Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

[NachoOfCheese]

For the record, the music discussion is technically my fault. Oops.

Anyway, something that I'd like to see talked about are "resets" where rather than going for an attack that would put the opponent away from you (usually guaranteed) you use an attack that takes them back to the ground (usually not guaranteed) to extend the combo further than it would go otherwise. A good example of this is Zero Vs Mr R at Evo, where you can see Zero go for a D-air a lot even when U-air would be guaranteed. Almost every single character can take advantage of this, so I'm really curious about what people think of it.

It's kind of hard for me to give much input on this because my main doesn't have too many true combos to begin with, most of the low %s already keep people close to the ground (D-throw U-air), and most of the higher % guaranteed ones (D-air to U-air, U-smash to U-air) put people offstage which is almost always better anyway. Most importantly though, him putting you up too high to follow up and not killing you is pretty rare.

The Kong has Cargo Uthrow to Dair that can do that on fast fallers, Diddy has Dthrow Dair, Lucas has Dthrow Dair...
Yeah it's a thing. After you get the Dair its usually a matter of figuring out what the opponent is going to do after that. Most people would rather take the free damage but hey resetting to the ground gets you more style points.

 

[RayNoire]

The whole soundtrack is bad. There.

Any thoughts about Robin's placement given how not-unimpressive Dath @ VSGC has been doing recently? (Watch two sets in a row, the second one very close.)

Still has a godawful grab, still has bad mobility, still has bad recovery, still has awful grounded normals. I don't know who he beats now that he didn't before (so Shulk, Mewtwo, and heavies?)

But good on Dath for being a low-tier hero. We need more of those.

 

[Shaya]

@ Ffamran It's crazy how much Falco got gutted and had his best tools given to Fox... all because Sakurai ****ed up and gave that character a chain grab and double auto cancelling lasers in a short hop.
Like Fox has his jab, dash attack and laser specs, the better illusion/phantasm... on what's a significantly faster character with better recovery/etc too.

Jab1-2 into Jab1 again is probably his best bet for jab shenanigans, but any character with a 5 frame or less attack/aerial is likely going to punish you every time without thinking.


Still, Falco is not "bad" right now. But yeah... those 3-4 moves given back/"shared" to Falco again and welcome to high tier+ Falco. I mean, mainly dash attack would be the big thing, but jab + dash attack would definitely push him into having close to the best set of normals in the game and a super godlike midrange and close range boost.
Honestly what's truly holding Falco back in a lot of high tier match ups is his jab being punishable on hit. Luigi/Mario/Ness near unwinnable because he's relegated to ftilt/dtilt poking on the ground and not having a good out of shield punish anymore, legitimately just because those characters can hold the A button in anticipation/reaction of being hit and get like 2-3x the reward Falco would've gotten if his jab actually went through.

It screams Brawl low-tier attribute. Many characters were just bad primarily because some of their moves were dysfunctional. Meta Knight's 3 frame 18% nair should say it all.
But given what we're seeing in this patch cycle there is a likelihood it'll be fixed...

If Falco gets ignored next patch I'll be worried, I still feel/assume we're looking at over a third of the cast being given one on, one off attention for patches. If they fixed Fox' jab, I'm seeing it happening with Falco too. Dash attack/laser/side-b is hopeful though.

 

[SpottedCerberus]

I gotta say, i kind of agree with Ness's placement in Japan, even through i'd place him a bit higher.
You see, in a nutshell, Ness is the defensive character who can punish you very well with , has one of the best out of shield in the game & the best killthrow of the game. And that's about it really, everything else about Ness is just not that good,

Best set of aerials in the game? (Only d-air isn't incredible.) One of the best grab rewards?

 

[Macedonian]

Samus's jab would be good if it had less end lag and that's saying something when it's on the spectrum of low end lag for a jab 1. Yeah... The major issue is its knockback which all right, it's like a jab, a real jab where boxers would poke, measure space, and put a hit out to get a reaction. Why is it bad in Smash 4, but not Melee or Brawl? Smash 4 is a different game, so why not fix it? It's problematic even with its intent of being a jab. Lower the end lag to something like Samus can act at frame 15 instead of frame 18. For reference, Fox's jab 1 lets him act at frame 18 and Link's used to let him act at frame 17 or 18. Wow, right? Wow, when theirs work because theirs have actual knockback unlike Samus's pitiful 3%, 8 base knockback, and 80 or 100 knockback growth.

Oh, and to make it worse, Little Mac's frame 1 jab 1 and frame 1 jab 2 both don't let him act until 22, but Little Mac can double jab to Dtilt just fine.

Starting here, welcome to your daily Falco rant. You will waste time starting... now.

Then there's Falco jab... People complained, I looked into it, and it's just gross. From Brawl to Smash 4, he gained 5 frames of end lag to his jab 1, 7 to his jab 2, and his rapid jab from checking Brawl and Smash 4, stutters a bit. Falco winds up like he does with Dair and Fair before his rapid jab registers as a hit - it looks like about 2-4 frames before he hits in Smash 4 compared to Brawl. Do you know what that leads to? That leads to what wasn't a true combo in Brawl into a untrue combo that if you so much as hesitate, a Luigi can grab you. That's death at like 80% and anywhere from a dropped combo to 40%. Why? What the hell was wrong with his rapid jab in Brawl that it needs to transition even worse in Smash 4? Also, bear in mind, they reduced the transition frames from 9 to 8 in patch 1.0.8 for Falco. Yeah, that 1 frame was very nice when his Falco Phantasm is 1 frame slower in startup in patch 1.0.8. What? Did you just take a frame and put it randomly somewhere else?

