Tier List Speculation

[DrinkingFood]

What if we all recognized brawl tethers are dumb and we should have either melee tethers or none at all

 

[SpiderMad]

What if we all recognized brawl tethers are dumb and we should have either melee tethers or none at all

Are they able to make Olimar's up-b be something different

 

[DrinkingFood]

They gave ganon a float
They can do anything

 

[skellitorman]

I know this post is a little late, but this information needs to be known.

Hits into side-b on shield is also only ok. Lucario has ZERO moves that combo into side-b on shield. Every single one can be spotdodged or rolled out of(in fact, pretty much all of his shield pressure options are negative on shield even with ASC and can be escaped quite easily). Spotdodging lucarios side-b means he's stuck in an incredibly laggy and easy to punish animation. A lot of characters can even punish it out of a roll.

It is true that Lucario has no moves that can lock the opponent in shield long enough to guarantee the side B grab, but it is not true that you can always spotdodge side B.

The fastest spotdodges (which about 1/3 of the characters have) have 1 frame of startup, 14 frames of invincibility and 7 recovery frames. Lucario has a 15 frame gap between the first active frame of his grab and the flame attack hitbox. Canceling into side B from any tilt or smash attack leaves about a 5 frame gap (actual number varies between moves) between the opponent’s ability to perform an action and the first active frame of Lucario’s side B. This means that no matter what frame a spotdodge was inputted, any character with such a spotdodge will always be hit with either the grab or the flame from side B.

Unfortunately for these certain characters, Lucario’s forward tilt into side B has a 2 frame gap between the last frame of shield stun and the frame that they get grabbed. Rolls have 3 frames of startup so it is not an option against this. Since characters with such a spotdodge cannot avoid the side B by spotdodging and since rolls are too slow, Lucario is guaranteed to hit with side B against many characters when forward tilt is blocked.

When rolling forward does work, it will allow many characters to punish the side B, but rolling forward is a risky option against Lucario, and rolling backwards (although safer) will position the character too far to punish.

You're right, Lucario's smashes have more shieldstun than shine
And they can be canceled into down B to avoid shield grabbing.

No..they can't lmao. Down-b has TWELVE frames of start-up. You can certainly shieldgrab it if misspaced. It does prevent WD OoS -> grab however.

It is true that Lucario’s smash attacks have more shieldstun than shine, and that down B will avoid shield grabs if canceled into from a smash attack. I’ll use downsmash for this example. Upon impact, down smash has 15 frames (including the frame of impact) to where the opponent cannot perform any action, and if Lucario inputs Down B frame perfect, then he becomes invincible on frame 20 due to the weird property of the attack cancels which I explain in the last section. Since there is a 4 frame gap, between when the opponent can move and the frame that Lucario is invincible, grabs will not be able to grab downsmash when canceled into down B. This also happens to be the case with the case with the majority of Lucario’s moves (not including jabs) when canceled into side B due to the weird property of the attack cancel.

If a character actually attempts to shield grab Lucario when he does this, then Lucario will be +9 after the Down B finishes, and Lucario can punish such an attempt.

Oh gee you can roll out of lucario's shield pressure?
Guess spacey's pressure is minus on shield too

No..Spacies pressure is much safer and they can punish you for rolling because they don't get stuck in laggy animations when they whiff.

Watch a player abuse CC/spotdodge/roll against lucario pressure and watch it crumble.

The problem I see with defense options involving shield against Lucario is that Lucario has too many options and too many of them that overlap the possible counters. Canceling into down tilt (out of a dash attack) will beat grab out of shield, roll in either direction and if canceled at a certain frame will even beat all spot dodges. The only safe option is to shield, but if you shield, then you play the guessing game again. Furthermore it could have been a cancel into side B which beats shield.

Canceling into downsmash will beat grab out of shield and other OoS options. If delayed, then it will beat a forward roll or spotdodge. Opponents can reset the position with a back roll given that there is space. If the opponent shields, then they play the guessing game again.

