BBR Weekly Character Discussion #18: Peach

To sum Peach up, she is an extremely solid character in every aspect of the game imagainable except one - killing ability. This is her major weakness. Besides this, she is extremely good, and can match up to any character in the game. This major weakness, however, seperates her massively from high tier characters and puts her into a solid upper mid tier region. She deserves to be a bit higher on the tier list. She is better than Pit, as tournaments results have shown over and over again, with good Peaches placing relatively high throughout Brawl's history - Leon is doing it now, I did it for awhile when I was going to tournies consistently, Praxis, Mikey, Excel Zero, Kos Mos and a ton of other peaches have had solid top 5-top 10 tournament placings at large scale tournies.

Peach doesn't have much movement speed, but this is more or less compensted by her attack speed. Her moves don't have much lag, and each move either comes out fast or has low cooldown - she can vary her attacks to use the right one depending on the situation. F-smash has like NO cooldown despite appearances, it has IASA frames I THINK - or something similar. Basically even though she is still swining that pan back, she can jab almost instantly after Fsmash. It makes it a great anti-air tool from the ground, for ex against Marth's "wall" he attempts with fair and such, and Kirby's bair. This gives her the tools a lot of people don't think she has for anti air long ranged aerials like these.

Peach doesn't "float cancel" like she did in Melee, but she can autocancel all her aerials, and F-air's autocancel is amazingly good. Her baiting game is incredible because of floating and autocancels, as it allows her to punish attacks in a manner that no other character in the game can, making it difficult to face Peach if you are not used to it - opponents often go for punishments that work even against characters like MK. For example if Peach uses all her jumps and she's falling to the ground, she can suddenly just float place RIGHT above the opponent above their range, making them flinch and use a move to punish her landing. She can also do a melee edgeguard - ie, edgehog most characters others can't. This is because she can float right next to a ledge, and as soon as the opponent UP B's, she can let go of float and instantly grab the ledge, allowing FULL use of her ledge incibility to protect from recovery move hitboxes. This helps her edgehog characters like Toon Link, Marth, and so on - characters with limited hitbox duration on their recoveries.

She has an amazing return to ledge game because of her short jump. It makes her recovery worse because she can't recover from footstools or spikes, but it makes her spacing and speed great. She can juse the short jump to dodge aerials and retaliate at the same time. Think of Ike players who jump forward, then jump back with an aerial. She can use this tactic well.

Turnips are useful against characters without projectiles, but many can compensate and get around them with their speed, such as MK.

Like I said her biggest weakness is killing. She is pretty light and must wait for high percentages to kill, especially since her best reliable kill move is always one of her best damage builders (F-air) so it is RARELY if EVER fresh. This makes her GREAT on stages she can recharge her move staling - Castle Siege, luigi's mansion, DDD's waddle dees, brinstar. She has kill power on these stages because her fair will always be fresh, so IMO she gets a huge boost on such stages. Upsmash has few and very specific scenarios where it is a guaranteed setup (such as shielding slow get up attacks, and dashing into upsmash) and is only landed with really good reads. It's a decent airdodge punisher, as its strong to punish them but it doesn't have much horizontal range on its sweetspot, so even if you read an air dodge, sometimes you will miss if they are airdodging and DIing sideways. She has serious troubles killing.

Peach also has a lot of gimmicks that are flashy but only help mindly. Examples are all her turnip tricks (Bonewalking, turnip free pulls, turnip catching combos, bair trap). These can help her a lot in the future, but no peach has been able to consistently use these to make a significant difference yet. Time will tell whether these can grow and move her up. Bonewalking in place, analysed and explained by Dark Pch in this thread, shows that Peach can cosnistently pull a turnip and retreat from opponents at the exact same time. If mastered this can really really change her game in the future. On the flipside, smash DI has made her regress in many ways, reducing many of her previously great damage rackers to possible combos if DI is followed. Still some people smash DI so well you can't do anything from dair (like Fiction).

Peach's worst matchups are common - MK, Snake, Falco. These are her 3 toughest matchups, and they are probably the 3 most common characters in the game, or among them. However, she does have favorable to even matchups against some of the better characters in the game - Diddy, Olimar, DDD, Game and Watch, Ice Climbers. This means she can handle her own weight against a ton of great characters. The problem is that her bad matchups are just so **** common. She'd be high tier if MK and Snake were less common, but these two characters keep her solidly in mid tier until she can find ways to KO them more consistently and without relying on really really good reads to get kills.

In short, like I said before, great character all around, one major weakness, mid tier solid character. Very good to use against people without matchup experience. Also she has really strong and favorable matchups against most lower tier characters, which is not necessarily true for many mid tier characters.

I agree with Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. Basically the only thing keeping her down is kill potential. I doubt her combos are actually legit though because of SDI, but she is still good at damage racking.

