Character Competitive Impressions

[Budget Player Cadet_]

people freaking out about the infinite thing when it involves pikachu losing his best special move upb1, I'm pretty sure 80% of the pikachu mains won't even touch this because upb1 is way too good to sacrifice it for an infinite combo

This.

When I saw that video, my first thought was, "Oh boy, another stupid gimmick nobody will use, is difficult to execute or setup, and which will never see tournament play, yet everyone and their dog will ***** and moan about because it's customs". Because that's what this is - a stupid, borderline useless gimmick. Any Pikachu who would give up upB1 for this is nuts. I can almost see someone using Thunder Wave, because that custom actually isn't bad, but this is stupidly hard to land, and without UpB2 (again, nobody will do that because upB2 is ass), it's percent dependent, doesn't do much damage, and is generally not that devastating.

 

[webbedspace]

Mii Brawler is stupid discuss.....

Top Secret Anti-Brawler Strat: don't go to Smashville or Town and City on game 1.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

This.

When I saw that video, my first thought was, "Oh boy, another stupid gimmick nobody will use, is difficult to execute or setup, and which will never see tournament play, yet everyone and their dog will ***** and moan about because it's customs". Because that's what this is - a stupid, borderline useless gimmick. Any Pikachu who would give up upB1 for this is nuts. I can almost see someone using Thunder Wave, because that custom actually isn't bad, but this is stupidly hard to land, and without UpB2 (again, nobody will do that because upB2 is ***), it's percent dependent, doesn't do much damage, and is generally not that devastating.

Sure, this infinite requires selecting one distinctly sub-optimal custom, another trade-off custom, and then using that trade-off custom in a way that's pure suicide if your opponent has a functional shield button, but then again, most of the country banned the stage Wuhu Island on the basis of an obscure glitch that has essentially zero relevance to competitive play and that further is no longer even mechanically possible in the game with the latest patch. I'm coming to understand that imaginary balance problems are a lot more insidious than real balance problems; real balance problems quickly make themselves clear since people actually do the associated stuff and win tournaments or at least do very well in them in obnoxious ways whereas imaginary balance problems survive in the public mythos for a long time. For a related example, consider that I still hear almost every day about how broken ledge stalling custom Villager is despite the fact that it has been clearly demonstrated to be a generally ineffective tactic if used against an educated opponent (that is, it can ONLY work with surprise factor which is why ADHD doing it the very first time was the very best performance it has ever had). If it were a semi-decent tactic, everyone would know the limitations as people would try to do it and would lose for various reasons. As an awful tactic, no one tries it since the percentage of educated players is high enough that even making it out of pools with ledgestalling Villager at any major would be impossible, but enough players are not educated about how to counter it that the myth that it works just survives.

I'm not really convinced this is an infinite in the first place not because of any flaw in the mechanical theory behind it (it's sound) but just because of this community's repeatedly poor track record in documenting how combos actually work. This was plainly done against an inert opponent; they did better than most in showing that mashing doesn't matter, but they didn't explore the critical topics of DI and SDI. I'm sure we all remember Link's "infinite" that wasn't actually an infinite since you could just SDI out after 4-5 jabs which actually resulted in fairly modest damage with the real point of the whole set-up being that Link could hit confirm into his smash attacks. I do worry that hysteria about this not real infinite was a contributing factor into Link basically being patched out of the game (the patch removed, by far, the best thing about Link as a character)... That's not to say this is decisively not real, but there has not yet been enough evidence presented for us to conclude it's definitely an infinite.

Of course, the broader point is that even if it turns out to be real (which is plausible), our current best intuition suggests this combo is not powerful and will likely come up exceptionally rarely if at all. My fear is that as an imaginary balance problem it will be a lot more powerful than it could be as a real balance problem. If it were a real balance problem, we'd have ample tournament evidence of it being dangerous, could quickly analyze what makes it tick, and could easily issue some concise ban to address the issue since we can probably agree that we're all better off without Ice Climbers as a speed character existing. If it is an imaginary problem, it can create a lot more hysteria. We need more effective avenues to dissipate hysteria over imaginary balance problems; I used to be a believer in "if you think it's broken, go out and win enough tournaments with it to prove your point" but clearly most people are not inclined to remain calm until such tournament winning happens. The evidence also suggests that imaginary problems will quickly disseminate from smashboards postings and youtube videos but responses that rigorously analyze the situations to prove there is no problem do not tend to go nearly as viral. When stuff like this infinite comes up as, at best, a very vague possibility of a balance problem that needs substantial additional time and exploration, how should we be responding to this for the health of the game?