Canceling into side B beats spotdodge (against many characters), shield, and grab out of shield, but the opponent can reset the position with a back roll (if the side B was not canceled from a forward tilt). Many characters can forward roll and get a punish.

Canceling into Down B allows Lucario to either reset or play another guessing game with his Super cancel, in which case you go through all this all over again. Jab x (grab or tilt or special) x (grab or smash or special) x (grab or special).

These are some of the main options that Lucario players will cancel into against a shielding opponent, and most of the options overlap what they beat, which is pretty much any option that takes 5 frames or more to perform (sometimes while also beating spotdodge and roll). Since Lucario can cancel into Side B at any point throughout the duration of the entire mixup, shield significantly becomes a much worse option. Rolling happens to be the single most effective option when having blocked an attack.

So what Lucario players can do (some already do this) once they know that the opponent knows this, is attacking their shield with anything and waiting for the opponent to roll so that they can get these heavy punishes. With ASC Lucario will usually be around -10 which will allow Lucario to punish any roll with a dash attack which cancels into everything.

I would argue that defending against Fox’s mixup is easier because the mixup is much simpler, and the defense options are much more effective. After Shine, Fox will either do another shine (double shine), a grab, a wavedash, or a jump. All of these options are easy to visually distinguish unlike Lucario’s pressure, and although it is still difficult to defend against, there are a lot less tools to have to be aware of at any single point in time.

Double shine doesn’t beat shield, and frame perfect spot dodge, but beats practically everything else. Grab beats shield but loses to spot dodge and back roll will reset the position. Wavedash loses to grab, and other OoS options. Jump may lose to certain OoS options but can reset with a roll. Yes, Fox has less risk, but it is also much easier to defend.

Also unlike Fox who requires frame perfect execution for double shine, Lucario does not for any of his attack cancel mixups. If an attack cancel is inputted too early after impact, then the attack cancels are forced to delay a certain number of frames which varies depending on the move that was canceled. For every frame off that Lucario inputs the AC, a delayed frame will be removed so that the next attack still comes out on the same frame. Obviously if inputted after the delayed frames are taken into account then the move will come out later. This is why the opponent always has about 5 frames to perform any action in between Lucario’s cancels.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Technically you have to play the guessing game against spacies (fox/falco), too. Wolf's aerials are drastically different and generally less safe on shield such that you can roll before the first shine even with good timing. If you buffer roll after a nair (or certain other aerials), and they shine, you get hit, if the aerial was low enough to the ground. Buffering spotdodge either gets you hit on the only vulnerable frame before invinc, or it gets you easily punished after. And if you don't buffer roll, they can just grab off the aerial without shining, you could buffer the roll such that it's too late to come out before shine buff will barely beat grab, so the shine will hit your shield and the grab will whiff- but double shine will beat that roll after the first shine. You basically have to know when they are either going to fail the first aerial timing so you can get a grab, or know when they will fail the multishine and be force to DJ, or you have to know when they will shine last before grabbing so you can safely roll away. The correct answer here is don't shield late aerials. Because otherwise you are banking on being a mind reader or banking on their sloppiness. Even knowing they aren't going to aerial late and shielding in advance requires a read. So it's safest to just not shield at all if they aren't throwing out bad aerials.

 

[DMG]

I am a man. I shield late Spacie aerials for the challenge. This may also explain why I am talking to you all from Loser's Bracket right now

 

[Deleted member]

What if we all recognized brawl tethers are dumb and we should have either melee tethers or none at all

Melee tethers are definitely preferred, but I dont think an "all or nothing" attitude is appropriate. Samus, Link, and Ivysaur not being able to use tethers at all for recovery is just...wrong.

 

[DrinkingFood]

You can always give them something better designed to compensate
Assuming you couldn't use Melee's
Which you should
PMDT plz
And lightshield when plz

 

[Chesstiger2612]

@ DrinkingFood
I agree with Melee tethers being the prefered choice. Do you think there have to be some stage list changes if those get added, because Melee's stagelist and PM's stagelist behave much different in respect to Melee tethers

 

[Warzenschwein]

Why can't Olimar just throw Pikmin downwards to gain height as his Up-B. Then fix everything else what's wrong with him and ta-da, you have a character people might actually want to play.

