BBR Weekly Character Discussion #30: Mario

He didn't look anything like that in Super Hornio Bros.
Source (no nudity): http://thecinemasnob.com/2010/08/03/super-hornio-bros.aspx

Mario's okay. He's a bit under-appreciated, but his limitations are pretty clear from the beginning. He lacks good range and good approaches. He has a better projectile than his brother, but it's still not that good. His combos are inferior to luigi's as well, but at least he has some which is more than most of low tier can say. Cape is a bit underrated still. If playing in a region that bans the infinite, it keeps him viable in the DDD matchup. Flood. I dislike the move. I'm not sure what matchups it actually works well in. I mostly use it on Snake, since Cape gives him his Up B back. Outside of that, it probably helps a bit against a lot of character who need to use their second jump to recover instead of having good special recoveries, but isn't really a matchup breaker. He could probably stand to move up a couple of spots, possibly squeezing out of low tier (but not likely). He performs decently in tournament for a low tier character and has at least one very good player out there representing him, keeping his metagame up to date. He has one of the healthier growths in the low tier environment and may still develop more yet.

Mario is def low tier. He lack kill moves and kill setups. Its not really hard to see the stutter step fsmash or just wait for it after the bair spacing. And his fair spike is super weak. His bair is somewhat reliable to kill but it should be staled for spacing. Really what lets mario have even a chance at winning his matches is his fireball projectile. Thats easy to pshield though and react accordingly to.

Future has a decent Mario (he plays a lot of characters), so I have a fair amount of experience against this character.

I honestly think that there is only one thing holding Mario back, but it's a major issue. He is a character that is designed around ledge-play / offstage gimping / irritation... however, his recovery is TERRIBLE. He can wrack damage quickly, has a good set of tools to deal with most situations, and his issues with killing really aren't a big deal when you factor in his ability to keep people in the air / recovering with cape, flood, and his aerials.

Unfortunately, as a character, he wants to be off the ledge hitting you with capes and whatnot, but it just doesn't work out for him because his own Up-B has such a short range that he is often the one who gets gimped rather than his opponent.

He's not terrible, he can definitely be played well and he has some surprisingly even matchups with top-tiers, such as Falco.

Overall though he is not a strong character or even a mid-tier. His unfortunately terrible recovery just seems completely counter to his character design, and holds him back greatly. I don't see him going beyond the low tiers.

I don't have much to say about Mario compared to most of the other low tiers. He seems about fit for middle of low tier, maybe on the lower side of that. He's just about the easiest match-up ever for Mr. Game & Watch and seems to have fairly little to make him legitimately threatening.

I don't find his off-stage game credibly threatening not only because of what MMM said about his recovery (which is completely true) but also because way too many characters have virtually ungimpable recoveries that can only even be harassed by MK level pressure which Mario definitely does not have. I mean, he can have his "good" game in this area, and then the other guy picks Meta Knight... or Pit... or Mr. Game & Watch... or R.O.B.... or Kirby... or Jigglypuff... or... It's just not that impressive, and even against characters like Olimar or Ness, I really don't see Mario doing much more good work racking that damage and taking those stocks than many good characters can. It's not saying he's bad at it, but I think a lot of other characters are better at it which makes me wonder why it's being listed as an advantage for him at all so much as a non-weakness.

Mario's tournament results are also really, really bad as I recall, even for a low tier, and doubly bad if you ignore boss who as far as I know uses primarily Luigi. Maybe that low it doesn't really matter since noise is such a factor in the data, but it's worth noting. Of course, Crow will doubtless have much more enlightening things to say on this, with graphs and numbers, so I won't try to develop this point substantively.

Mario suffers one actual major weakness that no one here has addressed. I don't think the rest of the weaknesses listed here are actual weaknesses, coming from a Mario player. Mario is decent at killing. His Usmash isn't underwhelming, it's just not broken, and his Fsmash is STRONG. You can keep thinking that Mario's not going to land that Fsmash, but I get them when I want them. Dsmash I typically use for damage, or later percent kills out of jab 2, but I'll note that the Frame 6 move has little lag, and is often good at provoking bad DI or setting up for an edge-guard.

Mario's true weakness comes from having little forward attacking power. Mario is strong when his back is to you, or you're at a range, or up close, but he has little to aid him in the way of RETALIATION. Basically, save UpB, hitting the front of Mario's shield is free. With no grab range, a good but too slow Dash Attack, a misunderstood Fair, average mobility, etc, Mario has no way of punishing lots of things on his shield. Considering that characters with major disjoints beat out all his major approaches, he's got a problem.

