Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[NotLiquid]

If Pikachu fails to catch people in its hitboxes (usually committal ones if we're talking high percents) or loses a lead, it's forced to play campy with aerial thunder jolts, and playing campy is probably the lowest down on the list of things Pikachu would prefer to do, since converting from that state relies on more micro commitments that Pikachu doesn't have a lot of control over. For one thing, despite its strong air acceleration, its actual air speed is suboptimal, so when it starts spamming the move, you can usually expect one of two things; Pikachu will either fast fall and use thunder jolts as a means to run in and hit confirm into a grab or combo (alternatively condition you to jump in and get slapped by a FAir), or it will burn its double jump in the event of your approach and try catching you with an aerial. When Pikachu plays campy, it's where it's liable to get outspaced the most.

A lot of characters on the roster aren't as well equipped as others to have the option coverage for both of those flowcharts because of Pikachu's size, and some of those that do in theory (Byleth and Min Min come to mind) usually get violently counterbalanced by a disadvantage state that Pikachu gobbles up like poffins if it gets a hit - a mostly ubiquitous problem with sword characters. But then you have characters like Game & Watch and Snake who have some of the best disadvantage tools in the game, powerful burst options, and great hitboxes which serve to exacerbate several blind spots in Pikachu's neutral game. It doesn't help that if Pikachu does win that neutral attrition, it needs to play perfectly to maintain that advantage state. Throughout Glutonny's set, Pikachu generally struggled whenever it had to camp because Wario's aerial mobility made it way easier to space, and Pikachu did not have a good time with trading hits during strings that were less than true.

That isn't to downplay Pikachu's strong kit obviously, because at a high level the intimidation factor that it carries can wind up being second to none. Like Thinkaman once pointed out; at mid-percents the character sports some of the most volatile kill deviation on the cast. Part of the reason that Leo has had issues with this matchup is because he plays characters that either have very questionable out-of-shield options to contend with Pikachu's scrappier play and the privilege it gets from being a small target who can frametrap them as a result, or he plays characters who are more liable to get taken advantage of the moment they get put into disadvantage. But this character works at a very unconventional percentage curve that gets particularly exploitable, and in recent history it feels like multiple players have started to take advantage of that fact more. If that becomes a running trend, it's going to become harder to buy the argument for Pikachu as a top 3 character when there are characters on the roster who are less prone of having to compromise their game plans when something isn't working.

 

[blackghost]

right now i havent decided where I fall in the discussion. But looking at the character and comparing him to is actually interesting. their movesets and their use are close but move to move byleth often comes out on top.
all frame data is from ultimate frame data

jab: byleth is 1 frame faster and ends in rapid jab finisher.
Ftilt: byleth 7 frame faster at frame 8 vs frame fifteen for sepiroth. plus the bonus of larger hitbox. the ftilt angles of do have uses in edge guarding but byleth has a ftilt that is easier to land

uptilt the first close one. sep's uptilt is a great move, for anti air kills. frame 10 startup with comical range comparable to palutena upsmash. byleth uptilt is a move whose hitbox looks like a mini ike up smash and comes out frame 9. both moves are kill options but byleth's still has more utility.

dash attack once again byleth wins. frame 9 killing dash attack that combos from nair. sepiroth's comes out frame 14.

fsmash: both moves are 63 total frames. start up is frame 23. byleths reaches further and has the sweetspot as the tipper. byleths fsmash does 16 frames of shield stun and massive shield damage. sep sweetspot is in the middle of his blade encouraging more risk to get max reward. sep startup is frame 24.

Upsmash:
byleth frame 13. doesnt hit behind him and is multi hit but unlike some multihit smash it is a very consistent move. sep startup is frame 23. hits everything around him. but the move is extremely slow and deliberate.

dsmash: both shield breakers byleth is faster and hits both sides frame 19 vs frame 21.

thats just the ground and byleth wins every single compassion. i might do the air attacks later. but its pretty clesr whos the wwinner here.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

r/smashbros new tier list

 

[WatwatBreton]

byleth stuff

Intersting. Not tooo surprised though tbh considering seph is a F1 turbo machine compared to byleth, him having better frame data than them would be terrifying. He might have slightly better specials too - they both have really good up b, good side b (maybe seph is better?) and ok neutral b, but he trades a meme falcon punch for one of the best counters in the game.

