Tier List Speculation

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

reslived has an unwarranted reputation for being the punching bag of mdva back when 3.02 was a thing and his gameplan largely revolved around throwing a whole lot of 3.02 pkfire but since then he's shown himself to be capable of doing work with ness and has adapted to the 3.6 meta far better than anyone else from the mdva days has (aside from junebug)

was I surprised to see reslived top 8? yeah, but so was he and I didn't really consider it beyond the realm of possibility

I was far more surprised that at another major yet another ness somehow beat the odds and got top 8

 

[OrientalAmazing]

I might consider getting a Top 3 pocket. Maybe Diddy XP

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

can someone compile a list of pm results and assign some sort of value to placings so we can see how much snake is outperforming his "perceived" tier placement and how much fox is underperforming for his tier placement (edit: jk even according to smashboards rankings fox is still the best lmao)

 

[Life]

When's the last time SB ratings were reset? He's been way ahead since forever. How many Foxes have actually won 3.6f tournaments?

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

When's the last time SB ratings were reset? He's been way ahead since forever. How many Foxes have actually won 3.6f tournaments?

rankings have been reset relatively recently and I think pretty accurately capture 3.6f as a whole, as there's no zero and ipk is ranked second. I think the sheer amount of foxes in local brackets greatly buffs his character stats, if you filter results for tournaments larger than like 50 players I think fox will be a little less dominant in terms of top 8/16 placings

 

[Life]

rankings have been reset relatively recently and I think pretty accurately capture 3.6f as a whole, as there's no zero and ipk is ranked second. I think the sheer amount of foxes in local brackets greatly buffs his character stats, if you filter results for tournaments larger than like 50 players I think fox will be a little less dominant in terms of top 8/16 placings

I can't find any evidence of a ranking reset via Google, and Pit has 57 first-place finishes, which seems like a lot for his supposed obscurity. Are you sure?

Fox arguably overperforms in locals as a result of being a high-APM character that's hard to play over long tournaments. Tough to say for sure, though.

 

[DMG]

Smashboard ranking system also depend on all the regions reporting in. Some prominent areas may not upload results to SB system or have not done so reliably in the past. I can think of a few in the past that hardly reported

 

[ilysm]

something something and how much fox is underperforming for his tier placement

This statement isn't directed specifically at Magikarp, but rather I want to capitalize on this opportunity to say something that's been eating at me for a little.

I've never understood the tendency of some people in this thread (not being passive aggressive, literally just can't remember names right now) to repeatedly bring up Fox's lack of results as if it carried the implication that he might not be as good as everyone assumes. I understand that it can be dangerous to judge a character by their toolkit and MUs exclusively and not focus on results, but at this point if there's one thing we know it's that Fox's toolkit is generally pretty good in 99% of situations and his matchup spread is one of the better if not the best in the game. There are plenty of logical explanations to reconcile this (common?) knowledge with his lack of results, too. I guess I just don't see the point of this beating around the bush.

It's entirely likely that I'm missing something so by all means let me know if that's the case.

 

[Ripple]

I can't believe how many nesses have now gotten top 8 at a regional.

Boiko
Octo
Aki
Stereo
Reslived

 

[Life]

Because it doesn't matter how good Fox is on paper if nobody's carrying him in practice?

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

I can't believe how many nesses have now gotten top 8 at a regional.

Boiko
Octo
Aki
Stereo
Reslived

is aki that one random ness from montana?

glorious return of Awestin when

 

[ilysm]

Life But Wolf is really good, right?

