Been a while since I've shared my thoughts on a character. Since I have the game myself and more data on each character in general, I want to give my thoughts on some of the characters.
Before I begin, I find found it hilarious that I was pretty much one of the only people pre-release to say that "just because Bowser got his grabbed nerfed, doesn't mean that it overshadows his drastic buffs", "Samus/DSamus is underrated", "Chrom's recovery doesn't mean it overshadows the rest of his drastic strengths", and "Bayo is heavily overrated". Such unpopular opinions ended up being true in the end lol.
Anyways, the characters:
Despite the paragraph above (which is probably unnecessary to exist : p), I couldn't have been more wrong about Mega Man's place. I thought that Mega Man was going to get screwed over by the game mechanics favoring aggression (I basically had the Leffen mindset that projectile users will struggle in Ultimate), the loss of his footstool combos, and the parrying mechanic being a thing. Mega Man got big QoL buffs that overall boost his playstyle in the Ultimate metagame. His ability to wall out opponents with pellets and projectiles, while still being on your face, is second only to Olimar (and maybe ROB). He has really strong damage racking capabilities, while possessing reliable KO power. He seems to be an overall very solid character. I don't think he is as good as the Japan tier list is saying, but a character that can deal heavy damage to anyone when fully mastered.
Pichu is an interesting character to place. Everyone except for ZeRo is on board for putting Pichu at top tier, even as one of the best characters in the game and even above Pikachu a lot of the times. But at the same time, I don't really think that will last for too long. Despite Pichu's very explosive damage and KO power, it's small size also gives it arguably the worst overall range in the game. Pichu is also made out of paper, and that fact that it deals self-damage to itself, is also a big flaw. I won't deny that Pichu is a good character (that f-tilt is bonkers), but I feel that it is a super high risk-high reward character, and is therefore very inconsistent as a character (similar to SSB4 Lucario). The reason behind it's current popularity over Pikachu is (as already mentioned in this thread), the fact that it was intentionally made as a joke character in Melee and was a bad character because of that, and that people are still in the SSB4 mindset of explosive advantages and thinks little of disadvantage.
Just as FastBlade said earlier, Corrin did not deserve those drastic nerfs. He wasn't even top 10 in SSB4 (though very close). They made all of his special moves much worse: Dragon Lunge got big nerfs in utility and safety; Dragon Fang Shot's followup potential is pretty much gone; Counter Surge is much weaker (though it is still strong) and it no longer has a hitbox directly above Corrin; Draconic Ascent now halts his momentum after usage, which combined with his lower jumps, really harms his recovery. His fair's increased startup, slower grab, and his still slow grounded speed also harms him as well. He did end up getting some nice buffs as well, such as improvements to his smash attacks, his up B is much stronger (in a similar vein to Bowser's up B), the decreased landing lag changes (think of falling nair) and the universal jumpsquat changes (previously frame 6) also help him out as well. However, he seems to be inferior to all of his other Fire Emblem brethren, due to his retained weaknesses and nerfs. However, due to his retained strengths and buffs, I think he at worst mid tier (although that is most likely where he will end up in the current moment). I actually learned a little bit more about his changes when writing about this, so his position is kind of ambiguous in my eyes.
Lucas is a very... interesting character in this game. While I think he is sort of underwhelming in comparison to the a lot of the cast, but I am really loving the direction the developers are taking with the character in this game. In SSB4, it upsetted me that while Ness got all the significant buffs and love, Lucas ended up getting more of a mixed bag: sacrificing a lot of his offensive potential in return of making him a bait and punish grappler-zoning esque character. While he more effective overall in SSB4 than in Brawl, the one-dimensional playstyle can only get so far, especially if the opponent knows the matchup. As a result, he ended being merely a mid tier character with average results overall, while his counterpart got much better representation and results both in peaks and consistency. In Ultimate, they ended up doing the same thing again: Ness got even more significant buffs, while Lucas once again got a mixed bag. However, the fact that the developers are resorting back to Brawl Lucas' offensive playstyle is something I love. The SSB4 playstyle of Lucas wasn't really going to translate very well in Ultimate anyways, and what we got is Lucas with much better hitboxes, approach, and frame data. The down smash and PK Freeze buffs are actually silly strong. But by doing that, they really gutted his damaging combo game in the process, and his buffed offensive ability doesn't feel as impressive as other characters in the game (which includes, once again, his counterpart). I do think he is slightly better overall than in SSB4, but not by much, while the vast majority of the characters ranked below him in SSB4 got much more significant improvements. Still, if his offensive potential gets fined tuned with balance updates, this character will be very frightening to fight against.
I remember back at the E3 demo, when everyone saw MkLeo vs Plup and everyone thought she still top tier, or even the best character in the game. I was one of the very few people who was skeptical on Bayo's place in the metagame. Granted that she was nerfed from the E3 demo, but man I called it out hard. She got the nerf button super hard (probably one of the most nerfed characters in Smash history). Her ability to apply pressure, avoid disadvantage, punish the enemy, and reliably KO the opponent either heavily nerfed or outright removed. By giving her more reasonable hitboxes instead of the ridiculous ones in SSB4, it kind of exposes her frame data issues as well. Her own combo game also got heavily nerfed, as you can now easily DI and directional airdodge out of her combos now with absolute ease. Whenever I play Bayo in this game, I feel outright clunky to play. The game engine changes and everyone getting faster also doesn't really help her out at all. I think she will start out with somewhat decent results at the start of the game, but when more people learns that you can easily DI out of her combos, she is probably going to plummet. Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think she may be one of the worst characters in the game. I honestly feel bad for the dedicated Bayo players who put all of their time and dedication with her in SSB4. Who knows, maybe the Bayo mains will surprise us again because we all thought she was finished after SSB4 patch 1.1.6 came out (granted we still thought she was somewhat decent after the nerfs), but things look very bleak for the witch this time (no pun intended).
#giveherkilloptions
Stuck as a mid tier (albeit solid mid tier) in both of his appearances, this character's official render pretty much describes the how jacked up he is feeling in this game. Since we already talked about him plenty in this thread, I will keep this short and sweet: the fact that he is a projectile user that can play aggressively, plus having an even more broken nair, retained Gyro setups, and still great grab/combo game definitely helps him. Numerous factors from the game engine also provides very huge buffs to ROB. ROB players like WaDi and 8BitMan are already providing very strong results for ROB, and many top players are putting him in the high, and even top tiers. BSD even recently posted a video about a really devastating 0-death combo he can do. Overall, things are really looking up for ROB.
Wario is looking very nice. Ended up being a very solid high tier in Brawl (his range and grab release issues kind of sucked though lol), but then plummeted to mid tier viability in SSB4 (with some saying that he is low tier, although I heavily disagree with that). Losing footstool combos and his Bike getting nerfed kind of sucked (and that turned me down at first during the pre-release days), but oh baby... he got HUGE improvements. There isn't really anything I can say that isn't already said in this thread, so let me finish my thoughts by saying: he is going to bring in the gold.
Btw, what do you guys think of Isabelle and Mii Gunner? Both of those characters where talked about a lot during the pre-release days, but not really talked about post release, and current opinions on both of them are all over the place.
