Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Thinkaman]

Yup, shield damage modifiers are programmed as a flat additive bonus, rather than a ratio. So a penalty is something like "-5" rather than "x0.5."

Makes sense when you consider the typical case: It is far more clear for Pound to be written as "+20 shield damage" than "x2.8182 shield damage."

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Okay from offline footage so far. can quite possibly be this games definitive crazy comeback character. Facing A Sepiroth that has OWA, Rage and can actually punish on reaction seems legit more scary/threatening than any iteration of with high/max Aura. That is my late hot take..

 

[TimG57867]

So Xanadu just finished its first offline local in over a year. Seeing how iconic VGBootcamp is in the Smash community, it along wtih Infinity Con may well be the cue a lot of other scenes in the U.S were looking for to start opening back up.

Looking at this local specifically, a big highlight for me was the return of Pink Fresh now rocking . Just like in SSB4, he really seemed to spend such a long time soul searching until a late DLC patch added just the character he could vibe with. He ended up getting 2nd overall and what makes this performance so neat for me is not only is it potential new source of US MinMin action but given how long he's spent searching for a main and offline in MD/VA JUST coming back, he made quite the statement in his return. In his run he took out Dexter, ZD, Barking Frog, and even Wadi and only got double eliminated by MJ (who I must say really showed up with his . Even beat Wadi in the mirror!)

And this is just the first of what I can expect to be the area's gradual return to an offline tournament regimine. If Pink Fresh stays on that grind and keeps showing up, he may well help do for MinMin what he also helped do for in SSB4 as being one of the first folks to help show off what a threat the character could actually be. We can only hope.

(Nice to comment here again btw. Had to take a long break due all the absurdity of last year distracting me from Smash and am now trying to get back into active discussion).

 

[SKX31]

Tbh, I think the "100 times more fun" bit is more interesting to talk about concerning than the viability of the character.

I remember someone mentioning how went a very... "vanilla route" - A top tier with very clear and prominent strengths, but one that is often tossed aside by players in favor of top tiers with more interesting and fulfilling designs and kits like Peach or Joker. And whoo boy, do I think there isn't a single character more worth of that route than everyone's favorite Buster Sword wielding swordsman, because once you get just the mere basics down with the character... what exactly is left? There's the neat instances where you can follow up an NAir into UAir when you have Limit on deck, there's the one or two times you can trip someone up with an unfinished Cross Slash offstage, but I'm not kidding when I say that's all she wrote about the character.

Neutral is exceedingly straightforward almost to a mundane degree, especially against the 80% of the cast Cloud can easily wall out. Things are a little more involved against the occasional distance demon like Min Min who can penetrate his bubble from a few feet away, but for the most part, against your typical Wolf, Palu, Mario, G&W, Peach, Pac-Man, etc. you ain't doing much besides the standard BAir/Cross Slash walling along with the occasional OoS Climhazzard and waiting game with Limit Charge. Even advantage state doesn't have much varied to offer outside of the BAir into Cross Slash conversion or UAir juggles. Things only start becoming interesting in the disadvantage state, more specifically offstage, because Cloud is very easily capable of dying at 40~50% against most of the cast there and he's not exactly jacked with strong recovery options like most characters are. That said, once you reach that point, you're basically playing just not to lose, and that doesn't really sound fun when said aloud, does it?

Don't misunderstand me: This isn't me talking about Cloud's viability in any way whatsoever. The character's got very clear cut and admirable strengths: Massive safe hitboxes, absurd movement to compliment it, good set of defensive neutral tools (burst options, OoS options, camping tools), and a great way to force characters to approach. This makes for a very good straightforward gameplan against a good chunk of the cast, and it can feel so cool to feel so... "powerful" without much effort in the first couple or so matches. I did when I used him for the first time. But like I said earlier, you aren't doing much with the character you haven't been already doing when you started picking him up, and it can get pretty dull to a point where I really only use him to deal with the occasional ZSS or Ike when I don't feel like chasing them as G&W.

In that regard, that makes him a strong secondary because he isn't a very mentally demanding character (barring offstage) all things considered, and he's got very relevant MUs against the likes of characters like Mario, Pac-Man, Fox, or G&W. That said, I feel like characters like Chrom, Roy, Sephiroth, Shulk - or in the case of Sparg0's situation - Pythra, all have the higher ceiling that makes them more fulfilling characters to do well with. He kinda parallels someone like Lucina in that regard: He's a swordie that's great to start off with and can very easily get the job done, but if you want someone you can really sink your teeth into in the lab for a good while... I don't think you'll find that with him (from what I gathered, Niko also found Cloud too boring and switched to Sephiroth).

Not to say he needs it or anything, but part of me kinda wants to see the nerfs on his aerials reverted, because while some may argue that pushed him over the edge, I think it gives him a far more interesting neutral and advantage game.

Of course, there is something I could be missing about Cloud, so take it for what it's worth.

I can add my input as a Wi Fi Cloud:

While I do think he has a bit more flashy stuff to him: N-Air is still a decent poking option and can set up for low-mid % combos / strings if you read the DI (including itself), D-Tilt still is a good pop-up option and can lead to further extensions, you're pretty much right. The gameplan is oftentimes very simple and can oftentimes wind up being relatively monotomous compared to a lot of the cast. It's understandable why B-Air is so relied upon, even if I don't think that it is the best option in quite a few situations.

