Tier List Speculation

[Arrow (Kyle)]

>Searing Arrow
>Definitely me

Talk to me when you're not too ***** to travel to EC and get 17th at a local.

 

[Nausicaa]

inb4 Odds gets salty about Zelda after

@ Nausicaa I thought you were going to read the changelist. Uhhh. TLink's & Link's Nair were changed and I'm sad?

i donno how to use forums anymore
There are posts after yours but I can't read anymore
Something about olimar getting a shine and Cable is in this game?

Ivy's B is hilarious to mess up Falco pressure. Even if that recovery is bad it's fun to play as the plant.
First impressions of kind-of-bad characters are like Zard and Jiggs or something, but the gap seems smaller than ever between good and bad. I haven't played again yet, but pondered as I did other things.
Played Melee once, PM once, and Smash4 once so far this year, and PM still mah fave.
Still can't believe Wolf was left so good when everyone worse was sat on at least a bit though...
Falcon, Diddy, Fox, Ike, Lucario, Lucas, Luigi, Mario, Peach, Pika, M2, Samus, Sheik, Sonic, Ness, Roy, Snake, TL, Wario, Yoshi, Zamus, all seem really solid too. Others probs on their level but they seem very apparently good at a glance.
MK feels like he was hit a bit like Pit, but not just the Dair. Maybe the Dair really was being THAT good for him, ionno, seems clunky, but I guess he always had that feel to him in an off-handed way.
Pika, Peach, Luigi, always bad by rule-of-thumb though.
And Ooze is still as Ooze as ever.


Someone wanna gimme a run-down of where the hype is and what the talk-of-PM-community-town is about this patch?

Skimming through pages might help, and reading patch notes maybe, but I'm sure the word-of-the-people is better, and all I see around here is flip-flopping from one random train to another with so much fluff that it drowned the substance right into the abyss of gibberish. <like that
PWEPEWEPPWEPWPWPEWP
And stop liking my posts dangnammit, answer my shiz.

I wanna know who is NOT obviously good. So who's the underdog in this game, since that whole 'they probs aren't bad but it's gotta be someone' deal exists?

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

Has anyone made a tier list of obnoxiousness everybody can agree with yet? No? Pls. First step to achieving an actual tier list kappa.

did u forget my definitive 3.02 tierlist

 

[NachoOfCheese]

I feel like everybody is saying everything is jank. But every great competitive game has it's fair share of it. Look at Melee.
Sheik invalidates half the cast with her grab, but their community is strong. Ice climbers can 0-death literally everyone if you know how to press Z and desynch. Fox is fox. Melee is still strong. The puff can set up a rest and kill you at 10%. Melee is still strong.
What's the difference? Project M in my opinion is a far more extensive (and frankly, more fun) game, yet... this community is just living in the shadow of a game that's been around longer than the range of Ivy's Bair. The difference is the option of change. You can't nerf Melee Fox. But you can give Olimar shine in PM if you wanted. As a result, for Melee, a game that's been the same for YEARS, complaining is an option but changing the game isn't. People learn to deal with the jank. The result? Well, Melee's huge competitive scene.
But for Project M, like Smash 4, players have the option to cry out for nerfs, and get those nerfs, and get rid of the jank. Thing is... that usually (not ALWAYS) but usually makes the game sorta bland. What is Sonic without his speed? A joke. What is Bowser without crazy armor on his entire kit? Forgotten. What is Smash 4 now, where combos are just memorized d-throw to whatever? Not fun.
I don't know about you but I'd rather have a game where everyone has their own Melee toptier-esque jank than a game of everyone being terribad. Just my thoughts.

 

[Frost | Odds]

What is Bowser without crazy armor on his entire kit? Forgotten.

Or a terrifying, vicious, crazy mother****ing animal

but I wouldn't know anything about that

@Lunchables

 

[JOE!]

First impressions of kind-of-bad characters are like Zard and Jiggs or something, but the gap seems smaller than ever between good

Why do you see Zard as bad, out of curiosity?

 

[NachoOfCheese]

Or a terrifying, vicious, crazy mother****ing animal

but I wouldn't know anything about that

@Lunchables

But really though, in every other game he's been in he's just that dude that hangs out in top tier in week 1, then quickly drops to unusably bad.

