Yes, Byleth's advantage state is great, one of the best. Top-tier edgeguarding tools, ledgetrapping tools, juggling tools, and just KO tools in general. He converts good situations into kills easily, and he does this using tools that he was already looking to use before trying to get the kill. Most characters have to switch from using their neutral tools to using their kill moves when high percent rolls around. Byleth doesn't, and this is a strength.
I'm aware of this, and aware of Byleth's kill power. I made a post back in September about how I believed Byleth to be possibly top 20. It's quoted below:
For the people who think that MKLeo won this tournament with a mid tier--maybe you should re-evaluate Byleth. I think there was in fact a world where Byleth was low or mid tier, but this is not that world, and I'd like to go over why.
First of all, let's get this out of the way--looking at those sets and thinking that Byleth-Diddy is an OK matchup for Byleth is a shallow conclusion (like thinking that Richter-Luigi isn't that bad just because Elegant beat Dom). Yes, Leo won, but he wasn't reacting in the neutral--those were predictions. Leo was predicting all those monkey flips, dash d-tilts, banana tosses, everything. When we talk about matchup ratios we don't assume that one player has a significant read on the other, but this was absolutely the case here. Several times, I saw Leo actually initiate retreating full hop 40 frames or more in advance of Tweek starting the Monkey Flip--because that's what it takes for Byleth to position properly for the matchup. Those sets were an incredible display of skill and careful study of the opponent, but should be viewed within that context.
Second, despite the bad Diddy matchup, I think Byleth is somewhere in the top 20 characters.
The best thing about Byleth is advantage state that you just can't contest. You're not fighting back against a Byleth up-airing you, you're not reversaling him after he up-bs you (you just have to get away), you're not doing anything but airdodging and fastfalling when he ledgetrumps you. Byleth in advantage just gets to run train for free. It's similar to Sephiroth and Min Min.
But it gets even better! Sephiroth and Min Min have a hard time killing you directly with their neutral tools. They have to get you into a bad position first. But not Byleth. Byleth can kill you from a ledgetrap or an edgeguard just like those other guys can, but Byleth can also get a confirm. n-air to dash attack, d-tilt to up-air, up-b to imagination (even with proper DI), up-smash OOS on a whiff--Byleth has Ganon-level kill power, but confirms his kills from safe neutral moves, much like Diddy and Sheik.
The second best thing about Byleth is disadvantage state. Yes, you read that correctly. This is something that I think Byleth didn't quite have when he was released, but that he's actually really hard to keep trapped at the ledge and to edgeguard. The up-b and side-b buffs gave Byleth legitimate stalling tools at ledge. Part of the reason that Leo had a chance against Tweek was that Byleth just ignored most of Diddy's ledgetrapping with various mixups. Those few frames make a huge difference and I noticed that sometimes Tweek was a hair off from being able to react or prevent Leo from simply snapping to ledge. Ledge is such a relatively safe position for Byleth that Byleth can escape a juggle attempt by drifting offstage and up-bing to ledge. It's really actually pretty hard to edgeguard Byleth's new frame-10 aerial up-b and side-b is "only" 62 frames given how huge it is.
The up-b buff was also relevant for giving Byleth a scary OOS besides n-air, of course, and the neutral merit isn't lost on me, but the advantage and disadvantage are really what enable Byleth to shine as much as he does in Leo's hands.
This is the one time where I don't have much to say about the neutral. In neutral, Leo just mixes up different timings and spacings of n-air up close and spaces f-air/b-air when he can get away with it. That's really all there is to the neutral for this character. The depth isn't there, but then again, it doesn't need to be--the risk is low enough and the reward is high enough that Byleth could be even worse in neutral, as slow as molasses, and still 3-stock Tweek.
I mean, Byleth is doing 20-40% per neutral win, killing you pre-100%, and then limiting damage taken to 15-20% lower range, 30-40% upper range, without getting edgeguarded or f-smashed at ledge for early kills, finally dying at 120%. That is an insane risk:reward ratio. If those numbers don't pass your "possibly top 20" smell test, what does?
Leo's playing a good character--there's no doubt about that. The question really was, "is he skilled enough to overcome Byleth's few really bad matchups?" And the answer, to even my surprise, is yes, he is.
If you don't have time to read all of it, I mentioned what you're talking about (
Goodstyle_4
) right here:
"But it gets even better! Sephiroth and Min Min have a hard time killing you directly with their neutral tools. They have to get you into a bad position first. But not Byleth. Byleth can kill you from a ledgetrap or an edgeguard just like those other guys can, but Byleth can also get a confirm. n-air to dash attack, d-tilt to up-air, up-b to imagination (even with proper DI), up-smash OOS on a whiff--Byleth has Ganon-level kill power, but confirms his kills from safe neutral moves, much like Diddy and Sheik."
So to "Do you see it?" yes, I see it, it was part of my initial analysis.
Back in September, Byleth looked top tier and at the least trending toward top 20 based on gameplay.
Today, though, now that we've had several months of Byleth at top level, I've revised my opinion a bit.
