Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[ARISTOS]

Funny enough, Ramin himself made a post addressing the idea of ev with low representation:

"But only >input top player< gets results with that character!"

So? That person still showcases how much potential a character has when played at its best

Its also annoying when people say they could do the same thing with anyone else. No Leo's not gonna win majors w/ Ganon lol

— BKROG | Ramin (@Mr_RSmash) October 16, 2019

I honestly find myself agreeing with this viewpoint to a certain degree, and it sheds a lot of light on his tier list in that regard.

This has been a major point of contention on this board and will probably continue to be ad infinitum.

While it's possible for a lowly represented character to be great, there is also the possibility that results are the work of a great player ie the results are the result of an outlier rather than a testament to the character's strength. Trying to divorce that is difficult given the varying factors going into character selection/results but not impossible.

My thing with Pikachu, and this has gone back to Smash 4, is that the character is routinely touted as amazing when looking at both how the character performs and the willingness to pick the character up seem divorced from reality. Smash players flock to strong characters. If Pikachu was provably as strong as stated, people would pick the character up and do things, or the current playerbase would outstrip their expected performance level. There's nothing to suggest either here.

and and on the other hand do have convincing top 10 representation, but don't have the broader success of the above, even Wario! Yet none of these are historically unpopular or exotically difficult to pick up. I can buy them as top 10 atm, but can't regard them as breaking into that top 4.

Pushing back against this slightly, ZSS to my knowledge has never been a popular character pick (even in Smash 4, where she was very strong) due to hyper-mobility and tiny hitboxes extending her learning curve significantly. Olimar likewise is also not super popular because he kinda plays lame lmao. Unlike Pika though, their small playerbases typically do very well, as you noted.

But is all theory, we can no longer base expectations off a single player's peak performance. We've had a year, and NO ONE else is doing anything remarkable with the character outside of Captain L if we are being generous. The days of thinking Pikachu is #1 or top 3, while the #1 Pikachu isn't top 10 and the #2 Pikachu player is barely top 100, are past. We have to accept that these are amazing players playing a perfectly ordinary and respectable high tier character, and nothing more.

Basically my argument in a nutshell.

Bringing together different conversations going on in here , I think Byleth is going to end up being a baaad matchup for G&W. If you look at all the characters that Maister thinks give G&W grief, one of the main themes is big disjoints. This is why he considers Ike more of a threat than many top tiers. And Byleth is a "distance demon" who's likely more than happy to play keep-away.

G&W is a lot about forcing his game plan onto others and preventing them from setting up theirs, and having a character who just comes in with 4 honking big weapons is not going to make G&W's life easy.

Very cold take but Byleth will definitely have a polarized MU spread, I think a lot of the slower characters/more predictable jump-ins will get swatted away with side-B/ftilt/utilt while faster/more ambiguous characters will have a field day. The character also looks to be bad on the ledge given how poor his jumps are which will prove problematic in the long run.

Also, while sick this week I've been playing a ton of . Very cool character in this game, while nerfing dtilt and buffing almost everything else hasn't left him net-positive it's made him a much more expansive character. I need to see if someone has labbed out + frames for Shadow Ball charges on hit as percentages increase, as knowing that can help solidify what works/doesn't.

FSmash is a fun spacing option since it has quite a disjoint and can call out early jumps, plus upward angled it hits the exact area people want to jump-in on.

Exploding due to being ledge trapped isn't fun but when I'm playing the game in neutral vs anyone not Palu/Chrom it's a blast. Main issue with this character's poor tournament performance is consistency rather than the character being bad, playing Mewtwo has a huge mental load.

 

[KirbySquad101]

I feel like it can more or less be taken in two ways: On one hand, if ESAM decides to suddenly stop competing for whatever reason, doesn't technically become a worse character, or rather isn't fundamentally changed in any way. On the other hand, there does HAVE to be a reason why people are decidedly flocking to ////etc. over characters like ////etc., even though all characters listed are capable of being successful at a high level. Level of representation is important, don't get me wrong, but it's also important to look at characters' performances at their peaks.

So in other words, it's more like the latter section is good enough to win majors, but not exactly good enough to be overly dominant either. IMO, that can be enough to keep them out of top tier, but not exactly any lower than that borderline (or high tier, if you consider that to be the borderline of top tier), either.

For what it's worth, I never really bought into the whole "Pikachu is top 3" sentiments; I was hoping I didn't really give off the impression I did lol.

 

[Iron Maw]

Byleth:

I like the concept Sakurai is going with them. Incorporating all the various Hero Relics not just into their b specials but normal really sells the fact they aren't just a swordsman, but more a Master of Arms. Yeah any hard judgement on their viability at this point is silly. We all had numerous examples why like how peeps thought Smash 4 Cloud would be low tier due to him have clear weakness such as a terrible recovery. We all know how that turned out.

Which also brings me to another point, low mobility isn't necessarily a death knell either. Quite a couple of top and high tiers aren't fast themselves such as Snake and Wolf. They compensate for that with other things like aerial mobility (good drift in Wolf's case) great range and attack speed or some kind of unique attribute. Hell Bayo in Smash 4 had one of worst frame data in the game, but that didn't stop her from becoming top tier because of other factors. So depending on what Byleth brings and how their kit pans out in practice their perceived weakness aren't anywhere enough to say anything concrete. I feel like they might end up a long the lines of where Smash 4 Corrin was most similarities with due the emphasis on range except without being push towards vertical kills. Unlike the Belmonts they seem more balanced as decent melee options for CQC.

