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Tier List Speculation

zman804

Smash Ace
Joined
Jul 9, 2012
Messages
509
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Phoenix, AZ
So I've been thinking a lot recently, and I have no freaking clue who is the "top" anymore. I think 3.5 was so strange in that SB and Lunch's list was bizarrely agreeable, and now I'm looking at results and the changelist and thinking and I really don't know. I feel like all of the Melee chars who were good are still really good, as much as I don't like the Shiek change it does help her in a few matches.

@ DrinkingFood DrinkingFood do you think ROB is still fine? There was a crazy guy in the stream chat arguing that ROB was the best by far but he seemed pretty radical. I can see Robo-Shiek still being good af, he doesn't seem to have many things he directly struggles with.
 

DrinkingFood

Smash Hero
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May 5, 2012
Messages
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Location
Beaumont, TX
^ Woah, really? Good on you, @ DrinkingFood DrinkingFood
I don't think that's possible, Samus isn't a penguin. I do see how she can survive arctic climates in her suit though.

ROB is still good as expected. I thought the fall gravity changes would have done more and ruin the character, but they didn't and I'm glad. SideB is silly bad now, but I fully am behind the idea that every move should not have extreme utility. I was glad @ DrinkingFood DrinkingFood could beat Sethlon. It's always good to see regions stepping up.

Has ProPro been doing work across the water still? I feel like I don't get to see much from over there, but maybe I'm just not looking for it.
People like to sleep on Louisiana for some reason. Our scene is not the largest but our talent density isn't like, small or anything. Sethlon also almost lost to one of our top melee players. Last stock game 3, our player flubbed an edgeguard and got hit by Roy's (ridiculous) up-b hitboxes and knocked across the stage, then sethlon pushed that advantage and won. Also had tons of close games with 2 of our other top PM players. Funnily enough, he was knocked into loser's by Mojo, who I then sent to loser's 3-0 in WFs. Lee Martin, a top player in LA across all games, took 2 games (and almost a set, last stocks game 5 he SD'd) off me whereas sethlon took 1; not really a super important comparison, but nobody thinks Louisiana is good or anything because we really don't travel besides me occasionally, and we have no big streams here. The only time anybody cares is when a big names comes to one of our tournies.

So I've been thinking a lot recently, and I have no freaking clue who is the "top" anymore. I think 3.5 was so strange in that SB and Lunch's list was bizarrely agreeable, and now I'm looking at results and the changelist and thinking and I really don't know. I feel like all of the Melee chars who were good are still really good, as much as I don't like the Shiek change it does help her in a few matches.

@ DrinkingFood DrinkingFood do you think ROB is still fine? There was a crazy guy in the stream chat arguing that ROB was the best by far but he seemed pretty radical. I can see Robo-Shiek still being good af, he doesn't seem to have many things he directly struggles with.
ROB is only slightly worse in most matchups. His fall speed increase makes him easier to combo, but even though he has Ike's stats now he's still harder to combo than ike due to less aerial commitment. So it's not like ROB is super easy to combo or anything, characters who are really good at comboing will now put a much worse hurting on him but characters that usually push for positional advantage in their punishments still aren't going to get much more on him.

He's definitely way worse in the spacies matchups: Side-b no longer gives the possibility to turn falco's lasers into your punishment (this always required proper spacing anyways but now the option is just straight gone); dthrow change means chain grabs on spacies start way later, have much tighter regrab windows when they do exist, and no longer lead into usmash at kill percents; nair change means SH nair auto-cancel doesn't knockdown fox/falco with the late hit (mostly only good in the fox MU tho since lasers don't hit you out of it) or lead into grab depending on DI; fthrow/bthrow change means it's way easier for them to get proper DI which means laser to snipe jump is less reliably since there are so many possible jump timings/shine stall timings when you get the proper DI; fall speed and weight decrease means fox's uthrow upair might work on ROB now (I haven't actually labbed this yet though) but combined with worse punish game means in general ROB no longer outpunishes fox as drastically to make up for the worse neutral game. So ROB went from being a reliable fox counter to the 40th character that loses to fox. Oh well. And his falco/falcon matchups went from slightly disadvantageous to pretty bad. Idk much about wolf, I speculated he probably beat ROB in 3.5 due to his main approach tool, nair->shine, beating CC on top of being a character that was too fast for ROB to play any other kind of unique neutral with. So chances are that matchup is worse now too.

