Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Sucumbio]

Anyone know who Teaser is? They knocked ESAM into losers at dreamhack.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Anyone know who Teaser is? They knocked ESAM into losers at dreamhack.

Teaser is a Samus player from Georgia, who popped off with results since post-quarantine started. Notable placements include 17th at CEO 2021, 17th at Genesis 8, 25th at MomoCon 2022, and 17th at Let's Make Big Moves Miami. He was once ranked 2nd in the Georgia Power Rankings in Fall 2021, though he is currently 4th.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Anyone know who Teaser is? They knocked ESAM into losers at dreamhack.

Teaser is a Samus player from Georgia, who popped off with results since post-quarantine started. Notable placements include 17th at CEO 2021, 17th at Genesis 8, 25th at MomoCon 2022, and 17th at Let's Make Big Moves Miami. He was once ranked 2nd in the Georgia Power Rankings in Fall 2021, though he is currently 4th.

ESAM has had bad history with Samus for a while. Multiple losses to Sisqui and lost to IcyMist. I believe Teaser also eliminated ShinyMark at 65th place at Smash Con 2022 as well. Samus seems to win the MU over Pika.

 

[The_Bookworm]

We have our sets for tomorrow for both Apex 2022 and DreamHack Atlanta 2022.


DreamHack Atlanta Top 8

Winner's
Jahzz0 vs MVD
ApolloKage vs Teaser

Loser's
Anathema vs Fatality
Goblin vs Peabnut



Apex 2022 Top 24

Winner's
MPg vs Gackt
Dabuz* vs Syrup
DDog vs Jakal
LeoN vs Miya

*Note: Dabuz's only streamed set was versus Ling, in which he went Min Min. He likely have used his other characters given his bracket.

Loser's
Mega vs Mr.Zercon
Geist vs GuyGuy
Lima vs Quinn
Frozen vs Zomba
Suarez vs Squidplumber
Ling vs Pink Fresh
Rivers vs Tilde
John Numbers vs WhyDo

 

[Frihetsanka]

Not as single Steve or Kazuya in top 8 in DreamHack Atlanta, and unless DDog makes top 8, no Steve or Kazuya there either (and only one Steve in top 24). Or well, WhyDo might play Steve.

 

[superjm]

ESAM has had bad history with Samus for a while. Multiple losses to Sisqui and lost to IcyMist. I believe Teaser also eliminated ShinyMark at 65th place at Smash Con 2022 as well. Samus seems to win the MU over Pika.

Pikachu more or less has to rely on his mobility advantage and small size to do anything in the matchup. Samus's tools are just kinda perfectly aligned to counter most of what Pikachu wants to do. Long, active hitboxes along with charge shot and grab give a significant range advantage. These also mean that Pikachu has so much trouble getting in (fair in particular walls like half of Pikachu's approach options). Being both very heavy and very floaty means many of Pikachu's most lethal kill setups stop working before they actually start killing. Samus recovery laughs at Pikachu's vaunted edgeguarding. Also, and this might be the biggest thing now imo, screw attack OOS just ruins Pikachu in every way. Much of like against GnW Pikachu can't touch Samus's shield with... much of anything really.

Of course, as stated, Pikachu's speed and small size cures a lot of ills, and WHEN Pikachu gets an opportunity to be in advantage he can shine, and he can juggle and mix up Samus with the best of them, but just getting those opportunities is a dangerous obstacle course, especially at high percents where Samus can throw out a ton of different options and hitboxes to kill and Pikachu just kinda can't.

 

[The_Bookworm]

We have arrived at Top 8 for Apex 2022:

Winner's
MPg vs Syrup
DDog vs Miya

Loser's
Gackt vs Dabuz
Jakal vs LeoN

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

We have arrived at Top 8 for Apex 2022:

Winner's
MPg vs Syrup
DDog vs Miya

Loser's
Gackt vs Dabuz
Jakal vs LeoN

Everyone in winners side is between the ages of 15-18.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Everyone in winners side is between the ages of 15-18.

And now I officially feel old. Who's the oldest player that still plays in official tournaments?

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

And now I officially feel old. Who's the oldest player that still plays in official tournaments?

Think it's Larry Lurr.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Think it's Larry Lurr.

Mew2King is a year older.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Mew2King is a year older.

I don't think he's truly active at Ultimate though tbf.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I don't think he's truly active at Ultimate though tbf.

He attended 7 tournaments in 2022, LarryLurr 14.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Think it's Larry Lurr.

