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Having a bad recovery also is weird for heavies since the whole point of being heavy is so that they can survive at higher percentages. And at least Ike's and Chrom's Up B are based off canon moves they have in their own source games. Ganondorf doesn't have that excuse since its just a Falcon move.
Okay, they are hardly as high on list of favorites post 3, but Pyra is still fun to play. However, you have been decrying them for months now despite how little of a problem they are. A polarizing matchup spread isn't even a "problem." And I think a lot of the actual balance concerns on Kazuya are less matchup based and more his extreme touch of death philosophy. Most of the complaints for him though probably boil down to how unfun it is to just get deleted cause Kazuya. Even if it is avoidable, it feels bad, and emotions are powerful.
Eh...Chrom's is based on him spinning in that one cutscene but it doesn't even play out like that. Maybe partially a FEW move but that ends differently. Chrom doesn't have much of a reason to stick with something so awful other than it was probably easier to clone from Ike. However, I could go into ways to declone him and Lucina, but that might could use it's own thread or two. Given how they treat Ganondorf, don't expect anything too much though.
Because I like the character and I like the game; I want good things for the character and good things for the game. When I pick Aegis and I win, I want to feel like I won because I outplayed my opponent consistently, not because I have access to Mythra dash attack and they don't have a good answer. That's just competitive spirit.
But it does have likely the best balance of any Smash game despite the largest roster. Not every fighter has an answer to everything. You have perpetually called out those two specifically, even to the point of seeming to think they'd overrun the scene...but it never happened. Fear mongering about any fighter in this game always seems to inevitably die down once they get figured out, and it happened extremely fast for those two. The balance team actually did a pretty good job. There are some questionable decisions here and there, but Pyra and Mythra aren't the problem. They win some good, they lose some badly. It's not the end of the world. You'd be hard pressed to find any fighter that doesn't struggle in some matchups. But typically the worst isn't virtually unwinnable.
Absolutely true. Balance gets better over time, and the balancing team did better with Ultimate than any past smash game.
Yeah, I have, and I've given supporting reasons for calling them out every single time I've done that. Hitboxes, matchups, observations about top level, kill percents, etc. When it seemed like the meta was running counter to their development, I also pointed that out, and the reasons why (evolving corner play).
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's engagement was great, it gave me a lot to consider and engage with/respond to. If you can give me that level of detail for your argument, I'd be happy to reconsider my stance (or respond if I don't agree).Aegis doesn't lose any matchup "badly." Min Min might be the hardest and it's likely -1 at most. I guess fighting Diddy Kong feels pretty hard sometimes too, but that one is highly stage-dependent (I don't mind fighting him on FD for example even though Diddy loves FD; there's so much room to juggle him there).
It's not any argument I've made that should convince you, it's real world evidence that it just never happened. Even at their peak, it was hardly the end of the world and that peak ended almost as quickly as it came. Their day in the sun was essentially a flash in the pan. Every time you'd be a doom sayer, I could look at what was going on and not see much of a reason to be alarmed. They weren't taken up half or more top spots at most if any tourney. I have heard enough doom saying before, and it rarely amounts to much of anything game shattering in this game. Not then, not with Joker, not with the Heroes, not with Min Min, and not with Steve and especially Kazuya. Most notable thing about Pyra and Mythra is probably just how ludicrously fast they both rose and fell. Though the general and simplistic reason isn't that hard to see. They are relatively simple and easy to pick up, but that makes the inverse true of them being easier to figure out. Lucina had an admittedly less extreme version of this if memory serves.Absolutely true. Balance gets better over time, and the balancing team did better with Ultimate than any past smash game.
Yeah, I have, and I've given supporting reasons for calling them out every single time I've done that. Hitboxes, matchups, observations about top level, kill percents, etc. When it seemed like the meta was running counter to their development, I also pointed that out, and the reasons why (evolving corner play).
