3.5 Link Discussion

[Zach777]

Hi guys. Concerning a plus I found with Link's new bomb throw that helps recovery. I read through the first page and most of the second one too and no one mentioned this.

If you AGT up and have DACUS type timing between shield and throw then dj you will be lined right up to do another AGT up with the same bomb.

To make it clearer.

Have bomb, agt up, dj, agt again.

Now a disclaimer. You have to have really good timing or you will just airdodge with no throw and fall to your death.

I hope this helps someone.

Oh, by the way, here is a glossary of the acronyms I used just in case you don't know.

DJ= Double Jump
AGT= Aerial Glide Toss

 

[666blaziken]

Just get over it?

Yup let's all just blindly accept whatever they hand us without questioning it. There's no reason to revert something just for the sake of doing so. You're missing the point, obviously. This is a change that directly affects the effective range of a move that has a 40 frame initial animation. It wasn't a change for the sake of balance as the boomerang and Dthrow changes were (which I've accepted and am not complaining about), but it was a change literally for the sake of changing it.
Let's imagine a Melee Link player coming into the room. He tries this **** out.

Do you really think bomb throw range is going to make or break whether or not he feels like Melee Link? Are you serious? That's that bull****.
Omfg he throws the bombs too far... THIS GAME IS ***
Not going to happen. He's different from 3.0 Link because his automatic combos are gone and he has to play differently to see success. That doesn't mean his bombs should feel like throwing poorly-made paper airplanes.

And let me reiterate since you seem to be hard of reading: I'll call it whatever the **** I want whenever the **** I want. It's what I'm used to referring to it as. And there's no doctrine of political correctness when it comes to how I refer to Smash combos. Jesus Christ. Why don't YOU get over it?

Edit: The ideological debate over the ethics of naming need not apply if everyone else just ignores the **** and stops trying to defend some arbitrary honor over something that LITERALLY affects nothing. It literally affects you nihil when I call it that.

Aren't you acting a little bit entitled? Yes, you are supposed to just deal with it-,u didn't make the game, nor did you place well in major tournaments to really know what the characters need. if it were nintendo or capcom nerfing your character, would you send them an angry letter complaining about how they nerfed your characters? No, they will laugh it off and throw the letter away. While PMDT listens to suggestions (not demands), I don't think they will change their mind unless the metagame really shows that link needs faster bombs. I think the reason they nerfed the distance of the bombs is to make link overall harder to recover with, which in all honesty, is a great change. One of the main problems in 3.02 was that the game was easy to be good at it because the tech skill barrier was weak. Do you know how many people said that recovering was broken, and that it ruined the game? With shorter bomb throws, a better timing is required for AGT bomb tossing while there is easier timing with regular bomb tossing like in melee. It's a really good trade off because you actually need skill to recover with link now. The reason why they are slower? Because if they were still fast, there wouldn't be enough time for the bomb to hit link. But if you want, you could think of the speed as a buff. You can now camp the bombs almost as effectively as toon link, but your bombs are still more powerful than his. While his distance on his spin attack got nerfed horizontally, it's still one of the better recovery options. Also, even though the rang is shorter, it's still really fast, and it still leads to combos if you hit them successfully. On a final note, while technically you have the right to name common combos after yourself, you come across as arrogant and full of yourself, nobody is going to take you seriously,

 

[Nemiak temp]

Link is still pretty godlike.

 

[EmptySky00]

Aren't you acting a little bit entitled? Yes, you are supposed to just deal with it-,u didn't make the game, nor did you place well in major tournaments to really know what the characters need. if it were nintendo or capcom nerfing your character, would you send them an angry letter complaining about how they nerfed your characters? No, they will laugh it off and throw the letter away. While PMDT listens to suggestions (not demands), I don't think they will change their mind unless the metagame really shows that link needs faster bombs. I think the reason they nerfed the distance of the bombs is to make link overall harder to recover with, which in all honesty, is a great change. One of the main problems in 3.02 was that the game was easy to be good at it because the tech skill barrier was weak. Do you know how many people said that recovering was broken, and that it ruined the game? With shorter bomb throws, a better timing is required for AGT bomb tossing while there is easier timing with regular bomb tossing like in melee. It's a really good trade off because you actually need skill to recover with link now. The reason why they are slower? Because if they were still fast, there wouldn't be enough time for the bomb to hit link. But if you want, you could think of the speed as a buff. You can now camp the bombs almost as effectively as toon link, but your bombs are still more powerful than his. While his distance on his spin attack got nerfed horizontally, it's still one of the better recovery options. Also, even though the rang is shorter, it's still really fast, and it still leads to combos if you hit them successfully. On a final note, while technically you have the right to name common combos after yourself, you come across as arrogant and full of yourself, nobody is going to take you seriously,

Aren't YOU acting a little bit entitled that you think everyone's perceptions should match your own? I'm allowed to call out bull**** when they arbitrarily change something for the sake of pointless reversion when it caused absolutely no detriment and was objectively better before. I don't expect them to change it simply because I said so, but this project is still being done for the community and I voiced my opinion so that they knew I disagreed with it. So shut the **** up on that regard. You're just being an ass trying to invalidate someone else's viewpoint at this point.


Changing bomb throws to compensate recovery is deteriorating another crucial aspect of his game (not to the point of being terrible obviously, because I know you'll ***** about that and misconstrue in that regard next) so it's a very poor way to balance recovery. I also don't care about them being slower. I was ******** about distance. I may have mentioned them being slower now, but that was a tertiary concern. I also never mentioned the spin attack and I think the spin nerf was fine. Glad this was all so important while meanwhile in tier-land Fox gets to remain essentially the same. Oh no, my Usmash kills 10% later. I guess I'll just have to deal with my broken neutral game.
Roy gets to remain auto-combo CC-**** central. Samus, who was extensively just a better Link, gets to keep her projectile game untouched. But that's whatever. **** isn't held in the same balanced regard across the board simply because no one complained about it like they ******* about Link and Fox is untouchable because of melee preservation. I can still voice an opinion. Glad these forums are here so we can all just be like WOW PMDT, YOU NERFED **** THAT WAS COMPLETELY FINE BEFORE, GOOD JOB!

