Are you telling me that
he can't say that?
his is the part where you say "touché".
Actually, if you're picking up characters to improve (AKA to learn how to play them correctly to get improve the areas where you are weak, rather than to cover MUs or use in tournament), then the tier is not what matters. Certain characters are stronger at certain things then others. For example, if you need to work on spacing, pick up Marth or Lucario. If you need help with tech-chasing, then Sonic and Ganon are good characters to pick up. For mindgames, a lot of characters are good, but Sonic is a good one to pick up, since his character is pretty much based around them. For comboing, characters like ZSS and Shiek are good. For gimping, MK and Mario are some good options. For aircamping, you could pick up Wario.
Your risk:rewards factor when playing lower tiers is much more unbalanced than with high tiers. Lower tiers require too much skill to win with, whereas higher tiers require less. If you're versing a very high-level opponent that adapts and mixes up, lower tiers won't suffice due to their limitations, but higher tiers can give you the options to
adapt and outplay them. When I said Joey should learn higher tiers, I also meant to say that if he learns a higher tier, along with getting better as a player, he'll also be able to use that character for other high-level matches, where lower tiers would require a greater amount of skill to reach the same goal.
Obviously, there are more than just the characters I list that are good in those areas, but you get my point, right?
I do, dontcha worry about that!
The original reason I picked up Mario, after all, along with him being fun, was because he required all the things I seemed to lack when I started using him. I also picked up Sonic to help with my mindgames (and because I enjoy him).
I tried picking up Samus, Lucario, Snake, Jigglypuff, MK (after the last "ban MK" poll), Ike and Olimar in that order, but failed at them all... Only characters I stayed with were Kirby and ZSS, they just "clicked" and made the game fun for me.
Kewk, did you play Hilt at Pound?
Sadly, nope. LuigiMAX played Logic and Car2n played Hilt... But I didn't play any olimars. In all seriousness, the most people I played were MKs, Snakes, and Kirbies asking me for dittos (Poyo even tried to MM me for $1.00, but I didn't even have a buck on me, so we just played friendlies. After that, it was a 3-way Kirby ditto with Chu, then Hum joined in and we made a 4-player kirby Battle Royale for a bit... heh).
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