How can we help Jigglypuff get buffs?

[Zerp]

So, I think that while a lot of us would disagree on where exactly we place on a tier list, most of us Puff mains would agree that our character is deserving and needs buffs. My question though, is how do we best increase our chances of getting buffs? I feel like sitting around doing nothing will get us nowhere, Puff has historically been ignored in patches in both this game and Project M. It seems to me like our opinions are either being ignored by both developers or possibly are always being drowned out by other mains, regardless of which, it's clear to me that we need to do something about it.


Honestly though, I don't really know what we should do about it. I have a few suggestions to hopefully get the ball rolling but please feel free to chip in your own ideas.


Suggestion 1: Make a petition, the pros and cons of this are very obvious, so I'm not going to bother listing them out since I'm pretty confident you all know them.

Suggestion 2: We could create a sort of Low Tier Alliance/Balancing Committee. It would be designed to gather the opinions of all sorts of low tier mains on every character that's generally agreed to be low tier, and after we're done voting on which characters are deserving, we'd mail them to Nintendo. I think this would help us not get drowned out since you'd have to vote on every character and then people can't just ignore Puff. I've noticed that a lot of non-puff mains who think she's low tier actually don't want her to be buffed, forcing votes on every low tier character in a public setting would help to force out their honesty. It could end up backfiring on us though if people really don't think she deserves buffs, but I don't think that's very likely, the biggest flaw I can think of is how on Earth we'd communicate our message to Nintendo/Sora.

What do you all think we should do?

 

[Wintermelon43]

I like both ideas. However, I think for the second idea, that mid tier ideas should be used there too, since Nintendo buffs them a lot too. But I like the second idea as well. Something defitenly needs to be done in order to buff Jigglypuff

 

[Metalex]

I just stumbled into this forum and don't know much about Jiggypuff at all, but i Think the "Low tier Alliance / Balance commitee" sounds like a good idea and it might even be fun to do. I play Mewtwo and he's also a character that is broken in many areas and in need of buffs.

 

[Uncle Tonkle]

lets spam sakurai and say our dad is the owner of nintendo and he needs to buff jiggs or hes fired that should work lets go do it now


No but seriously. The second idea sounds pretty good. However, I feel like only Jiggs mains will sleep better if she's buffed. A lot of people get really salty from rests, even though they don't KO as early now as they did in Melee. Also, generally high level Jiggs play is lame to people. She "just jumps around and gets free edgeguards and is impossible to combo" to them. If we add other low tiers, people will definitely choose Mewtwo, Zelda, Dedede etc over our pink balloon.

 

[Jiggly]

I turned off the "send info to nintendo" box in online settings since I do good with puff. If puff can get bad FG records, she will be buffed. Sakurai uses those statistics for balancing and shizz.

 

[Wintermelon43]

I turned off the "send info to nintendo" box in online settings since I do good with puff. If puff can get bad FG records, she will be buffed. Sakurai uses those statistics for balancing and shizz.

I've thought of that too.

 

[Uncle Tonkle]

Do they really base it off that? That's actually kinda sad. That'd mean they balance the game on a suboptimal way of playing, judging by the general demographic of players that aren't good at the game. Do they not realize the better players stray away from there? Man, now I'm bummed out.

 

[drakeirving]

implying smash devs ever really cared that much in the first place

 

[LRodC]

This is a toxic attitude to have and it will not add to the metagame of Jigglypuff at all. Instead of waiting and requesting for buffs that may never come, you should push your character as much as possible and learn to work around the flaws. Turning off the "information to Nintendo" toggle is just laughable. Do you really think they care about the results of one person out of thousands?

I main Mewtwo. I used to be like you guys; I was being completely pessimistic and waiting for buffs. Hell, I made a video on my main highlighting their problems to get him more awareness. However, I realized that it was going nowhere and I instead chose to push the character as much as possible. This led to more enjoyment, more improvement, and allowed me to be more productive instead of praying for patch buffs. In fact, it actually changed my opinion on the character and I saw more potential than I previously thought. Would have I got to that point if I just stood back, mained a higher tier/easier to use character and just asked for or waited for buffs? Not at all.

