Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Supermodel From Paris]

How does anyone think Steve is anywhere near the worst in the game?

 

[NotLiquid]

I think the inherent irony of ESAM critiquing Izaw on the grounds that a lot of his counterplay strats assumes "perfect play" is that ESAM has an extremely bad habit of doing the exact same thing he accuses Izaw of doing, usually when he talks about how strong Pikachu is. Granted, there's a difference between punching up a character as opposed to punching down, but he has a tendency to get wrapped up in his own histrionics. It's particularly prevalent already from the start, since he piecemeals a lot of sections that causes him to at least confuse one point straight off the bat and assume Izaw's point about "not gaining an advantage state/combos off of dash attacks and stray hits" is in fact suggesting Steve has no advantage state or combos period. It causes him to launch into a huge discussion about all the things Steve can do when he's comboing or at an advantage, which... y'know, that's real neat and all, but it has nothing to do with what Izaw is talking about.

One thing I'll say about Diamond weapons is there's definitely a point to be made that Izaw underrates its strengths as it's essentially an x-factor that can cheese stocks really early, and if you've got something like that in tow then you can for sure afford to miss a few read attempts if you construct it at lower percents, but I'm not entirely sold on ESAM's point that opponents are forced to approach in the fear of getting it because, statistically speaking, Steve is guaranteed to get Diamond at least once or twice during a game anyway. Even in perfect play there's always going to be gaps for Steve to mine, and players have to assume that he'll get that weapon at some point, or at the very least the material for it. It's not that different than Arsene or Limit Break in that regard. The only issue is compared to those two, Steve doesn't gain any weapons that cover anything he's suboptimal at, especially since mining also has to account for the remainder of his resource drain. This is really observable in some of Salem's sets during Ultimate 32, where he ended up missing top 8 in losing sets against Lui$'s Palutena and Mr.E's Lucina. In all of his games he could generally be expected to get Diamond, but it didn't stop him from having to drain so many of his resources just to barely contend with either of those two characters' spacing. Especially if you're going up against a good projectile character, you're even less inclined to let the opponent make the first move. Against Angel's Robin, it didn't matter that Salem got a diamond tool on last stock if he kept getting shut out.

The cop-out answer of course is to say "the truth lies somewhere in the middle". Over time I've somewhat come to see Steve as a lesser Luigi; he trades a more explosive combo and advantage state for worse mobility, less range, and less conditioning. Not giving Steve a projectile may have ended up being one of the unfortunate decisions against this character, as it stands I don't feel he's anywhere near the worst but I feel like he's starting at a mid-average that's susceptible to a downtrend.

 

[Arthur97]

To be fair, the worst part may be largely clickbait. Them being in the bottom 7 might be more believable.

 

[DougEfresh]

I was reluctant to watch ESAM's critique video on Izaw's analysis of Steve because of many of the same reasons NotLiquid mentioned about his opinions and personality, but I did and it was an interesting contrast in perspective nonetheless.

The old adage "the truth lies somewhere in the middle" is indeed a cop-out response to the discussion, although I do think it has solid merit. While I very much doubt he is nearly as bad as Izaw claims he is or will be, I also struggle a great deal to justify putting him in top 25 to 30 of the cast like ESAM states beyond mere theorycrafting, especially at this juncture with a mostly-online-only era.

The main thing I took away from the critique is his insistence on how opponents are frequently, if not always, forced to approach Steve because otherwise he'll just be able to mine materials for free and gain this huge advantage, and I think the argument ESAM makes is overstated, if not downright flawed: While yes, Steve does get to mine materials for free if you don't approach him, his low mobility and puny range combined with numerous characters both outclassing him massively in terms of mobility and range that are common at high and top level is likely to make it difficult to do much with the materials in a productive way in the long term Imo, even with diamond available to him.

I think the point Izaw was attempting to articulate (but probably didn't do such an adequate job of doing) is that Steve will be very prone to circle camping whenever he's the first one to lose a stock because of his lacking mobility stats and range, and it's even possible that having a stock lead may not be a huge boon for Steve with all of the safe, and often disjointed, pressure that Ultimate has to gradually make up the difference on him (and diamond being an x-factor aside, I don't think Steve will be well-suited for making comebacks once a deficit reaches a certain point.)

I think it's fair to say that Steve is in mid tier as of right now, but I believe his playerbase absolutely must have patience and creativity in spades to develop effective counterplay to mitigate pressure situations in neutral that he's likely to find himself in for Steve's perception to shift in a significantly positive manner (and at least anecdotally speaking, if there's anything Smash players lack immensely, it's patience, creativity, or very often, both.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't see how Steve can be the worst when Mac, Ganon, and to lesser extents, Isabelle, Doc, and Lucario exist in their current states. I think Steve is around middle of mid-tier, but at the very least, I think he's better than these characters by a decent margin. And I'd be surprised if buffs helped Mac and Ganon to the point of them being better than Steve tbh.

See my thoughts just above this and you'll see that I agree with your placement of Steve, though I'd personally argue Lucario and Steve are pretty similarly situated on the tier list at this point in solid mid tier or even early on in upper mid if you're optimistic about either.

I've been doing my best to apply the new tech that Lucario now has available to him since his buffs in 9.0 (mainly jab lock set ups into dsmash) and while it's admittedly a bit buffed online because of hitting your techs consistently being more challenging, I've found support in my original hypothesis that he would be more explosive off of neutral wins and he was already fairly good at tech chases once you got a grasp of his tools and how to use them (now being put in that spot just adds that much more fear into the opponent.)

As a recent example, I was fighting a Falco the other day on elite smash and we were both on our second stocks. He got me up to 82% after a couple of his "cutscene" combos and he was at 32%. I land on him with nair, then utilt to send him upward, catch his neutral tech with a bthrow and killed him with the jablock>dsmash confirm at 67% by the ledge (before hit), though effectively, I brought him from 32% to death in one interaction. Before 9.0, at best I would have been able to get a modest tech chase that would lead to some nice damage and maybe try to go for a relatively low reward ledge trap while he was still at low to mid percents, so his punish game has definitely improved notably.

Besides raw killing, I've also experienced some verification that the set up lends itself quite well to setting up for edgeguards and for getting extra credit when you're a stock up (or a way to get a speedy 50 or so percent if you're trying to make up a % deficit quickly.) It requires more testing, but I think his new jablock set up will work best on fast fallers and heavyweights (both the standard heavyweights and super-heavyweights) that give him a way to keep up somewhat better against many match ups both meta relevant and those less so. His main drawback is his really mediocre to flat out bad frame data, especially on the ground (something I've mentioned here several times), but you have to reach a very high level of skill for it to become genuinely problematic Imo and most current reps of the character aren't even close to that yet. If they remedy that flaw of his even modestly before all balance patches are completed for Ultimate, it'll do him wonders that a weight buff alone wouldn't be able to (being heavier wouldn't mean a whole lot when his current start up fdata is easily stuffed out by most characters' moves anyway.)

