Pierce7d
Wise Hermit
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2006
- Messages
- 6,289
- 3DS FC
- 1993-9028-0439
INTRO
Now I know you read the thread title, and you're all like, "PIERCE! YOU?!?!?! HOW COULD YOU!?"
But the fact of the matter is, the last tier list came out around 4 months ago (it came out early June, and we're about to enter October.) I know I'm inviting stupid amounts of flame wars and dumb tiers lists with no founding (but it's okay to express your opinion, because that's what a forum is for).
This was a hot summer for Brawl. It's the second summer since Brawl's release, and the first summer where we really know some stuff about this game. Last summer, everyone was still learning, we had no idea what was going on. Then we went through a year, and we all learned, little by little. Summer broke out again, and we had some of the best Smash the world has ever seen. Genesis, GameUnicon, Evo, we just had ActiveGamers, and all our tourneys in our various regions. A LOT OF SMASHING HAS HAPPENED. We learned a lot. It was too fun, and things aren't quite the same.
Also, I'm not going to lie, I kinda like talking about Tiers. We all get upset when some noob says something really stupid, etc, but I talking about the game in an educated manner, with other educated people, and making more people educated. I mean, I could go into the SBR tier list thread and start discussion there, but it's unorganized and goes off into random tangents (like this is most likely going to do). So much has changed, and I want to talk about it with some intelligence and detail, and not really worry too much about tier list v3 right now. I mean, it's been 4 months. Nobody who matters still cares what the errors are on that one. Let's start fresh, eh?
So of course, to keep some semblance of organization, I'm going to put up a rough outline of what I think the tier list should look like based off the current meta-game right now. THIS DISCUSSION WILL BE BASED OFF OF THIS LIST! Of course you can agree, disagree, relate it to the SBR Tier List, state your own opinion, etc. But for the time being, we aren't going to have EVERYONE post their own tier list, and try and discuss all of them. It's just too much, and it's how the discussion gets derailed. Also, please note, that when I say "rough outline" it means that. I'm not going to order every character in the game myself. It's impossible. I don't know enough about the game, all by myself, to put an exact order for every character. I've tried, but I would fiddle, and miff, and be unsure, and it's not even worth it. This list shows where characters fall relatively to each other.
The last thing I have to say before we begin is this: people often say that Brawl isn't a very balanced game, but I'd like to disagree. I think that my S-tier is pretty **** broken, and that the characters in B-Tier and higher are a bit over powered. But I think that many people don't take the fact that there's 39 characters in the game into consideration. On the overall spectrum, yes, Brawl gets pretty stupid. Comparing MK to Ganondorf is dumb, and their relative power is so vastly different that they may as well not be in the same game. However, I have broken the game up into three inclusive tiers, High, Mid, and Low. Within these tiers, I would find the characters balanced, relative to the other characters.
FINAL NOTE: I wouldn't recommend reading the entire next section. Just read the characters you're interested in discussing and jump to the conclusion. I don't reveal any secrets about any characters, it's just an overview.
My Tier OutLine Please note that the characters are not ordered within the tiers.
High Tiers S-B
These are the competative characters. They're a notch above the rest, and you should know most of them well, as they're the ones you will see counting in tournament.
S Tier
I think top 4 right now is easily MK, Diddy, Snake, IC in no particular order. That would be my S-tier. I greatly enjoy this, because it makes the top of the game very dynamic. I'm really loving the Brawl Metagame right now.
MK is MK. I'm not really going to say much about him, because he's been discussed enough already, but it's clear that he's top 4 in the game. However, I'd like to note that despite his powerful offensive and defensive options, I am beginning to doubt if he is the best character in the game.
Diddy Kong is really stupid. Many of you might say, "But Pierce, you're biased, you train with ADHD." That's true, but I'm not dumb, and I'm really good at analyzing characters. Diddy Kong is a very interesting character, in that I find he has a lot of the same broken characteristics of MK (minus the 5 jumps). He never needs to commit to an approach. He has a modifiable grabbing approach to bypass shields. He has an attack which, when it hits you, reduces your options to ZERO and then FOUR, and it combos into itself. There is a lot of stuff I know about Diddy, but I'm not going to make this all about Diddy Kong. If you want to learn more about Diddy Kong, please await my new thread in the Diddy boards coming out sometime this week titled, "Diddy Kong is the best character in the game." Needless to repeat, I think that right now, Diddy Kong is the best character in the game.
Ice Climbers are also mad broken. They have a projectile, which encourages your opponents to approach. De-synched Blizzard is a stupidly solid wall. Their Uair deals massive damage and combos, solidifying their Blizzard wall. They have good kill power and priority. And of course, the chain-grab. As our IC players are perfecting their craft, one grab is becoming the loss of a stock. And let's face it, it's not that hard to get grabbed in Brawl. With pivot grabbed, and de-synched techniques, all an IC player needs is for you to mess up once, or to read one dodge, and GGs. This is a stupidly devastating character.
Fortunately, both Diddy and ICs have an extremely exploitable weakness. Diddy, though solid without them, is not nearly as devastating without his bananas. ICs can have Nana killed off since she is controlled by an AI when separated, and this leaves Popo vastly weakened. MK does not suffer from such an exploitable weakness.
Lastly in S-Tier, we have Snake. Now, I used to love Snake, but recently, he's been frustrating me. The reason for this is because I'm realizing that Snake's stupid weight class alone increases virtually every single one of his MUs by about 10 points or more. Now, that might be a no-brainer, but let's think about this for a second. I think if D3 or DK were mid-weight, or at least lower heavy weight (C. Falcon or Yoshi) that Marth would go even with these characters. But it only changes the MU by about 5 points. In the instance of Snake, he potentially has a positive MU over Marth, Diddy, and even with MK, etc, off of sheer weight class. It's a bit ridiculous. Coupled with his reliable kill power, stupid damage output, and amazing recovery, Snake is really great. Still, I think he's rank 4 in the game right now. When I look at Snake, and his move-set, I realize something. Snake really can't do anything. Snake relies on his opponent's either, A) Doing something punishable and getting punished. B) Not anticipating Dash Attack which is his only (unsafe) reliable approach. C) Hitting a grenade, or fearing it unnecessarily. and D) Letting Snake reach safe solid ground. I could write essays about Snake, but I think you get the point. For more information, check out the Snake boards.
