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Edit: Seems this topic was already mentioned... I was busy, so I had this post set up, but not posted hours ago.
I mentioned this idea already, but characters should have standardized jumps and grabs. Standard jump frames no matter how slow or how fast means nobody is at an advantage or disadvantage. Pretty sure it's standard for other fighting games such as Street Fighter and The King of Fighters to have the same jump frames for all characters. The only difference? Jump arcs and overall mobility. That's kind of like jump height and, well, overall mobility. Take Nash from Street Fighter V. Nash has overall slowish walk speed, a fast dash, and normal jump arc. Now, what would happen if he also had a slow jump? Kind of screws over Nash when he doesn't have any invincible anti-airs and one of his considered anti-airs is to jump and air grab. Now, take The King of Fighters XIII. King is considered, well, the queen of zoning - King's a woman - and like everyone else in KoF XIII, has a frame 5 jump. Now, what happens if it's frame 4? Just 1 frame? That 1 frame adds up when you consider her aerials, her aerial specials, and overall, her options both on the ground and in the air against everyone else. She will be advantaged to the entire cast of KoF XIII not matter how subtle. The main issue is that it adds up. Fox to Mario's jump is only 1 frame, Fox to Falco is 2 frames, Fox to Ike is 3 frames, and Fox to Bowser is 4 frames. That's double - Bowser takes double the amount of frames to do any aerial option against the likes of Fox, Sheik, and ZSS. Even if there should be a difference, it shouldn't be double between any character like that. Fastest jump frame of 4 to slowest jump frame of 6 is better than 4 to 8 and 4 to 5 is better than 4 to 6. 4 to 4? 5 to 5? 6 to 6? Or even 10 to 10. Hella slow jumps for everyone, but guess what? Everyone would have frame 10 jumps.
Why the smash 4 balance team need to standardize a whole value that can cause huge balance problems in a +50 cast, is like reversing all the work they have do it, is simply not worthy when only a small portion of the cast suffers problems becuase how jumps and grabs work.
In fact out of all of those 4 frame jump squat animations, ZSS and Diddy are the only ones with option-rich usages of it.
ZSS can uair, fair, bair, dair (flip jump: can act before landing)
Diddy can uair, fair, bair, nair
Fox has no SHAD game whatsoever, he lands during the landing lag period of his AD.
I believe greninja is similar too, he would maybe get a single hit out of uair or bair
I'm not sure about duck hunt (nair?)
Megaman gets the first two hits of his bair? A single pellet?
MK can nair/jump
Pits can jump, but lose all their auto cancel choices if they SHAD; i'm not sure if he can sh ad jump and ac his aerials.
Sheik can only SHAD auto cancel landing with something.
Kirby can bair/jump
Pika can shad aerial but he loses all of his auto cancel frames and has horrendous landing lag; back air can work though.
Lucas I'm not entirely sure of but I tend not to feel he has much of shad game at all from what I've seen.
With SHAD, Pikachu can get the single hit of f-air to setup for a 50/50 into grab or a tilit. Can confirm that Greninja has little to no SHAD game. Yoshi has one of the best SHAD games as mentioned thanks to the combination of n-air, u-air and Egg Lay. Zelda's SHAD was also mentioned earlier and is pretty good with N-air since it combos into Farore's Wind and other stuff.
Why the smash 4 balance team need to standardize a whole value that can cause huge balance problems in a +50 cast, is like reversing all the work they have do it, is simply not worthy when only a small portion of the cast suffers problems becuase how jumps and grabs work.
Sounds fun to me. I was all for everybody having 5 frame jumpsquats, but now that I see how many are frame 4, I say buff everybody to frame 4, and let the chaos begin~
Standardize landing to the lowest possible, as well! One of Bowser's biggest weaknesses comes, in part, from the massive lag he incurs simply from landing.
Ehh, balance via homogenization never sounds right in my mind. Though I do agree the slower characters have a pretty lame deal with extra lag from just moving around. Maybe make the jumpsquats that are on heavyweights slightly super armor, briefly. If you are so big and strong it takes longer to lift on the ground, needles and jabs shouldn't keep you there.
Agreed that homogenization is boring, but I don't think it really matters when we're talking about the most basic of basics, things that all characters have. Grabs I can understand having different frame data/hitboxes, especially with the existence of tether grabs and the like. That makes sense, they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. But everybody jumps, and there are already plenty of differences in jumping, just from the characters' attributes.