Fun fact: Peach is the worst person at punishing shield breaks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzd0KIVMbLU 1:43

I'm Edrees not praxis, lol <3

She's actually decent at punishing shield breaks..you can throw a turnip up and jump to the other side of the player and charge upsmash. once the turnip hits the upsmash is released and hence sweet spotted. this is a necesity in the peach -jiggly matchup in melee in punishing rest and where the idea originated from.

On stages with platforms where a turnip cannot be simply thrown up, peach can jump down and turnip a turnip up right before she lands, making the turnip throw very short ranged, allowing her to still use the technique. It's just much more difficult, but consistent with practice. You can usually push the opponent into the area where platforms are not above her and still have time for a non charged upsmash too!

In that video, a fully charged sweet spotted upsmash would have killed snake at 97% for sure.

Oh....thats nasty....

I agree with most of what Edreeses said, however I think that those qualities make her better than he suggests. I think Peach is actually quite a bit under-rated.



I play a against Nicole quite often and as she is one of the core smashers in our group, I often travel with her OOS and see her play against various people. I've never really seen her have too difficult of a time against Snakes, she really likes to time them out (she times a lot of people out, actually, which is something that not enough Peach's go for imo). Snake is definitely a tough match for Peach, but I don't think he's unmanageable in the slightest.

From playing against Nicole constantly, I don't think that Falco beats her that badly either. It's at least 55:45 Falco just because of lasers, but no more than 6:4 for sure. She can wrack him up SO FAST and constantly pressure his shield / avoid almost all grabs. Unfortunately, she has to eat a lot of lasers to get in in the first place, which is why Falco unquestionably has a slight advantage in the matchup-- it's really not much at all though. Probably 55:45 in my experience against Nicole, anyway.

As for Metaknight, Peach has issues with him for sure, which can be a major setback. The matchup isn't completely hopeless unless the MK is amazing though, from what I've seen. I think MK is probably her only matchup that is worthy of counter-picking another character for, but even then only the best MK's ever really give Peach's trouble.



Peach has amazing shield pressure (the best in the game?) and is EXTREMELY difficult to punish due to being virtually lagless when played/spaced correctly. Her kill power is terrible, but her damage wracking is above average, so it's not a huge ordeal.

Peach currently being in "D-tier" is utterly laughable to me. From playing once a week against Nicole, we have a saying in STL that Peach is "Triple S-S-S God Tier" Obviously that is a huge exaggeration, but still, I think she strongly deserves to be at least C-Tier. She seems at the very least on-par with Toon Link and ZSS, who seem to be getting a lot of love for moving up a bit. I've seen so much more from Peach than I ever have from Donkey Kong, ROB, Pit, or Kirby.

A lot of people don't play against Peaches at all, or have never played a good one, so I think she's underrated because of that. If she had proper representation, I would put her solidly above Kirby and ROB, personally.





As a side note, she's absolutely AMAZING in teams... unfortunately that doesn't mean much for her singles tier ranking

I agree with pretty much everything said in this thread so far. Peach is one of those characters where she has such a decent amount of even match-ups and few REAL counters that it makes her highly viable in a tournament setting. Even against MK, who many say is her worst MU, she has tools she can use to at least keep up with all but M2K-level. Even then, though, it's to be seen as to whether or not Peach can compete at that level successfully because all the current Peach players aren't super-amazing. Yet.

A note to make as to why Peach might be underrated is because of her EXTREMELY HIGH learning curve. ALL of her moves have a usage or two, but each move can be very very situational, and it takes almost Olimar-level of memory and knowledge in order to know when to do something and when not to. Peach herself is probably one of the only characters, too, that can be aggressive and get rewarded for it, and also be defensive and get rewarded for it. Once a Peach player properly starts balancing both games is when we're probably going to see more improvements in her tournament-placing.

It's also because of Peach's learning curve that she has another weakness, albeit one that isn't in the game itself: energy demand. In order to keep up properly, Peach demands a LOT of concentration and energy. Not feeling well? You're not doing well. Distracted? You're not doing well. Especially in her 'bad' match-ups is when this specifically comes into play. Her fast attacking speed makes her capable of dealing with almost every situation in the game(if you have the right experience to know what to do about it), and if the player is even slightly off then it'll seem impossible.

Turnips are mostly key to her game, since it adds a little bit of pressure to shields and toward her own moveset. Glidetosses for Peach are pretty good, and if it can be used in conjunction with bonewalking/hadoken pulling, it could make her extremely hard to punish for pulling her projectile out. That in itself was a weakness in Melee, but no longer because of this and ledge-cancelling them.

