Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Impax]

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.

I'm assuming swagguy was talking damage otherwise wft wouldnt be there.

 

[Megamang]

Well, it continues to combo much longer than most characters or outright kills from combos. He doesn't grab you and do 80 damage, but he does dair you at 60 and kill you with arsene. If he misses that, well he can land a uair or fair and those both combo to kills for a long time, or in uairs case forever essentially. That's got some weight for sure. But I could see arguments that it is a kill confirm game and his combo game is mediocre.

 

[|RK|]

Well, it continues to combo much longer than most characters or outright kills from combos. He doesn't grab you and do 80 damage, but he does dair you at 60 and kill you with arsene. If he misses that, well he can land a uair or fair and those both combo to kills for a long time, or in uairs case forever essentially. That's got some weight for sure. But I could see arguments that it is a kill confirm game and his combo game is mediocre.

Right, this is why I specified damage!

 

[Lacrimosa]

Zelda also does 40% with her...uhhh..combo(?) game :^).

Anyway, on a more serious note:
Trela will be more active on Nationals from now on which means more (in case he didn't drop him) and at high level play.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[Nah]

: 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.

I'd really hope that this community would finally learn that basing a shift in opinion (on an uncommon character) from just one tournament is really not the way to go, but I won't hold my breath.

Also, Hero was never a threat to Robin's viability, just maybe their usage. Semantics, I know, but still.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Zelda also does 40% with her...uhhh..combo(?) game :^).

Anyway, on a more serious note:
Trela will be more active on Nationals from now on which means more (in case he didn't drop him) and at high level play.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

It seems like he is indeed using Ridley and Hero, though a bit more of the latter.

It would be cool to see him back at high level play again.

 

[Heracr055]

Expect Trela to drop (or at least sparingly use) Ridley and use Hero as a play toy/distraction until Banjo comes out. That's what I gathered from his Twitter posts and Twitlonger, at least. I'm just glad I get to see my favorite player traveling again

 

[Avokha]

I'd really hope that this community would finally learn that basing a shift in opinion (on an uncommon character) from just one tournament is really not the way to go, but I won't hold my breath.

Also, Hero was never a threat to Robin's viability, just maybe their usage. Semantics, I know, but still.

What do you think is the right way to go then, out of curiosity?

 

[Anomilus]

Expect Trela to drop (or at least sparingly use) Ridley and use Hero as a play toy/distraction until Banjo comes out. That's what I gathered from his Twitter posts and Twitlonger, at least. I'm just glad I get to see my favorite player traveling again

https://twitter.com/TrelaTTN/status/1166088041255055361

Don't sound like he has any plans on dropping Ridley (thank goodness he's the hero Ridley needs) and will rely on him as a proverbial "big gun". Understandably he's focused on Hero right now. Gotta level up new character. The same will happen when Banjo drops.

 

[Nah]

What do you think is the right way to go then, out of curiosity?

Long-term data basically. When Robin starts getting these sorts of results over a relatively long period of time across more than one player, then we can start re-evaluating the character.

 

[SwagGuy99]

so in your mind how many characters are thigh tier if top 20 is high tier?

Do you mean High Tier or Top Tier? I'm not sure if this is the way everyone decides who is Top/High/Any other tier but this is how I like to think about it. Of course, it's all opinion based, but there needs to be some foundation for having a certain amount of confidence in a character.

I'll try to answer both questions as best as I can but IMO, at this point in Ultimate's meta, I'd say there are about 15 characters who I'd say are probably Top Tier, all of which either have the results to back up their placement (like ) or characters who have proven that they have the right tools to be as successful as the rest of the cast, even if their results may be a bit more hit or miss (like ). This isn't all of the characters I'd consider Top Tier and this list can change over time, but given that Ultimate's meta is still young, I don't think we can say that a character isn't top tier because their results may fluctuate as players experiment with new characters and as certain characters may have sudden (oftentimes temporary) rises and drops in popularity/results due to changes to other characters. While Ultimate is young, I'd say that potential/theory matters more now than in a year or two when we have more (consistent) results to back up character placements. However, I think when considering Top Tiers, results play a much larger factor in whether or not they are Top Tier or not than when considering who is high, mid, low, or bottom tier.

High Tiers are the characters who have the potential (or have been proven to be) solo-viable, but have less notable strengths or more prominent weaknesses that hold them back from getting the consistently high placements that Top Tiers will often get in tournaments. They can still place very high, but require much more practice, effort, and may have a few poor matchups, but high tiers still generally lack a really big (even crippling oftentimes) weakness that mid/low/bottom tiers tend to have and if they do have a really big weakness, their strengths must be extremely good for it to make up for it. Most characters I consider high tier do have some top level representation but not nearly as much as the characters better than them and right now (again, Ultimate is a young game) applicable theory is something I'd consider a bit more when ranking these characters although results are something else that I'd consider. I'd say there's about 15 to 20 characters in high tier to answer the original question.

Not sure if this makes a lot of sense or not, but it's how I choose to view it.

 

[Avokha]

Long-term data basically. When Robin starts getting these sorts of results over a relatively long period of time across more than one player, then we can start re-evaluating the character.

Makes sense, although acquiring said data gets harder and harder the smaller a given characters playerbase is, as there are far fewer players to serve as your sample size, don't you think? So relying on that alone would only prove to be accurate for the most popular (most used) characters, unless you assume that characters are less used exclusively because they are worse and ignore all other social factors and phenomena that leads to the compositions of every playerbase.

 

[Rizen]

Makes sense, although acquiring said data gets harder and harder the smaller a given characters playerbase is, as there are far fewer players to serve as your sample size, don't you think? So relying on that alone would only prove to be accurate for the most popular (most used) characters, unless you assume that characters are less used exclusively because they are worse and ignore all other social factors and phenomena that leads to the compositions of every playerbase.

doesn't have the largest player base and he's gotten repeat performances. I agree there are outside factors like popularity so you can't rely exclusively on results but there's nothing stopping lesser used characters from preforming well. It just takes a few good players.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Makes sense, although acquiring said data gets harder and harder the smaller a given characters playerbase is, as there are far fewer players to serve as your sample size, don't you think? So relying on that alone would only prove to be accurate for the most popular (most used) characters, unless you assume that characters are less used exclusively because they are worse and ignore all other social factors and phenomena that leads to the compositions of every playerbase.

