Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[Fuujin]

Why heal him?

Play FE 9+10

 

[The Milk Monster]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlCuSnuZa_I
Ness for top tier?

 

[A2ZOMG]

That was a pretty horrible match tbh.

 

[The Milk Monster]

I never once claimed it was a good match, nor did I ever ask criticism on the match.
I posted it here because it was a Balanced Brawl video, plus I thought it was funny, the spontaneity of it.

I really don't have anything left to say without being completely rude, so I'm done. I shouldn't of even posted here to begin with, I knew you'd come in and say something rude and I'd just get pissed about it.

 

[Linkshot]

The Ness and ROB were definitely not high-level of play.

But this did spark an idea for a niche Ness buff.

Since Lucas has an extremely powerful hitbox when releasing PSI Magnet...as well as healing more than Ness for some reason...

Buff the healing on Ness' PSI Magnet?

 

[PKNintendo]

Lol like that would do anything.

It's really hard to describe Ness problems. But he needs ONE thing to swing him from okay to AWESOME. I can't find that one thing though.

 

[IrohDW]

Lol like that would do anything.

It's really hard to describe Ness problems. But he needs ONE thing to swing him from okay to AWESOME. I can't find that one thing though.

If Fsmash had less startup lag, Ness would be a lot more intimidating.

 

[Eldiran]

@Milk: That was amazing.

 

[A2ZOMG]

idk, I wasn't in the mood to laugh at that video. All I saw was scrub players attempting to be competitive doing random **** that usually failed, but sometimes owned ppl. I just think it was really stupid and boring.

Now I'll laugh if it's something like this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roKcLsTJu0w

Probably that video would have been better if you cut out all the scrub play of people running into random attacks, and left in the gimmicks.

And I've been saying this forever...the only way you're going to make Ness better is by making his gimmicky stuff safe to use. He's entirely outclassed by other characters when it comes to zoning, spacing, poking, defensive, and mixup options because his mobility is not very good (also seriously, his double jump sucks. Lack of double jump canceling on most moves means there is waaaaaay too much commitment on it for it to feasibly punish much of anything), his range is one of the worst in the game, and his frame data is merely average at best. The only things that make him "unique" are a reliable kill and REALLY BAD SETUPS. He's a power type character with very limited options and very significant fundamental weaknesses that have next to no workarounds against conservative play. He can score the kill fine when his opponent has enough damage, but he has extremely limited options for actually dealing damage reliably, which is a losing combination, as generally speaking, dealing damage consistently >>>>>> reliable KOs.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

They added more ending lag to the nonsweetspot version to prevent stalling. So basically everytime you do it you go lower until you too far to sweetspot the edge. Plus Ivy still has slow aerial mobility and such.

Referring to Steeler's Post

Quite the problem about balancing. Clearly the chracters that were high before are still high abiet with some few who already had the potenial to be good now being amazing eg: Mario/Samus. I think we should use BBrawl Link as the focused example. He is clearly better now However he might just be the most perfected balanced character.

He has his strengths: projectile/camping game, disjoints, KO power, relatively heavy
Then he has his weaknesses: poor aerial mobiliy, poor offstage game, terrible recovery, often sluggish moves.

BALANCE!! ....but wait...then you have.....
Marth, G+W, MK, Snake, etc. characters with few weaknesses and strengths so overwelming that they engulf these weaknesses. So yeah basically setting the bar lower wouldnt hurt.
I like what was stated previously about the midtier characters having the best balance within themselves which I also believe its true.

While its an amazing effort to balanced all these unlike characters with the fewest changes possible,( They've done an extraordinary job so far) but it seems that true balance cannot be achieved if certain aspects of this game's characters are not at least somewhat radically changed which relates to Diddy's level guiding (not necessarily the standard anymore) the balance of this game. Obviously in extremes we have Ganon and Diddy. One cleary amazing and one clearly terrible. It seems in a situation like this Ganon may never be "AS" good as DiddyK without some major improvements and drastic ones at that UNLESS the amazing character is taken down a notch to a more acceptable level basically elaborating on "Lowering the Bar" the problem with that is mostly publicity issue where vbrawl mains of these top chars. with most likely be diswayed with BBrawl because of this so its quite the dilema. so yeah........

Snake doesn't have significant weaknesses? Are we thinking about the same Snake? The Snake I know has massive weaknesses and massive strengths that ultimately come together to make him a good character.

Regardless, in the spirit of openness and since the next release is near, I think I'm going to stick myself out on a limb here. All 36 characters, here's where I honestly see them (this is just me, haven't talked with Thinkaman and know he has some different opinions).

Mario: Easily in the top half of the cast (but probably not top tier) but mostly well designed. Some complaints have come in that his KO power is a little too jarring, and inspection after community input suggests that maybe it is a little too high for the type of character Mario is. On the other hand, Mario that can win is actually really fun to play (I hear this a lot and personally agree) and is still mostly a balanced character.

Luigi: Probably in the top half of the cast but not definitely there. His Fireball buff helps him a lot and basically does what it was designed to do, and initial concerns about it shutting down the low mobility characters is largely debunked by the bad things about the projectile (for instance, Ike can easily beat all Fireball spam strategies by just walk forward jab1 to clash out Fireballs until he gets near Luigi). He's still somewhat polarized in his problems with team disjoint, but I don't think it's too bad anymore. Dash attack buff is nice for him too all around.

Peach doesn't really impress me, and I suspect she's in the bottom half. However, I'm not confident in saying she is; her buffs do help her, and there doesn't seem to be dissatisfaction over this rendition of Peach. She's definitely viable as is in any case; she was pushing the line in standard Brawl, and with the "fall of Meta Knight" along with the fact that she's buffed, it's just obvious she's past it now.

