Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[ぱみゅ]

Sheik is there to pressure them into a fear aura.

That's the point. Sheik does, Zelda doesn't.

At a certain point, Sheik needs to switch to attempt kill earlier, but Zelda isn't match for them; By any way, is a bad situation for S/Z. =/

 

[Linkshot]

They'll be at a high percent from Sheik, so Zelda will be an "Oh **** if I get touched I die"

Perhaps Din's needs more Shield Damage so that there comes a point where they have to get into her range?

 

[IrohDW]

I like the idea; It also reminds me of the Pokemon games when one of your pokemon is poisoned and they are hurt when you walk.

The problem, though, is that when playing against a "camper character" like Falco, DDD, Fox, and Olimar, it would be utterly useless to stand still. The opponent wouldn't be making you more fatigued, but you would be eating damage like crazy by not moving.

One question of implementation regarding this, though, is whether the other Pokemon's staminas should recharge while not moving. I think that they should, so that if you wait, and your opponent doesn't attack you, they are slightly incentivized to approach. (or spam projectiles)

I definitely agree with you there. This would put an end to the abuses of the stamina system and still maintain the incentives to continually switch between pokemon.

 

[Steeler]

the 2 benched pokemon do regain stamina while they are out, at a rate of 2 seconds of stamina per second of rest.

however, it's not enough of an incentive to stop camping. PT still has to switch pokemon (or die, which isn't ideal) in order to take advantage of that. bbrawl has sped up the switching animations though. i remember AA saying that from across FD, sonic could only punish a switch with dash attack. and the matchups should be more even so waiting for the other two pokemon shouldn't be as beneficial. however, the new pokemon is still going to be just as vulnerable to the camping as the previous one so...do you really solve anything? other than giving your opponent a more advantageous matchup if they decide to actually fight?

you can argue "well, that's just PT and that's the character's weakness, deal with it." but at high level play, the stamina timer implicitly encourages stagnant, campy play and skews matchups. i mean, should a MK be encouraged to plank a squirtle even when the MK is losing simply because it gives MK a bigger advantage in the long run? this is the difference between planking a PT and planking a ganondorf. MK can be behind by a stock with 5 minutes left to go and planking would still be beneficial.

this is a problem for more characters than just PT though, so i think a code that severely limits planking's effectiveness would be the best solution.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Not allowing more than 3 or 5 consecutive cliffhangs (like tethers), if something like that can be done, planking would be completly eliminated, instead of banning it

Spoiler

or creating weird rules....

 

[The Milk Monster]

Though that would eliminate Planking, I really doubt that would be a widely accepted change, that's kinda' lame.

Though I do incredibly hate Planking, I really don't know a logical solution around it. :/

 

[shanus]

Though that would eliminate Planking, I really doubt that would be a widely accepted change, that's kinda' lame.

Though I do incredibly hate Planking, I really don't know a logical solution around it. :/

Or repeated ledgegrabs diminishes your ledge invulnerability time till you are on the stage again

 

[IrohDW]

Or repeated ledgegrabs diminishes your ledge invulnerability time till you are on the stage again

What if after 3 ledgegrabs you don't autograb the ledge and you lose half of your invincibility frames? I think that would end planking rather quickly.

 

[shanus]

What if after 3 ledgegrabs you don't autograb the ledge and you lose half of your invincibility frames? I think that would end planking rather quickly.

Current known techniques do not know how to disable or diminish warp distance, but only how to disable grabbing in its entirety.

 

[Stealth Raptor]

ive had extensive discussions with thinkaman on this subject, and the biggest problem with limiting ledge grabs is that some chars can put really hard pressure on those trying to recover. the one im most familiar with is marth vs pikachu. if marth spaces himself on stage, and does nothing but sh nairs or fairs, he makes this really large trap that pikachu really has a hard time getting around. at any time he can land and do a ground attack, or jump higher to swat me out of the air. whats worse, QAing over marth doesnt work thanks to the bs hurtbox on pikachu extending way down. i have easily regrabbed the ledge 5-10 times without touching the ground just trying to get on stage. that doesnt even count some of the ledge mindgames i use (some of which require a few regrabs, not planking necessarily but setting up patterns for marth to try to punish so i can get through him). such rules would hurt the matchup of pikachu vs marth quite extensivly, as all marth needs to do is get a couple ledge gaurds and then punish the fact that we dont ledge snap anymore or grab the ledge. we could get up from the ledge/qa into the ground, but that sets up into tipper fsmash/ more nairs or fairs, and this is marth vs pikachu, with pikachu having an amazing recovery. imagine what could happen vs others? or even with the defender being mk.