Of course, jumpsquat/landing lag are probably on the list of things that are never going to change, aren't they? I'm getting stupidly excited for Sept 30th, even though we just know there's a DLC stage, so we don't actually know if there will be balance changes or not. @_@
I also think I agreed with most of Ffamfran's post, and wanted to point out some part of it, but it was too long and I forgot.
Best:
rest doesn't match up remotely as much bar MK.
The super solid mid range+ dash attacks exist:
Zelda's is really good but it's zelda, Peach's is also pretty good. Yoshi should probably be in the solid mid range punish ones but Yoshi mains are emo about their dash attack (FOR LIKE NO REASON JESUS)~
Shoutouts to ganondorf, falcon, duck hunt (it's animation/usages seem pretty good I forget if it's laggy though). Possibly shout outs to Roy because he has combo set ups into it and it kills (despite being the same frame data as Marth's which is one of the worst). Palutena also for having a win button dash attack.
Sheik shouldn't be forgotten either, but we can't dacus out of it anymore, can you imagine? needles into dacus was like a thing, in Brawl dash aerials seem generally always more worthwhile with similar range. I'm sure many many characters would love to swap theirs for hers though.
In fact out of all of those 4 frame jump squat animations, ZSS and Diddy are the only ones with option-rich usages of it.
ZSS can uair, fair, bair, dair (flip jump: can act before landing)
Diddy can uair, fair, bair, nair
Fox has no SHAD game whatsoever, he lands during the landing lag period of his AD.
I believe greninja is similar too, he would maybe get a single hit out of uair or bair
I'm not sure about duck hunt (nair?)
Megaman gets the first two hits of his bair? A single pellet?
MK can nair/jump
Pits can jump, but lose all their auto cancel choices if they SHAD; i'm not sure if he can sh ad jump and ac his aerials.
Sheik can only SHAD auto cancel landing with something.
Kirby can bair/jump
Pika can shad aerial but he loses all of his auto cancel frames and has horrendous landing lag; back air can work though.
Lucas I'm not entirely sure of but I tend not to feel he has much of shad game at all from what I've seen.
Best:
rest doesn't match up remotely as much bar MK.
The super solid mid range+ dash attacks exist:
Zelda's is really good but it's zelda, Peach's is also pretty good. Yoshi should probably be in the solid mid range punish ones but Yoshi mains are emo about their dash attack~
Shoutouts to ganondorf, falcon, duck hunt (it's animation/usages seem pretty good I forget if it's laggy though). Possibly shout outs to Roy because he has combo set ups into it and it kills (despite being the same frame data as Marth's which is one of the worst). Palutena also for having a win button dash attack.
Why the smash 4 balance team need to standardize a whole value that can cause huge balance problems in a +50 cast, is like reversing all the work they have do it, is simply not worthy when only a small portion of the cast suffers problems becuase how jumps and grabs work.
Reverse what work? Reverse assumes they do something like return Fox's jab back to its launch frame data or returning Sheik's Bair to its pre-patch 1.0.6 frame data.
Standardizing jumps and grabs both creates and resolves problems for all characters. Characters with the best aerial options tend to have frame 5 below jumps. Frame 6 and above characters are ultimately screwed and despite the fact only 15 characters are affected, the majority of the cast have frame 5 jumps. They don't need to give Zelda a frame 4 jump when her other issues of basically everything exist. You don't fix Bowser by giving him a frame 5 jump when his landing lag is atrocious. Standardizing jumps prevents characters from being penalized for jumping because they happen to have frame 6 and above jumps or even frame 5 and above since like I said, 6 top to high tier characters have frame 4 jumps; 6 of assuming top 15 to 20 have very good aerial options made better by having the fastest jumps in the game. Standardized jumps of say, 5 doesn't automatically turn Ike into a monster. His fastest aerial, Bair is still frame 7 meaning his fastest aerial is frame 12, he still has poor air acceleration, he still doesn't have a vertical ledge snap recovery, he still doesn't have good Smashes outside of Up Smash, and he still doesn't have many options to get out of disadvantage. Bowser's still not going to do jack with a frame 8 Nair, actually frame 13 with a frame 5 jump, with 24 frames of landing lag and unreliable hitboxes. At least it's not frame 16 anymore with a frame 8 jump.
