Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Rocketjay8]

And the heads keep rolling. Honestly how hard is it not to be a creep to kids?

Actually sort of on that note, how do you think Palutena’s meta will be affected now that her number one player is gone? Personally I think she’ll experience a situation similar to snake and slowly but surely move down the tier list. Obviously there are many more high profile Palutena players than snake but none near the level of N***o.

Probably not as bad as Snake because Palutena is significantly easier to play. So much so that many use her as secondaries. Meanwhile, Snake requires a lot of effort and concentration to use for a ton of matches.

Oh well, it's for the best.

 

[Kokiden]

So are any of the characters that received buffs in the latest patch anywhere close to being viable now as a solo main? It's still a no for my main, so I'm just curious if any other characters got a significant boost enough that now they are.

Impressions on how Min Min would perform competitively? I think once you figure her out, she could be easy to overcome if your character is fast and has strong aerials.

 

[Alicorn]

How good is Incinerator the patch update has been really generous to him.

 

[Nemesis561]

How good is Incinerator the patch update has been really generous to him.

The buffs dont change his weaknesses, they just boost his strengths. Obviously he's a better character now, and he can be extremely scary to fight against with so many kill options (3 legit kill throws!), but his core issues will still hold him back. Correct me if I'm wrong please, but I believe his startup frames on grab were buffed? If thats the case thats a really big deal for a grappler character

 

[Thinkaman]

Incineroar's changes are such that his strengths (throws, side-b, revenge) apply more generally to more matchups. His playstyle, options, and flowchart have changed the least of any buffed characters, but he's considerably better across all matchups.

WFT and maybe Falco are the characters most likely to have snuck into solo-main high tier, to answer that question. No opinion on Ike.

I think Incineroar is one of the most underplayed/underrepresented characters, and that Revenge usage is particular is underoptimized in his competitive development. I have trouble imagining him below "mid tier", unless dynamics from the other 17 buffed characters and Min Min really end up penalizing him in specific ways. He's very well designed, which is evidenced with how he is the slowest character in the game yet manages to make the top 10 in matchup consistency. I would not discourage anyone from picking up or continuing to use the character.

But I'm telling you guys:

• WFT was already good
• WFT got very generous buffs
• WFT is, according to my data, suggested to be the character with the most consistent matchups in the game; there's no "counterpick"

For contrast, Ike and Falco have been two of the absolute least consistent characters, Belmont levels of matchup skew. Now, I expect the well-targetted buffs to change that--but how much? Hard to say. Whereas WFT is already on the runway ready to take off.

 

[Nemesis561]

Incineroar's changes are such that his strengths (throws, side-b, revenge) apply more generally to more matchups. His playstyle, options, and flowchart have changed the least of any buffed characters, but he's considerably better across all matchups.

WFT and maybe Falco are the characters most likely to have snuck into solo-main high tier, to answer that question. No opinion on Ike.

I think Incineroar is one of the most underplayed/underrepresented characters, and that Revenge usage is particular is underoptimized in his competitive development. I have trouble imagining him below "mid tier", unless dynamics from the other 17 buffed characters and Min Min really end up penalizing him in specific ways. He's very well designed, which is evidenced with how he is the slowest character in the game yet manages to make the top 10 in matchup consistency. I would not discourage anyone from picking up or continuing to use the character.

But I'm telling you guys:

• WFT was already good
• WFT got very generous buffs
• WFT is, according to my data, suggested to be the character with the most consistent matchups in the game; there's no "counterpick"

For contrast, Ike and Falco have been two of the absolute least consistent characters, Belmont levels of matchup skew. Now, I expect the well-targetted buffs to change that--but how much? Hard to say. Whereas WFT is already on the runway ready to take off.

Wii fit trainer really did not need buffs as she was already a solid character, probably a high tier imo who is just pretty underrepresented. With the buffs she received, I think she's definitely a viable solo main. It makes me wonder how they decide who needs buffs/nerfs, are they looking at tournament results or usage numbers on wifi? There's definitely other characters that deserved buffs before WFT, but maybe they plan on doing that in future patches

 

[Thinkaman]

Wii fit trainer really did not need buffs as she was already a solid character, probably a high tier imo who is just pretty underrepresented. With the buffs she received, I think she's definitely a viable solo main. It makes me wonder how they decide who needs buffs/nerfs, are they looking at tournament results or usage numbers on wifi? There's definitely other characters that deserved buffs before WFT, but maybe they plan on doing that in future patches

I posted this earlier:

As you can see, the buffed characters are very tightly in line with competitive data. It becomes even tighter when you take into account known trends like "not changing characters two patches in a row." I pointed out that a model comprised of these two datasets would have "predicted" the characters buffed with an accuracy of 91%.

WFT is that one buffed character it wouldn't have predicted, but you can see she isn't far off from the cluster. It's entirely possible that both these data sets overrepresent WFT for any number of reasons, just like we are confident they do for Falcon. Alternatively, it's possible that the data the balance team has underrepresents WFT.

Frankly, look how different these two data sets are to each other. It's a bit crazy that for ~20 characters their data is not more different from ours than it is.

