Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Phoenix_is_OK]

Here, I heard you idiots like data so I made this:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rYlBo5hyyh1RzcHiItoB5SWdmAfldElVW082zD4npZI/edit?usp=sharing

A startup comparison of everyone's A moves and grab. Color coded too

 

[Wunderwaft]

So are your opinions on D3 risen somewhat after the Zaki set? At the very least, I’d provide that as evidence against him being low tier, especially coupled with his top 8 placements at majors like Umebura and BoBC3. Thoughts?

I'm convinced that the number of low tier characters is a small pool, and D3 isn't part of the pool. So yes I don't think the penguin is terrible. He's not the best heavy by any means, but he can pull his own weight against stronger characters if he's played smart. ZAKI is gonna be up against VoiD who plays Pichu, this match up will decide how I feel about the character since it's Dedede against a small rat who is arguably part of the top five best characters.

 

[Kiligar]

Anyone have a tier list for doubles? Doubles is different from 1v1 in many ways as shown in the video below.

I believe these differences can make changes to the viability of characters, and allow new strategies to change the meta in doubles.

 

[DJ3DS]

Anyone have a tier list for doubles? Doubles is different from 1v1 in many ways as shown in the video below.

I believe these differences can make changes to the viability of characters, and allow new strategies to change the meta in doubles.

There isn't even a definitive tier list for singles out yet, and doubles is a different beast altogether. It is unlikely every team combination has even been played in competitive doubles formats just yet!

In general I think characters who suffer in 1v1 due to relatively poor disadvantage get a new lease on life when they have a teammate to act as a combo breaker. Characters with large hitboxes that control space work better too.

On the flip side of things, I think zoners and setup characters potentially suffer. There's less space, more opponents and a teammate you have to worry about hitting, after all.

 

[JustCallMeJon]

I found something interesting in Sumabato Tourney.

Sumabato SP 3 results!
Bracket: https://t.co/RkOt81Aks7 pic.twitter.com/sutX6OW61v

— Justin (juddy96) (@juddy_96) April 14, 2019

I know that HOLY COW Rizeau mains majority of characters!
LOOK AT IT!

 

[Omnos]

He might have gone all random.

 

[$.A.F.]

I'm convinced that the number of low tier characters is a small pool, and D3 isn't part of the pool. So yes I don't think the penguin is terrible. He's not the best heavy by any means, but he can pull his own weight against stronger characters if he's played smart. ZAKI is gonna be up against VoiD who plays Pichu, this match up will decide how I feel about the character since it's Dedede against a small rat who is arguably part of the top five best characters.

Well...............?

 

[Wunderwaft]

Well...............?

After seeing the match against Void I think Dedede is one of the better heavies. I think he's a character that can harass and even beat high tier characters due to his big damage and survivability. With that said, there's only so much that he can do and I feel like he needs a buff before he can truly shine and perform well in big tournaments.

 

[Frihetsanka]

He might have gone all random.

I doubt it, that list corresponds fairly well with his Smash 4 roster.

 

[$.A.F.]

After seeing the match against Void I think Dedede is one of the better heavies. I think he's a character that can harass and even beat high tier characters due to his big damage and survivability. With that said, there's only so much that he can do and I feel like he needs a buff before he can truly shine and perform well in big tournaments.

I don’t think he needs a buff to perform in tournaments. BoBC3, Umebura, and the Ukie circuit show multiple D3s from separate regions consistently making top 8s and top 4s at majors.

 

[Phoenix_is_OK]

Yeah I'm bored so I'm starting another fire.

I think Sheik is bottom 10. I said this once and got kicked around a bit but I'm going to stick to my guns here. Sheik's biggest thing in Smash 4 was her godlike neutral. She could simply do whatever the hell she wanted for the most part because almost everything was safe.

Fastfoward to this game and you'll see that it is harder to find characters with horrid neutrals than there are characters with options in the neutral. Smash 4 Sheik feels like a character who would fit in nicely with every other character in Ultimate, but she wouldn't be top tier.

The engine in Ultimate does Sheik no favors. The neutral is much less defensive from Smash 4 due to the overall nerf of airdodges and shields, to the reintroduction of directional airdodges. Sheik is an insanely defensive character in nature, because she has everything to lose from a neutral interaction with minimal reward for winning one. Less hitstun ruins her.

The character simply doesn't do enough damage to be considered viable at all in this game. Her combos are gutted strings compared to 4. Honestly, her moves have more issues connecting than characters who do more damage per hit. It doesn't matter how fast you are, or how you can come back to the stage with seemingly no problem, she just cannot do anything with winning the neutral. Winning the neutral usually grants you some sort of competitive advantage, but with Sheik you have to essentially win the neutral several times over your opponent to be equal with them.

Tier Lists are based on this: if two players of equal, optimal skill are against each other, who has the highest odds of winning? Simply put, playing Sheik requires a slight neutral advantage with the expectation that you need to be oppressive the entire match to have a close game. Sheik players come across to me as able to outplay their opponent for 2 minutes at a time, and then everything falls apart because their opponent landed two Fairs.

Finally getting your opponent to kill percent is another struggle altogether. Now what? Sheik may not "struggle to kill" in the standard sense, but her kill options are among the most irritating and skill reliant to set up.

There's a reason why Void dropped her: he's made numerous videos on it. The character comes across as not nearly as safe as the previous game, with much less reward for everything, with worse confirms. She's a horrid, handicapped player and I would make the argument that nearly any character, minus the worst of the worst, is a better character than Sheik.

I truly hope she is buffed.

