Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[MaverickF]

Hmm if I had to pick a top 5 (in my opinion) I'd say Inklings, Poke trainer, Yoshi, Pichu, and arguably Falco. Maybe Belmonts but their recovery is meh and using tether to grab the stage is inconsistent.
Inklings: Not much to say about them. They're fast, they're safe, and the ink mechanic is solid. Their dash animation as well is crazy. While there are some moves that can counter it, it feels so hard to hit in the middle of battle, ya know? Can't wait to see more of these guys.
Poke trainer: SO many options with the starters. Legit you can do pretty much any style of play you want with them. So versatile and Squirtle's facial expressions are already top tier.
Yoshi: He's so much better than his previous iterations. His air speed is crazy good and up b feels better than ever. AMSA dream come true.
Pichu: Small and fast. The self damage issue is not too much of a problem, as uptilt and nair are great tools in the neutral and will be your go to for combo starters.
Falco: Hits like a truck. Kind of the falco I was hoping for in ssb4. Lasers are actually useful and his combo potential is crazy. Hands off his bread.

 

[The_Bookworm]

I am going to summarize my thoughts about Luigi via a little skit.

Spoiler: The Skit :p

Developer 1: So the game engine has created a bunch of sword characters that fly around in the air, and swing their large swords like they are swinging empty water bottles. And Luigi is still stuck with his slow air speed, only slightly better, with mediocre range.

Developer 2: But...

Dev 1: And you heavily nerfed his Cyclone's ability to recover and gimp people. That was stupid good in SSB4. AND you gave him a tether grab that is slower than his normal grab. It doesn't even grab on ledges. How do you plan on buffing him to compensate for that?

Dev 2: Well I decided to make him much faster on the ground to keep up with their opponent. His aerials have much less landing lag so they connect to eachother more reliably. With this, his combo ability outside of grab has improved, and it can potentially lead to his combo finishers like his up B and Cyclone, in which the latter move now connects more reliably. His Fireballs are now cover more range and are faster. Also I greatly buffed his back air so that the Luigi back air scene on GTX doesn't happen again.

Dev 1: Seems alright, but try again.

Dev 2: Ok. How about I buff his up B so that it travels higher AND has much less landing lag. Much less time to punish. Also, I made his dash attack WAY better.

Dev 1: Try again.

Dev 2: Ok. How about make his Cyclone have I-frames at the startup of the move. On the air, the I-frames is from frames 1-7, so that it is now a busted combo breaker and it finally grants him a landing option.

Dev 1: Okay, that is annoying, but better.

Dev 2: But wait, there's more. I will also grant him his pre-patch SSB4 down throw so he practically has a 0-death option against almost everyone off of one-to-a-few grabs. I will also greatly decrease his traction, so he doesn't slide for a billion years when his shield is hit. He runs faster to boot. It is way harder to wall him out on the ground, especially with the movement mechanic changes, improving his other grounded moves as well. I will also make it so that his tether grab is almost as fast as normal grabs, aka disproportionally fast for a tether grab. This tether grab, combined with the run speed buff, the fireball buff, the air speed buff, and the traction buff--

Dev 1: --Wait! Hold on! That is a little too--

Dev 2: --Woah, woah, woah. I know. "Try again". I will also buff his down tilt, by decreasing it's endlag from frame 27 to 14, which grants it much greater safety and even combo potential. I will buff his down air so that it's clean hit now affects grounded opponents, allowing it to deal more damage and spike them. This combined with the removal of teching for grounded spikes, drastically improves its combo potential, even possessing a KO setup into up B, Cyclone, his newly buffed back air--

Dev 1: --STOP! So let me get this straight: you nerfed his two busted options in this game, then grant him a bunch of QoL changes AND gave him even more busted stuff?!? I know that his air speed isn't looking pretty in this game, but this is ridiculous! Can you at least make it post-patch SSB4 down throw?

Dev 2: The game has already shipped.

Dev 1: ................... then why did you use your words in future tense ...............................

In real honesty, Luigi is looking way better that I expected him to be. Elegant and ConCon are already labbing the character super hard on stream, and Elegant is doing his Elegant things on locals. Not one of the best characters due to his still slow air speed and mediocre recovery, but a very fearsome character and a sleeper pick imo.

 

[Thinkaman]

I'd like to hear more thoughts about Yoshi, actually. I've seen a lot of vague positive sentiment, and can personally agree that it *feels* like he's much better, but have yet to read anything that pins down just what makes him seem to tick this game.

 

[The_Bookworm]

I'd like to hear more thoughts about Yoshi, actually. I've seen a lot of vague positive sentiment, and can personally agree that it *feels* like he's much better, but have yet to read anything that pins down just what makes him seem to tick this game.

Well ESAM just released a video about Yoshi, and Leffen put him really high in his new tier list, so I guess that is a good starting point to analyze what makes Yoshi much better. It, however, is still top player option on the first week on Ultimate, so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Shaya]

Also yes, this is it toot my own horn, but I ended up eliting everyone in quickplay last night (16ish hours ago).

Elite with the entire cast in Quickplay!
(3stock 7min battlefield pref)
Everyone's pretty fun, ICs took me 2 days ._.#SmashBrosUltimate pic.twitter.com/aNrqWJbPFP

— shaya (@ShayaJP) December 14, 2018

I'm glad I decided to grind through the entirety of the cast (something I would've only done so more rudimentary in smash4) and while how shallow I delved into most characters likely only tickling toes, fundamentals and the willingness to Brawl ANYONE and anything if it was necessary worked out. Generally having to figure out what I can space with, what I can kill with, what I can trap with and occasionally, what) the hell someone's final smash did (is it a dash or just a BIG explosion or CLOSE RANGE SHINDIG? - I always guessed wrong). Control of platforms, edge guarding capabilities, and the loss of grab spam being viable (this seriously deluded depth of neutral in smash4 so drastically has enhanced the importance of having control of minute movement (as anyone can dash dance then dash attack on reaction), through SH FFs into good spots or walking is a big differentiator between classes of player movement right now (which is easily evened up by general power of smash attack safety / ease of jbuffering A buttons on someone when you have better range/priority).

I was really scared of Ken/Ryu, but now that they face their opponent all the time they genuinely have a lot of effort taken out of CQC combat. Could you beat people with Ken in this game with Smash fundamentals + the game carrying you for an extra input 100% of the time automatically? I think so, yeah. Back air is still truly a most disgusting thing for them.

Strong vertical range tools can really not be underrated enough - most are vertically unparalleled and you won't be avoiding their strongest hitboxes if you're caught below in any shape or capacity. It's truly a pleasure to be able to just get directly underneath someone and press the button for great effect. A lot of these shoryukens (looking at zero suit) have really bad horizontal range now, but due to the way the game is (follow the air dodge read) it's gucci. Peach / Daisy (and anyone else) rage up-bing in a game where a lot of players are trying to full hop out of shield to relieve pressure.

