Here is my analysis on Steve. Remember, Sakurai did say that the footage used is still relatively early in development.
Something to note: we have very little information on the character's damage output. I think this is important specifically for the basic sword swipe attacks.
Standard Buttons:
Jab / Forward Tilt / Neutral Air (Sword): The standard sword swipe.
- Comes out on frame 4, which is average for a sword jab, but very fast for a neutral air. It is pretty fast, to the point where you can essentially machine gun this move, and can be used in the air. It has limited reach, but Steve runs quickly doing this.
- However, it seems to have very little hitstun, and I doubt this move is really worth wasting resources on in higher percents unless it is a get-off-me-tool. This an interesting move to look at when the character drops.
Forward Smash (Sword): Comes out on frame 12. Seems pretty strong in terms of KO power. I do see with this move and normal sword swings, is that they seem to be vulnerable to low profiling, so that is something to note.
Ledge Get-Up Attack (Sword): I am personally worried about this move, as there may be a chance that we are going to get a pre-patch Banjo situation, in which the move whiffs on opponents inside of Steve, as Steve is put a good amount of distance before swiping.
Get-Up Attack (Sword): Steve does seem to have a pretty good get-up attack with speed and reach.
Up Tilt / Up Air (Axe): The standard axe swipe.
- Comes out on frame 6 and has little endlag.
- As an up tilt, this move is pretty good. It combos easily into itself and up smash in low percents, and has amazing coverage over Steve. This may be an important tool for him, especially due to his laughably weak jump height.
- As an up air, I am rather mixed. It is very fast with good horizontal reach, and its speed makes it easy to land laglessly. However, the move in lower power levels seems very weak and the move has very limited vertical reach.
Dash Attack (Axe): A running pickaxe attack that comes out on frame 8 and propels Steve very far forward. It does some endlag, so this move seems to be punishable especially by quick OoS options.
Forward Air / Back Air (Pickaxe): A pickaxe swipe on the according direction.
- Forward air comes out in frame 8, while back air comes out in frame 12.
- Forward air is a meteor smash in a similar vein to Mario. The reveal trailer does show that forward air does have considerable landing lag. In comparison to Mario's, Steve's forward air is much faster in startup and endlag, although Mario does have his combo routes into it.
- Back air is simply a dummy strong KO option, emphasis on it coming out on the slow frame 12. Back air seems to have about 18 frames of landing lag, which is pretty laggy. You can full hop aerial and recover fast enough to land laglessly, so that is useful to know.
- Both, especially forward air, seem to be both useful options, especially in a full hop.
- However, both of them having very high landing lag does limit them quite a bit, in a similar vein to Hero's aerials. At least Steve's aerials have significantly less startup and endlag than Hero's, so Steve has that going for him.
Forward Air / Back Air (Sword): If he uses his standard sword attack, and then doesn't leave enough window to do a forward air / back air (pickaxe), he will use a sword in that direction instead. It seems to be simply the pickaxe versions but with more of the normal sword swing properties. It will be faster than the pickaxe versions, but much less potent when it hits.
Up smash (Magma Block): Steve places a magma block above him, then breaks it after some time, with the breaking hit being the launcher.
- It comes out on frame 8. For reference, Mario's up smash comes out on frame 9.
- This move is very fast in startup for an up smash, lingers for a really long time, and covers the area directly above Steve better than almost every other up smash in the game. He can also combo up tilt into up smash, mimicking Olimar's up smash shenanigans.
- However, while the move technically has very low endlag, the duration is so high that it leaves Steve vulnerable for a very long time. The move, at least according to the presentation, looks very weak for an up smash.
- Still, this moves seems very useful as an anti-air and combo finisher, as well as covering the platforms due to Steve's weak first jump height. However, it is very specialized move.
Down smash (Lava Bucket): Steve deploys two pools of lava next to him. It comes out on frame 9, and the second pool of lava appears on frame 27 (18 frames after the first lava pool). The first pool of lava expires before the second pool of lava is deployed. It is quick for its range, and it sends at a disgusting launch angle for edgeguards. Overall, a pretty good down smash.