 

[InfinityCollision]

Someone wanna gimme a run-down of where the hype is and what the talk-of-PM-community-town is about this patch?

No particular order within groupings:

Hype: Fox, Wolf, Roy, Sheik, ROB, Falcon, Lucario, Samus

(Not so) secret hype and/or kept down by THE FOX MAN: Tink, Diddy, Mewtwo, Ike, Yoshi, Marth, Lucas, others

Antimeta hero: D3

Maybe good, maybe not, currently unpopular because feels: Pit, MK, ZSS, Pika, Link, maybe others

I recover with an up-b tether, RIP: Ivy

Might be scary Soon™: ICs, Olimar

 

[Binary Clone]

Not really meant at you, but what the hell does priority even mean?

Priority is one of those terms that everyone uses incorrectly, nobody agrees on, and is typically used to mean something we don't have a good, snappy name for, where is actually means something else.

Typically when people say "priority" they mean "the tendency of a hitbox to win out over other hitboxes" whether this means by coming out faster, being disjointed, etc. This is not what it actually is.

Priority is the behavior of hitboxes that causes one hitbox to be nullified and the other to persist, or two hitboxes to clank and mutually cancel. This behavior applies mostly to normal ground attacks and projectiles. If one hitbox is more than 9% more powerful than the other hitbox, the weaker hitbox is low priority, and is cancelled, while the stronger hitbox is high priority and persists. Whenever one of these collisions occurs, there is that distinct clanging sound and a little white bubble appears.

This rule does not apply to aerial attacks. Aerial attacks will not collide/clash with other aerials or with normal ground attacks, and both will persist. However, aerial hitboxes will collide with normal projectiles, where the priority rule does apply, but the aerial attack will not cancel, only the projectile, if it is low or even priority.

There is also transcendent priority, which ignore priority entirely, and cannot cancel out or be cancelled by any other hitboxes, or really interact with other hitboxes at all.



Often, movesets are given the description of having "good priority" or "bad priority" (e.g., "Sonic's moveset has bad priority") where that is not actually the appropriate term (in the example, they mean Sonic's moveset lacks many good disjoints and so is often hit before his attacks can hit).

In my opinion, we do need a new term to describe the general behavior of some moves. Luigi's nair or Falcon's uair are often wrongly described as having "good priority" even though priority rules barely apply to them, and they do fairly standard damage. What they really mean is that the speed and placement of the hitboxes are very favorable, but there's not a neat single little term for that property, since it's not a concrete behavior.

 

[Zerudahime]

@ Frost | Odds

I accept your challenge of course.
I will make you run and scream like everyone else that plays me.
I absolutely have no problem doing that.

bowser v zelda is zelda favor btw.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

@ Frost | Odds

Frost | Odds . Sorry buddy, as much as I love you those kicks keep Bowser down.[/user]

Not sure how I turned half this post into a link but I'm keeping it like that.

 

[ThegreatVaporeon1]

Zelda can just press down b and it's over for Bowser

 

[Frost | Odds]

If this was ever in dispute, I gotta say you're insane, @ Frost | Odds . Sorry buddy, as much as I love you those kicks keep Bowser down.

Not sure how I turned half this post into a link but I'm keeping it like that.

I think it's around 60:40 Zelda's favor, maybe even closer to 65:35. Could ofc be wrong about that, as I've certainly never played a Zelda anywhere near Zhime's caliber. Bowser's Dash Attack is super degenerate right now, though, and I'm not sure if Zelda has a real answer, given her extremely limited mobility.

 

[FreeGamer]

How big were those nerfs for Link? I've heard people say he's bottom 10, but I find that extremely hard to believe.

