Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[The_Bookworm]

I'm gonna be honest, I don't think SHADIC is just the best in the USA. I think he might be top 3 in the world alongside acola and Sparg0. His consistency in placements, high attendance, H2Hs, lack of bad losses and major wins make him have an incredible season thus far that feels comparable to those two.

Well rn, I think the top 3 is Miya, Sparg0, and Shadic.
acola has only attended 4 tournaments this season, 3 of which are superregionals. Winning all of these tournaments, including the premier tiered event Umebura SP 10, certainly helps him out, but I don't think he has the attendance to be top 3 right now.

 

[Rizen]

Sonix might only get second at most majors but his consistency in that is far better than most other players. Sure between Tweek, Zomba, and Light (etc) there's always someone to beat him but he generally places better than all of them. Plus he has a harder region in the West than Japan locally with more top 10 opponents and Spargo, who he recently beat in an online coinbox. Don't count Sonix out for top 3.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

So, SHADIC has gone 2-2 with Sonix, 1-1 with Miya and Onin and 2-0 on Maister this season thus far. Obviously SHADIC is an incredible player going up against other incredible players, but are we all ready to agree that goes even with , and yet?

 

[NairWizard]

I mean SHADIC also lost to sparg0 2-0 (and has lost every encounter before that, in addition to Neo losing to sparg0 at King Con), but no one is saying Cloud beats Corrin, top-level head to head is just one factor among many

Sonix is 2-0 on sparg0 this season in offline sets where sparg0 used Corrin, is 2-2 with SHADIC and is 1-0 on Neo.

this kind of cherry-picking is the reason I hate talking about Corrin

Where was the “maybe Corrin doesn’t actually beat Kazuya” talk when Riddles brought in new tech against Neo at Diamond Dust and destroyed him? Where was the talk about how Snow won a supposedly -2 MU? Or how Cloud is a hard MU because the Corrins keep losing to sparg0?

oh but wait, when Corrin loses a matchup it’s because of the players and when Corrin wins a matchup it’s because Corrin is good right?

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

I mean SHADIC also lost to sparg0 2-0 (and has lost every encounter before that, in addition to Neo losing to sparg0 at King Con), but no one is saying Cloud beats Corrin, top-level head to head is just one factor among many

You made a good point here. SHADIC even said in the Coaches Corner that he thinks the Cloud matchup is fine for Corrin and he just thinks Sparg0 is better then he and Neo is, whereas he thinks the reason he struggles against Tweek is more to do with the matchup rather then the player (though he does think Tweek is really good). Top players are also able to get through and beat their bad matchups, but that doesn't stop a bad matchup from being bad. People still think Corrin vs Fox is horrible for Corrin, despite SHADIC beating Light twice in a row in 3-1 set victories. Head to head can help determine how good/bad a matchup is, and I think is what is most important, but it's not everything.

I apologize for cherry picking, the reason why I didn't mention Sparg0's Corrin against Sonix offline was because it's a (very good) secondary and not really on the same level as Shadic's, and I didn't mention Neo because of Neo being an obvious worse player then Sonix, and the fact that I don't think Neo's rush-in, heavy reads playstyle works on a player like Sonix.

 

[NairWizard]

People still think Corrin vs Fox is horrible for Corrin, despite SHADIC beating Light twice in a row in 3-1 set victories. Head to head can help determine how good/bad a matchup is, and I think is what is most important, but it's not everything.

Head to head is almost the least important thing, at least to me. What happens during the match can tell you a lot about a matchup, but the actual end result of a set between two top players has to be qualified, since at top level, many other factors besides the matchup determine the outcome.

It's hard to even judge relative player quality, let alone factor that quality into matchup assessments. sparg0 might be (marginally) better than SHADIC, but it's clear that SHADIC is better at playing grand finals sets right now than Sonix is, so the same logic can be applied to cast doubt on the implication of SHADIC's victory today.

In the end, even slight differences in comfortability and razor thin margins of matchup knowledge can swing results pretty wildly.


What doesn't change as much though is interactions. Those are static and easy to look at. If I see Corrin ledgetrapping Joker for 30-40% consistently and the Joker players are doing everything they can to get off ledge, that tells me that the matchup is winning or even for Corrin. That's what I think we should be focusing on.



If you just go by results, then I think Corrin isn't just top 10, she's clearly a top 3 character, if not better.

Think about it this way. Each of the perceived top characters have multiple top reps, and each of them seem to be struggling in similar matchups -- except Corrin and Sonic.

Steve mains are struggling with the top Clouds -- acola with sparg0, Onin against sparg0 and almost every pocket Cloud from another top player has caused him at least some grief.
Game and Watch mains are struggling with Rosalina so much so that Miya won't even play it any more and Maister tried Cloud against Dabuz today.


Who are Corrin players struggling with? Really, no single character is giving Corrin issues right now, unlike every other top character other than Sonic. Diddy Kong isn't even a valid pick for this because although SHADIC has lost multiple sets to Tweek, Neo beat Tweek at Smash Con and then Tweek didn't even bother going Diddy the next time they fought.


At these events, SHADIC is beating everyone and Neo is beating everyone else. Today's Corrin isn't just even with Game and Watch, Sonic, and Steve -- today's Corrin also beats Fox and Roy (see: SHADIC vs. Light and Kola and the way he's playing those sets); she beats Samus and zoners (see SHADIC vs. every Samus player, like IcyMist and Yaura); she beats heavies and whiff punishers.

