Melee Match-Up Chart (NTSC) [Update 008 - 09.09.28]

[Hazygoose]

good point.
and i guess i'm not entirely sure if a matchup chart or tierlist should match our convictions IF they don't seem to coinside with the metagame. meaning if we all know peach should beat y.link, what's the point of saying it if even the best peaches aren't making that very clear? obviously part of it is that peach players can't spend all their time invested in learning the young link matchup inside and out.

thank god i play sheik. learn 10 matchups, chaingrab the rest of the cast. gg.

 

[Eyce Theon]

I don't think it's a fair to attribute "falcon is gimpable" to a specific character because Falcon gets gimped by everyone.

The main reason why Yoshi was butchered so much was because of his lack of a jump out of shield.

Once Falcon (or anyone for that matter) starts pressuring Yoshi in his shield, Yoshi can't WD oos so his limited options make him very predictable and easy to punish. Granted it's not like Falcon has much to pressure as effectively as say Fox or Falco but, he does make up for this with his speed.

It's probably not as bad as 100-0 but, I just can't see how Yoshi could have any advantage.

Is there something else that Yoshi can do to Falcon on-stage?

I'll go into more detail then, sure. While Yoshi doesn't have traditional out of shield options, his shield has some major advantages. His lightshield gives him almost no traction on the stage and looks identical to his regular shield (as opposed to the rest of the cast), allowing him to create space by blocking, and approach again. When going into his shield he has frames of complete invincibility, even to grabs, which are a large part of Falcon's ground game.

Yoshi can always Dsmash out of shield to punish slower moves/a missed L-cancel anyway, which has decieving range and speed, and excellent knockback. It's true that Yoshi can be overwhelmed by faster characters, but he can remain quite safe in his egg until he decides to retreat or become offensive.

I put emphasis on the "Falcon is gimpable" part in my last post because Yoshi has excellent tools (Dtilt, Dsmash, DJC Nair) to get Falcon to the edge, where he can be comfortably go on the offensive. His time on the stage could all be considered defensive (such as staying in shield and waiting for a Dsmash opportunity) but still put on pressure (there's not much Falcon can do about approaching Bairs from Yoshi except shield or make space).

Yoshi Bairs are perfect for comboing Falcon too. He'll normally be able to combo any Bair near the stage into the smash of his choice, or DJC'd Uairs for more damage.

The main reason I think Yoshi has an advantage here is his ability to negate combos, and live for so long with his weight+DI. Just the fact that Yoshi's hitbox moves around SO much when he attacks means that Falcon can't be sure that his next move or grab is going to connect, and an open Falcon is a sitting bird? duck. That DJ of Yoshi's is in itself a great lateral combo disrupter against Falcon, because Yoshi won't be anywhere near where Falcon thought you were going to be when he hit you last - another chance to attack him.

And of course, the DI I mentioned. Yoshi DIing knees will seem to live like Samus, greatly disheartening to a Falcon.

 

[Hazygoose]

*falcon's nair>yoshi's bair

*a falcon doesn't get punished by attacking shields normally, much less by yoshi, assuming he's being played right. he can land dairs behind the shield, nair with nice spacing, or knee->jab before a smash OOS can happen.

*falcon is fast enough to chase down yoshi's double jump, not to mention one failed DJC or one unsafe/not smart double jump recovery leads instantly to a yoshi death since falcon is so fast to take advantage of it. DJC uair fail-->knee capitalization-->yoshi can't do crap and dies at 30% if he's even remotely close to an edge

the rest of your points were very nice, though, IMO, and it's obviously not 100-0. i don't think yoshi gets past 30% though. i give it 75/25 as an old yoshi player, for what it's worth.

--------------------------------

as a ness player i'll throw out my concepts of his matchups. i'm sure no one cares about ness but if you need me to describe my perception of the matchup, just ask:

sheik | 0/100
fox | 40/60
falco | 25/75
marth | 20/80
jiggly | 40/60
peach | 0/100
c.falc | 35/65
ganon | 30/70
samus | 40/60
ICs | 30/70
luigi | 30/70
doc | 40/60
pikachu | 50/50
dk | 25/75
link | 40/60
mario | 40/60
y.link | 35/65
gaw | 60/40
zelda | 50/50
bowser | 70/30
m2 | 70/30
roy | 50/50
yoshi | 55/45
kirby | 60/40
pichu | 80/20

 

[Cia]

why does ness have a harder time with peach than he does with Marth?

