3.5 changes discussion

[HK_Spadez]

Seems like nerfs across the board tbh. Feels uncalled for. Thoughts?

 

[Zoa]

Some things are okay, but Lucario can no longer Extremehog. Just wtf? He keeps getting the nerf bat each time. He loses an edgeguard option that was already a tad risky because a mess up could lead to an SD. He got a shield buff increase, but I'm honestly not really that stoked for it.

Looking over at the entire roster nerfs might actually work out for us. Luc's AS and DT might actually be more useful now that all sorts of projectiles have been nerfed to the ground.

 

[HK_Spadez]

yeah.. but the nerfs on our boy def outweigh the gains. if only his new crawl tilt was useful? it seems to send them in angles that are not comboable and theres no way to incorporate it into his combo game

but ur right. the nerfs we facing are def less than the nerfs others are looking at. but the melee chars (sheik/marth/fox/falco/peach/etc) basicaly got untouched =/ not too fair imo. only the "PM" chars got nerfed pretty hard.

 

[Szion]

Did we just lose our invincible aura cancel of double team?? That was one of the saving graces of lucario's awful approach game e.e..

 

[CyberZixx]

You guys will now always have a charge and your shield is better. You are fine. Maybe i'm missing something, what exactly is so bad about his nerfs?

 

[Darkgun]

For posterity sake:

Lucario Changelist


Specials
-Forward Special
--Aerial non-super throw angle: 290 -> 280 (meteor cancellable)
-Up Special
--Can no long grab the ledge while holding down past the normal threshold
--Ledge grab box slightly increased vertically to compensate
-Down Special
--Invulnerability ends 3 frames earlier (28 -> 25) to match the end of the cancel window
--Does not refresh on hit

Others
-Charges now carry over between stocks.
-Shield size increased: 6.5 -> 8.6
-Lucario now has a crawl tilt
-Final Smash
--Last hit KBG 150 -> 120

I've not had a chance to play yet, so I could potentially be full of it.

The change to ES should make ledge snapping much harder in general, but I suspect that with super strict timing, snapping to ledge from stage might still be possible. That said, I may have to relearn how to snap to ledge from below or get used to trying to find ways to recover high.

Also, I'm fairly certain DTC still has its rather significant 10(?) frames of invincibility on cancel, but DT's invincibility no longer extends beyond the window in which you can initiate a DTC. This... changes practically nothing, really, unless you were one to use the veeeeeery end of DT to evade attacks.

One thing to note that will significantly change recovery is the fact that DT does not refresh if we are hit, meaning the super long lasting recovery Lucario had in the past is no more. I suspect it also means that there will be a significant decision made between burning a charge on DTC to recover, using the double jump or ESC>DJ, or identifying when recovery is a lost cause and saving the charges for the next stock.

 

[Zoa]

I tried the ledge snapping earlier today. We can't Extremehog anymore. It seems we can't ledge snap at all past a certain distance, nor can it be used to ledge snap to the ledge outside of anything but a 180 (straight line parallel to the ledge) degree angle.

 

[Zoa]

You guys will now always have a charge and your shield is better. You are fine. Maybe i'm missing something, what exactly is so bad about his nerfs?

Well, we play an offensive character that can't pressure nor force much of any commitment out of the opponent. Our neutral is basically nothing but DD and moonwalk. Aura Sphere and Force Palm can't really be relied upon to do much of anything because they're both horrendously laggy. Each time Lucario has been nerfed without much of anything to compensate. He's lost wall cling, Extremehogging now, his aFP is now able to be meteor cancelled, his recovery is now worse thanks to the changed ledge snapping and DT doesn't refresh, and just the general nerf to AS from Brawl reducing its utility period. Basically the changes we got don't help us all that much as much as we lost. Bigger shield is a plus without a doubt, but it doesn't change the fact that we already have to be super defensive in so many MU as it already is. The aura charges across stocks helps our neutral somewhat, but nowhere near as much as it would be if we had a decent pressure option.

