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

[Frihetsanka]

Votes thus far:

7 tiers: 12
8 tiers: 2
9 tiers: 2
10 tiers: 1

Average: 7.53
Average with top and bottom vote ignored: 7.4
Votes for 7 tiers: 12
Votes for 8 or more tiers: 5

 

[L1N3R1D3R]

Notes:

• Would like to move just down, but I can't do that right now without moving too many characters.
• deserves to be in the tier above. Why did he end up that low when he got a net positive?
• Same with , except she got an even worse deal with the previous votes.
• Any more than seven tiers wouldn't accurately reflect how many different levels of viability exist in Smash 4, and would make the higher tiers appear more dominant than they really are. Please don't do that, people!

EDIT: Moved Marth up to top tier based on ZeRo Saga results.

 

[Munomario777]

Bowserboy3

In terms of counting up votes, will it be an average between all of the votes, or whichever number of tiers gets the most votes?

 

[lbrasz44]

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[Bowserboy3]

Bowserboy3

In terms of counting up votes, will it be an average between all of the votes, or whichever number of tiers gets the most votes?

I first average out the number of tiers; from the looks of things, it's likely to be anywhere between 7, 8 or 9.

Finding out which character ends the amount of tiers is a bit trickier, but lets say 60% of the votes vote for ZSS at the end of the 1st tier, then that's what happens.

---

Glad to see a fair few votes so far. Remember, characters still get a chance to move later on, so don't worry if you have to split certain characters higher or lower (for example, I want to see move up).

 

[jespoke]

Went through and pressed enter every time i found a good point to split, ended up with 10 tiers.

* Darn you nightly backup for always coinciding with my morning to eat my posts.

 

[QualityQ]

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6.
7.

Tier 1 is pretty much agreed on at this point of the game. Not much to say here.

Tier 2: In my opinion, is no longer justified in being there, despite DarkShad's recent performance. Ryu has some pretty terrible matchups that he will downright lose, and has great difficulties against characters willing to play defensive for timeout. And Darkshad's results mark one of increasingly uncommon times we see him do well. He stays in tier 2 solely because of characters below him. The others in this tier have much better justification, although and are not quite tier 1 material yet. Given the diversity in tier 1 I think a character from tier 1 would have to move down to bring them up, and that seems unlikely right now.

Tier 3: Corrin has yet to do very well at a large-scale event, although multiple excellent regional performances might be able to put him/er at tier 2. Only and stand out as outliers here; Dark pit is justified from pit's results, and peach has seen enough recent improvement to be put in tier 3. Overall Pit has too good a matchup spread and multifunctional tools to be in tier 4 anymore. People underestimate how good it is to have no awful matchups, but counterpicking is a solid technique.

Tier 4: and seem underplaced here, but in reality they're probably the top of this tier or the bottom of tier 3. Basically Tier 4 is characters with solid game plans with one or two easily exposable weaknesses. The difference between tier 4 and 5 is whether that gameplan is easy for them to execute or more difficult for them to execute.

Tier 5: Saved by a last-second upvote, gets put here. Hopefully now it seems more obvious that he should move down, since almost everyone in this tier has no problem beating him. He is almost certainly tier 6, particularly when you consider competitive stage selection.

Tier 6: We can argue day and night over these characters, but in reality they're all the same: 1 or 2 good representatives, 1 or 2 good results, and obvious, easily exploitable flaws in their gameplans with almost no flexibility. Splitting this tier feels very opinionated, as one person might think some of these characters should move up while some should move down, and vice versa. Lumping them all together gives a good "average" and there are just enough characters here to keep things neat.

Tier 7 is also pretty much agreed on at this point in the game.

I see maybe one or two characters moving up or down from here; this is a solid list (tier-wise).

 

[Wintermelon43]

This is kinda hard to do because of three characters being in much differant places than I think they are () but either way:

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7:

 

[Munomario777]

[Top] The best of the best, no real explanation needed.

​

[High] A notch below the top-tiers. Great moveset and solid results, but not as dominant as top-tiers. Might vote Ryu down due to blatant lack of results.

​

[High-Mid] Notable, but not super-powerful or overly dominating.

​

[Mid] These fighters have some tricks up their sleeve and can hold their own, but haven't quite risen to high tier in terms of results.

​

[Mid-Low] Characters with flaws that hinder their growth, but can still mess you up if you're not careful.

​

[Low] These characters aren't very effective overall compared to the rest of the cast. Moving Roy and Samus up, Gunner down.

