Official 4BR Tier List V4 - Competitive Insight & Analysis

[HoSmash4]

Why do people still consider Greninja to be difficult to use?

Misconceptions, the influence of vine combos etc.
Also his frame data is mainly a problem is only on his nair and fair and his standing grab - his grounded buttons Roll and general speed are top notch.

 

[Laken64]

she isn't all that common at lower levels either).

Corrin is very common in lower lvs, for the last couple of months on Das Koo-pa's chart her results rivaled top tiers for a while (under mewtwo I believe?)

 

[Jaguar360]

Greninja is considered difficult to use because of the comfort you need with his mobility, knowledge of kill setups/options, mediocre frame data, ability to easily rust, as well as a not super straightforward gameplan against the majority of the cast. There's also combo game in later stages I guess too. And his entire kit needs to be utilized to get the best out of him whereas certain other characters have a few standout moves that they can use to get by. I've seen ZeRo, ESAM, and Locus among others attempt to play Greninja without much experience and it's not really a good look. He can be awkward for some players to pick up without truly studying him and that can turn people off.

 

[KakuCP9]

Also, you're going to have shield a lot less since his options out of it are bad which can be another turn off since shield is a pretty big boon in this game.

 

[Y2Kay]

my schpiel on greninja's difficulty from the Gren FAQ, shameless plug here: https://smashboards.com/guides/freq...s-and-answers-from-new-greninja-players.1122/

"Simply put, yes.


First off, Greninja’s mobility is drastically different from a mass majority of the cast. Switching from someone like Pit to Greninja will feel like upgrading your mom’s minivan to a Ferrari. It will be challenging just to run and short hop right. Then you have to be able to space Neutral air and Forward Air accurately. This task can be arduous when you consider these aerials’ wacky frame data, their tight active frames, and Greninja’s unbridled speed. Then, you will also need to learn how to juggle right with Gren’s funky air physics, because juggling/edge-guarding is where a good chunk of his damage output originates. You will also have to get used to not having a shield. Technically Greninja has one, but if you rely on it like with other characters, you will be limiting yourself significantly. By far the hardest thing about Greninja is the matchups. Though Greninja has an excellent matchup spread, he has to change up his game plan a lot from character to character. Overcoming this will come from research and trial and error.


Oh yeah, and the footstool combos.


Frankly, footstool combos get over-hyped by people who don’t understand him. Landing Nair will rarely lead to zero-to-deaths. DI and tournament nerves can screw with your combos when the opportunity comes (which isn’t very often). I wouldn’t stress about these too much, but you should still plan to learn them."

 

[Eekum_bokum]

Greninja is extremely difficult to use and requires a very high skill ceiling. If you wanna see some good Greninja play see Salem running through the 12th tournament of Tipped Off where he rolled through Fatality & M2K with Greninja. Also watch Stroder 2-0 Nairo at West Side Saga this year.

Sometimes I'll play Greninjas and they'll seem tougher than they actually are. He's fairly rewarding however. He's not very popular in North America but apparently he's very popular in Japan. Definitely mid tier.

 

[ReVerbIsSuperb]

While he does have a decent learning curve if you want to just pick him up compared to a large amount of the cast, I can understand it to a certain extent being less of him being incredibly hard to use, but more so of him being hard to master. Although, I'd say both aspects come into play.

To play Greninja at a high level, a lot of his difficulty comes from things not immediately shown on the surface. Even now, I still see some Greninja players not pushing his mobility stats and attributes to their fullest potential. Without good control, you gonna put yourself in situations where you have to shield too much and that is the last thing Greninja wants to do, especially since he often can avoid it. His mobility and ability to shift his hurtbox can be used in various ways whether you crawling under projectiles, low profiling under moves with his low running animation, or using creative angles to pressure with hydro pump offensively or get out of disadvantage state.

You have to get used to his poor OOS and lack of applicable standing grab in most situations, you have to get used to his high startup aerials and moves that are active for a few frames that he can't just throw out and require precision, etc. Greninja's punish game is good, but it varies quite a bit on different weight classes which requires one to learn a lot of different %s and varifying setups just to keep up, even outside of footstool combos. A lot of Greninja's tools aren't quite so intuitive.