A Tier
Falco/Wario come in VERY close 5/6 (no order again). Though IC get ***** by Snake, they **** Falco, who does good against every other character listed this far. Wario also does good against every other character here, so they greatly add to the meta-game as well. We're finally starting to settle into the diversity that Melee enjoys. This is my A-Tier.
Falco is extremely good, and has S-Tier potential. He has a map wide transcended projectile, with no lag. Now someone (I think it was VaNz) said to me that lasers hold no weight in the game because of power-shielding. I greatly disagree. The reason lasers are so **** good, is BECAUSE they force an action. You must either reflect them, shield, dodge, or jump. Dodging is really not that great of an option, and not every character has a reflector (plus Falco has an amazing reflector), so that leaves you with shielding and jumping. For a character who doesn't really have disjointed normals, Falco has really great priority, and he can get around really fast with absurd traps, follow ups, and actual combos. Couple this with his chaingrab, and he's definitely a beast of a character. Falco outright beats MK on FD. The only reason I don't give Falco the S-Tier ranking is because he suffers from a gimp-able recovery, and has issues with certain characters lower on the tier list. However, I think that if you were to put Falco in S-Tier on your tier list, it would be fair.
Wario got a LOT of hype last season, and many, many players picked him up. He is fast, he is not large, he is heavy, he can kill, he wracks up great damage, and fart might end your stock at 40%. To top it off, he has bite, which means that he can approach you from the air safely even if you're shielding. This amount of attack power, plus defense power qualifies Wario as an A-Tier character. Wario just barely misses my S-Tier, because like Falco, he has an awesome but gimpable recovery. Additionally, he has an exploitable grab release that sets up kills for many characters, which almost nullifies his weight class. He also does not have disjoints despite high priority like Falco again, but unlike Falco, he doesn't have an accessible projectile. This means that in some MUs, he's forced to approach, and certain opponents can simply outfight him (Marth, Luigi, MK). Now that so many players have picked up Wario, we've discovered his weaknesses a bit better, and know how to handle this character, but doesn't stop him from being top notch and A-Tier.
B Tier
Marth, D3, GnW, Pikachu, Olimar make up my B-Tier. These characters rarely have un-winnable MUs, and most of them can compete with the characters above.
Marth is viable against all characters listed this far. Marth is everything I could ever want in a character. He has speed, range, combos, a great camp game, solid recovery, kill set-ups, shield breaker, a great grab game, and if you tipper a smash attack, awesome kill power. He's just mad good. His low weight class coupled with lack of a projectile means that this lightweight character is forced to approach in some MUs, and that's what landed him in my B-Tier. Still, I wouldn't grudge you if you put Marth in the same tier as Falco and Wario.
D3 is suffering now, because Diddy and IC are getting popular, and Pikachu + Olimar give him trouble, and there's always MK, but D3 is still a solid character. His recovery is punishable, but good at getting him back to the stage, and he's got 4 jumps. Aside from this, absolutely beast grab range plus major damage (guaranteed at least 16 or 18 percent regardless of everything) off a grab makes him really solid. Ftilt is a great tool to approach with. Bair is HUGELY disjointed, active forever, and extremely interrupt-able, making for what I think is the most annoying aerial in the whole game. Inhale allows D3 to grab from the air. Utilt kills pretty solidly, and D3 himself is very heavy. This is the make-up of a B-tier character.
GnW is a really great and unique character, that suffers a lot in many of these MUs. I'm not sure how he does vs. ICs, but he gets wrecked by Marth, MK, Snake, and Diddy. Still, I label him B-Tier because he wrecks most of the cast below him in a way that he is clearly above. Like Diddy Kong, he's momentum based due the the fact that his lag is toward the beginning of his moves and not the end. This makes it hard for him to get started, but easy to keep going once he hits you once. Of course, against some characters like Marth, MK, and Diddy Kong, he finds it extremely hard to ever get started. Additionally, since he has low start-up, GnW is very vulnerable to pokes. Still, if the GnW gets in, it's amazing amounts of damage, and of course, GnW has great kill power, and good set-ups into kills.
Pikachu suffers in similar ways, but always seems to find ways to deal with bad MUs (either through camping or CG). I don't know enough about Pikachu to really go into detail, but for more information, check out the Pikachu board.
Olimar does well against most characters here as well, though out of my B-Tier, he is the least dominating over the cast below, but still flexible enough to fight all characters listed thus far. His grab and reliable kills and damage still make him B-tier material. I know a lot about Olimar, but there isn't much to say. He camps like a beast, and you want to curse when he plucks a purple. He's good.
Mid Tiers C-D
I feel like most of the characters can fight each other, and that's reflected by the larger mid-tiers. I really like the C-Tier because I feel like characters here will take you as your skill will let you go, but no further.
C Tier
I think C-Tier is: R.O.B., Kirby, Lucario, Zero Suit Samus, Toon Link, Pit, Donkey Kong, Peach, Luigi, Mario, and Zelda/Sheik
R.O.B. is an interesting character, because he doesn't really have any safe pokes. His DownB gives him decent approaches, and dtilt gives him a decent poke I guess, but really, he just throws mad projectiles at you, and forces you out with his anti-approach options (ftilt, Fair, Pivot grab). He has a great recovery and defensive game, and despite decent kill power, he lacks good kill set-ups. R.O.B. also has a difficult time dealing with certain strategies, including characters that out-camp him. He's an all around solid character, but not great in way that makes him high tier.
