Tier List Speculation

[Cia]

S Tier: Winning a tournament near you.
A Tier: When they S tiers are away..

B Tier: Hidden Bosses
C tier: The "WTF happened" tier
Pokemon Tier.
* Don't know enough about these guys.
** ZSS prolly actually belongs in B tier. But srsly, she didn't deserve that. WTF

 

[trash?]

I like being rude to zelda players, and I like looking at people in hindsight, so I'd like to leave this gfy here

y'all have literally been given rose orbs from street fighter. how is that not amazing

 

[Frost | Odds]

@ Cia I know you're a great player, and I've seen (and made) bad lists before, but I think that's the first one that I could ever describe as offensive. Uh, congratulations?

 

[GabPR]

Most Melee Top tiers meta development -

Spoiler

Rest of the cast meta development (most) -

Spoiler

It will take a while before the cast gets a chance to develop (And to actually get good players to showcase them or existing ones to get better) but nonetheless I'm happy to see that people are starting to have a harder time placing characters, and the worst ones are actually average and not bad.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Most Melee Top tiers meta development -

Spoiler

Rest of the cast meta development (most) -

Spoiler

This characterization is pretty common, and has an element of truth, but is also highly misleading. While the overall utility of melee characters' movesets have been explored pretty thoroughly, this is expressed so far only in their matchups against other melee characters. Melee top tiers' matchups against new or newly viable characters in PM are no more developed than those of the new characters themselves - not even counting new abilities (like RAR, DACUS, etc); pretending that PM characters are going to get stronger over time as their metas develop while the melee top tiers will simply stagnate, is pretty silly.

 

[GabPR]

This characterization is pretty common, and has an element of truth, but is also highly misleading. While the overall utility of melee characters' movesets have been explored pretty thoroughly, this is expressed so far only in their matchups against other melee characters. Melee top tiers' matchups against new or newly viable characters in PM are no more developed than those of the new characters themselves - not even counting new abilities (like RAR, DACUS, etc); pretending that PM characters are going to get stronger over time as their metas develop while the melee top tiers will simply stagnate, is pretty silly.

Time will tell, but I believe the posibility exists, even if the odds are against it.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

This characterization is pretty common, and has an element of truth, but is also highly misleading. While the overall utility of melee characters' movesets have been explored pretty thoroughly, this is expressed so far only in their matchups against other melee characters. Melee top tiers' matchups against new or newly viable characters in PM are no more developed than those of the new characters themselves - not even counting new abilities (like RAR, DACUS, etc); pretending that PM characters are going to get stronger over time as their metas develop while the melee top tiers will simply stagnate, is pretty silly.

So basically the deep sea is not explored yet in either, speaking in that analogy.

 

[Boiko]

@ Cia I know you're a great player, and I've seen (and made) bad lists before, but I think that's the first one that I could ever describe as offensive. Uh, congratulations?

I actually like his list, sans a small handful of changes, but eh, ya know, I see you.

 

[Cia]

@ Cia I know you're a great player, and I've seen (and made) bad lists before, but I think that's the first one that I could ever describe as offensive. Uh, congratulations?

haha. my opinions are.. unconventional.

 

[Boiko]

haha. my opinions are.. unconventional.

Are yours in order within their tiers?

 

[Binary Clone]

S Tier: Winning a tournament near you.
A Tier: When they S tiers are away..

B Tier: Hidden Bosses
C tier: The "WTF happened" tier
Pokemon Tier.
* Don't know enough about these guys.
** ZSS prolly actually belongs in B tier. But srsly, she didn't deserve that. WTF

I don't think I can take a list seriously when Sonic is in the same tier as Ike, and Jigglypuff in the same tier as Roy.

Plus the fact that there's a "Pokemon Tier"

 

[GabPR]

I don't think I can take a list seriously when Sonic is in the same tier as Ike, and Jigglypuff in the same tier as Roy.

Plus the fact that there's a "Pokemon Tier"

Im curious, why would Sonic not be in the same tier as Ike?

