Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

[Wintropy]

Everyone was talking about what can reflect Gordos and nobody mentioned how Luigi's taunt can even do so?

Luigi's down-taunt does set knockback, though.

Moves that don't cause knockback, e.g. Pit's n-air (except for the final hitbox), can't reflect Gordo.

 

[TTTTTsd]

I'm gonna be real about D3. When your projectile loses to basic jabs and is then turned against you, your life must suck.

I feel like Gordos being as bleh as they are is a lot of what is holding him back GREATLY.

 

[Jabejazz]

Luigi's down-taunt does set knockback, though.

Moves that don't cause knockback, e.g. Pit's n-air (except for the final hitbox), can't reflect Gordo.

It's damage based. Pit's Nair does 0.5%-1% 0.7% damage per hit, except the final one.

Damage threshold is set to 2%, as in every move dealing 2% damage or more will reflect it.
If it was knockback based, needles would bounce them. It was lowered from 3% in 1.04

I'm gonna be real about D3. When your projectile loses to basic jabs and is then turned against you, your life must suck.

I feel like Gordos being as bleh as they are is a lot of what is holding him back GREATLY.

If it wasn't usable against us, your life would suck.

 

[Tobi_Whatever]

I'm gonna be real about D3. When your projectile loses to basic jabs and is then turned against you, your life must suck.

I feel like Gordos being as bleh as they are is a lot of what is holding him back GREATLY.

I certainly can't speak for DDD mains, but I don't feel that Gordos are about directly hitting people. They stay out long and if you approach together with them (not WITH them) you force your opponent in a multitask situation.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

It's hard to take anything you say seriously about Yoshi when you make a statement like that. Did you not watch Smashcon? Dabuz OBLITERATED Raptor, and I'm more than confident that the MU had something to do with that.

Dabuz is an elite level player. One of the very best in the world.
Raptor is a minor regional threat. A very solid and competent player. Nothing more and nothing less.

There's a notable skil gap between them. Dabuz will demolish Sheik players that are on Raptor's level of skill too. Doesn't say A DAMN THING about the matchup.

Edit: Fact of the matter is that dabuz is actually one of the people that kinda helped to establish the idea that Yoshi beats Rosalina. Him having lost a set to Raptor at some point might have had an imact on that but you better ask him yourself if you wanna know where he stands exactly.

 

[HFlash]

Instead of calling people out why don't we discuss precisely why Yoshi does or doesn't suck against certain characters? A single set between two mismatched players (in terms of skill) isn't exactly good evidence.

I'd be inclined to believe the only character @ ~ Gheb ~ listed that Yoshi actually beats is Villager but I'd be interested in seeing why he thinks Yoshi wins those matchups. @ DunnoBro 's input on Yoshi vs Luigi was far more valuable that simply saying "X character wins".

Taking away Yoshi's eggs away from him and then being able to act into a punish is a huge negative for Yoshi. Taking away his great projectile which really makes the neutral alot harder compared to other MUs because he has to approach now. How does a Yoshi approach? Nair? Fair? Dash attack? I really don't see how Yoshi can get into Rosalina consistently. She can just sit in shield and zone with the star.

 

[Djent]

It's hard to take anything you say seriously about Yoshi when you make a statement like that. Did you not watch Smashcon? Dabuz OBLITERATED Raptor, and I'm more than confident that the MU had something to do with that.

Sorry to pick on you, but you are demonstrably overconfident in this assertion.

There is a huge skill disparity between Dabuz (easily one of the top 10 best Smash 4 players) and Raptor (who AFAIK has never top-8'd at a single regional-level event). When a skill discrepancy this large exists, the predicted outcome is "Dabuz soundly defeats Raptor" so long as the MU is not unwinnable for Rosa. There is no noticeable divergence in the predictions between "the MU is somewhat in Rosa's favor" and "the MU is somewhat in Yoshi's favor" until the players are of roughly comparable skill.

