Tier List Speculation

[Player -0]

G&W is really dumb. He's not tippy top of tiers in my opinion but he's got stuff. His recovery, while gimpable, is really good with the bacon being able to disrupt edgeguards (and possibly turn them), stalling bucket, DJ out of Up B, etc.

In the same token G&W can play super patient and make it really hard to approach. D-Tilt knocks down some time and his crouch is really good. More specific stuff that you probably already know. I think G&W's neutral is actually pretty good.

He gets punished so-so. The thing is he can't really trade because he's so floaty. He can dodge half your stuff with crouch though lol.

Life You can actually cover all of them due to vulnerability/can't act frames of missing the tech. I could be wrong but from my experience you can cover all of them.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Did somebody just say GnW gets punished super hard?
Kill me now



Also yeah the idea for DKs fair is to compensate knockback and keep the speed, buffing damage by 1 and reducing landing lag by 2, to make it -2 on shield. Reducing landing lag by just 1 would also work, but if so it would be -4 when staled at all

 

[_Chrome]

Did somebody just say GnW gets punished super hard?
Kill me now



Also yeah the idea for DKs fair is to compensate knockback and keep the speed, buffing damage by 1 and reducing landing lag by 2, to make it -2 on shield. Reducing landing lag by just 1 would also work, but if so it would be -4 when staled at all

To be fair he didn't say super hard, just hard. Regardless, GDubs is light, so while he dies off the top easily, he definitely isn't punished hard. Characters punished hard are either fat (ex. Dedede), fast fallers (ex. Wolf), or have a pretty easy/favourable combo weight and size such that they can be punished pretty consistently by all characters (ex. Link).

Gdubs has his upB to escape combos as well and his bucket to stall as well as his OPplznerf dair. He isn't punished hard at all; he's on the less punishable side of the scale.

 

[steelguttey]

Pretty sure the 9 people whom liked my original post would say otherwise

jesus ****ing christ

 

[DiZZ]

jesus ****ing christ

Why take this out of context the guy was arguing that no one would back a dk fair that was safe on shield when multiple people liked my original post on it.

 

[nimigoha]

Never said no one would back it.

Your original post also had other solid ideas, despite claiming that Falcon's Fair was +5 on shield.

Sorry if I was being a **** though.

 

[steelguttey]

Why take this out of context the guy was arguing that no one would back a dk fair that was safe on shield when multiple people liked my original post on it.

internet points dont mean anything and the amount of likes you have doesnt make your argument correct

 

[Deleted member]

lets buff everyone so the game feels ****ing awesome to play

and then we can stop ******** about each others characters

 

[Kipcom]

and then we can stop ******** about each others characters

lol you sure about that one?

 

[InfinityCollision]

I agree with @Umbreon, we should buff my characters

 

[Nausicaa]

I wanna play Rang again.
Was a cool character.

DK having a crazy starter and a crazy finish off it is fine, but when it's his only starter and only way to finish (outside of sick Up-B hits or some kind of Down-B snip) then that's fun... FOR A WHILE.
Him (CF and D3 to smaller degrees) are the only characters I find boring in terms of flexibility of play.
Ganon is boring to play AGAINST but that's another story. You just avoid his 'trap' game and out-macro him and it's eliminating most of the elements of Smash, similar to a Puff but more of a 'don't play with it' type of thing rather than a 'figure out how to beat it' type of thing.

Screw DK's F-Air, I wanna see his game have U-Air > Finisher stuff built around Pawnch only.
Make it combo into tech-chase spikes really well that a new Yoshi D-Tilt type of D-Tilt can lead into Ground Slam into Pawnches so his finish isn't 100% conversions off Grabs.



Nah though, as far as Tiers go, DK/CF etc are fine.
They're just not nearly as interesting as basically any other character anywhere beyond 'meh' levels of play.

 

[nimigoha]

DK can get loads of finishes that don't involve grabs. Getting hit by ground slam above 90% is basically an instant death.

 

[Nausicaa]

I wanna play Rang again.
Was a cool character.

