Tier List Speculation

[Frost | Odds]

Also why do people think wolf loses to Fox? He doesn't have many guaranteed set-ups on fox at low percents but he has amazing tech chase throws which are almost as good. Or is there more to it than lack of punishments?

It's partly lack of punishments, partly that he doesn't have any way to really stifle Fox's ridiculous neutral game. His lasers kinda don't do anything due to being relatively high commitment (compared to Falco's), and the fact that they can be naired through. Wolf's lack of a reasonably large, lingering hitbox hurts him a lot in the matchup, because Fox is super difficult to pin down without such a move, or at least a completely ridiculous grab game.

Wolf is also by far the easiest spacie to gimp, due to the huge startup+endlag on his upB and side B. He may have more distance than Falco, but Falco has many more options available to him due to the quickness of the Phantasm.

Fox's anti-Falco stuff like uthrow usmash, weak nair to utilt chains to whatever, and so forth, still work fine against Wolf, and being offstage as Wolf in many matchups (including Fox) is effectively a guaranteed death in situations where Falco would still have options.

Wolf has a few things going for him (like dat dsmash), but he ultimately just has to work way harder than Fox.

 

[Player -0]

I don't see how combos were too easy in 3.02 besides like, Pit. Personally I dislike ZSS' changes.

Fox's Nair is too good vs. Wolf and his punish game is just as good.

The Ness vs. Fox is 4-6 approx.

Edit - Wolf is easiest to gimp? Loooooooooooooooooooooooolwhat.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Edit - Wolf is easiest to gimp? Loooooooooooooooooooooooolwhat.

Yes. The startup on the sideB and the endlag after both his recovery moves, collectively change everything. Against Wolf, you don't have to tentatively cover an instant Phantasm option while simultaneously preparing to deal with an omnidirectional up-B. Whatever he chooses to do, he's stuck hanging in midair for half a second while you go out there and kick him in sus huevos. Even if you're terrible and miss for some reason, his only options are to sweetspot the edge or land onstage and suffer another half second of endlag during which you have another chance to punish him.

Also, his upB isn't nearly as disjointed/ridiculous as Fox's, so that's something. I'm still of the opinion that Firefox's hitbox should be reduced to a comparable size.

 

[egumption]

The /r/ssbpm list is definitely only 50% as bad as the /r/smashbros list. Ike, Tink, Wario, Yoshi are too low. Ike should totally be A tier, Tink up to B+, Wario to, like, the top of B and Yoshi in the middle of B. Ganon, Mewtwo, and Lucas seem a tad high...Ganon probably needs to be bumped down the most. Ganon will always be mid-tier at best.

But if you look at the actual scores, anyone below the "A" tiers has a standard deviation of ~1.5pts, which basically means they could place anywhere in that range. So I'd probably consider it a bit of a success that it generally puts people in approximately the correct ranges.

 

[Strong Badam]

Funny how in 3.0 it was a common complaint that "combos were too easy/automatic", and now that PMDT a has "fixed" the "problem" it's not even uncommon for characters to have problems punishing spacies.
Also why do people think wolf loses to Fox? He doesn't have many guaranteed set-ups on fox at low percents but he has amazing tech chase throws which are almost as good. Or is there more to it than lack of punishments?

wolf gets absolutely **** on by fox. all of wolfs combos work on normal characters, not FFers, and fox doesn't care about your falling speed and 0-deaths you regardless. not to mention fox is one of the few characters who doesn't seem to care about wolf's laser game bcuz nair spam. i think i 2/3 stock oracle's wolf consistently in that MU, it's stupid lol

 

[eideeiit]

After reading some of these responses I'm somewhat surprised by how people keep saying Mewtwo is too high. I personally would think the opposite. His nerfs were real big yes, but I honestly believe that the day someone unlocks his teleport movement options to the fullest he'll return right up there, to the very top. In my opinion AC teleports and ledge cancel teleport to hovers have incredible potential. Of course, what I'm saying is way off if this is one of those "state of the current meta"-tierlists as opposed to "taken to the human limits"-tierlists.

 

[Zarek]

Can I ask why the majority of people think Kirby is so bad? Every list I see has him near the bottom, is it just lack of exposure or is he legit bad?