I mean, it seems like how good a character is on paper and how well they're represented in tournaments have almost nothing to do with each other at all. Obviously both need to be considered when compiling a tier list, but it seems misguided not to approach this on a case-by-case basis. In Fox's case specifically, it seems like he's still pretty good regardless of how he's performing right now. This is a little different from the way we treat Wolf in that in Fox's case we have a great deal of prior data and meta development from a very similar game (and while I'm on the subject, it also seems silly to pretend that data from Melee automatically doesn't matter at all solely by virtue of the fact that it's from Melee). The fact that Fox isn't performing well on the national scene is not mutually exclusive with the fact that he is a very good character and very likely isn't anywhere lower than 3 on almost any kind of tier list (that placement is me being generous and homogenizing several viewpoints I've seen; personally I believe he's a close #1 but this analysis is about more than my narrow and flawed personal viewpoint). Just as an example, consider; if anyone has the skill to play Fox to around his full potential, there is almost zero reason for them to be playing Project M to begin with. Consider; most players that have the skill to play Fox to around his full potential have the skill to do so by virtue of the fact that they've been playing Melee for a long time and it's strictly to their advantage to stick to that game. Consider; if anyone in Project M reaches that level of potential, a Melee career is highly incentivized for them on the basis that it's a much more reliable and comfortable victory rate. Consider; the 'fun factor' of PM, as much as I adore it, is probably not enough to convince someone with a top-level Fox mentality to stick with the game or play it seriously to begin with. Consider; it is extremely hard to play Fox at a top level in Melee, and it is reasonable to assume that it is even harder to do so in PM (this is actually supported by results), but tech and strategies that seemed impractical just a year ago are becoming commonplace now and it could be a mistake to assign skill caps to games where a skill cap hasn't really been made clear yet.

I'm not saying results (or lack thereof) don't matter at all if we know how good a character is on paper. I'm saying that it seems misguided to assume the opposite is true. I'm also saying that blanket statements about how we should evaluate a character's tier placement (be it by results only, toolkit only, MU spread only, or some mix of any of the three) is going to result in inaccurate placement, that it's in our best interest to consider things on a case-by-case basis, and that in Fox's case, we all know to some extent that he is really really good.

I hope all of that made sense; it could all very well sound extremely stupid. I'm tired and procrastinating on an assignment. Just thinking on it.

 

[steelguttey]

so diddy is solid top 5 right now? idk man

he has soooo many even/undecided matchups. you could go down almost all of the characters and their matchup against diddy can go either way, i just feel like nobody has fleshed out and talked about his matchups to just put him in top 5. like, who does he stomp other than d3 and bowser? and on the other end who does he lose to really hard? ive never heard anyone complain about a diddy matchup either way. which isnt a bad thing, but i just havent heard a solid idea of what his matchups are like at all.

 

[DMG]

Thing with Diddy is that he often holds the keys to the engine. He might lose or have a handful of really tough evenish MU's despite having broad control in many of them, where for other characters it might be easier to quantify "Ok this char holds an edge in neutral and kill confirms easier, this character wins" vs "Well Diddy kinda edges out neutral but opponent may be able to reverse or neutralize this to various degrees, but he may still be the better character regardless???"


Complicating things even further is that characters who may handle his control in unorthodox manners (take Peach) may not be super quick in mobility to pressure him in other areas. If Peach could do float related stuff, and also leap like Captain Falcon across half the map, the MU would be over entirely. The MU may be such that Peach anti-controls him, but subsequently does not fare that well on longer maps because she doesn't maintain that anti-control over a huge amount of space at any given moment.


Now the MU rating is further split into relevant stages with different ratios. Then, you have the question of how "well" both sides are utilizing Bananas. A match could be won or lost for either side, in tournament, based on even small mishandling. It's almost always possible to find improved item play for both sides, but the defending side usually comes with a disadvantage because Diddy should often start with the advantage.


One metaphor to that would be like Tennis IMO: Diddy spawns the ball and gets to serve way more than you. Various timings and directions he can choose, which makes your returns harder.


Diddy is bound to have a huge question mark, but the reason he leans so easily to Top 5 placement in most tier lists is due to the first quality: he almost always can generate or start with control. Having that advantage, in the hands of a really good player, can be absolutely crucial to success.

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

speaking of characters that start with or generate stage control:

snake

is snake top 5? is there a significant difference in theory snake vs everybody else on a theoretical level and practical snake vs everybody else on a realistic level?

 

[Akhenderson]

is aki that one random ness from montana?

glorious return of Awestin when

Originally Chicagoland, moved to Washington. Also, my top 8s arent really anything special compared to stuff like octo, boiko, stereo and reslived lol.

