Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Thinkaman]

Contrast that chart with older, pre-9.0.0 data, and we see a few interesting things. (Note: some of these may be due to different skill level cutoffs and a higher density of online)

usage has plummeted; no other top character was affected as much
usage also fell dramatically--surprising. (Ness and Bowser stayed widely used.) This is the "online change" I least expected.
continue to only shine at the highest levels
and are batting way above their previous averages, out-performing most characters holistically
is also doing pretty reasonably well, as older data suggested--but we previously all assumed it wouldn't hold true at this level
rose greatly, some of the biggest winners. In this data, they are near-median characters.
and to an extent are performing better but not being picked up by more players
has fallen off the edge of the world in this data set. He has a reputation for being poor online, so it's not that radical, but even so a sharp fall for one of the single most popular characters at release.

 

[RonNewcomb]

Re the European tourney, that v. match was so damn fun.

: I have long combos with barely a single frame allowing escape
: lol, 'k.

: I have a super high recovery that barely anyone can touch.
: lol, 'k.

 

[Tri Knight]

I'm more surprised by the usage rates than anything. Had no idea Snake and Palu were still that popular online. Ness I could have guessed, but not Min Min. I know it's from top 12.5% but you'd have to assume that it more or less carries down to the lower brackets given the trends, no?

 

[Nobie]

Thinking more about Jigglypuff's poor grab game/ability to deal with shields, I remembered that Melee Puff (the platinum standard of Puffs) DOES have a niche use combo throw in up throw into rest off of bad DI. Obviously a different game and different take on the character in so many ways, but the the ability to slip it in and get huge reward when the opponent is busy trying to deal with aerials makes for an interesting threat.

One thing that holds back Puff most is that the bad matches are soooo bad, and the character's trump cards just aren't potent enough here. How do you fight Yoshi when he's basically You, but Better?

 

[duxx]

Online PGRU (PGOL) just came out. They're only doing top ten this time so in case you haven't watched it yet:
(secondaries are in parentheses)
#10: RVN | 9superpie ()
#9: LVD | Suarez
#8: Sparg0 ()
#7: Bandits | Sonix
#6: SSG | Maister
#5: Yu
#4: Sharp (, )
#3: 8BitMan
#2: Panda | WaDi ( )
#1: ILUZ | Jake


here's the video link if you want to watch it for yourself

 

[Frihetsanka]

The online meta sure is different from online, both in regards to top players and characters. It seems like more and more offline top players are getting sick of online and are participating in fewer online tournaments. Seems to me that one offline is back in full, online tournaments will lose most of their mainstream appeal.

It's Sonix, not Sonic, by the way.

It will be interesting to see if Steve can keep up in the offline meta. It's hard to argue that he isn't at least high tier online, although I suspect offline will be different. I'm suspecting he will drop to mid tier, but we'll see.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Nairo is Playing Cosmos right now on his Youtube Stream using Yuzu. It is worth checking out you want to likely the closest thing top level vs MU may look like as well as respective gameplay in general

 

[TennisBall]

I have to wonder how they ranked it cause Sparg0 is absolutely Top 1 on Online right now imo and his placements are incredible if you look at them. Maybe it's cause he doesnt enter as often as some others.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Another Tweek talk, quite a bit of this wasn't about the actual game all that much but some of it was, and you can always just watch the segments you're interested in if you want. Anyway, I timestamped when they started talking about Diddy Kong, and it seems like both Aaron and Tweek think Sephiroth is top 10 (seems Aaron thinks he might be even better than that). I could see it (top 10, that is, top 5 seems like a stretch). All four of them are roasting people calling Sephiroth mid tier rather heavily. I also never really believe he was mid tier, he always struck me as at least high tier. I'm not 100% sure he's top tier, but currently I think he probably is.

Hey, I guess a bunch of people who weren't watching Tweek and other Sephiroth's might've watched Nairo now and maybe changed their mind? I really don't think Sephiroth is mid tier.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

"Potential" has become sort of buzzword and meme over time die to it being associated with and that he was top tier because "potential" even though he could not get results to back the claims.

