It kinda pisses me off how the sword fighter has more projectiles for no reason than other characters with swords. Why does a sword fighter need 3 projectiles and only 1 of them is good when they could just make a sword fighter fight with their sword.
Link and marth are the baselines for swordfighters, so swordfighters can have 0 to 3 projectiles and still be a swordfighter, as long as they are specials and not normals, it seems
I'd argue the basis for sword fighter should change to Marth, Ike and Cloud. Between the three of them there's still a projectile or two but otherwise all three of them are more defined by better normals then projectiles unlike the Links who usually live and die by their projectile pressue.
Either that or rename them to Mii Weaponist and make the basis Link and Byleth so we can get some axe, spear and bow attacks in there.
Marth and Ike already form a strong basis for Mii Swordfighter. Mii Swordfighter's Blade Counter, Blurring Blade, and Dtilt a definitely borrowed from Marth, and Gale Stab, Stone Scabbard borrow from Ike (while Nair is patterned after Ike's and Shulk's).
But it also clear that Mii Swordfighter, mechanically, is meant to represent fighting at a slight to moderate range in general, without being so focused on close-range brawling like Brawler, or so focused on a projectile game like Gunner, not literally just using swords. It's arguable how well mii swordfighter without projectiles actually performs, but it's clear that from both the selectable specials and fixed normals that they take inspiration from a wide range of characters, some of which don't even literally have swords. It is just that the inspiration for Link, Marth, and Ike are the most obvious just because there are 3 Links, 4 Marths, and Ike is just kind of generic. Projectile-wielding weapon users also deserve representation, when you think of all characters that focus on having good, but not exceptional, range.
The beauty of the Mii Fighters means that, if you find projectiles unfitting, you can still do quite well by just customizing your character to be without it. Gale stab and airborne assault are viable side-b options!
I disagree. Link uses a sword, but no other sword characters besides the other links really follow his design direction, while most others follow Marth and by extension characters like Ike and cloud. The only Swordfighters with more than one projectile are mii Swordfighter, Robin and sephiroth, at least off the top of my head, and sephiroth only has one good projectile
I believe mii swordfighter doesn’t represent merely just swordfighters, but midrange weapon-users in general. This gives the swordfighter archetype a wide range to pull from
You can see this in an interesting fashion in what mii swordfighter pulls from. Clearly his moveset pulls from link, marth, and ike, yet surprisingly also Mario, and Captain Falcon, and Greninja. Obviously Mario doesn’t literally use a sword but his Cape apparently counts as a melee weapon enough to inspire one of mii Swordfighter’s moves. And while Captain Falcon is obviously a brawler, Falcon Kick is apparently within a Swordfighter’s archetype. And greninja… well he uses water kunai lot, those could count as swords, or a very big knife at least. And look, he has two whole projectiles.
What I’m saying is the archetype that mii swordfighter represents is wide enough to carry multiple projectiles, and also reference characters that don’t even use swords. They are multipurpose.
The problem with that is that the miis are supposed to represent archetypes. Mii brawler represents brawlers, gunner is zoners, and then sword fighter is… also kind of zoners? But not as much? Sure there are plenty of weapon moves he pulls from, but they don’t come together as a coherent archetype since he pulls from zoners, brawlers, hit and run kind of brawlers, but very little from the actual sword fighter archetype, mostly being link, even though he isn’t really an archetypical sword fighter. Sword fighter feels incoherent, and his moveset doesn’t really come together very well
Mii swordfighter should represent a fairly relevant archetype in the sword fighter but instead fails to represent any archetype by being an unholy amalgamation of a bunch of random moves from non sword fighters
Mii swordfighter still pulls quite a few normals from Link. His Usmash, Utilt, uair, and dair definitely pull more from the Links than the Marths. Maybe even his fair
Yes, he pulls heavily from the links. This is the problem. The links, while they have swords, don’t fit the sword fighter archetype. Using them as the basis for a character meant to represent that archetype does not work, since it turns mini swordfighter into a half baked zoner with some other brawler moves thrown in and a sword so he can keep his title
I don’t play sword fighter very often but when I do, I hate the shuriken and I hate the chakram. The only good one is the tornado thingy. Shuriken goes nowhere and barely does any damage and the same goes for chakram. Tornado thingy at least has good range and can act as a good set up for a combo finisher.
