Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[meleebrawler]

Yeah, when thinking about how I would nerf Sonic, I draw a complete blank. I guess make Spindash less safe? That would probably help but seems like it only barely would.

He already kills quite late if he doesn't get an early edgeguard. I don't think nerfing his KO power would do anything to stop the issue people have with how campy his playstyle is. It might just encourage Sonic players to camp more until they get to those higher kill %s. Increasing his KO power, though, would only make him a stronger character and also do nothing to mitigate the camping issue.

His aerials are good and deserve more use than campy players give them. At the same time, though, they seem pretty fair? They're good combo tools, but I don't think Sonic having a solid combo game is much of an issue. Most characters do. And I don't think their hitboxes are anything egregious. As evidenced by Sparg0's Cloud and the recent rise of Corrin, swords are a decent answer to Sonic that we very may well see continue to get fleshed out.

So yeah, I'm at a loss for how one would mitigate Sonic's current strengths without an overhaul.

Having the highest base mobility in the game is just such a massive fundamental advantage. Brawl Sonic exemplifies that you can make everything else about him hilariously weak and he still ends up mid tier at worst.

Since you can't really make Sonic not be the fastest character in the game without angering fans, the only other option is to shrink the gap between the fastest and the slowest.

 

[NairWizard]

Mobility's stocks are at an all-time low, especially grounded mobility. In a way unprecedented for smash, several top characters for today's meta (Steve, Snake, Min Min, ROB, Samus, etc) set up obstacles that make it difficult to use your mobility to its fullest extent while many of the top characters themselves aren't particularly fast. At the same time, characters like Wario, ZSS, and Palutena are struggling at the top level the most they've ever struggled despite having crazy mobility options. I will always believe in the counterplay for the mobility side, but mobility mixups at close-to-mid range (Steve Minecart, Corrin dash to shield, Snake b-reverse) are key to the meta right now, rather than mid-to-long-range options like running, dash in and out, and double jump away.

Sonic's mobility isn't the issue today, it's Spindash. It's always been Spindash, in one way or another. Spindash is an invincible, unreactable burst that gives Sonic the ability to play from the corner without being in disadvantage. Corner disadvantage is so important against Sonic's archetype of character -- if you corner a similar character like Sheik you get a lot of reward out of it, but cornering Sonic often leads to nothing.

There are design solutions, and most of them are easy to implement should the dev team ever want to. While you can't make base Spindash reactable without deviating from the true spirit of the character, the easiest thing you can do is make consecutive Spindashes weaker and slower, similar to how your roll stales if you use multiple rolls in a row. Sonic shouldn't be able to spindash 6 times in a row with the same invincibility frames, startup, and endlag; it doesn't make him feel more like Sonic. Necessitating mixups makes it easier to punish Sonic for playing from the corner while retaining the spirit of having an unreactable invincible burst built into the kit.

You can even compensate him for this by giving him more mixups during the spindash itself -- he could do some kind of Brawl d-smash mid-spin, or use the spin hop as an attack if he bounces on his opponent's head, or build some traction while turning around and skidding if he holds the stick with a smash input.

There are definitely options to fix Sonic's design without making him slower or making anyone else faster. The one thing you do have to be wary of is how this change would affect Sonic at the casual level, especially in FFAs, but it's probably fine: casual Sonic would just resort to dash attack and f-smash, which are just as strong at that level and accomplish similar goals to spindash in FFA, and none of these changes diminish Sonic's ability to run away on big stages like Hyrule Castle, which is an amusing privilege that should be preserved for sure.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Mobility's stocks are at an all-time low, especially grounded mobility. In a way unprecedented for smash, several top characters for today's meta (Steve, Snake, Min Min, ROB, Samus, etc) set up obstacles that make it difficult to use your mobility to its fullest extent while many of the top characters themselves aren't particularly fast. At the same time, characters like Wario, ZSS, and Palutena are struggling at the top level the most they've ever struggled despite having crazy mobility options. I will always believe in the counterplay for the mobility side, but mobility mixups at close-to-mid range (Steve Minecart, Corrin dash to shield, Snake b-reverse) are key to the meta right now, rather than mid-to-long-range options like running, dash in and out, and double jump away.

