Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

[Zelder]

It's fine, I like having these sorts of debates.

ZeR0's opinion just happens to line up with that the Charizard boards have; that Charizard isn't explored quite fully just yet, even with our current understanding. Bengalz seems to have explored Charizard a bit more thouroughly then most people have, which might explain why he's so good at Charizard rather than him just being really good (which he is, but it's also that he's explored Zard quite thoroughly). Charizard's aerials are fast, he has a good grab game and he's overall pretty good, but again the dominance of Shiek in the meta currently diminishes Charizard's reputation since, while he does decently against most of the cast, he really struggles with the Shiek MU.

Charizard has plenty of potential, but the fact that he's derided as a low-tier character contributes to his low use. He's not exceptional against high-tiers, but he is, at least as far as his mains are concerned, far better than being low tier. The only really bad MU he has is against Shiek, everything else is about even or in his favor.

If this were true he'd be the second best character in the game and have a phenomenally insane matchup chart!!!!!

Edit: I'm sorry, I'm not trying to hassle you or pick on you, but that's simply not true. If Charizard was going even or better with most of the characters in the game (or against most of the top tiers, I wasn't quite sure which you mean), he'd be way way way top tier.

 

[meleebrawler]

It's fine, I like having these sorts of debates.

ZeR0's opinion just happens to line up with that the Charizard boards have; that Charizard isn't explored quite fully just yet, even with our current understanding. Bengalz seems to have explored Charizard a bit more thouroughly then most people have, which might explain why he's so good at Charizard rather than him just being really good (which he is, but it's also that he's explored Zard quite thoroughly). Charizard's aerials are fast, he has a good grab game and he's overall pretty good, but again the dominance of Shiek in the meta currently diminishes Charizard's reputation since, while he does decently against most of the cast, he really struggles with the Shiek MU.

Charizard has plenty of potential, but the fact that he's derided as a low-tier character contributes to his low use. He's not exceptional against high-tiers, but he is, at least as far as his mains are concerned, far better than being low tier. The only really bad MU he has is against Shiek, everything else is about even or in his favor.

Again someone says something about their character that also happens to describe Mewtwo in a nutshell. Only Sheik can really systematically shut down his options; most other top or high tiers are tricky at worst due to the small margin of error but still very winnable.

 

[Trifroze]

What about characters like Pit that can technically beat anybody (no unwinnable / hard counter matchups), but don't necessarily have the tools to do it well? That is, you can win every matchup with this character, but it might require more effort than other, better characters.

I mean, if you want to tell me Pit is solo viable, go for it. I'm quite happy to have praise dished onto my main. I don't even think you're wrong, in fact I think what you say has merit, but I think the word "viable" has become a platitude at this stage. Even @bc1910 dropped "semi-viable" into his dissection of viability (not knockin' you, dear, your post was great, I just want to demonstrate that there's different "categories" of viability to some folk). I don't think we can even progress with these discussions in any meaningful way until we can define beyond rebuttal exactly what "viable" means.

You say "viable", I say, "How viable?" Is viability a fixed state of being (binary opposition of "viable / not viable"), or subject to gradation (relative definition, "X is more viable than Y")? Some say it's one, some say it's the other. Nobody is agreed. Human nature sticks its foot in the door, even when we don't want it to.

Or maybe it's just that there is a definitive meaning inherent in "viable", but people obfuscate and examine it without needing to. Even if it's written in the OP in big bold type to say, "THIS IS HOW VIABILITY IS DEFINED, NO OTHER INTERPRETATION IS OKAY", you will still have people who ask, "Yeah but why is that the definition? Isn't there a better / simpler / more efficient / more controversial way of defining it?"

I don't have an issue with the word "viability", I know what the concept itself means; the real tricky bit here is how we define "viable" and what and where exactly distinguishes between viable and not viable. I don't know. Just something I want to say.

Regarding the most reasonable definition of viability, I'm pretty sure viability is generally seen as the ability to consistently place in the top 8-32 in tournaments that are considered at least national level. In this way the definition of viability is fixed, but it becomes a problem when there may be more than 20 characters that can potentially achieve that but who can't all always place in the top ~16 especially when there are often multiple copies of the same characters there.

In this scenario you have to see if it's always the same characters making it to top 16, or whether there are some characters frequently switching places with them. Those characters who can never bust through that mark are unviable, even if they're just barely behind every time, and the ones who do make it are viable even if they can't do that every single tournament. The ones who make it every time are naturally more viable than the ones who make it once every three majors, although even then you have to take representation into account and whether that's the only thing holding some characters back or not.

The strictest definition for viability is the capability to realistically straight up win huge tournaments, but I don't know if that's very practical considering player matchups, surprise characters and player skill starts to play a more and more massive role when you get to the players who are closer to the game's skill cap than any other. In any case, Salem won Apex 2013 with ZSS who was considered 10th on the tier list at the time (and still only 9th later) and Brawl's balance is considered pretty unforgiving, so I think it's safe to say there will probably be at least 20 viable characters in Smash 4 and the lack of representation will be the only thing holding some of them back.

I'll say if a character can make consistent top 16s it's a testament that no single character can ruin their tournament since they made it that far, thus they're good enough to be called viable even if you define it strictly. If this doesn't happen in nationals and before top 16 (or even 32), it's not going to happen anywhere and that's why it's a good definition for viability.

 

[Wintropy]

The only really bad MU he has is against Shiek, everything else is about even or in his favor.

I strongly disagree with this, but everything else you said is good. I'd love to see more Charizard in the meta, diversity is my favourite thing about this game, but I wonder why, if he has that kind of potential, nobody goes out and does something about it.

 

[Tri Knight]

It makes sense that Charizard is kind of meh though because the general consensus has always been Speed > Weight. Most people value elusiveness over the ability to tank hits. There are just finally a few people who have shown that weight CAN matter but the popular opinion is speed.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Yeah, we need to stabilize what the rankings are for ratings to really by good. Here's my own proposed system;

Solo-Viable: Characters who can be mained without the need of a secondary to cover any particularly disadvantageous matchups. Common character tropes that can land here include rushdown and puppet fighters.
EX: , , ,

Paired-Viable: Characters who can be mained, but will probably need a secondary to cover any particularly disadvantageous matchups. Heavy hitters with reliable combos and characters that are generally good but aren't quite good enough to be solo-viable tend to be in this category.
EX: , ,,

Niche-Viable: Characters who require a secondary to perform in tournaments due to some critical flaws making for some poor matchups against a number of the higher-tier characters. Fighters here tend to have crippling flaws that can heavily damage their performance, such as poor range, problems in certain parts of the meta or poor recovery options.
EX: , , ,

Unviable: Characters who cannot do exceptionally well in tournaments, no matter how hard you try, because of some massive flaws crippling them, even despite of their potential advantages. Fighters here are generally just not as good as a choice as other characters due to some severe problems, like poor range, poor performance, laggy moves, light weight and poor recovery.
EX: , , ,

Okay, I will admit, I really don't have a right to judge Charizard, I don't really know him or how viable he is. But how are characters with "untapped potential" like Samus, Kirby, and even Palutena are competely unviable? I mean, like Wintropy said, we should see someone put in work with him if he is really that good.

