Tier List Speculation

[NWRL]

I was referring to @Soft Serve's post particularly.

I don't really play Yoshi so I wouldn't know the specifics regarding him

 

[Kipcom]

Yoshi is indeed similar to his design in melee, which I don't find to be a problem. I just think he's highly exploitable without having much in return for it.

I agree with NWRL's post on a general scale, not in regards to Yoshi.

 

[nimigoha]

Yoshi's standing grab, Sheik's chain, Lucas's dash grab, Samus's standing grab, Puff's Sing, etc. I've always wondered why they just didn't get something else.

Because Melee, Because Melee, Because active frames, Because active frames, BECAUSE SO MUCH MELEE, etc. (Because Melee)

Like, I get keeping strong things because Melee, then nerfing them a bit. Like Fox, Falco, and Marth. Then taking bad things and making them similar to Melee but better.

"Because Melee" doesn't really work when you have a character that's already so different from Melee but you want to "preserve the character" or whatever. Like Sheik. I appreciate DT changing Dthrow, but why leave Side B? You're already changing how the character fundamentally plays. Not to mention the fact that by making Zelda a viable character you completely change the Sheilda dynamic.

Or Samus, when you keep things like her weird grab (which admittedly has active frames to balance it out kinda) but also add in Ice Samus.

Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.

 

[Life]

Useless moves are important because they are a type of weakness which informs the way the character plays. Puff can be gimped if she wastes her double jumps. Sheik chain is effectively punishment for screwing up needle tricks and upB (and also chain jacket is a thing now so you can't really say it's useless). A bad dash grab forces you to JC grab every time (I screw up a lot of JC grabs actually, I keep noticing it lately and it really bothers me). A bad standing grab prevents you from doing the easiest shield punish, which forces you to work with other options like nair OOS, upB OOS, WDOOS, rolls... Pika's Melee bair means you can't really jump with your back to the opponent (although it's good 64 bair in PM).

If your jab is bad, you effectively don't have access to the standard "I need a hitbox instantly" button and need to look for something else. If your utilt is bad, you need to use higher-commitment moves like usmash or uair to juggle. If your dair is bad, you have trouble getting down from platforms unless you move around them a lot first, and you can't really contest juggles. If your fair is bad, you need to do something else when you are in the air and there's someone in front of you. If your upB doesn't get much vertical distance (Bowser, DK), you have to find other ways to avoid meteors (and Bowser and DK players do as much as they can about that, though it's still an issue for them).

etc etc etc

 

[Kipcom]

Sheik chain is effectively punishment for screwing up needle tricks and upB

I feel like this one is really reaching, because this effectively only applies to Sheik and not the entire cast. Plenty of characters can be punished for doing the wrong move without said move needing to be useless. Although you do have a point with the chain jacket, so I'll give you that (even if it's a glitch)

I also don't feel as if everything you listed is actually a true weakness. I don't consider characters like Lucas having a bad dash grab to be a weakness. I just think it's a lack of a strength. I intentionally JC grab with Lucas about 99% of the time so I don't have to keep dash grab in mind, but I also don't like the idea of never having a reason to use it over JC or pivot grab (but I feel that way about a lot of grabs). It's not a big deal, but I do sometimes ask myself "When or why should I ever use this move?"

I do think of bad standing grabs to be more suitable towards being a weakness, because it heavily affects your defensive options, which some characters lack. So I guess I can agree with you there.

Pika's Melee bair means you can't really jump with your back to the opponent (although it's good 64 bair in PM).

I mean, his uair is pretty damn good at least.

But yeah, I don't think character's not having useless moves will suddenly make them that much better or different. It just means that they can have a move that stops being useless and instead becomes more situational (Yes, there's a difference). You can give DDD a faster jab and he will still have most, if not all of the same weaknesses he had before. You can give Peach a better up tilt (which the PMDT actually did), and she will still struggle with fast characters who can effectively camp her.

tl;dr There are much better ways to give a character weaknesses that don't boil down to "Well this move is a weakness because it's possible that you MIGHT just make an input error and have said useless move occur."

 

[Deleted member]

The problem is the PMDT decided to take a lot of creative freedoms with the cast which caused a lot of these issues.

