Heavy characters not viable?

[Saturn_]

Long time lurker on here, only just registered.

Lurking on here, I've seen, over and over again, that the vast majority of people seem to think that the best characters are simply the fastest characters, ranked in some order, i.e. Diddy, ZSS, Fox, etc. I basically never see the heaviest characters ranked in the top 10, and not even really in the top 20, to be honest.

I'm a scrub as Smash4, so I ask the more experienced players - which do you think are the best heavy characters? Do you think heavy characters (Bowser, Charizard, King DeDeDe, Ganondorf, etc.) will stand the test of time, or will the fast, light characters always dominate the metagame?

 

[ATH_]

This thread has been made many times by people.

Heavy characters are good as any other character can be good to some extent, the reason they tend to be at the low part of lists and ranks is because it takes extremely high amounts of skill to play them and get results. This is because most of them have slow and strong moves which mean you'll have to be reading your opponent a lot harder than other characters.

Characters like Sheik can NAir into a shield and still have the possibility of avoiding the shield-grab because they can fast-fall and possibly grab them quicker. This makes them really useful because it means that you can clean up your mistakes as you make them, of course, getting to a higher level of play means that these mistakes will not go un-punished.

Some characters that are heavy and really good are Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and some may consider Sonic to be fairly heavy as well. Again, most of these characters demand lots of skill to play well at a high level, but that doesn't mean that all of them will have this syndrome.

 

[Muro]

If any of them ends up being any good it's bowser.

 

[ATH_]

If any of them ends up being any good it's bowser.

Bowser's insane. His FSmash and BAir are just so stupidly powerful.

 

[J0A0B]

Judging by the many results of tournaments and community tier lists, it's pretty obvious the characters with high mobility and speed are the superior choices. Despite heavy characters dealing higher damage, speedy characters can execute quick combos that may deal more damage than a heavy character's successful hit. In addition, they are able to dodge and jump easier to avoid fierce attacks and can easily grab when one is vulnerable. In a scrub's mindset, the speedy characters can simply spam jumps or dodge rolls and play annoying mind games since there is no limitation to how often they use them and the only viable punishment is if the heavy opponent is aware enough to defend or counter at the precise moment, which takes indeed more skill.

This honestly creates a huge gap between the two. I feel if there was a punishment for spamming certain tactics, like jumping too much will cause increase in landing lag unless they don't jump from the ground for 3 seconds, the speedy characters would be forced to be more careful with their tactics similar to the heavy characters. It would probably put them in a more even field with each other and hopefully not be an annoying setback like tripping.

 

[Collective of Bears]

If any of them ends up being any good it's bowser.

Damn skippy.

Side note: I think Charizard's being overlooked by a lot of folks, but that may just be personal bias.

 

[warriorman222]

If any of them ends up being any good it's bowser.

Is what they expect you to think...

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I strongly feel heavies are being undervalued in the current metagame, especially Charizard. They tend to be less safe on block but have monster grab range so they make their opponent less safe on block too, and their massive range + power + moves with armor really let them bully their opponents effectively. The main difference is that, with a slower character, taking risks and sometimes taking hits is just what you have to do whereas you can just play around the idea of not getting hit as a speedy character. For a lot of players that's a harder mindset to adopt, but IMO once you get into how heavies play they're actually the easiest characters to pick up. Yeah they rely even more heavily on reads, but they also tend to have very low execution requirements so it kinda balances out.

 

[Octavium]

Heavy characters are good as any other character can be good to some extent, the reason they tend to be at the low part of lists and ranks is because it takes extremely high amounts of skill to play them and get results. This is because most of them have slow and strong moves which mean you'll have to be reading your opponent a lot harder than other characters.

I wouldn't say they take more skill, just more patience and more concentration. However with their damage output they are usually very well rewarded for reading.

I feel heavies are great characters for those who are new to the series, they seem to rely heavily on basic fundamentals.

But as the player starts to slowly understand the game's physics and have better control of their characters, they'll want to make use of that by picking a faster character. While those that remain heavies, will need to majorly improve their reading abilities to keep up.

 

[Raijinken]

Historically, their susceptibility to combos and their poor speed have been detriments too great to overcome.

Now that we have Rage, though, and in some cases some boosted speed on their movements, I think they stand a better chance. Not a great chance, but a better chance. Because while Rage applies to everyone, heavier characters are more likely to reach relevant percents while still surviving, and typically have the power to take a low-percent kill if they're glowing brightly enough.

