Lurker > Link versus Cloud

Interesting, I definitely didn't consider League coming into this topic but OP makes a good case for it.

Especially if we are considering "game of the decade" to mean the game having had the largest impact on the whole decade and not just the best game released in this decade.

LoL might end up being the most influential game in history if e-sports continue to grow like they have (even if its not LoL itself being the top e-sport going forward).
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Yo, I missed most of this due to the holidays. If you still want to add in my rankings:

Elites:
1-Samus Aran
2-Cloud Strife
3-Zelda
4-Mario
5-Snake

Upper-Midcarders:
1-Zero
2-Auron
3-Aerith
4-Squall
5-Ryu
6-Mewtwo
7-Charizard
8-Red
9-Dante
10-Sora
11-DK
12-Big Boss

Midcarders:
1-Amaterasu
2-Vincent Valentine
3-Fox McCloud
4-2B
5-Sub-Zero
6-Geralt
7-Frog
8-Chun-Li
9-Bayonetta
10-Kratos
11-Kefka
12-Terra Branford
13-Knuckles the Echidna
14-Magus
15-Princess Peach
16-Yuna
17-Leon Kennedy
18-Tidus
19-Crash Bandicoot

Lower Midcarders:
1-Captain Falcon
2-Scorpion
3-Jill Valentine
4-Ness
5-Simon Belmont
6-Wario
7-Ridley
8-Waluigi
9-Phoenix Wright
10-Ryu Hayabusa
11-Zidane Tribal
12-Rosalina
13-Ike
14-Pac-Man
15-Miles "Tails" Prower
16-Lara Croft
17-Shadow the Hedgehog
18-Cecil Harvey
19-Spyro the Dragon

Current rankings to follow once I have more time.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

ayyy I'm #1.

BGE 04 is what prompted me to make an account on this site, but that 03 Link/Cloud match was the impetus for my name.

Also I think Draven/Snake/Samus also deserves to me mentioned somewhere. I know after he beat Link it was pretty much a foregone conclusion, but its still important that he finishes the job and (until this year) ended character battles forever.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Draven winning a character battle is not in the TOP 75??
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

FinaIFantasyV posted...

CAN SOMEBODY ELSE TAKE OVER THIS FUCKING TOPIC AND GET THIS TRASH THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.

lol Trans wouldn't even call out the obvious cheating by Sonic over Samus, compared to that WW/Starcraft was nothing.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

MetalmindStats posted...

Link versus Cloud posted...

Draven won the contest as a 3-seed.

True. However, Safer only asked for the furthest runs in contests with 16 seeds per division.

Oops missed that
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

MetalmindStats posted...

That would be an interesting comparison to have, but no, I don't think it's conveniently written anywhere.

As far as I can remember (though I'm probably missing some):
- a 3-seed has reached Round 6 (Melee, 2015)
- a 4-seed has won in Round 4 (Ganondorf, Bowser, and Zelda, 2018)
- a 5-seed has reached Round 5 (Crono, 2002)
- a 6-seed has won a contest (Undertale, 2015)
- a 7-seed has reached Round 6 (Sephiroth, 2002)
- an 8-seed has reached Round 4 (Pokmon RBY, 2015)
- a 9-seed has reached Round 6 (Super Mario RPG, 2015)
- a 10-seed has reached Round 4 (Zelda and Tifa, 2010)
- an 11-seed has reached Round 3 (Aerith, multiple times + Fox, 2018)
- a 12-seed has reached Round 3 (Sonic 2, 2015)
- a 13-seed has reached Round 3 (Sub-Zero and MissingNo., 2010 + Chrono Cross, 2015 + Tails and Wario, 2018)
- a 14-seed has reached Round 3 (Jecht, 2010 + Donkey Kong Country 2, 2015)
- a 15-seed has reached Round 4 (Aerith, 2018)

Draven won the contest as a 3-seed.
Zelda 2018 reaching the finals as a 4-seed is the best.
I don't recall a 5,7, or 9 seed ever making the finals, so those SF runs from Crono/Seph/SMRPG look correct.
Undertale winning the title as a 6-seed is correct.

Too lazy to check on 10 or below.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

transience posted...

I won't try to comment on the moment to moment drama of this match, if it was fair or any of that.

