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I've heard a comparison between me and fei long before, so that's rushdown/turtle. People like to say Marth can't rushdown, but Mr.E does his thing and he's pretty aggressive.
EDIT: From Wikipedia: "Zoning is a tactic in 2D fighters usually used at mid-range or far mid-range, the purpose of which is to out-prioritize your enemy's moves. The idea is to space yourself so that you are in a position to respond to or punish any entry angle or attack of your opponent's. Ideally, you can use certain pokes and attacks to beat your opponent's attacks, punish his advances or jumps, and hopefully shut down his offensive options, while landing hits. In attempting to zone, it is important to know the properties of your own attacks as well as the attacks of your opponent, in order to find the best move to use in countering your opponent's move. The ability to predict your opponent's next move, and having good reflexes to react to that move, are also important."
Also from Wikipedia: turtling- "The act of staying in a defensive stance for most or all of the match, only attacking when the opponent misses, or with a reversal move. Usually done when far ahead in the match and running low on time, to avoid unnecessary risk."
Ehhh guess my interpretations of the terms may be off.
"If ZSS didn't have flip kick she'd have a really hard time killing"
"Bouncing Fish is what makes Sheik broken"
"Luma and Limit aren't around often enough to be broken"
"Quick Attack is better than True Shoryuken, Flip Jump, Bouncing Fish, and Dragon Lunge"
"Cross Slash is on this list because of its non-limit form"
"Gravitational Pull is better than her Up Air because you can always use it"
"If ZSS didn't have flip kick she'd have a really hard time killing"
"Bouncing Fish is what makes Sheik broken"
"Luma and Limit aren't around often enough to be broken"
"Quick Attack is better than True Shoryuken, Flip Jump, Bouncing Fish, and Dragon Lunge"
"Cross Slash is on this list because of its non-limit form"
"Gravitational Pull is better than her Up Air because you can always use it"
"If ZSS didn't have flip kick she'd have a really hard time killing"
"Bouncing Fish is what makes Sheik broken"
"Luma and Limit aren't around often enough to be broken"
"Quick Attack is better than True Shoryuken, Flip Jump, Bouncing Fish, and Dragon Lunge"
"Cross Slash is on this list because of its non-limit form"
"Gravitational Pull is better than her Up Air because you can always use it"
From Wikipedia: "Zoning is a tactic in 2D fighters usually used at mid-range or far mid-range, the purpose of which is to out-prioritize your enemy's moves. The idea is to space yourself so that you are in a position to respond to or punish any entry angle or attack of your opponent's. Ideally, you can use certain pokes and attacks to beat your opponent's attacks, punish his advances or jumps, and hopefully shut down his offensive options, while landing hits. In attempting to zone, it is important to know the properties of your own attacks as well as the attacks of your opponent, in order to find the best move to use in countering your opponent's move. The ability to predict your opponent's next move, and having good reflexes to react to that move, are also important."
Um, you sure this is from Wikipedia? Wikipedia is supposed to use third person pronouns ("he", "she", "they") and not second person pronouns ("you", "yourself").
Zoning should always be "aggressive," like any playstyle that involves controlling space.
Too many people have the wrong idea of defensive play in general. Optimal defense play very rarely involves simply running away to the other side of the stage. When you are on defense, you want to have stage control. You want to have a lot of stage at your back, you want to limit your opponent's options.
Zoning means that you create a zone around you that the opponent can't enter.
If this zone is at center stage then good.
Trapping your opponent near the ledge is a good thing, because a single mistake is more likely to result in death for your opponent since he'll go flying toward the blastzone (just ask anyone who's ever been Villager Bowling Balled for rolling at the wrong time near the ledge).
The only thing you accomplish by going to the far end of the stage to "zone" your opponent is giving up the entire zone you were supposed to control.
There's no such thing as "passive" zoning. That's just bad zoning.
Couldn't she just be considered a zoning character? Keeping people away and controlling space with her normals and Kikoken? Or rushdown depending on how you'd play her... An aside: I still find it a bit funny how in KoF and SF, some characters who are Chinese, German, Thai, or whatever, still have Japanese-named moves. Unrelated to Smash, Chun-Li's like the pre-patch Sheik of Smash 4 where she's touted as this amazing character and while I don't follow SFV much, but she hasn't really won much from what I know, so... IGNORANCE.
