Official MBR 2010 NTSC Tier List

[john!]

I don't get why people think it should be eye-opening. If Mango had spent all this time practicing Falcon instead of Fox and had started winning tournaments with Falcon, everyone would just attribute it to Mango being amazing. Armada's Peach has already gotten to the top and impressed people only to have people say "Armada is just good with a bad character." Suddenly when it's a Fox doing good, it has nothing to do with Mango playing amazingly (he said himself he felt like he was playing at a 8 vs. M2K and 9.5 vs. Hbox), it's somehow proof that Fox is really good. It just seems like confirmation bias to me because people have already put Fox so high on their list in their mind that when they finally see a Fox play well it carries more weight than it should.

the only other peaches to even come close to armada's success are pink shinobi and mikael, and they haven't been seen in years. meanwhile, fox has been a popular main/secondary at all levels of play during every stage of the metagame. even now, m2k, pp, and mango are all top 5 and all main or secondary fox. this is why it's easier to dismiss armada's peach as a statistical anomaly than it is to dismiss mango's fox (although armada definitely showed the world that peach had more potential than most people realized)

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Bladewise, DoH, VaNz, MacD. XIF, Wife, Sastopher if you want to go older. There are many more than the ones I listed, too. Peach is one of the best characters in the game and she has historically been at the top of the tier list (2010 tier list is her lowest showing so far, we will see soon where the 2013 tier list puts her).

 

[BTmoney]

Uh, Ado, you're post was worded in a way that made me want to bother reading the rest of your post, so I'll respond to it. . .

What makes you think Mango is obviously the best player right now? (Or did I misread your post and you were being sarcastic?)

He has recent losses to (Bladewise/PPU, which I'll call outliers), Hbox, M2K, PP and Armada. We'll go ahead and neglect Aramda as being a potential best player because he is retired, but then after looking at the rest of the players. . . everyone has been losing to other players. (Before Zenith, everyone but PP), so Mango looks like he is primarily beating Hbox, probably going evenish with PP, and primarily losing to M2K.

I would say (neglecting inconsistency) that it would be no more obvious that he is best than it is as obvious that he is 4th.

I'm not a huge Mango fan or something but I give him credit where it's due.

• vs. Hbox, you can look at all the stupid mistakes at NCR. Second to last game of 2nd set last stock Mango jumps off stage for no reason while he was in control (seemed to be an error) and he tries to get off the ledge and gets uthrown-rested for it. Now instead of winning that match and set 3-1 (after already beating Hbox in the first set) he loses. Last game Mango side B's off the stage. Pretty sure he got uthrown-rested 5 times in the last 2 games. I don't think you're playing well in general if you get hit by uthrow rest 5 times in 2 games. Other than that, winning record vs Hbox. Clearly an upset.
• vs. M2k, Apex 2013 he was just playing bad and stupid or at least so he said. I can't argue otherwise. Vindication, beat M2k bad in winners. Drunk (not sure how relevant that actually is but I'm not getting drunk at any tournament I want to win) mango loses a set in GF then wins. Zenith, loses to him 3-1 in winners and wins 3-1 in losers. If you want to argue that M2k is as good or better, Mango consistently and historically out places M2k and plays better against the other top 2 players. Other than that look at his record historically vs. M2k.
• vs. PP, 1st time PP beat Mango in a set was Kings of Cali (unless you want to count the shenanigans of Mango going all Falcon vs PP at Winter Game Fest VI), can't say anything about that PP just beat him. Other than that, he went Fox against him at Zenith (you can look into that more however you want, maybe he was confident since he doesn't usually go Fox versus Falcos of that caliber). I don't see how losing 3-1 and pretty much always losing makes a strong argument for being better. PP is my favorite player though so if anything I'd be johning for him.

And yes he shouldn't of lost of lost to Bladewise or PPU but arguing that either of them is better obviously wouldn't make any sense. I don't think there is anything suggesting that he currently is not the best player. I didn't say he's far and away the best and just junks everyone, but in my opinion he clearly is the best.

 

[KirbyKaze]

PP won their WFs set at Impulse FWIW

 

[BTmoney]

PP won their WFs set at Impulse FWIW

Whoopsies, thanks for the correction. But for anyone else, my point is you are the minority if you don't consider Mango losing to those 3 players an upset.