 

[Teshie U]

Its better to be quick and safe to avoid being hit, than being heavy enough to tank hits.

You can't tank forever.

Though Smash 4 might be the first time heavies see a bit of balance. They aren't that slow this time. The slow ones (Ganondorf, DDD) have some nice reach and DDD has a projectile at least.

 

[Thinkaman]

I think Ganondorf, Charizard, and Bowser Jr. have a lot of potential, personally.

Also, heavy characters tend to benefit more from custom moves than almost anyone, since their default specials contain a lot of their power and are designed around free-for-alls.

 

[warriorman222]

Its better to be quick and safe to avoid being hit, than being heavy enough to tank hits.

You can't tank forever.

Though Smash 4 might be the first time heavies see a bit of balance. They aren't that slow this time. The slow ones (Ganondorf, DDD) have some nice reach and DDD has a projectile at least.

YASHI

 

[Fatmanonice]

Though Smash 4 might be the first time heavies see a bit of balance. They aren't that slow this time. The slow ones (Ganondorf, DDD) have some nice reach and DDD has a projectile at least.

This. The heavy characters are still juggle fodder but, as far as I've seen so far, none of them have matchups where they are absolutely shut down like they were in Melee and Brawl. There's also some changes in this game that help them:

-Shields are a lot easier to break in this game and most of the heavy weights in this game have at least one move that can practically one shot a character's shield, leading to hard punishes.

-Chain grabs are all but gone, leading to a lot less matchups that are complete shut outs or revolve almost entirely around not getting grabbed.

-The new ledge mechanics help them from getting gimped super early because of their weight and (typically) average recoveries.

-A lot of the heavy weights seem to have better reach now and appear to hit harder, with getting KO's at lower than 100% not that unusual.

-Farther blastlines mean heavier characters can live longer.

Despite these changes, I'm not wholly convinced there will be a lot of regularly used heavy weight characters in tournaments, I'm just saying that the situation isn't anywhere as hopeless as it was compared to earlier games.

 

[warriorman222]

This. The heavy characters are still juggle fodder but, as far as I've seen so far, none of them have matchups where they are absolutely shut down like they were in Melee and Brawl. There's also some changes in this game that help them:

-Shields are a lot easier to break in this game and most of the heavy weights in this game have at least one move that can practically one shot a character's shield, leading to hard punishes.

-Chain grabs are all but gone, leading to a lot less matchups that are complete shut outs or revolve almost entirely around not getting grabbed.

-The new ledge mechanics help them from getting gimped super early because of their weight and (typically) average recoveries.

-A lot of the heavy weights seem to have better reach now and appear to hit harder, with getting KO's at lower than 100% not that unusual.

-Farther blastlines mean heavier characters can live longer.

Despite these changes, I'm not wholly convinced there will be a lot of regularly used heavy weight characters in tournaments, I'm just saying that the situation isn't anywhere as hopeless as it was compared to earlier games.

True, but almost every heavy (bar Yoshi) still needs some buffing. The problem is that heavies are revolved around FFAs, meaning they are doomed to suck in tourneys. Fortunately, Yoshi can wreck just as well in 1v1 as he does in FFA, and the Cap is really good in this game, so we have 2 immediately good heavies (They're tied with Link for 11th). SHulk is decent, and so is Mega Man, but Mii Brawler doesn't really count, because 1111 Brawler is horrible. Sure it has Shot Put and Onslaught, but the other 2 are horrid, and now that it can't even have 2222 (which is nearing S tier) in Apex , it won't get used.

 

[DavemanCozy]

Some characters that are heavy and really good are Yoshi, Donkey Kong, and some may consider Sonic to be fairly heavy as well. Again, most of these characters demand lots of skill to play well at a high level, but that doesn't mean that all of them will have this syndrome.

Yoshi and Sonic being heavy is stretching what a heavy character is. The Mario bros. are just barely heavier than Sonic, and Yoshi got lighter in this game (he's Link / C. Falcon heavy now).

The overall idea is right though, if you play a heavy character you'll need to know which moves you have available to get you out of trouble and how you can use their moveset to your advantage. The benefit of the heavies is their KO power is above average and survive much longer than your standard characters. The bad things are that most of them have few options to get them out of pressure, movement is often not what you would see from others, and their moves come out slower than others. Not all heavies are equally viable either, like with every character archetype, certain ones are better than others.

With that said: DK Will got 2nd place at the Come Up in Toronto, and Snake rode the top of Brawl as the best heavy character.