We've seen the three I mentioned put in work above by people like Ryo, Depth, and MikeKirby, so claiming these characters are completely unviable is a bit of a hard pill to swallow.

I'm sorry, but I just can't agree with the notion that there characters that are completely unviable. Are they bad? Probably. But not useless.

 

[Trifroze]

When people talk about the potency of superheavies in this game, I think DK should always be used to set the bar for them.

That is, when you think Bowser, Dedede, Charizard or Ganondorf are better than people think they are let alone viable, look at DK and how ridiculous his mobility (for the size and weight), kill confirms and overall tools are, then look at how much trouble he still has in several important matchups that are so difficult for him only due to his size and weight. What do the other superheavies have that lets them handle all these troubles without dying far harder than DK, let alone performing better than him?

Bowser, Dedede, Charizard and Ganondorf are all slow compared to DK and fast running speed is hardly enough to make a character mobile. Bowser is fairly slow and floaty in the air with a massive jumpsquat, while Dedede, Charizard and Ganondorf are all super slow in the air, with Dedede and Ganondorf also being slow on the ground. Charizard and especially Dedede have multiple jumps to aid landings with Dedede also having a low lag aerial and disjoints, but he lacks a lot of the kill potential the other super heavies have. Charizard's OoS options actually seem better than what they really are because as long as you space versus his shield properly he'll never get to use them since they have very little horizontal range, especially usmash, they aren't that fast and they don't kill before 100-130% depending on his opponent's weight.

The superheavies are all clustered together as bad characters because they have so very few safe options, poor overall mobility (some less than others with other strengths like Dedede's relative landing ease and Ganondorf's power) and of course such massive hurtboxes. They all have a couple things that are actually very safe on shield, some of which are good pokes, like Bowser's ftilt, Ganondorf's dtilt and Charizard's dtilt as well as some falling aerials of Ganondorf and Dedede and rising fade back fair of Charizard, but none of these options can be whiffed, they're only safe if they hit shields and that's all thanks to 1.1.1. In the end they get potentially punished for all commitments and they get punished for them harder than any other type of character with a tough time resetting back to neutral.

I've had a tough time ranking these 4 superheavies among themselves, although I'm quite convinced Ganondorf is last. Competitively, his strengths are the least sustainable and his weaknesses the most exploitable.

 

[Gamegenie222]

I strongly disagree with this, but everything else you said is good. I'd love to see more Charizard in the meta, diversity is my favourite thing about this game, but I wonder why, if he has that kind of potential, nobody goes out and does something about it.

Cause people want easy characters with more immediate results. I'm on that need more zard train as well but it is what it is. Also getting weeded out at big events is also a big thing.

 

[Routa]

Shouldn't tier list be based on MU spread, frame data and theory that is backed up by results?

 

[Wintropy]

Cause people want easy characters with more immediate results. I'm on that need more zard train as well but it is what it is. Also getting weeded out at big events is also a big thing.

Then his potential evidently isn't as strong as suggested. If he had potential but nobody was interested in playing him (in the vein of Pit, Greninja, Peach, maybe Pac-Man, etc), I think we'd know about it by now. The fact that there's a sizable coterie of characters often perceived to be in high-tier, despite not having great representation, is important.

 

[Nobie]

I know a few months ago that @Amazing Ampharos was touting Charizard as underrated. Not sure what he thinks now, and how much his opinion changes if it's customs off.

I feel like Donkey Kong does better in the matchups that matter "more" (i.e. vs. the top tiers) but if we're judging the viability of characters on their ability to take on the entire cast, then things change. This also says a lot about how we view tier lists (Luigi being able to beat top tier characters brought him higher up in the past, while Ryu having a disadvantage against Mega Man means less).

For example, as Mewtwo, my view of superheavies from easiest to most difficult matchups goes something like:

Donkey Kong < Charizard < Ganondorf < Bowser < Dedede

I know some might disagree, but the first two I find the easiest to combo and space out, Ganondorf is very even and super fun as a match, Bowser's bursts of high mobility are legit scary, and Dedede is aggravating to fight because of how deceptively difficult to punish his attacks can be, on top of being difficult to kill vertically which is Mewtwo's forte.

In contrast, if I'm Mega Man then the matchup ends up being something like:

Dedede < Ganondorf < Charizard < Bowser < Donkey Kong

Basically Mega Man's properties give him different advantages and disadvantages, though this may not be the best example because he's such a peculiar character with an extreme game plan.

I think it makes sense that so many people judge their characters on the ability to fight the biggest threats at tournaments or whatever environment they're in, but I think it's actually worth looking at obscure matches as long as it doesn't devolve into "my low tier dad can beat up your low tier dad." For example, I'm just dabbling in Jigglypuff at the moment, but I feel like it's a character that has many workable matchups but can get bodied by enough (massive disjoint characters especially) to keep it down.

You know what's a fun as hell matchup? Jigglypuff vs. Wario. I'd like to see better players than me analyze it.

 

[Jams.]

I think one reason nobody can agree on who's bottom tier is due to regional bias and a general lack of knowledge regarding these characters. Everyone knows what the top and high tiers are capable of, but nobody understands what the bottom tiers can do and we're mostly just left with theorycraft. This is where an extremely strong regional rep for a bottom tier can come in and make you think their bad character is better than all the other bad characters.

For instance, the top player in my region secondaries . As a result, I know very well about what Mac is capable of, and have seen his Mac beat every top player in my region as well as solid out of region players. With this experience, it's very difficult for me to accept that Mac is bottom 5, and worse than other characters usually considered bottom tier. I think "well I know Mac can do this, this and this and wreck face, and I've heard bad characters X, Y, and Z are awful in theory and I don't know any of their results so they must be bad in practice as well" while knowing very little about X, Y, and Z. It's a pretty flawed line of reasoning, but I think almost all of us are guilty of it.

I'd imagine it's the same sort of thing with and GTA (Greater Toronto Area, not the game) and and Nevada, though I'd like players from those regions to confirm or deny my theory. This bias may not be restricted to strong regional players. If you follow the results and metagame development of a character (I guess seems like a relevant example right now) while neglecting the other bottom tiers, you're also more likely to have a favourably skewed perception of that character's viability.

