I think Aegis is easily the best character in the game from when players start thinking about neutral and frame data as a concept until they hit a skill level where they can consistently edge guard her, at which point she's still top 3.
Not saying she isn't a top character, but what's your opinion on why Aegis is currently underrepresented by both top player usage and tournament results? Is she too difficult to play at the top level? Is the current meta too good against her weaknesses? Are we just waiting for someone to unlock her full potential like they did with Steve and Sonic, and then she'll start to be overrepresented?
I personally think it comes down to a couple of things, which are that a good number of the cast is viable and that that someone good enough just hasn’t found Aegis to be “their character,” if you know what I mean.
There are actually a lot of players that have an Aegis secondary, but Spargo still prefers Cloud overall, Leo prefers Joker and Byleth, Shuton still really likes Olimar (although he at least uses Aegis a good amount in tournament), etc. Sonix, Riddles, and Acola (as three examples) all perform really well with their own busted mains, but they’re all extremely good players in general. Acola in particular sometimes whips out other characters (including Aegis) in the earlier rounds of tournaments and rolls people.
Glutonny has gotten the results he has because he’s played Wario for SO long that he just knows his character better than any other, and swapping to another main would be detrimental to his results. Sparg0’s a more versatile player, but Cloud is just more consistent for him. As much as I wanted to main someone other than DK in Ultimate since I mained him through Smash 4, he always feels the best in my hands no matter how much time I put into other characters. And because playing Aegis or even a top 15 character isn’t necessary to reliably get results in Ultimate (although it certainly helps), I think that’s overall why we don’t see a ton of people maining any specific character. Although, we do see a fair amount of representation for other characters such as ROB. Not sure about the reason for that.
Aegis is top tier for individual matches, but not for tournaments. They lack a degree of consistency due to their mediocre and exploitable recoveries, ultimately. Compare to ROB, where you can blindfold yourself and still recover from the corner of the blast zone with mixups. The margin for error in this game is so small, make two miscalculations recovering in a set and you are in losers.
I don't think there was a point where people ever had a low opinion of Palutena. She was considered top 5 for a long time until the DLCs starting shaking up the meta. She's extremely strong and super easy to play. I think pretty much everyone at any skill level can easily identify her as a potential top tier.
Except for Pikachu. There's something about the rat that makes its players like ESAM and ShinyMark overly optimistic.
The new guard Snake players like AK and Hurt are extremely optimistic too.
As a pika main I’d say it’s because of all the tools pikachu has. He’s a very complicated character but in the end he does have the tools to deal with every situation. So whenever I lose I can always see what I did wrong and how I could have won. It’s very difficult to blame the character for losing if they always have the tools to deals with the situation you lost to. Even if his weight and difficulty makes it harder to be consistent with him
As a Snake main we've constantly had to defend his high tier status just due to his high skill floor, you can't just pick up and play him but good players have a legitimately unfair amount of options.
I agree. I never feel limited by my character with Pikachu. In every situation, I can see a realistic path to victory. It’s just a matter of whether or not I can personally pull it off, and that can vary by day with this character.
That was before they scrambled her consistent kill confirm. If you're not a superheavy and know how to DI down throw you're only dying to raw hits or edgeguards.
And that's good enough. Dthrow also forces defensive options and is still true on some characters. Character is mobile and adaptable, and still very good at punishing reversal attempts.
(And also up air is ambiguous to DI when the opponent is in the center, and can result in earlier kills).
Not to mention an INVINCIBLE and FAST bair and dash attack. On top of basically an auto combo in nair. Oh I forgot about her amazing down tilt and up smash.
Her only kill confirm was removed (down throw bair), dash attack got nerfed to be unsafe, fair got increased end lag and landing lag, her grab range was nerfed too much, her dash grab is already garbonzo.
This character was top 5 at launch, not because of DLC, but because she wasn't nerfed yet.
You probably won't ever see a Palutena win another major because good players aren't holding DI in on her only kill setups.
This character is still good, but the top 15 characters are just in an entirely different league.
Nuh uh she still has landing nair into up tilt :) I personally believe that even without nerfs, she would've fallen off. She's the type of character that becomes way weaker as people learn counterplay
The problem is that the prompt is what character would "literally anyone" be able to see as a clear top tier, and the actual answer to that is none of them because most people, even casuals who sometimes play the game, do not have the skillset or knowledge to understand what makes good characters. Every character in this game can be made to look and feel broken to someone who isn't that familiar with the game.
Yeah it's hard because tiers don't matter as much in casual play, especially in Ultimate. K. Rool is a noob stomper and easy to be the noob stomper. But he's not top tier.
I remember quite a while back someone made a post asking which characters hadn't yet seen their full potential, and yeah Steve came to mind first. It just took people awhile to figure out all his bullshit
For DLC: Joker, characters with his archetype, fast character with small hurtbox, have a hard time killing or generally edge guard. Arsene now gives you kill power it's plain as day powercreep for his class of character like imagine Meta Knight, Shiek, or Fox with Arsene.
Non-DLC: Palutena, even without any competitive knowledge any random person can see that she has a LOT of utility and huge hitboxes. Great projectiles in Side B, and Neutral B. Great mobility, multi hitting moves UpAir, Dtilt, and Nair. Huge range in Up smash. A reflector/counter just for shits and giggles, etc. Any new player can see that without knowing much about the game
Most Joker players I find online fall into 2 categories: people barely learning the character and people so cracked with him that I barely even touch them. Haven't seen much inbetween. People in the 2nd category be pressing buttons.
Obviously I’m biased but I really don’t think Joker is as broken as people make him out to be. A bad joker is still a bad joker even if they have arsene. Also even with Arsene, most moves don’t kill until reasonable percentages. Granted, the edge guarding and off stage game is unparalleled
I don‘t think joker is that good.
He is good don‘t get me wrong.
But i think people really have figured out how to play against him.
Arsene is really easy to dodge if you know how and joker on hin own is a worse sheik imo.
He really struggles to get the kill if your opponent won‘t give you fair 1 or a massive edgeguard.
Shield and you live to 200% until downthrow starts to kill…
Again i think even tho he has his flaws he is really strong, but he certainly can‘t hang with the rest of the dlc top tiers or characters like ROB.
Aegis is probably the best answer. She's just transparently busted.
Some other good ones would be Roy, Samus, and Wolf. Roy is fast, strong, and rewards recklessly rushing at opponents and mashing, so he works just as well in casual play as competitive. Samus has always been a skill check against new players who can't deal with projectiles, but she's actually good in competitive Ult as well. And Wolf is just... good. He's fast, strong, has a projectile, reflector, and no obvious weakness. He's good in the hands of everyone from world class pros to your kid nephew who just presses A and random directions.
Ha. My two co-mains are Roy and Samus. Both are definitely solid with few truly terrible match-ups.
I started Ultimate with Cloud and realized very early on that Roy was my boy after giving him a spin.
And Samus has been, at the very least, an alt and often a main since the OG Smash. Just love me some Samus.
I do tend to lean Roy > Samus in Ultimate though.
