Low Tier Characters

[Putuk]

Depends, if you wanna play tourneys, you'll probably wanna know how to play one of the "better" characters.

Otherwise, if you just wanna have decent results on For Glory or with some friends, pick either a character you like a lot, or a character who's fighting style feels good.

I started out maining Ness, since I'm a big EarthBound fan and learned he can operate on a high level.
Problem was, while Ness is a good characters, I'm not a good Ness player. I'm a mediocre Ness player.
So I searched the roster for other characters I liked, and eventually fell in love with Dededes playstyle (that aside, I'm a big fan of his character design). Now Dedede is probably considered mid-tier at best in Smash 4, but I've had much more positive results with him than with Ness on For Glory. He just sorta feels right.
So while I'm only a mediocre Ness, I do fancy myself an okay Dedede.

In my own unprofessional opinion; do what FEELS right.

 

[YELLO]

people who play top tier characters just to win are known as "scabs"
they are the scabs of the competitive community
They cant win with any other character and they are afraid to lose

You should always play your favorite character and don't use a character just because they are high tier

 

[Emblem Lord]

people who play top tier characters just to win are known as "scabs"
they are the scabs of the competitive community
They cant win with any other character and they are afraid to lose

You should always play your favorite character and don't use a character just because they are high tier

You actually are a scrub. The very definition of it in fact.

 

[33percentgod]

You actually are a scrub. The very definition of it in fact.

No, I pretty much agree with what he said. People like that ruin any fun a tournament can be. You pick the highest character to try to guarantee you a win just to win. Those people need to GO AWAY.

 

[Emblem Lord]

No see a scrub in fighting game terms is someone that makes up rules as to why you shouldnt play to win. So yeah. hes a scrub. It's not an insult.

 

[33percentgod]

No see a scrub in fighting game terms is someone that makes up rules as to why you shouldnt play to win. So yeah. hes a scrub. It's not an insult.

Nobody is saying you shouldn't play to win. We're talking about ONLY playing to win. The people who don't play for fun and will cut any corner just to cement themselves a win just for the sake of winning. Sure, if you enter a tournament one of the goals is to win, but it's not the ONLY reason you're there. The people that are only about winning and boasting, those are the people he is talking about, and those are the people who need to go home because they are toxic to a community (any community.)

 

[Emblem Lord]

I don't think such a human exist.

 

[YELLO]

I don't think such a human exist.

well see I said "scab" not "scrub"
And there are PLENTY of those human beings that exist
The kind that cry and wont even shake your hand after a good game just because you wrecked their top tier with a lower tier
I've seen it happen all the time, people get mad when you actually have skill and not just a tier abuser

 

[Emblem Lord]

Tiers only matter at certain levels of play. If you are the stronger and they the weaker, then they deserved to lose. Plain and simple. No top tier can save you from a dedicated player of any character, unless that char is just abysmal.

Now a dedicated top tier main...is something else entirely.

 

[tru.]

If you are aiming to win tournaments or dominate in competitive play, choosing a high-tier character is almost essential. A low-tier character pitted against someone as high as Diddy Kong, Sheik, or Rosalina definitely have a much less chance at winning, so it would take a lot of time and effort in order to maximize your performance with a weaker character. If you aren't aiming to be the best player out there, then choosing the character you like or have the most experience is just fine.

Fortunately, the creators of SSB4 at least attempted to keep the characters as balanced as possible, unlike the mess that Brawl was with the overpowered Meta Knight and Ice Climbers. I, strangely, have always liked Yoshi and Sheik instinctively, and then Rosalina when SSB4 came out. I played as these characters regardless of how high they were on a tier list, but since they are ranked so high, it would only be logical for me to continue playing as them. All in all, playing as who you like and practicing with them isn't the end of the world, as an excellent player with a low-tier character could easily beat a bad player with a high-tier character.

Just for future reference, these characters are stated to be in high-tier at the time if you'd like to look into them:

 

[KittyKyat]

You should play who you're good at or who you enjoy no matter if you play in a tournament or For Glory. What good will a high tier do if you suck at them? So, I recommend putting your time in to learning a character and having fun with it, no matter what. If it's high tier, great. If not, learn how to fight the high tiers and maybe even make the enemy shed some in the meantime.

But, if you want to win and only win, high tiers can work as well, just saying finding your character you enjoy first is more important then whats good, because skill>tiers 90% of the time.

