Tier List Speculation

[Soft Serve]

saying that they should be nerfed because characters in the passed have been nerfed for less, is kind of invalid. Even if we don't know it now, those past nerfs could have been a mistake. Once again, Fox's upsmash being nerfed I can understand, but Falco doesn't have anything as crazy as that. His dair, although freaking amazing, is not as safe as fox's upsmash. It gimps amazingly, but so does fox's shine and mario's cape and we don't seem to have a problem with that (as far as I know). It is also much more punishable on stage where as fox can practically throw out up smashes all day and be fine. Wait, what is it that people want to nerf about falco in the first place? Not to mention, I dont see falco played that much on pm or winning tournaments. Can anyone point me to some videos of falco destroying everyone at highlevel play in project M tournament? not that im saying videos justify nerfing/not nerfing, I just need examples. I really do not think it is the same as melee even with the frame data

I know it's M2k, but this is what I mean when I say that falco is much more manageable now. Some characters can deal with him both on and off stage. Fox on the other hand probably would have made it back on the stage in some of those stocks and had more of a chance of winning.

I just want to say that a lot of this is just straight wrong. Falco's dair is much safer than foxi's up-smash both used in neutral and on shield. If fox gets baited or is just up-smash happy in the neutral (Like i am, btw) he will get grabbed after they dash dance out of range. If they shield it most characters can WD OoS and punish on reaction. Falco's dair, on the other hand, has less end lag when shffled compared to fox's upsmash, and is kind of half of his shield pressure. It isn't positive on block, but its not negative enough for Shine to not cover every option the opponent has that isn't buffering rolls. Falco's pillaring on shield is just a huge frame trap, completely different from throwing an up-smash from fox. The safeness of spacies on shield is something INCREDIBLY developed and looked at from melee,


Fox, and more so Falco, are incredibly domineering in the neutral game because they can both approach with impunity and still force others to approach them. No other characters (I guess lucas and wolf have the same pressure capacity, but with more frame traps and mobility/spacing needed to be safe) have the ability to just attack whenever they want to and not get punished for the most part. Beating spacie approaches has to be done on prediction, not reaction, and they both technically don't have to approach at all when laser camping still beats most of the cast (albeit only racking up 1% per laser now).

Fox/falco are stupid because when played competently they should control the pace of the game in nearly every matchup a majority of the match, while still being safe when being the aggressor. They might not have the best or most guaranteed killing options (especially on the heavier cast in PM) but they certainly have enough. That said changes should be done carefully to maintain the same spacie play without being so toxic to the game, Although I don't know how that would be possible.

 

[Daftatt]

I just want to say that a lot of this is just straight wrong. Falco's dair is much safer than foxi's up-smash both used in neutral and on shield. If fox gets baited or is just up-smash happy in the neutral (Like i am, btw) he will get grabbed after they dash dance out of range. If they shield it most characters can WD OoS and punish on reaction. Falco's dair, on the other hand, has less end lag when shffled compared to fox's upsmash, and is kind of half of his shield pressure. It isn't positive on block, but its not negative enough for Shine to not cover every option the opponent has that isn't buffering rolls. Falco's pillaring on shield is just a huge frame trap, completely different from throwing an up-smash from fox. The safeness of spacies on shield is something INCREDIBLY developed and looked at from melee,


Fox, and more so Falco, are incredibly domineering in the neutral game because they can both approach with impunity and still force others to approach them. No other characters (I guess lucas and wolf have the same pressure capacity, but with more frame traps and mobility/spacing needed to be safe) have the ability to just attack whenever they want to and not get punished for the most part. Beating spacie approaches has to be done on prediction, not reaction, and they both technically don't have to approach at all when laser camping still beats most of the cast (albeit only racking up 1% per laser now).

Fox/falco are stupid because when played competently they should control the pace of the game in nearly every matchup a majority of the match, while still being safe when being the aggressor. They might not have the best or most guaranteed killing options (especially on the heavier cast in PM) but they certainly have enough. That said changes should be done carefully to maintain the same spacie play without being so toxic to the game, Although I don't know how that would be possible.

