Tier List Speculation

[MagnesD3]

Considering what Boiko said... Im starting to think its not only about a character being "good" or easy... its about how "quickly" one develops the meta of a character and if there is something more to develop. I mean... people may be just asking "Give me a character in which I can good at quickly". If you want further proof of this, Im going to put as an example a thread in Sonic boards when 2.5 came out COMPLAINING that Sonic was too nerfed, was too changed, and was around mid tier at best (lol, we all know how THAT turned out with just 6 months of development, and it was not even close to finishing). Is it really that bad for a character to take a bit more time to develop? Sure... at first people will lose to melee characters because their development is ahead... but in the future that can change.

Conclusion: Stop jumping to Conclusions.

Sonics great, he has always been great, but yeah his player base complains a ton since he has had some silly things. I think he in a perfect place atm, clear weaknesses/strengths and nothing super dumb atm.

 

[Deleted member]

Sonics great, he has always been great, but yeah his player base complains a ton since he has had some silly things. I think he in a perfect place atm, clear weaknesses/strengths and nothing super dumb atm.

except that run speed that's 50% faster than CF

as long as sonic has ridiculously polarizing attributes, he will always be ridiculous and polarizing

 

[MagnesD3]

except that run speed that's 50% faster than CF

as long as sonic has ridiculously polarizing attributes, he will always be ridiculous and polarizing

I think that's good though right? (That he is clearly awesome in certain areas and crap in others). There's always room for improving silly stuff tho.

 

[GabPR]

except that run speed that's 50% faster than CF

as long as sonic has ridiculously polarizing attributes, he will always be ridiculous and polarizing

Sonic does not have the fastest initial run speed though. Fox has faster initial speed that Sonic actually (other characters as well) And he only starts beating fox in a race after half the stage in smashville (or final maybe). That should be put into consideration.

 

[MagnesD3]

yes i think sonic is a real character, sonic is always horribly underrated and i have no idea why. i hate that *****

the difference between PM and melee PAL sheik is that PM dthrow is much faster and gives you a huge margin to react and do a followup. PAL sheik has the negative of the DI window against her with no time advantage to make up for it. PM dthrow is also generally harder to react to even by good players with good reaction, even if they know it's coming. you also get this nasty DI mixup when you try to intercept landing lag with dsmash that is completely coincidental that you don't even have to play to because you already know what you're going to do and they don't so you never have to try to "trick" them. in general any DI trap that foregoes the guesswork of a "mixup" is a good deal, but as a sheik player i know that i almost always want to grab them instead unless it's right near a ledge and a respect FF > block strategy will push them off to the edge favorably.

and i could totally see sheik losing to fox and wolf, but i won't agree to it until i'm absolutely sure of it. so far the dthrow > jab reset works like it did in melee but the offset of dthrow speed means its much easier to react to buffer roll out of the reset if you don't get them with it. this makes the punishment game quite a bit better than it was (since in melee it was horrible) but it's still very far from being a good reliable punish. ofc after like 40% you can do whatever you want to them on a non-grab conversion and kill them quite easily.

and yes fox is STILL a problem. real talk @ someone in the development team, is fox ever going to be actually fixed or should i just stop holding out on that?

edit: and no it's not that "developed meta" ****, sheik doesn't play anything like she did in melee past mid-level, and i don't see all that developed meta carrying marth jigglypuff peach, or even older characters that weren't so good that are clearly good now like samus. it really is just fox, only fox, and it's always fox that's the problem.

Do you find that sheik has clear weaknesses? (Since you seem to know quite abit about her.)

 

[Deleted member]

I think that's good though right? (That he is clearly awesome in certain areas and crap in others). There's always room for improving silly stuff tho.

no. you want characters that are generally well-rounded but bring something unique and flavorful to the table. being awesome in some areas and crap in others leads to highly exploitable and degenerate tactics that hurt the overall balance of the game.

edit: sheik is soft to good crouch games, dashdance abuse, and has a mediocre combo weight and recovery combo that makes her susceptible to heavy punishments. you can play around the first two to some extent with good finesse though, so it's a lot of give and take, which is ideal imo

 

[Boiko]

edit: and no it's not that "developed meta" ****, sheik doesn't play anything like she did in melee past mid-level, and i don't see all that developed meta carrying marth jigglypuff peach, or even older characters that weren't so good that are clearly good now like samus. it really is just fox, only fox, and it's always fox that's the problem.

