Air Dodge: THE problem with Brawl (aside from tripping)?

[Quillion]

The floatiness and slowness are stuff that I see being complaints against Brawl, but in my opinion, it's totally incidental. I thought that it could make an awesome aerial game, but for one problem:

The AIR DODGE.

Note: I will leave Wavedashing out of this discussion.

The main problem with the air dodge is that it completely destroys the aerial game. You can do it as many times as you like in the air, there's very little lag if you spam, and you can air dodge out of tumbling. The only one who can reliably intercept air dodges is Meta Knight thanks to him being the only reliably comboing character in Brawl.

So maybe it wasn't the floatiness after all; it was the air dodge that broke the game?

 

[Ganreizu]

I think the shield was a bigger problem, since it was basically always the best option especially if you power shield consistently.

 

[Quillion]

Perfect blocking is really strict, though. Air dodging is broken in almost every situation.

 

[DeLux]

Multiple characters can frame trap air dodges to set up option select punishes in various ways that aren't MK...

 

[Quillion]

@ DeLux

How would you do that?

 

[Dragoomba]

Nah, it wasn't just the air-dodges.

To be honest, air-dodging really wouldn't be that much of a problem if there were just a decent amount of hitstun, without the ability to cancel the hitstun animation.

There were many, many other (and more problematic) issues with Brawl that have been repeated time and time again. Floatiness, lack of hitstun, insane defensive options, etc.

 

[DeLux]

uhhh, you throw out an aerial that's shorter in frame data than air dodge, and then hit them with another aerial when they are out of air dodge? ICs uair > ICs Bair comes to mind as an example.

Alternatively, you can SH aerial to bait the air dodge closer to the ground and then follow up with a grounded option. Marth Uair > to Whatever on the ground comes to mind.

I only give one example per, but nearly every characters has some variation of these basic options.

 

[PKBeam]

You can also use a move with a lingering/multiple hitbox(es) or jump at them to try and bait an airdodge if you can't frame trap them.

A very unsafe move if you're being knocked up by a ZSS and you try to airdodge the incoming Uair.

 

[Praxis]

The floatiness and slowness are stuff that I see being complaints against Brawl, but in my opinion, it's totally incidental. I thought that it could make an awesome aerial game, but for one problem:

The AIR DODGE.

Note: I will leave Wavedashing out of this discussion.

The main problem with the air dodge is that it completely destroys the aerial game. You can do it as many times as you like in the air, there's very little lag if you spam, and you can air dodge out of tumbling. The only one who can reliably intercept air dodges is Meta Knight thanks to him being the only reliably comboing character in Brawl.

So maybe it wasn't the floatiness after all; it was the air dodge that broke the game?

The problem with the air dodge was that you could do it out of hitstun and tumble. If you couldn't use it out of either, the game would have had combos.

 

[Player-1]

Brawl had the best air dodging mechanic out of all smash games

 

[Quillion]

Brawl had the best air dodging mechanic out of all smash games

I personally prefer the Brawl air dodge over Melee's since Melee's is only good for wave dashing.

But even though they retained it for 4, there's no more hitstun cancel and air dodging near the ground produces landing lag, which destroys the brokeness of a short-hop air dodge.

 

[Djent]

Poor frame advantages for most attacks, busted spot-dodges, and tripping were all worse. Airdodges out of hitstun only come in after all of these factors IMO, because unlike the others their impact could be mitigated through good juggle traps.

 

[Lukingordex]

Persons that spams air dodges are punished badly if the player is decent.

 

[Player-1]

I personally prefer the Brawl air dodge over Melee's since Melee's is only good for wave dashing.

But even though they retained it for 4, there's no more hitstun cancel and air dodging near the ground produces landing lag, which destroys the brokeness of a short-hop air dodge.

brokeness of short hop air dodge? You mean a generally bad option for most of the high tier characters and the only saving grace for low tier characters for an approach? Okay.

 

[Quillion]

Poor frame advantages for most attacks, busted spot-dodges, and tripping were all worse. Airdodges out of hitstun only come in after all of these factors IMO, because unlike the others their impact could be mitigated through good juggle traps.

That's exactly the point, though. The air dodge was the final nail in the coffin that shallows the meta. Removing wavedashing is one thing, but destroying the aerial game (particularly when Sakurai allegedly intended for Brawl to be more aerial), is utterly baffling.

 

[Lukingordex]

I believe you're having a hard time against lvl 9 CPUs

 

[Quillion]

I believe you're having a hard time against lvl 9 CPUs

No, just Luigi.

Apparently, his AI has the ability to have an uncancelable hitstun, but I've never looked into this beyond anecdotal evidence.

 

[Tocaraca2]

Nope. There never was anything wrong with air dodging, there is nothing wrong with air dodging and there never will be anything wrong with air dodging.

 

[TurboLink]

Poor frame advantages for most attacks, busted spot-dodges, and tripping were all worse. Airdodges out of hitstun only come in after all of these factors IMO, because unlike the others their impact could be mitigated through good juggle traps.

What was wrong with spot-dodges?

 

[Djent]

What was wrong with spot-dodges?

Incredibly fast start-up and cool down. The best of them last 22 frames with frames 2-20 invincible IIRC. That's flat-out absurd.

 

[Tocaraca2]

Who cares, Smash 4 is out now. Air dodging was nerfed.