 

[Purpletuce]

I think the majority of players think tech skill directly correlates to player skill. Not surprised the majority of players think mango is best, but I'm sure the majority of good players will see it differently. I'm sure a lot of good players think mango is best, but I don't think the majority thinks its obvious. Also, historical results would indicate ken is the best. New mango is just as much performance as jhons about bad performance imo. I think mango is too caught up in trying to be the gladiator of smash to be consistently good. He doesn't seem efficient enough.

 

[Jayk]

Everyone always gives Mango excuses for being off, or doing stupid things.
Doesn't doing stupid things and being incredibly inconsistent make him a worse player?

 

[CyberZixx]

I'm with Purpletuce in that Ken is arguably the best all time player judging by his dominance during his prime. Sure he would get bodied free by all the top players now but it is relative. While tech skill is important people do overate it. Mango is far more than the player with the best tech skill. He is super duper good. Best in the world? I can see that.

 

[Purpletuce]

That's not at all what I was trying to say.

 

[BTmoney]

I think the majority of players think tech skill directly correlates to player skill. Not surprised the majority of players think mango is best, but I'm sure the majority of good players will see it differently. I'm sure a lot of good players think mango is best, but I don't think the majority thinks its obvious. Also, historical results would indicate ken is the best. New mango is just as much performance as jhons about bad performance imo. I think mango is too caught up in trying to be the gladiator of smash to be consistently good. He doesn't seem efficient enough.

(yes?) I'm not sure what you are getting at about the Ken thing. Well all johns and silly things considered Mango still beats the other top 3 players 90% of the time. I just want to hear something that points to him not being the best player right now.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

In the last 4 sets they played, m2k won 3 of them.

 

[Ziodyne]

In the last 4 sets they played, m2k won 3 of them.

You didn't see Vindication then. It happened between Apex and Zenith, where Mango won a set in WF, lost a set in GF and then won the second set of GF.

So in their last 4 sets, I'd guess they'd be dead even. If we're looking at just how they seem to be recently doing, Mango's taking the important sets off Mew2king and doing better in tournament atm

 

[BTmoney]

In the last 4 sets they played, m2k won 3 of them.

Vindication: 2-1 Mango
Zenith: 1-1 (Both players had a 3-1)

3-2 Mango in the last 5 sets.

3-4 in the last 7

A lot to not as much, historically

 

[john!]

Bladewise, DoH, VaNz, MacD. XIF, Wife, Sastopher if you want to go older. There are many more than the ones I listed, too. Peach is one of the best characters in the game and she has historically been at the top of the tier list (2010 tier list is her lowest showing so far, we will see soon where the 2013 tier list puts her).

you're just naming good peach players. maybe some of them cracked top 10 at one point. mikael beat ken in his prime and pink shinobi was arguably 2nd to mango on the west coast. that's the kind of success i'm talking about.

 

[Bones0]

the only other peaches to even come close to armada's success are pink shinobi and mikael, and they haven't been seen in years. meanwhile, fox has been a popular main/secondary at all levels of play during every stage of the metagame. even now, m2k, pp, and mango are all top 5 and all main or secondary fox. this is why it's easier to dismiss armada's peach as a statistical anomaly than it is to dismiss mango's fox (although armada definitely showed the world that peach had more potential than most people realized)

There haven't been that many Peach players, so you can't consider Armada an anomaly when there is so little data to compare his performance against. By contrast, you said yourself that everyone and their mother plays Fox, yet with all those opportunities for success, Fox has relatively few tournament victories. If there are any anomalies occurring in Melee's metagame recently, it's the fact that a Fox won.

M2K only uses Fox vs. Puff these days (and to no great effect unfortunately), Mango was a top player well before he started using Fox in tourney, and I've never seen PP use Fox in a serious match. The fact that these players happen to play Fox because he is fun or whatever doesn't prove Fox is a good character. It isn't like all three of them wouldn't be where they are today without their Fox.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

IIRC Sastopher was like 2nd best on WC after Ken for a while, including wins on him. Wife consistently made top 8 at MLG tournaments. I don't know when Pink Shinobi was ever 2nd in WC; before he quit he was still losing consistently to at least Mango and Silent Spectre. The only thing i remember about Pink Shinobi is that he timed out Rock Crock one time. When did Mikael beat Ken? The only time they would have had the chance to play was at the JGT, but Ken won that tournament and IIRC the only loss he had was to Aniki. Even so, Mikael never did anything before or since, making it a fluke and not worth mentioning as a "omg best of all time"

Btw, here are a few more legendary peach players: Cort, PC Chris, Vidjo

 

[MountainGoat]

I'm kind of with Bones on this. So many people still seem to think that Fox is just obviously the best despite a lack of consistent results with so many fox mains. It kind of makes me feel that the distinctions between the top 6 or so characters don't matter so much, the player is a lot more important.