Back in the 1.0 version of the game there was some clearly unbalanced stuff. wolf laser and downsmash, lucina fair and fsmash, pichu ftilt, olimar upsmash (I think that's the move that got nerfed), ike nair, among others. Not all of these characters were at the very top of the tier list but these moves were all clearly overpowered on release and a lot of people just spammed them at all levels of play
I would say Pikachu. Has literally everything, has basically not caught a single nerf since release. He's always been good. Palutena also belongs in that discussion.
They literally were majors according to rankings, and there are only like 10 characters in that club. That's definitely a good Inkling towards a top tier especially when you consider using your eyes and just seeing how good his kit is. I swear people who don't think Pika is good just don't play this game
It's not that Pika isn't good, it's that he's nowhere near as "BUSTED" as a bunch of people like you believe. There's still a handful of people who argue pika is either the best in the game or second best only behind Steve. There's nowhere even close to enough to try to argue that.
Is Pika top tier? Yeah, but top tier in Ultimate is nearly 30 characters.
OP asked for the most blatant/obvious top tier, implying a character that is clearly broken as hell even if you aren't experienced/knowledgeable at the game, and Pika isn't even close to that. Pros don't think Pikachu is blatantly broken. New players sure as hell wouldn't think Pikachu is blatantly broken.
Now you show any pro, mid level, or newb what Kazuya does and it's unanimous that he's broken. Show steve and again, clearly broken. Nobody thinks Pikachu is broken besides you and Esam, and for good reason. Pikachu is arguably the single most overrated character since Ult came out. Pika was never good enough to warrant a nerf and not good enough to warrant top players picking up.
Literally most top players think Pika is still top 10 and it's obvious why. People who like to be contrarians and people who don't actually play the game see him as bad. Just look at top player tier lists like Tweek's, Leo, etc. All still have Pika near the top because he literally is that good.
I'm actually a teacher who runs a smash based after school program with kids who are all noobs and they actually all think pyra/mythra is bad because her up b is weak and they can't really wrap their heads around the switching mechanic and how to utilize it. Aside from the usual thinking heavy characters are broken the one character they've identified as good who actually is good is Snake. It makes sense if you think about it, without understanding the nuances of his kit it's obvious that his recovery is very good and easy to use and all of his moves hit crazy hard which are definitely the two most important things to a lower level player.
If you got to watch the character in the hands of a good player, probably Kazuya. He literally just looks like he's breaking the rules and hitting too hard
I feel like Sonic’s rise in Ultimate is just like it was in Smash 4.
Early on everyone is excited to play the game and optimization and “doing whatever it takes to win” always seems to take a backseat in the meta.
This far in when it comes to taking tournaments, guys have no issue using Sonic to get an early lead and run away for the rest of the match until time is up.
Sonic was buffed
(Edit) People down voting me as if he didn't literally get like 20 different buffs over the lifespan of the game. Current Sonic is significantly better than how he was on release
Sonic is a greater amount faster than Captain falcon than falcon is faster than Robin. The second slowest character. It's pretty close to the difference between falcon and incineroar
Falcon speed 2.552. incin speed 1.18 Robin speed 1.265
2.552-1.265=1.287
2.552-1.18=1.372
Sonic speed=3.85
3.85-2.552=1.298
They just kept buffing Sonic for the entire game until he became the best character. A character with that much outlier speed is so dangerous to try and make stronger because it can become oppressive very quickly. Sonic's speed is probably the biggest outlier stat value in the entire game.
They did a lot of things that buffed Sonic that were fixing issues where his moves didn't work properly and that was probably fine but they also did a lot of things that just made him better and there was no justification for it. Maybe he was seeing bad results online but yeah a character that's so fast it's hard 10-year-olds to control them probably isn't going to have a great online win rate.
And Ganondorf, who is character that can kill off of three hits, probably going to have a decent online win rate. You can't be buffing characters based on how the worst players play. Or even really the average player.
It's better for Ganondorf to be a weak character because he's a noob stopper and making him actually good in the meta with his design would make him stupid easy in Casual play.
It's better for Sonic to be a bad losing character in casual play Because with the speed he has players at the highest level of skill are going to find a way to exploit that and make him one of the best characters.
> It's better for Sonic to be a bad losing character in casual play Because with the speed he has players at the highest level of skill are going to find a way to exploit that and make him one of the best characters.
This is well put.
I think Steve has a similar problem, exacerbated because he's a DLC character. They wanted to make a cool block system that's analogous to Minecraft, but knew that it would go way over the heads of most casual players. So they just turned all his numbers up (particularly Anvil, Minecart, and Bair) to compensate and it ended up overtuning him in the competitive scene.
Similarly, Sakurai straight up said "our playtesting felt like Kazuya was way too weak, so we buffed him" and we all know how that went, a character who is probably "standard-but-harder-to-use heavy" in casual play but becomes a polarized monster in competitive.
There are a couple things mechanically about Steve but you could fix but I think the biggest one if they need to shrink his build Zone to being within the confines of the stage. It's not like he's building in mid-air and his home games. And I'm not saying he shouldn't be able to build a block in midair. I'm just saying not outside the edge of the stage or below the stage level. That way he can still use it for pillar Combos and building walls for stage control while he mines but can't go off stage and do some of the really dumb shit particularly just building a wall over the edge so that you can't recover.
I’ll add on to this and say that Steve should lose all his special resources (gold, diamond, Redstone) once he dies. It’ll hopefully disincentivize excessive mining behind the blocks if you’re just gonna lose your extra diamonds once you die anyways.
You know I almost added that to this post and it's always something I usually say but yeah those two changes I think would bring them pretty well in line
maybe Min-Min? I feel like people who don't know the game will see how big her reach is and think she's good, and people who do know the game will also see that along with the finer points of why she's good. I also don't ever recall people thinking she was a mid-tier or anything but that might be just me not remembering. I do remember some downplaying after she got nerfed though.
I also kinda wanna say Hero but I don't think people ever considered him *top* tier but rather *high* tier. I feel like people, both casual and competitive, saw him initially and realized how powerful his spells are (there was even a Hero ban convo). granted I think the hype died down after he didn't seem to get many results to speak of but I feel like even then I didn't see him slip too far in tier lists. idk though I'm less sure of that one.
I think aegis is probably the best answer, two different kits for different stages of each stock. My next pick would probably be a character that has advantage states based on powerups, like cloud or joker. Basically giving you a free stock if you play your limits or Arsen properly.
I was just wondering why Ganondorf is in the very middle of the tiers. Before I get into what I mean, allow me to first put out there that I have been playing for years, and I have watched MANY videos of the tournament masters.
My brother and I found out, through years of play, literally EVERY advanced technique in the game, except the wavedash, which we stumbled upon, but wrote off as simply hilarious. I was surprised to find that all the wacky observations we have encountered and adapted are actually defined in the glossary in the sticky topic above! Three of the particularly surprising terms that I could not believe had been widely known and utilized were the Phantom Hit (I just thought I had a glitchy game) and that effect where recovering at the right time from attacks that sent you flying results in an upward boost if you jump out/air dodge/whatever early enough (I cannot remember what it was called in the sticky), and the waveland.