Bowser is a character I think is being underrated a lot. His fundamental game in standard Brawl was really not that bad, and now he has a more rewarding version of that while simultaneously having to worry a lot less about the chaingrabs that just ruined him in the first place. I see him as a candidate for top half though not really a shoe-in, much like Luigi.

Donkey Kong is a character I also think people are kinda sleeping on. In standard Brawl, we already see every few months someone coming out and reminding us "hey, this character has all the tools he needs to win!" and then the inevitable die-down of "DK still can't beat King Dedede". Early in this thread, someone even raised the point of "when you have a character with the combination of range, power, and speed that Donkey Kong has, you have to start by asking why he isn't the best character in the game". I'm not saying he is #1; I don't believe that at all (top tier in general isn't a place I see DK). I do, however, think his positives definitely outweigh his negatives and that he is probably top half.

Diddy Kong is pretty much strictly worse from his standard Brawl self but not significantly so. I see Diddy Kong as a character who will never be ruining any other decent character but at the same time will always be able to win just because of how solid his core design is. In other words, he's one of the least polarizing characters in the game. I really don't know how to rank him in light of this, but I don't think he needs to change.

Yoshi is my least favorite character to actually use so he can be hard for me to evaluate. That being said, I see him as a character with a very clear strategy (throw lots of eggs and camp with pivot grabs and safe jabs, rely on the fact that you are really survivable to trade hits as often as possible while doing this). I see the rest of his moveset being largely supportive of this clear strategy, really moreso than it was before (his tilts in particular are just better at what they do). I tihnk some of his core limitations (such as his shield game) probably keep him in bottom half, but I don't think he's really very far down and is mostly in a good place. Perhaps some toning and tweaking in Yoshi's favor is in order though.

Wario is a character I think isn't getting enough critical analysis and is an example of some internal dischord. I think we possibly overnerfed Wario and wouldn't be surprised to see him in bottom half. Thinkaman has always had some concerns that our project carried a big risk of making the game too easy for Wario to dominate. I know on some internal tier list discussion I put Wario at 28th or something and Thinkaman was dumbfounded. In practice, we just haven't heard much from Wario though, and given all this, he probably is fine where he is.

Link is solid and I think a shoe-in for top half but definitely not top tier. I don't want to go on for too long so I'll just say the summary of Link in the quoted post is a good one.

Zelda & Sheik I think are easily top half and maybe top tier (I'm not sold on that) and are kinda being slept on because people are too concerned with their hatred of half of the character (one way or another really) and not concerned enough with how to use what's there to win with this character. I do think Sheik is still the "dominant" half of the duo, but I think reports of Zelda just being terrible are really exaggerated. Zelda just has a really simple playstyle; that doesn't mean she's bad (and her buffs are non-trivial). I think a player who was willing to use both halves to their full potential and was just unconcerned with preference one way or another would be a really huge threat, and I hope to eventually see that.

Ganondorf... Honestly, I think he's probably bottom half, but I don't think he's the worst in the game or even particularly in the running for it, and I think certain elements vastly underrate what he can do. I am so sick of talking about this character.

Toon Link is good still, but I always thought he was super underrated in standard Brawl anyway. He's someone I could see as top half but also maybe see as barely in bottom half, very definitely a viable character either way.

Samus is probably a little overpolarizing, but in terms of her overall quality, I'm left a bit unsure. She still seems to have kill problems, but the rest of her game is fairly solid. I'd probably put her in top half all things considered, but I don't think she's really top tier.

Zero Suit Samus is likely being underrated; Paralyzer now guarantees a grab, and fsmash is now a move (a very disjointed move I might add). She was also pretty decent in the first place. On a purely abstract level, she is a character who seems to have nothing particularly wrong with her, but somehow victory still seems to be more likely to elude her than you would expect for someone with that description. I guess my opinion on her overall placement in Bbrawl is fairly identical to what I see in Toon Link.

Pit is a character I'm fairly sure is in bottom half in Balanced Brawl, probably not the worst character but maybe a contender. It's not that Pit is bad; Pit always has been and remains a tournament viable character (surprise: I think everyone is viable in Bbrawl). He was just kinda one of the worse viable characters in standard Brawl, and we were probably over-conservative with buffs on him.

Ice Climbers are a stupid character from a design perspective. That aside, I think their quality is largely dictated by the unclear limits of how much cging they can do. If it's what I suspect (they can do a lot of damage [like 50%ish on average, remembering this is also a KO move since the last hit will be either usmash or fsmash from Nana] out of every grab that would have been an infinite in standard Brawl), they may be candidates for top tier. If they really can't cg at all (which we know to be untrue), they're one of the worst. Them in bottom half in general would surprise me; I just have more faith in what people can do out of their still very diverse grab game than that.

R.O.B. is probably over-buffed; internally we definitely underrated how good we made his dthrow. He's definitely top half and maybe top tier. The solution is pretty obvious; he shouldn't be hard to get into a good place.

Kirby seems decent but nothing special to me. Yet another "maybe top half, maybe not" that is kinda hard for me to place but I think is ultimately fine.

Meta Knight is probably worse than people suspect; I think his killing problems are actually pretty bad now (I think living to 200% against MK even for light characters is non-surprising). That being said, his raw ability to land attacks and control space is so good that I think he's probably still top half; I just can't envision him as a top tier in Balanced Brawl.

King Dedede, on the other hand, seems more like a top tier every time I look at him. His new dthrow is really good and even better something he can consistently rely upon. There isn't any more "well they're in the lightest 1/3 of the cast so my dthrow suddenly isn't nearly as good as it usually is" to worry about. I think he still has some bad matchups though, and I think the way he has one good tech chase but is otherwise a very "boring" character hurts him in terms of drawing appeal. I don't think he's a balance problem altogether.

