Tier List Speculation

[Soft Serve]

On Falcon though, why the hell does his fair have so little endlag when canceled? It's ridiculous

 

[Beorn]

Red 1 is staying with me for LTC3, so yeah he's still around.

I would really like to know how your matches with him go. He is probably considered the best Link in a lot of peoples mind.

 

[Deleted member]

I would really like to know how your matches with him go. He is probably considered the best Link in a lot of peoples mind.

he beat all my random jank chars pretty cleanly, and we were about 50/50 in marth vs link (he played like garbage vs axe and should have bopped him imo). when i played sheik i basically 3 and 4 stocked him over and over, but that has a lot more to do with the MU than player skill, hes a fantastic player.

edit: he's definitely the best link player no question

 

[PlateProp]

Didnt we do this a ton of pages back

 

[Chevy]

Fire f-smash is brutal on everybody. Ice has it's niche uses, but if it's relegated to being the "kill mode" then maybe she shouldn't lose her best kill move for something near unusable.

 

[Eisen]

Fire f-smash is brutal on everybody. Ice has it's niche uses, but if it's relegated to being the "kill mode" then maybe she shouldn't lose her best kill move for something near unusable.

Missiles are also useful in ice, but yeah, now that I think about it, it completely changes her to have ice fsmash be so inexplicably horrible. Dtilt I can understand since the tradeoff is (more range for ice) vs (up close for fire) in regards to dtilt's capabilities. I would like to see her ice dtilt be able to be used for something, but probably just not for kills. Maybe it does more damage but has a lackluster knockback? Or maybe it could be a DI-trap kind of move.

 

[didds]

Not kill mode, it's ice mode, it's hard to throw a cross properly when she's so cold, swinging her arms is one thing but to punch through an opponent properly? That takes being warmed up

 

[Player -0]

@ jtm94 So I was at a buds house and we were chilling. While I was playing a bit of Sonic I remember this discussion. We tested both in game and debug mode for Side B (didn't remember if there was anything else to test for, I'm pretty sure there is).

For Side B (tested on Peach and Fox):
- Can CC -> Spotdodge before the grab. This means you can also roll or do invincible Up-B's.
- Can CC -> Shine before the grab/before Sonic can even jump (didn't do debug mode for this. I'm 99% sure that there's no way to dodge the shine if you Side B into a CC'ing Fox/Falco).
- CAN'T CC -> Peach D-Smash. I was actually surprised about this. My partner may have messed up but I think that frame 5 is too slow/maybe Peach is too floaty (doesn't reach ground fast enough). So you can confirm a grab if they go for D-Smash (If they know MU they'll know you can't D-Smash though.) You might be able to trade initial hit of Up-B and let one of the multihits of Sonic's Side B as a gtfo option.

Was there anything else that was still eh-y? I'll probably go back and check but I think that was it mainly the Side-B thing that I had problems with.

 

[jtm94]

Makes sense. I will start trying to get shield out to avoid it.
So at best you just escape the move and there is no way to punish Sonic for SideB.

I love Luigi right now. It's just losing all 4 stocks to cheese KO moves and dying at 60 each time. (:

 

[FreeGamer]

Does anyone seriously think that Green Missile's Russian Roulette gimmick belongs in 3.5? It's like letting G&W farm for a 9 or Peach farm for a Bob-Omb.

 

[Narpas_sword]

It's fine if you stop going around labelling it a 'gimmick'.

 

[Ningildo]

It would be an issue if he could cancel it with shield or something, but the moment he goes into Side-B, he's committed to a negatively disjointed attack with 20 frames of startup and 42 frames of endlag (and is -75 on shield).

I mean, the randomness of it can be stupid at times, but if you keep an eye on Luigi (which you should be doing against all opponents anyway) you'll see the flash and be prepared for the next Side-B being a misfire. He tends to do it out of throws or for recovery anyway, so you shouldn't get grabbed for the former and lol for the latter.

Idk, maybe I'm scrubby, but frames coupled with the visual cue doesn't scream jank (or whatever buzzword it is nowadays). He has to farm for it in order to use it midcombo anyway (don't forget the amount of commitment he needs to use it). Maybe the fact it happens based on luck of the draw puts you off, but...eh :/

 

[FreeGamer]

What should it be called, then?

