Official MBR 2010 NTSC Tier List

[JonnyW]

PP don't be a scrub, Puff still beats Sheik.

Sheiks cry about Puff all day long.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Kal, if you keep making posts like that people will think you like the MBR or something

 

[KirbyKaze]

Sheiks cry about Puff all day long.

Falcons cry about literally every other character. Even Pichu.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

"Pichu has a chaingrab, thats ****ing stupid. I hate this character."

 

[Kal]

I need to work on my Pichu chaingrabs. I measure success as a function of the number of Falcon's I have made complain.

 

[Aber]

m2k u should learn to use google lol

 

[knightpraetor]

So guys, I have a question about Marth's pivot forward smash. What exactly is all the hype concerning it? I mean, is pivot fsmash really that good? If so, why, I am clearly a noob and need to be educated lol

no, pivot fsmash is rarely if ever useful. however, pivot into neutral stand and react should theoretically be quite strong, but i have played a lot of people and have yet to see anyone make significant use of it. I've seen a friend (redd) use pivot fsmash with falcon to guard my ledge hop on as marth...however, just having better spacing would allow him to do this without pivoting.

I'm still unconvinced that it's particularly good..certainly there are better things that are more worth your time.

all the hype surrounding pivoting stems from non-marth mains who know jack squat about the character coming in and saying, "you just suck, if you just (reactively, though they leave this word out) pivot fsmash you wouldn't have any problems... marth is so broken. that and false thinking that pivot fsmash somehow lets you catch people even on proper DI, which definitely isn't true for most of the cast, though might be true for select floaties..i could see it helping vs jiggs, but i think you're better off focusing on other aspects of the matchup


Now if you want something that is worth your time. learn to shield drop. dash shield drop enhances marth's metagame more than that of the other characters though it is god tier tech skill for preventing people from spacing against you from under a platform for marth, sheik, and falcon

still, i seem to only get 70% accuracy with this atm, which isn't good enough for use in tourney, but i've only spent 40 min so far practicing it since i never practice tech skill these days...i saw some vids of arcnatural's fox doing is so i became convinced that it's possible and will grant marth more options on getting down from a platform.


also lol @ kal for correcting bones on the use of the term phase shift. I thought that was pretty funny

 

[Kal]

WELL I'M GLAD SOMEONE NOTICED!

Pivot fsmash is pretty useful, but it can be risky. If your opponent knows you will do it, he can roll and you'll probably get punished. However, spaced aerial into spaced pivot fsmash is pretty powerful. Except against Darkrain. Somehow, he'll put his shield up faster than possible and you'll lose.

 

[Wake]

Falcons cry about literally every other character. Even Pichu.

It would be funny, except that it's true.

 

[Warhawk]

^ That's what makes it even more funny

 

[Strong Badam]

it's hilarious when falcons complain about DK

 

[Bing]

it's hilarious when falcons complain about DK

I would think its hilarious when almost anyone complains about DK...

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

The characters that(should) invalidate Peach at top level are most likely....

1. Fox

2. Falcon

3. Marth

4. Puff(apparently....I don't actually know but Peaches don't like it and I haven't theorized it so meh)

5. Sheik I guess?

Falco is debatable(meaning I haven't thought about it lol, but yeah we can count him too for fun)

Of those, we have 1 top Fox(who is a secondary, well 2 if you count M2K but I'll get back to this one), no top Falcons(and even so SS beat Armada and Hax almost did), a semi-top Marth(who nearly beat Armada a couple times), Amsah beat him in NTSC but honestly he hasn't played a solid Sheik(KIRBYKAZE) in bracket in so long who knows what'll happen there, he switches for Puff, and he lost to my Falco two sets in a row once.

Going back over some of this....


Fox- Mango.....sigh. I don't believe he plays up to his potential in the matchup(even with his aggressive style). Should Mango try to play a matchup correctly like Armada does, the matchup should fall to Mango.

As for M2K, his style seems to work better on bigger stages he can camp on. I do not believe he ever really learned to platform camp/work Bair well on small stages for some reason. Again, not total mastery of the matchup like Armada has.

Everything else seems pretty straightforward.


What I'm kind of getting at here is that this is not necessarily an issue with my theory but really an issue with the community, or rather the player pool. People seem to have had various reasons not to bring themselves to the rigor Armada has brought to matchups, and I'm hoping that will change soon. It's high time most better players(USA's especially) get into gear and start putting solid theory into practice. This doesn't mean they go think and then play, but rather they begin hardcore exploiting the other characters better like they know they could and quit being lazy(for some but not all this is the main problem).

Is the logic:

top level play exacerbates matchups -> but top level players often lose winning matchups -> those top level players aren't playing at top level play for that matchup -> if they were, the matches would look worse

??

