Tier List Speculation

[Deleted member]

Could you speak to the Tink-Marth MU? I've heard it going both ways.

+1 or +2 for marth

His overall stage presence/dash dance is powerful enough to where toon link isn't really allowed to pull a bomb, aka his main conversion option in neutral. Toon Links projectiles have significant startup, 40 frames to pull a bomb, so he struggles vs characters that can stop him from pulling said bombs. Marths pseudo pressure with **** like D tilt is also significantly safer vs toon links shield due to toon links OOS options being mediocre.

Although, there basically aren't any good marths in PM (I'm spoiled by PP) so its hard to come across a good tink vs a good marth because both are as rare as shiny pokemon

So basically the same strengths in 3.0. And people were all worried about 3.5 tink.

Yup. He still got significant changes. TL;DR:

• Upsmash doesn't auto combo
• Fair went from +1 to -1 on shield
• Nair turned into brawl nair, overall buff
• Grounded up b isn't nearly as safe due to the uncharged form going no where + doing less overall damage from animation speed up
• Auto combo D throw replaced with a 50/50 between F and D throw
• Although not a direct change, the release points on grabs were fixed due and thus toon links u throw release point was lowered (buff)
• Boomerang got steroid'd to YLs sweetspot % (14 -> 19)
• Global Changes: Melee item throws (bomb), Tether nerfs, AGT decay

 

[Strong Badam]

God I don't know what I'd do with my life if Lunchables still had 3.0 Tink. No one could beat him. Except Fox players still lmao.

 

[Frost | Odds]

So I just finished mopping the floor with the best melee player in AB with Bowser for about 3 hours on my stream (making him incredibly salty in the process), and am starting to second guess myself. Do I only think Bowser is bad because I'm biased? Is he actually strong? Or did I actually earn this with my endless hours of practice?

euggggghghghghgh

 

[Deleted member]

God I don't know what I'd do with my life if Lunchables still had 3.0 Tink. No one could beat him. Except Fox players still lmao.

I get sad when I think back to times when I lost to 3.0 sethlon. My character was so busted, HOW DID I EVER LOSE?!?!?1?

 

[steakhouse]

Is he actually strong? Or did I actually earn this with my endless hours of practice?

no good bowsers in MTL but my 2 cents nonetheless :

Bowser sounds like a counterpick character at best due to how bad his bad matchups are. Anyone with a chaingrab on non-fastfallers (Sheik), anyone with a tethergrab, any fast and projectile-reliant character, anyone whose precise sweetspots become easy to land due to obese hitbox (Falcon, Ivy, Zelda) sounds sooo bad for Bowser. That being said, Bowser's hit trajectories and improved combo game via down-B cancel make him a monster if you can get a combo started (think M2K's Marth at Apex 2013) against some characters. Indeed, Bowser's armor loses a lot of its use against players who know what to do against it (which is gonna increase over time and is also gonna be a bigger problem the further you get into bracket)

All in all, Bowser = godzilla against some characters that heavily rely on weak hits to get combos started, but Bowser = Barney against a bunch of other characters

Also, Bowser's power wildly fluctuates based on your ability to read and your opponents ability to do things you didn't expect.

 

[Jacob29]

tethergrabs aren't so bad anymore.

Falcon is still fairly easy to edgeguard with Bowser. Ivy is easy because of the tether.

The rest is fairly legit.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

Incredible mobility, great recovery, safe normals, **** load of damage output, great combo throw, projectiles that hitconfirm into said tons of % or kills, disjoints, insane kill power, other small things like a stupid af spot dodge

His only real problems are not being fox, being awful at combo'ing true FFers until mid %, and having a bad tech roll.

You forget another one of his problems is his poopy grab, generally slow, don't know the exact frames, and one of the 2 throws in the game that can't grab airborne opponents. Lucky for you, unlike regular link, tink has the mobility to negate this weakness.

Edit -

So I just finished mopping the floor with the best melee player in AB with Bowser for about 3 hours on my stream (making him incredibly salty in the process), and am starting to second guess myself. Do I only think Bowser is bad because I'm biased? Is he actually strong? Or did I actually earn this with my endless hours of practice?

euggggghghghghgh

Odds I never actually seen any of your matches, but the sensible way you usually post tells me you're at least decent, I'm not being sarcastic btw, so you were probably just out playing the dude. Also most peeps don't know the bowser matchup, high level bowsers are very rare.

 

[Deleted member]

You forget another one of his problems is his poopy grab, generally slow, don't know the exact frames, and one of the 2 throws in the game that can't grab airborne opponents. Lucky for you, unlike regular link, tink has the mobility to negate this weakness.

Oh yeah! Solid point. His regular grab = neutral options vs characters like spacies is even worse

ALTHOUGH toon link gets around this vs most characters by being able to confirm bomb fair grab.

