Speaking of
, the character in relation to his SSB4 appearance is also a bit of an anomaly.
On one hand, the character seems like a complete direct upgrade from his SSB4 appearance (and was seen as that in the early metagame), thanks to receiving a lot of useful buffs that patch some of his most glaring flaws from the previous game, and seemingly brings back traits from Brawl MK (albeit to a far less extreme degree).
His jab now frame 4 (as opposed to frame 7), the vast majority of his multi-hit moves has received adjustments that allows it to better connect, the vast majority of his sword moves in general received bigger hitboxes that increase their reach and cover many blindspots (down tilt is the biggest example), all of his aerials received large landing lag drops (moreso than any other character), and both his Tornado and Drill Rush are more useful overall.
Then there is his punish game.
was dash attack: the character, and
was dash grab (and up air): the character.
was both dash attack and dash grab: the character, and both moves got nerfed in Ultimate. He relied on those moves a lot in SSB4, not only because his other options were not too great, but also because it let his powerful lattering punish game. His entire metagame revolved around latter combos, and public option on him even reached to the point of potential top tier (prior to 1.1.5) despite possessing so many other problems.
Now despite latter combos being nerfed in Ultimate and his main two moves in Ultimate getting nerfed, he still retains some of his strengths, and there is the plethora of buffs that patches up his biggest weak points in SSB4.
We have seen
get away with not having the single centralizing move to spam anymore, due to having a far more consistent moveset and their weaknesses being patched up.
Why isn't this the case for MK?
From what I can see, it has to do with his natural low damage output not translating very well in Ultimate.
Sheik suffered for this for the longest time (granted that she also got direct damage nerfs and weight nerfs in the transition to Ultimate).
KO power can be finicky without edgeguarding and latter combos as well, as a few of his multi-hits, most notably up smash, still has some issues connecting into eachother.
In a nutshell, Ultimate MK trades a weaker punish game for a stronger neutral game in the transition.
However, there is still lingering questions on my mind on why Ult MK is seen as a strictly inferior character.
A lot of weaknesses people in this thread pointed out about, such as juggling and getting off the ledge, are weaknesses he suffered arguably even harder in SSB4, and he manages to be a relatively successful character in that game.
Any thoughts/ideas why?
Metaknight's disadvantage is really bad - while he has Dimensional Cape as a way to warp out of bad situations and can recover from pretty much anything his air speed leaves him combo and juggle food against a lot of the cast. When you're a light, low DPS character, this ends up hurting him a lot in trade off situations.
Ultimate MK's airspeed isn't actually too bad, being the 45th fastest airspeed in the game, which is about average, but he has the liberty of having multiple jumps and Dimensional Camp to aid him. This airspeed is actually faster relative to the rest of the cast than in SSB4 (his airspeed was 35th out of 58 in SSB4).
Characters like YLink and Pikachu manages to get away with far worse airspeed, being 62nd and 63rd, respectively.
A good number of characters have solid KO options, but Waft is practically a stock-stealer! I believe, more than any other singular move in the game, Wario's Waft can really turn the tide of battle... And it's not just the move, itself, but rather its integration within the context of Wario's kit as a whole, how it can fairly reliably be utilized w/ the proper patience and setup.
