Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

[Pazx]

I agree in that Meta Knight is good, but I still wouldn't put him above 12th best. He's perfectly viable, but saying that he's in the 6-10 range is ludicrous. What makes him better than Fox? What makes him better than Luigi? What makes him better than Diddy Kong? Better than Yoshi? Than Ness? Than Sonic? Than Villager? Than Ryu?

I'm not buying it.

Neither Yoshi nor Luigi have any place in the top 15, so I'd say he's better than those two by virtue of actually being a good character. He's probably also better than Villager, so then he only has to be better than one more of these characters to be considered top ten.

Well if positions 1 through 4 are occupied by some amalgamation of Sheik, ZSS, Pikachu, and Rosa (a statement which is almost universally agreed on at this point), that only leaves one spot, which Fox does have a case to occupy but Sonic and Ryu certainly don't, and at this point we can be fairly confident that Mario occupies #5. If not, and even if these characters are tied for 5th, that's still more proof that MK isn't 6-10 since all of those chars outplace him. MK may have good conversions, but with his poor neutral game (and the fact that they're pretty easy to avoid by DI'ing away), he can't do much else. Could you explain why MK's state of disadvantage is so good?

Not sure what you mean. This may come as a shock, but Meta Knight has been selectable on the character screen since the game came out, same goes for Yoshi. All the patches have done for Meta Knight are buffed his jab (which is still pitiful) and made his f-tilt just a little bit better. Besides, the current top-level MK mains have been maining him since release, the only exception being Abadango.

Bolded is blatantly incorrect.

imo MK is #11 but I'm not sure which side of "top tier" 11th place falls.

 

[DR()BC]

It's very easy to be better than Yoshi for example, likely the same with Villager and possibly also Ness, and they're all better characters than Luigi now. Yoshi doesn't have safe approaches, gets nothing out of grabs, and doesn't have non-committal kill options. His main strength is pressuring you with his aerial speed and fair offstage and trapping you in the air with his nair and uair where shield isn't available to you. He's a good character, but he can seem overwhelming when he shouldn't if you don't abuse his lack of safety and linear options in neutral, especially when it comes to approaching and killing. He dies to disjoints and good rising SH aerials as well, and he can't really approach on the ground because his dash attack and dash grab are both slow and laggy. Eggs aren't safe either except sort of if Yoshi puts himself in the air first, but then he's counter-productively vulnerable because of putting himself in the air. Not going to go into the other characters, but I'll mention that Ness is still mostly being overrated because it's easier for Ness to abuse his strengths than it is for the opponent to abuse his (glaring) weaknesses that will only become more and more apparent with time. He also lacks mobility so his depth can't get developed too far relative to faster characters.

MK is a strong character even outside of his uair to up b combos which alone would make any character a serious threat, and his only considerable flaws are bad SH aerials in neutral and low damage per hit. Falling bair spike into ftilt jab lock into death / a lot of damage is also about as real as Ike's footstool setups, although probably even easier to get started. MK has a great recovery and edgeguard capability, dash attack into up b kills at 90-100% and is guaranteed, fsmash is safe to throw out whenever, down b is a very viable kill move, bair kills, ftilt kills, and nair kills. I don't even know if tornado is commonly used on high level but it traps airdodges and also kills. Despite MK's low damage per hit, I think he ultimately racks up damage well enough through combos, juggles, setups and edgeguards, doesn't have trouble getting kills, and has a super threatening low % kill setup completely contrary to Pikachu. When it comes to neutral though MK is basically an objectively worse version of Falcon. He has the same gameplan in neutral with slightly worse overall options for approaching and zoning/spacing alike. MK has to commit a lot in neutral and is lightweight, and I think that's the only thing holding him back from being something like top 5. In my mind he's 9-10 with Pikachu, behind Sheik, ZSS, Sonic, Rosalina, Ryu, Diddy, Fox and Mario.

when you put it that way...

 

[C0rvus]

I can see there being some merit in determining ease of operation for every character, but it's going to be highly speculative. Characters get easier/harder at different levels of play. It's also on an issue of defining what easy to play means. Executing their gameplan, or effective use, or just being able to not SD with them? On top of that, some characters come more easily to different people. I for one, have a hard time playing Falcon effectively for some reason, yet Robin comes pretty easily to me. Also it's Reddit, so I don't care what they think.

 

[Xxaz_v]

If anyone is interested there was a poll in /r/smashbros about which characters are hard to play and which are easy to play as. I wont link the results due to it is very harmful to everyone's eyes so... If you are interested and need reason to hang yourself...