 

[Chevy]

I think we'll have the agree to disagree here. In my mind, you shouldn't be shooting missiles when Marth is close enough to punish but instead space him out with tilts. And if he wants to throw out a laggy aerial to cover a missile, he should be punished for it. Or at least it can be a form of conditioning.

Laggy aerial? Why would Marth use d-air to hit a missile? And you shouldn't shoot missiles when Marth is close enough to punish, that's the whole point. Samus can't shoot missiles most of the time, because Marth is always there, and even if she gets a chance, he has no problem slicing them anyway. F-tilt is great, but you have to have perfect spacing not to be shield grabbed, and the only appreciable mix-up otherwise is the threat of jab1 into jab2, which if predicted is an easy punish.

That's not even true... Sheik and Puff are far and away Samus' worst MU's in melee. Falcon is a tier down from that and Marth is below even that with there being arguments for it being even barring specific circumstaces. But I think comparing it to melee is sort of a bad argument anyway, as Samus has gained so much since then, it's hard to make a real comparison.

Keep in mind that Samus' recovery is also worse now, and she can't cover multiple tech options with her standing grab anymore. Also for what it's worth, no extender. : (

 

[howbadisbad]

Can I ask why the majority of people think Kirby is so bad? Every list I see has him near the bottom, is it just lack of exposure or is he legit bad?

They took away his chaingrab and dash attack. Kirby mains don't know what to do if they cant chaingrab and dash attack.

Spoiler

3.0 kirby

 

[DrinkingFood]

M2 is definitely still good, in fact in 3.02 he was good even without stupid tele hover stuff, tho not in relation to the 3.02 cast. Now his tail is slightly shorter and tele hover is gone but hover by itself is way better and he can apply pressure way better with dtilt. Biggest nerf IMO besides tele hover removal was actually utilt losing knockback. But there's no way he's not still really good in 3.5

 

[Zarek]

They took away his chaingrab and dash attack. Kirby mains don't know what to do if they cant chaingrab and dash attack.

Spoiler

3.0 kirby

I don't really seem to mind, dash attack is still amazing and I never used the chaingrab anyway. Personally I think he's a great character, maybe not the best but certainly not low tier in this iteration. Maybe I can prove that if I can ever get my ass to some competition.

 

[Foo]

I don't see how combos were too easy in 3.02 besides like, Pit. Personally I dislike ZSS' changes.

I actually like the changes to zss combo game. It used to just be nair to nair to nair to nair but now there is more depth and more options in the combos. I think upair is a bit too laggy on land (by one or two frames), but other than that I think it's perfect.(I'd also like fair to not be multihit because people who aren't even sding often get out of it. It should be something like diddy fair except come out later and have the size of her current fair. That or make it really quick multihit like fox upair. Kinda silly to have a combo finisher work like that.)

 

[Soft Serve]

Funny how in 3.0 it was a common complaint that "combos were too easy/automatic", and now that PMDT a has "fixed" the "problem" it's not even uncommon for characters to have problems punishing spacies.
Also why do people think wolf loses to Fox? He doesn't have many guaranteed set-ups on fox at low percents but he has amazing tech chase throws which are almost as good. Or is there more to it than lack of punishments?

its neutral. Fox doesn't care about blaster because he can jump in, fox is much faster and has an approaching aerial. Wolf can't approach fox well because blaster is less effective, and fox's bair/nair/uptilt all stop wolf's approach tools or trade in fox's favor.

Both destroy each other in combos, but in the smaller situations fox should always come out on top unless he gets outplayed/baite, because fox controls neutral. Its fox/falco but fox wins harder because wolf can't approach/lock down fox as well as falco

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

M2 is definitely still good, in fact in 3.02 he was good even without stupid tele hover stuff, tho not in relation to the 3.02 cast. Now his tail is slightly shorter and tele hover is gone but hover by itself is way better and he can apply pressure way better with dtilt. Biggest nerf IMO besides tele hover removal was actually utilt losing knockback. But there's no way he's not still really good in 3.5

Uh
I remember hearing, tele hover is still in. Its just on a 1 frame input...

 

[Ogopogo]

Yes. The startup on the sideB and the endlag after both his recovery moves, collectively change everything. Against Wolf, you don't have to tentatively cover an instant Phantasm option while simultaneously preparing to deal with an omnidirectional up-B. Whatever he chooses to do, he's stuck hanging in midair for half a second while you go out there and kick him in sus huevos. Even if you're terrible and miss for some reason, his only options are to sweetspot the edge or land onstage and suffer another half second of endlag during which you have another chance to punish him.

