Tier List Speculation

[FreeGamer]

3.02 U-Tilt filled that role perfectly. So perfectly, that they decided it was too good.

 

[Avro-Arrow]

marth and falco have somewhat the same issues but are slightly different in execution, but its basically that they both lose the long game in the face of good counterplay. for a good example, i had a long talk with @Dakpo on thursday at the dfw weekly about how yeah falco is really good but to realize that you have to be flawless to a point that i consider ridiculous- if you make absolutely any mistakes with falco, youre basically going to lose in a way that is almost always more flexible for the opponent. and he was telling me how he does well with GAW, but that character illustrates the opposite, which is having a character that is way more forgiving of misplays, and takes good advantage of the opponents misplays in a way that doesnt require perfection. in theory, falco is way better than GAW, but we know that it doesnt play out like that in tournament. even our very best players make dozens of mistakes every match, and it only goes up from there. in a tournament format where your goal is to go X-1 or X-0, the best approach is to accept that both players will always make some number of mistakes and to account for them appropriately. therefore, in a real tournament setting, you could make a reasonable argument that GAW does better than falco from the margin falco loses from misplays over a tournament day. you'll suicide here or randomly slightly misplace a dair or something and get obliterated for it. and that my friends is exactly what an over-rated character looks like.

as a marth and sheik player, i get this all the time. @Lunchables will occasionally make fun of me saying i suck because "think of a character skype group where the players dont think marth/sheik beats their character", and he knows exactly why- everyone thinks they lose to my two characters because its all mid-level players doing free play. sure, marth are sheik are hilariously soul-crushing at mediocre levels of non-tournament gameplay to the point where i make it a point to tell other dev team members not to mimic sheiks ground game properties on other characters. but at top level they both have very real setbacks. lets stick to marth since you asked about it- marth's range is very good, but other characters can now match it unlike melee. his low growth moves mean he can combo well but has a hard time killing. better recoveries mean opponents live longer but marth retains his mediocre recovery and combo weight from melee. he doesnt really have any outs to the better projectiles introduced by the brawl characters like bananas or grenades. he cant really finish stocks on heavy characters like ddd or dk or yoshi or rob. an experienced opponent that understands marth can force him to fish for tip fair conversions which is just really bad in most cases. more variable combo weights make throw combos less reliable across the cast. relatively faster characters across the cast make it much harder to dashdance the opponent out of the game. marth is way more understood to play against than say ness or charizard. relatively larger stages in PM means he cant close out kills well. marth can hit the opponent and still get punished for not hitting the correct part of the move. now on one hand, thats just a list of stuff that marth has issues with but he can still compete (except vs ddd/dreamland, seriously **** playing those). but thats not the point, the point is that over a tournament day, you WILL lose margin on those things, and they will cost you wins, and you wont be able to go X-1 or X-0 forfeiting margin like that. its much better over a long tournament day to play a character like say diddy where you have multiple dynamic ways to solve your problems and can get more on free margin than by losing it. marths primary way of winning in PM is hoping he gets a lucky bracket against jank like luigi players and bad CPs than it is because hes a good character with no issues. in melee where the stages are small and he has double everyone elses range and upthrow is a OHKO against half of the relevant tournament sets, marth is absolutely hard top tier. in PM, hes merely pretty good, at best in the 11-15 range out of 41. i personally wouldnt recommend anyone learning the game to play either of these characters even though theres nothing really wrong with them. i encourage people to play characters like diddy or MK or ZSS where you're not necessarily out at the character select screen or from a handful of common mistakes over a full tournament day.

edit- kirby vs a really good fox is only fun if youre the fox or you like losing a lot as kirby, that MU is ****ing awful

Thanks for writing that up. I really appreciate it. I don't really value perfect play either, but putting it in perspective of an entire tournament... yeah it'd be really easy to lose a set over time.

