Best tweak buff for Zard's bad projectile match ups...

[TheTTimeLives]

Everyone who regular plays Zard realizes that he struggles against projectile characters, namely Falco and Link. His size and floatiness make it hard for him to avoid many strong projectile games without playing in an overly linear and ineffective fashion.

But the largest difficulty that Zard faces in surmounting this issue is an aspect of the system rather than the balancing of the projectile characters themselves.

In Project M (and I dunno which other Smash games), if you are hit by a projectile you will be forced to face toward the projectile. Conceptually, this was probably intended to be a buff for those who have been hit by the projectile, allowing them to more immediately pursue the pressurer. But (at least in this game), there isn't any actual benefit to this occurring, as all forward moving options are available with no extra lag regardless of the direction you face.

IN FACT, this acts as a nerf to characters that use reverse facing aerials (like Zard's RAR Nair) to pressure and get in on difficult zoning. Because they are safely flipped to face the opponent when the projectile lands, reverse approach characters like Zard are forced to rely on linear shield/dodge tactics and less effective aerials. If Zard absolutely needs to turn back around, he must sacrifice his second jump to flip back around by mid-air jumping away as quickly as possible, also sacrificing valuable space and time against characters whose projectiles are most often very safe (Falco's laser, Link's boomerang, Ness's PK Fire...)

It's also worth mentioning that most characters who use reverse facing aerials to approach have forward aerials that are deliberately not designed as go-to approach options (Zard, DK...) and are further hurt by the system oversight relevant to their overall design.

So what do you guys think? Do you/Don't you think a change in this overall system mechanic would be valid?

 

[Heroofhatz]

Everyone who regular plays Zard realizes that he struggles against projectile characters, namely Falco and Link. His size and floatiness make it hard for him to avoid many strong projectile games without playing in an overly linear and ineffective fashion.

But the largest difficulty that Zard faces in surmounting this issue is an aspect of the system rather than the balancing of the projectile characters themselves.

In Project M (and I dunno which other Smash games), if you are hit by a projectile you will be forced to face toward the projectile. Conceptually, this was probably intended to be a buff for those who have been hit by the projectile, allowing them to more immediately pursue the pressurer. But (at least in this game), there isn't any actual benefit to this occurring, as all forward moving options are available with no extra lag regardless of the direction you face.

IN FACT, this acts as a nerf to characters that use reverse facing aerials (like Zard's RAR Nair) to pressure and get in on difficult zoning. Because they are safely flipped to face the opponent when the projectile lands, reverse approach characters like Zard are forced to rely on linear shield/dodge tactics and less effective aerials. If Zard absolutely needs to turn back around, he must sacrifice his second jump to flip back around by mid-air jumping away as quickly as possible, also sacrificing valuable space and time against characters whose projectiles are most often very safe (Falco's laser, Link's boomerang, Ness's PK Fire...)

It's also worth mentioning that most characters who use reverse facing aerials to approach have forward aerials that are deliberately not designed as go-to approach options (Zard, DK...) and are further hurt by the system oversight relevant to their overall design.

So what do you guys think? Do you/Don't you think a change in this overall system mechanic would be valid?

Yeah it's a neat idea, however, that doesn't change the fact that we have to deal with projectiles now. Zard has more than just RAR Nair to deal with projectiles, in fact, it's almost an non preferable method to deal with projectiles considering how long it takes to turn around (your point exactly). Jab will clank with pretty much any non transcendent projectile in the game, same with Ftilt. What it can all boil down to is that a lot of Zard mains need to learn power shielding, specially against falco, since there isn't any way to clank his laser. Dashing and blocking projectiles is also a very effective means of approach, since Zard's Dash is so fast, he can close a large distance in even a slight break in a projectile flood.

But let's also look how this system is useful. If a projectile flips you, then you have a really easy answer to a lot of projectiles and approaches, crouch cancel jab. Even if you're CC-ing, you get flipped, and if you have your Cstick set to "attack" instead of "smash" then you can jab using the Cstick while remaining fully crouched. And a 4 frame disjointed launcher is a fairly good counter to a lot of things. This way, even if I get crossed up, I can still use CC jab cause I get flipped around to face my opponent.

Thus, I don't think that they should change that mechanic, it helps with more things than it hurts I think.