Tier List Speculation

[JOE!]

1) Which is more important, having a higher average MU spread or having stronger winning MUs but with some terrible ones? In other words, how important is the ability to counterpick characters (and be counterpicked) in terms of tiers?

I think it is more important to have less "bad" MUs then more "good" ones. Going by the CP example, one could swap characters next match and abuse the same advantage they had on you, and then game 3 you swap out of that character making for them not being as "solid". A character with few "bad" MUs can stick it out through a whole set and it really shows how capable they are at fighting the whole cast, not just a select few.

2) How important is the current stagelist for tiers? Since this is different at every tournament, I don't know which one would be the "current" one to talk about. But maybe we can still discuss if the "average stage" is favoring a set of characters?

Stages make a load of difference in terms of viability. For example, if there were only 1 legal walled stage, banning it during CP periods of a set suddenly neuters the abilities of characters with wall jump play. Or if there are generally more small stages available than other types, bigger/more rushdown-type characters would have an advantage over more space oriented ones.

 

[nimigoha]

Keep in mind a trait like "mostly evenish MUs" is hard to do without giving characters ridonk tools, resulting in stuff like 3.02 Pit and Mewtwo (and Fox ...)

A general up/down sort of MU spread is more conducive for balance because it means you have defined weaknesses, which some character archetypes are able to exploit while others are not. The ultimate (perhaps impossible) goal is for MUs to be distributed such but for no single MU to be unwinnable.

I like this a lot. In my ideal game, no matchup would be worse than like 65-35. Characters have a good 30% spread of matchups. Nothing should be unwinnable.

I think it's almost impossible to do because if you need to make (for example) Kirby's Link matchup worse, you have to change something on one of the characters, and it would just have a domino effect on all the other matchups. Balance is freaking hard.

 

[Ogopogo]

I think Mewtwo's going to either hate 3.5 and/or get a complete reboot. His viability and subsequent brokenness at peak play hinges on a very limited number of options (not that his other tools aren't good, but they're small components in a bigger machine), all of which are prime targets for the nerfbat but also very sensitive to small changes. It'll be interesting to see if the PMDT can simultaneously 1) make balanced changes 2) retain a non-broken form of his current playstyle and 3) maintain or increase his already very high skill celing.

I can't see tools like hover or act out of teleport being entirely scrapped, but maybe reworked to be less strong. One thing I def predict is M2 having worse range and shield damage (is that reliant on the % dealt by an attack?). #2, retaining a non-broken form of his current playstyle, is what I expect. Or at least what I hope for him to be.

 

[JOE!]

I think shield damage can be separate, going by bowser's attacks and things like MArth's Shield Breaker (and Mr Saturn)

 

[Soft Serve]

Polarizing MU spreads aren't something you can fix without completely redesigning characters. I also think having polarizing mu spreads is fine, as long as the bad MUS aren't unwinnable. Grapplers in traditional fgcs have polarizing mus, and they can still be great and viable.

Some characters just lend themselves to polarization. Look at kirby. Basically, he is: can you deal with his ledge game somehow? Okay, you're fine. No? You lose. Do you have actual safe options in neutral that cover his crouch? No? You lose the mu pretty bad. See: kirby /ganon.

Stage lists matter a whole lot too. Just look at mdva. They have the most diddys out of any region. They also have a stagelist that diddy LOVES. Every stage that isn't yoshis melee or battlefield diddy excels on for that list. ( Not discrediting the mdva diddys)
on lists with many large blastzones stages legal, characters like samus or others with amazing survivability get even better, while they wouldn't do much for say Roy or wolf or wario.

Stagelists matter a lot for characters because match up spreads change depending on the available stages.

 

[TreK]

I also think having polarizing mu spreads is fine, as long as the bad MUS are unwinnable.

My vocabulary is not sufficient to explain how much I disagree with this.
You don't get no cookie today bruh.