Well as the recent Orionstats have said. Shd may actullay of had the potential for real the whole time. With is showing that now its Shulk time.
U
So its worth saying has potential can hopefully be taken with less memey mindset. Like Shulk Seth can be. Tricky and complex character to play optimally. So there may be a chance it can be Seph time baby!

 

[StrangeKitten]

Another Tweek talk, quite a bit of this wasn't about the actual game all that much but some of it was, and you can always just watch the segments you're interested in if you want. Anyway, I timestamped when they started talking about Diddy Kong, and it seems like both Aaron and Tweek think Sephiroth is top 10 (seems Aaron thinks he might be even better than that). I could see it (top 10, that is, top 5 seems like a stretch). All four of them are roasting people calling Sephiroth mid tier rather heavily. I also never really believe he was mid tier, he always struck me as at least high tier. I'm not 100% sure he's top tier, but currently I think he probably is.

Hey, I guess a bunch of people who weren't watching Tweek and other Sephiroth's might've watched Nairo now and maybe changed their mind? I really don't think Sephiroth is mid tier.

Sephiroth has struck me as top tier from day 1. Upper echelons of it, too. I still maintain that position.

 

[Diddy Kong]

He seems lower Top Tier, Sephiroth is basically a slower Smash 4 Marth and Mewtwo mix. He's quite underrated, and Tweek is gonna take names with both Diddy and Sephiroth, am gonna call it. I won't be surprised if he's gonna win mayors with these two.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Nairo is Playing Cosmos right now on his Youtube Stream using Yuzu. It is worth checking out you want to likely the closest thing top level vs MU may look like as well as respective gameplay in general

There's a lot of takeaways from this given the sheer number of matches between the two, but some things lining up pretty consistently from what I see are:

- Most of the explosiveness between the two happens offstage, whether it's Sephy skewering Pyra's recovery at 50% with DAir, or Pyra going to deep to challenge his Octoslash for a 60% kill (not even just during its slow start-up too, it didn't seem particularly hard for either character to challenge the disjoint of that move with their own). Recovering low in particular as Pyra or Mythra feels like such a bad move against Sephiroth between his DAir that goes DEEP and his counter.

- Sephiroth isn't actually that helpless up close against Mythra; when he's getting juggled, perhaps, but NAir seemed really good at challenging most of Mythra's aerials. That, and side B is really good at making sure Mythra just can't keep mashing on him even when she does get a hit in.

- Cosmos played the standard "Mythra neutral/damage racker" and "Pyra killbot/later percents" and only ever seemed to break out of that mold whenever Pyra was getting wailed on by Sephiroth. While there is room for improvement in this area, it did work out to an extent against Nairo, even if Cosmos lost a majority of the games. Pyra in particular had a much easier time abusing juggles and vertical KOs against Sephy compared to other characters given the dude's big size and not-so-excellent air speed.

Really good sets overall between the two! Early impressions are that the MU does kinda look difficult for Pythra, but there is room for improvement on both ends, I find (sometimes called out by Nairo himself). Nairo could've kept on to his leads a little better via camping, Cosmos had instances of cold feet against OWA, could improve swapping between the two, but his combos/strings with Mythra are a definite improvement over what I saw from Tsu. Looking forward to seeing more of both.

And there's even a bit of vs. at the end as well, nice! I'll need to watch that later.

==================================================================================================

Since we're on a bit of Yuzu mood, here's a Twitch stream highlighting some Yuzu matches between Dabuz vs. Fatality Maister vs. MKLeo and Meme , with MKLeo and Maister notably trying out Yuzu for the first time. Dabuz also gives his thoughts on the current online chart in the same vod after his Yuzu matches:

TLDR: His takeaways from the online chart are:

• Playrate speaks more than the winrate of the characters, and to him, anyone with a low playrate (even characters with a high winrate) is a low tier, noting that the high WR/low PR characters get by with player dedication/MU inexperience, while honoring as the two worst characters online.
• In contrast, he mentions anyone in the highest quartile of playrate to be "carried", even characters with low win rates like and , given that this chart only analyzes the top 12.5%. 's inclusion alongside Sonic and Steve stuck out as puzzling to him, given his reputation as a character who should theoretically be nerfed by online play.
• are characters that are very strong in brackets, but have much more exploitable weaknesses than anyone in the green category that only top Wi-Fi players can consistently exploit.
• 's low WR stuck out as extremely puzzling to him.

