Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[Lokee]

Top
Samus, Mario, Metaknight, Olimar, Marth, Rob, Game and Watch, Snake

High
PokemonTrainer, Link, Lucas, Wario, Kirby, Fox, Yoshi, Donkykong, DiddyKong, Wolf, Falco, Peach, Falcon, Luigi, Pikachu, Pit, Ness, Toon, Link, IceClimbers, Lucario

MID
Ganondorf, Sonic, Zelda, Shiek, Jigglypuff, Dedede, Bowser, Ike

This is my General Tier List. I couldnt really separate them too well cause how the gap between them is so close. Also they are in no particular order within the tiers.

This is just an opinion so you know the deal.

EDIT: I firmly believe that the bottom tier has been eliminated and possibly the low tier as well.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

@Milk I would have expected Marth to be higher up on the list, why did you only keep him in the bottom of high tier?

 

[JOE!]

why is bowser still so low on both these lists?

sure, he lost grab release but he is still very solid...

 

[Lokee]

why is bowser still so low on both these lists?

sure, he lost grab release but he is still very solid...

He is, its just I feel he still needs abit more to keep up. Plus the more we say he's low the more buffs he might get

But I guess its maybe the general mindset of a heavy and large character in a fighting game.
Honestly though id put him between mid and high

 

[The Milk Monster]

I think Bowser is so low in the respect of it's hard to approach with him, hard to land a kill, can't really gimp AMAZING, slow of course, terribad recovery, size, etc.

:/

I kept Marth as low as he did because yeah he's got a great approach, semi alright recovery, decent kill potential, he doesn't have a whole lot about him that someone can't do better, besides fair and stuff, IMHO.

 

[JOE!]

er...

Bowser has an OK approach with Klaw hopping.

All his moves have kill potential.

why gimp when you just have Fair? (or firebreath)

NOT SLOW, good ground speed and good ground speed. He also has respectable frame data for the ranges he tosses stuff out at.

Recovery is meh...but he lives the longest horizontally.

>.>

 

[TP]

I don't want to say too much because I am not technically a designer of the project, but I have talked with Thinkaman quite a bit about changes for the next version. I won't go into details (mainly because details don't exist too much yet), but:

Samus, Mario, and ROB will almost certainly get nerfed. I refuse to let Thinkaman make another change without fixing ROB's Dthrow. A2 is completely right about it.

Bowser will get buffed. No clue how yet, but Dthrow will be fixed.

Thinkaman and I somewhat disagree over Ganon. Suffice it to say that your points have all been considered and we will take a close look at him.

That's all you're getting for now. Those characters have dominated the discussion, so I'm telling you this stuff so that you can start discussing other characters instead, characters we need more input on. Get the hint?

 

[Linkshot]

Okay guys.

Everybody get your bottle of A1 ready and pick up Sonic.

Let's gooo

 

[JOE!]

ir marth getting nerfed, TP?

 

[Lokee]

Good to hear kinda makes me giddy

I think EVERYONE disagrees about Ganon.

Well lets begin, for I think he probably just needs a little more effient ways of finishing the opponent. Id say either a KILL throw or maybe buffing the knockback on downsmash or maybe fowardsmash a bit, wouldnt want another Mario situation.

I wouldnt know which throw exhactly since im not too familar with the hedgehog and definitely wouldnt wanna ruin his followup game.

Anybody got any ideas, anyone who uses Sonic occasionally.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Those lists are always nice to see. I think Bowser and Lucas both are really deceptive though. They aren't really very obviously different, but they both lost some really stupid nonsense against them (grab release against Lucas, tons of chainthrows against Bowser) and are generally more rewarding at doing what they do to a pretty non-trivial extent. Lucas's jab is just such an efficient damage racking tool, and Bowser does so much damage and is so heavy that he can come out pretty far ahead just by focusing on back and forth hit trading. I just remember noticing with Bowser the issue of "I can trade hits with Snake and win!" which, for anyone with Snake experience in standard Brawl, is a really amazing thing to claim and really would inspire you on any character. I would really caution people not to overlook these two when making lists; really give them a careful look before placing them.

Anyway, not to detract from the tier lists (feel free to keep adding to that branch of discussion), but the next character I was hoping to draw some focused attention to was Sonic. Here's what I have on Sonic...