 

[Asdioh]

in other words, people whine too much about things that aren't actually as good as they seem. When I watched the first few seconds of that Pikachu video I thought it looked broken as heck, then I realized he had to take a worse upB and an arguably worse b... and it doesn't start working until 40% or higher, requires risky setup and precise execution. Not a problem!

Is Link's jab cancel into kill moves gone now, is that what you were talking about AA? that's awful, and presumably because of an "infinite" I've never seen actually happen, but apparently Nintendo has.

 

[Pyr]

in other words, people whine too much about things that aren't actually as good as they seem. When I watched the first few seconds of that Pikachu video I thought it looked broken as heck, then I realized he had to take a worse upB and an arguably worse b... and it doesn't start working until 40% or higher, requires risky setup and precise execution. Not a problem!

Is Link's jab cancel into kill moves gone now, is that what you were talking about AA? that's awful, and presumably because of an "infinite" I've never seen actually happen, but apparently Nintendo has.

Don't think I'll ever get used to the kneejerk reactions. Hundreds of messages across many different mediums all saying that this makes Pika number 1 and it's broken on the level of Akuma in SF2 and all this jazz. What happened to the mentality of, "I'm going to do this to see!" over trying to gut something without any understanding of that thing?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Sure, this infinite requires selecting one distinctly sub-optimal custom, another trade-off custom, and then using that trade-off custom in a way that's pure suicide if your opponent has a functional shield button, but then again, most of the country banned the stage Wuhu Island on the basis of an obscure glitch that has essentially zero relevance to competitive play and that further is no longer even mechanically possible in the game with the latest patch. I'm coming to understand that imaginary balance problems are a lot more insidious than real balance problems; real balance problems quickly make themselves clear since people actually do the associated stuff and win tournaments or at least do very well in them in obnoxious ways whereas imaginary balance problems survive in the public mythos for a long time. For a related example, consider that I still hear almost every day about how broken ledge stalling custom Villager is despite the fact that it has been clearly demonstrated to be a generally ineffective tactic if used against an educated opponent (that is, it can ONLY work with surprise factor which is why ADHD doing it the very first time was the very best performance it has ever had). If it were a semi-decent tactic, everyone would know the limitations as people would try to do it and would lose for various reasons. As an awful tactic, no one tries it since the percentage of educated players is high enough that even making it out of pools with ledgestalling Villager at any major would be impossible, but enough players are not educated about how to counter it that the myth that it works just survives.

I'm not really convinced this is an infinite in the first place not because of any flaw in the mechanical theory behind it (it's sound) but just because of this community's repeatedly poor track record in documenting how combos actually work. This was plainly done against an inert opponent; they did better than most in showing that mashing doesn't matter, but they didn't explore the critical topics of DI and SDI. I'm sure we all remember Link's "infinite" that wasn't actually an infinite since you could just SDI out after 4-5 jabs which actually resulted in fairly modest damage with the real point of the whole set-up being that Link could hit confirm into his smash attacks. I do worry that hysteria about this not real infinite was a contributing factor into Link basically being patched out of the game (the patch removed, by far, the best thing about Link as a character)... That's not to say this is decisively not real, but there has not yet been enough evidence presented for us to conclude it's definitely an infinite.

Of course, the broader point is that even if it turns out to be real (which is plausible), our current best intuition suggests this combo is not powerful and will likely come up exceptionally rarely if at all. My fear is that as an imaginary balance problem it will be a lot more powerful than it could be as a real balance problem. If it were a real balance problem, we'd have ample tournament evidence of it being dangerous, could quickly analyze what makes it tick, and could easily issue some concise ban to address the issue since we can probably agree that we're all better off without Ice Climbers as a speed character existing. If it is an imaginary problem, it can create a lot more hysteria. We need more effective avenues to dissipate hysteria over imaginary balance problems; I used to be a believer in "if you think it's broken, go out and win enough tournaments with it to prove your point" but clearly most people are not inclined to remain calm until such tournament winning happens. The evidence also suggests that imaginary problems will quickly disseminate from smashboards postings and youtube videos but responses that rigorously analyze the situations to prove there is no problem do not tend to go nearly as viral. When stuff like this infinite comes up as, at best, a very vague possibility of a balance problem that needs substantial additional time and exploration, how should we be responding to this for the health of the game?

