Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[MG_3989]

While losing a stock early is bad, it's a whole lot more forgiving than smash 4 where you had only 2 stocks.
Seriously, who's bright idea was it to do that?

Was the game really that slow that they decided to play with 2 stocks? It definitely didn’t seem like it

I mean Brawl was slow and they still played 3 stocks

 

[Nate1080]

Iirc, the whole 2 stock thing was partly due to For Glory (which was 2 stock 5 mins).

 

[Untouch]

I was always against 2 stock, even now I think Smash 4 was fast enough to support 3 stocks.

 

[MG_3989]

Iirc, the whole 2 stock thing was partly due to For Glory (which was 2 stock 5 mins).

That’s pretty dumb. 2 stocks isn’t enough time to download your opponent if you’re the type of player who likes to take a stock to settle in and get reads on your opponent

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Probably when they figured out that their terrible recovery can be abused by most characters with a decent edgeguarding kit. Most other high/top tiers are just able to play around their game and losing a stock early in this game can be a death sentence.

I remember the first couple of weeks when the game came out most people believed Chrom and the Belmonts would be top-tier despite having bad recoveries. However thier results have shown that thier bad and easilty exploitable recoveries have been a detriment to them.

I dunno unless you are a space animal, having poor or exploitable recovery options will keep you out top-tier in the meta

 

[Today's Tom Sawyer]

Didn't play Sm4sh but if I remember this correctly, rage forced playing with two stocks so that Ryu and Lucario (for instance) wouldn't kill at 70 consistently.

 

[MG_3989]

I remebere first couple weeks of this game most people believed Chrom and the Belmonts would be top-tier despite having bad recoveries. However thier results have shown that thier bad and easilty exploitable recoveries have been a detriment to them.

I dunno unless you are a space animal, having poor or exploitable recovery options will keep you out top-tier in the meta

Ness is high tier with an exploitable recovery. Same thing with the Links. Granted they have far more mixups than the Belmonts

Didn't play Sm4sh but if I remember this correctly, rage forced playing with two stocks so that Ryu and Lucario (for instance) wouldn't kill at 70 consistently.

Me neither but that makes sense. I have no idea what they were thinking with rage

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Ness is high tier with an exploitable recovery. Same thing with the Links

Well i said top-tier, I know many high tier characters have exploitable recoveries

 

[MG_3989]

Well i said top-tier, I know many high tier characters have exploitable recoveries

Ok I get what you’re saying. I think Wolf and Fox have just enough to recover safely and they have such good neutral and advantage it doesn’t matter as much. If they weren’t so exceptional in other areas they wouldn’t be top tier

 

[Siledh]

Ness is high tier with an exploitable recovery. Same thing with the Links. Granted they have far more mixups than the Belmonts


Me neither but that makes sense. I have no idea what they were thinking with rage

I mean, rage still exists in SSBU and clearly was designed to give a losing character a chance to kill before his health basically killed him.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Ness is high tier with an exploitable recovery.

Speaking of Ness, seems the best Ness player in Europe is dropping him, citing that he's bad:

Ness is so fucking bad I just can't, literally playing the game on hard difficulty

— S1 (@S1_SSB) February 3, 2019

Is Ness overrated?

Well i said top-tier, I know many high tier characters have exploitable recoveries

Olimar, Snake, Cloud (assuming you consider them top tier).

 

[MG_3989]

Speaking of Ness, seems the best Ness player in Europe is dropping him, citing that he's bad:

Ness is so fucking bad I just can't, literally playing the game on hard difficulty

— S1 (@S1_SSB) February 3, 2019

Is Ness overrated?

Olimar, Snake, Cloud (assuming you consider them top tier).

I’m not sure if Ness is overrated. His results are there and his kit is good. You don’t see FOW, Shaky, Awestin, Bestness or Gackt dropping him and they continually place well and win tournaments. I think Ness’s “potential” may be overrated but he’s a high tier character right now. He’s definitely not an easy character to play at a high level but the results speak for themselves. Three players in the top 40 of Genesis says a lot

He feels better to me than ever before and I never feel like I’m in an unwinnable situation with him. This seems like an outlier opinion

I mean, rage still exists in SSBU and clearly was designed to give a losing character a chance to kill before his health basically killed him.

I still don’t like the concept. It’s a free unearned knock back booster

 

[Rocketjay8]

Olimar, Snake, Cloud (assuming you consider them top tier).

