Tier List Speculation

[Hylian]

So link is suddenly bad because you got 4 stocked once by arguably one the top PM players at the scene?? You said your Lucario also got wrecked, does this mean lucario sucks too?

I mean at face value that might seem absurd lol. I have played with metroid a ton though, and have had very close sets with him using link. Here is an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Zgcza75YA

Sorry for the audio. Before 3.5 I've had many nailbighter sets with him using both Link and Lucario, going from having fairly close sets with Link to getting 4 stocked is eh. The lucario game was a bit different in that he just got some really nice combos off and I killed myself, I usually do pretty well with lucario vs him. Obviously this is all anecdotal but I find myself losing to people I used to beat with link, even though I can beat them with characters I barely play lol. I was very stubborn about Link not being bad but I can't really prove it myself so I'll admit defeat at this point *shrugs*.

Edit: Though I am also not practiced in very many optimal things Link can do currently like bair waveland or bair double jump that no Link are doing for some reason despite it being an amazing option.

I mainly use Link for spacies in 3.5(as weird as that sounds) because he's so good at gimping them and he combo game is pretty much the same as it was before where it suffered more against other match-ups. Here is me playing a fox right before getting 4 stocked by metroid lol: http://www.twitch.tv/socostreams/b/637016228?t=1h39m01s

 

[Foo]

His range is kind of oppressive for a lot of characters to deal with, and makes me feel like I'm playing Spaced Fairs and Dtilts, The Character

OH REALLY MISTER

(On Bowser fair)​

No, it's not good for spacing. It's good for swatting people out of the air, and hitting people who don't know how to space. Marth's fair isn't a neutral tool, and neither is this.

YES I STILL REMEMBER THAT CONVO AND AND LOVING THAT POST AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

IDK, it's not particularly overpowering or anything however.
That wasn't even my initial argument. I'm just saying, there's plenty of ways around it though.

Alright, and? Why not give every character light armor on the startup of their up-b for no reason. It doesn't matter that it isn't super OP, it's something ike shouldn't have. His recovery is fine without it, and it's just a really lame thing to have happen when it does come into play. I'm more coming from a design standpoint than a balance standpoint. It's just especially notable since ike would still be high tier without it.

 

[dude it's raining]

I haven't been a part of this conversation, but I have some general thoughts about tiers:
Melee vets like the 3.5 recovery atmosphere.
Of the 4 OP chars of 3.0, I still feel Pit has more options than he needs, Lucas/Diddy are still solidly top tier only more balanced. I dunno about M2. Wolf seems like he'll endure through to the final top tier. Ike is another character with a lot going for him. Falco/etc shut him down a lot, but other than that he's solid.
There are a lot of chars that I feel are nicely balanced or set on a good course. Roy seems nicely balanced. ZSS has seen way too much change between 3.0 and 3.5, but I feel optimistic about her future. Zelda & DK feel really cool. Tink & Sqrt seem to have a lot of potential.
I feel like the rest of the list will fill out with a combination of gimping ability and tourney results/individual and relative MU's.
Sorry I don't have anything concrete to add.

 

[Mean Green]

@ dude it's raining you've given them so much to work with, get out while there's still time

 

[Frost | Odds]

YES I STILL REMEMBER THAT CONVO AND AND LOVING THAT POST AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Wasn't the first time I've been wrong. I can only imagine it won't be the last.

 

[DrinkingFood]

M2 is still amazing btw, he's basically sword peach with a teleport why has nobody realized this

 

[~Dad~]

M2 is still amazing btw, he's basically sword peach with a teleport why has nobody realized this

float canceled nair scares me

 

[DrinkingFood]

Float canceled nair is overrated, HC fair/telefair however causes knockdown at just above 0%. One mini shadowball will do it.
He keeps so much run momentum into his hover now, combined with the low endlag of HC, it's basically his equivelent of Roy's dtilt. Same approx duration, slightly more startup but less endlag, knocks down at low percent or picks up if they don't CC, it even has decent disjoint
New speed on dtilt and hover changes aiding in HC uair utility really makes his punish game scary if he gets in with that fair or you don't CC a dtilt

 

[Deleted member]

I think the tip being lower knockback could be an indirect buff for a character that has a lot of trouble with floaties like samus. I would instead see the angle become useless.