The only negative matchup we have real hard evidence of is Cloud (and I would suspect we'd have some of Sheik and Snake if we saw those matchups played more even in today's meta).



Going only by top-level, modern results, Corrin's a top 3 character in today's meta, competing with Steve and Sonic for the top spot -- more than 2 reps in the top 20, almost no losing matchups, winning matchups on most of the cast, consistent ledgetrapping and juggling and edgeguarding with a solid recovery to adapt to most unfamiliar matchups, flexibility on stages (great on FD, HB, SB, BF, and PS2)... Corrin's currently in contention for best in the game, and there's really no debating that.


Personally, I do think that top-level, modern results are barely relevant to the long term (look at Byleth, at Joker, at ZSS, at Mario), but if we're going to talk about that aspect of Corrin, let's not focus only on Game and Watch, Steve, and Corrin -- the Corrins are winning all of their matchups, not just those 3. It's confirmation bias to focus only on matchups we already thought she won.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Top 8 of Game is Game (B+ Tier)

Winners
Shuton vs MuteAce
Glutonny vs Raflow

Losers
Sisqui vs crepe salee
Gackt vs Raarchyor

 

[Frihetsanka]

I don't quite understand why Corrin seems to do alright vs him. I would think that Lucina would be best suited for fighting him out of the swordies because she's well suited to baiting and spacing him out with her floatiness.

I think Corrin loses to Snake still (slightly), but Neo has been grinding that MU hard so he's very good vs Snake now. It's still a (slightly) bad MU for Corrin. Fox is also (slightly?) bad for Corrin still, even though SHADIC beat Light twice in a row now. Personally I think Corrin's worst MU is likely Sheik, but luckily for top level Corrin players there aren't many good Sheik players around. At LMM Miami WebbJP 3-2 Neo. Since then I don't believe we've seen a Corrin vs Sheik set at top level.

I think Corrin likely loses 10-13 MUs or so, which is around what SHADIC seems to think as well. Most of those are only slight losses and very doable. SHADIC said he thinks she's top 20 (at best), that sounds fairly reasonable to me. I've never believed in the claims that she's top 10, and I don't think that will change. SHADIC might very well be a top 5 player right now, though.

I think she goes even with several top tiers like G&W, ROB, Sonic, Steve, and Cloud, but probably doesn't beat them (although some think she does beat some of them, like Neo thinks she beats Steve). She might beat Peach though (even Cosmos said that!) and maybe Min Min. She also probably doesn't +2 a lot of characters, instead having a long list of slight wins and even MUs. This means Corrin players have to work for their wins, she's not like top 3 characters who +2 a large % of the cast (not that +2 means "free" but it's significantly easier for Steve and G&W to MUs). SHADIC is an incredibly skilled player and does well in even and slightly winning MUs (and tends to do well in slightly losing MUs these days too). To some extent, he (and Neo) probably made the character look a bit better than she is, at least to some people. She probably isn't a top 10 hidden top tier character, SHADIC's stance on top 20 or top 25 sounds reasonable to me (I'm leaning towards top 20, the char is still very good, but she's not busted).

 

[NairWizard]

She’s definitely top 5-10 today, right now, current meta. I don’t believe in Corrin’s long-term versatility but even I can see that. Cloud went through a period where he was top 5-10 too, pretty recently, and that was only with one major rep in sparg0. Corrin has 3.
Also, Corrin has plenty of +2s today, just like Game and Watch. Advantage state mechanics are very similar.



I guess most of you expect insight from me, though, so here's a bullet list of how to play better vs. Corrin (I think most people are playing the MU terribly):