He can't execute the same gameplan vs the whole cast, it just won't work. All of his tools aren't oppressive enough to the point where he can just barrel through by executing the same strategy. Certain things like staying more grounded to where he can't get hit by certain rising aerials won't apply to another MU where he can get away with n-air being completely safe on shield vs a select few characters if done properly and allows him to pressure more.

Plenty of little things you need to learn about every MU to make it easier means you need to spend a lot of time playing him to understand just how his tools work. So many of his MUs across the cast end up being a lot harder than they should if you don't adapt accordingly to specific MU interactions. And any flubs in your gameplay gets you punished hard because of Greninja's fast-faller nature and not having any immediate "get off me" moves to help.

 

[|RK|]

Funny enough, Greninja's poor OOS has caused his players to abuse his mobility in ways the entire cast should replicate.

Very anecdotal evidence here, but I've found that when I don't shield against faster characters (and move instead), I deny them the opportunity to pin me down. I also end up guessing significantly less.

And so that makes me think - what if characters with good OOS options - like Sheik - used shield just as rarely as Venia? Would be absolutely terrifying, IMO.

 

[Deleted member]

I recall @Das Koopa saying this a while back:

Bizzaro Flame is coming to Smash 4 . He's said he wants to focus on Smash 4 temporarily. He'll be at Civil War.

He's a bit of a Melee legend (used to be ranked 90-100 in Melee before going on break) so watch out, I guess, especially if he's focusing on the character. If there's potential for Ganondorf, he'd certainly be somebody to really show it.

Is Bizarro Flame still doing Smash 4? It would be pretty cool to see Ganondorf rise in the tier list. He probably will not because his match up spread is literally garbage and probably the worst in the game. I mean the top four characters and Pikachu basically destroy Ganondorf especially if they are skilled. I am not sure if Bizarro Flame does Smash 4; if he did that would be great.

What about C-tier? I think Olimar () and Greninja () have a good chance of being B-tier characters. Olimar got nerfed from Brawl and is a very strange character to play, which is probably one of the reasons why he isn't used more. As for Greninja, I'm not really sure why he's not used more. Too technical with not enough reward to justify using him over a top tier or Pikachu?

I hear people saying Olimar is top sixteen or even fifteen. I am not sure though.Keep in mind that the voting process was finished before Greninja's explosive results ( you probably know that ). In the next tier list Greninja is almost guaranteed B tier next tier list, unless his results stop drastically ( which I highly doubt will happen; Greninja keeps on getting tons of good results ).

 

[FeelMeUp]

greninja isn't difficult to use at all
he's good as **** and should be piloted by more serious players with strong fundamentals so people could better understand how abusive some of his options can be

 

[Y2Kay]

greninja isn't difficult to use at all
he's good as **** and should be piloted by more serious players with strong fundamentals so people could better understand how abusive some of his options can be

You have me hella intrigued now. tell me more.

 

[TDK]

Lucas has always done relatively well in Japan at least, and Ness has a lot of really crappy Match ups such as Rosalina and Marcina while Lucas doesn't have any MUs that are "terrible", Lucas is a lot more solo mainable than Ness. I think Ness is in the right spot but Lucas could be a little higher

Last I checked, Lucas's matchups against Cloud, Corrin, Sheik, and maybe Rosa (Falln even thinks Rosa beats Lucas harder than Ness) are just as bad as, or worse, than Ness's matchups with them. People always say Lucas has a ton of potential, but he's done absolutely nothing major outside of one moment at Gren saga where Mekos got 17th with a win on Nairo (Which is really good) for the past year or so and even his regional results seem to have gone down. Taiheita basically vanishing doesn't help, either. I think the character's solidly overrated and whatever hidden ability he may have, I just don't see.