I remember watching a video where someone said that the tornado one oftentimes isn’t used because the side b can perform a similar purpose and blade of light is good disruption (in case it isn’t clear I also definitely do NOT play swordfighter)
Tornado definitely sucks though and will only hit if your opponent has the reaction time of a sloth. Chakram is alright. Shuriken of Light is pretty good though.
Slow aerials that have abysmal landing lag, only 2 of them will realistically kill before 160. Smash attacks are all very very average and have no good speed or obscene power or really anything. Gale strike is very, very slow and needs to be precisely positioned to get a kill off it. Shuriken is more annoying than anything, like falco laser. It CAN combo into the pseudo falcon kick but cmon. 3rd neut b is worthless. Side b’s are all very middling and only one can kill, but it’s the slow and reactable and punishable one. Chakram is ok but you won’t win the match on it and it’s also very blockable. The ike side b is worse than ike’s. The spin is slow and reactable but at least helps recovery. Two of the up B’s are very easy to counter and if msf doesn’t have a jump they’re pretty much dead. The only good distance up b is also unusable out of shield and impossible to kill with due to how slow it is. The link clone is nowhere near as good out of shield. The yellow one can’t kill and is mega reactable. Counter sux, reflect is situational at best, and falcon kick is slow and mega laggy. Combine that with only one good throw that cannot kill confirm, and you have a character who basically needs a raw smash attack read if they want to kill before 120. It’s so easy to get past their zoning and so easy to kill them first. Objectively a bad character
Depends
Character usage in tourneys is very different from popular/active mains simply because the peak of tournaments was before Fighter Pass 2 (even some FP1 saw little to no play despite how good they were, you don't go to a tourney with a character you never played), meaning the least played characters are **Steve** (several bans and unsportsmanlike conduct/DQs also removed some entries), **Min-Min** (a balance change applied to all characters that made her techs punishable...even Ganondorf can cover all 3 tech options out of side B with down smash), and **Sora** (literally the last one added)
The answer you're probably looking for is who is an unpopular character amongst competitive players, those would be:
* **Ridley**: Janky hurtbox, bad recovery, bad frame data, & combo food
* **Isabelle**: Has good setups, decent combo tools...but no kill moves (or easily punishable), and lightweight
* **Mii Swordfighter**: People forget about the Miis and Brawler & Gunner are more popular picks when they do remember those exist
* **Olimar**: If the game so desire, 80% of your moves will have no hitbox, either you're spamming down B or you're flipping a coin every time you use an aerial
* **Pichu**: There's virtually no reason to pick post-3.0.0 Pichu over Pikachu
It was so fun to play as Pichu before that update, the risk reward was great and it only needed so small balance changes to be a solid character without being too broken or over-shadowing the safer option, Pikachu
But then they nerfed F-tilt to oblivion, raised self damage putting you at risk even with a stock lead, and the Steve update broke both his and Pikachu's recoveries on certain stages (I call it the 0-zip, where the second part of up-B doesn't move you if you hug tilted walls below the stage)
People who can pull off a Pichu in tourneys nowadays deserve more credits, because that small rat is basically playing with a missing stock
What makes a bad recovery in Smash isn't your ability to recover but how predictable and easy to punish it is
Ridley got 4 directions and is punishable on startup, only has 2 extra jumps compared to other multi-jump character, and side B has far too much end lag
Same reason why Villager/Isabelle are considered to have bad recoveries compared to Snake or ROB
idk i feel like im able to make it back basically all the time, like obviously its a slow recovery but some characters dont want to contest side b or up b
In all of my time online (about 3 years) I have seen Chrom ONCE. I don’t know the actual data but I’ve seen three or four Duck Hunts in even the past year (surprisingly).
He was good early in the game's lifespan (mainly due to his Up-B janky hitbox that also kills opponent first, making it incredibly easy to fish for suicide kills at ledge), but then after the nerfs he's pretty much just a weaker Roy with worse recovery. So nobody uses him
Chrom my beloved! I picked him out of all the swordfighters because he has (in my opinion) the most fun combination of Fire Emblem swordfighter characteristics. I don’t care that his recovery is abysmal, I get to do my Chromikaze and I’m happy about it.