Kirby is similar to R.O.B. in that he has great range and priority. Kirby gives up the great recovery for 5 jumps, which is a pretty fair exchange if you ask me. Kirby's tilts and awesome dash grab give him great options, and the disjointedness and speed of his Bair make him an contender. He suffers against camping though, as his approach options really are limited, and his range and aerial mobility aren't the greatest. Another solid character that misses the mark of High Tier.
Lucario is such a weird character, because of the aura effect. It's hard to place him. Unfortunately, Lucario is a little on the slow side with ground moves, but his meta-game is a little underdeveloped. His dtilt is really fast, and though not completely safe, hard to punish. His ftilt might be completely safe, and unlike most other pokes, it cannot be power-shielded normally because it's two hits. Utilt is really fast as well. Coupled with the safe Fsmash and Bair, Lucario can remain relatively safe. High jump and decent movement with a solid projectile and aerial move pool, Lucario is pretty good. He doesn't have reliable kill set-ups, but Bair, Uair, Fsmash, and Aura Sphere are mostly safe, so he makes the K.O.s happen. Dair also is pretty clutch utility. If this character was always at his peak strength, he'd definitely be high tier. However, seeing as he's most powerful when he's about to die, and otherwise pretty underwhelming, he's only seeing C-Tier
Zero Suit Samus is pretty over-rrated IMO. Bair is safe on block and kills, but the set-up for Bair is pretty bad. and Plasma Whip is safe when spaced, but easy to power-shieid. Dsmash makes this character good, but it has start-up. Basically, a really patient player can overcome ZSS, simply by not running into all of her traps. A solid character with great range and traps, once again lacking tools in the approach category. C-tier.
Toon Link is a really misunderstood character with good pokes, and a great camping game. He has decent kill power, and not to shabby traps and recovery. What most players fail to understand is how vertical spacing is necessary to overcome his amazing Zair. This is a really good character, but has no dominating features which put him in the high tier.
Pit . . . this character is mad good. I think people have yet to understand just how amazing Pit is. This character has a great projectile, solid approaches, great recovery, decent weight, and is just good all around. Despite not having amazing kill power, Pit's kill moves are really good, and can rack up damage like a beast. In fact, I'd say the only reason this character isn't B-Tier, is because he suffers a lot versus the high tier character. MK, GnW, Snake, Marth, and Falco all give Pit a lot of problems, and he doesn't exactly dominate the characters below him. In my personal opinion, Pit is potentially the best character in C-Tier, and is extremely underdeveloped. Once again in my opinion, I think my brother is THE BEST PIT, and Pit's meta-game is STUPIDLY UNDERDEVELOPED. I've seen mad stuff that Pit can do that really makes me wonder why he's so much less popular at the game's development. It's probably just because MK and Snake are so unfair to him.
D.K. is pretty straight forward. Good damage, good anti-approach, good weight, good kills. His frame data is just slightly underwhelming, and he doesn't really have really amazing pokes. Other that that, DK is really solid.
Peach has the advantage of very little lag, a solid projectile, glide-tossing AND floating, and nice combos and damage. She lacks the reliable kills she needs to be better though, and coupled with her lightweight, this puts her in mid-tier.
Mario is the most underrated character right now in my opinion. This character has a beast projectile, good pokes, beast jab, beast anti-air, beast fsmash for kills, solid damage racking, decent recovery when master, etc. MK, Marth, and GnW are the only MUs that this characters really suffers against. He's very flexible, and his ability to gimp can compensate for his lack of K.O.s in some MUs. A patient Mario who has mastered his many styles of fighting can definitely perform well in tourney.
Luigi's interesting sliding mechanic lets him approaching in weird ways. He's got a beast jab, good zoning tools, and his Tornado seems to ignore the rules of spacing. Coupled with devastating kill options, he's really solid. Unfortunately, the sliding also makes some moves save on block against him. A poor ability to punish offense keeps Luigi from climbing up the ranks.
/ :shiek: I count Zelda/Sheik as one character. Anyone playing solo-Zelda against any reasonably good character is doomed to failure. Sheik is another underrated character who has excellent chains and the ability to hit the opponent many times consecutively with proper reads. Speed, coupled with excellent juggle tools and traps, and a fast projectile that deals 18 damage when charged makes Sheik a great choice for experienced players. Still, lack of kill power, defensive power, disjoints, and priority make Sheik suffer. Zelda is a good option not just to kill, but to refresh moves. Unfortunately, Zelda is a pitiful character. This puts Sheik/Zelda in the C-Tier.
D Tier
Fox, Wolf, Sonic, Ike, Bowser, Pokémon Trainer, Lucas, Ness compose my D-Tier.
Fox isn't actually a bad character. Lasers help refresh moves and rack up damage, and overwhelming ground speed with surprising grab range help the approach game as well. Unfortunately, coupled with easy gimping, underwhelming approach tools, and light-weight, Fox relies on landing very difficult to land moves on good opponents to secure kills and rack up damage. Fox can neither poke, nor punish very well. Additionally, Fox has several un-winnable MUs, due to Pikachu's chain-grab, Sheik's ftilt lock, and ZSS Dsmash lock. This puts Fox in my D-Tier.
Wolf is in a similar boat to Fox. A great projectile, coupled with a couple of good pokes and excellent punishing make Wolf pretty solid. He's also heavier than Fox, and has his own reliable kills. Bair also gives Wolf a solid zoning tool. A common question is what makes Wolf so bad with all these good qualities? The answer lies in everything gay. I always say Wolf is the worst good character in this game. He'd be viable if he didn't get ***** by pretty much every gay thing in this game. He's caught by everyone's chain-grab. In fact, he's the only space animal that gets caught in D3's chain-grab. Name any gay tactic, or any chain-grab a character can perform, and I bet you it works on Wolf. He's just heavy enough, falls just fast enough, and is just tall enough to get ***** by Brawl at large. This lands him in D-Tier.
