EmptySky00
Banned via Warnings
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2012
- Messages
- 804
- 3DS FC
- 1263-6981-9999
When 3.5 came out and I was forced to transition from having an amazing character to one that was normal, I grew very resentful of Link and his inability to perform as he had prior. I thought the character overall felt 30% worse than before and dropped him for a few weeks because of how impotent he felt.
As 3.5 went on, however, I learned how to take Link's more normalized tool kit and work with it and as a result I became a better player. I started crafting the nuances of a punishment game that I had never before attempted to refine in 3.02, and by the end of 3.5 I really enjoyed Link.
So then I'll get this out of the way, I think 3.6 Link is probably a fair amount better than 3.5 Link. Perhaps a high mid tier. But due to the fact that the punishment game I had started refining in 3.5 was torn apart, I'm left with the opinion that he's a very uninteresting and anemic-feeling character and the only reason I think he's solid tier-wise is because of the relatively low power level of the cast at large. But that's another debate.
The biggest reason why I think this character is bland is because his conversions all feel fake. They generally amount to 2-3 hits into position and anything beyond that is always due to the opponent choosing a garbage defensive option. The single conversion that he retains that's somewhat real is his Uair strings, and for a punishment game that's a tad bit 1-dimensional. His punishment game oftentimes feels like it often only goes as far as encouraging my opponents to run into attacks that they shouldn't be getting hit by, which is incredibly weak-feeling.
This is due to 2 of the nerfs he received.
First, boomerang. It lost a mere 4 frames of startup and has 4 added frames of animation as a result. This makes the move a much larger commitment, but also succeeds in making Link less boomerang-centric. The move itself just feels relatively underwhelming as a zoning/stage control tool, and somehow less powerful as a conversion tool as well. The argument has been made a while ago by another Link player, Beorn I think it was, that boomerang needed to be reverted to Melee startup because its 3.5 incarnation left him centralized around it and it was unfun to play against. To this I'd say, there are tons of characters that rely heavily upon a limited set of moves, and I don't think Boomerang was a huge offender in that regard. It's completely reliant on how the player utilizes his tool kit. Boomerang isn't always the correct option. Also, saying something is unfun to play against may be somewhat valid in regards to game design, but in the case of Boomerang I would argue that it's completely a matter of opinion how fun or unfun it was to play against. Need I remind people that this is also Smash. I find a large portion of the cast unfun to play against. This doesn't mean I'm going to gut their core design to suit my own whimsy. I accept them as they are and play the matchup to the best of my ability. I think Link was fine as a zoning projectile character. This has been his design for a long time, and attempting to make that style of gameplay no longer work so late in this project's development feels like it was done of the whims of some outside party who doesn't even play the character and is overall just jarring to me.
Last but not least, the changes to Usmash are far and away the biggest reason this character feels terrible to play in my opinion. This goes back to the whole SDI modifier debate. SDI it seems is seen by a lot of people as the pinnacle of defensive interaction or something, but I'll argue that this is not the case. In instances of grounded stationary moves, SDI does indeed amount to counterplay, but it is not interactive counterplay.
As a Link player, if I use Usmash and my opponent decides to hold a direction to fall out of it, what options are left to me to prevent this? None. You can argue that I just need to place the attack so they're deep inside the hitbox, but I've posted numerous videos before of people SDI'ing from one side of the attack and out the other. This is completely unacceptable game design and ultimately renders the move absolutely useless at mid-high levels of play since it will effectively get Link punished for even attempting to use it. Thoughts of a few of Melee Zelda's attacks come to mind in this instance. The SDI modifiers in 3.5 were x.5 if I'm not mistaken, and I would argue that this is much more interactive design. This means that if Link places the move correctly, it's less likely to fail, but it also gives the opponent wiggle room to punish Link for having poor spacing. This leaves the success of the attack mostly up to how Link uses it and not up to how hard the opponent wants to drop kick their control stick while still leaving opportunities for the opponent to have defensive input.
There's also other counterplay to this move that existed even in 3.02. You can crouch cancel the first 2 hits ad infinitum. You can almost always shield grab it unless your grab range is terrible and it's perfectly spaced. I can only recall 1 instance where this has happened however. You can SDI the first 2 hits down then shield the last hit. You can even grab him in-between the swings. There's no shortage of counterplay to this move to justify its 3.6 iteration.
My assumption from the changes in post-beta is that the intent is to change the angles on Usmash so it works more effectively, akin to Zelda's current Usmash and Nair. I honestly don't understand why we need to mindlessly stick to baseless arbitrary ideals like the anti-SDI mod crusade instead of just sticking with versions of these attacks that worked perfectly fine. In the end if we assume changing the angles gets the move to work just as effectively as before, what was the point of even changing it? You've essentially done a 360 spin and wasted a ton of effort over-engineering a move that was already fine. The phrase "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind. You're simply running the risk of ending with a much more ****ed up product than what you began with.
I've honestly all but dropped this character for now. I've relegated him to the top shelf to collect dust and only play him when I'm feeling masochistic or nostalgic. I feel like my time is much more easily enjoyed playing a character that feels good to use such as Marth or Sheik or some other nonsense. The fact that I feel no enjoyment from the character I've been playing for over half of my life is disgusting to me. But I guess that's how it goes. I've let my grievances be known at the very least.
