Tier List Speculation

[CORY]

Most people generally agree that it's a great mechanic. It's just a little too good at what it does right now.

Well, part of that is also heavier characters being mor relevant making cc more noticeable for longer.

 

[Player -0]

mfw I get a huge combo opportunity then ASDI down my starter.

 

[DrinkingFood]

That is literally the first non-joking positive response in favor of crouch cancelling. Most people find the idea of ddd eating a diddy forward smash at 164% and only sliding silly, or luigi eating a game and watch up smash at 95% and not being anywhere close to death odd. Keep in mind these are not even characters that abuse cc to the extent roy, samus, and others do.

Also I know I am late to this, but found it extremely weird diddy was somehow on the s tier list in some of these post. Has anyone tried using a character like samus? Diddy has the worst vertical kill moves in the entire roster, and being great at combos is kind of negated by how fast she breaks out combined with the strongest kill options either having a poor killing angle or moderate knockback. (Completely capable character just obvious flaws combined with an easy to combo weight makes him balanced.)

I've defended CC as a mechanic for a long time lol.
All those percents you gave refer strictly to crouched opponents, and crouching has its own trade offs that merit the reward of 2/3rds knockback. But when most us refer to CC we are usually talking about the effects of ASDI down which the effect that can CANCEL hitstun, and it doesn't work at high percents at all unless the player is already crouching

mfw I get a huge combo opportunity then ASDI down my starter.

Use a different starter this is the most basic of skills in melee/PM

 

[FreeGamer]

If Bowser's Fire Breath gives you trouble, I want to put 2.5 Bowser into the game and watch the salt ooze from your skin.

 

[Sethlon]

Only if I get 2.5 sonic

 

[CORY]

Only if I get 2.5 sonic

can i keep float? if i can't hit you i at least want to float around before i get combo'd into oblivion.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Who are you callin salty, you short-shorts-wearin-son-of-a-!

No but seriously, Bowser is pretty awful. My play against Odds was pretty butt-tier (bad strike for first stage, no idea how to deal with firebreath, DI'd literally every single command grab incorrectly, etc). The fact that nB is super uninteractive is dumb, but that doesn't change the fact that bowser has tons of matchups he should never be winning.

Heheh, I just know you're much better than that. I think with the right mindset you'd very likely beat me, but it was pretty obvious that you weren't on top of your mental game last night. I sort of idolized you for most of my Smash career, so if I'm going to be biased, it will be in favor of you losing to me because of circumstances rather than me being that much better of a player - it should be obvious to all that I'm not.

Bowser may do well vs rob but its pretty much only because of 2 moves, and 70% of the cast just doesnt care about those two moves (nair/nb). Still sucks.

I was mostly salty about how much everybody complained about rob mitigating positional advantage when bowser has an armored combo breaker and the best landing move in the game and somehow thats oki guess? Didnt help that i have the flu, makes it pretty difficult to win those hard matchups. Was mostly impressed with odds movement and shield dropping (what kind of pm player shield drops? This isnt even melee)

I would really like to see armor taken off nair and flame cancel removed, and buffs to make bowser a real character instead of 2 broken moves glued on to a bowser plushie

Flame cancel is on my **** list too, and I'd like to experiment with reducing nair to light armor, provided Bowser gets a commensurate buff elsewhere - but right now both elements are necessary bandaids to an awful overall character. They necessitate that I play lame and boring as hell, and capitalize to the max on the frustration and salt of my opponents - hopefully increased public awareness of how lame (and effective) my playstyle is should help build support for more positive changes making Bowser's optimal playstyle into something more interactive and enjoyable.

I can assure you that 3.5 Bowser was much, much more frustrating to play against.

 

[Jonyc128]

for mario. it feels silly to me, still, but i'm also a relatively large target so it could very well just be salt.

