Tier List Speculation

[MLGF]

If Link's boomerang weren't so safe, to the point of consuming his meta actually, I'd say Tink would hands down be the better of the two.
So really

Boomerang > Tink > Link

 

[B.W.]

Oh that's what you meant. The way you worded it confused me.

 

[Saproling]

I think the fire on the arrows makes them fine honestly,more potential for stage control.

 

[Radical Larry]

If you actually think about it for a moment, Link could be top 5 or top 10 material due to having the largest (maybe second largest) amount of buffs in the game. He doesn't need to heavily rely on Boomerang to win, and in fact, he can use his Bow, which has an insane horizontal angle to gimp opponents. Of course, any of Link's specials can gimp an opponent with ease, with Bomb and Boomerang just adding damage and windows to further gimp or even KO an opponent. Thanks to his AGT, he is fully capable of keeping his air time up while trying to recover; also a factor in this is his lower falling and higher air speeds.

His attacks are much faster, dealing the same amount of damage they did back in Brawl, which is rather absurd once you think about it. Thanks to the L-Cancelling, this boosted Link up to a tremendous buff and gave Link better results in the game. A factor people truly underestimate and underrate is Link's new walking animation, which allows him to shield any projectile while walking, as it has the same animation as the Smash 64 walking animation.

But I digress, his weight and large stature only deter him, alongside his normal recovery move being rather short. And there's a whole bunch of negative factors within Link, yet they are countered by most of the positive.

I prefer that Link is top 5 or top 10. His best spot would be either 4 or 8, and the worst he could possibly go is 14, which is still high in the roster.

 

[Saproling]

I would say 11th of 12th

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Oh I see, we stopped riding Pit's **** because Zero didn't win a tourney he attended and now we've moved onto M2.

Lmfao

 

[Fortress]

Joined late into the Link discussion; my two cents is that he's fairly average. Strong attacks, good reach, solid if not tech-heavy recovery game, good weight for others to combo, sub-par recovery under normal circumstances for players not skilled in AGT tech, sluggish attacks, and a slow jump-start. He's pretty very clearly in the middle.

Even as my secondary, I can't see any justification for him being in the top ten, let alone above fifth like I've seen him placed here. At best he'd probably be thirteen, at worst I'd say twenty-two.

 

[Fortress]

Oh I see, we stopped riding Pit's **** because Zero didn't win a tourney he attended and now we've moved onto M2.

Lmfao

Right? RIGHT?

 

[Seagull Joe]

Tier list opinions for 3.02 (Note, this is just tier areas, not actual positions):
Top tier:
, , , , ,

High tier:
, , , , , ,

Mid high tier:
, , , , , , , , , ,

Mid tier:
, , , , ,

Low mid tier:
, , , , , ,

Low tier:
, , , ,

Been saying was top tier since March. I think my list from then wasn't too far off lmao. I would make a few changes tho.

Edit: Current opinion (Note, this is just tier areas, not actual positions):
Top tier:
, , , , , ,

High tier:
, , , , , , , ,

Mid high tier:
, ,, , , , ,

Mid tier:
, , , , , , ,

Low mid tier:
, , , , , ,

Low tier:
, , ,

 

[Saproling]

Swap ZSS and Falcon,Pikachu and Tink,Mario and Link and Marth and Wario then drop Samus and Shiek down one each and ill agree to that.

 

[Fortress]

Swap ZSS and Falcon,Pikachu and Tink,Mario and Link and Marth and Wario then drop Samus and Shiek down one each and ill agree to that.

Seconded.

 

[trash?]

link got that brawl DDD where everyone thinks he's godlike because he has one good thing that makes everything else he has less bad solely through application

he's not that good, just really badly designed. rest of the list seems alright, though, beyond some region bias here and there (I see that lucas up there, don't be silly)

talking about mewtwo: how potent is his planking tricks with upb? I know that it's godly for edgeguarding, since he can basically extend his ledge invincibility for however long he feels like, but idk much else

 

[MysteryRevengerson]

Nah, Lucas is a top tier character for sure.