Sonic is another of those almost decent characters. He has semi-reliable pokes, in that spin dash is a pretty solid move. Sonic can punish, and do lots of cool things. Homing attack has good mind-game utility, and gets Sonic out of juggles. The problem here is killing. If you DO NOT DODGE, Sonic cannot kill you. That's just the way it is. He has no kill moves with any kind of respectable frame data. Don't dodge, and you won't get mind-gamed into one. This plops Sonic in D-Tier.
Pokemon Trainer has recently been proven to be more competent than he is usually given credit for. However, I find Pokemon Trainer's recent success to be in that most people simply don't know the match-up. A lot of people say that Pokemon Trainer should be really good because of having three Pokemon, and this means you can almost always find a positive match-up. However, I think that logic is terribly flawed. Since you have three Pokemon and three stocks, you're going to use each Pokemon once. Most Pokemon Trainers will start with Squirtle as he's the best Pokemon, and probably A Tier individually. They also switch off Ivysaur instantly because despite beast kill power, he's extremely gimp-able if you break his zoning, and considered bottom tier. Charizard himself is mid-tier. The problem comes in the fact that even considering you might have one advantaged MU, you also have to consider that you have one or more disadvantaged MUs. If that bad MU is Squirtle or Charizard, then you're pretty much out 1.5 stocks. Obviously, this is a flaw in the character design, and lands PT in D-Tier.
Lucas has awesome kill moves, reasonable damage racking, and semi-decent pokes. He's got a decent grab range, but Fair isn't really that safe, and neither are the rest of his aerials. However, his relative defense is poor, and his recovery is punishable and gimp-able. His priority is poor, and he has no range either. Coupled with a horrible grab break, he's D-Tier.
Ness has recently shown us that he's more than meets the eye. Fair is an awesome zoning tool, Nair is extremely fast, and Bair has great power. He also gets awesome kills off the Bthrow, and has a great dash grab to secure it. Unfortunately, a lack of range and an awful recovery ends this character's career early.
Bowser lives forever, has a really good grab game, can grab from the air with SideB to increase his approach options, and has a pretty decent anti-air game. He also has an amazing UpB out of shield, which allows him to punish well, and rack up good damage. He even has frame advantage on grab release, so he has great grab game. Unfortunately, Bowser has a pretty vulnerable recovery. He also has a lame Dair, so he's susceptible to getting juggled. Also, due to his massive size and weight, he can actually get comboed, and can have a really hard time getting off a platform.
Ike is a heavyweight character with lots of kill power, but outside of his jab, he's pretty slow. His grab is also sub-par, so he's very vulnerable to shield camping. It's relatively easy to powershield his Fair and punish it. Also, his recovery is relatively gimpable.
Low Tiers E-F
The low tiers in this game are pretty below the rest of the cast. They have severe weaknesses that are not MU dependent, and cripple them from competing versus most of the cast. While the characters in E-Tier might be able to challenge the D-Tiers, the F-Tier is pretty hopeless.
E Tier
Yoshi, Samus, and Jigglypuff are my E-Tier. They all seem like they might be alright, until you figure out just how deep the weakness of these characters run.
Yoshi cannot jump out of shield, and has a longer than average shield drop. While Yoshi cannot be shield stabbed, this weakens Yoshi's defense overall. Yoshi is heavy, but his recovery is punishable. Eggs are overcome by power-shielding. Yoshi relies his great grab game, and has reasonable approaches, but lacks a powerful defense. Lastly, Yoshi has a difficult time killing a cautious opponent. Yoshi would be a solid character, but having a handicap on his shield puts him in low-tiers.
Samus is great against most of the cast . . . or rather, she would be if she could kill. Unfortunately, this character's fsmash is completely underwhelming, and you'll never kill with the other two smashes. A Dair can be avoided as a meteor, and Charge Shot is both telegraphed and underwhelming. Dtilt is about the best thing Samus has going for her as far as kills, and it's not that great. Zair is a great long range attack, and missiles are good projectiles. Samus has good combos and decent defense, but she's a little on the slow side. This makes Samus pretty bad, and lands her in my E-Tier.
This character has great mobility and multiple jumps, so she can stay in the air, but her priority isn't that great. Similar to Wario, she can weave, but she doesn't fall fast like that character. She has no projectile, and has difficulty landing K.O.s. Overall, I'm actually not sure how good this character is, but from what I've seen, and from what I can tell, Jigglypuff is pretty fail. Her super lightweight status does nothing to help her pitiful struggle in racking up damage and landing K.O.s.
F Tier
It's quite obvious that the worst characters in the game are Captain Falcon, Link, and Ganondorf. Ironically, if Zelda was a solo character, she'd be here too. No love for LOZ.
This character can't really kill you if you don't mess up, and can't really do much of anything. Dash attack punishes and jab mix-ups will only take you so far if it's all you have. A gimp-able recovery doesn't help the matter at all. Falcon might be fast and heavy, but his advantages end there. He needs way more reward for landing a hit.
I encourage you to take a look at Ganon's frame data sometime, and then you must ask yourself why Sakurai would curse him with a pitiful grab range on top of all this. Run up to Ganon and shield, and there's nothing he can do. He's just a bunch of fail that's can't attack or defend himself.
Link has standard game-play, but you would expect him to pack way more of a punch for a supposed heavy character. Since Link has such a terrible recovery to boot, he's not really a huge contender.
Conclusion
If you actually read all of that, you might have forgotten we're talking about tiers. At any rate, this is my opinion on what the current tier list should look like. Please, rate, review, discuss, debate, etc. Here's the condensed version:
S-Tier: MK, Diddy, Snake, IC
A-Tier: Falco, Wario
B-Tier: Marth, King Dedede, Mr. Game and Watch, Pikachu, Olimar
C-Tier: R.O.B., Kirby, Lucario, Zero Suit Samus, Toon Link, Pit, Donkey Kong, Peach, Luigi, Mario, Zelda/Sheik
D-Tier: Fox, Wolf, Sonic, Ike, Bowser, Pokémon Trainer, Lucas, Ness
E-Tier: Yoshi, Samus, and Jigglypuff
F-Tier: Captain Falcon, Link, and Ganondorf
Now I know you read the thread title, and you're all like, "PIERCE! YOU?!?!?! HOW COULD YOU!?"