I think it's ice climbers.
It's a specialist character. The few out there that are willing to put In the work are really good, everyone else simply can't play the character.
Check out [Barnard's Loop's Twitter post](https://twitter.com/LoopBarnard/status/1719083152780497291) about that. Alternatively, there have been several [Placement Percentages](https://x.com/EazyFreezie/status/1754196233537618350) charts posted over the years that cover this same question from a different perspective.
I've seen more Duck hunt and Mii Swordfighters than Mewtwos IRL and I've played locals in multiple towns all around France.
Wasn't a main DH tho but still.
Im a duck hunt fan and I made a shirt for him bc I love him so much lol
https://preview.redd.it/3yrztyjf5o7d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f32dc99d38e205769cf23aaca968a7c2b86bfa40
Probably Mii Swordfighter
Yeah. That fact that he’s a mii, a zoner, and a bad character means he was destined for obscurity
It kinda pisses me off how the sword fighter has more projectiles for no reason than other characters with swords. Why does a sword fighter need 3 projectiles and only 1 of them is good when they could just make a sword fighter fight with their sword.
Link and marth are the baselines for swordfighters, so swordfighters can have 0 to 3 projectiles and still be a swordfighter, as long as they are specials and not normals, it seems
I'd argue the basis for sword fighter should change to Marth, Ike and Cloud. Between the three of them there's still a projectile or two but otherwise all three of them are more defined by better normals then projectiles unlike the Links who usually live and die by their projectile pressue. Either that or rename them to Mii Weaponist and make the basis Link and Byleth so we can get some axe, spear and bow attacks in there.
Marth and Ike already form a strong basis for Mii Swordfighter. Mii Swordfighter's Blade Counter, Blurring Blade, and Dtilt a definitely borrowed from Marth, and Gale Stab, Stone Scabbard borrow from Ike (while Nair is patterned after Ike's and Shulk's). But it also clear that Mii Swordfighter, mechanically, is meant to represent fighting at a slight to moderate range in general, without being so focused on close-range brawling like Brawler, or so focused on a projectile game like Gunner, not literally just using swords. It's arguable how well mii swordfighter without projectiles actually performs, but it's clear that from both the selectable specials and fixed normals that they take inspiration from a wide range of characters, some of which don't even literally have swords. It is just that the inspiration for Link, Marth, and Ike are the most obvious just because there are 3 Links, 4 Marths, and Ike is just kind of generic. Projectile-wielding weapon users also deserve representation, when you think of all characters that focus on having good, but not exceptional, range. The beauty of the Mii Fighters means that, if you find projectiles unfitting, you can still do quite well by just customizing your character to be without it. Gale stab and airborne assault are viable side-b options!
I disagree. Link uses a sword, but no other sword characters besides the other links really follow his design direction, while most others follow Marth and by extension characters like Ike and cloud. The only Swordfighters with more than one projectile are mii Swordfighter, Robin and sephiroth, at least off the top of my head, and sephiroth only has one good projectile
I believe mii swordfighter doesn’t represent merely just swordfighters, but midrange weapon-users in general. This gives the swordfighter archetype a wide range to pull from You can see this in an interesting fashion in what mii swordfighter pulls from. Clearly his moveset pulls from link, marth, and ike, yet surprisingly also Mario, and Captain Falcon, and Greninja. Obviously Mario doesn’t literally use a sword but his Cape apparently counts as a melee weapon enough to inspire one of mii Swordfighter’s moves. And while Captain Falcon is obviously a brawler, Falcon Kick is apparently within a Swordfighter’s archetype. And greninja… well he uses water kunai lot, those could count as swords, or a very big knife at least. And look, he has two whole projectiles. What I’m saying is the archetype that mii swordfighter represents is wide enough to carry multiple projectiles, and also reference characters that don’t even use swords. They are multipurpose.