• Getting ledgetrapped
  • Don't neutral get-up when you are at n-air -> b-air kill percent. Favor roll, but you can also double jump depending on the Corrin's position (react to it). Even if Corrin reads your roll, you won't die from rolling. She'd have to hard-read you and commit to risk of reversal.
  • On ledge, Corrin can pin you at roughly roll distance, can reverse f-smash with her back to the ledge to catch your roll, can b-air your jump, or n-air your neutral getup. That seems like a lot of options, but luckily Corrin can't threaten everything at once. Some fast and hard tips:
    • If you see her jump, you can react and input roll right there, since even with fastfalling she doesn't have enough time to f-smash.
    • If she's dashing back and forth she can cover roll, stay in place, and neutral getup, but you won't die to n-air -> b-air probably if you jump. Just have to be ambiguous about the timing.
    • If Corrin isn't at roll distance (is closer, like with back to ledge), just stay on ledge for a bit. You might get hit by d-air, but you won't die from this usually.
• Getting juggled
  • While getting juggled, getting hit by the front part of up-air is usually better than getting hit by the back. If you get hit by the front, Corrin has less time to position to hit you with more stuff since she still has to complete the rest of the aerial and fastfall.
  • We all know about airdodge frame traps. If you airdodge up-air, you can die to b-air or neutral B reads. Just take the up-airs and keep DIng to ledge. You'd rather get ledgetrapped than juggle frametrapped, even though Corrin's ledgetrapping is good.
  • Don't give up a defensive option the moment you hit the ground, that's how you get Pinned. Spotdodge, roll, and dash back are all Pinnable depending on your character and the position. Pin has low priority so you'd much rather swing.
• Grounded Neutral
  • In neutral, Corrin's fastest option out of dash is shield, so you should be grabbing her a lot. Pin and Dash attack are huge commitments that a player like SHADIC won't be going for that freely, so just run up and grab her to deprive her of the opportunity to set something up.
    • Zoners get free conditioning into the grab because Corrin's main approach tool against all zoners is that dash to shield.
  • Corrin has to jump a lot of the time to deal with shield pressure. This is how you get your kills. Force a jump-or-hold-shield situation, then grab or up-smash (or whatever vertical kill move you have).
  • Shielding in general is good vs. Corrin. d-tilt is -17 and Pin doesn't do enough shield damage to be scary. To deal with shield, Corrin has to play the Cloud game of spacing a falling aerial like f-air or n-air and then guessing your followup. If all else fails and you don't have a neutral conditioning plan, you can just guess what Corrin will do. Cloud gets more chances to do that due to his big mobility, so you only have to guess right a few times per stock/game in this situation vs. Corrin.
  • Midrange short-hop mixups are free against Corrin (I'm looking at you, Light, jump more). Cloud, Lucina, Mythra, etc. can all call out your midrange short hops and slide in with up-tilt, but Corrin's up-tilt doesn't scoop that well, and her slide doesn't go as far, so you can hop around like a bunny in this MU until Corrin starts air-to-airing you with b-air or f-air.
    • Remember, rising f-air is just OK on reward, so risk:reward is in your favor in many positions if she meets you up there with it.
  • Look at Corrin's feet to see if she's jumping toward you or away.
    • Jumping away -- take some space and pressure. b-air will push her into the corner if she uses it, but dash to shield isn't good against it either since it's too safe. Reverse up-air is very safe too but take space to use.
    • Jumping toward you -- dash in shield the f-air/n-air. Falling f-air is how she gets her really big damage, so that's the move you should be playing around most.
  • Stop dashing back and forth in neutral. It's a good positional mixup if you have good burst (e.g., Sonix does this a lot), but it doesn't do much against Corrin. Corrin already has to work pretty hard to get stage control and gives it up constantly to space her main aerials (b-air/reverse up-air), plus she needs space to hit sweetspot Pin, so just keep pressing forward in this MU.
    • Even if you're a zoner with projectiles, bring the projectiles to Corrin and steadily force her into the corner.
• Corrin camping a platform
  • She can really only do this if you don't have good projectiles for the situation.
  • Her transitions down are better than her transitions up. Rising f-air won't hurt you that much, just scrap with her while she's going up.
  • Bait pin/d-air with fadeback jump. Corrin doesn't actually get much out of reading your fadeback jumps from this position.
  • Corrin's run-off b-air is a bit less threatening than other similar b-airs. The pushback makes it hard for her to follow up the pressure like a Cloud could if Cloud b-airs while descending. You can just shield it and the platform camping ends from there, or Corrin corners herself. No need for additional yomi layers here.
• Cornering Corrin
  • Corrin doesn't have a good dash attack or burst option out of corner; you have to respect roll and Pin simultaneously, but not much else.
  • She will throw in jab or d-tilt because she has to. Shield seems very tempting here, since jab is disjointed, which can catch some people off guard, but honestly Corrin is nowhere near as dangerous as someone like Byleth in corner. No kill confirms from here (mostly; sometimes with d-tilt), no set-up. So keeping up the pressure is best.
  • Honestly, the most dangerous thing about cornered Corrin is roll in charge f-smash on your shield if you shield at roll distance. Just make sure you prepare something in response or space around it.
• Ledgetrapping/Edgeguarding Corrin
  • Corrin's recovery is deceptively hard to edgeguard horizontally. It's best to spike it, if you have one. Ledgetrapping is generally better otherwise.
  • Her ledgejump option of choice is rising f-air or at best a delayed falling n-air. You can shield around mid-roll distance, and react to the delay with anti-air (if you get hit by n-air while you're both aerial you're probably fine on followups, just reset to neutral).
  • Corrin will jump from ledge a lot. It's just easier for her. A character like Cloud who has a crazy double jump can neutral get up and double jump to center later, or can burst there with d-tilt/dash attack, but Corrin has to inch her way back into stage control. Plus, ledge jump gets her reversal opportunity. Know your reversal percent (what percents will falling n-air/f-air actually be an issue for you) and then call out the jumps around those percents.
  • Ledge-trump is great against Corrin. Most of her mixups for getting off the ledge are timing-based.
• Juggling Corrin
  • Corrin isn't great at getting off ledge, so you have to force her there with your juggling. Use options that send horizontally, instead of just sending her up. e.g., if you're Cloud, aim for b-airs over up-airs.
  • Being sent up is a big reversal, so you have to minimize risk of reversal.
    • When Corrin is near the ground, she will try to gather enough space around her to do an up-air or n-air. If you want to make a read, try to make it from the safer direction. In front of her is way better than behind her, since behind can lead to reverse up-air and back-hit n-air (kill confirms).
    • 45-degree angle below her isn't actually optimal like it is in other matchups. Directly below can actually be better. She will definitely feel uncomfortable and either feel like she has to d-air or drift away so that she can space an aerial while landing on you, since she can't get as much out of you being directly below.
    • In many situations, you can follow Corrin to the sky. She's not confirming off of up-air if she hits it when you're both high above the stage. This is pretty counterintuitive since usually you don't want to commit to a double jump when juggling and want to stay near the ground, but against Corrin it often makes sense. It minimizes reversals while giving you a chance to make reads.
      • Don't do this if you're at kill percent, obviously.

That's all for now, I suppose I could go more in depth if anyone is struggling vs. Corrin at their locals (you probably aren't).

