Official Viability Ratings v2 | Competitive Impressions

[Antonykun]

If there's one thing that bothers me is the notion that Luigi is braindead. Not only is that incredibly disrespectful to Luigi mains but it also Implies that mid level Luigi are as good as high level Luigi mains.

I'm not going to disagree with the notion that Luigi is the easiest Smash 4 character, he is someone who's very design allows him to essentially bypass fundamental mental challenges in reading your opponents disadvantage state in guaranteed damage and kill set ups off a throw, but this does not mean that he is so astonishingly easy that he requires no skill to be good at and can be played without having to think.

 

[Trifroze]

Luigi is only braindead if you give him a banana and double all his mobility stats.

 

[Antonykun]

Luigi is only braindead if you give him a banana and double all his mobility stats.

Looking at 1.0.4 and comparing him to 1.0.6 I feel comfortable saying how dumb diddy was. Like wow this is a character who was actually incredibly deep with many interesting nuances, but none of that mattered because got stupid amounts of reward from Grabs and Up airs. I feel legit mad at myself for hoping he didn't get nerfed. Likewise I feel really happy for the current version of the monkey who actually has to tap into his own complexity.

 

[outfoxd]

Looking at 1.0.4 and comparing him to 1.0.6 I feel comfortable saying how dumb diddy was. Like wow this is a character who was actually incredibly deep with many interesting nuances, but none of that mattered because got stupid amounts of reward from Grabs and Up airs. I feel legit mad at myself for hoping he didn't get nerfed. Likewise I feel really happy for the current version of the monkey who actually has to tap into his own complexity.

Watching Zinoto work with diverse banana setups and overwhelming fundamentals post patch clued me in to how great the patch was for the character's flash and ingenuity. Hell, we have a mid to high level player that has gotten repute around here for nailing kills with Up b to make up for the loss of kill options.

Less kill options in general breeds ingenuity. Playing DH has taught me that. I have to jump through some ridiculous hoops to end stocks.

 

[DunnoBro]

Luigi actually has a lot more depth and nuances that aren't allowed to come out because why try baiting air dodges into shoryuken when you could just take the free 30% and just kill off the next 1 or 2 grabs guaranteed. And why go for an edgeguard despite superb edgeguarding tools because the likelihood of getting a grab covering their ledge options is higher and this is consistently more helpful than going for an edgeguard.

"Braindead" is an exaggeration to convey the sense of simplicity though. No one's saying inherent player skill is divorced from the character. But he's very reminiscent of pre-patch diddy in that he has polarizing option selects between just a few options.

Having a good mu vs pre-patch diddy(according to zero) should tell us something.

 

[outfoxd]

Luigi actually has a lot more depth and nuances that aren't allowed to come out because why try baiting air dodges into shoryuken when you could just take the free 30% and just kill off the next 1 or 2 grabs guaranteed. And why go for an edgeguard despite superb edgeguarding tools because the likelihood of getting a grab covering their ledge options is higher and this is consistently more helpful than going for an edgeguard.

"Braindead" is an exaggeration to convey the sense of simplicity though. No one's saying inherent player skill is divorced from the character. But he's very reminiscent of pre-patch diddy in that he has polarizing option selects between just a few options.

Having a good mu vs pre-patch diddy(according to zero) should tell us something.

I run into this with Ness, though only around kill percents. Why should he open up anymore if he can just wait for one wrong move and finish with a grab?

The sheer potency of grabs this game seem partly responsible for this centralization. For certain characters They're a Swiss Army Knife of options.

 

[Nobie]

This brings up an interesting question. How often do the right kinds of nerfs actually expand a character's meta, because they no longer have a crutch to rely on?

 

[TriTails]

By that logic then all other grab set-up chars take two reads. One for the grab then one for the follow-up. Either way, luigi still is more guaranteed. (And he's also one of the easier characters to get grabs with)

Uh. Yeah. It's just the reads are generally easier (Landing a 20 frame smash attack is harder and require better reads rather than a F8 dash grab, no matter if the range reaches almost 1/4th of the FD).

