Balance patches are spoiling us

[Tenretsujin10]

ik i feel ya. i main little mac, and has amazing frame data, but he has almost no grab follow ups and his combo game can be DI'ed out of.
wow im whining for another patch. i guess i am spoiled.

Lil Mac is an exception with grabs. His back throw can kill, and jab one to up-B is a true combo if spaced right. also, unless the opponent perfect shield's your attacks, they have decent shield pushback.

 

[jet56]

i get you, but i was talking about the range of the grab on little mac. its so easy to whiff if not spaced right, it gives me advantage though if i get the grab. in regards to the shield vs little mac, yes that's true, but pivots and certain out of shield options still can get to little mac, but they do have to be and advanced player to punish it. i find i get punished the most for f-smashes, up smashes, and d-tilt and f-tilt if not spaced right. down smash i like and has low cooldown with good range, but has little pushback on it. im sure part of the problem is me not spacing things right sometimes, but mac still struggles with shields a lot, and he has to get very close to grab, which ruins the spacing part of his gameplay.

i forgot that jab combos to up-b, actually a easy kill setup, i appreciate the reminder.

 

[Wintropy]

On that note, I think it's worth remembering that even a small change can make a huge difference to a character.

Marth and Ike may not be top-tier or anything to that extent, yet their toolkit is much more useful now thanks to balance patches than it was in the base game.

Sometimes a few subtle tweaks in the right place is all it takes.

 

[Dsull]

The only character i know of that got nerfed that wasnt because of For Glory pubstomping (littlemac anyone?) was Diddykong. All the other patches were bug fixes or tweaks to characters that didnt really need it (Why the hell did DK get nerfed....)

However thats not why i dislike the patches. Nintendo is doing more than bug fixes but they dont release ANY information about the patch so were just guessing everything until someone datamines the differences. Thats what i hate. The changes are almost never obvious but theyre impacting enough to change your motives. For instance the most recent patch made Ryu's Focus Punch slumping effect linger longer so he can actually do something outside a no-charge dsmash. Once i noticed this it dramatically changed what im doing with him.

Sad to say thats the only case i can think of where the changes are positive and pleasant to find unexpectedly lol.

If we were really being spoiled by patches, then Sheik/ZSS would have been nerfed to uselessness by now. Spoiled by patches is what Dota2 does - some hero gains the spotlight and rather than learn to deal with him, he gets nerfed to the ground and someone else gets buffed juuuust enough to claim the spotlight themselves and repeat the whole shebang again.
Aside from Diddykong, what patch altered the potency of top tier characters?

 

[Infinite901]

Aside from Diddykong, what patch altered the potency of top tier characters?

 

[Dsull]

Greninja got nerfed? Missed that one lol. I considered him slightly above average on release but not much of a problem.
Thats what i get for taking month-long breaks between playing sprees of this game lol

 

[Infinite901]

Greninja got nerfed? Missed that one lol. I considered him slightly above average on release but not much of a problem.
Thats what i get for taking month-long breaks between playing sprees of this game lol

Nerfed so much so that it spawned a cringe-worthy meme. "better nerf greninja hahaha"

Also Bowser got heavily nerfed in early days of 3DS, but he was severely broken anyway.

 

[b2jammer]

Nerfed so much so that it spawned a cringe-worthy meme. "better nerf greninja hahaha"

Also Bowser got heavily nerfed in early days of 3DS, but he was severely broken anyway.

Remind me how Bowser got badly nerfed. Was it really just the Flying Slam change, or is there something else I missed?

 

[Infinite901]

Remind me how Bowser got badly nerfed. Was it really just the Flying Slam change, or is there something else I missed?

It was just Flying Slam, but the fact that Bowser died second and that it had increased horizontal movement made it pretty powerful, and with customs on it became plain broken (Dash Slam could kill from any point on stage, and on some stages he could actually survive his own Bowsercide and use custom up-b to recover.)

 

[b2jammer]

It was just Flying Slam, but the fact that Bowser died second and that it had increased horizontal movement made it pretty powerful, and with customs on it became plain broken (Dash Slam could kill from any point on stage, and on some stages he could actually survive his own Bowsercide and use custom up-b to recover.)

Wo. No wonder why they patched it. I really should have used it more.

