Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Megamang]

Kaku that is an interesting point and something I didn't see clearly. Thanks.


Regarding Lucina.,. Having a situational dash attack is... ok. It has a duck and lunges pretty far forward, but the frame data is pretty bad for a dash attack especially. Which has always been true, but dash attacks are pretty powerful now in regards to reward. Sure fox has always had an amazing dash attack, but we have Pikachu/Snake/Inkling(?)/Snake and Greninja, among many others, now which makes Lucina a bit more jealous these days.


why Snake gets the intangible fast relatively safe dash attack is beyond me, but he does and it really gives him that burst range you don't expect a zoner to necessarily have.



I watched some quik games and, while it may be confirmation bias/ MU stuff, it definitely felt like he was using more zair. How do you guys feel about the buffs? They feel better to me, and having a great zair is a cool niche for samus and IMO really helps her at that max zair range. I've been making an effort to use more zair with ZSS, I've always felt it was an underrated tool. It stuffs a lot of stuff and also gives you a mixup for landing that can scare them for trying to punish you.

 

[BitBitio]

in general is really good and her buffs expand on this. Her mobility is actually okay because while her stats imply below average movement, her mixups with bombs and b-reversing charge shot, in addition to her horizontal and vertical burst killing and poking options in Dash Attack and up-b respectively. Her damage and combos are very good thanks to a good set of combo aiding projectiles, good starters, and tools like her up air. Her recovery is safe, long, hand has mixups to boot. Her ground game is relatively safe, her aerials are quite good, her jab 1 and charge shot are incredible conditioning tools, and her KO power via smashes, aerials, up throw, and charge shot is fantastic as well. Her grab game is very rewarding, and her endurance is good. Her only major weakness is her poor disadvantage and inconsistent multihits. Super good character. Other underrated characters I can think of are while the overrated ones tend to be and are somewhere in the middle here. But anyway, is really good.

 

[TennisBall]

I'm pretty glad that mostly everyone has figured out that Mario is really, really good. Speaking of top tiers.
R.O.B, huh?
Lots of top players are putting him at the highest tier, even Mkleo.
It's telling how well the character is doing.

 

[sleepy_Nex]

Heyho. I saw that there was some Palu dthrow bair posts some pages ago so i thought i'll write down some facts:

First of i want to say that dthrow bair isn't the ez free kill confirm that every non palumain always claims it is. I don't wanna say that it is the most difficult confirm in the game or so just it's not jab jab powadunk levels of easy lol.

Dthrow bair is a frame perfect input there is no leeway in frames if you want to hit it in kill percents. Like you see nairo hitting it alot right? Thats all the people ever see though. Nairo fails to get the confirm just as many times if not more what brings me to my next point:

Prepatch it wasn't a killconfirm on many characters. Rage also screws it over alot(no i don't know the exact rage percentages it needs to be not true anymore)
https://twitter.com/juanpi_a1/status/1222597819753811969?s=19 In this twitter you find the old dthrow bair doc and juanpi's progress on the new confirm windows. (it's in the thread)
When you scroll through there you can see that on most chars the confirm window got smaller with the nerf.

 

[BlackInk]

Going to make an early call, by the by, that Greninja might end up being Byleth's worst matchup in time. Byleth hates the kind of neutral that Greninja is capable of (burst ground options with strong reward + an actual projectile to camp with, all on a character who is capable of low-profiling things).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QSuA-RppHOQ
Looks like Byleth doesn’t have any burst options with high rewards, can’t deal with camping, or any capabilities to deal with low profiles. Byleth is dlc D3 confirmed!

 

[Daisycakes]

I dunno, I'd call nair 1 to fsmash and rising DB1 - Nair 1 -> smash a kind of cheese. I mean these things have loose definitions... but Lucina definitely has decent KO power. she can get the classic marthritis but also has a stock cap throw and bair starts murdering you anywhere on the stage at decent damages.

Having a raw kill move vs a confirm has advantages and disadvantages, but when you have a sword having a raw kill move is nice because you can go for a trade or to stuff out their hitbox.

Her bair does less knockback than literally most of the cast even do more with their safer bairs, and Samsora complains about their KO potential not being the best. There’s a reason why they chose to nerf fair over bair. Nair 1 to F-Smash isn’t exactly 100% reliable either. If you aren’t getting edgeguards or inconsistent f-smash setups down then you are simply going to get Marthritis when playing as her. At least Marth has less trouble killing off stray hits at more points in the stage due to higher damage and knockback growth.

I would say Roy and Chrom are also victims of early meta buzz. They are just extremely overrated and not even viable in my opinion. Chrom for example is basically Marth but with less range, notably less damage and less killpower to safety ratio, a worse disadvantage state, a worse recovery, worse jumps...but he trades it for a strong f smash and bair in your face, making him a noob killer who just doesn’t hold up against players of equal or greater skill.

 

[DJ3DS]

I'm pretty glad that mostly everyone has figured out that Mario is really, really good. Speaking of top tiers.
R.O.B, huh?
Lots of top players are putting him at the highest tier, even Mkleo.
It's telling how well the character is doing.

I personally agree with Zackray's assessment of the character: "if he was the same size as Mario, he'd be top 5".

Unfortunately he isn't. Most of the ROB discord would place him around 20-25. He is an explosive character who can kill obnoxiously early with the correct read and whose advantage state is increasingly optimised. As an example of this optimisation, you should see double tossing:

https://clips.twitch.tv/FairBoxyAxeResidentSleeper

The difficulty is that this is compounding his strengths without addressing his weaknesses, so he still loses to characters who can exploit his disadvantage and outbutton him in neutral. For example:

are all pretty universally agreed to be bad

are hotly debated as well

are all ones that need time to figure out post buffs. Young Link is a particular one to keep an eye out for in that many ROB mains believed it was a losing matchup even before then (notably 8bitman).

