Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Ziodyne 21]

Samsora also recently realesed his 5.0.0 Tier list

I think I am surpirsed he put Palu in top 5, possibly due to Nairo's recent win at Mainstage, I would swap Peach and Palutena on the list. Olimar is still top-tier easy as well.

I also unsure about DH in high tier. Its becoming more and more obvious that his extreme difficuly to kill is a major issue for him. With Raito now dropping Duck Hunt for the newer animal duo his resutls are likely to go down.

 

[Megamang]

Palutena is interesting. Her tilts aren't great, but her aerials cover so much that it doesn't seem to always matter. The shield invincibility alone seems pretty damn adaptable, her dash attacking / bairing through stuff is an absolute pain for all my mains. Whether that makes her top tier remains to be seen. But Pichu's precipitous fall from the metagame is pretty awesome for her. People are better at not getting trapped by explosive flame and dying off the top early, but she can honestly go a full game without projectiles and still be a threat. Counter is meh, but reflector is good in the matchups that matter. But the way she plays right now fits into the mold of a top tier, fast safe moves that confirm into damage and pretty oppressive strong kill options, such as bthrow and uair traps. Nair also kills surprisingly early if you are near the sides of the stage. Getting d-thrown isn't always death but it is always a scary situation. Bthrow has an absurd angle. U-smash is situational but damn good at what it does. Getting windboxed isn't always scary but for some characters it is hilariously painful to miss a DK upB and get windboxed at the edge.


But yea, the way she plays fits into what we have traditionally known as a top tier and it doesn't surprise me to see her ranked this way when she just got a major win. Had Bowser won, he'd still be high tier, but Palu fits the mold. That isn't necessarily bad, we have learned what makes characters good over the decades, but it definitely can lead to some biases that may or may not pay off this generation.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Yeah what’s going on with Snake there? That’s an error right?
EDIT: also speaking of things coming out, M2K put out another tier list with some controversial but not unusual placements. https://youtu.be/lr2DdlvY5GM

I think his points is meant to be "355.25".

Anyways, I checked M2K's video to see what he has in store. It is... not as bad as I expected. It still has its numerous issues and controversial placements (such as Cloud in low tier, but that is expected from M2K), but I have seen way worse.

For reference this is his tier list so far:
B Tier:
C Tier:
D Tier:

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Regarding Palutena's tilts: They're slow, but I believe they're also pretty meaty, with a boatload of active frames? Does that give them any sort of niche use?

EDIT: Not to mention disjointed AF since it's literally a floating staff.

 

[Bobert]

Regarding Palutena's tilts: They're slow, but I believe they're also pretty meaty, with a boatload of active frames? Does that give them any sort of niche use?

EDIT: Not to mention disjointed AF since it's literally a floating staff.

Catching spot dodges seems to be the most common use of her tilts. I've seen ftilt and dtilt used for ledge trapping, but I'm not sure how good they actually are at that.

 

[Megamang]

D-tilt is actually pretty solid at the ledge seems like, leads into an aerial which can be death pretty early and it scoops low and is active.

Ftilt seems to trample out other moves pretty efficiently, just if you get rolled past or jumped over you're gonna get punished. Utilt has low profile activity. So her tilts actually work pretty well for her, they're just niche where her aerials cover tons of situations and apply much safer pressure.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

What makes Palu's d-tilt so potent at the ledge is that at can be comboed into bair for a kill-confrim if you succesfully 2-frame/catch the opponents recovery.

 

[Blue Banana]

Samsora also recently realesed his 5.0.0 Tier list

I think I am surpirsed he put Palu in top 5, possibly due to Nairo's recent win at Mainstage, I would swap Peach and Palutena on the list. Olimar is still top-tier easy as well.

I generally agree with Samsora's placement of Olimar in competitive viability. My reasoning is that the character has a lot of small quirks inherent to Pikmin that, while not a generally big deal alone, can make going through a tournament bracket more uncertain than it should. Both Myran and Dabuz made videos on unexpected things that Olimar players have to deal with, but a few quirks stand out to me:

- If a Pikmin is running back to you while you are using upB, any aerial that isn't Nair will not use a Pikmin in tow and completely whiff. This makes certain situations where one would or could use upB in be limited in terms of potential options.

- In some cases where Olimar is launched very far by an attack, the Pikmin also die in the process from it because they "left" Olimar's lineup, leaving them vulnerable to damage. This leaves Olimar very limited in terms of getting out of disadvantage and regaining control in neutral.

