Tier List Speculation

[Cassio]

Just had an extended conversation with Anther about this. We both agree that hes lacking important qualities from his melee counterpart. I elaborated earlier so I wont again.

 

[The_Altrox]

Exactly how balanced is the cast right now? By a Brawl standard, where does the weakest character fall into place in comparison with the top character? Is he still at a "Ganon" level in comparison with the "Top/High" tier, or would he be somewhere in the low/mid tier?

Speaking of Ganon, what are his bad MUs right now? I know when I play with my friends, Lucas is a pain in the neck to deal with.

 

[Infil]

How many more iterations of this game do the developers need to make before they can take their hands off it for a year and let the balance and techniques settle out? Should they tweak Ganon and Olimar a bit and then let it be, or do they need to be making continual updates once every few months to get where people want the game to be?

Also, I'm fairly curious where people think the low tier characters are in terms of relative power. People claim the game is much more balanced than other versions of Smash, but... to people who put Sonic at the top of their bottom tier, could he crack top 4 at a major? Or are the bottom 15 or so characters still relegated to never doing well in tournaments, despite having better matchups than the bottom chars in other games? When people name a tier "D" or "F", to me that means more than just "the lowest tier in the game", to me that says something about their tournament viability.

To me, the tiers mean:
S - pervasive tournament presence, a threat to win any major
A - strong tournament presence, wins majors but not as frequently as S
B - a strong player can easily place top 4, a small threat to win a major if the stars align, likely has a bad matchup in S tier which requires a bit of luck in tournaments
C - top 8 appearances are possible but rare
D and lower - virtually no chance at getting top 8 at a major, almost always a character with similar archetype in a higher tier that makes this character wholly obsolete

It would be cool if the worst character in this game was somewhere in the C tier range... I wonder if the developers think it's possible?

 

[Kankato]

How many more iterations of this game do the developers need to make before they can take their hands off it for a year and let the balance and techniques settle out? Should they tweak Ganon and Olimar a bit and then let it be, or do they need to be making continual updates once every few months to get where people want the game to be?

Back when 3.0 dropped, I noticed that a lot of the cast remained unchanged/ tweaked very little (with exceptions such as Ivysaur). It seems as though the PMBR is allowing older characters to develop before any sort of major change is released. Newer characters like IC and Kirby will be subject to review as their designs are very young, but tested designs like Wolf and ZSS change very little (exception with Snake's new tranq gun, but I'm sure we all agree that was a brilliant move).

Maybe every character "matures" at a different rate as they're tested and developed.

 

[Bryonato]

I kinda wanna analyze invidual match ups.
Like, are there any people out there that know there main well enough to name what some of there bad MU's are? Just outta curiosity of course.

I know a lot of Ivys hate the Falcon match up and that's about it. :T

Ness main. His worst MUs are easily (in no particular order):
Ivy, Sheik, Marth and Link. There's some debate within our group but a few people also consider M2 and Mario to be pretty bad for Ness.

 

[Time2Play]

Does anyone know any bad MUs for Sheik?
My brothers main are Fox, Sheik and Marth, so I won't play Marth or Fox against him. It just feels like Sheik has no really weakness. Amazing grab game, disjointed moves, quick dash and dash attack combos into alot of stuff. Her tilts also combo into itself or smash/arial. Upsmash is also really good for killing and downsmash is great for edgeguarding.

And her recovery is really hard to edgeguard. I get punished so often by her invincibility when trying to jump off the edge. But I guess against Sheik its best to stay on ledge and punish her landing lag. But even if you get up on the ledge and she decides to land on the ledge, she has so much time where she can still grab it compared to other characters.

Even though Sheik lost her dthrow cg on 3/4 of the cast I feel like shes Top 3, most likely behind Fox and Falco.
My mains are Pit, Dk and Roy if that helps.

 

[Nguz95]

Sheik still has a semi-difficult time against spacies, and I believe this holds true against wolf. Aside from then I'm struggling to come up with any others, Sheik is a super great character, so her bad matchups are few.