For what it's worth, Cloud doesn't lose many matchups harshly either, so he's not a super-volatile character either. One could argue that characters like Mega Man and Olimar have certainly higher ceiling, but also potentially rougher floors. Which does matter in the format most tournaments use, where one lost set effectively doubles the number of sets that the player need to play + removes a lifeline, and a second lost set eliminates the player outright.

Looking at this local specifically, a big highlight for me was the return of Pink Fresh now rocking . Just like in SSB4, he really seemed to spend such a long time soul searching until a late DLC patch added just the character he could vibe with. He ended up getting 2nd overall and what makes this performance so neat for me is not only is it potential new source of US MinMin action but given how long he's spent searching for a main and offline in MD/VA JUST coming back, he made quite the statement in his return. In his run he took out Dexter, ZD, Barking Frog, and even Wadi and only got double eliminated by MJ (who I must say really showed up with his . Even beat Wadi in the mirror!)

I still hold onto the wariness regarding the four FP2 characters partly since I do think we need several months worth of offline events (incl. quite a few majors and supermajors) before we can start to place them on the tier lists*. At least with any sort of accuracy. That said, that local and Pink Fresh picking her up is a quite promising all things considered, and beating ZD / WaDi is no mean feat, so it is certainly possible.

I don't want to be preemptive though in case the counter-meta develops.

*(Another reason is that all four FP2 characters have been called really strong, and there's the possibility that those four + the existing top tiers might trample on each others' feet. Add to that the possibility of Character 10 and / or 11 also potentially being strong contenders as well as whatever additional patches have in store, and I am being cautious on those four for now.)

Also Thinkaman , I felt that Hydreigon's idea of showing and explaining tier lists could be a neat idea, but like Bookworm I'm also wary of starting a potential "tier list sharing" war, so I'm asking if it's okay to do so.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Cloud is kinda sharing the same fate as Wolf and Lucina. Where they are very strong and solid characters they can seem kind of vanilla and because their gameplan is fairly basic and simple. There is not much that it"hype" about them so to speak. It is pretty easy to just go into "autopilot mode" mentality even when you do not want to.

That is why characters like Wolf and Lucina were common at the start of this games ccokeotive meta. Many mains eventually decided to switch to more unique or dynamic characters after DLC characters started coming out. This also seems to be happening with Cloud. With many notable Cloud users stating they may use Sepiroth or Pyra/Mythra once offline tournaments fully comeback

 

[TDK]

I'm not sure I'd lump Wolf in with Cloud/Lucina given how genuinely crazy the character's advantage state when optimized is. I think with Wolf it's more of a different case, where up to a certain level the character lets you get away with just using sh nair/bair/laser and winning off of it, giving the impression of a vanilla character because only one player's actually bothered to optimize him.

 

[Thinkaman]

Tuned into Xanadu at the end, just in time to see a ROB/ROB WF and ROB/Min Min GF. "Offline will be so different!"

btw does anyone know how to short-sell Pikachu? Asking for a friend who is asking for me.

 

[NotLiquid]

Tuned into Xanadu at the end, just in time to see a ROB/ROB WF and ROB/Min Min GF. "Offline will be so different!"

btw does anyone know how to short-sell Pikachu? Asking for a friend who is asking for me.

Ask what makes Pikachu so special compared to top tiers that get more for less once you ignore the pancaking

(This answer is marginally in jest)

 

[Nobie]

Tuned into Xanadu at the end, just in time to see a ROB/ROB WF and ROB/Min Min GF. "Offline will be so different!"

btw does anyone know how to short-sell Pikachu? Asking for a friend who is asking for me.

One thing we keep seeing people say is, "This character is good both online and offline, but what makes them excel in one isn't necessarily the same as what makes them excel in the other." I'm not sure how much that applies to ROB, but a good amount of Min Mins seem to think this.

 

[NotLiquid]

One thing we keep seeing people say is, "This character is good both online and offline, but what makes them excel in one isn't necessarily the same as what makes them excel in the other." I'm not sure how much that applies to ROB, but a good amount of Min Mins seem to think this.

Min Min certainly has the hallmarks of a character you think would mainly profit from online; weakened reaction times benefit characters that like to hit buttons with impunity, especially someone like her who can do it from across the screen. Her occasionally dubious shield reward is also a much more mitigated factor in online, and at a more meta level, the character archetypes that she's believed to struggle with are much harder to play at an optimal level online.

On the other hand, Min Min's primary defensive kit is built mainly around things that are strengthened offline, chief of which is her very solid frame data on attacks like NAir and up smash, and how she mixes up a lot of her regular buttons thanks to being able to jump. Her reactive play is way more powerful as a result. The best analogy I can think of for this is that online Min Min usually plays in a way befitting that of an unstoppable force, while offline Min Min ends up resembling an immovable object (or as the kids put it I guess, one's more of an "unga" character). Moreover, outside of having to deal with the aforementioned shield reward, her more state specific weaknesses don't really get substantially affected when you move offline. Her suboptimal disadvantage state doesn't change in any meaningful way, nor does her recovery.

