Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[SwagGuy99]

Cosmos is playing a lot of right now, and thinks the buffs made the character high tier.

I honestly don't think 's buffs made too much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. I feel like this might be another situation where her mains may be overestimating how important her buffs actually were, due to her being so bad in the first place that receiving buffs of this magnitude make her seem much better than she actually is. Yes, they were good buffs and they make some of her matchups against mid tier and low tier more bearable than they were before, but I still see her struggling a lot going into the higher parts of the tier list. Her worst matchups that I can think of pre-patch off the top of my head () I don't see being any better for her now than they were before, even with her changes.



Her kill power being a bit better I think was the main thing that lifted her out of low tier this patch, but her combo game (despite being improved) is still lackluster in my opinion, as is her neutral and recovery. Her slow move speed doesn't help her in any of those areas, and I think she needs more changes before she is any better than middle of mid tier. However, I do think she is a much better counterpick in matchups she already did fine in () and while I'm doubtful Cosmos will stick to Corrin as a solo-main in the long run, I wouldn't be surprised if we see him pull her out more against those characters going forward, especially if he's still determined to solo-main if he doesn't solo-main Corrin.

Also, after having a a while to mess around in the new patch, I do have some thoughts on some other characters that were buffed:

• 's changes honestly don't matter much. Counterplay to this character is still linear for most mid/high/top tiers and I think buffing a lot of characters this patch didn't help him much either, but I do think his changes may be enough to put him on the very bottom of mid tier.
• 's fear factor is much higher now and there is much less room for making mistakes when fighting this character. His matchup spread is still one of (if not) the worst in the game on paper, just like pre-patch, but in practice, there is much less room for making mistakes. I'm not sure his changes were enough to lift him out of low tier, but this character is much more threatening than pre-patch. I think this aspect of matchups being much more volitile now also applies to as well, to a lesser extent.
• I think I overrated 's changes initially, but I still would like to acknowledge that I think they are very good changes for him. While Fatality seems optimistic in this regard, I don't think he's right about Falcon no longer having any -2 matchups. and all seem like they are still very hard matchups for him, and while this patch did change some small aspects of these matchups for sure (and Pika probably isn't -3 now) I don't think his matchup spread is that of a high tier. However, I wouldn't put it past Fatality to prove me wrong here, and I'm curious to see if he has an upswing in results once offline tournaments start again.

Edit: How much I think this patch affected everyone who was changed

 

[Arthur97]

Hey now, some people care about Final Smashes.

That aside, one of the biggest things to come out of this for Falcon may be Fatality getting more invested in dedicating himself to competing again. Assuming his enthusiasm holds, but he seems rather content with him now. A lot of times buff hype doesn't seem to, but he has shown an impressive amount of dedication to Captain Falcon, so maybe with the boost he'll push himself harder.

 

[Thinkaman]

's changes honestly don't matter much. Counterplay to this character is still linear for most mid/high/top tiers

No way man, Crown Armor is huge! Like, maybe the net impact is tiny and K. Rool doesn't move up. But his counterplay has absolutely changed if nothing else. He now has this obnoxious tool that beats a crazy amount of neutral options + is applicable to the ledge.

It's funny and maaaaaybe even related, that Min Min would have DESTROYED K. Rool without this buff. But I messed around with TTTTTsd playing this matchup a decent number of times (just online), and I can't tell you how many times I landed a simple Min Min dragon arm only to eat a crown-into-bullcrap K. Rool two-piece. I had to basically stay Megawatt all the time (to not just lose to Crown on jump), which was way harder to pressure him with in neutral. Offline maybe she could u-smash more readily, but man, talk about a gameplay-changing buff.

's fear factor is much higher now and there is much less room for making mistakes when fighting this character. His matchup spread is still one of (if not) the worst in the game on paper, just like pre-patch,

Citation needed! As I've been blabbing, Incineroar claims, in the broad smash.gg data, to have the 10th best matchup consistency across the cast.

I think this aspect of matchups being much more volitile now also applies to as well, to a lesser extent.

...and WFT meanwhile is the #1 matchup-consistent character in the game, the only one to top Pokemon Trainer.

I think I overrated 's changes initially, but I still would like to acknowledge that I think they are very good changes for him. While Fatality seems optimistic in this regard, I don't think he's right about Falcon no longer having any -2 matchups. and all seem like they are still very hard matchups for him, and while this patch did change some small aspects of these matchups for sure (and Pika probably isn't -3 now)

Did you watch those 6 Falcon/Pika games? That doesn't look like any -3 or -2 matchup I ever saw. Hell, it doesn't look like -1; Fatality was outperforming a player considering significantly better. We're only looking at a match where the better player lost with a higher tier character and saying it is "-1" for the other guy because we are giving ESAM significant benefit of the doubt.

Hey now, some people care about Final Smashes.