But the fact of the matter is, the last tier list came out around 4 months ago (it came out early June, and we're about to enter October.) I know I'm inviting stupid amounts of flame wars and dumb tiers lists with no founding (but it's okay to express your opinion, because that's what a forum is for).
This was a hot summer for Brawl. It's the second summer since Brawl's release, and the first summer where we really know some stuff about this game. Last summer, everyone was still learning, we had no idea what was going on. Then we went through a year, and we all learned, little by little. Summer broke out again, and we had some of the best Smash the world has ever seen. Genesis, GameUnicon, Evo, we just had ActiveGamers, and all our tourneys in our various regions. A LOT OF SMASHING HAS HAPPENED. We learned a lot. It was too fun, and things aren't quite the same.
Also, I'm not going to lie, I kinda like talking about Tiers. We all get upset when some noob says something really stupid, etc, but I talking about the game in an educated manner, with other educated people, and making more people educated. I mean, I could go into the SBR tier list thread and start discussion there, but it's unorganized and goes off into random tangents (like this is most likely going to do). So much has changed, and I want to talk about it with some intelligence and detail, and not really worry too much about tier list v3 right now. I mean, it's been 4 months. Nobody who matters still cares what the errors are on that one. Let's start fresh, eh?
So of course, to keep some semblance of organization, I'm going to put up a rough outline of what I think the tier list should look like based off the current meta-game right now. THIS DISCUSSION WILL BE BASED OFF OF THIS LIST! Of course you can agree, disagree, relate it to the SBR Tier List, state your own opinion, etc. But for the time being, we aren't going to have EVERYONE post their own tier list, and try and discuss all of them. It's just too much, and it's how the discussion gets derailed. Also, please note, that when I say "rough outline" it means that. I'm not going to order every character in the game myself. It's impossible. I don't know enough about the game, all by myself, to put an exact order for every character. I've tried, but I would fiddle, and miff, and be unsure, and it's not even worth it. This list shows where characters fall relatively to each other.
The last thing I have to say before we begin is this: people often say that Brawl isn't a very balanced game, but I'd like to disagree. I think that my S-tier is pretty **** broken, and that the characters in B-Tier and higher are a bit over powered. But I think that many people don't take the fact that there's 39 characters in the game into consideration. On the overall spectrum, yes, Brawl gets pretty stupid. Comparing MK to Ganondorf is dumb, and their relative power is so vastly different that they may as well not be in the same game. However, I have broken the game up into three inclusive tiers, High, Mid, and Low. Within these tiers, I would find the characters balanced, relative to the other characters.
FINAL NOTE: I wouldn't recommend reading the entire next section. Just read the characters you're interested in discussing and jump to the conclusion. I don't reveal any secrets about any characters, it's just an overview.
My Tier OutLine Please note that the characters are not ordered within the tiers.
High Tiers S-B
These are the competative characters. They're a notch above the rest, and you should know most of them well, as they're the ones you will see counting in tournament.
S Tier
I think top 4 right now is easily MK, Diddy, Snake, IC in no particular order. That would be my S-tier. I greatly enjoy this, because it makes the top of the game very dynamic. I'm really loving the Brawl Metagame right now.
MK is MK. I'm not really going to say much about him, because he's been discussed enough already, but it's clear that he's top 4 in the game. However, I'd like to note that despite his powerful offensive and defensive options, I am beginning to doubt if he is the best character in the game. Diddy Kong is really stupid. Many of you might say, "But Pierce, you're biased, you train with ADHD." That's true, but I'm not dumb, and I'm really good at analyzing characters. Diddy Kong is a very interesting character, in that I find he has a lot of the same broken characteristics of MK (minus the 5 jumps). He never needs to commit to an approach. He has a modifiable grabbing approach to bypass shields. He has an attack which, when it hits you, reduces your options to ZERO and then FOUR, and it combos into itself. There is a lot of stuff I know about Diddy, but I'm not going to make this all about Diddy Kong. If you want to learn more about Diddy Kong, please await my new thread in the Diddy boards coming out sometime this week titled, "Diddy Kong is the best character in the game." Needless to repeat, I think that right now, Diddy Kong is the best character in the game. Ice Climbers are also mad broken. They have a projectile, which encourages your opponents to approach. De-synched Blizzard is a stupidly solid wall. Their Uair deals massive damage and combos, solidifying their Blizzard wall. They have good kill power and priority. And of course, the chain-grab. As our IC players are perfecting their craft, one grab is becoming the loss of a stock. And let's face it, it's not that hard to get grabbed in Brawl. With pivot grabbed, and de-synched techniques, all an IC player needs is for you to mess up once, or to read one dodge, and GGs. This is a stupidly devastating character.Fortunately, both Diddy and ICs have an extremely exploitable weakness. Diddy, though solid without them, is not nearly as devastating without his bananas. ICs can have Nana killed off since she is controlled by an AI when separated, and this leaves Popo vastly weakened. MK does not suffer from such an exploitable weakness.
Lastly in S-Tier, we have Snake. Now, I used to love Snake, but recently, he's been frustrating me. The reason for this is because I'm realizing that Snake's stupid weight class alone increases virtually every single one of his MUs by about 10 points or more. Now, that might be a no-brainer, but let's think about this for a second. I think if D3 or DK were mid-weight, or at least lower heavy weight (C. Falcon or Yoshi) that Marth would go even with these characters. But it only changes the MU by about 5 points. In the instance of Snake, he potentially has a positive MU over Marth, Diddy, and even with MK, etc, off of sheer weight class. It's a bit ridiculous. Coupled with his reliable kill power, stupid damage output, and amazing recovery, Snake is really great. Still, I think he's rank 4 in the game right now. When I look at Snake, and his move-set, I realize something. Snake really can't do anything. Snake relies on his opponent's either, A) Doing something punishable and getting punished. B) Not anticipating Dash Attack which is his only (unsafe) reliable approach. C) Hitting a grenade, or fearing it unnecessarily. and D) Letting Snake reach safe solid ground. I could write essays about Snake, but I think you get the point. For more information, check out the Snake boards.A Tier
Falco/Wario come in VERY close 5/6 (no order again). Though IC get ***** by Snake, they **** Falco, who does good against every other character listed this far. Wario also does good against every other character here, so they greatly add to the meta-game as well. We're finally starting to settle into the diversity that Melee enjoys. This is my A-Tier.