 

[TennisBall]

Her bair does less knockback than literally most of the cast even do more with their safer bairs, and Samsora complains about their KO potential not being the best. There’s a reason why they chose to nerf fair over bair. Nair 1 to F-Smash isn’t exactly 100% reliable either. If you aren’t getting edgeguards or inconsistent f-smash setups down then you are simply going to get Marthritis when playing as her. At least Marth has less trouble killing off stray hits at more points in the stage due to higher damage and knockback growth.

I would say Roy and Chrom are also victims of early meta buzz. They are just extremely overrated and not even viable in my opinion. Chrom for example is basically Marth but with less range, notably less damage and less killpower to safety ratio, a worse disadvantage state, a worse recovery, worse jumps...but he trades it for a strong f smash and bair in your face, making him a noob killer who just doesn’t hold up against players of equal or greater skill.

Marth has extreme trouble killing because tippers are extremely hard to land, sure a tipper bair is going to kill at 70% offstage, but good luck spacing that against fast characters or characters with insane recoveries, which is most of the current meta.

Lucina's bair may not be the biggest killer but firstly Samsora complains about literally everything lol. No shade to him at all since I'm pretty sure most of it is good-hearted/ironic but also Peach/Daisy Bairs are cancelable killmoves that have extreme shield pressure and can be comboed into, which isn't exactly fair to compare to the average Back Aerial.

If you aren't getting edgeguards as Lucina, which she is very good at, or per say, ledgetrapping, which she is also really good at and doesn't have to worry about an overlapping sourspot hitbox at all times.

I feel as though you overrate Marth significantly because in theory his tipper hisbox makes him great, while in practice it's an extremely small hitbox that most people can avoid just by playing neutral and moving around unpredictably, and as a result he struggles more so than Lucina at killing. It's telling when even MkLeo can't make the character work as well as Lucina, which is why he dropped him in favor of her after Ultimate Summit 2.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Speaking of top tiers.
R.O.B, huh?
Lots of top players are putting him at the highest tier, even Mkleo.
It's telling how well the character is doing.

is really weird. On paper, his disadvantage state is way to bad for him to be anywhere near being a top tier, but his advantage state is so good that putting him in disadvantage is hard for most characters. I do feel like he'll fall off (like and did) once people can find easier ways to get him in disadvantage but for now, he's in a pretty good spot in the meta.

I will say that his MU spread on paper isn't the greatest for a top tier.

Loses badly to

Probably loses or goes even with

I wouldn't be surprised if most of the characters buffed in the patch would have improved matchups against ROB either. all have decent enough tools against ROB and the changes to and specifically seem like they could suit them really well here.

 

[williamsga555]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QSuA-RppHOQ
Looks like Byleth doesn’t have any burst options with high rewards, can’t deal with camping, or any capabilities to deal with low profiles. Byleth is dlc D3 confirmed!

While I'm glad you provided a video to dissect, let's try qualifying this a bit with a little less passive-aggression;

First, don't misconstrue what I was trying to say. Byleth disliking those traits in neutral doesn't mean Byleth necessarily lacks those traits. To stay more in my lane, for example, D3 doesn't really like offstage pressure (his airspeed and high-commitment aerials means he needs to recover from about the same spot everytime, and if the opponent can beat him to that spot before superarmor comes into play, he's pretty helpless), yet he's still quite capable of doing it himself.

Second, showcasing an instance of Byleth doing well in a matchup I forecasted as being bad has nothing to do with the D3 comparisons. For starters, I never mentioned how D3 does in it (poorly, for the record). Beyond that, I'm interpreting this weird callout as an argument against Byleth being bad overall. I don't think Byleth is that bad. I even made it clear in the original post that I have more optimism for Byleth than D3, because Byleth has a more rounded neutral and access to more reliable finishing options.

Third, the video itself is a local match featuring MkLeo, the best player in the world. I would be utterly shocked if he didn't win this set handily. There are a number of different instances of the Greninja player making several matchup mistakes (such as never DI'ing Byleth up-b correctly) that could end up being more significant as time goes on. It's also important to note that I think this is a matchup that will get worse in time. Byleth has enough space control and raw reward to shred characters with high spacing demands playing "sloppy" (as everyone tends to space poorly against new characters at first...they're new characters). As people get more familiar with defensive spacing, optimal DI, and neutral strategy, I still think this matchup might become his worst. Which reminds me:

Fourth, I never stated anything like "this matchup will be unwinnable." I said I predict it will be his worst matchup, whether that ends up being Even, -1, -2, or whatever other arbitrary number ratio we use. Honestly it was a pretty tame statement to provoke a bit of speculative discussion, kept vague intentionally because it's obviously too early to say anything more definitive.

I need to give some merit to that video, however, in that it did reveal something more positive in the matchup than I was originally giving Byleth credit for: MkLeo was doing a great job of using dtilt as a general space-control tool to keep Greninja leery of when he could dash in. Dtilt has juuust enough reach+cooldown to make the punish window tight without a preemptive jump-in (and jumping against Byleth willy-nilly is a terrible idea). Maybe Greninja merely has to retreat with shuriken pressure to alleviate this, but it can be argued that he merely corners himself in that case, so it might not be that simple in theory. If this matchup shakes out to be not that bad, I imagine this use of deterrent dtilts will likely be a significant factor.