Falco was able to act at frame 16 for jab 1 and frame 18 for jab 2. In Smash 4, he can't act until frame 23 for jab 1 and 26 for jab 2. For his jab 1 to jab 2, it doesn't matter; his Brawl and Smash 4 jab 1 to jab 2 match up, but not his rapid jab. That kind of end lag leads to this. Assuming the same damage, knockback, and on Mario:

Move|On shield|Shield Drop|On-hit (0%)
Brawl jab 1|-12|-5|+3
Brawl jab 2|-15|-8|-1
Smash 4 jab 1|-19|-12|-4
Smash 4 jab 2|-22|-15|-8

In Brawl, Luigi was able to Nair Falco if he button-mashed while hit in mid-air and moved himself to the edge of Falco's rapid jab. In Smash 4, it can happen even if Luigi's on the ground since Falco's jab lifts people slightly up more. Falco's rapid jab isn't like other rapid jabs since he leans his entire body in while Fox, Kirby, Captain Falcon, and Little Mac just hit with their arms or legs. Then you have the Pits, Palutena, and Robin who rapid jab with disjoints. You can as Jigglypuff, DI into Falco so you're out of his rapid jab and into his body to Rest punish him. Or as Mario, Dr. Mario, Sheik, Luigi, and Sheik, Nair him if he decides to jab mixup. Marth, Lucina, Mario, and Dr. Mario can just Up Special him. Luigi's ability to punish his jab mixup is hilariously not funny. You decide to jab mixup, you're at 100%, and Luigi can kill you with a clean Nair because you picked an option Fox, Sheik, Triple D, Captain Falcon, Ike, Charizard, Kirby, Little Mac, DK, Marth, Ryu, Yoshi, Mario, and Luigi all do. Not only that, but if you hesitate while doing a jab combo or as what the game calls, a standard combo, you can get punished pretty damn hard. A standard attack/standard combo that all characters are capable and get punished. Marth, Lucina, Diddy, Ike, Zelda, Ganondorf, Robin, and even Fox's jab combos were improved. That leaves Samus as a top priority to make it function as an "incomplete standard combo" and make Falco's not be stupidly punishable.

Oh, and Falco's standing grab is frame 8... so he can't actually grab you from a jab 1 until frame 31 or frame 34 for jab 2. 1 frame earlier and you get Dtilt which is safer. In Brawl, with a frame 6 standing grab, he could grab you at frame 22 with jab 1 or 24 with jab 2. If he had his Brawl jab end lag and his Smash 4 standing grab, he'd be able to grab you at frame 24 with jab 1 or 26 with jab 2. In comparison, patch 1.1.0 Fox can grab you at frame 24 with jab 1 and frame 27 with jab 2. Pre-patch? He could grab you at frame 22 with jab 1 or 24 with jab 2. Just give Falco an end lag of 18 for both jabs...

Is it really am issue that some moves are negative on bit because that's only really a issue at really low percents is it not? Like I know as samus and mario have gotten counter attacked after landing hits at zero. And as falco I've jabbed my opponent after getting hit for a punish before. While I hate getting punished for landing a hit I just can't rational out how this is a problem when it occurs all over the game.
When it comes to rapid jabs most of them I can think of mario can upB out of or others have the the ability to get out and punish. So if this is an issue it's an issue with many rapid jabs and not just falcos, but I don't think it's an issue because falcos jab range and speed make up for it to me.

Edit @ Shaya and @ Ffamran can the jab be mashed out with Nair at any percent or just low percents? And is there no way to get a shield up in time? Because that could make me rethink things.

 

[Shaya]

I'm near certain you get hit before rapid jab can come out after jab2.
Although both jab1/2 have KGB it seems to be so low that you're likely at kill percent before it starts being safe.
I think rage makes it safer than damaging the enemy would, which is sad.

Super-well spaced jab won't be punished on hit by Luigi/Mario at least. But still, meh. It's hard to do so because he steps so far forward between strikes.
Ness with frame 5 nair is still hitting you up to the point his back throw is killing you.

So yeah, while it's a common thing to see in the game to some extent, it's debilitating Falco because he doesn't have much of anything else going for him bar his normal's further than average range. And it's definitely a feature that keeps characters from being viable (in every Smash game).

If every character has 20 odd usable moves in a match up, it's likely going to be closer to even than a match up where your small few good moves turn dysfunctional while having moves which are universally dysfunctional or too poor to be impacting.

-

Also now Falcon had damage nerfs and I can't see him as anything but "fair", I'm going to start focusing my "way too overtuned" efforts towards Ness.
Neutral Air and Up Air need 1% taken off of them.
Back Throw needs to have it's growth taken back a bit already. That or making his dash grab / disjointed magnet hands less pronounced, because right now the combination of all three is legitimately disgusting (and has been disgusting the entire time).

People complain about ZSS not getting nerfs here a lot more often, yet along with Mario, Ness has not had anything taken away from him. In fact, he's been getting small buffs all this time as well.

Otherwise though, kinda giving reason to Japan's lowish thoughts of him.
Ness gets away with a ton of crap because he's one of the few characters who can do short hop double aerials, this combined with a "janky" [i.e. atypical] jump/air-borne mechanics really messes with people.
But past this mid-level stupidity of nair/uair being successful for "free" (because everyone is poorly reacting to the first aerial and not anticipating a secondary) as he comes into the ground, he really crutches on the stupendous rewards he gets off his grab and the lose-if-you-trade aerials allow him to come out on top in disadvantaged positions when he shouldn't be.

But, stand a little outside the range of mid-air jump nair towards the ground, otherwise still expect the nair/uair just before landing, and what are we fighting? A sub-average mobility character who has a high skill ceiling but a really low skill floor for success. Japan's focus on proper execution during various states of game play (especially neutral / elongating enemy disadvantage) result in a non-top outlook on him. The notion that he has to work that much harder if opponent's force him to play honest despite the silly is the basis for their lower-than-west opinions.

Kinda almost feel like he may be a repeat of smash64, and perhaps he doesn't "deserve" nerfs because of it. But as always my stance tends to be spreading around power-level between more moves than making a character crutch on single way overtuned actions.

 

[TriTails]

Best set of aerials in the game? (Only d-air isn't incredible.) One of the best grab rewards?

Luigi probably beats him in that regard. Mario I would say so because B-air, U-air, and D-air are just godly but the entire set was held back by his F-air.