 

[Mario766]

Bowser was heavily nerfed when the game came out. The reason everyone thought Bowser was OP when the game came out was the demo version of Bowser was massively better. At Comic Con 2014 they were using the demo version which is what everyone saw. That's why there was Bowser dittos in the grand finals.

ZSS was also said to be nerfed when the game finally came out, compared to the E3 version.

 

[Dsull]

Oh the Bowsercide is one of the nerfs i dont even consider a nerf. Im surprised they didnt do that to Ganondorf too since he can still suicide you first for the win (though its vastly harder to pull off). Thats a cheese, straight up bullcrap cheese proving you cant win without abusing some mechanic to get a free kill. Before that got patched i'd see bowsers constantly get you down a stock and IMMEDIATELY camp the edge for a free kill. If you even attempted to approach them, death from practically 0%.

Hes pretty freakin powerful without that cheesemode strat anyway. I play him among 7 others regularly and i dont usually have problems getting a win most of the time.

 

[Wintropy]

I don't recall Bowser being nerfed, with the debatable exception of the Bowsercide clause. I recall the meta advancing and people realising that he has weaknesses, same as happens to any ostensibly overpowered character, and a good reminder that first impressions aren't everything.

That said, there are some characters that could do with some readjustments. Vanilla Diddy was a noteworthy example of this, I think, though I totally agree that the subsequent patch was definitely unnecessary on the poor jilted chimp.

 

[Mario766]

Bowser was nerfed from demo -> full release of the game. He was stronger and had less lag on his attacks. The nerfs hit him very hard and put him to what he was now.

 

[Wintropy]

Bowser was nerfed from demo -> full release of the game. He was stronger and had less lag on his attacks. The nerfs hit him very hard and put him to what he was now.

I'm referring to an in-game context, though.

He was nerfed from the demo to the main game, quite distinct from the process of routine in-game balance patches, which is what the thread is referring to.

 

[Dsull]

I don't recall Bowser being nerfed, with the debatable exception of the Bowsercide clause. I recall the meta advancing and people realising that he has weaknesses, same as happens to any ostensibly overpowered character, and a good reminder that first impressions aren't everything.

That said, there are some characters that could do with some readjustments. Vanilla Diddy was a noteworthy example of this, I think, though I totally agree that the subsequent patch was definitely unnecessary on the poor jilted chimp.

After release i THINK all he got was the bowsercide change...maybe a damage point here or there but nothing big.
And thats all that needed to be done. Too many people in For Glory doing nothing but bowsercide chains. I remember facing bowsers before that patch that literally ONLY did his grab attack and tried to take you off the stage - even if you were ahead a stock they still did it for the "practice"

 

[Eisen]

I didn't have the game until release night, and didn't get to play online until around 11 PM or so, but I don't recall hardy ever seeing any Bowsers. FG when I got on was nothing but Mac, Lucina, Yoshi, ZSS, and Ness.

On topic though, I honestly don't think we're being spoiled. Sure, Diddy received huge nerfs, but that doesn't mean we're "spoiled". Is this thread honestly trying to tell me balance changes are bad and we should deal with Brawl and Melee levels of tier differences? There are only a few instances where the changes have been detrimental so far, imo. From here if they just slightly nerfed the top 5 characters and buffed the bottom 5 or so, the game would be pretty well balanced.

Also, this thread kinda screams "my character isn't OP anymore it's not fair you have to adapt" which is the same argument one could make about Project M 3.02's top tiers. There's a difference between people needing to learn to adapt to a gimmick and one tool being overly strong and having too much usefulness in too many areas. Ex: Diddy 1.04 uair. Comboed, killed, was fast, had little cooldown. There were some diddys that could get far just by upairing everywhere, even in neutral because the hitbox was so fast, arcing, and useful.

 

[25%Cotton]

as a WFT player i feel pretty confident that i have not been spoiled by balance patches...
if anything, i've been humbled. :l

 

[Nobie]

I find that balance patches have actually inadvertently remove one of the community's most annoying tendencies, which is the obsession with "advanced techniques." It used to be that people hoped and prayed that someone somewhere would figure out the next wavedashing and that it would transform gameplay and make bad characters good, but now with balance patches I hope people see that it isn't necessary to hope that ATs might somehow "fix" things.

 

[Dsull]

I find that balance patches have actually inadvertently remove one of the community's most annoying tendencies, which is the obsession with "advanced techniques." It used to be that people hoped and prayed that someone somewhere would figure out the next wavedashing and that it would transform gameplay and make bad characters good, but now with balance patches I hope people see that it isn't necessary to hope that ATs might somehow "fix" things.

