Thanks for watching everyone! Tier lists are fun to talk about, not to live by. Play who you want. List of links: www.patreon.com/mockrock twitter.com/MrMockRock teespring.com/stores/mockrock
I feel like rather than having tier lists which try and be as good as possible on their own (though I agree with you that W. matchups is the best method for that) it'd be better to have a collection of good tier lists of every type for the sake of having more complete information about the roster _without_ needing too much complexity.
Hey MockRock, amazing video, it's nice to see you improve with every video and deliver such amazing quality and video editing skills. I just have one thing that I think could add to your tier list tier list. IMO a huge aspect that affects the meta in ultimate is the average stage pool available in tournaments, a big example that I know is Incineroar, who would be far better if tournaments weren't plagued with huge stages with big blastzones that benefit camping, steups, fast caharcters and good kb growth, while Incineroar is the complete opposite. Instead, if stages like Unova, Wario and Castle siege were available more often Incineroar would be much more meta. I think most of the cast receives a great impact from the stages available, from ladder combos to wall jumps, shaking, etc, and the greater amount of x type of stages helps characters with y traits, or the opposite as with Incineroar. I don't think this aspect is as important matchups or weighted matchups, but nonetheless you can see how most sets have the the one that wins the first game win the set, since often the counterpick wins the match with close matchups and player skills, imo that's why we see so many last game scenarios in ultimate. Anyway, keep the amazing content, and if you ever get to do a "stages impact in competitive smash" video I will definitely watch it.
A great way to show the argument for Weighted Matchups is to just look at how tier lists for Brawl were decided. Since MK was by a massive margine the inarguable "best" in game, he was everywhere in every bracket that didn't have him banned. So tier lists were basically turned into "list of how well everyone does against MK" and nothing influenced these lists more than the MK matchup. Based off this model, I think it's fair to say Weighted Matchups is the most practical and realistic way to form a tier list of competitively viable characters for any fighting game. (The only problem is how easily they become outdated due to a constantly changing meta)
If MK was baned, characters like Lucas are gonna be higher in the brawl tier list because he struggles against MK, but characters like Sonic are going back to low tier.
@@jamesv337 MKs combo game is strong, the priority in Meta tornado is so high, that thing eat shields and don't get me started on MKs recovery and frame data.
@@jamesv337 that is the casual way of playing smash, I am a casual, but my go to characters have both strong arials and smashs, I just love playing as Lucas, Nair for the win!
finally someone who see's the power of matchups... you can have the unarguably best character in the game but if you lose 70:30 against a character thats easy to pocket you'll end up losing to players who are worse than you more times than not simply because you solo main a character so easily countered.
I really like the comment on not ignoring the low tiers. My regions top players play so many mid/low tiers. We have a Piranha Plant/Bowser Jr, a Lucas/Villager, and a Ridley in the Top 5.
I miss black yoshi. Umbreon doesn't have his own Yoshi color now, while the other eeveelutions are still jammin' with their own. What's even worse, crafted Yoshi is promoting a bad game. If you want a good Yoshi game, play Yoshi's Woolly World or the remake instead.
I have always thought that matchup spreads were the most important thing when determining a tier list because a character’s worth can only be determined by how it fairs against the other characters in the game.
When starting the video I thought you were going to do a tier list of tier lists from other players. I was really disappointed because it was an idea already made lots of times. Then, I was all the video waiting for you to start placing other players tier lists in a tier list. I got one big surprise at the end of the video when I understand you were doing a tier list of criteria for doing a tier list. Great tier list. S tier, of Solid S tier :)
I’ve been saying this stuff for ages. I’m so sick of people telling me Joker is the best character in the game just because Leo is winning. No, Leo is just the best player. I’m glad someone with a bigger platform than me has such a good grasp on the issue.
Joker is the best character in the game regardless if Leo is winning or not. He has no clear weaknesses whatsoever and is a character that can blow you up at anytime with huge combos and kill confirms with and without his gimmick. It feels more like people use Leo winning as a cop out to say "oh no leo is just literally god" even when nobody mentions him. I feel like people tend to ignore that Leo and Tweek were pretty even before Joker came out too, whereas now Tweek either gets bodied or gets reverse 3-0'd usually.
