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

[WastingPenguins]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntkoUSScfRc

Think again. I know this is Melee, but still, she is just weaker in Brawl.

You're embarrassing yourself worse than you'll ever know.

 

[GofG]

I don't get it.


Metaknight is the easiest character to play at a competitive level; that is why he is at the top of the tierlist.

Captain Falcon is the hardest; that is why he is at the bottom.

Why does this thread exist?

 

[Fletch]

I don't get it.


Metaknight is the easiest character to play at a competitive level; that is why he is at the top of the tierlist.

Captain Falcon is the hardest; that is why he is at the bottom.

Why does this thread exist?

I think they're relating it to an example of like Melee Fox being one of the hardest to play at a competitive level in Melee despite being the number one character in the game. The problem with Brawl is that there is essentially no tech skill to the game and little to no punishment system, so I believe the order for this is essentially the order of the tier list.

 

[mimic_king]

I don't get it.


Metaknight is the easiest character to play at a competitive level; that is why he is at the top of the tierlist.

Captain Falcon is the hardest; that is why he is at the bottom.

Why does this thread exist?

Yeah, after that, it changes. For example, Ice Climbers are higher than Fox, but Fox is easier. Snake is higher than a lot of people, but he is still considered to be hard to play with.

 

[Orion*]

You pretty much described ROB right there, and listed him as the easiest. He can spam like a mofo, but it wont do **** in the competitive scene. ROB has fewer kill moves than Marth, and in fact ROBs moves are more riskey. Plus ROB is VERY un-agile. You have to keep using Glide tossing, RARs, Wavebouncing, and cancels to stay unpredictable.

And theres only like five ROB pros.

i somewhat agree with you

however. ROB pretty much autospaces his moves for you (bair XD)
ntm ROB can camp like gay. Marth cant.

RARing is like universal lol
you can be unpredictable with ROBs basic moveset without ATs.

for kills, ROB is fine, and can gimp well. i could go through a list but you know youre own character >_>

Anyone can master MK within two weeks, tops.

then if i give you a month you should be able to start placing in ankokus rankings, and making money at high level tournaments right?
it takes a long time to learn all of his matchups, flaws and capabilities.

 

[adumbrodeus]

I don't get it.


Metaknight is the easiest character to play at a competitive level; that is why he is at the top of the tierlist.

Captain Falcon is the hardest; that is why he is at the bottom.

Why does this thread exist?

The easiest to play at a competative level within the character.

In other words, to play at the top of the character's metagame, just because a character is weak, that doesn't make the character a hard character to master.

Conversely being good doesn't make the character easy to master.

 

[Remzi]

Why do some of you make it seem like the amount of ATs a character has defines their difficulty. Other things go into a characters learning curve besides ATs.

 

[Orion*]

Why do some of you make it seem like the amount of ATs a character has defines their difficulty. Other things go into a characters learning curve besides ATs.

you can win the thread

 

[Browny]

About MK;

it takes a long time to learn all of his matchups, flaws and capabilities.

This would Totally be sig-worthy If i had more room in my current one... lmao

 

[Dynamism?]

then if i give you a month you should be able to start placing in ankokus rankings, and making money at high level tournaments right?
it takes a long time to learn all of his matchups, flaws and capabilities.

lol I agree with djbrowny.

I did that on day one using Random. Doing that with MK takes a minute. Brawl isn't hard to do well in, especially with MK.

The toughest to play the best with is PT. 3 characters are tougher than 1, no matter who that one is.

 

[adumbrodeus]

Why do some of you make it seem like the amount of ATs a character has defines their difficulty. Other things go into a characters learning curve besides ATs.

Because, they're obviously not familiar with characters that are difficult without ATs.


I lol'd when I saw Marth on the top 3 easiest on a lot of the lists on the first page.

 

[Remzi]

Doesn't the world champion of Melee use Marth? Doesn't he use Marth in Brawl too? Doesn't he win?

Marth is not hard to play with at a competitive level.

*facedesk*

Dude I actually thought this was a joke post for a minute, then I realized it's just stupid.

Assuming your statement that the champion of Melee still did win in Brawl with Marth was true, that would in NO way reflect Marth's learning curve. After all, he was the champ for a reason, he spent a ton of time to nearly master the character, he didn't just play for a couple of days and get good. Also, the fact that Marth still wins a decent amount of tournaments is because he is a good character, not because he is easy to use. Your backing doesn't make any sense at all.

