Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Lacrimosa]

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.

Tbh. I don't even know how much OrionStats values tournament attendance.
We all know (or I think we do) that characters like Robin or Link are characters that are very well able to win a tournament, just like these four mentioned.
However, it doesn't help when the biggest and best player rarely competes: T is a player that has proven multiple times to beat PGR players, not only from Japan.
And on that note, I don't see any Robin, Link or Zelda player competing at mainstage, meaning these characters will drop again.

I guess for these characters it's better to look at peak performance and not at the average usage.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Tbh. I don't even know how much OrionStats values tournament attendance.
We all know (or I think we do) that characters like Robin or Link are characters that are very well able to win a tournament, just like these four mentioned.
However, it doesn't help when the biggest and best player rarely competes: T is a player that has proven multiple times to beat PGR players, not only from Japan.
And on that note, I don't see any Robin, Link or Zelda player competing at mainstage, meaning these characters will drop again.

I guess for these characters it's better to look at peak performance and not at the average usage.

I personally think that it's important to look at peaks for characters in addition to where they stand in terms of popularity; it's a major part of why was never really thought to be a top tier character prior to DW's Shine performance despite his rankings on OrionStats. Before that, the highest placement Mario ever made at a big league tournament was 13th. Even today, most pros still don't consider him a top tier character outside of Wizzy himself. It's also a part of why characters like or have been debated to be among the best characters in the game, despite being ranked lower than characters that are considered worse than them (I don't think anyone besides Leffen is clamoring that belongs in top tier) on OrionStats. I think that a lack of notable peaks was why so many players questioned over-inflated tier position before his breakout; prior to that, his best placement was simply 13th at Prime Saga, and outside of that, he didn’t have much else to show for it. And while I’ll agree that is overrated, I think there is some truth to his potential top tier status: though inconsistent at times, ESAM has had some of the strongest peaks out there, even being one of the few players to win a tournament as big as Glitch 7.


are weird because they kind of fit the category of the previous five characters mentioned, though they have not been quite as explosive. To me, I think out of the three, Robin's had the least notable peaks (though they are still good); neither of Jul's and Deci's runs at Shine and Port Priority respectively had any PGRU players, and in the case of Jul, the only major player he defeated was FSharp. I actually think Deci's placement was more impressive, scoring a big win over Big D and almost winning against Nicko.

Both ven and Mystearica feel pretty inconsistent in their performances, but they've also had some fairly strong runs and some big wins under their belt. Ven has defeated ESAM, brought players like MVD and Light to the final game, and has had strong peaks, particularly Prime Saga. Mystearica is not as big, but he's had strong signs of success, defeating PGRU players such as Tea and Goblin and having very good showings at B/C Tier events. She hasn't quite peaked as highly as Robin has, but in terms of what she's done so far, I think she actually might have the edge over Robin.

To me, Link has the most sparse, but also the strongest peaks and placements out of all 3; I don't think I really need to go into detail about how nutso of a player T is, but to keep it brief, he's been a consistent major player at almost every major tourney (EVO notwithstanding) and has a boatload of major wins under his belt, including but not limited to: zackray, WaDi, Marss, shuton, Raito, and HIKARU. The problem is 2 things: 1. T isn't very active outside of Japan, so he mainly has to perform well at his home country's tournaments to keep up Link's reputation, and as a whole, Japan tournaments aren't as highly valued as US tournaments point-wise. This leads me into my 2nd point: Outside of Link, he pretty much has no one else to bank on: There's Scizor and Rex, but neither players aren't very active, and Scizor has expressed interest in dropping him in favor of Greninja. Bully had a surprisingly strong showing at Glitch 7, so I'm hoping he can keep up the good work there. Funny enough, despite dropping him, Salem still considers him a very strong character, citing that his only reason for dropping him was literally because Snake's a broken version of him. I think this might actually raise some possible reasons Link is not used: He's strong, but he's also hard to use; with a difficulty cap such as his, and with Snake running amok, there's not really much reason to use Link over him unless you like Link (or hate Snake). Despite this, I actually think Link as the greatest potential of the three to be a high tier threat despite his OrionStats suggesting otherwise, and it's mainly because of T's such strong peaks (and actually Salem for that matter prior to dropping the character).