Oh don't worry, this community has given me plenty of reasons to hang myself.

 

[bc1910]

Keep in mind for Jigglypuff and Mewtwo it's more than just being really light. Jiggs is at severe risk of trading with every altercation and Mewtwo has a large hurtbox when he's hurt. For Sheik it's more than just her weight that justifies all of her safety, it's also her very low damage per hit which severely hinders her in free-for-alls. All those strings and combos don't look so impressive when other fighters keep getting in the way.

The whole "weight isn't that important" argument pretty much extends to every fighting game ever. As long as your tools are good enough it doesn't really matter if you have the lowest health. That only matters if you get hit, and nobody plans for failure.

Her kill power hinders her more in FFA. The best "strategy" (if such a thing even exists in FFA) in that mode is to never get hit, which usually means letting others rack up the damage because that's safer, and then steal the kills. Her low damage per hit isn't a big deal.

Mewtwo's large hurtbox is an important factor in his weight actually mattering, yes.

 

[Smog Frog]

hold up. people are debating being top 10?

what 10 characters are better?

 

[Nidtendofreak]

hold up. people are debating being top 10?

what 10 characters are better?

My guess?

Sheik, ZSS, Pika, Sonic, Rosalina, Fox, Diddy, Mario are all pretty much shoe ins for being considered better. They all have better results than Ness without really any room for argument. Falcon, Meta Knight, Ryu and Wario are all certainly on the table for discussion at least, particularly Falcon, Ryu and MK.

That leaves Ness in a 9th to 13th range, and I think most people would at least put Ryu and MK over Ness. He just hasn't done much lately.

 

[Nobie]

John Numbers and Mike Kirby just won a doubles weekly with Shulk and Kirby. There were some crazy team strats based off of Monado Kirby.

-Kirby activates Shield to be a stock tank.
-Kirby uses Shield to survive hits that attack both him and his opponent
-Inhaling Shulk and leaving the opponent guessing as to whether Kirby will take Monado or will spit out as an attack
-Back throw into Back Slash, which gets the bonus damage because the opponent is facing away

 

[bc1910]

My guess?

Sheik, ZSS, Pika, Sonic, Rosalina, Fox, Diddy, Mario are all pretty much shoe ins for being considered better. They all have better results than Ness without really any room for argument. Falcon, Meta Knight, Ryu and Wario are all certainly on the table for discussion at least, particularly Falcon, Ryu and MK.

That leaves Ness in a 9th to 13th range, and I think most people would at least put Ryu and MK over Ness. He just hasn't done much lately.

Exactly this. The 8 characters mentioned are better, and then Ness, MK and Ryu fight for the last 2 spots of top 10 with Villager, Wario and Falcon right behind.

 

[Dagon97]

I can see there being some merit in determining ease of operation for every character, but it's going to be highly speculative. Characters get easier/harder at different levels of play. It's also on an issue of defining what easy to play means. Executing their gameplan, or effective use, or just being able to not SD with them? On top of that, some characters come more easily to different people. I for one, have a hard time playing Falcon effectively for some reason, yet Robin comes pretty easily to me. Also it's Reddit, so I don't care what they think.

When debating whether x character and y character is better, difficulty does not and should not be taken into account. If people used that logic, would be a low or mid tier. Deciding on whether or not a character is better should be based on the usefulness of the tools that the game or "labbers" provide for the people who inserted a game into their gaming console. Another determining factor is results. If a character has little rep it suffers on the tier list for example or .

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Exactly this. The 8 characters mentioned are better, and then Ness, MK and Ryu fight for the last 2 spots of top 10 with Villager, Wario and Falcon right behind.

There's a lot of characters better than Ness. He's extremely one dimensional.

 

[Peppermint1201]

Could someone explain to me why everyone thinks Ryu is so good? I'm kinda bewildered as to why. I don't think he's anywhere above B+, but I haven't watched him or played as/against him to give an accurate judgment.

 

[Green L]

o wit, his ability to get high damage, no-risk followups off of a simple fireball -> grab confirm).

After several months you'd think you guys would learn by now that fireball < grab never was a true setup. All you had to do powershield. Even without power shielding, Luigi is too slow for that to be legit

hold up. people are debating being top 10?

what 10 characters are better?