Besides fox/falco/falcon/wolf though, floaties don't get followed up for nearly as long if they DI dthrow away, but that doesn't matter much because he still has them in a bad position when they jump away and can still position himself properly to outreach them in the stagger situation with boost->upair. Semi FFers/mid fallers that he could CG before can still be CG'd with dthrow angle change, in fact if they try to DI away, the lower angle lets him CG for longer, they need to DI in to escape the longer CG but then I can utilt; in fact, the angle change might be better on these characters since they can no longer DI very far behind ROB at all, giving him more control over the follow-up.

tl;dr- the changes didn't affect many matchups drastically except he's now notably worse at spacies matchups. I've been busy lately labbing punishments on spacies and it looks pretty grim.
 
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Strong Badam

Super Elite
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So I've been thinking a lot recently, and I have no freaking clue who is the "top" anymore. I think 3.5 was so strange in that SB and Lunch's list was bizarrely agreeable, and now I'm looking at results and the changelist and thinking and I really don't know.
Our lists didn't come out until around... 3-4 months? after 3.5 dropped. I know it was at least February, but I think early march. The meta had settled for the most part by then, and very little significant changes took place afterward. It'll be a while before we can do the same for 3.6. I haven't even attempted to write a tier list for 3.6, even in private, and don't really intend to until after Paragon.

2 minute unordered list of "quite capable characters":
Captain Falcon
Diddy Kong
Falco
Fox
Ike
Lucario
Mario
Marth
Meta Knight
R.O.B.
Roy
Samus
Toon Link
Wario
Wolf
Zero Suit Samus

Jury's out on:
Lucas
Luigi
Ness
Peach
Pit
Sheik
Snake
Yoshi

That's probably a good bet for "upper half of cast," but I don't know specifically the direction the metagame will take, and which characters will benefit most from it.
Some characters I didn't list will probably end up higher than a couple of the characters I listed but I wanted to at least give y'all a big picture.
 
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Boiko

:drshrug:
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Mar 31, 2011
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New York
Those melee characters are great, but not as good as fire emblem ones. Pokemon just suck outside of :lucario:. My list is hella solid.

Edit: Boiko just won a tourney Sunday and StereoKIDD wins EVERYTHING in Florida. :ness2: is busted. You're blinded. It's ok...

Edit 2: Reslived beat Hat and Plank in 3.6. :sheik: shouldn't lose to :ness2:.

:018:
I used Samus in Grand Finals.
 

LupinX

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jan 9, 2015
Messages
226
can we talk about the buffs that snake got? i think hes hit the design goal that he was set in 3.0 tbh
Has ProPro been doing work across the water still? I feel like I don't get to see much from over there, but maybe I'm just not looking for it.
Snake got good movement options to get himself out of early situations (but he's still Snake lol). The fast sticky allows him to stick with little consequence, which is fine by me because sticking isn't easy. Though I believe he's still under-buffed compared to the cast. He's still situational as ever and can be played more aggressively and apply more pressure. His C4 can also be used more as traps now that detonation is faster. He can recover faster at least lol.

As for Prof, I have yet to see him play Snake in 3.6. Though I predict he will play more aggressively especially in higher levels. His 0-death game was already potent in 3.5, now he will be able to pull off more of those this patch
 
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Soft Serve

softie
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Dec 7, 2011
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4,164
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AZ
Joke tier is a joke, while there is humor in playing along, can we please move on to something else. Also outside of dair and grab, diddy doesn't really beat cc. No one is ccing when they see the banana in your hand, and f smash like all his smash attacks get eaten pretty easily.
Exactly, having a banana in hand beats CC because it removes it from their options.

Fsmash can't be cc/asdi'd down and shielded now (well it still can despite changes made to prevent it, it happens like every week to me but I think the move just has to be stale) so unless they asdi and tech the strong hit they won't get a punish for CCing it, going too far away if they don't like, tech in place.
 

Player -0

Smash Hero
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Helsong's Carpeted Floor
Pit feels a lot better overall.

- D Tilt isn't terrible and is a reliable/BnB kill setup
- Up Air strong hit feels weaker (BKB/KBG changes on changelist are janky to understand). Easier to set up to Up B though.
- Shield change means Pit getting juggled is lolzy.
- From what I understand the arrow change makes comboing out of arrow worse but the Hitbox comes out earlier so better camping?
- Glide change hurts scrooging and some stuff but otherwise not too much affect. With shield change pretty much always go high now anyway.
- People still fall out of F Smash super easily.
- I like animation changes to Bair annd F Smash

I'd still like to see:
- Jump put of Glide to be the next jump instead of always the last (and lowest) jump.
- D Smash reverted to the horizontal angle.