Falco is extremely good, and has S-Tier potential. He has a map wide transcended projectile, with no lag. Now someone (I think it was VaNz) said to me that lasers hold no weight in the game because of power-shielding. I greatly disagree. The reason lasers are so **** good, is BECAUSE they force an action. You must either reflect them, shield, dodge, or jump. Dodging is really not that great of an option, and not every character has a reflector (plus Falco has an amazing reflector), so that leaves you with shielding and jumping. For a character who doesn't really have disjointed normals, Falco has really great priority, and he can get around really fast with absurd traps, follow ups, and actual combos. Couple this with his chaingrab, and he's definitely a beast of a character. Falco outright beats MK on FD. The only reason I don't give Falco the S-Tier ranking is because he suffers from a gimp-able recovery, and has issues with certain characters lower on the tier list. However, I think that if you were to put Falco in S-Tier on your tier list, it would be fair. Wario got a LOT of hype last season, and many, many players picked him up. He is fast, he is not large, he is heavy, he can kill, he wracks up great damage, and fart might end your stock at 40%. To top it off, he has bite, which means that he can approach you from the air safely even if you're shielding. This amount of attack power, plus defense power qualifies Wario as an A-Tier character. Wario just barely misses my S-Tier, because like Falco, he has an awesome but gimpable recovery. Additionally, he has an exploitable grab release that sets up kills for many characters, which almost nullifies his weight class. He also does not have disjoints despite high priority like Falco again, but unlike Falco, he doesn't have an accessible projectile. This means that in some MUs, he's forced to approach, and certain opponents can simply outfight him (Marth, Luigi, MK). Now that so many players have picked up Wario, we've discovered his weaknesses a bit better, and know how to handle this character, but doesn't stop him from being top notch and A-Tier.B Tier
Marth, D3, GnW, Pikachu, Olimar make up my B-Tier. These characters rarely have un-winnable MUs, and most of them can compete with the characters above.
Marth is viable against all characters listed this far. Marth is everything I could ever want in a character. He has speed, range, combos, a great camp game, solid recovery, kill set-ups, shield breaker, a great grab game, and if you tipper a smash attack, awesome kill power. He's just mad good. His low weight class coupled with lack of a projectile means that this lightweight character is forced to approach in some MUs, and that's what landed him in my B-Tier. Still, I wouldn't grudge you if you put Marth in the same tier as Falco and Wario. D3 is suffering now, because Diddy and IC are getting popular, and Pikachu + Olimar give him trouble, and there's always MK, but D3 is still a solid character. His recovery is punishable, but good at getting him back to the stage, and he's got 4 jumps. Aside from this, absolutely beast grab range plus major damage (guaranteed at least 16 or 18 percent regardless of everything) off a grab makes him really solid. Ftilt is a great tool to approach with. Bair is HUGELY disjointed, active forever, and extremely interrupt-able, making for what I think is the most annoying aerial in the whole game. Inhale allows D3 to grab from the air. Utilt kills pretty solidly, and D3 himself is very heavy. This is the make-up of a B-tier character. GnW is a really great and unique character, that suffers a lot in many of these MUs. I'm not sure how he does vs. ICs, but he gets wrecked by Marth, MK, Snake, and Diddy. Still, I label him B-Tier because he wrecks most of the cast below him in a way that he is clearly above. Like Diddy Kong, he's momentum based due the the fact that his lag is toward the beginning of his moves and not the end. This makes it hard for him to get started, but easy to keep going once he hits you once. Of course, against some characters like Marth, MK, and Diddy Kong, he finds it extremely hard to ever get started. Additionally, since he has low start-up, GnW is very vulnerable to pokes. Still, if the GnW gets in, it's amazing amounts of damage, and of course, GnW has great kill power, and good set-ups into kills. Pikachu suffers in similar ways, but always seems to find ways to deal with bad MUs (either through camping or CG). I don't know enough about Pikachu to really go into detail, but for more information, check out the Pikachu board. Olimar does well against most characters here as well, though out of my B-Tier, he is the least dominating over the cast below, but still flexible enough to fight all characters listed thus far. His grab and reliable kills and damage still make him B-tier material. I know a lot about Olimar, but there isn't much to say. He camps like a beast, and you want to curse when he plucks a purple. He's good.Mid Tiers C-D
I feel like most of the characters can fight each other, and that's reflected by the larger mid-tiers. I really like the C-Tier because I feel like characters here will take you as your skill will let you go, but no further.