 

[Macedonian]

So then he just needs to be a me to act out jab two quicker right? Because I fee like if falcos rapid jab became inescapable then Falcon, pit, et. all. should get the same treatment.

Luigi probably beats him in that regard. Mario I would say so because B-air, U-air, and D-air are just godly but the entire set was held back by his F-air.

Mario's Dair can be broken out of by frame three aerials, also we have really low kill power in our aerials compared to many of the cast. Shiek. Luigi, ness, yoshi, villager, and pika all have better air buttons then mario IMO

 

[ILOVESMASH]

@ Ffamran It's crazy how much Falco got gutted and had his best tools given to Fox... all because Sakurai ****ed up and gave that character a chain grab and double auto cancelling lasers in a short hop.
Like Fox has his jab, dash attack and laser specs, the better illusion/phantasm... on what's a significantly faster character with better recovery/etc too.

Jab1-2 into Jab1 again is probably his best bet for jab shenanigans, but any character with a 5 frame or less attack/aerial is likely going to punish you every time without thinking.


Still, Falco is not "bad" right now. But yeah... those 3-4 moves given back/"shared" to Falco again and welcome to high tier+ Falco. I mean, mainly dash attack would be the big thing, but jab + dash attack would definitely push him into having close to the best set of normals in the game and a super godlike midrange and close range boost.
Honestly what's truly holding Falco back in a lot of high tier match ups is his jab being punishable on hit. Luigi/Mario/Ness near unwinnable because he's relegated to ftilt/dtilt poking on the ground and not having a good out of shield punish anymore, legitimately just because those characters can hold the A button in anticipation/reaction of being hit and get like 2-3x the reward Falco would've gotten if his jab actually went through.

It screams Brawl low-tier attribute. Many characters were just bad primarily because some of their moves were dysfunctional. Meta Knight's 3 frame 18% nair should say it all.
But given what we're seeing in this patch cycle there is a likelihood it'll be fixed...

If Falco gets ignored next patch I'll be worried, I still feel/assume we're looking at over a third of the cast being given one on, one off attention for patches. If they fixed Fox' jab, I'm seeing it happening with Falco too. Dash attack/laser/side-b is hopeful though.

At the very least, Falco's movest is nowhere near as dysfunctional as it was in the original build of the game, where in addition to his Jab and Phantasm, his U-Smash, Nair, and Up Air did not connect properly / had hitbox issues.

That being said, a better jab would be a god sent to Falco and probably push him up to upper mid tier.

Luigi probably beats him in that regard. Mario I would say so because B-air, U-air, and D-air are just godly but the entire set was held back by his F-air.

Luigi's aerial game is held back by his awful air speed and bad SH in my opinion.

 

[MistressRemilia]

Best set of aerials in the game? (Only d-air isn't incredible.) One of the best grab rewards?

You spelled Yoshi, Villager and Marios wrong, and grab reward goes along the amazing punish game; grab combos serves defensive utility for Ness, allowing him to rack up % very easily.

 

[Ffamran]

That reminds me, someone mentioned why Mewtwo's Shadow Ball doesn't do damage while charging anymore. Let's go with this: it needs to be different. Now, let's look at Mewtwo, let's look at Falco, let's look at Dr. Mario, let's look at Lucina, and let's look at Dark Pit. It needs to be different more or less messed with them.

Mewtwo, in Melee was able to hit people with a charging Shadow Ball. What does that do for him? I don't know, I don't remember playing Melee since I was like 10. Would it be broken for him to confirm an Up Smash out of a charging Shadow Ball? Maybe, but what does Mewtwo have? I don't know. At the same time, let's look at ROB. He had a strong U-throw kill. What happened when Mewtwo was released? Nerfed U-throw to ROB. Was ROB's U-throw even close to Mewtwo's? I don't remember, but even if it was just 1% close to Mewtwo's U-throw kill percent, that's still not enough to just weaken a character's option.

And on next, is your daily Falco rant starting... now.

Spoiler

Falco can pretty much fit racial profiling for a Smash analogy, but I'm going to stop there. Problems in Brawl that people hated: laser spam and chain-grabs. Questionable choices in Melee and Brawl for Falco: his Dair hit speed and his Blaster in Melee which was ramped up in Brawl. As the poster bird for auto-canceling projectiles, his was just removed without any changes to end lag. In patch 1.1.0 when even Greninja who people complained about his old Water Shuriken, all had buffed projectiles. Falco? Nothing. Chain-grabs: offenders were Falco, Pikachu?, Triple D, Sheik, and more that I don't know. Let's also add tech chase chain grabs in Melee which Fox, Marth? - I might be confusing with PM here -, Roy, and more were able to do. In Smash 4: nobody. You can grab reset, but in reality, nobody can chain-grab. What happens to Falco's grab? Goes from frame 6 in Brawl - questionable - to frame 8. In Melee, it was frame 7. Jab... Who abused jab? Everyone, but really, who abused jab cancels and jab mixups? I'm only aware of Falco, Ike, and Fox who's been doing it since 64 and still continues to do so. There's probably at least 10 more characters who do jab cancels. In Smash 4, 5 frames added to jab 1's end lag, 7 to jab 2, and rapid jab takes at least 2 frames longer to register. Umm... What? Oh, and Ryu has a frame 8-12 Dair spike that while has short range, still pretty decent. Why not Falco? It could have been a frame 5 or 8 spike that's second to Little Mac's spike strength and it would be a useful move because of its speed alone. Hell, make it frame 10, 12, or 14. Why 16? There's 6 characters with frame 16 spikes: Captain Falcon, Ganondorf, Ike, Roy, Mii Brawler, and Falco. Of all those characters, only Ganondorf and Falco have *** air speed and of those characters, Falco's is probably least safe and less useful when it's okay in power and he doesn't have the speed to set it up.