We all know about her dair, as well as fair. Uair is VERY good, too, due to how well it baits airdodges. I've done a lot of baiting with this move ala MK's uair and gotten some pretty good punishes, even usmash punishes, due to how fast Peach recovers from this, both in the air and autocancelling(mainly the latter). Nair is nice because it covers her entire body, and shares the float-drop double-hit that bair has going for it. It and bair aren't spam-worthy anymore, though, because of the amount of air lag they have. Still, they are nice for OoS punishes, and bair can be quite the frame trap(I'm looking at you, Wario). Bair, uair, and, to a slight extent, fair all move Peach's hurtbox, too, which can help her get out of juggles a bit faster.

Her tilts are still situational, but ftilt seems to have the greatest use of them all. It can hit underneath her, which actually helps combat things like rising MK tornados. It can cut through most aerials coming her way, making it a great anti-air. Utilt is the biggest single-hit move in the game(too bad it's all above her head), making it the best anti-dair move. Dtilt seems like the odd one out, but it has a good amount of range on it, and it has a slide that, when cancelled into another move like a jab, grab, turnip pull, and so on, makes it a very safe poke and retreat. Too bad the spike's hitbox on it is nearly worthless.

Her smashes, too, are situational. Usmash is her best killing move by FAR, especially the super-sweetspot. Fsmash is a great zoning tool, and you can cycle out the weapon you don't want in order to not have something like the frying pan come out at a crucial moment. The tennis racket itself has a sweetspot on it that can also kill surprisingly low, the frying pan is a decent vertical killer with the most percentage dealt, and golf club is an insane amount of disjointedness. Dsmash isn't nearly as good as it was, but it can still shield poke, is fast, can stage spike, and is a good 'get off me' move.

Her grab and throws aren't... exactly spectacular. They weren't in Melee(outside of chaingrabs), and they definitely aren't in Brawl. Her pummel speed was increased, making it more worth to spam to refresh her moves. Her fthrow was EXTREMELY downpowered, though it still serves to throw them off the stage and is her second-strongest throw. Bthrow is her strongest percentage-wise. Dthrow can chaingrab a good portion of the cast at low percents, and can lead to follow-ups. Uthrow is her most useless, but it puts her opponents in a bad situation: being above Peach.

Jabs are still amazing, and can help lead into a grab. It's her best follow-up to a perfectly spaced and cancelled fair, to boot. Dash attack is extremely disjointed, the first hit can trip, and the second part pops them up into the air. It also ducks her whole body down, making it a great anti-air against certain things like Marth's nair. Her specials, outside of turnips, are VERY situational. Her up B isn't good when she can't grab the ledge, but her molasses-level decent with the parasol open makes her difficult to ledgehog for most characters. Side B helps recovery, but aside from being able to hit something on the stage is mostly never used offensively except for the odd tech chase. Toad is, well, a counter. If it doesn't work, Peach gets punished.

Peach is a character where all her moves have SOME use somewhere, but you need to know them all in order to deal with each situation as they come. It's going to take a Peach player learning them all and their proper applications for us to see just where she deserves to be on the tier list. Honestly, though, I feel she's about due for a spot or two higher. She will probably never be top-tier, but she just might be worthy to at least be somewhere in C-tier as of right now.

... I didn't intend to write this much. Sorry for the wall-o'-text. ^_^;

I agree more or less with the last two write ups, seems to have summed everything up nicely! While I don't see Peach as high as MMM does, I have nothing against that line of reasoning and see the strong possibility that she is that high. I can really swing either way on that opinion.

People have hit a lot of the good points with Peach. I can't say better or worst than DK, ZSS, or TL now, but she's better than Pit IMO (unless he's planking, Pit is so overrated).

Her fair can be reacted to, and a lot of people don't handle the move correctly. However, it's still a great zoning tool.

In today's metagame, people have reactive and counter defenses to item projectiles which weakens them in a sense, but has opened them up to being better baiting tools. Peach can use this to her advantage, because she already has lots of good baiting tool.

Peaches need to learn which MUs to use the Beam Sword, and how to properly use it (it's not only a projectile, y'know).

Peach can be gimped by EXCELLENTLY timing a stand from the ledge on her UpB, but I wouldn't consider this to being a major flaw, considering the window is probably 3 frames or less.

Peach's airdodge is horrible, and she's subject to HEAVY offense once she gets hit out of DJ or Float.

In the end, this character does see SOME usage, but not a consistent enough amount to get a solid read on her.

Peach with the beam sword is amazing. After I watched a vid of myself losing a set I could have won if I took advantage of the beam sword, I took it upon myself to master it. The beamsword is great because you can use all your aerials while you still have it, and all it does is enhance the range of your ground moves and smash attacks. The last thing you want to do is throw it. The only direction you want to throw it is down, you will still get the hit off, but you run no risk of throwing it off stage if you miss.

Peach has come so far in this game, and probably still has nowhere to go but up. She still seems way too low to me right now, also, much like Edrees just pointed out, not enough people fully utilize the beam sword and do foolish things like toss it offstage immediately when they could be using it to its full potential. The worst idea I've ever seen is people who just throw it straight at the opponent, allowing them the chance to gain the sword themselves.