Zelda is kinda the lamest character in the game. I'm not sure if they're good. But.... I don't think any character in the game is as simple, effective, and tedious to deal with, as Zelda. I'm sure people will lab things out eventually and there might be some parry set ups for her multi hits, and if there are any, that will be helpful, because it generally feels like infinite shield stun with + frame advantage on block for nearly everything. This is the character that if you don't have minute/micro spacing skills for online, she's gonna spam in your face and you're going to lose. Probably the best CQC/neutral dash attack in the game (Wolf holds a special spot as one of the only moves I've seen which reaches the now longer-ranged back rolls everyone has with KO power + low lag [yoshi has a looong dash attack too]).
Not to mention that now air dodges are bad, it's nice to have a B button that achieves that for you.

The most awkward characters:
Squirtle / Ivysaur - I guess I semi-cheated; charizard carried me. All the heavies have these like, super sexy godlike forward airs that win win win, it's great. But yeah I rarely played either in Brawl (barring Squirtle for the sake of ftilting shields), their range and mobility issues respectively would take more time to get used to - I will go back to them now that I can.
Corrin - in S4 I used to not use much pin in neutral *shock and horror* (I like swordie normals, sorry guys) and then when it came to KO percent started putting it out there (and when the move is completely fresh you'd be surprised at the frequency of 80% KOs). Can't seem to do this anymore (side-b safety/reliability) - can rely on corrin's great normals kit and get them to 150% in like 5 seconds, and then struggle to finish off for 2 minutes. Feels like the weakest FE in the game to me but could be wrong.

ICs - in a game where smash attacks are basically safe on block, and one where nana's AI seems to be blind while in shield and needs to drop it to check to see if a charged smash attack is coming - this was turmoil. It really came down to not being able to punish people playing run away and smash attacking in proximity. Most of my games was dealing 600% damage with up airs only in a minute, and then losing trying to take their final stock as they turtled.
Eventually I figured it out, the answer is forward air - probably their biggest ranged move and as an overhead can whiff punish, out space and be safe on shield; from there both Sopo and the two together became a much stronger force.

Kirby - still feeling inadequate mostly; dash attack and bair can get you by. I'm sure Sakurai didn't leave them behind that badly but it's beyond what we see on the surface.
Toon Link - can't just keep air dodging until you can pull a bomb to start winning neutral for free anymore. BIG SHAME.

-

Also shout outs to the Miis.
They're all (barring maybe Brawler? shotput is basically richter axe so you can spam the liiving daylights out of it right now on a much more mobile character with great success) very solid.
Swordfighter's tornado might be bettter than Inklings roller [well, not completely]. Move is cheese cheese cheese and it's a decent angleable projectile - without rage worsening it for you, up air for free all the time.
Gunner in general while not being fair dash focused anymore has many solid moves; including an INSANELY STRONG UP-B OOS LIKE HOLY CRAP WATCH THEM DIE ON BATTLEFIELD AT 100% OoS FREEEE. I'm not sure what their weaknesses are now, dealing with Wolf's laser (a really stupid move as i'm sure most people know), and moves similar, being the only hindrance in this character playing however the hell they want to - but they have a a reflector for that!

Like after playing the Miis I jokingly, but maybe not so jokingly, thought I'd main Miis in this game.
Thank goodness people were so stupid about them in S4, that now due to that stupidity feel obliged to let them stay completely legal.
I can't see them stopping you, me, or anyone else now. Play the Miis. They're super fun and feasibly godlike.

Incineroar is kinda like Zelda, except without the sparkles and a worse recovery, I guess. A lot of very strong-priority buttons that just are going to win-out while trying to fight against them. Their aerial kit seems similar to Diddy Kong's (at least in older games) but with a lot higher damage values - get your opponent backed to/on a ledge and enjoy the stock as getting through these are exhausting.
I'm glad I know that no one has business whatsoever trying to fight this character. Just Run. RUN FOREST. RUN.

 

[Galgatha]

lso yes, this is it toot my own horn, but I ended up eliting everyone in quickplay last night (16ish hours ago).

That's awesome! I am hoping to be able to do that when I finally get SSBU (and a Switch lol). Also, super excited about what you mentioned in regards to Mii fighters (Swordfighter specifically) and Incineroar; 2 characters I plan on using as secondaries.

I am so happy you can play as the Mii's online now in Quickplay/elite Smash. Also, just wanting to check, you can play as ANY set up of the Mii fighters right? (1111, 1332, 2312, etc) or it is restricted to 1111? JW thanks

 

[Krysco]

Great to see this place up after the Sm4sh one died off. With this thread up, I'd like to bring up an idea I had and tried with the old CCI.

There's plenty of discussion that'll happen here between the 108 stages (obviously less since only legal ones will be brought up), 80 characters, numerous game mechanics and whatever advanced techniques are found. I'm already seeing stuff brought up for Mega Man, Ryu/Ken and Shulk.

A problem however is that things are brought up and then get lost in the huge sea of posts as the thread moves on to other topics. This makes it hard to find potentially useful info if it's only mentioned here and new posters who come here may bring up a point that has been addressed before (such as Roy's tipper being useless).

My solution to this is to make a bookmark CCI thread of sorts. Essentially taking whatever useful stuff is mentioned here and keeping it saved in the first post of the thread I'd make. I can easily keep it organized with spoilers and character name drops and the icons like so . Would also have a section for more general stuff and stage specific info.

Since this is the beginning of Ultimate's meta, I won't have to root through thousands of posts like I would've when I first planned to do this for Sm4sh. If anyone is interested in me making a thread like this, let me know. If it's okay with the mods of course. And if I do make it, anyone can feel free to post in the thread anything they think should be added to the first post.

I'm mostly thinking of adding BnB combos including percent ranges, kill confirms, advanced techniques and anything else that may be of use competitively. I'll also try to have videos showing all of the stuff for visual proof, either frm myself or other sources. And lastly, I'll of course keep it updated as patches add and remove things.

Quoting my own post from page 3 to bring up this idea again. I got quite a few likes on it and only one reply advising I post stuff specifically to the character boards rather than make a general character tech thread. I'll see about doing that if I see anything brought up here or if I find anything on my own and it's not already in said boards but I'm also gonna keep a simple wordpad document saved and keep updating it as I see more techs, glitches, exploits and combos brought up. I did a quick skim of the thread again and saved any Twitter or Youtube links. Might record them myself on my phone in case they ever get taken down for whatever reason. I'll ask 3 mods that I assume are the correct people to ask about making a general 'CCI Bookmark' thread Shaya Gunla Thinkaman

I actually did something similar with certain posts back in Sm4sh, saving them to a wordpad document such as:

This post going over every characters best ground poke https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...nsight-analysis.445990/page-103#post-21772928

This post showing a Mewtwo kill confirm https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...nsight-analysis.445990/page-154#post-21822490

And this post showing aerial fafs compared to an average airdodge for frame trapping purposes https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...ive-impressions.440784/page-113#post-21511467

This is the kind of stuff that gets mentioned here or on Twitter or Youtube and then if you ever wanna find it again, you have to go hunting for it since it's usually not archived anywhere. That's why I'm interested in making a thread for bookmarking stuff mentioned here and honestly elsewhere too. I wanna see about following noteworthy Smash Ultimate players on Twitter (a social media I've basically never used) and subscribing to some on Youtube just to be up to date on this kind of stuff.

If an archive-like thread is deemed unneeded then I shall just stick to updating my wordpad document and possibly make a Google doc and keep a link to it in my signature.