Here's some advice: If you want to be a Jigglypuff main, do it. Learn the ins and outs of your character, and learn your character's pros and cons. Learn to take advantage of the good things, and learn how to work around the bad things. Help expand the metagame if it's lacking in certain areas. Be productive. You will go far and maybe learn some things that you never before realized. This will allow you to see more potential in the character.

However, if you want to just wait around, complain, and just try to ask for buffs while you wallow around in shame around these boards while adding nothing to metagame discussion, go ahead and drop Jigglypuff and go pick up a top tier. Nobody will judge you.

 

[drakeirving]

can you not do both

You seem to presume that advancing the meta of your character, and wanting the team working on character balance to give fair balancing to a character that has issues that fundamentally restrict the meta from advancing, are mutually exclusive. I can complain about Jiggs having fatal flaws all day but it isn't as though I'm just plopping down with my arms crossed and not trying to push my character to the best of my ability; that just sounds more like you projecting your previous attitude.

I agree that sitting around whining about not getting buffs and doing nothing else is a terrible attitude to have about your choice of character because that's a stupid thing to do, but there's a difference between doing that and trying to think of some way for the dev team to take notice of reasonable wants of their core competitive audience so that hopefully some relevant buffs do come our way. The key assumption is that the devs repeatedly balancing characters suggests that they are listening in some capacity, but that they're really just not very good at doing so and only some things trickle up to what actually gets implemented.

 

[leesinger]

This is a toxic attitude to have and it will not add to the metagame of Jigglypuff at all. Instead of waiting and requesting for buffs that may never come, you should push your character as much as possible and learn to work around the flaws. Turning off the "information to Nintendo" toggle is just laughable. Do you really think they care about the results of one person out of thousands?

I main Mewtwo. I used to be like you guys; I was being completely pessimistic and waiting for buffs. Hell, I made a video on my main highlighting their problems to get him more awareness. However, I realized that it was going nowhere and I instead chose to push the character as much as possible. This led to more enjoyment, more improvement, and allowed me to be more productive instead of praying for patch buffs. In fact, it actually changed my opinion on the character and I saw more potential than I previously thought. Would have I got to that point if I just stood back, mained a higher tier/easier to use character and just asked for or waited for buffs? Not at all.

Here's some advice: If you want to be a Jigglypuff main, do it. Learn the ins and outs of your character, and learn your character's pros and cons. Learn to take advantage of the good things, and learn how to work around the bad things. Help expand the metagame if it's lacking in certain areas. Be productive. You will go far and maybe learn some things that you never before realized. This will allow you to see more potential in the character.

However, if you want to just wait around, complain, and just try to ask for buffs while you wallow around in shame around these boards while adding nothing to metagame discussion, go ahead and drop Jigglypuff and go pick up a top tier. Nobody will judge you.

Actually this attitude isn't toxic its completely healthy and natural for a competetive game in which patches exist. Player feedback is the most critical aspect of a game that a developer can look at and if Nintendo does care about smash 4 in a competetive sense, which is debatable, then creating petitions and threads that express well thought out ideas of balance are positive and serve to make the game better as a whole. If anyone is being pessimistic it would be you, by completely trying to shut down any kind of discussion on having characters buffed/nerfed. Its also not as simple as "learning the ins and outs of a character". I can learn the fundamentals of a character in a day, it really isnt that challenging. If you think the low tier characters are fine in their current state, then thats your opinion and you are entitled to it, but most of us agree that the mid/low tiers need buffs and we also believe that Nintendo is capable of listening to player feedback as they have shown to do in past patches.

 

[MarioMeteor]

However, I feel like only Jiggs mains will sleep better if she's buffed.