 

[Keman]

Im curious, why would Sonic not be in the same tier as Ike?

Quickdraw? Better tourny results? That big sword?

I really don't know but I thought it was pretty accepted in the community that Ike was very high on the tier list in 3.5 and thus giving merit to him being above Sanic.

 

[jtm94]

I'm,"salty" because I said 10 years of developed meta is unfair. People will never surprise me. It's like Putting Deoxys and all his forms into the bottom used Pokemon tier and telling them to learn the MU. It's laughable.

Yo I agree with VaNz tier list. I honestly don't think Ness is that bad, I'd also put Luigi with the hidden bosses.

And Sonic's run speed is basically QD + he has SideB.

 

[KhanYe]

Sonic is still amazing. Belongs in high tier just as much as Ike does. Sonic has similar burst movement, better dash dance, a hard-to-punish approach, super solid combo game, and great kill setups. Not much to complain about with Sonic besides maybe dealing with swordies, which isn't that big of a deal.

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

I dont think you are aware of 20ikeike

 

[Boiko]

I'm,"salty" because I said 10 years of developed meta is unfair. People will never surprise me. It's like Putting Deoxys and all his forms into the bottom used Pokemon tier and telling them to learn the MU. It's laughable.

Yo I agree with VaNz tier list. I honestly don't think Ness is that bad, I'd also put Luigi with the hidden bosses.

And Sonic's run speed is basically QD + he has SideB.

Ness is definitely slept on good and VaNz has arguably the best Ness experience since he plays with me and Stereo.

 

[KhanYe]

Ness is definitely slept on good and VaNz has arguably the best Ness experience since he plays with me and Stereo.

Who does Ness have good matchups with, out of curiosity? I know he does okay vs. the spacies compared to the rest of the cast, but idk how many positive matchups he really has.

 

[GabPR]

Sonic is still amazing. Belongs in high tier just as much as Ike does. Sonic has similar burst movement, better dash dance, a hard-to-punish approach, super solid combo game, and great kill setups. Not much to complain about with Sonic besides maybe dealing with swordies, which isn't that big of a deal.

Not to mention great recovery which works on par with his menacing edgeguarding tools.

 

[Keman]

People talking about Ness being good, is NZA's opinion on Ness really that far off from what others feel?

(as seen here)

 

[Chesstiger2612]

I really don't think Ness is good, but habits from playing against Ness in 3.02 can hinder you (fearing PK fire or magnet tricks too much for example) from punishing him correctly and that is what can still help Ness right now.

 

[PlateProp]

From what i've seen, the only person who doesn't play Ness as PK fire thw character is Tetra.

 

[Binary Clone]

Im curious, why would Sonic not be in the same tier as Ike?

To preface, I'm by no means a Sonic main, and my Roy just got bodied in my last tournament by @Solharath because I had no MU knowledge then, and he's just a much better player than me.

That being said, I don't think Sonic is A tier.

He has a good boost grab and can grab out of side-b, and he has good edgeguarding skills with his fair meteor and sometimes his cool dair spike. But Sonic has zero disjoints and very short range. Though he has high speed and a great dashdance, he's not actually much faster than Fox in any way that's meaningful, IIRC. His recovery is also not as good as people think it is. It's incredibly easy to edgeguard because you have such little air control after the upB, which doesn't really have a sweetspot, since his hangtime has no ledgegrab box, so WDing to the ledge to kill Sonic is simple.

Contrast to Ike. Ike has burst movement options that have more coverage+disjoint than Sonic in QD, out of which you can WD, grab, usmash, RAR, pivot grab, jump, or QD attack. He has massive disjoints and huge horizontal and vertical recovery, which can both be used in one recovery by walljumping out of QD. His recovery has similar range to Sonic's, but is much, much harder to edgeguard. It goes very high still, and he has a useful walljump, so he can often recover onstage if he has to. He can sweetspot, and the only way to ledgehog him is to grab edge just before he tosses his sword up and roll right before your invincibility runs out, because otherwise the tossed sword will hit you. If you don't have a disjoint, you'll probably struggle to hit him out of his upB no matter what. He also has chaingrabs and pseudo chaingrabs, DI mixup throws into kill/combo setups, a meteor/spike aerial, an armored spike in his nB, amazing offstage game granted by massive disjoints and good recovery, and kill options off the top. He has a jab combo that nets him a free grab. One of the best nairs in the game, probably.