Of course that's just observing the raw numbers, Min Min's one of those characters where the main difference is going to boil down to how much offline affects characters that aren't her; certainly she's going to have to deal with more Jokers and Foxes, and how those MUs end up boiling down in practice is something to be fully observed yet. As for ROB, unless post-pandemic characters or character changes serve to completely invalidate it, I don't think it has much to worry about. It was a perennially trending OrionStats favorite toward the end of the pre-pandemic era.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Ask what makes Pikachu so special compared to top tiers that get more for less once you ignore the pancaking

(This answer is marginally in jest)

Pancaking is just annoying and most top tiers low profile. What makes Pikachu good is his zero-to-death combos through up-air bridges or edge guards, his lack of disadvantage state and a top 3 recovery.

Just as an example here’s this clip of ShinyMark’s Pikachu doing a zero-to-death on ESAM’s Pikachu.

🥶 pic.twitter.com/vWFQ2yjuKs

— ShinyMark🌙 (@ShinyMark1) May 29, 2021

I really want ShinyMark to travel offline to PGR events to see how much higher he’d get Pikachu on OrionRank. He’s a really good player.

 

[NotLiquid]

Pancaking is just annoying and most top tiers low profile. What makes Pikachu good is his zero-to-death combos through up-air bridges or edge guards, his lack of disadvantage state and a top 3 recovery.

Just as an example here’s this clip of ShinyMark’s Pikachu doing a zero-to-death on ESAM’s Pikachu.

🥶 pic.twitter.com/vWFQ2yjuKs

— ShinyMark🌙 (@ShinyMark1) May 29, 2021

I really want ShinyMark to travel offline to PGR events to see how much higher he’d get Pikachu on OrionRank. He’s a really good player.

This is a very impressive clip showing how talented of a player ShinyMark is, but this isn't really a zero-to-death combo. This is another exhibit in a long line of top tier players showing how to successfully make correctly adjusted reads on the most likely option (anticipating that Pikachu was immediately going to double jump into the FAir, anticipating that Pikachu would immediately drift toward the ledge and into the dropdown NAir, etc.). This stuff isn't really alien to other top tier contenders, only they often times accomplish this with a lot less maintenance. With the exception of potentially Mythra, I can't think of a lot of other commonly considered top tiers who needs to maintain that quantity of hits in advantage to reliably take stocks.

Addendum: The point of the original question was to sell Pikachu short, not to question whether or not it is in fact a great character.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Does it matter at this point? So many of us have expressed our opinion many times about Pikachu in this game and wether or not we agree with almost every pro player putting them in top-3 of every tier list since Pichu got squashed with the nerf bat in 3.0.0 and no one could rationally consider that electric rat Top-5 anymore and apparently there is some unspoken vow among pro players that at least one electric rat has to be considered top 5 or even #1

I mean any more talk is basically memeing at this point

 

[blackghost]

back to Pikachu already? thats gotta be some kind of record.

no i refuse.

regarding minmin- i think the skill requirmeent to win with her online is signifigantly lower compared to offline where she will get punished for throwing out bad attacks. the character is good but if her initial gameplan doesnt work she wil have a hard time. i also dont think minmin players are really used to using her upsmash to threaten people for throwing projectiles at her as well. i think its a holdover from online play.

min min, sepiroth, and steve are all off to good starts bu being a top tier or high tier requires sustained excellence even as players get used to what you do. of the three i think sepiroth is the one that will be th ehardest to adapt becuase its really just smash fundementals placed on a character with extreme abilities plus OWA. i dont think OWA is better than lucario in high aura but i do think its a mechanic that will be hated by some in a few months.

 

[DJ3DS]

Tuned into Xanadu at the end, just in time to see a ROB/ROB WF and ROB/Min Min GF. "Offline will be so different!"

I know this post is in jest, but Xanadu has been WaDi's playground for the entirety of Ultimate at the very least, and I'm fairly sure MJ has won or at least been in grands of it before. Bringing it up (at least for ROB) feels dangerously close to confirmation bias for my tastes.

 

[RonNewcomb]

Well on the subject of Lucina, Cloud, Wolf being easy to play but top out soon, ROB's almost as easy to play but tops out a little further along. So maybe Rob will be the next top tier to fade away.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

All this talk gives me a question. For how inatial reveal as DLC Ffor Smash 4 caused an nuclear explosion of hype for the entire Smash fanbase, FF fanbase and internet in general. But would of he have remained one of the most popular in that games meta if he did not have the gifts of being both very easy to play and vastly overpowered/ overtuned? I mean we all saw the almost comical mass exodus of former Cloud users after they saw all his nerfs in Ultimate.I mean come on, even former SSB4 Bayo mains stuck by her and tried to make her work despiteetting nerfed even harder.

Even when he got buffed and became a legit strong character in the meta he never reached anywhere near his SSB4 popularity, even in the online era.

I mean look at the case of . They were one of the most requested characters to be included in Smash for years and the hype was indeed strong when they were revealed at last E3, but then it turned out they were pretty umm, lackluster powerwise and they were likely the quickest dropped and ignored DLC character in the history of Smash. Even had more rep and overall results.