Those aren't measurable or quantifiable, so yeah you ignore them. Trying to include those ideas for data is even worse than the insane amount of theory propping up Shulk's hyper-inflated tier list rankings.

If a character has 1) a small player base and 2) sparse results, the character is probably not that good. Probably got enough there to sort out between bottom/low/lower mid, but you need something tangible to be above that. Don't get a free ride to high tier off of one really good result.

People need to keep in mind, so far Ultimate is proving to be balanced enough that even these many months later literally any character can win a strong B/low A level tournament. That's kinda nutty when you remember the roster size. But that also means one offs matter even less than they did during Brawl or SSB4.

 

[Megamang]

Theres a handful of players capable of breaking into the top level / top 8 range, but one step below that is chock full of talent. I agree that if there was a character that was drastically misplaced, we would see some activity beyond statistical noise. We did see that with Bowser, to a tiny extent isabelle (where you at Thinkaman time to get some results!), etc.


But with a large roster, matchups are a big deal. With a relatively balanced toolset, there are characters that match up well in some places and get bopped in others. I feel this is how Falco did so well vs Light, I see his tools matching up with Fox pretty darn well but falling short vs Lucina.


Also, how long into the meta before we stop the meme that we all just suck and tethers will be free, and we realize the tether player has tons of mixups and pretty generous invincibility/ really fast ledge snapping? I agree we should be going deeper, but the same as 4 there are actually a decent number of situations where you are better off keeping pressure at the ledge.

 

[Avokha]

doesn't have the largest player base and he's gotten repeat performances. I agree there are outside factors like popularity so you can't rely exclusively on results but there's nothing stopping lesser used characters from preforming well. It just takes a few good players.

I absolutely agree, though this poses another interesting question; if a given character is fully capable of performing very well consistently but lacks the right players to carry them there, is their viability being judged fairly? I suppose a good way to see that would be like the age old philosophical question of "if a tree falls but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

In other words, "If a character is X tier and no one is playing them, is that character still X tier?"

Those aren't measurable or quantifiable, so yeah you ignore them. Trying to include those ideas for data is even worse than the insane amount of theory propping up Shulk's hyper-inflated tier list rankings.

If a character has 1) a small player base and 2) sparse results, the character is probably not that good. Probably got enough there to sort out between bottom/low/lower mid, but you need something tangible to be above that. Don't get a free ride to high tier off of one really good result.

People need to keep in mind, so far Ultimate is proving to be balanced enough that even these many months later literally any character can win a strong B/low A level tournament. That's kinda nutty when you remember the roster size. But that also means one offs matter even less than they did during Brawl or SSB4.

The thing about this is that those factors very much matter. They determine just who and how much a character is used. If you truly can't find some way of quantifying these, then any data you accrue using this model will be vague at best and will only really mean anything at a surface level.

I need to stress that characters aren't chosen by players solely for their competitive prowess and the likelihood that character will win tournaments. Players choose their characters for all sorts of reasons loosely or even entirely unrelated to competition in general. I'm not saying it's impossible for perceived "bad" characters to be "bad," but that the amount of data available from underused characters is not enough to determine whether or not said characters are conclusively bad. To assume that any obviously underutilized character is unviable based entirely on said underutilization is folly.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

I need to stress that characters aren't chosen by players solely for their competitive prowess and the likelihood that character will win tournaments. Players choose their characters for all sorts of reasons loosely or even entirely unrelated to competition in general. I'm not saying it's impossible for perceived "bad" characters to be "bad," but that the amount of data available from underused characters is not enough to determine whether or not said characters are conclusively bad. To assume that any obviously underutilized character is unviable based entirely on said underutilization is folly.

For the players who want to win (and thus the most relevant data for determining how strong characters are when played at their best) they will absolutely pick the strongest character they are comfortable with. Frankly, little Timmy who uses a low tier character because they really like them and doesn't care about only getting to the 3rd round is borderline irrelevant.

There's also far too much "my character is really good, just nobody actually uses them because X reason" that goes around with virtually every upper low tier/lower mid tier character as time goes on to trust it at all. You will have passionate arguments about every character in that range secretly being high tier, with boat loads of theory that looks good in a post but in reality is worthless. Results are what proves if a theory is correct or not. No data to prove a theory means the theory is bogus. Been there, seen that song and dance repeated since Brawl, quite tired of it now thank you.

The moment you're talking about an upper mid tier character or better, you need to be looking primarily at results. And being picky about the results, needs to be long term and repeated. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy cool moments like Robin breaking out of nowhere this weekend. Fantastic, enjoy the moment, look up more VoDs on Robin gameplay, if you think there's something to it try it out in tournament. Just don't expect Robin to suddenly shoot up to upper mid because they did well at one S level tournament. It only takes 2-3 players to prove a character is upper mid or better, but they need to be able to consistently prove it over months.

 

[Ffamran]

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.

As offensive as this is, you and everyone else know that you can look up players and their brackets, right? Unless any of you want to be spoonfed information for the rest of your life in an era where information is plentiful and finding information is simple, asking for things like I need to see who this player played, videos of their games, or evidence is kind of disingenuous when you don't even attempt to try and find said information.

Seven's Evo 2019 details: https://smash.gg/tournament/evo-2019/event/super-smash-bros-ultimate/entrant/3201582. Notable wins against Charliedaking (Wolf) who was seeded 65, Cyro (Roy) seeded 97, and Prodigy (Mario) seeded 33 and lost to Plup (Mega Man) seeded 82 and who took Seven out and Zenyou (Mario) seeded 81 who put him into losers. Cyro is the most interesting as for some of you who know him, he played Falco in Smash 4 along with Marth and Meta Knight if I recall correctly. In Ultimate, he and other Falco players like Anragon, Daybreak, and Keitaro expressed their disappointment and discomfort with using Ultimate Falco compared to Smash 4 Falco. They all did use Falco in Ultimate at some point, but they've switched to other characters; Anragon switched to Inkling and now it seems like Hero, Cyro switched to Roy, Daybreak switched to Wolf from Falco and Cloud, and Keitaro switched to Snake. Also, there's AC aka Armando who switched to Snake from Falco, Meta Knight, and I think Marth in Smash 4, but occasionally plays Falco in Ultimate. Anyway, point being that Cyro does know Falco both in Smash 4 and in Ultimate, but I guess Seven was the better player that day.

