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

[Frihetsanka]

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

Having 4 be lower mid makes little sense to me given the characters currently in it. Olimar, Donkey Kong, Luigi, Bowser are all clearly High-Mid in my opinion. I thought we kind of voted under the impression that 2 and 3 were high?

 

[lbrasz44]

1. Top
2. High
3. Upper-mid
4. Mid
5. Low-mid
6. Low
7. Bottom

 

[Frihetsanka]

Bowserboy3 Why is Kirby in tier 5 instead of tier 6? More people seem to have voted him in tier 6 instead of tier 5 for the split.

I decided to count the votes, and here are the results:

5 people voted for Kirby in tier 5.
10 people voted for Kirby in tier 6.
2 voted for Kirby in tier 7, and one tier 8.

So, Kirby should probably remain in tier 6, right? That's where the majority of voters want him to be, both by these results and by prior results.

The other splits seem reasonable, but Kirby should've been in tier 6 and not tier 5, unless I'm missing something.

 

[TDK]

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

 

[Samuelwisebaggins]

1) Top
2) High
3) High mid
4) Mid
5)Low mid
6)Low
7)Bottom

 

[Frihetsanka]

I will attempt to make an argument for why High tier should be split into two and why tier 4 should be High-Mid.

Tier 1 as top tier I think pretty much everyone agrees with, so I won't discuss that. Tier 5, 6, and 7 could be discussed but I will focus on 2, 3, and 4.

Super Smash Bros. 4 has a lot of viable characters, more than any Smash game before. It seems reasonable to consider High tiers viable, but high-mid tiers can also be usable. Characters below High-mid tend to be less viable at a higher level, although there are exceptions.

Most characters in Tier 3 are good enough for High tier, I'd argue. Corrin, Captain Falcon, Lucario, and Ness were all voted into High tier by the Smash 4 Backroom. Lucina is similar to Marth, and from what I've seen she seems to belong more in the lower end of high tier than High-mid. Though she might be High-mid, I'm not sure. Pit and Lukas and possibly Peach might be High-mid rather than High tier.

Should we decide that Tier 3 is High-Mid, then Corrin and Lucario should move up. I think Captain Falcon is High tier too, although not everyone might agree (ZeRo doesn't, for instance). Should we decide that Tier 3 is High tier, then we might want to consider whether Lucas and the Pits belong up there.

Tier 4 is very interesting as well, I think. Is it High-Mid or is it Mid? Considering how well Dath's Robin has performed I think it's pretty clear that Robin is High-Mid rather than Mid. Larry Lurr's Donkey Kong and Nairo's Bowser strike me as High-Mid rather than Mid as well. Olimar should also be High-Mid, as should R.O.B. and Luigi. Maybe Link should move down though, and possibly Yoshi (though I think Yoshi might have the potential to be High-Mid). If we consider tier 3 Mid and tier 4 High-Mid, then a lot of character would have to move up, in my opinion.

During the voting phase, it seemed like we considered 4 as High-Mid and 3 as High. It's not like 3 has to be High -/Lower High and 2 has to be High-Mid, but since many people (me included) voted for the tiers as if they were named that, well, it'd be strange to change it now.

I also think we should have had this vote at least two months ago. It's kind of weird to first place characters in tiers and then name the tiers. Perhaps this could be done for the next tier list? Anyway, regardless of the names we end up with I think it would be a good idea to have a few rounds with regular voting. If, for instance, Tier 4 is Mid tier, then Olimar, Robin, Donkey Kong, and Bowser (at the very least) should move up, in my opinion (settling for Tier 4 as High-Mid would require fewer changes in order to make the tiers accurate, but either way people should be given a chance to vote again once the names have been decided).

 

[Kirby Dragons]

1. Top Tier
2. High Tier
3. High Mid-Tier
4. Mid-Tier
5. Low Mid-Tier
6. Low Tier
7. Bottom Tier

 

[MarioManTAW]

1. Top
2. High
3. High-Mid
4. Mid
5. Low-Mid
6. Low
7. Bottom

 

[L1N3R1D3R]

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

I'd rather be as optimistic as I can while naming the tiers. Almost every character has proven themselves enough to be at least lower mid tier, and the few that haven't still have some things going for them that keep them relevant and out of bottom tier.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

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

 

[MrGameguycolor]

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

 

[Frihetsanka]

I'd rather be as optimistic as I can while naming the tiers. Almost every character has proven themselves enough to be at least lower mid tier, and the few that haven't still have some things going for them that keep them relevant and out of bottom tier.