But here. Just for you, the more cordial version: I understand that Link is functionally fine as he is now probably, however I feel like some of the changes were unfounded as they did not cause a problem in the character's design at all and overall come across as completely arbitrary and change for change's sake. Personally I don't like change without reason. I'm not demanding they be reverted, I'm just trying to voice my own disagreeing opinion with some of the changes while overall maintaining that you probably did a great job in the grand scheme.

Also, I didn't name the ****ing thing after myself. My friend did. And I can still refer to it however the **** I want. Stop being immature and just ignore it then. That's just what I call it. It has nothing to do with pointless vanity or narcissism. It's just what I call it for myself. I honestly don't care if any of you like me or if you say you don't take me seriously because none of you are relevant to anything significant in my life anyway. You're the one getting so bent out of shape at someone's fond pet name for a ****ing 2 move string. So just drop it and I will too. Jesus Christ.



On another less combative note, the reason the boomerang goes over people's heads is because the hitbox shrinks in size (and consequently doesn't match the model for the boomerang) after the sweetspot is over (5 frames). IT'S JUST A SUGGESTION SO DON'T TRY AND CRUCIFY ME LIKE A BUNCH OF CHILDREN FROM THE MIDDLE AGES WITH PITCH FORKS AND NAILS, but I think if the hitbox just remained constant that would be fine. It's just a massive inconvenience that comes with the territory of his sweetspot being reduced, but I think it wouldn't be too horrible for it to be compensated by a less flawed hitbox. Just a suggestion again. Some characters can just dash underneath the boomerang because of this small shrinking of hitbox size. It just seems stupid.

 

[Shadic]

Calm down.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

I agree, you need to chill duder, understandable that you're getting heated, but getting worked up solves nothing. Also I see you lurking this thread Beorn, you better be free tomorrow >_>

 

[NaijaboyIrin]

Nobody seems to have mentioned that ftilt was nerfed.

It went from a BKB of 20 to either 5 or 2 depending on spacing. Why was this done?

 

[Shadic]

Because it was abnormally high in the first place. Link had this treatment on several of his moves.

 

[Beorn]

I agree, you need to chill duder, understandable that you're getting heated, but getting worked up solves nothing. Also I see you lurking this thread Beorn, you better be free tomorrow >_>

Yeah, I was thinking about posting exactly what shadic posted. Then I was like... Someone else will do it.

I agree with some points made, but please corral your jimmies. The only problem I really have with link atm is his inability to get early kills or gimps on anyone with half a brain, and the dexterity to hold up. A stronger Nair or lower ftilt angle would be cool, but as he stands Link still has some good matchups and many tools at his disposal in neutral.

 

[BigHairyFart]

Yeah, I was thinking about posting exactly what shadic posted. Then I was like... Someone else will do it.

I agree with some points made, but please corral your jimmies. The only problem I really have with link atm is his inability to get early kills or gimps on anyone with half a brain, and the dexterity to hold up. A stronger Nair or lower ftilt angle would be cool, but as he stands Link still has some good matchups and many tools at his disposal in neutral.

Granted, I already did make a post like that, though it didn't seem to help.

 

[EmptySky00]

Oh, I also love the argument that throw distance was nerfed to hit bomb jumping. Meanwhile over in Samus-land..

Ya, whatever.

 

[Deleted member]

Calm down.

empty sky is in my play group. he's an emotional creature, but a talented player and i happen to agree with his stance on link. i didn't read his wall of asterisks here but we've talked about the character extensively in person. and frankly, i agree that 3.5 link is terrible. he is lots of bad and not much good and pretty much strictly worse than samus. i'll make a bigger post on why later when i have some time, but yeah basically he's not the only one that thinks link is awful.

 

[Nemiak temp]

Link's new jump and altered hitboxes on nair ALONE make him a more fundamentally sound character. He can't touch death the whole cast off a random projectile but his toolset rewards basic smash fundamentals and is just as viable as before. Comparing Link to Samus in any way makes no sense. They have projectiles and a tether but otherwise play completely different. Stop whining and adapt

 

[Beorn]

Link's new jump and altered hitboxes on nair ALONE make him a more fundamentally sound character. He can't touch death the whole cast off a random projectile but his toolset rewards basic smash fundamentals and is just as viable as before. Comparing Link to Samus in any way makes no sense. They have projectiles and a tether but otherwise play completely different. Stop whining and adapt

I'm sorry, but this is untrue. Link is not as viable in 3.5 as he was in 3.02. I never understood why people considered him so good to begin with. Easy to play, and a couple of overly centralizing moves? Yes, he had those problems, but he was never on the level of Mewtwo fox or diddy.

Links boomerang was the only move in 3.02 that made people respect links space. Now that it has been nerfed you can pretty much just walk all over him, onstage or off, with many characters. This move needed to be nerfed, but at the same time he was hit with a worse gimp game via nerfs to nair, ftilt, and his recovery. The kill power and saftey of his tools due to the nerfs to ftilt and fairs safeness on shield, a more punishable slower boomerang with a worse angle for combos and Nairs strong hitbox nerf. As well as making his Damage output slightly worse an a few of his more used moves.

Link ended up getting nerfed like he was lucas or MK. I agree that he feels much better and is designed very well this time around, but he is not a great character. I feel that relative to the rest of the cast he will be worse off then he was in melee, but the tiers will be so much closer in this game that his bad matchups won't be a complete blowout. Just very campy, tedious matches like marth in melee.

I expect link will be buffed in a couple of areas in the next big build when people have more time and experience with him and realize how little you have to respect him if you can block and hold up. There are a few characters atm that just don't stack up to the rest of the cast in 3.5, but I understand this was not a balancing patch so much as an overhaul in design.