 

[Big-Cat]

Heavies are historically biased against since speed and mobility were practically the prerequisities for viability.

The thing with heavyweights is that they are not the kind of characters that can go afford to go all YOLO like, say, Sheik. They make up for this by having excellent punishers, beastly strength, awesome reach, and can take forever to kill. The problem is that they have to really know how to read the opponent and that gives them an initial higher learning curve.

I used to play speedy characters almost exclusively, but I've come to love the likes of Bowser and Potemkin.

 

[Darklink401]

Fast characters can definitely combo heavies...but on the other hand, it takes for exampke, Sheik, 2-3 hits to equal out a single hit from, say, a Bowser.

Bowser is extremely powerful. DK is pretty nice from what I've seen. Deceptively good.

Dedede's recovery is ridiculous, for being a heavy character.

I'm afraid of Ganon.

They're certainly viable, but you have to play KNOWING you WILL get comboed, but that shoudn't scare you TOO much.

 

[Big-Cat]

It's risk, reward. Comes with the territory of being a big guy.

 

[Darklink401]

It's risk, reward. Comes with the territory of being a big guy.

I wouldn't say it's risky, more like, it's...challenging.

But playing with patience is all it takes for powerful characters that can't recover well.

Trust me. My secondary is Little Mac.

We play without patience, we get thrown off and die.

 

[Roukiske]

Everyone is viable to a smart player. Gonna use Ganon examples because I spend a lot of time with him. Sure, Ganon's moves are slow, but not all of them. Quick characters are easier to pickup because you can do so many things and probably get away unscathed. With slower characters you have to master their movesets and know when its okay to do move x.

If you are given a situation where the only thing you could use to get a punish was Ganon's quick moves such as jab, use the quick moves. If you're in a situation where for some reason you know with 100% Warlock punch is your strongest punish that will hit, you better do it. If fair is an unsafe approach against character x, don't approach with it. Sure, all this sounds really obvious, but its hard to apply in practice and I see those kinds of mistakes all the time. I make em too, nobody's perfect.

 

[Darklink401]

Everyone is viable to a smart player. Gonna use Ganon examples because I spend a lot of time with him. Sure, Ganon's moves are slow, but not all of them. Quick characters are easier to pickup because you can do so many things and probably get away unscathed. With slower characters you have to master their movesets and know when its okay to do move x.

If you are given a situation where the only thing you could use to get a punish was Ganon's quick moves such as jab, use the quick moves. If you're in a situation where for some reason you know with 100% Warlock punch is your strongest punish that will hit, you better do it. If fair is an unsafe approach against character x, don't approach with it. Sure, all this sounds really obvious, but its hard to apply in practice and I see those kinds of mistakes all the time. I make em too, nobody's perfect.

I'd another viable heavy is Ike, because like Dedede, he has a long weapon, so he can keep his distance from speedies well enough.


An advantage heavies DO have is that most light characters need to take their opponent to well over 100% to KO without gimping.

But like, Bowser can KO things at like 60% with his Fsmash so yeah.

Rage definitely benefits heavies more, since they are resistant to Kos but take a lot of damage. Rage makes a single touch be enough to send someone flying.

 

[outfoxd]

Does Wario count? Cause he hits hard and has pretty good mobility considering. I'm new so this is pure noob speculation/input.

 

[Darklink401]

Does Wario count? Cause he hits hard and has pretty good mobility considering. I'm new so this is pure noob speculation/input.

Pretty sure Wario is considered a heavy.

I mean, if Sonic is almost a heavy...like.....


Is it just me, or does there seem to be a triangle here?

Agile characters beat Strength characters who beat floaty characters who beat agile characters.

Cuz agility can combo slow powerhouses, slow powerhouses can KO floaties at like 40%, and floaties are really hard foe agile characters to combo, and usually are tricky to fight

 

[HeavyLobster]

Pretty sure Wario is considered a heavy.

I mean, if Sonic is almost a heavy...like.....


Is it just me, or does there seem to be a triangle here?

Agile characters beat Strength characters who beat floaty characters who beat agile characters.

Cuz agility can combo slow powerhouses, slow powerhouses can KO floaties at like 40%, and floaties are really hard foe agile characters to combo, and usually are tricky to fight

If Sonic's considered almost a heavy then half the cast must be heavies. Wario's mid-heavy. Also the triangle is more like Speedsters > Heavies >/= Floaties = Speedsters. Most of the high tiers are speedsters because that archetype has never really lost consistently to any other in Smash, even if floaties sometimes annoy them. Heavies are tough for floaties but not as tough as speedsters are for heavies because floaties' mobility is still good enough for them to have a chance to outmaneuver heavies.