Then Sing should be buffed, too.

 

[drakeirving]

If anyone is being pessimistic it would be you, by completely trying to shut down any kind of discussion on having characters buffed/nerfed. Its also not as simple as "learning the ins and outs of a character". I can learn the fundamentals of a character in a day, it really isnt that challenging. If you think the low tier characters are fine in their current state, then thats your opinion and you are entitled to it

I don't think they expressed any of these stances, though. Also when they noted "ins and outs" they basically meant maximizing all knowledge about playing the character, not fundamentals. If anything it's that their main criticism was that people tend to stop at learning fundamentals and then start complaining about limitations. I also don't think this is even wrong, since this attitude occurs all the time and people usually just switch characters instead. The problem was the implication that you can't complain about lack of buffs or talk about ways to get the character "noticed" for buffs, and also be at the forefront of the meta.

 

[donyavierre]

I don't think the devs aren't aware about jigglypuff's flaws or that jiggly's mains are waiting buffs, they know right about it. I think they just don't want to do a thing because rookies would complain.

 

[LRodC]

I don't think they expressed any of these stances, though. Also when they noted "ins and outs" they basically meant maximizing all knowledge about playing the character, not fundamentals. If anything it's that their main criticism was that people tend to stop at learning fundamentals and then start complaining about limitations. I also don't think this is even wrong, since this attitude occurs all the time and people usually just switch characters instead. The problem was the implication that you can't complain about lack of buffs or talk about ways to get the character "noticed" for buffs, and also be at the forefront of the meta.

This is what I mean. You can help advance the meta and want less limitations or more buffs. I try to do this myself for Mewtwo. I don't have an issue with them, that's not what I meant. I just have an issue with whiners that do nothing to help anything and just complain.

 

[drakeirving]

I don't think the devs aren't aware about jigglypuff's flaws or that jiggly's mains are waiting buffs, they know right about it. I think they just don't want to do a thing because rookies would complain.

I don't think this is the case either. Barely anyone plays Jiggs and this isn't a point in Smash's lifetime where people don't know about Rest, anymore (Rest is clearly shoved at your face over and over with the ingame tips, even). This was the issue when they moved to Brawl: they were implementing online play but figured people would react poorly to Rest if they didn't know what it was, which I imagine was partially why it was nerfed so hard. Now that doesn't make any sense: the only reason to get salty over Rests is because you got hit by it early and got stomped. By that virtue it's even less enraging than true spikes and guaranteed combos/setups which are way more prevalent.

Really, which do you think is more enraging to players online? Rest, or Falcon utilt spike?

They know about Rest; they buffed it from Brawl. Having setups to Rest is one thing that they might be scared of, but there are many other ways that Jiggs could get buffs (her primary issues aren't related to Rest imo). The problem is that they haven't changed anything, not that they've been changing the wrong things.

 

[LRodC]

I don't think this is the case either. Barely anyone plays Jiggs and this isn't a point in Smash's lifetime where people don't know about Rest, anymore (Rest is clearly shoved at your face over and over with the ingame tips, even). This was the issue when they moved to Brawl: they were implementing online play but figured people would react poorly to Rest if they didn't know what it was, which I imagine was partially why it was nerfed so hard. Now that doesn't make any sense: the only reason to get salty over Rests is because you got hit by it early and got stomped. By that virtue it's even less enraging than true spikes and guaranteed combos/setups which are way more prevalent.

Really, which do you think is more enraging to players online? Rest, or Falcon utilt spike?

They know about Rest; they buffed it from Brawl. Having setups to Rest is one thing that they might be scared of, but there are many other ways that Jiggs could get buffs (her primary issues aren't related to Rest imo). The problem is that they haven't changed anything, not that they've been changing the wrong things.

I'd like if they made it so that Rest always caused a star KO. I'm not sure if that's just a programming oversight or intended.