 

[Darkgun]

Got a chance to try out the new stuff briefly during my lunch break.

Crawling tilt is... interesting. It doesn't feel like it has much knockback scaling. That may prove useful, but I'm not quite sure how yet. On the bright side, if the opponent is DIing Lucario's moves in a standard fashion and you connect with the crawling tilt, they will not be DIing that move practically none, so yay an actual DI mixup for Lucario.

Edit: Had a moment of... non brilliance and realized my mistake driving to our meet up spot to play. This is... barely a DI mixup. Maybe ctilt can be used to shield poke low?

Ledge snap is much harder now since we have to obey the traditional recovery rule of "holding down will cause you to pass the ledge during your special". But it didn't actually do much to change ledge snap overall. By using C-stick up as you get within viable ledge snap position, you can cancel your down analog stick input for one frame, and grab ledge. EShogging is REALLY hard though. I didn't use it before anyway, but still.

 

[Zoa]

So Darkgun, it is still possible to ledge snap like before with the C stick?

 

[AkashSky]

I am overall dissasisfied with the ES change. I understand the recovery nerfs is a design goal, but the thing with lucario is that he needed his excellent recovery to stay a balanced character because of the terrible neutral. He needed as many chances as possible to start a string.

Now that lucario's recovery has gone down, the developers have not really given enough to compensate lucario's neutral game.
Increasing the shield is huge, but I personally don't think that it is enough since you can't sweet spot the ledge from all the previous positions. I would have liked some better Out of shield option for lucario, like perhaps decreasing the start up time for one of the tilts or aerials you could do out of shield.

I am a fan of the new aura system. It makes it so you have to earn all of your charges, but you get to keep everything. Now, you can save your aura and not be wasting resources (since you don't get a free charge every stock).

What I am not a fan of is the shortening of Down-B cancels. I don't think it was necessary, and this change overall weakened lucario's neutral game even more.

TLDR; Lucario got slightly more nerfed than buff, but He's still a perfectly fine character to play.

 

[Giygacoal]

It would be great if one of the devs that works on Lucario could explain the decision making.

 

[Zoa]

While not necessarily related to Lucario, how do I change my name? Sick of this one.

 

[TheNinjaFreak]

I don't like how it is impossible to snap ledge anymore with ES... It slows down Lucario's momentum and puts him in a (only recover high option). Edge guarding lucario is so much easier now and it is unfortunate. His down b (Double Team) shouldn't have been nerfed. It was perfect in the amount of invincibility and frames it had. Seems unnecessary to change the recovery options for Lucario. It is now extremely hard to recover against a good opponent. -_-

 

[TheNinjaFreak]

Also is it harder to do dash attack -> forward tilt -> side b (force palm)? ... much more strict timing.

 

[Szion]

I dont know why they think nerfing double team is ever a good idea anymore.

 

[Darkgun]

So Darkgun, it is still possible to ledge snap like before with the C stick?

Yep. I'm no where near as consistent, but that's what I've been doing where possible. It seems to have pretty strict timing though, and I am... fairly(?) certain you can only initiate the ledge snap by C-sticking up... I can't say I've tried other directions. In addition, the snap point also extends above the ledge. I'll need to play with it more, but this may open up more forgiving recovery methods.

 

[ꓰspeon]

I wonder why crawl tilts count as a smash in the magic series.

 

[BestNameEver]

Pretty sure they're tilts. Ones that are impossible to combo into (someone prove me wrong please).

 

[Sail]

Pretty sure they're tilts. Ones that are impossible to combo into (someone prove me wrong please).

Yeah sadly it's just a worse tilt for combos at least. And can anyone tell me what an extremehog is?

 

[BestNameEver]

Yeah sadly it's just a worse tilt for combos at least. And can anyone tell me what an extremehog is?

It's just a broken ledgestall.

 

[Sail]

It's just a broken ledgestall.