I dunno, to me, it feels like saying a character like , , and is mid tier would imply there are many characters you can do a lot better with in a tournament. While this might've held true back in the days of Frostbite, I'm not sure you can do much better than consistently winning (or coming in 2nd) B/C Tier events, then getting Top 3/8 at A/S Tier events, and then proceeding to defeat players like Dabuz, shuton, Light, Void, Gluttony, ESAM, Tweek, and Marss.

 

[Megamang]

While Salem's peaks are impressive with Link, it does strike me as a bit early. Ya know, it definitely shows his skill but early on in the meta there are characters that aren't exploited properly. IMO we are still in this part, but a lot less so as we understand matchups considerably better. I think people shut down and let Salem dance on them to an extent because it looked technical, but nowadays they'd stuff him and catch the bomb at the same time. It would work, but not as well.


But T is still showing he has potential.


Whether tiers should be divided somewhat evenly or not is a discussion for another thread, we seem to unanimously agree the middle of the pack has a better chance this go around than ever.


An example of a character that was dominant early but kinda fell off was Snake in brawl. He was still damn good, but his weaknesses were exploited a lot more as time went on. This sometimes seems true in ult, but at the same time he seems to be more option rich with aerials that work on the ground / a 2 framing smash etc etc. Also grenades staling when they hit shield is a small buff IMO, assuming they refresh his utilt. Even if they don't, other things that hit shield and stale is always helpful because utilt fresh is silly, and will always be, so I don't see him falling more than Brawl snake, and probably not even that much.

 

[Nebunera]

i actually think is damn good, it's just there is no gimmick he is just well rounded all around

 

[TennisBall]

To me, Link has the most sparse, but also the strongest peaks and placements out of all 3; I don't think I really need to go into detail about how nutso of a player T is, but to keep it brief, he's been a consistent major player at almost every major tourney (EVO notwithstanding) and has a boatload of major wins under his belt, including but not limited to: zackray, WaDi, Marss, shuton, Raito, and HIKARU. The problem is 2 things: 1. T isn't very active outside of Japan, so he mainly has to perform well at his home country's tournaments to keep up Link's reputation, and as a whole, Japan tournaments aren't as highly valued as US tournaments point-wise. This leads me into my 2nd point: Outside of Link, he pretty much has no one else to bank on: There's Scizor and Rex, but neither players are very active. Bully had a surprisingly strong showing at Glitch 7, so I'm hoping he can keep up the good work there. Funny enough, despite dropping him Salem still considers him a very strong character, citing that his only reason for dropping him was literally because Snake's a broken version of him. I think this might actually raise some possible reasons Link is not used: He's strong, but he's also hard to use; with a difficulty cap such as his, and with Snake running amok, there's not really much reason to use Link over him unless you like Link (or hate Snake). Despite this, I actually think Link as the greatest potential of the three to be a high tier threat despite his OrionStats suggesting otherwise, and it's mainly because of T's such strong peaks (and actually Salem for that matter prior to dropping the character).

Yeah,T is absolutely nuts. Speaking of Japanese players that play underrepresented characters exceptionally well, Ken has been doing decently with , having wins against zackray, Comsos, Lea, T, and HIKARU,among others. Sonic doesn't have a lot of results in super majors, players like 6WX, Sondio, Wrath, and SuperGirlKes all do decently well,with Sondio being on the Area 51 part of the PGR, but everyone seems to argee none of them are on the same level as KEN. The problem with KEN is that he almost never travels outside of Japan, and nobody else seems to be doing as good as he is.

Another character that seems to be showing up in Japan is the one and only , where Brood just showed up and took 2nd place at a Japanese supermajor. Plant has been rising as the problem with Plant seems to be that we were playing him in a completely different way than what actually works for him, which makes sense considering he's still pretty new in the grand scheme of the meta. Plant isn't doing as well as something like but he's gotten pretty solid placings overall.

 

[Megamang]

Hmmm. Even playing with KEN is probably a boon for Sonic players, heres hoping he gets a ton of friendlies or plays in the view of Japan's sonic players. When an underrepresented character shows up at a major, all the lower level players of the same character get a significant XP boost!


Of course, we will never be able to measure this effect, and the best thing would be KEN traveling, but traveling for smash bros isn't really always feasible. Maybe if sonic was broken again and he had a sure thing for top 2

 

[Arthur97]

I don't think I'd ever classify Sonic as broken. Annoying to fight? Sure. Broken? Not hardly.