 

[Tri Knight]

Diddy and Sephiroth, am gonna call it. I won't be surprised if he's gonna win mayors with these two.

Won't even settle for the key to the city, he's taking the mayor with him.

Honestly I can see a Diddy/Sephi main combo doing wonders for someone like Tweek. I can see him being able to cover a LOT of MUs with the two of them

 

[StrangeKitten]

I won't be surprised if he's gonna win mayors with these two.

Well I love Sephiroth and Diddy, not just generally but their playstyle and everything in Smash, so Tweek has my vote!

 

[NotLiquid]

I'm generally not fond of trying to draw conclusions in terms of the associated correlations between offline and online statistics since several characters like Chrom, Donkey Kong and Dedede underscore the absolute extremes when it comes to the volatility of online play, but I find it interesting that out of the five characters that currently top the usage rates by an uncontested wide margin, four of them (ROB, Ness, Palutena and Snake) are ones with usage rates which by-and-large reflect upon how they used to be valued in the before times. I'm not a number cruncher by any means (and I'm sure Thinkaman or someone else has some sites or spreadsheets with documented VODs/results/etc.), but Palutena and ROB have sort of spoken for themselves over the last two ongoing years. Snake used to be an interesting case study not often talked about; despite MVD being the most visibly documented active Snake rep, his results were incredibly inconsistent compared to the agreed-upon top Ultimate players of the time, but that didn't reflect the character's constant near top ubiquity in the old OrionStats, which point to Snake always having enjoyed an upper tier quantity of players. Ness sort of fits into that very same boat, he's always been an extremely popular pick at mid-level competitive play alongside Yoshi and Inkling - more or less the de facto character to gravitate toward if you were a lower level player playing for success - albeit his qualities among even top level players tends to be more of a conversation of dispute.

The reason that sort of sticks with me is because the fifth character among that group, Min Min, already doesn't really follow a comparable curve with most of the DLC characters so far. Granted, she's had more months to work with and this chart started tracking in October. But her particularly lopsided usage rate contrasts very notably with her win rate. It's kind of a statistical rule of thumb that the more common something is, the lower chance of success you deal with (I believe Sakurai had even pointed out that the most used character online in Smash was Cloud at some point, who despite that enjoyed a similarly below average win rate as he does here), so for her to be batting above the average begs the question how that's gonna reflect in the offline meta. Keep in mind; Min Min inarguably gets rewarded from the "environment" of online since whiff punishing is so much more deadly, but pretty much every notable top main of hers have generally insisted that her traits as a character get better offline in part because so much of her kit relies on accurate executions and being able to play on reaction (a big reason why characters like Joker and even lower tiered characters like Piranha Plant seem to suffer offline). It's hard to say what the shape of the meta to come will be like now that we may be finally moving back to normalcy by the end of this year, but even though Min Min may not be the most exciting character to talk about right now (if she ever was to some people), I wouldn't be surprised to see offline come back to a notable contingent of players if that top 5 is of any indication. Her and Sephiroth may well be the first new characters since Joker to enjoy a fixture far above the average. Pyra/Mythra most likely as well, since skirting the perfect average rate this close with the least amount of lead time is a pretty notable start. Despite the quarantine situation, FP2's batch has certainly not been boring to think about.

Also, that Ken placement is really elucidating in more ways than one.