On the other hand, I have never seen you post anything in response other than "But they're not dominating," "They're not a problem." It's hard to convince someone else you're right if you don't provide any evidence for why you believe something, right? I'm not calling you out for not doing analysis because this thread is pretty dead and no one does any analysis here any more, but if you think I should be persuaded to your point, maybe you could try actually talking about the game with me, instead of defending it based on your gut and surface-level observation?
I'm definitely open to being wrong, I've been wrong about plenty of things before, but surely you can see how it's annoying when someone keeps saying you're wrong but does nothing to back that up other than pointing to what everyone can see (Leo/Sparg0 switching off solo Aegis).
Aegis doesn't lose any matchup "badly." Min Min might be the hardest and it's likely -1 at most. I guess fighting Diddy Kong feels pretty hard sometimes too, but that one is highly stage-dependent (I don't mind fighting him on FD for example even though Diddy loves FD; there's so much room to juggle him there).
edit:
Maybe a better and more earnest way to re-engage with you is this: what do you think is the biggest counterplay to Aegis that makes them manageable for the cast long term, besides edgeguarding? You play Lucina, right? Let's go from there. How can Roy and Lucina keep consistent counterplay to Aegis in neutral in your opinion? I'd like to see it from your perspective.
right, we're talking about two different things here. you're talking about Pyra/Mythra taking over the top-level meta, and I'm talking about P/M's general strengths across levels of competition. I went through several phases on P/M -- at first, i didn't think they were that good at any level, because I was playing and losing against great players with them and I didn't see what I could be doing differently. Then, I had the realization that I should be using Mythra to ferry Pyra around, and suddenly it clicked just how strong and oppressive they could be. I extrapolated that they would take over the top-level meta because of what we were seeing and what I was experiencing at that time -- not doomsaying, but what seemed like a reasonable conclusion based on contemporary meta progression. [Important to note: I didn't think the same of Kazuya or Joker or Steve (all overrated in my estimation). Just Pyra/Mythra.]
Well, the thing about lower levels is whoever dominates the local scene can often be more determinant on players than fighters. I think it was Thinkman who said something along the lines of to the guy who just goes to his local scene, he doesn't care about Joker, Cloud, etc, he cares about the Mario that keeps kicking his butt. In that small corner, Mario would be king, and he might seem better to them than he actually is (maybe a poor choice since Mario may actually be top tier). Though, I suppose high level play may be that weird zone between the two extremes. Arguably where fighter chose matters the most. But, that's what it is.
Having to mash SDI as fast as you can repeatedly for extended periods of time because you are fighting Bayo sucks. You really can't say it doesn't. My opinion on this does not come from my personal interactions with Bayo players, it's something I realized over time because better players pointed it out. Feelings do matter. We play the game because of feelings.
I believe that to be a natural consequence about how competitive Smash is. You see it with the scrubby characters like the Belmonts, Ganondorf, Robin, etc, what do they have in common? Their awful air movement, when a character has that trait it is easier to predict where and when they are gonna land VS a fastfaller. Because Pyra is so slow in the air turning into her when it is not completely safe will earn the Aegis player a big punishment, and a big punishment may come in a move that hits horizontally and send offstage. A lot of Aegis stocks offstage at top level are because Pyra is a sack of bricks and cannot reach the ledge with Prominence Revolt or Mythra is at an awkward angle or has too many options covered and rather than relying on her drift she has to rely on PUNISH ME Edge. Being Mythra allows an Aegis player to not eat damage for free (in theory), which is how many Aegis players get clowned on, even top players, they are stuck in a situation as Pyra, and are trying desperately to get out.
The Robins are "scrubby?" They're literally designed to have limited use specials.
Not for nothing Robin is low tier.
Given your other examples, it makes it sound like you're saying they're "scrubby" spam to win types.
have been falling and characters that were considered slow or with a poor neutral like have risen. Neutral has taken a backseat to advantage and having a strong and consistent advantage is the difference.
