I think Byleth is mediocre just like the rest of you, but some of you guys are jumping to conclusions way too quickly without any supporting evidence, or ignoring Byleth's advantages while looking at others' strengths.
He can edgeguard in the most braindead way like all tethers (Just drop hydrant off the side of the stage) and you'll likely kill her the first time she's off stage and is forced to recover low
Seems unlikely--tether characters can just instant tether to the ledge at anywhere between 0 and 45-degree angles. You can predict that angle based on her low air speed and hit her, but it's a pretty tight window. This strat might hit Byleth if she
hangs below ledge, but if Byleth hangs below ledge and you hydrant from too far up she can tether to the ledge on reaction and not get hit, so you have to be precise here too. Certainly doesn't seem braindead. I can see it being used in conjunction with other setups to force an unfavorable option, though.
(Which is basically her only option)
You can drift toward ledge, side-b to bat away aerials, then airdodge.
has a lot more speed than Byleth.
And Byleth has a lot more range. You have to look at both sides of these matchups; listing the advantages of one only will lead to tunnel vision.
It's kind of like his matchup with Bowser
It's nothing like Bowser at all. Bowser is a different archetype.
Byleth-Fox may be in Fox's favor, but Byleth has a few things going for her that may push the matchup toward even. One is that Byleth destroys Fox's disadvantage state. Fox has a decent enough time landing in most matchups due to his fall speed, but Byleth has so much range that she frequently doesn't have to get into position to be able to juggle him. And offstage, some of her attacks, like side-b, cover almost all of Fox's recovery options at the same time. If Byleth can force Fox to recover even at a percent as low as 20% and predict the right option, Fox is just dead to a tippered f-smash. Most other characters can't say this against Fox, or even if they can, the range of options that they can predict is much smaller (for example, Ryu/Ken can play the prediction game as well but can't always convert a 2-frame into a kill).
goes even with or wins against most of the sword characters already,
Does he? I know our frog-playing friends in this thread believe this theory, but I'm skeptical. Stroder has said before that Lucina is one of Greninja's harder matchups, and Roy/Chrom/Shulk have the tools to keep it competitive. Yes, Greninja has great whiff punishing with dash attack--but that's also only one tool. Sword characters do better at keeping Greninja in disadvantage than the average character, outrange and outdisjoint him, and also can attack him from angles that are tricky for him to respond to.
When talking about Greninja's matchups, people reduce him to just "good dash attack and bad shield." They think he destroys Lucina while getting destroyed by Pikachu--when the reality is that he's likely even with both.
I do agree with your conclusion that Greninja beats Byleth, though, but for slightly different reasons. Greninja's Shuriken has a 20-frame startup, meaning that if Byleth starts Failnaught, assuming a total reaction time of roughly 20 frames, Greninja can actually fire Shuriken before Byleth can finish Failnaught. This means that Byleth must approach in the matchup, and that's pretty bad. She also doesn't have access to the diagonal angles that other swordies do.
has better speed and kill power, and does a ton of damage when he breaks her defense. If he didn't have eiha or guns, approaching her might actually be a bit challenging for Joker, but since he has those, it's not that bad. Probably -1 for Byleth.
Joker has better kill power with
Arsene, you mean. Joker isn't going to try to approach Byleth in the matchup. He's going to whiff punish her. Guns are great in this matchup because as with Greninja's shuriken, you can gun on reaction to Byleth using Failnaught. I don't have a strong opinion on this matchup, but it seems likely that Joker can Rebel's Guard pretty liberally here, so he likely has key advantages.
can approach Byleth due to his speed and she can die off of losing just one neutral interaction, since she doesn't really have any good options for landing or breaking out of combos. She can juggle Mario to an extent, and he might have trouble getting past her long ranged attacks, but approaching Byleth is nowhere near as hard for him as approaching Cloud or Lucina. -1 for Byleth.
It's true that approaching Cloud and Lucina (and Palutena, and Shulk) is much harder, but they also have less range than Byleth.
The biggest thing in this matchup is that Mario has to jump. Grounded approaches are just too slow against Byleth's huge range, and many of Mario's really good options are only accessible via jump. And when you jump, you put yourself in Byleth's hands. Mario's landing options are also vulnerable to Byleth up-air and up-smash--and he's got good air mobility, but he doesn't fall fast like Fox, so sometimes if you just use your air mobility to drift to ledge you can get f-smash tippered or side-b'd.
Speaking of side-b, side-b is the size of like 4 Marios.
It's worth noting, too, that Byleth has an f6 grab, same as Mario's.
Byleth has a
lot going for her in this MU.
If it's -1, it'll be because of FLUDD, which will be incredibly strong in the neutral against Byleth. But until I see more of it on video, it sounds like an even matchup.
is faster than Byleth, can abuse her in disadvantage, and can approach Byleth. However, Byleth is actually OK at abusing Lucina's lack of landing options with up-smash and up-air and Lucina is much easier to hit than most of the top tiers due to being fairly tall. -1 or even for Byleth.
You forgot the most important attribute for Lucina: range. She relies on outranging all of her opponents to win. Byleth can just use walking spacing in this matchup, baiting Lucina into whiffing and then punishing those whiffs from a safe range. If there's any top tier matchup that Byleth actually wins, it'll be this one, though I can certainly see it being even as well.
can just kind of combo and juggle Byleth forever. However, like Lucina, Palutena may have some trouble landing against Byleth and Palutena is a fairly easy character to hit since she can't really low profile like a lot of the other top tiers. -1 or even for Byleth.
Palutena is another character who loves to jump, and teleport recoveries are slightly easier to aim f-smashes again, but it's hard to say much else that's positive for Byleth in the matchup.
