Official SWF Tier List v8

[Krynxe]

It is, in my opinion, a mixture of considering all of their matchups (while minimizing deviations) while also considering all of their positive and negative attributes. The thing is, their "positive attributes" are all relative to the other characters as well. Olimar's grab range wouldn't be as great of an attribute if everyone else had it OR had an easy way to deal with it - same goes for any positive/negative attribute for any character.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

so in what way is this superior to just looking at tournament viability

 

[Krynxe]

How viable a character is in a tournament is entirely different, because then you're looking at a series of variables including unbanned stages and the number who play select characters. One of the things that determines a characters viability in a tournament IS how good they are, which is what a tier list defines.

pretty much this

 

[ぱみゅ]

Pretty sure that if FD were definitely banned and people started banning more of IC's second-best stages for certain MUs, they wouldn't be as potent as they are right now.

The current TIer List, AFAIK, pretty much only considers APEX Ruleset.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

So we can either start with complicated, subjective methodology for determining how good a character is (in the sense that different people will have different ideas about what stages are neutral, how good or bad different traits are, etc...), and use that to help determine their viability

or we can go with the relatively simple, objective (in the sense that we can just look at recent results and more-or-less extrapolate a tier list from them) and then each player can discuss and form their own opinions on why characters are performing better or worse than they "actually are"

and the first method of tier list creation sounds better to you? I'm not seeing it

 

[Tesh]

This isn't even worth a discussion really. A tier list is determined by the ruleset you consider when making it.

If the ruleset was stamina brawl on box shaped stages, the tier list would be different. Obviously things like fast, long range moves are good in more situations than slow low range moves, but if the ruleset was "norfair with soccerballs on high and using A attacks is banned" we would see a much different tier list.

A tier list IS tournament viability.

 

[Ghostbone]

But then again, so has GW and I'm not sure why you mention him in that group, especially since he loses to all other top tier characters as well.

G&W does decently vs MK, Falco, Snake, ZSS, Wario, Pikachu.
D3 only does decently vs Snake, Marth, ZSS and Wario (though he does solidly win that one).

This is all my opinions so it's whatever.

Fox is the real beast.

Amusingly fox still can't handle planking

 

[ぱみゅ]

DDD does as decently against ZSS than against Diddy and Falco.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

where is that youtube vid of DDD getting wrecked by Diddy on Smashville, someone find it

 

[Krynxe]

Grim: Well, I'm trying to say what a tier list should ideally be. Tournament results are statistics to show how good a player is, not how good a character is. It's just not accurate for tiers. But when it comes to discussing why a character performed the way they did, that's exactly what I'm suggesting but with a different approach. Use objective information to determine how good a character is, and THEN speculate their viability in a tournament by inputting variables such as players, rules, stages, etc. BUT, people still use tournament results and such for the exact reason you mentioned - it's easy, simple, and agreeable.

tesh:

Tier lists are theoretical assessments, and we use neutral stages as our best tool to avoid deviation. Rulesets aren't really necessary for assessments because the goal of smash is always the same: hit/kill your opponent without being hit/killed.

to add to that, a box stage doesn't accomplish the goal of avoiding deviation, because it removes the characters ability to gimp, which is a trait of that character that should be considered in a neutral situation. You're actually supporting my claim several posts ago, that changing a ruleset will change a characters viability, which is what we want to avoid when judging tiers. Thus, making a ruleset as close to neutral as possible will help us see what the true tier placements should be.

For any math-minded people out there, think of limits in calculus. Our goal of a neutral scenario can be defined as a set point, and we're trying to find the limit as we get indefinitely close to that point by removing as many discrepancies as possible. Just like a hole in a graph, a true objective assessment of a character does not actually exist. It's theoretical, and the best we can do to "solve" this is to get as close as possible

 

[Ghostbone]

DDD gets bodied by Falco
DDD gets slightly less bodied by Diddy
Everyone seems to think ZSS ***** D3 but she can't quite handle the penguin.

 

[Tesh]

Grim: Well, I'm trying to say what a tier list should ideally be. Tournament results are statistics to show how good a player is, not how good a character is. It's just not accurate for tiers. But when it comes to discussing why a character performed the way they did, that's exactly what I'm suggesting but with a different approach. Use objective information to determine how good a character is, and THEN speculate their viability in a tournament by inputting variables such as players, rules, stages, etc. BUT, people still use tournament results and such for the exact reason you mentioned - it's easy, simple, and agreeable.

tesh:

to add to that, a box stage doesn't accomplish the goal of avoiding deviation, because it removes the characters ability to gimp, which is a trait of that character that should be considered in a neutral situation

Why is gimping (abuse of recoveries) something that should be considered in the tier list? Why not the ability to abuse walkoffs, ice physics, low gravity, items and hazards? Because a ruleset values it. If the ruleset was stamina in a box, it would value doing damage, and devalue low angle and high knockback moves.