Cloud especially has a bottom 15 worst recovery. Limit Climhizzard is so unreliable now thanks to the 15-second time limit. The air dodge nerf doesn't help either.

 

[L9999]

Ness is high tier with an exploitable recovery. Same thing with the Links. Granted they have far more mixups than the Belmonts.

Belmonts have abysmal air speed and acceleration. The lower you have those stats the more predictable are your drifts. That speed is whyare not as predictable as they should be. The Belmonts need to use their airdodge yes or yes to have a chance to make it back, instead of just DIing up and away, then drifting to the stage. Thy have no way to protect themselves coming back. The Cross is laggy and has to be thrown at a precise altitude to cover the ledge, Axe is a suicide note, and the Holy Water only activates if it hits the ground. Better than nothing but they are commitments that can be punished severely. Up Bing is also an option but it has to be a hard read. Since chaining without clicking A is 9/10 times a terrible idea you almost always have to do quick chain, which can be clipped, and since jumps after 2 frames are gone, Belmonts are guaranteed to be dead if they get clipped because lol Up B. had a gigantic Nair and multiple airdodges to get past edgeguarding. Besides the awful recovery the Belmonts are also cursed with other bad traits like slow run speed, abysmal grabs, and laggy attacks.

 

[fozzy fosbourne]

Light had to work so hard recovering on many of those stocks and even then he was gimped a few times. I think Leffen has predicted that as time goes on Fox will become more of a liability as people start getting crazy with their edge guarding. In this tourney in particular I feel like I saw a lot of development on that front, some people going down into the underworld to chase people.

 

[MG_3989]

Light had to work so hard recovering on many of those stocks and even then he was gimped a few times. I think Leffen has predicted that as time goes on Fox will become more of a liability as people start getting crazy with their edge guarding. In this tourney in particular I feel like I saw a lot of development on that front, some people going down into the underworld to chase people.

I definitely saw an improvement in edgeguarding at Genesis. People went deep and took opportunities when they were there. It was great to see and I love seeing the game evolve into what it’s supposed to be

 

[J0eyboi]

While losing a stock early is bad, it's a whole lot more forgiving than smash 4 where you had only 2 stocks.
Seriously, who's bright idea was it to do that?

IIRC, 2-stock was the result of a few things, none of which were rage (rage was a common argument for switching to 3-stock):

• The game's slow pace, especially in the early patches where vectoring killed a lot of combos while boosting survivability and shielding was even stronger (3-stock taking too long was a very common argument against it)
• For Glory being 2-stock
• Regrets from Brawl, which ran 3-stock but which a lot of people thought should've run 2, and the desire not to repeat the same mistake

That said, Smash 4's ruleset isn't really relevant to this thread.

 

[MG_3989]

My last thoughts on the Ness being overrated argument. These are his results last week. Results speak louder than anything else

 

[Nate1080]

Belmonts have abysmal air speed and acceleration. The lower you have those stats the more predictable are your drifts. That speed is whyare not as predictable as they should be. The Belmonts need to use their airdodge yes or yes to have a chance to make it back, instead of just DIing up and away, then drifting to the stage. Thy have no way to protect themselves coming back. The Cross is laggy and has to be thrown at a precise altitude to cover the ledge, Axe is a suicide note, and the Holy Water only activates if it hits the ground. Better than nothing but they are commitments that can be punished severely. Up Bing is also an option but it has to be a hard read. Since chaining without clicking A is 9/10 times a terrible idea you almost always have to do quick chain, which can be clipped, and since jumps after 2 frames are gone, Belmonts are guaranteed to be dead if they get clipped because lol Up B. had a gigantic Nair and multiple airdodges to get past edgeguarding. Besides the awful recovery the Belmonts are also cursed with other bad traits like slow run speed, abysmal grabs, and laggy attacks.

A lot of what you’re saying about the Belmonts is exactly what I said weeks ago about them and people almost fought me tooth and nail against it lol.

 

[Frihetsanka]

My last thoughts on the Ness being overrated argument. These are his results last week. Results speak louder than anything else

He had good results in Smash 4 too despite being a mid tier. While his results right now are good they're not that good.

 

[DJ3DS]

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My last thoughts on the Ness being overrated argument. These are his results last week. Results speak louder than anything else

These results are a compilation sourced from a variety of different skill levels. Whilst results are always important, they are useless without context and unfortunately that's what these results are.

