I use Zr to jump (classic controller ftw ^_~)
And I'd like to see bBrawl Ness with the B+ DJC. Insta-top tier? I think so.
I don't know about Brawl+ DJC, but I do know melee DJC quite well (DJC fair was 90%+ of Ness's game in melee, and I was a long-time Ness main). I don't think it would fit Brawl Ness very well. Double jump dair is pretty good in Brawl and an approach (though few people seem to realize it), and Ness's recovery is WAY better in Brawl mostly because of the "removal" of DJC (double jump fair is really hard for a lot of characters to hit through if the Ness plays it smart). Double jump uair is also one of Ness's main killing tricks; I don't think DJC bair would be a good substitute given how much time you spend in the air in Brawl.
Ness is seriously not bad in Bbrawl, but he's also really not that bad in normal Brawl either and no one believes that either (grab release is really stupid, but otherwise, he's pretty decent). Oh well; Ness has received too much time being talked about anyway.
Hmm... after playing around on BB a bit I've noticed a few things.
1: Sheik actually got worse in terms of her 1, 2 killing blows? o-O
2: Falcon, still lacks priority and his attacks come out slow. Sure he got some new tricks but didn't really fix what he needs. I personally like the PSA from B+ of him aside from the obsurd hitbox on the knee. xP
He may still be a little low on priority but his attacks come out fast enough he can combo somewhat, such as n-air, u-air, KNEE. But yeah, the current falcon in BB needs some tweakage, especially in his attack speed if that's possible.
3: PT, I must say i'm quite surprised at how good he is now after actually playing him a while. Ivysaur comboing into spike marth style=win, and they switch out fast enough you can swat them away with a quick smash and switch out. They can move as soon as the pokeball pops open which is quite nice.
*Off topic*
Also, if anyone knows how to make my Sig bigger let me know via pm please, my smashh card gets cut in half.
Sheik has the best kill move in the game: transform to Zelda. Her fsmash is a net buff since now she can actually rely on it, and it does a lot of damage with both hits. Of course, if you want to try to kill with her with moves other than her down special, her usmash is as good as always (good luck hitting; at least she has a good DACUS).
Well, that's what Captain Falcon is in Brawl. Captain Falcon, design wise, is a heavyweight who trades the usual high range and priority for mobility. That's not exactly the way he ended up playing in the games he was good in so some people don't realize it, but in Brawl with him not having those true combos anymore, it's how it plays out. As I'm sure we all know, that didn't exactly work out for him in standard Brawl, but it's pretty unique so we decided to run with it in Bbrawl and see if we could make it work. I am not exactly going to roll out the "Captain Falcon for top tier" banner, to say the least, but I'm pretty sure he's a whole lot better now and probably somewhere in the spectrum of viable. If you really need some form of priority at all, I'd point out that Falcon Kick has actually semi-decent priority, and now it's actually safe on hit (a big deal, Bbrawl Falcon Kick is the best Falcon Kick ever because of that). Also, if you're having trouble getting in and failing at basic fake-outs with your mobility (sometimes you can't get that sort of thing working), aerial Raptor Boost is a pretty decent trick. You can air control a pretty big amount while he's swinging so you can do stuff like aerial Raptor Boost into shields and retreat as you attack, making it pretty good pressure (remember no helpless means you can double jump before hitting the ground if you want). I mention the second one specifically because most people don't notice how much better aerial Raptor Boost is on a casual inspection of Captain Falcon, but it's actually pretty handy.
Yeah, PT rocks no doubt. I can't say I've ever seen fair/bair on Ivysaur (presumably bair?) leading into dair, but it sounds like fun stuff.
Strange. I don't remember Sheik being significantly better then Zelda where using Zelda is useless. Or Zelda/Sheik being really broken or at least polarizing in VBrawl. Sounds like a needless nerf. I understand that you guys want to encourage Sheik/Zelda by not buffing them, but were nerfs really neccessary (Besides Sheiks F-tilt nonsense)?
Falcon+ is mid at best. He gets ***** too much by range, combos, and edgeguards to be OPed.
The main reason Sheik's fsmash was nerfed kill-power wise was so we could get away with making it link. If it linked with no kill power nerf, Sheik would have a fast, very effective kill move that would essentially remove her only weakness. Hmm, replace "smash" with "air" on that, and you are reminded a bit of another game... In any case, I don't consider Sheik nerfed in Bbrawl; the things that were improved on her weren't exactly trivial.