A page back, Lavani said that Falco's aerials have good frame data and it's held back his slower jump. True, but guess what else holds him back? Slow aerial mobility, slow ground mobility, and the fact while his aerials have good frame data in terms of power and speed, his aerials don't have that much range - bird lazily attacks and never extends enough like ZSS or Fox. So yes, it along with everything else does check his ability to chase people not just vertically, but horizontally. Meanwhile, ZSS's fast jump, overall fast mobility, and good aerial frame data can chase vertically and horizontally. Captain Falcon and Fox also counts for horizontal and sometimes vertical chases. Even Rosalina can count as her slightly faster jump is combined with above-average mobility and good air acceleration allowing her to glide on by. Compounded by how his mid-range "works" and disadvantage, Falco's held back by much more than just a slow jump. Making his jump 1 frame faster wouldn't turn him from mid-tier to top tier.
Standardized grabs don't automatically make say, Little Mac the best character since his grab game might be better, but his throw game isn't that great and never will be unless they change his throws. If all melee characters had frame 7 standing, 9 dash, and 10 pivot, all ranged grabbers - characters like Villager and Yoshi, had frame 10 standing, 11 dash, and 12 pivot, and all tether grabbers had frame 12 standing, 14 dash, and 14 pivot, that doesn't mean Ganondorf suddenly becomes better than Captain Falcon because he has a faster grab now. Ganondorf will get grabs easier, but still not as easy as Captain Falcon who is the second fastest runner. This solves why Zelda's grab is atrociously slow for a melee grab that gets average reward. Now it's average reward with average risk as all melee grabbers would have the same grab speeds. Luigi would still have a fast grab with massive rewards, Fox's is still fast, but only offers positional rewards, and ZSS's still slow, but with massive rewards and assuming total frames are not changed, ZSS's can still be punished severely. Special cases can be left like Greninja having a faster dash grab than his standing grab or how Pac-Man and Wario have the same grab speeds for all their grabs - Pac-Man's are all 12 and Wario's are all 8.
Mewtwo, Jiggly, Samus, Zelda, and Ganon all have good dash attacks, as far as low tiers go. Jiggly's dash attack is by far her best ground option (and one of her only good ones).
Also Peach has a pretty sexy SHAD game. Basically all her aerials are good out of AD (barring fair, obviously), she's the second slowest faller, and she can float out of it for a mixup. ALSO HER DASH ATTACK IS TOP TIER LMAO.
Maybe not the best, but 's has additional utility that makes me love it more than any non-MK dash attack. On top of having good disjoint for the attack itself, she can boost grab to grab knocked down opponents as Luma hits them.
da would be good if it had hitboxes. it can confirm into any of his aerials barring dair much like his dthrow...if he could actually connect all of the hits. its just inconsistent.
also im gonna be ninjaing Nu~
but da has like no cooldown on it and can confirm into bell for early kills as low as 50% w/ the side b, so long as you are on the edge of the stage
Mewtwo, Jiggly, Samus, Zelda, and Ganon all have good dash attacks, as far as low tiers go. Jiggly's dash attack is by far her best ground option (and one of her only good ones).
Also Peach has a pretty sexy SHAD game. Basically all her aerials are good out of AD (barring fair, obviously), she's the second slowest faller, and she can float out of it for a mixup. ALSO HER DASH ATTACK IS TOP TIER LMAO.
Yeah I can definitely admit underrating Mewtwo's and Samus (which I know is secretly the best); Jiggly I'm wary of, it can't be clanked, it can string into itself, but I can't see it as potent as others outside of a vacuum because of how deficient her grounded kit and empty jump mix ups are.
The way I feel about Peach's dash attack is either I'm ZSS and always have both hits combo on me and I die at like 120% (wtf), or I'm someone else and always fall out of the second hit and be all KAY KAY KAY :> :> SMASHU ATAKKU
da would be good if it had hitboxes. it can confirm into any of his aerials barring dair much like his dthrow...if he could actually connect all of the hits. its just inconsistent.
also im gonna be ninjaing Nu~
but da has like no cooldown on it and can confirm into bell for early kills as low as 50% w/ the side b, so long as you are on the edge of the stage
Edit: Seems this topic was already mentioned... I was busy, so I had this post set up, but not posted hours ago.
