Tier List Speculation

[PandaPanda Senketsu]

I think Meta Knight, Fox, and Samus are the 3 best in the game, in that order.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

I think Meta Knight, Fox, and Samus are the 3 best in the game, in that order.

THE TIER LIST SPECULATION

IT HAS BEGUN

 

[Warzenschwein]

"Squirtle can't spam withdraw -> he dead."

k m8

 

[NeoZ]

I've always wondered why this thread is called tier list speculation and not tier list discussion.

 

[DARKcpu0]

Mewtwo for **** tier.

 

[DARKcpu0]

THE TIER LIST SPECULATION

IT HAS BEGUN

What do you mean.

the tier list is already made.

Isnt it obvious?

-S TIER-
Fox
Fox's Nerfs
Samus
Zelda's Buffs
-A TIER-
Falcon's Buffs
Ganon's Buffs
-B TIER-
Ike
-C TIER-
The world
-F TIER-
Mewtwo's Up B

 

[Chevy]

Samus went even with Fox in Melee (allegedly) and has only gotten better.

Her recovery also wasn't hit absurdly hard. Sure tether stuff but the tether was never the main thing that made her impossible to kill anyway. She had a god tier recovery even in Murluh.

Her tether is about a thousand times worse than it was in Melee now, though. Her recover is so much worse it hurts. Don't get me wrong, it's justified, but losing the ability to tether drop ruins any sort of mix-up game she had within a certain range. Also, the new ledge grab being not completely silly hurts her, but that's for the best. Screw attack grabbed from like 2 ft. away before, it was donk. Tether length nerf is a change for the less silly, but also much worse for her.

So yeah, Samus' recovery is much worse now, I'm sad about losing my plethora of recovery tech mixups, but I guess it's for the better cause everyone is nerfed. Except Fox, who is now the best character in the game by far. "Boo hoo my up-smash kills at 90% instead of 80%". Nothing done about up-air or shine in the slightest means it's not gonna be that relevant a lot of the time anyway. I like the Falco nerfs though.

Game feels great btw, good **** PMDT.

 

[DARKcpu0]

Nothing done about up-air or shine in the slightest

I feel like you can act out of shine faster.
Not sure if thats just me.

 

[MLGF]

Not sure about MK, I think he's just a more aggro Marth turned into an angry ball.
We'll see, but he certainly feels less powerful as a whole. He didn't get the top 5 treatment, but he got roughed up pretty hard.

 

[Ivko]

I call Fox for #1.

Let's compare him to my main, Samus. Samus got nerfed very hard, and probably went even or lost to a good fox before. Fox hardly got nerfed and was already basically top tier before. I feel like most of the below top tier characters got nerfed pretty significantly yet some of the top tier ones hardly did. I don't agree with it.

 

[DARKcpu0]

I call Fox for #1.

Let's compare him to my main, Samus. Samus got nerfed very hard, and probably went even or lost to a good fox before. Fox hardly got nerfed and was already basically top tier before. I feel like most of the below top tier characters got nerfed pretty significantly yet some of the top tier ones hardly did. I don't agree with it.

Top tier?

Hardly nerfed?

Have you seen mewtwo?

 

[Foo]

Top tier?

Hardly nerfed?

Have you seen mewtwo?

He said most of the BELOW top tiers hardly got nerfed.

EDIT: Samus did not get nerfed hard though. There was just a lot of REALLY small nerfs, the recovery nerf and a few small buff/nerfs

 

[Burnsy]

This is all I'm going to say on the matter, but Squirtle got many significant nerfs, ones that hurt the character far more than the changes to his side-b, aquajet and smashes. Although the latter are the things you will probably be hearing gripes about most often from the less experienced mains of the character.

 

[Ivko]

Top tier?

Hardly nerfed?

Have you seen mewtwo?

Most of them got heavily nerfed, some didn't. Fox and Falco is mainly who I'm thinking of. Fox kills slightly harder with up-smash, and Falco's down-air is harder to use but just as good basically, and he got a better recovery.

I don't think the Samus nerfs are minor at all. The recovery nerf is HUGE, and now competent players can SDI out of some of her very important moves. Z-air which was a staple of mine seems like it'll be much less safe and effective at gimping.

edit: you guys are saying Samus top tier now? I'm confused. Maybe at a mid-level of play, but skilled opponents always ****ed her (anyone good I've played against had no trouble breaking through tethers) and now it'll be even worse since they can SDI out of stuff.

 

[Anonistry]

What do you mean.

the tier list is already made.

Isnt it obvious?