And this applies to Incineroar to a lesser extent. He also has a good dash to shield, with tons of oos options. But the cream of the crop is obviously Alolan Whip. Not only is it powerful and armored, it does a lot to help offset his poor mobility. Dash attack also gives him a surprising amount of burst and is a good combo ender and KO tool.

 

[NairWizard]

Sonix just can't win a grands, huh?

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

You know, this makes me think back to Tweek Talks when they were talking about characters like Corrin and Fox throwing out disjointed hitboxes on the top of a platform to stop Sonic from using spin dash freely. Was Light doing that?

Results for LVL UP Expo
1. Light
2. Sonix
3. MuteAce
4. Tweek
5. Capitancito
5. Jahzz0
7. Lui$
7. Chase
9. Cosmos
9. Mr. E
9. Lima
9. Wrath
13. Monte
13. Loaf
13. MFA
13. SocietyMan

 

[Rizen]

Light's really making a good case for being a top 5 player. If Acola doesn't start attending more events he could easily drop out of top 5.

On the subject of Sonic's spindash: there are characters who can deal with it and characters who can't. This relates back to what I was saying about needing to counterpick vs Sonic. Spindash has an absurdly skewed risk/reward ratio in Sonic's favor. The best most characters can do is shield but then the situation simply gets reset. It's a move that instantly puts Sonic in a kind of advantaged guessing game. It doesn't help that the move is invulnerable at the start so it can go through and punish projectiles.
There are ways around it however. The biggest one is to take Sonic to small stages. I facepalm everytime someone lets Sonic go to PS2. This is a big deal. Certain characters who have really good midrange zoning can also deal with it. For everybody else you have to shield, reset and try to chase Sonic down before he starts another.

 

[NairWizard]

You know, this makes me think back to Tweek Talks when they were talking about characters like Corrin and Fox throwing out disjointed hitboxes on the top of a platform to stop Sonic from using spin dash freely. Was Light doing that?

Nah, Light just leaves very limited windows of vulnerability to get hit by spindash. There's always either a hitbox or a shield somewhere. He full hops in neutral and either d-airs or n-airs. If he n-airs and lands on spindash he beats it, so that's neat, and if there's no spindash, he lands super fast and can shield after due to Fox's fall speed, or he can input a dash attack right away and that's f4 and leads to combos, so yeah, it's tough.

I mean, Sonix was literally parrying into jab to get hits in the MU. When you have to parry to get 9% you know things are rough.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Nah, Light just leaves very limited windows of vulnerability to get hit by spindash. There's always either a hitbox or a shield somewhere. He full hops in neutral and either d-airs or n-airs. If he n-airs and lands on spindash he beats it, so that's neat, and if there's no spindash, he lands super fast and can shield after due to Fox's fall speed, or he can input a dash attack right away and that's f4 and leads to combos, so yeah, it's tough.

I mean, Sonix was literally parrying into jab to get hits in the MU. When you have to parry to get 9% you know things are rough.

Thank you for the knowledge

Seeding for DELTA 8, a P Tier happening on Friday.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Nah, Light just leaves very limited windows of vulnerability to get hit by spindash. There's always either a hitbox or a shield somewhere. He full hops in neutral and either d-airs or n-airs. If he n-airs and lands on spindash he beats it, so that's neat, and if there's no spindash, he lands super fast and can shield after due to Fox's fall speed, or he can input a dash attack right away and that's f4 and leads to combos, so yeah, it's tough.

I mean, Sonix was literally parrying into jab to get hits in the MU. When you have to parry to get 9% you know things are rough.

