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Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

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Rizen

Smash Legend
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I don't have anything to add about Lucario other than he feels underwhelming.
One thing that's confused me recently is the placement of Duck Hunt on tier lists. Now back in the EVO 2019 days most people had him in high-tier since Raito had some amazing results but it seems after that the character has only been going lower and lower. I can see why, as Raito is definitely the only player carrying Duck Hunt's meta right now (imo every other top Duck Hunt like Vintendo, Wisdom, Paint aren't really top level and will rarely get the results at majors like Raito has) and even his results aren't as consistent as they used to be. Duck Hunt as a character seems very inconsistent in a game where most characters have crazy kill options and his best way of taking stocks is either walling the opponent to 160% or more, or getting a good Up-Air or Smash Attack read. That flaw coupled with his light weight and meh disadvantage state definitely hurts DHD, but I also don't get why players are putting them as far as low-tier given his past results which clearly show that DHD can thrive still, but needs an immense amount of effort to do so. Imo he seems like a good high mid-tier, can do great in certain matchups and has some nice top-tier ones like Peach, but generally takes too much effort for the inconsistent reward. He's always a treat to watch, at the very least.

also Smash 4 Lucario was most definitely high-tier at least but that's the past, and in the now, Lucario sucks ass.
IMO if one player is getting significantly better results than everyone else they're probably an outlier and it says more about their skill than the character. Duckhunt is one of a handful of characters this applies to. If you look at top tiers like Wolf or Snake, they have proven to get results even if a top player drops them. On the other hand I also agree with Mr.R's point from a while ago that MKLeo could not get results with Ganon or bad characters. A character's peak does have some value in saying they're at least "Good" and this applies to Ike and G&W. But I think neither of them are top tier material due to my first point. As for DH, I agree he falls into mid tier with the other characters who have an outlier top player getting results with them like Rosa (Debuz) and Luigi (Elegant).

tl;dr Duckhunt has the tools for success but there's a difference in how good DH is and how good Raito's DH is.

Does anyone really want Lucario to be good? His various nerfs, buffs and tweaks in the transition to Ultimate haven't changed the fact that his design is fundamentally the most idiotic in the game by a significant margin.
:ulthero: says "hi".
 

L9999

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I don't have anything to add about Lucario other than he feels underwhelming.

IMO if one player is getting significantly better results than everyone else they're probably an outlier and it says more about their skill than the character. Duckhunt is one of a handful of characters this applies to. If you look at top tiers like Wolf or Snake, they have proven to get results even if a top player drops them. On the other hand I also agree with Mr.R's point from a while ago that MKLeo could not get results with Ganon or bad characters. A character's peak does have some value in saying they're at least "Good" and this applies to Ike and G&W. But I think neither of them are top tier material due to my first point. As for DH, I agree he falls into mid tier with the other characters who have an outlier top player getting results with them like Rosa (Debuz) and Luigi (Elegant).

tl;dr Duckhunt has the tools for success but there's a difference in how good DH is and how good Raito's DH is.


:ulthero: says "hi".
Still in denial Mr Game and Watch is a top tier character?
 

Rizen

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Still in denial Mr Game and Watch is a top tier character?
If :ultgnw: is top tier, why isn't :ultpacman:? Tea has gotten very similar results to Maester, although slightly worse. The 2 characters are basically in the same position: backed by a top 10 player but not common outside of their results. Pac meets the same criteria as G&W for a top tier yet no one's saying Pac's top tier.

If you want to talk about denial, let's talk about :ultrob:. He's number 1 on Orion stats and popping up in top 8s everywhere. And still I see him put and entire tier below Shulk and Pikachu, who are often in top tier. When are people going to wake up and smell the overwhelming evidence ROB's top tier? ROB's the new Palutena in that sense.
 

Nathan Richardson

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If :ultgnw: is top tier, why isn't :ultpacman:? Tea has gotten very similar results to Maester, although slightly worse. The 2 characters are basically in the same position: backed by a top 10 player but not common outside of their results. Pac meets the same criteria as G&W for a top tier yet no one's saying Pac's top tier.

If you want to talk about denial, let's talk about :ultrob:. He's number 1 on Orion stats and popping up in top 8s everywhere. And still I see him put and entire tier below Shulk and Pikachu, who are often in top tier. When are people going to wake up and smell the overwhelming evidence ROB's top tier? ROB's the new Palutena in that sense.
When characters like pokemon trainer stop exploiting his honestly god awful recovery. Any hitbox causes his upb to lose fuel. He's effortlessly edgeguarded by the likes of PT's CHARIZARD, who if taken by itself is only midtier at best! Characters with easily exploited disadvantage states are not exactly well regarded.
 

L9999

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If :ultgnw: is top tier, why isn't :ultpacman:? Tea has gotten very similar results to Maester, although slightly worse. The 2 characters are basically in the same position: backed by a top 10 player but not common outside of their results. Pac meets the same criteria as G&W for a top tier yet no one's saying Pac's top tier.

