BBR Weekly Character Discussion #5: Snake

[MetalMusicMan]

Long story short, Snake has virtually no learning curve until the upper levels of play, and then it is a phenomenally steep learning curve.

I agree with this.

 

[AllyKnight]

Snake is #2.

MK filters out Snake's worst match-ups. No point talking about characters that can beat Snake if they get demolished by someone else who's not Snake i.e. MK, Falco, Diddy, IC's.

MK vs MU who Snake loses or possibly goes even? Not good.

Performance-wise: Snake does the best behind MK. CO18 already listed most of the notable ones. It's obvious that Diddy's don't do as well as Snake's and Falco has only has one or two real representatives that are getting the job done in their region.

not like there's more falcos that do the job better than Snake. There is no WC Snakes (if there is, they don't place well), South has Razer who loses to LUCARIO/MK (Lee Martin), DIDDY (GNES). EC has.... Fatal and Bizkit who barely places in a regional. They only CAN GET 1-2-3 inconsistantly and loses to a PIT (koolaid), D3 (Ling Ling) or the usual MK.

Not sure about Florida, they seem to only have HRnut at the momentwho doesn't go to much tourney and with Red Halberd's Snake maining rage quitting.

Character-wise: Snake is solid. There isn't a character he can't hold his own against. Even in his worst match-up (which I think is DDD) grenades completely interfere with DDD's chaingrab attempts. I like him a little over Diddy and Falco on paper, but not by much.

Grenades are easily countered/ can be walked by while CG.

If need be dude can reset some (not all) situations with up+b to land on platforms on other parts of the stage.

What? English dictionary please.

I wonder this though, how many of you have even played with Snake at high level? Snake is not easy to main, being laggy, always doing risky stuff and hard time landing makes him one of the hardest character to main ( I think diddy is 1st though)

 

[EdreesesPieces]

Character-wise: Snake is solid.

Of course Snake is solid. He's solid snake. Please don't waste precious post length saying repetitive things, this will not be tolerated.

 

[AllyKnight]

Of course Snake is solid. He's solid snake. Please don't waste precious post length saying repetitive things, this will not be tolerated.

rofl edreese made me laugh

 

[Praxis]

LOL Edrees.

I have to agree with Ally. I can only name a couple Snakes that I would actually make note of if they lost to someone- basically Ally and Razer, and maybe Fatal.

Meanwhile, I can name about a dozen MK players I would say the same thing about- M2K, Tyrant, DSF, Havok, Seibrik, K-sizzle, Shadow, Anti, Dojo, Lee Martin (I've heard scary things about his MK :o )...just on the spot off the top of my head.

 

[Crow!]

Do you have the data that shows how Snake does without Ally vs MK without M2K, falco without Dehf, etc? When you said "even ignoring Ally.." you made it sound like you do have access to the data, so i'd love to see it.

You quoted a chart which displays precisely that information. Unsurprisingly, M2K, Ally, ADHD, and DEHF are all #1 with their respective characters. Each data point in that chart is some player playing as the character in question. Simply ignore the leftmost data point for, say, Snake, and you see the Ally-free Snake world.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

What does the Y axis value represent?

The reason I ask is because:

-With all the top players:
X the difference between Snake and MK is 100-780 = 220.
X the difference between Snake and Diddy is 780-510 = 270.
X the difference between Snake and Falco is 780 - 310 = 470.

To summarize the data above, with all the top players in there, Snake is considerably below MK. He is considerably above Diddy, and WAY above Falco and miles ahead of IC.

However, without them;
X the difference between Snake and MK is 400-180 = 220 .
X the difference between Snake and Diddy is 180-150 = 30.
X the difference between Snake and Falco/IC/Marth is 180 - 40 = 140.

Basically, the data proves that, with all the top players of each character, the gap between Snake and MK is just as big as the gap between Snake and diddy. It also says Snake is wayyyyy above Falco, IC, and Marth.

HOWEVER, once you remove the top players of each character, Metaknight is STILL way above Snake, but NOW, Snake is NOT very far ahead of Falco, not very far ahead of IC, and not very far ahead of Marth.

This numerically proves that Ally gives much more of a significant boost to the ranking of Snake than any of the other top character mains do to their respective characters.