All in all, my stance hasn't really changed much yet. Showing a video of Leo having week-1 success in a matchup that I predicted to eventually get bad is...not exactly persuasive. I'm not sure I'd outright call Byleth "good" yet, but it's still early, so Iunno. Character's fun, that's basically my only real foundation.

 

[BlackInk]

While I'm glad you provided a video to dissect, let's try qualifying this a bit with a little less passive-aggression;

First, don't misconstrue what I was trying to say. Byleth disliking those traits in neutral doesn't mean Byleth necessarily lacks those traits. To stay more in my lane, for example, D3 doesn't really like offstage pressure (his airspeed and high-commitment aerials means he needs to recover from about the same spot everytime, and if the opponent can beat him to that spot before superarmor comes into play, he's pretty helpless), yet he's still quite capable of doing it himself.

Second, showcasing an instance of Byleth doing well in a matchup I forecasted as being bad has nothing to do with the D3 comparisons. For starters, I never mentioned how D3 does in it (poorly, for the record). Beyond that, I'm interpreting this weird callout as an argument against Byleth being bad overall. I don't think Byleth is that bad. I even made it clear in the original post that I have more optimism for Byleth than D3, because Byleth has a more rounded neutral and access to more reliable finishing options.

Third, the video itself is a local match featuring MkLeo, the best player in the world. I would be utterly shocked if he didn't win this set handily. There are a number of different instances of the Greninja player making several matchup mistakes (such as never DI'ing Byleth up-b correctly) that could end up being more significant as time goes on. It's also important to note that I think this is a matchup that will get worse in time. Byleth has enough space control and raw reward to shred characters with high spacing demands playing "sloppy" (as everyone tends to space poorly against new characters at first...they're new characters). As people get more familiar with defensive spacing, optimal DI, and neutral strategy, I still think this matchup might become his worst. Which reminds me:

Fourth, I never stated anything like "this matchup will be unwinnable." I said I predict it will be his worst matchup, whether that ends up being Even, -1, -2, or whatever other arbitrary number ratio we use. Honestly it was a pretty tame statement to provoke a bit of speculative discussion, kept vague intentionally because it's obviously too early to say anything more definitive.

I need to give some merit to that video, however, in that it did reveal something more positive in the matchup than I was originally giving Byleth credit for: MkLeo was doing a great job of using dtilt as a general space-control tool to keep Greninja leery of when he could dash in. Dtilt has juuust enough reach+cooldown to make the punish window tight without a preemptive jump-in (and jumping against Byleth willy-nilly is a terrible idea). Maybe Greninja merely has to retreat with shuriken pressure to alleviate this, but it can be argued that he merely corners himself in that case, so it might not be that simple in theory. If this matchup shakes out to be not that bad, I imagine this use of deterrent dtilts will likely be a significant factor.

All in all, my stance hasn't really changed much yet. Showing a video of Leo having week-1 success in a matchup that I predicted to eventually get bad is...not exactly persuasive. I'm not sure I'd outright call Byleth "good" yet, but it's still early, so Iunno. Character's fun, that's basically my only real foundation.

Honestly, Greninja is not that good of a character. Sheik is more capable of being difficult opponent for Byleth, but her damage output and kill power is legitimately awful.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Honestly, Greninja is not that good of a character.

is actually (in my opinion) a great character with a ton of strengths and very few weaknesses. He has so much going for him.

• Strong combo game
• Decent frame-data on most moves
• Relatively small hurtbox, making him hard to hit (especially for characters like and Byleth)
• Really good disjoints for a non-sword user
• His aerials are very safe on shield
• Decent projectile in water-shuriken
• Great recovery (hard to use, but really good)
• Has one of the better counters in the game
• Strong kill moves and kill confirms
• Long ranged grab
• Great edgeguarding
• Probably Top 3 for mobility in the entire game
  • 4th fastest walk speed
  • 7th fastest run speed
  • 14th fastest initial dash
  • 2nd highest full hop
  • 1st highest short hop
  • 4th highest mid-air jump
  • 10th fastest air speed
  • 31st fastest air acceleration
  • 8th fastest fall speed and fast fall speed
  • 2nd highest gravity

Literally his only big weaknesses are his lack of good moves OOS and that his attributes make him easy to combo for some characters. His disjoints, combo game, and frame data make him challenging to fight for sword characters in general and some in particular ( and Byleth) can't deal with it.

Going to make an early call, by the by, that Greninja might end up being Byleth's worst matchup in time. Byleth hates the kind of neutral that Greninja is capable of (burst ground options with strong reward + an actual projectile to camp with, all on a character who is capable of low-profiling things).

Now that I'm thinking more about it, and will probably end up being Byleth's hardest matchups. I do think there will be some other really bad ones for her, but these three kind of share similar strengths in the Byleth MU and they can exploit her really well.

 

[BlackInk]

is actually (in my opinion) a great character with a ton of strengths and very few weaknesses. He has so much going for him.

• Strong combo game
• Decent frame-data on most moves
• Relatively small hurtbox, making him hard to hit (especially for characters like and Byleth)
• Really good disjoints for a non-sword user
• His aerials are very safe on shield
• Decent projectile in water-shuriken
• Great recovery (hard to use, but really good)
• Has one of the better counters in the game
• Strong kill moves and kill confirms
• Long ranged grab
• Great edgeguarding
• Probably Top 3 for mobility in the entire game
  • 4th fastest walk speed
  • 7th fastest run speed
  • 14th fastest initial dash
  • 2nd highest full hop
  • 1st highest short hop
  • 4th highest mid-air jump
  • 10th fastest air speed
  • 31st fastest air acceleration
  • 8th fastest fall speed and fast fall speed
  • 2nd highest gravity

Literally his only big weaknesses are his lack of good moves OOS and that his attributes make him easy to combo for some characters. His disjoints, combo game, and frame data make him challenging to fight for sword characters in general and some in particular ( and Byleth) can't deal with it.