Then you have the audacity where they make him more like other characters. Frame 16 spike like everyone else because everyone needs a slow spike. Can't be Melee Fox, Melee or Brawl Falco, so let's make him Brawl Wolf with his Bair animation and Dair hit speed. The only benefits besides making his Bair a ridiculous kill move and Up Smash doing more damage and having more active frames are that (after patch 1.0.8) his Nair is Zelda's where it autolinks and Uair is essentially a reversed ZSS or Captain Falcon's. We need different characters, so let's make him like other characters... Dash attack gaining 4 frames of startup hurts when you're a slow moving character. Meanwhile, Fox gets to abuse his speed and dash attack speed. It's not a major problem, but it's a minor problem upon problems. The least they could have done was make it look different to justify a frame 8 dash attack, but it's literally a lazy version of Fox's. Falco's supposed to be a hand fighter to contrast Fox's kicks. Totally would be okay with this even if it's like Samus's where it boosts him forward before he attacks. At least he gets a speed boost...

Can we just make Falco like Nash in Street Fighter V? He already has his Somersault Shell Nash no longer uses and he even fits the bill of an overall slow-moving character with a fast (initial) dash and anti-air options where you hit people before they do an option since Falco and Nash don't have invincibility frames on their anti-airs like Ryu and Mario do. Hell, a Sonic Boom animation would be easy to replace his horribly overshadowed Blaster. And thanks for half a hitbox on Falco Phantasm. If it was such a big problem - only in Brawl when you geniuses decided to give it and Fox Illusion intangibility frames, lower its end lag, and increase its travel speed - why not make it a different move? Why not make a Falco Dive? At least it'd be a different kind of move where Falco can recover from above to below. Think of Falcon Kick's angle, but Falco can ledge grab from it. I don't care that it spikes; people even question if it can spike because it rarely happened. How does a frame 19 linear move like that spike often? OR give him a RED Kick which could have just been a shoddily reworked Fox Side Smash. We all know Falco can do that move because he was a Fox clone in Melee. Fire Bird... Of all the moves not to make different or "Wolfify"... Thanks, we needed more reminders that we're an inferior Fox.

Do I need to say anything about Dr. Mario and Lucina? You can't just say Dr. Mario is a slower, (slightly) stronger Mario and just leave it at that. At least patches have been making his Up Smash work different, but his other moves, please? Lucina's gimmick is not having Marth's gimmick. Slowly, she's making her way as a more aggressive, smack you to smack you fighter, but at launch, she was just Marth without tippers. Now? She's more like a more reckless, hot-blooded Marth. Sounds like Roy? Nah, he's on his own now like Falco and Wolf are to Fox or Luigi is to Mario, and Ganondorf is to Captain Falcon who Roy more resembles...

Dark Pit used to be Pit with lower base knockback on his Ftilt, a different Side Special, and more damage on his Silver Bow than Pit's Palutena's Arrow. Well, now Pit's rapid jab is different to Dark Pit's Pit's pre-patch 1.1.0 rapid jab. At this rate, either they're going to define Dark Pit as a Melee clone or do something stupid and make him pre-patch 1.1.0 Pit while Pit becomes something different. My money's on the more pessimistic choice. It just feels hypocritical when you say you want different characters, but end up making them more similar to others or just haphazardly changing characters to make them different.

So then he just needs to be a me to act out jab two quicker right? Because I fee like if falcos rapid jab became inescapable then Falcon, pit, et. all. should get the same treatment.

Two different things. Being able to act out of jab 2 quicker means just less end lag on jab 2. Jabs and moves like Dancing Blade have a different act out of frame: regular and next state. Regular is like when you do a Ftilt and have to wait before you can do another one or another move. Next state is when you can move from say, Link's Side Smash 1 to Side Smash 2. Falco's end lag for both are slow on his jab 2. For jab 1, it's only slow for end lag as his next state is the same as Brawl's. Normal end lag on both makes it more punishable for Falco to try for a jab cancel. The next state issue for his jab 2 makes it punishable for him to go to rapid jab. Captain Falcon's is fine along with Little Mac, Fox - thanks for the random phantom hit, developers -, Kirby, Rosalina, Palutena, Mr. Game & Watch, Triple D, Duck Hunt, Greninja, Meta Knight - patched -, Mewtwo, Mii Brawler, Sheik, Diddy - patched as well... patch 1.0.8? -, and the Pits. For Falco, there's a noticeable delay which combined with his jab 2 end lag means he can be punished for picking an option everyone uses. I believe it's the same issue that Bowser Jr. also has. Jab 1 has okay knockback of 10 BKB and 50 KBG, but okay end lag at frame 20 while jab 2? You can't act out of Bowser Jr.'s jab 2 until frame 40 and it only has 14 more BKB than his jab 1. Don't know when he can go into rapid jab.

 

[juddy96]

I know we're in the post-EVO slow season, but is it so slow that we have resorted to My Music discussion? For shame.
Boss Battle Theme on BF is bae

Anyway, SKTAR is tomorrow and I haven't played the game in 2 days, and Nairo is in my pool. RIP the dream of making it into bracket. Not the biggest tournament of the summer, but it's got a lot of good players (Zero, Nairo, Dabuz, Nakat, Angel, False, DKwill, and a bunch of rising stars as well). So this thread had better be watching! Should be good footage ahead.

ZeRo isn't entered in that tournament.

Another nice tournament tomorrow/today (Saturday) is Smash Nexus in Ottawa, featuring Boreal | Holy, Poke, Yoh, [HoH] SuperGirlKels, [TTD] Blacktwins, [EGE] Chrim Foisch, and Ray Kalm

 

[Ffamran]

Edit @ Shaya and @ Ffamran can the jab be mashed out with Nair at any percent or just low percents? And is there no way to get a shield up in time? Because that could make me rethink things.

Do you have 2 controllers? I can't test anything like that on Smash 4 because I'm stuck with a 3DS and you can't exactly play with 2 people on it simultaneously... Here's the thing: mashing. At high levels, you're not going to see players button-mash unless there's a need like SDIing, escaping grabs, or using moves like Flying Fortress, Luigi Cyclone, or Doctor Tornado. Like I said, you can mash attack to get a Nair out with Luigi against Falco's rapid jab in Brawl.