Nair and stuff didn't really feel too different from 3.5. Grab change was nice, before when you missed was eh.
 

Smash G 0 D

Leave Luck to Heaven
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My current tier list opinions of 3.6b (Characters not ordered within tiers):
S: :ness2: :gw:
A: :ike: :roypm: :marth:
B: :fox: :falco: :wolf: :sheik: :falcon: :samus2: :luigi2: :peach: :mewtwopm:
C: :diddy: :popo: :lucas: :mario2: :wario: :rob: :sonic: :metaknight:
D: :toonlink: :lucario: :link2: :bowser2: :dedede: :pit:
E: :kirby2: :ganondorf: :dk2: :olimar: :yoshi2: :snake: :zerosuitsamus: :zelda:
F: :pikachu2: :squirtle: :ivysaur: :charizard: :jigglypuff:

:ness2: and :gw: are actually stupidly broken this patch. Godlike recovery, easy access combos, easy to land kill moves, and extremely quick aerials.

:018:
Honestly this is pretty accurate. The only difference is that Peach is probably also top tier. I have, after all, won 100% of tournaments I have used all Peach in.
 

Boiko

:drshrug:
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Honestly this is pretty accurate. The only difference is that Peach is probably also top tier. I have, after all, won 100% of tournaments I have used all Peach in.
Amazing that someone from the same region agrees with one of the most baseless lists made. Weird...
 

TheGravyTrain

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@ Player -0 Player -0

The up air change basically makes it much more uniform. Dont remember all the specifics, but the middle vs outer hitboxes on the strong hit only vary in damage, not angle or knockback. The weak hit had similar adjustments.

I actually really like dsmash. Before it was a meh kill move/edge guard set up where pit has much better options. Now it is solid against the spacies. Dont know if it combos, but gets them in the air and its quicker than dtilt.
 

Player -0

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It was a solid kill move/edgeguarding setup. Currently it's outclassed by dash attack and D Tilt for combos. As a finisher it's nonexistent currently. I've used it once for a combo on Falco (I was actively trying to use it to see if it had any use) but it's situational at low-medium percents and then on fast fallers like the spacies.

The old D Smash was a mixup between DA and it that would kill if people DI'ed away and if they DI'ed up and you DA'ed then more juggles. Even if they guessed right you had the positional advantage.

It was actually better vs. spacies before because Pit had a reliable way to quickly set up an edgeguarding.

Tried to post before and internet is bad so I might've forgotten to go over something (since post deleted).
 

Smash G 0 D

Leave Luck to Heaven
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Amazing that someone from the same region agrees with one of the most baseless lists made. Weird...
Baseless?? @ Seagull Joe Seagull Joe and I are two very knowledgeable players, who have put a great deal of time into PM. The game is young, so it is difficult to make claims without top players filling in the gaps. This list is clearly as accurate as it can be right now. I encourage you to engage with our claims, whether or not you agree, rather than calling them "baseless" and leaving it at that.
 

didds

Smash Lord
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Eh I'm just a typical obscure hipster main so I see low squirtle and pika and my brain goes haywire with character info I've experienced myself.

Character mains never fail to sprout and yell, especially when the list is full of low tiers that are hardly represented in the posters region.

Anyway, it's pretty reasonable based on his experience for his list to look that way.

Even if it is objectively wrong ;)
 

Seagull Joe

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Eh I'm just a typical obscure hipster main so I see low squirtle and pika and my brain goes haywire with character info I've experienced myself.

Character mains never fail to sprout and yell, especially when the list is full of low tiers that are hardly represented in the posters region.

Anyway, it's pretty reasonable based on his experience for his list to look that way.

Even if it is objectively wrong ;)
:squirtle: and :pikachu2: are so bad...

:018:
 

Boiko

:drshrug:
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Baseless?? @ Seagull Joe Seagull Joe and I are two very knowledgeable players, who have put a great deal of time into PM. The game is young, so it is difficult to make claims without top players filling in the gaps. This list is clearly as accurate as it can be right now. I encourage you to engage with our claims, whether or not you agree, rather than calling them "baseless" and leaving it at that.
I'm not taking his list or your response that seriously, no offense. But what I would like to point out for anyone reading, is that if you're posting a list, it's your responsibility to defend the placement of each character, not by saying "this character is good" or "this player has good results at their locals." Otherwise your list is, in a word, baseless.

