Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Arthur97]

Will never suck and never has and as far as I can tell, never will even in any future installments. Flip Kick May be considerably better than a good portion of her kit but it’s not her only good move like people like to pretend. Nair, Boost Kick, Up Air, Down Smash, Up Smash etc. Are all amazing moves that at least ten characters would kill to have. Still (arguably) top 5 IMO.

Bayonetta. Never say a fighter can't be bad.

 

[$.A.F.]

Bayonetta. Never say a fighter can't be bad.

She obviously can be bad but I don’t think they’ll ever make her bad

 

[Arthur97]

She obviously can be bad but I don’t think they’ll ever make her bad

People probably thought the same thing about Marth before base Smash 4. No one is ever completely safe.

 

[$.A.F.]

People probably thought the same thing about Marth before base Smash 4. No one is ever completely safe.

Marth isn’t bad though. He’s worse than Lucina but not bad by any means

 

[Zinith]

managed to maintain an 18th placement for months now...

 

[Arthur97]

Marth isn’t bad though. He’s worse than Lucina but not bad by any means

I didn't say in Ultimate.

 

[TennisBall]

I didn't say in Ultimate.

But when was Marth bad before?

 

[Ziodyne 21]

But when was Marth bad before?

Smash 4 along with Lucina before they got buffed

 

[Arthur97]

I literally said base Smash 4. Did no one read that part?

 

[|RK|]

I know it's known, but I don't know if it's *known*

Orion Stats merely reflects what is happening now, not what each char can do. To that end, I'd definitely say Pikachu is a top tier.

His MU spread is theoretically among the best in the game, and he creates problems for many other top tiers.

He has no crippling weaknesses or holes in his gameplan, either. Most Pikachu players, I find, aren't as good at putting on pressure as, say, ESAM.

But having one player being able to bring out a character's maximum potential doesn't mean that the character doesn't have that potential by itself.

Example: No one else has Leo's ability to evade opponents with Joker. Or Protobanham's ability to pressure with Lucina. Etc.

 

[DJ3DS]

The Savior off the gaming industry has become an even larger plague upon Ultimate. Personal bias aside, ROB is definitely establishing himself at worst as a gatekeeper. Even if his disadvantage is bad, there isn’t much else he’s really bad at. Also having the most BS in the game except for maybe Hero (except his is unintentional) isn’t hurting him. His zoning is great, his specials and aerials are all good, Nair is ridiculous, Side B kills at 30, down tilt is undoubtedly the best of its kind IMO, etc. This character is underrated and even ignoring the stats him being top tier one day wouldn’t surprise me.

I'd actually like to offer a counterpoint - ROB isn't underrated; he's actually overrated.

The problem with ROB is that people are bad at playing against him. People are bad at dealing with gyro (seriously, too many people get control of it and just throw it against his shield rather than throwing it up to keep it out of play) and especially bad at dealing with Nair. It is not a move that should hit people in neutral and it's a very telegraphed landing move that people need to get better at parry punishing.

As for Side B...yeah, it kills stupidly early IF you can hit it offstage. Onstage, it isn't killing most characters till 100+ (and with startup comparable to smash attacks that isn't really an issue) and to hit it offstage you're either edgeguarding with it, made a hard read or you've comboed into it somehow. Most of these comboes are starting off of a N-Air which is super slow. It is honestly difficult to get these N-air conversions on anyone who is expecting them because of how slow the move is.

As for down tilt...yeah, fair. The move is incredibly useful. There's no defending it.

Long term though I cannot overstate how bad this characters disadvantage is. He has basically no out of shield options against crossups without gyro in hand, and forget about those against shorter characters. He is comboed extremely hard thanks to his size and stats, and whilst he is heavy he's only at 106 so those comboes matter.

