Tier List Speculation

[NWRL]

Not even close to Sonic-nerfed. As she stands, she's better than 2.5 Ivy, who I thought was already a fairly capable character in the right hands.

What's your opinion on Ike? I saw that you posted that you were no longer playing him.

 

[onlywonderboy]

I find it interesting the whole "Project M being easier" discussion actually shares a lot of parallels with LoL vs Dota 2. One game is harder but there are things about the easier game make it more accessible/fun. That said, it still requires a lot of practice to get really good at the easier game. Being easier isn't necessarily a bad thing if there is still a fairly high skill ceiling. "Easy" has such a negative connotation people feel the need to defend the game when it gets called that.

 

[NWRL]

I find it interesting the whole "Project M being easier" discussion actually shares a lot of parallels with LoL vs Dota 2. One game is harder but there are things about the easier game make it more accessible/fun. That said, it still requires a lot of practice to get really good at the easier game. Being easier isn't necessarily a bad thing if there is still a fairly high skill ceiling. "Easy" has such a negative connotation people feel the need to defend the game when it gets called that.

They're both extremely easy games mechanically. Strategically is another story. Dota is "harder" because map control is the name of the game, people are constantly roaming and getting objectives. League tends to focus on laning way too much, no one wants to watch two nerds last hit for 20 minutes.

 

[onlywonderboy]

They're both extremely easy games mechanically. Strategically is another story. Dota is "harder" because map control is the name of the game, people are constantly roaming and getting objectives. League tends to focus on laning way too much, no one wants to watch two nerds last hit for 20 minutes.

Believe me, I know a lot more about MOBAs than I do Smash haha. Compared to a fighting game, yes, neither is mechanically difficult, but when comparing the two there are way more mechanics in Dota (denying, more active items, ect) which means there is more difficult execution (especially in terms of the numbers of buttons in a combo or the precision required to hit skill shots). There is certainly different mindsets in terms of tactics, but I still think Melee is harder in a much similar way Dota is to LoL.

 

[Plum]

Watching professional League disproves the idea that League is all about laning for 20 minutes. Professionals try to do whatever they can to circumvent the laning phase and take objectives as soon as possible, often taking their first objectives within the first 3-4 minutes. Just as in DotA whichever team controls the map better and secures more objectives will win. In casual play maybe those points hold, but who cares about casual play.

DotA is harder because it demands more from players on a mechanical level.

 

[Ali Baba 177]

That's why I said purely based on results. Basing a tier list on what characters do well is a good approach, it's just that if you only based it on results, you end up with underrepresented characters being placed very low regardless of their strength as a character. Yoshi is a good example here as many people will agree that yoshi is pretty damn good in this game (likely in the top 20), but not a lot of people play Yoshi, so he will be underrepresented and in lists based on results he will generally be on the lower end. Which brings me to the other problem with relying purely on results is that what you're actually doing is creating a history of what characters have performed well in the past rather than a ranking of the character's relative goodness in comparison to the rest of the cast, or a prediction of what characters will do well in the future. In other words, I think a purely results based list is a great tool to use when trying to create a tier list, but shouldn't be substituted in place of one as it has issues that makes it function poorly as a tier list.

Thats a good point. If I do an updated list with more tournaments later I will put a weighting system in where the more recent the tournament the more points are awarded, in a small but effective way. That way characters that start to do well will have a better freedom of maneuver around the tier list.

 

[Ali Baba 177]

I was actually thinking of a list like this the other day. It's definitely interesting to see who is winning tournaments.

Edit: I think this list would be really great if you sort of kept updating it every couple months and if it also had some other lists placed next to it to compare it with such as character popularity.

Character popularity as in numbers in entries for every character in every tournament or popularity as in like a poll?

 

[Strong Badam]

What's your opinion on Ike? I saw that you posted that you were no longer playing him.

He's good and fun and awesome and more characters should be like him

 

[Armada]

Kink-Link: If you truley wanna be the best you should practice a lot. I don't have the game though and I don't look at PM the same way as I did with Melee.