To clarify, I DO NOT want a link like 3.02 that everyone and there brother could pick up and wreck at mid level with. I think with a couple of tweaks this link could be perfectly viable. That's the cool thing about 3.5 besides the spacies and a couple of characters like G&W, much of the cast just needs a couple of small tweaks in angle or power to be solid viable character. I'm excited for the future of link and this game. 3.5 doesn't make this game unplayable or unwatchable like 3.02 did, so everyone just needs to train up and this link is just the link to do it with, because he requires speed, thought and incredible spacing to play well.

 

[Nemiak temp]

Try Jab. Jab > Boomerang. He struggles against Falco/Marth/Sheik a bit more but can still beat them. Link was never broken he was just very good and VERY stupid. He's still very good just not as brainless

 

[Fortress]

Link was never a perfect character, he just had a few overcentralized things that were very dumb coincidentally. 3.5's bent is interaction between players, and having characters with movesets that require some thought on each move and their purposes makes for a soundly designed Link. Like others have already said, the great thing about 3.5 is that everybody's been brought down to and centralized around a nice even level. From here we can start to see meaningful improvements to the cast, one small thing at a time. The design process before seemed to be 'make everybody good in ways they lacked before, so they can have tools like Fox/Falco's', and that ended up producing a ton of options for a ton of characters that were just way too brainless (boomerang, Lucas recovery), way too good (literally anything Lucas and Pit had), or a combination of the two (Llllllllllllucas). It felt as if nobody was being designed around the game as a whole, and instead were focused on in their own, individual vacuums. With the process the PMDT are using now, things at the very least seem like they're going to be examined more slowly and thoughtfully before making any huge, game-breaking changes to the roster. Expect nothing but (mostly) good things from here on out. With all of the complaining of everybody being 'ruined' you can at least see it this way: things can only get better.

And quit looking at it like this.

Spoiler

 

[DarkDeity15]

I see where Beorn is coming from though, and I can agree with what has been said regarding his viability on the part where he isn't a great character in 3.5. So for the time being, I guess I'll just train up with him for a bit. When I get the Wii U version of Sm4sh, I'll likely not be playing PM anymore until the next big update. Link seems to show a bit more promise in Sm4sh. Speaking of, why not take a little inspiration from what makes Link good in that game and apply it to PM Link? Just a thought.

 

[Deleted member]

first off, citing anything your peers have to say as the "whambulance" is hilariously dismissive and is a great way to have everyone dismiss you for being inconsiderate and shallow in your arguments. don't propagate this behavior.

secondly, link was hit with the nerfbat in 3.5 way too hard imo. the way that "good smash" is played generally involves a linear set of actions as follows:

1. since you don't want to get hit, you play a very cautious neutral game that involves establishing position
2. you achieve some kind of positional advantage such that the game state is risky for the opponent, but not for you, or if you are the one at positional disadvantage, you try to regain position and reset to neutral
3. you work your position into a conversion
4. you carry out the punish from the conversion optimally. optimally can mean many different things and goes past the scope of why link sucks for this post

you can deviate from this series of steps, but you are almost always wrong in doing so, especially as you get better and better as a player.

i submit that link sucks because he is wholly ineffective at every portion of this method. link's plan of attack in a match is generally to use projectiles to lead into a conversion, or to use projectiles to prevent a conversion from the opponent. 3.5 link is good at neither of these things. all 4 of his projectiles carry some (but not too much) risk from their slow and narrow use for each. more importantly, none of them transition into any reliable conversions, nor do they act as conversions the way say 3.02 boomerang did. for most characters, grabs are the default conversions, but 3.5 link's grab was already horribly risky, but now his throws suck too. grabs are essential to keeping an opponent honest from blatant shield abuse, and link no longer has any way to prevent this. the end result is that link can throw ****, but it has almost no offensive value at all since it can't reliably transition into a real punishment, and there's no way to resolve shield camping. the combination of these aspects means that nothing link has is threatening in any meaningful way assuming your opponent plays cleanly. and i don't mean plays well, i mean clean as in they don't jump into your upair strings. so long as your opponent doesn't punt and throw you a freebie, link is fairly harmless.

since we can dissect the character to a point where we understand that he doesn't have anything all that threatening, you don't really have to be as cautious in the neutral game either. this means that attacking link is relatively attractive as an option, because he's not really going to punish you in any meaningful manner if you screw up. since his projectiles are also worse at walling people out, you get to a point where you can just go in on him, since his main way of preventing being put into positional disadvantage and/or conversions is also horribly gimped. and let's be real link's combo weight and recovery aren't anything special and never have been.

so now you have this character that has a mediocre Plan A, no usable Plan B, and his Plan A sucks because you aren't really effective at killing people, and you straight up suck at keeping people from killing you back. this is why link sucks in this version. when you get a character that sucks at neutral, positioning, conversions, sucks against those things from real characters, and has a few major flaws along the way, you don't get a "thoughtful" character, you get a bad character that anyone above mid-level play can exploit all day long. i agree with the development team that balancing the game around a clear S tier like fox was no good, but balancing around D tier is no good either. strong bad says the game was balanced around the ideal A tier. with most of the cast, i can see what they were going for. with link, i respectfully disagree. 3.5 link is just a worse melee link surrounded by other, more numerous, more diverse, more complicated, real characters that don't have major flaws.

3.02 link was certainly good, but no where near being problematic. the only bad part about 3.02 link was the angle of boomerang being able to stuff well placed aerial approaches from peach, zelda, and jigglypuff, making those matchups overly-difficult. there was really no reason to address the rest of the character. i also find it particularly egregious that he was nerfed so excessively in a game where fox gets to STILL be fox. after like 6 versions of this game. like, are you kidding me? but i'll stop here since i don't want to make any comparisons if i don't have to.

 

[jtm94]

No one even really commented on Empty Sky's post other than to tell him to calm down. Just because he doesn't conform to social norms does not mean he did not have valid points.

The way his recovery was before was only slightly difficult to intercept because of the speed of tethers, it was not because of bomb jumping, but it was hit because? The bomb change into slower than turnip projectiles was a bit far for both Links.