Yeah, I dislike any tone that people who play the game differently are wrong or dumb. It's just a bad look.

I like to say "all identity assertions are false". If someone goes around telling people they're a "nice guy", stay away cause they ain't.

The more someone feels the need to signal that they are a SERIOUS BUSINESS COMPETITIVE GAMER, the more likely they are just cosplaying as one.

That aside, one of the biggest things to come out of this for Falcon may be Fatality getting more invested in dedicating himself to competing again. Assuming his enthusiasm holds, but he seems rather content with him now. A lot of times buff hype doesn't seem to, but he has shown an impressive amount of dedication to Captain Falcon, so maybe with the boost he'll push himself harder.

Yeah, he said in one of those videos explicitly that he has switched from focusing on content to actively practicing the game. This is part of the reason why those 3 videos (minimally editted match marathons against top players) existed.

 

[TennisBall]

It's interesting to see how this patch is affecting the overall metagame. It's a bit harder to see how it's truly impacted and warped Ultimate due to offline tournaments being on hold but judging from top player opinions, attributes, and a bit of speculation, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to assume that ,and have most likely cemented themselves into the high tier, with being a potential candidate thanks to quality of life changes and her moves becoming a lot stronger, most notably her Fair being now -2 to -4 depending on where you hit it on shield and the faster Up-Smash allowing for more reliable kill confirms. Having a stronger chargeable projectile is always nice as well.

I'm also interested to see where goes in this patch. His primary weaknesses from what I've understood are that he struggled to kill and that he didn't have a great way to deal with Shield since his grab is so slow. The buffs seemed to have directly addressed this and given him stronger moves to work with and Axe dealing more shield damage in addition to making an already strong move hit harder, along with some nice QoL changes with Dair being faster considering it's originally unreasonably sluggish framedata and giving him less endlag on planting and watering Tree. Jab connects easier too which is cool.

I've also been observing a Twitter account named Venus for a while. He's a main who has been posting consistent grab kill confirms across the 0-80% that result in death and is tested on DI In and DI Out. He's been working on a sheet and has been slowly comboing the entire cast. I would take it with a grain of salt but it's interesting to see how this could come into play if say Elegant started labbing and getting combos down to where he could quite literally take a stock off of one interaction or if counterplay will evolve to deal with it. Either way Luigi is definitely a late meta character.

Oh and the Diddy infinite seems to be back;https://twitter.com/FirehaoChile/status/1281086944873676800

 

[StrangeKitten]

Killed Rosalina towards the top of the stage with 's nair. The nair may no longer be the potent combo option it once was, but it can now work as a kill move at late percents, and nair to Aether is even more potent of a kill confirm than nair up air was. I think Ike's buffs definitely outweigh the nair nerf

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Killed Rosalina towards the top of the stage with 's nair. The nair may no longer be the potent combo option it once was, but it can now work as a kill move at late percents, and nair to Aether is even more potent of a kill confirm than nair up air was. I think Ike's buffs definitely outweigh the nair nerf

Ike only lost the ability to combo with Nair for about a 40% window (and then its threatening to kill beyond that window). In exchange he got... everything else. And the Nair combos he does have are more likely to kill, particularly ones based off of laddering up platforms. Nair's changes barely qualify as a nerf overall.

He was overall quite clearly buffed. By a significant margin. I think just how impactful his buffs are will take a bit longer to show because anyone who used Ike before is having to adjust their game plan accordingly (unlike say, Falco mains who just get to play with new tools and don't have to unlearn much of anything) and learn the new windows but the only characters who benefited from 8.0 more are Falco and maybe the Pits (I don't know enough about Pit to make an argument one way or another outside of looking at the change list and going "seems like a lot of good stuff"). Falcon is right up there as well in the same boat. Everyone else's buffs kinda pale in comparison.

 

[PK Bash]

Citation needed! As I've been blabbing, Incineroar claims, in the broad smash.gg data, to have the 10th best matchup consistency across the cast.

...and WFT meanwhile is the #1 matchup-consistent character in the game, the only one to top Pokemon Trainer.

Hi! I was going to DM you, but I thought maybe some other lurkers/posters might be interested too - where do you get this data from? I've looked around but I can't find this broad smash.gg data for myself, and I would be very interested in looking into the numbers further on my own time.

Apologies if you've already shared this and I just missed it, I don't really check this thread too often these days.

To make this post a bit more substantial, Lucas got a good buff to his pivot grab in the most recent patch that wasn't documented. https://twitter.com/Zeckemyro/status/1278228203438575616

Lucas got a shadow buff of his Pivot Grab blindspot without fixing the abnormally high range (0.5 -> 3.5) pic.twitter.com/3VYxCXqv7R

— 🏳️‍🌈Hitbox Enthusiast Zeck🏳️‍🌈 (@Zeckemyro) July 1, 2020

Not the most significant buff of the patch, but god do I appreciate it.