Now that I'm thinking more about it, and will probably end up being Byleth's hardest matchups. I do think there will be some other really bad ones for her, but these three kind of share similar strengths in the Byleth MU and they can exploit her really well.

Almost everyone loses to the rats because they’re that dumb. Greninja is more like a good on paper kind of character, but Joker actually does exceed them by miles.

 

[Nah]

I was going to post this in a different thread, but rather than return to a thread that has spiraled out of control and make a post that's not about the original topic, I though that maybe it might be a little more appropriate in here. Context is that in said other thread there became a bit of an argument on what zoning is and who is a zoner, so to try to clarify for you B BlackInk
I'm like 99% sure I have this right, but on that 1% chance I'm wrong, which could totally happen, (hello getting screwed over by very low percent chances in Fire Emblem!), one of the people here smarter than me (not that it's hard to be smarter than me) please correct me.

----

Zoning is, in the simplest terms, controlling space, either directly with attacks, or with the threat of them. Each character has a zone you can visualize around them, which varies depending on the range of their attacks, the speed of their attacks, their mobility, if they're in the air or on the ground etc. When two people are spacing themselves in battle, they're doing so in order to try to best make use of their zone relative to their opponent. A lot of characters have a tool that can be used to zone (Shiek needles, Doc pills, etc), but aren't necessarily zoners, so what makes one a zoner is if your gameplan is primarily centered around zoning. It's an inherently defensive playstyle.

(Spamming) projectiles is the most well-known form of zoning, but it's not the only way to zone. Snake controls various spaces with C4, grenades, and the threat of that dash attack, for example. Luma is not a projectile, neither is Rosa side B. Swordies are another form of zoning, and they mainly do it with their disjointed range. The areas that their sword swings (and lance and axe swings in Byleth's case) can occupy at any given time create their zone. Each swordie is a different flavor of the same base idea.

 

[Cracke]

Honestly, Greninja is not that good of a character.

In every possible facet Greninja is the workings of a good character. What makes you say this?

 

[BlackInk]

I was going to post this in a different thread, but rather than return to a thread that has spiraled out of control and make a post that's not about the original topic, I though that maybe it might be a little more appropriate in here. Context is that in said other thread there became a bit of an argument on what zoning is and who is a zoner, so to try to clarify for you B BlackInk
I'm like 99% sure I have this right, but on that 1% chance I'm wrong, which could totally happen, (hello getting screwed over by very low percent chances in Fire Emblem!), one of the people here smarter than me (not that it's hard to be smarter than me) please correct me.

----

Zoning is, in the simplest terms, controlling space, either directly with attacks, or with the threat of them. Each character has a zone you can visualize around them, which varies depending on the range of their attacks, the speed of their attacks, their mobility, if they're in the air or on the ground etc. When two people are spacing themselves in battle, they're doing so in order to try to best make use of their zone relative to their opponent. A lot of characters have a tool that can be used to zone (Shiek needles, Doc pills, etc), but aren't necessarily zoners, so what makes one a zoner is if your gameplan is primarily centered around zoning. It's an inherently defensive playstyle.

(Spamming) projectiles is the most well-known form of zoning, but it's not the only way to zone. Snake controls various spaces with C4, grenades, and the threat of that dash attack, for example. Luma is not a projectile, neither is Rosa side B. Swordies are another form of zoning, and they mainly do it with their disjointed range. The areas that their sword swings (and lance and axe swings in Byleth's case) can occupy at any given time create their zone. Each swordie is a different flavor of the same base idea.

What the ****? I literally just described their tools as traps. The reason I don’t think sword characters are zoners is because they are normally more aggressive than zoners and don’t benefit much from being away from their opponent (even with a projectile). Cloud has a projectile but he doesn’t get any great rewards from it besides charging limit (which also charges if Cloud approaches their opponent aggressively). Byleth seems too different in their kit as it’s more punish-based instead of zoning out the opponent with a trap or projectile.

In every possible facet Greninja is the workings of a good character. What makes you say this?

I haven’t seen any consistent results with him. It’s like the Luigi thing, where they sometimes win and they sometimes don’t. It’s weird. I feel like they do lack something that’s necessary but I don’t know what it exactly is. Maybe their strengths are as not great as they seem. Think about the Pits, they seem like good characters until you actually see them in battle.

Edit: Oh crap, it’s no wonder Greninja is so inconsistent. Their head hurt box is so surprisingly big and their weight lighter than Yink. Okay, Byleth is a bad matchup for Greninja simply because that character is meant to combo and hit hard and that’s a bad combination for that cool ninja Pokémon.

 

[Cracke]

I haven’t seen any consistent results with him. It’s like the Luigi thing, where they sometimes win and they sometimes don’t. It’s weird. I feel like they do lack something that’s necessary but I don’t know what it exactly is. Maybe their strengths are as not great as they seem. Think about the Pits, they seem like good characters until you actually see them in battle.

Nah, Greninja has gotten plenty of good results. See the previous OrionStats season placement. He placed number ten, out of seventy, those are clearly from some kind of results. The strengths are great because the placements back it up. Pit has hitboxes that often are unreliable, Luigi has an extremely linear plan that you can workaround. The only weakness he has is the OOS, other than that he's extremely solid.