Honestly, I can't agree with most of this .... Neutral is not unimportant. Ultimate's engine is perfectly competitive as the 2022 season demonstrated. There could be tweeks, sure but as has been mentioned, some characters just aren't designed well for 1v1. What's true evidence to this is that the same characters have always hovered below average. It's the design not the engine. So to make them viable their design needs to change.Seems to me that a character being good is less so about individual moves and more so about having certain advantages more integral to their design. After having played this game for thousands of hours I've come to the conclusion that there is only a few principles a character has to abide by in order to be any good. And those are hurtbox shifting (size, drift, dodges, etc), low risk (not strictly frame data but the overall picture), and the most important being a strong advantage state.
There is way too much emphasis on neutral in this game when neutral is complete ass to the point of nonexistence. Stage control is meaningless when most characters can cover most of the stage with little effort. Being in the corner isn't inherently a bad thing when you can just casually jump or roll halfway across the stage if your opponent tries to approach. In fact, some players deliberately put themselves into the corner with faster characters in order to bait an approach when theirs isn't working. When neutral is 90% spamming low risk full hop aerials until someone somehow ****s up, the barrier to entry isn't very high.
Disadvantage is also the same way. A good disadvantage is the exception and there's virtually no reason to really consider it when evaluating character strength.
And I think we can see proof of this in character trends over Ultimate's lifespan. Characters that were considered to have a good neutral or mobility attributes like
So when you want to evaluate a character you should be looking at their advantage state first and foremost as that is pretty much what determines a character's viability. Ganondorf suffers not because of his disadvantage, but because he's unable to actually put his theoretical advantage state into practice. His advantage state sounds good on paper until you realize that his strongest moves are situational at best and carry significant risk whereas his safer moves like his aerials are usually stale from all the spam he does in neutral. All of those factors combine to neuter what would otherwise be a powerful enough advantage state to overcome his disadvantage.
Pyra and Mythra suffer because neither have a good advantage state in practice and Mythra's neutral isn't even as good as people say. Mythra's strings are highly dependent on MU and even at their peak aren't greater than what is average for top tier. Pyra has the same issues as Ganondorf and her most practical kill moves are also her neutral tools and therefore stale. Neutral doesn't matter, but advantage does.
But even if neutral did matter, what exactly makes Mythra neutral so good that giving her kill power would make her strong? Yeah, she does have oppressive aerials that make it difficult to dogfight her. But the thing that continues to be ignored is that her shield pressure is complete ass. It isn't even that she does less shield stun, but also that she does less shield damage and her mobility traits and frame data prevent her from being able to continuously strike the opponent's shield. It's not that she's bad on shields so much as she lacks any real counter to them at all.
Some would point to her dash grab and I would point to the dodge mechanic. Did you know that Mythra's dash attack and dash grab have similar startup(9 and 11) and active frames(2)? And that the typical spotdodge has something in the realm of 14 frames of intangibility? And in fact you can use the spotdodge to counter both and prevent mixups?
See the problem with continuing to highlight only a character's good or bad sides is that you miss the flipside of their design. Mythra's arcing and sweeping hitboxs are great for chasing and catching moving characters. But she will never be able to casually back air an opponent's head poking out from a slightly damaged shield like Cloud can. Mythra lacks any sort of precision or nuance and is therefore unfit for the nuance required in top level play.
She only works if the opponent is willing to play her game. Remember the argument that her allegedly oppressive neutral inherently forces people into the corner? Given what I illustrated above, is being in the corner not actually a good counter strategy instead of a last resort? Some top tiers have ungodly levels of shield pressure that will either lead to a poke or force a roll if you get trapped in the corner. People can just casually hang out in the corner versus Mythra because she has no ability to say otherwise. Any commit on her part can lead to an easy reversal thanks to her cumbersome handling.
Whether or not that is a productive strategy depends on who has the lead. And therein lies the root of Pyra and Mythra's problems. Aegis must maintain the lead in order to continue to force the opponent to engage with them. This is the exact issue that Zelda had for the majority of her time in this franchise and neither Pyra nor Mythra have any better answers. No Mythra's speed does not magically make this problem go away. No Pyra is not in fact better with shields than Mythra.
