Tier List Speculation

[DMG]

Very few people attempting to main, without many "good" players, with a poorly understood character, based on a patch where they have glitches and sucky things, in an environment where many other characters are both more powerful + easier to use.

Hmmmm...

Yep IC's suck

 

[MasterIcarus7 (SHADE)]

Just in general, ignoring the obvious fixes to the glitches they have currently with the sliding/movement, does anyone think that the IC's will improve at all in 3.6? I remember reading/seeing that Jiggs got better indirectly due to the recovery nerfs in 3.5, but is there anything planned, or even possible that changes that will give IC's the same kind of potential. Or are they just doomed to be terrible without infinites?

Also, outside of the glitches, I'm curious as to why other people think they are bad in 3.5.

no insane chaingrabs or infinites. that was the only thing they had going for them

 

[JOE!]

It's actually a lot like a grounded Puff bair, or a better Marth dtilt: the move can absolutely serve as the foundation of Zard's neutral in basically every matchup. Obviously there's more to it, but it's so vastly better in basically every way than any of his other 'pokes' (mostly because he has none) and better than other characters' pokes as well -- that there's no reason for Zard players not to force their opponents to play around the ftilt-wall before engaging Zard in any deeper gameplay.

Normally I'm for decentralizing of characters' kits, but I actually miss the version of ftilt that had a disjointed head. He's a huge combo-food character; why not have a completely ridiculous move or two? Overcentralization is only bad if it's unfun or shallow to play as or against, and Zard's ftilt is actually super fun from both directions imo

Can we just make his wings 100% disjoints and call it a day?

 

[MasterIcarus7 (SHADE)]

Can we just make his wings 100% disjoints and call it a day?

lol yes PLEASE

 

[JOE!]

In all honesty though, the wing hurtboxes are super jank and IMO a big reason why Zard is held back a bit. They are essentially two floating Marios that hover off of him and get nailed by random moves/projectiles, as well as are relevant places to trade/get swatted from with a few key moves (Jab/Utilt/Usmash).

Either make them closer to his body, like on the shoulder so the wings are actually sorta disjointed in a non-weird way, or remove them plz.

 

[Ya Boy GP]

As of 3.5, including the handoff infinite, they're probably mid to mid/high tier. The ability to 0-death someone off any grab is pretty big. ICs do have their issues and their handful of awful matchups, but those characters also aren't too popular during this meta (Peach, Mewtwo, etc.) Their neutral game isn't bad due to the large amount of desyncs possible, plus they have solid mobility and kill power. They have new tools in the neutral game that allow them to deal with issues that hurt them a lot before like CC (namely synced side-b). Nana is WAY better than people make her out to be as well. Plus due to the lack of representation, their metagame is very underdeveloped and they could be played WAYY better than they are now. Not trying to bash any IC mains, it's takes a long time to develop the IC meta since there's so much about the character.

Once 3.6 drops, assuming there's no nerfs/buffs, they'll be a bit worse than they are now. With the turnaround glitch fixed, they will have much better approach options and will be able to move around without any restriction due to a fear of mis-spacing from the turnaround glitch displacing the character. That's a nice indirect buff, but the lack of a reliable infinite will make the character overall a bit worse, but not by much. ICs can still get a solid 50+ damage off a grab without an infinite, and could even kill them if the followups or stage positioning is nice. They're good, they really are.

 

[Ripple]

ICs could be good, but no one wants to play them. so they will continue to be low tier. Give them something cool (NPI) and/or unique and more people would go to them.

I gave nana infinite jumps in melee. so there's a start.

making ice have new and different properties other than freezing someone would be nice since, let's be honest here, no one likes when someone is frozen.

 

[JOE!]

Like if ice applied a micro-stopwatch effect to "slow" you down for a hit confirm or something that'd be neat

 

[Ripple]

mind reader there joe

 

[didds]

Well if POOB quit I really don't know what else to say, I guess he prolly sucks yea.

I blame no aerial down b

 

[DrinkingFood]

Dk's aerial down-b should be a shine
but sized appropriately for him

 

[Boiko]

DK is bottom tier.
One of the only characters I feel I can affirmatively say that about. Very few niche uses that other characters do better.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

The problem is that because of the lag on Zard's dthrow, these reads never happen. It has (if I'm not mistaken) 19 frames of endlag, which is well within the parameters of reaction techchasing. Jab on neutral/no tech (+7 frames) is acceptable, running after their tech away (+21 frames) might work if they're out of room or have a short enough roll (Zard shouldn't be dthrowing in a situation where they get their full tech away IMO). Dsmash is pretty much inferior to dair on techroll in; no aerial is fast enough to hit them out of neutral tech anyway.

