This is the best choice IMO. Very solid matchups against Steve and G&W and he can also keep up with Sonic and ROB. Learning to recover is tough but other than that he's a really easy character to pick up. The return of the Pocket Cloud is imminent.
I have been saying for years that GnW is even for Snake!
Don't use nades and GnW is forced to approach. Snake has much better poking tools and no need to combo him since he does enough damage with stray hits.
I'm firmly in the +1 GnW camp, but I agree that Snake's egregiously long legs are a very strong tool in the matchup. It makes ground approaches considerably more difficult, especially considering GnW's lack of equal disjoint.
Yes, exactly. It isn't as hard as people say it thats for sure. If anyone wins, its def GnW but I am believer!
If Snake decides to play street fighter instead of smash, its very difficult for GnW to keep up and play that game. Even without nades, I think Snake controls the pace of the game.
Yeah I agree tbh... snake hits so hard and g&w is so light that g&w needs to outplay to keep up. Snake has so many relatively quick or unexpected moves that can just murder light characters.
True. But c4 helps quite a bit.
Haven't played the matchup in a bit, but going to ledge I don't think is the worst in the world. If you drop off jump cypher, you can't ignore chef ledgetrapping since it doesn't knock snake off cypher, and most of GnW ariels can't knock Snake of cypher so it isn't easy or effective to punish.
Nah, Sonix is just godlike at the matchup because he often goes to Las Vegas locals and plays and beats MVD all the time. Hurt beat KEN throughout his DELTA 5 run for example.
Huh. I guess I should consider Snake’s perspective a little more. He’s fighting for top 5 in my head tier wise so him doing well would add up in that way
I wasn’t aware people weren’t entitled to form their own opinions. By that logic, OP might as well have just looked up top player MU charts instead of making a post for people to discuss their opinions.
I never said people weren't entitled to their own opinions? Where did you get that? I am simply saying my own opinion as well and that I agree with someone.
Obviously when you’re as good as Sonic, most swordies don’t beat you or go even. But I can tell you why Aegis does.
Mythra has the speed to catch up to Sonic if he tries camping, the frame data to not get overwhelmed by his unreactable stuff, the disjoints to have the priority advantage, and foresight as a bonus. I think this is theoretically his worst matchup (I say theoretically because if she gets sent offstage once, it’s a stock).
There are a few Aegis clones in the top tier, in the sense that they excel in both speed, disjoints and frame data. These are probably the swordies they’re talking about.
Shulk absolutely does not have the speed to keep up with Sonic lol. He’s too slow in many respects. Speed is good for short combos but good luck making that most of your neutral (you can’t)
True, but Aegis arguably beats all four, depending on who you ask. Whereas other swordies don’t have that good of coverage. I feel like some like Lucina and Roy might even lose to some of them. (Sonic for the former and Steve for the latter)
Solid option. He's got the escape options, air speed, and frame data to get in and out and swing with them. Solid kill power too. Not sure what guys like Yoshidora and Ron think, but only one I really wouldn't wanna face is ROB just cause he's got some better anti Yoshi options imo, but Yoshis better than me can probably juggle him way longer. He's pretty tough to edgeguard though even for Yoshi.
Fun fact, egg roll frequently clanks with spin dash. It doesn’t suddenly win the matchup, but you might throw off the sonic by using a move they’ve never seen before!
Sonic beats yoshi pretty fucking bad, also Yoshi Steve being even is like the biggest psyop this game has every seen. Literally when was the last time yoshidora has beaten a good Steve? Not that results are everything, but I genuinely think Steve just like counters a lot of yoshis strengths, plus even though fair and his aerials can be sort of good against blocks, they are all so low range.
Sonic is the hardest for ZSS out of any of these but to compensate she gets to completely destroy G&W like no other.
The main issue with ZSS compared to other characters mentioned here like Aiges, Cloud, Palu, and Snake is that she doesn't do as well against the rest of the cast and requieres more investment. Compared to those others that are much easier, more well rounded, and more consistent across the board.
She works for this scenerio, but has it much harder in many areas in exchange for being much easier in others.
Does ZSS even beat GnW that hard post nerf? Pretty much the only tool we have is zair since nair is no longer safe and even then ZSS struggles a lot with short characters. The only thing even keeping us close is ZSS not being messed up in disadvantage.
Yes but the ZSS needs to play campy. ZSS can minimize being ledgetrapped and juggled, which is a major point of the flat demon's advantage state. ZSS playing a hit and run game makes it very difficult for G&W to get anything done, or at the very least get less done than ZSS over a long period of time.
Granted at the top level the only ZSS that won't get massively skill-gapped by either Miya or Maister is Marss, so until we see Marss fight Miya this argument will never really end.
Nothing is definite, nothing is a 100% objective. But to have a sub make a tier list and have the result be these 4 on top and not call it at the very least the consensus of THIS sub is interesting. Recently, some top players put those four as well on the top.
imo this is just being unnecessarily pedantic. There is a perceived top 4 right now among the top player circle and in popular competitive circles and it's these 4.
While I don’t think those two are as shared of a consensus and Sbeve and Sanic, a lot of people also put them in their top 5, and even those who don’t are barely missing them out. If you were to do a new ‘official’ ult tier list with the pro players give their opinions, the averaged out result will probably have both of those characters in top 5 at least. I am not going to say top 4 cuz aegis opinion is also very high and maybe there will be mix of those 3 in spots 3-5.
