Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Arthur97]

Seeming more and more like he just can't accept Pikachu is, in fact, not broken. Then again, the term broken is probably thrown around too much by the community to the point it kinda doesn't mean as much. ESAM may be the poster child for don't believe everything the pros say.

 

[L9999]

Seeming more and more like he just can't accept Pikachu is, in fact, not broken. Then again, the term broken is probably thrown around too much by the community to the point it kinda doesn't mean as much. ESAM may be the poster child for don't believe everything the pros say.

It is a brand by this point, like how Marss says Zero Suit Samus sucks ass. ESAM has said Pikachu is busted so much that if he denies it he will look like an even bigger fool. I think the people even more foolish than ESAM are the ones who believed that whole "Pikachu busted" propaganda that might have never been sincere to begin with.

And it shows in the meta, Zackray preferred to play PIT of all characters in tournament, not to clown on bad players but to beat world level talent, even though he has the talent to play Pikachu and show how "broken" he is. Not just Zackray, so many talented players would rather play weird mid tiers instead of Pikachu, some that btw don't have easy learning curves, or have more blatant weaknesses than Pikachu.

 

[Hotcakes]

This is just theorycrafting, but I've always felt that Gunner could do pretty solidly against Pikachu. Absorbing Vortex to force approaches, Charge Blast to make those approaches tougher, and then using a mix of Cannon Jump Kick (frame 4, kills) and their amazing grab (largest frame 6 grab btw.) to keep him off their shield.

 

[The_Bookworm]

LVL UP EXPO 2023 has been going on right now. Here is top 16 of the tournament.

Winner's
Tweek vs Marss
Cosmos vs Kola
Light vs Mr. E
Sonix vs Zomba

Loser's
Goblin vs Nito
frawg vs ven
Capitancito vs Kreeg
MVD vs Wrath


It is a smaller event, but some top faces of the scene has showed up for this event.
Notable in loser's is the presence of rare characters Zelda, Gunner, and Marth, the former two being piloted by their respective best player, while Kreeg is the odd one out for this.


Edit:
Top 8

Winner's
Tweek vs Cosmos
Light vs Sonix

Loser's
Marss vs Kola
Mr. E vs Zomba

 

[Cheryl~]

I believe LVL UP Expo is the first American A tier event for the year (we already had some S tiers but not an A tier level one yet), so this was actually a really good tournament for a few characters like Zelda and Mii Gunner who typically never reach placements like 9th.

the top 8 ended up going like this:

1st: Light
2nd: Tweek
3rd: Sonix
4th: Cosmos
5th: Kola
5th: Mr. E
7th: Marss
7th: Zomba

Notably, this was a rather hard fought win for Light despite what you might think at first. Tweek ended up taking the Winners Finals set after a decisive game 1 win by Light, sticking to Diddy Kong and playing extremely well. Light pulled through once he made it to Grands, though, forcing Tweek's Diddy out and into the Sephiroth which has beaten Light before, but ultimately lost game 5. The reset, he tried Wario and Diddy, and both were unable to take the win. Tweek's always had a bit of a Fox problem (well, mostly a Light problem) but it is nice to see how hard he tries to beat the character and he really made Light work for it this tournament. Also was great to see Mr. E putting up good results again, Lucina's gonna really like a top 8 placement from someone not named ProtoBanHam or Leon in Europe.

 

[Hippieslayer]

This is just theorycrafting, but I've always felt that Gunner could do pretty solidly against Pikachu. Absorbing Vortex to force approaches, Charge Blast to make those approaches tougher, and then using a mix of Cannon Jump Kick (frame 4, kills) and their amazing grab (largest frame 6 grab btw.) to keep him off their shield.

Cannon jump kick is kinda asking to get gimped vs Pikachu and is just not worth it in general. Gunner does not have the airdrift needed to get away with having a terrible recovery move, even with fair shenanigans their recovery becomes predictable and they can't use their missiles to cover their recovery to the same extent either because with jump kick they will not always be able to afford to the loss in air drift. Gunner is a heavyweight, they benefit from having a good recovery because it lets them live long, and the up-b without a hitbox is a very good recovery move for them because it allows for so many mixups.

