The Easiest/Most Difficult characters to play at a competitive level?

[TofuToph]

I know I main Falcon but doesn't anyone think Falcon is hard to use? Considering he has trouble approaching people and his overall lack of priority. I guess not but hey, Olimar is definitely easy to use haha, as are MK and G&W.
Oh god and Zelda is really easy to use, she is one of the spammiest characters in the game!!!

However, I believe Ness, Lucas, Sonic, Falcon and Link are very difficult to use in tournaments, though I'm not saying it's impossible (see: Anther's Sonic haha)

 

[fissionprime]

Why give them props for using an underused character? Give the props if they're winning with a bad character, not an underused one.

I haven't seen a better post in a long time, its absolutely true, people using underused characters should be trying to bring the usage of that character up to an acceptable level, not winning and acting like they're great just because the character isn't used much even though they may be a good character.

 

[Yuna]

I know I main Falcon but doesn't anyone think Falcon is hard to use? Considering he has trouble approaching people and his overall lack of priority. I guess not but hey, Olimar is definitely easy to use haha, as are MK and G&W.
Oh god and Zelda is really easy to use, she is one of the spammiest characters in the game!!!

However, I believe Ness, Lucas, Sonic, Falcon and Link are very difficult to use in tournaments, though I'm not saying it's impossible (see: Anther's Sonic haha)

There's a difference between difficulty of winning and difficulty of controlling.

 

[TofuToph]

There's a difference between difficulty of winning and difficulty of controlling.

Well are we discussing characters that are difficult to use? I still stand by the characters I said haha.

 

[shaSLAM]

Marth is not easy to play competitveily at a high level...

yeah he is.

 

[Plum]

Not basic to use well though. I'd like to see a bunch of random n00bs pick him up and "Use Him Well at a Competitive Level" like it says in the thread title.

I would say that if you can already play at a competitive level and select Marth you are going to do much better than if you select a character such as IC or Olimar. Yes, Marth requires very good spacing to master but it is not about mastering, but doing well.

As far as characters go Marth is a basic character as far as what he can do. He has a sword, a counter and no projectiles. That is basic and I would love to see you argue against that being a basic character setup. I'm also sure it is safe to say that even players who haven't played Marth know what his moveset is and they have a general idea of what does what.

That being said, anybody can select Marth and do good enough to not get their *** handed to them. Are they going to receive a lot of props and attention for how well they did? No, I doubt that, but they have a chance of winning assuming the other person is equal skill level. They haven't mastered Marth's spacing and what kill move to use when but they will put up a fight, and if they get some lucky tippers they might win.

As for me, I would say the easiest to use would be:
Game & Watch
Meta Knight

Hardest:
IC
Olimar

As far as the hardest part goes, that is biased because I secondary both characters. Whether that is true or not I haven't experienced the learning curve of other characters to the level I had to with them...

 

[Johnny Pteran]

The Easiest: MetaKnight, closely followed by G&W (seriously, no advanced techniques, all you basically have to do is use the bair and throw in a couple smashes)

The Hardest: In my opinion, it's a tie between Zero Suit Samus and Diddy Kong. All those banana tricks, easily-messed-up recovery... And all those combos with ZSS.

 

[TofuToph]

Olimar is definitely easy to use you guys. Please don't say otherwise. His smashes are disjointed, fast, with safe ranges. He has a ridiculous grab range and it requires very precise timing to dodge a grab or smash because the pikmin get you on the way back (or falling down from a forward smash). You can stand in place and dominate with Olimar. >.>

Blah sorry I just really hate him.

 

[xxHammerxx]

I would say that if you can already play at a competitive level and select Marth you are going to do much better than if you select a character such as IC or Olimar. Yes, Marth requires very good spacing to master but it is not about mastering, but doing well.

As far as characters go Marth is a basic character as far as what he can do. He has a sword, a counter and no projectiles. That is basic and I would love to see you argue against that being a basic character setup. I'm also sure it is safe to say that even players who haven't played Marth know what his moveset is and they have a general idea of what does what.

That being said, anybody can select Marth and do good enough to not get their *** handed to them. Are they going to receive a lot of props and attention for how well they did? No, I doubt that, but they have a chance of winning assuming the other person is equal skill level. They haven't mastered Marth's spacing and what kill move to use when but they will put up a fight, and if they get some lucky tippers they might win.

As for me, I would say the easiest to use would be:
Game & Watch
Meta Knight

Hardest:
IC
Olimar

As far as the hardest part goes, that is biased because I secondary both characters. Whether that is true or not I haven't experienced the learning curve of other characters to the level I had to with them...

If you can use a character competitively already, of course you would be able to use Marth better than Olimar. But the thread I think means that if you just got the game, who'd be the easiest to use. SOLID I think knows that Marth is easier than IC's, but not as easy as MK or GnW. IMo Marth's in the middle.

 

[Yuna]

Well are we discussing characters that are difficult to use? I still stand by the characters I said haha.