I'm sure @Solharath or someone could correct me on some of this, but I'm fairly sure Ike is much better than Sonic overall.

 

[Boiko]

Who does Ness have good matchups with, out of curiosity? I know he does okay vs. the spacies compared to the rest of the cast, but idk how many positive matchups he really has.

If I had to make a MU chart it would look something like this:

-3: (35:65)
-2: (40:60)
-1: (45:55)
0: (50:50)
+1: (55:45)
+2: (60:40)
+3: (65:35)

Some up for debaters are Luigi being worse for Ness, Lucas being worse for Ness, Lucario being better for Ness, Kirby being worse for Ness, Marth being worse for Ness.

Something like that.

 

[Boiko]

People talking about Ness being good, is NZA's opinion on Ness really that far off from what others feel?

(as seen here)

I don't have audio, but I believe I recall NZA saying Ness was bottom 5, which is just far from true.

 

[Cia]

Are yours in order within their tiers?

For the most part, tho I can see myself changing my mind later on a few.

Im guess ppl have the biggest problem with my placing on puff. But rest is too strong of a tool to be slept on and alot of people underestimate how game changing it can be.

As for ness.. lol. I don't have time to list all the things he has going for him. absurd combo game, defensive/combo/mobility/approach tool in the form of PK fire. PK Cloud (Neutral B?) safely exhausts a recovery option when falling. Disjointed Fair, kill grab, grab to kill move options, amazing recovery distance.. etc

The list goes on. Ness is in a very good place right now.

 

[jtm94]

Oh NZA, you card. If Awestin was the best and didn't use tech skill, that means the character still has a ways to go and is as figured out as he says. We have Awestin who just wins, and Tetra who just goes in.

Sonic has the same abilities out of SideB that Ike has out of QD, it isn't as fast, as far, nor does he have disjoint, but the way it drags you off stage and can't be CCd is really good. He also has other movement options in the form of DownB..... OHBOY, my training partner has started doing this thing where if I mixup teching with not teching, or even if he reads the tech he reads it or causes getup by charging Sonic's DownB and then once he lets go immediately jumps into KO move. Falcon doesn't have disjoints, good recovery, or movement options and he's still contender for being tops. It's also worth noting that at worst Sonic's dair is -9 on shield, his other aerials are -7, -6, or better. I think the frame data thread has nair as being +, but I can't figure out the timing to achieve it. I'm assuming autocancel.

 

[Narpas_sword]

PK Cloud (Neutral B?).

Flash.
PK Flash.

Almost as annoying as people calling Sheik's needles "darts" or "daggers".

 

[Binary Clone]

Here's mine, fairly close to Lunchables'

S tier:
A+ tier:
A tier:
A- tier:
B tier:
Not quite working tier:
lol imar:


I'm definitely not satisfied with it, though.

 

[KhanYe]

If I had to make a MU chart it would look something like this:

-3: (35:65)
-2: (40:60)
-1: (45:55)
0: (50:50)
+1: (55:45)
+2: (60:40)
+3: (65:35)

Some up for debaters are Luigi being worse for Ness, Lucas being worse for Ness, Lucario being better for Ness, Kirby being worse for Ness, Marth being worse for Ness.

Something like that.

I'm surprised you think he beats Diddy, Kirby, Link, Jiggly, Sonic, or Ivy tbh. Isn't the edgeguard basically free for all of those characters? You may know better than I do, I'd just like to hear your reasoning on those being plus matchups for Ness.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

I don't know if I am the only one who is annoyed by this, but I don't like if the tier lists are very asymmetric. I don't think it is acceptable if you have >2/3 of characters in upper mid or higher because by definition that is not the mid, or having double as many characters in top and high as in bottom and low.
I can understand that naming characters bottom and low tier can create associations of unviability but one will get used to it. To me it sounds as silly as naming them top tier, super top tier, god tier and super god tier, kind of...

