Marth has counter. His f-air covers him as he recovers. His up b is invincible and super fast. He can recover.
Why wouldn't you just ban planking? Every tournament I go to has it banned. I didn't even know tournaments still existed that didn't ban it.
Why do people want Meta Knight banned? Most players consider him the best character in the game. Many players think he has no bad matches or bad stages, so they think he breaks the counterpicking system. He has been dominating the tournament scene in many places. Some players find him annoying to fight against, boring to use, or both. I think those reasons are pretty weak.
In my opinion, Meta Knight should not be banned. I believe the pro-ban side is wrong in almost every area with regards to the issue. I will now address some major points of the pro-ban side and provide my counterarguments.
“Meta Knight is the best character in the game.”
First of all, this is not a valid reason to ban a character. Every game needs to have a “best character” because no characters are created equal. If Meta Knight were to be banned, some other character would easily replace him as “best,” and that would most likely be Falco or King Dedede, in my opinion. Second of all, Meta Knight being the best character in the game is still arguable. Reputable players like teh_spamerer and myself believe that Snake is potentially the best character in the game, and there are other players that are starting to feel this way as well. Every character that fights against Snake, be it Meta Knight, Dedede, Falco, or whomever, has to do more work than Snake does in order to win. Snake merely has to camp with grenades and his C4 and punish with his gigantic and fast f-tilt in order to get any character to within kill range, and then his stupidly fast and large u-tilt will kill them easily. Snake has insane priority, range, move speed, KO power, and camping abilities. His survivability is also absurd. If you’re intelligent and don’t get put into situations where you’ll get gimped, which isn’t that hard, you will live to over 150% quite consistently. That’s much better than the average ~100% for most characters in the game, and Meta Knight dies often before the triple digits. I recently played Mew2King a lot in this match-up. He ***** me a lot at first, but after I started to stay in the middle of the stage and camp more, I did much better and even won several games, one by a lot. Staying in the middle of stage and staying safe on platforms and in general was enough to prevent the absolute best Meta Knight from gimping me. Snake is good even on stages people say are bad for him. Rainbow Cruise has a really low ceiling for most of it and a lot of platforms for Snake to drop grenades and C4s on for camping. His priority in the air also makes jumping around a lot not that big of a deal for him. Frigate Orpheon has platforms for him to camp on and a slightly lower ceiling than neutral stages, so that’s also good for him. Final Destination, despite having no platforms to dodge chaingrabbing on and abuse the hitboxes of C4s and grenades, is very large, thus allowing him to live a long time. Where is Snake actually not an amazing character? It’s very possible that Snake is the best character in the game, and players making the claim that Meta Knight is definitely the best are making it too soon. In the earlier days of competitive Melee, Sheik was considered the best character and people though she was broken, but by the end of Melee’s prime, Falco, Fox, and especially Marth all had better tournament records and were put higher on many tier lists. The SBR’s official tier list put Fox and Falco above Sheik. The pro-ban side needs to have some patience.
“Meta Knight has no bad match-ups.”
While it’s true that Meta Knight has no matches that are terrible, he certainly has at least one bad match. teh_spamerer, myself, and other reputable players agree that Snake has the advantage against Meta Knight. Snake has to do very little work in order to win. Simply camping intelligently will grant Snake the win against all but the very best players. Snake can drop a grenade on the ground and then hold one in his hand, limiting Meta Knight’s approach options to grabbing and nothing else since any other option will results in Meta Knight blowing up. Even after getting the grab, only u-throw is safe because other ones will blow him up. Why does this matter that much if Snake is also blown up? Snake lives to 150%+ while Meta Knight can easily die before 100% against Snake. Any trade of damage is in Snake’s favour, even if Snake takes slightly more, due to this huge difference. Snake can throw grenades at Meta Knight and drop them and run away, forcing Meta Knight to approach even if he’s winning. Snake can punish almost anything Meta Knight does with a grab or an f-tilt. F-tilt does 21% undiminished. That is nearly ¼ of Meta Knight’s stock in a single attack. The move is gigantic and only 4 frames, which is actually faster than Meta Knight’s d-smash, which many people cry about due to its speed. Snake’s grab goes higher than most grabs, meaning grabbing Meta Knight out of the air isn’t hard to do. He can d-throw Meta Knight, doing 12%, and then hold his shield and react to what Meta Knight does. If he gets an f-tilt, that’s 33% and an advantageous situation because Meta Knight will be knocked away and be forced to approach again. He can chase Meta Knight with a d-air, doing 29% and killing him at 75% from the center of a stage with good DI. If Snake connects his n-air or d-air at all, that’s 29%, almost 1/3 of Meta Knight’s stock, in a single attack. Meta Knight has to get a gimp in order to kill Snake before very high percentages. Snake doesn’t have to do this because he outright kills Meta Knight before 100% with many attacks. Snake can hit Meta Knight with an f-smash and kill him at 0% if Meta Knight DIs badly. Snake can ignore DIing at all and survive Meta Knight’s f-smash from the middle of a stage at well over 100%. That is how unfair the percentages that they die at are. Snake most certainly has the advantage here.
