A serious strategical discussion about stalling.

[DanGR]

I'm not here to complain about it.

If anyone flames and spams as a result of this thread I'll simply report you.

Let's embrace stalling and have a discussion about how USEFUL it can be in tournament matches, and what characters it works best against. Also, if you're not man enough to plank and circle camp where it's legal then you shouldn't be playing MK... and you shouldn't be commenting in this thread. This is for players that want to WIN at all costs.

Now then, let's assume it's not banned at your tournaments for the purpose of this discussion. Let's also assume there is no ledge grab limit, and there's an 8 minute timer.

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I suppose I'll start off by listing what characters are fast enough to actually get to the ledge before your drill rush gets there... on Smashville... when you're circle camping beneath the stage... and if you both start off at the middle. If X begins to dash as soon as you drill rush, they cannot reach the ledge in time to edgehog you.

X includes all characters in red.
The characters I'm not entirely sure about are in yellow:
The characters in green are the ones that I'm confident (I'm not 100% sure though) can make it there in time:

And let's make this clear. These are my estimates after many hours of play testing against a wide spectrum of different running speeds.

1. Sonic
2. Captain Falcon
3. Fox
4. Sheik / Zero Suit Samus
6. Metaknight
7. Charizard
8. Pikachu
9. Marth / Diddy Kong
11. Yoshi
12. Toon Link
13. Donkey Kong
14. Pit
15. Mr. Game & Watch
16. Bowser
17. Mario / Lucas / Ivysaur / ROB
21. Samus / Lucario
23. Falco
24. Ness / Ice Climbers / Olimar / Wolf
28. Kirby / Squirtle / Ike
31. Luigi / Peach / Wario / Snake
35. Link
36. Zelda / Dedede
38. Ganondorf
39. Jigglypuff

Some notes:

Characters in RED

• Squirtle can probably hyrdroplane to the ledge in time, but you can watch him do the initial dash one direction to begin the hydroplane and drill rush to the opposite side as/before Squirtle is pivoting.
• Snake's mortar slide will get him there. All of his explosives can make it impossible to circle camp him too.
• Zelda's Din's Fire won't reach in time. Neither will Mario's fireballs, or Lucas/Ness' PKanything.
• Wolf and Wario's air speed may possibly get them there in time.
• Falco's phantasm and Wolf's phantasm cancel will likely let him get to the ledge in time.

On every other character in red you've got a free win if you can get the first hit.

Characters in YELLOW

• Pikachu has jolts, but if you hover under the jolts as they come down after you, you can avoid them. Once you start a drill rush, they'll go through them. He's also got the quick attack, so they can get to the ledge with that if they choose to.
• Yoshi is quick in the air. I'm not sure if that will make a difference.

Characters in GREEN

• The characters in green can most likely make it to the ledge in time to edgehog you, so you probably don't want to circle camp against them too much.
• If they edgehog your drill rush you can land on stage and take an attack- not recommended.

 

[Nic64]

Snake's mortar slide will get him there. All of his explosives can make it impossible to circle camp him too.

C4 hitting you from the other side of the stage LOL

This assumes that they are in the center of the stage yes? This means that many yellow/red characters could still catch you if they are staying mobile and get you to go the wrong way.

It should also be noted what red/yellow characters this is actually more effective against than standard planking, like Falco isn't doing **** to stop you from just camping the ledge anyway but it could be useful against others like ROB or Snake, and it's good for stalling out ledge grabs where ledge grab rules apply.

 

[DanGR]

Well, assuming they'll dash the direction you're about to drill rush, yes, I bet some of the reds and surely the yellows could make it to the ledge in time.

But if you mix up between your number of jumps and when you drill rush, you should be able to pick the right direction a really good percentage of the time. And if you're at low enough a percent and you're only up by a stock, you can afford to get hit a couple times to take 3 or 4 minutes off the clock- not to mention the variety of mixups for dealing with each character when you take the platform and different planking methods into account. It's really, really hard to beat. Flat out impossible for nearly half the cast- probably more.

Against some of the characters like D3 it doesn't even matter, lol. You could be the one reacting to their dash and make it to the ledge before they do.

edit: Yes, I'll end up adding whether it's probably better to plank or circle camp them, or neither.

 

[Toronto Joe]

whats circle camping?

 

[Zozefup]

Are there any good video examples of planking? Or ideas on what are good options while planking?