Statements like these are why people are hesitant to concede that results are highly (though not directly) relevant to the process of tiering. You need to factor in most of the relevant background information about the players in order to predict how any given MU should go, and a prediction (for comparison's sake) is necessary for the outcome to warrant any adjustment in our confidence in the various theories of who wins it and how.

EDIT: Partially ninja'd, but there are still some general points worth making about how to interpret tourney results.

 

[DanGR]

Dabuz has said on more than one occasion that he thinks Rosalina beats Yoshi. Dunno if he still thinks that though.

 

[LightLV]

Hey guys, if someone is going to blow you up with Marth, they're going to have no problem doing it with Lucina, and that's real. Everytime i see a bad tier list or lucina pops up in discussion i question how on earth people rationalize placing marth somewhere and then sticking her like 3 tiers down. She has never been a BAD character in this game's history, if she's trash-tier then Marth is garbage too. They are simply way too similar.

Otherwise...with the changes she's gotten, and the fact I really don't see too many marth's on average perform better than Lucina regardless of tipper or not, and even theoretically speaking, Marth himself is in the worst position for doing accurate tippers than he's ever been in smash, I cannot understand why she isn't, at the very least, directly behind him in terms of tier placements.

 

[HFlash]

Dabuz is an elite level player. One of the very best in the world.
Raptor is a minor regional threat. A very solid and competent player. Nothing more and nothing less.

There's a notable skil gap between them. Dabuz will demolish Sheik players that are on Raptor's level of skill too. Doesn't say A DAMN THING about the matchup.

Edit: Fact of the matter is that dabuz is actually one of the people that kinda helped to establish the idea that Yoshi beats Rosalina. Him having lost a set to Raptor at some point might have had an imact on that but you better ask him yourself if you wanna know where he stands exactly.

Dabuz and Raptor have a noticeable skill gap yet both of them placed yet they both placed 9th in Smash Con? Ok. Unless one of them got extremely lucky/unlucky, it's safe to say they are reasonably even skilled enough to get some MU information from their set.

 

[Trifroze]

Edit: I have to disagree on the Yoshi community comment as well. I am convinced that that title belongs to the Falcon community.

Since nothing is being done to your messages and you're effectively firing shots at people trying to do something in the Falcon community, I'd like to address it after deciding to ignore your first comment about the Falcon boards being "cancerous" when talking about matchups and matchup threads, which on the Falcon boards is maintained by myself.

Well, that is very encouraging.... especially from the main moderator on the kirby boards. Don't feel too bad, the Falcon boards are probably more carcinogenic.

Mind telling me what you think is carcinogenic regarding Falcon boards and how we see matchups? Here's the link: http://smashboards.com/threads/come-ahwn-captain-falcon-mu-thread-lap-9-fox.399692/

Finding examples of other MU threads with similar dedication would also help your cause.

 

[MudkipUniverse]

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[Wintropy]

It's damage based. Pit's Nair does 0.5%-1% 0.7% damage per hit, except the final one.

Damage threshold is set to 2%, as in every move dealing 2% damage or more will reflect it.
If it was knockback based, needles would bounce them. It was lowered from 3% in 1.04

This is why I don't get into the science of numbers, ha ha~

You're absolutely correct, and upon further research, Luigi's down-taunt does exactly 2% damage. Just enough to reflect Gordo.

Guess I owe @SmashCapps an apology, ha ha~

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and yes I legit think Peach is that good

Robin isn't better than Pit as much as I want her to be.

Why is Pikachu in its own tier?

 

[HFlash]

Since nothing is being done to your messages and you're effectively firing shots at people trying to do something in the Falcon community, I'd like to address it after deciding to ignore your first comment about the Falcon boards being "cancerous" when talking about matchups and matchup threads, which on the Falcon boards is maintained by myself.



Mind telling me what you think is carcinogenic regarding Falcon boards and how we see matchups? Here's the link: http://smashboards.com/threads/come-ahwn-captain-falcon-mu-thread-lap-9-fox.399692/

Finding examples of other MU threads with similar dedication would also help your cause.

