3.6 Squirtle Changes [Discussion]

[Mage.]

Squirtle Changelist

Smashes
Forward Smash
-Reduced Armor, Medium to Light. Indicator Adjusted to match.
-Armor now terminates earlier frame 35 -> 20
-Hitboxes active frames pushed slightly forward and trimmed. Active 16-20-22 -> 15-18-20. Middle number is when the hitbox degrades.
-Outer disjointed hitbox reduced and is not active during first hit frame.
-Hitbox no longer clanks.
-Outer Hitbox damage reduced by 1.
-Knockback curve adjusted to favor growth and knockback increased.
-Base 50 -> 25, Growth 78 -> 104.

Down Smash
-Reduced Armor, Medium to Light. Indicator Adjusted to match.
-Armor now terminates earlier frame 29 -> 16.
-Final Hit knockback curve adjusted to favor growth and knockback increased.
-Base 65 -> 44, Growth 80 -> 113.

Aerials
Neutral Aerial
-Reduced Armor, Medium to Light. Indicator Adjusted to match.
-Hitbox size increased.
-Trajectory raised 25 -> 30.

Forward Aerial
-Animation movement slightly reduced
-Removed non-reversible knockback flag

Throws
Up Throw
-Redid timing to better match animation
-Assuming a 100 weight victim, Release Frame delayed 9 -> 11. Reduced Cooldown by 3 frames, IASA 38 -> 37.
-Increased Knockback Growth 62 -> 80.

Specials
Side Special (Withdraw)
-Fixed bug where point blank, non-Aqua Jet Withdraw would fail to hit opponent.
-Removed Armor Start up
-Added Armor indicator
-Fixed indicator flash for when side B duration is up

Side Special (Aqua Jet)
-Removed Armor

Up Special (Waterfall)
-Moved hitboxes inward, reducing range. Graphics adjusted to match.

Other
-Walljump Horizontal Velocity 1.3 -> 1.1.


Discuss.

 

[Life]

I don't really know what to make of it. Uthrow and nair buffs are nice I guess?

 

[Mr. Fabulous]

Need to test all this out. Looks like they nerfed a lot of Squirtle's jankier **** but get him a few buffs. Not sure how much it'll compensate but we'll see.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

From a glance, I'd say not too much has changed. They just dialed back the armor on a lot of things, and improved a couple things. Pretty much he's got less jank, more or less the same character with a couple tweaks here and there. His recovery seems a little worse though.

 

[shinyskarmory]

Tentative first reaction:

We lost a lot of armor across our skillset in general. Fsmash armor was pretty situational but useful, so I'm sad to see that go. Side-B armor was cool but not really anything you could rely upon for more than projectiles anyways, not too upset about that. D-smash and Nair armor, on the other hand, really hurts us. Especially the nair armor, since shellsling nair will be a substantially weaker approach without the armor to help us.

To compensate, though, we got a better hitbox on Nair, faster endlag on Uthrow (which has always been one of my favorite string starters, so that's nice), and better kill potential on Fsmash and Dsmash. I wish Fsmash had gotten a little bit faster in exchange for losing armor, but whatever.

I think this is probably a net "meh" for Squirtle. We lost some of our jank but gained some kill potential in exchange for it. I want to test kill percents on the new Fsmash and Dsmash but I won't be able to do that until Wednesday night because work and stuff.

 

[Jamwa]

reaction:
-armour
**** armour its dumb anyway why wasnt it completely removed

-nair hitbox increase
thank you pmdt

-smash attack -bkb +kbg
-uthrow +kbg
needs to be playtested

-fair reverse hitbox
this is good

-walljump
hopefully this is useful in terms of wall-jumping more than once if that's in pm im not sure, otherwise i really dont give a **** walljump is not that important

-waterfall
lmao i hope this actually nerfs the move, they didnt mention hitbox changes and the last hit is dumb

to sumrise my thoughts:
bigger hitbox nair = good for neutral game
waterfall change = worse recovery
overall buff imo if you weren't abusing armour every match like some skrub and your opponents already know how to gimp squirtle

 

[Daftatt]

3.6 is the best squirtle ever

 

[theperson91]

How big is the nair hitbox now? I won't get a chance to test it out until late tonight.

 

[Mage.]

I wouldn't be able to tell you based off numbers, but from playing last night his nair hitbox is a tiny bit bigger than before. Previously his nair hitbox would only encompass his shell, now its radius extends a little bit past his shell. It's not significant enough to make it much easier to land but it helps.

Overall I think the changes were "meh" as well. Tbh I liked the armor idea with his shell and all and a majority of the time it wasn't even that useful. Withdraw would still get beat out by a lot of smashes or certain projectiles at higher percents and the only smash where I recalled it being useful was fsmash, of which they removed the clank now so i'm a bit sad at that. This especially hurts nair the most though, even if they gave it a slightly bigger hitbox. Overall I still think squirt is fine. He's not too over powered nor is he too under powered. I basically think he's at the perfect point of balance and most of the cast should try and revolve around the same power.

