Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Heracr055]

I don't think Corrin underusage is a popularity issue; I see quite a few people actually really like her (in Smash, no comment on her source game lol) and her unique playstyle. It's just that her tools aren't really good in this game, at least with her current attributes (such as slow speed, which affects her juggling game). And again, praying for a kill with a heavily punishable raw kill option (which almost all her kill options are, unfortunately) isn't good enough to cut it in Ultimate.

Edit: To tie in with what Zachmac said below: if a Fire Emblem Heroes popularity poll counts as any indicator, Corrin places as the 5th most popular female character

 

[ZephyrZ]

To be specific among FE fans, if I may, Roy is just slighty infamous for being weak in FE gameplay, but has a decent reputation otherwise, especially in recent years. In contrast, Corrin is near universally panned for his/her personality and actions in the FE fandom(although fans do exist). His existence is smash is one of the more interesting results of ''everyone is here'', approach, since the inclusion as a marketing push doesn't have quite the legacy as the melee/brawl characters who got returned. With the new FE game going so mainstream recently, I don't see him returning in a future game with a slighty more conservative cast.

I do have a selfish hope he gets a few buffs to stand himself out more in this game though. Even a more casual player like myself could see his awkwardness compared to other swordies, and at best he makes me miss his SSB4 self, which I did enjoy.

Internet outrage can be misleading - while I am in the boat that thinks Fate's story is horribly written, Corrin (female Corrin in particular) still manages to do very well in official popularity polls.

That said I doubt that Corrin's placement has anything to do with popularity. I mean, K.Rool got in entirely eue to popularity and he's not exactly tearing the metagame up.

 

[Idon]

The only tool in Corrin's kit that helped differentiate them and make them a worthwhile pick from the other swordie monsters like Lucina and Chroy were their pin and honestly while it's not too terrible, there's no denying that it's not as effective as it used to be in the Smash 4 days. If it had the versatility and relative safety that it did back then, I'm sure there'd be much more mainstay Corrin mains.

(Also, Corrin and Roy are two characters that are... not received well within the main FE community, so I doubt representation comes from character loyalty for them specifically, though that's a discussion for another thread)

 

[KakuCP9]

I don't think popularity has any correlation between a character's viability or chance at getting buffs. Take Melee Roy for instance, he was used for advertising FE6 and he ****ing sucks which doesn't sound like the optimal way to get someone to buy a game vs Fox/Falco who don't look or play like any of the Gamecube StarFoxes and are blatantly top tier. Or Brawl Sonic, beloved character that everyone was hyped for turned out to be painfully average. Or Smash4 ZSS and Diddy who aren't from flag ship series standing head and shoulders above the rest of the cast. I can think of a ton more examples, but the long and short of it is that like Bayo, the dev team went:
Guy A: "Alright. We can't make them like we did last game."
Guy B: "Okay. How should we design them this time?"
Guy A: " ...... "

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Character popularity definitely doesn’t affect who gets buffed or not but it definitely impacts usage rates, more so early in a games life span. For a new player to smash unless your coming from a competitive background chances are you aren’t looking at characters and thinking about them in terms of frame data, hitboxes and viability. Your looking at who looks cool to you and who have you heard about and like. As the games lifespan goes on unless the character is actually good will definitely impact the usage rates far more than is the character cool or not, which is just a by product of people learning about the game’s mechanics and having a desire to use better tools to achieve victory, if that’s the ultimate goal.

Can’t really compare older titles balance decisions to newer ones, completely different era, different mindsets and attitudes towards balance. Only way you were patching Melee once you figured out your marketing gimmick Roy actually sucked was to rerelease the game all over again. Back then even caring that Roy sucked to being with probably wasn’t even a concern for a new IP still trying to figure itself out.

 

[Megamang]

I wasn't referring to the like of a character as a character, more as a conglomeration of tools. While they may not consider frame data, I think most players (that we see in pools at least) pick a character on how they feel in smash. There are true loyalist, but most players mess around with some characters until something appeals to them.


Corrin just doesn't have any tools that made me say 'oooh, that's useful/fun/powerful', a few 'that's a decent tool/hitbox' but nothing strikes me as particularly powerful. Bair is cool and safe but its got a slow startup and dashing away while you attack actually kinda hurts you in this game compared to. say, falcon / palu / Squirtle / pichu / MARIO where they hit with a bair and then because they are coming towards you they continue pressuring aggressively. Corrin bairs me and I'm like 'whew, she flew away, and is slow, ill drift away and im fine'. That is assuming I survive, but if I get bair'd at kill percent I probably screwed up and definitely got forced into it, I don't get raw bair'd much because its pretty telegraphed in this game.

 

[The_Bookworm]

In the Shine 2019 bracket, here are the notable upsets so far in pools:

Mr.R (DQ'ed out of pools)
Leffen 3-2 8BitMan
Blacktwins 3-1 Puppeh
808 2-1 Jayy
Dunston 3-1 Jayy (out at 97th)

 

[KirbySquad101]

Shine's Top 12:

Spoiler

Winner's Side:

MKLeo vs Marss
Dabuz vs Samsora

Loser's Side:

Dark Wizzy vs Jakal
Blacktwins13 vs Raffi-X
Nairo vs LeoN
ESAM vs Tweek

We might finally see a Bowser, Mario, and/or a post-patch Pichu in Top 8 at an S Tier Event for the first time; aside from that, the Winner's Side is looking pretty standard, though it'll be interesting to see if Marss has the same success against MKLeo that he did at Smash Factor.