Also, best Melee and Brawl player = m2k. m2k uses Metaknight.

 

[Wylde]

still lol @ diddy being easiest to use.

 

[cj.Shark]

since when was marth exactly "hard to use?" not saying hes the easiest or even top 3 but you gotta admit marth isnt that hard. saying "omg marth has spacing" well every character does, the fact that marth has it Much easier with spacing makes it a big plus.
GoGo its marth!
Space with f-airs and d-tilts
Punish with DB or UpB OoS
Kill with edgeguarding or F-smash out of shield
marth really has nothing beyond the basics to learn and anone who is looking for a good secondary that already has most of theese basics will have an easy time learning how to be a competent not tourney winner material..but a competent marth capable of being a good counterpick.

 

[IxxI]

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

Agreed.

10char

 

[TreK]

then if i give you a month you should be able to start placing in ankokus rankings, and making money at high level tournaments right?
it takes a long time to learn all of his matchups, flaws and capabilities.

*10facepalms*
You can say that for every single character in the game. Seriously worst point evr...

 

[IxxI]

I'm just going to say the hardest.
Pikachu
Falco
Ice Climbers

 

[SirDumpling]

Easiest:
Game and watch
Marth
Ike

Hardest:
Diddy Kong
IC
Pikachu

For me anyways

 

[adumbrodeus]

since when was marth exactly "hard to use?" not saying hes the easiest or even top 3 but you gotta admit marth isnt that hard. saying "omg marth has spacing" well every character does, the fact that marth has it Much easier with spacing makes it a big plus.
GoGo its marth!
Space with f-airs and d-tilts
Punish with DB or UpB OoS
Kill with edgeguarding or F-smash out of shield
marth really has nothing beyond the basics to learn and anone who is looking for a good secondary that already has most of theese basics will have an easy time learning how to be a competent not tourney winner material..but a competent marth capable of being a good counterpick.

The issue isn't so much that his game is complex.

The issue is that his game requires a level of precision far beyond most characters in the game.

His spacing margins are very tight, and without that spacing, he becomes pretty much useless. Granted, he definitely has the moves to maintain that spacing. But in practice, doing it at a competitive level is very difficult.

I'll steal a quote from EL that's one easy example of this:

You are indeed correct.

It seems like Marth has to land a tipper on the actual body of the character for the most part.

And it also seems a characters hurtbox does not fully extend to the entire length of that characters limbs which can be annoying when you want to land a tipper.

Also sometimes if you aim to tipper a specific part of the body, often times Marth's sword will actually hit a different part of the body so you won't get a tipper. Like say you want to hit someones head with a tipper but the inside of Marth's sword makes contact with a characters shoulder or something before you can tipper the head and you get a non-tipper instead.

This just reinforces the fact that Marth is about 100% precision at all times.

Actually, the entire thread that the quote is in pretty much explains why Marth is 100% precision at all times. That's just how you're required to play Marth competitively, and that's why he's hard.

It's not about his game being overly complex, it's just that applying it well is VERY difficult.

Easiest:
...
Marth

phail

 

[nightSN]

diddy kong is HARD to use at competitive level.
and lucario is not that easy to use at competitive level. to me marth and lucario are on the same boat.

 

[Clai]

His spacing margins are very tight, and without that spacing, he becomes pretty much useless. Granted, he definitely has the moves to maintain that spacing. But in practice, doing it at a competitive level is very difficult.

Every character has a very tight margin of space to look over, this isn't exclusive to Marth. Besides, when does Marth become useless without spacing margins? This isn't like Bowser who can get comboed into rediculousness every time someone gets into his zone; nor is it like Pit whose options are greatly reduced to almost zero when someone zones him. Marth has plenty of options from far away, up close, in a median range- a good Marth player should be able to get out of any situation and his game is not compromised at any point.

It's the skill of the player, not the character, that plays the biggest role in determining how far he/she will be at a competitive level. If the player is incapable of creating options and spacing well, he/she is not going to advance, no matter whoat character he or she is using.

Actually, the entire thread that the quote is in pretty much explains why Marth is 100% precision at all times. That's just how you're required to play Marth competitively, and that's why he's hard.

