Things you thought about "tiers" before knowing about the competetive scene

[JamietheAuraUser]

Similarly, my brother was convinced that Pichu was one of the best characters, because clearly if he's so strong he has to self-damage during attacks, he must by a nightmare used in the right hands.

Didn't stop him from maining Roy instead though.

Well, Pichu can certainly make a nightmare of himself in casual play. If your opponent is stupid enough to eat a fully-charged Side Special, they deserve that OHKO!

 

[The Slayer]

For Smash 64, always thought Samus was pretty terrible and Ness nearly useless. Didn't realized they can both be monsters if they're competitively used right (and Samus being TAS with cancels everywhere is a crazy sight).

For Melee, Roy was obviously better than Marth. I thought Doc was a lot stronger than Mario. Fox and Falco to me were very gimpy and Peach OP. I guess i was wrong when I first came into the competitive scene. All those thoughts changed pretty quickly.
Though, I still think Peach is quite ridiculous in Melee.

For Brawl, I thought Snake, Dedede and Olimar might be most potent in the scene while Mr. G&W was gonna be top tier (he hits like a truck in Brawl now compared to Melee). Didn't realized Meta-Knight was going take that place with an iron fist instead.

 

[DakotaBonez]

Before I learned about the competitive scene, I thought tiers were based solely on how often a character was used

I wasnt being sarcastic, I seriously thought they were based solely on how often a character was used until about 5 minutes ago when I googled it.

 

[Frank Weast]

Before: how the hell is jiggly so high on the melee tier list
After: (looks at jiggly) what the hell are you

 

[Toledo Jones]

In Melee I thought Mewtwo was the best because he was the strongest pokemon, & I thought jigglypuff was one of the worst characters, I couldn't have been more wrong about both. Funnily enough, in Jiggz's case, I thought she was amazing in Brawl because I could use her much better than in Melee. funny how that is. & in Brawl I thought that Meta Knight was useless because I could never get a KO as him.

 

[JabbatheHutt]

Before I knew about tiers i thought Pickachu was the most OP char in smash not MK.

But if you mean Tiers, Wario uses them to his advantage.

 

[AceX19]

Before I knew about tiers I used to play as Link and Pit. That explains soo much! lol Now I use Falco and Marth

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

Before I knew about tiers I used to play as Link and Pit. That explains soo much! lol Now I use Falco and Marth

Pfft I still play as Pit. My friends have learned to hate rolls, jab combos, and the mirror shield because we're all scrubs. I'm just very slightly less scrub than they are.

 

[Brian_Buckley]

When I was 8 I played Roy because I thought he looked awesome and the fire sword was just bad ass, and I thought Marth was just his lame brother that no one ever played. Fast forward 13 years and now I'm a Marth main.

 

[Sir Bubbles]

PRE COMPETETIVE
2005(When I was 6): Luigi is the best, Link and Roy are really good, Kirby's good rest all suck. Jigglypuff is the wordt

2013: Link is good, so are spacies, Sheik is good, Roy is better than Marth, Kirby and the rest are okay Mario bros suck, especially Doc and other clone characters.

POST COMPETETIVE
2014: Boy was I wrong.

 

[Morbi]

My tier-list was not very accurate as I used to only play in a free-for-all, all stages, all items rule-set. So characters such as Ganondorf were actually at the top of the tier list, whereas characters such as Meta Knight were bottom.

I had no idea that Meta Knight was broken in competitive or that Ganondorf was bottom. My tier-list was essentially the inverse of the "official" tier-list.

 

[JediLink]

I mained Link in Melee for many, many years and I used to think that he was the best character. I now realise that he isn't. I still use him though, especially against people who don't know the matchup.

 

[Malcolm Belmont]

Honestly in the Brawl days my main was King Dedede but i always thought he would be Low Tier..guess i was wrong

 

[Totally Casual]

I thought the top 5 in Melee were Sheik, Pikachu, Samus, Marth & Link and the top 5 in Brawl were Snake, Pikachu, Kirby, Meta Knight and Pit.