After watching some of that grand finals (that last game was heart breaking lmao) I gotta say I'm still puzzled about too. Nair feels like half the character's gameplan lol that move is gross (landing hitbox, good anti air, combos into whatever at any% and includes kill confirms), but outside of that neutral felt a bit limited - especially against a character like mythra who's just schmooving around and pressing 55 buttons a second without a sweat. Looking forward to see if counterplay will develop against that one move in particular.

continues to impress me, and I fail to see any significant weakness to the character outside of her mediocre recovery. Even their disadvantage is pretty decent outside of offstage, swap can help in a pinch and Mythra's airdodge is absuuuurd - the distance and her fall speed makes it pretty hard to punish even if baited, and well foresight is a thing. Gives her plenty of mixups for landing, especially when platforms are involved.

Maister Dabuz was interesting (and very long lol). After an unimpressive g1 , who mostly got outbuttoned + bucket is a problem when half your kit is projectiles, the came in clutch and seemed like she had more abilities to zone g&w with luma. Easier to shield pressure him when you got your minions to do the job for you I guess. Gravitational pull was nice to avoid uair juggles too.

Watched Elegant vs Tweek, thought it might be a troublesome matchup for coz he has to fight buttons to buttons + can't sit in shield, and was mostly right. Monkey Flip seemed very good in neutral to force hard to punish 50/50 though, but then Elegant would just explode him on a grab at 90, or worse, get a banana and murder him at 50. 's cyclone mixups at ledge (where he lands on the stage then falls back before the last hit and grabs ledge) seemed like very potent options. The jab jab grab mixups on shield were cute and seemed very effective. Also Elegant is mad good lol last stock was 3/4 clutch reads in a row.

Also caught Gluto vs Chag. I hadn't seen Chag much before but that player is insane wtf, outside of that game 1 weird double up-b missinput he just was in complete control of the game. Jab mixups were sweet, and his parry game is so good, man casually walked in and parried wario landing uairs lmao.

 

[Hippieslayer]

Pac Man isn't a high tier. He is top tier. Very flexible and adjustable character capable of prevailing in pretty much all matchups, has a ton of strengths without any real glaring weaknesses at all. Has the tools to handle rushdown and has the tools to win slow games. Sure Tea got destroyed by Leo and Sparg0 but even in those sets you could see he was adjusting a lot. Tea got destroyed by Light when they first met too. Light made the matchup look bad, rushing Pacman down. But later on when they met again Tea won, and then he won again iirc.

Pikachu is overrated. Seems to have a lot of meh matchups vs highly relevant characters and some versus not so relevant characters too.

 

[Sucumbio]

Byleth is high tier.

Not because mkleo uses him. Because he has a crazy long tether which combos, awesome recovery, strong ko options, quick dmg buildup and can camp, footsy and delete stocks when necessary with insane reward for great reads.

mkleo's secret sauce is his read mechanic. He is consistently making the right choice so often that you should assume his movements are genuine and if you get too greedy byleth has many brutal combos to answer a missed choice so make them count he only needs 3? Lol yeah in his hands byleth is a wrecking crew that it takes staby mcstab a million buttons to make it close. Anyway that makes it a good case for Aegis to be considered top tier results aside.

 

[Hotcakes]

I'm gonna derail the current discussion and ramble about some. I mainly want to touch on how good the change to stage selection has been for the character. Because you choose your fighter after, you can tailor your moveset to fit whatever layout is selected. This means that you can choose thrust uppercut on triplats, and helicopter kick on stages with closer horizontal blastzones like FD and T&C. What helps this more is how much of a threat they become on Yoshi's. Brawler likely gets more out of that stage than any other character. You're essentially forced to insta-ban it every time, leaving you with a single ban to deal with their shenanigans.

