Smashboards Community Voted Tier List: Version 4 COMPLETE! Break for a few months...

[Y2Kay]

How is it a bad MU spead?

Mario advantage? Bayo and Mewtwo even?

Pulling for straws if you ask me.

2-3 65:35's against common top tiers is ugly imo.

 

[TDK]

I don't understand your point.
In my example both (For lack of a better term) popular & non-popular characters were getting around the same results.
But from how you stated your post & quoted mine, it sounded like if a character doesn't have wide player base then their results don't mean as much as the more preferred.

I'm arguing about the numbers in results not rate.

The rate of results over a long period of time is important too. If a character is able to get a steady stream of results, then it stands to reason they're going to be a good character because they have shown that they're able to get a large amount of results over a large period of time.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

The rate of results over a long period of time is important too. If a character is able to get a steady stream of results, then it stands to reason they're going to be a good character because they have shown that they're able to get a large amount of results over a large period of time.

But what does that have to do with my argument?

 

[Deleted member]

Mario advantage? Bayo and Mewtwo even?

Pulling for straws if you ask me.

2-3 65:35's against common top tiers is ugly imo.

Considering TLTC had very close games against Abadango at CEO I don't doubt it.

DunnoBro also believes Palutena has the edge in the Mario matchup.

Plus, it's not like upper mids don't have a good amount of 65:35s themselves. Look at .

 

[TDK]

But what does that have to do with my argument?

From what I understand about your argument, is you're arguing that people look at the amount of players and that characters only have "some" results - however, "some" is equal to just about any number since it's so non-specific that I just don't understand what you're fully trying to say. Every character (Except like Dark Pit Doc and the Miis) have "some" results - but "some" is very different between characters.

 

[Wintermelon43]

How is it a bad MU spead?

Duck Hunt is in 65:35.

Plus much more but that's pretty much all you need.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

From what I understand about your argument, is you're arguing that people look at the amount of players and that characters only have "some" results - however, "some" is equal to just about any number since it's so non-specific that I just don't understand what you're fully trying to say. Every character (Except like Dark Pit Doc and the Miis) have "some" results - but "some" is very different between characters.

This is going nowhere, so I'll admit defeat for today & conclude that I don't know enough about results to argue how they should impact any characters.

 

[Bigbomb2]

(/) - They're pretty good, but to me just a lil bit underwhelming. Personally find them very honest characters.
+ Hate him, but he's uber good.
+ Awful disadvantage state and an excellent advantage state. He's so volatile that a mediocre matchup can become his favor in two grabs
- Once you figure his playstyle out he's not as scary. I mean still pretty scary but not like he used to be. Still a doubles fiend though
- Sorry D3

 

[Bowserboy3]

The rate of results over a long period of time is important too. If a character is able to get a steady stream of results, then it stands to reason they're going to be a good character because they have shown that they're able to get a large amount of results over a large period of time.

I agree with this point. Any character can get some good results really; it's about how often they can get these good results.

---

And I also want to remind people of the significance of "lower level" results too. Not every tournament is top level play, in fact it's quite the contrary. Simply dismissing character results away because they were at a "lower level" is a cop out if you ask me. Results are results. Just because a top player wasn't attending for example, it doesn't mean that results aren't notable.

Then of course you have different regions of the world differing in general skill. For example, here in the UK, "upsets" are quite common because the general skill level is very high (but this is a whole different topic; in fact, it's been recently discussed in the CCI Thread - go there for more).

Admittedly, while the top level results and going ons usually decide the debatable areas ("Marth's not good!" he gets very good results at top level though, so that makes no sense - this is a prime example), you cannot simply dismiss lower level results. Results are results, and good characters get them.

This leads me to my next point, of you cannot simply use the excuse of "this character has a big playerbase so their results are inflated because of it". OK then, Falcon is the most used character in the game, so why doesn't Link, the 2nd most used character in the game, have nearly as many results as Falcon? What about Ganondorf, who's within the top 10 most used characters? - oh that's right, he has poor results, and even the uncommon characters like Villager get better results (Hmm, I wonder why?). Just because the character boasts a big playerbase, it doesn't mean they can get results.