The boxing style ideas just seems clearer. In-fighting and out-fighting are just simple terms. Rushdown and zoning tends to have some connotation and misconceptions in some communities. Now that I think about it, I really do think the problem isn't how we define them, but the fact there's so many categories that could just be sub-categories like "footsies" which I still consider a concept rather than a style.
If I were to categorize everyone, it would be something like this. Disclaimer: I'm not omniscient and there's 58 freaking characters. I'm not going to be able categorize everyone accurately like, "Hey, Lucario's definitely a *insert category here*!"
First off, asterisks, *, Falco's simple and I explained him already; by design a zoner, but in reality, a rushdown because of his nonexistent zoning. Lucina's in the middle since she can zone, but she can still sort of rushdown. This comes from her not having sour-spots, but because she doesn't have sweet-spots, her zoning isn't as scary as Marth's. Luigi's weird. You'd think in-fighting, right? Luigi actually zones better than Mario and it's mostly because his Fireballs have much lower recovery which makes zoning with his Fireballs less risky. Range is short, but if Luigi needs to challenge you at range with projectiles, he can more easily than Mario can.
Characters I was hesitant on putting: Bowser, Bowser Jr., Charizard, DK, Lucario, Mr. Game & Watch, Ness, Palutena, Pikachu, Samus, and ZSS. Do I want to explain why? Nope. Do I have to? Can you accurately place 58 characters in categories?
Anyway, if we add in sub-categories, then these would be aside the "main" in-fighter and out-fighter categories.
Slugger a.k.a. the heavyweights; probably the most pointless category... , , , ,
Has unique hair color; Miis obviously excluded. , , *
WFT's debatable since some say grey, others say it could be black, and then there are people who draw her as a brunette. Oh, and thank Lemmy for having green hair and making Palutena generic.
Uncategorized
Best smile
Still, I think we have better things to do than categorize characters into play styles...
Lucina's a zoner. Optimal Lucina basically plays identical to optimal Marth.
I'd also definitely place Corrin bait & punish sub category. That's literally her entire ground game. Mixup with grab / side B, and punish with either if they screw up.
Cloud's definitely an all-rounder. He can rush in mess your face up, but he still needs to space those normals, and will definitely hang back and zone if it suits him (ie: see Little Mac matchup)
Zoning should always be "aggressive," like any playstyle that involves controlling space.
Too many people have the wrong idea of defensive play in general. Optimal defense play very rarely involves simply running away to the other side of the stage. When you are on defense, you want to have stage control. You want to have a lot of stage at your back, you want to limit opponent's options are limited.
Zoning means that you create a zone around you that the opponent can't enter.
If this zone is at center stage then good.
Trapping your opponent near the ledge is a good thing, because a single mistake is more likely to result in death for your opponent since he'll go flying toward the blastzone (just ask anyone who's ever been Villager Bowling Balled for rolling at the wrong time near the ledge).
The only thing you accomplish by going to the far end of the stage to "zone" your opponent is giving up the entire zone you were supposed to control.
There's no such thing as "passive" zoning. That's just bad zoning.
Unless you have a laser/ fireball ala brawl falco, then you just need to avoid the corner and just force the opponent to come to you instead of visa versa.
On the topic of the Brazilian tier list, there's a lot of placements there that might seem weird at first glance but make more sense when you take a look at our meta.
Case in point, Dedede has a really strong player here and for some reason he's also a surprisingly popular pick, the best Dedede here even managed to win the biggest tournament in Rio so far.
Mewtwo on the other hand I don't think has any notable players around so he ended up significantly lower than one might expect.
Even if it's supposed to be a MU based tier list, results still have some influence in how we see a MU play out since we see a lot of people here for example claiming a MU can't be that bad for x character after said character manages to beat the bad MU in a single set, so we here seeing a Dedede getting 1st place in our majors end up affecting how we see the character and how his MUs play out.