Between their frame data, and varied choice of specials, it's hard for me not to be optimistic about their future. The main reason I wouldn't claim they're top tier is the lack of meta-relevant winning matchups. I've seen some discussion before on them beating the likes of and due to how good their item play is. Maybe those are all winning, but that's pretty much it for top tiers unless you've got lot of faith in .

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Top 64 representation at Mainstage (counting secondaries)

 

[Kokiden]

Who knows, maybe, in the future, Seph will be optimized to become a menace. But, again, for now looks underwhelming for "top tier".

I don't think there's much that can be done in terms of his placement, unless they decide to buff him.

He just strikes me as the type of character the balance team tried way too hard to "balance" and took him in the opposite direction.

His reputation precedes him, and in this case, I guess it did more harm than good.

Min Min has greater reach, Terry's GO comeback mechanic stays until he loses the stock, and it's funny how in terms of viability, they've got more to work with than he does.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

Min-Min got nerfed twice for far less than what Pyra/ Mythra are accomplishing right now, and the plsyer responsible for those results also had to depend on another character to do as well as he has..

Tbf one of the nerfs Min Min got was to prevent her from being able to kill at 0% off of the ledge in a mere 3 moves and another nerf was to her up smash which I'd argue was the best up smash in the game before the patch, now merely being one of the best up smashes in the game, especially considering how she's supposedly supposed to have bad CQC considering her range

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

After Sparg0 beat ESAM, Light and Tea with Cloud, he thinks the character is better then he thought.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

I'm sure there's discussion on whether the character is carried by Sparg0's pure skill similarly to Byleth and Leo, but at least the character is in the top 25 on OrionStats rn compared to Byleth being top 40 and is also being used by Kola, enhancedpv and Masashi. Personally I believe Cloud is upper high tier.

 

[NotLiquid]

There's only ever been two good reasons to assume Cloud doesn't cut the mustard for being high tier; his recovery is weak and he's forced to play neutral a lot because it usually doesn't take very long to reset against him. The former is a genuine problem in a lot of situations, but the latter is often overstated since Cloud's neutral is the kind that's built to take stocks between just all-around good range, frame data, power, and mobility stats. A character like Lucina might have him beat in individual traits like that, but Lucina usually has to work a lot harder in pinch scenarios to score KOs, whereas Cloud's spacing sees a lot more immediate reward once the opponent enters kill percent range.

He's a character from an old school turn-based JRPG, so the emphasis on maximizing the effect of more singular exchanges comes with the territory. Where other characters embrace a gameplan of "alright I'll push into this combo off of a confirm and hit a kill move/edgeguard", Cloud just says "shorthop autocancel BAir".

 

[SKX31]

Spargo panicking and burning his double jump at the very end while Leo wasn't done pushing advantage more or less cost him that set. He'd still have to deal with a potential ledgetrap situation, but Leo wasn't really killing through those quite as often as Byleth usually does. With the amount of neutral exchanges that Mythra has to win in order to take stocks, the fact that Spargo pushed things this far and even scored a 3-1 before the reset is a testament to how much Leo was consistently getting outplayed whenever he wasn't the only person standing on stage.

Simultaneously it also felt particularly indicative of where Ultimate is at right now; as both Leo and Elegant's breakout performance showcase two players who placed in top three off of the back of their extremely suffocating capacity to play in advantage.

Game 4 was also a major turning point in the set, since Sparg0's second stock practically vanished after he:

1) Ate a Up B -> Side B conversion.
2) Landed with a panic N-Air on Leo's shield, which led to:
3) Him eating a Up B -> B-Air conversion that sent him offstage.
4) The whole edgeguard sequence.

It highlights what I believe to be Sparg0's primary weakness as a player: his tendency to swing when nervous. TBF here his swings came awfully close to sealing Game 5 on at least two different occassions, but those misses came vs. a player that takes a missed inch and turns it into a proverbial mile.