Mario Dair isn't even that good anymore. Sure yea it beats basically everything, but the absurd disjointed hitbox is basically gone lol

 

[Player -0]

@ DrinkingFood Pit: Anything but grab gets bodied and grab kinda sucks as a combo starter really bad. D-Tilt leads into nothing but MAYBE grab so that doesn't count either.

 

[DrinkingFood]

@ DrinkingFood Pit: Anything but grab gets bodied and grab kinda sucks as a combo starter really bad. D-Tilt leads into nothing but MAYBE grab so that doesn't count either.

You have arrows to encourage approaches against your good DD, several DI mix-ups out of grab that lead either to guaranteed damage or at least really good stagger situations, spacing aerials is a thing, upsmash is a thing. Yes, you have to make harder commitments to get something started at low percents. That's how most characters operate.

 

[Life]

Pit has guaranteed dash attack out of dthrow versus DI away in most circumstances. At zero you might end up frame disadvantaged after the DA depending on their character, but not so much that you can't pull up shield if they try something silly. Other DIs give you regrabs, usmash, aerials, upB...

Also uthrow is really good against the likes of Samus (can't get much out of dthrow against her so might as well put her above you), and eventually functions as a DI mixup against faster fallers.

 

[Strong Badam]

Only if I get 2.5 sonic

Not even 2.5 DK could save me...

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

But actually, why does no one play Pit?

@ Frost | Odds plz

 

[Frost | Odds]

My pit is garbage, why would you ask me that? ;(

I find his arrows really extremely tough to aim. The aiming system is super unintuitive for me.

 

[Ripple]

I recently browsed the pit forums.

They wanted to start air camping like me because their normal styles weren't effective enough.

 

[CORY]

i'm honestly starting to dig the idea of float camping with ganon, at least for certain matchups.

but i'm just some midlevel scrub, so this could just be a super silly idea.

 

[CyberZixx]

Not even 2.5 DK could save me...

How about 2.5 Wario? he was pretty busted.

 

[Bazkip]

I recently browsed the pit forums.

They wanted to start air camping like me because their normal styles weren't effective enough.

Soooo...that mean we'll soon see the Ripple Pit?

Inb4 they nerf Pit's dair.

 

[Ripple]

they want to play like me, I don't want to play like them.

I also don't think pit is good

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

That's cuz he kinda isn't :/

He's got too much "okay" stuff and a huge case of "wtf am I actually supposed to do"

Odds I'm desparate

Pit plays like a cool mofo who don't need no man BUT NO ONE MAINS HIM

 

[InfinityCollision]

But actually, why does no one play Pit?

@ Frost | Odds plz

Why does no one play Mewtwo Lucas Pikachu Kirby ROB Squirtle Yoshi D3 Ivysaur ICs ZSS Charizard Olimar...

There are a lot of characters that seemingly have only 1-2 players max in most areas, if that, and there's no telling what kind of high level representation they do/don't have.

 

[Shokio]

There's actually tons of Squirtles, Yoshi's, and Ivy's...........just nobody that plays them at a high level.

I think ZSS has pretty good representation. You could easily list 5 high-level ZSS's. The other chars could definitely use some more love though, especially Olimar </3

 

[mimgrim]

Why does no one play Mewtwo Lucas Pikachu Kirby ROB Squirtle Yoshi D3 Ivysaur ICs ZSS Charizard Olimar...

There are a lot of characters that seemingly have only 1-2 players max in most areas, if that, and there's no telling what kind of high level representation they do/don't have.

Man my region has like 3 or 4 Lucas players right now. Including me as I've been trying to learn him as a compliment to Tink, and I'm still thinking about a few other characters to use to compliment Tink instead as well but Lucas is at the fore running currently and the one I have been putting the most time into. We just all suck.

 

[Oracle]

I'm fine with 2.5 firebreath as long as I get 2.5 rob dthrow. mmmmm dthrow upsmash at 90%

I miss 2.5

 

[InfinityCollision]

There's actually tons of Squirtles, Yoshi's, and Ivy's...........just nobody that plays them at a high level.