 

[Wunderwaft]

I don’t think he needs a buff to perform in tournaments. BoBC3, Umebura, and the Ukie circuit show multiple D3s from separate regions consistently making top 8s and top 4s at majors.

I still believe his atrocious air speed and lag on some of his moves holds him down. Dedede is viable at even the highest level of play, but he's a character that requires a huge amount of training to get any mileage out of. There are also some characters that can shut down the king, like Young Link for example.

 

[bc1910]

People usually like to assert that Dedede is a bad character and that people just suck at fighting him.

At what point do we make the differential between “hard to fight” and “actually good”?

If everyone is finding this character hard to fight then maybe, just maybe, there’s some substance there.

This is a character backed by multiple high level players, ranked #25 on OrionStats; that’s higher than Pikachu, Pac-Man, Shulk and the Belmonts. To give just one example, Peli is one of the best players in Europe and has seen strong success with near-solo D3.

Everyone’s familiar with D3’s weaknesses but how often does his decent (for a heavy) disadvantage state, excellent range, strong kill power, strong ledge trapping or insane survivability get brought up? The character has a lot of strengths that get ignored since they don’t fit with the narrative of D3 being a meme character that people suck against. There’s elements of truth in there, but it’s hardly the whole story. D3 ain’t no Mac, he’s not a character you should be taking lightly.

tl;dr upper mid tier, don’t sleep on the king

 

[Rizen]

I don’t think he needs a buff to perform in tournaments. BoBC3, Umebura, and the Ukie circuit show multiple D3s from separate regions consistently making top 8s and top 4s at majors.

I think DDD's definitely gotten results but in the case of BoBC3 I attribute big D's success a lot more to ICs and the fact no one knew how to fight them than DDD. His ICs were getting away with free blizzards and squall hammers and people didn't know how to punish them. To be fair, I've lost to ICs. If you don't know the MU they're surprisingly hard to punish.

This is a character backed by multiple high level players, ranked #25 on OrionStats; that’s higher than Pikachu, Pac-Man, Shulk and the Belmonts. To give just one example, Peli is one of the best players in Europe and has seen strong success with near-solo D3.

Orion stats are just one group keeping track. People bring them up like they're an authority on rankings but they skip a lot of weekly and local tournaments. I'm not saying ignore them but take them with a grain of salt.

 

[Wunderwaft]

So Olimar has won 2GG: Prime Saga. What are your thoughts on the character?

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

So Olimar has won 2GG: Prime Saga. What are your thoughts on the character?

He is a top tier, top players don't use him because he is ankward to play and you have more easy top tiers like wolf and lucina.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

So Olimar has won 2GG: Prime Saga. What are your thoughts on the character?

Same as before Prime Saga and one that I've had for a while now. A top tier character with slightly overturned damage output. When you factor in passive damage it's completely normal for him to deal 60% off three hits combined if a pikimin stick. I'd honestly like to see a statistic on how much damage he gets off passive Pikmin damage per game alone I think it would be interesting. The only reason you don't see as much complaining from folks about him is his relative obscurity outside of top level as it takes a top level player to really abuse his ability to get an opponent near 100 off 3 neutral wins.

 

[Frihetsanka]

So Olimar has won 2GG: Prime Saga. What are your thoughts on the character?

One of the best characters in the game but arguably the most hated character and also considered weird/boring to play by many, so you don't see much representation outside of Smash 4 Olimar players.

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

Same as before Prime Saga and one that I've had for a while now. A top tier character with slightly overturned damage output. When you factor in passive damage it's completely normal for him to deal 60% off three hits combined if a pikimin stick. I'd honestly like to see a statistic on how much damage he gets off passive Pikmin damage per game alone I think it would be interesting. The only reason you don't see as much complaining from folks about him is his relative obscurity outside of top level as it takes a top level player to really abuse his ability to get an opponent near 100 off 3 neutral wins.

This doesn't make sense all top tiers are overtuned by default, all of them can do massive damage in 3 or 4 hits, and people do complain about olimar and every top tier for that matter, the difference is that they cicle, if zackray won then you will see people complaining about wolf and how he can kill you at 60.

 

[KirbySquad101]

I already posted my thoughts on the Prime Sage tournament in its respective thread, so I thought I might post them here:

Holy cow, that was quite a rundown; unfortunately, I couldn't see all of the Grand Finals, but from what I can tell, shuton absolutely dominated zackray; while this can be chocked up to 's ridiculousness overall, and while that's true, shuton is an extremely talented player, and he's really looking to be the best Olimar main out here currently.

Anywho, some quick impressions (most of it is pretty sloppy):

- , , and have pretty much cemented themselves as top tier characters, and I may feel they might need to be adjusted a little, though I'm not too certain. To sort of go off on what Gatekeeper said, while Olimar's damage output is ridiculous, Fox's is actually not too far off in terms of silliness; he can easily get about 40-50% damages in about 3-4 hits, and his up smash is borderline ludicrous with how much range and power it has. Again, I'm not saying they should definitely be nerfed, but they might need to later on, and if so, I'd say only small tweaks overall.

- did not perform as well as I had expected, especially with Trela getting knocked out quite early. This was a bit of a bummer, as I do think Ridley's better than people give him credit before, but 49th is still a good placement, especially out of 800+ entrants. also did not do very well either, with Elegant getting knocked out at the same time Trela did; Luigi's polarizing traits are starting to show their ugly sides, though I do have faith Elegant will do better with him.

- Holy guacamole, poor , this tournament was just not for him; I thought he had some really solid reps in the form of Zenyou, MastaMario, and Prodigy, but Zenyou failed to attend, MastaMario couldn't even get out of pools, and Prodigy ultimately got knocked early at 65th. From what I heard, MastaMario's not happy at all with how he did.