 

[KhanYe]

I don't know if I am the only one who is annoyed by this, but I don't like if the tier lists are very asymmetric. I don't think it is acceptable if you have >2/3 of characters in upper mid or higher because by definition that is not the mid, or having double as many characters in top and high as in bottom and low.
I can understand that naming characters bottom and low tier can create associations of unviability but one will get used to it. To me it sounds as silly as naming them top tier, super top tier, god tier and super god tier, kind of...

The reason it's that way is because characters in B tier are still viable against a lot of characters. For example, in the tier list that was just posted, Jigglypuff was B-tier. However, Jigglypuff can win against a lot of the cast, especially the top tier, and she doesn't do badly against most characters. It's not like Melee where the worst characters legit don't have more than six good matchups, in PM, they did a great job of making almost every character relatively viable. Thus, it wouldn't be fair to label the worst characters as D-rated or F-rated characters.

 

[mimgrim]

I don't know if I am the only one who is annoyed by this, but I don't like if the tier lists are very asymmetric. I don't think it is acceptable if you have >2/3 of characters in upper mid or higher because by definition that is not the mid, or having double as many characters in top and high as in bottom and low.
I can understand that naming characters bottom and low tier can create associations of unviability but one will get used to it. To me it sounds as silly as naming them top tier, super top tier, god tier and super god tier, kind of...

This is why I don't label tiers when I get bored enough to make one. :L

 

[GabPR]

To preface, I'm by no means a Sonic main, and my Roy just got bodied in my last tournament by @Solharath because I had no MU knowledge then, and he's just a much better player than me.

That being said, I don't think Sonic is A tier.

He has a good boost grab and can grab out of side-b, and he has good edgeguarding skills with his fair meteor and sometimes his cool dair spike. But Sonic has zero disjoints and very short range. Though he has high speed and a great dashdance, he's not actually much faster than Fox in any way that's meaningful, IIRC. His recovery is also not as good as people think it is. It's incredibly easy to edgeguard because you have such little air control after the upB, which doesn't really have a sweetspot, since his hangtime has no ledgegrab box, so WDing to the ledge to kill Sonic is simple.

Contrast to Ike. Ike has burst movement options that have more coverage+disjoint than Sonic in QD, out of which you can WD, grab, usmash, RAR, pivot grab, jump, or QD attack. He has massive disjoints and huge horizontal and vertical recovery, which can both be used in one recovery by walljumping out of QD. His recovery has similar range to Sonic's, but is much, much harder to edgeguard. It goes very high still, and he has a useful walljump, so he can often recover onstage if he has to. He can sweetspot, and the only way to ledgehog him is to grab edge just before he tosses his sword up and roll right before your invincibility runs out, because otherwise the tossed sword will hit you. If you don't have a disjoint, you'll probably struggle to hit him out of his upB no matter what. He also has chaingrabs and pseudo chaingrabs, DI mixup throws into kill/combo setups, a meteor/spike aerial, an armored spike in his nB, amazing offstage game granted by massive disjoints and good recovery, and kill options off the top. He has a jab combo that nets him a free grab. One of the best nairs in the game, probably.

I'm sure @Solharath or someone could correct me on some of this, but I'm fairly sure Ike is much better than Sonic overall.

You do seem to have been misinformed on the character, so I will fill in the gaps.