Sakurai designs characters pretty holistically, for the most part. I think you can fix most issues with the Melee cast purely by buffing frame data

The DT went way too crazy with a lot of the designs and I think we're just now starting to see the ramifications of that

the other part of that is that different members of the DT balanced different characters because getting 70 people to agree on every nuance one character at a time is impossible. criticism of the dev team is generally reasonable because there seems to be no binding philosophy for how the game was balanced aside from 3.5, which met its design goals flawlessly imo. that said, practicality has to step in somewhere, and you can only go so far with this.

i agree with you btw, particularly with respect to mewtwo- i wish mewtwo was given a FC that acted like peachs and a normal up B and that they were independent of each other. instead they kept no special fall to preserve teleport attacking and did selective mechanics nerfs elsewhere, so its very easy and unintuitive when the player randomly loses their 2nd jump and dies with one of the best recoveries in the game, and you end up with another MU where you have to have extensive play exp against it before it starts to make any sense because no other character in the game helps you to develop that skillset. now you could make an argument that it hurts mewtwos flavor or something, but if it had simply been done correctly to begin with it would have been a million times better for both players. i know ive said it a lot but you really dont need to staple jank attributes onto characters to make them unique and flavorful

**** snake

 

[redbeanjelly]

Are there any PM-ified characters that people believe the DT handled correctly, or well, then?

 

[Kipcom]

If we're talking about only the characters who are also in Melee, I think PMDT did a really good job on Pikachu. Everything he has comes from his official iterations, ex: 64 Bair, Melee's moveset, and Brawl's Quick Attack Cancel (which is very tolerable now that Pikachu can only use it from Quick Attack 1).

To be honest, more of the cast should have been done like Pikachu. They didn't try to give him any ridiculous jank or a gimmick of their own that would make him seem completely stupid, and the issues he had in 3.0 were fixed in 3.5 (for example, QAC being on both 1 and 2, plus being able to plank ledge with side b). I think Roy is very well done, too. I'm also one of those guys who think his recovery is fine and that he never should have gotten that floaty up-b bull**** from 3.02 and 3.5 in the first place.

 

[Life]

I think 3.6 Lucas worked out alright. Old versions of the character were super nasty, but part of that was due to overtuning. Lucas had a guaranteed shield break off magnet in older versions. Brrr.

I like how Ike turned out as well. I'm concerned he might be reliant on Quickdraw, but I haven't seen enough recent Ike play to tell ya.

Pit would have been fantastic (or maybe a tad undertuned?) if they'd just left usmash alone. ;_;

 

[DMG]

Ike is probably a decent design. QD is suspect occasionally, but he's pretty fair all things considered.

Some Brawl characters are inherently hard to balance if you want to keep a lot of their flavor. Wario and Snake in particular were probably the most difficult cases.

 

[KinGly]

I feel like the consensus that we are reaching is that

We like Ike!

(Scurries away...)

 

[TheGravyTrain]

If we're talking about only the characters who are also in Melee, I think PMDT did a really good job on Pikachu. Everything he has comes from his official iterations, ex: 64 Bair, Melee's moveset, and Brawl's Quick Attack Cancel (which is very tolerable now that Pikachu can only use it from Quick Attack 1).

To be honest, more of the cast should have been done like Pikachu. They didn't try to give him any ridiculous jank or a gimmick of their own that would make him seem completely stupid, and the issues he had in 3.0 were fixed in 3.5 (for example, QAC being on both 1 and 2, plus being able to plank ledge with side b). I think Roy is very well done, too. I'm also one of those guys who think his recovery is fine and that he never should have gotten that floaty up-b bull**** from 3.02 and 3.5 in the first place.

Roy up-b was an unintended remnant that carrier over from Marth (his clone) and was removed in 3.6 because they finally figured out how to.

 

[NWRL]

Roy, Wolf, Ike are all pretty solid example of great designs the DT did.