I don't think D3 is that bad if you simply take forever to do it, and not on FD. This is with the infinite. Without it, it's 6-4, with, it's 7-3.

I think Marth is his worst match-up. His MU against MK is also pitiful. GnW I also find ridiculously hard, but he's

I will agree that his MU against Falco is overrated. When I fight Falco players, I often win by exploiting their lack of MU knowledge and my in depth knowledge of the MU, but when I use Falco to fight Mario it's not even close.

Snake is not bad at all if you camp, and know what to look for. 6-4 Snake IMO.

I think Mario goes even with Olimar at most recent study. He seems to also go even with, or possibly slightly beat Pikachu. I have played the MU, but not against a REALLY good Pikachu.

I think Mario is bottom of mid-tier. Terribly misunderstood character, who's game resembles something out of SF, by utilizing Fireballs to create frame traps.

I agree with just about everything pierce said, especially about his forward attacking potential and mario getting owned by marth. I think he's very good in low tier tournaments though, going even with or beating ike, and hardly having any poor low tier matchups. What keeps him low tier is that he gets beat by the majority of the high tier chars even worse than most other low tiers.



Also, for what its worth, I think Mario vs Diddy Kong is even.

Well, to try to get some more discussion started here, let's consider how Mario's actually doing in tournaments.



Mario's actually doing okay in tournaments. He's up there with the E tiers in terms of results. Why is this not consistent with the general sense of how bad Mario is? Discuss.

Count said:

Also, for what its worth, I think Mario vs Diddy Kong is even.

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Wanna elaborate?

I really don't know anything about Mario, but I cannot imagine that matchup being even.

Diddy vs mario:

Mario's fireballs are a really annoying projectile for diddy. They make you drop bananas, and are, for me, just as much if not more difficult to get around than Falco's lasers. I play a campy style of Diddy and I feel like I can camp a lot of characters, sometimes even snake and olimar (or at least camp them decently) I don't feel like I can do this against mario, the fireballs make me -feel- like I have to approach.

The cape isn't as big of a tool against Diddy as a lot of Mario mains think it is, but it can still be a nuisance at times and gives Mario something to take control of bananas that a lot of characters don't have.

Diddy's side b latch is a good tool against Mario but a simple nair oos by Mario stops that as well. The best thing for Diddy in this matchup is his ability to cover Mario's options coming down to the stage from above and Diddy's fair usage, which beats the majority of Mario's moveset.

Besides the previously mentioned stuff, some things Mario has going for him are a solid gimp game against Diddy as well as not being as easy gimped by diddy as other characters. As noted, Mario's biggest weakness is being horizontally outranged and Diddy cannot really do that besides with SH fairs, which can be difficult to space against Mario.

Hope that helps some as to why I believe this to be an even matchup.

Well. My computer crashed while making a big post about Mario and Diddy. To shorten that, I would just say that Mario does pretty well against Diddy and the matchup is probably close to even. I also wanted to point out that Cape has a secondary use of stalling Mario out in the air, allowing him to dodge a lot of banana that normally would be trying to catch him as he lands which is pretty nice and works a lot like Fox's reflector can in this situation, protecting him from landing on bananas and reflecting any that hit him in the air to give him a safer landing.

Mario has a pretty good Up B out of shield which is more than many characters can say. I remember hilariously seeing an argument between Bowser and Mario mains over whose Up B out of shield is better (personally, I find Mario's to be better, but it's more of a personal opinion). Some of his air attacks are pretty good, but as Pierce pointed out, he actually does have very few forward attacking options that are very good. His Fair has the same problem as DK's in that while it spikes, it comes out slowly making it a poor defensive option. His Nair is nowhere near as good as many other characters and utilt out of shield is really only useful against poor spacing (or characters forced to get that close). Still, bair is good, Fsmash is pretty nice, but he does have that blind spot (while not actually BLIND, it's, how would you say, dim?).

The Real Inferno said:

Mario has a pretty good Up B out of shield which is more than many characters can say. I remember hilariously seeing an argument between Bowser and Mario mains over whose Up B out of shield is better (personally, I find Mario's to be better, but it's more of a personal opinion). Some of his air attacks are pretty good, but as Pierce pointed out, he actually does have very few forward attacking options that are very good. His Fair has the same problem as DK's in that while it spikes, it comes out slowly making it a poor defensive option. His Nair is nowhere near as good as many other characters and utilt out of shield is really only useful against poor spacing (or characters forced to get that close). Still, bair is good, Fsmash is pretty nice, but he does have that blind spot (while not actually BLIND, it's, how would you say, dim?).