​

[Bottom] Like top tier, the purpose of this tier is clear: characters who were made for free-for-alls, as a joke, or a metagame that doesn't ban them.

​

 

[_Jack_]

Top Tier: These characters are viable in every scenario and are the best bet to win tournaments. They have a positive matchup over a solid majority of the cast and, while they do have a few losing matchups, they don't lose to many characters.


High Tier: These characters are still very viable. However, their weaknesses are more exploitable than the top tiers' and they have trouble with more characters. They're so close to being top tier, but they're just missing one thing.


High-Mid Tier: These characters are viable and their pros do tend to outweigh their cons. However, their cons are much easier to exploit when compared to the characters ranked above them and, as a result, their matchup spreads are worse.


Mid-Tier: These characters are generally a mix between pros and cons, so it's hard to tell which side outweighs the other. Their strengths can make them very difficult to deal with, but their weaknesses are always noticeable in their play.


Low-Mid Tier: While the flaws of these characters are quite prevalent, they can be absolutely deadly in the right hands, so you can't sleep on them. They also tend to have a couple of high or top tiers they can hold their own against.


Low Tier: The flaws of these characters are very noticable. While they have a few strengths that can be good, they're overshadowed by their weaknesses. Unlike the low-mid tier, they can't really hold their own against any of the best in the game and have poor matchup spreads overall.


Bottom Tier: Every character below this point is unviable in competitive play. Their weaknesses are so immense and detrimental that they completely negate any of the small strengths they have.

 

[Bowserboy3]

I do want to make sure there are a good slew of votes this round, so I'm not necessarily going to be updating after around a week's time like I have done in the past if I'm not happy with the amount of votes.

That said, there are a few current trends, so I'd imagine by Friday or something... maybe I'll update then? We'll see.

 

[Bowserboy3]

Wow, I know it's approaching the Christmas period, but I didn't expect it to be quite this slow. I'll probably update on Friday or Saturday anyway, but I'll be a bit more lenient with the length of each voting round over the Christmas period (perhaps a few days more than I usually do).

 

[Frihetsanka]

7 tiers is winning pretty hard. While I would've prefered 8 tiers, I suppose I'll change my vote (from 8 tiers to 7 tiers) as well. I'll edit my vote.

 

[QualityQ]

I'll probably update on Friday or Saturday anyway, but I'll be a bit more lenient with the length of each voting round over the Christmas period (perhaps a few days more than I usually do).

While we wait, I did an average of all the votes, so assuming nothing changes the final result is this:

Dated 12/17/16 8:54 PM EST

Average of all votes: note rounding is at .5 (example, Corrin rounds to group 3)

Group 1 [1][1.05][1.11][1.17][1.41]

Group 2 [2.05][2.29][2.35]

Group 3 [2.76][3][3.17][3.24][3.35]

Group 4 [3.52][3.58][4][4.12][4.17][4.24]

Group 5 [4.58][4.88][5.11][5.24][5.29][5.47]

Group 6 [5.53][6][6.18][6.24][6.29][6.35][6.41]

Group 7 [6.58][6.82][7.47]

Group 8 [7.53]

However, we can also calculate this doing tier-number first. That is, we find the mode of #tier votes and then exclusively list by those votes. This helps account for outlier votes where voting for a larger number of tiers makes your vote count more.

In that case, 7 is the most popular #tiers votes, and the list is organized like this:

Group 1 [1][1.16]

Group 2 [2][2.08][2.16]

Group 3 [2.66][2.92][3][3.16][3.33][3.42]

Group 4 [3.83][3.92][4][4.33]

Group 5 [4.58][4.91][5][5.08]

Group 6 [5.66][5.91][6][6.08][6.42]

Group 7 [7]

Which system is better? I think that's worth discussion.

 

[Frihetsanka]

12 people voted for 7 tiers, and 5 people voted for 8 or more tiers. It seems more reasonable to go with 7 tiers.

 

[jespoke]

People are too attached to a specific number of tiers instead of finding out how many power gaps there actually are. But if that is what the community wants, the community tier list will follow it

 

[Frihetsanka]

People are too attached to a specific number of tiers instead of finding out how many power gaps there actually are.

People have different views on how many tiers are necessary. If characters are not ordered within tiers, then having more tiers is important to showcase the differences. However, since characters will be ordered within tiers, we could theoretically just have 4 tiers (Top, High, Mid, Low), though I think having a few more tiers is useful.

