Ep. 5: A Blast From The Past And An Unexpected Appearance

In this episode we take a look at two very unique tournaments that happened recently, with High Rez giving us a look back into the early meta of Smash Ultimate, and Patchwork giving us some very unexpected counter picks from both players in Grand Finals.

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Hey everyone. Welcome back to the fifth episode of Upset Factor. I'm your host Lukas, and today we have a bit of a nostalgic episode ahead of us. We're gonna be talking about two different tournaments today, the first tournament we're gonna be talking about is High Rez, this was a regional level tournament that happened a couple weeks ago. And, this tournament had some pretty unexpected results with quid taking the win over players like Dabuz, Lui$, Jakal, and a few other players and we're also gonna be talking about Patchwork, and if you've already watched Patchwork, you probably know why I'm gonna be talking about this tournament. There were some pretty unexpected counter picks from Lingling in his match against MuteAce, and I think the sets between those two players were very interesting. So those are the sets that we're gonna be focusing on today and without further ado, let's just get into the tournaments. So getting into the tournaments, the first one we're gonna be talking about is High Rez, and I'm gonna do things a little bit differently for this tournament. The reason I wanted to talk about High Rez isn't because there were specific sets that I thought were interesting, it was more so because there's been a lot of conversation around the current meta of Ultimate and how it's changed compared to when the game came out and as I was watching the sets that happened at High Rez, it really felt like it was a window into the past because other than Dabuz on Min Min, all of the characters that were being played were characters that were in the base Vanilla Smash Ultimate before any DLC came out. And as the DLC has come out in Ultimate, especially Fighter Pass two, the meta has shifted to revolve around the characters that were released with those DLC patches. As generally with the D L C in Ultimate, the characters that are released have gimmicks that are a lot more unique compared to the vanilla cast of the game. And this makes it so that the characters are either very, very broken and become the best characters in the game, or are just a gimmicky character and they don't get too much serious play, but in the case of especially fighter Pass two, the gimmicks that came with these characters, skyrocketed them to the top of the meta with characters like Steve and Kazuya being mainstay characters in today's Ultimate Meta and all of the other characters that have risen to the top have been characters that have been able to combat these characters a lot more efficiently than the rest of the cast. And this is why we've started to see characters like Cloud, for instance, become more popular. Because while cloud was thought to be a character that wasn't really worth putting time into when the game came out. As time has gone on, people have realized that he didn't fall quite as much compared to how he was in Smash four. And he also has a very good matchup against Steve. With him being able to negate a lot of. The tools that Steve has that makes him so powerful and make it so hard to interrupt his game plan. And so getting back into high rez while the characters we saw weren't uncommon by any means. they're still characters that really dominated the early game and have slowly dwindled in popularity as time has gone on with only a few players playing them. And the players that do play them are the ones that have just stuck with them since the game came out. And so I think this has been really cool because a lot of people have been a bit bored of the meta lately as a character like Steve or a character like Kazuya they both have a very specific game plan and because it just feels so unfair a lot of the time when you're playing against them with Kazuya just having zero to death combos that can kill super early, or Steve being able to camp you out for the entire game as he mines and then once he does mine, just throwing out endless anvils and mine carts that kill way too early and combo you until you die. It was a bit refreshing to see this tournament where characters that maybe people thought were overpowered,, when the game came out, are now the characters that people consider honest characters or characters with no cheese factor that you really just have to rely on your game sense and your skill on the character to win and so getting into the one set that I did want to talk about from this tournament, I think a character that really fits this definition the most that was very popular in early Ultimate was Pokemon Trainer and. If you watched this tournament, you'll know that Quid was the one that won this tournament. And he is a player that has mained Pokemon trainer since he really had his rise to the spotlight and specifically he is very proficient with Ivysaur. And personally I think Pokemon Trainer is a really cool character. They were the character that I mained for a very long time when the game came out. And, , I personally think that. This character is a character that just flows so well. Squirtle feels like his combos some of the time. It honestly feels like they just combo for you. All of his moves go into each other and while he doesn't have very much kill power, all you need to do is press down B and then you have Ivysaur out who has his up air that kills insanely early, his Up smash, that is the most powerful Up smash in the game. he has really good zoning tools to just eek out a bit more percent and slow the game down if you're having trouble with Squirtle, he has everything that you need to combat the weaknesses that squirtle has. And then , if