EDIT

Still a nice consistency change, but it overall going to be about as helpful as the ledge attack blindspot fix.

I know nothing about Banjo, but this matters for Lucas actually. This blindspot was so annoying lol

 

[Arthur97]

Yeah, I kind of would have liked if they had toned down Ike's nair a bit more. I'm not sure if they tried and just failed or if they do just want that move to be the center of his gameplan for whatever reason. I mean, they gave him some other non-nair stuff so that might could be seen as an attempt to spread it out with the slight nerf to nair, but apparently not a very effective attempt if it was one.

 

[san.]

After more time with the character, I feel that 's nair has been sufficiently nerfed. With perfect DI or jumping, the % window for confirming with front nair is small, while it is around 10-15% with poor DI. A small change to a key move has a multitude of effects to the rest of his kit.

Dash attack and aether, while strong, aren't as strong as you think. With good DI, bair is better than both of them, unless you land the initial hit of aether. This is because of the ~50 degree angle allowing easy DI towards the corner of the blastzone. I actually think that Ike's fair could've been left a bit stronger (No -5 KBG) since there is a new hole of Ike being non-threatening when facing you ~100%.

I think they did a good job distributing the utility of nair to other attacks. Pre 7.0.0, if Ike landed a nair at the ledge, that should be death from nair->dair up to ~70%, and nair->bair afterwards. The threats have been distributed to different attacks now, such as dtilt ~70-75%. This helps Ike's neutral, since it allows him to better counterplay anti-airing.

I mentioned "perfect DI" quite a few times already, but I wanted to push the notion that Ike has a decent set of tools where you may not always want to DI a certain way near kill %s due to a healthy mixture confirms and raw kill moves. You do not want to DI his dash attack away at 70 now, but you also don't want to get caught with a nair confirm.

For how much better it supposedly makes him, I don't expect him to be better initially in terms of results. I think it will take time to get familiar with the new setups and risk-reward. Right now, he's about the same or a little better, but I can expect some growth in the future.

 

[Xfire]

Thinkaman was referring to the cumulative matchup ratios based on smash.gg usage. It's from this reddit post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/hfb2ep/i_analyzed_one_million_matches_and_found_smash/

To any lurkers around, you can look over page 404 for the amazing discussion and stats about MU polarization. Although the data is rather broad and doesn't reflect top level play, it's still good to talk about why some MU's can work in practice rather than in paper (K.Rool in mind). And it may help others on insight with the lifetime of Smash Ultimate's meta.

Personally, I was surprised when has a more evenish matchup ratio (even top 10 consistent too) than I thought. Sure having the slowest ground movement and 8th slowest air speed limits most of its fantastic moveset, which means most characters can play "lame", but on practice having a strong moveset can still be enough to keep the tides in its favor. For example, on paper would win easily because he can play keepaway onstage (retreating Fair/Bair and OOS up-B) due to slippery movement, edgeguard with dair and up-B, and can ledgetrap with just NSpecial alone. But is said to have a winning MU against in practice! Is it because of better range? Revenge usage? Or something that we overlooked? Some 's don't think the MU is in their favor, but hey, the stats suggest otherwise. That's something that we can discuss more, which has happened a few pages back.

Note: is the most inconsistent character next to , but it still doesn't explain how Maister had great tournament results in terms of MU ratios alone. Something's at play here that we can discuss.

 

[The_Bookworm]

To make this post a bit more substantial, Lucas got a good buff to his pivot grab in the most recent patch that wasn't documented. https://twitter.com/Zeckemyro/status/1278228203438575616

Lucas got a shadow buff of his Pivot Grab blindspot without fixing the abnormally high range (0.5 -> 3.5) pic.twitter.com/3VYxCXqv7R

— 🏳️‍🌈Hitbox Enthusiast Zeck🏳️‍🌈 (@Zeckemyro) July 1, 2020

Not the most significant buff of the patch, but god do I appreciate it.

I wasn't even aware that pivot grab even had a blindspot. Whenever I see any Lucas footage, I never see the pivot grab whiff on point blank. Then again, the move is hardly ever used at point blank anyways.
Still a nice consistency change, but it overall going to be about as helpful as the ledge attack blindspot fix.

 

[RonNewcomb]

Still a nice consistency change, but it overall going to be about as helpful as the ledge attack blindspot fix.

Quality of life buffs like that are important. Games with unfair crap can make people quit, so in a way it's the most important buff.

Now if only Pit can get a few similar fixes. :sigh:

 

[Rizen]

I was watching Captain's Quarters and want to rant for a minute: Don't take to PS2! It's his best stage. I saw both Maister and Epic Gabriel lose to him on PS2 then CP him strait back. They both would have won their sets if they'd banned it and taken him to triplats. YL is a very stage based character. He's significantly weaker on triplats vs most characters.