Then you are still wrong. Zelda being one of the easiest to use Competitively my tuchas.

 

[Steeler]

i find it curious that there are very few low/mid tier character mentions in this thread. sure, some characters are bad enough that you cannot play them competitively regardless of your skill but for all we know, a few characters down there are "good enough" to be competitive, but are just so difficult to play (and don't have many people playing them) that they haven't been able to really penetrate the smash scene yet. the game is less than a year old, after all.

zero suit samus is strange to play because she's so unique. none of her tilts/smashes kill on their own, and yet she still has good kill power with forward b and her aerials. she also has pretty bad OoS options, it takes a good player to get around that.

anyway, no character in this game is "easy" to play...except for Mr. Game & Watch.

 

[Crystanium]

Infinite Dimensional Caping is not easy.

I found no difficulty in learning it. I saw what the people did in a YouTube video, and then I followed their example. It's not hard.

 

[Remzi]

Anyone who says Marth is easy to use clearly doesn't know what it takes to get good with him.

Easiest: MK, G&W, D3

Hardest: Yoshi, , ICs

 

[Kage Me]

Ice Climbers, definitely. I main them, and I still haven't mastered them (in particular desynching), what does that tell you?

Easiest would be Meta Knight.

 

[ComboBaker]

Easiest:
MK
GW
D3
Hardest:
IC
Olimar
Peach

 

[Blad01]

Easiest :
1. MK
2. King DDD
3. Olimar

G&W is not hard to "use", but it can pretty hard to win with him in a very good competitive environment, since he's very predictable...

Hardest :
1. Capt. Falcon obviously
2. Falco
3. Samus
4. Ice Climbers

 

[Deleted member]

Easy
1. G&W (hardly any AT's but Bucket Braking)
2. MK (obvious)
3. DeDeDe (chaingrabs)

Hard
1. Ganondorf (next to IMPOSSIBLE to play competitively)
2. Jiggly (Does poorly in tournies, believe me I've tried)
3. Falcon (If Maxfire were here he'd say the Prima guide says Falcon is awesome)

 

[mimic_king]

1. Capt. Falcon Obviously
2. falco
3. Samus
4. Ice Climbers

WTF?? How can you say that?

 

[iLink]

*looks at tier list*

 

[mimic_king]

Falco is top tier, so I dont know what you're talking about.

 

[YagamiDark]

Falco does have a bunch of AT's.

 

[Vlade]

Diddy kong IMO is one of the hardest characters to play at a competitive level.

Easiest: King Dedede, Game and Watch, MK
Hardest: Most Low Tier Characters, All Bottom Tier Characters, Ice Climbers

Falco isn't easy to play, but he isn't the hardest either. Probably in the middle.

 

[fox219]

link = epic win! toon link too!

 

[Regam]

A lot of it depends on your playstyle/experience with the character. Falco was always somewhat difficult for me. Of course, so was MK (who I've probably used a grand total of eight times).

Overall? I'd say MK and G&W are the easiest, with Olimar (it takes a while to get used to the pikmin style) and Pika at th most difficult. For me, it's a completely different list (ROB easiest, Toon Link hardest).

 

[Luigi player]

Easiest: King Dedede, Meta Knight, Ike...

Hardest: Ness, Sonic and Ganondorf.

 

[omegablackmage]

im sorry everyone, but why do you guys put gw as easy.

he's easy to get to a mediocre level, but really... how many really good gw's are there? what... 3?
how many good snakes/mks/ddds? too many to count...

 

[Clai]

im sorry everyone, but why do you guys put gw as easy.

he's easy to get to a mediocre level, but really... how many really good gw's are there? what... 3?

I absolutely agree with this statement here. Game and Watch has disjointed aerials and powerful smashes, but its smashes are pretty easily telegraphed and G-dub isn't exactly the most fluent and mobile guy around. Yeah it's easy to get 'decent' with the guy, but once good players (as in those in the competitive level) figure out how to get G&W's tricks, there isn't too much that G&W can get out of his sleeve.

Marth, on the other hand, isn't seen as an overpowered character, but he's very safe to use. Very mobile, quick aerials, near-instant options out of shield and a great popularity hung over from Melee, and you have a character that people can use at the competitive level very, very easily.

Easiest:
-Dedede
-Marth
-ROB

Hardest:
-Ice Climbers
-Bowser
-Pikachu

 

[LuigiKing]

Easiest: MK, Marth, Falco

Hardest: Ice Climbers, Pika, Diddy

 

[XxBlackxX]

easiest: MK, D3, Falco, GnW

hardest: ICs, Diddy, ...uh....Capt Falcon?

 

[Plum]

im sorry everyone, but why do you guys put gw as easy.

he's easy to get to a mediocre level, but really... how many really good gw's are there? what... 3?
how many good snakes/mks/ddds? too many to count...

