Tech Skill Tiers

[PlixiK]

Note:
(???) next to APM means I need more data/suggestions. If a character has not been given an APM then they are still ordered purely by Tech Skill and are likely in the wrong tier.

I will adjust it according to input/suggestions and other peoples lists.

Goal:
Provide data for players to choose a character with a skill ceiling that is close to attainable for them according to their personal skill level, time commitment, and comfort level.

KEY:

██ Overall Difficulty Tier
This is NOT an average of AT and APM. This is how difficult it is to execute all necessary skills in a competitive match. This includes ATs, APM, spacing, comboing, character speed/physics, reaction time...ect.

██ AT Difficulty
Advanced techniques. This is how difficult it is to perform necessary ATs in competitive play.

██ APM
Actions per minute. This is how quickly a player must perform their inputs in competitive play.



██ S ██


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (10)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (9)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (10)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (10)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (9)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (10)

██ A ██


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (9)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (9)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (9)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (9)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (10)


██ B ██


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (8)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (8)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (8)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (8)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (7)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ (8)
█ █ █ █ (4)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (7)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (7)
█ █ █ █ █ █ (6)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (7)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


██ C ██


█ █ █ █ █ █ (6)
█ █ █ █ █ (5)


█ █ █ █ █ █ (6)
█ █ █ (3)


█ (1)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (7)


█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (7)
█ █ █ █ █ █ (6)


█ █ █ █ █ █ (6)
█ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ █ (6)
█ █ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ (5)
█ █ █ █ █ █ █ (7)


█ █ █ █ █ (5)
█ █ █ █ (4)


█ █ █ █ █ (5)
█ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ █ (5)
█ █ █ █ █ (???)


█ (1)
█ █ █ █ (4)


█ (1)
█ █ █ █ (4)


██ D ██


█ █ █ █ (4)
█ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ █ (4)
█ █ █ █ (4)


█ █ █ █ (4)
█ █ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ (3)
█ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ (3)
█ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ (3)
█ █ █ (???)


█ █ █ (3)
█ (1)


██ E ██


█ █ (2)
█ █ (???)


█ █ (2)
█ █ (???)


█ █ (2)
█ █ (2)


█ (1)
█ (???)


█ (1)
█ █ █ █ (4)


█ (1)
█ █ (2)

 

[1MachGO]

Has a lot of inaccuracies TBH. I'll address the most glaring ones.

For starters, I think you can divide "tech skill" into two categories. APM and # of ATs utilized. It looks like you are going with the latter but some of the conclusions you made seem like they'd be evident of the former so I'm not sure.

Secondly, Ice Climbers aren't even included lol and you could make a strong case that they are S tier. Definitely A tier at worst.

Jiggs, far and away, is the easiest character to use (Both in terms of # of ATs or APM).

Mewtwo, Peach, and Yoshi are wayyyy too low. Any character with a DJC shouldn't be lower than B tier and especially a character like Yoshi who is fast and has other unique techniques like parrying. Mewtwo and Peach have float canceling on top of DJC so I feel they already have more technical capabilities than a majority of the cast.

Lucario should definitely be A tier. Diddy and Pit should probably be B.

 

[PlixiK]

You're right, I was ordering mostly according to ATs and how difficult they are to use properly. I made all the changes you suggested.

 

[ShadowGanon]

I'm wondering what people think are the most and least tech heavy characters when played at a high level. I think it would helpful to people looking to pick up a new character according to how much time they have to practice.

I don't have nearly enough experience with most of the characters to be accurate so I'll just take my best guess.

I will adjust it according to input and other peoples lists.

S:


A:


B:


C:


D:

Zelda should not be in D tier. She has way more ATs than you think she does. I would recomend cruising Zelda boards a little more. She belongs at least in B tier. DarkStarStorm could tell you more.

 

[Phan7om]

Here's my two cents.
Imo...
-Ness is about the same as Mewtwo, though I think both of them should be B tier
-Peach should be B tier
-GnW should be the top of D tier/Bottom of C tier because of things like SHDB and Dacus
-Pika is more technical than Marth solely because of QAC
-Link is about the same as TL, though both of them should be low B imo
-Zelda should be higher, maybe top C or low B
-Idk, maybe im missing something... but why is Roy so far from Marth. I know they have different playstyles but technique wise they're almost equal. They can both DACUS, I would just put Marth a little higher than Roy because of the Tipper.

Other than that, I think its pretty good.