 

[shadow0x0cloud]

Spoiler

QaC is worth it, highly useful move. Your opponents don't expect it, and when you throw it out they dont know where your going, you could also cancel it directly into a nair/bair, not only that but your could also cancel it onto a platform and immediately react out of it with any air options. You could also jump out of it, giving you all his air options in a new position. Its one of the best mix ups because it also deals damage and makes your opponents flinch. QaC is very useful, thats why we always bring it up. You could apply some pretty scary shield pressure when you mix QaC with shffling

And a lot of people in the cast still get gimped by Uair, shockwave, and reverse thunder. Recoveries in this game are good, but once your below stage pikachu can gimp a lot of people. And tail spike sends them below stage, so really he can still gimp people.

And one thing Pikachu has is speed, and in this game movement is key. He has an amazing Dash Dance along with decent run speed, he could also use shockwave to help approach and also use quick attack for a mix up. Pikachu's grab range is terrible, but the throws themselves are useful, and Pikachu does have some chaingrabs on a few characters. And ive found that Pikachu can shffl through shields, which is also very useful.

His smash attacks are all pretty good, i find his Dsmash to be the most useful. His up smash+thunder kills pretty fast, and his Fsmash is kinda slow but it does a lot of damage.

And Pikachu is able to chase you down, so his combo's don't suck as much as everyone makes them sound.

I dont main pika anymore, but he is very good. I think hes in the top half if you ask me.

Look, you are completely misunderstanding me. Low mid is still really good. Like if your in mid tier thats about as good as link, and he is really freaking good. Low tier characters and low tier heroes are much more viable than in probably any game. But you have to face reality. There are some things pika cant do.

You cannot apply shield pressure with QAC. This is what happens : QA 1 hits the opponents shield, QA 2 crosses them up, you QAC into a rising uair. Let me ask, what did you achieve? Your not fox and have the ability to nair plane > shine pressure or lucas with his psi shield. All that happened is you made your opponent block for two seconds but now your above him. without a double jump. GG.

Uair spike, one of the many redeeming qualities of pika offstage. Sets up for early gimps on most of the melee characters, but the problem is, this isnt anything new. The same people she early% gimps are the same people she was doing it to in melee. However it went from gimping 10/25 characters (arbitrary, idk exactly) to 10/42. The same number, but worse. Not to mention you miss the small spike hitbox and suddenly the opponent is back onto the stage for free. Lets go back to QA for a moment. If you hit, you most likely are going to go into uair strings. This is where QAC shines. the ability to play on a stage like battlefield, and juggle the enemy like your marth. UAir x 10, then when you accidently push the opponent out of range, QAC to a platform and continue. Its beautiful, trust me. The problem with this is, after 20 minutes of breaking your fingers with cool tech like you play fox, you find out you only did about 40%.

Her problems are really small, but they just add up. She cant finish. Congratulations, usmash > thunder. If you miss, the opponent gets to get back on stage for free. Thunder by itself doesnt kill, so when you use it to gimp, the opponent gets placed in a better position to recover. People are really overhyping what she can do. Not to sound rude or anything, but, honestly, go play the character before you assume one move is HER saving grace, you will notice that her problems dont really stem from or are helped by QAC unless in the most specific circumstances.

Pikachu is not a bad character, SHE has the potential to dominate some matchups, and on FD i believe she has a grab infinite on spacies (up throw to about 60, than down throw chains, then usmash). There is good stuff about her. She is amazing on teams because of a fox Usmash and a better than fox recovery. Can save teamates / gimp opponents with QA. In doubles, QAC becomes much better because the opponent has to shift their focus much more than in singles. Meaning that long animation can be overlooked and you can save your partner. In singles, Pikachu doesnt need to get touched if she doesnt want to, the problem is thunder bolt is so bad of a projectile your forced to go in anyway. Bair looks so sexy. Her crawl is something people should be talking about. Her crawl > dtilt is amazing for positioning and getting around Fox / Link / Tink / bullet hell. idk wtf to do with dair. uair can potentially be really good it is just up to player judgement. Nair is a worse version of MK's but still pretty good. Ftilt and dash attack are trash, almost no knockback and free punishes on hit. Utilt is fun, combo starter. Jab is not as good as brawl. Usmash kills, Fsmash is just there to make you more like mario, Dsmash is a combo breaker a la Peach.

And idc what you guys say, that down taunt is too cute for pikachu to be a boy.

 

[Kaeldiar]

Also, I'm fairly curious where people think the low tier characters are in terms of relative power. People claim the game is much more balanced than other versions of Smash, but... to people who put Sonic at the top of their bottom tier, could he crack top 4 at a major? Or are the bottom 15 or so characters still relegated to never doing well in tournaments, despite having better matchups than the bottom chars in other games? When people name a tier "D" or "F", to me that means more than just "the lowest tier in the game", to me that says something about their tournament viability.

