Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Lacrimosa]

Last weekend, there were a total of 0 PGR'ed events happening this weekend.
However, when we arrived to this weekend, there are now a total of 7 events.


Sweet Spot 6 (C Tier)
1st: Yez
2nd: Skilly
3rd: Kwaz
4th: ToffeeCG
5th: SKITTLES!!
5th: Welfare Pickles
7th: Fahrenheit
7th: ApolloKage
9th: Comet
9th: TonyZTank
9th: PUHpaya
9th: Wisdom


Ascension 2020: Back to Basics (C Tier)
1st: Silver
2nd: Stroder
3rd: Asotil
4th: Thor
5th: RileyKitty
5th: Tilted
7th: LordSpin
7th: B-Rice


Winter Clash 2020 (C Tier) *Puerto Rican tournament
1st: EKING
2nd: Kata
3rd: Zonkk
4th: Tama
5th: Tuitt
5th: Headshot
7th: PeachIt
7th: Excel_Zero


Guerras Regias! (C Tier) *Mexican tournament
1st: Wonf
2nd: Necro
3rd: Best Taco
4th: Osuka
5th: Pollo
5th: Daige
7th: Vizard
7th: Hope


LAN ETS 2020 (C Tier) *Canadian tournament
1st: Venom
2nd: Jayy
3rd: Blacktwins
4th: FSharp
5th: Jw
5th: Smokk
7th: Justin
7th: Fwed
9th: Maple
9th: SuperGirlKels
9th: Armadillo
9th: Pacha


Salts Flats 2020 (B Tier) *Canadian tournament
1st: Exodia
2nd: Alphicans
3rd: frededish
4th: Marf
5th: Scubbss
5th: Face
7th: Nurse
7th: Chocojo
9th: Pasta B0i
9th: Chaizord
9th: Beezy
9th: Kursed


Relatively minor weekend, especially when we have a S tier next weekend.

There is also event called Chillhouse (C Tier) *Mexican tournament, but there isn't a bracket posted, nor there is any progress.

One tournament that wasn't PGR'd but probably made the biggest waves this weekend happened in France:

WANTED Saison 3 Chap 6: L'Invasion des sudistes
1. Glutonny
2. Mr. R
3. Flow
4. Meru
5. Oryon
5. Tag
7. Leon
7. VinS

It's counted as a weekly, so it doesn't count for the PGR, but it had two currently ranked player.
Alrhough it's weird since previous WANTEDs counted for the PGR if they had a certain entrants number, which was bigger than some C-tiers above.

 

[SwagGuy99]

There was also a mid tier bracket at 2GG: All In as well. IMO, it's interesting to see which characters do well with Top Tier characters (and PGR players) out of the picture.

The characters allowed were:

Byleth and .

Overall, I'm mostly fine with the list of mid tiers included although I think including on this list is a little weird.

2GG All In (Mid Tier Singles side-event, 128 entrants):

1st. Larry Lurr
2nd. ChillyChilli
3rd. AC
4th. K9sbruce
5th. GOHAN
5th. GaYo
7th. Speclar
7th. KiraFlax

The only other thing I have to say is that AC's is hype.

 

[StoicPhantom]

PT is not beating Zelda without the whole team. Squirtle is a big problem yes, but kill moves are too laggy to solo Zelda. And any mistake or whiff with those, will potentially open up a big hit from Zelda. As Zelda's rage builds, it's going to become an increasingly bad idea to remain Squirtle for too long.

Razor Leaf is annoying but there are tools to mitigate it, as have already been mentioned. Ivy is a fat hitbox, making it easy to sweetspot LK. If that happens and Ivy is put into disadvantage, Zelda has an array of tools that can really exploit that. It was already difficult to safely make it back, but the new buffs to those tools are going to make Ivy incredibly vulnerable. You can pretty much expect death at 100 at the maximum.

Charizard is fairly quick and with large hitboxs, but he's still a heavy, of which Zelda excels against. He's not destroying shield Phantom and he's not beating it's disjoints. He can be easily juggled and makes for easy kill confirms. If optimal use is at kill percent for him and his opponent, to take advantage of his power and range, that goes both ways. Zelda will just as easily kill at 100 with rage as he can her. The first mistake in that situation will decide things, and Charizard doesn't have a good enough neutral to make that easy for him.

There is enough of a balance to make it even or in Zelda's favor in each of the individual Pokemon for it to be necessary to require all of their individual strengths. One of Zelda's strengths is her versatility against a variety of archetypes, so she can definitely beat each Pokemon individually. Squirtle has the combos and neutral, but lacks the kill moves. Ivy has the range, but is very vulnerable to Zelda in disadvantage. Charizard has the kill moves, but as a heavy, is going to get murdered in a straight 1v1.

At worst, I would say this MU is even. But the new buffs to Zelda might push things in her favor, if only slightly.

 

[DrKatz]

MKLeo could go win a local with any character, any time. He’s #1 for a reason.

Pink Fresh winning a local? Cool. I mean, MU inexperience is definitely a factor here but I think that Byleth just does well against Wolf.

Can you link me to the tournament Zackray won with them?

Byleth is not as good as .

Sure, here’s the link: https://youtu.be/vugS23pslwE

Isn’t Eim one of Japan’s best Joker players too??

