Tier List Speculation

[Life]

Tiers only determine balance relative to the rest of the cast. You can argue that Fox is where character power levels should be at and everyone else is a little undertuned. You can argue that the low tiers are balanced and everyone else is OP.

A balanced character has few or no highly polarized matchups which are overall about even with the rest of the cast (arguably with some weighting for character popularity; a weak Fox matchup is much more relevant than a weak Olimar matchup, although both are usually symptoms of a deeper problem).

(I'm pretty sure I literally just copied what Odds just said.)

In addition to being reasonably balanced, a well-designed character gives both the player and the opponent a high degree of agency into how the match plays out (RNG characters, characters such as ICs with polar punish games, and characters with very weak or very strong neutral games need to be careful about this), and is otherwise satisfying to play (usually follows when balance and agency are sorted out, but sometimes it's the little things, like Falcon's knee SFX).

Is this making sense?

 

[The Baron]

Tiers only determine balance relative to the rest of the cast. You can argue that Fox is where character power levels should be at and everyone else is a little undertuned. You can argue that the low tiers are balanced and everyone else is OP.

A balanced character has few or no highly polarized matchups which are overall about even with the rest of the cast (arguably with some weighting for character popularity; a weak Fox matchup is much more relevant than a weak Olimar matchup, although both are usually symptoms of a deeper problem).

(I'm pretty sure I literally just copied what Odds just said.)

In addition to being reasonably balanced, a well-designed character gives both the player and the opponent a high degree of agency into how the match plays out (RNG characters, characters such as ICs with polar punish games, and characters with very weak or very strong neutral games need to be careful about this), and is otherwise satisfying to play (usually follows when balance and agency are sorted out, but sometimes it's the little things, like Falcon's knee SFX).

Is this making sense?

Question, where do hard counters fit into a state of balance. Like the first match is even but the loser picks a character that is 70:30 or 60:40 against the other character. Would that be considered an imbalnce and would it be possible to get rid of it without homogenizing the cast or taking away too many tools away from the character?

 

[TreK]

<disclaimer>
I am EXTREMELY biased about that matchup. That's why I never talk about it, I feel like it would be more honest if other Ivies did it instead. Here's why :

I am currently ranked 4th in France and the three players ranked higher than me are as follows :
1 - Leon : Snake/Marth - 3rd best Marth in the world in Brawl, 12th best Marth in Europe in Melee (he doesn't play Melee seriously)
2 - Mahie : ZSS/Marth - 4th best Marth in Europe in Melee
3 - Charby : Marth/CF - no Melee background to my knowledge, but a top French SSBB player when he played that game (France is the best European country in Brawl)

And all those Marths have different styles : I can hold my own against Charby's defensive Marth because him being defensive actually lets me interact pretty often, and I've set out to win at least one set against that guy before 3.6 is released. But Leon's aggressive Marth makes it pretty clear I have still a lot to learn about that matchup, and the game in general.

So I have potential financial gain if I complain hard enough that the Marth matchup gets fixed, and I'm not the Ivy with the best knowledge of the Marth matchup. That's why I don't usually go in too many details about it.

tl;dr, if there's an Ivysaur you should hear about this issue, it certainly isn't me.
</disclaimer>

Whether you ask me, or any other Ivy, they'll all tell you that Marth was Ivy's worst matchup in 3.02 and is her 2nd worst matchup in 3.5 after Fox.
Ivy's a weird matchup for Marth, in that it's a matchup where he benefits from jumping too much, when in Melee Marth is pretty much Dr Dash Dance. Marth's dash dance is an invaluable tool, but it does systematically lose to Ivy's dtilt and razor leaf so it should be used very carefully in this matchup. As far as I know, Marth's dash dance should only be used to ban Ivysaur from dash dancing herself, that's it.
So I can see why some people inexperienced with the matchup would dash dance spam on autopilot and loose. I've written a quick guide on how to play Marth against Ivy. I think it illustrates a good portion of the problems I have (personally, blah blah blah see my disclaimer) with this matchup.
Like ffs the very fact that I was able to write a Marth vs Ivy guide and am not able to write an Ivy vs Marth guide is ridiculous.

