Tier List Speculation

[Deleted member]

Whatever gets you that W right?.

i think you misunderstand me then, based on your reply. the point i'm trying to make is that this version of PM has too many matches akin to marth vs mario, because many characters (mario in this case) have had their means to counterplay strong opposing tactics (marth's fair in this case) removed, and those players are no longer able to reasonably through those disadvantages. i believe that they were able to play through them at least somewhat in prior versions, in a general cast-encompassing way. for other examples, in 3.6, i do not understand how ivysaur is supposed to check roy's dashdancing with bair nerfed, and i do not understand how ike is supposed to develop a punish game on ZSS with his conversions nerfed. these and many other examples have led me to the conclusion that many things in this version were unnecessarily tampered with to the detriment of the game as a whole. as a top level marth player, i think the marth vs mario MU is just as stupid as you think it is, and i dont think we ever want a character like marth to be a clear top tier for that very reason. in my exp, any time marth is a top tier, it also means 70%+ of the cast is unplayable.

 

[JOE!]

Why aren't tech rolls normalized? Seems kinda convoluted how characters have either amazing/awful tech options sometimes.

Also, people complain about the melee characters because they have a disproportional head start that is a form of meta-jank.

 

[The_NZA]

yeah the problem is that in taking everything powerful out of the game, we've created two major problems-
1. the game just isn't as fun and the player base is being driven out of the game
2. when all of your tools are situational and mediocre in power level, you end up with a very heavily MU based game depending on how those tools interact with each other. if you have tools that are ubiquitous and powerful, you may still have to respect the MU but it's much less because you have the capability to overcome disadvantages and new forms of opposition.

you have to be realistic about how much your character contributes to your success as a player. lots of top players get "exposed" when their character is nerfed, which says a lot more about the game than the individual players when it keeps happening.

@ Mr.Pickle -

perhaps a third and more subtle effect is that the only powerful tools left in the game are those which we refuse to take out because they were grandfathered in- and honestly, dealing with marth's dashdance and falco's lasers in 3.5 was still difficult but certainly doable. dealing with those characters in 3.6 is a different story entirely. having your same old tool kit be able to solve new problems as they arise is good depth and keeps the players coming back as new strategies evolve and develop. in 3.6, a good chunk of that stuff was taken out. i can play marth against your mario and watch you lose to fair for 6 minutes, and it doesnt even have anything to do with you as a player. if that's your idea of "incredibly interesting and fun" then you can continue to play mid tiers and get stuck getting 17th in a bracket over and over because you're okay losing at the character select screen. but for me personally? no thanks. i want the cast to be relatively even, but i also want to be able to have the tools to outplay my opponents when the situation arises. right now, that basically means a lot of people are switching to fox or metaknight, because those characters can do it and everyone knows it. huge red flags imo.

I'm like 95% of the way with you, Bré. I would have never nerfed Ivy's bair, Ganon's nair, DDD's dair, Wario's dsmash (wtf was this even a problem!?!?), Yoshi's dair, Squirtle, Lucario's taunt, and a bunch of other things. I would in fact BUFF everyone right now who is a low tier, and make it a rule to replace bad game design for mid tiers with compensatory buffs. What I don't get about your approach, Bré is why do you feel like removing overcentralizing jank like GnW's jump after upb, which we can both agree is pretty dumb, and give him something else that preserves his uniqueness and makes him cool.

I personally think 3.6 could work to buffing half the cast that seems on the lower end up a bit, and I think we have a LOT of room to do so before we creep back into 3.02 toxicity. I'd start by polling prominent mains of characters to find out what their 3 most reasonable asks would be, and have a conversation character by character, week to week about whether those 3 things are worth pursuing or not. Code those changes, send those builds out to a top player of each character, get some data and make some decisions.

 

[Frost | Odds]

@Umbreon Marth does tend to gatekeep the characters he beats extremely hard, and I'll always be at the front of the Marth Hate Parade, but imo, the counterplay to him by most PM characters isn't all that developed yet. He might not be quite that ridiculous. I don't think he crushes Mario in particular that hard.

 

[The_NZA]

Yeah... If you give Fox a worse tech roll then because of his fall speed many matchups become even more heavily centralized on "grab fox, throw fox, tech chase fox on reaction for 60%+" which isn't very fun for anyone involved. That kind of play is already boring. There are probably better, less unfun ways of making Fox more squishy.