 

[The_Bookworm]

#21-30 is here:

Concluding the first week of the #PGRU reveal, we have another batch of amazing players to celebrate.

In partnership with @redbullgaming, we are proud to present to you the 30-21.

Read & Watch: https://t.co/ukCwC6oxWJ

— PGstats.com (@pgstats) January 17, 2020

21st: Lea() +9
22nd: Dark Wizzy +9
23rd: Cosmos -12
24th: Abadango() +16
25th: Kome New
26th: Choco New
27th: Nietono() +18
28th: LeoN() +7
29th: Gackt New
30th: Salem() -8

Spoiler: #31-A51

31st: Raffi-X New
32nd: Elegant New
33rd: Pandarian New
34th: Etsuji() New
35th: Umeki +7
36th: Nicko New
37th: Ned() New
38th: VoiD() -29
39th: Lui$() New
40th: ScAtt +1
41st: HIKARU() New
42nd: Goblin() -3
43rd: BestNess() New
44th: Mr R() -8
45th: RFang() New
46th: Kola() New
47th: Riddles() New
48th: Kirihara New
49th: Big D() New
50th: Ron() New
A51: yeti -17
A51: Wrath() New
A51: Myran -38
A51: Leffen New
A51: Eim New

#21-30 is basically Japanese invasion. lol
Still some nice placements here. It is a shame that Cosmos fell just short of top 20 this season, but his inconsistencies in comparison to last season held him back. Still very good placement.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Still wondering if quiK made it...

 

[Cheryl~]

Still wondering if quiK made it...

quiK was shown as an Unranked win on one of the player cards, he's not in sadly.

 

[KirbySquad101]

I might be wrong, but the last twenty players left are (no particular order):

MKLeo ()
Nairo
Marss
Gluttony
Tweek
Kuro
Maister
Light
Raito
KEN
T
Zackray ()
WaDi ()
ProtoBanham ()
Tea
ESAM
Kameme
Shuton ()
Samsora
Dabuz ()

 

[Rizen]

Byleth talk. He seems good but it's hard to say how good without knowing his mobility and frame data. One thing we do know is he has good hitboxes.

The bow killing is a strong asset but not being able to hold a charge, like the Links, makes it predictable. He'll probably use the bow in advantage for landing traps and sniping recoveries. It looks too slow to be a neutral tool like YL's bow.

We don't know how long his sword tether is. He could have a good recovery like Joker or a bad one like Belmont. This will be a big factor we'll have to wait and find out.

Down B actually has utility because the armor, dropping through platforms and reversing it. If he's on BF for example, he can use it as a landing option to not get trapped on the platforms. It could be a strong ledge trap move that beats getup attacks and ledge rolls. In general it looks a lot better than Falcon Punch although slightly slower.

 

[Tri Knight]

bombs should explode even when picked up by an enemy. They should also explode quicker.

I might be wrong, but the last twenty players left are (no particular order):

MKLeo ()
Nairo
Marss
Gluttony
Tweek
Kuro
Maister
Light
Raito
KEN
T
Zackray ()
WaDi ()
ProtoBanham ()
Tea
ESAM
Kameme
Shuton ()
Samsora
Dabuz ()

Seems like a pretty solid list to me!

 

[FruitLoop]

bombs should explode even when picked up by an enemy. They should also explode quicker.

What did you just bring upon this cursed lands?

 

[Tri Knight]

What did you just bring upon this cursed lands?

Only the gods can save us now.

It was actually a jest that I meant to post when someone asked about what 7.0 buffs we'd like to see and it just saved without me realizing lol

 

[TennisBall]

On a different note, I would like to take some more time to talk about a rather tragic character in Smash Ultimate,

It's a darn shame too, the character is incredibly fun to play with in my personal opinion, but why play Marth when we have ?
Now sure, the tipper hitbox is rather small for Marth and Lucina has a very good damage output, but I don't think that a simple buff/nerf kind of scernio is the main problem with Marth being obsoleted.

Lucina's just better, she has better damage output, kills more reliably, and also comes with the bonus of being incredibly easy to play typically. Now, I don't think anyone is flocking to nerf Lucina either, the character seems to be falling off at least to competitive players minds, and isn't really that broken, she's just really good in a lot of areas and is an easy to use,hard to master similar to in a way. But we can't buff Marth into the meta traditionally. We would either have to buff him so much to the point where he'd be stupidly broken, or nerf Lucina, and I don't like either of those options. It's just a sad curse, not even MkLeo could get him to a good point where he could comfortably use him, he dropped him after Ultimate Summit 2.

Now, an example of designing different echoes in a good way is and . The characters are both very good, play very similarly, and can generally be switched from one another, but the two have strengths and weaknesses over the other that don't cause one of the echoes to be obsoleted like outclasses . Roy is more explosive, gets kills eariler, and has a more flexible disadvantage, but can struggle to get in, and can't space very well. Chrom has better spacing tools and is more consistent with kills, but has a much, much worse disadvantage and doesn't have as much of the cheese that Roy has. (I said not as much, Chrom still has some very cheesy techniques.)