Hype and popularity are funny, fickle things

 

[Thinkaman]

I know this post is in jest, but Xanadu has been WaDi's playground for the entirety of Ultimate at the very least, and I'm fairly sure MJ has won or at least been in grands of it before. Bringing it up (at least for ROB) feels dangerously close to confirmation bias for my tastes.

Of course; it was more a tongue-in-cheek chuckle that Xanadu (where this isn't a surprise) is one of our first high-profile weeklies to resume on the national stage. I did enjoy the matches though, especially Pink Fresh.


As for , alright, here's the thesis:
(In which I try to explain once and for all why people are somehow all wrong, rather than waving my hands and saying "But the data! Results! Twitter stupid!")

1. People regard Pikachu as having amazing combos. Yet in competitive play Pikachu exhibits the lowest average damage-per-combo of any relevant character in Smash Ultimate.

A Reddit user started a giant project recording the combo and kill data for every streamed top 32 SWT set, and then actually finished it. Really interesting stuff.

And this data actually explains Pikachu quite a bit! I've always thought that Pikachu's combos are like Ultimate Sheik's; he hits you a lot of times, often 2-3 moves with no way out, but the actual total damage is pretty low. If you don't die from it, the actual pain you take from losing a neutral exchange with Pikachu is... low.

This data puts a number on it, and surprise, Pikachu's damage-per-combo is bottom of the barrel. Over half of Pikachu's successful interactions earn less than 20%; this is true for no other character in this dataset except Diddy Kong. (Who is hitting in the higher end of that range far more often.)

But the combos Pikachu does exhibit have a very high range, as well as standard deviation. He has a decent number of clippable crazy strings. But the base case is so low that the average still comes out in last place. (Even though the ESAM zero-to-death is the only combo you remember.)

Pikachu does achieve combos out of neutral more than most characters (7th highest in this set), but, I mean, duh. If he didn't, at his damage output, he'd be a bottom tier character.

2. People regard Pikachu as having a dangerous gimp game. Yet Pikachu's average kill-% is quite high!

At 124%, it's not awful. That's around 30th percentile; soundly bottom half, but a decent gap from the bottom.

Lots of top tier threats have even worse average kill-%s. But all of those bundle with key advantages over Pikachu, namely much higher weight. Joker kills 3% later than Pikachu on average, and Wolf kills 5%. And well, Joker and Wolf live way longer on average than just 3-5% more than Pikachu.

But the story gets worse than Pikachu from here, and again in a way that explains the hype. Pikachu's data clearly shows extremely high range and standard deviation for kill-%s--especially for a non-zoner who relies on getting in to kill.

So Pikachu does get his fair share of amazing gimps. (Some characters don't!) Except his average is still high because the 77% of the time he doesn't close the stock before 100, it becomes a slog. 24% of stocks against Pikachu went over 150, a trait shared with very few characters. (And again, those characters are either heavy like Wolf, have god-tier damage output like Bayonetta, or otherwise thrive at the long-game like PAC-MAN.)

All of this matches personal experience. I spend a lot of my games against Pikachu having a Wario-like terror of the worst-case outcome, but the average stock actually drags on into some pretty high numbers.

3. Pikachu's evasion is overhyped by examining it in a vacuum decoupled from his toolset, and in practice is not actually more survivable than most characters of his weight class.

"Pancaking" is only relevant because Pikachu is having to do those half-risky moves to go for what he wants. Meanwhile Joker is doing bairs for free and nobody blinks an eye. (To say nothing of PAC-MAN or Min Min!)

Can you see how Pikachu's flirting-with-death and avoiding attacks by a hair, right in your face, is more emotionally spotlit than most soft commitments--even though it is less safe? Hot take: If Kirby was good, people would make similar complaints about him.

Pikachu has impressive mobility stats and QA is a top-tier recovery, but he isn't Young Link or PAC-MAN; fishing endlessly for a specific jolt setup is not a good gameplan. His ability to avoid risk when he wants is muted by his lack of reward for doing so, so it really just amounts to great disadvantage but not much more. Just look at ESAM; he doesn't play Pikachu like he's Dabuz or Tea or even Maister. That's not how the character works.



The bottom line is what we already knew. Pikachu is really, really annoying, at least to many people. He doesn't actually do much damage, but he hits you a ton of times and makes you feel helpless. He doesn't actually kill you early (often), but still strikes the fear of God in you every early stock. He doesn't actually avoid interactions like many characters, but slides right by many of your attacks an inch away as if mocking you.

You could insist that all of Pikachu's volatility represents underoptimization, doing some logical gymnastics to insist that lower damage/kill consistency is actually evidence of a superior character. I don't buy it, as you'd never apply that logic to any other character. (Outside of brand-new DLC?) Plus, that thinking assumes by fiat that Pikachu's strings are uniquely complex to have such a higher ceiling than everyone else yet also simultaneously has ordinary, already-mostly-solved counterplay. That sort of confident extrapolation made some sense for Melee/Brawl ICs, but really no one else.

And you could also claim that this is all confounded by online, yet Pikachu hasn't really performed differently online than offline.



In conclusion, there are a lot of justifiable reasons for why people love to hate Pikachu, and it's far easier to accept these as an explaination for social phenomenon than to explain away the massive absence of evidence for top-tier Pika.