 

[Zinith]

I'd like to hear more thoughts about Yoshi, actually. I've seen a lot of vague positive sentiment, and can personally agree that it *feels* like he's much better, but have yet to read anything that pins down just what makes him seem to tick this game.

I'll lend a few points...

Fair and Bair are kill moves now (you could only spike with Fair before)
Uair and Dair are easier to land hits
Egg Throw no longer cancels DJ momentum, so now he has a deceptively good recovery (and remember he still has DJ armor...)
Ftilt combo strings
Grounded Egg Throw is a safer option due to his increased ground speed.

There's probably more I'm missing, but you get the idea. What I'm seeing mostly is trade-offs of making him less of a zoning fighter and more rushdown. To be honest, I think he may be braindead. But hey I'll take it over the Smash 4 hell of him being labeled a "braindead character" without the results of one.

If there's any worry for the time being, it's Pikachu...

 

[Shaya]

Quoting my own post from page 3 to bring up this idea again. I got quite a few likes on it and only one reply advising I post stuff specifically to the character boards rather than make a general character tech thread. I'll see about doing that if I see anything brought up here or if I find anything on my own and it's not already in said boards but I'm also gonna keep a simple wordpad document saved and keep updating it as I see more techs, glitches, exploits and combos brought up. I did a quick skim of the thread again and saved any Twitter or Youtube links. Might record them myself on my phone in case they ever get taken down for whatever reason. I'll ask 3 mods that I assume are the correct people to ask about making a general 'CCI Bookmark' thread Shaya Gunla Thinkaman

I actually did something similar with certain posts back in Sm4sh, saving them to a wordpad document such as:

This post going over every characters best ground poke https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...nsight-analysis.445990/page-103#post-21772928

This post showing a Mewtwo kill confirm https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...nsight-analysis.445990/page-154#post-21822490

And this post showing aerial fafs compared to an average airdodge for frame trapping purposes https://smashboards.com/threads/4br...ive-impressions.440784/page-113#post-21511467

This is the kind of stuff that gets mentioned here or on Twitter or Youtube and then if you ever wanna find it again, you have to go hunting for it since it's usually not archived anywhere. That's why I'm interested in making a thread for bookmarking stuff mentioned here and honestly elsewhere too. I wanna see about following noteworthy Smash Ultimate players on Twitter (a social media I've basically never used) and subscribing to some on Youtube just to be up to date on this kind of stuff.

If an archive-like thread is deemed unneeded then I shall just stick to updating my wordpad document and possibly make a Google doc and keep a link to it in my signature.

No definitely, please do. New threads require approval but we'll definitely accept it.
If you want it to be moderated in a specific way (maintaining minimum posting/responses to people outside yourself) that can likely be arranged.

That's awesome! I am hoping to be able to do that when I finally get SSBU (and a Switch lol). Also, super excited about what you mentioned in regards to Mii fighters (Swordfighter specifically) and Incineroar; 2 characters I plan on using as secondaries.

I am so happy you can play as the Mii's online now in Quickplay/elite Smash. Also, just wanting to check, you can play as ANY set up of the Mii fighters right? (1111, 1332, 2312, etc) or it is restricted to 1111? JW thanks

Any Mii set up, they have full access to custom specials!

 

[Galgatha]

Any Mii set up, they have full access to custom specials!

That is absolutely awesome! I always believed that, one of the main reasons why Miis were banned from tournaments (besides the height/weight part), was due to people simply not having any experience with them, and not being able to narrow down 1 move-set for each Fighter. Now that you can play any Mii set up online in Quickbattle/ Elite Smash, and the height weight issue has been removed, there is literally 0 reason to not have them as legal with any set up.

You mentioned something about Swordfighter's tornado shot, and something about it being directionally influenced? Is this true? Because I don't remember that being the case in Smash 4 so this interests me greatly!

 

[Rizen]

I don't remember miis ever being banned.

 

[aarchak]

I don't remember miis ever being banned.

They were banned at many tournaments in Smash 4, but definitely not all of them.

 

[trickroom]

I don't remember miis ever being banned.

I hope you're not playing semantics. The way people are using 'banned' in this thread isn't referring to the entire characters being banned, but instead to the banning of their 2222 and 3333 special moves, which completely butchered Swordfighter and Brawler and limited the range of Gunner's viability. This was, of course, all done for no good reason.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

The Miis were actually outright banned in a lot of NA tournaments, particularly in the first half of SSB4's lifespan. They were seen as using custom moves because there were none set by default (unlike Palutena), so they got hard banned in some cases because of it. Later on locking them to 1111 became more common.

Shaya since you've used literally every character at this point, any characters who's playing style ended up being different from what you expected?

 

[Rizen]

I hope you're not playing smeantics. The way people are using 'banned' in this tread isn't referring to the entire characters being banned, but instead to the banning of their 2222 and 3333 special moves, which completely butchered Swordfighter and Brawler and limited the range of Gunner's viability. This was, of course, all done for no good reason.

That's making Miis use the same neutral set of moves ALL OTHER FIGHTERS USED! This is ridiculous Shaya can we make complaining about miis from SSB4 a red topic? I'm sick of this.

 

[trickroom]

That's making Miis use the same neutral set of moves ALL OTHER FIGHTERS USED! This is ridiculous Shaya can we make complaining about miis from SSB4 a red topic? I'm sick of this.

Sorry for sneaking my opinion in at the end there, but that's the way people were using the word 'banned' in the context of miis in this discussion.

Speaking of the miis' "newly" expanded movesets, what's the verdict on Mii Gunner's grenade-launch neutral B? I still think charge shot is better, but I feel like that could also be a relic of Sm4sh in my brain. I feel like it's too unique and powerful to be useless, but I doubt many people will try it if they just like charge shot more. I'm wondering if anyone is willing to make the case for diverging from charge shot.

 

[Krysco]

There won't be complaining about Miis as long as they're fully legalized (unless of course one of them becomes OP). Custom moves were completely ditched going from Sm4sh to Ultimate save for the Miis since that's their shtick. They're meant to be customizable. There's no more size changing so they should be easier to handle and you no longer need to leave the game to make one ready for use.

The only issue I see with them is figuring out how to handle someone going from one moveset to another just to counter another player like going from Gunner's Bomb Drop vs Marth to Absorbing Vortex if the Marth player switches to Ness.

Because of their size being universal, they'll be easier to patch too and honestly, if there are some broken moves in there, people should make use of them asap so they get patched to be more balanced (or, ya know, hide them away until patches are done and then unleash them). Even then, they're looking at Elite Smash for balance too so any Mii players that get in there will be looked at for balancing purposes.

 

[Galgatha]

Well, once I get the game lol, I plan on getting into Elite Smash with my Swordfighter (hopefully)!

 

[Rizen]

I'm just going to talk about SSBU. YL is not as powerful as I initially thought. His projectiles lack priority and outcamping simple things like blade beam or thunder jolt spam requires he position himself favorably through jumps and platforms. He's weak and light. But he's not one of those characters who will get figured out and fall, imo. The more I use YL the better his combo game looks. He can use projectiles to safely start a combo then rush in and Utilt/Usmash/DA at low %s and SH/jump Nair/Fair at higher %s well past killing damage. He has so many ways to start combos at any % like bombs/Nair/Bair1/Dtilt/Boomerang/Dthrow. YL will have to work hard for every win, even vs Ganon (IDK why I'm using Ganon as a bad character in SSBU, he's not). He has the tools to pull it off.