I think my favorite part about these videos is that MockRock can bring up stuff like quantum mechanics in a video about Super Smash Bros. and still somehow manage to keep it relevant to the topic at hand. Keep up the good work, MockRock, I love watching these informational videos.
Really like this video. Great audio and visuals, amazing editing, concise points and I do agree that weighted matchup based tier lists seem perfect for this game.
For me, tier lists are less useful for the list and more useful for the discussion of the contents. Even if abbreviated, it helps get an idea of the whole that individual analyses often lack.
"Whether they lost their best costume from the last game" I'm glad to have variety in the Zelda characters, but Old Man Ganon in Twilight Princess' design is waaaaay better than Ocarina's, and I miss the skin so much.
One of the best discussion on this topic I've ever seen. I think tier lists are a good intellectual exercise but I think it's borderline impossible for any one person to truly make an effective tier list on their own. In a game like Smash with 80+ characters one person CAN'T have a deep understanding of each character and all their match-ups so they have to resort to quicker methods of data gathering that aren't perfect. They might get close, but there's going to be gaps in the knowledge.
Regarding results: Results are effective evidence for one thing: if a character is consistently used to get grand final level results at majors, it does show that the character is capable of being used by top level players at top level play. If PK Trainer keeps showing up in the top 16 of majors, they probably have the tools to be used in top level play. The problem is that results don't say that other characters aren't capable of being used in top level play. Duck Hunt might have the sauce, but not enough top level representatives, an undiscovered gem. Mr. G&W is a good example of this: many tier lists thought he was not viable at top level play until Maister proved he was viable. A character without results could be top level viable. But similarly, lack of results doesn't mean that a character is viable at top level play. In other words, results says next to nothing about the viability at top level play of most characters.
This was a very good video. I'd like to add that another reason I don't like when people weigh results so heavily is that we kind of already do that naturally. Seeing a character perform well and do good things in matches already gives the impression that the character is strong and this perception has the same issues you covered when talking about results. Adding in actual results on top of this only doubles down on the same issue, only blatantly so.
The majority of tier lists are purely anecdotal and made more for fun than for practicality. That's why it became such a meme. That said, very well-crafted analysis! You effectively dissect the principles that are employed in the making of serious tier lists, illustrate the large scale of constantly-fluctuating variables that influence the lists, and present a strong argument for why certain criteria for judging characters are more reliable than others. Nicely done!
how you explained tier lists is the exact reason why i hate how much weight people put on tier lists. its such a subjective thing. saying " your main is low tier" means nothing but people think it does
Now if we could just get tournaments to easily and consistently tally how often each character was used and where, maybe start with at least the top 32 or top 25% of bracket roughly?
This was a very good video! I mean, I always knew there was different kinds of tier lists.... results... theorycrafting... but this really put things into perspective! Thanks for the great video. :)
The thing about match up spreads is the fact that match up spreads are much more biased on the individuals strengths, so no one agrees on one solid match up spread. If joe schoemoe one is good at playing close quarters and joe schoemoe 2 is good at fighting from afar then their match up spreads are going to vary by a lot because one is generally better at fighting an archetype than another.
Wow, what a great and informative video! I loved the editing, the topic, and how everything was broken down and explained so well. Thanks for a great video man!
Your content is simply phenomenal. There was so much information told in an easily understandable way, partly due to the usual beautiful editing. Keep up the great work!
We need somebody (if it hasn’t already been done) to take note of the date of usage per each character at high profile Smash tournaments. This will allow us to make informed decisions about weighted matchups.