Ivy can't di out of fthrow followups

That's a common misconception that comes from 3.02 : that was true in the last update, and Marth pretty much had guaranteed 0-deaths off of grabs which was a total party pooper, but the fix to throw release points or whatever they're called makes it so now, Marth does require you to react to or read the victim's DI, or at the very least get a tech chase.
This change alone, despite the fact that Ivy got nerfed and Marth not, made the matchup a LOT easier for Ivy.
Obviously Ivy still doesn't like getting grabbed by Marth. At 0 it's a 21% combo into an edgeguard, later on it's a tech chase into whatever strikes your fancy. And then there's the fthrow dthrow DI mixup, where if you fail to recognize which one of these identical looking throws Marth is using, you take 8 fairs to the face.
So yeah getting grabbed still kinda sucks, but not nearly as much as it used to.

Ivysaur's recovery is a huge detriment to him in this matchup

It's not that bad.
Ivy's upB does suck, but she has other tools and those are what you should be focusing on, because everybody and their mother can get a stock off of Ivy's upB if they manage to force her to use it. She's designed to function despite that upB, and for the most part it works (not saying it's good design, wink wink nudge nudge). What matters is your ability to harass Ivy offstage, make her waste her double jump and her time, because else she'll be able to use down B and side B to punish you if you try to edgehog her.
Marth has slightly above average punishes if he manages edgehog Ivy's upB (spike on reaction if you strafe back, rising nair on reaction if you strafe forward, which sends Ivy back offstage without her DJ, dair bumps, and one less upB. They're only slightly above average because, again, everybody and their mothers can kill Ivy from an edgehog), but, because Marth can't really go very far offstage to make Ivy waste her recovery resources (double jump and dair), as far as making that situation happen, he's very much average.

I recall @ TreK mentioning that he has an amazing marth player that's considered significantly better than him that has huge trouble in tournament solely because of how ivy/marth plays out

lol I wish. It's the other way around.
My region's top player is a Snake main, Marth second, and he's forced to switch to Marth against me. He's only won one set as Snake against my Ivy, and he's won like 3 by CPing Marth.

For the record, Charby thinks the matchup is 4-6, I think it's 35-65, and we both think Umbreon is cray-cray.

 

[supascoot]

Is this making sense?

Does not compute, greninja nerfed, **** stuck in blender, meme meta game left to develop etc.

Really though, while I agree with every explanaion given, I'd like to know what tier people think the characters should be balanced to. Is everything in A tier and above too good? Does this make wario the ultimate balanced character? I think this may be too hard to decide, but I'd like some input. Either way, its a pipe dream to get every character in the same tier, but it doesn't hurt to try.

2 - Mahie : ZSS/Marth - 4th best Marth in Europe in Melee

I actually asked Mahie on what he thought on the MU. He said this
[22:23:37] Supa: since you probably know about it, what do you think?
[22:23:43] Mahie: I actually don't
[22:23:46] Supa: dammit
I got nothing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Deleted member]

For the record, Charby thinks the matchup is 4-6, I think it's 35-65, and we both think Umbreon is cray-cray.

to be fair, i watched your sets, and you play really, really bad against marth. like im pretty sure my ivysaur is better vs marth than yours and ive played her twice ever. this isnt a slam on you so much as i understand why you think the MU is bad. if you want i can probably help you with this MU. leon's marth is also just straight better than charby's by quite a bit.

 

[TreK]

I actually asked Mahie on what he thought on the MU. He said this
[22:23:37] Supa: since you probably know about it, what do you think?
[22:23:43] Mahie: I actually don't
[22:23:46] Supa: dammit
I got nothing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah Mahie lives in Lille, which could almost be considered another region from Paris. I only got to play him once in 3.5

to be fair, i watched your sets, and you play really, really bad against marth. like im pretty sure my ivysaur is better vs marth than yours and ive played her twice ever. this isnt a slam on you so much as i understand why you think the MU is bad. if you want i can probably help you with this MU. leon's marth is also just straight better than charby's by quite a bit.

I definitely won't say no to that :V
I'd rather wait until I get another set against Leon recorded though. That one was pretty meh.