Olimar is one of those characters that makes designing for balance hard. In very few matchups is Olimar "just another matchup". He is pretty likely to be "the worst machup" and even for characters that can deal with him he forces them to fight completely differently. Olimar likewise has issues largely with the types of things that are typically strange to have issues with; Peach's float is the most terrifying character attribute in the game for Olimar. I think changes external to Olimar have made great progress in this regard (with his improved up special somewhat helping against his problems), but I think we probably still have more progress to make largely in making characters like Ganondorf do better against him but also while not really nerfing him overall since Olimar is another one of those only "maybe" top half of the cast characters.

Fox is perhaps being slept on but perhaps not. It's easier to see him as bottom half than top half, but I don't see him as a candidate for worst in the game at all and also have this vague notion of a chance he's just really, really undersold and maybe well in the top half that isn't being realized. I think "very timid buff" is still the name of the game here.

Falco is a fundamentally decent character that is probably worse than he was in standard Brawl but in ways that make the game so much better. He's probably still top half, but I don't see him as a top tier.

Wolf is probably in bottom half but not really a candidate for worst. I think his playstyle offers a lot to the game, and I think it would be really easy to overdo buffs on Wolf and make him ridiculous. Like Fox, a timid buffing plan is probably in order.

Captain Falcon is my pick for worst; I know there isn't agreement on that. I still see him as viable, but it just seems like he has to work harder and play better than everyone else to score those wins. I don't think the engine in general is very supportive of his playstyle (it's not just "lol Brawl no combos"; the idea of a character who has mobility and power but not attack speed or range/disjointedness is a very hard one to make good without being ridiculous in the Brawl engine). He'll be a challenge.

Pikachu is a character I think is in bottom half which is kinda a shame since Pikachu was in a good overall place in standard Brawl but had issues that just had to be addressed with that dthrow.

Pokemon Trainer is a character I really think is a top tier still. He's just so flexible and diverse. However, the more I look at how things play out, the more I'm seeing the fact that his high learning curve may be too much for everyone. Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard are nothing alike at all, and even most PT mains seem to be legitimately bad with one of them (steeler, the PT main I know well, is the type of player who I don't think could ever really succeed with a character like Ivysaur regardless of how good he is; it's just totally contrary to his impulses as a player). It ends up meaning we have a "best character" who can only be played as the best character by someone who is Azen-like in character use, the sort of player who has no real attachment to any one playstyle and just uses whatever that character needs to win no matter what it happens to be (a very, very rare sort of player). To be honest, I don't really have a problem with that, but it does mean that PT doesn't really need any sort of nerfing at all and maybe even may see some changes that would count as buffs just because of the nature of the character preventing anyone from truly exploiting how amazing he is.

Lucario is probably top half and has probably been slept on. Seriously, no one has had anything to say about him, but he is a good character who got non-trivially better.

Jigglypuff is probably bottom half but not really a candidate for worst at all. She doesn't really have very many good moves by virtue of the type of character she is, and that makes her really hard to make into a non-polarizing but still good character. I think we got her viable for sure, but making more progress in making her the most balanced she can be is going to be tricky.

Marth is a pretty good guess for top tier. He's really a very well designed character I don't feel inclined to nerf, but he does indeed seem to stand near the peak without any clear bad matchups (DDD) or the sort of inherent complexity the transforming characters have. We'll have to put some thought into him.

Ike is definitely top half; he has some issues still in a few matchups, but the new Quick Draw is just amazing and fleshes out his "it honestly wasn't that bad in the first place" game so much. I mean, just look at him now. He has amazing power and range, the best jab in the game, and suddenly decent mobility and recovery if he's willing to commit to Quick Draw which is a big enough deal that just spamming it ultimately is probably a bad tactic but that he can use it quite a bit and in creative ways that no one really considered before.

Ness is maybe top half maybe bottom half. I am kinda sick of talking about Ness and Lucas so I'll keep it brief that I think he can do a lot of cool things and has a lot going for him but doesn't have enough going for him that he could really be a problem. I also think some people completely miss the point on him as a character which is just really annoying to deal with. It's not just the people who say he's horrible (obviously not true), but the kinds of buffs I see suggested for him too often suggest that they don't understand how Ness works very well.

Lucas is safely top half IMO. He's just so reliable in so many ways; you can get away with playing a really basic game with Lucas and do very well as long as you use his goofy glitches to recover off-stage. Like Ness, he's fairly misunderstood, one of the very few things he has in common with Ness really.

Mr. Game & Watch is a character I see as top tier, but he is also my main so it's hard to really get into him and separate it from the way I'm always rooting for him sometimes. I look at MK vs G&W now and get scared because I think one of his negatives suddenly went positive like that and ask myself what negatives he really has left, but then I can see he has a lot to fear from all the improved heavyweights. I don't really see him being nerfed coming very easily to him either (it would be easy to just make him suck), and I can't shake off the desire to take all the people who say he's long overrated in standard Brawl as justification to just leave him to his own devices which are undoubtedly not really that big of a problem for the game in the first place.

Snake is possibly still top tier and definitely still top half. He's an awkward sort of character of big advantages and big weaknesses that I think people don't really understand well on a design level because of how well the particulars about him work out. He could probably use some smoothing out if nothing else.

Sonic is probably bottom half, but I don't think he's horrible like some people like to say. I think he has a whole lot going for him, and I think the kinds of buffs some Sonic players want out of him would just make him ridiculous. He's kinda tough to work with since his mobility is one of the most extreme good things in the game, but I think he'll ultimately work out.

 

[IrohDW]

I have two problems with Peach as she is now:

1. the knockback buff on her fthrow is not enough to make it a useful kill move. People are able to survive it up to, if not above 150% at the ledge, which I think is still too much. Peach has a terrible grab range (the grabbox doesn't even reach as far as her hand goes) so I think that increasing the reward on a successful grab isn't too much to ask.