As an aside, the player I mentioned recently posted a matchup spread for , and I can definitely see him bottom 5 now because his spread is abysmal. His matchups are polarized, and not in a good way. They're either even-ish, or practically unwinnable; unfortunately, many of the high and top tiers fall into the latter category.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Yeah, we need to stabilize what the rankings are for ratings to really by good. Here's my own proposed system;

Solo-Viable: Characters who can be mained without the need of a secondary to cover any particularly disadvantageous matchups. Common character tropes that can land here include rushdown and puppet fighters.
EX: , , ,

Paired-Viable: Characters who can be mained, but will probably need a secondary to cover any particularly disadvantageous matchups. Heavy hitters with reliable combos and characters that are generally good but aren't quite good enough to be solo-viable tend to be in this category.
EX: , ,,

Niche-Viable: Characters who require a secondary to perform in tournaments due to some critical flaws making for some poor matchups against a number of the higher-tier characters. Fighters here tend to have crippling flaws that can heavily damage their performance, such as poor range, problems in certain parts of the meta or poor recovery options.
EX: , , ,

Unviable: Characters who cannot do exceptionally well in tournaments, no matter how hard you try, because of some massive flaws crippling them, even despite of their potential advantages. Fighters here are generally just not as good as a choice as other characters due to some severe problems, like poor range, poor performance, laggy moves, light weight and poor recovery.
EX: , , ,

>Diddy
>Not Solo-Viable

Elaborate, if willing.

 

[Y2Kay]

It makes sense that Charizard is kind of meh though because the general consensus has always been Speed > Weight. Most people value elusiveness over the ability to tank hits. There are just finally a few people who have shown that weight CAN matter but the popular opinion is speed.

Charizard has one fastest dashes in the game, barely slower in acceleration than Sheik

 

[Project Quarantine]

You know what's a fun as hell matchup? Jigglypuff vs. Wario. I'd like to see better players than me analyze it.

That matchup is like played either entirely offstage, or is wario camping some platform for a timeout.

Jiggs is one of the characters without too many problems against wario offstage, granted she gets a read. But where wario should win the matchup is offstage. An adept Wario should take advantage of his ability to prevent puff from grabbing tje ledge.

Anywhere outside of FD, however, how does jiggs approach camping wario? She's almost a free waft offstage and one setup even onstage could be the stock at 10%.

I'd play a jiggs in that anyday for fun though

 

[Mr. Johan]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10205408588477838

Marth and Lucina apparently have a kill confirm at high-ish percents by chaining SH DB1 into falling Nair 1 over and over into an Fsmash.

Ironically gives Lucina a leg up on Marth, since the final hit is likely to be a non-tipped Fsmash near the ledge, so Lucina can get this at 70 and ride it out for the KO.

 

[Nobie]

That matchup is like played either entirely offstage, or is wario camping some platform for a timeout.

Jiggs is one of the characters without too many problems against wario offstage, granted she gets a read. But where wario should win the matchup is offstage. An adept Wario should take advantage of his ability to prevent puff from grabbing tje ledge.

Anywhere outside of FD, however, how does jiggs approach camping wario? She's almost a free waft offstage and one setup even onstage could be the stock at 10%.

I'd play a jiggs in that anyday for fun though

Waft is a concern for Jiggs, but it's not like Wario gets five of them per match.

 

[Trifroze]

Trifroze Thanks for providing an example of what I was talking about when it come to every character having people trying to defend them?

Not to pick on just you buuuuut....

Saying so and so "just needs the Ike treatment to be viable" isn't exactly a good thing: before patches Ike was bottom 5 easy. If somebody needs the Ike treatment they are a bottom tier character like he was before his treatment started. To say your character needs the Ike treatment is to admit they are trash. Seriously, Ike had no combos, awkward hitboxes on a few key moves, and bad knockback on several other key moves. And more landing lag. And a jab combo that didn't work. He was garbo, which made Ryuga winning that 3DS tournament with Ike absolutely mind boggling. He even beat a Greninja to do it!

People keep looking at one particular character in a vacuum, ignoring the others around them tier wise, and go "look X can do such and such and such they are clearly better than what you think!". Thing is you can do that for literally every character in the game. I've seen freaking Zelda get that treatment in this topic.

No really. Every single character in this game you can make seem like at least a high low tier/bottom mid tier character by overemphasizing their strengths and overemphasizing the weaknesses of other characters. You think Little Mac is worse than Samus because of his recovery? Give it an hour, somebody will pop up talking how Little Mac's strengths are better than Samus and how Samus needs a lot more than he does to be good. Zelda? "She has such great kill power on her moves and has the elevator to use to punish whiffs, a recovery that's particularly hard to gimp and a reflector. Really all she needs is a a combo throw and a rework of her Down B then she'd be mid tier. She's much better off than Samus who's trying to be a mid range character with awkward combo bits thrown in and the inability to kill."

Guys. Accept that your character is bad. Bad doesn't mean nearly as much in this game as it did in Melee or Brawl.

You only have a point with all of what you just said if you think all reasoning is equally valid. You can say anything about any character, how good they are and what they would need fixed to be considerably better, but whether that actually makes any sense or not is a different matter. The fact that anything can be said about everything doesn't mean everything is therefore equally wrong. Discussion happens and should happen so that we find the valid reasons amidst the invalid ones. You try to shut it off at the basis of "everyone who defends a character who's claimed to be bad is wrong because everyone always defends bad characters, so accept it, they're all bad". The fact that you use Little Mac as an example of a defendable character, one whose solo viability is completely invalidated by tournament rulesets alone, begs me to wonder whether you really do think all reasoning is equally good.

The Ike treatment term was coined after 1.0.8 here due to the changes of that patch which ultimately consisted of small startup and landing lag decreases, slight hitbox fixes and one damage buff to dash attack. The only larger than small changes were on dash attack and fair. I could've used a clearer term, but I thought everyone remembered this. Perhaps Ike was never bottom trash like you and some lists made him seem, he always had his dthrow combos, range, damage output and kill power aside from dash attack and bair. Instead he was just a flawed character with high potential, and that potential was ultimately reached with several small changes and a couple moderate ones. He wasn't overtuned in any way and nothing about his fundamental design was changed. Maybe Samus and some others are the same and you try to stem that acknowledgement.

How would you make Mac into a viable character without overtuning him or without touching his design-weaknesses? What about Jigglypuff or Zelda? Tell me and we might have a conversation.

 

[Mazdamaxsti]

So I decided to make a Kirby Match-up chart with the supposed high/top tiers, and I described every single one so it can help with discussion about Kirby. Descriptions in the spoiler.

(IN NO ORDER)
-3:

-2:

-1:

0:

???
/
*Moved Peach down, came to my senses.

Spoiler

-3 (no order):

: Outspeeds us in the air and ground, with superior range and faster moves. Can camp us out easily, and his n-air and super armour jump make combos and edge-guarding really unreliable.

:MikeKirby says it's our worst. His amazing frame data and kills hurt us tremendously, our d-air also doesn't effect him. His juggle game is also really good against us and he forces us to approach.

: Another MU noted as Kirby's worst. Sonic's speed is so crippling to Kirby, and we can't punish anything he does. We also have a hard time beating out his moves and his up-b wrecks our recovery, while we have a hard time gimping him.

