Current Placing: T2
Suggested Placing: T8
Lucario is an amazing character, no doubt in my mind. He has all the tools he needs to succeed at top levels of play. However, he has a relatively strong reliance on having aura. If aura was only used for pressure/combos that would be one thing, but it's also expelled for his recovery. Without aura, Lucario's recovery becomes notably worse, as all characters at the top tier level have a method of gimping him. His recovery certainly isn't bad though, even without aura. It has a degree of mix up and interesting hitboxes, to say the least. Lucario also has a weakness to crouch cancel, and characters with fast combo interrupts, like a frame 3 nair (Peach). If a combo is interrupted after he uses aura to continue it, he kind of wastes that opportunity and has to build it up again. Someone calculated earlier in the thread saying Lucario, on average, will get about 11 aura charges in one game. While this is good, it may not be enough against a majority of top tiers to keep his pressure game consistent.
Current Placing: T5
Suggested Placing: T8
Falco has an extremely solid neutral game, a ridiculous punish game, a great projectile, a fast and strong spike, and other great kill moves. So why shouldn't he be top tier? First of all, smash DI. Falco has no follow ups from a shine or dair that is smash DI'd correctly. And while it may be hard to be consistent with, it's just an easy escape option from his pressure. His horizontal mobility is subpar, and if timed properly, a buffered roll can get you out of his shield pressure, and even far enough away that he has to give enough chase for you to just get away. Lasers are overall less effective in PM than in Melee due to the diverse array of characters that can deal with them now. A large portion of the cast has significant aerial mobility so that they can weave around lasers and close the gap on Falco. His recovery provides a lot of mix up options, but if he does get caught, it's curtains at very low percentage. Lastly, Falco gets comboed to death by a big portion of the cast, and a lot of them can go off stage to shut down his recovery completely. His shine is notably worse than Fox's, and his average run speed means his combo strings can be cut short with proper DI.
Current Placing: T9
Suggested Placing: T5/7
Ike is an amazing character. His nair can be comboed into itself, he has burst movement with mix ups embedded into it. He can go deep off stage with HUGE range and knockback to end stocks extremely early. He has a strong recovery between his wall jump, and his aether having a relatively smally window to punish. He has grab mix ups that convert into kills, damage, or stage positioning. If Ike is charging a quickdraw against Fox, what can you actually do? You can CC the QD attack, but then he just grab you, you can try to jump away, but then he can cancel into upsmash or a large disjointed aerial, you can shield, but then he can just grab you, you can try to hit him out of it, but he has disjoint. You don't have a projectile to stop him either. He has so many options out of burst movement and they all convert extremely well. Plus, he can edge guard with counter if that happens to be favorable. It's just another tool he has. He does have weaknesses, of course. He gets comboed decently hard, and if you catch his recovery quickdraw, he's pretty much dead. But these weaknesses aren't enough to outweigh his strengths and prevent him from being at least top 8 in the game, if not top 5.
Current Placing: T12
Suggested Placing: T7
Samus has great stage control, good projectiles, long range zair, fast moves, great OoS options, good spacing tools, and she's probably the most difficult character the combo in the game. Strong Bad said his list considered the characters that would be faced most frequently in tournament. Some common characters are the spacies, Roy, Ike, Falcon, Diddy... All of who she goes even with or wins against besides Ike and MAYBE Falcon. Her losing match ups are a lot less common that her winning ones. ROB, Tink, and Zelda, for example. But really, there are three players that come to mind when looking at those characters at a top level, so it's not a huge issue. Samus does not need to approach in almost any match up. Her down smash and down tilt are both frame six IIRC and they both convert from CC and lead into potent follow ups. When she's holding a charge shot, you're forced to play very differently. If she connects with a forward tilt or up tilt, two of her best spacing tools, you'll eat the charge shot, so you're almost forced to keep your distance from her. But then she'll just harass with missiles. While most characters can deal with missiles, having to deal with an onslaught of homing missiles and smash missiles while she's holding a charge shot is extremely difficult. If you try to nair through, you're going to get hit by charge shot and then you'll be forced to recover against a missile wall, her up tilt or drop zone nair. Her recovery is still good, despite what other Samus players may say. The fact that she needs to be blast zone killed, dunked low, or hit out of tether, otherwise she's going to make it back, doesn't make a bad recovery. If there is a DBZ moment, her tether allows her to quickly reel back to the stage, and considering aerial interrupts, she should be somewhat comfortable on the ledge. Plus, her recovery has a lot of mix ups. Bomb jumping, just rolling off a bomb, rising grapple, up+b. While none of them are fantastic, having a lot of mix ups and being able to come from different angles, or bait your opponent to commit to something are never bad. Plus, she's one of the only characters who is comfortable in shield, having a 1 frame (with 5 frames of invincibility) OoS option that can be mixed up with up smash if the situation calls for it. Ice mode gave her the tools she needs to deal with floaties at reasonable percentages. Her weaknesses lie in that she has a hard time getting down from juggles, and she dies off the top early. Plus, she has a hard time approaching against projectiles or characters with good reflectors. Her overall combo game is solid, but not amazing. She's more about spacing, threatening with presence, building up damage, and then converting into an edge guard situation.
Current Placing: T32
Suggested Placing: T20
Ness is an overly slept on character with a wide variety of tools, pressure options, kill options, potent edge guarding, and a very strong punish game. He has a solid match up against spacies, Roy, Lucario, Falcon, and Diddy, but loses solidly to Sheik, Samus, Marth, and Ike. The biggest issue with Ness is his terrible recovery. I've said it before, but his recovery is one of the worst in the game. It's incredibly difficult to sweet spot, telegraphed, and he has no hitbox in front of him, so he loses to everything that hit's his face. I've wrote time and time again about Ness' conversions off of a single hit, his ridiculous edge guard mix ups, his solid neutral game, so I'm not going to repeat myself any further (just look a few posts back for the novel). He's a bad combo weight, and should die if he's below the stage. But he has way too many strengths to be on the same tier as anyone else in B-.