Cloud and Chrom have given me the most trouble, which follow the trend of fast swordies. They're not terrible MUs though. On the flip side, YL doesn't get any free wins. He's too undertuned to be a top tier. Even MUs like Bowser are hard to space in the limited room stages provide.

In terms of the Links IDK if he's stronger than TL. TL has slightly better stats and power but YL got Link's amazing landing game and quick projectiles.

 

[Krysco]

I'm just going to talk about SSBU. YL is not as powerful as I initially thought. His projectiles lack priority and outcamping simple things like blade beam or thunder jolt spam requires he position himself favorably through jumps and platforms. He's weak and light. But he's not one of those characters who will get figured out and fall, imo. The more I use YL the better his combo game looks. He can use projectiles to safely start a combo then rush in and Utilt/Usmash/DA at low %s and SH/jump Nair/Fair at higher %s well past killing damage. He has so many ways to start combos at any % like bombs/Nair/Bair1/Dtilt/Boomerang/Dthrow. YL will have to work hard for every win, even vs Ganon (IDK why I'm using Ganon as a bad character in SSBU, he's not). He has the tools to pull it off.

Cloud and Chrom have given me the most trouble, which follow the trend of fast swordies. They're not terrible MUs though. On the flip side, YL doesn't get any free wins. He's too undertuned to be a top tier. Even MUs like Bowser are hard to space in the limited room stages provide.

In terms of the Links IDK if he's stronger than TL. TL has slightly better stats and power but YL got Link's amazing landing game and quick projectiles.

Is Young Link able to use his Deku Shield to block projectiles like the shields of the other 2 Links? Haven't bothered testing it myself and I don't recall if it did in Melee.

 

[Rizen]

Is Young Link able to use his Deku Shield to block projectiles like the shields of the other 2 Links? Haven't bothered testing it myself and I don't recall if it did in Melee.

Yes he can while standing still, walking or crouching. But if you walk too fast he drops his guard.

 

[PK Gaming]

Corrin - in S4 I used to not use much pin in neutral *shock and horror* (sorry guys, never like playing characters for single move spam and I like using my sword when playing a swordie) and then when it came to KO percent started putting it out there (and when the move is completely fresh you'd be surprised at the frequency of 80% KOs). Can't seem to do this anymore (side-b safety/reliability) - can rely on corrin's great normals kit and get them to 150% in like 5 seconds, and then struggle to finish off for 2 minutes. Feels like the weakest FE in the game to me but could be wrong.

You have the right idea about Corrin

In complete contrast from before, I don't think is anywhere near as good as she was in Smash 4, let alone in "Fire Emblem" tier. Pin being nerfed is one thing, but her kit simply doesn't work as well in this game as it did in Smash 4. Edgeguarding, one of the cornerstones to killing in this game, is something she's not particularly good at due to the nature of her aerials (while the other FE lords can simply run off Fair, Nair or Bair, she has to rely on Bair or a precisely timed Pin because her Fair and Nair send the opponent upwards). Her recovery is far worse than before, and while she's good at building up damage, she has somewhat of a hard time KOing due to how linear her KO options are.

Corrin is without a doubt the weakest FE character in the game currently.

The character can still do work if you work hard for it, but I don't really see a point to using her when like, Ike is right there.

 

[KakuCP9]

I firmly believe that the people classifying the Belmonts as zoners have not truly examined their gameplan or how they work. They are terrible at continuous long range zoning (without a large amount of really stellar guesses on their part), but where they thrive is that their moves link together quite nicely and push you to the ledge, where they then proceed to not let you play the game for about 30 seconds or more, and then you either die or have to deal with them in neutral again. This is how I believe they will be played optimally, because one neutral win for them (if it involves ideal conditions which are simple, either hit with Cross or land a Nair into grab etc.) generally means you are pushed quite far and have to either try and land or go to the ledge.

Cross and Holy Water synergize quite well with their ledge traps and Axe is never not a threat because not only does it do a ton of damage and send you up above them (ideal for pressuring your landing or hitting you on platforms) but it also kills at high %. To complete their ideal "ledge death" philosophy, they are also equipped with two high % kill throws (F-Throw and B-Throw) that are really only good at the ledge, which is fine, because thats where their setplay and strengths orient to.

One day, someone is going to throw the axe from mid stage and hit a recovering opponent to steal a stock/game since the axe goes through the stage. It will be glorious (though probably not practical). Also I, was wondering if f-tilt is only safe on shield at certain distance away from fair/nair OOS or if its just straight up un-punishable bar a parry.

 

[Thinkaman]

Also yes, this is it toot my own horn, but I ended up eliting everyone in quickplay last night (16ish hours ago).

How long did this take, in matches per character? Did matches tend to actually get harder the more you won?

 

[Gh00l]

I’ve played this a couple of times and I gotta say Looks to be an absolute monster. He has so much utility, some of which heavies such as and maybe would dream of having; an unholy recovery that’s hard to challenge, a counter that’s also a reflector, super armor that’s very good (but penetrable) and good projectiles. It’s like they decided to give King K Rool everything that makes a character good and slap it on to his gold thick belly. I would look out for him he’s here to stay no doubt in my mind.

 

[TTTTTsd]

One day, someone is going to throw the axe from mid stage and hit a recovering opponent to steal a stock/game since the axe goes through the stage. It will be glorious (though probably not practical). Also I, was wondering if f-tilt is only safe on shield at certain distance away from fair/nair OOS or if its just straight up un-punishable bar a parry.

I mean I just throw axe when people are above me in disadvantage now. Its actually ridiculous how much it covers and it forces them to have to come land next to me to get out of the way of its arc which means they get hit by Ftilt and stuff. Or Holy Water.

But yes its good for pressuring low recovery and catching ledgejumps @ the ledge all the same

 

[Gh00l]

Holy ****, this character plays like a demi-God. Am not overestimating him, but whoaaaa... Run speed increased, ground options increased, Side B buffed, Banana buffed, Neutral Air buffed, aerials still damn crazy good, F Smash kills earlier it seems? This is just recipe for a Top Tier character. He's incredibly strong and fast, and even his recovery seems a little buffed. Diddy Kong is definitely a Top Tier character, and I have a blast playing as him, powering through so many helpless fighters who have no clue what to do. Z dropping items is a thing now to, so Diddy can even create kill confirms out of that. 10/10. He has great matchups all over the roster, and I dare say, he's the best character, hands down.



DK is also a real potent character, and kills really early again. Giant Punch is mad powerful as ever, and DK actually likes having approach options and all that now. Cargo F Throw even kills. He has the range of a sword character, insane priority and even speed, and he can rack up damange the quickest out of all other characters I feel. Definitely better than in Smash 4, even if Ding Dong isn't a thing any more (which is good).



He plays like a different character almost. Spacing has never been so easy. U Air is amazing, so is his.. everything. Feels great playing as him now.

