Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[The Milk Monster]

I was gonna' post something, being a jerk, but I decided I'm just going to quit discussing here. Everyone has something negative/unfixable about them as a character, that's a fact, but if the character isn't perfect, apparently they are un-viable.

I'll peek in every once in awhile, but f posting.

Deuces.

 

[Eyada]

Nerfing Snake even further is...undesirable, if at all avoidable. Character nerfs make it really hard to get people to try BBrawl, and lots of people use Snake.

If any troublesome match-ups vs. Snake can be fixed by buffing the disadvantaged character rather than nerfing Snake, that'd be great. I'd even go so far as to say that I support drastic buffs (timing changes, alterations to rolling animations to escape tech-chasing, et al) to other characters in lieu of directly nerfing Snake.

 

[A2ZOMG]

but if the character isn't perfect, apparently they are un-viable

I'd like you to actually define "perfect". I just don't think you know what you're talking about.

There is no such thing as a perfect character unless they cannot be viably overcome.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Oh yeah, and BTW, I'm not totally against timing buffs for Ness BTW. I was just trying to defend the point that they aren't absolutely necessary.

The thing is though, if a character has only advantagous MU's and everybody needs something to help keep their MU with them, then the obvious thing is nerfing, but not totally signifigant, because we don't want Snake players to be like "psh, no". Which most of them already sorf of are"

 

[CarVac]

I would like to continue the argument on Ness, but I feel that it would just lead to more anger, and most of the people on the thread agree he needs no changes. In fact, it seems that A2 is the only person who thinks he should be buffed. That's not to say that A2ZOMG is wrong; in fact, by having a devil's advocate, we're more able to see the whole picture.

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with A2ZOMG on Snake, Marth, and GAW, though. My Ness doesn't have too much of a problem with Snake, but at least Marth and GAW have the extremely unbalanced matchups vs. the former low tiers. Marth's fair and GAW's bair are just too stupidly good. I think that Marth's fair should be made less safe, because that's what he can abuse against characters like Ness, Lucas, and Olimar.

GAW's bair... I don't know how to change it without severely hurting his damage racking ability or drastically changing the move. If that move weren't there, GAW would have no approach and no way to refresh his kill moves conveniently. If we left that move strong but nerfed his kills, then he'd have trouble against heavies.

Actually, one good option I just thought of would be nerfing the sourspot of his dsmash. That is one way a lot of the characters with subpar recoveries die: they shoot horizontally out and are unable to recover. That would help balance his strong matchups against many of the heavies and tethers.
One thing that'd do, though, is hurt his dthrow techchase game, which is more effective versus lighter characters in general (http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=141781 about 2/3 the way down), but that's not most important part of his game.

My main suggestions are italicized and bolded.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

I don't really support much of a nerf on G&W b-air though. I think the people he really hurts are people with bad recoveries. I'd support the sourspot nerf on d-smash if it's ok w/ AA.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Bleh, nerfing his D-smash sourspot isn't going to do much. It's very difficult for G&W to actually land, since you will be stepping inside of most shieldgrab ranges to land that. Nerfing his D-throw is also unnecessary in high level play, just because anyone can tech to escape the smash.

I really think the solution for G&W is to nerf the damage on his B-air. This should ideally accomplish two things. If you make it harder to SDI, his worst matchups can be more viably pressured with it if they don't just punish him when he hits with it. Against people who get ***** by it because they really can't punish it that well, taking less damage matters more.

tbh I don't approach with B-air all that much though. I actually use F-air more than B-air in a lot of matchups, and D-tilt and Jabs I find more appealing for pressure tricks. Nerfing those however would be a bad idea, since that would polarize his worst matchups.

 

[CarVac]

@A2ZOMG: For one thing, you kinda discounted your opinion on GAW by saying you don't approach with the turtle. Disregarding that, though, for the sake of civility, here's my response:

The Dsmash sourspot is not intentionally landed, as you suppose it is ("It's very difficult for G&W to actually land, since you will be stepping inside of most shieldgrab ranges to land that."). It's rather a punishment for approaching. Imagine if you will Ganondorf is trying mighty hard to get over a wall of bair. Let's say he airdodges and lands on GAW. GAW's only really useful option here is to dsmash: Upsmash is too slow, Fsmash might not work (depending on what side Ganon goes to), and his tilts are either slow or weak.

In that case, he dsmashes. Suppose if you will GAW was near the edge of FD, and Ganon was at 60-70 percent damage. Ganon has an infuriatingly high chance of being semi-spiked irrecoverably off the edge. That's a percent that Ganon should be killing GAW at, not GAW killing Ganon at. I noticed this happening far too often when I mained GAW.