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Yeah, Corrin is currently as meta relevant as , and at the tippity top level and people are going to really have to learn the MU. Three top 20-25 players playing her, one of which is a top 5 solo main, the other is a top 20-25 solo main and one that is a top 5 player using her as a pocket. That's pretty similar with how acola, Onin and Miya's secondary/pocket Steve are doing currently. I do think players will start getting better at the Corrin MU, but SHADIC will continue to do very well just like how Sparg0 is still doing great even after top players learnt how to fight Cloud.

 

[Rizen]

I'm going to throw out a hot take: IMO the USA is now better than Japan. Japan was the best country last year but several things have changed. 1 Acola is less active, he's been dropping off a bit due to inactivity. 2 Miya has dropped slightly. Miya was ranked 2nd in Lumirank at first then he fell to 4th. This also coincides with 3 Shadic has seriously leveled up. I think most people would agree he's a top 5 player at this point. IMO Shadic has passed Miya. 4 Light, Zomba and Tweek have all leveled up. While they may not be top 5, imo they're all top 10 players. There was a time when the top 5 players were all from outside the USA and the USA players couldn't beat them. Now Tweek, Light and Zomba have all won a tournament beating the former top 5 international players. Although in Japan's defense I will say Hurt has probably also leveled up into the top 10. 5 I also think Debuz is going largely unnoticed but has been improving as well. He could end up a top 10 player too. 6 IMO top 2 players Spargo and Sonix have a much easier time visiting Western tournaments. Their participation has increased the value of wins by other players.

 

[Cheryl~]

I'm going to throw out a hot take: IMO the USA is now better than Japan. Japan was the best country last year but several things have changed. 1 Acola is less active, he's been dropping off a bit due to inactivity. 2 Miya has dropped slightly. Miya was ranked 2nd in Lumirank at first then he fell to 4th. This also coincides with 3 Shadic has seriously leveled up. I think most people would agree he's a top 5 player at this point. IMO Shadic has passed Miya. 4 Light, Zomba and Tweek have all leveled up. While they may not be top 5, imo they're all top 10 players. There was a time when the top 5 players were all from outside the USA and the USA players couldn't beat them. Now Tweek, Light and Zomba have all won a tournament beating the former top 5 international players. Although in Japan's defense I will say Hurt has probably also leveled up into the top 10. 5 I also think Debuz is going largely unnoticed but has been improving as well. He could end up a top 10 player too. 6 IMO top 2 players Spargo and Sonix have a much easier time visiting Western tournaments. Their participation has increased the value of wins by other players.

I wouldn't say that, but I may value the depth of Japan more than how their top 5/10 perform compared to the USA. Reason I say this is because we have seen "B tier" Japanese players such as Ly travel and straight up beat top 5 players such as Sparg0 whereas USA's "B tier" players are never gonna scratch that level of upset.

 

[Rizen]

I wouldn't say that, but I may value the depth of Japan more than how their top 5/10 perform compared to the USA. Reason I say this is because we have seen "B tier" Japanese players such as Ly travel and straight up beat top 5 players such as Sparg0 whereas USA's "B tier" players are never gonna scratch that level of upset.

Stuff like that happens. Peabnut beat Miya and Zomba in cirque-du-cfl-3. (Miya shown in 7th with Japanese text).

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Peabnut is probably top 25 right now because of his runs at Cirque 3 and Collision, so I don't even think he's a depth player anymore. But rankings talk isn't really what this thread is about until the mid-year rankings actually come out, so I think this conversation should be dropped. It seems rather irrelevant.

 

[NairWizard]

The thread is pretty dead, anyway. Most of the very insightful theorists long ago abandoned it, it's the same handful of legacy users just casually talking at this point. I think whatever we discuss is OK, rankings or otherwise.

Still, agree, would be nice to see more character-based conversation, and maybe some more different voices speaking up. Love when someone new posts here.

and please someone talk about hitboxes I beg you I can't take matchup result talk any more


Here's something interesting.

Graphic version:

Mexican regional (PKSHOWDOWN) won by Chase. sparg0 got 5th here, losing to Mr. E and Alandiss.

Seems like Snake is emerging as a -2 for Cloud after all (though Alandiss practices with sparg0 often), and Lucina, as always, is competitive, just missing a top player until Mr. E gets there (almost!).

I think this definitely does have some impact on rankings, too, for sparg0's spot, though arguably minor.

 

[williamsga555]

Speaking of more specific character/hitbox stuff and Lucina/Marth, I want to hear a bit about their dtilt's place in Ultimate

Way back in the days of Smash 4 I played a good amount of Marth in friendlies and was a huge believer in dtilt as a key component of his neutral (in theory). In general I quite liked pokes and it felt like a particularly amazing one -excellent reach, quick startup, fairly safe on shield (especially important then since Smash 4 was so shield-heavy), and was a good response to people trying to whiff-punish landing fair/nair with dash grab. It was great!

I also recall seeing a lot of good use of it from Brawl's time as well, though I wasn't a tournament goer then so I'm not nearly as well-versed in it.

While I think it's still a great move in a vacuum in Ultimate, I do wonder if it's lost most of its use case due to the shift away from grounded neutral and whiff punishing and more into aerial mashing. At that same merit, has/should utilt become notably more useful as an anti-air and mid-percentage combo starter?