Food for thought: jump frames. Basic data that should have been known the moment frame data studies began if you had a means to record. Here's a list of everyone's jump frames in order of highest to lowest and in alphabetical order. Pit, Marth, and Mario take precedence over Dark Pit, Lucina, and Dr. Mario.
Now that's done, who are the most overall mobile characters in the game with frame 4 jumps? Greninja, Sheik, and ZSS. Of those 3, Sheik and ZSS are the most notorious for their air game. Now, who else is notorious for their air game and has a frame 4 jump? Definitely pre-patch 1.0.8 Diddy, Fox, Meta Knight, and Pikachu? Meta Knight? He doesn't have an air approach! Yeah, but his frame 4 jump definitely aids in his ability to immediately followup into his infamous Uair strings to Shuttle Loop.
Frame 5 jumps are common, so there's nothing to be said, except... what about the frame 6 and above jumpers? Bowser is the only character to have a frame 8 jump. Bowser's fastest aerial is his frame 8 Nair. Assuming it's perfectly inputted, his fastest aerial is actually frame 16. Now, let's take Sheik whose fastest aerial is a frame 3 Nair. Sheik jumping and doing a Nair takes only 7 frames with against Bowser, 9 frames of leeway. You want a slow aerial? How about Greninja's frame 12 Nair. Bowser and Greninja are both going to hit on frame, but who's going to be in the air first? Sure as hell ain't Bowser. So, this effectively means Bowser is disadvantaged to all characters when taking an aerial option.
There was a question on why the bad guys almost always lose quick draw duels to the good guys in westerns. The explanation was that the bad guy consciously thinks of drawing and shooting while the good guy reacts and reflexive answers back. The idea was that reflexive actions are faster than conscious actions. This is one reason why Falco's short hop is dangerous. Reflexively, he will throw out one of the fastest and strongest aerials to answer back to your conscious thought of I'm going to intercept Falco and outwit him.
Here's the thing though, what if both players are playing on reaction and attempt to use an aerial to hit each other? 15 out of 55 characters will be disadvantaged because of their slower jumps. That's a third - approximately 27% - of the cast who attempting to reflexively jump and use an aerial will be disadvantaged to the rest of the cast. 13 out of 55 characters will be advantaged to all characters because of their quick jumps and of those 13, 6 of them, Diddy, Fox, Meta Knight, Pikachu, Sheik, and ZSS are considered top to high tier characters. 7 to 9 of the 5 frame jumpers, Captain Falcon, Luigi, Mario, Ness, ROB?, Rosalina, Ryu, Sonic, and Villager are also considered for top to high tier. The other characters? Yoshi and Wario are considered top to high tier while Ike is only considered high at best.
You start to question why? Why the hell does Falco and Yoshi, famous for their strong and high jumps in their games and in Smash have one of the slower jumps? At least Luigi has an average jump speed, but in the Mario universe, it was said that Luigi's holding back for whatever reason. He could have had a higher jump than lightweight Palutena with a frame 4 jump. Imagine that... Oh wait, you're going to have night terrors now. Falco and Yoshi make up with whatever they have; Falco's fast and strong attacks and Yoshi's high mobility and fast to average speed attacks, but what about someone like Zelda? She's not exactly mobile and a slow jump adds onto that. Zelda's slow, her moves are slow, and her aerials outside of Nair and Uair are situational. Her air game and even ground game, especially close-range and mid-range is almost nonexistent. So, with good game design, Zelda should have a slow jump... I'm sorry, but what? Characters like Link, Ike, Robin, Charizard, and Ganondorf still have functioning aerials e.g. Ganondorf's moveset being derived off of Captain Falcon aids in good speed, coverage, and low end lag or landing lag and Charizard's at least fast on the ground and has functioning aerials. Another example is Robin: Robin's aerials are phenomenal, but those small things, her jump, matters. A slow jump will hurt her aerials even though her long to mid-range are good, having a slow jump and a hilariously not funny slow ground speed are all points against her. Meanwhile, someone like Fox not only has fast ground speed, but fast jumps, fast attacks, a fast standing grab, and even fast, burst kill moves like Up Smash and Uair that can be setup from various moves such as Nair, Dair, and jab.