I think ness is overrated. The only reason why people consider him him so him so high is because of his back throw

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Could someone explain to me why everyone thinks Ryu is so good? I'm kinda bewildered as to why. I don't think he's anywhere above B+, but I haven't watched him or played as/against him to give an accurate judgment.

If you haven't watched a ryu or played vs a ryu how in the hell do you have an opinion on ryu? There's something called youtube. I think you should use.

 

[Wintropy]

Discussions of viability consider the character being played optimally (within the context of human ability), since that's what you'd expect from the highest level of play. It doesn't do much good to say that Sheik isn't necessarily the best because a more skilled Zelda can beat her. You have to consider how characters match up to each-other independent of player skill.

Which is why Ryu doesn't get points taken off of him for being "difficult to play". A good Ryu player is expected to know how to do TSRK's at the drop of a hat.

 

[Ghostbone]

S:
A:
B:
This is my top 11 btw, MK coming in at 8th.
Top 2 is a given, Sheik is still better than ZSS because she's consistently good in every matchup. ZSS has some super polar matchups and might even have the advantage against Sheik (at least having the best matchup vs her out of every character), but has worse matchups against other characters like Pikachu and Ness.

Rosalina is still 3rd, character has obscene strengths and keep away game.
Ryu this patch is super threatening, being the king of shield safety and killing you at 70% from frame 2 or 3 moves (jab/d-tilt/u-tilt > true srk). Trela and 9B have been wrecking people with this character.
Sonic doesn't get super good results in the US but I trust the high opinion of him that Japanese players have. Can't really place Diddy any lower when Zero continuously proves Diddy has the tools to deal with the best characters (beating Vinnie's sheik solidly and doing far better than his Sheik against Nairo's ZSS in their most recent encounter).
Mario has multiple top level players so he's above the rest of the characters by default. I can't justify placing him in A tier though because on paper the character is very linear in a lot of aspects (grab until they're at 100, then spam up-smash).
Abadango proves how potent MK can be, so does Mr. R, so does Leo. Character is really good and might even be higher idk.
Fox is super good but struggles with shields, having the worst throws of every character listed really hurts when shielding is still a really good option.
Pikachu basically only has ESAM representing the character (NAKAT's Pika is good but I don't see him winning with pika?), if I lived in Japan I'd probably be putting Villager at this spot because of Ranai. Pikachu definitely can't be top 5 though like a lot of people think.
Ness misses out on top 10 but hey not everyone can fit in. Ness very easily finds a kill but his recovery and mobility hurt him a lot and other characters can abuse that.

At the end of the day, the top/high tiers of this game are super competitive among themselves and this is just my opinion on how they're ordered.

 

[Wintropy]

Could someone explain to me why everyone thinks Ryu is so good? I'm kinda bewildered as to why. I don't think he's anywhere above B+, but I haven't watched him or played as/against him to give an accurate judgment.

Pretty much comes down to the fact that he has very good footsies options, a scary advantage state and one of the best kill confirms (weak u-tilt -> TSRK). You just need to make one mistake for Ryu to get in there and end your stock.

EDIT: Typo on the tilt, sorry~

After several months you'd think you guys would learn by now that fireball < grab never was a true setup. All you had to do powershield. Even without power shielding, Luigi is too slow for that to be legit

I didn't say it was a true setup. Just that it's a setup.

Otherwise you disregarded the entire point of my statement, which is that Luigi was a potent character in tourneys because his reward was so good relative to how easy it was to confirm into.

I think ness is overrated. The only reason why people consider him him so him so high is because of his back throw

And because of his good shorthop game, strong d-throw followups and the fact that PK Fire in neutral is basically a guaranteed end to your stock at high percents.

 

[Peppermint1201]

If you haven't watched a ryu or played vs a ryu how in the hell do you have an opinion on ryu? There's something called youtube. I think you should use.

Well first of all it's kinda presumptuous to assume that I have never played/watched Ryu based on my comment. I said I hadn't watched/played enough. Semantics aside, I have plenty of valid reasons to come here. I've watched the good Ryus and I've found them unremarkable, but I think my stance is biased because I'm sick of the "DAE Ryu is secretly god-tier ultra hard character breaking the tier list xD" circlejerk, so I want objective opinions from other peoples' point of views. No need to be unnecessarily rude to me just to sound cool.

 

[|RK|]

Well first of all it's kinda presumptuous to assume that I have never played/watched Ryu based on my comment. I said I hadn't watched/played enough. Semantics aside, I have plenty of valid reasons to come here. I've watched the good Ryus and I've found them unremarkable, but I think my stance is biased because I'm sick of the "DAE Ryu is secretly god-tier ultra hard character breaking the tier list xD" circlejerk, so I want objective opinions from other peoples' point of views. No need to be unnecessarily rude to me just to sound cool.