Zard doesn't have nearly the option coverage people give him credit for specifically because his dthrow is so laggy. He's almost always better off going for a different throw. Now, if he could actually hit dsmash on tech in place, that would actually be good option coverage, but nope, can't have that, he's not allowed to be good.

Basically this. Sure, you have enough time to grab or jab tech in place/miss tech. With how quick those options come out, if you have a good reaction time (20GX tech chase used around frame 18/19 of the tech animation to decide what to do, the last frame grab still is an option essentially), you can instead dash and probably grab the other tech options. The problem I have with this is it isn't very viable at the moment. Nobody is at the point in their play where reaction tech chases are a high priority to learn and grind (or they believe they can't). With characters like Squirtle, Zard, Diddy (maybe? no testing for this one), and others who have tech setups on everyone (not just fastfallers), reaction tech chasing becomes much more of an incentive to learn and use.

The problem is getting there. Until a player is at the point where they feel reasonably confident in their ability to ignore what their gut says and trust reaction 100 percent, Charizard down throw isn't great bar platforms. If you aren't going for reaction tech chases, dthrow sucks. It does not accommodate much if any option coverage choices. (which charizard has potential for with down smash, nair, dtilt). I should prolly do more testing before I make such claims, but in the 0-30 range fthrow/back throw seems much better as a tech chase against the spacies and a prolly combos other parts of the cast. Bthrow in particular accommodates using dtilt/nair/dsmash much better. Until we get to reaction tech chases, using a mix of option coverage (which if you have good ones, can essentially narrow their choices to 2) and then can go for reads when you convince them the other 2 aren't good, making your reads much easier.

I will show an example using Squirtle. This could be anyone, but I will use Fox. The fox is at 10 percent when I start a fthrow. I dash at them as soon as possible and bubble on the 10th frame of their tech of choice. This covers everything but tech roll in with very low risk and mediocre reward. They tech in place, take 9 percent from bubble and the situation repeats, though I have much more frame advantage due to the nature of bubble. I dash forward again, but this time, I turn around bubble on the 15th frame of their tech of choice. This covers every option but tech away. If I continue this the whole set, I get mediocre rewards (9 percent for every miss tech/tech in place, 3 percent if I guess the correct roll), but if I guess my 50/50 correctly, I get to continue. Tech in place/miss tech is always covered and punished hardest, which means they will probably learn soon to avoid those options. Now I can start going for reads that only include covering 2 options, reads that punish much harder. For example I can go for grabbing tech away since it puts them by the ledge. That gives me a ledge di trap where they either get edgeguarded to death on DI out or downsmash every tech option on di up and in. I was able to set this up via option coverage and reads, whereas strict reads (due to not enough frame advantage for option coverage) alone would be way less fruitful.

 

[941]

As of 3.5, including the handoff infinite, they're probably mid to mid/high tier. The ability to 0-death someone off any grab is pretty big. ICs do have their issues and their handful of awful matchups, but those characters also aren't too popular during this meta (Peach, Mewtwo, etc.) Their neutral game isn't bad due to the large amount of desyncs possible, plus they have solid mobility and kill power. They have new tools in the neutral game that allow them to deal with issues that hurt them a lot before like CC (namely synced side-b). Nana is WAY better than people make her out to be as well. Plus due to the lack of representation, their metagame is very underdeveloped and they could be played WAYY better than they are now. Not trying to bash any IC mains, it's takes a long time to develop the IC meta since there's so much about the character.

Once 3.6 drops, assuming there's no nerfs/buffs, they'll be a bit worse than they are now. With the turnaround glitch fixed, they will have much better approach options and will be able to move around without any restriction due to a fear of mis-spacing from the turnaround glitch displacing the character. That's a nice indirect buff, but the lack of a reliable infinite will make the character overall a bit worse, but not by much. ICs can still get a solid 50+ damage off a grab without an infinite, and could even kill them if the followups or stage positioning is nice. They're good, they really are.

ICs definitely aren't high tier in 3.5. I know they can potentially 0-death from a grab, but it's very difficult to do on a lot of characters, and the reason you see the infinite handoffs working most of the time is due to players being bad at mashing out of grabs. Also ICs have bad MUs against popular characters like Spacies (mostly Fox), which are quite common, as well as Toon Link, Peach, Samus, and Ivysaur, which aren't common, but there's usually at least 1 or 2 good players of those characters at bigger tournaments.

ICs neutral game is decent, but not amazing. They do really well in neutral against characters that are slower, or play a more grounded game, but against characters like Captain Falcon, their neutral is pretty terrible given the opponent's ability to get around their projectiles.