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Bowsers Up-B out of shield is infinitely better, they don't even compare.

What swordgard said. No contest.

I also agree with Mario's lack of priority in front of him.

Anybody with Mario experience have any comments on his jab and f tilt?

Mario's meta game hasn't grown as far as I know, and his matchups aren't very good. However, according to Crow!'s statistics, he does okay in tournaments. Therefore, in my opinion, he should stay in the same spot because I don't see any significant reason for him to rise.

Everything has been pretty well said.

Arc told me once that players>>>>>>>>>>>matchups, and that is really the only way you win with Mario. You win off of your opponent just not knowing how to play mario.

If you're beating a Marth, for example, the Marth your facing must be oblivious to the fact that f-tilt or fair stops pretty much any Mario advance.

I wish there was some upside to this like with Melee (SCORP-DA-DORP) where there is some potentiality of rising the ranks. But Barwl ain't like that, so unless people play low-tier tourneys exclusively, then getting out of the 30s won't be happening anytime in the near future.

Mario isnt THAT BAD of a character imo. Sure, he has bad range and (imo) decent but still not THAT good options for approaching/camping. He only does pretty bad in tournaments because the matchups he gets ***** by are high tiers (MK,Snake, GaW, Wario, D3, Olimar, etc) So you see more of them. However, that being said, Mario doesent do too bad against Snake, since it is possible to camp decently vs him, and juggle the hell out of him in low percents with utilt. His bad air mobility and options in the air make a big advantage to Mario as well. If you are a smart player, I think it will be hard for Snake to make it back on stage. If i recall i think it was 1 year ago but Bo almost beat Allys Snake in a MM, but then he picked MK, and lulz. Old news but yeah.... If marios worst matchups werent so commonly used, I really think he could do good in tournaments imo.

I apologize to the Mario players I didn't participate more in this discussion. I was away for most of it.

Mario has good matchups for a low tier, actually. he has quite a few 6-4's with higher tiers, and 50-50s as well, like with Diddy. all his moves have legit purposes (Other than dtilt and maybe ftilt) and in some cases cape stall saves you from edgehoggers.

Utilt is a good combo starter. It also can be chained at early percents.
Ftilt is useful is some quick situations
Dtilt sucks
Jab is good for things like ftilt and jab canceling.
Fair is a bad spike. It can be useful though.
Bair is too good. Spacing, juggling, spacing, it pwns.
Uair is a really good juggling move, it can bait aerial opponents as well.
Dair is a really good shield pressure and damage move.
Nair is a good (c-c-c)combo breaker, it can set up for jab locks, it can end combos pretty well, it's surprising and in some scenarios a pretty good edeguard. Also, spacing.
Super Jump Punch is for things like jab and ftilt, out of shield it's pretty good, too. It's not that good of a recovery move but if you cape stall to waste your opponents invincibility frames, it can stage spike pretty well.
Cape is amazing. Gimps, turning around mindgames, (ledge/aerial) stalling, and cape *****.
FLUDD is pretty amazing, too. It ****s up recoveries pretty well. It can setup for capes and induce hit lag, which is pretty useful.

Just gonna summarize some key points:

Defense: I'd call it a fair defense game. Fireballs will do the job on certain characters like Snake and ICs but is not a reliable strategy against every character. We can also zone bairs to camp. He has some nice OOS options as well. His grab game is poor due to his bad grab range and his throws aren't amazing.

Offense: Above average offense game. Fireballs are very good to use to approach and frame trap the opponent. Can either grab the opponent or use ftilt as a good poke (assuming they will shield the fireball). He has very good frame data on most of his moveset and a very tight boxing game.

Killing: Underrated, but still mediocre. Fsmash is a strong move with very good range, especially when stutterstepped. Usmash also has a fair amount of kill power on it as well and has deceiving disjoints.

Edgeguarding/gimping: Definitely one of the better edgeguarding/gimp games of the rost Bair is a very good edgeguarding tool to keep the opponent off stage. Fair spikes them although it won't be our most common option. Sour spotted nair can hit them down a little bit and possibly clip their jump. Of course for gimping the most known one would be the cape which is effective on a nice amount of the cast and can be really rewarding. We also have FLUDD which can hinder other characters recoveries like the spacies and Ike.

Recovery: Like his killpower, mediocre but underrated. We can use cape to stall the opponent's invincibility. He can also cape the ledge to cling onto it (Pierce knows what I'm talking about). If an opponent is coming after you, you can FLUDD them to get them away and recover safely. His UpB is pretty one dimensional though.

Other: Mario can be a very gimmicky character. He has cape and FLUDD to work around with things like FIHL and cape stalling. He has a good amount of room for creativity.