I just checked his age, I'm nearly four years older than he is. Now I definitely feel old....

 

[blackghost]

there were more bayonettas in top 24 apex than steve and kazuya combined.

the game is fine. anyone acting otherwise is being hyperbolic.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I just checked his age, I'm nearly four years older than he is. Now I definitely feel old....

Daigo Umehara, the Street Fighter legend, is 41 and still competing.

 

[Sucumbio]

ApplloKage went Steve vs MVD wonder if he just doesn't like the ditto? Also did he switch back to Snake for GF or did he stay Steve?

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

ApplloKage went Steve vs MVD wonder if he just doesn't like the ditto? Also did he switch back to Snake for GF or did he stay Steve?

He switched back to Snake.

 

[The_Bookworm]

DreamHack Atlanta 2022 (415 Entrants)

1st: ApolloKage
2nd: Anathema
3rd: MVD
4th: Goblin
5th: Jahzz0
5th: Teaser
7th: Peabnut
7th: Fatality
9th: DDee
9th: Sean
9th: moxi
9th: omega
13th: ESAM
13th: Greg!
13th: Kailen
13th: Chugs
17th: Regalo
17th: CJFrozen
17th: Kobe
17th: Denny
17th: merf
17th: Vendetta
17th: Dany
17th: Axel~



Apex 2022 (607 Entrants)

1st: Miya
2nd: Jakal
3rd: MPg
4th: Dabuz
5th: DDog
5th: Syrup
7th: LeoN
7th: Gackt
9th: Ling
9th: Zomba
9th: Tilde
9th: GuyGuy
13th: Squidplumber
13th: John Numbers
13th: Lima
13th: Mega
17th: Frozen
17th: Suarez
17th: WhyDo
17th: Pink Fresh
17th: Mr.Zercon
17th: Quinn
17th: Geist
17th: Rivers
25th: Pelca
25th: Yoda Cage
25th: Beast
25th: IcyMist
25th: AxiomXL
25th: Tony Pajamas
25th: Peanut
25th: Mr. E
33rd: Jules
33rd: Sumgai
33rd: Haven
33rd: Makken
33rd: Vivi
33rd: Peco
33rd: Zie
33rd: Derpager
33rd: Sinji
33rd: Z minus
33rd: Steffen
33rd: yonni
33rd: Kenoca
33rd: Samuel
33rd: Hungrybox
33rd: Deltaforce


Overall:

• Strong week for , with ApolloKage winning DreamHack with mostly solo Snake (only used Steve to beat MVD to avoid a Snake mirror), as well as MVD placing 3rd.
• Very good week for , with Peabnut's 7th at DreamHack and MPg's 3rd at Apex 2022.
• Very good week for , with Syrup and Gackt placing 5th and 7th, respectively at Apex 2022, alongside Tony Pajamas placing 25th.
• Pretty good week for , with Fatality and Sean placing 7th and 9th, respectively at DreamHack.
• Apex 2022 has been a paradise for uncommon/lower tiered characters.
  • Squidplumber impressed once again, and got 13th.
  • Peanut and Yoda Cage both got 25th, with their runs ended by Pink Fresh and Mr.Zercon, respectively.
  • Most notable of which is Mr.Zercon getting 17th at Apex and Axel~ getting 17th at DreamHack.
• The current public enemies from FP2 in the eyes of the people (namely ) all had interesting weekends.
  • did decently well with Pink Fresh getting 17th with solo Min Min, and Dabuz getting 4th using her as one of his characters. It is a character you don't see often despite her reputation, let alone solo success. Pink Fresh is very likely the best solo Min Min in the world, but even then he still doesn't place as highly as Dabuz or Proto who utilizes other characters.
  • Week isn't too eventful for . AxiomXL, arguably the best solo Kazuya in the world, placed 25th at Apex 2022. Not too bad, but still doesn't match the character's reputation.
  • 's week is weird. He have DDog getting top 8 and placing 5th at Apex 2022. We also have ApolloKage use Steve to defeat MVD, but he mainly did this purely to avoid a Snake mirror. Outside of that, nothing too eventful for the character. DDee unfortunately underperformed people's expectations and got outside of top 8 for DreamHack. There is a large amount of Steve players that placed 33rd at Apex 2022, but that is it: only 33rd. Only two Steves past top 32, with WhyDo using other characters as well.