Peach is...sigh.

Half of me wants to go on about how much potential Peach still has, how much room she has to grow, how well she can do against Dedede, Falco, Snake, Marth, and other top tiers which seemed to flat out beat her early in the metagame.

How her ATs like Bonewalking, free turnip pulling without B-stick (Dark.Pch's analog stick tilt method), etc will make her continue to rise, how we continue to find more, better applications of the fantastic tools she has available.

But...I'm not so sure if it is true anymore. Peach's largest flaw of them all is, of course, her ability to kill. Past that, though- her bad airdodge. She has enough return to ground options (especially when you utilize footstooling) to make it back down normally. She absolutely does not have the tools to get to the ground against MK. Her airdodge is the worst in the game by an utterly enormous margin, with a full half-second of lag, to the point where airdodging has to be avoided by all means as a return-to-ground option. Combine that with the fact that she's one of the slowest fallers in the game, and she is juggle-bait for Metaknight.

Peach has excellent spacing tools, moves that give her frame advantage on shield, other moves that let her frame trap (some characters can't punish a SH dair on shield crossed up to land behind them before she can nair, other characters can't punish fair > jab). She just gets wrecked by Metaknight playing the proper playstyle. Luckily...most MK's don't play it right.


I'd like to see Peaches use dtilt more; her dtilt imparts enough shieldstun that most of the cast can't punish it OOS, and has disjointed range similar to MK's ftilt. 0.0 It unfortunately has a slow startup time (which is why most people don't use it), but the startup animation actually makes your hurtbox smaller. I have had a dtilt cause MK's ftilt to miss due to the hurtbox shrinkage, and then connect with him between the hits of his ftilt.

I also think Peaches need to footstool opponent's shield's as a recovery reset method more, as opposed to airdodging (which never goes unpunished).


Peach has, however, a lot of flaws that I don't wish to particularly advertise here. I'm not sure where to really argue her in the tier list. =/ She probably still has the most potential growth of any character in the roster, however.



I will note, however, that all of this evaporates in Doubles. Peach is the Inui of the Brawl roster. Her largest issue in doubles is double Metaknight; she needs a teammate that doesn't get juggled by him (Larry and I had this issue with Peach+Falco, and Superboom and I had this problem with Peach+Snake).

Peach+Metaknight works fantastically. So does Peach+Snake (except against double MK), Peach+Wario (I love that one), and a number of other team combinations. I suspect Peach+G&W might work well too...but I haven't tried it lately. All of Peach's grounded moves send opponents up as well, setting up for juggles (which is why Peach+MK and Peach+Wario works so well).

I think Peach+Snake, with a Snake that seconds MK for the double-MK team, is probably the best setup, but I'd like to try teaming with a high-level Wario sometime because the few experiences I had with that team were fantastic.



A couple other notes:

* Peach's dash attack is FANTASTIC. The invisible disjoint is so great that she can dash attack Green Greens blocks with proper spacing and detonate them without being damaged. She can also space it perfectly on Marth's shield so that he cannot up-B OOS.

* Peach's nair is three frames, her jab is two. She's fast. Groundfloated nair is the best way to punish a lot of stuff.

* Peach can catch items during her aerial by dropping float, an interesting side-effect of the removal of Melee float-canceling. IMO, this is an enormous advantage against Diddy that no Peach really utilizes.

Mikey Lenetia brought up what I consider to be the biggest issue with Peach; STAMINA. Peach is a mentally exhausting character. Almost everything requires a lot more focus; even punishing random rolls sufficiently takes a lot more precision than with other characters (fsmash is slow and reaches higher in the air than the ground, jab and dsmash don't do that much damage since a roller will usually only take one or two hits of the dsmash), and usually requires that you do something like a groundfloated autocancelled aerial (nair or bair) very quickly.

Though, keep in mind that my regular practice partner plays Lucario. xD

Under pressure? Tired? Peach performs far worse. Peach gets punished very badly for lack of precision due to her bad airdodge, and similarly requires you play a lot more precise to get your punishments. Her aerials only grant you frame advantage when spaced perfectly. Her turnip game is not for damage as people think, but positioning advantage and option reduction, and becomes very hard to take advantage of when you're not playing at your best.

I'm famously inconsistent in Washington; in fact, in my tournament history, it's extremely common for me to beat players in winner's bracket and lose to the same player in loser's finals, because my stamina saps. Similarly, at Apex- I beat Vinnie in a MM, two stocking him and beating him on his counterpick, but lost 3-0 on the livestream later in front of the crowd. Players in Western Washington took it upon themselves to go out of their way to trash talk me when playing notable matches against crewmates because it works. >_<

In fact, almost all of the top Peaches are very inconsistent in this manner, beating good players and then losing to bad ones. She's, I suppose, an emotional character, subject far too much to the moods of her player.