Greninja being 14th probably has to do with stuff like the fact that seeing 2 Greninja in top 8 (hell in top 3 even) in major tournaments in my state used to be considered a common occurence until recently.
not true even tho smash is unique and it's fighters are hard to group sometimes. it isn't unique in that aspect. look at a game like soucalibur. nightmare and siegfried are zoners with massive swords. pepper characters in in anime games are zoners.
like wise you can be a rushdown character without combos.
looking at the Brazilian tier list a lot of people seem suprised at Mario on top. why? there's omay one character I can think of that a Mario might be athe sigfignat disadvantage (Miis brawler with hurricane kick) mostly because they both want that grab. mario gets damage the Miis just kills you.
it also has some interesting implications regarding bayo and corrin and that those characters in theory simply don't " cleanly beat" a lot of characters maybe ryu as well.
I was thinking more about my previous statement about Falco not quite fitting into those 3 categories listed before, and also about Ffamran
and his statement about Falco not excelling at anything. That's not exactly true, is it? One could argue that he's lacking in a number of categories, namely a poor run speed and a pretty bad projectile, but there's one area where he's among the best in the game: vertical movement.
While we think of Smash Bros as a platform fighter, I think it's not unusual to still prioritize the horizontal. When we think of good air movement, we think of characters like Jigglypuff or Mario who can traverse horizontal space more easily. When we think of approaches, it's more often forward movement. But Smash also has a vertical component, and Falco has some of the best ups (and downs) in the game.
His first jump can reach the top platform of Battlefield, AND he's among the fastest fallers. Ideally, he should be a character that uses platforms to his advantage to navigate the stage against the opponent until he can get in range and use his strong, footsies-based normals in conjunction with a very good walk speed. I can picture a very good Falco essentially zigzagging towards his opponent going through platforms at various heights, changing up jump height, etc. to mix things up.
What might really hurt Falco is actually the legal stage list itself. Aside from Battlefield and Dreamland, none of the stages are terribly platform-heavy in terms of vertical movement. Town & City is on occasion, but most of the time isn't. Smashville has a single platform that anyone can reach. Lylat Cruise's platforms are pretty low. FD is FD. Duck Hunt has the tree I guess? The legal stages aren't exactly built to allow Falco to showcase those ups all around.
Compare those stages with some of the illegal ones, like Gaur Plains or Wrecking Crew (or Tomodachi Life on the 3DS), stages that are more vertical than horizontal. I think those are the places where Falco's movement specs are meant to shine (no pun intended).
Unrelated question: a couple pages back I posted some optimal banana punishes for non-diddy characters. Do you think that if people started labbing, practicing, and making banana punishes more of an integral part of diddy counterplay (in the same way that killing luma has become an essential aspect of the Rosaluma matchup), Diddy would perhaps drop in viability and some of his matchups would become worse?
I always thought Doc vs Diddy wasnt scary for Doc at all. If Doc optimally uses the banana he get huge punishes off of it. Oh and imo Dr.Tornado great against Diddy offstage.
But I could see that if people went out and labbed anti banana stuff his viability wouldnt drop, but his MUs might get a lil worse
Out of curiosity, what makes you keep saying Falco is a zoner by design? Just having a laser doesn't make you a zoner, even if the laser was good. When you compare Falco to Duck Hunt, Olimar, and Mii Gunner there's a very clear difference. Or perhaps my definition of a zoner is too specific. If you have really good melee range like Marth or Charizard you could still be considered a zoner, but Falco doesn't have that either.
So what makes you think that was his intended design?
And yes, we do definitely have better things to do then categorize characters. It doesn't matter if X thinks Charizard is rushdown and Y thinks Charizard is a zoner and Z thinks he is a grappler. That literally doesn't have anything to do with tier lists and is really pretty subjective in many cases. (Not all cases.)
