Tier List Speculation

[Player -0]

Also, you can DI her D-Throw and B-Throw on-reaction so as to avoid any of her nasty followups on bad DI.

Lol?

Here's Ottawa's number one Smasher and the best Link in the World versus the Moon. If you haven't seen it already, maybe this'll help you understand how the Link versus Marth MU works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6FFMcDtBM8

This is a kinda really bad example because it's obvious the Moon has no clue how to play the matchup. He was flubbing easy important stuff too.

 

[JesteRace]

I usually just say Link vs. Marth is even cause the matchup has been debated to death and even if either one wins the matchup, it's not significant enough to matter in practice.

 

[Blue6969]

Lol?.

What? You don't think it can be done?
Sure it can!

The moment that Sheik gets a grab on you, preemptively DI down and away for her D-Throw, and react with the appropriate DI for her B-Throw as soon as you notice the animation begin.

 

[Player -0]

I feel like a bunch of people did a bunch of bad/derpy theory crafting and they said it wasn't possible.

Something something confirmation bias.

idk, if you can all the power to you?

 

[Bazkip]

This is a kinda really bad example because it's obvious the Moon has no clue how to play the matchup. He was flubbing easy important stuff too.

They played again against each other recently, maybe this is a better example (since presumably The Moon would be more familiar with the MU)? The Moon won this time, but it was still a close set

 

[jtm94]

I think Link loses to Marth in every game. His projectiles are slow, he's slow, his grab is slow. Yeah on a big stage maybe things could tilt in his favor if you let him throw junk for a few minutes, but I'm not sure what he's supposed to do on smaller stages when he can't breathe. I don't think it's bad, I just don't see Marth losing.

Link does really good vs GnW and Zelda. Fortunately Sheik takes care of him. I don't even think GnW vs Link is worth attempting for fun.

And don't talk about reacting to grabs. It isn't a fun time for you, me, or anyone reading. It just brings out salt and misinformation that rivals the bad wiki.

 

[CORY]

This is so accurate it hurts.

I cri evrytim

 

[Player -0]

Just watched first 2 games.

Moon's edgeguarding is a ton better but he's still not punishing grab/Spin2win well. Like, spacing for D-Smash/F-Smash after he misses grab should be easy.

 

[DrinkingFood]

ROB for starters.

We can stop saying this now
I don't think there are any notable ROB mains that think this anymore, and the only notable fox mains that say this are either knee-jerking to a new matchup or aren't actually notable fox mains

I feel it's even or close to even, but the transition from 3.5->3.6/3.6b cost ROB a lot in the matchup. Dthrow is no longer a 0-to-death CG where the only option is DI offstage/onto platforms, and while ROB's punish game was busy getting worse on fox, ROB's fall speed increase (mostly) and weight decrease (slightly) gave fox access to uthrow-uair on ROB.

I was one of the only real proponents (from ROB's end) of ROB winning the matchup because I felt that ROB won the punish game hard enough due to being immune to uthrow uair, making grabs inefficient against CC, force fox to mostly dair and letting ROB mostly try to bait out those dairs in neutral to compensate for neutral in a matchup where he still mostly loses it. And then netting the grab more-or-less could guarantee kills for ROB, conversely getting like 10 damage from fox's end and the chance for a risky read against double jump boosts for ROB (with the best option being try to bait out boost nair, which basically gives ROB a way better conversion if hit than fox gets if he baits it out and punishes, meaning fox is better off not ever trying to read it since one bad read costs him a stock and 5 correct reads might take ROB's stock, meaning ROB is better just jumping out of the combo and falling to the ground). But ROB lost the ability to guaranteed hard-punish fox anywhere on the stage, instead having to resort to a tech-mix up with dash attack from dthrow/uthrow (after 25%) or tech chase (before 25%). It's still a doable punish but measurably worse than what he had before. And fox now has an effective throw in the matchup. Keep in mind this disparity in punish game is what I felt made the difference- fox having to win neutral many more times than ROB did per-stock helped neutralize the fact that fox SHOULD be winning neutral more times than ROB. Fox still has a hard time of punishing ROB, and ROB still punishes fox hard, but the disparity isn't big enough

 

[G13_Flux]

Off of what i watched, i can see how it might be even. Im still not quite convinced that link beats marth however.

I am still confident that link doesnt beat roy though. the CCs and conversions are too real. The community Mu chart has roy losing, but i reeallly disagree.

 

[JesteRace]

I could see it being close enough to even as well. It plays pretty similarly to Marth. It has a similar dynamic of "Link wins on big stages, loses on small ones" to it, so I'm fine with calling it even.

I am very confident in saying Link beats Ike though.

