Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[*_Echo_*]

He also meant that strengthening what they are already good at is what balanced brawl is all about, not that it is about controlling the ground.

oo gotcha, and if they strengthened wat olimar is good at, the only way to do that is to give him priority and if they did that he'd be worse than MK

o well i was hopping for more buffs for olimar, but then he would be god.. not that he isnt already lol

 

[daisho]

oo gotcha, and if they strengthened wat olimar is good at, the only way to do that is to give him priority and if they did that he'd be worse than MK

o well i was hopping for more buffs for olimar, but then he would be god.. not that he isnt already lol

Thats not what they meant. They would give him more power to his already existing strengths and leave his weaknesss alone. But olimar doesn't need many buffs anyway.

 

[*_Echo_*]

Thats not what they meant. They would give him more power to his already existing strengths and leave his weaknesss alone. But olimar doesn't need many buffs anyway.

oo alright, im learning

i get it now

true olmar doesnt really need any buffs, and the only one he got was more power to his up-B.. i think

 

[blakinola]

Did you test DK... it doesn't make sense that Yoshi should live longer.

Well yoshi has the momentum cancelling like DK--but what makes his better is that he's not in helpless falling animation after he breaks out of his egg. DK is a sitting duck and will be killed by anyone with half a brain on a normal stage. There's no point in living to 999% if you can't get back on stage and take/keep the stock lead. :/

 

[daisho]

Well yoshi has the momentum cancelling like DK--but what makes his better is that he's not in helpless falling animation after he breaks out of his egg. DK is a sitting duck and will be killed by anyone with half a brain on a normal stage. There's no point in living to 999% if you can't get back on stage and take/keep the stock lead. :/

I guess that makes sense but DK is not in as bad of a position as you make it out... Some characters can kill him easily but most don't have a fast enough kill move. With aerial control you can usually DI so they certainly won't get a charged smash or anything.

 

[*_Echo_*]

i wish they would have tweaked olimars up-B like they did ivy =/

 

[Lokee]

BBrawl Impressions

Thats not what they meant. They would give him more power to his already existing strengths and leave his weaknesss alone. But olimar doesn't need many buffs anyway.

This is true, Olimar is already a worst matchup for many characters so buffing him more would result badly for characters such as Falcon and Ganon.

Anyway, Im new to the boards, but Ive been following BBrawl for a while and I just wanted to share some of my thoughts.

Mario: I can agree with mostly everyone that Mario is overall improved. Possibly in the top 3.
Though he might be too good.

Poke Trainer: I love the new PT, All the pokemon are better at what they do.
Squirtle has a better gimping tool for kills
Ivysaur it better at damage racking and has a fatal weakness buffed.
Charizard is better at killing
Most of all, the increased speed of "Pokemon Change" makes PT more useful overall to the point that you can knock the other player off the edge and Change before they can recover at times. I kinda wish they could make Stamina a bit longer.

Dark Lord Ganon: I feel he has improved however im mixed on this.
Wiztruck and always connecting D-Smash is always AMAZING
Murder Choke has more followups thanx to improved D-tilt (I think you can Dsmash after D-tilt some characters)
His recovery, one word KILLER!!
I dont know about anyone else but the new U-tilt is pretty awsome. The Hitboxes for the wind is so large your almost always garanteed damage and adds some reward even if you dont hit with the main attack.
The Grounding Boot Spike is cool but is kinda feels if would be less used, then when it originally was used for vertical kills.
Ganon still has problems with getting in and with enemy pressure. Which is why I liked that speed jab in Brawl
He definitely is better but I think he could use a little more in his dark arsenal.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Yoshi is definitely better than the bottom tier that he used to be placed in from vBrawl, and that's all I know. Partly due to actually being slightly underrated, and because of the nature of his buffs.

I just want someone to tell me how high this guy can go. I doubt he's necessarily top 15 material, but I'm guessing he's like on Wolf's level or something. Overall decent enough to get away with, although not excessively powerful.

and PKNintendo, you're just stupid if you can't realize that Ness's movepool is below average compared to that of actually good characters in terms of speed/range/safety. In the words of M2K, why is Ness horrible? "He only has F-air and B-throw!" That's always been the reason why he's never been good. You can get away with a bad recovery and grab release combos if your movepool has great combination speed/range/safety/power (Olimar and Wario can attest to this). Ness has decent power, but is lacking in everything else, while most other characters in BBrawl with their buffs actually have moves that help them cover options in other areas like speed/range/safety.