Thank you for this post. No, seriously, this is really needed. Now if only there was a way to glue everyone saying "PIKACHU IS BROKEN!!!1" to their seats and have this read to them on repeat until they either get the bloody point? Or a migraine?

 

[Afrobean]

Is Link's jab cancel into kill moves gone now, is that what you were talking about AA? that's awful, and presumably because of an "infinite" I've never seen actually happen, but apparently Nintendo has.

Nintendo didn't fix that because it was broken. They fixed it because it was unintended. That's all. If it was just the infinite combo, that's all that would have been removed. Instead, they fixed the jab cancel altogether, because that unintended tactic was actually what they didn't like.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

From what I've experienced so far, I think the Diddy nerf is being underestimated.

Diddy kills like 30-40% later than he used to, and he also doesn't rack up damage as well as he used to (to the tune of about 15% overall I'd say). Basically Diddy has to work for about an extra 50% on each stock compared to what he used to. That also allows his opponents to spend much more time in rage mode than they ever did before. The down-throw nerf is also pretty big (especially for my character, who used to receive guaranteed Hoo-Hah KOs at certain %s, but not any longer).

The people acting as if this patch hits Diddy a little bit really aren't seeing it. Diddy got way worse. The only reason he's still a pretty good character is because he was broken before the patch.

Diddy is still diddy it just takes him a bit longer to kill. When he uses the other up B that's not an issue.

Top Secret Anti-Brawler Strat: don't go to Smashville or Town and City on game 1.

Wish I would've known that played 2 mii brawlers yesterday and both times we started on SV and the second one I played I cp town and city....needless to day it didn't work too well for me. I know too little about that character and got exposed to how much utter nonsense he is.

 

[the king of murder]

Nintendo didn't fix that because it was broken. They fixed it because it was unintended. That's all. If it was just the infinite combo, that's all that would have been removed. Instead, they fixed the jab cancel altogether, because that unintended tactic was actually what they didn't like.

If that is the case than why does Fox still has his stupid double Jab combo? Considering he can get a kill confirm out of it is just..urghs. If anything they should have removed Jab Cancels in general than(according to your explanation).

Also how is Sonic's little B-throw nerf so significant? He still gets stupid reward out of grab and B-throw still kills at stupid percent. He still racks up damage like crazy. They really should have nerfed him more like less general knockback on his moves so he can easily rack up damage but he has to actually work for his kills.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

I thought it was strange that people were mentioning Sheik's ledge trump B-Air as a reliable KO move when people should never be getting ledge trumped due to a buffered ledge action making it impossible to get trumped.

That's actually my biggest gripe with the new patch; what I wanted most of all was for ledge trumping to actually exist. :/

 

[LiteralGrill]

Something I'm not seeing people talk about with Pikachu's infinite, how does it work combined with Heavy Skull Bash? Could that make kills happen a LOT quicker without even the need for the different up b? Hmm...

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Also, GA had its first significant Customs On tournament yesterday. Let me reiterate this: Wario's customs rule. Rose-Scented Waft simply doesn't miss (and hits people below the ledge, and is still affected a decent bit by Rage so it can KO in a pinch even without common stage spike situations), and Speeding Bike makes it incredibly easy to avoid confrontation, even more than usual.

Still waiting for us to ban Duck Hunt. Those platforms are completely unacceptable against a character as lame as Wario, and in most other matchups it mostly acts the same as an extra Final Destination. I'm having a hard time seeing what it adds to the stage list other than extra time spent banning stuff and annoyance that a completely flat stage is so prevalent to deal with.

 

[Firefoxx]

Something I'm not seeing people talk about with Pikachu's infinite, how does it work combined with Heavy Skull Bash? Could that make kills happen a LOT quicker without even the need for the different up b? Hmm...