-S TIER-
Fox
Fox's Nerfs
Samus
Zelda's Buffs
-A TIER-
Falcon's Buffs
Ganon's Buffs
-B TIER-
Ike
-C TIER-
The world
-F TIER-
Mewtwo's Up B

Dude, how dare you. Ganon Buffs. Solid S Tier. S for Swag, that is. Also solid G tier. If you think that means below F tier, it just means you are not, in fact, a G.

(God that was awful, even for me. I probably should apologize. Probably.)

 

[NeonApophis]

Calling it now: Wolf is the best character in 3.5.

 

[Deleted member]

Diddy got nerfed in to the ground

thank god

 

[zeldasmash]

I honestly don't think Link is low tier. I think he is still a high tier character, he just doesn't have his dumb boomerang from 3.0.

 

[shairn]

So Fox and Falco aren't as good as they were in Melee, I don't see any problem with them being the best characters in the game considering that there are no characters as bad as the Melee low tiers. Everybody can do something about them, and they have a good enough reward/effort ratio to keep people playing them without giving too much reward for little effort à la 3.0 Mario.

 

[CyberZixx]

Because it is boring and there is clear spacie bias in the dev team when all other top characters got nerfed much harder?

 

[shairn]

Of course other characters got nerfed harder, they didn't take as much effort to use for similar/better results. There's no reason for spacies to be mid-tier level, no one would play them. I don't see what's boring about it. How do you expect to play this game long term if you can't get used to the fact that some characters are going to be better than the rest? The important part is that they're not too strong compared to the others, which I think is something we're closer to than any other smash game yet, excluding Sm4sh seeing as the metagame is still too young.

 

[pkblaze]

Why the Falco dair nerfs? 10 frames to 4 is pretty big. Would rather take PAL dair and just learn to not get weak dairs.

Also his lasers on upthrow are still ****ed up. the UpB fix is kinda nice though, but upthrow bothered/bothers me more than upB.

 

[CyberZixx]

Effort to use is no reason for a character to be the best. Squirtle and Pika are hard but are far worse. Plus all of foxs standard stuff is not that hard in PM. I just think it is bad game design. I imagine there would be an uproar if Mewtwo never got nerfed but with Fox it is fine?

 

[shairn]

The crazy SDI on uthrow lasers helps avoid consistent uthrow dairs I think.

Effort to use is no reason for a character to be the best. Squirtle and Pika are hard but are far worse. Plus all of foxs standard stuff is not that hard in PM. I just think it is bad game design. I imagine there would be an uproar if Mewtwo never got nerfed but with Fox it is fine?

I can't speak about Squirtle since I never bothered learning to hydroplane or whatever but how's Pikachu on the same technical level as Fox or Falco? Not only that, but he's also safer than both of them in regard to survivability and avoiding combos. I think that if you're going to have a character be the best it might as well be the hardest ones to use. Anything else makes no sense.

 

[CyberZixx]

This game is more than tech skill and the tier list should not beholden to that. Tech skill is to me the least intesting part of a fighting game (but a needed one) so it being the only judge of hardness so often annoys me. Pikachu is harder to win with I feel because he got much worse options while still having hard tech with proper QAC useage (which was nerfed in 3.5 by the way). That is the main issue for me here. It feels darn near every character got some notable nerf so now everyone is playing on a lower base level so Fox is that much better.

 

[DARKcpu0]

The crazy SDI on uthrow lasers helps avoid consistent uthrow dairs I think.

I can't speak about Squirtle since I never bothered learning to hydroplane or whatever but how's Pikachu on the same technical level as Fox or Falco? Not only that, but he's also safer than both of them in regard to survivability and avoiding combos. I think that if you're going to have a character be the best it might as well be the hardest ones to use. Anything else makes no sense.

I don't find spacies to be so hard from a technical standpoint.

But then again I just press buttons fast naturally. I literally approach with roy by dashing forward wavedash back, dash forward, dash back, wavedash forward, THEN fair or nair, to satisfy myself. Could be just me.

They aren't easy, but not as hard as people seem to make them out to be. I have harder times wavelanding in general and double jump cancelling with mewtwo and yoshi than multishines.

Iunno I'm weird I guess.

 

[Xcite]

Calling it now: Wolf is the best character in 3.5.

I couldn't agree more. 3.5 is going to be straight up spacie domination with what I believe to be in order Fox, Wolf, and Falco.
My other predictions for upper mid/high teir:
-Mario
-Lucas (Even with his nerfs, still has a great combo game just much tighter to perform)
-ZSS
- MK

 

[shairn]

This game is more than tech skill and the tier list should not beholden to that. Tech skill is to me the least intesting part of a fighting game (but a needed one) so it being the only judge of hardness so often annoys me. Pikachu is harder to win with I feel because he got much worse options while still having hard tech with proper QAC useage (which was nerfed in 3.5 by the way). That is the main issue for me here. It feels darn near every character got some notable nerf so now everyone is playing on a lower base level so Fox is that much better.