: Hard to edge-guard and combo due to her fast options. Her amazing aerials block all of our aerials because of range, and turnips destroy a lot of our options. Usually would be -2 but in my opinion it's -3.


-2 (No order):
: Rosa is either considered -3 or -2, but it's definitely bad. All of her tools are hard for Kirby to deal with, her campy nature makes Kirby struggle against her. She has easy kills against us, and she is one of the only top tiers are combos don't work at all against. Kirby's poor mobility/range also make it hard to get rid of Luma, and LUMA CAN HIT US OUT OF OUR THROWS. GAH

: Pikachu's speed and ability to get out of combos easily INCREDIBLY hurts Kirby. One big thing with Kirby is his advantage state, and Pika makes it almost non-existent, with wuick attack, n-air, and the best recovery in the game. His moves are also extremely safe on us because we are to slow to punish any of his moves optimally.

: Diddy's great air game, and banana game, cripple Kirby. Bananas are one of the best projectiles that forces Kirby to approach, and if we pick up the banana we don't get much from it. His ability to stay in the air hurts us due to bad air speed and low jump. Only good thing about the MU is his easily gimped recovery, but doesn't make the MU good.

: This MU is pretty bad. Mario's good frame data and fast kill moves make the match hard for Kirby to do anything, and he is hard to punish. He can usually land hits on Kirby before Kirby can do anything, and fireballs make it even harder. Inhale helps, but explain how I can land it reliably against Mario please.

: Ness is a hard MU to judge. In a vacuum, it seems like an okay MU. We have good combos and good edge-guards against him, PK Fire is useless against us, and he can't force us to approach. Let's get out of the vacuum. Ness has the easiest juggles against us, and due to our weight if he lands one u-air we die. His b-throw can end our stocks extremely early, his disjoints are hard for Kirby to beat. He has good enough tools to beat out any combo attempts we go for, also.

: Hard to edge-guard and combo due to her fast options. Her amazing aerials block all of our aerials because of range, and turnips destroy a lot of our options.

-1:
: His bad aerial frame data and lack of good combos against us, when we have amazing combos against him, make this MU do-able. He can't force us to approach and we can beat his approach options pretty well. His raw power and fast kill moves make this MU bad, though. Same with his really hard to punish recovery.

: Kirby vs Sheik is an iffy one. I think it's between -1 to -2 and most Kirby players seem to agree. Kirby's floatiness and size give Sheik trouble, we can duck under needles and take our own (if we can get it). We have okay combos against her, and Sheik's aggressive nature give us an edge in the MU. Her speed, in-gimpable recovery, range, and good edge-guards against us make this MU a loss though.


0:
: I would usually put ZSS -1, but after watching MikeKirby vs LarryLurr's ZSS and hearing Mike's opinion about it, I decided to place her even. We can duck under a lot of her approach options and punish them well, including n-air and grab. If we can read a grab and duck, we get a free kill. He have the advantage on the ground. Our size makes getting early kill combos hard for ZSS. The kill combos, her amazing speed and range, and ungimpable recovery do make the MU hard for Kirby, though.

: After watching Game 1 of Mike vs Larry's Fox, and asking Mike about it, this MU is even. He wins neutral, but with a single punish Kirby has as 0-74 that only needs a frame-trap. We can also edge-guard him surprisingly easily. This makes our advantage state amazing against him, and makes him play more campy to not be punished. This campy play can lead to lasers, but hey we can duck under those too. His speed and good kills, along with him dominating neutral make the MU not a winning MU.

: Falcon mains say this is in Kirby's favour, Kirby mains say it's in Falcon's favour. I think it's even because while we have our crippling duck, combos, and edge-guards, his superior range, speed, and kill moves make playing this MU scary on both sides. One hit from either player and it could mean the stock.

: -2 without inhale, even with it. His incredible spacing, range, recovery and combo breKers would usually make this MU hell, but pocket makes his spacing bad and gives us a new damage tool. Using bowling ball and tree is highly frowned upon against a Kirby with inhale, because he can kill you at 30% if he successfully pockets them.


MUs idk:

: Considered really bad for Kirby, but I've never played a good MK in more than one game so I can't put my input on it.

: Never faced a good one. In theory, it's bad but not too bad, we have good combos, edge-guards, and spacing against him, but our weight and campy nature can mean a stock from one hit.

/: In theory -2, I've only faced one competent Pit, so I actually have no idea.

: In theory bad, but I've never played a good Wario so idk.

 

[Blobface]

I'm starting to think there are some characters that should almost always ledgehop after a successful trump rather than try to land a guaranteed B-air.

A lot of people buffer DJ after getting trumped, since letting yourself go too low after losing your invincibility is suicide in most matchups. If you go for a "guaranteed" B-air and your trump wasn't early enough, you'll just miss and end up offstage with your opponent above you or onstage. If you ledgehop however, you can simultaneously threaten both their options: DJ/Recover onstage, and Grabbing the ledge. If they try to go to the ledge, you try to D-air them. If they try to go onstage, you can hit them with a B-air.

It's obviously not perfect, and it won't work equally across the cast, but the risk:reward is incredibly favorable. The absolute worst that can happen to the trumper is a F-air in the direction of the far blast zone. Meanwhile, the trumpee risks getting B-aired offstage without their DJ, or even getting spiked to a stock loss.

I'm pretty sure most characters can use this somehow, but characters that I think are especially good at it:

The key thing all these characters have is a consistent and strong D-air spike with good range to hit people who grab the ledge, along with (mostly) strong B-airs.

 

[NairWizard]

Bias is universal and natural, but I think the biggest form of bias comes not directly from what characters we play or play against but rather indirectly through our characters' matchups. There is a strong positive correlation between a player's perception of a given character on a tier list and his main's matchup against that character.

I myself am not immune to this phenomenon. Pikachu has been my most-used character since the launch of the Wii U, and so I have always had a slightly higher opinion of Mario than perhaps I would if my main were instead Rosalina. Conversely, my opinion of Rosalina has never been that high and even now I find it difficult to see her as a top 3 pick. This is (at least very partially) because I play a character who is particularly susceptible to Mario's strengths and particularly good at exploiting Rosalina's weaknesses, so it seems natural that I would understand Mario's strengths better and Rosalina's weaknesses better and thus my relative perception of the two would be skewed, even if only somewhat.

Playing multiple characters is a good way to counteract this bias but it's not enough to just devote time to these characters and play friendlies. There's a difference between messing around with a character and understanding his or her moveset and actually playing that character in a high-stakes tournament when the pressure is on and your opponent's best strategies come out. Bias tends to form more easily in such circumstances because when two players are trying their best and one person loses, it's very easy to partially rationalize the result on some basis other than skill gap. The loser can either accept that he was outplayed or say that while he may have been outplayed there were other factors at work such as his character's fundamental weaknesses or his opponent's character's fundamental strengths. In contrast but in the same vein, the winner gets a chance to take pride in his character choice and claim yet another winning or even matchup for his character (though some people will say "I won despite a bad matchup" instead; this tends to vary on a player-by-player basis though). These are just logical corollaries of playing in a high-pressure environment where players are going all out, so unless we subject our secondaries to that high-pressure treatment we'll always have some kind of "main bias."