We have very different definitions of fun .

*DJC uairs across the stage*

 

[JOE!]

Get up attacks are weird too, would it be possible to like, press A or B to select which get up attack you get as opposed to the weird front/back thing?

 

[mimgrim]

Are you honestly complaining about marth now? Although marth is good (easy top 10 imo) it's not impossible to play to his weaknesses. He actually is worse in most relevant melee matchups (except sheik but it's still pretty close) because of stage picks.
This game should be immune to drastic design changes. There's nothing broken or poorly designed enough so that it warrants an outright removal or redesign (except maybe bowser idk what to do with him). Most characters have over 5 years of individual meta, and the more "jank" that is taking away from original design goals of making the game fast paced. Are we really going to balance around link as a standard? Is that really a game that you want to be playing? There needs to be a point in which people stop complaining about character design and start getting better. The majority of characters don't even have good top player representatives, while the melee tops do.

And I really don't think that link has trouble killing. I have a lot of link practice with a really good player and his weaknesses are a lot around being generally too slow and losing pretty bad to CC, DD, and high priority hitboxes. And tethers suck.

Do you even read? Because your post has completely missed Pickle's point lol.

Why aren't tech rolls normalized? Seems kinda convoluted how characters have either amazing/awful tech options sometimes.

To add onto this, why aren't jump squats normalized yet? (they're close but not quite there, imo). Why is heavy landing lag for characters normalized yet?

There are certain attributes that all characters share that I think should be normalized (mainly tech rolls, jump squat, and heavy landing lag)

 

[Boiko]

Personally I like characters having different stats on their attributes. Tech chasing would then be the same for every single tech chase character, where's the fun in that?

 

[mimgrim]

Personally I like characters having different stats on their attributes. Tech chasing would then be the same for every single tech chase character, where's the fun in that?

More fun then having to tech-chase characters with absolutely horrid tech-rolls. :L

 

[AuraMaudeGone]

Personally I like characters having different stats on their attributes. Tech chasing would then be the same for every single tech chase character, where's the fun in that?

It still wouldn't be exactly the same since every character has enough attributes that differ from each other.

 

[didds]

Not to mention the tech rolls would be better normalized proportionate to character size so tech chases would still require character adjustments. Obviously bowser should travel farther than squirtle since equal distance simply favors small characters

 

[JOE!]

That'd be interesting it applied to rolls and stuff to. Like, even with bias you would imagine something like Zard's back roll where he pushes back with the wings to be able to move him quite a bit/etc

 

[Narelex]

I think having some variance of tech roll is okay.
But we have to draw the line at a certain point. Tech chasing any character with an incredibly bad techroll is one of the least interesting things you can do in this game.

As MK you sit there Dthrow wait for them to pick a direction then grab and dthrow again. The only 2 thoughts that even cross my mind are

• Will he Tech in place?
• Will he miss the Tech?

And those are easy to account for. Even with a roll as bad as Falcons if you guess the wrong direction you won't have any chance to get the regrab but not against someone like Squirtle. Its like you're not even playing against a player anymore, just a mechanic in a game that has a set amount of outcomes and takes too long to come out, for any of them to really matter.

(Tech chasing forever isn't technically possible but its easier to do it for a long time against someone like Bowser Squirtle then it should be)

Normalizing some Jumpsquats sounds like a good idea. Its hard to go from someone like Bowser/D3 to someone like Pikachu because the timings are just inherently different.

 

[Trollinguy]

Tech chasing is fun if you have to make reads... reaction tech chasing is boring.

 

[didds]

There's no such thing as pure reaction tech chasing, every tech chase starts with a mental 50 50, should I cover the tech in place, or wait and react to the roll. Tech in place has always been the "way out mixup"

 

[Mr.Pickle]

Are you honestly complaining about marth now? Although marth is good (easy top 10 imo) it's not impossible to play to his weaknesses. He actually is worse in most relevant melee matchups (except sheik but it's still pretty close) because of stage picks.
This game should be immune to drastic design changes. There's nothing broken or poorly designed enough so that it warrants an outright removal or redesign (except maybe bowser idk what to do with him). Most characters have over 5 years of individual meta, and the more "jank" that is taking away from original design goals of making the game fast paced. Are we really going to balance around link as a standard? Is that really a game that you want to be playing? There needs to be a point in which people stop complaining about character design and start getting better. The majority of characters don't even have good top player representatives, while the melee tops do.