 

[CELTiiC]

It's not that bad.
Ivy's upB does suck, but she has other tools and those are what you should be focusing on, because everybody and their mother can get a stock off of Ivy's upB if they manage to force her to use it. She's designed to function despite that upB, and for the most part it works (not saying it's good design, wink wink nudge nudge). What matters is your ability to harass Ivy offstage, make her waste her double jump and her time, because else she'll be able to use down B and side B to punish you if you try to edgehog her.
Marth has slightly above average punishes if he manages edgehog Ivy's upB (spike on reaction if you strafe back, rising nair on reaction if you strafe forward, which sends Ivy back offstage without her DJ, dair bumps, and one less upB. They're only slightly above average because, again, everybody and their mothers can kill Ivy from an edgehog), but, because Marth can't really go very far offstage to make Ivy waste her recovery resources (double jump and dair), as far as making that situation happen, he's very much average.

Fair enough. In my experience once Ivysaur gets off stage he generally is dead, but then again it may be how my friend recovers and I'm just used to punishing his habits. B-air off ledge beats low recoveries and f-air walls have helped with higher recoveries especially if the Ivy throws out a Razer Leaf.

 

[DrinkingFood]

@ DrinkingFood How are you able to intellectually appreciate that ROB is one of the best characters, and yet manage to pretend that every one of his moves is total garbage in every situation? For God's sake, you sound like I used to when talking about Melee Jigglypuff.

By your logic, literally nobody can ever defend against approaching aerials, recovery is impossible, projectiles are always garbage and will always be caught or powershielded, tilts are unusable, and every move in the game is far too much commitment to ever get away with.

Dude, DACUS comes out frame 13, has amazing launcher and vertical hitboxes, and travels farther than all but a handful of DACUSes in the game. I can't tell if you seriously think it's a bad punish option, or if you're trying to pull one over on us. From watching some of your games, you seem to dsmash approximately twice as much as every other move combined, which is pretty strange behavior for someone who thinks dsmash is a garbage move. :/

I say that, that moves are bad for what you are suggesting, because I know what they're good for, and you don't. You say ftilt is an anti-air, I say it's a poking tool/situational combo extender.
As for DACUS, the vertical launcher:
Hits grounded opponents only
can be CC'd to avoid the strong hit at any percent
can also get boned on random SDI/ASDI, tho it depends on the opponents position and DI
comes out too early in the DACUS to get much extra reach from the DACUS momentum
And the strong hit only hits at his base, which is way over head, so you have to be right on top of an average-or-taller character to actually hit it unless the launcher actually lands
nevermind the actual difficulties of hitting it, it's also got plenty of lag, you don't get a direct combo out of hitting it, you just get them overhead. But no guaranteed combo, it's not worth using ROB's most committed and hardest to hit move unless you have a hard read or a good set-up to land a kill.

 

[Frost | Odds]

I say that, that moves are bad for what you are suggesting, because I know what they're good for, and you don't. You say ftilt is an anti-air, I say it's a poking tool/situational combo extender.

I didn't say it was a great anti-air, just that it was one of the many, many tools ROB can use to hit the space above and immediately in front of him.

As for DACUS, the vertical launcher:
Hits grounded opponents only
can be CC'd to avoid the strong hit at any percent
can also get boned on random SDI/ASDI, tho it depends on the opponents position and DI
comes out too early in the DACUS to get much extra reach from the DACUS momentum
And the strong hit only hits at his base, which is way over head, so you have to be right on top of an average-or-taller character to actually hit it unless the launcher actually lands
nevermind the actual difficulties of hitting it, it's also got plenty of lag, you don't get a direct combo out of hitting it, you just get them overhead. But no guaranteed combo, it's not worth using ROB's most committed and hardest to hit move unless you have a hard read or a good set-up to land a kill.

I have no response to this that isn't both incredibly sarcastic and at least moderately rude. Given that Bowser's DACUS is even worse than his regular usmash, which is already one of the worst moves in the game, I'm not sympathetic.

@ TreK Quality post, 420/69 would dank again

 

[DrinkingFood]

I didn't say it was a great anti-air, just that it was one of the many, many tools ROB can use to hit the space above and immediately in front of him.