Damn I didn’t make it out of pools this was my worst performance yet I probably shouldn’t have played in the condition I’m at eh oh well I still got dubs but man I’m actually really sad

— 💯Mastamario💯 (@Keyblade_Masta) April 14, 2019

That said, Teb did well with Mario overall, placing 17th, and Stroder also brought him up when he needed it as well; based on his tweet, he said he was planning on co-maining and for the future.

- really is starting to show his status as a more polarizing top tier. There are many matches he does well in, in which people cannot answer his grenade shenanigans very well, but some characters like Pikachu and Mr. Game and Watch are a real struggle for him.

-Nicko's definitely proving that is a force to be reckoned with, and scored a pretty strong placing at 13th place. That said, Nairo did show a pretty noticeable weakness of Shulk's that being that his Monado Arts like Smash can also be used against him. Still not sold on him being a top tier, but doing good at a big tourney is most welcome.

- Some nice placements from characters you normally don't see, with Stryker and Ven each placing at 17th with and respectively, as well as Sparg0 placing 25th with , and Zaki placing 25th with . T also did well with at 17th. While he did bring , I noticed that T performed worse with him overall, though I imagine it's because Link is his better character atm.

- scored big with two 13th placements today; Samus is looking more and more at her prime since Melee, having much more dangerous projectiles, as well as very quick and powerful kill options with good reach, like Nair and Bair.

- It's a good day for as Tea managed to reach 5th place, taking out some really big names like Tweek and Dabuz in the progress. Pac-Man is just a really dangerous foe with his strong sets of aerials, disjointed smash attacks, and really tricky projectiles to play around.

- I am starting to become a bit more pessimistic about in the future; I noticed that when Samsora and Light have adjusted to the fear factor that he carried, it was curtains for him. Of course, we need more information in the future about Ganondorf overall, but let's just say that his old wounds from Smash 4 are starting to resurface.

- Quite a lot of upsets, with cookieslayer defeating Gluttony, Mr. R defeating MKLeo, Banana Boy defeating Prodigy, imHip defeating Salem, etc. Just goes to show how many matchups there are to deal with, as well there is quite a lot of challengers out there looking to take big names.

That's all for now; sorry for the sloppy format, but just wanted to get all my thoughts done haha

 

[FruitLoop]

People usually like to assert that Dedede is a bad character and that people just suck at fighting him.

At what point do we make the differential between “hard to fight” and “actually good”?

If everyone is finding this character hard to fight then maybe, just maybe, there’s some substance there.

This is a character backed by multiple high level players, ranked #25 on OrionStats; that’s higher than Pikachu, Pac-Man, Shulk and the Belmonts. To give just one example, Peli is one of the best players in Europe and has seen strong success with near-solo D3.

Everyone’s familiar with D3’s weaknesses but how often does his decent (for a heavy) disadvantage state, excellent range, strong kill power, strong ledge trapping or insane survivability get brought up? The character has a lot of strengths that get ignored since they don’t fit with the narrative of D3 being a meme character that people suck against. There’s elements of truth in there, but it’s hardly the whole story. D3 ain’t no Mac, he’s not a character you should be taking lightly.

tl;dr upper mid tier, don’t sleep on the king

One thing i do want to add regarding the "Hard to fight" vs "actually good" argument is the main attribute of Ultimate being a new game. Most people experience DDD from online when inputs are less precise therefore being knowledgable in the mu is usually not consistent between top level players. DDD is considered a "hard to fight" character mostly due to his unique properties of being an air camper thats hard to kill with range. You mostly have to play a unique game with him and being incapable of fighting under pressure vs the fat penguin or not knowing how to deal with gordo (which ironically nearly no one has actually mastered going against gordo). Due to DDD not being as inherently awful as Smash 4 DDD, he actually isn't always completely a pushover and that kind of makes learning the mu for such a unique char all the more hard as you can't really always apply the same knowledge of the last game to the new game due to DDD's new tricks. However, this doesn't apply towards DDD being "actually good". Due to the game being relatively new and counterplay for a relatively obscure character offline tends to be minimal, also keep in mind that most top level players tend to note that they "suck" against DDD from what I usually hear and that can sort of attribute the idea behind DDD just being a simply hard to fight against character rather than a good character. At the end of the day, DDD in terms of genuine tools still is quite lacking and it'd be quite inevitable that DDD will probably be figured out, sort of like a challenging boss in a game that becomes a pushover once you get enough practice and learn the mechanics.