It's not about his game being overly complex, it's just that applying it well is VERY difficult.

I'd rather have a character that requires 100% precision all the time than a character that has to cover a huge weakness that, if exploited at any time, creates an almost insurmountable hole that the player can't climb out of. Marth can't get comboed easily, gimped easily, or be rendered usless at any situation. There is no shortcoming that prevents Marth from becoming competitive.

If we're assuming (which I don't think we are) that the player being discussed here is a newb that needs to climb to a competitive level (and thus doesn't have the gist of proper spacing and such), then Marth is definately not the right choice. However, if we're assuming (which I think we are) that the player we're talking about is a player that is knowledgeable about spacing and zoning and all the player needs to do is learn the minutae of the character, then I think Marth is an easy choice.

 

[maxmillion]

Easist:

1.Metaknight
2.Kirby
3.Lucario

Hardest:

1.Ice climbers
2.Sonic
3.Mario

Note: This is just MY personal opinion!

 

[CR4SH]

easy
Meta
GW
there's a gap here.

hard
IC
Diddy
maybe sonic.

Obviously flawed logic on some level. As for the easiest though, I'm pretty confident it's meta-small gap-GW-big gap- everybone else (I like the typo too much to correct).

 

[adumbrodeus]

Every character has a very tight margin of space to look over, this isn't exclusive to Marth. Besides, when does Marth become useless without spacing margins? This isn't like Bowser who can get comboed into rediculousness every time someone gets into his zone; nor is it like Pit whose options are greatly reduced to almost zero when someone zones him. Marth has plenty of options from far away, up close, in a median range- a good Marth player should be able to get out of any situation and his game is not compromised at any point.

It's the skill of the player, not the character, that plays the biggest role in determining how far he/she will be at a competitive level. If the player is incapable of creating options and spacing well, he/she is not going to advance, no matter whoat character he or she is using.

No, because Marth has signifigantly tighter zones of effectiveness. Granted he has more options outside those zones then a lot of characters, but to play him on the competitive level, since you've got the tools to space to keep them in that area, it just REQUIRES precision.

On the other hand, there's a much larger zone where most characters work optimally against other characters.

Granted, it's different on individual match-ups (try outspacing the Grenades with MK vs. Snake), but in general, Marth has a tiny tiny optimal zone that you gotta use correctly to play him correctly.


This is especially important for high-leveled Marth play because he basically has no safe kill moves, so if you don't play safe the entire game, you're way too vulnerable to low percentage gimps.

I'd rather have a character that requires 100% precision all the time than a character that has to cover a huge weakness that, if exploited at any time, creates an almost insurmountable hole that the player can't climb out of. Marth can't get comboed easily, gimped easily, or be rendered usless at any situation. There is no shortcoming that prevents Marth from becoming competitive.

If we're assuming (which I don't think we are) that the player being discussed here is a newb that needs to climb to a competitive level (and thus doesn't have the gist of proper spacing and such), then Marth is definately not the right choice. However, if we're assuming (which I think we are) that the player we're talking about is a player that is knowledgeable about spacing and zoning and all the player needs to do is learn the minutae of the character, then I think Marth is an easy choice.

You're TOTALLY misunderstanding the topic, we're not talking about which characters are hardest to compete in tournaments with, we're talking about what characters it's hardest to get to the top of the metagame with.

Having a devestating character-specific weakness doesn't make them hard to play at the top of the metagame, it just means that the top of the metagame is going to not be as powerful as it is for other characters. Ganondorf for example, is almost impossible to get far in tournaments with, but his tactics really aren't difficult at all. The spacing is easy to understand (but hard to maintain except against some characters. The only really difficult point is the extensive Yomi required to make flamechoke REALLY effective.


Granted, some characters have complex strategies that simply make them very difficult to understand and play. But the requirement of ungodly precision is as much a factor in character difficulty as the complexity of utilizing and understanding the strategies.


And realistically speaking, spacing is not anywhere near as easy as you make it out to be. It's one of the higher understandings of competative gaming. It's just some characters have such wide margins of error for "optimal spacing" that it SEEMS easy. But at the top levels of play, there's a very obvious difference between spacing with Marth and spacing with Falcon.