At Glitch 8.5, I watched Maister edgeguard Leo almost flawlessly with Game and Watch b-air. There are angles from which you can approach Byleth's recovery that don't get you spiked. Byleth's up-b prioritizes ledge, so to kill you, Leo has to reactively drift down to a space where he can't grab ledge when you're trying to edgeguard. Byleth's air drift is bad, and so there are limitations on this reaction that many aren't capitalizing on yet. You saw Tilde die a million times offstage because he was trying to edgeguard Byleth from the wrong angles. I've noticed over two dozen missed edgeguarding opportunities on Byleth since then. This counterplay will become more evident as Leo gets more and more rematches against characters capable of going offstage (so not Roy or Aegis, although they can do it too). Doing this can be risky since if Byleth tethers the ledge, Byleth will make it back before you do and ledgetrap you or drop off and up-b you, but you have to really study Leo's reaction drift to understand the best angles to keep yourself safe here and guarantee the hit on Byleth. Some players haven't even thought to do this yet (Bassmage in doubles at Port Priority was the single best example of doing this that I've ever seen, but that is notably Jigglypuff).
Also at Glitch 8.5 during Leo vs. Kola, I realized that there are certain angles and situations where Byleth doesn't function as well as normal. The angle between up-b and SH f-air is good vs. Byleth; n-air requires a high-commitment drift to cover certain timings of aerial from this approach angle, and side-b is a big commitment in basically all situations. Any time you can force Byleth to rely on side-b in neutral, you can win the neutral game vs. him. This also applies to platform transitions. When Roy descends from the edge of a platform with b-air, most Byleths in most positions have to retreat because covering all timings of the platform run-off requires commitment (or leads to misspacing).
After Glitch 8.5, while in the lab (testing Byleth counterplay to Pikachu to see if Leo was messing it up or if it's really that bad--I came to the conclusion that Leo played it wrong, by the way, so I don't think that Pikachu is that bad for Byleth), I realized that Byleth's ledgestalling has significant counterplay. You can cover the neutral get up, walk out of range of the up-air, and then walk back in range to cover the neutral get-up. You can react to side-b; it's got 21-frame startup in the air and doesn't hit you on frame 1 of its animation. Cosmos reacted to Leo's side-b with Foresight at SWT to punish with f-smash. Eventually, Byleth has to get off the ledge. At both Port Priority and Mainstage, we saw Byleth getting ledgetrapped by sparg0. The stalling techniques didn't work that well.
Also at Port Priority, I saw that Byleth's answer to Mythra's dash attack is to double jump in neutral. Byleth deals with strong horizontal burst by getting out of the way, but because he's slow, dashing back is often just cornering himself, so in matchups like these, he either accepts being in the corner or has to jump. In general, Byleth jumping is only good at some spacings; you can tomahawk or fastfall shield because of Byleth's low jump height, but at the same time you get almost no drift at all from a single full hop, which means that no matter your mixups you sometimes still get hit by dash attack on reaction. And while Leo makes being in the corner look just fine, it isn't. You're sacrificing stage control and at mid or high percents you're vulnerable to death being so close to the blastzone.
The thing about Byleth's kill power from neutral moves is that he's slow. For a slow character, even noncommital moves can become commital, because just the act of moving is commital (since it takes you a long time to get back to where you were, and you can get stuck in a vulnerable position). That's just the life of a slow character. At Low Tide I saw Marss miss fifteen different opportunities to kill Byleth for whiffing because he didn't feel confident in his punishes. I saw Byleth overcommit again and again to try to secure a kill on ZSS because there just weren't guaranteed openings as long as she kept moving.
In all of these instances (and more), I saw Leo counterplay all of this. Sometimes with creative use of his moves, but many times with reads.
Which brings me to this:
The whole Leo exceptionalism is silly and a lazy argument imo.
I think it's important to dig deeper in the analysis rather than say something is Leo exceptionalism or that it isn't (goes for both the people saying that it's just Leo and for the people saying that it's Byleth). We should try to identify which parts are Leo and which parts are Byleth, because it's definitely both.
For d-tilt I don't have a strong opinion. Leo uses it in the Sephiroth matchup because Sephiroth isn't going to run in and shield it, and pivot d-tilt is good for catching landings and kill-confirming, something which we've already acknowledged is Byleth's strength.
But here's an example of something that's more Leo than Byleth. Leo has really good mixup drift in disadvantage, so when you see Leo not get hit by 5 up-airs in Byleth vs. Roy, that's because he's outplaying his opponent with his mixups. Byleth doesn't have great counterplay to Roy up-air sharking besides fastfall n-air; drift to ledge can be good because Roy's ledgetrapping is sometiems commital, but it's hard to do with low air speed from center stage. One of the things you'll notice if you watch Kola vs. Leo at SWT is that Leo rarely got in a situation to be up-aired at center stage; it was almost always under a platform or near ledge. That's no mistake and that definitely also counts as outplaying your opponent.
That part? That's clearly Leo, not Byleth.
But when Leo up-bs Roy's recovery and spikes him, that's clearly Byleth and not (just) Leo. Anyone can see that and replicate that against an opponent of the same skill level. It doesn't require a read or outplaying.
So, with all that in mind, given all the information we have, I think there
is potential for Byleth to really be top tier, but the counter-counterplay to some of the things mentioned (and many more) has to be refined. I'm sure Leo will come up with something creative to stay in the game with Byleth, but there may well be a limit. At some point Kola will catch on to his drift habits, and Tweek will ledgetrap him, and Cosmos will handle all the short hop mixups, etc. If Leo's Byleth has an answer to all of that, then Byleth will be top tier. If not, the Aegis and Joker will emerge.
in the USA aside from VoiD.
