Tier List Speculation

[Foo]

In regards to ike, all of the moves that ike uses in neutral/adv-disadv are really quick, and almost all of his slow moves are more for ending combos/edgeguarding. Grab/jab/ftilt/bair/nair etc. Yeah, stuff like fair and fmsash are really slow, but ike doesn't use stuff like that when the speed matters (because he has plenty of other options to rely on.) His burst mobility is crazy, his combos are obscene, and he's got really good range. I personally don't think he's top 10 or better than shiek, but I wouldn't say he's worth automatic dismissal. He has a lot of potential.

 

[Bazkip]

MrLz made a tier list that's pretty different from the standard. Fox, Sheik, ZSS, Ness, Ivy, and a few others are all in pretty different spots from what everyone else has been saying.

He made a newer list half an hour ago

 

[Ya Boy GP]

He made a newer list half an hour ago

Now it's perfect

 

[JesteRace]

The idea of Ike not being amazing is hilarious to me, I would almost go as far as saying he's the best FE character. If not top 10, he's like top 12.

 

[Deleted member]

ike is def worse than marth or roy, he doesnt have a reliable ground conversion and is de facto pigeon-holed into conversions via grab or aerials. this would be fine if he had a dashdance to solve the problem like CF does, but instead he has QD, which is good but clearly no substitute for a real dashdance. in real gameplay, the lack of a ground game means that ike functionally plays out closer to CF than either marth or roy, but then MK plays out more like marth and roy than he does to other ball chars with multiple jumps

 

[JesteRace]

Snake is dumb

 

[G13_Flux]

He made a newer list half an hour ago

ehh. just no.. to both lists. give him respect for trying to break the grain but certain characters are just very very obviously misplaced. wolf at 12th?? yikkesss. ZSS at 29th?? SUPER yikeeeees. ike above marth and roy is obviously wrong, for reasons mostly already brought up. shiek too low, snake way too high, even lucario and GW are a bit too high. Robs good but now way is he number 2. Even ignoring the specifc number placement, and looking more generally, the characters are not properly placed into their respective tiers. placing characters like diddy and MK into the same tiers as wario, GW, snake, and CF is just not correct. leaving characters like ZSS, wolf, shiek, and falco a full tier below wario,CF,GW, and snake (who already are not properly relatively placed) is again, just not right.

i just think that these lists represent a serious lack of knowledge when it comes to some characters. Hes a very good GW player, wont take it away from him, but he obviously doesnt understand the potential or MU spread of some characters deeply enough.

Sorry to chew it up. not heavily opposed yet to some of the more "revolutionary" placements hes made, like fox being a bit lower, diddy being 1, or snake being closer to the top tier than many think, but some character placements are just DEFINITELY not right.

 

[shairn]

2. Analyze the following tier list (10 points) (5/10):

He made a newer list half an hour ago

a) Is this tier list accurate? (5 points) (5/5)

ehh. just no.. to both lists. give him respect for trying to break the grain but certain characters are just very very obviously misplaced. wolf at 12th?? yikkesss. ZSS at 29th?? SUPER yikeeeees. ike above marth and roy is obviously wrong, for reasons mostly already brought up. shiek too low, snake way too high, even lucario and GW are a bit too high. Robs good but now way is he number 2. Even ignoring the specifc number placement, and looking more generally, the characters are not properly placed into their respective tiers. placing characters like diddy and MK into the same tiers as wario, GW, snake, and CF is just not correct. leaving characters like ZSS, wolf, shiek, and falco a full tier below wario,CF,GW, and snake (who already are not properly relatively placed) is again, just not right.

i just think that these lists represent a serious lack of knowledge when it comes to some characters. Hes a very good GW player, wont take it away from him, but he obviously doesnt understand the potential or MU spread of some characters deeply enough.