This to me is the best way to make echo fighters, to have them have some difference so they have different experiences, but not too much so that they aren't completely separate, and not enough so that one is so much better than the other. Even if one is better than the other, you can still play the other one and as long as you have the proper skill, can do just as well.
But uh, if you did happen to nerf Lucina, Ness would be very grateful.

 

[Thinkaman]

I would say that Chrom is A+, but Marth is just a matter of numbers being slightly off.

I actually love Marth/Lucina's distinction. It's simple and subtle, yet results in a variety of combo differences and differing move preferences. It's perfect and I wish the 4 boring echoes took after them.

To jump from one off-topic note to another, I still need to find cool people to hang out with at Genesis.

 

[SwagGuy99]

I would say that Chrom is A+, but Marth is just a matter of numbers being slightly off.

I actually love Marth/Lucina's distinction. It's simple and subtle, yet results in a variety of combo differences and differing move preferences. It's perfect and I wish the 4 boring echoes took after them.

I'm assuming you mean /, /, /, and / and I'm going to be honest: I don't find that boring compared to Pit. They are more similar than the other echos not listed, but they still have some differences that do matter:

• Dark Pit's arrows deal significantly more damage and knockback and can travel further and faster than Pit's. While Pit's arrows can be used to edgeguard more safely from onstage but might not be as rewarding if landed, Dark Pit's can be used to edgeguard if the opponent chooses to recover a bit above the ledge or if Dark Pit is willing to take more risk and go offstage to hit one. Dark Pit will also be more rewarded for landing one as well.
• Electroshock arm will kill significantly earlier near the ledge, killing most characters easily below 100% and even if it doesn't flat out kill them, it can set up for an edgeguard well. From center stage, it may be weaker from Pit's, but it can still kill below 130% from onstage anyways, so it's not horrible. Granted, the move is laggy for both Pit's, so it's not going to be thrown out all the time anyways, but it's still an important difference.

IMO (not that it matters much) but I think Dark Pit is better overall due to him being rewarded more for landing his moves than Pit and Dark Pit's arrows being better for tacking on damage onstage (while his arrows are still good for edgeguarding despite the added risk). Not that the / debate matters much, but just putting my own thoughts on it on here.

 

[Idon]

Nerfing Lucina won't make ex-Marth mains pick Marth again.

Making him not **** might, but fat chance of that happening and not something like Little Mac getting yet another buff that will do nothing to affect his nonexistent viability.

 

[TennisBall]

I would say that Chrom is A+, but Marth is just a matter of numbers being slightly off.

I actually love Marth/Lucina's distinction. It's simple and subtle, yet results in a variety of combo differences and differing move preferences. It's perfect and I wish the 4 boring echoes took after them.

To jump from one off-topic note to another, I still need to find cool people to hang out with at Genesis.

I love it too, it's just that without some serious changes Marth won't ever be on the same level.

I'm not gonna be at Genesis, sorry....

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Seedings for EVO Japan 2020. I'm only doing top 10 because it'll take too long otherwise.

1. Zackray(,,)
2. Shuton()
3. Kameme(,)
4. Tea
5. KEN
6. Kuro
7. Raito()
8. Kome
9. T
10. ProtoBanham

Other important people to look out for are Mr. E (Seeded 15th), ANTi (29th) and Paseriman (59th). Paseriman has been doing very well lately in EGS Cup 3 so he may cause a lot of upsets especially considering Fox seems to beat Japan a lot of the time considering how Light is Zackray's bracket demon and how many people he defeated in Kongo Saga.

 

[VodkaHaze]

Nerfing Lucina won't make ex-Marth mains pick Marth again.

Making him not **** might, but fat chance of that happening and not something like Little Mac getting yet another buff that will do nothing to affect his nonexistent viability.

I don't think we'll be seeing big buffs to Marth any time soon. His viability is highly debatable due to being outshone by Lucina, and buffs to him might mean buffs to Lucina as well since they're echo fighters.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I don't think we'll be seeing big buffs to Marth any time soon. His viability is highly debatable due to being outshone by Lucina, and buffs to him might mean buffs to Lucina as well since they're echo fighters.

They could buff his sourspots without buffing Lucina. For instance, make sourspot f-smash and sourspot bair kill a bit earlier.

 

[NairWizard]

Based on only the trailer footage (which is 2 months old, so things could have easily changed), I think current-form Byleth makes a solid case for being bottom 5.

Byleth's really slow. Like, really, really slow. Not just Robin-tier ground mobility, but really bad air mobility too. So overall much slower than Robin--he's more like Incineroar-level slow.

Slow characters don't work in the neutral without some form of burst-mobility or camping game. For example, Corrin in smash 4 was really good, and Snake in Ultimate is really good, but Corrin had pin and one of the best dash to shields in the game in a game where both shielding and grabbing were critical, and Snake has one of the best dash attacks in the game, several stage-length projectiles, and a b-reverse frame-1 grenade. Let's also not forget that these characters when good were hilariously overtuned move by move--Corrin had almost free 30-40% combos based on any combo starter at low percent and a busted counter that had to be nerfed.

What does Byleth have? Bow? Failnaught as seen in the trailer just isn't good enough; it makes you stand in place, it's easily reactable (frame 40+ for charged?).