 

[NotLiquid]

Just here to say since the conversation came up on the last page that Megawatt really shouldn't be slept on as a neutral option, especially against projectile camping play even with a character like Pikachu. Ramram is pretty unreliable in dealing with TJolt spam and I largely think the MW has a lot of value for grounded coverage. Slowness isn't a problem when you're able to act out of it (jump a whole lot more, guys) and are granted far more active frames, and also deadlier ledgetrapping. The NAir also has the least amount of lag and least amount of minus frames on shield (though supposedly there's some wonky stuff going on that it's plus in some situations?).

I haven't found much use out of Double Dragon outside of edgeguarding myself, but I think the big thing people need to come to terms with ARMS swapping as a mechanic isn't necessarily as simple of an answer as being MU dictated, it more intrinsically just alters the flow of battle, mostly because the utility of these attacks only change at a micro level. It's less Pokémon Trainer and more Shulk; "ah they've switched to the Megawatt, well landing just got a little more risky".

 

[The_Bookworm]

• WFT is, according to my data, suggested to be the character with the most consistent matchups in the game; there's no "counterpick"

True. I don't think WFT has any matchups that she hard loses too, and she can win any matchup.
However, judging from experience playing against and watching good WFT footage, I don't think she really dominates any matchup either.

Every matchup playing as her feels winnable, but every matchup against her also feels winnable.

I think the big thing people need to come to terms with ARMS swapping as a mechanic isn't necessarily as simple of an answer as being MU dictated, it more intrinsically just alters the flow of battle, mostly because the utility of these attacks only change at a micro level. It's less Pokémon Trainer and more Shulk; "ah they've switched to the Megawatt, well landing just got a little more risky".

I do agree that arm swapping is more situation based rather than matchup based.
Switching an arm doesn't change a matchup in any specific way, as you are supposed to use one depending on what is going on during the match. It also helps that arm swapping is also much more instant than Monado Arts and especially Pokemon Change.

 

[SwagGuy99]

So are any of the characters that received buffs in the latest patch anywhere close to being viable now as a solo main? It's still a no for my main, so I'm just curious if any other characters got a significant boost enough that now they are.

Impressions on how Min Min would perform competitively? I think once you figure her out, she could be easy to overcome if your character is fast and has strong aerials.

for sure. IMO he may already have been solo-mainable since I don't really think he had any extremely terrible matchups before outside of and maybe and , but I feel like this patch helps him, even in those matchups. Making d-tilt a better combo starter gives him a combo starter that is easier to hit on smaller characters than up-tilt and up-smash connecting better on smaller characters and having a bigger hitbox on the second hit gives him better options to kill smaller characters too. His combo game being better also helps him in some matchups where his punish game was maybe outclassed slightly by his opponent.

In terms of how his matchups changed, I think the changes he was given may improve his matchup spread overall, even against some characters who were buffed.

Some Palutena and Falco players previously believed the matchup to be even for Falco due to his strong punish game and ability to keep Palutena in disadvantage with MuteAce in particular saying Palutena actually lost to Falco in his last matchup chart if I'm remembering correctly. I think this matchup has gotten better for Falco, and he might actually win now, which is very much something to take note of.

His matchup against I think has improved as well, even though I still think Falco loses slightly. I think making grounded side-b a faster option gives him a way to mix up his approach against Luigi and again, allowing up-smash to connect better gives him more reliable ways to kill against Luigi that I think he largely lacked before outside of edgeguards and up-air at higher percents.

and are all probably losing matchups still (maybe Ness isn't?), but I do think d-tilt being a more viable combo starter (that he can use as opposed to up-tilt which has trouble connecting both hits/hitting smaller characters) as well as improving the second hitbox of up-smash to let it connect against smaller characters easier helps to some degree.

There is one matchup that I do think got noticeably worse for him in this patch, that being . Her combo game has improved and based on some early clips I've seen of her, she's gained the ability to combo into some kill moves on heavyweights and fast fallers, and Falco just so happens to be a fast faller. I don't know how practical all of these combos are, but Bayo mains have been trying to make their (previously pretty bad) character work for a year and a half and if they are still determined to do so, I'm guessing they'll find ways to make her work reliably with her new buffs.

Also, I think it's worth noting that Falco already had some decent matchups against relevant characters that probably are only going to get better from here.

He already did well against a lot of characters due to his solid anti zoning tools like and large bodied characters with poor disadvantages like . These matchups are only going to improve from here on out.

He still loses some matchups but it's less than before, and he doesn't lose any of them by a large enough margin that there's no way a Falco player could win. He still destroys several mid and low tiers ( are some) and does well against several relevant top tiers (). IMO this character is one that we should be keeping an eye on once offline tournaments start again, especially if a player like LarryLurr or Juice start playing this character heavily again as opposed to their secondaries.

 

[StrangeKitten]

How good is Incinerator the patch update has been really generous to him.

He's still big and slow, with no projectile. Approaching and disadvantage will be just as rough as ever, though Revenge buffs will help a little in the disadvantage department. Recovery's still not as good as you'd like it to be, too; though it is at least a step up from awful recoveries such as Mac, Ganon, DK, etc.

Incineroar may be strong enough to edge his way into lower mid now, but I doubt he'll be higher than that. The weaknesses are very glaring, and still present.

 

[Thinkaman]

He's still big and slow, with no projectile. Approaching and disadvantage will be just as rough as ever, though Revenge buffs will help a little in the disadvantage department. Recovery's still not as good as you'd like it to be, too; though it is at least a step up from awful recoveries such as Mac, Ganon, DK, etc.