 

[Soft Serve]

Diddy is really good

so many MUs you have to play neutral hella perfect because they die at stray hit at 160 and you die to grabs at 0, but he has so many amazing tools to just come out on top in long range positions. He also has great up close micro situations to come out on top in CQC RPS fights. I think he has a couple pretty bad MUs but invalidates many in return

people still ****ing suck with DIing his throws though. Just hold behind him, you don't get hit by dthrow>move, you minimize the combos he gets off of upthrow (if you get comboed into dair DI doesn't matter, if you get juggled he has to turn to uptilt/continue, and you don't get hit by dash jump upair>falcon combos like you do if you DI away from him). The Mix ups are in his positional throws but for a lot of characters at higher %s you can just no DI or slight DI in, dthrow won't combo anymore and you won't die to b/fthrow

theres a lot of small things that people don't work around/blow diddys up for. stuff like SDIing away from the upair after side-b>falling upair to avoid the grab and get a spotdodge/buffered roll mixup going on

or if you're a lighter/thiner tall character you can DI the side-b behind diddy then SDI the upair behind diddy and avoid the grab (snake can't at 0% though, works at highers).

expecially lighter ones because they get sent further from side-b, and can get hit by the weaker late hitbox of upair instead of the reverse hitbox of the strong hit.

we still get away with bad recoveries constantly because people over-respect side-b's safety and over-respect diddy's flexibility on up-b. gotta cut off angles closer and track high-recoveries better. Not saying its easy to do all the time, but people gimp fox well in melee and his recovery is more flexible (although less resilient).

Idk theres a lot of big anti-diddy optimizations, completely ignoring items, that people could do. Diddy struggles to kill to begin with and proper counterplay to his combo game can shut down a lot of things and really make him have to hone down the neutral interactions. Knowing things like not letting diddy get away with glide toss directly onto shield>grab (its -3 point blank) goes a long way with shutting down diddy's momentum in neutral because he is a real snowballing character. One opening can lead to so much because of how strong his stagger game is

Everyone still ****ing sucks at pm. Diddy is the most overrated underrated character imo if that makes sense. People respect his gimmicks too much and underrate his real strong micro interations


Although if you just took Diddy's dash dance+movement, bair, banana, and Dsmash and take everything else away and he's still probably better than a good handful of characters

Also doing stuff like this isn't that hard, I have it down to like 65% consistency from 1 day of practice. diddy with space to setup things is dumb:

throw a b reverse in there and you have a crazy ambiguous movement/move that can be really effective when he's in control but completely useless when he is in the corner or people just attack through them.

 

[DMG]

See look^^^ once nerds take over Diddy his dong expands 3 tiers

 

[D e l t a]

Softie, how long till you lab Lucas / PM Fox and find some broken stuff about those characters?

 

[Mentor]

I don't frequent this thread much, but is there any talk about Sheilda's placement in the tiers? If Sheik is top 7/8, surely there must be some MUs at some stages at some %s where Zelda has the better options, making Sheilda better than Sheik in terms of tier placement.

 

[DMG]

The mix would be better, but possibly by such a small margin that you would just be listing "7. Sheilda 8. Sheik"

Placing Sheilda on tier list seems redundant unless the combination is clearly better than other chars above Sheik. If not, the unwritted assumption/rule would already be that Sheilda is marginally better, and doesn't really require to be formally stated on the tier list.

 

[Life]

speaking of characters that start with or generate stage control:

snake

is snake top 5? is there a significant difference in theory snake vs everybody else on a theoretical level and practical snake vs everybody else on a realistic level?

I think that other than certain Melee top tiers in the hands of people who mained them for years before even starting PM, Snake has by far the most developed punishes out of any character, especially when you start looking at players other than the best at their character e.g. compare a mid level Snake to a mid level Diddy and you'll still see Snake getting massive punishes, just not as often, and their neutral will be lacking. Whereas that Diddy player will likely only be getting small 2-3 hit combos and maybe an extra hit off the positional advantage.

Which would mean Snake is better than people give him credit for at this moment in time (myself included), but we expect other characters to develop in similarly strong-looking ways given more time. (Commonly cited examples include Diddy and Wolf with their respective projectile games, shield pressure, and techchasing/stagger aptitudes.)

Also, random, but the number of people who don't pay attention to where Snake lays his mines is absurd to me. Like c'mon people, watch your opponent's character from time to time.