 

[shairn]

no good bowsers in MTL but

Shots fired

Legit though Bowser is bad. His armor is only really useful for a few matches before people realize that Bowser loses to camping 100% of the time. You can't approach since all your moves are ultra laggy(bar like pivot jab? lmao) and your DD sucks so as long as the other person isn't jumping into your armor/shield they should have the advantage at all times, admitting for similar skill levels and adequate matchup knowledge.

And yeah, if you're REALLY good at reads Bowser looks pretty amazing. But every other viable character also looks much better. If you're that amazing at reading people, picking Bowser is like playing Poker with 4 cards. You're just limiting yourself.

Which isn't to say Bowser loses all MUs horribly, I think he does fine against a good enough portion of the cast and only really has problematic matchups against Sheik and Falcon. Ivy is whatever, she's a floaty, you can crawl through her leaf, edgeguarding the tether with Bowser isn't really a problem anymore. Not a particularly terrible matchup in my opinion, probably 60/40 at most. Similarly for Zelda - her kicks have been weakened, and she's also a floaty, which Bowser kills deceptively easily.

 

[pkblaze]

How does bowser vs falco work? My 2-ish experiences with it were unpleasant.

 

[steelguttey]

Legit though Bowser is bad.

woah woah dude

say imo man we dont know if its an opinion or not. now somebody might argue with you

 

[Deleted member]

Sheik is better than Fox

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

I put my 3rd glasses on and i saw
"In smash 4" included in that sentence

 

[shairn]

How does bowser vs falco work? My 2-ish experiences with it were unpleasant.

Bowser crouches and instantly negates all of Falco's approaches except for grabs so he becomes super predictable. Poor bird dies from a single scratch. On the upshot Bowser gets pretty much guaranteed 0-death'd if Falco manages to get anything started and doesn't fall for the nair armor, but when you play Bowser you just assume that's going to happen with every character anyway. Both thrash each other pretty hard but I think Bowser has the upper hand simply because of how easily he dispatches of Falco, while Falco is going to need to land much more damage, or a well-placed dair, or a swag double shine pillar upB kill off the top. Prolly like 55-45 for Bowser.

 

[Jacob29]

How does bowser vs falco work? My 2-ish experiences with it were unpleasant.

I'm not sure yet.

I keep beating Falcos.. but man when his combo's start boy do they start.

and laser->grab is real ****ing good vs bowser.

I think atm most of us think Bowser edges it out slightly.

 

[DrinkingFood]

I'm pretty sure SH shine beats bowser's crouch armor? SH specifically so you can threaten with a laser or other aerial as a mix-up to encourage him to stay crouched.
Couldn't you just approach with that then waveland onto platforms for safety?

 

[shairn]

Hm I guess you can try to shine through it, but then you expose yourself a lot since you need to be pretty close to land a shine. Bowser can also armor through it with a DA if he sees it coming I think. Alternatively, try to beat it in speed with upB.

 

[Strong Badam]

Bowser is probably the worst character that does the best vs Falco. Getting hit feels bad and Dair edgeguards are kinda free, but otherwise Bowser's kit interacts with Falco's pretty well.

 

[steelguttey]

Sheik is better than Fox imo

ftfy

youre off your game lately man

 

[bec]

lmao
the real umbreon wouldn't use capital letters

 

[DMG]

The real umbreon wouldn't be a poser, putting Fox as his main and then playing Sheik instead for PM

 

[Deleted member]

zach youd beat PP his marth is the same as mine except he has even less MU exp

 

[Deleted member]

idk ill try

 

[DrinkingFood]

You guys are killing me with those avas. Like the expressions even reflect the brief exchange you just had
"Nah man I'm I'm tellin' you"
"i dunno, i guess"

 

[Foo]

So I just finished mopping the floor with the best melee player in AB with Bowser for about 3 hours on my stream (making him incredibly salty in the process), and am starting to second guess myself. Do I only think Bowser is bad because I'm biased? Is he actually strong? Or did I actually earn this with my endless hours of practice?

euggggghghghghgh

Imo, it's because boswer is just a really weird character. So many of his options are so odd, that, if you don't know what to expect, can wreck you hard. Stuff like fair, koopa claw, up-b oos and get up attack are really annoying to get used to. I don't remember who said it, but someone made a formula for every bowser matchup in the game that just made the matchup more and more favorable the more you play against bowser. So, my thinking is that he wasn't familiar with the matchup.

Now, you may be thinking, "well, we played for three hours so" but you said it yourself, he was really salty. Because of the really weird and extremely punishing moveset bowser has, and his lag being unituitive etc, he's very salt inducing. And when people get salty, they tend to auto pilot, play irrationally and not adapt.

Also, if he's primarily a melee player, that could be another reason. I huge part of melee is knowing the matchups SUPER well. In PM atm, there's just too many matchups and too much stuff that's undiscovered and you could "know the ivy matchup" then play an ivy who does totally different stuff. A couple hours of bowser matchup experience pales in comparison to god knows how many hours of fox matchup knowledge.