TL:DR

while ledge grab changes could easily eliminate planking, it has the potential to polarise certain matchups with characters that have incredible ledge guarding.

just know that there is something in the works on this subject, which i think is a good balance. the only current problem is implementation, AA/think will explain further once its fully worked out

 

[Hyrus]

Or the 4th ledgegrab without touching the ground forces an auto-stand up from the ledge.

 

[shanus]

Stealth Raptor - limiting ledge grab by count is overall a poor idea.

So unless AA or Thinkaman figured out how to code a fighter.pac injection with how to diminish invulnerability time on recurring ledgegrabs, then I doubt the solution is as solid as you suggest

 

[Stealth Raptor]

it does not do that at all, i already explained why i thought that limiting ledge grabs was a bad idea XD

 

[Linkshot]

Since when does QA-ing into the ground lead into getting tipper'd? What about the QAC?

 

[Stealth Raptor]

marths sword ***** qac. the qa into the ground was a way to refresh the jumps given a limited ledge regrab code. the problem with qac is any decent disjoint will beat it, the larger the disjoint the worse for pikachu. lemme just say that while qacing onto stage can work even vs mk, you have to get lucky for it to work vs marth

 

[A2ZOMG]

I've been wondering, is there any way to make Ike's counter better? It's a pretty bad move. It's slow at 10-11ish frames or something, meaning that reaction time is not sufficient to pull it off consistently. It's only marginally more powerful than Marth's, and the hitbox sucks, making it whiff a lot when Ike is attacked from certain angles (particularly easily during juggles).

And besides that, his N-air should have less ending lag, since he suicides when pushed off the ledge (by Mario's FLUDD perhaps) and buffering a N-air.

I think Ike's most pressing problem to address after that is his bad aerial game in general. He's the only character along with Snake who literally cannot do two aerials in a jump, and furthermore, everything he does has significant startup and ending/landing lag. If an appropriate change could be make to something like Ike's B-air, he would be a much more interesting and viable character.

 

[Linkshot]

I think Ike is very viable right now :/

 

[IrohDW]

I've been wondering, is there any way to make Ike's counter better? It's a pretty bad move. It's slow at 10-11ish frames or something, meaning that reaction time is not sufficient to pull it off consistently. It's only marginally more powerful than Marth's, and the hitbox sucks, making it whiff a lot when Ike is attacked from certain angles (particularly easily during juggles).

And besides that, his N-air should have less ending lag, since he suicides when pushed off the ledge (by Mario's FLUDD perhaps) and buffering a N-air.

I think Ike's most pressing problem to address after that is his bad aerial game in general. He's the only character along with Snake who literally cannot do two aerials in a jump, and furthermore, everything he does has significant startup and ending/landing lag. If an appropriate change could be make to something like Ike's B-air, he would be a much more interesting and viable character.

I agree with you in that counter needs some work to be viable. If the counter frames started sooner and it had more power (I think 1.5X is what it should have been from the beginning) it would be a much more useful move. Other than counter and a faster Nair, I don't think Ike needs any more buffs. I think his other aerials are just fine for what they are intended to do.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

As Stealth brings it up, I think I realized the perfect ledgegrab solution, if we can manage to code it.

After N ledgegrabs (probably some relatively big number, like 5 or 7, so it's not a concern for tether characters who like to grab with their tethers a few times in a row quickly to mix up), ledgegrabbing simply ceases giving invincibility at all until you get back on the stage. You can grab all you want, but it's not invincible at all. In fact, given how this game handles invincibility, grabbing it would probably prematurely terminate invincibility if you grabbed it during an invincible move. Now, please resume your planking, and have fun. The best part is that offensive ledge use (such as on Norfair) might actually continue without invincibility; refreshed jumps is still quite the prize.

Can anyone think of any legitimate strategies that would be seriously disrupted by this? Usually I say I'm looking for data moreso than suggestions, but this is one area where the prize goes to whoever has the best idea. The goal, while we are not explicitly acknowledging ledgestalling as a problem, is to make ledgestalling an unambiguously non-viable tactic on every stage and in ever matchup while disrupting the rest of the game as little as possible. Ideally any solution should be sufficiently simple that players will have no trouble adapting to it; intuitive design is very important here!