The set-up seems difficult without Meteor Quick Attack since it requires landing a raw Thunder Wave with some pretty proper spacing. But the theory (and HSB's silly knockback) would support this being a good way to land early HSB KOs.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Pikachu can land really easy footstools from U-Tilt and U-Air, which are primary spacing and combo tools for him to begin with. This would likely make the Thunder Wave string fairly trivial to set up (assuming he has another move to properly lock them post-footstool, like Meteor Quick Attack). Also as has been mentioned earlier, Heavy Skull Bash prevents the need for the footstool stuff at higher percents, since it murders anyone at 70% near the ledge.

Welcome to the new Pikachu bread-and-butter combo, compliments of Custom Moves.

 

[Asdioh]

I thought it was strange that people were mentioning Sheik's ledge trump B-Air as a reliable KO move when people should never be getting ledge trumped due to a buffered ledge action making it impossible to get trumped.

That's actually my biggest gripe with the new patch; what I wanted most of all was for ledge trumping to actually exist. :/

But that would take away from the mixups! In its current state, I think Smash 4 has by far the most brilliant ledge mechanics of any Smash game. If your opponent knows you'll try to trump, yeah they buffer a ledge action. If you know they know you'll try to trump, you have an easy time punishing their buffered ledge action, since the timings for buffered ledge actions will always be the same (instant), and you'll just have to guess which one they chose.

If your opponent's afraid you'll punish a buffered ledge action, they'll wait. If you know they're afraid you'll punish a buffered ledge action, you trump. etc. etc., I really like this mechanic If ledge trumping simply became guaranteed, then it would just hurt the characters with worse recoveries, and would make ledgeplay overall far less interesting.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

But that would take away from the mixups! In its current state, I think Smash 4 has by far the most brilliant ledge mechanics of any Smash game. If your opponent knows you'll try to trump, yeah they buffer a ledge action. If you know they know you'll try to trump, you have an easy time punishing their buffered ledge action, since the timings for buffered ledge actions will always be the same (instant), and you'll just have to guess which one they chose.

If your opponent's afraid you'll punish a buffered ledge action, they'll wait. If you know they're afraid you'll punish a buffered ledge action, you trump. etc. etc., I really like this mechanic If ledge trumping simply became guaranteed, then it would just hurt the characters with worse recoveries, and would make ledgeplay overall far less interesting.

I definitely disagree. I'd probably think more highly of the current state of things if the invincibility of Ledge Climb and Ledge Jump weren't significantly increased (2 frames of vulnerability? Really?), but in a lot of situations it creates a guessing game where the ledgeguarder stands to get punished hard for attempting to punish the ledge option, so people are often forced to do very safe options even on hard reads. There isn't much room for "forcing them to buffer a ledge option" because it's fairly trivial to react to an opponent when they are at what is otherwise optimal spacing for punishing ledge options.

The characters with better edgeguard games also happen to generally have great tools after a Ledge Jump for going back to neutral or punishing an aggressive opponent, so the current state of things generally benefits characters who don't need any more help getting back to the stage. Characters like Ike or Ganondorf cannot reasonably edgeguard, so they're forced to try and cover ledge options, but they rarely have the frame data to make that a safe endeavor when it's highly likely they'll whiff or get powershielded, then get punished really hard. Ledge trumping tends to benefit these characters more hit-for-hit than, say, Sheik, since their follow-up is much more of a stock-ending thwomp. You could argue that the slow characters still have that property in potentially landing strong moves on a read of the opponent's ledge option, but that's way riskier, considering the weak characters can throw -> aerial x3 offstage against someone like Ike for a quick and painful death regardless of percent.

People are almost never forced to grab the ledge; the mix-up was supposed to be "am I grabbing the ledge or am I holding Down to go past it?" This is sub-optimal now because you're always better off taking the guessing game with crazy invincibility frames and multiple options that take significantly different lengths of time.

 

[Asdioh]

In that case, I'd rather have them nerf ledgestand, rather than changing the trumping mechanic. I don't think ledge jump is that strong though? I know that I constantly (constantly) get hit out of that one. I also heard that if you have at least 100% damage, you have more vulnerability on ledgestand... but it's 5 months into the game and I'm still not sure if that's a thing, because it's not obvious like it was in past games.

I could be biased towards the current trump system because Kirby has amazing tools for covering ledge options.

And my favorite part about trumping isn't even trump->aerial, it's trump -> go back on stage -> wait for them to regrab the ledge (with no invincibility) or go above the ledge. It's easy to cover both options, and I think that's true for most characters.