That...actually makes sense. And i agree.

Wavedashing pissed me off in Melee because i dont give a crap what you think, if your making your character behave in ways his animations arent agreeing with youre GLITCHING THE GAME not playing advance techniques and i consider that cheating.
And patches prevent another Metaknight problem, agreed. Only character to ever be banned from tournaments far as i know lol.

 

[iVoltage]

They often don't balance fairly though, they nerfed seemingly random things but they got 1-2 right. Its a bit odd to me that they nerf things like little macs recovery or DK instead of trying to raise characters up to the level of the others. These being your robins and Charizards ect.

 

[Infinite901]

That...actually makes sense. And i agree.

Wavedashing pissed me off in Melee because i dont give a crap what you think, if your making your character behave in ways his animations arent agreeing with youre GLITCHING THE GAME not playing advance techniques and i consider that cheating.
And patches prevent another Metaknight problem, agreed. Only character to ever be banned from tournaments far as i know lol.

It's not a glitch, it's an exploit. Are we really gonna go through this thing again? Wavedashing is fine.

Also, Miis are very unfairly banned from a lot of tournaments, and Palutena may as well be.

 

[LightLV]

I find that balance patches have actually inadvertently remove one of the community's most annoying tendencies, which is the obsession with "advanced techniques." It used to be that people hoped and prayed that someone somewhere would figure out the next wavedashing and that it would transform gameplay and make bad characters good, but now with balance patches I hope people see that it isn't necessary to hope that ATs might somehow "fix" things.

Unfortunately, since none of the advanced techniques present in Brawl were intended features of the game, it is highly unlikely balance patches are going to add any depth to the characters that isn't already present. This is a very hypocritical stance of the game, because without all those AT that developed, Brawl would have never become an even halfway interesting game.

And since Smash 4 is actively removing all the ATs they can find...balance patches are literally all that's going to hold this game together. There is nothing to "explore" about the vast majority of the cast, and by vast majority, i mean everyone that isn't already top-5.

That...actually makes sense. And i agree.

Wavedashing pissed me off in Melee because i dont give a crap what you think, if your making your character behave in ways his animations arent agreeing with youre GLITCHING THE GAME not playing advance techniques and i consider that cheating.
And patches prevent another Metaknight problem, agreed. Only character to ever be banned from tournaments far as i know lol.

Well, is autocancelling "GLITCHING THE GAME" too?

And people who can wavedash don't care what you think either, they're just going to wreck you. Why some people see it as cheating (specifically because you can't do it) escapes me. Wavedashing could have been assigned to a specific button in Melee and most of the people who complain about it would still be bad at it.

 

[NewZen]

Unfortunately, since none of the advanced techniques present in Brawl were intended features of the game, it is highly unlikely balance patches are going to add any depth to the characters that isn't already present. This is a very hypocritical stance of the game, because without all those AT that developed, Brawl would have never become an even halfway interesting game.

And since Smash 4 is actively removing all the ATs they can find...balance patches are literally all that's going to hold this game together. There is nothing to "explore" about the vast majority of the cast, and by vast majority, i mean everyone that isn't already top-5.

It'll stay on the side of being the party game Sakurai intended it to be...*sigh*

Well, is autocancelling "GLITCHING THE GAME" too?

And people who can wavedash don't care what you think either, they're just going to wreck you. Why some people see it as cheating (specifically because you can't do it) escapes me. Wavedashing could have been assigned to a specific button in Melee and most of the people who complain about it would still be bad at it.

Someone shares the same thoughts as me and a group of my competitive friends, awesome. Seriously, there is an article addressing Wave-dashing for ****'s sake, so the complaints about it are so moot it pains me when others complain about any AT's-they're the things that add to the game's depth and longevity instead of wondering when the next update pops up to see who sucks and who doesn't from some minor to questionable changes made by the devs who thought characters like ZELDA and R.O.B. of all people needed to be nerfed in one update...

You want to be good at a game from a competitive stand-point (Unless the game is downright busted...), you have to know every trick of the trade, because in a play to win environment, if it's fair game and doesn't tamper with your playing ability (Opponent bugging you, unplugging your controller, using hacked equipment, etc.), you have to play to win. No Johns. Hell, I've gotten my tail handed to me in Melee for the past 4 years and I still find it fun to play from time to time after playing it casually for 10 of the 14 years I've owned it.