Of course, a similar limiting number on water entrees needs to be applied somewhere to force either auto-drowning or non-interaction with water. A big number so it basically doesn't happen on accident, but I would rather like Pirate Ship to be legal. I know our first attempt didn't go over so well (for anyone who remembers), but I think this general direction would be nice to pursue. Of course, grabbing ledges and entering water would be non-resetting of all relevant counters so you can't flow between the water and the ledge on the front of Pirate Ship, stalling away all day.

The idea of both counters raises the question of whether getting hit should be a refresh condition. I see advantages and disadvantages both ways.

Now we question how these things might be implemented, of course. This is the difficulty of having zero real coders, though rest assured that Thinkaman and I will do our best to make stuff happen.

 

[Eldiran]

@Think: thanks for adressing my posts!

I agree with you in that counter needs some work to be viable. If the counter frames started sooner and it had more power (I think 1.5X is what it should have been from the beginning) it would be a much more useful move. Other than counter and a faster Nair, I don't think Ike needs any more buffs. I think his other aerials are just fine for what they are intended to do.

Rather than just changing them because they are bad, we should wonder -- do they help Ike's unfavorable matchups?

@AA: Regarding the planking... that ledge solution sounds good to me. All I can contribute to the theories is that getting hit should probably reset the water count. As for implementation, I believe Dant has been able to edit Fighter.pac in the past? That would make this change very easy, most likely.

Failing that, you can change the edge and water behavior by editing every character's .pac, which is far from optimal, but certainly do-able. If I took the time and effort right now, I could implement your idea for you.

 

[IrohDW]

I like the idea of taking away invincibility frames after consecutive ledgegrabs. The only problem that I see is determining how someone gets their invincibility frames back. If it is just touching the ground, then planking would still be too easy to do.

With water stages I think a good idea would be to have a timer on how long someone can be in the water for each life. If they are in the water for a predetermined amount of time they die. To balance this out you could have them restore their drowning timer by being on the stage.

 

[Linkshot]

With water stages I think a good idea would be to have a timer on how long someone can be in the water for each life.

This, but apply it to every water-based animation, but don't restore it unless you die.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I think Ike is very viable right now :/

His main buff is a recovery buff...and then you could argue that his horrible horrible D-smash is more than just useless. He's still pretty bad. He really can't realistically approach, and his defense relies completely on people not outspacing his Jabs and powershielding his aerials.

He can't actually land any KO move in any realistically safe or viable way...well, at best, he can try to outspace someone with B-air, which reeealy doesn't kill early enough nor does it actually have enough range to warrant how laggy it is. His next best option is U-air on people who are terrible at getting back to the ground, so that only is really easy to land basically on someone like Ganondorf or Bowser.

He's comparably horrible to Ganondorf actually, except his QD buff does mean he can escape juggles better and not get autogimped, and his QD buff gives him a new edgeguard option, but on stage, he's pretty awful, and unlike Ganondorf, he can't really combo at all outside of Jab canceled grabs, and he's worse at baiting for the juggle due to the fact his air game is terrible and laggy. Ike's edgeguarding is also nothing without the QD buff. Everything else he does offstage is dodgeable on reaction, and SUPER laggy meaning he has ZERO followups after doing an aerial, which is different from Ganondorf, who actually is fairly lagless while he's in the air meaning he gets to chase offstage with aerials.

 

[Linkshot]

You don't need to tell me about Ike. Ike is a beast. I grew up (Smash-wise) with easily the best Ike in Canada, maybe even the world at the time.

YouTube "Saus Ike".

 

[A2ZOMG]

Well on the other hand, myself and a few others grew up as really good Ganon users, and it's taken forever for us to accept that Ganondorf is the worst character in the game.

So your argument was what again? Because if anything, it doesn't prove that Ike is a viable character. It's too easy for me to prove that Ike is not viable. Just look at how awful his frame data is. Either x move is unsafe, or it's powershieldable on reaction and thus unsafe in high level play, or it's his Jab (which in fact isn't all that safe, as it can be shieldgrabbed between hits).

And furthermore, he lacks any real depth. No combos, or real followups except for some Jab cancel shenanigans.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

So basically you're saying that the design of all characters that have slow attacks are made wrong? Well AA and Thinkamans goals are to get the characters to play mostly the same as in vBrawl. What A2 is asking for, is a totally different character.

A2 believes too firmly about pefection, not everytime you sheild an attack with lag like that you can PS it, sometimes you get hit if you miss the PS or you get sheild knockback. Jab Cancel Shenanigans has also been looked a lot on, Ike mains have nearly mastered those "shenanigans".