And I really don't think that link has trouble killing. I have a lot of link practice with a really good player and his weaknesses are a lot around being generally too slow and losing pretty bad to CC, DD, and high priority hitboxes. And tethers suck.

You don't think that marth's problem killing isn't overshadowed by roy, who has a similar moveset (different playstyle) but an easier time killing? 95% of the melee tops are balanced but people just hate them so much that they want nerfs for no reason. I've had people complain about my marth and sheik in 3.02. People need to lose the stigma against melee tops, and consider that sheik, who was a melee top, was arguably nerfed more than anyone going into this patch. Theyre not immune to balance. Marth has stayed the same for a reason. Most "jank" was taken out of the game going into 3.5. Characters should have strong tools. Melee tops are good for sure, but the majority of the time when people lose to them, it's because they weren't good enough to win.

I don't even know where to begin with this post, like mimgrim said, my post went over your head and you need to re read it, not trying to be disrespectful but that's just how it is. I never said that this game needs to be centered around link, I used him as an example to show that the melee top tiers' problems pale in comparison to other characters, link is an extreme case because he has numerous problems. I specifically said, "I'd say the general status I'd like this game to be at would be a slightly buffed melee doc" do you see the words "link" anywhere in that sentence? I'm not going to respond to the rest of the first paragraph because I honestly don't see the point.

Yes he does, he probably has the worst kill potential next to probably zamus, though she has speed and actual good setups into her kill moves. You are correct in saying his other weaknesses are he's slow and he losses to cc and super left right bros. Also I have about 3 years of link matchup experience and kinda play him myself, not to sound condescending, but I know what I'm talking about when it comes to that character.

No not really, roy is in about the same spot as marth, his kill potential is a little better and consistent, but it's not to an extent to where marth looks like he can't kill. I'm not going to bother with the rest, all I'm going to say to that is that you're entitled to your opinion, but I respectfully disagree with you.

@Umbreon - Fair enough, I'm not going to continue with this conversation any further then this post unless it's heavily desired, I feel like I've derailed this thread enough. I can see we share the opinion that 3.6 doesn't have the direction we desire, and that it's structure needs serious work. The method to how this is accomplished, we don't agree on. If I understand correctly, you feel like they should buff everyone to melee top tier status, which I personally think will just repeat what we went through in 3.0 but everyone has their opinions, I may be wrong. My stance is to nerf the melee top tiers, all of them, buff the handful of bad characters, and round out the "jank" in the middle.

 

[Deleted member]

There's no such thing as pure reaction tech chasing, every tech chase starts with a mental 50 50, should I cover the tech in place, or wait and react to the roll. Tech in place has always been the "way out mixup"

yeah lots of people seem to insist that a player can infinite tech chase (which would be a hilariously broken punish game if true). in my modest 14 years of competitive smash experience, i have never once seen that unicorn. i assure you, if players got the equivalent of a free KO from fox's dthrow, it would have been studied to death, mastered, and forced huge swaths of players out of the game. it does not exist.

mr pickle my stance is basically the same as yours, but my ideal power level is somewhere around 3.5 samus wario ike or so.

 

[didds]

First thing I always look for is how often people tech in place or regular get up, it says a lot about their level of play. It's easy for a new player to see just standing in place as a dumb option when in reality it's often the best option and the only thing you have to anticipate to cover.

 

[1FD]

Its like you're not even playing against a player anymore, just a mechanic in a game that has a set amount of outcomes and takes too long to come out, for any of them to really matter.

Totally sounds like you just described where the tether salt comes from
Thread makes full circle again

Snake has a stupid techchase throw that needs to die

 

[Mr.Pickle]

I suppose it's just our standards of power are different that causes us to disagree with certain things. Though I am curious to your thoughts on wario, and his placement on the tier list. Especially since he's one of the characters that you set your ideal standard of power in this game.

 

[Binary Clone]

Totally sounds like you just described where the tether salt comes from
Thread makes full circle again

Snake has a stupid techchase throw that needs to die

Snake's isn't even that bad because it just puts you into prone, in my opinion. You can get up, roll, or immediately getup attack, or do nothing, which is basically all of the options out of other throws like Charizard's dthrow except you can instantly getup attack as well because you don't actually tech.