To me, the tiers mean:
S - pervasive tournament presence, a threat to win any major
A - strong tournament presence, wins majors but not as frequently as S
B - a strong player can easily place top 4, a small threat to win a major if the stars align, likely has a bad matchup in S tier which requires a bit of luck in tournaments
C - top 8 appearances are possible but rare
D and lower - virtually no chance at getting top 8 at a major, almost always a character with similar archetype in a higher tier that makes this character wholly obsolete

It would be cool if the worst character in this game was somewhere in the C tier range... I wonder if the developers think it's possible?

This is a very good point, and it's definitely worth considering. I'm pretty sure that most of us (including me) created our tiers based on either sizable gaps in skill or on a template with "Top/High/Mid/Low/Bottom Tier." Since we talk about how balanced this game is, it's worth thinking about whether these tiers are closer to S/A/B/C/D or S/A++/A+/A/A-

 

[Oro?!]

By that definition there is probably no D tier except for maybe Ganon. Ganon has gotten top 8 in Melee, but he only suffered through 4-5~ extreme matchups. He probably has like 10-15~ that are extremely rough now despite being better.

 

[Kink-Link5]

I'm not a fan of letter tiers, since they have a lot more tendency to make more splits as characters are arbitrarily graded between B- and B. Even worse, the existence of an "S" tier above A or A+ further seems like it's made just to push characters up (The whole cast is effected, really).

I have A-, B- and C- Classes, with divisions between them being larger than divisions between tiers. Within those classes are the Top-, High, and so on tiers, whos names mean just that, top of the cast and bottom of the cast.

I look at a game that has letter tiers and see "B Tier" which would sound like "Great, but not the best," and then that tier is at the bottom of the tier list, after S++, S+, A+, A, A-, and B+ Tier. It just seems like kind of a joke to keep pushing the "top" and "bottom" like that.

It's as bad as modern Game Review scores.

 

[Vashimus]

And idc what you guys say, that down taunt is too cute for pikachu to be a boy.

Female Pikachu have dents in their tails, while male Pikachu don't. This has been the case since 4th gen onward, and Brawl came after DPP.

The Pikachu in Smash is male.

 

[shadow0x0cloud]

No I understand the whole male/female pokemon difference. I guess I'm just stubborn. Nothing that cute can be manly. Just like nothing about ivysaur can be girly.

 

[THK]

First off, lmao. Second for a game like this the lowest tier letter I would have is B- (heck, maybe just B); something like "F" says to me "don't ever touch these characters they're that bad". And third with the way balance in PM is, a tier list won't exactly work, but a matchup chart would.

 

[Paradoxium]

Ali, Bubba
Catina Cat
Dede Dear
and Elephant
Francy Fish
and Gordo too
They all live at the zoo!

Is that where you got your name from?

 

[Oracle]

Lol pikachu is fine. Idk how you can argue that hes worse than melee pika when melee pika is absolute trash. Pm pika has an incredible recovery, good dashdance, solid throw game, and an upsmash thats BETTER than foxs and kills earlier with thunder. What more do you even want?

 

[Rᴏb]

Pikas offstage game in melee is reliable that you could expect to get a gimp or two most games which was important vs spacies. In PM you are lucky to.

You can still gimp spacies as easily as you could in melee, but I do think that the majority of the cast having such good recoveries is a problem that shouldn't be attributed to Pikachu specifically. It's definitely my major gripe with this game.

 

[batistabus]

Just like nothing about ivysaur can be girly.

Ivysaur is a dude. Fushigisou is a girl.

 

[jtm94]

You can still gimp spacies as easily as you could in melee, but I do think that the majority of the cast having such good recoveries is a problem that shouldn't be attributed to Pikachu specifically. It's definitely my major gripe with this game.

It isn't necessarily that the cast in PM has better recoveries, characters in Melee have some good recoveries too, it's just that the only 3 playable characters in Melee don't really have the best recoveries and people base everything else off of that.

That aside though, there is an increase in flying characters who I will agree have really good recoveries. (Pit, DDD, MK, Charizard, R.O.B.)
But with these recoveries in mind we still don't see an excess of them topping every tournament, but they are out there nonetheless and may pull Pikachu down because Pika can't really gimp them like he can a space animal.