 

[Megamang]

I don't think I'd ever classify Sonic as broken. Annoying to fight? Sure. Broken? Not hardly.

Right, I get that. Which is why I said 'if'. So if Sonic - the character he committed to - was easily top 3 and he had a much better chance of coming home with the prize pot and the glory of a major win, he would probably be more likely to travel. I don't know this of course, but I imagine it is a factor. It can be tough to travel as a mid tier main, when you might run into a top player that knows the MU and shuts you down. Just another factor. I feel like he traveled more in 4 when Sonic was comparatively better, but that could just be selective memory or the fact that US players traveled to Japan.

 

[Arthur97]

Right, I get that. Which is why I said 'if'. So if Sonic - the character he committed to - was easily top 3 and he had a much better chance of coming home with the prize pot and the glory of a major win, he would probably be more likely to travel. I don't know this of course, but I imagine it is a factor. It can be tough to travel as a mid tier main, when you might run into a top player that knows the MU and shuts you down. Just another factor. I feel like he traveled more in 4 when Sonic was comparatively better, but that could just be selective memory or the fact that US players traveled to Japan.

You said broken again. I don't think he was ever broken.

 

[The_Bookworm]

At Mainstage: Cyro 2-1 Big D


Can someone please fix this character, specifically the AI? Big D essentially lost two stocks in the last game due to Nana being an imbecile.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Since this is another S Tier (though small one at that): https://smashboards.com/threads/mainstage-discussion-topic.489474/#post-23561205

 

[Goodstyle_4]

When I see Gluto fight Raito, it's so obvious that wins that match up against on paper... and then it comes time to kill and DH just... can't... do it. Like, ever. It's fascinating.

 

[Daisycakes]

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:

View attachment 238604
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.

How the heck does ROB slightly lose to Lucina but slightly win to Marth?

 

[Heracr055]

How the heck does ROB slightly lose to Lucina but slightly win to Marth?

I think the theory here is that Marth won't be landing his tippers, meaning that the non-tippers will keep ROB around for a long time (giving himself more time to do ROB things).

 

[Goodstyle_4]

Genuine question: What happened to ? Why isn't she getting results anymore? Still an amazing character on paper right?

 

[SwagGuy99]

Genuine question: What happened to ? Why isn't she getting results anymore? Still an amazing character on paper right?

On paper, your opponent should always be covered in max ink and Inkling should be one of the best characters, but that's not going to happen most of the time.

She also has quite a few harder matchups in the high tier () as well and the icing on the cake is that if you want to play a character who is fast and has high kill power, there are much easier characters to play that are at least as good as Inkling that fit that criteria ().

I feel like if a player who could make Inkling's more unique playstyle work for them would start getting really good results, that Inkling would get more attention, but her only top level player isn't doing as well as other top level players and if you only want to look at the simpler aspects of Inkling, then there are other more favorable characters to play.

 

[NotLiquid]

Genuine question: What happened to ? Why isn't she getting results anymore? Still an amazing character on paper right?

Cosmos went on hiatus after SmashCon for about a month and a majority of Inkling's best players aren't in the US, so we don't get to see them in action. The character's adoption rate has never been the highest despite her perceived strengths and there's a lot of varying reasons for that (hype backlash, difficulty of use at a top level, and so on).

She's going to get a pretty decent boost after this weekend though. Mainstage had a bunch of Inkling players in attendance (Inkling had more players than any other character in Top 64 with five mains playing her), and while none were fortunate enough to break into Top 16, it is a Category 5 so the point spread is going to be really kind to her, especially since most of the players almost qualified. Cosmos, Armada, Xzax and Chag all placed within Top 48; most notably is Armada who, after a six month hiatus from attending Smash Ultimate tournaments, put on a stellar 17th place showing with a great reverse 3-0 against Lemmon. On average this was one of the better tournaments for her in a while.

Anyway, the character is still mad privileged compared to 90% of the cast. Her best tools never got altered in patches, she has a few inconvenient MUs but nothing that's a hard counter, and her only flaw is only really a "flaw" relative to the roster's top tiers. Main reason this is becoming particularly evident nowadays is moreso thanks to the character's best player failing to stay ahead of the pack. I've speculated it for a bit but in as much as he's the main person trailblazing the character's potency I'm not sure Cosmos' mentality is all there to get the most out of the character. I didn't catch many of his sets for Mainstage but his Glitch 7 performance was kinda mediocre by his standards, and based on his placing at Mainstage I'm going to assume he committed many similar mistakes. All of his lesser performing sets had him constantly go for aggressive options and whiffed grabs because Cosmos always goes for the options that guarantee the maximum result of an exchange, despite the fact that it makes it extremely predictable how often he'll go for grabs and how you can punish him off of it. His adaptation is distinctly average, and he's always had trouble with momentum working against him. The amount of clutch plays he'll get is pretty rare because his mistakes are usually predictable to anticipate.