 

[BTmoney]

I think it's important to consider the pool of players that are even skilled enough to win a National-caliber tournament barring major flukes, then consider how many are Fox mains, then consider the mains of the rest of said pool. I'd put parameters on that pool to ballpark a skill level but no one would like what I have to say.

You could (should) even contemplate why someone choses or choses not to play Fox.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Victor when are we smashing again?

 

[BTmoney]

Victor when are we smashing again?

whenever you (or you guys) want to meet somewhere within an hour away from me lol

I'd love to play more (and I just met some guy on here that lives in my neighborhood, McSnappleton?)

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Oh I know McSnapple. Havent seen him in forever, though. Hows he doin?

 

[V3ctorMan]

^sorry about my stream earleir... Sveet.. i was trying to say i was having problems.. but... it just DC'd.. and stuff ...

my thoughts on Yoshi still stand <3

Hope your project goes well

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

NP. I stuck around for a few minutes to see if it would go back up. You should stream again soon; I want to see how yoshi does against characters other than link (tho it was still fun to watch that MU)

 

[V3ctorMan]

I went to an AZ tournament, and have matches vs AZ's best... just check my thread.. you can see them there

 

[Max?]

you're just naming good peach players. maybe some of them cracked top 10 at one point. mikael beat ken in his prime and pink shinobi was arguably 2nd to mango on the west coast. that's the kind of success i'm talking about.

There was a point and time where Vanz was top 3 in NY, beat jman and hax a few times, and would place top 3 at No Johns with 80+ people where people like m2k, mango, zhu etc in attendance.

I'd say thats pretty good

 

[john!]

There haven't been that many Peach players, so you can't consider Armada an anomaly when there is so little data to compare his performance against. By contrast, you said yourself that everyone and their mother plays Fox, yet with all those opportunities for success, Fox has relatively few tournament victories. If there are any anomalies occurring in Melee's metagame recently, it's the fact that a Fox won.

M2K only uses Fox vs. Puff these days (and to no great effect unfortunately), Mango was a top player well before he started using Fox in tourney, and I've never seen PP use Fox in a serious match. The fact that these players happen to play Fox because he is fun or whatever doesn't prove Fox is a good character. It isn't like all three of them wouldn't be where they are today without their Fox.

what do you mean "there haven't been many peach players"? sveet just named like 15 high-level peaches, lol. lots of people play her because she's a great character. but even more people play fox, because he's an even better character.

oh, and you're really only counting "tournament victories" when the person winning all the tournaments has been a single peach player? how convenient... for you... try looking in the top 8 of most big tournaments in the past few years. look in the top 32. look in the top anything. there will be more foxes almost every time. you would have a point if the tier list was designed to measure "the likelihood of a character winning a national in the past year", but sadly that's not what it measures.

i'm not sure why some space animal players have such a hard time accepting how good their characters are. i'm not denigrating whatever success they may or may not have achieved. they choose to pick characters that give them the best odds of winning tournaments, and i'm not criticizing their goals, because that's totally up to them and not me.

There was a point and time where Vanz was top 3 in NY, beat jman and hax a few times, and would place top 3 at No Johns with 80+ people where people like m2k, mango, zhu etc in attendance.

I'd say thats pretty good

yeah vanz is a beast. i don't think he was as good (relative to his contemporaries) as the ones i mentioned, though.

 

[Bones0]

what do you mean "there haven't been many peach players"? sveet just named like 15 high-level peaches, lol. lots of people play her because she's a great character. but even more people play fox, because he's an even better character.

I was agreeing with your comment that there haven't been a bunch of top level Peaches... She is significantly less popular than Fox, hence there being less data to draw conclusions from. It'd be like saying Doc or Pikachu aren't that good, and justifying the statement by considering Shroomed and Axe anomalies even though they are basically 30%+ of their main's population above mid-level.

oh, and you're really only counting "tournament victories" when the person winning all the tournaments has been a single peach player? how convenient... for you... try looking in the top 8 of most big tournaments in the past few years. look in the top 32. look in the top anything. there will be more foxes almost every time. you would have a point if the tier list was designed to measure "the likelihood of a character winning a national in the past year", but sadly that's not what it measures.

When did I say I was only counting someone winning the whole tournament? Last time I checked, any time you beat someone in a tournament, it is considered a tournament victory...