 

[blackghost]

Dabuz made that Steve vs minmin fight look so miserable for Steve. That was something to watch.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Dabuz made that Steve vs minmin fight look so miserable for Steve. That was something to watch.

Proto did the same against Jake at Double Down.

 

[superjm]

It'll be interesting to see how that matchup develops over time. Min Min players are currently doing well exploiting Steve's lack of range and mobility with her busted zoning tools, but acola has shown that Steve does have some real counterplay that exposes Min Min's weaknesses. Problem being that it's only acola able to exploit them right now, all the other Steves seem utterly helpless trying to punch through Min Min's wall of hitboxes.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

It'll be interesting to see how that matchup develops over time. Min Min players are currently doing well exploiting Steve's lack of range and mobility with her busted zoning tools, but acola has shown that Steve does have some real counterplay that exposes Min Min's weaknesses. Problem being that it's only acola able to exploit them right now, all the other Steves seem utterly helpless trying to punch through Min Min's wall of hitboxes.

Tbf, we haven't seen Onin fight off against any significant Min Min yet.

 

[Hippieslayer]

Do you know the exact frame data on it? I can't find it.

Afraid not, but it's long enough for me to go "goddamnit let me act, **** I can't do anything they will get some followup no matter what" everytime the cart grabs me, and long enough for it to feel hard/impossible to gain anything by mixing up ones mashing speed to throw the Steve player off. Have to just not get grabbed by the cart in the first place.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Afraid not, but it's long enough for me to go "goddamnit let me act, **** I can't do anything they will get some followup no matter what" everytime the cart grabs me, and long enough for it to feel hard/impossible to gain anything by mixing up ones mashing speed to throw the Steve player off. Have to just not get grabbed by the cart in the first place.

Good luck with that, Steve's minecart may be launched the same way each time but the cart's momentum is dependent on hills and if Steve stays in the minecart or hops out of it. It also can be launched from anywhere so it's easy to get caught offguard by it. I also discovered Steve has a pretty reliable grab combo that can hit anywhere from 32% to 52% if you try to get close when he whips out his fishing rod (down grab to pickaxe aerial)

 

[Aligo]

You also have the fact that the minecart hitbox gets much bigger once Steve gets out of it (the riding hitbox is actually pretty small). This can result in situations where you successfully hit the minecart but still get trapped, or get trapped due to hurtbox shifting.

 

[Linkmain-maybe]

You also have the fact that the minecart hitbox gets much bigger once Steve gets out of it (the riding hitbox is actually pretty small). This can result in situations where you successfully hit the minecart but still get trapped, or get trapped due to hurtbox shifting.

Is that why you can get hit then get grabbed afterwards by the same cart?

 

[Aligo]

The grab hitbox appears on frame 6,while the Minecraft itself

Is that why you can get hit then get grabbed afterwards by the same cart?

Yes, the hitboxes when Steve is in the cart look like this


While the empty mine cart hitbox is like this

The mine cart can grab after frame 6, but is not vunerable until frame 17. The hitboxes are also based on the speed of the cart, which can make them tricky to anticipate during a match. It also further adds to the power of gold mine cart as it is able to beat out other attacks easily.

What I want to know is wether the grab time is based off of the speed of the mine cart.

 

[Frihetsanka]

New OrionStats update: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...oqtbDcuvUKz_ROsMZHGegon53M/edit#gid=329450080

I planned ahead and downloaded the old version while it was still up in order to more easily compare the two.

Steve went from #1 with 671.5 points to #1 with 746.5 points. ROB #2 with 557 points to #2 with 650 points. Wolf went from #6 with 459 points to #3 with 565.5 points, I wonder how much of that was Jakal? Palutena #3 with 483.5 points to #4 with 523.5 points. Snake remains #5, from 461.5 points to 523 points, only half a point behind Palutena! Aegis drop from #4 with 476.5 points to #6 with 506 points. #7-10 are the same order as before, Roy, Samus, Joker, Kazuya. Joker did the worst out of those 4, only getting 26 points, while the other three all got around 50 points, Kazuya is likely to overtake Joker soon.

Ness jumping from #15 to #12. Fox dropping from #17 to #19. Bayonetta keeps climbing and is now tied with Captain Falcon for #23. Sheik climbs from #42 to #38. Byleth drops from #47 to #50. Hero drop sfrom #49 to #52.