That reminds me, I remember reading some time ago that Fox is a bad matchup for Sonic. Seems to have held true. Fox definitely has the speed to keep up well and a high damage output

 

[Rizen]

That reminds me, I remember reading some time ago that Fox is a bad matchup for Sonic. Seems to have held true. Fox definitely has the speed to keep up well and a high damage output

I can see that. Fox has slightly better frame data than Sonic and better kill setups, although Sonic beats him offstage pretty hard. The last sets of Light vs Sonix looked pretty even though. Sonix won the first set and almost took the 2nd in a game 5 last hit scenario.

One thing I will say is it looks like Diddy loses to Sonic. Tweek beat Sonix once but has lost the last few times. It also looks like Sephiroth is not the counterpick answer Tweek is looking for. Sephiroth is too slow to effectively wall opponents; he's forced to retreat after his sword is shielded because he isn't fast enough to strike again before getting punished. I've noticed this with Ken's Sephiroth too. Sephiroth just isn't that good of a character. Being as light as Kirby really felt uncalled for.

 

[StrangeKitten]

I can see that. Fox has slightly better frame data than Sonic and better kill setups, although Sonic beats him offstage pretty hard. The last sets of Light vs Sonix looked pretty even though. Sonix won the first set and almost took the 2nd in a game 5 last hit scenario.

One thing I will say is it looks like Diddy loses to Sonic. Tweek beat Sonix once but has lost the last few times. It also looks like Sephiroth is not the counterpick answer Tweek is looking for. Sephiroth is too slow to effectively wall opponents; he's forced to retreat after his sword is shielded because he isn't fast enough to strike again before getting punished. I've noticed this with Ken's Sephiroth too. Sephiroth just isn't that good of a character. Being as light as Kirby really felt uncalled for.

Agreed. I've put a decent chunk of time into Seph and it really feels like the sluggishness holds him back a lot.

 

[Frihetsanka]

As a former Sephiroth main, it saddens me to say that the character is likely mid tier... They really could've tweaked wing a bit more, it's so awkward to lose wing at the final stock, and sometimes not even get wing or get it right before you die, etc. Making wing spawn 10-15% earlier and making him never lose it on his final stock would probably push him into high tier. Still, Tweek could probably use Sephiroth to cover some of Diddy Kong's bad MUs, if Tweek doesn't want to solo main Diddy Kong or pick up some other secondary. Diddy Kong seems like a strong character with some troubling MUs.

 

[NairWizard]

Sephiroth is good enough to hang, just like most of the swordies in this game; definitely not a bad character at all, but he's missing the right player playing him.

If MKLeo, for example, actually played Sephiroth you would see Sephiroth in a lot of top 8s and even winning some events.

Sephiroth's status right now is what Fox would be without Light, or Sonic would be without Sonix. Without Sonix we'd see KEN struggling at a bunch of events and think, "well, Sonic has clear weaknesses, obviously not quite good enough to be top tier despite spindash, but maybe pushing high tier," and without Light no one would ever be thinking about Fox.



Sephiroth does just fine against Snake, ROB, Steve, all the heavies, other swordies (beating Corrin, who is another top meta threat right now), many zoners, random characters who are on the come-up like Bayonetta, popular characters like Falco (+2), etc.


Sure, he loses to Fox/Roy/Diddy/Joker/ZSS, but who cares? Every good character has tough MUs against roughly 10% of the cast. You can overcome a few -1s with enough patience. We see Miya and SHADIC and sparg0 do it all the time with their mains.


Space your f-air and f-tilt horizontally, camp n-air on platform at percents where you can die before you get wing, mix up between retreating up-air and b-air to condition into b-reverse Counter, use orbs in advantage only, bladedash generously against slower characters, use d-tilt to low profile sword characters and dash attack against short characters, and bam. Your Sephiroth can play neutral.

What is this grab into up-throw in neutral nonsense? Man, it just hurts to see.

Advantage is easy and Tweek is good at it, so no need to comment there.


Overall, though, even without Wing, Sephiroth is fast, has huge disjointed range, and a good recovery -- what other character has the combination of all three? Not a single one (Acceleratle Hero or Limit Cloud aside).

 

[NairWizard]

Predictions for Delta, anyone?