C Tier
I think C-Tier is: R.O.B., Kirby, Lucario, Zero Suit Samus, Toon Link, Pit, Donkey Kong, Peach, Luigi, Mario, and Zelda/Sheik
R.O.B. is an interesting character, because he doesn't really have any safe pokes. His DownB gives him decent approaches, and dtilt gives him a decent poke I guess, but really, he just throws mad projectiles at you, and forces you out with his anti-approach options (ftilt, Fair, Pivot grab). He has a great recovery and defensive game, and despite decent kill power, he lacks good kill set-ups. R.O.B. also has a difficult time dealing with certain strategies, including characters that out-camp him. He's an all around solid character, but not great in way that makes him high tier. Kirby is similar to R.O.B. in that he has great range and priority. Kirby gives up the great recovery for 5 jumps, which is a pretty fair exchange if you ask me. Kirby's tilts and awesome dash grab give him great options, and the disjointedness and speed of his Bair make him an contender. He suffers against camping though, as his approach options really are limited, and his range and aerial mobility aren't the greatest. Another solid character that misses the mark of High Tier. Lucario is such a weird character, because of the aura effect. It's hard to place him. Unfortunately, Lucario is a little on the slow side with ground moves, but his meta-game is a little underdeveloped. His dtilt is really fast, and though not completely safe, hard to punish. His ftilt might be completely safe, and unlike most other pokes, it cannot be power-shielded normally because it's two hits. Utilt is really fast as well. Coupled with the safe Fsmash and Bair, Lucario can remain relatively safe. High jump and decent movement with a solid projectile and aerial move pool, Lucario is pretty good. He doesn't have reliable kill set-ups, but Bair, Uair, Fsmash, and Aura Sphere are mostly safe, so he makes the K.O.s happen. Dair also is pretty clutch utility. If this character was always at his peak strength, he'd definitely be high tier. However, seeing as he's most powerful when he's about to die, and otherwise pretty underwhelming, he's only seeing C-Tier Zero Suit Samus is pretty over-rrated IMO. Bair is safe on block and kills, but the set-up for Bair is pretty bad. and Plasma Whip is safe when spaced, but easy to power-shieid. Dsmash makes this character good, but it has start-up. Basically, a really patient player can overcome ZSS, simply by not running into all of her traps. A solid character with great range and traps, once again lacking tools in the approach category. C-tier.Toon Link is a really misunderstood character with good pokes, and a great camping game. He has decent kill power, and not to shabby traps and recovery. What most players fail to understand is how vertical spacing is necessary to overcome his amazing Zair. This is a really good character, but has no dominating features which put him in the high tier. Pit . . . this character is mad good. I think people have yet to understand just how amazing Pit is. This character has a great projectile, solid approaches, great recovery, decent weight, and is just good all around. Despite not having amazing kill power, Pit's kill moves are really good, and can rack up damage like a beast. In fact, I'd say the only reason this character isn't B-Tier, is because he suffers a lot versus the high tier character. MK, GnW, Snake, Marth, and Falco all give Pit a lot of problems, and he doesn't exactly dominate the characters below him. In my personal opinion, Pit is potentially the best character in C-Tier, and is extremely underdeveloped. Once again in my opinion, I think my brother is THE BEST PIT, and Pit's meta-game is STUPIDLY UNDERDEVELOPED. I've seen mad stuff that Pit can do that really makes me wonder why he's so much less popular at the game's development. It's probably just because MK and Snake are so unfair to him. D.K. is pretty straight forward. Good damage, good anti-approach, good weight, good kills. His frame data is just slightly underwhelming, and he doesn't really have really amazing pokes. Other that that, DK is really solid. Peach has the advantage of very little lag, a solid projectile, glide-tossing AND floating, and nice combos and damage. She lacks the reliable kills she needs to be better though, and coupled with her lightweight, this puts her in mid-tier.Mario is the most underrated character right now in my opinion. This character has a beast projectile, good pokes, beast jab, beast anti-air, beast fsmash for kills, solid damage racking, decent recovery when master, etc. MK, Marth, and GnW are the only MUs that this characters really suffers against. He's very flexible, and his ability to gimp can compensate for his lack of K.O.s in some MUs. A patient Mario who has mastered his many styles of fighting can definitely perform well in tourney. Luigi's interesting sliding mechanic lets him approaching in weird ways. He's got a beast jab, good zoning tools, and his Tornado seems to ignore the rules of spacing. Coupled with devastating kill options, he's really solid. Unfortunately, the sliding also makes some moves save on block against him. A poor ability to punish offense keeps Luigi from climbing up the ranks. / :shiek: I count Zelda/Sheik as one character. Anyone playing solo-Zelda against any reasonably good character is doomed to failure. Sheik is another underrated character who has excellent chains and the ability to hit the opponent many times consecutively with proper reads. Speed, coupled with excellent juggle tools and traps, and a fast projectile that deals 18 damage when charged makes Sheik a great choice for experienced players. Still, lack of kill power, defensive power, disjoints, and priority make Sheik suffer. Zelda is a good option not just to kill, but to refresh moves. Unfortunately, Zelda is a pitiful character. This puts Sheik/Zelda in the C-Tier.D Tier
Fox, Wolf, Sonic, Ike, Bowser, Pokémon Trainer, Lucas, Ness compose my D-Tier.