Giving up bomb drop for vortex seems like a terrible idea too. The former is a far better and more integral move than the latter and missiles and bombs can stop t-jolts anyway. Pikachu has the tools to counterplay vortex too, don't think it's really gonna help that much and you sacrifice a lot for it. I think there's very few matches if any at all were giving up bomb drop is a good idea.

Gunner doesn't really wall with charge shot either since their charge shot is pretty terrible unless charged at least halfways and it really only starts to be good at 3/4 to full. It's got more endlag than those of Samus and Mewtwo so Gunner can't follow up from landing it and the endlag also makes it rather punishable. Rather than a walling tool it's something you combo into at low percents for big damage, use the threat of to control your opponent at high percentages and of course as a killing move. Gunner walls with fair, missiles and down-b.

There's footage of Capitancito fighting Shinymark and Esam, beating the former (who did not seem well versed in the matchup) and losing but putting up a good fight vs the latter. Those games are probably what Esam is basing his opinion on.

On another note: Felt like Tweek coulda won if he had just stayed Diddy.

 

[Hippieslayer]

Is the Diddy/Fox Mu really as bad for Diddy as Tweek says? The Sephiroth mu looks horrible but the Diddy one didn't look that bad to me.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Tomorrow is the day. Stay tuned!

Tomorrow, Smash Ultimate will finally receive its first official tierlist, powered by @StartGG! This tier list was formed by 70 of the top 100 players from around the globe! Any predictions? pic.twitter.com/DWi11MLZas

— LumiRank (@LumiRank) February 23, 2023

 

[Arthur97]

Official? Official by what standards?

 

[The_Bookworm]

Official? Official by what standards?

For each Smash game, there are community tier lists created by the overall Smash community figureheads.
They are typically done by the Smash Back Room, but that currently does not exist anymore.
Between that, the larger roster of Ultimate, and the stagnate metas of Smash games that isn't Melee or Ultimate, all means that they are no where near as frequent as they were in the 2000s/early 2010s.

The current one for Smash 64 was made at May 15th, 2015 by the Smash 64 Community, fairly outdated but the 64 meta is fairly stagnate right now.
The current one for Brawl was made at April 25th, 2013 by the Smash Back Room.
The current one for SSB4 was made at December 11th, 2017 by the Smash Back Room, also outdated imo since it excludes 2018 meta developments.

As such, modern Smash tier lists are now being done via aggregate complied from most of the top players of the world. Melee did this with their current tier list on March 29th, 2021, made by PG Stats. Perhaps someone in the thread can explain this a bit better, but that is the gist of it.

However, no top-level community made tier lists have been made for Ultimate. Now, after over 4 years after the game's release (which the longest it has ever taken for an official tier list to be made for a Smash game between its release and the tier list's creation) we are finally getting one.

 

[Arthur97]

But the game is in a state that doesn't really lend itself to a tier list. When you can hardly agree on anything and those in the tiers are so close together. What's the point? Plus, I clearly don't trust the "pros" with their biases, intentional or not.

 

[Sucumbio]

But the game is in a state that doesn't really lend itself to a tier list. When you can hardly agree on anything and those in the tiers are so close together. What's the point? Plus, I clearly don't trust the "pros" with their biases, intentional or not.

I mean, the previous back rooms were also mostly compromised of pros and tos and labbere, etc. It's just that Smashboards isn't home to an Ultimate Back Room group bc this site has unfortunately become something of a relic. But the same people that would have been involved, are. So I'm not understanding your objection to their conclusions?

 

[Rizen]

A little off topic but imo Tweek and especially Light are just as good as Spargo and Acola now. They weren't at first but they've both been seriously leveling up this last few months. MKLeo's still the GOAT though.

 

[Arthur97]

I mean, the previous back rooms were also mostly compromised of pros and tos and labbere, etc. It's just that Smashboards isn't home to an Ultimate Back Room group bc this site has unfortunately become something of a relic. But the same people that would have been involved, are. So I'm not understanding your objection to their conclusions?