I just wished they buffed our grab a bit ><

 

[Warzenschwein]

WITHDRAW ACTUALLY HITS PROPERLY POINT BLANK NOW THANKS

 

[didds]

what's wrong with our grab?

 

[Mage.]

I've had plenty of times where characters are right in front of me and I grab but it whiffs or i'll hydroplane grab and just not grab them at all. Sometimes I feel like our grab is just so tiny especially when playing against marth. I'm fine with our grab but there are some moments where I'm right in front of them and it whiffs the grab and I just go:

SQUIRT MAN WHY

then get fsmashed and die.

 

[Life]

I've actually gotten grabs on people behind me (specifically it was a fox CPU that techrolled behind me and I WD back and grabbed without turning around), so...

 

[shinyskarmory]

Okay so finally found time to do that testing I mentioned earlier.

Fsmash kills Mario at ~105% from the center of Final Destination, which is actually pretty solid even considering the fact that we won't always be able to set ourselves up to face the way we want to. Dsmash kills Mario off the top at around 210%, so it's still a pretty lackluster kill move even with the buffs.

Feel free to check my answers yourselves. I didn't have a friend around to DI for me, and I have no idea how good CPU DI is, so it would be best to confirm or disprove these results with known human DI.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

Just a tip @ shinyskarmory you can use use debug mode to freeze the frame for a bit while you get the correct DI on your second controller. This also lets you pause when they are close to the bz to make sure they aren't just drifting off and they are in hitstun when they cross the blastzone.

Armor decrease is good imo, don't know how it works out with nair yet, but I think the tradeoff is worth it. Up throw is very helpful because I think we do well enough with f throw vs light floaties anyways, so its definitely worth giving up the u throw on them for how useful it is on Spacies. Up b hitbox nerf was warranted. Down smash is probably a strict nerf. I don't really see the use of f smash, so those changes don't really matter. Fair being reversible isn't useful, we just need to be more precise. Wall jump being better is good, it was so bad, don't know how much its better. Oh, and we keep our broken bubble, thats the best part...

 

[Ascelesce]

Is nair OoS a good option with the hitbox buff now?

 

[PlateProp]

Tentative first reaction:

We lost a lot of armor across our skillset in general. Fsmash armor was pretty situational but useful, so I'm sad to see that go. Side-B armor was cool but not really anything you could rely upon for more than projectiles anyways, not too upset about that. D-smash and Nair armor, on the other hand, really hurts us. Especially the nair armor, since shellsling nair will be a substantially weaker approach without the armor to help us.

To compensate, though, we got a better hitbox on Nair, faster endlag on Uthrow (which has always been one of my favorite string starters, so that's nice), and better kill potential on Fsmash and Dsmash. I wish Fsmash had gotten a little bit faster in exchange for losing armor, but whatever.

I think this is probably a net "meh" for Squirtle. We lost some of our jank but gained some kill potential in exchange for it. I want to test kill percents on the new Fsmash and Dsmash but I won't be able to do that until Wednesday night because work and stuff.

we didnt lose armor on withdraw, just on the start up (6frames).

dsmash losing med armor is nothing, It was literally just 4 random frames of medium armor that hardly ever managed to block anything, also lol wtf dsmash isint supposed to kill, it's for setting up combos/ maybe gimping with the link angle if you get lucky

Fsmash did get faster

Nair is better in all mu's except Marth/Roy now cause cant armor through fair or other sword crap

 

[TheGravyTrain]

Actually, we got nair on the startup according to Daft. They worded it terribly though (said "removed startup of armor", not "removed armor on startup" like everyone interpreted it).

 

[PlateProp]

Actually, we got nair on the startup according to Daft. They worded it terribly though (said "removed startup of armor", not "removed armor on startup" like everyone interpreted it).

Withdraw doesnt have armor on the start up anymore. Nair has one random frame of medium that was probably forgotten about, it's not gonna do much

 

[TheGravyTrain]

That was a typo. I meant to say "Actually, we got armor on the startup of withdraw according to Daft" Just tested though and I don't think we actually do...

 

[PlateProp]

That was a typo. I meant to say "Actually, we got armor on the startup of withdraw according to Daft" Just tested though and I don't think we actually do...

We had armor on frames 6-7 of startup before, now we dont. Daft be smokin too much

 

[GrizzleDrizz1ed]

Ok, dumb question, but I've looked and can't find an answer. How do you do Squirtles Aqua Jet? They changed it from 3.0 and I'm picking him up again.

 

[shinyskarmory]

Ok, dumb question, but I've looked and can't find an answer. How do you do Squirtles Aqua Jet? They changed it from 3.0 and I'm picking him up again.

Hold Side-B while you're next to or inside someone, like you're doing a Jigglypuff rest. You can no longer Aqua Jet out of Withdraw itself, now it's only on startup but comes out on frame 6 IIRC.

 

[ShadowKing]

Withdraw has many combo options if I'm correct like withdraw to up air or side air plus a upsmash or down smash