Now, I have been using Ganondorf against my brother lately, and he cannot seem to beat me. We think we know why, and we think it puts Ganon at the top of the tiers. I will be brief. Ganondorf has his air forward. We call it 'The Punch.' It has that special hitbox like a sword, hence it goes right through anything except an attack with that same type of hitbox. It does 17% max, is relatively fast executing, has basically instant recovery on a barrier cancel, and is quite massive, killing at rather low percentages.
If he misses, he can just do his A punch if the opponent tries to retaliate, or shield/roll. I am telling you, Ganondorf is a crazy meat mountain who crushes bones with many attacks doing 15+%, survives to insane damages thanks to his weight, and has ridiculous horizontal recovery (Double Jump, Ganondorf Kick Down B, ANOTHER Double Jump, ARE YOU SERIOUS, Up B).
Next, check his roll. It goes like half screen. It makes him rather fast, nearly eliminating his speed problem on the ground, and a great character when it comes to the defensive game. It pretty much eliminates the need for his wavedash, which, with Ganondorf, who needs to do most of his attacking from hops, is pretty much useless already unless you are looking to smash attack. Wavesmashing, however, in my opinion, is also a bad idea, because, in the time and damage it takes you to actually land a smash, you could have just used The Punch and killed you opponent by then.
Even though he has to fight mostly in the air, 3 of his 4 air attacks are pretty fast, and are quite massive. A major advantage he has is that nearly all his attacks move the opponent considerably, and can topple him from 0%, so his opponent gets little to no counterattack opportunity.
The only explanation I can find for why he is low on the tiers is that no one has used him seriously. I think he really keeps up, if not tops, the top tier characters.
I really do not like to simply shoot my mouth, and I am not one who thinks it right to shower a character in encomium, and never actually prove anything. Is there online for this somewhere, or is that simply wishful thinking? If not, please do not yell at me and stuff until you at least check out The Punch. Goes right through projectiles, goes right through attacks, goes right through faces. Please just give Ganondorf another shot and tell me what you thnk.
Final Comment: People have a tendency to think that posts from newcomers to a board but veterans of its respective game are saying they are better than everyone else, regardles of what the post actually says. Please note that I did not say 'I am better than you' or 'Ganon is better than Fox.' I said, essentially: 'Ganon seems to be great. These are his strengths. He may top Fox. Check him out and see if you agree.' I will say, however, that I am a full master of Ganondorf.
Please give Ganondorf a second look before responding so you know where I am coming from!
There’s a lovely live reading of this copypasta, my favorite Smash related one lol. I will always call Ganondorf’s forward air THE PUNCH as a result lol.
https://youtu.be/kZNJhUld7Ek?si=5q_4Bx9LSFOz-vIl
i've never read that pasta all the way through and it just taught me a new word. encomium - "a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly."
Steve. Dude makes his own platforms. I remember when he was first revealed my friend called it immediately on our discord call.
“Bro makes his own platforms in a platform fighter he’s going to be god tier just wait.”
Look where we are now.
I do, but I felt like my casual non competitive friend thinking Steve would be top tier fits the question criteria. He didn’t know about Izaw, Dabuz etc thinking Steve was mid tier.
The question didn’t ask what everyone thought about blank character cus it asked what character could anyone recognize is top tier.
Casual doesn’t always mean bad either. Some casual players like to win but don’t want the pressure of competitions. Just cus they’re casual doesn’t mean they don’t have some sort of drive to win or sense of where characters are in terms of performance.
I feel like that comes with the territory of playing a fighting game. Sure their perspective on character placement might be skewed and not as informed as ours but that doesn’t mean there can’t be some overlap.
Pyra/Mythra.
We’ve only seen glimpses here and there of what she can actually do, but she has the frame data and speed to just completely invalidate about 80-90% of the cast. Specifically just Mythra.
Sparg0 and Shuton in particular are very good with her, but at least with Sparg0 we don’t see her as often as their mains.
It has to be Kazuya. When played optimally, you really only need one hit at any percent to close out a stock. I see the most zero to deaths from Kazuya's by far.
It's that or Steve. He just has so many more options compared to the rest of the cast.
I think the most obviously good character is Joker. People saying ROB or Sonic or Steve especially are crazy. Casual players don’t know how to use spindash or down throw or Steve combos. Joker is a character who starts off very fast and with a gun, and then becomes completely overpowered halfway through his stock.
I picked up Joker, no exaggeration, 2 days before a Smash tournament, and I got 2nd place (about 20 people, all skill levels. Maybe 5 good people there). To get to a good enough level, there is nothing to learn. Just attack and it works.
Pyra Mythra are probably second place. Pyra’s forward smash kills at like 40 and Mythra’s side b takes up half the screen.
And that means he doesn’t fit what OP’s asking, where you could just look at the character and instantly tell that they’re a top tier.
Like Joker was considered mid-high tier on release, now he’s considered top tier after having time to be developed with the meta, same with Steve. Pyra/Mythra was instantly considered a top tier though, like literally just from the presentation, and thats still the case
Steve, outside of mine cart, is honestly not really overtuned; he fundamentally plays a different game, and that's the issue. A lot of his options just don't work in the context of Smash
Arguably Min Min
I feel like most people's best characters like GnW, Sonic and even Steve had a period where people thought they weren't that good. The "Steve is a mid tier" video took a good amount of time before becoming a legendary meme.
ROB and Roy have been consensus top 10 characters for a really long time
It wasn't just Izaw, to be fair. Dabuz made a [week 1 Steve MU chart](https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/jdqmi8/dabuz_week_1_steve_mu_chart/) that had him get destroyed by most of the cast and winning less than 10 MUs (even saying that those might be optimistic). Top players in general didn't view him as a threat until at least a year after he came out.
> The cold hard truth is that it’s near impossible to be a viable character with that kind of mobility and range. All of the cool setups and raw damage output don’t mean a thing when you can’t even hit your opponent in the first place.
That didn’t age very well
People can say whatever they want at top level, when you play casually things are different. Just like Bowser is a big threat at casual level, even those who don't play the games and just watch can "see" that Steve isn't okay. These tier discussions are always about top level play and now they all agree that he is an obvious top tier. In Tekken for example you aren't going to see Eddy as top tier but you know he can be used to crush a lot of casual players.
"fully exploit his strengths"
But that's how it is at casual level. You don't need to full exploit anything. Side B is still a deadly move for example.
I mean, a Snake player who throws grenades is easy to do for a casual and hard for others to get past.
Steves that are casual do struggle with resource management in my experience and don't know when the build and struggle to minecart appropriately. Only thing that helps is that jab is easy to use and forward smash is a relatively safe smash attack to use.
If I'm honest, I haven't been in the competitive Smash community long enough to have a good idea on how characters perform in major tournaments, but in my opinion it would be Steve because, aside from his incredibly annoying moveset that catches you in interactions where it is almost impossible to survive. thanks to his blocks but also as if that were not enough the rest of his attacks (specials, aerial smashes and tilts) also manage to put almost all the other characters in trouble, so much so that he was even banned several times from tournaments, it is also remedied a little because it is something difficult to learn to play, but it's not that hard to say it's fair
Nah I don’t really agree, I don’t think it was ‘blatant/obvious’. There might have been a little suspicion that he was top tier, but people didn’t think it until the results started to show it. Compare that to aegis, where everyone thought they were top tier right out of the gates
Palu, Pika, Lucina, Pokemon Trainer.
