Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[A2ZOMG]

Honestly, I'm really curious if buffing every single one of Lucario's most unsafe attacks (minus Double Team) is really supposed to make him as good as Diddy Kong, considering the fact that they're still unsafe, still useless, and now may even be more limited as the strings from before may not work as well due to possible extra knockback? Wouldn't have been better to simply remove all of those "buffs" in favor of reducing the ending lag on ftilt, which would've made it a safe poke, something that Lucario is seriously lacking and possibly would've allowed for a style change from Lucario being a horriblely mediocre defensive character into one with actual offensive potential and a safe poke? Or possibly giving fair or nair less landing lag so it can combo better, or a 3-frame jab, or a better grab, or something... Although I doubt even with all of these he'd be as good as Diddy Kong...

Lucario's Smashes are stupidly safe attacks (minus Up-smash, which has utility in lingering which makes it homo in different ways). I don't know how his buffs amount, but his buffs by far aren't useless.

I was under the impression that Lucario was a pretty darn good character under any circumstances...he has good range, safe KO moves, and some decent projectile camping, not to mention quite a few combos.

Is giving Sonic a very weak spike on the spring really supposed to be that game changing to put him on the same level as a character who can spawn infinite-priority tripping projectiles that can be thrown vast distances while glide tossing to create legitimate combos in brawl?

My opinion is that it really isn't that big of a deal except in a few specific matchups. At any rate, Sonic's damage buffs matter more.

I mean Falco now has two close, combo-powerful throws, including one that nearly combos into his kill moves, DK gets actual buffs to moves that matter, ZSS gets buffs to her paralyzing moves, while Sonic gets stuck with a very, very insignificant buff to a move which basically does the exact same thing as it did before, which was to gimp people who don't know that uair beats the spring, and Lucario gets buffs on every single move that doesn't matter when a few simple basic frame changes would've sufficed instead of trying to make every single move that he still shouldn't use slightly less useless

His Smashes aren't useless as I was saying...

Also, Lucario's dodges are stupidly good, which makes it much easier for him to land that various stuff he has. His excellent priority and well-designed aerials make him good at edgeguarding too.

That's my opinion from playing against good Lucario mains though.

 

[Sucumbio]

why does the bitrate change sometimes when using hacks >< now the sound is messed up even though I just booted normal. I did reboot and its fine now but still. strange.

wow intense discussion about ganon, at least i've had time to practice a lot of ike now and I definitely enjoy his aerial qd. I haven't quite got the knack of ganon tripping but holy crap that's a vast improvement over him. bottom tier no more.

also this may have been an unintentional side effect but if you load bb and then play wifi the waiting room music seems to have been replaced by the 8bit nintendo medley heh ok.

the trajectory after hit changes... the predictably of it is something that's fairly programmed into our heads, but it seems as if we'll have to relearn some things. it's too soon to tell if it's going to be randomly different or if it's just simply a new set of trajectories to learn but I'm hoping it's not random. just the more we play it out the more weird effects we are seeing on characters, but overall so far the best impressions coming in are "oh finally, now I can use such and such and not have to worry about such and such" so that's good. balance was the goal, and it seems to have been achieved.

one last observation, it seems to have a dramatic effect on wifi matches involving wii's that aren't also running BB, lol it seems to cause the other players to lose control of their characters. is this verified?

 

[BG3]

I was arguing before that G&W's moves are too powerful, safe, and fast. I seriously think that some of his moves(particularly his f-smash and d-smash, and maybe the d-tilt) should seriously be toned down. They are just too useful and very spammable in some situations. It also seems kind of unfair to have these types of moves against characters that are already seriously lacking in "at least decent" moves, kind of like Ganon. I also don't think that giving him these nerfs would totally ruin him, but as it stands now, I just think that some of the tools he has available to him are just......stupid.

 

[JOE!]

I seriously think he was balanced unde rthe impression that he was so light, that he needed the power in order to kill before being killed.

Then they found Bucket braking...

 

[Mr. Escalator]

G&W isn't overpowered at all. He is fine.

 

[Thinkaman]

Honestly, I'm really curious if buffing every single one of Lucario's most unsafe attacks (minus Double Team) is really supposed to make him as good as Diddy Kong, considering the fact that they're still unsafe, still useless, and now may even be more limited as the strings from before may not work as well due to possible extra knockback? Wouldn't have been better to simply remove all of those "buffs" in favor of reducing the ending lag on ftilt, which would've made it a safe poke, something that Lucario is seriously lacking and possibly would've allowed for a style change from Lucario being a horriblely mediocre defensive character into one with actual offensive potential and a safe poke? Or possibly giving fair or nair less landing lag so it can combo better, or a 3-frame jab, or a better grab, or something... Although I doubt even with all of these he'd be as good as Diddy Kong...