Ness, on the other hand, seems to have a stigma that he's declining or has a ton of unwinnable matchups, and while the second one is sorta true (Rosa is only a slight win for her, but the rest I mentioned above for Lucas suck), currently Ness actually has better results than Marcina, Ryu, Peach, and more in Das Koopa's database, and carries a respectable amount of solid placings at some of the bigger tournaments this year from FOW, NAKAT, and Gackt respectively. Ness gets a lot of crap for no reason, and a lot of the claims that he's on a full decline just don't make sense to me, even if I don't think he's high tier anymore. A character with those aerials and that grab game could never be low tier, bad recovery or not.

Also can we please stop comparing these two?

 

[Heracr055]

Funny enough, Greninja's poor OOS has caused his players to abuse his mobility in ways the entire cast should replicate.

Very anecdotal evidence here, but I've found that when I don't shield against faster characters (and move instead), I deny them the opportunity to pin me down. I also end up guessing significantly less.

And so that makes me think - what if characters with good OOS options - like Sheik - used shield just as rarely as Venia? Would be absolutely terrifying, IMO.

This is exactly what more Sonics should be doing IMO. Most Sonics I see try to play aggro with Spin Dash, etc. What they should do is take advantage of how free they are to avoid getting hit.

 

[MercuryPenny]

tbh ness and lucas are mid-tier. strictly in terms of theory i'd throw lucas above ness since he has superior spacing options, lower-commitment options and a reliable kill confirm but ness still has some residual representation from the early days where people thought he was top-tier which probably gives him the edge in practice

 

[Krysco]

How about instead of constantly comparing Ness and Lucas to each other, we compare them to characters that fill similar roles to them? Like, Lucas is very spacing and zoning oriented, right? Genuine question there since I'm not entirely sure. He has PK Fire, zair and a tether grab which allows him to engage his opponents from a further distance than Ness so that's where my assumption comes from. Where is Lucas in peoples eyes in relation to Megaman? Or Charizard? Or anyone with a long sword ? Or Mewtwo? Or even those who zone with mostly projectiles like ? There's 57 characters in the game not named Lucas, would be nice to see people mention what Lucas has to offer over the 56 of them not named Ness.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

tbh ness and lucas are mid-tier. strictly in terms of theory i'd throw lucas above ness since he has superior spacing options, lower-commitment options and a reliable kill confirm but ness still has some residual representation from the early days where people thought he was top-tier which probably gives him the edge in practice

Lucas has been out like 7 months fewer than Ness. Anyone still using Ness because he was thought to be top tier two years ago is long gone or plays other characters, there is nothing residual from two years ago and many patches later. While the character will likely never win a major alone he clearly is still a useable character that can take you far in tournament.

Like I don't know why people refuse to accept the idea that Ness might not be as bad as they though he was. I think his current spot on the tier list is a perfect spot for him though he can rise a little.

 

[Shaya]

I would say the primary difficulty, and the main reason I don't use/enjoy Greninja [much], is because I can't help but buffer Shadow Sneak out of tumble/whatever instead of Up-B, then I die.

Then I'm like "why game, why?"

May be a tap jump thing

Also close to the fairest comparison for Lucas to another S4 character is "passive" Zero Suit.
Passive Zero Suit has more holes than passive Lucas of course, and the risks Lucas will take with grabs are excessively dangerous in comparison, but yeah.

 

[FeelMeUp]

I would say the primary difficulty, and the main reason I don't use/enjoy Greninja [much], is because I can't help but buffer Shadow Sneak out of tumble/whatever instead of Up-B, then I die.

Then I'm like "why game, why?"

May be a tap jump thing

Also close to the fairest comparison for Lucas to another S4 character is "passive" Zero Suit.
Passive Zero Suit has more holes than passive Lucas of course, and the risks Lucas will take with grabs are excessively dangerous in comparison, but yeah.

Edit: Almost exactly 1 year since this video was posted, too, wow.

 

[theMichael]

I would say the primary difficulty, and the main reason I don't use/enjoy Greninja [much], is because I can't help but buffer Shadow Sneak out of tumble/whatever instead of Up-B, then I die.

Then I'm like "why game, why?"

May be a tap jump thing

Also close to the fairest comparison for Lucas to another S4 character is "passive" Zero Suit.
Passive Zero Suit has more holes than passive Lucas of course, and the risks Lucas will take with grabs are excessively dangerous in comparison, but yeah.

