Tier List Speculation

[Ripple]

Honestly, I thought Fox and maybe Falco should get nerfed too. But then I realized that they are not only the best in Melee, but also the most developed ones. PM actually changed alot. And it takes more than a few months or a year, to fully understand a new/heavy changed character. So before we start nerfing any characters we should give the game some time to develop. You saw what Armada can do with Pit and he isn't even considered to be Top Tier by most people. So why shouldn't people like M2K be successful with Fox. That doesn't mean that Fox is too strong, it just shows that M2K is a Top Player and Fox is fully capable of placing high in tourneys.

You argument would hold weight if M2K was the only fox doing well in PM doing the same old thing that they did in melee. Pit has 1 player who does really well with him, armada. Who does well in PM with fox? oh that's right Kels, DEHF, Chu Dat even plays fox. and that's not even everyone who places decently.

These players are winning even though they have to play against players who play completely new characters. and I bet that its because Fox's 3 options combined with his raw speed beats every character in the game

 

[MLGF]

But so many characters don't have the years that Fox has. Give the newcomers time before we assume that the spacies are better.

 

[Ripple]

if you can describe what makes the spacies good in melee, you can describe what is making a character bad in pm.

same game essentially, but with more characters

 

[JOE!]

But so many characters don't have the years that Fox has. Give the newcomers time before we assume that the spacies are better.

While initially true, we have all those years of observation and know-how to look at new characters and determine what makes them tick incredibly quickly compared to all the years learning melee from scratch.

 

[Cassio]

You argument would hold weight if M2K was the only fox doing well in PM doing the same old thing that they did in melee. Pit has 1 player who does really well with him, armada. Who does well in PM with fox? oh that's right Kels, DEHF, Chu Dat even plays fox. and that's not even everyone who places decently.

These players are winning even though they have to play against players who play completely new characters. and I bet that its because Fox's 3 options combined with his raw speed beats every character in the game

Umm it could also bee because Larry is one of the best smash players in all games in the world...

 

[Kaeldiar]

Dude.

Listen.

Any information you get from that is going to be useless if it's open to the public. Community consensus means jack **** this early, especially when John McSalt's vote has the same weight as a PMBR member's. You should stop this unless you really, really want to collect and propagate misinformation. Let the game breathe. Talk about it, try to get a handle on it but don't codify anything

^

EDIT: adding stuff

Is it odd that I feel like most match-ups for Ike are "He can take them" but they don't seem to be overly disadvantageous OR advantageous? Feels a lot like a vBrawl spread. -1's 0's and +1's only errywhere.

Link's MUs are determined solely on how good a character/player is at getting in. I played Olimar today and wrecked a Link because I could get in. Let's get this straight: I suck at Olimar. If that Link were better at keeping me out, then I would've gotten killed. Once I got in, though, it was ugly. Link tends to do better against larger characters because it's easier to hit them with projectiles. On the whole, the smaller the character, the worse the MU for Link.

 

[fabulouspants]

yeah fox is being picked up by randoms and winning tourneys left and right now. NOT established melee players who constantly do well in their region...

 

[Mr.Pickle]

Doing anything to the original spacies should really wait until the rest of the cast is finalized. Wouldn't make much sense if the standard of acceptable (barely) top tier characters were changed when we're not even sure if everyone else has a legitimate design. Though this subject should really get its own thread when the time calls for it, hopefully its handled better than it has been in the past.

On topic though, I'm going to attempt a tier list of my own, but it won't probably won't be tonight....as I'll be busy wasting my life on dark souls 2.

 

[Rᴏb]

Doing anything to the original spacies should really wait until the rest of the cast is finalized.

I feel the opposite. Balancing the cast around a certain standard only to have that standard lowered eventually doesn't make much sense to me. I think the spacies should be nerfed asap so the rest of the metagame/development process can be focused on combating things that aren't broken.

 

[Player -0]

People also have to take into account the stage lists being used.