 

[StrangeKitten]

With how Skyjay has consistently been doing well, I feel like a case could be made for Incin to be a top 20 character

 

[NairWizard]

Speaking of more specific character/hitbox stuff and Lucina/Marth, I want to hear a bit about their dtilt's place in Ultimate

Way back in the days of Smash 4 I played a good amount of Marth in friendlies and was a huge believer in dtilt as a key component of his neutral (in theory). In general I quite liked pokes and it felt like a particularly amazing one -excellent reach, quick startup, fairly safe on shield (especially important then since Smash 4 was so shield-heavy), and was a good response to people trying to whiff-punish landing fair/nair with dash grab. It was great!

I also recall seeing a lot of good use of it from Brawl's time as well, though I wasn't a tournament goer then so I'm not nearly as well-versed in it.

While I think it's still a great move in a vacuum in Ultimate, I do wonder if it's lost most of its use case due to the shift away from grounded neutral and whiff punishing and more into aerial mashing. At that same merit, has/should utilt become notably more useful as an anti-air and mid-percentage combo starter?

Great topic, imo.

d-tilt has a few uses. It's the best ledgetrapping tool, since it can hit stuff like Cloud up-b'ing to ledge and so on, and d-tilt -> tech chase d-smash can lead to kills outside of ledgetrapping.

Walking spacing is not as big in this game as it was in S4. You still do walk, but in many matchups that are relevant -- Steve, Sonic, etc., they are not really playing traditional smash brothers with you. What I mean to say is that they don't care about your footsies. They are behind a wall, spindashing in the corner, etc., and d-tilt is not relevant to those situations.

You do still d-tilt sometimes though, using dash in to go under someone swinging high and to get out of the corner with low profiling.
It's kinda hard to explain the situations where you would d-tilt in neutral since the reward is so low (10% with usually no followup). Let me find some replays of my Lucina against some high-level Steves or Palutenas, because you do use the move differently depending on whether the matchup is traditional footsies based or not, and I'll come back to this.

You main Marth/Lucina?

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

As we're discussing Lucina, ProtoBanham announced today that he is now on indefinite hiatus due to health issues, which is obviously going to negatively impact Lucina's results at the major level, though maybe Mr. E can do well with the recent win on Sparg0. Obviously, I wish Proto the best with his health and that is more important then him playing again.

I do think Proto not going to that many events is one of the reasons why people believe that Lucina is falling off (I know Frihetsanka thinks Lucina is falling off), but I still think she's a great character with her good neutral, disjointed hitboxes, frame 1 escape option in Up-B, great edgeguarding game and solid ledgetrapping.

As for Lucina's down-tilt, I always assumed it was used as a good poking tool in neutral and for ledgetrapping, or to hurtbox shift. So it has the occasional uses but isn't her best move.

 

[williamsga555]

You main Marth/Lucina?

Nah, but I do love almost all of the swordies across the series, so I've played a lot of Marth in all of them since Brawl (don't care for Melee much uh-oh). More importantly here though is that I used to commentate our local scene and Marth was a decently popular pick at that time (Smash 4 again), so I studied a lot of his theorycraft discussion back then. Helps that I always enjoyed Marth gameplay as a spectator, too; I really feel that "way of the sword" stuff you talked about awhile back, it was a really well-articulated way of expressing how much more I prefer watching that kind of gameplay (SHADIC really has made Ultimate much more interesting for me since his rise)

If you twisted my arm and asked who I main I'd say either D3, Hero, Incineroar, or Robin but I play this game pretty casually and just muck about with most of the cast offline.

Anyway, speaking of Proto, one of the most interesting facets of his gameplay that always stood out to me was his use of runoff->airdodge-back-to-stage as a quick tool when dashing in for a ledgetrap scenario. I don't think I've seen anyone else utilize it, but it seems situationally great as a spacing/timing mixup.

 

[NairWizard]

I have faith in Lucina. I'm not a top player by any means, and smash will never be more than a passive hobby to me, but I've done well vs. every Steve I've played with Lucina, and that includes some pretty good/known Steves. I actually think I've won 100% of friendlies games I've played vs. Steves (or maybe 90%), and Lucina isn't even a main for me. I just default to Lucina for the MU.

It's for all the reasons that people think Corrin does well vs. Steve, but Lucina also has some pretty crazy mobility that she can take advantage of.

Let me get my switch and find those replays tomorrow or something, I'll make a bigger more detailed Lucina post including it, d-tilt usage, and what I think is the optimal way to play Lucina.

frame 4 escape option in Up-B

aerial up-b is invincible frame 1, it is the single reason I still believe in Lucina being a potential top 10 character and only Banham used it correctly out of the top Lucinas imo.

f1 combobreaker on a swordie is just insane. Getting comboed is the one weakness every swordie has, and Lucina sometimes... just doesn't.

 

[NairWizard]

Something that was brought up on today's Tweek Talks: Tweek feeling a lack of motivation and saying that this game is "soulless" because matchup gameplans feel decided at character select.

For those of you who watched the segment, how do you feel about the sentiment?

There are definitely some elements of truth to it for me. I remember having this same feeling in S4, when I fought Mistake's Bayonetta, and he would Heel Slide in neutral whether or not it was working, because it was that safe, and eventually one of them would hit and I'd die anyway. And I was like "is this how you play the game? wow this feels terrible." I think it is a little frustrating when your opponent isn't closely watching what you're doing, and isn't watching because they don't have to watch you to win.

But I also think that the problem in the case of Ultimate is at least partially created by the ruleset. We don't have to play the current stagelist with the current stock and timer. Steve doesn't have to be given 3 stocks a game to hide behinds walls. We don't need PS2 as a neutral stage.