If you want to talk about denial, let's talk about :ultrob:. He's number 1 on Orion stats and popping up in top 8s everywhere. And still I see him put and entire tier below Shulk and Pikachu, who are often in top tier. When are people going to wake up and smell the overwhelming evidence ROB's top tier? ROB's the new Palutena in that sense.
Stop focusing on results only, look at their MUs. Look at their toolkits. Look at their "unfair" traits. One clearly is better than the other.
 

Ziodyne 21

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I think people still overblow R.O.B's
disadvantage . Yeah it's not great when he finds himself being comboed. But it's not like he is completely scrap in disavantsge. He can stall with his up-b off and onstage and he has 2 projectil many other options to try and land or grab the ledge.

People really got to let to of the stigma that characters cannot be top-tier if they have a weakness in one area or attribute that top-tiers had thought the history of Smash games

If :ultpalutena: can be Top-tier with no good Oos options' :ultshulk: Top-tier with overall poor frame-data' :ultfox: be Top-tier with an exploitable recovery. Then :ultrob: has some kind of shot of being Top-tier with a less than ideal disadvantage state
 
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Rizen

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Stop focusing on results only, look at their MUs. Look at their toolkits. Look at their "unfair" traits. One clearly is better than the other.
People need to start focusing on results because you can make any character look top tier if you build them up in your head. Orion stats are better than any individual tier list.

And you're not really saying anything besides "G&W's top tier because I said so". But I reiterate: there are outliers. One player doing really well is not enough to make a top tier. Even with Maester, a top 3 player imo, G&W's 16th on Orion stats and without Maester his results would plummet just like Ike's.

In terms of tools, G&W has great rewards for making reads and Maester's one of the best at reads. Ftilt and Dtilt do not have good hitboxes for KO moves and Dsmash needs to be sweetspotted to bury. But Maester has the spacing down. I've watched him and it's like he knows what the opponent will do. He makes G&W's flaws seem less prevalent in ways no other player has. On paper, G&W should lose to most swordies, like he has in every game.
There's a reason why no one else has had anywhere near Maester's level of success. Why you very rarely seem him in results besides Maester. If you look at top tiers; they're everywhere. Every tournament I've seen, the top 32s are littered with Palutenas, ROBs, Snakes, Wolfs... it's no secret who the top tiers are. G&W does not give any player the tools a top tier does. You have to be really good to make him work. I've tried picking him up. He rewards making good calls but he doesn't have the easiest tools to do it. It is very hard to play around swords with much better hitboxes. His advantage state isn't free like some characters. He's a very position based attacker. He lacks the freedom of big sweeping hitboxes.

AS a counterpoint I'm also learning ZSS. I suck with her but can still win because her buttons are stupid good. f1 jab beats everything up close, flip kick is well flip kick. IDK who's bright idea it was to give her a huge Uair. Her control of space is absurd.
 

NotLiquid

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Even if you want to prescribe to the notion that results are everything, there's some strange whataboutism going on with Mr. Game & Watch's results that also assumes a whole lot of his representation. Maister isn't the only one who's been making waves with the character. At a regional level, Regi has placed exceptionally well in a lot of Mexican majors. Japan also has a lot of G&W players, most notably Zackray who plays the character as one of his many secondaries.

I've mentioned before that OrionStats' ranking is less important in its absolutes and more important in its trends. Game & Watch's 16th placement on the current OrionStats doesn't look impressive when taken in a vacuum, but he ended the first season of tracking being as low as 35th. That's an insane jump. No other top tier contender has had such an exponential rise with the exception of Joker, who released at the tail end of the first phase. What's more, G&W has largely managed to do this without a lot of significant buffs. If you want any character that's the UR example of the notion that a character's "hidden potential" has been tapped into at some point during the evolution of the meta; G&W is your guy. Even his current 16th placement right now is subject to a lot of statistical noise since he rests at a particular point range where he's barely out of reach from characters like Inkling, Lucina and Mario; two of which are characters that have experienced slight downtrends.

If you are a stickler for results, then G&W isn't the character you should be looking at to support your point. A better example of a character who is truly carried by only one person right now is Pikachu, who's largely been on a flatline; even trending downward in the recent phase and being in the low 30s. Granted, this was before Cosmos decided to give maining him a shot and before the quarantine busted everyone's chops, but the important part is more so who is bothering picking the character up, and whether you want to admit it or not, G&W does have strong representation.
If :ultgnw: is top tier, why isn't :ultpacman:? Tea has gotten very similar results to Maester, although slightly worse. The 2 characters are basically in the same position: backed by a top 10 player but not common outside of their results. Pac meets the same criteria as G&W for a top tier yet no one's saying Pac's top tier.
A lot of people have argued he's at the borderline, actually.
 