The biggest things that I don't like about Pikachu are how you either throw into uair, or bthrow into gimp.(Pikachu has below average grab range) Fair and dair still aren't really amazing. Nair is really decent and does like 11% damage, but still uair only hits for 4%, come on son.

 

[The_NZA]

It isn't necessarily that the cast in PM has better recoveries, characters in Melee have some good recoveries too, it's just that the only 3 playable characters in Melee don't really have the best recoveries and people base everything else off of that.

That aside though, there is an increase in flying characters who I will agree have really good recoveries. (Pit, DDD, MK, Charizard, R.O.B.)
But with these recoveries in mind we still don't see an excess of them topping every tournament, but they are out there nonetheless and may pull Pikachu down because Pika can't really gimp them like he can a space animal.

The biggest things that I don't like about Pikachu are how you either throw into uair, or bthrow into gimp.(Pikachu has below average grab range) Fair and dair still aren't really amazing. Nair is really decent and does like 11% damage, but still uair only hits for 4%, come on son.

It's not debatable: PM recoveries are by and large MUCH harder to gimp. Mario's upb/walljump game, the wallclimb game on Squirtle and Lucario, Zelda's upb, Ike's upb, AGT recoveries like Link's and TL's. A lot of recoveries are much stronger in this game, and its not just the flying characters.

 

[Hylian]

the wallclimb game on Squirtle and Lucario, .

Guess you haven't played Lucario in awhile huh? lol

 

[jtm94]

It's not debatable: PM recoveries are by and large MUCH harder to gimp. Mario's upb/walljump game, the wallclimb game on Squirtle and Lucario, Zelda's upb, Ike's upb, AGT recoveries like Link's and TL's. A lot of recoveries are much stronger in this game, and its not just the flying characters.

Mario can walljump in Melee, wallclinging isn't anything new and they took it away from Lucario actually, Zelda has the same recovery she does in Melee, Ike's walljump off of his SideB is much better than his UpB, but I guess it goes pretty high. Link and Young Link can float indefinitely in Melee not new.

So basically you just mostly brought up characters that already had decent recoveries, they just don't suck now and that makes it a problem?

Mewtwo, Kirby, and G&W also have decent recovery straight out of Melee, I guess they're all a problem in PM too.

 

[Infil]

To be honest, I wonder if they went a little overboard by giving almost every character a strong recovery. Fast, fun characters like Captain Falcon who still have relatively poor recoveries will likely suffer big time in the long term, but at the same time it probably wouldn't be a good idea to give him much better of a recovery.

I suppose as long as everyone has decent on-stage KO moves that can be set up smartly, it's not as much of a problem. In a fast game like this, recoveries being slightly too good is probably preferable to recoveries being slightly bad on the whole. We want to see good on-stage and off-stage fights, not one on-stage fight and then a gimp. And gimps are still possible, just harder on average.

 

[jtm94]

The only thing to fair things up that is even thinkable would be to maybe take a jump out of the flying characters, but then we have characters with amazing recoveries straight out of Melee and then why is it fair for them to retain the same recovery they have always had? You run into more discrepancy if you start boosting the recovery of every single character in the game, which they didn't. There are only a few new characters with exceptionally good recovery, then the rest of them have had that recovery.

If they gave Roy Marth's recovery, and made it so Falco can recover just like Fox, that is blasphemous to me.

As I said before the only reason this seems like an issue is that the only good characters in Melee bar Jigglypuff and Peach have subpar or average recovery. Now you can play as anyone, and the meta will change accordingly. You can't play against a pit just like you would a Fox and try to gimp him with Sheik's needles, the game isn't as straightforward as that now. And more commitment must be made to gimp the characters with better recovery, but they are also lighter and can be KOd much earlier on with a solid hit, meaning that a gimp may not exactly be necessary.

 

[SixSaw]

I don't know about you, but I think gimps are way more exciting than regular KOs. One of the draws of Smash is how quickly the dynamic of a match can shift, "a stock is not a lead", etc. If you restrict fights to be strictly on-stage and force players to work their opponent up to kill percent for every single stock, you're left with, well, Brawl.