Also, his upB isn't nearly as disjointed/ridiculous as Fox's, so that's something. I'm still of the opinion that Firefox's hitbox should be reduced to a comparable size.

I'm in support of firefox nerfs, hitbox or otherwise. Also, one thing that not many people take into account is that if Wolf tries to instantly side-b to the ledge, he loses his jump. If he gets hit before he makes it back, he's left with his comparatively bad up-b. But Flash has a good hitbox on the end, so if they don't catch on or know the matchup they'll be hit. Overall I think it's fairly balanced.

 

[Boiko]

Uh
I remember hearing, tele hover is still in. Its just on a 1 frame input...

Pretty sure it's patched for the next bug patch release.

 

[Player -0]

I don't see how combos were too easy in 3.02 besides like, Pit. Personally I dislike ZSS' changes.

Fox's Nair is too good vs. Wolf and his punish game is just as good.

The Ness vs. Fox is 4-6 approx.

Yes. The startup on the sideB and the endlag after both his recovery moves, collectively change everything. Against Wolf, you don't have to tentatively cover an instant Phantasm option while simultaneously preparing to deal with an omnidirectional up-B. Whatever he chooses to do, he's stuck hanging in midair for half a second while you go out there and kick him in sus huevos. Even if you're terrible and miss for some reason, his only options are to sweetspot the edge or land onstage and suffer another half second of endlag during which you have another chance to punish him.

Also, his upB isn't nearly as disjointed/ridiculous as Fox's, so that's something. I'm still of the opinion that Firefox's hitbox should be reduced to a comparable size.

Why would you kick Wolf in his eggs? Do wolves have eggs?

You can fully cover the phantasm option and if they Up-B then you have ample time to run up and jump to an aerial. Even if you're not close enough for the aerial to hit, you can wait to throw the aerial and they have to take a dumb angle that won't save them or get hit.

Wolf's Side B's startup isn't THAT long, it's better than Fox's/Falco's because it goes up and you can cancel it to sweetspot while faking your opponent to think that you're going onto the stage. Up-B you can go any angle with half as much start time as Fox's/Falco's, which includes the ledge if they're expecting you to go for the stage with Side-B.

 

[jtm94]

The /ssbpm tier list isn't even bad. It's better than most things I see regurgitated on here by far.

Kirby lost the CG on floaties?? I thought that was still in... I used to fraud Peach by CGing her until 70% then KOing with fsmash. It was maybe even more braindead than Ganon CG, just on a more annoying character that can CC and avoid grabs at the same time with the still dumbest dash attack in the game. Kirby is neat though... Thinking about it I don't see him used at all..

I still don't get Link being higher tier though. I guess I'll wait to be proven wrong.. They just took everything that was cool away. I used to think Tink was cool too, but now he's so gross feeling. The only changes I didn't like coming into 3.5 and I don't play either character. Oh and Luigi's misfire is absolutely stupid, that's the 3rd and last change I don't like.

 

[Player -0]

Kirby's D-Throw instantly plants opponents onto the floor, like Snake's. This is how it should be to be honest, the Kirby boards were looking for a bit of change in his other throws but idk.

Kirby's dash attack is still amazing, it's just not super dumb anymore.

Link wasn't changed much: Nair (Want old one but egh, dumb balance stuff), item throwing distance (new one is pretty gross), Spin attack changes (I still don't think I've gotten a clear answer from Hylian about the changes, who else is there to ask?), boomerang (so-so), Zair landing lag, etc.

 

[Strong Badam]

you're gonna have a bad time if you're just looking for "justification" for changes. the end result of a character and their changelog is the culmination of months of revision, playtesting, discussion, and compromise between opposing parties with in the DT. there isn't an official, universally agreed upon "reason" for a change due to this, but the DT is generally happy with how characters end up as a whole

if you're curious about why a character's recovery is worse, that's probably because of the whole "recoveries are worse" theme 3.5, posted on our blog in july or august.

 

[Plum]

so how the hell did Olimar happen?