Moreover, as soon as you are playing against someone experienced enough to deal with Nair patiently it becomes extremely difficult to land. His recovery can make it back to ledge or above from basically anywhere...but then he's got to get back onto ledge, which is a struggle, and doesn't regain fuel whilst hanging. Because of this I'd contend he is the single most susceptible to ledge trapping in the game.

Long term I can't see him going anywhere but down over time. Perhaps his parry game is optimised to good effect (because this improves his OoS significantly thanks to frame 3 jab and down tilt) but I'd wager it's more likely people remember how to deal with gyro again and get better at trapping and dealing with his limited ledge trapping options.

Also, just talking in terms of matchups...here is WaDi's matchup chart:

That's a lot of losing matchups, and I think most people would contend that WaDis chart is quite optimistic. People would generally contend that Palutena is noticeably worse than slightly losing, for example, and GWs placement here is very contentious as many think he's also very hard. But this number of losing matchups doesn't indicate top tier potential.

 

[TimG57867]

HOW IS STILL NUMBER ONE. He has nobody anymore as far as top players. I get how popular he is at mid level and his early placements from Zackray, but I’m still baffled. As for my thoughts on the character, he’s definitely not top 5 IMO but certainly top 10.

Well, along with being popular at mid level play, he does tend to be a popular pick amongst high level players across the globe. And what he lacks in a few dominating reps, he makes up for with a healthy sized playerbase that is more than capable of having various, not-famous users creep their way into Top 8, Top 16, Top 32, and Top 64s of various tournaments.

Also saying he now has 0 top player rep isn't quite accurate. Larry Lurr and Charliedeking among others still primarily use him and they're not to be underestimated with the 2 recently getting 9th and 17th at SwitchFest. Furthermore, Wolf's abandonment by some key players has been somewhat offset by Jakal's recent surge in performance. After a not-so-hot performance at Super Smash Con 2019 (513rd. Yeesh), he's come roaring back with consecutive 9th placements at both Shine 2019 and Glitch 7 which are Category 5+ and 5 respectively.

Wolf may not have much if any super dominating players like say or now that Zackray dropped him but he makes up for that by having a large number of capable/strong players performing everywhere and not being totally devoid of top talent regardless. And being one of, if not THE, most popular comain/pockets only helps his case.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Also, just talking in terms of matchups...here is WaDi's matchup chart:

Rob definitely loses the Samus matchup and Wadi has been schooled 3-0 by top Samus mains repeatedly now. I don't know if that chart is up to date - or if it is - what he's thinking as the short hop CS goes through airborne gyro and combos him and z-air shuts down basic n-air spacing hard. His shield if it gets scratched is instantly poked by short hop up-air into ladder combos for days.

As for ledge trapping Rob is not that bad at mixing up his timings, it's not a good matchup for Belmont. Riddles got rocked recently before making the wise decision of changing mains and there are tons of sets of Moosh struggling to kill the robot (usually 200%+ because belmont can't kill).

Rob is a good character overall, traditional zoner with some traps. Upper mid-tier in my estimate, needs some luck in the opponents he runs into to make it far in bracket but definitely, clearly, can.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Not sure on some of them.
Bowser, Wario and Shulk are characters that WaDi should've fought at some point. He clearly lost to Leon's Bowser at Run it Back or Gluto's Wario at CEO for example. He's beaten Nicko a lot but lost to Kome just recently, although the match was close.
You may say it's MU inexperience that make WaDi lose but then he shouldn't make a MU chart to begin with even if you're optimistic. Results aren't everything for a MU chart, especially not after one match but it shows that this MU isn't as clear as Wadi wants it to be.

I'd also question his placement of Zelda and PP in this chart. Yeah, I know that 8Bit killed Myst's Zelda at some point in time, however Myst dropped a lot of edgeguards which was a bit unnatural.

Anyway, it's a good MU chart with some odd placings but that's inevitable. Nobody can make a tier-list/match-up chart that satisfies everyone.

 

[Spinosaurus]

Joker isn't even in that MU list, nevermind the other DLC chars. It's old.