Looking at top 32, of course there are more Foxes. THERE ARE MORE FOX PLAYERS ENTERING. I cannot believe how many times I have to explain how this **** works because it honestly is not complicated. Just because there are more Fox players entering doesn't mean you should consider Fox, as a character, to be more likely to win a tournament. You should only take the characters the community uses into account when determining how important certain matchups are (if Sheik was countered pretty hard by Kirby or something, it wouldn't be a big deal because you probably won't face a Kirby in bracket). For the rest of my explanation, I'll simply quote my own post back from March in this same thread.

I don't know why you linked to that thread. Like Overswarm told you in that post, that is not a tier list, it is a compilation of ranking data. The first page defines a tier list as "a list of characters ranked best to worst in their likelihood to perform well in a tournament setting in the near future based on recent, relevant tournament results."

If you have 10,000 Mario mains and 1,000 Doc mains, Mario is not more likely to perform well than Doc because you evaluate it on a case-by-case basis. If you had to place a bet on one of these characters winning a national, everyone with a brain would bet on a Mario winning. If you had to place a bet on who would place higher, Max, the Mario main, or Don, the Doc main, who would you bet on? Hopefully you would have the brain capacity to realize that Doc is a better character all around, and therefore a player that mains him is more likely to perform better than a random Mario player. Even if you have more Mario players performing well than Doc players, it gives you no insight into which character is stronger. That's why you need to keep in mind how relatively common characters are before assuming that "ACTUALLY SEE"ing them in the top 8 doesn't mean they are ACTUALLY ANY GOOD.

Your whole point is incredibly ironic because you constantly go around falsely accusing me of basing my tier list off of results only to say basing a tier list off of anything but results is "inherently flawed." No **** it's inherently flawed to deviate from anything but tournament placement statistics, but accounting for untapped theory and skewed character representation tells us a lot more about the game than you'll ever get from tallying up the characters good players happen to use. Maybe we should have different tier lists for each region. Peach, Fox, Yoshi will be top tier in Sweden. Sheik, Fox, and Ganon will be top tier in Canadia. etc. This way each region has a tier list that more accurately represents what they "ACTUALLY SEE" in the top 8 of their tournaments.

i'm not sure why some space animal players have such a hard time accepting how good their characters are. i'm not denigrating whatever success they may or may not have achieved. they choose to pick characters that give them the best odds of winning tournaments, and i'm not criticizing their goals, because that's totally up to them and not me.

I put my main, Falco, second on my tier list after Sheik...

 

[john!]

When did I say I was only counting someone winning the whole tournament? Last time I checked, any time you beat someone in a tournament, it is considered a tournament victory...

you said that fox has relatively few tournament victories, despite the fact that he is a popular tournament pick and often places highly.

Looking at top 32, of course there are more Foxes. THERE ARE MORE FOX PLAYERS ENTERING. I cannot believe how many times I have to explain how this **** works because it honestly is not complicated. Just because there are more Fox players entering doesn't mean you should consider Fox, as a character, to be more likely to win a tournament.

if there are more foxes in tournament, then not only is fox statistically more likely to win a tournament, but it also indicates that fox is probably a very good character. the distribution of mains among our community is proof that people choose their mains mostly based on tournament viability and not on personal taste.

You should only take the characters the community uses into account when determining how important certain matchups are (if Sheik was countered pretty hard by Kirby or something, it wouldn't be a big deal because you probably won't face a Kirby in bracket). For the rest of my explanation, I'll simply quote my own post back from March in this same thread.

really, dude? the characters that the community uses, and the frequency with which they appear in tournaments, is EXTREMELY important in determining a character's tournament viability. if a character has great matchups with the most unpopular characters, and bad matchups with the most popular characters, then they are simply not tournament viable, despite your claims that tournament viability should be independent of what characters the community chooses.

 

[FirestormNeos]

No wonder I love CP in this game.

 

[KirbyKaze]

Whoopsies, thanks for the correction. But for anyone else, my point is you are the minority if you don't consider Mango losing to those 3 players an upset.

I can agree with you in that I think Mango has the edge on the other three strictly in the head to head. However, to call it an upset seems a bit sketchy to me - Mango has shown a lot of inconsistency lately and the edge he has is noticeable but not so domineering that it's a real shock when he does drop a set to any of them (this ain't 2009). It's also worth noting that Mango is currently the worst against M2K (of himself, PP, and HBox) and arguably the worst vs HBox (HBox's recent win on PP is his first in a long time). I also feel he had the toughest time vs Armada (Mango got 3-0ed at APEX 2012 and basically hasn't taken a set from him since perhaps Genesis) of them too. Rounding this out, Mango is also probably the most likely to lose arbitrarily to someone much weaker (for one reason or another) and has the record to back it up (PPU, Bladewise, Ice).