You can't make a tier list that considers everything because anyone can play this game in any way they choose. You have to have some kind of set parameters for what "good" is before you can call a character "good". And thats what a ruleset does. It gives you win conditions and tells you whats legal and not legal. Characters that are efficient at reaching those goals without breaking the rules are "good".

 

[ぱみゅ]

DDD gets bodied by both Diddy and Falco until the time to kill comes, none is very reliable at that.
Falco is much better at it, but still, if DDD gets the first kill the matchups suddenly become much different.

 

[Krynxe]

check out my post edit if you haven't already

Why is gimping (abuse of recoveries) something that should be considered in the tier list? Why not the ability to abuse walkoffs, ice physics, low gravity, items and hazards? Because a ruleset values it. If the ruleset was stamina in a box, it would value doing damage, and devalue low angle and high knockback moves.

You can't make a tier list that considers everything because anyone can play this game in any way they choose. You have to have some kind of set parameters for what "good" is before you can call a character "good". And thats what a ruleset does. It gives you win conditions and tells you whats legal and not legal. Characters that are efficient at reaching those goals without breaking the rules are "good".

Like I said already:

Lets pretend that the current ruleset for tournaments had nothing but smashballs on high. Would you say sonic is instantly a better character simply due to this outside factor? No, he's the exact same character who can take better advantage of the ruleset than other characters, thus making him more viable of a character for the ruleset. Similarly, if several stages with walls were legal in the ruleset, dedede is not instantly a better character because of that, he's only more viable under those rules. He can take advantage stages more often and thus theoretically win more often, but when your opponent counter-picks you elsewhere (to a neutral, for instance) it's still the exact same matchup as it was before.

Tier lists are supposed to be as close to objective as possible, and the more variables we try to stuff into it, the more inaccurate it will become.

To more specifically refer to your post: gimping should be considered because you're considering how good a character's recovery is and weighing it versus another characters ability to prevent recovery - it's a direct character vs character comparison which, like I stated earlier, is the key to defining tiers.

The other elements you suggest all introduce an outside source as a key factor, particularly the stage. For the 4th or 5th time: we're trying to get as close to neautral as possible to assess an objective tier placing. (see my calculus example above.)

Don't get me wrong, you cannot ignore EVERYTHING when assessing tiers. Like I've mentioned, you need some sort of guideline to make your judgements, because otherwise no judgement would exist, but that guideline should be more-so defined by the game and not some arbitrary ruleset

 

[Tesh]

You don't fight yourself in this game. "Outside" factors are all you deal with. How you interact with stages, physics, characters, items etc. What you consider neutral is subjective. Far more subjective than asking yourself "which characters are most effective within this ruleset?".

What makes up a character doesn't change between ruleset. But the ruleset does change what the most important attributes are for a character. Playing race to the finish? Sonic is top tier. Playing target test? Olimar shoots back up to the top. The tier list in the OP is specifically about standard competitive play. It only rates characters based on how well they perform within a standard competitive ruleset for singles.

If we were to race across land, cars, trains and such would be high on the tier list for that. But if we needed to race across a river or lake, suddenly boats become top tier for such an event. Within the bounds of that competition, cars ARE bad and boats ARE good. If we needed to race from the same spot to the moon, they both become bottom tier. You are clinging to semantics here. This tier list directly correlates to this community's standard tournament rulesets and thats all that needs to be considered when making the list.

You are supposing about what you think a tier list should be, but I'm telling you what a tier list is.

 

[1PokeMastr]

Kringe mod boy.

Stop posting, I know you're trying, but you shouldn't be forcing yourself in here (what I feel you're doing with constantly quoting your own posts). Your posts actually make me Kringe because they give me a headache when I try to even read them.


You have no need to make unnecessarily long posts when you're trying to get one point across.

As for BTT in Brawl..

Level 1: Olimar = Top.
Level 2: Falco = Top.
Level 3: Falco again.
Level 4: Pikachu or Zss = Top.
Level 5: Same strat for everyone, everyone = Top.