I have no response to this that isn't both incredibly sarcastic and at least moderately rude. Given that Bowser's DACUS is even worse than his regular usmash, which is already one of the worst moves in the game, I'm not sympathetic.

@ TreK Quality post, 420/69 would dank again

Then yes, ROB can hit the airspace in front of him. Any character can. I fail to see how that's significant when all his options to do so have either dramatic commitment or don't really do the job at all. That was the initial point- ROB has no signicant tools for dealing with airborne opponents, short of retreating and punishing a landing, which isn't relevant against characters who can almost always cover their landing, like sheik, or who can land unpredictable and shift both horizontal and vertical positioning precisely, like Kirby, or who just can't be retreated from at all and must be handled directly, like falcon.

The uselessness of bowser's upsmash has no bearing on the usefulness of ROBs. I fail to see the relevancy. Ofc ROB's DACUS is useful, but it's not significant as a burst range option except against an opponent who won't respect your space, which is already going to cost them in any matchup anyways, and even in that case there's no guarantee they'll be disrespecting your space in the exact positions to get DACUS'd, nor that you'll get much more than positioning off of it. ROB has waaay better alternatives for burst range.

 

[YourOpinionIs]

DrinkingFood, which characters do you think ROB struggles against and who in your opinion are the top 5 characters in the game?

 

[Frost | Odds]

It may appear at first glance that my rare and prized 'like' has been awarded to the above post out of malice and/or sarcasm, but that's not true - it's just a couple points well made.

I still question whether ROB's anti-air could be that bad when he's in possession of one of the best shieldgrabs in the game, an amazing fair, and a great DACUS, but I'd have to study your games in a lot more detail than I have time for right now. Maybe after NWM :o

You also seem to think that I advocate using DACUS as an approach, and that's not true at all. Like Kirby's dash attack and ROB's boost fair, it simply extends his punish range, and effectively makes it so that the opponent can't make a mistake within a huge, wide horizontal space within ROB lest he eat a nasty punish. Bowser's dash attack is currently one of the most busted moves in the game, for that exact same reason.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Your tag is YourOpinionIs and you're asking for my opinion? I am direly confused, things are never this straightforward.
I can't say I know enough about enough matchups to quantify who the best characters are or in what order, restricting it to just my top 5 would get something I might change by the next day. I mean I might list characters who I would think don't have too many undesirable matchups like the spacies, Roy, sheik, M2, Samus, ROB, Diddy, lucas, possibly more who just have inherently strong tools, so they either get a lot out of fundamental play (Spacies/Roy/Sheik) or have options to deal with challenges a little more creatively/specific to the situation (I feel diddy lucas ROB Samus maybe M2 operate that way)

Also @ Frost | Odds , ROB's shield is one of the worst in the game, making the whole operation of attempting to shield then grab less than desirable since it hinges on the ability to successfully shield the move and grab, using the time made during the throw to regenerate the shield damage. While the range on his grab isn't bad (it's actual reach from the front of his standing position is slightly above average) he also happens to have one of the worst shields in the game. I try to conserve shield in situations other characters would use it to deal with things such as projectiles or invading a wall, and instead use it against opponents are in position to come down with a move that beats CC so that I can shield grab. But if instead your shield is spaced safely against, or crossed up, and a shield grab isn't an option, ROB loses much of the safety of his shield to its extreme pokeability.

 

[Deleted member]

my top 5 is fox wolf roy sheik rob and pretty much has been since 3.5 was released in november.

 

[Deleted member]

You don't like playing vs Roy or Samus as rob?


Uhhhhhh1?!?!!!?!?!?!?!?! Am I reading this right? I can't tell if I'm reading your post right.

 

[DrinkingFood]

You don't like playing vs Roy or Samus as rob?


Uhhhhhh1?!?!!!?!?!?!?!?! Am I reading this right? I can't tell if I'm reading your post right.

no you aren't reading that right

 

[Deleted member]

no you aren't reading that right

I'm drunk please help me read it right your post confuses me I'm a small child

help

 

[9bit]

I'm drunk

Ohhhhhh I'm gonna tell ur dad on you


Edit this is not the Social Thread >_>

Realrap what is up with Roy? I mean damn.