Yes. Us Luigis HAVE to land the grab. One read. THEN we have to react to people's DI. Two reads. That's how we work. Isn't it the same for any other characters who have a kill setup that can be messed up by proper DI? It's just people are still pretty green on reaction time + DI correctly that make us look like playing in a flowchart, when in reality, playing as such is a death sentence in competitive play.

It also depends on the MU you are playing. With proper reads, characters like Ganon can be awfully easy to be grabbed, when characters like MK or Rosalina can be hell to get grabs. I believe there's more to Luigi than just being a grab machine that can shoot fire. Had my playsytle being too centered on grabs, I'd get my *** whooped by FG players (FG players on 3DS are legit pretty good now. IDK maybe it's just me. But any decent player should be beating a Luigi fishing for grabs).

Have you seen Boss vs Hart's Sheik BTW? I saw that and I see Boss getting his grabs shorthopped or spotdodged. I rarely see him taking to the air with shorthops at all, when they are very very useful on combating jumpy and spotdodging characters (N-air combos to everything). Maybe you can ask him what he think about shorthopping? Because Mr. CC seem to use it a lot.

Oh great. My mind trailed off again :/.

Luigi actually has a lot more depth and nuances that aren't allowed to come out because why try baiting air dodges into shoryuken when you could just take the free 30% and just kill off the next 1 or 2 grabs guaranteed.

Wait a second. WHAT!?

Getting FJP literally means you're killing people at like 60% and possibly lower with rage AND get free 25% guaranteed AND set them up for juggling with a godly U-smash even if you don't kill them straight away! WHY are you keeping in a F8 kill move that deals mountain of damage and knockback AND not stale your other moves AND is infinitely more guaranteed than a throw combo? Like, D-throw kill setups don't even kill below 100% and are not very guaranteed unless you're willing to sacrifice power for precision (Cyclone) or read a person's DI out of a throw (B-air).

I run into this with Ness, though only around kill percents. Why should he open up anymore if he can just wait for one wrong move and finish with a grab?

Because unlike Luigi's kill setups, there's no escaping from the B-throw once he laid his hands on ya. In Luigi's case it's actually better to go straight for a kill move if you can rather than a grab. Ness' can go for B-throw all day due to his smashes not killing as early or are slow. Luigi's smashes can kill earlier than his grab setups and are reliable as well.

 

[Jabejazz]

I think character difficulty is a touchy subject, because everyone will have their character bias, and nobody has a clear idea of what it really means. Especially when it's not only hard to play, but "hard to master".

I see difficulty as the skill floor; or how much effort and time do you need to put into the character before you see consistent rewards.

In that sense, I feel characters like Dedede, Mario, Falcon and Luigi are definitely on the low difficulty, as grabs naturally chain into something else, and racking up damage feels extremely natural. On a low level, these characters do extremely well, because their rewards are obvious, and really good.

On the other hand, Sheik/Falco/Pikachu are more technical and their follow-ups aren't exactly as obvious. At a low level, it isn't surprising to see these characters do poorly (and in the case of Falco, at a high level as well, but for different reasons), because without a proper knowledge of technical inputs or combo trees, these characters simply won't perform well.

If your character thrives on hard reads to be successful, he isn't hard to play. He's just bad.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I don't really agree with all of this but it fits the current topic anyway.

I think this list is kinda ... bad tbh. Peach may be harder to master than other characters but in no way should she be on the same level as Shulk and Ryu. There is absolutely nothing about Fox that makes him even remotely difficult to play. There isn't a whole lot of precision required for that character, same with Pac-Man. Wario, ZSS and Marth aren't hard to pick up either ... I dunno, this just looks like a lot of random / guesstimated stuff that doesn't make sense. A lot of those "hard to use" characters aren't actually hard to use but just ... bad - Samus, DDD, M2, ...

[collapse="imo"]* Hard to use because strategically complex:
* Hard to use because some key mechanics are difficult to execute: [major gap]
* Kinda hard because not very straightforward:
* Awkward to play at first, usually because of mobility properties:
* Characters that require some precision:
* Not actually hard to play, just bad:

* Easy as ****:
* Not super easy but not actually hard to get the hang of: [/collapse]

 

[Shaya]

If you consider Smash game machinations similar to RPS (attack > grab > shield > attack), then Luigi (and pre-patch diddy, and ice climbers) are a character who forgoes playing rock ever because all the reward required for victory comes from just one of them.