I definitely agree with everything in this post, but I am hesitant to say if it is a big a factor in P:M as in melee. I think there are many extremely potent counters to fox/falco right now.

 

[NeonApophis]

I feel like over 90% of the people discussing Fox in this thread have never played him at a high level against a good melee player.
Also, this design vs. balance argument is pretty silly. They go hand in hand since a poorly designed character will not be well balanced, and broken moves/characters will not seem to be well designed. The PMBR clearly uses balance as a criteria for evaluating whether something is well-designed when determining what needs to be changed, and we feel that moves are stupid and/or poorly designed because they are either overpowered or not very useful. A given move having detrimental effects on how a character interacts with others is essentially a balance issue; evaluating design would be extremely arbitrary if we didn't consider balance as a factor in our evaluation.

 

[Saproling]

Any changes to Fox will not change the way he plays, they will probably just be slight tweaks. I'm crossing my fingers for a punishable up smash in the next update

Even small changes cause for a tiny bit of adjustment,even if it is just doing a little bit more work for a kill.But yes I hope they do just tune some things down a bit I don't want fox nerfed too heavily even if Im not a fan.

 

[FireBall Stars]

What SB meant with a game full of characters at Fox' level being full of stupidity is not that Fox is completely dumb or even that Melee is full of that.

A big part of what makes Fox and Falco good are their physics, and physcis are a fundamental part of a character's identity, how it feels and how it plays. To get every character in a game, with their own physics and identity, try to bring them up for Fox and Falco's level will generate stupidity. Mobility is extremely strong in this game, and characters with low mobility will need ways to compete with the characters with both high mobility and strong moves.

Things such as commitment-free moves or extremely polarizing hitboxes/damage/kb/angles/recovery. Melee has some of that, but the inherent characteristics of the best characters there is mostly enough to keep them viable. In theory it's ok to bring those characters with "worse" physics/identity to Fox/Falco's level, but it's not. Characters with silly moves will be hated, be labeled "too easy to use", "******** characters", "too many autocombos". If there are too many of them, people will simply just hate the game and won't play it, it will die from the inside by bad design which developers were forced to do to make the characters viable.

We once thought that getting everyone to Fox' level was viable and would make as good game just like melee is. But now we see that only happened because Melee has just a few characters viable and they didn't give too many silly traits to other characters (this part makes it not frustrating to play, still some characters are frustrating to play due to extreme characteristics), and still Fox and Falco are above the rest of the cast although not enough to be even near broken, it is enough to limit the amount of resources we can use to make other characters viable without making them frustrating to play against due to silly moves or characteristics.

 

[NisforSmash]

I'm sorry for being harsh. Really, I am, but I'm simply not interested in rehashing the same argument we've gone through a million times already in this thread alone.

I can see why you'd be tired of addressing the fox/falco argument. It's been done time and time again but to no avail because we just keep on arguing about what could be or what shouldn't be but no actions are being taken. We can talk about how overpowered or dominating or whatever you think fox and falco are but unless the PMBR have determined within their minds to tackle the situation there is absolutely nothing we can do about it besides renaming the topic to the official fox and falco controversy thread.

 

[B.W.]

B.W.: Samus and ZSS cannot transform

I know this. It was an example to hopefully make people see why Sheilda is stupid to add to tierlists

 

[DontHate-]

[/quote]

First video is falco doing lots of work and smacking a link and second video is falco getting smack by mewtwo.
This is so that you can get an idea of what both sides look like, although it might not help much that they are different characters being played against.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, Falco is much more manageable because of these new scenarios that did not exist in melee. He is able to be dealt with both on (not easily) and ESPECIALLY off stage. There are characters now that can do this yet we still keep the "Melee falco" mentality for some reason. Frame data isn't everything. Again, fox is a different case and Im not about to try and defend him because I do think his upsmash is a bit much. But again, we really need to start separating Fox and Falco in PM. Fox can deal with these new matchups while falco has a much harder time and we treat both of them as if they are the same because of our preconceived notions of the melee fox/falcos.