That's not a comment on the characters actual potential, just that citing he has more first place wins without contextualising what those wins were isn't really making a point. Even if Ike/Lucina only had one win, that win being Genesis matters so much more than any of the others.

With regards to Ness, he has a solid base of people winning smaller events and placing decently at Genesis. I don't think anyone is really trying to say he is a bad character, but at the same time without some breakout performance by a player showing us something new there's not enough there to my mind to place him e.g. top 20. At the same time, there is a laundry list of characters with (to the best of my knowledge) worse overall results.



That's a solid half of the cast.

 

[MG_3989]

He had good results in Smash 4 too despite being a mid tier. While his results right now are good they're not that good.

Look we’ll still have to see how the meta evolves and what Ness’s place in it is. Right now he’s high tier that could change. I don’t think one main dropping him changes his status or tier

Besides those results are really really good

These results are a compilation sourced from a variety of different skill levels. Whilst results are always important, they are useless without context and unfortunately that's what these results are.

That's not a comment on the characters actual potential, just that citing he has more first place wins without contextualising what those wins were isn't really making a point. Even if Ike/Lucina only had one win, that win being Genesis matters so much more than any of the others.

With regards to Ness, he has a solid base of people winning smaller events and placing decently at Genesis. I don't think anyone is really trying to say he is a bad character, but at the same time without some breakout performance by a player showing us something new there's not enough there to my mind to place him e.g. top 20. At the same time, there is a laundry list of characters with (to the best of my knowledge) worse overall results.



That's a solid half of the cast.

I understand this point of view and I know these results are out of context but they still show a trend overall. And he’s doing it every week. I understand people’s hesitance to place him high because of his weaknesses but I personally think he’s top 20. It’s completely fine that you disagree though

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

is important to remember but if a high tier character has enough bad matchups to require a secondary in a game with 60+ characters then that character isn't high tier. Most people use a secondaries because smash characters are easy to use and gatekeeping low tier mid tiers is a blessing to competidors in a tournament setting, is why smash 4 cloud and sheik was popular, why you think top players say lol "whats a wario or olimar, how you play that Mu", because top players in reality know few matchups, is more easily to use a secondary that knowing that many matchups because you only see like 8 or 12 max, in a tournament.

 

[Siledh]

I still don’t like the concept. It’s a free unearned knock back booster

Maybe, but it keeps you viable even at high percents and can help a lot of MUs.

 

[MG_3989]

Maybe, but it keeps you viable even at high percents and can help a lot of MUs.

Yeah I understand that and I understand why they did it but I just think it’s completley unnecessary. Also It takes away Lucario’s unique property (I mean obviously there’s a huge difference but you base a whole character around rage and THEN make it available to every character). I guess if I think of it something like x-factor in MvC it makes more sense but I still don’t love it

 

[The_Bookworm]

Speaking of Ness, seems the best Ness player in Europe is dropping him, citing that he's bad:

Ness is so fucking bad I just can't, literally playing the game on hard difficulty

— S1 (@S1_SSB) February 3, 2019

Is Ness overrated?

Olimar, Snake, Cloud (assuming you consider them top tier).

inb4 he loses immediately to another Ness player on stream.
I remember that Abadango was eliminated from Genesis 6 by SDX, a user of his former main from SSB4.
I personally has ESAMopinions curse vibes from this. lol

Personally, it is kind of silly that he dropping him considering the solid performances of the Ness players in Genesis, and especially in regional/local tournaments. Then again, top players of a character tend to kind of be volatile in their characters placement, whether it is lower than everyone says and/or results showing, or higher than everyone says and/or results showing.

Yeah I understand that and I understand why they did it but I just think it’s completley unnecessary. Also It takes away Lucario’s unique property (I mean obviously there’s a huge difference but you base a whole character around rage and THEN make it available to every character). I guess if I think of it something like x-factor in MvC it makes more sense but I still don’t love it

SSB4 not being 3 stock was actually kind of a topic of debate throughout it's history. ZeRo was a huge supporter of 3 stock games (from the player of adaptability, not too surprised lol).
Being 3 stock is kind of volatile in SSB4, as there are games that end in no time at all, while there are games that drag on for awhile (especially against Sonic).