Regardless of the merits of Captain Falcon in Brawl+, I'm pretty sure the way he falls like melee Falco isn't very Brawl-like (maybe this was changed in a newer build; I don't know). Making him like that for Bbrawl isn't even close to on the table.
Well put Meta.
Also another thing I noticed. Meta Knight, still cheap as hell. No lag on any aerials meaning he can still gimp you to death with ease, or just sh combo you with f-airs off the side. Or better yet get out of Yoshi's d-air just by firing off any aerial.
If you don't let Meta Knight gimp you (which is pretty reasonable really), he has some more serious trouble killing. Meta Knight still seems pretty good, but he got the heaviest nerfs out of anyone who was nerfed (though the only other character I consider at a non-trivial net negative is Snake anyway). I mean, doing ridiculously quick aerials is kinda what Meta Knight is all about, and no one wins if we "balance" the fun out of him and make him bottom tier as "retribution" for how good he is in standard Brawl. With Yoshi in particular, you can expect to survive to radically higher percentages than Meta Knight by combining your excellent survivability with his poor KO ability. Of course you can expect him to have some pretty easy to land attacks to make up for that, though his poor air speed should make it risky for him to stay in the air where he has those great aerials (I hear Yoshi has a pretty good anti-air projectile).
You can turn the hitstun code off, or limit it if you don't really care about playing at tournies or just feel like playing for fun
BTW my friends and I were just playing around for fun and he started using DDD and we're trying to figure out whether or not his d-throw to d-tilt is inescapeable. It seems like sometimes it'll miss just as a fluke, but we feel that it's a bit overpowered when you figure he has a good tech chase now and also when you consider that he forces people to approach and has a massive and quick grab range.
It may be matchup dependent and DI dependent even in those matchups. I expect some characters can wiggle out while others can't (I really doubt Luigi is even reasonable to hit, of course). King Dedede seems pretty powerful yeah, but given how significant dthrow was to him in standard Brawl (where he wasn't overpowered in general so much as broken in a bunch of specific matchups and matchup-stage situations), it seems like a good direction to let him keep a good dthrow. Let us know how King Dedede's matchups seem to be evolving though; it's really a good thing to see this explored since it is a fairly important change that makes a former high tier fairly unpredictable for us.
I'm really not sure what you mean by him forcing approaches though. Waddle Dees? Could you elaborate?
Aye, he is pretty good now, it sees like his attacks come out a tad stronger too. Do miss the massive hammer from B+ though, yay tripping all grounded targets. xD
His attacks are the same strength they always were. Granted, that's actually pretty strong.
i've just played BB for like the last 3hrs and i dont like the nerfs on the higher tier chars.
and links arrows are total bull**** now, my friend gimped me soooo many times with them.
i think i prefer a more broken brawl where everyone has **** combos but brawl+ physics and nerfs on the high tier chars make it trash
so i think i'll stick with normal brawl
There really weren't many nerfs to high tiers, unless by that you mean "Meta Knight and Snake". I mean, we didn't nerf Marth or Mr. Game & Watch; our standard of balance was pretty high. Of course, any combo ability either of those had wasn't nerfed except Meta Knight Mach Tornado shenanigans I guess so I'm not sure what you're getting at here. If balance just isn't your cup of tea, you really like Meta Knight, and you really want to play the game where he's as good as possible relative to the rest of the cast, I'm not sure what to say really. The game is better when Meta Knight and, say, Pokemon Trainer are closer in worth, but if you really want to just win as easily as possible with Meta Knight, I can say that this game is really not for you. I'm sure your friend with Link enjoyed having a chance though (no way he gimped you more than you gimped him; Link's arrows are good, but not as good as Meta Knight's dair).
Thank you for the advice Meno, Card re-sized accordingly. Need to get it edited though, don't play Marth enough to give him a place on my card anymore.
*Edit*
Also, out of curiosity what is the buffer for BB? It seems a little higher than Vanilla.
100% unchanged. Standard Brawl does indeed have a fairly generous buffer.
Are thinkaman and/or amazingampharos looking for any specific matchups right now? I want to help out with this.
