Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

[PK Gaming]

Like I said, I wanted to "chime in real quick" because I was/am busy. If you're interested in something specifically I can elaborate. But I'm not about to write 10+ MU descriptions.

Whenever you have the time, I'd definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts on his/her matchups against some of the top tiers.

 

[MistressRemilia]

Can anyone translate what Abadango said about the C Tier?

 

[Jucchan]

Can anyone translate what Abadango said about the C Tier?

C tier and below:

It's not like they that can't beat characters of higher tiers. They are certainly getting stronger due to buffs over the versions. However, the weakness of their neutral is unchanged, and hard machups are still hard machups. [Sakurai,] Instead of giving them increased damage on moves, please give them stuff like moves that can be used in the neutral and combo throws.

 

[Shaya]

Probably late now but posting it anyway:
Roy's developed a little since then.
Marth was better pre-patch, but that's understandable as he had 7+ months (and years of Brawl) of development over him.
Roy's aerials aren't really that safe. There is only one applicable timing for neutral air, so it is power shield fodder. Full hop fairs are pretty good and his ability to string moves together is better than we gave credit for; his jab into fair is scary and all he really needs.

With developments in mind, Marth may have still edged him out because of better abilities at handling top characters (Marth can body Rosalina, while Roy has many more issues, to name one). Buff came in and Marth is suddenly looking tastier too. However, power level wise, Roy is tuned higher than Marth is (damage values/mobility specs mostly) and comes with his grab game. His early game has grabs which gives him solid reliable things, his mid game is somewhat iffy as grabs stop producing real follow ups, but then shortly afterwards he can play a grounded game of jab, down tilt and [still] grab with a lot of potency. Is it any better than what Marth can do at that stage? Not sure.

Oh and Marth's off stage game is average/bad so it doesn't matter he has that over Roy?
If you maintain that position I don't know if it's worth arguing with you, you don't know enough about both character's tool sets.
Marth's abilities/tools "in the air" are trivially worse than Brawl. He was the second best off stage edge guarder in that game, in some match ups better than Meta Knight (and was the only character who would go off stage against MK because he COULD).
So I'm not sure how arcing, FAST and larger range/disjoint than Brawl on aerials that can kill tippered with a stronger vertical recovery and more appropriate fall speed isn't effective and doesn't differentiate Roy/Marth's capabilities (in this area) noticeably.

 

[LancerStaff]

The DLC hype was in my head however when I decided to co-main him with Marth (to cover more MUs which Roy turned out to be incapable of doing LMAO). That didn't last long at all after I sat down and thought about Roy's disadvantages. I knew it would suck against the competent players in tourney. Also, apparently as a Roy/Marth you can't have Marth/Roy (Lucina too) as a secondary because it really messes with you. After dissecting Roy for a whole day my Marth was trash for two whole days.

I was thinking about picking him up too, but I had Pit's data to comb through (there weren't any changes, durr) and I had decided to take a wait-and-see approach before really getting into it. Can't say I was impressed when I did... I can imagine what you missed from Marth, but what really hit me was how limited and telegraphed his options out of dash are. Pit can do almost anything out of a dash, while Roy just has empty SH to whatever and pray. Like, it drove me up a wall to play what's supposed to be a speedster who can't do anything out of a dash.

If I had to compare them, Pit is a tidy set of tools that neatly covers every situation. Roy is more like a heap of powerful tools with big gaps and redundancies.

 

[Greward]

I think it looks so bad partially because his other aerials are so great. But there is rarely a sitaution where it is even an option, let alone the best option. Dairs in this game are mediocre on the whole, so it's not a huge loss for Ness. Isn't it disjointed at least?

Toon Link's dair is pretty booty. But sometimes you can get cheesy kills at ledge with it at least. Bowser has a pretty bad one as well. It gets beaten by so much, it's rarely worth the risk. Ness can get spikes with his, but why risk going offstage when you can shoot a PK Thunder or two? No commitment, no risk. Could lead to a stage spike.

It's not a huge loss for Ness, but his spike is still bad. It's slow and has tons of lag, even for a dair. Other frame 20 dairs (ROB, WiiFit, Gunner) are better, usually having less lag or being just stronger / better hitbox. Sourspot is pretty crappy too. Gunner's might be worse but I don't really know.
It's not like Ness would be offstage to spike people anyways, but the move itself is bad.