 

[foxygrandpa]

If you think that link's throws suck, you're just flat out wrong. Use upthrow at low percents. It leads into upsmash (which is only slightly more reliable into this version) or upair strings on most characters. Dthrow was changed for the worse for sure, but its still a good tool. Use upb or dsmash out of it instead. It's also good for chaingrabbing in some cases. He still has a decent matchup spread. He just loses to several of the top tiers now (fox, falco, sheik).
Link's recovery was not slightly difficult to intercept before, it was nearly impossible to edgeguard if the link was at a high level and was familiarized with how to exploit the tether breaks.
And link still has decent conversions. Dash attack is still a strong combo tool, and so is upair. Once you're above him, he's as good as any other character

3.02 link was indeed problematic. Many of his nerfs were warranted.
However, I do agree that he was slightly overnerfed around his projectile game. And I think that tether breaking would be a better mechanic now that link is limited to only one. To say he's trash is honestly too much, but he's definitely not on fox's level.

 

[Deleted member]

i tested the character quite a bit on my own, after emptysky actually suggested upthrow use. its not good. it doesnt lead into anything reliably against most of the cast and at most percentage ranges. unlike say ike or fox, it also doesnt lead to solid position either, since link's slow movement generally means your second jump and basic evasion is enough to reset to neutral. most of the good upthrows you can simply stay under the opponent and hold position, link is just not fast enough to do that. this all assumes you're okay with link's terrible grab to begin with.

links MU spread now is that he simply loses to any characters that are faster than him because his projectile game can no longer seamlessly transition into good normals to be threatening or meaningfully control the stage. and a lot of chaaracters are faster than link. sure his peach and ganon style MUs are okay, and you can improve his spread somewhat by speeding up your play considerably, but thats a lot of precise input needed for a character that still generally sucks vs most of the cast.

links recovery went some distance but it was never hard to edge guard, unlike say samus zss ivysaur lucas, edgeguarding link was a matter of waiting for him to do anything like agt up b or just get close and do a ledge jump aerial and hit him with anything. dash attack is a mediocre conversion since you undertake way more risk than a usual good conversion, and upair isnt a conversion at all.

the character has tons of issues and no real benefit, no real advantage vs much of the cast, and huge flaws to overcome that he didn't have before because... reasons? gotta agree that link was nerfed way too hard.

 

[Baeklays]

3.5 Link's D-Tilt.

 

[foxygrandpa]

i tested the character quite a bit on my own, after emptysky actually suggested upthrow use. its not good. it doesnt lead into anything reliably against most of the cast and at most percentage ranges. unlike say ike or fox, it also doesnt lead to solid position either, since link's slow movement generally means your second jump and basic evasion is enough to reset to neutral. most of the good upthrows you can simply stay under the opponent and hold position, link is just not fast enough to do that. this all assumes you're okay with link's terrible grab to begin with.

links MU spread now is that he simply loses to any characters that are faster than him because his projectile game can no longer seamlessly transition into good normals to be threatening or meaningfully control the stage. and a lot of chaaracters are faster than link. sure his peach and ganon style MUs are okay, and you can improve his spread somewhat by speeding up your play considerably, but thats a lot of precise input needed for a character that still generally sucks vs most of the cast.

links recovery went some distance but it was never hard to edge guard, unlike say samus zss ivysaur lucas, edgeguarding link was a matter of waiting for him to do anything like agt up b or just get close and do a ledge jump aerial and hit him with anything. dash attack is a mediocre conversion since you undertake way more risk than a usual good conversion, and upair isnt a conversion at all.

the character has tons of issues and no real benefit, no real advantage vs much of the cast, and huge flaws to overcome that he didn't have before because... reasons? gotta agree that link was nerfed way too hard.

I secondary Ike and I think his uthrow is slightly dumb since its attached to character with ridiculous tech chases and option coverage and strong kill power and three other good grabs, and fox obviously has potent follow ups out of his upthrow, but the boards lately have devolved into "my character can't do this but fox can do this and he's attached to a better character". Take into consideration that fox and ike have arguably the best upthrows in the game too, it's not really fair to compare.
And upthrow is only really reliable at low percents. At mid-high percents, dthrow is a better option. It still leads into dair for a kill option, but it's just later than before. And weak hit nair will combo into grab at low percents pretty easily on most of the cast. I can reliably chain upairs after an upthrow at 0-30 percent. Try jumping sooner, it doesn't have as much endlag as you think it might.

Second jump and basic evasion aren't good enough to escape a competent link's combos. He doesn't have super potent combos like sheik or falco, but dash attack, DACUS with the upsmash buff, and upair certainly suffice in keeping opponents suspended in the air.

Link doesn't lose to faster characters. That's true as a general trend, but he still has some good matchups outside of those, like mk, ness, and maybe lucas.
Yeah he was nerfed pretty hard, but D tier? Worse than melee link? He needs help, but come on.

 

[Deleted member]

i only used fox and ike for an example because they are the obvious go-to comparisons. i'm not saying link has to match them but he should at least have comparable tools since goodness in this game is relative.

which is why i put him squarely in D tier. he's definitely worse than melee link because melee link was still better than maybe 9-12 characters out of 26, give or take. i would not put link above the 20% in this game.

but hey could be worse, could be olimar. olimar is unplayable.

i'll come back here later tonight when i'm not on my phone.

 

[666blaziken]

Aren't YOU acting a little bit entitled that you think everyone's perceptions should match your own? I'm allowed to call out bull**** when they arbitrarily change something for the sake of pointless reversion when it caused absolutely no detriment and was objectively better before. I don't expect them to change it simply because I said so, but this project is still being done for the community and I voiced my opinion so that they knew I disagreed with it. So shut the **** up on that regard. You're just being an *** trying to invalidate someone else's viewpoint at this point.