And that's just neutral. In advantage, what good is a huge up-air if you can't get in range to juggle with it? What use is an armored down-b without multiple jumps (s4 Charizard) or drift speed? And offstage, it doesn't matter how good Byleth's up-b is without the drift speed to enable using it--even Chrom's recovery will be better, since he doesn't even have to up-b most of the time. Joker's so hard to edgeguard because of a mix of counter, tether mixups, and air mobility. Of those, Byleth only has up-b mixups--which, sure, can be lethal for the edgeguarder if you push Byleth too hard off stage, but again, it's really hard for Byleth to even get in position to spike you since he's slower than most of the cast in the air.

Being so slow without an evidently overtuned option means that Byleth won't be top or high tier, but he could manage mid tier with strong close-range game--which he doesn't have, because man, even his moves look terrible. There's nothing that's fast on the ground besides jab, and jab seems to have a lot of range for a fast move, but the first hit is a fist and the second hit is a kick, and you don't get to the ranged part until the third hit/rapid jab, so actually even jab is pretty slow. Just compare to Lucina, another prominent sword-zoning character (who has plenty of mobility): bam, super fast f5 up-b if you hit her shield up close.

But forget about a top-tier up-b out of shield, Byleth doesn't have good out of shield options period--up-smash seems to be frame 10 at best; ditto n-air (maybe 9?). up-b is what, 11 or 12 and likely doesn't hit grounded characters? A grab with bad range?

"But he shouldn't be shielding, he should be zoning."

Zoning with what? A 30+-frame projectile? Some of his best ranged moves like side-b look to have something like 20 frames of startup--20 frames! That's fully reactable. Think about it. Reactable neutral moves on a character with nearly game-worst mobility? Wow, that is really bad.

Yes, I know that it's very likely that they'll make some major changes to Byleth before release--and they really need to, because otherwise this character looks seriously, dramatically undertuned relative to the design. I've never had such a weak initial impression of any character in smash history.

 

[Emblem Lord]

On a different note, I would like to take some more time to talk about a rather tragic character in Smash Ultimate,

It's a darn shame too, the character is incredibly fun to play with in my personal opinion, but why play Marth when we have ?
Now sure, the tipper hitbox is rather small for Marth and Lucina has a very good damage output, but I don't think that a simple buff/nerf kind of scernio is the main problem with Marth being obsoleted.

Lucina's just better, she has better damage output, kills more reliably, and also comes with the bonus of being incredibly easy to play typically. Now, I don't think anyone is flocking to nerf Lucina either, the character seems to be falling off at least to competitive players minds, and isn't really that broken, she's just really good in a lot of areas and is an easy to use,hard to master similar to in a way. But we can't buff Marth into the meta traditionally. We would either have to buff him so much to the point where he'd be stupidly broken, or nerf Lucina, and I don't like either of those options. It's just a sad curse, not even MkLeo could get him to a good point where he could comfortably use him, he dropped him after Ultimate Summit 2.

Now, an example of designing different echoes in a good way is and . The characters are both very good, play very similarly, and can generally be switched from one another, but the two have strengths and weaknesses over the other that don't cause one of the echoes to be obsoleted like outclasses . Roy is more explosive, gets kills eariler, and has a more flexible disadvantage, but can struggle to get in, and can't space very well. Chrom has better spacing tools and is more consistent with kills, but has a much, much worse disadvantage and doesn't have as much of the cheese that Roy has. (I said not as much, Chrom still has some very cheesy techniques.)

This to me is the best way to make echo fighters, to have them have some difference so they have different experiences, but not too much so that they aren't completely separate, and not enough so that one is so much better than the other. Even if one is better than the other, you can still play the other one and as long as you have the proper skill, can do just as well.
But uh, if you did happen to nerf Lucina, Ness would be very grateful.

Marth was dominating Melee before half of the current competitive community was in middle school.

His time is over and that's fine.

His grandbabies are putting in the work now.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Ultimates system mechanics really hurt Marth while benefitting Lucina. That is also a good reason why Lucina is so much better than Martg right now despite both of them not being changed to drastically from Smash 4. Its also part of the reason why Marth's complete opposite swordie Roy is so much better in Ultimate too

At least Marth is not Corrin, who also came out worse in Ultimates gameplay AND got mauled by the nerf-bat

 

[MrGameguycolor]

On a different note, I would like to take some more time to talk about a rather tragic character in Smash Ultimate,

Well not many people seem to know that all they did was change to have sour-hits take priority if both hitboxes overlap, along with slightly increasing the size of sour-hits on Fair and Bair.
This video goes into more detail:

Those changes alone were enough to turn people away from him.

 

[Planty]

Based on only the trailer footage (which is 2 months old, so things could have easily changed), I think current-form Byleth makes a solid case for being bottom 5.

Byleth's really slow. Like, really, really slow. Not just Robin-tier ground mobility, but really bad air mobility too. So overall much slower than Robin--he's more like Incineroar-level slow.

Slow characters don't work in the neutral without some form of burst-mobility or camping game. For example, Corrin in smash 4 was really good, and Snake in Ultimate is really good, but Corrin had pin and one of the best dash to shields in the game in a game where both shielding and grabbing were critical, and Snake has one of the best dash attacks in the game, several stage-length projectiles, and a b-reverse frame-1 grenade. Let's also not forget that these characters when good were hilariously overtuned move by move--Corrin had almost free 30-40% combos based on any combo starter at low percent and a busted counter that had to be nerfed.