If that's dropping from the edge and immediately using ES, I'm pretty sure that's still usable, because I can do it pretty easily and still retain most of my invinciblity (I only see the blue flash away for an instant). Idk if it even had perfect invincibility before, cause I didn't have debug mode to tell, but it seems like this even now can stay perfectly invincible if frame-perfect. And I didn't need to use the Cstick btw
EDIT: Spelling

 

[Darkgun]

O.K, so I've been playing around a little bit more with ES (and Debug mode! This thing's awesome!), and I've found that it is no longer possible to snap to ledge from the 3.02's seemingly full half character height below ledge. Lucario can snap to ledge from further away horizontally than before... I think. Edgehogging someone from the stage with ES seems incredibly unsafe. I managed to do so from full ES distance (using Debugs frame by frame, no less), but anything closer doesn't seem to work. C-Stick assisted snap seems to work for anything but down. I can't seem to do the old ledge stalling trick unless I burn my doublejump.

As for the new crawling tilt... I'm still honestly not sure, I think it is one of the furthest reaching tilts we now have, which is nice. Starts on frame 14, which is... not. It also has a static knockback sweetspot hitbox at the tip of the move, which is beyond awesome. Still not sure what to use it for, but from what I could see, even at 999 percent, the opponents I tested it on went the same distance as they did at 0.

 

[Sail]

O.K, so I've been playing around a little bit more with ES (and Debug mode! This thing's awesome!), and I've found that it is no longer possible to snap to ledge from the 3.02's seemingly full half character height below ledge. Lucario can snap to ledge from further away horizontally than before... I think. Edgehogging someone from the stage with ES seems incredibly unsafe. I managed to do so from full ES distance (using Debugs frame by frame, no less), but anything closer doesn't seem to work. C-Stick assisted snap seems to work for anything but down. I can't seem to do the old ledge stalling trick unless I burn my doublejump.

As for the new crawling tilt... I'm still honestly not sure, I think it is one of the furthest reaching tilts we now have, which is nice. Starts on frame 14, which is... not. It also has a static knockback sweetspot hitbox at the tip of the move, which is beyond awesome. Still not sure what to use it for, but from what I could see, even at 999 percent, the opponents I tested it on went the same distance as they did at 0.

I don't see the problem with using a double jump for it. We still have an invincible edgehog, and even though we can't use ES at shorter distances to grab ledge fron stage, we can still get to the ledge at least just as quick by running up into a RAR wavedash. I think overall, Lucario at least didn't get nerfed, unless this ES thing is more of a nerf than I think it is. We lost like 3 (or 5 i forgot) frames on down b, a SLIGHT ES nerf, and we got a bigger sheild with a whole new attack (granted I'm not sure of a good use for it yet, but the PMDT didn't put it in for no reason lol, I'm pretty sure it's gonna help a lot for some specific use we're not sure of yet).

 

[HK_Spadez]

nowadays i just moonwalk to ledge. i find that fastest way outside of ES

 

[Giygacoal]

While not necessarily related to Lucario, how do I change my name? Sick of this one.

You have to subscribe for a premium account, and then you have to leave a request comment on the page of some mod guy (forgot his name) that will change the name itself for you. Then you can unsubscribe (as in remove the automatic repayment) if you want to stop paying and just want the name. Yes, the name stays even after your premium membership eventually expires.

 

[Windstar120025]

You guys will now always have a charge and your shield is better. You are fine. Maybe i'm missing something, what exactly is so bad about his nerfs?

How about the ONE they didnt put into the cha nge list he can no longer airjump after an aerial Down-B!! thats a significat lose for any Lucario play i had as it ment great mix up on his approach back to ledge, which other wise was very easy to predict/ stop

 

[Windstar120025]

lucario just needs to be glad he isnt sonic or lucas then every thing will be better

 

[Windstar120025]

It would be great if one of the devs that works on Lucario could explain the decision making.

it would be help full if on of the devs explains allmost all their decisions this time!

 

[Giygacoal]

it would be help full if on of the devs explains allmost all their decisions this time!