 

[blackghost]

losing to peach, pautena, lucina, and ivysaur doesnt bode well for ROB long term. he may be a good character but losing to common bracket threats isnt a good look long term. Ultimate is still not even a year old.

 

[Lacrimosa]

My 5.0 Tier List for anyone who was curious. It was going to be a YouTube video BUT i'm dumb and played too much random music so the video is blocked when I upload it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯https://t.co/M50C0HCoFJ pic.twitter.com/II54fipP3k

— Liquid | Dabuz (@DabuzSenpai) September 18, 2019

Dabuz's 4.0/5.0 tier-list.
Eh..I guess it's fine. Oof.

 

[Impax]

So basically dabuz thinks there are 13 bad characters. While people may disagree on the order, seems like a solid tier list

Initially I was surprised to see ness so low but given that he think mid tiers are still good I could see the argument.

 

[Megamang]

Surprised on Megaman and Rosa's placement, as well as shulk obviously. I would love to have seen that video, dabuz has always been heavy on the theory and pretty solid at that.

 

[DJ3DS]

Rob definitely loses the Samus matchup and Wadi has been schooled 3-0 by top Samus mains repeatedly now. I don't know if that chart is up to date - or if it is - what he's thinking as the short hop CS goes through airborne gyro and combos him and z-air shuts down basic n-air spacing hard. His shield if it gets scratched is instantly poked by short hop up-air into ladder combos for days.

As for ledge trapping Rob is not that bad at mixing up his timings, it's not a good matchup for Belmont. Riddles got rocked recently before making the wise decision of changing mains and there are tons of sets of Moosh struggling to kill the robot (usually 200%+ because belmont can't kill).

Rob is a good character overall, traditional zoner with some traps. Upper mid-tier in my estimate, needs some luck in the opponents he runs into to make it far in bracket but definitely, clearly, can.

As mentioned, it is pretty old (I believe February). I don't believe he's done one since but I felt it better to quote a top ROB than to give my own personal feelings on it.

As per ROB vs Belmonts and ledge trapping, though... that matchup being bad for Belmonts is not to do with ROB being good at getting off the ledge, and much more to do with the fact that ROB can go high with relative impunity as Belmonts very precise hitboxes struggle to juggle him in the way many other characters can. That and ROB being able to beat him up close, interrupt his zoning, edgeguard him very well and have stronger kill setups in general.

I personally would agree with your estimate. ROB can do work solo but there are enough characters capable of exploiting his horrible disadvantage that if he runs into a player using them of similar skill level with some MU experience then it's a massive uphill battle. Mainly I wanted to weigh in that this character is not a secret gatekeeper top tier and that he himself is gatekept by several characters, not just limited to those above him.

 

[$.A.F.]

So my thoughts on seem to be pretty common among top players as of now if not even more optimistic among some like VoiD and Dabuz. The OrionStats also putting Plant relatively high isn’t hurting opinions either. As of now I’d say Plant has made the biggest jump in viability perception of any character so far (except for Wolf, Pichu and maybe Fox if we count pre release)

 

[The_Bookworm]

My 5.0 Tier List for anyone who was curious. It was going to be a YouTube video BUT i'm dumb and played too much random music so the video is blocked when I upload it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯https://t.co/M50C0HCoFJ pic.twitter.com/II54fipP3k

— Liquid | Dabuz (@DabuzSenpai) September 18, 2019

Dabuz's 4.0/5.0 tier-list.
Eh..I guess it's fine. Oof.

Some weird placements all-around (like how really low are, and how high are), but it is not the worst thing I have seen. It is fine for a top player tier list.
not being in the lowest tier is also something that sparks curiosity with me. Of course, him placing at top 10 (the former of which top 5) is to be expected from Dabuz given his history of thinking both characters are underrated.

