I’m glad to return Melee Science in article form with HTC Esports. We’ve been on a brief hiatus and I know that we’re all itching to bring more analysis content out there.



It’s been roughly two years since the last major updates to the Melee tier list and I wanted to give some of my thoughts on the 2017 metagame. Before we get into the tier list, let’s create a foundation for it. Here are some criterions that I use.

Character kit and matchups

The central core of the tier list relies on each characters’ abilities and tools with what we know in 2017. “In 2017” is emphasized as the key point as we still have many characters that still need optimization and fine-tuning, especially the low and mid tier characters. With the knowledge we currently have, who has the best tools to succeed and who can win the important matchups against the top tiers, like Fox?

Results

This is where theory begins to deviate. What are the actual results of the characters in 2017? How frequently do these characters hit the Top 32 or win events? Even with its faults, this metric can give us some idea of a character’s upper limit. To emphasize on my previous point, many characters are still unexplored, so it’s fair to pose hypotheticals such as, “if a top 5 player were to play a mid-tier character, how far could they get?”

Consistency and Execution

In theory, characters such as Fox and Yoshi have powerful kits if people were to play at a tool-assisted level. How does this play out in practicality? Can a player realistically execute a waveshine back and forth against a Peach every time he lands a drill or an initial shine? We’ve seen people cite certain VODs where it looks like a matchup is “solved,” but we should also ask ourselves, how often a player can execute at that high of a level. Part of why we still see slower characters such as Ice Climbers in the metagame is because people are capable of making mistakes, so it’s important to factor execution errors even when we talk about high level melee. Even the best players will mess up a dash or miss an L-cancel.

Individual Biases

There is never going to be an objective measure of a tier list, so anything that deviates will be because of my personal biases.

Other notes