 

[Darklink401]

I guess that's true.

Though I know whenever I use Jigglypuff, Ike and Bowser wreck me. Or at least are very difficult.

 

[greymanz]

Arent you forgetting someone? *cough* Bowser *cough*

 

[Roukiske]

Arent you forgetting someone? *cough* Bowser *cough*

I don't play Bowser, but that auto cancel bair is devistating. Quick strong f-tilt and quick strong bair, OOS Bowser Bomb. He definitely has the tools to win in the right hands.

To be honest, I forgot about him, I'm now going to make him my flavor of the week online

 

[warriorman222]

Arent you forgetting someone? *cough* Yoshi, Bowser, Captain Falcon, ROB, 2222 Brawler, Shulk, Mega Man *cough*

FTFY.Also viable essentially means usable, so the list is even higher. And like none of these are below 15th.

Yoshi and Sonic being heavy is stretching what a heavy character is. The Mario bros. are just barely heavier than Sonic, and Yoshi got lighter in this game (he's Link / C. Falcon heavy now).

The overall idea is right though, if you play a heavy character you'll need to know which moves you have available to get you out of trouble and how you can use their moveset to your advantage. The benefit of the heavies is their KO power is above average and survive much longer than your standard characters. The bad things are that most of them have few options to get them out of pressure, movement is often not what you would see from others, and their moves come out slower than others. Not all heavies are equally viable either, like with every character archetype, certain ones are better than others.

With that said: DK Will got 2nd place at the Come Up in Toronto, and Snake rode the top of Brawl as the best heavy character.

Yoshi is not stretching it. He's 11th place.

 

[warriorman222]

double post.

 

[mimgrim]

There has always been at least one good or decent heavy in each of the past Smash games (Falcon in 64/Melee, Wario and Snake in Brawl, and in Project M 3.5 there is Ike,Yoshi, DDD, Wario, ROB, Samus, Snake, Falcon, Link, and Charizard but most people don't like to count this last one) so there is that at least. But yea, overall they have gotten the short end of the stick. Fatties (Bowser, DDD, Zard, Ganon, and DK) have had it even worse.

At first glance this games seems to do a good service to both types of characters but only time will tell if it will continue that way.

 

[RadianB]

I seriously think that Charizard is the best heavy and high tier overall. Most people won't understand at the moment but they will as time goes on.

 

[PCHU]

Coming from a heavy main, the main issue I struggle with is getting in.
I really have nothing to approach with since my gordo can get deflected by most anything (nowadays I either try to get the gordo out fast enough to maybe hit them or launch from above so it hits them during the projectile animation) and most of my attacks are slow or have a lot of cooldown (or both).
It most certainly isn't impossible to pull out a win, since a few correct guesses means a stock (but that's generally if they continue to challenge me; running away solves everything), but I get shut down pretty hard by projectiles and fast aerials, so I spend most of the match doing pretty much nothing but thinking about what I should do to get around the wall or at least counter it.

I think heavy characters are viable, but their weaknesses are very obvious and, like it's been said before, it takes a really skilled player to win with them.
There were strides to make heavy characters better, and I respect that, yet there are still quite a few simple things that they seemed to just skip over (DDD's old bair being fantastic for walling out and general gordo BS, DK still freefalls after Giant Punch, etc) that sour the experience for me and tend to make matches very frustrating, even if I'm doing well.

Heavies are for the truly patient.

 

[J0A0B]

It doesn't help either that most faster or lighter characters can still kill easily around the 100% damage. Even Mario and Luigi have ways to build up half of that damage very quickly through combos. Once they hit with an Up-Smash, it's pretty much over no matter how low their rage is. It's because the quick characters can smash heavily and recover from it quickly to execute even more mind-guessing tactics afterwards. Meanwhile, heavier characters can kill with smashes at less damage, but often fail at connecting them and get heavily punished for missing. From there, all they got left for kill moves are throws or aerials that require even more precision, and for heavy characters, the landing lag or throw missing lag isn't always worth it. Wish the heavy characters' throw moves could kill earlier like Ness' back throw. Good reach aside, they're poor enough already for being so slow.