Down tilt (Flint & Steel): Steve uses his Flint & Steel to produce a small fire pillar.
- It comes out in frame 12, with the flame pillar reaching it's apex at frame 14. The flame is affected by gravity.
- The move is rather slow for a tilt and Steve will be stuck in lag during most of the flame pillar duration.
- It also seems like it has a blindspot on front of Steve, so using this up close is a bad idea.
- That being said, it has good range, and combined with Anvil and Create Block, this move can a deadly piece in Steve's edgeguarding and ledgetrapping games.
- Be noted that the move duration isn't nearly as long as PK Fire or Arcfire.
Down air (Anvil): Steve falls when riding on anvil.
- This move consumes one piece of iron.
- The anvil is deployed on frame 12, and begins falling at frame 17.
- The sheer speed and power of the anvil is astounding, and most importantly, Steve can jump out of the anvil partway through as long as he has a midair jump. The anvil then lingers afterwards like Pac-Man's Hydrant.
- This is a deadly tool for both edgeguarding and landing.
- All this power comes from the usage of iron, so if you don't have any, he has no down air. This is still a very useful tool, and worth consuming iron for in the right situations.
Grab (Fishing Rod): Steve uses a fishing rod.
- It is similar to Isabelle's, except it is a true grab instead of a hit grab, so it doesn't have the crippling weakness of being shieldable. It may not have quite as much range as Isabelle's, but it much faster in startup (frame 13 vs frame 21) while still covering a good amount of range.
- It comes out on frame 13, which is pretty good considering how much range the move has. For reference, Lucas', YLink's, and TLink's grab is frame 12, with only about half the range as Steve's. It can also snipe opponents in the air thanks to its trajectory.
- This could be a strong contender for the best tether grab in the game. This is what Isabelle's grab should've been.
Forward Throw (Piston) / Down Throw (Anvil): None of his KO throws seems notable, at least until we see which percent they KO at.
- His forward throw, at the very least, launches in a semi-spike angle without DI.
- His down throw is immediately his most notable throw, as it seems to be a pretty good combo throw, which is getting rare these days. Since it uses the anvil, it does consume one piece of iron, but the anvil-less version does still seem to combo, so that is pretty good. Only damage is sacrificed without the anvil.
Side special (Minecart): Steve deploys a minecart, hops on it, then repeatedly places rails on front of him to move himself forward.
- The cart requires iron to make, while each part of the rails uses up the other materials (starting with the least valuable to the most).
- The minecart hitbox becomes active on frame 18.
- Steve can stay in the cart for as long as he can, and can jump out of it at any time after he starts moving.
- He has access to the powered rail. With gold and redstone at Steve's disposal, he can go instantly fast at any time, decreasing reaction time while boosting it's power.
- The cart has difficulty going up slopes and slides on the ground to a halt without any rails. The cart then lingers afterwards.
- By jumping out of the cart, Steve can trap opponents inside for a follow-up or to roll them offstage. We don't know exactly how easy it is to escape out of the cart, but the footage shows that it is fairly easy to escape. When the cart is by itself, you can hit it to make it disappear.
- In terms of overall utility, it can be nice tool to catch opponents off-guard, especially with the powered rails, but I think it consumes too much material to be overly useful, although it has its place in his moveset.
Up special (Elytra): Steve equips himself with the Elytra, then uses a firework rocket to zoom with the sky.
- The firework rocket ignites on frame 20, before Steve moves.
- This move is functionally similar to Brawl's gliding, but the Elytra breaks down with time, so it is much more limited than Brawl's gliding.
- Landing on the stage while the Elytra is still active endures approximately 23 frames of landing lag. Not a crazy amount of lag, but enough for it to be readily punishable.
- The move also has an upwards variation where he travels a decent distance upwards.