 

[Thinkaman]

Over time I've somewhat come to see Steve as a lesser Luigi; he trades a more explosive combo and advantage state for worse mobility, less range, and less conditioning.

This is my exact perspective, except perhaps more pessimistic. (Than mine)

Even now, over a month later, my opinion on Steve is "idk, he feels kinda like Luigi...?" followed by the biggest of shrugs.


Edit Bonus: The recent Atelier sets were very good, and reinforced my positive outlook on Pokemon Trainer. (I mean, as much as a single event/series of sets can.) I remain skeptical of claims that this character has a limiting ceiling.

 

[meleebrawler]

This is my exact perspective, except perhaps more pessimistic. (Than mine)

Even now, over a month later, my opinion on Steve is "idk, he feels kinda like Luigi...?" followed by the biggest of shrugs.


Edit Bonus: The recent Atelier sets were very good, and reinforced my positive outlook on Pokemon Trainer. (I mean, as much as a single event/series of sets can.) I remain skeptical of claims that this character has a limiting ceiling.

I prefer to think of him as "Luigi with a better recovery, ledgetrapping, stage control, and non-traditional but no less effective conditioning". Not to mention zone-breaking if he's allowed to get a healthy stock of gold; the powered minecart is the real X-factor, being essentially a renewable Wonderwing that's much faster and safer, if less invulnerable (still has some armor, an understated attribute). People in general also still haven't really grasped the block's ability to be used as cover or stymie go-to approach paths, and TNT can be powerful both for forcing a reaction from the opponent when they're on the defense, or deny a landing spot in the reverse scenario.

Mewtwo and Ridley are in very similar situations- both very solid sword characters but burdened by huge hurtboxes while enjoying none of the perks actual super heavyweights get. They're not bad characters, very few of the cast are, but you could get almost all of their benefits with none of the drawbacks with other swordsmen.

Calling Mewtwo a sword character feels like a disservice with his powerful projectile and speed. He's more of a jack-of-all trades with highly varied playstyles (defensive zoner or spacing aggresively with long, if not fully disjointed moves) that serve well depending on a given matchup. What he's good at no matter what is punishing whiffs, though. His ability to get significant damage off of practically any kind of slip-up from the opponent is almost unparalleled.

 

[Courageous Baka]

How can I get more creative exactly? By just doing a lot of theorycrafting and experimenting?

 

[Courageous Baka]

And just knowing what can work in certain matchups with my character, too?

 

[meleebrawler]

How can I get more creative exactly? By just doing a lot of theorycrafting and experimenting?

Testing hypotheses in training is one way, or sometimes inspiration spontaneously strikes when basic fundamentals aren't cutting it. That's the best way I can explain creating a 4-block high tower to block a Robin getting up from a ledge, preparing a TNT block to blast him where he stood and then smacking him with a diamond forward aerial for the win when he tried to jump out of his situation.

 

[SwagGuy99]

I prefer to think of him as "Luigi with a better recovery, ledgetrapping, stage control, and non-traditional but no less effective conditioning". Not to mention zone-breaking if he's allowed to get a healthy stock of gold; the powered minecart is the real X-factor, being essentially a renewable Wonderwing that's much faster and safer, if less invulnerable (still has some armor, an understated attribute). People in general also still haven't really grasped the block's ability to be used as cover or stymie go-to approach paths, and TNT can be powerful both for forcing a reaction from the opponent when they're on the defense, or deny a landing spot in the reverse scenario.

I actually think (as weird as it sounds), that despite the fact that Steve's kit is probably more well rounded overall, Steve's reliance on materials combined with his poor neutral and poor speed makes it seem like he has less options available to him at any given time compared to Luigi. Steve players will have to play conservative at times with some moves in order to save resources for later which will limit his options in a lot of scenarios. Steve players will also have to dedicate time to mining, likely sacrificing potential ledgetrapping scenarios in order to do so a lot of the time. This is he has Iron/Diamond tools and at least some materials available to him. I think if he has the higher tiered weapons/tools and some materials available to him, then he's probably a high tier character, or at least very close to it as by that point, his damage output overall is going to be high enough that he won't need to win as many neutral interactions in order to kill and rack up damage. The problem is that there are times where it feels like Steve won't be in that position where he has the tools he needs to play the game properly until his second or third stock. A lot of characters can disrupt Steve collecting materials using projectiles or just by pressuring him with moves that can overwhelm him at close/mid/long range (depending on the character). This shuts down Steve's gameplan of collecting materials and will likely just force him to attempt to fight the opponent with the materials he's prepared to or not. And if he breaks his weapons, or runs out of iron to use for Minecart and Anvil, then Steve as a character becomes extremely crippled.

Steve's resource management combined with his poor speed holds him back a lot I think. These issues prevent him from having enough of the materials he needs in order to be a functional character a lot of the time. I'm not sure how good he is at the moment in terms of viability, as Aaron has gotten results with him online, but Tweek also placed 5th at Glitch with Banjo, and Banjo hasn't exactly accomplished much in the meta since then. My current opinion is that Steve is not any better than the middle of mid tier at best, but I could see my opinion on him dropping even further as time goes on.

Edit: A slight comparison between him and Luigi that kind of funny, is that they both might share the same worst matchup: the Belmonts.

 

[Das Koopa]

Too high:
: This character has simply failed to make a splash, and still has yet to receive substantial buffs. I'd put him at bottom of D, but I can see top of D if you're optimistic about him.

I remember recently watching Hungrybox's tier list video, and having watched a substantial bit of Yei footage and having put some time into the character, it was admittedly weird/funny seeing Hbox describe Meta Knight's positives. He compliments his mobility, his recovery, his frame data, his edgeguarding, his disadvantage, and his combo game - all elements the character excel at. Unmentioned to my memory are his shield safety on moves like fair/nair. The only digs he had for the characters were

A: Vague jabs at his consistently or lackthereof, which isn't really a significant issue with adequate character experience.

B: His weight, when weight has almost never been a real limiting factor for any significantly good character. Most top tiers in the series, including polarizing ones, had "being light" as a weakness. Yes, it's a factor. No, it's usually never significant enough to kill a character's viability prospects, especially if they have good tools everywhere else.

The issue is, character that are light frequently trade greater weight for mobility, which gives them far more than they lose by simply being light, because fast & high mobility characters often have good damage outputs. Not coincidentally, Meta Knight - like Sheik in Ultimate - has a quality damage output that is frequently mischaracterized by only looking at single move outputs and not the total damage output & positional advantage.