 

[Holla@ChaBoi390]

Don't sweat it. Use every character until one clicks, practice, and then fight other people. I main Mario and my secondary is Dr. Mario. Mario is considered upper mid tier and Dr. Mario is considered trash. However, I've use these characters since I was a kid and I do well with them so I'm not switching to a higher character just to make life easier. As long as you use practice and get the mechanics down you will beat people if you are better at the game.

 

[AUS]

Not for Smash 4, at least not yet. Melee is in my opinion the only smash game in which you need to play characters at least in the A tier in order to get good tournament results (Aside from anomalies like Amsa with Yoshi). However Smash 4 is so new that all characters are viable, we don't know the Meta of this game yet. Even in Brawl at release it seemed that Meta Knight and Snake would be the best but in Smash 4 we don't see anything to this extent building yet, and no I do not believe Diddy is the be all end all best character an should be banned, simply not the case. Use the character you enjoy and clicks with you, mine was Zero Suit, yours could be DK, and there isn't anything wrong with that. People love to throw characters into tiers and state that they are worthless if they are not a high tier, however when it comes down to it...its the player not the character. Sure a characters move-sets can set back some players but it never means you cant win with that said character.

 

[JingleJangleJamil]

If you are not amazing at getting in your opponent's mind you will find yourself losing a lot against the high tiers in tournaments. People say this is the most balanced smash game,but how long will it be until something new is discovered and only the top 10 characters can even have a chance of winning? I say stick with whoever you use now, because for all we know Diddy/Sheik/Rosalina could end up being all the way at the bottom of the tier list after a while,but if you intend to play tournaments to win you should probably learn a high tier character. People hate on players like ZeRo for using characters like Diddy in tournaments,but people need to understand people like him need to win these tournaments to pay their bills. If you want to be able to win tournaments with a low tier character you need to be amazing at mind games, not just good at it.

 

[MarioMeteor]

I think you'll find that if you take the time to learn and devote to a character that you like, you'll be a much better player than if you were to use Diddy because he's top tier.

 

[Danny of AD 1]

i honestly have found that my worst characters are often ranked really high i dont think that the tier lists are completely accurate because i have no chance of winning as most top tier characters yet in the mid and low tiers i do decent and in my opinion you should play as your best character not because they are high tier but because you have a decent grasp on how to use them i hate using falco or olimar yet their considered top tier i think personal strategy is your best option not because they tre high tier

 

[Jigglymaster]

It's funny because my character is bottom tier without customs and top tier with. So do I get to be both?

 

[Quarium]

Entering a tournament on october, going with either of the following:

I haven't looked at tiers so far and I just concentrate on bettering my characters, I have played agaisnt tourney goers and while I do have a hard time I do very decently, getting awesome victories with effort and sometimes getting the people behind me cheering my Falco or Kirby. It feels good and that's what really matters! Unless you need money desperately and the tourney is your only chance, play for fun and create hype! my friend.

 

[CronoT]

In my experience, Tier Lists are a combination of determining which characters have the most amount of exploits available, along with a corporate laziness to get to the fastest way to consistently win with the least amount of effort. Brawl as a whole had a pliable engine that was able to be bent in ways that the designers never intended. Because of this, the "top tier" characters were the ones that were able to exploit these unintended gaps in the game's engine best, with the exception of MetaKnight, who was just straight up broken.

This very of Smash IS a bit more balanced, as a replay of mine shows. Using Link, I was able to fight an experienceday Sheik player to a stalemate through the entire match, buses my time, and scored the victory in the last few seconds. I can send you and/or anyone else that replay upon request.

 

[Antonykun]

Tier lists usually only matter in the highest level of play anyways. Like it is not impossible for me to go as Villager, in a local tournament filled with Diddy and Sheik mains and win simply because I was the better player.

Amusingly, by the time Tier lists really matter, the people affected by tier lists will care very little as those characters are the ones they found or know the most impressive things

Actually this reminds me of my days playing semi competitive Brawl. My friend mained Falco and would beat me like 60-80% of the time. I went on to play Snake in hopes that a top tier would beat my friends top tier, but, no, I still lost. Why did I kept losing? Because my friend used Falco because he's Falco, he went on and learned all sorts of advanced techniques out the love of the character whereas I was too busy looking at tier lists and whatnot.

 

[ShadowLBlue]

This very of Smash IS a bit more balanced, as a replay of mine shows. Using Link, I was able to fight an experienceday Sheik player to a stalemate through the entire match, buses my time, and scored the victory in the last few seconds. I can send you and/or anyone else that replay upon request.