Seven himself was unseeded or according to his Evo 2019 entry, seeded 1712. Other Japanese players from his region which I think is Osaka were seeded, but he wasn't and in general, Seven's kind of a mystery as there are not a lot of videos of him despite his performance. I'm not even sure he competes regularly, but when he does show up, apparently he does well. For example, he took third at Sumabato #11: https://twitter.com/ssbspResults/status/1151846578337927169.

The only YouTube video of Seven from Evo 2019 was recorded off-camera and was his last match against Plup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqQW5NVmDU8. There is a video of his match against Cyro floating somewhere on Twitter, but I don't remember who posted it. Edit here: Found the video. It was OMNaoto who posted Seven and Cyro's match: https://twitter.com/OMNaoto/status/1157848984280453127. Against Plup and Mega Man, I don't know enough of Seven and if there is a strong Mega Man player in his region. I'm guessing no since it looked like Plup ran a train on him.

Otherwise, there are these videos of him versus Uvamaro's Joker and Greninja (won): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kci4GWiZ4NY, Rizeasu's Corrin and Dr. Mario (lost): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBgGsWI5zOQ, and Masashi's Cloud (lost): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOEW4B7wikk.

All of those were from several months ago and Masashi is an interesting case as he recently was beaten by OMNaoto who is a Falco player during Umebara SP4: https://smashboards.com/threads/competitive-character-impressions-2-0.464762/page-279#post-23498356.

The other Falco players of Evo 2019 included Active who was unseeded at 2795 and from Oregon which is really weird since he's apparently second on Oregon's PR as of spring 2019, FILIP who was seeded 150 and from Japan, and SK92 who was seeded 235 and reportedly used Falco against MuteAce's Peach who was seeded 22. I want to call that a fluke as while SK92 is a good player, it seems like he plays mainly Fox and occasionally Link and Wolf in Ultimate, so randomly pulling out a Falco and somehow winning against MuteAce is curious. By chance, these three players had to fight each other. Active lost to SK92 and Mr. E who was seeded 27 and FILIP lost to Active.

The only video of Larry Lurr's Falco from Evo 2019 had him switch from Wolf to Falco for the second round against Firefly's DK, lose, and then switch back to Wolf to win 2-1 in pools: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k56oVr0oWm4. There is a reason why I do not regard Larry Lurr's Falco highly if at all. He should have kept his Fox and worked on Wolf instead of seemingly dropping Fox for Falco and Wolf. DEHF died in Brawl.

Lui$ plays multiple characters and the Falco thing was when he used him against Nairo's Palutena at Super Smash Con: https://youtu.be/fF0Joj6EUDI?t=595. As noted by the commentators, Nairo plays Keitaro and while Keitaro probably doesn't use Falco a lot in Ultimate, he does play him and he played him in Brawl and Smash 4. Falco did not radically change in such a way that Nairo could have been unfamiliar with Falco in Ultimate. Different setups, different frame data, whatever, but it's still Falco and unless Lui$ had an out of this world Falco, I don't think he could have won against Nairo. This does not factor into Falco generally having trouble with characters who have disjoints. We will also ignore Light's Falco against Shuton's Olimar during SSC 2019: https://youtu.be/vQIye1Yd4Fs?t=336. That was a last-ditch effort from Light.

Onto Juice who was seeded 38 at the recent Shine 2019. Here's his Shine 2019 details: https://smash.gg/tournament/shine-2019/event/ultimate-singles/entrant/3586991. He won against Myran's Olimar and who was seeded 27, Light's Fox and who was seeded 6, lost to Jakal's Wolf who was seeded 54 and who put Juice into losers, won against BestNess's Ness who was seeded 29, and then lost to Tweek's Wario who was seeded 2. The best part is that all of these matches have videos and I think were on stream.

Juice vs. Myran: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9R8kv8ZILU.
Juice vs. Light: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeWTYx0vXOk.
Juice vs Jakal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXOFIPJFOmE.
Juice vs. BestNess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ_WCuLPBfM.
Juice vs. Tweek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnLZnlsgNZ8.

According to Juice, he only used ZSS once during Shine and Falco for all his remaining matches. Not going to embed it due to language: https://twitter.com/ZamirMorales/status/1165429905875714049.

Juice's greatest strength seems to be his ability to adapt to his opponents on the fly and noticing his opponents' habits. Against Myran, he used Pikmin Order's armor against Myran in later rounds as he attacked in places that Myran could not easily counter back letting Juice deal damage safely and sometime even set up for more damage against Myran and adjusted his timing to wait out a Pikmin Order. Similar deal with BestNess using PSI Magnet frequently. Against Olimar specifically, Falco's ability to combo and string from different moves makes it easier for Falco to deal with Pikmin Order. Falco's Utilt alone doesn't lead into just one or two moves; it combos and strings into Nair, Uair, Fair, and Bair, so it was up to Juice's call on what he wanted to do and how he wanted to respond to Myran. Dair can be used as well which I think if Juice was more confident about calling out Myran using Pikmin Order after a Utilt or U-throw, he could have spiked him to setup and pressure Myran even more. Add on Dtilt, Nair, Uair, Fair, Dair, U-throw, and Falco Phantasm mainly as a Bair kill confirm and there you go, this wacky character with an absurdly flexible ability to combo and string exists. Realize in horror that Falco isn't a top tier or even a high tier character. Or worse! He might not even be mid tier.