Sorry to chew it up. not heavily opposed yet to some of the more "revolutionary" placements hes made, like fox being a bit lower, diddy being 1, or snake being closer to the top tier than many think, but some character placements are just DEFINITELY not right.

b) Explain. (5 points) (0/5)
???
See me after class

 

[Deleted member]

can we stop pretending the snake is a mid tier now? instead of saying that literally the entire community "doesn't know the MU"? all of our best and brightest consistently fumble against snake, it could be, maybe, possibly, that he's just really ****ing good and has a lot going for him.

 

[JesteRace]

Let's stop acting like Ness isn't good, either. Jose V is like, what, the 4th Ness to get top 8 at something big?

 

[MartinWolfe686]

Wew lad that Lucas placement. Why'd you place him so high? (I get your list isn't super serious but at least some thought went into it)

 

[Life]

can we stop pretending the snake is a mid tier now? instead of saying that literally the entire community "doesn't know the MU"? all of our best and brightest consistently fumble against snake, it could be, maybe, possibly, that he's just really ****ing good and has a lot going for him.

Except Junebug, apparently.

While Flipp's successes do a lot for showing what Snake can do (and Prof is inactive lately and would probably troll if you asked him), what isn't clear to me is exactly *how* good Snake actually is. (And even less clear to me: why random Ness players keep winning things. Seriously?) (EDIT: I'm kidding about the random part.)

And while I'm here: I'm curious what this thread thinks about Dreamland, particularly in relation to Snake but also in general.

 

[FirewaterDM]

Dreamland's a real good stage. In terms of Snake it's prob worth a ban when available in a set.

Either way, let's think about the newer thing that's been moving around, i.e Ice Climbers, how are people thinking about them after Balcony?

 

[Deleted member]

junebug is A a really talented player on B a blatant top tier with C the most stifling and powerful tool in the game. i wouldnt call that a MU issue.

last stock of the tournament showed exactly why dreamland should be banned. hard banned. 281% lol

 

[Player -0]

idk

camping top platform vs. Ness is kinda good

 

[Boiko]

I think the whole, "Ness players think Ness is bottom 5" thing died in 3.5. I don't think any top level Ness players have said that he was bad in recent times, unless it was just a joke. I don't think Ness is amazing, I don't even think he's great. I think he's solidly high-mid tier. Right around the ~20 range.

The big problem with Ness is that he loses hard to two things: circle camping and large disjoint. His losing match ups are top and high tier characters like Fox, Wolf, ZSS, MK, Marth, Tink, Sheik, Falcon, and Peach. He does have the tools to reasonably compete against those characters, but it's still an uphill battle.

Take a look at Fox, ZSS, and Tink, for example. These characters are much more mobile and have spammable projectiles. If you didn't see my WF set against Lunchables from IAB, check it out. Game two, he picks Tink and runs away, camping me out the entire time. It's extremely difficult to deal with. Take a look at reslived vs. Aidan (ZSS) from Blacklisted 2. Aidan runs away, camping him out the entire time. That is the optimal way to play the MU. When it is played that way, it feels virtually unwinnable. So, in theory, these match ups are horrible, but theory and practice are very different. In practice, they are doable, because no one seems to be able to camp forever (Hax vs. Plup, Evo), or once a hole in the strategy is figured out, the camper either abandons their plan, or fails to adapt.

I think that if everyone plays the MU the way Lunchables played against Stereo, it would be a lot less likely that Ness players advance TOO far in bracket.

And for what it's worth, no Ness has been in top 8 of an EC tournament since SF2, where res got 7th after a solid, but not particularly amazing bracket run. Prior to that, I believe the last time a Ness was in top 8 was when I got 5th at the TLOC 1k, which wasn't a major, and before that, Final Boss. At Supernova, res got 33rd, and Stereo and I each got 17th. At Blacklisted 2, I got 9th, res got 13th. Aki got 2nd at NWM, but that was basically him just playing in his region. I don't think Ness' results are as impressive as everyone lets on. Good, yes, but top 8 every tourney, no. Unless I'm missing something.

tl;dr: Ness is probably around 20th in the game, has a hard time with top tiers when they play campy. In practice, it's not as bad, since not many people play that way, or if they do, they don't play it effectively.