Pros seem to like to parrot opinions (Pikachu and Shulk being most prominent examples) or have hot takes for clicks. Neither of these are good things for a "definitive list." Add that to Ultimate being so close that it can be nigh impossible to properly rank things on a micro scale, and it doesn't seem to be a recipe for accuracy. Ultimate seems really incapable of a proper individually ranked tier list since they're so close together.

 

[Hippieslayer]

The list doesn't have to be accurate though. It would just be nice to have something that isn't produced by reddit.

Plus it will be interesting to see how they choose to design the list even if everyone knows that individual placements will be somewhat arbitrary.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Ladies and gentlemen, here it is: https://blog.start.gg/ultranks-first-official-ssbu-tier-list-4a35bf3dcfc3

Top Tier
S+
S ()
S-

High Tier
A+ ()
A-

Upper Mid Tier
B+
B- ()

Lower Mid Tier
C+
C- ()

Low Tier
D+
D-


Very solid list overall imo for a first community tier list. I can post my individual thoughts on it later.
I recommend all of you, before posting anything, to read the blog post first surrounding the methods, as well as the notable facts around some character's placements (most notably regional differences).

 

[superjm]

Man, I remember posting that I thought we might be heading towards a meta where Samus is considered better than her Zero Suit counterpart but thought it was unlikely. And now this tier list comes out with Samus just barely edging it out and I just find the whole thing funny.

EDIT: Also glad to see that at least some high ranked players still recognize what an utter terror Peach is. This character never went away, we just forgot all about her until Mute and Umeki made us remember.

 

[Sucumbio]

Honestly the only one that sticks out as being odd to me is Yoshi being higher
than Lucina, Wario, Trainer... I'd have expected them to be in B- territory.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Honestly the only one that sticks out as being odd to me is Yoshi being higher
than Lucina, Wario, Trainer... I'd have expected them to be in B- territory.

To quote the article: "Pikachu was notably in the top 5 in Latin America and in the top 10 in the US and Canada, but not even top 25 in Japan. Conversely, Yoshi was in the top 10 in Japan, but not top 25 in the US and Canada."

So yeah, heavy Japanese influence in that placement.

Speaking of which, Sora's and Banjo's placements stook out to me as surprisingly pretty high, but Japan had a fair amount of influence on both of those placements according to the Regional Differences section of the article.

 

[Sinister Slush]

You can see the Japan influence with Min Min Shulk Yoshi Sora and Hero.

But since I'm biased to Yoshi I am fine with the placement except for the fact he's in top 20 yet in high tier. What a random cutoff, make it seem cleaner by having top 20 S tier at least instead of top 19.
The real outliers to me though is Falcon > Ness Falco Corrin AND Chrom. Unless I'm just ignorant on Falcon players outside of fatality, wouldn't the multiple ness mains doing well in both Japan and the West heavily outweigh Falcon results. Or Tilde for Falco, MKLeo Cosmos (secondaries/pockets) and SHADIC results for Corrin, and Chrom generally being an all around solid pick to do well in tournies but not enough to win them afaik. Don't remember how close Mr.R has gotten in EU majors.

Not gonna delve too deep into other picks I feel could be a spot or two higher but those were the ones that stuck out to me immediately, especially falcon above the 4 I mentioned.


Mii Brawler High tier tho...

 

[The_Bookworm]

But since I'm biased to Yoshi I am fine with the placement except for the fact he's in top 20 yet in high tier. What a random cutoff, make it seem cleaner by having top 20 S tier at least instead of top 19.

Funnily enough, if Peach and Daisy are counted as separate characters, then S tier is indeed the top 20. That does have a weird slippery slope.
If Peach/Daisy are counted as slot #9, then Cloud is #10.
If Peach/Daisy are counted as slots #9-10, then Cloud is #11.

The real outliers to me though is Falcon > Ness Falco Corrin AND Chrom. Unless I'm just ignorant on Falcon players outside of fatality, wouldn't the multiple ness mains doing well in both Japan and the West heavily outweigh Falcon results. Or Tilde for Falco, MKLeo Cosmos (secondaries/pockets) and SHADIC results for Corrin, and Chrom generally being an all around solid pick to do well in tournies but not enough to win them afaik. Don't remember how close Mr.R has gotten in EU majors.

Mii Brawler High tier tho...