Like, imagine two balanced games. One of them has mostly 55-45 matchups, the other has mostly 3-7 matchups but they happen to cancel out each other so that every character has a reliable counter. Every other aspect of them is strictly identical.
In the one with 7-3 matchups, you'd see a lot more people picking up secondaries, wouldn't you ? I mean, that'd be the logical next step to take : my character cannot win against that other character, so if I want to win the tournament, I'll take that other character's counter as my 2nd. But if you HAVE to pick secondaries to succeed, then it's not really a balanced game, is it ?

idk about you, but one of the reasons I picked up PM was that it prided itself on its balance, so I figured "well I can finally just pick up whichever character I like and win tournaments with him/her, that's great".
Turns out I ended up picking a character they polarized two updates later, and I am still pissed off about it one year later.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

My vocabulary is not sufficient to explain how much I disagree with this.
You don't get no cookie today bruh.

Like, imagine two balanced games. One of them has mostly 55-45 matchups, the other has mostly 3-7 matchups but they happen to cancel out each other so that every character has a reliable counter. Every other aspect of them is strictly identical.
In the one with 7-3 matchups, you'd see a lot more people picking up secondaries, wouldn't you ? I mean, that'd be the logical next step to take : my character cannot win against that other character, so if I want to win the tournament, I'll take that other character's counter as my 2nd. But if you HAVE to pick secondaries to succeed, then it's not really a balanced game, is it ?

idk about you, but one of the reasons I picked up PM was that it prided itself on its balance, so I figured "well I can finally just pick up whichever character I like and win tournaments with him/her, that's great".
Turns out I ended up picking a character they polarized two updates later, and I am still pissed off about it one year later.

I am 110% sure Soft Serve made a typo and meant to write "aren't unwinnable".

He is, in case you haven't noticed, a pretty reasonable guy.

 

[didds]

no, he's just wrong and bad and a mean person

 

[Soft Serve]

I blame mobile auto correction
I think 7-3 is as bad of a mu as I would want. Idealy nothing would be worse than 60/40 ish but honestly as long as there's not mus like melee shiek/bowser it's fine.

 

[InfinityCollision]

I can't see tools like hover or act out of teleport being entirely scrapped, but maybe reworked to be less strong. One thing I def predict is M2 having worse range and shield damage (is that reliant on the % dealt by an attack?). #2, retaining a non-broken form of his current playstyle, is what I expect. Or at least what I hope for him to be.

I'm pretty sure hover out of teleport is a goner. It's the primary reason his shield pressure is so good, nerfing that means tools like nair are much less powerful and no longer warrant consideration for nerfs. It also forces players to move beyond the hovernair/fair shenanigans where the meta has plateaued. Removing hover entirely or further nerfing it directly is a possibility but who knows. Range on tools like utilt/uair will probably get nerfed too. Possibly other options, but it's worth noting that Mewtwo's attacks are actually very unsafe for the most part. Without hover cancels his only options that are reasonably safe on block are fair and his command grab, maybe bair because of the range. His best normal is like -12 and his OoS game sucks.

Messing with his ability to act out of teleport is the possibility I find most worrying because it's by far the most sensitive to change. If you increase the endlag on aerial teleports then you severely limit his ability to safely approach, because it's the only halfway decent approach tool he's got. Autocancels are still a thing unless they increase the duration of the intangibility period, but that just leads to a meta where his best option is wooping around trying to get a punish or a surprise poke. On a stage like FD he'd be completely screwed, and regardless it's a very campy playstyle that I don't think the PMDT wants to encourage. It's also worth noting that autocancels are really difficult - I've yet to see a single player fully utilize them, just the basic stuff like autocancels from ledge that has easy setups and doesn't require precise angling. The punishment for messing up is also harsh, particularly if you unintentionally end in the grounded landing animation.

 

[Spralwers]

1) Which is more important, having a higher average MU spread or having stronger winning MUs but with some terrible ones? In other words, how important is the ability to counterpick characters (and be counterpicked) in terms of tiers?

2) How important is the current stagelist for tiers? Since this is different at every tournament, I don't know which one would be the "current" one to talk about. But maybe we can still discuss if the "average stage" is favoring a set of characters?

1) Depends on what goal you have in mind for the competitive players. Do you want it so that the better player always wins regardless of character choice? Then you want a higher average MU spread. Do you want character counter picks to factor in terms of whether or not a player is "better?" Then more of an emphasis stronger winning MUs with some terrible ones. In terms of design though, the former is way more difficult to achieve than the latter.

2) Definitely important. Other people have convered why and I don't have anything extra to add.