The only Peach player to demonstrate any kind of consistency was Edrees, when he played.

Oh, and Peach's best pullable item is Mr. Saturn.

Peach and Snake does fine against double MK. If snake uses his grenades well while peach just plays a turnip defensive game you can get tons of damage in and early kills. When Snake is my partner I tend to just grab turnips, shield attacks and punish. Since I'm always shielding he's free to abuse grenades and trade damage with the MK's as much as he wants, since I'm shielding the explosions. In addition I'm shielding any tornados that come my way. Just stay on the ground against double MK when snake is ur teammate as much as possible and the best way to do is turnips.

Think about it: In singles against MK the problem is he can approach you easily when your turnip spamming. In doubles MK is wayyyy scared of randomly running into snake territory. It's a good team against double MK IMO.

Except Peach and Snake both get juggled bad =/ Maybe my teammate was doing it wrong, but when I played Jem and Sean, they just took Snake into the air and focused on gimping him together, and Peach can't really chase out there and help him.

Peach herself doesn't have a problem in the Peach+Snake team, it's the fact that she can't really help Snake out once two MKs come down on him.

Thats why the snake should abuse grenades as much as possible. There will be random explosions everywhere, with snake and the MK's trading damage, all while peach is saving damage and shielding a bunch, throwing turnips around. I dunno I like it, but doubles is so crazy that people's playstyles drastically change everything. I personally suck at teaming with DDD and can't even beat the weakest of players teaming with him, but I saw how well Excel Zero did, so yeah.

It might've been my teammate as well. We wrecked everyone else so hard that I'd team with a good Snake again in a heartbeat. We placed 4th at a notable WC regional, and even bob-omb-*****-Mew2King. :3

Since we are doing all of D Tier this week, I present my usual data for D-Tier characters.

As usual, the following graph takes tournament results as compiled by Ankoku (current as of the end of May, 2010), groups the results by character and player name, and shows on the Y-Axis how well the N-th best player (arranged on the X-Axis) of characters A, B, C... has been doing in tournaments over the course of 6 months.



Peach doesn't really have a pair of high-performing heroes like Luigi, Fox, and Wolf each do. However, there is a pretty large number of players doing mediocre-ly with Peach - after spots 1 and 2, Peach consistently remains above the other characters.

This probably indicates that Peach is unusually popular among players good enough to do reasonably well in tournament. Which doesn't bode well for her - that nobody's really stood out and started kicking butt with her despite so many players trying to do exactly that suggests that something is holding her back in comparison to her other D Tier comrades.

Maybe her popularity kills her ability to get wins through the gimmick effect like Luigi apparently can. Or maybe she just runs out of steam at the highest level (which seems counterintuitive to me, given how technical she is...) I don't know.

Part of the problem is that just about ALL the Peach players are still learning. I know I am, as is Praxis, and so on. Her growth for a while was stinted because of how many characters just absolutely destroyed her before, and it's only been somewhat recent where it's started to change. If anything changes for her now, it'll be very minimal in reflection of this.

And yes, Crow!, I think those results are right because her surprise factor(something almost all the other D-tier characters have) is voided. On the contrary, though, I'd find possibility in the fact that she does as well as she does in spite of 'not having an outstanding player' for her yet. It shows she has nothing but improvement to give from an already decent standpoint. When/if we'll get that 'special someone' for Peach is anyone's guess, or even who he/she could be. She has the potential, and unlike some characters, she has some pretty solid data(looking at your chart) to back it up to some degree. Her learning curve is just making it a slower progression than the others.

Do you guys think peach beats ics

I was talking to Mikey about this less than an hour ago and we agree that Peach gives ICs a hard time. She splits them up easily, shield pressure and is good at gimping Nana. And once Popo is alone she can pick him apart with turnips and edge guards.

CO18 said:

Do you guys think peach beats ics

Click to expand...

Yes. She beats them down rather decently. She can separate them easily, keep them separated, and once Popo is by himself she destroys him.

I'm going to rain on the parade and say that I don't really see Peach as upward mobile in terms of a tier list. She's fine where she is and is about as good as someone like Luigi, but I'm pretty sure she's no better.

Peach is a low mobility character who has an "okay" projectile but otherwise has to get pretty close to you to hit you. Practically speaking, this means she is going to have to work really hard to land a hit from a neutral position. Against most good characters, she'll flat out lose in a spacing war. If she tries to play a faster, more aggressive game to minimize that factor, it's hard for her because her mobility is kinda bad. Turnips are the secret since they provide cover for her to get close and can be pulled in succession to force the opponent to come to her (unless they're just okay with her getting a bomb or a beam sword, which few rational opponents will be). Turnips pulls aren't generally instant though, and being a weak item styled projectile kinda limits their potential pay-out (just compare them to Diddy Kong's bananas; they're basically strictly inferior). I have to give her credit for being really good at exploiting advantaged positions, but she seems pretty bad at making an advantage out of a neutral position to me which is a significant problem.