It wasn’t just Wolf though that Pink Fresh took down with Byleth though. He took out ZD’s Fox (a matchup many believe is bad for Byleth, which I’d agree), and some fairly good Palutena players too.

MKLeo places Byleth as significantly better than Corrin by the way. In his recent tier list/MU Spread. Just putting it out there.

 

[PK Gaming]

Woof, Joker's Down B gun nerfs were pretty significant. It's still good for preventing enemies from intercepting your landing, but my God can you no longer get away with chasing people with it. The hitbox is really narrow now. Other than that... he's pretty intact. His damage, confirms, neutral, etc is still great. The Arsene meter nerfs are noticeable, but adjusting to them is something you'll eventually do unconsciously with tons of play. Though I predict this will effect some of the high level matchups like Peach.

As for Byleth... Well at this point I don't think you can get away with saying the character is bad. They're pretty much mid-tier at the bare minimum, because while their mobility specs are bottom class, the sheer strength of some of their buttons (NAIR), Fair/Bair being amazing spacing aerials when spaced, damage and the ridiculous KO potential off a raw hit makes them a threat. Their recovery is deceptively good as well (despite their garbage aerial mobility) because the range on their Up B is massive. Overall, Byleth is an uneven and inconsistent character, but extremely dangerous.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Woof, Joker's Down B gun nerfs were pretty significant. It's still good for preventing enemies from intercepting your landing, but my God can you no longer get away with chasing people with it. The hitbox is really narrow now. Other than that... he's pretty intact. His damage, confirms, neutral, etc is still great. The Arsene meter nerfs are noticeable, but adjusting to them is something you'll eventually do unconsciously with tons of play. Though I predict this will effect some of the high level matchups like Peach.

As for Byleth... Well at this point I don't think you can get away with saying the character is bad. They're pretty much mid-tier at the bare minimum, because while their mobility specs are bottom class, the sheer strength of some of their buttons (NAIR), Fair/Bair being amazing spacing aerials when spaced, damage and the ridiculous KO potential off a raw hit makes them a threat. Their recovery is deceptively good as well (despite their garbage aerial mobility) because the range on their Up B is massive. Overall, Byleth is an uneven and inconsistent character, but extremely dangerous.

Joker is still very good of course. Its just the issue that his MU chart at the top-level took a noticable hit. Which is why MKLeo is now actullay serious about looking for a secondary

is just going to be super-rough now no question. It was considered likely one of his worst MU's before , but considering Pikachu can nearly erase a whole Arsene meter with one , good long combo loop I say it could be possibly midway between-1 and -2 now for Joker
are also likely slightly losing MU's for similar reasons. Other characters that have paticularly deadly advantage states or can deal big damage quickly are not quite losing, but a bit more troublesome and Joker mains may need to change up the way the play the MU . i.e

 

[Kiligar]

This game is terribly balanced. People may get upset already at that first statement, but if I brought a newcomer and said, half the characters in this game are competitively unviable, what impression does that give? Of course, previous smash games have set the bar real low, given smash was intended to be a party casual game originally and the devs didn’t care at all for competitive. But competitively this game simply is poorly balanced. We’ve had seven balance patches and seven characters that were unviable became viable, Ryu, Ken, Samus, Diddy Kong, Sheik, Mewtwo and Rosalina. By viable I mean escaping mid tier since mid tiers are unviable, only high tier and up have viability. Also for all you Mewtwo fans who dismiss Mewtwo’s plethora of buffs it’s getting ridiculous. Increased weight, smaller tail hurt box, stronger up smash, faster reflector, stronger neutral special, more damage on forward tilt and up tilt, bigger forward smash, stronger back throw etc. He’s at least high tier.

Anyway, at this rate, roughly one character made viable per patch, and with six confirmed patches left it means that if they continue to buff at this rate only six more characters will become viable. You may get many more solid mid tiers that used to be borderline low tier etc but not significant enough to make the characters competitively viable. If the balance team truly wants to balance smash they would have to buff at 5x the rate they are now. Perhaps the balance team will step up but I have reason to doubt it considering the poor balancing efforts of many previous patches. At this point I just hope the characters I like to use get the buffs they need.

 

[Firox]

This game is terribly balanced. People may get upset already at that first statement, but if I brought a newcomer and said, half the characters in this game are competitively unviable, what impression does that give? Of course, previous smash games have set the bar real low, given smash was intended to be a party casual game originally and the devs didn’t care at all for competitive. But competitively this game simply is poorly balanced. We’ve had seven balance patches and seven characters that were unviable became viable, Ryu, Ken, Samus, Diddy Kong, Sheik, Mewtwo and Rosalina. By viable I mean escaping mid tier since mid tiers are unviable, only high tier and up have viability. Also for all you Mewtwo fans who dismiss Mewtwo’s plethora of buffs it’s getting ridiculous. Increased weight, smaller tail hurt box, stronger up smash, faster reflector, stronger neutral special, more damage on forward tilt and up tilt, bigger forward smash, stronger back throw etc. He’s at least high tier.

Anyway, at this rate, roughly one character made viable per patch, and with six confirmed patches left it means that if they continue to buff at this rate only six more characters will become viable. You may get many more solid mid tiers that used to be borderline low tier etc but not significant enough to make the characters competitively viable. If the balance team truly wants to balance smash they would have to buff at 5x the rate they are now. Perhaps the balance team will step up but I have reason to doubt it considering the poor balancing efforts of many previous patches. At this point I just hope the characters I like to use get the buffs they need.