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Nobie

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"This is online" caveat, but it looks like Mew2King is trying to go G&W for recent tournaments. Maybe he'll finally find a main (probably not).

I think G&W is perhaps a high tier who is brought up to top tier by being a potent anti-meta character. A lot of the top tiers are used to being able to throw out very safe aerials (a common theme in Smash in general), and G&W just poops all over that. The one absolute top tier that does well against G&W is Palutena, while the others (Shulk, Lucina) are arguably high tier or top tier and not all that common, and other impressively disjointed characters like Chrom who give G&W trouble are also marred by poor off-stage recoveries that G&W can exploit.
 

Nemesis561

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People need to start focusing on results because you can make any character look top tier if you build them up in your head. Orion stats are better than any individual tier list.

And you're not really saying anything besides "G&W's top tier because I said so". But I reiterate: there are outliers. One player doing really well is not enough to make a top tier. Even with Maester, a top 3 player imo, G&W's 16th on Orion stats and without Maester his results would plummet just like Ike's.

In terms of tools, G&W has great rewards for making reads and Maester's one of the best at reads. Ftilt and Dtilt do not have good hitboxes for KO moves and Dsmash needs to be sweetspotted to bury. But Maester has the spacing down. I've watched him and it's like he knows what the opponent will do. He makes G&W's flaws seem less prevalent in ways no other player has. On paper, G&W should lose to most swordies, like he has in every game.
There's a reason why no one else has had anywhere near Maester's level of success. Why you very rarely seem him in results besides Maester. If you look at top tiers; they're everywhere. Every tournament I've seen, the top 32s are littered with Palutenas, ROBs, Snakes, Wolfs... it's no secret who the top tiers are. G&W does not give any player the tools a top tier does. You have to be really good to make him work. I've tried picking him up. He rewards making good calls but he doesn't have the easiest tools to do it. It is very hard to play around swords with much better hitboxes. His advantage state isn't free like some characters. He's a very position based attacker. He lacks the freedom of big sweeping hitboxes.

AS a counterpoint I'm also learning ZSS. I suck with her but can still win because her buttons are stupid good. f1 jab beats everything up close, flip kick is well flip kick. IDK who's bright idea it was to give her a huge Uair. Her control of space is absurd.
Just because he isn't top tier in the traditional sense that you know doesn't make him not a top tier. You have to play him with a different mindset, he doesn't have the greatest approach game and huge hitboxes, yes thats correct. His strengths lie elsewhere.

Also saying his advantage state isn't free is hilarious. If you land a nair or grab at low percent your opponent takes a ton of percent very easily. And if you hit with up B the nair/up air combos are easy bake. So I have no idea what you're referring to.
 

Diddy Kong

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Does anyone really want Lucario to be good? His various nerfs, buffs and tweaks in the transition to Ultimate haven't changed the fact that his design is fundamentally the most idiotic in the game by a significant margin.

Let him languish at the bottom of the tier list. I'd honestly rather buff Mac.
This.

@ Lucario: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GeNey4E7wBU

Why didn't they just redesign him into a character that functions with 50-75% Aura? That would be a good reason to have these bad artibutes on his design.
 
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VodkaHaze

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Does anyone really want Lucario to be good? His various nerfs, buffs and tweaks in the transition to Ultimate haven't changed the fact that his design is fundamentally the most idiotic in the game by a significant margin.

Let him languish at the bottom of the tier list. I'd honestly rather buff Mac.
Trust me, if people are still demanding that Marth ought to be buffed, despite him being good in Melee, Brawl and 4 (albeit the latter due to updated buffs), as well as many top players having arguably a varied and inconsistent view on how good he is, and even having a viable echo fighter, don't be surprised if people want any character buffed. Hey, I wouldn't even be surprised if people want top tiers buffed and low tiers nerfed.

Also, you think Lucario is the most idiotically designed character, but Little Mac can lose solely via platform camping and has the worst aerials, arguably the worst recovery, and a lacklustre grab game. Not to mention people would hate a buffed Little Mac because if you hate losing to Lucario at high aura, you're probably going to hate losing to KO Punch.
 

Lacrimosa

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Does anyone really want Lucario to be good? His various nerfs, buffs and tweaks in the transition to Ultimate haven't changed the fact that his design is fundamentally the most idiotic in the game by a significant margin.

Let him languish at the bottom of the tier list. I'd honestly rather buff Mac.
I don't want ZSS to be good because my char hates the MU and she's quite annoying.
So yes, I want characters to be good, even if they may be unpopular with a lot of people. Prime example is Sonic.
 

MrGameguycolor

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Does anyone really want Lucario to be good? His various nerfs, buffs and tweaks in the transition to Ultimate haven't changed the fact that his design is fundamentally the most idiotic in the game by a significant margin.