Good stuff to Skittles though.

 

[Arthur97]

I don't know, could be people talking when they don't know what they're talking about, but do people really think Marth's buffs are that substantial? Can't say much until they're put into practice, but Lucina getting usurped into obscurity is something I am not particularly keen to see.

 

[blackghost]

I was watching Captain's Quarters and want to rant for a minute: Don't take to PS2! It's his best stage. I saw both Maister and Epic Gabriel lose to him on PS2 then CP him strait back. They both would have won their sets if they'd banned it and taken him to triplats. YL is a very stage based character. He's significantly weaker on triplats vs most characters.

Good stuff to Skittles though.

until competitive smash has a real culture change on stage selection you will continue to see people lose games on bad stage picks. theres no reason to continue to go to these super "neutral" stages that benefit your opponent. too many people are only comfortable only on 2 stages. that needs to change.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

I don't know, could be people talking when they don't know what they're talking about, but do people really think Marth's buffs are that substantial? Can't say much until they're put into practice, but Lucina getting usurped into obscurity is something I am not particularly keen to see.

Lucina might not be put in obscurity no matter how good the buffs are, and were pretty close together by the final Smash 4 tier list, with Lucina being 13 and Marth being 11.

 

[Arthur97]

Lucina might not be put in obscurity no matter how good the buffs are, and were pretty close together by the final Smash 4 tier list, with Lucina being 13 and Marth being 11.

While that's true, I still don't want to go back to the days of worse Marth. It's bad enough people have apparently decided Chrom is now just worse Roy. Mind you, both cases are largely personal as I prefer those characters to the originals. It's probably not helped either by all the people chomping at the bits for Marth to be better. Though as far as the "hype" goes, I guess they don't think late stocks without a tipper KO compensates for KOing at 50 (arbitrary number, I don't know when he kills with tippers).

 

[ZephyrZ]

Word of advice for fellow character loyalists: Don't stress too much about if other people don't play your character. You play them because you like them. It's a personal choice. Besides, there's some charm in maining an underdog - I almost kind of miss the time no one knew the Charizard match up.

That said, Marth's buffs seem really modest to me, especially compared to what some other characters got. I think the devs are being careful not to overbuff him as to not make Lucina competitively obsolete.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

True, I felt like I was the only one playing zard on smash 4. Now I play PT. I feel though that my PT is significantly worse than my smash 4 zard. I mean sheesh I lose to elite smash jigglypuffs because I'm not used to them chasing my pokemon down when they try to recover then attacking them. Heck she even got my ivysaur after the tether grab connected. Early stock losses there.

 

[Arthur97]

Word of advice for fellow character loyalists: Don't stress too much about if other people don't play your character. You play them because you like them. It's a personal choice. Besides, there's some charm in maining an underdog - I almost kind of miss the time no one knew the Charizard match up.

That said, Marth's buffs seem really modest to me, especially compared to what some other characters got. I think the devs are being careful not to overbuff him as to not make Lucina competitively obsolete.

Fair, though I can't say I'm a big fan of how Lucina is implemented. Though, that's not to say I don't enjoy playing her some, and Chrom can be really fun.

Though, I hope they don't overdo it. Lucina already got slapped with nerfs specific to her, and I doubt they're going to reverse those anytime soon. There is an issue though, they aren't almost completely identical like, say, Richter, but they're still incredibly similar which begs the question of how you truly balance them out. Is "easy mode" enough for Lucina? What about Chrom? How should he be compensated for his recovery (granted, they may not deem it in need of too much compensation since Roy's already isn't superb)? Chrom and Lucina do seem to be in a bit of an odd spot. They aren't really to Melee clone status, but they are still different.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Word of advice for fellow character loyalists: Don't stress too much about if other people don't play your character. You play them because you like them. It's a personal choice. Besides, there's some charm in maining an underdog - I almost kind of miss the time no one knew the Charizard match up.

That said, Marth's buffs seem really modest to me, especially compared to what some other characters got. I think the devs are being careful not to overbuff him as to not make Lucina competitively obsolete.

To me, even if eventually gets buffed to the point where he becomes superior to , she will never be obsolete.

In SSB4, despite being widely considered superior to to , Lucina still gets to see a wide array of play, with representation at the end of SSB4 lifespan exceeded Marth in numbers considerably.
Why is that? Two reasons:

1. Her blade allows more aggressive play. Despite playing defensively being the optimal way to play Lucina, which is a major reason on why Marth is better in SSB4, because Marth gets better reward for playing the same optimal playstyle as Lucina, the option to play aggressively is there. It appeals to a wider audience, and while Marth can technically play aggressive, Lucina does that aspect better.
2. The bigger reason, and the reason why she is also used more as a counterpick than Marth does: she is easier to play. No need to worry about spacing as much as Marth, and he combo routes are almost always identical across her entire blade. While all of Marth's important tech is beneficial to Lucina as well, it is not as essential to her as it is to Marth.

