Dominant options? She's not the only one to have a ton of powerful options. Plus, her only REALLY dominant option is Witch Time.
It's obviously a broken move, it's in my opinion the best in the game and it would make a lot of bottom/low tier characters jump like 2 whole tiers if it was given to them.
She has a LOT of good options, but in terms of really dominant ones, I think she has less than Cloud (U-air, Limit Specials) & Diddy (F-air, Banana).
Her good options just happen to have a powerful synergy, with one of her only weakness (high start-up on good moves) being compensated by the threat of WTi.
Not that it makes her any less good than those two, but I just wanted to point that out.
had Tornado, U-air, Shuttle Loop, D-Smash and a ton of other top tier options (those 4 moves were the really broken ones though).
We're talking about LoL now?
Riot doesn't want to balance the game. They want a rotation between OP & Viable champions while trying out new features so that they keep their playerbase interested by the game (people want novelty).
They can't ignore the Gold/Silver/Bronze playerbase (which is like 70% of it) so they need to get rid of whichever character is dominating low elo matches.
On the other hand, they also want their game to be competitive so we sometimes have champions that are useless before Mid-High Diamond get nerfed, such as Lee Sin a few years ago.
If Riot was in charge of Smash4, our current S/A tier characters would've been nerfed to the ground and the "meta picks" would be like Falco, Bowser Jr. & Ganondorf lol.
Nintendo didn't patch the game every 2 weeks like Riot does for LoL.
The winrate is also a lot different. In Smash we'd have to only count sets as a whole and not separate matches to avoid some counterpick things such as
being only played on his best stage (T&C). And where do we draw the line between low elo and relevant matches?
In addition, in LoL, you're supposed to be matched against players of your level. It's not the case on Smash. Judging from the winrate isn't adequate here.
I'm starting to understand that you really like comparisons, but in that case it's not appropriate.
I'd like to hear what you have to say on muscle memory & bullet arts, though.
As an aside, you mentioned the link between reaction time & age. I agree on that, which is why some things like "MKLeo is so good and he's only 15" feel wrong to me. MKLeo is indeed extremely good, but it's an advantage to be this young. I'll use myself as an example, during the brawl era, I was much more talented that I am right now. Aging sucks.
Perhaps dominant kit would sit better. Semantics going all over. I also reworded parts of my above post (I'm an edit fiend).
The amount of options at her disposal is dominant.
But while other characters might have tons of powerful options, they tend to have mighty powerful drawbacks, somewhere.
Limit specials by nature are limited, as is Diddy's banana (and while great, it can be used against him and people are getting better at this). Cloud's up air is insane with really no shortfalls by itself; but it doesn't have negligible end lag that can then have one of 50 (exaggerated number) different really good options chosen afterwards, ones which kill, do damage, bring her to safety, etc etc.
A lot of my putdowns of those options listed can be said about Bayo too, I don't deny this.
Options aren't singular, options are flowing and multi-stepped/faceted.
On the point of Diddy's fair, personally have advocated it is overrated for a while now; it isn't drawing the same level of ire as it once did (it's use at the ledge as a wall is domineering, but again, specific limited situation/location).
Sometime last year I realised/noted that Zero Suit's back air is a bigger hitbox and more disjointed than Diddy's fair (less range of course); it obviously isn't as easy to use, but used properly it wins. Whenever I see Nairo bair a Diddy's fair I feel all gooey inside (not only bair, but he uses tons of options to punish it now such as boost kicking from underneath it), Diddy's lack of aerial mobility and it only being solid with a single timing for autocancels is very limiting (*** this is an important thing for your inquiry on muscle memory and BA). Also it can have a lot of its pressure negated by being short or crouching.
Meta Knight's down smash was awesome but it wasn't broken. -20ish on block. It's speed just bowled people over for a very long time. I'd still really despise the fact that a
6 sorry 5 frame low to the ground smash attack could nick me and I'd die near the ledge (edge guarded or otherwise), but this tended to only ever happen to me verses much better players than I (like Tyrant/M2K).
My comparisons, including that of LoL is meant to mostly be abstract (this is where it oft gets confusing; I don't intend to choose invalid or inappropriate ones). Bayonetta might not be as dominant as MK, or might never be; but we're in a game with a lot more characters so it's to be expected.
What line we draw or set is unfortunately up to us.
Signs of a continuing trend of increasing dominance out of line with the rest of the upper cast is probably enough IMO, whatever that dominance number is now (10%? I think someone said?) compared to Brawl MKs (which at this time was in the 20-30%).
Most players are playing people of their own skill level, or within reach. Locals, regionals or Gold/Silver/Bronze. Riot style balancing for Smash would be awful.
There could be a similar statistic we could derive for Smash, but we tend to rely on just big tournaments. That's missing out on a lot of everywhere else as well.
So, falling back on Diddy's fair having a single optimal use case and a generally underwhelming use case otherwise is important. A player could only use the optimal use case, and this causes problems for many players for a long time. But as it's one timing, one recognisable situation, we can develop muscle memory or reactive options to overcome them that once learned will generally be consistent and work for you indefinitely.
MK's options were all like this - Tornado and Forward Tilt in particular, but there was a flow to them that allowed people to get acutely strong at dealing with them. I don't think that level of prerequisites to compete is really fair (in the sense that it's detrimental to the game's health).
Bullet Arts/ability for her to continue attacks and hitboxes without lag drawbacks (contrast to MK ftilt/tornado) is something unique only to her, ever - and it allows layers of timing differences that will get in the way of a person seeing, reacting, winning like they could most other dominant options. If the option isn't working for Bayo, they can hold A for less amount of time or longer, and it becomes a different 'thing' to deal with, you have to read how long they do that for, instead of just seeing the start of something and acting accordingly.
In my view, a person who has 10 years of experience vs another person of 10 years of experience - the younger one will do better. Genetics matter as well.
I could go into a huge diatribe about top level tennis right now.
Federer is still capable of winning grand slams.
So is Nadal, despite statistically/technically being weaker and slower in every facet of his game (runs slower, speed and power of shots worse across the board, etc) compared to 4 years ago / prior to his injury hiatuses.
No one is as good as them in terms of experience, and they've still maintained themselves physically to an appropriate level. However, once someone younger has bridged that gap, it tends to be a one way street.
Djokavic lost to a 21 year old Korean player, Hyeon Chung last night in 3 sets. It was beautiful tennis.
Chung idolizes Djovakic and played an almost perfect replication of Djokavic at his best, the way Chung played last night indicates to me he could very well be the next champion/world number 1.
Despite Djokavic coming back from an injury hiatus (and how long it takes to 'get back into the swing of things' after breaks takes longer and longer as we age), if someone is already matching his potency while being 10 years his junior, will Djokavic ever be able to live up to his 'arguably best tennis player ever' status? (harder seeing as "guess who's no.1/2!?" again).
I'm sure it's going to be really tough for him now. Losses like that mark the [beginning of the] end of careers.