I did mention my reasons towards why DDD even with his strengths is still far from a great character, but i'll try to sort of re-establish my statements again to get my point across. DDD at the end of the day is simply a character who has an extremely poor gameplan to get the opponent to do what he needs. He's usually supposed to be a defensive character, however he only has one move that can force approaches in the form of gordos which can just be reflected back at far range to actually ironically force DDD to approach even if the opponent doesnt have range or a reflector. The issue with that of course is, DDD has one of the worst approaches in the game. He's slow, has no air speed, and his moves are relatively laggy and can't really deal with shield well. DDD has to pray that the opponent eventually tries approaching DDD after he bursts with a dash and fade backs and F-Tilts as a form of walling but guessing wrong could basically mean taking 80 to the face. DDD's disadvantage isn't nearly as awful as other heavies thanks to his multiple jumps, but he's still a heavy at the end of the day and that practically means that DDD will take 80 before he even gets the chance to jump out (Also DDD still has the worst air speed in the game so a lot of chars can just read his jumps and continue juggling him in certain scenarios) and ironically retreating back to ledge is sometimes problematic for DDD as a method of getting out of disadvantage as he has a poor ability to get out of ledge even with sharking. DDD's Range is great and it could mean that he can stuff approaches, but it gets completely covered by his extremely poor mobility which means that the opponent can actually play a game of "Red Light Green Light" with DDD whenever his fat booty cheeks presses against his hammer even once. I feel a lot of top level players struggle vs DDD due to the fact that they think that consistently approaching DDD is optimal when that really only increases their chance of getting walled and they play a bit too impatient (even high level players have that issue and that's usually something that happens subconsciously which is sort of another reason why I feel like it's more DDD being tough to fight rather than him being good). DDD's kill options are mostly just fishing for relatively unsafe kill move that usually struggle vs shield and usually DDD's late game is him begging the opponent to make the wrong options at ledge which usually can be resolved by of course playing patiently at ledge. DDD only really has jet hammer and the final hit of forward-tilt (I guess gordo depending on timing) to hit below ledge and usually that's more than enough time to tell what you need to do at ledge to get there safely. The fact that DDD has to use gordos for most of his time at ledge and since buffering aerials, sharking, and attack getup destroy gordo and can hit DDD back means that patient play can usually have most players retreat safely and go back to center stage to reset neutral which is something DDD lacks in of course.

DDD does have good attributes and his unique properties are what mostly make him infuriating to play, but he's probably going to end up like K Rool where eventually people learn to play around his gimmicks and he just kind of gets kept out of the wayside of the meta as time goes on. He doesn't really have any real way to force the opponent to always play his game and it seems more of the opponent thinking they have to play DDD's game in order to succeed when it usually is the opposite case. DDD's great properties mostly gets traded off by disadvantages that actually negates half of his properties and the other half of his good attributes are usually negated if the opponent has enough knowledge to either play patient or to work around gordos. He's not an awful character, but i feel like people sort of overrate him to an extent.

 

[Mister M]

For what ever it's worth, DDD is actually quite common online.

He's one of those characters where you have to put some conscious effort into changing your play style, like Krool, peach, megaman or Olimar. The difference between him and Olimar is that people will only get better at blowing him up.

DDD to me seems like he's supposed to corner you with ground options, and then crush you when you've got no where to run. He thrives when you can't retreat, shines when you need the ledge and sings when going deep for edge guards. A little more about the corner, his up air, nair and multiple jumps are actually pretty good at stopping you from jumping over him. Once he's got you in the corner, he can then set up and cover multiple options with 1 or 2 attacks that kill.

Unfortunately, he tends to lose any semblance of stage positioning after hitting shield or worse, whiffing. The only tools helping him get you to the ledge is fear and his survival ability. People will only get better and more consistent at dealing with these.

Inhale actually helps him in achieving his game plan and is a nice mix up for landing. But it's not enough. Gordos (outside of ledge traps) are nothing but a distraction.

If his aerials had as much range as his ground moves so he could retain some safety when landing, he'd be nutty. But begging for buffs is lame.

 

[williamsga555]

Don't want to delve too far into the is Dedede actually good? discussion since I've been out of the competitive realm for quite some time now, BUT I do want to analyze the sort of differences I see in the play of the two best Dedede's (probably) right now: Zaki and Peli. After watching a few of their sets, I've come across some interesting realizations; to make a long story short, Zaki has ridiculously good movement and a smart neutral, Peli typically has better conversions and has more consistently good spacing (though not by a whole lot, both of them are unsurprisingly excellent at making the most of that hammer's space).

First, let's take a look at the recent set between Zaki and Void. I'll be making a general bullet point list of some observations below:

Spoiler

• The biggest takeaway, for me, is how rare Zaki shields. He almost always prefers to reset neutral/avoid danger by foxtrotting away and/or taking to the air afterwards. Pay attention to the first 10 seconds of Game 1. Zaki is constantly respecting Pichu's approach by backing off, challenging his aerial reach, landing, then repeating the cycle. He's fully willing to retreat from one edge of the stage to the other after every neutral exchange.
• Notice how rare it is for Zaki to ever spend more than 1-2 multijumps in the air. This man hates to air camp, preferring to only use those jumps as timing mixups for resetting to the ground. I predicted way back near the beginning of this thread that D3 would develop into a much more ground-based approach in this engine, and Zaki's play is reminiscent of this idea (although I was definitely wrong about the importance of his grounded pokes, he still prefers his aerials on the whole).
• Zaki has a tendency to flub some relatively straightforward conversions at times, which is surprising for a player of his caliber. Pay attention to Void's 2nd stock in Game 2. Zaki misses three different true conversions:
  • 5:46 -he gets the gordo-hitlag into grab, but misses the down throw→fair by accidentally buffering a shorthop variant
  • 6:15 -he gets falling nair, but goes for a bair followup at too low of a percent. Ideally should've followed with a sweetspot nair or baited airdodge→dtilt left for stage control
  • 7:00 -he once again gets falling nair, but gets greedy with another bair followup (this time with Pichu at too high of a percent). Up air would've definitely been the better decision, and might have taken the stock (though I'm a little dubious, it would've been close!)