- Rolling onto the stage from a ledge grab may sometimes leave the Pikmin stuck hovering at the ledge, making nearly all of his attacks whiff if he tries to use them.

- If Olimar plucks Pikmin under a platform, Pikmin that get plucked and land on a platform will get stuck there if Olimar moves away from the platform, while still technically being in Olimar's line. The only way to alleviate this is to jump, making the Pikmin jump back to you.

- Pikmin in general act really weird sometimes when they're in the air or near the ledge. To specify, depending on how Olimar moves or how the Pikmin follow you when you get launched, they sometimes just fall out of line for no reason. Pikmin that fall out this way may take more than one whistle to keep them back in line.

The final quirk I mentioned was a thing that existed back in Wii U, so I'm assuming that for Ultimate, the devs just wanted to increase the reward for using Pikmin in ideal situations instead of trying to make them act a little more consistent (which, in their defense, is probably a lot of lines of code that it probably isn't time-efficient for one character).

These slight Pikmin issues, along with the 3.1.0 nerfs, Olimar's shield size (still) not enlarged, and that players have more knowledge on the MU, makes me think that although he has a lot of traits that make him a very notable tournament threat, he can be inconsistent, making the amount of effort to make him work a little less worth it.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Regarding Palutena's tilts: They're slow, but I believe they're also pretty meaty, with a boatload of active frames? Does that give them any sort of niche use?

EDIT: Not to mention disjointed AF since it's literally a floating staff.

Yes. Up-tilt is, at least. Her tilts (despite having long lasting hitboxes) have way too much lag to be very useful.

F-tilt: High startup, high end-lag, can (sometimes) hit twice. Serves as a move for spacing, but too slow.

Up-tilt: Fastest of her tilts, situational KO move, Still somewhat slow in terms of end-lag, but not actually horrible.

Down-tilt: Very slow startup, average endlag. Very situational move and serves a similar purpose to f-tilt but it hits lower making it capable of two-framing.

So yeah, to me, these are pretty underwhelming and serve the purpose you'd expect them to.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Not much has changed with the OrionStats, but there are some trends I'm witnessing that I figured I'd want to talk about:

- is definitely enjoying his newfound success between Season 1 and Season 2, serving as the gap in points in between and everyone else above, and and everyone else below. Both DW and Prodigy have been stepping up their game considerably, and with other Mario mains slowly coming out of the woodwork (SilentRain, Duwang, most notably MastaMario), it's a good day to be the jump man. R.O.B.'s also enjoying himself quite a bit in a similar fashion; in addition to WaDi, Raffi-X, seemingly emerging out of the open blue, has been making very strong strides at high level tourneys, most notably Shine and Super Smash Con. Other mains such as MJ, Epic_Gabriel, Dill, and OCEAN have been putting in quite a bit of work with the character, and even 8BitMan has stepped up his game, winning a B-Tier event just recently. As much as I'd want to say R.O.B. will fall off, that doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

- Despite 's popularity and strong OrionStats ranking (ranked #16, exactly the same as his Season 1 ranking), opinions of the characters has seemingly dropped spontaneously from notable players: Mew2King only regards him as an upper mid tier, Armada shares similar sentiments, and Dabuz and VoiD are very pessimistic about the character's viability, placing him as low as mid tier. Despite Gackt's and BestNess' strong success with the character, his peaks as a whole have not been as impactful as characters ranked below/above him (), which I'm guessing is the biggest contributing factor to why many competitive players think so lowly of him. I still think Ness is an easy high tier, but something must've changed for player to think otherwise.

- Does no one care about anymore? From what I've seen, both representation and placement-wise, the character has been completely overshadowed by , with a 40 point deficit between the two. I do have to wonder if his mediocre representation is chocked up to him actually being worse than Ken, or if it's just that his playstyle is not quite as "exciting" as his echo counterpart (or both).

- Despite Big D's strong success with the character, is ranked lower than at least 50 characters results-wise; while Big D has been doing a great job of showing off just how dangerous they are, I imagine their ridiculously high learning curve, combined with Nana's unreliability as an AI, is a major turnoff for most players (that, and their IP isn't the most popular).