She has arguably one of the worst weights in the game since she's still light enough to die early but not light enough to avoid being cg'd by DDD or to wiggle out of shenanigans in general. Her general problems with kills are the obvious handicap as well, of course, and I'm not sure having the worst airdodge in the cast really does much to help her in this stuff. All of it together seems to make it pretty easy for Peach to take way too much damage too fast off a mistake, die too early, or fail to kill for way too long. All three of those pretty much make you lose.

When I fight against Peach as G&W, my general idea is to stay at an arm's reach but no more so I can easily stuff grounded non-turnip approach attempts with dtilts, smack her with a quick fair or turtle if she tries to pull a turnip, and up special any attempt to approach with aerials. Above all else, I never get super close to her and always focus on just SDIing away if I get hit with anything. This basically stops her up smash (only dangerous kill move) from ever hitting me and minimizes the reward of her dair if I happen to get hit. If I'm ever in doubt, I just back off and try to re-create a neutral position since I'm very confident in my ability to turn those to my favor against Peach. I'm pretty sure G&W has a clear advantage against Peach (though not so big that the Peach can't win), and I suspect Meta Knight and Marth can fight her in much the same way.

I will say though that I think Peach will always have a place in the metagame, and her biggest hope for rising would be a rise in ICs and Olimar, both extremely obnoxious characters for the majority of the cast who have general serious concerns with the way Peach operates. I don't think she's an advantageous choice against a field of good characters in general, but I don't think she has to worry about any horrible match-ups so it is feasible to go decently far as a dedicated Peach main probably... just really hard.

CO18 said:

Do you guys think peach beats ics

Click to expand...

Yes, 55-45. She can space his shield safely from floats and jump away or footstool away, and turnip through their blizzards.

It's not **** by any means, but she has some very fast moves and is good at not getting grabbed.


@ Amazing Ampharos; when discussing Peach's turnips, are you giving consideration to Bonewalking? I think you're misunderstanding turnip usage, as well. Peach doesn't throw them to hit the opponent, lol.

I'd just like to interject and say that a stitch-face turnip is BY FAR the best thing Peach can pull, probably followed by Mr. Saturn.

Imo, peach is an underrated character, as you know, everyone in Europe thinks that because of Leon's placings with her, although Leon has been using more and more Marth lately ( He has changed from maining both to maining Marth and leaving Peach as a secondary).

Besides this, I think has what it takes to place alone, his only real bad match-up is MK imo, and its still not that bad, 65-35 for mk at worst. She does well ( with well I understand around even) vs Diddy, Wario, ICs, D3, Pikachu, Olimar... Versus Falco I think she has a slight disadvantage on some stages but the match-up is even in others ( and even in peach's favour in some like brinstar lol).

Then we have Snake, who's considered a bad match-up by some people, but just like Marth, Peach has all the tools to beat Snake easily, the only problem being spacing mistakes that cost her a lot of damage / an early kill. If Peach plays extremely safe Snake has trouble hitting her. Of course it's hard to play like this considering all the stage control snake has and thus the match-up isn't that easy, but Snake is not a counter of Peach.

I don't think she loses versus Marth either, both characters have good spacing moves and can get loads of damage fast if they get a good setup. I think overall Marth does have the advantage but it isn't that great because Peach has way to punish all of his approach/pressure game, fair beats nair, dash attack can go under full hopped fair and turnips are also useful to punish his landings ( and to gimp Marth).

About general weakness, Praxis pointed them out perfectly, lack of kill moves, you end up killing with something like nair or bair at 160% or so if you can't get a smash attack or a not decayed fair ( which sadly is usually decayed xD). His airdodge is horrible, it may seem it's only a few frames worse but it's as Praxis says, she gets juggled extremely badly because of it and this gives her trouble vs characters like Marth and MK specially.

Overall, I feel she should be along Fox a bit higher in the next tier list, Peach has not good results but often I see the peach players just get outplayed in even or good match-ups, I hope someone else besides Leon appears that's able to show Peach's potential.

People have hit a lot of the good points with Peach. I can't say better or worst than DK, ZSS, or TL now, but she's better than Pit IMO (unless he's planking, Pit is so overrated).

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I agree with this, but I also think she's at least better than Dk as well, not sure about TL or ZSS.

ESAM said:

Fun fact: Peach is the worst person at punishing shield breaks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzd0KIVMbLU 1:43

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Continued lol at Kyon's fail.