DK having a crazy starter and a crazy finish off it is fine, but when it's his only starter and only way to finish (outside of sick Up-B hits or some kind of Down-B snip) then that's fun... FOR A WHILE.
Him (CF and D3 to smaller degrees) are the only characters I find boring in terms of flexibility of play.
Ganon is boring to play AGAINST but that's another story. You just avoid his 'trap' game and out-macro him and it's eliminating most of the elements of Smash, similar to a Puff but more of a 'don't play with it' type of thing rather than a 'figure out how to beat it' type of thing.

Screw DK's F-Air, I wanna see his game have U-Air > Finisher stuff built around Pawnch only.
Make it combo into tech-chase spikes really well that a new Yoshi D-Tilt type of D-Tilt can lead into Ground Slam into Pawnches so his finish isn't 100% conversions off Grabs.



Nah though, as far as Tiers go, DK/CF etc are fine.
They're just not nearly as interesting as basically any other character anywhere beyond 'meh' levels of play.

nimigoha bolded for you

Centralizing around Grabs doesn't mean he can't do something like Dash-Attack F-Air or B-Air for a kill or something.
Thinking broader than a straight line with this, that's all. No biggy.
Edit: I guess I should be careful though. Fly-by N-Air turned into a gong-show from literalness. Crazy forum-goers.
You know what's up though.


Further Tier-List related stuff.

I consider Ivysaur to be in the same Tier as Bowser.

Anyone else?
Edit: By anyone else, I mean, anyone else either think so, or can anyone see why this might be if it's the case? Hopefully so I wouldn't have to explain a bunch of stuff and you peeps could figure it out or something.

 

[Life]

Nausicaa is that the bottom tier? Or somewhere else?

 

[Nausicaa]

bottom tier

This, for all practical purposes.

 

[MLGF]

Ivy could use some offensive buffs, as imo she feels too based around walling atm and gets wrecked by any decent disjointed option.
And her walling continually gets nerfed lmao.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

I agree, or did when I last thought about it. I can't see ivy doing much better than anyone else. She has a slow grab, no crazy throw followups to make up for it, bad grab makes cc more effective, with only dair that gets stuff going v cc (though spacing keeps ivy safe from it), she dont seem to have very crazy punishes, an abusable recovery, apparently has terrible mu's vs Fox, Marth, C. Falcon, etc. The list goes on.

Can someone explain why ftilt was changed? Removing the rear hit seems to make it super easy to asdi through and have the final hit miss. It seems like it could be useful for Ivy's problems, but it just doesn't work.

 

[DAT4120]

That a was very long tl:dr lol

Squirtle is secretly god. I know it.

I am a squirtle main and it is kinda dissapointing how few people use him.

 

[Saproling]

Im just gonna leave some Ivy suggestions here AKA rounding her ass out since shes an all or nothing character.

Up throw charge/heal gained Down from 6 to 3
Charge/heal gained from up/down air sweetspot going down from 7 to 5
Charge/heal gained from up smash sweetspot going down from 9/10/11/12 to 8/9/10/11
Amount of charge needed for solar beam from 22 to 20
Invincibility on bulb hurtbox during the active frames of up air,down air and up smash
up/down airiels sourspot hitboxs are 5% larger
Sweetspot hitboxes on up air,down airiels and up smash are 3% larger
Up airiels sweetspot BKB down from 32 to 30 BKB
Down airiels sweetspot is now a spike
Air mobility stat from 00.095 to 00.098
Forward airiels start up decreased by 4 frames
Tip hitbox of forward air now does 12 damage down from 13 damage
Back airiels start up decreased by 1 frame
Sweetspot/tip of second hit of back air now does 9 damage up from 8 damage
Second hit of down tilt now reaches as far as the first
Sweetspot/tip hitboxes on both strikes of down tilt are 3% larger
All grab boxes now come out immediately
All grabs come out 3 frames sooner
Up tilt start up reduced by 2 frames
Up tilt now does 8 damage down from 9 damage
Endlag on razer leaf reduced by 5 frames
Razer leaf now has one less strike at the end
Jab 2 can now be input 2 frames sooner
Up throw ASAI from frame 28 to frame 26
Jab 1 now does 2 damage down from 3 damage
Jab 2 now does 5 damage up from 4 damage
Falling up air now does 4 damage down from 6 damage
Falling up airs land lag reduced by 2 frames

Sorry if this is hard to read im in a hurry to get to work.

