Doubles tier list?

[S P O N G E]

What do you think a doubles tier list you look like?
Just like the normal tier list but characters based on how well they preform in doubles.

 

[JKJ]

I'd say we could make write ups for each character's strengths in doubles, and make a tier list for best doubles characters, but we could also make a team list where we discuss and rate teams configurations of characters. It would be pretty cool to see.

 

[S P O N G E]

That sounds like quite a good idea

 

[EPsilon933]

Tier list for each possible team would be impossible. There's way too many combinations to consider. We could consider only the top 8-12 characters to help reduce the number of teams

If we're looking at individual characters, only the top 8 in 1v1, in teams, the list would look like

S Tier
Fox
Jigglypuff

A Tier
Sheik
Peach

B Tier
Captain Falcon

C Tier
Falco
Marth

D Tier
Ice Climbers

 

[Nuttre]

D Tier
Ice Climbers

That high?!?!?!

 

[Hitzel]

There's a system that some players use to make Marvel tier lists to handle the concept of teams, this example is from ApologyMan (2013):

As you can see, the Y-axis represents a character's "traditional tier value" to a team, while the X-axis represents a character's support value to a team. This isn't perfect, but I suspect that using this system to construct Smash Doubles tier lists would be a fun exercise.

 

[EPsilon933]

That high?!?!?!

I only regarded the characters who were in the top 8 of 1v1


The UMVC3 tierlist format sounds like it could be a good idea, but 2v2s are not 1v1s with assisted. I think there should be different scales for the axes. Idk what they'd be

 

[Hitzel]

I don't play Smash enough to know what I'm talking about, but I constantly hear things like "Zelda is bad in 1's but she's good in 2's because she can support her teammate and finish kills with heels." Comments like that make it seem like the axes should represent direct combat and support.

*Edit*

I think I should say:

A character's support value in Marvel considers more than their assists, but also things like safe switching, team supers, tag combos, setups for teammates, assist usage, etc. Pretty much any time you're actively using more than one character at the same time, which can be often. I don't know if that really makes a difference, but I guess it means that people shouldn't look at the X-axis here as an assist tier list.

 

[S P O N G E]

I would say Falcon would be higher

 

[EPsilon933]

I don't play Smash enough to know what I'm talking about, but I constantly hear things like "Zelda is bad in 1's but she's good in 2's because she can support her teammate and finish kills with heels." Comments like that make it seem like the axes should represent direct combat and support.

*Edit*

I think I should say:

A character's support value in Marvel considers more than their assists, but also things like safe switching, team supers, tag combos, setups for teammates, assist usage, etc. Pretty much any time you're actively using more than one character at the same time, which can be often. I don't know if that really makes a difference, but I guess it means that people shouldn't look at the X-axis here as an assist tier list.

Zelda is better in 2v2 because she has an easier time spacing toes (fair and bair) against opponents in 2v2 than in 1v1. She also has a far reaching recovery that's easily edge guarded. Edge guards happen less successfully in 2v2 so she'll get to live and fight longer

Support sounds deeper than I thought it would be. I don't play UMVC3 so it's difficult for me to make comparisons

 

[Hitzel]

Zelda is better in 2v2 because she has an easier time spacing toes (fair and bair) against opponents in 2v2 than in 1v1. She also has a far reaching recovery that's easily edge guarded. Edge guards happen less successfully in 2v2 so she'll get to live and fight longer

Support sounds deeper than I thought it would be. I don't play UMVC3 so it's difficult for me to make comparisons

Hmm. That makes a lot of sense that the nature of a 2v2 will cause certain traits to gain or lose value like that. Maybe you're right that killing power and support aren't the best choices. I still think it'd be neat to see one made, and maybe if one is made a better solution will make itself clear. I just don't know enough about Smash to make one lol.

 

[EPsilon933]

Hmm. That makes a lot of sense that the nature of a 2v2 will cause certain traits to gain or lose value like that. Maybe you're right that killing power and support aren't the best choices. I still think it'd be neat to see one made, and maybe if one is made a better solution will make itself clear. I just don't know enough about Smash to make one lol.

Neither do I. We haven't even thought up a good pair of axes to consider yet. Just some assets that affect teams; KO power, recovery length /survival ability , spacing tools, running speed. I think safeness of recovery and combo ability matter less in 2v2

Also, support is more clearly defined in a 1v1 fighting game with multiple characters and assists. It's not so well for 2v2 with 4 simultaneous players

 

[JKJ]

Somehow, smash teams needs four axes. Speed, KO Power, Recovery/Survival, and Combo Ability. Some kind of a four-way scale. I have a few ideas. I want to make a trial list.
Any help on a four way scale?