If we revisit Meta Knight's positives he looks like a high tier at worst. This is a relatively common opinion in my circle and I've yet to see much of any real argument against Meta Knight retaining his Smash 4 status when you confront his character stats & look at footage of people doing well with the character. This footage is from the dead end of pre-COVID Smash, so by meta standards, it's very recent and before they buffed two of his best moves (fair/nair) even more:

Smash Vertex Winners Semis - Maister (Game & Watch) Vs. Yei (Chrom, Meta Knight) Smash Ultimate

Smash Vertex is a Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tournament in Puebla, Mexico Streamed Live at: http://www.facebook.com/smashfactorgaming Bracket: https://smash.g...

www.youtube.com

You can add "good neutral" to Meta Knight's kit on top of everything else since he raw moves are effective. There's no real way to reconcile that with his other tools and not understand him as one of the most likely to rise characters moving forward.

 

[Nobie]

Mewtwo's tail hurtbox is a problem, of course, but the one change I want to see even more than that is a better up smash.

To give you an idea of how bad it is, I was playing a Spirit Board match that involved fighting a giant Charizard. I up smashed at pretty much point blank against a GIANT CHARIZARD and it STILL MISSED! You can probably see how bad it gets against normal-sized characters in multiplayer.

Something that Thinkaman brought up about Mewtwo also applies to its smash attacks. In Smash 4, you almost never had a reason to use f-smash because up smash was so dang versatile. Between the ability to slide with it, the quick startup, and the generous hitbox, it was the go-to move in a lot of situations—even as a Disable follow-up.

In Ultimate, it's almost the opposite problem. Up smash has its uses, but they're so few (Hail Mary anti-air, specific combo ender) that you end up feeling like you made the biggest mistake of your life most of the time you throw it out. The move can't even properly reach the Pokemon Stadium 2 platform, and Mewtwo is one of the tallest characters in the game!

I don't think it necessarily needs a better scooping hitbox from the ground AND a bigger hitbox at the top, but one or the other would be nice.

I'm not sure if we'll see more Mewtwo buffs, though. The character has gotten so many already, and the Shadow Ball changes a few patches ago are actually kind of absurd. Baby Shadow Ball does almost 2/3 more damage than it used to! It's such a big change that I find it easy to forget, and I don't utilize them nearly as much as I should.

 

[The_Bookworm]

I remember recently watching Hungrybox's tier list video, and having watched a substantial bit of Yei footage and having put some time into the character, it was admittedly weird/funny seeing Hbox describe Meta Knight's positives. He compliments his mobility, his recovery, his frame data, his edgeguarding, his disadvantage, and his combo game - all elements the character excel at. Unmentioned to my memory are his shield safety on moves like fair/nair. The only digs he had for the characters were

A: Vague jabs at his consistently or lackthereof, which isn't really a significant issue with adequate character experience.

B: His weight, when weight has almost never been a real limiting factor for any significantly good character. Most top tiers in the series, including polarizing ones, had "being light" as a weakness. Yes, it's a factor. No, it's usually never significant enough to kill a character's viability prospects, especially if they have good tools everywhere else.

The issue is, character that are light frequently trade greater weight for mobility, which gives them far more than they lose by simply being light, because fast & high mobility characters often have good damage outputs. Not coincidentally, Meta Knight - like Sheik in Ultimate - has a quality damage output that is frequently mischaracterized by only looking at single move outputs and not the total damage output & positional advantage.

If we revisit Meta Knight's positives he looks like a high tier at worst. This is a relatively common opinion in my circle and I've yet to see much of any real argument against Meta Knight retaining his Smash 4 status when you confront his character stats & look at footage of people doing well with the character. This footage is from the dead end of pre-COVID Smash, so by meta standards, it's very recent and before they buffed two of his best moves (fair/nair) even more:

Smash Vertex Winners Semis - Maister (Game & Watch) Vs. Yei (Chrom, Meta Knight) Smash Ultimate

Smash Vertex is a Super Smash Bros Ultimate Tournament in Puebla, Mexico Streamed Live at: http://www.facebook.com/smashfactorgaming Bracket: https://smash.g...

www.youtube.com

You can add "good neutral" to Meta Knight's kit on top of everything else since he raw moves are effective. There's no real way to reconcile that with his other tools and not understand him as one of the most likely to rise characters moving forward.

Except that MK hasn't really attained much of any significant results. You have a few splashes with Yei, BONK!, and Abadango back when he played the character, but the results obtained with the character isn't really that much.

In the case of Sheik, she suffers from being very frail, but also has very low raw damage output and a very inconsistent time KO'ing. However, the character has a bountiful combo game and unmatched frame data with good plus frames. Her range is decent for a brawler and she has amazing mobility, all of which help compensate her rather unfortunate weaknesses.

MK in the other hand is rather lacking to compensate for similar weaknesses. The character has very solid mobility, great frame data, and amazing recovery. All of which are great aspects on paper, but his plus frames are surprisingly lackluster, especially on his grounded moves. The only grounded moves that are relatively safe on shield is down tilt (-9) and forward smash (-6). The rest of his grounded moves are incredibly unsafe on shield. Now granted that his aerials are pretty fast and safe on shield.

However, this brings up another issue with MK: his range is absolutely pitiful. His sword is very small, and a some of his hitboxes doesn't even cover the entire sword. Granted that this issue was somewhat worse in SSB4 (looking at you down tilt), but with the nerfs to his dash attack, it makes it all the while harder to land his combo starters. This further enhances the issue of his raw damage output being very low, and it makes his neutral game surprisingly awkward, combined with the fact that his moves have very few active frames. It certainly doesn't help that MK did not really benefit much from the changes to Ultimate's grounded mobility. It altogether can also make it hard to for MK to land his finishers as well.

Sheik in the other hand is even faster (both in mobility and frame data), has better range despite not possessing a sword, has a solid projectile (that MK lacks), and has more combo starters that are much easier to land.

So yeah, Ultimate MK is probably the biggest culprit of a character that looks great on-paper, but has many unfortunate flaws that goes under the radar that makes it hard for him to get much accomplished consistently.

Ultimate Mewtwo has the exact opposite problem: having an amazing advantage state and neutral game, but with a very poor disadvantage state given his tall hurtbox, lightweight, and very slow airdodge.

A: Vague jabs at his consistently or lackthereof, which isn't really a significant issue with adequate character experience.

Not sure how "adequate character experience" would solve a character's consistency issues. The character not being consistent on what he/she does is an inherent issue with the character, and will show up in a match especially between two equally skilled players.
It is one of the primary reasons why Hero is such a rare and rather mediocre placing character (especially as a solo-main) overall: the character is very inherently inconsistent (mixed with a bunch of other glaring flaws) that makes it hard to justify usage in high level play outside of counterpicking.
Granted that MK's inconsistencies is completely different from Hero's inconsistencies, but it is still the same general idea. Inconsistent characters tend to not perform the best in tournaments, especially over a period of time.