Picking Fox doesn't give you the win in the same way that 3.02 Mario, Diddy, Lucas and M2 did. This is because, obviously, the game is partly about technical skill and partly about mind games. Practicing for ten thousand hours in your basement to have perfect Fox tech skill will get you places, but you'll hit a wall relatively quickly if your mind games aren't good.

What else would you judge a character's difficulty to use with if it isn't tech skill? "Harder to win with" means nothing. The character is harder to win with because he's not as good as others. That has nothing to do with difficulty to actually use the character, it only means the character is more limited in its options. It makes no sense that a character that's "hard to win with" would be the best, therefore you fall back on difficulty to use.

I don't find spacies to be so hard from a technical standpoint.

But then again I just press buttons fast naturally. I literally approach with roy by dashing forward wavedash back, dash forward, dash back, wavedash forward, THEN fair or nair, to satisfy myself. Could be just me.

They aren't easy, but not as hard as people seem to make them out to be. I have harder times wavelanding in general and double jump cancelling with mewtwo and yoshi than multishines.

Iunno I'm weird I guess.

The difficulty is in application and consistency as well as in the execution itself. I can multishine and waveshine drillshine SHDL no problem but my Fox is still terrible because I can't apply these to my game.

 

[Foo]

Let's just give a hypothetical.

Let's say Fox and Falco never existed in melee, but PM was made without them. The PMDT gave one of the characters a frame 1 move that can combo into anything (even itself) and is even a potent kill option. Now imagine that they put that onto an already strong character with options that are already pretty safe on shield.

EVERYONE WOULD BE IN AN UPROAR. The only reason shine (fox shine in particular) is viewed as acceptable is #BecauseMelee.

I understand that, at this point, all spacie players would be completely outraged if shine was changed, but it doesn't need to be attached to a character who is super fast, has good projectiles, combos super well, has super safe moves, and has more kill moves than non-kill moves. Yes, I know they can be combo'd really easily, but that's their only true weaknesses* Not only that, but the fast falling only makes some matchups easier. There are matchups where the fall speed makes it almost impossible to combo him.

To be perfectly honest, I don't know what to do about Fox (and potential wolf), but I feel something needs to be done. I know we haven't had enough time to see yet, but it'll happen. The upper part of the tier lists will be spacies (cept falco) and characters with good/even matchups against those two.

I think falco will be good, but wolf and fox will be at the top.


*falco has an additional weakness of having a super bad recovery. While fox and wolf recovery aren't great, they aren't bad.



Also, at everyone who says ZSS is going to be top tier, I'm not so sure. They removed her bread and butter combos =/ Also, she has bad spacie matchups. If spacies are top tier, she'll CANNOT be high tier. If you have bad matchups against the best/most popular characters, your tier will suffer.

EDIT: Also, I bet fox/falco/wolf would be considered ungodly overpowered if there weren't years and years for melee players to figure out how to beat them. Anyone who isn't a melee vet is going to really struggle this patch.

 

[CyberZixx]

By easy and hard I mean how many quality and simple options a character has to get them by. For instance 3.02 mario being real good at everything so you can kinda get by. Fox also has amazing options, the only draw back is they require tech skill (for some). A character like Ness has far worse options to utilize thus harder to play. Way I see it at least.

 

[DARKcpu0]

EDIT: Also, I bet fox/falco/wolf would be considered ungodly overpowered if there weren't years and years for melee players to figure out how to beat them. Anyone who isn't a melee vet is going to really struggle this patch.

I'm already struggling as a Mewtwo Roy and Falco main.

Atleast Roy wasnt hit too bad.
But christ.

 

[shairn]

Yeah, but the quantity and the quality of options a character has is directly related to how good they are.

EDIT: Also, I bet fox/falco/wolf would be considered ungodly overpowered if there weren't years and years for melee players to figure out how to beat them. Anyone who isn't a melee vet is going to really struggle this patch.

Sheik was considered the best character in Melee for like 3-4 years. The struggle was figuring out how to make Falco and Fox work well enough to beat Melee Sheik.

 

[DARKcpu0]

The difficulty is in application and consistency as well as in the execution itself. I can multishine and waveshine drillshine SHDL no problem but my Fox is still terrible because I can't apply these to my game.

Application is more deeper into the mindgame aspect and what have you.

I was just refering to execution, nothing more. You're not wrong by any means. My fox is pretty **** for the same reasons.

 

[shairn]

Application is more deeper into the mindgame aspect and what have you.

I was just refering to execution, nothing more. You're not wrong by any means. My fox is pretty **** for the same reasons.

I think it ties more into technical skill, since you have to have fast enough reactions to execute correctly what you want when you need to. That's where muscle memory ties in, since you need to be consistent.