Actually, I believe I figured it out. I'm going to have two regular charts with two axes each, one is going to be Support (Speed vs. Recovery/Survival), and the other is going to be Aggression (KO Power vs. Combo Ability).

Then we can see what characters are the best/highest in each categories.

 

[JKJ]

I did some preliminary charts. Flawed attempts, but a starting point perhaps.
http://imgur.com/X5OyNE4,TIDsSkG#1
http://imgur.com/X5OyNE4,TIDsSkG#0

 

[SSS]

Falco suuuuuuuuuucks in teams. Probs worse than Marth.

 

[T-R3X]

lasers are amazing in teams though...

 

[phish-it]

I did some preliminary charts. Flawed attempts, but a starting point perhaps.
http://imgur.com/X5OyNE4,TIDsSkG#1
http://imgur.com/X5OyNE4,TIDsSkG#0

I like the idea of a list like this but it's still difficult to rank characters in such a 2 dimensional way. Recovery and Survivability are both treated as one aspect. Like Pichu's recovery might be good but his surviability is poor because of how light he is. Combo ability is broad too. Ice Climbers chain grabs/wobbling would basically fall under combo ability, but due to the chaotic nature of teams Nana gets separated and killed extremely easily and once that happens the character loses the bulk of their combo ability. And yeah I disagree with alot of those placings too.

 

[Kaeon]

So Peach is A tier because she has downsmash?

Sound logic.

 

[Elyssa Xey Hexen]

I would think the most valuable team's characters would be those who have a solid set of traits to handle 2v1 situations well and reverse a situation quickly.

For example, those with very long edge guards are pretty pointless. Your opponent can come break it up much more quickly unless your teammate can keep out the opposing player. Additionally, grabs are very good at changing a situation. Suppose your opponents are 2v1 your teammate. By getting a grab and throwing them away you can quickly get it into a 1v1 situation without having your partner recover through three people. Additionally, you can throw people away or force both players into a narrow area.

At the same time, the ability to be opportunistic is greatly valued I believe as well. If your teammate gets hit you can rush in quickly to capitalize on a punish. Or intervene more quickly in a 2v1 situation by being able to recover more quickly.

In any respect, the higher tiered 1v1 characters will likely still remain the best teams characters. I doubt there is some hidden mid/low tier which does extremely well in teams to trump the other top tiered characters.

 

[JKJ]

I agree that my list was flawed, and survivability/recovery is definitely a flawed category. Also i agree that combo ability is a flawed category, though i tried to think of it in teerms of teams, hence why icies is lower...

if we can come up with some categories, id be happy to re do the list.

 

[Hitzel]

Maybe try doing it the same as the Marvel-style list, then taking a look at the results to determine what needs to be different. Make the two separate tier lists, plot the characters, and see what happens. The places the characters end up may help you figure out what to do with the categories, if that makes any sense.

 

[S P O N G E]

This is good, looks like we're getting somewhere with this.

 

[Bones0]

Instead of doing a 2-dimensional chart, we could just come up with the most important components to teams and rate each character 1-10 in each aspect. If I had to list the major elements of teams, I'd probably use something like this:

- KO Power (strength, difficulty in landing, safety)
- Offense (damage output, edgeguarding, combos)
- Priority/Hitboxes (size, duration, disjointedness)
- Assist (speed, disrupting, saving, 1v2)
- Durability (weight, gravity, comboable-ness)
- Recovery (speed, distance, difficulty to save)

You can combine these 6 stats into a radar chart for each character. With these, you can notice that if both characters on a team have a low KO Power stat that they will struggle in that aspect overall. Here's an example (you may or may not agree with the values, but that's not really the point):

 

[1MachGO]

@ JKJ , what is wrong with your scale system is that you are trying to apply traits traits which are important in singles to doubles. Moreover, its hard understand why speed is an area of assessment against the support role but not for the aggressive role.