I agree, and I would like to call Tier 6 Low-Mid tier, but I've got the feeling people won't accept Tier 7 as Low tier rather than Bottom tier, and they won't agree with skipping Low tier either, so eh. If we look at Melee's low tier, we have Mewtwo, Ness, Zelda, Mr. Game & Watch, and Roy. I think most characters in tier 6 deserve to be at least one spot higher than that. Brawl didn't actually have a bottom tier, and Low tier were Mario, Samus, Bowser, Captain Falcon, Link, Jigglypuff, Zelda, and Ganondorf. So maybe we should just skip Bottom tier?

 

[Wintermelon43]

Top Tier
High Tier
Upper Mid Tier
Mid Tier
Low Mid Tier
Low Tier
Bottom Tier

 

[jespoke]

High/Low Mid, +/- Mid, Upper/Lower Mid are all fine by me, i just want tier 4 to be "Mid Tier" with no attachments.

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

 

[Y2Kay]

I don't like the term low-high tier. It's an oxymoron.

1. Top Tier
2. High Tier
3. High Mid Tier
4. Mid Tier
5. Low Mid Tier
6. Low Tier
7. Bottom Tier

 

[Bowserboy3]

Bowserboy3 Why is Kirby in tier 5 instead of tier 6? More people seem to have voted him in tier 6 instead of tier 5 for the split.

I decided to count the votes, and here are the results:

5 people voted for Kirby in tier 5.
10 people voted for Kirby in tier 6.
2 voted for Kirby in tier 7, and one tier 8.

So, Kirby should probably remain in tier 6, right? That's where the majority of voters want him to be, both by these results and by prior results.

The other splits seem reasonable, but Kirby should've been in tier 6 and not tier 5, unless I'm missing something.

I'm not entirely sure what happened there. In my notes, I had Kirby at the top of tier 6, so I must've pressed Enter too late when re-creating the list. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[ShadowGuy1]

I'm back and missed like this entire list's creation but might as well join back now

1.Top Tier
2.High Tier
3.High Mid Tier
4.Mid Tier
5.Low Mid
6.Low Tier
7.Bottom Tier

 

[L1N3R1D3R]

One thing that I think is quite important which more people should consider is that is that tier 5 is where every character started. This is why I consider it to be mid tier, as everyone better than it was voted up and everyone worse was voted down. Plus, the characters in tier 4 are simply too relevant to be anything less than upper mid, as their results have proven.

 

[Bigbomb2]

1. Top Tier
2. High Tier
3. High Mid Tier
4. Mid tier
5. Low Mid Tier
6. Low Tier
7. Bottom Tier

Lots of mids I see

 

[jespoke]

Top Mid tier
High Mid tier
Pretty High Mid tier
Mid tier
Slightly Low Mid tier
Low Mid tier
Bottom Mid tier

/s

 

[Nidtendofreak]

4BR Tier List v2.0 - Competitive Impressions

Just to hammer in a point I made a while ago when people kept trying to claim/vote for Palutena in Mid Tier.

She. Is. Not. Good. She has been figured out now. She's falling flat on her face. She has to rely on one very specific set of tools, doesn't have the ability to mix it up outside of those tools. People know those tools now when it comes to high level play, and its showing accordingly.

She is not mid tier. When the option comes to choose who in a tier to move out of it, move Palutena down accordingly. Her time in the sun is done.

 

[Deleted member]

1. Top
2. High
3. Upper
4. Mid
5. Low-Mid
6. Low
7. Bottom

 

[MarioManTAW]

There seem to be two main thoughts on tier naming, and it boils down to one major distinction: absolute vs. relative viability.

First of all, I'll explain relative viability, as that's the position I take. With relative viability, the tiers are named based on viability relative to the rest of the roster. Thus, I think tier 4 should be mid tier and tier 7 bottom tier because tier 4 is in the middle of the roster and 7 is at the bottom of the roster. It's as simple as that.

Absolute viability suggests that tiers should be named based on arbitrary values of viability: top are 100% tournament viable, bottom are not tournament viable, and other tiers are named relative to those absolute standards. As even the worst characters in Smash 4 are at least somewhat viable, the supporters of this system argue that there is no bottom tier.