- While everyone's talked about 's fall between Season 1 and 2, has been starting to show a similar trend as well, currently ranked nearly 25 spots below his previous Season 1 placement (even below characters like and ). While ZAKI continues to see success with the character, he's not very active, and his two other strongest players, Atomsk and Peli, have dropped him in favor of and / respectively; things are looking a little bleak for the penguin. has also been on a major decline as well, with only Jay and Hoe occasionally popping up once in a while to achieve results with him.

- Despite Japan players migrating towards (RAIN, zackray) and a lack of strong placements relative to his ranking, still has a grip on the #1 spot currently. While a lot of this can be attributed towards Jakal's recent success with the character, it's clear that Wolf continues to remain one of the most popular top tiers out there. A lot of this can also be applied to as well. While none of the current Snake players have been able to reach the same level of success as Ally (though MVD and Salem are close), Snake is pretty much EVERYWHERE: Even casting aside the PGR Snake players, there's still Grape, Welfare Pickles, Pelca, Vinny G., Shogun, DIO, AC, Ki, Bushi, probably 30 other Snakes I'm missing, but you get the picture; even without Ally, I still think the character is undoubtedly a top tier, if only because of how much success/representation he's had outside of PGR players.

- Characters like and have had their time in the spotlight, but they've dialed back a little for now; that said, they continue to maintain a decent #40~50 ranking currently, and in the case of Piranha Plant, his placement has remained stable thanks to Lucky's success with with the character.

- After factoring in VoiD's recent success with the character, is now ranked #43. While this doesn't seem all that impressive, the fact that she's already outplaced characters like Robin, Villager or Zelda after VoiD's just picked her up again is a good sign for the character; let's how much farther VoiD will push her.

- Despite Sans bringing up a lot of hype to the table, things haven't changed much for , who's still ranked below characters such as and even (also ranked below in particular). While Mii Gunner can't be counted out due to Aikhota and Katakiri, this scenario is starting to feel like a repeat of the "Plant Gang" hype that quickly died away.

- Despite Raito's recent success with the character, has been slowly lagging behind characters like , , and . There's still players like Wisdom around to help with the character's representation, but out of the characters with top tier specialists representing them, Duck Hunt seems to be the one who is most deprived of other outside talent.

As for mah boi....

- has made a respectable rise from his #30 spot to #26 thanks to Maister's, YoshiFreak's, and Notty's performances with the character. It's nice to see that there are other players starting to rack up some good representation/points for him, even if it isn't quite as impactful as Maister's success with the character.

I also unsure about DH in high tier. Its becoming more and more obvious that his extreme difficuly to kill is a major issue for him. With Raito now dropping Duck Hunt for the newer animal duo his resutls are likely to go down.

Based off of his recent performance at his weeklies, Raito isn't showing any signs of dropping , at least at the moment:

Toryumon Kiwami #37
Bracket: https://t.co/TeUhAZSEJf
Streamed on https://t.co/aQMTIpq0ae pic.twitter.com/oJXH6JUOvn

— リザルト画像bot (@ssbspResults) September 25, 2019

Form the looks of things, he's planning to co-main him and .

 

[sleepy_Nex]

Ftilt is still kinda trash. It has it's uses in some matchup but it's frame14 and punishable max spaced. Dtillt is best for two frames and trapping at ledge and uptilt is a antiair which has an awesome disjoint but is extremely punishable if you miss.

 

[Ropalme1914]

- Does no one care about anymore? From what I've seen, both representation and placement-wise, the character has been completely overshadowed by , with a 40 point deficit between the two. I do have to wonder if his mediocre representation is chocked up to him actually being worse than Ken, or if it's just that his playstyle is not quite as "exciting" as his echo counterpart (or both).

I think it's both and even more. Yeah, Ken is a better character than Ryu, but I'm pretty sure that many of Ryu's points comes from him being secondary to Ken himself, which according to what I understood from the rankings, only gives him half of the points (but yeah, if you're going solo, which I don't recommend since it's not that hard to use both, Ken is the better option). Also, not only is Ken's playstyle exciting to watch and (at least to me and from what I hear from other players) to play too, but I also think that Ken plays closer to what Ryu did on Smash 4 than Ryu himself. Yeah, that might sound crazy, but Ken's speed compared to the rest of the cast is equivalent to Smash 4 Ryu (since he didn't get the 10% buff that most of the cast did), his Shoryuken is the one that kills crazy early, and even his weakness is similar with approaching, seeing as using Hadoken with Ryu now is wildly different to what it was before. Ken's strong points after the biffs also are easier to implement when you look at their playstyles than they are to Ryu, as I still don't think people realized how to fully abuse his own tools (at least his Uair is almost always seen as one of the best)

 

[Nekoo]

Well, seems that Hero just got unbanned from the Europe Invitational Circuit, so everyone can just play who they want everywhere in Europe/ In alls countries.