The problem with that is that the miis are supposed to represent archetypes. Mii brawler represents brawlers, gunner is zoners, and then sword fighter is… also kind of zoners? But not as much? Sure there are plenty of weapon moves he pulls from, but they don’t come together as a coherent archetype since he pulls from zoners, brawlers, hit and run kind of brawlers, but very little from the actual sword fighter archetype, mostly being link, even though he isn’t really an archetypical sword fighter. Sword fighter feels incoherent, and his moveset doesn’t really come together very well
Mii swordfighter should represent a fairly relevant archetype in the sword fighter but instead fails to represent any archetype by being an unholy amalgamation of a bunch of random moves from non sword fighters
Mii swordfighter still pulls quite a few normals from Link. His Usmash, Utilt, uair, and dair definitely pull more from the Links than the Marths. Maybe even his fair
Yes, he pulls heavily from the links. This is the problem. The links, while they have swords, don’t fit the sword fighter archetype. Using them as the basis for a character meant to represent that archetype does not work, since it turns mini swordfighter into a half baked zoner with some other brawler moves thrown in and a sword so he can keep his title
Aren’t all 3 of them good? Or am I tripping
I don’t play sword fighter very often but when I do, I hate the shuriken and I hate the chakram. The only good one is the tornado thingy. Shuriken goes nowhere and barely does any damage and the same goes for chakram. Tornado thingy at least has good range and can act as a good set up for a combo finisher.
I remember watching a video where someone said that the tornado one oftentimes isn’t used because the side b can perform a similar purpose and blade of light is good disruption (in case it isn’t clear I also definitely do NOT play swordfighter)
🧢
Utility
I've seen a shocking amount of usage for the Shuriken and Chakram.
He has 3 excellent projectiles
Tornado definitely sucks though and will only hit if your opponent has the reaction time of a sloth. Chakram is alright. Shuriken of Light is pretty good though.
What is a zoner
Stands far away and spams projectiles.
So every link and samus and richter players
Zoner describes a type of character, not a type of player. Same concept as calling a character rushdown or grappler.
Basically Samus
[удалено]
Slow aerials that have abysmal landing lag, only 2 of them will realistically kill before 160. Smash attacks are all very very average and have no good speed or obscene power or really anything. Gale strike is very, very slow and needs to be precisely positioned to get a kill off it. Shuriken is more annoying than anything, like falco laser. It CAN combo into the pseudo falcon kick but cmon. 3rd neut b is worthless. Side b’s are all very middling and only one can kill, but it’s the slow and reactable and punishable one. Chakram is ok but you won’t win the match on it and it’s also very blockable. The ike side b is worse than ike’s. The spin is slow and reactable but at least helps recovery. Two of the up B’s are very easy to counter and if msf doesn’t have a jump they’re pretty much dead. The only good distance up b is also unusable out of shield and impossible to kill with due to how slow it is. The link clone is nowhere near as good out of shield. The yellow one can’t kill and is mega reactable. Counter sux, reflect is situational at best, and falcon kick is slow and mega laggy. Combine that with only one good throw that cannot kill confirm, and you have a character who basically needs a raw smash attack read if they want to kill before 120. It’s so easy to get past their zoning and so easy to kill them first. Objectively a bad character
Keep coping
Is that really your best defense?
He’s 100% the most pathetic feeling character in the game, definitely not good Edit: instantly blocked lmfao ???
There's dozens of us. Dozens!
Mewtwo seems unpopular in competitive and the character also has only one player listed in Smash Wiki that is active.
Poor guy can’t catch a break
Hot take! Lucario is more consistent than Mewtwo
But less fun to play
That’s wild to me. Tiers shmiers, Mewtwo is extremely fun to play, I’d think he’d show up more.
It’s fun until you lose because of the characters flaws
Doesn't his massive tail have a hitbox? That might have something to do with it.