Or just give him a shine AMIRITE.

..no?

 

[CORY]

Why can't Olimar just throw Pikmin downwards to gain height as his Up-B. Then fix everything else what's wrong with him and ta-da, you have a character people might actually want to play.

Or just give him a shine AMIRITE.

..no?

SHINES FOR EVERYONE!

BOWSER REVOLUTION!

 

[DMG]

SHINES FOR EVERYONE!

BOWSER REVOLUTION!

*Collect 100 stars*

...

BOWSER HAS RAN!

 

[The_NZA]

Why can't Olimar just throw Pikmin downwards to gain height as his Up-B. Then fix everything else what's wrong with him and ta-da, you have a character people might actually want to play.

Or just give him a shine AMIRITE.

..no?

I suggested this idea a while ago:

Olimar's upb becomes that he sort of footstools off one of his pikmin, sending them to their death downwards. This pikmin would also have a hitbox similar to Robin's upb from Smash 4. There may be a limit on how many times he can do this, and as he does it, he loses a pikmin each time (which is where the risk/reward relationship comes). It would also mix up olimar's neutral and punish game in an interesting way and could lead to some cool dair follow up punishes.

 

[The_NZA]

What if we all recognized brawl tethers are dumb and we should have either melee tethers or none at all

I like brawl tethers a little bit. Characters with brawl tethers play an extreme risk reward game where they can edgeguard super super deep without worry, and cover a lot of options because they can snap to the edge quickly. In exchange, their recoveries kind of blow. Its really interesting to me--they become gimp->glass cannons.

 

[Ningildo]

I suggested this idea a while ago:

Olimar's upb becomes that he sort of footstools off one of his pikmin, sending them to their death downwards. This pikmin would also have a hitbox similar to Robin's upb from Smash 4. There may be a limit on how many times he can do this, and as he does it, he loses a pikmin each time (which is where the risk/reward relationship comes). It would also mix up olimar's neutral and punish game in an interesting way and could lead to some cool dair follow up punishes.

Why should Oli be punished for recovering? Or going in deep for the kill?

 

[Deleted member]

I still think they should just give Olimar the Winged Pikmin and be done with it (obviously nowhere near as good as they are in SmashU.) They'll fly him a short distance before dropping him. Simple. Maybe they could even keep his Pikmin chain as his grounded UpB while the winged Pikmin are the aerial version.

You can always give them something better designed to compensate

While that's true (although it might be a bit difficult to come up with something for Ivysaur), I simply cannot envision them not being able to use their tethers for recovery at all. It's what they do. It's part of their character. It would be like replacing Kirby's inhale with an entirely different move just because Kirbyciding was dumb.

But anyway, yes, MeleeTethers4Life.

 

[Warzenschwein]

I thought using Winged Pikmin was impossible because they made their first appearance in Pikmin 3?
But perhaps this is only relevant for potential Clone Engine Characters, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[The_NZA]

Why should Oli be punished for recovering? Or going in deep for the kill?

Ideally, this recovery type would give him more flexibility in his recovery (sort of like multiple jumps) in exchange for giving up his finite resource that he is trying to hold onto.

 

[Rᴏb]

Are they able to make Olimar's up-b be something different

rumor has it they were going to
but I guess they decided olimar should be the worst at almost everything and changed their minds.


Also, the throwing pikmin down to recover idea is horrible and would only make Olimar worse.

 

[steelguttey]

yea the footstool pikmin idea is bad cause offstage game doesnt mean you are at a disadvantage enough to lose your pikmin.

it also means every time you get hit by a marth tipper, you lose pikmin too, making that matchup even worse! yayyyyy

 

[Ningildo]

Ideally, this recovery type would give him more flexibility in his recovery (sort of like multiple jumps) in exchange for giving up his finite resource that he is trying to hold onto.