"100%" vs "66%". You'll manage to shoot fireballs a few times to make up some quota. I'm sure there's some crude analogies one can make to elude that is brain dead, or rather less complex decisions are required to achieve results. That doesn't mean Luigi cannot put in 100%, or that he can succeed in all match ups at a low throughput, but what I'm trying to say is that he CAN succeed in MOST match ups that way. Poor mobility, exploitable recovery; very few characters are able to match up unless their attacks beat shields and fireballs.

But I speak to tournament going Luigi users. Some are prideful (the extra good ones), some will only complain about Sheik/bad mus as a "defense", the rest will express how dumb/easy the character is to succeed with.
If you want to be the 100% Luigi, go ahead. In tournament if you aren't good at the Scissors/Paper you aren't beating anybody, the rest doesn't matter enough.

... ZSS aren't hard to pick up either ... I dunno,

Alright, buddy. I'm glad you dunno~ But I do know this is a trap.
She has a decent amount stuff at the base of her though ("i.e. mindless mashing on wifi winnable").

 

[bc1910]

Speaking of Duck Hunt's viability and extending this to the viability of Sm4sh's newcomers in general, has anyone else noticed how slightly fewer newcomers than usual are considered top or high tier in this game?

We have 18 newcomers overall, the same as Brawl. Now I know that as a percentage of the roster we have the fewest newcomers ever (18 newcomers added to 37 veterans), which I'm sure has an effect on their tier positions by virtue of the newcomers having more competition than ever before. Despite this though, there are still slightly fewer newcomers considered better than mid tier.

Customs off, the viable newcomer tier list looks like this for me...

Top tier:
High tier:
Arguably viable:

...with everyone else being mid tier or below, and many of those characters (Palutena, Wii Fit, Robin, even Shulk) have been considered bottom 5 in the game. Obviously this is just my opinion but it should be pretty similar to common opinion. But yeah, 4 out of 18 newcomers being solidly high tier+ is a somewhat low number.

Compare this to Brawl's latest tier list:

God tier:
Top tier:
High tier:
Arguably viable:

The arguable viability depends on your cutoff point. They probably weren't viable to be honest but I don't know enough about Brawl to say. A lot of those characters continue to do well in tournament with Seagull's Wolf performing very well at SmashCon recently (he got 5th I think). Regardless, there was probably a larger number of viable newcomers in Brawl, particularly top tiers, and of course we all know about MK.

Melee is the same:

Top tier:
High tier:
Arguably viable:

Only 6/14 here so Sm4sh is comparable in terms of raw numbers, but the newcomers absolutely killed it in terms of being top tiers. Of the game's 6 top tiers (Fox + Puff are the veterans), 4 of them were newcomers. Though in fairness the other 8 newcomers besides maybe Ganondorf were pretty garbage in Melee and Sm4sh's unviable newcomers aren't actually bad characters for the most part.

I don't think there's a massive difference in newcomer tier position with Sm4sh but I think it is there, and in particular there are fewer top tier newcomers than usual.

 

[Ghostbone]

Tbh every character in this game is easy.

Shulk (and Ryu cos inputs) being the exceptions.
Like smash4 is almost literally d-throw > uair: the fighter, in that most characters are homogenized. (they're mostly just slight variations on the same theme, especially within the top tiers)

Anyway, difficulty in a competitive game is meaningless because difficulty generally refers to how hard it is to win, but that's literally just the tier list.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Alright, buddy. I'm glad you dunno~ But I do know this is a trap.
She has a decent amount stuff at the base of her though ("i.e. mindless mashing on wifi winnable").

It ain't a trap though. Like, what's actually advanced about playing ZSS other than having the reaction times to get upB OoS down?

 

[Shaya]

Having only straight horizontal lines for hitbox animations. Usually at around shoulder height on a human character. Has like twice the sh height of everyone else [that's good] with moves suffering a similar shpiel in the air.
I'd say that's more tech skill than reaction speed, although your definitions could be expansive.

But now you've gone from "easy to pick up" to "[not] advanced". Seems like a trap. I thought you said you've played this character?
>> I thought you said you've played this character? << This sprung the trap =(

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I play all characters.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Tbh every character in this game is easy.