 

[SKX31]

The reason that sort of sticks with me is because the fifth character among that group, Min Min, already doesn't really follow a comparable curve with most of the DLC characters so far. Granted, she's had more months to work with and this chart started tracking in October. But her particularly lopsided usage rate contrasts notably with her win rate. It's kind of a statistical rule of thumb that the more common something is, the lower chance of success you deal with (I believe Sakurai had even pointed out that the most used character online in Smash was Cloud at some point, who despite that enjoyed a similarly below average win rate as he does here), so for her to be batting above the average begs the question how that's gonna reflect in the offline meta. Keep in mind; Min Min inarguably gets rewarded from the "environment" of online since whiff punishing is so much more deadly, but pretty much every notable top main of hers have generally insisted that her traits as a character get better offline in part because so much of her kit relies on accurate executions and being able to play on reaction (a big reason why characters like Joker and even lower tiered characters like Piranha Plant seem to suffer offline). It's hard to say what the shape of the meta to come will be like now that we may be finally moving back to normalcy by the end of this year, but even though Min Min may not be the most exciting character to talk about right now (if she ever was to some people), I wouldn't be surprised to see offline come back to a notable contingent of players if that top 5 is of any indication. Her and Sephiroth may well be the first new characters since Joker to enjoy a fixture above the average. Pyra/Mythra most likely as well, since skirting the perfect average rate this close with the least amount of lead time is a pretty notable start. Despite the quarantine situation, FP2's batch has certainly not been boring to think about.

I'd argue that Min Min is a beneficiary of the lessened reaction time online though. The ARMS generally come out frame 14-ish, which is not much when accounting for both the buffer and the minimum lag adding a lot of unreactable frames. As such they're better at stuffing out approaches that aren't cautious enough or when the opponent makes a mistake. And really, both the Ramram and Dragon have still wide enough coverage to be able to stuff out quite a few angles online.

It's kinda like Sonic and the Belmonts - their stuff is much more difficult to react to online and they benefit from mistakes as well.

Worth noting is that Min Min's top 5 in terms of online winrate according to Ultimategamedata.com at 57.25 % Now, Ultimategamedata does pull its data from more low / mid level 1v1s, so there's a big discrepancy between it and the PGStats chart. Her PGstats winrate seems to hover around 56 %, the difference between the two might be statistical noise.

Since UGD's data is filled with low / mid level players: it's here where one finds 's bad win rate (42,06 % - 6th worst in UGD's data - including a relatively small - 400 matches - but abysmal 26.75 % winrate vs. ). Sephiroth's not one of the "losers" in PGStats because those who finish in the top 8th of a tournament will have polished their Sephiroth gameplay and commit less mistakes as a result. Sephiroth's PGStats win rate is 46 %, which is a noticeable 4% jump over his UGD rate.

Still, most of the characters that show up in PGStats' winners quadrant are also winners in UGD's data: Snake and Ken are also amongst UGD's top 5 in terms of winrates. I'm kinda leaning towards those frame 1 grenades / jabs being a main contributing factor in both cases.

Other interesting comparisions one can draw between UGD's and PGStats' datasets:

• 's win % in UGD is 46 %, 12 % higher than his PGStats winrate. fares way better in UGD as well - he's got a 49 % winrate there compared to 38 % in PGStats.
• is a character that wins big in PGStats instead. His UGD winrate is 42,01%, his PGStats one hovers around the 60 % mark. Is it a small sample size we're dealing with here, considering Corrin's marked in the "Rare" section of PGStats?
• Amongst the more common characters, wins big in PGStats. A 58-ish % winrate there compared to 42,78 % in UGD. has the third worst winrate in UGD with 40,77 %, while her PGStats winrate is a respectable 50 %.

In the end, I do think we'll have to see if Min Min's better offline - it's kinda difficult to top a 56-ish % winrate at the top end of online bracket. What causes me personally to wonder if she actually is better is that she's not had superb OrionStats placements so far, and while playing on a reaction is a boon to her, it's also a boon to the opponent playing against her. Yeah, the first might be down to relatively few people using her in offline tournaments (outside of like Proto and Mao), so there's that, but I can't shake the feeling that she should've gotten more concrete results by now. Might be just me though.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

PGstats | Wolf, Joker emerge atop the pack in Season 2

EazyFreezie returns with a look at character trends over the PGRUv2 season. Whose stock rose, whose stock dropped, and which characters defined the meta in Season 2?

www.pgstats.com

FreezyBeats did some statistics and apparently Joker and Wolf had the most success in the PGRUV2 meta with Palutena being 3rd. Wolf has a slightly higher percentage, however Joker has much better results at all tournament tiers (Getting 1st place at every tier). These results seem to line up with Season 2 of Orion Rank pretty nicely.

