1.0.4 patch discussion

[dean.]

Hi guys,

Recently a new balance/bug fix patch came out. I thought it would be a good idea to have a thread dedicated to discovering the changes that have befallen His Majesty and how they effect his performance.

I will be keeping a list of confirmed changes in this post. So far:

• Fair does less damage, down from 13% to 12%. It also kills later as a result (by roughly 10%).
• Dthrow's trajectory has changed. It goes more vertical and the knockback has increased, making it harder to land fairs out of. It also kills earlier as a result. Low-mid percent combos with nair, uair and fair are still possible, depending on opponent vectoring.
• Damage threshold to reflect Gordos has been decreased. Moves dealing 2% or more now reflect them, down from 3%.
• There are changes to the way nair and airdodge interact with Gordos.
  

  Before 1.0.4, Gordos interacted oddly with Dedede's airdodge and nair. As of 1.0.4 this is no longer the case.
  
  

  Spoiler: nair

  
  

  Spoiler: air dodge

• Gordo hitbox sizes have been decreased. In summary, they are approximately 80-90% of what they used to be.

Global changes:

• DACUS has been removed. Doesn't affect Dedede in any way.
• Vectoring has received large-scale changes. http://smashboards.com/threads/dawn-of-a-new-day-vectoring-mostly-removed-in-patch-1-0-4.378709/
• There may be different properties to the way in which multi-hit moves keep opponents locked in them. This may slightly affect the way Dedede's "chaingrab" (http://smashboards.com/threads/sm4sh-chaingrab-confirmed.375399/) and "spiking" with uair function but needs testing.

 

[Lavani]

No more uair spiking, though that was a global change to those sorts of moves. Seems the downward knockback speed is hard limited now. Outside of that, the changes you mentioned are all I'm noticing.

Not sure how to feel about the new dthrow trajectory/knockback, though I noticed dthrow>uair is a kill combo around 110% on Mario. dthrow launches so high now you need to double jump at that percent to connect, but there's enough hitstun that it still combos.

 

[dean.]

Dthrow -> nair and dthrow -> uair might be things. Worst case scenario we still have a 13% bthrow to fall back on.

It will most likely be hardest to check move speed/movement speed/hitbox changes if any. At least damage/kill percents are hard data.

Did some more checking and I think some customs are slightly changed. Dedede Storm, Topspin Gordo and Armoured Jet Hammer all do more damage. I would assume they kill earlier as a result but I didn't check kill percents for these moves in 1.0.3 because I never used them lol. Fully charged Dash Jet Hammer does less damage.

 

[Lavani]

Well, dthrow→nair was actually a thing before. The new launch angle favors dthrow→fair to higher percents still, but after ~50% or so uair's looking to be the way to go. Unfortunately that also seems to stop working around 120% vs Mario, and even sooner if they DI...

Speaking of customs, Bouncing Gordo does 6% now. I think it did 7% before but I'm not sure. Armored Jet Hammer is still 24% fully charged, did you leave the CPU set to random? I think you may have been testing against a CPU with defense-lowering equipment.

The new dthrow ruins dthrow→Rising Dedede as a KO combo due to the launch height throwing them past Rising Dedede's strong hit too...

 

[dean.]

Pretty sure Bouncing Gordo did 6% pre-patch as well. I had Armoured Jet Hammer as doing 23% pre-patch but maybe I recorded that incorrectly.

I only naired out of dthrow at like 0% pre-patch. If they vectored away from you nair's piss-poor range made it hard to land at higher percentages. Now they don't go far horizontally at all so it's relatively easy to land and does seem like the go-to choice for damage racking.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Did they make his Bair faster? It seems I can connect with it more often. Even with a short hop. Not much of a delay. Or maybe it is just me.

 

[FEFIZ]

So DDD was nerfed right? =/

 

[Jabejazz]

Wasn't aware the patch came out; haven't played in the last few days, and I might not be able to until the Wii U release either.

• Fair does less damage, from 13% to 12%. It also kills later as a result.

Is the knockback observably affected?

 

[Lavani]

Pretty sure Bouncing Gordo did 6% pre-patch as well. I had Armoured Jet Hammer as doing 23% pre-patch but maybe I recorded that incorrectly.

Eh, you might be right. I'm not very familiar with the particulars of most of Dedede's customs.

Did they make his Bair faster? It seems I can connect with it more often. Even with a short hop. Not much of a delay. Or maybe it is just me.

Seems unchanged as far as I can tell.

Is the knockback observably affected?

Doesn't KO Mario from the middle of FD until ~190% now.

 

[Exdeath]

The Dthrow/Uair changes are saddening. Had the rapid-hit properties not been altered, he would have had near 0-Death chain grabs on most of the cast.

 

[Jabejazz]

I don't think it's effectively a 0-Death on most of the cast, as DI Up and Away gives them enough time to act before our UAir reaches them. It's still puts them in a bad positon, but the chain grab doesn't work as well as it seems. Even more so with how our DThrow now works, it's even harder to pull off a UAir at later %.