G&W has very few specific AT's for him, and those he has are simple to pick up. Bucket braking for instance takes like 5 seconds to get the hang of, Nair and bucket and you just saved yourself... simple

Yeah, I agree that getting to the top level with G&W is hard but most people competing aren't at the top level. If you rated Smash players on a scale from 1-5, most competitors would be at a 3-4 with top players taking a 5, and to get a G&W to that 3-4 level doesn't take too much.

With other characters you might have to spend hours of training to get down ATs and then even more time implementing them into play, but with G&W (at least in my experience of finding a main) you just have to play around in friendlies to get the hang of him.

You aren't going to be as good as Hylian or xYz anytime soon, duh, but G&W has a small learning curve where as somebody like Olimar has a huge one to get WAC down, color placement, the huge amount of DI skill needed with his recovery issues, which Pikmin to use against which character and etc. Just try playing Snake without any Olimar knowledge and watch every Pikmin you have die when his explosions eat you up. Yeah Olimar is a fortress but only when you know exactly what you are doing.

 

[EWING]

A tier list assumes all the ATs of a character as given, that is, that the person using the character can reliably pull off the stuff his/her character can do without consideration of difficulty. So, no, you don't just look to a tier list.

As a GW player, he's got to be up there in terms of easiness. He doesn't have to work for safe damage and he doesn't have to work for easy kills. With MK, you need to have a modicum of intelligence to get a kill, as small as it may be.

Hardest to make effective in competitive play is different. There are a lot of different standards you can use (possible ATs, lack of decent moves, poor character stats like speed or size, etc). I don't really know which one you can go by.

 

[lordsturm473]

I think it really depends on the person's playstyle... Everyone here is listing Marth as easier to pick up than Olimar, but in my experience (I'm not really up to the pro standard yet, but I'm no slouch at this game), when searching for a main in Brawl the first time I picked it up, I couldn't get a kill with Marth, whereas Olimar fit like a glove. I dunno, maybe it's just for me, but I still think it definitely varies between players.
But if I had to pick generally, I'd say the easiest are Meta Knight, Ike and Game+Watch, and the hardest are Ness, Pokemon Trainer and Link.

 

[Denzi]

Falco is top tier, so I dont know what you're talking about.

Since when does tier placement relate at all to ease of use? They're not at all the same thing.

And I still stand by Link being one of the toughest to use competitively. He has tons of AT's to master/remember, and even some not so A T's that take a while to get the hang of. He is also very heavy, falls fast(the fastest?), and has a horrible recovery. It takes a good player to get around all that.

@ Lordsturm: Ike's not at all easy to use competively. Remember that this thread isn't about ease of learning, it's about how easy it is to use the character competitively.

 

[lordsturm473]

Fair enough. I thought I'd be catching the online demographic with that one, but if we're just talking competitively here, then that's another story.
I'd replace Ike with DeDeDe then, probably.

 

[omegablackmage]

well if your talking about AT's then ya i guess gw is easy, but who cares about ATs? only a few characters have At's that are worthwhile

imo the only level of compeitiveness that matter is the top, because thats when you win. Where do most people lie? ya in the lower ranks, but when tier lists are decided we talk about high level play, why talk about mid here?

 

[GMo]

Falco isn't near as easy as (some) people think. He is by no means the most difficult (ICs and Link come to mind), but certainly nothing like MK and GW.

I think DK was pretty easy for me to pick up. I play him really well and I picked him up not too long ago and play him significantly less than Falco. Just need to space well, learn his good moves and not play sloppy (but I guess you can say that for most everyone).

 

[Cirno]

The tier list.


As a first revision should, it shows what characters get the job done with the least amount of effort from top to bottom.

MK currently has the easiest methods for damage building and koing.

Captain Falcon must get around his horrible priority, perfect sweetspots, work with laggy kill moves, deal with terrible recovery, and find ways around the third jump glitch to even be considered viable.


If you literally meant play instead of play with however, just flip the tier list.

A competent MK is an incredibly difficult match, even using Diddy Kong and Snake who limit alot of his options need to be on a similar level or higher to win.

Likewise, no matter how incredible a player may be Mario users can still cancel out or over prioritize the majority of his attacks with a fireball, gimp him with an airdodge after attempted edgeguard due to the low horizontal movement after a reverse falcon dive.

MK is the easiest don't be fooled by DDD's downthrown domination.

And Capts the hardest, no matter what Rebaz makes it look like.

 

[smaci92]

IC's, Pokemon Trainer, and ZSS for hardest IMO

 

[FrozenHarpie]

I'd say the easiest to just "pick up and use" are Meta(game) Knight, R.O.B. and Pikachu.

IMO, the hardest to play competitively are Zelda, Link and the Climbers.

 

[Backward]

GW does tend to be simply 'spacing his aerials and timing his Smashes' and he's relatively unpunishable. It's not even difficult spacing because there's quite a large room for error. Then it's all about mixing things up seeing as how his attacks feel somewhat telegraphed. That's it to him. You can essentially place high with just that.

Naturally, if anyone knows better, I'm all ears.

EDIT: I hope people didn't think Diddy Kong was easy to master. There's quite a lot you can do with his Bananas.