 

[Kokiden]

It's interesting watching the contrast between how Nairo and Tweek play as Sephiroth. I find that Nairo is a bit more polished, and he takes more risks with off stage play and edge guarding.

I'm just glad we've got 2 top tier players repping the guy. Mkleo has Joker covered, but we haven't seen Joker in awhile. Bayo is out of the picture now, but at least I've still got the other two still alive and active in the scene.

 

[StrangeKitten]

It's interesting watching the contrast between how Nairo and Tweek play as Sephiroth. I find that Nairo is a bit more polished, and he takes more risks with off stage play and edge guarding.

I'm just glad we've got 2 top tier players repping the guy. Mkleo has Joker covered, but we haven't seen Joker in awhile. Bayo is out of the picture now, but at least I've still got the other two still alive and active in the scene.

Frawg has had recent success online with Bayo. Though it remains to be seen if he'll take her far once offline returns.

 

[Rizen]

is a character of strengths and weaknesses. He has one of the best advantage states in the game with an enormous Uair and Usmash, long reach, good shield breaks and extremely strong punishes off them with giga flare>Fsmash, and one winged angle makes him even more outrageous. He can destroy you if he plays right. But he's also extremely light while being one of the taller characters, can have trouble hitting small opponents due to his attacks mostly poking out in a thin line and has a counter Nairo called "bottom tier" due to the dead zones everywhere except in front and lack of invulnerability. Overall, I think he's well balanced and strong enough to be high tier but has too many weaknesses to be top tier.

However because the power creep of high tiers getting buffed and top tiers nerfed, I think high and top tiers are blending together. Excluding Mythra, the line between these tiers has gotten very thin. It's probably a better tier list model to have three large tiers: Tournament viable (top and high), mediocre (mids) and weak (low tiers) at this point.

 

[Frihetsanka]

[...]has a counter Nairo called "bottom tier" due to the dead zones everywhere except in front and lack of invulnerability

Pretty sure he was being sarcastic, "Bottom tier counter for that reason alone, ignore that it kills people at like 60". Nairo actually uses counter quite a bit and gets good kills from it. It's easily a top 3 counter in the game, aside from Joker's Arsene counter (which is limited to Arsene) and Incineroar's Revenge (which is stuck to a bad character).

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Pretty sure he was being sarcastic, "Bottom tier counter for that reason alone, ignore that it kills people at like 60". Nairo actually uses counter quite a bit and gets good kills from it. It's easily a top 3 counter in the game, aside from Joker's Arsene counter (which is limited to Arsene) and Incineroar's Revenge (which is stuck to a bad character).

Yea during his stream vs Cosmos you can tell they were both "Marss ZSS Sucks" levels of seriousness. At worst Sephiroth's Counter is just one more cars in Sepirtohs huge hand of ledgetrapping tools.. That counter alone is great for the MU since it can easily foil both of thier recoveries. As well as messing up other recoveries that do not immediately snap to the ledge

Also when Nario said Sepiroths recovery is not good, ummm yeah..


Its not like Glass Cannon type characters cannot be too tier. Just look at or

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Wadi just uploaded his M2 MU chart:

Spoiler: Complete MU Chart

IMO, seems like a chart for a High to Low-High character.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Wadi just uploaded his M2 MU chart:

Spoiler: Complete MU Chart

IMO, seems like a chart for a High to Low-High character.

Mewtwo may be pretty good, but Unfortunatey seems a better version of him this game

 

[Tri Knight]

I think high and top tiers are blending together. Excluding Mythra, the line between these tiers has gotten very thin.

I agree. The sheer amount of Top Tier / High Tier worthy characters says a lot about the future of the meta. There are plenty of characters in High Tier that can totally be considered borderline Top Tier right now, or rather, probably would be Top Tier with the right representation.