Incineroar may be strong enough to edge his way into lower mid now, but I doubt he'll be higher than that. The weaknesses are very glaring, and still present.

I don't think weaknesses mean anything except in the context of creating polarized bad matchups.

Incineroar's lifetime figures on smash.gg have him with no matchup win-rate under 40%. That's really consistent, on par or better than many top-tiers; Peach vs. Lucina is 38%, ROB has multiple in the 30s.

When we say "Oh, the shotos have such big weaknesses though", it's relevant because we can directly point to the many matchups that Ken and Ryu do worse-than-a-usual-bad-matchup in as a result of those properties. (With the data to back this up--while they do fine or even impressive against many characters, they have terrible records against huge hitboxes, Olimar, and Daisy/Peach among others)

Everyone has weaknesses. Joker has weaknesses. Pikachu has weaknesses. WFT, who we speculate is the "most consistent" character in the game, has glaring weaknesses--they just manifest into problem matchups less than any other character for whatever reasons.

Speed has traditionally been one of the most polarizing types of weaknesses, for sure, probably only surpassed by "over-reliance on projectiles" or "having PK Thunder as a recovery", or "Nana." Slow moving characters do make up most of the more polarized characters, alongside Ness/Lucas/ICs. But Incineroar, and surprisingly Robin, don't seem to exhibit this sort of behavior.

The Belmonts, on the other hand, are totally screwed up.

 

[Xfire]

I'm a bit curious about this matchup consistency/inconsistency that was mentioned a few pages back about smash.gg and right now. Does matchup consistency mean that a character's perceived MU is just as expected from what's told from the statistics, or a lack of outliers (like Ike having a major losing MU against 1 character, but great against others)?

Edit: just as I was asking this question, the later post slightly answered my question

 

[StrangeKitten]

Snip

I guess that makes sense. I know I've certainly felt like Incin's slowness holds him back at times. I can definitely see where he'd be better than the Shotos vs the characters you mentioned. Incin has enough range, oos options, Dariat intangibility, and Revenge to keep up with bigger hitbox characters better than Shotos. Those things all help with Peach/Daisy, too. And I actually like fighting Olimar as Incin - might even be a winning matchup. Olimar's gameplan revolves around tossing Pikmin at you, and when he does, that's when you spam Revenge for a quick stack of boosts, then KO in a couple hits because Olimar is light. Though, I don't know how the matchup feels from the Olimar side of things, so maybe I'm off-base here.

Probably worth pointing out that Shotos' recovery is around on par with Incin's, maybe a little better but not by too much. And Belmonts have a far worse recovery

 

[Arthur97]

Yeah, while I may get what some of them mean when they say it, it does kind of bug me how people keep saying that their weaknesses weren't really addressed. It doesn't seem they plan to. They seem more intent on making their strengths better, and while that may not always be a recipe for competitive success, it's something I can get behind so long as they aren't overly reliant on a single move like the hayday of Ike's nair which they seemed to at least try to correct even if to limited success. Every fighter should have weaknesses. Who wants to play a game full of all arounders?

Again, I can kind of get what at least some people may be getting at, but I would rather see them tweaked to work as they were intended rather than making them generically good.

Edit: And that's not to say that I'm opposed entirely to them beefing up some fighters in areas they don't excel at, so long as they are still maintaining weaknesses.

 

[Thinkaman]

I'm a bit curious about this matchup consistency/inconsistency that was mentioned a few pages back about smash.gg and right now. Does matchup consistency mean that a character's perceived MU is just as expected from what's told from the statistics, or a lack of outliers (like Ike having a major losing MU against 1 character, but great against others)?

Edit: just as I was asking this question, the later post slightly answered my question

I computed those numbers as "difference from the expected standard deviation for that character's sample size."

Aka, Joker has a massive sample size of over 67,600 registered games. Based on the entire data set of all character and its distribution, we would expect that the smaller-but-still-very-large pool of just Joker matches would have a nominal stdev of 2.74%. We measure it as 2.75%, basically spot on. Joker has a very typical matchup spread, with a typical distribution of matchups from his mean.

WFT has a medium-sized sample of about 23,400 games. We'd expect it to have a stdev of 4.14%, but it's only 3.33%; a considerable relative difference.

Ritcher has about 15,700 games. We'd expect a stdev of 4.83%, but it's 5.81%. His matchup results are all over the place.

It's unwise to put much stock in win-rates even globally, much less on the specific samples of a single matchup. Yes, the error bars on individual matchups will be high. However, the error bars on my and your anecdotes are colossal, so there's still insight to be gained here.

 

[Untouch]

I would say the only extremely dumb matchup for WFT is .
The 3 worst matchups for her are...
(Amazing OoS options and the ability to reflect projectiles make approach hard, the change to FAir makes this matchup much more doable as the move is now -2 so is harder to punish.)
(Pikachu pancakes everything so is very difficult to hit, the changes to DTilt make this matchup better as Pikachu dies way earlier now.)
(Villager gets to take the ball and outcamp WFT, nothing in the patch really fixes this, luckily Villager isn't picked very often and has problems of his own.)

 

[Thinkaman]

For what it's worth, WFT shows an above-average win-rate against Villager. G&W too.

To me this makes sense. Both these characters are great at keeping people out, but when WFT gets in she stays in. Yet WFT is also TOTALLY A-OK with you camping. Stealing the ball puts SS back on the table, so it's a mixed bag.

