Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

[FullMoon]

Back on topic, forcing ledge re-grabs, something that should be done more? Characters like Little Mac and Shulk don't have good or fast enough Bairs, but they still have good options to clip the ledge. And still, even if a character has a good ledge trump Bair like Mega Man, he could just not and get back on the ledge to Down Smash or something. It would turn those lottery ticket 1-frame attempts into freebies. Hell, Luigi could setup a Down Taunt kill with forced ledge re-grabs. On stages with platforms, you've made one option less safe and with characters like Sheik, Greninja, Roy, etc. who have strong Up Smashes, probably deadly if they can force you to land on a platform and then punish you.

Nitpicking but Greninja can't hit with the full Up-Smash if the opponent is on a platform (whyyyyy ;-; ), only the weak 4% first hit.

Also making the opponent do a ledge regrab with Greninja is beautiful because we can meteor D-Air them down

 

[Antonykun]

those difficulty bars tho

http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/Samus
http://kuroganehammer.com/Smash4/Ganondorf

Ganondorf doesn't have all that much technical depth but instead feeds off of reads and punishes, and he also has really good hitboxes and reward off of landing hits, it's just hard for him to do that. Obviously though the difficulty isn't determined by character viability or how hard it is to do well with them because Samus and Ganondorf are considered close in that regard. Also to be able to judge such things to begin with you'd need to possess character mastery.

master trole ?

IIRC @ KuroganeHammer gave Ganon and samus a similar difficulty score until the Samus boards pestered him into making it a 10/10 which he did for a little bit only to rebel and give an astoundingly low score to Samus.

I'm more worried about the olimar score tbh

 

[Ffamran]

Nitpicking but Greninja can't hit with the full Up-Smash if the opponent is on a platform (whyyyyy ;-; ), only the weak 4% first hit.

Also making the opponent do a ledge regrab with Greninja is beautiful because we can meteor D-Air them down

Wait... really? This reminds me of when Falco's Up Smash would only get the weak hit under platforms... There was a reason why Utilt was only used under platforms, but now it was fixed and we only get the strong hit.

... Still wished we could get the entire hit...

 

[TriTails]

Hell, Luigi could setup a Down Taunt kill with forced ledge re-grabs.

Yeah. But most people can just jump back onto the stage directly (Though, they risk getting U-smashed), or use their Beefy Up-Bs (I imagine Shulk can really mess with the D-taunt here), or do a jumped U-air/F-air. Not to mention D-taunt hitbox startup is iirc 45~ frames and is only active for 1 frame. Oh, and the range is smaller than an ant.

Sonic's page uses Brawl Sonic's render and Zero Suit Samus's tab name is... Zero Skill Samus. Also, Ness is known as Ebola Back Throw for the Running Speed list.

- Lucina's Sytle: Forward Smash
- Diddy Kong's Sytle: Hoo Hah
- Fall Speed:
49-50 Samus
49-50 Lugi [Typo I'm sure]

Though. One cannot deny, it's kinda refreshing to have some jokes around the website . But I'm 100% sure Luigi's Sytle will be 'Down Throw' and the difficulty bar will be somewhere around 1 or 2/10.

 

[KenMeister]

IIRC @ KuroganeHammer gave Ganon and samus a similar difficulty score until the Samus boards pestered him into making it a 10/10 which he did for a little bit only to rebel and give an astoundingly low score to Samus.

I'm more worried about the olimar score tbh

This is why people who don't play the character shouldn't be making ratios like that to begin with when he clearly has no idea how Samus' tools flow as opposed to the Samus mains who put 50x more time into their character. Samus may not be very good, but she definitely requires good knowledge of percent strings, mixups, and a different playstyle in general from most other characters san some of the newcomers.

 

[DunnoBro]

Also, Ness is known as Ebola Back Throw for the Running Speed list.

Every time ness gets a grab over 100%

 

[Antonykun]

This is why people who don't play the character shouldn't be making ratios like that to begin with when he clearly has no idea how Samus' tools flow as opposed to the Samus mains who put 50x more time into their character. Samus may not be very good, but she definitely requires good knowledge of percent strings, mixups, and a different playstyle in general from most other characters san some of the newcomers.

