Tier List Speculation

[Frost | Odds]

[Insert QQ about Fox's fsmash being better than Bowser's]

@Umbreon you think Sheik should be taken down a peg, too?

 

[Deleted member]

[Insert QQ about Fox's fsmash being better than Bowser's]

@Umbreon you think Sheik should be taken down a peg, too?

no, but i also have no illusions about how good she is either. imo sheik is fine atm and i would like to see fox/roy toned down to match her and the rest of the cast buffed up to meet her. imo a good chunk of the cast is like charizard where theres nothing wrong with them but they still feel slightly underpowered so that defenders advantage is just a hair too good. the number one reason i hear people lose is something to the effect of "i couldnt get in" which is generally indicative of low tier syndrome (poor movement and/or conversions and/or punishments). i believe that many characters can be buffed very very slightly to solve this problem while satisfying players because you want to feel like your character is "good" in a general way that a lot of charaters are missing right now because they feel mediocre. i believe this is also totally possible while avoiding the degeneracy we had issues with in the past. for a frame of reference, i think characters like diddy, wolf, lucario, and falco are all fine right now, but you could make a reasonable argument that all four having something with questionable balance aspects (induced tripping, shine, cancel system, and lasers respectively). but i also think we can agree that these characters are above average as well. now that we have a good balanced falco im pretty sure anything is possible.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

no, but i also have no illusions about how good she is either. imo sheik is fine atm and i would like to see fox/roy toned down to match her and the rest of the cast buffed up to meet her. imo a good chunk of the cast is like charizard where theres nothing wrong with them but they still feel slightly underpowered so that defenders advantage is just a hair too good. the number one reason i hear people lose is something to the effect of "i couldnt get in" which is generally indicative of low tier syndrome (poor movement and/or conversions and/or punishments). i believe that many characters can be buffed very very slightly to solve this problem while satisfying players because you want to feel like your character is "good" in a general way that a lot of charaters are missing right now because they feel mediocre. i believe this is also totally possible while avoiding the degeneracy we had issues with in the past. for a frame of reference, i think characters like diddy, wolf, lucario, and falco are all fine right now, but you could make a reasonable argument that all four having something with questionable balance aspects (induced tripping, shine, cancel system, and lasers respectively). but i also think we can agree that these characters are above average as well. now that we have a good balanced falco im pretty sure anything is possible.

I think the point to balance around should rather be the high tiers, so I'd nerf top tiers (where I'd place Sheik) a little, buff upper mid tiers a little etc... I feel if you would balance around Sheik that would work fine for some of the characters but for some characters it would be hard to buff them up so much without making certain aspects of their toolset ridiculous, which they would need in exchange for weaknesses which belong to the design of the aforementioned character.
You are totally right about defender's advantage. Maybe neutral game options that aren't projectiles (otherwise 3.02 syndrome) should receive some small buffs for most of the cast, maybe via movement, maybe via buffs for typical neutral game attacks.

 

[Frost | Odds]

I just watched a few more @ hamyojo games and he's actually a lot better than I'd thought. IDK if what I originally watched was just exceptionally poor play for him or if I was just sleepy or dumb or something.

Props, dude. I still think you could make much better use of the command grab (it really is ridiculous), but you actually do use a lot of the DJC stuff I'd been wanting to see. Given how well you're playing in relation to your results, I'm sure I've been overrating Yoshi in my tier lists.

@ Chesstiger2612 I'd also prefer if balance were around the 'high' tier characters rather than around the tops; to err as far away from the mistakes of 3.02 as possible. Sheik's not completely patently ridiculous, but she could certainly stand a few minor hits in places like ftilt's kb angle, needle charge speed, that sort of thing -- assuming, of course, that the other top tiers are also getting adjustments.

Either way, both she and falco are actually pretty reasonable right now, which IMO is a significant achievement.

 

[JOE!]