B: His weight, when weight has almost never been a real limiting factor for any significantly good character. Most top tiers in the series, including polarizing ones, had "being light" as a weakness. Yes, it's a factor. No, it's usually never significant enough to kill a character's viability prospects, especially if they have good tools everywhere else.

The issue is, character that are light frequently trade greater weight for mobility, which gives them far more than they lose by simply being light, because fast & high mobility characters often have good damage outputs. Not coincidentally, Meta Knight - like Sheik in Ultimate - has a quality damage output that is frequently mischaracterized by only looking at single move outputs and not the total damage output & positional advantage.

You are right: it isn't his weight alone that is causing issues with the character. You can be lightweight and be very viable. Like you said, a lot of top tiers in previous Smash games are in the lighter side of things. However, it is his lightweight, combined with low raw damage output and a tricky time KO'ing, that is proven to be a pain for MK to deal with.
Now he does possess overall quality damage with his combos. It is not amazing, but it is nothing to scoff at. The issue is that, as I said earlier, it is hard to land said combo starters, given MK's pitiful range and most of his grounded buttons being relatively unsafe.
The end result is that the character must take a lot of risks in order to get his stuff started. The range of difficulty for this ranges wildly from character to character, with Game & Watch being one of the easier characters funnily enough (which is something he and his SSB4 counterpart shares in common), but a lot of meta relevant characters (even lower tiered randos like K. Rool) has the tools to take advantage of MK's shortcomings, although I don't think he loses terribly to anyone.

To give you an idea of how bad it is, I was playing a Spirit Board match that involved fighting a giant Charizard. I up smashed at pretty much point blank against a GIANT CHARIZARD and it STILL MISSED! You can probably see how bad it gets against normal-sized characters in multiplayer.

To be fair, Giant Charizard and especially Giant Ridley, despite being big bodies, have some of the most awkward hurtboxes I have ever seen.
I had instances of moves whiffing, or multi-hits dropping, randomly on those two specific giant characters.

I do would like to see his up smash get better though.

 

[StrangeKitten]

The move can't even properly reach the Pokemon Stadium 2 platform, and Mewtwo is one of the tallest characters in the game!

This bothers the hell out of me when I play Mewtwo! The hitbox should be a tad bigger. I could be wrong, but Incin's up smash hits iirc, and he's just using an overhead arm swing and not extending his arm fully with spooky psychic magic floating above it!

" • Fixed an issue where sometimes you would be forced to end a battle on a stage created in Stage Builder." I wonder if this means getting stuck in the stage is no longer possible? I just had a match the other day where a Ridley CPU got stuck in the stage and couldn't get out.

So, it doesn't seem like this is the case. RIP my favorite Persona 5 custom stage. I wonder what this actually did if it didn't solve the getting stuck in the stage issue:

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

This bothers the hell out of me when I play Mewtwo! The hitbox should be a tad bigger. I could be wrong, but Incin's up smash hits iirc, and he's just using an overhead arm swing and not extending his arm fully with spooky psychic magic floating above it!


So, it doesn't seem like this is the case. RIP my favorite Persona 5 custom stage. I wonder what this actually did if it didn't solve the getting stuck in the stage issue:

This video discusses those issues before 9.0.2 (I've timed the video to where it discusses the problems that were occuring). It was to do with Steve crashing the game on Stage Builder.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

I think MK hasn't made any big waves because of nerf inertia (or "antihype" if you prefer). I don't think any top level wants to play him because he's not what he was in Brawl. Even when he was briefly considered very strong in Smash 4, he wasn't played all that much. The reality is that the Ultimate community is an evolution of the Brawl community -- a game where top 8s were often 80-100% MK -- and people don't want to play a version of the character that isn't as good as they remember. It feels really bad, and we've seen this over and over throughout the history of competitive fighting games. Riven in League of Legends. Yang in SF4. Rufus in SF4. Fox after Melee. It took like 20 years for someone to win a major with Pikachu in Melee, which he has literally been capable of doing since the game was released.

Think about what MK lost since Brawl. Tornado is good but it's a shadow of what it was, a 19% damage transcendent move that does literally everything. A glide and insanely good glide attack, and an up-b that goes into that glide. Transcendent sword property. A bit of range here and there. Damage on most attacks (though most characters, including some very good ones like ZSS, lost damage after Brawl). MK could play literally however he wanted and had access to a variety of playstyles that he could activate from anywhere onscreen at any time. All of those nerfs were necessary to balance the character, but if you were used to playing with those tools you just don't want to play a version of it that has lost them.

If you put M2K or Leo (or honestly, several of the recently cancelled former Brawl players) on MK for a while they'd make him look very very good but that caliber of player just isn't interested in playing a worse version of a character they used to play, especially if he's not top tier, which he probably still isn't. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of Diddy Kong. The premier Diddy players from Smash 4 just don't want to play him because they got so much of what made him good taken from them. They dump these characters into mid tier without honestly spending time with or evaluating those characters on their current merits.

If MK was new to Ultimate, where would he be now? I think this discussion would be framed very differently than it is now.

 

[KirbySquad101]

I always think having low overall damage on individual hits is an issue in that you don't ever want to trade hits with the character, but aside from that, I feel like 's damage output would be acceptable if he was about as flexible as say... someone like Sheik, or even Pikachu to a lesser extent.

Sheik's got the worst overall damage on stray hits, BUT she's also got combos at 0%, she's got combos at 30%, she's got combos at 80%, she's got combos at nearly every percent imaginable, and on top of that, kill confirms starting at 100%, and she can start off so much of this off of practical tools like NAir, FAir, DTilt, UTilt, Needles, FTilt, etc. And while Pika doesn't have the same level of flexibility as someone like Sheik, he still has respectable 20~30% strings off of things like UTilt, NAir, grab, UAir, etc. at a broad range of percents that mitigate what's otherwise really mediocre damage levels.

Don't get me wrong, when Meta Knight's getting those ladders rolling off of his Dash Attack or Grab at that low percent range, the low damage is very much a non-issue. But outside of that... what's he racking up the damage with? His FAir or BAir that require him to pressure more for actual damage? His dash attack and down throw, both of which do not have good combo windows? His DTilt that may only sometimes trip? He is clearly scary at that 20~40% sweetspot as we no doubt saw given the amount of times Yei laddered Maister into oblivion games 2 and 3. But if we also see players like Maister perform at the same level of passiveness that he did in game 4 and deny Meta Knight those openings and sweetspots he really wants, I really don't think there's much Meta Knight can do to alleviate what's otherwise a very low damage output aside from the occasional 5~10% poke, or the hard FSmash read.