SmashFromThePast: Easier to execute stuff and the combo game is much easier too. This doesn't necessairly be a bad thing but you choosed to put it that way.

 

[Jacob29]

I find it interesting the whole "Project M being easier" discussion actually shares a lot of parallels with LoL vs Dota 2. One game is harder but there are things about the easier game make it more accessible/fun. That said, it still requires a lot of practice to get really good at the easier game. Being easier isn't necessarily a bad thing if there is still a fairly high skill ceiling. "Easy" has such a negative connotation people feel the need to defend the game when it gets called that.

I dont think it's that comparable really. LoL and DotA are fairly different where as PM and Melee are pretty similar.

Also p.s league sucks monkey balls.

 

[Yung Mei]

s tier

flaco
foxy boxing


A tier
Meat knight
a lot of people
teh phiyah!!

B tier
Wolf
Martha
Flacon
Game & Watch
a couple of people

C Tier because of lack of representation aka i have never seen ANYONE use these characters in tournament
Luigi, Olimar, Squirtle



best tier list NA

 

[DMG]

Hey Meiling, don't think I missed that stuff under your name. YOU'RE BAKA!

 

[Oracle]

Lol rob number 10 in that list. Oops my bad

 

[popsofctown]

Figuring out how much bias caused by people already playing the character from a similar game/format is an NP hard problem. Pretty tricky.

If you tried to figure out the true power of characters for Brawl doubles, even a large sample of tournament results would give you very flawed results, like Ness, ZSS, GW, Lucario, and Fox too low.

Project M plays a lot like Melee so I think Fox/Falco/Sheik/Marth are the main guys that are tricky to figure out. I don't think playing Brawl gets you very much credit with any character, even ROB feels like a foreign language to me.

 

[Papa+Stone]

I dont think it's that comparable really. LoL and DotA are fairly different where as PM and Melee are pretty similar.

Also p.s league sucks monkey balls.

They call it league of losers for a good reason. Coincidence does not exist in our world.

 

[Ogopogo]

Good ol' Papa Stone.

I'm fairly sure Hungrybox used Olimar at Apex. I don't remember how he did, or who he used it against.

 

[deadjames]

What's your opinion on Ike? I saw that you posted that you were no longer playing him.

When did this happen? He just wrecked me in tournament with Ike a couple months ago.

 

[Papa+Stone]

When did this happen? He just wrecked me in tournament with Ike a couple months ago.

Just today or so LOL when that enlightenment chap started dissing string bad he just crumbled under the peer pressure and cannot return to ike without evoking painful memories of his online spankage by t_e

 

[deadjames]

Just today or so LOL when that enlightenment chap started dissing string bad he just crumbled under the peer pressure and cannot return to ike without evoking painful memories of his online spankage by t_e

Implying that wifi actually matters.

Good ol' Papa Stone.

I'm fairly sure Hungrybox used Olimar at Apex. I don't remember how he did, or who he used it against.

His Olimar kinda got bodied by Axe's Pikachu.

 

[Papa+Stone]

Implying that wifi actually matters.

His Olimar kinda got bodied by Axe's Pikachu.

It obviously matters to some people if messiahs like t_e are managing to be banned from swf

 

[Papa+Stone]

One thing though that ive been hearing a lot, especially recently is people talking about how they feel melee players should adapt a pm character rather than their melee main and that it would be nothing but beneficial to the community. This is a good point but one problem with this is that no individual pm brawl newcomer or buffed low tier fits the same kind of playstyle melee players enjoy, which is fast, technical, versatile, and combo heavy chars with an intuitive movset which are kind of hard to find in pm. (Hear me out)

So ive really liked that pm has taken the time to implement a lot of really unusual, heavier, and slower zoning chars in the game which wouldnt have worked well in melee and ive enjoyed their designs. However as a melee predominant player ive always gravitated towards simpler designed characters that are adaptable yet leave room for creativity and innovation such as fox mario luigi marth falcon falco. A lot of the new characters feel really gimmicky with no room for anything but the intended play style and they lose my interest pretty quickly. You see campy foxes and falcos, patient ones, ddance heavy ones and aggresive ones. Some are more methodical while others fish for reads. No luigi player ever plays the same in melee. And this isnt even mentioning marths different playstyles.