Depending on the stage list used by the tournament characters can be better or worse because the available counterpicks and neutrals.




Also waiting for there to be a character added and it screws with MU's.

 

[Soft Serve]

I actually had a talk last night with a fellow melee player(i guess hes a "melee purist" ) about pm. He didnt like that the game was "built around spacies" and thus all characters either have stupid easy combo games on them or have solid anti pressure options. I brought up the point that being able to compete with spacies is needed when they still are dominant forces, and he said he would be completely fine with drastic spacie changes if it improved the overall health of the game. He also said falco felt different enough to him (slight changes and the different camera) that he would be open to new changes and at the worst would pick up a new character if he got more interested in pm.

 

[MagnesD3]

People also have to take into account the stage lists being used.

Depending on the stage list used by the tournament characters can be better or worse because the available counterpicks and neutrals.




Also waiting for there to be a character added and it screws with MU's.

Honestly this is why I want page 1 to be completely open to being used as a counterpick.

 

[Deleted member]

Here was our local tourney in Canada (Revival of Brampton Monthlies)

I finished 17th, both times I was eliminated by a Zelda player.

Any thoughts on this?

Spoiler

Project: M Singles Bracket - (44 Entrants)
1) EMG | Weon-X ($52)
1) Coffeeblack ($52)
1) RaynEX ($52)
1) Idea ($52)
5) EMG | SmashCentral ($5)
5) Hello ($5)
7) EMG | Coast
7) Kid
9) EMG | ProZak
9) GFist
9) Leafshadow
9) Nutffles
13) EMG | Blitz
13) Joma
13) Kiwi Milkshake
13) Spud
17) BDawg
17) Calamity
17)Sandro: :
17)Sixty Nine
17) Styles
17) Sunshine
17) Tent
17) XJ9
25) Arezza
25) Blacksmith
25) Ghoti
25)Hermit
25) NTR
25) Toast
25) Tora
25) WumpaWolfy
33) Bhe
33) Briefs
33) Erik
33) Frog
33) Kave
33) Max
33) Mega
33) N64
33) Sabz
33) SNES
33) Yogi
33) Zack

 

[Vashimus]

Here was our local tourney in Canada (Revival of Brampton Monthlies)

I finished 17th, both times I was eliminated by a Zelda player.

Any thoughts on this?

Spoiler

Project: M Singles Bracket - (44 Entrants)
1) EMG | Weon-X ($52)
1) Coffeeblack ($52)
1) RaynEX ($52)
1) Idea ($52)
5) EMG | SmashCentral ($5)
5) Hello ($5)
7) EMG | Coast
7) Kid
9) EMG | ProZak
9) GFist
9) Leafshadow
9) Nutffles
13) EMG | Blitz
13) Joma
13) Kiwi Milkshake
13) Spud
17) BDawg
17) Calamity
17)Sandro: :
17)Sixty Nine
17) Styles
17) Sunshine
17) Tent
17) XJ9
25) Arezza
25) Blacksmith
25) Ghoti
25)Hermit
25) NTR
25) Toast
25) Tora
25) WumpaWolfy
33) Bhe
33) Briefs
33) Erik
33) Frog
33) Kave
33) Max
33) Mega
33) N64
33) Sabz
33) SNES
33) Yogi
33) Zack

Well don't look at us! Post that on the tourney results thread.

 

[Soft Serve]

Here was our local tourney in Canada (Revival of Brampton Monthlies)

I finished 17th, both times I was eliminated by a Zelda player.

Any thoughts on this?