While Falcon is not at his absolute best right now (otherwise he would be ranked even higher than he is currently), Fatality and Sean have both still place fairly well with him with Jogibu places especially well in Japanese tournaments.

Mii Brawler is definitely more of a theory > results pick, cause otherwise the character is no where near high tier, let alone above half of the folks in B+.

Mii Brawler, Sora, and Palutena are my personal biggest outliers in the list (should be lower, lower, and higher, respectively), but otherwise I am happy with everything else.

 

[Corrector]

Can anyone tell me why is Peach so high in the tier list, and most importantly above the like of Pikachu, Palutena, Wolf, Snake, Mr.G&W, Pacman, and Cloud? I just don't get her appeal.

 

[L9999]

Can anyone tell me why is Peach so high in the tier list, and most importantly above the like of Pikachu, Palutena, Wolf, Snake, Mr.G&W, Pacman, and Cloud? I just don't get her appeal.

Largely because of her strong combo potential, float mixups, and ledge play. Unlike the yellow rat people are actually playing Peach to show what she is capable of. Whether it is sustainable for humans to perform with consistency and make up for her tough matchups, only time will tell, it took MuteAce a while to mimic Samsora's power, ignoring that covid itself killed Peach's meta for years.

If we can hype Pikachu for all the nothing he does we can hype Peach too.

 

[Hippieslayer]

I refuse to believe that Roy is better than Cloud!

 

[Sucumbio]

I refuse to believe that Roy is better than Cloud!

Yeah cloud seems to be more well rounded, but to quote MKLeo "anyone in S could be top 10."

 

[Idon]

I refuse to believe that Roy is better than Cloud!

Then live in denial. That character is busted.

 

[Cheryl~]

The thing I'm most happy about this tier list is that it gives Ultimate Diddy Kong the respect he deserves for being a complete monster. I feel like Japan definitely had a heavy influence on this with their abundance of Diddy mains/pockets coming out in the last year or so (TKM, Nietono, Ryuooh, Etsuji, etc.) but I think the top playerbase in general have stopped seeing Diddy as this character that takes too much effort for what you get out of him. He's small, has insane neutral, banana, monkey flip, insane damage output, an okay recovery that can be hard to deal with for some characters, also has Diddy Down Air so he isn't even bad at killing early. What I'm saying is, this character pretty much has it all except for raw kill power sometimes, and yes he may struggle with SOME weird mid tier zoners because of his playstyle but when it comes to the top level, those characters don't even exist (and Tweek has shown that bad top level matchups like Steve are pretty doable as well, only outlier has been Pac-Man really). Diddy is good, really good.

 

[Wunderwaft]

Well now....
Thanks to a new tech Steve now has a frame 1 air dodge / combo breaker

Have you seen the Steve hitstun canceling clips floating around?
Did you hope they were fake?

Well sorry to burst your bubble!

Introducing Phantom MLG: pic.twitter.com/OJ2GIM5Env

— XCido 🇮🇱 (@XCidoClipDump) February 25, 2023

使えそうな非確定コンボ抜けその２ pic.twitter.com/a0dzq1Ak0W

— そんじょ (@Sonjo_SSBU) February 25, 2023

 

[Rocketjay8]

Well now....
Thanks to a new tech Steve now has a frame 1 air dodge / combo breaker

Have you seen the Steve hitstun canceling clips floating around?
Did you hope they were fake?

Well sorry to burst your bubble!

Introducing Phantom MLG: pic.twitter.com/OJ2GIM5Env

— XCido 🇮🇱 (@XCidoClipDump) February 25, 2023

使えそうな非確定コンボ抜けその２ pic.twitter.com/a0dzq1Ak0W

— そんじょ (@Sonjo_SSBU) February 25, 2023

If this becomes a completely broken, at the very least we can ban the technique.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Made a Reddit comment with my thoughts on Steve's new 'hitstun cancel', explaining where it works, how it can be used, counterplay etc.

