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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3417 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Super Smash Brothers Melee power rankings over time [graphs]

Yeah it was very good for setting up combos, the range was hilarious.

I got this from r/dataisbeautiful, where some of the commenters made the point that a significant part of these rankings (especially Jigglypuff) comes from just a few people. I remember about 6-7 years ago Jigglypuff was considered mediocre, and then someone started maining her and placing really high in tournaments so they finally bumped her up. Not sure if that really says a lot about how powerful the character itself is. The competitive scene has never been that big.





seriallurker  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Jigglypuff is a viable character now, but she's not as dominant as she used to be. The guy who mained her switched to Fox and Falco after he started being usurped as the best jiggs player. These days he's the definitive number one player, while the usurper is a tentative number five. People are learning how to avoid rest better, so jigglypuff's competitive potential is waning a bit.

I find it fascinating how much the rankings depend on individual innovators. Some characters that have amazing depth never get developed because on the surface they're crap. The best example of this is the Ice Climbers. The tech skill for those characters is so different from all the other characters that they were underrated for a long time, until one or two players figured them out. And they still haven't been perfected. The top ranking IC player today got to that rank without using their best technique: an infinite grab that's inescapable. They still have untapped potential

Maybe a better example of this is Yoshi. The Yoshi meta basically didn't exist until this year when some japanese guy comes out of nowhere and starts taking games off the top 5 players using this character that used to be F tier. Some of that was probably lack of experience against a strange character, but it's still crazy that Yoshi can be viable in that way.

user-inactivated  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Which is what makes Melee possibly the greatest game ever made. Fuck patching.

Since you seem to still pay attention to the scene, I'll just run a name by you -- Ken, mained Marth. Still active at all?

seriallurker  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There's definitely something to be said for letting players dissect and figure out the game before it gets patched. Something a lot of e-sports could do with a little more of.

As for Ken, he just recently returned to the scene.

He went inactive for about 5 years, but came back in 2012. Hasn't been doing nearly as well as he used to though. After 5 years the metagame kind of left him behind. He made it onto the 2013 power rankings, though only barely at spot 100. Recently he was given a sponsorship by Team Liquid so he's been getting a lot more high-level practice, and he even finished 21st at MLG this year, outstripping a lot of people who outranked him on the 2013 list. It'll be interesting to see how far he goes. Everybody loves a good comeback story.

user-inactivated  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh fuck, cool. I remember a Smashboards thread from almost a decade ago where he was offering private lessons. Back when he was (I think) on top of the rankings.