 

[mimgrim]

Oh I see, we stopped riding Pit's **** because Zero didn't win a tourney he attended and now we've moved onto M2.

Lmfao

I still think Pit is potentially the best character in the game. :L

I think M2 is great against fast fallers, but I'm unsure of other characters. I see him in top 10 easily. But am rather unsure about top 5. I think a lot of it is not many people (if anyone?) knowing how to deal with Teleport effectively, I know I don't anyway lol.

 

[trash?]

whoops, I missed his quote from his before list, I thought he called lucas #1 my bad. link should sit in high-mid more than top, though

 

[Giygacoal]

Why do people think Yoshi is that low? The dino hits like a truck.

Eh, I wonder if Lucario will ever climb to high/upper-mid tier. He's definitely not top tier though.

 

[Cassio]

The thing is, Emu didnt just win SKTAR. He ran a train through it. There wasnt any point where he seemed close to losing I remember except maybe vs ESAM who was reading the hell out of him and still lost. Not to mention, m2 has had a couple Cinderella stories around the country. That being said maybe peeps havent adapted yet. Either way I hope he stays the same, he doesnt look too hard to play and Im about to abuse this character for a bit.

 

[fabulouspants]

@ Thane of Blue Flames

Don't worry we still think fox is #1

also, i'd like to know how many spacies emu killer had to play against. because im reading that mewtwo is only good cause hes good vs spacies but i dont recall any spacies except for m2k fox in top 32 or whatever.

 

[1FD]

At least most talk about acting out of upb and hover being overrated won't show up again
That's all I'm happy for
#early3.2lurkingdayshurtmyhead
It's like people forgot moving really fast into free attacks along with float cancelling were good things in pm or something
peach is hawt
She is my speculative numeru uno for melee to pm top tier transition characters
YES ABOVE FOX EVEN SCREW YOU ALL

 

[DrinkingFood]

PMBR, when is MewTwo's hover gonna be fixed so he can hover cancel the second+ aerial he does during a hover? Currently he has to L-cancel any second or later aerial he does out of his hover because he goes into regularly aerial landing lag if he ends the hover during and lands during that move instead of going into the empty landing like a hover-cancel should.
Peach can do that for like, her 2nd, 3rd, or 4th aerial done out of her float, mewtwo can't even do more than two aerials in one hover anyways unless they're all 3 bairs so he could at least get that.

Also idk how swayed PMBR is by MewTwo now, personally I've considered him a possible top tier contender ever since I saw how much reach up-air and up-tilt have in front of him and diagonally above him now, probably some of the best anti-airs in the game.
But if PMBR does decide to do some adjusting to his crazy tail reach in compensation for a few design based bufftweaks I could see him getting (like the hover one above), you won't need to go so far as to shorten his tail's model or make the hitboxes inaccurate to his current model. A nice way to do it would be to instead adjust his animations so his tail is more curved into the axis in the direction it swung from, so its cross-sectional reach, and thus effective reach and disjointedness, is slightly less. So for example, for dtilt, since he spins from the left, his tail's position duing the active hitbox frames could be curved more to the left; since his tailed would have a larger portion of it extended into the Z-axis, its reach on the x-axis would be lessened. The same could be done for ftilt using the same axes, and for utilt/upair using the Y/X axes. To prevent this from affecting when certain hitboxes could effectively hit the opponent and wheree, mewtwo's position could also be rotated so that the farthest hitboxes still have the same position as before but closer to mewtwo's center, slightly but not signficantly putting the rest of his tail hitboxes slightly ahead of themselves in their arc.
TL:DR if PMBR decides to shorten his reach, they can do it without making the hitboxes unfaithful to his tail model and without shortening his tail model with some clever animation adjustments.

 

[1FD]

So I have a question since Yoshi was mentioned on this page along with Mewtwo
When PM3.0 came out, the 2 best players i know in person said right away that mewtwo and yoshi could very well be some of the best characters in the game
There were other characters they went into after but yoshi and mewtwo were like TOP TIER LIKELY from like the day they played the game

I really trust these 2 peeps for lots of reasons and almost everything they tell me seems to come true and it's been like this for many years LOL
Sooooo
Anyone think that highly of Yoshi at all?
Like top tier possibly?
Or are my local champs crazy?
Both of their release date guesses have been doing work recently if you include Melee........ so what's up with PM Yoshi?