The bad characters of this game are not just undertuned, they're also punished, so to speak, with questionable design choices such as sporadic grab frames and jump frames. I mean, you start to wonder why Samus is so weak or why Zelda has 3 situational aerials and enters helpless mode for a move that slows her momentum down and Din's Fire being way to slow of an option to cover her recovery unlike Fox's Blaster or Yoshi's Egg Toss. In contrast, good characters are both overtuned and blessed with good, albeit questionable design choices like the disjoints on Captain Falcon, very, very low end lag on Sheik, especially her Needles allowing her to play at any range, and Rosalina not only having above average ground and air mobility, her air acceleration is also top-notch with the likes of Wario, Palutena, and just below Yoshi and Jigglypuff. Grab frames are varied, but also "standard" in weird ways like Fox and Falco share the same dash and pivot grabs, but Falco's standing grab is among the slowest melee grabs, how Ganondorf and Captain Falcon share standing grabs, but different dash and pivot grabs or how Marth, Lucina, Robin, Roy have the same grab frames, but Roy's overall more mobile allowing him to rush in and grab as he pleases in contrast to Robin and even Marth and Lucina.
I mentioned this idea already, but characters should have standardized jumps and grabs. Standard jump frames no matter how slow or how fast means nobody is at an advantage or disadvantage. Pretty sure it's standard for other fighting games such as Street Fighter and The King of Fighters to have the same jump frames for all characters. The only difference? Jump arcs and overall mobility. That's kind of like jump height and, well, overall mobility. Take Nash from Street Fighter V. Nash has overall slowish walk speed, a fast dash, and normal jump arc. Now, what would happen if he also had a slow jump? Kind of screws over Nash when he doesn't have any invincible anti-airs and one of his considered anti-airs is to jump and air grab. Now, take The King of Fighters XIII. King is considered, well, the queen of zoning - King's a woman - and like everyone else in KoF XIII, has a frame 5 jump. Now, what happens if it's frame 4? Just 1 frame? That 1 frame adds up when you consider her aerials, her aerial specials, and overall, her options both on the ground and in the air against everyone else. She will be advantaged to the entire cast of KoF XIII not matter how subtle. The main issue is that it adds up. Fox to Mario's jump is only 1 frame, Fox to Falco is 2 frames, Fox to Ike is 3 frames, and Fox to Bowser is 4 frames. That's double - Bowser takes double the amount of frames to do any aerial option against the likes of Fox, Sheik, and ZSS. Even if there should be a difference, it shouldn't be double between any character like that. Fastest jump frame of 4 to slowest jump frame of 6 is better than 4 to 8 and 4 to 5 is better than 4 to 6. 4 to 4? 5 to 5? 6 to 6? Or even 10 to 10. Hella slow jumps for everyone, but guess what? Everyone would have frame 10 jumps.
There is indeed a pretty strong correlation between tier position and jumpsquat speed, as the frame 4s are mostly above average and frame 6+ are usually subpar. Of course better jumpsquats tend to be associated with better mobility which is also very important for competitive viability. Overall the game would be more balanced if all jumpsquats were 5 frames, with the only good character to see any substantial benefit being Ike. Link, Robin, and Ganondorf would also gain noticeably, and Wario, Puff, and Yoshi would also greatly appreciate even a 1 frame buff considering how often they're in the air. Definitely like the concept, or at least trimming down the gap to range between 4 and 6 frames. Don't see it being patched in though. Frame 10 jumps are clearly bad though because they cripple more aerial focused characters.
Could you explain this statement? In my mind, the main factors influencing how good a SHAD is are the character's aerial mobility, fall speed, and how good their options out of it are (fast, high coverage aerials basically). Jump squat just doesn't make the list for me. Furthermore, it seems like you're suggesting characters with long jump squats have a better SHAD game, which also doesn't make sense to me. Long jump squats unequivocally make a character's ground-to-air game worse because it takes longer to access your aerial options. I don't see how SHAD is an exception.
Ive been dual maining falco and wario now for awhile and I just can't seem to be able to use characters like fox, sheik, and zss. Would the 2f difference in jumpsquats be the reason why I feel so uncomfortable using them?
Ive been duel maining falco and wario now for awhile and I just can't seem to be able to use characters like fox, sheik, and zss. Would the 2f difference in jumpsquats be the reason why I feel so uncomfortable using them?
I would say you are playing characters with unusual aerial control.
