The Issue with Balance in Smash 4 and Describing My Low Tier Crisis
Shady - June 4, 2017I currently main diddy kong. He is my solo main, and I use him for every matchup.
Before about 2 months ago, I also used falco. He was the character I used for projectile characters like Robin and Villager. I also used him for heavies like Bowser, Donkey Kong, and even Dedede, because he's relevant in my region for some reason.
Even though I think falco wins all of the matchups that I explained before, I don't use him anymore, and that makes me upset. I have been having a "character crisis" for the last 6 months, regarding who I should play. I have considered Mario, Diddy Kong, Falco, Link, Sheik, Marth, and even Mii Gunner. I like to play all of these characters, but I don't like to play any of them as much as I like to play Falco.
I got into smash from watching melee, and that has influenced my style of play. I like to go for exciting and creative combos, and I like to see what all my character can do.
Whenever I first played this game about a year and a half ago, I picked up falco because I liked to watch falco in melee and I realized that nobody played falco in smash 4 and I thought that would correlate. It actually did, in the sense that falco in smash 4 is similar to falco in melee. You can combo different characters many different ways, and you can really punish your opponent hard whenever they're in disadvantage. I also liked it that Falco wasn't popular, because that means that he is unexplored. I would spend hours in training mode pushing my characters punish game. I learned combos and setups that were so exciting and satisfying to see pulled off. At my first tournament, I was so excited to pull off these combos and wow everybody.
Well, at my first tournament I lose to Bowser and Yoshi, and I was nervous and panicking because I quickly realized that none of the work that I put in actually mattered in a tournament set because Falco was not good.
I knew that Falco wasn't top tier before I attended that tournament because I saw tier lists that put falco low, but I never believed any of them. I was so set that Falco was mid tier and that I was going to prove everybody wrong and the problem was that nobody took the time to learn the character. I didn't realize until about last week that I was right.
It turns out that low tiers are very bad for your mindset, and figuring that as a person I already do badly under pressure, maining Falco did not help. Maining Falco hindered my learning mindset, and made me a worse player in the long run.
There were multiple reasons that maining Falco was bad for me. His options are not very well rounded. He has moves that are good for comboing, but in terms of zoning, baiting, conditioning, and adapting Falco has a bad moveset. What Falco's moveset is good at doing is comboing, and keeping your opponent at the ledge. They also kill which is nice.
Something that encouraged me to switch off of Falco is, and I haven't shared this with anybody, peer pressure.
I was told so many times that I was always going to lose if I mained Falco, and that there are certain situations in which Falco loses and there's nothing I can do about it. I was told that I would have more success and improve as a player if I switched to a top tier. I was told that I was only hurting myself by being upset because I knew what I was getting myself into by maining this character. I was told that Falco doesn't win any matchups that are relevant. While all of these statements are true, I didn't believe them at the time because my belief in Falco was hurting my mindset.
Eventually my friend who mains Rosalina just straight up told me that my pocket Diddy was better than my Falco in which I invested all of my time into. I didn't believe him, and to prove a point I switched to Diddy and sure enough I went from getting two stocked to taking a stock.
I was at my lowset the last few weeks that I played Falco. I remember specifically my last tournament that I solo mained falco. It was game 3 last hit versus a local Sheik main, and I tryed to upthrow upair, missed, and got upaired. I was tilted, and in losers I played a Bowser Jr main. Game 1 I took the first stock 0 to death, but he QUICKLY adapted and brought it back. Falco has no guranteed kill conifirms, so I struggled to kill, and lost game 2.
I had never been so upset, because bost of those players were respectable in our region and they both would've been great wins.
Two weeks later there was a smash fest at my friend Sam's house, and I went and she held an impromptu bracket for the 8 people that went. I played a respectable player with my Diddy Kong, and beat him 3-0. I was so happy even though it wasn't bracket, because I started to gain confidence in my Diddy.
That Sunday at my local, I played #5 in my region and almost beat him with Diddy Kong.
Last night I was at a smash fest around 3 AM, and I explained all of this, and I said that if Falco was good I could play this game happily. I said that Falco deserved a buff.
He responded that Sheik should have never been nerfed, and that neither should have bayo. I was confused and I thought he was joking because he had previously mained those characters, but he was serious, and he explained this.
Sheik was not broken before she was nerfed, and neither was bayo. All of the other characters were just bad. He said that the issue was never that the top tiers were too good, it was that the lower tier characters were too bad. And that instead of nerfing all of the good characters, they should have buffed all of the bad characters.
This resolated with me because if you look at other popular esports in where their brands care about them, there are often balance patches to fix the broken characters and nerf the bad characters, and there's logic behind them, and the factor is always esports.
Nintendo did not follow that pattern with Smash 4. Nobody fucking knows their logic behind why they gave falco amazing moves but no tools to use them. Nobody knows why they gave Diddy Kong 9 of the 10 best moves in the game.
My overall point is that you need to find out what you care about more. Winning and learning the game correctly, or having a jaded view of how the game is played and never reach the top level of play, but winning the way you want.
I encourage everybody to make the decision that is going to make them happiest, and thank you for reading my first blog. I enjoyed writing this even though it was all over the place.
Shay D (Shady)
This blog post was written by a SSB World community member. Share your Smash 4 knowledge by creating your own blog post now.
You must log in to comment.
That being said, your friend is mistaken about Bayo. Pre-patch she was quite broken. When a player who goes 0-2 regularly can grab a character, learn 1 combo, and then win a tournament against because far outside of their skill level, you have a broken character. Her Nerf was definitely justified. But your friend is right about many of the cast requiring buffs to go from perennially viable, to top 8 in a major viable.