Mew2king 1.1.5 Tier List Opinion + Cloud edge guarding

My personal 1.1.5 tier list opinion: (I will only be talking about the top and high tiers because I am not fully confident in myself to accurately rank ALL the characters in an exact order.  But I have confidence in ranking the best ones, and talking about a few random things).

SS: Bayonetta (tons of ways to death combo you), then Rosalina (same as before, but ZSS/Sheik were nerfed).

S: ZSS (almost as good as before), then Diddy, then Sheik (Both Diddy and Sheik have some of the best neutrals, period, which is extremely important in this game).

A: This will not be in any order, because I honestly have no idea how to order this tier, I can see MANY characters being #6 and many characters being #15, so I will just list them all here: Ryu, Pikachu, Villager, Cloud, Ness, Fox, Rob, Lucario, Sonic, Mario. I would group all these characters at around the same level, worse than the top 5, but better than the characters below them.

Rob and Lucario are sleepers, with both good ledge traps and also grab kills.

Rob is EXTREMELY underrated IMO. Rob has D-throw U-air for a reliable KO, not much worse than DK's grab kill, and he has amazing ledge traps too by using Gyro.  Throw kills and ledge traps are some of the most important 2 things in the game, and Rob has both of them to a top tier degree for each category. His U-air also goes through almost any move without trading (like Cloud's lingering giant D-air sword). I think people underrate him, because of his bad matchups vs ZSS and Rosalina, which is understandable as those are 2 top-tier characters. Elsewhere, I find him to be extremely powerful and underrated.

Lucario also has up throw to u-air kills vs some faster falling characters at certain %s and rages. For example, did you know a rage Lucario can up-throw metaknight at 40% and kill combo him on FD? Lucario struggles vs characters that kill quickly and reliably, but is very good vs characters that don't kill until high percentages, since he stacks aura and rage.  He might win the Sheik match-up now, due to his character design.

Bayo and ZSS excel at punish game, being able to do death combos on hits frequently, where as Rosa, Sheik, and Diddy excel at neutral.  I put them top 5 for different reasons, in addition to personal opinion.

Bayonetta can death combo people off of the following moves from 0% at ground level: ground side-B to up tilt, ground side-B to kick, aerial downwards kick side-B, stray up-tilt, stray down-tilt, up-tilt out of witch time, up-B, and in other situations that aren't on the ground, 1st hit of F-air also. All of these moves can launch into a potential death combo. Playing Salem in friendlies at MVG Shots Fired 2 last month, there was one friendly where he did 2 ground launchers vs me at 0%, and killed me off of it both times. He beat me 2 stock 2% that game, because of hitting me twice from 0% in neutral with launchers. I thought DI away worked, but Salem taught me you can chase that too. That's the worst friendly I ever lost in my life, and it happened just before I 3-0d 9B in tourney right afterwords.

Rosalina is the only unchanged of the previous top 3 women trio (Sheik, ZSS, Rosa), making her the same extremely strong character as before, but with worse competition, except for the addition of various DLC characters. I think she's #2 after Bayonetta personally, right now.

ZSS is still extremely strong, and down throw to up-B is a true kill combo at many % ranges, in many situations. N-air to down-B spike still works a lot, just not as easily as before.  I could see her as being #2 or #3 right now.  I would definitely put her within the 2nd to 4th place range though.

Diddy, when he has a banana in his hand, is one of, if not the best character in the game. You can hit or throw the opponent away, then pull a banana, sit in shield or run/roll around the stage randomly, then get a strong punish off of banana OOS to grab, banana OOS to down-tilt spaced into another follow-up (grab or smash attack), or banana OOS to smash attack, or side-B kick ledge cancel, or side-B grab. With the nerfs to all of the other top-tiers besides Rosalina, but no real Diddy nerfs for almost a year, he becomes one of the best in the game once again. If I wasn't so personally bad with using bananas to their full potential, I would be playing him myself again. My old Diddy barely used bananas and focused heavily on aerials and grabs (F-air, U-air, down-throw, up-throw), which ALL got heavily nerfed since I used him, crushing my personal play style, without as heavily affecting the play style of banana-focused Diddies. I focused on aerials/grabs, barely using bananas, but the nerfs forced his optimal play style to be the opposite, and be using bananas constantly. I would have mained a pre-patch Diddy with 0 bananas, if such a strange option was available to me.  This character is insanely strong right now, IMO.