 

[Professor Pro]

It really annoys me that the development team would let Snake get through as he is, it's like he wasn't tested at all but somehow he still was able to get through with all of his BS.

I hope something can be done about it in the future but I hardly see it happening.

I hate Snakes and Snake mains.

 

[Life]

Is there a difference between "people don't play correctly vs Ness" and "people don't play correctly vs Snake?" Aside from one Snake player doing drastically better than all the Ness players.

 

[Tomaster]

last stock of the tournament showed exactly why dreamland should be banned. hard banned. 281% lol

Yea but that's just diddy, some characters don't have that problem. Thunderz loves DL vs snakes for example.

 

[Deleted member]

i think Boiko makes another extremely relevant point, which is that ness has readily apparent weaknesses that are readily demonstrated in real tournament play. the community at large seems to insist that snake has major weaknesses, but no one seems to be able to consistently identify them or replicate MU advantages among multiple characters. its almost like snake isnt actually weak to those things. when you see "X beats ness" its very easy to connect the dots and replicate those things.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Boiko I've been trying to tell people the same thing almost verbatim about Bowser for years. Camp = win but nobody wants to camp

 

[DrinkingFood]

It really annoys me that the development team would let Snake get through as he is, it's like he wasn't tested at all but somehow he still was able to get through with all of his BS.

I hope something can be done about it in the future but I hardly see it happening.

I hate Snakes and Snake mains.

Who are you, and where's prof pro

 

[Frost | Odds]

It's not that snake is that horrible of a design in principle - some people are always gonna be attracted to that kind of playstyle so it's probably fine to have in the game (as much as I personally hate him). It's just that a lot of his attributes (particularly the defensive ones) happen to be overtuned.

He's no more egregious than a few other characters; we'll live

 

[Luk101]

These are the pains and joys of having a game that won't be patched.

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

we mahvel baybee


also ics are good wtf are footstool handoffs lmao

 

[G13_Flux]

2. Analyze the following tier list (10 points) (5/10):



a) Is this tier list accurate? (5 points) (5/5)

b) Explain. (5 points) (0/5)
???
See me after class

If you need me to explain why placing ZSS at 29th is incorrect then you dont understand enough about this game.

ability to display common sense about the game (100 points) (0/100)
go back to elementary school.

 

[ThegreatVaporeon1]

wtf are footstool handoffs lmao

Cancer

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

Cancer

says the luigi players

also luigi snake is even or in luigi's favor and luigi beats ness

luigi top 15 I've said it before I'll say it again

but then again playing luigi ideally is hard

 

[ThegreatVaporeon1]

says the luigi players

also luigi snake is even or in luigi's favor and luigi beats ness

luigi top 15 I've said it before I'll say it again

but then again playing luigi ideally is hard

I agree with luigi being even snake and beating ness

Top 15? Maybe. People do underestimate the character quite a bit. Luigi's top tier mus can be bad but they aren't too awful. His worst matchup is sheik in my opinion, but even that's doable.

 

[JesteRace]

Everyone except Kirby and Bowser are secretly top 15.