 

[Frost | Odds]

I'm pretty sure hover out of teleport is a goner. It's the primary reason his shield pressure is so good, nerfing that means tools like nair are much less powerful and no longer warrant consideration for nerfs.

You can't be serious.

 

[Vashimus]

You can't be serious.

**** THIS MATCHUP

 

[mimgrim]

Maybe hover should just be gotten rid of completely for M2. :L

 

[PsionicSabreur]

I'd much rather see action out of teleport adjusted or removed before hover, especially considering it also kills juggles and makes M2's recovery not only unassailable but outright dangerous to challenge. I very much disagree on it being necessary for a well-designed approach game, as well. Nothing wrong with making M2 go for spaced approaches with WD, normals, and HC bair instead of woop-rushdown + mixups over and over.

 

[Frost | Odds]

IMO it would make more sense to simply increase the lag out of TP by a few frames (idk how many would be appropriate. 5? 10?) before M2 can act (in addition to appropriate nerfs elsewhere obviously) -- so Mewtwo can still combo out of TP and use it offensively, but it's possible for every character to punish without a hard read,

Also plausible - an indicator of which way / where M2 is teleporting towards?

 

[Phan7om]

Maybe hover should just be gotten rid of completely for M2. :L

I highly doubt it will be removed, but it was questionable why they even gave it to him in the first place. I can understand "well he can float because hes psychic and we thought it would be cool or w/e"... but idk theres a lot of things characters can canonically do that shouldnt be in the game.

But its there now guess whats done is done.

 

[InfinityCollision]

You can't be serious.

Well... I was going to look into this, but apparently my Wii decided it was time to die and my desktop's PSU is still en route after an RMA. Now I'm starting to wonder if there's something going on in the house wiring.

**** **** damn ***** **** **** ARRRRGH

Guess I'm playing Melee and Smash 4 for a bit.

I guess someone else will have to answer my question: is Samus known to have bits sticking out from shield a la Lucario? Because going through frame-by-frame appears to indicate that he got shield stabbed on the first hit.

Barring that, yes, I meant what I said. It's horribly laggy on landing (-9 iirc) and obviously you have to use it right on top of them.

I'd much rather see action out of teleport adjusted or removed before hover, especially considering it also kills juggles and makes M2's recovery not only unassailable but outright dangerous to challenge. I very much disagree on it being necessary for a well-designed approach game, as well. Nothing wrong with making M2 go for spaced approaches with WD, normals, and HC bair instead of woop-rushdown + mixups over and over.

It's necessary for approaches in the context of Mewtwo's current moveset. Go look at the frame data if you don't believe me. Jab1 is -5 and lacks range (not to mention it's frame 8), next best option is dtilt at -12. HC bair hits on frame 14 at the earliest (5 frame jumpsquat, 1 frame hover, hitboxes come out frame 8 but the furthest hitbox is I believe frame 9) and his mixup in that scenario is a frame 12 command grab that requires him to move closer. They're not exactly his best combo starters either. If he's forced to rely on that then even with his new kit he's a Melee A tier at best in a game full of S tiers. If they want to buff the rest of his moveset and make him into PokeMarth then okay, but I'm mostly speculating along the lines of bare minimum changes that retain his skill ceiling while making him less toxic.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Well... I was going to look into this, but apparently my Wii decided it was time to die and my desktop's PSU is still en route after an RMA. Now I'm starting to wonder if there's something going on in the house wiring.

**** **** damn ***** **** **** ARRRRGH

Guess I'm playing Melee and Smash 4 for a bit.

I guess someone else will have to answer my question: is Samus known to have bits sticking out from shield a la Lucario? Because going through frame-by-frame appears to indicate that he got shield stabbed on the first hit.

That had nothing to do with shield. About a second after that video starts, Samus's nair gets straight up beaten by Mewtwo's nair. Surely you don't think that's acceptable. :s

 

[InfinityCollision]

That had nothing to do with shield. About a second after that video starts, Samus's nair gets straight up beaten by Mewtwo's nair. Surely you don't think that's acceptable. :s

Oh, that? Yeah, spoilers, nair's hitboxes are mildly disjointed. Always have been:

Kinda makes sense seeing as it's supposed to be an energy field around his body, and the range isn't that good by any stretch of the imagination. If ESAM hadn't spaced nair within an inch of the visor (read: he wasn't going to hit MasterRaven regardless) then it might've traded, not sure on the timing since lol30fpsvideo.