Sheik still has most of the same strengths as before, with an incredible recovery, good edge guarding, needles that go across most of a stage, safe Fair, great run and shield, great roll, great dash attack, and just excellent neutral overall.  However, her down throw got way worse, by sending them greater distance, so now she has to use Fthrow and Back throw for everything (Usually Fthrow), which can work a lot, but isn't quite as good as down throw used to be for killing.  Fthrow is her primary go-to tool now, but it stops working and 50-50ing at the very high percentages. This is obviously not as good as her down-throw 50-50 she used to have, but still good. (Sheik used to have a guaranteed KO combo on town and city off a grab around 120, using down-throw to U-air, without even needing to 50-50 due to the lower ceiling, you could combo the down-throw to U-air before they could even air dodge in most match-ups). At low %, F throw gives combos to Fair or bouncing fish.  At midhigh %s, it's a 5050, and very high %s you can just DI up and away to avoid it.  Back throw might be a good mixup then, to trick their DI.  Her F-air still has great range, although less than before, but also auto-cancels and is safe when spaced on shield. The most major new difference with sheik by far is her throw game isn't as strong as before, which used to make her a class/tier all on her own, by herself. Now, she is just a solid top tier, with arguably the best or one of the best neutrals, but a weakness of no guaranteed kill grab or 50-50 at as many % ranges as before. I still think she is top 5, and Mr. R beating Ally (overall best Mario in the world) twice this past weekend supports my theory that she is still insanely strong, just not god-tier like before. I used to view her as a tier on her own, and now I would put her at approximately 5th place in singles, and still very strong in teams.

Cloud is definitely one of the better characters in the game, but is being extremely overrated right now, mostly because people don't exploit his weaknesses properly. I know half the people clicked this video to hear me talk about Cloud, so, I am going to teach you why I feel his weaknesses, specifically recovery, are actually VERY huge, and not being exploited correctly, or enough.  This is general smash knowledge that can apply to any smash game, in any match-up, and I recommend anyone that enjoys competitive smash to pay attention to the concepts I will explain below, that I came up about 8 years ago.

Many characters have at least one move that they can to gimp his recovery while standing on stage, such as Marth's down-tilt for example. That is one way to exploit his recovery in a safe manner (or you can just prepare a falling aerial just before or during his 2 frame).

 In other situations, if you hit cloud off stage with an f-smash, all you have to do most of the time to threaten him and force a reaction is GET NEAR HIM, and fall with him at a set distance, at a 45 degree under him (not exactly 45... A bit more under than to the side), where you can threaten him with a double jump aerial, but he cannot threaten you back. (Because you have the positional advantage, and more range by far thanks to the double jump option you can choose to use whenever you want.  Also, because you can make yourself within his range, and you exert the pressure and mixups as you please, and all he can do is fall and guess and make decisions.  If you are smart about it, it is a bad situation overall for the falling cloud.)

What do you mean Mew2king, and why does this work? Well, think about it. Human reaction time is roughly 13 frames, more or less. Think about how long it takes a character like Sheik to do a double-jump b-air. B-air is 4 frames, and you must be double jumping for one frame before the game lets you aerial the next frame.

So that entire sequence has Sheik travel A GREAT DISTANCE with an attack, in only 5 frames. This is WAY faster than any human can react to, BY FAR. Just by FALLING with cloud at a fixed distance, under cloud's fast-fall N-air/D-air/F-air range, but still close enough to double jump B-air him (which has more range, since you have the double jump option to lunge you a great distance in only a few frames), you are EXERTING GREAT PRESSURE on cloud and FORCING HIM TO MAKE A DECISION, such as "air dodge, aerial, or do nothing".