 

[jtm94]

I don't know about you, but I think gimps are way more exciting than regular KOs. One of the draws of Smash is how quickly the dynamic of a match can shift, "a stock is not a lead", etc. If you restrict fights to be strictly on-stage and force players to work their opponent up to kill percent for every single stock, you're left with, well, Brawl.

Gimps are still possible, even on chars with better recovery.

The one character that I struggle the most to gimp is Link. I cannot do it.

Some characters can also gimp like no other. Mario's Bair can catch anyone offguard.

 

[Ali Baba 177]

I wish! but my name is Bubba when i play though lol

 

[Rᴏb]

Mario can walljump in Melee, wallclinging isn't anything new and they took it away from Lucario actually, Zelda has the same recovery she does in Melee, Ike's walljump off of his SideB is much better than his UpB, but I guess it goes pretty high. Link and Young Link can float indefinitely in Melee not new.

So basically you just mostly brought up characters that already had decent recoveries, they just don't suck now and that makes it a problem?

Mewtwo, Kirby, and G&W also have decent recovery straight out of Melee, I guess they're all a problem in PM too.

Mario's walljump out of upb was much harder to do in melee, Zelda's recovery is much better now that she can love jump and guard the edge with her side B (her upb also has a hitbox at the end of it now), and the Links' recoveries were much harder to pull off in melee because the lack of their AGT.

It's okay that Kirby and G&W have buffed recoveries because they die so early, and G&W's is very predictable. I'm on the fence about Mewtwo though, he is like the one character that is virtually impossible to edgeguard.

I definitely think they went a little overboard with most of the recoveries in this game though. Sure, it makes sense that the characters with wings have good recoveries, but not everyone has wings... This situation really sucks because no one wants to see their character get nerfed, but I truly think the majority of the cast could use some so recovering isn't so braindead easy.

 

[deadjames]

As I said before the only reason this seems like an issue is that the only good characters in Melee bar Jigglypuff and Peach have subpar or average recovery. Now you can play as anyone, and the meta will change accordingly. You can't play against a pit just like you would a Fox and try to gimp him with Sheik's needles, the game isn't as straightforward as that now. And more commitment must be made to gimp the characters with better recovery, but they are also lighter and can be KOd much earlier on with a solid hit, meaning that a gimp may not exactly be necessary.

I wouldn't really consider Fox's, Sheik's,
or Marth's recoveries bad in Melee you can make it back from pretty deep with all three of them and they all have options to mix up their recoveries. Out of the viable characters Falco, Falcon, and ICs are the only ones with bad recoveries. Also Sheik's needles are actually a pretty effective way to gimp Pit, just make him use his glide and hit him out of it and he's pretty much screwed.

 

[Ogopogo]

It might seem like recoveries are buffed because a lot of them sucked in Melee/Brawl. Making most of them better creates a more equal playing field. And let's not forget that some characters sacrifice great recoveries for other attributes (Falco comes to mind)

 

[Paradoxium]

It isn't necessarily that the cast in PM has better recoveries, characters in Melee have some good recoveries too, it's just that the only 3 playable characters in Melee don't really have the best recoveries and people base everything else off of that.

That aside though, there is an increase in flying characters who I will agree have really good recoveries. (Pit, DDD, MK, Charizard, R.O.B.)
But with these recoveries in mind we still don't see an excess of them topping every tournament, but they are out there nonetheless and may pull Pikachu down because Pika can't really gimp them like he can a space animal.

The biggest things that I don't like about Pikachu are how you either throw into uair, or bthrow into gimp.(Pikachu has below average grab range) Fair and dair still aren't really amazing. Nair is really decent and does like 11% damage, but still uair only hits for 4%, come on son.

Fair can be auto-canceled into grab, which means you could grab someone out of shield before they could react. His fair also leads into any ground move.

Dair has a bit of start-up and low endlag. It is useful, hits you at a nice angle and its great for offstage attacking.

Pikachu has all the tools he needs to deal with nearly every problem in the game

 

[Chesstiger2612]

The only characters from that I think they need a buff:
I think the only change Pikachu needs is a little bit better grab game (for example setting up DI traps). Ganon is probably changed massively right now so I will just wait and see... Dedede needs no change imho because of his grab range and since he is like the only character that can effectively gimp OP-recovery characters. Squirtle needs one aerial that really counters crouchcancelling (change some properties would definitely do no need to change the complete move) his grab isnt enough. Ness needs a buff definitely, not only that he isn't that good, he also plays a bit like a low tier (feels a bit to basic, not "flashy" enough, not PMish). I would like to see Olimar's pikmin to get bud and flower status sooner because otherwise he is very camp-oriented, but he probably doesn't need it its just my opinion about him.