 

[MG_3989]

inb4 he loses immediately to another Ness player on stream.
I remember that Abadango was eliminated from Genesis 6 by SDX, a user of his former main from SSB4.
I personally has ESAMopinions curse vibes from this. lol

Personally, it is kind of silly that he dropping him considering the solid performances of the Ness players in Genesis, and especially in regional/local tournaments. Then again, top players of a character tend to kind of be volatile in their characters placement, whether it is lower than everyone says and/or results showing, or higher than everyone says and/or results showing.


SSB4 not being 3 stock was actually kind of a topic of debate throughout it's history. ZeRo was a huge supporter of 3 stock games (from the player of adaptability, not too surprised lol).
Being 3 stock is kind of volatile in SSB4, as there are games that end in no time at all, while there are games that drag on for awhile (especially against Sonic).

I’d love to see that happen lol

And that’s pretty much the reason why I only played Smash 4 for two weeks. It just didn’t feel right to me. I know a lot of people loved it but it wasn’t my cup of tea

 

[J0eyboi]

Rage, on the other hand, is totally within the scope of this thread and also a thing I've wanted to talk about for a while.

There's one thing I think a lot of people don't realize about Smash that leads them to believe rage is unfair. That thing is that percent is not health, stocks are. According to the game, if you and your opponent have the same number of stocks, you are tied. If time runs out while stocks are equal, the game goes to a tiebreaker round, regardless of whether you're tied in percent, ahead by 1%, or ahead by 100%. The rule causing the lower % player to win if stocks are tied is entirely community-made, and is fairly unique even among community-made rules in that it directly contradicts the rules of the game. There's no in-game option for making the player with less percent win, like there is for turning off items or only choosing certain stages or only choosing certain characters. The game thinks that stocks should be the only tiebreaker other than Sudden Death, and we're directly contradicting that by deciding matches by percent when stocks are even (to be clear, I'm not arguing that the game's way is better; Sudden Death is a mess of a system and it'd be way better if equal stocks just resulted in a tie).

I digress. The point I'm making here is that as far as the game is concerned, dealing more % to your opponent does not put you any closer to winning. It's kind of like Dissidia Final Fantasy, where there are Brave attacks that increase your Bravery Level on hit but do no HP damage, and HP attacks that deal damage to your opponent's HP based on your current Bravery Level and then reset your Bravery Level to 0. Sure, you'll do more damage if you raise your Bravery Level first, but just raising your Bravery Level doesn't put you any closer to winning; you'll have to use an HP attack eventually.

I bring this all up in relation to Smash because there's a common misconception that Rage is unfair because it benefits the losing player, which is untrue. It benefits players who survive to high %s, but because racking up % doesn't put you any closer to winning, and because rage is equally strong no matter how many stocks up or down you are (unlike Aura, which does reward the player for losing somewhat), it doesn't really benefit the losing player. Rage rewards surviving to high percents, and in turn punishes you for letting your opponent survive to high percents. To make a Dissidia comparison once more, it would be like if the game made you take more HP damage the higher your Bravery Level was.

This does a couple of things. The more obvious one is that it helps to create an environment that's more friendly to characters like superheavies who have historically been underwhelming in Smash games. The other one, though, is that it encourages riskier play. It makes allowing your opponent to survive even more risky, as they not only get an additional chance to make a comeback, but also get increased kill power with which to make that comeback. This, in turn, encourages going for setups and mixups that could lead to kills, rather than always going for guaranteed damage. Nothing about this is inherently positive; games in which offense is too good are just as bad as games in which defense is too good, and while this does encourage taking risks (something spectators and designers tend to like and players tend to hate), it only works so long as killing your opponent requires risk. If it doesn't, then rage isn't really a factor. This can be seen most clearly in Wolf, who will gladly laser his opponent to 170 without a care in the world in certain matchups because his damage-racking ability and kill options are both so safe. Rage doesn't improve or hurt the game so much as it changes it, messing with the dynamics and game flow in interesting but ultimately neutral ways. Whether this results in a better or worse game is pretty much down to personal preference.