you're just not able to squeeze out that kill with Ivysaur, you're really just struggling a little bit, you then can just switch to Charizard who has all of his moves that do insane damage he's a heavyweight so he can survive when you need him to and with his back air, his flare blitz, his up smash and honestly so many of his moves, his forward air, his up throw. He has so many moves that can seal off the kill, and then you can just switch back to squirtle and rinse and repeat. And so this was a character at the start of the game. That really popped off because it wasn't too hard to learn each of the characters, even though you are learning three characters. And if you were able to learn their intricacies and really get everything going the way that you're supposed to when you're playing this character, they can really do a lot. However, as the game has progressed they've sort of fallen off from the meta and. Personally, I'm not really sure why this is. They have a pretty good matchup against Steve. I think they have a pretty good matchup against Kazuya and while, I do think they have a hard time against sword characters. At least when I play them, I am definitely not. An authority on the Pokemon Trainer matchup chart. But when I play them, at least I have a hard time against Sword Characters and with characters like Pyra and Mythra, kind of taking the place of this character switch. Archetype, I can see why they've sort of fallen off. But I personally still think they're like at least a top 20, maybe top 10, depending who you ask character. And so getting to see them in this grand finals was very cool to see. Now the coolest thing about a character like this to me is because they've been around so long and players that have stuck with them have had so much time to figure out every little detail about the character. Compared to characters that came out later in the game, like Steve or Kazuya or Pyra and Mythra , since they've had so much time on these characters, they can really bring out every little strength of the character. And it makes for a very exciting set because watching quid, especially on Ivysaur, but the other two characters too, watching the things that he was able to do for this set was so entertaining because you don't often see characters like this brought up to the insane level that he was bringing them up to. And it was a huge breath of fresh air, at least for me, because after seeing so many. Top eights of Pyra and Mythra vs. Steve, or Kazuya vs Pyra and Mythra, or Joker versus Steve seeing this set between a Palutena and a Pokemon trainer was, honestly, you might laugh if you haven't watched the competitive scene since the game came out. But it was honestly a bit of a rare sight because these characters are just not as popular as they used to be. And so I hope to see more from characters like this moving. Into the tournaments that will be coming up. And I think even though characters like Steve and Kazuya and Pyra and Mythra and Joker are so centralizing as people start to learn how to play against them more and more, I think we're gonna see a rise again in characters that are just fundamentally sound, and they're going to. Really focus on just counter play and using the strengths of the characters that they play to their advantage even more so than they are now. And I think it'll be a lot easier to play against characters like Steve and Kazuya and it's gonna be harder when those players go against characters that aren't quite as common. And we've already seen that a little bit. When looking at Pokemon Trainer specifically as, People I think are starting to realize that this character still has what it takes in the current meta as, especially DDee has been, very vocal about this character having a good Steve matchup. And I think it's only a matter of time before more people start to pick up on these characters that have sort of faded away, but that could still be powerful in today's meta. Now moving on to patchwork, this tournament was exciting for a whole different reason. And while the sets that I'm gonna talk about are also sets that are focused on mostly characters from pre dlc, the reason I'm talking about this tournament is because of the set between MuteAce and Lingling. If you don't know these players, we've talked about MuteAce before. MuteAce is a peach player that has really popped off in the last couple years of Ultimate, Peach really dropped off , during the online era just because of how complex they are and playing online with a character like that, it's always gonna be difficult. But as we've came back, Into the offline era post quarantine MuteAce has really started to gain ground with Peach. I think a lot of people should be watching out for MuteAce and it feels weird to say he's an up and coming player because he's definitely not, he's been around for a very long time. People know who MuteAce is, but with Peach really getting explored again, I think it's been really cool to see what Peach players have been able to do. And Lingling who I didn't really know too much before this tournament is another Peach player who has had a hard time in the peach. Ditto. And because of this, this made him bring out quite the strange counter pick in the two sets that these two players played at Patchwork. And that counter pick was Dedede. If you follow Ultimate at all, you will know that Dedede is often touted as being one of the worst characters in the game honestly, probably bottom five out of like 90 characters or however many characters there are in this game. And so I think everyone that was watching was pretty shocked to see this character come out against MuteAce and I think the main reason for this , counter Pick was because while this is a strange pick. It kind of makes sense because Peach is such an intricate character that relies on a lot of setups and a lot of combos. And