Exactly, that's why i said his biggest weakness is simply being too honest. Honest characters aren't netplay champions. That's his strength and his weakness.
"Look, bottom line: parrying a Lucina Fair, throwing out Utilt, going into a 40% combo that throws her off stage, throwing out a laser to steal her jump, and then run off Dair spiking her to death is... life affirming."
First you have to get the parry. (risky) Then you have to land the combo. (pretty easy but probably requires a specific damage range) Then you have get the laser gimp (Falco knowledge can stop this from happening). Meanwhile Lucina just has to Fsmash you at any point past 70% and touch you with any of her disjointed normals off the stage to win.
Yes, but it isn't on any of those characters, it's on Falco. Not to mention the hitbox is pretty narrow.
Mario will box your *** to death and then throw out a fair while ON THE STAGE and get the spike 5x easier than any Falco player could. Yoshi can do the same thing, so can K Rool.
His spike isn't particularly noteworthy IMO. His physics and its hitbox make it average at best and that's even with its impressive frame data IMO. Falco's best edgeguarding tools are Nair and Fair simply because they're infinitely easier to use.
This isn't smash and it isn't even a generational thing, this is every fighting game on earth. Least path of resistance is always going to be the most traveled path.
But most importantly...telling yourself that you aren't going to press buttons does not necessarily make you a better player, or vice versa. Getting better comes from knowing WHEN, both to do it and to not do it.
All the careful neutral analysis on earth isn't going to stop a Chrom from getting in your sh*t. All the theorycrafting on earth isn't going to make a character with bad tools good.
Naaaaaaaah.
What's happening is that you're putting more value into a concept (sticking with a character, learning to make them work) than it might actually be worth putting value into. Humans are pretty good at finding patterns that work.
Here's what people don't necessarily understand about tiers, "flavor of the month", being a character loyalist, and flowing with the meta : Everyone doesn't play fighting games for the same reasons.
People who stick to characters and exhaustively lab them are people who probably care more about proving a point and being unique than actually winning. People who flock to characters with proven winning tactics are probably players who get most of their enjoyment from actually winning matches. Most people are probably between those two on some sliding scale.
If you were previously an Ike player, but now are deterred from picking him now that he's a confirmed strong pick in the current meta...then your main motivation for playing is NOT winning matches. If you're a Kirby player and struggle consistently with matchups that are slanted against you, and you still refuse to even pick up a secondary main...your main motivation for playing is NOT winning matches.
Besides, I think there's no greater insight into making low/mid tier characters viable than playing top-tier and FotM characters, just to get a feel for why they shift the meta, and what their own weaknesses are.
bottom line....there's nothing stopping a character that HAS good buttons from playing like a character that doesn't, and good players understand this, which is probably why they all flock to higher-tier characters at some point. The burden of keeping the roster diverse is on the developers, not the players.
But regardless, it's still way too early to start glooming over the current meta direction. People are getting bopped by different stuff every month it seems.