I don't think Nana is very good currently, and I honestly think She would be better if she functioned like Melee Nana. She jumps off-stage to re-sync with Popo, which means that if you don't save Her while recovering, She's gone. She also tries to Solo up-b to recover, which means that if you don't wait for the animation to end, She can't be saved. It's kind of nice that Nana sometimes uses side-B to recover, but since She doesn't gain any height from it, the distance is only about 1 training room square (not sure what the technical term is here) more than just drifting back to the stage. Nana also dies a lot due to the turnaround bug, as well as doing inputs when She isn't remotely close to being synced, although I'm not sure if it's fair to attribute these to the AI.

I agree that there aren't any really good ICs players right now. I know about Fumbles is a solid player, but there's nobody playing the character as well as Sethlon/Lunchables with Roy, or IPK with Lucario. This could be due to the character itself being outclassed by most of the top/high tiers, but I do think a really good player could potentially place at least top 8 at a major.

I predict ICs still won't be winning much after 3.6, but people will blame the lack of representation rather than pointing to the weaknesses of the character. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I think it's the most likely scenario. Right now, ICs feel like Melee G&W, in the sense that they have some stuff that you would see in a top-tier character, but are also lacking in areas, while not being fully functional on a basic level. Without the infinite and turnaround bug, they become more like a mid-tier character, in the sense that they work, but are still outclassed by the top and high tiers.

 

[Ya Boy GP]

I don't think Nana is very good currently, and I honestly think She would be better if she functioned like Melee Nana. She jumps off-stage to re-sync with Popo, which means that if you don't save Her while recovering, She's gone. She also tries to Solo up-b to recover, which means that if you don't wait for the animation to end, She can't be saved. It's kind of nice that Nana sometimes uses side-B to recover, but since She doesn't gain any height from it, the distance is only about 1 training room square (not sure what the technical term is here) more than just drifting back to the stage. Nana also dies a lot due to the turnaround bug, as well as doing inputs when She isn't remotely close to being synced, although I'm not sure if it's fair to attribute these to the AI.

I agree with everything else you said, but PM Nana DEFINITELY feels better than she does in Melee. In Melee, if you get desynced from nana, she's more of a hassle than anything else. Her movement and move choice is really dumb most of the time, and at different percents Popo is at, Nana does different things. Her movement is really clunky when she's alone and it takes a long time to sync back up with you even if you're in a good position to resync. I don't see how her jumping off the stage to help you is any worse than her standing at the ledge waiting to get hit by a charged smash attack. If you're smart and have experience with ICs, her up-bing off the stage by herself shouldn't be much of an issue 99% of the time because you should know when it's coming and be able to up-b either before or after she up-bs. I've played hundreds of games as ICs and I can only remember being messed up once up by Nana up-bing. Nana side-bing onto the stage/ledge is also better than just drifting back only to not make it back, so that's also never really an issue with me either.

 

[Sardonyx]

I'd like to discuss Zelda's tier in PM. I used to main her, but dropped her in 3.5 because of her changes. She was solid middle of the cast, maybe 1-2 places higher in 3.02, but in 3.5 I truly believe she's the bottom of mid tier. Her dins change was necessary (lemme just place 3 land mines around you lol), but this form of dins is very underwhelming. It has less overall space it can travel, and is just generally not that threatening.

Aerial nayru's was gutted with invincibility, love jump, the land cancel being pushed back, and it being able to send behind her, so her best approach option was pretty much removed. Jab is pretty meh. It's slow (frame 11) and offers little in terms of followups. Her kicks are still good, but the overall area in which it could hit has been reduced, not to mention they're not even true Melee kicks because their damage decays over time, and don't do 20 damage fresh. Oh, she also can't get a normalized grab for some reason (frame 8 as opposed to frame 7)

Her up smash had one of the linking hitboxes removed, which has allowed spacies to fall out and punish her before the move itself finishes. The reduced BKB on it has gotten me punished by spacies for landing it at 0% (which will obviously lead into more than 15% like her usmash because lol shine).

 

[941]

I never really had issues with Nana's AI while on the stage in either game, but I could see how someone could have difficulty resyncing with Melee Nana. I almost never see Melee Nana just stand at the ledge and eat a smash though, she almost always attacks the opponent in some way, which I find much more useful for recovery than Her jumping low to try and help you when you recover high. I can usually anticipate when Nana is going to up-B, I just don't like having to wait for it while my opponent can do whatever they want. I don't have an issue with Nana using side-B unless She doesn't need to do it. I was just pointing out the actual distance it gains isn't that good.

 

[Vitriform]

I'd like to discuss Zelda's tier in PM. I used to main her, but dropped her in 3.5 because of her changes. She was solid middle of the cast, maybe 1-2 places higher in 3.02, but in 3.5 I truly believe she's the bottom of mid tier. Her dins change was necessary (lemme just place 3 land mines around you lol), but this form of dins is very underwhelming. It has less overall space it can travel, and is just generally not that threatening.