What does Byleth have? Bow? Failnaught as seen in the trailer just isn't good enough; it makes you stand in place, it's easily reactable (frame 40+ for charged?).

And that's just neutral. In advantage, what good is a huge up-air if you can't get in range to juggle with it? What use is an armored down-b without multiple jumps (s4 Charizard) or drift speed? And offstage, it doesn't matter how good Byleth's up-b is without the drift speed to enable using it--even Chrom's recovery will be better, since he doesn't even have to up-b most of the time. Joker's so hard to edgeguard because of a mix of counter, tether mixups, and air mobility. Of those, Byleth only has up-b mixups--which, sure, can be lethal for the edgeguarder if you push Byleth too hard off stage, but again, it's really hard for Byleth to even get in position to spike you since he's slower than most of the cast in the air.

Being so slow without an evidently overtuned option means that Byleth won't be top or high tier, but he could manage mid tier with strong close-range game--which he doesn't have, because man, even his moves look terrible. There's nothing that's fast on the ground besides jab, and jab seems to have a lot of range for a fast move, but the first hit is a fist and the second hit is a kick, and you don't get to the ranged part until the third hit/rapid jab, so actually even jab is pretty slow. Just compare to Lucina, another prominent sword-zoning character (who has plenty of mobility): bam, super fast f5 up-b if you hit her shield up close.

But forget about a top-tier up-b out of shield, Byleth doesn't have good out of shield options period--up-smash seems to be frame 10 at best; ditto n-air (maybe 9?). up-b is what, 11 or 12 and likely doesn't hit grounded characters? A grab with bad range?

"But he shouldn't be shielding, he should be zoning."

Zoning with what? A 30+-frame projectile? Some of his best ranged moves like side-b look to have something like 20 frames of startup--20 frames! That's fully reactable. Think about it. Reactable neutral moves on a character with nearly game-worst mobility? Wow, that is really bad.

Yes, I know that it's very likely that they'll make some major changes to Byleth before release--and they really need to, because otherwise this character looks seriously, dramatically undertuned relative to the design. I've never had such a weak initial impression of any character in smash history.

I agree that Byleth does not look too impressive at the moment, but that side-b is not reactable. Assuming that you're correct about 20 frames of startup and that top players have some of the best reaction speeds in the whole world, they'll be pressing shield around frame 12. Add in 7 frames of input lag and their shield will come out frame 19. We're already cutting it close there. Additionally, it's well established that human reaction speed is faster when they're specifically waiting for a particular stimuli (like Byleth side b). Players in matches are not sitting there waiting intently to shield side b. They're doing many things simultaneously, so their reaction speed in practice is non-trivially slower than 12 frames. Byleth side b will also likely see use to dissuade short hops, meaning shielding is not even an option. Players will have to airdodge, which adds a few frames.

Byleth is full of issues, but a reactable side b is not one of them.

 

[The_Bookworm]

What is the progress of Glitch 8? Any upsets so far?

I imagine not since it is just pools right now, but I still want to know.

 

[meleebrawler]

I agree that Byleth does not look too impressive at the moment, but that side-b is not reactable. Assuming that you're correct about 20 frames of startup and that top players have some of the best reaction speeds in the whole world, they'll be pressing shield around frame 12. Add in 7 frames of input lag and their shield will come out frame 19. We're already cutting it close there. Additionally, it's well established that human reaction speed is faster when they're specifically waiting for a particular stimuli (like Byleth side b). Players in matches are not sitting there waiting intently to shield side b. They're doing many things simultaneously, so their reaction speed in practice is non-trivially slower than 12 frames. Byleth side b will also likely see use to dissuade short hops, meaning shielding is not even an option. Players will have to airdodge, which adds a few frames.

Byleth is full of issues, but a reactable side b is not one of them.

Don't you think the Belmonts wished they had such an arc move to complement their very long but narrow aerials? We're kind of glossing over how Byleth has aerials like that, that will be very hard to punish if spaced, regardless of landing lag.

Also don't forget that the bow can be cancelled at any point before halfway, not only allowing mindgames like tricking people into jumping for a lance slash, but also b-reverse mobility shenanigans. The guy can cover many options and ranges with his moves, a mid-range fortress.

 

[PK Gaming]

What is the speculated run and air speed for Byleth?

 

[MrGameguycolor]

What is the speculated run and air speed for Byleth?

-Run Speed: 1.4
-Air Speed: 1.02

Just a hunch.

 

[san.]

I'm not too positive for Byleth either. At least it's good to know that Sakurai purposefully made some of these grabs so abysmal instead of an oversight. A character with such big, sluggish moves still needs reliable, quick options that are usable as pokes and out of shield. If you don't have them, then you'll just be like Greninja, but with no other positives.

The bow can be cancelled, but without a strong option out of shield or against those who are able to approach, it won't be as helpful as one would like.

It's still possible that some moves become unintentionally busted, but the design itself doesn't look too nice.