Let him languish at the bottom of the tier list. I'd honestly rather buff Mac.
Not that I agree with this statement at all, but it's in a similar vein to why some players don't want viable superheavies.

Even if those players have the advantage 9 times out of 10, they just hate the idea of dying early but are fine with losing to swords and getting combo to death by little guys since they've been conditioned to this for years of competitive Smash.


Also, Lucario is fine.
He's the black sheep of the week.
 
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The_Bookworm

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If :ultgnw: is top tier, why isn't :ultpacman:? Tea has gotten very similar results to Maester, although slightly worse. The 2 characters are basically in the same position: backed by a top 10 player but not common outside of their results. Pac meets the same criteria as G&W for a top tier yet no one's saying Pac's top tier.
Tea's results with Pac-Man, while pretty good, is not as top class as Maister's results.
Tea's results reaches at the #11-25 area, while Maister is straight up a top 10 player in terms of results, even coming close to the top 5 spot.
 

KirbySquad101

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"This is online" caveat, but it looks like Mew2King is trying to go G&W for recent tournaments. Maybe he'll finally find a main (probably not).

I think G&W is perhaps a high tier who is brought up to top tier by being a potent anti-meta character. A lot of the top tiers are used to being able to throw out very safe aerials (a common theme in Smash in general), and G&W just poops all over that. The one absolute top tier that does well against G&W is Palutena, while the others (Shulk, Lucina) are arguably high tier or top tier and not all that common, and other impressively disjointed characters like Chrom who give G&W trouble are also marred by poor off-stage recoveries that G&W can exploit.
For what it's worth, Mew2King's used G&W in Squad Strike at Frostbite, where he did surprisingly well overall, placing 4th I IIRC. Here's some footage of his G&W in action:


That said, I agree that I can't probably see Mew2King maining G&W, at least in the long run anyway. Not to rag on Mew2King, he is an extremely talented player. But this is also the same guy who's said neither :ultwolf: or :ultlucina: - 2 characters he's happened to main before - are top tier characters, and has been extremely adamant on :ultcloud: - his main from SSB4 - being a bad character. :ultgnw: might be a different case, given that he listed him as a top tier, but even that opinion seemed to be heavily swayed by Salem's insistence that he is.
 
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The_Bookworm

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Btw, Pound Online is going on right now, and pretty much all the top online players are here and counting for.

Melee is already at the top 8, but Ultimate has just started pools not too long ago.

Any predictions?
 

Hydreigonfan01

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Btw, Pound Online is going on right now, and pretty much all the top online players are here and counting for.

Melee is already at the top 8, but Ultimate has just started pools not too long ago.

Any predictions?
Kola, Sparg0 and BestNess all get in top 8 as expected.
 

Ziodyne 21

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Biggest thing that happens so far at Pound was Maister was uoset in pools by a :ultcloud: player named Chino.

Nairo is claiming he is going to all random this tournament . Fu we were all discussing :ultlucario: a while ago as ANTi is soloing him
 
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Rizen

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Even if you want to prescribe to the notion that results are everything, there's some strange whataboutism going on with Mr. Game & Watch's results that also assumes a whole lot of his representation. Maister isn't the only one who's been making waves with the character. At a regional level, Regi has placed exceptionally well in a lot of Mexican majors. Japan also has a lot of G&W players, most notably Zackray who plays the character as one of his many secondaries.

I've mentioned before that OrionStats' ranking is less important in its absolutes and more important in its trends. Game & Watch's 16th placement on the current OrionStats doesn't look impressive when taken in a vacuum, but he ended the first season of tracking being as low as 35th. That's an insane jump. No other top tier contender has had such an exponential rise with the exception of Joker, who released at the tail end of the first phase. What's more, G&W has largely managed to do this without a lot of significant buffs. If you want any character that's the UR example of the notion that a character's "hidden potential" has been tapped into at some point during the evolution of the meta; G&W is your guy. Even his current 16th placement right now is subject to a lot of statistical noise since he rests at a particular point range where he's barely out of reach from characters like Inkling, Lucina and Mario; two of which are characters that have experienced slight downtrends.

If you are a stickler for results, then G&W isn't the character you should be looking at to support your point. A better example of a character who is truly carried by only one person right now is Pikachu, who's largely been on a flatline; even trending downward in the recent phase and being in the low 30s. Granted, this was before Cosmos decided to give maining him a shot and before the quarantine busted everyone's chops, but the important part is more so who is bothering picking the character up, and whether you want to admit it or not, G&W does have strong representation.


A lot of people have argued he's at the borderline, actually.
Excluding Maister's results, G&W would have mid tier results at best. Regional results and the rare times Zackray has used him as a secondary have added very few points. Nowhere near top tier results. You could argue a lot of characters get results on a regional level, like K.Rool in Australia. G&W's jump in results mirrors Maister's. Maister has carried the character up several places.
Tea's results with Pac-Man, while pretty good, is not as top class as Maister's results.
Tea's results reaches at the #11-25 area, while Maister is straight up a top 10 player in terms of results, even coming close to the top 5 spot.
I'm pretty sure Tea was ranked a top 10 player but can't look that up.
 

