Official MBR Tier List

[victra♥]

Why can't we just do what the ssb guys did and base this list off of match up potential.

Like seriously lol.

 

[x After Dawn x]

because there are too many people whining and complaining about tourney placements, even though they don't mean nearly as much as potential.

 

[KAOSTAR]

true, but they do mean something and shouldnt be completely ignored.

I dont know how to solve it diplomatically. We just need a dictator.

 

[TresChikon]

I know how to solve this argument.

1. Take down the current list and replace it with

"The new tier list is currently being constructed, please wait until it is released for further discussion."

2. But never actually go through with it, so people can complain about the new tier list's release date rather than what's actually in it.

Anything is better than the crap flying around right now.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

my only beef with using a match-up chart as a tier list is i think some characters are better than others, even if their match-ups don't specifically say so.

Take samus for example. She has lots of bad match-ups and few strong match-ups. If you play her right, she is a really good character. She has the speed, range, priority and projectiles to be on the low end of tournament viable characters. But because she doesn't raaaaaape the lower tiers and her mid+ match-ups are even-ish, she gets placed at the bottom of mid/top of low in a match-up chart tier list.

I know how to solve this argument.

1. Take down the current list and replace it with

"The new tier list is currently being constructed, please wait until it is released for further discussion."

2. But never actually go through with it, so people can complain about the new tier list's release date rather than what's actually in it.

Anything is better than the crap flying around right now.

this.

 

[Fletch]

my only beef with using a match-up chart as a tier list is i think some characters are better than others, even if their match-ups don't specifically say so.

Take samus for example. She has lots of bad match-ups and few strong match-ups. If you play her right, she is a really good character. She has the speed, range, priority and projectiles to be on the low end of tournament viable characters. But because she doesn't raaaaaape the lower tiers and her mid+ match-ups are even-ish, she gets placed at the bottom of mid/top of low in a match-up chart tier list.

That and if we go solely on matchups, Sheik becomes the best character in the game, which I'm pretty sure isn't the case.

 

[Inaphyt]

The thing is, there is no character that does not have the "tools" provided that there is a great enough skill gap. Sure, the characters have a great deal of difficulty doing it reliably, but with sufficiently good reading skills it is possible to defeat any character.


Honestly, that's one beautiful thing about melee, every character has a counter to literally everything that every other character can do, there are no 100-0 match-ups, the difference is a matter of reliability, and effectiveness. Bottom tiers lack reliable ways to get in without reading their opponent perfectly, have large gaps in their defenses, or simply are too vulnerable to other characters options to win reliably (ex. chaingrabs, shin combos, etc), but they CAN win, provided there's a large enough skill gap.



On a completely separate note, I think I'm gonna pick up pichu as a secondary, he's fun.

I disagree, 2 players of exactly the same skill one pichu one fox. In some alternate universe the pichu has gone through 7 rounds and won the grand finals in a tournament.

It's not about a "skillgap" it's about the worse characters patience and luck.

In the grand finals of a national tournament there isn't going to be a massive skillgap if there was the better player would win all the time.

Melee is alot about luck.

Edit- I disagree with anyone that says zelda is better than roy. Down b to sheikh does not count and roy completely terminates zelda.

 

[S.R. XXVII]

Zelda IS better than Roy.

 

[adumbrodeus]

That and if we go solely on matchups, Sheik becomes the best character in the game, which I'm pretty sure isn't the case.

Again, that's based on a bad assumption, namely if you faced an even number of every character, in that case Sheik would be the best character, garbage in garbage out.

The reality is even if there was an even number of mains of each character, low tier characters fall far too easily in the early stages of tournaments to really be relevant, but we all know this.

Of course, being low tier also discourages people from maining them.


This why we need to weigh match-ups based on the likelyhood of running into them, and how do we weigh match-ups? Do a match-up chart and then weight everyone's advantages and disadvantages based on position of advantages and disadvantages.

Then repeat.

 

[Inaphyt]

I use zelda, the range is just too much to get round roy terminates her.

He has a longer and quicker wavedash than her, he can actually short hop once below zelda what is she going to do? not alot. dtilt out ranges everything and nullifies zeldas decent downsmash, zeldas running attack bair and fair are good, but roy can punish these on sight.