 

[a dog]

Use a Moonstone.

In all seriousness though, there's all but nothing that we, as ordinary Smashboards members, can do to change to cause any character to receive buffs in this game. The Smash dev team seems to do rebalancing all on their own, and if they take any fan feedback, it's likely all from the Japanese scene which has a different metagame and tier list going on than the American scene.

 

[drakeirving]

I'd like if they made it so that Rest always caused a star KO. I'm not sure if that's just a programming oversight or intended.

They changed it game-wide so that KOs from the top can cause Blast KOs, and they made it so that in the last few seconds you can only get Blast KOs, to remove the silliness in previous games where one could get KO'd earlier than the other but still win. Also, any vertical KO with knockback over a certain threshold will always Blast KO, which obviously doesn't help us.

I don't think it was intended, but they didn't do anything special for Rest either. They must have seen this when testing and I see no reason why this would be kept on purpose so I assume it's an oversight. It would definitely be good though, since in many situations you have to actively avoid KOing with Rest because you would lose any lead you had, or lose the match entirely if you were behind, if they could come back early and kill you at 40~50. The two-stock game format doesn't help this either.

 

[Wintermelon43]

Balance Tester #1:Oh Magic Sakurai, what should we do with Jigglypuff and King Dedede?

Magic Sakurai:Nothing

Balance Tester #2:DADDY SAKURAI HAS SPOKEN!!!

 

[420quickscoper]

Balance Tester #1:Oh Magic Sakurai, what should we do with Jigglypuff and King Dedede?

Magic Sakurai:Nothing

Balance Tester #2:DADDY SAKURAI HAS SPOKEN!!!

But... but King Dedede is already perfect!

In all honesty, yeah. I do think these characters do need buffs. They both have too many negatives.

I'm not looking forward to any throw combo buffs to Jigglypuff, though. I just don't like those kind of buffs.

 

[donyavierre]

I don't think this is the case either. Barely anyone plays Jiggs and this isn't a point in Smash's lifetime where people don't know about Rest, anymore (Rest is clearly shoved at your face over and over with the ingame tips, even). This was the issue when they moved to Brawl: they were implementing online play but figured people would react poorly to Rest if they didn't know what it was, which I imagine was partially why it was nerfed so hard. Now that doesn't make any sense: the only reason to get salty over Rests is because you got hit by it early and got stomped. By that virtue it's even less enraging than true spikes and guaranteed combos/setups which are way more prevalent.

Really, which do you think is more enraging to players online? Rest, or Falcon utilt spike?

They know about Rest; they buffed it from Brawl. Having setups to Rest is one thing that they might be scared of, but there are many other ways that Jiggs could get buffs (her primary issues aren't related to Rest imo). The problem is that they haven't changed anything, not that they've been changing the wrong things.

But wait, i wasn't talking about the knowledge of the rest in the game. Even if i was thinking in a possible rest that kills earlier, the most hyped buff i should expect in Jigglypuff is a viable approach tool.

 

[Zerp]

So since suggestion 2 is definitely the dominant one in the poll, I think it's safe to say there's a general consensus now. Now all that's left for us is to decide how we execute suggestion 2, the first step of which would be deciding exactly what characters are to be included in it. Wintermelon43 brought up a interesting point about this, saying that he thought Middle Tier characters should be included too, which while I don't personally agree, it would be a bit unjust if I were to just make a thread/group without addressing it, wouldn't it? I feel the best way to figure out which characters we should make eligible is by poll, so by all means please vote on who you think should be eligible.

Spoiler: POLL

http://strawpoll.me/6176293

Edit: added poll to a spoiler since it was apparently easy to miss earlier in my sentence, sorry about the (probable) confusion.

 

[Wintermelon43]

We should start it now.

 

[Zerp]

We should start it now.