 

[BlackInk]

Nah, Greninja has gotten plenty of good results. See the previous OrionStats season placement. He placed number ten, out of seventy, those are clearly from some kind of results. The strengths are great because the placements back it up. Pit has hitboxes that often are unreliable, Luigi has an extremely linear plan that you can workaround. The only weakness he has is the OOS, other than that he's extremely solid.

That’s good to hear, I like Greninja.

 

[DungeonMaster]

So with a bit more time to absorb the buffs to my main girl in power armor: Samus is borderline dirty now. Not top tier fully dirty like Palu, but none too shy either.

It's actually the active frames on zair that push the strongest into high tier. Zair was awesome in smash 4 and then ackward in ultimate until now. It's the safe poke and short hop aireal denial that are literally twice as active as they used to be. You don't need to be a master Samus player to understand how good safe pokes and stuffing short hop approaches are. It's a bit more then quality of life, it shifts important timings in Samus favor, I see it every match now.

D-smash synergizes quite well so zair first hit -> d-smash is reliable and true combos earlier then fsmash confirm and has much more power then f-tilt angled down confirm.

She just flat out kills stuff now. For a decade taking off the suit made you kill better, NOW, FINALLY, putting on the power armor gives you KILL POWER. Great stuff.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I do not get why people are still underestimating R.O.B. He is not falling off yet, in fact the opposite has been happening in that his results have only gotten better over time in this game, just recently reaching #1 in Orion stats.
This is likey as R.O.B mains have discovered tech and ways to push his very scary advantage state, and while his disadvantage is bad yes, he still has quite a lot of survivability due to his weight and surprisingly good recovery if you manage it right, and R.O.B with rage can be very frightening.

I am not saying that R.O.B will not fall off anytime soon, but I feel its pretty wrong to just ignore the results he has been getting due to his weakness and stigmas of past games

 

[NairWizard]

Yes, ROB has a disgustingly good advantage state. It's not just the best advantage state in the game, it's by far the best; there's no clear competitor for 2nd place.

Other states are lukewarm. His neutral is above average--great spacing tools, to be sure, but then big hurtbox, some blindspots, and a mediocre grab settle it to an average placing. His disadvantage isn't overall awful, but isn't good either, and in some matchups it borders on awful. But other states don't really matter. This character is almost entirely advantage.

What makes ROB stand out from other characters who are also 100% advantage? It's the breadth of what ROB considers "advantage." For others, what qualifies as "advantage state" comes with certain constraints--Luigi needs to be horizontally close to you, preferably on stage; Pichu needs to be below you.

ROB gets you in any even slightly bad position at all, and you're done. You're off stage? Gyro side-b can steal your stock at 40. You're on the ledge? Gyro traps you, and n-air/d-smash/side-b covers everything. You're in the air? Up-air and n-air juggle you for days. You're in the corner? Setups galore; good luck getting past all those hitboxes. You let go of shield too early? You just ate a d-tilt or Gyro and got pushed to the corner and possibly lost your stock from a sub-f4 move. You shielded in a bad position? D-tilt--followed by whatever the heck ROB wants because this move is -5 on shield.

In Smash Ultimate, the phrase "between a rock and a hard place" is more like "between ROB and his gyro."

 

[DJ3DS]

I do not get why people are still underestimating R.O.B. He is not falling off yet, in fact the opposite has been happening in that his results have only gotten better over time in this game, just recently reaching #1 in Orion stats.
This is likey as R.O.B mains have discovered tech and ways to push his very scary advantage state, and while his disadvantage is bad yes, he still has quite a lot of survivability due to his weight and surprisingly good recovery if you manage it right, and R.O.B with rage can be very frightening.

I am not saying that R.O.B will not fall off anytime soon, but I feel its pretty wrong to just ignore the results he has been getting due to his weakness and stigmas of past games

I think I would sum ROB up as follows:

1) ROBs Orionstats are deceptive; though he is at the top he is not winning the top things as a solo character. I think Wolf is or was at some point a good example of a similar thing.

2) ROB has a good number of losing matchups, and gets a good degree of bracket luck in that Pikachu, ZSS, Mr Game & Watch and especially Bayonetta are not too common, especially at the highest level (outside of zss in Japan, I guess).

3) ROBs advantage state is insane but suffers from one very noticeable problem - all of his truly ridiculous things tend to start from zdrops or Nairs, which either require immaculate spacing for the zdrop to hit or one of the slowest combo starters in the game.

WaDi has repeatedly expressed a desire for secondaries. He is the most consistently high placing solo ROB; and Zackray is already doing the sensible thing. He's clearly a strong character but pretty much every ROB main thinks any kind of top tier placement a ludicrous overexaggeration.

I honestly like to think of him as quite similar to Melee Ice Climbers on the surface. Both are disproportionately popular at low level, with absurd advantage states. However, neither have seen the success solo at the highest echelons and get exposed pretty hard by some matchups.

 

[Lore]

For me the big debate is whether Samus or Rob has the better advantage state now, post-Samus buffs. I really want to pick up Samus, but it feels half the time that Rob is mostly a better Samus in a lot of ways.

Am I wrong in this impression? They both have amazing setups while in advantage, but Rob seems slightly better at it. But I'm less experienced with either character, so I have no idea.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

The issue I see with R.O.B. is that his ridiculous advantage state comes from one thing and nearly one thing only: his gyro. Look at the post SolidSense made and count all the times he mentions gyro.
Thing is, like diddy kong's banana it's an item projectile. When gyro is out R.O.B can't send out another one. R.O.B. wants to send gyro out not in neutral but in advantage and if he loses gyro (either by sending it out too early or heaven forbid the opponent managing to catch it which can be done) R.O.B's in a bad position.