Thats some Switzerland level shit.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

I mean Undertale got 58 on OOT, so I think it should 60-40 BotW pretty easily

Kappa
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

No

Why would you remove the strongest character from the bracket? Especially when he's already been relegated to side-contests like the legends bracket? This is a truly 'millenial' line of thinking. "Every character deserves to win". Fuck that noise, let me see Link 60-40 the next strongest character

To increase hype for the contest portion of the event. Everyone who has any idea about making brackets in these things will always pick Link to win it all because its a certainty bar rallies. This means the finals are basically worthless and the contest is decided before the finals.

If Link were removed this year for example there would be a reasonable split among Cloud, Mario, Snake, or Samus to win the title and hence there would be way more on the line in a final between 2 of them (plus a surprise run by someone like Zelda actually means something because she has a shot at unseating that group but even her miracle run still couldn't even get 40 on Link let alone beat him).
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

transience posted...

ha, I just noticed that I skipped #56. how fitting is it that it was this one?

56.
.

I thought you purposefully skipped 56 because you had two matches (both Mario vs Samus this year) tied for 55.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

MetalmindStats posted...

So I'm thinking that, as these rankings are mostly reflecting, I may have messed up by putting Zero in the Near-Elite tier instead of the Upper Midcarder tier. My idea was that 44% on Pikachu was comfortably above 46% on Sonic (comparing to Auron), but in retrospect, I don't think that's so obvious that those two should be in entirely different tiers. The problem that comes with that, of course, is that a solid 6/15 participants so far have ranked Zero at not-last, particularly with Anagram and darkx putting him at 11th. What I'm thinking I'll do to solve this is have Zero as part of the Upper Midcarder ranking as well as the Near-Elite one and, depending on those results, I may shift him down into the Upper Midcarder tier. Does that sound reasonable to everyone, or would you rather not have to rank Zero twice?

(And, if you're coming into this topic not yet having ranked the Near-Elites, please still include Zero in your ranking.)

I would be fine with ranking Zero twice. I think Zero belongs in upper midcard and Snake belongs in near elites. That would also give us a nice cut off of top 5 for elite and top 20 for near elite.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

1)Crono
2)Mega Man
3)Pikachu
4)Sonic
5)Tifa
6)MMX
7)Sephiroth
8)Luigi
9)Bowser
10)Kirby
11)Yoshi
12)Alucard
13)Ganondorf
14)Vivi
15)Zero
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

DoctorJimmy133 posted...

Today's Lineal Nine is:

Samus
Zelda > Snake
Mario > Sephiroth > Vincent > Crono
Crono > Mega Man > Red > Squall > Missingno. > Crono > L-Block > Sonic
Cloud > Crono > Bowser > Kirby > Big Boss > Luigi > Weighted Companion Cube > Mega Man
Tifa > Mewtwo > Sonic > Kirby > Sephiroth
Pikachu > Squirtle > Cloud
Link > Ganondorf > Vivi > Mario
Amaterasu > Draven > Link

Outside of Amaterasu, that actually looks pretty close to what the actual top 9 probably is right now.

Link/Cloud/Mario/Samus/Zelda/Crono/Pikachu should all be in there. Megaman and Snake should be in there over Amaterasu and Tifa, but Tifa is probably #10 or 11 so its reasonable for her to have a spot coming off a contest with so many big wins.

Next contest, we just need to job Amaterasu to either Snake/Megaman and put the other of Snake/MM vs Tifa.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

MetalmindStats posted...

To be clear, I'm not saying that Snake matches Cloud indirectly - I'm saying that the two are close enough indirectly that a direct match between them would be closer than a direct match between Snake and Crono or Mega Man.

That makes more sense, but I still disagree. You are basically saying:

Tier 0: Link
Tier 1: Samus
Tier 2: Cloud/Zelda/Mario/Snake
Tier 3: Crono/MM/Pikachu

while I'm saying:

Tier 0: Link
Tier 1: Samus/Cloud/Zelda/Mario
Tier 2: Snake/Crono/MM/Pikachu

Ultimately though the only way to know is to have the matches as LOL X-Stats.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

MetalmindStats posted...

I would bet money on Cloud vs. Snake being closer than Snake vs. Mega Man or Crono. Also, Samus would crush Cloud about as much as one character can crush another in a relatively close match.