 

[yummynbeefy]

hardest: jigglypuff, ice climbers, zss

easiest: d3, mk, marth


on a side note id say my character(pit) is a tough one but no where near the hardest

 

[cj.Shark]

You're TOTALLY misunderstanding the topic, we're not talking about which characters are hardest to compete in tournaments with, we're talking about what characters it's hardest to get to the top of the metagame with.

You obviously didnt read the title. it says easiest/most difficult characters to play at a competitive level. competitive level =/= top of metagame

 

[furyberserk]

I've masterd all but Diddy, Rob, TL, and none other than OLIMAR. I want to be stubbon and just put Olimar off completely. Ganondorf has very easy tactics; Link doesn't need skill, just common since and attack time/stun; and Falcon is the most easiest, don't:
jump off the stage, use ariels as arials, and always grab. Falcon maybe my favorite, but Fox is my best. Trash tiers are the easiest.

 

[King Funk]

It's a pretty hard question to answer because it depends entirely on the player's general fighting game style and learning technique/ability. We've also have to separate "mastering the character" and "playing him at competitive level", the first meaning how hard the learning process is, and the second how generally safe the mastered character is while playing in competitive level. But I'll just give my opinion.

Easiest to master/play at competitive level:
- Meta Knight ---> GOD tier

...-Other than Meta Knight-...

Easiest to master:
- Game and Watch
- R.O.B
- Pit

Easiest to play at competitive level:
- Snake
- Game and Watch
- R.O.B

Hardest to master:
- Ice Climbers
- Diddy Kong
- Falco

Hardest to play in competitive level:
- Captain Falcon
- Jigglypuff
- Ganondorf

 

[Nic64]

GAW is definitely easiest IMO, I don't think any other character has so much potential in such a shallow, easy to use package. hardest is harder to call because some characters will simply never be competitive period, I feel like it would be redundant to say it was ganondorf when the difficulty of making him competitive is "impossible" given what some characters can do to him

 

[Tianxiazhai]

Hardest: Diddy, GaW, Diddy
Easiest: MetaKnight

 

[Neon9837]

Easiest and hardest

Easiest(for me) - MK, Snake and ROB

Hardest-CF, Peach and Luigi

 

[Neon9837]

Easiest for me- MK, ROB and Snake

Hardest- CF, Peach and Luigi

 

[adumbrodeus]

You obviously didnt read the title. it says easiest/most difficult characters to play at a competitive level. competitive level =/= top of metagame

Take a look at his explanation, he said "at a high level of competition" and further explains, aka, the character's limits or close to.


Again, Captain Falcon's limits are a lot lower, but it's easier to get to.

 

[Clai]

No, because Marth has signifigantly tighter zones of effectiveness. Granted he has more options outside those zones then a lot of characters, but to play him on the competitive level, since you've got the tools to space to keep them in that area, it just REQUIRES precision.

On the other hand, there's a much larger zone where most characters work optimally against other characters.

Granted, it's different on individual match-ups (try outspacing the Grenades with MK vs. Snake), but in general, Marth has a tiny tiny optimal zone that you gotta use correctly to play him correctly.


This is especially important for high-leveled Marth play because he basically has no safe kill moves, so if you don't play safe the entire game, you're way too vulnerable to low percentage gimps.

Marth can handle himself offstage far better than almost every character which doesn't have multiple jumps or rocket boosters, considering the speed and range his aerials come out to prevent the other character from gimping him.

Give me characters which have "much larger optimal zones" than Marth and I'll give you weaknesses which hinder the character more than Marth's higher degree of precision. The only character which does a better job at this type of game than Marth is Metaknight, and Metaknight has the problems of getting comboed early, light weight, and being so overused in tournaments that any person striving to play in high-level competition will look to dismantle all but the best Metaknight players.

You're TOTALLY misunderstanding the topic, we're not talking about which characters are hardest to compete in tournaments with, we're talking about what characters it's hardest to get to the top of the metagame with.

-__-

Taken from the first post:

I was wondering what the opinions of the SWF were on which characters were easiest/hardest to play at a high level of competition.

You're the one that's mistaken, and my previous explanation does not justify the errors you have here. High level of competition implies competitiveness, as in high-level players going against each other, so it actually is a combination of playing at the top of the metagame and playing in tournaments.

