Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[The_Bookworm]

I’m sick and tired of hearing this crap. This is not a real argument since it’s purposely looking away at legitimately garbage in favor of garbage design that’s worse and even more difficult to fix. Olimar legitimately needs fixes patches ago on his sheild and it’s completely ignored but that’s somehow fine because Olimar is a viable character!? Screw that halfassed logic, it’s a legitimately poisonous mindset and it purposely avoids fixing crap that’ll be way easier to fix.

I never said that PPlant didn't need buffs, or obnoxious inconsistencies like Olimar's shield shouldn't be fixed.

Not sure how you came to that conclusion when the main argument I was stating was that PPlant is not bottom 5 and there are other characters in more desperate needs for buffs than it. That doesn't mean PPlant shouldn't need or doesn't need any buffs, because it does need it.

 

[KirbySquad101]

In terms of why GameTyrant Expo wasn't a PGR event, in order for a tournament to be counted towards the PGR, they either need to A: Have at least 200 entrants (or in the case of non-US events, at least 160 entrants), or B: Have enough Top 50 PGR-ranked players attending. Game Tyrant only had 171 entrants, and while it was fairly stacked, Prodigy and Cosmos were the only currently PGR-ranked players that attended it. This is also why events like Delfino Maza 2 (99 entrants) and Waseda Festival 2019 (128 entrants) weren't counted towards the PGR despite being stacked enough to be labeled as Category 3 events on OrionStats.

EDIT: Also, here's the rest of the top 32 for Tri-State Shodown:

17. Zenkai
17. Sesnei
17. John Numbers
17. The Great Gonzales (for anyone who's wondering, he's made the switch from Palu to G&W for quite a while now)
17. Raptor
17. Chrismus
17. Enzo
17. Jack
25. Zomba
25. DKWill
25. Dazai
25. LemonTea
25. KingArc
25. PKChris
25. Echo_Sean
25. Protom

Notably, we finally got to see a make a fairly strong placment after being absent for so long from the meta.

 

[Zinith]

Also, just my luck that tourneys with hundreds of entrants and where my boi does pretty well also don't count in PGRs

 

[Rhus]

I'm not sure if people want to hear general opinions or not, but I spent a couple hours hopping in and out of arenas and fought a lot of Terry's. Here's some of my experience with the MU and general thoughts.

VS

I'll be honest at first I thought this was going to be a Ryu situation where I can make the matchup look even by playing really defensive and shoot him the whole game but I was mistaken. As mentioned prior, Terry's not really a Luigi-syndrome character (maybe because people are obviously still working on his combos but anyway) in the sense that he doesn't fish for one option and instantly kill you for it. His burst mobility in contrast to his stage mobility is what makes his gameplay a little weird.

I really had to train myself to understand and prepare for his myriad of dashes and jumps - he definitely punishes people that press too many buttons in neutral pretty hard and I, as a Fox main, will die early for it. After a few matches I found the best way to play against him was to force an option from him as he's quite punishable and relatively slow. I was able to circle him pretty easily and move around his hitboxes once I realized where they were. I think Fox's insane stage mobility is what really enabled me to microspace around his side/backB and down special pretty easily in the end.

As is the mantra of Fox MUs, Terry wrecks us off stage with spikes and dashes galore but he can't go very deep. I was pretty confident in the end I could mix up my recoveries enough to avoid instant death. What I was surprised about though is Fox seems to be able to actually edgeguard him relatively well with Shine and Nair. Was able to Shine him out of the latter half of UpB for an early kill and Dsmash 2-frame as his recovery doesn't poke through the ledge ala Marth, Corrin etc.

On stage, I think Fox's neutral is notably better and can take advantage of Terry pretty handily. Fox's walk/dash allow him to microspace easily out of his dashes and approaches. When we have to approach is where the problems come. Terry does lots of damage and his hitboxes are a lot meatier than ours. I usually had to scare them to shield, get a throw and lean in on vortexing him from there. Speaking of that, he's pretty easy for Fox to vortex as his burst mobility is pretty laggy and is punishable, and with poor air speed and a small Dair, juggling him was where I got most of my damage. Conversely, I didn't have much trouble landing once I knew where his hitboxes were simply because of his poor stage mobility and commitment required for his specials.