 

[The_Bookworm]

I think MK hasn't made any big waves because of nerf inertia (or "antihype" if you prefer). I don't think any top level wants to play him because he's not what he was in Brawl. Even when he was briefly considered very strong in Smash 4, he wasn't played all that much. The reality is that the Ultimate community is an evolution of the Brawl community -- a game where top 8s were often 80-100% MK -- and people don't want to play a version of the character that isn't as good as they remember. It feels really bad, and we've seen this over and over throughout the history of competitive fighting games. Riven in League of Legends. Yang in SF4. Rufus in SF4. Fox after Melee. It took like 20 years for someone to win a major with Pikachu in Melee, which he has literally been capable of doing since the game was released.

Think about what MK lost since Brawl. Tornado is good but it's a shadow of what it was, a 19% damage transcendent move that does literally everything. A glide and insanely good glide attack, and an up-b that goes into that glide. Transcendent sword property. A bit of range here and there. Damage on most attacks (though most characters, including some very good ones like ZSS, lost damage after Brawl). MK could play literally however he wanted and had access to a variety of playstyles that he could activate from anywhere onscreen at any time. All of those nerfs were necessary to balance the character, but if you were used to playing with those tools you just don't want to play a version of it that has lost them.

If you put M2K or Leo (or honestly, several of the recently cancelled former Brawl players) on MK for a while they'd make him look very very good but that caliber of player just isn't interested in playing a worse version of a character they used to play, especially if he's not top tier, which he probably still isn't. The same is true, to a lesser extent, of Diddy Kong. The premier Diddy players from Smash 4 just don't want to play him because they got so much of what made him good taken from them. They dump these characters into mid tier without honestly spending time with or evaluating those characters on their current merits.

If MK was new to Ultimate, where would he be now? I think this discussion would be framed very differently than it is now.

It is possible that the absurdity of rubbed off on some players when approaching .

The character in Ultimate, believe or not, was considered a potent character at the very early meta. Some players who played him in the past, including back in SSB4, gave him the old college try. However, as time goes on, his status as a very medium-risk, low-reward character really started to show.

For reference, I think you are underselling how popular was. Sure it was nowhere near as absurd as in Brawl (as the character did get heavily nerfed from Brawl), but there were quite a lot of players that obtained success with the character.
We had Rags, AC, Pandarian, Tyrant, and S2H doing some pretty great things with him, especially in the 2018 meta.
We also have the secondary efforts of Abadango, MkLeo (prior to 2018), and tyroy doing stuff with the character.
Jayy also uses him as a co-main alongside Bayonetta.

However, a lot of those who pushed MK in SSB4 has dropped the character.
AC (now known as Armando) now plays Snake, with Falco as a secondary.
Rags now plays Greninja, occasionally Inkling and DK.
Pandarian now mains Pokemon Trainer, with Wolf as a secondary.
tyroy now plays Joker and Pichu, with Palutena (and occasionally MK) as a secondary.
MkLeo, after experimenting with the character in the early meta, largely wrote him off this game as very lacking.

There is still some that continues to play him, such as Tyrant and S2H, some notable players like Destany, Crispy, and Lickey, and Jayy (now known as Soar) does continue to use him as a co-main. Abadango have occasionally pulled out the character, but instances of him doing this is pretty rare nowadays. They have obtained a few instances of respectable results, especially in-region, they haven't really done anything impressive.

Outside of dedicated mains that continue to play him in Ultimate, the character has a high-skill ceiling, but unlike Sheik who rewards her dedicated players a decent amount when learning her neutral game and combo routes, MK is far less flexible, more flawed, and has very little reward to be worth picking up.

As for , stigma of how good he was in SSB4 was a factor behind his low reps at the beginning of the game, but Diddy Kong was also a very lacking character in the early meta. His recovery got gutted, the game engine nerfed banana pressure due to the reduced projectile shieldstun on shields, some of his moves (including staple moves) got their range reduced, and his KO power is overall lacking relative to changes to blastzones (including up smash).

However, game patches significantly buffed Diddy. The range on some moves like forward tilt, neutral air, jab 2, and (most importantly) forward air got increased, the damage/power of moves like down smash, up air, and up smash got increased, his Popgun is faster and deals more damage, his recovery got heavily buffed, and various other changes.
All these changes together helped nit together his neutral game in Ulimate's engine, and made him much more rewarding. The recent change to his forward air and dash attack in 8.0.0 was especially helpful in achieving this recently, which is a major reason why Diddy's results exploded after that patch.

tl:dr, Diddy started out of the gate as one of the game's most nerfed characters (not as nerfed as Rosa, Sheik, or Bayo, but still up there), but has been one of the most buffed characters in patches so far, which ultimately helped out his standing in the roster tremendously in comparison to his state in the base game.

As for what if was introduced into Ultimate, that is an interesting topic. Assuming if he is introduced in the state he is today, it is hard to say. A big reason to why MK was a very hyped up character in Ultimate's early days, is the fact that some aspects of MK's Brawl-self has made its way to Ultimate. It certainly doesn't help that we had the infamous 0-death clip shortly prior to release (which I just remembered now when typing this lol). MK just kinda faded away as time went on.

If MK was introduced in Ultimate, we wouldn't have viewed him with the context of his past iterations. Putting on the shoes of players in the early meta, he would probably be hyped up at the beginning (though more conservative), be experimented around, and either be decently popular at the start of the game before ultimately fall off, or be dropped off immediately due to similarities to Sheik, who was considered to be a very weak character at the start of Ultimate.

Of course, there is no definitive way of knowing what players would think of MK, but those are some ideas I threw around.

 

[Das Koopa]

Except that MK hasn't really attained much of any significant results. You have a few splashes with Yei, BONK!, and Abadango back when he played the character, but the results obtained with the character isn't really that much.

I don’t really agree with this. Meta Knight’s results only look sporadic if you look at, say, Yei’s profile and only look at the attendance date gaps (i.e Smash Factor 8 > Smash Vertex) and ignore that these are his two most recent significant international events. As it stands, his results with the character were significant when he was active; he just lacks a USA visa.

The broader issue is that some characters simply lack a star player. I think results can be critical and are important to meta perception, but it is always tempting to look at a character and point to how many only have one tippy-top player and realize how dead their meta would look without that player.

This was seen in action with Mr. G&W, where the bulk of his top players are flat-out just in Latin America. If Maister hadn’t had USA success or lacked a visa, it’s undeniable that perceptions of the character would be worse because the representation gap is significant.

I don’t want to use that to argue things on paper must be true; I’m skeptical of Pikachu’s #1 status simply because the character truly is lacking in depth of results everywhere outside of ESAM. But that hinges on the argument being “Pikachu is #1” – I’m just saying Meta Knight fits somewhere in high-tier. This could be as low as 30th.