His match against Light or rather Light was a cluster****. I don't know what Light was thinking running into Juice like that and as scummy as it would have been, Light should have ran with the first match where Juice SD'd twice instead of what it seemed like wondering about technical issues with the headphones. He gave Juice time to find composure and think about Light's gameplay and that's exactly what a player like Juice wants. If your opponent is that on edge, then you should make use of it. Anyway, things that were odd include his short term memory lost of Fox's Utilt hitting him back in the face when Falco landed and attacked back, recklessly running towards Juice and getting called out by Falco's Dtilt which is a disjoint since it uses his tail and a kill move, especially at high percents, and approaching Falco unsafely.

Also, regarding the Greninja talk a bit before, Juice might be interested in Greninja calling Greninja like ZSS, but without a hurtbox? and he did take a local with Greninja.

Greninja...............................

Is a fun character........

— 🔥🗡️Juice🗡️🔥 (@ZamirMorales) August 21, 2019

And I LOVE IT

— 🔥🗡️Juice🗡️🔥 (@ZamirMorales) August 21, 2019

Here's the grand finals against Enzo's Joker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ePG6kzOugg.

Edit: Found the video of Seven's match against Cyro.

 

[Rizen]

I absolutely agree, though this poses another interesting question; if a given character is fully capable of performing very well consistently but lacks the right players to carry them there, is their viability being judged fairly? I suppose a good way to see that would be like the age old philosophical question of "if a tree falls but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

In other words, "If a character is X tier and no one is playing them, is that character still X tier?"

The thing about this is that those factors very much matter. They determine just who and how much a character is used. If you truly can't find some way of quantifying these, then any data you accrue using this model will be vague at best and will only really mean anything at a surface level.

I need to stress that characters aren't chosen by players solely for their competitive prowess and the likelihood that character will win tournaments. Players choose their characters for all sorts of reasons loosely or even entirely unrelated to competition in general. I'm not saying it's impossible for perceived "bad" characters to be "bad," but that the amount of data available from underused characters is not enough to determine whether or not said characters are conclusively bad. To assume that any obviously underutilized character is unviable based entirely on said underutilization is folly.

It's not like these characters are completely undiscovered. People play all sorts of characters and the fact that they haven't gotten consistent results after all this time makes it very unlikely they're some hidden diamond in the rough. Although I think any character can potentially win because the game's so balanced, inconsistent results do not bode well for a character's viability. We have a lot of data to work with at this point and, as I've said, the cream rises to the top. Good characters get discovered and picked up. There's no perfect formula for determining character viability but we can still paint a fairly clear picture based on results. Also if a character is good they'll have to prove it before I recognize them.

 

[Avokha]

For the players who want to win (and thus the most relevant data for determining how strong characters are when played at their best) they will absolutely pick the strongest character they are comfortable with. Frankly, little Timmy who uses a low tier character because they really like them and doesn't care about only getting to the 3rd round is borderline irrelevant.

There's also far too much "my character is really good, just nobody actually uses them because X reason" that goes around with virtually every upper low tier/lower mid tier character as time goes on to trust it at all. You will have passionate arguments about every character in that range secretly being high tier, with boat loads of theory that looks good in a post but in reality is worthless. Results are what proves if a theory is correct or not. No data to prove a theory means the theory is bogus. Been there, seen that song and dance repeated since Brawl, quite tired of it now thank you.

The moment you're talking about an upper mid tier character or better, you need to be looking primarily at results. And being picky about the results, needs to be long term and repeated. Doesn't mean you can't enjoy cool moments like Robin breaking out of nowhere this weekend. Fantastic, enjoy the moment, look up more VoDs on Robin gameplay, if you think there's something to it try it out in tournament. Just don't expect Robin to suddenly shoot up to upper mid because they did well at one S level tournament. It only takes 2-3 players to prove a character is upper mid or better, but they need to be able to consistently prove it over months.

Interesting thing about this is that "little Timmy" doesn't matter...unless he happens to win the event with his low tier of choice. Even high level players can play any character for any given reason. Many players that do well aren't necessarily competing specifically to further their own careers by winning. Many simply want to improve with their character or are just in it for fun. Not every tournament player is a "tryhard" if you will. And the hypothetical "little Timmy" will matter if he does well with his low tier, regardless of his reasons for choosing said low tier.

I can understand your feelings toward the overuse of theory in regards to people challenging tier placements. But I can't agree that results have to be the sole determinant for peoples views on the meta. Theorycraft can provide alternate angles towards viewing various aspects of the game that simply seeing a list of tournament results could never allow, and thus does have a place in metagame discussions. And a lack of data to prove given theory does not equate to the theory being bogus, but rather untested.

And just to clarify, I'm not referring to Robin alone like you seem to believe, but every character who is underepresented in the competitive scene, even the characters who are objectively bad. I would prefer to have concrete proof that a character is good or bad than merely leave it up to their presence or absence on top 3/8/16/etc lists.

Coughalsorobinisalreadyuppermidtierwhatareyoutalkingaboutlmaocough

 

[Minordeth]

I guess y'all forgot that Ultimate doesn't have a real tier list yet.

On the one hand, advanced information sharing through social media and discord acts as a meta accelerant. On the other, you have a game with 70+ characters that counteracts that accelerant. On the third hand (!), you have a game with an admittedly short power gap between characters which confounds making clean stratifications.

So, the game has some characters that are widely seen as top tier, but outside of those, the distinction between high and mid (or more annoyingly, high-mid, low-mid, low-high, mid-high) is not clean cut at all.

Is it really that surprising that a character like Falco, who is online-unfriendly with a non-intuitive neutral, starts to get results as he becomes even marginally developed? The Olimar MU was really only partially labbed out recently, for instance, and largely because of one player.

"Oh, he can't be high tier."

What's the meaningful difference between high and mid-tier in this game? Where's the demarcation point? Number and degree of favorable/unfavorable MUs with the somewhat established top tiers? Do you know all of Falco's MUs with the top tiers? His own players are still figuring them out.

FWIW, Falco is a strong character. Against the whole cast, he's most likely less good than Wolf, and probably less likely good than Fox. But, his advantage state is insane. Juice was able to finally show some actual Falco stuff, and he still hasn't incorporated powerful set ups and options that have only recently become known.