 

[1FC0]

I am not really spoiled since R.O.B. has been nerfed pretty badly by the patches and has never received any buff from the patches at all.

 

[J0A0B]

Unfortunately, since none of the advanced techniques present in Brawl were intended features of the game, it is highly unlikely balance patches are going to add any depth to the characters that isn't already present. This is a very hypocritical stance of the game, because without all those AT that developed, Brawl would have never become an even halfway interesting game.

And since Smash 4 is actively removing all the ATs they can find...balance patches are literally all that's going to hold this game together. There is nothing to "explore" about the vast majority of the cast, and by vast majority, i mean everyone that isn't already top-5.




Well, is autocancelling "GLITCHING THE GAME" too?

And people who can wavedash don't care what you think either, they're just going to wreck you. Why some people see it as cheating (specifically because you can't do it) escapes me. Wavedashing could have been assigned to a specific button in Melee and most of the people who complain about it would still be bad at it.

I feel both of you bring informative points. Even though programmed ATs such as Melee's wavedashing were unintended, there probably isn't a need to remove them unless:

1) The technique overcentralizes the metagame to the point where other techs such as basic rolling are useless.
2) The technique is only exploitable by specific characters to bring them a higher advantage over the unfortunate characters. Thereby disrupting the balance further. Luckily, that is not the case.

Then again, if an AT is beyond advanced and more difficult to execute for any casual or growing competitive player, then it would seem unwelcoming for those who want to develop and fit into the community.

In my opinion, I would find the existence of some exploitable and unintended AT to be discouraging if it means I have to master them like a chore and take lessons from outside sources just to match up against anyone. In Mario Kart 8 for example, I've read about a technique known as Fire Hopping that when executed right in a specific way, allows the racer to move much faster in addition to more traditional methods of gaining speed. There was no word of this technique though from official sources and the last time I played online was before it was discovered. If I were to go back online and notice everyone doing the Fire Hopping trick and be left at last place in every race, I'm not gonna enjoy the long process of practicing one difficult technique just to get even.

That isn't to say all uninformed ATs are bad. In fact, I find they should be greatly encouraged in games like Splatoon since online play is the general market and all characters are fairly balanced and similar to each other regardless of equipment held. Unless there is an obvious glitch like splatting a roller every half second like a paintbrush, the ATs should not isolate average players from the overall metagame.

In general, this is the reason patches exist and should continue to be encouraged. When it comes to the community, Nintendo is not supplying to casuals. They are doing what they can to primarily lure in players that can better themselves through a steady slope. Players will better themselves by practicing the basics as well as the advanced tricks to gain better control of their characters. Sometimes though, there are techniques that give advantage to certain types of characters that generally overpower them above other character types. If they are easily exploitable enough to gain an easy win such as the dreaded Hoo-hah, then it's more of a shortcut rather than an AT. And if it becomes repetitive enough to use an gain control over the stage without relying on other strategies much, then it kind of defeats the purpose of gaining experience in the overall metagame. Patches are to be expected these days if we want to add more variety to our own skills. That means accepting whatever nerfs comes to encourage finding alternatives to win with our characters or character types (speedies, zoners, etc), and be free to face higher tiered opponents much better to improve our own techniques and bring challenge to said opponent so they can do the same.

 

[Nobie]

My point with advances techniques isn't that they're bad or bad for gameplay, but rather that patches have somewhat supplanted the obsession with trying to find the next great AT that will somehow make the game more special. Instead, you have things like Marth's jab buff helping to realize that subtle changes can have huge impact. It's as if Marth got the positive effects of an "AT" without the need to learn a new technical skill. Instead, the player has to learn how and where to utilize this improved jab.

In exchange we get balance patch whining. You win some, you lose some.

 

[V4n1sh]

Honestly,nintendo should probably try out the community stuff,like watch the youtube videos of matches.They need to start nerfing more competetively instead and internationally because they must see sort of the main view.If patches are spoiling us,without patches Meta Knight was still broken in Brawl.Maybe the meta just needs to evolve though
SSB4 Mains:

SSB4 Secondaries:

SSB4 Doubles:

 

[LightLV]

I feel both of you bring informative points. Even though programmed ATs such as Melee's wavedashing were unintended, there probably isn't a need to remove them unless:

1) The technique overcentralizes the metagame to the point where other techs such as basic rolling are useless.
2) The technique is only exploitable by specific characters to bring them a higher advantage over the unfortunate characters. Thereby disrupting the balance further. Luckily, that is not the case.