Aerial nayru's was gutted with invincibility, love jump, the land cancel being pushed back, and it being able to send behind her, so her best approach option was pretty much removed. Jab is pretty meh. It's slow (frame 11) and offers little in terms of followups. Her kicks are still good, but the overall area in which it could hit has been reduced, not to mention they're not even true Melee kicks because their damage decays over time, and don't do 20 damage fresh. Oh, she also can't get a normalized grab for some reason (frame 8 as opposed to frame 7)

Her up smash had one of the linking hitboxes removed, which has allowed spacies to fall out and punish her before the move itself finishes. The reduced BKB on it has gotten me punished by spacies for landing it at 0% (which will obviously lead into more than 15% like her usmash because lol shine).

New Din is stronger than it first appears. You can do all sorts of crazy setups with the returning wisp hitbox, manual detonations, and orbiting. I think the current iteration of Din's fire is still very much unexplored, and it's an exceptionally good move in its own right. Nayru's still a useful approach option, but I agree that with its loss of invincibility, Love Jump, AND Diamond Dive all at once was a bit excessive. It doesn't really serve as the combo breaker that it once did, relegating its use to approaches against certain characters (Link and Samus are good examples) and b-reverse/wavebounce tricks. As for the kicks, I agree that their full strength should be adjusted to last all 4 frames. Falcon's knee does not have the same limitation, and it's a very similar move, so I don't think that would be an unreasonable buff. The normalized grab I'm not sure about; I'm somewhat indifferent about it since Zelda's shield grab is rather good in terms of range, but it would be nice to have it match other grabs.

That said, I also agree with your assessment that she's low-mid tier. The only person who's achieved widespread tournament success with her is Zhime, and he still seems to be struggling with a few matchups. It doesn't help that many of the most-played characters have favorable matchups against her (Marth, Fox, Roy, etc.)

 

[Sardonyx]

New Din is stronger than it first appears. You can do all sorts of crazy setups with the returning wisp hitbox, manual detonations, and orbiting. I think the current iteration of Din's fire is still very much unexplored, and it's an exceptionally good move in its own right. Nayru's still a useful approach option, but I agree that with its loss of invincibility, Love Jump, AND Diamond Dive all at once was a bit excessive. It doesn't really serve as the combo breaker that it once did, relegating its use to approaches against certain characters (Link and Samus are good examples) and b-reverse/wavebounce tricks. As for the kicks, I agree that their full strength should be adjusted to last all 4 frames. Falcon's knee does not have the same limitation, and it's a very similar move, so I don't think that would be an unreasonable buff. The normalized grab I'm not sure about; I'm somewhat indifferent about it since Zelda's shield grab is rather good in terms of range, but it would be nice to have it match other grabs.

That said, I also agree with your assessment that she's low-mid tier. The only person who's achieved widespread tournament success with her is Zhime, and he still seems to be struggling with a few matchups. It doesn't help that many of the most-played characters have favorable matchups against her (Marth, Fox, Roy, etc.)

I experimented with the new dins for a few months before realizing that they're not as threatening as people make them out to be. Idk, I think the dins should get their old maneuverability back at least. Nayru's is okay as an approach, I'll give you that, but it was nerfed too hard. I think zelda's grab should be frame 7 like other characters'. She has a good grab range, but she's not Marth levels of grab range

 

[Player -0]

Personally I like the speed of the new Din's more than 3.02. That might be because it fits my playstyle with her a bit better though.

The removal of love jumping and consequent AT's was unwarranted in my opinion though.

 

[Frost | Odds]

I've still been experimenting with Yoshi, and I'm finding that I do nearly as well with Ness for some godforsaken reason. Ness feels a hell of a lot more intuitive to play, even though I still don't intellectually think he's nearly as good of a character.

It would help if I didn't continually mess up my double jump lands.

I'm no longer convinced that Yoshi is top tier, though I think it's still a strong possibility. It's really tough to say, because my tech is still nowhere near where I want it to be, and reactions aren't honed at all. :/

 

[didds]

I've still been experimenting with Yoshi, and I'm finding that I do nearly as well with Ness for some godforsaken reason. Ness feels a hell of a lot more intuitive to play, even though I still don't intellectually think he's nearly as good of a character.

It would help if I didn't continually mess up my double jump lands.

I'm no longer convinced that Yoshi is top tier, though I think it's still a strong possibility. It's really tough to say, because my tech is still nowhere near where I want it to be, and reactions aren't honed at all. :/

Did you try licking more?