Now, before I get lynched by MangoNation, I'm gonna explain my evaluation of all these things. So bear with me. WC, keep your calm.

Basically, I think Mango probably is the best active player right now but it's really close between the top 3. Currently, M2K is a solid 4th and is more competitive vs the others than he's been in a while, though I'm not sure whether or not that will last. And HBox still bops him. He still won't learn to Jiggs.


Edit: Armada is the freakin' man though. And would beat any of them right now except maybe PP. Adam Frickin' Lindgren.

 

[Bones0]

you said that fox has relatively few tournament victories, despite the fact that he is a popular tournament pick and often places highly.

Yes, he does. Idk how that's confusing. There are more Foxes placing high than other characters, but he is much more popular. Therefore, relative to his popularity, he is not as successful as other characters.

if there are more foxes in tournament, then not only is fox statistically more likely to win a tournament, but it also indicates that fox is probably a very good character. the distribution of mains among our community is proof that people choose their mains mostly based on tournament viability and not on personal taste.

Did you even READ my last post? Of course if Fox makes up 1/3rd of the population he is likely to win a tournament, but that doesn't tell us anything about how good he is as a character. If 90% of the community played Link, would that make Link top tier? The distribution of mains in our community isn't proof of anything. You are just using circular logic. Fox is the best (most likely to win) because he is the most popular because he is perceived as the best because he is the most popular because...

The fact that there are a ton of Fox mains doesn't make any INDIVIDUAL Fox more likely to win a tournament. Reread my example with the Dr. Marios and Marios. Doc is a better character and should be higher on the tier list. Just because there are more Mario mains making him more likely to win a tournament doesn't mean he should be higher on the tier list.

really, dude? the characters that the community uses, and the frequency with which they appear in tournaments, is EXTREMELY important in determining a character's tournament viability. if a character has great matchups with the most unpopular characters, and bad matchups with the most popular characters, then they are simply not tournament viable, despite your claims that tournament viability should be independent of what characters the community chooses.

Honestly, did you even read this part?

You should only take the characters the community uses into account when determining how important certain matchups are (if Sheik was countered pretty hard by Kirby or something, it wouldn't be a big deal because you probably won't face a Kirby in bracket).

It's like you just quoted my post and restated every point back to me without actually understanding anything I said, just assuming I meant whatever you wanted me to mean.

 

[john!]

Did you even READ my last post? Of course if Fox makes up 1/3rd of the population he is likely to win a tournament, but that doesn't tell us anything about how good he is as a character. If 90% of the community played Link, would that make Link top tier? The distribution of mains in our community isn't proof of anything. You are just using circular logic. Fox is the best (most likely to win) because he is the most popular because he is perceived as the best because he is the most popular because...

The fact that there are a ton of Fox mains doesn't make any INDIVIDUAL Fox more likely to win a tournament. Reread my example with the Dr. Marios and Marios. Doc is a better character and should be higher on the tier list. Just because there are more Mario mains making him more likely to win a tournament doesn't mean he should be higher on the tier list.

this reminds me of the old anti-tiers argument which went something like "tiers don't exist, people just bandwagon onto popular characters and make them win more, making people think they are better, making them more popular, etc..."

lemme ask you something: do you think tournament viability and popularity of a character are correlated at ALL? you're trying to use fox's popularity against him, which is really strange lol. fox is popular BECAUSE he is really good, and therefore really easy (i think i talked about this earlier)

 

[The 2t]

Well I can see where Bones is coming from. Obviously there's some degree of people gravitating to the good characters going on, but it's still not 100% of the picture.

A lot of people likely pick Fox because he's perceived to be the best character and not necessarily because he actually is. I mean, if you went over to the IGN boards or any other gaming community which is aware of competitive smash but hasn't really tried it and asked them what the best character in SSBM is, they'd probably tell you that Fox completely dominates everyone. Obviously we know it's not like that at all, but it seems to be the perception that a lot of people have of the game until they actually get into it themselves. Idk how it originated but hey, it's definitely there and I'd say it influences people quite a lot when they pick up smash and choose their main.

So there's this perception that Fox is far and away the best character and he seems to get far more representation than he probably should have, even when there are several characters that could actually be better than him (though this is obviously up for debate).