I ask because I know neither of them have seen anything in 2014 from other players yet
Meaning no apex etc with Amsa as Yoshi doing work and none of the mew(2)king craze and of course nothing about sktar and the M2 ditto GFs etc yet
So I'm stoked to show them that stuff when they come back
But is Yoshi good in PM and/or possibly as good as Mewtwo type of thing?
I believe so, and my superiors in the game thinks so
What about around the rest of the community?

 

[BombTicker]

If you actually think about it for a moment, Link could be top 5 or top 10 material due to having the largest (maybe second largest) amount of buffs in the game. He doesn't need to heavily rely on Boomerang to win, and in fact, he can use his Bow, which has an insane horizontal angle to gimp opponents. Of course, any of Link's specials can gimp an opponent with ease, with Bomb and Boomerang just adding damage and windows to further gimp or even KO an opponent. Thanks to his AGT, he is fully capable of keeping his air time up while trying to recover; also a factor in this is his lower falling and higher air speeds.

His attacks are much faster, dealing the same amount of damage they did back in Brawl, which is rather absurd once you think about it. Thanks to the L-Cancelling, this boosted Link up to a tremendous buff and gave Link better results in the game. A factor people truly underestimate and underrate is Link's new walking animation, which allows him to shield any projectile while walking, as it has the same animation as the Smash 64 walking animation.

But I digress, his weight and large stature only deter him, alongside his normal recovery move being rather short. And there's a whole bunch of negative factors within Link, yet they are countered by most of the positive.

I prefer that Link is top 5 or top 10. His best spot would be either 4 or 8, and the worst he could possibly go is 14, which is still high in the roster.

His finishers are kinda garbage assuming people don't fool for tricks and don't get gimped at 38%. His dair is a great finisher and lcanceling does make it less punishable, but if the weight is not correct it NEVER combos well and the link may find themself fishing for a kill for far longer than they can afford to. I'd say 14th place is probably his niche to be honest. That is by no means a shameful place with the beasts PM brings to the table.

 

[Fortress]

His finishers are kinda garbage assuming people don't fool for tricks and don't get gimped at 38%. His dair is a great finisher and lcanceling does make it less punishable, but if the weight is not correct it NEVER combos well and the link may find themself fishing for a kill for far longer than they can afford to. I'd say 14th place is probably his niche to be honest. That is by no means a shameful place with the beasts PM brings to the table.

Fourteen is fine, but he's got plenty of solid finishers. F-Air setups through 'rang, moonwalk b-air > b-air for dumb gimps, D-throw > D-air for the classic Helm Splitter, and a solid n-air to block with. Not to mention things like up-B OoS, or z-air > f-air/d-air. He's got plenty of killing options.

 

[0RLY]

So, what do we think about that WOOP WOOP for 6 minutes per game?
Not any different from m2k's POOF POOF?
Introduce brawl's ledge grab limit?
Adjust M2's up-b so it's like a tether and can only grab the ledge 3 times before it fails?
Adjust everyone's up-b so it's like that?

 

[ThreeSided]

I think the fact that M2K lost to Emu in a Mewtwo ditto says something about what happened there. Is it really Mewtwo, or the players? Considering how recent Mewtwo is as a character, it's perfectly believable that a dedicated Mewtwo player could beat someone as diverse as M2K in a ditto. Not to mention, M2K is known for being much worse in matchups he doesn't know, and Mewtwo plays freaking weird. Honestly, I think the reason he's doing so well right now is that exact reason, among other things (like spacies I said before). Don't get me wrong, he's good, but I get the sense that it's the sort of thing that will change once people learn how he works. We've spent 10+ years developing a melee-based metagame which revolves largely around understanding mobility options which don't include a teleport good for anything besides recovering. For example, people seem to forget that mewtwo's teleport can only travel one distance. The only way to shorten it is by hitting a surface, and if that surface is the ground then he has a punishable landing lag he usually doesn't out of the teleport. If you don't take that distance into account when spacing you're going to eat a lot of free pressure and mixups. How many times during that tournament did people eat shadow claws and grabs because they were keeping just the wrong distance from the edge when Emu was on it? Usually that's a perfectly safe place to be, but mewtwo is an exception, and people just need to keep that in mind when playing against him.