Normally I would agree with you, but I refuse to believe that Samus is as difficult to play as Ryu and Shulk the other 10/10s

 

[DunnoBro]

Yea, with Ryu and Shulk set as the standard for 10/10, I don't see many characters touching 7 or 8

 

[KenMeister]

Normally I would agree with you, but I refuse to believe that Samus is as difficult to play as Ryu and Shulk the other 10/10s

I did say newcomers for a reason. lol
I mean, she isn't the hardest character to play, but she isn't someone you can pick up in 2 months and do well with as opposed to most characters. IMO
She should probably rate around a 7/10 if you want my opinion.

 

[Nu~]

Every time ness gets a grab over 100%

http://youtu.be/5V65dtKOk2Y
Ness's back throw in a nutshell

Yea, with Ryu and Shulk set as the standard for 10/10, I don't see many characters touching 7 or 8

I can see Pac-Man making 10 with his insane learning curve. You literally have to relearn the definition of "nuetral game" because his stage control is just that weird/unique

 

[FullMoon]

I did say newcomers for a reason. lol
I mean, she isn't hardest character to play, but she isn't someone you can pick up in 2 months and do well with as opposed to most characters. IMO
She should probably rate around a 7/10 if you want my opinion.

I think 7 was what she got until the other Samus players started pestering him lol.

 

[san.]

How is Shulk difficult again? Ryu seems difficult in execution but not complexity to me, but I may be completely off. How does Ryu's decision making process work out?

Gunner is definitely up there, along with most of the other complex projectile characters. I like to think of "difficult" in terms of complexity since any character may require precise usage of any AT out there.

 

[FullMoon]

Since we went into this topic of difficulty to play, one of my friends sent me this some time ago (I don't even know if it originates from here lol) but I thought it was neat:

I don't really agree with all of this but it fits the current topic anyway.

 

[KenMeister]

How is Shulk difficult again? Ryu seems difficult in execution but not complexity to me, but I may be completely off. How does Ryu's decision making process work out?

Gunner is definitely up there, along with most of the other complex projectile characters. I like to think of "difficult" in terms of complexity since any character may require precise usage of any AT out there.

I think part of it his weird issues with shield, hence Ryu players need to optimize their gameplan a lot differently (and smarter) to apply safer pressure as opposed to other characters who just space an aerial on shield and get away with it. Also, the fact that he has more moves in his moveset than any other character (soft and heavy jab for example), so there's probably different strings, % specific combos, and punishment options they'll have more to work with just from the virtue of having a more expanded moveset alone. I don't play Ryu (so someone correct me if I'm wrong), but I'm hoping I struck the right idea.

Since we went into this topic of difficulty to play, one of my friends sent me this some time ago (I don't even know if it originates from here lol) but I thought it was neat:

I don't really agree with all of this but it fits the current topic anyway.

He left Doc out of the list. lol

 

[TriTails]

Since we went into this topic of difficulty to play, one of my friends sent me this some time ago (I don't even know if it originates from here lol) but I thought it was neat:

I don't really agree with all of this but it fits the current topic anyway.

Luigi in the bottom of the bottom.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

I ain't claiming that those bar graphs are the be-all and end-all of everything. It's just something that's for fun. I try to get input from mains of the characters before I make them though, so there's that.

She should probably rate around a 7/10 if you want my opinion.

That was Samus's original score but for some reason mains of <insert character here> think harassment will get them what they want.

It doesn't.

Since we went into this topic of difficulty to play, one of my friends sent me this some time ago (I don't even know if it originates from here lol) but I thought it was neat:

I don't really agree with all of this but it fits the current topic anyway.

Seems biased imo, characters like Palutena are not as easy as Bowser to play as (Bowser main here).

Ike and Diddy are not "easy to use" either.

But I mean, they got Luigi, Falcon, Ryu and Shulk right I guess.

 

[KenMeister]

I ain't claiming that those bar graphs are the be-all and end-all of everything. It's just something that's for fun. I try to get input from mains of the characters before I make them though, so there's that.

That was Samus's original score but for some reason mains of <insert character here> think harassment will get them what they want.

It doesn't.

Seems biased imo, characters like Palutena are not as easy as Bowser to play as (Bowser main here).

Ike and Diddy are not "easy to use" either.

But I mean, they got Luigi, Falcon, Ryu and Shulk right I guess.

I'm guessing the list was made before Diddy got his jank nerfed/removed. I guess difficulty curve can be subjective though, especially for characters who have initial stigmas but get better over time (Meta Knight for example), so we probably won't figure out where nearly every single character stands as far as learning curve goes until people get tired of Smash 4 or whenever the next game comes out.