 

[InfinityCollision]

Ivy doesn't really command respect in any phase of gameplay. Her movement is unremarkable, she can't control space or pressure effectively, her defensive options are awful, her recovery is free, kill power is subpar without a solar beam charge, she's mediocre against CC and has a poor CC game herself, edgeguarding capabilities are decent at best nowadays, etc. It's not so much that she folds hard to a particular style of play as it is that she simply doesn't bring enough to the table to compete against all but a scant handful of characters where she can abuse niche advantages well enough to even out or win the matchup. She is the jack of no trades.

 

[Lens]

Ivy doesn't really command respect in any phase of gameplay. Her movement is unremarkable, she can't control space or pressure effectively, her defensive options are awful, her recovery is free, kill power is subpar without a solar beam charge, she's mediocre against CC and has a poor CC game herself, edgeguarding capabilities are decent at best nowadays, etc. It's not so much that she folds hard to a particular style of play as it is that she simply doesn't bring enough to the table to compete against all but a scant handful of characters where she can abuse niche advantages well enough to even out or win the matchup. She is the jack of no trades.

To be fair, usmash and uair are both exceptionally strong, particularly against the floaties that are the most difficult to edgeguard properly. I'd also say her CC game is alright, since she's got a decent weight and can still CC punish a lot of ranged pokes that other characters couldn't.

A ranged character that trades solid neutral pokes for huge, disjointed counterpokes isn't a totally useless concept, it just isn't reliable enough in a CC and DD-heavy game, where even if you can punish any poke under the sun, it won't matter against characters that can't be forced to throw one out to begin with (or can just CC if they do throw something out).
In the end it's still enough to give heavyweight zoners a difficult time, though, so then you have to sacrifice other strengths, as you pointed out, to avoid invalidating those characters.

 

[Tomaster]

Ivy doesn't really command respect in any phase of gameplay. Her movement is unremarkable, she can't control space or pressure effectively, her defensive options are awful, her recovery is free, kill power is subpar without a solar beam charge, she's mediocre against CC and has a poor CC game herself, edgeguarding capabilities are decent at best nowadays, etc. It's not so much that she folds hard to a particular style of play as it is that she simply doesn't bring enough to the table to compete against all but a scant handful of characters where she can abuse niche advantages well enough to even out or win the matchup. She is the jack of no trades.

Free recovery? yea right, go watch Machiavelli and tell me that **** is easy to edgeguard. Kill power subpar? you're joking, right? She still has up air and great set ups to it, as well as one of the best edgeguards in the game. She's incredibly underrated.

 

[Saproling]

Ivy doesn't really command respect in any phase of gameplay. Her movement is unremarkable, she can't control space or pressure effectively, her defensive options are awful, her recovery is free, kill power is subpar without a solar beam charge, she's mediocre against CC and has a poor CC game herself, edgeguarding capabilities are decent at best nowadays, etc. It's not so much that she folds hard to a particular style of play as it is that she simply doesn't bring enough to the table to compete against all but a scant handful of characters where she can abuse niche advantages well enough to even out or win the matchup. She is the jack of no trades.

I'd say your being a bit too harsh her kill powers fine but her neutral needs some serious love.

Free recovery? yea right, go watch Machiavelli and tell me that **** is easy to edgeguard. Kill power subpar? you're joking, right? She still has up air and great set ups to it, as well as one of the best edgeguards in the game. She's incredibly underrated.

She only has good setups into up air on ff and yes her recovery blows as much as you do at covering it.

 

[Tomaster]

She only has good setups into up air on ff and yes her recovery blows as much as you do at covering it.

Don't be a smartass, im not saying she has a good recovery because i dont know how to edgeguard it. Sure she can be edgeguarded, every character can, but no, it's not easy to do it. Watch Machiavelli play, learn how to cover your recovery with projectiles, and stop johning about it because you can't do it. Not only is it a strict timing to grab the ledge without getting clipped by the razor leaf, but her recovery also covers a ton of distance, she has a benefit kind of like Wario's where she can drift close to stage with dairs, before having to get to the recovery mixups, and if your DI is good, you're going to get pretty far with those dairs.