 

[Terotrous]

My hot take on Greninja.

Greninja is hard. Like, really hard. It's not for no reason that for a long time, Japan was the only region that could really utilize the character. I do think, when played to full potential, Greninja is probably top 15 or maybe even top 10, but I don't think he's as broken as the characters above him, and those characters are also usually somewhat easier to play, so I think top players tend to gravitate towards them instead. This is probably why he seems like he doesn't get quite the results you'd expect for a character who is that good.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Almost everyone loses to the rats because they’re that dumb. Greninja is more like a good on paper kind of character, but Joker actually does exceed them by miles.

That's fair. He does lose hard to the rats and Joker is better than Greninja (mostly due to Aresene and being better in disadvantage) but Greninja is good, he's just really hard to play properly.

 

[ARISTOS]

My hot take on Greninja.

Greninja is hard. Like, really hard. It's not for no reason that for a long time, Japan was the only region that could really utilize the character. I do think, when played to full potential, Greninja is probably top 15 or maybe even top 10, but I don't think he's as broken as the characters above him, and those characters are also usually somewhat easier to play, so I think top players tend to gravitate towards them instead. This is probably why he seems like he doesn't get quite the results you'd expect for a character who is that good.

Greninja is good but one of the big flaws of the character is that his damage starters are either descending onto the opponent (Nair, fair), dash attack (which at -13 is punishable castwide, but given it's speed it's hard to punish without anticipating it), or running dtilt (which is very good).

The lack of rising aerial pressure is huge since that's a large part of how characters mixup their offense. While Greninja definitely has the speed and projectile to lessen this weakness, it doesn't alleviate it entirely, and serves to cap his offensive presence.

This combined with poor OOS means he doesn't really "scramble" well with the cast, and it's a bit of a scrambly game.

 

[DungeonMaster]

I really want to pick up Samus, but it feels half the time that Rob is mostly a better Samus in a lot of ways
Am I wrong in this impression? They both have amazing setups while in advantage, but Rob seems slightly better at it.

You're not completely wrong in your impression.
You need to accept the tradeoffs between the two and if you want my take it comes down playstyle.

Samus will take you considerably longer to learn, right off the bat, because Rob's neutral is both easier and better. Rob can get a lot of mileage against anyone in the cast with just nair, gyro and laser. Samus does not have that kind of a neutral, she must adapt her options to the opponent. You will not oppress Olimar for instance with the almighty Charge shot in neutral - forget about it, you have to rush him down. Rob keeps his same basic gameplan with anyone. So there's a big neutral gap between the two.

Samus on the other hand, CAN brawl, she is not going to get locked into shield because of invincible fast up-b. She has options that damage shield and then shield poke consistently (see any of my ytube vids). Rob isolated from his gyro under pressure often needs to gtfo, Samus can scrap and kill or combo the opponent with fast aireals. She shakes off and reverses pressure way better.

Samus also does an enormous amount of damage anywhere, anytime. Just hitting the b button is 34%. If you learn the combos you get 50+ easy, many many ways, and kills, again see my vids.
Rob on the other hand has a much more refined trap game. It's situational, requires setups, but very potent once you get them. If you do get them, big damage and kills. So it's how much you like traps vs direct combos.

Samus hurtbox is way better then Rob's, no contest. Rob has his strong neutral but then it fails him big damage to Rob. Samus weaker neutral but more leeway to escape the biggest combos and kill confirms. A classic matchup difference is Pika wrecks Rob whereas it's pretty even vs Samus and in fact Esam has lost to top Samus. Pika just zone breaks and everything I've said above happens, Samus scraps well with the electric rat. Rob vs fox is even because Rob's neutral remains pretty effective at zoning him out, Samus struggles because her neutral can collapse and Fox will out box her. The difference in hurtbox doesn't matter since most of fox's combos are 2 hit affairs and then he juggles.

In dissadvantage overall it's about even, Rob can land better, for sure, big hitboxes. He gets gimped less. Bombs are not on the same level. Tether vs fuel tank, fuel tank is overall better and more versatile.

So make your pick!

 

[Tri Knight]

https://youtu.be/vIP_pK2Doc0

Leffen-brand 7.0 tier list for your viewing pleasure.

Interestingly enough, he divides high tier into two categories: one that is Solo mainable (Upper High Tier), while the other is made for fighters that may need secondaries (Lower High Tier).

Do you think high tier should include characters that may not be solo mainable?

 

[Ziodyne 21]

R.O.B. has good projectiles is not really meant to be a Zoner. I think its correct that he is played best when pressing the offensive and trying to keep advantage as much as possible.

R.O.B is similar to and possibly now as "100 % Advantage characters" who can easilty explode on you and delete stocks super early with just one combo or confim, but have some big notable flaws in other areas and lots of rough MU's on paper

R.O.B is still likely a tier above them for having a more solid neutral and recovery.

Actually R.O.B is kinda like a superior . A big-body non-superheavy that live in thier frightening advantage states, but have very bad disadvantage states due to their size and other lacking areas

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Samus hurtbox is way better then Rob's, no contest. Rob has his strong neutral but then it fails him big damage to Rob. Samus weaker neutral but more leeway to escape the biggest combos and kill confirms. A classic matchup difference is Pika wrecks Rob whereas it's pretty even vs Samus and in fact Esam has lost to top Samus. Pika just zone breaks and everything I've said above happens, Samus scraps well with the electric rat. Rob vs fox is even because Rob's neutral remains pretty effective at zoning him out, Samus struggles because her neutral can collapse and Fox will out box her. The difference in hurtbox doesn't matter since most of fox's combos are 2 hit affairs and then he juggles.