 

[Foo]

Yeah, but the quantity and the quality of options a character has is directly related to how good they are.

Sheik was considered the best character in Melee for like 3-4 years. The struggle was figuring out how to make Falco and Fox work well enough to beat Melee Sheik.

Absolutely true. However, after people figured out how to abuse shine and learned that falco could pillar every character for free and fox could waveshine to anything he wants, the opposite effect happened. Now everyone MUST know how to deal with fox/falco if they want to do better than 1 win 2 losses at a tournament.

 

[Vashimus]

Who cares if a character is "easier" to win with (to you anyway... never mind this is a 100% subjective valuation). As long as they're balanced accordingly and other aspects of their play are weaker to compensate for their strong points, it shouldn't make a bit of difference. You don't get special privileges just because you have to press a lot of buttons. When you pick a character, you should take the good and take the bad, not take the good and be able to get rid of the bad with time in the lab.

People didn't have a problem with Fox simply because he's strong, but because he excelled in too many areas, whereas by design he shouldn't.

 

[DARKcpu0]

Absolutely true. However, after people figured out how to abuse shine and learned that falco could pillar every character for free and fox could waveshine to anything he wants, the opposite effect happened. Now everyone MUST know how to deal with fox/falco if they want to do better than 1 win 2 losses at a tournament.

Or give in and play one or the other themselves.

I only picked up falco to counter lightweights on mewtwo, but a fox who knows how to deal with mewtwo is more than enough reason for me to have picked up a spacey. (refering to melee.)

 

[PsionicSabreur]

The crazy SDI on uthrow lasers helps avoid consistent uthrow dairs I think.

I can't speak about Squirtle since I never bothered learning to hydroplane or whatever but how's Pikachu on the same technical level as Fox or Falco? Not only that, but he's also safer than both of them in regard to survivability and avoiding combos. I think that if you're going to have a character be the best it might as well be the hardest ones to use. Anything else makes no sense.

The goal is not to "have a character be the best." Rationalizing with "there will always be a best" only applies when an equal attempt is made at balancing all characters in the first place. The error in this process is what's excusable, not ignoring the process entirely.
If it was somehow felt that Fox and Falco were not viable without excessive tech skill (which is wrong), it would still be preferential treatment (and, as follows, poor balancing) to offer an incentive for competitive players to gravitate towards these characters in particular.

Picking Fox doesn't give you the win in the same way that 3.02 Mario, Diddy, Lucas and M2 did. This is because, obviously, the game is partly about technical skill and partly about mind games. Practicing for ten thousand hours in your basement to have perfect Fox tech skill will get you places, but you'll hit a wall relatively quickly if your mind games aren't good.

"Mindgames" isn't too useful a metagame term. Every character requires some degree of patience and unpredictability be contributed by the player, and Fox is arguably specifically tooled to make this process easier.

What else would you judge a character's difficulty to use with if it isn't tech skill? "Harder to win with" means nothing. The character is harder to win with because he's not as good as others. That has nothing to do with difficulty to actually use the character, it only means the character is more limited in its options. It makes no sense that a character that's "hard to win with" would be the best, therefore you fall back on difficulty to use.

The difficulty is in application and consistency as well as in the execution itself. I can multishine and waveshine drillshine SHDL no problem but my Fox is still terrible because I can't apply these to my game.

Tech skill itself is an incredibly broad term. They might have relatively high APM, for example, but require little of the finesse involved in another character's waveland or pivot game. I also hope you realize that less cooldown and getting from point A to point B faster = easier on the player's reaction time, as well.
As another example, look at kill confirms, a common and necessary "technical skill;" to any Fox player they're piss-easy.

 

[InfinityCollision]

The more I think about it, the less I "get" some of the ZSS changes. I can see the dominoes of one thing following another, but I fail to understand the rationale for changing her in ways that so deeply alter her gameplan and (perhaps more importantly) her feel/playstyle at every level. It's a huge shift for a character that would have been adequately served by more subtle changes, and an emphasis on subtlety in alterations is certainly a desirable goal for a character that wasn't fundamentally busted to begin with.

 

[Foo]

The more I think about it, the less I "get" some of the ZSS changes. I can see the dominoes of one thing following another, but I fail to understand the rationale for changing her in ways that so deeply alter her gameplan and (perhaps more importantly) her feel/playstyle at every level. It's a huge shift for a character that would have been adequately served by more subtle changes, and an emphasis on subtlety in alterations is certainly a desirable goal for a character that wasn't fundamentally busted to begin with.

I wish I could like this more. They changed her SO much, it's as if they thought she was super busted and needed to be remade into a new character. It baffles me so much because I never saw so much as one post that suggested she wasn't a very well balanced and designed character.