Also, some really good representation for characters not seen too often eliminated earlier:

- Juice (placed 13th, got 3 upsets against Myran, Light, and BestNess)
- NickC (placed 13th, got 3 upsets against ScAtt, Lui$, and Riddles)
- Sandstorm (placed 25th, got 2 upsets against Salem and LingLing)
- Jul (placed 17th, admittedly, Jul's bracket didn't have as much notable players, but 17th is still nothing to scoff at, and he got a notable win over SharpF, who defeated Riddles earlier)

 

[Nebunera]

is high tier and Juice is proving it.

 

[bc1910]

Shine's Top 12:

Spoiler

Winner's Side:

MKLeo vs Marss
Dabuz vs Samsora

Loser's Side:

Dark Wizzy vs Jakal
Blacktwins13 vs Raffi-X
Nairo vs LeoN
ESAM vs Tweek

We might finally see a Bowser, Mario, and/or a post-patch Pichu in Top 8 at an S Tier Event for the first time; aside from that, the Winner's Side is looking pretty standard, though it'll be interesting to see if Marss has the same success against MKLeo that he did at Smash Factor.

Also, some really good representation for characters not seen too often eliminated earlier:

- Juice (placed 13th, got 3 upsets against Myran, Light, and BestNess)
- NickC (placed 13th, got 3 upsets against ScAtt, Lui$, and Riddles)
- Sandstorm (placed 25th, got 2 upsets against Salem and LingLing)
- Jul (placed 17th, admittedly, Jul's bracket didn't have as much notable players, but 17th is still nothing to scoff at, and he got a notable win over SharpF, who defeated Riddles earlier)

We also had Jw and Stroder getting 13th which makes two players in top 16 at an S-tier. Stroder likely used some other characters but Jw’s placement is solo. This is the best the character has done in a while.

Jw in particular had a fantastic losers run with wins over Pugwest, Mr E and Goblin who sent Tweek to losers again this tournament. He was eliminated by LeoN which almost certainly comes down to a case of raw player skill/MU inexperience since LeoN himself says that Greninja is a pretty bad MU for Bowser.

Unfortunately Venia only made 49th losing to Dark Wizzy and Riddles. Both sets were 3-2 however and neither player is a bad loss to have. 49th is the best Venia has done at a big tournament iirc so at least he’s improving.

I don’t think it should be too long before we get a Greninja breakout into top 8 at a big tournament. There’s still a strong argument for the character being low top tier especially since he’s not backed up by a tippy top player.

 

[blackghost]

is high tier and Juice is proving it.

falco is high tier based on what? a singular performance? or are there other falco players placing well?

also shine put hero in an interesting light. if a character loses that badly to palutena they will never be high tier in ultimate's current meta game. hero's mu with palutena is really bad. salem nearly lost to a palutena that was a far worse player and when bestness pulled her out against hero the matches became a breeze for him.

Ken continues to impress. just can't seem to quite get there yet. but he's super close. the ryu and ken mains took a second, but they are coming. better learn the di now. lol.

 

[The_Bookworm]

In terms of Snake players, Snake didn't really give off the best performance here again.

Ally is gone and Salem is focused on right now (however, after two consecutive 49th placements at a major using him, I don't know if he is going to stick with him or not).
MVD and Pelca underperformed again, getting 49th and 97th, respectively. Not sure if it is people adapting to Snake, or these players not performing as well as they usually do.
Conversely, however, Welfare Pickles has picked up the slack for the top Snake players, securing an impressive 17th placement for him.

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Speaking of , Hero once again didn't do well in a major event. The highest placement of Hero is Salem (of course) at 49th, who lost to Phantom 3-2 and Sandstorm 3-0.
, the character is which everyone was constantly mocking to be an irrelevant character due to Hero's release, completely and utterly outplaced Hero in this event.

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Speaking of , Jul promoted a new and frightening style with Robin. He is going to use jump canceled Thunders all over your face like Samus' Charge Shot, he is going to use uncharged Thunder like a Falco laser, he is not afraid of expending all of his resources when necessary because when he does, he is going to use his dropped items like he is playing Brawl ZSS.

With a very impressive 17th placement, only losing to ESAM (who knows the matchup like the palm of his hand) and Dark Wizzy (in a bunch of really close games), we will see how much further the character can be pushed.

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There is also NickC and his 13th placement, with his set with Dark Wizzy going either way, defeating MuteAce, Riddles, Lui$, and ScAtt. With Fatality taking a bit of a break of big events (and not doing too hot on them), it is good to see NickC pick up the slack.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Maybe it's exactly Robin that makes Hero irrelevant...hehe.

 

[Rizen]

I agree 's not high tier.
_______________________________________
If you look at Orion Stats, there's no distinct recipe for a good character. You can't say "sword characters are clearly favored by the engine" or rush downs or zoners etc. Ultimate is very well balanced in that regard. It really comes down to how strong a character is individually and how well they appeal to top players.

How good a character is really depends on how well they can weather a storm. for example managed to stay at the very top due to being an all around strong character, even after players like MKLeo dropped him. He still has a fare amount of top level players like Zackray but isn't used by everyone like he was a few months ago. IMO this makes Wolf a strong contender for the #1 spot. Not that there is any definite #1 character.
Characters have ups and downs. did really well at first, dropped off a bit when Light was under preforming then bounced back. I can't see him falling out of top tier. Long term results are important. It's the overall staying power that shows how good a character is.