Essentially, when ranking a character, you have to look at all areas of the game; lower level, top level, results, popularity, character specifics (neutral game etc), MU's etc.

One final point, is you can argue that "well X character does get results at top level play, but not very often". This is fine, but in reality, players playing to win will use the characters that give them their best shot at winning (The Sheiks, Diddys, Clouds, Marios that litter the top levels of play prove this), so when for example, Captain Falcon doesn't appear super common at top level play, it's because the players playing to win are going to be picking the absolute best of the best; this is why we rarely see those pretty good characters at top level, such as Captain Falcon, Villager, heck, even Meta Knight, because, while they are all still very good, and have proven on many an occasion to be able to compete at top level, there's a reason why they don't, because players playing to win will be playing the far better characters. In a sense, you have to respect these people who use the lesser used characters, at least I do.

Remember, tier lists are to represent the metagame as a whole, not just one part of it.

For this reason, I still stand by my point of IS high tier. I do want to clarify though, I can't place him within the top realms of high tier, not when characters like ,, etc are still doing better than him in general. I would place Falcon near the bottom end of high tier; effectively, like he is in the 4BR tier list. I feel he could be perhaps a spot lower on that list, for example, but he'd still be within the high tier. When you look at everything as a whole, you cannot say Falcon is merely a mid tier (at least from my point of view).

 

[Frihetsanka]

Duck Hunt is in 65:35.

Either you're saying that the MU chart is incorrect and the Duck Hunt MU is worse than that (possible, I don't really know), or you're reading it wrong. Palutena is winning 65:35 versus Duck Hunt (and 55:45 versus Mario, which is very good). Her bad matchups are really bad though so Palutena players might want to consider picking up a secondary to deal with some of those matchups. Still, even high tier characters and some top tier characters have 40-60 matchups.

And I also want to remind people of the significance of "lower level" results too. Not every tournament is top level play, in fact it's quite the contrary. Simply dismissing character results away because they were at a "lower level" is a cop out if you ask me. Results are results. Just because a top player wasn't attending for example, it doesn't mean that results aren't notable.

I generally agree, although it's probably a good idea to disregard some results. If a tournament only has, say, 30 entrants, then top 16 isn't very impressive. Das Koopa's list only counts tournaments that are reasonably large.

- Once you figure his playstyle out he's not as scary. I mean still pretty scary but not like he used to be. Still a doubles fiend though

Ness is #17 on Das Koopa's top 16 result list. Here are some October results for Ness: 5th at Toryumon 1 with Taranito, 13th at DAT Blastzone 15 with SmashBound, two results at eSports Arena at EB Games Expo (5th with Luco, 13th with Enn, neither solo mains), and 5th and 7th (BestNess and SS, SS also using Villager) at Final Destination 11. Most people in the Ness Discord seem to consider him a top 20 character. Sounds like tier 3 to me. When FOW was still playing many even considered him top 15*. I bet if FOW were still active few people would question Ness in Lower High tier.

*DLC characters made life harder for Ness, though. Still, I think he's strong enough to be top 25.

 

[Wintermelon43]

Either you're saying that the MU chart is incorrect and the Duck Hunt MU is worse than that (possible, I don't really know), or you're reading it wrong. Palutena is winning 65:35 versus Duck Hunt (and 55:45 versus Mario, which is very good). Her bad matchups are really bad though so Palutena players might want to consider picking up a secondary to deal with some of those matchups. Still, even high tier characters and some top tier characters have 40-60 matchups.

I generally agree, although it's probably a good idea to disregard some results. If a tournament only has, say, 30 entrants, then top 16 isn't very impressive. Das Koopa's list only counts tournaments that are reasonably large.

Ness is #17 on Das Koopa's top 16 result list. Here are some October results for Ness: 5th at Toryumon 1 with Taranito, 13th at DAT Blastzone 15 with SmashBound, two results at eSports Arena at EB Games Expo (5th with Luco, 13th with Enn, neither solo mains), and 5th and 7th (BestNess and SS, SS also using Villager) at Final Destination 11. Most people in the Ness Discord seem to consider him a top 20 character. Sounds like tier 3 to me. When FOW was still playing many even considered him top 15*. I bet if FOW were still active few people would question Ness in Lower High tier.