Sonic has been a pretty unpopular character so far in Balanced Brawl, not a statement he has gotten negative feedback so much as he's just not used much. Spring is his crown jewel, and it seems to help him quite a bit. He seldom actually gets outright gimps, but he can use it to pressure off-stage effectively and get extra damage in those situations or even trick the opponent into avoiding a spring threat and getting hit by bair which has always been one of Sonic's best kill options.

Otherwise, much of what I'm seeing is Sonic playing really similarly to how he does in standard Brawl... which means his actual quality is something I expect some widespread disagreement on given that standard Brawl Sonic is usually argued to be somewhere between "just a little below viable" to "completely horrible". Sonic does have the added benefit of the poor recovery and slow characters being more prominent in Balanced Brawl which is an indirect boon to his playstyle. The presence of walk-off stages also gives him powerful counterpick options; Sonic goes from a poor killing character to a very credible threat if he can threaten his bthrow near walk-offs.

Also, Sonic's dash attack is amazing. I swear it's better than Diddy Kong's now.

If I had to guess a tier position for Sonic, personally, it would probably be somewhat "low", but that's misleading. I am just guessing, off fairly limited data, that Sonic is probably one of the worse characters in Balanced Brawl, but he's definitely better than he was in standard Brawl and still someone I see as a credible tournament level threat that if plopped into standard Brawl would probably break into the top half of the cast. I definitely would love to hear from people who have been actually using Balanced Brawl Sonic or fighting against him.

EDIT: A bunch of people posted while I was typing this...

 

[The Milk Monster]

In my personal opinion, Marth doesn't really deserve a nerf, he's fine, tolerable, not out of hand or anything.

For Sonic, my personal suggestions:

1. Fsmash is good, maybe do something to Dsmash? Dunno what.
2. For Dair being so dumb, make it do something snazzy.
3. Kill throw would be fantastic. Bthrow prolly'.

I wish I could give more ideas, I don't have much of an idea, cause my friend who used to play Sonic retired like a weiner.

 

[JOE!]

sonic is fine as-is...as a damage racker.

He REALLY needs a reliable means of KO, perhaps a buff to his Bair or Nair to make them more potent.

he can dance around the stage and hit and run all day, but he seems to never be able to land that kill-shot

 

[ぱみゅ]

I was wondering if Sonic's spring spìke could be exploited, giving him several low-angle knockbacks (thinking on Fair, Fsmash and/or Dsmash) for set up his offstage options.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

I think a buff to b-throw is overkill, he already has great damage buffs (Dash attack is so f***ing annoying, so that means it must work). It's not hard for him to get grabs and he's fast. Giving him a lower angle and more BKB on his D-smash could set up for spring gimps as a possiblity.

(Edit: Lucas isn't totally destroyed by grab release stuff, and it's not truely an infinite agaisnt Lucas with Marth, because we can usually escape after 2-3 grabs with EIDI. As long as we DI grab stuff, it isn't truely a huge problem [also Lucas metagame already revolves around not getting grabbed so we know how to avoid it])

 

[Mit]

I'd support a bthrow buff on Sonic.

His damage racking is increased greatly due to dash attack (love spamming that now...) but I still find it pretty hard to kill with him. Since he only has two kill moves, most opponents will watch out for those two moves and avoid any setups they can. It makes it very difficult to kill and you usually have to pull off some wicked mindgames to hit someone, or you just have to hope you get the chance to punish with either move.

I wouldn't say make bthrow a kill move or anything, but I think it would be good if it had a relatively low angle. Low angles help Sonic set things up well offstage. I usually use dthrow to do this, but if your back is facing the ledge, this isn't possible.

Overall I think it'd help him out. More pressure into the spring gimping game, more offstage gimping of characters with poor recoveries using Sonic's rather excellent recovery options to his advantage.

 

[Lokee]

It will basically act like an insurance. So Sonic can finish off characters at least before an X amount of percentage.

All in all though Sonic's damage buffs really help getting to those Kill% with the Spring Sonic has a better Offensive and Defensive Option off stage.

but yeah a minor Back Throw buff would do the trick.
I like Mit idea of a low angle throw sounds like it equals win. but make it just right so we dont have Sonic constantly Ledge camp

 

[GHNeko]

I try to host tourneys, but I just get laughed at ._.