Changing bomb throws to compensate recovery is deteriorating another crucial aspect of his game (not to the point of being terrible obviously, because I know you'll ***** about that and misconstrue in that regard next) so it's a very poor way to balance recovery. I also don't care about them being slower. I was *****ing about distance. I may have mentioned them being slower now, but that was a tertiary concern. I also never mentioned the spin attack and I think the spin nerf was fine. Glad this was all so important while meanwhile in tier-land Fox gets to remain essentially the same. Oh no, my Usmash kills 10% later. I guess I'll just have to deal with my broken neutral game.
Roy gets to remain auto-combo CC-**** central. Samus, who was extensively just a better Link, gets to keep her projectile game untouched. But that's whatever. **** isn't held in the same balanced regard across the board simply because no one complained about it like they *****ed about Link and Fox is untouchable because of melee preservation. I can still voice an opinion. Glad these forums are here so we can all just be like WOW PMDT, YOU NERFED **** THAT WAS COMPLETELY FINE BEFORE, GOOD JOB!

But here. Just for you, the more cordial version: I understand that Link is functionally fine as he is now probably, however I feel like some of the changes were unfounded as they did not cause a problem in the character's design at all and overall come across as completely arbitrary and change for change's sake. Personally I don't like change without reason. I'm not demanding they be reverted, I'm just trying to voice my own disagreeing opinion with some of the changes while overall maintaining that you probably did a great job in the grand scheme.

Also, I didn't name the ****ing thing after myself. My friend did. And I can still refer to it however the **** I want. Stop being immature and just ignore it then. That's just what I call it. It has nothing to do with pointless vanity or narcissism. It's just what I call it for myself. I honestly don't care if any of you like me or if you say you don't take me seriously because none of you are relevant to anything significant in my life anyway. You're the one getting so bent out of shape at someone's fond pet name for a ****ing 2 move string. So just drop it and I will too. Jesus Christ.



On another less combative note, the reason the boomerang goes over people's heads is because the hitbox shrinks in size (and consequently doesn't match the model for the boomerang) after the sweetspot is over (5 frames). IT'S JUST A SUGGESTION SO DON'T TRY AND CRUCIFY ME LIKE A BUNCH OF CHILDREN FROM THE MIDDLE AGES WITH PITCH FORKS AND NAILS, but I think if the hitbox just remained constant that would be fine. It's just a massive inconvenience that comes with the territory of his sweetspot being reduced, but I think it wouldn't be too horrible for it to be compensated by a less flawed hitbox. Just a suggestion again. Some characters can just dash underneath the boomerang because of this small shrinking of hitbox size. It just seems stupid.

I see your point, the bomb nerf wasn't really warrented, but I think that you are wrong about fox and samus. Fox doesn't have a broken metagame, and isn't as broken as he was in melee. His reflector has been nerfed (no invinciblity), his blaster decays from range, and his upsmash is harder to kill with. What can he do? He can approach with his good arials, and his shine is still a combo extender, but he is also at great risk because he is light weight and combo food. Many characters in project M have good combos on spacies, so fox is balanced as a glass cannon. The reason why he beats link is because design-wise, fast characters are supposed to beat campy projectile characters if the fox main can outplay the projectiles, but in exchange, link has good matchups against floaty characters with inferior projectiles that don't fastfall such as game & watch, ness, zelda, toon link, and diddy kong. By design, Link shouldn't ever have a good matchup against fox. Because if he does like in 3.0, then that would mean that he is fast enough to perform a lot of combos against fast characters that are supposed to win by getting in the opponents face, plus he would have a bigger advantage against characters that already have a hard time dealing with his projectiles and big sword range. Samus isn't better in every way than link. She is floaty, has lower mobility, her weapons arn't as good close range as link's, and she has a harder time against floaty/ higher-range characters than link does.

 

[EmptySky00]

I see your point, the bomb nerf wasn't really warrented, but I think that you are wrong about fox and samus. Fox doesn't have a broken metagame, and isn't as broken as he was in melee. His reflector has been nerfed (no invinciblity), his blaster decays from range, and his upsmash is harder to kill with. What can he do? He can approach with his good arials, and his shine is still a combo extender, but he is also at great risk because he is light weight and combo food. Many characters in project M have good combos on spacies, so fox is balanced as a glass cannon. The reason why he beats link is because design-wise, fast characters are supposed to beat campy projectile characters if the fox main can outplay the projectiles, but in exchange, link has good matchups against floaty characters with inferior projectiles that don't fastfall such as game & watch, ness, zelda, toon link, and diddy kong. By design, Link shouldn't ever have a good matchup against fox. Because if he does like in 3.0, then that would mean that he is fast enough to perform a lot of combos against fast characters that are supposed to win by getting in the opponents face, plus he would have a bigger advantage against characters that already have a hard time dealing with his projectiles and big sword range. Samus isn't better in every way than link. She is floaty, has lower mobility, her weapons arn't as good close range as link's, and she has a harder time against floaty/ higher-range characters than link does.

I'm sorry for getting pissy. I'll respond in a calm fashion from this point and I understood your point about calling it the Empty Combo in public, but didn't want to give any form of admission to that point because of the annoying way it was being presented.

Fox's neutral game is still broken for all of the same reasons it was broken in Melee. It's just slightly less potent, but it essentially does the same thing. Invincibility on shine only ensured that it would never trade, since it was only on frame 1. So unless you're trading constantly with it (it's frame 1 so you were using it on a move to begin with generally), then the invincibility change had no bearing. Laser decay is a thing, but lasers still essentially function the same way in how they force the opponent to play into Fox's defender's advantage while he doesn't have to commit to an approach. It makes it so you're forced to chase him down regardless, which is disadvantageous. Usmash still kills, but just 10% later. This is a deficit Fox is more than capable of making up. He still plays the same game, which is why Umbreon and I said "Fox still gets to be Fox" or something along those lines. Being a glass cannon @ jtm94 lolusuk doesn't balance a character. If they're broken in neutral then they can make up for any deficiency in frailty or whatever. I wasn't saying Link is bad now because he loses to Fox at all, actually. I don't even remember saying Link is bad now because I made it a point to myself to not come in here ******** about how he's ruined. I wasn't even going to complain at all, but some of the changes felt so random and unwarranted that it just annoyed me. Having a few good MU's doesn't make a character not bad. If the general function and gameplay of a character is fundamentally flawed, then they're just bad.
Samus is fundamentally a better Link. Better projectile game. Better recovery. Better projectiles. Amazing CC game. SIGNIFICANTLY better combo weight. Better tether. Better normals. better wave dash (Link's movement is terrible unless I'm playing him). etc. She doesn't play the same but a lot of her aspects are just in general superior to Link in terms of a projectile character. I'm not saying #NerfSamus, I was merely annoyed that nerfs seemed to have been served out with an uneven hand.