FWIW Sparg0 got his first offline set win vs. Leo, but is now 1-6 in offline sets. Not as bad as say Maister or Dabuz vs. Leo (especially not since most Sparg0 - Leo sets have gone the distance), but the 1-6 does include a couple of those patented Leo reverse sweeps (Ultimate Summit 3's Loser Finals, Port Priority Grands). My point here is that while Sparg0 can challenge Leo, he kinda needs to refine those nerves and his own clutch factor. He might do so granted, but he still has some ground to cover. That's not to say he hasn't come far though: multiple consecutive Grand Finals appearances at majors and generally solidifying himself as a Top 5 caliber player is nothing to scoff at.

Leo did go for a lot of N-Airs near-automatically but Sparg0 shielded them a ton - FWIW I kinda think that's where Leo's opponents might look at and exploit his near-automatic move uses. Yeah Byleth's N-Air can be extremely difficult to punish due to the Quake hitbox, short landing lag and this being Leo - but there are definetely some cracks in the Plot Armor.

After Sparg0 beat ESAM, Light and Tea with Cloud, he thinks the character is better then he thought.

I'm sure there's discussion on whether the character is carried by Sparg0's pure skill similarly to Byleth and Leo, but at least the character is in the top 25 on OrionStats rn compared to Byleth being top 40 and is also being used by Kola, enhancedpv and Masashi. Personally I believe Cloud is upper high tier.

I really dislike several players knee-jerk calling their mains "Bottom tier" or something similar. It feels like those calls are coming from those players extrapolating off of some bad MUs coupled with a "grass is greener on the other side" mentality. Without really looking at the big picture either.

Glad to see that Sparg0 proved himself wrong though.

 

[blackghost]

I don't think there's much that can be done in terms of his placement, unless they decide to buff him.

He just strikes me as the type of character the balance team tried way too hard to "balance" and took him in the opposite direction.

His reputation precedes him, and in this case, I guess it did more harm than good.

Min Min has greater reach, Terry's GO comeback mechanic stays until he loses the stock, and it's funny how in terms of viability, they've got more to work with than he does.

i think there are two ways to go to enhance sepiroth potential the first is easy just shave a few frames off certain moves and i think he's fixed. ftilt, fair, up air, and maybe dash attack.
the second is enhance his sweetspot kb and base damage. Sepiroth sweetspots feel exponentially weaker than marth, roy, or even bayonetta's. as far as im aware there not even a sound indicator that its landed.

spargo is comparable to leo in terms of skill thats according to leo. cloud was never really destroyed. cloud lost his crazy nair and lost perma limit (which was just a bad design choice form the beginning in smash 4)

 

[Thinkaman]

Charliedaking tried to warn us about Cloud, but no one listened.

 

[Sucumbio]

I really dislike several players knee-jerk calling their mains "Bottom tier" or something similar.

Is riddles among them?

 

[Hippieslayer]

i think there are two ways to go to enhance sepiroth potential the first is easy just shave a few frames off certain moves and i think he's fixed. ftilt, fair, up air, and maybe dash attack.
the second is enhance his sweetspot kb and base damage. Sepiroth sweetspots feel exponentially weaker than marth, roy, or even bayonetta's. as far as im aware there not even a sound indicator that its landed.

spargo is comparable to leo in terms of skill thats according to leo. cloud was never really destroyed. cloud lost his crazy nair and lost perma limit (which was just a bad design choice form the beginning in smash 4)

what makes Seph annoying to play as isn't his frame data so much as his hitboxes on key moves, their tendency to whiff whenever the opponents hurtbox shifts makes him fundamentally inconsistent, since he's so light and his frame data isn't very good it really sucks for him whenever one of his attacks just straight out whiffs, and even without hurtbox shifting in the picture he's got weird blindspots on moves that look like they have great coverage, such as uair and usmash

would much rather see this fixed and maybe have him weigh a wee bit more, and they could shave a very small amount of frames of startup from his smashes, at least the d-smash, and maybe his wing should last a little longer too, but the moves he relies on for spacing being prone to whiffing is the most annoying **** about him

what youre suggesting is just Seph on steroids with the same fundamental problems aka classic smash ultimate balancing, he can already obliterate stocks extremely quickly anyway and his attacks are already pretty safe when spaced, especially with wing out, buff his frame data and KB and he'd turn into another super annoying character with glaring weaknesses being compensated for with stupidly overpowered stuff, there's already too many overly polarized characters like that in the game