2.She still has a ridiculously terrible airdodge. I don't think that I am the only person that is annoyed by this.

Besides that, the only idea I have that I that I think should be considered would be to make turnips bounce off of shields instead of disappearing when blocked.

 

[Eldiran]

Hey AA, I don't really have anything particular to respond to in your mega-post, but I thought I'd say I really appreciate it when you type these huge things up. They are very interesting to read and give some nice insight into your thoughts as a developer of BBrawl.

Same goes for everyone else who types up insightful posts on characters (except for the developer of BBrawl part).

 

[A2ZOMG]

Peach doesn't really impress me, and I suspect she's in the bottom half. However, I'm not confident in saying she is; her buffs do help her, and there doesn't seem to be dissatisfaction over this rendition of Peach. She's definitely viable as is in any case; she was pushing the line in standard Brawl, and with the "fall of Meta Knight" along with the fact that she's buffed, it's just obvious she's past it now.

Honestly Peach is just plain underestimated. Peach is a character who is able to camp and pressure defenses really well once she gets a zone and rhythm established, and while her buffs aren't as big as she may prefer, none of her problems are really insurmountable.

Bowser is a character I think is being underrated a lot. His fundamental game in standard Brawl was really not that bad, and now he has a more rewarding version of that while simultaneously having to worry a lot less about the chaingrabs that just ruined him in the first place. I see him as a candidate for top half though not really a shoe-in, much like Luigi.

...No, this character was TERRIBLE in standard Brawl. In fact, I'm quite impressed at how quickly Gimpyfish was able to realize this and learn not just the fact that Snake was top tier, but how Bowser was a terrible character in general.

Everything Bowser does is generally extremely predictable and punishable. In order for him to win, he has to hope that you either like spotdodging a lot, or get scared into shielding every time he jumps. Plus, he has to bet a lot on the fact that your reaction time or analytical skills suck and you will get tricked into eating his Up-B every time he airdodges. He can't recover on any stage except battlefield either if you know how his recovery works.

If you can anti air effectively and camp, there is almost nothing Bowser can do. I just learned how to do this with Mario. Fireball camp him and poke him with B-airs, and Up-B every time he jumps. His tilts aren't failsafe pokes and punishable on reaction if he whiffs, and the same goes for his Jab to a slightly lesser extent. Mario in particular can easily punish ANY whiff with F-smash.

Wario is a character I think isn't getting enough critical analysis and is an example of some internal dischord. I think we possibly overnerfed Wario and wouldn't be surprised to see him in bottom half. Thinkaman has always had some concerns that our project carried a big risk of making the game too easy for Wario to dominate. I know on some internal tier list discussion I put Wario at 28th or something and Thinkaman was dumbfounded. In practice, we just haven't heard much from Wario though, and given all this, he probably is fine where he is.

Use Up-angled F-tilt and Half Waft. KO problems solved.

Samus is probably a little overpolarizing, but in terms of her overall quality, I'm left a bit unsure. She still seems to have kill problems, but the rest of her game is fairly solid. I'd probably put her in top half all things considered, but I don't think she's really top tier.

LOL LOL LOL AT SAMUS HAVING KO PROBLEMS.

No, Samus is top tier. Her D-tilt kills Mario at 114%. ONE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN PERCENT. That is a lot stronger than most Up-smashes. Compare to say...Mario's Up-smash in vBrawl, which only kills at like 126% if I recall. Furthermore, Samus can COMBO into D-tilt. This is an extremely rare and valuable ability, to combo into a reliable and powerful KO move. Her F-air is a pretty safe move that does give enough of a frame advantage for this to be possible. Her D-tilt is also mostly safe on block due to the good shield pushback, and randomly landing it out of the blue isn't hard either since it comes out in a mere 6 frames, the same as G&W's D-tilt.

Her B-throw and F-throw are godly pocket KO moves. Comparable, if a little more effective in KO power to vBrawl Mario's B-throw, you can expect them to be pretty reliable at around 165% on most of the cast, particularly if you manage to get that grab near the ledge (which shouldn't be too hard for a well-timed tether pivot grab or missile -> grab trap). Getting people to 165% with Samus is not particularly hard either.

Her Down-angled F-smash is also muuuuuuuch too strong, as NO-Idea pointed out ages ago.

Plus, her new charge shot is simply ridiculous. That move is not hard to land if you know what you're doing. Specifically it's very very viable and threatening as an edgeguard tool.

KO problems? Hell naw. Samus is blatantly top tier. She was never a bad character in standard Brawl. She was merely outclassed in terms of KO options.

Meta Knight is probably worse than people suspect; I think his killing problems are actually pretty bad now (I think living to 200% against MK even for light characters is non-surprising). That being said, his raw ability to land attacks and control space is so good that I think he's probably still top half; I just can't envision him as a top tier in Balanced Brawl.

Aside imo from clearly losing to Olimar, Metaknight still is pretty obviously dominating. Really, you need to just play smarter and save KO moves with him better. I really doubt someone like Ganon or Ike has the tools to beat Metaknight at any rate.

Sure he's no longer the best character in the game, but top 10? Definitely.

King Dedede, on the other hand, seems more like a top tier every time I look at him. His new dthrow is really good and even better something he can consistently rely upon. There isn't any more "well they're in the lightest 1/3 of the cast so my dthrow suddenly isn't nearly as good as it usually is" to worry about. I think he still has some bad matchups though, and I think the way he has one good tech chase but is otherwise a very "boring" character hurts him in terms of drawing appeal. I don't think he's a balance problem altogether.

You would be surprised at how it's possible to literally avoid DDD's grab consistently.