Bowser dair is actually used. TL dair may sometimes work against juggling and is his best option against ledge regrab. Ness dair is like used once every 30 matches or so and I'm being generous. If Ness had TL or Bowser's dair, he would be a better character definitely.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Probably late now but posting it anyway:
Roy's developed a little since then.
Marth was better pre-patch, but that's understandable as he had 7+ months (and years of Brawl) of development over him.
Roy's aerials aren't really that safe. There is only one applicable timing for neutral air, so it is power shield fodder. Full hop fairs are pretty good and his ability to string moves together is better than we gave credit for; his jab into fair is scary and all he really needs.

With developments in mind, Marth may have still edged him out because of better abilities at handling top characters (Marth can body Rosalina, while Roy has many more issues, to name one). Buff came in and Marth is suddenly looking tastier too. However, power level wise, Roy is tuned higher than Marth is (damage values/mobility specs mostly) and comes with his grab game. His early game has grabs which gives him solid reliable things, his mid game is somewhat iffy as grabs stop producing real follow ups, but then shortly afterwards he can play a grounded game of jab, down tilt and [still] grab with a lot of potency. Is it any better than what Marth can do at that stage? Not sure.

Oh and Marth's off stage game is average/bad so it doesn't matter he has that over Roy?
Okay, if you maintain that position I don't think it's worth arguing with you about anything. You don't know enough about the characters to comment.
Marth's abilities/tools "in the air" are trivially worse than Brawl. He was the second best off stage edge guarder in that game, in some match ups better than Meta Knight (and was the only character who would go off stage against MK because he COULD).
So I'm not sure how arcing, FAST and larger range/disjoint than Brawl on aerials that can kill tippered isn't effective and doesn't differentiate Roy/Marth's capabilities noticeably.

I can't agree with you on that. I think Wario had the 2nd best edgeguard in the game. He had the ability to go super deep had bike bite and waft at his disposal. Recovering against Wario was very very difficult.

 

[Shaya]

If my experience with tournament level Warios mean anything (i.e. my local rival for the entirety of it's history + internationals), bike wheel items and a waft charge were essential for applying pressure to people recovering; for this reason most Wario players would keep to edge guarding on stage instead as a 10 frameish super armor fsmash, the largest low to the ground standard grab after Dedede and the likes of his ftilt were insane for covering nearly all options. He could harass average vertical recovery characters like falco, snake and olimar disgustingly, but so did everyone else. Bite is good against some vertical recoveries but doesn't work if people are angling their recoveries properly (Marth being one of the recoveries Wario would actually attempt to bite-gimp bad players with). Nothing of Wario's non-batman prep time tools really matches to the likes of Pikachu, Marth and Meta Knight in that game.

Wario was definitely one of the best at keeping people on the ledge though. Marth and Wario were at the least better than MK in this regard.

 

[Vipermoon]

And to the other responses, instead of posting silly images or accusing me of lying, how about you explain why his ledge guarding is so great in this game? Because I'm not seeing it even compare to stuff like Sheik or Rosa etc, or being that hard to avoid at all to be honest. Instead of cherrypicking the only parts of my posts that you have an issue with how about discuss it?

Picture in your head a character with slightly above average fall speed, air speed, and aerial acceleration. Picture that his Fair and Bair are come out very fast, are DISJOINTED, can do great knockback, arc, and have low cool-down. Picture that his disjointed, transcendent priority, 70 base knockback, invincible from frames 1-6, frame 5, immediate ledge snap special move gimping your butt. If you aren't dead yet, picture him dropping from the ledge and up B'ing repeatedly until you are in a game where ledge hogging doesn't exist. Picture those arcing, disjointed aerials carrying you off-stage from an Utilt, Fthrow, or landing Nair. Picture him not having a problem sending you off-stage with a back throw off a grab with good range throwing you off-stage with horizontal knockback or a guaranteed 4 hit combo we'll call Dancing Blade. Picture air dodge traps into gimping sakurai angle aerials and that 70 base knockback move we'll call Dolphin Slash. Picture a fast counter countering your hitboxed recovery move with 90 (!!!) base knockback sending you back into the abyss. Picture that counter slowing down the character's fall speed so he stays in your recovery path and doesn't SD. Picture something called Tipper Fsmash (80 base KB) slicing your fingers off after you grab the ledge a second time.