About Marth: I actually had a discussion about it earlier today and we touched on a lot of the same points... the edgeguards, the recovery, uthrow sucking against heavies, marthritis being more significant... and the stage list totally makes a huge difference too. Really glad I was able to hear your input on this. Thanks!

 

[TheGravyTrain]

Squirtle has no bkb (exaggeration, but you get the point) on like any move except throws. So bubble and throws are all Squritle gets against fastfallers at low percents. No guaranteed combos off throws either. Bubble is the same at all precents and is a auto tech chase starter (thankfully Squirtle is godlike at tech chasing). For throws, from my testing hydro up throw, it seems to start working around 30 percent with reasonable levels of difficulty (no tas). For any body who doesn't know (probably most people...), hydro throws are simply taking advantage of the absurd sliding that Squirtle can undergo while he throws somebody. Primarily talking about hydrograb (jump cancel grab during the late boost of shellshift), but is relevant with a dash grab (and jump cancel grab, but dash grab carries more momentum, comes grabs the same frame with jump squat, and only has 10 more frame of end lag). I haven't tested other DI's and what options Squirtle has against those, but it does work on DI away at 30 ish. So Squirtle being forced to tech chase isn't as bad as I initially thought.

Dtilt starts knocking down at 12 percent of both hits connect (14 if only the second hits). It doesn't really lead into anything but a tech chase though, and it can be asdi'd down and teched till 55 percent or so. Up tilt doesn't knock down till post 50 percent. Same with crawl tilt. Up smash has too much end lag to combo. Down smash knocks down at 0 and sets up a tech chase (and is good for tech chasing). Up air knocks down at 11 percent, but due to its short range I haven't done too much testing in this context. Unless you already got them popped up (which isn't what I'm trying to address here), the only way you are landing up air is a falling up air since you aren't getting followups of a rising up air. For falling up air to work, the fox really had to mess you up... Nair knock down post 50. Fair knocks down early, but it doesn't lead to anything but a tech chase. Dair has some potential, it appears to knock down around 30. Bair doesn't knock down early and isn't a launcher.

 

[Player -0]

Squirtle's C-Tilt is the mvp. You bop them up if they don't CC/ASDI down and then if they do then you sneak behind them like a ninja.

Unless they're Peach, then feel bad lol.

 

[Chevy]

Nerfing uthrow wouldn't significantly alter his floaty matchups. It's the move you use when you've already ****ed up and let them live too long.

Up-throw changes the Mewtwo Samus MU from like 55-45 to 65-35 lol. If he doesn't really need it, I definitely would like to see it take a hit. For the sake of balanced MUs of course.

 

[_Chrome]

Up-throw changes the Mewtwo Samus MU from like 55-45 to 65-35 lol. If he doesn't really need it, I definitely would like to see it take a hit. For the sake of balanced MUs of course.

That could potentially get rid of Mewtwo's chain throws on fast fallers though, which is pretty important to him if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Chevy]

That could potentially get rid of Mewtwo's chain throws on fast fallers though, which is pretty important to him if I'm not mistaken.

Which is why i specifically would like to see the growth lowered, it can definitely be adjusted to still get follow-ups on fast fallers and not kill super floaties at 100%.

 

[Searing_Sorrow]

Up-throw changes the Mewtwo Samus MU from like 55-45 to 65-35 lol. If he doesn't really need it, I definitely would like to see it take a hit. For the sake of balanced MUs of course.