 

[DanGR]

whats circle camping?

When one is circle camping, they're stalling by utilizing the main stage to block their opponent from reaching them.

A good example would be floating under the stage until you're out of jumps. Then drill rushing to the side your opponent isn't on. The characters in red, barring the exceptions I talked about in the "Notes" section, cannot run fast enough to stop this.

Are there any good video examples of planking? Or ideas on what are good options while planking?

Not that I'm aware of.

In my opinion, your main goals when planking should be...

1. To prevent your opponent from grabbing the edge.
2. To keep yourself safe from all damage (obviously)
3. To stall out the clock.

As long as you can do all three, you'll win.

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A couple ways I attempt to do this is:

• Grab the ledge, drop down and immediately double jump into two more upairs. Then you'll grab the ledge. If your opponent is shielding too much you can just do one rising upair, land on the stage, and then grab your opponent- use very sparingly.
• Tornado is a good mixup from the ledge.
• Shuttle loop as long as they're vulnerable.
• Drop back, double jump a fair onto the stage. Then you fall back and land on the ledge.
• Drop back into an upair, double jump a nair, land on stage without lag.
• On Yoshi's island you can drop down into an upair and then upb to the ledge.
• On Battlefield you've got platform canceled drill rush mixups.

There's a ton of things you can do if you put your mind to it and read your opponent. If your opponent ever grabs the ledge or puts you in a bad spot just drill rush below the stage to the other side.

 

[Kaffei]

Are there any good video examples of planking? Or ideas on what are good options while planking?

All you're doing is grabbing and releasing the ledge over and over again. That's what Planking is.

TS, why do you thinking Stalling is banned in most tournaments? Answer that first.

 

[adumbrodeus]

I think we need to understand that there's nothing to prove these tactics banworthy. If they are banworthy, then we won't know until tested in tournament play.

 

[DMG]

I think, in spirit of the game, we should completely allow planking/edge camping/circle planking (yes I call it circle planking, I patent that name from now on) in tournaments across the US for two full months (Including Nationals ONLY if agree on by both the majority of top players and TO. Anything 100 or smaller would not apply to the National "Exclusion") to collect Data/evidence on whether it is game breaking or not.

To be honest, in the pit of my heart, I really believe that some forms of planking/edge camping/circle planking are unstoppable or extremely hard to reasonably stop (you can stop it, but at great risk to your character's stock). While I'm usually an advocate for all things gay in Brawl, I do think that allowing planking/similar things to be widespread/fullblown would probably have more negative consequences than positive assuming I am right about it. (On the bad side, Planking IMO would ruin a few potentially good sets, would demoralize players, might get people mad, Might 'officially 'prove how terrible of a game Brawl is balance wise, in general bad things etc. On the plus side, getting that evidence would better prove how bad planking really is and would give support behind whatever decision we make based on it. This all is me assuming how it would play out based on how I feel about planking already.)

The obvious flaw in having a"grace period" for planking is that we can't force people to do so. Even if the SBR recommends doing so, we can't go to TO's and tell them "Hey you can't do that" and have any absolute binding authority over them. If we ask the community to do such a thing for a period of time, it would be entirely up to them to do so.


If the community feels strongly enough about taking such action, then by all means I would support it if we felt it was in the best interests of the game. Otherwise, I don't think I can support a motion like that.

 

[demonictoonlink]

I think we need to understand that there's nothing to prove these tactics banworthy. If they are banworthy, then we won't know until tested in tournament play.

Though I suck at theorycraft, I honestly don't feel this should ever banned nor is it banworthy.

Firstly, this doesn't hurt anyone who matters. Hate to say it that way, but the closest thing would be Wario. Even he, and I'm sure of this, can make it with bike/air speed.

Secondly, this is beatable. Even if you are a non-snake red character, there are ways. I am not sure for each character and the situations will most likely be undesirable, but there are ways.

Ambiguous post in ambiguous.

 

[DMG]

Wario...