Other than that the MU has the standard problems on our part - Terry lives a lot longer than we do and combos us, edgeguards us etc. Don't Buster Wolf Fox's shield or the OoS Usmash will straight murder Terry.

I'm really happy Terry's GO attacks don't break shields or have crazy shield stun/DLC privilege so it seems because it feels like I can do something against it (which is welcome compared to Joker's Bodyguard mechanic). I especially like that his commitment to the attack means successfully baiting it out means he dies. Really powerful tools for Terry but good windows of counterplay.

Not going to call a verdict at the moment but I think has all the tools to deal with , but the MU feels relatively even overall.

I expect Terry to have a relatively even MU spread with no glaringly bad or highly lopsided MUs. I think he will struggle most with Zoners, particularly ones that jump around and can SH over Power Wave easily. Characters like Pac, Duck Hunt, and Olimar might really present some challenge for him.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Very good showing from ZeroTwoNone at this tournament with a win over The Great Gonzalez .
This tournament was also pretty much New York/Tri-State, so I'm not really surprised he did good but Top 17th is still better that I would've though.

Too bad there have been only like 5 tournaments where the Zelda players showed up this season but whenever they did, they placed fairly good. Nothing crazy but that's pretty much what you expect for a mid-tier.

 

[NotLiquid]

I'd like to co-sign on Nobie 's theory and would also go as far to say that Terry is essentially Wolf but with all his good/bad traits dialed up to eleven.

Anyway, here's Dabuz's day 2 impressions of Terry. He's largely reached many of the same conclusions other top players have (as well as people in this topic such as SolidSense). Terry is essentially a neutral monster on ground due to his byzantine amounts of burst options and anti-airs. He gets a lot of reward off of very little, especially anytime he calls out approaches, and his advantage is extremely potent in part thanks to dangerous ledge trapping.

Some things he mentioned that I didn't see mentioned a lot elsewhere is that Terry has a shield game that's arguably on par or surpassed only by characters like Fox. Not only does he have great OoS options, but Terry gets more out of parries than most characters because his dash and burst options are so powerful. You can die very easily if you get parried at high percents.

Also much like the spacies in general, Dabuz points out that as far as recoveries go, you're essentially committing to a hard read in terms of edgeguarding him. Terry is a heavy so your only way of reliably killing him is going to be an edgeguard. Similarly echoing Locus' sentiment that his recovery isn't all that terrible, he's not entirely unsafe when off-stage given that he has enough options to mix-up the way he gets back onto the ledge, though emphasize again; if he does get read then he should be dead (off-stage counters are going to be a pain).

In general, he believes Terry is definitely way more competitively viable than Hero or Banjo, and that while he's not so good that he'll see top players drop their character for him in waves, he's probably going to be pushed by a few dedicated mains. Could have been a contender for top tier if his disadvantage wasn't so average at best, but is likely going to end up in high tier when all is said and done.

 

[TennisBall]

I'd like to co-sign on Nobie 's theory and would also go as far to say that Terry is essentially Wolf but with all his good/bad traits dialed up to eleven.

Anyway, here's Dabuz's day 2 impressions of Terry. He's largely reached many of the same conclusions other top players have (as well as people in this topic such as SolidSense). Terry is essentially a neutral monster on ground due to his byzantine amounts of burst options and anti-airs. He gets a lot of reward off of very little, especially anytime he calls out approaches, and his advantage is extremely potent in part thanks to dangerous ledge trapping.

Some things he mentioned that I didn't see mentioned a lot elsewhere is that Terry has a shield game that's arguably on par or surpassed only by characters like Fox. Not only does he have great OoS options, but Terry gets more out of parries than most characters because his dash and burst options are so powerful. You can die very easily if you get parried at high percents.

Also much like the spacies in general, Dabuz points out that as far as recoveries go, you're essentially committing to a hard read in terms of edgeguarding him. Terry is a heavy so your only way of reliably killing him is going to be an edgeguard. Similarly echoing Locus' sentiment that his recovery isn't all that terrible, he's not entirely unsafe when off-stage given that he has enough options to mix-up the way he gets back onto the ledge, though emphasize again; if he does get read then he should be dead (off-stage counters are going to be a pain).

