Tier List Speculation

[JOE!]

I mean what else could bowser really need? Aside from a reasonable approach option I mean? Everything else i really feel is pretty good, maybe a projectile or approach or a way to get out of combos sooner, but really. Everything else is pretty good feeling so far.

He needs a fireball is what he needs, I tell Ya whut.



Zard is known for flamethrower, and 95% of every appearance has bowser shoot fireballs.

 

[ThegreatVaporeon1]

So what're your guys' thoughts on Luigi? Do you think he's in a good place now? Does he have silly things that should be toned down or changed and if so, how? Is he too overwhelming or is he fine?

Just curious

 

[tasteless gentleman]

So what're your guys' thoughts on Luigi? Do you think he's in a good place now? Does he have silly things that should be toned down or changed and if so, how? Is he too overwhelming or is he fine?

Just curious

I think luigi at a high level is about as dangerous as a high level peach, waveland crawl moves are scary and green missle is unpredictable.

And as for the bowser's fire ball, Would it be faster than it is powerful? What would happen to flame breath? Would it clank with other projectiles? What special properties would it have?

 

[Starfall11]

Where would you all place Ike on the PM tier list? He's been incredibly good for quite some time. With the ability to jump out of QD and his quickness in movement, he's difficult to nerf. DJNintendo took Summer Jam with him, and Ally took another recent tournament. He's had the results, so I was wondering where you'd place him tier-wise. I also feel he has easy 0-death on all spacies.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

Where would you all place Ike on the PM tier list? He's been incredibly good for quite some time. With the ability to jump out of QD and his quickness in movement, he's difficult to nerf. DJNintendo took Summer Jam with him, and Ally took another recent tournament. He's had the results, so I was wondering where you'd place him tier-wise. I also feel he has easy 0-death on all spacies.

Hes A tier, his recovery is good but predictable and gimpable and i think that is what holds him back, but honestly, he needs something to hold him back

 

[DrinkingFood]

Ike's recovery is predictable? Lol

 

[The_NZA]

People clearly don't know QD wall jump bair to drift on stage is a thing and is a mixup with aether and is a mixup with qd wall jump upb. Ike's recovery is ridiculous.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

Ike's recovery is predictable? Lol

Maybe because of who i played or mained, i literally just hang out next to ledge and time a super armour smash attack if hes coming in high from either angle or ill ledge gaurd him if hes low. Its a stock either way. (bowser edges everyone though so this is not too surprising)

 

[Manaconda]

What the hell is a 'waveland crawl'? I'm assuming it's just a waveland which transitions into a crawl? '"waveland crawl" project m' brings up no results on Google, and 'waveland crawl' on the smashboards search bar only brings up the post mentioning it on this page.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

What the hell is a 'waveland crawl'? I'm assuming it's just a waveland which transitions into a crawl? '"waveland crawl" project m' brings up no results on Google, and 'waveland crawl' on the smashboards search bar only brings up the post mentioning it on this page.

I made it up, luigi crawls while sliding from a wave land, makes for insanely fast movement

 

[NWRL]

Ike's recovery is predictable? Lol

On wall-less stages it's extremely hard to get the walljump, just cover ledge and force him to go on stage with QD and punish, if he's using Aether, shield the sword throw and then hit him out of Aether right before he drops down. It takes a little bit of practice but I have a buddy who plays ROB and just throws a top and makes my life hell

People clearly don't know QD wall jump bair to drift on stage is a thing and is a mixup with aether and is a mixup with qd wall jump upb. Ike's recovery is ridiculous.

It's only ridiculous if you let him get a walled stage lmao, that's on you

If he doesn't have a walled stage his recovery is much weaker.

 

[Boiko]

On wall-less stages it's extremely hard to get the walljump, just cover ledge and force him to go on stage with QD and punish, if he's using Aether, shield the sword throw and then hit him out of Aether right before he drops down. It takes a little bit of practice but I have a buddy who plays ROB and just throws a top and makes my life hell



It's only ridiculous if you let him get a walled stage lmao, that's on you

If he doesn't have a walled stage his recovery is much weaker.