 

[Life]

Would like to point out that not every character has equal options against techchase grabs (everyone can shield frame 1 of course). Someone who can put out a frame 1 attack (spacies, I guess technically Jiggs though that's an awful idea LOL, IDK who else) or has frame 1 invincibility in some form have to be grabbed on an earlier frame than characters that rely on the couple-frames-slower spotdodge, or like a frame 2 jab for characters that have one, or stuff like that.

It's ultimately minor-looking, but that extra frame or two can make a difference--the number of times I've been shined out of a techchase regrab speaks to that.

 

[Narelex]

yeah lots of people seem to insist that a player can infinite tech chase (which would be a hilariously broken punish game if true). in my modest 14 years of competitive smash experience, i have never once seen that unicorn. i assure you, if players got the equivalent of a free KO from fox's dthrow, it would have been studied to death, mastered, and forced huge swaths of players out of the game. it does not exist.

mr pickle my stance is basically the same as yours, but my ideal power level is somewhere around 3.5 samus wario ike or so.

Infinite tech chasing doesn't exist but its impossible to deny how much easier it is against someone like Bowser or Squirtle.

Tethers need to be fixed. The lack of interaction is one of the reasons I despise playing vs Ivysaur. Since it doesn't' feel like I'm outplaying them when I edgeguard a tether.

 

[TheoryofSmaug]

I feel like tech rolls and stuff are mostly pretty good right now except.
1 Squirtles tech roll is so damn bad it is sickening. You can basically tech chase him by trying to grab tech in place, then recover from the lag of your grab and grab him out of his tech roll. Dumb af.
2 Most of the heavies techs/rolls/spotdodges are ass which is dumb. Take Bowser for example, he is way to slow to reliably dash away from attacks, has the worst spotdodge in the game, making it free to grab him, and then has horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE, tech rolls that 4 real allow him to be reaction techchased out of his stock. This is one of the main reasons, along with the silly nerfs and wave land bug, I dropped Bowser a couple weeks after 3.6 dropped.
If you aren't going to give the big fatties decent approach options, plz plz at least give them some defensive options. It's dumber tf that characters like Fox can rack up damage, approach and kill better than characters like Bowser and still have better defensive options.

 

[Narelex]

I feel like tech rolls and stuff are mostly pretty good right now except.
1 Squirtles tech roll is so damn bad it is sickening. You can basically tech chase him by trying to grab tech in place, then recover from the lag of your grab and grab him out of his tech roll. Dumb af.
2 Most of the heavies techs/rolls/spotdodges are *** which is dumb. Take Bowser for example, he is way to slow to reliably dash away from attacks, has the worst spotdodge in the game, making it free to grab him, and then has horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE, tech rolls that 4 real allow him to be reaction techchased out of his stock. This is one of the main reasons, along with the silly nerfs and wave land bug, I dropped Bowser a couple weeks after 3.6 dropped.
If you aren't going to give the big fatties decent approach options, plz plz at least give them some defensive options. It's dumber tf that characters like Fox can rack up damage, approach and kill better than characters like Bowser and still have better defensive options.

I actually like the idea of the heavies having good spotdodges and rolls since they already have issues with getting juggled hard why not make their defensive options not garbage? It's not even an unhealthy interaction the way armour can be. Since it still requires the player to react to the situation accordingly. Instead of just bulldozing through a move without thought, the way Bowsers dash attack and nair used to be.

Also Normalizing all frame 6 jumpsquats to frame 5 would make a lot of people happy I'm sure. None of the characters with a frame 6 Jumpsquat are top tier anyway so its just a win-win for balance and consistency.

 

[The Baron]

I actually like the idea of the heavies having good spotdodges and rolls since they already have issues with getting juggled hard why not make their defensive options not garbage? It's not even an unhealthy interaction the way armour can be. Since it still requires the player to react to the situation accordingly. Instead of just bulldozing through a move without thought, the way Bowsers dash attack and nair used to be.

Also Normalizing all frame 6 jumpsquats to frame 5 would make a lot of people happy I'm sure. None of the characters with a frame 6 Jumpsquat are top tier anyway so its just a win-win for balance and consistency.

Are there any of the frame 6 squats you think can be pushed to 4 without destroying the game?

 

[Narelex]

Are there any of the frame 6 squats you think can be pushed to 4 without destroying the game?