Yeah, I know the dev team has been super busy, but it's really surprising we didn't get any dedicated long character balance articles like we did in preparation for (I think) 2.5. We did get a good blog post on how Lucas's recovery was changed, but that a tie-in example for the recovery redesign philosophy.

 

[ꓰspeon]

Pretty sure they're tilts. Ones that are impossible to combo into (someone prove me wrong please).

You cannot cancel a crawl tilt with a smash, but you can with a special. (Obv you can't cancel anything into crawl tilt since you have to be already crawling to use it)

 

[Darkgun]

You can indeed cancel crawl tilt into smash, and you can cancel jab/DA into ctilt. The more I use this move the more I like its design. It'll be nice to try it on a player who doesn't crouch cancel it often (my training buddy CCs inadvertently due to the liberal use of down input action).

My bigger problem is getting to ctilt effectively out of a dash.

 

[ꓰspeon]

Wow, yeah you guys are right, I have messed badly with the controls apparently.
Also, now that I've tried it harder, ctilt looks easy to do out of a dash, angling the stick diagonal down.

 

[nimigoha]

How about the ONE they didnt put into the cha nge list he can no longer airjump after an aerial Down-B!! thats a significat lose for any Lucario play i had as it ment great mix up on his approach back to ledge, which other wise was very easy to predict/ stop

That's not true. As long as you've saved your jump and you're in a free state you can use it. After DT, after ESC, after ESC>DT, etc. It's the same.

And guys I think we're overreacting a little bit.

Recoveries are a *lot* less free in 3.5. We have too look at Lucario's changes in relation to the rest of the cast, not in a vacuum like you are in this thread.

Imagine 3.02's recovery in the 3.5 environment. There are almost no free recoveries anymore and Lucario had a pretty damn good one in 3.02. Ledgesnap from almost literally anywhere, getting swatted meant using DT again to make up the distance, ESC into airdodge, aMSa jumps if you're a god, DTC Dairs for massive diagonal recovery, INSANE mixup if you have your jump and 1/2 aura charges (DT into ESC>jump>airdodge, etc.)... I could go on.

We lost free ledgesnapping and always being able to use DT. Chill a little bit.

The shield buff and Mario's Dair nerf combined make me extremely happy. Shieldpoked with a full shield by that was pissing me off.

Crawl tilt has yet to be fully realized, the game's been out for 4 days, let's not immediately call something useless.

Sexy costumes.

Debug mode makes for a lot of fun times.

Overall I think that 3.5 was pretty good to Lucario. There were rumours about removing OHC on Shields, so just be happy that didn't happen.

We get to keep aura charges, and more importantly, our progress towards them. Dying with 9/10 Utaunts then doing the 10th Utaunt gives you the charge. This came out of nowhere and is an incredible boost. It's at the cost of responding with a free charge but I doubt this will be an enormous issue. Seems like a fair trade to me.

Lucario's below-average neutral game is the same, but overall projectile nerfs boost this a little. Lucas, Diddy, Mario, and Pit all have worse projectile game.

Also for anyone struggling with WL out of Usmash, turn on ledge grab boxes in Debug. When this appears near the bottom of Usmash, you're free to WL

And is it just me or is Aura Bomb like half the size and a bit faster?

Debug mode has made me realize how big Dsmash is. Like damn.

I think crawl tilt (Ctilt) can be good from cancelling out of DA. Think about it: at low percents they barely go anywhere so we want a fast move to keep them in hitstun. Dtilt is good for this. But at slightly higher percents they get knocked back further, meaning if we cancel into Dtilt we'll miss them. Ctilt hits furthest on frame 18, 19, and 20, and has more range than our other tilts. It might, according to DG, have set knockback on this outer hitbox meaning you get the same followup pretty much regardless of %. Seems to me like cancelling into DT will be best but it needs a lot more testing.

 

[KhanYe]

People who are complaining that Lucario got nerfed too hard are just not aware of the nerfs every other character got. Squirtle got nerfed harder than Lucario did ahahhaha.

The only thing I can't stand about Lucario's new design is his crawl tilt. I've been accidentally DTC'ing into C-tilt rather than D-tilt as an approach, and that ish is telegraphed. I'd like that taken out.