Also I forgot to mention, if you do end up getting edgeguarded, guess what, u can vine whip the player sitting on the ledge and stage spike him/her as he/she will not have ledge invincibility by the time you do it. This can be avoided if you roll in time but it's yet another option ivy has when recovering. She has so many mind games she can use to make the opponent let her back to stage. I'll say it again, watch Machiavelli's sets and see how many edgeguards his opponents drop. And if in a rare case your opponent does catch you with on stage with the recovery lag, it only normally leads to death in high percents, unlike with most edgeguards. Lastly, she also has a lot of pretty good options to recovery from ledge, like razor leaf on, fair, etc.

I'm not going to say it's one of the best recoveries, but it's not bad at all.

Also I'm not saying Ivy's in a good place at all, I really don't know what to think about that, but she definitely doesnt have a bad recovery. Her kill power may not be the best, but it's not terrible either. And saying her edgeguards are only decent? that's plain ridiculous. They may not be as good as they were in 3.5, but they're still amazing and some of the best in the game.

 

[GrandpaDukes]

As far as the DK talk and fair-on-shield talk, I'd like to point out that a spaced DK fair is safe on shield. The key difference between falcon's knee and DK's fair is that DK has the ability to retreat and space his fair due to its crazy range. Falcon cannot do that, but with the trade of it being a faster move and safe and point-blank. It's a pretty "fair" balance to say the least

 

[Saproling]

Don't be a smartass, im not saying she has a good recovery because i dont know how to edgeguard it. Sure she can be edgeguarded, every character can, but no, it's not easy to do it. Watch Machiavelli play, learn how to cover your recovery with projectiles, and stop johning about it because you can't do it. Not only is it a strict timing to grab the ledge without getting clipped by the razor leaf, but her recovery also covers a ton of distance, she has a benefit kind of like Wario's where she can drift close to stage with dairs, before having to get to the recovery mixups, and if your DI is good, you're going to get pretty far with those dairs.

Also I forgot to mention, if you do end up getting edgeguarded, guess what, u can vine whip the player sitting on the ledge and stage spike him/her as he/she will not have ledge invincibility by the time you do it. This can be avoided if you roll in time but it's yet another option ivy has when recovering. She has so many mind games she can use to make the opponent let her back to stage. And if in a rare case your opponent does catch you with on stage with the recovery lag, it only normally leads to death in high percents, unlike with most edgeguards. Lastly, she also has a lot of pretty good options to recovery from ledge, like razor leaf on, fair, etc.

I'm not going to say it's one of the best recoveries, but it's not bad at all.

Yeah I'm not saying buff it but razer leaf doesn't magically make the bad things go away it only works when knocked high and her options to get off of the ledge aren't great either. You'll still get lag even when they are rolling up and no leaf isn't her best mix up it's ledge canceled pullback or whatever it's called I think her recovery can be bad every character needs downsides but dont make it sound like it's actually good.

 

[Tomaster]

Yeah I'm not saying buff it but razer leaf doesn't magically make the bad things go away it only works when knocked high and her options to get off of the ledge aren't great either. You'll still get lag even when they are rolling up and no leaf isn't her best mix up it's ledge canceled pullback or whatever it's called I think her recovery can be bad every character needs downsides but dont make it sound like it's actually good.

off the top of my head, these are all the characters who have worse recoveries than ivy, with the following which are maybes:

(when the climbers arent together, which is pretty often off stage)(when not on a stage with walls)

Saying Ivy's recovery is bad is nice, but it's pretty good compared to the rest of the cast.



Here are the recoveries that are definitely better than hers.

 

[steelguttey]

zss, zelda, zard, marth, fox? dont think so

 

[prem]

I'm sorry but zss's recovery is literally a direct buff to ivy;s in everyway basically and as a zss player i think it needs to be nerfed kind of (like make downb go less high).

I also think a lot of characters need small nerfs to some normal moves because i think in general most characters kits are just full of way too good normals. and by small nerfs I mean something like add 1 or 2 frames of lcanceled landing lag to zss's bair so it isn't THAT safe. itll still be really good when spaced but at least more punishable is what I'm thinking of

 

[InfinityCollision]

Free recovery? yea right, go watch Machiavelli and tell me that **** is easy to edgeguard.

