Tier List Speculation

[Circle_Breaker]

Man, its weird how all the melee top tiers who aren't space animals are either only alright or borderline unviable now. Like I was thinking what could peach, Jiggs, and falcon get to make them good again? Maybe just replacing the brawl disk with a melee one and playing melee like god intended. Don't shoot me I'm just unsure of how pm will ever be balanced properly.

 

[1FD]

^Slight nerfs to the ridiculous things, that's all.
Then they'll be just as ridiculous as everyone else without being out-ridiculoused.

 

[SpiderMad]

@ SpiderMad What's ICG?

InsaneCrazyGuy, I think he lives in North Carolina though

Does the sorting into different rows imply that they are unordered in their specific row, that the difference between two rows is especially big or that it separates them by a certain subjective value of character strength?

Higher row is better, being towards the left in the row is vaguely better. PM is pretty balanced, so only the lowest row I would say are not viable used solo.

Your top 5 are flawless. But, uh,

wolf above Falco? Above Link?
Kirby above Marth, Ivy, ZSS, CF, DK... serious?
Bowser above ganon?

...Pass the bong, pls. I want some of that.

Blaster's WL hasn't been fully utilized with platforms along with AGT'ing/Re-AGT'ing projectiles. He's got some good throws, and there's a lot to flesh out about his combo tree and everything. Link though, you're pry right: I'ma move him

Kirby can copy their powers brah.. I'ma move him too

 

[the man]

I'd imagine the idea of completely balancing a game would be impossible. Too many factors to balance out and some characters will always be better by design.

 

[CBO0tz]

Has everyone seen this?
http://www.eventhubs.com/tiers/projectm/

 

[WIZRD.Pro]

 

[Deleted member]

can someone explain to me why everyone thinks link is so good? i dont get it

@EmptySky00

 

[MLGF]

With Link's, in my experience, the opposing player needs to have extreme pressure/rushdown in order to win. I've seen players better then me lose to Link players who are significantly worse then me, but too conservative to win the matchup.

I find Link is just really good against some playstyles, and by extension characters, as he's able to force opponents to do what he wants better then almost any other defensive character via boomerang.

 

[WIZRD.Pro]

• His Boomerang confirms into everything
• Great projectile pressure with bombs and arrows
• Really tricky bomb techs
• Great recovery
• Very campy

 

[shairn]

You cannot possibly be serious. This might be the wrongest, most obviously, wrongly wrong opinion I've ever read. (But not really. It's a sort of understandable mistake)

Why?

 

[JOE!]

It essentially boils down to how much friggen reward he gets just for tossing out a Boomerang in most MUs (there are those who dont care about it like Falcon due to how his Nair works) and how it can convert to most anything he wants. The tool itself I wouldn't mind at all if he couldn't just send it out as much/as fast as he did currently.

On top of that, he has amazing recovery, other projectiles, a great Zair that hits twice and compliments his projectiles, and killer normals alongside a Dthrow that leads to damn near anything.

 

[Deleted member]

but hes like slow as ****, his grab sucks, his oos game is mediocre via slow jumpsquat, his combo weight is atrocious, hes still pretty easy to edge guard, his combo game is mediocre, and he gets camped and spammed back pretty hard. theres just so many ways to manhandle him, boomerang is good but not THAT good. i just dont get it. wheres nick riddle

 

[1FD]

So many safe hitboxes that lead into more safe hitboxes that make it really hard to get through without certain tools.
I personally like this Rang-Based-Link more than the stupid BS he did in 2.1 where he could grab you from the top platform while standing on the bottom. The link/tl grabs in that version are now Kirbys and Pits but like at least the Rang is COOL and not COMPLETELY mindless.
I like Link. He's in a cool spot. I wouldn't mind a LITTLE more lag on rang but he's cool.

umbreon His combo game isn't stupid like mario/pit/wolf but it's plenty good and everything in his zoning game is fast and leads into it. It's not a game of attrition through the footsy game on HIS side where it is often for the opponent if they're trying to out-camp him. If that makes sense.
+ He rarely needs to have a good oos game since if anyone gets close there's (rangs coming back too I guss) the option of jumping away into nairs and zairs and that's all he needs to keep people from pressuring him.
He's not unbeatable or godly, but THANK THE GODZ he's slow and has no oos game or that would be hell. lol
Also hint > he's one of few who gives Mario a super hard time
It was a toughy in Melee for doc/mario oddly (compared to how good doc/mario was compared to him) so now that they're both better (probably by equal amounts/mario was already better so proportionally the same) it's stayed steady like that.