So make your pick!

I don't think ROB vs Fox is even, Zackray got 3-stocked by Light in that matchup and has never used ROB for it again.

 

[TennisBall]

Yes, Joker exceeds Greninja by miles, but Joker is up for debate as the best character in the game, even with the nerfs? That's like comparing to say, someone like . No, I am not calling Joker equivalent to Melee Fox, nor am I calling Melee Samus like Greninja, I'm just saying it's a little unfair.

 

[B_Burg]

https://youtu.be/vIP_pK2Doc0

Leffen-brand 7.0 tier list for your viewing pleasure.

Interestingly enough, he divides high tier into two categories: one that is Solo mainable (Upper High Tier), while the other is made for fighters that may need secondaries (Lower High Tier).

Do you think high tier should include characters that may not be solo mainable?

Yeah, I don't know if I agree with the mindset of splitting up high tier like that myself. It just seems like people are trying to emphasize that a lot of characters that are in the game are good and strong, but if some are solo viable and others aren't, I feel like that should be enough of a power difference to justify a seperate tier entirely.

For example, looking at the character I always talk about, I don't think I understand his placement of . He doesn't say much about him and even talks about how he thinks to really do well with the character you need an alt, which lines up with what other tier list makers have been saying. He's just not solo viable, something I think is going to become more and more clear as time goes on. So why is he not only in high tier but placed explicitly on his 'solo mainable' part of the list?

I think I understand the idea behind it like I said, but I don't know that I agree with it.

 

[Y2Kay]

Greninja definitely takes a steaming dump on Byleth. Definitely has the worst matchup against Greninja of all the swordsmen.

People bring up the “falling aerials” weakness but forget that Dair is a dive kick that’s not only safe on shield, confirms on hit, but ALSO beats the Parry OS. That move is often dismissed as “scrubby” but it’s really good mixup to compliment SH/ FH Nair and Fair and tomohawks.

Greninja Bair is a good rising approach tool, frame 5, multihit, active, deceptively large hit box on the last two kicks, and decently safe on shield. Bair is his most underrated move imo. Bair is honestly his second best move outside of Dash attack.

The breadth of Greninja’s kit and the flexibility it allows in neutral and advantage is not respected enough by smash players who’ve never faced a good one before.

 

[Thinkaman]

If Greninja is a bad character, this game has around 70 bad characters.


In DLC trends, Hero is still on track to fulfill my prediction of dropping out of the top 50 on OrionStats within a year. Salem is the only thing barely keeping him top 50 atm; wothout Salem he'd probably not make top 60.


Banjo, on the other hand, isn't really going up in accordance with common opinion of how good Banjo is. (And I agree; I think Banjo is downright solid.)

Honestly, I just think Banjo is hard, and in a non-flashy way that fails to attract players who gravitate towards (and get the most out of) hard characters. It's an usual "honest" hard, a difficulty that comes from having 20 great moves and 0 amazing ones, mastery of zoning and boxing alike, and a demanding attention to both consistency and reads. Banjo's kit is not lacking in reward for any of this--he doesn't at all feel like a traditional "work twice as hard for the same result" low tier. He's just a very broad character who demands a lot from his player.

Contrast with Pokemon Trainer, who I'd say is the most similar character at a very abstract level but ends up having really straightforward goals at any given moment.


Terry continues to be outclassed by Ken in results, even pre-buff.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

e

If Greninja is a bad character, this game has around 70 bad characters.


In DLC trends, Hero is still on track to fulfill my prediction of dropping out of the top 50 on OrionStats within a year. Salem is the only thing barely keeping him top 50 atm; wothout Salem he'd probably not make top 60.


Banjo, on the other hand, isn't really going up in accordance with common opinion of how good Banjo is. (And I agree; I think Banjo is downright solid.)

Honestly, I just think Banjo is hard, and in a non-flashy way that fails to attract players who gravitate towards (and get the most out of) hard characters. It's an usual "honest" hard, a difficulty that comes from having 20 great moves and 0 amazing ones, mastery of zoning and boxing alike, and a demanding attention to both consistency and reads. Banjo's kit is not lacking in reward for any of this--he doesn't at all feel like a traditional "work twice as hard for the same result" low tier. He's just a very broad character who demands a lot from his player.

Contrast with Pokemon Trainer, who I'd say is the most similar character at a very abstract level but ends up having really straightforward goals at any given moment.


Terry continues to be outclassed by Ken in results, even pre-buff.

One thimg Banjo's philosophy of having lots of okay-good moves and no great ones also means he really does not have all that great killing options.

His smash attacks are allright but nothing special. None of his airiels really do it at reasonable percents outside of a somewhat slow fair. So that leaves really Wonderwing, which has limited uses , somewhat long startup and is highly punishable if whiffed/blocked, and potenial smash confirms his d-throw which are not true until around 150-160

 

[SwagGuy99]

https://youtu.be/vIP_pK2Doc0

Leffen-brand 7.0 tier list for your viewing pleasure.

Here's the list as an image. I do have some issues with who he considers solo-viable vs might need a secondary high tiers but overall, I don't actually have too many issues with Leffen's opinions here. Again, I think that some characters in High Tier and Low High Tier need to switch around (Greninja and Link go up, Terry and Ness go down). My other big issue is the placement of Bayonetta. As much as I want to believe she may have some things going for her, her lack of kill power until absurd percents really holds her back as well as the fact that she dies so early (meaning that it's really hard to keep a lead with her and she will never benefit from rage either). She seems like a lower mid tier or worse, but I've been wrong before, so....

 

[VodkaHaze]

https://youtu.be/vIP_pK2Doc0

Leffen-brand 7.0 tier list for your viewing pleasure.