The only commonality in her weaker matchups is people with a mix of speed and range. The Pits, the Kongs, Joker, to some extent swordies. I wouldn't read into it too much.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Really? I think pokemon trainer has WFT beat. What applies to pikachu's small size also applies to squirtle. Squirtle combos WFT hard (if he can combo HIMSELF he can combo WFT), ivysaur has range that can keep WFT at a distance and despite zard being combo food he can hit WFT hard without the need for Deep Breathing. You can argue it's only slightly losing for WFT but it's a serious uphill battle because PT doesn't need the setups and positioning that WFT does. Not to mention that PT can change their pokemon at any time.

 

[blackghost]

So are any of the characters that received buffs in the latest patch anywhere close to being viable now as a solo main? It's still a no for my main, so I'm just curious if any other characters got a significant boost enough that now they are.

Impressions on how Min Min would perform competitively? I think once you figure her out, she could be easy to overcome if your character is fast and has strong aerials.

bayonetta is now probably a solo viable character (offline). the uptilt buff opens up so many possibilities. but right now i'd guess there are only 3 or 4 players capable of solo maining her to a good Tournament result.
she still has some horrific MU in snake, palutena, and pikachu but she wont be drowned in frame data by a huge portion of the cast now.

 

[Djmarcus44]

Thinkaman Clearly a lot of work went into these resources. I have a couple of questions.

1. How were you able to access this data for the character usage and win rate? I have not been able to get this from smash.gg.

2. Why does the chart compare lifetime usage to phase 3 of OrionRank? It is very interesting how close it is to the current patch changes, but there are a few things wrong with this comparison. The chart does not count results for a majority of the time period tracked for usage. Early in the game, characters like Ike and Link were viewed as potential top tiers and had usage from Mkleo and Salem. The chart shows the usage during this period, but it does not show results for this period. I can point out more examples of issues caused by the inconsistent time periods if needed. It also doesn't account for patch changes, and newer characters get less time to get results.

 

[KirbySquad101]

For what it's worth, WFT shows an above-average win-rate against Villager. G&W too.

To me this makes sense. Both these characters are great at keeping people out, but when WFT gets in she stays in. Yet WFT is also TOTALLY A-OK with you camping. Stealing the ball puts SS back on the table, so it's a mixed bag.

The only commonality in her weaker matchups is people with a mix of speed and range. The Pits, the Kongs, Joker, to some extent swordies. I wouldn't read into it too much.

Looking at the MU box chart given by Reddit displays WFT as having slightly less than 50% win rates against both and (for both the MU chart and the MU chart with more than 50+ matches), unless I'm reading it wrong.

It DOES show her as having a slightly above 50% win rate against and an even higher win rate against , which I am curious about.

 

[StrangeKitten]

I doubt will be solo-viable even with the buffs. are all fast, high-to-top tier characters that likely still shut him down. is also a terrible matchup thanks to waft.

However, it's been said earlier in the thread that the cat has a good matchup against and , and I believe he does well against . So, he has his uses. You'd just probably want to use some other good characters alonside him.

 

[Thinkaman]

Thinkaman Clearly a lot of work went into these resources. I have a couple of questions.

1. How were you able to access this data for the character usage and win rate? I have not been able to get this from smash.gg.

u/will_occam posted it on Reddit, and gave me the raw data he pulled. I recompiled most of it into some resources.

I haven't broadly published my internal parsing because well, it takes bucketloads of context and I feel pretty sure that the data would be heavily misinterpreted by the majority of audiences. (Plus it would take more work for me.) Best to just publish analysis, rather than try to rigorously filter the data, try to educate people on how to read it, and get mad when they still get it wrong. Anyone actually interested in data sciences can get the raw data from me or u/will_occam, as you always could.

2. Why does the chart compare lifetime usage to phase 3 of OrionRank? It is very interesting how close it is to the current patch changes, but there are a few things wrong with this comparison. The chart does not count results for a majority of the time period tracked for usage. Early in the game, characters like Ike and Link were viewed as potential top tiers and had usage from Mkleo and Salem. The chart shows the usage during this period, but it does not show results for this period. I can point out more examples of issues caused by the inconsistent time periods if needed. It also doesn't account for patch changes, and newer characters get less time to get results.

Correct. The two axes measure very different things. There are even more differences:

• The biggest, smash.gg usage is broadly speaking measuring a lower, broader level of play. It's still a very high level in the grand scheme of smash, but it's clearly lower than OrionRank.
• smash.gg usage is still a weighted, survivor-biased (winner-biased) measure (it's not actually a pure player survey!), but it is considerably less weighted than OrionRank.
• The smash.gg data includes some online events. OrionRank 3 does not.
• OrionRank 3 includes more Japanese data that smash.gg does. (I am pretty sure?)
• The smash.gg data is lifetime, OrionRank 3 is the first few months of 2020. The Smash.gg data extends back through old patches, and forward into online events with more Byleth. While I cut off some of the earliest matches from my own charts (compared to what u/will_occam posted), it wasn't much and honestly made little difference in dampening "release era" trends.

The use of two wildly different measures of competitive play is very deliberate. This is not a graph seeking to establish a scientific relationship between two dimensions. This is an infographic seeking to convey an extremely broad snapshot of the game and where characters fit in it.