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Predictions for Delta, anyone?

I think there's a really good chance that Zackray beats Toriguri as projected and then upsets Hurt. Zackray is really good against Snake and has beaten MVD, DIO and Hurt in the past.

Kagaribi 12 seeding

Very different seeding compared to DELTA, notably it's a Japanese seeding team this time and not an NA one.

 

[The_Bookworm]

I think there's a really good chance that Zackray beats Toriguri as projected and then upsets Hurt. Zackray is really good against Snake and has beaten MVD, DIO and Hurt in the past.

Kagaribi 12 seeding
View attachment 388702
Very different seeding compared to DELTA, notably it's a Japanese seeding team this time and not an NA one.

First time in a long time that acola and Glutonny attended a major, let alone a supermajor.
Also I am assuming "her rob" is Zomba, correct?

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

First time in a long time that acola and Glutonny attended a major, let alone a supermajor.
Also I am assuming "her rob" is Zomba, correct?

Yeah, her rob is Zomba.

 

[Cheryl~]

So, uh, those Delta upsets huh? We're just starting top 64 and Sparg0, Toriguri, Zackray, Asimo, Tea, and many more top seeds are in losers with some like Neo, BigBoss, and Umeki already being out of the tournament. Also, following the upset thread at least three Donkey Kong mains were responsible for many of the upsets that occurred, namely Rarikkusu upsetting Sparg0 to make it into top 64 winners side. What an insane bracket so far, and this is the P tier BEFORE Kagaribi!

 

[Idon]

Can Leo just let Byleth go, it is clearly not putting in the same work it did years ago.

 

[NotLiquid]

Might be premature to say with Kagaribi still around the corner but Japan are definitely the kingmakers of the meta right now. It feels like a very long time since that's been the case in a Smash game, even for as long as we've revered the talent over there. The western invasion being completely dismantled was not something I expected.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

Results for DELTA 8
1. Acola
2. Miya
3. Shuton
4. TamaPDaifuku
5. Snow
5. Akkakikusu
7. Raru
7. Lv. 1
9. Carmelo
9. KEN
9. Hurt
9. MkLeo
13. Glutonny
13. Zomba
13. Sparg0
13. Rarikkusu
17. M0tsunabE
17. Leaf
17. Yaura
17. Gackt
17. Tea
17. Maipan
17. Gorioka

What was that about Japan not being the strongest region and acola not being #1 in the world Rizen ? Acola has won all 5 events this season including 2 P tiers and his only set loss is to Miya.

 

[Rizen]

Results for DELTA 8
1. Acola
2. Miya
3. Shuton
4. TamaPDaifuku
5. Snow
5. Akkakikusu
7. Raru
7. Lv. 1
9. Carmelo
9. KEN
9. Hurt
9. MkLeo
13. Glutonny
13. Zomba
13. Sparg0
13. Rarikkusu
17. M0tsunabE
17. Leaf
17. Yaura
17. Gackt
17. Tea
17. Maipan
17. Gorioka

What was that about Japan not being the strongest region and acola not being #1 in the world Rizen ? Acola has won all 5 events this season including 2 P tiers and his only set loss is to Miya.

Acola was dropping off at the time. He hadn't played in many events. Edit,

The thing is that prior to Delta 8 yesterday, his win at Umebura SP 10 was the only major tournament he attended this season, let alone a supermajor.
He only participated in 3 other tournaments aside from that, which is already very low attendance, but those 3 other tournaments where regionals/super-regionals.
His win at Umebura SP 10 (which was back at January, mind you) used to be the only thing that was going for him this season. I do think his win at Delta 8 alone has secured him a spot somewhere in the ranks this season, but he still needs to attend more notable tournaments if he wants to cement #1 again. Golden Week, which is still ongoing, is his best shot in doing so.

This.