I'd like to see what some Ike mains think of the character.

 

[A2ZOMG]

What I'm asking for doesn't necessarily mean Ike is supposed to play differently. It's meant to address the fact that he is fundamentally not viable due to lacking safe options. Is Luigi's playstyle different just because it's safer to poke with his Fireball? Likewise, would it be THAT much different if Ike could actually land something BESIDES a non-powershielded F-air and be safe? Not at all, except for the fact that Ike could now do something to increase his chances of winning.

The only Ike main who actually knows what he's talking about from what I can tell is Sadaharu Inui. His sentiment is that Ike is the 5th worst character in vBrawl, which is something I agree with.

Even more fundamentally besides the fact Ike is extremely slow, he cannot approach and doesn't have viable KO setups. Link beats Ike in vBrawl despite being one of the worst characters in the game, simply because Ike can't approach.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

So what would Ike need to get past projectiles and approach?

 

[A2ZOMG]

Something besides F-air that he can land safely. His F-air is only safe on landing due to its range and is thus not an approach option, and everything else is not viable on block due to both not having enough practical range, and being too laggy.

 

[TP]

The only Ike main who actually knows what he's talking about from what I can tell is Sadaharu Inui. His sentiment is that Ike is the 5th worst character in vBrawl, which is something I agree with.

Did you really just say that if people disagree with you, they don't know what they're talking about?

A2, quit looking at things in absolutes. You see every disadvantage as unwinnable, and for you all moves are either safe or worthless. If we were all robots with 1 frame reaction time and every game was played on FD, you would be right, but that's not the game we play. Mindgames are a much bigger deal than you make them out to be, and you want to ignore them because they can't be written out and backed up by evidence. That doesn't mean mindgames don't matter. Kirk got 9th out of over 100 entrants at No Koast v2, where Legan got 17th with Link and Breezy got 25th with Ganon. That's the evidence I look at when I want to see if a character has options.

 

[The Milk Monster]

TP, I agree with a good chunk of what you said, except:

That's the evidence I look at when I want to see if a character has options.

That I don't completely agree with, though you did say thats what you, so agree to disagree.

Legan/Kirk both know their character flaws, and no matter how apparent they are, they just work around them. Them doing good with their characters doesn't make the character suddenly have options, it makes the player know how to get around the lack thereof.

By no means am I bashing you or anything, just felt I'd throw my two cents in.

In the case of Ike, Iunno how to fix him to be honest, I wanna' say he's viable, but considering I play him in BBrawl, I'm far too biased. Kirk did well, I rightfully congratulate on his win, along with Legan of course, but that doesn't hide the face of a bad character sad enough as it is.

I really like his dsmash now, very high risk, high reward, and QD is fantastic now, but maybe make counter not suck, some way or another, and we'll start seeing what else we could do with him. Maybe do what you did with QD, make it go quicker on hit?

 

[CarVac]

Could the perfect shielding windows be reduced? The fact PSing isn't incredibly difficult seems to hurt a lot of the slow, powerful characters more than quick characters. It would make a VERY subtle change in gameplay not noticeable when switching back to vbrawl, but add to the ability of characters like Ike and maybe Ganondorf to approach slightly more safely. If it's like 5 frames now, (I don't know the number exactly) how about 2 or 3 frames?

That would fix Ike, because his fair is perfectly fine against shields, just not when perfect shielded.

 

[TP]

Milk, I agree. My wording was poor in that sentence. The point is that on paper, they should not be able to put up results like that. Since they do, there must be an important aspect that gets left out when put on paper.

BTW, a counter buff sounds like a pretty good idea.



EDIT: CarVac, I believe it is 2 frames right now, and was 1 frame in Melee. I highly doubt a change like that will happen, since that is a pretty big change that requires relearning the timing of important stuff. It WOULD really help Ike and Ganon, though. However, there are ways to help them that aren't so dramatic.

 

[Eldiran]

A much more likely change would be an increase in their shield damage. But again, what matchups are they losing, and what could be tweaked that would specifically address those matchups? (Other than MK, Marth, and G&W, naturally.)

 

[CarVac]

@TP:
My point is that it's a subtle change that would be hard to notice, and the timing is not diifferent in the sense that a move's sweetspot hitbox appears sooner, for example. It's a general tech that many don't know about or are unable to use consistently, and so further reducing the likelihood of success is not an obstacle for easy switching between BBrawl and VBrawl. In fact, switching from BBrawl back to Vbrawl would make it easier to PS rather than throwing off the timing.