And I can't help but think if this were Smash 4 these characters would be laughed off as low tiers for being unable to approach their opponents. Then you add in that their disadvantage is truly awful to the point of being an exception and you realize that all it takes is one mistake to knock them out of the lead. There's a reason why they only barely win or get completely wrecked. Their damage output is too mediocre to gain huge leads and their disadvantage is such that their opponent can gain an insurmountable lead if they aren't incompetent.
So buff the damage output and knockback of all characters right? Some would benefit from that and a few would probably be legitimate top tiers. But the flipside is the excessive hurtbox shifting preventing anyone from landing a hit, no matter how powerful. You can in fact have the correct spacing and timing on a hard read and still miss because the opponent is able to shift their hurtbox in way that makes it physically impossible to hit them. This leads to all MUs being governed by hitbox coverage vs hurtbox shifting and that's why lots of characters simply aren't viable in this game. Not because there is anything wrong with their inherent design, but because their opponent's hurtbox is literally broken.
And that's why buffs/nerfs never fundamentally changed anything in the game. It's not the values or the size of the moves, it's the coverage in the animation. If Character A's hitbox coverage cannot hit Character B's hurtbox shift it doesn't matter how strong or weak or really what that move does. And that I think is the fundamental problem that effectively breaks this game. There's a certain cabal of characters that have it all in terms of hurtbox shifting. Not just the animations, but the dodge mechanics that can always reset frame advantage, and the extreme aerial drift and/or hurtbox size that allow them to just casually fall out of people's moves. At the same time, these characters retain all advantages from the game's design such as higher damage (relative to other games) and greater freedom of movement.
What that means is that all other things being equal, the shiftier character will win. You can try to increase a character's damage output, but damage output doesn't matter so much if you can guarantee that character can't be hit. And as you might already be able to tell, you can increase/decrease damage values or hitbox size, but you can't redesign the animations without redesigning the game. The devs did attempt to do something about the hurtboxs of the small characters early on but clearly gave up. The problem is ultimately fundamental to Ultimate's design and can't be fixed by patches.
That cabal of characters realistically should be the ones banned rather than the other characters that we've debated. My biggest peeve nowadays is people pretending that the problem lies with most of the cast rather than the small few that break the game and render most of the cast unviable. Not because there is anything inherently strong with them, but because their hurtboxs don't work thanks to Ultimate's trash design. These characters are so broken that they even have a difficult time hitting each other and that's why there are so many characters in top 32 and why there's no consensus on a definitive best character. It's gotten so bad that the only people that consistently place top 3 are people who frequently cycle through several characters in the same tournament.
And as you probably already guessed, the characters bred and designed exclusively for Ultimate are the best among everyone. Not necessarily the newcomers that shipped with the game, the ones that came in the form of DLC. If you look closely, you can see exactly the point when the devs realized what kind of abomination their game was and thus when they started making characters that fit perfectly with this game's design.
And because of that, I think we should stop trying to fix characters that aren't broken and just simply toss a bad game into the garbage. Ultimate has already been considered obsolete by the devs so we shouldn't try make good characters fit a bad game that doesn't matter anymore. It is far more efficient to change the game to suit the characters rather than the other way around.
Even worse since many low lag moves tend to high damage output, like most of Clouds moves.
Roy can pressure harder than any other sword character, and many of the moves he uses in neutral can also kill. If someone wants to play a more rushdown sword character, Roy is a better choice than Aegis or Cloud.
Aegis is generally the best, but don't underestimate Lucina and Corrin. Lucina is still so good in today's meta, able to aerially zone out many characters with her floatiness. Against zoners like Pacman and Snake, I'd definitely favor a Lucina pick over an Aegis pick. Aegis can't really whiff punish those characters, while Lucina can float around the edge of their range and sting them with perfectly spaced aerials. It's so satisfying to lock down that archetype with good Lucina play. It's also great fun to go Lucina against Fox on Battlefield, which Aegis probably doesn't want to do. Lucina on Battlefield and Smashville in general is just oppressive in some matchups, whereas Aegis really needs FD or Kalos or something to let their juggling shine.