It also shows that Snake is still the #2 best, but it shows that the gap between Snake and the next 3-4 characters below him ALL get MASSIVELY smaller once Ally/M2K/etc is removed from the picture.

 

[Crow!]

Same as usual for my charts. Sorry, I just assumed everyone was used to them by now >.<

The charts take Ankoku's data and divide up the tournament results into the players who scored the points for each character. The Y axis represents how many points the person has scored for the character using Ankoku's usual scoring method, and the X axis simply ranks the people within each character.

Ankoku's scoring gives 10 points for first, 7 for second, 4 for third and fourth, 1 for up to eighth, then multiplies by either (total prize payout, i.e. for MLG) or (total entrants times entry fee, excluding venue), then divides by 160 (so that getting eighth in a 16 person tourney with $10 entry is worth 1 point.)

 

[EdreesesPieces]

I should be used to them, it's my fault. I didn't pay close attention before, though I did look at the trends in the charts, I didn't pay attention to the numbers or the data itself like I am now. Thanks for the clarification!

 

[Marc]

I would say that we should find a balance of how effective a character is in tournament, and vs. the rest of the cast. Neither MUs, nor tourney results, nor MU vs. MK should be an exclusive factor.

This. The SBR tradition of creating tier lists has always been about finding a healthy balance between theory and practice. You are expected to use whatever information is out there to base your judgement on.

 

[The Real Inferno]

Snake is absolutely ridiculous. Just looking at his tools, there's pretty much no way you can claim him to not be top 3. No amount of playing good makes his advantages go away. No one punishes as hard as he does, or can afford to be punished as much as he can, thanks to living to such high percents. Only Wario comes close to that kind of damage output coupled with survivability. Despite Ally's claims, Snake does very very well without him in comparison to other characters and until that changes, all justifications that Snake is anything less than second best is player bias.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

Yeah, because using data to form my arguement is player bias, where your paragraph explanation is perfect fact. Right. It's one thing to have a stance, its another thing to brush off people who disagree with you as "bias" we are all biased, get over it.

 

[The Real Inferno]

Considering I was referencing the same data as you, Crow!'s, and it comes to the same conclusion (that he's second best) I have no idea why you're flipping out other than to just flip out.

 

[AllyKnight]

Snake is absolutely ridiculous. Just looking at his tools, there's pretty much no way you can claim him to not be top 3. No amount of playing good makes his advantages go away. No one punishes as hard as he does, or can afford to be punished as much as he can, thanks to living to such high percents. Only Wario comes close to that kind of damage output coupled with survivability. Despite Ally's claims, Snake does very very well without him in comparison to other characters and until that changes, all justifications that Snake is anything less than second best is player bias.

Lmao all his moves are easily punished, most players are still too dumb/don't know what to do against Snake. How about anything you say is SCRUB bias. LMAO.

 

[Darkmusician]

-Strengths
Hits hard and can kill early, controls the on-stage with his explosives, great ability to rack up damage and create momentum, up and forward tilts are fast and disjointed, strong survival ability with his weight/falling speed/nades and c4 jump, has a down throw with tech chase options

-Weaknesses
In the air and coming down his options are not as amazing, cypher can be grabbed for early gimps if the snake isn't paying attention, some characters can chain grab him due to his heavy weight, overall slow in speed, prone to offstage/edge guard pressure

-Matchups
Can hang with any character in the cast. No real insta-lose match ups.

-Tournament performance
Snakes are everywhere in both low level and top level play. At low level play people get instant gratification and at top level play in the right hands Snake is very deadly.

-Current tier list placement and potential for the future
His spot at 2nd is fine. It's well deserved. In the future he may drop one but not much lower. I don't think he has a chance of over taking MK as number 1.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

Considering I was referencing the same data as you, Crow!'s, and it comes to the same conclusion (that he's second best) I have no idea why you're flipping out other than to just flip out.

Crow's data shows Snake as 2nd best tournament results wise, but I make the arguement that without Ally and all the best of each character, he has only a VERY slim lead on Diddy and Falco. And considering the tier list isn't based on tournament results alone, I'm saying we can still argue him as 3rd or 4th best - since his tournament results outside of Ally aren't that much better than Diddy/Falco/Marth. Even if you disagree with me you have to admit my arguement is at least reasonable, but the way you wrote your post made it seem like I didn't put together an arguement, and I'm just "biased" as if everyone else here isn't.

