Tier List Speculation

[supascoot]

Don't make me come over there and hit you with my frame 91-94 windbox up taunt

IM WARNING YOU

Hows that fox MU nerd? bet ur char can't even 0-death him cuz hes olimar tier

I'm not salty that a friend picked up toonlink to counter wario oh god the fsmash

metroid semi-mastered the C-stick Nair technique, along with its downfalls. That's one of the four hidden aptitudes

If you don't mind me asking what C-stick Nair is? I know in Smash 4 you can use nair on the C stick because of how ****ily they ported the GC controls but I didn't know you could do it with Ike. I'm sure its gonna be one of those "very small usage character ATs" that some chars seem to have but I'm still curious.

 

[DMG]

I think to C-stick Nair, you have to go at some weird c-stick mini angle perfectly

 

[PootisKonga]

Or you could set C stick to Attack and hit any diagonal direction

 

[Soft Serve]

Diddy is also very... weird. With a banana, diddy is pretty legit. But if you can take diddys banana, you now make diddy have to respect you SO much. Without a nanner, diddy goes down the tier list so hard, meaning a good item game will ruin him.

This is pretty much exactly how I feel about diddy
with a banana, I think he is top 8 and only loses hard to fox/wolf/peach/samus
The moment he loses the banana he becomes a knock off falcon who has marth syndrome, and the opponent becomes the best character in the game

 

[Foo]

ZSS was pretty underrated to begin with, and was one of the few characters majorly buffed in 3.5 (dat grab tho)

woah woah woah, she was not majorly buffed. She had her bread and butter from 3.02 flat out removed. Both of her best neutral tools are no longer even neutral tools, and her dsmash went from being really good to being exclusively for tech chase and edgeguard, and she took a huge recovery nerf (still relatively good recovery, but still). Not to mention, none of her previous weaknesses were fixed. Also, that amazing new grab? It kinda sucks. Her throws are literally the worst in the game. Hold the right direction (same direction for every throw) and she gets zero follow ups save for some very specific %s against very specific characters. At low%s or against fast fallers, her dthrow is a tech chase, but not a particularly good one since the throws are so laggy. Not to mention, once you get past low%s, you can DI in a way that denies a follow up and a tech chase on many characters, and that DI denies follow up on her other throws too.

I understand the rest of the cast was nerfed too, but she was not substantially buffed. It seems people either look only at her strengths or only at her flaws. She has some incredibly strong strengths, but also some incredibly impact flaws. You all seem familiar with her strengths, and they are definitely pretty strong, but here are her flaws detailed.

1. Really bad throws. Name a character and that character has better throws. Almost every character in the game has some sort of guaranteed follow-ups on throws, and every character that doesn't is trash (not really sure there are any, come to think of it). Her up throw is neither good for position, nor can it kill or combo without dump di. Her forward and backthrow have no follow ups regardless of DI, send at a bad angle so you can't get tech chase, and don't send offstage very far.

2. Very weak kill options. She has almost no combos into kill moves, and the ones she does can almost always be DI'd or SDI'd (fair). And no, dsmash doesn't count as a kill combo because hitting a raw frame 20 smash attack isn't exactly consistent. She can get downsmash off tech chase, but that's not the most reliable. Also, she struggles to get tech chases at higher %s unless against fast fallers. Pretty much her only way to do that is up-b on an aerial target, but that rarely leads to a legit tech chase. You have spaced bair, and that's great, but it's telagraphed because it's the only thing you can do while facing away. So, basically, you either have to get a hard read, land spaced bair, or gimp for kills. Very similar to marth, but marth has better kill combos and cannot kill absurdly early with one good smash. Granted, marth also doesn't have a kill option as good as bair.

3. Trash smash attacks. Her smashes, with the slight exception of downsmash, are basically useless. Her upsmash is usable now, but it's still pretty mediocre. Not to mention, missing up or fsmash leaves you vunerable for so long your opponent can do anything to you. Fsmash has around 45 frames of lag, and start up of 20, for over a second long move.