This is why - it's a programming error:
https://youtu.be/_04K6WaKhqw

 

[Deleted member]

I am just glad people in this thread no longer complain about Cloud saying "He is overrated, he is not top two!". I am fine with Cloud being in the 2 - 5 range. In @Das Koopa 's character score Cloud had the second best score. Sure his recovery is exploitable ( which is a flaw ), but he has other dangerous tools and his match ups are top three when it comes to characters. Also MKLeo, Tweek and Komorikiri have made lots of waves with Cloud. Cloud will always be one step behind Bayonetta though. I think it is a fact that Bayonetta is the best character in the game. I also think Falco is underrated, he actually has a solid air game.

 

[Lukingordex]

Last I checked, Lucas's matchups against Cloud, Corrin, Sheik, and maybe Rosa (Falln even thinks Rosa beats Lucas harder than Ness) are just as bad as, or worse, than Ness's matchups with them. People always say Lucas has a ton of potential, but he's done absolutely nothing major outside of one moment at Gren saga where Mekos got 17th with a win on Nairo (Which is really good) for the past year or so and even his regional results seem to have gone down. Taiheita basically vanishing doesn't help, either. I think the character's solidly overrated and whatever hidden ability he may have, I just don't see.

Ness, on the other hand, seems to have a stigma that he's declining or has a ton of unwinnable matchups, and while the second one is sorta true (Rosa is only a slight win for her, but the rest I mentioned above for Lucas suck), currently Ness actually has better results than Marcina, Ryu, Peach, and more in Das Koopa's database, and carries a respectable amount of solid placings at some of the bigger tournaments this year from FOW, NAKAT, and Gackt respectively. Ness gets a lot of crap for no reason, and a lot of the claims that he's on a full decline just don't make sense to me, even if I don't think he's high tier anymore. A character with those aerials and that grab game could never be low tier, bad recovery or not.

Also can we please stop comparing these two?

To be honest, i believe ness success in US has to do with the fact that people from there usually have a more aggressive gameplay, and that makes ness' biggest weakness (slow + low horizontal range) a lot less present. Ness usually struggles when people notice that his neutral is really lacking and you can play the patience game against him quite nicely, specially if your character is long ranged. Ness options are very good when people are close to him, but he struggles if you keep your mid-range distance.

This does not mean that it's a bad thing for a scene to be generally aggresive, but it definitely helps Ness because that's what he wants.

 

[|RK|]

Honestly, I can see Falln's opinion on Lucas/Ness vs Rosa. Everyone always summarizes the MU to offstage, but consider literally everything else.

Lucas wants to zone his opponent out, bait an aggressive option and punish. He sucks at approaching in any capacity, and if you have a lead, he's at a severe disadvantage.

So Rosa, who can actively ignore his zoning entirely, doesn't care that he gets extra chances when knocked offstage. He needs them.

Comparatively, Ness has a neutral that is significantly less reliant on projectiles. And that gives him a bigger advantage by itself.

 

[TimG57867]

To be honest, i believe ness success in US has to do with the fact that people from there usually have a more aggressive gameplay, and that makes ness' biggest weakness (slow + low horizontal range) a lot less present. Ness usually struggles when people notice that his neutral is really lacking and you can play the patience game against him quite nicely, specially if your character is long ranged. Ness options are very good when people are close to him, but he struggles if you keep your mid-range distance.

This does not mean that it's a bad thing for a scene to be generally aggresive, but it definitely helps Ness because that's what he wants.

Good points. Inversely, this can also explain why zoning characters have generally done better in Japan than the West. Aggressive, in-your-face rushdown, which many zoning characters including hate, is far more popular in the U.S than Japan. This is reflected in things like being a much more popular pick in the U.S than Japan.

 

[NairWizard]

Greninja isn't difficult to use at all. The problem is that most Greninja players including players who just try him out for a few games (like the aforementioned top players like ESAM and ZeRo) try to space f-airs and n-airs with him, or shield too much when his OoS options make shield a poor choice. This creates a false sense of difficulty because spacing aerials with his mobility stats is actually pretty hard and requires tight precision, but the reward for doing it isn't very high. We've seen years and years of Greninjas trying this style of Greninja and even the better players didn't have that much success with it (Greninja's results were good, but no one was ever truly impressed).