Shulk (and Ryu cos inputs) being the exceptions.
Like smash4 is almost literally d-throw > uair: the fighter, in that most characters are homogenized. (they're mostly just slight variations on the same theme, especially within the top tiers)

Anyway, difficulty in a competitive game is meaningless because difficulty generally refers to how hard it is to win, but that's literally just the tier list.

Could it be just because the meta is not developed enough yet?

 

[NachoOfCheese]

Like smash4 is almost literally d-throw > uair: the fighter,

I don't think you're playing Smash 4 right...

 

[Minordeth]

Yeah, no characters in Smash are truly like, difficult to play as - at least in comparison to other fighting games. I mean, we have no Venom from Guilty Gear with weird floating pool ball set ups being integral to his game, and even though Rosaluma is a good starter puppet archetype, she is nowhere near as difficult to get a grasp of as basically any other marionette character. And we don't have an Ivy from Soul Calibur fame to make us tear our hair out.

The only reason Ryu is difficult to play as is because they had to map Street Fighter to dual-attack inputs. I think Ryu is actually harder to play in Smash than in Street Fighter. I mean, I could actually win with Ryu in the early 90's via being a button mashing scrub, as opposed to getting straight bodied by your run-o-the-mill FG player. And I've taken people's money in SF. In the arcades and online. As an adult. Smash Ryu is a humbling beast.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Could it be just because the meta is not developed enough yet?

No, I don't think so. The "homogenized" comment kinda nails it imo - you know how to play Pikachu? Then you also have a 90% of Fox' basics down as well. If you know what do as Diddy it's not very hard to pick up Sheik or Captain Falcon from there.

 

[Jabejazz]

Could it be just because the meta is not developed enough yet?

Granted that there are probably a few intricacies that have yet to be discovered, the game's skill floor isn't particularly high.

 

[PUK]

Hard to play doesn't mean hard to optimized.
MK, sheik, Falcon, DDK, mario, luigi; rosalina and most top tier are easy to play, but not to optimize
Pikachu, ZSS and some other are easy to optimized when you understand how they play, but learning the basis with them will take long time.
Then there is things like greninja, hard to play, hard to optimized (since no one will help you, and because it requires good inputs)

 

[Shaya]

If I can take dthrow as analogous to vertically upwards then:


to name a few characters which don't play Smash 4 right ()

But the characters who heavily go for uairs from their grab games heavily? uhh...like not many bar Falcon, Ganon, DK, ROB, Ness and... Lucario? (Falco doesn't care which aerial he uses, they all lead to fun).
Characters like ZSS, Diddy, Ike, G&W, Sheik, Robin, Oli (etc?) prefer fairs/bairs or other horizontal choices but will uair for the stock. Very few have really wide ranges of that uair being guaranteed at kill percent though.

 

[Ghostbone]

I don't think you're playing Smash 4 right...

Oh yea, sometimes I f-throw > fair, or up-throw > dair.

Same basic principle, all the good characters in this game rely on grab followups and a lot of the time, a kill out of a grab (whether it be an air-dodge trap or guaranteed)
I don't think fox is top 5 primarily for this reason, shields are too good vs him, and he's not as broken as ZSS to compensate.

 

[S_B]

Anyway does Duck Hunt even have true combos that don't rely on shenanigans with the can?

They're called "cananigans", and not really, from everything I've seen.

It may however be the case that the character was designed with cananigans to BE the source of all combos, or applying shield pressure with skeet and gunmen into grab is the "combo", in Sakurai and co's eyes...

 

[Emblem Lord]

Conversion from grab reminds me of conversion from poke to super in...well...any fighter ever.

So yeah. Homogenization is a thing.

But it occurs in all fighters. Isnt melee about converting safe aerial into sealing a stock?

3s is hit confirm to super art. SFIV is converting poke into Ultra or highly damaging EX combo.

Same **** guys.

 

[Ghostbone]

It's a lot worse in smash 4 than in Brawl or Melee

In brawl, MK plays very differently to snake plays very differently to Ice climbers plays very differently to Diddy, to Olimar, to Falco, etc.