Anyway, on bower vs falco. You guys keep talking about how falco can approach bowser. I know very little about the matchup, but why is falco approaching? Seems like he wouldn't really have to fight unless it was on his terms.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Bowser isn't actually vertically slow so it's not like Falco can top platform camp him. And Falco's dash isn't much (if at all) faster than bowser's and bowser can crawl and dash attack through lasers to take up space, limiting falco's best neutral tool. If it weren't for shine, bowser's crawl/crouch would probably decide this matchup but I wanna say Bowser wouldn't be able to CC/CA shine

 

[Jolteon]

You forget another one of his problems is his poopy grab, generally slow, don't know the exact frames, and one of the 2 throws in the game that can't grab airborne opponents. Lucky for you, unlike regular link, tink has the mobility to negate this weakness.

Edit -


Odds I never actually seen any of your matches, but the sensible way you usually post tells me you're at least decent, I'm not being sarcastic btw, so you were probably just out playing the dude. Also most peeps don't know the bowser matchup, high level bowsers are very rare.

I agree that his grab sucks, but it can grab airborne characters. Just grab with the hand grab box.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

Yeah I know, though it never made sense to me considering the other tether characters can grab airborne opponents any point in their tether.

 

[Strong Badam]

Those characters wouldn't have standing chaingrabs or huge distance hitconfirms into grab if they did.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Yeah I know, though it never made sense to me considering the other tether characters can grab airborne opponents any point in their tether.

I'm pretty sure this isn't true tho. ZSS could, since stunned opponents counted as airborne, but not anyone else.

 

[B.W.]

Link, T.Link, Samus and old ZSS can grab you out of the air within the first few frames of their grab, but it's only on the hand and it's kind of difficult to pull off cause the first came the grab comes out is slowish

Otherwise, Link, T. Link, and Samus ( and maybe some other character with a tether grab that I don't know about) can't grab people out of the air.

 

[Chevy]

Samus can grab out of the air. She has a chain-grab on Pika at very low percents, and DI dependent re-grabs on a handful of other characters.

 

[Jolteon]

Yeah I know, though it never made sense to me considering the other tether characters can grab airborne opponents any point in their tether.

2.0/2.1 Links had fully airborne grabs, they had standing dthrow CGs as a result.

Either way, it's a pretty important distinction between being unable to grab airborne opponents and being able to so with your hand imo. Makes combo'ing into grab on aerial opponents a thing, and enabled dthrow CGs on a lot of the cast prior to 3.5

 

[Jacob29]

Bowser isn't actually vertically slow so it's not like Falco can top platform camp him. And Falco's dash isn't much (if at all) faster than bowser's and bowser can crawl and dash attack through lasers to take up space, limiting falco's best neutral tool. If it weren't for shine, bowser's crawl/crouch would probably decide this matchup but I wanna say Bowser wouldn't be able to CC/CA shine

You are correct Bowser cannot crouch cancel/armour shine at 0%.

 

[GabPR]

Why is Wolf considered to be the Second best in the game? While his punish game is really good, his neutral is not as polarizing or dominating as the other spacies since he does not have many (if any) high priority moves and a shine that can be crouch cancelled. He still suffers from most characters being able to chaingrab and/or 0 to death him. Not to mention he can be edgeguarded relatively easily cause of the before mentioned less dominating neutral. Not saying he is bad, prob still top 10, but pushing it so high is in my opinion is a stretch.

 

[Strong Badam]

I feel like 2-5 on the tier list is pretty interchangeable. There's no clear "second best character" that stands out to me after Fox. Kinda sucks that I also feel that those 4 characters lose the Fox matchup at least marginally..

 

[GabPR]

I feel like 2-5 on the tier list is pretty interchangeable. There's no clear "second best character" that stands out to me after Fox. Kinda sucks that I also feel that those 4 characters lose the Fox matchup at least marginally..

Ok, in that case, what are the reasons for him being in the top 5?

 

[Strong Badam]

Wolf's super good. He has everything you would want. A flexible recovery, good movement speed, an incredible projectile, good normals that flow together, shield pressure, confirms into a potent KO move. There are very few matchups in the game that he struggles with.

 

[GabPR]

Wolf's super good. He has everything you would want. A flexible recovery, good movement speed, an incredible projectile, good normals that flow together, shield pressure, confirms into a potent KO move. There are very few matchups in the game that he struggles with.

Do his strenghts balance out the unforgiving punish game characters have vs him? (Particularly his neutral)

 

[Strong Badam]

Wolf's neutral is definitely viable. It doesn't seem that way until you implement a well-developed and executed laser game; not lasering with Wolf is kinda like not lasering with Falco, though not quite as much of a detriment because of stuff like DD grab, Dash Attack, and spaced Bair are still pretty good. Laserless Wolf would probably still be in the top 10-ish characters IMO. With the laser, he's easily top tier (or in the tier below Fox-only tier lol).

I'm currently working on my own tier list and plan to post it fairly soon, probably by tomorrow afternoon. Just need to think on it and maybe write out a lil bit of rationale for any particularly controversial placements, though I think most people are coming around to the general conclusions that Lunchables and I share.