Unless the distance gained makes up for losing your everything (which, considering the direction PM has gone recovery wise, I highly doubt), it makes NO sense for Oli being forced to nerf himself for recovering.

Imagine if you lost your ability to do any attack bar jabs, tilts and nair as punishment for recovering. I'm pretty sure it would feel out of place and seemingly done for no reason but to piss you off.

Oli needs a better recovery, but the problem lies more in the fact that tether changes were made universally seemingly without paying attention to the characters individually (as in, did the character REALLY need the tether nerf or was it done for the sake of "equal" nerfs across the board?).

 

[skellitorman]

Technically you have to play the guessing game against spacies (fox/falco), too.

This is true. I compared Lucario’s mixup to Fox’s mixup because my argument is that Lucario’s mixups are more difficult to defend against.

And if you don't buffer roll, they can just grab off the aerial without shining, you could buffer the roll such that it's too late to come out before shine buff will barely beat grab, so the shine will hit your shield and the grab will whiff- but double shine will beat that roll after the first shine.

I could have gone more in depth as you did with Fox's mixup potential but I chose to start at the point that Fox hits with shine for a couple of reasons. Fox can't cancel any of his attacks and most of them either are unsafe on block (like every other character) or safe but not close enough to perform the shine mixup. Fox is only capable of hitting shine by itself or doing it after a jump attack. After a jump attack, Shine is generally the most effective option whether the opponent blocks or not. Although Fox technically can grab after a blocked aerial attack, players don’t choose to do so since Shine is just that much of a better option overall.

Edit: Furthermore if you input a roll ten frames after impact of the second shine, then you can avoid rolling in between the first and second shine while also being able to avoid both grab mixups (before the first shine and after the first shine).

Edit: Although it is possible to do it, it is not practical to do it after the first shine due to having to be frame perfect.

You basically have to know when they are either going to fail the first aerial timing so you can get a grab, or know when they will fail the multishine and be force to DJ, or you have to know when they will shine last before grabbing so you can safely roll away. The correct answer here is don't shield late aerials. Because otherwise you are banking on being a mind reader or banking on their sloppiness. Even knowing they aren't going to aerial late and shielding in advance requires a read. So it's safest to just not shield at all if they aren't throwing out bad aerials.

Fox’s frame advantage after an aerial can only be neutral at best so he is most likely going to be negative given that the Fox player would want to cover more options (doing it earlier makes it more difficult to counter hit) and change his approach as necessary. However, even if a nair was inputted at the peak of his jump arc, Fox can fast fall and recover fast enough to be -5 on block, so he can still shine afterwards to beat certain OoS options. This means that whether you blocked it late or not, shine is still going to beat shield grab and other OoS options unless they did it that much earlier which shouldn’t happen as you said (banking on their sloppiness).

However, rolling away is feasible since it will avoid the potential grab, and shine if Fox is at least -3 after the aerial. If Fox does a shine that whiffs (because you successfully rolled away) and he inputs a double shine or shine grab, then Fox will jump and not be able to punish the roll since there are different frame perfect timings (3 frame difference) for performing those actions against a shielding opponent and whiffing.

Edit: Furthermore, if you do choose to block, you can still perform the option that you stated with the timing of the roll to beat both the initial grab and shine. After the mixup from the first shine (grab or shine or wavedash) it is truly a guess, but the mixup can ideally end after that option. If you roll, then you can avoid the grab. If you do an OoS option, then you can possibly punish the wavedash. If you continue to block, then after a double shine, Fox cannot do a grounded shine again (technically he can but for a couple of reasons it is extremely unlikely to happen) which will also allow you to roll most of the following options.

Edit: So even if the opponent blocks a late aerial there is still a chance that they can defend the shine mixup. You will have to “guess” or read the opponent’s timing for the initial shine so that you can perform the defense previously mentioned, but after that first shine, it only turns into a guess (Fox wavedashes or shines or does anything else), given that your execution is on point. If Fox wavedashes, then he can catch the roll, but he still has to react to the roll (which could be in either direction). If the opponent shielded and decided to do an OoS option instead, then Fox can get punished.