Palutena's explosive flame in particular seems hard for Byleth to deal with given that atrocious air speed. Seems like a -1 or -2 MU, agreed.
is literally Pikachu in this matchup but with a bit worse edgeguarding but is arguably even harder to hit..
Pikachu has tjolt, which makes things really frustrating for Byleth, and more importantly, he's got Quick Attack to burst punish Byleth for jumping. Comparing the two is like comparing DK to Samus or something. Squirtle has to get in. Pikachu gets in for free. By comparison, Squirtle is an easy matchup.
has turnips, combos, juggles, kill power, but Byleth might be able stop Peach from approaching and Byleth is able to juggle her with up-air. Probably even or -1 but I'm actually kind of leaning towards even.
Peach is floaty, likes to be in the air, has an atrocious airdodge, and turnips function best at a range where Byleth can jump f-air. Failnaught pressure is good against Peach too. This seems either even or +1 Byleth.
edgeguards Byleth hard, hard to hit, better neutral, can't keep him out, combos and juggles her forever. -2 for Byleth.
I think that Pikachu is overrated in general, but I agree. This matchup is really, really bad. Tjolt is hard to deal with and cancels Failnaught pressure (kind of; if you parry it after a Failnaught you can still hit Pikachu, so the Pika has to be careful), and Pikachu can juggle her for a very long time given her options to land.
SideB has way too much cooldown in order to be a neutral tool.
I agree, but it's not too bad as a callout when your opponent is already in the air. What are they going to do? Airdodge? You have frame advantage for sure against most airdodges.
I don't think that short crouches are going to be as big of a deal as people think against Byleth
Crouch is pretty good against an aerial Byleth, but I agree (not because of side-b/f-smash though). Since crouch leaves you more or less stationary (unless you can crawl!), it's not much different from shielding. The difference is that some characters don't have good options out of shield, but nearly everyone has good options out of crouch, so what this does is create additional options for shorter characters.
is fairly easy to abuse in disadvantage, but he can stop Byleth from approaching and he can edgeguard and juggle her really well. -1 or even for Byleth, IMO.
ROB gets way too many 0 to deaths against Byleth for me to make an analysis comfortably. I have to see it in practice, but I think Zackray would absolutely decimate MKLeo in this matchup. My gut says it's -2 for Byleth.
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are kind of similar in this matchup. They both want to get in and deal a lot of damage, and Byleth's poor frame-data, lack of camping options, and lack of escape matchups make this very easy. Like some other top tiers, they can be abused in disadvantage and can get edgeguarded, but that's implying that Byleth will be able to land one of her combo starters on them or to not be Chromicided. Chrom is probably -1, while Roy might be -1 or even.
Byleth outranges them, which is a pretty big deal in a sword vs. sword matchup. Byleth also has some very safe options for dealing with Chrom's recovery without getting killed. Most importantly, perhaps: the two of them have some very poor air acceleration, so once they're in the air, they're vulnerable to lots and lots of things that other characters with better accel wouldn't be.
I would think that these are even matchups.
has Monado Arts and can adapt to anything Byleth tries to throw at him. Not much to say here TBH. Somewhere between -1 and -2 for Byleth.
This matchup, as with most of Shulk's matchups, sounds so complicated that I can't possibly fathom it, let alone give it a rating.
can camp out Byleth but may actually have some trouble approaching her if the Snake player plays too aggressively. However, if the Snake player is patient and waits for an opening, this matchup shouldn't be too bad. -1 for Byleth.
Snake's actually pretty slow, and none of his moves are safe on shield (except d-tilt, sometimes). Failnaught is great pressure in this matchup since grenades don't explode instantly. Maybe most importantly, Snake's disadvantage is total Byleth fodder. You can't just up-b high to recover and b-reverse since Byleth covers so many options so well.
I would think there's a +1 waiting to happen for Byleth here, just by gut reaction.
can abuse Byleth in disadvantage, but he has to get in first, which is slightly challenging due to his poor range. However, like Byleth's matchup against Squirtle, Pikachu, or Mario, she takes so much damage just for losing neutral and gets edgeguarded hard enough for it to not matter. Most likely -1 for Byleth.
I don't think the numbers are that bad for Byleth here. Wario's usual approach game against sword characters is f-air from aerials drift-ins. Note that key word: aerial. Wario wants to be in the air. Byleth loves when you're in the air.
Byleth will probably do just fine vs. Wario overall. She'll keep Wario out more than Lucina would, since she's less vulnerable to random Wario f-airs, and will hit Wario harder when he's in disadvantage, but she'll take more damage in disadvantage, too.
is similar to Fox, but trades having better speed and recovery for having blaster and better survivability, which makes it incredibly hard for Byleth to approach him. Probably -1 for Byleth.
Blaster's transcendence is actually pretty important here in the neutral. I can see this matchup as being -1, but I think Byleth also has plenty of room to develop edgeguarding against Wolf in particular, and he has a harder time landing than Fox.
has no disadvantage state
This is just not true. Flip Jump is great, but it doesn't mean that she's never in a bad position, especially when she's outranged.
ZSS doesn't approach. She whiff punishes. She's the campiest character in the entire game.
I think overall ZSS seems like a losing matchup, but she does struggle in the neutral vs. patient swordplay. She also doesn't have projectiles that force Byleth to approach; Failnaught is fine pressure vs. paralyzer/z-air/side-b. And, like many of the characters on this list, ZSS likes to jump. So Byleth has tools that keep it competitive.
In sum, I think Byleth has some hard matchups in top tier, but also has some pretty decent/even ones. I also think that she succeeds in some matchups that others would struggle a lot in--Ness and Ice Climbers, to name a couple. Let's not bandwagon the "Byleth is terrible and loses everything" meme too hard, even if we can agree that Byleth is substandard.