Well, I'll tell you this much, it would GREATLY help Pit/Dark Pit if the dev team could just get their freaking hitboxes to be legit. Have you seen the hitboxes on Fair and Nair? They don't even cover the tip of the swords. Meanwhile you've got characters like Snake and ROB with hitboxes you could drive a Mack truck through. One can only hope that Pit is among the few to finally get viability.

 

[Kiligar]

Yep, the hit boxes on Fair and Nair are terrible. People fall out of f smash all the time if they’re airborne. U smash still sometimes fails. Side special clanks ways too much, especially against joker dash attack. I can go on and on but Pit is far from the only one who suffers from inconsistent multi hits. Balance team should put on their reading glasses and make sure they’re sober when buffing.

 

[Deleted member]

I see a lot of tier lists with Corrin as a low tier, why is that?

 

[Thinkaman]

Forgive the rudeness, but it's always easy to tell who the young kids are who haven't played other video games. One has to wonder what they think a well-balanced, non-imaginary game looks like.

As for Corrin, it's really two things.

• Corrin is simply slow, and lost some of the questionably overtuned specials from Smash 4 that made up for it.
• Corrin isn't actually that bad (as evidenced by Cosmos's performance), but suffers low popularity for external reasons and due to the attractiveness of other disjointed characters. (Be it strong like Lucina/Roy/Chrom or novel like Simon/Shulk/Byleth)

 

[NuzTheMonkey]

True. Some acknowledge it and some are incapable of it.

What is the general opinion on Bowser as of now? Has it changed much? Just wondering, since I don’t see him nearly as much in tournaments (or I don’t know where to look).

 

[SwagGuy99]

I see a lot of tier lists with Corrin as a low tier, why is that?

is a bit of a weird character in Ultimate and there are several factors that contribute to the opinion that she's low tier.

From Smash 4 (where I would say she was a borderline top tier), she got a large amount of nerfs, more so than almost any other character ( and being among the few who were hit harder than she was with the nerf hammer). Here's a summary of her nerfs:

• Jab, f-smash and grab all have noticeably worse hitboxes.
• Corrin's dragon lunge (AKA Pin) is much worse, despite being able to be manually canceled. It has reduced distance, more endlag, less safety, less knockback, and has more lag when landing after cancelling.
• Corrin's counter has reduced multipliers, making it one of the worst counters in the game.
• Dragon Shot's projectile doesn't stun for as long, and has more startup lag.
• F-air has more startup lag.
• Jab, f-tilt, f-smash, and Dragon Shot all have shorter duration.
• The knockback on several moves was reduced to varying degrees.

There were other nerfs as well, and she did receive some minor buffs (especially in the earlier patches) but that wasn't really enough to make her much better.

The faster engine of Ultimate also makes her worse as well, as landing tippers on the moves that require it is now harder as well. She also doesn't really have good anti-zoning options or good options to stuff out approaches either and when most characters have a really good move to approach with ( f-air, n-air, laser, etc.) her lack of options of stuffing out approaches is more noticeable. Also, not to mention her own approach options (Dragon Shot and Pin) are much worse overall and she lacks the speed to be able to rely just on her aerials in this regard.

Finally, the fact that several characters were buffed to the point where their matchups against her are much easier is the last nail in the coffin for this character. and all have much more manageable matchups against her due to their own changes in combination with hers.

She's not a complete trash characters IMO, but she's not that great.

 

[meleebrawler]

This game is terribly balanced. People may get upset already at that first statement, but if I brought a newcomer and said, half the characters in this game are competitively unviable, what impression does that give? Of course, previous smash games have set the bar real low, given smash was intended to be a party casual game originally and the devs didn’t care at all for competitive. But competitively this game simply is poorly balanced. We’ve had seven balance patches and seven characters that were unviable became viable, Ryu, Ken, Samus, Diddy Kong, Sheik, Mewtwo and Rosalina. By viable I mean escaping mid tier since mid tiers are unviable, only high tier and up have viability. Also for all you Mewtwo fans who dismiss Mewtwo’s plethora of buffs it’s getting ridiculous. Increased weight, smaller tail hurt box, stronger up smash, faster reflector, stronger neutral special, more damage on forward tilt and up tilt, bigger forward smash, stronger back throw etc. He’s at least high tier.

Anyway, at this rate, roughly one character made viable per patch, and with six confirmed patches left it means that if they continue to buff at this rate only six more characters will become viable. You may get many more solid mid tiers that used to be borderline low tier etc but not significant enough to make the characters competitively viable. If the balance team truly wants to balance smash they would have to buff at 5x the rate they are now. Perhaps the balance team will step up but I have reason to doubt it considering the poor balancing efforts of many previous patches. At this point I just hope the characters I like to use get the buffs they need.

I'd argue the devs aren't really balancing for competitive play here either. Or at least not with the goal of shooting character viability up. That's a fool's errand which only ends with, at best, power creep where everyone ends up in more or less the same position as before, but matches are shorter. Like it or not, some characters are just inherently better and more consistent at 1v1s, and no amount of buffing or nerfing will change that short of the truly excessive. In a game like Smash that can be played in a huge variety of ways, "only" half the cast being viable in one of them is one of the best things you can hope for.