Did it ever occur to you to think even one step ahead of what you see? Did it ever occur to you that maybe Socal's counterplay hasn't evolved to keep up with Mach's recovering strats yet?

I'd say your being a bit too harsh her kill powers fine

That's just it though. Everything she has is "fine" at best. Nothing about her is remarkable, and too much of her kit fails to even be average.

Also that reminded me, her punishes are nothing to write home about either. She lacks both long combos and the means to consistently win stagger situations nowadays.

I'm sorry but zss's recovery is literally a direct buff to ivy;s in everyway basically and as a zss player i think it needs to be nerfed kind of (like make downb go less high).

Uhhhh no, let's not do that.

I also think a lot of characters need small nerfs to some normal moves because i think in general most characters kits are just full of way too good normals. and by small nerfs I mean something like add 1 or 2 frames of lcanceled landing lag to zss's bair so it isn't THAT safe. itll still be really good when spaced but at least more punishable is what I'm thinking of

Let's also not do this. Reducing safety means less incentive to interact -> more emphasis on reactionary and "safe" play. Better to encourage interaction.

You're also overstating the significance of bair's safety on shield.

 

[Tomaster]

You may be right about ZSS and Zard, I havent seen them enough to be sure.. But Marth? how is his recovery better than Ivy's? he has way less options and if he gets hit out of his recovery he's pretty much dead. With Ivy, you're usually just going to eat a combo if you get edgeguarded, not death, unless you're at a high percent or against someone like Falcon or Bowser. Fox? I guess that depends on the matchups, some characters are better at edgeguarding him than other, he does have a lot of quick options, but if he drops below the stage it's an easy edgeguard.

Did it ever occur to you to think even one step ahead of what you see? Did it ever occur to you that maybe Socal's counterplay hasn't evolved to keep up with Mach's recovering strats yet?

Did it ever occur to you that what you just wrote is true of most characters in PM? And it's not only Socal, I watched plenty of sets of him from Paragon and LTC3. So you're basically saying "no one can edgeguard Ivy's recovery consistently, but trust me guys, it's bad." And maybe you could consider reading what i wrote earlier explaining why Ivy's recovery isn't terrible? If every recovery had developed counterplay Ivy's would still be average.

 

[InfinityCollision]

Every "mixup" Ivy has in any situation where she eventually has to take the ledge loses to reactionary counterplay and proper use of ledge invincibility. Reaction to spacing, reaction to startup, reaction to forced reel-in. This is not a radical new concept, this is something I've been expounding on and personally making use of for the better part of a year. What anyone else does at this point is quite frankly not my problem.

I get tired of repeating myself. I'll get around to recording flowchart edgeguards with various characters at some point.

 

[MLGF]

I remember playing some Ivy who tried to cover his options really well by throwing razor leaf at really smart moments

I ledge dropped and regrabbed and ruined all his best recovery options in that single option.

It was a good day

 

[Saproling]

off the top of my head, these are all the characters who have worse recoveries than ivy, with the following which are maybes:

(when the climbers arent together, which is pretty often off stage)(when not on a stage with walls)

Saying Ivy's recovery is bad is nice, but it's pretty good compared to the rest of the cast.



Here are the recoveries that are definitely better than hers.

You're insane.

Did it ever occur to you to think even one step ahead of what you see? Did it ever occur to you that maybe Socal's counterplay hasn't evolved to keep up with Mach's recovering strats yet?


That's just it though. Everything she has is "fine" at best. Nothing about her is remarkable, and too much of her kit fails to even be average.

Also that reminded me, her punishes are nothing to write home about either. She lacks both long combos and the means to consistently win stagger situations nowadays.


Uhhhh no, let's not do that.


Let's also not do this. Reducing safety means less incentive to interact -> more emphasis on reactionary and "safe" play. Better to encourage interaction.

You're also overstating the significance of bair's safety on shield.

I get what you're saying but she needs more ways to set up situations where she can use her strong tools like up smash is super strong but its just not usable outside of jab reset them missing their tech or low percent upthrow upsmash on FFers.She has to work so hard for stuff and her consistency is just straight up bad.