Aside from that, the point I want to make is that he's extremely limited and horrible at scoring kills easily. He was pretty overrated in standard Brawl as far as I'm concerned. Random techchases can only rack up so much damage, and he literally has trouble feasibly landing moves onstage due to how slow and predictable he is. Or actually, he can sometimes land random aerials, but none of those ever kill except at high percents since he's usually staling them in desperate attempts to actually land moves.

Captain Falcon is my pick for worst; I know there isn't agreement on that. I still see him as viable, but it just seems like he has to work harder and play better than everyone else to score those wins. I don't think the engine in general is very supportive of his playstyle (it's not just "lol Brawl no combos"; the idea of a character who has mobility and power but not attack speed or range/disjointedness is a very hard one to make good without being ridiculous in the Brawl engine). He'll be a challenge.

Captain Falcon unlike some characters has a few viable approach options on defenses, and he does also have an OOS kill move. He also has an underrated juggling game, that almost guarantees free hits on anyone who has to airdodge. Getting grabs with him is also much easier than his low grab range would suggest. He's definitely a hard character to use, but with his existent viable offensive options, and huge damage output, I highly doubt he's the worst character.

Pikachu is a character I think is in bottom half which is kinda a shame since Pikachu was in a good overall place in standard Brawl but had issues that just had to be addressed with that dthrow.

Well, all he needs is a minor buff to KO power. He has some unorthodox combos that rack pretty good damage, and he's really good at being annoying since he can move around a lot and has stuff that has disjointedness comparable to Luigi's N-air. Even though his landing lag sucks, he usually doesn't have to touch the ground with aerials to approach.

Pokemon Trainer is a character I really think is a top tier still. He's just so flexible and diverse. However, the more I look at how things play out, the more I'm seeing the fact that his high learning curve may be too much for everyone. Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard are nothing alike at all, and even most PT mains seem to be legitimately bad with one of them (steeler, the PT main I know well, is the type of player who I don't think could ever really succeed with a character like Ivysaur regardless of how good he is; it's just totally contrary to his impulses as a player). It ends up meaning we have a "best character" who can only be played as the best character by someone who is Azen-like in character use, the sort of player who has no real attachment to any one playstyle and just uses whatever that character needs to win no matter what it happens to be (a very, very rare sort of player). To be honest, I don't really have a problem with that, but it does mean that PT doesn't really need any sort of nerfing at all and maybe even may see some changes that would count as buffs just because of the nature of the character preventing anyone from truly exploiting how amazing he is.

Only Squirtle really has the tools to score KOs reliably and work around camping, and even he is struggling to keep up with Mario's ridiculously amazing KO options, not to mention it's even arguable he always works around camping better since Mario has some interesting zoning options and reflecting properties with his Cape. Assuming you can't use him 100% of the time, the Pokemon Trainer is still rather crippled by switching, due to how easily camping and smart poking ruins the other two.

Ivysaur is still bad. Not bottom tier bad, but still D tier at best. Her recovery buff is appropriate, but it does still mean her recovery sucks as long as you know how it works. Ivysaur can't really "camp" anyone who is smart, so usually she has to bait approaches, since she has no approach of her own. She has some decent walling options, but she really isn't mobile enough or fast enough to keep people out consistently, and there is really no easy or reliable way to score a kill with Ivysaur unless B-throw is fresh.

Charizard is the worst of the three Pokemon in terms of options. He neither has the tools to really approach, poke, or wall extremely well. All he can do is hope he lands a random huge attack and bet that his bulk and moderately superior recovery allows him to survive when his opponent punishes him. He also has unwinnable matchups against Snake and DDD (and possibly G&W) due to his extremely bad getup. There is little he can do to actually kill a cautious player.

Marth is a pretty good guess for top tier. He's really a very well designed character I don't feel inclined to nerf, but he does indeed seem to stand near the peak without any clear bad matchups (DDD) or the sort of inherent complexity the transforming characters have. We'll have to put some thought into him.

Marth loses to DDD? I highly doubt it. In vBrawl, Marth has to worry about a chaingrab from DDD, and even though he DOES have Up-B, it's too massively punishable for it to be worthwhile most of the time. The matchup in vBrawl was like 55/45 DDD. Considering that DDD lost some of the threat of his grab game on Marth, and the fact that Marth is no longer hindered by RCO lag, not to mention Marth in fact does outzone DDD, it doesn't look disadvantaged for Marth at all.

Ike is definitely top half; he has some issues still in a few matchups, but the new Quick Draw is just amazing and fleshes out his "it honestly wasn't that bad in the first place" game so much. I mean, just look at him now. He has amazing power and range, the best jab in the game, and suddenly decent mobility and recovery if he's willing to commit to Quick Draw which is a big enough deal that just spamming it ultimately is probably a bad tactic but that he can use it quite a bit and in creative ways that no one really considered before.

He has decent power and amazing range. He doesn't actually kill amazingly early if you note that stuff like fully charged Eruption, Random F-smashes, F-tilt, U-air, and U-smash are all generally very easy to avoid.

And while his Jab may be really good, it only cancels into more Jabs (SDI out) or grabs, none of which kill. Luigi has a better Jab than Ike. His Jab also cancels into more Jabs, but it also has the potential to set up kills, and furthermore Luigi's Jab is also faster and doesn't lose in range.

Ike really can't kill you if you don't mess up, since he telegraphs EVERYTHING. I mean everything. People just don't play against this character correctly most of the time. He can do nothing to feasibly approach if you camp, and he can do nothing on block if you powershield his F-air (I'll add his Jab is in fact shieldgrabbable). With Mario, I can literally just Up-smash out of shield anything Ike does to approach because his movepool is just so horrible on defenses. He has to try to poke with F-airs, which fails if Mario fireball camps correctly. Generally speaking, Ike's juggling game is complete garbage, since his aerial game is basically as bad as Snake's, and he has little to no ability to combo outside of his Jab cancel, and thus no ability to really set up kills at all.