*DLC characters made life harder for Ness, though. Still, I think he's strong enough to be top 25.

You do realize 65:35 is what people consider Rosa vs Ness to be right? Duck Hunt vs Palutena is no better than +1 for Palutena

 

[Frihetsanka]

You do realize 65:35 is what people consider Rosa vs Ness to be right? Duck Hunt vs Palutena is no better than +1 for Palutena

Ah, okay. So you're saying the MU charts is incorrect. I don't know enough about Palutena's matchups to say, but it does seem like Duck Hunt is being underrated, yes.

 

[L1N3R1D3R]

And I also want to remind people of the significance of "lower level" results too. Not every tournament is top level play, in fact it's quite the contrary. Simply dismissing character results away because they were at a "lower level" is a cop out if you ask me. Results are results. Just because a top player wasn't attending for example, it doesn't mean that results aren't notable.

...

Admittedly, while the top level results and going ons usually decide the debatable areas ("Marth's not good!" he gets very good results at top level though, so that makes no sense - this is a prime example), you cannot simply dismiss lower level results. Results are results, and good characters get them.

...

Essentially, when ranking a character, you have to look at all areas of the game; lower level, top level, results, popularity, character specifics (neutral game etc), MU's etc.

...

Remember, tier lists are to represent the metagame as a whole, not just one part of it.

Okay, but the post you're coming from overdoes it way too much. I'll agree that you can't simply ignore low level results, but making the category 1 tournaments worth HALF of the category 4 ones is completely unreasonable, since most category 1 tournaments come nowhere close to the competition of category 4 ones. A fourth AT MOST is sufficient to represent how those tournaments compare, and even then most category 1 tournaments aren't close to that level of competition, so a fifth makes more sense.

A system that makes much more sense would be Category 1: 1-8, Category 2: 4-16, Category 3: 9-25, Category 4: 16-40. Here, first place in a category 1 tournament is worth half of top 16 at a category 4 tournament but a fifth of first place, which is much more accurate to their relative levels of competition.

With that change, Falcon drops significantly since his only representatives in tier 4 tournaments are Fatality and maybe Tearbear and Gluttony's secondary, and "weird" characters you mention like Peach rise above him.

Don't ignore low level tournaments, but don't overweigh them, either.

 

[Bowserboy3]

Okay, but the post you're coming from overdoes it way too much. I'll agree that you can't simply ignore low level results, but making the tier 1 tournaments worth HALF of the tier 4 ones is completely unreasonable, since most tier 1 tournaments come nowhere close to the competition level of tier 4 ones. A fourth AT MOST is sufficient to represent how those tournaments compare, and even then most low level tournaments aren't close to that level of competition, so a fifth makes more sense. With that change, Falcon drops significantly since his only representatives in tier 4 tournaments are Fatality and maybe Tearbear and Gluttony's secondary, and "weird" characters you mention like Peach rise above him.

Don't ignore low level tournaments, but don't overweigh them, either.

I'm not overweighing them - the point of that post is to just remind everyone that tier lists represent the whole metagame, not only the top level, and in unison, not only top level results.

I could make quite a list of characters I feel are getting the short end of the stick lately for one reason or another.

, and all come to mind.

 

[L1N3R1D3R]

I'm not overweighing them - the point of that post is to just remind everyone that tier lists represent the whole metagame, not only the top level, and in unison, not only top level results.

I could make quite a list of characters I feel are getting the short end of the stick lately for one reason or another.

, and all come to mind.

Okay, so in that case, don't use numbers that are really skewed, because that just weakens your argument.

I'll agree with you on Greninja, as he's gotten a lot higher results in category 4 and more consistent and higher results in the lower categories than the other two (and to stray from the results topic a bit, he has a much more versatile theory). However, I think Luigi's in the right spot because he suffers in a similar vein as Falcon in that his results in category 3 and 4 are lacking (for reference, I have Luigi in the same tier as Falcon, but lower).