I'm not important :<


Good stuff people need to know about Peach
- Bone Walking: Lets you pull a Turnip whilst sliding a great distance
- Peach can't Float cancel
- Peach should never (and this is only if she does actually approach) be approaching in the air unless for specific match ups such as Olimar. She is much better off approaching on the ground where she can shield and punish on block

By far Peach's best asset is her defensive game. Fair works well vs grounded charaters and has virtually no landing lang. Turnips to follow up cause some nasty shield pressure. Her OoS game is ridiculously good, something I don't see many Peach players use. Turnip OoS is 8 frames and combined with a Glide Toss, is good for punishing or escaping. Nair hits on frame 8 OoS and Jab hits on frame 9 OoS and has pretty decent range. Dash Attack OoS is also pretty sweet. Peach's item game is also really good. Turnips aren't always used to hit people, they're to bait reactions because Peach's punishing game is quite simply amazing

Like Praxis said, Peach is a very mentally exhausting character to use. She requires a huge amount of concentration and precision so she can minimize risk whilst gaining an advantage. Unless its a really specific match up like Wario or Olimar, she doesn't really have a traditional 'that aerial' - infact tbh, her fighting style is nothing like anyone else in Brawl.
She is awful at killing as her best killing move is also her best spacing move. Next to no set ups work for landing Up Smashes either. You need a heck of a lot of patience with Peach because its so easy just to go 'hot dang, this DeDeDe is at 180%! I'm bored of this, DIE' and then get destroyed. Her airdodge is the worst in the game and combined with her floaty nature and slow fall speed means that she can be very easily juggled. Her recovery is also something that requires good timing otherwise Peach will get knocked out of Peach Bomber or smacked/edgehogged when she Parasols

These are not only in-game problems but also out-game problems imo which seriously hurts her popularity and stops new peole picking her up. Why would anyone bother to pick up Peach in such a developed metagame when other characters such as Snake and Marth have much more solid tactics and strategies that have time and time again been proven to be solid ways of winning? Peach doesn't have the 'lets use a low tier and win' novelty either so there's no incentive to use her for that. Also, whats the point in learning a character that doesn't function tradtionally like every other character in the game? Stuff like this is very off putting for people who want to pick up Peach. She's got an excellent punishment game but her combination of light weight and poor kill power means that it can be very tedious to grasp that victory

MK, Snake and Falco are the match ups that always crop up when discussing Peach's bad match ups. Snake and Falco are generally tossed around between even and disadvantaged (though I can see Falco being more even than Snake tbh). They aren't on the same level as MK though who is by far the biggest problem for Peach atm. Her bad airdodge and slow fall speed means that she has to be extremely careful when trying to land vs an MK who knows what they're doing with Uair.
I have found my Dair poking through MK's Uair's a lot though by moving away and hitting at a diagonal to clip MK where is Uair won't slap against my hurtbox and combined with his terrible horizontal air movement...is the MK doing it wrong?

Other than those match ups, she goes even with nearly everyone else and has some slight advantages over high tier characters. She does well vs everyone below her too
The thing is, she goes even with lots of characters whereas higher tier characters have much more solid advantages over these characters. Such characters will always be higher than Peach


Does this mean she's viable to go all the way? This is an issue I'm very careful of because I don't attend tournaments and if I did, I would be unlikely to play vs the US metagame (or US players for that matter). Sooooooo I'm going to comment but I'll be watching myself so I don't get shot down ><
Yes. Perhaps I'm deluded or really don't know the true horrors of fighting a Meta Knight or maybe I'm seriously overestimating Peach as a character or maybe my lack of tournament experience simply means I'm not qualified to say this but after watching countless videos and studying the game and how it works for goodness knows how long, nothing I have seen so far has told me 'Peach is completely unviable in Brawl'. Peach has a solid enough tools to allow her to win. She has her flaws yes but I don't think they're so massive that they render her unviable
Her killing ability is very irritating indeed but its not something as crippling as an infinite...and I'd like to point out this is something which everyone in her current Tier suffers from. Timing someone out (or taking as long as you can to secure a victory) is a very viable strategy for Peach if you ask me and its something I've been adopting more and more each day


What Peach needs is a player who uses her to her full potential. We've got a decent sized but very skill-spread collection of Peach mains, all of whom are good at something, be it techs or match ups but fall at hurdles that other Peach's conquer. We need someone who is patient, can work around Peach's flaws, consistantly makes good decisions and is good at everything with Peach (someone find Edrees' old chart ;D) because I have to yet to see and hear about any Peach that is truly testing her limits. This isn't being nasty - this is a generally agreed principle in the Peach community. MK is the problem atm. Peach's can win games vs MK but can't seem to win sets so tournament wise, Peach always gets knocked out

She's got bucket loads of potential and when someone uses all of it, I can see her being an amazing character. She has to work harder than lots of characters for her wins though and whilst she can still win such matches, it tells me that she should be below them in the tier list

