I think Little Mac is unquestionably the best Fsmash in the game. Furthermore, Sonic and MK just aren't that much better than A tier. The A tiers that belong in A tier, that is. Range is excellent, the damage is wonderful, his hurtbox leans back before the super armor kicks in, blowing through all aerials, there's a windbox that ensures you don't punch through your target most of the time. Good startup, better endlag. The damage of the move alone ensures no block punishes unless they have an extremely long ranged 9 frame attack. And the up and down variations aren't awful. Use down to get more reward at early percents and keep them close. It can also do
this, but I'd eat my hat if somebody pulled it off in a real match. Use up to kill earlier than the late hit of Usmash. It does have some have some issues though. Punching past targets when you're as close as possible is frustrating and happens with all three variations. All three variations also stale each other, so using this in neutral early can cause it to fail to take a stock later.
Sheik should move down to D. It's damage and knockback are near to bottom among fsmashes, it's also a multihit smash attack that the victim will optimally DI. Endlag is great, but it's an attack that moves you forward, ensuring a shieldgrab will not fail. Or some other nasty option like Luigi's Super Jump Punch. There's enough time between kicks that you can put down shield and perfect shield the second guaranteed. ZSS has that property as well, but at least her move has respectable knockback.
Edit: Oops. ZSS is actually worse than sheik for knockback. So all she really has over sheik is she doesn't step quite as far with the attack, making the defender have to make an effort on their punish since shieldgrab won't work. Except for between kicks if they react fast enough.
While Marth's has the advantage of being safe on shield at tipper range due to hitlag modifiers, Lucina's doesn't even have that benefit,
Next, I am going to talk about
/
. Why on earth are they still in C tier? They have the tied fastest Fsmash in the game (Along with
,
and
, they are all frame 10), but Pit's has the noticeable advantage of being a multihit move, which helps in a lot of situations (bye bye Ryu), as well as technically having the least cooldown, due to the fact that hit 2 hits later. It's also not short on KO power either, and still has the boons of being disjointed and having pretty solid reach.
/ should be B tier at the least, though A tier is a possibility.
Finally, I vote that
's Fsmash goes up to A tier. IIRC, this has the lowest cooldown of ALL Fsmashes in the game (perhaps bar
).
Hitlag modifiers do not make attacks safer on shield. That was never the case in Smash 4, and it was the exact opposite case before patch 1.11 and in Brawl. Now, Attacker and Defender always suffer the same amount of shieldlag before shieldstun begins. Unless it's a projectile, in which case hitlag modifiers over 1.0 do make them safer - since the attacker won't suffer shieldlag or shieldstun. And not every Marth/Lucina Fsmash has to be a hail marry. There's the famous jab to Fsmash mixup that can't be fatally punished even when the victim makes the right escape choice. Plus falling Nair 1 to Fsmash is a true combo at kill percents, but that's more optimally a lucina thing since you won't have to space either move.
For Pit, I'm willing to agree on B tier just by being a long range, quick kill option. But it's just under average in kill power. And that's before you factor in that it's a multihit, which gives the victim about 17 more frames to decide on DI than if it were a single hit attack. If it were just the second swing, they'd have 8 frames to DI instead of 25. And 8 is well under what's possible for a human acting intentionally. The time between swings is 11 frames - the exact amount of time it takes for Ryu to swing focus attack, so they could clank, or trade, both results came up when testing. Furthermore, the second swing helps alleviate the endlag, but it's ultimately only 4 endlag less than Lucina, and 1 frame safer on block. Almost precisely as risky as Marth Lucina who have far more reward for the risk.
And Luigi does not have second lowest endlag for Fsmashes. Besides MK, Bowser jr, Diddy Kong, Little Mac (tie), Mr G&W, Olimar, Sheik, Sonic (tie), Villager, and Zelda beat him. It's also not quite average in kill power thanks to a very high launch angle that you must mitigate by angling downward. That angle drops the already short range to less than his jab.
Secondly and this is interesting it can hit people who are spot dodging (with good timing), most times that charizard tries to do a smash he can be faked out with a spot dodged and punished. If an opponent spot-dodges an uncharged forward smash? The invincibility frame ends right as the smash hits which makes it perfect for spot-dodge spammers.
A move being so slow that it hits a panicked spot dodge after its I-frames wear out isn't really a boon. It's the other guy making a fatal mistake. When somebody says something beats spot dodges, they typically mean it has more active frames than the invulnerability frames that a dodge could provide. For Fsmashes, Bowser jr is closest to fitting the bill with 15 multihit frames before the finisher which is another 3. Charizard just has three, which is average for single hit smashes
: Frame 2-13
