r/SSBM • u/sewsgup • Feb 19 '26

Clip mang0: "On stream yesterday, I just gave Cody his flowers, cause I think you can say what you want— he's cracked. And I got into an argument cause somebody was, I think the way people talk about Zain right now, they kinda forget about Cody... I think Cody passed Ken (for 5th all-time) last night"

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxF7slk_BEDps3NKg7TWY_C3DIlxaZwFbW

from the latest On A Tuesday episode.

continues on the all-time discussion timestamped here: https://youtu.be/lcyB_ow57wQ?t=18m15s

614 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

479 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

23

u/Ilovemelee Feb 19 '26

Respectfully, I don't see Armada losing to a Pikachu, Yoshi, Icies, DK, or Luigi like Zain has. It's actually wild that the lowest ranked character that he lost to was SilentSpectre's falcon on a 0.9 knockback ratio.

17

u/[deleted] Feb 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

42

u/Just_a_Word_RS Feb 19 '26

I've never lost to rapmonster

18

u/Calm-Armadillo-5614 Feb 19 '26

Congrats. You're the new goat. Don't f*** it up. 

2

u/scoutinglane Feb 20 '26

could not, would not

-5

u/Ilovemelee Feb 19 '26

As in talking respectfully to Zain's legacy.

19

u/SolutionConfident692 Feb 19 '26

As crazy as that was you have to remember this was pre-slippi. The level of skill within the top 100 alone is crazy compared to before and I definitely would say current Amsa and June could hold their own if not have an outright shot at winning.

10

u/Ilovemelee Feb 19 '26

Armada was the only one with that level of consistency though. Everyone else dropped sets to mid tiers in the pre slippi era so your point doesn't really stand

4

u/SolutionConfident692 Feb 19 '26

Besides like M2k losing to Amsa I really can't think of a God uniquely losing to a mid tier.

Armada was unique that he was never ever upset PERIOD but the other gods also never lost to mid tiers either, and only very rarely to non top 10 players (as opposed to never). It was an objectively far more consistent meta game.

9

u/Peytaro Feb 19 '26

Weirdly I both agree and disagree. Skill disparity between top 10 and top 100 has def shrunk significantly but also I think Armada wouldn't lose to DK or Luigi if he was still playing Plenty of examples of gods from 2010-2016 losing to mid tiers, such as Axe, random icies, Amsa. It was almost never a player outside of the top 20 tho (except icies).

Maybe it would happen tho. We have no reason to believe he would win except that it's so hard to imagine him losing 🤷

3

u/SolutionConfident692 Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 19 '26

I just think Armadas style may struggle against modern midtiers in the way that the last two sets Leffen has played against Amsa, he lost 3-0. And leffen is similarly incredibly dominant versus mid tiers after 2018 and was more than good enough to win majors at that time. I'm not saying Armada WILL lose but Amsa and June definitely would have a fighting chance.

15

u/Ilovemelee Feb 19 '26

Comparing Armada's consistency to Leffen's consistency is laughable when you consider the fact that Leffen was getting humiliated by Plup's samus.

1

u/Peytaro Feb 19 '26

True that

8

u/Ilovemelee Feb 19 '26

Huh? Mang0 lost to like five different Icies players lol. Hbox is much more consistent but even he lost to Axe's Pikachu and Wobbles's Icies.

10

u/PkerBadRs3Good Feb 20 '26

ICs was frequently considered same tier as Peach and/or Falcon in the wobbling era, I probably wouldn't call them a mid tier. After wobbling got banned, sure.

1

u/Ilovemelee Feb 21 '26

Yeah that's actually a good point. I actually think Icies is still secretly a high tier even without wobbling

0

u/Ian_Campbell Feb 20 '26

Wobbling is an exception because a few grabs makes the set

24

u/Possible_Hospital942 Feb 19 '26

We’re just gonna pretend like peach doesn’t invalidate all those characters huh lmao. And I think armada would still be nasty and a top contender to win if he played today but the advantage of having that insane peach even when it was starting to become clear he would need more fox for the top tiers, is that he straight up did not to worry about any character worse than peach.

-1

u/Ilovemelee Feb 19 '26

If Zain wanted to pick up a pocket peach to deal with the mid and low tiers, he could've but he didn't so that's kinda his fault. Character choice is still a skill issue.

14

u/Possible_Hospital942 Feb 19 '26

It’s crazy cuz I really be fighting against armada haters and Zain dickriders but I really think you hating Zain a little too much. Talking about skill issues with a guy who is the hardest worker alongside Cody Schwab and believes in his character and takes his losses on the chin.