Any data is helpful really, though data about the less used characters would be more useful of course. Basically, any matchups involving...
Luigi
Peach
Bowser
Donkey Kong
Diddy Kong
Wario
Toon Link
Zero Suit Samus
Pit
Ice Climbers
R.O.B.
Kirby
Fox
Falco
Wolf
Lucario
Sonic
is somewhat more helpful than with the others. Of course, that's a long list; data about how you do with your best characters will be more useful than anything (since we can expect the best performance from that).
Honestly you should try more characters...there are actually quite a few new combos in this game that are pretty broken.
ROB's D-throw -> U-smash is my favorite. Mario could always Jab Jab cancel D-smash, and it is EXTREMELY lethal in this game, not to mention his Jab cancel B-throw. Samus's random combos into D-tilt and Charge Shot and F-smash are also a lot more lethal.
I'm pretty sure dthrow to usmash with R.O.B. isn't a true combo (maybe against Bowser at 0% or something). I don't think the second one is either. They do kinda position well and give you some frame advantage to work with, of course, so it can be hard to avoid and is very landable with prediction (both things listed). I'm sure you know this quite well; I'm just saying it so no one gets confused, thinks us mad, and worries about R.O.B. having an insane dthrow of death.
R.O.B. dthrow to utilt is a true combo at low to mid damage in a lot of matchups though.
i think most people will go to whatever game gives their main the best possible chances at winning.
i mean, im not gonna lie; if a new brawl was made where the only change was that all of wolf's moves were one-hit KOs, i might consider playing it competitively
And most people picked mains in the first place because they were good at winning (i.e. high tier). This is one of our challenges; we're basically trying to convince people to ignore their personal interest in favor of the greater good... though in the long run they may benefit anyway if a former low tier fits their playstyle more than their current high tier main.
Of course, people don't really think long term...
People who just main a character more independent of value should hopefully be easy sells though since most of those people are going to main characters who saw improvements (I think a fairly small percentage of MK and Snake mains main them for irrational reasons).
Oh, nice comeback with the Brawl+ topics, really neat. I'll give you a 10 out of 10 because you outsmarted him so bad.
...
I liked vBrawl, I really do. The tripping, the infinite CGs, the broken characters, everything. Why do I like it? Well, to show off how ridiculous it is. Whenever I play someone in vBrawl, weather it's a newbie or a torney champ, they get so mad that it makes them want to quit. Because, if it was for skill alone, they would have won. Reason is, I never play vBrawl, yet I continue to win. All I play is Brawl+ and Melee, and it seems that that's all I need to win, does that make sense? Then, I see BBrawl and notice the changes it's made... which aren't many. Meaning, in theory, the game still doesn't require much skill.
When I look at vBrawl, I notice a lot of placement in tiers feel terribly wrong. Which characters exactly, I'm not going to say. I don't want to start arguments where someone yells in my face all the reasons why x character is at the bottom. I couldn't care less. For example, Melee's tier list. Look at Melee's first few tier lists and today's tier list. Completely different. This is one thing I don't like about BBrawl, it seems to base changes on a tier list that might not even be true. Maybe they didn't, heck, they probably based changes on matchups, but it seems to me that everywhere I look for changes the lower tier characters get more attention than the top tier. Yes, the bottom tier characters seem like thrash, but they might not be. Brawl hasn't been out for as long as Melee has, so it's tier list might not even be right, and BBrawl may be buffing characters that don't need it. But, what do I know.
I notice that BBrawl keeps stating that it's Balanced (kill me for stating the obvious here, but whatever), but... I myself don't see it very balanced at all. I've been watching the BBrawl threads for a while now, so I know for a fact that I'm not the only one that thinks this way. And... for some reason, when someone tries to prove the creators of BBrawl wrong, they seem to just shut down any valid points, give out all the reasons why the changes were made and how they help balance in theory, and say to prove them wrong with videos. I've seen this posted more than twice, but I don't want to look for the posts. I'm sure they wouldn't deny doing this.