I just want to say that a lot of this is just straight wrong. Falco's dair is much safer than foxi's up-smash both used in neutral and on shield. If fox gets baited or is just up-smash happy in the neutral (Like i am, btw) he will get grabbed after they dash dance out of range. If they shield it most characters can WD OoS and punish on reaction. Falco's dair, on the other hand, has less end lag when shffled compared to fox's upsmash, and is kind of half of his shield pressure. It isn't positive on block, but its not negative enough for Shine to not cover every option the opponent has that isn't buffering rolls. Falco's pillaring on shield is just a huge frame trap, completely different from throwing an up-smash from fox. The safeness of spacies on shield is something INCREDIBLY developed and looked at from melee,

Some of what you say here is incorrect. If falco does an ideal pillar ( meaning after he shines his dair is slightly delayed and done more so around the peak of his jump) and the opponent sees this, HE CAN GET GRABBED or punished Oos after he did his first shine (this is what the frame data tells us from melee because there is a seven frame window to grab falco after his shine if he is to do an ideal pillar)[1:56 in the mewtwo video would be what it would look like if falco tried to continue by doing an ideal dair after that shine] . Similarly, if falco does an early pillar (a shine then a dair as soon as he is airborne), he can also get grabbed before he reaches the ground and does another shine. It is only if falco does a perfect frame ideal pillar(or is off by 1-2 frames) that he is not punishable, but doing perfect frame pillars are not easy. Grabbing falco out of pillar is also not easy but it is still very much possible once you see what an ideal and a early pillar looks like when you play against him. It is only when the opponent trys to grab an ideal pillar and the opponent misses this opportunity on falcos way up and tries to grab falco as if he was doing an early pillar (meaning you would have to attempt to grab him before the shine on his way down) that the opponent get punished. Either way, what you said about fox is correct. Although I haven't attempted it, wave dash out of shield should punish fox's upsmash.

Fox, and more so Falco, are incredibly domineering in the neutral game because they can both approach with impunity and still force others to approach them. No other characters (I guess lucas and wolf have the same pressure capacity, but with more frame traps and mobility/spacing needed to be safe) have the ability to just attack whenever they want to and not get punished for the most part. Beating spacie approaches has to be done on prediction, not reaction, and they both technically don't have to approach at all when laser camping still beats most of the cast (albeit only racking up 1% per laser now).

Is this broken or nit picking? Part of playing the game is baiting moves, mindgames, and reaction. The majority of the cast has way to use their tools to their advantage and force you to have to bait in order to punish. Also, Link has a ridiculous keep away game and practically never has to approach too.

Fox/falco are stupid because when played competently they should control the pace of the game in nearly every matchup a majority of the match, while still being safe when being the aggressor. They might not have the best or most guaranteed killing options (especially on the heavier cast in PM) but they certainly have enough. That said changes should be done carefully to maintain the same spacie play without being so toxic to the game, Although I don't know how that would be possible.

I would agree that they can dictate the pace of the match, but characters can still approach well or maintain a distance where they are not able to use lasers safely. Not to mention, if a falco wants to play extremely defensive and laser all day, then the opponent can just camp the ledge and gimp if falco gets close. There are many ways to deal with falco as we have seen 100x before in high level play.

 

[DontHate-]

What SB meant with a game full of characters at Fox' level being full of stupidity is not that Fox is completely dumb or even that Melee is full of that.

A big part of what makes Fox and Falco good are their physics, and physcis are a fundamental part of a character's identity, how it feels and how it plays. To get every character in a game, with their own physics and identity, try to bring them up for Fox and Falco's level will generate stupidity. Mobility is extremely strong in this game, and characters with low mobility will need ways to compete with the characters with both high mobility and strong moves.

Things such as commitment-free moves or extremely polarizing hitboxes/damage/kb/angles/recovery. Melee has some of that, but the inherent characteristics of the best characters there is mostly enough to keep them viable. In theory it's ok to bring those characters with "worse" physics/identity to Fox/Falco's level, but it's not. Characters with silly moves will be hated, be labeled "too easy to use", "******** characters", "too many autocombos". If there are too many of them, people will simply just hate the game and won't play it, it will die from the inside by bad design which developers were forced to do to make the characters viable.