Considering the way samus has skewed matchups against a few other characters, (donkey Kong country) I don't see the problem with a few skewed matchups in the opposite direction for samus. In terms of balance this is the best mewtwo has ever been by far. Characters are meant to have good things

 

[TheGravyTrain]

Player -0

Pretty sure like every character can punish that if they asdi it down. It doesn't go far enough to really cross anybody up in a meaningful way, so all they have to have is a downsmash that hits on both sides quickly, an fsmash thats quick enough, heck a ftilt that is quick enough, the proficiency to turn around grab (if it grabs crouching squirtle), etc. Ctilt only does 3 percent, so if they make a habit of simply trading the 3 percent even just for a 10 percent ftilt, it won't be worth it. On top of that, ctilt isn't very quick to make up for it. Frame 6, but the quickest you can do it out of a standing state is 13 (7 frames of crouching/crawling). Plus, the discussion was on Spacies, which you don't really get anything off a ctilt at low percents anyways.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Honestly if every character had marthritis, heavies might actually be good
long survivability is kinda, ya'know, the point of being a heavyweight
except against 90% of the cast it doesn't really work

That could potentially get rid of Mewtwo's chain throws on fast fallers though, which is pretty important to him if I'm not mistaken.

Which is why i specifically would like to see the growth lowered, it can definitely be adjusted to still get follow-ups on fast fallers and not kill super floaties at 100%.

MewTwo doesn't actually get chainthrows on fast fallers
I think he can get like one regrab on falco/maybe wolf/falcon
but MewTwo's uthrow combos on spacies rely on uthrow->aerial->regrab
reducing the growth just make these regrab combos longer. If you adjusted just the KBG value without fixing the BKB (Both factor into knockback at 0) he might actually gain longer chaingrabs on those characters.

EDIT: just double checked, he can't actually chainthrow anybody unless they don't jump out for w/e reason

 

[DrinkingFood]

double post

 

[Deleted member]

double post

im going to fair you in your darkest nightmares

 

[DrinkingFood]

im going to fair you in your darkest nightmares

no, not my nightmares

 

[DrinkingFood]

http://giant.gfycat.com/SelfishDefinitiveLabradorretriever.webm
http://prntscr.com/8qbn5t
PMDT you got some 'splaining to do. Why does yoshi's nair have double jump armor.

double post because **** you umbreon

 

[nimigoha]

That's the first frame of his double jump kick animation.

Unless you're missing a kappa?

 

[DrinkingFood]

http://prntscr.com/8qbsui
that's the first frame of double jump

http://prntscr.com/8qbsyo
that's the first frame of nair

just labbed it out. Yoshi can initiate aerials during the hitlag of his armor. As if double jump armor wasn't annoying enough in melee. PMDT ****ing why did you exaggerate the problem

 

[nimigoha]

Well ya got me. That's odd.

Although I can't think of a situation where it would be a problem. Like if you've hit him while he's in DJ then he's going to Nair you either way.

 

[Chevy]

Considering the way samus has skewed matchups against a few other characters, (donkey Kong country) I don't see the problem with a few skewed matchups in the opposite direction for samus. In terms of balance this is the best mewtwo has ever been by far. Characters are meant to have good things

Donkey Kong actually does alright against Samus, it's probably close to even either side. She definitely beats Diddy but it's not like it's by an unwinnable margin. I think if we're aiming for ideal balance targeted nerfs like this are the way to go, and no it doesn't mean taking away all good things; if something is fun or interesting enough most of the time I don't want to just rip it away because it hurts one character. I just thought it'd be interesting to evaluate how a change like this would affect his other matchups.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

Probably just another bug to add to the *massive* list

 

[InfinityCollision]

For the sake of balanced MUs of course.

I like how you threw that in at the end.

Let me restate myself more clearly: Mewtwo has enough ways to set up kills and edgeguards at comparable or earlier percents to make uthrow's kill potential less of a concern than it might be on another character. Samus' high weight exaggerates the value of uthrow, but generally speaking an uthrow kill is a sort of admission that you played that stock suboptimally. Changes to uthrow do not significantly alter his matchup ratios against floaties, they just further shift attention towards those alternative options. I'm speaking from both theory and experience here, having experimented with various uthrow tweaks in the past.