Devs have a vision for given characters and will only give buffs when some of their tools are performing below expectations (as defined by them), or nerfs when they're proving universally obnoxious for a wide variety of characters and players to deal with.

 

[SwagGuy99]

True. Some acknowledge it and some are incapable of it.

What is the general opinion on Bowser as of now? Has it changed much? Just wondering, since I don’t see him nearly as much in tournaments (or I don’t know where to look).

I think the lack of notable representation right now is partially due to the fact that LeoN has been in Australia (according to his Twitter at least). His results on OrionStats currently still have him sitting at 31st so he's not doing too bad even with the reduced representation from LeoN recently.

IMO, is fine as a character. He's hard to solo-main (it's possible as LeoN has shown, but and are incredibly frustrating MUs to work around) but he still has the results and the kit to back up being high tier for now. I do think that at some point could take over as the character who has fairly steady results, be a somewhat common secondary, and will make big upsets occasionally but might not always be in the spotlight.

However, I don't see him dropping off nearly as hard as I see some other characters dropping off currently. has wildly inconsistent results from Cosmos, with his placings at larger tournaments in the past few months ranging from 4th at Glitch 8 to 17th at Kongo Saga. I also see dropping off in the (distant) future, but we seem to be quite far away from that happening right now.

 

[Nate1080]

Considering the sheer number of characters in the game, half the roster being “viable” is honestly a quite a feat and not even a knock to this game. Especially in a Smash game, where traditionally only roughly 1/3 of a roster is agreed by the community to be “viable”.

Even when you don’t consider the number of characters in this game, half the roster being “viable” in a fighting game in general is damn good. Most fighting games wish they had that percentage of characters “viable”, especially at the top level.


You have to understand that not every character in a fighting game is going to be good. For them to get at least half of the characters in this game to be good is freaking amazing because it could’ve easily gone south in many ways, especially considering this is Smash...a series known for suspect balancing. Give them credit where credit is due.

 

[Thinkaman]

The first real batch of nerfed characters last summer mapped exactly to the 5 top characters on the averaged community tier list.

The last patch nerfed Joker, ZSS, and Palu, who were widely regarded within this thread and elsewhere as 3 of the top 4 characters. The 4th, Wario, was indirectly nerfed by the shield fixes--which itself was a top demand of the competitive community.

No directly buffed character has been in the top 25 on OrionStats--whereas the entire bottom 33 characters on Phase 1 have now recieved buffs. (Though the Miis, Ganon, and Villager changes could be described as favorable fixes.)

Anyone believing that Ultimate's balance patches aren't targeted towards the competitive community is living on Jupiter.

 

[TennisBall]

It is difficult to grasp where balancing is going. Nerfing was a mistake, is sitting in a corner crying himself to sleep while and roam around carelessly with their new, cool buffs, and I personally feel like they might have gone overboard with 's nerfhammer, even if he needed to be nerfed quickly before it got out of hand.

It's clear from the buffs to characters like ,, and that balance in this game is going to be more polarizing most of the time. That's simply a difficult truth that we're going to have to accept moving forwards unless that Nintendo changes their mind and we get a bomb of buffs for a patch.

You have to admit, they're really trying this time, and it's been more buffs than nerfs, which is really nice, and with 80 fighters, they haven't been doing an awful job per say.

It is a shame that Nintendo will never really cooperate with the competitive community....that would be nice.

 

[Thinkaman]

DDD was never directly nerfed, and was #31 on Orion Stats Phase 1--decidedly top half. (Though unlike other characters, almost every bugfix related to him worked against him rather than in his favor.)

Like Falco and Ganon, his usage and results have both dropped meaningfully over time. I wouldn't be opposed to DDD buffs at this point, but I don't think he'd make my top 5.

 

[|RK|]

DDD was never directly nerfed, and was #31 on Orion Stats Phase 1--decidedly top half. (Though unlike other characters, almost every bugfix related to him worked against him rather than in his favor.)

Like Falco and Ganon, his usage and results have both dropped meaningfully over time. I wouldn't be opposed to DDD buffs at this point, but I don't think he'd make my top 5.

I'd consider Gordo nerfs to be direct, no?

 

[The_Bookworm]

DDD was never directly nerfed, and was #31 on Orion Stats Phase 1--decidedly top half. (Though unlike other characters, almost every bugfix related to him worked against him rather than in his favor.)

Like Falco and Ganon, his usage and results have both dropped meaningfully over time. I wouldn't be opposed to DDD buffs at this point, but I don't think he'd make my top 5.

I'd consider Gordo nerfs to be direct, no?

The nerfs are technically direct. However, the Gordo hitbox size change isn't really that impactful (it is mostly a nerf to online Dedede).

The more impactful changes is when his shieldbreaking capabilities did take a blow at 3.0, with Gordos and forward smash having less impact on shield.
It is, however, nothing really tier changing, and it is again mostly a nerf to online Dedede.

Dedede's drop in popularity and viewpoints is mostly coming down to Dedede's metagame mostly stagnating, with other lower and mid tiered characters getting better results over time, or receiving buffs that puts them in a better position.

While I don't think Dedede is in a terrible position, as he does possess a few very notable results outside of the local level (such as Peli's 9th at Valhalla III), he can certainty get some help from updates (just as Thinkaman says).
However, the developers need to plan the buffs carefully if they don't want to make the character a bigger online menace than he already is.