We once thought that getting everyone to Fox' level was viable and would make as good game just like melee is. But now we see that only happened because Melee has just a few characters viable and they didn't give too many silly traits to other characters (this part makes it not frustrating to play, still some characters are frustrating to play due to extreme characteristics), and still Fox and Falco are above the rest of the cast although not enough to be even near broken, it is enough to limit the amount of resources we can use to make other characters viable without making them frustrating to play against due to silly moves or characteristics.

That was nicely put. Oh and seeing as how you are PMBR, can you just go ahead and make it so that the game feels more like melee. You know.. do more of that stuff u did before to make it similar to melee but now just do more stuff to make it exactly like melee. Thank man, really appreciate it!

But seriously, is it really not possible to change the physics to make it more like melee? Even if it is, do we want to?

 

[Fish&Herbs19]

for real though, I don't like not being being known apparently. on the Xanadu stream last night, people had never even heard of me playing DDD but they were all over Fly being the one and only DDD

Having played DDD and seeing all the great stuff that you've brought to the table makes it so this pisses me off too. Just know that you are a fantastic, amazing player, and will always be remembered by us DDD players! You really should go to more events though. It would be awesome to see you play on stream.

 

[fabulouspants]

fly is better

 

[9bit]

^ this f**kin guy

 

[9bit]

That was nicely put. Oh and seeing as how you are PMBR, can you just go ahead and make it so that the game feels more like melee. You know.. do more of that stuff u did before to make it similar to melee but now just do more stuff to make it exactly like melee. Thank man, really appreciate it!

But seriously, is it really not possible to change the physics to make it more like melee? Even if it is, do we want to?

I'm really happy with how PM feels, I actually prefer it to Melee. I know they have some things they still kinda want to do to make it more like Melee, like bring back Melee tethering, but I'd be OK if they didn't. I'm happy with PM being very similar to Melee but still having its own idiosyncrasies that make it unique.

 

[B.W.]

Shoulda gone and bopped Xanadu, Ripple.

 

[Cassio]

There's already a game that buffed everyone to Fox's level, it's called Brawl-. Heard thats going well.

 

[jtm94]

Everyone has to play at Xanadu at least once.

 

[Nguz95]

Xanadu is the best. Ripple, I love your DDD.

 

[Terotrous]

There's already a game that buffed everyone to Fox's level, it's called Brawl-. Heard thats going well.

Well, to be fair, it is still running, and some people do seem to like some of their ideas.

In general though the concept is correct. In order to make everyone as good as Fox is now, you'd have to put in a lot of things that are really gimmicky or dumb. Armor all over the place, huge and very free combos, everything is jump cancellable, etc.

Alternatively we could just tone Fox down to a reasonable level and maintain the game mostly the way it is now.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

everything is jump cancellable, etc.

PMBR pls

 

[Fenrir VII]

I take issue with the "Fox is overwhelming in the neutral" argument, because there really is a limit to that, based on damage output and killpower vs. recovery and gimpability.

For example, if Fox were nearly perfect in neutral, but all of his attacks did ~5% less damage, he would still be "overwhelming in neutral" but would not be nearly as good... So there's no way you can really use that comment to say that just nerfing his killpower/etc wouldn't be enough. Fox could be almost perfect in neutral, but without his damage output and killpower, he's not the same char.

My point is, we can't only consider the neutral in these discussions, because the game does devolve outside of the neutral fairly quickly, and Fox is very vulnerable to edgeguarding and gets comboed very hard by a lot of the cast.

I personally still believe that Fox has a number of negative matchups in PM, and the rest of the cast will catch up to him. I don't believe that he would be top tier when the dust settles, if no other balancing changes were made. I don't believe he should be nerfed, but if he gets a nerf, I seriously hope that it's killpower only... he doesn't need anything huge.
He doesn't make most of the cast unviable in PM by any means, and he didn't do that any more than Falco, Marth, Peach, or omgSheik did in Melee.