PS2, Smashville, Battlefield...?

 

[robosteven]

So what're your guys' thoughts on Luigi?

why the **** is his shield so big

 

[NWRL]

PS2, Smashville, Battlefield...?

Well it changes depending on your scene, but with my scene we use

PS2
SV
BF
GHZ
Delfino

Assuming a 1-2-1 banning ruleset, you can ALWAYS ban out the walled stages

CPs we have

WW
Norfair
FoD
FD

FD and Norfair are a little unreliable as walled stages due to the walls either not going all the way down to the bottom blastzones, or are tapered away from the edge

You can ban out 2 of the smaller walled stages like WW and GHZ, leaving stages with wider blastzones that make it harder to walljump properly.

Ike's recovery is definitely strong, but in a best of three set you're looking at one stage out of three being walled if you ban out walled stages

In a Bo5 it's easier for Ike to pick a walled stage but as long as you are banning out the smaller walled stages you can reduce the impact of his recovery pretty decently.

 

[Akhenderson]

On wall-less stages it's extremely hard to get the walljump, just cover ledge and force him to go on stage with QD and punish, if he's using Aether, shield the sword throw and then hit him out of Aether right before he drops down. It takes a little bit of practice but I have a buddy who plays ROB and just throws a top and makes my life hell



It's only ridiculous if you let him get a walled stage lmao, that's on you

If he doesn't have a walled stage his recovery is much weaker.

Depending on your region, your stage list can vary, and sometimes, it would be impossible to ban every walled stage. GHZ, WW, YI:B, YS, DS, DP are all walled stages and I'm pretty sure you can't ban every single one of them. This is assuming you've won and are banning potential counter picks, which, yes, the Ike SHOULD have an advantage. I'm just adding on the fact that you can't ALWAYS play against Ike in a non walled stage in a set.

 

[DrinkingFood]

1: nobody smart is going to ban walled stages against Ike, because they will be busy banning for more important elements like stage size
2: QD. Your mix-up is QD.
3: ROB's gyro hardly does anything to Ike. ROB has no tools to force him to go low in the face of QD mix-ups, and assuming he did, up-b>gyro

 

[Bazkip]

Not to mention that all small stages have walls so if a character prefers that stage size they kinda lose the ability to counterpick Ike.

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

Not to mention that all small stages have walls so if a character prefers that stage size they kinda lose the ability to counterpick Ike.

#LEGALIZELYLAT
#LEGALIZEMETALCAVERN

 

[The_NZA]

On wall-less stages it's extremely hard to get the walljump, just cover ledge and force him to go on stage with QD and punish, if he's using Aether, shield the sword throw and then hit him out of Aether right before he drops down. It takes a little bit of practice but I have a buddy who plays ROB and just throws a top and makes my life hell



It's only ridiculous if you let him get a walled stage lmao, that's on you

If he doesn't have a walled stage his recovery is much weaker.

Consider the following -- for Aether (looking at 3.02 frame data, because thats all I have and I don't think Ike's upb active hitbox lengths have been changed), Ike is only vulnerable in that time for 9 frames. 9 Frames.

Sheik's upb by contrast has 17 frames of vulnerability before she turns invisible/invulnerable. It is twice as easy to catch Sheik during the startup of her upb than to catch Ike in the middle of aether. And even still, SHeik's vulnerability isn't sandwiched by hitboxes on either side of it.

As for punishing a high quickdraw, Ike can mixup going the full length of quickdraw or swiping it and cutting his distance short. He's got a good recovery no matter what stage or circumstance. It's only bad against certain characters who have exceptional tools for punishing it (DDD/KIrby).

 

[Gawain the Knight]

What if you cut out QD's aerial drift?

 

[Manaconda]

What if you cut out QD's aerial drift?

Why would that be necessary? Just because a character's recovery isn't that predictable doesn't mean it has to be turned into one that is.