Hydreigonfan01

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Excluding Maister's results, G&W would have mid tier results at best. Regional results and the rare times Zackray has used him as a secondary have added very few points. Nowhere near top tier results. You could argue a lot of characters get results on a regional level, like K.Rool in Australia. G&W's jump in results mirrors Maister's. Maister has carried the character up several places.

I'm pretty sure Tea was ranked a top 10 player but can't look that up.
He was #12 on the Fall PGR
 

NotLiquid

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Excluding Maister's results, G&W would have mid tier results at best.
I'm glad we're all in agreement with the sentiment that excluding the results of a character's best player does, in fact, mean a character has less results. Tune in next week when we find out that Joker is mid-tier because we need to exclude MKLeo's results.
 
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Rizen

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I'm glad we're all in agreement with the sentiment that excluding the results of a character's best player does, in fact, mean a character has less results. Tune in next week when we find out that Joker is mid-tier because we need to exclude MKLeo's results.
Except that's not true. Like real top tiers Joker has a ton of representation at all levels. It's like I said with Wolf and Snake, top tiers can lose their best rep and still get results.
 
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NotLiquid

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Except that's not true. Like real top tiers Joker has a ton of representation at all levels. It's like I said with Wolf and Snake, top tiers can lose their best rep and still get results.
It's quaint that you bring this chart up now when up until this point and even on this page you've been singing the praises of OrionStats as the one metric to look at - the same one that currently sees G&W as 16th out of 76. That's some prime confirmation bias in effect.

Thank you for showing me this chart so that I also know now that Link is top tier and also Wario is carried by Glutonny.
 
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PK Bash

Smash Apprentice
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Jan 26, 2016
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Excluding Maister's results, G&W would have mid tier results at best. Regional results and the rare times Zackray has used him as a secondary have added very few points. Nowhere near top tier results. You could argue a lot of characters get results on a regional level, like K.Rool in Australia. G&W's jump in results mirrors Maister's. Maister has carried the character up several places
Not to rag on you, I appreciate your contributions here, but if you follow this logic to its conclusion then nobody can put forward interesting hypotheses about characters that don't have many results. There's 80 characters in this game dude and the top 10 players aren't each playing 8 unique characters.

You made an excellent point earlier that "anyone can big up any character in their head" and yeah, this is true and I think almost everyone I've seen in this thread over the years has proven guilty of that, including me. This is something that could do with improvement, but focusing too intently on results is not the way to go about this - though this information is, of course, extremely valuable. Ultimately, as in any academic debate, we are all biased no matter how much we try not to be - the good discussion emerges when conflicting biases are pit against each other, and the two lenses overlap to give us a much broader view then we could ever hope to see alone.
 

L9999

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Excluding Maister's results, G&W would have mid tier results at best. Regional results and the rare times Zackray has used him as a secondary have added very few points. Nowhere near top tier results. You could argue a lot of characters get results on a regional level, like K.Rool in Australia. G&W's jump in results mirrors Maister's. Maister has carried the character up several places.

I'm pretty sure Tea was ranked a top 10 player but can't look that up.
No ****, if you exclude some results you would make any character look bad, it is all hypothetical and a fallacy. But lets play along this "logic." MK Leo has won multiple majors with :ultjoker:, he has shown that Joker has a lot of dumb buttons in his toolkit. If we removed MK Leo from the equation would Joker drop? Of course, because Joker players are not as skilled as Leo, but we have more than enough proof that Joker's toolkit has desirable traits for competitive play. Lets not give browny points to the other Joker players for participation, they are insects compared to Leo.

In real life it happened to :ultsnake:, his peak results are not as good as when Ally was around. Ally understood the character so much that he threw away matches with nobody noticing. Yet Snake was and is still considered to be up there despite not as many peak results as majors as he used to.

Now lets use your favorite character to hold this absurd narrative, :ultike:. If you payed attention, he was getting called out for his flaws very early in the meta. MK Leo and many top players were already catching on Ike's trash disadvantage state and very limiting amount of tools in neutral, even if Leo won majors. Other players got good and were already giving Leo trouble. Those flaws are why Leo dropped the character.

:ultgnw: on the other hand was called garbage during the Ike meta, then Maister got gud and started topping events. Between his rise and the present players have had all the time in the world to look for weaknesses in his gameplan, and even with the adaptations GnW continues to top. If a character can be resilient to so much adaptation it can mean a few things, one is being good.

"But mah results, and Pac-Man."