 

[Idostuff]

Link is so bad now. He had a great recovery (so did a lot of ppl), and a OP boomerang. So they changed those 2 things, and then took away everything else too. Hylian and i talked in detail about Link many pages ago if you want to look that up.

edit: looked it up for you http://smashboards.com/threads/tier-list-speculation.331666/page-695#post-18787389

 

[Ripple]

bowser vs zelda is even

 

[Seagull Joe]

7 hours later so I'm gonna double post to say to say holy ****, olimar is cancer
I'm playing this character and I'm like
forcing people to approach and stopping them from approaching with the same move
like I know most of them have no MU exp
but pikmin throw is like sheik's melee needles and fox's melee lasers rolled into one move, it's ****ing bonkers, it deals chip damage, is low commitment, can use different arcs, sometimes has hitstun, almost always stops projectiles so you can't even like counter camp him
On top of that he's a small character and with strong quick disjoint
And then sometimes you get 3 purples, you're basically a god at that point, especially if you have like 3 purples and a white/blue, 2 purples and two other good colors might be better, not sure
but other times you get like, 4 not-purples and you're just like... why am I playing this character
****ing RNG ruins what could be a badly designed but at least consistently good character
it's fun to play as but man, I can see why people hated this character in brawl

Good thing I bodied 's in brawl. Then again... in PM bodies him too LMFAO.

I see.


I don't think it's a terrible matchup, but I could be wrong.


This is just way too rich.

I don't think it is. I beat Justbngoode from my region 2-0 with . I think most 's don't take an aerial approach or spam up b when characters run at them, which is why they get trashed randomly.

 

[Frost | Odds]

bowser vs zelda is even

Dooooooooooooo you know something I don't?

Because I'd like to know it.

 

[Star ☆]

So two of my fellow Australian players have been complaining about their main, Lucas, a lot recently. They say that once you learn how to quarter circle SDI his aerials and specials he becomes useless and can't continue combos, this is somewhat more possible in 3.5 than in 3.0 because the hitlag on those moves was normalized (from 0.3 to 1.0), allowing the opponent more time to SDI out of the move. I'm not entirely sure what my opinion on this are because I haven't really tried to SDI these moves in a fashion like this so I'm not sure exactly how much worse this makes Lucas. My friend was pretty adamant about it and I quote "This won't be fixed because the PMDT doesn't know how to design a character"

What is everyone else's thoughts on this?

Also, on another note, even if it is unbalanced, I love the RNG on Olimar's Pikmin pull, forces me to create strategies on the fly rather than create guaranteed setups like in Smash 4.

 

[Seagull Joe]

So two of my fellow Australian players have been complaining about their main, Lucas, a lot recently. They say that once you learn how to quarter circle SDI his aerials and specials he becomes useless and can't continue combos, this is somewhat more possible in 3.5 than in 3.0 because the hitlag on those moves was normalized (from 0.3 to 1.0), allowing the opponent more time to SDI out of the move. I'm not entirely sure what my opinion on this are because I haven't really tried to SDI these moves in a fashion like this so I'm not sure exactly how much worse this makes Lucas. My friend was pretty adamant about it and I quote "This won't be fixed because the PMDT doesn't know how to design a character"

What is everyone else's thoughts on this?

Also, on another note, even if it is unbalanced, I love the RNG on Olimar's Pikmin pull, forces me to create strategies on the fly rather than create guaranteed setups like in Smash 4.

They can't touch death people anymore from a single grab? What a shame...

 

[InfinityCollision]

Comboing gets harder/less rewarding in general if opponents SDI consistently, that's hardly a Lucas-exclusive trait.

Dooooooooooooo you know something I don't?

Because I'd like to know it.

You need to jump more.

 

[DMG]

You could keep Lucas's SDI multiplier the same, and just make moves like his Nair fewer hits (but equal damage or final knockback or whatever).

 

[Star ☆]

Comboing gets harder/less rewarding in general if opponents SDI consistently, that's hardly a Lucas-exclusive trait.

Lucas has lots of multi-hit moves that he relies on so SDI affects him more than others, or so I've been told.

 

[Ripple]

You need to jump more.

finally....people are starting to listen to me

 

[DMG]

They aren't totally off base, but the answer would not be try to modify SDI multipliers to make his current Nair work on both sides, just have normalized multipliers (on most moves at least) and find another way to balance the counter play. There's no law that says his Nair or Dair have to have that many hits

 

[FreeGamer]

Link is so bad now. He had a great recovery (so did a lot of ppl), and a OP boomerang. So they changed those 2 things, and then took away everything else too. Hylian and i talked in detail about Link many pages ago if you want to look that up.

edit: looked it up for you http://smashboards.com/threads/tier-list-speculation.331666/page-695#post-18787389

He has felt somewhat underwhelming in 3.5, but I never thought of him being gutted so hard. He got off easy compared to Zelda. >_>

 

[InfinityCollision]

Link is pretty bad now, yeah.