I can see where you’re coming from with this, maybe I can help a bit on your points
Is indeed a nut when he’s in your face and retains most of his unholy pressure, bananas are the stuff of nightmares as well dear lord! Buuut, his up b has been nerfed super hard and doesn’t retain the amazing verticality he has had before, so if that’s all he has, one footstool or weak spike and he’s a goner
Yes he’s faster, but he’s feels like he was in 4 minus the kill throws. Idk he’s definitely better but it might be too soon to call
Lord help us all, Ike being fast and powerful thanks to the auto L cancel, Ike is going to have an immense pressure game. Soo, good freakin luck.

 

[TDK]

That's making Miis use the same neutral set of moves ALL OTHER FIGHTERS USED! This is ridiculous Shaya can we make complaining about miis from SSB4 a red topic? I'm sick of this.

Spoiler: off-topic, mods can delete this if they like

It depends on what people mean by Banned. Up until probably late 2016, all miis, including 1111, were largely banned at tournaments. Eventually people stopped doing that, and metas for the default miis started to develop. After that, people started experimenting with XXXX Guest size, and in a non-zero amount of regions the thought process on miis would go something like this:

- XXXX Guest Mii Main does well at local
- People complain about miis being broken
- TO bans XXXX Guest Miis
- Mii main uses 1111 Miis at tournament, beats maybe one or two people
- People complain about 1111 Miis being broken or unfair
- TO bans 1111 Miis because of one player doing decently and people complaining

Generally speaking, if someone's talking about Miis being banned later on in SSB4's lifespan, it's usually cycles like this, where people would rather ban the miis due to a preconcieved notion of their custom varieties than figure them out.

To make this post relevant, I'm going to talk about .

He's good. Really, really good. Not brawl good, but he feels like a sleeper top tier with a lot of huge buffs. For starters, the biggest one is that all his aerials are now disjoints instead of having item priority. Not only does this help him air to air people and land, but yellows have an almost-tink esque disjoint to them and he can actually attempt to wall people out. Sadly (mercifully?) his smashes don't do that, but they're still fast with long range, a deceptive amount of active frames (fsmash has a hitbox as long as the pikmin is in the air and not falling towards the ground), and solid killpower with the right ones. Buffering something out of up smash makes the move so lagless as to be safe on shield and a combo move, as well. All of his Pikmin had their damage outputs increased, both in general and when stuck on other characters, which is nice. He's probably the single best damage racking character in the game, and he's able to do it all mostly safely. His killpower is also high enough to work, despite lacking a kill confirm, blue up throw with a 3 Pikmin grab is roughly as strong as Smash 4 Mewtwo's, coming off of a relatively fast long-range grab. That alone is enough to help him kill, but his smashes and aerials without white all get the job done pretty quickly too. Even purple side-b can kill near the ledge, although you will be closing most of your stocks with up throw.

His main problem is still his disadvantage. Whistle Armor is frames 2-7 now, which is nice, and the air dodge system gives him more options, but he's still going to struggle more than the average character. It's also possible to kill his Pikmin in midair, especially if he tries to up-b away, which can hurt him on the ground. His recovery's good, but it lacks a proper hitbox and is thus vulnerable. He does, however, have a strong enough neutral and advantage to mitigate this. Overall, a very strong character, although like I said yesterday, I predict him flying under the radar.

 

[Browny]

Incineroar is kinda like Zelda, except without the sparkles and a worse recovery, I guess. Just them pressing buttons is going to win if you actually try to fight them. They have an aerial kit like prior games Diddy Kongs and with a lot higher damage values, better range (probably, god it's disgusting). Get them to a ledge and enjoy the stock as they aren't getting off the ledge verse their nair/bair/fair and they're one react/read away from fsmashing you mid air for a stock at like 60%. Truly a monster.
I'm glad I know that no one has any business whatsoever trying to fight this character. Just Run. RUN FOREST. RUN.

Can you re-write this from a consistent point of view.

You use 'they' and 'them' while talking about Incineroar and I presume whoever he is up against interchangeably so its pretty confusing.

 

[Das Koopa]

I've posted general thoughts on K. Rool on reddit in a large, sort of counterplay point guide, so before I finish all my Smash 4 databases I will share my general thoughts on K. Rool here.

-He's very gimmicky. Can get large amounts of % by punishing a complete lack of patience. Crown is a great way to do this since it can lead into Fair and does a lot with cannonball if people blindly run into it. Is any of this good? Not really, crown has a high startup and can be jumped over. K. Rool's antiairs are predictable.

-He's painfully slow. Decent initial dash speed but nothing outside of that. Moving that doesn't involve dash dancing, like simply moving around a stage with platforms, really demonstrates how he feels like molasses.

-Burying is gimmicky. I literally got 25th at First Strike because people were not mashing out of dthrow Bury > fsmash, which is fake below 100-120% but I killed with it as low as 70% at the ledge. It was an equalizer that shouldn't have worked.

-He has a lot of trouble killing outside of gimmickry. Upthrow takes a while to kill, his edgeguards are slow and predictable since there's a sizable amount of endlag on some of his better edgeguarding aerials that threaten to cause SDs if you try them too low off the stage, his moves have tons of startup in general.

-His recovery is 100% exploitable if you are sent off stage horizontally. It's borderline bad vs. certain swordies. Shulk in particular invalidates Rool offstage. This should be expected because despite having good head protection via its hitbox, it's still a "fixed" recovery with little variation. It will suffer badly as time goes on.

-Upsides are get-off me tools like Dsmash and ftilt is pretty nice. I like nair as a way of landing but when it's your only decent option it becomes incredibly predictable which is bad when it has armor (forcing this move to be a double edged sword). This will lead to armor breaks as punishes or he will simply get read on this move and juggling will persist as a whiff punish

mid tier at best, will get eaten alive long-term by swords (who can edgeguard him and invalidate him on the ledge) and anything that rushes down.

it's super telling k. rool went from S to B tier in the span of 5 days on Leffen's tier list and that drop will persist as he fails to get offline results and people continue to remember he's a heavy and loses the same way every heavy loses

ridley is unironically better

 

[Nobie]

God help me, I'm actually playing online.

Making my way through the roster in quickplay, through the first 4 rows. It hasn't really been *that* bad. The real surprise of this journey was the Pits; I full agree with Shaya now. The only real let-down so far was G&W. I'm also curious how the lay of the land will treat Mega Man?

I feel like my experience might not be that useful though? The opponents I've gotten have been... not terrible, but not great. People tend to be just "using moves well", with no higher-level principles. (And a few ragequit after losing a stock.) My GSP is 1.33m, and almost all my opponents are well under a million? It might be for the best, as I have zero desire to play online seriously. Parrying is going to be rather important, and any serious attention devoted to online play is very likely to spoil that.

This is pure theorycraft, but I get the feeling that Mega Man is going to prove out to be a character who can get decent results (top 8 at majors semi-consistently) despite not having a great (?) dash dance, which players seem to be emphasizing. The big thing to me is his combination of crisp movement and range. Few, if any characters can move the way he does with that high air speed + ability to wiggle in the air + projectile bonanza.

In most ways, he's the same Mega Man as ever, but the way the engine treats him fascinates me. The range increase in pellets is pretty massive and basically allows him to compete with the Belmonts of the world. The freedom that comes with the new dash into whatever mechanics means he functionally has two dash attacks (the regular one and down tilt) to whiff punish with. I'm still not used to the improved recovery of f-smash, and I think that'll play a bigger role too.