I can still play fairly effectively with Link on a good day, but he really does feel like he has nothing threatening anymore. Link wasn't as problematic as people make him seem, yet I was willing to accept boomrang nerfs. But the unnecessary changes in general when the only established issue was his boomerang and maybe slightly his recovery (which was already hit with the removal of tether cancels and the general heavy hits to tethers and the decaying distance for AGT) threw me for a loop in general.

 

[Deleted member]

fox is as much a glass cannon as he was in 2003, and by that i mean not at all. fox can choose when to attack in a game based on movement and positioning, has probably BOTH of the best conversions in the game (shine and upthrow) and the entire character is built to exploit those characteristics in a way that no character can compete with. link never had a good fox MU, not in 3.0 and certainly not otherwise.

unlike empty, i think link is ruined and i am quite open about it.

 

[foxygrandpa]

I don't know why they changed the bombs. They were fine before.

The thing about fox, is that although he's definitely the best from what ive seen so far, a lot of characters can now face him in even or advantageous matchups (Samus, Ike). I agree that he might need to be toned down slightly, he's not brawl MK broken tier. Most characters are just about melee sheik or marth level, which is fine. Total balance in a game with as diverse of a cast isn't really possible.
Link isn't great, but in a cast of severely nerfed characters, he's fine. It's okay if he loses some matchups. He wins some too.

 

[J3f]

I'm in agreement with EmptySky and Umbreon. Link is no longer competitive. His bad matchups are the best characters in the game at the moment. Every tournament Link will have to face a Fox and having a mandatory secondary isn't good game design.

Link feels neutered now. It's not even that he's weaker, he's less fun to play. All of the good things in his bag of tricks got taken away.

Do you like having a kill move that requires a very risky grab? Too bad no more Down Throw to Down Air.

Do you like performing the hype as hell Bomb Jumps off stage? Now you need 20XX skills to pull it off for a very mediocre recovery.

Like not losing to any character faster than Link? Sorry, we nerfed his boomerang so it can't be used to space properly or get you out tough situations.

Meanwhile on the Great Fox:

PMDT: "Fox everyones getting extensive nerfs, seeing as how you're still on top..."

Fox: "But everyone does fine now, I mean there's actually matchups with me that are 50-50."

PMDT: "Well everyone's taking a hit so we were thinking we might nerf your neutral game..."

Fox: "Nooooo! unacceptable"

PMDT "Uggh, Uughh sorry your excellence, but we have to tell the other Characters something."

Fox: "Then tell them this: Up air damage reduced by 1, Recovery now basically like Melee. Haaaa Haaaa Haaaa Haaaaa."

Long Live 3.02

 

[Beorn]

fox is as much a glass cannon as he was in 2003, and by that i mean not at all. fox can choose when to attack in a game based on movement and positioning, has probably BOTH of the best conversions in the game (shine and upthrow) and the entire character is built to exploit those characteristics in a way that no character can compete with. link never had a good fox MU, not in 3.0 and certainly not otherwise.

unlike empty, i think link is ruined and i am quite open about it.

Yeah, I haven't played enough good players in 3.5 to come in here and act like link is a terrible character now...

But, I strongly believe he is a bad character with no meaningful way of pressuring or avoiding pressure against most of the cast.

This is how I have felt since the early builds of 3.5 I play-tested, but I won't act like this is fact. I respect umbreons opinion on the game and agree with everything he has said. Even so far as having nearly quoted some of his sentences while playing against other pm players.

My training partner ends up just laughing and shaking his head at how free Link can be now.

 

[Beorn]

I'm in agreement with EmptySky and Umbreon. Link is no longer competitive. His bad matchups are the best characters in the game at the moment. Every tournament Link will have to face a Fox and having a mandatory secondary isn't good game design.

Link feels neutered now. It's not even that he's weaker, he's less fun to play. All of the good things in his bag of tricks got taken away.

Do you like having a kill move that requires a very risky grab? Too bad no more Down Throw to Down Air.

Do you like performing the hype as hell Bomb Jumps off stage? Now you need 20XX skills to pull it off for a very mediocre recovery.

Like not losing to any character faster than Link? Sorry, we nerfed his boomerang so it can't be used to space properly or get you out tough situations.

Meanwhile on the Great Fox:

PMDT: "Fox everyones getting extensive nerfs, seeing as how you're still on top..."

Fox: "But everyone does fine now, I mean there's actually matchups with me that are 50-50."

PMDT: "Well everyone's taking a hit so we were thinking we might nerf your neutral game..."

Fox: "Nooooo! unacceptable"

PMDT "Uggh, Uughh sorry your excellence, but we have to tell the other Characters something."

Fox: "Then tell them this: Up air damage reduced by 1, Recovery now basically like Melee. Haaaa Haaaa Haaaa Haaaaa."

Long Live 3.02

I respect that you feel he is not fun to play anymore, but most people agree he needed changing to be made a more demanding and less easy to play character. We really don't need 3.02 link back. He was pretty over centralized around a couple of moves and his basic game plan was boring and not fun to fight against even if he was shut down by the same things he gets shut down by in 3.5.

His current game plan is ineffective and easily worked around as of 3.5, but the boomerang, his safe on shield fair, and his nair were the only reasons this was not true in 3.02. He still had poor mobility, a terrible grab and weak defensive options in 3.02, but boomerang covered up most of these flaws by being fast, having a great hit angle for conversions can being more ranged on the strong more damaging hit. This was not fun to play against and in my opinion unfun to use considering boomerang was how you play link in 3.02.