My tier list for words you used in this based on usefulness, popularity, and dictionary matchup: S tier: Absolute, the, individual A tier: If, Spear Guy B tier: Popular, strong, results C tier: Potential, of F tier: Perfect
I don’t watch this channel all the time but this vid just popped up on YT, and I really just want to note that I’m really glad Sylvanos, or really anyone from Rivals, is in the intro.
each video produced by mockrock just seems to have a higher quality than every other similar style youtuber. great writing, visuals, analysis.... mock rock is the top tier of smash commentary content
Yeah, a few people have said that, I deliberately left the title ambiguous. For the record, you're never actually going to see me pit people against each other like that, particularly people from the Smash scene, many of who I've spoken with and like!
I thought you’d just be rating other lists based off the creators competitive experience in ultimate but damn I was pleasantly surprised by this full blown explanation
Weighted matchups are really revealing in melee in particular. For example in melee part of the reason Sheik was considered the strongest at the start is because she had so many heinously oppressive matchups against low and mid tier characters, to the point that "an even sheik matchup" is basically the standard for a high tier character (other than Falcon) But this stopped being relevant because people very quickly stopped bringing bowser/zelda/ness to tournaments, and among top tiers, fox pretty solidly has the best MU spread, winning against puff, peach, ice climbers, pikachu, samus, yoshi, and sheik and only losing against Marth on one stage. Hbox's dominance was by itself sufficient to make fox EVEN BETTER against the meta at the time, to the point that almost every top player picked up a fox secondary. And now people say marth is the best, and in a meta where half of top players play fox and falco, that might well be true. Indeed, it might have been true in 2018 and 2019 when Hbox was still dominant. The hilarity of this being, of course, that marth has of bad or even MUs versus characters other top tiers beat, and with lots of marths on the rise (logan, kodorin, and zain at the top) its concievable that characters like pikachu and yoshi will do a lot better.
THANK YOU! I’m hate how people expect some characters are only viable if they have a good player winning tournaments with them. Any character is viable if you can outplay and outsmart your opponent. I also hate how RU-vid is filled with video about different small tech for characters when they won’t be useful like ever in an actual match.
In my opinion observation is probably the factor that is the most healthy for the community. I think weighted matchups may be the best objectively, but observation recognizes and awards good players in tournament and encourages others to pave a path for their character in tournament instead of just crunching the numbers and playing the best character. Does it affect the top and bottom of the tier list that much? No, but it may prevent people from being judged based on the quality of the character that they pick. But objectively, weight led matchups is still the best.
FINALLY!!! I’ve always hated the “SHOW ME THE RESULTS” argument, it’s stupid and flawed. Results are mainly due to a players skill with said character, not a characters strength. You can take a mid tier character like Byleth for example and get results if you’re good enough. (Which is what MKLeo is doing) while you can pick a top tier like Pyra and Mythra or Joker and get mediocre results and that doesn’t mean the character is any worse it’s that you as a player are not as skilled. The way I like to think of it is this, if you were to solo main one character and play them and only them in bracket, to what extent would said character be “holding you back” I think we can all agree that maining someone like Little Mac or Ganon on top level play is gonna hold you back a fair amount. But if you play them so much they become your best character, if you were to put in that time to someone like Pikachu instead. How much better do u think as a player you would be? I think characters that would “hold you back the least” or allow you to have the least possible combination of bad attributes or matchups that happen to that character while having the most amount of good attributes (ex, heavy, small, good recovery, good neutral, good range, fast, good combos, etc) and having not necessarily the most winning matchups but if you were to give every matchup a number of a point based on how much you win the matchup, the higher the number or point being the more advantage you have in that matchup. Which characters would end up with the most points? And which would end up with the least points? I feel this is the best way to determine a tier list as player skill plays far more of a big deal than results, and then take into account character popularity, character bias, getting results with a character because you hard counter picked them, etc etc. However this is really really hard to do, because if you want to make an 100 percent accurate (or at least close to 100 percent accurate) it basically means you have to be an expert a literal top player, with every character. This is why at least in my opinion people tend to lean to results more because they simply do not have much knowledge about a character they never play or even think about, they just think hm, no one ever plays this character this character has almost no results and every time I do verse one I am able to exploit a few things and just beat my opponent easier than I would with a top tier. Or something like that, but in reality, chances are the person you versed doesn’t know 100 percent everything about their character and prolly just got beaten due to player skill. You could argue that skill is hard to measure because certain characters can hold you back