 

[Narpas_sword]

so how the hell did Olimar happen?

because olimar is this guy:

 

[Player -0]

you're gonna have a bad time if you're just looking for "justification" for changes. the end result of a character and their changelog is the culmination of months of revision, playtesting, discussion, and compromise between opposing parties with in the DT. there isn't an official, universally agreed upon "reason" for a change due to this, but the DT is generally happy with how characters end up as a whole

if you're curious about why a character's recovery is worse, that's probably because of the whole "recoveries are worse" theme 3.5, posted on our blog in july or august.

I'm referring specifically to the horizontal momentum of Link's aerial spin attack. In the change log it says nothing about it, it only talks about vertical height but it definitely feels different.

My main problem is when things in the changelog seem (not sure if they are) to be missing, are confusing, or don't give the previous data for the moves (like when changing frame data and knockback on moves).

 

[Cpt.]

I'm curious as to where you guys would put Roy and Marth on a tier list. Which do you think is better (even if slightly)?

 

[9bit]

Roy is god tier broken AF lame tier

perhaps i should elaborate

marth was good in melee because he was the only good character with a sword. he's got disjoint and range. he now has some serious competition in that area. its harder to gimp characters in PM so he loses there, too. in previous versions i would have said marth was slightly better than roy but now it's clear that roy is the better character. maybe.

 

[Narpas_sword]

I'm curious as to where you guys would put Roy and Marth on a tier list. Which do you think is better (even if slightly)?

Im pretty sure this comes up at least every second page.

Roy is looking higher at the moment, if not top.

 

[Strong Badam]

marth was good in melee because he was the only good character with a sword. he's got disjoint and range. he now has some serious competition in that area. its harder to gimp characters in PM so he loses there, too. in previous versions i would have said marth was slightly better than roy but now it's clear that roy is the better character. maybe.

so in previous versions where recoveries were stronger and the disparity between marth and roy's ability to KO consistently was larger, marth was better than roy, and now that marth is better at KOing than in previous versions due to nerfed recoveries, roy is clearly better?
pardon my confusion at your logic pls

 

[Rawkobo]

I find Roy's recovery to be stronger than Marth's due to angling and the fact that Up-B has the potential to punish on-stage edgeguards. Dolphin Slash happens to do a lot less for protecting Marth, despite his sweet ledgegrab box.

I also find that Roy's mixups are a lot better than Marth's, and in a lot of ways he's more capable of dealing with projectiles (though he still runs into some trouble with a few of them).

Although at the moment, I would say Roy > Marth >= Ike in terms of the Fire Emblem trio. Ike's got better recovery and QD, but I feel like he still gets bopped in more matchups than Marth does, and even worse in those where Marth gets bopped.

EDIT: That's not to say I think Roy is immensely better, but in a theoretical metagame where you want to have the best possible options against spacies of all characters, Roy's your boy. Marth is still very much relevant due to having sick combos on floatier characters.

 

[jtm94]

Link's bair doesn't connect like every multihit move in the game besides Ganon nair does. The first hit has way too much KBG and hits people away. It would be a shame if Marth's or Falcon's nair hit people away on the first hit... I was also mainly talking about how his grab isn't very good and they changed the throws when they were fine as they were. Bombs are also gross now, but I just really liked fast item play.

Roy is amazing. I was definitely downplaying Ike, but QD has me shook because theoretically it has more options than Mewtwo's 3.0 teleport. Give it a hitbox while charging and it's Sonic's broken spindash from Wizzrobe era.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

I have to agree with @ DrinkingFood here.

While Fox has a good MU vs Wolf, Wolf has combos on Fox. I think many Wolf palyers aren't that used to comboing that weightclass.
Comboing fastfallers with Wolf only needs standard Wolf fundamentals, and (most important) the ability to do dash shines (either by jumping and shining in the perfect frame or pivot shining which is harder but faster). Shine is the main move to combo them at low %s and if you have to go through your entire dash animation to run-cancel->shine, or if you end up airborne after a dash shine, the combos really don't work.
WD->dash->shine
and up-throw (against no DI or DI in, otherwise dash attack is also possible)->dash->shine
work much better if you can dash shine.

Edgeguarding is indeed much harder for Wolf, he can't chase Fox down properly but has to wait on the ledge or onstage.

 

[GabPR]

Just wanted to say that Tier Lists are dumb and have lost their purpose, carry on.