Zard's Heatwave (side b) is transcendent, and a giant disjointed multi hit that wouldn't clank and stop anyway (like flamethrower). Can we please make it not transcendent so I can stuff projectiles without a super laggy/poor range flamethrower?

 

[Chesstiger2612]

@ Frost | Odds When it comes about nerfing top tiers, I wouldn't try to generally tone them down a little, but look at the characters that get decimated by them and look what the reason for these uneven matchups is (exception being if a character wins against almost everyone by a little bit, and doesn't cause nearly unwinnable matchups). One has to look at the cases individually, as it could be more efficient to see the winning or the losing character as reason for the disparity.
I don't think that an f-tilt kb angle change would address those issues, as Sheik doesn't give those characters problems with her combos. It is rather that they have significant problems winning the neutral, as they have to make their way to Sheik through needles and as soon as they come close they could get grabbed. On the other hand, she needs the quick needle charging in fast-paced matchups against characters who also have projectiles and have good counters to Sheik's approaches. Charge speed nerfs also have to be looked at in matchups of different pace. Balancing is such a thin wire :/
Anyway, I think Sheik and Falco are reasonable, too.

 

[JOE!]

Zard's Heatwave (side b) is transcendent, and a giant disjointed multi hit that wouldn't clank and stop anyway (like flamethrower). Can we please make it not transcendent so I can stuff projectiles without a super laggy/poor range flamethrower?

Wait, I lied. A better thing would be if flamethrower had its end lag scale with how long you hold it. A small burst (8-12% damage is nothing compared to his other moves) should have minimal lag so you can have an answer to some types of projectiles. Hold ing it in situations where you'd net like 80% or more (usually edge and bad DI) would have the full like 30ish frames it has now which is always punishable.


Point of this being as umbreon said, zard is solid but a smidge under par. A means of stuffing space with say, a burst flame would just let him operate a bit better imo.

 

[Strong Badam]

yeah we can drop the 14 years of metagame development crap, no one says anything about sheik and its ****ing sheik. lots of characters have been the same since melee or even ssb64 and it always comes back to fox being ridiculous. we all recognize the problem, i really don't see what the issue is here. why are we pandering to a subset of players that are overtly asking for poor balance again? the good melee fox players don't even like PM. if you want a game where fox is god, it already exists and D1/GIMR will still play it with you.

*dead* at the ending

 

[Deleted member]

its the truth

don't talk about supporting the community and then pass off on your own for the big N

 

[PlateProp]

yeah we can drop the 14 years of metagame development crap, no one says anything about sheik and its ****ing sheik. lots of characters have been the same since melee or even ssb64 and it always comes back to fox being ridiculous. we all recognize the problem, i really don't see what the issue is here. why are we pandering to a subset of players that are overtly asking for poor balance again? the good melee fox players don't even like PM. if you want a game where fox is god, it already exists and D1/GIMR will still play it with you.

This is going in my sig

 

[PandaPanda Senketsu]

its the truth

don't talk about supporting the community and then pass off on your own for the big N

It's for our own good guys. If they didn't remove pm from vgbootcamp and ban it from major tournaments Nintendo might have done something. We should be thanking them because they are the ones who are really saving our community!

 

[_A1]

VGBC probably prefers PM. It's not like they don't care for the game. They had to choose between a bad situation and an even worse situation, is how I see it.

 

[supascoot]

Nah, most of the players there just wanted to jump to smash 4 as soon as it launched. While people like TK claimed to be "the voice of PM" all you ever see them do is stream smash 4. I find it hard to see them still preferring it when they stopped the streaming of PM as well as deleting well over a years worth of tourney footage

 

[Cubelarooso]

If you love something, you let it go.

 

[DrinkingFood]

They never implied that they were under any current pressure or threat from Nintendo for streaming PM. They removed it preemptively before they even had a reason to remove it. At worst had they kept streaming, they might have been told by Nintendo to stop streaming PM, not stop streaming all together. But in the meantime they could have had additional viewers and stream time, so not only was it a cowardly move it was a really dumb business decision as well.