 

[Mera Mera]

That had nothing to do with shield. About a second after that video starts, Samus's nair gets straight up beaten by Mewtwo's nair. Surely you don't think that's acceptable. :s

The way priority works in this game, the only way Mewtwo's nair could beat Samus's nair is if he hit with a single hitbox that was greater than or equal to 9% more than Samus's Nair. There's no way that any of the multihits on Mewtwo's nair does that, so in this case it's almost certain that Mewtwo hit Samus w/o a trade simply because his move hit first. In other words he hit at an angle where his nair was more disjointed than Samus's nair or maybe Samus's nair hitboxes hadn't come out quite yet despite the animation coming out.

I personally think there are a lot of problems with nair itself, even when ignoring his options when utilizing hover and teleport. For one, landing hitboxes are basically a way to always have the same safety on shield no matter how high you hit their shield, which is a pretty huge advantage. Then three's the fact that this move is disjointed, does a fair amount of damage, has low start up and endlag (landing or otherwise), and combos. They need to choose a few strengths and weaken the rest.

Personally I would adjust the move by giving it:
-less damage
-negative disjoint (Not sure if that's how to word it, but I mean have the hitboxes inside the hurtbox)
-and either take away the landing hitbox or make his landing hitbox do less damage (for less shield stun) and have equally bad disjoint compared to his initial hitboxes Edit: though I'll admit that having a large landing hitbox is interesting since it puts some use to djc so maybe keep that... just cause it's cool.

And to clarify why this move would still be useful it would have:
-low start up
-low endlag (landing or otherwise)
-have multihits which are good for dealing with shields and crouch canceling
-you could still hover cancel it right after the final aerial hit for shield pressure
-it would still lead to combos
-it would still be a solid OoS option

That might actually sound still too good but honestly making it negatively disjointed would go a long way into toning the move down. Making it negatively disjointed means that it will basically lose to every aerial ever unless he's already on top of you before you aerial.

 

[InfinityCollision]

The way priority works in this game, the only way Mewtwo's nair could beat Samus's nair is if he hit with a single hitbox that was greater than or equal to 9% more than Samus's Nair.

Aerials don't have priority vs other aerials. They trade. Samus' nair wouldn't have hit regardless, Mewtwo was just barely out of range and Samus had a lovely foot hurtbox right where nair's hitbox is active.

-low endlag (landing or otherwise)

12 frames of landing lag (when L-canceled) is not low. -9 on block is most certainly not safe. If you don't shield poke a non-HC'd nair, you WILL get grabbed or otherwise punished for trying.

-it would still be a solid OoS option

How is that a solid OoS option? Especially if you were to make it negatively disjointed. Usmash is a better option if they're right on top of you for whatever reason and even that's not really a good OoS relative to what other characters can do.

 

[Mera Mera]

Aerials don't have priority vs other aerials. They trade. Samus' nair wouldn't have hit regardless, Mewtwo was just barely out of range and Samus had a lovely foot hurtbox right where nair's hitbox is active.

You're right that this disjoint is the reason that Mewtwo's nair hit first. There is aerial priority however. While there is no clanking, if you do greater than or equal to 9% damage than another aerial hitbox, that hitbox will no longer be able to hit you (you being the character that "beat" said aerial hitbox). Think of it like having shielded the move I guess... the move can still hit other players though (which is relevant in 2 v 2), so it's not entirely accurate to say the hitbox is gone.

12 frames of landing lag (when L-canceled) is not low. -9 on block is most certainly not safe. If you don't shield poke a non-HC'd nair, you WILL get grabbed or otherwise punished for trying.

I'll admit I don't know Mewtwo's frame data, so if that's true, fair enough. Though I will say that his hitbox comes out during the l-canceled frames so make sure you take that into consideration.

How is that a solid OoS option? Especially if you were to make it negatively disjointed. Usmash is a better option if they're right on top of you for whatever reason and even that's not really a good OoS relative to what other characters can do.

I admit that you have to go through jump squat and aerial start up so most of the time up B or up smash is a better OoS option. If Mewtwo's nair comes out faster than his up smash though I'd have to disagree, at least in the case where they just hit your shield, since you really only should care about whether the OoS move will hit or get you out of your situation.