In the case of Sheik, she suffers from being very frail, but also has very low raw damage output and a very inconsistent time KO'ing. However, the character has a bountiful combo game and unmatched frame data with good plus frames. Her range is decent for a brawler and she has amazing mobility, all of which help compensate her rather unfortunate weaknesses.

MK in the other hand is rather lacking to compensate for similar weaknesses. The character has very solid mobility, great frame data, and amazing recovery. All of which are great aspects on paper, but his plus frames are surprisingly lackluster, especially on his grounded moves. The only grounded moves that are relatively safe on shield is down tilt (-9) and forward smash (-6). The rest of his grounded moves are incredibly unsafe on shield. Now granted that his aerials are pretty fast and safe on shield.

Okay, but Meta Knight is a character that primarily functions in the air in a game where safe aerials largely take precedence over safe grounded moves. The safety of aerials in general has been cited as an issue people have with the game, even – rather than strong grounded normals. The fact is, he has multiple very safe aerials, a constant threat aura at mid-high percents with Fsmash, and can use his grounded mobility to threaten grab (which, at worst, provides him positional advantage when he has incredibly aerial mobility and aerial hitboxes to take advantage of this.)

However, this brings up another issue with MK: his range is absolutely pitiful. His sword is very small, and a some of his hitboxes doesn't even cover the entire sword. Granted that this issue was somewhat worse in SSB4 (looking at you down tilt), but with the nerfs to his dash attack, it makes it all the while harder to land his combo starters. This further enhances the issue of his raw damage output being very low, and it makes his neutral game surprisingly awkward, combined with the fact that his moves have very few active frames. It certainly doesn't help that MK did not really benefit much from the changes to Ultimate's grounded mobility. It altogether can also make it hard to for MK to land his finishers as well.

I find myself disagreeing with this point again; by emphasizing his grounded normal flaws, we’re just missing his aerial safety. In combination with his mobility and damage output, this largely compensates for his lack of range because he can still threaten players.

Not sure how "adequate character experience" would solve a character's consistency issues. The character not being consistent on what he/she does is an inherent issue with the character, and will show up in a match especially between two equally skilled players.
It is one of the primary reasons why Hero is such a rare and rather mediocre placing character (especially as a solo-main) overall: the character is very inherently inconsistent (mixed with a bunch of other glaring flaws) that makes it hard to justify usage in high level play outside of counterpicking.
Granted that MK's inconsistencies is completely different from Hero's inconsistencies, but it is still the same general idea. Inconsistent characters tend to not perform the best in tournaments, especially over a period of time.

I didn’t word this well; my point was that these perceived consistency issues don’t actually exist in the way people think they do, which is why I brought up Sheik. The point is that people’s exposure to the character is suboptimal and as a result they view the character through this lens even though it’s not especially accurate.

I don’t agree with comparing Meta Knight and Hero at all. Hero does have consistency issues in terms of his extremes enabled by Menu, but for one, Hero is generally used against characters where this is less of an issue (see: zoners that provide him far more menu time to compensate) and for two, the issue there is basically saying “I need broken options to exist because my base form is bad.”

The second point is why Hero is really bad and hasn’t done much; he has a truly horrendous disadvantage state, his mobility without menu is bad, his frame data is bad, and he basically relies completely on a resource limited move pool to even function better than a character like Ganondorf.

So yeah Hero does have consistency issues but those aren’t actually his core flaws, they simply represent a final nail onto hero’s kit because he needs actual luck to get over the hump designed by the developers. Meta Knight isn’t like this at all.

You are right: it isn't his weight alone that is causing issues with the character. You can be lightweight and be very viable. Like you said, a lot of top tiers in previous Smash games are in the lighter side of things. However, it is his lightweight, combined with low raw damage output and a tricky time KO'ing, that is proven to be a pain for MK to deal with.
Now he does possess overall quality damage with his combos. It is not amazing, but it is nothing to scoff at. The issue is that, as I said earlier, it is hard to land said combo starters, given MK's pitiful range and most of his grounded buttons being relatively unsafe.
The end result is that the character must take a lot of risks in order to get his stuff started. The range of difficulty for this ranges wildly from character to character, with Game & Watch being one of the easier characters funnily enough (which is something he and his SSB4 counterpart shares in common), but a lot of meta relevant characters (even lower tiered randos like K. Rool) has the tools to take advantage of MK's shortcomings, although I don't think he loses terribly to anyone.

To be clear – I do think that range and weight can and do act as mitigating factors. My issue with your statement here is I think you’re overplaying how much of a mitigating factor they are, because Meta Knight has a significant number of different options to engage combos & extensions and doesn’t really suffer much if he misses them once or twice specifically because

A: He has good aerial mobility and 5 jumps
B: Cape is a very good, low/no lag landing option
C: He’s hard to edgeguard
D: The above factors make him able to escape the ledge more effectively than many characters

This is IF you don’t correctly hit things like; Grab, dtilt, dash attack, falling nair/fair, and bair1 confirms, all of which are combo starters that cover a range of options. That’s just for a grounded opponent, though – Meta Knight’s options expand with jump reads.

Basically, I don’t agree with the characterization of Meta Knight being (as you put it later) “medium risk”. His biggest issue is often closing out stocks, but this gap is bridged partially by his immense offstage pressure and partially by his mixup potential and aerial/fsmash safety that allows him to throw out moves on top of everything else. Working back to jump reads, he can jump read uair > shuttle loop as a kill confirm, and falling bair/fair kill confirm at certain %s. Depending on the exact situation, you can get shuttle loops, grabs, ftilt 123, etc.

I don't agree he struggles killing much as people say and I think this comes from a lack of knowledge on his aerial confirms. So, sure, his ftilt isn't amazingly safe on shield, but that doesn't really matter because his threat aura with aerials is huge and if he tags you in bair1 he's going to get ftilt123 or downsmash anyways. These aren't impractical and they exist as options alongside his already practical kill ladders, Fsmash, and his edgeguarding ability.

I understand why the negative perception exists because there has been a steady dropoff since 2017-2018 of Meta Knight presence, and people overhyped him so much early game in Smash Ultimate that he was given up on when he wasn't autokilling everybody all the time. I'm saying that this is an idea that afflicted a lot of characters in this game from Smash 4 and made them unreasonably underrated due to some antihype effect where people disregard quality tools and only emphasize weaknesses.

Last bit since I want to address this (though I'll be gone for a bit afterwards.)

For reference, I think you are underselling how popular was. Sure it was nowhere near as absurd as in Brawl (as the character did get heavily nerfed from Brawl), but there were quite a lot of players that obtained success with the character.
We had Rags, AC, Pandarian, Tyrant, and S2H doing some pretty great things with him, especially in the 2018 meta.
We also have the secondary efforts of Abadango, MkLeo (prior to 2018), and tyroy doing stuff with the character.
Jayy also uses him as a co-main alongside Bayonetta.