While I want to start it soon, in a few days, if we wait till the direct happens and assuming there's a new patch, there'd be a lot of temporary interest in balance for a few days and I'm fairly confident we could capitalize on that. While the new interest would go away eventually it would help us grow at a faster rate and make it much easier to become relevant enough that we can draw in new members to our cause on our own, we need to get to a certain size if we want to be taken seriously, and I feel like timing it right will allow us to reach that size we need. Although, if you can convince me otherwise I'll consider starting it earlier, I'm not really opposed to it, I just feel like starting it the day of or a day after the next direct is our most viable option right now.

 

[Wintermelon43]

While I want to start it soon, in a few days, if we wait till the direct happens and assuming there's a new patch, there'd be a lot of temporary interest in balance for a few days and I'm fairly confident we could capitalize on that. While the new interest would go away eventually it would help us grow at a faster rate and make it much easier to become relevant enough that we can draw in new members to our cause on our own, we need to get to a certain size if we want to be taken seriously, and I feel like timing it right will allow us to reach that size we need. Although, if you can convince me otherwise I'll consider starting it earlier, I'm not really opposed to it, I just feel like starting it the day of or a day after the next direct is our most viable option right now.

In the last smash bros direct, the update was released immediatatly, and I think this will happen with this patch too. And considering it's most likely the final patch.

 

[Zerp]

In the last smash bros direct, the update was released immediatatly, and I think this will happen with this patch too. And considering it's most likely the final patch.

Yeah, that's what I'm banking on, whenever we get new patches I notice a lot of people start caring more about the game's balance for a little bit, and since it's so likely we're getting one I want to take full advantage of it.

 

[Wintermelon43]

Okay start it now.

 

[Zerp]

Okay start it now.

Sorry that it took so long, I was waiting till after the direct was released, but it's done now anyway, I encourage you all to show up so we can ensure that Puff is treated fairly as possible in it. http://smashboards.com/threads/the-unofficial-super-smash-bros-balancing-committee.426052/
Also, if you guys have any other ideas on how to help Jigglypuff get buffs I'm still open to hearing them .

 

[Ninja Girl]

I love playing Puff but I hate the fact that rage is a mechanic in this game. I feel so pressured to get extremely early rests and gimps because if I don't then I'll might KO'd by any random rage boosted hit. On the other hand Jiggs herself rarely benefits from rage since she usually dies at low %. I think that discourages a lot of people from playing her, it just feels like the game is working against you a lot of the time.

In terms of buffs though, I think a better grab and combo throws would help her a lot.

 

[Ximlee]

I just stumbled into this forum and don't know much about Jiggypuff at all, but i Think the "Low tier Alliance / Balance commitee" sounds like a good idea and it might even be fun to do. I play Mewtwo and he's also a character that is broken in many areas and in need of buffs.

I would absolutely love to see Mewtwo in a viable place

 

[Stickmanlolz]

Why not make a community montage highlighting the primary flaws of the character just like how the Samus mains did.

 

[Ximlee]

I love playing Puff but I hate the fact that rage is a mechanic in this game. I feel so pressured to get extremely early rests and gimps because if I don't then I'll might KO'd by any random rage boosted hit. On the other hand Jiggs herself rarely benefits from rage since she usually dies at low %. I think that discourages a lot of people from playing her, it just feels like the game is working against you a lot of the time.

In terms of buffs though, I think a better grab and combo throws would help her a lot.

That's a VERY solid point, and one that I hadn't considered before. What ideas do we have as a community to overcome this with a Jigglybuff? (HA!)

 

[Furret24]

I would absolutely love to see Mewtwo in a viable place

He is. :|


As a secondary.


Seriously, he's pretty good.

 

[Ximlee]

He is. :|


As a secondary.


Seriously, he's pretty good.

Maybe, but I think the general consensus is that he could stand to be a bit better

Even main material

 

[Furret24]

Maybe, but I think the general consensus is that he could stand to be a bit better

Even main material

Fixing his grab and going the whole nine yards with dthrow are the only things I want for him. He's perfectly fine outside of that (in my opinion).