 

[adumbrodeus]

I disagree, 2 players of exactly the same skill one pichu one fox. In some alternate universe the pichu has gone through 7 rounds and won the grand finals in a tournament.

It's not about a "skillgap" it's about the worse characters patience and luck.

In the grand finals of a national tournament there isn't going to be a massive skillgap if there was the better player would win all the time.

Melee is alot about luck.

Are you SURE?


In many fields I have seen truly amazing people, and generally speaking the true top player is head and shoulders above the rest, or at least there's a significant difference. What's to say that we can't get somebody who's the smash community's equivalent to somebody who can set a world record that stood for decades using regular shoes with nails in them?


And while there is luck, most of the "luck" in melee is reading? Why do the same players consistently win? Lucky? To a disagree, but to the outsider good reading skills are indistinguishable from luck, and what else is there to separate the truly top players?

I use zelda, the range is just too much to get round roy terminates her.

He has a longer and quicker wavedash than her, he can actually short hop once below zelda what is she going to do? not alot. dtilt out ranges everything and nullifies zeldas decent downsmash, zeldas running attack bair and fair are good, but roy can punish these on sight.

Zelda does better against characters that matter, therefore Zelda is better.

 

[undyinglight]

Yeah powersheilding is legit I powersheilded a bunch of foxes lasers in one game on the fly as pichu(uber easy to powersheild with compared to most people) But keep in mind some camping is retarted to powersheild like sheik's needles.

yeah love that about melee too. Nothing is impossible even if someone powersheilded every single attack that's still not auto win because they can still get punished for their attacks and get grabbed.

adumbrodeus- I will let you choose. I can say nothing about you playing as pichu or I can say something(maybe PM or something), because I am annoying about it. Chooses are always nice even if the answer will always be the same.

I 4 stocked undyingchaos's Fox using Pichu. He was speechless.

 

[Stevo]

Zelda IS better than Roy.

Lies.

I play both.

 

[Fletch]

Again, that's based on a bad assumption, namely if you faced an even number of every character, in that case Sheik would be the best character, garbage in garbage out.

The reality is even if there was an even number of mains of each character, low tier characters fall far too easily in the early stages of tournaments to really be relevant, but we all know this.

Of course, being low tier also discourages people from maining them.


This why we need to weigh match-ups based on the likelyhood of running into them, and how do we weigh match-ups? Do a match-up chart and then weight everyone's advantages and disadvantages based on position of advantages and disadvantages.

Then repeat.

I'm agreeing with you... Matchups need to be weighted.

 

[adumbrodeus]

I'm agreeing with you... Matchups need to be weighted.

What I'm pointing out is that we don't have to do it based on an outside list, we should do it based on the conclusions inside the list on the basis of the relative odds of running into the character in a tournament based on a standard distribution (aka an even amount of everyone). We should discuss how many of each character should be present to appropriately weigh the tiers.




Also, your sig is very lol-worthy while still having a worthwhile point, melee is the faster paced game, whereas Brawl is all about patience and positioning (not saying that those things are not important in melee, but there's pretty much nothing left in brawl) making it more appealing to the players who appreciate a slower more patient game like chess. Which begs the question, with our super-ADD community, why the **** is melee not the more popular game?

 

[St. Viers]

I'd say that the difference is more like the difference between blitz chess and chess (or blitz go vs go would be more accurate).

Because melee needs all the things brawl does, plus the ability to do them quickly, and be able to recognize common strings of moves without deliberating over them each time.

 

[Stev]

Which begs the question, with our super-ADD community, why the **** is melee not the more popular game?

Graphics are much more important to little kids getting into gaming than people who were around from earlier ****ty graphics, like the melee community.

 

[adumbrodeus]

Graphics are much more important to little kids getting into gaming than people who were around from earlier ****ty graphics, like the melee community.

Actually this is more a sophist question with a long term prediction. I understand, it's bright, it's shiney, it's new. It had that initial push.


You see most of the Brawl community remembers melee, see I really do think in the long run there's a reasonable possibility more of the community will prefer melee and when they think it's viable, become primarily melee players (at least as well as Brawl players).

 

[Winston]

This why we need to weigh match-ups based on the likelyhood of running into them, and how do we weigh match-ups? Do a match-up chart and then weight everyone's advantages and disadvantages based on position of advantages and disadvantages.