Ive tinked with some slower and faster chars like sonic wario and wolf but none of them quite cut it for me, and obviously many others feel the same way from the evident popularity of the aforementioned melee characters. I promise you would see many more melee players get involved if you had at least one new char that drew their attention.

And before you bring up wolf Im pretty sure the biggest turnoff if that he doesnt have the same coolness factor that fox or falco do. They have this really serious look to them and their attacks arent over the top or trying to force a personality onto the characters aesthetic design. Maybe this is the really I've not really been interested in wolf, but i find it hard to like a character who wears gay porn leather mixed with vegeta armor with an anime chibi wolf head attached. And thats not mentioning his jank as hell attack animations (canonball nair and that uair) If Wolf had an alt costume that looked like how he did in the melee intro I probably would pick him up. Maybe id need new attack animations too who knows. Just all of these new characters kinda becomes a moot-ish incentive to pick up pm if youre a melee player when all of the new characters are ones that dont evoke the same kind of gameplay that the melee top tiers provide, unless youre looking for new matchups and not new characters to play. (This all applies to all top tier mains except marth players, roy and ike are pretty neat-o but sword characters arent my preference.)

Holy **** are you me? I feel the exact same way lmao

 

[Metazoa]

Holy **** are you me?

I think that's been answered numerous times by numerous observers.

Anyway, to try and spark some conversation: the Space Animals. It's pretty much completely agreed on that they're still top of the food chain. What I'm really not sure of is their distinct differences and how that changes their approach to matchups and others' approaches to them. So, the question: How exactly do their tools and the differences between them change the way they tend to play?

 

[deadjames]

I think that's been answered numerous times by numerous observers.

Anyway, to try and spark some conversation: the Space Animals. It's pretty much completely agreed on that they're still top of the food chain. What I'm really not sure of is their distinct differences and how that changes their approach to matchups and others' approaches to them. So, the question: How exactly do their tools and the differences between them change the way they tend to play?

Fox gimps, Falco pillars, Wolf juggles.

 

[Ali Baba 177]

I think that's been answered numerous times by numerous observers.

Anyway, to try and spark some conversation: the Space Animals. It's pretty much completely agreed on that they're still top of the food chain. What I'm really not sure of is their distinct differences and how that changes their approach to matchups and others' approaches to them. So, the question: How exactly do their tools and the differences between them change the way they tend to play?

Falcos recovery forces falco players to focus more on stage control which usually is the best thing to focus on, wolf tends to play more chaotically than fox or falcos standard quick technical combos. wolf is obviously less developed, fox is just fox. i also think falcos lasers are the best and give him advantage at range and more approach options

 

[deadjames]

Falcos recovery forces falco players to focus more on stage control which usually is the best thing to focus on, wolf tends to play more chaotically than fox or falcos standard quick technical combos. wolf is obviously less developed, fox is just fox. i also think falcos lasers are the best and give him advantage at range and more approach options

I don't feel that chaotic is the right word. He actually has the freedom to be creative because his combos aren't flow charts.

 

[MVP]

i would advise everyone not to put much thought into "tier lists". in a game like PM where the characters are designed to be balanced, MU exists but tier lists do not. it then becomes a mental block for players whose ccharacters are considered "lower tier". know your MU's but don't take heed to speculation.

 

[jtm94]

I think a lot of people are sleeping on Link. He crushes me too hard for being as bad as he is ranked.

Yoshi will start winning when they start playing more like Melee Yoshi.

Other games shouldn't be discussed here.

Wolf is difficult to use because I don't know which of his attacks to apply to which situations. I don't really play the other spacies, but I have seen and watched them extensively, and can emulate to the degree of technicality that I am capable of.