I think if we can agree on one of these two systems, the rest of the naming process should flow naturally. (The majority seems to be in favor of relative viability.)

 

[QualityQ]

I don't have much of an opinion one way or the other, but I'll copy this vote since it seems closest to what I agree with.

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

 

[kaz99]

1. Top
2. High
3. Upper-mid
4. Mid
5. Lower-mid
6. Low
7. Bottom

 

[Frihetsanka]

There seem to be two main thoughts on tier naming, and it boils down to one major distinction: absolute vs. relative viability.

The way I see it, tiers are descriptions of certain attributes a character has, which I suppose make it "absolute viability". Top tiers are characters that range from slightly overtuned to super broken (in Smash 4, I'd argue that no character is super broken right now). High tiers would be characters that have some top tier potential, but not quite the same strength or MU chart to really be overpowered. High-mid tiers are characters that are flawed and basically mid tiers, but they have some strengths that make them somewhat tournament viable (and some, like Robin, can do pretty well even in majors). Lower tiers are harder to define and those characters are generally not used much in majors or supermajors, though they could see the occasional niche use, and they might be fairly viable for locals and regionals (and maybe even nationals).

An advantage with "absolute viability" is that it makes it easier to order characters based on how strong they are. We could give each tier a power level. For instance, top tiers have a power level between 9.5 and 10, high tiers have a power level of 8.5-9.4, high-mid tiers have a power level from 7-8.4, etc etc. We could theoretically see a meta where every character has a power level of 8 or higher, which means that even the weakest character would be high-mid tier. Calling that character "bottom tier" would be an insult, I think. In Smash 4, I'd argue that the weakest characters are still more viable than the weakest characters in Brawl or Melee, which helps make the case for not having any Bottom tier for now.

I think it's nice to be able to compare tiers between games. For instance, if Pikachu is high tier in Smash 4 and high-mid tier in Melee, then Pikachu should be stronger in Smash 4.

Of course, characters do not exist in a vacuum; If a new DLC character would be added that has a 90-10 MU against Mario, then Mario would likely fall from top tier.

 

[jespoke]

In my eyes, making the list to be comparable with those of other games will only hold it back. I think "Bottom tier" should refer to how picking that character means you could hardly make it harder for yourself to win consistently.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I think "Bottom tier" should refer to how picking that character means you could hardly make it harder for yourself to win consistently.

Fair enough. I think high and high-mid should be similar-ish though. I disagree with calling a lot of the characters currently in tier 4 just "mid" tier, since I think they're high-mid tier (most of them). With tier 3 I think 3-4 of them might be good enough for high tier. This could, perhaps, be solved with a few more rounds of voting if we decided that tier 3 is, in fact, high-mid tier rather than lower high tier that some of us expected it to be.

Let's compare with the 4BR tier list: Ness, Captain Falcon, Corrin, and Lucario were in high tier there. I think at least Corrin and Lucario deserve to be (for comparison, ZeRo put Lucario at #12 and Corrin at #16, slightly too optimistic in my opinion).

If we consider ZeRo's "Upper" tier to be roughly the same as "high-mid", then Olimar, Yoshi, R.O.B., Luigi, Bowser, Shulk (!), and Robin deserve to move up. I am unsure about Yoshi and I disagree about Shulk, but for the rest I'm inclined to agree that they are high-mid tiers.

So, if we do settle for 3 as high-mid, 4 as mid, and 5 as low-mid, then I propose we do the following (in the following voting period): Move Corrin and Lucario (and maybe Captain Falcon and/or Ness) up to High tier. Move Olimar, Robin, Donkey Kong, Bowser, Luigi, and maybe Yoshi and/or R.O.B to high-mid tier. Maybe move Wario and/or Mr. Game & Watch to mid tier. Maybe move Samus up to Low-Mid tier.

The tier list might look like this (tiers not in order):

Top:
High:
High-Mid:
Mid:
Low-Mid:
Low:
Bottom:

Every character in High tier has a good shot at making a good run at a Major, and an even better shot at doing well at smaller tournaments. High-Mid have some pretty good uses at majors as well, yet they are not as good as High tiers. Mid tier characters can do well but generally struggle to be consistent, and Low-Mid tiers are generally not worth it but can have some niche use. Low tiers are generally bad for majors but can have some niche use, while Bottom tiers struggle to get results at large tournaments.