These seem pretty nit-picky, but in fairness, Zaki is otherwise an incredible player, so it's a bit surprising to see these kinds of whiffs (especially with a character like Dedede, who depends heavily on executing his setups when they arrive since his neutral is pretty suspect).​

• I know I mentioned that this was about Zaki and Peli, but something I noticed actually relates to Big D: Zaki doesn't seem nearly as willing to chase offstage and harass with the threat of fair. Big D has made a killing with run-off FF fair in this game, but Zaki always seems hesitant to chase below the ledge. Maybe he values corner pressure and/or finds Pichu's recovery too difficult to intercept to make it worthwhile?
• Man, falling nair→buffered dtilt is a smooth option, and Zaki's got the timing of it nailed down. In general, Zaki gets a lot of mileage out of buffered inputs directly after AC windows, which certainly makes D3 look way less sluggish in general. Seems obvious, I know, but how many other D3 players are consistently pulling these windows off this frequently?
• Zaki has a healthy balance between nair/fair/bair in neutral. Many D3 players (including me, unfortunately) tend to rely on bair too often. I think this may be a holdover from Smash 4, where fair was a garbage neutral option, but now is fairly passable thanks to an improved hitbox and the universal landing lag improvements across the engine.

Basically, Zaki gets mileage from having a smart, non-committal neutral that emphasizes ground movement over air camping and a lot of buffed options to disguise D3's inherent frame data problems. His shortcomings are in an inconsistent punish game and surprisingly timid offstage pressure (although that might have just been because of the Pichu matchup).

Right, for our second set, let's look at Peli vs Akashic.

Spoiler

• Early on, we can see that Peli is much more prone to shielding often. There's a brief moment of corner pressure at 1:00 where Peli has stage control but opts to bait for a shield punish, which Akashic takes advantage of by simply jumping over to center stage. The problem is that D3 doesn't have a particularly good answer to either instant dash attack OR SH bair from Greninja in that situation, so the choices are basically to bait with shield (which Peli did), or retreat to maintain center stage (which, I imagine, is probably what Zaki would've chosen). Neither option is particularly good, but D3 can't really do corner pressure against characters with instant burst options (like Greninja).
• Despite having less fluid movement and relying on shield more, Peli comes off as more agressive than Zaki. He's very opportunistic, even when in disadvantage, as shown at 1:05-1:16. He's kissing the blastzone with Greninja attempting to get a final fair off, and yet he still goes for the gordo toss anyway. Worked well!
• He has pretty immaculate spacing on the ledge. 2:15's setup is more or less ideal -gordo to cover anything attempting to bypass ledge, ftilt to cover any option not named getup attack or regrab. He was able to put himself at this distance without a whole lot of direct forethought either...again, Peli is opportunistic as hell.
• Again, Peli is showing to be quite masterful in ledge pressure. 4:50 demonstrates another excellent trap, thanks to perfect Gordo spacing to cover both getup attack and holding ledge.
• In Game 2, Peli demonstrates his consistent punish game by successfully converting all three down throws (including a pretty difficult DI chase at 6:18, really good timing + spacing with the jumping fair).
• In both games, he tends to rely on Gordo a bit too often in neutral, especially at inopportune spacing situations. Even Greninja's horrible OOS game was still able to punish him several times because blocked Gordo is just not even remotely safe.
• Peli, much like Zaki, tends to hate air camping, and also rarely ever utilizes his jumps simply to camp out. His ability to switch between air and ground isn't quite as smooth as Zaki's, but he does a better job of shifting between the two states than most D3's (including myself).

Basically, Peli gets mileage from having a strong punish game with excellent ledgetrapping. He's able to maximize D3's damage often and generally knows when to take risks for the stock. His shortcomings are in an overly shield-heavy and gordo-heavy neutral that leads to him struggling to capture stage control for most of the match.

So what do these two playstyles say about Dedede as a meta-relevant character? Not a whole lot, to be honest, as both of these came from losing sets, but there's some good theory here about how Dedede should be handled going forward:

1. Dedede should not be air camping much. Both players have a glaring pattern of almost never using more than 2 jumps in the air above stage -it eats too much air time and hinders D3's lateral mobility too much.
2. Fair needs to be utilized more than in the past. It's still not a great move, but it's far removed from the dumpster fire it was in 4. As a bonus, it helps keep bair fresh and meaty, to an extent.
3. Buffered options (namely dtilt and retreating dash) out of AC windows are a necessity. That's not to say they should be used every time, per se, but all D3 players need to reach Zaki's level of consistency with the timing to really push this character. Otherwise, it's too easy to pressure him from whiffed/misspaced nairs -as lagless as nair is, the startup on every grounded option is too high to waste any time letting the landing animation play through.
4. Use dtilt more and jab less. This one might just be a note to myself, tbh.
5. Most importantly, get away from a grab-centered gameplan. In Smash 4, Dedede relied extensively on shieldgrab to get things going. He still gets pretty decent reward on grabs from low-mid percents, but the universal loss in effectiveness of shield grabbing makes that old gameplan much more tiring than it needs to be. Neutral should be based around spaced aerials and punishing overzealous OOS options from opponents who overestimate the landing lag of said aerials.

I think Zaki's play right now is the closest to a likely-ideal D3. If you could combine his command of D3's movement and neutral options with Peli and Big D's advantage states, you'd probably wind up with the best possible D3 in Ultimate...maybe.

 

[ARISTOS]

Yeah I'm bored so I'm starting another fire.

I think Sheik is bottom 10. I said this once and got kicked around a bit but I'm going to stick to my guns here. Sheik's biggest thing in Smash 4 was her godlike neutral. She could simply do whatever the hell she wanted for the most part because almost everything was safe.

Fastfoward to this game and you'll see that it is harder to find characters with horrid neutrals than there are characters with options in the neutral. Smash 4 Sheik feels like a character who would fit in nicely with every other character in Ultimate, but she wouldn't be top tier.

The engine in Ultimate does Sheik no favors. The neutral is much less defensive from Smash 4 due to the overall nerf of airdodges and shields, to the reintroduction of directional airdodges. Sheik is an insanely defensive character in nature, because she has everything to lose from a neutral interaction with minimal reward for winning one. Less hitstun ruins her.