One thing I'm especially curious about is his bair, because of how they refused to reduce its landing lag in any specific way. I feel as if the developers are afraid of that move being busted, and that it would open the flood gates to an incredibly overpowered Mega Man.

 

[Shaya]

How long did this take, in matches per character? Did matches tend to actually get harder the more you won?

According to my smash tags at the time it took 330? wins across the entire roster, as you can gather, that's very meagre (and if you want the tl;dr, median of 2, a third are 5 or more).
I theorize the game has a sort of single score and when you have not played a character yet that deviation probably starts at around -7.5% of your base score (and thus it continues to scale up as your scores goes up even without playing them). IIRC when I was at 1.3 million Roster GSP chars I hadn't played yet were at 1.209?
The hard part was getting the first few characters to elite, by roughly 5 characters with around 5-10 wins over losses each, I noticed that it was requiring a lot less wins to get elite if I never lost with that character, as low as two wins.
I was constantly queued with people at similar GSP and winning those one 'fresh' was an Elite for a majority of the cast, if I fought someone much lower (hazard a guess, maybe more than 10% difference?) then it would require two or more wins. Going up was very quick, if you lost, it would take longer - 2 wins-1 loss would suffice, but 3 wins-2 losses often did not.

Did matches get harder? You're probably not going to find this surprising but, not particularly, the frequency of certain characters I fought the more I won and the average quality of the connection lowering was more apparent instead. This exercise was a lot of how good I was versus Chrom (and many of Emblem's children), Wolf, and K Rool and ability to adapt a characters tools to replicate it, a much different exercise to actually going past the toes.
But while it took one win to gain, maintaining them would require more wins lest they dropped out after a few global score updates - thus most of my roster would have two or three wins/games. I haven't checked today but I wouldn't be surprised if I require 20 or more chars to re-elite right now (I could be in for a shocker and it's a lot more).
So while slogging (with some chars) and grinding to get elite is cool, maintaining it is actually going to be the challenge to be proud of (I'll see how I go).

So in short, the obvious trick is, get elite with someone ,or have a very high win rate with someone, before playing other chars because the system will assume a much closer proximity to your 'best' than it likely should be.

since you've used literally every character at this point, any characters who's playing style ended up being different from what you expected?

This is tough, because I don't think every character would have a singular style, and if they did I probably wasn't playing that way anyway.

Ridley. Expected some sort of weird ganon murdering machine, is actually some weird whacky I'm-a-Boss-Battle murdering machine with tippers. I also didn't but should've expected the vertical prowess he and the other Metroid characters share,
G&W (I mean, it's not widespread difference, but you definitely need to adjust to him from the transition)
Belmonts - The potential to play this character aggressively, the angling of aerial chains being difficult (when trying to be fast paced at least) but could see dominant coverage. Really enjoyed trying to achieve this, but incited many losses in doing so.

 

[Mister M]

I've been trying to play wolf and for about 6 hours straight and I really wanted to quit cause **** wasn't working but then it started working.

His recovery is super awkward. Off stage, you'll almost always be aiming to sweet spot the ledge with side b which means you have to head to the same spot everytime which makes you predictable. But it does means that often you'll be drifting backwards (thus away from your opponent) to achieve that sweet spot positioning; so its servicable. Not designed for edge guards inspite of the beautiful spike hit box. Up b only appears to be for WILD mix ups and is barely a secondary recovery tool, if one at all.

Dash attack is cool, but, it's more of a punish tool. To be in punish range, means you have to navigate the neutral with his meagre mobility and Very stubby normals (seriously, d-tilt and u-tilt have trash range but are good on hit at least). These two factors limit his ground game. That said, they are all pretty quick. Great for tech chasing and pseudo vortexing (if that's even a phrase).

In the air, you get one aeriel per full hop. Lame, but we'll roll with it. You have a decent nair with a lingering hit box that may set up for a string. Fair has a nice hit box and you can get fair chains up to about 50%.

Bair and up air can frame trap into ground normals but their range makes this bad to do against characters with decent air mobility or good defensive options. They're inappropriate neutral tools but good for juggling and killing once you get started.

So his aerials arent safe on shield and when they do hit, nothing reeaallyy combos up, you'll have to hunt strings to rack up more damage. His mobility and the new dash mechanics mean that he's going to be eating heavy damage for playing the neutral with them alone. They are bad fishing tools.

So how the hell do you get started without paying an arm an a leg in percentage.

ONE MILLION LASERS
****s unreal. Once I accepted the crown of scumbag and started spaming short hop b reverses lasers, everything made sense. You can gracefully gain stage control by spaming them from far to mid range and rack up huge amounts of damage. At mid to close range, you can start to make sensible decisions about whether it's safe to nair, fair or even land and f-tilt. If it's not safe, fade back and LASER.

From here, you can transition into tech and ground chasing till they are out of range and cap it off with a LASER.

If you can keep them in range of your ground normals, u-tilt to up air juggling transitions naturally into punishing landings with smash attacks. U-smash shines here.

Plus, with the aforementioned ONE MILLION LASERS, opponents start jumping. So now you can leaping in with fairs and up airs to get started this way.

His kills come from dash attack, ftilt at the ledge, up-smash out of tech reads and punished landings, fishy back airs and the occasional sky high up air. Down smash covers ledge regrab. Foward smash is redundant.

Forward throw and down throw keep opponents reasonably close so you have a shot at maintaining advantage. Back throw kills for spice and up throw sets up those glorious juggles you want.

Over all he's okay. Rigid like Ridley but has a working gameplan

Edited for grammar

 

[Rizen]

I've been trying to play wolf and for about 6 hours straight and I really wanted to quit cause **** wasn't working but then it started working.

His recovery is super awkward. Off stage you'll almost always be aiming to sweet spot the ledge with side b which means you have to head to the same spot everytime which makes you predictable. But it does means that often you'll be drifting backwards (and away from your opponent) to achieve that sweet spot positioning, so its servicable. Not designed for edge guards inspite of the beautiful spike hit box. Up b only appears to be for WILD mix ups and is barely a secondary recovery tool if one at all.

Dash attack is cool but, it's more of a punish tool. To be in punish range, means you have to navigate the neutral with his meagre mobility and Very stubby normals (seriously, d-tilt and u-tilt have trash range but are good on hit at least). These two factors limit his ground game. That said, they are all pretty quick. Great for tech chasing and pseudo vortexing (if that's even a phrase).

In the air you get one aeriel per full hop. Lame, but we'll roll with it. You have a decent nair with a lingering hit box that may set up for a string. Fair has a nice hit box and you can get fair chains up to about 50%.

Bair and up air can frame trap for ground normals but their range makes this bad to do against characters with decent air mobility or good defensive options. Inappropriate neutral tools but good for juggling and killing once you get started.

So his aerials arent safe on shield and when they do hit, nothing reeaallyy combos up, you'll have to hunt strings for more damage. His mobility and the dash mechanics mean that he's going to be eating heavy damage for fishing this way.

So how the hell do you get started without paying an arm an a leg in percentage.

