I'll start.

I had a discussion (with Google Translate of course,) with a Japanese player in one of their discords for SSF2. They are well aware of the larger scene we have here in the States, and say that, and I promise this is true, that we sucked. Now, I don't know if this is the one player who thinks this, so I decided to go deeper into asking.

He told me our tier list was far off from the right thing, and that if we were to update it, it would look almost exact to theirs. At this point, I'm offended, and wanted to go off on him, but sadly, Google Translate doesn't translate curse words. So after telling him what we thought of their list (its based off of combo potential with speed and not viability) He completely dismissed me.

This had me thinking, since we haven't updated the list in a year, does that mean our meta hasn't advanced? Is it possible that the current list we have applies to December 2016? With Beta fast approaching, it seems as if the meta could completely change once again. But for the last days of 9b, is our list still accurate today?

Let's dicuss this.

Firstly, there's no way in hell that the current tier list reflects the true state of the meta at all right now. Fox, Sheik, Zelda, Marth, and DK have all experienced significant growth as characters, while Pikachu, MK, Lloyd, and ZSSamus have seen major drop-offs in representation. I'd say that at this point, the top tier comprises of ZSSamus, Lloyd, Sheik, Zelda, and Marth, while the next tier contains Fox, MK, Pikachu, Goku, and DK. These are in no particular order, but pertain to which characters I believe have weaknesses that can be exploited vs those who don't.

I don't understand why Pikachu is #1 in Japan, nor why Zelda and Lloyd are so low.

Heck yeah the tier list is outdated. Here are some obvious changes that need to be made:
Pika needs to be below at least fox and Zelda
Zelda needs to be above at least fox, Pikachu, and Marth
Naruto needs to be below Goku
DK needs to be at the top of A tier
Tails needs to be at the bottom of A tier at most (His priority on spindash and several other moves can't keep up, as well as his neutral b being easy to powershield
Yoshi needs to be much lower on the list
Ichigo needs to be slightly higher on the list
Wario needs to be at the bottom of the tier list
Kirby needs to be moved to either the top of b tier or the bottom of A tier
Sora needs to be higher on the tier list

Should have asked him to upload the best replays to view or match to YouTube.

I always feel like we don't have nearly enough optimized high-level play available for viewing. We don't have a clear sense of what the best of their meta looks like, and all the meta they probably see of us isn't our best. We also have had very little crossover with player matches, so we can't assume anything of each other entire.

However, there is no way hell characters like Lloyd and Zelda are outside top-5. With Guaranteed punishes/abilities to cover all forms of combo DI; lagless, large and fast acting hit-box moves; and some of the safest neutral in the game; by design, these characters are top-tier because of their ways to address most problematic threats other characters may throw at them.

The slack room tier list is the most accurate tier list we have. I think that the player you were conversing with does not fully understand what a tier list represents. It's a reflection of the metagame, not just a list of who everyone thinks is the best. If we were to update our list, there is absolutely no way it would be anything like that because their best character, pikachu, is far from a dominating threat in our tournaments.

I think we are quite justified to believe in our tier list, but we also should be careful not to be so arrogant as to assume that our MUST be correct and that theirs MUST be wrong.

DE their best player is a Pikachu, that's probably the biggest reason (plus the char is good). In the way that we've had players show how good some characters are (like MK, ZSS, Lloyd, Goku), I don't think they've had someone for those other characters.

That other guy sounds kind of racist, honestly. But this has given me a bit of insight as to why Western and Eastern lists have always been so different, even with international scenes; there's just plain different criteria for ranking.

Whatever our meta right now, it has less than two weeks to live. I believe it's already been confirmed that once Beta hits, v0.9b's online mode will be shut down.
So I feel that we should focus on seeing where we went wrong this time around so we don't repeat the same mistakes with Beta.
Let's review. What snags did the v0.9b meta face? What can we do so that the Beta meta develops quick and smooth without getting tangled up?

Issue 1: Why is our list updated/reviewed so infrequently, to the point where there had to be a split? That the meta's such a mess that people got fed up and started their own is a big eyebrow-raiser for me.
Issue 2: I know we struggled for quite a while finding a definitive stagelist. How did we solve that in advance, especially taking into consideration the increased number of stages (and, especially, Dracula's Castle being viable both with and without hazards?)

I know there's more issues we've faced that I don't know too much about, so fill in the blanks.

Well I'm not from the States so this doesn't apply to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But I still don't understand why MK is #1

The reason there's metagame disagreement is because not every character has more than one (or even one!) good representative, so who's to say whether Yoshi's actually top tier or just that no one's unlocked his potential yet, as opposed to Yoshi just being mid-tier. That and the BR's tier list inherently being conservative due to agreement before publication means that people will always disagree with a tier list, especially with the metagame developing as quickly as it will. Sm4sh had the same thing: the BR was conservative, and so the tier list was out of date and people published their own.

The stagelist is a good problem to have: we have enough stages that we can pick and choose which ones make the meta as healthy as possible. I don't see that as something to learn from or fix, just a good thing about SSF2.

The thing that will make the meta as healthy as possible is people playing Beta at a high level. If that happens, we won't have a problem compiling a generally-agreed upon tier list.

So basically, we need to have much more diverse character choices in order to form a more solid list. Right?
Hopefully the competitive Beta scene spreads out enough to where every character's repped by virtue of the sheer number of total players.