 

[mimgrim]

his combo game is mediocre

I agree with everything but this. Link has one of the better combo games in all honesty. Definitely better then mediocre.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

Well his combo game is so weakened by his low mobility, you are right there is d-tilt->dash-attack->aerial/up-tilt/smash, but otherwise...
Mediocre fits imo, it is not bad, it is not exceptional.

What annoys me most is how much salt many have about boomerang. I mean either you have possible ways to clank or you are MK and therefore mobile enough to avoid it otherwise

 

[Soft Serve]

How could people be salty about Link when M2 and spacies exist

 

[mimgrim]

Link has Rang, Dtilt, Utilt, dash attack, and Dthrow(Uthrow and FFers) as combo starters and these same moves can also serve as extenders and he can finisn into Fair, Dair, or Uair which are all great finishers and can kill easily. His combo game is better then mediocre. It might not be on the level other characters have but it is still pretty good.

 

[FreeGamer]

How could anyone be salty about Link when Mario and Lucas exist?

 

[1FD]

Link has Rang, Dtilt, Utilt, dash attack, and Dthrow(Uthrow and FFers) as combo starters and these same moves can also serve as extenders and he can finisn into Fair, Dair, or Uair which are all great finishers and can kill easily. His combo game is better then mediocre. It might not be on the level other characters have but it is still pretty good.

You forgot Zair, Nair/Bair (easy garbs), even Dsmash.
All of his BNB moves for OTHER things like zoning or whatever ARE combo starters. It's kind of what makes him user-friendly.
Being salty about Link is understandable but like really there's bigger shaker of salt to be shaken.

I'm salty about 3.5 not being here yet

 

[CyberZixx]

Maybe they play a character that gets shut down by rang. Or they are bad at match up. I am fine with link as is. I think he is top 15 but totally manageable. He is no Lucas/other incredible character here.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

How could anyone be salty about Link when Mario and Lucas exist?

Lucas doesn't even have good range / neutral game.

 

[Deleted member]

Maybe they play a character that gets shut down by rang. Or they are bad at match up. I am fine with link as is. I think he is top 15 but totally manageable. He is no Lucas/other incredible character here.

spot on imo. i'm comfortable putting link in the 11-15 range but who cares when the top 6-8 shape the game?

 

[JOE!]

Lucas is fine, its just offense Up doesn't really make sense when he has good KO moves without using it.... Like what purpose does it serve aside from boosting a move to OP levels? And I can gimp Lucas easier than I can gimp link and mario.

 

[InfinityCollision]

How could anyone be salty about Link when Mario and Lucas exist?

Boomerang is a scrub killer. The same people that think Zelda is top 10 almost inevitably think Link is a "top 5 character that takes no skill to play".

 

[mimgrim]

I can understand the range portion for Lucas, but he can usually subvert character with more range then him with his great movement options. But how does he have a bad neutral game exactly?

 

[Jacob29]

Man, its weird how all the melee top tiers who aren't space animals are either only alright or borderline unviable now. Like I was thinking what could peach, Jiggs, and falcon get to make them good again? Maybe just replacing the brawl disk with a melee one and playing melee like god intended. Don't shoot me I'm just unsure of how pm will ever be balanced properly.

Your idea of balanced properly is having Fox/Falco/Peach/Sheik/Marth as the core of most the games?

PM is no miracle balancing, but your idea of proper balancing seems to be "because characters I liked were better in Melee" which isn't proper balancing at all.



Links' grab isn't that bad. The grab itself is eh, but his throws are real good. Anaky can d-throw d-air me as Marth pretty much every time...

 

[Strong Badam]

Some people seem to think that some characters "deserve" a particular tier placing for some reason or another. Generally not how proper balance works.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Lucas doesn't even have good range / neutral game.

Uh, if he doesn't know how to B-reverse or use his zair or magnet, then no.

 

[Circle_Breaker]

Actually, I never said melee was well balanced. And I don't think fox and falco are well balanced. The rest of the top tiers in melee are for the most part well designed, though, and its funny that they're now basically uniformly outclassed by the newcomers or melee low and mid tiers who have been buffed to or above space-animal level. None of the melee top tiers "deserve" to be top tier but I would argue that pit, m2, sonic, diddy, and mk don't "deserve" it either. No character should be as good as the current crop of top tiers, but I think Marth/peach/falcon/sheik have enough weaknesses to be considered a well designed top tier. Sheiks dthrow was definitely stupid though and jigglypuff is just weird design in the first place.