Again to be specific, when I said Marths move were slow I was referring to the situation of being offstage. He's not overly oppressive.

How are Marth's moves slow in an offstage situation? DS is light speed and again, invincible. And this is the character that can kill you for trying to edgeguard him with those fast, disjointed, arcing aerials.

----------------------------

In all seriousness, I've done many Marth things off-stage that I'm sure almost every Marth can say they did. Bair to Fair to Fair to Fair to death. Fair to Fair to Fair to death. Fair to their Air dodge to Dolphin Slash. Simple drop down Dolphin Slash. 10 counters until Donkey Kong dies. One counter until Ness dies. Air dodge and then double jump Bair their edgeguard attempt for the kill. Guaranteed Bair after ledge trump. He has a decent double jump Dair from the ledge. A bunch of things that aren't hard at all.

Marth has some of the best edgeguards in the game. In every Smash game he's in actually. And I can tell because when I challenge Sheik, Pikachu, Kirby, Wii Fit Trainer, Jigglypuff, and Meta Knight off-stage and usually come out alive there is no doubt you main an edgeguard machine. Not saying you're safe against those characters off-stage. A competent version of any of those guys are scary and Marth is gimpable if you play the correct mindgames. No, you have to be safe, smart, alert with your fingers resting on , and with your double jump SAVED.

I can't stand it when I watch Marth players stay on stage against a character he is superior against off-stage. Actually, more players of any characters need to step up their edge game. The future of Smash 4 matches will have a lot more off-stage in them.

 

[Sinister Slush]

I'm kinda glad abadango knows one of the many weaknesses for Yoshi.
Shielding counters almost everything in Yoshi's kit.

People bring up dair? It destroys almost entire shield and eventually shield pokes for 2-5%, woooow
DownB? If they're bad to shield both hits than they deserve to get their shield broken even though it does only 39% on a 50% shield, do the thing that's fantastic for everyone not named samus or Yoshi, roll away lol

 

[DanGR]

^Not even 2-5% on dair. You can just spotdodge before the dair shield pokes and get a free punish.

 

[Shaya]

Dair is alright, but it isn't a win button. A fast fall dair when you aren't in a position to reactively shield does tend to work and is a lot of damage.
People who are prone to jump out of shield as a habit will be destroyed for it. I think in times where being punished from a neutral opponent isn't a factor, it's pretty worthwhile to go for.

I think Yoshi is still a mixed bag of opinions of either being the sleeper-amazing character that has "no top level players" or overtuned buttons but not a completely coherent kit. I think there is enough versatility from an outsider's perspective to believe he can still rapidly change the way he is played
Now, I get to hear "no top level players imagine if" quite a bit, so I'm pretty happy to see a player "put their money where their mouth is" and assures us we'll be seeing more of it in the future. ESAM will either be the goat or prove Yoshi isn't the goat; for anyone not particularly Yoshi-afflicted it's WIN/WIN.

If only someone had the balls to pick up Lucario now because I'm sick of having to be [more] quiet [than usual] about me thinking he's average/low tier.

 

[bc1910]

Abadango is right about Greninja's crappy OoS game. He can anti-air people well with up angled Ftilt now though. Plus a bunch of other more read based tools like Usmash.

In terms of hitting people in front of him when both characters are in the air I guess that's a weakness but it only really applies in disadvantage. In neutral or advantage he can just face the other way and use his 5 frame Bair. Not as convenient but not a crippling weakness.

Of course, Sakurai could just buff our standing grab and we'd be amazing balanced. Come on Mr Sakurai we need it, the frog is clearly still a shadow of his prepatch self!

@ Shaya Blasphemy!

No but I get where you're coming from because many of Lucario's moves are just bad, to be blunt. But aura is just stupid. You make one mistake against this character after hammering him for the whole match and you could die at 40. And eventually, if the Lucario is good, he'll get a read off. It happens. Lucario is definitely inconsistent so he'll never be a top contender in my eyes but as a character who has a pretty reasonable chance against everyone, including the best character in the game and her top tier brethren, he can't not be a high tier. Even if it is for BS reasons.