Twitter char limit is bad for complex topics so I'll answer every question/argument over there as honestly as I can!https://t.co/AYM8ct02xC

— WhyDo (@WDBTHtGP) February 25, 2023

I think it's going to end up being more nuanced than Twitter clips make it out to be. Banning now would be premature, we need more data first. From what I've seen it doesn't seem to be banworthy, it's limited in several ways.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Made a Reddit comment with my thoughts on Steve's new 'hitstun cancel', explaining where it works, how it can be used, counterplay etc.

Twitter char limit is bad for complex topics so I'll answer every question/argument over there as honestly as I can!https://t.co/AYM8ct02xC

— WhyDo (@WDBTHtGP) February 25, 2023

I think it's going to end up being more nuanced than Twitter clips make it out to be. Banning now would be premature, we need more data first. From what I've seen it doesn't seem to be banworthy, it's limited in several ways.

Yeah, I agree that it is always better to wait to see if something is actually problematic then deciding any action against it. Remember Hero?
I do have to say that is definitely up there with for the buggiest character to ever exist in Smash, especially in terms of competitive meta relevant glitches.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Btw I wonder why there isn't that much discussion on the official tier list, like deeper thoughts on each specific character placement and why he or she should be ranked lower or higher. Remembering back in the day where the folks in the thread would dissect on each of the official SSB4 tier lists released with their thoughts on character placements, arguing on characters that should be higher/lower or underrated/overrated.
Wonder why such isn't really happening as much now, but I guess as nostalgic as I am, the SmashBoards Competitive Discussion threads have become something of a relic nowadays.

I am particularly curious on everyone's thoughts on the placement, because that character is honestly one of the biggest question marks of the cast. It is definitely one of those characters bolstered by theory than results, but I do wonder what all of your takes are.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

I'm actually sad that Pokemon Trainer seems to have dropped off a tier placement to high tier instead of being a low top tier like they used to be. DLC did Pokemon Trainer dirty.

 

[Arthur97]

Maybe it just isn't that interesting? I mean, Steve might be overhyped (though people seem to have calmed down if just a little), I'm not really sure about Pyra and Mythra and Joker being second and third too. I mean, I guess someone has to take those spots if you insist on making it, but, feeds back into is Ultimate really ready for a tier list even this far out?

But, beyond that, does it really matter beyond maybe some people taking it too seriously as absolute fact?

 

[Eremurus]

If this becomes a completely broken, at the very least we can ban the technique.

How do you then monitor, and enforce it?

 

[Rocketjay8]

How do you then monitor, and enforce it?

Well, we have been able to enforce bans on other techniques in other smash games (wobbling, cape infinite).

 

[Idon]

Well, we have been able to enforce bans on other techniques in other smash games (wobbling, cape infinite).

All of which are far more noticeable and easy to recognize than this.

A character falling out of a non-tumble attack is a little harder to detect than two children grabbing and pummeling for several minutes, Meta Knight teleporting from one end of the stage to another, or any other example like Peach stalling at the bottom of Fountain of Dreams.

 

[Trunks159]

Yeah just ban Steve at this point

 

[Wunderwaft]

Banning the tech itself is a logistical nightmare, it's a half-second interaction compared to wobbling which is more easily noticable. Multi-hits in this game already are shaky and have a lot of instances where people get out of them intentionally or not. There's no way to accurately tell if the Steve player used the tech to escape a multi-hit move or not besides saving the replay and dissecting the video frame by frame, which uhh good luck doing that in a crowded tournament. This is gonna lead to a lot of false positives.

 

[Rizen]

I was against banning Steve before but I agree this new tech could lead to a ban.

 

[Sucumbio]

Banning the tech itself is a logistical nightmare, it's a half-second interaction compared to wobbling which is more easily noticable. Multi-hits in this game already are shaky and have a lot of instances where people get out of them intentionally or not. There's no way to accurately tell if the Steve player used the tech to escape a multi-hit move or not besides saving the replay and dissecting the video frame by frame, which uhh good luck doing that in a crowded tournament. This is gonna lead to a lot of false positives.

I gotta agree here. I think it's just yet another example of how Steve is relentlessly different from the rest of the cast. As for banning the character, I still don't see it happening on a large scale. That's is until a Steve wins a major attended by MKLeo, Sparg0, Tweek and Light. But that'd be Acola and he doesn't seem too reliant on farming for broken techs.