I would much prefer, his 3.5 move set be tightened up to be better at what link is good at than have to stop playing pm because of how lame he is to play. Currently throwing projectiles is almost always your best option, but as umbreon said, the conversions don't really workout after you get the hit. You can play faster and more precisely now with better landing detection and the one frame faster shorthop, which is why he feels so good to move with now, but it does you no good if nothing in your tool set makes the opponent feel any sense of pressure, or give him any reason to question why he shouldn't just go in and **** you up.

The fastest close range move link has is his jab and it is a wopping 6 frames before the hitbubble comes out and 7 before it is in front of you. His down smash is his next fastest option at 7 frames, Both of these options are beaten by holding shield or CCing, and as umbreon mentioned you can't keep them honest with a grab, because he has an 11 frame tether grab that can't grab any opponent in the air, unless they are nearly inside of link. So to say he has poor defensive options is an understatement . This deteriorates matches into link running away with retreating fair's, bairs, and nairs, and throwing every projectile he has to hope for a read or bad DI, while avoiding being gimped at 60 because he was hit by a stray low angled move. Yes this is an over generalization, and I realize he these are not literally the only moves you use, but they are the safest.

All of this is pretty pointless honestly though. We need to figure out ways around his numerous weaknesses and learn what his optimal stuff is. Let's give it a bit more time and tourney experience. The PMDT had a year to fix link and this is how they felt he should be. They must have some reason to nerf him as hard as they have. I'm not saying I agree with their decision, but I would like to hear from a PMBR what they think we should do with link regarding his current moveset. Someone playtested this link against good players and found that he was a good character. I want to know what they were doing we aren't.

I'm pretty sure shell and shadic did most of the decision making this time around, with input by a few others, but I could be wrong about that. They did wonders with toonlink. So hearing from one of them would be helpful. If we are all just playing him wrong I would like to know how to play him the way he was intended to be played in 3.5.

 

[666blaziken]

I was playing a friend yesterday against a friend who regularly beats me with ike. I remembered that ike is kind of like a combination of falcon and marth, so if I played the matchup like in melee, I have a better chance. This would be short-hopping bombs, camping out with the bombs and boomarang, and if under pressure, using a nair OOS. While I know I am not the best link player, I managed to beat my friend a couple of times. I think while having the bombs shorter range (for nerfed recovery reasons) is a nerf, the slower bombs are a buff because if they bounce off sheild, you can pick them up in the air and use them like peach's turnips.

 

[EmptySky00]

I respect that you feel he is not fun to play anymore, but most people agree he needed changing to be made a more demanding and less easy to play character. We really don't need 3.02 link back. He was pretty over centralized around a couple of moves and his basic game plan was boring and not fun to fight against even if he was shut down by the same things he gets shut down by in 3.5.

His current game plan is ineffective and easily worked around as of 3.5, but the boomerang, his safe on shield fair, and his nair were the only reasons this was not true in 3.02. He still had poor mobility, a terrible grab and weak defensive options in 3.02, but boomerang covered up most of these flaws by being fast, having a great hit angle for conversions can being more ranged on the strong more damaging hit. This was not fun to play against and in my opinion unfun to use considering boomerang was how you play link in 3.02.

I would much prefer, his 3.5 move set be tightened up to be better at what link is good at than have to stop playing pm because of how lame he is to play. Currently throwing projectiles is almost always your best option, but as umbreon said, the conversions don't really workout after you get the hit. You can play faster and more precisely now with better landing detection and the one frame faster shorthop, which is why he feels so good to move with now, but it does you no good if nothing in your tool set makes the opponent feel any sense of pressure, or give him any reason to question why he shouldn't just go in and **** you up.

The fastest close range move link has is his jab and it is a wopping 6 frames before the hitbubble comes out and 7 before it is in front of you. His down smash is his next fastest option at 7 frames, Both of these options are beaten by holding shield or CCing, and as umbreon mentioned you can't keep them honest with a grab, because he has an 11 frame tether grab that can't grab any opponent in the air, unless they are nearly inside of link. So to say he has poor defensive options is an understatement . This deteriorates matches into link running away with retreating fair's, bairs, and nairs, and throwing every projectile he has to hope for a read or bad DI, while avoiding being gimped at 60 because he was hit by a stray low angled move. Yes this is an over generalization, and I realize he these are not literally the only moves you use, but they are the safest.

All of this is pretty pointless honestly though. We need to figure out ways around his numerous weaknesses and learn what his optimal stuff is. Let's give it a bit more time and tourney experience. The PMDT had a year to fix link and this is how they felt he should be. They must have some reason to nerf him as hard as they have. I'm not saying I agree with their decision, but I would like to hear from a PMBR what they think we should do with link regarding his current moveset. Someone playtested this link against good players and found that he was a good character. I want to know what they were doing we aren't.

I'm pretty sure shell and shadic did most of the decision making this time around, with input by a few others, but I could be wrong about that. They did wonders with toonlink. So hearing from one of them would be helpful. If we are all just playing him wrong I would like to know how to play him the way he was intended to be played in 3.5.

All he needed was the boomerang angle altered, up B distance nerfed to where it is now, and the tether nerfs and he was fine.
But I think their goal is to nerf "problems" to the ground then buff them back up to a comfortable position later. I just don't want there to be some sort of perceived universal understanding this time to be that he's fine so he doesn't get any better in later versions. He wasn't broken before, though his overall design could maybe have been viewed as being too centralized around boomerang, but that didn't make the rest of the character a problem. Hell, boomerang was good but it wasn't that good to break any metagames. He was borderline perfect how he was and to be slammed as hard as he was is just a little disheartening. Artificially limited and gimped in too many aspects.

I wish Zair was 10 frames of landing still. It requires so much precision to get the benefit compared to other Zairs that 15 frames is so excessive. The hitbox is still small as piss. I understand that it's a universal lag thing for tethers, but that wasn't necessary imo. Dash attack's extra lag is annoying. Utilt being 2 frames slower is annoying just knowing that it was changed for no reason. You already know how I feel about bombs and bomb jump. 5 frame jump and better wavelands are fantastic though and probably the only thing I like better in this version.