The character simply doesn't do enough damage to be considered viable at all in this game. Her combos are gutted strings compared to 4. Honestly, her moves have more issues connecting than characters who do more damage per hit. It doesn't matter how fast you are, or how you can come back to the stage with seemingly no problem, she just cannot do anything with winning the neutral. Winning the neutral usually grants you some sort of competitive advantage, but with Sheik you have to essentially win the neutral several times over your opponent to be equal with them.

Tier Lists are based on this: if two players of equal, optimal skill are against each other, who has the highest odds of winning? Simply put, playing Sheik requires a slight neutral advantage with the expectation that you need to be oppressive the entire match to have a close game. Sheik players come across to me as able to outplay their opponent for 2 minutes at a time, and then everything falls apart because their opponent landed two Fairs.

Finally getting your opponent to kill percent is another struggle altogether. Now what? Sheik may not "struggle to kill" in the standard sense, but her kill options are among the most irritating and skill reliant to set up.

There's a reason why Void dropped her: he's made numerous videos on it. The character comes across as not nearly as safe as the previous game, with much less reward for everything, with worse confirms. She's a horrid, handicapped player and I would make the argument that nearly any character, minus the worst of the worst, is a better character than Sheik.

I truly hope she is buffed.

Don't know who said it prior, but neutral is tied to reward in advantage-the better your reward is, the more threatening everything that leads to that reward is.

had a "lackluster" neutral (maybe compared to Sheik/Diddy, but everyone else? lmao) but because the options she did have were just so scary, you had to walk on eggshells and take less risks in pushing to win advantage, This means less buttons, less grabs, which opens up opportunities for the Bayo player.

The opposite is true now; with her reward neutered, players can now swing much more with impunity against , lessening her neutral advantage. The same thing has happened to

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

This doesn't make sense all top tiers are overtuned by default, all of them can do massive damage in 3 or 4 hits, and people do complain about olimar and every top tier for that matter, the difference is that they cicle, if zackray won then you will see people complaining about wolf and how he can kill you at 60.

People do complain about Wolf's ability to kill at 60 lol. Twoframe down smash with a generous hitbox that will blastzone (note not gimp) at 50 is ridiculous I don't care how you slice it, not a complaint just stating facts lol.

Anyways regarding Olimar, which top tiers compare to his damage output per interaction? Fox? Atleast with Fox in order to get those 50-70% strings off there is a lot of player vs player interactions inbetween each hit. Fox isn't guaranteed to get that much damage each time he hits the opponent with a dash attack at zero and Fox always puts himself at some form of risk to approach opponents to attempt to start those strings.

Lucina doesn't, Pichu has counterplay being discovered to escape their loops and has the distinct disadvantage of self damage, the lightest character in the game by a margin and little range. There are fewer players vs player interactions once Peach gets started so she's comparable but that may have to do with of her not being affected by the shorthop damage modifier was intentional or not.

I like to refer to this clip when I state that Olimar's damage output may be a bit overturned. In the course of three hits Fox went from 2 to 75 with passive Pikmin damage added on. He could had avoided the last hit that sent him over 80 but was understandably trying to get Pikmin off him which ultimately got him punished. Had he not taken the last Up air the Pikmin would had probably added another 6-10% before it would had been safer for Fox to toss it off him. This clip isn't a one time thing either you can see this occur throughout the weekend. https://mobile.twitter.com/dabuzsenpai/status/1097336005449957378

 

[Lacrimosa]

Does Wolf even 2 frame the opponent? I don't know where I found it or if it was even a video, but I think they said that Wolf's dSmash reaches far below so that he can punish characters that are not in the 2frame-animation, yet. I could be wrong, though.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

I like to refer to this clip when I state that Olimar's damage output may be a bit overturned. In the course of three hits Fox went from 2 to 75 with passive Pikmin damage added on. He could had avoided the last hit that sent him over 80 but was understandably trying to get Pikmin off him which ultimately got him punished. Had he not taken the last Up air the Pikmin would had probably added another 6-10% before it would had been safer for Fox to toss it off him. This clip isn't a one time thing either you can see this occur throughout the weekend. https://mobile.twitter.com/dabuzsenpai/status/1097336005449957378

That is an awful lot of damage. A lot of it is the passive damage from the Pikmin. I think the issue here is that the Pikmin damage is designed with the assumption that Olimar does most of his damage with attrition, but we can see that he also functions well in a rushdown capacity, which means that his passive damage is only adding to his damage output in rushdown situations. I'm inclined to agree that his damage is overtuned, but I also think that perhaps his rushdown is too good and his zoning should be more of a focus.

With that said, I welcome a top tier Olimar. It's nice to see a character that is more zoning oriented at the top too, if only to give us a little variety. I wish characters like Samus and Robin were more relevant too, but eh, whaddayagonnado

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Interesting while did not have that good a showing ay Prime Saga. Nietono did win a prettt well-stacked. Japaon tourament Sumbamoto with the little electric rat. So it was not like it was a bad preformance this week in the slightest

I feel bascially the "gatekeepers" between high and top-tier im this game.

They have proven to be very, very strong and effectivr. But it feels they have notable shortcomings that keep them just a bit below the top-tiers.

Also a pretty solid showing for Superheavies at Prime saga with Stryker. (17th) Zaki (25th) and Magister (33rd).

But He has had maybe the weakest results out of any superheavy besides depsite being consideres the best of them after everyone realized K.Rool obviously was not...