Doesn't this directly contradict this:

"At top level, matchups can be exacerbated because every player is abusing the matchups as hard as possible. A 55-45 matchup, while mostly winnable by anyone up until the top, rarely sees victory for the losing character(though it can still be won with a lot of work). A 60-40 is nearly unwinnable at top level and should basically never be lost. A 65-35 is already a counter and pointless to play at top level then.

People often argue about player skill being more important than matchup at top level, but is this necessarily the case when the top players may simply be exploiting their character abilities and exposing their opponent characters' weaknesses harder than anyone else?"

??

Because it sounds like player skill (or matchup knowledge) is what you are arguing for with Armada, and you are pointing out how top players in fact DON'T properly exacerbate matchups.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Ideally, they are supposed to exacerbate matchups. Thoery doesn't work out well with top players currently in Melee because there's less competition motive or something similar that keeps people from really doing what Armada is doing.

An alternate explanation, I suppose, is that Armada simply found a way to perform his ideal matchup style properly and better than anyone has against him or his character.

Either way, what is currently happening shouldn't be happening under my theory, but some human factors that top players shouldn't be dealing with are present(or that thing I said about Armada's strategy). These factors reduce each players' potential and so skew tournaments and thereby everyone's perceptions.

Positively, this can be seen as an opportunity for any rising player to have a better shot in the current tournament scene, with less regard to character than there should be.

 

[Max?]

In science when Results don't match Theory, the Theory tends to be wrong. Tho it wouldn't really be a "theory" but a Hypothesis.

 

[N.A.G.A.C.E]

I also have to disagree with your theory drpp. U used the fact that top players have beaten armada to prove your point in one of your posts but of course that argument fails b/c armada has come back and beat all (or almost all) of the people u named. And unless peach is top 3 your argument makes less sense.

Now i am not a top player but to me it always seemed like mu ratios meant less at higher levels. Now i know u said axe is not a top level player but my theory is he has become good enough as a player and with his character that he has been able to overcome the shortcomings of pika with being very precise to minimize pika's weaknesses, something which i dont believe someone could do except at higher levels. Also i want to point out that axe has beaten a couple of the people u named as top level something which in your theory should not be possible

Not sure if i explained myself well b/c i find what i am trying to say kinda hard to put into writting and harder still on a phone

 

[Dr Peepee]

In science when Results don't match Theory, the Theory tends to be wrong. Tho it wouldn't really be a "theory" but a Hypothesis.

Okay, I'll just call what I'm thinking an "idea" then.

I also have to disagree with your theory drpp. U used the fact that top players have beaten armada to prove your point in one of your posts but of course that argument fails b/c armada has come back and beat all (or almost all) of the people u named. And unless peach is top 3 your argument makes less sense.

Now i am not a top player but to me it always seemed like mu ratios meant less at higher levels. Now i know u said axe is not a top level player but my theory is he has become good enough as a player and with his character that he has been able to overcome the shortcomings of pika with being very precise to minimize pika's weaknesses, something which i dont believe someone could do except at higher levels. Also i want to point out that axe has beaten a couple of the people u named as top level something which in your theory should not be possible

Not sure if i explained myself well b/c i find what i am trying to say kinda hard to put into writting and harder still on a phone

No, I was merely listing what those characters had done to Armada in tournament since he has been coming to the USA. That was not an argument.

@Axe: Well, again, Axe gets the same case as Armada in that the top player pool is either off in some way, or he himself has developed his strategy more rigorously than those other players, basically outskilling them enough to win(or some combination of the two causes). Axe has overcame many of Pikachu's disadvantages, this is very true, but he himself will not deny that Pikachu should still lose to those characters at top level I'm sure.

I do not feel that this is necessarily a matchup problem but a community pool problem, as I said.

 

[N.A.G.A.C.E]

I believe your idea wont ever be true as long as we r still humans who make human errors, i dont believe its a player pool issue.

If u look at sports and compare it to smash (which it has Similarities to) u can see examples were the "better team" lost and its going on this that i believe your theory wont ever be true b/c as long as there r two people playing anything can happen

 

[ShroudedOne]

Why is it difficult to believe that players are outplaying their opponents in bad matchups? Are we really going to take away that much credit from Armada/Axe/whoever, and just say, "Well, those MUs aren't as bad as we thought, since Armada/Axe can win them."

By the same token, everyone says "Peach/Puff isn't that bad," despite Armada consistently losing to Hungrybox. Yet, when he destroys every Fox, they go, "See? Peach/Fox isn't that bad!" If you're going to use a certain line of logic, be consistent.