Marth and Peach are still doing well IMO. M2K beat Rolex with Marth. VaNz is using Peach at Nebulous. Samus is played very differently from melee, so it doesn't really apply. Fact is, any skilled melee Fox player can pick up Fox in PM and know what his tools are and apply them. But I'm pretty sure you agree with that based on "it really is just fox, only fox, and it's always fox that's the problem."

 

[MagnesD3]

no. you want characters that are generally well-rounded but bring something unique and flavorful to the table. being awesome in some areas and crap in others leads to highly exploitable and degenerate tactics that hurt the overall balance of the game.

edit: sheik is soft to good crouch games, dashdance abuse, and has a mediocre combo weight and recovery combo that makes her susceptible to heavy punishments. you can play around the first two to some extent with good finesse though, so it's a lot of give and take, which is ideal imo

I agree that something supergood or bad in an area is poor design but if its in a perfect place with a characters polarity I see nothing wrong with that.

IMO it's impossible to make every character well rounded otherwise every character would have to be basically the same. When I look at shiek it think she's finished balance wise when she has a ton of 5-5s and as about as many 6s as 4s. Right now she seems to have only 6s and 5s which is too good and Isn't balanced till she reaches that fair even ratio. (Since she is one of those all around good type of characters.)

How to go about balancing sheik to that perfect spot I don't know how to reach since I am not informed enough and the game is too unexplored ATM.

 

[Deleted member]

marth vs snake is horrible for snake. i would be very surprised to see m2k use a mid tier like marth vs any real characters in a fair MU when he has access to better characters instead.

IMO it's impossible to make every character well rounded otherwise every character would have to be basically the same. When I look at shiek it think she's finished design wise when she has a ton of 5-5s and as about as many 6s as 4s. Right now she seems to have only 6s and 5s which is too good and Isn't balanced till she reaches that fair even ratio. (Since she is one of those all around good type of characters.)

i agree for now but i doubt sheik will stay on top for too long for a couple reasons that i won't mention here so i don't end up exposing my own character too hard lol

 

[4tlas]

I think Din's coming out faster now is a buff overall against the super mobile characters. Old Din's was awful against fast characters just because it was so slow and punishable. As Falcon, you could dash dance camp until they threw out a Din's and knee them from halfway across the stage on reaction alone. I think old Din's is heavily overrated

Coming out fast is a buff, but its also a nerf, and what I was saying was reducing the number down to 1 is a big nerf against fast characters. The speed is a nerf because you can't place them close to you anymore (and the reduced control makes it difficult to place them on the floor for short characters or above heads to block shffl approaches).

Falcon was one of the MUs I always dreaded, because yes he could knee you from across the stage on reaction from you placing a Din. But you could also drift backward and dodge his approach if he was approaching from long range. The problem really was that there was nothing you could do at mid range, which is now changed.

But this is only 1 fast character. I felt that the Fox MU, for example, was tolerable because on the right stage I could cover a lot of space with Dins. Once again though, the mid range dashdance was painful. This is better with new Dins.

New and Old Dins are both in this weird space where they aren't quite a projectile, not quite a disjoint. The mine part is like a projectile because you dont need to channel the move to have a hitbox, and the automatic return of new Dins is like a projectile as well. However, since the mine doesnt move, it will not hit unless you a) force them into it or b) place it on them in the first place. Placing it on them is using it like a disjoint because you are still channeling the move. Old Dins was quasi-clanked on shield, which allowed it to still be used as "projectile" shield pressure when the timers ran out. New Dins is completely negated by shield, which removes the use of placing the hitbox directly on them. You also have a much more difficult time forcing the opponent into Dins as it must be placed closer to the opponent than you in most situations due to the quick speed it comes out (thus creating a minimum distance). If Zelda is nowhere near the Din she cant zone into it. I think this was the healthiest of the gameplay patterns with Dins, and should be encouraged. New dins currently makes it near impossible.

Maybe old Dins is heavily overrated, but I think New Dins is even more overrated. There seems to be a lack of analysis on both sides of the argument due to resistance to change.

 

[Frost | Odds]

marth vs snake is horrible for snake. i would be very surprised to see m2k use a mid tier like marth vs any real characters in a fair MU when he has access to better characters instead.

This is the one thing I really don't understand. Why in God's name would Marth be mid-tier?

 

[Deleted member]

because he's not that good

 

[GabPR]

because he's not that good

Not that good as in right now... or not that good when everybody else's meta develops?