 

[Boiko]

This hella good Peach player always beats my Ness, and my Tink isn't good enough yet, so I just went Samus...what a good character.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Ice is even better vs peach.

 

[ChiePet]

Peach is always going to be top 8 to me. **** wat ya heard!!
AT-Intensive (High Level) and cocky, dat #Bass (aka Low BAirs) is too stronk.

Wish she had more dedicated players, really glad to see Bladewise still using her, and HankyPanky and Jaden/VaNZ too.


Oh, right. Tier lists..

 

[V3ctorMan]

I'm also curious as to why you rate Yoshi as top tier

Not that I'm complaining

Challenge accepted.

 

[Boiko]

Ice is even better vs peach.

I need more practice with ice mode. Switched it out Game 3 to get a kill when she was at 120, ended up going down 3 stocks to 1, switched to fire made a 3 stock comeback. I believe ice is good though. I just need to use it more.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Challenge accepted.

You gonna actually play him in PM and use the new stuff bruh?

 

[_A1]

Nah, most of the players there just wanted to jump to smash 4 as soon as it launched. While people like TK claimed to be "the voice of PM" all you ever see them do is stream smash 4. I find it hard to see them still preferring it when they stopped the streaming of PM as well as deleting well over a years worth of tourney footage

The thing is, they don't have to like PM over Smash 4(although PM is way better honestly).

 

[Zarek]

Pal up b/landing lag on up b
Bit more landing lag on side b
nair does like 2% less
change d throw somehow (right now with how techs work in pm, it's basically snake dthrow which is silly and he doesn't need it)
nerf jab in some way that jab upsmash is gone but you can still jab reset and thunders combo
then always make shine knock down.

Thats all I'd want to take out of fox's kit. Hed still be high tier, there'd just be a lot more counterplay

I don't think anything should be done to his combo game. If we take away the raw kill power of upsmash and make his recovery more akin to the glass cannon he should be that should balance him out quite well for now. And if he's still OP there's always next patch to tweak things a bit more. But I don't think the flow of fox's play needs to be changed, just made a bit more difficult to get kills and easier to be killed.

 

[jtm94]

I guarantee no matter what you do Fox will still win. Melee players are amazing, and unless you change the character enough so they can't waveshine, nair shine, drill shine, upthrow uair, or Upsmash they will still win. Obviously if Fox was "new" he wouldn't win as much. Example, see Wolf, but there is something inherently unfair about about having characters in the game people have been practicing for over a DECADE. His existence, and the existence of every other solid melee character is problematic to the balance of Project M and nothing will fix that.

Make any KO move weaker and he will just laser more. Make his recovery weaker, but you still can't touch him. The only way to fix Fox is for every character to be developed in a "healthy" manner without steroids(see 3.02) or for him to be redesigned, not slapped on the wrist. Melee Fox players are used to playing high stakes games against Fox. If they play against any PM character as if they are facing Fox they cannot lose, because no character is that good. They make PM players sound like scrubs while failing to realize how bad Fox beats everyone. No character has a different shield, and he can do the same things to every shield, and out speed everyone with his superior dash.

You can't put a toddler up against a teenager in a foot race, and then when the toddler loses tell him to get faster we'll have the teenager wear ankle weights so it's fair.

 

[hamyojo]

I just watched a few more @ hamyojo games and he's actually a lot better than I'd thought. IDK if what I originally watched was just exceptionally poor play for him or if I was just sleepy or dumb or something.

Props, dude. I still think you could make much better use of the command grab (it really is ridiculous), but you actually do use a lot of the DJC stuff I'd been wanting to see. Given how well you're playing in relation to your results, I'm sure I've been overrating Yoshi in my tier lists.

Heh. Cool. Glad you can see how much I've done with that dumb dino.

Challenge accepted.