 

[Sir Tundra]

isn't yoshi's neutral b a thing?

I mean I wouldn't say it's a direct answer for shields due to it's startup but it does look like a nice mixup tool seeing how it's a command grab and all

 

[Sinister Slush]

^Not even 2-5% on dair. You can just spotdodge before the dair shield pokes and get a free punish.

That too, can avoid half the hits prolly from spotdodge alone before it has the chance to hit you.
Or.
Usmash Fsmash or anything before his rising dair he's starting up offstage gets to you lol

Now, I get to hear "no top level players imagine if" quite a bit, so I'm pretty happy to see a player "put their money where their mouth is" and assures us we'll be seeing more of it in the future. ESAM will either be the goat or prove Yoshi isn't the goat; for anyone not particularly Yoshi-afflicted it's WIN/WIN.

Frankly I'm glad ESAM is gonna toy around with Yoshi, once he fails most likely people will realize he isn't that good and hopefully will stop referencing Sky as a top Yoshi player already.

isn't yoshi's neutral b a thing?

I mean I wouldn't say it's a direct answer for shields due to it's startup but it does look like a nice mixup tool seeing how it's a command grab and all

Yeah but easy to bait out or even simply spotdodge instead of sit in shield. Even if the Yoshi is trying to mix it up with neutral B, they can mix it up and bait him into using it

 

[Minordeth]

Whenever you have the time, I'd definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts on his/her matchups against some of the top tiers.

I second this. I'm no Robin main, but I played her more often in 2014, well before the recent buffs, and now picking her up again is bizarre. All of her spells are useful now, probably more so than Thoron. Arcthunder especially is such a beast spell. Being able to Arcthunder > Nosferatu, or Arcthunder > Dthrow > Follow up is ridiculous. The Dthrow buff is actually fairly significant, especially given wind jabs absurd damage output.

Too bad about her silly mobility, but given the spell and throw buffs, Robin actually feels more in line with her intended design as a tactician, rather than a heavyweight with projectiles.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Wario's Down-Air hits seven times, and the first six hits have two hitboxes that send opponents up and down between each other before the final hit.

If both hitboxes overlap at the same time, the downward-hitting one has priority. This often happens if you're falling while an opponent rises with an attack, and when your attack trades in such a manner, the opponent can effectively be meteored. As the linking hits have fixed knockback, the opponent's percent is irrelevant, and like all knockback-inducing attacks, the downward force is increased by Rage.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

On the subject of Mr. G&W [ @ Illuminose ]: He may have a manageable matchup against Sheik but Fox, Yoshi, ZSS and Rosalina are hell for him. Sonic is also very, very hard. For G&W to do well in tournament he has to be lucky enough to face none of these characters in bracket. Calling him viable without qualification is a bit misleading. He's definitely not the trash tier character that a lot of people used to see in him but he still depends on bracket luck quite a bit. Less so than a bunch of other character but enough to make the claim that he's 'viable' a questionable one.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

On the subject of Mr. G&W [ @ Illuminose ]: He may have a manageable matchup against Sheik but Fox, Yoshi, ZSS and Rosalina are hell for him. Sonic is also very, very hard. For G&W to do well in tournament he has to be lucky enough to face none of these characters in bracket. Calling him viable without qualification is a bit misleading. He's definitely not the trash tier character that a lot of people used to see in him but he still depends on bracket luck quite a bit. Less so than a bunch of other character but enough to make the claim that he's 'viable' a questionable one.

The rosalina MU is way to bad for him to be viable. The MU seems like even if the Rosalina is worse and doesn't know the MU she can win it. But yeah bracket dodging is like 25% of my strategy. I just hope I don't run into any of my poor MUs.

 

[juddy96]

We're a little too late for that though since the 300 player national is next month and registration is closed :/ I'm sure they would let American players in the bracket if they asked but we would need to get the funds very quickly and it would a bit of a short notice. It might be worth a shot though since I can't imagine a tournament of this caliber happening in Japan for another half-year, maybe longer.

Ayuha confirmed to me via twitter that there would likely be cancels anyway and that allowing a top foreign player to enter is possible.