Conversely, Armada strikes me as the Inkling player way more versed and willing to adapt to situations. The one real thing that undid Armada this tournament was lack of MU knowledge, he did pretty poorly against Salem's Snake despite the fact that it's an MU Inkling generally does well in. Armada has admitted he has little experience with the character and was gonna grind that match up for when he attends The Big House 9, so hopefully he'll keep his momentum going into that.

 

[Impax]

I really do think inklings biggest problem was the lack of top level representation in the US after cosmos (who was on that hiatus)

If you made a list of the 5 best inklings in the world, cosmos is the only American that would definitively make that list.

 

[DJ3DS]

How the heck does ROB slightly lose to Lucina but slightly win to Marth?

I mean it isn't my matchup chart, so I can't tell you the exact thought processes but my gut feeling is just that against ROB the tipper difference matters a lot. Marth struggles to kill ROB because without a tipper his edgeguards won't outright KO until pretty high percents.

 

[Idon]

How the heck does ROB slightly lose to Lucina but slightly win to Marth?

Because Marth is awful in this game.

Lucina's going to be landing much more consistent percent, knockback, offstage fairs/bairs, nairs, side B finishers, etc while Marth v ROB will struggle to kill a heavyweight like ROB until far later, unless he lands an extremely specific sourspot or nair-1 set-up or an extremely commital read with fsmash or shieldbreak.

 

[NairWizard]

I know everyone likes the Peaches and the Shulks of this world, and I like them too, but you know what, the more competitive games I play in my lifetime, the more I come to love the simple characters.

I don't like going into the lab and practicing my combos. I'd rather spend that time figuring out how to beat up opponents with different playstyles. And during the actual game, removing the mental fatigue and stress of playing your character lets you focus on simply outplaying your opponent.

That's why I really enjoy watching Nairo's Palutena. Palutena only has a few options in neutral outside of movement options. f-air, n-air, b-air, dash attack, and grab, that's 5. You can mix up with short hops vs. full hops and dash dances and rolls and whatever else, but really you're playing a 5-card hand against opponents playing 15-card hands. And it's so satisfying to watch Nairo win by matching one option to a host of different options that his opponent might pick.

 

[Spinosaurus]

I will never understand calling Lucina and Wolf boring. Every time I watch top play of them I'm continuously impressed by the sheer control and efficiency players have of them. Winning with them always comes from fundamentals and I adore watching that and trying to dissect their thought process.

It's the same reason why the Ryu mirror in Street Fighter is probably my favourite match up in any fighting game.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Earlier someone mentioned if usage and rankings were related. Didn't someone make a list comparing how often characters were used vs. the results each character achieved?

 

[Rran]

I know everyone likes the Peaches and the Shulks of this world, and I like them too, but you know what, the more competitive games I play in my lifetime, the more I come to love the simple characters.

I don't like going into the lab and practicing my combos. I'd rather spend that time figuring out how to beat up opponents with different playstyles. And during the actual game, removing the mental fatigue and stress of playing your character lets you focus on simply outplaying your opponent.

That's why I really enjoy watching Nairo's Palutena. Palutena only has a few options in neutral outside of movement options. f-air, n-air, b-air, dash attack, and grab, that's 5. You can mix up with short hops vs. full hops and dash dances and rolls and whatever else, but really you're playing a 5-card hand against opponents playing 15-card hands. And it's so satisfying to watch Nairo win by matching one option to a host of different options that his opponent might pick.

I've always enjoyed watching Nairo's Palu specifically, but couldn't describe why exactly. Thanks for putting it into words

 

[Arthur97]

I will never understand calling Lucina and Wolf boring. Every time I watch top play of them I'm continuously impressed by the sheer control and efficiency players have of them. Winning with them always comes from fundamentals and I adore watching that and trying to dissect their thought process.

It's the same reason why the Ryu mirror in Street Fighter is probably my favourite match up in any fighting game.