You're not allowed to play PM until you play more Melee again! Buuuut if you do play PM that'd be pretty sick~

 

[steelguttey]

ima make a new tier list cus im bored. if theres a * next to the name of the tier then it is in order.

top*:
high:
high-mid: (fixed)
mid: (without recovery)
low-mid*:
bottom*:

notes:

Spoiler: top

: im not even gonna say anything cus if i do the next 30 pages will be more fox discussion
: ridiculous neutral and shield pressure and 0-death combos on most characters

Spoiler: high

: probably 3rd best in the game? idk. has a good matchup with jank brawl characters and only really loses to spacies
: dacus+agt make her silly in this game, really slept on and is a pretty different character compared to melee
: has a good matchup with everyone that isnt high-mid or higher, and still ahs a good matchiup with most of high-mid
:dumb neutral, dumb speed and dumb matchjups
: big dumb sword and big dumb neutral and good mu spread
: got nerfed but still slept on. nair is stupid and shadowball is still dumb.
: endless paragraphs have been typed about this character on this thread, i dont need to go into details
: top is stupid, controls more space than it should. completely shuts down characters like luigi and quirtle who have to move through the ground.
: missiles are ridiculous and rollie pollie gives her good mobility and she can deal with floaties now
: neutral is as amazing as ever, has trouble with brawl gimmicks tho. **** recovery.
: #treeblade
: projectiles are dumb, up-b is dumber

Spoiler: high-mid

: has little to no neutral but combo game 2silly
: big punishes and hitboxes but nerfed dmg
: really good pressure and combos but no oos options and sux against top platform camp
: peanuts are silly and banana still controls space, although not to the extent of rob top
: see gnw
: goes fast and gimps fools
: **** recovery but ridiculous projectile and new pm stuff is cool
: slow and has bad ways with dealing with pressure but is really good at edgeguarding and combos
: is gonna be really good when theyre fixed but theyre trash rn cus of bugs
: still a jack of all trades and fireballs are hella
: slow with no oos options but so stupidly good at edgeguarding

Spoiler: mid

: olimar is mid tier until he has to recover. but because right now his recovery is so bad he is in bottom tier. rip.
: no neutral, still has problems against projectiles cus cape sux but when he gets in he should get a stock in 6 hits
: still has hella polarizing matchups and dumb stuff but has trouble against pressure
: bair is silly, dtilt is free edgeguard cus the angle it sends you at and dthrow is kill
: nerfed real hard but still has big damage and projectiles so hes here
: you have to sweetspot everything to do anything with this character
: has a really dumb and weird matchup spread
: combos into resets all day but bad oos options and has trouble with the space above her head
: autocombos and ridiculously good punishes but bad neutral
: has good matchups with melee characters still but brawl jank screws with her
: most mobile character in the game but has bad matchup against big hitboxes

Spoiler: low-mid

: good disjoints and combo game but is really big and combo-food
: grab combos make my dong expand but lost nair-dtilt which was some dumb pressure and has bad oos options
: lost zip-zip and can only zip now so recovery isnt free but b reverse thunder is crazy and nair is sweet
: got nerfed really hard but arrows are still dumb

Spoiler: bottom

: combo food but yoshis story is cool
: absolutely broken right now, see above

 

[MudkipUniverse]

ima make a new tier list cus im bored. if theres a * next to the name of the tier then it is in order.

top*:
high:
high-mid: (fixed)
mid: (without recovery)
low-mid*:
bottom*:

notes:

Spoiler: top

: im not even gonna say anything cus if i do the next 30 pages will be more fox discussion
: ridiculous neutral and shield pressure and 0-death combos on most characters