WRT what you actually said about Snake starting with stage control, I don't necessarily agree. In the time it takes Snake to lay his first mine down or pull a grenade, the other character's already run to center stage. And of course mines in general can be used against Snake in the same way: if he's on FD with center stage, but has a mine directly behind him, he might as well be at the edge.

 

[Strong Badam]

The main mu where shielda outperforms sheik is vs snake where you transform exclusively to remove C4 lol

 

[Boiko]

Ness isn't completely awful. My opinion is that he is very middle of the pack. Somewhere around the ~20 range where an order really stops mattering. I think that in 3.5 he was the one of the worst characters in the game though, for what it's worth.

I do think that within a year or two he'll becomes less and less relevant. Once players really figure out the best counter play to his kit, and are able to implement it consistently, he'll probably fall off pretty substantially. Ness just has a really hard time being safe. He doesn't have a particularly large effective threat zone, he has crummy approaches, and an average at best defensive kit.

There are certainly a lot of things Ness players could improve on, myself included. For example, I have numerous tech traps on fast fallers that I haven't seen any other Ness use. I also have a lot of DI traps by using magnet>bair, which like, no one else does. Magnet>bair in general is just an insanely strong tool. I have clips of me punishing a whiffed grab and a whiffed jab with a maget>bair for an early kill. I use down smash to cover all tech options in certain instances. I use up tilt as an anti approach option. And most importantly, I play like a huge nerd and DD camp hella hard, which is IMO, the best way to play Ness.

Btw, saw some earlier posts about a top five, but I don't think that a top five really exists right now. I do, however, think that there is a generally agreed upon top four: Fox, Wolf, Meta Knight, Diddy Kong. The fifth character kind of boils down to an opinion at this point, as I don't think anyone agrees to the extent that they agree with the top four. The most frequent suggestions I see are Marth, Mewtwo, Sheik, Wario, ZSS, Falco, ROB and Falcon. Not sure which I agree with. I think optimal Sheik or ZSS play can be a nightmare for any character, and those two stand out to me more so than the others.

 

[Journal]

Out of curiosity, what's with people suddenly seeing ZSS as top tier? I don't comment often, but I've lurked this thread a few hundred pages over the months and people would usually place her around upper mid tier. The only person I really remember making an argument for her being top tier on here was Umbreon.

 

[DMG]

ZSS mains too pessimistic, almost similar to Ness mains going the whole 9 yards to convince you their character is dookie^2.

ZSS got a real grab, her mains play better, and people are willing to go "Maybe x doesn't beat ZSS +2 or +3 mindlessly cause this is a good character"

 

[Life]

Fast characters get good over time and her players have been developing her. The big thing that was holding her back was the space animal matchups, which they've since been working on. (Remember when Fox was a hard hard hard counter to ZSS? Yeah me neither)

 

[DMG]

No, the main issue was the players. Her mains simply weren't proficient enough at the character. A lot of ZSS players had 1 glaring hole: combo like crazy but can't play Neutral, play onstage phenomenally but can't edgeguard or recover in creative ways, etc.

Other characters being stronger in prior patches also could have dictated a lower opinion of her (take Captain Falcon, he absolutely loves the overall cast nerfs from 3.02)

Quality of ZSS play overall is much higher now, because her players are more consistent now.

 

[ForTheLulz]

Because it doesn't matter how good Fox is on paper if nobody's carrying him in practice?

Why play fox when you could play melee?

 

[DMG]

Why play Melee when you can play Duelist?

Spoiler

Ripple if you're going to LTC4, let's play Duelist.

 

[OrientalAmazing]

Why play Melee when you can play Duelist?

Spoiler

Ripple if you're going to LTC4, let's play Duelist.

Professor Pro would be proud

 

[Ripple]

speaking of ZSS, I liked how my ZSS performed against Junebug at SF2 with 0 practice. I even got a sweet gfycat moment.

definitely gonna bust her out more

 

[DMG]

Make D3 skin for ZSS, this will move her 30+ spots on the tier list

 

[Idostuff]

I don't frequent this thread much, but is there any talk about Sheilda's placement in the tiers? If Sheik is top 7/8, surely there must be some MUs at some stages at some %s where Zelda has the better options, making Sheilda better than Sheik in terms of tier placement.