Then again, and got buffed, so at this point, the devs are probably going to buff him at some point regardless of online notoriety.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

I see a lot of tier lists with Corrin as a low tier, why is that?

Unpopular Opinion: Well the only true low tier is Mac, but that's a different can of worms. lol

To answer your question, while many can agree that Corrin functions decent enough, it's mainly that they lack an interesting niche and/or explosive factor that many other off-meta characters possess.

Interesting, varied grab game.
Quick moves with many early ways to kill off of reads and combos.
Amazing zoning via unique projectiles.
Early kill confirms through buries.
Huge focus on walling and strong kill options when spaced.
Deadly combos through command inputs and interesting movement due to their auto-correct feature.

You get the idea.

Best Corrin has going here is B-Air spacing and hard cheese off of F-Smash, Dragon Fang Shot, and Pin.

 

[meleebrawler]

It is difficult to grasp where balancing is going. Nerfing was a mistake, is sitting in a corner crying himself to sleep while and roam around carelessly with their new, cool buffs, and I personally feel like they might have gone overboard with 's nerfhammer, even if he needed to be nerfed quickly before it got out of hand.

It's clear from the buffs to characters like ,, and that balance in this game is going to be more polarizing most of the time. That's simply a difficult truth that we're going to have to accept moving forwards unless that Nintendo changes their mind and we get a bomb of buffs for a patch.

You have to admit, they're really trying this time, and it's been more buffs than nerfs, which is really nice, and with 80 fighters, they haven't been doing an awful job per say.

It is a shame that Nintendo will never really cooperate with the competitive community....that would be nice.

How can Nintendo trust the community to be fully impartial and not just out to protect their mains?

 

[Nah]

MKLeo places Byleth as significantly better than Corrin by the way. In his recent tier list/MU Spread. Just putting it out there.

When they said that Byleth is not as good as Corrin, they meant Smash 4 Corrin. Byleth is not as good as Smash 4 Corrin, but is better than Smash Ultimate Corrin.

 

[Thinkaman]

I'd consider Gordo nerfs to be direct, no?

I don't really consider anything in 2.0.0 to be a "direct" buff or nerf. The patch was basically a cast-wide pass fixing janky stuff that stood out right after launch.

The Gordo body hitbox was simply incorrect before, that half of it is simple. The tricky part is the spikes--Gordo spikes animate in-and-out, but attaching hitboxes to those bones rather than the body would be janky and make the move's hit behavior super random. The original hitboxes more closely matched the spike's extended position--hitting as if all the spikes were extended all the time. This was sort of weird. The new hitboxes are closer to the median of the Spike's modulation, which looks and feels more correct.

Then again, and got buffed, so at this point, the devs are probably going to buff him at some point regardless of online notoriety.

This is the biggest uncertainty, the biggest "news story". Before this patch, my expectation was that buffs for both these characters would be a good thing, but would never happen. (Due to casual and online dominance.) But clearly they are willing to focus on the center of the bullseye a little more than we thought.

The real question left is if they will touch . Ganon is THE poster child of disproportionate online and less-than-top-level results.

The thing is, you don't have to go that far down from the top of the mountain to find a place where Ganon is performing like a solid character. Sakurai mentioned how early on Ganon was the #1 played character in Elite Smash, and his lifetime VOD win rate is currently 51.9%, 18th best in the cast! You would be unwise to put too much stock in these specific statistics; my point is just to showcase that there is a lot going on with Ganon that happens just below the surface of our normal PGR and OrionStats metrics.

(I believe Ganon is a weaker character, and that these sort of measures are being inflated by Ganon being an extremely popular sandbagging secondary of the most skilled players--a cursory delve into the SmashWorld VOD data seems to back this up.)

 

[Das Koopa]

This game is terribly balanced. People may get upset already at that first statement, but if I brought a newcomer and said, half the characters in this game are competitively unviable, what impression does that give? Of course, previous smash games have set the bar real low, given smash was intended to be a party casual game originally and the devs didn’t care at all for competitive. But competitively this game simply is poorly balanced. We’ve had seven balance patches and seven characters that were unviable became viable, Ryu, Ken, Samus, Diddy Kong, Sheik, Mewtwo and Rosalina. By viable I mean escaping mid tier since mid tiers are unviable, only high tier and up have viability. Also for all you Mewtwo fans who dismiss Mewtwo’s plethora of buffs it’s getting ridiculous. Increased weight, smaller tail hurt box, stronger up smash, faster reflector, stronger neutral special, more damage on forward tilt and up tilt, bigger forward smash, stronger back throw etc. He’s at least high tier.

Anyway, at this rate, roughly one character made viable per patch, and with six confirmed patches left it means that if they continue to buff at this rate only six more characters will become viable. You may get many more solid mid tiers that used to be borderline low tier etc but not significant enough to make the characters competitively viable. If the balance team truly wants to balance smash they would have to buff at 5x the rate they are now. Perhaps the balance team will step up but I have reason to doubt it considering the poor balancing efforts of many previous patches. At this point I just hope the characters I like to use get the buffs they need.

declaring mid-tiers as nonviable but gradually increasing the quantity of high tiers until you have to actually delineate high tier as a tier is weird logic to me.

i don't see how pre-patch Samus was unviable mid-tier when that iteration of the character (while not top tier) had great results the entire year. Results IMO are not an end-all, be-all, but it's definitely worth noting when a character has three mains from different continents and they all apparently do well (Joker, quiK, YB as your prime examples)

i actually agree with you re: mewtwo so I find it really odd that you're arguing half the cast isn't viable while at the same time listing characters like Ryu & Mewtwo who are definitely in the "to be developed" column of meta progression.