 

[SwagGuy99]

So my thoughts on seem to be pretty common among top players as of now if not even more optimistic among some like VoiD and Dabuz. The OrionStats also putting Plant relatively high isn’t hurting opinions either. As of now I’d say Plant has made the biggest jump in viability perception of any character so far (except for Wolf, Pichu and maybe Fox if we count pre release)

The biggest jumps I'd say that have happened between January and now are:

Significant jump:

Significant drop:

Wildly varying opinions:

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Back to the R.O.B speak, I'm only putting in my two cents due to playing the character but R.O.B doesn't solidly win against zard. When he's offstage zard becomes a nightmare because flamethrower outlasts R.O.B's fuel. He'll be inches away from the ledge but flamethrower will force him to reuse upB over and over until R.O.B runs out and drops for a stock loss. R.O.B doesn't even need to be at high percentages for this to happen. Zard's flamethrower also disintegrates gyros. Granted R.O.B. can fire them out faster than zard can initiate his flamethrower but once it's out a solid flamethrower removes them.
To make matters worse zard outpaces the robot on the ground, making R.O.B have to play an air-to-ground game versus zard's anti-air upb and uptilt which is not a position you want to be in versus charizard.
On the positives his laser effortlessly walls charizard out when it has charge and his upair is comboable into downthrow at practically all percentages. The match in my opinion is still winning in R.O.B's favor but it's not a blowout.

 

[TennisBall]

Back to the R.O.B speak, I'm only putting in my two cents due to playing the character but R.O.B doesn't solidly win against zard. When he's offstage zard becomes a nightmare because flamethrower outlasts R.O.B's fuel. He'll be inches away from the ledge but flamethrower will force him to reuse upB over and over until R.O.B runs out and drops for a stock loss. R.O.B doesn't even need to be at high percentages for this to happen. Zard's flamethrower also disintegrates gyros. Granted R.O.B. can fire them out faster than zard can initiate his flamethrower but once it's out a solid flamethrower removes them.
To make matters worse zard outpaces the robot on the ground, making R.O.B have to play an air-to-ground game versus zard's anti-air upb and uptilt which is not a position you want to be in versus charizard.
On the positives his laser effortlessly walls charizard out when it has charge and his upair is comboable into downthrow at practically all percentages. The match in my opinion is still winning in R.O.B's favor but it's not a blowout.

If I were to help you against , recovering high doesn't seem to bad considering Flamethrower has some lag to it. Also, Charizard does not like projectiles, it forces him to stick to the air, which is not his strong suit, and R.O.B is fairly good at walling opponents, which can force them to switch to Squirtle, who is super light and dies at like 100%.

 

[DJ3DS]

When he's offstage zard becomes a nightmare because flamethrower outlasts R.O.B's fuel. He'll be inches away from the ledge but flamethrower will force him to reuse upB over and over until R.O.B runs out and drops for a stock loss. R.O.B doesn't even need to be at high percentages for this to happen.

ROB can just go over this, or double jump out of his Up B to then hit you with a projectile (or a Nair) and then recover. If Charizard commits to the flamethrower too close to the ledge then ROB can upair through the stage everywhere except Yoshi's and Kalos to punish and still recover.

 

[Abyssal450]

has been the source of controversy for awhile now, and after playing him for awhile and after playing him for an extended period of time. I can say that hes a solid mid tier.

While hero has some real jank with thwack potentially killing at 0 and it two-framing. It doesnt solve the inconsistency of his rng. You have to be constantly using your menu and hoping you get the right spells and you cant even do that without rushdown characters breathing down your neck for attempted to menu.

In addition, his main flaws are that hes so goddamn slow. He can't escape juggles and he cant really maneuver around projectiles and attacks from swordies and zoners.

On the other hand, Has been warming up for me. This character is really underrated in terms of his potential due to not being as easy to use as his semi clone . While his issues of disadvantage and oos options hurt him a bit. I feel his advantage state more than make up for it. Pk fire is really flammable as it can be a really good "get off me tool" and can set up for edguards with pk thunder 2.