Let's calm down with all this Mewtwo stuff.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Besides, this logic does not really compute:

a) Mewtwo is broken and carried Emukiller, an allegedly inferior player.
b) This enabled him to beat M2K, the allegedly superior player ... who was using the same allegedly broken character.

 

[trash?]

don't ever get mad that someone "dared" to use a good character to a higher potential than expected. that's always a good thing for a metagame that's in it for the long haul w/r/t patches like PM

 

[FlamingForce]

Besides, this logic does not really compute:

a) Mewtwo is broken and carried Emukiller, an allegedly inferior player.
b) This enabled him to beat M2K, the allegedly superior player ... who was using the same allegedly broken character.

He also destroyed M2K's Fox tho.

 

[ThreeSided]

He also destroyed M2K's Fox tho.

Mewtwo destroys spacies. What extra gruff that fox gets for having M2K holding the controller is counteracted by the matchup. From there it's just Emu being a good player.

 

[jtm94]

He still did decent Fox stuff to Mewtwo. If you play good Fox regardless of what character you're facing you will win and not get hit. Safe pressure, unpunishable aggro options, hit confirms into superior KO moves. The problem is he can be punished HARD when he does get hit, and his recovery means nothing to M2.

Regardless I've known Mewtwo was one of the best in the game the day he came out. It isn't about results or players, it is the fact that you can play Mewtwo and understand how he is superior in every way over most of the cast. Amazing movement, pressure, and recovery. Fast KO moves and a safe ledge stall. A projectile that can be both incredibly fast and incredibly strong. Throws that either finish or set up a KO.

 

[TreK]

M2K does not play PM Mewtwo, he plays Melee Mewtwo. He admitted himself that he didn't use float at all, and I don't think I've ever seen him RAR or do any of the Brawl techs in PM. His woop skill is lower than Emu's, too. He was simply not playing the character to its fullest : his incredible smarts are the only reason he was still doing good with Mewtwo imho.

What would you guys say are Mewtwo's weaknesses now that you've seen somebody use his whole toolkit ? I'm guessing bad oos is one of them, but we haven't seen Emu need to shield all that often.

 

[ThreeSided]

He still did decent Fox stuff to Mewtwo. If you play good Fox regardless of what character you're facing you will win and not get hit. Safe pressure, unpunishable aggro options, hit confirms into superior KO moves. The problem is he can be punished HARD when he does get hit, and his recovery means nothing to M2.

Regardless I've known Mewtwo was one of the best in the game the day he came out. It isn't about results or players, it is the fact that you can play Mewtwo and understand how he is superior in every way over most of the cast. Amazing movement, pressure, and recovery. Fast KO moves and a safe ledge stall. A projectile that can be both incredibly fast and incredibly strong. Throws that either finish or set up a KO.

I don't buy the "Fox will always win if you play him right" argument. He has good tools and is definitely a beast, but he's got plenty of holes to exploit. Everything fox does sets him up for a potential read. It doesn't matter how good you are with the character, if your opponent expects you're going to try to react to pressure with a shine and then jump cancel dair and you do it, that's, say, a free Mewtwo utilt > combo. Unless you can read your opponent's mind, a good player can always get a hit off and convert.