He has a frame 3 Up B that denies pressure. You know how many characters struggle with :ultpeach: floating near them? Mr Game and Watch doesn't give a single ****. Very few characters can genuinely bait or punish GnW for Up B OoS.

Bucket alone demands you to play differently against Mr Game and Watch, even he doesn't use it often it is a looming threat that interferes projectile spacing and approaching. :ultwolf::ultsnake: :ultrob: have to think more than usual because GnW can use some of their best tools against them, and these are good characters.

Uair is a great juggling tool very few characters can respond to and not be punished for it. :ultfox: shine'd it! If it didn't hit GnW tho he will get hit again and we are back to square 1. If you don't escape Uair right you get Nair'd, and we are back to Uair or another Nair. In every Maister match and even Regi match the opponent takes a lot of damage then moment they get Dthrown or sent upwards.

DSmash is dumb because it has very little endlag. Yes, it is a read, but if he does it there is little to no punishment. If you attempt to punish it you might get hit and say goodbye to your stock.

"But he has the spacing down but I don't"


Have you have ever thought Maister has the spacing down because he actually knows his character inside out and is like, good at the game? Yeah, foreign concept. Allow me to take your wall of text and hit "replace text at some parts."

":jigglypuffmelee: has great rewards for making reads, and Hungrybox is one of the best at reads. Rest doesn't have good hitbox for a KO move, and can be punished if it doesn't star KO. But Hungrybox has the spacing down. I've watched him and it's like he knows what the opponent will do. He makes Jigglypuff's flaws seem less prevalent in ways no other player has. On paper, Jigglypuff should lose to most big hitboxes, like she has in every game.

There's a reason why no one else has had anywhere near Hungrybox's level of success. Why you very rarely seem him in results besides Jigglypuff. If you look at top tiers; they're everywhere. Every tournament I've seen, the top 32s are littered with Fox, Marth, Falco.. it's no secret who the top tiers are. Jigglypuff does not give any player the tools a top tier does. You have to be really good to make him work. I've tried picking her up. He rewards making good calls but he doesn't have the easiest tools to do it. It is very hard to play around swords with much better hitboxes. Her advantage state isn't free like some characters. She's a very position based attacker. She lacks the freedom of big sweeping hitboxes."

Why is Jiggs then considered to be top tier even though only Hungrybox has major success with her? Entirely toolkit and traits. There is more than enough proof that Jiggs has the capacity to top 4 and win majors. Jiggs MUs has been explored again and again for more than 10 years over and over. You think, if Jiggs is so good why does nobody else picks her up? So many players pick :icsmelee: because they can cheese wins with wobbling yet don't pick Jiggs who is better than ICs. Jiggs require a special talent to play her, she is unlike anything else in Melee. Hungrybox taps into the full potential of Jigglypuff, because he understands the character to an extreme degree and he has the talent to perform it. Getting Rest on rolls is not a piece of cake, Hungrybox makes it look easy, as if he were blindfolded. And he does it to top players, not scrubs at locals.

There is no written law a top tier needs to have lots of representation. It is the case most of the time but it is not a law.
 
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AxelVDP

Smash Apprentice
Joined
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Messages
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Sorry in advance for this useless post of mine but I simply find it funny that with G&W (and Joker, etc) you can't take away their top players performances when looking at results, while with Pikachu it's totally fine to do so.
(yes yes, it's not necessarily the same users making those posts + there are other reasons aswell, but still, it's funny)

(edit: to avoid misunderstandings though I do agree with what the poster above me said)
 
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Ziodyne 21

Smash Lord
Joined
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Messages
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8Bitman :ultrob:2-0 MKLeo :ultbyleth:.

I would wonder why MKLeo went Byelth as the R.O.B MU is very bad for him.

But with Nairo going all random, Gluttony going solo :ultdk:again . It's safe to say many pro players are not taking Pound all-too seriously
 

Rizen

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It's quaint that you bring this chart up now when up until this point and even on this page you've been singing the praises of OrionStats as the one metric to look at - the same one that currently sees G&W as 16th out of 76. That's some prime confirmation bias in effect.

Thank you for showing me this chart so that I also know now that Link is top tier and also Wario is carried by Glutonny.
What you're saying makes 0 sense and I'm done with this conversation.
Not to rag on you, I appreciate your contributions here, but if you follow this logic to its conclusion then nobody can put forward interesting hypotheses about characters that don't have many results. There's 80 characters in this game dude and the top 10 players aren't each playing 8 unique characters.