 

[DrinkingFood]

I'm drunk please help me read it right your post confuses me I'm a small child

help

all I said was those are characters I would could conceivably put in the top ten. ROB included. I didn't put them in any order, in fact I didn't even count them I just kinda listed off who I thought were probably the best

 

[YourOpinionIs]

Samus is a...curious...choice. Can you elaborate? Ive started playing her a lot recently and she seems to suck in the air and has no shield pressure whatsoever since her grab is awful. Awesome zoning and projectile game though.

 

[Ariyo]

I remember hearing about a build with nontranscendent falco lasers and how it was quickly reverted because they became the best antiprojectile projectile in the game, while also still being almost as dumb as they usually are.

I should've thought that'd be the problem

 

[InfinityCollision]

Really though, while I agree with every explanaion given, I'd like to know what tier people think the characters should be balanced to. Is everything in A tier and above too good? Does this make wario the ultimate balanced character? I think this may be too hard to decide, but I'd like some input. Either way, its a pipe dream to get every character in the same tier, but it doesn't hurt to try.

It's honestly not possible to do this question justice within the span of a single post. What the hell though, right?

Balance is this complicated, interactive system. Sometimes top (and more often high/upper mid) characters rise to that level because characters that otherwise might challenge them are suppressed by balance/design issues or lack of meta development. Does that mean these characters should remain as they are? Not necessarily. Does it mean they should be nerfed? Not necessarily. Does that mean the weaker characters really need to be buffed? You already know my answer to that question.

At some point, guidelines have to be established. Now the PMDT mission statement comes into play. Balance is theoretically possible across the entire spectrum of power levels, so they chose a design philosophy that encompasses the gameplay they intend to foster and build from there.

Design and balance converge. Set baselines and define tolerances in various categories: how much reward should a typical character get from a typical conversion? What are the maximum and minimum acceptable values? Do these values differ at low, mid, and high percents, and how so? How many conversions is approximately equal to one stock? How easily should a character be able to convert, and how easy/consistent/reliable should followups of varying types (extenders, kill moves, etc) be for the first, second... nth actions be in a given situation? You can also phrase these questions in other ways to examine other sides of the issue: how resistant a character should be to pressure, damage racking, KOs, gimps, etc. Generally speaking, clear answers to these sort of questions will lead not only to consistent design but also reasonably good balance. Defining that balance point relative to current meta is challenging however for the reasons above.

-----

As far as my own opinions on the matter, I think I'm more or less on board with where PM is heading. Oppressive and overly reliable options are being trimmed down; that said I'd like to see increased opportunities for creative use of tools in their wake. Decreased polarization in design is obviously something the PMDT is working towards. I could also get on board with a meta where the punish game isn't as heavily emphasized as in Melee, which may or may not happen. Where does that put us in relation to current tiers? That's kind of hard to say, given the shifts in design that would take us there. If I had to put a number on it I'd say somewhere around the current 15-20 rankings is a reasonable target for power level, but I'm not sure about how closely the characters in that eventual future will resemble the characters that occupy that space now. Given the right design decisions I could easily push that number higher, towards the number 10 spot... probably not much lower than 20, but part of that is simply that I think the bottom third of the cast is plagued by design issues at the moment.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Samus is a...curious...choice. Can you elaborate? Ive started playing her a lot recently and she seems to suck in the air and has no shield pressure whatsoever since her grab is awful. Awesome zoning and projectile game though.