Most of the value of the smash.gg data lies in its sheer quantity. Additional filtering of the smash.gg data would degrade this significantly--comparing only the games of the same time period as OrionRank 3 would be a magnitude fewer--the variance introduced by this would be more problematic than things we can intuitively control for, such as the estimated significance of patches and the relative lifetime availablity of DLC characters.

Daisy is a good case study. Daisy is the least-used character, used about 30% as much as Peach. Her data is clearly inferior in quality to Peach's, with almost double the variance for what should be a similar data set.

These numbers should be the same, or at least follow the same pattern of variance.
​

If everyone's data was of the quality of Daisy's, I wouldn't find much meaning in anything concluded from this dataset.

​

Looking at the MU box chart given by Reddit displays WFT as having slightly less than 50% win rates against both and (for both the MU chart and the MU chart with more than 50+ matches), unless I'm reading it wrong.

Correct, but they are both (very slightly) above WFT's average matchup win-rate. WFT is one of the lowest win-rate characters in the data set.

Edit:

I doubt will be solo-viable even with the buffs. are all fast, high-to-top tier characters that likely still shut him down. is also a terrible matchup thanks to waft.

However, it's been said earlier in the thread that the cat has a good matchup against and , and I believe he does well against . So, he has his uses. You'd just probably want to use some other good characters alonside him.

Many of these the data suggests Incineroar has historically gone even with or beat. I was as surprised as you that he is lifetime 52% on Pikachu.

Falco is bad (for Incineroar) though, and is probably worse now. Mario is bad, Wario is bad. Olimar actually reports as the worst, though take that with a grain of salt because Olimar's data is very poor quality. (I can buy this--Revenging pikmin is great in theory and pain in practice) Ditto with Meta Knight--weak data suggesting it could be his worst matchup.

That said, I'll reiterate: Everyone has bad matchups, and historic smash.gg results suggest Incineroar's bad matchups are less significant than almost 90% of the roster. These buffs presumibly help that.

Again, it's the Belmont mains who need a secondary--or maybe, who need to pick a main now that they have mastered their secondary.

 

[Rizen]

I never had a high opinion of but I also think has a good MU vs her. Or at least he did before the buffs. WFT wants to play a balanced game of zoning and comboing but YL's projectile zoning outclasses hers hard. WFT is usually good at planking on the ledge and using header and sun sat for damage. YL can shut both these down and her offstage stalling by throwing projectiles at her no matter where she goes. WFT has to approach and she does not have the best rushdown tools nor the oppressive hitboxes to get in on YL. YL can freely do what he does best and take advantage of safe openings. WFT does get good power with deep breathing but YL can snipe her out of that too. It's pretty solidly in YL's favor imo.

 

[Nobie]

Watching Hungrybox, Wii Fit Trainer seems to be a miserable matchup for Puff. It's basically just a little bit of everything, from deep breathing to the thin hurtbox to having attacks that hit both sides.

I think Belmonts vs. Min Min is probably not that bad. However, it requires a player to think the opposite of how they normally play. Belmonts have HIGHER air speed, faster normals, and comparable run speed. They're basically the Mario to Min Min's Lucina, and that's just not something Belmonts are gonna be used to.

 

[Thinkaman]

Watching Hungrybox, Wii Fit Trainer seems to be a miserable matchup for Puff. It's basically just a little bit of everything, from deep breathing to the thin hurtbox to having attacks that hit both sides.

While I've highlighted WFT as a contender for "most consistent character", the stats show Puff as an outlier--far and away her worst matchup.

*shrug emoji*

 

[PK Gaming]

I'm not a strong player by any means, but here's me playing friendlies w/ the new Corrin

I think she's definitely, demonstrably better now. They fundamentally fixed her biggest issue (KOing) and her damage and pressure is much better now. She honestly feels reminiscent of her Smash 4 self, with some new tricks as well. Genuinely super impressed with her now and I think she's in a good spot in the metagame.

We also played with Min Min earlier and she's... polarizing, to say the least. There are some characters she just stomps after getting them offstage. Mega watt is kind of overtuned as well imo, but it's still early.

 

[The_Bookworm]

I'm not a strong player by any means, but here's me playing friendlies w/ the new Corrin

I think she's definitely, demonstrably better now. They fundamentally fixed her biggest issue (KOing) and her damage and pressure is much better now. She honestly feels reminiscent of her Smash 4 self, with some new tricks as well. Genuinely super impressed with her now and I think she's in a good spot in the metagame.

Except that KO'ing is not entirely her biggest issue. It is an issue, but it is not her biggest.
It is getting in, as she has very little ways to approach the enemy or force approaches at all. As such characters with good speed and even a decent projectile can make it hard for Corrin to get anything started.
This is also coupled with some aspects of her moveset still being inconsistent, such as odd priority on her pin based moves and times where the side B kick would whiff for no reason after pinning someone.

So while they fixed an aspect of her, the biggest aspect that put her in the bottom 5 discussion in the past hasn't been addressed.
She is, however, likely not the worst sword character in the game, as Mii Swordfighter is approaching pre-8.0 Corrin levels of stagnation, and it got absolutely nothing this patch.

 

[Thinkaman]

At the very least, a lack of KOing was what separated Ultimate Corrin from her "distance demon" disjointed peers. Corrin's other advantages were a tough value proposition when anyone you could compare him/her to just plain gets to kill people in fairly straightforward/accessible ways.