I also don't think his matchups against floaties are generally that polarizing, and definitely don't buy the Mewtwo-Samus matchup being anywhere near 65:35. I've long considered it closer to 55:45, and last I heard Frozen held a similar opinion. There are a few bad ones (Jiggs, Icies, Kirby, Ivy), but the common thread that jumps out to me here is four bottom half floaties with polarized and often somewhat dysfunctional kits. Improvements to their designs would naturally improve their matchups against Mewtwo, while uthrow nerfs would have very little impact.

tl;dr uthrow is fine, more focus on giving other characters fully functional & cohesive movesets

 

[Chevy]

I like how you threw that in at the end.

Let me restate myself more clearly: Mewtwo has enough ways to set up kills and edgeguards at comparable or earlier percents to make uthrow's kill potential less of a concern than it might be on another character. Samus' high weight exaggerates the value of uthrow, but generally speaking an uthrow kill is a sort of admission that you played that stock suboptimally. Changes to uthrow do not significantly alter his matchup ratios against floaties, they just further shift attention towards those alternative options. I'm speaking from both theory and experience here, having experimented with various uthrow tweaks in the past.

I also don't think his matchups against floaties are generally that polarizing, and definitely don't buy the Mewtwo-Samus matchup being anywhere near 65:35. I've long considered it closer to 55:45, and last I heard Frozen held a similar opinion. There are a few bad ones (Jiggs, Icies, Kirby, Ivy), but the common thread that jumps out to me here is four bottom half floaties with polarized and often somewhat dysfunctional kits. Improvements to their designs would naturally improve their matchups against Mewtwo, while uthrow nerfs would have very little impact.

tl;dr uthrow is fine, more focus on giving other characters fully functional & cohesive movesets

Yeah but that doesn't help ME. I don't think it's a huge problem, Mewtwo is actually one of my favorite MUs to play it just sucks to have guaranteed death at 100% attached to those grab-boxes.

 

[MTL Kyle]

welcome to Project M!

You could say that for a lot of people that started Smash with PM.

But then again, you have to be called a biggot, ******** and close minded by a bunch of midleveled 014ers who will hug each other until they convince themselves they are right.

 

[DrinkingFood]

 

[MTL Kyle]

Yeah but that doesn't help ME. I don't think it's a huge problem, Mewtwo is actually one of my favorite MUs to play it just sucks to have guaranteed death at 100% attached to those grab-boxes.

IMO, Kill throws killing off the top are bad design at it's finest.



Horizontal Kill Throws :
- Positioning in the stage MATTERS
- DI matters much more (eg.: Peach)
- Grabs become more of a threat in certain parts of the stage (ledge situations)
- Generally terrible as combo starters


Vertical Kill Throws :
- Fix % to kill someone
- DI barely matters
- Grabs are a threat everywhere, and become even more threatening at certain parts of the map
- Can launch someone up to a platform and using good positioning to rack up % or just flat out start a combo on some characters.

 

[standardtoaster]

http://giant.gfycat.com/SelfishDefinitiveLabradorretriever.webm
http://prntscr.com/8qbn5t
PMDT you got some 'splaining to do. Why does yoshi's nair have double jump armor.

double post because **** you umbreon

Action changes can occur during hitlag. All that happened here is that yoshi was in massive hitlag from the misfire and then input a nair during the hitlag. There's no armor on any of his aerials.

 

[Deleted member]

so i told lunchables that we should make all of pikachus moves have horribly unintuitive angles so that absolutely anyone that understands DI basically gets slaughtered for no reason. i told him we should start by making upsmash angle 15 degrees so if you DI away like you normally would it can just kill you from like 20%, and he starting throwing up popcorn and having convulsions on the floor. i also wanted to have bair have an angle of like 170 so the normal hit sends you behind him and the reverse hit sends you forward like you DId sheik fair straight down off stage. i also want to make all his aerials armored and iasa by like frame 5 because #YOLO. so i'll try to get this added for you all before i get kicked from the dev team.