Trust me, after playing with my own builds of Roy where I've changed the BKB of the tip to 70, the move becomes significantly worse. CC becomes a significantly more viable option, and the fact that its on the tip means that you're still not going to get followups due to how far they are spaced away. Making the angle useless but keeping it at 90bkb means the move is still ******** vs CC.

True. I'd post my list, but way too lazy.

It takes 5 minutes to make a list lol

@Lunchables I'd argue nerfing Marth's hang time is less important than nerfing Roy's. This is because Marth's can be CC'ed and has less angles, making it much easier to edgeguard.

I agree that roys is more of an issue, but theres no reason for marth to also have it. He already has a reverse ledge grab box in PM, theres no real need to give him that obnoxious float.

 

[jtm94]

If even Peach was changed to match Melee recovery after so long of it being fine then I'd be upset if it wasn't reverted. "But we aren't changing recovery anymore"

I agree that HC nair is overrated, but I love that you can fair any character at least 4 times starting at 0. Man Mewtwo is too fun, he just feels like you can do almost anything if you try hard enough.

I will never understand Pit. I don't know how to tell if he's good against anyone, or bad against everyone. His moves feel strange, but not entirely hopeless. That's also in relation to his former self.

 

[Juushichi]

Mewtwo getting as many attacks on your shield as he does is terrifying. One of the things I hate the most is getting knocked down by his fair. : (

It just makes me so sad.

 

[AceGamer]

The way Pit is now I kinda feel like he's at a cross roads lol. Like the next update will either make or break him, currently he's not terrible but he's not that good either

 

[Boiko]

Nah guys, Mewtwo sux.

 

[PlateProp]

Alright, and? Why not give every character light armor on the startup of their up-b for no reason. It doesn't matter that it isn't super OP, it's something ike shouldn't have. His recovery is fine without it, and it's just a really lame thing to have happen when it does come into play. I'm more coming from a design standpoint than a balance standpoint. It's just especially notable since ike would still be high tier without it.

Cept it wouldnt do anything because Light armor only stops projectiles really

Were you not paying attention earlier or somethin man

 

[Boiko]

Cept it wouldnt do anything because Light armor only stops projectiles really

Were you not paying attention earlier or somethin man

That's still a thing and some characters get murdered by projectiles off stage. Especially those that have a charge animation on their recovery.

<------

 

[PlateProp]

That's still a thing and some characters get murdered by projectiles off stage. Especially those that have a charge animation on their recovery.

<------

Step 1: Dont get knocked off stage as Ness

Step 2: Profit

 

[steelguttey]

something something olimar something something bad recovery something something kill me

 

[PlateProp]

something something olimar something something bad recovery something something kill me

at least you dont play squirtle

 

[Foo]

Cept it wouldnt do anything because Light armor only stops projectiles really

Were you not paying attention earlier or somethin man

When did I say anything suggesting that I don't know it was light armor? How about you respond to the points I made rather than making it about something completely different. Fact is, light armor stops some stuff. It's happened to me a few times with ike up-b, and it was really lame every time it happened, and I see no reason for it to be in there. It wouldn't be overbearing for any character to have light armor on their up-b, but does anybody need it? no. Why is it there in the first place? Ike has plenty of hitboxes and recovery mixup options to cover his recovery, he doesn't also need armor. It doesn't matter that it's only light armor.