Perhaps the most notable is the continuing decline of Aegis, relativitely speaking. Wolf got the second most points, 106.5. ROB seems to have gotten the seccond biggest score improvement though, 93 points. Steve "only" got 75 points. If this trend continues it's not implausible that ROB will end up #1 in a few months, on OrionStats anyways. Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Arthur97]

Maybe the Pyra and Mythra stuff should serve as a lesson not to overhype fighters. They didn't break the game, Kazuya isn't breaking the game, and Steve may not either.

 

[Aligo]

Maybe the Pyra and Mythra stuff should serve as a lesson not to overhype fighters. They didn't break the game, Kazuya isn't breaking the game, and Steve may not either.

I'd say that Steve and Kaz are more like a brawl dedede situation, where they don't break the game, they just make the player experience much worse (though I am pretty sure Steve could break the game if the non-acola mains put in a modicum of effort).

Pyra and Mythra fall into the same camp as Joker where they are generalist characters that are very effective, but more stressful to play than their counterparts, resulting in less usage at the top level, hence falling below others like wolf and palu.

 

[Sucumbio]

Tier List :)

+/- 5 spots for every tier not top 10 or unviable

Was fun :) pic.twitter.com/oRKezEHsSN

— ESAM (Stride Esports) (@imESAM) November 26, 2022

ESAM's latest tier list.

 

[Frihetsanka]

The Dr. Mario placement is a joke btw, he would've been Low-Mid tier but ESAM joked about "If someone pays $250 I'll put him in high tier" and someone did. So yeah, Dr. Mario should be in Low-Mid tier.

Steve #1 over Pikachu was a surprise. Even ESAM, the Pikachu optimist, put Steve as #1.

 

[Arthur97]

At the same time, how has him pushing PIkachu so unrealistically hard not hurt his credibility?

 

[Linkmain-maybe]

Pikachu more or less has to rely on his mobility advantage and small size to do anything in the matchup. Samus's tools are just kinda perfectly aligned to counter most of what Pikachu wants to do. Long, active hitboxes along with charge shot and grab give a significant range advantage. These also mean that Pikachu has so much trouble getting in (fair in particular walls like half of Pikachu's approach options). Being both very heavy and very floaty means many of Pikachu's most lethal kill setups stop working before they actually start killing. Samus recovery laughs at Pikachu's vaunted edgeguarding. Also, and this might be the biggest thing now imo, screw attack OOS just ruins Pikachu in every way. Much of like against GnW Pikachu can't touch Samus's shield with... much of anything really.

Of course, as stated, Pikachu's speed and small size cures a lot of ills, and WHEN Pikachu gets an opportunity to be in advantage he can shine, and he can juggle and mix up Samus with the best of them, but just getting those opportunities is a dangerous obstacle course, especially at high percents where Samus can throw out a ton of different options and hitboxes to kill and Pikachu just kinda can't.

Most forms of charge shot eat T-Jolt as well, so its difficult to run behind it.

 

[Sucumbio]

Spoiler: Some Language

SWT Canceled. (For now)

 

[The_Bookworm]

Spoiler: Some Language

SWT Canceled. (For now)

I both love and hate that November has been a consistently cursed month for competitive Smash in the past few years.

But yeah, this sucks for the next notable major tournaments (Mainstage is still happening very soon though).
I do find it bizarre that this happens literally a week or two before the literal finals happens.

 

[Sucumbio]

I wonder what will happen to all that prize money. Hopefully it goes toward reimbursement for all the participants who dropped tons of money to fly and whatnot to all the various worldwide events... And if Panda's CEO is really the bad guy as it seems he is, he should be boycotted and maybe even hit with a class action.

 

[NotLiquid]

It's not exactly relevant to this thread but this is one of the rare times where I'm pretty concerned for how the community deals with this. Panda has not only been one of the more supportive Smash esports orgs but they also house a lot of prominent community figureheads and players, knowing that they've seemingly spared no expense in trying to get SWT kicked into the curb reads as a massive betrayal of trust and I expect infighting to escalate. Obviously the buck still falls in Nintendo's court to let SWT run the event so they're still culpable in this but for the first time it feels like what caused this to happen was some people in the community not knowing their place. Also hoping VGBC makes it out of this in one piece because the sunk costs can't be good and we probably need them around more than most other orgs.

 

[Arthur97]

It is wild to think some esports guy managed to get this kind of leverage at Nintendo. Even if it likely isn't at the top of the ladder, it's weird to think about. It's almost hard to believe, but while circumstantial, the evidence does seem to point that way.