One problem with this however is that patches and new characters happen and shake up the meta. We don't have a stable model of a metagame. is probably the best example of being significantly moved by forces outside the meta. This makes it extremely hard to gauge characters' overall staying power.

And then there's the popularity aspect. Some characters, if they're good enough, just appeal to players. Top players have a strong influence on popularity and can cause a snowball effect. The FotM factor is real.

For all these reasons, determining character viability is sketchy at best especially for characters under high tier. All I can say is expect upsets; the upset factor in a game this balanced is very high. Don't sleep on anyone and try not to have knee jerk reactions.

 

[Lacrimosa]

The devs really have issues creating shields that work.
Not only Olimar has them but also Kirby.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Maybe also a reason why Kirby is so heavily treated as a bottom-tier when even his defenses don't work properly.

 

[The_Bookworm]

The devs really have issues creating shields that wiork.
Not only Olimar has them but also Kirby.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Maybe also a reason why Kirby is so heavily treated as a bottom-tier when even his defenses don't work properly.

???
How does that work? How did Kirby get shield poked? The shield seems to have covered his whole body.

At least Kirby can inhale Snooze for a star, but still...

 

[Megamang]

Do 2D stages collapse the Z axis still? That would be a way to test if the issue was z-axis related. And we could possibly try holding upwards like Olimar has been doing to prevent stabs.


That said, this is unfortunate. Hopefully the devs are aware, it kinda made sense for olimar because he is so potent and small that having a solid defensive game was making him oppressive (though nothing like we've seen in previous games, blah blah blah, but I understand why a character like olimar would have a weaker shield) but Kirby? Nah, Kirby needs that shield and he probably needs a good parry window to be able to get in at all where he can use his spacie type tilts.

Speaking of spacie tilts, falco's utilt looked as oppressive as I've read here. Utilt just kept grabbing fox, it combo'd out of landing aerials, and it consistently lead to damage and an advantageous position. Its a solid move. And it really synergises well, when Falco is so fast vertically. He was able to shoot up and continue pressure lots of times. That said, fox has to get closer to it than most and I'd imagine with a sizeable disjoint it becomes less of a problem for a lot of the cast. When power levels were equal, falco does pretty well against fox historically. Vertical combos vs a fastfaller, wicked edgeguarding, reflector and an annoying laser (I laughed pretty hard when Juice reflected a laser then shot another to stop light... I think? Maybe I have it reversed but Falco certainly has more answers than 'take damage and try to get in' that much of the cast has).

Some more uniquely annoying stuff for fox... Horizontal lasers slap both illusion and firefox startup, his dair is pretty good at punishing low firefoxes, and to top it all off Fox can't punish falco offstage nearly the same way. He was never a good edgeguarder but getting off the ledge is also easier now, though still not nearly free you dont get 2 frame utilt'd -> bair'd away like you used to, which is a huge relief for a lot of the cast.


To me, the falco combos looked realer than the fox ones.


That said, I expressed above why I think falco may do better vs fox than much of the rest of the meta relevant cast. However, I feel this way on a lot of MUs and fox just isn't as scary as he has been... which isn't saying much, he's been a terror forever so he could still be low-top tier and be 'less scary'.

 

[NotLiquid]

Falco has always been the character with the better combo routes in Smash compared to Fox, it's not too surprising he goes into Ultimate with that still being the case. What usually makes him worse than Fox tends to be down to a lot of extenuating circumstances, primarily related to his neutral being worse, and still retaining Fox's notoriously sub par off-stage play/disadvantage.

Though really at the end of the day you have to look at all those traits from the perspective of how the balance changes, the new engine, and how the surrounding cast reflects on some of his "inferior" aspects, i.e is it easier to "counterplay" Falco rather than Fox, what part of Falco's inherently lesser qualities are actually lesser in practice, and other such questions.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Zackray won EGS (A large Japanese tournament) with Joker, is dropping Wolf. It'll be interesting if his Joker can be on Leo's level.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[Megamang]

Falco has always been the character with the better combo routes in Smash compared to Fox, it's not too surprising he goes into Ultimate with that still being the case. What usually makes him worse than Fox tends to be down to a lot of extenuating circumstances, primarily related to his neutral being worse, and still retaining Fox's notoriously sub par off-stage play/disadvantage.

Though really at the end of the day you have to look at all those traits from the perspective of how the balance changes, the new engine, and how the surrounding cast reflects on some of his "inferior" aspects, i.e is it easier to "counterplay" Falco rather than Fox, what part of Falco's inherently lesser qualities are actually lesser in practice, and other such questions.

Definitely, I agree with all this. I find it interesting that the MU might be kinda hard for fox because, while fox may be able to mitigate range issues with horizontal speed better than falco, falco himself has better range/hitboxes in this MU. Also, falco can abuse fox offstage while fox really can't edgeguard very effectively.

Just watching, fox's entire gameplan really hates that powerful utilt combo starter. And there isn't really much of a 'bad' hitbox on that move unless you pop out, its just freaking good at catching you.

 

[KirbySquad101]

The devs really have issues creating shields that work.
Not only Olimar has them but also Kirby.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Maybe also a reason why Kirby is so heavily treated as a bottom-tier when even his defenses don't work properly.