With these two fundamental aspects of Lucina's design, there is always a reason to play Lucina. When Marth is the inferior of the two, as seen as in Ultimate, barely anyone aside from dedicated Marth enthusiasts play him. Why play the harder to use, more passive version of the character, when the easier, more aggressive version of the character is better in pretty much every way. Granted that both are kinda forced to play more aggressively in Ultimate, but that only exacerbates Marth's issues, especially this specific iteration of Marth.

As for my opinion on Marth's buffs in 8.0: they are nice, but they turn out to be very tame, especially in comparison to the crazy stuff Falco, Falcon, and fellow mid tier FE rep Ike got. The tipper increase in his aerials seems not very noticeable at first, aside from back air, which makes sense since that is the move where you are forces Marth to turn around so you must get proper reward, but in key moments and in the neutral game, they come in clutch.

Despite this, I don't think Marth is really going to be moving up the tier list much at all. None of the grounded tippers got touched, and all of his sourspots still hit like a sack of feathers in this game. If I were to change Marth in the future, I would potentially increase the damage/power of his sourspots, because they are pathetically weak in their current state. It needlessly necessitates Marth to land tippers at almost all times, in a game where there are no microspacing options to work with.

 

[whitesnake]

I've been known as a optimist, saying he was lower mid tier before the buffs, but even I think that chart's ridiculous. He probably wins +1 against the characters in the +2 area and half the characters in the +1 area. He certainly does not beat .

IDK about ; I have Wolf for that MU but the MU is a real pain in the ***. Reflector doesn't really help against nades because they're often littering the stage and not a direct projectile. K.Rool can belly armor if he gets close to snake but doing so is literally navigating a minefield with the 2nd biggest hurtbox in the game. Then Snake has a really good cqc boxing game. KRool gets blown up all over the stage and has a terrible time resetting neutral. It's a bad MU. This is one where we actually have top level offline footage of MVD vs Ben Gold, pre-buffs but still.

I see him as upper mid tier now.

he can for sure beat the swordies. His neutral air is an underrated gimping tool and the back throw + dashes getting buffed is making for easier kills

the krown tanking through projectiles helps with young link matchup but this is still likely -1 for king K

greninja is a very hard matchup... maybe -2

 

[whitesnake]

First of all, i don't think we should take seriously ANY MU charts as of now. Patch changed a lot for many characters, and even if they aren't objectively much better, those small things can still make the difference. Lack of offline tournaments for the most part doesn't help either.

Secondly, while i definitely agree that Raphy (and Plague) are at least a little too optimistic, there is also IMO na issue of ppl not realizing how plays. As i've said before, a lot of players who pick up K. Rool play him like he is a hardcore zoner that keeps running away from others. I've already mentioned running away from that was OFFSTAGE and this seems to be a running (sigh) theme, but even better players (some pros included) seem to adopt that playstyle when they try .

Now, aside from the "WHY ON EARTH ARENT YOU GOING OFFSTAGE AFTER SWORDIE/MAC/insert character with exploitable recovery THAT IS FAR FROM STAGE?", why would that matter? Well, that basically makes some MUs way worse than they should be. is a perfect example for me. Feel free to correct me, but isn't the last thing you want to do against Snake is to give him space to prepare his setups and throw grenades at you? And that's without mentioning "small" things like "DThrow ISN'T combo throw" that i see way, way too often ignored from "i try Rool randomly" players.

Again: i agree that chart is most likely way too optimistic, especially about some characters (e.g. and ) and my opinion doesn't exactly matter. Anyway, i think that discussing any MU charts at this point - even from top players - less than 2 weeks after the patch and with close to no offline competition is kinda meaningless, aside from "discussion" and laugh factors.

You nailed it. If played with a more aggressive style the character becomes more viable. And yes some matchups like villager are harder than shown in the chart

 

[TennisBall]

I'm interested to see where goes in the meta now. He seems to have gotten a lot of nice buffs but was overall received as a nerfed character due to the removal of the Infinite.
So they just found two more.
https://twitter.com/Suinoko0614/status/1279402132811051009

https://twitter.com/FirehaoChile/status/1281086944873676800
First one the dude messed up but it seems to be true.
Nintendo tried their best.

 

[SirLink]

Though, I hope they don't overdo it. Lucina already got slapped with nerfs specific to her, and I doubt they're going to reverse those anytime soon. There is an issue though, they aren't almost completely identical like, say, Richter, but they're still incredibly similar which begs the question of how you truly balance them out. Is "easy mode" enough for Lucina?