 

[Browny]

People are too attached to a specific number of tiers instead of finding out how many power gaps there actually are. But if that is what the community wants, the community tier list will follow it

As I explained in a post a few weeks ago, its important to set a number of tiers as a hard limit.

If you don't, it creates crazy splits and this pile of junk
https://smashboards.com/threads/official-swf-tier-list-v8.335959/

 

[Zerp]

Bumpity bump.

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EDIT: I moved the line between 1 and 2 one space farther so Marth could be in Top Tier Land.

Edited my post, all that changed is the line between 1 and 2, changed how it by one slot so Marth's in Tier 1. If I'm not allowed to edit posts during this round for some reason, just tell me and I'll change it back.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

I wouldn't be chucking Marth into T1 quite yet. Still need long term consistency to get into that tier.

But yes, last night was when the idea of Marth not being high tier went from "laughable" to "literally rolling on the ground, pointing at the screen doubled over in laughter".

Ryu also solidified that he belongs in T2. Lower end of it, dude is never going to win a tournament of that level. But the only characters in T2 that might have a shot are MK and an extremely outside chance of MegaMan.

 

[Bowserboy3]

Marth has been getting consistent results since February. If by consistent you mean, consistent majors 1st places, then by that nature half of the top tier aught to be down in the tier below too; characters like Mewtwo, Rosalina, ZSS, Bayonetta and even Cloud, haven't won a major in a very long time.

I don't see how when a character wins a major and has consistent results backing them up, that they don't have a shot at being top tier, to be honest. Mewtwo was much the same back after Pound.

I'm not saying you're wrong for not thinking that though; I main Marth myself, and I am still very much on the fence about if he really is top tier yet. I can see both sides of the story, and it's a really tough decision. Part of me sees how well he can do when optimised, and the other half of me sees how hard he actually is to optimise, as well as some of the issues of his moveset.

But the idea of Marth being top tier is now very real, and there's more than enough evidence and data to support it. It's just conflicting opinions at this point.

What IS true at this point, is that Marth is clearly a high tier character, no lower.

---

As a sidenote, I will update the list tomorrow. I would have liked to see more votes but it doesn't matter.

 

[L1N3R1D3R]

Notes:

• Would like to move just down, but I can't do that right now without moving too many characters.
• deserves to be in the tier above. Why did he end up that low when he got a net positive?
• Same with , except she got an even worse deal with the previous votes.
• Any more than seven tiers wouldn't accurately reflect how many different levels of viability exist in Smash 4, and would make the higher tiers appear more dominant than they really are. Please don't do that, people!

EDIT: Moved Marth up to top tier based on ZeRo Saga results.

Edited my vote based on the results of ZeRo Saga.

 

[Y2Kay]

is this alright?

 

[QualityQ]

View attachment 122848

is this alright?

For now, there's no order within tiers. Use this string of characters ( ) and organize them into 'tiers' without changing the order of the characters.

This may result in some irregularities, but those will be corrected with time.

 

[Y2Kay]

Ok lemme do this over:

1:

2:
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7:

 

[QualityQ]

While we wait, I did an average of all the votes, so assuming nothing changes the final result is this:

Dated 12/17/16 8:54 PM EST

Which system is better? I think that's worth discussion.

In case you missed this Bowserboy3 since although this seems trivial it can make a big difference given the smaller # of votes. It seems best to agree with # of tiers chosen (which appears to be 7), then have non-7 people revote into 7 so votes are not over-weighed.

I'm not saying you're wrong for not thinking that though; I main Marth myself, and I am still very much on the fence about if he really is top tier yet. I can see both sides of the story, and it's a really tough decision. Part of me sees how well he can do when optimised, and the other half of me sees how hard he actually is to optimise, as well as some of the issues of his moveset.

Agreed that Marth is high tier, but there are issues that inhibit his ability to be top tier. The first is that there are already 10 characters there, meaning one likely has to drop down before Marth can get in. It looks like that's either going to be or and although Rosalina has had some recent dropoff, there's not enough data to really warrant either of those happening.

The second issue is consistency. Here's the list of all Marths at zero saga:

MKLEO -1st- /
Pugwest -Top 32-
Ned -Top 48- /
Mr. E -Sub-48-

This is very different from, say, 6 solo diddy mains in top 48, 4 Rosalina players in top 48, and 2 marios in top 8. There have been a lot of good Marth performances recently, but Marth only warrants top tier if this recent spike in performance continues.