4. Struggles to combo fast fallers. She has tech chases, but that's not how you excel against fast fallers. Most fast fallers primary weakness is being zero to deathed easily, but ZSS has the opposite problem. She doesn't have moves that reliably knock straight up for combos save for uptilt, but uptilt is fairly laggy and can be CC'd and SDI'd out of. This is particularly problematic since most of top tier is fast fallers (spacies, roy, falcon etc.)

5. Very weak to CC overall. Not much to say here, but most of her non dsmash or spaced bair moves lose to CC pretty badly. Even side-b gets wrecked by CC on sweetspot.

6. Really bad spacy matchups. Most characters have a bad spacy matchup, but ZSS has it particularly bad. It's like all the problems falcon has against spacies x5. Her only saving grace is that she is decent at gimping them. Normally specific matchups.

7. Low overall damage values. Not much to say here, just that her damage values are below average. She makes up for it by racking damage well with combos, but still worth keeping in mind.

8. High aerial lag. Not a big deal, but if you throw out an aerial, you can almost never use another one before hitting the ground. (note: not talking about landing lag)

Now, as an honorable mention, here's why she's not falcon.

1. No knee. This is the number 1 thing that makes falcon better. Falcon can kill you at 60 at any time if you aren't careful, and can combo into it even off of throws. Knee and combos into knee is a threat to kill at basically any % for most characters.
2. Longer landing lag on aerials, particularly combo starter aerials. This patch, her only combo starter aerial is upair, with 9 landing lag where falcon has 7 on nair and upair.
3. Lower shff speed. This comined with 2 means falcon has faster combos.
4. less safe neutral game
5. No falcon jab
6. Slower with less air speed.

ZSS does have her fair share of advantages over falcon as well, but this post is just listing weaknesses. Since it would be easy to read this post and assume I think ZSS is bad, please don't assume that. She is a good character, but that's because her strengths outweigh her weaknesses. Most top tier characters don't have that many large weaknesses, if any weaknesses at all.

Overall, she's top 20 at the least, top 15 at the most. I'd put characters like marth, lucas, samus etc. over her. If you want me to list her strengths as well, I will.

What is this DI that doesn't let you get a tech chase? AFAIK, DI'ing away means a tech chase, and DI'ing in gives ZSS followups, so you always want to DI away.

It's kinda like falcon dthrow, but with much more lag and a lower trajectory. If you DI up and away at mid%s on floaty/semifloaty characters or high mid%s on semi fast fallers, you don't get a tech chase, especially if they have a fast aerial so they don't HAVE to jump out.


(P.S. Yes, this did take me over an hour to write, but granted, I played league games in between writing.)

 

[Bazkip]

So with LLoD winning Xanadu the other day, is Peach top tier yet?

 

[supascoot]

1. Really bad throws. Name a character and that character has better throws. Almost every character in the game has some sort of guaranteed follow-ups on throws, and every character that doesn't is trash (not really sure there are any, come to think of it). Her up throw is neither good for position, nor can it kill or combo without dump di. Her forward and backthrow have no follow ups regardless of DI, send at a bad angle so you can't get tech chase, and don't send offstage very far.

This is one thing I find odd about the transition from 3.0 ZSS to 3.5. Whats the point of getting a "better" (aka. non-laggy but pretty underwheming grab) if followups are nerfed to make it worse after you do get a grab. And while I disagree with you on the whole "characters need guaranteed followups on grab or they're bad" *cough*wario*cough* it just seems that this change just homogenized the character even more, taking the "poor grab with good followups" to "eh grab with bad followups" which doesn't help make the charater interesting

 

[Foo]

This is one thing I find odd about the transition from 3.0 ZSS to 3.5. Whats the point of getting a "better" (aka. non-laggy but pretty underwheming grab) if followups are nerfed to make it worse after you do get a grab. And while I disagree with you on the whole "characters need guaranteed followups on grab or they're bad" *cough*wario*cough* it just seems that this change just homogenized the character even more, taking the "poor grab with good followups" to "eh grab with bad followups" which doesn't help make the charater interesting

I'm pretty sure Wario has upthrow chain grabs on some fast fallers and upthrow upair. They aren't guaranteed, but I think they work a considerable amount of the time. I think he can get stuff off downthrow at the right %s too. I don't really remember, though, have only randomed wario a few times.