About Ike, it's a simple case of too many of his other moves getting nerfed too hard. He lost a majority of his neutral tools now that jab, dtilt, and bair can't be relied on anymore. He's received extensive hitbox reductions on attacks that aren't uair, nair, dair, and ftilt (dair and angled ftilt just retain their broken hitboxes from 4 that are shorter than the blade).

Then you have egregious examples such as the following, where many attacks just don't feel reliable (This missed btw):

Spoiler

He's capable of touch of death kill confirms for sure, which keeps him good, but if you DON'T get them, you are severely punished since his raw attacks are lacking and can no longer make up for his mobility that has been nerfed relative to the cast.

If Byleth doesn't have reliable buttons to the extent of Ike nair/uair at the very least with that mobility and grab, it will be a struggle. If we can obtain some preliminary frame data, it'd be easier to estimate how things will go.

 

[BitBitio]

I think Byleth will have fine airspeed. Robin does, so I’d imagine that “a bit faster than Robin” means that her airspeed will probably be faster too.

 

[Thinkaman]

People keep asking me about Byleth, and I keep mentioning bad OoS and lack of burst mobility. So on that much I agree.

But complaining that side-b is reactable is off-base. No one expects to be running around attempting to control neutral with that thing. It's a trapping/coverage move that can threaten certain types of landing, air dodge, or defensive zoning moves. Seems more than functional at this job @ f20, if the range is even 90% as big as it looks.

On rewatch, what stood out to me was how floaty Byleth appears; a sharp contrast to the Belmonts.

Up-b will likely be good just because of how much people undervalue diagonal threat in Smash. But it leaves Byleth in the air, and remember, she's floaty. She might not like this.

 

[meleebrawler]

Just saying, numbers like frame data and launch angles are the things most subject to change in different builds. I'd rather try to glean what the gameplan is.

He looks to take cues from Ganondorf in that his modus operandi is intimidating opponents with hugely damaging moves that are hard to challenge, at the cost of mobility. Whereas Ganondorf uses burst options to close in and compounds his power with effective combo tools, Byleth instead controls the pace with increased reach and a projectile, though not suited for camping or zoning in the traditional sense, still lets him bait reactions.

People keep asking me about Byleth, and I keep mentioning bad OoS and lack of burst mobility. So on that much I agree.

But complaining that side-b is reactable is off-base. No one expects to be running around attempting to control neutral with that thing. It's a trapping/coverage move that can threaten certain types of landing, air dodge, or defensive zoning moves. Seems more than functional at this job @ f20, if the range is even 90% as big as it looks.

On rewatch, what stood out to me was how floaty Byleth appears; a sharp contrast to the Belmonts.

Up-b will likely be good just because of how much people undervalue diagonal threat in Smash. But it leaves Byleth in the air, and remember, she's floaty. She might not like this.

She doesn't like Final Destination, is what you're saying. Platforms would mitigate the post-footstool landing, and provide a way to mix up armoured Aymr swings. We'll have to keep paying attention for the exact percents up b starts meteoring, and if it's weight dependent.

 

[NairWizard]

I agree that Byleth does not look too impressive at the moment, but that side-b is not reactable. Assuming that you're correct about 20 frames of startup and that top players have some of the best reaction speeds in the whole world, they'll be pressing shield around frame 12. Add in 7 frames of input lag and their shield will come out frame 19. We're already cutting it close there. Additionally, it's well established that human reaction speed is faster when they're specifically waiting for a particular stimuli (like Byleth side b). Players in matches are not sitting there waiting intently to shield side b. They're doing many things simultaneously, so their reaction speed in practice is non-trivially slower than 12 frames. Byleth side b will also likely see use to dissuade short hops, meaning shielding is not even an option. Players will have to airdodge, which adds a few frames.

Byleth is full of issues, but a reactable side b is not one of them.

But complaining that side-b is reactable is off-base. No one expects to be running around attempting to control neutral with that thing. It's a trapping/coverage move that can threaten certain types of landing, air dodge, or defensive zoning moves. Seems more than functional at this job @ f20, if the range is even 90% as big as it looks.

I can agree with Thinkaman that side-b seems fine for ledgetraps and indeed that may be one of Byleth's uncontestable strengths--a superior ledge/edgetrapper (though keep in mind that Little Mac is also pretty good at this--even though Mac can't cover certain jump options--so by itself it's not enough).

But here are some additional thoughts in bullet form:

• side-b seems to be intended to be used in the neutral because Byleth doesn't have many other good neutral options. What do you do in neutral with the character? You can't run around and d-tilt all day. Sword zoning characters must eventually jump, so you'll have to be in the air f-airing and b-airing, and those two moves have such poor vertical coverage that it seems intended (and even Sakurai said as much) to supplement coverage with side-b
• For neutral use, you have to look at side-b in terms of Byleth's design in addition to the move's speed in a vacuum--Byleth's so slow that it should be easy to anticipate side-b and shield it if Byleth is in the air at any time, even if you couldn't react to it outright. If you're also in the air...
• I don't think short hops will be necessary against Byleth; shield seems sufficiently strong for the majority of the cast. If you're short hopping, you're doing it at a range where Byleth can't safely side-b; Byleth's only burst mobility option to get away from this kind of situation is roll
• The move looks (citation needed) to be frame 22-23. Frame 20+ moves are definitely in the realm of reaction; top player reaction speed is probably close to 10-14 frames if reaction speed tests are to be believed. Even if you assume they can consistently get 12 at best, the move is still far more reactable than a Mario f-smash would be at f15.