But please, carry on.
 

TheGravyTrain

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@ Seagull Joe Seagull Joe

Isn't your only Squirtle experience Jewchainz? Granted, it has been awhile, but last I saw of him he was sooooo amish. You can't look at a character like Squirtle from a player like that, it doesn't work...

Still can't tell if trolling or serious though...
 

FirewaterDM

Smash Apprentice
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Jan 8, 2008
Messages
113
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VA
Eh, not so sure on how accurate that list is, other than I think IC's, while not bottom 5 characters anymore don't feel like C tier. But people should try and do more than just ridicule it?
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
But hey, its a tier list nonetheless. A reminder that everyone that isn't a regular that comes in always complains about how every list (but Lunchables for some reason) gets torn apart and then we go back to complaining about fox.
Well you see, I was born with a special power

I'm the strongest fighter at the sonic fighting academy
 

D e l t a

That one guy who does the thing with a camera.
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It's so hard to picture Kirby, pika, squirtle, and Ivy as bad, when we have Tetra, Anther, Dirtboy, and JZ....
 

Nausicaa

Smash Lord
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Noticed my fave Pit changed (Red) but donno if nerf or buff
I can accept it though
LOL starting a match with 2 purple pikmin in a row, and after throwing one through the opponent and off stage, immediately picking up another.
Oli is lulz
 

Manaconda

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
199
Honestly this is pretty accurate. The only difference is that Peach is probably also top tier. I have, after all, won 100% of tournaments I have used all Peach in.
Machiavelli.CF and JOE! posted in their 3.5 personal tier lists that Peach loses to Ivysaur and Charizard (which I find to be the case), and buffs that Peach received barely affect the Puff MU (Utilt, Ftilt, side-B aren't all that useful), so it's essentially the same as it is in Melee.

So a top tier has 3 losing MUs against F-Tier characters? I don't think Peach is bad by any means, but I don't think she's exactly top tier.

I also don't see ZSS or Olimar being that low, or GnW being anywhere near the top.
 
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Ace55

Smash Lord
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Feb 18, 2008
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Amsterdam
I don't understand they buffed Snake stick animation. Why would you make a move with such obscene reward and plenty of setups safer?
 

Ripple

ᗣᗣᗣᗣ ᗧ·····•·····
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I found a hidden super buff on bowser's flame breath.

if you start getting hit on the ground, it no longer puts you into the air. you now HAVE to SDI away

that is actually huge.

zard could really use that same treatment
 
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Strong Badam

Super Elite
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The notion that G&W is top tier is kind of absurd, and likely indicative of an isolated meta that isn't properly representative of the overall metagame. Character has tough MUs with many characters such as Marth, Ike, Toon Link, Fox, and probably Meta Knight now, several of which are extremely popular which puts a dent in his viability. G&W probably does great if your region doesn't have a great player of any of those characters.

Same with ness really. Dude's got stubby limb syndrome, but is certainly a capable character.

Machiavelli.CF and JOE! posted in their 3.5 personal tier lists that Peach loses to Ivysaur and Charizard (which I find to be the case), and buffs that Peach received barely affect the Puff MU (Utilt, Ftilt, side-B aren't all that useful), so it's essentially the same as it is in Melee.

So a top tier has 3 losing MUs against F-Tier characters? I don't think Peach is bad by any means, but I don't think she's exactly top tier.
Having losing matchups vs characters that are perceived as that bad is actually preferable to having losing matchups to top tiers due to the popularity of each group. I'd rather lose to the worst character in the game than the best, because there are probably going to be anywhere from 5 to 30 of the top tier character at a national and between 0 and 2 of the worst.
 
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JOE!

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I found a hidden super buff on bowser's flame breath.

if you start getting hit on the ground, it no longer puts you into the air. you now HAVE to SDI away

that is actually huge.

zard could really use that same treatment
Its really the only thing that grinds my gears: why does Zard's flamethrower get nerfed each patch (or every other lol) while Bowser's Firebreath gets buffs?
 

FreeGamer

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Dec 20, 2013
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Bowser's Fire Breath hasn't been this great since 2.5. Whatever Flamethrower nerfs get doled out can't possibly be as sad as Fire Breath going from 2.5 to 2.6.
 
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