I always thought Marth was Ness' worst match up next to sheik. i know that peach beats him senseless tho.. lol.

 

[Hazygoose]

peach is like "lol i'mma jumpinz 'n' floatinz right above were ur DJC iz useful!"
what a *****. she can edgeguard his double jump, which is like...his only real recovery in most cases, and she can combo ness alright while he can only combo heavyish fastfallers.

i approach marth in the dumbest way possible. it's almost drephen esque. ness's dash attack actually has a longer range than anything in marth's arsenal. so you can dash attack-->send him up-->followup, and then fake dash attack-->grab...then you create a system where a marth realized you have more than 1 approach and is like "WTF?" not to mention, ness's DJC bair can be spaced through marth's fairs about 10x easier than peach's float cancelled spaced fair. you have to be like frame perfect on that shiz vs peach.

other than that most of his weaknesses and his few strengths are shared in the matchups.

oh, and 1 last thing: i've had peach's nair rock ness's nair before. with marth and almost every other character he at least trades hits. rendering ness's nair useless makes me a saaaaaaad panda

 

[exarch]

explain that one because i dont see game and watch at being that disadvantaged by roy

Maybe it's closer than that but the big thing is he's so light he just loses stocks like nothing. I have had many games where I played like trash against GW and then get a few lucky fsmashes and end up winning. When I don't have to play well to win, I assume my character has a rather large advantage.

 

[Stratford]

****. Poor Kirby. He had it made in N64.

 

[KirbyKaze]

Ness's dash attack can be cced if he's spacing it for the last sparkle to hit until absurd percentages. And from that cc, Marth has all sorts of fun options. The alternative is to not space and let the sparkles combo, but that can still be cced for a good while and it also compromises the only real good point in his ground game.

Moreover, with how terrible Ness's grab range is, I'd imagine that simple shield games would be rather difficult for him to overcome. His dash attack is horribly unsafe on block, even spaced, and - not even including Marth's potent cc game - simple jumps out of shield ruin most of Ness's approaches. I suppose you can wait for him to land, but what if he goes for a platform? Either you commit with pointedly inferior air range, or you have to pull back.

I think that mix would cause issues for Ness.

If Marths you play are consistently trading with Ness's Nair, I have nothing to really comment about. It has terrible range, and medium priority. I understand that its relatively low startup gives it some power in close quarters, but Marth is the faster character in virtually every respect. If Ness is getting that close, close enough to put that much pressure on Marth, consistently, then I question the quality of your opponents.

 

[Hazygoose]

your arguments are always terrible, KK. i think you just argue with what you think the matchup would be like, without any substance because of a lack of experience or actual knowledge on the subject. you'd be mad cool if you didn't, too.
you think sheik ***** marth like 70+% anyway, so what's the difference in me saying you're playing crappy marths if you're destroying them, than you saying i'm playing crappy marth's if i even get to nair them with ness. lol terribad logic. not to mention i play with legit one of the best peach players period...who also has a dag nasty fox (traded games with m2k and almost beat jman in dittos at apex). but...i guess he sucks, despite performing better than anyone in your crew. moving on to the actual points:

most every dash attack can be CC'd to a decent percentage. it's not just ness's. and marth isn't actually amazing OOS. due to the forward distance that can be gained by a DJC aerial, ness actually has no problem with marth waiting in shield and trying to attack out of it. there's a video of it somewhere, i don't feel like fishing through old ness boards to find it, but the hitbox on an l-cancelled low-starting DJC fair is amazing. it hits until you land, and doesn't have much lag, allowing ness to grab right afterward. i mean, it's not completely safe, marth can grab first if he times it amaingly, but he can do the same on a falco pillar and how often do you see that work? also, DJC bair shield pokes like crazy, marth can't shield camp ness.

marth should also not intimidate a ness from above. ness's double jump is crazy weird in how is speeds up and slows down, and it's really hard for a marth to follow and try to intercept with a dair or even a fair. ness's ground speed is also redank, he can wavedash/dash dance camp as well as marth.

even with all this it's obviously not a close matchup. you're right about his grab not being even close to marth's grab, and ness can't combo off of it, but the same applies to peach. honestly the most terrifying things about marth to me are his spaced retreating/approaching nairs (not as bad when being spammed in place, obviously), his dtilt as both a shield poke and edgeguard, and his utilt once he gets ness above him with a grab/dash attack/fair.

the matchup is terrible for ness. i was just saying it isn't as bad as peach. meaning ness actually has a decent chance on a stage where he can find the ground and have room to recover (pretty much most places except marth's story and FD). and find me someone who would know better, please. most of ness's matchups are closer than he gets credit for. this is obviously due to no one good has played ness since simna. these charts assume that the 2 players are of equal skill, so i think everyone can throw their previous knowledge of watching random to good marths pummel the crap out of random to mediocre nesses out the window.

also, why the crap are we talking about ness? should we debate high and top tiers like every other thread ever? lol.