 

[Petrichor]

I thought that Kirby was awesome in Melee and that the Ice Climbers were terrible. I thought that Fox and Falco were great though, so hopefully I win a few points back for that.

In Brawl I didn't think Olimar was very good. I feel slightly vindicated by the fact that that was apparently the competitive community's first impression of him as well.

 

[CroonerMike]

I used to think smash was fun.

 

[roymustang1990-]

I didn't know stuff like tiers existed back in 2003 when I played melee.

it did often occur to me how the " fun" for melee,reawakened when I played constant 1v1s as fox(who was unconcidentally my favorite character) versus CPU level 9 falco.

Now I know why

 

[A Lucky Person]

In Melee my older brother always played as Fox, and he would beat me most of the time so I thought Fox was amazing. I mained Young Link and thought he was one of the best characters too just because I liked him.

In Brawl I thought Ike was the cheapest character in the game, and my good friend who I play with all the time would ONLY use Ike. He literally never played with any other characters. Around 2011-2012 I got a lot better, learned how to deal with Ike, and started maining Olimar and found that I could gimp Ike's over-b recovery super easily with the pikmin toss. He switched to Marth.

I also thought Pit was too good because of all of his "cheap" special moves.

 

[STiCKYBULL3TZ]

These are Melee thoughts:

I thought Fox and Falco were the best in the game because they gave me the most challenge as lvl 9 CPU. In the the right hands they would be ultimate. (Right on this one)
I thought Luigi was one of the best because he was/is my main.(He's A-tier at least)
Any character that was fast had to be the best characters (Mostly right)
Zelda would be high tier because she can turn to Sheik and Sheik is fast (Turns out Zelda is rated differently from Sheik)
Roy and YLink were better than Marth and Link because fire

 

[Symba]

Before I even knew about tiers, I knew that if you were good enough you could make a character play to their strengths. Even after I started playing competitively I still have that mindset. Really great examples of this are.. Sethlon and Amsa. But when I was younger it was still about who looks cooler so I always thought whoever is coolest and fastest is the best xD

 

[Dr. Krumm]

Me and 2 brothers were actually sorta close to the tier list with our thoughts of characters. We always said that Fox was the best, however we did think that Shiek was second and below those 2 we had characters like Captain Falcon, Samus, Falco, Ganondorf, etc.

Pretty much every character in the A and S tier list we deemed were good before we knew anything about the game (we didn't even know about L-Cancel).

Oh, and Mewtwo was one of the worst. By far. (we were so sad when we discovered this, as was everyone I'm sure)

 

[AceX19]

Pfft I still play as Pit. My friends have learned to hate rolls, jab combos, and the mirror shield because we're all scrubs. I'm just very slightly less scrub than they are.

lol I kno that feeling! I used to spam Pits arrows and neutral a until I actually learned how to use him better. but its rare for me to use him now.

 

[menotyou135]

I thought Shiek was 1 and Marth was 2. I put Fox at like mid teir.

 

[Busterbie]

Even when i was younger with freinds, knowing nothing, about competetive play, we all knew metaknight was too good.
Also me and the people i was playing brawl with always though pit was OP.
But seriusly we knew very little about smash, we didn't even know you could roll, or do tilt attacks

 

[8-peacock-8]

Didn't care about tiers since i knew nothing about them originally.

All i knew about tiers was the joke "Tiers are for *insert derogatory term here*"

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

I used to think smash was fun.

Thought you left Pidgeon Man.

 

[LOGIA666]

In Melee, I thought that the best characters were Fox, Marth, Link, and Mewtwo.
For Brawl: I could already tell from a casual perspective that Meta Knight was broken. I also thought that Kirby and Sonic were OP.