Interestingly enough, he divides high tier into two categories: one that is Solo mainable (Upper High Tier), while the other is made for fighters that may need secondaries (Lower High Tier).

Do you think high tier should include characters that may not be solo mainable?

Hard to say. Many of the top players will have a secondary even if its just for a specific match-up. I think someone pointed out the reason why ROB has such good results is because people have him as a counterpick or ROB mains will have a secondary. But the characters in high tier probably won't have horrendous match-ups like the characters below them.

Leffen does think that 37.5% of the cast is solo-viable, which isn't bad for a cast 80 characters if he's right. To translate that to another game, that would be the equivalent of Brawl having 13 solo viable characters.

Though Leffen did reference Samsora's MU chart near the end, which was bizarre because he only put two characters in +2 (and ) and said Peach had like 20 losing MUs and 24 even MUs. I can tell you now, if Peach did lose to a quarter of the cast, she would not be considered a Top 5 character, both in theorycrafting and results.

 

[bc1910]

Yes, Joker exceeds Greninja by miles, but Joker is up for debate as the best character in the game, even with the nerfs? That's like comparing to say, someone like . No, I am not calling Joker equivalent to Melee Fox, nor am I calling Melee Samus like Greninja, I'm just saying it's a little unfair.

Joker does not exceed Greninja by miles at all, particularly after the nerfs. Greninja is probably one of Joker's worst MUs given that he's one of the few characters who is faster than Joker overall, allowing him to both chase Joker in disadvantage and run away from Arsene. He has plenty of kill power as well as a good recovery to avoid offstage down guns nonsense. See the amount of trouble Venia gave Tweek, a top 5 player in the world, at Return to Yoshi's Island; he came the closest to beating him out of anyone at the tournament with a narrow 3-2 loss. It was also pre-nerf and Venia wasn't even camping Arsene.

If you want quantifiable numbers, Joker is 6th on Orionstats while Greninja is 9th.

I'm not sure what more this character has to do to be recognised as a top tier. Greninja has great overall results, great wins over individual top players and no real bracket demons since even the Snake MU has improved significantly. He has achieved all of this whilst lacking top 20 player rep.

Greninja's biggest weakness (OoS options) is mitigated almost entirely by his mobility in most MUs. Only two characters (Fox and Sheik) are able to abuse this weakness consistently since they are the only characters with good shield pressure tools who are fast enough to consistently corner Greninja. Most characters with good shield pressure simply aren't fast enough to consistently catch Greninja and those that are (Sonic, Falcon, Mac lol) don't have particularly good shield pressure tools.

Not only does Greninja have great results, he has strengths which go a long way toward mitigating his weaknesses in the majority of his MUs. His position as a top 10 character seems blindingly obvious to me.

Greninja Bair is a good rising approach tool, frame 5, multihit, active, deceptively large hit box on the last two kicks, and decently safe on shield. Bair is his most underrated move imo. Bair is honestly his second best move outside of Dash attack.

Bair is easily Greninja's best move in my opinion. Dash attack is crazy is in its own right and potentially the best move in the game at what it does, that being callout/whiff punishing with the subtle ability to be microspaced as it can be used at any point in a dash. However, it is held back significantly by its lack of safety on shield. Bair, on the other hand, is a quintessential all-purpose top tier move. It can combo, kill, edgeguard, pressure shields, catch jumps and has a generous, fairly active hitbox all while being frame 5. It's one of the most underrated moves in the game.

 

[Lore]

You're not completely wrong in your impression.
You need to accept the tradeoffs between the two and if you want my take it comes down playstyle.

Samus will take you considerably longer to learn, right off the bat, because Rob's neutral is both easier and better. Rob can get a lot of mileage against anyone in the cast with just nair, gyro and laser. Samus does not have that kind of a neutral, she must adapt her options to the opponent. You will not oppress Olimar for instance with the almighty Charge shot in neutral - forget about it, you have to rush him down. Rob keeps his same basic gameplan with anyone. So there's a big neutral gap between the two.

Samus on the other hand, CAN brawl, she is not going to get locked into shield because of invincible fast up-b. She has options that damage shield and then shield poke consistently (see any of my ytube vids). Rob isolated from his gyro under pressure often needs to gtfo, Samus can scrap and kill or combo the opponent with fast aireals. She shakes off and reverses pressure way better.

Samus also does an enormous amount of damage anywhere, anytime. Just hitting the b button is 34%. If you learn the combos you get 50+ easy, many many ways, and kills, again see my vids.
Rob on the other hand has a much more refined trap game. It's situational, requires setups, but very potent once you get them. If you do get them, big damage and kills. So it's how much you like traps vs direct combos.

Samus hurtbox is way better then Rob's, no contest. Rob has his strong neutral but then it fails him big damage to Rob. Samus weaker neutral but more leeway to escape the biggest combos and kill confirms. A classic matchup difference is Pika wrecks Rob whereas it's pretty even vs Samus and in fact Esam has lost to top Samus. Pika just zone breaks and everything I've said above happens, Samus scraps well with the electric rat. Rob vs fox is even because Rob's neutral remains pretty effective at zoning him out, Samus struggles because her neutral can collapse and Fox will out box her. The difference in hurtbox doesn't matter since most of fox's combos are 2 hit affairs and then he juggles.

In dissadvantage overall it's about even, Rob can land better, for sure, big hitboxes. He gets gimped less. Bombs are not on the same level. Tether vs fuel tank, fuel tank is overall better and more versatile.

So make your pick!

Gotcha, thanks! Very detailed and useful answer.