 

[TennisBall]

How can Nintendo trust the community to be fully impartial and not just out to protect their mains?

They can't, which is why in a way, if they're really using Orionstats and other sources it's honestly kind of genius.

Again, it's not like 's nerfs directly made him into Bottom 3, it just feels like the game has it out for him. Model fixes I can understand, but the indirect nerfs are starting to catch up with him, especially with the shield buffs.

I will admit, I am however going to be extremely sad if keeps getting left out. It's starting to become pathetic how outclassed he's becoming. Power creep is going to be a factor considering how many characters there are, but maybe, just maybe, he'll get the buffs he deserves.

 

[SwagGuy99]

I don't really know who's going to be buffed at this point. Prior to patch 6.0.0, I would have said that I doubt or would get any significant buffs in the patches but there are a few things that have me thinking it's possible, despite how good they are online (which makes them less likely to receive buffs).

• They buffed , a character who has received no notable changes in the patches since got his up-smash buffed in July 2015. Not only were his buffs significant, but they make him a much better character IMO, even it he still isn't great.
• went from a despised character in Smash 4 to being nerfed into low or bottom tier, before being buffed all the way up to high mid/low high tier.
• Other characters who are commonly seen as 'OP' online got buffed like and .
• and got similar treatment to . However, their buffs have been more consistent throughout the patches and those buffs have at least helped 's representation at tournaments quite a bit.

We'll just have to see what happens. I would never have thought they would have buffed or to the extent that they did, but they did and that does give me some hope that other characters who aren't good or have issues they need to be fixed like and won't be ignored as time goes on. However, I also didn't expect them to buff or either in this last patch so maybe they'll just keep buffing the characters that don't need it instead.

 

[Thinkaman]

Simply having more buffs than nerfs or otherwise increasing the mean strength in the game is not automatically powercreep. For it to be creep, it has to diverge rather than converge.

Smash patches are rather conservative, and haven't had a single case of buffed characters leapfrogging high-tiers into a new echelon of power.

The worst they did was the half-ham-fisted d-throw combos they gave Bowser/DK/Charizard/Robin in 4; I'm glad they walked these back and are being more measured, this time.


With regard to "who do we expect to get buffed", beyond the obvious (people who got buffed 2-3 patches ago and are ready for round 2) and the Ganon question, I think Falco and DDD are solid possibilities. Both did quite well upon release, but have fallen off hard. DK followed a similar but more rapid trajectory, and was obviously touched up.

Mewtwo is a weird case. On a theory level, and from playing good Mewtwos, the character is obviously not bad. But, where are the results? Where is the usage? Lifetime VOD win-rate is a pretty terrible statistic to fixate on (on multiple levels), but that he's the lowest by a massive margin is telling of something.


And yeah, I'd like to see Pit nair fixed. The rest of Pit's hitboxes are honestly fine size-wise. (Maybe fair is a bit conservative; it could be bigger and no one would complain.) It really is just nair that is incorrect, and should be sized comparably to Simon's.

 

[AxelVDP]

It is a shame that Nintendo will never really cooperate with the competitive community....that would be nice.

They already kind of do though, several japanese top players (of which I only remember Earth and aMSa on the top of my head) helped with Ultimate development.
If you mean it in a broader sense (ie listening to the actual community via some form of feedback): thank God they do not do this lol
I mean no offense to anyone in this thread (I'd even include myself in the list), but if we were to pick people at random from the posters here, chances are you'd pick people who do not know anything about actually balancing things and that would probably do more harm than good. If you think otherwise I'd recommend a little dose of Humility, and try pondering that again. (yes, there are several users here who would probably do actually good, even amongst the posters of this very same page for instance, they are a minority though)
and this is without considering the other myriads of problem that come with working with unverified community members, such as blatant characters bias, the possibility of being associated with dubious individuals (I don't think it would do much good to Nintendo's image if they were found out to work alongside individuals such as Ally for example, sorry for bringing his name into the discussion) and so on

 

[Thinkaman]

I mean no offense to anyone in this thread (I'd even include myself in the list), but if we were to pick people at random from the posters here, chances are you'd pick people who do not know anything about actually balancing things and that would probably do more harm than good.

I had a post recently going over everything I got "right" in BBrawl, claiming to claim a finger close to the pulse of things.

Yet I still thought G&W was completely awful at the start of Ultimate. I can give excuses as to why I thought that, but those are just that, excuses. Point being, it has to be a slow process with broad perspectives.

Balance work is unique in that it is iteratively super-easy but difficult in aggregate due to the sheer volume, low-confidence intervals, and dynamic relationships of everything. Anyone can make 1 good balance-change, but making 100 is way more than 100 times harder.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Before 7.0.0 I was thinking Nintendo's strategies on who got buffs depeding on characters that not popular either both in tournament play AND online play. not getting results in either field. Which is goes along with characters like ot buffs thought the patch history.