 

[Geenareeno]

Well, to be fair Shrouded, if we're using PP's theory, Axe/Armada have gotten so good at covering the matchups weaknesses and playing to it's strengths that they can win. We're basically saying the same thing, but opposite.

 

[ShroudedOne]

I'm not sure I follow. Could you elaborate?

 

[twizzlerj]

I have heard some say peach/puff should be impossible for peach and i see no reason to argue since at the highest level we have seen it really hasn't been done aside from armada vs mango where it took him 2 stitch face hits to win a game right?

 

[Gea]

To be fair, it also isn't that common of a matchup.

 

[JonnyW]

it's hilarious when falcons complain about DK

When does that ever happen?

 

[Kal]

Probably whenever Strong Bad encounters a Falcon player.

 

[KingofCereal]

I would think its hilarious when almost anyone complains about DK...

...because they know it's coming.

There's been a lot of talk about top level play, and the interesting point of how outdated videos just 2 years old look. Can we agree that smash will still exist in 2014, 2016 (Olympic games baby) and in all likelyhood willl continue to evolve until then? This means that we are still not even close to the final peak of melee. Matchups will continue to be exploited til the whole cast is perfectly figured out and Grand Finals are won with a team of characters. How many have already been pushed to the utmost limit of potential?

 

[Bones0]

how many have already been pushed to the utmost limit of potential?

0 .

 

[KrIsP!]

People have said quite a bit top tiers have so much unseen potential while low tiers have so much unexplored potential. So long as the community stays welcoming and people in college keep learning that people still play this game but at a whole new level I think it still has a lot of time to go. Basically until the last GCN controller breaks.

And I've said it before, if Nintendo stops selling them and they're nowhere to be found the cliche internet petition/boycott will be brought up.

 

[RaphaelRobo]

At that point someone's going to have written an emulator for some modern console, and we'll all be playing it on that with 5960p.

 

[JPOBS]

Why is it difficult to believe that players are outplaying their opponents in bad matchups? Are we really going to take away that much credit from Armada/Axe/whoever, and just say, "Well, those MUs aren't as bad as we thought, since Armada/Axe can win them."

By the same token, everyone says "Peach/Puff isn't that bad," despite Armada consistently losing to Hungrybox. Yet, when he destroys every Fox, they go, "See? Peach/Fox isn't that bad!" If you're going to use a certain line of logic, be consistent.

Its not taking anything away from the players to say that a matchup is "not that bad" if they manage to show it as so.
Matchups can't exist in a vacuum. It does absolutely no good to just theorize about how badly Fox beats pika because of X, Y and Z if that has not been shown to be the case in practice. No one benefits from holding onto beliefs half a decade old.

In fact, saying that a player is showing a matchup to be better than previously thought, should be considered as high praise to the player for revealing new parts of the metagame. Its not a bad thing for matchups to change over time, its a good thing.

 

[Varist]

Wholeheartedly agree with the above post

Consequently, I must wholeheartedly disagree with Shroudedguy's post

 

[Kal]

I think ShroudedOne is just asking for some consistency, and for people to avoid jumping to conclusions. If a Pikachu player comes out of nowhere and beats a single Fox player once, it would be presumptuous to assume Pikachu does better against Fox than we thought. On the other hand, a Pikachu player consistently performing well against Foxes across the board would suggest that Pikachu does not do terribly against Fox.

Of course, I totally agree with JPOBS' point; these preconceptions we have about matchups are not sacred, and there is nothing wrong with them changing over time.

 

[Warhawk]

So long as the community stays welcoming and people in college keep learning that people still play this game but at a whole new level I think it still has a lot of time to go. Basically until the last GCN controller breaks.

With all the emulators people have nowadays and the different controllers you can use with those the community could potentially outlast even the last gamecube controller.

 

[Mahone]

ps: none of this is admittance that Armada is the best player. GOTTA DO IT THREE TIMES LIKE MANGO DID BABY!!!

^that's the flames btw

What exactly did mango do 3 times? I dont recall him winning 3 internationals armada was at... Unless you mean winning 3 nationals/internationals in a row.... In which case, Armada has been doing that for years in europe including winning the last 2 in the us

Also u did sorta admit hes the best player atm, since you say he plays the matchup better than his opponents...

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Genesis, Pound 4, uhhh...

 

[ShroudedOne]

Pound 3? I was thinking of that one when I read that.

 

[Strong Badam]

Pound 3 :3

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Pound 3 was an epic win for mango, but its not on the same level as Genesis 2 or Apex 2012

 

[Mahone]

Pound 3? I was thinking of that one when I read that.

Ya, but my point is that armada wasnt at that (or ROM)....

I could just as easily say armada won beast 2, gen 2, apex 2012...

PP just has some captain america bias lol

 

[Strong Badam]

america #1