I def agree that there could be more feedback when he lands his tippers making it clearer so that it feels more satisfying to land them, but I don't think they are too weak and there is feedback already, I just think there could be a bit more of it

irregardless of how I really hope they do buff him though, its seph ffs

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Sephiroth is fine, as long as OWA is a thing Sephiroth does not need any adjustments. OWA is absurd in what it grants a character with his range and KO power in base form. His weight honestly isn’t an issue because OWA makes him far harder to kill than his light weight would suggest, in that unless he’s outright launched into the blastzone he can make it back from just about anywhere, especially when you factor in Octoslash which unless you have a counter your not contesting.

I like the idea of making it more visually apparent when you do land his sourspots but I can’t get behind buffs for Sephiroth in anyway as long as OWA is a thing in its current form.

I suspect Sephiroth’s smaller top level player base is more of a consequence of Ultimate’s massive and bloated roster over Sephiroth viability. We have plenty of higher tiered characters that lack top level representation it’s not that uncommon in this game.

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

To be honest i think the players that pilot sephiroth aren good enough to make the character justice, i think this because when i watch nairo play him it looks like a completely different character.

 

[The_Bookworm]

is pretty good. He is undeniably not as good as we once thought when he came out and we were speculating on how good he would be offline, but players like Ned still brings good results to the character. Nairo not competing and Tweek pretty much abandoning the character altogether does hurt his presence in high level play.
I do have to say, he is fairly popular outside of high level play, if the amount of points he has in OrionRank has anything to say.



However, there is another character I want to talk about.

Elegant has been performing amazingly ever since offline events returned. He already got pretty good results pre-quarantine, if his 32nd rank on the Fall 2019 PGRU says anything, but Elegant right now is a different beast.
Remember when Elegant got 2nd on GameTyrant Expo 2017 with ? That was the event where perception on SSB4 Luigi post-1.1.1 nerf shifted from mid tier to high tier, and Elegant continued to get good results from there.
With , Elegant is now getting comparable GameTyrant-esque results with far greater consistency. 4th at Riptide, 4th at Low Tide City 2021, followed by 17th Smash Con and Port Priority 6, and then now with 3rd at Mainstage 2021. This has already exceeded his performances with SSB4 Luigi if you can believe it.


I think a big development that has occurred, is that while grabs with Luigi is important, he is starting to use other options to aid him in neutral and advantage, including zair to cover his landings. Luigi's frame data is amazing, and he doesn't need the grab to suddenly convert to high damage, as a lot of his normals just naturally combo into one another. He is, of course, abusing the ever living crap out of Cyclone's combo breaking invincibility (frame 1 in the air btw) while weaving safely away from stage.
His recoveries are also smart. His recovery in SSB4, while better than in Ultimate, is still very exploitable on paper. However, rarely anyone in that game went for edgeguards against him. Same case here in Ultimate, unless he is completely wide open for a Pyra fair or something. Rarely do Elegant's stocks fall due to him being edgeguarded. When recovering smartly, edgeguarding against Luigi becomes easier said than done.

In other words, he is starting to use the character past the "0-death: The Character" or "Grab: The Character" stigma. Grabs are important for Luigi, but Luigi can very well function without purely fishing for grabs. You hardly ever see Elegant go for the 0-death at all, instead going for consistent damage.

His recovery may be worse, and his frankly absurd gimping capabilities may be a thing of the past, but everything else about Luigi in Ultimate is simply a direct upgrade over his SSB4-self.
I think it is safe to say that the character is indeed high tier, and very likely at the same league as his SSB4 counterpart.
Yes, he has some troublesome matchups that can hold him back, as demonstrated with his matches vs Sparg0 and MkLeo, but so does SSB4 Luigi (his matchup with Rosalina in that game was abysmal).