Meta-Knight: In vBrawl, he is clearly broken, because of countless reasons. I was disappointed to see that some things that make him overpowered never got changed, only very few. For one, his recovery. 5 jumps, 2 glides. Clearly, one of the best, if not, the best in the game. Next, his power. TP on all his sword attacks, lagless, and with very high potential to gimp. Some even to kill at low percentages (one of the changes in BBrawl). Not punishable. In vBrawl, all moves seem to be slowed down. MK bearly seems affected by this, so while all the other characters are waiting to pull their swords out of the ground, MK can just throw a nair in their face, no risk. MK's best points are, safety, recovery, and early kills (gimping/high knockback). Do you know how many characters in the roster would benefit so much by just having ONE of these attributes?
I'm going to stop now. I seem to be bashing BBrawl way too much, which isn't what I was going for at all. Like I said, I like vBrawl, and it would be nice to have it balanced, but it looks like BBrawl is going at it all wrong, and don't seem to want to change. If it never changes, it will never be balanced, period. What changes? Mainly:
- Increasing/decreasing hitbox size
- Speeding up/slowing down certain animations
- Fixing main problems some characters have (see, MK, Ganon/Link and their horrible recovery), however gameplay changing they may be.
In tournament play, lower tier characters get thrashed because of their weaknesses. For example, in theory, a very good MK player could keep Ganon from ever touching him, making all of his "buffs" useless. This is why he needs safe moves, which BBrawl seems to be denying him, and because of it's persistance of not wanting to change his playstyle too much, he will never change and stay a low tier.
I understand the goal of not wanting to change vBrawl much, heck, this was also a goal in Brawl+ too, but it's just not possible to make it balanced without heavily changing playstyles. You might want to reconsider, either your goals, or your name.
If you don't like standard Brawl, you won't like Bbrawl probably. I could have told you this from the beginning. Thinkaman and I are both of the opinion that standard Brawl is an excellent game; that's why it was worthy of the massive time investment to make it even better. Of course we're going to be conservative in what we change; we actually respect the game and its design. To us, Sakurai is a name worthy of respect, not laughter, to put our views into perspective. If this sounds totally alien to you, I doubt this project could make sense to you.
I will say, about how we balanced things, we didn't just take the SBR's word on how good characters are. We have our own ideas on balance, formulated independently, that happen to highly agree with each other. The fact that we reached independent and similar conclusions strengthened our resolve that we, in fact, have some insight. In some cases, we feel the community is pretty right (guys, Diddy Kong is pretty high tier). In other cases, we feel they miss the mark (Ness is not anywhere near that bad). In any case, it's about more than just how good they are in a static game; it's about how their worth is flexible with changes to them. Think of each character as having a bunch of "knobs" that you can turn up or down to move them on the tier list. Think of each one as having an indefinite scale as well, and think of adjusting any one character as changing every other character as well. I think we have a really good feel for how things tend to play out; we're both extremely academic about the game and generally have good game design intuition. We also tested our changes pretty thoroughly to see how they played. Of course, future developments could, and in fact inevitably will, show us that we have some characters too powerful and others not powerful enough. Balance is an iterative process, and we're ready to handle that situation. In fact, the whole reason for our long period on new releases isn't so much that we think our current release is perfect (I do think it's pretty good though!) as we understand how metagames work and are giving it time to mature.
You make it sound like Meta Knight is actually broken in standard Brawl. Blatantly top tier yes, but it's not like other characters can't effectively fight against him. Of those three attributes you listed, one of them is now effectively a weakness (the killing part). I mean, he can still gimp, but it's a lot harder to kill outright and even set up for the gimps with the weakened dsmash and Shuttle Loop (those moves are insanely important to Meta Knight).
In theory, a good Zero Suit Samus main could win matches with nothing but walking and jab1. Jab1 hits on frame 1 so it could beat out pretty much everything, including Meta Knight's entire moveset. In fact, if Meta Knight tries to do anything and you aren't in range, powershield and punish with jab1. He has absolutely nothing that can even hit a perfect Zero Suit Samus (or Squirtle). It's not going to happen; even the best players are very, very far from perfect.