As 3.5 went on, however, I learned how to take Link's more normalized tool kit and work with it and as a result I became a better player. I started crafting the nuances of a punishment game that I had never before attempted to refine in 3.02, and by the end of 3.5 I really enjoyed Link.
So then I'll get this out of the way, I think 3.6 Link is probably a fair amount better than 3.5 Link. Perhaps a high mid tier. But due to the fact that the punishment game I had started refining in 3.5 was torn apart, I'm left with the opinion that he's a very uninteresting and anemic-feeling character and the only reason I think he's solid tier-wise is because of the relatively low power level of the cast at large. But that's another debate.
The biggest reason why I think this character is bland is because his conversions all feel fake. They generally amount to 2-3 hits into position and anything beyond that is always due to the opponent choosing a garbage defensive option. The single conversion that he retains that's somewhat real is his Uair strings, and for a punishment game that's a tad bit 1-dimensional. His punishment game oftentimes feels like it often only goes as far as encouraging my opponents to run into attacks that they shouldn't be getting hit by, which is incredibly weak-feeling.
This is due to 2 of the nerfs he received.
First, boomerang. It lost a mere 4 frames of startup and has 4 added frames of animation as a result. This makes the move a much larger commitment, but also succeeds in making Link less boomerang-centric. The move itself just feels relatively underwhelming as a zoning/stage control tool, and somehow less powerful as a conversion tool as well. The argument has been made a while ago by another Link player, Beorn I think it was, that boomerang needed to be reverted to Melee startup because its 3.5 incarnation left him centralized around it and it was unfun to play against. To this I'd say, there are tons of characters that rely heavily upon a limited set of moves, and I don't think Boomerang was a huge offender in that regard. It's completely reliant on how the player utilizes his tool kit. Boomerang isn't always the correct option. Also, saying something is unfun to play against may be somewhat valid in regards to game design, but in the case of Boomerang I would argue that it's completely a matter of opinion how fun or unfun it was to play against. Need I remind people that this is also Smash. I find a large portion of the cast unfun to play against. This doesn't mean I'm going to gut their core design to suit my own whimsy. I accept them as they are and play the matchup to the best of my ability. I think Link was fine as a zoning projectile character. This has been his design for a long time, and attempting to make that style of gameplay no longer work so late in this project's development feels like it was done of the whims of some outside party who doesn't even play the character and is overall just jarring to me.
Last but not least, the changes to Usmash are far and away the biggest reason this character feels terrible to play in my opinion. This goes back to the whole SDI modifier debate. SDI it seems is seen by a lot of people as the pinnacle of defensive interaction or something, but I'll argue that this is not the case. In instances of grounded stationary moves, SDI does indeed amount to counterplay, but it is not interactive counterplay.
As a Link player, if I use Usmash and my opponent decides to hold a direction to fall out of it, what options are left to me to prevent this? None. You can argue that I just need to place the attack so they're deep inside the hitbox, but I've posted numerous videos before of people SDI'ing from one side of the attack and out the other. This is completely unacceptable game design and ultimately renders the move absolutely useless at mid-high levels of play since it will effectively get Link punished for even attempting to use it. Thoughts of a few of Melee Zelda's attacks come to mind in this instance. The SDI modifiers in 3.5 were x.5 if I'm not mistaken, and I would argue that this is much more interactive design. This means that if Link places the move correctly, it's less likely to fail, but it also gives the opponent wiggle room to punish Link for having poor spacing. This leaves the success of the attack mostly up to how Link uses it and not up to how hard the opponent wants to drop kick their control stick while still leaving opportunities for the opponent to have defensive input.
There's also other counterplay to this move that existed even in 3.02. You can crouch cancel the first 2 hits ad infinitum. You can almost always shield grab it unless your grab range is terrible and it's perfectly spaced. I can only recall 1 instance where this has happened however. You can SDI the first 2 hits down then shield the last hit. You can even grab him in-between the swings. There's no shortage of counterplay to this move to justify its 3.6 iteration.
My assumption from the changes in post-beta is that the intent is to change the angles on Usmash so it works more effectively, akin to Zelda's current Usmash and Nair. I honestly don't understand why we need to mindlessly stick to baseless arbitrary ideals like the anti-SDI mod crusade instead of just sticking with versions of these attacks that worked perfectly fine. In the end if we assume changing the angles gets the move to work just as effectively as before, what was the point of even changing it? You've essentially done a 360 spin and wasted a ton of effort over-engineering a move that was already fine. The phrase "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind. You're simply running the risk of ending with a much more ****ed up product than what you began with.
I've honestly all but dropped this character for now. I've relegated him to the top shelf to collect dust and only play him when I'm feeling masochistic or nostalgic. I feel like my time is much more easily enjoyed playing a character that feels good to use such as Marth or Sheik or some other nonsense. The fact that I feel no enjoyment from the character I've been playing for over half of my life is disgusting to me. But I guess that's how it goes. I've let my grievances be known at the very least.
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