I'm not sure if this is true or not, but moving Kirby's (full) shield forward will allow him to successfully block Snooze, so that's another option to answer it; still, that doesn't really change the fact that that shield poke looked like it was "DK's headbutt" levels of misguiding. Between this, Captain Falcon's hurtbox shifting, and Bowser's "not getting grabbed when I'm shielding" jank, a lot of things REALLY must've flew under the dev team's radar.

It also doesn't do any favors in terms of his already abysmal competitive reception from the Smash community.

We also had Jw and Stroder getting 13th which makes two players in top 16 at an S-tier. Stroder likely used some other characters but Jw’s placement is solo. This is the best the character has done in a while.

Jw in particular had a fantastic losers run with wins over Pugwest, Mr E and Goblin who sent Tweek to losers again this tournament. He was eliminated by LeoN which almost certainly comes down to a case of raw player skill/MU inexperience since LeoN himself says that Greninja is a pretty bad MU for Bowser.

Unfortunately Venia only made 49th losing to Dark Wizzy and Riddles. Both sets were 3-2 however and neither player is a bad loss to have. 49th is the best Venia has done at a big tournament iirc so at least he’s improving.

I don’t think it should be too long before we get a Greninja breakout into top 8 at a big tournament. There’s still a strong argument for the character being low top tier especially since he’s not backed up by a tippy top player.

That is definitely good news for Greninja; the only real reason I didn't mention him was that I always considered him to be a high tier character at worst. From what I've seen, he seems to be in a similar place as at the moment results-wise, a character who's got tons of good rep and places consistently very well, albeit just short of Top 8. I have no doubts that either Lea or Jw can pull it off (maybe also Stroder, but he seems busy with a lot of other characters as well atm).

Speaking of which, what are your thoughts on the - match-up? I always figured Greninja would have the edge, given how much trouble Greninja's vortexing can give R.O.B., but when Stroder tried using Greninja against Raffi-X, he ended up getting clapped pretty badly.

 

[Space thing]

My experience with the frog v robot match up is that frog usually has trouble challenging robot's big hitboxes. He basically can't directly go against landing nair for example, so he either has to snuff it out before it comes out, which can be tricky and isn't possible once robot gets some momentum and traps frog on the ground, or he has to parry it consistently, which is doable but requires far more effort for lower reward than on robot's end. He can also try to whiff punish with dash attack, but he isn't always in that situation and when he is robot could just land different. Either way the timing is fairly strict. Neutral is fairly ok but it does require good movement from frog to get around projectiles and avoiding shielding, which is again doable but not easy. Meanwhile, thanks to d tilt, robot doesn't really struggle that much close up on the ground, he has slightly better oos options, and frog's aerials outside of bair and uair, which sometimes aren't available options, or usually to slow to reliably context robot's and defensively robot can deal with these fairly easily.

I'm not giving numbers or saying who wins or not, just pointing out that the match can in fact be quite annoying or hard to deal with for frog in my experience. Like, these are all things that can be dealt with and frog def has his own strengths here (mobility, advantage state, the ability to chase robot pretty far both off stage and high up for juggles, etc.), but it's definitely a match up I feel the frog player has to know what to do and have their timing down to perform very well at.

 

[Megamang]

yea, learning the ROB matchup to me was a lot about snuffing his nair before it starts and suffocating him. Greninja struggles to get that first hit that begins the advantage stage, when you get in you have decent frame data but its hard to call out a jump and hit an aerial before he nairs. Yea, tilts work OK, but the trades are then really not in your favor.


Getting the top is great though. Like really great. It gives greninja an OOS, lol. But I don't think this is unique to greninja, ROB's big hurtbox really is annoying when trying to fight his own projectile. Greninja's mobility means the laser alone isn't really threatening.

Having a great dash attack helps for easily grabbing the top. And his big hurtbox makes edgeguarding pretty scary, you both have side special kills super early and bair is a fast big aerial that actually can do some edgeguard loops.

 

[bc1910]

That is definitely good news for Greninja; the only real reason I didn't mention him was that I always considered him to be a high tier character at worst. From what I've seen, he seems to be in a similar place as at the moment results-wise, a character who's got tons of good rep and places consistently very well, albeit just short of Top 8. I have no doubts that either Lea or Jw can pull it off (maybe also Stroder, but he seems busy with a lot of other characters as well atm).

Speaking of which, what are your thoughts on the - match-up? I always figured Greninja would have the edge, given how much trouble Greninja's vortexing can give R.O.B., but when Stroder tried using Greninja against Raffi-X, he ended up getting clapped pretty badly.

It seems evenish overall. The projectiles aren’t actually that much of a problem given Greninja’s excellent mobility and the fact that they aren’t really spammed in the same way as Links or Belmonts spam theirs. The difficulty comes from ROB’s up close game being dangerous and Greninja’s options for stuffing out Nair during startup being relatively sparse; you’re pretty much limited to RAR Bair which does work but is risky to miss given it doesn't autocancel. Nair and Dtilt are definitely tough to deal with, but that's kinda true for everyone against ROB. At least Greninja has the luxury of mobility and good range on his aerials to stop ROB from getting in his face too often.

Whilst ROB probably has the edge in neutral, Greninja can destroy him in disdvantage due to his big body, slow aerials and exploitable recovery. Greninja doesn't really get bodied in disadvantage either thanks to his huge jumps and fast falling speed, outside of grounded gyro setups which again kinda body every character.