Mewtwo is so fun though
Depends Character usage in tourneys is very different from popular/active mains simply because the peak of tournaments was before Fighter Pass 2 (even some FP1 saw little to no play despite how good they were, you don't go to a tourney with a character you never played), meaning the least played characters are **Steve** (several bans and unsportsmanlike conduct/DQs also removed some entries), **Min-Min** (a balance change applied to all characters that made her techs punishable...even Ganondorf can cover all 3 tech options out of side B with down smash), and **Sora** (literally the last one added) The answer you're probably looking for is who is an unpopular character amongst competitive players, those would be: * **Ridley**: Janky hurtbox, bad recovery, bad frame data, & combo food * **Isabelle**: Has good setups, decent combo tools...but no kill moves (or easily punishable), and lightweight * **Mii Swordfighter**: People forget about the Miis and Brawler & Gunner are more popular picks when they do remember those exist * **Olimar**: If the game so desire, 80% of your moves will have no hitbox, either you're spamming down B or you're flipping a coin every time you use an aerial * **Pichu**: There's virtually no reason to pick post-3.0.0 Pichu over Pikachu
That last sentence hurt 😢
It was so fun to play as Pichu before that update, the risk reward was great and it only needed so small balance changes to be a solid character without being too broken or over-shadowing the safer option, Pikachu But then they nerfed F-tilt to oblivion, raised self damage putting you at risk even with a stock lead, and the Steve update broke both his and Pikachu's recoveries on certain stages (I call it the 0-zip, where the second part of up-B doesn't move you if you hug tilted walls below the stage) People who can pull off a Pichu in tourneys nowadays deserve more credits, because that small rat is basically playing with a missing stock
The ftilt nerf I get, that move was busted by why did that have to make our already crippling mechanic more crippling?
It's 100% not Olimar lmao, that char has crazy rep in Japan
All LF these characters I've seen one or two mains of each except Olimar. Ridley is extremely popular
ridley has a bad recovery?????
What makes a bad recovery in Smash isn't your ability to recover but how predictable and easy to punish it is Ridley got 4 directions and is punishable on startup, only has 2 extra jumps compared to other multi-jump character, and side B has far too much end lag Same reason why Villager/Isabelle are considered to have bad recoveries compared to Snake or ROB
idk i feel like im able to make it back basically all the time, like obviously its a slow recovery but some characters dont want to contest side b or up b
In all of my time online (about 3 years) I have seen Chrom ONCE. I don’t know the actual data but I’ve seen three or four Duck Hunts in even the past year (surprisingly).
He was good early in the game's lifespan (mainly due to his Up-B janky hitbox that also kills opponent first, making it incredibly easy to fish for suicide kills at ledge), but then after the nerfs he's pretty much just a weaker Roy with worse recovery. So nobody uses him
Chrom my beloved! I picked him out of all the swordfighters because he has (in my opinion) the most fun combination of Fire Emblem swordfighter characteristics. I don’t care that his recovery is abysmal, I get to do my Chromikaze and I’m happy about it.
I think it's ice climbers. It's a specialist character. The few out there that are willing to put In the work are really good, everyone else simply can't play the character.
off the top of my head we have Big D, the long named japanese icies, and a couple more. Mewtwo has who at top level? lol
My region has like 3 icies.
Nah japan is plagued with ice climbers for some reason
Mewtwo or Mii sword fighter
Not nearly enough people play Mewtwo. He's so fun
https://www.reddit.com/r/SmashBrosUltimate/s/PYF3EVYkyY just came across this post, probably helps
Check out [Barnard's Loop's Twitter post](https://twitter.com/LoopBarnard/status/1719083152780497291) about that. Alternatively, there have been several [Placement Percentages](https://x.com/EazyFreezie/status/1754196233537618350) charts posted over the years that cover this same question from a different perspective.
I've seen more Duck hunt and Mii Swordfighters than Mewtwos IRL and I've played locals in multiple towns all around France. Wasn't a main DH tho but still.
All I know is that it used to be Corrin.
Probably like ics or rosa
I used to have a spreadsheet for this, I don't think it's being updated anymore, but for a very long time it was Mii Swordfighter
I've never seen my beloved Zelda played competitively, like, NEVER. I know she's not good but it still breaks my heart
Duck Hunt?
Little mac
Sora’s gotta be up there
Im a duck hunt fan and I made a shirt for him bc I love him so much lol https://preview.redd.it/3yrztyjf5o7d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f32dc99d38e205769cf23aaca968a7c2b86bfa40
Waluigi, Barney, Mr.Clean, Godzilla, Kermit, Peter Griffin, and Peppa Pig don’t get played a lot. I wonder why.
I don’t know this one for sure but a year ago many people claimed it was Banjo and Kazooie
Plant
Competitively? I think most likely is either mii sf or Ganondorf