Fox isn't actually a bad character. Lasers help refresh moves and rack up damage, and overwhelming ground speed with surprising grab range help the approach game as well. Unfortunately, coupled with easy gimping, underwhelming approach tools, and light-weight, Fox relies on landing very difficult to land moves on good opponents to secure kills and rack up damage. Fox can neither poke, nor punish very well. Additionally, Fox has several un-winnable MUs, due to Pikachu's chain-grab, Sheik's ftilt lock, and ZSS Dsmash lock. This puts Fox in my D-Tier. Wolf is in a similar boat to Fox. A great projectile, coupled with a couple of good pokes and excellent punishing make Wolf pretty solid. He's also heavier than Fox, and has his own reliable kills. Bair also gives Wolf a solid zoning tool. A common question is what makes Wolf so bad with all these good qualities? The answer lies in everything gay. I always say Wolf is the worst good character in this game. He'd be viable if he didn't get ***** by pretty much every gay thing in this game. He's caught by everyone's chain-grab. In fact, he's the only space animal that gets caught in D3's chain-grab. Name any gay tactic, or any chain-grab a character can perform, and I bet you it works on Wolf. He's just heavy enough, falls just fast enough, and is just tall enough to get ***** by Brawl at large. This lands him in D-Tier. Sonic is another of those almost decent characters. He has semi-reliable pokes, in that spin dash is a pretty solid move. Sonic can punish, and do lots of cool things. Homing attack has good mind-game utility, and gets Sonic out of juggles. The problem here is killing. If you DO NOT DODGE, Sonic cannot kill you. That's just the way it is. He has no kill moves with any kind of respectable frame data. Don't dodge, and you won't get mind-gamed into one. This plops Sonic in D-Tier. Pokemon Trainer has recently been proven to be more competent than he is usually given credit for. However, I find Pokemon Trainer's recent success to be in that most people simply don't know the match-up. A lot of people say that Pokemon Trainer should be really good because of having three Pokemon, and this means you can almost always find a positive match-up. However, I think that logic is terribly flawed. Since you have three Pokemon and three stocks, you're going to use each Pokemon once. Most Pokemon Trainers will start with Squirtle as he's the best Pokemon, and probably A Tier individually. They also switch off Ivysaur instantly because despite beast kill power, he's extremely gimp-able if you break his zoning, and considered bottom tier. Charizard himself is mid-tier. The problem comes in the fact that even considering you might have one advantaged MU, you also have to consider that you have one or more disadvantaged MUs. If that bad MU is Squirtle or Charizard, then you're pretty much out 1.5 stocks. Obviously, this is a flaw in the character design, and lands PT in D-Tier. Lucas has awesome kill moves, reasonable damage racking, and semi-decent pokes. He's got a decent grab range, but Fair isn't really that safe, and neither are the rest of his aerials. However, his relative defense is poor, and his recovery is punishable and gimp-able. His priority is poor, and he has no range either. Coupled with a horrible grab break, he's D-Tier. Ness has recently shown us that he's more than meets the eye. Fair is an awesome zoning tool, Nair is extremely fast, and Bair has great power. He also gets awesome kills off the Bthrow, and has a great dash grab to secure it. Unfortunately, a lack of range and an awful recovery ends this character's career early. Bowser lives forever, has a really good grab game, can grab from the air with SideB to increase his approach options, and has a pretty decent anti-air game. He also has an amazing UpB out of shield, which allows him to punish well, and rack up good damage. He even has frame advantage on grab release, so he has great grab game. Unfortunately, Bowser has a pretty vulnerable recovery. He also has a lame Dair, so he's susceptible to getting juggled. Also, due to his massive size and weight, he can actually get comboed, and can have a really hard time getting off a platform. Ike is a heavyweight character with lots of kill power, but outside of his jab, he's pretty slow. His grab is also sub-par, so he's very vulnerable to shield camping. It's relatively easy to powershield his Fair and punish it. Also, his recovery is relatively gimpable.Low Tiers E-F
The low tiers in this game are pretty below the rest of the cast. They have severe weaknesses that are not MU dependent, and cripple them from competing versus most of the cast. While the characters in E-Tier might be able to challenge the D-Tiers, the F-Tier is pretty hopeless.
E Tier
Yoshi, Samus, and Jigglypuff are my E-Tier. They all seem like they might be alright, until you figure out just how deep the weakness of these characters run.
Yoshi cannot jump out of shield, and has a longer than average shield drop. While Yoshi cannot be shield stabbed, this weakens Yoshi's defense overall. Yoshi is heavy, but his recovery is punishable. Eggs are overcome by power-shielding. Yoshi relies his great grab game, and has reasonable approaches, but lacks a powerful defense. Lastly, Yoshi has a difficult time killing a cautious opponent. Yoshi would be a solid character, but having a handicap on his shield puts him in low-tiers. Samus is great against most of the cast . . . or rather, she would be if she could kill. Unfortunately, this character's fsmash is completely underwhelming, and you'll never kill with the other two smashes. A Dair can be avoided as a meteor, and Charge Shot is both telegraphed and underwhelming. Dtilt is about the best thing Samus has going for her as far as kills, and it's not that great. Zair is a great long range attack, and missiles are good projectiles. Samus has good combos and decent defense, but she's a little on the slow side. This makes Samus pretty bad, and lands her in my E-Tier. This character has great mobility and multiple jumps, so she can stay in the air, but her priority isn't that great. Similar to Wario, she can weave, but she doesn't fall fast like that character. She has no projectile, and has difficulty landing K.O.s. Overall, I'm actually not sure how good this character is, but from what I've seen, and from what I can tell, Jigglypuff is pretty fail. Her super lightweight status does nothing to help her pitiful struggle in racking up damage and landing K.O.s. F Tier
It's quite obvious that the worst characters in the game are Captain Falcon, Link, and Ganondorf. Ironically, if Zelda was a solo character, she'd be here too. No love for LOZ.
This character can't really kill you if you don't mess up, and can't really do much of anything. Dash attack punishes and jab mix-ups will only take you so far if it's all you have. A gimp-able recovery doesn't help the matter at all. Falcon might be fast and heavy, but his advantages end there. He needs way more reward for landing a hit. I encourage you to take a look at Ganon's frame data sometime, and then you must ask yourself why Sakurai would curse him with a pitiful grab range on top of all this. Run up to Ganon and shield, and there's nothing he can do. He's just a bunch of fail that's can't attack or defend himself. Link has standard game-play, but you would expect him to pack way more of a punch for a supposed heavy character. Since Link has such a terrible recovery to boot, he's not really a huge contender.Conclusion
If you actually read all of that, you might have forgotten we're talking about tiers. At any rate, this is my opinion on what the current tier list should look like. Please, rate, review, discuss, debate, etc. Here's the condensed version:
S-Tier: MK, Diddy, Snake, IC
A-Tier: Falco, Wario
B-Tier: Marth, King Dedede, Mr. Game and Watch, Pikachu, Olimar
C-Tier: R.O.B., Kirby, Lucario, Zero Suit Samus, Toon Link, Pit, Donkey Kong, Peach, Luigi, Mario, Zelda/Sheik
D-Tier: Fox, Wolf, Sonic, Ike, Bowser, Pokémon Trainer, Lucas, Ness
E-Tier: Yoshi, Samus, and Jigglypuff
F-Tier: Captain Falcon, Link, and Ganondorf