 

[Zerp]

+ 1
Not going to do a full vote this round because I'm unsure how I want to handle Diddy Kong's Tier, not sure if I want to upvote a bunch of characters there or downvote Diddy + Sheik so they're in the same tier as the others.

Anyways though, I found something very entertaining, I'm sure you guys will also get a kick out of it.

Spoiler: An interesting Tier List

https://rankedboost.com/ssb4-tier-list/
It was made in Sept 30th this year, if you're (understandably) wondering what patch this was made for.

Spoiler: Tier Key

"
S Unbeatable
A Excellent
B Viable
C Decent
D Average
E Weak
F Avoid

S Tier is the strongest among them all. The characters listed here are hands down the best.
A has many that are excellent and pretty hard to beat on the battlefield.
B features many viable picks that are able to do well against everyone.
C holds the ones that are decent but can be countered easily.
D showcases the average performing picks, they do okay but a different pick would be a better option if you’re looking to really win the match.
E these are not some you should really play unless your trying to go easy on your opponent by giving them a chance.
F Tier displays the worst performing, you should flat out avoid these. "

 

[Frihetsanka]

Not going to do a full vote this round because I'm unsure how I want to handle Diddy Kong's Tier, not sure if I want to upvote a bunch of characters there or downvote Diddy + Sheik so they're in the same tier as the others

A bunch of tier 2 characters are moving up to tier 1, so even if you somehow manage to get Diddy Kong and Sheik down to tier 1 you'd still have characters in tier 1.

My suggestion is to move all the current tier 2 characters up to tier 1 and then move some of the characters in tier 3 to tier 2. That way tier 3 and tier 2 would be Lower High tier and Upper High tier (respectably), and tier 1 would be for the truly top tier characters. Others want tier 1 to be Upper Top tier and tier 2 Lower Top tier, but the issue with that approach (aside from having High tier be massive) is that few people will agree which characters are Lower Top tier. I suspect that when we come to the phase where we order characters within tiers we'll see very different lists for top 10. Some will place Mewtwo near 8-10, some will place Mewtwo near 5. Some will place Mario near 8-10, some will place Mario near 5. Cloud, Zero Suit Samus, Rosalina & Luma, Fox... Some might even place Diddy Kong near 6-8 (didn't ZeRo?)! So I think it's better to keep all top 10 characters in tier 1. Right now all will be aside from Cloud (2 votes), Mario (1 vote), Zero Suit Samus (1 vote), and Mewtwo (1 downvote, although I suspect Mewtwo will be tier 1 soon).

So, I think upvoting a bunch of characters there is what's going to happen, if we look at the current votes. You could, of course, ignore tier 1 for now and vote for other tiers (maybe get some characters into tier 2 now that others will leave, such as Meta Knight, Mega Man, and Villager).

Anyways though, I found something very entertaining, I'm sure you guys will also get a kick out of it.

Whoever created that seems to think that Leffen and Mang0 matter for Smash 4. Mewtwo confirmed for worse than Jigglypuff? Yoshi top 13? Falco top 23 (and better than characters like Marth, Pikachu, and Toon Link). Yeah... Let's just ignore it.

 

[ShadowGuy1]

+ 1
Not going to do a full vote this round because I'm unsure how I want to handle Diddy Kong's Tier, not sure if I want to upvote a bunch of characters there or downvote Diddy + Sheik so they're in the same tier as the others.

Anyways though, I found something very entertaining, I'm sure you guys will also get a kick out of it.

Spoiler: An interesting Tier List

https://rankedboost.com/ssb4-tier-list/
It was made in Sept 30th this year, if you're (understandably) wondering what patch this was made for.

Spoiler: Tier Key

"
S Unbeatable
A Excellent
B Viable
C Decent
D Average
E Weak
F Avoid

S Tier is the strongest among them all. The characters listed here are hands down the best.
A has many that are excellent and pretty hard to beat on the battlefield.
B features many viable picks that are able to do well against everyone.
C holds the ones that are decent but can be countered easily.
D showcases the average performing picks, they do okay but a different pick would be a better option if you’re looking to really win the match.
E these are not some you should really play unless your trying to go easy on your opponent by giving them a chance.
F Tier displays the worst performing, you should flat out avoid these. "

I remember seeing this tier list literally a month before my birthday, and my birthday is May. I think someone just reposted it, and I think it was for the patch prior for bayo dropping because they would of had proper images.