 

[Rachman]

I think the way it works in PM adds flavor and FUN in a way that feels like it fits and works with the character's overall feeling (not sure the proper word to describe this). I always hear people call things gimmicks or jank but when I hear those words I generally think of something that allows a character to pretty much ignore the dance that is a match between smash players in exchange for a significantly less interesting battle of character vs character. Frankly, I don't really see green missile as being that type of thing but I suppose I could just have a strange definition of "gimmick".

In regards to the tier list, how much of a "given" is a player having a secondary or being a dual main in the formation of a tier list? If, theoretically, two characters had slight advantages or disadvantages vs every character and you liked these two characters in all different MUs (you like one char vs 20 characters and the other vs 20 with no overlap) would you put those characters above a character with pretty much all completely even MUs? Ofc this is theoretical and frankly it's fairly silly to assume we know who each MU favors in this game when Melee MUs are still changing all the time all these years later with significantly less variety. Still, I'm mostly curious what people's opinions are on that if for no other reason than out of curiosity.

 

[drakargx]

My main issue with misfires are how he can keep you guessing. When he stores a misfire he can continuing storing that same one which makes expecting it a challenge. But with a good punish off stage you can basically force him to misfire which balances it out I guess

 

[Ningildo]

Having unique quirks is cool, as long as they don't let you ignore footsies.

But there is this character called Fox...

I would say that, eventually, dual maining will be the way to go, simply due the nature of having so many viable characters. Some kits interact ridiculously well against others (see Bowser vs Falco. Just an example of the top of my head, probably not the best). A kit might not be overbearing in a vacuum, but might just have inherent advantages against another kit due reasons(this being anything that makes it so). As such, some characters will always have bad match ups no matter how much the values of the opposing character is changed (See Oli vs Marth/Ivy).

However, we aren't even close to optimizing characters yet, so knowing what character to have as a secondary is still guesswork at this point. We all gotta get good at this game with our mains before dual maining becomes a thing.

Edit: At above, he still has to go through all the startup and endlag in order to do so. And if you shield it when it's done out of the blue (very possible to do so), you have a guaranteed whatever.

 

[Life]

That's really the ultimate folly of speculating on the tier list: virtually nobody is actually good at PM. As late as a few weeks ago most Squirtles thought Marth was nearly unwinnable. Daftatt thinks it's even, last I heard. If lots of people were actually good at PM, that discrepancy would be extremely rare, but as far as I can tell there's still a ton of disagreement on a lot of characters. (Even in Melee there are still a ton of varied opinions, and people are generally better at that game.) How do we separate truth from misconception and informed opinion from uninformed babbling?

EDIT: I suppose this is more of a design question than a tier question, but I have to ask:

Having unique quirks is cool, as long as they don't let you ignore footsies.

Would you say a "gimmick" is a function of a character that lets it ignore an established part of the game? I see a problem with that definition, but I'm curious to see if people actually agree with it before I go on.

 

[Ningildo]

When people start looking at whole frame data and back up statements about the game with actual proof instead of "it feels like..." (e.g. people start about G&W's Up-B being a get out of jail for free card due frame 1 hitbox, when 1. it's negatively disjointed and 2. G&W doesn't start moving till frame 8 or something).

Sadly, that's the case for most MU's. Only a few players, if any, have played all the other characters in tournament or in general. As a result, most MU's are discussed based on theory alone rather then a mix of that and practice.

 

[Narpas_sword]

What should it be called, then?

I dunno.

Green Missile?

You have a visual cue as to when he'll misfire now, and it's more consistent than melee was. so, deal with it.

 

[jtm94]

Real talk you can definitely avoid misfire. I only get supreme salty when the invincibility mattered so it didn't get beat in the startup. In most edgeguarding scenarios Luigi will Green Missile twice giving him pretty solid chances right there to get it. If you hit him away he may do it again. A lot of people don't go out and hit Luigi, they give ledge up for free and watch him take like 10 seconds to recover. Not every character can safely go all the way out there, but some can.

As far as I can tell in my testing there are no true combos into misfire, and if there are they are at specific %s on specific characters and specific situations factoring in momentum and such. He gets most of his cheese kills off of poor DI/capitalizing on poor decisions. UpB as a whole is a strong punish move, and you cannot say that it isn't. I firmly believe Aqua Jet is amazing and it doesn't start to KO until 40ish% later than UpB Shoryuken. That said there is more counterplay to UpB because you can sdi the jab out and escape, uair won't go into it if you always DI out, dthrow won't go into it ever if you have an ounce of DI behind him and the throw shouldn't catch anyone off guard being his best throw. The most lenient setup into UpB is falling nair > UpB because it actually gives time to move, jump, and go into it. Aerial UpB also doesn't start KOing until 20% later than the grounded version, around 80 or so on a character like Mario.