It is worth noting that, while I do think rage is a neutral mechanic in theory, Smash 4 handled it exceptionally poorly. Some things, most notably autolink angles, weren't programmed to account for rage, resulting in ZSS' and Bayo's rage ladders, Shinespark, and a lot of other things. There were also some unrelated poor design choices that Rage served to exacerbate, like DK and Bowser, who wouldn't have been fun to fight even without rage but became especially infuriating due to its existence.

how the **** do you end essays

 

[MG_3989]

I mean it was an effective essay and it did make me look at rage in a different light. There is merit to rewarding certain characters for surviving to higher percents and punishing players for not killing early (and with the way edgeguarding is trending in this game people will kill early). It’s just certain characters are designed to live to higher percents and I think it may unfairly benefit heavier characters (and not just super heavies, characters like Wario and Yoshi benefit from it too). It’s not a game breaker for me at all but I still don’t know how I feel about it. Fast light characters do usually end up being very good though so I guess it tips the scales in somewhat of a fair way

Looking at it in terms of stocks vs percents really does make me see the mechanic differently though and what you wrote did make me think

Also I agree, **** conclusions. Always the most difficult part of the essay

 

[missingnomaster]

Just look at tournament results. There are a few exceptions, like Snake and Wario, but heavy characters usually do poorly, despite benefiting the most from rage. Without it most of them would become a lot worse than they already are, so I'm not sure it's right to say that they benefit unfairly from rage.

 

[Ffamran]

Light had to work so hard recovering on many of those stocks and even then he was gimped a few times. I think Leffen has predicted that as time goes on Fox will become more of a liability as people start getting crazy with their edge guarding. In this tourney in particular I feel like I saw a lot of development on that front, some people going down into the underworld to chase people.

Fox's recovery moves have high startup, especially if he's trying to recover upwards. Fire Fox travels far, but it starts moving on frame 43 or 44 and Fox Illusion has a startup of 25 frames because it not being able to pass through shields wasn't enough of a nerf that it needed 4 more startup frames. If Fox wants to quickly get to ledge from below, his fastest option would be to jump and air dodge upwards if needed, but that means he burns his double jump.

In contrast, Wolf's recovery moves all start moving around frame 18 I believe and while Fox's air speed is pretty good in Ultimate and he shares the same air acceleration stats as Wolf, Wolf's air speed is still higher. Wolf also doesn't fall as fast as Fox. There's also Ridley where Wing Blitz (Up Special) is apparently frame 37 on startup when moving up, frame 39 when moving horizontally, and frame 40 when moving down, and Sky Pirate Rush (Side Special) is frame 22. He has a much larger hurtbox, but Ridley's recovery moves are slightly faster on startup than Fox's and Ridley does have 2 midair jumps.

Falco's even worse than Fox when it comes to being forced to recover with Fire Bird since it has the same launch frame, but it has a shorter travel distance. There's a reason why I say I'd rather have an Up Special with the vertical travel of Little Mac's aerial Rising Uppercut, Sheik's weird midair hop when using Vanish in the air, or Yoshi's Egg Throw on Falco even if it meant losing the ability to choose angles and even if the move didn't do damage or ledge snap because it could have so much faster startup. I'd even take a freaking divekick or a falling attack like the second parts of Aether, Climhazzard, or Soaring Slash that didn't ledge snap until the end of its travel -- make it as long as possible because why not -- as a recovery move over Fire Bird. I'd take no vertical recovery move over Fire Bird if it meant Falco got something like a grenade from Star Fox: Assault over Fire Bird. Fire Bird is literal dog****. Rant aside, when it comes to recovering horizontally, Falco Phantasm is much faster at frame 18. Falco also jumps significantly higher than Fox and falls slower, so he can recover high more easily.

The main point is that Fox never really did well off-stage in any game and recovering wasn't a strong suit of his either outside of Smash 4, I guess. On-stage, though, he's a monster. In Ultimate, his glass is showing more than in Smash 4, but his cannon is just as strong or even better.

Ridley frame data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...nf1GGIteH35UX3IM7-mnbdG6eE/edit#gid=899732416.

 

[Rizen]

Yeah I understand that and I understand why they did it but I just think it’s completley unnecessary. Also It takes away Lucario’s unique property

By the earth mother; call the shaman they've taken his aura!

Someone mentioned the Links having bad recoveries. Link's can (and should) be exploited but it's not bad. He has boomerangs, big hitbubbles and bombs for distant recoveries. It's about mid-tier in terms of recoveries. YL has one of the better recoveries with good distance on upB because drift, projectiles to toss out, bombs renew upB and a tether for mixups and quick ledge snaps. TL's can't far off. Both are high tier.

 

[Siledh]

The rage multiplier has been reduced in SSBU anyway from x1.15 to x1.1 so it is not huge. But definitely, I think anyone who survives on the same stock for a long time deserves some reward.

 

[PK Bash]

Is Ness overrated?