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Interesting while did not have that good a showing ay Prime Saga. Nietono did win a prettt well-stacked. Japaon tourament Sumbamoto with the little electric rat. So it was not like it was a bad week for Pichu at all.

I feel bascially the "gatekeepers" between high and top-tier im this game.

They have proven to be very, very strong and effectivr. But it feels they have notable shortcomings that keep them just a bit below the top-tiers

This is classic Snake. It's very easy to make an argument that he's overrated and will fall off because his weaknesses are so easily identified and exploited, but what makes him strong is that he can be everywhere and convert from anywhere. His weaknesses are obvious but he gives a good player so much to work with, because his tools are so powerful and flexible. I don't see Snake ever falling out of top tier unless he's nerfed, but I also see this thread continuing to ask why he's there all the time.

 

[Sean²]

Does Wolf even 2 frame the opponent? I don't know where I found it or if it was even a video, but I think they said that Wolf's dSmash reaches far below so that he can punish characters that are not in the 2frame-animation, yet. I could be wrong, though.

99% of the down smashes I get at the ledge are due to it either hitting below the ledge, or because I caught a recovery option before they even get to the ledge, e.g. Fox and Falco side B. A lot of edge kills you see from dsmash from other players are this way as well. Probably 99% of the 2 frames I get are from ftilt or dtilt.

Basically, if they try to hug the stage while recovering on a stage like BF or SV, there's a certain spot where they'll get caught by the hitbox no matter what, unless they have a recovery move that also goes through the stage, but outranges and/or overpowers the dsmash hitbox. Ironically, the only one I can think of that might do so, off the top of my head, is Wolf's up B.

Honestly, I do have my opinions about strong, safe attacks that hit underneath the stage, e.g. a lot of down airs/spikes. So if they remove dsmash's ability to go underneath the ledge in a future patch, I probably won't be too upset. Knockback should probably not be messed with though, as it's part of the "pattern" with how the space animals were designed to function. Considering everyone wants Wolf's dsmash KB to be nerfed...to keep the pattern true to form, I think they'd almost have to nerf the other spacies' strongest smashes as well. I think the main issue is the direction the move sends you in comparison to the other spacies. Fox's sends you straight up, so if you DI to the corner blastzones, you can technically survive longer. Wolf's sends you at that disgusting angle toward the side blastzone, which makes the ways you can DI it very limited.

- really is starting to show his status as a more polarizing top tier. There are many matches he does well in, in which people cannot answer his grenade shenanigans very well, but some characters like Pikachu and Mr. Game and Watch are a real struggle for him.

I think saying he's anything but top tier at this point is nearly silly. Fans of the zoner archetype are flocking to him in droves. I'd say unless buffs/nerfs occur to him, he'll remain a solid top tier. But he may be one of the more likely characters to fall out of it as time goes on.

 

[Rizen]

IDK how anyone can say isn't top tier. Look at his results for Prime Saga (or most any tournament). Ally got 5th with him solo and he's all over the top 64. Furthermore look at his tools. Nikita is just plain stupid. F3 jab and F6 Utilt that kills around 100%. He's heavy with an above average recovery. Dthrow leads to tech chases and Utilt is guaranteed after 160%. All that on top of being the best trap character in the game. Snake's crazy.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

IDK how anyone can say isn't top tier. Look at his results for Prime Saga (or most any tournament). Ally got 5th with him solo and he's all over the top 64. Furthermore look at his tools. Nikita is just plain stupid. F3 jab and F6 Utilt that kills around 100%. He's heavy with an above average recovery. Dthrow leads to tech chases and Utilt is guaranteed after 160%. All that on top of being the best trap character in the game. Snake's crazy.

It's because his recovery is sort of exploitable. It's been his primary flaw since Brawl. It's hard to "gimp" him per se but you can deal a LOT of damage to him while he's recovering. It does hurt him and it's not really deniable, but it doesn't hurt him THAT badly because Snake lives until like 200% and can force trades really easily. I think a lot of players who haven't seen a lot of Snake in Brawl or even PM don't understand that Snake doesn't really care that much about taking damage or being juggled. It's a weakness for sure, but you can make a gameplan around and account for the damage you take.

Snake fell out of favor a little bit in the Brawl days as people learned to exploit this stuff, but he was never out of top tier, and still isn't. And to be honest, he's not really worse in this game.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I am not saying Snake is not very good. He likely loses to very few characters. But the ones he does lose to he seems to REALLY lose to. Light vs Ally set at Prime Saga showed that Fox is one of those MU. He can right up in Snakes face with little trouble and bascailly turn him into a ragdoll in the air

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Snake likely loses to very few characters. But the ones he does lose to he seems to REALLY lose to. being examples. G&W can just bucket gernades and nikita. Fox can just rush right in Snakes face and basically ragdoll him in the air

Snake lost to a few characters in Brawl too (MK, ZSS, Pikachu, Fox, that sort of thing), but he'd still manage to have success vs them because his kit is so bursty and surprising that a smart player can overcome matchups that are bad on paper.

Again, Snake is special. His win state is different because avoiding damage isn't really part of his typical gameplan. You can juggle him for days and it'll look like he's losing and then he hits you with two ftilts and a grenade and you're at uptilt % or C4->uair %.

Snake is really really good.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Speaking of , Ally posted a matchup chart for him a few days ago:

This is my current Snake MU chart. Some could be +0.5 or -0.5. This is based off of what I've played/seen. Remember this is my opinion and doesn't mean I'm correct on everything. pic.twitter.com/50bUp6BbJh

— Ally (@AllyUltimate) April 9, 2019

Note: is supposed to be in the even category, Ally just placed him wrong there.