 

[666blaziken]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4URlQEgTX98 at 3:10 and other instances, dash attack leads into itself. It basically gave him a huge matchup against fast fallers and for other characters, it could easily lead into one of his 3 high knockback arials. It was kind of broken. Overall, watching that match, it was easy to see how much more skilled darkflame was over jesse, but jesse abused link's broken stuff and won.

 

[EmptySky00]

It wasn't kind of broken at all. Dash attack still held inherent risk to its reward and that ratio wasn't excessively skewed to one side to make it broken. Stop getting hit by stray dash attacks and punish harder. That move was made continually worse and worse in each version. It was fine before. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this character having effective moves.

That's also just a bad MU and Falcon is a fast faller. Any time you see a bad MU you can't say that the character on the winning end is broken. That's not how it works.

 

[J3f]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4URlQEgTX98 at 3:10 and other instances, dash attack leads into itself. It basically gave him a huge matchup against fast fallers and for other characters, it could easily lead into one of his 3 high knockback arials. It was kind of broken. Overall, watching that match, it was easy to see how much more skilled darkflame was over jesse, but jesse abused link's broken stuff and won.

That's the disadvantage fast fallers have in Project M. They're easy to combo. Also that combo was partially due to bad DI. Using a characters strengths to their fullest also isn't abusing them. Link still struggles with fast characters, even the ones that are fast fallers because he can't kill very early. 90% at the very earliest and 120% or more most of the time, unless your opponent really screws up and eats the semispike hit box of Spin Attack off the edge.

Also a lot of characters are vulnerable to 0-Death combos. It's one of the balancing factors that gets thrown out every time someone calls Fox OP. Link's Kill moves aren't even that great because they launch at an upward angle which gives a lot of characters like Falcon extra room to recover.

 

[Deleted member]

1 i dont think cf vs link is a bad matchup in the old game

2 thats a pretty low level match to use as a reference

3 aside from boomerang maybe, i dont know what link was "centralized" around. you dont really want to rely on a projectile vs fast characters anyway (see: half the cast).

 

[EmptySky00]

It seems like it has the potential to be a difficult MU for Falcon at least, though he does have the movement to win it because Link folds to pressure and Falcon should be able to convert into a kill pretty easily.

I think overall this misconception about Link last version comes from him being good at a few things (hard-hitting projectile conversions and zoning), and these things tend to be more insurmountable at lower-level play. But good players don't fold to projectile walling, as Umbreon has repeatedly proven to me time and again. Perhaps this can be related to Melee and how you can't just take Falco into a game and expect lasers alone to carry you at high level because better players can beat it. You can say boomerang was fast but it was frame 21 (only 6 frames faster than it was pre-speed increase) and frame 21 is nowhere near unreactable. If you get hit with boomerang it's because you made a mistake. It's a really threatening move that was perhaps overly spammable in some MU's, but its more pertinent application against characters that don't auto-lose to projectiles is cutting off space, stuffing aerial approaches, threatening the opponent from mid-range and forcing them to play into defender's advantage. A common reason people cited for losing last version was that they couldn't get in. Link's boomerang was a threatening tool that made getting in on him more difficult, but at higher level play you can't just smack side B over and over and expect to win. In regards to him being too easy to play, Link imo was a character that had a low tech requirement but a very high tech ceiling. The requirement to win with him may increase slowly as you play better players, but against top level it's really ****ing high. As high as most other characters and perhaps higher in some MU's. I always got really annoyed when people blew out of proportion how amazing he was last version because I knew this would be the result. Now the boomerang carries little weight just as a lot of his tool kit does so you generally don't have to fear anything he can do to you. It's like, he throws **** and he throws more ****, and you get hit by one of them but he can't convert it so you're still in neutral. Then he proceeds to throw more **** to maybe situationaly set up a kill on bad DI for far more work than most other characters have to put in.

 

[Deleted member]

two things to that-

the comparison to melee falco lasers is a bad one, because lasers are only "good" at mid level play but are absolutely busted at top level play. 3.02 link was a newb-slayer but fell into the bigger picture well at higher levels of play, give or take a few very small precision details. 3.5 link is okay at mid level play and falls apart as you move up the player spectrum

also i don't always think getting hit with boomerang was a mistake. pivot rang was a good tool to keep the opponent honest but you don't want it to be "too honest" per se because then the threat of it shuts off huge portions of offensive momentum to always respect it. however i don't think it crossed that line and worked well as a happy medium

the main issue to 3.02 link was certainly boomerang, but it was that the slower characters had no productive means to negotiate it due to the angle being able to stuff aerial approaches. aerial approaches aren't particularly good in the first place but thats a major portion of the neutral game that slower characters must respect vs projectile based characters and link isn't changing on a fundamental level any time soon. tbh having the angle reduced but otherwise leaving it would have been the ideal change to it imo

as an aside you write way too much filler to make a point. use active language and 25 words or less if possible

 

[EmptySky00]

two things to that-

the comparison to melee falco lasers is a bad one, because lasers are only "good" at mid level play but are absolutely busted at top level play. 3.02 link was a newb-slayer but fell into the bigger picture well at higher levels of play, give or take a few very small precision details. 3.5 link is okay at mid level play and falls apart as you move up the player spectrum

also i don't always think getting hit with boomerang was a mistake. pivot rang was a good tool to keep the opponent honest but you don't want it to be "too honest" per se because then the threat of it shuts off huge portions of offensive momentum to always respect it. however i don't think it crossed that line and worked well as a happy medium

the main issue to 3.02 link was certainly boomerang, but it was that the slower characters had no productive means to negotiate it due to the angle being able to stuff aerial approaches. aerial approaches aren't particularly good in the first place but thats a major portion of the neutral game that slower characters must respect vs projectile based characters and link isn't changing on a fundamental level any time soon. tbh having the angle reduced but otherwise leaving it would have been the ideal change to it imo

as an aside you write way too much filler to make a point. use active language and 25 words or less if possible

Ya whatever. I didn't mean falco lasers were bad at high level, just that high level players can beat it.


Link is a noob slayer because they can't beat projectiles.

10 words. Take that.


You ass.


Just was a theory anyway.