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

Everyone except Kirby and Bowser are secretly top 15.

list of people who I think don't really have a say at top 15, just kinda off the top of my head:

bowser
kirby
yoshi
link
zelda
ness
dedede
ganon
dk
all the pokemon aside from mewtwo and lucario
samus
pit
ike
olimar

which I guess leaves 22ish charaters left

minus the characters that I think are universally considered top 15 (diddy, falcon, wolf, fox, sheik, tink, mewtwo, lucas, mk, gnw, 10 characters)

that leaves wario, mario, luigi, peach, falco, lucario, zss, marth, roy, snake, ROB, and sonic on the "bubble" of top 15, ie not consistently represented one way or the other in tierlists

and zss I really want to put in the top 15

if we're talking about who I think are the 15 best characters in the game, then it'd probably be
diddy, wolf, fox, falcon, shiek, mk, mewtwo, lucas, zss, wario, luigi, peach, snake, game and watch, and then the 15th spot is a tossup between lucario and rob because lol idk

but then again the more I see phresh do work with icies the more that I think they're just as good/explosive as lucario is if not more

 

[ilysm]

also ics are good wtf are footstool handoffs lmao

but then again the more I see phresh do work with icies the more that I think they're just as good/explosive as lucario is if not more

LOL yesssssss finally the respect we deserve!

TBH I'm in a conflicted spot with Icies. Their punish game is definitely amazing, but not for the reasons everyone thinks it is. Nobody in Phresh's bracket up until like Flipp really knew how to SDI dthrow dair consistently (the Sosa match in particular made me feel an odd mixture of pride and wanting to cry). Even though I and other Icies mains strictly benefit from only needing to dthrow dair our enemies to death, I really want to see the counterplay develop. Icies definitely have reliable options outside of dthrow dair—it's just that nobody has really forced us to use them yet. One secretly godlike thing to try is mix up the SDI for dthrow dair by hitting with different hitboxes of the dair (which nobody does; they all just do normal fullhop dair). Tech chase off of Nana fair isn't bad. We have a fthrow Nana pivot grab setup that looks really sweet and can be used to set up some silly things like up-b kills and fully charged fsmashes. If worse comes to worst, there's even a one-frame window we can use to control Nana's throw direction that still somehow made it into 3.6 (though if I'm being honest I don't see that at all being reliable at any point in the future). We can also make Nana pummel now, which is useful for reasons. And since fair is one of the most powerful spikes in the game to the point of it being like stupid good and all their smashes are wicked strong, handoffs are really good—and we've figured out some ways to make handoffs infinite, and set them up on platforms midstage. They have the best punish game off a grab in the entire game. They're actually crazy. And that's not even factoring in the incredibleness that we have recently discovered and dubbed the zsync. S/O to the Icies discord for basically being in a mad scramble to push our character to the top for the past eightish(?) months.

But are they Top 15? As good as Lucario? To be honest, no idea. On paper, they lose some matchups so badly. In practice they lose others. They're so squishy. Some characters have a single move that seems to invalidate their whole gameplan (hi Toon Link). But I'm so optimistic about them and I think they have a place in the metagame. They're still in super early infancy stages of the amazingness that their development could turn out to be so I'm skeptical to call it yet. We know two things for sure. One is that in practice, under the right circumstances, Icies can work really well right now. The other is that my character is weird and fun and I love them.

Footstool thing is a pseudo-infinite but it's godlike haha

 

[Luk101]

list of people who I think don't really have a say at top 15, just kinda off the top of my head:

bowser
kirby
yoshi
link
zelda
ness
dedede
ganon
dk
all the pokemon aside from mewtwo and lucario
samus
pit
ike
olimar

which I guess leaves 22ish charaters left

minus the characters that I think are universally considered top 15 (diddy, falcon, wolf, fox, sheik, tink, mewtwo, lucas, mk, gnw, 10 characters)

that leaves wario, mario, luigi, peach, falco, lucario, zss, marth, roy, snake, ROB, and sonic on the "bubble" of top 15, ie not consistently represented one way or the other in tierlists

and zss I really want to put in the top 15

if we're talking about who I think are the 15 best characters in the game, then it'd probably be
diddy, wolf, fox, falcon, shiek, mk, mewtwo, lucas, zss, wario, luigi, peach, snake, game and watch, and then the 15th spot is a tossup between lucario and rob because lol idk

but then again the more I see phresh do work with icies the more that I think they're just as good/explosive as lucario is if not more

I'm curious about your placement of Samus. Samus on almost every credible tier list I've seen has been just around top 15 actually, and I'm curious what this thread thinks of Samus. I've been picking her up as a comain with Ness and she's been a lot of fun, but she's very unintuitive and very hard to play right. So how good is samus just as a character without results? And how good is she if you factor in like Esam's performance with her?