 

[GP&B]

By the nature of giving Fox a weaker USmash, it means granting opponents more opportunities to KO him. This I feel would be a pretty fair change, especially for characters who already have a ton of trouble dealing with rushdown (like Link and Ike) and need those additional chances to keep up. This still keeps his other powerful options in place (Bair and UThrow -> Uair) while still making USmash reliable as it always was but simply require a little bit more on it to get the KO. I'm not too keen on adjusting Uair without accidentally making it useless in the long term. The Melee top have already gotten especially good at reading the throw and even SDI-ing it that weakening it would make Fox players look towards other options and perhaps significantly alter his ability to close out the stock which could drastically alter his performance.

 

[Terotrous]

I'm not too keen on adjusting Uair without accidentally making it useless in the long term

Uair is fine as is, you can SDI out if the spacing on it isn't totally perfect. It also requires him to land a throw first, and his throw isn't as ridiculous as his USmash.

USmash is really the main problem.

 

[didds]

Landing the grab with fox really isn't that difficult

 

[Touching_Everything]

Personal tier list.... its not accurate.

S Tier:



A+ Tier:


A Tier:




B Tier:




C Tier:




D Tier:


E Tier:


Unknown:

 

[DrinkingFood]

I still don't see it making any sense for fox and falco to be in a tier all by themselves.
Consider that even in Melee, they usually weren't put a tier above the rest. In PM, the gap is definitely smaller.
Seven tiers is also quite a lot.

 

[Terotrous]

Landing the grab with fox really isn't that difficult

It's not super hard, but at least there are answers to grabs. Absurdly fast and safe upsmashes are much harder for some of the cast to deal with.

I still don't see it making any sense for fox and falco to be in a tier all by themselves.
Consider that even in Melee, they usually weren't put a tier above the rest. In PM, the gap is definitely smaller.

But the gap between the other tiers is smaller too. IMO, in PM, the 35th best character is about as viable as the 10th best character in Melee.

That means that if you have comparably many tiers, it doesn't take as much to go up to the next one.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Then why have so many tiers at all if the gap between them is small? It's easier to get across the concept of there being less significance between placings with less tiers than it is to have so say every time someone looks at a tier list "Yeah, but there's hardly any space between them even though there's 40 tiers."

 

[Soft Serve]

Spoiler

Total: 41
Hit: 7-17
Head invincible (but not snout): 1-9
Charge frame: 2

Might as well actually look at the move that is being argued about. It has 24 frames of end lag. I'm not quite sure how much shield stun it causes, but asuming like 4 at the maximum thats still plenty of time for people to WD OoS and punish. I don't see why people keep saying its safe. It has stupid knockback, yes, but it isn't safe to throw around against people who know the matchup.

 

[Burnsy]

He can be punished for it but that doesn't stop it from being more rewarding to spam in neutral than any other smash attack. How rewarding it is is a function of what it does to the opponent when it works. Relative to most smash attacks, it is very low risk/high reward.

 

[Ripple]

a perfect WD OOS + grab is between 21 and 24 frames, 26 for bowser.

that's not including shield stun at all.

let's say it is 4 frames stun.

now, only pikachu, sheik, fox, (and other frame 3 jumpers) can punish fox at all without him being able to buffer a roll. and that's even IF they were frame perfect

you act like 24 frames is a lot, it's not

 

[Terotrous]

Then why have so many tiers at all if the gap between them is small? It's easier to get across the concept of there being less significance between placings with less tiers than it is to have so say every time someone looks at a tier list "Yeah, but there's hardly any space between them even though there's 40 tiers."

I don't think 5 tiers is a lot for 41 characters. Melee has 8 tiers for only 26 characters.

Also, the way I defined the tiers, they have an objective meaning beyond gameplay viability. My system was:

"Needs minor tonedown"
"Strong"
"Fine"
"Needs a little help"
"Needs a lot of help"

Which you could really apply to almost any game that doesn't have absurdly spectacular balance.