 

[PCHU]

It doesn't help either that most faster or lighter characters can still kill easily around the 100% damage. Even Mario and Luigi have ways to build up half of that damage very quickly through combos. Once they hit with an Up-Smash, it's pretty much over no matter how low their rage is. It's because the quick characters can smash heavily and recover from it quickly to execute even more mind-guessing tactics afterwards. Meanwhile, heavier characters can kill with smashes at less damage, but often fail at connecting them and get heavily punished for missing. From there, all they got left for kill moves are throws or aerials that require even more precision, and for heavy characters, the landing lag or throw missing lag isn't always worth it. Wish the heavy characters' throw moves could kill earlier like Ness' back throw. Good reach aside, they're poor enough already for being so slow.

I think I understand why more hasn't been done to fix this (though a lot has) -- this game IS balanced for more casual play, so it's understandable when someone's turned off by a strong character being quick (although all I see is Bowser fans rejoicing and people generally being more content with how much better he is), but all the same, I guess I don't see how PM managed to make the game fun on both levels AND be balanced while giving each character their own unique flair (Samus's ice/fire system is genius, and Kirby's horizontal upB thing is actually pretty cool).
I guess development time and money has a lot to do with it, not to mention Sakurai himself isn't doing so well.

 

[Saturn_]

Sonic is the fastest character in the game, it feels totally inappropriate to describe him as a heavy. Bowser, DK, King DDD, Charizard, Ganondorf...these are all extremely heavy, powerful characters who routinely live to 150% and can kill opponents around 80%. Maybe I should have been more specific? "Lumbering" characters? Sonic isn't really what I'm talking about. I've been trying to group the gigantic Smash 4 roster into meaningful groups, and I feel like Sonic would be totally out of place. Isn't he just average weight?

 

[mimgrim]

I think the term you are looking for is "fatty/fatties" which is what characters like Bowser/DK/DD//Zard/Dorf have been called for a long time due to them being rather relatively big hurtboxes along with being heavy and a little bit on the sluggish side one way or another. Heavies are a more general terms for character that just have heavy weight. Generally the base-line for a heavy is drawn at Falcon with his 104 weight through all games.

 

[etecoon]

Fatties are bad in Smash typically because even the fast characters have stupidly powerful attacks, haven't tested but it feels like Diddy's up air is stronger than most heavy characters' aerials, **** will kill at like 85%. You don't necessarily gain much for the speed tradeoff and having a hurtbox the size of a house. It's also a series that is biased towards mobility, you have double jumps(some characters have more), free air mobility, tons of ground speed, mobile specials, rolling...if you're a fatass that has bad ground speed, would be ill advised to go into the air, don't have quick mobile specials, and bad rolls...it's pretty hard to succeed in smash bros when your opponents can run circles around you and just come back in whenever you do something

DK and Bowser are the best big guys in this game IMO, I think the consensus would be that DK is better but I like Bowser personally. Supposedly Ganon is closer to viable in this game but I'm not seeing it, flame choke being techable is a pretty bad nerf and he misses short hop dair too. Rest of the cast being worse at brickwalling and not having chain grabs helps, but I still see Ganon as being one of the worst characters easily

 

[Deleted member 269706]

The interesting thing about the heavy characters is that people aren't used to playing against them. When you play against a lot of Fox players or ZSS players, you start to pick up on certain patterns and such. Since there aren't a lot of high level players who play as heavy characters, people tend to actually have a pretty hard time against the heavy characters because they aren't used to the combos and tricks. People are less likely to know about X's amazing grab range, or Y's incredibly fast Bair. I think this is why people like Ryo and San were able to do so well with Ike in Brawl tournaments. No one really knew how to fight against Ike, yet the Ike players knew how to fight against the others.

With that said, heavier characters tend to get caught into combos much easier, and at higher percents, which is one reason that they're less viable. On top of this, they have ungodly amounts of endlag and start up times, which is easily punishable. I'm excited to see what non-top tier characters we'll see do well in the upcoming months. We've already seen Ryuga, an Ike main, practically dominate Youmacon 2014, ending in second place against a Diddy player (and that was before patch 1.0.4).

 

[atomicblast360]

IMO Bowser, Dedede, and DK are the best heavies in this game. I haven't seen too many Dedede's specifically in tournaments, and having used him the most over any character on the roster I really think he is solid in this game. His recovery is amazing, and his off stage game and edgeguarding is amazing. His Gordo's are good, but you need to be really careful with them and use them at the right times, and to punish. Also his new back air is a great kill move, even though it is slower.

DK has 3 specials that break shields and he's pretty quick, I feel he is also really solid in this game.