One other thought: it feels like the B button decides adaptation requirements for a match. There are characters who play the game "normally" with their normal moves for the most part with a sprinkling of specials, and then there are "special" characters whose entire gameplan is dominated by special move usage. The latter tends to be the strongest characters in the game. If you don't even have to use your normals to win well you don't have to engage, and that can make it feel hopeless to spectate or play against.

You look at a strong character like Pyra and Mythra, Joker, or Wolf -- they have great specials and they do use those specials, but their gameplans are based on normals, and so they have to change their gameplans every game against different characters. Joker can't just use Rebel's Guard in every matchup, Wolf can't just infinitely laser, and Mythra, as much as Elite Smash Mythras would disagree, can't just Photon Edge in midrange.

Then you look at strong characters like Sonic, Steve, and Snake -- their specials are characters by themselves. Their gameplans are based almost entirely on specials. And since it usually takes other good specials or very specific normals to counter their specials, their gameplans seldom change. They can get away with doing the same thing in almost every matchup, even after adaptation from the opponent.

There are a few characters who are defined by their specials and are low tier regardless (Isabelle), but in those cases it's usually because the normals are undertuned to the point where you can force your way past the specials and engage normally and win.


I don't feel particularly doomer about this issue, though, nor the game in general. But that kind of observation makes you wonder whether more limitations similar to Banjo Wonderwing would have been a good balancing mechanic at the top echelon of the cast.

 

[NotLiquid]

On the "matchup plan" part,

Guilty Gear Strive recently released ABA, which is probably one of the most fun characters in the game that I've played in a while. The quirky thing about her is that because of how she's designed, her matchup weaknesses in particular are extremely transparent even to people who don't spend time on Dustloop disseminating character data. Characters like Bridget and Asuka are known to basically outzone her forever and prevent her from getting in with her extraordinarily oppressive advantage state. On character select you already know that most rounds with her, against a specific contingent of the cast, is going to go one of two ways; either ABA fails to get in on the opponent and she dies, or ABA gets in on the opponent and the opponent dies.

Historically I'm not entirely convinced that a game being optimized or sanded down to the point where the character select "dictates" the matchup is something that isn't an inevitability; at least to my knowledge this has sort of been a relative commonality toward longer lived and some of the ironically more deified competitive fighters. In Marvel vs Capcom 3 the entire stock life basically begins and ends with whoever gets the first hit in neutral, and you usually see the common comps with Vergil, Doom, Morrigan, Zero etc. who have the easiest time harassing you in neutral, with some more niche comps featuring likes of Spencer, Haggar, Nova, Hulk, etc. In Third Strike I believe this type of character select mentality is especially notorious at a higher level of competitive play and has brought about its own level of trepidation going into EVO deciding to bring the game back as opposed to letting it live as a glorified memory, but Street Fighter has never been my domain so someone like Emblem Lord might be able to correct or counter me on my assumptions and provide some worthier insight compared to my original Strive example (Strive is, frankly put, somewhat controversial of a game for its own reasons, but I also don't think the game gets enough credit for basically foreseeing the current era approach to fighting game design -- the idea of fighting games having leaned on "resource advantage meta" being discussed is a similar topic of design which SF6 and Tekken 8 ended up landing upon with Drive and Heat).

Either way I haven't seen the video where Tweek talks about the subject so I'm likely missing out on a lot of nuances but I can't say that sensation is an alien one even if looking from only a Smash Bros. perspective. Meleeheads could probably tell you a lot of stories about how the Ice Climbers vs Jigglypuff matchup devolved into an abject catastrophe because of this sentiment. The scene was forced into combatting an extreme case of this through additional character clauses, with a consequence of that now being that Ice Climbers has been kind of forced out of the meta because one character had the leeway to refuse engaging with them. My assumptive takeaway is that this basically only seems to matter to more proliferated meta-relevant characters because we're intimately knowledgeable of their overall strengths, which is why we also get blindsided by the many assumed mid-tiers and lower high-tiers that have made small waves lately. Maybe it feels consequential because Smash is the only competitive fighter where the format we play is dictated by the community rather than the designers, and the knowledge that we could change it is tantalizing in the face of the community's apprehension to realize that power. It could make for an interesting post-mortem once the next game rolls around, since realistically I don't expect us to meaningfully seize an opportunity to change the way we've embraced playing for a game that will soon enter its sixth year -- not unless the next game is a Brawl-type sea change that encourages people to stick with Ultimate.

 

[meleebrawler]

The player-decided rulesets are always going to be a monkey wrench in balancing (and also Smash's online offerings) on the dev's part. If they tried to do things the way other studios do by hosting tourneys, paying attention to what happens in them as well analyzing in-game statistics like popularity and win-rates, they could always be thrown off by the community suddenly deciding, say, shorter 2-stock games are the way to go now.

But even looking past the obvious monetary reasons they won't be balancing further, it's clear they take a more... artistic, shall we say, approach to tweaking characters. Nerfs and buffs don't target winners or losers, they aim for overcentralizing options or moves/attributes that are failing in their intended purposes. They'll stick to their visions regardless of how the players feel about them. They've known since Melee that some character traits are inherently better or worse for the kind of game competitive players like to play and don't really let this influence their design. This is unlikely to change with any kind of rerelease we might get.

Basically, as long as they stick to their philosopholies of gameplay representation first, there will always be rule-breakers in Smash.