 

[DrinkingFood]

a perfect WD OOS + grab is between 21 and 24 frames, 26 for bowser.

that's not including shield stun at all.

let's say it is 4 frames stun.

now, only pikachu, sheik, fox, (and other frame 3 jumpers) can punish fox at all without him being able to buffer a roll. and that's even IF they were frame perfect

you act like 24 frames is a lot, it's not

3 frames jump start+10 frames air dodge landing
The fastest wavedashes are 13 frames, and jumps come out of shield instantly, where the **** are you getting 21 from?

Also an easy to remember approximation of shield Stun is add 4 to how much damage it does, then divide by 2. That number will be pretty accurate give or take a frame.

 

[Terotrous]

3 frames jump start+10 frames air dodge landing
The fastest wavedashes are 13 frames, and jumps come out of shield instantly, where the **** are you getting 21 from?

Also an easy to remember approximation of shield Stun is add 4 to how much damage it does, then divide by 2. That number will be pretty accurate give or take a frame.

Well, it does 18 with the front part and 13 with the back part, which suggests 11 / 8 frames stun, though if you get hit by the front part the recovery is actually 34 frames. So you've got about 10 frames to punish the front hitbox. The back hitbox is almost totally safe though.

It's still pretty safe for something that's that fast and strong though.

 

[Deleted member]

USmash is really the main problem.

only kind of. fox's problem is that he has the fastest functional speed while also being the most threatening at the same time. to some degree, speed should augment your other attributes, but fox still kills better than say ike and bowser and ganondorf do. i'm pretty sure project m was supposed to address these kinds of issues. that we have any resistance at all is hilarious. upsmash is just the most obvious example of a larger issue with the character.

i maintain that fox's initial dash speed should be toned down and not just the upsmash. although i think addressing both at this point should be pretty obvious. upair could probably stand to not kill out of a grab at 90 too lol

 

[metroid1117]

3 frames jump start+10 frames air dodge landing
The fastest wavedashes are 13 frames, and jumps come out of shield instantly, where the **** are you getting 21 from?

Also an easy to remember approximation of shield Stun is add 4 to how much damage it does, then divide by 2. That number will be pretty accurate give or take a frame.

The wavedash itself would take 13 frames for 3-frame jumpers, but Ripple was including the time it takes to grab (which is, on average, 7 frames), bringing the total to around 20 frames. Also, it would take 3 frames of jumpsquat and then 10 frames of speciallandfall, but doesn't there have to be a frame where the airdodge is inputted after leaving the ground, making it 14 frames for the wavedash?

 

[Cassio]

rofl at people complaining about Fox's usmash of all things, please no. If being a fast character with a strong upsmash was that good or easy to land in neutral pikachu would be top tier. That shiz is super punishable people just need to get better.

 

[Vashimus]

rofl at people complaining about Fox's usmash of all things, please no. If being a fast character with a strong upsmash was that good or easy to land in neutral pikachu would be top tier. That shiz is super punishable people just need to get better.

Except Pikachu has **** range on nearly of his attacks and has worse problems approaching and performing well in neutral than Fox. There's no comparison between them besides having stupid strong up-smashes.

I would get riled up, but that cutesy Eevee sig and avvy settles me down. Crafty devil.

 

[DMG]

To punish him, we should evolve it into Flareon

 

[Cassio]

False prophet sounds like an upgrade to me if I wasnt so associated with eevee ;;

But I completely agree. Pikachu is one of the worst characters in the game. I just think its funny people think Fox's Usmash is spammable, too difficult to punish, or easy to land in neutral. I dont think his uair is that bad either since you can SDI it. If I have any issue with Fox its his get out of pressure free card.

 

[Terotrous]

rofl at people complaining about Fox's usmash of all things, please no. If being a fast character with a strong upsmash was that good or easy to land in neutral pikachu would be top tier. That shiz is super punishable people just need to get better.

Pikachu isn't amazing in absolutely every other way too. The USmash doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's an absurdly strong tool on a character who is already incredibly good.

And besides, his USmash is actually not quite as good, it doesn't have nearly as good coverage on his other side.