Spoiler

Project: M Singles Bracket - (44 Entrants)
1) EMG | Weon-X ($52)
1) Coffeeblack ($52)
1) RaynEX ($52)
1) Idea ($52)
5) EMG | SmashCentral ($5)
5) Hello ($5)
7) EMG | Coast
7) Kid
9) EMG | ProZak
9) GFist
9) Leafshadow
9) Nutffles
13) EMG | Blitz
13) Joma
13) Kiwi Milkshake
13) Spud
17) BDawg
17) Calamity
17)Sandro: :
17)Sixty Nine
17) Styles
17) Sunshine
17) Tent
17) XJ9
25) Arezza
25) Blacksmith
25) Ghoti
25)Hermit
25) NTR
25) Toast
25) Tora
25) WumpaWolfy
33) Bhe
33) Briefs
33) Erik
33) Frog
33) Kave
33) Max
33) Mega
33) N64
33) Sabz
33) SNES
33) Yogi
33) Zack

I think I know what to say

One fox in top 16? spacies too prevalent.

Ike/pit top 3? nerf incoming.

 

[Strong Badam]

Honestly this is why I want page 1 to be completely open to being used as a counterpick.

fox needs more help

But so many characters don't have the years that Fox has. Give the newcomers time before we assume that the spacies are better.

wait 5 years to evaluate character balance so then no one will want anything to change ever including Fox/Falco
at the same time, evaluate character balance of newcomers in under a year's time
good plan

 

[Fortress]

wait 5 years to evaluate character balance so then no one will want anything to change ever including Fox/Falco at the same time, evaluate character balance of newcomers in under a year's time
good plan

You could just remove Fox/Falco from 3.03. Supah nerfed. I imagine they'd only be high-mid tier at that point.

 

[Terotrous]

The main issue I have with some nerfs on spacies is that they start to emphasize certain playstyles over others. I know that on top of the laser nerf, If up-throw>uair or raw up-smashes got nerfed my entire fox game would be obsolete

Because obviously an Upsmash that comes out near-instantly and kills at 120-130% would be totally useless.

Even with slightly reduced kill power Fox UpSmash would still be one of the best in the game.

Honestly, I thought Fox and maybe Falco should get nerfed too. But then I realized that they are not only the best in Melee, but also the most developed ones. PM actually changed alot. And it takes more than a few months or a year, to fully understand a new/heavy changed character.

This isn't really a character knowledge issue. The raw statistics on those two moves are far superior to what any other characters have. Every other powerful spike requires a sweetspot hit. Falco's Dair inexplicably doesn't. Fox Upsmash has more kill power than Ike and Dedede Upsmash, and is one of the fastest in the game.

There's simply no real way to argue that those design choices make sense. Those characters were designed by people who didn't understand competitive smash at all (Sakurai and company), and it shows.

Like I said before, we all agreed that Metaknight was too bonkers and fixed some of his crap. Why are the spacies off the table?

 

[MagnesD3]

Because obviously an Upsmash that comes out near-instantly and kills at 120-130% would be totally useless.

Even with slightly reduced kill power Fox UpSmash would still be one of the best in the game.



This isn't really a character knowledge issue. The raw statistics on those two moves are far superior to what any other characters have. Every other powerful spike requires a sweetspot hit. Falco's Dair inexplicably doesn't. Fox Upsmash has more kill power than Ike and Dedede Upsmash, and is one of the fastest in the game.

There's simply no real way to argue that those design choices make sense. Those characters were designed by people who didn't understand competitive smash at all (Sakurai and company), and it shows.

Like I said before, we all agreed that Metaknight was too bonkers and fixed some of his crap. Why are the spacies off the table?

Becuz eeleM

 

[Deleted member]

fox needs more help

who put the paprika in your vagisil?

 

[Strong Badam]

I actually had a talk last night with a fellow melee player(i guess hes a "melee purist" ) about pm. He didnt like that the game was "built around spacies" and thus all characters either have stupid easy combo games on them or have solid anti pressure options. I brought up the point that being able to compete with spacies is needed when they still are dominant forces, and he said he would be completely fine with drastic spacie changes if it improved the overall health of the game. He also said falco felt different enough to him (slight changes and the different camera) that he would be open to new changes and at the worst would pick up a new character if he got more interested in pm.

combos against spacies are among the hardest in the game because they're done so close to the ground (techs turn many combos into guessing games). many 0-deaths are either heavily read-based or multiple 2-3 frame windows. i challenge anyone who views the majority of this game's combos against spacies as "easy" to do the same against high level fox/falco players in a tournament environment.