 

[_Chrome]

Tomaster : the only characters with the same garbage tier level of bad recoveries with Ivysaur are Roy, maybe Yoshi, SoPo, and maybe Olimar. Honourable mentions go to Falco, Sheik, Lucas, and Diddy. I would argue Roy has the worst recovery in the game, but when it's that bad it doesn't really matter. Ivysaur has zero ways to mitigate the fact that she is beaten by someone grabbing the ledge, unless she is recovering from way high up, minus the almost laughable excuse of the razor leaf method (which isn't bad; but it's predictable and her only mitigation).

Have you ever played as Ivysaur? Recovering is damn frustrating, coming from the guy who has played as/mained over half of the haracters you mentioned in your list of bad recoveries, as well as my main training partner being competent with every other character you mentioned. There is no comparison to how bad her recovery is, save Roy's.

EDIT: Especially for Link and Tink, since they have AGT which nets Tink a wonderful recovery and Link one of the best in the game.

 

[DrinkingFood]

I remember playing some Ivy who tried to cover his options really well by throwing razor leaf at really smart moments

I ledge dropped and regrabbed and ruined all his best recovery options in that single option.

It was a good day

couldn't he just have ledgesnapped when you ledge dropped, then?

 

[Nausicaa]

^ As soon as Ivy is going into the Razor animation, you can drop into a B-Air or re-grab (accordingly) with plenty of time left.
Especially when she actually uses it to attack you on the ledge or snag you when dropping off or whatever. She can't even Up-B to the ledge from the height she needs to start tossing a Razor Leaf if she wants to hit you with one.
Got days to adjust.

_Chrome Roy's recovery can't be the worst. There's like... Bowser in the game and stuff. Roy's is at least kind of fast and has hit-box coverage and some mild blend of vertical + horizontal. It's bad of course, and sure it 'could' be the worst, but it would be tied for the worst at worst. At least I wouldn't ever consider being THE ALONE worst. lol

Lucas doesn't have a recovery as bad as most either. His Tether/Up-B/Magnet mix alone is better than Ness by a notable 'tier' spread. Yoshi either, Yoshi when it comes to recovering is actually very solid. It's just a matter of niche things allowing it to happen or not. (quicks of the character)


Glad a lot of people are on the same page with the Ivy thing.

2nd batch of low-end characters, I'd throw Zelda, Link, and Ganon down there.
This is just to start, but these 3 are somewhere 'down in that direction' near the 'just above Ivy/Bowser tier' area.

Same thing to Ivy...
Anyone else think that? Or understand how/why that may be if it's the case?
Why The Tri-Force is just above Bowser/Ivy tier?

By anyone else, I mean, anyone else either think so, or can anyone see why this might be if it's the case? Hopefully so I wouldn't have to explain a bunch of stuff and you peeps could figure it out or something.

Basically this.

 

[MLGF]

couldn't he just have ledgesnapped when you ledge dropped, then?

Did it at the startup of the razor leaf so that ivy couldn't, the invincibility from ledge lasts long enough that it isn't even a problem

 

[Y2Kay]

I am getting back into PM. What are the top tiers again? Have they changed since 3.02?

 

[Nausicaa]

I am getting back into PM. What are the top tiers again? Have they changed since 3.02?

Nothing in this game ever changes, never will it ever change from here, as it has never changed before.
Your only hope then is to take the wild guess at who the top of the game is or forever be doomed to learn something that you can not possibly ever translate or incorporate or use as context to understand in another way, the things you would do with the character you'd eventually switch to, effectively wasting all of the life that you take to make this game a part of your life.

Therefore, your only safe and sound option, is the only stable thing that will FOR SURE CHANGE

Because it is so OP
Because it has been going on far too long
Because it is the undeniable
The ultimate diety
The only one true threat
The forever anti-meta
The Ooze


This character is the only Sure-Bet you have, because it WILL change into a fast character with a shine and laser, or something of that nature, because it is too strong in it's current incarnation, and together we must unite to put an end to it by PM patch 4.0

Unite with us.

Feel the tiers.

Let them into your heart and your mind and your blood.

Bleed the tiers, breathe the tears back in again...

The Ooze is strong in you. You just have to let it in... or out.