K. Rool's crown armor buff is one of the biggest changes, full stop.

Man I love Min Min. Her advantage and disadvantage states are so broad. Like, when we think of "big advantage" we think of like Luigi or "big disadvantage" as Little Mac--narrow, high-magnitude cases. But for many characters it's less binary and a broad distribution of "varying degrees of Having A Bad Time until you land and get back to center stage". And Min Min is the most extreme case of this. She is pretty much always winning or losing, and not like Ganondorf flipping a light switch back and forth--more like tides coming in and out, sometimes violently but mostly gradually.

I find Megawatt the best holistically just because the reward is "worth it" and nair is key. But not having Ramram up is a vulnerability that makes every opening left punch much more vulnerable. It's like she is incentivized to shift rapidly just to keep the opponent playing a shell game that hides this vulnerability.

I think she is weak against Falcon, and probably Yoshi, Wario, Jigglypuff, Fox, Mario, Pikachu, Roy. But she's a strong character who can pull off moments of insanity with just a pair of reads, and laughs at zoners.

Edit: I suspect the Min Min ditto might be one of the rare great dittos; it has all the hallmarks of good dittos: Asymmetric state, offensive bias, pronounced advantage/disadvantage.

 

[PK Gaming]

Except that KO'ing is not entirely her biggest issue. It is an issue, but it is not her biggest.
It is getting in, as she has very little ways to approach the enemy or force approaches at all. As such characters with good speed and even a decent projectile can make it hard for Corrin to get anything started.
This is also coupled with some aspects of her moveset still being inconsistent, such as odd priority on her pin based moves and times where the side B kick would whiff for no reason after pinning someone.

So while they fixed an aspect of her, the biggest aspect that put her in the bottom 5 discussion in the past hasn't been addressed.
She is, however, likely not the worst sword character in the game, as Mii Swordfighter is approaching pre-8.0 Corrin levels of stagnation, and it got absolutely nothing this patch.

Corrin is a sword character; she doesn't "need" to get in, but rather control space and look for opportunities to get punishes in. That was the whole point of moves like Pin, which is an extremely punishing mid-range tool, but the problem with Corrin was that after she built up the damage, she extremely struggled at actually finishing her opponents off. It's true that Corrin suffers against faster characters, but that's by design. And no, the things that made her bottom 5 have absolutely addressed lmao. Her abysmal recovery (it's still mediocre, but not untenably bad at launch), her punish game being significantly stronger (Fair now converts into high damage combos and even kill setups) and her raw KO ability (fsmash charge change, pin kick killing 18% earlier~, uair KO buff and some non-gimmicky kill setups being added to her kit) absolutely address Corrin's primary flaw of being utterly redundant by other sword characters. Harping on stuff like Side B occasionally whiffing feels like missing the forest for the trees imo.

At the very least, a lack of KOing was what separated Ultimate Corrin from her "distance demon" disjointed peers. Corrin's other advantages were a tough value proposition when anyone you could compare him/her to just plain gets to kill people in fairly straightforward/accessible ways.

Right. She was fairly redundant in the grand scheme of things. There was no point to using her over other sword characters beyond "liking dragon girls" I guess (which is a valid reason tbh), but like, even something as simple as "I brought my opponent to 150% how do I kill them" has been fixed for the character and it makes for such a huge difference.

K. Rool's crown armor buff is one of the biggest changes, full stop.

Man I love Min Min. Her advantage and disadvantage states are so broad. Like, when we think of "big advantage" we think of like Luigi or "big disadvantage" as Little Mac--narrow, high-magnitude cases. But for many characters it's less binary and a broad distribution of "varying degrees of Having A Bad Time until you land and get back to center stage". And Min Min is the most extreme case of this. She is pretty much always winning or losing, and not like Ganondorf flipping a light switch back and forth--more like tides coming in and out, sometimes violently but mostly gradually.

I find Megawatt the best holistically just because the reward is "worth it" and nair is key. But not having Ramram up is a vulnerability that makes every opening left punch much more vulnerable. It's like she is incentivized to shift rapidly just to keep the opponent playing a shell game that hides this vulnerability.

I think she is weak against Falcon, and probably Yoshi, Wario, Jigglypuff, Fox, Mario, Pikachu, Roy. But she's a strong character who can pull off moments of insanity with just a pair of reads, and laughs at zoners.

Edit: I suspect the Min Min ditto might be one of the rare great dittos; it has all the hallmarks of good dittos: Asymmetric state, offensive bias, pronounced advantage/disadvantage.

Yeah Min Min is a fantastic character, though i'm worried they may have gone too far with her. While I feel like "doesn't fit into Smash" is a lazy, template answer, I think that genuinely applies to Min Min. She just doesn't... abide by the rules and it's kind of crazy. Like, if she gets you offstage and your character isn't good at recovering low, that's it. No character can consistently shut down a character in terms of edgeguarding like she can. She also gets powerful smash attacks that are mostly safe and it's such a big boon over the rest of the cast.

I think she utterly decimates Falcon because while he's really effective up close, he's *dead* the minute he gets off stage. Roy is probably a similar story, and I think Jigglypuff still loses by virtue of the gap in character strength, though I realize i'm not really engaging in that matchup in good faith here lmao.