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Super regional Mexican tournament coming up
https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/qvltnd

 

[Idon]

Yeah I don't think Sephiroth needs to have his sweetspots buffed in literally any way shape or form, especially saying they're "not as rewarding as Marth's." I can hit Sephiroth's sweet spot attacks with my eyes closed while playing with my toes. Especially with the wing giving him a all that mobility. Hell with Octaslash you don't even need to fish for many sweetspots to kill.

 

[NairWizard]

I wasn't sure if I was going to make this post, but after talking about this a bit with Thinkaman I thought I'd throw my impression on the table.

I was (and am, in some ways) probably one of the biggest Pyra/Mythra doubters on the planet, but I am now fully in support of nerfs for them. It's just a silly design that Mythra can win neutral with 0 commitment in so many matchups and then ledgetrap you so hard by switching to Pyra.

Before, it seemed to me that it was mostly Mythra who was overtuned, and that Pyra balanced her out. I've fallen out of this opinion over the last few months.

The things that Mythra can do on reaction are alone pretty excellent, similar to Fox but with better burst range and a disjoint. Sometimes when I watch Cosmos vs. Nairo it looks like Nairo is actually frozen because of how fast Mythra is. During Mainstage, I saw Leo using double jump mixup in neutral just to avoid landing in a space where Mythra could dash attack. At Port Priority, I saw Tweek run to the corner and try to fake a banana pull so that he doesn't get dash attacked for starting his gameplan.

Beacuse of this, I had been thinking for a while that top-level Aegis looks mostly like the Mythra show with a bit of Pyra sprinkled in. It just made sense from a theory perspective and when I was watching matches.

But whenever I was playing against good players (offline), this wasn't working that well for me. Mythra was winning neutral for free, but there were so many times past 50% where Mythra's reward just wasn't there. Mythra would catch a roll from ledge with what, b-air or back hit of d-smash? That's nothing, just leads to neutral reset soon after if not right away. All the opponent needed was one good offstage read and I lost all my progress.

To my surprise, I realized that I was doing better piloting mostly Pyra despite not having "free" neutral, and I tried to come up with a way to focus on Pyra over Mythra. Have Mythra act as a ferry and get Pyra to where she needs to be, then swap with a short hop and start swinging giant hitboxes.

It turns out that Sparg0 does exactly this a lot, but instead of swapping immediately and risking a read on his swap, he waits to get a hit with Mythra before bringing out the Pyra. And from that point, the character's real strength is clear.

People are dramatically underestimating Pyra.

You've all seen d-air -> up-smash. It starts from a big move that covers many options and is pretty safe, and kills early. The risk-reward on it is amazing. But this (very good) kill confirm isn't the focus of this post. The real focus of this post is Pyra's other great moves. jab, f-tilt, up-tilt, up-air, n-air, f-air... Pyra oozes quality moves for ledge and neutral. Comparisons are drawn to Ike or to Ganon, but while Ike and Ganon have some good moves, Pyra both outnumbers them in options and has way better options. Ganon dash attack and up-air are some of the best moves in the game, but Pyra n-air alone is just in a different league. A big disjointed hitbox starting behind Pyra, then covering all sides of her, that not only can reverse disadvantage but can kill you for trying to bait an airdodge.

And while you might think that Pyra having high startup balances it, this is what happens on frame 10 of her d-air, for example:

A crazy hurtbox shift that has allowed sparg0 to fastfall land with a kill confirm in disadvantage in bracket several times. And I don't even think this move is comparable to f-tilt.

This is without Mythra. The worst/best thing about it is, if committing to any of Pyra's (very safe) tools puts you in a bad position where you don't have stage, you can just go back to Mythra!

I literally saw Pyra double f-tilt at ledge like 7 times this weekend without punishment, and then when she failed the ledgetrap, there were sometimes no consequences for losing stage because Mythra was back forcing the opponent into the corner from center stage. That's entirely silly.

The representation is definitely there, and top player attitudes towards picking the duo up say a lot to me. I don't know how serious all the top players are, but it's telling that Fatality is considering secondarying the character, and Leo said in an interview, "I've been practicing Pyra/Mythra because I know I will need them eventually."