My community laughs at the idea of hacks becoming tourney viable, and Montreal's community (the closest out-of-town) is a Brawl+ community that laughs at vBrawl physics in general.

It's a real downer, eh.

Wifi tourneys man. better than nothing. At least, unlike Brawl+, wifi isnt unplayable because it's easier to keep up with in with latency lag.

 

[dansal]

All I can think of whenever I see discussion about Sonic is "**** I wish homing attack didn't have that slow-*** charge up time". I know changing the time on it screws it up but it FEELS like an attack that should do more.

I just haven't played against/with him a lot, although i've beat my brother's Falco with him (I think this is because he doesn't play against Sonic that much either).

 

[Stealth Raptor]

Wifi tourneys man. better than nothing. At least, unlike Brawl+, wifi isnt unplayable because it's easier to keep up with in with latency lag.

an interesting idea. ill look into maybe hosting a bbrawl wifi tourney when i get my wii back

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Sonic B-air is a real threat and can be mindgamed into with his spring now... All I think is he needs more set ups to get people off stage (such as a d-smash/b-throw with low angle) Sonic is too good at damage racking.

 

[GHNeko]

an interesting idea. ill look into maybe hosting a bbrawl wifi tourney when i get my wii back

Best way to get some steam really. BBrawl is gonna have a harder time getting momentum as well, imo, soooo...

Get going. :3

 

[Lokee]

Cant wait to see what the next version of Bbrawl has in store for my man, Ganon.

We definitely need to expand more. Have more torney's, a place of our own to dicuss everything balanced, and we also need more videos cause the ones on Youtube are frankly outdated and lack a certain diversity character wise.

Also, Ive noticed no one has complained about for awhile just wondering if any one thinks he is still too good. He seems fine for the most part though.

 

[GHNeko]

I've noticed that in a game where MK is "balanced" through hacks (BBrawl/Brawl+), no one plays him. LOL.

There are like 3 MK- users in Brawl+ and one of them is a PAL users, thus he plays an outdated build.

Why play MK when your favorite character can win without being 208432402834028x better than your opponent?

 

[JOE!]

without MK's whorenado being as bad, or his silly power-moves within Dsamsh and Shuttle-loop, he honestly isnt much of a threat anymore...just an annoyance

 

[TP]

For the record, a lack of MK players is actually a bad thing. If there is no appeal for MK players to pick up BBrawl, they won't. We want all the players they can get. Why would MK players go to a game that is the same for them except harder to win? Unfortunately, I don't know of any way to fix this.

 

[GHNeko]

That's the problem. He has absolutely no appeal in BBrawl. At least in B+, it's essentially a new game, so MK has a different feel to him. They'd know he'd be nerfed, but he still plays pretty differently, and enough so that there is at least some curiosity to testing him out to see how he feels, and in that, appeal can be born and grow.

That's what happened to me actually.

Usually the best way to create appeal for a nerfed Top tier character is to compensate by giving them something over their original version. If MK got a utility buff somewhere on rarely used moves, like Usmash, Utilt, Side/Down B, B/Fthrow, Pummel, Jab, or Bair, then he wouldn't be a nothing but a 100% weaker version of his original form and would have something to interest players with who are thinking, "Hey. They nerfed MK but now his Usmash can kill/his Utilt combos better/Side B has more priority." etc etc

The problem with this option is: Why buff the best character in a game who was nerfed because he was the hands down best character in the game? He was nerfed for a reason so why buff him again?

 

[The Milk Monster]

BBrawl made me wanna' play Meta, I didn't feel like I was robbing the other player of a good match by playing Meta.

But I don't, cause he sounds like a Matador.

The only person I'm still scared of at all, with any of my mains, is Olimar, that's about it.

It was Diddy, but I got over that yesterday.

**** Pikmin...

I agree with :V, Why buff him, when he was nerfed to balance the game a bit more?

F Metaknight, why couldn't you have just sucked?!

Also, Think, do you plan to add that new code for the Subspace stages to the BBrawl GCT in the near future?

More stages would be pre' sweet.

 

[Lokee]

Ahh the bandwagon how I loathe you so. Everytime I see people Drop their character for MK I die a little in the inside, but the few who continue to strive despite their characters absoulute flaws make me shead a tear and feel happy.

