Tier List Speculation

[Rᴏb]

Anybody have any idea why I'm finding that I can trigger Wolf's landing animation for his nair without the landing hitbox coming out? It seems to be a very small window. The move is definitely l-canceling not auto-canceling as the flash is clearly visible, but the hitbox is not coming out. I thought landing hitboxes were directly tied to the landing animation? Is this not the case?

iirc the landing hitbox can only come out after frame 7
is that not happening?

 

[shairn]

Maybe the L-canceled animation skips a frame where the hitbox comes out
But have no idea how l-canceling actually works so ayyy lmao

 

[Player -0]

Then it would always affect the Nair so no Hitbox comes out.

I think the Nair hitbox pops out separately when ground collision marker pips or something.

Edit - Friggen phone capitalizing hitbox.

 

[zFrost]

still waiting on ripples broken lucas discovery

 

[Strong Badam]

iirc the landing hitbox can only come out after frame 7
is that not happening?

Yeah I'm looking at the subaction and this seems to be the "issue" here. Frame 1-6 of the animation you can still get nair's landlag animation but only if you land between frames 7 and 34 (? not sure but somewhere around there) does the landing hitbox come out.

 

[Mr. PotatoBread]

There is a variable in the coding for wolf's Nair (LA-basic[67]) that starts off as false, but turns to true on frame 7 (at the same time as the first hitbox comes out).

Maybe that has something to do with it?

 

[Strong Badam]

Indeed it does, that's what I was referring to in my previous post.

 

[DrinkingFood]

For educational purposes, youre saying that doing quarter circle DI in addition to the c stick gives 4 inputs of SDI. Why only 4? arent there 16 directional positions on the control stick that are read? That would make a full quarter circle sweep give about 5 inputs of SDI, then another one for smashing the c stick during it. So 6 total.

If you could tell me why my logic is wrong (if it is) that would be cool.

New smash inputs for SDI are only registered once you enter a new quadrant on the control stick or return to center. A quadrant being 1/4th of the stick, north east, south east, north west, south west. As such, a quarter circle registers two of these. C-sticking in a different quadrant then takes priority for one frame, a third input. Priority then returns to the control stick, which if held in any quadrant besides the cstick's becomes your fourth input.

 

[Life]

New smash inputs for SDI are only registered once you enter a new quadrant on the control stick or return to center. A quadrant being 1/4th of the stick, north east, south east, north west, south west. As such, a quarter circle registers two of these. C-sticking in a different quadrant then takes priority for one frame, a third input. Priority then returns to the control stick, which if held in any quadrant besides the cstick's becomes your fourth input.

To clarify, that means the borders between quadrants are plus-shaped, right? Not counting the dead-zone hole in the center ofc.

So in other words, if you wanted to SDI something really far down, you could do:

Control stick SW frame 1
Control stick SE frame 2
Cstick SW frame 3 (overrides control stick)
Control stick still SE frame 4 (new input because cstick interrupted it)

and provided you timed it perfectly so all inputs registered, you'd effectively get two SW inputs and two SE inputs, which, if SDI in all directions gets the same distance (not accounting for fall speed, I'm pretty sure this is the case?), would be equivalent to 4/sqrt(2) = about 2.8 downward SDI inputs.

(For the math noobs--and so someone can correct me if I messed up--I got that number with a little simple geometry. The diagonal from corner to corner of a square is as long as the sides of the square times the square root of 2. If our side length is one SDI unit, then the diagonal would be sqrt(2) units. But in this case, it's the diagonal that's one unit, which means the side lengths of our imaginary square are 1/sqrt(2), or about 0.7. This means that a diagonal SDI input will send you as far down as 0.7 of a downward SDI input AND as far to the side as 0.7 of a side input. Since we have two inputs in either diagonal, the total horizontal distance should be 0. The vertical distance, then, is equal to four diagonal SDI inputs, which is 4 * 1/sqrt(2), or 4/sqrt(2), or about 2.8 downward inputs.)

Did I get that right? IIRC this is the same way it worked in Brawl, but it's been years since I've refreshed or used that information and I wasn't sure if it was the same in PM.

 

[eideeiit]

If it only gets that much shouldn't just

F1: Analog stick S (hold)
F2: Cstick S

...get you more distance since it would give you 3 full SDIs? Or does the engine not count the Cstick's SDI if it's in the same quadrant as the Analog stick's SDI? I only have debug mode so I can't test this myself since cstick doesn't work there.

 

[Life]

The reason the cstick gives extra inputs is that it overrides the control stick for a frame. If the cstick is in the same direction as the control stick, nothing should change.

