Granted, retreating is in itself an opportunity cost which a shielding opponent can use as an opportunity to gain stage control. Commonly, to maintain safety when using an attack in neutral, it is ideal to retreat an attack to maintain a distance that cannot be punished if the opponent attempts an out of shield option. While the definition of a safe unreactable poke should be simple, I should clarify that I am most likely talking about a ground move or a rising aerial that is about -15 or safer on regular shield that also has a startup time under 12 frames (not counting jump squat). So having access to one is a huge deal, probably a much bigger deal than people commonly admit. Safe unreactable pokes are actually fairly rare in Smash 4, believe it or not. Since this type of advantage works against the entire cast, I believe it's the primary reason Cloud is strong competitively, in spite of clearly having problems in the other three categories.
SMASH ULTIMATE FRAME DATA JABS FREE
Cloud's grab game in a sense is mediocre in that he doesn't get a lot of guaranteed damage or setup from it, however Cloud's universal reward from grab is top tier in the sense that he is given free time to charge Limit, his main win condition, any time he makes a trivial neutral win. I also will give a special mention to Cloud, as I would argue this is actually the thing Cloud is strongest at in the metagame. In short, stronger presence with a grab is extremely meaningful for any character. Conversely, if a character has a very difficult time getting in range to grab, and/or has a grab that doesn't lead to anything remarkable, the opponent loses very little using shield as a conditioning tool to put pressure on the opponent to approach them unfavorably. The ability to confirm a kill off a grab in some way is very strong in this game and can force your opponent into being pressured to take risks, which by extension is a powerful conditioning tool in the neutral game when you know your opponent is not going to want to sit still in shield against you. Plus, grabs are useful in that throws virtually always interact with your opponent the same way when used at the same percents, meaning the positional advantage you get from them is generally more consistent than landing an attack.
Shielding is still pretty strong in Smash 4, as most attacks in this game leave you at large enough frame disadvantage that your opponent has options to react or reposition after dropping shield in most (but not all) situations. Grab games, both in terms of being able to land the grab and what you get from landing a grab, are the next thing I believe matters a lot. So thus in this game, a lot more kills need to happen either from ledge traps, juggles, or raw neutral wins. It's easy to see why this type of game focus gives fairly large flexibility for a character to utilize tools in a disadvantage state.
SMASH ULTIMATE FRAME DATA JABS WINDOWS
And while grab confirms and kills still exist in Smash 4 (which will be covered in the next section), they are overall less powerful than grab confirms from previous titles especially when many of them are made situational due to the implementation of Rage, which can drastically change ideal confirm windows if not ruining them. This is true in every fighting game admittedly, but compared to previous titles, it's relatively speaking much harder to gimp characters with extreme consistency offstage when ledge hogging no longer exists. Now I want to explain why I believe these specific qualities highlight what Smash 4 is about.ĭisadvantage state I list as the lowest priority of the top tier qualities, but Smash 4 makes it fairly obvious that having a ability to safely reset neutral from a bad position generally makes you less likely to lose. Characters like Diddy, Sheik, and Bayonetta are exceptionally strong at every single one of these categories, making it fairly obvious they are top tier characters in this game. While all of these are essential, they are ordered from lowest priority to highest priority. They are disadvantage state, grab game, safe unreactable pokes, and out of shield options. In Smash Bros for Wii-U, the things that most matter for winning at a top level I believe can be summed up in 4 concepts. Mario, I want to talk about the metagame at a larger scale, and what I make of it. But before I explain more about my opinions of Dr. Mario, who I believe is a viable strong character in the current metagame. If you know who I am, you're probably aware of my analytical drivel about Ganon and Dr.
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