As far as results go they are fairly even. Lea has beaten WaDi, Stroder just lost to Raffi obviously, and Dill and Venia go fairly even with Venia having the edge historically. If you're interested in the MU, here are a couple of recent sets between Dill and Venia.

Even seems a fair assessment to me as of now, although I feel Greninja might eventually have the edge as we iron out the kinks in the neutral game against this character and learn to push advantage even more. Also as Megamang said, grabbing the gyro is fantastic for Greninja and this kind of counterplay has a lot of room for growth.

Incidentally I think ROB is mad good overall but held back by a horrible MU with Palutena and iffy MUs against other top tiers like Pika, Wolf and Zero Suit. He has some great anti-meta potential with strong MUs against Inkling and Snake though.

 

[Megamang]

Low profile is also pretty useful vs ROB, you can dodge early frames of fair, gyro OOS... while SH aerials go over dtilt (usually...) kinda similar to greninja, ftilt antiair is useful but doesn't have reward beyond position and chip damage. Though his jab is decent here as well. I think f-tilt is underrated for greninja as a poke, it covers lots of holes and putting them in disadvantage isn't guaranteed damage but for greninja getting positional advantage is really really nice. You have more stage to run back to, which ROB can only really contest by taking ground or shooting a projectile... and the less space ROB has the better.

 

[Nebunera]

mario should be top tier i don't get how he is considered lower

 

[blackghost]

mario should be top tier i don't get how he is considered lower

the prominence of sword users, lack of range, no extreme tools, lack of results, and head to head vs other elite characters.
mars basically gave two games away vs wizzy and then switched to zss for a reverse 3-0. mario is ok but he's no high tier. yes he can beat up on predictable recoveries but he's not very special offstage himself.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Dark Wizzy literally could've eliminated Marss games 3 and 4 had he not flubbed up on his punishes as bad as he did (i.e. FSmashing the wrong direction, NOT Caping ZSS when she was completely helpless offstage after using Boost Kick).

Also, Mario's currently ranked #8 on OrionStats and is one of the only characters to actually place consistently well in tournaments, so he's been churning out the results and representation for quite a while now.

I'm not sure if I'm quite on board with Mario being a top tier just yet, but considering the success he's had beforehand and Dark Wizzy's 5th placement at an S Tier event just now, he's practically inches away from sitting his plumber butt in that golden spot at worst.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Dark Wizzy literally could've eliminated Marss games 3 and 4 had he not flubbed up on his punishes as bad as he did (i.e. FSmashing the wrong direction, NOT Caping ZSS when she was completely helpless offstage after using Boost Kick).

Also, Mario's currently ranked #8 on OrionStats and is one of the only characters to actually place consistently well in tournaments, so he's been churning out the results and representation for quite a while now.

I'm not sure if I'm quite on board with Mario being a top tier just yet, but considering the success he's had beforehand and Dark Wizzy's 5th placement at an S Tier event just now, he's practically inches away from sitting his plumber butt in that golden spot at worst.

That was just an...odd set in general. I dont know why Marss slummed it with Ike those first two games, epescially since he had no issues in the Mario MU as ZSS before to my knowledge.

It almost became the story of Marss at Bat, if Wizzy did not make crucial mistakes game 4 and 5..

 

[TimG57867]

Speaking of flubbed punishes, I really can't but feel we'd have had a in Top 8 if Blacktwins hadn't messed up his Jab Lock punish in Game 5 against Raffi's .

Clearly he was trying to go for an optimal combo that possibly be could have setup into a kill, but he dropped it and Raffi was able to reverse the momentum from there. In hindsight he might have just been better off setting for a charged F Smash. It probably wouldn't have killed R.O.B at 71% but it definitely would have forced an off stage situation that Blacktwins could have exploited to get a double stock lead and further cement himself. Stuff like that really shows the gamble you take when you go for optimal, more rewarding conversions that have more potential for error. Sometimes the simpler less immediately rewarding punishes can leave you in a safer position in the end. Nevertheless it was good set all around it and Blacktwins whole run overall showcased that even after the nerfs Pichu can still be rather explosive given an opportunity. Seeing Blacktwins steal that Game 1 with a Thunder Spike at like sub 20? was definitely a good reminder Pichu was and still is capable of. Getting Top 8 with bascially solo Pichu in this meta would have been quite the statement but 9th ain't nothing to scoff at either. Hopefully Blacktwins and the other remaining Pichus can continue to show that Pichu is still capable. The nerfs were quite the blow to his meta and made so many strong players fully drop Pichu.

Also a big congrats to Samsora and his for double eliminating MkLeo and his and taking Shine, all the while returning the favor from Super Smash Con. Watching the set, Samsora definitely remembered how Mkleo's Gun Special usage threw a wrench in his otherwise solid camping strategy. This time, the key adaptation seemed to be exploiting Peach's float and platforms to say out of gunshot height and preserve his leads. And in general commited camping and fully waiting on respawn platforms really seemed to pay dividends as Arsene Joker was as terrifying as ever whenever they had to interact. Speaking of which, I am impressed how quickly Samsora was able to work around Mkleo abusing Tetrakarkhan against his recovery again when feasible. He mixed up his recovery a lot and abused DAD to avoid giving Leo easy counters. Seeing those first 2 games in Grands, I was starting to worry Samsora would crumble just like in Smash Con, but thankfully the RNG bomb pull he used to end Game 3 got his head back in the game he was able to keep composure and clutch it out despite getting resetted. With that we're once again reaffirmed that MkLeo is more than beatable. I wonder what MkLeo will have up his sleeves for Sam in future tournies. He already seems to have figured out Marss's after his Smash Factor loss. The pocket Megaman pick definitely threw him for a whirl though in Game 3.