I'd like to point out that Lucina's nerfs last year weren't to specifically target her, the nerfs simply brought her in line with what Marth already had nerfed at launch. Forward Smash tipper was kept the same for Marth, but the sourspot got significantly decreased knockback (55BKB/80KBG -> 48BKB/75KBG) while Lucina's version got only a very minor nerf (80KBG -> 77KBG). 3.0.1 then lowered that a bit further to 73KBG. It's the same for Forward Air, where Marth's tipper went from 90KBG to 80KBG while Lucina only went from 85KBG to 81KBG. 3.0.1 then lowered that a bit further once more to 77KBG.

Essentially, they hit Lucina with further nerfs to moves that Marth already had at launch because hers were nerfed less to begin with. If they actually wanted to hurt her, they would have aimed directly at her backair, which is very overtuned in comparison to Marth's tipper.

As for Marth's buffs in 8.0: Yes, they aren't as crazy as other notable winners from the patch. The change to backair is very significant however and finally undid the harsh nerf its tipper hitbox received coming from Smash 4. Having a slightly stronger Lucina backair that can now reliably be tippered for stray kills or sending further for better edgeguard situations is a big deal. Combined with the lesser buff to upair and fair especially, it feels like they finally fixed Marth's aerial game. Will it be enough? Perhaps not, but it's a great start that they finally acknowledged that he wasn't fine 1.5 years later. Based on these conservative buffs I expect them to wait and see how they pan out before giving him anything else but for now he feels like a more complete character and a lot better to play.

On the topic of future Marth buffs: With the exception of sour Fsmash that is laughably weak now, I don't want to see his sourspots getting stronger. Bringing them closer to Lucina will hurt his unique combos and setups and make them even more similar. His grounded moves also weren't as hard to tipper to begin with. One change I'd personally like to see is for Upsmash's middle sourspot to move down a bit so it can tipper on BF platforms, though I'll admit that one was inspired by playing Hero recently and very unrealistic to ever happen.

That said, I don't think he needs that much more at this point given that his main concern was always the kill if things don't go his way. The backair and upair buff to a degree do help in that aspect. Same goes for buffing the knockback of the first tipper hit of downsmash, which is commonly used for techchasing at high percent. If they didn't nerf his upthrow into the ground in addition to rage being weaker, this likely wouldn't be a talking point anymore after the buffed aerials since that used to be his "Die already!!" option.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Ken proves that even a pretty bad matchup is not insurmountable for the cat

 

[Nobie]

So now that Falcon has gotten all these buffs but still has a bad turnaround out of dash, the question is: was that change from Smash 4 a very intentional nerf and new weakness, as opposed to an oversight?

I'm no expert on game animation, but I think it would be an easier (and less disruptive) change than, say, shrinking hurtboxes. To me, this says that Falcon in Ultimate is meant to be a character who's very good at getting in, and very bad at getting out, and I wonder if this is meant to further contrast him from other speedy characters.

 

[Arthur97]

So now that Falcon has gotten all these buffs but still has a bad turnaround out of dash, the question is: was that change from Smash 4 a very intentional nerf and new weakness, as opposed to an oversight?

I'm no expert on game animation, but I think it would be an easier (and less disruptive) change than, say, shrinking hurtboxes. To me, this says that Falcon in Ultimate is meant to be a character who's very good at getting in, and very bad at getting out, and I wonder if this is meant to further contrast him from other speedy characters.

Well, from watching some videos (well, one in particular), Fatality seems to think they wanted to make him more of a brawler and less of a whiff punisher. So...maybe it was intentional. In the end, it's hard to really know for sure.

 

[Minordeth]

Yeah, Falcon’s turn around out of dash is bad. It may truly be intentional, though. Think about it:

How often do you ever use reverse in F-Zero?

 

[Thinkaman]

They went the exact opposite direction (in a very deliberate, explicit way) with the Boulevard Busters and then also Mr. Bogard. I buy the differentiation argument.

 

[meleebrawler]

Yeah, Falcon’s turn around out of dash is bad. It may truly be intentional, though. Think about it:

How often do you ever use reverse in F-Zero?

More to the point, you are piloting a hypersonic machine with antigravity. You can imagine how hard it is to get something like that down to a full stop from top speed, and making those hairpin turns requires crazy planning, memorization and/or reflexes. Making them in such a way that you don't lose speed can backfire horribly.

 

[The_Bookworm]

If you guys like 19 straight games of some good Smash Ultimate goodness, feast your eyes on this:

 

[Rizen]

If you guys like 19 straight games of some good Smash Ultimate goodness, feast your eyes on this:

I wish he'd just show the full games without slicing bits out in editing. Characters will suddenly warp and be up in %s

 

[The_Bookworm]

I wish he'd just show the full games without slicing bits out in editing. Characters will suddenly warp and be up in %s

You can simply check out Fatality's/VoiD's Twitch streams for the full unedited set.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Here's the link to Fatality's Twitch video if anyone wants to see the unedited version: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/677583157

He fights VoiD starting at 3:13:30.