Then again, if an AT is beyond advanced and more difficult to execute for any casual or growing competitive player, then it would seem unwelcoming for those who want to develop and fit into the community.

I think all fighting games are struggling to find where this balance is. SF5 is easing up link windows, increasing damage, removing proximity normals, overall making hard punishes less of a skill-gap exclusive thing. Tekken 7 nerfed sidestepping, nerfed grab priority and made throwbreaks easier, and a form of superarmor attack from Revolution. Guilty Gear XRD removed FRC, since release patched itself with a more lenient buffer, alot of mechanics and inputs on characters got much easier to manage. Considering these are all known highly technical fighting games, its interesting they're all following suit, nerfing their deeper technical mechanics to make space for accessibility. Smash Bros is in a funny spot though. Some people call Melee a "mistake", but that's a completely useless term when it comes to explaining how the metagame of any fighter pans out -- it's almost always a mistake.

I think the reason the ATs of Melee clicked so well is because they're all intuitive. All aerials can be L-cancelled, there's no discrimination like with autocancelling. All characters can directional airdodge, which means all characters can wavedash, which means all characters are capable of the same general benefits. The PROBLEM with smash is that Sakurai acknowledges ATs and removes them, likely on the principle that they were unintended features of the character, but without acknowledging that by removing them, you're taking emergent options away from that character (or, in the case of DACUS, the entire roster).

Like, for instance, removing Falco's laser cancel. That single-handedly made him a completely different character. He's growing into his new role now, yeah, but even with SSB4 launch frame data, Falco would have likely been a much higher character with that one technique alone.

 

[PUK]

I think the removing of some AT are more linked to the new motor, more than sakurai desire. Things like wavedash for exemple, but animations cancelling too, may have just gone with the old motor.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I think all fighting games are struggling to find where this balance is. SF5 is easing up link windows, increasing damage, removing proximity normals, overall making hard punishes less of a skill-gap exclusive thing. Tekken 7 nerfed sidestepping, nerfed grab priority and made throwbreaks easier, and a form of superarmor attack from Revolution. Guilty Gear XRD removed FRC, since release patched itself with a more lenient buffer, alot of mechanics and inputs on characters got much easier to manage. Considering these are all known highly technical fighting games, its interesting they're all following suit, nerfing their deeper technical mechanics to make space for accessibility. Smash Bros is in a funny spot though. Some people call Melee a "mistake", but that's a completely useless term when it comes to explaining how the metagame of any fighter pans out -- it's almost always a mistake.

I think the reason the ATs of Melee clicked so well is because they're all intuitive. All aerials can be L-cancelled, there's no discrimination like with autocancelling. All characters can directional airdodge, which means all characters can wavedash, which means all characters are capable of the same general benefits. The PROBLEM with smash is that Sakurai acknowledges ATs and removes them, likely on the principle that they were unintended features of the character, but without acknowledging that by removing them, you're taking emergent options away from that character (or, in the case of DACUS, the entire roster).

Like, for instance, removing Falco's laser cancel. That single-handedly made him a completely different character. He's growing into his new role now, yeah, but even with SSB4 launch frame data, Falco would have likely been a much higher character with that one technique alone.

I'm not sure "intuitive" is the word you're looking for. "Consistent", maybe. (Although wasn't G&W bugged so that his aerials couldn't l-cancel?)

Also, what's a proximity normal?

 

[Snackss]

I'm not sure "intuitive" is the word you're looking for. "Consistent", maybe. (Although wasn't G&W bugged so that his aerials couldn't l-cancel?)

Also, what's a proximity normal?

Characters in Street Fighter IV do different normals depending on how close they are to the opponent. For example, at close range, standing medium kick with Ryu, Evil Ryu, and Akuma does a knee attack that can be special canceled. Doing a medium kick anywhere but very close will instead do a different kick entirely, that also can't be special canceled. Oni is the only character who doesn't have them as far as I can tell.

 

[LightLV]

I'm not sure "intuitive" is the word you're looking for. "Consistent", maybe. (Although wasn't G&W bugged so that his aerials couldn't l-cancel?)