 

[Juggleguy]

There's no way Marth is 35-65 against Sheik. The matchup has come a long, long way since the days of Ken vs KDJ. 45-55 methinks.

 

[Masmasher@]

Been a long time since weve seen some of these matchups matierialize in high play.

 

[Endless Nightmares]

and also how no one else has bothered to step up and do this.

no offense but it was that way for a reason...these charts are always horribly inaccurate and match-up chart threads never really make any progress it's best to let this thread die or close it

 

[pockyD]

yeah hopefully this goes the way of the smash bus

 

[idea]

smash bus isn't happening anymore?

still waiting for the mid tier and up chart =( let's work on that tomorrow or something. most of the problems people have with this involve wildly disparate opinions on seldom-used characters.

 

[JPOBS]

Maybe it's closer than that but the big thing is he's so light he just loses stocks like nothing. I have had many games where I played like trash against GW and then get a few lucky fsmashes and end up winning. When I don't have to play well to win, I assume my character has a rather large advantage.

you must be playing some pretty awful G&W players then if you can win playing poorly.

IMO, the G&W - Roy mathcup is in G&W's favor.
Roy's Fsmash (pretty much his only kill move) is virtually a standalone attack vs G&w.
Sure, its strong and can kill him because he's light, but roy isnt going to combo into the attack like he can vs fastfallers. Which means its goignt o become pretty obvious when you want to/can go for the fsmash kill which really helps g-dubs avoid it entirely.

furthermore, g-dubs DOES combo roy, dtilt/uptilt, fair, nair, **** roy. and getting him off the stage into a edgeguard opportunity is all it takes to lose the stock.

edgeguarding is in g-dubs favor imo, once roy is off the stage, all he has to do is run off, and hit him with one of his disjointed fair/nair hitboxes, and, roy being the worst recovery in the game cant defend himself from this AT ALL.

on the other hand, roy's got two realistic edgeguards vs g-dubs, he can either counter or fsmash, and barring yoshi's story, both of those can be evaded with a sweetpotted b-up.

so yea, thats how i see the matchup, if all you have to do is throw out a couple fsmashs to beat your opponent, then frankly, you arent playing anyone good.

 

[pockyD]

but roy has up-b

and on a more serious note, g/w has an awful tech roll that roy can exploit to land his fsmash

not that i know anything about this matchup, but i really doubt that any significant amount of people do

 

[JPOBS]

but roy has up-b

and on a more serious note, g/w has an awful tech roll that roy can exploit to land his fsmash

not that i know anything about this matchup, but i really doubt that any significant amount of people do

indeed, the roy-gaw mathcup isnt even important in high level tourny play, but since this is matchup chart discussion why the hell not just through out my two cents on a matchup im confident in

 

[otg]

Whoever said "Midtier and up" chart totally has it right. I guarantee most matchups from Mario - up can be figured out easily because they are still used in tournament. Yoshi vs. Ness? Who ****ing cares? Is this matchup ever truly going to happen in a legit tournament?

 

[idea]

we were discussing doing a chart like that before this one was posted. but this one was only posted a week or two ago so we haven't all been in the same room since.

 

[Stripesorbars3]

we should just take all the characters under gannon off the list just so no one gets confused.

 

[JPOBS]

Whoever said "Midtier and up" chart totally has it right. I guarantee most matchups from Mario - up can be figured out easily because they are still used in tournament. Yoshi vs. Ness? Who ****ing cares? Is this matchup ever truly going to happen in a legit tournament?

But what about High vs low tier matchups?

you cant just do a "midteir and up" chart because even though you dont have yoshi vs ness in tourny, you DO have pika vs falcon, bowser vs marth, Taj mewtwo vs falco etc etc blah blah.

so what about in the case of upper tiers vs lower tiers?