While I don't think they're broken or necessarily even the best in the game at top level, there are parts of Pyra/Mythra's design that just feel too suffocating and too replicable. I would like to see a handful of touchups to some of their best moves, or to Swap so that Pyra -> Mythra is more of a commitment.

 

[Sucumbio]

Put another way, get Aegis off stage. If that is a bad design choice, that Aegis only gets consistently ko'd by deficit of recovery, then I get it but maybe it should be enough.

 

[NairWizard]

Aegis having you offstage -> ledgetrapping into KO is more consistently applicable across the cast than the cast trying to gimp Aegis' recoveries.

 

[Sucumbio]

Aegis having you offstage -> ledgetrapping into KO is more consistently applicable across the cast than the cast trying to gimp Aegis' recoveries.

And yet that's literally mkleo's strategy. But ok if it's not enough to leave her as just beaten by gimping then maybe some adjustments as you suggest just I think they'd have done that already...

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

On the Aegis discussion, here's a list on how many characters have each made top 16 at majors/supermajors. Aegis is at the top.

 

[Sucumbio]

On the Aegis discussion, here's a list on how many characters have each made top 16 at majors/supermajors. Aegis is at the top.

I wonder how close to tier lists this is...

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Orionstats update and it's a pretty big one after two majors.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[toonito]

Orionstats update and it's a pretty big one after two majors.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

biggest jump from last data (11/3): +15
biggest drop from last data (11/3): -8

 

[Kokiden]

i think there are two ways to go to enhance sepiroth potential the first is easy just shave a few frames off certain moves and i think he's fixed. ftilt, fair, up air, and maybe dash attack.
the second is enhance his sweetspot kb and base damage. Sepiroth sweetspots feel exponentially weaker than marth, roy, or even bayonetta's. as far as im aware there not even a sound indicator that its landed.

spargo is comparable to leo in terms of skill thats according to leo. cloud was never really destroyed. cloud lost his crazy nair and lost perma limit (which was just a bad design choice form the beginning in smash 4)

He definitely needs a few frames off his moves, especially since he's so light. There's no reason to make him that light, and with that much startup and end lag.

He's not exactly a monster in the game, so it's just a very odd way of balancing someone who is nowhere near broken.

Of course, it could just be me playing online again after awhile, but man, he does not feel good, since he's so easy to outpace.

I fear they're just going to leave him as is tbh. Can't say I got too much faith in the balancing team.

As for Cloud, I still wish his nair was at least decent. Right now, it's just plain pitiful. I don't think they should have gotten rid of perma limit, since it's so weak that those with good DI end up surviving it most of the time anyway. If Terry can have perma Go, Cloud should have his as well. Then again, it's not like they're going to add it at this point...

 

[TennisBall]

The last time Cloud had Limit permanently his nair was the size of a college essay and never option really did any good for the metagame.

Personally think Seph's fine as he is regardless of representation.

 

[Kokiden]

Sephiroth is fine, as long as OWA is a thing Sephiroth does not need any adjustments. OWA is absurd in what it grants a character with his range and KO power in base form. His weight honestly isn’t an issue because OWA makes him far harder to kill than his light weight would suggest, in that unless he’s outright launched into the blastzone he can make it back from just about anywhere, especially when you factor in Octoslash which unless you have a counter your not contesting.

I like the idea of making it more visually apparent when you do land his sourspots but I can’t get behind buffs for Sephiroth in anyway as long as OWA is a thing in its current form.

I suspect Sephiroth’s smaller top level player base is more of a consequence of Ultimate’s massive and bloated roster over Sephiroth viability. We have plenty of higher tiered characters that lack top level representation it’s not that uncommon in this game.

I can't say I agree.

Just because OWA exists, doesn't mean he doesn't need more fine tuning. It's not like it's permanent, or reliable where you can turn it on and off when you need it.

It does not negate the unnecessary bad frame data + absurdly light weight. It's not like he's a huge threat or anything (which is ironic)

I'll also mention I didn't say anything about representation, so much as I'm criticising how he plays.

