What Happened to Ike? Why NO ONE Plays Him Anymore | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

from the start of the game's release in version 1 all the way back in late 2018 to now reaching four years later our understanding of Smash ultimate's meta its characters what's good or bad and so on has changed drastically more so than any other previous title some members of the cast who are almost unanimously agreed upon as high or top tier have lost a lot of notoriety While others who are discarded as mid or low tier have since proved us wrong with the help of version updates or player experimentation one such character from the first category is Ike the main protagonist to find on Path of Radiance and a deuteragonist to Fire Emblem radiant dot my two favorite titles in the franchise at the beginning of Smash ultimate's competitive scene the Buffs to Ike either directly such as improving his moveset or indirectly such as universal reduction to Landing lag have made players gravitate towards them particularly Leia who garnered a lot of success with them in 2019 following the return of offline competition however IX results after all intents and purposes vanished and while we still have a few players representing him like yes Raven King and just recently Mega who plays top 16 at Apex 2022 he's nowhere near as president anymore despite being so fighter who is still considered by many to be a respectable High tier so for today let's find out what happened to Ike why no one plays him anymore as the third Fire Emblem character to be introduced in the Smash Bros franchise as well as the third official sword fighter not counting link Ike served to contrast Smart's fast Frame data by opting for a slower but more powerful approach he's initially thought of as a replacement scene as Roy was not included in Brawl but their playstyles were nothing alike without going too far in detail Ike's performance in competitive role was average to above average more or less but is lackluster Frame data made him feel a lot less effective than Marth who wasn't that much weaker but far better in speed and Mobility comes match 4 Ike was given a controversial series of boss and Nerfs reducing his power in exchange for better physics and more generous Frame data popular opinion came to the conclusion that while the increased mobility and Frame data was certainly helpful it failed to address his flaws and predictable option selection resulting in a net negative for the character especially given his loss of power which ironically would have been amazing to have in Smash Force rage utilized meta game updates would alleviate to some degree but once again Ike was seen is considerably worse than Martin performance and the reasons to use zoom were medium reviewer after Corin and Claude were brought into play although he stood for him even after the one he was meant to replace Roy was reinstated come smash ultimate the playing field was leveled causing many high-end top tiers to be nerfed while simultaneously buffing low and bottom tears to be more effective alongside Roy who was also suffering from Bad performance in two games Ike was significantly buffed across the board they still wanted to preserve the idea of a slow but powerful sword fighter yet at the same time making his strengths more discernible and distinguishable from his peers and initially they succeeded most notably through his neutral air prida version 8 Ike's near was a hot contention from one of the best in the game only challenged by the likes of palutena or gamer watch at a startup refer in 10 is not particularly effective at a shield but has an extremely long lasting hitbox covering all around him except for directly above regardless of whether you hit the strong or weak hitbox he would then be able to follow up into just about all of his Aerials for their backyard a bear or just another near his upper was also completely reworked no longer being a circular swing but just an overhead slash thus turning it into another generic up air like you see on every Fire Emblem character has Nightmare and brawl I was kind of against it at first but obviously it's a lot more practical possessing incredible vertical and even horizontal range while having immense kill power he stable confirmed for him early on was landing near Intel bear killing most people at around 80 to 90 percent it wasn't flashy but this gave hike some of the most straightforward yet potent mid-range pressure and punish game among the entire cast meanwhile his ground game would easily convert into his Aerials like Talent tilt or outright kills such as up till 4 tilt and dash attack this will further extend into his throws allowing down throw and uproar to Cabo into a Forward Air overall Ike's early popularity was a result of three things the first was how easy he was to pick up he was always a straightforward character just not very effective in relation to others until now with his new trailer he could effectively spam it in neutral and his generous hits done a lot into combo into any one of his other Aerials depending on where they were hit he had no trouble closing his stocks through his endless repertoire of 1-2 combos the second was the smash community initial perception of what was good at the start of ultimate many players were immediately drawn to characters with strong nails at a shield so many people hiked up palutena as the best character in the game purely from how broken her Nair was and I mean it was good it wouldn't be too hyperbolic to say that ninety percent of like Central game consisted of spamming Nair granted it wasn't the safest on Shield at -5 there were plenty of Aerials that were -3 or even -2 but when you paired that with how big the hitboxes not many characters could punish snare out of Shield due to range or lack thereof the third is an extension of the first and second The underdeveloped Meta we are now entering year five of Smash ultimate and the game isn't even a fraction of the way from being solved the consensus at the time was that Chrome and inkling were like the top two best characters in the game and Game and Watch was bad everyone mostly operated on a first