 

[deadjames]

I think a lot of people are sleeping on Link. He crushes me too hard for being as bad as he is ranked.

Yoshi will start winning when they start playing more like Melee Yoshi.

Other games shouldn't be discussed here.

Wolf is difficult to use because I don't know which of his attacks to apply to which situations. I don't really play the other spacies, but I have seen and watched them extensively, and can emulate to the degree of technicality that I am capable of.

Link is upper mid-tier at best. He's better than he's been in any other Smash game, but he's still Link and he's still not that great.

 

[Vashimus]

I think a lot of people are sleeping on Link. He crushes me too hard for being as bad as he is ranked.

"Honestly, I think a lot of people are sleeping on G&W and, myself included, don't fully understand what he's capable of." - metroid

"I feel like people are sleeping on [Squirtle's] greatness too..." - Jayman-X

"The only character people are really sleeping on is Game and Watch and probably DeDeDe." - Kinky

"People are sleeping on Ness. That dude is gdlk." - B.W.

"People are sleeping on GnW. He got a massive amount of small little tweaks that make him flow incredibly well." - Soft Serve

"I think everyone is sleeping on Link." - The NZA

"I'm maintaining the fact that people are still sleeping on dedede." - Lv. 100 Magikarp

"Everyone is sleeping [on] Charizard." - NightShadow6

"everybody is sleeping on the angel even though he just won apex…" - Nguz95

Et cetera, et cetera, until the end of time. I've quoted it before, and I'll quote it again,

"Everyone's sleeping on everyone" - DMG

 

[DMG]

I think a lot of people are sleeping on Link. He crushes me too hard for being as bad as he is ranked.

Wolf is difficult to use because I don't know which of his attacks to apply to which situations. I don't really play the other spacies, but I have seen and watched them extensively, and can emulate to the degree of technicality that I am capable of.

Link is tedious. I don't mind Link, but I might as well be playing against Zelda with a Boomerang. That's the level of fun I approach. There are plenty of ways to dampen how well Link does, but it's just not fun. If you play "well" against Link, you die slow deaths because you take a minute to approach and he takes a minute to throw stuff at you like a wild monkey. What most people are missing against Link, is DI away. If you get hit by boomerang, most people are still holding towards Link or have bad DI that pops them directly vertically upwards. It's free damage. If you DI away and/or pullback your aerial when you whiff, you usually reduce 90% of the followups he would have had. Same with a lot of vertical juggle stuff, eventually he won't be able to keep up.


It's awesome testing how well I can jump, shield, and dash away with Captain Falcon because Link decided to throw his Boomerang out and I WILL have to respect it. I don't mind that much, because while it's lame, you can pull ahead and force them to actually approach. I will get the "W" for Win after a match of basically nothing. Janky AGT camping with bombs, 5000 Boomerangs (no seriously why use any other projectile, throw Boomerang and use something on cooldown AND THEN THROW ANOTHER BOOMERANG HOW CLEVER)


Do you know how many solid Link players Dallas is getting for no stupid reason? I hate you all pick another character like Ganon

Link is upper mid-tier at best. He's better than he's been in any other Smash game, but he's still Link and he's still not that great.

This is sort of true, and sort of untrue.

The way Link is right now, he's a much improved Melee version of himself, but with some of the same core problems (just not as crippling). It takes characters with very specific sets of tools, to dismantle Link and make him look incredibly bad. Even then, on 50-60% of those characters he has very extensive and strong combo games if you don't have impeccable SDI and DI. It takes someone like a Spacie, like a Sheik, like the new Mario, to make him look very bad. Your average "run of the mill" character will not body Link by any means. He's very capable, but doesn't fare well against much of top tier.


Vash: You're god damn right. My statement is the most true statement on PM characters and how people view them.

 

[Oro?!]