 

[Bowserboy3]

The second issue is consistency. Here's the list of all Marths at zero saga:

MKLEO -1st- /
Pugwest -Top 32-
Ned -Top 48- /
Mr. E -Sub-48-

This is very different from, say, 6 solo diddy mains in top 48, 4 Rosalina players in top 48, and 2 marios in top 8. There have been a lot of good Marth performances recently, but Marth only warrants top tier if this recent spike in performance continues.

You can't prove a character is inconsistent with just one tournament.

Why don't we look at another tournament, eh?

UGC:

Mr E: 5th
Leo: 13th
Pugwest: 25th

Think what you like, but that's 3 Marth's in top 32, all on a solo account. If we take just solo characters from the same tournament and same range, the only characters that beat Marth in that area are Diddy and Bayonetta, each with 4 solo placements within the top 32. Characters like Sheik and ZSS only placed twice within the top 32 of the same tournament for example, placing only as high as Marth anyway (5th place for Sheik, and 9th for ZSS [solo ZSS - Marss]).

In terms of high level placements, Marth is still one of the most represented characters, commonly placing one way or another in the top spots. Consistency is a murky area for discussion because each player has a different view on the term.

And as a side note, while Rosalina appears to not be getting the best reaults (top 3 for example), a recent study of majors shows that she is still well within the top 10 in terms of highest placements. Here is what I am referring to: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/5j91wv/29_nationals_since_patch_116_this_is_what_a/

Of note, Marth is also 10th on that list...

---

UPDATING NOW...

As a side note, I appreciate concerns about how votes are tallied up, but I am not changing the rules on something that has been done the same way for at least 6 times now. Things will be fine.

Also be aware that I may not be able to "update" as such straight away; I'm sorting the orders and stuff out tonight and will most likely post the new list tomorrow. I wanted to get this done as soon as I could, but today was a busy day, so I aplologise for that. Please don't be disappointted by the slower turnaround time this round. The next rounds should be better, it's just how things have fallen this time, and nobody is as upset/annoyed as me about this. Just know that I am in the process of updating and will post ASAP!

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Relevant to this topic in the near future:

TLTC has dropped Palutena outside of specific matchups. https://twitter.com/ImTLTC/status/811320221000531969?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

Sited her as being not consistent.

 

[Wintermelon43]

Relevant to this topic in the near future:

TLTC has dropped Palutena outside of specific matchups. https://twitter.com/ImTLTC/status/811320221000531969?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

Sited her as being not consistent.

I can already hear the screams of Palutena mains all around the world..........

......Or, at least, the beginning of it. It's lagging a lot. The rest hasn't came out yet.

 

[FamilyTeam]

Marth is not going to be even Top 10 anytime soon. Even with MKLeo.
MKLeo showed me he can be Top 15, but Top 10 is really, really pushing it.
The only reason I (reluctantly) consider him better than Corrin now is that result. At the very least Corrin doesn't lose to half the Top 10 people, and 5 very common matchups at that, , while doing better against . You could make a case for Diddy and Sheik becoming possibly even in the future, but for that to be the case, for me, I'm gonna want to see far more victories in Marth's part for that.
Marth's MU spread is infinitely better than Wintermelon gives him credit for, but you guys also have to remember it's not anything particularly stellar. I'd say Marth is Top 15 right now, but until he consistently stops losing to those 5 people, I'm not seeing him breaking through to even Top 10 like that. Not today, not ever.

 

[Deleted member]

He's already consistently stopped losing to those 5 characters.

 

[Y2Kay]

Out of those five characters you listed, the only one's I can seriously call losing are and . even then, it's not that bad.

 

[Vyrnx]

Where did the idea of ZSS dropping out of top ten even come from? She hasn't ever seen a significant drop in results, even immediately following her nerfs. With that and her moveset/stats/ridiculousness, I'm just confused that she's being considered for lower than tenth.

 

[FamilyTeam]

Out of those five characters you listed, the only one's I can seriously call losing are and . even then, it's not that bad.