Falco bursts like a formula one, but then is lethargic when in the air. He also has a crazy high jump, slow normal fall speed and fast ff speed.
Wario has the best "control" in the game. This considers mobility, acceleration, and deceleration. After playing wario, other characters feel restrained in the air, since they cannot take flight as gracefully as wario.
Clearly, all characters you mentioned integrate aerials quite a bit. While the jumpsquat frames may be a factor, I find that after playing wide variances of air speed creates more awkwardness.
You're not used to needing to buffer 2-3 frames faster to get out aerials.
Fox's jump squat in melee was like 1 frame faster than most of the cast, it made him short hopping one of the hardest technical things to be consistent with; you would have to let go of the jump button/holding up within a frame of input registration.
In fact out of all of those 4 frame jump squat animations, ZSS and Diddy are the only ones with option-rich usages of it.
ZSS can uair, fair, bair, dair (flip jump: can act before landing)
Diddy can uair, fair, bair, nair
Fox has no SHAD game whatsoever, he lands during the landing lag period of his AD.
I believe greninja is similar too, he would maybe get a single hit out of uair or bair
I'm not sure about duck hunt (nair?)
Megaman gets the first two hits of his bair? A single pellet?
MK can nair/jump
Pits can jump, but lose all their auto cancel choices if they SHAD; i'm not sure if he can sh ad jump and ac his aerials.
Sheik can only SHAD auto cancel landing with something.
Kirby can bair/jump
Pika can shad aerial but he loses all of his auto cancel frames and has horrendous landing lag; back air can work though.
Lucas I'm not entirely sure of but I tend not to feel he has much of shad game at all from what I've seen.
Could you explain this statement? In my mind, the main factors influencing how good a SHAD is are the character's aerial mobility, fall speed, and how good their options out of it are (fast, high coverage aerials basically). Jump squat just doesn't make the list for me. Furthermore, it seems like you're suggesting characters with long jump squats have a better SHAD game, which also doesn't make sense to me. Long jump squats unequivocally make a character's ground-to-air game worse because it takes longer to access your aerial options. I don't see how SHAD is an exception.
The idea is that Zelda, Puff, and Samus ALREADY have good options out of their SHAD. Decreasing their jump squat makes the startup of SHAD shorter (time before intangibility). Partially why ZSS's/good characters' jumping AD is great (f6 intangibility. You trade 3 frames of startup vulnerability from rolls for movement flexibility and ~5 frame endlag. But you're now in the air which is generally bad in Smash 4 so tradeoffs.). Giving Zelda, Puff, and Samus shorter jump squats increases how good jumping airdodge is. Curiously, this may be an active decision by developers to discourage the use of jumping airdodge by these characters.
Edit: Also, Smash is not a game that is solely focused on balance. Feel of a character is important (and why Smash is popular and successful) and how that character makes the transition to Smash. Ryu has a bad forward roll, because he's not supposed to cross up roll from street fighter. Shulk has bad air accel/decel because that's how he is in Xenoblade. Whether those things are good or bad for balance reasons are not likely to be among the reasons they are implemented.
In fact out of all of those 4 frame jump squat animations, ZSS and Diddy are the only ones with option-rich usages of it.
ZSS can uair, fair, bair, dair (flip jump: can act before landing)
Diddy can uair, fair, bair, nair
Fox has no SHAD game whatsoever, he lands during the landing lag period of his AD.
I believe greninja is similar too, he would maybe get a single hit out of uair or bair
I'm not sure about duck hunt (nair?)
Megaman gets the first two hits of his bair? A single pellet?
MK can nair/jump
Pits can jump, but lose all their auto cancel choices if they SHAD; i'm not sure if he can sh ad jump and ac his aerials.
Sheik can only SHAD auto cancel landing with something.
Kirby can bair/jump
Pika can shad aerial but he loses all of his auto cancel frames and has horrendous landing lag; back air can work though.
Lucas I'm not entirely sure of but I tend not to feel he has much of shad game at all from what I've seen.
Lucas just lands during the AD. No SHAD game whatsoever. Although at least he can Zair.
Greninja is in the same boat as Sheik, he can't do anything except autocancel his AD landing lag with an aerial. If he could get hit 1 of Bair out that would actually be really cool.