Even in Melee she wasn't too awful, but she was majorly outclassed by a few of the top/high tiers. Sheik bodied her, Falco bodied her, falcon bodied her, but now she has some major buffs to compensate and a lot of unique new tools that give her a new way to approach a lot of matchups
Crawl is probably her best new tool, giving her the smallest most mobile low profile movement in the game, with an amazing crawl attack to boot. Crawl gets her under most falco lasers, under sheik's grounded needles, makes falcon have a super hard time getting in on her, it makes her passively a threat because she can just crawl away from a lot of the things that used to be a threat to her, and reestablish her place on the stage for her amazing zoning game.
Other huge additions are her zair, giving her quick access to hit outside of the poking range of her normals very quickly and a way to deal with many projectiles better; and ice form which gives her access to a walling/option covering fair, a gimping/knockdown dtilt (don't let Samus mains lie to you this is not a bad move), a kill move upsmash (She never had a good vertical killing option before!) and missiles that function very differently giving them new subtleties in their usage; and tilt pivots are now consistent which are basically quick versions of wavedash back-> move, but using dash back->soft turnaround->ftilt/dtilt/dsmash etc. instead
She also got improvements to some of her existing stuff- fire fsmash has more range, fire usmash feels better tho it might just be placebo from the last version, grab is way quicker, and not-garbage rolls.
Universal mechanic changes help her a lot too- RAR lets her get to the edge quickly from certain distances she couldn't before. B-reversal and her aerial charge shot charge cancel actually help her improve her mobility in the air. Pivot grab is probably the most important one though- she can now vacate space and punish opponents very hard if they go into and commit in that space immediately behind her. Running past her DD length to evade highly aggressive opponents is now less of a commitment.
Plus I think the stages favor her a lot more now too. She can always avoid FD which was probs her worst stage in Melee, plus she can avoid GHZ which is just FD+, meaning she will ALWAYS have platforms for use, which is very important to her, even if it does just end up being YIB's platform which is kinda disappointing for her it's way better than having nothing.
Although it doesn't automatically make her top/high tier, she has the most buffs for her placement in Melee by A LOT, like it's not even close. I don't see many of her matchups with other top characters being so awful, and I definitely don't see her having losing matchups to mediocre characters either.

 

[eideeiit]

Well maybe Mario and Doc could be argued? About that last point of the most buffed veteran in relation to placement.

 

[DrinkingFood]

ehh PM Mario is more Melee Mario with Doc's pills than anything else, and Mario was pretty low tbh so I don't really consider his buffs extreme relative to his placement or anything
but even then you're right, I guess he'd be a good contender for the title of "Best Character with Most Buffs"

 

[trash?]

any list of best characters with best buffs from melee that doesn't include the objectively worst character from melee is incorrect

 

[DrinkingFood]

It's not really worth discussing
but
It's about who got the most buffs for their placement, not who got the most buffs period
Kirby's buffs make sense for his placement

 

[DrinkingFood]

You don't like playing vs Roy or Samus as rob?


Uhhhhhh1?!?!!!?!?!?!?!?! Am I reading this right? I can't tell if I'm reading your post right.

I'm drunk please help me read it right your post confuses me I'm a small child

help

DrinkingFood, which characters do you think ROB struggles against and who in your opinion are the top 5 characters in the game?

Oooohh I didn't realize he asked who ROB struggled against, I mentally blocked that out somehow and just read "Who are the top 5 characters"
that explains the confusion hopefully


Anyway I only have experience in some of those matchups I listed for my potential top 10 against good players as ROB, the ones I feel are surely bad for ROB are Sheik and Falco, another one I expect to be bad for ROB is Spacie-Falcon-Sheik (Wolf) although I've never played a top wolf; Roy, Samus, Fox, Diddy are Probably in ROB's favor (or even at worst); M2/Lucas I have no idea I've never actually played a good one so I don't have an intuitive understanding of how they work. I'd probably have to guess the M2 beats ROB due to teleport letting him violate ROB's zone easily and having a quick powerful aerial capable of breaking CC, on top of the tools to out-reach and carry ROB for extended combos and guaranteed off the top kills at reasonable percents, while being challenging for ROB to gimp or punish in return. No idea what to guess on Lucas but I know ROB would definitely have no issues punishing or gimping him in response to Lucas's own punish game, but how the neutral would play out is completely beyond my current understanding.

 

[eideeiit]

Doesn't Mewtwo also have godlike item play? And is nearly ungimpable? I don't know much, but this MU definitely seems like a real ***** for ROB.

 

[DrinkingFood]

He definitely has an amazing backwards glide toss and a relevant forward glide toss, and can make other moves available while holding an item, and still one of the easiest powershields
Definitely not looking good for ROB from where I'm standing

 

[Boiko]

Just a quick for the record: Falco:Samus is 50:50 in melee.