In smash 4 the top tiers just feel like slight variations on the same theme. And the rest of the cast are mostly just weaker versions of them...

 

[BSP]

No, I don't think so. The "homogenized" comment kinda nails it imo - you know how to play Pikachu? Then you also have a 90% of Fox' basics down as well. If you know what do as Diddy it's not very hard to pick up Sheik or Captain Falcon from there.

This is the worst thing about using Pac-Man. What you learn for him aside from the very basic fundamentals doesn't apply to anyone else in the game. Converse is true too, which makes him a main or bust character IMO.

I'd say he has precision requirements with his setups and general fruit use. After all, the setups take time management + taking opponent action into account to execute properly. Fruit is easy to clash with or catch unless Pac-Man really mixed you up, and then there's the whole having no grab deal.

I'd say he's top 5 at least in character difficulty.

 

[chaos11011]

Anyway does Duck Hunt even have true combos that don't rely on shenanigans with the can?

If you don't detonate the clay pigeon right after it hits, you can get close enough and THEN detonate to follow up into basically anything. You can get a lot of easy Fairs that way and a lingering pigeon can be used for stage presence as if you get too close, it can denotate to damage you and make you follow up bait as you're getting hit.

But I guess that could be classified in the same manner as the can shenanigans

 

[Emblem Lord]

Meh. Having played 3s, Smash 4 doesnt bug me.

3s is ****ing boring lol. But also exciting. lolol

Yall are so young but there is an old capcom game called Rival Schools. In that game literally EVERY character can convert a chain combo into super so tiers come down to just how much damage they do and how good they are in neutral. Basically how good they are at getting their reward and how good the reward is. But that game is fun as hell.

 

[Shaya]

Basically the long term issue with Smash and balance tends to always be the disparity of that grab, over everything else they concoct in a character.
But the more they give characters angle adjustment on hitboxes/etc the more we get solid game play differences in characters. I think we see enough "depth" in characters like Diddy, Sheik, Greninja, Pikachu, Villager, Yoshi, ZSS, etc and I'm sure many others who haven't had enough chance (or buffs) to break the top with unique and functional game play.

But while air dodges are as strong as they are, nullifying most of the frame trap game, the amount of options characters have in a fleshed out match to differentiate themselves skillfully are pretty low. Rage is also a ****ter mechanic that dulls the extent to which we can reliably optimise ourselves. One of the few things I always find shocking when I look at brawl vids are people actually dying from one side of the map to the other at early 100%s while in S4 most moves won't be sending people to their deaths centre stage well past 150%... such a drastic "pace" changer to the game that I guess I haven't gotten over.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Basically the long term issue with Smash and balance tends to always be the disparity of that grab, over everything else they concoct in a character.
But the more they give characters angle adjustment on hitboxes/etc the more we get solid game play differences in characters. I think we see enough "depth" in characters like Diddy, Sheik, Greninja, Pikachu, Villager, Yoshi, ZSS, etc and I'm sure many others who haven't had enough chance (or buffs) to break the top with unique and functional game play.

But while air dodges are as strong as they are, nullifying most of the frame trap game, the amount of options characters have in a fleshed out match to differentiate themselves skillfully are pretty low.

Dat Tireless Wanderer tho

 

[Nate1080]

This is the worst thing about using Pac-Man. What you learn for him aside from the very basic fundamentals doesn't apply to anyone else in the game. Converse is true too, which makes him a main or bust character IMO.

I'd say he has precision requirements with his setups and general fruit use. After all, the setups take time management + taking opponent action into account to execute properly. Fruit is easy to clash with or catch unless Pac-Man really mixed you up, and then there's the whole having no grab deal.

I'd say he's top 5 at least in character difficulty.

Pac-Man isn't hard to play, he just has a weird playstyle.

If I had to compare him to anyone, I would compare him to Mega Man, another character with a weird playstyle. They both rely on thrown items and traps to take stocks

 

[oldkingcroz]

@ bc1910 :
Wanna know why newcomers aren't good in this game? Custom moves. Palutina, Wii Fit, Brawler, and Shulk all have superb customs that make them viable. Mega Man, Lucina, PAC Man, Duck Hunt, Greninja, Little Mac, Robin, Bowser Jr, and Villager get a lot out of them, as well, and might lessen the gap between mid and high tiers. Mii fighters are hardly allowed in customs off. Rosalina is the only naturally good character, and she too has top notch (albeit, non abusable) custom moves. Perhaps this game was designed to utilize custom moves...?