 

[Tesh]

Are you saying level 5 target test is the most balanced brawl ruleset?

 

[Luco]

[emphasis mine]

When the HELL did ethnic slurs become acceptable on SmashBoards!?!?!

HE'S trolling you too. >:-I

 

[~ Gheb ~]

G&W does decently vs MK, Falco, Snake, ZSS, Wario, Pikachu.
D3 only does decently vs Snake, Marth, ZSS and Wario (though he does solidly win that one).

What's you definition of decently?

 

[Luco]

So we can either start with complicated, subjective methodology for determining how good a character is (in the sense that different people will have different ideas about what stages are neutral, how good or bad different traits are, etc...), and use that to help determine their viability

or we can go with the relatively simple, objective (in the sense that we can just look at recent results and more-or-less extrapolate a tier list from them) and then each player can discuss and form their own opinions on why characters are performing better or worse than they "actually are"

and the first method of tier list creation sounds better to you? I'm not seeing it

To be fair, this doesn't exactly allow for upsets because the upsets are suddenly taken into account as if they weren't outliers. Well you haven't stated it but the idea implies that outliers suddenly become a whole lot more important than they otherwise might be.

Then again, sometimes upsets represent a fundamental change in that character's metagame... it's interesting.

Anywho, for BTT I think there are a few chars who do really well and others who fail terribly. Anyone with short ranged side-ward aerials end up taking a nosedive on this stage due to the (usually) very last target that remains to the very right of the stage.

A few other characters lose time where they shouldn't trying to get the two targets on the very left due to extremely low falling speeds or an inability to hit the first one out to the left consistently. And finally, some characters find the one directly below the starting platform a nightmare to get to because almost all characters actually need to get up there to get it unless they took the time to go for another item because iirc the one below it is the bazooka (which doesn't allow you to jump high enough on most chars for it to work out).

 

[Z'zgashi]

Pit is the best at target test 5 by a few seconds.

 

[pidgezero_one]

I thought this was the apex thread... carry on

 

[Shiny Mewtwo aka Jigglysir]

I thought this was the apex thread... carry on

You also seem to think it's the MU chart thread

 

[Ghostbone]

What's you definition of decently?

-1 or better

Though upon reflection G&W vs MK would fall under -2 though it's one of the better -2 matchups? idk.

 

[pidgezero_one]

listen up GHOST BONER as a jigglypuff player i've had it up to here with all you game and watch Nerds. i demand a puff vs g&w crew battle at apex 2014 that im not gonna participate in

 

[Ghostbone]

I won't be participating either since I'm not going.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I'll participate despite not going.

 

[Ghostbone]

I'll participate despite not going.

I wonder if it's possible to make a super long distance wavebird controller.

It'd probably be faster than Brawl's wifi at least.

 

[Karnu]

I now main mid-tier trash and am irrelevant.

But we main this mid tier trash character together <3

 

[~ Gheb ~]

-1 or better

Though upon reflection G&W vs MK would fall under -2 though it's one of the better -2 matchups? idk.

Then DDD does decently against Diddy and GW doesn't do decently vs MK ... maybe not even against Snake =/

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I haven't seen anything that would make me think GW/Snake is worse than -1
GW/MK is another story

 

[Gardex]

Snake is -1 at worst.
Marth and ICs are the clear -2s, Wario and Pika are the clear even MUs(or better for someone). The rest are just really split when people discuss their matchups.
If I had to add another guy to -2, it would be Mk, while others would pick something like diddy or olimar(I don't find those tough at all. Opinions and stuff)

 

[Nemy]

Does anyone have a link or anything for a Japanese tier list?


Just curious.

 

[mimgrim]

Does anyone have a link or anything for a Japanese tier list?


Just curious.

http://www.ssbwiki.com/Japanese_tier_list

Not sure how accurate it is since it is SSBWiki, but was the only thing I could find. :L

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

That's really old

 

[mimgrim]

That was the most recent tier list I could find for Japan. :/

 

[infiniteV115]

Doesn't mean it's not old and outdated, maybe they stopped bothering with attempting to construct a tier list

 

[Luco]

Hm...

Yeah that seems to be the most recent one. It correlates to the one on the boards iirc, anyway (yeah there's a copy of it somewhere on SWF)

 

[infiniteV115]

Pikachu worse than DK
Ness worse than Bowser
PT worse than Ganondorf
..........

 

[Grim Tuesday]

They clearly know their ****.