Short answer is yes
If he was anywhere near as good as some say he is, we'd have seen far more people play him. This character is not difficult to play and apparently has a high yield for playing him, but still nobody plays him except the ardent die-hard mains who will not surprise us with how good they are.
Genesis 6 is another tournament where yet again, in parallel to later Smash 4, only FOW was able to break top 32 with solo Ness, and nobody uses him as a secondary or to counterpick specific matchups. There's a good reason for that - not only is he high risk to play, he doesn't win any relevant matchups and in fact I can't think of one where Ness can control the game. (Miss me with Pichu and Snake, Ness don't win those.) He's another pretty average character whose entire neutral is based on committing to risky gambits (what with the nerfs to up air, dash attack and dash grab) using a small pool of threatening but distinctly non-abusable tools in both neutral and advantage, and flat-out weak tools for disadvantage (bless directional airdodging though). He's definitely less viable than his smash 4 self if you ask me; his achievements so far in this game are nothing unprecedented.
There's enough there to make a coherent character and evidently if you're good you can take him far, but it's all spectacle. None of it is particularly solid in this game unfortunately.

We'll see what the overarching pattern is for future majors before ringing the death bell but I am not optimistic for him. Solid mid tier again for sure - he's certainly not terrible and is really good against a lot of characters - but he's never going to rank with the meta defining characters in my opinion when there's just so much risk and uncertainty to using him and not enough reward of decent important matchups or whatever.

I do not blame S1 for dropping the character and honestly I hope he means it this time. While I have no doubt he can maximise the potential of Ness, why should he? There are significantly stronger characters out there who can maximise the potential of S1.

 

[MG_3989]

By the earth mother; call the shaman they've taken his aura!

Someone mentioned the Links having bad recoveries. Link's can (and should) be exploited but it's not bad. He has boomerangs, big hitbubbles and bombs for distant recoveries. It's about mid-tier in terms of recoveries. YL has one of the better recoveries with good distance on upB because drift, projectiles to toss out, bombs renew upB and a tether for mixups and quick ledge snaps. TL's can't far off. Both are high tier.

I wasn’t sure if it was me who said that and I didn’t mean it was bad. Just the fact that you both drop down on it and counter it is exploitable but not bad. They’re not that hard to gimp either. That said I think they all have average to above average recoveries and I didn’t mean to say they were bad. Especially as far as recoveries go in this game they can definitely land and recover

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Fox's recovery moves have high startup, especially if he's trying to recover upwards. Fire Fox travels far, but it starts moving on frame 43 or 44 and Fox Illusion has a startup of 25 frames because it not being able to pass through shields wasn't enough of a nerf that it needed 4 more startup frames. If Fox wants to quickly get to ledge from below, his fastest option would be to jump and air dodge upwards if needed, but that means he burns his double jump.

In contrast, Wolf's recovery moves all start moving around frame 18 I believe and while Fox's air speed is pretty good in Ultimate and he shares the same air acceleration stats as Wolf, Wolf's air speed is still higher. Wolf also doesn't fall as fast as Fox. There's also Ridley where Wing Blitz (Up Special) is apparently frame 37 on startup when moving up, frame 39 when moving horizontally, and frame 40 when moving down, and Sky Pirate Rush (Side Special) is frame 22. He has a much larger hurtbox, but Ridley's recovery moves are slightly faster on startup than Fox's and Ridley does have 2 midair jumps.

Falco's even worse than Fox when it comes to being forced to recover with Fire Bird since it has the same launch frame, but it has a shorter travel distance. There's a reason why I say I'd rather have an Up Special with the vertical travel of Little Mac's aerial Rising Uppercut, Sheik's weird midair hop when using Vanish in the air, or Yoshi's Egg Throw on Falco even if it meant losing the ability to choose angles and even if the move didn't do damage or ledge snap because it could have so much faster startup. I'd even take a freaking divekick or a falling attack like the second parts of Aether, Climhazzard, or Soaring Slash that didn't ledge snap until the end of its travel -- make it as long as possible because why not -- as a recovery move over Fire Bird. I'd take no vertical recovery move over Fire Bird if it meant Falco got something like a grenade from Star Fox: Assault over Fire Bird. Fire Bird is literal dog****. Rant aside, when it comes to recovering horizontally, Falco Phantasm is much faster at frame 18. Falco also jumps significantly higher than Fox and falls slower, so he can recover high more easily.