 

[DunnoBro]

I think the extremes are about right, though it gets less agreeable around the middle.

 

[FullMoon]

I'm guessing the list was made before Diddy got his jank nerfed/removed. I guess difficulty curve can be subjective though, especially for characters who have initial stigmas but get better over time (Meta Knight for example), so we probably won't figure out where nearly every single character stands as far as learning curve goes until people get tired of Smash 4 or whenever the next game comes out.

If that was the case then Ryu, Lucas and Roy and maybe not even Mewtwo should've been there.

 

[KenMeister]

If that was the case then Ryu, Lucas and Roy and maybe not even Mewtwo should've been there.

Well, derp me then. lol
But yeah, Diddy actually seems pretty difficult to use now as opposed to what's shown in the chart, he's kinda where Brawl Diddy was in terms of knowing banana setups and mixups again.

Luigi in the bottom of the bottom.

You can't tell me you didn't at least see that coming. Even high level players like Xero and Zenyou tend to bring up how braindead the character is.

 

[DunnoBro]

I was questioning if luigi was actually not braindead so i decided to pay attention to boss vs feeltension in i think winners semis at xanadu

The moment I turn to the screen I see him roll and buffer 4 dash grabs until one works and does like 40% to feeltension

You can complain about his traction and neutral all you want, that character is braindead as ****

 

[SpottedCerberus]

Jeez. Why is everyone so mean to Luigi? Poor guy. His brother's easier and more well-rounded than him, but he's the one who everyone beats up on.

 

[TriTails]

You can't tell me you didn't at least see that coming. Even high level players like Xero and Zenyou tend to bring up how braindead the character is.

I would expect him to be low, but not the bottom of the friggin bottom.

I was questioning if luigi was actually not braindead so i decided to pay attention to boss vs feeltension in i think winners semis at xanadu

The moment I turn to the screen I see him roll and buffer 4 dash grabs until one works and does like 40% to feeltension

You can complain about his traction and neutral all you want, that character is braindead as ****

...Where? I see Winners Quarters and Finals.

Luigi's mobility is enough to get him outta the bottom tier alone. You can complain about his combos and Fireballs all you want. He gets zoned and camped as ****. Falcon at least has top tier dash grab and insane mobility. Luigi has nothing like that.

 

[Aunt Jemima]

Luigi has the 2nd best Perfect Pivot length, though. You can just zoom everywhere spamming fireballs and U-Tilt, lol.

 

[-RedX-]

Just make sure you guys don't confuse "hard to play as" with "hard to win with"...

 

[TriTails]

Luigi has the 2nd best Perfect Pivot length, though. You can just zoom everywhere spamming fireballs and U-Tilt, lol.

While this might be true, I don't think using something as 'non-existent margin of error' like PP is considered 'braindead'. Even so, Luigis haven't started to apply it to their games so IDK on how much it actually can impact his metagame.

 

[RedBeefBaron]

Diddy player here. Post nerfs, he is quite difficult compared to many of the characters I've played.

Luigi player as well. He is still basic as ****.

None of this has anything to do with viability though. Can I bump some koopa kid discussion? The common criticism is frame data, but his tilts and nair have great speed and range. Good stage control in neutral with mechas on top of his bizarre armored mobility. He has better kill potential than most seem to think with kart to hammer, up smash OOS, d smash and bair. He also has pretty impressive weight and recovery for his kit.

 

[TriTails]

You know. I would like some opinions on what people consider 'braindead'. Is it on how a character just easy to win as OR is it on how a character just get massive rewards off little risk?

People have been throwing this word around and I'm not even sure now. Like, EVERY character needs a brain to do well in competitive play.

 

[A_Kae]

Typically, I consider 'braindead' to mean that a character has high reward with low risk on their tools, which usually means they have a lot less thought behind what they're doing.

It's not meant literally, of course. It's just that some characters don't require as much thinking about what's going on.

 

[DunnoBro]

...Where? I see Winners Quarters and Finals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35shUq0m_kc

Right at the beginning of the match. Boss does 7 GRABS IN A ROW UNTIL ONE WORKS AND DOES 40%

Then three more.
Just buffering the **** out of them.

Luigi's mobility is enough to get him outta the bottom tier alone. You can complain about his combos and Fireballs all you want. He gets zoned and camped as ****. Falcon at least has top tier dash grab and insane mobility. Luigi has nothing like that.