Also, what's a proximity normal?

Consistent is probably a better word. A proximity normal (or any attack really) is when the attack that comes out when you press the button is different depending on whether you're a specific distance to an enemy or not. Like, pressing A with Mario while someone is in grab range does jab, but when slightly out of grab range, it does his Ftilt instead.

I think the removing of some AT are more linked to the new motor, more than sakurai desire. Things like wavedash for exemple, but animations cancelling too, may have just gone with the old motor.

It's almost certainly just Sakurai. Or at least, the collective decision making process. DACUS was present in the launch version of Smash 4, and was later removed. A few techniques have since been patched out, which means they're deliberately changing what made them work.

As for wavedashing, that's just the new engine at work. The funny thing about animation cancelling though, is that L-cancelling was actually a feature. Nobody calls it this, but it's essentially a nerfed Z-cancel from SSB64 (which was totally broken, and essentially autocancelled everything.). Autocancelling was already fully present in melee, and is a different thing (it removes all landing lag instead of speeds the recovery animation like L-cancelling).

I still think removing L-cancelling was a terrible choice. The alternative (normalizing everyone's autocancel frames) could have been just as disasterous as SSB64, and the game feels much worse off than not having it at all.

They should have just eased the L-cancel window, or worked in a system that makes it braindead but limits its practical use (like, each successive use depletes 15% of your shield or something, sacrificing defense for offense) instead of removing it from the game. So many characters would be way better off if L-cancelling existed here.

But as it currently exists, the people with good autocancel frames just stay top-tier.

 

[thehard]

Just as a side note, someone brought up an idea that L-canceling was originally intended as a "buffer" to aid new players who would hold L or R as they were landing in an attempt to shield as fast as possible. Food for thought.

 

[LightLV]

Just as a side note, someone brought up an idea that L-canceling was originally intended as a "buffer" to aid new players who would hold L or R as they were landing in an attempt to shield as fast as possible. Food for thought.

Nah i doubt it. Smash already buffers your shield to activate on the earliest possible frame, as long as the button is held down. Z-cancelling looked to be a typical glitch/exploit (I sure thought it was) until someone found that HAL themselves actually referenced the ability on the website. This was proven even farther by Z-cancelling not only carrying over to Melee, but having its effect changed (1.5x animation speed, instead of complete animation cancel). It was a feature, but i highly doubt it was ever intended for new players, since it had a specific input window to work, essentially making it a tech skill.


The balancing decisions that led to L-cancelling from 64's Z-cancelling is the type of balancing that competitive fighting games usually have. But sometime after Melee i guess Sakurai just gave up, and took the "gut it with a spoon" method of balancing, where instead of attempting to have mechanics be balanced around skill, you just try and remove the mechanics that allow for a skillful advantage entirely.

 

[Snackss]

Mitigating landing lag with a button press was stupid, though. Either base aerial frame data around that so L canceling is redundant, or do away with it entirely, and we obviously know which solution they went with.

 

[1FC0]

That...actually makes sense. And i agree.

Wavedashing pissed me off in Melee because i dont give a crap what you think, if your making your character behave in ways his animations arent agreeing with youre GLITCHING THE GAME not playing advance techniques and i consider that cheating.
And patches prevent another Metaknight problem, agreed. Only character to ever be banned from tournaments far as i know lol.

What does the animation have to do with anything?

 

[LightLV]

Mitigating landing lag with a button press was stupid, though. Either base aerial frame data around that so L canceling is redundant, or do away with it entirely, and we obviously know which solution they went with.

No actually it's a pretty sound idea. It could stand to be tweaked a bit (adding a mechanic to limit its use, like shield depletion or some other resource), but it added options to every character in a reliable and consistent way.

The truth is, landing lag, autocancel frames, and the old L-cancel were all methods of balancing movesets. By removing L-cancelling, the only real option to balancing attacks would be to either auto L-cancel everything, or have more laggy attacks overcompensate for their unsafeness by being much stronger moves.

Neither happened. And, in natural smash bros fashion, the characters with the lowest lag are highest on the tier list.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

Idk about you guys, but I see smash 4 as ST.
Match ups and fundamentals are almost absolute.

 

[Dsull]

What does the animation have to do with anything?

...everything?
no point in arguing it because people who dont view it as a glitch/exploit (same damn thing) never understand that when your character is behaving oddly when you do something its not suppose to be that way.