 

[LOGIA666]

Honestly, I'd probably put Lucas at the top of this list.

 

[Italia06823834]

G&W does have some nasty moves. Gatling and DACUS most notably.

 

[Empyrean]

As I have spent time trying to learn every tech out there (except Yoshi's), I agree with the current S and A tiers and what 1MachGO said. However, things become iffy towards the bottom. I'd argue that Bowser and D3 could be replaced by others lower on the list, for instance.

 

[ShadowGanon]

And Roy should be even, if not slightly higher, than Marth.

 

[PlixiK]

I've taken everything into account as best I can so far. I wasn't ordering them in each tier, but I've started to since people started mentioning it.

 

[Burnsy]

Squirtle should be at least B. He has tons of character specific movement tech requiring unique input combinations and a very unique playstyle. Putting him at D would imply that someone could pick him up for the first time and do pretty good by just playing with his fundamentals, but this is less true for squirtle than it is for someone like say, Marth and Roy, who I would argue should be dropped down to C. Anyone can scoop up noobs with side-b and bubble spam but to play the character well you need to know a ton more techniques than just hydroplane usmash.

 

[PlixiK]

Squirtle should be at least B. He has tons of character specific movement tech requiring unique input combinations and a very unique playstyle. Putting him at D would imply that someone could pick him up for the first time and do pretty good by just playing with his fundamentals, but this is less true for squirtle than it is for someone like say, Marth and Roy, who I would argue should be dropped down to C. Anyone can scoop up noobs with side-b and bubble spam but to play the character well you need to know a ton more techniques than just hydroplane usmash.

I placed him low because the high level matches I've seen if him look very similar to low level matches. I bumped him up as you suggested though since I don't know anything about his ATs.

 

[DarkStarStorm]

Zelda should not be in D tier. She has way more ATs than you think she does. I would recomend cruising Zelda boards a little more. She belongs at least in B tier. DarkStarStorm could tell you more.

Yeah I'm not ready to make my discoveries public until I have made a video. For now, put her in C, once I have made my findings public then you can move her up. Something I discovered in 2.5 and still works in 3.0 will change the metagame with Zelda. Not yet.

 

[ShadowGanon]

Yeah I'm not ready to make my discoveries public until I have made a video. For now, put her in C, once I have made my findings public then you can move her up. Something I discovered in 2.5 and still works in 3.0 will change the metagame with Zelda. Not yet.

I was talking about stuff that Zeldas already, do such as Teledashing. Not the thing you're brewing up right now.

 

[chaosscizzors]

i've got a few disagreements with this but i'm just wondering why people think peach is so high. float canceling is much easier than shffling as far as i'm concerned. i'd put her at around the bottom of C. other than that what does she have? DJC? her's is easier to pull off than the rest of the cast imo and it's not even useful as a super low attacking option when you can just spam instant FCd nairs across FD. then what's the next argument, AGT? that's muuuuuch less technical than drill waveshines and DJC ness uairs. at the very highest i'd put peach at the same level as shiek because of shino stalling and auto canceled FF fairs.

 

[Collective of Bears]

Yeah I'm not ready to make my discoveries public until I have made a video. For now, put her in C, once I have made my findings public then you can move her up. Something I discovered in 2.5 and still works in 3.0 will change the metagame with Zelda. Not yet.

This sounds fun. I was looking into Zelda, so I'll keep an eye out for this.

 

[Bane13]

I'd put Olimar in at least C simply because he has to micromanage his pikmin. Peach should also probably be in the bottom of B or top of C for the reason's chaos mentioned.

 

[1MachGO]

Well, for efficiency sake, every character within a tier should go as "unordered" like the current SSBM tier list.

As for Peach, again, this is a situation where it becomes # of ATs vs. APM. If its APM, someone like Falcon is clearly more "technical". However, if we are simply talking about the # of ATs a character can make use of, then Peach is clearly more technical.

 

[PlixiK]

Revision:
I bumped some characters down to D otherwise I feel like Jiggs would be the only one left. I also bumped some characters down from A to B due to suggestions and it was a bit over crowded/ didn't seem right to me.

Well, for efficiency sake, every character within a tier should go as "unordered" like the current SSBM tier list.

As for Peach, again, this is a situation where it becomes # of ATs vs. APM. If its APM, someone like Falcon is clearly more "technical". However, if we are simply talking about the # of ATs a character can make use of, then Peach is clearly more technical.