Afin que tous les joueurs soient sur un même pied d’égalité, nous avons décidé d’harmoniser les règles du #SmashBrosEC à l’échelle européenne.
Ainsi, vous pourrez vous entraîner et jouer avec les mêmes personnages pour tous nos évènements européens.

— Nintendo France (@NintendoFrance) September 26, 2019

 

[The_Bookworm]

Found some new tech with Isabelle's jab.

Thank goodness the move itself has low range and it is attached to Isabelle. Imagine if this technique is attached to faster characters like Pikachu or Roy.
Anyways, considering that they patched the easy Luigi 0-death in earlier patches, I don't really expect this technique to last too long, unless it is like Diddy's infinite and they keep it (this technique is more similar to Diddy's infinite than anything).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh, and M2K released the second part of his tier list.

S:
A:

This is one wacky looking tier list, although this is nothing unusual from M2K.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Found some new tech with Isabelle's jab.

Thank goodness the move itself has low range and it is attached to Isabelle. Imagine if this technique is attached to faster characters like Pikachu or Roy.
Anyways, considering that they patched the easy Luigi 0-death in earlier patches, I don't really expect this technique to last too long, unless it is like Diddy's infinite and they keep it (this technique is more similar to Diddy's infinite than anything).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh, and M2K released the second part of his tier list.

S:
A:

This is one wacky looking tier list, although this is nothing unusual from M2K.

Here's M2K's full tier list:

S Tier:
A Tier:
B Tier:
C Tier:
D Tier:

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So, I'd like to discuss some things about this because this list isn't that great IMO.

• So, M2K seems to have C Tier as being low tier which means are all in low tier when they clearly have shown themselves to be far more capable than characters in that tier like and.
• is right next to . I'm sorry, but no. Dedede is clearly an average mid tier with some clear issues while Link is most likely a lower high tier with weaknesses and strengths that are much better balanced.
• What is up with people putting in Mid Tier now? This is an actual question that I don't really get.
• is being severely overrated by M2K here I feel like. It's not just M2K who is doing that, but it's worth noting.
• is the top of high tier. I have no words.
• are not in Top Tier, but are. ?????
• Oh yeah, as an after thought, WTF is doing in high tier?

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Her's M2K's full tier list:

S Tier:
A Tier:
B Tier:
C Tier:
D Tier:

Honestly outside of some questionable picks, this is pretty dang solid.

This a Solid B+ Tier List.

 

[Lacrimosa]

M2K ranks Ike fairly low, however I can see that.
Leo dropped Ike for a reason. Only Nairing can only get you so far.

Ganon, on the other hand, is placed one or two tiers too high. I don't really see how Ganon can keep up with the other characters except for his hype factor.

 

[Gleam]

I'm going to say something that some might call crazy, but I legitimately believe that at best is a Bottom 5 character, arguably better only than and if there's one good thing I can say about Samsora's list (I actually didn't have much of a problem with it overall) it's the fact that he seems to understand just how garbage this character is.

I've tried so hard to give Ganondorf some credit, but it's high time people realized that this isn't some second coming of the Dark Lord. This is a piece of trash who fundamentally is no better than the junk we've had since Melee. To quote again, even if he smells a little nicer than before, it doesn't change the point that he sucks.

 

[Deleted member]

I'm going to say something that some might call crazy, but I legitimately believe that at best is a Bottom 5 character, arguably better only than and if there's one good thing I can say about Samsora's list (I actually didn't have much of a problem with it overall) it's the fact that he seems to understand just how garbage this character is.

I've tried so hard to give Ganondorf some credit, but it's high time people realized that this isn't some second coming of the Dark Lord. This is a piece of trash who fundamentally is no better than the junk we've had since Melee. To quote again, even if he smells a little nicer than before, it doesn't change the point that he sucks.

At this point people have put away their hype and now they are citing him as a low tier. There’s some bottom 5 opinions and optimists but sooner or later I predict people are gonna universally consider at the bottom of the barrel too. Then again it’s only 9.5 months into the game so opinions will change.