Sonic does have the disjoint on his Fsmash, which serves as a good edgeguarding option against characters who tend to sweetspot ledge and beats a lot of moves. A sonic should not be using up b first to recover in the first place, and should only be used as a last resort. Here is my short list on recovery options for sonic, which are rarely used by most players I have seen in 3.5:

• Blast attack - to sweetspot ledge its fast and it snaps the ledge quick, hard tor eact to.
• side b - Can grab the ledge and you can cancel it quickly by holding back, in which you can then jump out of it (including spinshot), homing/blast attack and up b
• Spinshot- You can spin shot straight to the ledge and grab it, wall jump or do any other setup with b moves
• up b- As a last resort, but can serve as mix ups. For extra on stage coverage, you can reverse up b so when you land on stage you dair, covering more space (still more unsafe than the rest of the moves mentioned)
• homing attack
• Dair - If you are up high, you can use dair for mixups, since if you dair high enough, you can grab the ledge after the end of the animation.

Now, lets see what ikes have in terms of recovery:

• Side b- Wall jump in walled stages and sweetspot the ledge
• Normal double jump
• up b -

In my own biased opinion, and you can correct me if you have a valid argument, Ike has an extremely predictable horizontal and vertical recovery compared to Sonic's. People are too afraid to realize that all Ike can do in a certain distance is side b so a neat thing you can do is just jump offstage and try to remain in a horizontal position to Ike while he charges quickdraw. Once you see him let go hit him and come back on stage. This is easiest for floaties and even other weight classes, characters such as fox or falco have a much riskier time to do this, so most spacie players (which may conform the majority) will rarely edgeguard them and just let him back to the stage or let him wall jump. Maybe this is why people have the ilusion that ike recovery is overly good. (ofc you can also ban walled stages like GHZ and warios, for a much simpler matchup).

tl:dr- Sonic recovery is underestimated greatly, and Ike recovery is overestimated greatly.

Edit- I forgot to mention, you can airdodge out of most of what I just said with sonic, think about it.

 

[Binary Clone]

You do seem to have been misinformed on the character, so I will fill in the gaps.

Sonic does have the disjoint on his Fsmash, which serves as a good edgeguarding option against characters who tend to sweetspot ledge and beats a lot of moves. A sonic should not be using up b first to recover in the first place, and should only be used as a last resort. Here is my short list on recovery options for sonic, which are rarely used by most players I have seen in 3.5:

• Blast attack - to sweetspot ledge its fast and it snaps the ledge quick, hard tor eact to.
• side b - Can grab the ledge and you can cancel it quickly by holding back, in which you can then jump out of it (including spinshot), homing/blast attack and up b
• Spinshot- You can spin shot straight to the ledge and grab it, wall jump or do any other setup with b moves
• up b- As a last resort, but can serve as mix ups. For extra on stage coverage, you can reverse up b so when you land on stage you dair, covering more space (still more unsafe than the rest of the moves mentioned)
• homing attack
• Dair - If you are up high, you can use dair for mixups, since if you dair high enough, you can grab the ledge after the end of the animation.

Now, lets see what ikes have in terms of recovery:

• Side b- Wall jump in walled stages and sweetspot the ledge
• Normal double jump
• up b -

In my own biased opinion, and you can correct me if you have a valid argument, Ike has an extremely predictable horizontal and vertical recovery compared to Sonic's. People are too afraid to realize that all Ike can do in a certain distance is side b so a neat thing you can do is just jump offstage and try to remain in a horizontal position to Ike while he charges quickdraw. Once you see him let go hit him and come back on stage. This is easiest for floaties and even other weight classes, characters such as fox or falco have a much riskier time to do this, so most spacie players (which may conform the majority) will rarely edgeguard them and just let him back to the stage or let him wall jump. Maybe this is why people have the ilusion that ike recovery is overly good. (ofc you can also ban walled stages like GHZ and warios, for a much simpler matchup).

tl:dr- Sonic recovery is underestimated greatly, and Ike recovery is overestimated greatly.

Edit- I forgot to mention, you can airdodge out of most of what I just said with sonic, think about it.

Even if I don't argue any of those points, I still don't think Sonic is on par with Ike. The recovery differences was one piece of my post about the comparison, and even if I were to say Sonic's recovery is better than Ike's, I don't think that's enough to make up for the rest of it.