So of you mained a newcomer, you're pretty much **** outa luck...

 

[thehard]

Basically the long term issue with Smash and balance tends to always be the disparity of that grab, over everything else they concoct in a character.
But the more they give characters angle adjustment on hitboxes/etc the more we get solid game play differences in characters. I think we see enough "depth" in characters like Diddy, Sheik, Greninja, Pikachu, Villager, Yoshi, ZSS, etc and I'm sure many others who haven't had enough chance (or buffs) to break the top with unique and functional game play.

But while air dodges are as strong as they are, nullifying most of the frame trap game, the amount of options characters have in a fleshed out match to differentiate themselves skillfully are pretty low.

I'm surprised you think ADs are too strong. I thought most metagame-relevant characters (and borderlines) had good frame traps available to them. (Sheik, ZSS, Rosa, Mario, etc)

 

[~ Gheb ~]

This is the worst thing about using Pac-Man. What you learn for him aside from the very basic fundamentals doesn't apply to anyone else in the game. Converse is true too, which makes him a main or bust character IMO.

I'd say he has precision requirements with his setups and general fruit use. After all, the setups take time management + taking opponent action into account to execute properly. Fruit is easy to clash with or catch unless Pac-Man really mixed you up, and then there's the whole having no grab deal.

I'd say he's top 5 at least in character difficulty.

I don't think Pac-Man is very difficult to play. Most of his moves are actually incredibly straight-forward. It's really just Bonus Fruit, Hydrant and Trampoline that make Pac-Man look stranger than he actually is. All his "A"-moves though do exactly what they're expected to do.

Out of these 3 specials only the Trampoline is KIND of hard to grasp beacuse being able to force an opponent to jump is unique. Everything beyond that is basically figuring out the synergy of Hydrant + various Bonus Fruit but those aren't that hard to see and Abadango is actually using most of them on the spot. It's mostly a matter of how well opponents understand how each Fruit works. I don't think most people outside of Japan know. It's not terribly hard to figure out though, especially if you play the character yourself.

 

[Blobface]

"Brain dead" is the opposite side of "honest": you're a worse person for playing this character.

Also, 90% of smash 4 players don't even edgeguard yet, of course they're going to stick with guaranteed strings. Give it time.

 

[Ghostbone]

I'm surprised you think ADs are too strong. I thought most metagame-relevant characters (and borderlines) had good frame traps available to them. (Sheik, ZSS, Rosa, Mario, etc)

Air-dodges, like shields, are metagame defining.

They're so powerful that to be a good character you need superb options to punish people for using them. (and the mobility to chase people so you can actually trap their air-dodges)

Rolls are like this to an extent to, any character without good run speed (or some burst mobility option) will never be a true top tier contender in this game because they can't cover rolls.

 

[Minordeth]

Meh. Having played 3s, Smash 4 doesnt bug me.

3s is ****ing boring lol. But also exciting. lolol

Yall are so young but there is an old capcom game called Rival Schools. In that game literally EVERY character can convert a chain combo into super so tiers come down to just how much damage they do and how good they are in neutral. Basically how good they are at getting their reward and how good the reward is. But that game is fun as hell.

If remembering Rival Schools makes you old, then... bro. Come on. You're killing me here. I played SF2 in the arcade. I got so hype when SSF2 was released.

Smash 4 has enough character diversification at the highest levels that it's interesting. I mean, we have way more chances in this game of a Q type messing with the high tiers. It makes it all exciting.

 

[outfoxd]

If remembering Rival Schools makes you old, then... bro. Come on. You're killing me here. I played SF2 in the arcade. I got so hype when SSF2 was released.

Smash 4 has enough character diversification at the highest levels that it's interesting. I mean, we have way more chances in this game of a Q type messing with the high tiers. It makes it all exciting.

I wanna say Virtua Fighter is an example of how to retain diversity at high levels but then this is more what i heard as a member of the community than what i could play. I will say i never heard much tier rage (i started at vf5).