Seeing as Link's my favorite character (tied with ZSS and Palutena), I'd like to see this video.

 

[CronoT]

Seeing as Link's my favorite character (tied with ZSS and Palutena), I'd like to see this video.

I also have a replay of me as Zero Suit Samus beating a Link player in a Flawless Victory in less than a minute. Send me your Friend Code over PM, so neither of us get Mod Wrath for thread jacking. ;-)

 

[ChikoLad]

From what I understand, tier lists are only defined in part by actual tools the character has/their match-up ratios. The other part of them is just defined by tournament performance.

With that in mind, the worst character in the game in terms of toolset and match-ups could be the most frequently used in tournaments, inevitably get the most wins because of that, and as a result, would be considered top tier.

However, if that's happening, it's more because either the players who use that character are really good, or the players of all of the other characters are terrible.

With that in mind, top tier does not always equal the best character objectively. I actually firmly believe Diddy Kong ISN'T the best character and I think he could be knocked out of even the top 10 characters, but he's top tier right now because so many people use him, and they get easy wins because people aren't bothering to counter the character or innovate their own characters (*coughRosalinacough*, but I'll get to that in a bit). This exact thing happened with Little Mac when the game first released - everyone whined about how he was broken, but then we actually put our thinking caps on and now many don't even consider him high tier anymore because we know how to deal with him. While Diddy is definitely better than Mac, and will always be at least high tier, I actually don't think he's guaranteed to stay in the top 10 group, let alone top 3.

Going back to what I hinted at earlier, Rosalina players are a prime example of "not innovating their character" these days. I actually don't really like discussing Rosalina competitively anymore, because so many Rosalina mains are either:

1) Afraid of her being considered top tier, so they try to skew match-up discussions into saying she is mid-high tier. This has resulted in even non-Rosalina mains questioning her top tier position.

2) Play her almost exclusively as a defense focused character, even though she shouldn't be played as such - they do this because this is how Dabuz mainly plays, and he's the only Rosalina main that really has a big name in tournments (his insistence on playing this way is exactly why he lost to ZeRo's Diddy so badly to the point where there has been Diddy/Rosalina **** porn drawn because of it). As a result, even non-Rosalina players take Rosalina to be a "defensive" character.

As a side note, if you ask me, the MU is solidly in Rosalina's favour if you know what you're doing.

3) They developed bad habits against certain characters early on and can't shake them.

Personally, I easily consider Rosalina top 3, and if people truly mastered her, top 1. But I personally can't innovate the character publicly yet because I don't have the time to develop on various things I have found. This is all in hindsight though, and assuming her players don't keep doing those things I listed above. If they do, no amount of oddballs like myself is going to change anything about the character's tier placement (especially since I don't live in a country where Smash tournaments are a thing), or public perception.

I kinda rambled, but TL;DR - everyone is up in the air right now, even Diddy. So play as whoever you like.

 

[Zethoro]

This may seem silly to some of you vets and pros, but Smash 4 is the first in the series that I have been able to play against so many different people, and sometimes I just feel my character is helpless against certain players, and characters. It is hard for new competitive players to improve with the less popular characters with the limited resources available, but I am trying. I just feel conflicted because a lot of people just say to use good characters only if I want to win, and I don't want to bandwagon, but it is hard to keep working at it while people seem to have it so easy playing the high tiers.

Ah, but thanks for all the replies everyone! I just needed to vent I suppose.

That's not a matter of a character being "high tier" or not, that's a matter of your own skill and the matchup. Yes, high tier characters are high tier because generally they have better matchups, but even high tiers can have bad matchups. Brawl Olimar, #3 on the tier list, had a 35:65 matchup against the mid-low tier Luigi.
As people like aMSa have shown, you don't "have" to play high tiers to do well. Tiers change too, so just play who you want.

 

[Ting Sing]

Play who you want to play, not who you feel you should play, based off what everyone tells you to do. I feel like many tier lists to this day are incorrect because nobody attempts to try the low tiers, because they feel like they need to play a higher tiered character. If people put more time into characters like Young Link or Ness in Melee (maybe, only from watching Mango's Ness lol) I think they could start showing some more potential.

 

[KRBAY]

The good thing about this game is that most glitches and abusive mechanics are gone. There really are no broken characters, and you can play most of the cast and win, depending on your skill level. So tier lists will exist, they just don't seem as relevant this time around.