In general, he believes Terry is definitely way more competitively viable than Hero or Banjo, and that while he's not so good that he'll see top players drop their character for him in waves, he's probably going to be pushed by a few dedicated mains. Could have been a contender for top tier if his disadvantage wasn't so average at best, but is likely going to end up in high tier when all is said and done.

This seems like an accurate statement. I wonder how Terry will evolve as the meta continues as his strengths and weaknesses are examined.

 

[J0eyboi]

Hi, I'm here again for the first time in forever because no one seems to be talking about how obscene Terry's Ftilt is.

Here's a quick overview of all the **** it has:

• Frame 8
• FAF 28
• -7 on shield (basically unpunishable if spaced)
• Active for six(6) frames (8-13)
• Leg invuln 8-13
• Does 13% (15.6 in 1v1s) when sweetspotted, 12% (14.4 in 1v1s) when sourspotted
• Cancellable

I cannot stress enough how dumb this move is. The number of situations in which you can just throw it out and it wins is insane, and you get 25-30% off it by comboing into Crack Shoot. Even if it's blocked, you have an insane amount of options with which to continue pressure.

And as if all of that wasn't enough, it also confirms into Buster Wolf at mid %s. It's a dumb move, is what I'm saying.

For the record, the rest of Terry's things are also good and I think Solid Sense was mostly correct in his analysis, except for the part where he didn't mention Ftilt.

 

[TennisBall]

Hi, I'm here again for the first time in forever because no one seems to be talking about how obscene Terry's Ftilt is.

Here's a quick overview of all the **** it has:

• Frame 8
• FAF 28
• -7 on shield (basically unpunishable if spaced)
• Active for six(6) frames (8-13)
• Leg invuln 8-13
• Does 13% (15.6 in 1v1s) when sweetspotted, 12% (14.4 in 1v1s) when sourspotted
• Cancellable

I cannot stress enough how dumb this move is. The number of situations in which you can just throw it out and it wins is insane, and you get 25-30% off it by comboing into Crack Shoot. Even if it's blocked, you have an insane amount of options with which to continue pressure.

And as if all of that wasn't enough, it also confirms into Buster Wolf at mid %s. It's a dumb move, is what I'm saying.

For the record, the rest of Terry's things are also good and I think Solid Sense was mostly correct in his analysis, except for the part where he didn't mention Ftilt.

FTilt into Buster Wolf is not actually true, you can DI up to avoid it.
Everything else about it is still stupid tho.

 

[J0eyboi]

FTilt into Buster Wolf is not actually true, you can DI up to avoid it.
Everything else about it is still stupid tho.

I'm aware, and I probably should've clarified.

While it's not true on DI up, that only really comes into play if you do a longer combo into Ftilt into Buster Wolf. No one is gonna be holding up in neutral, so if your hitconfirms are on point, you can combo Ftilt in neutral into Buster Wolf and kill at like 50, or just do a bunch of damage if it doesn't kill.

 

[TennisBall]

I'm aware, and I probably should've clarified.

While it's not true on DI up, that only really comes into play if you do a longer combo into Ftilt into Buster Wolf. No one is gonna be holding up in neutral, so if your hitconfirms are on point, you can combo Ftilt in neutral into Buster Wolf and kill at like 50, or just do a bunch of damage if it doesn't kill.

That's true. Human reaction does come into play.

 

[blackghost]

I'd say Corrin would be worse than Bayo, at least Bayo has a decent DPS.

bayo is worse than corrin. corrin still has a disjoint in her favor and bayo just a really bad character that is more of a knowledge check than anything else. bayo has worse frame data, worse kill options, no useful kill throws, and a worse neutral.

Additionally, theres also the fact that most people still dont really fight her well but her inability to punish people with taking stocks renders it worthless. People still dont deal with jump ledge abk well, they still dont di combos well, and they still dont punish landing recovery well and shes still cant win these games. only reason she still has a playerbase is because there no other character you can slide to that has bayo's aerial combo game except maybe peach and thats not a character most people can play.
but yeah buff bayo.

 

[Lacrimosa]

In what way would she be significantly buffed while not killing the game in the process?

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

In what way would she be significantly buffed while not killing the game in the process?