 

[Kapapanerp]

Captain Falcon's N-air is the best projectile in the game

Correction; The Cap is the best projectile period

 

[MLGF]

Idk if link beats Ike, Ike's punish game on link is pretty absurd and he's super easy to edgeguard for Ike.

 

[JesteRace]

Link's punish game on Ike is also great (not quite as good), he also can edgeguard Ike well (not quite as well), and he wins the neutral game pretty solidly. +1 bruh.

 

[MLGF]

I'm just playing devil's advocate because people overate it as "one of Ike's worst MU's"
Link prolly wins, but yeah. It's honestly pretty close.

 

[DMG]

There's like 3 active Link players whose opinions I'd trust in PM, and not very many of them are posting in this thread right now concerning this current influx of interest for his MU's.

 

[The Baron]

There's like 3 active Link players whose opinions I'd trust in PM, and not very many of them are posting in this thread right now concerning this current influx of interest for his MU's.

They made the right choice

 

[DMG]

Falcon MU discussion kind of like that, but luckily for 70% of his MU's you get to copy paste LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT KNEE and everyone goes "Oh yeah duh that's Falcon. +1 to +3 Falcon favor"

 

[G13_Flux]

ok well i guess we should all just stop posting then. only top players are allowed to post from now on. everyone else, stop talking. sound better?

just cuz the people posting arent "well known" players doesnt mean we cant contribute to some discussion. thats how people learn to think about MUs, regardless of whether everyone is spot on in their reasoning or not.

 

[JesteRace]

Are you saying I'm not trustworthy?

...

...

...

Cause you're probably right.

 

[DMG]

I just wouldn't attempt to present strong arguments about a particular character or MU unless I had a decent foundation for doing so. Does not only or specifically correlate with being top level though.

Like take Pikachu for example: I got to Winner's Finals at an IaB a bit back by going roughly 50% Pikachu. I can probably do better than some Pika mains in tourney (Pikachu's too hard to solo main though, good lord I respect them)

Doesn't mean I should start going on about Pikachu PM matchups, posting multiple paragraphs and videos from Melee + PM to make a case. I dunno WTF Pikachu does, he's a Small Falcon with Fox Usmash and good recovery. I'm pretty decent and even I have no clue about in-depth Pikachu. (All I know is Pirat Pikachu is the best)

If I'm decent, and you still should take what I say about Pikachu with some grains of salt because idk what I'm talking about, I'd be wary of other people with even less play time or experience with the char going on about his MU's.

Now people who may not be so good, but have a certain MU play out frequently at a high level during their weeklies, or people with top players in the region and they get to watch a lot of sets IRL, that person formulating an opinion and backing it is not something I'm deriding at all.


People speak too confidently and too firmly about MU's in PM IMO without a fairly solid underpinning.

 

[JesteRace]

Alright, lemme go back to all my posts and edit in a "in my humble-because-I-suck opinion" after every sentence, just so it really sinks in for people that ****ing duh, of course none of this is solid fact.

 

[DMG]

People are free to do whatever. There's a sea of opinions, and most of them suck. If bad opinions clash, the outcome is even worse. Trying to steer the ship out of the massive, filthy waters.

The stronger the opinion, generally the stronger the evidence should be to back it. People take the second part and disregard it, or don't understand it. Most people have been guilty of this at some point in Smash though *raises hand*

 

[trash?]

while matchups are obviously important long-term to a tier list, to use them as a basis for a loud, strong argument when it's pretty obvious people don't even strongly believe in what they think their own char MUs are is silly at best, but also possibly within bias

as one I wanna throw out, The Devil's Character, Of Which Only Satanists Enjoy has winning MUs all around currently, yeah... but that's because he's easy to figure out from older games, already learned near-fully, and everyone else around him has years of optimization to go, so they're on the losing side of knowledge. how you place him, thus, depends entirely on how you view a tier list; is it built around what's good right now, or what's good assuming the theoretical top level these characters can go to? I like playing around with the latter, which is why I don't think he's #1, but that still doesn't change that, if you assume the former, he's certainly uncontested.

DMG has the right idea here, I kinda realized how utterly seriously I took a bunch of concepts that could turn out to be horribly ripped apart in one metagame push (s-sorry about that, by the way...), it's not a good thing to have such rigid discussion when the very concept of viability is so loose, and even in well-developed metagames can remain loose.

I don't want that to somehow come out as me talking down (I'm pretty bad at trying not to do that, I'll admit), but it's important to note. this game's got far too long to go for us to be able to figure it out already

also, on link: I don't think his grab is as big of a deal breaker as ppl think it is. he's certainly not too worse off, he still gets great-to-amazing punishes from a grab, so it's just high risk high reward. he might be in an awkward spot long-term due to dealing in extremes, but I feel like that was inevitable given his set of tools, and a more normalized-feeling link just ends up being toon link anyways so it's not like there was anywhere else he could go.