This is, of course, still when the game is in its "shiny new phase". Things can change over time.

 

[Ryusuta]

It's been said many, many, MANY times, but it still needs to be repeated.

Using a high tier character is like using the same expensive athletic shoes the pro basketball players wear. Yes, it can give them the edge if they're good, but using them won't automatically make you a better player. Focus on developing a competitive skillset and then you can worry about which characters you should be rocking on the tournament scene.

 

[Brinzy]

Play who you want to begin with.

Eventually, if you're a player who is determined to get better, you'll hit a brick wall. You have to then figure out a way through that wall. It'll boil down to two things:

- Is there something I could do to improve my play, and
- Is my character actually keeping me down

You will find that being skilled at your character and at the game itself will matter a ton more than who you are playing, in the majority of real situations. Sure, you may not be able to beat the top 5 players of the game, but I firmly believe that you could win a local tournament full of people like yourself if you simply work on improving your gameplay and not worrying as much about the character.

If you get even better from there and then feel you are simply losing matches because of a character matchup, that's when you should really start thinking long and hard about picking other characters up. It does not mean you necessarily have to leave your current character behind, because they may have a solid matchup against a popular character, and that would give you the upper hand if your opponent isn't familiar with the matchup.

Tier lists aren't end all be all of what's going to happen in any competitive scene, but they're good indicators when skill isn't a factor.

 

[WaterDemonBaku]

I play as Kirby, and have been playing him since Melee. People often ask me why I play someone who's at the bottom of the tier list, my reply is always the same and very corny.

I just wanna have fun.

Whoever you play, be it Diddy Kong or Luigi, Duck Hunt or Bowser, as long as you're having a good time playing, I think that's all that really matters.

If I ever play in a tournament, I'm only going to pick who I main and have fun with the most. (Unless for the DUMBEST reason, Kirby is banned from every tournament, in which case I'll play Clue on the SNES and never speak to anyone of Super Smash Bros. ever again.)

 

[r.f.m]

everybody knows who is my main XD

 

[Reila]

The good thing about this game is that most glitches and abusive mechanics are gone.
.

For now...

 

[KRBAY]

For now...

Yeah, you do have a point...

 

[Rikkhan]

In casual - semicompetitive you can main everything, but if you really want to shine as a competitive player picking a top 10 is essential.

People need to get real and understand that some characters are simply not viable, smash 4 meta is still fresh but you can't ignore all the data that says which characters are good and which not, a.k.a tierlist. For example becoming a sheik/diddy main is solid option, becoming a ganon main... well don't expect much.

The good thing about smash is that low tiers characters becomes tricky ones, because people get used to top tier MU and don't know how to deal with underdogs. For example dabuzz vs m2k, m2k was clueless about dabuzz olimar and that cost him the game, this trick didn't work against ZeRo as he saw trough olimar tricky style and beat him easily.

 

[Ryusuta]

In casual - semicompetitive you can main everything, but if you really want to shine as a competitive player picking a top 10 is essential.

Amsa would disagree with you, I think.

 

[AceMan]

One can do quite well in tournament play even if they play a low tier, sure they aren't as successful as top tier players but a low tier can take most people by surprise. If one plays as an uncommon character most people will be caught off guard in that matchup yet you'll probably have a ton of experience, even some characters that are thought of as good might be uncommon (See Pikachu in every smash game other than SSB64). Also if you want some more practice check out Anther's Ladder.

 

[ggamer77]

Just play with whichever character you have the most fun playing as.

 

[Poppy JR.]

I think in a game like Smash 4, tier lists should be taken with a large grain of salt, Most people can do well with just about any character, if you know the character well enough. I know I've seen great Pikachu players, great Marth players, and great DK players, even though they all sit at very different spots on the tier list.

My advice would be to stick to a character you like, and really stick with them. (This isn't to say that you can't experiment, of course.)

 

[Purin a.k.a. José]

It really depends on how passionate you are in competitions. If you really like Toon Link, keep playing with him until you feel like you got the right skills to do well, like aMSa. If you go just for winning, stick with the best character. But, on the other hand, the game is much more balanced now, so Tier worries are less of a thing now.

 

[1FC0]

I am a tier ***** because I want to use a top tier too but I am not 100% tier ***** since I do have a demand of my top tier if I am to use him and that is that he must be R.O.B.

 

[Raijinken]

Become a character specialist. Play who you want, regardless of tier.