No other characters have the advantage against Meta Knight, and this is agreed upon by anyone intelligent I’ve ever spoken to about it, so I won’t try to say he loses to any other characters. Diddy Kong has been discussed, but I think Snake does slightly better while Diddy Kong vs Meta Knight is even. However, other characters go nearly even with him. Falco, Diddy Kong, Game and Watch, Wario, and Olimar most likely do not lose more than 45/55 to Meta Knight, meaning the match-ups are basically even. I actually think Wario vs Meta Knight is nearly 50/50. Dedede, Marth, R.O.B., Donkey Kong, and other good characters have taken down Meta Knights in tournaments many times and do not lose the match-up any worse than 40/60 in my pretty well educated opinion.
“Meta Knight has no bad stages.”
If you seriously think about this, how can it be true? Meta Knight is not perfection incarnate. Stages can tilt match-ups out of his favour quite easily. Stages with low ceilings or stages that are just really large tend to work well. Final Destination is a huge stage with no platforms. Meta Knight gets most of kills off the side and he is exceptionally good at platform control. If you’re on Final Destination against Meta Knight, simply staying in the middle of the stage helps you win. Battleship Halberd has a low ceiling, and most of Meta Knight’s deaths are ceiling KOs. He’ll die ~10% earlier on this stage. The sides are larger than the sides of most neutrals. Yoshi’s Island (Brawl) has those ghost platforms that can save other characters from being gimped by Meta Knight. For any other stage counterpick options, think about your character. Generally picking somewhere that’s great for your character and just neutral for Meta Knight will tilt the match-up slightly in your favour, giving you a better chance to win. Ban stages where Meta Knight is extremely good, such as Rainbow Cruise and Frigate Orpheon, and you’ll do better. Intelligent stage counterpicking can win a set for you.
Those three points seem to be the main arguments of the pro-ban side. Any other arguments are minor things, bias, etc. The biggest point they have is that Meta Knight somehow breaks the counterpicking system and makes it so picking anyone else is automatically a horrible idea. This is because of the idea that Meta Knight has no bad matches or stages. Meta Knight is not the worst match-up for most of the top tier characters and he is not amazing on every stage.
-Snake’s worst match-up is widely considered to be Dedede, and Snake wins against Meta Knight in my opinion, so Meta Knight certainly doesn’t break the counterpicking system here.
-Falco’s worst match-up is most likely Game and Watch. Falco can’t shoot lasers because of the bucket, he can’t compete with Game and Watch’s priority, and he dies stupidly early. Falco can CG combo Meta Knight to ~60% and laser camp like crazy. Just ban planking.
-Dedede’s worst match-up is widely considered to be Falco. Atomsk and Mew2King both cry about this match-up endlessly and call it unwinnable, but Atomsk loves fighting Meta Knight with Dedede and he beats almost all of them. Atomsk also cries about Olimar just as much. Meta Knight? Not at all. Atomsk wrecked Dojo recently and has taken out top Meta Knights like myself, teh_spamerer, Shadow, and Omni.
-Game and Watch kills Meta Knight at very low damage and easily competes with his priority. Game and Watch also can’t be edgeguarded because of his insane u-b. His u-b and u-air can put Meta Knight in very dangerous situations. Vex Kasrani and Mew2King both agree this isn’t a bad match-up at all. Game and Watch probably does worse against several other characters. Hylian beat me recently. omegablackmage beat dmbrandon.
-Diddy Kong’s worst match-up is most certainly not Meta Knight. NinjaLink never complains about this match-up and he’s beaten Mew2King twice in tournament sets in it. Diddy Kong players seem to hate characters like Luigi, Falco, and Olimar far more. ADHD has been destroying Meta Knights and almost beat M2K.
-Olimar players complain about random characters like Wolf, Luigi, and Peach more than they do about Meta Knight. Marth also does very well against Olimar. Olimar can camp against Meta Knight really well and just stay safe to not get gimped. BlackWaltz has beaten teh_spamerer and Plank recently in tournament sets.
-Wario probably goes even with Meta Knight, and most people say Luigi and Dedede are worse for him than just about any character. I’d say Zelda does better against Wario, as well, due to her f-smash and grab release into easily sweetspotted f-air and u-smash.
Wow, look at that. Meta Knight probably isn’t the worst match-up for any character near him in ability! What a surprise! Well, no, not really. It’s not a surprise at all to anyone that looks at the debate without tons of bias. These are all situations where Meta Knight is not the best option, so he’s clearly not breaking the counterpicking system.
Get *****.
) doesn't help fully explain what is going on in the long run. So, I think that everyone should back away, and then a thread be made for each of the different points of views:The Ban Side, the Anti-Ban Side, the Temporary Ban Side, and any other viewpoints. Let the people who are thinking alike convien together, and put all of the ideas and main view points, as well as all of the information that backs this up, come together and get the back bone of that side's arguement together. Let those for each side help out eachother to find the ideas that everyone on that side has in their head.