Falcon has to actually get reads and bait air dodges to get kills though(or yolo raptor boost/smash which are much more punishable than grabs so they demand a lot more thought to weigh the risks). Yea, falcon is easier to control but having to control luigi is much easier than having to know how your opponent is controlling their character.

 

[RedBeefBaron]

You know. I would like some opinions on what people consider 'braindead'. Is it on how a character just easy to win as OR is it on how a character just get massive rewards off little risk?

People have been throwing this word around and I'm not even sure now. Like, EVERY character needs a brain to do well in competitive play.

Its complexity of the game plan on top of execution for me. Luigi wants to move in, get grabs, and do guaranteed damage in advantage. It's easy to understand what should be happening (application) and its easy to physically perform it (execution.)

Not to be putting you or any other Luigi players on blast, I play Luigi too and I feel that the weakness of playing a character with a basic game plan is that he gets countered by very basic strategies. So you have to be pretty creative and exceptional to make up for this at a high level most of the time.

Luigi does have to take risks because of how dead he is if he ever ends up off stage even with his massive reward.

 

[SpottedCerberus]

Why is Peach considered so hard to play? People always cite her as a character with a high learning curve, but I don't know much about her. What makes so difficult?

 

[Trifroze]

Falcon is also a very basic character but killing with him the way he's clearly meant to get kills essentially requires airdodge conditioning / reads and landing traps which I'd say are on another level compared to Luigi. Every character can do that but their movesets are rarely built around that like Falcon's. You could also argue that his disadvantage and recovery are so bad that using the character forces you to think about what you do more carefully.

 

[DunnoBro]

Honestly falcon's movement isn't really that easy to control either. I'd say he's on the other end of the spectrum of luigi. Much more consistent punish game but less reward. Ridiculous momentum and dash speed (which when utilized improperly leads to him losing neutral) Unlike sonic he doesn't get to cancel his dash with shield as quickly so he can run into a lot more.

He's overall an easy character but luigi is clearly easier simply because he always has a clear way to advance the gamestate. Falcon's are less obvious, since his boxing and ledgeplay are necessary for optimal results. Luigi only edgeguards in two ways, ledge drop bair for stage spikes, or semi spike cyclone.

 

[⑨ball]

Why is Peach considered so hard to play? People always cite her as a character with a high learning curve, but I don't know much about her. What makes so difficult?

Float cancels mainly.

If Smash 4 had button recording available in replays, Peach mains that utilize it heavily would probably be trippling the amount of button inputs in comparison to the rest of the cast.

 

[Yonder]

Luigi only edgeguards in two ways, ledge drop bair for stage spikes, or semi spike cyclone.

Or fastfall dair spikes for linear recoveries...[Falcon it works wonders on]

 

[TriTails]

Falcon has to actually get reads and bait air dodges to get kills though(or yolo raptor boost/smash which are much more punishable than grabs so they demand a lot more thought to weigh the risks). Yea, falcon is easier to control but having to control luigi is much easier than having to know how your opponent is controlling their character.

Technically, everyone need a read to KO off people. Like, you can kill people off a D-throw with a kill setup, but it also takes a read to actually land the grab. Alhough, I agree on how Falcon get KOs harder than Luigi.

Its complexity of the game plan on top of execution for me. Luigi wants to move in, get grabs, and do guaranteed damage in advantage. It's easy to understand what should be happening (application) and its easy to physically perform it (execution.)

Not to be putting you or any other Luigi players on blast, I play Luigi too and I feel that the weakness of playing a character with a basic game plan is that he gets countered by very basic strategies. So you have to be pretty creative and exceptional to make up for this at a high level most of the time.

Luigi does have to take risks because of how dead he is if he ever ends up off stage even with his massive reward.

This is what I meant. Luigi's typical strategy is very easily countered by other basic strategies. This forces Luigi to do stuffs other than just mindlessly spamming Fireballs and grabs that is very effective on low level players but stupid to do at high level.

IMO, this is what makes Luigi not as braindead as people would think. His options have counterpicks, and getting punished can mean terrible disadvantage as he has no good options landing to the stage and his recovery is so easily exploitable, so he has to take risks doing his stuffs. But this is my opinion so yeah.

Luigi only edgeguards in two ways, ledge drop bair for stage spikes, or semi spike cyclone.