The main point is that Fox never really did well off-stage in any game and recovering wasn't a strong suit of his either outside of Smash 4, I guess. On-stage, though, he's a monster. In Ultimate, his glass is showing more than in Smash 4, but his cannon is just as strong or even better.

Ridley frame data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...nf1GGIteH35UX3IM7-mnbdG6eE/edit#gid=899732416.

Yea a I noticed that Fox seems to get gimped much more often than Wolf.

Wolf's recovery options, while not great is kinda like pre-patch Chrom's up-b where it has factors that make people fear trying to contest if offstage.



Wolf's up-b starts faster than Fox's and I said it before, but the hitboxes on it are friggen huge, deceptively so. Not to mention the move has serious lauching power.
I think ot was Zackray's vs Dabuz set. At G6 where Dabuz tried to 2-frame the recovery from below the ledge with a d-smash. Only for it to hit Olimar from above the ledge and actullay get the kill!..and people were complaining that the active hitboxes on K.Rool up-b were to big..lol.

But who knows players may find ways to exploit Wolf's recovery more and better as time goes on

 

[MG_3989]

There's a good reason for that - not only is he high risk to play, he doesn't win any relevant matchups and in fact I can't think of one where Ness can control the game. (Miss me with Pichu and Snake, Ness don't win those.).

I definitely think he wins the Pichu and Snake (he oppresses Snake easy when played right) matchups. And he does have a good enough reward to play. His advantage is really good and he’s good in neutral against most characters. I’m not ready to nail him down yet not do I wanna be somebody who overhypes their main but I still think thus far he’s top 20 or so. He’ll never be a top tier character but he’ll always be viable and he goes even or close to even on a lot of high and top tier matchups. I’m personally optimistic in what he can do and I think more people will pick him up but I understand the other side

 

[The_Bookworm]

Yea a I noticed that Fox seems to get gimped much more often than Wolf.

Wolf's recovery options, while not great is kinda like pre-patch Chrom's up-b where it has factors that make people fear trying to contest if offstage.

Wolf's up-b starts faster than Fox's and I said it before, but the hitboxes on it are friggen huge, deceptively so. Not to mention the move has serious lauching power.
I think ot was Zackray's vs Dabuz set. At G6 where Dabuz tried to 2-frame the recovery from below the ledge with a d-smash. Only for it to hit Olimar from above the ledge and actullay get the kill!..and people were complaining that the active hitboxes on K.Rool up-b were to big..lol.

But who knows players may find ways to exploit Wolf's recovery more and better as time goes on

Yeah. I find it harder to edgeguard Wolf despite the lower distance it travels.

I like how Wolf's insane popularity has appeared pretty much out of nowhere. A few top players where like, "Oh, Zackray is winning Japan tournaments with Wolf. Lets explore the character more." And behold the great rep he has right now. lol

Btw, Chrom's up B, if initiated anywhere below the stage in all legal stages (as far as I know), still kills the opponents first, so it still has the fear factors of dying at zero like pre-patch up B had.

 

[Ffamran]

Yea a I noticed that Fox seems to get gimped much more often than Wolf.

Keep in mind that Fox's weight was lowered a bit in Ultimate, from 79 to 77, so he does take more knockback. Fox has also been progressively coming closer to a Melee character's falling speed after Brawl. Ultimate Fox clocks at a fall speed of 2.1 and regained his 0.23 gravity from Melee. Fox not only falls the fastest, but he reaches his fall speed faster than anyone else.

And as noted already, if Fox is forced to use his Fire Fox, it's heavily telegraphed. Getting hit by it is dangerous, but for some characters, especially characters with disjointed aerials like most weapon users, it's not that risky to hit it. Case in point: Lucina. What doesn't help is that Fox Illusion is slower than in the previous games. The rundown is that Fox's recovery is very telegraphed on top of being linear, and therefore, predictable at times. In contrast, characters like Captain Falcon, Ike, Luigi, Mario, Roy, and Wolf have linear and predictable recoveries, but theirs are much faster than Fox's or very fast like Luigi's and Mario's Super Jump Punch. That said, they have their own issues that Fox might not have when it comes to recovering.

Fox's recovery moves also aren't as threatening as say, Ness's PKT2 where you're probably going to die if you mess up and get hit by it. Wolf's recovery moves are already noted to be threatening, especially if you get hit by Wolf Flash's sweetspot and aren't prepared for it. That thing does 20% with the spike hitbox and 15% with the not spike hitbox. Falco also can spike with Falco Phantasm which while rare because it is kind of hard to hit with it, does deter some people from trying to intercept it off-stage. Fox Illusion on the other hand would pop you up while Falco Phantasm could lead to a spike or a gimp.