Sheilda is marginally better than just Sheik. Zelda slightly wins the DDD, Kirby, and Puff MU, where as Sheik slightly loses, making those no longer be viable counter picks. Transforming is also useful in the Snake MU for the reasons Strong Bad MU.

tier list wise, Sheik is probably tied with ROB, Falcon, Falco, and maybe Marth and ZSS. While Sheilda may be better than Sheik, those optimizations most likely aren't enough to bump her up into the next tier with the likes of Fox, MK, Diddy, and Wolf, so adding another spot for Sheilda as a separate character from sheik is kinda pointless since they would be right next to each other anyway.

 

[JOE!]

Make D3 skin for ZSS, this will move her 30+ spots on the tier list

Zero Suit DDD, or a DDD bathrobe for ZSS?

 

[Player -0]

DDD bathrobe sounds sick. You can do cool combos then throw the super heavy robe for combo extensions.

We mahvel

 

[Deleted member]

Out of curiosity, what's with people suddenly seeing ZSS as top tier? I don't comment often, but I've lurked this thread a few hundred pages over the months and people would usually place her around upper mid tier. The only person I really remember making an argument for her being top tier on here was Umbreon.

zss is in the same boat as the other top tiers where shes so fast that she can just choose to shut out a huge chunk of the cast because she doesnt feel like playing smash bros with them, somewhere below the 1.8 run speed chars you just get to the point where you accept that you character cant meaningfully force zss to interact with you and fold if the player feels like playing that way. however, if you can catch her, zss is merely very very good no real downsides. i have her at 5th atm, but i also agree that shes not in the same tier as fox mk wolf diddy.

also, i dont understand putting marth in top tier. i could see rating sheik that high maybe, but absolutely not marth. mk is basically just marth++ like 95% of the time so putting them in the same tier makes absolutely no sense

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

Sheilda is marginally better than just Sheik. Zelda slightly wins the DDD, Kirby, and Puff MU, where as Sheik slightly loses, making those no longer be viable counter picks. Transforming is also useful in the Snake MU for the reasons Strong Bad MU.

tier list wise, Sheik is probably tied with ROB, Falcon, Falco, and maybe Marth and ZSS. While Sheilda may be better than Sheik, those optimizations most likely aren't enough to bump her up into the next tier with the likes of Fox, MK, Diddy, and Wolf, so adding another spot for Sheilda as a separate character from sheik is kinda pointless since they would be right next to each other anyway.

this is a fundamentally wrong way of thinking about shielda (ok maybe that wording is a bit harsh but)

simply playing zelday for certain matchups is no different than having a main sheik and counterpicking another character for certain matchups.
A shielda tier placement would be based off of the advantages of switching midgame and playing shiek and zelda during the same game which, as far as I know, nobody does and is only relevant in the snake matchup where it gets rid of a stuck c4

as such, shielda would not even exist on the tierlist because nobody actually plays "shielda" they either play sheik or zelda or both

 

[KinGly]

this is a fundamentally wrong way of thinking about shielda (ok maybe that wording is a bit harsh but)

simply playing zelday for certain matchups is no different than having a main sheik and counterpicking another character for certain matchups.
A shielda tier placement would be based off of the advantages of switching midgame and playing shiek and zelda during the same game which, as far as I know, nobody does and is only relevant in the snake matchup where it gets rid of a stuck c4

as such, shielda would not even exist on the tierlist because nobody actually plays "shielda" they either play sheik or zelda or both

That's not necessarily true, as it can give you a game one counterpick. Y'all do double blind and you say sheik and your opponent says Kirby, then you can counterpick without giving up a game by switching to Zelda whenever you get the chance game one, and now you've moved the whole set into your favor. This is the best use of shielda imo.

As for switching back and forth there aren't many matchups where switching is optimal as sheik. Best chance you'd get to do it is when your opponent is offstage/dead, but then you could edgeguard if he's offstage which is better than switching and waiting for him to come back, and if he's dead well that's really just a comfort thing but I think Sheik would be better anyway for the most part.

But yeah don't put shielda on a tier list cause it wouldn't matter.

 

[JOE!]

A shielda tier placement would be based off of the advantages of switching midgame and playing shiek and zelda during the same game which, as far as I know, nobody does and is only relevant in the snake matchup where it gets rid of a stuck c4

@4tlas