 

[blackghost]

still believe we place way too many characters in high tier. people confuse viability with tiers. there are a handful of characters that are just better than others but unlike past games it's not a death sentence to play them until you get to some seriously flawed characters. most of the cast is viable but I get annoyed when I see people make matchup charts for these characters that don't look like they are high tiers yet they always end up there.

matchup charts should reinforce tier placement not contradict them.

 

[Tri Knight]

still believe we place way too many characters in high tier. people confuse viability with tiers. there are a handful of characters that are just better than others but unlike past games it's not a death sentence to play them until you get to some seriously flawed characters. most of the cast is viable but I get annoyed when I see people make matchup charts for these characters that don't look like they are high tiers yet they always end up there.

matchup charts should reinforce tier placement not contradict them.

I think viability is tiers. You're not seeing a mid-tier character taking top 32's in S-Tiers. I don't think the number of characters should constitute the breaks in tier placement so "too many" doesn't seem like a factor here either. But I do think the lines have thinned a bit compared to previous games.

However, the biggest problem is in the past we had a much more clear cut perception on what represents High and Top tier. Frankly, there just wasn't nearly as much competitively viable characters - nor was there anywhere near as many characters in the first place. This causes a huge lack of representation for characters who would otherwise miss out on the limelight of the players who display their perceived abilities, which then results in "theory" to take a step forward over "results" unfortunately. Although, bias can play a factor there as well.

But I think the fact that there are in fact so many more truly competitively viable characters than past games can blur the perception on what correctly represents who belongs in High or Top tier. But even more so, there are so many that can belong there that it does potentially thin the lines.

 

[Emblem Lord]

You know what?

Imma say it.

Ken's placement in that data makes perfect sense. He is a solid high tier with a dedicated base. He is not "carried" in the normal sense that his character does alot of work for you. (Pick Terry if you want an FGC with that kind of toolset.) He is however carried by his player base. When a Ken player shows up, you can bet he is a very solid player that knows what he is doing. Which makes sense considering how different he is and how much he deviates from the Smash formula. At this point Ken players are specialists which makes them a threat. Combine that with the fact that fighting him is so different and he can definitely clutch wins while placing well.

Chrom is low because Roy looks cooler and has a better recovery. That is literally it.

 

[Krysco]

I've seen the take a number of times where an MU chart gets discussed and with the smallish amount of winning, large amount of even and small amount of losing MUs, the character doesn't look top X but instead top Y or what have you and with how often I've seen it, I genuinely wonder, if most, if not all of the cast end up with MU charts like that then can't it be said that whatever top or high tier is still top or high tier? If that's how most MU charts end up? I don't have a particular MU chart in mind to bring up but I've seen that sort of comment enough times here that I'm curious on the matter.

Obviously not all MU charts are like that. You'll have some MU charts for say Joker that make him clearly look like a top tier and others that make him look like top 20 or 25 or whatever and MUs aren't set in stone and are subject to biases but I'm wondering if people are just too used to the likes of Smash 4 and possibly other games when they think of top tiers. Clearly dominating characters that should only lose or go even with other top tiers.

Heck, mid tier alone means different things in different Smash games. Pika is seen as mid tier in Melee and yet Axe is able to do consistently well with him, mid tiers in Brawl were those like Wolf, Fox, Pit and further down characters like Sheik and Kirby and they were largely irrelevant to the meta of Brawl. Then Smash 4 mid tiers were usually at best counterpick characters like DK and Bowser or just incredibly rare to see make it far like Duck Hunt. Ult seems balanced enough that if you're to use the old metric of 'mid tiers are only counterpicks or rarely seen place high' then yeah, a lot of characters will seem like they're high tier because tournament results still end up with a lot of character variety.