 

[Frihetsanka]

So, some people have been arguing that Corrin belongs in a lower tier. I decided to look at what a Corrin MU chart might look at from the perspective of other players. Let's take a look:

I think we can disregard Brawler and Samus, Brawler because Miis with customs on are incredibly rare, and Samus because that's 1 person's opinion, while the top Corrin players actually think that Corrin wins the matchup.

So, this leaves Corrin with 5 bad matchups, all of which are top tier characters, and most being close (Sheik is bad, but Sheik is bad for many characters). Meanwhile, Corrin has a lot of matchups that she wins, and the rest she goes even with. Seems like a tier 3 character to me.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Problem is other people are still overrating Corrin, thus they put down Corrin as say, a 45-55 lost for them instead of a 50-50.

This is particularly important when considering we don't know when those various MU opinions were made. If some where made back during the "Corrin is top 15!" craze, its a worthless chart.

Also: its from reddit. Those charts are horrible. They think Wario wins a total of like 3 or 5 MUs... one of them being Little Mac at +3. Claiming any kind of value from those charts would be extremely silly.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Problem is other people are still overrating Corrin, thus they put down Corrin as say, a 45-55 lost for them instead of a 50-50.

That's possible.

This is particularly important when considering we don't know when those various MU opinions were made. If some where made back during the "Corrin is top 15!" craze, its a worthless chart.

Oh, but we do know, Twitter saves the dates, after all. Most were made in August, September, and October, ie fairly recent.

Also: its from reddit.

No, the charts are from Twitter, from various top and high level players.

 

[TDK]

Also: its from reddit.

Some redditer compiled a lot of top player MU charts, which you can find here: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/54p1hj/notable_players_matchup_chart_compilation_v2/

Cheers!

 

[Nidtendofreak]

I'm aware that its from (mostly) top players. (I would not, for example, call Rango a top level player). I'm in the CD topic all of the time.

Still doesn't change the fact that almost every MU chart that comes from there is completely laughable. Top main ones included. I once again, point at Wario's numbers.

There is also that whole "Japan and NA have different metagames" issue popping up again. See: every Japanese player with a chart in there lowballing Ike like they have since the start of the patches. It was also pointed out that whoever made those overall lists didn't always grab the average when there were different opinions. There are also times when its literally one high level player's opinion, and 3 others in other places that were not recorded have said completely differently.

Its mildly interesting, but nowhere close to reliable. Unless you think ESAM's Pikachu numbers are accurate for example.

 

[Y2Kay]

Uhh pit doesn't lose to Corrin, let alone as bad 40:60.

It's cool to see how Corrin mains thoughts compare to outsiders but if that's Corrin defense for being high tier, than forget it.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Uhh pit doesn't lose to Corrin, let alone as bad 40:60.

It's a Pit player saying it. Actually, 70:30, but I thought that was way out there, and I only had 1 Pit MU charts so I compared it with the Corrin player's charts (which had it at 55:45) and balanced it out to 60:40.

It's interesting that the 4BR seem to consider Corrin stronger than the people in this thread. I wonder why that is? Are 4BR people more inclined to judge Corrin too high and not consider her weaknesses? I do remember ZeRo placing her at #10 at one point, which is way too high, and didn't Larry Lurr put her in his top 10 list*? Yet some people around here seem to think she's top 30 at best. I think a middle point is probably the correct answer: Probably somewhere around #18-23 or so.

*Rhetorical question.

 

[Y2Kay]

all of that pit player's opinions should be ignored because pit losing 30:70 to Corrin is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I have edited away my previous vote (upvotes for Ryu, Toon Link, Mega Man, and Meta Knight) since not many people were helping me get those to Upper High tier (maybe next round?). To make it easier to follow I've decided to post my new votes here.
+1 (I consider tier 1 Top tier and tier 2 Upper High tier, and Cloud should be Top tier.)
+1 (Mario should also be Top tier.)
(As should Zero Suit Samus.)
+1 (This is a counter-vote. Lucina should be Lower High tier, tier 3, and Marth should be Upper High tier, tier 2.)
-1 (Because I don't want people to view tier 5 as Low-Mid tier, since I think those characters are better than that. Ganondorf is Bottom tier anyway, alongside Jigglypuff and probably Mii Swordfighter and Mii Brawler, 1111 Guest size. Zelda is Low tier though.)