Some thoughts:

- It looks like a pretty accurate match-up chart for the most part; I'd personally put in the +1 category, he pretty much has everything that makes an exercise in patience for Snake plus an annoying projectile to deal with.

- and strike me as the most confusing, both seem too slow mobility-wise to get around Snake's trapping capabilities and Ike doesn't have a projectile to contest him either. I could be missing something as I don't know these characters very well.

- is also a very bad matchup for Snake in Ally's opinion. I don't know Mega Man very well, so if someone could fill me on this match-up, that would be pretty cool.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Matchup for Snake in Ally's opinion. I don't know Mega Man very well, so if someone could fill me on this match-up, that would be pretty cool.

Wonder how much of this has to do with Megaman Up Air.

 

[Click5]

Speaking of , Ally posted a matchup chart for him a few days ago:

This is my current Snake MU chart. Some could be +0.5 or -0.5. This is based off of what I've played/seen. Remember this is my opinion and doesn't mean I'm correct on everything. pic.twitter.com/50bUp6BbJh

— Ally (@AllyUltimate) April 9, 2019

Note: is supposed to be in the even category, Ally just placed him wrong there.

Some thoughts:

- It looks like a pretty accurate match-up chart for the most part; I'd personally put in the +1 category, he pretty much has everything that makes an exercise in patience for Snake plus an annoying projectile to deal with.

- and strike me as the most confusing, both seem too slow mobility-wise to get around Snake's trapping capabilities and Ike doesn't have a projectile to contest him either. I could be missing something as I don't know these characters very well.

- is also a very bad matchup for Snake in Ally's opinion. I don't know Mega Man very well, so if someone could fill me on this match-up, that would be pretty cool.

Lemons cause snake to drop grenades. Thrown Leaf Shield flies through all Snakes projectiles. Up air to kill Snake when he tries to land after cipher. Crash Bomber trades with Nikita off stage...

Mega Man is a weird aggro zoner/rushdown character in Ultimate, but if someone wants to camp against him he will make them pay.

 

[meleebrawler]

Speaking of , Ally posted a matchup chart for him a few days ago:

This is my current Snake MU chart. Some could be +0.5 or -0.5. This is based off of what I've played/seen. Remember this is my opinion and doesn't mean I'm correct on everything. pic.twitter.com/50bUp6BbJh

— Ally (@AllyUltimate) April 9, 2019

Note: is supposed to be in the even category, Ally just placed him wrong there.

Some thoughts:

- It looks like a pretty accurate match-up chart for the most part; I'd personally put in the +1 category, he pretty much has everything that makes an exercise in patience for Snake plus an annoying projectile to deal with.

- and strike me as the most confusing, both seem too slow mobility-wise to get around Snake's trapping capabilities and Ike doesn't have a projectile to contest him either. I could be missing something as I don't know these characters very well.

- is also a very bad matchup for Snake in Ally's opinion. I don't know Mega Man very well, so if someone could fill me on this match-up, that would be pretty cool.

Ivysaur doesn't really need to approach when his leaves cut right through all of Snake's projectiles.

 

[Augi]

Speaking of , Ally posted a matchup chart for him a few days ago:

This is my current Snake MU chart. Some could be +0.5 or -0.5. This is based off of what I've played/seen. Remember this is my opinion and doesn't mean I'm correct on everything. pic.twitter.com/50bUp6BbJh

— Ally (@AllyUltimate) April 9, 2019

Note: is supposed to be in the even category, Ally just placed him wrong there.

Some thoughts:

- It looks like a pretty accurate match-up chart for the most part; I'd personally put in the +1 category, he pretty much has everything that makes an exercise in patience for Snake plus an annoying projectile to deal with.

- and strike me as the most confusing, both seem too slow mobility-wise to get around Snake's trapping capabilities and Ike doesn't have a projectile to contest him either. I could be missing something as I don't know these characters very well.

- is also a very bad matchup for Snake in Ally's opinion. I don't know Mega Man very well, so if someone could fill me on this match-up, that would be pretty cool.

I appreciate Zelda at least being listed as a neutral matchup.

But between Nayrus "get-off-me"/reflection and her own zoning options that bypass or neutralize his, I'd say she may have a slight advantage over Snake... not to mention if they clash in CQC Zelda will usually win-out because of her magic sparkles.

But that's just this posters opinion. I'm no pro.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

- and strike me as the most confusing, both seem too slow mobility-wise to get around Snake's trapping capabilities and Ike doesn't have a projectile to contest him either. I could be missing something as I don't know these characters very well.

Speaking for Ike (and a lot probably applies to Ivy): massive disjointed range means that he can smack Snake while he's holding a grenade and not get blown up. Even if he does get blown up, he's equal in weight to Snake so Snake can't try to use a weight advantage with grenade damage trading to get an edge throughout the fight. Ike also hits like a truck, overall a bit harder than Snake does. Also has enough power to really punish Snake for needing to recover, knocking him off of his cypher.

In terms of movement, the two are roughly speaking even, which means Snake isn't going to easily dance around Ike's blade once he gets in. Also Snake has no real easy way to try to stuff out Ike's Nair and is combo food (and if he gets a grenade out he's back to the "may not actually hit Ike and if it does Snake doesn't get an advantage via weight" issues from before).

On the flip side: yeah Ike is taking some damage trying to get in, and the missile really messes with Aether. And if he gets in too close Snake's jab is going to stuff out Ike's ground options, plus if he gets predictable and mistimes his Nair he's eating a Utilt to the face. But if Ike stays just outside of Snake's melee range while being too close to really try to use projectiles/grenades, Snake's in for a struggle.