Sonic is a pretty arse matchup to play against, it's arguably his worst. Marth doesn't do well in disadvantage state, and Sonic overwhelming Marth is ridiculously common. It's hard to space against him, it's hard to keep him out, it's very hard to get any sort of lead back. This is a losing MU no doubt. And, again, his worst, arguably. Fox is basically the same route as to why it's pretty asinine, but at the very least Marth is good at edgeguarding him, and Fox is absolute combo food so it's easy to rack up damage on him, along with him being easier to kill due to being pretty bloody light.
Rosalina is plenty arse as well. Eliminating Luma can be pretty taxing (I don't recall if any of Marth or even Lucina's moves can send Luma immediatly into tumble) and I feel like Marth has trouble with Rosalina herself. It's hard to chain anything together against her, and it's sometimes hard to get in.
MKLeo is a monster, and he is able to make all of those matchups work, but it's a lot of bloody work to get going with any of them.
Then again, that's just this site everytime. I remember back when Mario won EVO and everyone thought he was godly, now sometimes I see people unironically calling him Top 20.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Marth is significantly better than Corrin.

Like, they're characters going two opposite directions. Marth's results have been steadily climbing and climbing for a while now. Corrin's results are slowly but steadily dropping. He's getting less and less secondary usage, and its showing in the trend of his results. Certainly hasn't fallen off of the radar, and can still make some noise at larger tournaments but its an overall negative trend. Corrin's MUs are proving to be more difficult than before, the opposite is true for Marth.

Marth is 11th/12th like people have been calling him for well over a month now. Corrin is.... top of mid tier. So roughly 15 spots back.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Corrin's results are slowly but steadily dropping. He's getting less and less secondary usage, and its showing in the trend of his results.

Corrin's results are not that bad: 20th best top 8, 14th best top 16, according to Das Koopa's data.

We might also see Cosmo stepping up in the future: https://twitter.com/CosmicCosmology/status/810723719144411136

I personally think Corrin is somewhere around #18-22, ie lower end of High tier. Certainly worse than Marth, who is #11 or #12, but still in a pretty good spot. I personally think Corrin is better than Greninja, Peach, and maybe Ness. Maybe Captain Falcon as well. Perhaps Lucario too, although Lucario does have a better clutch factor. She's probably worse than Marth, Mega Man, Toon Link, Ryu, Meta Knight, Villager, and Pikachu. So around #18-22. It's worth mentioning that both ZeRo and MKLeo think that she's top tier. I don't think so myself, but I find it interesting how some people call the character a top tier and other people call her a high-mid tier. I'd say she's closer to high-mid than top, but still good enough for High tier.

 

[Bowserboy3]

UPDATED

That was luckily easier than I worried it might be. The average number of tiers was 7.5, and seeing as the majority of the votes voted for 7 tiers, I went with 7 rather than 8 (it was a stray 9 and 10 that bumped the average score up, for example).

And luckily there was a clear percentage on each tier split (for example, there was no 50% voted Marth for top of tier 2, and 50% voted Meta Knight at the top of tier 2).

For those interested, here is the list now:

Tier 1:
Tier 2:
Tier 3:
Tier 4:
Tier 5:
Tier 6:
Tier 7:

HOWEVER...

I am just checking some rules and info on the individual tier voting phase, so as filler, I am going to do a small round where we finally settle on some tier names once and for all. This will take no more than around 2-3 days, so if you miss it, hard lines unfortunately!

Here are the rules for this round (they're simple):

Spoiler: Rules

Right now we will vote on the tier names; rather than dispute over which tier means which, lets settle in stone what they all account for!

Simply post what you would name each of the 7 tiers.

As an example, here is my vote:

(1) Top Tier
(2) High Tier
(3) Upper Mid Tier
(4) Lower Mid Tier
(5) Upper Low Tier
(6) Lower Low Tier
(7) Bottom Tier

It's as simple as that. The names will follow on in an orderly fashion of course. I won't be keeping this round going on for very long; around 2-3 days at maximum, as this is just filler really until I can 100% start the individual tier voting phase.

As in the rules spoiler, here is my vote:

(1) Top Tier
(2) High Tier
(3) Upper Mid Tier
(4) Lower Mid Tier
(5) Upper Low Tier
(6) Lower Low Tier
(7) Bottom Tier

 

[Munomario777]

(1) Top
(2) High
(3) Mid +
(4) Mid -
(5) Low +
(6) Low -
(7) Bottom

If needed, substitute "Mid +" etc with "Upper Mid" etc.

 

[Routa]

(1)Top
(2) High
(3) Mid +
(4) Mid
(5) Mid -
(6) Low
(7) Bottom

 

[Zerp]

Doing this from my phone so please forgive any typos.
1. Top Tier
2. High Tier
3. High Mid Tier
4. Mid Tier
5. Low Mid Tier
6. Low Tier
7. Bottom Tier