The best sets we have all year for Greninja are those in which the Greninja player played more cautiously and just used a lot of rolls and basic attacks. And the top example of this is Salem. Salem plays the character simply and also best. Dash, dash attack, roll, jab, shuriken, d-tilt at kill percent. That's about it, other options are situational.

What Salem does with Greninja isn't very difficult (doing it at such a high level is, though). He makes Greninja look even easier to play than Mario, and he takes out very good players with this simple, effective playstyle. And Salem is a player who isn't against learning complicated or 1-frame-tight maneuvers; he played ZSS in Brawl and had one of the flashiest playstyles ever seen in the game. But in Greninja's case he just totally put years of involved tricks to focus on a crude but powerful grounded style.

What this means is that you don't need all that intricate spacing and all that mobility to make Greninja work. f-air and n-air are fine moves but shouldn't be bread-and-butters.

Greninja has a handful of top-tier options--shuriken being the best of them--and that's enough to make him very strong. Don't shield with a character with bad OoS options, don't jump with a character with bad rising aerials. Instead, abuse the broken grounded options and roll and dash at key moments.

We just all have those footstool combo videos from years ago ingrained in our heads, along with our own experiences trying to space his f-air, which makes us think of him as difficult to use. But it's time to put that bias aside; we have evidence of a simple-to-play Greninja style being very effective, and mounting evidence of the strength of his simpler options through non-Salem players.

The character is easy to use, and very strong.

 

[Nobie]

I think the most significant slides down the tier list generally come from gimmick characters whose player bases aren't successfully labbing enough to keep up in the information war.

I'm defining "gimmick character" as someone who relies on weird and deceptive tricks to win consistently. All characters can play mindgames or do a one-off strategy that shouldn't normally work, but gimmick characters rely heavily on these and need to have a huge continuous bag of evolving tricks so that even if the opponent knows how to defeat everything the opponent does, they can at least keep the opponent guessing as to what's coming next. This is also a distinct idea from honest/dishonest, as that has more to do with risk/reward ratios.

If I were to be a bit broad, I'd define gimmick characters as the following:
and maybe a few more?

Many of them have trapping shenanigans or odd properties, such as Palutena's invincible bair and dash attack, mitigated by some sort of glaring flaws, often frame data. In general, they tend to fall in the mid to low tiers because fundamentals benefit them less. The ones who have done the best at keeping their character afloat is the Duck Hunt crew. Pac-Man's been viewed as a relatively weak character, but his player base also constantly tries to innovate. Bowser Jr.'s players, whether by fault of the character or the players, don't seem to be pushing as far.

While all the gimmicks in the world might not make a character high tier, the refining and development of new ones at least gives them room to grow and to keep up, as opposed to fall into complete obscurity.

 

[The-Technique]

I think the most significant slides down the tier list generally come from gimmick characters whose player bases aren't successfully labbing enough to keep up in the information war.

I'm defining "gimmick character" as someone who relies on weird and deceptive tricks to win consistently. All characters can play mindgames or do a one-off strategy that shouldn't normally work, but gimmick characters rely heavily on these and need to have a huge continuous bag of evolving tricks so that even if the opponent knows how to defeat everything the opponent does, they can at least keep the opponent guessing as to what's coming next. This is also a distinct idea from honest/dishonest, as that has more to do with risk/reward ratios.

If I were to be a bit broad, I'd define gimmick characters as the following:
and maybe a few more?

Many of them have trapping shenanigans or odd properties, such as Palutena's invincible bair and dash attack, mitigated by some sort of glaring flaws, often frame data. In general, they tend to fall in the mid to low tiers because fundamentals benefit them less. The ones who have done the best at keeping their character afloat is the Duck Hunt crew. Pac-Man's been viewed as a relatively weak character, but his player base also constantly tries to innovate. Bowser Jr.'s players, whether by fault of the character or the players, don't seem to be pushing as far.