Also, pika is kind of an anomily as well, people put him from like top 10 to like 25 or so. Pretty much the only good pika is anther lol.

 

[Chevy]

Samus has a lot of really trashy matchups, or at least a lot of matchups that you have to play very differently. This is cool, but takes a lot of work. She is also very underdeveloped still. It seems like I'm the only one trying to work in all of the new potential PM technology outside of the easy stuff. Which is understandable, because her peak tech limit is stupidly high for a number of reasons. Unfortunately, I can't afford to travel and also I still probably suck, Plup hasn't been to anything noteable, therefore Samus is bad for the time being. I'd like to believe that endgame tech level Samus can be top 15, but as she is she's solidly lower-mid, like I've been saying forever.

 

[JOE!]

The more I play it seems there are three distinct brackets of characters....

A) Characters who just sort of play their game and others have to react to them
Somebody like Snake or Fox just sort of has their set style that works on nearly everybody.

B) Characters who have to change their gameplay per match-up
Samus is an example of this, where she has to play differently per match-up but still gets by. It just takes more work and dedication.

C) Characters who's normal gameplan just sorta gets shut down by others
Characters like Bowser or Ganon unfortunately fall into here, where DD camp + grab combos just sort of mess them up universally.

 

[shairn]

If you need me to explain why placing ZSS at 29th is incorrect then you dont understand enough about this game.

ability to display common sense about the game (100 points) (0/100)
go back to elementary school.

Haha wow okay touched a nerve there
I can only wish they taught me smash in elementary school, at least I would have paid attention.

What if I need you to explain to me why ZSS is not 29th? Is she lower? Is she higher? Why are Lucario and GW better than Snake? Why do you think CF and Wario are not viable contenders for a top spot on the tier list? If Sheik is too low, just how far is she from where she should be?

Some of us are good and some of us less so, and if you have something to bring then don't keep it to yourself and wait for others to just magically arrive at the same conclusion. That post was just a gratuitous jab at his point of view on the current metagame.

 

[Life]

Some of us are good and some of us less so, and if you have something to bring then don't keep it to yourself and wait for others to just magically arrive at the same conclusion.

+1, sigquote

I think Samus is a potential sleeper hit. Despite how much weaker her recovery is without Melee tethers, she's got ice usmash to help kill floaties, she escapes combos really well, and her zair in particular is very useful compared to Melee: she can mix up her aerial momentum with airdodge zair to help her get down, she gets a very fast and long poke on the ground, and it's easy to snap to ledge quickly which can help with certain edgeguard scenarios. Crawl and crawl attack are super good additions as well. Probably some other random PM stuff too.

Being (arguably) even with space animals and advantaged over MK and Diddy is also one serious matchup resume.

(Of course, as I'm quick to tell people, everyone sounds broken when you list the things they can do.)

 

[Luk101]

Yeah, Chevy , I have a lot of respect for your samus. It's definitely my favorite PM samus to watch, and watching your play really inspires me to keep pushing my skill with samus. I get what you mean about having to play differently though. It's similar to Ness's matchups where a lot of tools that are good in certain matchups are really bad ideas in others.

And, wait samus MK and samus diddy are positive?

 

[Ripple]

thats a relic thought from the days on 3.5 when MK was a shell of his current self. and even then was hotly debated. as MK could easily prevent samus from landing

no one should ever think MK loses to samus now though

MK can and should be played like a better sheik with even more powerful edgeguarding

 

[Deleted member]

sheik def still has better edge guards, mk has a way better neutral and nair is god