You made an excellent point earlier that "anyone can big up any character in their head" and yeah, this is true and I think almost everyone I've seen in this thread over the years has proven guilty of that, including me. This is something that could do with improvement, but focusing too intently on results is not the way to go about this - though this information is, of course, extremely valuable. Ultimately, as in any academic debate, we are all biased no matter how much we try not to be - the good discussion emerges when conflicting biases are pit against each other, and the two lenses overlap to give us a much broader view then we could ever hope to see alone.
I agree but top tiers especially need to be held to higher standards than lower characters. Like I've said the cream rises to the top; if a character is top tier they will get results. People want to win and gravitate to the best characters. This is basically my point about ROB; ROB is winning everywhere. Hypotheses are fine but if they continuously don't match results it's time to revise them.
No ****, if you exclude some results you would make any character look bad, it is all hypothetical and a fallacy. But lets play along this "logic." MK Leo has won multiple majors with :ultjoker:, he has shown that Joker has a lot of dumb buttons in his toolkit. If we removed MK Leo from the equation would Joker drop? Of course, because Joker players are not as skilled as Leo, but we have more than enough proof that Joker's toolkit has desirable traits for competitive play. Lets not give browny points to the other Joker players for participation, they are insects compared to Leo.

In real life it happened to :ultsnake:, his peak results are not as good as when Ally was around. Ally understood the character so much that he threw away matches with nobody noticing. Yet Snake was and is still considered to be up there despite not as many peak results as majors as he used to.

Now lets use your favorite character to hold this absurd narrative, :ultike:. If you payed attention, he was getting called out for his flaws very early in the meta. MK Leo and many top players were already catching on Ike's trash disadvantage state and very limiting amount of tools in neutral, even if Leo won majors. Other players got good and were already giving Leo trouble. Those flaws are why Leo dropped the character.

:ultgnw: on the other hand was called garbage during the Ike meta, then Maister got gud and started topping events. Between his rise and the present players have had all the time in the world to look for weaknesses in his gameplan, and even with the adaptations GnW continues to top. If a character can be resilient to so much adaptation it can mean a few things, one is being good.

"But mah results, and Pac-Man."

He has a frame 3 Up B that denies pressure. You know how many characters struggle with :ultpeach: floating near them? Mr Game and Watch doesn't give a single ****. Very few characters can genuinely bait or punish GnW for Up B OoS.

Bucket alone demands you to play differently against Mr Game and Watch, even he doesn't use it often it is a looming threat that interferes projectile spacing and approaching. :ultwolf::ultsnake: :ultrob: have to think more than usual because GnW can use some of their best tools against them, and these are good characters.

Uair is a great juggling tool very few characters can respond to and not be punished for it. :ultfox: shine'd it! If it didn't hit GnW tho he will get hit again and we are back to square 1. If you don't escape Uair right you get Nair'd, and we are back to Uair or another Nair. In every Maister match and even Regi match the opponent takes a lot of damage then moment they get Dthrown or sent upwards.

DSmash is dumb because it has very little endlag. Yes, it is a read, but if he does it there is little to no punishment. If you attempt to punish it you might get hit and say goodbye to your stock.

"But he has the spacing down but I don't"


Have you have ever thought Maister has the spacing down because he actually knows his character inside out and is like, good at the game? Yeah, foreign concept. Allow me to take your wall of text and hit "replace text at some parts."



There is no written law a top tier needs to have lots of representation. It is the case most of the time but it is not a law.
If MKLeo was dropped from the equation Joker would still get top tier results. It may have been true leo carried joker at first but he's picked up a lot of rep and stood the test of time.

First of all, no one's saying Ike is top tier. Leo and Mars found greener pastures with Joker and ZSS respectively so he dropped. That does not mean Ike is suddenly a bad character nor does it mean Ike was ever a top tier.

G&W has good tools for the Peach MU. Characters with swords or projectiles can safely pressure G&W without his upB hitting them. I do agree G&W has one of the best disadvantage states in the game but other characters have good OoS options too, like Samus. There are several MUs where you simply do not touch their shield. It can be played around.

Bucket is a good tool and even better vs energy. I've said in the past G&W is an anti-meta character because it and upB but characters with physical projectiles can play around it. I've played the MU with YL and like all reflectors it's an annoyance, not a counter to him. Swords don't care at all.

Uair has a narrow hitbox that can be dodged to the side. It's alright but things like Palu's Uair are much better.

I don't play Melee, IDC about Melee and I'm not talking about Melee.

There's no "written law" for anything about smash character viability but like I said to PK, the cream rises to the top and people gravitate to good characters because they want to win. As much as I criticize ESAM, he is doing exactly what he should; playing pika in tournaments to prove he's top tier. I'm going to tell you the same thing Link players have been saying since brawl when people said "Link's a good character you just need to get gud": If you think G&W is a top tier, play him in a tournament and see how far you get. Maybe you'll be like Maister and everything will fall into place or maybe you'll find there are better characters (like Palutena)- like most player have found.
 

The_Bookworm

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Messages
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Epic_Gabriel:ultrob: 2-1 BestNess:ultness:

Things are turning out differently from last weekend it seems.
 