 

[Jacob29]

Just a quick for the record: Falco:Samus is 50:50 in melee.

damn must be rough for the poor poor Bird in PM then.

#ripBlueBird #Falco4FTier

 

[eideeiit]

That's extremely debatable

 

[PlateProp]

That's extremely debatable

Nope

 

[Boiko]

damn must be rough for the poor poor Bird in PM then.

#ripBlueBird #Falco4FTier

Eh, not really. Samus' changes from Melee to PM don't really help her too much outside what she would normally do. Plus the stage variety, favoring long flat stages, helps Falco more than it helps her. Stages like GHZ, FD, Smashville, Yoshi's Brawl, and even Pokémon are all solid choices for Falco. Even her typical best choice, FoD, isn't that bad for him. I generally prefer stages like Battlefield, personally. Crawl helps, Ice mode can help, but, eh. I still think it's even/slightly in Samus' favor.

That's extremely debatable

Not really, lol.

 

[Yambotico]

So in pm has there ever been a consensus on what it a real pivot grab? Its strange that two different techniques go by the same name (grabbing on the pivot frame and grabbing then immediately turning around).

 

[Chevy]

Even in Melee she wasn't too awful, but she was majorly outclassed by a few of the top/high tiers. Sheik bodied her, Falco bodied her, falcon bodied her, but now she has some major buffs to compensate and a lot of unique new tools that give her a new way to approach a lot of matchups
Crawl is probably her best new tool, giving her the smallest most mobile low profile movement in the game, with an amazing crawl attack to boot. Crawl gets her under most falco lasers, under sheik's grounded needles, makes falcon have a super hard time getting in on her, it makes her passively a threat because she can just crawl away from a lot of the things that used to be a threat to her, and reestablish her place on the stage for her amazing zoning game.
Other huge additions are her zair, giving her quick access to hit outside of the poking range of her normals very quickly and a way to deal with many projectiles better; and ice form which gives her access to a walling/option covering fair, a gimping/knockdown dtilt (don't let Samus mains lie to you this is not a bad move), a kill move upsmash (She never had a good vertical killing option before!) and missiles that function very differently giving them new subtleties in their usage; and tilt pivots are now consistent which are basically quick versions of wavedash back-> move, but using dash back->soft turnaround->ftilt/dtilt/dsmash etc. instead
She also got improvements to some of her existing stuff- fire fsmash has more range, fire usmash feels better tho it might just be placebo from the last version, grab is way quicker, and not-garbage rolls.
Universal mechanic changes help her a lot too- RAR lets her get to the edge quickly from certain distances she couldn't before. B-reversal and her aerial charge shot charge cancel actually help her improve her mobility in the air. Pivot grab is probably the most important one though- she can now vacate space and punish opponents very hard if they go into and commit in that space immediately behind her. Running past her DD length to evade highly aggressive opponents is now less of a commitment.
Plus I think the stages favor her a lot more now too. She can always avoid FD which was probs her worst stage in Melee, plus she can avoid GHZ which is just FD+, meaning she will ALWAYS have platforms for use, which is very important to her, even if it does just end up being YIB's platform which is kinda disappointing for her it's way better than having nothing.
Although it doesn't automatically make her top/high tier, she has the most buffs for her placement in Melee by A LOT, like it's not even close. I don't see many of her matchups with other top characters being so awful, and I definitely don't see her having losing matchups to mediocre characters either.

I'm not gonna argue Samus' tier placement right now, just wanna point out that she received a bunch of indirect nerfs from Melee too.