Then repeat.

I've liked the idea that the tier list should be derived from the matchup chart for a while now.

What sort of algorithm would you suggest, though? The main one I can think of is calculating the % of metagame and expected win % for each character at each step, but I'm not entirely convinced that there's a sound theoretical justification for it. Also, this system is bad at resolving rock-papers-scissors sorts of scenarios. (if A, B, and C where the 3 best characters, and A > B > C)

The other issue with this approach is that character representation in reality doesn't really match up to how strong the characters are. (sheik and marth are a bit underrepresented, falcon and peach are a bit overrepresented, etc.) I don't think most people would agree to the idea that the tier list should be completely divorced from the actual metagame composition.

 

[xxpatgxx]

I hope Mewtwo rises, he seems like he can be developed.

 

[x After Dawn x]

Zelda IS better than Roy.

lol you wish.

 

[KAOSTAR]

I hope Mewtwo rises, he seems like he can be developed.

feels that way

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

It's based on current metagame if it was future or max level(not reached) metagame then ice climbers for top of the top.

m2 should be risen by at least one spot but remember m2 is a huge target that can't cover himself(also combo bait), sucks on platforms/edges, his projectiles is pretty poor overall(can't really combo into anything or pressure people very good), Bad approach(basically wd tilts, sh shadowballs, or grab sometimes, slowish, bad at killing people, has a few not so amazing moves like side-B down-B, jab, and in truth people are going to combo him more than m2 will combo them.

Good things wd, tilts, grabs, recovery,DJC, and that's about it.

 

[MarioMariox2]

Isn't it possible to cancel out a grab by grabbing at the same time (a la SF)? Perfect powershielding + perfect grab cancel = boring but invincible game

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

Nope You can buffer down-throw so it's automatic and let's face it down-throws are the best

 

[St. Viers]

@ICG, he doesn't mean once grabbed. He means as you're being grabbed, press the grab button yourself.

 

[gnosis]

That doesn't work at all. Whoever hits first gets the grab. If both grabs hit at the same time, it goes to the person with port priority.

edit: And if you hit grab after I'd guess it just counts as an input for wiggling out. Maybe I'm wrong but I've never heard of a throw tech in this game.

 

[Fletch]

I'd say that the difference is more like the difference between blitz chess and chess (or blitz go vs go would be more accurate).

Because melee needs all the things brawl does, plus the ability to do them quickly, and be able to recognize common strings of moves without deliberating over them each time.

Exactly why I quoted that horribly funny post.

 

[KAOSTAR]

It's based on current metagame if it was future or max level(not reached) metagame then ice climbers for top of the top.

m2 should be risen by at least one spot but remember m2 is a huge target that can't cover himself(also combo bait), sucks on platforms/edges, his projectiles is pretty poor overall(can't really combo into anything or pressure people very good), Bad approach(basically wd tilts, sh shadowballs, or grab sometimes, slowish, bad at killing people, has a few not so amazing moves like side-B down-B, jab, and in truth people are going to combo him more than m2 will combo them.

Good things wd, tilts, grabs, recovery,DJC, and that's about it.

M2 isnt that easy to combo. unless you use soft attacks. He is just easy to hit. With m2 its almost always perfectly safe to DI off stage. you wll make it back.

sb is not a bad projectile, it kills, can be use as a standing hitbox, can be charged in the air and provides momentum. Does 25 damage and undulates as it flies making it harder to dodge while not really taking away from its accuracy. Its unsafe to counter, hard to powershield, and can be difficult to side step because it may move backwards depending on how much psychic energy the user has. It has a decent amount of stun on it and combos into grabs and tilts or disable.

the rest is pretty much true tho

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

I saw his B like samus's B with a little bit better rate of fire. Only really useful when you chage it up. Unlike jolts,lasers, pills, bombs, turpins, pills, fireballs(mario),missles, needles , or boomrangs you can't really camp, combo with, solidly approach with, or controll the stage well. It's good for killing and sometimes the turn around i'm just saying compared to other projetiles it's not that great.

edit: it's slower thn the charge shot's rate of fire.

Sorry for the combo thing I was think of FFers like falcon rpae m2 across the stage compared to m2 I would think fox could get a solid chain of nairs, flaco laser dair, shine dair up-tilt whatever. Marth fairs.