PMDT Umbreon, for players like you.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Action changes can occur during hitlag. All that happened here is that yoshi was in massive hitlag from the misfire and then input a nair during the hitlag. There's no armor on any of his aerials.

don't make it sound like it makes sense, because it doesn't
His armor is already painfully effective, there's no reason hitlag should be used to circumvent actually timing the aerial+letting him shave a frame off the beginning. It's not like this in melee, this was either intentionally changed or intentionally left in, and it's pretty stupid tbh.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

@Jamble I think Toon Link is great: not only does he have completely polarizing matchups against some characters (i.e. Peach) but he is also a good character to fall back on if you need to change pace in the middle of a set or feel out what your opponent is doing since he can drag games out for so long. Not that you can't feel out what your opponent is doing with a different character, but sometimes it's good to be able to analyze what they're trying to do and force options out of them. That being said, he also has some really bad matchups that hold him back (i.e. Falcon, Spacies, MK is bad although I think it's a little exaggerated how badly Toon Link loses).

nimigoha I can't really think of Marth being below top 5 either personally. I can see someone making a case for it, but I think he has the tools (movement, grabs, disjoint, edgeguards) to win most matchups. Kills can be hard, but they're not that hard to find.

And why isn't Falco top 5? No one's ever answered this and I don't care if I get torn apart for saying this right now but his neutral + punish is just sublime. I mean, his combos work in basically every matchup and lasers are still amazing for spacing, zoning, forcing opponents to approach, and getting hit confirms. Yeah, they can be power shielded, but even with this counterplay to lasers is tough. He has some close to even matchups like Samus, Marth, and Kirby (with many more) but I don't see him losing any.

I thought polarizing match ups were bad? isnt that like, why bowser was "toxic"?

Honestly if every character had marthritis, heavies might actually be good
long survivability is kinda, ya'know, the point of being a heavyweight
except against 90% of the cast it doesn't really work



MewTwo doesn't actually get chainthrows on fast fallers
I think he can get like one regrab on falco/maybe wolf/falcon
but MewTwo's uthrow combos on spacies rely on uthrow->aerial->regrab
reducing the growth just make these regrab combos longer. If you adjusted just the KBG value without fixing the BKB (Both factor into knockback at 0) he might actually gain longer chaingrabs on those characters.

EDIT: just double checked, he can't actually chainthrow anybody unless they don't jump out for w/e reason

But the heavies dont have more survivability, they just get comboed longer then slammed at their higher % by something that should not work (but does because of their size) then get edgegaurded because all the heavies have bad recoveries.

 

[Tomaster]

all the heavies have bad recoveries.

DDD....

 

[steelguttey]

DDD....

rob...
wario has a fine recovery...
in fact the only heavies with bad recoveries are bowser and dk lmao unless im missing someone

 

[JOE!]

DDD....

Zard's recovery isn't to shabby either. However, what hurts is the same thing that hurts onstage: they are so big that any stray whatever will hit more often than miss and disrupt recovery.

It's funny how backwards it seems to be. Outside of a stray hit / rest punish, Jiggs often is sturdier than Bowser when it comes to actually killing her due to an innate ability to escape juggles and gimps.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

I thought polarizing match ups were bad? isnt that like, why bowser was "toxic"?

Zard's recovery isn't to shabby either. However, what hurts is the same thing that hurts onstage: they are so big that any stray whatever will hit more often than miss and disrupt recovery.

It's funny how backwards it seems to be. Outside of a stray hit / rest punish, Jiggs often is sturdier than Bowser when it comes to actually killing her due to an innate ability to escape juggles and gimps.

I hate how small floaty characters can live longer just because they fly away when they get hit by a weird weak stray hit and then reset the neutral.


I chose my words wrong, i mean to say fatties, I thought heavies and fatties were probably the same class, i was wrong and thats my bad.


DDD only has that weird auto glide toss to save him, outside of that you can see his recovery from a mile away and pick out 5 ways to disrupt it.

Wario is only good if he has waft ready, and even then he has to burn it before hes at the ledge, otherwise hes an easy edge guard also.