It seems like... a typical recovery, if that makes sense. It's not garbage like Sheik's, but not insane like Puff's. Plenty of effective mix-ups at a short to mid range away from the stage, and fewer when he's forced to recover from further away.

 

[Gawain the Knight]

Removing the drift just shortens it a bit and makes it a little more predictable and less reliable at long range, otherwise it doesnt hurt Ike much while making him a little easier to edge guard

 

[InfinityCollision]

Nerfing QD's aerial drift wouldn't really address any of the complaints I've seen about Ike's recovery (granted I don't find it terribly problematic in the first place), nor do I think it'd be a good change from a "feel" standpoint.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

It's only ridiculous if you let him get a walled stage lmao, that's on you

If he doesn't have a walled stage his recovery is much weaker.[/quote]
Hmmm... how many walled stages are there even? I'm not really willing to count wario ware because of how small it is but i know of green hill zone, dream land, err.... FoD....FD...

1: nobody smart is going to ban walled stages against Ike, because they will be busy banning for more important elements like stage size
2: QD. Your mix-up is QD.
3: ROB's gyro hardly does anything to Ike. ROB has no tools to force him to go low in the face of QD mix-ups, and assuming he did, up-b>gyro

I actually just played a good ike last night in winners finals, I banned walled stages (because im bowser and didnt care what stage he picked) and it made his recoveries... not lame but not good either. Alot of bowser bomb edge gaurds that round.

 

[NWRL]

Consider the following -- for Aether (looking at 3.02 frame data, because thats all I have and I don't think Ike's upb active hitbox lengths have been changed), Ike is only vulnerable in that time for 9 frames. 9 Frames.

Sheik's upb by contrast has 17 frames of vulnerability before she turns invisible/invulnerable. It is twice as easy to catch Sheik during the startup of her upb than to catch Ike in the middle of aether. And even still, SHeik's vulnerability isn't sandwiched by hitboxes on either side of it.

As for punishing a high quickdraw, Ike can mixup going the full length of quickdraw or swiping it and cutting his distance short. He's got a good recovery no matter what stage or circumstance. It's only bad against certain characters who have exceptional tools for punishing it (DDD/KIrby).

I never said that Ike's recovery is bad, what I said is that it's pretty easy to mitigate some of his recovery strength

You can't really compare Sheik's recovery to Ike's strictly like that because they function completely different, Sheik is invulnerable in her recovery, Ike can be hit out of Aether pretty easily with practice. There's been plenty of times where I've sweetspotted the ledge with Aether and still got hit out of it anyway

You can mix up QD with wall jumps if you hit a wall, but if you use QD from a far enough distance away from the stage, you lose the ability to walljump, so wider stages with far blastzones reduce the potency of his recovery as well.

What if you cut out QD's aerial drift?

Ike is in a good spot and needs no further changes.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

I never said that Ike's recovery is bad, what I said is that it's pretty easy to mitigate some of his recovery strength

You can't really compare Sheik's recovery to Ike's strictly like that because they function completely different, Sheik is invulnerable in her recovery, Ike can be hit out of Aether pretty easily with practice. There's been plenty of times where I've sweetspotted the ledge with Aether and still got hit out of it anyway

You can mix up QD with wall jumps if you hit a wall, but if you use QD from a far enough distance away from the stage, you lose the ability to walljump, so wider stages with far blastzones reduce the potency of his recovery as well.



Ike is in a good spot and needs no further changes.

I agree, ike is very balanced in my opinion, we just need to find that balance with everyone. How do we feel about mario? I think he is in a fairly good spot. Personally though i think everyone should idealy be in the A tier and then left alone. S and B tier should not be a thing

 

[PlateProp]

I agree, ike is very balanced in my opinion, we just need to find that balance with everyone. How do we feel about mario? I think he is in a fairly good spot. Personally though i think everyone should idealy be in the A tier and then left alone. S and B tier should not be a thing

@Nausicaa thinks he's broken/needs nerfs, in some areas I agree (why does mario have Ganon's dthrow?) but he'd prolly explain it better if he would come out from behind his mist of confusion

 

[The Baron]

I agree, ike is very balanced in my opinion, we just need to find that balance with everyone. How do we feel about mario? I think he is in a fairly good spot. Personally though i think everyone should idealy be in the A tier and then left alone. S and B tier should not be a thing

Not having an s and b tier is pretty unrealistic but something to dream about I guess.