impression basis that and you know they only have decent DLC fighter we had for the better part of 2019 was Joker piranha plant hero and banjo were written off as four fine characters interestingly Ike received a mini rework in version 8.0 forcing those to maintain to reconfigure their win conditions espec actually at higher percents to listen's over Reliance on near and help you to close a lot of his stocks he's neutrally regained a lot of knockback skin preventing you from True comboing into an admin percent since it will launch them too high to combo until appear past the 100 Mark in exchange however ether was given tremendous knockback skill in killing most below 100 if used near the ledge it's a very solid Shield option at a frame 15 startup but if it lands Ike basically has a forward smash out of Shield his forwarder also lost 8 frames event night so you could reliably use it as an edge guarding tool off stage on top of doing more damage finally danteel was given higher combo potential and dash attacking to way more KO pressure the Boston Nerfs were a divisive adverse on encounter bike means losing their patent to kill confirm but in retrospect it gave Ike players a bit more room for a Nuance gameplay thus allowing for more kill options and less predictable of a neutral game he was then buffed a little more in 13.0.1 mostly quality of life stuff to increase his already high kill power the strange thing is that Ike's representation has been in serious decline even though he was only ever buffed not really nerfed more of a head scratcher is that the cloud Ike is a fantastic response to characters that famously give players trouble Ness Game and Watch Sonic to some extent Olimar Pac-Man even Steve if not your main choice he should at least be a common secondary so what happened between then and now the first reason is one that he struggled with ever since sprawl Ike is straightforward to a fault other than Martin Lucina I would say he's the sortiest sortie that ever sorted as in he's the epitome of a sword fighter long range decent power linear game plan you've likely heard many people Express Claude and Lucina as fundy's characters where the measure of their success is determined by how good the player's knowledge of the game is Ike is also a Funny's character one might try to argue that his snare is so brainless to plays a game for you but that's not necessarily true he does have very good range and power but his Mobility is quite horrendous and his running data could be better now given the sorties are inherently more reliant on players being good at the game whichever offers more return on investment is obviously going to be the one players will go after sadly for Ike his traits are not unique only to him leading many to believe that with all due respect he kind of boring credit where credit is due many Pros consider my to your character and can definitely net results in the right hands but he's comparatively uninteresting the other sword fighters try to Market themselves through some kind of gimmick or personal trait shulk is the same premise of emphasizing mid-range combat but his various monado Arts allowing to instantly shift his momentum and pressure around to the situation Roy and crom trade a bit of range in exchange for far better speed and Frame data being able to rush down even close quarters combatants like Fox and Mario all without sacrificing too much kill power Cloud's range is almost on Paradise yet he has better speed Frame data access to a projectile more consistent out of Shield options and of course limit essentially compromising on Raw strength and may be combo potential for better utility and physics there's also Aegis specifically pyra who has the same exact power if not more than Ike with the ability to swap to one of the best characters in the game this might upset Ike players but in the eyes of those who are looking at all the sword fighters wondering who to pick up Ike just doesn't stand out he's strong yeah but we have Roy who is faster sephirotho is more range and pyra who has personal to Ego that everyone wishes never existed even Among The Not So Hard hitters such as Cloud Lucina and shulk each have more elements of utility that allow for more options to repeat Ike is a good character a great one at that but his whole niche of being the powerful sortie is not really a novelty anymore almost everyone has some way to kill you at 80 or less making his other problem stand out a lot more Ike is slow really slow which is weird not to get too nitpicky on how loyal smash character is to its source material but Ike is actually pretty dang fast in his home titles Path of Radiance and radiant Dawn if anything he should be as fast as Roy and Marth then again Robin and Corn's terrible Mobility doesn't really speak true to their home titles either but going back to ultimate speed and Frame data are valued way more than power because of one simple aspect lack of turns in a game like Pokemon speed and power are bounced around each Pokemon taking one turn say you have an Agron and you're fighting a weevile obviously the weevile will go first it's an incredibly fast Pokemon but Aggron has always promised an opportunity to strike back since Pokemon is a turn-based game so if he survives whatever Weaver throws out he can take his turn smash is not like that a fast character can take several turns before a slow character gets to and even then the former can use his superior mobility to either snuff out the lattice option or run away to avoid the hit that's been the most prominent issue for super Heavies dating all the way back to the concept's Inception I explore ground in air Mobility as well as lackluster Frame data somewhat defeats the purpose of his overwhelming power and range despite having Frame data you would only see on the likes of Bowser or k rool he's nowhere near as heavy as them he's actually lighter than Samus and Terry Two fighters are pretty damn good Frame data All Things Considered naturally this means he's not really the type of authority who wants to approach and prefers to go for a more spacing with Punisher into win condition which he's exceptionally proficient