I wasn't talking about the MU thread. Obviously guys like you, Gawain, Fatality, and so on make excellent contributions to the Falcon boards, and I am always interested in what you guys have to say. I didn't want to do this, but this thread really got to me: http://smashboards.com/threads/is-t...smash-4-takes-up-half-the-stage.414590/page-3
I'm sure I'll get an infarction but w.e. I have never reported anyone, but some of the replies I got on the last page were just irksome. I'm sure there are people like these on any board, but my goodness, if that isn't cancerous, I don't know what is.

Edit: Also, @ Djent . If that is the case, then it's hard to really say anything really about the MU's Rosalina has based of Tournament matches except say, Diddy, Shiek, Pikachu, Pit, ZSS, Robin, or whoever else the top 5 smash players happen to main/secondary. It might not be perfectly normalized, but it's the data we have to work with at least for now.

 

[DunnoBro]

Even divorcing player skill largely from the match, observe dabuz vs raptor closely. The way dabuz was playing wasn't particularly outrageous, just very conservative. Which is why yoshi players talk about yoshi's neutral so poorly, he has an awful one. Any character who chooses to play the neutral game and has a good neutral beats yoshi.

How was he supposed to approach? He couldn't, so he tried pressuring with SH Egg Toss. Dabuz would either shield, pre-emptive gpull, or avoid them entirely and catch yoshi's VERY sucseptible landing with dash attack/upsmash and continue pressuring from there.

These two players are both IQHQ, they play each other and this matchup a LOT.

A rosalina that doesn't know the MU will have a hard time, being large and floaty (an advantaged yoshi's dream) but if they opt to play the bait/punish game, yoshi can't do **** due to only hail mary approach options.

Same goes for fox, you likely think he's good vs fox cause he combos him so hard, maybe edgeguards too right? If not, then explain. Because yoshi loses neutral to fox no questions asked.

Beating sonic is a possibility. Yoshi can gimp him/edgeguard him and sonic's landing coverage doesn't work well on yoshi unlike fox and rosa's dash attaks/upsmashes. Sonic has difficulty killing yoshi too, but I don't really consider sonic a top tier anymore anyway. Bottom of top or top of high.

 

[warionumbah2]

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Give explanations or we will ignore u.

 

[Dabuz]

IDK how the MU is, I was thinking even because react to eggs with GP, punish yoshi's landings, but Yoshi's fair, nair, and dash are all still really good, then Raptor dropped game 1 to Gadiel (an unknown rosa from the midwest) in that MU at SKTAR 4. He won the set but that makes me question both the MU and Raptor's approach to it.

 

[Pazx]

If you want two different kinds of cancerous try the Luigi boards or the MK boards (love u passive aggressive batboys, my home away from home)

Related: Yoshi vs MK is pretty even, Yoshi has decent attributes (weight, DJ, mobility, eggs) that means he doesn't get bopped by MK (who also suffers from having a pretty ordinary neutral) but I think he simply isn't a good enough character to truly win the matchup if MK plays safe. If that's a common theme among Yoshi's matchups he can't be considered top 15.

Sonic - I'm a firm believer that barring more nerfs Sonic will always be a very relevant solo-viable threat. Nobody outright shuts him down and while results seem to show that hit-and-run campy Sonic is optimal (even as players get better at punishing said tactic) his playstyle can be varied with great success. He's also still (probably) viewed as being one of the worst matchups for a lot of characters

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and yes I legit think Peach is that good

Hi, read this (from the second post in this thread):

This thread is also inhabited by the Competitive Impressions Unit, and we take etiquette and posting standards pretty seriously here (as does the Competitive subforum in general).
A general rule of thumb is:
THOUGHTLESS BALANCE SUGGESTIONS or PERSONAL TIER LISTS (without openly justifying themselves and responding properly to questions and critique) is punishable by DEATH.