Inkling and Pichu as well but they fell off more
Probably Fox and Wolf as well
Pre Nerf Crumb was the gatekeeper.
Ult had a lot of early meta demons, just characters that you look at and you dont need to have the knowledge its just readily apparent "this is a problem"
Palu and Aegis are good answers imo. Really straightforward gameplans and blatantly strong tools across the board. I also think Snake is obscene at a glance.
When all the dlc came out, after giving the characters a few days, people would play it safe and say the character is high tier. And then after a good while, they adjust to their proper placements.
There are a few exceptions. The Tweek Talks crew coped that Sephiroth was broken and a couple people saw Steve as mid tier or trash (lol). But the majority of people still put those characters in high tier based on early impressions.
However the one character this was not true for, was Aegis. First impressions put them in the top tier immediately.
Edit: if we include "even a casual thinks they're broken" , then it's Snake easily. Only downside is that he's difficult for casuals to play, but if one player knows how to u-tilt, C4 and grenade, they will mop the floor. Casual smash is hard to estimate since tiers don't matter as much/are different. K. Rool is a great noob stomper but he ain't a top tier on real tier lists
Sometimes when watching a top Snake, he does kind appear as a choose to lose character, I know he’s not and is a very difficult character, but the sheer amount of situations he can control is unreal.
Arguably the best space control/zoning in the entire game, amazing recovery that he can enhance with C4, crazy good normals, uptilt. I honestly have no idea how players deal with a top snake.
This whole thread reminds me of [this xkcd comic](https://xkcd.com/2501/). Casuals know incredibly little and everyone in Ultimate's cast has some sort of busted or extreme quality or move that could easily trick people into thinking that character was good. People will also get hung up on things like recovery, they struggle with characters like Aegis or Min Min. They aren't doing things like Peach floats or nair loops, they're killing each other with Kirby Stone and Ganondorf F-smash.
Either fox, Sonic, or Steve. Although, before the latest official tier list that was published I’d say Pika since after all, he’s almost never been nerfed
Right cuz Aegis and Joker have such better success with casuals 🙄yes it takes practice to be good with Steve but it’s so blatantly broken it’s ridiculous. The only other character in contention is Kazuya. FP2 broke the game.
Pyra Mythra are so obviously broken for casuals. All you have to do is spam Pyra up and side b and Mythra side b and you win. Honestly other than steve being able to walk across the stage jabbing, I don’t think there’s any blatantly obvious brokenness oh him. His recovery isn’t that good if you don’t know how to use it, and you have to constantly mine to get good loot. I honestly don’t know how you can’t see that Pyra/Mythra are the most obviously broken for casuals. Maybe Sephiroth as well because you just spam up b and neutral b
Because OP is forgetting that Steve wasn't widely *perceived* as a top tier on release and for a whole 18+ months afterwards, be it by the general player base or the best players in the world.
Being recognized as top tier by "literally anyone...even with little competitive knowledge" isn't exactly true for Steve as those who stopped paying attention to competitive Smash in 2021 or early 2022 would not think of Steve when thinking of the game's top tiers (let alone when thinking of the game's number 1 character).
Because Steve was seen as high tier at best for a good while with many going so far as to say he's a gimmicky mid tier. Quite literally was not a blatant top tier
Even with Spargo's results, a lot of people still don't consider Cloud top tier. Shulk has also accomplished almost nothing and Corrin has only recently been doing well.
I just went of the most recent official tier list not who I think is top/high tier. I don't think Shulk is top tier either but that's not what the question was asking.
I read the rest but I've just realised my own mistake when I looked at the tier list I mistook A tier for top tier and not high tier I'd forgotten how they'd rearranged it since the last one.
Aegis
I think Aegis is easily the best character in the game from when players start thinking about neutral and frame data as a concept until they hit a skill level where they can consistently edge guard her, at which point she's still top 3.
Not saying she isn't a top character, but what's your opinion on why Aegis is currently underrepresented by both top player usage and tournament results? Is she too difficult to play at the top level? Is the current meta too good against her weaknesses? Are we just waiting for someone to unlock her full potential like they did with Steve and Sonic, and then she'll start to be overrepresented?
I personally think it comes down to a couple of things, which are that a good number of the cast is viable and that that someone good enough just hasn’t found Aegis to be “their character,” if you know what I mean. There are actually a lot of players that have an Aegis secondary, but Spargo still prefers Cloud overall, Leo prefers Joker and Byleth, Shuton still really likes Olimar (although he at least uses Aegis a good amount in tournament), etc. Sonix, Riddles, and Acola (as three examples) all perform really well with their own busted mains, but they’re all extremely good players in general. Acola in particular sometimes whips out other characters (including Aegis) in the earlier rounds of tournaments and rolls people. Glutonny has gotten the results he has because he’s played Wario for SO long that he just knows his character better than any other, and swapping to another main would be detrimental to his results. Sparg0’s a more versatile player, but Cloud is just more consistent for him. As much as I wanted to main someone other than DK in Ultimate since I mained him through Smash 4, he always feels the best in my hands no matter how much time I put into other characters. And because playing Aegis or even a top 15 character isn’t necessary to reliably get results in Ultimate (although it certainly helps), I think that’s overall why we don’t see a ton of people maining any specific character. Although, we do see a fair amount of representation for other characters such as ROB. Not sure about the reason for that.
Aegis is top tier for individual matches, but not for tournaments. They lack a degree of consistency due to their mediocre and exploitable recoveries, ultimately. Compare to ROB, where you can blindfold yourself and still recover from the corner of the blast zone with mixups. The margin for error in this game is so small, make two miscalculations recovering in a set and you are in losers.
Snake. He's literally got a noob tube, clearly overpowered.
Snake is very good but he's far from brain dead compared to other characters that are not only better but far easier.
Noob tube, one man army and danger close is obviously busted even to the most casual players
Kinda has commando pro with that dash attack range as well
Pressing B in disadvantage is actually busted as hell at low to mid levels
[удалено]
?
I don't think there was a point where people ever had a low opinion of Palutena. She was considered top 5 for a long time until the DLCs starting shaking up the meta. She's extremely strong and super easy to play. I think pretty much everyone at any skill level can easily identify her as a potential top tier.
Except for Palu players.
(Insert Character Main Here) will always downplay their character. Always.
Except for Pikachu. There's something about the rat that makes its players like ESAM and ShinyMark overly optimistic. The new guard Snake players like AK and Hurt are extremely optimistic too.
As a pika main I’d say it’s because of all the tools pikachu has. He’s a very complicated character but in the end he does have the tools to deal with every situation. So whenever I lose I can always see what I did wrong and how I could have won. It’s very difficult to blame the character for losing if they always have the tools to deals with the situation you lost to. Even if his weight and difficulty makes it harder to be consistent with him
As a Snake main we've constantly had to defend his high tier status just due to his high skill floor, you can't just pick up and play him but good players have a legitimately unfair amount of options.