After all, way larger groups in history have been led to believe way more absurd things than merely overrating a Smash Ultimate character. (Where Pikachu is good, and the gaps between characters/tiers ain't that big anyway.) I don't think there's even an "agenda" or faction motivating this belief, as could be the case in more serious areas of society. This is small potatoes, but a tiny smash example of social phenomenon where "common knowledge" and widespread evidence are at odds.

 

[Thinkaman]

Double post because I'm covering different topics with long posts at 2am, as usual never do this please!

All this talk gives me a question. For how inatial reveal as DLC Ffor Smash 4 caused an nuclear explosion of hype for the entire Smash fanbase, FF fanbase and internet in general. But would of he have remained one of the most popular in that games meta if he did not have the gifts of being both very easy to play and vastly overpowered/ overtuned? I mean we all saw the almost comical mass exodus of former Cloud users after they saw all his nerfs in Ultimate.I mean come on, even former SSB4 Bayo mains stuck by her and tried to make her work despiteetting nerfed even harder.

Even when he got buffed and became a legit strong character in the meta he never reached anywhere near his SSB4 popularity, even in the online era.

I mean look at the case of . They were one of the most requested characters to be included in Smash for years and the hype was indeed strong when they were revealed at last E3, but then it turned out they were pretty umm, lackluster powerwise and they were likely the quickest dropped and ignored DLC character in the history of Smash. Even had more rep and overall results.

Hype and popularity are funny, fickle things

I agree with your central point but think the example is actually false.

I talked before about how --more than any other character in the game--hits the "wall" at peak-level play. But just outside of that tip-top, Banjo does pretty well and sees successful usage comfortably in the top half of the roster. Among DLC he outperforms Hero and Byleth!

Meanwhile, is just lackluster all around and ends up comparing to the likes of Doc, Kirby, Corrin, Ridley, Mewtwo, or Ganon at essentially all levels of play. While you could make the argument for either, I think it's more likely that Banjo has a long-term breakout player than Plant at this point. (Though currently I wouldn't bet on either.)

The better analogy has got to be : the strong sword character who is very easy to pick up. Sure, Pyra had nothing on Cloud's hype outside of the competitive community, but initial competitive impressions on Mythra/Pyra were extremely high-opinion.

 

[DJ3DS]

Of course; it was more a tongue-in-cheek chuckle that Xanadu (where this isn't a surprise) is one of our first high-profile weeklies to resume on the national stage. I did enjoy the matches though, especially Pink Fresh.

I had assumed as much, it's just always nice to be clear - particularly given I've had people complaining about the ROBs at my local throughout Ultimate despite the ROB dominating them (Lucretio, who qualified to the EU part of the SWT) having done so large parts of Smash 4 as well.

Well on the subject of Lucina, Cloud, Wolf being easy to play but top out soon, ROB's almost as easy to play but tops out a little further along. So maybe Rob will be the next top tier to fade away.

ROB has been putting in so much consistent work in brackets at all levels for so long now that I doubt he will fade; counterplay should have developed long ago. The reality is that whilst I still think calls of top 10 are premature (mainly because despite his popularity, he rarely if ever brings home the biggest offline tournaments) he is very clearly a strong character whose meta is not close to being optimised at the top level.

Imagine this sort of thing being a common sight (not DIable, by the way): https://mobile.twitter.com/topplayerluu/status/1234244242635186178

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

In terms of the Lucina discussion in how they're boring so they fell out of the meta. Smash University actually did a video on this that I think goes over some interesting stuff.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

ProGuides released another part in their new tier list:

"Grounded mobility doesn't matter in Smash Ultimate"

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

ProGuides released another part in their new tier list:

"Grounded mobility doesn't matter in Smash Ultimate"

Yeah, I'm not taking anything ProGuides says seriously, Falcon in the same tier as Marth is a bit of a stretch. He should have been in B tier or A tier.
BTW new Yoshi MU chart from Myles.

Yoshi June 2021 MU Chart pic.twitter.com/hvvwRiVRp1

— Myles (@MylesMoves) June 9, 2021

 

[blackghost]

banjo, ah yes, the character people tried to push into meta out of pure nostalgia. the inverse of byleth who poeple tired to kill from the meta out of pure salt.

Thinkaman this summed up my feelings on pikachu very well. we remember the highlights but not entire interactions that compose 90 percent of a match

 

[Frihetsanka]

ProGuides released another part in their new tier list:

First off, it's important to remember that this tier list is not ordered within tiers

(or well, it's ordered by which time they were added to Smash). So Link isn't necessarily better than Min Min, Sephiroth, and Pyra/Mythra. So anyone in A could, hypothetically, be #13.

S tier: Lucina in top 12 in 2021? Aside from that, I don't have too much to say about it. I don't agree with it 100% (probably not even 70%) but most of it is plausible enough, I suppose. ROB, Snake, Pokémon Trainer, and Lucina seem like the biggest outliers.

A tier: Given that it's not ordered, I don't really have any major concerns with this. I think some of them are probably S tier (like Sephiroth and Pyra/Mythra) but seems fair enough.

B tier: Mega Man, Sheik, and Pichu could be A tier. As much as it pains me to say it, Steve might be too... We'll see if his mains will keep the results up. Probably not better than lower end at best though. Not top tier, I don't think, but we'll see...