 

[DunnoBro]

I'd say sonic is bottom of A tier or Top of B. Barely solo-viable, no one's really done much with him in the states post-patch. Probably solo viable in japan since he will ALWAYS get to play on FD/Smashville, his two best starters. But here where he needs to beat sheiks on bf/dreamland and zero suits on delfino/halberd it's clear he isn't quite as solid a pick.

 

[Ffamran]

Give explanations or we will ignore u.

Thanks for replying to him. If someone does something... stupid... then just ignore them. Don't reply to them, don't even mention them, don't even think about them. If they're just going to slap a tier list without any explanation, then they're a waste of time. If they just made a top 10 characters and attempted to explain, then that's worth something.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Yoshi loses to all top tiers imo

He's fun to use against luigi since for once luigi is the not-braindead one, but defensive luigi wins irrefutably. Being so weak to shield, command grabbing not beating spaced fireballs, and if they properly bait out your grab, the endlag from it is a free fire jump punch. (Also being floaty means luigi can be at 140%, yoshi at 60% and luigi is winning)

Speaking of which, the taco money upb is a good way to gimp Yoshi, funny enough that's what kicked Raptor out of loser's during SKTAR after he lost to cortes.
And unfortunately because of Yoshi's size, similar to unable to DI as well out of ZSS boost kick, Luigi has an easy time comboing Yoshi and using DownB. Raptor died to Luigi downB's last hit at like 30ish% I believe.

Help.


Also Dabuz lost a set to raptor once, the following week there was a tournament Fire and Dice or wutever their silly tournaments are called, and dabuz 3-0'd him.
Don't think the Yoshi community is exactly scrubby, at least back in brawl. Smash 4 prolly moreso cause we have for glory people who complain/use him and think he's a god tier character while there's some people like say Tero back then who'd say silly stuff like Little mac was our worst MU. So the scrubby Yoshi mindset is more of this generation of players, 2014/2015.


Random fun fact for Yoshi though: Zudenka is #1 in Switz and gets 1st/2nd in every tournament he attends, not 100% sure who his competition is but it's something for an old fancy brawl Yoshi most of us vets back then would foam at the mouth from watching his vids lol

 

[Blobface]

Ganondorf's U-air makes his shins and feet invincible for the duration of the move. The hitbox runs down his entire leg including his thigh which is not invincible. What this means is that the only way to beat Ganon's U-air once the hitbox comes out is to have a disjointed hitbox hit his thigh or body without the opponent getting hit by U-air. Since U-air has long range and Ganondorf needs to basically be eating you to hit you with the thigh hitbox, this basically means Ganon's U-air will beat or trade with everything bar obvious stuff like Z-airs.

Ganon's U-air only has 3 more total frames than the fastest* Airdodges by the way.

Quick question for mains of "vertical" comboers (basically anyone who can U-air --> DJ --> U-air): how viable a tactic is it to, instead of going for a second U-air, read an airdodge and spike people back to the ground for further followups? I can't really give much input on this because Ganon combos horizontally for the most part.


*Only Mewtwo is faster but still

 

[HFlash]

Speaking of which, the taco money upb is a good way to gimp Yoshi,

You mind saying what exactly that is? (Sorry, I'm a scrub/pleb).

 

[Sinister Slush]

The not fire punch UpB.
Taco Money. 1 coin.

 

[Trifroze]

I wasn't talking about the MU thread. Obviously guys like you, Gawain, Fatality, and so on make excellent contributions to the Falcon boards, and I am always interested in what you guys have to say. I didn't want to do this, but this thread really got to me: http://smashboards.com/threads/is-t...smash-4-takes-up-half-the-stage.414590/page-3
I'm sure I'll get an infarction but w.e. I have never reported anyone, but some of the replies I got on the last page were just irksome. I'm sure there are people like these on any board, but my goodness, if that isn't cancerous, I don't know what is.

Edit: Also, @ Djent . If that is the case, then it's hard to really say anything really about the MU's Rosalina has based of Tournament matches except say, Diddy, Shiek, Pikachu, Pit, ZSS, Robin, or whoever else the top 5 smash players happen to main/secondary. It might not be perfectly normalized, but it's the data we have to work with at least for now.