I don't think it's overpowered, just silly and no one owns up to it. I play GnW and I think hammer cheese is silly, because I've won games I shouldn't with it whether it was a risk or not. You can't have an amazing UpB KO move on a character that has the furthest wavedash in the game and not say wow that's a REALLY strong punish. WD oos to punish Marth fsmash BAM UpB. In truth it just promotes air tight/safe play, but to be on the receiving end of it and to feel like someone is fishing for it is pretty lame.

 

[Ningildo]

That's really the ultimate folly of speculating on the tier list: virtually nobody is actually good at PM. As late as a few weeks ago most Squirtles thought Marth was nearly unwinnable. Daftatt thinks it's even, last I heard. If lots of people were actually good at PM, that discrepancy would be extremely rare, but as far as I can tell there's still a ton of disagreement on a lot of characters. (Even in Melee there are still a ton of varied opinions, and people are generally better at that game.) How do we separate truth from misconception and informed opinion from uninformed babbling?

EDIT: I suppose this is more of a design question than a tier question, but I have to ask:



Would you say a "gimmick" is a function of a character that lets it ignore an established part of the game? I see a problem with that definition, but I'm curious to see if people actually agree with it before I go on.

Most people use gimmick/jank to refer to "stuff I can't possibly deal and/or adapt to" or something along those lines (probably assuming too much here).

I avoid using words like gimmick because I have become confused in what people even mean with that anymore. I see character specific attributes add flavor to a character, especially if such an attribute aids the character in their perceived role.

Moderation is key, though. See 3.0 sonic spin to win and mewtwo TP Hover and fox lasers in general. Useful for the character, but ignore key parts of the game (TP ignored edgeguarding, Sonic ignored interaction due being too fast, Lasers let fox autowin neutral 99% of the time). On the other hand, we have Ness's magnet that seemingly extends combos, but also has a drawback in providing more SDI opportunities and only works on extending combos on hit (don't quote me on that, ask Boiko or an actual Ness main for that). A attribute shouldn't break or ignore fundamental parts of the game and should probably aid the character's archetype (which should be defined and decided on before balance changes are made, probably).

All in my opinion, take this with a grain of salt and all that.

 

[Player -0]

Aqua Jet is super good, removing the old one nerfed his recovery a bit but Squirtle's recovery is still super good. Before you could ledge cancel the slide lag which made it unpunishable if you got to the stage (you should get intercepted though).

I forgot how to activate it though. Do you have to to be in the first few frames of the Side B then hold B?

Also Squirtle's Up B hitboxes probably getting nerfed is sad but necessary lol.

 

[AceGamer]

I forgot how to activate it though. Do you have to to be in the first few frames of the Side B then hold B?.

Yeah you have to be holding B when you use withdraw and hit your opponent within the 1st 5 or 6 frames to use aqua jet

 

[TheGravyTrain]

So help me dirtboy, if you get our Aquajet nerfed...

In all seriousness, Squirtle Aqua jet is important because it gives us a kill move in the air (our aerials suck at killing unless fastfallers, but y'know). As for jank/gimmick/toxic/whatever other term, I try to avoid them because of how overused and meaningless they really are. There are so many better ways of describing things then using those words which everyone takes a different way anyways.

 

[didds]

So by most squirtles used to think Marth was unwinnable you mean the few squirtles who spend time on smashboards used to think marth was unwinnable?

What squirtles thought that?

 

[TheGravyTrain]

Squirtle is quicker in every way than pikachu, and some consider Pika v Marth even or in Pika's favor in Melee. Squirtle has a Luigi wavedash, the ability to fly through the air like Falcon, asafer poking projectile, disjointed tech chase starter that ignores crouch cancel, and the ability to slide across the stage with any smash or tilt or even shield. So the potential is there. The problem is who to believe. Some say characters like Pika and Squirtle are hard countered by Swords (Squirtle mains believe Roy is Squirt's hardest matchup). Others think their mobility at least makes it even.

Uhhh, I mean, Nerf fox or something.