Maybe but it seems weird to have Bowser/D3 jump faster then Falco to me so /shrug

Would probably have to be a character by character basis based on their options OOS and in the air

 

[Journal]

In fairness, I think infinite tech chasing is possible on some characters, it's just that people don't try to explore it enough. Just recently at EVO, DruggedFox played as Sheik and had Leffen in a 0-90 off one tech chase.

 

[Deleted member]

I suppose it's just our standards of power are different that causes us to disagree with certain things. Though I am curious to your thoughts on wario, and his placement on the tier list. Especially since he's one of the characters that you set your ideal standard of power in this game.

i have watched strongbad work on wario for the past year or so, and i think wario is absolutely perfect and would change nothing. personally i would prefer to change sheik to match wario in both power level and ethos, and i myself would play it.

 

[JOE!]

Snake has a stupid techchase throw that needs to die

Snake lays you on the ground, does 14%

Charizard pins you to the ground with a foot, then breathes fire all over you, 6%

Asking "PMDT plz?", Priceless

For everything else, there's the Subreddit

 

[Ripple]

If people truly want better spot dodges, then they need to look at the list of everyone's and decide what the least usable but still acceptable spot dodge is.

imo anything that lasts longer than 27 frames right now is terrible and needs changing.

DDD/Ganon/Wario/Falcon/DK/Bowser have ones that are 32 frames or longer.

idk why either, spot dodges go from ending on 22, to 25, to 27, then all of a sudden 32.

all imo

for DDD/Ganon/Wario/Falcon, all are 2-20 end on 32. simply shave off 3 frames of ending lag

same with falcon except make his start on 2 rather than 3.

DK. 2-23 ends on 37. cut off 1 frame of invincibility make end on 29

bowser 4-24 ends on 42. LOL. start on 2 or 3 end on 31. don't change when invinc ends


although I'm not 100% if these have frame speed modifiers on them. so these numbers could be wrong. but we all still know they are terrible

 

[Sartron]

bowser 4-24 ends on 42. LOL. start on 2 or 3 end on 31. don't change when invinc ends

Bowser's spot dodge is invic 3-20, and lasts 32 frames. http://smashboards.com/threads/pm-3-5-stats-list-still-wip-wavedash-ranks-added.335019/ is bad.

EDIT: DK's is also inaccurate. I would take that thread with a grain of salt.

 

[Scuba Steve]

Heavy spotdodges are laughably bad. The best is when you spotdodge a grab (kind of what they're meant for, ya know?) and then they just grab you again while you're still in the recovery of your spotdodge. Sakurai plz

 

[Ripple]

if all the heavies end on 32 then shaving off 3 frames of ending lag would be totally acceptable imo

 

[Zigludo]

There's no such thing as pure reaction tech chasing, every tech chase starts with a mental 50 50, should I cover the tech in place, or wait and react to the roll. Tech in place has always been the "way out mixup"

lolwat. DruggedFox and Gravy would like a word with you

 

[Deleted member]

lolwat. DruggedFox and Gravy would like a word with you

i trained druggedfox personally, he knows its jank.

 

[didds]

those two have definitely worked on optimizing tech chases, but it still requires anticipation. If it didn't and they could "react" to every option then these guys should probably be zero to deathing off every grab they get.

Like Umbreon said, if it was possible, sheik would have killed smash years ago

 

[Rachman]

reaction tech chasing is jank? I have absolutely 0 idea what jank means to you people. Reaction time isn't static lol you are a human being, it's going to have variation...when that variation causes your reaction time to be slower than is required to cover the tech option they choose you drop it. Every time I read this thread I feel like either you guys are getting even crazier or I am

 

[Narelex]

i trained druggedfox personally, he knows its jank.

Please stop throwing that word around everyone. "Jank" should be reserved for something outside the norms of the game such as clipping and falling into a stage.

Jank is a terrible term for anything relating to character balance/tools

Its the equivalent of using "that's gay" to describe something. Its childish and a cop-out. Use more specific words that don't have such a vague and negative meaning.

Toxic would fall in that category as well. (Unless we're talking about Pokemon moves =P) Unhealthy or Unintuitive are much better to use but only if used in the proper context.

 

[Rᴏb]

i'd also like to say that calling something unintuitive without providing evidence that is beyond reasonable doubt as to why that is, is also annoyingly vague and equates to "I don't like X"