It's a complicated manner. Reaching the other side before MK can grab the edge with Side B isn't the end all goal of each character in stopping MK from doing that. Wario under most circumstances, cannot reach the other side reasonably before MK grabs the edge. What he CAN do is follow MK if he tried to go under the stage, since Wario DOES move faster than MK does horizontally in the air and he can usually chase after people and still recover decently. In tournament a bit back, I had to deal with this against a MK. He was staying away from me with a big lead under Smashville, basically using Side B to whatever side he felt I was not going to be next to when he got there. For awhile, I let him get comfortable doing so. Then, I waited for an "opening" (It wasn't a true opening, but in the sense that I read the most likely options about to occur and I was correct) and stopped him from doing so. I actually won the match because basically he was doing the Side B stuff to time out the game. Time was running very low. He's under the stage, I know where he will Side B, he starts it. I run to that side of the stage anyways. He grabs it before I can reach him, and he moves before I can completely get to that edge. I know he wants to cross under it again, so I dive down with him and catch up to him under the stage. I get under him and bait the Dair so I can Uair stage spike. He airdodges, but he was a bit unlucky and DJ airdodged instead of falling airdodge. I farted and killed him.


Some characters have similar things to try on MK. They can try to "catch" him under the stage, force him to either try and Side B while risk getting hit nearly for certain if they are too slow, they can try to dodge your attack where if you read it you can hit them and hopefully recover still, or they can try to counter attack where same thing as dodging but they might be in an even worse position if they miss than if they dodged at the wrong time.


The only problem with this is that you cannot reliably force MK to eat damage from following him under the stage. Sure, if you read really well and things fall your way, you can. But if you read well and you guessed wrong, things will probably turn out bad for you instead. MK, even in those kind of situations, has the upper hand generally. The Wario situation at worst for MK was even in that particular instance. IDK of any other characters who would actually have the advantage, but I know a few others might be even or close to it (G&W potentially, Pit, Jigglypuff would do much better than most characters, etc).

What the community needs to determine is whether or not MK's advantage on the edge/in that general area is strong enough where it either dominates the other characters completely, Where it would fully dominate if it weren't for a few characters with a "decent" shot, or if there are other methods/ways to handle that situation that proves many characters can handle it in an even fashion or even prove they have the advantage over MK in those spots.

 

[Zozefup]

please stop debating planking. This thread isn't about if it should or should not be banned. It's about finding the best options to do it, and what characters to do it against.

 

[DMG]

That's fine. However at the same time, you have to understand how the community feels about planking. Most regions have either anti planking rules in place, or some sort of edge grab limit in place to discourage it. Regardless of which side you take, if your goal is just to collect evidence/data, the best way to do so would probably be through tournament sets with players on both sides trying everything possible many times concerning planking. Now with most regions having planking/similar things already banned, how are you going to go about collecting that data? Surely you can try other ways to figure out the intricacies of planking, but whatever method you have will likely be less valuable/"worse" than having top level players duke it out in tournament set after tournament set on various stages/settings with money on the line trying their best to plank/stop planking.

This cannot take place though if most everywhere has it banned. If your goal is just to collect data, you're gonna have to persuade people that planking is not broken or convince them to let their region allow planking for awhile to get some results back. THAT'S where the ban or no ban argument comes into play.

 

[Zozefup]

Arn't you a mod or something DMG? There are tons of other threads about planking being banned. Please go to one of those. I have a tournament in 2 weeks where planking is allowed, and I'd to abuse it to the best of my ability. I don't care if it should be banned or not. I want to get perfect at it.

Even if it gets banned, I'll MM people with planking allowed. So I'd still like to perfect it. Now please go away. Or give thoughts on how to plank.

This thread isn't about "collecting data to see if planking is broken". It's about perfecting your planking skills.

 

[DMG]

And I happen to think the best way to perfect your planking skills is to do it in tournament,

And a lot of places won't let you do so.

 

[DanGR]

As long as it leads to some healthy discussion about the topic at hand, I'm fine with whatever y'all wanna talk about. It doesn't look like many care to talk about this anyways. *shrugs* Thanks DMG ;3

Some tournaments in AL/GA (the location of most of the tournaments I travel to) allow circle camping. Most either have a 35 ledge grab rule or no rule at all.

 

[humble]

What stages is circle camping viable on?

 

[Zozefup]

I'll be a part of this discussion after finals... (1 week)

seriously though, this is a good topic. People should mess around and post their ideas.

I really don't know the first thing about planking, and I would really like ideas!

 

[DMG]

1. Planking is gay.
2. I like love gay things in Brawl.
3. Circle camping is possible on many stages with various characters. How well it works/how viable it is is stage and matchup dependent.

 

[Toronto Joe]

Plank with caution my friends.

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