Rushdown, in-fighter characters tend to have, but not all of these traits: good close-range pressure tools, good jump-in aerials, and good not necessarily fast (horizontal) mobility. Falco doesn't really have any of that; his best close-range pressure tools are Ftilt and Dtilt where Ftilt is unsafe on-hit until mid-percents and Dtilt is limited to grounded opponents, his aerials are more of air-to-air and ground-to-air and none of them have good horizontal range e.g. his Bair has the same range as Fox's Bair and you have to keep in mind Fox is much shorter than Falco and both (Dr.) Mario and Luigi's Bairs have more range as theirs -- Captain Falcon's Bair has about the same range as the Mario Bros. His Bair itself isn't built for spacing like Fox or Wolf's are; lower active frames, shorter range, and being tuned purely for offensive specializes Falco's Bair for one task: hit hard and hit fast. And his mobility is polarized to having good vertical mobility at the expense of horizontal. That being said, he has good burst mobility from his 1.9 dash, but his sustained mobility is low at a 1.472 run speed.
Zoners, out-fighter characters on the other hand tend to have good spacing tools whether it's through good pokes or good projectiles leading to a strong ability to control where their opponent is and have good tools to combat approaches. Falco leans more towards this; Ftilt and Dtilt are good pokes because of their long-range -- jab would be too if it weren't dysfunctional --, Reflector is, while risky on-whiff, is a long-ranged poke with transcendent priority; Falco has jab, Utilt, angled up Ftilt, Up Smash, Side Smash, Reflector, and Blaster if it wasn't terrible for anti-airing, and if you land away from him for whatever reason, Dtilt serves to punish poor approaches and if he wants, meeting air-to-air with Falco isn't a good idea when he has access to one of the fastest and strongest Bairs, a fast Nair with high active frames, and Fair which is slightly disjointed and has high active frames to suck you in like a weird bird tornado. Also, Nair has a property where it will send you flying wherever Falco faces, so with his good pokes, and considering that his Blaster is kind of supposed to be a run of the mill projectile, it's implied Falco can control where his opponent is.
From the way I see it, Falco has that one half of zoning: the close-range half of when people commit and try to answer to you keeping them away. It's the classic half that you would see in Guile and Ryu in Street Fighter. The other half, which is also pretty classic, the projectile game, the long-range control and keep your opponent where you want them, isn't there.
The other reason why I see Falco as a zoner, an out-fighter is because of the changes between Melee and Brawl. Melee Falco would be the boxer-puncher or the all-arounder. He was basically a slower Fox with a much better projectile. Melee Fox being purely rushdown is because his projectile is unorthodox as it does no hit stun. It had very little startup and recovery, but because it couldn't do hit stun, Fox couldn't guarantee it would be safe at all ranges. Falco could even though it was through set knockback. At worst, Falco was average in horizontal mobility, but he boasted the second highest walk speed at 1.4, 0.1 below the run speed average, and had a 1.9 dash speed, the same as Melee Fox's. He could rushdown and his pressure tool was one of the most broken ones in all fighting games: Blaster. A projectile that had little to no recovery, could be fired continuously at a rapid rate whether stationary or by auto-canceling it, had basically infinite range, and was transcendent, so it ignored all other hitboxes and only went after hurtboxes. You could not stop his lasers by firing another projectile. You only had avoid them, block them, and getting hit as your options against his lasers. His Blaster allowed him to keep you wherever he wanted and that would extend to the entire stage's length and because of its low recovery through auto-canceling it, Falco could immediately follow his laser, follow a hitbox, and make you have to deal with his laser and him. His other pressure tools included jab, Ftilt, Dtilt, and Reflector. Add in his aerials; Nair, Fair, Bair, and Dair could be used to shield pressure, Nair, Bair, and Dair were all cross-ups. Then you have to figure something else, those same moves were also good for poking and stuffing out approaches plus moves like Utilt, Up Smash, and Side Smash for anti-airing. Falco pretty much had it all and the only thing holding him back was his recovery (moves). If Falco had a good recovery, like Melee Pikachu-level recovery, didn't have a stupid sour-spot on his Uair, and for kicks, but not insane kicks, was about Ness's weight, had Marth's run speed, and Melee Link's air speed, Falco would undoubtedly be the best character in Melee bar none. There's a reason why out of all the characters in Smash, Melee Falco is the only, as of this posting, to be not the best character, but has no losing, not even slightly losing, matchups.