Edit: I'll also note that a lot of the frame data threads are unreliable simply because many used brawl box to get their data and were unaware of code that speeds up several actions, particularly landing lag / L-cancel landing lag. I don't know if this is the case for Mewtwo though, but thought I'd mention it. For Zard I thought everything was absurdly negative on shield, but it turned out a lot of that data was wrong... Zard is still pretty bad on shield though but that's besides the point lol.

 

[mimgrim]

If they want to buff the rest of his moveset and make him into PokeMarth then okay

That sounds pretty rad, actually. With the range and disjoints on his tail it's definitely what I would associate M2 as.

 

[4tlas]

Ok people seem to be running out of things to discuss regarding tiers, so here are 2 topics to think about. I hope I didn't miss these being discussed somewhere in the last 500 pages...

1) Which is more important, having a higher average MU spread or having stronger winning MUs but with some terrible ones? In other words, how important is the ability to counterpick characters (and be counterpicked) in terms of tiers?

2) How important is the current stagelist for tiers? Since this is different at every tournament, I don't know which one would be the "current" one to talk about. But maybe we can still discuss if the "average stage" is favoring a set of characters?

Quoting my own post...lol. Anyway I'm going to respond to my own questions, since nobody said it was a crappy topic.

I think the first question is more of a theory question, but the second one was more of a practical question.

So in theory, if the cast were balanced some archetypes would counter others, and some would be jack-of-all-trades master of none. So there would be rock, paper, scissors, and neutral characters. Since if the whole cast were balanced every player would be open to learning any/all of the characters, let's say every player knows 2 characters (to start).

Any player that mains a rock character can play that character against scissor mains, and will lose to paper mains. This means he should pick up a scissor secondary right? Well, no. If this were the case all paper mains would pick up rock secondaries, which leaves us with a double blind pick for first game in which the Rock/Scissor player can at best go even, and at worst get countered. Of couse when the Rock/Scissor main comes up to a Scissor/Paper main, he is in the advantageous situation. In a standard double elimination tournament, do you ever want to have the option of being countered and getting kicked out by a worse overall player? You'll never win a tourney that way.

Well what if you knew all of the characters equally? What do you pick for first match so you don't get countered? This is very important because if you pick wrong you will be on the back foot for the entire set (you counterpick second, then opponent counterpicks you, you lose 2-1). Well, you should pick a neutral, one of the flexible characters without strong strengths or weaknesses. What should your opponent pick? Also a neutral.

So one of you wins, right? Let's say it's you. What do you pick for the second match? You're about to get counterpicked, so a neutral to lessen that right? All MUs are vaguely even for this archetype, so it doesn't matter too much what your opponent picks. Might as well be another neutral (or the same one) on an advantageous stage. It might as well be a neutral because that's probably what they've trained with most, since they need to be able to play a neutral in the first place anyway.

So you both pick neutrals. The player getting counterpicked will always pick a neutral to soften the counterpick, and the player counterpicking will pick a neutral because that's what they know. The only reason to pick Rock/Paper/Scissors is if the stage heavily favors them.

So if all characters are "even", I think flexible characters will be more important and "better" than Rock/Paper/Scissor characters. Unless we change stage counterpicking to favor the counterpicker more...


Ok on to the other question. How do current map pools affect the current metagame? I think the idea with stage picking is that, for starters, stages are mostly similar with a few small differences, and bans remove those differences until the 2 players agree on a "neutral" stage. This seems perfectly reasonable as a concept. Well the "average" stage right now appears to be Pokemon Stadium 2, Smashville, or Battlefield. Are there any characters that can say all 3 of these are good or bad for them?

For counterpicks, I think the idea is that bans allow the banner to "pick your poison", banning out most of the stages with disadvantageous traits but leaving a couple for their opponent to choose from. This means that, for every type of trait, there must be more stages with that trait than there are bans, right? Well what things are traits worth picking?

-Slopes
-# of platforms
-Height of platforms
-Separation of platforms
-Size/movement of platforms (tilting or sliding)
-Width of stage
-Width of blastzones
-Height of blastzone
-Hazards/Moving parts (YI Flyguys, Randalls)
-Walljump-ability and ledge type (ride-able wall, overhead lip)

Maybe I should make a chart that crosses potentially legal stages with these traits. That would make this discussion easier wouldn't it? In the meantime, how do these traits affect the cast?