Is giving Sonic a very weak spike on the spring really supposed to be that game changing to put him on the same level as a character who can spawn infinite-priority tripping projectiles that can be thrown vast distances while glide tossing to create legitimate combos in brawl?

I mean Falco now has two close, combo-powerful throws, including one that nearly combos into his kill moves, DK gets actual buffs to moves that matter, ZSS gets buffs to her paralyzing moves, while Sonic gets stuck with a very, very insignificant buff to a move which basically does the exact same thing as it did before, which was to gimp people who don't know that uair beats the spring, and Lucario gets buffs on every single move that doesn't matter when a few simple basic frame changes would've sufficed instead of trying to make every single move that he still shouldn't use slightly less useless

In all due respect, I love what you're trying to do, and I love the ideas that you had for some characters, and they're fun and all, but I really think that for some of the more obscure characters like Sonic, you didn't actually know what really would've made them "as good as Diddy Kong," and probably would've done better with actual input from the mains...

Just my two cents. Maybe I'm just being picky with Lucario, but it's sort of obvious that Sonic's not up to par yet, as he also seems to be tweaked in the wrong places... :<

I appreciate the theory, but what really matters is solid real-world feedback. All of us are guilty of overestimating and underestimating the impact these changes will have. Only by getting lots of results from lots of players can we make accurate conclusions.

 

[Fox Hater]

G&W isn't overpowered at all. He is fine.

yes he is, his smashes are to powerful and almost impossible to stop or punish, i though they were going to Nerf his down smash and forward smash more startup frames and more recovery. that way he wont be able to spam them

 

[rPSIvysaur]

yes he is, his smashes are to powerful and almost impossible to stop or punish, i though they were going to Nerf his down smash and forward smash more startup frames and more recovery. that way he wont be able to spam them

Umm... why would you run into the spam? I'd be afriad of being b-air'd and d-air'd then his smashes. G&W is also easy to become telegraphed. Also, if you didn't read correctly, there is rare changes to timing. And lag IS timing. I'm sorry if you playing really good G&W's and your not quite as good, unless you play someone like Lucas or Ness and keep getting gimped, if that's true, learn the MU.

 

[A2ZOMG]

G&W isn't overpowered. He's one of the trickiest characters to play both as, AND against.

G&W suffers from having difficulty actually hitting with his Smashes due to none of them being viable out of shield (unless he powershields) and due to them being among the shortest ranged Smashes in the game (his F-smash has pretty good range, mainly because he leans in on it a lot). His best KO move is usually F-air because of this, and his F-air IS a very good attack indeed, and one of his few saving graces in his hardest matchups.

Most of his attacks have slower than average startup, so once you get in his range, his only real option is to grab, and most jabs outspeed this. He doesn't get much out of spotdodging either besides the fact it helps him land grabs. Trying to punish his ending lag is more or less futile, you want to limit his space and work on interrupting his flow or outspacing him.

 

[rocklee10]

Without starting an argument, does anyone think BBrawl is better than Brawl+ competitive wise? I'd try it myself but the download link(s) don't work for me v.v

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Melee fans / Aggresive Players - Brawl+
Brawl fans / Defensive Players - BBrawl
Competatively, it depends on what you like. I'm not going to say if either is better competively wise, because they are totally different games almost.

 

[TP]

Please keep Brawl+ out of this thread. Nobody wants another argument. There really is no way to mention Brawl+ without it ending in a bunch of insults thrown in every direction.

 

[bleyva]

Without starting an argument, does anyone think BBrawl is better than Brawl+ competitive wise? I'd try it myself but the download link(s) don't work for me v.v

its like comparing whiffle ball to bowling...........

but to answer your question, i prefer whiffle ball, due to its depth in pitching.

 

[Linkshot]

I facepalmed at Sucumbio's post, but I'm just too tech savvy.

1) WiFi Desynchs

These occur due to Wiis working independently of each other. When your opponent presses a button, the command is sent to your Wii, and your Wii loads the command to that character. Likewise, you send commands to his Wii. They interpret it on their own without assistance from the other Wii.

2) Famicom Medley

This was 100% intentional. Online Practice Stage is not a fighting song in the least.

3) Trajectory

There are no random trajectories. They have been changed from their previous angle. Perhaps you just aren't familiar with DI? DI (Direction Influence) is when you tap a direction just as you get hit, and it modifies the angle. Some moves can be DI'd more than others, so watch out for that.