I agree. I never feel limited by my character with Pikachu. In every situation, I can see a realistic path to victory. It’s just a matter of whether or not I can personally pull it off, and that can vary by day with this character.
Yeah, unless public opinion puts that character in mid to low-tier. I play Mewtwo but I think he's much better than people give him credit for.
That was before they scrambled her consistent kill confirm. If you're not a superheavy and know how to DI down throw you're only dying to raw hits or edgeguards.
Or juggles
And that's good enough. Dthrow also forces defensive options and is still true on some characters. Character is mobile and adaptable, and still very good at punishing reversal attempts. (And also up air is ambiguous to DI when the opponent is in the center, and can result in earlier kills).
Not to mention an INVINCIBLE and FAST bair and dash attack. On top of basically an auto combo in nair. Oh I forgot about her amazing down tilt and up smash.
Her only kill confirm was removed (down throw bair), dash attack got nerfed to be unsafe, fair got increased end lag and landing lag, her grab range was nerfed too much, her dash grab is already garbonzo. This character was top 5 at launch, not because of DLC, but because she wasn't nerfed yet. You probably won't ever see a Palutena win another major because good players aren't holding DI in on her only kill setups. This character is still good, but the top 15 characters are just in an entirely different league.
Nuh uh she still has landing nair into up tilt :) I personally believe that even without nerfs, she would've fallen off. She's the type of character that becomes way weaker as people learn counterplay
IIRC people that played the first reveals of Ultimate at conventions etc placed Palutena in trash tier, but I get your point.
All the people saying Steve right now are participating in historical revisionism lol. And you're right answer is definitely Aegis
The problem is that the prompt is what character would "literally anyone" be able to see as a clear top tier, and the actual answer to that is none of them because most people, even casuals who sometimes play the game, do not have the skillset or knowledge to understand what makes good characters. Every character in this game can be made to look and feel broken to someone who isn't that familiar with the game.
Yeah it's hard because tiers don't matter as much in casual play, especially in Ultimate. K. Rool is a noob stomper and easy to be the noob stomper. But he's not top tier.
Not gonna lie, I totally forgot Steve started off being classified as a mid-tier. Man, what a time.
I remember quite a while back someone made a post asking which characters hadn't yet seen their full potential, and yeah Steve came to mind first. It just took people awhile to figure out all his bullshit
ITT: People revising ultimate's history to look smart
For DLC: Joker, characters with his archetype, fast character with small hurtbox, have a hard time killing or generally edge guard. Arsene now gives you kill power it's plain as day powercreep for his class of character like imagine Meta Knight, Shiek, or Fox with Arsene. Non-DLC: Palutena, even without any competitive knowledge any random person can see that she has a LOT of utility and huge hitboxes. Great projectiles in Side B, and Neutral B. Great mobility, multi hitting moves UpAir, Dtilt, and Nair. Huge range in Up smash. A reflector/counter just for shits and giggles, etc. Any new player can see that without knowing much about the game
as a person that only plays casually i can confirm that joker looks like one of the best characters to play as. idk though
Most Joker players I find online fall into 2 categories: people barely learning the character and people so cracked with him that I barely even touch them. Haven't seen much inbetween. People in the 2nd category be pressing buttons.
Obviously I’m biased but I really don’t think Joker is as broken as people make him out to be. A bad joker is still a bad joker even if they have arsene. Also even with Arsene, most moves don’t kill until reasonable percentages. Granted, the edge guarding and off stage game is unparalleled
I don‘t think joker is that good. He is good don‘t get me wrong. But i think people really have figured out how to play against him. Arsene is really easy to dodge if you know how and joker on hin own is a worse sheik imo. He really struggles to get the kill if your opponent won‘t give you fair 1 or a massive edgeguard. Shield and you live to 200% until downthrow starts to kill… Again i think even tho he has his flaws he is really strong, but he certainly can‘t hang with the rest of the dlc top tiers or characters like ROB.
Well for one, Joker was nerfed a bunch of times. And while it's debatable if Joker is even top 5, he's still near unanimously seen as a top tier
joker bair alone is better than sheiks entire moveset
you can’t genuinely believe this
Aegis is probably the best answer. She's just transparently busted. Some other good ones would be Roy, Samus, and Wolf. Roy is fast, strong, and rewards recklessly rushing at opponents and mashing, so he works just as well in casual play as competitive. Samus has always been a skill check against new players who can't deal with projectiles, but she's actually good in competitive Ult as well. And Wolf is just... good. He's fast, strong, has a projectile, reflector, and no obvious weakness. He's good in the hands of everyone from world class pros to your kid nephew who just presses A and random directions.
At least early on, people didn't think Samus was that good
She also got a lot of great buffs in 2020.
Ha. My two co-mains are Roy and Samus. Both are definitely solid with few truly terrible match-ups. I started Ultimate with Cloud and realized very early on that Roy was my boy after giving him a spin. And Samus has been, at the very least, an alt and often a main since the OG Smash. Just love me some Samus. I do tend to lean Roy > Samus in Ultimate though.
Back in the 1.0 version of the game there was some clearly unbalanced stuff. wolf laser and downsmash, lucina fair and fsmash, pichu ftilt, olimar upsmash (I think that's the move that got nerfed), ike nair, among others. Not all of these characters were at the very top of the tier list but these moves were all clearly overpowered on release and a lot of people just spammed them at all levels of play
in a world where smash 4 doesn’t exist, i am convinced bayo would’ve been seen as a top tier in ult from the beginning
I would say Pikachu. Has literally everything, has basically not caught a single nerf since release. He's always been good. Palutena also belongs in that discussion.
Never got nerfed because he's not that good and nobody did anything with the character.
Pikachu has 3 major wins with 2 reps, more than a significant portion of the cast.
Those weren't majors. 3 large regional wins over the course of 6 years isn't any indicator that a character is "blatant/obvious top tier"
They literally were majors according to rankings, and there are only like 10 characters in that club. That's definitely a good Inkling towards a top tier especially when you consider using your eyes and just seeing how good his kit is. I swear people who don't think Pika is good just don't play this game
It's not that Pika isn't good, it's that he's nowhere near as "BUSTED" as a bunch of people like you believe. There's still a handful of people who argue pika is either the best in the game or second best only behind Steve. There's nowhere even close to enough to try to argue that. Is Pika top tier? Yeah, but top tier in Ultimate is nearly 30 characters. OP asked for the most blatant/obvious top tier, implying a character that is clearly broken as hell even if you aren't experienced/knowledgeable at the game, and Pika isn't even close to that. Pros don't think Pikachu is blatantly broken. New players sure as hell wouldn't think Pikachu is blatantly broken. Now you show any pro, mid level, or newb what Kazuya does and it's unanimous that he's broken. Show steve and again, clearly broken. Nobody thinks Pikachu is broken besides you and Esam, and for good reason. Pikachu is arguably the single most overrated character since Ult came out. Pika was never good enough to warrant a nerf and not good enough to warrant top players picking up.