Relatively speaking, Lucario still has a pretty great recovery without aura, and a top five recovery WITH aura. So I'm fine with the nerfs. The whole point of the update was to make it so recovery wasn't free, and now, Lucario's isn't, when it was impossible to edgeguard.

 

[Risky]

The shield buff far outweighs any of the other tweaks he received in 3.5. He can actually powershield now, and deal with more than one (sometimes not even one) attack on his shield.

They removed 3 frames on invincibility, and made sweetspotting harder. Of course his recovery was going to get nerfed as that was one of the main things outlined in the patch. At least now you can hit him far enough away with only one DT at high %. You can still sweetspot from the same positions offstage so I think we'll be ok. moonwalk -> dair above edge is godlike anyway

New ctilt is really sweet looking. Coolest thing I've done with it so far is [jab -> ctilt -> dtc fair] on a Falco with his back to the edge. Caught him as he flew off. If it does have set KB then it would make an option like ctilt extremely good for edgeguarding/gimps as the followup should be guaranteed. That said we already have a better cc option in dtilt, and it's way too slow to approach with. It doesn't put you more low profile than crouching so... I'm going to put it in the situational combo/edgeguard category.

His real buff was the new costumes. Such beauty.

 

[Thor]

I miss the single free aura charge for each stock's start, and don't mind sacrificing two full aura charges occasionally for one full to start every stock, since now if I die without a charge, it's that much harder to start building momentum again, but having two charges on respawn that I saved don't seem that big a boon to me...

Most the other stuff I'm fine with.

 

[Zoa]

I just spent the last couple of days playing with each and every member of my practice group to get a feel for Lucario in relation to the nerfed (handful of buffed) cast. Here's my thoughts:

-Lots of projectiles were just nerfed across the board if you aren't a projectile based character like Link or Samus. I did over 20 matches with a member who uses Mario as a secondary. It really feels like BAS is actually much more usable this time around. Lots more neutral for the cast now consists of movement options over projectile coverage. FCAS still doesn't really do much in my experience.
-New shield rocks. No more shield pokes like last time.
-New DACUS input really doesn't benefit as much as I had hoped. I don't really see a need to use it over our other options.
-Recovery nerf was fine. What I'm not fine with was the removal of Extremehog, or just how much more unsafe it is as a result of the changed ledge snap. I used this a lot against characters with poor recoveries back in 3.02. It was especially helpful against Falco given how much of a nightmare a neutral war is with him. It was already pretty Risky (pun intended) as it was. Screw it up and you SD. Now I can't really use it because my moonwalking sucks (any tips on classic controller would be appreciated though).

Overall I think it may not be as bad as initially thought, but removal (or just incredibly unsafe to the point of not even considering it) of Extremehog hurts our edgeguard game a bit.

 

[ForgottenLabRat]

A super disappointing change for me was the decrease in angle of the Side-B aerial non charged throw angle got decreased, and is now meteor cancel-able. It means that Lucario's non charged Side-B will never kill anyone again because it has a super long throw animation. Feel like non of these nerfs were necessary. Not very many people played Lucario to begin with, so making worse won't help that number. Which is sad because he is such a cool character.

 

[nimigoha]

Oh my god you guys need to quit whining.

Look at the character in the scope of 3.5 and you'll see that he's still good.

The alternative was not changing/buffing him, which would certainly have made him top tier in 3.5 and nerfed probably harder than this in the next balance patch.

This Lucario is fine. This Lucario is balanced. We have to work for recoveries.

Also uncharged aFP was always meant to be a meteor smash. It being a spike was a mistake. You were supposed to have to use a charge to get the guaranteed kill. If you're going to aFP them, use a charge. Don't have a charge, don't aFP them or do it when they're at a very high percent.

Some of you guys are acting like Lucario went from top tier to unplayable. Go visit any single other forum apart from Ganondorf and you'll see that everyone feels the same way. Have some perspective.