His QD buff just means that nobody repeatedly U-throw juggles him for free, and means he can actually hit people offstage with a relatively weak attack.

Ike still definitely has unwinnable matchups. Samus in specific got no better for him, and even with his buffs, MK STILL zones the crap out of Ike, along with Marth. His QD buff does little to help him against Olimar at any rate, and generally speaking I really don't think this character has any favorable matchups once you learn there is nothing he can do that is actually safe on defenses, and projectiles still stop him cold.

Lucas is safely top half IMO. He's just so reliable in so many ways; you can get away with playing a really basic game with Lucas and do very well as long as you use his goofy glitches to recover off-stage. Like Ness, he's fairly misunderstood, one of the very few things he has in common with Ness really.

Funny you say he's reliable. He's kinda reliable at poking and pressuring, which is a decent base to start with, but he sucks when you actually pressure him, and he has a toooooon of trouble scoring the kill reliably.

The most "reliable" ways you can get a kill with him are hoping your opponent gets gimped by PK Thunder and PK Fire basically. Or waiting for a D-throw at 160%, which takes too long. You really should rarely be landing any other kill moves unless your opponent gets tricked a lot. Lucas's F-smash has terrible range. Against anyone good, they will just wait outside its range, and you can do very little about it, and WILL get punished if you whiff it (since it's comparably laggy to Ganon's F-smash basically).

What RocketPSience and I suggest is a new setup for Lucas. Lucas's current N-air sends people diagonally outward at a pretty useless angle, and the damage output is pretty crap if you don't land every hit. By making the angle vertical, and making the knockback of the last hit low and (nearly) constant, the idea is this should set up into a U-air (which needs to be buffed so that Snake dies before 150%). Lucas's U-air is honestly quite hard to land due to the fact Lucas's jumps just suck in general. You can't punish anything with his midair jump, and by the time people are in his single jump range, they usually have time to fastfall before you can U-air them.

Snake is possibly still top tier and definitely still top half. He's an awkward sort of character of big advantages and big weaknesses that I think people don't really understand well on a design level because of how well the particulars about him work out. He could probably use some smoothing out if nothing else.

Snake's weaknesses are honestly not as big as people say they are. His weaknesses are obvious, but the thing is they almost all have solutions. Well technically he can't do much about solid juggle games, but his fall speed and airdodging are broken enough that it rarely matters. His recovery is easy to hit out of, but only if he recovers low. He doesn't really approach well at all and has predictable pokes, but his camping is so solid it hardly matters. Furthermore, Snake's weight class alone raises him a tier. It takes too long for several characters to kill Snake, as it is not unusual for several character having to wait until 160 and beyond before they can get a reliable KO, while he generally will kill off everyone else reliably from 130-140%.

Sonic is probably bottom half, but I don't think he's horrible like some people like to say. I think he has a whole lot going for him, and I think the kinds of buffs some Sonic players want out of him would just make him ridiculous. He's kinda tough to work with since his mobility is one of the most extreme good things in the game, but I think he'll ultimately work out.

Just use Pierce's suggestion. =)

 

[Mit]

Captain Falcon is my pick for worst; I know there isn't agreement on that. I still see him as viable, but it just seems like he has to work harder and play better than everyone else to score those wins. I don't think the engine in general is very supportive of his playstyle (it's not just "lol Brawl no combos"; the idea of a character who has mobility and power but not attack speed or range/disjointedness is a very hard one to make good without being ridiculous in the Brawl engine). He'll be a challenge.

Horray acknowledgment.

It'll indeed be tough to get him actually balanced, (and he'll probably never be top half without some ridiculous changes), but I still say speed up dtilt! D: (or lower the ending lag)

It could be a very useful poke, just like Sonic's dtilt. As it is now though, there's too much risk in whiffing, and even landing it doesn't offer much reward because the ending lag minimizes any followups you can get out of it.

The risk is mostly the problem. It has great range that is useful in punishing or poking from a further distance than any of Falcon's other faster moves (such as ftilt). If the move was sped up (and perhaps did less damage to balance it out? Although I really can't even remember how much it does offhand), it could become an invaluable tool for Falcon.

 

[JOE!]

yeah, i never got why snake was deemed fit to be the 3rd heaviest character...

...would it be too much to possibly make him lighter?

 

[A2ZOMG]

Yeah, assuming Snake's weight can be toned down a little bit, that would probably be ideal. Switching his weight with Ganon's would make sense.

That seems to be unlikely, which means the only other solutions are reducing his damage output more, or just making everyone a lot lot better.

And either way, his D-throw does need to be toned down for just being a stupidly good techchase that ***** certain matchups too hard, and then you compensate by making his other throws slightly more rewarding.

 

[Steeler]

i agree that pt has probably the longest learning curve of any character in the game (certainly not the steepest, though). however, i highly doubt PT is top tier, regardless. ivysaur and charizard still have the same fundamental weaknesses as before, aside from ivysaur's recovery being marginally better. the only notable change is that there's simply more reward for when they hit with one of their good moves, which happens to be bair in both cases. i am not sure of the bullet seed change because i haven't had much of an opportunity to try it. with charizard, everything else outside of dthrow is kind of a "you should have more reward if you manage to land this"

i just don't think PT has changed that much.

i agree with pretty much everything A2 said about PT. :\ although i think ivysaur is bottom tier, not D.

may i suggest giving charizard fair weak knockback on its outer hitbox? not enough to be a threat to KO. i think A2 exaggerated zard's worthlessness a bit as i feel it is a mediocre/average character in brawl, but definitely below average at best in bbrawl. still better than ivysaur imo.

i understand some concerns out there about making PT "too good" but i really don't think having three decent-to-good characters together with forced switch/stamina would be broken, at all. especially with how many more characters are now "good" in bbrawl. individually, they are each going to have good and bad matchups and the way they are joined together neutralizes both the positives and negatives a bit. regardless, as it is right now, we have a solid above average character, a below average character, and a bad character together.