Jump kind of near cloud to give the threat of a potential attack (your choice of when, and if, you want to attack) -> Fast Fall (optional and situational) -> cloud will probably air dodge or throw out an aerial which will miss you -> you should double jump Bair (basically just aerial him as a punish after you react to his lag, OR when you think/guess the aerial will successfully connect).

^ that is how it will happen most of the time.  Start with this.  Adapt based on their adaptions/habits throughout the set.  (If it keeps working exactly like this, then keep doing it if they never learn mixups).

When you guess right, which should happen on average 50%/66% of the time (depending the situation), you win. Or, when you react to his laggy commitment (his air-dodge or aerial attempt), you stay under it to avoid it, then react with a double jump b-air, and you win again.

Basically cloud's 3 options are air dodge, aerial, or do nothing.

Waiting and reacting is usually best to start with, since most people will usually air dodge or aerial at some point the first time (and most of the time) that you do this (as they panic because they don't want you to hit them, and they see you are close enough to hit them), then after you see it happen, you do a double jump B-air. (This covers everything except for cloud's "do nothing" option, since they give no lag to react to when cloud does nothing). This gimps cloud when you guess correctly, which should happen 1/2 or 2/3rds of the time, depending the situation, if cloud is decently far away falling down.

If you know they are smart enough to even use the "do nothing" option, then attacking at any point in time beats this. The longer you fall with cloud, the better for you slightly, since he's threatened for longer. Most people aren't even smart enough for you to have to get to this stage though, meaning you can get an extremely high success rate on gimping bad clouds just by doing what i said above only.

(Also, most people don't know all of their options, so once you figure out their tendencies OR figure out what they DON'T KNOW, exploiting them becomes even easier. For the sake of this discussion I assume cloud knows all his options, and i talk about how he is still screwed most of the time regardless.  Or at least half).

Depending the move/aerial you hit cloud with, he may even die immediately or not, due to a poor upB.  A move that sends cloud sideways, without sending him upwards much, basically guarantees instant death, where as a move that sends at a 45 degree angle, just makes a very high chance of death.

Most characters have aerials fast enough to force "un-reactable" traps like these on Cloud's recovery. Sheik was just one example.... Almost any character can do it. The fact that you simply POSITION yourself in a range where you are safe from his falling aerials, where he is falling towards the stage to recover and is unable to hit you, BUT cloud is still threatened by your double jump B-air at ANY MOMENT you decide to do it, means that he is in danger that ENTIRE time he is falling, because if you choose to, you can just attack right away, and if he doesn't air dodge it or intercept you, he's dead. So, you therefore should be falling WITH him, close enough to threaten him BUT far enough to avoid his falling aerial attempt. As long as you are falling with him, out of his range, but within your double jump aerial range (your advantage by far), then at ANY moment, you can do a b-air or a double jump b-air, and hit him.

The longer you are falling with him, the bigger your advantage continues, since you can both react [to his air dodge or aerial attempts] OR guess (calling his bluff of trying to call your bluff, by falling with you with no air dodge and no aerial) when to attack him. The best way to beat this strategy is to fall with no "action", because most of the time the top player will wait and react to your "lag", meaning after you commit to a laggy aerial or laggy air dodge. However, this is beaten by simply attacking right away, or attacking within a short period of time.

Almost nobody does these things to me. Most people do not understand these concepts evidently, so you aren't abusing clouds MAJOR weaknesses of recovery if you aren't doing them.

Speaking of recovery, he's often forced to use a limit up-b if you throw him off stage and then threaten or hit him, which means for 6.7 more seconds of charge time he cant use his best kill moves, or his best recovery move, which matters even more now with all his best kill moves nerfed in 1.1.5 patch. You can also hit limit up-B rising. The 2nd half of the rise doesn't even hurt you, in case you didn't know. You can just run off stage and n-air it and gimp him. Very few people do this too.

What if you want to gimp his normal up B?  Most characters can just fall off stage and Nair and trade with cloud's up B and then cloud is instantly dead.  Bayonetta can literally hold A to hold Nair, and usually trade, then cloud's dead.