 

[\Apples]

Ooooh confidence .

Money match?

If we ever cross paths, I'll throw down a Hamilton on that.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

EDIT: Accidentally double posted

 

[Phaiyte]

S:
Falco
Marth
Fox
Sheik
Wario
Link
Metaknight
Mario
Mewtwo
R.O.B.
Captain Falcon
Roy
Dedede
Charizrd
Zelda
Ike
Pit
Snake
Ivysaur
Wolf

A:
Lucas
Donkey Kong
Diddy Kong
Zero Suit Samus
Luigi
Toon Link
Ganondorf
Bowser
Pikachu
Squirtle
Kirby
Peach
Samus
Mr. Game and Watch
Lucario
Sonic
Jigglypuff
Yoshi
Ice Climbers
Ness
Olimar

Hey I fixed it for you.

 

[Sashimi]

Nothing that cute can be manly.

Spoiler

 

[\Apples]

Ooooh confidence .

Money match?

If we ever cross paths, I'll throw down a Hamilton on that.

 

[Ali Baba 177]

Lol but olimar should be his own tier underneath

 

[Ali Baba 177]

I did make a new one that forgot to post here, I poster it in the pm tier speculation list, its basically this:
this one encompasses tournament standings and community opinion, and there is some obvious seperation in numbers in both tournament and opinions between the tiers

S
Fox
Falco
Metaknight
Sheik

A
Mario
Wolf
Marth
Diddy
Lucas
Capt. Falcon
Snake
Link
Peach

B
Mewtwo
ZSS
DK
Ike
ROB
Roy
Yoshi
Kirby
Bowser

C
Lucario
Zelda
Charizard
DDD
Samus
Ice C.
Sonic
Toon Link
Jigglypuff

Sleepers
Pikachu
Luigi
Ganondorf
Ness
Squirtle
G+W
Olimar

 

[Infil]

I'm not a fan of letter tiers, since they have a lot more tendency to make more splits as characters are arbitrarily graded between B- and B. Even worse, the existence of an "S" tier above A or A+ further seems like it's made just to push characters up (The whole cast is effected, really).

I have A-, B- and C- Classes, with divisions between them being larger than divisions between tiers. Within those classes are the Top-, High, and so on tiers, whos names mean just that, top of the cast and bottom of the cast.

I look at a game that has letter tiers and see "B Tier" which would sound like "Great, but not the best," and then that tier is at the bottom of the tier list, after S++, S+, A+, A, A-, and B+ Tier. It just seems like kind of a joke to keep pushing the "top" and "bottom" like that.

It's as bad as modern Game Review scores.

In any game, you will have a theoretical ranking of characters from top to bottom (this is unavoidable), but to me it's *how* these characters relate that are interesting. How much better is the best character than the worst character? Can the worst character still kind of compete? These are all questions that can be answered by labeling the tiers with certain letters. If you have three tiers that are labeled A, B, and C, to me that means that there is no obvious best or overpowered character, and likely most of the characters in C can still compete. This is far different if those tiers were S, A and D. If you don't like the letter grades in particular, that's fine, as long as you're able to distinguish relative character strength in some manner. This system also lets you compare tiers across games somewhat ("he's about the same relative strength as Falcon in SSB64, compared to the top").

I don't know about you, but I think gimps are way more exciting than regular KOs. One of the draws of Smash is how quickly the dynamic of a match can shift, "a stock is not a lead", etc. If you restrict fights to be strictly on-stage and force players to work their opponent up to kill percent for every single stock, you're left with, well, Brawl.

I agree that gimps should still be relatively frequent and possible, just not guaranteed when knocked off the stage at 30%. PM might skew a bit on the recovery side, but a) I think that's better than skewing on the gimp side, if you had to choose, b) gimps are still frequent enough that a stock is not a lead, and c) the sheer speed of this game means that Brawl-like drawn out fights where it's hard to KO anyone are basically not an issue, and d) most characters with *way* above average recovery are also very light, which is a fair tradeoff; with the amount of strong KO moves in this game, being light sucks.