Spoiler: high

: probably 3rd best in the game? idk. has a good matchup with jank brawl characters and only really loses to spacies
: dacus+agt make her silly in this game, really slept on and is a pretty different character compared to melee
: has a good matchup with everyone that isnt high-mid or higher, and still ahs a good matchiup with most of high-mid
:dumb neutral, dumb speed and dumb matchjups
: big dumb sword and big dumb neutral and good mu spread
: got nerfed but still slept on. nair is stupid and shadowball is still dumb.
: endless paragraphs have been typed about this character on this thread, i dont need to go into details
: top is stupid, controls more space than it should. completely shuts down characters like luigi and quirtle who have to move through the ground.
: missiles are ridiculous and rollie pollie gives her good mobility and she can deal with floaties now
: neutral is as amazing as ever, has trouble with brawl gimmicks tho. **** recovery.
: #treeblade
: projectiles are dumb, up-b is dumber

Spoiler: high-mid

: has little to no neutral but combo game 2silly
: big punishes and hitboxes but nerfed dmg
: really good pressure and combos but no oos options and sux against top platform camp
: peanuts are silly and banana still controls space, although not to the extent of rob top
: see gnw
: goes fast and gimps fools
: **** recovery but ridiculous projectile and new pm stuff is cool
: slow and has bad ways with dealing with pressure but is really good at edgeguarding and combos
: is gonna be really good when theyre fixed but theyre trash rn cus of bugs
: still a jack of all trades and fireballs are hella
: slow with no oos options but so stupidly good at edgeguarding

Spoiler: mid

: olimar is mid tier until he has to recover. but because right now his recovery is so bad he is in bottom tier. rip.
: no neutral, still has problems against projectiles cus cape sux but when he gets in he should get a stock in 6 hits
: still has hella polarizing matchups and dumb stuff but has trouble against pressure
: bair is silly, dtilt is free edgeguard cus the angle it sends you at and dthrow is kill
: nerfed real hard but still has big damage and projectiles so hes here
: you have to sweetspot everything to do anything with this character
: has a really dumb and weird matchup spread
: combos into resets all day but bad oos options and has trouble with the space above her head
: autocombos and ridiculously good punishes but bad neutral
: has good matchups with melee characters still but brawl jank screws with her
: most mobile character in the game but has bad matchup against big hitboxes

Spoiler: low-mid

: good disjoints and combo game but is really big and combo-food
: grab combos make my dong expand but lost nair-dtilt which was some dumb pressure and has bad oos options
: lost zip-zip and can only zip now so recovery isnt free but b reverse thunder is crazy and nair is sweet
: got nerfed really hard but arrows are still dumb

Spoiler: bottom

: combo food but yoshis story is cool
: absolutely broken right now, see above

this is the tier list that I most agree with.

 

[eideeiit]

The only thing I can say for sure is that Ness and Lucas should be switched.

 

[Frost | Odds]

@ steelguttey I'll be the first to say that Bowser is quite bad, but putting him in the 'totally broken' tier with ICs and Olimar is kinda silly, I think. He's not on the same level as the other characters in low-mid, but not quite unusable. Bowser's kind of in a similar spot to Melee Luigi where he could theoretically win a Melee national if he just outplayed the absolute hell out of everyone, but his opponents would need to make an awful lot of uncharacteristic mistakes - plus his matchups will get worse and worse over time as people better understand how to play against him.

Give the boy his own tier and put a big, badass castle on it surrounded with lava and stuff. He'd like that.

 

[steelguttey]

@ steelguttey I'll be the first to say that Bowser is quite bad, but putting him in the 'totally broken' tier with ICs and Olimar is kinda silly, I think. He's not on the same level as the other characters in low-mid, but not quite unusable. Bowser's kind of in a similar spot to Melee Luigi where he could theoretically win a Melee national if he just outplayed the absolute hell out of everyone, but his opponents would need to make an awful lot of uncharacteristic mistakes - plus his matchups will get worse and worse over time as people better understand how to play against him.