Edit: The question of whether these "rule-breakers" have a place in Smash is interesting if you consider the long-standing debate over whether the long-time veteran's movesets are too outdated, don't represent their games well enough etc.. If we can barely handle someone like Steve, is the world really ready for something like an Auto-Building UltraHand TOTK Link?

 

[True Blue Warrior]

Considering the current meta, the nerfs to Pichu were both unjustified and unnecessary.

Edit: The question of whether these "rule-breakers" have a place in Smash is interesting if you consider the long-standing debate over whether the long-time veteran's movesets are too outdated, don't represent their games well enough etc.. If we can barely handle someone like Steve, is the world really ready for something like an Auto-Building UltraHand TOTK Link?

Well those debates has less to do with competitive balance and more about whether or not keeping the veteran moveset mostly the same goes against one of the aims of Smash to represent characters faithfully and properly (see Ganondorf), but to answer the question, yes. The only reason Steve is as powerful as he is right now is because they didn’t go further to take into account canon. If Steve couldn’t put a block in midair without it being connected to a block on the ground and if he lost diamond and gold every time he was KO’d, he would be less powerful and more faithful.

 

[NairWizard]

I also think a lot of characters are misunderstood, especially when it comes to their strengths and weaknesses when they over and underperform.

How many times have you heard it said that Pyra/Mythra's weakness is recovery and that's why they're not doing well? It's just so wrong (or so obvious as to be unworthy of note) that it beggars belief that anyone who's serious about the game would talk about it.

That isn't a weakness in their tuning, that's just a basis for their design. It's like observing that Mythra's attacks are fast. Like, yeah? That is the point of the character! It's not why they're doing worse than expected.

The real weakness at high level they're struggling with is approach options against projectiles. f-tilt isn't safe on shield and that's Mythra's best option for the scenario other than run in and shield and try to Foresight. Without a projectile herself, Mythra doesn't have a way to force interactions, so it allows characters like Ness to run to the edge of the stage and wait, or Greninja to force an uncomfortable approach angle that leads to an edgeguard with Shuriken.

Mythra's always starting on the backfoot in any match where the opponent has projectiles, and it shows in the characters that P/M players are losing to most often.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Considering the current meta, the nerfs to Pichu were both unjustified and unnecessary.

Agreed. It was tragically unfortunate timing. Void said Pichu had already begun to struggle before the nerfs. I think people overlooked how light Pichu is and that he's a difficult character. Those things were already beginning to catch up to him.

I feel like a lot of the earlier nerfs shouldn't have happened. Palutena, Lucina, ZSS, Ike. Would they really be too strong now that we're in the age of Sonic, Kazuya, and Steve? I just feel like they wouldn't, and might be on par at worst.

 

[L9999]

It's the danger of patch changes of an infant meta, specially a playerbase as vocal as Smash Bros'.

I do think there is a big sense of ungratefulness, Smash Ultimate didn't come out dead on arrival like Smash 4, there were no crimes against humanity like ,,, or. The devs even butchered before release to pacify the Bayo haters. But no, the mob would rather cry "broken" and "nerf"at anything that's good, and they will never be grateful to the devs for butchering all the characters they don't like, they'll just jump onto the next character to hate on.

I find it richly deserving that the mob cannot ruin Steve or Sonic anymore, and that all the old meta characters they now miss (ha) were butchered because of them.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Personally, I don't think I've ever argued that any of the characters I mentioned who got nerfed, should be nerfed. I agree with the nerf to Pichu's forward tilt and that's it. But indeed, it's a shame how those characters got nerfed, now that we have the benefit of hindsight.

Heck, upon thinking on it more, I'm mixed on whether nerfing Pichu's forward tilt was a good idea. I think it was at the time. It's a shame the devs rarely reverted anything.

 

[NairWizard]

On the flip side, reverting the majority of nerfs would make some of the mid tier heroism we've seen and enjoyed, as well as some of the character launches into high and top tier, unrealistic. For something topical, you think Corrin would be doing well in a meta with original Joker, original ZSS, original Palutena, and original Wolf? Or what about Leo's big run with Byleth? Definitely not possible if he was fighting prepatch Palus everywhere.

Would we ever have had a discussion about whether or not Incineroar is better than Palutena if Incineroar had to fight all those characters, Steve, Sonic, and also prepatch Pichu? No way.

The nerfs were good, almost all of them. Bringing any character who is above the average bar of balance down to the average is a good thing for overall cast balance. What we're missing is another round of nerfs to the newest top of the crop.

 

[StrangeKitten]

The nerfs were good, almost all of them. Bringing any character who is above the average bar of balance down to the average is a good thing for overall cast balance. What we're missing is another round of nerfs to the newest top of the crop.

Big agree with the last sentence here. It's a shame that we're never getting another balance patch.

Worth noting, though, that it's not only nerfs to other characters that helped the mid tiers rise. One factor was buffs to said mid tiers. Byleth only got a couple small ones, sure, but help is still help. Corrin got quite a few iirc, and Incineroar got buffs every other patch or so. I think another factor may simply be that these are the kinds of characters that get better as the players get better. I've definitely felt that with my own Incineroar.

 

[The_Bookworm]

The thing is that even if we get another balance patch, and assuming that it will even fix the problems given the dev team's weird patching decisions, who is stopping another unknown, hidden-under-the-radar character to suddenly show up 3 years down the line to become a problem character?