And light characters have de facto a get out of jail for free card against this at mid % even with suboptimal vectoring.

I'll agree that it's the biggest nerf this patch gives us, however.

 

[Exdeath]

It's not, nor has it ever been. I said that it would have been. To be clear, when I said near 0-Death, I should have worded it as, "It takes them into kill set-up %."

 

[Nintenpro]

Some weak moves (like Rosalina's side B and jab, Falcon's jab, ...) can now reflect the gordos... :/
Some MUs will be harder :3

 

[shrooby]

The d-throw to up-air hype is real~

 

[Jabejazz]

Some weak moves (like Rosalina's side B and jab, Falcon's jab, ...) can now reflect the gordos... :/
Some MUs will be harder :3

Yeah, Gordos knockback resistance got nerfed down 1% I suppose. Was kinda hoping the other way around, but guess they don't like us.

The d-throw to up-air hype is real~

Is it though? Feels more like a solid nerf to our grab game to me.

 

[shrooby]

Is it though? Feels more like a solid nerf to our grab game to me.

Nah, I agree; I think it has been nerfed.
But, at the very least, we still got another decent followup out of it. That's what I meant.

*continues to look on bright side*

 

[dean.]

dthrow -> uair seems to both true combo and kill the training mode cpus only at very specific percentages. even then it will most likely be avoidable by humans either by vectoring the dthrow upwards or the uair downwards. oh well.

Some weak moves (like Rosalina's side B and jab, Falcon's jab, ...) can now reflect the gordos... :/
Some MUs will be harder :3

Yeah, Gordos knockback resistance got nerfed down 1% I suppose. Was kinda hoping the other way around, but guess they don't like us.

is this confirmed? will add to the op if so.

Does anyone know if that glitch that made gordos unusable is still in?

 

[Jabejazz]

Can confirm 2% hits will reflect gordos.

This was probably to allow all jabs to reflect them.

Sheik's needles still cannot reflect them.

 

[Exdeath]

Gordo can still hit counter those attacks, so be sure to space accordingly.

 

[T4ylor]

Did Charizard's neutral B send back Gordos before? Because the CPU seems to be doing just that. Bowser isn't though.

 

[toadster101]

I can't believe they made Dedede even worse. Like... was the Gordo nerf really necessary? Let me guess, Sakurai is in charge of balancing the entire game by his lonesome, and he still has no idea what he's doing.

 

[Lavani]

I can't believe they made Dedede even worse. Like... was the Gordo nerf really necessary? Let me guess, Sakurai is in charge of balancing the entire game by his lonesome, and he still has no idea what he's doing.

"Let's see them call me biased now! Wahaha!"

 

[Jabejazz]

@ T T4ylor claimed he was able to reproduce UAir spiking in For Glory post-patch.

Most characters with a similar move retained the "vacuum" property of their canceled moves.

Further testing shows it still exists, albeit at a somewhat weakened state.

EDIT : Noticed that was exactly how the change was mentioned, disregard this post I guess.

 

[KeithTheGeek]

GG Dedede. Gordo nerf makes me sad, fair needed a buff, and not sure what to feel about dthrow change.

Still gonna stick with him for the time being, but all of these nerfs were uncalled for. I hope we see some buffs in the next patch, he really needs them.

 

[Jabejazz]

GG Dedede. Gordo nerf makes me sad, fair needed a buff, and not sure what to feel about dthrow change.

Still gonna stick with him for the time being, but all of these nerfs were uncalled for. I hope we see some buffs in the next patch, he really needs them.

I'm gonna say he didn't need most of these nerfs, but other than UAir spiking (which is still a thing, will still be useful for chaingrabs, not so much for actual spiking), the nerfs aren't that terrible.

DThrow is the biggest problem, mainly at high %, we lose a lot of options, sometimes we simply do not have any.

Fair nerf isn't a huge deal, it wasn't gonna kill at reasonable % in the center of the stage, and is still super useful as an edgeguarding tool.

Gordo nerf is simply to put every jab in line. Happens that some moves other than jabs can reflect them as well, but generally speaking, the opponent would use a much safer option to reflect them, which also happens to be well above the old 3% threshold, so the nerf has very little practical impact.

 

[Genghis_Connor]

Dammit. This nerf to our grab game was unnecessary and is almost crippling. Dthrow --> fair stayed a true combo until like 80 or 90 before, and I have no idea what the hell I'm gonna do to rack up damage now. Grabs into upair spikes being almost gone are also gonna hurt a lot; that chaingrab was a significant chung of my punish game. Another chunk of it was and still is Gordos, and luckily they seem unchanged other than the jabs reflecting back at us now, which honestly doesn't matter that much (if you got hit by reflected Gordos, you had bigger problems). Also jab cancels are luckily still in our arsenal, albeit cancelling them into grab isn't as effective anymore. I dunno, I'm afraid that this bumps us down a few more spots on the still-developing tier list.