 

[SpottedCerberus]

Ness' dair is one of the worst dairs in the game, if not the worst. Gunner's also looks pretty bad.

What makes it so bad? It's his worst aerial, and it's not good, but that seems really excessive.

 

[TriTails]

The nerf to fireball makes him struggle in the neutral.

Oh cool. Imma just let Japanese think that Luigi is much weaker than pre-patch (Fact: He isn't) so I can get my old D-tilt back.

What makes it so bad? It's his worst aerial, and it's not good, but that seems really excessive.

From what I know it takes a year for startup (20 frames). And the meteor hitbox is pretty small(?), 3.9u of size, after being buffed. I don't think I have ever being meteored by a Ness unless they are from the 3DS times when my skills are too scrubby to be true.

Come on Mr Sakurai we need it, the frog is clearly still a shadow of his prepatch self!

By this logic, Sheik needs her 1.0.0 needles end lag and U-air .

 

[Jabejazz]

What makes it so bad? It's his worst aerial, and it's not good, but that seems really excessive.

It's slightly slower than most popular Spike Dairs (Frame 20 as opposed to 16-18, DK's is even faster I think), and have a smaller hitbox than most. That being said, claiming it's the worst means you don't know about TripleD's. What a ****ing trainwreck of a move.

I'm kidding.

I was looking for a particular post, and I came across this. Ashamed to say I just got the joke.

 

[Ikes]

Wew, I wish I could get some notification when I'm blocked/banned from a thread

anyways, Anyone got opinions on Diddy? is he still top?

 

[Routa]

Anyone got opinions on Diddy? is he still top?

Diddy is still very very stronk. I simply dunno what to say about him... Great grab game, great neutral, great combo game, very nice MU spread etc. If I had to compare him to other character I would compare him to Mario. He is like Mario, but with greater neutral and grab game, but with worse recovery and edgeguarding. So top tier? If top tier means being in top 10 then yes.

 

[wm1026]

I feel like a lot of posts in this thread are people reiterating themselves over and over and the top tiers have been discussed to death here which there isn't anything wrong with that because they are the most relevant tbh. Then you have few wild statements thrown in here and there, so just for a change of a pace lets talk about a character I see no one talk about like I feel they should be. So what's the deal with Jr. And the koopalings? I mean his kit isn't bad and I see him as more of a bait and punish character with traps as well as disjoints. Now the only real representative most people know is tweek. Tweek has been getting good results and should have placed better at Evo. Now while I am not taking anything away from Tweek as a player the character he plays can't be to bad to place as well as he does. So the big question is why aren't more people playing them?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Tweek...should have placed better at Evo.

But he didn't, so he shouldn't have. Losses are losses. Guess he wasn't good/lucky enough.

 

[LightLV]

Wew, I wish I could get some notification when I'm blocked/banned from a thread

anyways, Anyone got opinions on Diddy? is he still top?

Same as before, only less stupid. Fighting Diddy doesn't seem all that different...he's just a bit more fair now. And of course, we're talking top tier in smash, and so "fair" is subjective.

Instead of Dthrow to [whatever] and [dead], it's upthrow to [most likely] [whatever] and [most likely dead]. Not that much different IMO.

 

[Planty]

I want to talk about recovering. To be more precise, edgeguarding. Why don't we see more people edgeguarding? What I'm gonna write here may seem weird but just hear it out: From a defensive standpoint(recovering after you're launched), Little mac and Captain Falcon have an equal recovery.

We all know how to fight Mac right? Throw him off stage and get a gimp from there for early kills. Not too hard right? So why don't we do that for Falcon? It's really easy to edgeguard him. If he up-b's high or side-b's to the ledge, use D-smash to knock him away. If he up-b's to the ledge, drop down and Dair him or something. Falcon is dead. Why aren't we seeing more of this?

And it's not just Falcon either. There's also Olimar. His winged pikmin have a stamina system like ROB. Just keep knocking him away and he'll die eventually. Or Villager for that matter. Or ganondorf. Or Wii Fit trainer. Or Fox. Or Falco. Or ANY character with a vertical focused up-b (Marth, Lucina, Shulk, Sonic, megaman, Roy, etc.) Can all die from one hit offstage. Why are we not seeing more aggressive edgeguards? We're already so aggressive against Mac because we KNOW that we can get easy gimps. All the characters mention here are just as bad as Mac at recovering. They're predictable, without a hitbox (or at least a good hitbox) and they're easy to gimp. When will people start realizing this? Why aren't more characters getting the Little Mac treatment?