When I said guaranteed follow ups off grabs I didn't mean at all %s on most characters, I just mean reliably enough to land it a few times a game. That or throws that kill at reasonable %s.

 

[supascoot]

I'm pretty sure Wario has upthrow chain grabs on some fast fallers and upthrow upair. They aren't guaranteed, but I think they work a considerable amount of the time. I think he can get stuff off downthrow at the right %s too. I don't really remember, though, have only randomed wario a few times.

When I said guaranteed follow ups off grabs I didn't mean at all %s on most characters, I just mean reliably enough to land it a few times a game. That or throws that kill at reasonable %s.

Yeah, wario has a few "truely guaranteed" followups off his throws (most are not even that strong), but my point with that is that making such a blanket statement like that isn't good. Wario has his choice of

• JOHN MADDEN (featuring the king of netplay)
• "you go offstage please"
• facesit into sideb
• playing catch with space animals

These all give him a great throw game even if the followups arent guaranteed(which goes against what you said) that can be varried at the same time. IDK, maybe I'm just looking too hard into single sentence out of an entire post. I agree with a lot of the other things you said about ZSS, however that in particular stood out the most

 

[Juushichi]

Peach beats characters harder than Falcon.

Peach I think is arguable Top 10. Falcon is solidly in top 15 or so, but not in top 10, lol.

Someone wanna run down an arguable MU chart for Falcon? @ DMG ? @Lunchables Doesn't have to be detailed:

Heavy Adv
Adv
Even
Disadv
Heavy Disadv

I wanna see how he is top 10.

 

[Deleted member]

Peachs overall slow mobility and lack of large priority in 3.5 is pretty... mediocre.
I'd like to see your MU Chart as well

 

[DMG]

I think it's incredibly difficult to examine Peach's MU's accurately. I tend to be pessimistic about her chances in PM, but that's cause I tend to view things from the view point of "How well can this character deal with the absolute worst of worst scenarios?". Peach for example, I would have viability questions based on the larger legal stages vs hard/campy characters. My gut would say that she doesn't totally have what it takes to appropriately tackle that kind of issue: see Armada vs Westballz?? in Melee where he camped the top platform with Falco. Something along those lines.

Where as if I take Falcon, his disadvantages might be more about getting stuffed or "chained down" by projectiles/priority/frame data that's way better than his options. If I were to extrapolate and try to solve his issues, I could probably find more answers OR better quality answers to his issues than I might for that Peach situation. Maybe powershielding will fix it, maybe ridiculous spacing or perfect DD spacing will solve some problems. Maybe there's X mixup potential that at least gives you hope. Because of that, my gut says that he would probably fare better in tourney even if I don't specifically know his or Peach's exact MU spread (I don't think anyone does for Peach, at all)

 

[JayTheUnseen]

This is pretty much exactly how I feel about diddy
with a banana, I think he is top 8 and only loses hard to fox/wolf/peach/samus
The moment he loses the banana he becomes a knock off falcon who has marth syndrome, and the opponent becomes the best character in the game

So he's balanced?That sounds fairly well balanced to me.

 

[Soft Serve]

So he's balanced?That sounds fairly well balanced to me.

I think he's really ballanced
3.5 changes for diddy were just more comitment added onto his super safe kit, then straight nerfs to a handful of moves.


As you can see between joe/june/luck/dla still going well, diddy is super solid still but has actually weaknesses that he can't cover up by pulling a 2nd banana

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

If Metroid could travel more he'd be the truth.

As it is I think if you want destructo-Ike you'll have to keep an eye on Ally or DJ Nintendo. My money is on DJ, personally.

 

[Strong Badam]

also I have no idea what they did to nair since I haven't played 3.02 zss, but nair seems fine to me?

if only there was some sort of

publicly available changelist

or something

 

[supascoot]

if only there was some sort of

publicly available changelist

or something

Like this one?