 

[Iron Kraken]

Diddy is still diddy it just takes him a bit longer to kill. When he uses the other up B that's not an issue.

"A bit" longer to kill is underselling it. Given the fact that he does 15% less damage, his primary kill moves kill 30-40% later, and the fact that he can no longer Hoo-Hah kill the same way, means that it takes him like 75% longer to close out each stock than it did before. That's not what I would consider "a bit."

Also, Diddy's custom Up+B is a nice kill move, but it's also a horrible recovery move. I honestly don't even think the trade is worth it if Diddy is playing against a character with good gimping tools.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

In that case, I'd rather have them nerf ledgestand, rather than changing the trumping mechanic. I don't think ledge jump is that strong though? I know that I constantly (constantly) get hit out of that one. I also heard that if you have at least 100% damage, you have more vulnerability on ledgestand... but it's 5 months into the game and I'm still not sure if that's a thing, because it's not obvious like it was in past games.

I could be biased towards the current trump system because Kirby has amazing tools for covering ledge options.

In my mind, the guaranteed ledge trump was a chance for characters like Ike to finally make people terrified of coming back to the stage; I imagine it would do a lot for their viability, allowing them to edgeguard in their own way instead of keeping them more-or-less barred from it in many important matchups.

In my (fairly extensive) experience and testing, I've seen no difference in ledge option invincibility; the only difference is that the invincibility experienced when just hanging from the ledge is a lower amount based on percents. At 0%, you have up to about 60 frames of invincibility, whereas at 150% you have something closer to the 22 frames Brawl gave you (probably a little more). Any invincibility you have as a result of doing a ledge option is tied to the ledge option itself, so you can mix up overall invincibility by hanging on the ledge for a little shorter or longer each time, making it much harder to punish those tiny vulnerability windows.

Wario has some of the best ledge coverage tools in the game, too. The ledge is still super-dumb from a balance perspective; hard reads should be reliably rewarded in that situation without huge fear of huge retaliation, IMO.

"A bit" longer to kill is underselling it. Given the fact that he does 15% less damage, his primary kill moves kill 30-40% later, and the fact that he can no longer Hoo-Hah kill the same way, means that it takes him like 75% longer to close out each stock than it did before. That's not what I would consider "a bit."

Also, Diddy's Up+B is a nice kill move, but it's a horrible recovery move. I honestly don't even think the trade is worth it if Diddy is playing against a character with good gimping tools.

He would want to use his crazy momentum stuff via Forward-B to recover high against good gimpers anyway.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Pikachu can land really easy footstools from U-Tilt and U-Air, which are primary spacing and combo tools for him to begin with. This would likely make the Thunder Wave string fairly trivial to set up (assuming he has another move to properly lock them post-footstool, like Meteor Quick Attack). Also as has been mentioned earlier, Heavy Skull Bash prevents the need for the footstool stuff at higher percents, since it murders anyone at 70% near the ledge.

Welcome to the new Pikachu bread-and-butter combo, compliments of Custom Moves.

I don't think we'll see much Meteor Quick Attack. The loss of utility and getaway options is just too extreme for the low utility. I mean, I could be wrong, but let's see it in tournament first, eh?

Also, re: duck hunt: you really think that works like another final destination despite the whole "blocks projectiles" thing and "extra platforms" thing and "platform off to the side" thing? The tree is only abusive in a handful of matchups, where you can ban it. What it adds? A good anti-projectile counterpick? A solid stage for Greninja (I've heard that Greninja likes it a lot)? The ability to say "I didn't ban anything without good reason in my ruleset"?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Also, re: duck hunt: you really think that works like another final destination despite the whole "blocks projectiles" thing and "extra platforms" thing and "platform off to the side" thing? The tree is only abusive in a handful of matchups, where you can ban it. What it adds? A good anti-projectile counterpick? A solid stage for Greninja (I've heard that Greninja likes it a lot)? The ability to say "I didn't ban anything without good reason in my ruleset"?

We already have stages that do the things you're suggesting. In my heart, I like liberal stage lists, but as time has passed, I understand that there's a real need to make sure that events go efficiently. Smash is not a game that runs at a fast pace.

There's already a precedent set for circle camping. I think that's a legitimate concern in the same way; even if you can just ban it against, say, Wario, why should you have to?