Because "boring" is subjective and I hate it when people use that (or at least try) as some sort objective metric for something being bad. That argument essentially boils down to they don't like it.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

So now that Palutena (and Nairo) has finally won a high ranking major. I think its still easy to say she is still top-tier level despite some of the community beginning to doubt her.

Speaking of which ESAM won his first major with Pikachu last week at Glitch 7 too. Gpod for both of them.

 

[The_Bookworm]

As I expected, one of the 7th placers of Mainstage has to be selected for Summit, as MkLeo was already invited.

Salem kindly gave the spot to MuteAce, so that is cool.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

That means that the Smash Ultimate Summit 2 qualifiers so far are:
MkLeo() (Won the spot by default)
Tweek (Won the spot by default)
Nairo() (Won the spot by placing 1st at Mainstage)
Marss() (Won the spot by placing 3rd at Mainstage)
Light (Won the spot by placing 4th at Mainstage)
Tea (Won the spot by placing 5th at Mainstage)
VoiD (Won the spot by placing 5th at Mainstage)
MuteAce() (Won the spot by placing 7th at Mainstage)


Other than the normal voting period, there are two other ways to get in:
The top 2 players at Big House 9
A last-chance qualifier at 2GG: Nightmare at Smashville

 

[Lacrimosa]

I am truly wondering why Sheik is considered a solid high-tier now.
She isn't really doing anything. Yes, taking down some PGR players is all nice and good, however Sheik wasn't really present and of course Void has a MU advantage at that point, even if Sheik was very common in Sm4sh.
What I find more intriguing is the thing that characters, like Bowser, have trouble to even be considered high-tier. I wonder why that's the case: What makes Sheik different from characters like Bowser (he's the easiest example because people still doubt his potential for some reason and that's despite Leon's showings at multiple tournaments).

As I expected, one of the 7th placers of Mainstage has to be selected for Summit, as MkLeo was already invited.

Salem kindly gave the spot to MuteAce, so that is cool.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

That means that the Smash Ultimate Summit 2 qualifiers so far are:
MkLeo() (Won the spot by default)
Tweek (Won the spot by default)
Nairo() (Won the spot by placing 1st at Mainstage)
Marss() (Won the spot by placing 3rd at Mainstage)
Light (Won the spot by placing 4th at Mainstage)
Tea (Won the spot by placing 5th at Mainstage)
VoiD (Won the spot by placing 5th at Mainstage)
MuteAce() (Won the spot by placing 7th at Mainstage)


Other than the normal voting period, there are two other ways to get in:
The top 2 players at Big House 9
A last-chance qualifier at 2GG: Nightmare at Smashville

How does the Smash scene work here btw.?
Let's say that the mentioned players all get top 8 at Big House 9:
Would the next players to qualify then be two players that are Top 9?
I know that's hypothetical, but I still wonder what the solution would be if the mainstage top placements doesn't offer a new player.

 

[Arthur97]

I am truly wondering why Sheik is considered a solid high-tier now.
She isn't really doing anything. Yes, taking down some PGR players is all nice and good, however Sheik wasn't really present and of course Void has a MU advantage at that point, even if Sheik was very common in Sm4sh.
What I find more intriguing is the thing that characters, like Bowser, have trouble to even be considered high-tier. I wonder why that's the case: What makes Sheik different from characters like Bowser (he's the easiest example because people still doubt his potential for some reason and that's despite Leon's showings at multiple tournaments).

Part of it may be history. People may be hesitant to call Bowser good given his history, and may be more willing to call Sheik good because of her history. Now, while past games might not should have so much of an effect on Ultimate, people can be swayed by preconceived notions bred through the series. Not just on a fighter by fighter basis. Generally, fast and speedy fighters are seen as good, so the archetype may help people be willing to call Sheik good while heavyweights have historically been bad so they face more inertia if they do happen to be good.

 

[blackghost]

shiek is gonna need A LOT more to prove she is a high tier. i think its a lot of MU unfamiliarity at this point. void was getting away with a lot and still struggling to consistently end games. no to mention offensively the gap between pichu and shiek is pretty self-explanatory. void is th eonly shiek placing high and when he is against people close to his equal he still has a lot of issues. personally i think void's abandonment of pichu (along with the community's) was a huge overreaction to nerfs. void best character still seems to be pichu.

i most upset at the last event at muteace for going bayonetta vs tea. just go your main. bayo is not better vs a zoner than peach is. plus peach is peach.

