Tier List Speculation

[Rizner]

YAY MY TIER LIST:
nerf plz:
A:
B+:
B:
B-:
C:
plz fix:
lol wtf:

Others: don't know where to put Zelda and ZSS

Why is link so low?

 

[Boiko]

YAY MY TIER LIST:
nerf plz:
A:
B+:
B:
B-:
C:
plz fix:
lol wtf:

Others: don't know where to put Zelda and ZSS

Luigi, Lucas, Diddy, Mewtwo, and Ness all need to be higher.
I'm not sure if yours are in order within tiers, but if so, I find it hard to place Falcon above Samus. Mostly because she has an easier time dealing with spacies and other common MUs.

 

[steelguttey]

ness is the second worst character in the game...

ok

 

[Ripple]

Okay so I'm going to answer a bunch of questions at once that I have gotten since I started placing well at tournaments with DDD. Feel free to permlink this post because its going to long and answer your questions about DDD's neutral.


The original question was how does DDD beat Samus? How does he deal with missile spam? The answer to this is the same as the answer to the question, “how the hell does DDD do anything do anything in neutral in the first place?”. DDD is slow on the ground, slow in the air, and his attacks are all so slow with grab being tied for his fastest move. It seems as though DDD has a **** tier neutral, right? I don't find this to be the case to be honest. The answer to how to do anything in neutral is simply: jump.


Jumping solves nearly all of DDD's problems in neutral by essentially allowing him to ignore an opponents long and mid horizontal range game. (Falco is an obvious exception). So let's go back to the question of how does DDD deal with missile spam. The answer is really that he doesn't have to deal with it in the normal sense. DDD ignores the missiles and simply jumps over them and lands inbetween missiles on stages they can't platform cancel missiles. He doesn't need to interact with them almost at all. On stages that do allow for that technique all DDD needs to do is to jump and then throw a waddle at the 1 homing missile that they usually shoot. Since the samus must be doing this on a platform the only place I'm going to be is on the other platform jumping over towards them. Missiles do not have enough of an arc in order hit DDD when he is jumping over toward Samus. Some samus players may now say that samus can just short hop > homing missle > land > homing missile again at the end of a stage, and that is true. But in order for you to even want to do that, I have to be pressuring you with my presence in the air. I'm ALREADY scaring you into back to the end of a stage as a giant, slow, wall. The same thing happens the other characters that have a projectile; Olimar, Mario, peach, Link, Toon link, Wolf, sheik, and lucario. I just jump over and ignore your projectiles until: you keep backing off so I can approach / you stop firing projectiles / or you decide to be aggressive and jump at me from below.


Now guess what happens when one of those occurs. That's right, I'm going to jump again. Now I'm spacing for my attack or my way to get in on you. For those of you who don't already know this, DDD has some of the best air to ground mix up options in the game. I'm going to fall with bair, b-reverse inhale, do nothing and fall into a f-tilt, fall into grab, FF a waddle toss, or jump right above your head and do a dair. This is my entire gameplan in almost every single MU because lots of characters can't do anything about it at all. They HAVE to come at me from below, or have such good speed that they can dash under me when I'm spacing above them that when I want to land, its suddenly a very confined battle. Now they have to be fearful of my grab, but everyone knows this so I won't go into it. If they do come at me from below though, they need a good strong hitting upair or fair, otherwise they aren't going to be able to knock me away for long at all OR I'm just going to trade with a pathetic move as a super heavy character. (another reason DDD beats samus). And even if they DO come at me from below, I STILL have the option to jump away from them at down-air to protect myself. If that does happen the situation starts all over again. I'll go back to jumping around looking to get in, and you'll be away from center stage trying for the life of you to hit me with something


So now the game devolves into trading aerial hits most of the game because projectiles mean nothing, and everyone is scared of my grab when I'm on the ground unless you have a good speed or very safe moves on my shield. And I just want to let you know that against good players, DDD will lose most of the trades. but DDD doesn't really care since any time I win a trade, it's doing like 12% minimum. if I get dair to grab, you just took 20%

 

[Player -0]

What happens in the year 20XX when Samus' SWD across the stage to negate your wall?