However, a lot of those who pushed MK in SSB4 has dropped the character.
AC (now known as Armando) now plays Snake, with Falco as a secondary.
Rags now plays Greninja, occasionally Inkling and DK.
Pandarian now mains Pokemon Trainer, with Wolf as a secondary.
tyroy now plays Joker and Pichu, with Palutena (and occasionally MK) as a secondary.
MkLeo, after experimenting with the character in the early meta, largely wrote him off this game as very lacking.

There is still some that continues to play him, such as Tyrant and S2H, some notable players like Destany, Crispy, and Lickey, and Jayy (now known as Soar) does continue to use him as a co-main. Abadango have occasionally pulled out the character, but instances of him doing this is pretty rare nowadays. They have obtained a few instances of respectable results, especially in-region, they haven't really done anything impressive.

I don’t disagree Meta Knight was relatively popular in Smash 4, but some of this needs to be contextualized.

Many of his then-significant mains either do not play the game anymore, are on hiatus, or have not yet peaked to the level they did in Smash 4 when they mained or co-mained the character. I think Pandarian and AC are the only current players with ranking credibility from Smash 4 or Ultimate who mained him through to the end of Smash 4 that dropped him going into Ultimate, among MK players who still play.


-MKLeo dropped Meta Knight in 2018 after picking up Bayonetta.
-Tyroy dropped MK in early 2016
-Rags either doesn’t play much now or dropped off entirely
-S2H is banned
-Tyrant doesn’t play much now
-Ito doesn’t play much now
-Abadango stopped playing Meta Knight much in Smash 4 after picking up Bayonetta (a very common trend in general)

Basically, Meta Knight’s player base progressively decayed a bit, retaining some level of decent national or solid regional results going into Late smash 4, but the retirement or hiatus of several players acted as a sledgehammer to his early meta progress, and the hands that tried him are often fickle with main picks historically to begin with – see Abadango dropping many top/high tiers in his career of the last 4-5 years.

Basically, I brought up Yei because he has consecutive credible performances & wins with Meta Knight despite not even solely using him in tournament. This type of phenomenon has, many times, preceded larger character successes.

I'm happy to talk about Meta Knight since he's one of the few characters I've seen so far that hasn't gotten an (IMO) proper reassessment; my impression, as I said earlier, is some vague blob of "High tier" or even "upper tier" (a bridge between mid/high) since while I do strongly believe Meta Knight is GOOD, I'm only arguing that he's suitably viable. I can't say if he's better than Mega Man or Pac-Man or Cloud or Sheik, only that he exists in a similar range of viability, and that worse characters have succeeded more.

 

[Nobie]

I've seen some people put Kirby above Meta Knight, and I just think, "really?"

 

[KirbySquad101]

I've seen some people put Kirby above Meta Knight, and I just think, "really?"

I don't really see how that's a farfetch'd take, especially if you're looking at it from a results angle. Theorycraft is a different story, but their performances in a tournament setting as a whole have generally been on par with each other.

Since we are talking about Meta Knight atm, though, here's the MU chart Yei posted of the character a while back:

A lot of people told me to make my personal MK Tier List (Offline) and there you go Hope you like it ! I promise I'll continue doing my best to show the World that MK can be good at this game :) pic.twitter.com/TVKdfokUoi

— Yei (@YeiMK_ssb) September 1, 2020

 

[SwagGuy99]

Yeah, I've noticed the matchup charts of the top Meta Knight players vary a lot. Yei's is fairly optimistic while KaPMk's matchup chart (he is probably the best Meta Knight player in Japan currently) is the exact opposite. It has multiple -3 matchups, barely any winning matchups, and it overall paints Meta Knight in a very negative light.

無言投下 pic.twitter.com/kTjIpq3wOl

— かっぱまき/KaPMk (@KaPMk_Spark) August 8, 2020

I think these differing opinions have a lot to do with how volatile the character is overall. This character gets punished hard by a lot of characters since he's fairly easy to combo, so making mistakes are really costly for Meta Knight. I also think that it's worth mentioning that while his combo game is extremely potent, a lot of it (including his up-air strings) feels extremely tight on characters who have faster fall speeds or fast moves that can combo break against him. Being light means he dies early, so Meta Knight players can't afford to be dropping combos because they inputted up-air a frame too early or because his up-b multihits didn't connect properly.

I feel like playing Meta Knight requires the Meta Knight player to be playing on point at all times, moreso than most of the roster. There are arguments for him being a good character, and I agree that Meta Knight feels fairly unexplored in Ultimate and might be a decent character. However I don't think that he's an amazing character either given the seemingly high skill floor the character requires to play at top level combined with the fact that he suffers from not being rewarded as much for successful punishes compared to other volatile characters with strong punish games like Luigi and Sheik.

 

[Nobie]

Yeah, I've noticed the matchup charts of the top Meta Knight players vary a lot. Yei's is fairly optimistic while KaPMk's matchup chart (he is probably the best Meta Knight player in Japan currently) is the exact opposite. It has multiple -3 matchups, barely any winning matchups, and it overall paints Meta Knight in a very negative light.

無言投下 pic.twitter.com/kTjIpq3wOl

— かっぱまき/KaPMk (@KaPMk_Spark) August 8, 2020

I think these differing opinions have a lot to do with how volatile the character is overall. This character gets punished hard by a lot of characters since he's fairly easy to combo, so making mistakes are really costly for Meta Knight. I also think that it's worth mentioning that while his combo game is extremely potent, a lot of it (including his up-air strings) feels extremely tight on characters who have faster fall speeds or fast moves that can combo break against him. Being light means he dies early, so Meta Knight players can't afford to be dropping combos because they inputted up-air a frame too early or because his up-b multihits didn't connect properly.

I feel like playing Meta Knight requires the Meta Knight player to be playing on point at all times, moreso than most of the roster. There are arguments for him being a good character, and I agree that Meta Knight feels fairly unexplored in Ultimate and might be a decent character. However I don't think that he's an amazing character either given the seemingly high skill floor the character requires to play at top level combined with the fact that he suffers from not being rewarded as much for successful punishes compared to other volatile characters with strong punish games like Luigi and Sheik.

The fact that KaPMK has both Sonic AND Ganondorf as even matchups says to me that MK is just a unique character whose strengths are kind of hard to boil down into simple descriptions. Really, I don't know how many characters can actually say that Sonic is just as tough to fight as Dorf and vice versa.

 

[SwagGuy99]

The fact that KaPMK has both Sonic AND Ganondorf as even matchups says to me that MK is just a unique character whose strengths are kind of hard to boil down into simple descriptions. Really, I don't know how many characters can actually say that Sonic is just as tough to fight as Dorf and vice versa.