Mashing means you're committing heavily. Someone who notices that after every time you get launched, you mash attack or air dodge, they're going to punish your end lag and just play it safe because they know you're going to be mashing. Mashing does work against auto-piloting players - stop complaining when you think everything true combos. Now, timing an attack to counter or knowing this can happen, that's when things get rough. For Falco, who's a lightweight, getting countered because your end lag is bad on moves most people don't expect to be dysfunctional, means stuff like this can happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VL0rW7sSNA#t=58m51s. TKBreezy just wanted to jab 2 into something and dies for it. Fox could have had an easier time with his lower end lag. This happens to TKBreezy about 3 times where he gets jabbed back, Naired, and grabbed. This isn't limited to him; watch what happens to Rice in this set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdlzF92jZtw. Within 20 seconds of the match, choosing to rapid jab lead to him getting Naired by Luigi. In the next match, it happens again and no offense to Nitro, but I think he's just mashing at that point because he knows Falco's jab can be interrupted like that.

It's not just limited to Luigi; GimR's Falco vs. Bonz's Yoshi has this happen to Falco over and over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcYFACGR1bo. And there is a question of do people really need frame 3 aerials? All the frame 3 Nairs of Mario, Dr. Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Sheik, and Falco could be made into frame 4 and it wouldn't be much of a difference outside of preventing issues like that. Fox's Nair is frame 4 and he can't do that. Captain Falcon? He frame 3 jabs Falco instead. What about frame 1 jabs? Are those necessary? Jigglypuff's Rest is frame 2 and she's intangible from frames 2-27. She can sneak in a Rest and kill Falco for doing a jab as can Yoshi and Luigi kill Falco for jabbing or Sheik and Mario can just stop Falco and start their own combos.

It's funny though since as of this patch, all of Falco's normals are pretty functional compared to other characters. So, complaining about stuff like this might make it seem... spoiled... It's fine and dandy since Falco's strong up close, but when a jab has these issues, it does hurt since jabs are generally the get off me, poke, and safe move for characters. Specials are another story where pretty much only Reflector is functional.

 

[Shaya]

Early percent frame 5 aerials can definitely punish Falco on hit for jab2.
Marth's up air says hello. Getting untippered uairs into the ground at 50% is legitimately Falco's stock because it'll combo into fsmash, haha. And otherwise that's comboing into likely 2 other moves minimum as well.

It's just way too silly for me to handle. Not having jab, grab or dash attack out of shield in certain match ups is ridiculously limiting to him.

 

[SpottedCerberus]

You spelled Yoshi, Villager and Marios wrong, and grab reward goes along the amazing punish game; grab combos serves defensive utility for Ness, allowing him to rack up % very easily.

Yoshi? By what logic? His n-air is great, but not quite as good as Ness's. I'd say Yoshi's n-air might be the third best in the game, where Ness's is second. Yoshi's d-air might well be the best in the game, but this is a game with very bad d-airs. Yoshi's b-air and f-air aren't nearly as good. Yoshi's u-air is very good, but it doesn't have the massive hitbox or killpower of Ness's. Your opinion of Yoshi's aerials is probably influenced by his incredible aerial mobility.

And Mario can't really KO with his aerials. They're really solid, but f-air is probably the only one you'll be killing with, (other than offstage b-air) and it's the worst of them by far. Doc has one of the best b-airs in the game, but Mario's isn't quite there.

I can see the argument for Villager. Villager, Luigi, and Ness are likely the top three in aerials.

Speaking of Luigi, I'm surprised you didn't mention him. I just realized after I posted that Luigi probably had better aerials overall, and was just held back by his air speed. His n-air is the best, and his f-air is #2. But, on the other hand, his other aerials, while all very good, might not be ranked among the best in the game. D-air is particularly average, although it seems better than that in this sad game with sad d-airs. I think Ness has him beat in average quality of aerials, although it's close.

Luigi probably beats him in that regard. Mario I would say so because B-air, U-air, and D-air are just godly but the entire set was held back by his F-air.

Is his d-air really that good? How is it used?

 

[Ffamran]

Meanwhile, Zelda... Zelda's jab is her Dtilt; she's been playing Street Fighter before Ryu was in the game. I know she can get a Ftilt out of Dtilt, so probably a jab and grab too, but her jab, Ftilt, and grab all being +10 frame moves is kind of bad when she doesn't exactly have good range or options up close. Her Ftilt is transcendent, but Ike's isn't and covers much more range while having the same startup.

 

[Rucent]

lets talk about exactly why isnt top 5 in most people's minds.

Well, as soon Sonic recieved the back throw nerf, videos were posted on youtube to to teach players how to DI in Sm4sh. People then starting learning that they can shield Spins, and sometimes jump OoS and Bair Sonic. At the same patch Sonic's overall damage output also got decreased, and it became more apparent that jabs and other moves can easily clash or outright beat Spins. More knockback nerfs then came.

Sonic doesn't have good landing, as Dair makes Sonic unable to do anything for so long while letting the opponent know where he is landing. Spring is a great escape, but puts Sonic above his opponent and in the air, which is bad for some match ups.

Sonic doesn't have great approach, as spins can easily be stopped by hitboxes and projectiles strong enough to clash or beat it. Grabs and Command Grabs also beat Spins. Sonic has a decent grab, but he doesn't have hoo hah or anything big anymore.

Then there hasn't been much good results with Sonic now compared to early this year now. 6WX, the Sonic people find aggressive, hasn't been getting the results he was getting before, whereas StaticManny's defensive bait/punish style got him far in EVO.

It's mostly the fact that people are better now and know more about the Sonic match up (and spins) now. The nerfs are also piling up as time goes.

I still find Sonic a good character. Top 10 bearly at best, top 15 at worst, but there is a lot of factors that make Sonic not a top 5 character.