 

[Jarbinks9/11]

Im really iffy on toon links whole design. It feels like hes got the whole amazing spiderman deal going on with him, in that hes trying to be two completely different things at the same time. Hes like a hybrid of the most hardcore camp character in pm mixed with some of the craziest combo potential in the game, and bad gimpable recovery. Its like hes not stellar at either camp or offense yet he has no inbetween equilibrium between the two?

 

[Jarbinks9/11]

combos against spacies are among the hardest in the game because they're done so close to the ground (techs turn many combos into guessing games). many 0-deaths are either heavily read-based or multiple 2-3 frame windows. i challenge anyone who views the majority of this game's combos against spacies as "easy" to do the same against high level fox/falco players in a tournament environment.

I disagree that spacies are as hard to combo as you make it out to be. Personally if you arent a sheik or a falcon main which prefer floatier characters like marth to punish, fox and falco, and to a lesser degree wolf, are extremely punishable.

While it can be hard to juggle them early on due to their gravity, many characters bar falcon have launchers that can easily set up combos on them ie throws or tilts with vertical trajectory which can set them up for a good juggle. In the case of throws, their low weight makes throws upon them much easier to follow up than a heavier character do to the quicker endlag of throws on lighter characters. While their gravity helps them fall through juggles, at an appropriate percentage it is still entirely possible, from the 70-100 range, which at that point they will suffer extreme hitstun while still staying in a comboable range. This is even worse when you factor in that the percentage they are best combod at is also the range where they can be killed relatively easily because of their low weight, making them the most susceptible to death combos.

As for how to get them to this range you simply just chaingrab or techchase or space with your attacks until they reach a reasonable damage. They have relatively slow tech rolls making techchases pretty easy to do compared to other characters, teching with them requires more awareness and consistency than other characters coupled with more risk upon failure, and they need good di all the time if the expect to live, which can be hard when youre rocking the analog stick that hard and focusing on other things. Their bad priority along with their inability to trade well at all can turn any combo around if you arent careful. And while they have many recovery options, each is interruptible and easily gimped, so a well predicted edgegaurd can end stocks early. Its not harder than comboing a character like marth who you can combo right away, it just requires different aspects to focus on.

 

[Soft Serve]

Because obviously an Upsmash that comes out near-instantly and kills at 120-130% would be totally useless.

Even with slightly reduced kill power Fox UpSmash would still be one of the best in the game.



This isn't really a character knowledge issue. The raw statistics on those two moves are far superior to what any other characters have. Every other powerful spike requires a sweetspot hit. Falco's Dair inexplicably doesn't. Fox Upsmash has more kill power than Ike and Dedede Upsmash, and is one of the fastest in the game.

There's simply no real way to argue that those design choices make sense. Those characters were designed by people who didn't understand competitive smash at all (Sakurai and company), and it shows.

Like I said before, we all agreed that Metaknight was too bonkers and fixed some of his crap. Why are the spacies off the table?

Id actually be completely okay with pal nerfs, and i know a lot of other people would bw for it. They dont really deal with all of the toxicness that spacies are but it'd be a step in the right direction.

 

[Jarbinks9/11]

Id actually be completely okay with pal nerfs, and i know a lot of other people would bw for it. They dont really deal with all of the toxicness that spacies are but it'd be a step in the right direction.

What is it that you feel is so toxic about fox falco and wolf? They dont seem too different than the other characters in the game so im just curious.

 

[Strong Badam]

Very few people take issue with Wolf. Usually when people refer to spacies in this context they refer to Fox & Falco specifically and aren't including Wolf.

 

[Plum]

Making characters not combo spacies to death is like saying we should make Jigglypuff easier to combo, or Luigi have more friction, or Falcon run slower, etc.
Spacies get punished by combo games because they are fast fallers, not because characters are specifically designed to combo them well.
If you think they are getting punished harder in PM than they were in Melee it's most likely because spacies aren't as dominating in the neutral in PM as they were in Melee relative to the cast; if the average neutral is better then there will be more opportunities to actually convert something against them on average.