 

[Boiko]

Okay, so for argument's sake, by trying to jump around missiles, you're basically playing into Samus' game. You can close the gap by jumping over missiles, yes, but then you're either a.) forced to challenge her in the air or b.) do what you said, and come down with a mix up. Only problem is that even though you have mix ups, they're all slow, and an upb OoS should cover a large portion of your options while giving her 5(?) frames of invincibility. Or, she can up smash OoS, which has significant disjoint (not D3 hammer disjoint, and sets up for a follow-up at low/low-mid percentage. Additionally, she can wavedash back tilt/dsmash, or go into crawl to further cut off your options. If she does get an UpB/UpSmash/anything off, she can basically run away and reset the situation. Or she can wavedash around quickly just to get away and start firing missiles again. It sounds like you're saying jumping around everything is the key to the MU, which makes sense, because she's not really going to be challenging you in the air, but coming down safely, even with a mix up, against a character who has so many tools riddled with disjoint, invincibility, range, and incredible speed, doesn't seem like a favorable position to put yourself in.

Edit: Forgot to mention, Samus' shield pressure is good too. CC jabs, tilts, bombs, nair, etc. to whittle it down, upsmash/dsmash to poke. If she baits an OoS option, she can shield it and upb also.

 

[Foo]

I really don't understand why pit is being put so low. He's super fast, has multiple jumps, an insane recovery, good projectile etc. All I've heard against him is that he is "clunky" or something, but that just tells me people aren't used to 3.5 pit. I mean, his neutral is spectacular, but he has pretty good tools, especially with upsmash. I didn't know what to think about pit, but I met a really good pit in my region, and he made me think pit is pretty solid. It seemed like pit was fairly well rounded with no astounding strengths, but I couldn't see any weaknesses other than somewhat limited neutral options. I'd put him above ICs, olimar, puff, bowser, DK, ness, bowser, pika, link, zard, kirby, and zss. If I were to go off of mudkipuniverse's tier list, I'd say he'd be right at home in B tier.

Also, my opinion on ZSS has gone south recently. I started playing against some actually smart players, and her weaknesses were far bigger than I thought. I thought her recovery was good, but, uh... it's trash. I didn't realize you could literally just wait for her to commit to an option, and then punish you for it because they have like 40 frames to do it. I thought fading back was a mixup, but I was soooo wrong. Even if you try down-b shenanagins, they can just refresh invulnerability on reaction to your down-b. Also, I knew her throws were awful, but I didn't realize how much it mattered. I was getting follow ups when I knew I shouldn't before, but against them, I got nothing but bad trades and the occasional tech chase. After a I point, I just started upthrowing and hoping they would do something dumb.

Also, side-b is useless apparently. They were smart enough to realize it's a frame 30 move and react to it, even if I did wavebounce shennagins. Even if I got a hard read and hit them, they just held down and no conversion. However, her combo game is a tiny bit better than I gave it credit for, because I hit longer strings then I expected to against good players. I was going against the tide of all the other zss players saying she was bad and believing hard that she her strengths outweighed her weaknesses, but the more I played her, the more I realized I was wrong. No wonder basically everyone is dropping zss, even if they didn't at the start of 3.5. I'm going to hold on for a least a while longer though in hopes that they give up-b tethers the buff that they deserve. You shouldn't be able to ledgedash and charge fsmash on reaction like holy ****.

I don't understand why zss gets nerfed into the ground, and she's higher than she was last patch, but pit gets nerfed around the same from 2nd or 3rd best character and he's bottom tier.

 

[Beets]

Would anyone mind explaining to me (probably for the millionth time) why Sonic is so oft criticized for being "a broken piece of ****" but many tentative tier lists posted in this thread regard him as nothing higher than mid tier?

 

[Narpas_sword]

What happens in the year 20XX when Samus' SWD across the stage to negate your wall?

SWD is terrible in neutral. and it's nothing '20xx', most samus mains can do it fairly easily... i think.