But then 7.0.0 came and characters that were already popular and pretty successful online also got signifigantly buffed, characters whos kits were much more annoying/dangerous in online lag environments

 

[Firox]

I'd argue the devs aren't really balancing for competitive play here either. Or at least not with the goal of shooting character viability up. That's a fool's errand which only ends with, at best, power creep where everyone ends up in more or less the same position as before, but matches are shorter. Like it or not, some characters are just inherently better and more consistent at 1v1s, and no amount of buffing or nerfing will change that short of the truly excessive. In a game like Smash that can be played in a huge variety of ways, "only" half the cast being viable in one of them is one of the best things you can hope for.

Devs have a vision for given characters and will only give buffs when some of their tools are performing below expectations (as defined by them), or nerfs when they're proving universally obnoxious for a wide variety of characters and players to deal with.

Not only do I agree with this, but two more things:

A) An 80ish character roster with at least half of them viable for competitive 1v1 is nothing short of miraculous. Overall, the game is actually incredibly well balanced and I've had my butt kicked by pretty much every character in the game at least once regardless of tier placement. If you're good enough, pretty much any character can do some serious damage. It's important not to confine ourselves to thinking that the pros are all there is with respect to character viability. There are plenty of people out there that never go to tournaments or can't afford to travel that are still god-level with characters you wouldn't think could be god-level.

B) While some characters legitimately could use some buffs, it's important to note that the dev team doesn't solely balance characters for 1v1. People complain that most heavies suck in 1v1 but forget the fact that they are absolutely godly in multi-player brawls or 2v2's. Conversely, you have characters that are great at dueling 1v1 (like Shiek, Joker or ZSS), but are actually on the sucky side when it comes to brawls where their combos and kill confirms get interrupted by the chaos. In short, characters are like tools. You need the right one for the job. Smash has a very diverse number of modes and gameplay, hence the devs aren't solely interested in 1v1 tournament results.

And yeah, I'd like to see Pit nair fixed. The rest of Pit's hitboxes are honestly fine size-wise. (Maybe fair is a bit conservative; it could be bigger and no one would complain.) It really is just nair that is incorrect, and should be sized comparably to Simon's.

Yeah, no, as someone who actually plays Dark Pit, Fair is a joke. If you don't believe me, check out https://ultimateframedata.com/dark_pit.php. Nair is worse, for sure, but Fair is noticeably bad compared to other disjoints. Against pretty much any other swordie's Fair, it will trade at best and straight-up lose at worst despite the fact that the blades are literally thrown out in front of him.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

People complain that most heavies suck in 1v1 but forget the fact that they are absolutely godly in multi-player brawls or 2v2's.

I never flowed with that idea due to the chaotic results that free-for-alls matches can produce. It comes off more as a "right place at the right time" situation rather than just being naturally being dominant in them which could be said about any character and arch-type.

Can't speak for 2v2's, though I imagine a similar idea applies...

 

[Lacrimosa]

Before 7.0.0 I was thinking Nintendo's strategies on who got buffs depeding on characters that not popular either both in tournament play AND online play. not getting results in either field. Which is goes along with characters like ot buffs thought the patch history.

But then 7.0.0 came and characters that were already popular and pretty successful online also got signifigantly buffed, characters whos kits were much more annoying/dangerous in online lag environments

Can we have a list of how popular certain characters are?
Like, I don't see DK and K.Rool being in the same league as Sheik, yet you put them together.

And the very last sentence...I dare say that characters that require maintenance are harder to play Online than Offline. g. Like, may be a threat offline but the Pikmin management isn't made for laggy environments, the same goes for and Luma. Or characters that require precise combo-games and item-management or other stuff . Or characters that require some inputs ().
This btw. also includes Zelda because the timing and spacing of her Phantom can be off in a laggy environment. Seriously, this move is useless against any laggy opponent.


These are just some ideas that I can't really prove but I dare say these characters are "harder" to play online than offline.
On the other hand, characters that have low-commitment projectiles are good in a laggy environment (). Or characters that have an super easy combo-game ( ). Or characters that can abuse super-armor or other "gimmicks" such as intangibility ().

I don't really see Zelda or Cloud in any of these categories

Again, if you have numbers to back up your claims, then I would be happy to see these. However, if there are no numbers involved then I can also make a list of characters that I think are hard to play offline based of some simple categories. Are these assumptions correct? Don't know, but I know what characters can and can't do (and I can assure you, Zelda in lag is super difficult to play because her downB is a non-factor).
Like, I may have mentioned Palutena twice here but there is no mean to actually verify my claims or at least none that I'm aware of. And yes, Palu is a difficult MU for my char, I don't think she's the worst and I didn't mention at all.

I hope my point came across that making a list of "harder" and "easier" to play characters in a laggy environment is ultimately subjective.
And yes, Sakurai released roughly one year ago a stat that showed that Cloud is the most popular character Online but basing this off of VODs doesn't seem like a good idea.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

I wouldn’t not be surprised if Sakurai and team base balance changes mostly off internal data rather than external 3rd parties. As nice as it would be a imagine they use wonderful resources such as Orionrank to base balance changes on being an unvetted third party source of data makes me doubt how much they really look at that kind of stuff.