 

[PlateProp]

When did I say anything suggesting that I don't know it was light armor? How about you respond to the points I made rather than making it about something completely different. Fact is, light armor stops some stuff. It's happened to me a few times with ike up-b, and it was really lame every time it happened, and I see no reason for it to be in there. It wouldn't be overbearing for any character to have light armor on their up-b, but does anybody need it? no. Why is it there in the first place? Ike has plenty of hitboxes and recovery mixup options to cover his recovery, he doesn't also need armor. It doesn't matter that it's only light armor.

I didn't say that you didn't know what it was, I said you were basically not paying attention when we talked about it earlier.

Try again yo

 

[Strong Badam]

Light armor is significant, unless you have moves with a reasonable amount of base knockback you could have trouble hitting him out of it until the 40s. Some examples of when some common edgeguarding moves break it:
Sheik sweetspot bair: 32 Sheik nair: 43 Sheik fair: 48 Fox/Falco bair: 38 Marth Dair: 26
Some common edgeguarding options that never break it include Fox shine, Sheik needle, Falco laser, Mario fireballs, etc. etc.
Most moves that have significant amounts of base KB have more startup/endlag, have a smaller hit area/duration, and/or are on characters that can't go far below the edge with those moves.

For reference, if your move sends Ike into tumble at a given percent (forced to tech, obvious change in hitstun animation), the move will also break his UpB's armor. Armor is frame 25-37 of the Up-B.

 

[didds]

at least you dont play squirtle

yea but olimar doesn't even have sunglasses so that really sucks

 

[Foo]

I didn't say that you didn't know what it was, I said you were basically not paying attention when we talked about it earlier.

Try again yo

Are you for real right now?

 

[PlateProp]

yea but olimar doesn't even have sunglasses so that really sucks

This is true

I recently found out that Diddy has poseer sunglasses, wtf is this pmdt

Are you for real right now?

Are you for real?

 

[didds]

pmdt, when are you gonna give squirtle a cig smoking taunt where he takes a drag, tries to say squirtle, but instead starts coughing halfway through?

HE SMOKES MORE THAN SNAKE IF YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED

edit:all tier list posters confirmed not real

 

[Strong Badam]

Alright guys, come on, this thread is getting pretty spammy and the post quality has been deteriorating. Clean it up or I'll need to start giving warnings to get this thread back on track. Take the silliness to the Social Thread where it belongs.

 

[didds]

Alright guys, come on, this thread is getting pretty spammy and the post quality has been deteriorating. Clean it up or I'll need to start giving warnings to get this thread back on track. Take the silliness to the Social Thread where it belongs.

yes sir!

let's bring pikachu up again, who I think is at least at the top two thirds of the cast.

I've heard a lot of people say that they see him as bottom 5 which seems crazy to me.

Tell me why I'm wrong.

 

[Mean Green]

something something olimar something something bad recovery something something kill me

at least you dont play squirtle

And here I was wondering how long until I saw those jokes again


Also pikachu's not great but his neutral is pretty good, maybe too good for bottom 5

 

[PlateProp]

Basically Fox is top tier and everyone else is just mid

 

[eideeiit]

What does Pikachu have that others don't? Speed? Isn't even that good. Gimp potential? Indeed, he is one of the best in this, but it is hard getting the foe into those situations. Recovery? Good, but Pikachu's so light he'll still die relatively early.

Pikachu is one of those characters where the cons just massively outweigh the pros. Why on earth would you play a very difficult, low damage output, range lacking gimp master with a good but super risky kill move when there are others who do what his niche is nearly as well while having a crapton of other awesome tools?

Just throwing stuff out, every point I'm making should be taken with a pinch of salt and in a devil's advocate-y way. I'm not very familiar with him.

 

[CyberZixx]

I feel the same way about Pika. He seems like more effort than he is worth.

 

[didds]

I think you might be overstating how bad his weaknesses are, and I'll admit that I have a bias towards more mobile characters, but that's because the very nature of the character is one where his weaknesses can be mitigated without relying on the opponent to make a mistake. It's why people fear nerfing fox with tech rolls and recovery, because who cares if you can't beat him in neutral anyway.