C tier: Captain Falcon and Hero should probably be higher, Mii Brawler as well. I'm not sold on Banjo being this high.

Overall, since it's not ordered, it's not a terrible tier list. Making unordered tier lists is an easy way to avoid criticism, but it also makes it less interesting, especially when you have big tiers (like this A-tier). Like Sephiroth could be #13 or #35, we don't know since it's unordered within tiers.

BTW new Yoshi MU chart from Myles.

I agree with the Sephiroth, Lucina, and Corrin placements (Even vs Corrin, -1 for the other two). Overall the MU chart seems a bit too optimistic though, unless Yoshi is better than what most people give him credit for. Is Yoshi a contender for top 30? Probably not?

 

[Ziodyne 21]

is a definite high tier contender for sure and does do well vs. We will just have to see how far Fatality does once offline comes backHe already got a solid 5th place at InfinityCon so lets see if he can keep momentum going. However while Falcon does well vs some common meta picks and top-tiers there are going to be MU's where he will struggle hard outside of his explosive advantage state. Kind of a similar position to when I think of it . Man the MU's vs the FF SOILDER Boys seem utterly miserable for him. Cloud could very well be one of it not Steve's worst MU, Try to farm for resources or setup blocks? Well Cloud can just charge up and get Limit faster than Steve can get what he wants most of the time , then really overwhelm him with high mobility and big disjoints

 

[Frihetsanka]

(In which I try to explain once and for all why people are somehow all wrong, rather than waving my hands and saying "But the data! Results! Twitter stupid!")

Very interesting writeup on Pikachu. I'm curious, what's your take on Shulk? Shulk is another character who is usually put in top 5 or top 10 but whose results are not stellar (but seems like they're getting better). Do you think Shulk is also overrated? Or does he have what it takes to be a top 5 or top 10 character? Unlike Pikachu he does have Monado Arts which is easily one of the best moves in the game, so that's something (well, without it he wouldn't be a contender for top tier at all).

 

[Nobie]

Abadango recently picked up Pikachu, and Cosmos in an interview with Larry Lure also said he was turning into a Pikachu pre-pandemic (but then Mythra came out, and he has Anime Loyalty). And keep in mind that Aba has mained Palutena, who's no slouch.

There's clearly something about Pikachu that top players gravitate towards, even if they're biased and/or don't use the character: the recent Tweek Talks tier lists all put Pikachu as a Top 2 character. What it might be is that Pikachu seems to have the ability to win neutral a lot more often while escaping disadvantage more easily, and the questionable kill power can be mitigated. Tweek himself believes that "can't kill" isn't a real weakness, and I think that comes in part from his overall strengths as a competitor. He even talks about how certain characters shouldn't play for kills, they should play for controlling the clock (though I can't remember if Pikachu is one of them).

That being said, Abadango recently lost to Kento's Mewtwo 2-0 in a Tamisuma daily online tournament, and Mewtwo hates pancaking more than most. Aba is fairly new to Pikachu and lacks experience, but that light weight certainly did not help. Pikachu is great at escaping disadvantage, but when your single hits are nasty, that strength gets mitigated.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

What it might be is that Pikachu seems to have the ability to win neutral a lot more often while escaping disadvantage more easily, and the questionable kill power can be mitigated. Tweek himself believes that "can't kill" isn't a real weakness, and I think that comes in part from his overall strengths as a competitor.

Precisely, same idea as Mythra and Sheik, which basically win neutral for free and have very little disadvantage state and their able to bully most of the cast in advantage but they have lacking kill power (though similarly to Pikachu they do have setups and kill confirms). The only character where killing is a problem IMO is Bayonetta. If a character has similar strengths and weaknesses to characters who are considered highly of, but with a better offstage game and recovery, why shouldn't they be considered incredibly good?

Pikachu's biggest problem is that the matchups he loses are all relevant characters. Ness, G&W, Mario, Pac-Man and Olimar are all pretty relevant and he all struggles against all of them. You're bound to see a few of those characters and their mains showing up in top 48 at least as some point. doesn't really have that problem, Pikachu isn't as common as people think, Inkling fell off, Diddy is only used by Tweek, Aaron and as a secondary for Rivers, you're probably not going to fight a notable Mega Man in an S tier other than Kameme and Sonic mains don't travel that much to US events.

 

[meleebrawler]

Precisely, same idea as Mythra and Sheik, which basically win neutral for free and have very little disadvantage state and their able to bully most of the cast in advantage but they have lacking kill power (though similarly to Pikachu they do have setups and kill confirms). The only character where killing is a problem IMO is Bayonetta. If a character has similar strengths and weaknesses to characters who are considered highly of, but with a better offstage game and recovery, why shouldn't they be considered incredibly good?

Pikachu's biggest problem is that the matchups he loses are all relevant characters. Ness, G&W, Mario, Pac-Man and Olimar are all pretty relevant and he all struggles against all of them. You're bound to see a few of those characters and their mains showing up in top 48 at least as some point. doesn't really have that problem, Pikachu isn't as common as people think, Inkling fell off, Diddy is only used by Tweek, Aaron and as a secondary for Rivers, you're probably not going to fight a notable Mega Man in an S tier other than Kameme and Sonic mains don't travel that much to US events.