 

[1FD]

Lucas is fine, its just offense Up doesn't really make sense when he has good KO moves without using it.... Like what purpose does it serve aside from boosting a move to OP levels? And I can gimp Lucas easier than I can gimp link and mario.

Just figured I'd add that without OU, the best lucas I know wouldn't be effected almost at all.
Those combos into combos into gimps into combos without ever needing to extend unless you're comboing the enemy is the strength of the character.

can someone explain to me why everyone thinks link is so good? i dont get it

@EmptySky00

Isn't the 11-15 the good that everyone is generally considering him? Or did emptysky go crazy with him (i missed that post maybe)
That's basically good, so why do you get it but ALSO not get it? I don't get that, but not be worth explaining. lol

Lucas doesn't even have good range / neutral game.

You may have forgotten about Fair/Ftilt/Grab/Zair/he doesn't need anything else when his movement in something like fsmash is probably faster to connect with than most character's neutral game options (lol why does EVERYTHING make Ganon just sound more and more terrible when thinking about it)
PS Lucas shouldn't ever get hit (EVER) because he doesn't have to. I don't like the way most Lucas's play because they jump into obviously bad situations as if they can get away with anything. Some of that is because they can ALMOST get away with everything and the reward is so high for the risk, but it won't last long term.

Links' grab isn't that bad. The grab itself is eh, but his throws are real good. Anaky can d-throw d-air me as Marth pretty much every time...

Now imagine if he could grab you if you were on the moon!
Oh nvm you don't have to imagine because 2.1 exists >:]

@ SpiderMad I didn't respond by no I have no idea who ICG is but I think I remember seeing him post a long time ago when I was just getting into smash

To go further on that luigi vs falco thing you mentioned.
About 2 years ago I saw a convo with armada bamesy and a few others on facebook (I think) and it was brought up how the metagame is going in a weird shift. They talked about seeing the game or whatever normal stuff, then bamsy explained what he was seeing to know if armada was seeing it too and everyone else started to discuss it too.

Like how it used to be vs Falco you would look for holes in his pressure to PUNISH him or try and SCREW with his pressure.
And it was like -sometimes you just wanna gtfo to not deal with it though-
But it slowly was becoming more like you would always look to gtfo if it looked like he was GOING to pressure.
And it became -sometimes you wanna look for a hole to punish though-
After talking about it armada said something back like how it made sense of a lot of things like how the metagame wasn't CHANGING but it was subtly shifting priorities INSIDE the metagame.
After that there was some cool stuff about the camping game and how a lot of punish game started to become more gradual because people wouldn't try to challenge anything if it wasn't like 100% ADVANTAGE for them. Nobody would even attempt engaging Falcon if Falcon was at a good Uair distance. Nobody would even attempt engaging a Marth if he was at uncomfy DD grab distance. Nobody would even attempt getting through Jiggs Bairs or Falco pressure.
We just started attempting to GTFO of any of those situations above ALL other options, so the movement and BIZARRE play started to shine again. Doing things slightly OFF was becoming the better way than doing things guaranteed because it was getting so weird.
The metagame today has a lot of that so I think it came true. Not just PM since everything is weird in PM, but Melee too even after having a stable meta for so long.
I think some of that attributes to Falco SEEMING like he's more easy to deal with than he used to be. The weird stuff (Samus/Luigi/etc do a lot of highriskreward weird things to get advantages) is the go-to now.

 

[jtm94]

Boomerang is a scrub killer. The same people that think Zelda is top 10 almost inevitably think Link is a "top 5 character that takes no skill to play".

Link is what they intended Zelda to be, but Zelda got a worse projectile and loses while camping/being camped.
Link is good, but not Lucas, Pit, Mewtwo good. He can kind of negate his opponent's strategies by just throwing stuff, but the problem is if the opponent's character is fast enough to not care about the projectiles then Link needs to take other action and not get hit. Who knows I'm bad.

 

[JesteRace]

Really glad to see people agreeing on Link not being broken, getting really tired of hearing that(even from people who beat me, oddly enough). He's great, though, just nicks the top 10. Now, I know this game isn't as miraculously balanced as it first seems, but it definitely is the MOST balanced and I probably can't count the unviable characters on one hand. So tier list speculation seems tricky past the top 10-15, simply because the difference in how good the characters is pretty small.

 

[trash?]

just gonna throw it out there to everyone playing link; learn a pocket toon link, the second your 'rang gets toned down in 3.5 you're back to having mostly 6-4s at best and 3-7s at worst

 

[Frost | Odds]

Tink operates completely differently. imo playing both is a bit of a trap.