And you can do what you just did for most characters. It's easy to name a character's good traits and ignore the bad ones. Mewtwo is not fast at all until you factor in his teleports, and every time you're using them you're taking a risk. It's not like a dash where you can just shield if you see something coming. The teleport is not 1 frame, and every time you use it you're committing, and your opponent gets a potential punish. To compound this, in case you haven't notied, just about all of his pressure comes from teleporting in, so every time you want to engage pressure you're taking a risk much larger than approaching with a dash dance. It's very telegraphed. He also lacks reliable responses to shield pressure. His teleport is also easily edgehogged since it has no hurtbox. You may argue that he can attack out of the teleport, but if you grab the edge when a mewtwo is trying to sweetspot the ledge while recovering, there isn't a single attack he can do which will still allow him to grab the edge afterwards. In addition, all of his tail moves are punishable both during and after their use. He gets killed off the top quite easily.

I expect that as the metagame evolves, Mewtwo will start teleporting much less as people learn how to punish it better. This will make him a much less mobile character than he currently is.

 

[DMG]

Either way I hope he stays the same, he doesnt look too hard to play and Im about to abuse this character for a bit.

"I'm glad something is possibly lame and toxic. I want it to stay so I can be cheesy! I HATE THIS GAME LET ME PROVE HOW BAD IT IS BY WINNING WITH M2!" - Cassio 20XX

Mewtwo talks: you can speculate or guess all you want, but Emu was the better Mewtwo player. Jason's personal comments on how he fares with Mewtwo, backed up by his tournament results, tend to show that he doesn't do as well vs non FF characters. Maybe that factored into why he didn't do so great in the ditto, maybe not. Either way, you don't look at a fact like "Jason lost in the Ditto, so the character must be busted!". If you have the capacity to analyze what Emu did better, or why he was effective with M2, then you don't need to be caught up in other stuff.


What the tournament showed us, was what some of us probably had a gut feeling about. Things about Mewtwo that would probably deserve a closer look at (not talking about guaranteed nerfs, since it's actually much easier to pinpoint those issues with other characters):

Should M2 be able to attack out of Teleport/what should his lag be
Should M2 be able to float out Teleport
Should M2 be able to "turn around" at the very end of a Teleport
Is it healthy for float to have that control vertically
Are his tail aerials healthy if he gets to keeps these traits

I leave out edgestalling, because general answers to that possible (would be interesting to see the frame data on his edge stall for example before making changes) problem could be found. Changes to edge invincibility, changes to how soon/easy his Upb can grab the edge, fairly basic stuff like this could probably be done. Solving any possible issues in that area would be a cakewalk in comparison to figuring out the rest.


Even after M2 won the tournament and everyone is all blah blah, it's much harder to say what makes him silly than more obvious stuff for other characters. A lot of his traits are pretty innocent when you think about them individually. When they are woven as a complete and whole character, it's much harder to say "float is the main problem, so we took it out" or "Tele too good, we only need nerfs on this". Situations and gameplay that some people would find unhealthy are a combination of his traits, not just 1 sole factor that overwhelms the others.


It's also kind of frustrating, because there are non "silly" uses for many of his traits that lead to interesting nuances (Weaving your floats in better ways than the average player, being proficient with Upb turnaround edgeguards, etc) and it's unfortunate that the total combination of them probably leads to some undesirable outcomes for character design and balance.


If the PMBR is set on going back over M2 and testing changes, I'd recommend testing only 1-2 removed or tweaked features at a time. There's probably some combination of "cool" stuff Mewtwo can keep, that won't be too far for balance, and you'll miss it if you slug him in a lot of general areas with the nerf bat and just go with that. Normally I would actually have plenty of faith that they could get the changes right, but the Mewtwo case is much more complex than the average "Sonic is fast, Ike is strong" things we notice.

 

[Empyrean]

I honestly feel that M2 is fine as he is. Well for now at least. He's extremely good, no doubt, but I don't feel as though he is ridiculously overpowered to the point of shutting down 99% of the cast.

I also feel that DK might do well against M2.

 

[DMG]

People may or may not do good vs Mewtwo. Despite how good he is, and how relatively popular he's been, many of his MU's haven't fleshed out very far on both sides. If you were to ask who won between Mewtwo or say Toon Link, nobody would have a solid + convincing clue in the world. Not even M2K or Jolteon. That's how janky the state of affairs many of his MU's are in.