She can be buffed but not to the point of her Smash 4 counterpart, like with what happened to Ryu

 

[Rizen]

What is the typical Bottom 5 now that most of the original Bottom 5 have been buffed.
For me, Mac, Ganon, and Doc comes to mind, but I wanna hear other people's opinions on the matter.

It's difficult to say who low tier is after all the waves of buffs and general lack of interest in certain characters. It's possible the buffed characters won't rise despite these buffs. I never saw as a low tier to begin with and think he's the 2nd best super heavy after . If I had to pick the worst characters, and a lot of this isn't completely informed, they would be:

 

[Thinkaman]

Still of the opinion that are underplayed and overlooked for cultural reasons, and accordingly underrated. (Not saying they are great or anything.)

Still of the opinion that tiny Arsene meter nerfs would be appropriate and one of the most safe/efficient balance changes. Tweek following Zackray in picking up Joker remains in line with previous sentiment on the character. Not really interested in discussing this topic because nothing has changed--just stating the boring fact that nothing has changed.

Still of the opinion that harsh criticism of is kind of weird and pointless, given that of course Mac is terrible in a specific 1v1 ruleset whose stage lists, picking procedures, and homebrew timeout rules allow his exploitation. It's like if someone declared that Melee or Brawl only be played on FD, and then constantly mentioned how are broken.

Here's some non-degenerate Mac questions:

1. Assume FD. How good is Mac?
2. Assume Battlefield. How good is Mac? (Note: Mac can FH onto/between Battlefield platforms, unlike most stages. He can also u-smash them.)
3. How good is Mac against Terry?


I think Mac is actually modestly mid-tier on FD. He's still very polarized, and hates electric rats + Peach. Also not a fan of Wolf or Snake, popular characters. But past that bad news, things seem actually pretty okay. He's better than you'd think against Joker--he's hard to bair, kills early, and being a glass cannon isn't the worst gamble in the face of Arsene. He also punches above his weight against Palutena, where frames in neutral are worth their weight in gold and many characters don't want an aerial fight anyway. PT is not really a problem outside of Water Gun being spooky.

On Battlefield, things get worse but not to the extent that I'd consider Mac worst-in-game.

As for Terry, I suspect it's one of Mac's more acceptable matchups. 1f invincible combo breakers are very nice to have in your pocket against a greedy Terry doing things he shouldn't, things that are normally safe in 98% of matchups. Beating Terry in frames is certainly a viable path, and Mac should not be inclined to spend a lot of time flirting around in Terry's favorite whiff punish range. Neutral-b should be able to land through auto-pilot Terry BnB startups, side-b will crush Power Wave, and killing early takes important Terry tools off the table. Finally, nothing punishes a ledge allergy like Mac d-smash.

Terry is an obviously good character, whom I am a bit afraid to fight with most of my characters. Yet, Mac of all people isn't one of them.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Bottom 5



Top 5
, then possibly contenders for last spot, pretty interchangeable #5-7

 

[BlackInk]

In what way would she be significantly buffed while not killing the game in the process?

All you have to do is give her faster frame data, make her bair faster and slightly stronger, and not allow ladder kills.

 

[SwagGuy99]

For me, it is and either or .

I think these 6 are noticeably lacking in comparison to the rest of the lower areas (low tier and lower mid tier).

Keep in mind that my Bottom 5 prior to this patch would have probably been in no particular order.

The characters I'd say are currently the worst of the worst right now are . The ordering of these 4 is tricky, but all of them are either underwhelming when compared to everyone else, have very significant weaknesses, or a combination of both.

Other characters who I think are possibly Bottom 10 right now are currently although I'm sure this list will change in this future as this patch has only been out for a few days.