Characters like bowser can be so bad because they get shut down once the opponent knows what to do. That's not something that can be done with a character who has solid neutral tools. With fox nerfed, pika undoubtedly has one of the best usmashes in the game. He absolutely needs to be killed outright since his recovery has enough options that it's on the pika player to screw up.

His hitboxes are small, but he absolutely does not have poor range. Speed is range. Pika's range is a dash shffl'd nair, and with fair he actually has gotten some disjoint added to his moveset.

He has incredibly strong anti cc options and like you said, his offstage gimping ability is still beautiful.

He can still struggle with fast disjoints, but so does everyone without a sword, hammer, or laser gun.

And don't get me wrong, he isn't easy to play by any means, but that should not be criteria for why he is low tier. It never has been, and again, that's the player adding his own personal feelings to the character's analysis. "He's got amazing tools that make him perform as well as ____ but it's so hard so he's worse than _____?"

Again, this isn't a legitimate argument.

Sorry if this is a mess, just some thoughts, I definitely don't think he's higher than mid tier or anything, not now at least.

 

[Frost | Odds]

This isn't strictly tier list speculation, but more Bowser stuff. Ordinarily I'd just dump this stuff on cmart, but she seems to be dealing with a bit of a rough patch right now so I'mma just infodump on the pmdt/general public

I've been reviewing my games, and I'm growing more and more convinced that Bowser's dash attack is one of his biggest polarizing aspects of his current design. It makes low aerials unsafe against him, pretty much across the board, extends his punish range like crazy, and kinda homogenizes his punish game in general - especially against fastfallers. I think medium armor might be too much.

In general, I think his armor system is a bit too much of a matchup knowledge burden for Bowser's opponents; they maybe shouldn't be punished quite so hard for not knowing the exact values of his armor thresholds. Unfortunately, Bowser needs most of the armor as it stands given his current design.

The most common complaints I hear are about Dash Attack and Nair - both of which have more armor than seems intuitively obvious. I still think armor on Koopa Klaw is kind of a silly concept and vastly unintuitive to opponents, but it is at the moment Bowser's best 'counter' option on hard reads of things like getup attacks: I wish this niche were filled by ftilt, fsmash, or maybe usmash instead.

I know I've touched a lot on the kinds of buffs I'd like to see, but imo the armor system bears some serious investigation. Light Armor and intangibility would probably be more than adequate for Dash Attack to get through projectiles without opponents feeling like it bulldozes every move in their kit. Light + Reductive armor might be interesting, but further complicating the situation is exactly the opposite of desirable. Koopa Klaw needs buffs, but the armor (and the fact that it's only armored on the ground) is super confusing for opponents: I think that's a failed experiment.

RE: Pikachu, he seems alright, but I'd place him solidly in the "Way More Effort Than He's Worth" category, along with Sonic, Squirtle, MK, and Pit. Sonic, Squirtman, and Pika seem better than the rest of those characters in my opinion, but still lack the kind of power/potential/versatility available to the top and even the mid tiers. Pretty much all of them seem to struggle against characters with more reach than them (ie. pretty much everyone, including Bowser) and vulnerable to the same kinds of defensive play as Fox, only without the shine / ridiculous recovery / degenerate bair / etc.

That said, I've still been experimenting with basically all those characters, and hold out hope that I'm wrong. It's still way too early to say for sure - except maybe in Pit's case; I'm pretty convinced he sucks.

Speed is range.

Absolutely, but speed is not disjoint. There's an awful lot of characters in PM (Bowser, Peach, Ivysaur, Luigi just to name a few) who totally excel at trades and really make these short ranged characters feel kinda helpless in terms of being able to actually get clean hits. This is on top of the issue of not being able to get in on the characters who do have actual disjoints like Marth&Friends.