 

[Pwnz0rz Man]

Not that good as in right now... or not that good when everybody else's meta develops?

Probably cause the thing he had going for him in Melee was that a good majority of the cast was kind of eh and he happened to have decent to good matchups against almost everyone near the top (With the exceptions being Sheik and Puff). In PM, there are more characters that can put up a fight and as they move up the list, Marth has to move down to make room. Puff moved down for the same exact reason.

 

[MagnesD3]

Mid tier makes sense for marth because of the type of character he is, i dont see a problem unless he is just losing a ton of matchups.

 

[jtm94]

Lol, no worries. I would say fox alone wins real hard which makes tournaments difficult. Any character that controls the mid range and close range and can quickly get above fireball placements. Then people with long projectiles like falco.
The new dins is no longer effective to edge guard, and you can't use it in conjunction with your body placement for safer approaches, because now you can't keep momentum on jump fireball as well to traverse the stage, and it's super easy for opponents to deal with when you aren't right there. That's why characters who can get up and over the midrange threat win imo.
I would say Ness and meta knight matchups got a good bit harder, ice climbers probably aren't as free. Wolf is probably hard, but I haven't fight any good ones. Sheik didn't get any easier. Peach can likely do work. Stuff like that.

The up b cancel I think is worse now/has less utility because you're forced to ledge cancel or have super lag, and can't go in and out to bait anymore, but I could see that argument as a negligible change based on the rest of character changes in 3.5, but I think it hurts at the mid and upper levels of gameplay.

Everyone loses to Fox and struggle with Falco now that's a null point. At least she has touch of death against them like most characters do.
Alright now we are just arguing stances on playstyle at this point. Saying new dins no longer edge guards effectively is like saying old dins didn't either. What makes it so different? I've used new dins at edge into Dsmash, Fsmash, Kicks, Dair, and Grabs. And new dins make it to ledge faster from mid range than old dins. It still stands that actually taking edge and trying to intercept recovery is and was a better way to edgeguard. As far as keeping momentum with dins, you don't need momentum because it places so fast there is no need to retreat or approach with it. Old dins was easy to deal with when you weren't there either, it was just more annoying because you had more to swat away.
I do agree with characters who can get around it with movement are problematic, but new dins is faster and can apply a pseudo pressure that makes people want to interact with the less uber defensive Zelda and that's how she wins. The dins is fast enough that it is much harder or almost not punishable mid range or beyond so even if they get around it you should be waiting with an attack. You either win as Zelda by forcing yourself on the opponent or if they force themselves on to you. While the Fox MU is difficult, he typically goes in and out with shield pressure and lasers, you can just shield that and net a grab to KO him. If he plays incredibly safe there is little you can do and you will likely lose. She halts hyper-aggressiveness to an extent.

Ness is still good, Zelda is mostly unchanged. He could absorb dins before, the only different is we can shield PK Fire safely now. I played it and you can outrange all of his aerials with fair/bair + he doesn't have incredibly fast movement.
MK is kind of a pain because of his speed, but he actually got slowed down pretty hard. His follow ups aren't nearly as guaranteed out of dthrow or ftilt. Juggles hurt, but Zelda's weakest position has always been above. Especially now that dins doesn't allow you to come down safer.
Ice Climbers as Zelda are incredibly easy. Played that with a really good friend from Erie on Sunday. He's trying to pick up a new character just to deal with Zelda. He's far better with ICs than I am with Zelda imo. Nothing that made the MU bad for them has changed.
Wolf is spacie I wouldn't expect him to have any incredibly terrible MUs.
Sheik has always beat Zelda, that's just how it is.
Zelda beats Peach in my experience. Peach plays similarly applying positional pressure and coming in with dash attack, but you can play the DD game in this MU and kick her. The only trick she has is float, but it's very forecasted, try to buffer roll to escape her shield pressure.


@Scuba Steve
Am I a god for beating local squirtle players with Zelda then? I had a squirtle player tell me Squirtle beats Sheik and I laughed. I honestly think she can deal with him, it isn't unwinnable at all.

