Young Link A tier potential?

[bigblast66]

I was watching axe and he is rocking in young link and does things some people haven't seen even beats some good players and as seen with the current tournaments are beating peach mains and such, which made me wonder could he go up to A tier? It may seem unlikely but if Axe keeps on showing his potential I think we'll see A tier soon.

 

[MurphyPrime]

I think the most likely thing is someone dual maining the links. Would basically cover all the match ups to an extent.

 

[MurphyPrime]

Spacies, Falcon, and Sheik all are very hard match ups for young link. Against Peach, Puff, ICs he is set. It's the other high tiers that hurt his placing.

 

[bigblast66]

Spacies, Falcon, and Sheik all are very hard match ups for young link. Against Peach, Puff, ICs he is set. It's the other high tiers that hurt his placing.

yeah i see what you mean he's best at countering characters that are floaty while characters like sheik fox and falcon can easily knock him out. He's a very good secondary as shown by users like axe.

 

[bigblast66]

another great thing about young link is how he handles ledge guarding. You can do a lot of great tricks on the ledge which makes him great of off stage recoveries.

 

[Yellowpikmin476]

Plus the biggest thing holding him back is he can't really get kills that easily, all his kill moves require more strategic setups and reads. I would love for him to go up on the list though. The biggest reason low tiers stay low is the fact that people are less interested in them, so they get left unexplored. I'm sure if people spent more time on him they'd find more ways around his issues. His matchups against high tiers are against him but I would like to believe that if new tech ever gets discovered, he could get a slightly better edge.

 

[MurphyPrime]

Nah, there's a lot of reasons why most low tiers are low besides lack of interest. Yoshi was a bit of an odd ball case, where he had tech that people thought it couldn't be used effectively. Amsa proved that was false, but that doesn't mean every character just needs an innovator to make them good. Some are just bad. For Young Link specifically, it goes beyond kills being hard to get, cause you could just have sick nasty edge guards and that problem wouldn't be that big a deal. Almost all of his safe approaches can get CC'd really well, and the only moves that don't get CC'd are laggy. He's also pretty light as well, but has high fall speed so he gets comboed pretty hard. His recovery isn't amazing, but it's not too bad. His grab is also pretty lame, and his OoS options aren't spectacular.

I personally think Young Link has a lot of room to grow, specifically around his projectile game (approaches and setups), but that doesn't necessarily mean he will be amazing. So I agree Young Link is hurt by lack of interest, but that isn't the case with all low tiers. Example: Roy. You think people don't want Roy to be good? Everyone would love Roy to be great, and many have tried to make him good. The necessary tools are just not there. If you have someone like M2K play Roy and hardly do well with the character, there is something wrong.

tl;dr: Young Link could use a lot more interest, but that's not why low tiers are low.

 

[Benny P]

what match ups would both links cover? don't both struggle vs top tiers? namely space animals?

 

[MurphyPrime]

When I said to an extent, I was thinking of the spacies being bad either way. It's more so that Young Link is really bad vs. spacies imo, where as Link is just bad, but not awful. Basically I think Link can handle Falcon, Sheik and Marth, and Young Link can handle the floaties.

 

[Team Plasma N]

Link gets destroyed by Falcon, it's way too easy to combo him. As for Sheik she can chaingrab him for days until he dies.

 

[Yellowpikmin476]

Definitely true that lack of interest isn't that big a contributor to a character's placement. If characters were truly equal, you can bet your behind Kirby for example wouldn't be bottom tier, considering he's a character who'd be very interesting to use if he were good, with his copy ability and such. Of course people are interested in bottom tiers, people want them to not be bottom tier, so obviously a lack of interest isn't what keeps them down. And Young Link is consistently a mid-tier character, so he's obviously got some potential, while clearly not so tournament viable, he probably has a higher skill ceiling than some.

 

[Yung Scrap]

Spacies, Falcon, and Sheik all are very hard match ups for young link. Against Peach, Puff, ICs he is set. It's the other high tiers that hurt his placing.

I disagree with you about the falcon matchup. I'm in no way a high ranked tournament player, so I haven't played any high tiered falcons, but I do know that young links nair comes out faster than falcons and also trumps the knee. It Is not a matchup in favor of young link but I think IC's pose much more of an issue than falcon.

 

[MurphyPrime]

There are hardly any of these matchups at super high level, so I don't blame you. Falcon isn't that bad if you abuse his mechanics (like lack of approach or terrible recovery), but he combos YL super hard imo. Axe uses YL against IC's, so that was my only reasoning really. Also Young Link's projectiles can break up them if you chuck a bomb between them. But I haven't used Young Link as much as I could against Falcon mainly cause I want to learn him for floaties, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

 

[bigblast66]

**** now I can't use A tier..... damn you tierrrsssss.

 

[Yung Scrap]

Honestly, I think young link can hold his own against a lot of high tiers like falcon, marth, and puff, and I believe he actually beats peach. One of the biggest problems is young links weight allowing him to be killed by tipper f-smashes and knees at like 60%. It's a weird situation with his tier ranking; as I get better with young link, I wonder more why he isn't ranked higher. Yet as I get better so do my opponents as they learn to counter my young link, reminding me why he is consistently placed where he is.