I'd like to explain my thoughts on a few of the more controversial picks and say why I think they are possibly deserving of Bottom 10 status:

• N-air helps K. Rool a lot, to a point where I don't think he's the worst character in the game anymore, and he's probably above Bottom 5. His disadvantage still sucks, but if your character doesn't have any fast OOS options or fast options to punish n-air with, K. Rool's disadvantage against them is much better than in pre-patch. Yes, he's still slow, and yes, his frame data is still abysmal overall, but n-air gives K. Rool a lot more to work with than he had pre-patch. While some people may disagree with how bad I think he is, I still think he is much better than pre-patch.
• I already know that people are going to disagree on this one, so I'm going to try to explain it to the best of my abilities. Falcon's disadvantage is pretty bad. He is one of the easiest characters to combo and edgeguard in the game, his dash dance is unusable, he can't deal with projectiles, past certain percents he can struggle to land the kill at higher percents, and he's just underwhelming when compared to most of the cast. His combo game on most characters is still pretty good and his ground movement is still very fast, but having an unusable dash-dance hinders it a lot. Even other characters with bad dash dances like and can at least use theirs.
• Ridley is probably the most hot/cold character in this game. His advantage state is surprisingly good, he's decently fast, his recovery is OK, his combos and juggles are alright, so therefore, he must be decent, right? Well, his disadvantage is arguably Bottom 3. Put him in the air and his only option to escape the living hell you will put him through is trying to jump away or spam n-air and hope it works, and since neither of those are very good options, he can't play the game half of the time. Not to mention that there are several kill confirms that work on Ridley and ONLY Ridley. Remember Ding-Dong? No? Well Ridley does. That's because it actually still works on him as a kill confirm. While this might be the most notable example of this, it's not the only one, I'm sure.
• Ice Climbers are another polarizing character. In theory, Ice Climbers have amazing combos, great juggles, untapped potential, etc. just waiting to show itself to us. But (at the moment at least) they are way to hard to play to their highest potential to be good characters, and in general, they are very easy to combo and separate for most of the cast. They also can rely too much on complicated desyncs and infinites to land kills and rack up damage and their crazy infinites are so hard to pull off that most characters will have time to combo or separate them before they have an opportunity to set up their shenanigans. Every character I previously listed as possibly being Bottom 10 has the tools to separate, combo, juggle, outrange, or out speed Ice Climbers and while it works to varying degrees depending on the character and the scenario, the fact that every character has the tools to exploit Ice Climbers to begin with is a huge problem for them. However, I don't think they are Bottom 5, as they still do have all of their insane stuff that they can do, but Bottom 10 sounds fairly reasonable to me at the moment. Ice Climbers have the most potential to rise or fall out of all of the characters I think are possible Bottom 10 candidates but we'll see.

Again, I'm sure this will change but these are my thoughts on the worst characters at the current moment.

Edit: My picks for Top 5 currently are in that order, with following closely behind. is still Top Tier, just not as good as I previously thought.

 

[The_Bookworm]

In what way would she be significantly buffed while not killing the game in the process?

Improve her frame data (particularly landing lag) and improve her multi-hit consistencies (jab multi-hits literally do not work at the ledge).
Witch Time also remains to be a counter that is completely overshadowed by almost every other, more consistent counters.
Improve her smash attack's priority and remove her forward smash's blindspot.

To compensate, lower her latter combo abilities. She technically can't really do this anymore, but those who don't know the matchup (which is 95% of players at least) probably are still susceptible to it.

I have two creative ways of doing this:
1) For vertically, make it so that Witch Twist will travel farther upwards than it is currently if it doesn't hit anyone. However, if the move does hit someone, its distance will be reduced than in its current state. It is a change that will improve her recovery while lowering her latter combo ability.
2) Rework forward air to not make Bayo travel as far as she does when hitting someone with it, do very little knockback on the last hit, and make the last hit launch opponents more horizontally, while lowering forward air's landing lag, making it a better combo tool but a worse lattering tool, both vertically and horizontally.

I know that the chances of the dev team actually doing this is very low, but considering what they did with some of Ken/Ryu's moves, I have some hope.

• I already know that people are going to disagree on this one, so I'm going to try to explain it to the best of my abilities. Falcon's disadvantage is pretty bad. He is one of the easiest characters to combo and edgeguard in the game, his dash dance is unusable, he can't deal with projectiles, past certain percents he can struggle to land the kill at higher percents, and he's just underwhelming when compared to most of the cast. His combo game on most characters is still pretty good and his ground movement is still very fast, but having an unusable dash-dance hinders it a lot. Even other characters with bad dash dances like and can at least use theirs.