 

[PsionicSabreur]

You may have forgotten about Fair/Ftilt/Grab/Zair/he doesn't need anything else when his movement in something like fsmash is probably faster to connect with than most character's neutral game options (lol why does EVERYTHING make Ganon just sound more and more terrible when thinking about it)
PS Lucas shouldn't ever get hit (EVER) because he doesn't have to. I don't like the way most Lucas's play because they jump into obviously bad situations as if they can get away with anything. Some of that is because they can ALMOST get away with everything and the reward is so high for the risk, but it won't last long term.

Alright, so your posts are always helpful and an interesting read, etc. etc, but could you please actually explain this a little more instead of leaving everything unsupported?

It's easy enough to say that Lucas can run away, since anyone with halfway decent runspeed has the option available. Statistically, Lucas has good run speed, but is a click or two below Marth/Shiek/Pika level. His initial dash, however, basically starts at full speed and can be stopped by a crouch very quickly. Still, movement-wise we're not looking at the straight best runner so I'm guessing you mostly have other movement options in mind when you say he's so good at running away/not getting hit. What I'm interested in hearing specifically is what you think he can execute while retreating that makes him more threatening than the rest of the cast when consistently avoiding semi-disadvantageous spacing.

Pivot grab seems to make the most sense to me. It grabs aerial opponents, outranges most attacks, and has respectable cooldown, so you'll never really have to use it at a point where it becomes punishable. (RAR) zair also makes sense given that it is a strong, ranged option out of a retreat due to it stopping projectiles, AD invincibility, maybe-too-quick startup, and generally hitting what pivot grab doesn't.
Pivot ftilt, RAR-DJC fair, turnaround/b-reverse magnet, and the like (even PK freeze at most ranges) will stop various approaches but grant the opponent a lot of room to move back or into a range where they out-space Lucas, and aren't airtight against trades. Without zair and grab necessitating that the opponent move closer and into their range, I doubt they'd be much of a problem, at least relative to the rest of the cast. That would be my main question; outside of zair and grab, his options aren't so different from other mobile characters. Are you implying that Lucas' particular combination of options is what makes his defense unbreakable, and if so, does that mean zair and/or grab are especially integral to this combination?

Again, I wouldn't be nitpicking if I didn't think this was so important to discuss in-depth.

 

[Deleted member]

can someone explain to me why everyone thinks link is so good? i dont get it

@EmptySky00

My reasoning for saying link is good is because he's significantly better than toonlink, thus I'm allowed to cry and *****

wuaaah wuaaah

 

[JesteRace]

just gonna throw it out there to everyone playing link; learn a pocket toon link, the second your 'rang gets toned down in 3.5 you're back to having mostly 6-4s at best and 3-7s at worst

Idk if it's actually been confirmed that they're gonna do that, but even then, he'll still be a better character than toon link.

Link's boomerang, as it is, is match-up dependent and doesn't dominate his metagame THAT much. Unless they completely poop on his boomerang, he will barely notice the difference.

 

[Blank Mauser]

Alright, so your posts are always helpful and an interesting read, etc. etc, but could you please actually explain this a little more instead of leaving everything unsupported?

It's easy enough to say that Lucas can run away, since anyone with halfway decent runspeed has the option available. Statistically, Lucas has good run speed, but is a click or two below Marth/Shiek/Pika level. His initial dash, however, basically starts at full speed and can be stopped by a crouch very quickly. Still, movement-wise we're not looking at the straight best runner so I'm guessing you mostly have other movement options in mind when you say he's so good at running away/not getting hit. What I'm interested in hearing specifically is what you think he can execute while retreating that makes him more threatening than the rest of the cast when consistently avoiding semi-disadvantageous spacing.

I'm pretty sure Lucas has one of the best wavedashes also.

 

[Frost | Odds]

My reasoning for saying link is good is because he's significantly better than toonlink, thus I'm allowed to cry and *****

wuaaah wuaaah

This is actually a legit point that imo you've understated here. Toon Link is around the middle of most people's tier lists these days, and I'd tend to agree that he's at least middle of the pack, probably in the top 1/4. It's almost inarguable that Link is pretty much strictly better than Tink, who's already pretty good. Link's bad matchups can be counted on one hand -- if indeed there are any (other than Mewtwo) to count.

 

[Deleted member]

as of recently, toonlinks placing in PM reminds me of brawl. In brawl, he was either the best mid tier or worst "high tier"
thats kind of how I think he is in PM, Tink is pretty much the best mid tier. He beats everyone thats below him, but he has 45-55's/40-60s vs pretty much the entire top 10 of the game lol.