ONE MILLION LASERS
****s unreal. Once I accepted the crown of scumbag and started spaming short hop b reverses lasers, everything made sense. You can gracefully gain stage control by spaming them from far to mid range and rack up huge amounts of damage. At mid to close range, you can start to make sensible decisions about whether it's safe to nair, fair or even land and f-tilt.

From here, you can transition into tech and ground chasing till they are out of range and cap it off with a LASER.

If you can keep them in range of your ground normals, u-tilt to up air juggling moves naturally into punishing landings with smash attacks. U-smash shines here. Plus with the aforementioned ONE MILLION LASERS opponents start jumping, so you can leap in with fairs and up airs to get started this way.

Forward throw and down throw keep opponents reasonably close so you have a shot at maintaining advantage. Back throw kills for spice and up throw sets up those glorious juggles you want.

Over all he's okay. Rigid like Ridley but has a working gameplan

That's good to hear. I tried Wolf out and he feels really sluggish in this game. Bair and his smashes were gutted.

 

[Caiahar]

Also yes, this is it toot my own horn, but I ended up eliting everyone in quickplay last night (16ish hours ago).

Elite with the entire cast in Quickplay!
(3stock 7min battlefield pref)
Everyone's pretty fun, ICs took me 2 days ._.#SmashBrosUltimate pic.twitter.com/aNrqWJbPFP

— shaya (@ShayaJP) December 14, 2018

I'm glad I decided to grind through the entirety of the cast (something I would've only done so more rudimentary in smash4) and while how shallow I delved into most characters likely only tickling toes, fundamentals and the willingness to Brawl ANYONE and anything if it was necessary worked out. Generally having to figure out what I can space with, what I can kill with, what I can trap with and occasionally, what) the hell someone's final smash did (is it a dash or just a BIG explosion or CLOSE RANGE SHINDIG? - I always guessed wrong). Control of platforms, edge guarding capabilities, and the loss of grab spam being viable (this seriously deluded depth of neutral in smash4 so drastically has enhanced the importance of having control of minute movement (as anyone can dash dance then dash attack on reaction), through SH FFs into good spots or walking is a big differentiator between classes of player movement right now (which is easily evened up by general power of smash attack safety / ease of jbuffering A buttons on someone when you have better range/priority).

I was really scared of Ken/Ryu, but now that they face their opponent all the time they genuinely have a lot of effort taken out of CQC combat. Could you beat people with Ken in this game with Smash fundamentals + the game carrying you for an extra input 100% of the time automatically? I think so, yeah. Back air is still truly a most disgusting thing for them.

Strong vertical range tools can really not be underrated enough - most are vertically unparalleled and you won't be avoiding their strongest hitboxes if you're caught below in any shape or capacity. It's truly a pleasure to be able to just get directly underneath someone and press the button for great effect. A lot of these shoryukens (looking at zero suit) have really bad horizontal range now, but due to the way the game is (follow the air dodge read) it's gucci. Peach / Daisy (and anyone else) rage up-bing in a game where a lot of players are trying to full hop out of shield to relieve pressure.

Zelda is kinda the lamest character in the game. I'm not sure if they're good. But.... I don't think any character in the game is as simple, effective, and tedious to deal with, as Zelda. I'm sure people will lab things out eventually and there might be some parry set ups for her multi hits, and if there are any, that will be helpful, because it generally feels like infinite shield stun with + frame advantage on block for nearly everything. This is the character that if you don't have minute/micro spacing skills for online, she's gonna spam in your face and you're going to lose. Probably the best CQC/neutral dash attack in the game (Wolf holds a special spot as one of the only moves I've seen which reaches the now longer-ranged back rolls everyone has with KO power + low lag [yoshi has a looong dash attack too]).
Not to mention that now air dodges are bad, it's nice to have a B button that achieves that for you.

The most awkward characters:
Squirtle / Ivysaur - I guess I semi-cheated; charizard carried me. All the heavies have these like, super sexy godlike forward airs that win win win, it's great. But yeah I rarely played either in Brawl (barring Squirtle for the sake of ftilting shields), their range and mobility issues respectively would take more time to get used to - I will go back to them now that I can.
Corrin - in S4 I used to not use much pin in neutral *shock and horror* (I like swordie normals, sorry guys) and then when it came to KO percent started putting it out there (and when the move is completely fresh you'd be surprised at the frequency of 80% KOs). Can't seem to do this anymore (side-b safety/reliability) - can rely on corrin's great normals kit and get them to 150% in like 5 seconds, and then struggle to finish off for 2 minutes. Feels like the weakest FE in the game to me but could be wrong.

ICs - in a game where smash attacks are basically safe on block, and one where nana's AI seems to be blind while in shield and needs to drop it to check to see if a charged smash attack is coming - this was turmoil. It really came down to not being able to punish people playing run away and smash attacking in proximity. Most of my games was dealing 600% damage with up airs only in a minute, and then losing trying to take their final stock as they turtled.
Eventually I figured it out, the answer is forward air - probably their biggest ranged move and as an overhead can whiff punish, out space and be safe on shield; from there both Sopo and the two together became a much stronger force.

Kirby - still feeling inadequate mostly; dash attack and bair can get you by. I'm sure Sakurai didn't leave them behind that badly but it's beyond what we see on the surface.
Toon Link - can't just keep air dodging until you can pull a bomb to start winning neutral for free anymore. BIG SHAME.

-

Also shout outs to the Miis.
They're all (barring maybe Brawler? shotput is basically richter axe so you can spam the liiving daylights out of it right now on a much more mobile character with great success) very solid.
Swordfighter's tornado might be bettter than Inklings roller [well, not completely]. Move is cheese cheese cheese and it's a decent angleable projectile - without rage worsening it for you, up air for free all the time.
Gunner in general while not being fair dash focused anymore has many solid moves; including an INSANELY STRONG UP-B OOS LIKE HOLY CRAP WATCH THEM DIE ON BATTLEFIELD AT 100% OoS FREEEE. I'm not sure what their weaknesses are now, dealing with Wolf's laser (a really stupid move as i'm sure most people know), and moves similar, being the only hindrance in this character playing however the hell they want to - but they have a a reflector for that!

Like after playing the Miis I jokingly, but maybe not so jokingly, thought I'd main Miis in this game.
Thank goodness people were so stupid about them in S4, that now due to that stupidity feel obliged to let them stay completely legal.
I can't see them stopping you, me, or anyone else now. Play the Miis. They're super fun and feasibly godlike.

Incineroar is kinda like Zelda, except without the sparkles and a worse recovery, I guess. A lot of very strong-priority buttons that just are going to win-out while trying to fight against them. Their aerial kit seems similar to Diddy Kong's (at least in older games) but with a lot higher damage values - get your opponent backed to/on a ledge and enjoy the stock as getting through these are exhausting.
I'm glad I know that no one has business whatsoever trying to fight this character. Just Run. RUN FOREST. RUN.

What moveset were you using for the Mii Gunner?

 

[BunbUn129]

I've been trying to play wolf and for about 6 hours straight and I really wanted to quit cause **** wasn't working but then it started working.