He also fights Nicko, LeoN, Ravenking, DKWill, Maister, and Dabuz. Here's a nice little bonus for Pit players: Dabuz goes all the entire set against him.

 

[Kung Fu Treachery]

I'm intrigued to see how Falcon performs in the future. Before his buffs, I thought he couldn't be too far past the middle of the pack at best. This is going to sound silly, but one thing about him that I kept coming back to was this: no one seems to hate playing against this character, so how good could he possibly be?

Now as we know, Falcon is a popular character, and so he sees a ton of play. But, anecdotally, whenever Ultimate players discuss which character they most enjoy playing against, Falcon is common answer, which isn't too surprising given that he's combo food, and at least when he kills you, he might do something neat.

In Smash 4, I think it was much the same: tons of pocket Falcons, and if you had to play against the character, you probably weren't too put-out, as opposed to some other cast members whom I'll decline to name.

But if we look back to Melee, possibly the last Smash game in which Falcon was/is a consistent major Top 8 threat in the hands of multiple players, we see something different. Some of you may, like me, only spectate Melee and thus have a positive opinion of the Captain, but make no mistake: a lot of players have gripes about the guy. Here are some of the ones I've heard:

• "Why is he so fast?"
• "You can combo out of stomp after you miss the L-cancel."
• "All his stupid aerials just combo into each other."
• "Why is he so heavy?"
• "Busted up-air"
• "Air wobble into Rest" (up-air into knee, if you didn't know)
• "Literally just Sheik with flashier animations"

Several of these complaints are exaggerated for comedic effect, but my point in listing them is that if a Smash character is strong, you can expect a certain number of players to really hate their guts. There was a dedicated Melee Captain Falcon Hate Group on Facebook, as I recall. This pattern has continued with each game, and basically every Ultimate high/top tier draws a certain amount of disdain, though Wolf and Lucina get relatively little griping these days.

So, if Ultimate Falcon does indeed reach high tier, will he break the mold and be the first character to reach that echelon while remaining in most everyone's good books? If not, what aspects of him will finally draw ire? Up-Smash is kinda silly, I guess?

More generally, since I'm relying on anecdotes, I wonder if there's a way to get some real data on these sorts of preferences among players. Which characters do we love, hate, and love to hate? Which characters are despised, even if they aren't particularly strong? Which characters do people like as mid-tiers or below, but would hate if they got buffed to the top? Actually attempting to gather this sort of information sounds like a pain, though.

It sort of reminds me of the NBA. Everyone loves young stars on the come-up, but then they hit a certain threshold, and the slander pours in. People are out here calling Giannis Antetokounmpo "Stacey Augmon who's allowed to take three steps". Tale as old as time.

 

[blackghost]

I'm intrigued to see how Falcon performs in the future. Before his buffs, I thought he couldn't be too far past the middle of the pack at best. This is going to sound silly, but one thing about him that I kept coming back to was this: no one seems to hate playing against this character, so how good could he possibly be?

Now as we know, Falcon is a popular character, and so he sees a ton of play. But, anecdotally, whenever Ultimate players discuss which character they most enjoy playing against, Falcon is common answer, which isn't too surprising given that he's combo food, and at least when he kills you, he might do something neat.

In Smash 4, I think it was much the same: tons of pocket Falcons, and if you had to play against the character, you probably weren't too put-out, as opposed to some other cast members whom I'll decline to name.

But if we look back to Melee, possibly the last Smash game in which Falcon was/is a consistent major Top 8 threat in the hands of multiple players, we see something different. Some of you may, like me, only spectate Melee and thus have a positive opinion of the Captain, but make no mistake: a lot of players have gripes about the guy. Here are some of the ones I've heard:

• "Why is he so fast?"
• "You can combo out of stomp after you miss the L-cancel."
• "All his stupid aerials just combo into each other."
• "Why is he so heavy?"
• "Busted up-air"
• "Air wobble into Rest" (up-air into knee, if you didn't know)
• "Literally just Sheik with flashier animations"

Several of these complaints are exaggerated for comedic effect, but my point in listing them is that if a Smash character is strong, you can expect a certain number of players to really hate their guts. There was a dedicated Melee Captain Falcon Hate Group on Facebook, as I recall. This pattern has continued with each game, and basically every Ultimate high/top tier draws a certain amount of disdain, though Wolf and Lucina get relatively little griping these days.

So, if Ultimate Falcon does indeed reach high tier, will he break the mold and be the first character to reach that echelon while remaining in most everyone's good books? If not, what aspects of him will finally draw ire? Up-Smash is kinda silly, I guess?