Yeah but some people have an easy time comboing him. Yeah I when to far there.

 

[Tamoo]

His charging has the advantage of
a) doing damage with surprisingly high priority
b) not losing his charge whilst hit out of charging.

Unfortunately it doesn't travel as far and the fluctuation in height can either be a blessing or a curse

Still m2 is pretty trash but i do have fun playing him

 

[X1-12]

Isn't it possible to cancel out a grab by grabbing at the same time (a la SF)? Perfect powershielding + perfect grab cancel = boring but invincible game

I think i know what you mean, like an instant grab release, i think its gotta be like press Z/A a frame after being grabbed, i've done it a few times before but i can't find a solid way of doing it

 

[INSANE CARZY GUY]

Only if it's fully charged which makes you ask why were you still chargeing? M2 is kindof fun at least more than ness. Also m2 is really good agaist bad players. Ahhhh noobs the people where you can SD till you have one life and only take a little bit of damage and **** them so bad. It's even better when they say blank in unfair where they could easily do it. Then they quit and I tell them I could teach them how to beat me and they give up before they try. SO they play with items which you always grab first because your always in controll.

Who else loves noobs? The ones who brag are the best.

 

[Inaphyt]

Are you SURE?


In many fields I have seen truly amazing people, and generally speaking the true top player is head and shoulders above the rest, or at least there's a significant difference. What's to say that we can't get somebody who's the smash community's equivalent to somebody who can set a world record that stood for decades using regular shoes with nails in them?


And while there is luck, most of the "luck" in melee is reading? Why do the same players consistently win? Lucky? To a disagree, but to the outsider good reading skills are indistinguishable from luck, and what else is there to separate the truly top players?



Zelda does better against characters that matter, therefore Zelda is better.

I disagree i can't think of a matchup zelda does better than roy in, and i don't care about matchup charts it's quite plain which characters are good against others i bet in reality zelda doesn't have a positive matchup all characters can get round her i bet pichu is better than zelda haha. Nevertheless i think zelda is a wildcard character that can kill in 4 or 5 moves and has no unwinnable matches (via down b) .

Apart from that i don't understand what your talking about i may need more marijuana to decipher this.

Winning a match in melee is luck, lucky the other opponent ****ed up so you can hurt them alot, the more experienced you become the more luck you can take advantage of because you can get to the opponent quicker a missed L cancel is lucky everyone does it but noone means to.

 

[Tamoo]

It should be defined more as risk/reward than luck. This is a skill based video game, going to a tournament based on a luck based video game would probably be classed as gambling.

With regards to zelda, i've got a 100% record in tournament with her so she's clearly broken :D
But seriously, zelda has much better tools than roy to punish and exploit imo. I can't think of a single character above mid tier that i'd relish the chance to use roy but zelda would be quite nice against the likes of luigi and samus at the very least. Ans she can actually recover onto stage which is always nice in a character

 

[Inaphyt]

I doubt she has the advantage over luigi and samus though.

Roy vs zelda. Roy wins that's all i was saying.

You've taken luck out of context, the skill makes the player however any good pro smasher will tell you that they got well lucky during a match. If a player with skill know his opponents options but falls for it anyway, it's a mindgame aka luck. This occurs often that's how i see it.

 

[Tamoo]

lol well i beg to differ on that matchup, although i reckon a roy or zelda main could shed light on that matchup. I just feel that roy has to get uncomfortably close to zelda to do any damage whatsoever and would more often than not either trade arials with zelda which is bad or be baited into doing a laggy ground move which is also bad for roy. Roy will have trouble getting any kind of kill move due to the fact that the zelda could always just stay a fair/bair lengths away.

 

[ihavespaceblondes]

Considering that if Samus touches Zelda's shield with basically anything, you get kicked in the face, and that Samus can crouch cancel basically everything Roy has.... I'd say Zelda is the better choice by far vs Samus.

 

[adumbrodeus]

I'll answer these in reverse order, because I have something relevant to establish.

Winning a match in melee is luck, lucky the other opponent ****ed up so you can hurt them alot, the more experienced you become the more luck you can take advantage of because you can get to the opponent quicker a missed L cancel is lucky everyone does it but noone means to.