- The move has a hitbox only at the beginning when the firework rocket ignites.
- This seems like an incredibly versatile recovery tool. It is currently unknown the precise amount of durability it has.
Down special (TNT): Steve uses wood or stone to place a TNT block on front of him.
- It takes a long time before it detonates by itself, but explodes as you hit it.
- It explodes almost instantaneously when hit with fire.
- It hits both Steve and the opponent, and the explosion is very powerful.
- Steve can use redstone by holding down special in order to create a circuit, then put a pressure plate to explode it instantaneously. The one who presses the pressure plate will take less knockback, and it can be placed right next to the TNT box to create a trap.
- It is an overall pretty good tool for pressure, traps, and ledgetrapping.
Upgrade / Block Mechanic:
Crafting Table (Craft): The crafting table is spawned instantly at the start of the match, and it technically is in the background. Using neutral special on the ground next to a crafting table will interact with it, allowing Steve to use collected materials to upgrade his weapons.
- Hitting it will eventually break it apart, although it takes only about 5 seconds for another one to respawn.
- As this is a tool to repair and upgrade basic tools, this is an essential move.
- However, the sauce of this move comes in the fact that you can summon it to Steve's position anytime by shield + special, like with Inkling's recharge ink. This is huge! With the ability to summon it to your position, it forces the opponent to approach Steve, or else he will be free to upgrade/repair his basic tools. It, alongside Create Block, also halts camping, as the opponent cannot hold position on the crafting table to bait Steve into approaching.
Neutral special (Mine): This is where Steve uses a shovel, axe, or pickaxe to mine the terrain on front of him. You can still mine without a weapon, but it will decrease your mining speed.
- The speed in which you mine is determined by the terrain, with the order from fastest to slowest being dirt > wood > stone > iron. As such, mining from a purely iron surface isn't always the best tactic, as it will drain your resources more quickly.
- What you get from mining is completely pre-determined, and it solely depends on the surface mined. After the whole Hero dilemma the first month he was released, it seems that Nintendo is trying their best to limit/remove RNG. We have some idea on what we get off of mining, but we will wait till the character gets released for a definite list.
- On a side note, THANK THE DEV TEAM for making each Battlefield/Omega stage yield the same mine results. We just dodged a bullet in terms of Battlefield/Omega stage inconsistencies.
Neutral special (Create Block): Now this move is where all the sauce happens. Steve places a block below him.
- The block in question breaks overtime, and can be broken via hitting it or jumping under it (we playing Super Mario Bros here). The durability of the block depends on material used, with higher staged materials being more durable (unless it is gold).
- The move will eat up the resources from the least valuable blocks to the most. This means that you must use up all your resources in order to reach the blocks
- This move has some nasty applications, with offstage being the nastiest. It can block opponents from certain recovery angles, especially if the recovery in question lacks a decent hitbox and/or puts you into freefall. However, Steve can also attack as if grounded when on top of a block. Conversely, the opponent can do that too, but the blocks don't really last that long for the opponent to take advantage of this.
- However, the true nastiness of the move comes from above. This move may singlehandely give Steve the best disadvantage in the game. When you are above, you can place a block to mixup your landing and stall out, then you have numerous mixups (like using Anvil). You can also use this move to support your recovery, which paired with Elytra, gives Steve a potentially strong recovery, unless you are launched too far away from the stage.
- There is a limit to how far within the stage boundaries you can place a block, and the blocks touching the boundary breaks very quickly.
- It is currently unknown if standing on the block will give your double jump back.
- Standing perfectly still on the block will allow the block to eat up projectiles, unless the projectile does not hit the block at all.
- I personally don't think assembling a wall with this move will be that good, given how the process of building a wall of blocks is, as well as simply it burning up your resources quickly.
- This is overall an incredible tool to their arsenal. I think the move is a bit more limited than some people claims, at least offensively, but it is amazing defensively as a recovery and landing mixup, and may make Steve's disadvantage state strong.