Weaknesses: His range is bad. Most obvious weakness of his. He gets juggled pretty easily because of he doesn't have any good hitboxes to hit in front of or below him. He can cape stall and b reverse fireballs to avoid getting juggled though. Also lacks good kill setups.

Matchups: Really not that bad. I honestly can't say much about the D3 MU because I don't use Mario for that MU if I don't have to. I don't think it's good at all for him. 4:6 or 35:65. MK is probably 3:7 although most Mario's will say its 35:65. G&W isn't that bad a MU imo because if you play safe, you can live to nice percentages and G&W can die at low percents. Still a solid G&W 6:4. Mario also does well against some C tier and above characters like Diddy, Lucario, Pikachu, Pit, Kirby, and ROB.

I think Mario's highest possible spot he deserves right now would be lower mid tier (Upper E/Lower D). He isn't the most represented character though.

Also Mario ***** Marth 7:3.

EDIT: I feel like there's some misconception about Mario. I reread some posts and people make it sound like Mario basically relies on gimping to win. He doesn't. Although his killpower isn't amazing, it certainly isn't as bad as some people are making it seem.

Mario's a good balanced character. But with that said, everything Mario does decent at, character "A" does a whole lot better at. What ever character "A" lacks, Mario only does slightly better.

This is how I see Mario. It's like a pentagon of stats, Mario's like a perfect pentagon, but a small one xD

Yeah, this seems like it's summed up about right.

Against most characters in the game, there are very winnable matchups and our worst matchups (not surprisingly) comes from MK, D3, GW [I'm still testing this, tbh] and Marth. In no particular order, that is. We've got some decent, surprising matchups (Falco, Diddy, Pikachu) that really are even based on fundamentals and beat oh... say 95% of the characters around our position. A smart player can play a basic Mario and a really good one can play a very viable one.

Oh yeah, talking to Hilt... he told me that Mario's a difficult matchup for Olimar. Onstage, it's really not that bad for us when you realize the spots you can attack him at and offstage... it's really a matter of RPS with the theoretical cards in our favor. Whistle > Aerial (M), Cape > Whistle, Aerial(M) > Aerial(O) [Though why Olimar is doing any aerial is beyond me.].

Even without the advanced stuff that most Mario mains utilize (cape glide, FIHL). This is a little off the kilter, but I learned something pretty hilarious with Mario in a team with Kirby or MK. In a 2v1 situation and on an MK/Kirby u-throw at a decently high percent, if you cape the character popping out of the throw (obviously it's more for heavier characters), they're stuck in CIHL (Cape Induce Hit Lag) and will just die off the top, without being able to do anything.

Cape is really good because it does more than just reverse projectiles. It completely reverses momentum, which easily messes up people's DI (cause I mean, who really knows how to handle something like that?).

Kazoo made the amazing point of the player behind Mario determines how good Mario is rather than the character itself and it's true.

Like Kanzaki said, Mario's a "perfect"... but small pentagon which allows you to play a lot differently than other people. I seriously doubt that there's a "textbook" Mario. Just doesn't seem feasible to me. The fact that we still get a fair amount of results without having a popular character at all (I'm ignoring people who just play him in low-tiers) I think is amazing. Though, a lot of people (at least in the Midwest) mess around with him on some level.

Yaaay said:

Can you tell me what higher tiers Mario beats?



Are you being serious with this?

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It seems you interpreted SKidd wrong. He was saying there are a bunch of (character A) 6 - 4 (Mario) matchups, which are very managable. And Inferno was either joking or he meant to say that Marth ***** Mario 7-3. Given that he was agreeing with Pierce, I'm going to go ahead and assume the latter.

I kinda laughed when everyone was knocking on Mario's recovery.

HeroMystic said:

I kinda laughed when everyone was knocking on Mario's recovery.

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Same here hero.....same here. *walks away*

I generally agree with what's been said.

Weird though, no one mentioned the biggest 'weakness' I find Mario to have: His super ****ty AD. Turn on your Wiis right now and do a FH AD. Now look at how long the animation lasts, and compare it to the invincibility. This makes being juggled really bad because your only options are to B-reverse a fireball or capestall (granted, they are good options), since airdodging will very often STILL get you punish, even if you time it right. Basically, Mario only has an AD close to the ground, although ADing into the ground is rather easy for good players to punish.