 

[DrinkingFood]

Personally I like the speed of the new Din's more than 3.02. That might be because it fits my playstyle with her a bit better though.

The removal of love jumping and consequent AT's was unwarranted in my opinion though.

love jumping/etc basically made her combo proof, it was the MOST warranted change she got. She needed that more than she needed less janky din's. Anything that wasn't a true combo she could pretty much escape, with frame 4 invul, huge active hitboxes, and sudden momentum changes both horizontally and vertically in either direction, AND with endlag cancelation upon landing assuming she wasn't too close to the ground.
But I'm glad din's are less janky too. Trying to put one out before was such a huge commitment, I feel like it wasn't something you could rely on without knocking them across the stage, which is asking a lot when so many characters exist that could comfortably DD outside her zone but inside her uncomfortable-din's-laying zone. And when you got knocked away, she took control of everything. The way she operates now is just slightly more normalized to how characters operate in terms of how they control the space immediately around them and how hard the punish your for losing stage space. 3.02 had her at opposite ends of the spectrum for either scenario, 3.5 has her more typical for both.
I can kinda enjoy playing her now, shame Zelda mains ever had to go through 3.02 and become so attached to it.

 

[MLGF]

Ugh, so much of SnS' commentary with Ike games has some sort of ******** about Ike.
That's just annoying, he's not even close to being absurd like they keep whining about. It's just annoying >_>

 

[nimigoha]

Dk's aerial down-b should be a shine
but sized appropriately for him

His Up-B already does that /kappa

Frame 2-ish(?) invincibility and hitbox. The Donkey-shine can kill.

 

[Sardonyx]

3.5 Zelda just feels very poorly thrown together to me. She doesn't feel like Zelda anymore, which is what had me main her in brawl. Brawl Zelda felt like Zelda, whereas 3.5 feels nothing like her. It's just an opinion though, people will forever be salty over getting lightning kicked, but when some busted characters get guaranteed stuff on all weight classes it's okay.

 

[FreeGamer]

To not be completely off-topic - Kirby has high tier potiential in P:M. The little puffball of HIIIIIIIIIIIII~ is freaking crazy in this game.

I think he's a little too balanced to enter that territory.

 

[jtm94]

Brawl Zelda felt like a heaping pile of garbo. I couldn't beat my dog in that game using Zelda, and I can take random games off mediocre players in melee where she is at least capable of gaining a win, but still garbage.

New Zelda is amazing, she just has things that feel weird. After playing several months of 3.02 Zelda I can't land kicks consistently anymore. It was my assumption that the super kick hitbox would just be weaker, but with the priority changes I both land kicks I shouldn't now and whiff kicks that should land. I thought the kicks were supposed to be more consistent, but I feel the opposite has happened. I wish Roy's sour spot on his sword had priority, then he'd start to fall off real quick.

Other things that feel weird are Nayru's and how she travels at a different speed if she uses grounded UpB or aerial UpB so you have to have completely different timings to cancel it and shoot for edge cancels depending on the situation. I just don't use it because it's too much hassle. The land cancel on Nayru's feels kind of clunky just like Wolf's waveland out of lasers, but it's still good and plenty annoying. People respect Nayru's too much regardless. I wish the move looked how the hitboxes actually are. I get just plain fsmashed out of it a lot now and if you're airborne uairs will always go through it, it just looks like you should respect it more than you need to. I don't like the changes to her dthrow, I can't tell if it's worse or not, but I just don't like that it was changed slightly when it wasn't made better in any way, just different and still bad. I also miss jab, it's like frame 11 why can't it be good q.q

All that aside she still KOs people sub 100 easy and can convert into kick with things like ftilt and dtilt at certain percents. She also has good solid low% combos against everyone, she just can't convert against floaties at higher %. Din's is really good now because it's so much faster and less commitment. Old dins was slower to the close/mid range, took complete focus to keep placing them as to not lose your investment, and frankly didn't do anything. Now it's fast enough you can place it to cover tech rolls, or force people to tech in certain directions so you can get grabs/kicks. As an edgeguarding tool it's pretty mediocre harassment since it will usually hit people higher than they were, but it is good to interrupt some things like tethers or large UpBs so that way characters rush another UpB and don't sweetspot.

No matter what she's still slow as sin and will repeatedly lose neutral against any character that doesn't fall for Nayru's gimmicks. I have 0 opinion in any form on love jumping or weird momentum alteration with her specials because none of it was beneficial to her character in the long run and I have never used them. Escaping to the air with a character like Zelda doesn't do anything, it just prolongs air time and you will be juggled regardless.