Steve slipping under the radar from the Smash community for over a year is one thing, cause he is the most mechanically complex character in Smash history released as DLC, but Sonic slipping under the radar from the Smash community for over 4 years despite the fact that he is a base roster character that has been around since 2008, shows that eventually, things will slip under the radar years down the line and we will all have to accept that.

 

[True Blue Warrior]

Agreed. It was tragically unfortunate timing. Void said Pichu had already begun to struggle before the nerfs. I think people overlooked how light Pichu is and that he's a difficult character. Those things were already beginning to catch up to him.

I feel like a lot of the earlier nerfs shouldn't have happened. Palutena, Lucina, ZSS, Ike. Would they really be too strong now that we're in the age of Sonic, Kazuya, and Steve? I just feel like they wouldn't, and might be on par at worst.

This is why I am more in favour of buffs over nerfs. Even someone like Steve isn’t so much better than everyone else like Smash 4 Bayonetta to the point where, if weren’t nerfed, he’d be even less of a problem as would Mr Game & Watch.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Results for Maesuma Grand Wars (Japanese A tier major)
1. Miya
2. Snow
3. Hurt
4. Doramigi
5. Nizemamo
5. Raru
7. mzk
7. 33Peranbox
9. Kome
9. Toriguri
9. BassMage
9. Mero
13. Uraomote
13. Yone pi
13. Raki
13. Fui
17. Rarrikusu
17. Levi
17. MariduonaH.O
17. Senra
17. Yamanaction
17. Taikei
17. Lv. 1
17. Omuatsu

TBH I do wonder what effects pre-patch Joker, Palu, ZSS and Pichu would have on this current meta.

 

[toonito]

it is what it is

smash team doesnt patch indefinitely they move on to other projects/games to work on. the competitive community is too small for a dev team to keep fine tuning based on the meta six years later.

there will always be a #1 character the community will eventually sour on once they achieve success and competitive popularity due to the increased opportunity to camp compared to traditional fighting games. i still maintain ultimate is probably the most balanced smash game even with the success of steve and sonic.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

MockRock did a retrospective of an old video he did where he talks about each of the best moves in Ultimate competitively in a vacuum.

I find a lot of the opinions on this to be rather interesting tbh. For example I know ESAM thinks G&W has the best up-air, but MockRock thinks it's Corrin and doesn't even have G&W as an Honourable Mention.

 

[NairWizard]

Neo casually getting 49th at this tourney. Wouldn’t even have thought that he was there.

Miya wins dropping only two games. He did have a bracket of entirely favorable matchups though.


On topic, I do not agree at all with buffs over nerfs. I think this just makes for a worse game. Ideally you want a level of balance somewhere above the middle power level line of the starting cast and you need to nerf anyone over the line and buff anyone below the line. The dev team definitely went for this and Ultimate is as balanced as it is partially because of that.

I don’t want the prepatch characters back because while it would create contenders with Steve, it would also damage overall cast balance.

nerfing the #10 character still improves balance overall, nerfs don’t always need to target #1-3

Nerfs are also more effective in terms of effect per patch. Half the cast was unplayable into prepatch Palu.


As for Sonic going under the radar, eh. What Sonix does with Sonic is not even close to replicable at mid or high level. I don’t think Sonic is as much of an issue as people think. It’s just that his design is fundamentally pretty unfun to watch or play against, which isn’t something you can fix in a balance patch anyway.

 

[Rizen]

Without Acola attending tournaments, Miya's the best player in Japan.

I generally think a mix of nerfs and buffs is optimal. It really depends on individual characters. I definitely believe Ultimate could stand another round of both.

I'm still waiting for the Lumirank 2024 character list to come out. I think that will offer some valuable insight into where characters stand as opposed to how well top players are doing with them. The top player list will be shaken up significantly too. I expect Shadic and Zomba to skyrocket into top 5 and 10 respectively. It's important to remember the meta's always shifting before calling for nerfs. IMO Steve's the only character who really needs them.

 

[StrangeKitten]

As for Sonic going under the radar, eh. What Sonix does with Sonic is not even close to replicable at mid or high level. I don’t think Sonic is as much of an issue as people think. It’s just that his design is fundamentally pretty unfun to watch or play against, which isn’t something you can fix in a balance patch anyway.

Yeah, when thinking about how I would nerf Sonic, I draw a complete blank. I guess make Spindash less safe? That would probably help but seems like it only barely would.

He already kills quite late if he doesn't get an early edgeguard. I don't think nerfing his KO power would do anything to stop the issue people have with how campy his playstyle is. It might just encourage Sonic players to camp more until they get to those higher kill %s. Increasing his KO power, though, would only make him a stronger character and also do nothing to mitigate the camping issue.

His aerials are good and deserve more use than campy players give them. At the same time, though, they seem pretty fair? They're good combo tools, but I don't think Sonic having a solid combo game is much of an issue. Most characters do. And I don't think their hitboxes are anything egregious. As evidenced by Sparg0's Cloud and the recent rise of Corrin, swords are a decent answer to Sonic that we very may well see continue to get fleshed out.

So yeah, I'm at a loss for how one would mitigate Sonic's current strengths without an overhaul.

 

[Rizen]

I think Sonic's definitely one of several characters who you might need to counterpick, especially if you're playing a lower ranked character. There are plenty of characters who are good enough in their own way or have good answers to Sonic in midrange zoning. But he can be really bad for characters without good mobility or tools like KRool. He's definitely a top tier but imo he doesn't need nerfs.