Currently, I think top of C Tier would be a good place for her. When someone finally shows what shes truly capable of in a super skilled players hands and starts consistantly beating top MK's (although you could argue that she slowly is starting to do that) I would argue she'll be able to claim a place in the lower sections of B tier. Low B tier would be perfect imo (I view B tier as being viable, just not as much as A tier), although perhaps I'm seriously pushing my luck as to how viable I think she is. I can't see her going any higher because other characters are simply more deserving of those high placements


Ending statement - I currently believe Peach is a viable character in Brawl you can win anything with Peach provided you play as near to perfect as possible. Its just much, much easier to do with other characters because they are simply better characters than Peach

...I'm still not important ><

Good job Praxis, Edrees, and Mikey.
Not as long as I'd hoped but I still enjoyed reading the posts.

I just realized this is here. Sadly things I would say are already here. So there isn't really anything for me to say. However As good as I feel she is like everyone else says the killing is quite a problem. However her up smash being as strong as it is and I don't think its too flawed. Someone or something should happen to let this move be more usable. It kills quite early. I actually like going to Halberd against snakes because of it and the platform. Also at this point in time I feel that Peach players don't abuse the ground game she has. Which I'm looking more into now. In most cases players just think turnips and jab is her key ground game which when learned how to defend isn't so reliable. She has quite a few tools to use that I will further try to use in the up coming tournaments I go to. She is a hard working character that can drain a lot out of you thus is why I've said once before having another character simply for rest is a good idea.

Peach in teams is when I feel she does the best. However Teaming with a random person may not show it as far as she can go. More of a perm partner does the trick. Her amazing ability to rack up damage, mess up other players set ups with turnips, most of her moves can be used for combos with her partner, her lucky ability items to kill such as the bomb, beam sword, stitch face, and Saturn can change the entire flow of matches makes me feel she is one of the top best partners.

In the end a Peach main has to know the character and be fully aware of most options and tricks she can use such as the uair string. I feel in order for peach to be top or higher than she is now we need to step up to Armada's knowledge of Peach in Melee.

Random reminder - Someone really needs to look into the random mechanic behind Peach's Turnip pull. I know Brawl- users/modifiers like Xyless have already worked on altering the chance of pulling up different Turnips/items and even added extra items in for hacked versions of Brawl

I for one would really love to understand the random mechanic and whether there was any way to abuse it

Nair hits on frame 3 OOS I thought.

Jumping cancels the shield drop... unless your adding jumps to the frame count too

LanceStern said:

Nair hits on frame 3 OOS I thought.

Jumping cancels the shield drop... unless your adding jumps to the frame count too

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I'm adding jump frames

It hits on frame 8 because you have 6 frames for jumping and Nair hits on frame 3. The first frame of Nair starts on the 6th frame when you jump assuming you Nair immediatly
Sooo IIRC from hotgarbage said, it'll go like 1 2 3 4 5 6/1, 2 3

so what was the sbr's final consensus on her, i wonder?

Pierce7d said:

I'd just like to interject and say that a stitch-face turnip is BY FAR the best thing Peach can pull, probably followed by Mr. Saturn.

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No. You can just shield or instant throw a stitchface. Mr. Saturn gives you frame traps because you can't shield it.

Before I get into turnips, I would just like to say that, in my opinion, the thing that hurts Peach's chances in particular is her lack of fast fall speed. I was discussing it with Mikey while I was trying to make changes to Peach Minus, and after looking it up, her fast fall is almost non-existent. Combine that with her slow air dodge and she doesn't really have a good way of mixing up.

Rickerdy-doo-da-day said:

Random reminder - Someone really needs to look into the random mechanic behind Peach's Turnip pull. I know Brawl- users/modifiers like Xyless have already worked on altering the chance of pulling up different Turnips/items and even added extra items in for hacked versions of Brawl

I for one would really love to understand the random mechanic and whether there was any way to abuse it

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There's no mechanic to it like G&W's. It's a straight-up random chance, which follows the mechanics mentioned in the picture I posted...which I guess I'll mention here.



The first 5 turnips have the exact same stats (except pull rate), then the last three turnips get stronger in order. The winking turnips are the fourth most common turnips, and are surprisingly strong. A comparison is here (simplified for reference)

Xyless said:

BLUE:
12% Grounded Smash F-Throw (point-blank)

GREEN:
16% Grounded Smash F-Throw (point blank)

ORANGE:
22% Grounded Smash F-Throw (point blank)

RED:
40% Grounded Smash F-Throw (point blank)

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Nicole said:

so what was the sbr's final consensus on her, i wonder?

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There isn't meant to be a consensus reached with these, they are just discussions to get people talking and thinking before we actually work on the tier lists.

Im 100000% sure that the stitchface and Mr. Saturn are much more common than the beamsword/bomb.