- Something to very important to note: Sakurai himself says "I don't know if it'll go that easily in the final product, but at any rate you can see the possibilities." This seems to be a move very susceptible to change from the build they are showing, so the potency of the move may change at the final release. At the very least, this move looks promising.
Material Gauge: The meter above Steve's damage meter gives you an indication on how much resources you have, and how much of a certain resource you have.
- From the left to right: dirt > wood > stone > iron. Least valuable to most valuable.
- Iron has a limit of 8 before the gauge moves increases. Using the iron from there lower the gauge one piece at a time.
- Gold and diamond acts independently from the gauge, and flashes when it is ready to craft a tool.
- It is very possible for the material gauge to be completely void of any material, which is important to note.
- The ratio aspect of the gauge is very complicated, thus more time in the lab is required for this move.
Material Mechanic:
No Material:
- Without material, Steve cannot upgrade or restore his basic tools. It also disables his Anvil, Minecart, TNT, and Create Block.
Dirt / Miscellaneous Blocks:
- You cannot use these materials to upgrade/repair his basic tools.
- They are only used for Minecart and Create Block, in which they are very good fuel/resource to burn.
Wood (Stage 1):
- The weakest (tied with gold) and second-least durable of the weapons.
- You want to upgrade your basic tools out of this as soon as possible.
- It is a good resource to burn for Steve's Minecart and Create Block, and is required for TNT alongside stone.
Stone (Stage 2):
- The midway point for power and durability.
- Required for TNT alongside wood.
- A good substitution for iron if you want to use iron for other aspects of Steve's moveset.
- As such, burning stone for Minecart and Create Block is not recommended.
Iron (Stage 3):
- The second strongest in terms of both power and durability.
- As diamond is appear infrequently, iron is common enough to the point where you will see this often.
- It is also used in a lot of Steve's other moves aside from his basic tools. His down air and side B requires it, while it boosts his down throw.
- You need 4 pieces of iron in order to upgrade to an iron tool. This is so far the only material whose material requirement to upgrade has been officially confirmed.
- This is arguably his most valuable and versatile resource. It makes the slower mining in iron surfaces worthwile.
Gold (Stage 4):
- The weakest (tied with wood) and least durable of the bunch.
- Gold acts independently from the Material Meter, appearing as a gold ingot symbol next to the Material Meter.
- Gold weapons makes their already typically fast frame data even faster. The standard sword swipe, for example, now comes out in frame 3 and recovers even faster. Two gold swipes is about as fast as a single swipe with any other stage.
- It is one component, alongside redstone, of boosting Steve's Minecart.
- Overall, one of the more situational materials that can come in handy in certain times. You will probably be more happy with iron overall though.
Diamond (Stage 5):
- The strongest and most durable of the bunch.
- The diamond acts independently from the Material Meter, appearing as a diamond symbol next to the Material Meter.
- Something extremely important about diamond: everything powers up all at once. Once you have access to diamond, all of Steve's weapons upgrade to stage 5. Diamond is essentially Steve's "GO" meter of the character.
- Diamonds will appear eventually on every stage as you mine, so while getting this may be somewhat stage dependent, it isn't that bad to get.
- Diamonds isn't useful for anything else another than bringing all of Steve's weapons to max level, so you only need to worry about that.
Redstone:
- One of the resources that you mine out.
- The redstone acts independently from the Material Meter. However, for some odd reason, they are not indicated under the material UI like gold and diamond does. This is a very odd design choice and I personally hope they change this for the future.
- It is one component, alongside gold, of boosting Steve's Minecart.
- You can use redstone to create a circuit for TNT. This is, in my opinion, the best use for redstone, as it gives TNT some deadly trapping capabilities.
Movement / Mobility Specs:
- It is relatively hard to tell how fast/slow the character is. From what I can tell, the character seems to have about average ground and air mobility. It is a nice breath of fresh air, considering that most DLC characters up to this point has to deal with an aspect of poor mobility. Banjo's, Byleth's, and Min Min's poor air mobility is a striking highlight.