 

[eideeiit]

Life I've been under the impression that in Brawl/PM there is no "Cstick input", but that it acts as a macro for "Analog stick value x + A" for a frame. This is true, no?

And with the "nothing should change" at the end of your last post do you mean only 1 SDI will happen? Kind of ambiguous wording I think.

 

[Life]

I'm sorry, I thought I was clear. You are correct.

When you're holding the control stick in a direction and press the cstick in a different direction, the game overrides the direction you're holding the control stick by that new direction for one frame. Since you need to change directions to get extra SDI inputs, you should not gain the additional SDI inputs from the cstick this way; you'll only get the SDI inputs you would've gotten from the control stick, however many that might be (because it depends what you did with the control stick).

Every new cstick press during hitlag should give an additional two SDI inputs provided you're holding the control stick in another direction: one for the new control stick direction on the frame you press the control stick, and then a second one on the next frame for when it reverts to the direction you were holding.

There's also ASDI.

Some of this information might be wrong. People contradict each other, and it's hard to remember because the names of the two sticks are different, and it works differently in Melee, and...

 

[KinGly]

So... Uhh... Sheiks pretty good (it's been really quiet here )

 

[Life]

I won my first out of state PM tournament going all Wolf, except for an MK counterpick versus Sonic (the same one from my region, who carpooled with me and jtm) because my low laser wavelands weren't on point enough to prevent him from just spinning at me. That matchup's pretty fine when I'm executing correctly, it's just a mess when I'm not, and I certainly wasn't.

Was a good time. NEOH is free <3

 

[eideeiit]

Congratz. Did you beat anyone whose name is even semi recognizable?

 

[Life]

Nope! They had a fairly decent Dedede and a fairly decent Wario, whose tags are Mudo and John respectively. The region as a whole (or maybe just specifically the Malone group?) has some collective bad habits I was able to exploit. They were super gracious when I started to get all lecture-y about it (polite constructive criticism IRL is hard for me). Great people, would go again.

This is mostly relevant to the thread in regards to our character choices, though. Wolf players don't see a ton of success in the grand scheme of things, but y'all should know how we're doing on the local level.

 

[Kapapanerp]

So... Uhh... Sheiks pretty good (it's been really quiet here )

I struggle alot with Shiek. I play floaties/semi-floaties mostly (Mewtwo, Luigi and Squirtle) and I've been struggling figuring out ways to DI out of her grab setups and throw follow-ups.

 

[Dotcom]

Olimar is a nifty character

 

[eideeiit]

Olimar is a nifty characterView attachment 94741

Vids when where?

 

[Dotcom]

No vids unfortunately. 2-0 this past weekend at AEX featuring the likes of Dusty, DJ Nintendo, Kage, Zubat, BaconPancakes.

 

[Xykness]

What in the...

 

[Boiko]

dotcom, your post makes it sound like you 2-0'd all those peeps.

Highlights were Zubat double eliminating Kage
dotcom over Seagull
Dusty over BaconPancakes

Definitely an interesting tourney.

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

no jawns

10philly

 

[D e l t a]

Any big majors coming up? I can't wait to see how the tier list released reflects the current metagame

 

[KinGly]

Any big majors coming up? I can't wait to see how the tier list released reflects the current metagame

LTC 4 is on the horizon

 

[JesteRace]

Shots Fired 2 in March. BEAST 6 is in March too, I think.

 

[D e l t a]

Was wondering if there were any February tourneys. Feels a bit too quiet this month

 

[shairn]

Frozen Phoenix is in March.

February is midterms, so no big surprise it's calm.

 

[Ningildo]

Shots Fired 2 in March. BEAST 6 is in March too, I think.

BEAST 6 is this month, in exactly two weeks, actually. No clue on if there's going to be a stream, though.

 

[D e l t a]

Frozen Phoenix is in March.

February is midterms, so no big surprise it's calm.

Oh right. I'm not used to typical universities since I have a really off-schedule compared to other colleges...

Gonna try my best to attend Frozen Phoenix so long as finals are going well for me around that time. I'll show you all that there's more Lucas players than just Hyperflame and Kipcom

 

[nimigoha]

I'm considering practicing my Lucas up for Frozen Phoenix but then I play Marth and he's just way more solid.

FP will be really cool, nice to see how Canada stacks up against guys like June.

 

[D e l t a]

MI is coming out too - we got Dirtboy and Yata plus myself and a few others. Can't wait to see AZ rep - Silly Kyle, Heysuess, and others.