4) Bitrates

I, personally, have experienced no problems at all. Are you using custom music? If you take the SD Card out, it plays the original songs at the custom song's bitrate. Quite amusing.

 

[rocklee10]

Thanks guys, I won't mention it anymore. So can anyone tell me why I can't use the download link including PhantomWings? Or the original link?

 

[Linkshot]

MediaFire was down last night. It's working now.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Post Removed by Almas - Advertising other boards.

 

[daisho]

yes he is, his smashes are to powerful and almost impossible to stop or punish, i though they were going to Nerf his down smash and forward smash more startup frames and more recovery. that way he wont be able to spam them

So if Game and watch is such a great character than why was he not ranked number 1 in brawl... in fact hes not even S tier... He was high A and I could see him moving down a couple more.

Don't run into smashes and don't try to punish them... who cares if he spams them, not like he can force you to run into them.

 

[Thinkaman]

A2, I actually tried to make a AiB topic yesterday, but after an hour of it failing to work I gave up. I'll try again later.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

G&W may be singlehandedly the best character in Brawl at low levels of play (Ike is up there as well). However, when you learn to play... he's not as dominating. G&W isn't broken at all. He's balanced.

 

[A2ZOMG]

What G&W can do is punish dodges like no other character though. Getting free Up-smashes from predicting landings is epic.

That being said his matchups are in fact better off than they were previously, considering most of his hardest matchups with the exception of Marth all got easier in one way or another (MK, Snake, Diddy).

 

[The Milk Monster]

With Game and Watch, I do still love the dthrow tech chase up smash. SO satisfying.

But seriously, if you're getting hit by G&W Smash Spam, after awhile it's not gonna' hurt that bad cause move staleness.

But seriously, just don't run into it?

 

[Suntan Luigi]

How is the G&W vs. R.O.B. matchup in BBrawl? Can ROB put up a decent fight now?

 

[18.15.2.15x12.9.14.11]

I just played Link, I'm really happy with him. The only thing I still want changed about him is really trivial - his aerial spin attack. The grounded one is great now, but in the air it's still really weak. And it looks like it would do a lot of damage, too. Most people wouldn't care, but I just happened to really like that move.

 

[NO-IDea]

So if Game and watch is such a great character than why was he not ranked number 1 in brawl... in fact hes not even S tier... He was high A and I could see him moving down a couple more.

Because nearly every character above G&W has an advantageous match-up against him? He's high A because he should be placed in high A. Him moving down a couple more would mean someone would rise up in the tier list... who do you propose would be capable of that?

The tier list represents the character's overall performance against the rest of the roster in a tournament setting. I find G&W's current placing in vBrawl quite accurate and well-deserved.

And I also think his match-ups haven't changed for him as much as other characters in bBrawl. I'd continue to place G&W in the top tier (probably in the same spot he's in now) while characters around him drop (or rise in Marth's and possibly Wario's case) and other characters rise to replace them.

Finally... the G&W/Ganon match-up is probably 65-35. I'd want to say 70-30 G&W's favor, but the new buffs do help the match-up somewhat.

 

[daisho]

Because nearly every character above G&W has an advantageous match-up against him? He's high A because he should be placed in high A. Him moving down a couple more would mean someone would rise up in the tier list... who do you propose would be capable of that?

The tier list represents the character's overall performance against the rest of the roster in a tournament setting. I find G&W's current placing in vBrawl quite accurate and well-deserved.

And I also think his match-ups haven't changed for him as much as other characters in bBrawl. I'd continue to place G&W in the top tier (probably in the same spot he's in now) while characters around him drop (or rise in Marth's and possibly Wario's case) and other characters rise to replace them.

Finally... the G&W/Ganon match-up is probably 65-35. I'd want to say 70-30 G&W's favor, but the new buffs do help the match-up somewhat.

ICs for sure... Pikachu... maybe olimar

 

[blakinola]

If anyone wants to play Balanced brawl--send me an IM

 

[Sucumbio]

I facepalmed at Sucumbio's post, but I'm just too tech savvy.

1) WiFi Desynchs

These occur due to Wiis working independently of each other. When your opponent presses a button, the command is sent to your Wii, and your Wii loads the command to that character. Likewise, you send commands to his Wii. They interpret it on their own without assistance from the other Wii.

2) Famicom Medley

This was 100% intentional. Online Practice Stage is not a fighting song in the least.