If we are going to be measuring a character's doubles ability, it should be based on traits that are important in that context. Some of these traits would include but aren't limited to:

Durability: How much abuse the character can take if the enemy team decides to gang up on them. (ex. of good durability would be Jigglypuff, bad durability would be Marth)

Coverage: A character's ability to cover a location (vertical, horizontal, at the ledge) in a timely manner. Coverage involves mobility and smart projectile use. It also correlates to a character's ability to save teammates, get into edge guard setups, connect follow ups, etc. (good = fox, bad = kirby)

Crowd-Control: A character's methods for crowd control can vary but I would say that it generally comes down to two things: 1. how much space you can create between yourself and an opponent in the shortest amount of time 2. How well you can prevent two teammates from helping each other. There is some overlap between these two areas but there are definitely situations where characters excel at one but not the other. (good = Falco, bad = Roy)

Survivability: Pretty self explanatory. Pretty much a combination of recovery and weight. (good = Peach, bad = Roy)

Single-Hit Kill Potential: Also self explanatory. A lot of doubles can be exploiting the cramped space or preoccupation of an opponent. Since combos are hard to mobilize, single hits become more important for killing an opponent. (good = Ganon, bad = Roy)

Edgeguarding: Also somewhat self explanatory, if you are an amazing edge guarder then your character is incredible for the team. Fox, Pikachu, Sheik, and Jigglypuff are easily the best in the game at this regard. If your character needs to put themselves at risk to secure an edgeguard then they aren't that useful

 

[Hitzel]

I've always thought that tier lists should be based on character's overall ability to win matchups and nothing to do with specific "traits." Trying to make a tier list based of traits tends to be a giant black hole of subjectivity that doesn't really help.

In most 1v1 fighting games, you'll see each character get an "best of ten" rating per character (6-4, 5-5, 3-7, etc). The totals are added up for each character and that determines the order of the tier list.

From what I understand, Smash tier lists are generally determined by votes from the community, where players make their own lists and each character gets a position on the list based on average position on all of the lists. The method is different but the results are similar, a simple list of characters in order from best to worst.

For team games, there are too many matchup possibilities to list, so the characters need to be rated in order as objectively as possible without those numbers to back it up. The goal though is still to list the characters based on their ability to win matchups, and still avoiding the "traits" black hole. Two axes are used in a game like Marvel to show that while some characters aren't as useful in a direct fighting, they still have viable ways to help their teams win.

My problem with these traits being listed is that they are too specific and not general enough to fall into what I just described, and fall into that subjectivity problem I mentioned at the top of this post.

 

[Nuttre]

Guys! lets make a huge chart like this:

Due to the size, the chart is spoilered:

Spoiler

Maybe with team strength instead of matchup?

 

[Varist]

Instead of doing a 2-dimensional chart, we could just come up with the most important components to teams and rate each character 1-10 in each aspect. If I had to list the major elements of teams, I'd probably use something like this:

- KO Power (strength, difficulty in landing, safety)
- Offense (damage output, edgeguarding, combos)
- Priority/Hitboxes (size, duration, disjointedness)
- Assist (speed, disrupting, saving, 1v2)
- Durability (weight, gravity, comboable-ness)
- Recovery (speed, distance, difficulty to save)

You can combine these 6 stats into a radar chart for each character. With these, you can notice that if both characters on a team have a low KO Power stat that they will struggle in that aspect overall. Here's an example (you may or may not agree with the values, but that's not really the point):

nice dude i like how this chart is shape like a shine and u made fox and falco on it i think that adds a litle of the good ol smash broters touch to it doncha think lol

i think if i make a tier list it would be best characters are

FOX JIGGLYPUFF LINK PEACH

then some good ones but not as good as the others at what they do are

FALCON SAMUS SHEIK LUIGI

and awkward but can be good i gues chars are

FALCO ICECLIMBER MARTH GANONDORF

would be mine.

 

[Bones0]

I've always thought that tier lists should be based on character's overall ability to win matchups and nothing to do with specific "traits." Trying to make a tier list based of traits tends to be a giant black hole of subjectivity that doesn't really help.

In most 1v1 fighting games, you'll see each character get an "best of ten" rating per character (6-4, 5-5, 3-7, etc). The totals are added up for each character and that determines the order of the tier list.

From what I understand, Smash tier lists are generally determined by votes from the community, where players make their own lists and each character gets a position on the list based on average position on all of the lists. The method is different but the results are similar, a simple list of characters in order from best to worst.

For team games, there are too many matchup possibilities to list, so the characters need to be rated in order as objectively as possible without those numbers to back it up. The goal though is still to list the characters based on their ability to win matchups, and still avoiding the "traits" black hole. Two axes are used in a game like Marvel to show that while some characters aren't as useful in a direct fighting, they still have viable ways to help their teams win.

My problem with these traits being listed is that they are too specific and not general enough to fall into what I just described, and fall into that subjectivity problem I mentioned at the top of this post.