 

[blackghost]

I think viability is tiers. You're not seeing a mid-tier character taking top 32's in S-Tiers. I don't think the number of characters should constitute the breaks in tier placement so "too many" doesn't seem like a factor here either. But I do think the lines have thinned a bit compared to previous games.

viability and tiers are not the same. viability is affected by outside things: player knowledge, matchups likely in a tournament (this one is critical), execution barriers, and more. they may often be correlated but they are not a 1:1 ratio imo.
having a character that loses to common characters is not gonna help a character showcase a high placing in competitive play.
execution bars being higher increases the likelihood of a player (however skilled) messing up and making mistakes. doesnt mean the character itself is flawed for it.
Rare characters often show up and do well in a highly-skilled players hands and overperform bayo and hero having just done it.
tiers are just a data and theory-based analysis of what tools a character has and how they compare to others. you got Arsene congrats thats an unfair tool, you got auto cancels everywhere congrats thats gonna push you up.

personally, i only think people are pushing more characters into top tier is because essentially we have lost what high level competitive smash looks like offline.

in every fighting game, I've ever played the tier list is essentially a bell curve I haven't seen any reason to think this game is any different, I think smash player base has a mindset that they will refuse to lower a character or be slow to lower a character for a variety of reasons not linked to gameplay.

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

Smash ultimate is very humongous game in terms of matchups and specific interactions that sometimes even simple things can be difficult to remember, combined with the fact that almost all characters got buffed at low and low-mid and even high level (ex: ultimate zelda is stronger that all past zeldas except PM yet more easier to realize her gameplay at low mid level).

means most high or mid high level players cant simply filter players that use high tier mid tier characters by autopiloting the strength of their top tier character unlike past games.

That makes difficult to easily point this character is good this one is bad, etc.

In all past games there was a very dominant character with a clear selection of traits that you could study then compare it to the rest of the cast, to see who can compete with him then lab the matchup or interactions.

This hasnt happened in ultimate, yes we know lagless aerials and good moves help but most have those, yes whe know kill confirms and true combos boost your viability but again most have those unlike past games.

So what does make a good character in ultimate is difficult question to most players specially mid level players who make most of the bulk of the competitive discourse.

And top level players arent at the level were they know most of the matchups of the entire cast, much less with dlc.

Maybe in 3 or 4 years we could see more concrete opinions.

 

[Tri Knight]

tiers are just a data and theory-based analysis of what tools a character has and how they compare to others.

Which literally represents character viability.

Why is Little Mac or Ganon low tier? Because their chances of stacking up to other characters in a real competitive setting is extremely thin, their MU chart is weak, their weaknesses are too prominent, meaning the chances of hitting Top 8 at a Major is extremely thin - meaning no matter what the representation of that character is, the odds of getting any worthwhile results is very low. What does all of that represent? Viability in a competitive setting.

 

[Thinkaman]

People use the words "viability" or "tier" to refer to an abstract overall measure of how good a character is at given level of play, a triangulation between results, usage, and theory.

This measure can be taken at any level of play. If you use the words to apply to different levels of play, we end up splitting hairs like this.

Otherwise the only difference I might acknowledge is that "viability" might factor in properties of the tournament format in question (like how volitile characters dislike single/double elimination)--but those traits are usually minor, not being discussed here, and 99% of the time included in discussions of "tier" anyway...

 

[KirbySquad101]

Japan's Top 16 for SWT:

Winner's:

Harasen vs. Gackt
Kuroponzu vs. ProtoBanham
Shuton vs. Showers
Omuatu vs. HIDE

Loser's:

Hero vs. KEN
Lea vs. Masashi
Piro vs. Nukoeru
ZAKI vs. Tsumusuto

Notable players out included, but not limited to:

Tea (Out at 25th to KaPMk and KEN)
Arika (Out at 49th to TKM and Suinoko)
Suinoko (Out 25th to KaPMk and Rokko )
Paseriman (Out of 25th to Neo and Tsumusuto )
Brood (Out at 33rd to Shuton and Paseriman) (He used all PP this tournament instead of Banjo)
yuzu (Out at 25th to Neo and kept)
Nietono (Out at 25th to HIDE and Roly-Poly)
Mao (Out at 25th to Gackt and Lea)
kept (Out at 17th to Hero and Masashi)
Kameme (Out at 25th to Masashi and Piro)
takera (Out at 49th to Omuatu and KEN)
Etsuji (Out at 33rd Oijoji and Rokko)
DoubleA (Out at 33rd to Home and ZAKI)
Abadango (Out at 33rd to Nukoeru and Lea)
Rido (Out at 33rd to Piro and Nietono)