Anyway, done with my boot-licking of Melee Falco, Brawl's change in mechanics, his Nair and Fair being changed to be more of air-to-air aerials as they don't hit low like his old ones did and Dair's smaller hitbox meant he only had Bair for a jump-in and cross-up, Reflector's change from a weird shield pressure and ultimate hit confirm to a poke, and some other things pushed Falco from an all-arounder or well, zoner who could effectively rushdown to a more of a zoner who could rushdown at times, but mostly zoned. Brawl Falco was more about controlling and keeping his opponent where he wanted since he no longer had access to his old pressure tools and setups which frankly, wouldn't be effective at all because of hit stun changes, hit stun canceling, and some other reasons -- reasons why Captain Falcon while a decent character, struggled hard because of the mechanic changes. In a way, there wasn't incentive for Brawl Falco to rushdown. The other part of this is that Wolf sort of seemed like he was made to be the all-arounder which if Falco was too would be a bit weird since they would be similar. Wolf could zone with his Blaster, Fair, and infamously, Bair, but he could also go in with his incredible air speed and good jump-in aerials to pressure. So, Fox stayed as a rushdown, Falco was made to be a zoner, and Wolf was the all-arounder.
So, in a way, I see it as the developers saying: "We don't want Falco to do everything and be a bit too much like Fox or just a slower, but stronger Fox who does Fox things plus some Falco things", or even, "We don't want that monster to come back again." Anyway, it would be something like: "We want Falco to do Falco things like how everyone else, for example, Ike, does Ike-only things." That worked in Brawl, but to an infuriating and terrifying degree almost like a callback to how Falco in Melee worked in also, an infuriating, but more terrifying degree. In Smash 4, that didn't work. If anything, it backfired and leading to Falco ironically doing Fox or rather, everyone else / non-Falco things in Smash 4.
I've heard a comparison between me and fei long before, so that's rushdown/turtle. People like to say Marth can't rushdown, but Mr.E does his thing and he's pretty aggressive.
EDIT: From Wikipedia: "Zoning is a tactic in 2D fighters usually used at mid-range or far mid-range, the purpose of which is to out-prioritize your enemy's moves. The idea is to space yourself so that you are in a position to respond to or punish any entry angle or attack of your opponent's. Ideally, you can use certain pokes and attacks to beat your opponent's attacks, punish his advances or jumps, and hopefully shut down his offensive options, while landing hits. In attempting to zone, it is important to know the properties of your own attacks as well as the attacks of your opponent, in order to find the best move to use in countering your opponent's move. The ability to predict your opponent's next move, and having good reflexes to react to that move, are also important."
Also from Wikipedia: turtling- "The act of staying in a defensive stance for most or all of the match, only attacking when the opponent misses, or with a reversal move. Usually done when far ahead in the match and running low on time, to avoid unnecessary risk."
Ehhh guess my interpretations of the terms may be off.
People who use weapons generally won't be fighting at close-range. Unless they're using stuff like knives, knuckledusters, or very short-ranged weapons, they're likely going to keep you at range whether that's from the hilt of their sword to the tip, the length of their staff, or the range of their whip. The only problem is that most fighting games don't really have both hand-to-hand and weapon combat thrown together and if they do it's kind of rare like KoF only has Billy Kane, Whip, and Loveheart in KoF XIV, Street Fighter has Rolento, and Tekken has Yoshimitsu. Sometimes, weapons are just a stylistic choice like I'm pretty sure Oswald's cards are just considered normal attacks like Kyo, Iori, and Terry's or Marvel vs. Capcom in a nutshell. In the opposite case, Soul Calibur is all about weapons with very few characters who only use hand-to-hand combat or lean towards it more like Yun-Seong.