when you're playing a character like Dedede that is so heavy, it makes it so that you have to be executing all of those combos so much longer until you can seal off kills. And Dedede has such powerful moves that. While Peach is struggling, doing hundreds of inputs just to get a measly 40% on Dedede, Dedede can just throw out a few moves and get you to the same percent, and then also kill you way earlier because with Dedede, they're oftentimes living till like 170% before you can get the kill. And peach is so much lighter than that, and so it makes it quite an uphill battle right from the start against Dedede, even though peach is generally considered the better character. And what Dedede also has that I think MuteAce struggled a lot against in their winner's final set was Dedede's crazy ledge trap game. Dedede has so many tools at the ledge, that it just makes it so difficult to get back to stage and with Peach being a character that struggles against those tools at the ledge. It was, honestly, it felt like Dedede was looking like a high tier in this matchup because MuteAce was just not able to do anything in these first few games. And this ended up making it so that Lingling actually won against MuteAce who is a player that he loses against a lot, at least in this winner's final set. After winner's finals was over, MuteAce did end up coming back in grand finals to play against Lingling again. And it was looking like it might be a bit of a struggle for him as. He isn't really known for having a lot of counter pick characters at least from what I know, he always sticks to Peach no matter what. And so for the first few games, that is what we saw. And he was doing a bit better against the Dedede, he was able to get two wins in the first set of grand finals, but Lingling still kept up and was able to get his second win in game four, which I think made MuteAce a bit scared as, I mean, I wouldn't blame him if his hands were just getting tired after all this, as he does often talk about having hand pain just because of the sheer complexity of peaches combos, and so this brought out another counter pick, but this time coming from MuteAce and this was pretty surprising, but MuteAce actually brought out Palutena and I think this was a pretty good pick because Palutena is a lot more simple compared to Peach. They have a lot of tools that can work very well against Dedede. You're able to hit Dedede's projectiles back with Palutena's back air very easily because of its invincibility, and you're also able to get around his ledge trap since you can just teleport to the stage with Palutena's recovery. And so, While it was a bit weird to see this counter pick come out so late in the set, being in game five. It did work out in MuteAce's favor with him getting the win, bringing them to the grand finals reset, and this started a bit of a counter pick war between the two players, which was very entertaining to see with the first game, still being Palutena versus Dedede, maybe with Lingling, thinking that it was a bit of a fluke , with MuteAce getting this win, but MuteAce was able to clutch it out, getting the win again with Palutena And this prompted Lingling to switch to Peach, who has a winning match up against Palutena and Is Ling Ling's, main which would give him a bit of an advantage in this game. And then as the game progressed, Lingling was able to get the win, which then prompted MuteAce again to switch to Peach. And because of the way character picks work, you have to lock into your character first if you're the one that won the game. And so this makes it so that , there's this big back and forth between the two players that really shakes up the set. And so even though Lingling counter picked Dedede so that he didn't have to play in this peach ditto that he wasn't very confident in against MuteAce now because of the way character picks work, he was forced into this Ditto, which gave MuteAce the win in this game. However, now MuteAce was stuck on Peach and Lingling was able to go back to Dedede, hoping to use his counter pick again. But after playing against the character so many times, MuteAce was able to figure out a game plan that worked and he was able to take the game netting him the grand finals win at Patchwork. So I think this was a really exciting set. I would highly recommend watching it. Both of these tournaments, I think were a huge breath of fresh air. From High Rez being a tournament that really focused on these characters that were super prominent when the game came out, but have now fallen off. And now with Patchwork being a tournament that has brought out the Palutena from MuteAce which no one knew he had, and the Dedede from Lingling, which is a character that I personally don't think I've ever seen at the top level. And there's probably a Dedede somewhere that, is making moves with the character, but seeing it at this high of a level Was definitely a sight to see. And so if you're an ultimate fan and you're looking for some sets that are pretty unique compared to the Steves the Kazuyas and the Pyra and Mythra's that we've been seeing lately, I would highly recommend watching both of the tournaments that I talked about in this episode because I think you'll really enjoy the sets that we got to see. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Upset Factor. We'll be back next week with an episode, and in that episode we're gonna be talking about GOML the major in Toronto. And I'm actually gonna be attending this tournament I'm gonna be competing, not that I'm expecting to win, but I'm gonna try my best and I'm hoping to see a lot of the sets live and I'll maybe even get an opportunity to talk to some of the players about some of the sets they play, so that's gonna be a really exciting episode and I hope you will tune back in for that . Hopefully you'll have a good week and I'll see you next time.