3) Trajectory

There are no random trajectories. They have been changed from their previous angle. Perhaps you just aren't familiar with DI? DI (Direction Influence) is when you tap a direction just as you get hit, and it modifies the angle. Some moves can be DI'd more than others, so watch out for that.

4) Bitrates

I, personally, have experienced no problems at all. Are you using custom music? If you take the SD Card out, it plays the original songs at the custom song's bitrate. Quite amusing.

LOL trust me I face palmed too when no one was responding so I PM'd someone and got some good explanation.

1.) Yeah, the desync thing, didn't realize THIS was how it would look tho, cause I've never had it happen to me. It was pretty funny tho cause I'm sure the other player was like "WTF!?"

2.) HA! Ok, well good, intentional is good, though I dunno, maybe it'd have been better to have one of the more epic FE tracks. Just sayin' nah but yeah I realize now you can actually change the code to play any song in there so that's cool.

3.) OK good, no random trajectories. LOL of course I know what DI is. However now I understand WHY the DI is acting different... we just kept getting surprised over and over again cause a smash would land and the character would fly way different than normal or expected, despite any DI attempts, you can still pretty much predict where they're going to fly, but now it seems there's a few hit trajectories we'll have to relearn/prepare ourselves for.

4.) OK the bitrate thing, it's not anything to do with custom music or even specific to music. Basically after booting the game with ANY hacks not just BB but any... randomly the game's total sound output will be affected, making the game sound really tinny, or like it was recorded on old time radio kinda thing. A reboot fixes it, but it's still just strange how it happens.

 

[Linkshot]

I would love to hear that sometime.

I replaced "Victory is Near" with SoM's "Danger!" and took out the SD Card while it was playing. It started playing "Snowman" at a faster pace. It sounded amazing.

 

[Sucumbio]

Actually I may be able to get a recording, though a second hand recording may be harder to even tell the difference between normal and hacked sound, its worth a try. The major differences can be heard on high pitched sounds, like charged SB, kirby's up b, etc... its so tinny its almost annoying.

 

[JOE!]

I never said G&W was OP, just annoying

Alls i need is more experience with the flat basterd... >.>

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Well of course he's annoying, but you might as well say Metaknight is near broken... it's an obvious statement of fact, but it will make a huge war of scrubs vs. dedicated people. So you just have to be clear about things when you say them.

 

[The Milk Monster]

Link Aerial Spin Attack stuff.

Every Link main wants a better Aerial Spin Attack, more for recovery. Having Link as one of my secondaries, I never find myself really using ASA as an attack, so I don't have many complaints with it. But if you wanna' bring up a recovery argument, he'd prolly' be one of the top 5 easily with a better recovery, so they kept it bad to balance out his amazing projectile/camp/defensive game, and his pretty good offensive/combo/strings game.

I guess while we're on the G&W discussion, yeah he's annoying, turtle is a pain in the *** to get around, but he's not OPed really. Yeah his upsmash hits hella' hard, but it's got some crazy start up, if you hit with it, you deserve it.

On a different, random silly note, has anyone else had an issue with Delfino? I've been standing still, twice, and just..died. Once I able to use a recording device again, I will record them FOR SURE, cause it's a trip.

 

[SaltyKracka]

I think he just wants it to do more damage and kill better.

 

[Big O]

IIRC Toon Link's aerial up b kills earlier than Link's...

I tried out Bowser's new Dthrow and while it doesn't give you any guaranteed followups I don't see how the old one is better. All you had to do vs the old one is jump and Bowser would never followup on it. Samus and Toon Link can even Zair Bowser for free if he Dthrows them with the old one. If for some reason they didn't jump then you did get better followups but since all you have to do is jump, I don't see how it is competitively worse than the old one. At least with the new one you can mindgame in some sort of followup. Even if they roll away you get stage control and depending on how good their roll is you may even be able to regrab or something.

 

[Swordplay]

on the topic of Link's air spin attack.....

The B+ players are experimenting with something......not to increase his recovery but just to make the up-b well.....64ish.........

Shadic has a PAC in the Link section if you guys ever wanted to try it. basically the up-b doesn't connect anymore, instead it just knocks people a good ways a way for every hit making it a more "safe" move. It is becoming REALLY popular and you should give it a shot to see if you would like to do something for the next standard build..




Moving on.

I played BB this Friday at our Indiana university brawl club. (most of you guys know this. its where the rotation thing happeneed)

Anyway, I got a lot of positive response. Anyway, we have this amazing ganon player. He would consitantly pull off 0-death tech chase combos......For a while I considered ganon TOO good. Then I realized a smart counterpick like TL Link Falco and probably ROB or anyone with a horizontal camping game and some spacing can really shut him down a lot.