Smash has it different where both hand-to-hand and weapon-based combat coexist together and aren't just for stylistic reason. In Smash's case and although it's been answered already, yeah, zoning doesn't have to involve a projectile. Zoning can be done with weapons, but they're going to have shorter range. Projectile zoning for the most part covers long- to mid-range and sometimes even short-range depending on the projectile like Yoshi's Egg Toss has low enough startup and enough knockback that if he hits you at close-range, it will be safe unlike say, Diddy's Peanut Popgun which might not be as safe. Weapons would be like mid- to short-range and again, it's dependent on the moves like Roy's Sword of the Seals as dull as it is for whatever reason at the tip can do mid-range, but its power is concentrated at short-range or Meta Knight and the Pits being fast enough that short-range works for them, but ideally, mid-range might be better.
And like other people said, you can zone aggressively or defensively. I kind of mentioned that in my wall of text, well, I said I didn't want to say zoning was defensive and that it was more of a cautious play style where you want to keep and control space. Reason is because for whatever reason, zoning is associated with camping despite one of the most beloved characters, Marth, being a zoner and an aggressive one at that, especially in Melee, but also in Brawl and Smash 4.
Bringing up turtling... It would be the opposite of rushdown, but using the boxing styles, it wouldn't be the exact opposite of in-fighting. In-fighting would be going in and pressuring hard which you could do defensively. The opposite to in-fighting would be out-fighting where you don't go in and keep and control space between your opponent and which you could also do aggressively. Turtling also wouldn't really be like out-fighting either. Turtling would kind of be more like counterpunching which would be like punishing. From what I'm getting, Ganondorf would be the quintessential turtle which is ironic considering that 2 other turtles, Bowser and Bowser Jr., exist and they're not really turtlers. Ganondorf tends to not try to commit to anything and focuses more on capitalizing on your mistakes. He watches for openings; he doesn't create them. He doesn't attack, but counters. That being said, he is an in-fighter since he wants to be in and pressure you until you crack. He can probably fight as an out-fighter, but because he's much slower than the rest of the cast, he could constantly lose range while being in a safe zone. Weird dilemma, right?
I was thinking more about my previous statement about Falco not quite fitting into those 3 categories listed before, and also about Ffamran
and his statement about Falco not excelling at anything. That's not exactly true, is it? One could argue that he's lacking in a number of categories, namely a poor run speed and a pretty bad projectile, but there's one area where he's among the best in the game: vertical movement.
While we think of Smash Bros as a platform fighter, I think it's not unusual to still prioritize the horizontal. When we think of good air movement, we think of characters like Jigglypuff or Mario who can traverse horizontal space more easily. When we think of approaches, it's more often forward movement. But Smash also has a vertical component, and Falco has some of the best ups (and downs) in the game.
His first jump can reach the top platform of Battlefield, AND he's among the fastest fallers. Ideally, he should be a character that uses platforms to his advantage to navigate the stage against the opponent until he can get in range and use his strong, footsies-based normals in conjunction with a very good walk speed. I can picture a very good Falco essentially zigzagging towards his opponent going through platforms at various heights, changing up jump height, etc. to mix things up.
What might really hurt Falco is actually the legal stage list itself. Aside from Battlefield and Dreamland, none of the stages are terribly platform-heavy in terms of vertical movement. Town & City is on occasion, but most of the time isn't. Smashville has a single platform that anyone can reach. Lylat Cruise's platforms are pretty low. FD is FD. Duck Hunt has the tree I guess? The legal stages aren't exactly built to allow Falco to showcase those ups all around.
Compare those stages with some of the illegal ones, like Gaur Plains or Wrecking Crew (or Tomodachi Life on the 3DS), stages that are more vertical than horizontal. I think those are the places where Falco's movement specs are meant to shine (no pun intended).
What about Greninja, Luigi, Rosalina, and ZSS? Or Shulk and customs / Lightweight Palutena? They rival or even beat Falco's vertical mobility while also, except for Luigi in the air, beating his horizontal movement, air or ground.