Aaaand then we're back to high tier being large, which is why I helped "split" high tier into two to begin with. Oh well. And yes, I personally think that more than half the cast is High-Mid tier or higher; the game is decently balanced. With that being said, I am of the opinion that every character could theoretically be High tier, although in that case a tier list would likely look more like "top 10 tier, top 20 tier" rather than "Top, High, High-Mid".

 

[Bowserboy3]

UPDATED

First off, whatever you celebrated recently, Happy Christmas, Holidays, etc. I hope you all had a good one!

With the festivities dying down a little, I have finally updated the list. The most common names for each tier were chose, and luckily they followed on naturally. I decided to simply call all the "Upper Mid" or "Lower Mid" voted to Mid (+) and Mid (-) respectively. Let me know which you would prefer and I can change it down the line if needed.

Spoiler: Ordering Tiers Rules

With the naming phase out of the way, we can focus on each individual tier. In these rounds, we go one tier at a time and settle on a proper order for the characters.

What's more, during these rounds, you can even vote to move ONE character Up or Down a tier (new tiers will not be created at the top or the bottom).

This time, we start on the Bottom Tier, as below:

Bottom Tier:

Your vote can be these characters in whatever order you like. You can have Ganondorf at the top, the 2nd place, the last place, wherever you like.

As an example, here is my personal vote.

Bottom Tier:

Because I don't feel any character deserves to move up, I haven't voted in such a way. However, if I think a character wants to be voted up, I'd place them at the top of the tier, and add a + vote under the order. Let's pretend I want to see Ganondorf move up; my vote would be this.

Bottom Tier:
+1:

Pretty simple stuff. Characters with a noticeable amount of up votes will move up or down to the next tier. However, they cannot be voted upon in the next round, and will be left in a set of brackets to symbolise this: ( ).

DO NOT ADD CHARACTERS FROM OTHER TIERS INTO THE ORDER. Simply use the characters in the tier at the current time.

So, as in the spoiler, here is my vote for this round:

Bottom Tier:

 

[Tizio Random]

I REALLY want to move Zelda up one tier but there are no result to back up this claim. Still hopeful for the future. For now:

Bottom tier:

 

[Wintermelon43]

 

[Routa]

 

[Munomario777]

EDIT: Fixed, oops.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I really think we should have at least one more round of general voting or else we'll likely see a lot of characters ending up too low. Characters that are high tier in the 4BR might end up in high-mid tier. Sure, some might move up, but we only get one vote per person (maybe let us move up to three characters up or down?).

Anyway, my vote for this round:



Is King Dedede bad enough to be Bottom tier rather than Low tier? I don't think so. He scored 19 points in top 16 and 8 in top 8. Ganondorf, Jigglypuff, and Zelda have significantly worse results, as do the Miis. If tier 7 would've been Low tier then he probably should've stayed there, but since it's Bottom tier he should probably move up.

Edit: Removed my King Dedede upvote.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

+

 

[Frihetsanka]

I decided to simply call all the "Upper Mid" or "Lower Mid" voted to Mid (+) and Mid (-) respectively. Let me know which you would prefer and I can change it down the line if needed.

High-Mid and Low-Mid > High Mid and Low Mid > Upper Mid and Lower Mid > Mid (+) and Mid (-).

 

[MarioManTAW]

 

[Bigbomb2]

+ He's got some stuff. When you know the MU he's a lot less annoying but he can do some neat tricks

 

[kaz99]

 

[L1N3R1D3R]

EDIT 1: +1 To help combat the Dedede upvotes and try to ensure that no character moves up.
EDIT 2: Swapped and .

I think a lot of you seem to forget that Zelda has done significantly more for herself recently than the other characters. At the UGC Low Tier tournament, for instance, Nairo was able to win with almost all Zelda, with the only other character in this tier in top 8 being Zguh's Jigglypuff. Perhaps that was because Nairo, but that's still a better result. Also, I can't seem to find it now, but I remember that a Japanese Zelda player recently did really well in a Japanese tournament.

I'm not saying any characters should move up, but rather justifying the order I put them in this tier.

I'm still conflicted with the order of Ganondorf and Jigglypuff, but I've put Ganon higher for now because of familiarity.