While all the gimmicks in the world might not make a character high tier, the refining and development of new ones at least gives them room to grow and to keep up, as opposed to fall into complete obscurity.

i wouldn't put Palutena as a gimmick character, at least without customs. without customs her gameplay requires nothing but fundamentals, you jab you shorthop aerial you grab you tomahawk boom you can play palutena. the only "advanced" thing she has is teleport canceling, and i guess footstool neutral B kill setups that you'll probably only pull off in youtube montages.

i also wanna point out that i dont think shes low tier, no higher than mid tier though.

 

[Lavani]

Ness offstage is only manhandled by Rosa if he's forced to upB predictably. Thanks to his double jump movement, aerial weaving, and airdodge/aerials, he usually has enough ways to mix things up and make it back to solid ground. Even if he can't stay on the stage, airdodging into the ground to eat a hit and try again is better than getting jabbed or faired just before reaching the ledge and dying at 20%. Although GP gimps are mostly free, Rosa does need to be in position in advance; the suction range for projectiles is smaller than items, and the results for mistiming can be disastrous.

Onstage, Ness's tools are serviceable. Dash attack is quick to start and massively disjointed, with all three hits popping Luma in the air and being more than capable of smacking Rosa as well. His aerials contest Luma well, particularly nair clanking everything and fair's lingering transcendent disjoint stuffing it outright. Dsmash is potent; it's great at intercepting Rosa's recovery, and if it fails to do that, extending the hitboxes by hitting Luma on her ledge option potentially beats everything except maybe roll. It also sends even a fresh Luma flying. There's some other interesting nuances to their interactions, such as PK Fire detonating on Luma even if Rosa is shielding.

Lucas doesn't really have anything all that threatening by comparison. Zair and PK Fire are annoying, but not hugely rewarding and certainly nothing Rosa can't handle. He otherwise isn't all that great at breaking past or dealing with Luma; Rosa's excellent drift can get her out of footstool combos; and his recovery is still rather abusable - Gravity gimps are rare, but his PKT2 is far easier to contest, losing to things like Luma jab. Neither of upB or tether can actually get Lucas to the ledge past a spinning Luma.

Long-winded way of saying "Yeah I could see Lucas doing worse than Ness in the MU".

 

[Lord Dio]

Esam has started in his end of the year tier list.
Right out the gate we have him thinking Charizard is the 10th worst character in the game.
Just gonna leave that there

 

[Aaron1997]

Lord Dio And yet Zelda is not Bottom 10. The regional bias is real here. If Sharpy was in SFL he would think Zard is top 30.

 

[Minordeth]

Just in case people forgot, Greninja’s uncharged Shuriken has 60 base knockback and 100 for growth. It’s a better, longer ranger, faster traveling, chargeable, albeit slightly less damaging version of Luigi’s fireball. You can almost play Greninja like a Shoto character.

As for his aerials, watch Venia at any Xeno tourney this year. He uses Fair in conjunction with jab to play a super strong conditioning game. Autocanceled Fair is strong bait and also sets up for some easy but effective frame traps.

Greninja is really the only character on the tier list that I’m like, “why is he here?”

 

[SJMistery]

Just in case people forgot, Greninja’s uncharged Shuriken has 60 base knockback and 100 for growth. It’s a better, longer ranger, faster traveling, chargeable, albeit slightly less damaging version of Luigi’s fireball. You can almost play Greninja like a Shoto character.

As for his aerials, watch Venia at any Xeno tourney this year. He uses Fair in conjunction with jab to play a super strong conditioning game. Autocanceled Fair is strong bait and also sets up for some easy but effective frame traps.

Greninja is really the only character on the tier list that I’m like, “why is he here?”

1) Shuriken is his best move, and one of the best projectiles in the game, second only to stuff like Needles. If Greninja could store the charge of that thing it would be unquestionably the most broken projectile in the game as in adittion to being a fantastic camping and spacing tool and a dangerous ledge trap, it would be a devastating combo finisher
2) The true problem with Fair is the same problem with about half of Greninja's "bad" moves: The hitbox, or better said, the lack of hitbox. The blindspot on Greninja's arms means you can easily miss skinny targets when trying to land with Fair. It's also the reason Up Smash is the recommended roll punish, DSmash and FSmash fail to cover the most important spot to cover: Greninja's body.
3) He where is there because iStudying, Some & co got all squeezed on the same tournament bracket and eliminated each other on Greninja Saga.