To clarify, my idea of a traits-based chart for each character wasn't supposed to end with ranking them based on those traits. The idea was that you can compare and construct teams loosely based on the traits by seeing which areas they excel in and which characters they lack. I think the whole idea behind a teams tier list is flawed because it's hard enough ranking individual characters. Ranking individuals as part of a team or ranking entire times would both be ridiculous tasks to take on. I'd rather just convey the overall traits we base those rankings on and let people use their own judgement. Using my Fox and Falco chart as an example, a new player could recognize fairly quickly that a Fox/Falco team is going to struggle when it comes to staying alive. Both characters are light, get comboed because of their high gravity, and Falco specifically has a weak recovery. How you weight these traits is going to depend on the opposing team's strategy, characters, stage, and your own strategy, but it gives a reasonable expectation for the average match will unfold.

Isolating characters into 6 core traits is no doubt oversimplifying the game, but if the goal is just to get a rough idea of how characters perform in a teams environment, I think that is the best way. It is also really conducive to discussion because you are bound to be able to learn and explain much more about a character/team through individual traits as opposed to the singles tier list where people are almost exclusively talking in very broad terms, making ridiculously broad assumptions about how a character is played, and preoccupied with the ranking of the character in question. Radar charts can obviously be averaged out to find a ranking, but there's no agreed upon weighting for how important each trait is so it'd be relatively meaningless. This means each chart would stand on its own and people wouldn't be obsessed with Fox vs. Falco for the #1 spot, but rather obsessed with whether Falco's recovery is good or bad in a teams environment or how safe Falcon's combos are compared to other characters. These seem like really enlightening discussion topics that could help ignite a passion for teams the community has been lacking while simultaneously providing newbies with a general outline to how their character works in teams.

 

[JKJ]

I support fully Bones's radar chart. That is just too swagging to not +1. Way better than my ****ty list lol

 

[phish-it]

Bones' chart format is cool, but Fox's priority a 3? Come on now.

 

[Bones0]

Bones' chart format is cool, but Fox's priority a 3? Come on now.

Priority encompasses hitbox size, duration, and disjointedness. Almost all of Fox's moves are easy to trade with, and most of his attacks are very precise unlike other top tiers who can cover large amounts of space. Marth, Falcon, Peach, and ICs all have WAY better priority. I gave Falco a 5 since his dair gives him good downward priority, but now that I think about it, lasers should probably count towards that so it's more like a 7.

But hey, if you are interested you should come up with ratings for the top 8 or so characters and post them.
I wish there was an easy way to automate it, but it's not hard if you have Excel. Just fill in cells in the same format as mine, highlight them, and insert a radar chart.

 

[Elyssa Xey Hexen]

In my eyes this is the strategy to do this properly:

1) Define a definition for a tier list.
2) Set-up the ruleset that this tier list is working within.
3) Assign a variety of attributes which clearly define a strong character in teams.
4) Vote on it publicly among people.

By attributes, I think you need more documented examples than 'offence', priority, KO power, etc. that bones came up with.
Recovery, Offence, Priority, Assist, Durability. Some of these hit on the right topics I feel while others might be reworked or coalesced.

Recovery is certainly a trait which seems important. If you get knocked off as Falcon you have a very long time spent getting back to the stage at times or just get completely destroyed as soon as you are offstage. However, I would say it encompasses your ability to get back down from the stage platforms as well or reversing your situation. Marth gets the standard options as any other character, but he gets the ability for counter and sideB stall above opponents to attempt to get back down from a juggle. Falcon is pretty much air dodge, attack, or 2nd jump (standard options for any character) while Peach gets her own counter and float as well.

Priority/Offence I believe can just be shipped up into a single terms such as 1v1 material. How well a character does in a 1v1 situation.

Assistance I believe has a lot of forms. Easily the first thing that comes to mind is how quickly a character can aide in the assistance of your partner with the minimal risk and greater reward for your team. Falco laser is pretty non-committal for keeping away the other character as your teammate beats up on the other opponent falco is not lasering. While at the same time Shiek's ground speed is great at grabbing a punish for your partner getting hit.

I would just drop durability or coalesce it into an intrinsic property of the character's ability to recovery. Ganon will leave forever, but his offstage recovery is still seceptable to ONKO such as spike or swatting away.'

But yeah, that little bit I posted at the beginning I think should be the proper process for doing this whole thing.

@Bones: While Falco/Fox do not have marth sword disjoint or say jigglypuff bair disjoint, they are still pretty stupid overall in terms of priority as a whole.