I'm considering practicing my Lucas up for Frozen Phoenix but then I play Marth and he's just way more solid

Marth has way less punishment for his mistakes. Lucas does 1-2 bad things and he can eat 50%+ if not losing the stock. Not to mention the spacing is less tight for Marth. If only Lucas had range.... But then I'm fine with all of Lucas' flaws when I can kill floaties at 50% and take stocks consistently at 80-100% without having to deal with opponents live to 200%+

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

Oh right. I'm not used to typical universities since I have a really off-schedule compared to other colleges...

Gonna try my best to attend Frozen Phoenix so long as finals are going well for me around that time. I'll show you all that there's more Lucas players than just Hyperflame and Kipcom

I'm looking forward to see hidden candian bosses

I thought frozen phoenix was during my spring break but it's the weekend just before ugh

I mainly want to see more players from all regions (especially dotcom's olimar where u at tho)

also diddy is really good and the more diddy footage I watch the more I think that diddy is definitely in the "upper echelon" of characters along with people like fox and wolf. Fox, wolf, and diddy are probably top three right now although by a very slim margin and not as much separates them from the pack right behind them (mainly wario and his cronies but this pack extends all the way down to like luigi/mario, basically the top 15ish or so)

the more ics play I see the more I think that they're pretty polarizing (heh get it puns) but that because desynch ice block can cover so much space they can just kind of force a game to swing in a skewed manner with their zoning ability. ie, ics are probably around the same place they were in melee, very good matchups and very bad matchups that can be played to a painful degree of hyper-specialization where it becomes more of a mental battle than anything to do with the characters (see: m2k losing to nintendude)

olimar is mid-high tier but won't get there in the next year outside of a few random top eights by dotcom or shokio

eyeheartlovetap played well at project msu but he kept fishing for fair vortexes or fair jab reset all the time and didn't really know what to do when people learned to tech fair. also yoshi's roll is garbage and ally reacted to it 4 times in a row after which tap finally learned. so yoshi seems like a cool character that can do cool things and has some really different and unique things that he can do but like also is extremely hamstrung when yoshi players are too risky or overextend or get baited. tap didn't incorporate eggs or even temporary egg stalling as much in his game as I feel like a yoshi "should" but we got to see the endmember of the "go extremely ham all the time" yoshi species
the more i see ness play the more i think that his weaknesses are made obvious by nesses doing "ness things" rather than actually playing the game ie their bnb setups for bair get exposed and ****ed up and then they're offstage and a ness off their game or bothered by sdi seems like the most awkward character to play in the game. good nesses seem to hide their inherent weaknesses behind movement tricksies and different combo paths altho it's still painfully obvious that ness can't kill off of a non-meteor hitbox or gimmicky edgeguard until around 120% unless they manage to pull out an fsmash (which seems to be relatively possible given that it seems like nesses can create neutral mixups and di traps especially given how quick dtilt is)

also falco is still good but like marth and shiek is probably going to become a measuring stick for how certain characters deal with certain aspects of gameplay rather than a dynamic character in his own right. ie, falco is still going to be high-mid to high tier but his few dominant tools are going to be outclassed by other characters with tools that are maybe less dominant but more versatile. (altho if pm falco players start to develop actual uses for b-reverse laser rather than just doing it as proof of concept and circlejerking over how good falco is (despite the fact that aside from like 2 gfys b-reverse laser hasn't become a big deal) then maybe falco will start to be a character in his own right rather than just standing in the shadow of his melee self (but m-muh rar bair! that seems to be more of a quality of life buff than anything, falco can still do all of the stuff he did but now he can just rar bair rather than moonwalking or doing turnaround shines) falco is cool, more people play more falco and dunk on some nerds

luigi is broken

bang bang

I hope this post isn't too nausicaa-esque, I also am bad at htis game take my opinions with a grain of salt

 

[D e l t a]

pretty sure that you hit the nail dead on the head.

If I may add one part for clarity, Tap doesn't egg stall unless it's Melee and he's forced to play super lame against someone. Altho this is silly and why you wouldn't force your opponent to respect you at the ledge or else they take 5-8% damage is beyond me. A number of Yoshi's also haven't practiced this and consistently gotten it down. It's intriguing to me how the Yoshi player base has some of the lower tech skill compared to other DJC characters. I can't tell you how much Lucas / Ness / Mewtwo players practice their DJCs or the amount of times that Peach has to do some DJC / float shenanigans, yet Yoshi players are too scared or w/e to throw eggs at a ledge.