This is false. There are tons of ways you can edgeguard with Luigi. Even if most of them don't guarantee kills, they are effective on pestering people off-stage or straight up murders weaker recoveries.
- F-air: Obvious. Can also stage-spike at lower percents.
- B-air: Also obvious. Stage-spikes much more consistently than F-air and also kills at reasonable percents [read: Early] but have much more risk due to end lag.
- D-air: Another obvious thing. Even if it doesn't spike it sends people at semi-spike angle.
- Fireballs: Messes with momentum, so they are effective on the likes of Falcon, Link, or LM. Even if they airdodge we can still hit them with F-air. Can also Flare Guard by bouncing them off walls.
- Rev. U-air: At higher percents this sends people at semi-spike angle. Kinda like Ganon's tipman but not as effective. If you're lucky you may even be able to chain with a B-air.
- Cyclone: Obvious, but very difficult to do. And also, it's not a semi-spike, I'd call it a soft spike because semi-spike is different thing entirely.
- Meaty N-air + things: Not guaranteed and situational, but 6% hit of N-air combos to everything and the meatier it is, the better.

And I don't believe if Luigi can't go deep. He in fact can go really really deep thanks to Cyclone. You just have to watch your DJ so it doesn't burn out because you do something silly.

 

[bc1910]

Greninja definitely got easier with the shuriken and Dthrow buff. Prepatch, his neutral was good but very complex and hinged on his mobility. It was almost pure bait + punish. Depending on how the baits and reads played out, you could absolutely murder someone one match and get slaughtered the next, because at the end of the day, reads are "educated" guesses. Also, Greninja had a lot of kill confirms and KO moves, but all of them were hard to land except high percent Uthrow.

Whereas now, his neutral revolves around shurikens forcing approaches and hence forcing reactions from players, unless they want to get spammed to death. This is not only a much safer way to play, but the forced reactions make people a lot easier to read and hence his punishes are less risky, and he can transition into his advantage state more easily (so, he has a better neutral). In terms of killing, having a new 50/50 kill setup from one of the best dashgrabs in the game speaks for itself. Shurikens forcing more approaches makes it easier to hit and kill with Greninja's existing kill moves, too. Greninja's still not an easy character but I don't think he's up there with the likes of Peach in terms of difficulty any more.

However, I'm perfectly fine with Greninja being easier as long as he's a) not totally braindead and b) a better character. And frankly, how braindead he is matters a lot less to me than how good he is. Does that make me a bad person? It's not tier whoring, I never dropped Greninja even when he wasn't that good; I just want my favourite character to be viable. I don't know what the general opinion of that is in this thread...

I would hope, as people who wish to compete and therefore win, that you share the same opinion as me. I'm not one of these people who doesn't care how good their main is as long as they take tons of skill. I want my main to be good. I saw a reddit thread (yes I know reddit is terrible) where everyone was sorta circlejerking the idea of "I'd rather my main be mid tier and skill-intensive than top tier and braindead" and I was like welp, I don't feel that way at all. I mean if you want your main to be unviable then cool I guess, but that's not a competitive mindset. Because however much skill my main takes, the most important thing for me is how viable they are.

 

[Trifroze]

I would hope, as people who wish to compete and therefore win, that you share the same opinion as me. I'm not one of these people who doesn't care how good their main is as long as they take tons of skill. I want my main to be good. I saw a reddit thread (yes I know reddit is terrible) where everyone was sorta circlejerking the idea of "I'd rather my main be mid tier and skill-intensive than top tier and braindead" and I was like welp, I don't feel that way at all. I mean if you want your main to be unviable then cool I guess, but that's not a competitive mindset. Because however much skill my main takes, the most important thing for me is how viable they are.

It's a pretty delicate line. I think everyone competitive wants their main to be as good as possible, while at the same time wanting them to not be too good compared to every other character, otherwise wins won't feel as rewarding and most importantly everyone else will use the same character. I'm confident in saying that this is the case for everyone who:

1) isn't playing purely for money, and I doubt anyone is in Smash (and even in general it would sound like a depressing scenario)
2) is competitive

Character pride is a thing but most will rather have general success in addition to that.

 

[DunnoBro]

Technically, everyone need a read to KO off people. Like, you can kill people off a D-throw with a kill setup, but it also takes a read to actually land the grab. Alhough, I agree on how Falcon get KOs harder than Luigi.

By that logic then all other grab set-up chars take two reads. One for the grab then one for the follow-up. Either way, luigi still is more guaranteed. (And he's also one of the easier characters to get grabs with)