Overall, ganon is REALLY good. but he is also one of the most polarized characters in BB. He lives and dies by the couterpick system. I don't ever see a ganon ever winning a large tournament without a secondary character but I also see lots of ganons winning tournaments if they choose their secondary wisely. For example, it seems Kirby might be a good option for a secondary. Ganon and kirby had mass success when they played together Friday night. Kirby's approach seems to be able to get around most of the camping ganon has trouble with.




On the last note I would just like to say


WTF.....When kirby copied my as Link and used my arrows against me......OMFG.....I felt pain. I also felt pain when Kirby copied a Falco and harrassed me in a free for all.

 

[A2ZOMG]

How is the G&W vs. R.O.B. matchup in BBrawl? Can ROB put up a decent fight now?

Still bad for ROB, but D-throw -> new stuff helps the matchup. Not to mention U-throw becoming a viable KO move at liek whut 140%?

It's probably like 6/4 G&W. Still solidly bad...just...not as stupidly bad as G&W vs Ganon which is like at least 65/35 G&W lol.

@Big O, a lot of Toon Link's stuff not named D-air or F-tilt KO's earlier than Link's stuff in vBrawl. Pretty dumb huh?

And seriously Swordplay, Ganondorf is still terrible until something like his Jab or N-air becomes a safe attack. <_<

 

[The Milk Monster]

I think he just wants it to do more damage and kill better.

Yeah I know, and while I wouldn't mind it killing better, I'm not gonna' hound Think for that to be in the next version, I don't use it enough to care.

I agree Swordplay, about the Ganon stuff.
Though his new buffs aren't groundbreaking, they are better then what he had going for him, and with a wise secondary, we could see some more Ganon mains.

I love Bowser now, especially his new hawt down air. :D

Overall about BBrawl, as a whole, the best improvements, in my eyes, are these:

1. Ike's Over B.
2. Link's arrows.
3. Mario's kill power.
4. Link's Spin Attack power.
5. Wario's coin effect on his jab, or C.Falcon's electricity on his pummel.

Seriously, Think, this is so great, hopefully it will bring more players back to Brawl, because a lot left because chainthrows/infinite's/etc. It's what the community needed.

 

[SaltyKracka]

I agree Swordplay, about the Ganon stuff.
Though his new buffs aren't groundbreaking, they are better then what he had going for him, and with a wise secondary, we could see some more Ganon mains.

This kind of thing is exactly the reason why I state that Ganon is still bottom/low tier in BBrawl. Sure, he's had some matchups improved with the stuff he's been given, and the matches where he could actually have a chance, are actually debatable about whether he actually has an advantage or not. But you see, when a character can simply be CP'd and lose without fail to a player who isn't exactly as good as he is, that is what we call an unwinnable matchup, and it's what I've been talking about all along.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Swordplay, it's good to hear of some exploration on that front. We would like to think that Ganon's matchups aren't really that way, but to be very honest, it's plausible (though grounded Wizard's Foot should help in some cases with its out-prioritizing nature, guys like Falco do indeed worry me). Ganon is really new ground, and we did have three options. We could leave him terrible (obviously bad choice), make him into another Ike (would be popular but not a good choice), or make him into something very different from any other character that is going to be pretty difficult to analyze (what we did). Hopefully over the next several months we can really pin Ganon's real matchups down. If you happen to get any good, detailed impressions of specific Ganon matchups or have some good Ganon replays, please do share them.

As per Link's aerial spin attack, for one, we aren't planning on using file replacement (too insecure), and regardless, why would you want to remind yourself of Link's smash 64 recovery? I mean, as much trouble as he gets for his Brawl recovery, it's amazing compared to the smash 64 one... It is clear that aerial spin attack is a poor offensive maneuver, but given that Link has three powerful aerials, two quick ones, and a useful zair along with the ability to use all of his good projectiles in the air, I'm not sure he needs it to be a good offensive maneuver...

As per Kirby, Copy in general should see a lot more play, but Kirby's Link arrows theoretically shouldn't be buffed. Kirby projectile powers are weird though (fun fact: the hitbox data code totally ignores them just like stage hazards); it's possible something came of that that we didn't expect.

The real caution with Link's arrows is that reflectors are terrifying for him. Mario, Pit, R.O.B., Fox, Falco, Wolf, Ness, Lucas... If Link's at high damage and gets a reflected arrow back at him in those matchups, he's pretty likely dead. I don't think this is unfair, but it's definitely something to be mindful of!