It’s like the same case for : the realization of the significance of the nerfs didn’t see him as a borderline bottom tier until a little later in the game. Viewed poorly but hesitance in calling him one of the worst characters in the game.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

So now pros think is a top 5 character now since she finally won an S-rank major? I rember weeks ago people were saying she was not even top 10. With MKLeo saying Nairo should drop her.

 

[Thinkaman]

Ganon is a weird case. He was like, 20 steps forward and 10 steps back--and the end result is a yes better but far more generic character. I LOVED Ganon in Brawl/4, bless his poor soul, but have barely touched him in this game. He's honestly far closer to Melee Ganon, in a more "competitive" roster where Melee Ganon doesn't cut it against a broader slice of the cast. (Whereas the true heir to Brawl/4 Ganon is Incineroar.)

idk, Make U-Smash Great Again, swords were a mistake, ect. Curious if Ganon is still the most played character in Elite Smash.

 

[Deleted member]

Ganon is a weird case. He was like, 20 steps forward and 10 steps back--and the end result is a yes better but far more generic character. I LOVED Ganon in Brawl/4, bless his poor soul, but have barely touched him in this game. He's honestly far closer to Melee Ganon, in a more "competitive" roster where Melee Ganon doesn't cut it against a broader slice of the cast. (Whereas the true heir to Brawl/4 Ganon is Incineroar.)

idk, Make U-Smash Great Again, swords were a mistake, ect. Curious if Ganon is still the most played character in Elite Smash.

I think he still is top tier in Elite Smash. I haven’t seen him faltering alongside other superheavies.

 

[meleebrawler]

I think he still is top tier in Elite Smash. I haven’t seen him faltering alongside other superheavies.

Free-for-alls too. Having almost every move be a potential kill move and opponents being distracted are a powerful combo for scoring lots of points.

Always has been, always will be as stated in a trophy from Melee.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Superheavies were never really my jam (I dabble casually with Dedede and Incineroar and that's pretty much it) but my impression has always been they run very hot-and-cold with very little middle ground. Either you blow them up because they're so big and heavy that it's combos for days, or they blow you up because you're at kill percent in a handful of stray hits. It makes for very stressful matches sometimes.

I think RuPaul's advice applies the most to any of their matchups: "Don't **** it up."

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

I've been playing and really enjoying Banjo. He really embodies the spirit of Brawl ZSS where you just run around being annoying and throwing **** at the opponent until they run into it and then do 50% or kill them for over-committing.

I think Banjo is probably also going to be controversial in terms of how good he is for a long time. Every time he does well at or wins a major fights are going to erupt on the forums about whether or not the character is being carried by the player. Every time he wins because he does a side-b that looks real ****in' YOLO people are going to roll their eyes.

As a former Brawl ZSS main, I find this delicious.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

My beef (such as it is) with Banjo is that I keep forgetting his neutral special is a thing. It's getting ridiculous at this point.

 

[SwagGuy99]

I've been playing and really enjoying Banjo. He really embodies the spirit of Brawl ZSS where you just run around being annoying and throwing **** at the opponent until they run into it and then do 50% or kill them for over-committing.

I think Banjo is probably also going to be controversial in terms of how good he is for a long time. Every time he does well at or wins a major fights are going to erupt on the forums about whether or not the character is being carried by the player. Every time he wins because he does a side-b that looks real ****in' YOLO people are going to roll their eyes.

Yeah, Banjo seems pretty decent. Not wonderful or anything, but is probably the second best DLC behind Joker. He might be high tier, but I feel he's a bit inconsistent in regards to killing at times and he isn't very fast in the air which (along with his fast fall speed) leads him to being combo food.

He also struggles a bit against characters with long ranged grabs IMO as that kind of destroys Wonder-Wing onstage.

Decent, but nothing special. Possibly a high tier, but I'm not sure.

 

[Lacrimosa]

pic.twitter.com/omDERENiKz

— aerial charging bitch (@macessb) September 27, 2019

But, but ZSS sucks.
I don't get why some hitboxes are so inflated, but we need some top-tiers, I guess.

 

[FruitLoop]

pic.twitter.com/omDERENiKz

— aerial charging bitch (@macessb) September 27, 2019

But, but ZSS sucks.
I don't get why some hitboxes are so inflated, but we need some top-tiers, I guess.

Remind me to never play against zero suit samus ever again.