I think ZSS has pretty good representation. You could easily list 5 high-level ZSS's. The other chars could definitely use some more love though, especially Olimar </3

I can think of one Yoshi near me, and that's a Melee crossover... there might be one each in terms of actual Squirtle or Ivy mains within a couple hours of here, though I know there's another Ivy that visits periodically. The Squirtle community is active and vocal, but I still think they're underrepresented overall.

Similarly, ZSS has a pretty small community. We have just one active ZSS locally nowadays. As far as five high level ZSS... Numerics, JW... you, Arcana I guess? Oro?! has basically quit, Vixen's quitting iirc, the next candidate might actually be Frozen off the top of my head.

Man my region has like 3 or 4 Lucas players right now. Including me as I've been trying to learn him as a compliment to Tink, and I'm still thinking about a few other characters to use to compliment Tink instead as well but Lucas is at the fore running currently and the one I have been putting the most time into. We just all suck.

And we have no Lucas players now. Our one Lucas player sadly switched mains.

There will be pockets of relative activity, sure - look at France's two PR'd Zards for instance. Still, looking at what I see here, on Reddit, sampling local-level play in different regions, etc these characters don't exactly strike me as insanely popular.

 

[Shokio]

Oro?! said he was gonna come back to the fold eventually. Vixen idk she says she's gonna quit like literally everyday. Fickle.

 

[DrinkingFood]

@ DrinkingFood I was fully convinced that Bowser was totally unplayable, and I'm unconvinced that I can in good conscience keep defending that position, too. He's still awful and has a lot of autolosses, but the difficulty of the counterplay is such that sometimes I can just kind of avoid interaction until I see my opponent screwing up, then hit him with a safe shield drop or something.

I'd need to grind a lot more with these guys. Strong bad and lunchables did quite badly against me at first in friendlies, relative to the gaps in our player skills, but began performing much more reliably in the matchup once they figured it out a bit. Oracle and sethlon are both very salty players sometimes, so a snap judgement based on their performance while tilting, would be a mistake.

Worth noting that I thought bowser needed buffs either way. I didn't think he suddenly became a good character lol. And even tho his DD change wasn't really much of a buff at all, more of a compensation, he DID gain speed on a lot of his moves; I see his dsmash actually usable as a CC tool now (and I think the new angle is actually better since it's basically a reversal tool now for when you're cornered), up smash is just that much more usable in a number of situations, ftilt is slightly better. I still don't know if he was nerfed much if at all, but I don't think either way that it was a huge nerf overall, and he's almost certainly not buffed. My previous impression was "He's better, but not better enough", but now my take is more like "He's definitely not better, why not? He needs to be better."

 

[DiZZ]

Not even 2.5 DK could save me...

You hate dk or something because hes been bad since 3.02 and 3.5 gutted him even more so please try and save this character as well as the other fatties rather then have a grudge with him because you were not able to preform to the same standard as you can with the likes of other characters. I know for a fact you think dk is bad and we have had conversations about it dont ignore the character any longer it pains me to see dk in his current state I have spent countless hours in the lab for the past year just to realize even at optimal play dk lacks tools in neutral has terrible tech roll and spot dodge and one of the worst recoveries in the game, give some love to the dong

 

[DrinkingFood]

You hate dk or something because hes been bad since 3.02 and 3.5 gutted him even more so please try and save this character as well as the other fatties rather then have a grudge with him because you were not able to preform to the same standard as you can with the likes of other characters. I know for a fact you think dk is bad and we have had conversations about it dont ignore the character any longer it pains me to see dk in his current state I have spent countless hours in the lab for the past year just to realize even at optimal play dk lacks tools in neutral has terrible tech roll and spot dodge and one of the worst recoveries in the game, give some love to the dong

you know there are like 40 other major contributers to PM and like 7 other devs besides SB that make balance decisions right? For what purpose are you targeting him when he is MOST likely to be on the side of buffing DK?