Ike in particular is a huge design success imo

 

[1FD]

there are defs a few characters that I think would be way better with more standardizing
ICs being more solid solo and the duo being a bonus
Falcon and DK being less linear and lame
overall I'm happy with like every character in the game almost

Yoshi grab being less stupid is good but it really held him together now with that and nerfs everywhere else a bit like that ground bounce down air kind of made him floppy much like Pit

 

[Deleted member]

Are there any PM-ified characters that people believe the DT handled correctly, or well, then?

imo the best designed character in the entire smash franchise is pm wario. clearly powerful, has lots of counterplay and very real limitations, fun to play, intuitive to play against, hes just everything done right on one character

 

[nimigoha]

imo the best designed character in the entire smash franchise is pm wario. clearly powerful, has lots of counterplay and very real limitations, fun to play, intuitive to play against, hes just everything done right on one character

Wa wa WA

That's nuts though. I think Wario still has some unintuitive traits like being able to jump out of Side B, Dair being so good on shield compared to other dive kicks, Bite, the low KB/low endlag (IASA 27) Fair that combos really well at many percents... not to mention his massive aerial drift makes punishing things like airdodges and Up B a massive guessing game.

Intuitive is the last thing I'd use to describe him.

 

[DrinkingFood]

the low KB/low endlag (IASA 27) Fair that combos really well at many percents

this isn't weird at all, moves like this trade off the power to kill at late percents or break CC until very high percents in favor of filling certain combo roles

 

[nimigoha]

I agree that that's how the tradeoff generally works, but Wario's Fair is weak enough and fast enough that the combo potential is huge across a wide range of percents. It gets bodied by CC but Wario's weave is so good that he can just retreat. My problem with Fair is more how it's on Wario, not really the move by itself.

Also Wario's Bthrow is dumb. Forget stage positioning, being grabbed by Wario on a side third of the stage is the same as being grabbed by him at the ledge. Pretty dumb. Pikachu and Sonic do that as well but not to the same degree, and even so it doesn't make his any less dumb.

 

[1FD]

Intuitive to play against
sees someone use shoulder bash after moving like puff
brain explodes at contradictions

someone lied

after a bit I think Ike is really normal and well designed and anyone even CLOSE to Ike in design is good enough and most are like that so most characters are good
by after a bit I mean like after you play him once and see what QD does and that he's a sword person but has a good jab and grab and is kinda slow and see his recovery once

 

[JOE!]

The thing that puzzles me about shoulder bash are the inconsistent "rules".

1) On the ground, it starts off "meh" but grows bigger and stronger with distance. Ok, cool move.
2) In the air, it has a constantly "middle" hitbox between those values and goes to special fall. Ok, little weird how it doesnt ramp up nor start weak...
3) if you hit a wall, no more special fall. ...wait what
4) If you run offstage from the ground, no special fall. Where is the weakness aside from hitting shield?

Etc

 

[Kushina43]

The only problem I have with Bash is that it technically can give Wario 2 aerial jumps, one as part of the attack if falling off an edge and another normal double jump afterwards
Like what

 

[Swigo]

Also I don't think anybody has mentioned fart yet, which if I'm remembering correctly is the only move that automatically charges, in addition to being one of the few moves that stays charged between stocks(Ivy's solar beam is the only other one I can think of) I also agree with what everyone else has said, but I'll admit I think Wario is probably one of the worst designed characters in PM and smash as a whole so I'm probably just blinded by hate

 

[mimgrim]

which if I'm remembering correctly is the only move that automatically charges, i

Rob's laser though.

 

[MTL Kyle]

MTL Kyle

Don't do this to people.

 

[Avro-Arrow]

This thread was more fun back in those days though.

 

[_Chrome]

MTL Kyle I believe in the hugbox theory; not even joking when I say that.

Any thoughts on stuff?

 

[1FD]

what are bad matchups for mewtwo and lucas and mario and zss and wario and some of the other good characters that seem all around balanced in terms of no glaring flaw?

 

[JOE!]

what are bad matchups for mewtwo and lucas and mario and zss and wario and some of the other good characters that seem all around balanced in terms of no glaring flaw?

Marth because their flaw is no sword

 

[Life]

"No glaring flaw" is a bit of a stretch. Mario's got stubby arms, Lucas is fragile, Wario's recovery is questionable, ZSS has a tether recovery. Can't speak for M2, he's just odd. Maybe his hitboxes? Aerial mobility without spending DJ/Teleport? Shrug.