I have never seen a 3 stock 0% against a good Ganondorf even in standard Brawl and doubt I ever will. He can land hits; it's just a lot harder for him than other characters. Hence the fact that he hits harder than anyone else and has probably the best follow-up game out of hits out of the entire cast. If anyone other than Ganondorf was rewarded that much for hitting, they'd be instantly the best character in the game and probably broken. The game is about risk-reward-cost. I think I've explained this before so I'll keep it brief. You can get away with having a low chance of landing anything (everything is high risk) if the reward is sufficiently high it's okay. If you hit me 10 times and do an average of 2% per hit and I hit you once and do 20%, we're even if all else is even. If I can expect to kill you at 80% and you can expect to kill me at 140%, I'm beating you since you're 1/4 of the way to death while I'm only 1/7 of the way to death. This is the premise Ganon works on; you get hit a ton and generally get shut down, but they you suddenly make everything up really quickly and, if you do it right and predict well and such, are suddenly winning. The idea of your whole game funneling down to a fairly small number of high reward situations may not be appealing to you, which is why Ganon is far from the only character in this game, but he's there for those who want to play like that.
Testing shows Link is actually pretty good recovery or not; speaking of bad recoveries, I sure remember melee Falco pretty well, and it sure did a fine job of keeping him in low tier (Brawl Link has a better recovery than Melee Falco). I'm not seeing the issue there.
To get down to a fundamental point, characters need weaknesses, sometimes serious weaknesses. Some people get upset over us repeating this over and over again, but if we didn't preserve them, we might as well just use a custom CSS that's just one big Mario button. It's not like all the good characters are devoid of serious weaknesses in standard Brawl; just look at Snake. Extreme weaknesses lead to extreme strengths, and in the examples mentioned (Ganon and Link), they certainly were given extreme strengths.
The point of "eff off" could have been stated without shutting him down because he supports Brawl+, which seems like it was the only reason why you said that.
This is what I mean, why does he have to settle with something moderate? How does this help him exactly with high tiers? Even if he gets a good kill throw, high tiers will know to avoid his grabs like the plauge. What will he have then? His spring spike which only works on snail-slow recoveries?
I seriously still don't get this logic... People seem to be stuck with the idea that if a character was once bad, he will never be good. That's not true. Look at Brawl+'s Ganondorf. After almost a year of testing he has tools to help him deal with high tiers and not making him overpowered, and oh, look, his playstyle isn't drastically changed either...
I hate having to use the point of "look at Brawl+" cause I know you guys hate it anyway. The thing this though, we already went through all the mistakes, I don't see why you guys don't want to learn from them until you experience them yourselves.
I am going to say this simply on this one. Do not ask us to talk about Brawl+. We are aware of the project, and we have good reason to simply not want to discuss it.
So your strategy is superior, rather than skill, is what you're saying. However, if an opponent camps back, it's still a competition of skill. Alternately, they might be skilled enough to overcome your strategy with an inferior one.
It's still a competition of skill, but yes, strategy plays a big part. I think your complaint here is that camping is lame. Which yes, I agree it is. But that doesn't mean skill isn't a, or even the primary, factor in vBrawl or BBrawl.
I think you might have misunderstood me a bit. I'm saying the entire cast will never be -exactly- as good as eachother. They'll just reach that "standing in the same level somewhat" area. Some closer than others.
It's my understanding that "standing in the same level" and "having something good to offer" is what BBrawl accomplishes, and I can tell you disagree. If you want to be convinced otherwise, you'll need to either give BBrawl a try with other competent players, or you'll have to give the makers the benefit of the doubt when they present their theorycraft. Keep in mind they -have- tested this theorycraft, but theory is pretty much the medium of forums like these, so it's all you'll see until you test it yourself.
Good post.
In this whole current debate, no one seems to be considering ability to read your opponent. I think that's like 85% of Brawl's entire high-level gameplay. I don't know if either of you are considering that as skill or strategy (I would think skill is pure ability to control your character and use ATs effectively, while strategy is your overall plan of attack [or not attack, like camping]), but if you don't have that and your opponent does, it doesn't matter how much you camp, you won't win.
Bait and punish, predict attacks, react correctly and score hits. If you can do this well you will rack damage and kill much faster than your opponent. Otherwise, you have to be relying on your opponent to make mistakes. Because really, if someone wants to in Brawl, it's entirely possible to continually evade all attacks from an opponent with just about any character. If you aren't baiting and punishing or predicting attacks, you're just charging at your opponent and hoping your strategy works, which it may work sometimes, but other times it won't.
If your opponent can predict your strategy though, bait you into using something, predict it, and then punish you, though? You're screwed.