My belief in Falco not excelling at anything is that he doesn't excel in meaningful areas. Falco does excel and has access to things no other character has. Falco is among the few characters who can and will regularly use his projectile as a combo finisher almost like something you would see in games like The King of Fighters or Street Fighter. This is mostly because his moves send people away from him far enough that he can tag them. Other characters can do this, but sometimes it's not regular or as safe like Samus can use Charge Shot as a combo finisher, but not regularly, or Ryu can always confirm his Hadouken like in Street Fighter, but maybe because of how its knockback is tuned and how Smash deals with hit stun and knockback, it's not safe to do so. Falco's combo style is also something other characters don't have. Others usually work through guaranteed confirms or setups that you'll see them often. Falco can do that, but he can also do whatever the hell he wants and make them work; unlike most characters, Falco can make "ghetto" setups work without being discouraged from doing so or without much of a problem. He's also flexible and versatile even if he's not good at everything he does or can do; we're talking about a character who can function with a forced play style and a character who can work with random setups.
All of that, do add character to Falco and are things he excels at or can do other characters can't or don't do as well. The only problem is they're not the major things like Fox excelling at pressuring or Marth excelling at controlling and keeping space. They're half of Falco's game-plan, the close-range aspect that needs to be tied to a zoning aspect or even rushdown despite the problem that it could make with Falco "imposing" on Fox's rushdown. It could work, it could be a rushdown style Smash doesn't have like Falco could have access to a ton of blockstrings, but that could be terrible for everyone. Imagine a character who does not give a damn about your shields in a game where everyone does. If everyone had blockstrings, then whatever, but they don't. Well, Ryu does, but it's kind of not like in Street Fighter. Just imagining Falco be like, jab 1, jab 2, Ftilt, Ftilt, Ftilt, jab 1, Dtilt, and Side Smash all in quick succession and everyone would be like, "Welp... That's a thing."
Zoning should always be "aggressive," like any playstyle that involves controlling space.
Too many people have the wrong idea of defensive play in general. Optimal defense play very rarely involves simply running away to the other side of the stage. When you are on defense, you want to have stage control. You want to have a lot of stage at your back, you want to limit your opponent's options.
Zoning means that you create a zone around you that the opponent can't enter.
If this zone is at center stage then good.
Trapping your opponent near the ledge is a good thing, because a single mistake is more likely to result in death for your opponent since he'll go flying toward the blastzone (just ask anyone who's ever been Villager Bowling Balled for rolling at the wrong time near the ledge).
The only thing you accomplish by going to the far end of the stage to "zone" your opponent is giving up the entire zone you were supposed to control.
There's no such thing as "passive" zoning. That's just bad zoning.
I agree with most of this except the last line. "Passive" zoning simply means not directly engaging the opponent and this can be a great strategy. Any time a character retreating pivot grabs/Ftilts it's making the opponent's spacing reach too far and setting up a punish. When Ganon or anyone SHs over the opponent and Dairs rather than directly attacking it's passive. Things like Pac Man's fire hydrant and Link bomb planting are passive projectile zoning for better walling. Sometimes retreating SH Fair (Mii Gunner/villager or Zair makes the attack nonpunishable while forcing a defensive action from the opponent.
The important thing is to not give away your advantage while zoning.
At a guess, it was the first signal we got from developers that they were serious about that sort of thing. If that infinite had existed in Brawl everyone would have said "deal with it" because there was no other option, and IIRC between the infinite being discovered and getting patched out, there were also people saying to just deal with it, ZSS is good anyway, Robin is bad anyway, etc., then SURPRISE, HAVE A PATCH. It was kind of an important moment.
I was thinking more about my previous statement about Falco not quite fitting into those 3 categories listed before, and also about Ffamran
and his statement about Falco not excelling at anything. That's not exactly true, is it? One could argue that he's lacking in a number of categories, namely a poor run speed and a pretty bad projectile, but there's one area where he's among the best in the game: vertical movement.
While we think of Smash Bros as a platform fighter, I think it's not unusual to still prioritize the horizontal. When we think of good air movement, we think of characters like Jigglypuff or Mario who can traverse horizontal space more easily. When we think of approaches, it's more often forward movement. But Smash also has a vertical component, and Falco has some of the best ups (and downs) in the game.
His first jump can reach the top platform of Battlefield, AND he's among the fastest fallers. Ideally, he should be a character that uses platforms to his advantage to navigate the stage against the opponent until he can get in range and use his strong, footsies-based normals in conjunction with a very good walk speed. I can picture a very good Falco essentially zigzagging towards his opponent going through platforms at various heights, changing up jump height, etc. to mix things up.