This is only if we take Zelda/Snake, Zelda/Mario, and Zelda/Cloud as an indication that Snake, Mario, Zelda, and Cloud are all of a similar level and put Samus a tier above them. The problem with this is that it forces us to assume a near constant Zelda between her matches with Snake and Mario and also forces us to think that a 57-43 Samus/Mario result was able to be reversed by hierarchy twice.

I think the alternative (and more likely) situation as shown by Snake/Samus and Mario/Samus is that Samus/Cloud/Zelda/Mario are all of similar tier (Samus the strongest, but all close) with Snake a clear tier below them and that Zelda boosted a tier between the Snake and Mario matches with rallies + bandwagon. This would put Snake's performance on Samus in line with Crono's on Cloud. This would also be a more reasonable power gap for Mario to overcome.

I'd expect Cloud-Snake to go about 55-45 and Snake-Crono to be around 52-48.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

LusterSoldier posted...

Snake/Cloud allows us to compare Snake to Link using Link/Cloud, so that's one good thing there. Since we're not quite sure on Snake's strength.

You can get just as good of a read on Snake's strength via a match against MM or Crono with the added bonus of it possibly being close though.

Although I guess an argument can be made for saving Crono/MM vs Snake and Cloud vs Samus for the next actual contest with points on the line and take the Samus/MM, Snake/Cloud matches to gauge strength without giving too much away.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

KamikazePotato posted...

Link - 50
Samus Aran - 39.96
Cloud Strife - 39.48
Mario - 39.28
Zelda - 36.38

Stats have Samus>Mario>Zelda, when we literally saw Zelda>Mario and Mario>Samus twice. If there was ever a time to say it, LOL X STATS.

(not criticizing your adjustment btw, I think Samus IS indirectly #2 and Zelda IS most likely to be 5th of those characters if we ran the contest again, its just a funny warning to not use stats.)
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

LusterSoldier posted...

I'd rather swap Samus and Snake so we get Snake vs. Cloud and Samus vs. Mega Man.

Why? Cloud>Snake and Samus>MM are pretty obvious, whereas Samus/Cloud and MM/Snake would be in doubt. I think its clear our tiers right now are:

Tier 0: Link
Tier 1: Zelda, Cloud, Mario, Samus
Tier 2: Snake, Crono, Megaman, Pikachu
Tier 3: Sonic, Tifa, X, Sephiroth, Luigi, Bowser, Kirby
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

VeryInsane posted...

Similar to how BGE gave us some interesting (if slightly underwhelming) bonus matches

Samus vs Cloud
Mario vs Crono
Snake vs Mega Man
Sonic vs Sephiroth

Think some of those could be pretty interesting

If we are limiting it to noble 9 only, those are the 4 matches I would want to see as well.

Mario/Crono would probably be a blow-out though and only would be worth seeing for nostalgia purposes. I'd prefer to see Pikachu/Crono since through MM we can see Pika/Crono are about on par.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Doesn't seem like it.

Mario and Cloud are on a similar level and Cloud has less SFF vs Link and yet he still failed to break 40, so no reason to think Mario would do it. We already saw that Zelda couldn't do it. Crono/MM are about the same level as Pikachu, who barely broke 31.5, let alone 40 (Crono would do better due to less SFF, but still nowhere near 40). Snake and Samus are the only ones with a shot at 40, but Samus probably gets SFF'd to hell and if Snake barely got 43.5 on Samus I don't like his odds to get 40 on Link.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Jman_maximum posted...

DoctorJimmy133 posted...

Depending on how the next match goes Cloud could absolutely be a contender for winning a Linkless bracket.

why a contender?

if Cloud wins the next match he already won the linkless bracket.

He didn't have to fight Samus. All signs point to Samus being stronger than Mario indirectly, but being unable to win h2h. Presumably a Linkless bracket would pit Cloud vs Samus and that is still a toss up.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

redrocket posted...

I have 100 voters lined up to vote for Mario at 6:58.

I know you are joking, but if this was actually true that would be MAXIMUM lulz
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Damn the great heel is finally washed up huh?
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

charmander6000 posted...