You didn't say "enough."

 

[Peppermint1201]

You didn't say "enough."

Wow, that was a poorly-timed typo. Thanks for pointing it out -- I didn't even notice that I forgot to type it into that post.

 

[Ulevo]

For one, Meta Knight was not recently viable due to patches. Ito was making waves in Norcal and Socal with the character prior to that against high level players. They made him better, but he was easily top 15 prior to.

Secondly, purely based on match up spread, I would say Meta Knight has top 10 characteristics. He loses to Zero Suit and Sheik by general Meta Knight consensus. All of his other match ups are either 5:5 or in his favor, and this is not some Greninja/Pac-Man/Ganondorf/Radical Larry board nonsense.

Lets look at the characters that I firmly believe are better than him:



These are the best characters in the game from where I am standing. They have the highest rewards, strongest kits, most options, explored and unexplored potential, and all of this is backed up by results. As long as you're not naive enough to believe that a player is carrying a character, like Ranai being the best in Japan and ESAM being top four in the US, then this makes factual sense. Ryu is more questionable, but what do you expect from a recent DLC?

Let's look at the characters I see people rate highly but are more debatable on their placing:



Luigi recently just got nerfed. I think that covers that topic.

Mario is the hardest to call. He has a good match up with Sheik, a good match up spread, excellent overall frame data, and like the top 7, plenty of options. However, his recovery is rather poor and he lacks reliable kill confirms. He also lacks the over the top options the other 7 do. He doesn't have Luma, he doesn't have Sheiks Needles, he isn't killing you at 60 with TSRK, 30 with Boost Kick, et cetera. He does well because he is easy to play, he has the options of a top tier, and player style is easily translated with his kit.

Sonic is overrated. Like Olimar, he struggles when playing from behind, and people have not properly explored how to punish his approach options when he picks a particular approach option, or how to use character specific options to prevent him from approaching risk free with Spin Dash. He also has problems with kill confirms, and has a very binary style of play.

Ness loses too many match ups against the top tiers too easily. His recovery is very exploitable even in match ups where he should win, making him a volatile pick. He loses to Sheik, Rosalina wrecks him, and I am willing to bet characters like Mario and Villager do too. Once people start learning to not choose Smashville against him game 1 and how to DI his back throw while also keeping specific stage advantage, he will be doing even worse.

Fox is also overrated, though much less than Sonic. Fox has excellent tools due to his mobility, but he loses to any sort of priority, and the top 7 have those in spades with the exception of Pikachu. He also has a very unsafe recovery that still does not get exploited properly at high level play, and all of his confirms that he needs to get are unsafe on block.

I feel R.O.B. is vastly underrated and is likely better than Meta Knight, but it is difficult to call. Excellent CQC, an item game, a Gyro that instantly respawns when its gone, good frame data, excellent combos, kill confirms, good recovery, very safe. I am unsure of his overall match ups.

Meta Knight has the best overall recovery in the game, alongside Zero Suit, Sheik, and Villager. He has one of the strongest edge guard and ledge guard games in Smash Wii U. He has the ability to kill characters as early as 10%, with most commonly dying between 25-40, with the only other character capable of this being Zero Suit. With optimal play, characters die on average at 80 from simple conversions. He has some of the highest damaging, straight forward, non-item related combos of any top or high tier. While his neutral is not strong per say, he had one of the safest neutrals. He does well on literally every legal stage and can win match ups purely off of map flexibility. He has a strong advantage and disadvantage state, and is able to kill you easily in both. He has some of the best mobility. He is among the best characters in the game with rage. And he arguably has only two 4:6 match ups.

The reason you're not seeing Meta Knights place higher yet is because everyone is **** with him, and they don't understand him because they have not properly labbed with him and understand the necessary %'s for his conversions, basic ones included. He seems somple, but players like Mr. R and Tyrant, who have prestigous reputations as competitors, are doing suboptimal combos and unsafe carnival tricks when then should be destroying people.

 

[Trifroze]

Character difficulty is the most triggering thing because people tend to talk about difficulty of characters they don't even understand, let alone actually genuinely use.