 

[Player -0]

@ DrinkingFood I think the risk reward ratio is fair with the removal of invincibility frames. Diamond Diving/Love Jumping requires a jump and has no hitboxes below Zelda. If caught of it then Zelda gets more juggled than she already does. I don't think the land cancel is too much of an issue given the speed of the AT.

 

[POOB]

I quit DK for SOOOO many reasons. If only one of these many reasons existed, I probably wouldn't have quit DK. There were just so many small reasons I decided to quit him. Believe it or not, his spot on the tier list has nothing to do with it. I still think DK can win a national, but I just do not want to be the person to do it lol. So please, all the DK players out there, don't quit him. I'm NOT quitting him because he's bad. I still think he is hella underrated as a character, it just takes a certain kind of person to be able to show it. The reasons I quit him all have to do with me specifically as a player/person, here they are...

1. I realized the optimal way to play him isn't the fun/desirable way to play him, for many reasons. For example (and this is just one example), theoretically, if I was playing for my life, I would just run around charging my punch until it was charged, and then look to combo into it. If i missed, run away til it's charged again, repeat infinitely. DK does have the mobility to accomplish this, but it would just take SOOO LOONG and would not be fun for either player. However, I found that when I was in desperate situations, this strategy was always my go-to one and eventually I realized I could just do that all the time. That's not fun at all though.

2. I wanted to improve as a player. I felt like I had weaknesses as a player that I got away with due to my DK expertise. Also, on the flip side, I felt like I had a lot of STRENGTHS as a player that I couldn't show with DK due to his limitations. Earlier this year, I made a decision to go ham with Smash this summer, try to become the best I can be, then take a break when school starts. I felt that dropping DK and switching to Sheik (lots of reasons I chose Sheik of all characters, but i won't get into that) was the best decision in order to accomplish my goal of becoming a top player. I accepted the fact that I would be worse in the short term because even a few weeks after making this decision, DK is probably still my best right now.

3. I got bored. this and the first thing I mentioned go hand in hand. DK just got boring to me, and I didn't see it getting any more fun in the future after realizing that the way to play him optimally isn't very fun for me or the opponent (just my opinion). I would have so much more fun playing other characters, but would end up playing DK in big sets just because he was my best. Sometimes, I would even choose secondaries in grand finals just because I had zero desire to play DK. I got such a reward for playing DK (RESULTS, publicity, people getting hyped for me, even had a decent number of fans lol) and towards the end, that started becoming the only reason to play him. Look up internal v.s. external motivation if you don't know what that is. I had almost all external motivation to play DK, and my internal motivation was elsewhere. It was like a clash of motivations and eventually I just decided to do what I wanted, main Sheik, even if no one else supported it.

4. Little room for error. You could argue that there's ALWAYS little room for error when you consider top level play, and after all it's my goal to be a top player, but there's soooo much less room for error as DK. The other day I thought of an easy, accurate way to word it: Against DK, you have to worry about not getting grabbed. As DK, you have to worry about not getting hit.
Think about it. Sure, I can kill you off a grab. But DK is such combo food and with a s*** vertical recovery, that most characters can consistently combo him offstage and into death or an easy edgeguard situation off of virtually ANY stray hit assuming the opponent knows what they are doing(which is always the case at top level play). Whereas DK gets the majority of his punishes off of grabs. Almost always, DK's goals in neutral are much harder to accomplish than the goals of his opponent, and if you fail you will get bodied hard. Thus, "little room for error". Honestly, I don't have the patience to deal with that anymore, especially with a character who's become so stale to me. The more I play Sheik, the more I have these "I would be dead if I was DK" epiphanies.

Those are probably the biggest four reasons. I know there were others but i just can't think of them right now. These are the main ones though. As you can see, it's a very complicated answer when someone asks "why did you quit DK?" lol I gota figure out a short way to answer that question.. because when @ MLGF asked me, I just responded with "he has too low of a ceiling." That's why he said that in this thread. However, I don't actually believe that. It's more just, his ceiling is lower with ME as a player compared to potential i see in myself with other characters.

Oh yeah, I also changed my tag to Shane because POOB is too associated with DK and I don't want that DK identity anymore. Oops, time to get a new Smashboards account

 

[DrinkingFood]

@ DrinkingFood I think the risk reward ratio is fair with the removal of invincibility frames. Diamond Diving/Love Jumping requires a jump and has no hitboxes below Zelda. If caught of it then Zelda gets more juggled than she already does. I don't think the land cancel is too much of an issue given the speed of the AT.

