Samus (regular) and Ike are candidates for bottom tier

[Knife]

Thoughts? Questions? Arguments?

Edited October 10, 2014 by Knife

[kingddd]

I like Samus and Ike.

[Elieson]

You clearly don't know how to Samus if you're putting Samus in bottom tier.

I guess I'll explain why. Samus has a solid range game with missile spam and can pretty easily put distance between herself and slower units like Ike and DK. Her Grab-Up and Grab-Back put major distance between the two. Super Missiles cancel most opponents charge-type moves (Pikachu's SkullBash, Ike's Lunge, etc). Aerial Down-B is pretty good at putting safe distance between her and waiting opponents on ground, and boosts recovery range somewhat without tying up her second jump/UpB recov. Aerial bombs aren't fantastic by any means but they are useful for a Down-B, which a lot of PCs can't say with as much confidence. Ridiculous Grab range and a buffed UpB more or less offset her lack of Missile cancel, and an experienced Samus won't fire missiles at close range without damn good reason anyway.

Her recovery from missed grabs is pretty awful, and her general attack hitboxes are pretty awful, but her NeutralA is pretty quick for a 2 hit combo, and she very easily punishes people who come at her from a distance suboptimally.

She's a stall-unit though, who easily drags gametime out, so she's more likely to be leftin Sudden Death, should it occur. She's not the best performer in there, easily outclassed by mobility and better range like Link and Pit, but she's not Bottom tier. I'd say around Mid.

Edited October 10, 2014 by Sara.

[Knife]

Actually, I don't. But I never have problems against Samus either, even good ones. Loss of missile canceling sucks.

[Elieson]

See my post for explaination. Loss of Missile Cancel is hard, but boosted UpB really punishes sloppy aerial play. Good Samus players won't need to Missile-Cancel. Even though we can no longer missile cancel, I think we can just do full jump homing missile->zair which is just as good and covers just as much area and is also lagless/minimal. It's all about the ShortHop. Improved Dash-A knockback is worth noting too.

And hell, her Grab-Up starts killing in the 90s, which doesn't take that long to reach. Punishes tech-roll heavy users and slow-recovery players like Ganon even

[Knight]

I've been beating a lot of people online with Samus, the boost to Screw Attacks KO power allows for some easy top-of-the-screen kills, her smashes are generally stronger and the boost of speed on Samus' Charge Beam make surprise KO's much easier. That said, I'm not that good of a player, but I don't think she's bottom tier.

[Elieson]

Ike on the other hand.

The more I use him, the more I feel like he is restricted to a select few moves due to attack speed being memorable in its slowness. His UpA and UptiltA are good but far too situational. Side B is decent enough, but easily handled I think now that I'm getting used to the timing

Edited October 10, 2014 by Sara.

[Knife]

You clearly don't know how to Samus if you're putting Samus in bottom tier.

I guess I'll explain why. Samus has a solid range game with missile spam and can pretty easily put distance between herself and slower units like Ike and DK. Her Grab-Up and Grab-Back put major distance between the two. Super Missiles cancel most opponents charge-type moves (Pikachu's SkullBash, Ike's Lunge, etc). Aerial Down-B is pretty good at putting safe distance between her and waiting opponents on ground, and boosts recovery range somewhat without tying up her second jump/UpB recov. Aerial bombs aren't fantastic by any means but they are useful for a Down-B, which a lot of PCs can't say with as much confidence. Ridiculous Grab range and a buffed UpB more or less offset her lack of Missile cancel, and an experienced Samus won't fire missiles at close range without damn good reason anyway.

Her recovery from missed grabs is pretty awful, and her general attack hitboxes are pretty awful, but her NeutralA is pretty quick for a 2 hit combo, and she very easily punishes people who come at her from a distance suboptimally.

She's a stall-unit though, who easily drags gametime out, so she's more likely to be leftin Sudden Death, should it occur. She's not the best performer in there, easily outclassed by mobility and better range like Link and Pit, but she's not Bottom tier. I'd say around Mid.

She is overall better, that much is true. However, her buffs still don't catch up to the other characters buffs in a game where pretty much everyone is better than previous installment (except ones that were already good to begin with like Olimar and Metaknight. Lucario is godly now though he didn't need the buffs). She's a pretty technical character that will be mastered by very few people.

Ike got way worse. His attack speed is pretty much the same and his moves kill less. His slower Fair means he has more trouble edgeguarding (which is key in this game) and approaching projectiles.

Edited October 10, 2014 by Knife

[Elieson]

She is overall better, that much is true. However, her buffs still don't catch up to the other characters buffs in a game where pretty much everyone is better than previous installment (except ones that were already good to begin with like Olimar and Metaknight. Lucario is godly now though he didn't need the buffs). She's a pretty technical character that will be mastered by very few people.

That's why I disagree with your Low tier thing, and feel like Mid is her home

[Anacybele]

People told me that Ike got more buffs than nerfs in this game , but god damn it, this guy didn't even need ONE nerf. I agree that he got worse, as I have more trouble using him now than I did in Brawl. Some of his best tricks, like Quick Draw Cancel, were removed.