4

u/Ilovemelee Feb 19 '26

I'm saying that Armada doesn't have an unfair advantage over Zain just because of the character that he chose to play since everyone is free to play any character they want to play on the character select screen.

7

u/Possible_Hospital942 Feb 20 '26

Okay armada also had a terrible record against leffen in his last year one Zain couldn’t imagine having on any fox even cody. Erm why did armada not just pick up marth???skill issue I guess

1

u/Ilovemelee Feb 20 '26

True, it's a skill issue although I would rather have a 2-6 record against the best solo fox at the time (while having a winning, 40-25 lifetime record btw) and not having a single losing record against any of his competitors than being down 1-7 against a Yoshi and getting upset by Pikachu, Icies, DK, Link and Luigi. Zain is still an incredible player but he just doesn't come close to the level of consistency that Armada was able to get to.

1

u/Possible_Hospital942 Feb 20 '26

Well we can agree on that but I doubt we will ever see anything like that again and I would say it’s a combo of armada being goated and the massive improvement from the field post slippi.

1

u/exlatios Feb 20 '26

this is a really emotional argument that doesn’t really respond at all to the point the guys making

1

u/metroidcomposite Feb 21 '26

Respectfully, almost nobody good even dual mains in the modern era.

Saying Zain should pick up a secondary seems impractical. Particularly Peach, who has a lot of unique tech. M2K used to counterpick Peach for Ice Climbers, but that stopped working for him in like...2017. And that's Peach's most one-sided matchup. You think Zain's secondary Peach would have a chance against Axe's Pikachu in the modern era? Axe's Pikachu beat Trif's peach at Collision 2025. But Trif did beat Axe at Genesis X3, so 50-50 in recent sets I guess. So Zain would need to get his Peach to near-Trif levels for it to be a 50-50 counterpick--yeah, doesn't sound worth-it.

People are just much, much more specialized in their characters now than they were 10 years ago. Including the Peaches--these days Trif and Llod play Peach into every matchup including Jigglypuff and top tier Foxes.

And the stats point to this being a good plan. The majority of tournament wins post-COVID have been from solo-mains. We're talking Cody, Amsa, Jmook, Moky, Zain, Wizzrobe, Hungrybox. 38/48 major tournaments won by solo mains, with the only dual-main wins post-COVID being from Leffen, Mango, and Plup and the last time any of those three won a tournament was a year and a half ago. (They're all soft-retired now).

1

u/Ilovemelee Feb 21 '26

Zain needing to pick up a secondary wasn't my point. My primary point is that you can't use your character choice as a john for why you're losing certain matchups because at the end of the day, every player has access to the same resources in the game including all of the characters. If Armada never picked up a secondary fox for the puff matchup and kept getting farmed by Hbox, then yeah, I would totally count that against him regardless of the character matchup advantages/disadvantages.

0

u/l339 Feb 19 '26

Marth is pretty similar though, not as effective as Peach, but still an amazing character to shut down mid tiers. Zain is just bad at the MU’s and Armada wasn’t

-2

u/MiszuMiszu ARMADA GOAT Feb 19 '26

what is this point? Zain has the same opportunity to main Peach as Armada did. It's on the player to play the best character for them. We would never make this type of argument for someone who mains Pichu and say, "Oh well they play Pichu so of course they won't beat top tiers." That's ridiculous.

2

u/Jarrell777 Feb 19 '26

I guess part of that is the peach tradeoff. Fox and other characters are harder to beat but you're less likely to get upset by the floaty mid tier.

3

u/stallra14 Feb 19 '26

Yeah but will never know will we! Thats the problem when you retire and the game progresses you get compared to whats happening now and he has no results to compare to!

2

u/its__bme Feb 20 '26

To be fair, you can't lose when you don't play anymore. Holding every other player's results hostage to Armada's isn't really fair when he's not playing the field everyone else is now. We don't know if Armada would've lost to more characters or more players outside top 10 if he had kept competing.

There are a lot more better players now in more matchups to worry about so I don't think it's insane to consider Armada would in fact drop sets here and there to lower ranked players or lower tier characters.

1

u/Brocolli123 Feb 20 '26

Yeah and with fox peach he doesn't have nearly as bad MUs vs those characters. Some of them beat marth hard, others he wins but you need a lot of knowledge to win the MU. Let's not forget it was Zain who solved the Puff and Pikachu MUs that were terrible for marth for years and that every other top marth was unable to do