I'm fully open to being wrong on this, though--I'd welcome it, in fact, since I'd like Byleth to be good.

 

[meleebrawler]

I can agree with Thinkaman that side-b seems fine for ledgetraps and indeed that may be one of Byleth's uncontestable strengths--a superior ledge/edgetrapper (though keep in mind that Little Mac is also pretty good at this--even though Mac can't cover certain jump options--so by itself it's not enough).

But here are some additional thoughts in bullet form:

• side-b seems to be intended to be used in the neutral because Byleth doesn't have many other good neutral options. What do you do in neutral with the character? You can't run around and d-tilt all day. Sword zoning characters must eventually jump, so you'll have to be in the air f-airing and b-airing, and those two moves have such poor vertical coverage that it seems intended (and even Sakurai said as much) to supplement coverage with side-b
• For neutral use, you have to look at side-b in terms of Byleth's design in addition to the move's speed in a vacuum--Byleth's so slow that it should be easy to anticipate side-b and shield it if Byleth is in the air at any time, even if you couldn't react to it outright. If you're also in the air...
• I don't think short hops will be necessary against Byleth; shield seems sufficiently strong for the majority of the cast. If you're short hopping, you're doing it at a range where Byleth can't safely side-b; Byleth's only burst mobility option to get away from this kind of situation is roll
• The move looks (citation needed) to be frame 22-23. Frame 20+ moves are definitely in the realm of reaction; top player reaction speed is probably close to 10-14 frames if reaction speed tests are to be believed. Even if you assume they can consistently get 12 at best, the move is still far more reactable than a Mario f-smash would be at f15.

I'm fully open to being wrong on this, though--I'd welcome it, in fact, since I'd like Byleth to be good.

Hm, those are some good points. Even if I can't directly punish the huge lance stab or bow shots, at least I'll be safe from getting poked by the lance in the air. Oh look, here he comes jumping at me trying to land a dair in desperation, I'll just shield and punish that, should be easy with his slow speed...

Oh ****, he broke my shield. I forgot that Aymr does lots of shield damage and I already had it worn down shielding his other moves. Now imagine what can happen with the down b if he's in a good position. Doubly so if the air version retains the super armour (and if Sakurai really meant super armour, then nothing short of a grab will stop it from coming out).

 

[NairWizard]

Hm, those are some good points. Even if I can't directly punish the huge lance stab or bow shots, at least I'll be safe from getting poked by the lance in the air. Oh look, here he comes jumping at me trying to land a dair in desperation, I'll just shield and punish that, should be easy with his slow speed...

d-air's extremely slow too; Byleth doesn't have Mario-level air speed, so the difference between a spaced f-air and d-air on shield is massive enough that you should never have to just shield and eat the d-air. Doesn't sound like a real mixup.

Because side-b starts below Byleth, there may be some room for ambiguous spacing innovation here with full hops (threaten a side-b and hit with d-air). You have to be extremely careful doing this though--side-b and d-air are both frame 17+ moves, so if the other character just short hop aerials out of shield then you get hit for full hopping (if n-air's hitboxes are made better by the time the final release comes out then you may be on to something, since you can add n-air into the mixup tree, but I'm still unsure if this would work).

"can't directly punish the bow shots"

Why can't you directly punish the bow? It's immensely slow, and Byleth doesn't have great out of shield options if he chooses to cancel it.

Now imagine what can happen with the down b if he's in a good position.

I'm having trouble imagining this. What are you envisioning? This is a move that you punish by waiting--which means that it buys Byleth time to land, and that's a good thing, but it's not something that you should ever get hit by.


It's gonna be hard to go further than this into the theory without actually playing the character, but I think you might be seeing synergy in these moves that isn't there--or I missed something in the footage (which is completely possible). Either way, I hope he ends up being good, or at least has a functional gameplan.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Upsets so far for Glitch 8:
Snorley 2-0 Stocktaker69
Bankai 2-1 Phantom
Ese 2-1 Dexter
benn 9 9 9 2-1 Toast



And here the winner's side for each pool round 2:

Spoiler: Pool I1

Maister vs TheRed
File vs Raptor
Stroder vs Magister
Jakal vs Kishiru

Spoiler: Pool I5

Ryuga vs Shoe
Puppeh vs Conch
LeoN vs Enki
Fatality vs 6WX

Spoiler: Pool I9

Dabuz vs Lavish
Juice vs Daigon
Kola vs colinies
Jw vs Sandstorm

Spoiler: Pool I13

Tweek vs Ralphie
John Number vs Bankai
WaDi vs Disgaea
Pelca vs Ozone

Spoiler: Pool J1

Light vs Pink Fresh
BlazingPasta vs Dill
Sinji vs Mr. Mojo Risin'
Suarez vs Ese

Spoiler: Pool J5

ESAM vs Mossy
SoulArts vs Blacktwins
Raffi-X vs GoMan
Rivers vs SAUCE

Spoiler: Pool J9

Dark Wizzy vs Dietsoda
RFang vs DM
Gen vs Mata-Door
ZD vs UtopianRay

Spoiler: Pool J13

MVD vs Tarik
Mr E vs Mekos
Cosmos vs Dingus Joe
benn 9 9 9 vs Beast

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Ryuga vs Shoe
Puppeh vs Conch
LeoN vs Enki
Fatality vs 6WX

Geez why does LeoN always end up with such poor bracket luck facing Pikachu's ..geez

 

[meleebrawler]

d-air's extremely slow too; Byleth doesn't have Mario-level air speed, so the difference between a spaced f-air and d-air on shield is massive enough that you should never have to just shield and eat the d-air. Doesn't sound like a real mixup.