Defending against Shine mixups are very difficult due to having to “read” or guess the timing of the initial shine and the difficulty of timing the proper defenses. Shine mixups are very strong for all the reasons obviously known (risk/reward). Lucario’s mixups on the other hand, I would still argue are just more difficult to defend against (if you are shielding). Aside from the reasoning that I gave in my previous post, I forgot to mention that it is also more difficult to defend Lucario’s mixups due to the different amount of blockstun frames on every move that are also difficult to distinguish as opposed to just having to time the defense around one move in Fox’s case (shine).

 

[The_NZA]

Fair enough, you guys make a good point. To be fair, stomping pikmins to their death could ALSO be a powerful tool to gimp people similar to how Robin does it.

 

[yogurtgun1245]

Why not slap that onto his aerial neutral B? It's already a hop in the air.

 

[JOE!]

Give him 100 pikmin

 

[kaizo13]

just make his final smash his recovery
..problem solved

 

[steelguttey]

the only buff i REALLY want for olimar is a mod where he kicks pikmin when he uses side b instead of throwing them

and possible a soccer player outfit

pls

 

[Soft Serve]

Make yellow picmin trip on hit instead of latch on.
Or just make yellow pikmin bananas that follow/are carried in the line
Olimar instant high tier.

 

[supascoot]

Plucking a pikmin now has a chance to produce either a Bob-bom, Beam Sword or Mr. Saturn. We gotta keep things consistant between fighers, so now peach has a chance of plucking a pikmin instead of a turnip

 

[Chesstiger2612]

just make his final smash his recovery
..problem solved

I first understood that as designing him so he could only recover with final smashs, and thought that would make the problem only worse.

 

[JOE!]

Plucking a pikmin now has a chance to produce either a Bob-bom, Beam Sword or Mr. Saturn. We gotta keep things consistant between fighers, so now peach has a chance of plucking a pikmin instead of a turnip

Why can she still pick items? I find it so janky lol

 

[shairn]

Why can she still pick items? I find it so janky lol

Beam sword hype

 

[didds]

just make it so olimar plucks other olimars, then his olimar friends pluck tissues and they all cry together because it's sad being olimar

 

[mimgrim]

Why can she still pick items? I find it so janky lol

Same reason for other "jank" from Melee sticking around as well.

 

[Maneater]

as much as brawl tethers are a little bit more free for samus i miss melee wall tethers for being a little bit more flexible.

 

[supascoot]

as much as brawl tethers are a little bit more free for samus i miss melee wall tethers for being a little bit more flexible.

I think the reason for not having melee tethers is due to the way tethers were coded into the game. In order to make them work you would have to change walls of stages into ledges, which could mess up a lot of other things. Maybe PMDT could do a complete recode of tethers but that might be a bit unfesable. Plus there would be the MAJOR balance issue of giving an op character like Olimar the ability to recover

 

[MudkipUniverse]

@HungryHeadCrab hello, ganon player from my region. I want to play you at EpG, my tag is "pokepen".

If they were going to change tethers to be like melee, It would be the Z-tethers. Olimar, ZSS, and Ivysaur would be unnafected.

 

[Hungry Headcrab]

Melee tethers would be such a godsend.

The DT has yet to find a middle ground between the silly tethers of pre-3.5 and the braindead tethers we have now, which is a bummer. Melee tethers just seem like a conceptual nightmare as far as coding it in goes, so, yeah. Lame.

@HungryHeadCrab hello, ganon player from my region. I want to play you at EpG, my tag is "pokepen".

Okay.

 

[_Chrome]

And Olimar is an inch tall. Clearly he'll get better if he's actually to proportion, cause who knows how long he's needed his tether to be only measurable in pixels

And Kirby is 8 inches tall... we clearly need his duck to dodge more attacks.

 

[The Baron]

Exuse my ignorance but how exactly do melee tethers work and what makes them a coding nightmare?