Okay, so for argument's sake, by trying to jump around missiles, you're basically playing into Samus' game. You can close the gap by jumping over missiles, yes, but then you're either a.) forced to challenge her in the air or b.) do what you said, and come down with a mix up. Only problem is that even though you have mix ups, they're all slow, and an upb OoS should cover a large portion of your options while giving her 5(?) frames of invincibility. Or, she can up smash OoS, which has significant disjoint (not D3 hammer disjoint, and sets up for a follow-up at low/low-mid percentage. Additionally, she can wavedash back tilt/dsmash, or go into crawl to further cut off your options. If she does get an UpB/UpSmash/anything off, she can basically run away and reset the situation. Or she can wavedash around quickly just to get away and start firing missiles again. It sounds like you're saying jumping around everything is the key to the MU, which makes sense, because she's not really going to be challenging you in the air, but coming down safely, even with a mix up, against a character who has so many tools riddled with disjoint, invincibility, range, and incredible speed, doesn't seem like a favorable position to put yourself in.

Edit: Forgot to mention, Samus' shield pressure is good too. CC jabs, tilts, bombs, nair, etc. to whittle it down, upsmash/dsmash to poke. If she baits an OoS option, she can shield it and upb also.

In addition to all this, Ice mode.
Upsmash oos with ice = best AA against slow moving air characters.
Homing missiles in ice shut DDD down pretty hard.
Ice fair is perfect for folowing up a homing missile (which is easy to hit confirm)

Shield pressure is more of a 'fake' shield pressure though. You can do a few things and earn a poke dsmash, but you cant really pressure it per se.

Would anyone mind explaining to me (probably for the millionth time) why Sonic is so oft criticized for being "a broken piece of ****" but many tentative tier lists posted in this thread regard him as nothing higher than mid tier?

Becasue people that make tier lists are generally decent players who can deal with sonic.

People who complain, complain instead of figuring up the matchup.

 

[Player -0]

SWD is terrible in neutral. and it's nothing '20xx', most samus mains can do it fairly easily... i think.

In addition to all this, Ice mode.
Upsmash oos with ice = best AA against slow moving air characters.
Homing missiles in ice shut DDD down pretty hard.
Ice fair is perfect for folowing up a homing missile (which is easy to hit confirm)

Shield pressure is more of a 'fake' shield pressure though. You can do a few things and earn a poke dsmash, but you cant really pressure it per se.

Becasue people that make tier lists are generally decent players who can deal with sonic.

People who complain, complain instead of figuring up the matchup.

I was replying to Ripple, if you read his thingy mabob post (thing) he said that his jumps negate Samus' stuff. My response was what you replied to. Ripple wouldn't be on the ground so no punishes (although DDD FF speed is really fast).

As Ripple said, if I'm picturing this correctly, he'd be fairly close to Samus horizontally but ~3x Puff's normal vertical height. So ice homing missiles wouldn't be doing anything.

Problem with Ice Up-Smash is that its endlag would allow for a punish if the DDD read it and jumped again (you can always threaten so he has no jumps though).

 

[Chevy]

Shield pressure is more of a 'fake' shield pressure though. You can do a few things and earn a poke dsmash, but you cant really pressure it per se.

Samus has the best pretend shield pressure in the game. Bomb on shield that's too slow to not lose to any out of shield options, jab1 mix-ups that lose to shield grab. So tight. It's funny because it actually works because mix-ups.

 

[Boiko]

Also, just because I'm not hitting you with missiles, doesn't mean I'm going to stop playing smart and all of a sudden, "be away from center stage trying for the life of [me] to hit [you] with something"

Your strategy doesn't sound it would work particularly well if someone doesn't chase you, and not everyone is going to. While you're floating up there, I'm getting a charge shot ready, cutting off your landing options, and intercepting/meeting you at your landing.

 

[Boiko]

Samus has the best pretend shield pressure in the game. Bomb on shield that's too slow to not lose to any out of shield options, jab1 mix-ups that lose to shield grab. So tight. It's funny because it actually works because mix-ups.