I only feel truly qualified to talk about ZSS and Falcon in terms of usage difficulty despite having like 1000 matches clocked with Robin and Ganondorf as well, and hundreds of matches with Samus, MK, Villager and DK. Probably a 100 with Ryu as well at this point. I'm afraid I'm creating a new listing trend in this topic but based on my firsthand experience, character difficulty for "optimal usage" (not for doing well, otherwise top tiers would almost always be automatically easier):

> > > > > > > >

Mobility and combos tend to make characters more difficult, linear and fast hitboxes also help increase that. ZSS is an utter pain to use online.

 

[FullMoon]

Honestly I don't really think Villager is that good of a character. Still good, but I think people overrate him quite a bit.

 

[Kirby Dragons]

It seems to me like Ness is top tier due to an assortment of random tools spread across his moveset. A psychic bag of tricks, if you will. He has a trapping side special, a potent forward aerial combo, high jumps, a reflector, a way to convert projectiles into healing, and an electric projectile that he can chase opponents with. I personally wouldn't consider him a power character, but he's also got a strong up aerial finisher, along with a forward/back throw finisher. He also has a 30% KO move that's not very hard to land. Finally, his yo-yo can edgeguard very well.

He had all of that in Brawl, but I think the thing putting him on the upper half of the tier list (aside from the obvious change in mechanics) is his slight buff in running speed.

 

[meleebrawler]

It seems to me like Ness is top tier due to an assortment of random tools spread across his moveset. A psychic bag of tricks, if you will. He has a trapping side special, a potent forward aerial combo, high jumps, a reflector, a way to convert projectiles into healing, and an electric projectile that he can chase opponents with. I personally wouldn't consider him a power character, but he's also got a strong up aerial finisher, along with a forward/back throw finisher. He also has a 30% KO move that's not very hard to land. Finally, his yo-yo can edgeguard very well.

He had all of that in Brawl, but I think the thing putting him on the upper half of the tier list (aside from the obvious change in mechanics) is his slight buff in running speed.

And by "obvious change in mechanics", you mean no more stupid grab release right?

 

[Peppermint1201]

I feel R.O.B. is vastly underrated and is likely better than Meta Knight, but it is difficult to call. Excellent CQC, an item game, a Gyro that instantly respawns when its gone, good frame data, excellent combos, kill confirms, good recovery, very safe. I am unsure of his overall match ups.

I disagree. I think the popular consensus on ROB (upper B Tier alongside the Pits, Wario, etc.) is a good place for him. I'm not sure why you think he has good CQC, could you elaborate? I might be forgetting something but all ROB has going for him are his frame 3-4 jab, frame 3 down tilt, and spacing with fairs, along with throwing gyro which isn't something you can do multiple times in a row against a savvy opponent. Gyro is good, but it's still a projectile, and many characters can be adept at stealing it which can give ROB a very hard time. ROB's frame data is decent, but he still gets comboed very easily due to his large size, heavy-ish weight and lack of a fast combo-breaker aerial. ROB's combos are basically just downthrow upair and maybe like downthrow bair if they airdodge and have weird DI or something. Other than that, it's just small "two-piece" , not-guaranteed combos like nair to grab and that sort of thing. Again they're decent but not great. He does have good kill confirms, can't dispute that. Again, his recovery is good but still gimpable, but on the flipside good ROB mains are good at mixing up his recovery to avoid gimps. As for his matchups he's pretty polarizing, mostly wins or losses with few 50-50s, the most important being his losses. He loses very hard to ZSS, pretty hard to Sheik, Mario, Yoshi, and Villager, and takes slight losses to Toon Link, Rosa, Fox, Falco, Kirby, and Pikachu. There might be some more I'm ignoring but I believe that's all of them.

 

[Kaladin]

Do a majoirty of people really still think Rosa is top 3? There's no way. I'll diliver my big anti-rosa rant once I get to a proper keyboard.

 

[Ulevo]

Honestly I don't really think Villager is that good of a character. Still good, but I think people overrate him quite a bit.

I fail to see this. His recovery, while being less dangerous than say Sheik or Meta Knights, is easily tied for first given how far he can reach and how long he can stall. He has hands down the best edge guarding in the game. His neutral, advantage and disadvantage are all very strong. He has excellent stage picks. He has the closest thing in this game to actual Falco lasers. He is one of the hardest characters to juggle, and one of the best at juggling. His turnips beat moves like Meta Knight's up tilt, which are almost impossible to out prioritize. Hs hits like a truck. Most of his kit is disjointed, significantly more so than most other disjointed characters. He has one of the best out of shield options in the whole game. He literally ruins match ups with Pocket. He has one of the best kill throws in the game. He is one of the only characters that can use neutral options out of a run ala Melee's dash cancelled crouch due to an incredible skid animation. The amount of options and traps he has are also astounding.