 

[Stickmanlolz]

As much as I love Mewtwo if you want to discuss him you should probably go to the Mewtwo forums instead. Otherwise keep it relevent to the current topic at hand.

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

My best advice is to keep playing Jigglypuff, but not for the same "oh just toughen up and stop relying on updates" reason. I like the tenacity behind this line of thinking, but it's a philosophy rather than a solution. Nintendo draws more data from matches than most players realize. Even if you sit at home playing regular sessions of For Glory, win some matches, lose some more, they see it. Not every single match obviously, but they know when a certain character surges in popularity. And when that happens, they know it's a gold mine of a time to take notes. They want to know how she fares against DLC characters, they want to know how she works against top tiers. If you look at the characters who have received the most buffs in the patch history, most of them have a dedicated following. Shulk, Robin, Link, Kirby, Mewtwo, Bowser, DK, Charizard, Marth, Ike, Falco, Samus, Zelda, all of these characters are exceptionally popular on For Glory despite their supposed tier placements. The correlation between this wealth of data and the quantity of updates they have received is clear. So even if you detest For Glory, maybe add it to your daily routine. But don't stop attending actual events too. You must stay up to date on how opponents react to Jigglypuff at the competitive level. What strategies are working and how to improve.

As for what sorts of buffs Jigglypuff deserves, I truly have no idea from an outside perspective. Giving her a combo throw could turn into a nightmare because getting true followups from any of her moves would also mean that a rest followup is possible, since that is by far her fastest move on the ground and in the air. If such a throw only allowed for followups at 0-20% and no later, then the problem is solved, but would that really improve her grab game? The best thing would probably be to tweak Forward and Back Throws to set up edgeguards more consistently. Reduced endlag so that Jigglypuff can be in time to guard the offstage area faster. Or perhaps add more knockback growth to appropriate throws so that they can be relied on to kill at very high percents. Her aerials don't need to be more safe on shield. You can already land with Nair and jab to beat every shieldgrab in the game, and every other aerial is even better with proper spacing with her air speed and acceleration. Her Usmash definitely needs work. With such a slow Sing and a frame 6 jumpsquat, her OoS punish game is sorely lacking, and a frame 16 Usmash with such modest damage and killing power doesn't help. But her biggest weakness are those poor special moves. Pound is annoyingly unsafe on block, Sing is far too slow, and Rollout feels like a taunt with its lack of uses and high rate of self destruction.

Edit: Totally mispoke here. Jigglypuff's Nair to Jab beats just about everything that isn't a shieldgrab

 

[drakeirving]

Still dunno what you mean, since nair gives 8 and 5 frames of shieldstun and has 15 frames of landing lag. Strong hit plus shield drop adds to 15 as well, but you probably aren't going to land the same frame as you hit, and regardless you aren't beating any jabs faster than your own. Moreover it says nothing about any jump-canceled options.

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Still dunno what you mean, since nair gives 8 and 5 frames of shieldstun and has 15 frames of landing lag. Strong hit plus shield drop adds to 15 as well, but you probably aren't going to land the same frame as you hit, and regardless you aren't beating any jabs faster than your own. Moreover it says nothing about any jump-canceled options.

I really shouldn't have brought up Nair but I was glossing over data and needed some means of comparative example. If you want to know the difference between the safety of Jigglypuff's Nair potential block advantage and Sheik's potential Fair block advantage, it's one frame. The difference between both characters Fairs is just two. The reason these examples don't correlate is that the moves are being used for entirely different reasons. Sheik's Fair is the whole-wheat bread of her setups and combos, and Jiggs' aerials are...not. They don't lead into anything besides damage, zoning, and edgeguards. My point was that these moves don't need to be any safer on block because they're already safe thanks to how she moves through the air. The fact that the numbers back her up as well is just further testament that nothing needs to be changed here.