 

[jtm94]

I hate the nightly backup so much.....

I speak on some MUs here and there, but honestly the only MUs I feel I can speak on with any slight certainty are Zelda/Sheik/GnW vs Sonic/Link/Marth/Luigi/Mario. I've put an easy thousand hours against my training partner STN's Sonic with various characters and a comparable time against Empty's Link/Marth. Even playing the same MUs for hours a day, we've changed our ideas on who wins/loses over the course of a day and then more over the week. There's just so many minute interactions in PM that haven't been documented, let alone played out.

I used to want to main GnW even when I started as a Zelda main, but I thought he was garbage because that was when I was facing Link/Marth every single day. Turns out those are still the worst MUs I've ever faced as him and obviously I was biased because of it. Still don't know how I maintained sanity trying to use Zelda because she doesn't do any better honestly.

 

[DMG]

Nightly backup has legit ruined at least 5 posts of mine so far, and I mean gooooood posts

 

[Xykness]

I definitely agree that input from top players/notable players will give the more accurate or high level information, but it is still nice to hear input from those still learning and I think it can help players think through some of those concepts and understand them better. I can't speak for much of the cast, but I feel pretty comfortable speaking about Luigi and the majority of his MUs. I have been working on a Diddy for a while now and he's starting to put in some work, but I do not feel that I can really express any solid info on the character.

What would be super cool is to get the projected top 5's of each character to collaborate and create MU charts for their mains to see if there are any consistent decisions or to strike conversation about why there are small disagreements (based on player experiences, different playstyles, etc). Its also important to remember that one win over a player does not mean that character X beats character Y. I think there has to be more consistency than that.

 

[jtm94]

I don't think top/high/notable players have any more accurate information than the rest of us. I'd rather believe someone who is articulate over someone who is strictly good. There are people that are legitimately just wrong, but they can play the game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Some characters don't even have the representation to create a definitive top 3 for them. Some can't even have a top 1...

I hate the mentality that just because you get bodied by your local X or destroy your local Y that X is broken and Y is a MU in your favor. That's the M2K mentality that creates kneejerk reactions and spreads character misinformation.

 

[DMG]

Being articulate has no/little impact on being correct. You could take Ripple's opinions on D3, my opinions, or the English Major who has such an astonishing mastery of the language that we look like mere serfs before royalty. That dude could butter me up on a smooth platter of perfect grammar and syntax, I'll take 1 drunk sentence from Ripple vs anything the other person could possibly offer.

Articulate or not, you gotta know what the hell you're talking about. It's a pretty safe guess that the notable player will have better insight than the average player, or at least his experiences backing the opinion will tend to be more valid (given the level of competition they are expected to come across). You can point to outliers on "bad" players who know their stuff vs "good" players that flip flop based on winning/losing or just generally have crazy opinions, but the general trend is true.

 

[The Baron]

I feel like another big thing people have trouble with when discussing MU'S is that there is no unifying way to say what's most important in a match. I debate with people all the time about what makes x good and y bad, and in a game like smash itd never as cut and dry as we think it is.

Some people feel like punish game is the most important factor, some say neutral, and others still say it all depends on the stage list of the weather outside. I think this thread is great for discussing little problems or things you notice about the character we're currently talking about but putting all that info into something as small as one MU is still a rather difficult chore for us.

If we were to finally determine what makes a character really good, and rally behind it then we'd at least have a start but we haven't. That isn't to say we can't but I dislike our odds of sitting everyone who plays pm, or is at least influential, down and trying to unify on what the most important aspect of a MU is. I think that is what we have to do first before going any further on what makes an MU good.

Also on that note we discount outliers pretty quickly. Alot of list say snake isnt that great but when professor pro wins, we just say, "Well he's just a god," and go our merry way. This happened after paragon where so many ness' made it into top 64 and we pointed that out. And then days later we said, nah, Ness is still garbage.

So, what do we do then. Do we speculate on the now or the future. Do we look at what hapens before the punish or after the punish. Do we look at the character or the player. Do we say results matter, or the lab matters. Once we can answer these questions we can start moving foward. Hopefully.

 

[DMG]

Winning is most important. PM lab is overrated, just show your fighting spirit!

 

[The Baron]

Winning is most important. PM lab is overrated, just show your fighting spirit!