 

[pockyD]

almost every single high tier vs low tier matchup is 'do your simplest tactic and dominate'

whether the matchups are 'even' (or even favor the low tier player) is largely irrelevant; what 'matters' is that the matchups are so rarely seen that there is no possible way to make an accurate judgment on the (already arbitrary) rating system

 

[idea]

there are some high tier vs. low tier matchups that actually come up, but not frequently, and most people don't care very much. plus, good luck making a chart with high vs. low tier, but not low vs. low tier...it would look ugly and incomplete =P

edit:...**** it. i was at 1334 posts this morning. i missed it =(

 

[Ja]

You can't be like sheik ***** all the crappy characters really hard so she's the best. You would need to weight the matchups by importance, as in how importance is it to have a good ness matchup? It isn't, so that doesn't matter.

I think it would be better to leave the low tiers off the list. Focus on mid tier,and higher tiers, and try to make a chart of that. You'll have more data, and you get to ignore the characters that are so bad they don't matter.

By the way, I appreciate the attempt.

 

[NES n00b]

Wow pikachu having a 60-40 matchup against Falcon and ICs being apparently a much easier matchup than Ganon......and Samus? v_v

 

[Hazygoose]

everytime someone needs an example of a crappy character, they say ness

but i really don't see the point on not including low-tiers. to create an arbitrary list and then say "well...we're being TOO arbitrary making charts for low-tiers" sounds mad ********. if it's a waste of time for you to personally argue about: ok. but people shouldn't expect other people to not talk about it. that's like if you're at a party, and you go around telling people not to talk about any extreme sport because you don't care about it, but any conversations about conventional sports are fine.

 

[pockyD]

inaccurate information is worse than no information because you get people wandering around shouting how kirby counters sheik or young link wrecks peach because the magical chart said so

there is little to no viable information to use on most low tier matchups because of their scarcity in competitive play, especially at the highest levels

broken record disengage

 

[Hazygoose]

wait, we get accurate information for high-tier matchups in threads like this?

i must have missed out

 

[pockyD]

not necessarily, but that information is pretty widely and readily available

are you finding the volume of competitive marth/fox matches vs that of yoshi/bowser comparable?

 

[everlasting yayuhzz]

All I have to say is Fox vs Sheik is not equal and Falco vs Fox is not a 60-40 for Falco. It's a lot closer than that. What the hell is this based on?

 

[Hazygoose]

not necessarily, but that information is pretty widely and readily available

are you finding the volume of competitive marth/fox matches vs that of yoshi/bowser comparable?

sometimes people makes jokes instead of points; lighten up, buddy.
let's get sno cones =D

 

[worldjem7]

..............

K I'm updating the chart now... I've had this copy for a while now. The reason I haven't put it up yet is because I wanted to update it with explanations but, I can't really wait any longer for them, now.

This update doesn't include what's been discussed so far, the next update will.

 

[unknown522]

I'll bring a better update soon.

 

[idea]

lol, "young link" tier. at a glance it looks better.

 

[JPOBS]

im all for including all matchups of mid-upper tier as long as you also include their low tier matchups.

you dotn ahve to include low vs low tier, but the fact is, people DO play bowser/link/pika/mewtwo/ etc in tourny vs opponents so it would be ******** not to include their matchues vs the mid-top tiers. ESPECIALLY when alot of low tier chars arent THAT BAD vs fox/falco

 

[Ja]

im all for including all matchups of mid-upper tier as long as you also include their low tier matchups.

you dotn ahve to include low vs low tier, but the fact is, people DO play bowser/link/pika/mewtwo/ etc in tourny vs opponents so it would be ******** not to include their matchues vs the mid-top tiers. ESPECIALLY when alot of low tier chars arent THAT BAD vs fox/falco

What this guy said. Don't do low tier vs. low tier matchups, people don't really know those.

 

[HT F8]

So, what's the reason the Street Fighter community can have an accepted(?) matchup chart, but we can't?

Directed towards the people against the chart. ^_^

 

[Hazygoose]

they're smarter

 

[pockyD]

maybe they're dumber

and maybe it's more realistic in their game for the inferior character to triumph in a single "round" or whatever they use to measure simply due to the game mechanics, but in smash, it's rare for a character at a significant disadvantage to win even a game, assuming both players are at an equal level

maybe they have fewer characters, maybe their matchups are more widely played, maybe their gameplay has less depth than smash, maybe their rating isn't out of an impossibly detailed scale of 100

and maybe their community is developed enough that the primary contributors won't be people who joined it 8 months ago yet speak as if they have all the experience in the world and find it incredulous that people would differ from their ratings by 5/100 points

 

[HT F8]

Ah I see. Thank you for clearing that up. ^_^