As an approach his SHAD has little use but might be worth exploring a bit more. He can use any special before he lands except Shadow Sneak. He can also jump before he lands so he could hit with Dair. It's all pretty gimmicky but so underdeveloped there's no way to know how effective it might be.
EDIT: He can also hit with Dair before he lands but won't jump off the opponent. This can combo into Usmash or Uair at kill percent.
So much earlier in this thread I was a little hard on the Links, and I have to say my opinion has changed. Toon Link actually has combos and bomb trolling is really fun. I see them both as mid tiers now.
This is my new viability list
Viable:
Somewhat Viable:
Not Viable:
If you have any questions feel free to ask, but I think this is pretty straightforward.
I want to know your definition of "viable". That isn't a caustic quip, it's a sincere query. I don't understand how Ike, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Yoshi can be deemed "viable" when Pit and R.O.B. are only "somewhat viable".
Ike, DK, Pac and Yoshi - definitely strong characters with respectable results, but none of them have made waves in the same way that the other "viable" characters have. Ike has Ryo taking names at local tourneys, DK is a tentative threat since 1.1.0, Pac has an abundance of theory which is respectably backed up by the Japanese meta (i.e. Abadango and Dee), Yoshi gets fine results in locals but doesn't factor into nationals. Pit and R.O.B. have both been cited as potential threats in Shaya's survey data (see OP); even if they don't make it to nationals, it's undeniable that the work is there in the immediate vicinity.
If you're going by matchup data, I still don't see how the aforementioned four can be above Pit and R.O.B. If the Ike mains are to be believed, Ike has serviceable matchups with most of the top-tiers except Sheik and maybe ZSS but doesn't stand out, DK still gets beaten down by fast combo characters, Pac has a good matchup spread in theory but doesn't have any fundamentally incredible matchups with high / top-tiers, Yoshi is a bit more abstract and I don't think he has anything that really distinguishes him as definitely viable; Pit doesn't have any unwinnable matchups, but he doesn't have any exceptional matchups either, which offers him some consistency, and while R.O.B. can struggle with top-tiers, his unorthodox playstyle and good theory keeps him in the region of consistent threat in the eyes of many top players.
I wonder about your placement of Jigglypuff and Dedede. Neither have the results nor the theory, in my opinion, to justify them being above Mewtwo (a character that's been doing good work in Japan) and Mii Swordfighter (definitively buffed in 1.0.0, with players like san putting in the work and Chompy picking him up). Their matchups don't justify it either: I don't think they have any distinct matchups with any of the top-tiers, or even high-tiers (I think Dedede beats Pit, but that's about it). If you can provide definitive evidence (theory plus results) to justify it, please do.
On another note entirely~
How's Meta Knight been doing? I know there was the rosy-tinted heyday recently where he seemed to be on top of the world, but except for solid theory backing him up, is he still a considerable threat?
Mewtwo's Dash Attack IS pretty amazing. It just has a lot of nice convenient qualities thrown into one move, its only flaw being that it's very punishable on block. That huge disjointed, lingering hitbox upfront lets it beat a lot of things, and it's great for catching rolls. Mewtwo's decent run speed (not the best, not the worst) also gives him a slight advantage over other low tiers (or perceived low tiers) in that it really lets him catch up to opponents on the run.
The idea is that Zelda, Puff, and Samus ALREADY have good options out of their SHAD. Decreasing their jump squat makes the startup of SHAD shorter (time before intangibility). Partially why ZSS's/good characters' jumping AD is great (f6 intangibility. You trade 3 frames of startup vulnerability from rolls for movement flexibility and ~5 frame endlag. But you're now in the air which is generally bad in Smash 4 so tradeoffs.). Giving Zelda, Puff, and Samus shorter jump squats increases how good jumping airdodge is. Curiously, this may be an active decision by developers to discourage the use of jumping airdodge by these characters.
Edit: Also, Smash is not a game that is solely focused on balance. Feel of a character is important (and why Smash is popular and successful) and how that character makes the transition to Smash. Ryu has a bad forward roll, because he's not supposed to cross up roll from street fighter. Shulk has bad air accel/decel because that's how he is in Xenoblade. Whether those things are good or bad for balance reasons are not likely to be among the reasons they are implemented.