Basically Ness doesn't have anything that's super gay (besides B-throw), while almost every other character in this game has multiple things that are super gay. My point has always been consistent that Ness doesn't have much in his movepool that's exceptional without being an easily avoided gimmick.

 

[PKNintendo]

Yoshi is definitely better than the bottom tier that he used to be placed in from vBrawl, and that's all I know. Partly due to actually being slightly underrated, and because of the nature of his buffs.

I just want someone to tell me how high this guy can go. I doubt he's necessarily top 15 material, but I'm guessing he's like on Wolf's level or something. Overall decent enough to get away with, although not excessively powerful.

and PKNintendo, you're just stupid if you can't realize that Ness's movepool is below average compared to that of actually good characters in terms of speed/range/safety. In the words of M2K, why is Ness horrible? "He only has F-air and B-throw!" That's always been the reason why he's never been good. You can get away with a bad recovery and grab release combos if your movepool has great combination speed/range/safety/power (Olimar and Wario can attest to this). Ness has decent power, but is lacking in everything else, while most other characters in BBrawl with their buffs actually have moves that help them cover options in other areas like speed/range/safety.

Basically Ness doesn't have anything that's super gay (besides B-throw), while almost every other character in this game has multiple things that are super gay. My point has always been consistent that Ness doesn't have much in his movepool that's exceptional without being an easily avoided gimmick.

Sorry I can think and write on my own and form my own opinions. M2K your god?
I seriously won't bother because A2 your full of ****. You have always been full of ****, and you will always BE full of ****.

 

[SaltyKracka]

Sorry I can think and write on my own and form my own opinions. M2K your god?
I seriously won't bother because A2 your full of ****. You have always been full of ****, and you will always BE full of ****.

Ah, ad hominem. Always a good way to tell who's on the losing side of an argument.

 

[blakinola]

I played a bit of Yoshi and he plays the same for the most part. I don't feel that the sourspot fair is a good add. It's waaaaayyy too situational. I do like the Egg roll business, and yoshi's aerial mobility coupled with his super good pivot grab makes him still pretty good. Need to test dsmash more.

 

[PKNintendo]

Ah, ad hominem. Always a good way to tell who's on the losing side of an argument.

Have you seen his arguments though?

He states rather vague statements and relies on frame data to see the speed of aerials without even trying the character. It's a pointless battle to be fought, but someone needs to do it since everyone else refuses to call him out on it.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I'm going to throw out there that the reason Thinkaman keeps pestering for more people sending in tier lists is that we're compiling people's initial impressions as a curiosity. I'll post some compiled stats for said impressions if we get enough lists. Just, when making a list, please list Zelda, Sheik, and Zelda & Sheik as three entrees if you can. Also, if you are going to send a list, please be sure you have given each character a good enough look to be making a decently informed opinion; saying something like "Bowser should be near the bottom because, while I haven't used him, he doesn't sound good" is... not really helpful to anyone. Of course, this is just initial impressions so I'm not asking for expertise, just the opinions of people who have given every character what they would categorize as a decently fair try.

Also, to two certain people, you simply aren't going to convince each other about Ness. Healthy debate about balance is welcome, but I think most people in this topic would agree we've moved past that into bickering. For what it's worth, everyone I've talked to has considered Ness good but not top, something like upper mid tier. Of course, people tend to disagree wildly about the balance at this point (seeing two tier lists side by side on which one character is ranked #2 on one list and #37 on another) so thinking Ness is just about anywhere isn't too radical at this point...

 

[Mr. Escalator]

Between mine, Thinkaman's, AA's, and Yagami Light's tier list regarding BBrawl, Ness was averaged out as the 13th best character out of 38.

I don't know if they want any of the compiled or individual lists public, however, so I will just leave it at that.

We all think Ness is of high quality!

(seeing two tier lists side by side on which one character is ranked #2 on one list and #37 on another)

I swear Ice Climbers are just really subpar in comparison to everyone else in Balanced Brawl. They are viable, sure, but imo the worst with the exception of solo sheik and solo zelda.