 

[Deleted member]

if only there was some sort of

publicly available changelist

or something

Most of my point was that I couldn't even tell there was a change in the first place, aka the move is fine

but thanks for being a sarcastic ***** like usual, adam. I really appreciate it <3

 

[Strong Badam]

anytime bruh

 

[steelguttey]

ok lets do this ****

yes they are in order dont you come up to me with that "oh that character isnt lower than other character" fk u

top:
actually top:
high:
high-mid:
mid:
low-mid:
bottom:

top(furries): spacies are still stupid, wolf is in front of falco because he has better combos and falco's combos kind of fall apart with good di in this game

high(not furries): samus is rly fking good, shiek loves recovery nerfs, same with peach. lucario is so fking fast and he doesnt really have to commit to anything cus of aura canceling, tink has a really good item game and stupid big projectiles, ike has ridiculous mobility and long combos, marth still have a 10-0 matchup with the lower half of the cast.

high-mid(pm characters that got nerfed from 3.0 and captain falcon): these characters couldnt make it to high tier cause of the nerfs they got except for captain falcon, hes just really good still.

mid: these are characters who got nerfed too hard from 3.0 or were really ****ty in 3.0 and buffed in 3.5 so theyre decent now

low-mid: slow characters with BIG DAMAGE

bottom: yea olimar is bottom im admitting it now. his neutral game is ****, damage is ****, only good thing about him is pivot grab and when he gets comboed off stage its over cause edgeguarding him is ez

EDIT: fk i forgot ice climbers

i have no idea where to put these ****s cus in theory they are top tier but in reality they get **** on by most of the cast if you arent doing frame perfect **** constantly. ima just put them at the bottom of mid tier

 

[supascoot]

You've got Jiggs on there twice.

I disagree with placing characters like DK Yoshi Ness Pikachu and Kirby next to or above characters like GnW, when all that has happened to them has been major nerfs while GnW enjoyed a smooth transition. He already was considered a lot higher than those other characters and it doesn't make sense to me the place them where they are. While this can be sorta main bias talking I also think this applies to Snake, Wario, DDD and Lucas. I agree with the top tier but I feel that the mid tiers are too compact, when I could say about 10 characters that deserve to go lower or higher, especially when there are only 2 (3?) characters in lower-mid tier


Edit: Is that zard as the 5th worst character in the game. WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING IT PROBABLY ISN'T HEALTHY

 

[mimgrim]

Where is M2 and Roy?

 

[steelguttey]

FK

added them

 

[Soft Serve]

ok lets do this ****

yes they are in order dont you come up to me with that "oh that character isnt lower than other character" fk u

top:
actually top:
high:
high-mid:
mid:
low-mid:
bottom:

top(furries): spacies are still stupid, wolf is in front of falco because he has better combos and falco's combos kind of fall apart with good di in this game

high(not furries): samus is rly fking good, shiek loves recovery nerfs, same with peach. lucario is so fking fast and he doesnt really have to commit to anything cus of aura canceling, tink has a really good item game and stupid big projectiles, ike has ridiculous mobility and long combos, marth still have a 10-0 matchup with the lower half of the cast.

high-mid(pm characters that got nerfed from 3.0 and captain falcon): these characters couldnt make it to high tier cause of the nerfs they got except for captain falcon, hes just really good still.

mid: these are characters who got nerfed too hard from 3.0 or were really ****ty in 3.0 and buffed in 3.5 so theyre decent now

low-mid: slow characters with BIG DAMAGE

bottom: yea olimar is bottom im admitting it now. his neutral game is ****, damage is ****, only good thing about him is pivot grab and when he gets comboed off stage its over cause edgeguarding him is ez

EDIT: fk i forgot ice climbers

i have no idea where to put these ****s cus in theory they are top tier but in reality they get **** on by most of the cast if you arent doing frame perfect **** constantly. ima just put them at the bottom of mid tier

Lucas didn't get nerfed that hard lol. When half the cast struggles vs pressure, and lucas still has really good, DISJOINTED pressure, he can't be on the same level has jiggs or link
Switch peach and diddy, and bump lucas up and I'd pretty much agree.