The 2nd major weakness is no grab kill until around 180% which is incredibly bad. Shielding is strong. Speaking of shielding, you can spot-dodge the last hit of clouds side-B limit, without the risk of shield break, which makes your shield camping safer. Recover carefully and shield intelligently and Cloud's best offensive strengths are much weaker. People rarely do this. Edge guard using some of the strategies i stated above and almost ANY character can gimp or edge guard cloud. Cloud can beat anyone but he can also lose to anyone because of his glass canon type of design. I use him because I enjoy characters that are fast and good with giant swords, as shown with my Melee Marth and Brawl Metaknight, Brawl Ike being my low tier in brawl, and now a Cloud main in smash 4.

3rd I'd like to mention that his nerfs were actually very significant imo, contrary to what people are saying, because all his best kill moves kill much later. Just because each INDIVIDUAL nerf wasn't as big of a nerf as say, Sheik's throw change, the fact that -MULTIPLE- IMPORTANT THINGS were nerfed to various degrees DOES MAKE a BIG TOTAL DIFFERENCE in how good the character is as a whole.

 U-air kills around 12% later (cloud ditto on FD training mode no DI killed at 149 before and 161 now.  I tested this with my friend on different versions of the game), but from experience feels much worse, and i get u-air kills A LOT less now, likely due to move staling. D-smash kills 2% later, f-smash 4% later, side-B 2% later, aerial finishing touch 24% later (vs Marth on FD no DI ground level. 64% is now 88%). Limit taking 0.7 seconds longer to charge is actually major since his best recovery and best kill moves both come from that. I feel the effects on everything a lot.

Note that I'm NOT calling cloud bad, but i AM calling him noticeably worse than before, EVEN relatively, in my opinion.  I still think he's an A tier character, within the 6-15 range somewhere. (Another reason I think he's being overrated is because it's only very established or known top players using him getting the serious results.  Tweek is the best Bowser Jr/Wario and a pretty decent melee luigi player, Komorikiri is the best Sonic, 1st to 3rd best Cloud, and one of the best Bayonettas, Zero/myself are established in multiple smash games because of our fundamentals and experience.   I think he's similar to Mario in the aspect that general overall fundamentals are what take you very far with him, rather than a bunch of character specific knowledge which you'd need for a unique character, like say Pikachu or Villager for example).  Top/established players using him carries his results slightly (unlike all the tier 2 level players that get insane results by using bayonetta.  I don't intend to fire shots by saying that, I am only saying what I think/know is true).  Hope my logic makes sense.

Back to edge guarding... another thing you might ask is, if you can edge guard cloud so often so easily (especially from a distance, when you are able to fall with cloud a lot and force reactions by threatening him with position much easier), why not do that to everyone? Well, my concepts are very good vs any character, but other characters generally have more options, like being able to air dodge away from me, then still recover with up-B, or guessing wrong and getting hit by my double jump b-air, but still having a good enough recovery (aerial horizontal drift combined with how good their up-B is) to get multiple chances. For example, i can edge guard mario with these theories, but his superior aerial horizontal drift combined with his superior up-B often gives him multiple chances to survive. Also, some characters have side-Bs they can use for further mixups.

(Mario can also "trick" people that are fully committed to waiting for him by using his d-air, which lasts a very short total time, and then do an air dodge or n-air afterwards. Most people that aren't expecting this can get caught off guard by it or react slowly).

So, all in all, it comes down to cloud having less options, being edge guarded at least half the time or more on average, and rarely having 2nd chances since his up-B is so poor.  Most noticeable when cloud has to fall and recover from a distance, since he's threatened more, and for longer periods of time as you fall under him. Your odds of edge guarding him are even greater then, due to him being threatened by your position, for a longer period of time.  You can mix up reacting to him AND guessing in these types of situations, all giving you a 2/3rds chance of success each, among cloud's 3 basic recovery options.

Exploit his recovery weakness and lack of kill grab weaknesses, or you aren't playing the matchup properly, and you're letting cloud play on stage where he is strong.

Its only a weakness if you exploit why its a weakness.

Remember, these are just my opinions, but I think I have fairly highly educated ones at this point at least.

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