For instance, Falco's Fair can drag down into Dmash and Usmash on a majority of the cast for an additional set of kill confirms in addition to Utilt > Bair. On any platform stage, an early percent grab leads to a 50-70% BnB that sets up for an immediate edgeguard. Yes, both these examples are true.

The biggest struggle any Falco player has is to not press buttons, because they know most of his buttons lead to dumb percent damage or death.

 

[Ffamran]

For instance, Falco's Fair can drag down into Dmash and Usmash on a majority of the cast for an additional set of kill confirms in addition to Utilt > Bair.

That's quite odd for it to be recent discovery. Larry Lurr did Fair to Up Smash pretty much as his day one thing. Everyone else was raving about Nair being like Brawl Nair with its landing lag reduction to actually Brawl Nair's landing lag, but Larry Lurr preferred using falling Fair to Up Smash. It got to the point where he had to talk about it when people on his stream asked about it.

Edit: Found it, but because of how Twitch works, the video of the stream is no longer available.

Larry Lurr saw Leffen's tweet and ended up playing Falco a lot during a stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/345976805?t=181m24s. By a lot, I mean Larry played Falco for almost the rest of his stream.

Edit: Larry also has been doing falling Fair confirms into Up Smash and probably a mixup into Side Smash considering how slow it is on startup with Falco. Unfortunately, I don't remember when he starts doing it in the stream, but here's an example him doing it and explaining how it works: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/345976805?t=301m11s. The key to doing this is to not have the landing hit connect. This wouldn't have been possible in Smash 4 because of how disjointed the landing hit was and that Fair had 25 landing frames as opposed to 15 in Ultimate.

Edit 2: Edit Harder: Found an instance of him using it from I believe is one of the matches he saved from that stream: https://youtu.be/NBgspVJ3Xj0?t=50.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Zelda also does 40% with her...uhhh..combo(?) game :^).

Anyway, on a more serious note:
Trela will be more active on Nationals from now on which means more (in case he didn't drop him) and at high level play.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

It seems like he is indeed using Ridley and Hero, though a bit more of the latter.

It would be cool to see him back at high level play again.

Expect Trela to drop (or at least sparingly use) Ridley and use Hero as a play toy/distraction until Banjo comes out. That's what I gathered from his Twitter posts and Twitlonger, at least. I'm just glad I get to see my favorite player traveling again

He's been winning most weeklies he's attended in Houston with mostly Pit.
Also can't wait for banjo, we gonna grind hard for this character

 

[Minordeth]

That's quite odd for it to be recent discovery. Larry Lurr did Fair to Up Smash pretty much as his day one thing. Everyone else was raving about Nair being like Brawl Nair with its landing lag reduction to actually Brawl Nair's landing lag, but Larry Lurr preferred using falling Fair to Up Smash. It got to the point where he had to talk about it when people on his stream asked about it.

Edit: Found it, but because of how Twitch works, the video of the stream is no longer available.

I should have said that which characters DD Fair Usmash works on and what characters Dsmash works on is fully confirmed. Fair is more positive on hit than Nair, so I'm sure Larry figured this out fairly quickly. However, while Dmash is borderline universal as a followup, Usmash is not, due to the poor hitboxes. Fwiw, Larry, as skilled as he is, did not really dive into what Falco could actually do. Not to take away from the insight he brought into various MUs, like Pika/Pichu.

Edit 2: Edit Harder: Found an instance of him using it from I believe is one of the matches he saved from that stream: https://youtu.be/NBgspVJ3Xj0?t=50.

For instance, DD Fair > Usmash is not true on Inkling, whereas DD Fair > Dsmash is.

 

[Impax]

It's not like these characters are completely undiscovered. People play all sorts of characters and the fact that they haven't gotten consistent results after all this time makes it very unlikely they're some hidden diamond in the rough. Although I think any character can potentially win because the game's so balanced, inconsistent results do not bode well for a character's viability. We have a lot of data to work with at this point and, as I've said, the cream rises to the top. Good characters get discovered and picked up. There's no perfect formula for determining character viability but we can still paint a fairly clear picture based on results. Also if a character is good they'll have to prove it before I recognize them.

There arent enough "elite" (top 30 say) players to go around. If raito wasnt around we wouldnt see consistent high placings from duck hunt, as just one example. Even a top tier like inklings are struggling in the states (less so in Europe and Mexico) .

Too many characters for anyone except maybe top tiers to get consistent top placings at majors.

Edit: I've given up trying to figure out who sakurai is putting in the game.

Banjo and the dragon quest characters are fan favorites. But joker and plant seem like pretty left field pics.

 

[Rizen]

There arent enough "elite" (top 30 say) players to go around. If raito wasnt around we wouldnt see consistent high placings from duck hunt, as just one example. Even a top tier like inklings are struggling in the states (less so in Europe and Mexico) .

Too many characters for anyone except maybe top tiers to get consistent top placings at majors.

Edit: I've given up trying to figure out who sakurai is putting in the game.

Banjo and the dragon quest characters are fan favorites. But joker and plant seem like pretty left field pics.

Even with Raito, DH is only 28th place on Orion Stats (phase 2). And there's no telling that top players would do well with presumed bad characters like Isabelle. We're bound to see breakout performances like Kept's Villager but at the end of the day he's 47th. Top players often have streams where they play several characters so it's not like at least some haven't tried them out and chose not to use them.

 

[Arthur97]

There's also far too much "my character is really good, just nobody actually uses them because X reason" that goes around with virtually every upper low tier/lower mid tier character as time goes on to trust it at all. You will have passionate arguments about every character in that range secretly being high tier, with boat loads of theory that looks good in a post but in reality is worthless. Results are what proves if a theory is correct or not. No data to prove a theory means the theory is bogus. Been there, seen that song and dance repeated since Brawl, quite tired of it now thank you.

This kind of reminds me of the Marth argument. He simply doesn't have the results to prove their theories.