In addition, he has djc z-airs which can setup for combos, damage, and can get out of disadvantage. His d-air chains in of itself at around 60 percent and ou get some nasty kill confirms. The buffs he got were really helpful as it makes f-tilt a kill move as you can use it to get kills at the ledge at 110-130 percent. You can also true combo d-tilt into f-tilt to secure kills at the ledge.

All in all, I'm really surprised lucas has been perceived as a low tier character who gets **** on by everyone. Hes a mid-high tier character that if optimised can be really terrifying in the right hands. His only issues are that his disadvantage sucks but with djc z-airs and with pk fire 2 he can get out of disadvantage quickly.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but we got our 2nd saga (and likely the last for 2019) coming to us.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

I am kind of surprised that it isn't called: "2GG: Rare Saga", since is going to be prominently featured in it as well, but this seems fun.
It is coming at December, so this is going to take a while for it to happen. Maybe some buffs to the DK characters may happen since then?

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In the meantime, we got our next S tier event this weekend: Mainstage. It is going to be the first major event for both Melee and Ultimate, outside of the Summit series, that is hosted by Beyond the Summit. The top 6 non-invited players for Ultimate (the two already nominated ones being MkLeo and Tweek) will be qualified for Smash Summit Ultimate 2, which will happen in late October.

GatorLAN Fall 2019 will also happen this weekend, although it will be a B tier event.

 

[Lacrimosa]

In the meantime, we got our next S tier event this weekend: Mainstage. It is going to be the first major event for both Melee and Ultimate, outside of the Summit series, that is hosted by Beyond the Summit. The top 6 non-invited players for Ultimate (the two already nominated ones being MkLeo and Tweek) will be qualified for Smash Summit Ultimate 2, which will happen in late October.

GatorLAN Fall 2019 will also happen this weekend, although it will be a B tier event.

No Zelda player attends in either of the two tournament, so I guess I can leave my character bias at home again.



And it seems tier lists are flying around like there's no end to them.
Leffen put out his tier-list. Looks fairly accurate all things considered.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[The_Bookworm]

And it seems tier lists are flying around like there's no end to them.
Leffen put out his tier-list. Looks fairly accurate all things considered.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Definitely has some questionable placements here and there, but that is, again, nothing unusual from a top player.

The thing that curiouses me is his Hero placement(s). Considering that he is probably the biggest proprietor of the Hero ban movement, it is no surprise that he thinks highly of Hero despite his lack of success for a character he claims to be high tier. However, the fact there is multiple placements for Hero, two in in low high tier, one in solid high tier, and one under "good RNG" as not only the best in the game, but also above everyone else, is extremely questionable.

Also, and are missing in the list, although someone in his twitter thread says that he placed both of them somewhere around mid tier when he was developing the list.

 

[Megamang]

The RNG tier was a joke, S tier is the best (Superior?) tier. The high tier seems more in line with what he may believe, but its Leffen... he's a bit of a heel, he will place him where it triggers discussion, triggers people, and yet isn't high enough to be blatantly satire (though he did that with the above S tier placement lol)

 

[TennisBall]

Ness is not that much better than Lucas, although other than that and low placement of the Ice Climbers,who I personally think are being mega slept on due to underpresentation, it's not a bad tier list all things considered.
and not being there is weird though.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Ness is not that much better than Lucas, although other than that and low placement of the Ice Climbers,who I personally think are being mega slept on due to underpresentation, it's not a bad tier list all things considered.
and not being there is weird though.

They were both in mid tier originally before Leffen started messing around near the end. The order of them and the characters near them were

 

[TennisBall]

They were both in mid tier originally before Leffen started messing around near the end. The order of them and the characters near them were

Huh. That adds up.