You can take basically any character in Melee and be guaranteed they have silly stuff against the spacies, but that doesn't matter if you never have the opportunity to use it because you're too busy losing the neutral game. It's not like ****ty characters in Melee like G&W and Roy don't have chaingrabs, death combos, free tech chase setups, and the like on spacies... they do...
But I mean, who would have ever thought a Melee player would selectively ignore parts of their game when comparing it to other Smash games. Based Melee is perfect and can never be wrong

And God forbid you give a character besides a Spacie good tools... If you do, they're only getting a good tool because it's good against spacies...
OH NO SNAKE CAN ESCAPE PRESSURE WITH UP B OOS! IT'S CLEARLY TARGETED AT SPACIES AND NOT AN ACTUAL DESIGN CHOICE TO GIVE A CHARACTER WITH POOR APPROACH A GOOD WAY TO HANDLE PRESSURE!

 

[Jarbinks9/11]

Very few people take issue with Wolf. Usually when people refer to spacies in this context they refer to Fox & Falco specifically and aren't including Wolf.

Is wolf underpowered or something? He seems like he has the right tools to be viable imo like a mix of falco and mario. In any case i think it would be better to simply buff around fox and falco than nerfing the two, the melee speed that it gets praised for includes the rate at which stocks are eliminated, making dynamic characters like fox and falco worse would only hurt the pace of the game tbh. Plus there are already a lot of characters at that high level of balance anyway like link and metaknight to name a couple, dont see why we should need to bring them down to wolfs level and undo all the hard work that went into them.

 

[Jarbinks9/11]

Making characters not combo spacies to death is like saying we should make Jigglypuff easier to combo, or Luigi have more friction, or Falcon run slower, etc.
Spacies get punished by combo games because they are fast fallers, not because characters are specifically designed to combo them well.
If you think they are getting punished harder in PM than they were in Melee it's most likely because spacies aren't as dominating in the neutral in PM as they were in Melee relative to the cast; if the average neutral is better then there will be more opportunities to actually convert something against them on average.

You can take basically any character in Melee and be guaranteed they have silly stuff against the spacies, but that doesn't matter if you never have the opportunity to use it because you're too busy losing the neutral game. It's not like ****ty characters in Melee like G&W and Roy don't have chaingrabs, death combos, free tech chase setups, and the like on spacies... they do...
But I mean, who would have ever thought a Melee player would selectively ignore parts of their game when comparing it to other Smash games. Based Melee is perfect and can never be wrong

And God forbid you give a character besides a Spacie good tools... If you do, they're only getting a good tool because it's good against spacies...
OH NO SNAKE CAN ESCAPE PRESSURE WITH UP B OOS! IT'S CLEARLY TARGETED AT SPACIES AND NOT AN ACTUAL DESIGN CHOICE TO GIVE A CHARACTER WITH POOR APPROACH A GOOD WAY TO HANDLE PRESSURE!

I didnt say that. o.o sorry if i wasnt clear about what i was saying but i didnt mean to say that

 

[Plum]

It wasn't directed at you.
It was at an earlier post.
I was just too lazy to quote it.

 

[Jarbinks9/11]

It wasn't directed at you.
It was at an earlier post.
I was just too lazy to quote it.

Oh, haha guess im still just a newbie around here. Still, I like speculating about character balance and mus despite my inexperience at the game so far. I feel like every person should get a say in expressing their views, even new players, and not just legendary players like isai and koreandj, otherwise youd get a one sided view of things. When everyone gets to have an opinion you get a very diverse way of how things are interpreted just like in real life.

 

[JCOnyx]

Doesn't Pikachu's UpSmash come out just as quickly (if not more so) and kills off the top even earlier than Fox's? Not to mention she has Thunder which can help finish the job if you catch your opponent off guard. These people and their excessive complaining of Fox's UpSmash...