I see then, yeah that's pretty bad. Falcon is the most popular character in the series so he attracts more inexperienced players as well as negative attention, which is a problem, but I think a fair thing to do is to judge all the boards based on the amount/quality of the informative stuff they put out and simply ignore the rest. It'll always be there more or less.

 

[Mo433]

Has Kirby ever made it far in regionals/nationals to even face the strong ZSS and Sheik players? Everything revolving around Kirby performing well against Sheik and ZSS are theories. Maybe Kirby isn't as good as you think he is.

I think it has come down to representation. Characters like Meta Knight was considered to be bad at the launch of Smash 4. He wasn't always a popular pocket character. Besides MikeKirby, there hasn't been a dominant Kirby player to prove his worth. With the amount of time I've put into Kirby, I literally have no doubt that he can perform well at a regional.

 

[Spinosaurus]

Characters like Meta Knight was considered to be bad at the launch of Smash 4.

For a good reason though. Patches helped him out a lot. 3DS MK wasn't exactly stellar.

 

[warionumbah2]

I think it has come down to representation. Characters like Meta Knight was considered to be bad at the launch of Smash 4. He wasn't always a popular pocket character. Besides MikeKirby, there hasn't been a dominant Kirby player to prove his worth. With the amount of time I've put into Kirby, I literally have no doubt that he can perform well at a regional.

Nah MK was 100% **** in the 3ds days.

 

[HFlash]

Nah MK was 100% **** in the 3ds days.

The exact same thing could be said about Marth. Not sure who had it better or worse between the two characters, but Marth was definitely..... underwhelming, at Wii u release.

 

[Mo433]

Nah MK was 100% **** in the 3ds days.

True, but that didn't stop Ito from using him and dominating. He's been using Meta Knight since launch and dominated here in NorCal. And while the buffs he got where great, people didn't actually start to use him until they saw Leo beat Mr. R.

 

[Cassio]

Im not gonna comment on how good yoshi is or isnt, but Im already skeptical when top players heavily rely on their own results to justify opinions. Not to say such input isn't valuable, but it has limits. Maybe yoshi isnt the best character but its not very farfetched to consider that another player, particularly for a character without top level rep, can better handle weaknesses that are justified through existing results.

 

[|RK|]

Has Kirby ever made it far in regionals/nationals to even face the strong ZSS and Sheik players? Everything revolving around Kirby performing well against Sheik and ZSS are theories. Maybe Kirby isn't as good as you think he is.

Again, rare... but SmashGod beat VaBengals's ZSS at SmashCon.

 

[bc1910]

too low. Imo, no way are Junior, Ike, Robin, DK, Peach, or ROB better than him

As a Greninja/Mega Man main I don't know how you can choose to say this about Mega Man over Greninja when Greninja's results and theory are both better.

I am very surprised.

 

[DunnoBro]

As a Greninja/Mega Man main I don't know how you can choose to say this about Mega Man over Greninja when Greninja's results and theory are both better.

...What results does greninja have?

 

[warionumbah2]

True, but that didn't stop Ito from using him and dominating. He's been using Meta Knight since launch and dominated here in NorCal. And while the buffs he got where great, people didn't actually start to use him until they saw Leo beat Mr. R.

Bruh Ito dropped him in Dec2014 cuz Diddy was a demon, he used to get mad cuz MK was barely viable and underwhelming. He stuck with MK cuz he loved the character, had MK as a main(pocket?) and Diddy as a pocket(main?) until Diddy got nerfed thats when he started tearing **** apart. Customs held MK back but Ito knew he had to abuse uair combos or else he'll lose to silly stuff like custom Sheik and HSD Sonic.

Ito's dominance made most of California try to use MK apparently, he was used as a pocket to counter Roslaina by Diddy users after the 1st nerf because of Ito. Angel was one of them but he's obviously dropped him, Leo just stole the thunder lol.