I'm looking mostly for how difficult it is to use the character at close to their full potential. If they have a tech skill that is difficult to do, but it's worthless then I don't see the point in considering it.

I moved some things around and hopefully didn't make it worse.

I'm going to keep the list ordered so it's easier to judge who can be bumped up or down if needed. You can think it of it as unordered though, which will provide the same effect.

 

[Juker]

I'm confused why the IC are not only higher than Fox and Lucas, but in their own tier completely. In Melee, Fox was considered the most technical character, which he has remained largely unchanged, and the Ice Climbers lost wobbling.

 

[1MachGO]

I'm confused why the IC are not only higher than Fox and Lucas, but in their own tier completely. In Melee, Fox was considered the most technical character, which he has remained largely unchanged, and the Ice Climbers lost wobbling.

Desyncing

 

[Juker]

Desyncing

Is it different than Melee? I don't play the character much, they don't really interest me. I'm just curious why they have so much higher of a learning curve despite losing wobbling.

 

[Tryst]

Is it different than Melee? I don't play the character much, they don't really interest me. I'm just curious why they have so much higher of a learning curve despite losing wobbling.

Keep in mind this is just a list purely on Tech Skill. Not a Teir List. The Ice Climbers need a lot of it because of their Desyncing and that can be very difficult and very rewarding. Also, they kept most of their Desyncs from Melee and Brawl which makes it more needed.

 

[Juker]

Keep in mind this is just a list purely on Tech Skill. Not a Teir List. The Ice Climbers need a lot of it because of their Desyncing and that can be very difficult and very rewarding. Also, they kept most of their Desyncs from Melee and Brawl which makes it more needed.

I definitely don't think the IC are in a tier of their own when it comes to a traditional tier list. I was talking solely about tech skill; I'm simply saying, that I fail to see how IC are so much more technically difficult than every other character, that they need their own tier list, or that they are more difficult than say Fox or Lucas.
Basically, do they having a higher tech ceiling than they did in Melee? I honestly don't know, I'm asking. If the answer is no, then they shouldn't be at the top. From my point of view, them losing an AT, along with not much else in their mechanics changing, would lead me to believe that they are actually easier.

 

[Broasty]

I can tell you from experience, Luigi is definitely at least B tier. Most characters move with dashing and make incremental changes with WDing. Luigi does the opposite. In other words, Luigi requires the highest level usage of Wave Dashing because it's the bread and butter of how he moves. That in mind, there's a spacing where during a wave dash, Luigi can't do anything and is vulnerable. This requires very conscious choices as to when, where, and how far one should be wave dashing. So just to be able to MOVE with Luigi, takes a LOT technical skill. On top of that, his lack of number of jumps combined with his floatiness means you're basically dead if you mess up a single short hop and make a long jump. That's on top of the L-Cancels and Wave lands he needs to do on every jump. It took me a LONG time til Luigi became a legitimate threat in competitive level matches due to this. At least most characters can move with ease. Did I mention you have to avoid EVER doing a dash attack?

I'd argue farther towards A for the character specific Meta-game I've invented, but I'd rather let that debut at CEO 2014

 

[Burnsy]

I was thinking earlier today that it didn't make sense to have Luigi in C. So I agree.

 

[Chevy]

Samus cannot possibly be lower than Marth and Roy. Marth and Roy have important spacing, and double-edge dance trees. Samus has an entire meta-game around canceling missiles that is too huge to even get into. She has morph bomb jumping for recovery, and a thousand other one-off uses for morph bombs, tether canceling, SWD and all of the weird momentum canceling and momentum preservation off the edge that comes with that, DSWD, aerial interrupting, jab-canceling, charge shot reversing, wall jumping, charge shot reverse wall jumping, crawl spacing, zair spacing, zair cancel super jump, and a timing strict taunt cancel that actually does something. Samus for at least A tier, if not S. Marth and Roy are like C tier tops.

 

[PlixiK]

I moved Samus and Luigi up to B and Marth and Roy down to C.

 

[Chevy]

My take:

A:

B:

C:

D:

 

[DrinkingFood]

do you people just like making lists or something

 

[Deleted member]

having tech skill is just doing exactly whatever it is that you want to do.

tech skill tiers can be done by player i guess, but not by character.

 

[AkashSky]

what does lucas have to do that makes him hard to learn?

 

[Chevy]

having tech skill is just doing exactly whatever it is that you want to do.

tech skill tiers can be done by player i guess, but not by character.