 

[DiZZ]

you know there are like 40 other major contributers to PM and like 7 other devs besides SB that make balance decisions right? For what purpose are you targeting him when he is MOST likely to be on the side of buffing DK?

I have talked to a decent portion of pmdt about dk and his current situation and many are vocal about their opinions on how he is actually bad, with the case of strong bad he has gone on record actually stating dk can not be balanced correctly word for word stating this how the character held him back with an attitude like that I feel as though you would be against a character you have some sort of resentment towards in sb's case dk.

 

[Rachman]

Did some labbing today with PM just to learn more about the game. I just think it's insane how anyone thinks they really know how good many of the characters are (some of the more straight forward/stolen from Melee designs/outliers can have a more legitimate case made for them being "understood" but still) when the character design is so unique and the ways each character can be pushed is, in many cases, not even barely tapped into. It just makes hearing people's opinions on characters all the more interesting when honestly no one really knows what they're talking about in regards to over 30 members of the cast (including myself). The possibilities with all the new tech, new character designs, all the new stuff, and therefore the uncountable number of new interactions possible because of it. I wish they would just buff a few of the outliers and just let the meta sit for awhile, I'm very curious as to what would happen. I have some suspicions, but I am mostly certain that most of us would be very very surprised at the result.

Also, I really found D3's old niche interesting. Very much wish PMDT would allow for these unique play styles to exist as that's a large part of what I find so interesting about PM. I might not particularly enjoy fighting many of these characters atm (particularly Diddy...) but I attribute that in large part to a lack of understanding of how to properly combat the character and a lack of mastery over PM specific game mechanics. Similar story with D3, I disliked playing against D3 because I didn't immediately grasp how to effectively fight him and I resent having the opportunity to learn and expand myself in that way taken away from me for whatever reason the PMDT gave.

In regards to DK, kinda wish they would just give fatties some usable defensive options as that would go a long way. Bowser/D3 need more specific changes than that, but giving fatties in general usable defensive options (and Ganon having earlier IASA on float is a change that I'm 110% behind for so many reasons) would be a good starting point.

 

[DrinkingFood]

I have talked to a decent portion of pmdt about dk and his current situation and many are vocal about their opinions on how he is actually bad, with the case of strong bad he has gone on record actually stating dk can not be balanced correctly word for word stating this how the character held him back with an attitude like that I feel as though you would be against a character you have some sort of resentment towards in sb's case dk.

I feel as though you assume people just decide everything with their emotions. That's true for some people, but most people do let an element of reasoning pass into their judgements and I don't think you should put that past SB unless you know him personally.
That said, I would be more inclined to believe that DK is a tough character to get right, and his past with DK + the number of uninformed people that kind of just look at him as "head" of the PMDT or w/e, it's probably tough from a PR perspective to actually touch the character in a positive way.
What's more curious to me is that I never seem to hear any discussion on DK at all from the devs.

 

[Life]

I recently browsed the pit forums.

They wanted to start air camping like me because their normal styles weren't effective enough.

that was one person that I didn't have the heart to tell was an awful idea

My pit is garbage, why would you ask me that? ;(

I find his arrows really extremely tough to aim. The aiming system is super unintuitive for me.

Arrows are hard, yeah. I wrote a thread explaining how they work, but I for one have a long way to go in that area.

He's got too much "okay" stuff and a huge case of "wtf am I actually supposed to do"

uair

----

I'm aware there's a Pit Skype group but I'm not joining it for a couple reasons--I dislike character illuminati chats in general due to the way they keep information hidden from the general public (squirtle slack is pretty decent about this but I haven't seen similar from any of the others), I use my real name on Skype so I'm pretty uncomfortable just throwing it out there, and I don't even know if it's active or useful (and I suspect not given what passes for Pit discussion everywhere else). But other than that, there are barely any resources for the character at all--on Smashboards, on Youtube, or elsewhere.