 

[didds]

Everyone hates a party pooper
Trying to suck up the fun

In the last 3 pages ive gotten at least a few reasonable perspectives on characters I don't know much about, I'd say the thread is serving it's purpose, especially the tier lists that get posted and drive discussion.

 

[GabPR]

Everyone hates a party pooper
Trying to suck up the fun

In the last 3 pages ive gotten at least a few reasonable perspectives on characters I don't know much about, I'd say the thread is serving it's purpose, especially the tier lists that get posted and drive discussion.

All this is atm is a progress on which characters have the most developed meta or has been seen more in tournies, which would not be bad if most people actually... You know... Acted like it.

Like some have said before me, it has ended up being a "Who can beat the top tiers" in a game where most are relatively balanced and the matchups vary. In the end I have seen most people take it like a law and as a result, might tend to shy away from experimenting with other characters which can fair well.

 

[Altea77]

Can someone explain in depth why Marth is worse in PM against top tiers (mainly spacies) than he was in Melee? Like I get that he's lower tier than Melee because of higher competition, but why is he worse against spacies too?

 

[pkblaze]

IMO it's stagelist dependant. Stages like Dreamland, Norfair, and DP are pretty ****ty for Marth vs a lot of characters... If you have to play on one of them in a Bo3 u cri ery teim.

Spacies are ever so slightly weaker but not in many ways that make a difference in the matchup. Shine invincibility is the biggest thing. Fox's upsmash is the next biggest thing.

Sheik vs Marth is easier cuz of the Dthrow/Bthrow thing Sheik has in this game.

But the biggest factor is stages IMO. Having to play on a psuedo-dreamland sucks **** for marth.

 

[Mean Green]

I feel like this is the best time to throw this out there. This thread really needs more MU charts (w/ or w/o help from the character discussion forum) for each character, so that they can be a foundation or influence for the tier lists that get posted. And it needs to have tier lists posted more frequently with thorough explanations behind any updates/changes that the poster made (so that there's less questions/debating, and quicker progress). If you want to keep the discussion as somebody explaining why x beats y to somebody else, or posting/mocking ****ty reddit tier lists, etc., then that's fine. But it's not helping to produce any MU charts, just some words that get forgotten pages later. You have to admit, at the rate this thread is progressing, it will never produce a solid tier list. My 2¢.

 

[Rawkobo]

Just wanted to say that Tier Lists are dumb and have lost their purpose, carry on.

As Mean Green said, matchup charts seem like much more a viable option for this game, because you'll hear people place general power levels on characters and be relatively accurate (I still like Lunchables' new list despite some tiny bits of disagreement coming in the form of certain characters in low-mid), but you'll see someone else come up with an entirely different list that also seems to work in theory.

Although I'm not sure about the accuracy of it, I think Ripple posting a D3 matchup spread is the best thing we can ask for in terms of characters. Each character board having its own matchup spread chart would make it so that we could construct a "list" based on those with optimal matchups for a particular metagame.

Even then, your local metagame has the potential to shape your opinion as well, even with VoDs around. I still think Samus is officially a top tier by not receiving changes that hurt her more than making ice form strictly worse. And the tether, but it's surprisingly easier for mains to play around that if they're smart.

 

[TreK]

I feel like this is the best time to throw this out there. This thread really needs more MU charts (w/ or w/o help from the character discussion forum) for each character, so that they can be a foundation or influence for the tier lists that get posted. And it needs to have tier lists posted more frequently with thorough explanations behind any updates/changes that the poster made (so that there's less questions/debating, and quicker progress). If you want to keep the discussion as somebody explaining why x beats y to somebody else, or posting/mocking ****ty reddit tier lists, etc., then that's fine. But it's not helping to produce any MU charts, just some words that get forgotten pages later. You have to admit, at the rate this thread is progressing, it will never produce a solid tier list. My 2¢.

I started the discussion on Ivy's matchup chart in our subforums yesterday seeing all those beautiful matchup charts in here.
Check it out if you must, but let's just say we're FAR from reaching a consensus, contrarily to what I expected.

 

[Player -0]

I'm referring specifically to the horizontal momentum of Link's aerial spin attack. In the change log it says nothing about it, it only talks about vertical height but it definitely feels different.

My main problem is when things in the changelog seem (not sure if they are) to be missing, are confusing, or don't give the previous data for the moves (like when changing frame data and knockback on moves).