Yes, but what do you think about Cloud vs Aegis? Does he measure up to them?
2022 hasn't boosted the meta perception of anyone more than Steve, a character that started off as an upper mid/lower high tier at launch, but developed into a serious best character contender thanks to 2022's developments. The character has by far the largest amount of players at high level than anyone else, with only characters like Palutena, Aegis, ROB, and Snake coming close. Interestingly, this is largely from United States representation alone, as the character doesn't have that much high level representation outside of USA. Remember when this character was considered borderline low tier all throughout the first year of Ultimate? Interesting times those were. Wolf is in a bit of a bizarre state in the current meta. He is once again a character that sees high levels of representation in especially the mid-to-low levels. However, in comparison to Steve, ROB, Palutena, and Snake, all characters that are popular in all levels of play with their best players (acola/Onin, Zomba/Anathema/BigBoss, Chag, ApolloKage) obtaining amazing consistent high level success, Wolf's success in the highest levels of play is fairly inconsistent in comparison. is kind of in the same boat as Wolf, but in an even more awkward state. Still a very good character. Both Pikachu and Shulk, very popular perception-wise pre-quarantine thanks to the vast potential of these characters, have unfortunately taken a significant fall in both tournament presence and overall perception going into the 2022 meta. These two stalwarts from Fighter's Pass 1 are both in a rather uncomfortable position in the current metagame. These two, especially Byleth, has obtained incredible results thanks to MkLeo and Riddles, respectively, but both are very reliant on these players for essentially 95% of their relevant results. Sheik is also at a weird spot where her overall theory is definitely higher perception-wise than her current results and representation. The overall theory is that she is potentially an upper high tier, even top tier character thanks to her incredible neutral game, which she will always have thanks to her overall toolkit and attributes. However, she is weird in the fact that most of her results are international results, primarily from Japan. Eim is the character's current champion, with Mr.R's recent focus on primarily Sheik aiding him quite a bit in catching up. However even with the international contributions, the character is definitely still not performing at the heights of what her theory suggests. While there are some very notable Luigi players stepping up to the plate, rising up in results, and hold up the green plumber's overall placing the meta, such players being the likes of Luugi and WaKa to name the main two, the character definitely took a serious blow after Elegant's ban, who provided incredible results for the character with a series of top 6 placings at a few majors in a row late 2021. Even back in SSB4, Elegant carried the entire character's meta behind him, so without him, the character will suffer as a result. Rosalina is a weird one. With incredible amounts of tech and Dabuz getting a large amount of notable wins for the character, the character has quite a bit going for her. However, Dabuz is not a solo Rosalina player, such a tri-main with her alongside Min Min and Olimar. Outside of him, there is also extremally minimal Rosalina representation, especially at high level. Homika does decently well, but that is it. The influx of great Japanese Rosalinas have also taken a hit, with Kirihara dropping her for Sheik and yuzu now dual-maining her with Min Min. Minor thing, but I do like to point out that in the UltRank 2022 has three Young Link players in it, but none is ranked within the top 60. In the meantime, Sigma's Toon Link placed 44th in the rankings, outplacing them all considerably. Not really huge in terms of their overall tier or meta placement, but it does show that Young Link's result have stabilized considerably. MK is another odd one when looking at the UltRank 2022, as there has two notable representatives of the character in Abadango and Yei, at 49th and 85th, respectively. However, Meta Knight is only one of many characters they use in their roster, with Abadango is noted to use Palutena, Samus, and Pikachu, while Yei is noted to use Palutena, Byleth, and Sephiroth. Abadango as of late is primiarly using Palutena and Samus in his tournament runs as well. In other words: what tier is this character is exactly? He feels like both mid and low tier at the same time. Hero, after reaching an all-time high in terms of