I’m still not sold on the last two fighters being 3rd party honestly. Sure the first 3 fighters are, but that doesn’t have to be the case for the rest. Joker was there obviously because Sakurai and the team seem to love Persona 5, and the game had quite an impact on the industry as a whole (it seems). Then there’s Hero, who comes from Dragon Quest; a HUGE franchise, and with its roots on Nintendo. Then there’s Banjo, who might simply been one of the biggest requested ideas for a playable character since Sonic / Mega Man / Ridley / K.Rool ... I’m not sold that other 3rd party characters could be as impactful as the other 3 fighters we have seen already. Especially don’t think it’s too likely because Nintendo themselves did the picks for new characters. I’m sure at least one 1st party owned character is due. Who? No idea.

This seems pretty out of place, but, they're almost certainly going to be. Sakurai comes off as me as using Smash to work with characters simply because he wants to (Joker, Ryu). Other than that, there seems to be this idea that Smash DLC would be hard to sale and therefore needs to be borderline overtuned (Heroes may not be competitively broken, but that doesn't not make some things ludicrous) and third party (because apparently only they can be hype anymore; then again, I think Sakurai may have mentioned not picking the Plant just for the novelty since novelty wears off or something). Nevermind that they could probably sell just about anyone as a Smash fighter with ease.

 

[blackghost]

As offensive as this is, you and everyone else know that you can look up players and their brackets, right? Unless any of you want to be spoonfed information for the rest of your life in an era where information is plentiful and finding information is simple, asking for things like I need to see who this player played, videos of their games, or evidence is kind of disingenuous when you don't even attempt to try and find said information.

.

Moderators should not be making posts poking at people making requests for information. I did not insult anyone nor did I invite that sort of response. Smash is not my life and as a Law student, I do not have the time to see every match of a somewhat rare character. I asked to see some matches and data to see whether i need to reevaluate , my position on falco while thank you for that there is no need for that extra attitude. Coming here is the best place to find said information. many poster place matches or links here. The issue is when people don't follow links or read data that is posted here. Don't make requesting the info tabo that defeats the purpose.

I guess y'all forgot that Ultimate doesn't have a real tier list yet.

What's the meaningful difference between high and mid-tier in this game? Where's the demarcation point? Number and degree of favorable/unfavorable MUs with the somewhat established top tiers? Do you know all of Falco's MUs with the top tiers? His own players are still figuring them out.

FWIW, Falco is a strong character. Against the whole cast, he's most likely less good than Wolf, and probably less likely good than Fox. But, his advantage state is insane. Juice was able to finally show some actual Falco stuff, and he still hasn't incorporated powerful set ups and options that have only recently become known.

For instance, Falco's Fair can drag down into Dmash and Usmash on a majority of the cast for an additional set of kill confirms in addition to Utilt > Bair. On any platform stage, an early percent grab leads to a 50-70% BnB that sets up for an immediate edge guard. Yes, both these examples are true.

The biggest struggle any Falco player has is to not press buttons, because they know most of his buttons lead to dumb percent damage or death.

I'd argue the biggest difference between the top, high, and mid tier characters in this game is to what degree they can enforce their gameplan on their opponent and the second factor is how adaptable the character is. Can it slow the game down, speed it up, play to ledge trap, play to edge guard, ect. This game does not clearly favor a playstyle this is not melee nor brawl nor 4.

No one is arguing they have all the information on ANY character but is making use of what we have curently figured out is everyone's approach i'd say. The middle tiers are always the hardest to figure out we know which characters are really bad and we have known (mostly) which characters are elite)

you made two statements that i found interesting: the first being falco is less good than both fox and wolf and the second is that falco advantage is crazy good. The thing is having a good advantage state alone and even having high damage output doesnt make you a high tier in this game. I want to hear more about falco's buttons if possible and why his neutral is not intuitive.

 

[SwagGuy99]

I absolutely agree, though this poses another interesting question; if a given character is fully capable of performing very well consistently but lacks the right players to carry them there, is their viability being judged fairly? I suppose a good way to see that would be like the age old philosophical question of "if a tree falls but no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

In other words, "If a character is X tier and no one is playing them, is that character still X tier?"

In my personal opinion, yes they would, but we'd still need some results/applicable evidence to back it up.

For example, if ESAM was a Top 5 player in the world playing Pikachu (he isn't right now but this is a hypthetical example) and he was the only top Pikachu player in the top 200 or something, the question would be is Pikachu still Top Tier if his representation is being carried entirely by one person? If ESAM is playing (and beating) other top players like MKLeo (and others) with Pikachu very often and consistently and there is enough proof that what is being done against these players and their characters can be replicated by others if they were to pick up the characters as well, then yes.

Ultimate is still young though, so we probably don't have to be quite in that mindset yet and can be a little bit more flexible with our thoughts on characters right now. People may pick up these kinds of characters in the near future so it's not really a huge deal right now.

Edit: IMO at least on of the last DLC characters will probably be a Pokemon and the other Steve from Minecraft as that one leak from way back around E3 2018 is still almost entirely correct as of right now I think?

 

[ARISTOS]

Those aren't measurable or quantifiable, so yeah you ignore them. Trying to include those ideas for data is even worse than the insane amount of theory propping up Shulk's hyper-inflated tier list rankings.

If a character has 1) a small player base and 2) sparse results, the character is probably not that good. Probably got enough there to sort out between bottom/low/lower mid, but you need something tangible to be above that. Don't get a free ride to high tier off of one really good result.

Maybe I'm arguing semantics but this is not quite correct.

In general, the less data/players of a character there are, the less accurate any predictions made can be, because any outlier tends shift the data in larger ways. Characters with a small playerbase/sparse results are the hardest to actually say anything about, because while the character may indeed just be bad, they could also be suffering from a bunch of other factors.

This is versus a high player base character with poor results, which I would be more certain to call bad. These characters do get artificially boosted by point based systems which make it harder to suss out early on, but given time they naturally adjust down I think.

 

[TTTTTsd]

you made two statements that i found interesting: the first being falco is less good than both fox and wolf and the second is that falco advantage is crazy good. The thing is having a good advantage state alone and even having high damage output doesnt make you a high tier in this game. I want to hear more about falco's buttons if possible and why his neutral is not intuitive.