And yeah Min Min ditto's are fantastic/really fun. It's genuinely reminiscent of Arms in that you can start laying down some serious pressure and the opponent just has to deal until they can find an opening.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Except that KO'ing is not entirely her biggest issue. It is an issue, but it is not her biggest.
It is getting in, as she has very little ways to approach the enemy or force approaches at all. As such characters with good speed and even a decent projectile can make it hard for Corrin to get anything started.
This is also coupled with some aspects of her moveset still being inconsistent, such as odd priority on her pin based moves and times where the side B kick would whiff for no reason after pinning someone.

So while they fixed an aspect of her, the biggest aspect that put her in the bottom 5 discussion in the past hasn't been addressed.
She is, however, likely not the worst sword character in the game, as Mii Swordfighter is approaching pre-8.0 Corrin levels of stagnation, and it got absolutely nothing this patch.

I'd say the worst swordfighter currently is a close call between and . Both of them have their merits, but honestly, the both get indirectly nerfed by the buffs to characters like and others.

Mii Swordfighter is faster than Byleth, especially in the air, his zoning tools are better, he's slightly heavier giving him better survivability, but gets outranged much easier, his recovery is worse (no matter which specials he's using), and (depending on which set of customs he's using) can have trouble finding a kill sometimes.

Meanwhile, Byleth is one of the slowest characters in the game and has incredibly mediocre frame data on most of her (or his) moves as well. Byleth's defensive game (while good) is not all that better than Swordfighter's if he's using Chakram, Gale Tornado, and/or Hero's spin up-b (as an OOS option). Byleth does have better edgeguarding and recovery than Swordfighter though. It's worth noting that both characters have an amazing juggling game.

I'm personally leaning towards being worse, especially post patch. In a game where speed matters, Mii Swordfighter not only can move faster than her, but he often dies later too due to his additional weight. He's more susceptible to being edgeguarded, but his weight makes it harder for him to be edgeguarded at early percents. His zoning game is better, he has better kill confirms, his juggling game is just as good as Byleth's (maybe better) and while he does struggle with getting outranged, he still has ways to approach with projectiles or tack on damage from a distance against a larger chunk of the cast.

 

[DJ3DS]

Like, if she gets you offstage and your character isn't good at recovering low, that's it. No character can consistently shut down a character in terms of edgeguarding like she can.

To some extent I both agree and disagree.

Her edgeguarding is very clearly formidable but we do already have very strong edgeguarding characters. Pikachu and ROB are excellent examples of characters who can edgeguard as deep and kill as early.

I think the real selling point is that Min Mins edgeguarding is completely non committal. You mess up an edgeguard as Pikachu? Your opponent is back to ledge and you're off it, and now you're in disadvantage (as much as that's a technicality with Quick Attack). You mess up your Min Min edgeguard? It doesn't really matter, because you're still in position to ledgetrap. The risk/reward proposition of edgeguarding just isn't there for her.

 

[PK Gaming]

To some extent I both agree and disagree.

Her edgeguarding is very clearly formidable but we do already have very strong edgeguarding characters. Pikachu and ROB are excellent examples of characters who can edgeguard as deep and kill as early.

I think the real selling point is that Min Mins edgeguarding is completely non committal. You mess up an edgeguard as Pikachu? Your opponent is back to ledge and you're off it, and now you're in disadvantage (as much as that's a technicality with Quick Attack). You mess up your Min Min edgeguard? It doesn't really matter, because you're still in position to ledgetrap. The risk/reward proposition of edgeguarding just isn't there for her.

I think non-commital is the key word, yeah. Though I do want to stress that there are some angles of recovery that Pikachu/ROB just flat out can't get like Min Min can, but I do ultimately agree with the point you're trying to make

Very strange character, lol

 

[Lacrimosa]

To some extent I both agree and disagree.

Her edgeguarding is very clearly formidable but we do already have very strong edgeguarding characters. Pikachu and ROB are excellent examples of characters who can edgeguard as deep and kill as early.

I think the real selling point is that Min Mins edgeguarding is completely non committal. You mess up an edgeguard as Pikachu? Your opponent is back to ledge and you're off it, and now you're in disadvantage (as much as that's a technicality with Quick Attack). You mess up your Min Min edgeguard? It doesn't really matter, because you're still in position to ledgetrap. The risk/reward proposition of edgeguarding just isn't there for her.

One also has to say that even if you're back on stage the danger isn't over, yet.
Min-Min seems to be excellent at ledgetrapping because she can stay away at a distance and throw out two hitboxes and nearly the same time. Hanging on the ledge doesn't help because she will hit you there from far away.

Of course it isn't without holes but it's really difficult to get through and Min-Min is fairly new, meaning people will become better with her and it's already rough. However, if you can break through she's in trouble because it's likely that the hitboxes she threw out for ledgetrapping are still active. Not sure how non-committal it actually is.

I also don't know how good edgeguarding with her actually is. Sure, she can stay on stage but most recoveries are fairly strong in this games.
Pikachu's edgeguarding is really destructive for most opponents because he can go out really far and if Pika messes up, he can go back to stage really quick.

 

[Thinkaman]

Yeah, it's like the tides analogy I made. Getting back to neutral against Min Min is like a 3 stage process. But it's the same for her when the shoes are swapped.

I actually had a much harder time edgeguarding Falcon as Min Min last night than I expected. Fall speed helps a lot, and falling off-stage with nair is dubious against him. Min Min likes exploiting floatier or horizontal (Fox/Falco/Ike) recoveries, taking important tools off the table for them. Meanwhile, Falcon just got in on me all the time and dished out tons of of pain on Min Min's eternal disadvantage.