Most juggles don't occur completely vertically, so lacking hitboxes below you isn't the end of the world. For a horizontal carry or even just DIing a mostly vertical move to the side, the lack of hitboxes isn't relevant when you still have to respect the ones that exist, or get the combo entirely reversed on you; If you don't juggle with disjoint, you could also still lose to imperfect spacing, which happens frequently when you don't have the platforms/stage space/jump height to position yourself properly. And yes, the landing lag cancel is important- it means baiting it out and waiting to punish the endlag is... much less possible because there is a smaller window to punish; not only would you be getting off a much weaker punish, but you'd need perfect positioning as well, which is unlikely if you're trying to cover her do nothing option. Additionally, being able to b-reverse it or go forwards means you can't rely on any particular spacing to whiff punish it. It's already a good option by itself given the variety of ways you can do it and the low risk of doing it, but the fact alone that it exists makes the do nothing vs diamond dive mix-up extremely powerful.

It's like saying ROB's combo escaping ability isn't powerful because he usually has to expend a jump, then boost. It's true that he has to do that usually. But it's not like the boost is totally punishable, he has a low of options branching from there and it gets silly the amount of positioning you are required to adjust to get just a single hit even if it were guaranteed, which it's not. The jump->boost option makes his other combo escape options better and forces the opponent to respect him a lot even immediately after hitstun. And if you're respecting a boost-in -> nair option directly out of hitstun, you're not punishing the do nothing option. ROB also doesn't have any good hitboxes below him, much like Zelda, no invinc either. Jumping into a boost expends his jump, like diamond diving, AND expends a boost, though that's not always totally necessary, all of this on a character that gets NO recovery back when hit. Wanna know an option ROB doesn't have out of combos, though? Going straight down with lots of disjoint on a multi-hit land-canceling special.

 

[Frost | Odds]

@ POOB that resonates really hard with how I feel about Bowser at the moment. I hope 3.6 opens him up a little bit, both in terms of ability to deal with his bad MUs, and depth/difficulty of his punish game.

This especially:

1. I realized the optimal way to play him isn't the fun/desirable way to play him

My playstyle is by far the most optimal one of current Bowsers (which isn't necessarily saying much), and it's boring as hell. I play the super lame M2K style - purely to win; and that consists mostly of camping in neutral, poking with flame cancels, and then dash attacking the instant my opponent presses a button. The nerfs and changes I want for bowser constitute a direct nerf to my playstyle, but would be a great step towards making him vastly more fun in the long term. I resent the way I have to play in order to make my character effective. The people I play against hate it even more.

I wouldn't be surprised to see FSmash nerfed, in any case. I don't know why people seem to think Bowser's not allowed to have a useful FSmash, but whenever I suggest otherwise you'd think I'd suggested giving Sheik's grabs to Falco.

 

[D e l t a]

I hope 3.6 (or at least a version in the upcoming future) brings about a balance between 3.0 and 3.5 in terms of fun with depth and intricacies. 3.0 while busted, was fun due to the extensive punishes and crazy moves that had a lot of depth at high level. 3.5 while nerfed and overall pretty balanced, is mundane and predominately "playing the matchup." This could be attributed to the player more than the character, but it seems that you always have to do the same thing in neutral and to get kills.

For example, Poob mentions camping out for DK charge, Odds with the bowser reference, and even my two mains Fox & Lucas which require semi-mindlessly throwing out projectiles and baits to lead into an upsmash kill. There's little depth to it and more reliant on waiting for your opponent to mess up rather than out-playing them.

 

[POOB]

I don't think it has to do with the "depth" because there's actually a lot of depth to all those things you mentioned. To be honest it was mainly a personal opinion as opposed to something I think needs to be fixed. Also I actually have a Bowser and I love his optimal playstyle lol

 

[Boiko]

No depth = 3.02 Ness.

 

[DMG]

Surprised no one made the G^W reference for having no depth

 

[Nausicaa]

Without the glitched momentum, and a bit of accommodation to their hit-boxes/etc IF NEEDED (as if balancing for Sopo instead of both), the ICs will be fine.
Removal of any infinite stuff is welcome, and they do. not. need. it.

TY @ POOB for putting that together so well.

@ DMG I mentioned G&W here, and a lot of what I said is due to this phenomenon of 'depth' (as well as other things)

The closest to 'peaking' meta-game would be impossible for me to tell. I pay so little attention to the mainstream outside of little binges to catch up and see what's going on at the topish-end after a break.
BUT
If I were to guess...
I'd say G&W, if people are applying BnB things like Bacon mid-combo and focusing on playing a really solid ground-based game in neutral, which I at least saw a bit of when I binge-watched some vids recently, I think enough of the rest of his game is somewhat figured out.
Not by any individual player alone, but if you fused all of the directions that people playing G&W in end-game style competition have GONE and COME FROM, then added the tweaks to their play that were all lacking DUE to this exploration of nuances elsewhere, I think he'd be close.
AKA, crazy-far off, but more glimmers-of-hope have been glimmed. Need to like... pile them somewhere to a single person and yeah... with time.