Everyone here is biased, Crow and Ankoku are slightly less biased than the rest of us, but we all are, and there is nothing wrong with being biased as long as we accept that everyone here is biased. It doesn't matter how biased someone is, all that matters is if they are able to disregard the bias when they post. I've done that - I've lost to Snake a lot - and I even said I can't play the matchup right, If I let my bias get to me , I would have said Snake is definitely the 2nd best.

 

[The Real Inferno]

Crow's data shows Snake as 2nd best tournament results wise, but I make the arguement that without Ally and all the best of each character, he has only a VERY slim lead on Diddy and Falco. And considering the tier list isn't based on tournament results alone, I'm saying we can still argue him as 3rd or 4th best - since his tournament results outside of Ally aren't that much better than Diddy/Falco/Marth. Even if you disagree with me you have to admit my arguement is at least reasonable, but the way you wrote your post made it seem like I didn't put together an arguement, and I'm just "biased" as if everyone else here isn't.

Everyone here is biased, Crow and Ankoku are slightly less biased than the rest of us, but we all are, and there is nothing wrong with being biased as long as we accept that everyone here is biased. It doesn't matter how biased someone is, all that matters is if they are able to disregard the bias when they post. I've done that - I've lost to Snake a lot - and I even said I can't play the matchup right, If I let my bias get to me , I would have said Snake is definitely the 2nd best.

I suppose I misinterpreted your post then, my apologies. I wasn't meaning to imply I don't have bias, but I was meaning to imply we lack the proper evidence to justify Snake as lower than he is right now, because even though he doesn't place THAT much better than everyone else, it's still better. Until either they catch up or something changes, I remain comfortable in keeping him as second.

 

[Pierce7d]

I don't really analyze Snake with bias (and I play most of the characters in the game, including Snake)

I honestly think everything Ally is saying is true. Dash Attack and Dacus are a saving grace, because they give Snake a boost tool, which is amazing in this game. Ftilt is only a real poke against characters or players that suck, and would be nothing without the thread of Dash Attack to back it. Otherwise, it's just amazing because it's a punish. Dacus helps him with the follow-ups and edgeguards after landing an attack as well. His juggle game is mediocre. Grenades are good, but overrated as hell, etc.

What frame does a grenade explode on anyway? 180? 240? (I'm ashamed to not know; it's one of the few things that I just go off a feeling for). It's more than enough to do several attacks and then shield though. If grenades are really stopping you, then get your spacing checked. Also, Snake cannot cook a grenade while being pressured. All the good characters have answers to grenade (and most of the bad characters too, lol)

 

[MetalMusicMan]

You quoted a chart which displays precisely that information. Unsurprisingly, M2K, Ally, ADHD, and DEHF are all #1 with their respective characters. Each data point in that chart is some player playing as the character in question. Simply ignore the leftmost data point for, say, Snake, and you see the Ally-free Snake world.

Maybe you should label the graphs with "ally, m2k, adhd, dehf" so you don't have to explain that in the future?

 

[**Havok**]

I've been playing with Snake and putting effort into understanding him and to be honest, he is **** hard to play with.

His margin of error is extremely small in particular situations and the player has to take in a specific frame of mind to overcome Snake's disadvantages (Falco's CG, MK/Marth at low percent's etc etc)

Placing the character in relative terms to everyone, excluding MK, I do think Snake is 2nd. His damage output and psychological advantage ( "he doesn't die till later") places him above characters like Marth/Falco/D3. If Snake is obvious when he wants to Uptilt for the kill, a falco/D3 are far worse at being predictable (marth not so much but close), yet we all do get hit by those upsmashes and uptilts. Why? Because of the human element, we all make mistakes, some people less than others.

To be fair, the majority of what top players and the backroom discuss does not apply to the rest of the community. They simply do not perceive things as players like Jason and Elliot do, they sit on the limiting beliefs of their style of play.

 

[AllyKnight]

I have hard time landing up tilts on Jason lately >.>

 

[**Havok**]

Oh that's because he's a robot. I thought we all agreed to this already.