high levels results in late 2021, thanks to Akakikusu, has taken a bit of a back seat in 2022. Similar to Shulk, the Japanese sensational is Hero's only real source of high level results, as the character's representation and results are very lacking outside of him. Unfortunately for the character, Akakikusu's is unable to replicate his late 2021 success throughout 2022, with major results as inconsistent as the character he plays, and generally unable to reach his earlier peaks. Sadly since he, again, is Hero's only real source of high level results, Hero's overall presence on the meta takes a notable blow for this as a result, which is combined with other mid tiers beginning to advance past him. Poor Link is all I have to say. While fellow early meta top tier Ike took the blow of the meta's new harshness earlier in the post-quarantine era, Link definitely felt these effects all throughout 2022. T transitioning to perform only in smaller scale tournaments, and not doing too well in the major tournaments he does go in, hurts Link's results and overall metagame perception significantly. RaZe is arguably the character's best placing player right now, but even then, it is not great enough to stop the character's metagame from hitting the lowest he has been since the game came out. What happened to this character? Wii Fit Trainer was performing decently well throughout the earlier to even mid portions of the post-quarantine era. Even if the results is reminiscent of a mid tier character, she was still showing some good promise. Then suddenly, she just kinda vanished. Her best players have started to participate a bit less often and started to perform worse in major tournaments. Here it is: the most awkward group of characters in the current metagame. These are the ones that rose a lot in metagame presence in 2022, but is largely carried by one single player. K. Rool and Gunner are in similar boats as the above group, but even with their amazing best player carrying the boatload of the results, that being KirbyKid and Capitancito respectively, their overall results are still pretty low with inconsistent placings at larger events. Similar to Big D and BassMage, KirbyKid still ends up losing certain sets despite his overall skill level, due to the glaring weaknesses of K. Rool. In the meantime for Gunner, the character narrowly beats out Sora for the highest gap between the #1 and #2 player, but even with the gap, the overall results put together is still very low.
Yeah, looks like Belmont's gonna be on a bit of a decline this year from the meta. I feel I’ve pushed this character to the best of my ability, and I’m gonna need to accept a bit of a drop in my results least at locals for things to pay off long-term. pic.twitter.com/h44tteiySQ
— T3 DOM 💜🤍🖤 (@Dom_ssb) January 29, 2023
He's in the same tier for sure, but probably a bit lower if you're looking at performance against the cast. Characters like Pacman hate fighting Cloud, but characters like Fox and Sonic have a harder time vs. Aegis. Aegis wins some of Cloud's winning matchups harder, which is why sparg0 went Aegis vs. Miya and vs. Demon the Bayonetta.
I don't know if they're bad -- I just think they're not useful. As in, there's no reason for me to pick Chrom, Sephiroth, or Robin over other swordies who do similar things in a better way.
Ike is Aegis without Mythra. Not bad, not great, not the worst by a long shot.
Ehh, I feel like Pyra still has substaintially better ledgetrapping and rising aerials with trade offs in other, sometimes more important categories.
it’ll rarely run out but there’s no hit box above Robin during it, Robin’s air speed is nothing special (1.05, same as Rosa), and Robin can’t angle it nearly well as Rosalina, so most good characters can intercept it somehow
They are admittedly some pretty bad tilts. Down tilt seems pretty worthless and forward doesn't do a whole lot. Up can juggle a little bit, but is relatively short range for anti air.
NEW ANTI STEVE VIDEO, This time capitalizing on a developer oversight giving him one of the worst shields in the game
— MP | RockMan (@RockManSSB) February 3, 2023
Note: I do an initial attack then a followup attack. you can ignore the initial attack as that's just to get the shield to low enough damage
Full vid in Thread pic.twitter.com/0jP1ceXLWl
. 3-1, Umeki 3-1, NEO 3-1, Rizeasu 3-0, and Kameme 3-1 to make it to top 8. The funny thing about the Kameme win, is that Zackray lost to him as Joker the last time they fought, only to now beat him convincingly as Pit. at the first month of his release, Zackray can just sometimes do insane stuff like this. vs KEN vs Asimo vs Nao vs Zackray