 

[Jonyc128]

I think Mario's in a good spot right now, he has tools to help out with any situation he finds himself in. (Slowly but surely learning how good Shield approaches and WD OoSs are with him). IMO I think he just needs a few tweaks here and there, like a slightly longer horizontal grab hitbox but with slightly increased KBG on dthrow to compensate, maybe doc nair from melee, and a change to his UpB invincibility duration.

Side Note: UpB Cancel when?!?!?!

 

[The_NZA]

I never said that Ike's recovery is bad, what I said is that it's pretty easy to mitigate some of his recovery strength

You can't really compare Sheik's recovery to Ike's strictly like that because they function completely different, Sheik is invulnerable in her recovery, Ike can be hit out of Aether pretty easily with practice. There's been plenty of times where I've sweetspotted the ledge with Aether and still got hit out of it anyway

You can mix up QD with wall jumps if you hit a wall, but if you use QD from a far enough distance away from the stage, you lose the ability to walljump, so wider stages with far blastzones reduce the potency of his recovery as well.



Ike is in a good spot and needs no further changes.

I honestly don't have beefs with Ike. I even love QD, in all of its options. I just think Aether, out of all the recoveries, is the least intuitive to edgeguard consistently. The spinning hitbox of it means if you want to challenge it during the hitbox frames, you HAVE to be prepared for the possibility that you will be clipped and will therefore be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder, OR you will get meteored and will be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder.

Therefore, the best strat is to either grab ledge and use invincibility to catch him or intercept him during the 9 frames you mentioned. If you use invincibility and Ike wall jumps and stalls, then you double jumping away from the ledge and trying to intercept him will cost you your double jump if you end up getting clipped.

The counterplay is simply unintuitive. I didn't use Sheik's recovery though to make a perfect comparison. Just to point out that most people find intercepting Sheik's startup of her upb pretty hard, and what you are presenting as the logical way to edgeguard Ike requires twice the precision and a ton more risk.

 

[Soft Serve]

I honestly don't have beefs with Ike. I even love QD, in all of its options. I just think Aether, out of all the recoveries, is the least intuitive to edgeguard consistently. The spinning hitbox of it means if you want to challenge it during the hitbox frames, you HAVE to be prepared for the possibility that you will be clipped and will therefore be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder, OR you will get meteored and will be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder.

Therefore, the best strat is to either grab ledge and use invincibility to catch him or intercept him during the 9 frames you mentioned. If you use invincibility and Ike wall jumps and stalls, then you double jumping away from the ledge and trying to intercept him will cost you your double jump if you end up getting clipped.

The counterplay is simply unintuitive. I didn't use Sheik's recovery though to make a perfect comparison. Just to point out that most people find intercepting Sheik's startup of her upb pretty hard, and what you are presenting as the logical way to edgeguard Ike requires twice the precision and a ton more risk.

I don't see how this is counter intuitive, respecting stalls and mixups is just part of the edge guarding game. If your double jumps are getting caught, you are mis-timing them (or are playing a character with a bad ledge stall, like ness lol).

Mario is like that too, you have to respect the his stalls then go hit him out of endlag, if you're too early you get caped and if you're too late his up b invincibility kicks in and you get stage spiked or are now the one getting edgeguarded.