 

[ARISTOS]

I am truly wondering why Sheik is considered a solid high-tier now.
She isn't really doing anything. Yes, taking down some PGR players is all nice and good, however Sheik wasn't really present and of course Void has a MU advantage at that point, even if Sheik was very common in Sm4sh.

I don't know if she's high tier or not, but she's definitely a character that I believe will get better with time.

Pre-patch was a complex character with 10,000 options per scenario-but the character's bonkers range and a 50-50 kill combo meant you didn't really have to dig that deep into her bag of tricks to do well, you could simply abuse her privileged moves and incredible grab frame data to shut characters down.

With everyone in Ultimate getting increased relative range and frame data, Sheik lost some of that privilege, but she still has -bar none- the best zone breaking potential in the game, the best corner carry in the game once she opens you up, and a bevy of both grounded AND aerial pressure options that are safeish on block, lead to damage, and are fast enough to mix multiple variations of the moves in a block string. Her biggest issue is getting called out when she goes for grabs, as that's when most characters can absolutely destroy her.

When Sheik is played to her best, you almost get to take your opponent out of the game. There's no other character quite that oppressive in neutral, so as Sheiks and the playerbase gets better at responding to neutral options, the character naturally becomes better.

Sheik gets blown up in a match that goes blow for blow, but what if you can't hit her?

 

[The_Bookworm]

How does the Smash scene work here btw.?
Let's say that the mentioned players all get top 8 at Big House 9:
Would the next players to qualify then be two players that are Top 9?
I know that's hypothetical, but I still wonder what the solution would be if the mainstage top placements doesn't offer a new player.

That would mean that if the those 7 players fill up the top 8 at Big House 9, that would mean that two players who got 9th would have to step up to take the spot. The most common way to do this is through having sets between those players, although Salem in this case simply gave up the spot to MuteAce.

Part of it may be history. People may be hesitant to call Bowser good given his history, and may be more willing to call Sheik good because of her history. Now, while past games might not should have so much of an effect on Ultimate, people can be swayed by preconceived notions bred through the series. Not just on a fighter by fighter basis. Generally, fast and speedy fighters are seen as good, so the archetype may help people be willing to call Sheik good while heavyweights have historically been bad so they face more inertia if they do happen to be good.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. It is easy nowadays to call Sheik better than Zelda (even before this performance), despite all of Zelda's past success, due to the past history with those characters. Sheik is top tier in two games (Melee and SSB4), and still notably better than Zelda even when Sheik is not nearly as good (Brawl). I think that in general is also influences the lower tiered placements with Zelda and Samus nowadays with top players, mostly due to their past history not being too good.

Another example of this comes with Piranha Plant and Bowser Jr. Brood got 2nd at Umebura SP 4? PPlant may have mid tier potential. Young Eevey got 7th at Albion 4 and 25th at Glitch 7? Eh, Bowser Jr. still sucks. Now Brood's single performance is a better peak, but Bowser Jr.'s past history with being a mediocre character in SSB4 is also affecting perception of his performance's significance pretty much, while PPlant has the liberty of being a DLC newcomer.

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As for Sheik, it is safe to say that the character is no longer low tier. I think the character is a solid mid tier right now, but with VoiD having the power of matchup unfamiliarity (literally no one else plays Sheik seriously, let alone at his level) and his Pichu performing better in most instances, I think it is really silly to jump the gun with this character. Nairo and Light are probably the only two top players with legitimate Sheik experience because these have fought VoiD's Sheik on streams, which may explain why VoiD didn't go Sheik immediately against Nairo.

Many characters in the upper mid tier (such as Falco, Falcon, Sonic, Luigi, the Links, etc.) have greater playerbases and more consistent success for longer periods of time. Now someone may argue that whose mentioned characters I said are in the lower high tier, but my point still stands. To think Sheik is instantly better than those characters after someone dual-mained her to get two great placements seems silly to me right now.

 

[sleepy_Nex]

Didn't Void go Pichu because prepatch Pichu was like Palu's worst mu? After the nerfs Pichu is considered evenish now but since everyone dropped Pichu Void could have been able to catch nairo offguard with it. Especially when he fought nairo with shiek before on stream. No idea if he used Pichu there. Shiek seems to still give Palu some trouble. She was her worst mu in Smash4 and even now can overwhelm her in Neutral. It's probably a more even mu now.