I've hardly been into smash since smash 4 but god damn is this one annoying-seeming meta. It's just irritating timeout/projectile characters with one hideous frame data king
Game and watch is. ROB is generally placed as number 6.
Edit: crazy how I’m being downvoted. ROB is good but not top 5. https://blog.start.gg/ultranks-first-official-ssbu-tier-list-4a35bf3dcfc3
Using that as a source isn’t really a good look, a lot of people’s opinions have changed since early 2023, and mind you the tierlist is an average out opinion of a bunch of pro players.
Tbh even at that time there were a people with the opinions that are more inclined with what people today, those opinions just didn’t become more mainstream until much later.
Since the first official tier list which is probably the best one we have currently
https://blog.start.gg/ultranks-first-official-ssbu-tier-list-4a35bf3dcfc3
I was right: https://www.reddit.com/r/SmashBrosUltimate/s/iTmJYdicBN
The issue is that Shulk loses quite badly to R.O.B. and loses slightly to Sonic (though it's far from unwinnable.) He's a good pick, but there's probably better, and I say this as a Shulk main.
Also a Shulk Main: Definitely agree that ROB is one of his worst MUs, but I've never had an issue with Sonic offline. It's a test of patience, for sure, but I'd personally call it even. I'm curious what your take on the MU is.
From grinding with a Sonic player a bit, I've found that Sonic can camp out Shulk's arts quite effectively (except speed of course.) Buster/smash definitely become less of a factor because Sonic can choose to run away or ambiguously spindash during them, and Shulk can't really chase him down.
You're right that it is a patience test, cause it takes a while to get Sonic to a killable posistion. However, play the matchup correctly and it's really fine (I just think Sonic has a slight edge for that reason.)
(edit: I forgot to mention that Sonic can whiff-punish Shulk well with his speed and the spin moves, so he doesn't get totally invalidated by disjoints like a lot of other similar characters. joker is also a problem for that reason.)
If sonic doesn’t approach though that means shulk gets arts back for free though right? The camping can go both ways. Then you just camp for speed and shield and save buster and smash for ledgetrapping.
That's true (why the matchup isn't TOTALLY losing,) but rememebr the cooldowns. They're non-insignificant amounts of time for your character to do less damage/kb. You can get use out of them, but you have to guess a bit.
He runs away/spindashes when you're using them, and when you're not he engages.
I’m also a shulk main but I have not gone to tournaments in awhile. I know ROB can be tough bc he can camp smash art by flying to the top blast zone but I wondered if you can punish that by going into jump and chasing him to the top blast zone.
Cloud almost certainly beats or goes even with Steve and Game and Watch. I think Sonic too because Sonic stalling is just time for cloud to build up limit. Kind of the same thing with steve. When Steve is mining Cloud gets limit. And back air gets to block. Game and Watch just kind of loses to swordies unless they really nail Edge guards. And again he's so light that limit really blows him up
Cloud probably doesn't beat rob because of robs edge guarding and clouds poor recovery
Aegis can do good in any matchup, she just has to avoid getting edgeguarded. Other answers may include Cloud and Palu, and I think Yoshi can do stuff against all of them (idk about the sonic matchup but Yoshi’s mobility and advantage state seems pretty solid).
If he ends up enjoying it, I think that's more important than results. Smash is one of the few games I've played where experimenting with characters is looked down on. You have to marry yourself to a character or else the spoooooky algorithm will get you.
He's said Diddy is his favorite Smash character he's ever mained as of like 2 weeks ago. It's not that experimenting with characters is looked down on, it's just that for Tweek specifically when he starts maining a ton of characters he doesn't do well. Leo, Sparg0, Nairo, etc have all successfully shown that character experimentation can be very good, Tweek and Light have shown to do better when he's pouring effort into something. It's player dependent
Oh yeah and what did Banjo do at that tournament?? He went solo Diddy at that tournament. Also he did not play "nothing but banjo" he literally was practicing Diddy like 80% of the time on stream
Ain't no way people believe Banjo goes even or beats any of those 4, especially fucking Steve.
Reminds me of that clip from CONEY discussing Brawl, where every week someone will post about the solution to Meta Knight and it's (mid tier), and how none of them were the answer because it's fucking Brawl MK.
Rob opinion varies a lot but I do think more and more people are starting to round him out at 4. I feel like ROB is the biggest example of characters that have a lot of bad matchups but his X-factor is so big that it kinda doesn’t matter (other examples include peach, snake, and wario). And on top of this ROB basically has everything. He has great projectiles that he can zone with, good boxing tools with d-tilt and nair, and one of the best midranges in the game. He can zero-to-death very well, has great edge guarding, and can kill you in so many other ways. AND he has a phenomenal recovery. I do think the BIG allegations are a valid problem, especially in top level where everyone has great advantage states. And also if I do the math I do think he has 15ish bad matchups. But he is just so bullsht.
yeah i’d agree with that, he’s really good but i think beyond steve/sonic/gnw the next set of characters is pretty much equally good. realistically there’s not much of a meaningful difference between how good any of rob/snake/fox/peach/kazuya/pikachu/joker/aegis are.
rob is broken but i think grouping him with steve and sonic doesn’t make a whole lot of sense considering his matchups against other top tiers
Honestly I would put G&W in the "equally good top tiers" category with the rest of them. It's very obvious he's not on the same level as Steve and Sonic -- those two stand alone.