Speaking of , the blue bomber is actually 1 last thing I wanted to give attention too. When Kamame sent him to Loser's at EVO, that got folks talking up Megaman being a potential Joker check. But Mkleo hadn't fought Kameme before so it was easier to bring up matchup inexperience as a key factor. But this tournament has been interesting on that front. Scatt, after getting his waxed Game 1, was able to give Leo much more challenging games with Megaman, even taking 1. He possibly could have won Game 3 and 4 as well, but he SD'd game 3 and was hit by a hard call out from MkLeo via a near full rage Arsene Joker F Smash that was probably mis-DIed in Game 4. And today after having his ZSS messed, Marss was able to give Mkleo a shockingly competitive game 3 with his pocket Megaman that we haven't seen in ages.

This has gotten me starting to wonder if perhaps the Blue Bomber does in fact have some tricks to give Joker a run for his money. Across the games I watched this weekend, even though a lot of Megaman's projectiles could feed Joker's Rebel guage, the Pellets made it a headache even for Arsene Joker to zoom in and between B-Air, downward Saw Blade, D-Air, and Crash Bomb Megaman seems to have plenty of toys to harass Joker's recovery with. Especially vanilla Joker. I am quite keen to see Mkleo and possibly Zackray go up against more Megaman. I think this is definitely a MU to keep an eye on right now and could potentially be a big anti-meta one for Megaman.

 

[blackghost]

i really dont get why people act like pichu performing well is a surprise. pichu mains abandoned the character after relatively minor changes. I wouldn't call the ftilt loss nothing but the characters gameplan to my non-pichu main eyes appears relatively unchanged. I could be wrong about that of course but with so man people seeking to elevate new characters into high and top tier lately why has pichu been left on the side of the road?

 

[bc1910]

Pichu’s gameplan at top level is identical. Frame data nerfs are the real killers and Pichu didn’t get any of those outside of a measly 2 frames of endlag added to Fsmash. He was already declining before the nerfs due to his very significant range and survivability issues. The patch just exacerbated the survivability issues in particular that were already frustrating the Pichu playerbase, notably VoiD and Captain L.

Pichu is still high tier AF in my view, just a riskier pick than you need in Ultimate’s current meta. He’s also outclassed by Pikachu pretty heavily, who trades a slightly worse advantage state and raw kill power for being better at virtually everything else. Pika’s advantage state is probably still top 5 regardless. Despite this, Pichu is still a strong character and it’s no surprise he can do well when everyone is underestimating him and also forgetting the MU.

 

[SwagGuy99]

is high tier and Juice is proving it.

actually might be the most underrated character in the game the more that I think about it.

He doesn't really have any major weaknesses. I'm not saying he has none but they don't cripple him as a character like other Mid /Low/Bottom Tier's weaknesses do ('s movement speed, 's recovery, /'s disadvantage states).

• His ground movement isn't that great. However, he has landing n-air to start combos into his grounded moves, blaster to slow down approaches, reflector to help against campy characters (on the ground), and his grounded moves in general aren't what his gameplan revolves around.
• A lot of people say that Falco's recovery isn't that great. However, people often forget that Falco's side-b travels quite far and that his double jump is one of the best in the game. So while Falco's recovery is much weaker if he gets hit out of his double jump, if the Falco player manages to keep their double jump, Falco's recovery becomes significantly better.
• Falco's approach isn't that great against faster characters, however, he still has his blaster to slow the opponent down a bit. It's not the most effective method that any character has, but it can oftentimes work.
• Falco's range his last majorly notable weakness and it is probably his biggest weakness. Against long ranged characters. Falco has to play patiently and correctly know when to punish attacks, when to use blaster, and when to stay away from the opponent. This is Falco's biggest weakness, but it isn't big enough (IMO) to consider it crippling to his character.

Falco's strengths make up for his weaknesses by a lot and then some.

• Falco's combo game is possibly the best in the game rivaled only by ,, , , and . His high damage output, very reliable combo starters, and his ability to reliably link attacks until very high percents on most of the cast means that of you get hit once by Falco, you will most likely get hit again.
• Falco's kill power is decent. Up-air can kill near the top blast-zone at decently high percents (not as hard as it sounds due to Falco's jump height). All of his smash attacks are either powerful or fast, down-tilt has decent range and will start killing at high percents, up-tilt and n-air will start killing at very high percents, f-air will kill at mid to high percents off stage, and b-air is a fast and somewhat reliable kill move at high percents. Not all of these moves are easy to land, but having this many moves that can start killing at reasonable percents means that he is bound to land one eventually (especially when side-b/up-tilt --> b-air exists)
• Falco's edgeguarding is great. Falco's high jump height allows him to travel very far offstage to edgeguard opponents.
• Falco can deal with opponents who camp a lot due to his fast and long ranged reflector.
• Falco's grab game is pretty good. He can get some combos off of down-throw, but up-throw is overall better at combos than down-throw.
• Falco's juggling game is very good due to up-tilt and up-air.

