User:Naked Snake

Introduction
I've been playing Smash on and off for the past few years as well as frequenting this wiki. Due to a lack of game consoles (my parents did not wish to buy any until the Wii), I have played the original SSB and SSBM on my laptop via emulators. Going to a friend's house once in middle school and playing some casual Brawl was what first exposed me to this game series. From that point on, I was captivated by the innovative gameplay, and I started by playing Super Smash Bros. on the Project64 emulator. I was fairly decent at it, although I found it to be a little too simple and combos to be unnecessarily long. I was impressed by Isai's competitive ability, and I soon found that Melee had a much bigger competitive scene. After watching many videos of Ken, Isai, Bombsoldier, Captain Jack, and countless other professionals, I finally got a computer capable of running Gamecube games on the Dolphin Emulator. After many months, I became pretty good at Melee despite having to play on a keyboard (which to me is now as natural as using an actual controller). In high school, my parents finally relented and bought a Wii for my brother and me, and naturally my first game was Brawl. It was in many respects easier than Melee, but nevertheless I found it to be extremely fun and better than Melee as far as competing against others is concerned. I first mained Marth due to my experience with him in Melee (and the fact that Ken was my Smash role model), but I soon grew to know the moveset of each character pretty well and I can play at a decent level with many characters (and I have a few mains now). I've never had the chance to attend a real tournament due to school-related time constraints, but in competitions against my classmates I've usually come out on top. Also, as you might be able to tell from my username, I'm a Metal Gear fan. I like the stealth gameplay, and the storyline is better than that of many novels.

About me
I live in Nevada, and currently I'm a high school senior. I am the valedictorian of my graduating class, and I am proud to say that my academics are near the very top. Smash is probably my favorite series, and I play it at home on the computer and Wii. There's also a Senior Lounge at my school where there's a TV and a Wii, and Ifrequent the place as a senior. I'm quite a bit better than all of my classmates/relatives at Brawl, and over the years I can say I probably play at a semi-professional level. Since I focus a lot of time on academics and sports, I don't have time to go to any Smash tournaments but I follow them pretty closely and I have a pretty extensive knowledge of Brawl's mechanics as well as every character's moveset. Finally, as far as contributions on this wiki go, I am keenly aware of the importance of proper grammar and spelling. I strive to do my best to make myself logical and clear, but of course, I am not perfect (English is actually not even my first language, my parents taught me Chinese first), and I will occasionally make mistakes while typing. Don't hesitate to correct me if that occurs. :)

Melee vs. Brawl
Considering how controversial the topic sometimes is, and as a player of both games and lover of the SSB series, I feel compelled to make a short statement on the subject. I play these games primarily because I find them fun and innovative, and although I care about talent and ability and am not a bad player myself, I believe that dedicating too much of one's life to a game is a bad thing. Thus, I find Brawl to be more fun to play than Melee against classmates and family and in general because it is friendlier to new players and technical skill is not as big of a deciding factor as it was in Melee. That said, I also believe that as far as skill and intense competition go, Melee is the superior game. The existence of techniques such as wavedashing makes Melee much more difficult to play at a high level, and as such, I find Melee tournaments more interesting to watch. When playing by myself against the CPU, I also find Melee to be more interesting than Brawl because I can practice more advanced techniques that are not present in Brawl. As such, I do not consider either Melee or Brawl to be "better" than the other as a whole - rather, they each have attributes that make them more likable for certain situations. There is no need to impose your view of which is "better" on people who disagree because there is no unquestionable "right" or "wrong".

View on tier lists
Tiers are there to show which characters are most successful in tournaments and have the most potential when put in the hands of a skilled player. Characters were never designed to be "balanced" from the start simply because it is not possible to perfectly balance such varied characters in a game where the metagame is determined by the players are not the designers. As a result, some characters will inevitably end up inherently better than others (e.g. Meta Knight's clear dominance over the rest of the cast). The tier list does indeed change, but that does not make it wrong - it simply reflects the changing nature of the metagame and the development of the best players around the world. For more information, |Semicolon's Treatise on the Existence of Tiers provides a much more comprehensive argument.

One thing I would like to note, however, is that individual player skill can often trump differences on the tier list. Since no two players are exactly alike, a better player using a worse character can overcome a worse player using a better character - that is to say, tier list placement in itself does not determine the outcome of a match, but instead provides a good benchmark for the relative strengths of two characters. Additionally, just because a character ranks higher than another on the tier list doesn't make that character better; individual character matchups means that a lower-ranked character can very possibly have an advantage against a higher-ranked character.

Competency tier lists
Simple table of the characters I use most/best. Hover over the character's image for a short blurb.