I loved that Sakurai used RD Ike, but the people he had balance the game didn't do a good job. Nerfing Ike and buffing ZSS? Yeah, bullcrap.

[Murdok Dracul]

I completely disagree. Both of these characters are great.

[Ema Skye]

I disagree with Samus, but I do think Ike is a candidate for the very bottom.

With him I would probably put Mega Man.

[Comet]

ike is probably the character with the least amount of options available in neutral. RIP ike

[Ein]

I'll still like Ike. ;w;

[metalsnowman3]

they shouldn't have changed ike's fair, it sucks now imo (like it seems like a worse version of nair). Yeah i dont really like using him anymore, oh well.

Samus seems fine, i figured she would be more mid tierish. I wish they didn't changer her nair though.

[Anacybele]

You know, now that I think about it, this is probably why I've been sucking in battles lately. At least partly since I've also been practicing with my custom Ikes. Ike with his normal moves is just not usable anymore. You don't know how upset this makes me. I was looking forward to finally playing as RD Ike in this game and getting good enough to do well in tournaments, but I can't do that now if he's been too nerfed and if no tournaments allow custom moves. I bet the balancing team listened to the idiots that claimed Ike was OP in Brawl despite tier lists placing him at lower mid.

I wanted RD Ike so bad in this game and I wanted him to be buffed enough to be viable so the competitive player in me could do well in tournaments with him. But that didn't happen thanks to whatever idiot got the bright idea to nerf f-air, nerf Eruption, remove Quick Draw Cancel, and add any other nerfs that are there.

I don't want to be forced to use a character I don't like in order to do well in tournaments. It's not nearly as fun. But almost none of the characters I want to use appear to be viable so far. Luigi is bottom tier too according to the Japanese. Same with Link. I find that Robin is too slow and too weak. Toon Link, I don't know yet. Duck Hunt Dog is the only one that appears to be anywhere around high tier, but I don't like him enough to main him. He's just an occasional secondary.

Edited October 10, 2014 by Anacybele

[metalsnowman3]

ike isn't unusable, he just requires really good predicting skills, f tilt is still really good as well as his jab. I've lost to some ike's on FG mode. Also, he can still go pretty below the stage and has a decent off stage game, though the change to fair hurt it a little.

[PKL]

Agreed on Ike. Samus is kinda bad still but definetely not down there with ike. Ike lost all his nice options in Brawl. Hell, even his jab has trouble connecting on some characters and it's been nerfed to never jab cancel into grab etc. Fair got nerfed pretty badly too. It's practically the same range as Nair now, which is dumb. And he hits like a regular character now. And his recovery feels even worse. He still has back air autocancel...at least.

[Anacybele]

Metalsnowman says Ike's jab is still good and PJSalt says it's bad now. Who do I believe here? xP

[Dai]

I'd say it's kind of bad, to be honest. In Brawl, I remember it being a lot faster, particularly I think if you held it down, I could be wrong. Here, it's a lot slower.

[PKL]

Metalsnowman says Ike's jab is still good and PJSalt says it's bad now. Who do I believe here? xP

It's still one of his better moves for sure. But it's super nerfed compared to what he could do with it in brawl :P

[Anacybele]

Well then, all I can hope is that there's eventually a balancing patch released that fixes these issues, but I doubt that'll happen unless it fixes a bunch of characters and that's a lot of work. Still, if they wanted to buff Ike, why not do what they had done with Bowser and speed him up a bit? Not a lot, obviously, just make a few more attacks come out a bit faster. Quick Draw should've been changed to function more like its alternate, Close Combat. It's weaker, but I still wrecked people with it. Eruption's power didn't need to be nerfed. It was already hard to land a fully charged attack with it.

I heard that Ganondorf's attacks are faster now too. Again, why not do this with Ike? Were they afraid of giving him too much speed because of how powerful he is? If I recall, Ganondorf is actually a bit stronger, so this makes no sense.

[metalsnowman3]

Metalsnowman says Ike's jab is still good and PJSalt says it's bad now. Who do I believe here? xP

good as in quick, but some characters can like nair or something and hit you because of the low hitstun, so i guess it really isn't that good.

[riariadne]

Ike's jab isn't so much "bad" as it used to just be way better.

I do think Ike's custom moves help him out a lot but he's still not very good. Aether Drive is a much needed improvement to his recovery and can combo good with some throws at lower percentages, and Tempest is pretty good for edgeguarding.

[Anacybele]

Well, they say tournaments won't allow custom moves (except here on SF, of course). So Ike is still unusable now in the competitive ones. So much for the people that said everyone is viable now. I started believing them too.

I don't even want to play the game anymore now. I play it for competitive fun and to fight using my favorite characters. But now my favorites are bottom tier and utter shit according to the experts. So What's the point? I don't have any fun if I lose all the time or have to use a character I don't like just to get anywhere. After the tournaments I'm currently entered in are done, I guess I'm done...

Edited October 10, 2014 by Anacybele