Charizard has straight recoveries, if hes gliding, you know where he is gonna be and how to intercept and if hes trying to sweetspot you can easily time a ledge grab like any average level player.

Am I the only person that thinks all these recoveries are bad?

 

[Rawkobo]

I hate how small floaty characters can live longer just because they fly away when they get hit by a weird weak stray hit and then reset the neutral.


I chose my words wrong, i mean to say fatties, I thought heavies and fatties were probably the same class, i was wrong and thats my bad.


DDD only has that weird auto glide toss to save him, outside of that you can see his recovery from a mile away and pick out 5 ways to disrupt it.

Wario is only good if he has waft ready, and even then he has to burn it before hes at the ledge, otherwise hes an easy edge guard also.

Charizard has straight recoveries, if hes gliding, you know where he is gonna be and how to intercept and if hes trying to sweetspot you can easily time a ledge grab like any average level player.

Am I the only person that thinks all these recoveries are bad?

Not completely, but this makes me wonder what you define as a "good" recovery in that context. The fact that Deeds and Wario have recovery mixups (DDD with Waddledashing, Wario with Waft) changes the way you have to approach them offstage. Zard doesn't have to be linear with glide and his up-B has a deceptively good ledgegrab box unless you know the character/impulsively grab ledge, in which case, good for you.

 

[Ramz289]

I'm one of those people that lurk this thread but don't say much because I don't think I have anything to offer. But thanks to @Life's encouragement, I've decided share my thoughts on this thread:

Spoiler

You're all nerds.

COME AT ME

 

[Sadface]

...I have played decent Metaknights including Jelly...

Hi, sorry but I don't remember playing you. What's your tag and main?

 

[Twisty Treats]

New to this discussion but why is Peach so low in the tier list to everybody?

 

[_Chrome]

Puff's aerial mobility and his strong, disjointed, quick, aerial hitboxes have to be effective and relevant in a non trivial amount of MUs. I understand if this wasn't enough in 3.02 where quite a few characters were powerful enough to keep up (and maybe be advantageous?) vs Fox. I wouldn't be surprised if he goes even with or soft/hard counters random characters in this patch. Lucario is another character that seems to have a tough time vs him.

Also @Narelex I've recently become a believer in MK, I was just unaware of IDC at the time. I still think he has "weaknesses" but it's really more things that separate a broken character from a really good character. I do think IDC allows him to bypass one of his "weaknesses" of needing to sacrifice his range and jump into someone's threat zone (via grab, and non tipper dtilt) to break someone's neutral and effectively convert. Similar start up as Marth/Roy fsmash (so you can't exactly react to it), similar kill power to the knee, longer reach than Ganon ftilt, and can be done literally any time during MK's amazing DD if you use pivots. I'll need to revise my thoughts on the Marth-Metaknight MU a little bit. I have played decent Metaknights including Jelly and didn't have any reason to believe MK beats Marth, but the risk of getting sniped out of my DD at the slightest mistake or a read in my movement is pretty scary, and the counterplay (preemptively: shielding, throwing out a hitbox, or roll/spotdodge, at least that's all I can think of atm) are not too safe to do in neutral vs MK. Esp cuz if you miss, MK could just use IDC to punish endlag :x It has atrocious end lag but the start up, range, and sheer power more than make up for it I think, esp vs non projectile characters.

To me, an S tier is someone who you can read like a book but still get paper cuts.

I know it's an old post, but I like the reference to the Smash Documentary there. Clever use, really applicable too.

 

[Avro-Arrow]

T tasteless gentleman About polarizing matchups, I said Tink was a good character viability-wise from the standpoint that he has free matchups, not that it was good from a design perspective. He's incredibly frustrating to play against, but I don't think he's really a priority to change really.

 

[Player -0]

We're changing characters that are frustrating to play against?

Cool. Change Samus and Yoshi when?

 

[NinthWonder]

Make every character awful except for Olimar.