Fox doesn't really have any threatening aerials he can use when he's trying to recover. With his fall speed, Nair, Fair, and Dair are probably too committal and burning a jump might not be worth it for him to rise with those aerials, Uair probably wouldn't really work in most situations and I wouldn't be surprised if he could SD himself while trying to cover above him with Uair, and Bair is not going to happen unless Fox finds a way to turn himself around. Mewtwo and Wolf can threaten with rising Fair and with their projectiles. One key thing is that Fox's Blaster lasers don't do knockback. Falco and Wolf don't have that problem, we've seen ESAM, VoiD, and other Pichu and Pikachu players cover their already good recovery with Thunder Jolt, items and Pikmin being thrown from the blastzone by the Links, Olimar, Peach, ROB, and Snake not only annoy, but interrupt and add more for the opponent to deal with, and being unprepared for a charged projectile from Lucario, Mewtwo, ROB, and the Samuses can kill the opponent if not do a lot of damage.

If Fox had Impact Blaster, basically Falco Blaster, but if it couldn't be fired continuously or 64 Blaster without the ability to auto-cancel, Fox could probably do something like tag his opponent with a laser to stun them a bit in order to buy time for Fox Illusion.

Once again, though, that's when Fox is off-stage and recovering. Fox's on-stage performance and capabilities are more than enough to make up for his issues with his recovery.

Not to mention the move has serious launching power.

I tried to look for it, but I can't find it. Ultimate's day one patch changed a bunch of things and I swear I saw a tweet mentioning Fire Wolf was among them. I can't remember who tweeted it and I don't remember when. Its last hit used to have lower base knockback and higher knockback growth. Before the game was released, people were talking about how Fire Wolf could kill very well and earlier than what it can do now.

Some of the day one changes.

Btw they did tons of balance changes on 1.1.0.
25 fighters got changes on their own param file, 17 fighters got changes on FAF and intangible related file.
Also they changed some animation (Kirby Up B, Daisy Neutral B etc) and even added 3 animations to Ridley Side B.

— Meshima (@Meshima_) January 1, 2019

Speaking of patch changes. 2.0.0 apparently broke Olimar's Smashes and not for the better. Maybe we'll get a hotfix if this becomes a big enough issue.

To clarify on this, this bug affects damage dealt, shield damage dealt, and knockback. Charging up a smash attack does not increase any of these whatsoever. #SSBU_OLIMAR

— Blue Banana (@eigenbanana) February 5, 2019

 

[Nobie]

The game is so up in the air that I don't think I'll know how the top tier is truly shaping until at least a year into the game, but assuming that our 1st and 2nd places at Genesis are top tier characters, I think the meta is in a very healthy place.

Lucina is just an incredibly solid character with very few bells and whistles. She's the all-rounder swordsman, and simply someone you have to outplay to beat. The "trick" to defeating Lucina is just knowing how to deal with swords in general, and any lessons you take from fighting Lucina apply heavily to any other swordsmen. Speaking of...

While Ike did not appear in grand finals, MKLeo still used him for most of the tournament. Yes, nair is scary and Ike just hits like a truck in general, but he's not quite as flexible as Lucina, and he has a very clear recovery weakness that relies more on the Ike user being clever in a bad situation than anything else. Also, there's a reason MKLeo had to switch off of Ike for grand finals.

As for Pichu, if there's any archetype that's good to have as a top tier, it's whatever Pichu is. Consider the fact that Pichu's strengths and weaknesses are clearly understandable for anyone almost regardless of skill level. On the one side, size, speed, combos, and reliable KO power. On the other side, light weight, short range, and self-damage. That last thing is a big deal, because it means that, no matter how well Pichu is doing, it's slowly giving the opponent the chance for a comeback. As we saw, things that are just "get the opponent away from me" moves against any other character turn into legit kill moves against Pichu.

Thinking further about the 2.0.0 patch, it's notable that they did not get rid of Snake's down throw -> up tilt kill confirm. You'd think it'd be on the chopping block first thing (and it still might be for the next patch!), but they actually went as far as to slightly BUFF up tilt. There's a thoughtfulness at work in Ultimate, to a degree that I've begun to wonder if Smash 4's patches in general were crazy test runs for Ultimate concepts.