Read the OP. No-one is debating which character is best at tech-skill. That doesn't make sense.

 

[Deleted member]

i read it, it's just not a good premise.

 

[NeonApophis]

I can tell you from experience, Luigi is definitely at least B tier. Most characters move with dashing and make incremental changes with WDing. Luigi does the opposite. In other words, Luigi requires the highest level usage of Wave Dashing because it's the bread and butter of how he moves. That in mind, there's a spacing where during a wave dash, Luigi can't do anything and is vulnerable. This requires very conscious choices as to when, where, and how far one should be wave dashing. So just to be able to MOVE with Luigi, takes a LOT technical skill. On top of that, his lack of number of jumps combined with his floatiness means you're basically dead if you mess up a single short hop and make a long jump. That's on top of the L-Cancels and Wave lands he needs to do on every jump. It took me a LONG time til Luigi became a legitimate threat in competitive level matches due to this. At least most characters can move with ease. Did I mention you have to avoid EVER doing a dash attack?

I'd argue farther towards A for the character specific Meta-game I've invented, but I'd rather let that debut at CEO 2014

I know, wavedashing and short hopping are so dang hard. It's like, how do you even press the buttons that fast?

Real talk though, Lucas should be in his own tier. I haven't played ICs much in PM, but unless they now require like 3x the button inputs of melee they aren't even comparable to Lucas.

 

[Chevy]

i read it, it's just not a good premise.

I don't see why not. It's at least a base sort of fun to compare the relative learning curves of each character. And if anybody was looking to pick up a character, it could potentially serve as a guide to how much of an investment they would have to make to play competently. The discussion of each could also inform people of various traits that they didn't know existed in said character, expanding ones knowledge of the game.

 

[Broasty]

I know, wavedashing and short hopping are so dang hard. It's like, how do you even press the buttons that fast?

What makes Luigi technical isn't the number of inputs per second, but rather, the risk of what happens if you screw up. Considering how dangerous messing up execution is with Luigi, it requires the player of the character to put in even more time in practicing execution in order to insure victory.

That and have fun trying Wave Dash->Backwards Tilt(pivot)->Light Press Shield->Wave Dash same original direction after hit->Grab with perfect spacing in the middle of a match.

 

[Phan7om]

@Umbreon I totally understand what you are saying, it really depends on the player. Some players play a really basic, technical character; while some (like me) play a really technical, basic character. But this is a different story. Think of Melee, if someone asked "Im new to Melee which character should I start of maining?", im sure you wouldnt say Fox or Falco... it'd probably be Sheik or Marth. Thats the same thing going on here, were just listing our opinions on what characters are technical and which ones arent..
------------------------
Well anyway, right now Im looking at the list and I have a few things to say about the list and the comments.

1. ICs, imo, are in the right place. I dont even main spacies and I can waveshine, multishine, SHDL whatever. ICs have to desynch (which with about the same amount of practice, I cant do), meaning they have almost infinitely more options than Fox and Falco.
2. Pit is one of those characters that could be really technical if you wanted him to be. In reality, you could keep looping your arrows until like 6 or 7 of them were on the screen, and then aim each one down to hit your opponent... "but no one plays like that" I hear you saying. Im just saying someone could, and wouldn't that be more technical than, say, Diddy.
3. Kirby is another one of those weird tiers because, by himself, Kirby i think is in the right place. But then again, Kirby can copy abilities and such. Some of the more technical being, the spacies, mewtwo (since he can DJC the disable and completely change his momentum, pit (for reasons in #2), zelda, snake, gnw maybe, and possibly diddy. So yeah Kirby by himself if fine, but the abilities taken into account is a whole 'nother story.
4. Am I the only one that thinks CF isnt that technical? He's definitely sorta technically demanding, but not almost the same as Yoshi.

Thats all I have to say right now, I'll be back if I see any other problems.

 

[burntfish44]

Seems legit exept Mario should be lower. Like everyone in my region plays him, and they all say they do cuz he's easy to pick up and play, abd he doesn't really have ats beyond wavedash and recovery

 

[burntfish44]

What makes Luigi technical isn't the number of inputs per second, but rather, the risk of what happens if you screw up. Considering how dangerous messing up execution is with Luigi, it requires the player of the character to put in even more time in practicing execution in order to insure victory.

This taken into consideration jiggs should be higher due to spawning at kill %
Sheoes require fairly low tech tho, so makes sense where she is