IMO, with all of these things at his disposal, he's Top 20, near the very top of high tier,

 

[SapphSabre777]

Definitely a wondrous weekend for Smash Ultimate as a whole, so trying to recap the highlight characters this weekend is going to be a handful, but I'll try my best here. (And sorry for the wall of text in the spoiler, I like thinking and writing these things.)

Spoiler: Long List of This Week's Performances Pt. 1

: Samsora double eliming Mkleo with Peach and getting that S-Tier win he's been practically destined for speaks volumes for this character. The way this character can move, adjust her combo strings to strike weakpoints (a la Up-Air being seen now to extend juggles), and her complete toolkit that can allow her to play a very versatile game, this is a character that is a very top tier threat in this meta, a Top 5 character.

: Mkleo getting 2nd for the first time in so long would've stung for the Phantom Thief, but he got a great consolation in having a new top player in the mix: zackray. He showed it by winning a stacked EGS Cup with him (with a ROB). The representation is growing for this character, and if Leo has shown us anything, he is a terrifying top tier threat and one of the argumentative best at this game.

: Probably the biggest surprise in Shine was just how strong Robin was pushed. Juuuul didn't disappoint with a 17th place finish (beating FSharp), and Nairo seamlessly struck down Leon with the Robin at the gates, all this with a character thought to be in deep trouble viably due to Hero doing Hero stuff. Good thing these guys showed us how crazy Arcfire is, and how everything just melds to it and his resources. He'll definitely be rising in the public opinion's tiers.

: Another big surprise thanks to Blacktwins' performance. Getting 9th with a character long since to be ruined by patches is something of a revival of spirit for the pre-evo of Pikachu (ironically, he tied with ESAM's Pikachu), and with quality wins over Puppeh, Wishes, and Goblin. By no means will it fix the flaws he now has, but having this representation and results absolutely helps out the little guy in spades.

: For the third S-Tier in a row, a Falco makes it into the high-placing results list, this time with Juice, who seems to be showing that this is a character not to be overlooked (not top tier, but definitely getting some high-tier type results). His high-damage advantage state is definitely a killer, and getting wins over Light, BestNess, and Myran shows that this character can compete with the best. Definitely a good set of weeks for Mr. Lombardi.

Spoiler: Character Stuff Pt. 2

: Dabuz using primarily Rosalina came as a shock to me, but the way he used her definitely shut me up right away. 5th place with her is amazing for the character, with Dabuz getting wins (with some assistance with Olimar) versus yeti, Leon, Blacktwins, and taking games off of Samsora and Nairo. Just watching him control Luma with Attack Cancel Dash Attack and covering so much space, this is a character that, while won't be top tier, will be one to keep an eye on if Dabuz continues with her, along with Kirihara.

: Not one, but two Greninjas got 13th between Jw and Stroder, making it a great S-Tier for the ninja frog. Jw rampaged through Loser's side of Top 64, eliminating Pugwest, Mr. E, and Goblin, and Stroder followed suit (with assistance), eliminating Magister, BlazingPasta, Elegant, and Phantom. A lot of names claimed by a character players were growing skeptical of, but a performance like this should say a lot to them.

: No Fatality is no problem right now, thanks to NickC's performance. With a more methodical approach and usage of all his tools, NickC is definitely carrying the character's meta currently. It helps he had some big wins versus MuteAce, Riddles, Lui$, and Scatt in this tournament. The Captain isn't out of the woods yet, and representation like this is going to help him in the long run.

Of course...there are some Losers in these last weeks, and some of them are pretty interesting to mention:

: This was a very rough tournament for PT. The wins were there, for sure, but four PTs in 33rd (Puppeh, Leffen, Pandarian, Beast) really stings for the character. Those Ivy nerfs and Charizard buffs have seemingly thrown a monkey wrench into the original plan. I'm sure that they'll rebound in time, but not a good showing at all for a character people are calling top tier.

: While Pickles' performance at Shine was a very respectable one, the overall performance for Snake is on a bit of a downward decline now, which is definitely putting into question his #1 status. Another underperforming result from MVD, getting a 49th placing after falling early to a Wii Fit, then running into Puppeh. Scatt also leaned more Mega Man in the tournament. People are learning the MU now, and it is hurting Snake immensely.

: Fox faltered a bit in Shine (ironically enough), with Light and Lui$ falling early and being the worst spacie results-wise (Falco with 13th, Wolf with 9th). Light fell to Juice and Suarez, while Lui$ resorted to Mario versus Elegant and lost, then soon lost to NickC. This inconsistency with results for Fox is a bit worrying, and might drop him a few places as a result.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Shine 2019

1st: Samsora
2nd: MkLeo
3rd: Nairo
4th: Marss
5th: Dabuz
5th: Dark Wizzy
7th: Tweek
7th: Raffi-X
9th: ESAM
9th: LeoN
9th: Blacktwins
9th: Jakal
13th: NickC
13th: Stroder
13th: Jw
13th: Juice
17th: Juuuuul
17th: Gen
17th: ScAtt
17th: Elegant
17th: Suarez
17th: BestNess
17th: Goblin
17th: Welfare Pickles
25th: Sandstorm
25th: Lui$
25th: FSharp
25th: BlazingPasta
25th: Light
25th: Mr E
25th: yeti
25th: Myran

garnering quality wins versus yeti, Leon, Blacktwins, and taking games off of Samsora and Nairo.

Dabuz used to defeat Blacktwins, and I am not sure if he used against yeti since that set was off-stream.