 

[NO-IDea]

I'm curious as to where the old upper tier will be.

EVERYONE talks about the characters and their buffs and how it'll make them top tier. But at the same time... it means others will have to drop. For example, no one wants to discuss who's the worst now (maybe because the subject is rather intimidating?)

Come on people, MK is still good. So what if they nerfed his d-smash? It doesn't hurt his game drastically. If anything, MKs will change their play-style to include d-smash as a damage-racker, perhaps be more aggressive in their gimping gameplay and emphasize more on sliding f-smash (which is fairly hard to punish.)

Snake's hitboxes are still disjointed. And I've spoken to several Snake mains and half agreed that they saved their u-tilt for the kill, but the other half agreed they wouldn't pass up the chance to land an u-tilt if they got it. So now that u-tilt's been nerfed, the latter half has even more reason to use the disjointed hitbox more than normal.

I'm not saying the nerfs didn't do much. I'm stating that the top two characters will have to rethink what moves to use in their arsenal. So don't count them out. Same goes for Wario, Falco (he still has decent follow-ups with b-throw) and the other upper tiers.

 

[PKNintendo]

Between mine, Thinkaman's, AA's, and Yagami Light's tier list regarding BBrawl, Ness was averaged out as the 13th best character out of 38.

I don't know if they want any of the compiled or individual lists public, however, so I will just leave it at that.

We all think Ness is of high quality!


I swear Ice Climbers are just really subpar in comparison to everyone else in Balanced Brawl. They are viable, sure, but imo the worst with the exception of solo sheik and solo zelda.

Well good to see Ness gets some support.

 

[JOE!]

@NO-Idea.

true taht they are still good, but you have to consider if other character's busfs may have broght them to their Level?

For example, Link beats snake now...

 

[EraOfGames]

This is great. I bought an sd card yesterday just to try it out.

I have one question though...does Balanced Brawl work over wifi?

 

[JOE!]

yes, but only with other BBrawl players

 

[GwJ]

everyone try this with Luigi: Dtilt > buffered dash attack. Is this a true combo? I have no one to play with right now to test it.

 

[JOE!]

Im available if you dont mind testing WiFi

 

[ぱみゅ]

i wish they would have tweaked olimars up-B like they did ivy =/

As Thinkaman and AA told me, Olimar has enough strenghts onstage to compensate his terrible recovery.


About the tiers thing:
I really didn't practiced IC's chaingrab at all, so I learned play without them. Their DI is very good, they can live pretty long; and having strenghtened their single attacks, their only weakness now is their bad range, despite is a little more rewarding landing a hit.
And I'm still sad that solo Zelda (and solo Sheik) is a bad character...

 

[JOE!]

i think some MUs might be better off them going solo however...not sure which, but theres gotta be some

 

[NO-IDea]

@NO-Idea.

true taht they are still good, but you have to consider if other character's busfs may have broght them to their Level?

For example, Link beats snake now...

I have considered it. As for your specific example, I disagree.

Snake always used u-tilt to rack damage anyway. It's not as if Snake mains ever tried to kill Link main's vertically. If anything, the -1% nerf on f-tilt 1 and the jab knockback nerf hurt Snake in this match-up. On the other hand, Link's arrow canceling and camping game is better than ever. It definitely halts a DACUS attempt from Snake.

After all that however, I see no immediate advantage Link has over Snake. Snake's ground game is still good as ever, Snake can still somewhat compete with Link in camping with grenades (it's not as if Link has an extremely spammable projectile that can clank with Snake's nades consistently. Arrows do not clank with Snake consistently.)

At most, I'd put this at 50-50. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was to be found that it's 55-45 or even 60-40 Snake's favor. Link's recovery still hasn't improved, Snake has no problem facing Link on the ground ,and Snake's jab still has decent knockback.

 

[JOE!]

in VBrawl Link vs Snake is considered a neutral match.

Link got better, Snake got worse.

...

 

[MysticKenji]

since when is Link vs. Snake neutral in vBrawl?

 

[GwJ]

It's actually pretty close.