Mythra having no disadvantage is a gross exaggeration, and I don't just mean the recovery. Her aerials actually aren't all that great on shield and are not scary to challenge, and her trump card in Foresight, while often great when it works and providing swift reversals, is difficult to use reliably. At best, if you factor in Pyra mixups with fall speed and different attack properties, disadvantage comes out to maybe above average.

To put it simply, they don't have any Flip Jumps, Bouncing Fishes or Quick Attacks between them.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Precisely, same idea as Mythra and Sheik, which basically win neutral for free and have very little disadvantage state and their able to bully most of the cast in advantage but they have lacking kill power (though similarly to Pikachu they do have setups and kill confirms).

Mythra absolutely has a disadvantage state, her recovery is quite underwhelming. Her ledge options aren't the best either, and her landing options are somewhat limited (Foresight helps though).

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Mythra absolutely has a disadvantage state, her recovery is quite underwhelming. Her ledge options aren't the best either, and her landing options are somewhat limited (Foresight helps though).

Yea I am starting to think that may not the quite the"easy" characters that they were suspected of being at early after their release (at at a high competitive level. I mean they are still likely the easiest characters out of FP2 just to pick up and start doing realtively okay with, but there not branidead-level easy or on the level of Smash 4

Pyra may be a bit easier to punish and react to offline. It also turns out you kinda cannot really play Mythra as "Sheik with a Sword" because Mythra does not have quite Sheiks level of Sheild saftey or just plain saftey in general. Plus there is the recovery issue. Pyra/Mythra players are going to kinda have to be smarat and aware liof all of options and even pick who should be recovering to get back safely. Kinda like playing

I say all without it changing how strong they are likely going to be in the meta,

 

[Frihetsanka]

Finally, the Offline TTS has been updated with character scores. With 2 majors and many regionals on file, these are the top 26 characters by results, from mid-2020 to early June 2021. Among DLC pack 2, Sephiroth cleanly is on top, while Min Min has greatly underperformed. pic.twitter.com/BlEkIKQeuX

— Barnard's Loop (@LoopBarnard) June 11, 2021

OrionStats - Smash Ultimate 2021 TTS (Updated December 25th)

docs.google.com

Sephiroth doing pretty well, huh.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Finally, the Offline TTS has been updated with character scores. With 2 majors and many regionals on file, these are the top 26 characters by results, from mid-2020 to early June 2021. Among DLC pack 2, Sephiroth cleanly is on top, while Min Min has greatly underperformed. pic.twitter.com/BlEkIKQeuX

— Barnard's Loop (@LoopBarnard) June 11, 2021

OrionStats - Smash Ultimate 2021 TTS (Updated December 25th)

docs.google.com

Sephiroth doing pretty well, huh.

I am more surprised to see fairly low despite being so becoming popular and gaining results so quickly online and generally regarded as being very strong and fairly easy to use. Yes I know its mostly because we do not see their most notable users i.e MKLeo, Sparg0, Cosmos etc in the recorded tournaments But even then most tournaments did not even have much use of them at all.

I guess like i sadi in my last point the Agies pair may be "easy" to pick up and start doing decently well, but they are not THAT easy to just start winning effortlessly at a high level (well unless you are as insanely good at the game as MKLeo or Sparg0. You definetely can be in autopilot mode with them offstage...

 

[Arthur97]

Also, even if DLC is good and relatively easy to use, it also generally means shifting time away from other fighters that they've put time into as well as time to learn the new ones. Short of something super egregious, one probably shouldn't expect a massive shift of players.

 

[Game7a1]

I know this OrionStats season shows pretty early data, but look at Jigglypuff at #58, tied with Banjo and K. Rool. And then there are Dr. Mario and Falco, tied at 35th and above both Pit and G&W. Maybe the buffs for those three characters are finally starting to show.
It's also interesting to see that Steve is 43rd (tied with Pikachu) and Min Min is 54th (tied with Rosalina, if that means anything). I thought, for a first few splashes, they would have earned more points.

 

[NotLiquid]

The current environment goes a long way in maximizing the effects of character specific underperformance. The case in point is Pikachu and Ken. These are characters who, at various points in the previous TTS phases, charted pretty well. Ken actually closed out the premature Phase 3 as far up as 19th, yet he's seen a precipitous drop here to 54th, and as much as I dog on Pikachu and the fact that it was downtrending across the last few phases, the drop is way too steep to make sense of for a character that's still top of the line.

I'd say what a lot of those results indicate, and this extends to other underperformers like Steve, Min Min, and Pyra, is that most of their best players are in pools that benefit more from wider territory engagement. One thing online actually had over early post-quarantine is that events were absolutely stacked at a common rate and results were extremely easy to extrapolate. While you can argue whether or not it was good data there was at least no shortage of it; online majors could see up to thousands of entrants, hidden warriors, and so forth on a semi regular basis; even Hungrybox's weekly Juice Box series is one of the events that saw consistent 500 entrant weeklies for over a year, and yet InfinityCon, the most recent offline major - and most majors that will be going on for the better while such as CEO - impose 512 entrant hard caps with far more space between events. Smaller locals are slowly making a rise, but for now they primarily strengthen characters that were already secure comfort picks. A lot of the aforementioned characters instead are those who usually go to see results pushed by specific sets of players in high spotlight events, yet with entry caps, social distancing from extended travel, and lower frequency, it's going to get harder to get results from certain characters that don't have as much global density. That's also not accounting for how the point values between characters outside of the top 20 are less pronounced for the time being.