Double post, sorry. But have you ever seen Knut's shield pressure? It's actually insane for melee Samus. CC Jab> wavedash behind CC Jab/ftilt. Or if you're on a platform, jump through double bomb>dair. Crazy.

 

[Narpas_sword]

I was replying to Ripple, if you read his thingy mabob post (thing) he said that his jumps negate Samus' stuff. My response was what you replied to. Ripple wouldn't be on the ground so no punishes (although DDD FF speed is really fast).

As Ripple said, if I'm picturing this correctly, he'd be fairly close to Samus horizontally but ~3x Puff's normal vertical height. So ice homing missiles wouldn't be doing anything.

Problem with Ice Up-Smash is that its endlag would allow for a punish if the DDD read it and jumped again (you can always threaten so he has no jumps though).

if hes close enough already that ice missiles arent hitting, then you're getting ready for an A2G attack.
Ice Upsmash has a lot of endlag yes, but the point is that it reaches very high (a lot higher than people account for)
it's not something to spam, but can easily catch out an incorrectly spaced dj.

The funny thing is, even with a high endlag, if the opponent does something to avoid it (at max vert range) quite often you can recover from the endlag enough to react to whatever the punish might me (or CCdsmash)

It's kinda like a marth Fsmash. it has recovery lag, but some characters just cant quite get in after a whiff.

Double post, sorry. But have you ever seen Knut's shield pressure? It's actually insane for melee Samus. CC Jab> wavedash behind CC Jab/ftilt. Or if you're on a platform, jump through double bomb>dair. Crazy.

Assume youre meaning Jab Cancels.

and yea, as said, it can work because of the mixups. it's still not real shield pressure though.

 

[Apoc]

Really liking where Mewtwo currently is. The PM team tuned the things that made Mewtwo completely broken and accented other parts of his kit appropriately.

 

[Ripple]

Your strategy doesn't sound it would work particularly well if someone doesn't chase you, and not everyone is going to. While you're floating up there, I'm getting a charge shot ready, cutting off your landing options, and intercepting/meeting you at your landing.

I never said my strategy was flawless or anything, but if you stop shooting missiles to charge your charge shot. I'm going to instantly FF and throw a waddle at you. when a waddle is on the ground, I have some more options to get in. since it'll block a projectile or make you throw out move.

also, like I said, if youre coming to me to cut me off from landing. its a trading game. one that I "win" against samus even in ice mode

 

[Boiko]

I never said my strategy was flawless or anything, but if you stop shooting missiles to charge your charge shot. I'm going to instantly FF and throw a waddle at you. when a waddle is on the ground, I have some more options to get in. since it'll block a projectile or make you throw out move.

also, like I said, if youre coming to me to cut me off from landing. its a trading game. one that I "win" against samus even in ice mode

I guess I'd need to see it in practice to really understand.

 

[Ripple]

I was going to make an entire thread dedicated to it someday but with gifs and stuff to fully demonstrate it.

 

[DrinkingFood]

@ Foo what if you are just bad
Hypothetically speaking

 

[Foo]

@ Foo what if you are just bad
Hypothetically speaking

wow.... Seriously? How would my skill level change any of the points I brought up anyway? Is there some way to make side-b not lose to CC and asdi? Is there some way to l-cancel the tether hop? Is there some magical way to cancel the absurd lag on her throws? Yeah, I thought not. And either way, I did really well at that tourney. My two losses were two the 1st and 5th PR'd players in NC. I took the Stingers (PR'd #1) to game 3, and brought Jelly (#5) to last stock high% both games. That doesn't change the fact that every time I was off stage I got wrecked, I never got a combo off side-b and I never got anything off my throws.

And even if I am bad, that doesn't explain why all of the good ZSS players (yes, even oro) thinks she sucks, and are dropping her. ZSS is just a broken character right now. A large chunk of her tools simply don't work as intended. (I hope)

 

[Narpas_sword]

No matter how bad you think ZSS is, shes still better than she deserves to be.
If shes got more than run away, and stun so she can run away faster, that's fine.