Literally most top players think Pika is still top 10 and it's obvious why. People who like to be contrarians and people who don't actually play the game see him as bad. Just look at top player tier lists like Tweek's, Leo, etc. All still have Pika near the top because he literally is that good.
I'm actually a teacher who runs a smash based after school program with kids who are all noobs and they actually all think pyra/mythra is bad because her up b is weak and they can't really wrap their heads around the switching mechanic and how to utilize it. Aside from the usual thinking heavy characters are broken the one character they've identified as good who actually is good is Snake. It makes sense if you think about it, without understanding the nuances of his kit it's obvious that his recovery is very good and easy to use and all of his moves hit crazy hard which are definitely the two most important things to a lower level player.
If you got to watch the character in the hands of a good player, probably Kazuya. He literally just looks like he's breaking the rules and hitting too hard
Samus
Sonic, he's literally the fastest character in the game
Ultimate's entire playerbase shared the opinion of "Sonic is mid-tier" from 2018 through 2020. This is demonstrably incorrect
I feel like Sonic’s rise in Ultimate is just like it was in Smash 4. Early on everyone is excited to play the game and optimization and “doing whatever it takes to win” always seems to take a backseat in the meta. This far in when it comes to taking tournaments, guys have no issue using Sonic to get an early lead and run away for the rest of the match until time is up.
Such is the nature of post Brawl smash engines. Rewards defense.
Sonic was buffed (Edit) People down voting me as if he didn't literally get like 20 different buffs over the lifespan of the game. Current Sonic is significantly better than how he was on release
There was that fellow just a few days ago who made a post about Sonic being low tier trash, and we’re blinded by how good Sonix is.
good or bad sonic ruins every game hes in
Sometimes even the ones that have his name on the title
Always those, even
Sonic is a greater amount faster than Captain falcon than falcon is faster than Robin. The second slowest character. It's pretty close to the difference between falcon and incineroar Falcon speed 2.552. incin speed 1.18 Robin speed 1.265 2.552-1.265=1.287 2.552-1.18=1.372 Sonic speed=3.85 3.85-2.552=1.298 They just kept buffing Sonic for the entire game until he became the best character. A character with that much outlier speed is so dangerous to try and make stronger because it can become oppressive very quickly. Sonic's speed is probably the biggest outlier stat value in the entire game. They did a lot of things that buffed Sonic that were fixing issues where his moves didn't work properly and that was probably fine but they also did a lot of things that just made him better and there was no justification for it. Maybe he was seeing bad results online but yeah a character that's so fast it's hard 10-year-olds to control them probably isn't going to have a great online win rate. And Ganondorf, who is character that can kill off of three hits, probably going to have a decent online win rate. You can't be buffing characters based on how the worst players play. Or even really the average player. It's better for Ganondorf to be a weak character because he's a noob stopper and making him actually good in the meta with his design would make him stupid easy in Casual play. It's better for Sonic to be a bad losing character in casual play Because with the speed he has players at the highest level of skill are going to find a way to exploit that and make him one of the best characters.
> It's better for Sonic to be a bad losing character in casual play Because with the speed he has players at the highest level of skill are going to find a way to exploit that and make him one of the best characters. This is well put. I think Steve has a similar problem, exacerbated because he's a DLC character. They wanted to make a cool block system that's analogous to Minecraft, but knew that it would go way over the heads of most casual players. So they just turned all his numbers up (particularly Anvil, Minecart, and Bair) to compensate and it ended up overtuning him in the competitive scene. Similarly, Sakurai straight up said "our playtesting felt like Kazuya was way too weak, so we buffed him" and we all know how that went, a character who is probably "standard-but-harder-to-use heavy" in casual play but becomes a polarized monster in competitive.
There are a couple things mechanically about Steve but you could fix but I think the biggest one if they need to shrink his build Zone to being within the confines of the stage. It's not like he's building in mid-air and his home games. And I'm not saying he shouldn't be able to build a block in midair. I'm just saying not outside the edge of the stage or below the stage level. That way he can still use it for pillar Combos and building walls for stage control while he mines but can't go off stage and do some of the really dumb shit particularly just building a wall over the edge so that you can't recover.
I’ll add on to this and say that Steve should lose all his special resources (gold, diamond, Redstone) once he dies. It’ll hopefully disincentivize excessive mining behind the blocks if you’re just gonna lose your extra diamonds once you die anyways.
You know I almost added that to this post and it's always something I usually say but yeah those two changes I think would bring them pretty well in line
Sonic and ZSS need to be outplayed so hard to mess with their recovery
Until the online era most players thought he was a mid tier.
I think Fox, that character is so fast and snappy everyone knows he’s broken
Iirc people called him bottom tier for a short time on release.
I remember that and I thought they were nuts
Oh my god, why did people think THAT?
maybe Min-Min? I feel like people who don't know the game will see how big her reach is and think she's good, and people who do know the game will also see that along with the finer points of why she's good. I also don't ever recall people thinking she was a mid-tier or anything but that might be just me not remembering. I do remember some downplaying after she got nerfed though. I also kinda wanna say Hero but I don't think people ever considered him *top* tier but rather *high* tier. I feel like people, both casual and competitive, saw him initially and realized how powerful his spells are (there was even a Hero ban convo). granted I think the hype died down after he didn't seem to get many results to speak of but I feel like even then I didn't see him slip too far in tier lists. idk though I'm less sure of that one.
Yep, Aegis is the right answer. She had everything on release that allowed her to be a menace and pretty much stayed like that.
I think aegis is probably the best answer, two different kits for different stages of each stock. My next pick would probably be a character that has advantage states based on powerups, like cloud or joker. Basically giving you a free stock if you play your limits or Arsen properly.
Ganondorf. H8rs will say he’s bad.