 

[TriTails]

Mario's Dair can be broken out of by frame three aerials, also we have really low kill power in our aerials compared to many of the cast.

That's a good thing. You don't want a character with 6th fastest airspeed with F3 N-air, F4 U-air, F6 B-air, or F5 D-air be killin' anyone like Ganon. His B-air is much less laggy than Luigi's (Thus the absurd damage and knockback difference) too. You can WoP people with it.

But yeah. Mario's D-air being broken by F3 aerials suck. Otherwise, it actually can kill if you're high enough.

Luigi's aerial game is held back by his awful air speed and bad SH in my opinion.

When people say Luigi's SH is bad I just smile while dodging various things including dash grabs, Falcon's dash attack, Greninja's fully charged Water Shruikens, and *insert tons of ground moves here* with just the press of the Y button alone. Then you can N-air them, net a juggling 12% or comboing 6%. Or you can fast-fall and quickly dashgrab them. You then are allowed to go ham.

Speaking of Luigi, I'm surprised you didn't mention him. I just realized after I posted that Luigi probably had better aerials overall, and was just held back by his air speed. His n-air is the best, and his f-air is #2. But, on the other hand, his other aerials, while all very good, might not be ranked among the best in the game. D-air is particularly average, although it seems better than that in this sad game with sad d-airs. I think Ness has him beat in average quality of aerials, although it's close.

IDK on Ness' aerials but Luigi's aerials when hit properly none does below 10% other than F-air.

F5 11% U-air or F6 14% B-air are huge. His aerials are probably the reason why his airspeed is never fast [read: always one of the slowest]. One of the fastest startup, high damage.

Is his d-air really that good? How is it used?

I recall it can be used as an approaching tool. Also, U-throw + D-air + F-air spike is the best combo ever.

It also can kill when used high enough. You can also mess with recoveries with it (Fast-fall D-air when not connecting the final hits on a recovering opponent is hillarious) and comes out on F5. But maybe I'm overrating it a bit because I main a character with mediocre D-air. But when compared with other D-airs Mario's definitely comes out near the top.

Playing with Mario for a little while and I can say I'm satisfied. I just need to learn to not use SH F-airs in place of SH B-airs and not stupidly D-airing to people's shield and I'm good to go.

 

[Jucchan]

@ juddy96 Yay, Ally is going to Umebura FAT. https://twitter.com/SHI_Gaming/status/634983881238691841

 

[Luigi player]

Quick question: Why do people go to Smashville so much?

Because it's the least polarizing stage.

On one hand you have FD / Omegas, on the other hand you have Battlefield.

In the middle you have Smashville, Town & City, Dreamland and Lylat.

And then there are stages who are their own thing (Duck Hunt, Delfino, ...).


Often players don't like one or both of the first kind, because they're "extreme".
The others such as Duck Hunt and Delfino are sometimes liked to CP there, because they have some twists to them that can benefit some characters / playstyles (or help to overcome better players by getting cheesy kills (don't tell me you didn't know it was coming )).

So often you see people on the "middle" stages.

Let's look at all of them:

- Smashville: good platform stuff, can be annoying if you get into the situation where the platform helps the opponent in his combos, is most of the time not too big of a deal though [since like every other stage also has platforms that can help]. If you're unlucky to die because of it it's very likely your own fault and could've probably been avoided. Otherwise really good.

- Town&City: low ceiling which some like and some don't like. Is sometimes like FD... and sometimes the platforms are higher up. When they're here they are more prevalent than the one on Smashville when you're not having a grounded / shorthop battle. The platforms can also catch players while they're falling down in hitstun and / or tumble and drag them off if you miss the tech or are just unlucky.

- Dreamland: similar to BF, but the platforms take away less space (big deal) and the top blastzone isn't as far away. Also has the wind.

- Lylat: unusual uneven ground, swaying which can randomly help or destroy your recovery, 3 platforms pretty low which cover a lot of the grounded area, can make it difficult to land safely.


Overall Smashville is pretty good. Dreamland is nice too. TaC is decent, Lylat has a few annoying things about it so the majority of the players don't feel comfortable enough on it.

 

[Macedonian]

I can speak to Mario's Dair usefulness.

Autocancel from a shorthop making it safe on shield.

Leads to a kill setup by landing Dair to D or Usmash. Also leads into grabs so is huge for damage output.

@ Ffamran I am actually out of town visiting a friend, I could try on Monday

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Jab1-2 into Jab1 again is probably his best bet for jab shenanigans

I don't think that's a thing anymore.

 

[C0rvus]

ZeRo isn't entered in that tournament.

Another nice tournament tomorrow/today (Saturday) is Smash Nexus in Ottawa, featuring Boreal | Holy, Poke, Yoh, [HoH] SuperGirlKels, [TTD] Blacktwins, [EGE] Chrim Foisch, and Ray Kalm

Whoops, I guess not! Things just got a little more and a little less interesting. So for Smash 4 at least, this is more like a super regional, with a couple exceptions. Apparently there are a couple players from Kuwait? Should still be a good tournament, I think that Tristate is a very strong region, and we have some MD, PA, IL, etc entered as well.

 

[Shaya]

I don't think that's a thing anymore.

As in that it's safe to do or?
You would usually go jab 1-2 repetitions in brawl, but for actual option-traps he still likely needs to be following up from jab1 in this game due to "nerfs".

Inputting it is possible. Just as much as jab1-2 dtilt/fsmash/grabbing/etc are.

 

[Noa.]

IDK on Ness' aerials but Luigi's aerials when hit properly none does below 10% other than F-air.

F5 11% U-air or F6 14% B-air are huge. His aerials are probably the reason why his airspeed is never fast [read: always one of the slowest]. One of the fastest startup, high damage.