Also: Sightly pointless, but to be perfectly clear, I talked about nerfing the techchase from the dthrow by nerfing dsmash, rather than nerfing the dthrow itself (how would that be done, anyway?).



You do make an interesting, if not completely correct, point about the turtle, though. You are right in that the characters who you can charge in without worry would benefit from reduced damage, becaues they have no ability to SDI out of it when they're squarely in the center of the hitbox.

What's questionable, though, is the use of the turtle against characters like Marth. GAW vs. Marth is a very mental matchup based entirely on spacing. Marth and GAW exchange fairs and bairs, respectively. GAW tends to hit only with the very tip of the turtle. This is a situation when it's common to SDI out of the turtle and respond. The question is: Is it helpful or harmful in spacing matchups like these to reduce the damage and thereby reduce hitlag.

NOTE, however, the fact that we may nerf Marth's fair, so it may cancel out.



Concerning Marth's fair: I think that the base knockback should be increased, and the growth reduced. I was watching a video of Marth Vs. Ness, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9Twtr-Usjs&feature=related. Starting at 4:46, the Marth looks downright angry, chaining fair after fair after fair. Yes, this hadn't been going on each stock, but it could have been.

On the other hand, the fair becomes annoyingly strong at high damages, sending the opponent far offstage with ease (especially when tippered). See the play starting at 3:00 in that match, especially the tippers at 3:16 and 3:24, to demonstrate its effectiveness vs a character with a recovery like Olimar's. Keep in mind that Ness is much heavier than Olimar, too.

My main concern is: How unbalanced would his "less-good" matchups (he doesn't really have any bad ones) become if my changes were implemented?

EDIT: Also, don't judge the matchup based on that game. Note that it was recorded May 18, 2008, which was less than 2 months after the release of the game.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Honestly your example of Ganondorf was pretty bad, since that doesn't really represent the matchup correctly. And rather, the real problem in that matchup lies in Ganon's lack of tools, not G&W's excess power on his tools.

Oh well anyway, as for D-throw D-smash...it's really not that good since you can just tech out of it anyway, and if you really miss the tech, he can also F-smash you if you're one of those characters that gets D-smashed. I do it all the time against Olimars that fail at teching.

I think your suggestion on Marth's F-air is appropriate however.

 

[Steeler]

yeah one thing i've noticed is that a lot of buffs are made specifically to aid in matchups against marth and gw (to a lesser extent mk and snake) or "team disjointed". why don't we just nerf marth and gw a tad? nothing major but it'd accomplish a lot in the overall scheme of things.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Turtle damage reduction will really be that useful?

Sure his bad MU's will get more damage, making it even more useful against them, but characters that can't counter it (most the cast) would also get more damaged, because they could not SDI out of it, hurting them even more than now. Sure, they'll recieve less damage per hit, but at the long run, it could be more than just annoying...

Anyways, nerfing his kill potential will hurt his Snake/MK slightly-bad MUs.

Other than nerfing it a little and increasing his damage power, I can't think on a way to make him more balanced. But, this may change too much the way to play with him. =/


As for Marth, I think he's an outsmart character. Any Marth main already knows how to space well and use that in their favor, so slight changes won't hurt at all his playstile. Nerfing a little his Fair or DB sounds good to me.

 

[JOE!]

the difference with those guys is that most of the cast (low tiers) have too little reward on hit.

Team Disjoint have it very easy when it comes to actually hitting the opponent, and on top of it have good damage racking and kills while being able to hit easily...

o_O

 

[CarVac]

@A2ZOMG: You said that GAW can "also f-smash you if you're one of those characters that get dsmashed." While i understand that this is in the context of dthrow techchasing, I found myself getting practically gimp kills by dsmashing on characters like Olimar, whereas Olimar could recover if he is hit upwards by fsmash.

I was also making up that scenario involving Ganondorf. Basically, my point was that dsmash sourspot does connect, and when it does, it does a MUCH better job of killing in his good matchups than his bad matchups.

 

[Eldiran]

Isn't it possible to nerf GaW's bair's damage without affecting the knockback and SDI? I'm fairly certain it is.