More generally, since I'm relying on anecdotes, I wonder if there's a way to get some real data on these sorts of preferences among players. Which characters do we love, hate, and love to hate? Which characters are despised, even if they aren't particularly strong? Which characters do people like as mid-tiers or below, but would hate if they got buffed to the top? Actually attempting to gather this sort of information sounds like a pain, though.

it sort of reminds me of the NBA. Everyone loves young stars on the come-up, but then they hit a certain threshold, and the slander pours in. People are out here calling Giannis Antetokounmpo "Stacey Augmon who's allowed to take three steps". Tale as old as time.

as of now i would say the most liked high tier character is roy.
most liked character overall might be terry the ice climbers (what a 20 year journey this character has been on) and ganon.
these characters are liked for two reasons 1. ganon is liked because he is known by everyone to be bad so when he does well its a combination of an underdog effect and people can tell themselves (or lie to themselves depending on viewpoint) that they wouldn't get hit with the ganon's stuff.

terry and icies is in a different boat to perform with them you need execution and seeing it pulled off is deemed "skillful" so people appreciate it plus in novelty there is protection. remember in smash 4 when bowser and dk first showed up when they got their throw buffs people cheered them. Terry also has a coolness factor to him that reaches large portions of the fanbase that is only matched by falcon but thats more my subjective opinion.

most hated is bayonetta, sonic, or maybe wario. (wario usage i s down i think so it goes under the radar these days)
smash players dont hate characters based on what they can do they hate characters based on what they feel. characters that make them feel helpless (or worse stupid or foolish) have been universally disliked. For example icies were disliked more than mk in brawl, same with icies in melee vs the spacies bayonetta in smash 4 made people feel helpless and now in ultimate people know she is noticeably worse but still get comboes and they now feel stupid. Smash ultimate is the only game ive ever seen where the fanbase will rant about their hate for a mid tier (or lower) character.

this is a sharp contrast to other communities ive seen. people hated phoneix in marvel three because she was a godlike character you had to kill twice.

 

[SwagGuy99]

I'm interested to see where goes in the meta now. He seems to have gotten a lot of nice buffs but was overall received as a nerfed character due to the removal of the Infinite.
So they just found two more.
https://twitter.com/Suinoko0614/status/1279402132811051009

https://twitter.com/FirehaoChile/status/1281086944873676800
First one the dude messed up but it seems to be true.
Nintendo tried their best.

Not a Diddy player, but based on the set up, the position of the opponent on the platform, and the precise window that it looks like you have to perform the combo, this doesn't look as practical as the initial Diddy infinite (especially the second one) but Diddy mains will most likely reach a point where the can do it reliably (unless it's patched out, I wouldn't be surprised if it is). Although this also reminds me of when Nintendo tried to patch out the original Luigi 0-to-Death (by removing his d-air spike on grounded opponents which I loved to use in combos, I'm still a little salty about that) only for Luigi mains to find another reliable one quickly afterwards, which hasn't been removed yet, so who knows, maybe it's here to stay this time.

 

[TennisBall]

Not a Diddy player, but based on the set up, the position of the opponent on the platform, and the precise window that it looks like you have to perform the combo, this doesn't look as practical as the initial Diddy infinite (especially the second one) but Diddy mains will most likely reach a point where the can do it reliably (unless it's patched out, I wouldn't be surprised if it is). Although this also reminds me of when Nintendo tried to patch out the original Luigi 0-to-Death (by removing his d-air spike on grounded opponents which I loved to use in combos, I'm still a little salty about that) only for Luigi mains to find another reliable one quickly afterwards, which hasn't been removed yet, so who knows, maybe it's here to stay this time.

While it is a bit more difficult given that you now have two to work with and both of them are slightly different, they don't seem that much more difficult and getting into the position for at least the 2nd infinite is no different than pre-patch. Nintendo clearly doesn't want this infinite in the game but they haven't quite figured out how to get rid of the Infinite and chances are they never will. Judging from how the original down air nerfs Luigi got and how little it actually mattered I think it's here to stay.

I'm super curious as to how will do offline when we get to that point,more specifically Fatality. It's clear to anyone who has been paying attention to Smash Online that Fatality has had a massive success since the buffs, beating top players like ESAM and VoiD in competitive sets and blowing expections out of the water. Now obviously there is the the part that this is on WiFi, and both ESAM's and VoiD's characters are better offline, although not by as much as we would have originally thought. I'm curious to see if Fatality will also have a massive spike in results. Sadly, there isn't a way we'll know for sure anytime soon, but I do think that this new Falcon is going to help a lot.

 

[Lacrimosa]

After two weird tierlists, finally a decent looking 8.0.0 tierlist:

8.0 offline list pic.twitter.com/KFOvnVW3MR

— ESAM (@imESAM) July 14, 2020