Skeeter Mania soniczx123 Forgot to respond your message about Spin Dash. I must clarify, it IS a super safe approach... against Greninja, who has no lingering disjoints and has poor OOS options, and in short has no real way to contest Spin Dash abuse. Same applies for ZSS Down B and the rest of the mentioned moves.

 

[TimG57867]

Esam has started in his end of the year tier list.
Right out the gate we have him thinking Charizard is the 10th worst character in the game.
Just gonna leave that there

Lord Dio And yet Zelda is not Bottom 10. The regional bias is real here. If Sharpy was in SFL he would think Zard is top 30.

Yeah. Not to mention he's gotten to play some of the better Zeldas:

This is just another factor that makes properly mapping the bottom 20 characters so hard. Players, even many top players, tend to wildly varying opinions on bottom and low tiers depending on whether or not they've had first hand experience with mains of said characters that actually know what they're doing. And personal experience with a good main (who you often won't know the matchup very well against) can lead to one thinking the character has more potential than they actually have. It's easy to picture as being one of those characters. She has a lot of jank that can jack you up if you don't understand her kit such as he her jab and D-Tilt zoning, the early invincibility frames on Nayru's Love, and her Up B cheese amongst other things. A bad experience against this can make her seem far more threatening than she actually is. Play against her for a while and you realize just how bad her neutral actually is with her being easily camped, spaced out, and zoned. Plus Nayru's Love and Farore's Wind can be telegraphed with the former not even reflecting projectiles for the full duration and latter being highly unsafe on shield and often not being consistent in placing Zelda where you expect her to be. 's not the greatest character, but his kit is clearly more consistent and less gimmickyt than Zelda's. Funny enough, ESAM said that Charizard has a decent matchup in his segment on him.

 

[Y2Kay]

If you guys are arguing that Greninja's play-style / game-plan are inherently effective before we even consider all the technical stuff like movement, then yeah I'd agree with you actually.

I still feel that technical stuff (not necessarily footstool combos) will be needed for more difficult top tier MU's.

Just in case people forgot, Greninja’s uncharged Shuriken has 60 base knockback and 100 for growth. It’s a better, longer ranger, faster traveling, chargeable, albeit slightly less damaging version of Luigi’s fireball. You can almost play Greninja like a Shoto character.

As for his aerials, watch Venia at any Xeno tourney this year. He uses Fair in conjunction with jab to play a super strong conditioning game. Autocanceled Fair is strong bait and also sets up for some easy but effective frame traps.

Greninja is really the only character on the tier list that I’m like, “why is he here?”

Yeah, Greninja's Forward Air has massive auto cancel windows before and after the hitbox, autocancel Jab shenanigans are really good.

 

[Rizen]

Lord Dio And yet Zelda is not Bottom 10. The regional bias is real here. If Sharpy was in SFL he would think Zard is top 30.

I surmise Zelda's tools work better against Pikachu than a lot of other high/top tiers. Pika's not as much of a close range monster as characters like Fox yet doesn't have the disjoint to wall her like Marth. Zelda's phantom is actually a decent anti-projectile tool and Nayru's is a good move that acts like a gtfo weak counter with early intangibility and reflector.

Like TimG57867 said Zelda also benefits heavily from MU inexperience and has some potent stuff if you let her get going.

This is a good example of why results are important. We have years of data now, "hidden underrated characters" have had plenty of time to get represented and really should have some results to back them. Zelda mains like Ven have done good work but overall Zelda falls comfortably in bottom tier.

 

[Skeeter Mania]

This is a good example of why results are important. We have years of data now, "hidden underrated characters" have had plenty of time to get represented and really should have some results to back them. Zelda mains like Ven have done good work but overall Zelda falls comfortably in bottom tier.

Gee, like I haven't heard that before...