 

[JOE!]

Yeah, assuming Snake's weight can be toned down a little bit, that would probably be ideal. Switching his weight with Ganon's would make sense.

That seems to be unlikely, which means the only other solutions are reducing his damage output more, or just making everyone a lot lot better.

And either way, his D-throw does need to be toned down for just being a stupidly good techchase that ***** certain matchups too hard, and then you compensate by making his other throws slightly more rewarding.

just going on thematics alone here for a second: why si snake the 3rd heaviest? He has the weight status of a guy like DDD or DK, while being only a tad bigger than Falcon...

I mean really..

on a positive note for snake mains, less weight means you can probably DI out of stuff easier if you get caught

 

[A2ZOMG]

i agree that pt has probably the longest learning curve of any character in the game (certainly not the steepest, though). however, i highly doubt PT is top tier, regardless. ivysaur and charizard still have the same fundamental weaknesses as before, aside from ivysaur's recovery being marginally better. the only notable change is that there's simply more reward for when they hit with one of their good moves, which happens to be bair in both cases. i am not sure of the bullet seed change because i haven't had much of an opportunity to try it. with charizard, everything else outside of dthrow is kind of a "you should have more reward if you manage to land this"

i just don't think PT has changed that much.

i agree with pretty much everything A2 said about PT. :\ although i think ivysaur is bottom tier, not D.

may i suggest giving charizard fair weak knockback on its outer hitbox? not enough to be a threat to KO. i think A2 exaggerated zard's worthlessness a bit as i feel it is a mediocre/average character in brawl, but definitely below average at best in bbrawl. still better than ivysaur imo.

i understand some concerns out there about making PT "too good" but i really don't think having three decent-to-good characters together with forced switch/stamina would be broken, at all. especially with how many more characters are now "good" in bbrawl. individually, they are each going to have good and bad matchups and the way they are joined together neutralizes both the positives and negatives a bit. regardless, as it is right now, we have a solid above average character, a below average character, and a bad character together.

Idunno, I think Ivysaur is more reliable in theory because her B-air and F-tilt are poke options, and with the former doing 9 base damage, that's enough to be noteable. While charizard is significantly more limited in terms of poke options by virtue of lower priority and more ending lag on most of his moves, plus, he's a much larger target which always makes it fundamentally harder to poke safely and avoid pokes. Although....he does have a better out of shield game with his Up-B and shieldgrab.

@JOE!: And yeah...Snake is also heavier than Ganon, even though Ganon is CLEARLY larger than him, as the Dojo stated no less. Ganon iirc...he's like one of the only characters whose head pokes through the platforms on BF (when running).

Snake's U-tilt and Ganon's U-smash should also switch hitboxes.

 

[Steeler]

Idunno, I think Ivysaur is more reliable in theory because her B-air and F-tilt are poke options. While charizard is significantly more limited in terms of poke options by virtue of lower priority and more ending lag on most of his moves, plus, he's a much larger target which always makes it fundamentally harder to poke safely and avoid pokes.

Although....he does have a better out of shield game with his Up-B and shieldgrab.

ivy ftilt is not safe on shield and does like 2% at max range. it does good shield damage, but that's at unsafe range. i think dtilt is a more reliable poke, but that isn't really safe on shield either.

ivysaur doesn't really have anything that is particularly quick when it comes to ending lag...combine this with ivysaur's terrible mobility and you have an overrated poking game.

charizard's usmash is good as well, and bair is pretty dangerous in bbrawl. but his grab is the main thing.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Furthermore, I just thought I would point out...because it was funny. AA highlighted more than 20 characters as being in the top half (this was excluding the "iffy" ones).

 

[Linkshot]

I support lowering Snake's "defense" and giving it to Ganondorf, the King of Evil, wielder of the Triforce of Power, only able to be slain by the Master Sword >.>

Just saying <.<;

 

[PKNintendo]

And I've been saying this forever...the only way you're going to make Ness better is by making his gimmicky stuff safe to use. He's entirely outclassed by other characters when it comes to zoning, spacing, poking, defensive, and mixup options because his mobility is not very good (also seriously, his double jump sucks.

Lack of double jump canceling on most moves means there is waaaaaay too much commitment on it for it to feasibly punish much of anything), his range is one of the worst in the game, and his frame data is merely average at best. The only things that make him "unique" are a reliable kill and REALLY BAD SETUPS. He's a power type character with very limited options and very significant fundamental weaknesses that have next to no workarounds against conservative play. He can score the kill fine when his opponent has enough damage, but he has extremely limited options for actually dealing damage reliably, which is a losing combination, as generally speaking, dealing damage consistently >>>>>> reliable KOs.

That would take A LOT of changes to fix. Yikes, I say we wait until the NEXT standard release.
My first changes would be too change is aerial momentum to be faster. But honestly, what would YOU

do to fix the damage racking problems?

 

[Minwu]

Characters need better throws/grabs that don't blow up grenades on the floor, for example making MK's Bthrow a gimp setup and his Fthrow a combo setup on Snake, speeding up D3/Wario/Kirby's grenade swallow animation, etc. to deal with grenade countering. Snake's Ftilt could also do to hit shields lighter, making punishing it easier for the characters that have difficulty with it.

 

[Lokee]

Switching his weight with Ganon's would make sense.

That would help keep Ganon more on the ground and even though that would leave him open to being comboed/juggle Ganon's airgame > Snake's airgame.

yeah, i never got why snake was deemed fit to be the 3rd heaviest character...

