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The Evolving Meta of Smash 3DS

The Evolving Meta of Smash 3DS

Super Smash Brothers for the 3DS has been out for about a month, and we have all had time to fool around with it, choose our favorite characters, and take our best game online. How has the game evolved from Smash Bros. Brawl ? How is the tournament scene changing? Let’s take a look at how characters and the meta game are.

First of all, there are a couple characters that we see win routinely. Yoshi is one of the best, able to lay on damage, powerfully smash the opponent, and spike them reliably. Sheik is awesome as usual, and is one of the only characters in the game with a Short Hop Fast Fall Game. Zero Suit Samus is also similar, fast and powerful but without as much of a short hop game, and Greninja follows suit with similar advantages in mobility and a powerful projectile.

However, speed doesn’t ultimately rule. Many good characters in Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS are tricky characters that can control space. Duck Hunt has been tearing up the online world, constantly keeping explosions on the screen and making it hard to advance. Rosalina’s ability to control a characters at a separate space in the screen is also powerful, allowing her to rack up lots of damage quickly while keeping herself safe. Oddly enough, Bowser also has climbed to the top of the tier list, with incredibly damaging two hit combos and an odd amount of mobility for a bruiser.

Speaking of bruisers, there are a lot of characters that have been prospering, but pros aren’t quite sure they will make it to the big time when the Wii U version comes out. Little Mac has been quite the noob destroyer, with powerful single hits, able to KO at very low percentages. However, his limited recovery makes people wonder whether or not he will still be effective when people don’t have to factor lag into their quick dodges or spikes. Characters like Lucario, Samus, and Mega Man have been doing quite well with projectile spam, but once again, when you factor in Nintendo’s less than perfect netcode, this might be easy to avoid in a local Wii U match.

What’s most interesting is that many of the top tier fighters of previous Smashes have fallen quite a bit. Fox, Falco, Captain Falcon, Peach, Metaknight, Olimar, Kirby, Jigglypuff, and Marth are all much worse than they were in Brawl, Melee, and Smash 64 , ranging from average to depowered. Marth’s new clone, Lucina, is played more than he is and even she is considered average at best. Sheik is one of the only surviving top tiers from Smash ’s past, which is actually kind of refreshing. It’s nice to see newcomers take the stage.

The Evolving Meta of Smash 3DS

Stages are actually a huge problem in Smash 3DS. Almost none of them are competitive. With the exception of battlefield and the many different “omega” forms of stages, every stage has some sort of massive hazard, non-traditional layout, scrolling effect, or something else annoying. Luckily, the stages on the Wii U version will be different than the stages in the 3DS version, so this might change when the Wii U version comes out.

Overall, it’s hard to say what the overall “smash” metagame looks like. Without a c-stick to make reliable smash attacks at the drop of a hat, while simultaneously constantly dealing with lag even with local 3DS to 3DS multiplayer, a lot of characters that are dominating the meta may only be doing so because players cannot reliably react to their movements. We aren’t seeing as much of an aerial game as we used to, and people are not anywhere near as gutsy as they used to be when it comes to fighting opponents off the ledge. Also I can speak from experience that learning a brand new control scheme, as opposed to the traditional Gamecube controller control scheme, is not fun, and has caused numerous self-deaths for me and many of my pro-smasher friends. So maybe this will change quite a bit when everyone is using a Gamecube controller on the Wii U?

What do you think? What has changed in the Smash meta this time around? Let us know in the comments.

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