Give the boy his own tier and put a big, badass castle on it surrounded with lava and stuff. He'd like that.

bottom isnt a "totally broken" tier but more of a "you ****ing suck" tier. i didnt want to put him in low-mid is all

EDIT: on the topic of shiek and peach and how they have years of development like melee characters, i wouldnt agree like i would with puff or spacies.

shiek and peach are conditional characters and have alot of matchup specific stuff that hasn't been developed yet. give it time and they'll be high tier and better then their melee editions

 

[Yambotico]

Honestly I don't think pikachu should be this low. Compared to melee, he has a stronger uair, better bair, and can stil qac his first zip. His upsmash is also better than foxs. Compared to the rest of the cast his spacie matchup isn't too bad either. I believe pika is mid tier

 

[Zarek]

I guarantee no matter what you do Fox will still win. Melee players are amazing, and unless you change the character enough so they can't waveshine, nair shine, drill shine, upthrow uair, or Upsmash they will still win. Obviously if Fox was "new" he wouldn't win as much. Example, see Wolf, but there is something inherently unfair about about having characters in the game people have been practicing for over a DECADE. His existence, and the existence of every other solid melee character is problematic to the balance of Project M and nothing will fix that.

Make any KO move weaker and he will just laser more. Make his recovery weaker, but you still can't touch him. The only way to fix Fox is for every character to be developed in a "healthy" manner without steroids(see 3.02) or for him to be redesigned, not slapped on the wrist. Melee Fox players are used to playing high stakes games against Fox. If they play against any PM character as if they are facing Fox they cannot lose, because no character is that good. They make PM players sound like scrubs while failing to realize how bad Fox beats everyone. No character has a different shield, and he can do the same things to every shield, and out speed everyone with his superior dash.

You can't put a toddler up against a teenager in a foot race, and then when the toddler loses tell him to get faster we'll have the teenager wear ankle weights so it's fair.

It should be obvious that taking away something from a character makes them worse and in foxes case more balanced. You talk like fox is impossible to beat when that's clearly not even true now and that he needs an overhaul to make him a fair character because you can't compete with him. Honestly rather than offering insight you just seem salty about fox in general.

 

[Boiko]

A few pages back I said I think that Peach is low-mid tier. I take back everything I said. Malachi has been cleaning everyone up. Tonight he beat me, Gurukid, and StereoKiDD. He was double eliminated by Frozen. But like, dang Peach in that dude's hands is frightening.

 

[Zarek]

A few pages back I said I think that Peach is low-mid tier. I take back everything I said. Malachi has been cleaning everyone up. Tonight he beat me, Gurukid, and StereoKiDD. He was double eliminated by Frozen. But like, dang Peach in that dude's hands is frightening.

It certainly seems like a pattern where the less a character is represented in the pm scene the lower they're rated on tier lists

 

[Boiko]

It certainly seems like a pattern where the less a character is represented in the pm scene the lower they're rated on tier lists

Unless it's Samus.

 

[mimgrim]

Unless it's Samus.

Or Lucario.

Or Mewtwo.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Gyro isn't why ROB beats most of the characters he beats, he should have a very hard time getting it out in fact without choosing to drop a combo or edgeguard to do so, or without taking a stock or losing one. Trying to do so in neutral should just him ****ed or the gyro taken away. It's really good against slow fatties tho

 

[Deleted member]

I don't think he really drops an edge guard when he pulls a gyro, because then he LETS IT RIP and hits them

 

[TreK]

I agree with Steelguttey's tier list except for ZSS
Maybe it's just that I get to play Mahie pretty often and Leffen occasionally and both of those guys are godlike though.

Also yes Peach is hella good. Highest win rate in the game but nobody plays her. And she's still got a looot of potential thanks to the Brawl stuff.

 

[DrinkingFood]

I don't think he really drops an edge guard when he pulls a gyro, because then he LETS IT RIP and hits them

You're right, but it's not like he gets it for use in neutral, in that scenario. I was more referring to knocking someone across and off the stage, where you can then either try to suffocate them at the ledge grab without a gyro or let them back on in exchange for a gyro