==

Your point about Falco is interesting. Why do you choose Falco as a standout character? I'm curious to dig deeper into your thoughts as to why Falco's neutral which shuts down a majority of the cast, would be the point of reference for determining characters that are not sucky.

Taking that above part one step further, I feel that characters who beat Lucas & in instances shut down his options well, are among the top characters in the game. Characters such as Fox, Marth, Sheik, and Falco. But other characters who struggle with his options in neutral: Yoshi, Sonic, Pika, Kirby, etc, will never be above mid-high tier for similar reasons you stated.

 

[eideeiit]

>Sonic and Pika never above midtier

As long as this prediction holds true the PM player base sucks. When it doesn't, we might still suck, but at least not that much.

 

[Life]

>Sonic and Pika never above midtier

As long as this prediction holds true the PM player base sucks. When it doesn't, we might still suck, but at least not that much.

What a useful and interesting post. "Here's my opinion, if you don't agree with it you're bad."

I think Sonic's pretty sleeper (not Mewtwo levels of sleeper but pretty good) but I'm not super convinced Pikachu's that good. He's alright, but then we have like 40 characters that are at least alright. How does Pikachu deal with the likes of Peach in PM? How many of the new Brawl characters/buffed Melee mid/low tiers are gonna cause Pikachu huge issues?

 

[DustyTheKid]

Made a smashboards account just to say, people still use smashboards? LMAOOOOOOO

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

Your point about Falco is interesting. Why do you choose Falco as a standout character? I'm curious to dig deeper into your thoughts as to why Falco's neutral which shuts down a majority of the cast, would be the point of reference for determining characters that are not sucky.

Taking that above part one step further, I feel that characters who beat Lucas & in instances shut down his options well, are among the top characters in the game. Characters such as Fox, Marth, Sheik, and Falco. But other characters who struggle with his options in neutral: Yoshi, Sonic, Pika, Kirby, etc, will never be above mid-high tier for similar reasons you stated.

idk this is probably just because I was messing around with falco recently and was subconsciously thinking about him or something
probably because falco's typical neutral of sh laser>laser>dair/nair>stuff has been pretty fleshed out and developed over the 12 years or whatever of melee playing. as such it's not as variable or subject to massive change or development as some neutral games in PM are. also because of the prevalence of people who have experience playing as or against falco, he becomes a measurement standard or a go-to pocket when people realize that they're getting shut down by things they don't think they should be (this is actually almost kind of visible in melee, such as when ppmd switches to falco or especially when s2j switched to falco after his falcon was getting beat by abate)
and because falco lasers/dair are so good and so relevant in the mind of everybody who plays/watches melee, there's always the question of "oh so your character can deal with this, but can they deal with falco lasers?" or "wow it must be hard to play as bowser/[insert fat charachter] I bet you get ****ed up by falco laser" or "how does your movement work against falco lasers"
so good/great character are defined by how well they can deal with falco lasers or force falco to stop lasering. characters that are bad at either of these manifest their inability to deal with other things in other contexts, so falco lasers (like marth's sword or shiek's needles/grab game) can kind of act as a litmus test to see how well a character fares in the larger metagame

as for sonic/pika being midtier, I can get behind that, moreso for sonic than for pika. sonic strikes me as a very dash-dance focused character that largely leverages his objectively bad hitboxes into good positions just because of how fast he is. he's like falcon if falcon had bad hitboxes and didn't have nair. so still able to **** a lot of people just because of GOTTAGOFAST but definitely has to work for all of his stuff
pika meanwhile is more interesting because of qac shenanigans (which I think have a tendency to be overrated by people (also because the people who use qac the most aka capi tend to disregard dashdancing in favor of qac which I feel kinda is gimmicky and limits pikachus real strengths in netural)) and crossup/pivot things that can really **** people over in shield. I think compared to some of the "really good characters" pika might have to work more for what he gets but he still gets a whole lot. I mean pika is still relatively universally regarded as high-midtier in melee (which is a lot worse comparatively than high-midtier in pm) and axe still stomps like everyone. pika is definitely a character that could find success but because of the precision/speed required and lack of really stupid hitboxes (bar uair) puts him a little below other characters

pika strikes me as like a zss with a less good projectile and less hilariously disjointed hitboxes and without the ability to carry people wherever with nair (but then again I haven't watched all of the vods of project msu so I haven't seen enough footage of anther wrecking face, maybe he'll enlighten me to how good pika really is)

 

[Silvia]

Sonic, and all other current low tiers should get an equal chance to provide the info required to see if they really are the tier they truly belong in.