 

[Stealth Raptor]

damage has a direct affect in the formula of both. i believe its why you cant SDI mks tornado well. knockback could be directly changed to balance out the damage change, but idk about sdi

 

[Linkshot]

SDI Modifier, yayuhz

 

[A2ZOMG]

@A2ZOMG: You said that GAW can "also f-smash you if you're one of those characters that get dsmashed." While i understand that this is in the context of dthrow techchasing, I found myself getting practically gimp kills by dsmashing on characters like Olimar, whereas Olimar could recover if he is hit upwards by fsmash.

At the percents where Olimar could possibly be gimped, you're basically guaranteed to be killing him with F-smash. He'll DI towards the stage on D-throw basically all the time in the current metagame, so I don't have a real reason to be trying to predict him several times for edgeguarding when I can just predict him once and wipe him out.

Sure his bad MU's will get more damage, making it even more useful against them, but characters that can't counter it (most the cast) would also get more damaged, because they could not SDI out of it, hurting them even more than now. Sure, they'll recieve less damage per hit, but at the long run, it could be more than just annoying...

Most people from what I observed SDI out on reaction after 3/4 hits...assuming he lands 4 hits on a regular B-air, and 5 hits on a 1% per hit damage nerfed B-air, he's definitely going to be doing less damage on the nerfed one.

Besides, when you start factoring stale moves, damage reduction is going to only matter a lot more.

Against those characters who just get plain outspace ***** by it, it's not really going to matter much if they get hit by all of it if they lack the tools to easily punish B-air with SDI.

 

[hyrulianprincesszeldafan]

One question:
I was playing balanced brawl, and I've always had been playing it perfectly fine. But yesterday it froze. I was playing on a custom stage with a Bowserm DK, Lucario, and a Samus. For some reason after I did one of my attacks with Samus (the Z-air), the game froze. Is this something that happens occasionally?

 

[A2ZOMG]

Sounds like it has to do with the custom stage.

 

[Eyada]

I was under the impression that custom stages don't work at all in BBrawl. Isn't there a "No Custom Stages Code" in the BBrawl codeset?

Then again, I know nothing about Wii/Brawl hacking, so perhaps the seemingly clearly labeled "No Custom Stages Code" might do something else entirely.

On a different note, the removal of tripping has inspired me to push Fox's ground game in new ways. There are some not-quite-fully explored techniques which can now be done safely and reliably since significant amounts of dash inputs are no longer prohibitively risky. It remains to be seen whether or not any of it will be useful, but it's nice to have some new areas to explore. If anything does come out of it, Fox stands to benefit the most due to the nature of his ground movement/general physics. It's just one more subtle bonus for Fox in BBrawl.

 

[hyrulianprincesszeldafan]

The thing is, that I've been playing on a custom stage for weeks/months and nothing ever occured. I know there's a "Disable Custom Stage" code, but unchecking that code, does it not allow you to actually play on your custom stages? But anyway, might it be that that froze my game? Because specifically it happened a second after me releasing my Z-air with Samus.

 

[Linkshot]

It happens on every SSE stage and all custom stages. That's all to it.

 

[hyrulianprincesszeldafan]

It happens on every SSE stage and all custom stages. That's all to it.

So you mean we must have it disabled at all times? But why now and not before?

 

[Linkshot]

It only happens in bBrawl. Nobody knows why.

 

[Eldiran]

Man! That is crazy! Just using Zair, even with no one around, can cause glitching on some stages. I can replicate this consistently. It seems to be caused by buffering a short hop directly into a Zair.

It doesn't cause freezes for me. Instead, everyone loses a stock, and the camera points to something way offscreen and starts convulsing and twitching. Oddly, the blastzones remain normal. I can glitch the camera multiple times (and die each time) by short hop -> Zairing more.

 

[-Axis-]

I have a question. Does the Balanced Brawl package include the code for infinite replays?

 

[jalued]

I have a question. Does the Balanced Brawl package include the code for infinite replays?

i think all premade packages for any brawl hacked game include that code, its standard

 

[hyrulianprincesszeldafan]

Ok so freezes only occur with bBrawl, correct? So if I were to play vBrawl with Samus on custom stages it would not freeze? Whatif I use a code for no tripping, replays, unrestricted replay camara etc....and keep vBrawl, would it stil freeze my Wii when I use Samus and on custom stages?

 

[rPSIvysaur]

No, it will not freeze

 

[hyrulianprincesszeldafan]

No, it will not freeze

YAY thanks ^^

but I'll have a seperate SD card for bBrawl, vBrawl is...bleah

 

[rPSIvysaur]

I'm still waiting for AA to post about Lucas

 

[JOE!]