and certain characters can “carry you” however I feel like your skill as a player can be measured by playing your best character. And then play an opponent who’s playing a character with an even matchup to them. Character doesn’t have any even matchups or at least very few, because they win too many?!? Might be broken and actually carry you like 4 Bayo. (This isn’t always the case however, many top tiers are top tiers not because they have some stupid cheese you can pull off easily that can win games like bayos combos, but because they have a lot of options and are good in a lot of situations like pika or melee fox, which are inherently hard to master so I think they’re fair game to call part of your skill as a player) Character has very few even matchups because they lose so many?!? Probably holding you back, however if they are your best character you can’t really make the argument when you lose that it’s because your character is bad, and while that might be true, since you decided to play that character and make them your best fully knowing they were a bad character from the get-go. You’re holding yourself back. And whatever you can accomplish with that bad character IS what your skill is. Because that is your best character that character stands the highest chance of you winning and if you still lose, yeah it’s because you decided to main a bad character but you can’t use that as an excuse because since that character did stand the highest chance of you winning, if you chose another character (assuming you don’t spend much time playing other characters) you would just do even worse. So at the end of the day I know this was a long one but I think a tier list should be determined mostly on potential, because skill definitely affects it. And basically what characters would “hold you back the least” And if you were given the choice to fully master a character. And you had no character bias in this choice. What character would you chose. (Assuming you knew what you were talking about and chose the best possible option) It would be very interesting to ask the best player of each character how good they think their character is in relation to the rest of the cast and then throw it into a tier list and see where everyone ends up. ( I get character bias is a thing whether it’s positive or negative for the character, and I get that sometimes top players could also just be flat out wrong because they may know how good their character is, but by not fully knowing how good every other character is because they aren’t a top player with those characters, they might over or under rate their character based purely off of their interpretation of the strength of the rest of the cast.) However we do need to take into account that human beings due and will mess up and while I get that most theory crafting tier lists tend to do this, what the point I am trying to make is, it’s very hard to make a perfect tier list, and whole theory crafting would be the best option if done perfectly, human being can rarely do anything perfectly, due to us being HUMAN BEINGS. However if you take into account human error and human reaction times and knowing that no one can ever play “perfect” I still think the best way to make a tier list is theory crafting with a mix of results so long as the person making the tier list is a top player (preferably across multiple characters) that knows what their talking about and will have as little character bias as possible. And I didn’t even begin talking about weighted matchups but I don’t feel like it because I could go on all day but it’s 3:29 am and I’m tired, also the fact is that the meta can shift at any given moments certain characters can become more popular out of nowhere like what happened with Byleth. So if your character does good against Byleth, you character is slightly better overall than they were before Byleth got popular and that is with absolutely 0 BUFFS AT ALL!! So you can see where this really, really gets tricky but I just want to put this in here to show you that tier lists are inaccurate, don’t fully trust them, and that it’s nearly impossible to make the best possible tier list. My goal is to try and make the most accurate tier list possible (that I am able to) before smash 6 comes out but the fact that I’ll simply have to weigh in all these factors is showing this could talk a really, really long time. I’m also not a top player either so that’s not helping either. But I will try. But yes I feel like theorycrafting and weighted matchups are the most important so long as the theorycrafting is decently accurate
So matchup/weighted matchup tier lists are the best tier lists. Who would have thought the tier lists showing which characters win the most vs others are the best at showing which characters are the strongest. Mind boggling.
the "its the year 20XX" probably would never occure because of bad match ups, so let me tell you an example: everyone mains fox and fox has a losing match up against puff (idk I don't play meelee). So now Puff players are more likely to win a tournament and people will notice that and either play puff as well or play a counter against puff. The second one needs to be timed correctly other whise you won't see any results because there are to few puff players out there. Let's say Marth has a winning mathup against Puff, so now more people will play Marth and if not fox has a good MU against Marth you will see a nice meta develope other wise the char with the most winning MU against the other chars from the rooster (excluding marth, puff and fox) is most likely to win more tournaments because of char-loyalists
I love the fact that you actually think DEEP when you makes an argument... Most people can't do that. I agree with 90% of what you said and really, fuck those people who can only look at results. Results are for people that are not intelligent enought to analize something and they need something on paper.