 

[Wanderer from Roseyard]

The first time someone explained Melee tiers to me in, maybe, 2004, they said that if two characters were controlled with perfect, inhuman hands, the one higher on the tier list would win every time. It led to me thinking that the tier list was like a linear totem pole of power until realizing it was derived from a matchup table. I can't believe I used to trust goons on message boards.

 

[25%Cotton]

I thought Jigglypuff was the worst character in Melee.

Boy was I wrong.

i remember back when melee had freshly come out. i was in fifth grade.
my classmates were talking about the game, and they were wondering why jigglypuff was even in the game since she was so bad.

...
i wasn't even very good, but i knew that what i could do with jigglypuff would astonish and destroy them.

 

[MioTinto]

I thought that G&W sucked.

 

[Giga Wario]

64: Kirby was broken, Jigglypuff is terrible, Falcon Punch was the best move EVER

Melee: Kirby's the worst character, with Ness & Samus taking 2nd & 3rd place. Link & Mario are the 2 best characters, Mewtwo is terrible but not as bad as the bottom 3, Luigi is balls

Brawl: Pit is broken and the best character by a country mile, Meta Knight was only high tier, Snake mid, Mario had to be mid tier since he was the balanced character, worst characters are Ike, Samus, Pokemon Trainer & Sonic, nobody cares about Toon Link because he stinks

Well, I got a few things right...

 

[Oatmeal.]

Pre-competitive: ROY AND ONLY ROY. BAN PIT FROM LIFE.

Post-competitive: Tiers are just garbage that attract swarms of flies, being 90% of the Fox and Marth mains. Play who you want, not who is supposedly the best. Just look at aMSa, Sethlon, DJNintendo, and all of my Pichu brethren.

 

[Ghoti]

I thought that characters that dealt the most damage per hit (regardless of lag and various other aspects) were inherently more superior than those with weaker attacks.

 

[Saikyoshi]

Pre-competitive:

I thought every character was equally good (except Marth, who I thought was worse than Pichu, and to be honest I still find him incredibly boring, and Jigglypuff, who I honestly thought was meant to functionally be a Sandbag substitute).

My opinion on tiers was that the competitive [insert slur]s (Past me's words) artificially engineered the tier list to make everyone only play as their personal mains.

I also thought tiers meant, "You can only ever play as #1. Even #2 is as suicidal as #(Graham's Number)."

Post-competitive:

The divisions are unpleasant and I wish the tiers were closer together, but I'm proud to consider myself a specialist.

 

[Niala]

Certain characters had better tools to deal with the rest of the cast as compared to other characters.

Oh wait.

 

[Narigo1]

I thought was the one of the best characters in Brawl before i became a competitive player

 

[DonkeyStrong]

I thought was the one of the best characters in Brawl before i became a competitive player

I've seen ike kick ass

 

[Sykkamorre]

Before I learnt about tier lists...I thought tier lists worked.

 

[PingPongCop]

In Melee, I thought the best character was always Falco, because my friend from Alabama would always whoop me with him whenever he came over. I also thought that the worst characters were Roy, Jigglypuff, and Luigi. Link was just below high tier.

In Brawl, I immediately decided that Sonic was super OP. My cousin would always win as him. Thought that Pit was high tier, as well as Fox, Falco, Mario, and Diddy Kong. It didn't take me long to figure out Meta Knight was the most broken.

 

[LancerStaff]

I've always thought that certain characters were better then others, and I'd usually agree with a list for the most part after looking some things up. Yeah, pretty boring story...

A couple of my friends though... Bleh. When our little group would get together, we'd always be getting into arguments about stage and character bans. Naturally, a few of them thought all stages should be played and characters banned, as backwards as it is. It was Melee, and we already had like five characters "officially" banned by that point, none of them being any good. The best player out of all of us decided that'd be the day he gets everybody banned, namely the main of the one banning, Jigglypuff.

Well, let's just say some bridges were burned and leave it at that.