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Ziodyne 21

Smash Lord
Joined
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Messages
1,681
Epic_Gabriel:ultrob: 2-1 BestNess:ultness:

Things are turning out differently from last weekend it seems.
Just..so..many, R.O.B's. I think like every 2nd streamed match is with the robot . Never mind the Cloud rising during Wifi tournaments . The robot uprising has now begun
 
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Hydreigonfan01

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Joined
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Messages
4,307
Just..so..many, R.O.B's. I think like every 2nd streamed match is with the robot . Never mind the Cloud rising during Wifi tournaments . The robot uprising has now begun
I feel like the robot uprising was beginning before wifi too, but even so ROB seems to be even better on it, I always thought the gyro setups would be more difficult with input lag but I guess not.
 

L9999

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What you're saying makes 0 sense and I'm done with this conversation.

I agree but top tiers especially need to be held to higher standards than lower characters. Like I've said the cream rises to the top; if a character is top tier they will get results. People want to win and gravitate to the best characters. This is basically my point about ROB; ROB is winning everywhere. Hypotheses are fine but if they continuously don't match results it's time to revise them.

If MKLeo was dropped from the equation Joker would still get top tier results. It may have been true leo carried joker at first but he's picked up a lot of rep and stood the test of time.

First of all, no one's saying Ike is top tier. Leo and Mars found greener pastures with Joker and ZSS respectively so he dropped. That does not mean Ike is suddenly a bad character nor does it mean Ike was ever a top tier.

G&W has good tools for the Peach MU. Characters with swords or projectiles can safely pressure G&W without his upB hitting them. I do agree G&W has one of the best disadvantage states in the game but other characters have good OoS options too, like Samus. There are several MUs where you simply do not touch their shield. It can be played around.

Bucket is a good tool and even better vs energy. I've said in the past G&W is an anti-meta character because it and upB but characters with physical projectiles can play around it. I've played the MU with YL and like all reflectors it's an annoyance, not a counter to him. Swords don't care at all.

Uair has a narrow hitbox that can be dodged to the side. It's alright but things like Palu's Uair are much better.

I don't play Melee, IDC about Melee and I'm not talking about Melee.

There's no "written law" for anything about smash character viability but like I said to PK, the cream rises to the top and people gravitate to good characters because they want to win. As much as I criticize ESAM, he is doing exactly what he should; playing pika in tournaments to prove he's top tier. I'm going to tell you the same thing Link players have been saying since brawl when people said "Link's a good character you just need to get gud": If you think G&W is a top tier, play him in a tournament and see how far you get. Maybe you'll be like Maister and everything will fall into place or maybe you'll find there are better characters (like Palutena)- like most player have found.
So you just ignored everything that makes your bull**** argument fall apart? Nice you can be reasoned with. Btw, Maister does exactly what ESAM does, and he does it better. Just admit that you hate Mr Game and Watch and stop spitting contradictory bull**** and spitting fallacies.
 
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ZephyrZ

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Just admit that you hate Mr Game and Watch and stop spitting contradictory bull**** and spitting fallacies.
Ad hominen is a fallacy to, you know.

I'm not taking a side is debate, but you've got to realize its not worth getting this heated over.
 

Hydreigonfan01

Smash Master
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Guys, maybe we should all just take a chill pill so the thread doesn't get locked. This is getting heated for some reason.
 

Rizen

Smash Legend
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So you just ignored everything that makes your bull**** argument fall apart? Nice you can be reasoned with. Btw, Maister does exactly what ESAM does, and he does it better. Just admit that you hate Mr Game and Watch and stop spitting contradictory bull**** and spitting fallacies.
I don't mind having disagreements on this thread and will gladly explain my point of view but this kind of post is what's dragging the thread's quality down. Ignored.


Anyway I've talked about G&W for a full day and there's not really anything else to say so I'm moving on.
 

ZephyrZ

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Now here's an interesting piece of tech that's been flying under the radar.

I'm excited to start practicing this one. :ultivysaur: feels like a winner here since her pivot and dash grabs come out of the same frame, and she can use every bit of safety she can get. I already fish for pivot grabs a lot with her as is.

What other characters do you guys think might benefit from this? DK and Bowser are some of the first to come to my mind. Luigi to, thanks to his insane grab combos.
 

MrGameguycolor

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What other characters do you guys think might benefit from this? DK and Bowser are some of the first to come to my mind. Luigi, thanks to his insane grab combos.
-:ultkrool: has basically the same pivot grab as :ultbowser:, so the Kroc can thrive off it.

-:ultkirby: can replace his diving headfirst grab with this, along with M2's.

-:ultmario:, :ultdoc:, :ultfalco:, :ultlucario:, :ultpalutena:, :ultcorrinf:, & :ultinkling: 's are quite disjointed, so they'll get some mileage.

-:ultcloud:, :ultganondorf:, & :ultlittlemac: still stink.


EDIT:
welp :ultzelda: got buffed again...
 
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