This is why we love you

 

[Life]

This is why we love you

speak for yourself

Kappa

This just occurred to me but I'm not sure how good it is, so I'd like to throw it out there and ask everyone else's opinion on it: one definition of a winning character matchup is that your character has more control over the outcome than the opponent's character. If this statement holds true (and the more I read it the more sense it makes), then we can get a quick 'n' dirty impression of a matchup simply by looking at who appears to be in control the most, accounting for any obvious flaws in the way a player is doing stuff (e.g. predictable techs, predictable recoveries, ceding control through poor move choices, et cetera, but not simply getting outplayed by a superior opponent).

 

[DMG]

Nausicca would probably ask "But what is control?" and then nobody would make progress after getting slammed with that whopper of a question.

Character evaluation is hard man

 

[The Baron]

Nausicca would probably ask "But what is control?" and then nobody would make progress after getting slammed with that whopper of a question.

Character evaluation is hard man

That is a very difficult question but it's a starting point at least. If we can work our way up from there or at least use it as a universal foundation that we can all agree upon, we can get somwthing out of it. Or get nothing done.

Personally to me, to establish control means to put yourself in a position where you have a meaningful answer to anything your opponent does without losing said position

 

[shairn]

Starting at the very bottom seems like a pretty good idea at first (and a noble endeavor in the socratic method) but I don't think we'll find it at all effective both in manners of time and consensus

 

[eideeiit]

IMO MUs can be relatively accurately analyzed, but it requires pretty much perfect knowledge of the options both sides have at any situations and the risk/reward ratios and reactabilities (is that even a word?) of said options.
So it's possible in theory, but so incredibly difficult, complex and stuff, that in a game like Smash it's pretty much not.

I'm gonna try to whip up and example with some other, more simple game.
You and your friend Bob are playing a card game. Both of you choose three cards and once you've chosen one and a bell rings you slam them on the table at the same time. He has the following cards: blue, red and green1. You have blue, red and green2.

If both cards are the same color neither player gets points. If one player has blue and the other one has red, blue gets a point, red beats green the same. Green1 beats blue and gives 1 point, green2 does the same but gives 2 points.

For you the risk of playing any card is 1/3, since there are always 3 options and a loss loses you 1 point. The rewards are 1/3 for blue and red, but 2/3 for green2. The values of the cards come to 1, 1 and 2 (reward/risk) and the decks value is therefore 4.

For Bob the risks are 2/3 for blue and 1/3 for red and green1. The rewards are 1/3 for al of them. His cards' values are 1/2, 1 and 1, so the decks value is 2.5.

So the MU between your deck and Bob's deck is 4 : 2.5, which translates approximately to a ratio of 61,5 : 38,5.

Bob would have to outplay you (guess better) 21,5 % more than you in order to win a long enough game. (I'm not gonna take into account the situation where there's no difference in reward/risk between any cards because even the 1 point will finish it.)



me rn

Idk, there are ofc massively dumb things in there, but the point is stuff can be broken down I guess. This game doesn't even take into account reactions and other player dependent stuff. Possible in theory, but only there. (thank god, would be boring af otherwise). When we play we collect information on what risk/reward ratios every option has at this point in time against this particular person and use that info to change the look/plan we had on things before getting the info. The plan is then used to make educated guesses.

**** I'm deep nao.



Oh **** there's more

Control huh...
Control comes down to options too, and the risk/reward of said things. As does everything like I just tried to show...
You nearly always have some control in Smash, as long as you have options with different outcomes available.
The more decisions you can make, the greater the amount of control.
The greater the difference between the outcomes of your decisions, the greater the amount of control.

Now I'm looking at control as like "control of the future" and not "control of the game".
You'd agree with me if I said just performing a flow-chart edgeguard is more in-control than in neutral, right?

uhhhgh

control of the game
An optimal course of action that should always be followed: is it your control over the game, or the game's control over you? I favor the latter.
The less control your opponent has the more control you have. (So there's a set amount of control?)

So 3 parties hold control: you, the opponent and the game itself

****, this is actually interesting...

What you want to do is take away control from your opponent, and from yourself, and give it to the game in situations that work towards your eventual goals. The best thing to do/goal is not to play/ play as little as possible. To become a part of the machine and let the game use yourself as its extension as often as possible.

I started respecting Hearthstone a lot more while writing this.

****. Kids, don't internet and 2 am. Won't do nobody no good.

 

[D e l t a]

On the topic of "ask top players / notable players their opinion on matchups," basically all Lucas players agree on the matchups expressed on a matchup chart / in the Lucas forums somewhere.

 

[Saproling]

Winning is most important. PM lab is overrated, just show your fighting spirit!

I have no one to fight.

 

[Ripple]

I have no one to fight.

says the person who doesn't show up to any chicago weekly