I'm sorry, but this proves you know absolutely nothing of the melee metagame.

If it was based on being lucky that your opponent technically screwed up, and not screwing up yourself, then Silent Wolf would be the top player in the game, period.


The reality is that what sets apart the winner and the loser in a competitive game (really pretty much any good competitive game) is the ability to read the opponent's intent based on his patterns, and counter them. I don't wavedash back and hit my opponent with a tipper f-smash when he's trying to fair me because he made a technically error. I do it because I figured he was gonna do it beforehand and used a set of moves that directly countered his intent.

I don't successfully techchase because my opponent made a technical mistake, I do it because I read my opponent's patterns and realized he was gonna tech in the direction he did (or standing tech).


Of course in all these examples, your opponent can counter, if he thinks you're gonna wavedash to f-smash he can double jump to avoid the f-smash and punish, and in turn you can predict that and just jump to fair him instead, which in turn is beaten by him fairing because his came out first.


You rarely see people lose because of because they miss an l-cancel in top-level melee, and the assumption that they lose because their moves are a mistake from an objective stand-point is totally ridiculous. They lose because their opponent figured them out. That is a skill, a skill noted in top-level players and real-world strategists (aka generals, business leaders, etc.) for generations.


While certainly a degree of luck does come into play (there's always a chance your opponent will do other then you predicted because it's always a game of playing the odds in your opponent's mind), the reality is that getting consistently "lucky" means they're good at reading their opponents, and that, that is skill.


Technical skill is just a matter of controlling your character well, in the end it is meaningless compared to the real skills of the game, spying into your opponent's mind, realizing his intent and countering it. Tech skill just allows you to have more counters for more possible options, increasing the depth of the game.

I disagree i can't think of a matchup zelda does better than roy in, and i don't care about matchup charts it's quite plain which characters are good against others i bet in reality zelda doesn't have a positive matchup all characters can get round her i bet pichu is better than zelda haha. Nevertheless i think zelda is a wildcard character that can kill in 4 or 5 moves and has no unwinnable matches (via down b) .

You don't care about match-up charts because you don't understand the metagame, as shown very clearly above.

Easy example, why does Zelda do better against Sheik then Roy?


Simple, Sheik can shieldgrab (or WD out of shield to grab) Roy out of LITERALLY EVERYTHING, and then he gets chaingrabbed and followed up on. Sure Zelda loses to her, but for a character forced to approach, Roy is basically hopeless the movement he touches shield. At least Zelda can actually do stuff to zelda without pretty much guaranteeing a near-death combo.


TL;DR: Lurk more, also read into some general theory behind competitive gaming, Playing to Win (a book by Sirlin, a professional Street Fighter player, gaming theorist, and Game Designer) is an especially useful read, especially the "Art of War" section.

I've liked the idea that the tier list should be derived from the matchup chart for a while now.

What sort of algorithm would you suggest, though? The main one I can think of is calculating the % of metagame and expected win % for each character at each step, but I'm not entirely convinced that there's a sound theoretical justification for it. Also, this system is bad at resolving rock-papers-scissors sorts of scenarios. (if A, B, and C where the 3 best characters, and A > B > C)

The other issue with this approach is that character representation in reality doesn't really match up to how strong the characters are. (sheik and marth are a bit underrepresented, falcon and peach are a bit overrepresented, etc.) I don't think most people would agree to the idea that the tier list should be completely divorced from the actual metagame composition.

I think that's more of an open question because there's a great deal to establish, my suggestion there was one of many involving staging a theoretical tournament with a certain number of each characters' mains, tracking their possible opponents at each level and using MU ratios to establish how often which character will win.


By making the scale arbitrarily large it should cover the whole of the metagame.


This would tape a great deal of time to develop fully, but it would create a workable tier list.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

i Disagree I Can't Think Of A Matchup Zelda Does Better Than Roy In, And I Don't Care About Matchup Charts It's Quite Plain Which Characters Are Good Against Others I Bet In Reality Zelda Doesn't Have A Positive Matchup All Characters Can Get Round Her I Bet Pichu Is Better Than Zelda Haha. Nevertheless I Think Zelda Is A Wildcard Character That Can Kill In 4 Or 5 Moves And Has No Unwinnable Matches (via Down B) .

Summon Cosmo!!!!!!!!!