 

[Illuminose]

On the subject of Mr. G&W [ @ Illuminose ]: He may have a manageable matchup against Sheik but Fox, Yoshi, ZSS and Rosalina are hell for him. Sonic is also very, very hard. For G&W to do well in tournament he has to be lucky enough to face none of these characters in bracket. Calling him viable without qualification is a bit misleading. He's definitely not the trash tier character that a lot of people used to see in him but he still depends on bracket luck quite a bit. Less so than a bunch of other character but enough to make the claim that he's 'viable' a questionable one.

How is ZSS hell for G&W? G&W can crouch under, like, literally everything ZSS does including her grab, jab, nair, dash attack, paralyzer, and zair. If anything, this is one of G&W's better top tier matchups.

Why is Fox so unwinnable? I can see the matchup being a pain because G&W is light, but there has to be some merit to G&W's edgeguarding on Fox as well as his devastating combo game on fast fallers in general.

Can definitely see Sonic, can kinda see Yoshi...but the others less so.

The rosalina MU is way to bad for him to be viable. The MU seems like even if the Rosalina is worse and doesn't know the MU she can win it. But yeah bracket dodging is like 25% of my strategy. I just hope I don't run into any of my poor MUs.

How is the matchup vs Rosalina that bad? I'm legitimately curious -- I'm aware that G&W is at a disadvantage, but why is it an impossible one? G&W can crouch the jab so Rosa can't just necessarily do a wall of Luma jabs and get anything done, can also use back airs to rectify the Luma issue. Can also crouch the grab. You can also trap landing situations (like if Rosa tries a landing fair) with G&W's up smash super armor. dthrow -> up air kills pretty early because Rosa is light.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Falcon has one of the highest overall air speeds in the game. Tied for 12th in horizontal top speed, one of the best in drift speed, tied for 4th in vertical speed. Going underneath him risks getting spiked and dying at 35% by more than one move with vastly different timings, his U-Air is fast, safe, and pretty disjointed, and his Up-B deals 17% and is bigger than the vast majority of hitboxes, since it is the same size as it was in Brawl:

Basically, he can remain pretty well-protected and has a lot of options for air speed that make him unpredictable enough to get to the ledge without too much trouble in most cases. If you don't guess correctly against Falcon, he makes you pay for it, so it's pretty daunting.

 

[Planty]

@ TheReflexWonder

I don't think you get what I'm saying. You sit at the ledge. If he up-b's high or side-b's, then you just D-smash him there and he's most likely dead. I he goes into the drop zone and goes for an up-b, just hit him out of it with Dair or something. It has no hitbox. He's very easy to edgeguard and given enough practice, I could honestly see about a 95% edgeguard success rate vs him. Maybe higher. He's just so predictable.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

The ledge snap distance on Falcon's specials is actually pretty big. Not everyone has Little Mac D-Smash coverage, and he can vary when he starts Up-B significantly, because he can sweetspot it anywhere between halfway up or all the way up. It's just enough to make getting him most certainly unreliable if you don't have something huge like Rosalina D-Air.

 

[Asdioh]

That reminds me, we should totally have something similar to this for some characters in smash 4, if that's possible.
(I really just want to see how absurd Sheik's Needles look on a heatmap chart like this)

 

[NachoOfCheese]

I want to talk about recovering. To be more precise, edgeguarding. Why don't we see more people edgeguarding? What I'm gonna write here may seem weird but just hear it out: From a defensive standpoint(recovering after you're launched), Little mac and Captain Falcon have an equal recovery.

We all know how to fight Mac right? Throw him off stage and get a gimp from there for early kills. Not too hard right? So why don't we do that for Falcon? It's really easy to edgeguard him. If he up-b's high or side-b's to the ledge, use D-smash to knock him away. If he up-b's to the ledge, drop down and Dair him or something. Falcon is dead. Why aren't we seeing more of this?