Match CXLIX: (4) Zelda vs. (7) Mario

Zelda
Defeated Ezio Auditore da Firenze, 75.33% - 24.67%
Defeated The Boss, 70.70%, 29.30%
Defeated Squall Leonhart, 63.32% - 36.68%
Defeated Aerith Gainsborough, 62.19% - 37.81%
Defeated Solid Snake, 50.32% - 49.68%
Defeated Sonic the Hedgehog, 56.45% - 43.55%
Defeated Mario, 50.91% - 49.09%
Lost to Link, 36.44% - 63.56%

Mario
Defeated Sephiroth, 59.25% - 40.75%
Defeated Samus Aran, 51.42% - 48.58%
Lost to Zelda, 49.09% - 50.91%
Defeated Samus Aran, 50.03% - 49.97%
Defeated Cloud Strife, 50.1x-49.8x

Analysis

Zelda was able to hold Link off for about five minutes before crashing down to Earth. Overall, she did quite well, avoiding the brunt of the SFF hammer. Mario on the other hand is coming off of another close match. Will he be able to get his revenge on Zelda?

That depends on whether or not Zelda retains her bandwagon. Her loss to Link was quite demoralizing to the point where it was quite clear she would lose again if she tried. At the same time, she only needs to retain a small portion of that bandwagon to hold off Mario whom is regaining his reputation of being a bit of a villain in these contests. You clutch out three wins over 15 years ago and youre branded a villain for life. If Cloud wins this match as he is leading and I dont have time to redo my analysis, Id give him a better chance at winning, but in the end, I still think Zelda has this.

charmander6000s Bracket: Solid Snake > Mario

charmander6000s Prediction: Zelda wins, 53.73% - 46.27%

posting this while Mario is losing the match, thats an ayyyyy lmao if I've ever seen one.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Hbthebattle posted...

Pikachu vs. Tifa
X vs. Sephiroth
Samus vs. Zelda
Crono vs. Snake

These would be good too, although Pika vs Tifa is probably a waste since Pika was shown to be even with Megaman and Tifa even with X.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

On topic: Mario has been the top heel in these contests since literally the beginning. The contests need a good heel to make them fun. Mario usually beats the faces, but occasionally he drops a match here or there which makes it mean something.

Off topic: Somalian pirates destroying your entire village, stealing all of your possessions, and killing everyone you ever cared about.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Division 2 seems too imbalanced. MG/Metroid/Megaman/Sonic all in the same division as seeds 2-5 and behind Persona being the 1 seed? Those all seem like they should be on the same level as 2/3 seeds.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

I like the idea of bonus matches, but most of those aren't really the match-ups I'd want to see at this point as its pretty obvious:
Cloud>MM
Samus>Crono
Crono>Seph
Mario>Sonic
Samus>MM

If we were going to do 4 I'd want:

Sonic vs Sephiroth
Crono vs Snake
Cloud vs Zelda (assuming its not the loser's final, otherwise Samus vs Zelda)
Draven vs Link
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

I think I'm coming around on the idea that banning Link from future contests might actually be a good idea.

Samus/Mario/Zelda/Cloud all seem to be on a similar level and could all possibly beat each other in the right circumstances. Mario is a good villain that represents a powerful final boss that is actually possible to beat.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Qwaar posted...

Link versus Cloud posted...

rofl Rip Cloud, Mario coming for dat Zelda Ass

Calling the match after 15 minutes?

yes, Cloud needs to be blowing Mario out to win this. In a tight match the villainous plumber will for sure find a way.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

rofl Rip Cloud, Mario coming for dat Zelda Ass
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

_Dog_ posted...

Sounds a lot like Ash vs. Alain in the Pokmon anime. I'd rather not.

1)Alain wasn't really a villain though, just a rival.
2)The anime didn't just end immediately after the loss.
3)The loss was still clean.
4)Pokemon is completely different because Ash has been jobbing for 20 years now and sometimes to irrelevant deus ex machina characters just for the hell of it.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Mario had Zelda beat in the registered vote too, but Zelda was able to rally past the bonus.

Zelda Hentai > Samus Hentai confirmed
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

LusterSoldier posted...

Mario did almost 7% better with registered users compared to anonymous users. In the first Mario/Samus match, the difference was only about 3% between registered/anonymous users. This makes me think that the Samus rally on the Metroid subreddit actually had a noticeable impact on the match.

Zelda > Samus > Tifa confirmed in the Hentai community
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

not at all

Draven 13 and L-Block 07 were both stronger than Zelda 18 and also performed higher relative to their expectation coming in.