 

[ThreeSided]

At the end of the day, I think it's far too soon to be talking about nerfs. Let the metagame evolve a bit first. I'd imagine that's what the PMBR is thinking anyways though.

 

[DMG]

The evolving understanding we get about Mewtwo as the meta goes on, is very likely slanted towards Mewtwo being very good. Despite being speculation, I say this because we *still* have a lot of things about the character that aren't used too well. One thing is footstools + floats or tele's to cancel the footstool jump. An example I'd give is say you teleport towards someone's shield. You pop right on top of them, footstool the shield, then float cancel it with Nair/Fair/etc. How many Mewtwo players have that down? Or say you get a float combo going with Fair or something at low-mid %. You hit them, float up to them, footstool, and teleport back down to them with an attack. It sounds silly, but it might let you accomplish certain strings where instead of continually sending the person up + away with more Fair or Uair, you use the footstool to lower them for more damage. Stuff like this still isn't explored or utilized to the fullest, and paints the picture that Mewtwo still would have growth as we moved ahead.

 

[Empyrean]

This has nothing to do with M2, but is it just me or does Luigi just chew through big characters?

 

[ThreeSided]

The evolving understanding we get about Mewtwo as the meta goes on, is very likely slanted towards Mewtwo being very good. Despite being speculation, I say this because we *still* have a lot of things about the character that aren't used too well. One thing is footstools + floats or tele's to cancel the footstool jump. An example I'd give is say you teleport towards someone's shield. You pop right on top of them, footstool the shield, then float cancel it with Nair/Fair/etc. How many Mewtwo players have that down? Or say you get a float combo going with Fair or something at low-mid %. You hit them, float up to them, footstool, and teleport back down to them with an attack. It sounds silly, but it might let you accomplish certain strings where instead of continually sending the person up + away with more Fair or Uair, you use the footstool to lower them for more damage. Stuff like this still isn't explored or utilized to the fullest, and paints the picture that Mewtwo still would have growth as we moved ahead.

You could make that argument about any new character. Similarly, you could say that for my argument. The point is that they're both valid. The only question is, which one of these factors will play into this more? My point is that for the time being, M2's metagame is far too volatile to know for sure. Give it time to stabilize and we'll find out.

 

[Phan7om]

I ask because I know neither of them have seen anything in 2014 from other players yet
Meaning no apex etc with Amsa as Yoshi doing work and none of the mew(2)king craze and of course nothing about sktar and the M2 ditto GFs etc yet
So I'm stoked to show them that stuff when they come back
But is Yoshi good in PM and/or possibly as good as Mewtwo type of thing?
I believe so, and my superiors in the game thinks so
What about around the rest of the community?

Its because peoples opinions on characters tier position is greatly influenced by tournament results/character popularity, which is basically the biggest flaw about tier lists. It should be the other way around really. Tier lists should be about the options the character has, the # of positive matchups, etc. But its more like, "Ive never seen this character place high in tournament, and Ive never seen anyone smart/good play this character either, so he must be low/mid tier" or "There's more than X number of this character being played, so its definitely top 10". Which then leads into the "Oh, but this character has so many good options" when some characters that arent placing high or popular has probably the same good options but no one knows this. There are some people who do it in the correct order tho.

There's hella underrated characters that just arent being exploited to their true potential. For example, Mew2King said he plays basically Melee Mewtwo, this is the same for a lot of characters... people play the melee version of these characters and then demand buffs. But then, there are characters that have like 1-3 broken options but bad/average everything else, and the only character most people know has this problem is Link.

Should M2 be able to attack out of Teleport/what should his lag be
Should M2 be able to float out Teleport
Should M2 be able to "turn around" at the very end of a Teleport
Is it healthy for float to have that control vertically
Are his tail aerials healthy if he gets to keeps these traits

I can agree with not letting him float out of teleport, just like how he cant air dodge. Maybe make the lag after teleport increase a little as well like 7-10 additional frames, but thats it imo.

And edgestalling with Mewtwo is weird because he could do that in Melee, and he was low tier. That doesnt mean its not a bad design, probably because either he has more options, or people (not anyone here) jump to conclusions about characters they know nothing about.