And of course the best way to normalize for these biases in a discussion is to have mains of many different characters participate.

Having to rely on SHFF to hit with ZSS' aerials is in my opinion her biggest weakness, and calling it a minor one is unfair when you combine it with the fact that her ground game isn't that great, mainly due to super punishable grabs and dash attack. This means that hitting grounded opponents with nair and bair for instance takes about 28-32 frames total if you count jumpsquat, depending on how late you want to hit with them (the later the safer, also late is required for shorter characters). I'd like to stress that very few other characters in the game combine bad options out of a dash with non-existent rising shorthop aerial options like ZSS does, and none of those are top or high tier, plus there are very few of them to begin with. This is not a minor weakness, it's her major flaw.

Her CQC is good and fast though and down smash is still decent for ground spacing even though it became unsafe with 1.1.1. It's a serious nerf in my opinion when people start realizing that you can just dashgrab her after shielding it, and it's sad to see people unanimously say that the patch was good for her when it tampered two of her central ground options, down smash and paralyzer.

This is a fair point and the reason why Diddy, Pikachu, Mario, and other quick/small characters with good rising aerials can give ZSS some trouble. I'd accept the "major flaw" classification and it's even possible that some of these characters actually beat her because of it, which would give her bad matchups that Sheik doesn't have.

 

[Sir Tundra]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10205408588477838

Marth and Lucina apparently have a kill confirm at high-ish percents by chaining SH DB1 into falling Nair 1 over and over into an Fsmash.

Ironically gives Lucina a leg up on Marth, since the final hit is likely to be a non-tipped Fsmash near the ledge, so Lucina can get this at 70 and ride it out for the KO.

Does this also work with roy or is it just marth and lucina who can do this amazing new tech?

 

[Mr. Johan]

Roy falls too fast. He gets landing lag when trying to SH DED 1.

Marth's and Lucina's physics are the same, so they both get this.

 

[Dee-SmashinBoss]

Ugh I wish Mike were here to give his opinions because he actually goes to tournaments and doesn't complain about Kirby, seeing as he sees little to no difference even after the patch

 

[Wintermelon43]

Ugh I wish Mike were here to give his opinions because he actually goes to tournaments and doesn't complain about Kirby, seeing as he sees little to no difference even after the patch

If you want Mikekirby, summon him

@MikeKirby

 

[meleebrawler]

I know a few months ago that @Amazing Ampharos was touting Charizard as underrated. Not sure what he thinks now, and how much his opinion changes if it's customs off.

I feel like Donkey Kong does better in the matchups that matter "more" (i.e. vs. the top tiers) but if we're judging the viability of characters on their ability to take on the entire cast, then things change. This also says a lot about how we view tier lists (Luigi being able to beat top tier characters brought him higher up in the past, while Ryu having a disadvantage against Mega Man means less).

For example, as Mewtwo, my view of superheavies from easiest to most difficult matchups goes something like:

Donkey Kong < Charizard < Ganondorf < Bowser < Dedede

I know some might disagree, but the first two I find the easiest to combo and space out, Ganondorf is very even and super fun as a match, Bowser's bursts of high mobility are legit scary, and Dedede is aggravating to fight because of how deceptively difficult to punish his attacks can be, on top of being difficult to kill vertically which is Mewtwo's forte.

I see Mewtwo's matchups vs. heavies more like this: Ganondorf < Dedede < Bowser < Charizard < DK. Though the gaps between Ganon/D3 and Zard/DK are rather small.

Ganondorf's just too slow to apply any real pressure on Mewtwo, leaving him free to approach the match however he wants. He's also the easiest to gimp by far. Though since his frame data is a cut above he can turn a situation around better than most.

Dedede may seem aggravating online but as long as you don't get baited by his jumps there's not really much to be worried about. Mewtwo can generally outbox him, especially in the air, and gordos are rather easily dealt with shadow ball, confusion and bair. Bair in particular makes short work of gordo ledge traps. He may be hard to gimp outright or kill vertically but he's so slow in the air that it's not hard to find opportunities to strike him, allowing Mewtwo to rack up some good percent offstage.

 

[FullMoon]

I'm starting to think there are some characters that should almost always ledgehop after a successful trump rather than try to land a guaranteed B-air.

A lot of people buffer DJ after getting trumped, since letting yourself go too low after losing your invincibility is suicide in most matchups. If you go for a "guaranteed" B-air and your trump wasn't early enough, you'll just miss and end up offstage with your opponent above you or onstage. If you ledgehop however, you can simultaneously threaten both their options: DJ/Recover onstage, and Grabbing the ledge. If they try to go to the ledge, you try to D-air them. If they try to go onstage, you can hit them with a B-air.

It's obviously not perfect, and it won't work equally across the cast, but the risk:reward is incredibly favorable. The absolute worst that can happen to the trumper is a F-air in the direction of the far blast zone. Meanwhile, the trumpee risks getting B-aired offstage without their DJ, or even getting spiked to a stock loss.

I'm pretty sure most characters can use this somehow, but characters that I think are especially good at it:

The key thing all these characters have is a consistent and strong D-air spike with good range to hit people who grab the ledge, along with (mostly) strong B-airs.

Do you mean something like this?

 

[Mazdamaxsti]

Ugh I wish Mike were here to give his opinions because he actually goes to tournaments and doesn't complain about Kirby, seeing as he sees little to no difference even after the patch

I mean, I asked Mike about a lot of these. Specifically Fox, ZSS, Luigi, and Sonic. He said Yoshi wasn't too bad, but in my opinion it's our worst MU. Mike thinks it's luigi/sonic.

And while I'm not a top player, I do try my best to go to as many tournaments as possible, as frequently place in online tournaments (not like those matter tho). I'm more of a Kirby Labber right now.

Please correct me where I'm wrong, the more input the better.

 

[KirbySquad101]

I mean, I asked Mike about a lot of these. Specifically Fox, ZSS, Luigi, and Sonic. He said Yoshi wasn't too bad, but in my opinion it's our worst MU. Mike thinks it's luigi/sonic.

And while I'm not a top player, I do try my best to go to as many tournaments as possible, as frequently place in online tournaments (not like those matter tho). I'm more of a Kirby Labber right now.

Please correct me where I'm wrong, the more input the better.

The Yoshi/Kirby match up sounds awful, but I've seen quite a lot of Luigi/Kirby battles to a point where I'm considering Luigi to be our worst.

 

[Mazdamaxsti]

The Yoshi/Kirby match up sounds awful, but I've seen quite a lot of Luigi/Kirby battles to a point where I'm considering Luigi to be our worst.