I wouldn't really call a character with still high mobility, great combo game, mixups in quite a bit in his moves, raw KO power, and still 29th in the Orion Stats, a bottom 10 or even a lower-mid tier contender. A lot of his weaknesses that you mentioned (aside from initial dash issues), while it does probably prevent him from being in the high tiers in the current metagame, is weaknesses he had ever since Smash 64.

Also, just because his dash dance is poor doesn't mean that his mobility stats is anywhere near as bad as Doc's or IC's.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Not sure if we can have a good Bottom 5 list now that multiple characters in that area of the tierlist received buffs.
Still, there are very few players that still play these characters.
DKWill is a character loyalist but who is there besides him? Hikaru didn't play DK for the whole lifetime of Ultimate (maybe shortly at the beginning).
Ben Gold (Mr. L) switched to Bowser from K. Rool after he won this Australian major with the croc. There's still a possibility he goes back.
Kirby has still numerous players with Jesuischoq and Komota and Captain L also seems interested but his interest could've faded already.

They got buffed but the question is if anyone will abandon their main for them and increase the playerbase. That'S probably not the case and so they will stay low on OrionStats or similar formats.

 

[blackghost]

In what way would she be significantly buffed while not killing the game in the process?

Wait you think bayo is one buff from becoming smash 4 bayo???? Shes not even one buff from being a mid tier. People are still utterly terrified of this character for no reason.

 

[Heracr055]

Corrin isn't bottom 5 except in terms of results due to disinterest. It's that simple really

 

[BlackInk]

Wait you think bayo is one buff from becoming smash 4 bayo???? Shes not even one buff from being a mid tier. People are still utterly terrified of this character for no reason.

People really love to overestimate buffs.

 

[Wigglerman]

People really love to overestimate buffs.

I don't think it's overestimating but games in the past prove that buffs can change the ball park. You buff one thing in just the right way and suddenly someone can go from crap tier to over powered instantly. Buffing is a fine art that no company has really mastered yet. It can be scary, especially with how dominant Bayo was prior. Do I think just a single tweak would make her top notch like she was before? Probably not, though it's rare that if a character gets any sort of buff in Smash so far, it's hardly just a singular tool. Several things get the buff which could make her fearsome once more.


I chalk it up to PTSD, but my weary comes from I just don't want her to accidentally become the monster she was before. Nothing killed my interest in Smash 4 more than Cloud/Bayo purgatory near the end of Smash 4. Just a general mood killer to a game I'd had so much fun with prior.

Though my fear extends not just to Bayo or Cloud, but ANY member of the roster that accidentally got ascended to Godhood and dominated the meta. I don't want that from any one character. I'm enjoying the general variety Ultimate has and really, really don't want that to change for the worse.

 

[RonNewcomb]

https://mobile.twitter.com/momochi212/status/1192831101703618560

So Terry can charge partition, meaning he can dash up to you and invincible up-b in your face.

Why play Ryu again, when his fireballs can be destroyed by a fart in the wind?

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

So HBox got 13th at Genesis Black which is a lot better than what he was getting before.

6.0 Puff is showing promise?

 

[TennisBall]

So HBox got 13th at Genesis Black which is a lot better than what he was getting before.

6.0 Puff is showing promise?

6.0 Puff is without a doubt showing promise. Everything that got buffed has use now, and Puff is looking like she is very strong and now she can even reliably kill!

 

[Megamang]

Back to Palu, I know I keep saying this but I want to reiterate. Her issue isn't her top tier MUs, which are fine... its that she utterly demolishes mid tier characters. Don't know if this is something they can change, and while I'm not usually a twitter egg screaming only buffs no nerfs, maybe just making those mid tiers more fearsome is the solution.

That said, if you can't land vs nair… life is really hard. Uair is also a massive issue, what do you even do as Ridley trying to get past nair/uair spam?

That an arsene making stock 2/3 more of a slog / more likely to trigger twice is annoying, an even MU isn't really even if you tie at 2 stocks =\

 

[The_Bookworm]

So HBox got 13th at Genesis Black which is a lot better than what he was getting before.

6.0 Puff is showing promise?

It does, although there wasn't really too much getting in his way from advancing forward in this tourney. No notable players he beat.
This placement, plus Ketchup getting 9th, is interesting to see though.