So in that sense I agree with Bones in that just because there are a ton of Foxes around, it doesn't necessarily mean that he's the best character in the game, just that he's a popular pick. That being said, he's also obviously a popular pick because he's good too; I suppose the question is whether he's actually as good as his popularity suggests.

 

[Jim Morrison]

Disregard this, joining in this discussion where both parties agree but are talking around the topic is a bad endeavor.

 

[MountainGoat]

Endless chicken vs the egg argument?

 

[Bones0]

this reminds me of the old anti-tiers argument which went something like "tiers don't exist, people just bandwagon onto popular characters and make them win more, making people think they are better, making them more popular, etc..."

lemme ask you something: do you think tournament viability and popularity of a character are correlated at ALL? you're trying to use fox's popularity against him, which is really strange lol. fox is popular BECAUSE he is really good, and therefore really easy (i think i talked about this earlier)

Of course there is a correlation between tournament viability and popularity, but that doesn't mean Fox is the most viable just because he is the most popular. The core of the problem is you are considering Fox's popularity as a factor in how likely any INDIVIDUAL Fox player is to win a tournament. I'm not trying to say Fox is bad BECAUSE he is popular, all I am saying is that you have to view Fox's success in relation to his popularity. Simply pointing out there are more Foxes than Puffs in the top 32 of a national means nothing when there's 10 times more Fox mains than Puff mains. I will never point to tournament data as "proof" of what I believe the tier list to be, but the fact of the matter is Fox is very likely the least successful top tier if we could take the number of successful Fox mains ("successful" meaning top 16 or top 32 or whatever range) and divide it by the number of total Fox mains.

That being said, he's also obviously a popular pick because he's good too; I suppose the question is whether he's actually as good as his popularity suggests.

Well put.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

The tier list is supposed to anticipate or predict the results of a tournament. The actual results of tournaments will (almost?) never turn out to be what the tier list is because of the players.

T = Tier list
R = Results
-> = determines (or should predict)

T -> R not R -> T

 

[BTmoney]

The tier list is supposed to anticipate or predict the results of a tournament. The actual results of tournaments will (almost?) never turn out to be what the tier list is because of the players.

T = Tier list
R = Results
-> = determines (or should predict)

T -> R not R -> T

I agree entirely.

(LOL I got exposed today. **** was midly embarassing I haven't played in forever. I'll be training up though )

Of course there is a correlation between tournament viability and popularity, but that doesn't mean Fox is the most viable just because he is the most popular. The core of the problem is you are considering Fox's popularity as a factor in how likely any INDIVIDUAL Fox player is to win a tournament. I'm not trying to say Fox is bad BECAUSE he is popular, all I am saying is that you have to view Fox's success in relation to his popularity. Simply pointing out there are more Foxes than Puffs in the top 32 of a national means nothing when there's 10 times more Fox mains than Puff mains. I will never point to tournament data as "proof" of what I believe the tier list to be, but the fact of the matter is Fox is very likely the least successful top tier if we could take the number of successful Fox mains ("successful" meaning top 16 or top 32 or whatever range) and divide it by the number of total Fox mains.

I like when I agree with you and you take the time to write things I don't feel like explaining.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

I like when I agree with you and you take the time to write things I don't feel like explaining.

I like having bones around for this reason too.

 

[FourStar]

I can agree with you in that I think Mango has the edge on the other three strictly in the head to head. However, to call it an upset seems a bit sketchy to me - Mango has shown a lot of inconsistency lately and the edge he has is noticeable but not so domineering that it's a real shock when he does drop a set to any of them (this ain't 2009). It's also worth noting that Mango is currently the worst against M2K (of himself, PP, and HBox) and arguably the worst vs HBox (HBox's recent win on PP is his first in a long time). I also feel he had the toughest time vs Armada (Mango got 3-0ed at APEX 2012 and basically hasn't taken a set from him since perhaps Genesis) of them too. Rounding this out, Mango is also probably the most likely to lose arbitrarily to someone much weaker (for one reason or another) and has the record to back it up (PPU, Bladewise, Ice).

Now, before I get lynched by MangoNation, I'm gonna explain my evaluation of all these things. So bear with me. WC, keep your calm.

Basically, I think Mango probably is the best active player right now but it's really close between the top 3. Currently, M2K is a solid 4th and is more competitive vs the others than he's been in a while, though I'm not sure whether or not that will last. And HBox still bops him. He still won't learn to Jiggs.


Edit: Armada is the freakin' man though. And would beat any of them right now except maybe PP. Adam Frickin' Lindgren.

That was just simply beautiful :'D