Ness's Nair does 11% and is frame 5. Ness's Fair does 7% and is frame 7. Ness's Bair does 15% and is frame 10. Ness's uair does 13% and is frame 8. I'm doing this off of the top of my head so I maybe be off by one frame or one percent. Ness's aerials are slightly slower but do slightly more damage. However apart from this Ness's aerials have gigantic hitboxes that are much bigger than Luigi's. Our Nair, uair, and fair are all bigger than yours. To add onto that our fair is disjointed which is a big deal. Disjointed aerials are incredibly useful for stuffing out any other character in the air unless their aerials are also disjointed.

It's a shame that Ness's dair is useless. Otherwise I think it would be undeniable that he has the best set of aerials in the game. They all auto cancel out of short hop, they all do ridiculous damage, all of them but Bair have gigantic hitboxes, Bair and uair kill stupidly early, fair has a gigantic disjointed hitbox and combos into fair, uair, and nair Etc. Best aerials in the game would belong to Villager first, then Ness, then Luigi.

Though it really pains me that Ness's dair is so bad. Comes out frame 20, only spikes on the first frame, has a very small hitbox, has a ton of end lag and landing lag, and even when you do land it it's incredibly weak. Even if you land the spike it won't kill until like 90. Smh.

 

[Smog Frog]

Well, as soon Sonic recieved the back throw nerf, videos were posted on youtube to to teach players how to DI in Sm4sh. People then starting learning that they can shield Spins, and sometimes jump OoS and Bair Sonic. At the same patch Sonic's overall damage output also got decreased, and it became more apparent that jabs and other moves can easily clash or outright beat Spins. More knockback nerfs then came.

Sonic doesn't have good landing, as Dair makes Sonic unable to do anything for so long while letting the opponent know where he is landing. Spring is a great escape, but puts Sonic above his opponent and in the air, which is bad for some match ups.

Sonic doesn't have great approach, as spins can easily be stopped by hitboxes and projectiles strong enough to clash or beat it. Grabs and Command Grabs also beat Spins. Sonic has a decent grab, but he doesn't have hoo hah or anything big anymore.

Then there hasn't been much good results with Sonic now compared to early this year now. 6WX, the Sonic people find aggressive, hasn't been getting the results he was getting before, whereas StaticManny's defensive bait/punish style got him far in EVO.

It's mostly the fact that people are better now and know more about the Sonic match up (and spins) now. The nerfs are also piling up as time goes.

I still find Sonic a good character. Top 10 bearly at best, top 15 at worst, but there is a lot of factors that make Sonic not a top 5 character.

i think good dont rely on spins. he has an amazing pivot game(ftilt, grab, fsmash are all great/amazing out of a pivot). spen desh seems like it'd be used as more a punish option(and did he ever have a hoo hah? all i remember is uthrow->spring->uair/some other aerial)


his damage output is still amazing for his mobility and its not hard to get 20% or more out of someone overextending vs (something thats only easier to do against like lol)

i think he's basically shoed in as top 10 and has a very likely top 5. everyone knows more about every matchup p much so i dont see how that'd drastically effect his position. and remember, he's still pretty fear inducing for lots of characters(most boards i visit put him as their 2nd worst matchup behind but i'm curious if that's true)

 

[TriTails]

Ness's Nair does 11% and is frame 5. Ness's Fair does 7% and is frame 7. Ness's Bair does 15% and is frame 10. Ness's uair does 13% and is frame 8. I'm doing this off of the top of my head so I maybe be off by one frame or one percent. Ness's aerials are slightly slower but do slightly more damage. However apart from this Ness's aerials have gigantic hitboxes that are much bigger than Luigi's. Our Nair, uair, and fair are all bigger than yours. To add onto that our fair is disjointed which is a big deal. Disjointed aerials are incredibly useful for stuffing out any other character in the air unless their aerials are also disjointed.

It's a shame that Ness's dair is useless. Otherwise I think it would be undeniable that he has the best set of aerials in the game. They all auto cancel out of short hop, they all do ridiculous damage, all of them but Bair have gigantic hitboxes, Bair and uair kill stupidly early, fair has a gigantic disjointed hitbox and combos into fair, uair, and nair Etc. Best aerials in the game would belong to Villager first, then Ness, then Luigi.

Though it really pains me that Ness's dair is so bad. Comes out frame 20, only spikes on the first frame, has a very small hitbox, has a ton of end lag and landing lag, and even when you do land it it's incredibly weak. Even if you land the spike it won't kill until like 90. Smh.

Our N-air is F3. Deals 12%.
Our F-air is F7. Deals 8%.
Our B-air is F6. Deals 14%.
Our U-air is F5. Deals 11%.

Luigi pretty much beats Ness on speed:damage ratio on (important) aerials. But I do agree disjointed aerials are useful. But IDK if Luigi would appreciate one. If we were to get a faster airspeed, disjoints would be a low trade. Luigi's F-air is practically lagless (Not joking. Try that **** out) and has a bigger hitbox than Rosalina's U-smash (From Thinkaman's data dumps BTW). B-air is such a strong kill move that is safe on shield and deals flipping 14% while also coming out 1 frame faster than F-air and stuffs a lot of things. N-air combos, combo breaks, ends combos, and is also a kill move. U-air... is... uh... a decent U-air? Can't kill for what, but deals tons of damage for it's speed. And unlike Ness', his D-air is actually pretty great (I chew my words. It's not mediocre). Approaching tool, spiking tool, comboing tool (Yay D-air 8% hit to N-air on fast-fallers. Yay D-air spike bounce to N-air) and is also very fast for a spike.

But perhaps hitbox sizes beat power. Luigi's N-air doesn't cover much space and none of Luigi's aerials reaaaaaally strecthes out aside from B-air. But Luigi's aerials are definitely no joke. I'd hate if they get nerfed. If you want to nerf Luigi's aerials, then buff his airspeed dammit!

Because let's be serious. No one wants someone with that kind of F-air to has a decent airspeed.