Sephiroth obviously stands as a huge outlier, with a big part being that he is so extremely fundamentals-based that he's moving to become a Lucina-type pocket character for a lot of people who like to minimize risks.

 

[toonito]

Finally, the Offline TTS has been updated with character scores. With 2 majors and many regionals on file, these are the top 26 characters by results, from mid-2020 to early June 2021. Among DLC pack 2, Sephiroth cleanly is on top, while Min Min has greatly underperformed. pic.twitter.com/BlEkIKQeuX

— Barnard's Loop (@LoopBarnard) June 11, 2021

OrionStats - Smash Ultimate 2021 TTS (Updated December 25th)

docs.google.com

Sephiroth doing pretty well, huh.

takes the top spot back from
IIRC the following characters have been the only ones to top Orionstats since its inception for Ultimate:

 

[TimG57867]

The current environment goes a long way in maximizing the effects of character specific underperformance. The case in point is Pikachu and Ken. These are characters who, at various points in the previous TTS phases, charted pretty well. Ken actually closed out the premature Phase 3 as far up as 19th, yet he's seen a precipitous drop here to 54th, and as much as I dog on Pikachu and the fact that it was downtrending across the last few phases, the drop is way too steep to make sense of for a character that's still top of the line.

I'd say what a lot of those results indicate, and this extends to other underperformers like Steve, Min Min, and Pyra, is that most of their best players are in pools that benefit more from wider territory engagement. One thing online actually had over early post-quarantine is that events were absolutely stacked at a common rate and results were extremely easy to extrapolate. While you can argue whether or not it was good data there was at least no shortage of it; online majors could see up to thousands of entrants, hidden warriors, and so forth on a semi regular basis; even Hungrybox's weekly Juice Box series is one of the events that saw consistent 500 entrant weeklies for over a year, and yet InfinityCon, the most recent offline major - and most majors that will be going on for the better while such as CEO - impose 512 entrant hard caps with far more space between events. Smaller locals are slowly making a rise, but for now they primarily strengthen characters that were already secure comfort picks. A lot of the aforementioned characters instead are those who usually go to see results pushed by specific sets of players in high spotlight events, yet with entry caps, social distancing from extended travel, and lower frequency, it's going to get harder to get results from certain characters that don't have as much global density. That's also not accounting for how the point values between characters outside of the top 20 are less pronounced for the time being.

Sephiroth obviously stands as a huge outlier, with a big part being that he is so extremely fundamentals-based that he's moving to become a Lucina-type pocket character for a lot of people who like to minimize risks.

Yeah WiFi is quite fairly bemoaned in this game but the sheer accessibility it offers just can’t be matched. While a lot of big names drifted into hibernation during the WiFi winter, it also allowed many super talented players to enter the spotlight and show off zany abilities that folks would never expect simply due to their players not being able to practically attend many of these high profile events.

For instance, I worried that would decline in public perception during the WiFi era since a bunch of his most key reps like Jesuischoq and Ferretkuma wouldn’t be able to show big tournies as frequently. But wouldn’t you know it, this allowed a Discord Kirby pal of ours in JeJaJeJa to blossom into the starlight and not only consistently palace well at WiFi tourneys but display many obscure Kirby techs that even the top level Kirbies weren’t utilizing much. And on the east side of the globe, Ron’s Kirby play ended up getting that much more attention for how methodical and fundamentally powerful it was and he used him to similarly place well and outright win a number of Tamisuma tournies. These two’s success (especially the former) ended up being so noticeable that it definitely played a massive part in Kirby gradually sneaking his way into the mid tier of many of the tier lists folks share.

I am excited for offline returning since many characters that utterly languished in WiFi due to inactive mains will hopefully see a big resurgence and the better input delay will let us see a more representative meta. But it’ll bittersweet since it’ll likely lead to many of the most potent WiFi reps who helped keep characters’ metas alive during the pandemic falling back into the shadows a bit. It’s pretty telling how even after a full year of WiFi being center stage, the SSBWiki’s competitive play sections actually lists very few WiFi demons as prominent players for many characters like not having JeJaJeJa and Ron, Not having Mabel, not having Armadillo, and Not listing Pokelam (they all have individual pages though). A shame since folks like these people much put a large number of characters’ metagames on their backs when their prominent offline mains had to take a backseat. It‘d be nice if online results got to retain some of the extra attention they got in the past year even as offline takes over again. Online has many problems but accessibility is not one of them.

 

[KirbySquad101]

An offline invitational known as Momentus is happening right now! Players like Tilde, Dabuz, LeoN, Light, John Numbers, NickC, Saurez and Tweek are all participating in it:

Momentous -- A ... | Overview (smash.gg)

CollisionSmash - Twitch

Most notably, Dabuz and Tweek are sitting in Winner's Finals, and Tilde sent Light to Loser's early through their Round Robin pools; Jakal shortly 3-1'd Light afterwards and eliminated him at 7th place.