@ Strong Badam

Could I get an answer for this? Whenever I brought this up with @Hylian suddenly the responses became scarce, like the current situation.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

Falco is still really good in pm. He is the worst of the 3 spacies, but he is a lot better than the other characters in high tier

I don't know where to put marth either. I want to say hes high tier but I also want to say hes upper mid.

Roy is godlike. Seriously. He's amazing. I could just gasm all over roy for hours jfkl;jdsklaj;dkj;alkd;kja;l

Lucario is also really good in 3.5, the argument that he has an awful neutral game isn't really good/relevant, its fine lol. His punish game/shield pressure is so insane, the street fighter character in a smash game mechanic makes him ridiculous.

I disagree about Lucario. His punish game is very good but all the potential doesn't mean a hit leads into a KO on top level, at least you can force him to need reads if DIing correctly. The neutral game is key and Lucario's bad horizontal air movement is hurting him.
Mainly, those are reasons why he isn't top tier:
People overrate the importance of Lucario's shield pressure way too much. If you are able to get a comfortable hit on an opponents' shield with Lucario, they probably did something wrong. You have to shield some moves, but not the ones setting up for the shield pressure. The dash attack itself is risky in neutral, and most good Lucario's aim for auraspheres in neutral which I am convinced is a good strategy. The real threat of this strategy (which most players don't realize) is the compromising that happens. If you have some set of acceptable non-transcendental-priority moves, you always have ways to use one of multiple defensive options that barely give you a frame disadvantage, combined with the movement. The problem just starts if players see the auraspheres as the main threat and then get caught offguard by dash attack/grab/run-cancel something...
The aurasperes are barely puished, too. The common way seems to be to mix in some kind of approach after dealing with one aurasphere, but Lucario can easily react to it if he played with the mindset to use the auraspheres as bait and mistake provokers in the first place. There are multiple interesting alternatives: If you are a fast character/quick punisher, you can gradually get closer to Lucario and approach a zone where you can still deal with the auraspheres unpunished but throwing out auraspheres becomes unsafe. If you are at low %s you could try running in "anti-cyclic" (so when the aurasphere is about to get thrown out), crouchcancel and follow up. Other characters have better projectiles than the aurasphere. Lucario's neutral still works on some characters but way too many characters have clear ways to fight it to warrant a top tier placement.

I'd place Lucario in upper mid tier, could maybe accept high tier, but not top tier.

Fox and Wolf are about even vs Marth - Fox/Marth is probably the most balanced matchup in competitive Melee, and Fox got nerfed in PM while Marth got buffed. The maps in PM are slightly better for Fox, which somewhat offsets the Marth buffs and Fox nerfs. Puff loses to him (according to PPMD, a pretty damn reliable source - watch PPU vs Hungrybox if you want to see someone who finally plays this matchup properly), and it's probably too early to call the Lucas MU one way or the other, though it's incredibly easy for Marth to powershield Lucas's projectile and the latter is a great combo weight for Marth as well as having stubby limbs and not being terribly fast horizontally - hallmarks of characters that lose horribly to Marth.

I'm obviously not the ultimate authority, but i'm pretty confident about most of this:


Nearly invalidated by Marth:

Lose badly to Marth:

Lose Moderately to Marth:

Lose slightly to Marth:

Roughly even:

Beat Marth slightly:
?
Beat Marth moderately:

Crushes Marth:
N/A
Invalidates Marth:
hahahahahahahahahah

Putting this character anywhere below the top of 'high' or the bottom of 'top' is still a joke. Falco has more bad matchups, for Christ's sake.

I don't want to put out no reasoning, but also no wall of text for every disagreement, so it would be kind to reply and say which of my disagreements you have questions about or which you cannot understand.

Samus is roughly even. The Melee->PM changes are definitely changing lots of stuff.
Also Peach is probably slighly/moderately losing (like in Melee).
ZSS is roughly even imo.
Squirtle loses either slightly or moderately.
Lucario loses slightly.
Pikachu could beat Marth slightly but I understand if that is still in the roughly even range, depending on where you want to put the borders.

Way I see it, Fox shouldn't have lasers at all. Why give a character a tool that makes it so they dont have to approach at all on top of everything else he already has?

Shine's a whole other problem too

It is probably for design, character identity and Melee reasons, and not for balance reasons.