 

[J0eyboi]

This may be a hot take, but I feel like a lot of the puff buffs are being overblown. Like, I think the most meaningful change she got may be the Fthrow angle change, and I say that fully aware that Drill>Rest is now a thing. The Fthrow angle change at least lets her set up edgeguards more frequently and makes her approach mixups more threatening. Drill>Rest requires you to land on your opponent with Dair, something no one should ever let you do. It's also just another kill option (albeit a very early kill option) on a character who didn't really struggle to kill to begin with, in my opinion. Getting in is and has always been Puff's greatest struggle, and I don't see how the new changes help her much with that. In the small amounts of high-level post-patch Puff gameplay I've been able to find, I rarely see her buffs actually come into play because they're all so situational (I guess the Pound shieldstun and hitstun buff comes into play sometimes, but it's still unsafe and you still can't really combo off it most of the time).

I'd love to be proven wrong, though. Does anyone have tournament VODs where Puff has actually made use of her buffs?

 

[Goodstyle_4]

Riddles already won a C-Tier with Terry four days after he came out. What a lord.

https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/duljem/congratulations_to_the_winner_of_the_amuka_smash/

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Back to Palu, I know I keep saying this but I want to reiterate. Her issue isn't her top tier MUs, which are fine... its that she utterly demolishes mid tier characters. Don't know if this is something they can change, and while I'm not usually a twitter egg screaming only buffs no nerfs, maybe just making those mid tiers more fearsome is the solution.

That said, if you can't land vs nair… life is really hard. Uair is also a massive issue, what do you even do as Ridley trying to get past nair/uair spam?

That an arsene making stock 2/3 more of a slog / more likely to trigger twice is annoying, an even MU isn't really even if you tie at 2 stocks =\

Looking at most recent resutls. I say Palu just has a very solid MU spread in general, even vs the top tiers.
I think her only losing MU in top at least are and maybe .
Can still give her trouble too I guess.



actullay I think is volitalile yet even. They both wreck each other in disadvantage and stocks will basically be decided on who gets the first good opening.

Yeah she does not have any really good Oos options, and all her ground moves outside her DA are slow and situational at best. But she is still threatening on the ground due to her afformented DA and her ridiculous grab.
She almost has a tether grab level range that combined with a effective combo throw and a strong kill-throw.

 

[Nobie]

In terms of Little Mac's stage viability (or lack thereof), I really do wonder how much King of Fighters Stadium would change things for him, especially because the edges aren't true walkoffs and Little Mac hits hard enough that he'd probably score a few early wall-shattering KOs.

The other part of it is, KoF Stadium would most likely get stage-banned, but that still would force opponents to use their stage strike on it instead of some other beneficial stage.

 

[KirbySquad101]

EDIT: Didn't see Goodstyle's post lol Still, might as well keep the results around.

Amuka Smash Cup Results (174 entrants):

1. Riddles
2. Blacktwins13
3. iModerz
4. tamim
5. Stas
5. Burst
7. Jw
7. Advo
9. Secret
9. M9
9. Venom
9. Steve From Accounting

 

[TennisBall]

Welp... that was fast.

has already won himself a C-Tier, courtesy of Riddles' success at the Amuka Smash Cup.

Amuka Smash Cup Results (174 entrants):

1. Riddles
2. Blacktwins13
3. iModerz
4. tamim
5. Stas
5. Burst
7. Jw
7. Advo
9. Secret
9. M9
9. Venom
9. Steve From Accounting

I'm still not recovering from that fact that Jw beat ESAM at Big House.
Man, Big House was hype when we actually got decent stream privileges.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Genesis: Black (Not PGR Ranked)

1st: Nicko
2nd: Elegant
3rd: Charliedaking
4th: Larry Lurr
5th: ANTi
5th: Nito
7th: Razo
7th: Eon
9th: Nitro
9th: Lumbre
9th: Ketchup
9th: AC
13th: Dynomyte
13th: K9sbruce
13th: Hungrybox
13th: Zenyou


So many Wolves here. lol

Fun fact completely unrelated to Ultimate: Hungrybox had a sub goal on Twitch where he would enter this event's Melee singles under the tag "Genghis Juan", and use instead of his normal . He ended up getting 7th in Melee Singles under this different identity and characters. lol

 

[Thinkaman]