Mewtwo should also be top tier but he's currently at -1, so unless several people start voting for him I won't bother this round. I might change my votes later on (especially the Ganondorf vote).

Edit:

+1 (It doesn't seem like Zero Suit Samus will move up this round, so I changed the upvote for a counter-vote to keep Ness at the bottom of tier 3, which I consider to be Lower High tier.)

 

[Bowserboy3]

I'll try and update tomorrow sometime... I promise...

 

[Routa]

I changed my - to -

 

[QualityQ]

Oh man, looks like a good discussion going on! I'll bring it back to where I left off.

And I also want to remind people of the significance of "lower level" results too. Not every tournament is top level play, in fact it's quite the contrary. Simply dismissing character results away because they were at a "lower level" is a cop out if you ask me. Results are results. Just because a top player wasn't attending for example, it doesn't mean that results aren't notable.

This leads me to my next point, of you cannot simply use the excuse of "this character has a big playerbase so their results are inflated because of it". OK then, Falcon is the most used character in the game, so why doesn't Link, the 2nd most used character in the game, have nearly as many results as Falcon? What about Ganondorf, who's within the top 10 most used characters? - oh that's right, he has poor results, and even the uncommon characters like Villager get better results (Hmm, I wonder why?). Just because the character boasts a big playerbase, it doesn't mean they can get results.

Don't these two points disagree with each other? After all, certainly gets better results at locals/small tournaments and also gets better results at small tournaments. Just ask ESAM, who went 3/2 to beat someone playing ganondorf. Does that mean < ?

In my opinion, lower results matter but their value is much, much less than a large tournament with the best, most experienced players.

My argument, additionally, is that Captain Falcon gets more results BECAUSE of his popularity, not necessarily Captain Falcon's ability. Like you said, if uncommon characters became more common (Olimar, Villager, Ness, Pits, Lucas, even ROB), I would argue Falcon would get less results, even at a local level tournament where skill would be relatively equal.

For this reason, I still stand by my point of IS high tier. I do want to clarify though, I can't place him within the top realms of high tier, not when characters like ,, etc are still doing better than him in general. I would place Falcon near the bottom end of high tier; effectively, like he is in the 4BR tier list. I feel he could be perhaps a spot lower on that list, for example, but he'd still be within the high tier. When you look at everything as a whole, you cannot say Falcon is merely a mid tier (at least from my point of view).

I also think someone in a tier should be able to compete with other characters in the tier. If C. Falcon is "the very bottom of high tier," than how is he not mid tier? If he can't compete with other high tiers, he should be mid tier. All high tiers should at least have some chance of winning against other high tiers; a character shouldn't be high tier just because they stomp low tiers. Otherwise someone like should be high tier because Bowser can destroy other characters even though he can't compete with high tiers.

Now I'll move on to C. Falcon specifically, since there's another glaring argument he should be mid tier that was not addressed previously:

The meme lord does have his flaws, such as an exploitable recovery, and his relative weight makes him quite easy to combo, but I constantly see everywhere players jump straight on "recovery" and instantly use that as a way to knock him down. Shall we just ignore his fantastic dash grab? Shall we just ignore he has top 3 ground movement? Shall we just ignore his pretty safe neutral (courtesy of the last two points, as well as a great spacing move in Back Air)? Shall we just ignore his incredibly damaging combo game and KO confirms?

C. Falcon's abilities are certainly flashy, but do they really work with any sort of reliability? His fantastic dash grab isn't so great against almost any projectile, and side-B is very exploitable. The ground movement isn't matched well with his ground options, as smashes are slow with minimal range, jab is good but not rewarding unless specifically near the edge, and sideB/downB are very easy to exploit. It's almost within reason to say his aerial game is better than his ground game with knee/nair/upair.