Lucas has lots of multi-hit moves that he relies on so SDI affects him more than others, or so I've been told.

Somewhat true. Multihits are potentially easier to SDI (assuming normalized multipliers), and it's somewhat more rewarding to do so since you generally mitigate both the followup and some of the potency of the move you're SDIing to some degree. If people made more of an effort to SDI single hit attacks (@Lunchables has previously discussed the significance of doing so vs G&W), the difference would be less pronounced. The degree of impact does vary across the cast, but Lucas is far from the only one affected by this and as @ DMG mentioned the likely option (given current design direction) if it warrants a fix is probably to reduce the number of hits rather than reducing SDI/hitlag multipliers. While I can see an argument for making multihits more viable at top level play via the latter option, especially as players improve, that's something that would need to be addressed across the entire cast. Frankly I find the chance of the PMDT doing so rather low, and that's probably for the best. More reward from SDI keeps the punish game in check.

 

[JOE!]

Random thoughts on secondaries and character balance/perception:

Am I the only one who finds it weird when people say like, "X character won a tourney/placed really high!" when said player either did not use that character except for in the last few rounds / used a different character here and there? Like, if the player had to swap characters from X character, isn't that somewhat implying that X character would not have won on their own merit?

 

[Frost | Odds]

finally....people are starting to listen to me

Jumping isn't nearly as good with Bowser as it is with D3, but it's still too good.

 

[Idostuff]

The thing about Link, and why i think he will never be good in any Smash game, is that he just has trash tier mobility: his run speed is really slow, he has a terrible dash dance, his wave dash is one of the worst is the game, and his double jump basically goes nowhere. Usually slow characters get some cool movement option (float, teleport, Bowser's down b cancel, etc), all Link gets is AGT, which isn't even specific to him. In a game so much about movement and positioning, he will just never succeed, UNLESS he has the stupid stuff from 3.0, but that should be gone in a well designed game. He is also that perfect combo weight/fallspeed for so many characters, which combined with his not so great recovery, means lots of 0-deaths.

Link might have some good or even MU against slow floaties, but he gets destroyed by top tiers, mainly Fox and Sheik.

 

[Hylian]

My favorite part about link is when I dash attack someone and they punish me for hitting them with dash attack.

-.-

 

[DrinkingFood]

herp ignore this misread a thing

 

[DMG]

herp ignore this misread a thing

Bad reads usually cost a stock

Pay up!

 

[PlateProp]

My favorite part about link is when I dash attack someone and they punish me for hitting them with dash attack.

-.-

My favorite part of pm is when someone punishes me for hitting them too!

 

[941]

I too love being punished for hitting someone. It helps me learn how to deal with CC.

I don't think Link is as bad as people say. If I recall correctly, Hero of Time placed top 8 at Aftershock, so most of his MUs against the common characters are probably doable. He could probably use a few small buffs, but He's definitely not terrible.

 

[DMG]

Hero of Time good, wish I had a better Game 3 vs him at aftershock (closer game at least). Link's alright, kind of hard to say exactly how good or bad he is.

 

[Shadic]

My favorite part of pm is when someone punishes me for hitting them too!

With what move? Squirtle has tons of BKB all over his moveset.

 

[steelguttey]

Also, on another note, even if it is unbalanced, I love the RNG on Olimar's Pikmin pull, forces me to create strategies on the fly rather than create guaranteed setups like in Smash 4.

please dont

 

[ELI-mination]

Good thing I bodied 's in brawl. Then again... in PM bodies him too LMFAO.

I don't think it is. I beat Justbngoode from my region 2-0 with . I think most 's don't take an aerial approach or spam up b when characters run at them, which is why they get trashed randomly.

Zelda players that aren't Zhime don't actually matter. Fun fact.

 

[FreeGamer]

I love it when people try to tell me Zelda is better than low tier or the bottom of mid tier. lmao