And it's not just Falcon either. There's also Olimar. His winged pikmin have a stamina system like ROB. Just keep knocking him away and he'll die eventually. Or Villager for that matter. Or ganondorf. Or Wii Fit trainer. Or Fox. Or Falco. Or ANY character with a vertical focused up-b (Marth, Lucina, Shulk, Sonic, megaman, Roy, etc.) Can all die from one hit offstage. Why are we not seeing more aggressive edgeguards? We're already so aggressive against Mac because we KNOW that we can get easy gimps. All the characters mention here are just as bad as Mac at recovering. They're predictable, without a hitbox (or at least a good hitbox) and they're easy to gimp. When will people start realizing this? Why aren't more characters getting the Little Mac treatment?

Little Mac's recovery is objectively worse than everyone else's by a large margin. Like a huge margin. Thats why.

 

[Blobface]

Edgeguarding isn't that simple. There's a lot of things characters with sub-par recoveries can do to mix people up. You still have all your options open to you, DJ, Aerial, Airdodge, and just that alone makes edgeguarding pretty difficult, and there's plenty of other stuff to look out for (DJ air dodge is the TRUTH).

I completely agree people need to edgeguard more though. Watching people fight Luigi is a painful experience. He just slooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly side-B's over to the stage while people wait by the ledge to try and hit the 1/60 frame ledge vulnerability. It's starting to improve now though as players start to take more risks in general.

 

[S_B]

Instead of giving them increased damage on moves, please give them stuff like moves that can be used in the neutral and combo throws.

Agreed 1,000%.

Thankfully, it seems like Sakurai (or the Namco team, whoever is actually doing the balancing) is figuring out that throw followups are a great way to give characters better options in competitive play without overpowering them in casual play (ie Robin, Zard).

I love seeing heavyweight characters in tournaments. Most heavies have decent to amazing grab games (Bowser's pivot grab is nuts, for example) and giving them more options out of throws is the most logical way of making them stronger in ways that casual players won't take advantage of.

 

[Planty]

Edgeguarding isn't that simple. There's a lot of things characters with sub-par recoveries can do to mix people up. You still have all your options open to you, DJ, Aerial, Airdodge, and just that alone makes edgeguarding pretty difficult, and there's plenty of other stuff to look out for (DJ air dodge is the TRUTH).

I completely agree people need to edgeguard more though. Watching people fight Luigi is a painful experience. He just slooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly side-B's over to the stage while people wait by the ledge to try and hit the 1/60 frame ledge vulnerability. It's starting to improve now though as players start to take more risks in general.

Against characters with poor recoveries, you don't need to go all out to edgeguard. It's super easy to just WAIT for them to initiate their up-b or whatever and hit them out of it. And since I'm replying to a Ganon main, I hate watching peopel fight him. When you throw him offstage, it's so easy to just run off and hit him out of his up-b for easy kills. And there's absolutely NOTHING Ganondorf could do to counter this.

It doesn't matter if your up-b goes higher than Little Mac's. If it's still a terrible recovery, you're at a risk at being edgeguarded hard by a player that knows how to edgeguard that character (I.E. I literally have about a 98% success rate at edgeguarding Ganonondorf. It's just SOOOO easy.)

So @ NachoOfCheese
Sure Little mac's recovery doesn't cover as much distance and it's easy to get early gimps on him, but the same holds true for a large majority of the cast. If they get hit out of their up-b, very few characters can come back to the stage, because they will have likely burned their DJ. Once you start getting comfortable offstage, you realise that Ganon, Falcon, Megaman, and Little Mac are all equally easy to edgeguard. Certain other characters with slow, linear recoveries (Olimar, Villager, etc.) require a few more hits to kill offstage, but it's not hard in the slightest. Once they initiate their up-b, they become sitting ducks. And that's not even touching the rest of the cast who have vertical up-bs.

 

[Blobface]

Ganon's recovery is just fine as long as you save your Double Jump. DJ airdodge is good for your heart.

Furthermore there's no reason they must up B to recover. Since a vast majority of attacks hit at a 45 degree angle or higher, they can just drift back towards the stage without ever having to use their recovery. Even at higher %'s, you have enough time to vary your recovery to avoid edgeguarding attempts.

 

[hypersonicJD]

New Zero Video. What do you think about it guys?