At levels of play that A2ZOMG describes where perfect shielding is common, it would significantly affect the matchups in Ive and Ganon's favor. But at other levels of play, it would never be noticed at all.

But BBrawl is for balancing high-level play, and it could certainly help.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Yes but PS helps to prevent camping. Falco would be like god tier w/o it

 

[Eldiran]

@TP:
My point is that it's a subtle change that would be hard to notice, and the timing is not diifferent in the sense that a move's sweetspot hitbox appears sooner, for example. It's a general tech that many don't know about or are unable to use consistently, and so further reducing the likelihood of success is not an obstacle for easy switching between BBrawl and VBrawl. In fact, switching from BBrawl back to Vbrawl would make it easier to PS rather than throwing off the timing.

At levels of play that A2ZOMG describes where perfect shielding is common, it would significantly affect the matchups in Ive and Ganon's favor. But at other levels of play, it would never be noticed at all.

But BBrawl is for balancing high-level play, and it could certainly help.

Just so you know, I consider myself to be a mid-level player, and I use perfect shielding plenty. It's very useful against projectiles, and making the timing for it harder would be a drastic change.

Honestly, I think it would overall be a bad thing for Ike and Ganon, in that it'd be a buff to projectile users in general.

 

[Thinkaman]

Making perfect shielding harder in order to buff Ike would be like disabling jumps to buff Jigglypuff.

I mean, most the attacks she has problems with are disjointed aerials, right? No aerials, no problems!

Edit: Ike also struggles with fast attacks since he is so slow that most quick jabs can interrupt attacks that characters with more speed would be able to get off. We could also disable jabs to help Ike out.

Double Edit: I ran these ideas past Ampharos, who just suggested we skip all this and buff Turtle.

 

[TP]

Double Edit: I ran these ideas past Ampharos, who just suggested we skip all this and buff Turtle.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Did you really just say that if people disagree with you, they don't know what they're talking about?

A2, quit looking at things in absolutes. You see every disadvantage as unwinnable, and for you all moves are either safe or worthless. If we were all robots with 1 frame reaction time and every game was played on FD, you would be right, but that's not the game we play. Mindgames are a much bigger deal than you make them out to be, and you want to ignore them because they can't be written out and backed up by evidence. That doesn't mean mindgames don't matter. Kirk got 9th out of over 100 entrants at No Koast v2, where Legan got 17th with Link and Breezy got 25th with Ganon. That's the evidence I look at when I want to see if a character has options.

Most people suck at this game. Myself included.

People like Kirk, Legan, and Breezy are just better than the masses, and few people bother learning matchups for characters that are not considered threats.

There are some disadvantages that can be overcome like a low KO power, low damage output, and in most cases awkward priority is workable, but fundamentally lacking tools to safely create openings is something that must be fixed for the purpose of balance, as the real reason there is imbalance in the first place is because of the unfair distribution of safe methods of killing and creating openings.

I'm not in fact writing out mindgames in my arguments. I'm taking my time to consider what can be done within average reaction time (12 frames) in a match, mixups, bait tricks, and traps included. And of course, I'm trying to see from the perspective of someone who knows the matchup in and out. If I really wanted to go out of my way to ignore all forms of mindgames and trickery and talking about absolutes, there would be no point in arguing tiers.

Ike is unique in that he actually lacks any real mixup, bait trick, or trap with any respectable speed. Besides the fact that he has next to no attacks that can be viably used to approach defenses. All he can really do is spam a lot of Jabs and F-airs, and hope people get tricked a lot into getting hit by whatever else he tries to throw out. Even with his QD buff, there isn't much he can do to approach people that have decent projectiles and/or shieldgrabs.

And seriously, look at Ike's frame data. It's horrible for the most part. No aerial besides B-air comes out faster than frame 13. B-air is 7 frames, but really laggy, and his jump startup is also very slow. His shieldgrab is slower than average at 7 frames, (which does mean he cannot shieldgrab some Jab combos at least), and his tilts are very slow. His Smashes are horribly laggy and he has no legitimate setups into them.

At any rate, it's at least blatantly obvious that Ike is very under par with most of the cast.

PS: You don't know how long I've been trying to prove Inui wrong on everything, and find out that 95% of the time he's been right ever since Brawl's release. The reason I even picked up Ganondorf was to prove to Inui that he was not the worst character in the game.