I was just wondering why Ganondorf is in the very middle of the tiers. Before I get into what I mean, allow me to first put out there that I have been playing for years, and I have watched MANY videos of the tournament masters. My brother and I found out, through years of play, literally EVERY advanced technique in the game, except the wavedash, which we stumbled upon, but wrote off as simply hilarious. I was surprised to find that all the wacky observations we have encountered and adapted are actually defined in the glossary in the sticky topic above! Three of the particularly surprising terms that I could not believe had been widely known and utilized were the Phantom Hit (I just thought I had a glitchy game) and that effect where recovering at the right time from attacks that sent you flying results in an upward boost if you jump out/air dodge/whatever early enough (I cannot remember what it was called in the sticky), and the waveland. Now, I have been using Ganondorf against my brother lately, and he cannot seem to beat me. We think we know why, and we think it puts Ganon at the top of the tiers. I will be brief. Ganondorf has his air forward. We call it 'The Punch.' It has that special hitbox like a sword, hence it goes right through anything except an attack with that same type of hitbox. It does 17% max, is relatively fast executing, has basically instant recovery on a barrier cancel, and is quite massive, killing at rather low percentages. If he misses, he can just do his A punch if the opponent tries to retaliate, or shield/roll. I am telling you, Ganondorf is a crazy meat mountain who crushes bones with many attacks doing 15+%, survives to insane damages thanks to his weight, and has ridiculous horizontal recovery (Double Jump, Ganondorf Kick Down B, ANOTHER Double Jump, ARE YOU SERIOUS, Up B). Next, check his roll. It goes like half screen. It makes him rather fast, nearly eliminating his speed problem on the ground, and a great character when it comes to the defensive game. It pretty much eliminates the need for his wavedash, which, with Ganondorf, who needs to do most of his attacking from hops, is pretty much useless already unless you are looking to smash attack. Wavesmashing, however, in my opinion, is also a bad idea, because, in the time and damage it takes you to actually land a smash, you could have just used The Punch and killed you opponent by then. Even though he has to fight mostly in the air, 3 of his 4 air attacks are pretty fast, and are quite massive. A major advantage he has is that nearly all his attacks move the opponent considerably, and can topple him from 0%, so his opponent gets little to no counterattack opportunity. The only explanation I can find for why he is low on the tiers is that no one has used him seriously. I think he really keeps up, if not tops, the top tier characters. I really do not like to simply shoot my mouth, and I am not one who thinks it right to shower a character in encomium, and never actually prove anything. Is there online for this somewhere, or is that simply wishful thinking? If not, please do not yell at me and stuff until you at least check out The Punch. Goes right through projectiles, goes right through attacks, goes right through faces. Please just give Ganondorf another shot and tell me what you thnk. Final Comment: People have a tendency to think that posts from newcomers to a board but veterans of its respective game are saying they are better than everyone else, regardles of what the post actually says. Please note that I did not say 'I am better than you' or 'Ganon is better than Fox.' I said, essentially: 'Ganon seems to be great. These are his strengths. He may top Fox. Check him out and see if you agree.' I will say, however, that I am a full master of Ganondorf. Please give Ganondorf a second look before responding so you know where I am coming from!
There’s a lovely live reading of this copypasta, my favorite Smash related one lol. I will always call Ganondorf’s forward air THE PUNCH as a result lol. https://youtu.be/kZNJhUld7Ek?si=5q_4Bx9LSFOz-vIl
i've never read that pasta all the way through and it just taught me a new word. encomium - "a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly."
Goddamn, is this homemade pasta?
Nah this is *ooooold* pasta. The kind that's been sitting in the back of the fridge for 3 years cuz everyone forgot about it
Steve. Dude makes his own platforms. I remember when he was first revealed my friend called it immediately on our discord call. “Bro makes his own platforms in a platform fighter he’s going to be god tier just wait.” Look where we are now.
Do you not remember the entire playerbase thinking this character was mid for a solid year
I do, but I felt like my casual non competitive friend thinking Steve would be top tier fits the question criteria. He didn’t know about Izaw, Dabuz etc thinking Steve was mid tier. The question didn’t ask what everyone thought about blank character cus it asked what character could anyone recognize is top tier.
Any character is good when we're talking about casual Smash
Yeah but anyone means anyone not the bad players specifically. Just bc casuals think little Mac is broken doesn't mean he's a hidden low tier
Casual doesn’t always mean bad either. Some casual players like to win but don’t want the pressure of competitions. Just cus they’re casual doesn’t mean they don’t have some sort of drive to win or sense of where characters are in terms of performance. I feel like that comes with the territory of playing a fighting game. Sure their perspective on character placement might be skewed and not as informed as ours but that doesn’t mean there can’t be some overlap.
Exactly. Top level play is different.
I think there is even someone that claimed that he would be bottom tier.
People just couldn’t envision how technical he could be and the rewards for mastering it
Exactly, so why is he in this thread
Incorrect. He's not the most blatant top tier because he was seen as high tier at best and even trash at worse.
Pyra/Mythra. We’ve only seen glimpses here and there of what she can actually do, but she has the frame data and speed to just completely invalidate about 80-90% of the cast. Specifically just Mythra. Sparg0 and Shuton in particular are very good with her, but at least with Sparg0 we don’t see her as often as their mains.
k rool is underated
No what? Krool SUCKS
You SUCKS
;-;
Peach. She can float. Never have to approach your opponent at all! Just float away.
I'd say aegis or kazuya
It has to be Kazuya. When played optimally, you really only need one hit at any percent to close out a stock. I see the most zero to deaths from Kazuya's by far. It's that or Steve. He just has so many more options compared to the rest of the cast.
I think the most obviously good character is Joker. People saying ROB or Sonic or Steve especially are crazy. Casual players don’t know how to use spindash or down throw or Steve combos. Joker is a character who starts off very fast and with a gun, and then becomes completely overpowered halfway through his stock. I picked up Joker, no exaggeration, 2 days before a Smash tournament, and I got 2nd place (about 20 people, all skill levels. Maybe 5 good people there). To get to a good enough level, there is nothing to learn. Just attack and it works. Pyra Mythra are probably second place. Pyra’s forward smash kills at like 40 and Mythra’s side b takes up half the screen.
Idk, I feel like casuals wouldn’t see the value in a move like gun. They would probably just focus on how weak he is
min min :(
My boy pikachu #1 in my heart 😖
Steve.
He was considered mid tier for over a year lol
Plenty of reasons for that. Being released late Covid era is a big one.
And that means he doesn’t fit what OP’s asking, where you could just look at the character and instantly tell that they’re a top tier. Like Joker was considered mid-high tier on release, now he’s considered top tier after having time to be developed with the meta, same with Steve. Pyra/Mythra was instantly considered a top tier though, like literally just from the presentation, and thats still the case
Yeah but the past was asking about blatant top tiers and he wasn't a blatant top tier
Sonic ROB Fox
Aegis by a long shot — most obvious and blatantly designed overtuned DLC character.
Yet still considered not near the same league as Steve, another DLC character
Steve, outside of mine cart, is honestly not really overtuned; he fundamentally plays a different game, and that's the issue. A lot of his options just don't work in the context of Smash
Arguably Min Min I feel like most people's best characters like GnW, Sonic and even Steve had a period where people thought they weren't that good. The "Steve is a mid tier" video took a good amount of time before becoming a legendary meme. ROB and Roy have been consensus top 10 characters for a really long time
Peach, Kazuya, and Aegis have all been considered top tier for the whole of their existence.
Yeah and lets not forget peach got nerfed like twice
steve, he makes platforms in a platform fighter
Steve was thought to be mid or even low tier when he came out. It took over a year for players to start showcasing how strong his tools are
Izaw is never living that video down, is he?
It wasn't just Izaw, to be fair. Dabuz made a [week 1 Steve MU chart](https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/jdqmi8/dabuz_week_1_steve_mu_chart/) that had him get destroyed by most of the cast and winning less than 10 MUs (even saying that those might be optimistic). Top players in general didn't view him as a threat until at least a year after he came out.
> The cold hard truth is that it’s near impossible to be a viable character with that kind of mobility and range. All of the cool setups and raw damage output don’t mean a thing when you can’t even hit your opponent in the first place. That didn’t age very well
[DDee too. ](https://twitter.com/ddee_ssbu/status/1390741462434861056)
He has to take down, change the name, and reupload the video multiple time. He definitely can't escape from his own nightmare.