 

[Shadic]

So help me dirtboy, if you get our Aquajet nerfed...

In all seriousness, Squirtle Aqua jet is important because it gives us a kill move in the air (our aerials suck at killing unless fastfallers, but y'know). As for jank/gimmick/toxic/whatever other term, I try to avoid them because of how overused and meaningless they really are. There are so many better ways of describing things then using those words which everyone takes a different way anyways.

Fair/Bair are both quite solid options for how fast they are, and you have an armored Sheik Slap for Nair. Considering how seemingly easy Squirtle can knock players off stage (and follow them there) I think he's mostly fine killing.

 

[PlateProp]

Fair/Bair are both quite solid options for how fast they are, and you have an armored Sheik Slap for Nair. Considering how seemingly easy Squirtle can knock players off stage (and follow them there) I think he's mostly fine killing.

Fair only kills if you cant di. If you're dying before 140% from squirtle fair and you arent on a small stage you're doing it wrong. The sakurai angle on it it makes it way too easy to di (You can seriously di his fair almost straight upwards). Bair is also too weak to be straight killing as well, though it is a good tool for edgeguarding.

Nair's weird in that it can kill, but you're better off using it as a stuff against recoving characters with the medium armor.

That's really the ultimate folly of speculating on the tier list: virtually nobody is actually good at PM. As late as a few weeks ago most Squirtles thought Marth was nearly unwinnable. Daftatt thinks it's even, last I heard. If lots of people were actually good at PM, that discrepancy would be extremely rare, but as far as I can tell there's still a ton of disagreement on a lot of characters. (Even in Melee there are still a ton of varied opinions, and people are generally better at that game.) How do we separate truth from misconception and informed opinion from uninformed babbling?

EDIT: I suppose this is more of a design question than a tier question, but I have to ask:



Would you say a "gimmick" is a function of a character that lets it ignore an established part of the game? I see a problem with that definition, but I'm curious to see if people actually agree with it before I go on.

...Wat.

No one ever thought that Squirtle Marth has been unwinnable. Even when we did think it was worse we had it as 60/40 Marth favor. Have you been in a completely different chat or something?

 

[DrinkingFood]

You can't DI sakurai angle almost straight up lol
The best you can get is 63° and some SDI, and fair doesn't exactly have a lot of hitlag, so it's a small window with no reaction time to guarantee any SDI
The reason fair can kill is because it's quick enough that you can't DI it on reaction, like all of squirtle's aerials (except dair, multi-hits are a whole other story), so he has several effective mix-ups (uair vs fair for example) that throw off DI half the time. Plus squirtle doesn't have particularly hard time setting that up, and if it's near the edge even with good DI fair can kill at a respectable percent.

 

[PlateProp]

You can't DI sakurai angle almost straight up lol
The best you can get is 63° and some SDI, and fair doesn't exactly have a lot of hitlag, so it's a small window with no reaction time to guarantee any SDI
The reason fair can kill is because it's quick enough that you can't DI it on reaction, like all of squirtle's aerials (except dair, multi-hits are a whole other story), so he has several effective mix-ups (uair vs fair for example) that throw off DI half the time. Plus squirtle doesn't have particularly hard time setting that up, and if it's near the edge even with good DI fair can kill at a respectable percent.

I didnt know 140% near the edge was respectable killing percent for an aerial

Roy killing at 100% with his bair must be orgasmic

 

[DrinkingFood]

Are you testing on DL vs Bowser or something?

 

[PlateProp]

Are you testing on DL vs Bowser or something?

It comes from playing several matches, and telling people that they didnt DI up when they die at 100-110% on PS2, after which they know to DI up and do so, thus living because the arc that DIing up doesnt send them far enough into the blast zone to kill them until 140%

edit: Marth can survive at 128% on single stick di alone right on the edge of ps2. Anything before that really just is bad DI :/

Edit 2: I should also state that marth is barely dying. They have to be teetering on the edge for it to kill there.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Ok, do you think fox's bair is a bad kill move? I just checked and Squirtle's fair kills earlier. Marth (funny we used the same character, I did this before I saw your post) survived fox's bair at 125 on the edge of BF with DI up+in. He didn't survive squirtle's fair at that percent. You don't need to kill off the side at 100 to be a good or decent kill move or w/e. You just have to send them out too far to have many recovery options (or even enough recovery distance). No, fair doesn't kill early if you ONLY use fair in situations where you've set up for an aerial, but you should be encouraging your opponent to be DIing out or risk eating more damage from things like soft bair/upair combos. This kind of DI interaction is super common. Sheik can do it to with fair vs soft bair/uair. Falco can do it with dair vs fair/soft bair/soft nair (more situational) or just with subtle cross-ups on an opponent that missed DI on a shine, making it harder to DI dair away.