This isn’t to say they just look at online data alone, Sakurai nor this development team are fools they particularly do show they care about community feedback more than they did in the past. Which is a general trend competitive games are slowly shifting towards. You think developers don’t listen to what players want now, if only you’d seen some developer interactions with their player based regarding issues years ago, those were fun days.

But regarding my point based off whatever means of gather data they use to determine balance changes which is likely a mix of internal data and community input they are at the very least being considerate of the competitive community. Balance changes aren’t for causal players, if Cloud’s up smash comes out three frames faster is not going to have any impact for the players that who throw 20 Pokéballs at each other on Wuhu island, that’s purely a change that affects competitive play.

There is also the fact at determine what the developers consider competitive play. Seeing how they promoted Elite Smash as being an exclusive club for the best of the best I wouldn’t be surprised if they considered Elite Smash as “competitive” (despite the fact most of the competitive tournament going/following scene, like this thread wouldn’t consider elite smash competitive). Sure G&W just up b’s once you look at him wrong and it’s quite obnoxious but is that what the devs are seeing and do they see that as an issue or something G&W needs to not have his viability hit hard? Questions like that need to be answered when we try to see who will get changes and who won’t.

Balance is hard! We tend to forget Nintendo is still really new at this whole, “online post game support, wow people play our games in competitive high skill matches all around the world in there own established scene we should support this!” thing. Other developers and games that have had long standing competitive scenes as well have had much more developer support and experience with this sort of thing and even then then still make plenty of mistakes (See Leroy in tekken 7). I have a lot in this game I’d think needs to be changed to better “balance” it but truth be told I think Nintendo is doing not a half bad job at it so far, room for improvement for sure but they seem to be making a genuine effort at getting it right.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Tier list average done from 35 of the 50 PGR members. The main thing that surprised me is being higher than , and considering that a lot of the top level lists always have them higher than Palutena, so I'm confused about that one.

 

[Firox]

I never flowed with that idea due to the chaotic results that free-for-alls matches can produce. It comes off more as a "right place at the right time" situation rather than just being naturally being dominant in them which could be said about any character and arch-type.

Can't speak for 2v2's, though I imagine a similar idea applies...

While I get what you're saying, heavies have a huge advantage with raw kill power. Granted, FFA's have a lot of factors to consider (ie. items on/off, smash meter, players ganging up, stock vs time) but generally speaking, a good Bowser has a DRASTICALLY higher chance of winning over someone like Shiek who struggles for kills while Bowser can close out stocks with every Bair, Up Smash or Side B. Again, I could see someone arguing the subject nature of my point, but the fact remains that when you balance a fighter, you can't have speed, weight, reach AND kill power all in the same package without some kind of drawback. If nothing else, I think that's why counterpicking and having secondaries will become an increasingly crucial role in the future of the meta.

 

[ARISTOS]

I had a post recently going over everything I got "right" in BBrawl, claiming to claim a finger close to the pulse of things.

Yet I still thought G&W was completely awful at the start of Ultimate. I can give excuses as to why I thought that, but those are just that, excuses. Point being, it has to be a slow process with broad perspectives.

Balance work is unique in that it is iteratively super-easy but difficult in aggregate due to the sheer volume, low-confidence intervals, and dynamic relationships of everything. Anyone can make 1 good balance-change, but making 100 is way more than 100 times harder.

The easiest way to look at this is to look at the utterly absurd changes the creators of Smash fangames often make. Look at PM 3.0 - Mewtwo/MK were notorious for example, but even stuff like PK Fire activating on shield points to how off the boil fans can be when balancing games.

As far as balance is concerned, I see the team as having a set idea of how characters are supposed to play out and make adjustments to meet that mold. You're not going to see Kirby airspeed changes outside a massive shift in design, but his safety on shield and his ability to convert are definitely places where they may make changes.

As far as is concerned, the main issue I see is his defense legit being incredibly awful, bordering on bottom 10 in the game. He gets juggled/AD trapped very hard, he has a tough time escaping from ledge, and you've already heard about the hurtbox stuff. This all compounds and snowballs pretty terribly versus top tiers who have slightly lesser offensive output but can more successfully play the long game since they don't get trapped as hard.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

The easiest way to look at this is to look at the utterly absurd changes the creators of Smash fangames often make. Look at PM 3.0 - Mewtwo/MK were notorious for example, but even stuff like PK Fire activating on shield points to how off the boil fans can be when balancing games.

As far as balance is concerned, I see the team as having a set idea of how characters are supposed to play out and make adjustments to meet that mold. You're not going to see Kirby airspeed changes outside a massive shift in design, but his safety on shield and his ability to convert are definitely places where they may make changes.

As far as is concerned, the main issue I see is his defense legit being incredibly awful, bordering on bottom 10 in the game. He gets juggled/AD trapped very hard, he has a tough time escaping from ledge, and you've already heard about the hurtbox stuff. This all compounds and snowballs pretty terribly versus top tiers who have slightly lesser offensive output but can more successfully play the long game since they don't get trapped as hard.

One major addition was losing his nutty Smash 4 airdodge. It was undoubtedly the best airdodge in the game. Intangibility started from frame 2-24 and active for only 28 frames(the lowest amount in the game) . Plus being floaty and that he phazed out during it made trying to catch him hard.

Seeing Mewtwo in Ultimate now, It can not be overstated how much that airdodge also helped with a lot of the issues with juggling and getting ledgetrapped you brought up