I hope we don't all wind up gravitating to a couple of centralizing top-tiers again. According to MG's Twitter, balancing is still in progress (they tweeted to OHKO that Ness was about to be buffed), so I have a couple of doubts.

It's humanly impossible to reach a characters max meta potential. We can get kinda close to it, but it will forever remain out of our reach. Also to add this, people's playstyles have a meta of its own, as certain playstyles beat out others in a sort of rock-papers-scissors like fashion.

With this in mind, it's easy to constantly be having people's tier lists always be different, as everybody has their weaknesses and strengths against certain characters. But the end goal is in make this tier list apply virtually everywhere and for everyone.

Plus, everyone is not considered a robot. People have good days, and people have some bad days. Those days that everyone is playing amazing are the days that the meta takes shape clearly for the first time in a long time and then we can finally edit and put up to date the tier lists. But these things don't happen often, and sometimes are not saved or not archived anywhere. (Save your replays pls)

Another thing to consider is that some people are already near the end of their SSF2 character's meta finish line, while some people are still midway or haven't even started hardly at all yet. An example of this would be Lunary's MK. For he single-handedly pushed the MK meta to its brinks, and so making MK the best. But had he not done so, we'd probably place MK around the same spot as in the Japanese tier list.

So is the current tier list accurate to the current meta? Most likely not. But since it's based on tournament winnings/placing, it's by far one of the most stable tier list released to date. With no bias involved in its making, it's just the byproduct of cold, hard data.

Of course, there might be characters 1 or 3 spaces from their true spots on the tier list, but that can only be fixed if we have a bigger scene and with more high-level players out and versing one another. A perfect scenario for an ultimately accurate smash tier list would be placing people in a room and letting them play non-stop with each other with the end goal to beat everyone in the room with some sort of consistency. First, it would start with people picking a random character and versing one another with it. Once people see a dominant character rise to the top, they then pick a new character to counter that one, and then pick another character to counter that one, and so on and so forth until one character rises to the top because of how few counters they have, if any at all. The opposite applies to the last placed character.

So what I think had happened is another 'Lunary' pushed the Pika meta super early and nobody had any time to catch up yet and find any reliable counter picks against Pika, and so they claimed Pika as the best. This also happens on a smaller scale, making characters known to be beaten by lower tier characters being placed higher than them, making the inconsistencies we see taking place.

So the Japanese tier list might just work in their community and only remain truthful there. If only we faced one another or seen what they're capable of, who knows, maybe they've discovered some tech none of us have discovered just yet.

Also, I would like some definitive proof from the wiki as to where and how that tier list was sourced. It could easily have been somebody trying to promote a self-made tier list. I don't want false info.

Considering that Beta is a new game, I feel that only people who have touched the game already, or just the people who have the magic smash touch, can play beta at a high level from release. People who have been around for years, such as I, Miracle--7, Kyoz etc. These are the veterans of competitive SSF2. I find it funny and ironic as to how I start placing well at the end of 9b's life span, taking me 2 years in the process to consistently place top 8 more than once.

But it's not the fact that I placed, It's the fact that I completed it with Ichigo, a character who's meta is confusing to most, and is usually overlooked in comparison to high tiers. I'm not set to go down in SSF2 history as the best Ichigo player due to changing the meta of one character. However, I would receive praise for excelling at characters whose meta game is unknown, or barely known. This is what Lunary has done, and why he is praised today.

But back from my tangent, I would find it very unlikely that there will be a large number of top level players from the beginning. Which was my intention of attempting to join the Back Room. They would need more members to help see and construct the meta. I of course, took the "Mac" route, and withdrew my application, due to me being insulted by a single back room member, but it is still possible for the other experienced members to join and help. There are very few high level players today, and of those very few, even less of them have intentions of joining the Back Room to help with this meta. I wouldn't say they have lost me, due to a misunderstanding with the room, I will have one last attempt of reapplying in beta's release.

But to end this long essay, I believe that, There will be very few top level players to advance the meta, and the Back Roon could use all the help they could get. It would take half a year for the first Beta list to come out.

current BR tier list is trash and in dire need of an update
slackroom is closest to accurate but still a bit outdated imo

pika has untapped potential too imo, you can abuse his upB so hard

some people seem to have the ego i pretend to have around here rofl



preaching to the choir on that one

Mac heals thread for 500 HP

Reviving this topic.

I'm looking at a Matchup chart for 9b. I am very enthusiastic about finishing this chart, but there are a bunch of matchups that I am not very sure of at all. Below I will list them, and you can give me your honest opinion on these matchups. I also would have to ask the higher ups of the back room for their opinion as well, before making these edits, of course.

The character's number is always first.

UPDATE #1 January 6th, 2017 @3:27 am EST

Pikachu (Spotty as hell)

v 6-4
v 7-3
v 4-6
v 7-3
v 5.5-4.5
v 5-5
v 7.5-2.5
v ???
v ???

Link

v 6-4
v 4-6
v ???
v ???

Zero Suit Samus (Super spotty)

v (carry over)
v (carry over)
v ???
v ???
v ???
v ???
v ???
v ???
v ???

Yoshi

v ???
v ???
v ???
v ???
v ???
v ???
v ???
v ???

LATEST UPDATE: January 6th, 2017 @3:28 am EST

There is a lot more to cover, but I'm tired as hell, so I'll go to sleep and check replies in the morning.
Later dudes.

here's the current MU chart, for those interested.

No doubt, some of the MUs are incorrect. That's why I'm posting this here so that other players can get their 2 cents in here.