Terrible character to have in the game. Get your armour back on.

it's like having 'Zero Items Link' as a character.

 

[Player -0]

Zero Mission, the amount of work you put in for the little reward of escaping. The struggle.

 

[Binary Clone]

Oro!? played Roy all of WDW yesterday. I don't think he touched ZSS, and I'm pretty sure it's because of all of the changes that all the ZSS players hate.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

I think it is more 3.02 ZSS players being bad at playing 3.5 ZSS than being bad at general. Character just changed and many don't feel comfortable with it.

 

[Juushichi]

what if i told you that there have been more ZSS players than just oro for a few years now?

 

[Rizner]

I think most who dropped zss dropped her because they didn't like the changes and their implications outside of their balance. Similar to why I don't use Zelda nearly as much - she isn't necessarily worse off or has bad balance or anything, it's that she has a new playstyle with her updated kit that I don't enjoy as much.

 

[MasterBlu]

If Ness is the worst character after olimar and icies then I dont think we are playing the same game. I feel explanation is needed as I co-main Ness and Ganon and feel that both are at least mid tier due to their options and matchups, especially Ness. In your list I would have Ness at at least B or B+ tier

 

[MudkipUniverse]

My tier list was a bit rushed. falcon is definitely below samus. I'll edit my tier list
@ MasterBlu I guess ness could go a bit higher, but I believe he belongs in the C tier.

I changed my tier list to put ness at the top of the C tier, and to put Falcon right below peach.

 

[MudkipUniverse]

Why is link so low?

idk, he really should belong at the bottom of the B tier or something. I'm just going to make a new tier list when I gain a lot more information

 

[Boiko]

I'll still vouch and say that Ness is hella good and that people sleep. Only person who put him high up was VaNz who also has the most experience with top Ness mains. Definitely not a coincidence.

 

[eideeiit]

@ Boiko

I believe many people see Ness as a kind of Dr. Mario-y crappy neutral, good punishes character. Also few know of what he can do. If someone started theory crafting on his neutral and making his options better known I think many would start changing their minds.

 

[Soft Serve]

But Ness's neutral is great. His dashes and general speed has been buffed like, twice since he got introduced into PM. DJC, Magnet to hover/turn around, and wavebounce magnet things, thrown in with his fantastic spacing aerial fair and good whiff punish bair, makes his movement/neutral control very good and threatening. yeah he doesn't have a fox neutral but most dont. Just the fact that he can take to the air and be safe/still threatening/mobile makes his neutral fantastic. He sucks with vertical mobility because his doublejump dips down initially, but he has great ground to ground, low height air to ground and ground to air movement and control.

he just gets bopped by swords and rush down, but when he plays honest neutral vs characters with similar ranges to him, he is hella threatening.

 

[Saproling]

I feel people are underrating Ivy a bit shes a golden poo.

 

[Rizner]

idk, he really should belong at the bottom of the B tier or something. I'm just going to make a new tier list when I gain a lot more information

ahh, ok. Also, I'd probably agree with Ness placement, but I'm crazy.

 

[GabPR]

I feel that everyone is underrated and that they are being put under other underrated characters.

 

[PlateProp]

True tierlist:

Kamina Determination:

Everyone Else

Anything less than Kamina Determination

GG tierlist thread

 

[InfinityCollision]

I think it is more 3.02 ZSS players being bad at playing 3.5 ZSS than being bad at general. Character just changed and many don't feel comfortable with it.

ZSS vets have put in a ton of work exploring her options in 3.5. My 3.5 ZSS is probably better than my 3.02 ZSS, but my success with her has actually declined for reasons that are pretty well in line with Foo's statements. My Marth and Sheik perform far better, and even my Mewtwo (which is admittedly subpar for lack of practice time) is nearly as effective in a tournament setting. This in spite of the fact that ZSS is arguably my second strongest character in a vacuum.