There's still a good case for the USA being better than Japan as a US player has won many of the major tournaments featuring international champions. First Tweek beat Sonix in Luminosity Makes BIG Moves 2024, then Zomba beat Sonix in GENESIS X, then Light beat Miya at the Litvitational 2, Shadic won Cirque Du CFL 3 featuring Miya and the Luminosity Invitational, then light won again recently beating Sonix in LVL UP Expo, and Chase also won a tournament with Sprago and Skyjay in Mexico Showdown 7 where Mr.E beat Spargo. Acola is still making a good case for being number one but Delta didn't feature a lot of the top US players. The problem is a lot of the tournamets either feature the vast majority of Western players or Japanese players but not both. Although I will say Spargo was looking really good for number one but seriously underpreformed lately. I stand by my statements.

(See, I can look up smashwiki too )

 

[The_Bookworm]

Can Leo just let Byleth go, it is clearly not putting in the same work it did years ago.

His Byleth did prove crucial to beating Maipan's Zelda, after his Joker lost game 1, so there is that.
But yeah, Byleth stonks have dried up for a long time now.

Speaking of whom, we got some crazy character placements for this tournament, with two DKs in top 24 (3 in top 32), a Maipan's Zelda placing 17th, and Lvl.1's Toon Link placing 7th. Now Toon Link is quite good, but it is not often you see the character get brought this far in a supermajor.

Acola has won all 5 events this season including 2 P tiers and his only set loss is to Miya.

The thing is that prior to Delta 8 yesterday, his win at Umebura SP 10 was the only major tournament he attended this season, let alone a supermajor.
He only participated in 3 other tournaments aside from that, which is already very low attendance, but those 3 other tournaments where regionals/super-regionals.
His win at Umebura SP 10 (which was back at January, mind you) used to be the only thing that was going for him this season. I do think his win at Delta 8 alone has secured him a spot somewhere in the ranks this season, but he still needs to attend more notable tournaments if he wants to cement #1 again. Golden Week, which is still ongoing, is his best shot in doing so.

 

[NairWizard]

imo, sparg0 is coming to the correct realization that his current character roster is the problem that holds him back from being consistently #1. Cloud is just not a good main investment. sparg0 is an exceptional player who has been making it work, but realistically Cloud falls in line with all the other swordies in the game.

The dropoff from sparg0 to the next best Cloud is enormous -- can you even name the next best Cloud?
I believe this last month it was chicken. How many times have you seen chicken play?

Yeah, that's what I thought.


Don't be deceived into thinking the characters you see at the top are the actual best characters. One tournament's results are based on whoever puts in the most effort into polishing their character's meta (and other factors, like whoever is feeling the most emotinoally stable), but the long term tells you how it really is.


Back when Leo won Frostbite 2020 I was complaining into the void that Joker did not look like a sustainable top tier and I'm pretty sure everyone thought I was crazy, but all it takes is some patience and time to see the stability and consistency unravel, once you see the telltale signs.

For instance, once I see that a character is going for hard reads in neutral consistently that's it, game over, I do not see that character being a long-term meta dominator.

 

[The_Bookworm]

View attachment 388749


imo, sparg0 is coming to the correct realization that his current character roster is the problem that holds him back from being consistently #1. Cloud is just not a good main investment. sparg0 is an exceptional player who has been making it work, but realistically Cloud falls in line with all the other swordies in the game.

The dropoff from sparg0 to the next best Cloud is enormous -- can you even name the next best Cloud?
I believe this last month it was chicken. How many times have you seen chicken play?

Yeah, that's what I thought.


Don't be deceived into thinking the characters you see at the top are the actual best characters. One tournament's results are based on whoever puts in the most effort into polishing their character's meta (and other factors, like whoever is feeling the most emotinoally stable), but the long term tells you how it really is.


Back when Leo won Frostbite 2020 I was complaining into the void that Joker did not look like a sustainable top tier and I'm pretty sure everyone thought I was crazy, but all it takes is some patience and time to see the stability and consistency unravel, once you see the telltale signs.

For instance, once I see that a character is going for hard reads in neutral consistently that's it, game over, I do not see that character being a long-term meta dominator.