 

[AxelVDP]

Please do remember that these hitbox visualizers do not show the actual graphical effects tied to the moves shown.
It's easy to be upset at a move' hitbox by looking at these kind of things, when in game it's usually well represented.
(Yes, it's still a big fair don't get me wrong)

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

At least one of her hitboxes is big I guess

 

[Megamang]

I think you can still kinda see it in the visualization actually. I think that is what I am seeing, but it is a thin line instead of the thick white effect that usually accompanies it. Which matches pretty exactly. ZSS really needed it IMO, that frontward facing scoop is amazing for her when her only threat vs shorties used to be landing aerials (which are probably easier to parry than powershield even, because you can get your shield up early and do it rather than mistiming and having to eat a safe aerial into jab pressure), or a very risky grab. The grab isn't so risky anymore, but the reward is much much less. Especially because shorties tended to be light in 4 and, ya know, boom.,

 

[MrGameguycolor]

But, but ZSS sucks.
I don't get why some hitboxes are so inflated, but we need some top-tiers, I guess.

Yo is so good that everyone else below her is bad like , , , & .
They all like can't compete.
(Not really, but everyone's previous complaints about her being bad worked out for her in the patches, so why not try it for other characters.)

 

[TennisBall]

What is up with people putting in Mid Tier now? This is an actual question that I don't really get.

The thing aboutis that Ness has one of the most exploitable disadvantage states, and most top players see that as a giant problem. Another thing is that Ness is one of those characters that has matchups where it's dead even, you really win, or you really get dunked on. His recovery isn't the greatest, even with the best airdodge in the game, he has more glaring matchups than most high tiers, and can struggle to kill if he doesn't get an edgeguard, back air, or PSI Magnet kill confirm. Ness also almost completely lacks super top-level representation unlike characters like and with Bestness being left to dry as Awestin rarely travels, Gackt is nearly always in Japan, and FOW has been struggling to get noticeable results.

That being said...
Ness is actually stupid and I know this. His aerials are disjointed, combo into each other, do a decent amount of damage, and with the exception of Down Air are super fast. PK Fire explains themself, and Magnet allows for neutral to become disgustingly easier. Ness' actual grab range may suck, but he can confirm into it with two drag-downs from Magnet and the throw itself is infamous. Ness can also combo Back-Air from Magnet, and Ness can edgeguard and ledge-trap really well with his aerials, Yo-Yo in case you go low or you're on the ledge for too long, and PK Thunder just gimps and juggles and kills and yeah I can see why the community finds him so annoying.
In my solid opinion, Ness is a low-to-mid high tier easy. Bestness has been getting solid results, Awestin can regularly beat PGR players like MVD and don't even get me started on Awestin vs ESAM. Ness just has glaring weaknesses, and most players focus on balance, which they should, as Ness' weaknesses are bad and glaring.
I hope this answered your question.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I guess it also does not help Ness that many of his worst MU's are some of the most commonly used and relatively easy to pick uo characters in the game.

I.e

 

[KirbySquad101]

To be fair, dishonest hitboxes isn't something that's entirely exclusive to top tiers; for example, watch as the magical wind projected by Kriby's legs will hit Mario somehow:

EDIT: Here's what the move looks like (on frame 6) without any trails/effects:

What looks like super bogus hitboxes will end up generally looking fair thanks to the added wind effects and animations; I noticed they do this the most for characters with stubby limbs, particularly , , and especially . I imagine they probably did this for 's forward aerial, though I'm not sure.


What bothers me is that there are a ton of animations that outright lie about a move's hitboxes, especially for swordies in particular. In a decision that still confuses me to this day, they decided to make 's sword glow really brightly at the tip of his blade; they didn't change any of his hitboxes though, so the glow makes a lot of Cloud's stuff appear to whiff badly when in reality, the sword isn't actually hitting the opponent at all (this also leads to a lot of people saying Cloud's range got worse in between 4 and Ultimate even though only UAir/FSmash got nerfed in terms of hitboxes). While I get they probably made some swordies' hitboxes worse than they appear for balance reasons, it can still be very puzzling to deal with in an actual match.


's USmash is probably the king of having a dishonest hitbox/animation. Even though the animation only consists of 2 frames, the hitboxes lasts for 5 frames. As rare as it is, you can see stuff like THIS happen sometimes:

Then again, I imagine it's hard to give GnW accurate hitboxes when pretty much all of his attacks have 1-2 frames worth of animations.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Ness' disadvantage state isn't really that much worse than anyone else's, right? I mean he's got good air speed, down-b for stalling and b-reversals, and a really good airdodge. I realize there are some characters with absurdly good disadvantage (ZSS comes to mind) but most characters just kind of have to deal with it when you put them in the air, Ness comes out better than most I think.