Yup, movement is the core #1 thing that sakurai deems to be important for making them 'feel' like their character, even if they aren't controllable in a direct sense in their games (ie Marth or Bowser). But it's still important to Sakurai that they move the way they feel they should. Air accel, aerial movement speed, aerial deceleration, walk speed, run speed, dash length, roll speed & distance, jumpsquat length, jump heights, etc - these are all core to Sakurai and likely some of the first things designed in the characters.
Part of what stands out in Smash compared to most other fighters imo - the specific, clever, and creative characterization of movement properties for the characters.
He treats the nintendo characters the way Nintendo wants them to be treated - like mascots. And sakurai does well is communicating a mascot's personality/identity via movement & feel, which is a unique-to-videogame method of expression and immersion.
It's something nintendo has focused on more than most other aspects of game design, which is part of their identity - gameplay. And what that means in large part to nintendo, because of how much they pride and depend on their mascots, is how the mascots control and feel from a characterization point-of-view. Having a consistent 'feel' allows a character to not only be visually memorable, but also memorable from a gameplay perspective. We can remember controlling and 'feeling like' these characters in multiple games, and our urge to do it again may inspire us to buy the next game with our favourite characters.
So that's why it's important Samus always feel stiff - that's part of the mental connection people have with metroid games. It's a core part of them, and thus Samus.
How's Meta Knight been doing? I know there was the rosy-tinted heyday recently where he seemed to be on top of the world, but except for solid theory backing him up, is he still a considerable threat?
Our theory's good yeah, but our results are not that remarkable.
There are two top-level MKs in the US, Tyrant and Ito. Tyrant did pretty well at Paragon (9th) and he also came 3rd at the recent, somewhat stacked regional Indigo Plateau. Ito went to IP as well and got 5th/6th, he doesn't travel that much so this was a nice opportunity to see how he stacks up on the big stage. Personally I feel that he could have placed better but he had some nerves. He plays very impressively at every local he goes to and rarely (if ever?) doesn't win the whole thing, despite living in the very strong region of CA. We also have Katakiri who came tied 9th (alongside V115, Ksev and Demitus) at Rebirth, a regional on the same day as IP which was also quite stacked. He does very well at pretty much every local he attends.
Outside the states we have Salena in Japan and Leo in Mexico, but to be honest we don't see much of them in terms of matches. I think Salena came tied 17th or something at Umebura FAT but I'm not sure.
So we have some results but nothing huge, I'd say MK is certainly still a threat but isn't quite top tier. In terms of ordered characters, I'd put him at around 10th best.
May I ask why you guys fall for this bait every single time?
Step 1: Be a random
Step 2: Post a tier list without in depth explanation, or without any explanation at all
Step 3: Guaranteed replies! Most of which are belittling and arrogant.
Can you maybe just ignore the random tier lists, instead of trying to prove how much better your opinion of what a tier list should look like is?
Given the results Greninja has, I do have to say that he's likely not solo viable with Sheik around. The MU really is looking to be unwinnable at top level for us given how Some keeps getting roadblocked by her.
The MU is probably 65:35 in Sheik's favor and that doesn't really bode well for Greninja's viability. He would be completely fine otherwise though.
Sheik is Greninja's gatekeeper sadly. And yes, without her he'd be fine. Some has done some great work in proving Greninja's solo main viability. He and a couple of others (istudying and to a lesser extent Eddy) have shown how important the 1.1.0 buffs were and how good Greninja can be. Cements him as the second biggest winner of that patch (the biggest being DK) in my eyes.
Given the results Greninja has, I do have to say that he's likely not solo viable with Sheik around. The MU really is looking to be unwinnable at top level for us given how Some keeps getting roadblocked by her.
The MU is probably 65:35 in Sheik's favor and that doesn't really bode well for Greninja's viability. He would be completely fine otherwise though.
The MU probably sucks and takes a lot of effort to win in it, but it's far from unwinnable and basing this on a single top player (even if there are few greninjas) isn't a very sound observation, especially looking how young the game is compared to other FGs.
The MU probably sucks and takes a lot of effort to win in it, but it's far from unwinnable and basing this on a single top player (even if there are few greninjas) isn't a very sound observation, especially looking how young the game is compared to other FGs.
If the best Greninja player right now keeps getting roadblocked by Sheiks, then I don't think the others are going to do much better.
Sheik is far too overwhelming for Greninja, the only thing we have over her is that we have more immediate kill power on our moves, otherwise she just destroys us unless she gets really outplayed.