 

[∫unk]

It's hard to judge mlg results in terms of character success as falco gets a significant boost from laggy tvs with his 2-frame vulnerability window on his spotdodge. Same with pikachu. At MLG Columbus I saw many times among top players where the falco would spotdodge predictability, the opponent would mistime punishment, and the falco gets a u-smash, grab, etc.

It's also hard to tell as mks are much more used to fighting snake than falco. Matchup knowledge with mk goes a long way ex. diddy (with the trend being mk wins when they figure out what to do).

I believe Snake Falco Diddy are extremely close in postion. When considering matchups vs mk and each other, I believe Falco has the best tools, but Falco also has a high tier hard counter. If I had to put a number I would leave Snake at 2. He is still the second most successful character... you can say at nationals he does bad but the only character that consistently does well is mk.

 

[swordgard]

Oh that's because he's a robot. I thought we all agreed to this already.

I am pretty sure thats not all whats involved here.


MK has the tools to not get uptilted, so do many other chars.

 

[DMG]

MK has the tools to not get hit ever. We just don't want him using them.

 

[GimR]

LOL boss 3 stocked candys snake 2 weekends ago with wario

I think snake is 2nd to 4th best.

He has some problems. For example:

When he pulls a grenade he's in a bad position, he can only:

Spot dodge or roll
Throw the grenade
Shield(drop the grenade)
Grab


What does this mean? That you can get in on him when he pulls a grenade.

So here's a simple yet effective strategy for beating a campy snake:

Insta-throw his grenades back at him. This will force him to hold onto his grenades and time them to blow up right when they get to you so you can't insta-throw them back.

When he starts doing that run in on him when his nade is about to blow but stay out of his f-tilt range. Now you have lots of options and he doesn't.

 

[Coffee™]

There isn't really much to say that hasn't been brought up already but I can definitely agree with Ally and state that Snake is generally more exploitable than most people seem to think. I can see Snake dropping either to 3rd or 4th place with Diddy and possibly Falco passing him.

Not sure about Florida, they seem to only have HRnut at the momentwho doesn't go to much tourney and with Red Halberd's Snake maining rage quitting.

I don't know much about RedHalberd's Snake but it's true HRNUT hasn't been going to much tournaments lately. However, Afro Thundah started playing again recently and has been placing 4th-9th in pretty much all of the tournaments he's been in so far. We also have MVD who has been placing similarly.

 

[OverLade]

Wow I can't believe I missed this thread...time to get crackin.

Snake is horribly overrated. In about October I devoted all of my brawl practice to learning Snake and taking the character as far as possible. I still used mostly MK in most tournaments but eventually I won a couple tournaments going all snake or mostly snake. He has way too much lag on everything to the point where the character only gains from reads, and not from having good options. I won those tournaments because I was the best player there, not because Snake is that good.

MK and Diddy and Falco can attack and avoid getting hit because their options/mix ups are pretty safe.
If Diddy throws a banana and you shield it, he doesn't have to get hit for it.
If Falco shoots a laser and side B's, a lot of characters have trouble punish it plus its hard to react to.
If MK Ftilts someone's shield he has frame advantage to either get away or hit with another Ftilt as they drop their shield.Snake on the other hand is laggy enough with all of his best moves that he can be punished by any character.

Literally everyone I play with Snake I can beat a hundred times more easily with MK. People say Snake is Diddy's worst matchup but I think MK does WAY better vs him. I 3-0'd GDX with MK, 2 stocking him every match with MK, but beat him 3-2 and 3-1 with Snake. I 2-0'd Gnes with MK and he destroyed my Snake. And I know the matchup equally well because I practice both matchups with my brother who mains Diddy (I practice with Snake a hundred times more I might add). I had the exact same scenario playing with Ksiz and Nairo in New Jersey and this is a region of people who don't even know how to fight Snake and fight against MK every round of every tournament.

His OOS options are bad and easily exploitable, and every single character can juggle him if you know how. If you run up to a landing Snake and shield he has no guaranteed mix up to save himself. He can reverse grenade/reverse C4/Footstool/Bair but those are all entirely specific mixups that don't work if your opponent reads them. Snake has good mix ups but he doesn't win because he's immune to punishment he can just take a lot of it. Characters like Falco and MK get 80 free damage on MK from a grab.