Yoshi

Optimal Yoshi is very different than optimal Bowser.
Quit messing up buttons.
lol jkz but not really

Yoshi
Pivot D-Tilt
Not just pivot grabs/ftilt/normal things
Don't worry about the fancy stuff, just SH aerial and you'll still be a beast
B-Air is a beast too.
Neutral B more
Abuse your shield because you finally can and Yoshi is OP

I love the concepts Zelda brings, hope she gets sexier.

Sheik doesn't like neutral, so she gets rid of it. Neutral don exist

Sheik is still Queen of Stale-Mating the Neutral Game, just as much as ever. She's as glass-cannon as it gets, but that clobber-faces or get-clobbered game-plan works much better for her on a universal level than most other game-plans go for other characters. She needs to seriously adjust to deal with things thrown at her, but she can deal with anything. Characters like Kirby might be the ultimate specific-fly-traps, but she's the well-rounded one.

 

[DMG]

Sheik is probably the only Smash character that would prefer to go back to their original game. She fights like she hardly wants your involvement in the process

 

[Manaconda]

I'm pretty sure everyone is expecting a not-so-significant patch in terms of changes to most character's, or at least not 3.02 --> 3.5 types of changes. There are probably exceptions, but is that the general case, if anyone who has tried the build so far is allowed to answer?

 

[Player -0]

Most juggles don't occur completely vertically, so lacking hitboxes below you isn't the end of the world. For a horizontal carry or even just DIing a mostly vertical move to the side, the lack of hitboxes isn't relevant when you still have to respect the ones that exist, or get the combo entirely reversed on you; If you don't juggle with disjoint, you could also still lose to imperfect spacing, which happens frequently when you don't have the platforms/stage space/jump height to position yourself properly. And yes, the landing lag cancel is important- it means baiting it out and waiting to punish the endlag is... much less possible because there is a smaller window to punish; not only would you be getting off a much weaker punish, but you'd need perfect positioning as well, which is unlikely if you're trying to cover her do nothing option. Additionally, being able to b-reverse it or go forwards means you can't rely on any particular spacing to whiff punish it. It's already a good option by itself given the variety of ways you can do it and the low risk of doing it, but the fact alone that it exists makes the do nothing vs diamond dive mix-up extremely powerful.

It's like saying ROB's combo escaping ability isn't powerful because he usually has to expend a jump, then boost. It's true that he has to do that usually. But it's not like the boost is totally punishable, he has a low of options branching from there and it gets silly the amount of positioning you are required to adjust to get just a single hit even if it were guaranteed, which it's not. The jump->boost option makes his other combo escape options better and forces the opponent to respect him a lot even immediately after hitstun. And if you're respecting a boost-in -> nair option directly out of hitstun, you're not punishing the do nothing option. ROB also doesn't have any good hitboxes below him, much like Zelda, no invinc either. Jumping into a boost expends his jump, like diamond diving, AND expends a boost, though that's not always totally necessary, all of this on a character that gets NO recovery back when hit. Wanna know an option ROB doesn't have out of combos, though? Going straight down with lots of disjoint on a multi-hit land-canceling special.

What I mean is that the land cancelling frames are later in the move and the move is slow moving enough that you can trade while Zelda is in the air with a much more powerful move (one that'll either send her up for more juggles or send her offstage). If Zelda starts the diamond dive while being hit by the move since it no longer has invincibility frames she'll just have lost her double jump and maybe the juggler would take 2%. You can bait it out and then trade with an Up Smash or the like. Zelda can also only do the AT's while she's still taking KB meaning you can wait to choose your next move. ROB has Nair and is much heavier than Zelda. Nair is pretty terrifying considering the KB of the move, it also covers his whole body.

Also consider the character the AT is on. For characters like ZSS and Sonic they both have good escape tools and have much more solid neutrals. Even for ROB, while he has similar troubles to Zelda with being juggled his neutral is more solid than Zelda's. So there are characters that have better neutrals but when the opponent gets to punish them they can escape fairly well (Fox lel?).

Edit - Probably missed stuff because hurp.

I'm pretty sure everyone is expecting a not-so-significant patch in terms of changes to most character's, or at least not 3.02 --> 3.5 types of changes. There are probably exceptions, but is that the general case, if anyone who has tried the build so far is allowed to answer?

Players who are granted the privilege of playtesting the development build, if they like that privilege, should probably keep any information they learn to themselves (being vague does not accomplish this), including the fact that they were allowed to playtest it at all. Keep Tier List Discussion on the current public build and leave speculation on the next version in the dedicated 3.6 thread please.