I think she would be firmly low tier if you took away u-smash. It plugs a massive vulnerability in her gameplan.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Can Min Min two frame with any of her ARMS? How good does her ARMS cover a vertical recovery? You mentioned difficulty in edgeguarding Falcon coming low, if you can hug the stage how hard is it to make it to ledge? From my knowledge you can’t angle the dragon and the fire blast in a way to aim it directly at the ledge, just over it at an angle the fire blast won’t touch the ledge nor the ring but megawatt is able to hit people hanging on ledge?

If you can reliably get to ledge no amount of ledge trapping will help if she’s losing her stock the moment you get caught with an outstretched ARM and the game is back to even.

 

[Myollnir]

can 2-frame with either RamRam Smash or RR Tilt, both angled down.

Both moves can clank with the recovery's hitbox if you happen to hit them before the 2-frame animation (or if they hold down a bit to extend the hitbox).

RR Tilt is non-committal, allows you to walk back or jump, and it puts them in a very bad spot, although most characters can recover from it.

RR Smash, despite what people say here, is a lot more committal, since you can't move at all and can only throw out a Dragon Tilt / Smash to cover ledge options if you miss. If you just let RR Smash finish, you really can't pressure them, especially if they jump. Giving up your ledgetrap pressure isn't something you always want ; against some slow characters, you don't really care since they're still cornered, but against faster characters against whom you're not confident you have a high chance at 2-framing, you might want to go for a safer route.

Don't worry though, unless you were really late on your 2-frame tentative, you won't get punished for whiffing it. By definition, it's still not committal in 90% of cases, but you might not want to give up a potential ledgetrap, especially since RR Smash doesn't outright kill very well, and is a lot more inconsistent to land than it seems.

You CAN technically still try to ledgetrap after whiffing RR Smash by using Dragon Tilt / Smash (I don't recommend Smash but hey, you do you). However, it forces you to get a read :
- If you don't call out the ledge jump and they do it, most characters can punish you for whiffing DR Tilt (being under a platform may help).
- If you think they're not going to jump and you see them moving, you HAVE to DR Tilt as soon as they start their ledge option to catch neutral get up, get up attack & ledge roll. You need to react FAST, because if you miss and they shield the DR Tilt, in that specific situation you can't move or do ANYTHING, and I just tried in training mode, it's about -31 on shield, meaning you WILL get punished by most - if not all - characters.
- If they don't do anything, you don't have any reason to do anything, let the RR Smash cooldown end.

I suspect that Power Dragon (obtained after using a throw) can 2-frame as well, but I am going to need to spend more time in the lab for this one.

D-Tilt can 2-frame extremely poorly done recoveries (or which have terrible 2-frame animations, I guess).

D-Smash may work as well (as an aside, it's an insanely good move - albeit situationally - that is VERY underrated currently)

Outside of 2-framing, has a very potent edgeguarding game.

RR N-air is insanely good to do so :
- Pretty fast
- Good angle
- Very low endlag
- Lots of active frames

Dragon N-air and Megawatt N-air can be used, but RamRam seems to be the best for me.

Other, more exotic edgeguarding tools include stuff like run off / jump Aerial RR Tilt or - usually angled - DR Smash from onstage (+laser), and D-air to trade with hitboxes or as a hard read.

I also wanna mention that as you know, some characters can skip edgeguarding and ledgetrapping by recovering high, such as .

Against this kind of recovery, can use grounded UpB (charged or not), and pressure with multiple options (MW N-air kills obscenely early when done high, Power DR N-air as well (kills sideways), U-air kills surprisingly early as well, and UpB can kill pretty late (a lot earlier when empowered). RR & DR N-air can be used as a quick move to put them back offstage without the ressources they used to go high.

I could talk about all day, but I'll stop here for this time, or this post will be a lot longer than people are willing to read (don't get me started on her ledgetrapping abilities).

For the record, I think she's a candidate for high tier, very polarizing character that may not be versatile enough to be solo mained, but she has some excellent stuff, and I bet there will be more to come in the future.

 

[DJ3DS]

If you can reliably get to ledge no amount of ledge trapping will help if she’s losing her stock the moment you get caught with an outstretched ARM and the game is back to even.

the difficulty in getting into this position is that her moves tend to hit up and away, and then her arms are excellent at covering the horizontal space you want to drift into during your recovery, and the dual arms are excellent at punishing attempted airdodges.

Going high presents its own problems as well - take it from a ROB who thought this was a quick easy fix. Between up b, ramram, that nair and excellent options for covering landings Min Min can do a number on these recoveries too.

with that said, you want characters who can drift out, come in underneath the space her arms can cover and then recover upwards. Of course, that number isn't too low.

(And special credit to for being able to use his crown toss whilst drifting back in to cut through that noise)

 

[blackghost]

its hard for me to have an opinion on min min because i cannot tell if the minmin player or minmin's opponents would benefit more from an offline environment.

i do think bayo crushes her though. batwithin is a real issue for her to deal with on her high commital zoning and at half screen, she has to respect the 50-50 of heelslide or jump abk. guessing wrong can yield 50 percent. and witch time threatens minmin in neutral more than any other character in the game

offstage bayo has a bad time due to not ledge snapping. but i dont like to assume disadvantage state when looking at Mus. so i dont wiegh that as heavily as neutral.