 

[didds]

I think pika definitely struggles more to get in than say, sonic or squirtle, but I also think he has a couple of options that are just solidly better than what they have to work with, mainly dsmash, usmash, and fair (which im slowly realizing is a really good move.)

I also don't think recovery should be taken lightly, and pika has one of the strongest in the games.

Again though, it may indeed be a case of everyone else just having better tools, and if that's the case than a character like pika and his tier list position is a testament to how well the pmdt has done in general. I can still use the guy so whatevs right?

edit: I also don't think characters like pika and squirtle necessarily get shut down by disjoint as much as they get shut down by priority and lingering hit boxes. If there's a window, they can get in, it's just characters like luigi, peach, and even game and watch have so much priority, and it seems to just hover around them all the time, that finding these pockets seems impossible. Then when they do finally get in, they get cc dsmashed or dtilted anyway.

 

[Paradoxium]

What does Pikachu have that others don't? Speed? Isn't even that good. Gimp potential? Indeed, he is one of the best in this, but it is hard getting the foe into those situations. Recovery? Good, but Pikachu's so light he'll still die relatively early.

Pikachu is one of those characters where the cons just massively outweigh the pros. Why on earth would you play a very difficult, low damage output, range lacking gimp master with a good but super risky kill move when there are others who do what his niche is nearly as well while having a crapton of other awesome tools?

Just throwing stuff out, every point I'm making should be taken with a pinch of salt and in a devil's advocate-y way. I'm not very familiar with him.

Pikachu just has everything, there's nothing he can't do. I think he is one of those characters who has bad match ups, but has the kit to overcome them. Hes probably gonna end up in high tier.

 

[didds]

gotta provide more specific reasons and details, that generalization does not fly with hipster characters like pika.
we're not talking about roy.

 

[Paradoxium]

gotta provide more specific reasons and details, that generalization does not fly with hipster characters like pika.
we're not talking about roy.

I dont know what to say, Im not sure why people think he is so bad. It seems like all of his "Crippling weaknesses" are over exaggerated and have workarounds. A low tier character should be lacking vital tools, Pikachu isn't lacking in anything.

 

[steelguttey]

Pikachu isn't lacking in anything.

good projectile, range, horizontal kill power, weight

pikachu is good but come on homie

edit: good dacus, good wavedash length, shield pressure, combos against floaties

 

[didds]

good projectile, range, horizontal kill power, weight

pikachu is good but come on homie

edit: good dacus, good wavedash length, shield pressure, combos against floaties

eh, on combos against floaties. it's one of those weaknesses that he can mitigate with his absurd usmash kill power and reliable setups into said move: weak nair to usmash, fair to usmash. I agree with the rest, though even his projectile is alright, it serves it's purpose and can be tricky for certain, heavily grounded, opponents to deal with.

 

[Paradoxium]

good projectile, range, vertical kill power, weight

pikachu is good but come on homie

If thunderjolt Is used at the beginning of your jump you can waveland out of it. And plus, with a good dash dance and approach you dont really need a projectile.

Pikachu has range with his down tilt and up airs. i would also say that dash dance and shffl length both count as range.

Vertical kill power... Uh isn't it kinda obvious? Well I'm just gonna assume you meant horizontal kill power, where he has the uair hit confirm into bair. But even without it Pikachu has one of the best gimp games in pm, I would count that as kill power.

And being combo food... like every character has that problem except for the floaties, Pikahcu at least has the recovery to make it back if he isn't outright killed.

edit: good dacus, good wavedash length, shield pressure, combos against floaties

Dacus's dont determine how good a character is... that isnt a vital tool at all. Even so, he has like the second strongest upsmash in the game, that would give him one of the best Dacus's regardless of its range.

His wavedash is fine, its does its job.

Pikachu has very good shield pressure, spaced tilts, cross ups, fair into grab, quick attack, those are all legit options for pressure.

And Pikachu is one of the few characters in the game to have legit combos on floaties. His upair does 7 damage now so you can tug them around and actually rack up damage.