Well, his neutral relies largely on enforcing a specific kind of interaction and capitalizing off of it. Let's consider his common neutral options: dashing up and grabbing (yes, really), Forward Aerial, and Blaster. They all do different things, dashgrab is fairly quick (His grabs are all Mario speed, so very good data) and he has some of the most stable throw combos in the game. Forward aerial seems like pretty low reward until you learn how it works. If you hit someone air to air with it (which isn't uncommon, the best options in this game come from being airborne, and Falco's Fair is a blazing fast Frame 7 aerial with considerable range) you can buffer a dragdown into Utilt, and you know where this is going. This works at all percentages. If Fair hits someone grounded, its not all that bad either. The landing hitbox has good base knockback meaning you'll win a lot of stage at a wide % range, and Falco's edgeguarding is really good.

Blaster is surprisingly not talked about. The frame data on it is amazing! Sub frame 10 startup on both versions, FAF 41 on the ground and 38 in the air? That's incredibly good! Its big shortcomings are its low damage and hitstun, but its very good at enforcing chip damage and encouraging an approach from his opponent. It also couples really well with his reflector, making common projectile turtling strategies a bit harder vs. him.

These tend to be Falco's common good neutral options, they're somewhat limited compared to other top tier characters but they're really adequate for getting things started.

I do agree ranking him is hard, I think he is a certifiably good character, definitely. How good is really hard to quantify but his placings have outranked any notion that he's bad, I find.

 

[Ffamran]

I should have said that which characters DD Fair Usmash works on and what characters Dsmash works on is fully confirmed. Fair is more positive on hit than Nair, so I'm sure Larry figured this out fairly quickly. However, while Dmash is borderline universal as a followup, Usmash is not, due to the poor hitboxes. Fwiw, Larry, as skilled as he is, did not really dive into what Falco could actually do. Not to take away from the insight he brought into various MUs, like Pika/Pichu.

For instance, DD Fair > Usmash is not true on Inkling, whereas DD Fair > Dsmash is.

That makes more sense in falling Fair confirms being refined. Now that I think about it, I don't recall seeing any Falco player besides Larry use falling Fair to confirm an Up Smash or Down Smash. Usually they go for grab to set up a regrab or something else. I'm guessing that with Dtilt being 2 frames slower on startup than Down Smash and its shorter range that falling Fair to Dtilt is not a thing?

Moderators should not be making posts poking at people making requests for information. I did not insult anyone nor did I invite that sort of response. Smash is not my life and as a Law student, I do not have the time to see every match of a somewhat rare character. I asked to see some matches and data to see whether i need to reevaluate , my position on falco while thank you for that there is no need for that extra attitude. Coming here is the best place to find said information. many poster place matches or links here. The issue is when people don't follow links or read data that is posted here. Don't make requesting the info taboo that defeats the purpose.

I expected to be called out on this, but I'm surprised it wasn't sooner and from a staff member. Neither you nor anyone insulted anyone or invited such a response. I just went out of my way and used your post to essentially attack everyone as a way to say and remind people to use evidence to back up statements and try to look up information if and when you can. Such a great way to do so by looking like a massive ****ing asshole, right?

My point was not to poke at people requesting for information and I do regret if my opening statement came off as such. My point was that for -- I hope this is the right wording -- high profile information, that looking it up would not be difficult. For instance, Seven placing 25th at Evo 2019, a very high profile tournament. Knowing exactly who Seven is isn't a big deal here, but the name is known and Seven can be looked up on smash.gg and this board has a thread on Evo where yes, it would take some time to go through the pages since all sorts of discussions were taking place. Alternatively, searching for Seven and limiting it to the competitive boards on Smashboards or on Reddit could work too, but Seven isn't a really unique nametag considering it's a number.

Granted, simply stating Seven placing 25th at Evo 2019 does not help either to argue in favor of Falco. So what? Who is this random player? Who did this player beat? Maybe this nobody had an easy bracket or a bunch of people DQ'd. So on and so forth. There should have been some context provided for a stronger argument which in this case I reiterate as Seven won against a strong Wolf player (Charliedaking), lost against and won against strong Mario players (lost against Zenyou and won against Prodigy), won against a good Roy player (Cyro), and lost against a very strong Mega Man player (Plup). Hopefully, this does not come off as a call out.

So, I get that people are busy and nobody is omniscient, but in the cases where a statement was given and there's only a keyword such as a player's name or a tournament and not enough evidence was given, then with the time available, looking up that keyword is something I would do. Maybe a bracket would be found or some videos and maybe the opponents would be recognized. If not, then asking further for why this is important would be the next thing instead of waiting and possibly never receiving a follow-up. Not doing that is kind of eh from my perspective. That is not to say you or anyone did not do this.

Now, for more obscure information, then nobody can expect everyone to know or have an easy time finding whatever information. That's a situation where information should be provided as part of the post or when requested. I could drop something like there's this Falco player in Germany who does really well -- this is made up by the way. Unless a majority of people here were keen on Germany's scene and because of language barriers, regional awareness or unawareness, or there not being brackets, power ranking, or whatever posted online or accessible, people are probably not going to know what's being talked about and it's not going to be as strong as a statement as this German Falco player regularly plays against and wins against the strongest young Link, Lucina, Mewtwo, and Pit players of their region and is PR'd 7th or whatever. It might not be the most well-known region in Germany and they might not be the best players of Germany or Europe, but what does it say for this localized look of Falco? If there exists or it is known how this player works against these characters, then what insight does it offer? Some of it might be substantial like if this player was able to consistently beat a top or high tier being played and played by one of the stronger players in the region while others might not, but still is useful. Going off of that, if anyone of you want Falco vs. Little Mac stuff, then look up Osprey who regularly plays Sol and started back in Smash 4. Problem is that all the videos are six to seven months old and the latest video with Osprey seems to be four months old and against Poet's Pac-Man during GatorLAN Spring 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9RoDBhYpu4.

Well, his neutral relies largely on enforcing a specific kind of interaction and capitalizing off of it. Let's consider his common neutral options: dashing up and grabbing (yes, really), Forward Aerial, and Blaster.