 

[JOE!]

its either 50/50 or 55/45 snake

Link just happens to have tools to deal with snake

 

[NO-IDea]

It's not even. 55-45 Snake or 60-40 Snake if you're referring to vBrawl. With this brawl, maybe even. Either way, I will crush any argument made that it's in Link's favor.

You'd either have to love Link a lot or hate Snake's guts to say that and deny Snake's great moveset and Link's lackluster recovery.

(Not a Snake fan btw, but he's good...)

 

[A2ZOMG]

Have you seen his arguments though?

He states rather vague statements and relies on frame data to see the speed of aerials without even trying the character. It's a pointless battle to be fought, but someone needs to do it since everyone else refuses to call him out on it.

Your statements are even vaguer and rely on generalization as opposed to actual fact.

Nobody has proven to me that Ness has anything that is exceptional besides B-throw. That is why he sucks.

For the record, two of the best players in the USA, teh_spammerer and M2K have said Ness is a terrible character.

I've actually played teh_spammerer's Ness before keep in mind, and I can back up the fact that he's insanely good. He was one of the first people to believe Ness had potential when Brawl was initially released, and then he changed his mind later on. The premise was simple. Besides terrible recovery and getting grab release comboed, Ness doesn't have anything really good except F-air and B-throw (and F-air isn't even that great when other characters have better ways of poking at their enemy).

The small amounts of extra lag time on Ness's aerials which make him slower at aerial -> aerial mixups also make him less safe on shield compared to faster characters that have longer range, and generally his out of shield game isn't anything special.

Before you say anything is special about Ness...actually compare it to what other characters have, and almost nothing Ness has is impressive at all. The short story is that Ness often gets outclassed at whatever he does since his speed/safety/range is almost never incredibly good, which sucks in a game where many characters (even Captain Falcon) have moves that are very good at specializing somehow speed/range/safety. Ness only specializes somewhat in power, and then everything else on his moves is unimpressive.

Captain Falcon at any rate is clearly better than Ness in BBrawl now that I mention it. Captain Falcon actually has stuff that is stupidly safe on block if he knows how to space, he has existent mixups, and one of the better aerial speeds in the game both horizontally and vertically.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Guys, I made a THREAD for the ness debate. And linked to it ages ago. Nobody has posted there yet.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

On the other hand, Link puts up a wall of projectiles with much more volume than Snake can (arrows + boomerang + bombs + super disjointed clawshot are a better projectile wall than grenades + usmash + c4, sorry Snake), and Snake's poor mobility struggles. Likewise, Link's recovery may be pretty terrible, but Snake is not exactly a master of gimping. Snake does indeed have a very impressive moveset that in standard Brawl is certainly overall far superior to Link's, but I think Link's strengths match up well to it. To the topic of Balanced Brawl, I would honestly be surprised if this weren't leaning in Link's favor a bit, but it shouldn't be that bad for Snake.

Do remember that matchups are a web though. If Link beats Snake 1v1, that doesn't necessarily mean Link > Snake. For instance, I definitely would prefer to fight a Link as opposed to a Snake if I were using Jigglypuff; she has so much fun gimping Link and floating over his projectiles, and she has a lot less fun with Snake's great power. Of course, the game is young, and you really never know how these things evolve. I'm pretty sure all three matchups I've brought up are of magnitude 60-40 or less so there's a lot of room for counterplay on all sides.

 

[Thinkaman]

I want to make a post about these notions of characters getting "better" or "worse", or "moving up" or "moving down" in "tiers". These statements can mean very different things depending on the context.

It's easy to focus on character rankings, when that isn't ultimately what matters. There's always going to be a best and worst character--the important measure is how big the gaps between them and the other characters are.

It's very possible for a character to move down in "rank" but still be more viable, because the gaps are smaller. In fact, for this project that is inevitable.

For example, take Olimar. In the SBR 3.0 tier list Olimar is considered the #10 character. And yet in my personal first impressions BBrawl tier list, I put Olimar at #16. Most people would assume that means Olimar is worse now, since more characters are "better" than him.

After all, several characters got important buffs, while Olimar didn't intrinsically improve much. Even DDD has an improved matchup against him!