 

[Arthur97]

How is GO! a fair comparison to perma Limit? GO! requires you to be at fairly critical damage levels so you have to survive to get there and survive to keep it while you can just charge Limit and potentially get it without taking any damage. Easier come, easier go.

 

[Kokiden]

How is GO! a fair comparison to perma Limit? GO! requires you to be at fairly critical damage levels so you have to survive to get there and survive to keep it while you can just charge Limit and potentially get it without taking any damage. Easier come, easier go.

At least us keep it until it's used once.

I guess I'm just frustrated that the "balance" changes they've made to some characters because they were perceived as "broken", where just given to other characters.

Like Cloud's nair. It was an issue before but now they gutted it and kinda gave it to Mythra, or that blonde one. Not only is she fast, but that thing is huge and players can just spam that no issues. Then again, I just have a problem with that character in general since she's just obnoxious to go up against, especially online.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

At least us keep it until it's used once

Cloud having a time limit was one of the best changes in Ultimate as most players would just hold on to it in 4 until they were knocked off stage, which almost removes Cloud's one major weakness, not to mention having Limit also outright buffs Cloud's stats so making it permanent until he uses a move rewards him even more for negating his regular Climmhazard issue. Cloud's still considered a good character which shouldn't be surprising as Sakurai outright said Cloud was designed to be easy to use. The issue should be the other characters having stupid aspects, not Cloud being less stupid than he used to be

 

[Kokiden]

Cloud having a time limit was one of the best changes in Ultimate as most players would just hold on to it in 4 until they were knocked off stage, which almost removes Cloud's one major weakness, not to mention having Limit also outright buffs Cloud's stats so making it permanent until he uses a move rewards him even more for negating his regular Climmhazard issue. Cloud's still considered a good character which shouldn't be surprising as Sakurai outright said Cloud was designed to be easy to use. The issue should be the other characters having stupid aspects, not Cloud being less stupid than he used to be

They've already downgraded Cloud in Ultimate, and it's not like he doesn't have weaknesses.

HIs limit doesn't always kill, since they toned that down a lot.

I disagree that making his limit disappear after a certain timer isn't a good move, just like how I think them nerfing his nair but giving the same one to Mythra just goes to show the balancing team just randomly decide to buff and nerf what they please without thinking too much about things.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

They've already downgraded Cloud in Ultimate, and it's not like he doesn't have weaknesses.

HIs limit doesn't always kill, since they toned that down a lot.

I disagree that making his limit disappear after a certain timer isn't a good move, just like how I think them nerfing his nair but giving the same one to Mythra just goes to show the balancing team just randomly decide to buff and nerf what they please without thinking too much about things.

Name the biggest flaws Cloud has other than the ones that would get eliminated by giving him infinite time on Limit, he's a strong character with good range and surprisingly good frame data for said range. Again, he was deliberately designed to be easy to pick up and play.

Which means people would just hold on to Limit for the better recovery and now permanent stat boost, making Cloud's biggest strengths even better.

Again, this isn't a Cloud issue, the issue would be Pythra. Not to mention that Cloud's been in Smash for almost 6 years whereas Pythra have been in for 8 months, meaning the balance team may not have realized how potent Pythra's would be while they had at least a year or two to think about how Cloud was handled, especially with how DLC characters typically don't get touched until a while after they get released as the devs still need to see if it's an actual issue or a reactonairy take

 

[ZephyrZ]

They've already downgraded Cloud in Ultimate, and it's not like he doesn't have weaknesses.

HIs limit doesn't always kill, since they toned that down a lot.

I disagree that making his limit disappear after a certain timer isn't a good move, just like how I think them nerfing his nair but giving the same one to Mythra just goes to show the balancing team just randomly decide to buff and nerf what they please without thinking too much about things.

If the data I dug up is currect, Smash 4 Cloud's Nair was -2 on shield and came out on Frame 5 and looked like this.

Mythra's is -10 and comes out on frame 8, and it looks like this.

Not quite the same.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

MkLeo is dropping out of CEO

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As is Sparg0

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The top two players rn are no longer going, so the tournament will be a bit of a shake up.