Did some labbing today with PM just to learn more about the game. I just think it's insane how anyone thinks they really know how good many of the characters are (some of the more straight forward/stolen from Melee designs/outliers can have a more legitimate case made for them being "understood" but still) when the character design is so unique and the ways each character can be pushed is, in many cases, not even barely tapped into. It just makes hearing people's opinions on characters all the more interesting when honestly no one really knows what they're talking about in regards to over 30 members of the cast (including myself). The possibilities with all the new tech, new character designs, all the new stuff, and therefore the uncountable number of new interactions possible because of it. I wish they would just buff a few of the outliers and just let the meta sit for awhile, I'm very curious as to what would happen. I have some suspicions, but I am mostly certain that most of us would be very very surprised at the result.

Also this. I've started grinding out a Toon Link, Roy, and Mewtwo just because those characters are completely unrepresented in my local meta despite all three being pretty commonly cited as at least semi-good.

 

[Player -0]

The Skype group for Pit isn't super active. Something something I feel like responding to DF won't be worth it/lazy right now.

I feel like a lot of Skype groups aren't super active/about the character but people think they are. Idk though

 

[Kipcom]

That's cuz he kinda isn't :/

He's got too much "okay" stuff and a huge case of "wtf am I actually supposed to do"

Odds I'm desparate

Pit plays like a cool mofo who don't need no man BUT NO ONE MAINS HIM

People play him, he just doesnt get results and theres not really anyone notable playing him other than Darc.

The thing people forget is that even when Pit was amazing, he still didn't get a lot of representation (though two of the best smash players is a pretty good compensation). So not seeing an abundance of pit players is nothing new.

Also pits got uair, dair, bair, dash attack, and dthrow. I would say all of this is better than just "okay" tbh. I even think his arrows are in a really good spot now in terms of viability and balance.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

@ Life @ Ripple
That was a mere question if it had any merit. I was curious as to what people thought of it rather then assuming all Pit has in neutral is DD grab and sh arrow charge, with a touch of stray nairs/bairs.

 

[Life]

@ Life @ Ripple
That was a mere question if it had any merit. I was curious as to what people thought of it rather then assuming all Pit has in neutral is DD grab and sh arrow charge, with a touch of stray nairs/bairs.

Those are certainly his best options.

Nair is pretty decent if you can cross up on shield with it. I'll sometimes use running usmash if I read an aerial approach but that's obviously not the safest thing. Dtilt and ftilt are okay but not fantastic. Aerial walling is an option. Jab combo is an option, weirdly enough, although jab 1 is pretty slow--pretty sure people just assume you won't go for it so they run into rapid jab? Maybe I just play with bads. It's not really rewarding, anyway. And I guess dash attack catches people, though like everything else I just said, it's unsafe.

It's important to make grab central to his ground game though, since he doesn't have good anti-CC or anti-shield options otherwise. Gotta discourage the opponent from using those.

The other thing is to retreat to a platform, because now your opponent has to come into the air where you're more likely to be able to outspace them with fair/bair/etc. or drop under them and uair/usmash.

I'm still working it out, I guess...

 

[Ripple]

I think nair is pretty awful tbh. I'm a fan of moves with disjoint.

That being said, I could put time into this character for the next 3 weeks until our huge regional with IPK and lucky and see how far I can get considering I probably won't want to play DDD

 

[Life]

That being said, I could put time into this character for the next 3 weeks until our huge regional with IPK and lucky and see how far I can get considering I probably won't want to play DDD

Don't have to if you'd rather play someone else, but I'd be interested in seeing it.

 

[FreeGamer]

I think nair is pretty awful tbh. I'm a fan of moves with disjoint.

That being said, I could put time into this character for the next 3 weeks until our huge regional with IPK and lucky and see how far I can get considering I probably won't want to play DDD

Watch as you do well with him and then he gets nerfed back to 3.5 status.