Ok so freezes only occur with bBrawl, correct? So if I were to play vBrawl with Samus on custom stages it would not freeze? Whatif I use a code for no tripping, replays, unrestricted replay camara etc....and keep vBrawl, would it stil freeze my Wii when I use Samus and on custom stages?

most likley not, seeing as those codes dont do anything to the Custom Stages

 

[hyrulianprincesszeldafan]

most likley not, seeing as those codes dont do anything to the Custom Stages

Ok thats good. Aslong as I have no tripping. Would the file replacment take effect aswell? I want to use it for my textures.

 

[Fuujin]

Ok so freezes only occur with bBrawl, correct? So if I were to play vBrawl with Samus on custom stages it would not freeze? Whatif I use a code for no tripping, replays, unrestricted replay camara etc....and keep vBrawl, would it stil freeze my Wii when I use Samus and on custom stages?

I mentioned this like 3 months ago, guess if you're not familiar around here you don't have a voice.

 

[Linkshot]

I frigged around with SSE Samus after you posted it, Fuujin. It was plain hilarious.

 

[Eyada]

It's fairly common knowledge, but for the sake of anyone who is unaware: Samus' Z-air is glitched even in vBrawl. If you Z-air near a blast zone she spontaneously dies. I don't know if that initial programming error has anything to do with her ugly interaction with codes, but it's certainly possible.

 

[Linkshot]

All damaging zAir's initiate "blow up from bottom" if active when touching a blastzone. It's great if you're about to die off the top; your opponent has less time to get into a good position.

 

[A2ZOMG]

On a different note, the removal of tripping has inspired me to push Fox's ground game in new ways. There are some not-quite-fully explored techniques which can now be done safely and reliably since significant amounts of dash inputs are no longer prohibitively risky. It remains to be seen whether or not any of it will be useful, but it's nice to have some new areas to explore. If anything does come out of it, Fox stands to benefit the most due to the nature of his ground movement/general physics. It's just one more subtle bonus for Fox in BBrawl.

Naw, I'd give that one to Sheik from my experience playing both TonyGuacamole's Fox and Sheik.

Sheik has more tools for safer zoning than Fox.

 

[Thinkaman]

I'm gonna jump in and say a few things.

I missed the Ness debate, and don't want to restart it, but I do want to egotistically affirm my personal opinions: I think Ness is easily in the top third, and if you don't think he's in the top half you're bonkers. Just my opinions, of course.

Of course, my and Ampharos's opinions are not the only ones in the world, and at the end of the day I would be delighted to give a bucketload of buffs to one of my favorite, most underrated characters. However, just like Jigglypuff, as long as I honestly believe that buffs aren't needed I will politely argue against them.

Lucas really shouldn't be brought up alongside Ness, being a completely different character with a radically different playstyle. However, he was, and so I'll just say taht I think Lucas is a solid mid-tier character with no reason to change at this time.

Next, Marth and G&W. I'm pretty confident personally that we don't need to nerf them, even a little.

They are both likely in the top third of the cast, because they are just extremely good well-rounded characters. However, their dominance of the lower tiers just doesn't exist anymore. They are more similar to Diddy: merely solid characters. If you made me nerf Marth, I'd probably nerf some damage on dancing blade and that's it. Nerfing fair sweetspot isn't a terrible idea, but it's certainly not called for imo.

G&W is probably closer to needing a nerf (imo the anti-disjoin buffs to other characters affect him a bit less than Marth), but still doesn't need one. Nerfing bair isn't going to happen, since like most multi-hit moves it's a house of cards that is dangerous to tamper with. (No want wants to see a less damaging but equally safe and HARDER to SDI turtle... more campy G&W, wut?) His tech chase game is also not going to be screwed up, since that would be a major change that isn't called for... it's not like G&W is getting grabs much anyway. Nerfing sourspot d-smash is actually what I would suggest if I had to nerf something. MAYBE fair if the matchups called for it.

But again, Marth and G&W, as well as Olimar, don't really need changes. They are toe-ing the line perhaps, but they aren't over it.

 

[Eldiran]

....as well as Olimar, don't really need changes. They are toe-ing the line perhaps, but they aren't over it.

Aw. I am bitter from my past experiences and would enjoy it if Olimar got nerfed. Or, to be more fair, changed in a way that helped de-polarize some matchups.

Well, he's probably fine anyway. The little bugger. I should just be thankful that my opponent fears Ganon when he's playing as Olimar now. >D

By the way, to contribute something useful ... would you, Think or AA, be interested in using a version of Port Town Aero Dive without cars? I know it's not as good as weaker cars, but it's better than nothing.