People DO sleep on a lot of characters, but a lot of those statements were made in different versions, in very different regions, different times of new or buffed characters metas etc... That being said, I feel like as characters are as of this moment, there is a pretty clear cut tier gap between like the top 5 and everyone else. About half of who I personally feel are top 5 candidates are Brawl Characters. The majority of the cast feels like they can compete, and really don't need any buffs whatsoever. And then there is Ganon... RIP...

 

[Ripple]

Ganon needs the equivalent of what I gave him in melee. Instant top tier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8aBNs9xDCg

 

[DMG]

People DO sleep on a lot of characters, but a lot of those statements were made in different versions, in very different regions, different times of new or buffed characters metas etc... That being said, I feel like as characters are as of this moment, there is a pretty clear cut tier gap between like the top 5 and everyone else. About half of who I personally feel are top 5 candidates are Brawl Characters. The majority of the cast feels like they can compete, and really don't need any buffs whatsoever. And then there is Ganon... RIP...

YEP

Fox Falco MK Wolf GG world GG

 

[Oro?!]

Sheik so good vs Wolf tho...

 

[DMG]

Sheik is good vs like everyone, thank you Oro

 

[TKD]

I hope you're not just suggesting Pit and Mewtwo being better characters than Falco, Wolf, Wario, Sheik and Peach because Apex instead of considering the fact the other person simply got outplayed.

I have to admit that I've played PM no more than a bit, and that half my opinion of a PM tier list is based on stuff Larry told me that I can remember, and the other half is based on Apex matches.

 

[Ali Baba 177]

Fox Falco and Marth are best in tournament status by far as they are most developed and have many people use them, and then there is a tier of really good characters as mentioned like MK wolf, link sheik and mario. Then there are just a few large tiers that can be looked at and generally seen that more developed metas are more popular. based on tournament results it looks like ness and GnW are the ones really getting slept on

 

[RIDLEY is too SMALL]

Yoshi will start winning when they start playing more like Melee Yoshi.

yes

 

[jtm94]

IT just blows my mind that my friend has this beautiful Link that also has the ability to recover from anywhere and can't be edge hogged, and it gives me adverse amounts of trouble, and when I do win it is never crippling, as DMG said.

I can only beat him with a janky character like Kirby because Nair plane eats boomerangs which is CRUCIAL, and dash attack gets in there. Kirby can also combo like a maniac on Link's heavy self.

Characters that I have tried to get really good with, but think are bad consist of:
ZSS, she has amazing reach above her, I just find that her KO moves are few and far in between. She is fast as lightning, no joke. I know people play her very well, I just can't.

Game and Watch: I've been playing him for quite some time, but his approaches are bacon from a distance, fair, fair, fair and one time bair. Him being heavier helped so much, he used to die from star KOs at like 50%, now it's 60%. HE has good recovery though and once he gets in can do some random janky combos, but lacks true combo-like moves besides uair into uair into uair. Or bair, into bair, into bair. I want him to be good I really do.

Squirtle: Has TONS of neat character specific tech around shell-shifting and some "okay" super armor, but ohboy does he get swatted out of the air like a fly. His Up Smash feels almost too good, but he needs some kind of range to deal with disjointed hitboxes. He also has some awesome ledgeguarding moves, just gets KOd too easily.

Olimar: I think he can be okay if you're fine with playing the ultimate campy playstyle and pitching an entire campsite to take advantage of flowered Pikmin. HE has some strong disjointed moves, but none are super fast besides Up Smash and UAir which is my favorite. His recovery also rivals Roy for one of the worst outside of Falco.

Ness: Ness plays super linear and something about him lacks flavor. I can play him, but he's very timing and punish based. Dat backthrow be killing at like 70%. He just has a lot of moves that don't strike anyone as interesting. The yo-yo isn't that good at all, Down Smash is pretty neat because of the way you can walk the dog, but meh. I know the Ness players all have a pretty close group to develop his meta, but he may have ran out of gas in low tier city.

 

[Hylian]

I think Link is better when played mid-range rather then just throwing **** at your opponents the entire match but hey that's just me.