While the post does mention about difficulty staying on top with his characters (think he is also referring to Aegis as well), that is not the main point of his post.

He is saying that he performed better with the mentality of not really caring about rankings, but he is making the same mistake as last year in that he is starting to perform worse when he realized he had a good shot in being #1; letting the potential of getting #1 adding extra mental stress to his gameplay. That is the main thing he wants to touch up upon: he wants to get to the mentality he had earlier in the season; the mentality that allowed him to perform more consistently better in tournaments.

Btw, I don't really see how Cloud "falling in line with other swordies" is a particularly bad thing. Ever since day 1 of Ultimate, swordies have been consistently cracked and meta relevant, and Cloud has excellent attributes to back this up, matching up very well to a lot of the cream-of-the-crop characters in the current meta of the game.
Him being the primary carry of the character, while it is something that does hurt his metagame standing, isn't a doom-and-gloom situation, as there are plenty of characters like this as well. Can you imagine where Sonic will be in the tier list if Sonix didn't exist, or Fox without Light? Likely still pretty good, but def not top 10 characters whatsoever. Cloud's dropoff would be a bit more significant than the other two examples (except for mayyybbbeeee Fox), which is a good part why he is no longer a top 10 character going from the 1st to 2nd official tier list (that, and Snake's and Game & Watch's meteoric rise in the list), but still likely pretty good.

 

[NairWizard]

While the post does mention about difficulty staying on top with his characters (think he is also referring to Aegis as well), that is not the main point of his post.

He is saying that he performed better with the mentality of not really caring about rankings, but he is making the same mistake as last year in that he is starting to perform worse when he realized he had a good shot in being #1; letting the potential of getting #1 adding extra mental stress to his gameplay. That is the main thing he wants to touch up upon: he wants to get to the mentality he had earlier in the season; the mentality that allowed him to perform more consistently better in tournaments.

Sure, but the relevant part for character competitive impressions is his character roster's impact on the statement. While I always advocate for looking at other performance indicators besides character strength when evaluating a player's performance, we have so much data on Cloud's matchups at this point that a statement like this from sparg0 is very compelling.

sparg0 has been justifying his important losses on the basis of mentality and personal performance for years, it's something every player does. It's not his fault, and to an extent it is absolutely accurate, but you have to take it with a grain of salt too. He said his hands weren't working during SWT and that was why he placed 3rd, and while there is probably a good deal of truth to that, for character strength you can look past that a little and pick out consistent patterns, both in his statements and in the gameplay.

People talk about Cloud like this overwhelmingly strong top tier when it's just provably not the case. I see sparg0 swapping to Aegis against ROB and once in a while even GnW, avoiding DK, playing a clearly losing MU against Samus (which he still wins most of the time), etc. Half his problem winning since WTT has been losing to Sonix due to not having a character for the MU that wins consistently offline.

There is tons of evidence that Cloud's MU chart is actually not very top tier at all.

Btw, I don't really see how Cloud "falling in line with other swordies" is a particularly bad thing. Ever since day 1 of Ultimate, swordies have been consistently cracked and meta relevant, and Cloud has excellent attributes to back this up, matching up very well to a lot of the cream-of-the-crop characters in the current meta of the game.

It's not bad, not at all! Every swordie in this game (more or less) is perfectly viable. You can be a top 10 player in a given meta with any of them, from Sephiroth to Corrin to Cloud to Byleth, if you solo main and invest in their bad matchups enough to overcome.

It's when people take "perfectly viable" to mean "top tier/top 5/top 15/top 20" that we're jumping the gun. Sometimes it's enough to say that a character is good, you don't need to overstate their strengths. Doing so undersells the dramatic amount of effort required to push a character that far for a particular meta.

I see this a lot with sword characters in particular. When one of them dominates a meta, people are rushing to call that sword top 15. Lucina, Aegis, Byleth, Cloud, Corrin... the trend repeats.

sparg0's statement is a humbling reminder that our vision of this game is inevitably pretty narrow.