 

[SapphSabre777]

Dabuz used to defeat Blacktwins, and I am not sure if he used against yeti since that set was off-stream.

Thank you for that correction. I know he used Oli a bit, but with how some matches aren't streamed, it is awkward to say the least. I'm sure I missed a few with other characters as well, but the fact they were doing work against top-level opponents is a good thing regardless.

falco is high tier based on what? a singular performance? or are there other falco players placing well?

Seven got 25th at EVO, Lui$ used Falco along with Mario, Fox, and Doc, got 7th. Players like Kofi, Larry Lurr, and others getting meaningful results with him, and now Juice getting 13th with Falco. This isn't a singular performance trend at all, its just that Falco is coming up on the map in spades, and has the results (in S-Tiers, no less) to back up his high-tier status. Definitely a character that's not top-tier, but one to watch out as the meta progresses.

 

[Y2Kay]

It seems evenish overall. The projectiles aren’t actually that much of a problem given Greninja’s excellent mobility and the fact that they aren’t really spammed in the same way as Links or Belmonts spam theirs. The difficulty comes from ROB’s up close game being dangerous and Greninja’s options for stuffing out Nair during startup being relatively sparse; you’re pretty much limited to RAR Bair which does work but is risky to miss given it doesn't autocancel. Nair and Dtilt are definitely tough to deal with, but that's kinda true for everyone against ROB. At least Greninja has the luxury of mobility and good range on his aerials to stop ROB from getting in his face too often.

Whilst ROB probably has the edge in neutral, Greninja can destroy him in disdvantage due to his big body, slow aerials and exploitable recovery. Greninja doesn't really get bodied in disadvantage either thanks to his huge jumps and fast falling speed, outside of grounded gyro setups which again kinda body every character.

As far as results go they are fairly even. Lea has beaten WaDi, Stroder just lost to Raffi obviously, and Dill and Venia go fairly even with Venia having the edge historically. If you're interested in the MU, here are a couple of recent sets between Dill and Venia.

Even seems a fair assessment to me as of now, although I feel Greninja might eventually have the edge as we iron out the kinks in the neutral game against this character and learn to push advantage even more. Also as Megamang said, grabbing the gyro is fantastic for Greninja and this kind of counterplay has a lot of room for growth.

Incidentally I think ROB is mad good overall but held back by a horrible MU with Palutena and iffy MUs against other top tiers like Pika, Wolf and Zero Suit. He has some great anti-meta potential with strong MUs against Inkling and Snake though.

I feel like it's slightly in Greninja's favor in the long run too, but Epic Gabe and JW feel like ROB wins the MU due to higher Kill power

 

[blackghost]

• Falco's combo game is possibly the best in the game rivaled only by ,, , , and . His high damage output, very reliable combo starters, and his ability to reliably link attacks until very high percents on most of the cast means that of you get hit once by Falco, you will most likely get hit again.
• r,

im not questioning falco combo game my eyes dont lie. I am gonna say you are missing some combo games on that list. ken, bayo, joker(?), pikachu, and ice climbers.

Thank you for that correction. I know he used Oli a bit, but with how some matches aren't streamed, it is awkward to say the least. I'm sure I missed a few with other characters as well, but the fact they were doing work against top-level opponents is a good thing regardless.



Seven got 25th at EVO, Lui$ used Falco along with Mario, Fox, and Doc, got 7th. Players like Kofi, Larry Lurr, and others getting meaningful results with him, and now Juice getting 13th with Falco. This isn't a singular performance trend at all, its just that Falco is coming up on the map in spades, and has the results (in S-Tiers, no less) to back up his high-tier status. Definitely a character that's not top-tier, but one to watch out as the meta progresses.

so in your mind how many characters are thigh tier if top 20 is high tier? also some of these results are form players using him for specific matchups like Larry Lurr and Luis. So i really dont know how much weight to put on them. breaking top 25 at evo is good but i'd need to see who he played and who he lost to to make a better judgment. Flaco seems too matchup dependent to have arrived as a high tier imo.

 

[TimG57867]

I fully agree that 's actual capability really didn't drop a massive amount thanks to the actual nerfs. I actualy never felt they were a super heavy blow myself (I do believe the F Tilt nerf fully tipped the Electric Rat balance in 's favor though). But regardless of how big of an impact those nerfs actually made it didn't change the fact that they accelerated a lot his most capable players drifting away from him and when a character fails to make many splashes for so long, it leads to folks opinion of them dropping simply due to abscency bias. We just saw have a bad stint with this and he didn't even get nerfed so naturally a character in Pichu's position would get it so much worse, especially compared to and whose mains remained largely loyal without faltering too much if at all in overall success.

It's not so much a surprise to see a Pichu do good as it is a relief to have someone get a really strong placing with Pichu at an S Tier for the first time in a while. To put it in perspective, the Orion Stats TTS has not been updated yet and at the time of writing Pichu is currently #47 on the rankings. That has her behind , , , , , and a plethora of other uncommon characters while just above characters like , , and . A far cry from where Pichu was around the same time during Season 1. Regardless of how strong Pichu currently, actually is that drop in meta presence is real.

Just like how having a strong top player push a character will do more for their meta than most buffs, strong players dropping a character in droves will hurt them so much more badly than any nerfs ever will.

 

[|RK|]

Just a sidebar - Joker's combo game is pretty average. It looks cool, but does like 33-40% on a good day.

That is, if we're talking damage, at least.