- Here is one of Steve's biggest weaknesses highlighted by the presentation: his grounded full hop is by far the worst in the game, not being high enough to cover the Battlefield platforms (by extension: all legal stage platforms). This makes the character vulnerable to platform camping. However, thanks to Create Block and Crafting Table, the character has ways to force approaches, rather than Little Mac who has to approach the enemy due the lack of anything to force approaches.
- Weight is currently unknown.
Overall Strengths:
- This character possesses amazing startup frames in his moves, especially for a character with a disjoint. Endlag with each of his moves are also rather minimal. As an end result, Steve's frame data is overall very good.
- The character doesn't seem to be that slow in terms of mobility. It seems rather average, or even above-average, across the board.
- The character's anti-air capabilities, especially with a weapon on hand, seems very good, thanks to the speed of these tools.
- He appears to have a very potent grab, potentially the best tether grab in the game thanks to its immense reach, being nearly double the size (or even straight up double the size) of Lucas', YLink's, and TLink's grab while only being one frame slower. It can also grab opponents midair thanks to the fact that it shares similar physics to Isabelle's Fishing Rod, while not being crippled by the hit-grab mechanic.
- It is unknown if his throws can KO at a reasonable percent, but the possibility is there. However, he has a great combo throw in down throw, made even better if iron is available.
- Great KO potential and potentially great damage output with higher leveled basic tools, and even other tools like Anvil, Lava Bucket, and TNT.
- Great ledgetrapping thanks to TNT mindgames and setups. How well Flint & Steel and Lava Bucket interacts with ledges has yet to be known, but there is a possibility that they serve well for that as well.
- Very good edgeguarding thanks to Flint & Steel, Anvil, and Create Block, making it hard for certain characters (particularly linear ones with a poor/no hitbox) to make it back.
- Great recovery. Thanks to Create Block and Elytra, Steve has many, many ways on making it back on stage. He may have a bit of trouble recovering if sent too far, due to the boundary limit on Create Block and durability on Elytra, but it is still a very potent recovery.
- Potentially the best disadvantage state in the game. I already covered why his recovery is pretty dang good. However, thanks to Create Block and Anvil, he has many, many ways of mixing up his landing, which is, in my opinion, where the strengths of Create Block is truly put to use.
Overall Weaknesses:
- While Steve's frame data is overall very good, he does have a few attacks that are rather laggy. The landing lag of forward and back aerials is the biggest and most glaring example.
- His down tilt being slow doesn't entirely help, and the blindspot can make Steve's boxing game rather awkward, especially once we have the data on how safe his standard sword swing is on-hit and on-shield.
- Due to the way the character attacks, there are certain areas where Steve's attacks have issues covering. Diagonal above and diagonal below is the biggest ones. While his up tilt has amazing coverage on its own, it can be easily outreached by characters like Shulk, Link, and Ike.
- Steve's overall power is weak in lower levels, with his standard sword swipes having very little hitstun. It is unknown if this applies with higher levels of weapons, but it is something worth noting.
- The character has to constantly deal with durability. Unlike Robin, who only has certain ways to help alleviate this issue, Steve can summon a crafting table wherever he wants, so the issue isn't as glaring, but it can come back to bite him.
- The character's reach, in general, is limited, especially on front of him.
- OoS can be awkward if Steve is facing the opposite direction of the opponent, as he doesn't really have a fast option for behind him, aside from the weak sword version of back air (which potentially puts Steve in a good amount of lag).
- Extremely low first jump, the lowest in the game. This heavily limits the character ability to chase opponents jumping over platforms. The character, however, does have many ways to force approaches, isn't always in dire need of approaching, and has Create Block as support, so platform camping isn't nearly an issue with him as with characters like Little Mac.
Overall First Impressions:
- This is going to be a very difficult character to pin down in terms of his place in the meta.