They all have plenty of strengths, of course, some of which actively mitigate those weaknesses, but they're hardly flawless. If you think a character has no flaws, try playing them for a while.

 

[Avro-Arrow]

ZSS' recovery is still hella good. She's got mixups upon mixups, and her high recovery is really good. ZSS losing to Marth is questionable. Not necessarily wrong, but she can play around his stuff pretty well.

 

[Life]

That's what I was referring to with strengths that mitigate weaknesses. There are other parts of her recovery that let her avoid the tether issue entirely, but it's still a weakness if she is forced to reel in on a hogged edge.

I've been told ZSS beats Marth. I'm not really convinced, though.

 

[1FD]

and here I be chillin with the impression that marth can make those matchups even at best but has a bit of a tedious battle to do it because of them being so scary to him with explosiveness or something
like marth has an uphill battle against all the ones I mentioned but he can match them with a supergood onpoint game and that's why he can take games even if matchups are tough
wolf has no flaws
also I said no glaring flaws like things that just get them wrecked
which you actually just explained exactly why so that's cool Life but I think you meant to disagree or something so now that I'm writing this I'm confused LOL

 

[Zach777]

Only truly bad matchup for M2 is Toon Link. The rest are even, positive, or only slightly uphill to the point that it is negligible.

 

[Life]

1FD Because of the tone you took, I read that as implying that characters need a glaringly bad matchup to be balanced.

I take issue with the idea that characters need an obvious, easily exploitable weakness, because that encourages you to just pick the character that's best at taking advantage of that weakness. I'd rather have at least some characters with no seriously problematic matchups because that makes it impossible to just get by in a tournament on the force of your counterpicks. (Not that it's entirely possible even then, because you also have to beat the opponent on their counterpick, but...)

It's bad for your growth to try to win at the CSS.

Think this is just a misunderstanding tho.

 

[Player -0]

I'm still upset about the way tethers ended.

I've made a couple of long posts about this before but I'll just make a quick one outlining some problems.

- Very limited mixups that are typically situational
* All of these mixups also occur at or below the stage, essentially allowing no traditional high drift mixup
* Mainly due to the fact that you can't drop from tether after tethering to the ledge.
* These mixups are also limited dependent on the tether
- Having nerfs on both aerial (nothing besides drift/fast fall) AND ground (forever landlag).

Right now I'm fairly sure that what's being displayed the tether metagame (Mainly ZSS) is progressing a lot faster than what's being displayed of the anti tether metagame. Of course I haven't seen many P:M matches of good interactions so you can call this speculation I suppose.

Basically ZSS heralds what makes tethers still usable (even good) due to the Down B (and mixups out of it), walljump, Up B/Side B catching from quite the distance, paralyzer, and Up B extending her DJ height (thanks based Brawl). A list of some tether tech (generally):
- Ledge Cancel the forced land lag
- Back to ledge completely
- Drift into stage like hell and pretend you'll be able to get back.

But from the counterplay area not much is being shown.
- Haxdash/quick reactions on back to ledge
- The normal getup time thing that corresponds to the forced reel in timing which nets easy punishes
- No experience vs. driftback walljump aerials (I think this mixup should be a lot weaker than what's currently showcased due to walljump facing opposite direction of stage and only tether/aerial mixup from there, both of which lose to invincible ledge stall).



This thought wasn't well organized but I'm just gonna kinda post it.

 

[DMG]

If a character seems well rounded and without huge flaws, the real flaw may be their lack of more dominant traits. Mario can't run like Captain Falcon, almost any character would enjoy more range, etc. Some of those characters make up for it by being safe or playing safe, but that may not really be super impressive given a cast of 40 something characters, 20 of which you might see a top guy in bracket. Running around with a bunch of "hard" 50/50's and not a lot of dominance, kind of a hard tourney bracket life.

ZSS and Lucas are still quite good cause everything they have is like at least an 8/10. Those other 3 listed likely have harder limitations, or a much less dominant MU spread.