Aerial+Shine pretty much makes CC obsolete. They have rather disjointed aerials too. Weak fox nair is still super good in terms of disjoint.

 

[1MachGO]

Are we talking about priority in terms of attack speed, attack damage, or attack range?

If we are talking about the former two, Fox is very good. If we are talking about the latter, Fox is among the worst in the game haha.

 

[Nuttre]

Are we talking about priority in terms of attack speed, attack damage, or attack range?

If we are talking about the former two, Fox is very good. If we are talking about the latter, Fox is among the worst in the game haha.

Priority is what decides if an active hitbox goes through another active hitbox or just clanks with it, this is based off percent mainly.

 

[phish-it]

Priority is such a broad term there isn't any true way to measure it by a number. Generally attack speed, hitbox size, rang/disjointedness, attack duration and the attackers hurtbox size all play a part on what we understand priority as. Fox's attacks might not have great range for example, but his hurtbox is small and many of his attacks 'protect' his body in that sense, not to mention his attacks are fast which is important in beating out other characters attacks. I wouldn't say Fox's 'priority' is as good as Peach or Sheik of course but with 26 characters in the game there and a 1-10 scale, Fox is certainly higher than the bottom of the barrel in this aspect (same with Falco too slightly). If you want bad priority look at DK, Mewtwo, Pichu for example.

I'll try to compile some values for other characters using that chart myself.

 

[BTmoney]

Tier list for each possible team would be impossible. There's way too many combinations to consider. We could consider only the top 8-12 characters to help reduce the number of teams

If we're looking at individual characters, only the top 8 in 1v1, in teams, the list would look like

S Tier
Fox
Jigglypuff

A Tier
Sheik
Peach

B Tier
Captain Falcon

C Tier
Falco
Marth

D Tier
Ice Climbers

falco is worse than pretty much every relevant character in teams? not understanding that

falco is obviously better in singles but it's still falco. I agree with the "s tier"

 

[Bones0]

@Bones: While Falco/Fox do not have marth sword disjoint or say jigglypuff bair disjoint, they are still pretty stupid overall in terms of priority as a whole.

Aerial+Shine pretty much makes CC obsolete. They have rather disjointed aerials too. Weak fox nair is still super good in terms of disjoint.

1. How do you figure? Outside of dair, bair, and utilt, all of Falco's moves are really susceptible to trades, and outside of lasers, he has a very limited range of attack. Fsmash is probably his farthest reaching hitbox, and it's extremely slow and risky. This idea that spacies have good priority has been spread since the dawn of time, most famously with the claim that their nairs have good priority when that's not the case at all and people just don't understand how the game works. I'd trade all of Falco's aerials for most other top tiers' in a heartbeat, and his aerials aren't even his worst area of priority. If you think this is good priority, you're delusional (it's even worse than it looks because FFing increases the effect of hitbox dragging):

2. Not sure how aerial shine makes CC obsolete. I see spacies getting wrecked by CC left and right because outside of their dairs, their other moves are too weak to even link into shine. Marth can outspace CCs, Sheik can fair, Peach can FC any aerial except dair, Falcon can knee/stomp, Jiggs can bair and drift away, etc. Falco specifically also can't very well DD grab vs. CC spam because he's too slow and his grab punishes are too weak. There's a reason Fox vs. Falco and spacie dittos see a ton of CCing vs. each other.

falco is worse than pretty much every relevant character in teams? not understanding that

falco is obviously better in singles but it's still falco. I agree with the "s tier"

He's bad enough to make almost every top Falco player switch to a secondary in teams...

 

[phish-it]

Here are some poor priority nairs.

Spoiler

Even Samus' nair which has good priority isn't that much different than Fox's:

Her foot hurtbox actually extends outside of the hitboxes unlike Fox's, So yes, Fox's nair does have good priority, not sure why you don't think so.

 

[thesage]

Fox's nair has good "priority" because it has a decent hitbox for a non disjointed attack as well as fox having crazy momentum and speed.

Some low tiers do a lot better in teams because of their gimmicks as well as being harder to camp. Ness can heal himself and become a mini stock tank. Kirby's partner can set up for swallowcides.

I think how aggressive and defensive a character can be should be the axes. It encompasses everything in doubles.

 

[EPsilon933]

Fox's nair has good "priority" because it has a decent hitbox for a non disjointed attack as well as fox having crazy momentum and speed.

Have you looked at the size of Fox's nair hitboxes compared to hit hurtboxes? That's a better ratio than most other attacks. Also, his foot doesn't have a hurtbox, making it a little bit disjointed