His recovery is super awkward. Off stage, you'll almost always be aiming to sweet spot the ledge with side b which means you have to head to the same spot everytime which makes you predictable. But it does means that often you'll be drifting backwards (thus away from your opponent) to achieve that sweet spot positioning; so its servicable. Not designed for edge guards inspite of the beautiful spike hit box. Up b only appears to be for WILD mix ups and is barely a secondary recovery tool, if one at all.

Dash attack is cool, but, it's more of a punish tool. To be in punish range, means you have to navigate the neutral with his meagre mobility and Very stubby normals (seriously, d-tilt and u-tilt have trash range but are good on hit at least). These two factors limit his ground game. That said, they are all pretty quick. Great for tech chasing and pseudo vortexing (if that's even a phrase).

In the air, you get one aeriel per full hop. Lame, but we'll roll with it. You have a decent nair with a lingering hit box that may set up for a string. Fair has a nice hit box and you can get fair chains up to about 50%.

Bair and up air can frame trap into ground normals but their range makes this bad to do against characters with decent air mobility or good defensive options. They're inappropriate neutral tools but good for juggling and killing once you get started.

So his aerials arent safe on shield and when they do hit, nothing reeaallyy combos up, you'll have to hunt strings to rack up more damage. His mobility and the new dash mechanics mean that he's going to be eating heavy damage for playing the neutral with them alone. They are bad fishing tools.

So how the hell do you get started without paying an arm an a leg in percentage.

ONE MILLION LASERS
****s unreal. Once I accepted the crown of scumbag and started spaming short hop b reverses lasers, everything made sense. You can gracefully gain stage control by spaming them from far to mid range and rack up huge amounts of damage. At mid to close range, you can start to make sensible decisions about whether it's safe to nair, fair or even land and f-tilt. If it's not safe, fade back and LASER.

From here, you can transition into tech and ground chasing till they are out of range and cap it off with a LASER.

If you can keep them in range of your ground normals, u-tilt to up air juggling transitions naturally into punishing landings with smash attacks. U-smash shines here.

Plus, with the aforementioned ONE MILLION LASERS, opponents start jumping. So now you can leaping in with fairs and up airs to get started this way.

His kills come from dash attack, ftilt at the ledge, up-smash out of tech reads and punished landings, fishy back airs and the occasional sky high up air. Down smash covers ledge regrab. Foward smash is redundant.

Forward throw and down throw keep opponents reasonably close so you have a shot at maintaining advantage. Back throw kills for spice and up throw sets up those glorious juggles you want.

Over all he's okay. Rigid like Ridley but has a working gameplan

Edited for grammar

I'm maining Wolf this game and I've arrived to similar conclusions. I disagree with nair only being "decent," because it's damn good and one of his most important tools. It's start-up is slower than Brawl but it's mostly compensated by his faster jumpsquat, making SH immediate nair only 1 frame slower than Brawl. I'm glad he has a relatively safe button that covers the ledge extremely well and kills at higher percents. You can see how effective this tool is by how dexter used it on stream vs zd at the first Xanadu; zd was having trouble dealing with Wolf's nair despite Fox's vastly superior mobility. I'd say that this move and Lasers are what allow this character to function. He's eerily similar to Brawl Falco whose mobility and neutral buttons weren't that good but he easily made up for this with an absurd projectile.

Despite Wolf's changes in the transition, I think he's going to end up in a similar position as he was in Brawl: a good character who goes toe-to-toe with most of the meta characters but is foiled by a few iffy match-ups. Namely, Sheik, Pikachu, and Pichu, because they can all crouch and crawl, ignoring his lasers, in addition to bothering him offstage with their projectiles, while being difficult to pressure in their disadvantage states. The tools you need to defeat Wolf are quite specific overall (low crouch and crawl, and reflector) so I see him cementing his role as a force to be reckoned with, only held back from top-tier by a few counters.

 

[The_Bookworm]

An update here, but ConCon has apparently found something very useful about Luigi's tether attack.

Skip to 1:28.

 

[J0eyboi]

So I was watching Leffen's new tier list video, and got to the point where he called Olimar slow as **** because he has the slowest initial dash speed in the game.

This still isn't how initial dash speed works, but I do understand the confusion, so in order to hopefully remedy some of that, I made a spreadsheet calculating the initial dash distance and average speed across their initial dash for every character.

Sort of. This spreadsheet should be accurate for characters whose initial dash speed is higher than or equal to their run speed, but it isn't necessarily accurate for characters whose initial dash speed is lower than their run speed, for two reasons: Accurately calculating the initial dash distance of characters whose dash speed is lower than their run speed would require me to know their dash acceleration values, which I do not at this time, and I'm too lazy to add more logic to this bloated, inefficient spreadsheet today. Don't do math like this.

Anyway, the end result is that Ridley, Captain Falcon, Sheik, Fox, and Sonic (especially Sonic) have their initial dash distances listed as way higher than they actually are. A couple of other characters' listed values (Little Mac and Greninja, mostly) may be too high, but it shouldn't be by much.

I'll try to remember to update this spreadsheet if I find out I did everything wrong (which is a very real possibility) and/or when we get dash accel values, but for now this should be a decently accurate approximation of how far each character's initial dash goes.

Side note: Traction values in this game are weird. Like, Luigi isn't even close to the slipperiest boi anymore.

 

[TTTTTsd]

Some more food for thought for this thread, let's talk.....about Doc. :

- In spite of Dr. Mario's low speed his reward has been SIGNIFICANTLY tuned up to the point of being relevant and worth discussing. To note, Doctor Tornado is incredibly stupid in this game considering nerfed airdodges and recoveries, but mostly because it received a buff to its already high knockback. Expect to see your stock blown out at incredibly low percentages if Doc covers your recovery properly with this move (I've dropped Isabelle as early as 50% offstage and Incineroar at about 63%)
- Doctor Mario's lower speed also orients a lot better with his dashdance. He has more trouble getting in than Mario, but dashdance and foxtrot changes + FAF out of skid buff his approach tremendously and because of his lower speed, his dashdance is functionally more useful than Mario's, namely because he doesn't dash in as wide of an arc as Mario.
- Doctor Mario's Down Air might be one of the dumbest Dairs I have ever seen in this game. Autocancels in a short hop alone would be enough to push it over the edge, but other attributes include it having less landing lag than Mario's Dair, and having a sourspot that is basically non-existent (in my testing I had a harder time NOT getting a spike than I did getting one.) On top of this the sourspot does the exact same damage, just sends people to the side, so it will always kill.
- Doctor Tornado can also hit below the ledge now, at least vs. Belmonts.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

After maining Ridley for a bit, I gotta say that he has very good advantage. When things are going well for Ridley, they go REALLY well.

Unfortunately, he also has horrendous disadvantage. When Ridley's is in trouble, its extremely hard for him to land or get out of combos. His predictable recovery doesn't help this.

He's a very polarized character so I understand while some seem to think he's good and some think he's awful.

As someone who mained Charizard last game, I'm used to that kind of play.



I will say that Ridley's Up B is a tool that most people seem to overlook. I've gotten lots of kills with it, though I think its due to people not expecting it. Once people play enough Ridley's they'll see it coming every time.

F tilt was a surprise though. It's actually pretty reliable. It's main use is to give Ridley space which is invaluable to a big target like him. I just kind of throw it out sometimes and somehow it keeps working.