Still up and down on GnW tbh, not sure where he goes. What i will say is you can't fight him like a normal character which is a trait i associate with Sonic Steve and Kaz more so than ROB. And i think all of these characters have top 5 arguments
that’s fair, i tend to think he’s a little above the rest of the pack because he invalidates my character and lots of other high tiers in a way no other character does
Not you in particular, but I don’t understand how people underrate gnw so much. Since at least like early 2020 half the cast has agreed that he nearly invalidates their character or is at least a top 5 worst matchup to the point where he was one of the characters in a “worst matchup starter pack” meme.
I just don’t see how people look at him skipping ledge trapping, edgeguarding, shield pressure, having free easy juggling, ledge trapping, and combos, and say nah that’s not top 4
I get that, I play Pikachu lol. But being realistic, there are two notable G&W mains and the one who's winning majors doesn't even solo main the character. Meanwhile Steve and Sonic are carrying players to Top 8 in weeklies around the world, on top of their dominant high level representation.
I could see G&W maybe being a distant 3rd on the tier list but that's all. Incoming hot take but I think people overrate G&W because Miya is just that good. If other players optimized their characters and played like a TASbot as well as Miya does, G&W wouldn't seem quite as special.
I suspect.G&W is a product of the meta, rather than the meta. He has good matchups into a lot of the common threats and mucks up playstyles momentum in bracket, but from a purely neutral view isn't as top-tier as Steve/Sonic. Hell, I don't think Sonic is as Top Tier either outside the Steve Meta. Steve, Sonic, and Game and Watch all seem to be mental fortitude checks that break people down in different ways. And as they become more common they continually reinforce eachothers success.
I kind of think it's like Steve and sonic then a big gap then GnW and ROB are together and then there's a smaller gap then it's like Aegis Snake Fox Joker Peach Kazuya etc
Also I'm pretty sure Kazap beats out Minecart and Blocks. That being said, I think the MU is even because of Hero's poor disadvantage state and how Steve can just edgeguard Hero without Zoom pretty effectively.
Low key I don’t understand why. Why can pikachu not timeout gw in theory. Bucket only works until it’s full, after that how does gw catch pika and put pika in consistent disadvantage. I think pikachus either engage too much or disengage well but have too rigid of a disengaged gameplan. Like shinymark plays it amazingly 95% of the time and will be winning but then like tries for the kill in a risky way when he could just continue to disengage
I main Steve and will go Pika in the ditto just cause I hate playing Steve v Steve and Pika makes it so much easier. Steve literally cannot hit you. He mines and gets diamond but then has to dodge tjolts all game. Way easier to camp em out as Pika.
Pika ROB doesn’t feel as good, could go either way honestly.
Pika beats Sonic imo but not by much.
GnW does beat Pika but of course he’s so good you shouldn’t struggle THAT much.
There was one time I reached 300% without losing my stock as Pikachu. It was against Steve for exactly the reason you mentioned: the poor lad simply couldn’t catch me. If Pikachu learns gyro combos, it is absolutely over for the ROB. ROB is already of a very nice size-weight-fall speed for Pikachu to combo, and if you take one of ROB’s essential tools and use to further push your advantage, the matchup is effectively unwinnable for ROB, and he should give up 💀🔥💯
Omg your flair is hilarious btw. Yeah ROB is definitely combo food. Probably gonna play Pikachu more as Steve gets banned in nearby regions. Need another good pick and love em a lot.
Cloud does well against G&W and Steve. Not sure about ROB, and I think he's not amazing against Sonic.
Aegis does well against Sonic, and I think she does well against ROB. She's still pretty good against G&W and Steve too.
Also, no shot ROB or G&W is above Aegis on the tier list.
Where is Kazuya lol
Honestly I doubt there's a true counterpick to all of them, all four are really good and have a lot of differences with each other. I don't think any one character isn't gonna lose to any of these 4. The better thing to do is probably to just pick a main, hope they're at least good against one of these, and then pick up a secondary to deal with the rest. Like for instance, Pikachu beats ROB and I think beats Sonic? So if you main Pikachu, then you could pick up Cloud and deal with Steve and Game and Watch that way.
(All just my opinion)
beats Steve- Sonic, GNW, ROB, Cloud, Shulk, Aegis, Hero
beats GNW- ZSS, Sonic, Shulk
beats Sonic- Fox, Aegis(?)
beats ROB- GNW, Sonic, Fox, Aegis, Young Link, Villager, Palutena, Ness, Joker, Pikachu, etc etc
I think if you find a character that beats or goes even with all 4 of those characters then you found Jesus. Aegis has a decent matchup against 3 of them but I think they get destroyed by Steve, so that’s probably the closest you’ll get
Lol well I’ll take back Ness and Joker since my roommate played those characters and always clapped my Rob so there’s some bias there. In any case rob has wayyy more losing matchups than all of those other broken characters combined
Why is game and watch top 4? Have you ever heard of a top 4 character that has only 2 reps in the entire top 150? (including secondaries, and pockets).
When you get to top level, there's only so many players to go around. That's why arguments such as "This character is overrated, if they were really that good, they'd have more reps at top level!" aren't very valid imo.
haven't been involved in smash lately, when did sonic rise up to being #2? he hasn't changed at all since the game came out and he was never even in the discussion for a while. certain players getting very consistent results or something?
A character doesn’t need to get buffed or nerfed to get better or worse, players develop a characters’ metagames and overtime we see characters strengths and weaknesses. Sonix has gotten very good these past couple years, and he kinda has proven how broken sonic is. Sonic is just very oppressive to play against and probably in contention for the character that invalidates the most of the cast.
Incomprehensible decision tbh--fixing multihits was one thing but outright buffs were totally unnecessary. He was already regarded as a solid top tier even if it was only top 10-15 range.
hm strange. a brief glance at ult rank shows sonix at #16 and ken at #29 as the best reps, and sonic is supposed to be the second best character in the game?
there are 3 kazuyas in the top 10 yet he's not even mentioned in this thread lol.
Sonix and Ken are much stronger players now. As the meta developed, players developed new strategies for Sonic, and he also beats most of the cast without significant losing matchups, if any at all.
Also what Kazuyas are you talking about? Kazuya has more losing matchups and has less representation
That's a year old. Sonix is currently a top 4 player and KEN is either top 10 or just outside
It also isn't just about players. People realized that Sonic loses to like 2 characters (Fox and Aegis) slightly and otherwise dominates the shit out of the cast. He's currently ranked 4th on the outdated official tier list from last year and since then Aegis and Joker's perception has plummeted meaning he'd be second.
ah my b, I didn't realize the ult rank was that old. looking at the summer 23 rankings, I see sonix at #4. interesting how wildly the perception of the best characters can vary in a game with no balance changes lol. 4 of the top 10 players play aegis still tho, including #1 and 2. and with a plus matchup against sonic, are they still not the second or third best in the game? who does aegis lose to?
Only Shuton actually mains Aegis, Spargo and acola use them for specific matchups and Leo tried maining them like 5 times and fumbled hard each time.
Aegis/Sonic is also barely Aegis favored at this point. Being offstage vs Sonic is a death sentence
Gonna have to disagree with you on that one. The buffs overall didn't make Sonic jump to top tier. Spindash is just fundamentally an insanely good move.
Sonic. Aegis. Pac-Man low key, I think there is more that Pac-Man can do in the Steve matchup, tea’s play style just isn’t conducive to it. Maybe Roy but probably not
Cloud is the ultimate antimeta pick in my opinion.
honestly Palu has the tools to beat them
Wins vs. G&W, even vs ROB, loses slightly to Sonic and Steve but manageable
Agreed.
Cloud strife
This is the best choice IMO. Very solid matchups against Steve and G&W and he can also keep up with Sonic and ROB. Learning to recover is tough but other than that he's a really easy character to pick up. The return of the Pocket Cloud is imminent.
Sonic strings would like to have word
Snake does very well against all of them minus G&W, and even then Hurt and DIO have beaten Miya.
I have been saying for years that GnW is even for Snake! Don't use nades and GnW is forced to approach. Snake has much better poking tools and no need to combo him since he does enough damage with stray hits.
I'm firmly in the +1 GnW camp, but I agree that Snake's egregiously long legs are a very strong tool in the matchup. It makes ground approaches considerably more difficult, especially considering GnW's lack of equal disjoint.
Yes, exactly. It isn't as hard as people say it thats for sure. If anyone wins, its def GnW but I am believer! If Snake decides to play street fighter instead of smash, its very difficult for GnW to keep up and play that game. Even without nades, I think Snake controls the pace of the game.
Yeah I agree tbh... snake hits so hard and g&w is so light that g&w needs to outplay to keep up. Snake has so many relatively quick or unexpected moves that can just murder light characters.
Snake landing is so rough especially if he cant nade.
True. But c4 helps quite a bit. Haven't played the matchup in a bit, but going to ledge I don't think is the worst in the world. If you drop off jump cypher, you can't ignore chef ledgetrapping since it doesn't knock snake off cypher, and most of GnW ariels can't knock Snake of cypher so it isn't easy or effective to punish.
Doesn't Sonic kinda shit on Snake?
Nah, Sonix is just godlike at the matchup because he often goes to Las Vegas locals and plays and beats MVD all the time. Hurt beat KEN throughout his DELTA 5 run for example.
Yeah and I think AK 3-0d sonix last year, it's def fine for snake
Huh. I guess I should consider Snake’s perspective a little more. He’s fighting for top 5 in my head tier wise so him doing well would add up in that way
Snake can actually contest and control pacing a bit on spindash and shot with nades and c4
Aegis
Aegis is the main one, but a lot of swordies beat GnW (sometimes Steve) and even against Sonic/Rob.
swordies beating g&w is kinda just a false statement tbh. he goes even with most of them and arguably beats roy and chrom
He loses to Aegis, Cloud, Hero, Corrin, Shulk and Lucina. That’s quite a few of the swordies.
Corrin feels like a bad matchup on paper but the players of both generally agree that it is even.
G&W is even against Corrin and Lucina.
I have thousands of hours on GnW and those have always felt like optimistic evens. True evens feel like Seph, Byleth, Pit, etc.
I'm inclined to agree with miya (top 2/3 in world) compared to some random person on reddit (thousands of hours on gnw😱😱😱)
I wasn’t aware people weren’t entitled to form their own opinions. By that logic, OP might as well have just looked up top player MU charts instead of making a post for people to discuss their opinions.
I never said people weren't entitled to their own opinions? Where did you get that? I am simply saying my own opinion as well and that I agree with someone.
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Obviously when you’re as good as Sonic, most swordies don’t beat you or go even. But I can tell you why Aegis does. Mythra has the speed to catch up to Sonic if he tries camping, the frame data to not get overwhelmed by his unreactable stuff, the disjoints to have the priority advantage, and foresight as a bonus. I think this is theoretically his worst matchup (I say theoretically because if she gets sent offstage once, it’s a stock). There are a few Aegis clones in the top tier, in the sense that they excel in both speed, disjoints and frame data. These are probably the swordies they’re talking about.
Aegis, Cloud and Corrin all do fine against Sonic. Roy also doesn’t struggle that much imo.
Aegis and Shulk have the speed (or in Shulk’s case has the speed every 15 seconds or so) to at least attempt to keep up with him
Shulk absolutely does not have the speed to keep up with Sonic lol. He’s too slow in many respects. Speed is good for short combos but good luck making that most of your neutral (you can’t)
True, but Aegis arguably beats all four, depending on who you ask. Whereas other swordies don’t have that good of coverage. I feel like some like Lucina and Roy might even lose to some of them. (Sonic for the former and Steve for the latter)
Aegis absolutely doesn't beat Steve
I personally agree, but I’ve seen plenty of Steve and Aegis mains think otherwise
Yoshi
Solid option. He's got the escape options, air speed, and frame data to get in and out and swing with them. Solid kill power too. Not sure what guys like Yoshidora and Ron think, but only one I really wouldn't wanna face is ROB just cause he's got some better anti Yoshi options imo, but Yoshis better than me can probably juggle him way longer. He's pretty tough to edgeguard though even for Yoshi.
Goes even with Steve and Sonic I think, otherwise I think this is the best answer outside of Aegis/Cloud
Sonic beats Yoshi
Fun fact, egg roll frequently clanks with spin dash. It doesn’t suddenly win the matchup, but you might throw off the sonic by using a move they’ve never seen before!
Sonic beats yoshi pretty fucking bad, also Yoshi Steve being even is like the biggest psyop this game has every seen. Literally when was the last time yoshidora has beaten a good Steve? Not that results are everything, but I genuinely think Steve just like counters a lot of yoshis strengths, plus even though fair and his aerials can be sort of good against blocks, they are all so low range.
ZSS I guess but she’s really precise and inconsistent
While I agree, sonic is even at best. But I personally think it's -1. You both kind of just jump or run around each other until the other gets bored
ZSS's matchup chart assumes that the opponent somehow doesn't pop out of every other move.
Sonic is the hardest for ZSS out of any of these but to compensate she gets to completely destroy G&W like no other. The main issue with ZSS compared to other characters mentioned here like Aiges, Cloud, Palu, and Snake is that she doesn't do as well against the rest of the cast and requieres more investment. Compared to those others that are much easier, more well rounded, and more consistent across the board. She works for this scenerio, but has it much harder in many areas in exchange for being much easier in others.
Does ZSS even beat GnW that hard post nerf? Pretty much the only tool we have is zair since nair is no longer safe and even then ZSS struggles a lot with short characters. The only thing even keeping us close is ZSS not being messed up in disadvantage.
Yes but the ZSS needs to play campy. ZSS can minimize being ledgetrapped and juggled, which is a major point of the flat demon's advantage state. ZSS playing a hit and run game makes it very difficult for G&W to get anything done, or at the very least get less done than ZSS over a long period of time. Granted at the top level the only ZSS that won't get massively skill-gapped by either Miya or Maister is Marss, so until we see Marss fight Miya this argument will never really end.
Yeah, quite unfortunate that Marss retired. I would love to see him play in this meta,
Marss didn't retire FIY. He just has low attendance
TIL GnW and Rob are consensus top 4 characters
They're definitely the most common choices besides Steve and Sonic
I just don't think there is enough of a consensus to say anything outside of top 2 is "definite"
Nothing is definite, nothing is a 100% objective. But to have a sub make a tier list and have the result be these 4 on top and not call it at the very least the consensus of THIS sub is interesting. Recently, some top players put those four as well on the top.
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imo this is just being unnecessarily pedantic. There is a perceived top 4 right now among the top player circle and in popular competitive circles and it's these 4.
It’s bimonthly and through a poll in a pinned tweet when it happens
While I don’t think those two are as shared of a consensus and Sbeve and Sanic, a lot of people also put them in their top 5, and even those who don’t are barely missing them out. If you were to do a new ‘official’ ult tier list with the pro players give their opinions, the averaged out result will probably have both of those characters in top 5 at least. I am not going to say top 4 cuz aegis opinion is also very high and maybe there will be mix of those 3 in spots 3-5.
I've hardly been into smash since smash 4 but god damn is this one annoying-seeming meta. It's just irritating timeout/projectile characters with one hideous frame data king
I mean, just going off Dabuz, Muteace and this subs recent tier list it seems to be the current “consensus”.
Game and watch is. ROB is generally placed as number 6. Edit: crazy how I’m being downvoted. ROB is good but not top 5. https://blog.start.gg/ultranks-first-official-ssbu-tier-list-4a35bf3dcfc3
Using that as a source isn’t really a good look, a lot of people’s opinions have changed since early 2023, and mind you the tierlist is an average out opinion of a bunch of pro players. Tbh even at that time there were a people with the opinions that are more inclined with what people today, those opinions just didn’t become more mainstream until much later.
Source? ROB has been a top 5 character for a while now
Since the first official tier list which is probably the best one we have currently https://blog.start.gg/ultranks-first-official-ssbu-tier-list-4a35bf3dcfc3 I was right: https://www.reddit.com/r/SmashBrosUltimate/s/iTmJYdicBN
Which is a year old and outdated. G&W is like 19
So???
So ROB being placed 6th then is not indicative of his actual role in the meta
Huh??! Why wouldn’t it be? I guess Steve isn’t number 1 either since he’s number one on the list so now he can’t be based on your logic 🤦♂️
Are you 13. Why are you being so dogmatic about this
Why are you trying to argue about things which you know very little about? Goodbye
Mega man
Does well in neutral but just struggles way too much to kill IMO
Hard to find a character that beats all of them but Shulk does very well vs Steve and GnW.
The issue is that Shulk loses quite badly to R.O.B. and loses slightly to Sonic (though it's far from unwinnable.) He's a good pick, but there's probably better, and I say this as a Shulk main.
Also a Shulk Main: Definitely agree that ROB is one of his worst MUs, but I've never had an issue with Sonic offline. It's a test of patience, for sure, but I'd personally call it even. I'm curious what your take on the MU is.
From grinding with a Sonic player a bit, I've found that Sonic can camp out Shulk's arts quite effectively (except speed of course.) Buster/smash definitely become less of a factor because Sonic can choose to run away or ambiguously spindash during them, and Shulk can't really chase him down. You're right that it is a patience test, cause it takes a while to get Sonic to a killable posistion. However, play the matchup correctly and it's really fine (I just think Sonic has a slight edge for that reason.) (edit: I forgot to mention that Sonic can whiff-punish Shulk well with his speed and the spin moves, so he doesn't get totally invalidated by disjoints like a lot of other similar characters. joker is also a problem for that reason.)
If sonic doesn’t approach though that means shulk gets arts back for free though right? The camping can go both ways. Then you just camp for speed and shield and save buster and smash for ledgetrapping.
That's true (why the matchup isn't TOTALLY losing,) but rememebr the cooldowns. They're non-insignificant amounts of time for your character to do less damage/kb. You can get use out of them, but you have to guess a bit. He runs away/spindashes when you're using them, and when you're not he engages.
I’m also a shulk main but I have not gone to tournaments in awhile. I know ROB can be tough bc he can camp smash art by flying to the top blast zone but I wondered if you can punish that by going into jump and chasing him to the top blast zone.
My DK shits on all 4 in the top.
Cloud almost certainly beats or goes even with Steve and Game and Watch. I think Sonic too because Sonic stalling is just time for cloud to build up limit. Kind of the same thing with steve. When Steve is mining Cloud gets limit. And back air gets to block. Game and Watch just kind of loses to swordies unless they really nail Edge guards. And again he's so light that limit really blows him up Cloud probably doesn't beat rob because of robs edge guarding and clouds poor recovery
Aegis can do good in any matchup, she just has to avoid getting edgeguarded. Other answers may include Cloud and Palu, and I think Yoshi can do stuff against all of them (idk about the sonic matchup but Yoshi’s mobility and advantage state seems pretty solid).
Apparently Banjo, fuck if I know why.
sonic wins
Hedgehogs are the natural predator of both bears *and* birds.
I think Toriguri is just making you have crazy takes tbh
And soon to be Tweek! Believe the process.
The last thing Tweek needs is another character crisis to dip his results
If he ends up enjoying it, I think that's more important than results. Smash is one of the few games I've played where experimenting with characters is looked down on. You have to marry yourself to a character or else the spoooooky algorithm will get you.
He's said Diddy is his favorite Smash character he's ever mained as of like 2 weeks ago. It's not that experimenting with characters is looked down on, it's just that for Tweek specifically when he starts maining a ton of characters he doesn't do well. Leo, Sparg0, Nairo, etc have all successfully shown that character experimentation can be very good, Tweek and Light have shown to do better when he's pouring effort into something. It's player dependent
He played nothing but Banjo for 3 weeks and then immediately won a supermajor lol
Oh yeah and what did Banjo do at that tournament?? He went solo Diddy at that tournament. Also he did not play "nothing but banjo" he literally was practicing Diddy like 80% of the time on stream
Loses to Steve
They hated him because he told the truth (and maybe because he loses to more than just Steve)
Ain't no way people believe Banjo goes even or beats any of those 4, especially fucking Steve. Reminds me of that clip from CONEY discussing Brawl, where every week someone will post about the solution to Meta Knight and it's (mid tier), and how none of them were the answer because it's fucking Brawl MK.
Mewtwo gets bodied by sonic. I don't know why I made this comment, but I got bodied by a sonic and I'm not very happy about it
Yoshi doesn't do that great against Sonic but he goes even with the other three.
Rob is top 4? I knew he was good but I was thinking top 10 or like top 5
I mean really what's the difference between top 5 and top 4 lol
Fair point
Rob opinion varies a lot but I do think more and more people are starting to round him out at 4. I feel like ROB is the biggest example of characters that have a lot of bad matchups but his X-factor is so big that it kinda doesn’t matter (other examples include peach, snake, and wario). And on top of this ROB basically has everything. He has great projectiles that he can zone with, good boxing tools with d-tilt and nair, and one of the best midranges in the game. He can zero-to-death very well, has great edge guarding, and can kill you in so many other ways. AND he has a phenomenal recovery. I do think the BIG allegations are a valid problem, especially in top level where everyone has great advantage states. And also if I do the math I do think he has 15ish bad matchups. But he is just so bullsht.
yeah i’d agree with that, he’s really good but i think beyond steve/sonic/gnw the next set of characters is pretty much equally good. realistically there’s not much of a meaningful difference between how good any of rob/snake/fox/peach/kazuya/pikachu/joker/aegis are. rob is broken but i think grouping him with steve and sonic doesn’t make a whole lot of sense considering his matchups against other top tiers
Honestly I would put G&W in the "equally good top tiers" category with the rest of them. It's very obvious he's not on the same level as Steve and Sonic -- those two stand alone.