I think Ness is falling down the tier list because people don't play much Ness. He's not on streams blowing people up, most top players don't play him because they see his recovery as too much of a liability (and it feels true even if it really isn't as bad as all that).

Also, his reputation as sort of a pubstomp character hurts the perception of him as well. Like, most competitive mid level players have an internal bias along the lines of "If X character beats noobs online using one move but that strategy loses to better players it means that the character isn't effective," which is logically flawed but I think has had a real affect on the way people perceive a given character.

I used to play League of Legends and there was a hero named Darius who had an Ultimate that did a bunch of true damage if you had enough bleed stacks on you, basically acting as an execute. Darius was really easily kited but bad players lost to him all the time because they can't kite, ergo, a lot of players saw Darius as sort of an overrated pubstomper. The reality though was more complicated, Darius was actually a very strong tier 1 hero that you couldn't really pick in certain situations and that's sort of what's going on with Ness.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Ness's performance is still there. However, I don't think that BestNess is the best player Ness has.
Not that it means much but both Awestin and FOW beat BestNess everytime when they happen to play against each other and while FOW's Ness is pretty crazy, he really doesn't travel much. Fow says that he lacks a lot of MU experience and that I can see. Vegas hasn't the broadest variety of MUs and some of them are rather obscure.

Gackt is also a player, however he is overshadowed by other Japanese players.

Ness is a pretty fun character to watch and play but there aren't that many breaking results despite his high rank on OrionStats.

 

[TennisBall]

I guess it also does not help Ness that many of his worst MU's are some of the most commonly used and relatively easy to pick uo characters in the game.

I.e

Ness can do these characters, it's very difficult, and Ness loses these matchups no matter how many Lucinas I take to the Underworld, but they're doable. It is true that they are easy and they give Ness a hard time because they show up fairly frequently.
is the real losing match-up, it's practically unwinnable, in case you can't understand because G&W and Ness is not your priority in Smash, let me explain a little.
Ness gets outranged, G&W is near impossible to combo because of featherweight status and Frame 3 Up-B, often can easily lose neutral, and gets edgeguarded, not to mention G&W can Bucket Pk-Thunder, which not only completely gimps Ness, but also gives him an albeit weaker Oil Panic.
Never under any circumstance use PK Flash in a game against Mr. Game & Watch, there's stupid, there's desrespectful, and there's this.
Don't cross the line no matter how appealing the disrespect looks.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Awestin and FOW are essentially soft retired in that they just play the game leisurely, and aren’t really concerned about competing, sticking to locals really. Gackt and Bestness and really just BestNess is the only player he has that travels at a national level on a consistent basis, Gackt really can’t being in Japan and all. He still has long time players in the “2nd” tier if you with players like ATATA (winner of a recent C tier), Lumbre who’s taken sets off PGR, S1 still exists as well his scene isn’t as publicized anymore unfortunately though. Bestness and Gackt have all gotten some really good results though, iirc BN has not placed outside of 25th at majors since this PGR season started.

Either way his results are great better than what most people would rank him overall which is fair but I will say people get blinded about disadvantage state in general when determining character viability. Everyone knows Ness doesn’t have a great recovery, everyone knows his disadvantage state isn’t the best but when you look at good characters it’s not like they are all full of characters with top tier recover and top tier disadvantage. Fox has arguably a worse disadvantage state and while he gets more distance off his recovery they are just as exploitable as Ness. Peach has a good recovery but without float her disadvantage is pitiful. People generally refer to Wolf as being helpless off stage, rising star ROB has a giant hurtbox gets combo’d for days and can’t land , etc.

Now I totally understand why these characters are considered good it doesn’t need to be rehashed. But a combination of public perception and high amounts of top level exposure to these characters, I’ve noticed kinda of drive people to not let those facts listed above impact their perceptions as much as it does for characters not quite as good like Ness.

Also I’d love to see what you’ve experienced if you believe G&W-Ness is “practically unwinnable”. Characters with so many bad matchups simply don’t consistently make good placements in tournaments as often as Ness does compared to other characters with a similar amount of losing MUs as Ness is claimed to have.