This may be a hot take, but I feel like a lot of the puff buffs are being overblown. Like, I think the most meaningful change she got may be the Fthrow angle change, and I say that fully aware that Drill>Rest is now a thing. The Fthrow angle change at least lets her set up edgeguards more frequently and makes her approach mixups more threatening. Drill>Rest requires you to land on your opponent with Dair, something no one should ever let you do. It's also just another kill option (albeit a very early kill option) on a character who didn't really struggle to kill to begin with, in my opinion. Getting in is and has always been Puff's greatest struggle, and I don't see how the new changes help her much with that. In the small amounts of high-level post-patch Puff gameplay I've been able to find, I rarely see her buffs actually come into play because they're all so situational (I guess the Pound shieldstun and hitstun buff comes into play sometimes, but it's still unsafe and you still can't really combo off it most of the time).

Disagree. F-Throw is nontrivial but much smaller than he other changes.

It's not even about drill rest. SHAC dair is amazing and very safe. People aren't used to using it because it's a completely new tool.

Pound DOES link to point-blank fair and nair now at a reasonable low-mid % window against the entire cast--fully true with no DI, so you have a few spare frames to counter DI with puff movement. And point blank fair at this percent window combos into nair on the floatier fourth of the roster.

This used to be trivia--how often dies puff land point blank fair, on this characters, at that percent range? But now her favorite callout tool just sets it entirely up, ez. And boy, that is a SCARY three piece combo; it WILL put you off stage, often deep, and with puff still in your face. And the only real DI counterplay is holding out, which is... The last place you'd otherwise want to be in this situation.

Go mess around with new puff against random training mode opponents set to 35%. Get used to the new magic, and then try incorporating it into her gameplay.

 

[Zinith]

Welp... that was fast.

has already won himself a C-Tier, courtesy of Riddles' success at the Amuka Smash Cup.

Amuka Smash Cup Results (174 entrants):

1. Riddles
2. Blacktwins13
3. iModerz
4. tamim
5. Stas
5. Burst
7. Jw
7. Advo
9. Secret
9. M9
9. Venom
9. Steve From Accounting

Burst used both and . He told me himself

 

[SwagGuy99]

This may be a hot take, but I feel like a lot of the puff buffs are being overblown. Like, I think the most meaningful change she got may be the Fthrow angle change, and I say that fully aware that Drill>Rest is now a thing. The Fthrow angle change at least lets her set up edgeguards more frequently and makes her approach mixups more threatening. Drill>Rest requires you to land on your opponent with Dair, something no one should ever let you do. It's also just another kill option (albeit a very early kill option) on a character who didn't really struggle to kill to begin with, in my opinion. Getting in is and has always been Puff's greatest struggle, and I don't see how the new changes help her much with that. In the small amounts of high-level post-patch Puff gameplay I've been able to find, I rarely see her buffs actually come into play because they're all so situational (I guess the Pound shieldstun and hitstun buff comes into play sometimes, but it's still unsafe and you still can't really combo off it most of the time).

I'd love to be proven wrong, though. Does anyone have tournament VODs where Puff has actually made use of her buffs?

I don't have the vods (because I haven't seen them yet) but H-Box placed 13th at GENESIS BLACK with , a pretty big improvement over his placements with her pre-patch.

Also, you say that doesn't have that much trouble killing. I'd say more that has some decent kill moves (F-smash, aerials, down-smash), but landing them consistently is a bit of an issue at times. Or that's what I would have said before 6.0.

Having consistent kill confirms can go a long way on a character, even if that character has a semi-decent kill options to begin with ().

Edit:

In terms of Little Mac's stage viability (or lack thereof), I really do wonder how much King of Fighters Stadium would change things for him, especially because the edges aren't true walkoffs and Little Mac hits hard enough that he'd probably score a few early wall-shattering KOs.

The other part of it is, KoF Stadium would most likely get stage-banned, but that still would force opponents to use their stage strike on it instead of some other beneficial stage.

Characters who either have horrible air games or can just combo the opponent across the stage would benefit a lot here, as would characters with good options that kill at low %s near the edge while characters who can rely on killing off the top or are slow on the ground would be much worse.

Characters who I think benefit a lot on this stage are: and several others I'm probably forgetting.

Characters who I think become noticeably weaker here are: