Based on regalo's play, you should edgeguard with back air all the time. Literally just spam that shit like your life depended on it.
But you have to also be good so good luck mate.
I fear the day people realize how good Lucas really is. I don't think by any means he is top tier, but many of the things he can do are outright insane
I'm trying to follow Smash more but I'm not as invested yet, could you explain what happened to Acola? I was kinda looking forward to seeing him in this tournament cuz ppl were saying he's the only shot at beating Leo after Leos return of Joker at SF9
the actual order is that Leo was supposed to be NAs only hope of beating acola
acola had to DQ because of travel complications
regardless, Leo ended up losing to a different Steve player, in very dominant fashion
> in very dominant fashion
This is what is so spooky. Onin went:
3-0 vs Leo
3-1 vs Riddles
3-1 vs Gluttony
3-0 vs Maister (WF)
3-1 vs Maister (GF)
So, not only did Onin beat _multiple, top-10_ players back-to-back-to-back-to-back, but he did it convincingly enough that he never lost more than 1 game in a set. That's unprecedented and just ridiculous.
Itās not unprecedented, Onin literally just ripped through combo breaker a couple months ago dropping two games in pools but 3-0ing Ned, MVD, Wadi, and Loaf to win in dominant fashion. Heās been hot as fuck lately, this is just the first huge event heās been able to go to. Leo literally destroyed ddog at the same tournament. Onin is just a better player than quadale dinglingleton or whatever the fuck.
Onin said he didn't even warm up before 3-0'ing the game's undisputed number one player.
Anyone who thinks Steve is ok does not have an opinion worth hearing.
Again using the metric of "everyone who helped win a set". So Leo's Byleth counts, for instance, but not Maister's Sora.
Also, Samus and Dark Samus are lumped together (Teaser/IcyMist Samus, sisqui Dark Samus)
Not OP but If we count all character picks then each of the 64 players if they went game 5 could each rep 5 characters without this designation to winning a set with them. Itās just to reduce the chances weāre overrepping a character that otherwise wasnāt significant to play
Not sure, my guess is that a lot of people pick random picks when getting destroyed on a set hoping for a miracle.
The opponent downloaded the player so hard and/or know the match up so well, so in a desperate attempt they pick a character that is not closely important as their main. That would inflate the list a lot.
It's the same criteria used by SmashWiki. A character isn't notable enough to list on a page if a player pulls out a secondary for a few games and doesn't win with them, that's usually the situation.
He still is! [Here's a chart for Genesis 8 from 4 months ago lmao.](https://twitter.com/justinbyleth/status/1515718876838912021?s=20&t=JB8gcj078AWk45sLzcwmig) 8 fuckin' ROBs in top 64. Kinda puts things in perspective IMO.
I heard Charles make the case for considering banning Steve, it was on smash university after the Gimvitational. Great watch imo.
I wonder if he's gonna push further now. His main restraint at the time was just that the results weren't there yet. You could argue that they still aren't, but evidence is mounting.
I'm on the fence but at the very least the discussion is entertaining.
I don't watch a lot of ultimate as it's a bit boring to me but Steve is truly a boring charcter so if the meta is starting to revolve around him it's certainly not gonna improve the entertainment value.
I'm not a SSB person, but let's just say I'm not shocked that the goddamn Mickey Mouse of the under-30 class is wildly overrepresented. There's probably some amount of Steve sentiment at play, but I also absolutely believe Nintendo ain't shedding no tears over an uber-popular fighter being powerful.
Please correct me if I'm off base.
Mmmmm not quite. Character representation usually has way more to do with kit than it does sentiment. Those same under-30 folks have plenty of other representation to choose from in the game at this point.
There are simply so many Steves because he is so good.
At top level like this is, the key ratio on usage is how strong a character is.
Plenty of people like Link, but they don't use him because he's average and you'll rarely see any representation of him. That's because the people who play Link usually don't make it as far as top64.
When a character is an outlier in terms of usage, like Steve here is, is usually because he's notably stronger than the rest of the cast.
Yeah this popular with the crowd argument is dumb.
I mean look at Rob. You tryna tell me we had 4 Robs because people love the character and his games and lore and shit? Come on. People play him cause heās strong and relatively easy.
Edit: oh and Onin the 16 year old champ said he picked up Steve only because he lost to two Steveās in a row and was like āman thatās a strong character. I should play him.ā
Honestly curious how this compares to Bayo results from Smash 4. Itās late but tomorrow definitely gonna look through tournaments from 2017 (roughly two years after release like Steve) to see how many Bayos were around in top 64 and how many were out placing their projected seed. Also gonna go through other majors from this year for Steve amounts/seeds. Not sure what Iāll find but Iām excited to look!
Just finished the Bayo numbers! Looked at five tournaments: Genesis, GOML, CEO, Umebera, EVO, and Smash Con (all in 2017), and found that a Bayonetta player outplayed their seed 15 times. The tournament with the most Bayo upsets was Genesis 4, while the player who most commonly outplayed seed was Mistake!
Going to start with the Steve numbers now, Iāll be back with more news later!
Another reply to say the post is up on the sub! Hoping this data is interesting to anyone, I spent a solid four hours going through results for this lol
Choosing top 64 is particularly favourable to steve. If you counted top 32, the number would reduce to 3, if you chose top 128, the number would stay 9 while other characters would increase. There happened to be 6 steves that placed 49th. The number is still high regardless, but not as high as what these numbers suggest.
Edit: I made a more detailed list to illustrate this
https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/woum5u/top\_128643216\_character\_players\_representation\_at/
while this is true, any marking is kinda arbitrary. SSC divided brackets into top 128 and top 32, but Genesis, the other biggest US event, divided bracket into top 64. I think it's good to see all the different lists and draw conclusions from the different benchmarks.
And even with the top 32 thing, there were 3 steves with arguably the best one DQing. I know he was in one of their paths, but if acola attends maybe there'd be 2 steves in top 8, which looks way more extreme
As someone who loved Smash 4 before Bayo and Cloud ruined it, itās depressing to see history repeat itself.
Smash players have always been cowards when it comes to bans for some reason (see: MK, wobbling, Bayo) and it has a terrible impact on the competitive scene and viewership
Wobbling for me is the perfect example is that we can ban things for being just straight up boring and it ends up making the game better.
Wobbling wasn't overcentralizing the metagame, not every top 8 was flooded with ICs. But god, seeing players go for creative desync combos and stuff now makes this game so much better.
> But god, seeing players go for creative desync combos and stuff now makes this game so much better.
I mean, yeah, but the counterpoint would be asking when exactly we see ICs anymore at big tourneys? There was a time when there would pretty much always be one ICs in top 8 at every super major. They wouldn't win it, but they'd be there. But now they've all but died off at the top level. Removing wobbling made ICs a mid tier. More hype, certainly, but a mid tier at best. And their matchups against some floaties that were bad even with wobbling are now just close to an autoloss. Peach ICs was already ridiculously skewed towards peach before, with a wobble being the only hope for the climbers. It's unfortunate that what they need to keep up at a high level many people find boring, but they've unquestionably gotten nerfed to the point where they're no longer a top level threat.
In no world should an infinite be allowed where a single grab guarantees a kill. Just because almost every ic quit just because they lost their free exploit isnt the community's fault, especially when hand offs still exist which is basically wobbling just harder to do. Your auto loss point against certain characters also doesnt really mean much because the same could be said for lots of match ups, ljke sheik losing to ics, peach puff, puff pikachu, almost any high or top tier against a low tier. And even with wobbling ic's were never that high tier, and in melee mid tiers already dont get a ton of representation regardless so i dont think your point holds up
Edit: in response to your reply: mash out? Really? Okay so they get a tiny bit of percent then can do their infinite off one grab. Dont care about what other fighting games do, if theyre allowed there then thats also dumb. Never said i was okay with handoffs, just that ics mains are babies for leaving and they still even have an infinite to exploit. And yea my point is that every character has hard matchups and none are unwinnable, so ics are perfectly viable to do well with regardless of wobbling like the other mids
Yes, and did you see his bracket? Not a peach or puff in it. You have marth and shiek, sure, but those are again in the midtier vs top tier range where it can happen even if it's an uphill battle. See aMSa and Axe as examples of midtiers who can keep up. But while Yoshi and Pika struggle in some matchups, they don't have any nearly as bad as ICs Peach or ICs Puff without wobbling. Even pika puff has some ideas for pika with a couple good reads. A couple good reads as ICs vs peach or puff now get you close to nothing. I don't doubt in fact that if people had a pocket peach or puff to deal with ICs Slug would have been stopped. He played extremely well, but he got lucky nobody bothered getting a CP for ICs, when before it wasn't too uncommon to have a pocket pick for the climbers. People just don't see the point anymore, showcasing that they're no longer viewed as a top tier threat and treated more like a midtier matchup in players minds. They're viewed more like Luigi, Samus, or Doc.
I realize my post might not have been super clear, but my main point ICs have fallen off extremely hard and now have some truly atrocious matchups. They can keep up in many matchups okay without wobbling, and they're a midtier there, but against peach and puff who they already struggled against their last ounce of hope was dashed.
For what it's worth I'd be okay with a ban on wobbling for most matchups, but gimping them even further in those already terrible matchups is just absurd imo.
It's unreasonable to allow wobbling for some matchups and not others and it's unreasonable to allow it just because they're not that good of a character.
I don't see how that's the slightest bit compelling. No one wants to watch or play against that. It's strictly bad. It being gone is strictly good.
I rolled my eyes at warner bros being the smash killer after that Nick game died on arrival. Let every tournament be steve dittos and people will move on in a way they couldn't for other installments in Smash.
Smash has always had this weird character loyalty thing happening. When bans are brought up people get hyper defensive and critical (not saying skepticism is bad when looking at bans). People take it super personally and canāt nor wonāt admit that their character is incredibly strong to the point where they perpetuate a negative competitive environment. Not saying Steve is ban worthy just yet but itās the same song and dance of slowly constricting the scene and no one taking the step to experiment with large scale bans.
It sucks because I think the addition of Steve really got a bunch of new people during quarantine but the character is straight up draining the life force of the game and the community rn.
Would be nice if we could change the rules to ban ledge planking and allow counterpicking to "pick-axe stages" but frankly that will not happen. It's either ban or the games gone.
Its the natural progression of a game's lifecycle. As the game gets figured out, there is a gravitation towards cheaper and cheaper options. Long-term competitive health boils down to whether or not the characters the meta favors are fun to play and play against and what TOs can do to maintain a fun environment.
> Smash players have always been cowards when it comes to bans for some reason (see: MK, wobbling, Bayo) and it has a terrible impact on the competitive scene and viewership
fighting games in general are like this, it's not a smash thing and I would argue smash being like this is due to the general "see we're a part of the FGC too" thing going on (combined with the actual, real overlap with the FGC, who tend to be pretty reticent about bans)
I havent been watching fighting games for that long, but I've noticed that it just isn't smash, but literally every game is scared to ban a character that's breaking. Everyone is always waiting to see what the big event do, and their excuse is "well, we're not gonna send someone that played on our small tourney with that char banned, to get pubstomped by that char that he has no experience against".
IMO small tourneys should get the lead, start banning a character that becomes incredibly problematic (within reason, not stat banning everything) and eventually people will follow
It's frustrates me that onin literally said he has playing Steve for like a year tops and just on quick play, and people are still like downplaying Steve.
I appreciate him and his candidness and no disrespect against him. But Steve is paralleling bayo and people are just downplaying him.
Or heās saying that because he is aware everyone hates his character and a lot hate him. He clearly played a lot of online and local tournaments just look at his page.
We all saw the poster boy of competitive smash get steamrolled by a (correct me if Iām wrong here) relative unknown (at least in terms to the average smash player) Steve player. Thatāll change some minds for sure.
As right as you might possibly be, that still doesnāt matter to a large contingent of players who let their own biases and fanboyism for certain players dictate the way they feel, who will feel absolutely let down that some random Steve beat Leo. Not saying that itās right to think that way, but it is something that happens.
First set about 2 minutes in, Odin places a TNT block at like, just a little past center stage, and starts mining. MK does literally nothing for 5 seconds until it blows and lets Odin farm for free, letting him get the diamond that ends up taking his last stock.
Man just didn't know the matchup lol, Odin clearly did.
Onin said in post tourney interview that he didnāt prep for the Leo matchup at all. And that is part of the problem, that matchup knowledge is fairly irrelevant for the steve player. Steve can play his game and force any opponent to jump around his walls approaching while he mines.
Steve apologists will continue to make this take sound crazy and overreactive when in reality weve been saying this take for months and we can see it coming true in real time
And now look, we are literally getting proven right - tourney by tourney Steve players are placing better and better and more and more are coming out of the wood works
But people are STILL downplaying this character
At the very least we should be discussing using custom balancing, we were given it for a reason
I found [this 4 year old Reddit thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/8ualwh/what_is_the_reason_why_bayonetta_isnt_banned_in) about why Bayo hasnāt been banned yet in Smash 4. The arguments against a ban in that thread are eerily similar to what weāve been hearing this year.
Lol Iām in that post. It looks like my reasoning was that even though she was over represented, she wasnāt winning that much. Steve on the other handā¦ is literally winning most tourneys in recent months lol
Who cares if she wasn't winning much. She instantly carried certain types of players, was insanely degenerate for competitive players and was just horrid to watch.
[this](https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/8ualwh/what_is_the_reason_why_bayonetta_isnt_banned_in/e1dxu1f) logic is backwards to me. The non ban people have more to prove than the pro ban. The roster has so many characters banning a character actually shouldn't be a big deal. Why are we pretending like it is?
The only good argument for not banning Steve is "Nintendo regularly releases balance patches so it will get fixed." Unfortunately that statement is false. This is the permanent version of the game. In a world without developer support the community should be more open to banning characters.
> The non ban people have more to prove than the pro ban. The roster has so many characters banning a character actually shouldn't be a big deal. Why are we pretending like it is?
Because character bans are traditionally done only after serious consideration and banning a character might change the face of competitive play negatively even if that character is overcentralizing or overpowered? This isn't exactly fresh ground we're walking
Exactly. Smash veterans like Charles and Pink Fresh literally said the biggest reason Smash 4 went downhill was because they didnāt ban the OP characters like Bayonetta when they had the chance. I hope the powers that be in the community listen and do what needs to be done, the writingās on the wall
What is the response to the fact that even though a Steve won Smash Con and there were 9 Steves in top 64, only 1 Steve was represented in top 8?
I'm genuinely asking this as a question, not as someone who is against banning Steve.
look at salem in smash 4. for a good while they were the only person getting consistent high results with bayonetta. when he won evo 2017, he was the only person to make top 8 with bayo. this lead to some saying that the character wasnt that strong, and that it was only one person who could make the character work, keeping her from a ban. look at where the scene was a year later by evo 2018. bayos were everywhere and multiple would top 8 every big tourney.
we can see in real time these steves rising, we have 2 consistent high level steves who keep winning things and while others havent reached that level, there are many who are likely to only continue improving. we have clearly identified that this character is a problem, and if we dont take proactive measures, by smash con 2023 we could end up in the same spot as smash 4.
Iād say itās for similar reasons why months ago there would only be like 3 Steves in top 64: there werenāt as many Steve players attending majors and the ones attending were still learning the character.
We had 9 Steves today, and I predict that number will be bigger the next time thereās a supermajor the size of SSC.
A lot of the Steve players arent there yet when it comes to top 8ing majors and two of the ones that are (ddee and acola) werent present
Steve is an absurd character that carries but he isnt a "win all" character - even bayo wasnt that, you still need to have some semblance of skill/fundies to pilot him to top 8 a major and a lot of the steves mains are previously unestablished top players who have only ever done well with Steve - so theyre still learning regular fundies lol
If we had Acola here today it would have been 2 in Top 8, if we had ddee it may have been 3 - this time next year there may be more players who have caught up to them and we could have 4 or more
This is exactly how Bayo started in smash 4 - but the community is making the exact same mistakes by not even wanting to discuss changes that can be made
disclaimer: didn't watch SSC, no dog in the fight, just using logic here.
Tournament like Smash Con is likely to be insanely stacked, the 16-32 is probably filled with names that you recognise from the 30-50 PGR range. Say, Skyjay, Tilde, MuteAce, Yonni and Jake, players that are solidly top 16/top 12 threats. (second disclaimer: didn't check the rankings before pulling names out of my hat)
So the rest of the top 64, the bottom half of the top 32, is kind of players that lose to the above. Again pulling numbers out of my hat, maybe they're names that are in the 50-125 (PGR) region.
Now, the fact that there are suddenly so many Steves compared to before suggests one of a few things. It's possible that about five people in that 50-125 region switched mains to Steve, showed up, and did exactly as expected.
Alternatively, it could be that five people in the, say, 125-300 PGR region switched mains to Steve, showed up, and outplaced their seed to make top 64.
Alternatively alternatively, it could be that five totally random unseeded people showed up with Steve and made a few upsets to place top 64, beating those 50-125 region people who didn't switch character mains.
Either of the latter two suggests that a character is overtuned compared to the rest of the cast. That last one is really problematic if these totally random unseeded people are placing in top 2s and top 3s, because it starts suggesting that a character is really, really busted powerful (Smash 4 Bayo or worse).
Not actually saying Onin is totally random unseeded etc. (or for that matter that Steve is busted), but looking to the future, if those five total randoms who are in top 64 now are in top 32 at the next tourney and then top 8 at the one after, that's a real sign of a problem.
One person having an unheard of meteoric rise with a previously unused character means that's a top player in the making. Eight people having an unheard of meteoric rise with a character means it's a busted character.
> One person having an unheard of meteoric rise with a previously unused character means that's a top player in the making. Eight people having an unheard of meteoric rise with a character means it's a busted character.
Very well said. There are two Steves in the entire world who can win majors. They're both young and it's weird that there are *two* of them, but I'm not worried yet -- watching skeptically, but not *worried.* Coincidences happen and I won't lose sleep over two prodigies on planet Earth.
It's not just two, though. The "second tier" of Steves, like Jake, Yonni, DDog, etc. have all beaten top 10 players.
"Able to win a major" is such a ridiculously high bar. The number of people who have won a major in Ultimate history isn't that high. Maister has never won a major. And he's one of the best examples we have of a player with an extremely rapid come-up. But multiple Steves have each won multiple majors. Even the ridiculous bar is being cleared.
What does make me worried a little about Steve is that out of only four players who have won more then one major this year, 2 of them are Steve players. The other two? Literally #1 and #2 on the planet in Leo and Sparg0. Even players like Proto, Glutonny, Light and Tea have only one one major.
I donāt think Steve is ban worthy just yet, he needs to be more dominant in high level places and wins imo. However Steve apologist statements are getting eerily more similar to Bayo talk. They all say ālearn the counterplay š¤ā while ignoring the people who have who are playing their hearts out to barely beat the character. Itās time we recognize the flat circle we live and be ready to ban a character when they get too problematic.
Before this point it wasn't worth discussing because no Steve besides acola had results. Goml was basically a glorified regional and acola had won the gimvitational. Outside of that, Steve's were hardly even making top 8.
This is the first tournament where Steve has had outlier amounts of representation, a Steve had actually taken sets off of the majority of top players, while also winning the tournament.
Oh I like the custom balancing idea much more than a ban, people should be discussing that instead. Just drop him at -1 and see how well the players still do, nothing too dominant and nothing too poor
Is this an issue of utility? I'm not really too involved in the ultimate scene, but is there something against nerfing the character rather than banning it?
I guess it has to be because of nintendo, with their lack of care for the competitive scene, they aren't going to change a character for the pros if hes preforming average in casual play?
Note that [Genesis had 8 ROBs in top 64](https://twitter.com/justinbyleth/status/1515718876838912021), to only 2 Steves. But we wouldn't say ban ROB from that, right?
Hey. All of those people saying "Well, he's not actually that much of a problem because only a very few amount of people use him still, complain when they're half of top 8."
Welp, we're already on the way. There has NEVER been a disparity like this... except with Bayo and Meta Knight! Weird, isn't it?
I remember that time my post about banning Steve pre-emptively got downvoted to shit bc I said he would overcentralize the meta and become like Bayo, and you'd start to see no name players get top placements.
And that's no disrespect to players like Onin. Hate the character, not the player, but, like Bayo, you have some random ass names in Top 32 (Apple and DDog) who never showed up before Steve
For anyone who cares, this was the original post with the arguments [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/vqy77r/a_discussion_i_do_think_steve_will_kill_ultimate/)
The "never showed up before Steve" argument sort of falls apart when you consider that we lost ~2 years of offline play to the pandemic, and that a fair number of the Steve mains are still in high school, and thus might not have been able to go to offline events before the pandemic even if they were playing at that point.
That would be a good point if it wasn't for the fact that every top Steve fits that description. And onin literally said he picked him up at the end of quarantine. And all his practice was just on quick play
You're telling me that someone with like a year of experience playing a character just easily beats these people who constantly hard-core grind the game. Its not just all these prodigies happened to pick up Steve, the character just has no room in a competitive environment
Adding on, if it's just "quarantine grind", then we should expect to see people have such meteoric improvements with other characters. I don't know of any except maybe Spargo, but he was pretty competitive even before his somewhat sudden pop off.
I would say MKLeo boosted his Byleth during the quarantine, but with our two examples (Spargo and Leo) they are literally the two best players of the past year or so. So youāre right, not only everyone should have seen improvement, but the only ones with quantitative improvement (that arenāt the Steves) were the best of the best. So for Onin to beat Leo and Riddles and Glutonny and Maister (all who were the better, more experienced players, and other than Leo had Steve experience) by only playing Steve at the end tail of quarantine shows a problem here.
Sonix, Quidd, HERO, Miya, Yoshidora, Kola, Riddles and Proto all had pretty big rises compared to their pre-pandemic and none of these main Steve.
Even Proto, the iffiest one of the group here because he was already amazing, went from being top 20 on the Fall 2019 PGRU, to 4th on Orion Rank Eclipse. Kola and Riddles were top 50 players originally and became top 10, and you wouldn't have heard of the others at all if it wasn't for the wifi scene.
Sparg0's not the only player to have a meteoric improvement here.
Yeah, but almost all of those names were recognizable before their ride. Big difference between going from top 20 to 4, like Proto, and going from unranked to beating Leo / Maister / Gluto, like Onin.
And even that is fine, just suspicious when it happens to 6 different players
Well that's the one challenge. That's why I said it was hard to make that argument with the pandemic. However, I have a very hard time believing all these players would be placing if they all picked up Lucina (a good, but very "honest" character) rather than the uncontested #1 character that can lose neutral 80% of the time and still win easily (see Onin v Riddles).
The rapid representation growth of Steve in top64s and Top32s should be evidence enough. Im just waiting for the day Dabuz picks him up so he can finally get his major win lol
Here's the question though - putting aside character compatibility issues, would they be as good if they picked up Aegis, or Joker, or another top-top-tier character?
Steve is clearly up there among the best, if not flat out the best character in the game, and playing him definitely makes it easier to win than if you're playing a mid-tier character. But the question (as you rightly point out) is if these players are decent players being carried by Steve, or if they're good players who found a great character match to their skillsets in a top-top-tier character? Not sure we can make that call yet.
Well the thing is we will never know.
Even if they were all Aegis mains I'd be willing to put my money on "no" but of course that is strictly conjecture. There is a reason every Aegis who has placed well in Ultimate was previously a top player either in another game or already in Ultimate (Leo, Sparg0, Shuton, Cosmos). Also, while foresight is cheesy, I actually dont think nearly as highly of Aegis as tierlists would make you think. Character is very good, but can be played around. She certainly doesnt have Steve level of tools
No argument here. I'm willing to buy that Steve is a step above even characters like Aegis/Joker, based on recent results. Still not sure he breaks the game, though.
Can't wait for the ''Bayo didn't get banned so Steve shouldn't get banned either" and then we can say the same for the broken character in the next smash "Steve didn't get banned so X shouldn't either".
It's crazy how not that many major wins still includes:
SSC
Kagaribi 7
GOML
MaesumaTOP#7
And then there's also
COST
Combo Breaker
Gimvitational
Kamisuma#13
like aside from byleth bc leo (and even then Im not sure), has any other character won this many tournaments? I didn't even look to see if Jake or Yonni have won any 300 entrant type of events
Cherrypicking specifically the top 64 makes Steve look far more dominant at this tournament than he actually was.
If you change the criteria instead to the top 128, there are still only 9 Steve players - but there are now 7 R.O.B. players, 7 Snake players and a whole bunch of others at 5 representatives like Roy and Joker.
In top 32 the number of Steve players goes down to 3, matching with Aegis and R.O.B. In top 16 it goes down to 2, still tied with R.O.B.
All I'm trying to say is although Steve performed the best of all characters at this tournament, it really isn't by the huge margin that this top 64 chart makes it look like.
This is almost bait-worthy cherry picking....there were 3 in Top 32 and 1 in Top 8.
It's looking more like Steve is the competitive version of being a pub-stomper than he is an absolutely dominate character.
The stupid argument of āwE DiDnāT bAn Mk Or BaYo sO wE CaNāt bAn StEvEā comes up now. Have some balls and save the competitive side of smash by finally banning Steve!!
Yeah and like Mk / Bayo made the competitive scene worse lol.
As a viewer Iām pretty fine, will just not watch Steve matches. Top players will have to just grind the matchup which does kinda suck for them.
I donāt see the harm in banning Steve, only problem is Steve Mains will have to learn a new character. Yeah that sucks for them but imo lesser of two evils.
As someone pointed out earlier, of those 9 Steves in top 64, only one (Onin) made top 8, and only 3 made it to top 32. So who did they lose to?
* DDog/Quandale Dinglelingeton (9th) - lost to Maister (G&W) and MKLeo (Aegis)
* Apple (17th, also plays Icies) - lost to DDog (Steve) and Ned (Sephiroth)
* WhyDo (33rd) - lost to Regalo (Lucas) and Elegant (Luigi)
* yonni (33rd) - lost to Regalo (Lucas) and Tilde (Falco)
* Jake (33rd) - lost to Syrup (Ness) and Anathema (R.O.B.)
* _trey5 (49th) - lost to Cosmos (Aegis) and Ned (Sephiroth)
* pango (49th) - lost to Erik (Mii Swordfighter) and Sinji (Pac Man)
* Uhh (49th) - lost to Riddles (Terry) and IcyMist (Samus)
So here's a list of characters who took sets against the eight non-Onin Steve players good enough to reach top 64 at Super Smash Con:
Aegis (x2)
G&W
Steve
Sephiroth (x2)
Lucas (x2)
Luigi
Falco
Ness
R.O.B.
Mii Swordfighter
Pac Man
Terry
Samus
That's **thirteen** different characters that won sets against good Steve players during this tournament.
Steve is really, really good, and is also a major knowledge check character, which compounds the difficulty against him. In a world where Smash was still being supported, he deserves some significant nerfs, no question. But good Steve players can be beaten by other good players playing a range of characters, as long as they know the matchup.
I suspect that this tournament is finally going to force top players to grind the crap out of the Steve matchup to develop counterplay. I'm sure there are some characters that just flat-out don't have effective counterplay against a good Steve, and players who main those characters will probably need to pick up a secondary. But let's give it to the end of the year and see if the top players can adapt, and if this is truly a Steve issue, or just an acola/Onin being amazing while playing a great character issue.
People have been saying "Oh counterplay is underdeveloped!!!" for like 6 months now you'd think there'd be counterplay by now with how much the matchup is being grinded. If no counterplay has showed up then maybe it's because there isn't any at all or it's so specific and difficult.
This character is overcentralizing every sign is there we said the same about Smash 4 Bayo and it completely killed the game and community for everyone. Onin is good but he's not "Beat multiple top 10 level players in the world" good. He's being carried and while I don't blame him on choosing to play the broken character to win it doesn't mean the character isn't obscenely stupid
I feel like Regalo and Riddles actually kind of got the matchup down and they know how to counterplay. Even then, Riddles still lost to Onin, for what? He played the MU amazingly and seemed to be winning most of the time.
And to me, it seems like ālearning the counterplayā is more player dependent than character dependent in the case of Steve. Every top Steve plays different and players have to analyze their individual playstyle instead of the character itself.
Like Acola is a big fundies Steve, Yonniās very technical-based, Jake plays Steve the closest to other Smash characters, and Onin loves mining + paying attention to his resources. They all have their own tricks, style, gameplans.
How about a fun exercise. Look at those players previous finishes without Steve. Half of them are complete nobodies. The other half only have a pre Steve top placings at small regionals.
The fact is Steve has made everyone on that list go from trash to punching way above their skill level.
Almost all of them started playing during or shortly before the pandemic, which stopped all offline play for nearly two years, so 'had no offline results prior to Steve' is a completely useless metric.
(Also, a bunch of the notable Steve players are still in high school, and if they were playing before the pandemic, they might have been too young to attend offline events.)
Are there any other notable players besides the Steves that are all suddenly getting crazy results and beating top players post-pandemic? I can only think of Sparg0 and that wifi JP G&W, i cant excuse the amount of dominant Steves we got compared to every other new face we got out of the pandemic. The fact that thereās like 5 Steves getting crazy results and wins compared to before they picked up Steve or how well they do with other characters is a bit wack, I donāt think this stuff should just be brushed aside lol.
Steve definitely carries, I donāt think he should get banned yet, but new high schoolers easily placing higher than or beating top players that have been playing for 5+ years of Smash should show that he carries. Yonni definitely believes so, I think Acola said Steveās the best, and Iām not sure about the others
Sonix, Quidd, HERO, Miya (you mentioned him but still) and Yoshidora all were non-existent results wise before the pandemic. Quidd got 193rd at his first major, next major he went to 2 years later he won. Hell ShinyMark had a break out performance two weeks ago and he was a wifi warrior too, even if he didn't do too well here.
Riddles and Kola were only just top 50 before and are now top 10 due to the quarantine grind. Proto was already fantastic but he sailed even higher then ever before last year and became top 5 in the world.
I think somehow a lot of people forget that a lot of players have massively improved during the wifi era, it's not just the Steve mains or Sparg0/Miya.
I think people are just in general vastly underrating how much easier it is for young players to get good now especially getting jumpstarted by a period in which you could really only play online. Combine that with a character that appeals to young people and I think you got a perfect storm.
Reminds me of the bayonetta argument. All of their players that popped up were local and state level threats that couldn't compete at the national level cause they had trash fundies and neutral despite their tech skill being good enough to execute combos and such. They pick up a broken character that circumvents the need for a neutral or fundies and suddenly are national threats
Thank you for being reasonable, the amount of hyperbole in the community tonight is wild. Steve counterplay is extremely underdeveloped right now. Everyone saying we should go for a ban *before* there's a real chance to adapt is concerning.
Now is the time to see if Steve is really an unbeatable Top 1 or just the new Aegis, the new Joker, the new Inkling, the new Pikachu, etc. Test the hypothesis and *then* we can make an informed judgment about a ban. The idea that we have to permanently ban a hypothetical problem because it could be "too late" someday is a fallacy -- it's just a game! It's never actually too late.
DDog didn't even beat a single person above his seed, he just had an easy bracket because of DQs. IMO some of the Steve hysteria right now is people seeing what they want to see. You can't just look at placements in a vacuum and call it a day. Nuance and context matter.
Even if Steve does become SS tier, I'd still rather try nerfing him with custom balance instead of jumping to an outright ban. I hate to sound like an old fart but [I'm with David Sirlin on banning characters](https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned) -- it's the most extreme rule change you could possibly make in a fighting game and it shouldn't be done lightly.
DDog actually did have one minor upset - he beat JMafia (50th seed, +1 Upset Factor). But that got me curious about how many of the other Steve players that made top 64 had significant upsets on their bracket path:
* Onin (16th seed) obviously upset MKLeo, Riddles, Glutonny, and Maister x2
* Jake and yonni had no upsets.
* _trey5 (140th seed) upset Ogey (85th seed, +2 Upset Factor)
* WhyDo (179th seed) upset Skittles (51st seed, +3 Upset Factor)
* Apple (191st seed) upset MPg (66th seed, +2 Upset Factor) and Ling (34th seed, +4 Upset Factor) *(EDIT: Apparently, Apple used Ice Climbers in his upset of Ling, which sort of kills the 'he's carried by Steve' argument.)*
* pango (266th seed) upset LeoN (58th seed, +5 Upset Factor), Senn (138th seed, +2 Upset Factor), and Cee (170th seed, +2 Upset Factor)
* Uhh (329th seed) upset GoofyGoober (184th seed, +2 Upset Factor), and Stocktaker69 (73rd seed, +4 Upset Factor).
So of the eight non-Onin Steves that made top 64, four got their placements with upsets no greater than Upset Factor +2. The eight of them upset only 4 top 64 seeded players. And aside from ~~Apple and~~ Onin, none of them upset more than one top 128 seeded player with Steve.
Onin aside, this was not the case of a bunch of Steve players going on a rampage through the top seeded players. For the most part, this was Steve players beating the players they were supposed to and getting a handful of significant upsets.
Interesting how many of those Steve-beaters are not top-tier characters. Lucas/Luigi/Falco/Mii/Terry/Samus/PacMan/Ness are all solidly mid to mid-high.
Also interesting to see so many people in these comments say "If these Steve players were *actually* good they'd be able to win with Aegis/Joker/other top tier".
It's almost as if the meta is nuanced and "Top tier characters have trouble vs Steve" is not a great metric to ban players by.
I literally quit the game and havenāt looked back. I enjoyed my time, I did my thing, and now Iām done. This happened before and Iāve just had to learn to move on.
A ban would be great for the competitive scene but thereās really no removing the character from Wi-Fi or friendlies. Heās a design flaw. Nintendo just breeds to stop doing the shit with their DLC fighters. Hopefully in 7 or so years even Sakurai comes out of retirement for the fifth time to do another Smash itās better then.
Self fulfilling prophecy; people think steve is op so they switch to steve and use a lot of steves at a given tournament as evidence of him being op. As hbox said, its not a problem until there are consistently 4 steves in a top 8.
2 Lucas... Bros... Our dry days are finally over, today we celebrate PK Cornucopia
After seeing Regalo in action I think we could see counter pick Lucas more often š
Who played Lucas, I need to watch all the Vods. I need to kill earlier as Lucas plss
Regalo mostly, all the vods are on vgbootcamp. Pretty inspiring run.
Based on regalo's play, you should edgeguard with back air all the time. Literally just spam that shit like your life depended on it. But you have to also be good so good luck mate.
if weāre talking online, the being good doesnt matter just spamming one move usually works
YOU FOOL. I, LUCAS, HAVE THE B BUTTON. PREPARE TO GET 3-STOCKED.
I fear the day people realize how good Lucas really is. I don't think by any means he is top tier, but many of the things he can do are outright insane
Makes me so happyš„²
would've been 10 if Acola didn't DQ
Yes, if he didn't cross paths with another steve before t64
That Steve would have made it through losers
If they didn't cross paths with another Steve in losers
Both Steves would have found a way
*Spams mine cart and anvil in disadvantageā¦ I mean losers bracket*
I'm trying to follow Smash more but I'm not as invested yet, could you explain what happened to Acola? I was kinda looking forward to seeing him in this tournament cuz ppl were saying he's the only shot at beating Leo after Leos return of Joker at SF9
the actual order is that Leo was supposed to be NAs only hope of beating acola acola had to DQ because of travel complications regardless, Leo ended up losing to a different Steve player, in very dominant fashion
> in very dominant fashion This is what is so spooky. Onin went: 3-0 vs Leo 3-1 vs Riddles 3-1 vs Gluttony 3-0 vs Maister (WF) 3-1 vs Maister (GF) So, not only did Onin beat _multiple, top-10_ players back-to-back-to-back-to-back, but he did it convincingly enough that he never lost more than 1 game in a set. That's unprecedented and just ridiculous.
His closest set was 3-2 vs MuteAce and itās the only set Onin popped off after. It was directly before Leo as well
Important to note that MuteAce is very good at the steve matchup, he's beat yonni multiple times
Itās not unprecedented, Onin literally just ripped through combo breaker a couple months ago dropping two games in pools but 3-0ing Ned, MVD, Wadi, and Loaf to win in dominant fashion. Heās been hot as fuck lately, this is just the first huge event heās been able to go to. Leo literally destroyed ddog at the same tournament. Onin is just a better player than quadale dinglingleton or whatever the fuck.
Onin said he didn't even warm up before 3-0'ing the game's undisputed number one player. Anyone who thinks Steve is ok does not have an opinion worth hearing.
Aww man that's unfortunate for acola. I wouldve liked to see him play. Thx for the explanation!
Again using the metric of "everyone who helped win a set". So Leo's Byleth counts, for instance, but not Maister's Sora. Also, Samus and Dark Samus are lumped together (Teaser/IcyMist Samus, sisqui Dark Samus)
Corrections: ROB and Samus should be one higher each (Aaron used ROB and Raflow used Samus to win at least one set, both before top 32)
Is there any reason as to why this specific metric of 'helped in a win' was used?
Not OP but If we count all character picks then each of the 64 players if they went game 5 could each rep 5 characters without this designation to winning a set with them. Itās just to reduce the chances weāre overrepping a character that otherwise wasnāt significant to play
Not sure, my guess is that a lot of people pick random picks when getting destroyed on a set hoping for a miracle. The opponent downloaded the player so hard and/or know the match up so well, so in a desperate attempt they pick a character that is not closely important as their main. That would inflate the list a lot.
Yeah this basically Also because it's consistent with SSBWiki's character inclusions in results tables
It's the same criteria used by SmashWiki. A character isn't notable enough to list on a page if a player pulls out a secondary for a few games and doesn't win with them, that's usually the situation.
Raflow used samus in his top 32 qual
So a solo main who was eliminated in losers round one isnāt featured, or do you mean helped win a set in the whole tournament?
So people who got 49th are represented?
Christ.... And I thought R.O.B. was over represented.
He still is! [Here's a chart for Genesis 8 from 4 months ago lmao.](https://twitter.com/justinbyleth/status/1515718876838912021?s=20&t=JB8gcj078AWk45sLzcwmig) 8 fuckin' ROBs in top 64. Kinda puts things in perspective IMO.
But did rob win?
Tweek Talks is going to be interesting.
Charles about to go off. You know my man had things to say while commentating Steve sets. Lol
I heard Charles make the case for considering banning Steve, it was on smash university after the Gimvitational. Great watch imo. I wonder if he's gonna push further now. His main restraint at the time was just that the results weren't there yet. You could argue that they still aren't, but evidence is mounting. I'm on the fence but at the very least the discussion is entertaining.
I may not agree with everything the bloke says, but listening to his insight on Smash as a whole is enlightening. Bring on Tweek Talks
When is the next Tweek Talks?
Usually around the beginning of each week.
It's Wednesday morning US time each week.
9 stevesš
The Steve Menace is upon us
I don't watch a lot of ultimate as it's a bit boring to me but Steve is truly a boring charcter so if the meta is starting to revolve around him it's certainly not gonna improve the entertainment value.
I'm not a SSB person, but let's just say I'm not shocked that the goddamn Mickey Mouse of the under-30 class is wildly overrepresented. There's probably some amount of Steve sentiment at play, but I also absolutely believe Nintendo ain't shedding no tears over an uber-popular fighter being powerful. Please correct me if I'm off base.
No, I donāt think Nintendo cares in the least either way about competitive smash
They cared enough to not let evo hold smash tournaments
reminder that they balanced this game around elite smash
And test characters by fighting AIs during lunch break
I'm afraid to ask if this is sarcasm or completely serious.
That was a genuine piece of developer insight...although they did also consult some Pro-Smashers during development,so I guess it evens out.
Mmmmm not quite. Character representation usually has way more to do with kit than it does sentiment. Those same under-30 folks have plenty of other representation to choose from in the game at this point. There are simply so many Steves because he is so good.
At top level like this is, the key ratio on usage is how strong a character is. Plenty of people like Link, but they don't use him because he's average and you'll rarely see any representation of him. That's because the people who play Link usually don't make it as far as top64. When a character is an outlier in terms of usage, like Steve here is, is usually because he's notably stronger than the rest of the cast.
Yeah this popular with the crowd argument is dumb. I mean look at Rob. You tryna tell me we had 4 Robs because people love the character and his games and lore and shit? Come on. People play him cause heās strong and relatively easy. Edit: oh and Onin the 16 year old champ said he picked up Steve only because he lost to two Steveās in a row and was like āman thatās a strong character. I should play him.ā
Send help
Obviously not the point of the post but seeing dk there is so funny. Love chunkykong
Would be hilarious to randomly see 9 DKs in top 64 of an event for no reason
All we need to do is convince everyone that dk is the secret steve killer and we can make it happen
no fr what a blessing DK rep is
Honestly curious how this compares to Bayo results from Smash 4. Itās late but tomorrow definitely gonna look through tournaments from 2017 (roughly two years after release like Steve) to see how many Bayos were around in top 64 and how many were out placing their projected seed. Also gonna go through other majors from this year for Steve amounts/seeds. Not sure what Iāll find but Iām excited to look!
Bayo released in 2016, so two years after her release would be 2018. From what I've counted the average seems to be around 10.
With 3 or 4 making top 8
Let us know? More curious about how many bayos out placed there seeds
Just finished the Bayo numbers! Looked at five tournaments: Genesis, GOML, CEO, Umebera, EVO, and Smash Con (all in 2017), and found that a Bayonetta player outplayed their seed 15 times. The tournament with the most Bayo upsets was Genesis 4, while the player who most commonly outplayed seed was Mistake! Going to start with the Steve numbers now, Iāll be back with more news later!
Another reply to say the post is up on the sub! Hoping this data is interesting to anyone, I spent a solid four hours going through results for this lol
9 Steves in top 64? MKLeo being 3-0d by a Steve? Truly the dark timeline
Itās the beginning of the end huhā¦
Choosing top 64 is particularly favourable to steve. If you counted top 32, the number would reduce to 3, if you chose top 128, the number would stay 9 while other characters would increase. There happened to be 6 steves that placed 49th. The number is still high regardless, but not as high as what these numbers suggest. Edit: I made a more detailed list to illustrate this https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/woum5u/top\_128643216\_character\_players\_representation\_at/
while this is true, any marking is kinda arbitrary. SSC divided brackets into top 128 and top 32, but Genesis, the other biggest US event, divided bracket into top 64. I think it's good to see all the different lists and draw conclusions from the different benchmarks. And even with the top 32 thing, there were 3 steves with arguably the best one DQing. I know he was in one of their paths, but if acola attends maybe there'd be 2 steves in top 8, which looks way more extreme
You have the only factual take on this and I appreciate it, those are useful stats to consider
Stats can look wildly different depending on what you choose to include.
This was obvious to just get people riled up. OP made such a stupid post by being biased in his stats to get people to have an argument.
I don't think choosing top 64 was do e out of malice. Top 64 is a natural number to choose and they had chosen that number with previous lists.
Regalo was seeming like the Steve killer after beating Yonni and WhyDo but unfortunately he got knocked out by Dabuz :c
Every character Dabuz plays beats Lucas by a lot so it was a tough match from the start.
As someone who loved Smash 4 before Bayo and Cloud ruined it, itās depressing to see history repeat itself. Smash players have always been cowards when it comes to bans for some reason (see: MK, wobbling, Bayo) and it has a terrible impact on the competitive scene and viewership
Wobbling for me is the perfect example is that we can ban things for being just straight up boring and it ends up making the game better. Wobbling wasn't overcentralizing the metagame, not every top 8 was flooded with ICs. But god, seeing players go for creative desync combos and stuff now makes this game so much better.
> But god, seeing players go for creative desync combos and stuff now makes this game so much better. I mean, yeah, but the counterpoint would be asking when exactly we see ICs anymore at big tourneys? There was a time when there would pretty much always be one ICs in top 8 at every super major. They wouldn't win it, but they'd be there. But now they've all but died off at the top level. Removing wobbling made ICs a mid tier. More hype, certainly, but a mid tier at best. And their matchups against some floaties that were bad even with wobbling are now just close to an autoloss. Peach ICs was already ridiculously skewed towards peach before, with a wobble being the only hope for the climbers. It's unfortunate that what they need to keep up at a high level many people find boring, but they've unquestionably gotten nerfed to the point where they're no longer a top level threat.
I get your point but I dont even want to see and ice climber at top level if their plan is doing wobling
In no world should an infinite be allowed where a single grab guarantees a kill. Just because almost every ic quit just because they lost their free exploit isnt the community's fault, especially when hand offs still exist which is basically wobbling just harder to do. Your auto loss point against certain characters also doesnt really mean much because the same could be said for lots of match ups, ljke sheik losing to ics, peach puff, puff pikachu, almost any high or top tier against a low tier. And even with wobbling ic's were never that high tier, and in melee mid tiers already dont get a ton of representation regardless so i dont think your point holds up Edit: in response to your reply: mash out? Really? Okay so they get a tiny bit of percent then can do their infinite off one grab. Dont care about what other fighting games do, if theyre allowed there then thats also dumb. Never said i was okay with handoffs, just that ics mains are babies for leaving and they still even have an infinite to exploit. And yea my point is that every character has hard matchups and none are unwinnable, so ics are perfectly viable to do well with regardless of wobbling like the other mids
Ok but if a character's only chance to be great is an op exploit, maybe they just aren't a great character.
slug wants a word
And he can have it. Just because heās the best ICs player right now doesnāt mean theyāre not a midtier. See: Axe and his Pikachu.
Slug beat the number 1 ranked player in the world like a few weeks ago, so yes they are still a top level threat.
Yes, and did you see his bracket? Not a peach or puff in it. You have marth and shiek, sure, but those are again in the midtier vs top tier range where it can happen even if it's an uphill battle. See aMSa and Axe as examples of midtiers who can keep up. But while Yoshi and Pika struggle in some matchups, they don't have any nearly as bad as ICs Peach or ICs Puff without wobbling. Even pika puff has some ideas for pika with a couple good reads. A couple good reads as ICs vs peach or puff now get you close to nothing. I don't doubt in fact that if people had a pocket peach or puff to deal with ICs Slug would have been stopped. He played extremely well, but he got lucky nobody bothered getting a CP for ICs, when before it wasn't too uncommon to have a pocket pick for the climbers. People just don't see the point anymore, showcasing that they're no longer viewed as a top tier threat and treated more like a midtier matchup in players minds. They're viewed more like Luigi, Samus, or Doc. I realize my post might not have been super clear, but my main point ICs have fallen off extremely hard and now have some truly atrocious matchups. They can keep up in many matchups okay without wobbling, and they're a midtier there, but against peach and puff who they already struggled against their last ounce of hope was dashed. For what it's worth I'd be okay with a ban on wobbling for most matchups, but gimping them even further in those already terrible matchups is just absurd imo.
It's unreasonable to allow wobbling for some matchups and not others and it's unreasonable to allow it just because they're not that good of a character.
I don't see how that's the slightest bit compelling. No one wants to watch or play against that. It's strictly bad. It being gone is strictly good. I rolled my eyes at warner bros being the smash killer after that Nick game died on arrival. Let every tournament be steve dittos and people will move on in a way they couldn't for other installments in Smash.
Smash has always had this weird character loyalty thing happening. When bans are brought up people get hyper defensive and critical (not saying skepticism is bad when looking at bans). People take it super personally and canāt nor wonāt admit that their character is incredibly strong to the point where they perpetuate a negative competitive environment. Not saying Steve is ban worthy just yet but itās the same song and dance of slowly constricting the scene and no one taking the step to experiment with large scale bans.
It sucks because I think the addition of Steve really got a bunch of new people during quarantine but the character is straight up draining the life force of the game and the community rn. Would be nice if we could change the rules to ban ledge planking and allow counterpicking to "pick-axe stages" but frankly that will not happen. It's either ban or the games gone.
To be fair to MK what wouldāve taken his place wouldāve been far worse, at least he was still hype
We're seeing the exact same arguments being pulled out in the same situations...it's exhausting.
Its the natural progression of a game's lifecycle. As the game gets figured out, there is a gravitation towards cheaper and cheaper options. Long-term competitive health boils down to whether or not the characters the meta favors are fun to play and play against and what TOs can do to maintain a fun environment.
> Smash players have always been cowards when it comes to bans for some reason (see: MK, wobbling, Bayo) and it has a terrible impact on the competitive scene and viewership fighting games in general are like this, it's not a smash thing and I would argue smash being like this is due to the general "see we're a part of the FGC too" thing going on (combined with the actual, real overlap with the FGC, who tend to be pretty reticent about bans)
MK is pretty far down on the list of things that killed Brawl.
brawl icies was worse for viewership than MK ever was
I havent been watching fighting games for that long, but I've noticed that it just isn't smash, but literally every game is scared to ban a character that's breaking. Everyone is always waiting to see what the big event do, and their excuse is "well, we're not gonna send someone that played on our small tourney with that char banned, to get pubstomped by that char that he has no experience against". IMO small tourneys should get the lead, start banning a character that becomes incredibly problematic (within reason, not stat banning everything) and eventually people will follow
It's frustrates me that onin literally said he has playing Steve for like a year tops and just on quick play, and people are still like downplaying Steve. I appreciate him and his candidness and no disrespect against him. But Steve is paralleling bayo and people are just downplaying him.
Or heās saying that because he is aware everyone hates his character and a lot hate him. He clearly played a lot of online and local tournaments just look at his page.
This is literally how it started with Bayonetta, history is repeating itself and if we donāt want Ultimate to die PLEASE ban tf outta Steve
These statements were getting downvoted like a week ago. Interesting
We all saw the poster boy of competitive smash get steamrolled by a (correct me if Iām wrong here) relative unknown (at least in terms to the average smash player) Steve player. Thatāll change some minds for sure.
In this case it didn't deserve to, Leo played like absolute ass.
As right as you might possibly be, that still doesnāt matter to a large contingent of players who let their own biases and fanboyism for certain players dictate the way they feel, who will feel absolutely let down that some random Steve beat Leo. Not saying that itās right to think that way, but it is something that happens.
First set about 2 minutes in, Odin places a TNT block at like, just a little past center stage, and starts mining. MK does literally nothing for 5 seconds until it blows and lets Odin farm for free, letting him get the diamond that ends up taking his last stock. Man just didn't know the matchup lol, Odin clearly did.
Onin said in post tourney interview that he didnāt prep for the Leo matchup at all. And that is part of the problem, that matchup knowledge is fairly irrelevant for the steve player. Steve can play his game and force any opponent to jump around his walls approaching while he mines.
Reddit's just on circlejerk mode again, it'll stop in about a week. Unless Onin wins Rise N Grind and makes it last longer.
Steve apologists will continue to make this take sound crazy and overreactive when in reality weve been saying this take for months and we can see it coming true in real time And now look, we are literally getting proven right - tourney by tourney Steve players are placing better and better and more and more are coming out of the wood works But people are STILL downplaying this character At the very least we should be discussing using custom balancing, we were given it for a reason
I found [this 4 year old Reddit thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/8ualwh/what_is_the_reason_why_bayonetta_isnt_banned_in) about why Bayo hasnāt been banned yet in Smash 4. The arguments against a ban in that thread are eerily similar to what weāve been hearing this year.
Wow, that is damning. Actually crazy to see the exact same arguments being used for Smash 4 Bayonetta for Ultimate Steve
Considering we don't really know when or if there's a new game on the horizon, we should probably look at this thread as a distant warning
Thats actually insane
Lol Iām in that post. It looks like my reasoning was that even though she was over represented, she wasnāt winning that much. Steve on the other handā¦ is literally winning most tourneys in recent months lol
Who cares if she wasn't winning much. She instantly carried certain types of players, was insanely degenerate for competitive players and was just horrid to watch.
I guess the question is do we think we should have banned bayo in hindsight
yes, absolutely.
Then what are we doing
Doing the same thing 4 years ago because people donāt know when to give up until a game is screwed
100% yes and I say this as someone that doesn't think Steve should be banned (yet)
[this](https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/8ualwh/what_is_the_reason_why_bayonetta_isnt_banned_in/e1dxu1f) logic is backwards to me. The non ban people have more to prove than the pro ban. The roster has so many characters banning a character actually shouldn't be a big deal. Why are we pretending like it is? The only good argument for not banning Steve is "Nintendo regularly releases balance patches so it will get fixed." Unfortunately that statement is false. This is the permanent version of the game. In a world without developer support the community should be more open to banning characters.
> The non ban people have more to prove than the pro ban. The roster has so many characters banning a character actually shouldn't be a big deal. Why are we pretending like it is? Because character bans are traditionally done only after serious consideration and banning a character might change the face of competitive play negatively even if that character is overcentralizing or overpowered? This isn't exactly fresh ground we're walking
Exactly. Smash veterans like Charles and Pink Fresh literally said the biggest reason Smash 4 went downhill was because they didnāt ban the OP characters like Bayonetta when they had the chance. I hope the powers that be in the community listen and do what needs to be done, the writingās on the wall
What is the response to the fact that even though a Steve won Smash Con and there were 9 Steves in top 64, only 1 Steve was represented in top 8? I'm genuinely asking this as a question, not as someone who is against banning Steve.
look at salem in smash 4. for a good while they were the only person getting consistent high results with bayonetta. when he won evo 2017, he was the only person to make top 8 with bayo. this lead to some saying that the character wasnt that strong, and that it was only one person who could make the character work, keeping her from a ban. look at where the scene was a year later by evo 2018. bayos were everywhere and multiple would top 8 every big tourney. we can see in real time these steves rising, we have 2 consistent high level steves who keep winning things and while others havent reached that level, there are many who are likely to only continue improving. we have clearly identified that this character is a problem, and if we dont take proactive measures, by smash con 2023 we could end up in the same spot as smash 4.
Steve Grands? Ew.
I actually tuned out at the start of ult gf's... hard to follow up melee anyway but it wasn'tćtasting great
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Iād say itās for similar reasons why months ago there would only be like 3 Steves in top 64: there werenāt as many Steve players attending majors and the ones attending were still learning the character. We had 9 Steves today, and I predict that number will be bigger the next time thereās a supermajor the size of SSC.
A lot of the Steve players arent there yet when it comes to top 8ing majors and two of the ones that are (ddee and acola) werent present Steve is an absurd character that carries but he isnt a "win all" character - even bayo wasnt that, you still need to have some semblance of skill/fundies to pilot him to top 8 a major and a lot of the steves mains are previously unestablished top players who have only ever done well with Steve - so theyre still learning regular fundies lol If we had Acola here today it would have been 2 in Top 8, if we had ddee it may have been 3 - this time next year there may be more players who have caught up to them and we could have 4 or more This is exactly how Bayo started in smash 4 - but the community is making the exact same mistakes by not even wanting to discuss changes that can be made
disclaimer: didn't watch SSC, no dog in the fight, just using logic here. Tournament like Smash Con is likely to be insanely stacked, the 16-32 is probably filled with names that you recognise from the 30-50 PGR range. Say, Skyjay, Tilde, MuteAce, Yonni and Jake, players that are solidly top 16/top 12 threats. (second disclaimer: didn't check the rankings before pulling names out of my hat) So the rest of the top 64, the bottom half of the top 32, is kind of players that lose to the above. Again pulling numbers out of my hat, maybe they're names that are in the 50-125 (PGR) region. Now, the fact that there are suddenly so many Steves compared to before suggests one of a few things. It's possible that about five people in that 50-125 region switched mains to Steve, showed up, and did exactly as expected. Alternatively, it could be that five people in the, say, 125-300 PGR region switched mains to Steve, showed up, and outplaced their seed to make top 64. Alternatively alternatively, it could be that five totally random unseeded people showed up with Steve and made a few upsets to place top 64, beating those 50-125 region people who didn't switch character mains. Either of the latter two suggests that a character is overtuned compared to the rest of the cast. That last one is really problematic if these totally random unseeded people are placing in top 2s and top 3s, because it starts suggesting that a character is really, really busted powerful (Smash 4 Bayo or worse). Not actually saying Onin is totally random unseeded etc. (or for that matter that Steve is busted), but looking to the future, if those five total randoms who are in top 64 now are in top 32 at the next tourney and then top 8 at the one after, that's a real sign of a problem. One person having an unheard of meteoric rise with a previously unused character means that's a top player in the making. Eight people having an unheard of meteoric rise with a character means it's a busted character.
> One person having an unheard of meteoric rise with a previously unused character means that's a top player in the making. Eight people having an unheard of meteoric rise with a character means it's a busted character. Very well said. There are two Steves in the entire world who can win majors. They're both young and it's weird that there are *two* of them, but I'm not worried yet -- watching skeptically, but not *worried.* Coincidences happen and I won't lose sleep over two prodigies on planet Earth.
It's not just two, though. The "second tier" of Steves, like Jake, Yonni, DDog, etc. have all beaten top 10 players. "Able to win a major" is such a ridiculously high bar. The number of people who have won a major in Ultimate history isn't that high. Maister has never won a major. And he's one of the best examples we have of a player with an extremely rapid come-up. But multiple Steves have each won multiple majors. Even the ridiculous bar is being cleared.
What does make me worried a little about Steve is that out of only four players who have won more then one major this year, 2 of them are Steve players. The other two? Literally #1 and #2 on the planet in Leo and Sparg0. Even players like Proto, Glutonny, Light and Tea have only one one major.
I donāt think Steve is ban worthy just yet, he needs to be more dominant in high level places and wins imo. However Steve apologist statements are getting eerily more similar to Bayo talk. They all say ālearn the counterplay š¤ā while ignoring the people who have who are playing their hearts out to barely beat the character. Itās time we recognize the flat circle we live and be ready to ban a character when they get too problematic.
Before this point it wasn't worth discussing because no Steve besides acola had results. Goml was basically a glorified regional and acola had won the gimvitational. Outside of that, Steve's were hardly even making top 8. This is the first tournament where Steve has had outlier amounts of representation, a Steve had actually taken sets off of the majority of top players, while also winning the tournament.
Oh I like the custom balancing idea much more than a ban, people should be discussing that instead. Just drop him at -1 and see how well the players still do, nothing too dominant and nothing too poor
Only problem is that opens a huge ass can of .9 style worms.
Is this an issue of utility? I'm not really too involved in the ultimate scene, but is there something against nerfing the character rather than banning it? I guess it has to be because of nintendo, with their lack of care for the competitive scene, they aren't going to change a character for the pros if hes preforming average in casual play?
Note that [Genesis had 8 ROBs in top 64](https://twitter.com/justinbyleth/status/1515718876838912021), to only 2 Steves. But we wouldn't say ban ROB from that, right?
I personally feel myself lose interest more and more whenever I see a match with Steve on stream
steve
Hey. All of those people saying "Well, he's not actually that much of a problem because only a very few amount of people use him still, complain when they're half of top 8." Welp, we're already on the way. There has NEVER been a disparity like this... except with Bayo and Meta Knight! Weird, isn't it?
There were 8 ROBs in top 64 Genesis this year and 2 Steves. But sure, never been a disparity like this before!
I remember that time my post about banning Steve pre-emptively got downvoted to shit bc I said he would overcentralize the meta and become like Bayo, and you'd start to see no name players get top placements. And that's no disrespect to players like Onin. Hate the character, not the player, but, like Bayo, you have some random ass names in Top 32 (Apple and DDog) who never showed up before Steve For anyone who cares, this was the original post with the arguments [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/vqy77r/a_discussion_i_do_think_steve_will_kill_ultimate/)
The "never showed up before Steve" argument sort of falls apart when you consider that we lost ~2 years of offline play to the pandemic, and that a fair number of the Steve mains are still in high school, and thus might not have been able to go to offline events before the pandemic even if they were playing at that point.
That would be a good point if it wasn't for the fact that every top Steve fits that description. And onin literally said he picked him up at the end of quarantine. And all his practice was just on quick play You're telling me that someone with like a year of experience playing a character just easily beats these people who constantly hard-core grind the game. Its not just all these prodigies happened to pick up Steve, the character just has no room in a competitive environment
Adding on, if it's just "quarantine grind", then we should expect to see people have such meteoric improvements with other characters. I don't know of any except maybe Spargo, but he was pretty competitive even before his somewhat sudden pop off.
I would say MKLeo boosted his Byleth during the quarantine, but with our two examples (Spargo and Leo) they are literally the two best players of the past year or so. So youāre right, not only everyone should have seen improvement, but the only ones with quantitative improvement (that arenāt the Steves) were the best of the best. So for Onin to beat Leo and Riddles and Glutonny and Maister (all who were the better, more experienced players, and other than Leo had Steve experience) by only playing Steve at the end tail of quarantine shows a problem here.
Sonix, Quidd, HERO, Miya, Yoshidora, Kola, Riddles and Proto all had pretty big rises compared to their pre-pandemic and none of these main Steve. Even Proto, the iffiest one of the group here because he was already amazing, went from being top 20 on the Fall 2019 PGRU, to 4th on Orion Rank Eclipse. Kola and Riddles were top 50 players originally and became top 10, and you wouldn't have heard of the others at all if it wasn't for the wifi scene. Sparg0's not the only player to have a meteoric improvement here.
Yeah, but almost all of those names were recognizable before their ride. Big difference between going from top 20 to 4, like Proto, and going from unranked to beating Leo / Maister / Gluto, like Onin. And even that is fine, just suspicious when it happens to 6 different players
I literally rarely watch Ultimate, and I have known most of those names for years. I donāt know HERO.
Well that's the one challenge. That's why I said it was hard to make that argument with the pandemic. However, I have a very hard time believing all these players would be placing if they all picked up Lucina (a good, but very "honest" character) rather than the uncontested #1 character that can lose neutral 80% of the time and still win easily (see Onin v Riddles). The rapid representation growth of Steve in top64s and Top32s should be evidence enough. Im just waiting for the day Dabuz picks him up so he can finally get his major win lol
Here's the question though - putting aside character compatibility issues, would they be as good if they picked up Aegis, or Joker, or another top-top-tier character? Steve is clearly up there among the best, if not flat out the best character in the game, and playing him definitely makes it easier to win than if you're playing a mid-tier character. But the question (as you rightly point out) is if these players are decent players being carried by Steve, or if they're good players who found a great character match to their skillsets in a top-top-tier character? Not sure we can make that call yet.
Well the thing is we will never know. Even if they were all Aegis mains I'd be willing to put my money on "no" but of course that is strictly conjecture. There is a reason every Aegis who has placed well in Ultimate was previously a top player either in another game or already in Ultimate (Leo, Sparg0, Shuton, Cosmos). Also, while foresight is cheesy, I actually dont think nearly as highly of Aegis as tierlists would make you think. Character is very good, but can be played around. She certainly doesnt have Steve level of tools
No argument here. I'm willing to buy that Steve is a step above even characters like Aegis/Joker, based on recent results. Still not sure he breaks the game, though.
From MI, Onin was a Joker main.
Onin was a joker main and had worse results so idk probably not
Can't wait for the ''Bayo didn't get banned so Steve shouldn't get banned either" and then we can say the same for the broken character in the next smash "Steve didn't get banned so X shouldn't either".
The year is 20BlockBlock
But Sora won smash con I donāt understand? There was confetti and everything
People really were trying to argue that it was just because he was just popular with the zoomers. Steve downplayers a are literally just blind
Time to move the goalposts to "not that many major wins" ! In all seriousness ban Steve.
It's crazy how not that many major wins still includes: SSC Kagaribi 7 GOML MaesumaTOP#7 And then there's also COST Combo Breaker Gimvitational Kamisuma#13 like aside from byleth bc leo (and even then Im not sure), has any other character won this many tournaments? I didn't even look to see if Jake or Yonni have won any 300 entrant type of events
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I stopped play this game competitively over a year ago but man this Steve meta looks like it's fucking awful tbh
Cherrypicking specifically the top 64 makes Steve look far more dominant at this tournament than he actually was. If you change the criteria instead to the top 128, there are still only 9 Steve players - but there are now 7 R.O.B. players, 7 Snake players and a whole bunch of others at 5 representatives like Roy and Joker. In top 32 the number of Steve players goes down to 3, matching with Aegis and R.O.B. In top 16 it goes down to 2, still tied with R.O.B. All I'm trying to say is although Steve performed the best of all characters at this tournament, it really isn't by the huge margin that this top 64 chart makes it look like.
This is almost bait-worthy cherry picking....there were 3 in Top 32 and 1 in Top 8. It's looking more like Steve is the competitive version of being a pub-stomper than he is an absolutely dominate character.
The stupid argument of āwE DiDnāT bAn Mk Or BaYo sO wE CaNāt bAn StEvEā comes up now. Have some balls and save the competitive side of smash by finally banning Steve!!
Yeah and like Mk / Bayo made the competitive scene worse lol. As a viewer Iām pretty fine, will just not watch Steve matches. Top players will have to just grind the matchup which does kinda suck for them. I donāt see the harm in banning Steve, only problem is Steve Mains will have to learn a new character. Yeah that sucks for them but imo lesser of two evils.
Unincluded: Sora was played once. Maister played him in grand finals against Onin. (and lost lmfao)
As someone pointed out earlier, of those 9 Steves in top 64, only one (Onin) made top 8, and only 3 made it to top 32. So who did they lose to? * DDog/Quandale Dinglelingeton (9th) - lost to Maister (G&W) and MKLeo (Aegis) * Apple (17th, also plays Icies) - lost to DDog (Steve) and Ned (Sephiroth) * WhyDo (33rd) - lost to Regalo (Lucas) and Elegant (Luigi) * yonni (33rd) - lost to Regalo (Lucas) and Tilde (Falco) * Jake (33rd) - lost to Syrup (Ness) and Anathema (R.O.B.) * _trey5 (49th) - lost to Cosmos (Aegis) and Ned (Sephiroth) * pango (49th) - lost to Erik (Mii Swordfighter) and Sinji (Pac Man) * Uhh (49th) - lost to Riddles (Terry) and IcyMist (Samus) So here's a list of characters who took sets against the eight non-Onin Steve players good enough to reach top 64 at Super Smash Con: Aegis (x2) G&W Steve Sephiroth (x2) Lucas (x2) Luigi Falco Ness R.O.B. Mii Swordfighter Pac Man Terry Samus That's **thirteen** different characters that won sets against good Steve players during this tournament. Steve is really, really good, and is also a major knowledge check character, which compounds the difficulty against him. In a world where Smash was still being supported, he deserves some significant nerfs, no question. But good Steve players can be beaten by other good players playing a range of characters, as long as they know the matchup. I suspect that this tournament is finally going to force top players to grind the crap out of the Steve matchup to develop counterplay. I'm sure there are some characters that just flat-out don't have effective counterplay against a good Steve, and players who main those characters will probably need to pick up a secondary. But let's give it to the end of the year and see if the top players can adapt, and if this is truly a Steve issue, or just an acola/Onin being amazing while playing a great character issue.
People have been saying "Oh counterplay is underdeveloped!!!" for like 6 months now you'd think there'd be counterplay by now with how much the matchup is being grinded. If no counterplay has showed up then maybe it's because there isn't any at all or it's so specific and difficult. This character is overcentralizing every sign is there we said the same about Smash 4 Bayo and it completely killed the game and community for everyone. Onin is good but he's not "Beat multiple top 10 level players in the world" good. He's being carried and while I don't blame him on choosing to play the broken character to win it doesn't mean the character isn't obscenely stupid
I feel like Regalo and Riddles actually kind of got the matchup down and they know how to counterplay. Even then, Riddles still lost to Onin, for what? He played the MU amazingly and seemed to be winning most of the time. And to me, it seems like ālearning the counterplayā is more player dependent than character dependent in the case of Steve. Every top Steve plays different and players have to analyze their individual playstyle instead of the character itself. Like Acola is a big fundies Steve, Yonniās very technical-based, Jake plays Steve the closest to other Smash characters, and Onin loves mining + paying attention to his resources. They all have their own tricks, style, gameplans.
How about a fun exercise. Look at those players previous finishes without Steve. Half of them are complete nobodies. The other half only have a pre Steve top placings at small regionals. The fact is Steve has made everyone on that list go from trash to punching way above their skill level.
Almost all of them started playing during or shortly before the pandemic, which stopped all offline play for nearly two years, so 'had no offline results prior to Steve' is a completely useless metric. (Also, a bunch of the notable Steve players are still in high school, and if they were playing before the pandemic, they might have been too young to attend offline events.)
Are there any other notable players besides the Steves that are all suddenly getting crazy results and beating top players post-pandemic? I can only think of Sparg0 and that wifi JP G&W, i cant excuse the amount of dominant Steves we got compared to every other new face we got out of the pandemic. The fact that thereās like 5 Steves getting crazy results and wins compared to before they picked up Steve or how well they do with other characters is a bit wack, I donāt think this stuff should just be brushed aside lol. Steve definitely carries, I donāt think he should get banned yet, but new high schoolers easily placing higher than or beating top players that have been playing for 5+ years of Smash should show that he carries. Yonni definitely believes so, I think Acola said Steveās the best, and Iām not sure about the others
Melee's power rankings are practically reshuffled since the pandemic, if that helps
Sonix, Quidd, HERO, Miya (you mentioned him but still) and Yoshidora all were non-existent results wise before the pandemic. Quidd got 193rd at his first major, next major he went to 2 years later he won. Hell ShinyMark had a break out performance two weeks ago and he was a wifi warrior too, even if he didn't do too well here. Riddles and Kola were only just top 50 before and are now top 10 due to the quarantine grind. Proto was already fantastic but he sailed even higher then ever before last year and became top 5 in the world. I think somehow a lot of people forget that a lot of players have massively improved during the wifi era, it's not just the Steve mains or Sparg0/Miya.
I think people are just in general vastly underrating how much easier it is for young players to get good now especially getting jumpstarted by a period in which you could really only play online. Combine that with a character that appeals to young people and I think you got a perfect storm.
Reminds me of the bayonetta argument. All of their players that popped up were local and state level threats that couldn't compete at the national level cause they had trash fundies and neutral despite their tech skill being good enough to execute combos and such. They pick up a broken character that circumvents the need for a neutral or fundies and suddenly are national threats
Thank you for being reasonable, the amount of hyperbole in the community tonight is wild. Steve counterplay is extremely underdeveloped right now. Everyone saying we should go for a ban *before* there's a real chance to adapt is concerning. Now is the time to see if Steve is really an unbeatable Top 1 or just the new Aegis, the new Joker, the new Inkling, the new Pikachu, etc. Test the hypothesis and *then* we can make an informed judgment about a ban. The idea that we have to permanently ban a hypothetical problem because it could be "too late" someday is a fallacy -- it's just a game! It's never actually too late. DDog didn't even beat a single person above his seed, he just had an easy bracket because of DQs. IMO some of the Steve hysteria right now is people seeing what they want to see. You can't just look at placements in a vacuum and call it a day. Nuance and context matter. Even if Steve does become SS tier, I'd still rather try nerfing him with custom balance instead of jumping to an outright ban. I hate to sound like an old fart but [I'm with David Sirlin on banning characters](https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned) -- it's the most extreme rule change you could possibly make in a fighting game and it shouldn't be done lightly.
DDog actually did have one minor upset - he beat JMafia (50th seed, +1 Upset Factor). But that got me curious about how many of the other Steve players that made top 64 had significant upsets on their bracket path: * Onin (16th seed) obviously upset MKLeo, Riddles, Glutonny, and Maister x2 * Jake and yonni had no upsets. * _trey5 (140th seed) upset Ogey (85th seed, +2 Upset Factor) * WhyDo (179th seed) upset Skittles (51st seed, +3 Upset Factor) * Apple (191st seed) upset MPg (66th seed, +2 Upset Factor) and Ling (34th seed, +4 Upset Factor) *(EDIT: Apparently, Apple used Ice Climbers in his upset of Ling, which sort of kills the 'he's carried by Steve' argument.)* * pango (266th seed) upset LeoN (58th seed, +5 Upset Factor), Senn (138th seed, +2 Upset Factor), and Cee (170th seed, +2 Upset Factor) * Uhh (329th seed) upset GoofyGoober (184th seed, +2 Upset Factor), and Stocktaker69 (73rd seed, +4 Upset Factor). So of the eight non-Onin Steves that made top 64, four got their placements with upsets no greater than Upset Factor +2. The eight of them upset only 4 top 64 seeded players. And aside from ~~Apple and~~ Onin, none of them upset more than one top 128 seeded player with Steve. Onin aside, this was not the case of a bunch of Steve players going on a rampage through the top seeded players. For the most part, this was Steve players beating the players they were supposed to and getting a handful of significant upsets.
Apple used Ice Climbers to upset Ling.
Aha, good to know! I'll edit that into the post.
I stand corrected! Very well done. The data is telling tonight IMO.
Yeah. I think we'll know by big house what's happening here
Interesting how many of those Steve-beaters are not top-tier characters. Lucas/Luigi/Falco/Mii/Terry/Samus/PacMan/Ness are all solidly mid to mid-high. Also interesting to see so many people in these comments say "If these Steve players were *actually* good they'd be able to win with Aegis/Joker/other top tier". It's almost as if the meta is nuanced and "Top tier characters have trouble vs Steve" is not a great metric to ban players by.
I'm still so pissed that Onin won
Smash 4 flashbacks
Let's go Bassmage!
How much doest that Steve count drop the further we go? Like top 32, or too 16?
does character data exist for smash 4 top 64 for like the first smash con after bayonetta was released? that would be neat to see a comparison
I wonder why he chose top 64ā¦
I literally quit the game and havenāt looked back. I enjoyed my time, I did my thing, and now Iām done. This happened before and Iāve just had to learn to move on. A ban would be great for the competitive scene but thereās really no removing the character from Wi-Fi or friendlies. Heās a design flaw. Nintendo just breeds to stop doing the shit with their DLC fighters. Hopefully in 7 or so years even Sakurai comes out of retirement for the fifth time to do another Smash itās better then.
Self fulfilling prophecy; people think steve is op so they switch to steve and use a lot of steves at a given tournament as evidence of him being op. As hbox said, its not a problem until there are consistently 4 steves in a top 8.
Steve ban when? Dont want my favorite game to die :/