I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this, but I do think that it's interesting that two of the best Meta Knight players have such differing opinions on his matchups. I think Meta Knight being light and easy to kill (while having a passable disadvantage despite these weaknesses) but also having an inconsistent but very potent combo game means that I think matchups in general are going to be volatile for him and I think that's why players will likely have differing opinions like we see here.

I can try to theorize on he might think both of these matchups are even at a surface level, but take this with a grain of salt since I don't play any of these characters at top level.

I personally doubt Ganon/Meta Knight is an even matchup, but I can see an argument for it being not awful for Ganon. I think that if Meta Knight can't manage to kill Ganon off a combo, I do think that MK's issue of being able to take stocks will start to come into play. I know his f-smash and tornado are solid kill options, but Tornado isn't that strong and f-smash's hitbox isn't very active and lacks range, especially compared to the range of another sword character or even Ganon himself. Ganon outranges Meta Knight in general, and if Ganon plays just out of Meta Knight's range, he can outspace Meta Knight with a lot of his moves. I think on paper, Meta Knight's advantage state and edgeguarding on Ganon is a bit too good for the matchup to be even, but maybe there's something I'm missing here, IDK.

Regarding the Sonic/MK matchup, Sonic is a character who relies on being able to overwhelm his opponent with his frame data, speed, and ability to time his opponent out. Meta Knight can keep up with Sonic pretty well in both frame data and move speed, so that's pretty good. Like Meta Knight, Sonic is also a lightweight character who can struggle when it comes to killing, and Meta Knight is also better at taking advantage of Sonic's recovery than Sonic is at taking advantage of Meta Knights. Combine that with Meta Knight's ability to use his specials in order to evade/catch up to Sonic when he needs to, and I can definitely see an argument for Meta Knight doing pretty good against Sonic compared to a lot of the roster.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

The way Yei plays him is really interesting and unique and may account for some of that. The guy basically does nothing until he's sure he has an opening. It was shocking to watch the guy. lol

 

[Djmarcus44]

Das Koopa Meta Knight's air mobility stats are slightly below average. His airspeed is 45th at 1.04, and his aerial acceleration is tied for 41st at .075. This makes me question whether Meta Knight's neutral is above average.

SwagGuy99 Meta Knight has a great recovery and really good landing options. His frame 4 dair can also break up some strings. I would consider his disadvantage to be pretty good relative to the cast.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Raito's finished tier list

Raito's tier list

Woke as hell pic.twitter.com/Kns4ViQsIQ

— CGN | Tru4 (@Tru4Smash) November 18, 2020

Not ordered. It's done in who got introduced in the series first within the top tiers.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Raito's finished tier list

Raito's tier list

Woke as hell pic.twitter.com/Kns4ViQsIQ

— CGN | Tru4 (@Tru4Smash) November 18, 2020

Some people are saying it's unordered, can anyone here confirm that?

I don't know, but based on opinions I've seen from other Japanese players during 8.0/9.0, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was ordered. And if it is, that means he has Yoshi in his Top 10 which is a very hot take.

Since I started doing this before with the previous parts, here's the full list just here in case people don't want to go on Twitter/Youtube to see it.

S TIER



A TIER

()

B TIER



C TIER



D TIER



E TIER



Edit: Characters are ordered by fighter number (mostly).

 

[Firox]

I don't know, but based on opinions I've seen from other Japanese players during 8.0/9.0, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this was ordered. And if it is, that means he has Yoshi in his Top 10 which is a very hot take.

Since I started doing this before with the previous parts, here's the full list just here in case people don't want to go on Twitter/Youtube to see it.

S TIER



A TIER

()

B TIER



C TIER



D TIER



E TIER



Edit: Characters are ordered by fighter number (mostly).

Pits in A tier? Yeah, baby, OH BEHAVE!

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

In response to Raito's list:

Samus: A tier IMO
Doc: Too high
K. Rool: Too low
Lucas: too low
MK: my view on MK is established by now, lol


Still think everyone is overrating Doc.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Something else I saw this morning that was put out by a Japanese player was Rizeasu's Marth matchup chart and it honestly makes Marth look better than most Lucina matchup charts make Lucina look. I wish he played Lucina so we could compare his opinions of both characters, but it's still interesting to see how positive he is on the character.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Oh, and Smash Ultimate doesn't have an S tier. lol

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Context for the Raito tier list

he made this list based on how stable you can get higher in offline tourneys and not how strong they actually are

— Tきーと (@Tkiito_ssb) November 18, 2020

The list is going purely off of matchup spread and nothing else. So yeah, Raito also doesn't think Pikachu's matchup spread is that godlike.

 

[KirbySquad101]

I do like the confidence Rizesau has in Marth; I think a main overrating their character as opposed to underrating them is a better mentality to adopt.

But that game against Kome really did not do anything to convince me that the Shulk MU is even at all for Marth.

 

[Frihetsanka]

For Raito's:

Too high: ()
Too low:

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

For Raito's:

Too high: ()
Too low:

I feel like his Corrin rating is honestly higher than most people would rate her because people don't know how good Corrin actually is. Raito knows she has a good amount of sauce right now and put her in the top 30 section (It's ordered through when the character was revealed), which I don't think is too far off from her actual placement. I think she could go into A tier but it's not a drastic difference.

 

[NotLiquid]

It's hard to really grasp the full context of the tier list given the language barrier, but if this is an unordered list then I don't really have much problem with it, especially since a lot of this is Japan influenced. Most of the characters are in the tiers I'd expect them to be. If this is an ordered list, well, it raises a whole lot of questions, but again since we lack context I wouldn't really be arguing in good faith if I picked it apart too heavily.

The only characters that really stick out here for me if this is unordered are the Pits and Duck Hunt being valued pretty highly, whereas Inkling and G&W are pretty undervalued. The three aforementioned characters may have some semblance of optics that can explain their positioning but I don't know how G&W escapes scrutiny given the amount of success the character has seen worldwide. Even from a MU chart perspective, G&W is extremely privileged against 90% of the cast.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Lunamado's tier list (Though it's more of a ranking)

キャラランク作りました

俺が最も正しい pic.twitter.com/5rKCGlTgtq

— ルナマド🍅 (@Lunamado22) November 19, 2020

 

[Frihetsanka]

That Corrin placement makes me sad. Also Ike, does Japan not have any good Ike players? He put Donkey Kong higher than both...

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

That Corrin placement makes me sad. Also Ike, does Japan not have any good Ike players? He put Donkey Kong higher than both...

I don't think there is. There was a few at the start of the game, but even they got mediocre placements. The best result from a Japanese Ike was when Zackray used him as a secondary at Umebura SP 2 and won the tournament.