On Sonic:
In a game based on movement, having arguably the best movement seems a little good, yes?
My main training partner is Sonic and I have been with him since 2.5 on. We started in 2.5 so didn't notice much, but Sonic was annoying. 2.6 came by and didn't I didn't notice too much and my friend was kind of let down, but sonic was annoying. 3.0 came back and I noticed a few things being better, and Sonic was incredibly annoying. 3.5 and he lost recovery, but on stage he's still annoying. Even Nazo said his on game play barely changed, he just has a fair-er recovery. There's not really any weakness besides other disjoints, but I am 100% positive he outpaces every character with those besides Fox. I don't know how I deal with playing against the character on a day to day basis.. I guess it could always be Fox or Falco.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Puff moved down for the same exact reason.

No, Puff moved down because now everyone has straightforward, non-awkward tools to use against her -- she simply has worse matchups against the new characters than against the Melee top tier, who was pretty universally either gimpable or out-space-able. Now there's 34 better versions of Young Link (extremely gross/generally speaking) to deal with.

Further complicating matters is the fact that she was super dependent on MU-specific stuff in Melee, like crouch->resting Marth/Sheik's grabs. The burden of matchup knowledge is always on the Puff - the other player can typically just play his/her normal game, albeit accounting for comboing such a floaty character.

because he's not that good

He still outspaces pretty much everyone, still has a ridiculous DD and grab, godly dunk, still gets a lot from positional advantage, has a solid edgeguard game, and so forth. Also seems much easier to catch people with suboptimal DI on d/fthrow and get free tipper fsmashes.

He's no Fox, but so many great tools on such a good platform has to mean something.

Also possible that I'm missing something, I guess. Meh

 

[Pwnz0rz Man]

No, Puff moved down because now everyone has straightforward, non-awkward tools to use against her -- she simply has worse matchups against the new characters than against the Melee top tier, who was pretty universally either gimpable or out-space-able. Now there's 34 better versions of Young Link (extremely gross/generally speaking) to deal with

That's essentially what I said. "In PM, there are more characters that can put up a fight and as they move up the list, X moves down." Just so happens that more characters do better than Puff than they do Marth.

 

[mimgrim]

On Sonic. Sonic is the type of character that will always have disgusting design as long as they try to keep him true to his games. To give him actual good design he would need a complete rehaul and normalization done to him without giving consideration to his games. Otherwise he will continues to be a disgusting character.

 

[GabPR]

On Sonic. Sonic is the type of character that will always have disgusting design as long as they try to keep him true to his games. To give him actual good design he would need a complete rehaul and normalization done to him without giving consideration to his games. Otherwise he will continues to be a disgusting character.

Thats ok, he just needs a bath, thats all.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Umbreon's position is that Roy does Marth's job better and with more fire (and effectiveness, considering Roy's aerial finisher isn't stage position-dependent). It's hard to argue when you think about it.

I still think Marth is better than Umbreon says but he's not at the gold standard of running a train over the cast like other top tiers, even the fair ones now.

 

[steelguttey]

its just that marth has like a 9-1 matchup against the bottom half of the cast lol

god i ****ing hate that guy

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

I've stopped listening to people's opinions on Marth's MUs because half make him sound like the ******* child of Fox and Metaknight and the other half think he sucks so much they should just give his sword to Pichu.

So ... whatevs.

 

[GabPR]

its just that marth has like a 9-1 matchup against the bottom half of the cast lol

god i ****ing hate that guy

I think you are refering to melee marth not PM Marth.

 

[mythbust4000]

Teir for project m will never happen because by the time one is made a update is made making pepole do the thing all over again

 

[Deleted member]

I'd just like to point out that everyone who thinks tink is really good/stupid are people I've played

Basically everyone in TX thinks tink is ******** (Sethlon, Oracle, Denti, AeroLink, Awestin, Hamyojos insanely crazy toonlink S tier spot)
And then the only 2 other people I've played on netplay, Emukiller and Strong Bad, instantly wanted him nerfed after they played me LMAO

*illuminati here*

 

[Frost | Odds]

Umbreon's position is that Roy does Marth's job better and with more fire (and effectiveness, considering Roy's aerial finisher isn't stage position-dependent). It's hard to argue when you think about it.

I still think Marth is better than Umbreon says but he's not at the gold standard of running a train over the cast like other top tiers, even the fair ones now.

This could be entirely accurate, but in this patch "not being as good as roy" really isn't saying much. Marth also gained a lot more from the patch due to pretty much the entire cast's increased gimpability. Roy can't go offstage in nearly the same way for gimps, and his dunk is a lot more situational.

Even if marth were better (which I'm not saying - I just don't think he's as bad as Umbreon does), I'd be entirely comfortable arguing that he requires more skill and precision to play effectively than does Roy.