 

[L9999]

Every time 's viability is measured by comparing him to someone innocent dies, the two don't play alike in any way. If Lucas has so much "hidden potential" why do very few people play him? It is not because of Ness (entirely), it is because they rather play someone else in the 70 character roster. The meta/relevant characters have proven results and have a lot of footage you can learn tricks from, and some of those characters are pretty straightfoward (). If you wanted to learn someone as complex as Lucas you may as well play who would give you much better payoff. 70 characters and "too complex for their own good" is a reason why float in mid tier hell.

 

[TennisBall]

Every time 's viability is measured by comparing him to someone innocent dies, the two don't play alike in any way. If Lucas has so much "hidden potential" why do very few people play him? It is not because of Ness (entirely), it is because they rather play someone else in the 70 character roster. The meta/relevant characters have proven results and have a lot of footage you can learn tricks from, and some of those characters are pretty straightfoward (). If you wanted to learn someone as complex as Lucas you may as well play who would give you much better playoff. 70 characters and "too complex for their own good" is a reason why float in mid tier hell.

Is 's viability measured by comparing him to ? Is 's viability measured by him to ? is cursed by not being represented and being far outclassed by greater options, and because of this, he gets compared to , who is a very different fighter with a very different style of gameplay.

 

[Arthur97]

To be fair, Pichu and Pikachu do seem to be compared to each other more than Mario and Luigi.

 

[SwagGuy99]

To be fair, Pichu and Pikachu do seem to be compared to each other more than Mario and Luigi.

That's becuase Pikachu and Pichu have much similar sets of attributes and a much similar gameplan to Mario and Luigi. Some of their moves are a lot more functionally similar than Mario and Luigi as well.

TBH, I think we need to reconsider what a semi-clone, echo, pseudo clone, and a non-clone are.

• An echo should be a fighter with only one or two major gameplay differences that will generally share similar animations to their base.
• A semi-clone should be a character that (despite having many similarities to their base counterpart like attributes, animations, move functionality, and/or frame-data) is different enough to have their playstyle affected to some degree from their base character. There can be some moves that are completely different or some new properties the character possesses, but it should be similar for the most part.
• A psuedo-clone will usually still share some animations with their base character and some moves may still function in a similar way, but almost all moves will generally be significantly different in some way. Attributes oftentimes will be changed as well and these two changes will make it so these characters play significantly differently from their base counterpart, while still feeling familiar enough to be recognizable to them.
• A non-clone is a character that (despite having a few shared animations or similar attributes) has moves that function very differently from their base character, many different attacks/animations, different attributes, and usually a completely different playstyle.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Their result totals aren't the stuff of kings, but to me, the OrionStats really only tell half of the story; in terms of actual placements, PGRU wins, showcases of the characters, etc., and especially have done more than enough to show that they're high tier threats who should not be underestimated; it could just be chalked up to the players themselves, but if anything, I find it's more that it's top level players proving just how silly they can be at a high level.

That and there have been other players getting work done with them:

- Outside of Elegant, we just had SMB who placed 17th at Glitch 7, and Navy continues to perform well in Japan.
- Outside of Tea, Sinji continues to remain a constant threat (25th at EVO, 33rd at Super Smash Con, 17th at Glitch 7).
- Outside of Maister, Extra and Frido have both won C-Tier events in their respective regions.
- Outside of KEN, Sonido continues to perform well in tournaments, placing 2nd at Bucaneer Brawl.

The only one who might be lagging a little is Duck Hunt, but you still can't count out Wisdom, Ozone, or Vintendo (who placed 25th at EVO).

Also, I've been gone for a while, whew lol.

EDIT: Also, concerning , Imma echo what Charliedaking said a while back and suggest that Shiek's problems are much less racking up damage and sealing stocks, and moreso range/hitbox coverage.

 

[TennisBall]

To be fair, Pichu and Pikachu do seem to be compared to each other more than Mario and Luigi.

Yeah, that is fair, my point was that Lucas should not be considered low tier just because of Ness existing. Yeah, I think Ness is better than Lucas, but it doesn't mean Lucas is garbage.