The most messed up part of that is that people that mained top characters even before their was even the slightest idea their character would be so overpowered get the most respect from me for enduring the burden of people telling them they mained said character BECAUSE they were overpowered. I salute thee

In the end its the way of competitive gaming and I bid you farewall
*Close Curtain*

Thank God for Balanced Brawl

 

[GHNeko]

And really, the only way to give MK more utility that is actually "viable" in a tourney setting is to nerf the utility of his other moves (ie make his bad moves better and his good moves worse) but in doing so, you risk changing more than what BBrawl would prefer to be changed in a character because there will be less reason to use his BnB moves, and more reason to deviate MK's metagame to incorporate "viable" moves.

It's really a conundrum lollollol

 

[Lokee]

Also, Think, do you plan to add that new code for the Subspace stages to the BBrawl GCT in the near future?

More stages would be pre' sweet.

I think its possible, Ive seen AA poking around those SSE stage threads He even made a few
http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=254125

 

[GHNeko]

SSE stages are mad pimp. I'd be extremely surprised and somewhat disappointed if you didn't include them because imo, they dont step on the goals of BBrawl.

And considering you've already added Wifi Room and un-banned, banned stages with changes to make them more "viable"

I'd be like Sakurai Surprised. That's pretty **** surprised.

 

[A2ZOMG]

In my personal opinion, Marth doesn't really deserve a nerf, he's fine, tolerable, not out of hand or anything.

I think Marth is OVERALL the best character in BBrawl.

I think DB is really stupid for how easy it is to land. It's the BEST punishing move in the game. It can be done out of dash, does like 17%, and counts four times on the stale moves counter. I think all versions of hit 4 should take a damage nerf.

As for Sonic, I would suggest that his B-throw kill Mario at like 160-170ish percent.

Spring sucks and is easily outprioritized by most characters...I really don't think it matters that much except against bad recoveries.

 

[Mit]

MK's probably still pretty good. He just can't kill early, and can't use tornado for spamming/unskillful purposes.

I mean really, you don't see M2K whoring out the tornado too much, and his playstyle wouldn't change much from BBrawl. He would just have to rack damage a bit more before going for kills. Same with Snake.


I'm also excited for SSE stages. There's some really legit stages in there. Right now it seems like it's not entirely stable, but it should be better soon, and there should be individual songs for replaced stages too :3

I think for them to get into BBrawl it should be thoroughly tested first to be stable, have individual songs for the stages (because who wants to listen to the same song for like 5 different stages), and it should have a custom stage select set up where you can actually pick a physical icon for the stages (all the icons look the same, but IIRC someone's done this already, although I'm not sure they've done it with SSE stages yet).

Oh, and don't include any of the stages that are extremely similar to pre-existing stages.

Definitely include that jungle stage where you fight dark Bowser though :O

 

[A2ZOMG]

Metaknight is definitely high tier material. Use D-smash more for damage dealing and save D-air for KOs and he's still very good.

His DownB kills Mario on FD at like 125% or something. If you can mindgame that in, it's worth using for kills too, although it's pretty unviable for the most part.

 

[CarVac]

Does the cape glitch still happen (I remember seeing a video of Mario's cape vs. MK's DC attack, and MK dies)?

Kinda irrelevant, but against a Mario it'd be a concern for a MK player.

Nobody really plays as MK in bbrawl, so I don't know the matchups. In vBrawl, though, sometimes we pick him for sheer lulz. One person uses a grand total of 4 moves as MK: shuttle loop, downsmash, tornado, and glide attack. It's really funny.

 

[A2ZOMG]

The glitch is so obscure it doesn't matter at all.

Metaknight should NEVER be using this move for the most part, except to punish an extremely obvious mistake.

It's such a bad move, it probably could use slightly more knockback/damage (aside from the buff it already received) just to make it more interesting.

 

[GHNeko]

The main issue isnt the KB of the attack, but how punishable it is going in AND coming out. Nevermind the fact it's punishable on block, dodge, and probably hit at low percents.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

The Dimensional Cape attack is actually slightly buffed in Bbrawl, for whatever it's worth.

Anyway, Sonic is a cool character.

 

[GHNeko]

Buffed? How so?

EDIT: oic. well. wrong place to buff it. but eh. you guys are against speed ups. The move needs little punishability on the coming in/going out animation, not more KB. The KB is means nothing really.