What might really hurt Falco is actually the legal stage list itself. Aside from Battlefield and Dreamland, none of the stages are terribly platform-heavy in terms of vertical movement. Town & City is on occasion, but most of the time isn't. Smashville has a single platform that anyone can reach. Lylat Cruise's platforms are pretty low. FD is FD. Duck Hunt has the tree I guess? The legal stages aren't exactly built to allow Falco to showcase those ups all around.
Compare those stages with some of the illegal ones, like Gaur Plains or Wrecking Crew (or Tomodachi Life on the 3DS), stages that are more vertical than horizontal. I think those are the places where Falco's movement specs are meant to shine (no pun intended).
Without Diddys dtilt he would not be Top5 imo. If he did not have one of the easiest kill confirms in the game with that high damage output, he would be a far worse character.
Definitely check this out if you're interested in seeing Corrin, Mewtwo, Ryu and Bayonetta gameplay. Or heck, watch it because Nairo's a pretty funny dude in general.
Best thing about Diddy: his banana sends like 4-6 characters flying straight up the tier list if they pick it up. I'm 100% convinced that Fox, ZSS, Yoshi and Pikachu are the best characters in the game with that peel.
Upon looking at Kurogane's Hammer, I realized you can act out of it faster than Ganondorf's up smash, Roy's Flare Blade, and MK's Fsmash? Three moves that are known for being baits because they're virtually unpunishable...?
At a guess, it was the first signal we got from developers that they were serious about that sort of thing. If that infinite had existed in Brawl everyone would have said "deal with it" because there was no other option, and IIRC between the infinite being discovered and getting patched out, there were also people saying to just deal with it, ZSS is good anyway, Robin is bad anyway, etc., then SURPRISE, HAVE A PATCH. It was kind of an important moment.
I guess that's a valid counter argument but that's not what the list is about in terms of content it shouldn't be here and how were people ok with Wario nonsense? lol that's just the obviously not how that's supposed to work.
but overall the patched have had a similar theme: remove outliers. outliers on lag cancels, outliers in rewards for grabs, outliers in combo ability.
besides you know the one time Namco broke the game lol.
Upon looking at Kurogane's Hammer, I realized you can act out of it faster than Ganondorf's up smash, Roy's Flare Blade, and MK's Fsmash? Three moves that are known for being baits because they're virtually unpunishable...?
I had to double check this because it sounded crazy based on anecdotal experience. It looks like you're comparing the FAF instead of the endlag (FAF - last active frame). Mario's usmash may have a lower FAF than any of those moves, but it has noticeably more endlag (28 frames) compared to Ganondorf's usmash (19 frames), Roy's Flare Blade (19 frames), and MK's fsmash (18 frames), so it's much easier to punish.
Upon looking at Kurogane's Hammer, I realized you can act out of it faster than Ganondorf's up smash, Roy's Flare Blade, and MK's Fsmash? Three moves that are known for being baits because they're virtually unpunishable...?
I believe this is guaranteed if Mario has enough rage due to increased hitstun. I believe the first 5 hits of the dair has set knockback so the opponent's damage won't affect air-dodging.
Best thing about Diddy: his banana sends like 4-6 characters flying straight up the tier list if they pick it up. I'm 100% convinced that Fox, ZSS, Yoshi and Pikachu are the best characters in the game with that peel.
I had to double check this because it sounded crazy based on anecdotal experience. It looks like you're comparing the FAF instead of the endlag (FAF - last active frame). Mario's usmash may have a lower FAF than any of those moves, but it has noticeably more endlag (28 frames) compared to Ganondorf's usmash (19 frames), Roy's Flare Blade (19 frames), and MK's fsmash (18 frames), so it's much easier to punish.
I also want to nominate Rosalina as a character that doesn't get much out of holding a banana, or any other item for that matter. It prevents her from making Luma do anything not tied to a special move. Best she can do is zdrop aerial + regrab shenanigans, but it still locks her out of jab spacing. Unless Diddy is at a % where Banana > smash can kill, I don't think it's worth trying to do much with it.
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