 

[Iron Kraken]

He would want to use his crazy momentum stuff via Forward-B to recover high against good gimpers anyway.

Monkey Flip is a good recovery option as a mix up, but not as a primary recovery. If you get Diddy off the edge and you know that he's going to try to recover with Monkey Flip, you can easily punish that.

Gimping Diddy with his regular recovery can be quite tricky, but gimping Diddy with the custom Up+B is really, really easy. ZeRo even said that it's the worst recovery move in the game, which is why he doesn't use it. So if Diddy has to rely on the custom Up+B as a primary kill option, that's not a good thing.

 

[Blobface]

Ganondorf cannot reasonably edgeguard

Spoiler

Ganondorf has an incredibly good edgeguard game, maybe even as good as pikachus*. He has a million ways to put you in a bad position offstage (U-air, F-tilt, Jab, and his Forward and Back throws all have very horizontal knockback). All his aerials have giant hitboxes and are at least slightly disjointed, with F-air and D-air having enormous disjoints. U-air is a big bad semi-spiking trump card that beats literally anything and everything except airdodge, and have fun if he reads your airdodge. But best (or worst if you're on the receiving end) of all, if he lands a hit offstage, you're done. Not gimped, you just plain die outright at <50%. Stomp can outright OHKO a lot of characters!

Outside of customs though, yeah Ike's edgeguarding is crap.

A few last things: Generally, standing about a character-length away from the ledge allows you to cover almost every ledge option. While you may only have 2 frames to hard punish a standard getup, you still have a frame advantage and can punish whatever they do afterward I.E. grab for shield, tilt/smash for jab, etc.

*Pika's is a bit more reliable, but Ganondorf's is much deadlier

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

We already have stages that do the things you're suggesting. In my heart, I like liberal stage lists, but as time has passed, I understand that there's a real need to make sure that events go efficiently. Smash is not a game that runs at a fast pace.

There's already a precedent set for circle camping. I think that's a legitimate concern in the same way; even if you can just ban it against, say, Wario, why should you have to?

Because there's a difference between a hard circle and a stage where it's simply difficult to catch your opponent because your character is bad. How many characters can effectively circle camp on Duck Hunt? How many characters does this work on, and how effectively does this work? I haven't seen this, to be honest.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Handling ledge options? What is Charizard? F6 Usmash, Flame thrower, Long grab reach, Kill throw, Trump -Dsmash.

If anything more vulnerable ledge options would work against Ike and Ganondorf, when they're the ones trying to get up.

 

[Asdioh]

In my (fairly extensive) experience and testing, I've seen no difference in ledge option invincibility; the only difference is that the invincibility experienced when just hanging from the ledge is a lower amount based on percents. At 0%, you have up to about 60 frames of invincibility, whereas at 150% you have something closer to the 22 frames Brawl gave you (probably a little more). Any invincibility you have as a result of doing a ledge option is tied to the ledge option itself, so you can mix up overall invincibility by hanging on the ledge for a little shorter or longer each time, making it much harder to punish those tiny vulnerability windows.

But then you risked getting trumped
See? It's great! Both sides have chances to outplay the other, but I think the one doing the edgeguarding has the significantly better risk/reward, unless they mess up badly. Like Blobface said, standing a bit away from the edge, and using shield when necessary, is extremely safe and covers most options. Combining that with the option to instant ledgegrab, I think the current setup is fine.
I could be crazy, but I don't think I see people utilizing their edgeguarding capabilities in tournaments as much as they should. The game's been out for a while, but I still frequently see people just letting their opponent get back onstage for free.

 

[Blobface]

I could be crazy, but I don't think I see people utilizing their edgeguarding capabilities in tournaments as much as they should. The game's been out for a while, but I still frequently see people just letting their opponent get back onstage for free.

I've noticed this too. I know not everyone is Ganondorf, who has aerials that are strong enough to kill outright offstage, but a lot of the time people just stand near the edge and let people back on. It's especially annoying against Luigi. Luigi's recovery options cover a lot of distance and Boss in particular is good at mixing his recovery up, but Luigi's actual recovery moves lose to everything and people just let Luigi plod back to the stage.