Japan being limited to 16 slots for the qualifiers kinda feels wrong with how strong the region is, not gonna lie. :\

 

[SKX31]

Japan's Top 16 for SWT:

Japan being limited to 16 slots for the qualifiers kinda feels wrong with how strong they are, not gonna lie. :\

They're limited to 8 - the 8 who qualify from Japan will go to the East Asia Regional. East Asia South (Korea, Hong Kong / Taiwan, SEA) have the other 8 spots for the Regional - and their online qualifier will be next weekend. The 16 participants in the Regional fight for 6 Global Finals spots. FTR, there's still a Last Chance Qualifier for those already out - Top 6 at the regular qualifier + Top 2 at the last chance will get those 8 Regional spots. Still, it's gonna be tight.

Still, yes, I agree with the main point here - one can certainly argue that Japan could have more spots at the Globals, especially when NA West and NA East have 6 spots each currently. Korea's / SEA's scenes don't look nearly as strong as the Japanese scene, so there's a chance things become lopsided.

TBF there's been very little offline play elsewhere to compare Japan's meta to, and SWT made the most out of a pretty bad situation to begin with. While I certainly don't expect the Korean / SEA players to seriously challenge the Japanese players at the regional it's not a bad idea to encourage Korean / SEA players to travel to Japan (where I presume the Regional will be, SWT partnered with Umebura for the Regional).

 

[Terotrous]

Some absolutely bananas counterpicks coming out here. Ken going Richter against Harasen, which actually looked like a very strong pick, and Shuton just getting absolutely bodied by Minmins. It really goes to show that even among strong characters there's some pretty crazy matchup dynamics. I wonder how significant this matchup vulnerability is to Pyra/Mythra because if it's as bad as it looks that might be a real issue.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Man this Kuraponzu player. He just beat two Protobaham and Omatsu to get into GF winners side

All i can tell you is the R.O.B vs Min Min MU will involve the zaniest and explosvie offstage jank you will ever see

 

[Thinkaman]

• KEN's 13-win loser's streak, including the pick. Wow.
• Hero's winning the LCQ with a similar 7 set comeback after losing somewhat early to Hassen and KEN.
• Kuroponzu's , slayer of Min Mins. ROB seems so good at dictating the terms of the match, and just playing on his terms almost all of the time, without making too much of a fuss about it. KEN's game-5/game-5 win over him was the closest he ever came to showing any signs of weakness.
• Hassen's made a splash with his decisive set over Gackt; he only lost to grand finalists KEN and Kuro.
• This is also true for both players. Any of these 3 players could have gotten 3rd interchangeably. I have been worried about Min Min more than any other DLC character in this game's history (including Joker), and this even has done little to change that.
• Meanwhile, Shuton's destroys everyone but gets eaten by the two Min Mins. I felt like the non-MinMin Shuton footage I caught gave me... frustratingly little insight into the character. It felt very straightforward and mundane, with Shuton just making a lot of simple decisions better than his opponent. I wish I got to see more.

Yes yes, it's all online, but what a good send-off to online this has been. (Better than online deserves!)

 

[Ziodyne 21]

seems to Win vs because R.O.B can somewhat beat her at her own game when it comes to ledgetrapping and killing offstage at low%. R.O.B can use his recvoery to stall offstage to avoid and maneuver around Mim-Mins ledgeguarding. Plus when R.O.B gets Min Min offstage, well we all know how good R.O.B is as wrecking more linear and exploitable recoveries


Also its similar on how he wins vs
where he can use fast projctiles to snipe her out of her gigantic but somewhat slow startup airiels.


Yeah Shuton's was basically the Pyra show with him only really switching to Mythra as a recovery bot. He just seemed use Blazing End at the right times and fish for dair spikes and confirms. He was using just the basic of basic play you could do with the pair that worked because of Shutons amazing fundamentals