Ok some I'm getting some mixed messages: one side says that it is possible that Little Mac can get great results and that while he's outclassed by other characters with his movesef, he's not the worst of those classes. And that he may be the worse character in the game but he's not trash level like Brawl Ganondorf.
However, I'm heading the other side calling him "incomplete" and that players like Sol who use Little Mac aren't professionals and that the level of skill you out into him should be put into someone else.
I'm heading these things from both sides so which is it? Does Little Mac have a chance to shine in competitive smash or is he doomed to spend eternal suffering at the bottom with Brawl Ganondorf or N64 Luigi?
In a 3 month old game, no one is absolutely sure, or even correct here. We all have our own opinions. It's also objectively more difficult to see which characters are bad over which ones are good, as "bad" characters generally remain underdeveloped. It usually takes a character specialist to bring the best out of them. Sol is probably the best one right now, so keep an eye out.
Also who said Sol wasn't a professional? lol it's well known at high level play, it just takes more work and more skill to do well with a bad character. If someone has equal skill using a good character, the person using the good character will just have a slight edge over the low tier user. That is, if you also ignore things like matchup inexperience. And there's a LOT of that to take into account for this game.
No one in Ultimate is anywhere near as bad as the bottom tiers of Melee, Brawl, or Smash 4. The thing with Mac is, his weaknesses were brought to light very early on, moreso than most other characters. Partially because he had weaknesses carry over from the previous entry, so the general strategy of beating him hasn't changed. No one skilled in the matchup in S4 needed to adapt much, it's still a general "get him offstage, hit him once, and he dies". Adding onto that, he lost his dtilt combos, and the recovery "buff" actually turned out to be more of a nerf. So a character that was already generally seen as low-mid/low tier got nerfed even harder. The edgeguarding buff has hurt him more than anything, because now he can't time an airdodge to miss your edgeguard attempt. And we have a very high number of characters who can edgeguard effectively. He has to eat the attack, or airdodge to his death. Either way, that's a dead Mac, 100% of the time.
The character is not unusable, though. And I don't think anyone is suggesting that. I've certainly lost to my fair share of Little Mac players online, and so have many others here. Brawl Ganondorf was probably the closest thing to unusable that we've ever experienced. Matchup inexperience didn't work in his favor because even if you've never fought a Ganondorf, all the opponent had to do was camp him out and it was a free win. His only approach option against projectile users was basically "walk slowly through their projectiles and powershield as many as you can". Mac has a fast groundspeed, can still kill super early, can break shields with his smashes, and armor through most hits. Adding onto that, a OHKO move that kills at like 10%. He may still be better off than every worst character of previous games combined.
But to be effective in a 1v1 meta, he still doesn't make the cut to be a mid or high tier character. He simply wasn't designed or balanced to be effective that way. He's an FFA character. You can hop into most 4+ player FFAs with Mac and clean up just by running around and wailing on the C stick, as long as the stage isn't huge. 1v1 is an entirely different game. And to be effective, he needs to be overhauled. See my previous post for what my thoughts are on that.
I think the biggest issue, is that he's a character that walks the razor's edge of balance and imbalance. As it is with most glass cannon archetypes. If, say, his aerial game and recovery were to be significantly buffed, while leaving his ground game as is, he could tip over to being a problematic character. To become a "normal" character, he'd need his ground game toned down when his recovery/aerials get buffed. (See my other post in this thread in regard to that, mostly involves reducing his armor) Without an overhaul, a balanced Mac is a bad Mac.