Edit: ZSS tether stuff is fine to deal with if ur character can be very comfortable going offstage. Invincible ledge stall can give her opportunity to tether while you let go etc (usually amplified by walls). ZSS with clean walls is bonkers regardless

 

[Journal]

I'm still upset about the way tethers ended.

I've made a couple of long posts about this before but I'll just make a quick one outlining some problems.

- Very limited mixups that are typically situational
* All of these mixups also occur at or below the stage, essentially allowing no traditional high drift mixup
* Mainly due to the fact that you can't drop from tether after tethering to the ledge.
* These mixups are also limited dependent on the tether
- Having nerfs on both aerial (nothing besides drift/fast fall) AND ground (forever landlag).

Right now I'm fairly sure that what's being displayed the tether metagame (Mainly ZSS) is progressing a lot faster than what's being displayed of the anti tether metagame. Of course I haven't seen many P:M matches of good interactions so you can call this speculation I suppose.

Basically ZSS heralds what makes tethers still usable (even good) due to the Down B (and mixups out of it), walljump, Up B/Side B catching from quite the distance, paralyzer, and Up B extending her DJ height (thanks based Brawl). A list of some tether tech (generally):
- Ledge Cancel the forced land lag
- Back to ledge completely
- Drift into stage like hell and pretend you'll be able to get back.

But from the counterplay area not much is being shown.
- Haxdash/quick reactions on back to ledge
- The normal getup time thing that corresponds to the forced reel in timing which nets easy punishes
- No experience vs. driftback walljump aerials (I think this mixup should be a lot weaker than what's currently showcased due to walljump facing opposite direction of stage and only tether/aerial mixup from there, both of which lose to invincible ledge stall).



This thought wasn't well organized but I'm just gonna kinda post it.

If you wanna see someone **** ZSS's recovery check out this set with Sosa and Jason Waterfalls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P13diR1BUF4

 

[Player -0]

That was a sick match but not quite what I was looking for.

Sosa just applied pressure really well game 1 and stuffed most of Jfall's options. I think some of the stuffing was due to the more ZSS "gimmicky" movement like platform cancels and drop ledge -> Down B -> Insta DJ in questionable spots/times.

Also edgeguards took a hit later in the set which is disappointing. He gave up ledge for free a lot after being on it. Possibly just not comfortable yet.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

If a character seems well rounded and without huge flaws, the real flaw may be their lack of more dominant traits. Mario can't run like Captain Falcon, almost any character would enjoy more range, etc. Some of those characters make up for it by being safe or playing safe, but that may not really be super impressive given a cast of 40 something characters, 20 of which you might see a top guy in bracket. Running around with a bunch of "hard" 50/50's and not a lot of dominance, kind of a hard tourney bracket life.

ZSS and Lucas are still quite good cause everything they have is like at least an 8/10. Those other 3 listed likely have harder limitations, or a much less dominant MU spread.

Edit: ZSS tether stuff is fine to deal with if ur character can be very comfortable going offstage. Invincible ledge stall can give her opportunity to tether while you let go etc (usually amplified by walls). ZSS with clean walls is bonkers regardless

I havent done the testing, but I imagine invincible ledge stalls shouldn't be beaten by quick ledge snap up b's. When the tether attaches to the ledge, but hasn't reeled in, if you grab the ledge it does a forced jump. Tether quick snap my be quick enough though, idk till i test it.

 

[Kapapanerp]

Only truly bad matchup fo M2 is Toon Link. The rest are even, positive, or only slightly uphill to the point that it is negligible.

On paper.... maybe, it doesn't appear to be that way in practice though. I personally don't think Tink is all THAT bad honestly, M2 has alot going for him in the matchup. A reflector plus a good powershield game and and amazing glide toss when he catches/picks up a bomb all help him vs projectile spam, and M2 can get out of combos quite easily not to mention M2's own punish game is absurd. The matchup gets harder on stages where platforms play a larger roll, so banning battlefield, wario land dreamland ect. is a must.

Calling Tink his only bad matchup is a bit of a stretch as well, I personally would lump Roy Falcon Wolf there as well. For whatever reason Lunchables Roy did waaaaay better than his Tink vs Frozen, though I honestly can't imagine why. Could chalk it up to matchup inexperience, but who knows.