 

[MarioManTAW]

This is a good example of why results are important. We have years of data now, "hidden underrated characters" have had plenty of time to get represented and really should have some results to back them. Zelda mains like Ven have done good work but overall Zelda falls comfortably in bottom tier.

Not sure I completely agree with this. You say they have plenty of time to get represented, but time doesn't represent characters, people do. Very few people main Zelda, and time is irrelevant. As for having results, I think that if Nairo started using Zelda again or if Fairess came to the US, Zelda could very well rise on the tier list. IMO Fairess could very well be the best Zelda player. Despite not having results at major tournaments due to living in the Middle East and not being able to travel, he consistently does well in his region and impresses any top players who play him (ESAM above and Mr. R https://twitter.com/mr_rsmash/status/726483293244383232?lang=en). Honestly, reminds me quite a bit about John Numbers...

 

[soniczx123]

Skeeter Mania soniczx123 Forgot to respond your message about Spin Dash. I must clarify, it IS a super safe approach... against Greninja, who has no lingering disjoints and has poor OOS options, and in short has no real way to contest Spin Dash abuse. Same applies for ZSS Down B and the rest of the mentioned moves.

Shuriken beats bad Spin Dash approaches for free after the i-frames (they either trade and halts Sonic's forward momentum or just hits him and deals damage along with giving Greninja stage positioning) It's one of his best tools in the MU as it keeps Sonic at bay within the midrange and forces him to shield or jump, where Greninja excels in this regard. One bad thing is that they become unsafe inside the midrange area, but outside of that it's something you should abuse more if you want to better in the MU imo.

 

[Rizen]

Not sure I completely agree with this. You say they have plenty of time to get represented, but time doesn't represent characters, people do. Very few people main Zelda, and time is irrelevant. As for having results, I think that if Nairo started using Zelda again or if Fairess came to the US, Zelda could very well rise on the tier list. IMO Fairess could very well be the best Zelda player. Despite not having results at major tournaments due to living in the Middle East and not being able to travel, he consistently does well in his region and impresses any top players who play him (ESAM above and Mr. R https://twitter.com/mr_rsmash/status/726483293244383232?lang=en). Honestly, reminds me quite a bit about John Numbers...

Lack of representation usually directly relates to how good or bad a character is. If a character is good more people will pick them up. The cream rises to the top. Even after huge nerfs characters like Diddy and Bayo were found to be good and regained representation. There has been plenty of time for the meta to evolve, people to experiment and characters to be sorted. For the most part the worse a character is, the less results they'll see with a few exceptions like Dark Pit being widely regarded as a worse version of Pit.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Lack of representation usually directly relates to how good or bad a character is. If a character is good more people will pick them up. The cream rises to the top. Even after huge nerfs characters like Diddy and Bayo were found to be good and regained representation. There has been plenty of time for the meta to evolve, people to experiment and characters to be sorted. For the most part the worse a character is, the less results they'll see with a few exceptions like Dark Pit being widely regarded as a worse version of Pit.

This would be true, in a lab.

The problem is influence; too many people listen to what others have to say about different characters, instead of deciding themselves.

Everyone throws out a tier list from time to time.

Literally, there’s questions all on this website of people asking about how good is X character, is X character unviable, etc...

Top players, the ones people trust, can say the wildest stuff (the only solo-main viable character is bayo, period), and the people will believe them.

While the internet and social media gave us huge access to information and tech sharing that spreads like wildfire, it also makes opinions do the same, and there goes the necessity of figuring it out yourself

 

[Rizen]

This would be true, in a lab.

The problem is influence; too many people listen to what others have to say about different characters, instead of deciding themselves.

Everyone throws out a tier list from time to time.

Literally, there’s questions all on this website of people asking about how good is X character, is X character unviable, etc...

Top players, the ones people trust, can say the wildest stuff (the only solo-main viable character is bayo, period), and the people will believe them.

While the internet and social media gave us huge access to information and tech sharing that spreads like wildfire, it also makes opinions do the same, and there goes the necessity of figuring it out yourself

This is exactly why long term results are so important. Everything you just said backs up my point.