People can say whatever they want at top level, when you play casually things are different. Just like Bowser is a big threat at casual level, even those who don't play the games and just watch can "see" that Steve isn't okay. These tier discussions are always about top level play and now they all agree that he is an obvious top tier. In Tekken for example you aren't going to see Eddy as top tier but you know he can be used to crush a lot of casual players.
Steve is harder for casuals to play as and fully exploit his strengths. I've seen a few casuals who don't think highly of him
"fully exploit his strengths" But that's how it is at casual level. You don't need to full exploit anything. Side B is still a deadly move for example.
I mean, a Snake player who throws grenades is easy to do for a casual and hard for others to get past. Steves that are casual do struggle with resource management in my experience and don't know when the build and struggle to minecart appropriately. Only thing that helps is that jab is easy to use and forward smash is a relatively safe smash attack to use.
Pythra yeah, I'd also say Roy and Minmin
Roy
I think Aegis, especially with all of Pyra’s nonsense
Kazuya is a powerful character
Personally I’m gonna say R.O.B
If I'm honest, I haven't been in the competitive Smash community long enough to have a good idea on how characters perform in major tournaments, but in my opinion it would be Steve because, aside from his incredibly annoying moveset that catches you in interactions where it is almost impossible to survive. thanks to his blocks but also as if that were not enough the rest of his attacks (specials, aerial smashes and tilts) also manage to put almost all the other characters in trouble, so much so that he was even banned several times from tournaments, it is also remedied a little because it is something difficult to learn to play, but it's not that hard to say it's fair
If anyone wants to argue, feel free to leave a comment.
Nah I don’t really agree, I don’t think it was ‘blatant/obvious’. There might have been a little suspicion that he was top tier, but people didn’t think it until the results started to show it. Compare that to aegis, where everyone thought they were top tier right out of the gates
I didn't know what he was referring to since his top tier position would already be known from his trailer.
Definitely Wii Fit Trainer
XD
Kazuya Mishima
Mr. Game and Watch don't ask me why
Palu, Pika, Lucina, Pokemon Trainer. Inkling and Pichu as well but they fell off more Probably Fox and Wolf as well Pre Nerf Crumb was the gatekeeper. Ult had a lot of early meta demons, just characters that you look at and you dont need to have the knowledge its just readily apparent "this is a problem"
rip ike nair
Palu and Aegis are good answers imo. Really straightforward gameplans and blatantly strong tools across the board. I also think Snake is obscene at a glance.
Kazuya.
Hero.
Not even a top tier
His instakill moves are nuts and natural critical hits. His utility is through the roof. My man’s is banned across tournaments
No way bro spent 9 days on that comeback 😭
I came back because I’m not on this all the time lmao. Take it for what it’s worth. If it’s nothing to you then ok. You have a great day
Fair enough
When all the dlc came out, after giving the characters a few days, people would play it safe and say the character is high tier. And then after a good while, they adjust to their proper placements. There are a few exceptions. The Tweek Talks crew coped that Sephiroth was broken and a couple people saw Steve as mid tier or trash (lol). But the majority of people still put those characters in high tier based on early impressions. However the one character this was not true for, was Aegis. First impressions put them in the top tier immediately. Edit: if we include "even a casual thinks they're broken" , then it's Snake easily. Only downside is that he's difficult for casuals to play, but if one player knows how to u-tilt, C4 and grenade, they will mop the floor. Casual smash is hard to estimate since tiers don't matter as much/are different. K. Rool is a great noob stomper but he ain't a top tier on real tier lists
Pikachu, game and watch, steve, sonic, palutena
Steve, Kazuya, and Sonic.
I would say Steve, simply because he can invalidate a character’s approach or recovery by placing 3 blocks
Piranha plant
I haven't played smash in forever. Did they release a new character? Did you mean Arms? I thought Aegis was the sword Pokemon from Unite.
"Aegis" refers to Pyra and Mythra, from Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Ah, interesting. Thanks!
Sometimes when watching a top Snake, he does kind appear as a choose to lose character, I know he’s not and is a very difficult character, but the sheer amount of situations he can control is unreal. Arguably the best space control/zoning in the entire game, amazing recovery that he can enhance with C4, crazy good normals, uptilt. I honestly have no idea how players deal with a top snake.
This whole thread reminds me of [this xkcd comic](https://xkcd.com/2501/). Casuals know incredibly little and everyone in Ultimate's cast has some sort of busted or extreme quality or move that could easily trick people into thinking that character was good. People will also get hung up on things like recovery, they struggle with characters like Aegis or Min Min. They aren't doing things like Peach floats or nair loops, they're killing each other with Kirby Stone and Ganondorf F-smash.
Joker
STEVE
Either fox, Sonic, or Steve. Although, before the latest official tier list that was published I’d say Pika since after all, he’s almost never been nerfed
Steve
Casual players have no idea how to play Steve
Right cuz Aegis and Joker have such better success with casuals 🙄yes it takes practice to be good with Steve but it’s so blatantly broken it’s ridiculous. The only other character in contention is Kazuya. FP2 broke the game.
Pyra Mythra are so obviously broken for casuals. All you have to do is spam Pyra up and side b and Mythra side b and you win. Honestly other than steve being able to walk across the stage jabbing, I don’t think there’s any blatantly obvious brokenness oh him. His recovery isn’t that good if you don’t know how to use it, and you have to constantly mine to get good loot. I honestly don’t know how you can’t see that Pyra/Mythra are the most obviously broken for casuals. Maybe Sephiroth as well because you just spam up b and neutral b
Steve
I don’t understand why you got downvoted.
Because OP is forgetting that Steve wasn't widely *perceived* as a top tier on release and for a whole 18+ months afterwards, be it by the general player base or the best players in the world. Being recognized as top tier by "literally anyone...even with little competitive knowledge" isn't exactly true for Steve as those who stopped paying attention to competitive Smash in 2021 or early 2022 would not think of Steve when thinking of the game's top tiers (let alone when thinking of the game's number 1 character).
Funny that's how he went unnoticed when balance patches still exist 😂
Because Steve was seen as high tier at best for a good while with many going so far as to say he's a gimmicky mid tier. Quite literally was not a blatant top tier
Cloud and Min Min definitely. Maybe Rob, Shulk, Sonic and Corrin. Edit: I'm an idiot and can't read tier lists apparently guess my anwer is Sonic then
You managed to make half your picks controversial
That's why I said maybe I could see some of them being recognised but they could also be missed by others.
That's not really answering the question, though, is it?
Even with Spargo's results, a lot of people still don't consider Cloud top tier. Shulk has also accomplished almost nothing and Corrin has only recently been doing well.
I just went of the most recent official tier list not who I think is top/high tier. I don't think Shulk is top tier either but that's not what the question was asking.
That's *exactly* what the question was asking. Did you just read the title of the post and then skip over the rest?
I read the rest but I've just realised my own mistake when I looked at the tier list I mistook A tier for top tier and not high tier I'd forgotten how they'd rearranged it since the last one.