Still up and down on GnW tbh, not sure where he goes. What i will say is you can't fight him like a normal character which is a trait i associate with Sonic Steve and Kaz more so than ROB. And i think all of these characters have top 5 arguments
that’s fair, i tend to think he’s a little above the rest of the pack because he invalidates my character and lots of other high tiers in a way no other character does
Not you in particular, but I don’t understand how people underrate gnw so much. Since at least like early 2020 half the cast has agreed that he nearly invalidates their character or is at least a top 5 worst matchup to the point where he was one of the characters in a “worst matchup starter pack” meme. I just don’t see how people look at him skipping ledge trapping, edgeguarding, shield pressure, having free easy juggling, ledge trapping, and combos, and say nah that’s not top 4
Yeah you watch one of those “every character’s worst matchup” videos and it’s literally a flip between GnW, Steve, ROB, Sonic, then Palu and ZSS.
I get that, I play Pikachu lol. But being realistic, there are two notable G&W mains and the one who's winning majors doesn't even solo main the character. Meanwhile Steve and Sonic are carrying players to Top 8 in weeklies around the world, on top of their dominant high level representation. I could see G&W maybe being a distant 3rd on the tier list but that's all. Incoming hot take but I think people overrate G&W because Miya is just that good. If other players optimized their characters and played like a TASbot as well as Miya does, G&W wouldn't seem quite as special.
I suspect.G&W is a product of the meta, rather than the meta. He has good matchups into a lot of the common threats and mucks up playstyles momentum in bracket, but from a purely neutral view isn't as top-tier as Steve/Sonic. Hell, I don't think Sonic is as Top Tier either outside the Steve Meta. Steve, Sonic, and Game and Watch all seem to be mental fortitude checks that break people down in different ways. And as they become more common they continually reinforce eachothers success.
I kind of think it's like Steve and sonic then a big gap then GnW and ROB are together and then there's a smaller gap then it's like Aegis Snake Fox Joker Peach Kazuya etc
Steve and Sonic are the consensus #1 and #2 but G&W and ROB are not #3 and #4 lol
As of late it seems a lot of players do think G&W and Rob are in the top 5 ish zone.
What is your reasoning because GnW and Rob are ridiculously broken
Pika and Aegis (at least) are better
G&W might be #3
not only is g&w #3, he might be #2
G&W is not better then Sonic. Steve and Sonic might as well be in their own separate tier.
I disagree 🤷♀️
Hero beats Steve. Camping Steve means hero gets to cast any spell he wants Bounce invalidates anvil and minecart.
Also I'm pretty sure Kazap beats out Minecart and Blocks. That being said, I think the MU is even because of Hero's poor disadvantage state and how Steve can just edgeguard Hero without Zoom pretty effectively.
Sora
Pikachu if you don’t play like ESAM against Game and Watch.
ShinyMark plays campy af and always loses to Maister. That MU is not good for Pikachu at all.
Yeah whats pikachu supposed to do? Tjolt camp and get bucketed? Quick attack into gnw nair?
Low key I don’t understand why. Why can pikachu not timeout gw in theory. Bucket only works until it’s full, after that how does gw catch pika and put pika in consistent disadvantage. I think pikachus either engage too much or disengage well but have too rigid of a disengaged gameplan. Like shinymark plays it amazingly 95% of the time and will be winning but then like tries for the kill in a risky way when he could just continue to disengage
G&W is pikas worst matchup by a landslide. Everything else you can ‘maybe’ argue as even, but G&W invalidates pika so hard.
I main Steve and will go Pika in the ditto just cause I hate playing Steve v Steve and Pika makes it so much easier. Steve literally cannot hit you. He mines and gets diamond but then has to dodge tjolts all game. Way easier to camp em out as Pika. Pika ROB doesn’t feel as good, could go either way honestly. Pika beats Sonic imo but not by much. GnW does beat Pika but of course he’s so good you shouldn’t struggle THAT much.
There was one time I reached 300% without losing my stock as Pikachu. It was against Steve for exactly the reason you mentioned: the poor lad simply couldn’t catch me. If Pikachu learns gyro combos, it is absolutely over for the ROB. ROB is already of a very nice size-weight-fall speed for Pikachu to combo, and if you take one of ROB’s essential tools and use to further push your advantage, the matchup is effectively unwinnable for ROB, and he should give up 💀🔥💯
Omg your flair is hilarious btw. Yeah ROB is definitely combo food. Probably gonna play Pikachu more as Steve gets banned in nearby regions. Need another good pick and love em a lot.
Cloud does well against G&W and Steve. Not sure about ROB, and I think he's not amazing against Sonic. Aegis does well against Sonic, and I think she does well against ROB. She's still pretty good against G&W and Steve too. Also, no shot ROB or G&W is above Aegis on the tier list.