- Steve has a moveset and mechanics that is completely unique from everyone else. Amazing that unique characters are still being spawned when they are almost 80 characters in the game. He is essentially an alien invader to the game, and dissecting on how the character interacts with the characters and the meta will take quite a bit of time.
- Steve is an incredibly complex character. Given that Smash Bros typically tries to streamline character mechanics and movesets, which is why Hero's Command Selection is brings up spells randomly, rather than a menu-ing mechanic like RPGs typically work, Steve adds another new dimension of complexity. With his unique moveset and resource mechanic, this character requires IQ and management levels beyond even Pac-Man's levels.
- As such, this is a character whose viability cannot be determined on the first week of his release. Heck, not even first month, or even the next several months. There is a reason why it took until 2018 for SSB4 Pac-Man's results to blossom: characters as complex as Steve requires a really long time for their metagames to truly flesh out.
- My above point applies to counterplay as well. Remember when we all thought that Hero was a great character? Remember how popular Hero was for the first few weeks of his release, only to have extremely minimal reps and results in high, even mid-level play? The strangest, most off-beat characters requires time for counterplay.
- That being said, Steve is no where near as flawed moveset-wise or design-wise as Hero. Hero is plagued with stiff air mobility, terrible frame data overall, middling range-at-best on his faster moves, reliance on MP and RNG, and a linear recovery without Zoom. Steve, in the other hand, while he has notable issues himself, has ways to circumvent them, in a similar vein to Min MIn, while his strengths lie on the more important aspects of a character, such as frame data, disadvantage, and deadly set-ups.
- Overall, I think when fully developed, Steve can turn out to be a very potent character, only on the right hands though. Those who like to play characters like Pac-Man and Hero will find Steve at home, but it will take the most dedicated, quick-thinking players to push Steve to his full potential.
P.S. This character low-key has one of the most BM Final Smashes of all time. The man eats at your death.
P.P.S. No Samsora, you cannot simply mash buttons with this character. 
ESAM's elongated screech... I think we found a new meme. LMAO
However, Pika could've easily recovered low. I could see this move screw over certain no hitbox, linear recoveries, especially if magnet hands treats them unkindly.
As long as the recovery move has a hitbox on them, they should be fine.
will be perfectly fine in that regard, although anvil can be annoying (especially for Doc), although Steve must decide to burn away something as valuable as iron to do so.
It is trouble with these
. The former of which is because the move's hitbox comes at the end of the up B. The latter of which is because they have a notorious issue where if you intentionally get hit with their up B, Popo simply dies.
The block mechanic seems to be a great edgeguard move, but to what extent is currently unknown. There are various factors, such as how much resources are required, which recovery option Steve chooses to cover, or how easy it is to break the block with a given recovery move.
Someone pointed out that he was shown mining on SV and it counted as a wooden surface primarily giving him wood blocks. He needs iron to use a lot of his moves like side b iirc from the presentation if he isn’t able to get a lot of iron or other types of blocks due to the stage he is on that will absolutely hammer his viability on certain stages.
I wonder if this was accounted for when hazards are turned off giving him access to other materials. Actually I’m sure this was accounted for as they made that change to give him all types of materials on BF and Omega variants of stages but if it wasn’t? Steve’s stage choices become quite limited in our current stage list, but this is again dependent on what each legal stage is treated as. If SV is wood it’s safe to assume T&C is wood also. Lylat is definitely iron and maybe Kalos as well?
Good points.
Smashville and T&C seems to be problematic in a resource collecting perspective, although the character collects resources fast on wooden stages.
T&C, in particular, seems like an auto-ban to me, since the platform positions gives Steve the most trouble in dealing with platform camping out of all the legal stages.
However, all the other legal stages seems perfectly fine, so I don't think stage counterpicking will as big of an issue as we think.
It certainly not as polarizing as Little Mac, since Steve has many ways to force approaches in his crafting table, whereas Little Mac has to approach you.