I just don't see how grab ledge at proper time>refresh if they do a stall, then intercept them if you can't just raw edge hog is unintuitive. I just edge guard ike (going low) as if he his marth with a different stall and more hitboxes, never had problems or frustrattions doing so unless I didn't move around the sword.
His stall/ledge game isn't what makes his recovery dumb, it's the fact he can dj> drift away out of strings with quick draw, then fly over you to a top platform, release early and do the attack to contest your combo, or hold it more and then go for ledge mixups. That's frustrating.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

I honestly don't have beefs with Ike. I even love QD, in all of its options. I just think Aether, out of all the recoveries, is the least intuitive to edgeguard consistently. The spinning hitbox of it means if you want to challenge it during the hitbox frames, you HAVE to be prepared for the possibility that you will be clipped and will therefore be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder, OR you will get meteored and will be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder.

Therefore, the best strat is to either grab ledge and use invincibility to catch him or intercept him during the 9 frames you mentioned. If you use invincibility and Ike wall jumps and stalls, then you double jumping away from the ledge and trying to intercept him will cost you your double jump if you end up getting clipped.

The counterplay is simply unintuitive. I didn't use Sheik's recovery though to make a perfect comparison. Just to point out that most people find intercepting Sheik's startup of her upb pretty hard, and what you are presenting as the logical way to edgeguard Ike requires twice the precision and a ton more risk.

Hmmm... I may be brain dead but i just charge a backwards down smash and super armour through everything like a tool

 

[Manaconda]

why does mario have Ganon's dthrow?

Because he has Ganon's grab range.

 

[Binary Clone]

I honestly don't have beefs with Ike. I even love QD, in all of its options. I just think Aether, out of all the recoveries, is the least intuitive to edgeguard consistently. The spinning hitbox of it means if you want to challenge it during the hitbox frames, you HAVE to be prepared for the possibility that you will be clipped and will therefore be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder, OR you will get meteored and will be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about Ike. I don't think he's overpowered, balance-wise I think he's in a pretty decent place right now. But playing against him can be frustrating because of all the tools he has. I think QD is a really neat tool, just really cool in a lot of ways, but when it's stuck on a character that has Ganon knockback and Marth disjoint, even when most of those moves require tons of commitment, it's frustrating for a lot of characters that Ike can really just hop off stage, swing a big chunk of metal at them, and fly back to the stage because he's Ike while they are guaranteed to be dead. There seems to be a surprising number of situations in which the recovering character has few or no options to mix up that are sufficient to actually escape a dead-simple guard. Combined with a recovery that's obviously powerful, even a whiffed edgeguard doesn't spell doom for Ike most of the time.


QD, though, is fun, for the most part. My gameplan for dealing with it is just to dashdance in a range that makes Ike uncomfortable - a little too close for him to want to commit to QD, while being a little too far for him to want to commit to a non-QD grounded or aerial approach out of his lackluster DD. In my opinion, that's really good interaction.

However, I think (but I'm not sure) it could be problematic that this uncomfortable range for Ikes isn't actually outside of QD range. Timed properly, an Ike can QD rar JC grab someone standing practically right in front of him. This means that, with enough practice, even that uncomfortable range is never really "too close" for Ike's QD options.

But even though we've seen some obviously high-level players like Metroid and Ally playing Ike, I don't think I've really seen too much abuse of using QD at this range (though I'm probably wrong about that, too). So either it's not useful enough, or nobody's bothered to start using it regularly. I can understand that it might be too much commitment for too little payoff, but it kind of feels like that excuse would invalidate the use of QD at any range, not just that one, since the startup for QD even at short range isn't really enough for someone to react and punish accordingly before the Ike does something, if I'm right. Maybe it's more of a matter of the Ike being able to get the correct option at that kind of range-speed reliably?

 

[PlateProp]

Because he has Ganon's grab range.

Mario has a way larger effective grab range than Ganon and it's easier for him to get grabs. He's faster, he can actually jab > grab, he can fireball > grab, dash attack grab at low percents, ect. Ganon just has raw reads, nothing that legitimately sets up into his grab.

 

[ThegreatVaporeon1]

why the **** is his shield so big

Why not?

He is a defensively oriented character, so his defensive options should be good (tech roll, shield, rolls, spot dodges, cc, bait and punish).

Although spot dodge and rolls have been normalized, but they're still good for Luigi.