 

[Deleted member]

i don't think marth is bad in 3.5, he's just not that good either. he's definitely better off than he was since his main issue was folding to cheese in 3.0. the main differences vs a blind opponent between marth and roy is that roy has a better non-grab conversion, can reliably kill around 120, and doesn't really lose anything meaningful in the process.

 

[Deleted member]

I wish I could ultra mega-like umbreons post

 

[Deleted member]

just drop one-liners with obvious information and everyone will love you.

 

[Frost | Odds]

just drop one-liners with obvious information and everyone will love you.

I see what you did there.

 

[Deleted member]

oh yeah i forgot if you tip too well with marth you ****ing miss. you wanna tip, but only kinda because if you hit you miss, but if you hit the blade you get punished anyway. sometimes you can literally just move really fast until marth does something that isn't a connected tip and kill him for it. schizophrenic ass hitboxes.

 

[CyberZixx]

I find it weird how my region (and probably most others) got like a billion Marth players but i'm the only real Roy around here. Roy just seems better & has fire coolness yet people still flock to Marth?

 

[SpiderMad]

I find it weird how my region (and probably most others) got like a billion Marth players but i'm the only real Roy around here. Roy just seems better & has fire coolness yet people still flock to Marth?

Roy doesn't satisfy the double aerial quench https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gyIS-HdUgw

Also I fear Sheik a lot more than Falco in 3.5

And DK's Nair getting nerfed every version and now grab range makes it hard to determine where he is in 3.5, if like 2.0 DK was in 3.5 he'd destroy

 

[InfinityCollision]

Sword trails belying their hitboxes drives me nuts. Nature of the beast to a certain extent but the fact that you can actually tip too well on a character that so heavily emphasizes spacing is frustrating. He's far from the only one with unintuitive hitboxes though, for better and for worse.

Something to fill out the holes in the interpolated space would be ****, along with fixing similar oddities (Link forums for example mentioned his uair not too long ago) that don't make sense and have no real reason to exist at this point, but I doubt we'll be so fortunate.

And yeah, Roy's everything in neutral is disgusting and then he has a dozen ways to knock you into the blast zone once you're over 100. I like Marth's design/flow better (and I like that he's quieter, heh), but Roy's reward is mad good.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

I find it weird how my region (and probably most others) got like a billion Marth players but i'm the only real Roy around here. Roy just seems better & has fire coolness yet people still flock to Marth?

Subjective opinions. I despise Roy. Yes, this is in spite of Sethlon being one of my favorite players.

 

[Ripple]

I bet I wouldn't want TL nerfed if I played you Lunchables

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

I bet I wouldn't want TL nerfed if I played you Lunchables

*arrows fired*

 

[CyberZixx]

Wait, you don't like Santa Roy? "Hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh".

 

[Soft Serve]

So I was asked to make a tier list by a few people... So here goes.

Tier 1 - Definitely will be worth your time.

Spoiler

S Tier

Fox
R.O.B.
Captain Falcon
Toon Link
Falco
Roy

A Tier

Lucario
Yoshi
Ike
Wolf
Zero Suit Samus
Shiek
Mewtwo
Diddy Kong

Tier 2 - You'll probably need a secondary

Spoiler

B + Tier

Game & Watch
Samus
Link
Marth
Ness
Ivysaur
Luigi
Wario

B- Tier

Kirby
Charizard
Meta Knight
Zelda
Bowser
Mario
Pit
Sonic

Tier 3 - Fun in friendlies

Spoiler

C+ Tier

Donkey Kong
Olimar
King Dedede
Squirtle
Pit
Lucas

I Lost Because I Played X Character Tier AKA
X Tier

Pikachu
Ganondorf
Peach
Jigglypuff
Ice Climbers

Major characters I had trouble deciding spots were Pit, Lucas, Olimar, Sonic, and Samus. I feel like all those have potential that I don't know about, but ranking characters based on potential sounds like a bad practice. I think everyone's pretty viable except X Tier, which are the few characters who are hilariously close to each other on the Melee tier list that are hard to balance in a game like this. I feel like the X Tier characters will always stay as some of the worst in PM, which is fine.

I actually really like this list >.> Theres a few outlyers that I can't really agree with, namely ROB and Tink a bit too high (they aren't that good) and Lucas being so low, but I think its a great representation of the game at least right now.