Yeah the Yoshi/Kirby MU is awful in theory, but I've played some really good Yoshi players to back up my claims. At best it's -2 though, it's still a really bad MU.

 

[Blobface]

Do you mean something like this?

More or less. Not all characters can do it effectively from a ledge drop DJ though so some have to ledgehop. A lot of trumps don't really go anywhere because people jump out for B-airs, which requires the trump to be near perfect. It's usually better to opt for option coverage rather than going for something that may or may not be guaranteed.

 

[FlynnCL]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10205408588477838

Marth and Lucina apparently have a kill confirm at high-ish percents by chaining SH DB1 into falling Nair 1 over and over into an Fsmash.

Ironically gives Lucina a leg up on Marth, since the final hit is likely to be a non-tipped Fsmash near the ledge, so Lucina can get this at 70 and ride it out for the KO.

This has been a thing since Brawl. I've seen Dancing Blade 1 to neutral-air set-ups posted multiple times and every time I lab it out... I realize it doesn't work and you can get punished for it. Dancing Blade 1 has very little stun to it.

Fast fallers can fall then shield before the neutral-air comes out and non-fast fallers with access to decently fast aerials can punish you before you continue the string. It might work on huge targets with no access to fast aerials, but I think that would be all.

If you know your opponent is going to panic and throw out a punishable landing option (like an air-dodge) you might as well just set up the forward smash with a jab instead. Much safer.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

You only have a point with all of what you just said if you think all reasoning is equally valid. You can say anything about any character, how good they are and what they would need fixed to be considerably better, but whether that actually makes any sense or not is a different matter. The fact that anything can be said about everything doesn't mean everything is therefore equally wrong. Discussion happens and should happen so that we find the valid reasons amidst the invalid ones. You try to shut it off at the basis of "everyone who defends a character who's claimed to be bad is wrong because everyone always defends bad characters, so accept it, they're all bad". The fact that you use Little Mac as an example of a defendable character, one whose solo viability is completely invalidated by tournament rulesets alone, begs me to wonder whether you really do think all reasoning is equally good.

The Ike treatment term was coined after 1.0.8 here due to the changes of that patch which ultimately consisted of small startup and landing lag decreases, slight hitbox fixes and one damage buff to dash attack. The only larger than small changes were on dash attack and fair. I could've used a clearer term, but I thought everyone remembered this. Perhaps Ike was never bottom trash like you and some lists made him seem, he always had his dthrow combos, range, damage output and kill power aside from dash attack and bair. Instead he was just a flawed character with high potential, and that potential was ultimately reached with several small changes and a couple moderate ones. He wasn't overtuned in any way and nothing about his fundamental design was changed. Maybe Samus and some others are the same and you try to stem that acknowledgement.

How would you make Mac into a viable character without overtuning him or without touching his design-weaknesses? What about Jigglypuff or Zelda? Tell me and we might have a conversation.

Are all opinions about low tier characters being underrated going to be wrong? No. But when just about every single one of them have people claiming they are actually mid tier... it simply doesn't work. A lot of them simply have to be wrong. This game doesn't only have 5ish characters in the low to bottom range and the a giant cut of characters in mid tier. Its not THAT well balanced. Can't ever be because the game has to consider all modes not just 1v1 no items.

I can quite assure you, Ike was baaaaad in 1.0. Dthrow combos are... nice but they don't work anywhere near killing percents. Dtilt had absolutely no purpose. Fair was rather awkward to try to use. Uair wasn't killing anywhere soon enough for its frame data and had (has) lowish damage for its start up time. People very easily fell out of his Jab Combo, leaving Ike with no reliable CQC tools. Damage output wasn't good because there was literally no way to string two moves together beyond Dthrow at early percents. Range was there yes, but nothing else really was. Realistically Ike had Bair in 1.0, Dthrow combos and... nothing else. It was pretty abysmal over on the Ike Character Boards.

Little Mac? Would need to be actually able to play around with the changes hands on but most likely I'd be looking at his specials primarily. Nobody really denies that he has some pretty amazing tilts and smashes in terms of being tools. But he starts floundering outside of that. His Up B I'd probably make stronger, allowing it to kill sooner and widen the hitbox a tad. Side B would be more projectile invulnerability frames + less cooldown. Neutral B would have less cooldown. The actual punch in Slip Counter would hit sooner and have an increase to the base damage.

Beyond that I'd really want to play around with the character before committing to any other changes. Making Dtilt more safe would be something I'd consider though, probably play around with one of the throws to give him some more low percent combos. Basically he should have an amazing ground game, decent options for getting in past projectiles, and kinda fail at anything air related. Honestly though I wouldn't expect him ever to be buffed. He's bad in tournament settings because of our stage selection methods. Other modes he can be pretty deadly as is.

Jigglypuff imo might simply be doomed by design in the Smash 4 engine. Kinda like how Falcon in Brawl actually had some good tools in a vacuum but they just couldn't work together well in that engine. The only thing I can think of would be to (carefully) increase the amount of shield damage on some of her moves. Dair and Fair would be the candidates to start with, increase their shield damage and shield stun. Probably give Rest a very small knockback boot to try to make sure she gets the kill with it more often. I don't think you could really fix her neutral game though without overtuning, and as long as its THAT weak I don't feel she can be good. Increasing her shield damage so that her neutral game is more dangerous might be the safest way to try to buff her. But that would need a looooot of play testing. Sing is obviously hot garbage but that's largely by design/has FFA in mind. Side B is already pretty decent. Neutral B is... tricky to balance fairly considering all modes. If the shield related changes didn't break anything about the charge, I'd consider maybe slightly buffing one or two ground moves. It would be pretty slight buffs though and I'd want to see how she was looking first.

Zelda: make her multi-hitting attacks more consistent if those haven't been brought up to a proper level yet. I know they've at least poked at that issue before. After that, speed up her jab a tad, increase the base knockback of Dsmash, reduce the endlag on her Ftilt and Utilt by a tad, increase the number of active frames for the sweetspot of her aerials by 1, have Nair start 2 frames sooner, increase the hitbox, speed, and controllability of Din's Fire a tad. Don't know if they would consider making her Down B able to hold a charge or not within their patch philosophy. If they would, that would help her quite a fair bit right there actually. Her specials need just better functionality outside of Up B, her ground game needs to be a bit better at actually poking, and her aerials need to have a marginally better chance of actually being worth the risk.

 

[C0rvus]

My main training partner is a Charizard main. There's a reason that he's so rare in the meta. I can say with confidence that Robin has a non-trivial advantage over him, at the very least. He's not a good character. He does have an absurd ability to force trades and sit on a lead with his excessive armor and fatty status. Zard with rage is ******** strong. He's just not good. You can list any character's strengths and weaknesses and make them sound good, but you're only lying to yourself.

 

[Space thing]

I'm starting to think there are some characters that should almost always ledgehop after a successful trump rather than try to land a guaranteed B-air.