 

[InfinityCollision]

I'll admit I don't know Mewtwo's frame data, so if that's true, fair enough. Though I will say that his hitbox comes out during the l-canceled frames so make sure you take that into consideration.

That's true, so it's actually -8 I think. Still not a safe option in that respect. (edit: typo, -8 not -6)

I admit that you have to go through jump squat and aerial start up so most of the time up B or up smash is a better OoS option. If Mewtwo's nair comes out faster than his up smash though I'd have to disagree, at least in the case where they just hit your shield, since you really only should care about whether the OoS move will hit or get you out of your situation.

Nair is frame 5 on a 5 frame jumpsquat and usmash is frame 7, so it is the better option in terms of speed.

Edit: I'll also note that a lot of the frame data threads are unreliable simply because many used brawl box to get their data and were unaware of code that speeds up several actions, particularly landing lag / L-cancel landing lag. I don't know if this is the case for Mewtwo though, but thought I'd mention it. For Zard I thought everything was absurdly negative on shield, but it turned out a lot of that data was wrong... Zard is still pretty bad on shield though but that's besides the point lol.

Aerodrome compiled most, if not all of the Mewtwo data using frame advance and I know at least one PM dev has looked over the data, so I trust it to be correct.

That sounds pretty rad, actually. With the range and disjoints on his tail it's definitely what I would associate M2 as.

Yeah don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be upset at all if they went that route. It'd be right up my alley. I can see the appeal of trying to retain as much of his current playstyle as possible though.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

Edit: I'll also note that a lot of the frame data threads are unreliable simply because many used brawl box to get their data and were unaware of code that speeds up several actions, particularly landing lag / L-cancel landing lag. I don't know if this is the case for Mewtwo though, but thought I'd mention it.

This is incredibly rude, I'll have you know that I pride myself in accuracy regarding any smash data related project.

Some people use inaccurate methods, yes, but not me or Sartron or any of the ones that we've looked over/helped with.

 

[steelguttey]

aero do you even play this game or do you just like numbers

 

[nimigoha]

I think Mewtwo should teleport, hang in the new spot for a short time, then start to fall/be able to act.

This would mean it's a much more vulnerable option, but it's not totally dead.

The stall means that you can teleport somewhere and not immediately fall before you can act.

So basically make aerial teleport endless the same as on the ground.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

aero do you even play this game or do you just like numbers

I play

Just not lately because smash 4 tho

Spoiler

but i really do like numbers

 

[trash?]

I believe it was this very thread where I pointed out a match between emukiller and armada where armada wasn't even close to mewtwo's fair but it hit regardless

emu's explanation was that pit stuck out a grab which slightly moved the hurtbox forward... but even taking that into account, that's pretty silly distance

 

[Strong Badam]

I mean, his fair matches Melee's. Which is huge.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Maybe there's a bug or something? I've seen it hit at completely ridiculous distances pretty often - way more than I'd expect given that hurtbox.

Hmm.

 

[Bazkip]

You're right that this disjoint is the reason that Mewtwo's nair hit first. There is aerial priority however. While there is no clanking, if you do greater than or equal to 9% damage than another aerial hitbox, that hitbox will no longer be able to hit you (you being the character that "beat" said aerial hitbox). Think of it like having shielded the move I guess... the move can still hit other players though (which is relevant in 2 v 2), so it's not entirely accurate to say the hitbox is gone.

That's a special case for a specific few moves, it is not the case for normal aerial collision.

 

[JOE!]

This is where it hits,

Clearly it is bigger than it appears...

 

[Strong Badam]

This is where it hits, View attachment 28044

Clearly it is bigger than it appears...

The video isn't 60 FPS. That's not the frame before it hits.

 

[JOE!]

Even still, looking at where he did the Fair and what pit's Standing and Dash grabs do with his arm:

Spoiler

It still seems like the hitbox is bigger that in that melee gif

 

[Ripple]

pit threw out a f-tilt. that moves his body quite a bit

 

[JOE!]

That was Ftilt? It looked like the startup of grab lol.

Nevermind then I guess

 

[Strong Badam]

Yeah, that does look like the startup of Ftilt.