Having a devestating character-specific weakness doesn't make them hard to play at the top of the metagame, it just means that the top of the metagame is going to not be as powerful as it is for other characters. Ganondorf for example, is almost impossible to get far in tournaments with, but his tactics really aren't difficult at all. The spacing is easy to understand (but hard to maintain except against some characters. The only really difficult point is the extensive Yomi required to make flamechoke REALLY effective.

In reality, the "top of the metagame" is dependant on how much you master that particular character; as a Metaknight at the top of his metagame will nearly always beat a Captain Falcon at the top of his metagame. You can a Captain Falcon with the best space control, the best usage of all of his moves, the best mindgame capabilities out of every other Captain Falcon player out there, but his character weaknesses will ensure that Captain Falcon will not beat Metaknight. That is why Captain Falcon is so much harder to play at a competitive level than Metaknight- because his innate character weaknesses will always hold him back.

It's even more devastating when the weakness comes at a vital part of the game like vulnerability to gimps. Let's say, for an example, that the difficulty that Marth needs to maintain his spacing and keep his zone of optimum ability is the same (hypothetically) that Link needs to maintain his spacing while controling his projectiles and using advanced techniques like pivot boosting and such to keep his zone of optimum ability. Now, pretending that all of the on-stage capabilities have the same difficulty, we now look at the potential of gimps. Marth's aerials are fast and have good range, and that allows him both to gimp other characters and prevent himself from getting gimped. Link can barely do anything off the stage offensively and is a sitting duck if he ever has to use his up+B to recover. That glaring weakness makes Link that much harder to play at a competitive level than Marth because if Link messes up his spacing even once, he gets comboed or sent off the stage and gets gimped, leading to a loss of stock.

Granted, some characters have complex strategies that simply make them very difficult to understand and play. But the requirement of ungodly precision is as much a factor in character difficulty as the complexity of utilizing and understanding the strategies.

See the paragraph above.

And realistically speaking, spacing is not anywhere near as easy as you make it out to be. It's one of the higher understandings of competative gaming. It's just some characters have such wide margins of error for "optimal spacing" that it SEEMS easy. But at the top levels of play, there's a very obvious difference between spacing with Marth and spacing with Falcon.

Agreed, but as I said earlier, any player who wants even a shot at high-level play will already have spacing covered. With most other characters, the player will need to incorporate new strategies and work their moveset around any weaknesses that moveset has in providing that spacing. Marth's moveset gives him more than he needs to create proper spacing; the player just has to perfect it.

Also, realistically speaking, nobody can play at 100% precision all of the time. In that sense, the player needs to find a way to get out of a disadvantageous situation in order to even the playing field and return to a neutral state without having too much damage done to him. In that area, Marth does that better than just about any other character in the game, and if I'm wrong here, tell me who does it better.

Oh, and since you bring up Ganondorf (a character we both love to use), you are right in that it isn't particularly hard to bring him up to the top of his metagame. However, he has so many weaknesses and has so many bad matchups that playing him competitively isn't really hard, but rather pointless. Really high risk, minimal reward. That's why I kept to mostly middle-tier characters when I put up my list of hardest to use, because they actually have rewards to justify taking the huge risks involved with them.

 

[jehonaker]

I'm surprised that Yoshi really isn't mentioned as being tough to use competitively. His mediocre killing power and poor shield are sometimes tough to work around.

I feel the toughest to use competitively with any success are:
-Lucario
-Luigi
-Yoshi
-Pikachu
-Ice Climbers

The easiest are:
-Meta Knight
-King Dedede
-Falco
-Diddy Kong

 

[AlAxe]

Why do people think Diddy is easy? You really have to be a complete master with bananas to play competitively with Diddy. He's probably the most technical character in the entire game. There's practically a new technique for him discovered every day.

Easiest
MK
G&W
DDD
Marth

Hardest
IC
Diddy (a bit biased but I think it's true)
Lucario
Link
Bowser

 

[mimic_king]

Diddy isn't one of the hardest. You even said yourself, you need to be the master of bananas to be good with him. Being the master takes time, but doesn't classify Diddy as the hardest.

 

[bigman40]

Hardest: Yoshi

Nuff said...

 

[Omis]

Easiest for me- MK, ROB and Snake

Hardest- CF, Peach and Luigi

†Are you kidding?†
†Snake takes forever to be used well.†

 

[Barge]

†Are you kidding?†
†Snake takes forever to be used well.†

Ftilt
Upsmash
Nades
Utilt