(Sad Fact: Luigi's F-air is as laggy as an airdodge landing when Luigi lands with it)

 

[Smog Frog]

hitbox sizes>power. look at the patented slap™

 

[C0rvus]

Maybe it's just his weird place as a sort of anti-meta character, but Toon Link goes even or better with Sonic. His worst MUs are likely ZSS, Sheik, Rosa, and Fox? Luigi feels like a loss in my experience so far. Out projectiles get eaten by Fireballs or trade with them at best, so in most situations, Luigi can put his stuff out faster than we can unless we want to relinquish stage control to pull a bomb and set up a wall. That's Toon Link's problem in a few MUs; he has to retreat or find a place to pull a bomb to get things going. As a zoning, stage control based character, this can be a problem.

 

[Routa]

hitbox sizes>power.

Ike mains: "Why not both?"

 

[Trifroze]

Ike mains: "Why not both?"

Falcon can say this too but then we have fair which has a literal Zelda hitbox.

Although to be fair *puts on shades* I think hitbox sizes will get less relevant as time goes on and people get better at spacing. Good hitboxes are always good but it won't show as much as it shows now.

 

[TriTails]

hitbox sizes>power. look at the patented slap™

How exactly big is Sheik's F-air?

And Sheik's slaps are more of safetiness > everything else.

Ike mains: "Why not both?"

No. Because I don't wanna laggy aerials combined with bad aerial mobility (Not airspeed). Perhaps it's just me being used to lagless aerials Luigi or Mario has but Ike's F-air and B-air last for about a second while having 'not so lingering' hitboxes. Granted, the hitboxes and the power are ********, but two hits are better than one.

 

[Smog Frog]

How exactly big is Sheik's F-air?

And Sheik's slaps are more of safetiness > everything else.


No. Because I don't wanna laggy aerials combined with bad aerial mobility (Not airspeed). Perhaps it's just me being used to lagless aerials Luigi or Mario has but Ike's F-air and B-air last for about a second while having 'not so lingering' hitboxes. Granted, the hitboxes and the power are ********, but two hits are better than one.

its comparable in size to fair. it also has the largest range of all her aerials.

 

[TriTails]

its comparable in size to fair. it also has the largest range of all her aerials.

I play her yet I never knew about this. I always felt her F-air size to be somewhere around Luigi's...

 

[Smog Frog]

the attack trail is very misleading. first off, her arm extends beyond that, and there's a hitbox beyond that.

 

[LightLV]

Are people seriously falling into the same dumb trap of calling Smash 4 overly defensive, after months and months of overly defensive strategies prevailing?

Sigh, fixed that for you bro

And 3 frame aerials with body sized lingering hitboxes are a stupid idea and should have either been made standard to the cast or phased out by now, especially when nearly ALL of them are safe on block.

And, just because i love bringing up how much Samus sucks, i find it hilarious that sakurai removed Samus' Nair, one of the best moves she's ever had. Then had the nerve to make a tooltip telling you that her jab deliberately doesn't combo because it isn't a real move.

Thanks Other M

its comparable in size to fair. it also has the largest range of all her aerials.

Marth's range is absolutely disgusting on this game, i would not be the least bit surprised if Shiek's Fair has more or equal range.

 

[TriTails]

And 3 frame aerials with body sized lingering hitboxes are a stupid idea and should have either been made standard to the cast or phased out by now, especially when nearly ALL of them are safe on block.

Just putting out Luigi's N-air is super unsafe on shield. Neither is Mario's I think.

Marth's range is absolutely disgusting on this game, i would not be the least bit surprised if Shiek's Fair has more or equal range.

The man got a sword. His range is fine.

 

[Trifroze]

Luigi's aerials are only good (amazing) when he connects with a down throw or is being pseudo comboed by dumb moves like fast low knockback utilts. Other than that he doesn't contend for the best aerials in the game, for example he can't really do anything with his aerials in the neutral, although that's also partially due to his poor aerial mobility. It's hard to pick the best set of aerials in the game because each set is related to the mobility specs and entire moveset of the character, and judging aerials individually is fairly pointless.

Sheik, ZSS, Pikachu, Mario, Luigi, Fox, Ness, Falcon, Yoshi and pretty much every top tier except Sonic and maybe Rosalina (uair and dair though) have amazing aerials. I'd definitely say Falcon had the best ones before 1.0.6, but now his uair isn't ridiculous anymore and his bair is weaker. Knee has always been situational but it's still a decent move, and generally every character has a relatively useless aerial or two, either because they have a similar one that's simply better or because the move is just bad or situational by design.

ZSS' 3 lowest lag aerials have lower landing lag than any other 3 in the game, her nair outranges Sheik's fair and sword characters and her bair outranges Sheik's for example. They all do decent to good damage and combo well, plus a couple of them kill. She basically has no rising shorthop aerial game though unless she's challenging aerial opponents, and dair is only good for occasional landings, surprises and trading stock for stock in some predictable 2 to 1 stock edgeguard situations.

For the rest of the characters I can't really say anything too in-depth, but Pikachu, Mario and Luigi have crazy aerials for comboing, however they all have bad range and most of them aren't safe on shield.

 

[Vipermoon]

Marth's range is absolutely disgusting on this game, i would not be the least bit surprised if Shiek's Fair has more or equal range.

Marth's range and disjoint is either the same or more than Brawl depending on the move. Only Fsmash, grab (universal nerf), and up B have less.

Also Fair outranges Sheik's Fair. Wtf kind of claim was that.

 

[FullMoon]

Greninja's aerials are pretty sweet too. Up-Air kills and can be combo'd into, as well as being a good juggling tool, B-Air is fast and is good for edgeguarding and juggling, F-Air kills and is a good spacing tool even if it's slow, N-Air's only problem is that it's slow but it combos into everything, does 11% damage with the sweetspot and can be pretty safe if you do it right.

D-Air is the worst of them but even then it can still combo into F-Air for the kill or into an Up-Air Spike -> D/F-Smash if you get the meteor hitbox. It can also hit under the ledge with the meteor hitbox so it still has it's uses.

Not the best set of aerials because their speed is lacking outside of B-Air but what they do, they do very well.

I just wish Up-Air would link better sometimes.