Also, huge projectile vulnerability forces his approach.
Also, that recovery. Not simply trying to up-B to the ledge, but how does he even return to a platform when knocked above his foe? Isn't dair pretty much the only option? That's levels of bad.

Overall, we don't put in high just because they have very good rewards. He has glaring flaws compared to other high tiers. Popularity isn't enough to justify that, and it's doubtful that in the future he'll be any better than he is now. High mid is a better place for .

 

[Nidtendofreak]

I also think someone in a tier should be able to compete with other characters in the tier. If C. Falcon is "the very bottom of high tier," than how is he not mid tier? If he can't compete with other high tiers, he should be mid tier. All high tiers should at least have some chance of winning against other high tiers; a character shouldn't be high tier just because they stomp low tiers.

Just to point out, that wasn't the case back in Brawl. D3 was bottom of high tier specifically because of how much he stomped everyone below him in the tier list with his chain grab. Had few if any positive MUs against the characters above him. There is such things as gatekeeper characters for tiers.

That and well somebody has to have the title of "very bottom of high tier". Its always going to exist. Don't see why it can't be Falcon.

 

[QualityQ]

Currently seem to be better options for that position, in particular.

Can you deal with Corrin's pin, or not? Corrin has a similar role as Falcon without having such painful weaknesses. Can you deal with Pikachu's speed? Another example of a really powerful ability that has weaknesses but could be the "gatekeeper." Sure, the reward may not be as drastic or flashy, but even Pikachu seems more reliable than fishing for dash-grab into dthrow, and is a much better gameplan against more characters.

Heck, even PKbthrow could make Ness fit that gatekeeper role. You don't need a knee there.

 

[Y2Kay]

Falcon has serious flaws but his results and playerbase is HUGE compared to the other characters in high mid.

Bottom of high tier sounds perfect.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Corrin has a pretty bad weakness: bad mobility. Take the lead and then run. Due to how thin his true long range options are he's going to struggle to catch up and hit. Does it get exploited enough? No, particularly not with everyone loving smashville but its there. All of those characters you mentioned have weaknesses that get abused to various degrees. (Pika can't reliably kill, Ness hates dealing with swords, Lucina has the typical swordy issues of not great up close buttons in terms of speed + bad dash to shield time). You could also say all but Pika have meh to bleh recoveries.

Falcon is also outplacing those other characters you mentioned however. Fairly heavily in almost every breakdown type. That's why he should be the first one to get the nod for high tier out of the lot of them.

 

[Bowserboy3]

Heck, even PKbthrow could make Ness fit that gatekeeper role. You don't need a knee there.

-implying you can only have one "gatekeeper" character.

Falcon competes with the top tiers relatively well. Rosalina and Luma is pretty even in reality, considering his edgeguarding game excels due to her linear recovery, and he has a guaranteed Dthrow to Knee at specific percents on her. Sonic also isn't too bad, and is one MU where Sonic just doesn't straight up have a noticeable advantage in the neutral thanks to his speed (Falcon's EDD is far better and more usable than Sonic's for example, and tied with his speed, makes dealing with him a whole lot easier).

Take Fatality's recent Falcon MU chart for example - https://twitter.com/FatalityFalcon/status/765625182736318467

Here, he lists 3 characters as notable losses for Falcon. Then, we have another (Sheik), considered a fair loss. The rest are all do-able/slight MU's, even, or winning.

So, according to Fatality, Falcon has, in terms of legitimately losing MU's, just 4. What's more, a fair few of the top tiers are considered even.

Also, in response to Falcon's success due to him being popular, I once again harken back to my point of "Tier lists represent the metagame as a whole, not just one part of it".

Also remember that Falcon was still a very popular character in Brawl, as were Link, and Ganondorf. Did any of these get good results? Nope, not really. Why? Because they were bad. In a sense, this shows how much characters have improved, and how good they are as a whole across the two games; Ganondorf still has overall poor results, but they are overall much better. Link now has a decent amount of results, and Falcon has a tremendous amount of results.