As an avid Wolf player, having his Shine be extremely susceptible to DI and it can even be CC'd is a huge downside. In fact, a lot of his ground options are suboptimal and most can be CC'd. I find myself becoming extremely dependent on wavelanding out of Laser and mixing up my approaches with crossing up Bair, Dair, and an empty jump into grab. Almost all of my combo setups stem from landing a grab or a Dair (Diddy and Roy are extreme cases, they get comboed to hell and back if wolf lands a grab on them). Other FFs you can chain grab with UpThrow but once you get into mid percents Wolf really starts to have problems finishing them off.

I like to think of Wolf as a slightly more manageable spacie with some pretty cool tech, extreme juggling capabilities, and SideB flair. Will probably end up somewhere at the bottom of the top 10 once the meta starts to settle.

 

[Player -0]

I think the thing is that Pika doesn't get Jab to Up-Smash and Shine to Up-Smash like Fox does. I believe you can get thunder off before people are away from the hitlag/stun/whatever.

 

[JCOnyx]

At mid-high percents I believe Fair to UpSmash with Pikachu is almost damn near guaranteed. Certainly not a Jab to UpSmash but it's still there. Also, I think UpSmash to Thunder has an pretty tight window if the opponent DI's well. I'd have to test it out some more but I'm not really a Pika main so...

There is just so much untapped potential with Pikachu. I think she might end up being one of the better characters as long people actually start picking her up and sticking with her at some point.

 

[Player -0]

I think Pika is good, main problem in melee was Sheik CG's. I think weak Nair -> Up-Smash links better. Although Up Air semispikes will be less powerful in the better recovery environment (but still really strong).

 

[jtm94]

At the same level of skill you can pretty much use any character and see more success than you would with Pikachu.

His usmash isn't nearly as easy to land as Fox's. Fair is really decent, but people stop falling for it and thunder is extremely hard to land on a competent opponent.

I just don't have a draw to play the worse characters in the game when there are such easy/fun ones.

 

[PsionicSabreur]

Pika's usmash also has less range, I think, and isn't nearly as protective as Fox's on the backswing of the kick (Oh, they were too far behind you? No worries, still got a semi-spike)

Really, though, the big difference is most of Pika's easy lead-ins are gone by the time he manages to inch his opponent to KO percent.

Pika's still pretty good, though. It would be hard not to be with that much mobility. It's just that, unlike a lot of other fast, good-neutral characters, his good conversions/punishes tend to end in gimps/edgeguards instead of combos and KO setups (usmash notwithstanding). I think it will be rather interesting to see where Pika ends up, because it could be a good indication of just how balanced or unbalanced recoveries will turn out to be if offstage play is used correctly.

 

[Cassio]

Pika doesn't gimp well offstage compared to Melee. His entire success is built off baiting and reading the opponent, which doesn't compare well with a PM cast that's generally built off more guarantees in their punish game while pikas has become weaker (again compared to Melee). Hopefully the grab stuff is fixed soon to help alleviate that but it'll still be an issue overall.

 

[PsionicSabreur]

He might not gimp amazingly well, but it's still arguably Pika's main goal to achieve as many gimps as possible with those reads instead of trying to keep pace with his combo game.
As I said, whether or not Pika can eventually gain recognition as a high tier is a good indicator of recovery balance, because if it does happen it probably means that Pika's offstage game was developed enough to achieve the same levels of excellence as it exhibited in Melee, which still could happen, considering the tools available. Pika's edge game is by no means at it's peak yet.

 

[Deleted member]

wolf isn't underpowered, it's more like he was done correctly and doesn't have a neutral game that warps his interaction with the rest of the cast, as opposed to say fox/falco. wolf is probably how fox/falco should be play out ideally.

edit: this game's pacing is already more offensive than melee's. i think it's fine to regulate characters that are blatantly over the cast average in terms of goodness.