I think Diddy and Falco are definitely both better than Snake by a decent margin. They both have safer guranteed options. Snake can't attack mindlessly because everything can be punished, and he cant outcamp most of the good characters.

Seriously, all of the best snakes besides Ally still lose to random characters, even less so than the good Diddy and Falco players.

 

[Alphicans]

Lots of discussion here, I don't want to repeat too much. Ally's opening post was pretty ****, and then some other people elaborated on it. I think that Snake is like 5th or 6th best, being under MK, falco, diddy, IC's and possibly wario. Still top tier, but not the god he was made out to be for so long. Snake reminds me a lot of GaW, it's just that snake was far more broken, so his tricks have taken a lot longer to catch on to.

 

[AllyKnight]

:3 Im **** hehehe

 

[Pierce7d]

I cosign Red Halberd's entire post except that EC is pretty good against Snake.

 

[Crow!]

Snake has the potential to fall, but I'm not sure who would rise in his stead.

Diddy? No, at least not at tourneys with enough players who have taken time to learn bananas.
Falco? Probably not with the upcoming stage list, certainly not without a LGL to coddle him.
Marth? Not with MK around.
ICs? I'd believe this before I'd believe Falco, but I'm still skeptical.
Wario? Overrated already, imo.
MK? He's already on top. Though, unfortunately, he's probably the correct answer. As Snakes fall, he gets even better.

My guess, then, is Snake eventually loses his lead over the other A tier characters, but never really falls behind them.

 

[Overswarm]

It's just gonna be a larger "middle of the pack". The scale of usage/tournament results will probably have quite a few plateaus in it.

 

[Alphicans]

Doesn't snake also kind of get beaten by olimar?

 

[DtJ Hilt]

Emphasis on "kind of".

 

[Alphicans]

I've seen ratios ranging from 65-35 to 50-50. Given olimar's horrendous roll, and light frame I am guessing it'd be more on the 50-50 end of things, but olimar outcamps him, and when getting pikmin off, snake is often forced to weaken his utilt. Still seems slightly in olimar's favour.

 

[DtJ Hilt]

At best it would be Slight Advantage for Olimar. At worst, Slight Advantage for Snake (55:45 either way, if you will). Olimar's main problem in general is his lack of priority and vulnerability when up close to an opponent. Snake's ftilt destroys Olimar just as much as it does most any other character.

Snake does get outcamped, though. A grounded Olimar switching between Pikmin Toss, Fsmash, and Grab (Standing Grab, not Pivot) is a difficult wall for Snake to get through, but it's not unbeatable by any means.

Olimar also relies heavily on stage control, especially in this matchup, and a well placed C4 could ruin Olimar's camp game, as it sections off areas Olimar is able to use. And that space is extremely important. Same goes for grenades, but to a lesser extent. Olimar also is terrible at killing Snake as he is limited to one kill move (Up Throw) and the situational Up Smash, which is a pain to land in this matchup.

Snake's dthrow tech chase is also extremely effective on Olimar, due to his terrible Get Up Roll, but it's by no means an "infinite", as some people say.

 

[gallax]

Olimar can kill will fair(red for knockback and yellow since it has good range) and dsmash(when the snake airdodges next to oli) and fthrow/bthrow with a blue pikmin on snake. And the occasional spike I play with the best oli in FL often and know oli quite well/

 

[DtJ Hilt]

F/Bthrow aren't good kill moves. If the opponent knows how to DI at all it doesn't kill Snake until over 200%. Blue Uthrow kills characters much earlier. Fair is a pain to land on Snake and isn't reliable whatsoever. Going into the air against Snake, when you're up close to him, is a terrible, terrible idea. Dsmash on a landing Snake, yes, is a great punish, but doesn't work well as a kill move on him specifically.

Seriously. Uthrow is far and beyond the best kill move in the matchup, with Usmash working but being hard as hell to land. Everything else is, for the most part, not reliable but can work.

 

[ShadowLink84]

It mainly stems from Snake simply being outdone on the ground.
he has the means to force snake to approach and get him ni the air but, Snake takes forever to kill.
if I remember correctly, Snake has some really nasty followups after his Dthrow as well.
So even if Snake has difficult breaking through, once he does manage it, the reward is very high.