Or people running up and Utilting. I get why because it's not as rewarding on hit, but Ftilt should be used in neutral more given its relative safety. Or Dtilt.

I'm also a bit surprised about Nair and Uair. Nair has Brawl Nair's 9 landing frames and falling Uair was used in Smash 4. Falling Nair isn't as reliable as falling Fair in terms of connecting and being able to drag opponents, but it's still good and the developers even said for Smash 4 and possibly intended for it to work in Brawl and Ultimate that falling Nair can be used to confirm into moves which Juice and other did do with Nair. Probably also not that reliable, but cross-up Dair.

Blaster is surprisingly not talked about. The frame data on it is amazing! Sub frame 10 startup on both versions, FAF 41 on the ground and 38 in the air? That's incredibly good! Its big shortcomings are its low damage and hitstun, but its very good at enforcing chip damage.

I'm going to say it's probably because it keeps getting compared to Melee and Brawl Falco's Blaster and Ultimate Wolf's Blaster. You can zone with it, but memories of busted Falco and not "exciting" gameplay with big damage holds it back. Seven makes use of Blaster a lot from what I remember. Using aerial Blaster to turn Falco around is pretty good too considering when you want to use Bair or the starting hitboxes of Falco's frontflip Uair or for positioning Nair, Fair, or Dair if Falco was already facing the wrong way. It has the similar total frames as the Marthlings' Bair. Chrom and Roy's 35 total frames and Lucina and Marth's 39 total frames.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Don't know if it's still ok to post tier-list videos here (I recall there was something?), but VoiD started releasing his 4.0 tier-list, covering low-tier and low-mid-tier:

Low-mid-tier:
Low-tier:

Some things to notice: is nowhere to be seen.
Kinda wondering if that has to do with Brood (probably) since that'S the only reason PP could have risen. Then, on the other hand, Sonic is still there despite VoiD mentioning KEN.
I also assume this was done before Shine regarding the placement of Robin. Don't really think Robin is that low after what I've seen.

 

[$.A.F.]

Don't know if it's still ok to post tier-list videos here (I recall there was something?), but VoiD started releasing his 4.0 tier-list, covering low-tier and low-mid-tier:

Low-mid-tier:
Low-tier:

Some things to notice: is nowhere to be seen.
Kinda wondering if that has to do with Brood (probably) since that'S the only reason PP could have risen. Then, on the other hand, Sonic is still there despite VoiD mentioning KEN.
I also assume this was done before Shine regarding the placement of Robin. Don't really think Robin is that low after what I've seen.

Well yes there’s obviously Brood and how his performance showed off some things Plant can do and all that, but iirc VoiD always has had a relatively high opinion on Plant. A month after Plant was released he had him as a low high tier and even when opinions considerably soured by 3.0, VoiD still had the leafy boy/girl outside of bottom ten when it wasn’t unpopular to have him as the worst or second worst character in the game. In fact even in 3.0 VoiD put him above exactly twelve characters which is how many are featured in this list for 4.0. Even if his opinion was totally unchanged on Plant, he wouldn’t have been in this video.
EDIT: What’s notable to me is the lack of Mac. He just lost his jab confirms last patch.

 

[Heracr055]

I think acknowledging/scrutinizing top players' tier lists is fine for this thread. What isn't okay is posting a personal tier list or posting some random's tier list.

 

[Nah]

I would prefer to have concrete proof that a character is good or bad than merely leave it up to their presence or absence on top 3/8/16/etc lists.

What constitutes as concrete proof to you then?

 

[Lacrimosa]

What constitutes as concrete proof to you then?

Framedata maybe? Like, things that can be looked up in graphs and other sources that take such stuff from the game.

Although framedata isn't everything. I will always make a point about Zelda's framedata not ruining her despite not being the best. You always need character performance as well in order to see how characters work on the battlefield and not just on paper.
Otherwise I'd say that Roy is undoubtedly the best character but the performance isn't really there for him.

 

[FruitLoop]

Don't know if it's still ok to post tier-list videos here (I recall there was something?), but VoiD started releasing his 4.0 tier-list, covering low-tier and low-mid-tier:

Low-mid-tier:
Low-tier:

Some things to notice: is nowhere to be seen.
Kinda wondering if that has to do with Brood (probably) since that'S the only reason PP could have risen. Then, on the other hand, Sonic is still there despite VoiD mentioning KEN.
I also assume this was done before Shine regarding the placement of Robin. Don't really think Robin is that low after what I've seen.

I'm suprised that little mac isn't on this to be honest. While I haven't heard the section on Mii Swordfighter yet i'm kind of curious about the declining opinion on him. Is it just due to no one playing him or is Gale Strike being found out better?

 

[Avokha]

What constitutes as concrete proof to you then?

I believe Thinkaman illustrated it best; our 3 pillars for determining metagame viability are results (which most players eye almost religiously already) and the analysis thereof, usage and the factors that affect it such as playerbase size, concentration of talent, mobility (the playerbases ability to travel to events), etc., and finally theoreticals (using this as a catch-all term), or specific things that pertain specifically to in-game, so things like match up spreads, particular interactions, character statistics like frame data and movement stats, probability for those who utilise it, etc.

In short, I feel that results data should not be the end all be all as a viability determinant, but rather one corner of a trinity of determinants, the other two being usage data and 'theoretical' data.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Wasn't there a separate thread specifically for tier lists? I might've forgotten, though. Anyways, at this rate, I have a feeling that could win an A/S Tier event, and VoiD would still consider him a bottom 10 character lol, no offense to VoiD, the dude is mad talented, but he feels pretty firm in his stance on Sonic despite his success.

Speaking of tier lists, while I do think results are a big factor to consider when determining the viability of characters, I do think there's some truth to a lack of information/experience with characters who do not see much attention in terms of their representation. Whether you agree on Robin being a Bottom 45 character or not, Watching Jul's and Nairo's s in action at Shine made me realize just how off-base ESAM's analysis on Robin was in his tier list video, especially about Arcfire.