 

[KakuCP9]

Character with good oos options, mobility, disadvantage/ recovery , top tier neutral, great projectile and handful of combos/kill confirms is considered a good character by top players. More at 11.

How the heck does ROB slightly lose to Lucina but slightly win to Marth?

He doesn't. Whoever made that MU chart and whoever bought into are dummies. ROB is a footie character who lives and dies in the midrange and Marth is still very much the midrange king who can easily challenge any attempts from ROB to either approach or maintain stage control due to his combination of better disjoint and faster buttons much in the same vein as how Lucina beats ROB.
This whole fetishization of Marth's tippers being hard to land fails to account for the general risk and reward where a character has trouble cracking through Marth's neutral and up-b OOS will turn into a war of attrition where Marth has the upper hand due to him taking less risks in general. Any characters that loses to Lucina will lose to Marth. At best, the only time the tippers matter is when someone has equal risk/reward to Marthcina and the inconsistent tippers make it err to the opponent. Also one thing he has over Lucina in that MU is that ROB is difficult to edge-guard in general due his up-b having functionally infinite fuel affording recovery mixups that are difficult to cover whereas Marth can bully the crap out ROB with tipper nair at the ledge since ROB is at a fixed position of the stage to make tippers easier to land and Marth's nair nets KOs way way earlier than Lucina's.

 

[NotLiquid]

Looks like Raito is going to be committing to maining Banjo.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[sleepy_Nex]

Rob also has a big hurtbox. Should be fairly easy to land the tipper in comparison to other chars.

 

[Y2Kay]

Sheik is one of those characters where it’s very easy to miss the forest for the trees. People get so hyper focused on her weaknesses that they fail to see or understand the character in its entirety.

Sheik isn’t the only one. This happens to many characters, I think Lucario is another victim of this mentality.

It takes more than just high kill power to beat Sheik. And if that’s the only reason you can state for why x character beats her, then you probably don’t understand her as well as you think.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Sheik is one of those characters where it’s very easy to miss the forest for the trees. People get so hyper focused on her weaknesses that they fail to see or understand the character in its entirety.

Sheik isn’t the only one. This happens to many characters, I think Lucario is another victim of this mentality.

It takes more than just high kill power to beat Sheik. And if that’s the only reason you can state for why x character beats her, then you probably don’t understand her as well as you think.

One problem she has is her weight. Can't really recall it but she's like the 5th lightest character or something. And her hurtbox is rather big in comparison to other light characters, like Pi(ka)chu.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

One problem she has is her weight. Can't really recall it but she's like the 5th lightest character or something. And her hurtbox is rather big in comparison to other light characters, like Pi(ka)chu.

I believe Sheik's weight is 77, which is above Mr. Game and Watch, Squirtle, Jigglypuff and Pichu and one point below Fox.

 

[KirbySquad101]

weighs 78 units, so slightly lighter than (79), but slightly heavier than (77).

On the subject of Sheik, I understand being cautiously optimistic about a character's viability; after all, people were clamoring that characters like and were top tier during the game's early stages, so I think it's good to be cautious to avoid such predictions again. But this kind of feels like a repeat of Elegant's performance back at Low Tier City; not calling out anyone when I say this, but the vibe I'm getting from VoiD's performance is very similar to that of Elegant's. It's less of "Woah, Sheik/Luigi got Top 8 in an S/A Tier! They might actually be pretty good" and more of "Elegant/VoiD only got Top 8? They would've gotten farther but their character is holding them back". This isn't to advocate that Sheik is suddenly a high tier threat, but when the biggest takeaway most people can get from Prodigy-VoiD's set is "Sheik needs buffs" despite the fact that VoiD was up against the statistically 2nd best Mario in the world, I really can't help but feel that there's a bias against former SSB4 top tiers that aren't , , or . For what I've seen, people still continue to underrate characters like , , , or even , and I think a lot of that is chocked up to the fact that they have predecessor counterparts that people feel they HAVE to live up to or they're not good. I might probably be wrong about this, but I've noticed this kind of mentality pop around a lot (especially on social media), and I don't think it's a very good way to look at such characters.

As for Sheik herself, I don't know what tier she's at atm. That said, the fact that VoiD's gone back to using her in tournaments very recently and has already arguably reached the highest peaks out of any LoZ character (outside of and ) is definitely a sign of good things to come.