems to do best is as it has more range and weight that Squirtle, can pressure their landing a ton with Up Air, isn't quite combo prone or vulnerable on ledge as Charizard, and has Razor Leaf as proper range pressure tool. Big D's sets are anything to go by Ice Climbers can more than hold their own. The Hammers still seem handy in aerial exchanges, Ivysaur (while not as dependent on grab as Squirtle) still wants grabs to get the big conversions going and grabbing Ice Climbers when both are present is very risky affair, Ivysaur gets juggled and ledge pressured just as hard, and Razor Leafs while effective against Squall can be stuffed out by Blizzard and Ice Block can be rather annoying for the tether often forcing a switch to Zard. And the double Up Air seems like a strong pressure option against Pokemon Switch overall. You can see a lot of this in their sets at Pinnacle a month ago:

Shame Big D doesn't travel more. I'd like to see how other prevalent Pokemon Trainer's stack up against his Ice Climbers. On paper it seems they can do surprisingly well against all the Pokemon. But it's only through these 2 that we see this MU at a top level.

 

[Minordeth]

I know Wishes despises Chrom and thinks it’s a losing MU. Chrom’s dtilt and jab shut down Squirtle’s approach, and he overwhelms Ivy with his speed, safety and range. New Zard may make it not so apparently awful tho.

As for Damus/Samus, between Zair and bomb, she stuffs Squirtle’s approach, too. CS shenanigans, a long range grab, a ridiculous ledge and edge game, and a potent combo game make her less fun for Ivy and Zard.

 

[SapphSabre777]

I think one thing that has struck me with some deep intrigue has been the idea of representation for a character-base in tournaments. One thing Leo has preached since the start of the game is that the player makes the characters, not the other way around (oft reflected in his tier lists as well), and after him winning so much and demonstrating it all, I'm inclined to believe more than ever that a character's representation and playerbase will be more important than ever when it comes to pushing them in the meta and appropriating their positions in the public's tier lists. Granted some characters do take more work because of their tools (some characters have to fill this), but it doesn't stop a character from going very far even in the most prolific tournaments.

with BassMage made a splash over at EVO a few weeks ago, but there were also a few that made it to Phase 3 as well. RK's also applies in this situation, and a as well. However, these characters (along with their innate flaws) don't have player bases that have a high-leveled, consistently attending player or set of players of the like of Elegant/ConCon (), Raito (), Maister (), Riddles (), and much, much more.

Some characters, despite their strengths and/or weaknesses, simply feel like they are lost in anonymity: , , , (to a lesser extent thanks to Jayy), , /, , , , (and others) all are characters that many would say are better than the publicly-accepted low tiers, yet don't have a truly notable, consistently attending player or set of players to put them on the map, putting them in a very awkward place overall for the character and the player base when it comes to comparing them to the rest of the characters in the meta, which is many.

Overall, we are starting to hit a point where a player's use of their tools with their character will be more of an indicator of their worth in the meta than the innate properties of the character themselves, from top to bottom. There's no mistaking that using someone of a lower tier in this game *will take more work to play off of upping strengths and patching weaknesses through your own play, and the workload increases, sometimes substantially, the higher level you go*. However, I feel that a player's ability to assess the character and take advantage of their good aspects and play around their weaknesses will be more beneficial this time around, but that's if a player even picks these characters up, whether it be Leo picking up Chrom after going from Lucina, Ike, Joker, a player in the shadows awaiting a big breakout with an obscure character, or just a normal player looking to make a mark. The players of the characters have to make their case moreso than ever now.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Who has the best matchup against PT?

AFAIK the one dislike all 3 have in common is "people who can operate at minimal risk of being grabbed."

So ? What about ? or maybe even ?

Raito seemed bullish on vs PT but not sure how well that opinion stands--san someone remind me Raito's recent PT sets, if any?

I don't buy that or is a winning formula, but the range makes things at least interesting/different.

doesn't seem to work. I'm happy to play PT against Snake.

ESAM was always confident against PT in his initial opinions but what else is new. Still, it does make sense?

Ness does pretty solid against all three.

Squritle is Sheik esque in that he can press a lot of buttons and overwhelm but Ness dies sport superior range and far superior damage per hit. It’s not exactly easy for Squritle to get in on Ness and feels similar to Pikachu’s main issue with his Ness MU. You can usually get Squritle to a percentage he’s starting to feel uncomfortable and wants to switch in 1-2 neutral wins with Ness which is great since that’s less time you have to deal with Squritle combos and it’s not like you’ll see a Squritle in after 90ish percentage unless the trainer player wants to lose an early stock to a back air or throw.

Charizard is also solid for Ness. I don’t know how the new changes affect the MU yet the nair change likely helps with his landing issue against Ness. Zard has some good range where it matters but has to play around PKF which he doesn’t have the best times dealing with. He has average air speed but poor air acceleration so he can’t reliably jump over the move to punish and shielding it lets it be safe at distance. This puts more of a burden on him approaching Ness and approaching Ness is exactly what Ness wants. (He admittedly has good ground speed which lets him close gaps in even if he does have to play around fire) His big body means your not seeing him at lower percentages unless your at kill percents but then he’s gotta deal with typical big character issues. His overall survivablity is lessen by Ness loaded kill power as well.

Ivy I put last because it’s the MU that Ness doesn’t do as good against as the other two, but as I play the MU more I feel it’s better for Ness than first imagined. Firstly Razor leaf is actually pretty trivial in the matchup in neutral. It’s slow enough to reflect on reaction if Ivy is using it under platforms and if he’s not DJC PKF does an amazing job at invalidating the move. Razor leaf is either destroyed by the fire or Ivy itself is hit by the fire while in the fair amount of lag from using the move all being able to be done on reaction which is good for Ness. Being able to not have access to a lot of Razor leaf in neutral makes Ivy play this MU a lot closer to Ness which is much better for Ness than it is Ivy. Ivy has to rely a lot more of his still admittedly good aerials in neutral but the range on them isn’t super troubling for Ness and Ness can reliably get Ivy above him or off stage where PKT is really hard to deal with and can often force a switch to Zard to escape Thunder pressure.

Of course Ivy still has his ridiculous up air/ up b and down air which really really hurt Ness when he’s in similar situations that I described above and by playing more you close with more fairs and Bairs Ivy has more chances to get Ness in those situations which is why I don’t think the MU is as good for Ness as the other two Pokémon but overall the whole trainer package is fairly good for the kid.