If anything Link is probably having the GOAT contest flirting with not letting anyone get even 40% on him.

If you just mean in terms of consistently winning close matches vs good competition than that would be Undertale 15.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

KamikazePotato posted...

Mario>Samus is the most villainous result we've had in like, forever. Samus was reversing a 40-60 loss from 12 years ago, overcoming the Nintendo Hierarchy, overcoming bracket votes, and overcoming the Registered Voter Bonus which I will remind is equivalent to 400+ stuffed votes, overcoming rabid Mario ralliers literally going door-to-door asking people to vote. She came one update away from overcoming all that through raw strength alone. It's like an anime ending except the cheating villain won.

Good plotline tbh. I would love to watch an Anime where the hero gets destroyed by the villain in embarrassing fashion and then spends the next 13 years growing to finally get her re-match, only to narrowly be defeated this time due to being unable to unleash her full power. Then in the final arc, she finally unleashes her full power and gains the upperhand on the villain for the first time, but the crafty villain finds a way through devious tactics to bring the fight to a last hit situation and picks up that 3rd W in a fade to black. Would be a pretty refreshing story.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

lol no one cares about this match for some reason
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Ringworm posted...

Prediction: Samus wins by 23 votes. Let's see how close I get.

Mario to win confirmed
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Fighting so hard to not even be top 2 in their own company zulul
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

rip samus
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

I mean when we get
Zelda over Snake with 50.3
Zelda over Mario with 50.9
Mario over Samus with 51.4
Samus over Snake with 56.5
Samus vs Mario going to a 50-50

Whats even the point of (lol) X-stats?
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

ayyy lmao in the year where Mario was poised to finally rise to #2 and over-come all the non-Nintendo between him and Link over the years (Snake, Cloud, Crono, Sephiroth) he jobs to two ladies from his own company instead.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

The princess was actually in the castle this time. And it was HER castle.

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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Jman_maximum posted...

that depends

melee is still probably gonna be the primary smash games for the huge competitive events like evo.

I'm not so sure about that. Smash 4 was getting almost as much representation as Melee at big events and Ultimate appears to be much better than Smash 4.

There was talks at EVO this year about potentially only having one Smash game at EVO next year and if thats the case I think Ultimate would get the spot over Melee. It'll either be that or both will get in, but I don't see Melee getting a spot and not Ultimate.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

jacko_vdz posted...

So how the hell can you explain why Snake did better on Zelda than Mario, but is getting blown up by Samus?? Zelda must be boosting in between rounds or there is some weird hierarchy going on.

I think the best explanation is that Zelda beat Snake via natural strength and then used Hentai rallies to beat Mario.

Hentai Zelda > Mario > Zelda > Snake

Then hentai rally spillover into Samus today.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Yuri_LowelI posted...

Youre forgetting crono is stronger than MM outright right now. Makes sense with low votals. So MM maybe is being boosted. Just not enough to beat Crono.

I mean its possible, but Crono didn't really look that impressive failing to break 55 on Bowser and barely cracking 43 on Cloud. Remember Megaman was 5th in the (lol) X-stats in 2013. I find it hard to believe MM boosted and still lost to Crono here, seems more likely MM just didn't boost.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

Nanis23 posted...

Link versus Cloud posted...

Guess I overestimated how much Pikachu boosted.

Uh
Mega Man is still in the top 10 strongest characters this contest

Its relative. Top 10 isn't a great performance for MM's standards when he has literally always been top 10.

1) MM was above Crono in 2013
2) MM just recently got MM11
3) MM is in Smash Ultimate which is on day 3 of release and Crono is not

Its pretty bad for MM to lose to Crono under these conditions
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

KamikazePotato posted...

Mega Man's not quite going the direction he should be now.

Megaman jobbing to a character without a game in 20 years during the day vote Zulul. I'm honestly pretty surprised, I thought MM might even be able to make it interesting with Cloud. Guess I overestimated how much Pikachu boosted.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA

The funniest thing is so far consensus seems to be pretty universal that Samus is utter trash in Ultimate. Pretty much every streamer has said she is bottom tier. Snake seems to be mid tier with potential to go up.
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LeBron "Stannis" James - The one true king of the NBA