However, when you look at the context of the situation, Olimar has actually improved. Olimar benefits a great deal from newly legal stages, and his up-b buff seems small in many matchups but helps him fight aerial characters that he struggles most against. (And helps him on tricky stages like Rainbow Cruise) If BBrawl Olimar was compared to the normal SBR tier list, he would be a couple ranks higher than vOlimar.

I would not care if my character was the lowest rank if the difference between that and the highest rank was only 1%.

We already seem to be off to a good start in that department; a lot of people including myself have speculated that Solo Zelda might be the worst character. And yet, my Solo Zelda neighbor put up an impressive fight the other day, readily attaining his fair share of wins. Zelda might very well be the worst character, but it's such a close call that you can't tell from the win records.

 

[NO-IDea]

Don't give Link mains too much hope AA. Let them fight out Snakes to ensure the 50-50 ratio before claiming any advantage in the match-up.

And balanced brawl is young. Have you guys ever considered (gulp) publicizing this on AIB? I don't like AIB personally but it would be a good idea.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I've already tried publicizing this on AIB. Most people surprisingly don't have much faith in it.

Solo Zelda is better than Ganondorf and Ike at least imo, or at least beats those two characters.

Ganondorf I feel is the worst character in BBrawl. He ultimately has no real answers to shieldcamping except hope someone doesn't spotdodge his random grabs (and until you speed up at least ONE of his moves, he will continue to be the worst character). Captain Falcon now eclipses him since his reward on moves actually exists and he has stuff that is safe on block.

A lot of Ganondorfs matchups actually got harder as far as I'm concerned. Mario, Samus, and ROB are easily harder matchups for Ganondorf in BBrawl, and they were already pretty bad.

 

[NO-IDea]

Ike?? Noo. Ike is legit. It was his recovery game that stunted him. And don't compare him to Link either, because Link is heavier and had a camping game to make up for his recovery (somewhat.)

Unfortunately, I do have to agree with this guy on the G-dorf statement. It all looks good in the showcase, but even looking at bbrawl matches, there's only so much G-dorf can do. Albeit, all the new tricks are nice, not to mention the new extremely high knockbacks to reward his efforts... but he's just too slow with few decent responses to defensive players.

(Don't say his down+b fixes his approach. It mitigates the problem, but only if you catch them by surprise. It's still easily punished.)

 

[A2ZOMG]

Ike has the same problems Ganondorf has in that almost none of his stuff is safe on block, which is why I think he also sucks.

His Side-B buff is cool...I guess. Now he has a new crossup option (seriously, not getting gimped in Brawl is easy if you have good DI and are not playing against someone with insanely good edgeguarding who can gimp anyone in the first place).

Ike of course is better off than Ganondorf since his Jab can be safe on block when spaced well, but seriously, he still is pretty bad on shields.

Link is clearly leagues ahead of Ike. Link has a good camp game to pressure shields, and with his increased KO power can kill his opponents before they can gimp him. Not to mention gimp people with his new arrows.

 

[Linkshot]

I'm quite sure the Olimar:Sonic matchup is currently at least 90:10 Olimar XDD

Sonic has no answers to grab that actually do something.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

Ike is above both Link and Luigi in the current compiled tier list. I actually ranked Ike decidedly mid, but the others had him fairly high. I also had Luigi low, too. Ganondorf is in the upper half of the list, right above ROB.

It's unfair to say he does worse than he did versus Mario and ROB. I don't think that's the case at ALL. Samus may be true, or it may not. I don't know.

Really, A2ZOMG. Send AA your tier list following Thinkaman's format. Also play some Ganon. He's really good.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Mr. Escalator, in case you forgot, people have mistakenly said that I main Ganondorf after going to my youtube channel.

I am EXTREMELY knowledgeable about Ganondorf. To the same extent I know too much about Mario and G&W.

He was better than Captain Falcon in vBrawl since he had existent reward. In BBrawl, he's probably the only character in this game that lacks any real way of doing stuff on shields, and Captain Falcon now is better than him with his random stuff that is safe on block and his new stuff that does a million damage per hit.

Ike is overrated in vBrawl. Almost any character can punish him out of shield with Up-smash/aerial/Up-B out of shield whenever he does anything. Link beats him in vBrawl due to shieldgrabbing everything he does.

I really hate sounding like Inui, but at the same time, I feel this is the only way Ganondorf will become a better character.