 

[trash?]

I mean... yeah, fox's bair is a poor kill move, but that's because killing isn't why it's good, it's a quick and completely painless edgeguard option with just enough knockback that you can do if the opponent recovers above the ledge

that's not a very good comparison

 

[PlateProp]

Ok, do you think fox's bair is a bad kill move? I just checked and Squirtle's fair kills earlier. Marth (funny we used the same character, I did this before I saw your post) survived fox's bair at 125 on the edge of BF with DI up+in. He didn't survive squirtle's fair at that percent. You don't need to kill off the side at 100 to be a good or decent kill move or w/e. You just have to send them out too far to have many recovery options (or even enough recovery distance). No, fair doesn't kill early if you ONLY use fair in situations where you've set up for an aerial, but you should be encouraging your opponent to be DIing out or risk eating more damage from things like soft bair/upair combos. This kind of DI interaction is super common. Sheik can do it to with fair vs soft bair/uair. Falco can do it with dair vs fair/soft bair/soft nair (more situational) or just with subtle cross-ups on an opponent that missed DI on a shine, making it harder to DI dair away.

Bad comparisons lmao

There's stil the fact that your opponent has to be on the edge for it to even be able to kill at that percent, and no one's just gonna sit there and let you run up and fair them. It's not as good of a DI mixupas you think, it's not that hard to DI. People can and will DI moves even when they have super short hitstun or come out quick and it's dumb to assume that they wont just because the time period for it is short. It's a decent move, but it's not as good as you're trying to make it out to be.

 

[jtm94]

That's like me saying GnW fair is weak because Falcon and Roy can DI it up and live until 160. It may send at 55 degrees, but not every one always DIs it like a god and my fair is much slower.

Fair can KO crazy fast on small stages, it just sucks that Squirtle doesn't have a lot of space to slide around on the same stages.

 

[PlateProp]

That's like me saying GnW fair is weak because Falcon and Roy can DI it up and live until 160. It may send at 55 degrees, but not every one always DIs it like a god and my fair is much slower.

Fair can KO crazy fast on small stages, it just sucks that Squirtle doesn't have a lot of space to slide around on the same stages.

I never said it was weak. Just that it's not as good at killing as they think it is. I also already made the distinction that it does kill better on smaller stages, but everyone can kill better on small stages due to them being small and stuff

 

[TheGravyTrain]

When I was talking about aerial kill moves, I meant to the blast zone. Sure, against characters with poor recoveries, fair/bair set up good edgeguards. Its characters who have great recoveries that Squirtle struggles to kill in that manner. Fox does kills if the side/bottom with Shine and bair. Squirtle does it with bubble/watergun/withdraw->aerial/nair/dair/bair and whatever else Squirtle does. They are both fairly similar.

Fox kills off the top with up throw up air and something upsmash. This helps him deal with floaties who can easily mitigate shine and bair as kill options. Squirtle is much more complicated. Up smash has one very shaky combo lead in on some floaties. Anything else is a hydro something read in neutral. Up b, while fairly easy to set up, is difficult without relying on them to botch sdi
(tipper waterfall setups are scarce). Up air can be comboes from uthrow on light floaties, but kills rather late. That's why aqua jet is important. It helps him kill those he can't edge guard, but requires a lot of finesse and accuracy (akin to rest, with much more moderate risk and reward).

Also, Nair being armored is simply giving it priority (as long as you are low enough in percent) without a massive hitbox. Slap is also much better in every other context...

 

[Chevy]

Squirtle can just down?-throw floaties to kill. I wouldn't really say he needs aqua jet, especially with how early up-b and up-smash kill, even if it's not super common.

 

[PlateProp]

Squirtle can just down?-throw floaties to kill. I wouldn't really say he needs aqua jet, especially with how early up-b and up-smash kill, even if it's not super common.

AJ kills at about 12ish percent before upsmash would. It's not that huge of a difference and it's fair that it's a bit stronger in exchange for being so small a hitbox