I think part of it has to do with a lot of our current top/high tiers having very good recoveries (Pikachu, Sheik, Rosalina) making them almost invulnerable to gimps (but not invulnerable to getting hit offstage, mind you). But even then, there's plenty of top/high tiers with "meh" recoveries (Fox, Falcon, etc.), and extra damage is extra damage.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Still waiting for us to ban Duck Hunt.

I'm curious on what stage you'd put as a 5th starter if not duck hunt (let's assume no lylat)
One of the travelling stages like skyloft wuhu or delfino?

 

[Ulevo]

I'm curious on what stage you'd put as a 5th starter if not duck hunt (let's assume no lylat)
One of the travelling stages like skyloft wuhu or delfino?

A lot of Lylat's problems have been fixed. The ledges are no where near as unforgiving as before, and the stage no longer interrupts your character.

 

[Sinister Slush]

I only knew of the ledges being fixed, didn't know they fixed the engine problems too.

 

[Asdioh]

idk if this is where to ask this, but is http://pastebin.com/NJ4Q5PzU still the most up-to-date frame data? Can Mewtwo be added ?
And can names be changed to English ?

 

[LiteralGrill]

So if you guys haven't heard, Japan's latest tournament after the patch is up on Youtube to watch. I haven't gotten to see it all yet so I can't really make comments, here's a link to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeeyBY0JVM0&list=PLA0x72gyzAF1gD9FkgnJLNJPdMJgtVcsq&index=1

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

"A bit" longer to kill is underselling it. Given the fact that he does 15% less damage, his primary kill moves kill 30-40% later, and the fact that he can no longer Hoo-Hah kill the same way, means that it takes him like 75% longer to close out each stock than it did before. That's not what I would consider "a bit."

Also, Diddy's custom Up+B is a nice kill move, but it's also a horrible recovery move. I honestly don't even think the trade is worth it if Diddy is playing against a character with good gimping tools.

Nana to up B is a thing that works around 60 or 70. If you're going to tell me that's not worth I'll respectfully disagree. I was expecting diddy to be a lot worse off than he is. When I played some Diddys it didn't seem like anything changed other than when he killed me.

 

[Nobie]

Let's talk about the teamsp00ky stream and how that Charizard player is actually using Blast Burn.

 

[Blobface]

Where did this whole "shields regenerate quickly" thing come from? Shields regenerate the slowest of any smash game, and it takes well over 10 seconds for a shield to regenerate.

 

[Lavani]

So if you guys haven't heard, Japan's latest tournament after the patch is up on Youtube to watch. I haven't gotten to see it all yet so I can't really make comments, here's a link to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeeyBY0JVM0&list=PLA0x72gyzAF1gD9FkgnJLNJPdMJgtVcsq&index=1

Some thoughts on Rain vs Motsunabe:

Uthrow seems to be the new dthrow for Diddy; uthrow>uair, uthrow>fair, and uthrow>bair(>bair) all seem to work at low-mid percents for damage wracking. Diddy's aerials aren't getting kills anymore, which translates to Diddy's grabs not getting kills anymore as well; if Rain couldn't connect a banana or smash, Motsunabe was living to 140~180% and Diddy had to deal with high Aura...that MU honestly looks like it's improved in Lucario's favor quite a bit post-patch.

Ledge pressure with bananas is still really strong and I feel will be where a lot of Diddy's KOs come from now; he gets a lot of option coverage from simply dropping a banana on the ledge or empty jumps with a banana in hand.

Nerfs look very real, but Diddy's still looking very capable and has plenty of tools that weren't touched.

 

[Jigglymaster]

Top Secret Anti-Brawler Strat: don't go to Smashville or Town and City on game 1.

Wish I would've known that played 2 mii brawlers yesterday and both times we started on SV and the second one I played I cp town and city....needless to day it didn't work too well for me. I know too little about that character and got exposed to how much utter nonsense he is.

This is untrue, every stage is the same for us, except for Lylat, Lylat is our worst neutral because we can't ledge cancel the feint jump as easily. But yeah, it doesn't matter where you take us to.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Where there is a banana, THERE IS A WAY!!!!!

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I don't know if this is already known but I found a video on Reddit showing Mewtwo's landing lag for his aerials.

Nair: 19F
Fair: 18F
Bair: 21F
Uair: 16F
Dair: 22F

Assuming it's accurate, does this mean Mewtwo has some of the laggiest aerial landing data in the game?

 

[PUK]

He has generous AC window too