A lot of people buffer DJ after getting trumped, since letting yourself go too low after losing your invincibility is suicide in most matchups. If you go for a "guaranteed" B-air and your trump wasn't early enough, you'll just miss and end up offstage with your opponent above you or onstage. If you ledgehop however, you can simultaneously threaten both their options: DJ/Recover onstage, and Grabbing the ledge. If they try to go to the ledge, you try to D-air them. If they try to go onstage, you can hit them with a B-air.

It's obviously not perfect, and it won't work equally across the cast, but the risk:reward is incredibly favorable. The absolute worst that can happen to the trumper is a F-air in the direction of the far blast zone. Meanwhile, the trumpee risks getting B-aired offstage without their DJ, or even getting spiked to a stock loss.

I'm pretty sure most characters can use this somehow, but characters that I think are especially good at it:

The key thing all these characters have is a consistent and strong D-air spike with good range to hit people who grab the ledge, along with (mostly) strong B-airs.

I frequently do something like this with Greninja. Only, I just regular get up, not ledge hop. If my opponent DJ's towards the stage, I Usmash/shield to Usmash them. If they stay low, I can get a guaranteed spike/Dsmash/whatever when they re-grab the ledge. Not perfect, but I can very easily do a good chunk of damage or take stocks if my opponent isn't very careful/has a really good recovery.

 

[Y2Kay]

My main training partner is a Charizard main. There's a reason that he's so rare in the meta. I can say with confidence that Robin has a non-trivial advantage over him, at the very least. He's not a good character. He does have an absurd ability to force trades and sit on a lead with his excessive armor and fatty status. Zard with rage is ******** strong. He's just not good. You can list any character's strengths and weaknesses and make them sound good, but you're only lying to yourself.

Or maybe this is the main bias NairWizard was talking about? But I digress.......

 

[san.]

Are all opinions about low tier characters being underrated going to be wrong? No. But when just about every single one of them have people claiming they are actually mid tier... it simply doesn't work. A lot of them simply have to be wrong. This game doesn't only have 5ish characters in the low to bottom range and the a giant cut of characters in mid tier. Its not THAT well balanced. Can't ever be because the game has to consider all modes not just 1v1 no items.

I can quite assure you, Ike was baaaaad in 1.0. Dthrow combos are... nice but they don't work anywhere near killing percents. Dtilt had absolutely no purpose. Fair was rather awkward to try to use. Uair wasn't killing anywhere soon enough for its frame data and had (has) lowish damage for its start up time. People very easily fell out of his Jab Combo, leaving Ike with no reliable CQC tools. Damage output wasn't good because there was literally no way to string two moves together beyond Dthrow at early percents. Range was there yes, but nothing else really was. Realistically Ike had Bair in 1.0, Dthrow combos and... nothing else. It was pretty abysmal over on the Ike Character Boards.

Little Mac? Would need to be actually able to play around with the changes hands on but most likely I'd be looking at his specials primarily. Nobody really denies that he has some pretty amazing tilts and smashes in terms of being tools. But he starts floundering outside of that. His Up B I'd probably make stronger, allowing it to kill sooner and widen the hitbox a tad. Side B would be more projectile invulnerability frames + less cooldown. Neutral B would have less cooldown. The actual punch in Slip Counter would hit sooner and have an increase to the base damage.

I played a lot of 1.0 Ike, and you just had to use many things that are now considered suboptimal.

Ike still had nair combos along with the things you said, but you had to use nair->bair more often. 1.0's fair fortunately lingered long enough for decent enough followups and air dodge traps from above.

Ike's dthrow and uthrow frame data are the same. Ike's uthrow->nair would combo well into higher %, but it required much more technical finesse. Uthrow->bair also comboed at some %. In general, things were just tighter without fair. 1.0 fair had a higher hitbox than 1.04 fair, but it was a few frames slower to come out, so some throw->fair combos were possible.

Jab combo was only ineffective on a few fast fallers and was mostly an annoyance.

Eruption was the same.

Biggest changes that helped Ike were the fair hitbox and frame data changes, bair 13->14 damage, nair landing lag reduction, the dtilt change, and later on the uair knockback increases. The jab/ftilt fixes and uair/dair landing lag reductions were both nice but not really essential until this latest patch. Dash attack and other things I may not have mentioned are kind of good but situational (it's good for implied risk and punishments)

Overall, it was quite a bit worse, but there were still quite a few autocombos and the like.

 

[Vipermoon]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10205408588477838

Marth and Lucina apparently have a kill confirm at high-ish percents by chaining SH DB1 into falling Nair 1 over and over into an Fsmash.

Ironically gives Lucina a leg up on Marth, since the final hit is likely to be a non-tipped Fsmash near the ledge, so Lucina can get this at 70 and ride it out for the KO.

This is nothing new and it doesn't work very well. There simply isn't even hitstun between any of those hits. Even Ganondorf should be able to jump or Uair out.

 

[Trifroze]

Are all opinions about low tier characters being underrated going to be wrong? No. But when just about every single one of them have people claiming they are actually mid tier... it simply doesn't work. A lot of them simply have to be wrong. This game doesn't only have 5ish characters in the low to bottom range and the a giant cut of characters in mid tier. Its not THAT well balanced. Can't ever be because the game has to consider all modes not just 1v1 no items.

I can quite assure you, Ike was baaaaad in 1.0. Dthrow combos are... nice but they don't work anywhere near killing percents. Dtilt had absolutely no purpose. Fair was rather awkward to try to use. Uair wasn't killing anywhere soon enough for its frame data and had (has) lowish damage for its start up time. People very easily fell out of his Jab Combo, leaving Ike with no reliable CQC tools. Damage output wasn't good because there was literally no way to string two moves together beyond Dthrow at early percents. Range was there yes, but nothing else really was. Realistically Ike had Bair in 1.0, Dthrow combos and... nothing else. It was pretty abysmal over on the Ike Character Boards.

Little Mac? Would need to be actually able to play around with the changes hands on but most likely I'd be looking at his specials primarily. Nobody really denies that he has some pretty amazing tilts and smashes in terms of being tools. But he starts floundering outside of that. His Up B I'd probably make stronger, allowing it to kill sooner and widen the hitbox a tad. Side B would be more projectile invulnerability frames + less cooldown. Neutral B would have less cooldown. The actual punch in Slip Counter would hit sooner and have an increase to the base damage.

Beyond that I'd really want to play around with the character before committing to any other changes. Making Dtilt more safe would be something I'd consider though, probably play around with one of the throws to give him some more low percent combos. Basically he should have an amazing ground game, decent options for getting in past projectiles, and kinda fail at anything air related. Honestly though I wouldn't expect him ever to be buffed. He's bad in tournament settings because of our stage selection methods. Other modes he can be pretty deadly as is.