His only main issues are that his combo game is not the best and he has sub par mobility.

 

[Peppermint1201]

Do a majoirty of people really still think Rosa is top 3? There's no way. I'll diliver my big anti-rosa rant once I get to a proper keyboard.

Dabuz hasn't placed lower than 9th since Smash Wii U came out, and he only placed 9th twice -- at Collision X and Smashcon. There's obviously more to a character than results, but with results that good I find it hard to believe that Rosa is "overrated". I can certainly see Rosa getting worse as the meta develops, but at the moment she's indisputably Top 5, and can make a pretty good case for Top 3.

 

[Nu~]

"Villager has one of the best OoS options"

???????

 

[Apeirohaon]

"Villager has one of the best OoS options"

???????

nair I'm assuming. frame 3 [edit: 8 after jumpsquat], covers whole body. I'm not sure I'd call it one of the best but it's quite good

 

[Xxaz_v]

Character difficulty is the most triggering thing

 

[Dee-SmashinBoss]

@Pikabunz sorry to bother, but I'd like to hear in your opinion, how you would place Pikachu.
I have heard you say he's not as good as people constantly make him out to be, whats your entire opinion.

 

[Ulevo]

"Villager has one of the best OoS options"

???????

Neutral air. Turnip is decent too.

 

[wedl!!]

I dunno. Having great matchups against most characters (including hard countering Ness, countering Diddy and Luma doing silly things to Fox), stupid safe 50/50s (that most likely WILL kill you at low percents), and being a great edgeguarder while also being a great dedicated zoner and having amazing neutral game kind of outweighs having meh mobility and your main tool dying if you sneeze on it half the time.

Ice Climbers were invalidated entirely for a stock if you killed Nana. Didn't stop them from being top tier because of their absolutely skewed reward game. And Luma respawns.

Rosa also has really good results to back her up, too. Other potential #3's (Pika, Diddy, Ryu) don't really get as consistent results.

 

[bc1910]

I don't think Villager is that good either (dreadful grab, no kill confirms, suspect mobility, recovery gets worse as the level of play gets higher), but you really can't argue with Ranai's results. The character clearly has something. Having arguably the best set of aerials in the game is a major factor and his damage output is very good despite him not being combo-centric.

I go in circles with Sonic. I'll figure stuff out in the MU and start thinking he's actually beatable and then I'll fight a REALLY good one and it's just horrible again.

What I really wish is that his Dair didn't autocancel so easily after he uses spring. It's unnecessarily hard to punish.

Sonic's mixups do too much damage for their risk. He's limited in actually opening you up from an approach, but he's just gonna mix you up when he does hit your shield since option coverage vs Sonic isn't a thing for most characters. So he gets to escape for free most of the time and eventually you're gonna take 30% for guessing wrong on the approach, on top of chip damage from Spring and whatever he does after landing with Dair.

He does have slight killing issues. As in, not actual kiling issues, more just that you'd expect a top 5 character to kill better than he does. He's still better at killing than most of the cast. Riskless Bair, throws will eventually get the job done, Uair, Fsmash can be nasty.

As people play slower and more methodically against Sonic I can see him dropping. By which I mean, I can see him dropping as we learn when we should and shouldn't shield against him, and the optimal way to counter each of his escape mixups. He IS linear in his gameplan and he does do the same stuff every game, he's been doing the same stuff since release, it's just really hard to punish. Linearity is never a good thing. But right now I see no reason for him to be outside top 5.

 

[FullMoon]

Isn't OoS N-Air with Villager a frame 8 option since he has a 5 frame jumpsquat? That's slower than or equal to most grabs

 

[thehard]

Nobie , you don't just make a post like that and not link the VOD.

 

[Nu~]

Neutral air. Turnip is decent too.

The range is a bit lacking however. I know pacman mains like to complain about our frame 8 (once you factor in jumpsquat) OoS Nair against characters with good range.

Our Nair is pretty similar to villager's in range (but it trades hitbox duration for KO power)

 

[Ulevo]

Isn't OoS N-Air with Villager a frame 8 option since he has a 5 frame jumpsquat? That's slower than or equal to most grabs

Grabs lose to attacks, don't hit behind you, cannot reliaby hit aerial opponents, and don't cover your body.