 

[Exceladon City]

I feel the Gordo endurance drop was incredibly unnecessary. 3% was good enough, especially when you consider how many opponents can smack the damn thing back without pressing more than A or B. 2% goes a LONG way when trying to pressure opponents with Gordo. We're talking flat-out, disrespecting Gordo in what could be an opportune time to use it. Edgeguarding with Gordo is pretty much pointless if the opponent can just press a button and go "Nah, son." Maybe I'm over-reacting, but I think that nerf was just dumb. Like, scrubby-kid-that-hasn't-learned-to-block dumb.

 

[Genghis_Connor]

Edgeguarding with Gordo is pretty much pointless if the opponent can just press a button and go "Nah, son."

You shouldn't be edgeguarding with Gordos anyway, tbh. You should almost always go offstage, as Dedede has one of the best recoveries in the game. The only people you should really be using Gordos to edgeguard against are people who almost always recover low and against the stage, like Robin. That's the only situation where a single-bounced upward Gordo is actually useful. Otherwise, you should be jumping out there to hit 'em with any of your aerials except maybe nair.

 

[dean.]

@ T T4ylor claimed he was able to reproduce UAir spiking in For Glory post-patch.

Most characters with a similar move retained the "vacuum" property of their canceled moves.

Further testing shows it still exists, albeit at a somewhat weakened state.

EDIT : Noticed that was exactly how the change was mentioned, disregard this post I guess.

Yep, upon testing it myself it does seem more... different than gone. tbh I hadn't tested with it myself much before the patch (I play with tap jump on so it was generally more difficult than it was worth lol) but what I'm seeing now isn't quite like what was happening in the link I posted in the OP.


I do agree that dthrow nerf is our biggest hit, but it's still really good. I wonder why they decided to nerf Dedede of all characters though? I certainly don't feel like he's especially good or even much good at all - I would have him in the bottom third of the cast - but maybe he has a great win record on For Glory or something.

Upon further testing, I think maybe the 15% sweetspot of Rising Dedede might be slightly weaker? It's marginal though if it exists.


Look on the bright side guys... Dedede Storm buff! Woohoo! would still never use it though. Nevermind that my region is banning customs.

 

[Karthage]

Nothing crippling about the changes.

DDD always wants to be below his aerial opponents because uair is so good, and dthrow does that.

He's a tad worse, but I already didn't consider him "competition grade" so it's not a problem.

 

[Banjo-Kazooie]

Enh, its ok. I think Dedede is still on the high side of the tier rather than the lower side. Still got to adapt to the new trayectory of the Dthrow to see if I should Fair/Nair/Uair at what percents.

 

[Lemboliss88]

Hey, I don't know if anybody noticed but when you use King Dedede's final smash on another character, they get sucked in with the startup, but after the first hammer swings, Characters can air dodge out of it and not get hit with the rest of the swings and more importantly, air dodge out of the bomb. I noticed this in the previous pat h also. Is this intended or is this a bug of some sort. I'm just curious because i think this should not happen. It is more noticeable when used in the air.

 

[DrewMoney]

Not gonna lie but I hate the new update. He is character that didn't need to be changed IMO, I hate that any 2% hit can hit gordos back. Guess I gotta change and step up my game.

 

[FEFIZ]

0% to 40 is nair, but fair is possible too. More than 40% and to 70% is fair (fast 2 jump nair still can hit).. 70% to 100% is uair. More than 100 just use 2 pummels and back or front throw ='/ This depends of opponents char. And depends if you are in rage effect or not.

 

[Jabejazz]

Look on the bright side guys... Dedede Storm buff! Woohoo! would still never use it though. Nevermind that my region is banning customs.

Dedede Storm is, funnily enough, a great move against Rosalina. A lone Luma will get absolutely destroyed by it, either forcing an approach from Rosalina to save Luma, or it's a free Luma kill.

 

[Karthage]

0% to 40 is nair, but fair is possible too. More than 40% and to 70% is fair (fast 2 jump nair still can hit).. 70% to 100% is uair. More than 100 just use 2 pummels and back or front throw ='/ This depends of opponents char. And depends if you are in rage effect or not.

I haven't tested it, but I think you can DI upwards to prevent a guaranteed follow up from dthrow at a pretty low percent now.

In exchange, a dthrow can now be a 50/50 KO chance at whatever uair kill percent is, air dodge vs no air dodge

 

[FierceFox]

NERFED... majorly due to down throw trajectory (vertical sucks for comboing and more knockback). Screw Nintendo... Seriously, quit nerfing my favorites... You already screwed over Jiggs in this game

#EndofSaltyRant

 

[shrooby]

Do you guys think the newly discovered lack of vectoring may have some positive applications?
Come on, anything positive. Absolutely anything. Help me out here!

 

[dean.]

it ruins my theory that vectoring up would kill any dthrow follow-ups at mid-high percents. that's something i guess.

 

[Jabejazz]

With how DI is in its current state, it gives us a practically guaranteed follow-up with dthrow from 0-kill % on basically most characters.

It lessens the dthrow nerf, that's for sure.

On the other hand, I'm scared about how much of a combo fodder TripleD potentially becomes.

Mario/Doc/Ness dthrow setups becoming much more dangerous comes to mind.