Jigglypuff imo might simply be doomed by design in the Smash 4 engine. Kinda like how Falcon in Brawl actually had some good tools in a vacuum but they just couldn't work together well in that engine. The only thing I can think of would be to (carefully) increase the amount of shield damage on some of her moves. Dair and Fair would be the candidates to start with, increase their shield damage and shield stun. Probably give Rest a very small knockback boot to try to make sure she gets the kill with it more often. I don't think you could really fix her neutral game though without overtuning, and as long as its THAT weak I don't feel she can be good. Increasing her shield damage so that her neutral game is more dangerous might be the safest way to try to buff her. But that would need a looooot of play testing. Sing is obviously hot garbage but that's largely by design/has FFA in mind. Side B is already pretty decent. Neutral B is... tricky to balance fairly considering all modes. If the shield related changes didn't break anything about the charge, I'd consider maybe slightly buffing one or two ground moves. It would be pretty slight buffs though and I'd want to see how she was looking first.

Zelda: make her multi-hitting attacks more consistent if those haven't been brought up to a proper level yet. I know they've at least poked at that issue before. After that, speed up her jab a tad, increase the base knockback of Dsmash, reduce the endlag on her Ftilt and Utilt by a tad, increase the number of active frames for the sweetspot of her aerials by 1, have Nair start 2 frames sooner, increase the hitbox, speed, and controllability of Din's Fire a tad. Don't know if they would consider making her Down B able to hold a charge or not within their patch philosophy. If they would, that would help her quite a fair bit right there actually. Her specials need just better functionality outside of Up B, her ground game needs to be a bit better at actually poking, and her aerials need to have a marginally better chance of actually being worth the risk.

You seem to agree with Mac being bad in a tournament setting which is what tier lists and viability refer to. Also, despite Mac having fast and powerful ground options, the only safe move he has is a properly spaced dtilt.

Jigglypuff and Zelda still seem unconvincing to me. They'd get better, but the question was whether they could actually be made viable with just a set of small buffs, or hell, even one considerable grab setup buff like what DK got. I think only Palutena and Marth + maybe Lucina would get viable with the latter alone because that's all they lack, but at the same time it's a major hole in their gameplans except for Marth who already has pretty good reward and threat going for him due to tippers, thus he's most likely not bottom 10.

There are some characters who have such massive weaknesses that the only way for them to get actually good would be to remove those weaknesses or overtune their strengths to truly make up for them. I think every single superheavy for instance is in a state like this and they'd need massive buffs to their reward for getting in (bigger than DK since they also lack his mobility) or a great deal more mobility and safety.

Shulk really is just a worse Ike with similar frame data but no autocancels, much lower damage, much worse kill power, no throw combos and a similarly exploitable recovery. Most monado arts create as much as or more weaknesses than strengths mostly because it's harder for Shulk to take advantage of them than it is for his opponents due to most characters having better overall tools, although buster seems good. Shield on the other hand is easily timeoutable and at best a pointless temporary stalemate for Shulk, jump is only good for recovering, smash is only good if Shulk is at low percents and the opponent at kill percents, and speed I really can't tell but probably matchup based.

Palutena completely lacks fast moves for winning CQC situations in neutral, and Lucina lacks grab reward and combos while also having poor damage per hit. They both also lack good kill moves and there's nothing to be afraid of when playing versus either of them even at the 120-130% range. As long as you watch out for Lucina's fsmash and Palutena's bair and uair, you're good. They're also tall and on the lighter side, but not to a fault, still it doesn't help either of them.

Mac has no aerial game and possesses the worst recovery in the game so he can always die at <50%. Bottom 3 material in my opinion, just hasn't been widely realized yet. Jigglypuff has less strengths than Mac and lacks a ground game, but not to quite the same extent as Mac lacks aerials, and dies super early for different reasons. KO punch and rest don't help them nearly enough since both rarely find use against experienced players, and these two characters really are very similar in their weaknesses this way when you really think about it. Extreme characters that ultimately fail due to their polarized design that hurts them more than it benefits them.

Zelda is slow so she can't approach on the ground, with all of her moves being punishable and none of her aerials being useful for approaching either due to fair and bair having terrible hitboxes and huge landing lag without autocanceling. Landing them for the kill is unrealistic, as is landing her smashes, although usmash would be a quite good move if Zelda ran twice as fast as she does. While up b comes out fast and elevator kills quite early it's easily avoidable by proper spacing and can be DI'd out of even after the first hit connects. It's pretty much all she has, and still not a threat when you stay aware of it.

Samus to me is much more defendable than any of these characters because she has very potent strengths with her disadvantage and unsafe but still fairly rewarding grab being her weaknesses. She gets a guaranteed 40%+ at low percents out of landing a dash attack that covers almost half the stage in 10 frames and thus is also safe to miss from up close combined with its low endlag. Zair also covers almost half the stage in a similarly quick time and can't be punished, plus it can be comboed into dash attack. Dtilt is f6 and does 12% with a lot of disjointed range, ftilt reaches the furthest in the game, does 8-9% and is safe at the tip, and utilt does 13%, is safe on shield spaced, sets up for potential combos and kills people who are in the air or offstage from the ledge, being as strong as a lot of smashes in the game. Charge shot is charge shot and nair, ftilt and even dsmash set up for tech chases with it. Up b is her main OoS option and a kill move at the same time, plus she has ZSS combos into it on platform stages. Bair and nair are both safe on shield and hit most characters on rising SH, with bair being among the most powerful ones in the game. Fsmash is frame 10 and no weaker or laggier than average. Fair gets you off the ledge, and it completely traps people in the air and offstage due to its disjoint beating challenges and its duration trapping airdodges. Dair is her move to crap on exploitable recoveries like Ike's and Fox's up b. The only moves of her that don't really find a great deal of use are dsmash, usmash and missiles. Aside from those three, Samus simply doesn't have a bad/useless move. Even her dysfunctional jab is a frame 3 move that pushes opponents away from her face, and bombs help stalling offstage and in the air, although attack wise they're pretty useless as well.

Samus has one of the best overall kits in the game that all flows together, it just isn't quite rewarding enough overall to make up for her weaknesses and make her viable. I can't say for sure whether Ike treatment would be enough to make her viable without overtuning her grab reward or other properties, but to be honest, at this point her normals don't need to be buffed much at all to make them effectively overtuned because of how good they are already. Moderate up b and dtilt buffs would probably be enough so that she can kill people off of dash attack -> uair -> uair -> up b on platform / low ceiling stages and so that dtilt kills or becomes safe (or both). If zair did 1% more damage on both hitboxes on top of those I'd be pretty confident in calling her viable.

 

[Planty]

I'm pretty sure most characters can use this somehow, but characters that I think are especially good at it:

The key thing all these characters have is a consistent and strong D-air spike with good range to hit people who grab the ledge, along with (mostly) strong B-airs.

Rosalina can do this very well because when she does a ledge hop, Luma stays at the ledge. That means she can cover both options at once.