Can we talk about Luigi?
I feel like the latest patch has all but removed him from the game. 1.0.4 Greninja style.
Is Luigi still a big threat? Is he still at least as good as the Ike/Pit/Greninja crew, or are we looking at the level below that with the likes of Lucario and Olimar? What are you guys thinking?
I personally think we're looking at the 20-25 range for him now. He really misses that grab. Yes, he still has safe spammable Smashes a la Mario, but unlike his brother, he lacks the mobility to use them effectively. This leads to serious killing issues and compounded problems against zoners.
I avidly believe that Luigi is still in the 15-20 range. Definitely down, but not out. The moderator for Luigi boards kind of explained it fairly well: 'Luigi is still top tier...at the beginning of the match'. You see, Luigi still has one of, if not
the, best damage racking game until around 100%. Which means you'll be playing catch up if you let him in. His problem is now closing out stocks. But as Luigi mains get used to this, I feel as if that won't be much of a problem. He still has up b, cyclone 50/50's and amazing smashes. He also has an up throw that, after practicing with a bit, apparently has a 33% combo early game against fast fallers. He obviously isn't top ten anymore, and he still has his getting zoned out problems. But I don't think top 15 is a stretch at all. He's still Luigi. Kill confirms weren't the only thing keeping him in top ten. Outstanding damage per hit coupled with a superb frame data and combo game is also what made Luigi top 10. And he never lost that. Call me biased if you will (I suppose I am a bit biased about my own main, after all) but I believe that Luigi is still high (around the 15-18 mark) tier. It's just that people look at the fact that he lost his kill confirms and instantly go like: 'well, he's **** now'. Like, I saw a post somewhere saying that Doc was more viable than Luigi at this point. Overreacting to such things I won't blame people for. It was indeed a really bad nerf for Luigi. I won't conceal that. But people have created a stigma onto Luigi and saying that he's dropped from top ten to mid tier just because he his kill confirms? That's kind of rubbish, wouldn't you say? I want to show one more point: take a low/low mid tier character: Kirby and give him a kill confirm at around 120%. would he be top ten automatically? Would he ever have a shot at top ten at all? Of course not. He'd obviously rise a bit, but he still doesn't cover for his glaring weaknesses. Unlike Luigi, whose plentiful dominating strengths still make up for his (many) shortcomings.
Possibly really bad arguments aside, let me give a tl dr: Luigi, despite his pretty major nerfs, is still Luigi. His dominating strengths are still there and the only reason people say he can't kill is because I guess Luigi mains (I'm guilty too, I'll admit) relied too much on our kill confirms. But once we get used to our big strong brains (like we used for getting the grabs into down b to begin with) it's a matter of time before the 'Luigi can't kill' stigma to leave. Definitely not top ten but certainly around top 15.
Also, one other thing to respond to, before I post this.
Not targeted at you specifically, but what is actually keeping Olimar below the likes of Ike/Pit/Greninja? This seems to be a popular perception since I never see him listed among the low high tiers/barely solo viable crew anymore.
I know he struggles a lot with Sheik, but to my knowledge the rest of his top tier spread is pretty good. From what I've seen, he has even-ish or slightly advantageous matchups versus Diddy Kong, Rosalina, and Pikachu. I also can't see him losing horribly to ZSS, Ness or Sonic, though I'm not sure about Fox, Mario, Ryu, or MK. Is his Sheik matchup just that awful, or does he have other poor matchups that impede his viability?
Fox is probably our strongest high tier MU imo. Mario, Diddy and Pika MUs have been weakened, but still in our favor, ZSS beats us, but it's definitely still winnable. Ryu is a touch hard to determine, as I don't find many competent players. Our fireballs can outspam his hadoken, forcing him to approach most of the time. But we have to play very carefully or else we get punished hard. Our combos work well on him, though. Rosalina and Sheik have always been bad. We direly needed a secondary to beat them anyways. That fact hasn't changed. Consider it Luigi's challenge for his rite to passage. Except rite to passages are usually a bit more fair than those MU's.