The exact same thing could be said about Marth. No sure who had it better or worse between the two characters, but Marth was definitely..... underwhelming, at Wii u release.

Both had it just as bad, but MK broke out the Brawl stigma before Marth. Until Marth does something big like MK had to countless times such as beating strong players and placing high, he'll be loved by all again.

...or he can get spoon fed buffs like a baby along with Ike since Japan obviously wants him to dominate again. Marth and Ike users are in the best possible position.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Ganondorf's U-air makes his shins and feet invincible for the duration of the move. The hitbox runs down his entire leg including his thigh which is not invincible. What this means is that the only way to beat Ganon's U-air once the hitbox comes out is to have a disjointed hitbox hit his thigh or body without the opponent getting hit by U-air. Since U-air has long range and Ganondorf needs to basically be eating you to hit you with the thigh hitbox, this basically means Ganon's U-air will beat or trade with everything bar obvious stuff like Z-airs.

Ganon's U-air only has 3 more total frames than the fastest* Airdodges by the way.

Quick question for mains of "vertical" comboers (basically anyone who can U-air --> DJ --> U-air): how viable a tactic is it to, instead of going for a second U-air, read an airdodge and spike people back to the ground for further followups? I can't really give much input on this because Ganon combos horizontally for the most part.


*Only Mewtwo is faster but still

I don't think it's that viable people after they airdodge will press buttons. Especially if their in a position to get spiked. I think Uair bair air dodge 2nd uair is fine. This is even better if you have platforms that will allow you to continue to follow them. The moddle platform in town and city is good for this. Since you're ganon though I think uair bait airdodge fair or bair would be stronger than a 2nd uair.

It's something that you have to consider and weigh for yourself. Take the guaranteed damage or go for the potentially devastating read.

 

[NachoOfCheese]

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[Mo433]

Bruh Ito dropped him in Dec2014 cuz Diddy was a demon, he used to get mad cuz MK was barely viable and underwhelming. He stuck with MK cuz he loved the character, had MK as a main(pocket?) and Diddy as a pocket(main?) until Diddy got nerfed thats when he started tearing **** apart. Customs held MK back but Ito knew he had to abuse uair combos or else he'll lose to silly stuff like custom Sheik and HSD Sonic.

Ito's dominance made most of California try to use MK apparently, he was used as a pocket to counter Roslaina by Diddy users after the 1st nerf because of Ito. Angel was one of them but he's obviously dropped him, Leo just stole the thunder lol.
Both had it just as bad, but MK broke out the Brawl stigma before Marth. Until Marth does something big like MK had to countless times such as beating strong players and placing high, he'll be loved by all again.

...or he can get spoon fed buffs like a baby along with Ike since Japan obviously wants him to dominate again. Marth and Ike users are in the best possible position.

Personally, I haven't seen many people pocket Meta Knight until like 3 weeks ago. It might be different in SoCal. But my point is, instead of thinking a character is bad, how about we start looking at the players, because at the end of the day it's the player that changes our perception of the character. A character like Kirby has great potential to place well in regionals/nationals, but we haven't gotten that player to get him there.

 

[C0rvus]

So back when ESAM made his top 10 characters video, and I saw he had put Yoshi in it (above Sonic and Mario I might add) I voiced my concern, citing his lack of results, the negative theory surrounding him, etc. ESAM himself replied to me saying he was working on a Yoshi of his own to prove his point. So, however you feel about Yoshi, we may soon have a top-level representative in the states for the green dino. This means a lot, and should help quell the disagreements and misconceptions about the character. That is, if we see his Yoshi ever. Of course it had to be ESAM, the guy known for overrating his characters. But hey, positive development on the Yoshi front.

 

[warionumbah2]

But my point is, instead of thinking a character is bad, how about we start looking at the players, because at the end of the day it's the player that changes our perception of the character. A character like Kirby has great potential to place well in regionals/nationals, but we haven't gotten that player to get him there.

No one cares until the character does something. That's just how it roles.