Ally is my prime example for bringing this up. The man could probably take out tons of high level players with his Captain Falcon. Whenever he plays Falcon it perfectly shows off how incredibly good he is at baiting and punishing and predicting his opponent's attacks. Because really, that's all you can do with Falcon. He has no strategies, no approaches, no camping ability, and yet, it's still technically possible to win if you can predict your opponent well enough.
This is a central point in Brawl's gameplay, and that's why even if some character's might not seem too good (like they don't have that one great thing about them cited before), certain people with the right mindset, who can bait and effectively punish with the character, can still make them good.
It's really what brings a lot of characters closer to being balanced in BBrawl. "Link still sucks because of his recovery", and yet, I think if Izaw got a hold of BBrawl and started playing it a lot, he would win tournaments, because the man is a monster with the character, and with such an enhanced killing ability in BBrawl, not to mention those arrows, he would be absolutely lethal onstage. He requires a ton of skill, but if you can acquire that skill, and have a great ability to predict your opponents and mindgame them into deadly traps, you're pretty much unstoppable unless your opponent can do the same.
Anyways, my two cents. I think Brawl+ tries to bring a lot of the skill back into it (although, it's still kind of like Melee easy mode because you do a lot of similar movements and tactics without the need to l-cancel or wavedash and whatnot), and may be why some like it more and still think BBrawl/vBrawl is fatally flawed.
I would add to this that follow-ups after a hit are extremely important in Brawl and Bbrawl; there's a ton of prediction that goes on in that, and it's where a big chunk of the depth comes from. If you predict right, that hit maybe only does 4%. If you predict wrong, you eat an aerial that does another 8% and now are at a disadvantage positionally which is really just going to force you to predict again where "winning" means simply escape while "losing" means this just keeps going on. Of course, bait and punish is a great way to land that first hit, and in many ways, it's what can be going on in the middle of your follow-ups (bait the airdodge, continue the attack).
Also, don't make the mistake of confusing "skill" with "tech skill". Skill is in your brain; tech skill is in your fingers. They're pretty different.
I see, hadn't thought of using a game like that for reflex sharpening.
also, on an off note does Yoshi have and form of dash attack cancel?
Yoshi can cancel the start-up of his dash attack with an up smash like everyone else, but I don't think he gets any useful distance off it. If this isn't what you meant, I'll need clarification.
Thats literally RETARTED.
I've been paying attention to this as a link player and I didn't think it was so bad before because Links grab isn't used that much due to the lack of "safeness"
But It this works on TL/Links zair, that's LITERALLY ******** because those are extremely common moves that both characters use to space.
Still though will probably rarely happen due to the way zair is used (very close to ground). However, even I am highly interested now
(Personally, I blame the hyrule shield. (Don't ask why, inside joke for anybody who gets it))
=====================================
God I know AA and Thinkman really don't want to update BB. Its the LAST thing on their minds, but I wonder if they will come out with a patch to fix this or if they will fix it in the next set IF THEY CAN AT ALL. (I doubt they will)
Both of them have been unusually quiet on the subject.
We've been quiet because we've been pretty busy (especially Thinkaman; I wouldn't expect to see him post for quite a while yet). Do you know a post like this one takes over an hour to write? Consider how many massive posts we've made in the past and you might see just how much commitment this thread really is as well as the reason game developers almost never address the public like we do.
Anyway, this glitch is pretty bizarre; I think we can hardly be blamed for it. I think, based on the symptoms, that it's caused by a glitch in the hitbox mod engine itself causing the second hit of Lucas's Pk Fire in situations involving hitting someone with a hookshot out to read from some incorrect location in memory for hitbox values... which has very poor results. This only affects two matchups (Link vs Lucas and Toon Link vs Lucas) out of 666, and I don't think either make matchups anywhere close to unwinnable. We definitely want to fix this, but I doubt it will get an instant patch. Fixing it may be fairly tricky as well, to say the least.
So yeah, we take this seriously, and we aren't exactly happy over it. However, the only real thing we can do right now is sit back and wait and see how it develops and work on a fix when we can. I'm sorry; sometimes games have bugs, and sometimes they are pretty slippery. Sometimes you have to make priorities, and in this case, our pre-existing commitment to a static version of the game simply overrides this. It does suck, but in perspective it isn't that bad (I doubt it's a serious blow to the viability of Link or Toon Link), and I hope it doesn't seriously hurt anyone's opinion of Balanced Brawl.