ZSS' performance in the 3.5 meta peaked early and will overall decline from there barring significant adjustments in the bugfix patch. I called it early and I've yet to find anything to convince me otherwise. This is not a kneejerk, reactionary outcry from her patch notes - this is the result of significant lab time, communication with other ZSS players on and off smashboards, use and abuse of debug mode, and putting what I learned to the test against real opponents.

 

[Myst007_teh_newb]

Okay, I've lurked on this thread enough and heard absolutely nothing but whining and complaining about ZSS.

She is really, really good.

Her combo game is absurdly amazing. Her movement and offstage edge guards are top notch. Dtilt hit confirms into kills at relevant %s. Utilt is a godly frame 3 mixup option for shield pressure and HITS BEHIND HER, starting combos off of disrespect to her cross-up shield pokes. Her uair semi-spikes and she can go SUPER DUPER deep for offensive off-stage edge guards because her down-b cancelled 2nd jump into rising up-b recovery CAN RECOVER FROM THE BOTTOM BLAST ZONE OF FOD. Down-b divekick platform cancel and full aerial control on her down-b jump means that it's hard to punish ZSS even after you get her above you-- she can just slip right past you or even hit you on the way down and start her own combo thanks to her dair goomba stomp. Bair is amazing and can be safely spammed infinitely on all shields except Marth's and D3's if spaced correctly until it inevitably shield pokes them. Nair is intangible and uair covers multiple platform tech options, making uthrow onto platform a really good option. Her blaster TRAVELS THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF PS2 HOLY **** WHY and can force opponents into shield.

And let me just go a little bit into the pandora's box of mixup options that ZSS has for her recovery.

First off, she has the ability to recover high, something that she didn't have in 3.02. This is a godsend. down-b cancel 2nd jump with rising up-b and air dodge. Boom. Don't even have to deal with the tether situation if you don't want to. Drift downwards and mixup to safety and you already have a recovery that's better than DK's. She also has dair for the risky business recovery. There have been many times where I double jump dair onto edge guarding opponents in order to augment my recovery. Situational, but the option is there. On any of the stages that have non-trivial walls, you can down-b into the wall and wall jump uair to swat people off of your ledge. Same thing on tether reel in. Forced reel in fade away down-b into wall, wall jump, uair or bair. Mix up your timing with multiple wall jumps. OR JUST DOWN-B INTO THEM AND FLIPSTOOL. The timing is very tight, but if they're sleeping on the ledge, you can just fade away and literally jump over them while they wait for your forced reel in (Which will never come).

Look at all of the options that I just listed. And they're all offensive options, too. ZSS has one of the most threatening recoveries in the game and people who are sleeping for even a little bit will get punished for flubbing the edge guard. On a stage like Distant Planet, it is tough to edge guard her. Not to mention that she controls so much space and can go so deep offstage on her own terms due to the sheer vertical distance of her recovery that she can bait opponents lower and lower offstage and simply out-recover them.

But all I hear in this thread is whining about how bad her throws are. Who cares if you can't follow up on them. If you have a throw that can put opponents on platforms, you have a pretty good throw. AND you have one of the scarier dash dance games in the cast? AND you have a projectile that travels full stage and forces shield or jump? AND you have a god-like platform movement game with down-b cancels and her slick, sliiiiick wavedash? AND you can chase people vertically so crazy because you essentially have 3 jumps?

Dude, don't listen to this guy who's complaining about ZSS. She's straight OP. Gets bodied by spacies, sure (still trying to figure out that matchup myself), but she's one of the most high-octane fighters in the entire cast. And from personal experience, everyone I play who tries to edge guard me gets punished if they don't mix it up. And people who do nothing but sleep and hold onto ledge are the first ones to taste that tasty, tasty recovery mixup game.

If anything, they should nerf ZSS's recovery next patch. And that isn't sarcastic in any way, shape, or form. People are maaaad underutilizing her because they are still mourning over run-cancelled blaster.

- Jason Waterfalls

 

[Hylian]

^ this guy knows whats up

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

tierlist:

1. fox, skilled ddd
2. maybe sheik or something idk
3. everyone else
4. joke about olimar being bad