Peach does well vs a good amount of characters, and has a decade of MU development vs spacies which is really important right now, but she still gets camped to **** and loses to swordies and faster projectile users not diddy

 

[Jacob29]

Man just imagine what Smash would be like if over night the tier list just flipped upside down via a balance patch.

What a game that truly would be.

 

[PootisKonga]

Man just imagine what Smash would be like if over night the tier list just flipped upside down via a balance patch.

What a game that truly would be.

We'd lose most of the Melee-preference players

Maybe as a weeklong April Fools joke

 

[steelguttey]

Man just imagine what Smash would be like if over night the tier list just flipped upside down via a balance patch.

What a game that truly would be.

olimar top tier?

so down

 

[_A1]

We'd lose most of the Melee-preference players

Maybe as a weeklong April Fools joke

Most Melee spacies either don't play PM and/or hate the clunkyness of spacies in this game.

 

[PootisKonga]

Most Melee spacies either don't play PM and/or hate the clunkyness of spacies in this game.

PM? Clunky?

Maybe the 1 frame physics delay just gets to them considering they have the frame 1 hitbox

Edit: If not, how exactly is PM any clunkier than Melee?

 

[Soft Serve]

PM? Clunky?

Maybe the 1 frame physics delay just gets to them considering they have the frame 1 hitbox

Edit: If not, how exactly is PM any clunkier than Melee?

It's not, don't take the bait

This talk never ends well

 

[_A1]

I'm not in any way insulting PM as a game. Just try dashdancing/wavedashing with spacies and you can tell how horrible it feels.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Turn off rumble and close your eyes as you do it, I promise you won't feel anything except your finger moving back and forth. How about giving some actual detail as to how you think it's different instead of vague subjective nonsense that's probably just heavy placebo?

 

[jtm94]

I'm not in any way insulting PM as a game. Just try dashdancing/wavedashing with spacies and you can tell how horrible it feels.

You mean how it actually happens without having a perfect controller? Yeah it's a good feel.
I'd rank it top tier since this is the tier list speculation thread after all, not game mechanic discussion.

 

[Hylian]

I'm not in any way insulting PM as a game. Just try dashdancing/wavedashing with spacies and you can tell how horrible it feels.

I've been playing fox in tournaments since 2003...PM doesn't feel clunky at all to me. Pretty sure it's just placebo from people not used to playing a similar game with different graphics. I played brawl as well so this didn't bother me.

 

[Deleted member]

Tech skill/movement in pm is fine

Although I'll agree that the visuals are a bit "odd", the actual feeling is fine.

 

[DMG]

Yeah guys, we don't have a Play-Doh looking Yoshi like Melee does, so clearly PM is messed up

 

[Bleck]

melee players only know what fox and battlefield look like anyways

the reason amsa does so well with yoshi is 'cause most melee players can't even see him

they're all like DUDE WHAT IS THAT

IT'S NOT FOX

IT'S NOT FALCO

IS THAT MARTH?

NO HE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A SWORD OH GOD WHAT DO I DO

 

[Strong Badam]

I've been playing fox in tournaments since 2003...PM doesn't feel clunky at all to me. Pretty sure it's just placebo from people not used to playing a similar game with different graphics. I played brawl as well so this didn't bother me.

I think it's amusing that good Fox/Falco players almost never complain about clunkiness or anything because good players don't look at their own character, they're too busy watching their opponent. Whatever differences the graphics makes doesn't matter since the movement itself is more or less the same.

 

[steelguttey]

you melee players with your "tech skill" and your "skill"

 

[JayTheUnseen]

Yeah guys, we don't have a Play-Doh looking Yoshi like Melee does, so clearly PM is messed up

I prefer Melee's 'plastic' models to Brawl's 'gooey' models,but that's me...

On topic,what weakness does Lucario have other than mildly short range?I feel his speed makes up for that,though...