- Shorter Standing Grab
- More predictable and generally worse recovery(I could go on about the plethora of tools she lost from the loss of Melee tethers)
- Up-smash does less damage(not that it really matters it's near unusable in Melee lol)
- Ending f-air early nets you less because it links properly, In Melee since the first hits hit upwards substantially, you could L-cancel f-airs into kill options. This let you get instant conversions into kills from ledge and other setups.
- Brawl invincibility mechanics and difference in Samus' stage collision makes aerial interrupt much worse, which hurts her from-ledge game.
- Extender is gone : (
- No bomb cancel z-air, which was one of her only tools to mitigate juggles in Melee(also a recovery mix-up)

Also Ice d-tilt isn't strictly bad, it's more like there's almost never a situation where you don't have a better option. It just makes me wish I d-smashed every time I CC d-tilt. For ledge-guarding it's pretty much the easy but sub-optimal option. You'd rather low angle f-tilt or low angle f-smash or go for stage spike d-smash. It could maybe set up for charge shot tech-chasing but it's not nearly fast enough(and it shouldn't be, endlag is fine). Also it does like no damage. If the no knockback hitboxes were more consistent you could use it to punish Rest/shieldbreak I guess? But even that's almost impossible to get consistently. They'll get knocked back sometimes and not others it's weird.

EDIT:

Eh, not really. Samus' changes from Melee to PM don't really help her too much outside what she would normally do. Plus the stage variety, favoring long flat stages, helps Falco more than it helps her. Stages like GHZ, FD, Smashville, Yoshi's Brawl, and even Pokémon are all solid choices for Falco. Even her typical best choice, FoD, isn't that bad for him. I generally prefer stages like Battlefield, personally. Crawl helps, Ice mode can help, but, eh. I still think it's even/slightly in Samus' favor.

FoD is much worse for Samus in PM. RIP Melee tethers. Also I'd argue that Falco beats Samus in Melee, but I'll argue that about any character in the Melee top 8(except maybe Ice Climbers who knows?).

 

[Jacob29]

I wasn't being serious : (

Damn this post-kappa world!

 

[Boiko]

FoD is much worse for Samus in PM. RIP Melee tethers. Also I'd argue that Falco beats Samus in Melee, but I'll argue that about any character in the Melee top 8(except maybe Ice Climbers who knows?).

It's never really been about the tethers for me, but rather that she has a guaranteed dsmash if you and your opponent land on top platform from an UpB, which makes her threatening in shield. That, combined with the changing platform heights which generally only help her, her utilt covers almost an entire platform, cutting off recovery options.

Idk, Minty actually thinks it's in Samus' favor last I heard (Saturday). I'm inclined to disagree and call it closer to even. Camping with lasers can give her a hard time, and that's why I don't like Falco on Dreamland, but her safeness in shield basically negates Falco's pressure, and you obviously can't sleep on her ability to gimp.

Idk, that's all melee though, and we're not here to discuss that.

 

[DrinkingFood]

I'm not gonna argue Samus' tier placement right now, just wanna point out that she received a bunch of indirect nerfs from Melee too.

- Shorter Standing Grab
- More predictable and generally worse recovery(I could go on about the plethora of tools she lost from the loss of Melee tethers)
- Up-smash does less damage(not that it really matters it's near unusable in Melee lol)
- Ending f-air early nets you less because it links properly, In Melee since the first hits hit upwards substantially, you could L-cancel f-airs into kill options. This let you get instant conversions into kills from ledge and other setups.
- Brawl invincibility mechanics and difference in Samus' stage collision makes aerial interrupt much worse, which hurts her from-ledge game.
- Extender is gone : (
- No bomb cancel z-air, which was one of her only tools to mitigate juggles in Melee(also a recovery mix-up)

Also Ice d-tilt isn't strictly bad, it's more like there's almost never a situation where you don't have a better option. It just makes me wish I d-smashed every time I CC d-tilt. For ledge-guarding it's pretty much the easy but sub-optimal option. You'd rather low angle f-tilt or low angle f-smash or go for stage spike d-smash. It could maybe set up for charge shot tech-chasing but it's not nearly fast enough(and it shouldn't be, endlag is fine). Also it does like no damage. If the no knockback hitboxes were more consistent you could use it to punish Rest/shieldbreak I guess? But even that's almost impossible to get consistently. They'll get knocked back sometimes and not others it's weird.

EDIT:


FoD is much worse for Samus in PM. RIP Melee tethers. Also I'd argue that Falco beats Samus in Melee, but I'll argue that about any character in the Melee top 8(except maybe Ice Climbers who knows?).

Except for her edge game being worse, the rest of those aren't really even significant in light of the buffs she received tbh