I feel like results should be at the top. Its the evidence that suggests whether or not people should worry about/play the character in question. People aren't worried about characters like K.Rool, Kirby, etc because they don't have any significant results that would even make them a threat. From results, you can make observations in how these characters are winning and are more likely to win in certain matchups, then you can begin theory crafting based on the evidence you were observing.
Probably the most informative and well put together video that winds up treating itself as a joke. I feel conflicted with this video and in a good way!
The only tiers on tier lists I think are unequivocally correct are when a character is in those super tiers, like Brawl Meta Knight, because if so many people agree on putting a character so high up that they break the mold, then yeah something is up with that.
I generally really hate tier lists, especially in the Smash scene... the simple fact is they're always going to be somewhat biased (its just how it goes). But what makes them really really suck, is that people will use tier lists as a way to justify their claims or ideas regarding how good a character is. Lower tier characters will always get mocked and teased for not being as strong as the higher ups. The truth is, the second you start segregating characters by how "good" they are, it invites unfair judgement. All too often you see people hating on low tiers simply for being "bad" even when they aren't.
While I loved the video, I just want to point out that a lot of the tier lists showed depicted fighting a Ganondorf as a free win. I just want to say it for all the others who feel the same... GANON IS NOT BOTTOM TIER.
That's the thing, tier lists are made by Pros, and not your average or closer-to-average players. Pros live in a completely different reality of their own while they're making those Lists, one that few will actually find true since at their level, they're likely beating the shit out of supposed high tier characters and getting kicked around by supposed low tier characters, because they and the ones they're fighting AREN'T PRO LEVEL. They're Average or bad, they have SOME skill and not ALL of the potential skill for the game they're playing, so they will NEVER have their match results reflect the list some Pro who sweats against other pros makes.
Finally someone agrees with me! This is why I hate ProGuides! They think a character is good because a pro player uses them and think a pro player uses them because a character is good. ProGuides makes tier lists SOLELY on results, which makes them unreliable. They make it more complicated than it needs to be. Just how good is a character compared to others on the roster? Boom, done. This video is extremely informative and correctly represents how tier lists are supposed to be made. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Matchup charts are more relevant than Tier lists in the practical sense. For example: While Joker might be the best character in the game(with Arsen) Link might win that matchup. Does that make Link the best in the game now? No ofcourse not.
I'm actually really confident in Samus's matchup against Joker. They keep making the mistake of countering my bomb and thus giving me a free tether grab; Lower percent combo or late percent kill throw or juggle. I wouldn't expect to beat MK Leo, but the majority of opponents I fight eventually lose to at least one of my Samus's tools and strings. I've made back 3 stocks on my last stock upon finding a winning strat. Rematches afterwards can lead to zero death 3 stocks and so on.
"And if you think it's the stupidest thing you've ever seen, you disagree with every placement on it, it has no real purpose in the real world anyways... ...yeah. It's a tier list..." I practically heard the fucking mic drop there
Small correction: Joker was considered by the majority as top tier (or at least high high tier) before MKLeo got good results with him - he was never considered “a mid tier). Leo simply cemented his preowned spot in top tier.
I disagree with this, I watched essentially every Joker analysis video from notable players,as well as following the vast majority on Twitter, and I literally don't think I saw one person say he was a top tier before MKLeo's first win.
I agree with this cause that was some of my reasoning of why charizard was at least mid teir in 4 if not a blttile better with the hardest matchup up probling being pika diddy and link as well as fox and going in my option 40 - 60 against bayo
To be fair, you can't determine matchups without theorycrafting, observation and results. Also the frequency a character appears doesn't always influence that characters likelyhood to win a tournament. Melee Fox might be the most popular melee character by far, but due to the character's popularity, every other player knows the fox matchup very well leading to the character performing worse in tournament.