Because side-b starts below Byleth, there may be some room for ambiguous spacing innovation here with full hops (threaten a side-b and hit with d-air). You have to be extremely careful doing this though--side-b and d-air are both frame 17+ moves, so if the other character just short hop aerials out of shield then you get hit for full hopping (if n-air's hitboxes are made better by the time the final release comes out then you may be on to something, since you can add n-air into the mixup tree, but I'm still unsure if this would work).

"can't directly punish the bow shots"

Why can't you directly punish the bow? It's immensely slow, and Byleth doesn't have great out of shield options if he chooses to cancel it.



I'm having trouble imagining this. What are you envisioning? This is a move that you punish by waiting--which means that it buys Byleth time to land, and that's a good thing, but it's not something that you should ever get hit by.


It's gonna be hard to go further than this into the theory without actually playing the character, but I think you're seeing synergy in these moves that isn't there--or I missed something in the footage (which is completely possible).

Your last post implied all the opponent needs to do is shield to beat Byleth's stuff unless you're already up close. But if you're just waiting for Byleth to overextend, you're probably not getting in the positions that would actually let you punish bow shots or lance smashes effectively, and it increases the risk of not having a healthy shield to punish with when the time does come. And if you're not shielding, you're jumping, where Byleth can leverage his range to land hits. Yes, there is an answer to everything in a vacuum, but if you have to do different things to beat different moves, that's already mindgame potential at your disposal.

Also, you see that user at the top of the page talking about Mewtwo and how his up-angled fsmash hits at just the right place to hit short-hoppers? Byleth's is much the same but with even more reach, seems like a pretty solid answer besides just rolling away. Not to mention his upsmash is meaty and starts low enough to hit prone characters if they're being slippery.

The place to use Aymr down b is ledge scenarios, where it can cover several options with it's range, armour and ability to be reversed. And it doesn't look like you can just stay on the edge to dodge it.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Geez why does LeoN always end up with such poor bracket luck facing Pikachu's ..geez

LeoN does have a secondary so that might be his best bet in the MU. Not that it's an unwinnable matchup for (since he kills Pikachu fairly early, can survive for a long time onstage, and can keep up with his somewhat in terms of movement speed) but it's hard and probably one of his worst two MUs (the other being ).

 

[NairWizard]

meleebrawler

You mention f-smash as a neutral tool against short hop and shield--but f-smashes in general aren't used for this. smashes have lots of endlag, so usually when you're f-smashing or up-smashing in neutral you're calling out a habit. If a committal smash is one of your main answers to short hop* and one of your main ways to pressure shield, then you're in deep trouble as a character.

Quick example: ZSS in the Fox matchup has a hard time punishing Fox for jumping, since Fox lands so fast. ZSS players deal with this by calling out the Fox's jumping habits and up-smashing. You can see Marss and Nairo do this against Light all the time. But ZSS' up-smash is a very committal move, so as soon as Light catches on, Marss and Light start losing stocks to Fox just waiting for the up-smash and punishing. Some mindgames and back-and-forth are involved here, but the advantage nevertheless clearly belongs to Fox: it's less commitment for Fox to wait than it is for ZSS to up-smash.

And something similar applies to Byleth vs. shields. The burden of spacing isn't on the shielder; it's on Byleth. If you use a lance f-smash against someone as Byleth, you have to space it so that you can't just get punished OOS. Since Byleth has lower mobility, and there are so many ways to transition into a shield (walk, run, dash, land, spotdodge, etc), the advantage should be the shielder's.

This isn't an open-and-shut case of shields dismantling Byleth though; obviously Byleth can grab, or poke with d-tilt, or something else, but it looks like an advantage all the same.

*note here on Byleth vs. short hop: f-air is very good against short hops anyway, you don't even need angled f-smash. You should not be short hopping against Byleth at max spear range. It seems really counterintuitive. Does Byleth have a way to force you to jump at that range? Fear of taking shield damage because Amyr could break your shield doesn't seem compelling enough.

The place to use Aymr down b is ledge scenarios, where it can cover several options with it's range, armour and ability to be reversed. And it doesn't look like you can just stay on the edge to dodge it.

Yeah, I've acknowledged that the ledge is a powerful position for Byleth. Seems like one of the game's best ledgetrappers, just like Piranha Plant. I thought that this discussion so far had been entirely in the context of Byleth's neutral. Following the comment chain back to my original post, I said: "Zoning with what? ... Reactable neutral moves on a character with nearly game-worst mobility? Wow, that is really bad."

It's neutral where I think that Byleth's design should shine, but where it seems to fall apart the hardest based on the current footage.

Just for reference, S4 Corrin Pin was extremely overtuned and almost zero-commitment against some characters like Mario, who couldn't consistently punish the kick. That's the kind of move this design would need to really come together, imo.