As for good points, a lot of moves combo into each other (jabs into grabs and Dsmash, Uair into more Uairs and Nairs, Dthrow into a whole lot of stuff, Fthrow to Fsmash or regrab on spacies at low %s, Dair into grabs on shields unless the opponent has strong OoS options, Dair into Uair, grounded last hit Dair into Fsmash), a good OoS game, especially behind him (Nair, Bair, Dair, Uair, Usmash, jab, UpB), a Dsmash as fast in the front as MKs, good gimping options (although other characters do it better).

Basically, a decent character, but not nearly as good as a majority of the cast. I see him at the top of low tier TBH. He's not super ****ty, but not really viable by himself due to bad high tier MUs, especially MK, and does well against a strange assortment of characters.

Juushichi said:

It seems you interpreted SKidd wrong. He was saying there are a bunch of (character A) 6 - 4 (Mario) matchups, which are very managable. And Inferno was either joking or he meant to say that Marth ***** Mario 7-3. Given that he was agreeing with Pierce, I'm going to go ahead and assume the latter.

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Mario doesn't even have that many 4:6 or worse MUs. Definitely under 10 (meaning 1/4 of the cast at most) and even some of those MUs are up for debate.

Also there was no typo when I said Mario beats Marth 7:3.

Mario does not have a horrible recovery. Mario's aerial acceleration is pretty good, his protection from above while recovering is good due to his very convenient uair and up b that has invincibility on start up, even though his protection from the front isn't good at close range while being edgeguarded, when the opponent is coming at you, Mario can shoot fireballs and FLUDD, which both work VERY well. To a lesser extent Mario can also cape the opponent coming at him with only a bit of prediction needed.

Distance wise his recovery doesn't go very far and it is too dependent on the edge, but Mario can grab it from far away and can grab on to it with his cape to latch on faster. Plus, Mario has a lot of options for getting opponents off the edge, which a lot of times ends in a stage spike by method of uair or up b. Mario can also stall with his cape, as has been said.

It is also possible to manipulate his up b to go more forward, go in the opposite direction or go almost completely vertical.

All in all, I'd say Mario's recovery is only decent at best, but it's not horrible. I don't believe a Mario who knows what he's doing will get gimped often.

mario beating marth? that's laughable, marth is a very hard matchup. Play better marths inferno.

I think Marth vs Mario is near even. Irios has beaten Mr.R his Marth, but when both know the MU well marth has a slight advantage.

Inferno3044 said:

Mario doesn't even have that many 4:6 or worse MUs. Definitely under 10 (meaning 1/4 of the cast at most) and even some of those MUs are up for debate.

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I agree with this.

Inferno3044 said:

Also there was no typo when I said Mario beats Marth 7:3.

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... Not so much. Am I missing something? / Apparently, I'm missing something. Especially if Irios is going even with Mr.R. Not going to lie, some of the Euro Mario's I've seen are pretty legit.

I didn't know BBR was redoing this...I figured this was a bumped thread...

Same-old same-old though, lol. Might as well have been a bumped thread.

So I'm gonna say right now that Pierce is probably the smartest person in this chat for realizing I was terribly trolling. He decided not to be Pierce and write some annoyingly long passage about why Marth beats Mario using either **** I already knew or is negligible and then reply with TL;DR. That or he didn't read it lol. Either way Pierce is a ****** for having a brain.

inb4infraction <3 Pierce

vato_break said:

mario beating marth? that's laughable, marth is a very hard matchup. Play better marths inferno.

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Vato's saying that Pierce and Minty are booty.

Not so much that I dislike him, but I barely use him.
I don't find anything special with his moves.
Being my Smash Sap as of right now, I think he will be there for quite a while.

I tried him 3 times on 9 and I won all three matches with my Jigglypuff. ( They were 5 stock, and I lost one life in one of them.)

Marth beats Mario. But if Marth doesn't know how to fight the Mario, it's fun :]


The way I see Mario, play him how you want. He's balanced enough to be played with any style, and still be played efficiently.

Matador said:

I didn't know BBR was redoing this...I figured this was a bumped thread...

Same-old same-old though, lol. Might as well have been a bumped thread.

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The original analysis was more... I dunno, "hopeful".

Regarding this however, I am quite surprised no one has mentioned Mario's double-edged strength and weakness, his ability to exploit. Mario takes advantage of any weakness any opponent has. However, if the opponent does well enough to cover the weakness, Mario has very little options in terms of aggressive actions.

Kanzaki said:

Marth beats Mario. But if Marth doesn't know how to fight the Mario, it's fun :]


The way I see Mario, play him how you want. He's balanced enough to be played with any style, and still be played efficiently.

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You use fair and dancing blade. That's basic Marth right there. I've lost to Marth players around or below my skill level due to how easy that MU is.