I actually just played a good ike last night in winners finals, I banned walled stages (because im bowser and didnt care what stage he picked) and it made his recoveries... not lame but not good either. Alot of bowser bomb edge gaurds that round.

Bowser in general is really good at edge guarding, so a lot of recoveries to him will feel "not good" or "average."

 

[CORY]

Mario has a way larger effective grab range than Ganon and it's easier for him to get grabs. He's faster, he can actually jab > grab, he can fireball > grab, dash attack grab at low percents, ect. Ganon just has raw reads, nothing that legitimately sets up into his grab.

well, certain characters can be afc'd into a grab.

but then that requires the read for afc >.>

 

[NWRL]

I honestly don't have beefs with Ike. I even love QD, in all of its options. I just think Aether, out of all the recoveries, is the least intuitive to edgeguard consistently. The spinning hitbox of it means if you want to challenge it during the hitbox frames, you HAVE to be prepared for the possibility that you will be clipped and will therefore be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder, OR you will get meteored and will be off stage without a double jump against a master edge guarder.

Therefore, the best strat is to either grab ledge and use invincibility to catch him or intercept him during the 9 frames you mentioned. If you use invincibility and Ike wall jumps and stalls, then you double jumping away from the ledge and trying to intercept him will cost you your double jump if you end up getting clipped.

The counterplay is simply unintuitive. I didn't use Sheik's recovery though to make a perfect comparison. Just to point out that most people find intercepting Sheik's startup of her upb pretty hard, and what you are presenting as the logical way to edgeguard Ike requires twice the precision and a ton more risk.

We're thinking of two entirely different ways of edge guarding Aether. Your method is like you said, very risky with not a whole lot of pay off. I'll make a video and post it here later today

 

[MLGF]

I have a lot of mixed feelings about Ike. I don't think he's overpowered, balance-wise I think he's in a pretty decent place right now. But playing against him can be frustrating because of all the tools he has. I think QD is a really neat tool, just really cool in a lot of ways, but when it's stuck on a character that has Ganon knockback and Marth disjoint, even when most of those moves require tons of commitment, it's frustrating for a lot of characters that Ike can really just hop off stage, swing a big chunk of metal at them, and fly back to the stage because he's Ike while they are guaranteed to be dead. There seems to be a surprising number of situations in which the recovering character has few or no options to mix up that are sufficient to actually escape a dead-simple guard. Combined with a recovery that's obviously powerful, even a whiffed edgeguard doesn't spell doom for Ike most of the time.


QD, though, is fun, for the most part. My gameplan for dealing with it is just to dashdance in a range that makes Ike uncomfortable - a little too close for him to want to commit to QD, while being a little too far for him to want to commit to a non-QD grounded or aerial approach out of his lackluster DD. In my opinion, that's really good interaction.

However, I think (but I'm not sure) it could be problematic that this uncomfortable range for Ikes isn't actually outside of QD range. Timed properly, an Ike can QD rar JC grab someone standing practically right in front of him. This means that, with enough practice, even that uncomfortable range is never really "too close" for Ike's QD options.

But even though we've seen some obviously high-level players like Metroid and Ally playing Ike, I don't think I've really seen too much abuse of using QD at this range (though I'm probably wrong about that, too). So either it's not useful enough, or nobody's bothered to start using it regularly. I can understand that it might be too much commitment for too little payoff, but it kind of feels like that excuse would invalidate the use of QD at any range, not just that one, since the startup for QD even at short range isn't really enough for someone to react and punish accordingly before the Ike does something, if I'm right. Maybe it's more of a matter of the Ike being able to get the correct option at that kind of range-speed reliably?

I can explain why I don't JC reverse grab.
Because Dash dancing or throwing out a decent hitbox is better once you get past the "Oh so scawy" QD phase.

 

[PlateProp]

I can explain why I don't JC reverse grab.
Because Dash dancing or throwing out a decent hitbox is better once you get past the "Oh so scawy" QD phase.

QD would be scary if most ikes used it for tech chase stuff instead of an approach