Popularity/representation + good character often = results. Why do you think Marth suddenly got a huge rise in results after 1.1.4 (the 2nd part of the equation there was filled in, for reference)? Before you come back with the "most of his results are of a lower level than top level", I once again remind you that in top level, top players will pick the character that gives them the best chance of winning; ie Sheik, Diddy, Mario, Sonic etc. Oh, these are all "top tier". Falcon is more absent from top level, because he doesn't give as much as a fighting chance for one reason or another, so this is the biggest reason why he is more absent; you can use this arguement against many characters, but it explains why characters are only high tier and not top tier, for example. However, he does appear in top level quite often, and gets results in almost every other level of play. Take that for what you will.

Finally, in reference to his ground movement not converting into his ground options too well, I'll just remind you that Smashes are not what you consider when talking about movement; things that mesh well from movement are grabs, aerials, burst options etc (like a good dash attack, or Marth's Dancing Blade, for example [still the best burst punish tool in the game, quick plug there]). Falcon has a set of strong options that compliment his movement, and regarless of what else he has, his Dash Grab alone would be enough. As far as dash attacks go, he has a very good one, that functions as a cross up move, combo starter, and even a KO move at higher percents. He has a very good set of aerials, that function as combo starters and extenders (Nair and Uair), spacing tools (Bair), and finishers (all sans Nair at varying stages). And yes, while projectiles can force Falcon to approach, the good thing about Falcon is that he has the speed and good dash to shield to prevent many projectiles from walling him out. The slide he gets from his dash to shield is also helpful for this. Essentially, projectiles can force him to approach, but this is kind of counter intuitive on Falcon, as you're asking him to get close to your face, where he has the options to beat you. Projectiles in give him overall less trouble on stage than other characters like, say Ike, who's speed severely limits his ability to deal with them.

Essentially, as others have already re-itterated, Falcon has flaws, but most of them are not as severe as they are made out to be, or are able to be worked around (an example of an actual flaw would be his general off stage vulnerability, or the fact he's pretty easy to combo [but even then his heavy weight allows him to survive quite long, see what I mean?]).

But yeah, just my two cents on it all.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Take Fatality's recent Falcon MU chart for example - https://twitter.com/FatalityFalcon/status/765625182736318467

I'm no Falcon expert but I'm a little curious about why he slightly beats Marth, Lucina, Olimar & Lucas. While going even with Ness & Meta Knight. I also completely disagree with Dr. Mario being 60-40 or greater, I mean what does the Cap have to overwhelm him.

 

[TDK]

I'm no Falcon expert but I'm a little curious about why he slightly beats Marth, Lucina, Olimar & Lucas. While going even with Ness & Meta Knight. I also completely disagree with Dr. Mario being 60-40 or greater, I mean what does the Cap have to overwhelm him.

Mobility. The only reason Mario is top tier and Doc isn't is Doc can't get to where he needs to be as quickly as Mario can, which means Falcon can juggle him easier.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Mobility. The only reason Mario is top tier and Doc isn't is Doc can't get to where he needs to be as quickly as Mario can, which means Falcon can juggle him easier.

Yeah but Doc can do the same.
Not to mention Falcon has to actually get in on Doc, which is quite the risky task considering Doc's fast frame data & high damaging combos.

 

[sleepy_Nex]

Mario advantage? Bayo and Mewtwo even?

Pulling for straws if you ask me.

2-3 65:35's against common top tiers is ugly imo.

Well the Bayos too think that Bayo-Palu is even. You can check in the mu-charts from the Bayo-players in this link to the reddit thread.

 

[Djmarcus44]

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I also want to make a couple of corrections on the Captain Falcon discussion. QualityQ , The numbers that you used for Captain Falcon's usage only applies to Eventhubs members. In tournament play, Captain Falcon is the 5th most popular character. Your result post is pretty accurate otherwise.

Bowserboy3 , Captain Falcon's dash to shield is actually pretty bad (It is frame 15 while the average dash to shield is around frame 10-11). In addition, the forward movement from the dash to shield occurs with other characters as well. While he has great mobility, it isn't enough to make projectiles counterintuitive unless the opposing character has bad projectiles.