 

[Keman]

just jump offstage and try to remain in a horizontal position to Ike while he charges quickdraw.

Wait how do you do this with someone other then a character with multiple jumps? and can't Ike just jump out of QD and Nair or Fair to punish people off stage if he absolutely had to or something? maybe I am looking at it with to simple of a mindset though

Edit: I have to agree with Binary here, but maybe one day someone will actually decide to play Sanic in tourney play and show us what he is capable of >.>

 

[Binary Clone]

Wait how do you do this with someone other then a character with multiple jumps? and can't Ike just jump out of QD and Nair or Fair to punish people off stage if he absolutely had to or something? maybe I am looking at it with to simple of a mindset though

He's talking about as Ike is charging QD offstage, where he can't jump out of it. If you do that, he's forced to either go past you where you can hit him, or hit you with the QD attack and go into helpless.

 

[Boiko]

I'm surprised you think he beats Diddy, Kirby, Link, Jiggly, Sonic, or Ivy tbh. Isn't the edgeguard basically free for all of those characters? You may know better than I do, I'd just like to hear your reasoning on those being plus matchups for Ness.

Diddy he can chain grab and string up airs on for days. A single grab can guarantee upwards of 80 percent on Diddy. Plus, edge guarding Diddy is insanely easy with ftilt, magnet, dsmash, and rising nair. Diddy almost HAS to use his banana in the MU, and if Ness gets a hold of it, which is relatively easy to do, and he forces Diddy to have to get around him to get it, he has a very hard time.

Kirby is tough. Neither character can combo each other particularly hard, so it kind of just comes down to trading hits in the neutral, in which case, Ness has better hits that lead to more. Plus, he can combat sideways cutter very easily and basically gimp Kirby.

Link he combos to death. Dthrow>fair>mag>dair is guaranteed until high percentage and then gimping Link's recovery is pretty simple.

Jigglypuff has a really hard time dealing with Ness' DJC and projectile spam. Like, Jiggs is so slow, Ness can literally throw out a PKFlash safely.

Sonic has a hard time dealing with yoyo and yoyo edge guards and spaced fair in the neutral gives a hard time trying to get in. Like, I almost beat Wizzy at Zenith by just spacing fair in the neutral.

Ivy is tough, but you can SDI bair and she has a remarkably hard time getting Ness off stage in the first place.

Sorry, I'm at work otherwise I'd write more.

 

[Keman]

He's talking about as Ike is charging QD offstage, where he can't jump out of it. If you do that, he's forced to either go past you where you can hit him, or hit you with the QD attack and go into helpless.

ah ok yeah that does make sense, just get out there and throw a hit box out. I gotcha now

 

[GabPR]

Even if I don't argue any of those points, I still don't think Sonic is on par with Ike. The recovery differences was one piece of my post about the comparison, and even if I were to say Sonic's recovery is better than Ike's, I don't think that's enough to make up for the rest of it.

From what you may or may not have seen, then your reasoning can be understandable.

Oh NZA, you card. If Awestin was the best and didn't use tech skill, that means the character still has a ways to go and is as figured out as he says. We have Awestin who just wins, and Tetra who just goes in.

Sonic has the same abilities out of SideB that Ike has out of QD, it isn't as fast, as far, nor does he have disjoint, but the way it drags you off stage and can't be CCd is really good. He also has other movement options in the form of DownB..... OHBOY, my training partner has started doing this thing where if I mixup teching with not teching, or even if he reads the tech he reads it or causes getup by charging Sonic's DownB and then once he lets go immediately jumps into KO move. Falcon doesn't have disjoints, good recovery, or movement options and he's still contender for being tops. It's also worth noting that at worst Sonic's dair is -9 on shield, his other aerials are -7, -6, or better. I think the frame data thread has nair as being +, but I can't figure out the timing to achieve it. I'm assuming autocancel.

its +1 on shield if you hit the sweetspot just before you l-cancel. One of his fastest options after that is to dash attack cancel grab on shield using c-stick (to avoid doing a smash attack or tilt).