at against an opponent who isn't aware of his threat range and pressure eye cracks of damage arguably the best set of a sword fighter and again he has a ton of moves that whoop your ass below 100 but against an opponent who is aware of his pressure and or is equipped to what the means to deal with it the onus is then placed on Ike to approach or be more aggressive which he you can't really do as effectively as Cloud Roy Mitra or speedform shulk nor does he have a way to force approaches the way Robin does also before anyone says you can approach to a quick draw you're out of your mind if you think you can use that neutral in other words your only asset is your range and power except every sword he has ranged in power yes I cast more range and power but it's not that much more to where his peers can kill and you know we now have midmin and stuff rotted even more range see at the start of the video I brought up that one reason Ike was popular early on was the result of prevailing wisdom at the time valuing neutral air a lot more than they should have nowadays one aspect of the game among others of course that is highly sought after and high and top levels of play is the ability to alleviate pressure that is to say how good you are at getting your opponent off of you for example cloud and Nike are relatively similar when it comes to handling most matchups not the same but a lot of similarities the reason cloud is more popular is not only that he's faster and has a projectile and all that but he is better at her Shield options climaxer doesn't have anywhere near the same kill power as either but it's a far better get off me tool and swordies really need that Lucina and Martha have our frame one combo breaker in the form of aerial dolphin shulcus air slash and shield art stuff like that why they're at their best when fighting mid-range unless your name is Roy krom or Mithra even those three they would rather play at mid-range because it means they can hit you while you can hit them this extends to characters you wouldn't expect Game and Watch isn't classified as a sortie but he enjoys playing mid-range and is arguably the best get off me tool in the form of fire this is one area where playing Ike feels really uncomfortable he has no way of getting opponents away from him once they do get up close and personal that gets even more frustrating when you remember that Ike is a very exploitable recovery requiring him to have immaculous stage control and prevent being thrown off stage as often as possible once again and add a shield option or get off me tool would be really nice to have for someone who has to play like this the fastest option he has out of Shield is frame 13 or grab at frame 7. not fast enough to punish most landing Aerials in essence Ike sort of relies on his opponents being bad or careless to perform at his best making his performance at low and mid-level player really good possible at height here and underwhelming at top tier to repeat many players believe Ike is a mid-high tier or high tier character very respectable placement and without a doubt his best standing of the three Smash games he's been in so far unfortunately though he was a huge victim of circumstance in the brawl days his only other Saudi competition was smart and I guess Meta Knight now we have Roy crom Marth Lucina Cloud Robin corn shulk Hero by left midman yes I'm including midman sephiroth pyra Mithra Sora the competition is heavily saturated in the Saudi category everything he has someone else can do better or as something else in their moveset that makes them more consistent or more comfortable to play than him this might be a hot take but I feel like they made a mistake trying to illustrate him as a slow but powerful sortie yes he's buff especially in radiant on my God but sorties shouldn't be slow if they are slow they should have the necessary means to protect themselves what intrigues me however is the way he plays a very neutral focus with punish one two combo kanekai he's also very good at platform extension mid-range Focus he could do all that while being faster in exchange for Less power none of the other stories have a Nair that works the way his dust so they could act on that perhaps it would be too unfair for him to be any faster or mobile even if it meant losing strength since Authority with these u12 conversions might become broken but that's sort of the premise of light to begin with he does have any fancy DLC mechanic or projectiles or glass scanning properties he's just a regular guy he was the first main character in Fire Emblem to not be part of royalty or a position of power he was just an ordinary dude dramatically it makes sense to him to have a very ordinary kid but that's what I think they should have embraced I kept saying this throughout the video but Ike's moveset is perfectly fine if only they weren't trying to sell this Hulk and Balkan feel to it especially when there's other characters with just as much power as him but way better speed or utility maybe I'm not alone in this way of thinking so if you agree or disagree feel free to share your thoughts in the comments down below if they were gonna make Roy top tier after he was bad for two games Ike deserves the same treatment in my opinion anyways this can be it for today if you enjoyed the video please leave a like And subscribe I really appreciate it also don't forget to follow me on Twitter at bars swear I'm join my Discord server I'm trying to grow my smash Community some more and check out my other why no one plays episodes if you haven't yet but till next time thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music] foreign

Channel: Vars III

Views: 149,683

Keywords: smash, super smash bros, smash ultimate, super smash bros ultimate, vars smash bros, vars smash, smash bros ultimate, ssbu, ssbu ike, ssbu why no one plays, why no one plays ike, fire emblem ike, fire emblem heroes ike, ike, smash ultimate ike, ssbu ike montage, wnop ike, what happened to ike, ike smash ultimate, mkleo ike, ssbu ike combos, ssbu ike guide, ssbu ike gameplay, smash ike

Id: 0Kls34WtI9c

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 09 2022