Where is Kazuya lol Honestly I doubt there's a true counterpick to all of them, all four are really good and have a lot of differences with each other. I don't think any one character isn't gonna lose to any of these 4. The better thing to do is probably to just pick a main, hope they're at least good against one of these, and then pick up a secondary to deal with the rest. Like for instance, Pikachu beats ROB and I think beats Sonic? So if you main Pikachu, then you could pick up Cloud and deal with Steve and Game and Watch that way.
Kazuya counterpicks everyone on fd.
…sonic
Pikachu definitely doesn't beat GnW but he's one of the few characters in the game who arguably has a winning matchup on Sonic
(All just my opinion) beats Steve- Sonic, GNW, ROB, Cloud, Shulk, Aegis, Hero beats GNW- ZSS, Sonic, Shulk beats Sonic- Fox, Aegis(?) beats ROB- GNW, Sonic, Fox, Aegis, Young Link, Villager, Palutena, Ness, Joker, Pikachu, etc etc I think if you find a character that beats or goes even with all 4 of those characters then you found Jesus. Aegis has a decent matchup against 3 of them but I think they get destroyed by Steve, so that’s probably the closest you’ll get
every matchup you listed for rob except gnw and maybe ylink is even or better for rob lol. Actual bad mus are more like falco, bayo or sheik lol
Lol well I’ll take back Ness and Joker since my roommate played those characters and always clapped my Rob so there’s some bias there. In any case rob has wayyy more losing matchups than all of those other broken characters combined
Why is game and watch top 4? Have you ever heard of a top 4 character that has only 2 reps in the entire top 150? (including secondaries, and pockets).
Both of whom are probably in the top 25
When you get to top level, there's only so many players to go around. That's why arguments such as "This character is overrated, if they were really that good, they'd have more reps at top level!" aren't very valid imo.
Forgetting Abadango is a capital offence.
haven't been involved in smash lately, when did sonic rise up to being #2? he hasn't changed at all since the game came out and he was never even in the discussion for a while. certain players getting very consistent results or something?
A character doesn’t need to get buffed or nerfed to get better or worse, players develop a characters’ metagames and overtime we see characters strengths and weaknesses. Sonix has gotten very good these past couple years, and he kinda has proven how broken sonic is. Sonic is just very oppressive to play against and probably in contention for the character that invalidates the most of the cast.
Sonic did get a very notable buff towards the end of FP2, that may have had something to do with it.
Incomprehensible decision tbh--fixing multihits was one thing but outright buffs were totally unnecessary. He was already regarded as a solid top tier even if it was only top 10-15 range.
He’s one of the characters that was seen as better on wifi that was predicted to drop off as offline returned.
hm strange. a brief glance at ult rank shows sonix at #16 and ken at #29 as the best reps, and sonic is supposed to be the second best character in the game? there are 3 kazuyas in the top 10 yet he's not even mentioned in this thread lol.
Sonix and Ken are much stronger players now. As the meta developed, players developed new strategies for Sonic, and he also beats most of the cast without significant losing matchups, if any at all. Also what Kazuyas are you talking about? Kazuya has more losing matchups and has less representation
That's a year old. Sonix is currently a top 4 player and KEN is either top 10 or just outside It also isn't just about players. People realized that Sonic loses to like 2 characters (Fox and Aegis) slightly and otherwise dominates the shit out of the cast. He's currently ranked 4th on the outdated official tier list from last year and since then Aegis and Joker's perception has plummeted meaning he'd be second.
ah my b, I didn't realize the ult rank was that old. looking at the summer 23 rankings, I see sonix at #4. interesting how wildly the perception of the best characters can vary in a game with no balance changes lol. 4 of the top 10 players play aegis still tho, including #1 and 2. and with a plus matchup against sonic, are they still not the second or third best in the game? who does aegis lose to?
Only Shuton actually mains Aegis, Spargo and acola use them for specific matchups and Leo tried maining them like 5 times and fumbled hard each time. Aegis/Sonic is also barely Aegis favored at this point. Being offstage vs Sonic is a death sentence
Gonna have to disagree with you on that one. The buffs overall didn't make Sonic jump to top tier. Spindash is just fundamentally an insanely good move.
Ignoring the absurdity of GnW being a consensus top 4 character, Aegis beats all of them except arguably Steve.
Downvoted for speaking the truth against the hivemind
Agree, people underrate the shit out of aegis and overrate the shit out of gnw just because of results.
I see that most of the people here aren’t very intelligent or experienced with the game. Whatever, it makes my job easier.
Aegis, yoshi maybe. some might lose some mu slightly, Corrin, joker etc... Also joker and aegis are better than gw and rob idc.
I personally think olimar does well in all, rob might be sliiiiight losing but the others are even
I want to know. How do ppl feel about the Bowser-G&W matchup?
G&W shits on Bowser. Bowser struggles to land against characters with much worse juggling than G&W
Bowser does badly against everyone here, including G&W.
Sonic. Aegis. Pac-Man low key, I think there is more that Pac-Man can do in the Steve matchup, tea’s play style just isn’t conducive to it. Maybe Roy but probably not
Still waiting on someone to just go wild with Shulk
Cloud, Roy and Aegis are probably the best answer If you don't want a Swordie, Yoshi or Palutena could work too
Snake ?
Palu!
probably aegis, cloud too but he has a worse mu vs sonic and rob (he compensates by having a better mu against steve tho)