I read somewhere of a theory stating that in developement Snake was actually going to be much larger then he physically is now, however that was scrapped and to our dismay they left Giant Snake's large hitboxes and weight behind for reasons horrifyingly unknown.
______________________________________________________________________

Also I second the motion to make Falcon's Dtilt more applicable.

Also Linkshot........that idea.................about Ganon................


EVIL!!

 

[Syde7]

A few quick questions about installing...

1)I've got textures on stages/chars... so, do I need the "alternate download link replacement (textures) link" or the big, main one?

2) Since the above is true, ive already got homebrew/gecko/all that jazz installed. I still have the boot.elf on my root from all that installation. Is it ok to delete it (or remove/back it up to somewhere else) so as to use the BB "boot.elf" file?

3) To exit BBrawl, to go back to regular brawl, can I do so *without* going back to the standard wii menu? I ask, because my wii is being VERY finicky with reading Brawl (disc problems...already had it taken care of a year ago, problem has come back), and as such I'd like to be able to switch between games without having to cross my fingers and hope the wii reads the disk/try 20+ times (literally) to get it to read.

4) Just a courtesy (no one has to, as I think I can figure it out on my own); can someone give me the various filepaths for the diff files (depending on installation above?) I ask, because of my scenario outlaid in Q# (trouble reading disk; so I want to get everything right the{see: freezing/crashing if I mess up} first time if possible)

Thanks a ton, really looking forward to playing it!

 

[Linkshot]

I have Wii problems.

May I suggest a swift rotation if it doesn't power up properly?

 

[JOE!]

wait, first off: why the hell would Snake be giant? That makes no sense...

Second: the character's rankings from biggest to smallest (top 10 ) i believe are:

> > > > or = (tall vs wide issue) > > > > or = (slightly taller vs wider) > or

after falcon there was justa ton of dudes of about the same size, so yeah

now for their weight rankings compared to size: (left is size, right is weight)

1/1 2/2 8/3 3/4 4/5 5/6 7/7 ( = , tied for 8th heaviest) 6/9 10/10 9/11 = 10/11

now, this is rather odd. Snake seems to throw the whole balance of being big and heavy out of whack...as he is only 8th biggest, yet 3rd heaviest.

Wario and Yoshi arent really an issue as they dont really have anything broken about their size - weight ratio.

 

[Mikeomak]

So links arrows have a crap ton of knockback for no reason. In my opinion it needs to be toned down a little.

 

[Linkshot]

They have a ton of knockback so that he can gimp people that want to gimp him.

 

[JOE!]

So links arrows have a crap ton of knockback for no reason. In my opinion it needs to be toned down a little.

you do realize how easy it is to gimp link, right?

this gives him the ability to turn the tables, seeing as he has NO OFFSTAGE GAME at all

 

[Mikeomak]

They have a ton of knockback so that he can gimp people that want to gimp him.

What? Im confused. Are you saying they have a ton of knockback because when someones coming to gimp them, he shoots them and they are gimped?

I dont mind them having some knockback, but instead of an arrow stopping someone, its pushing them back alot farther then i would think they should.

 

[Eldiran]

What? Im confused. Are you saying they have a ton of knockback because when someones coming to gimp them, he shoots them and they are gimped?

I dont mind them having some knockback, but instead of an arrow stopping someone, its pushing them back alot farther then i would think they should.

Basically, they have awesome knockback in order to make up for the terribleness of his recovery.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

So links arrows have a crap ton of knockback for no reason. In my opinion it needs to be toned down a little.

They make them a solid projectile, but the angle or BKB/KBG ratio needs changed a little IMO.

If you have trouble with arrows, you're going to hate Link's grounded Up-B.

Honestly, Link's Grounded Up-B makes Lucas U-smash look like Risk-Reward ratio dosen't exist. I was playing Hero's Link and he whiffed an Up-B so I tried to punish with a with Gdubs and he side-steped it, where as a Lucas who whiff's a U-smash is subject to semi-charged Lucas U-smash and even a Snake F-smash. Honestly, some of the risk-reward is far off wack. Of course this is coming from a Lucas main where our risk-reward in this makes Lucas looks like crap.

Lucas is supposed to be a high-risk, high-reward character.
He has a uber slow dash attack, and it doesn't even kill when other characters with safer dash attacks kill. Lucas D-smash does less damage than Tink's D-smash. The third strike of D-smash which only punish's side-step doesn't even kill to above 180 at the side of FD, in fact it's so much safer to do a jab to get damage to punish sidesteps. Wasn't the point of BBrawl to have a balanced moveset where each character has a moveset that is viable. Instead Lucas got a "LOL Pivot-Grab, Jab, F-smash, done" to the face.

 

[Mikeomak]

Basically, they have awesome knockback in order to make up for the terribleness of his recovery.

Ok. Well in my opinion (doesnt have to be anyone elses) i think they should have slightly less knockback and maybe give his boomerang more knockback or something?I dont know though. Just seems like too much to me.

 

[JOE!]

anywho, back on the weight issue...

I really think snake should be made lighter. He is smaller than even samus, yet is many weight classes above her

EDIT @Mikeomak:

again, do you realize how easy it is to gimp link? If you even get him diagonally below the ledge of a stage, he dies if he isnt at 0%.

 

[Lokee]

wait, first off: why the hell would Snake be giant? That makes no sense...

Sorry I mispoke, basically he was originally going to be the tallest character due to the fact he is the most realistic human character and so essentially that bigger Snake would have needed bigger hitboxes and larger weight.

Of course its just a theory but it would be pausable considering other errors/glitches in the game.

On Link's arrows its an eye for an eye. Everyone can gimp me, well I can gimp everyone. (and I suck offstage)

So should we go on discussing? Next?

 

[uhmuzing]

Funny how I'm excited to see changes across the roster until y'all get near Marth. ;D

 

[JOE!]

Sorry I mispoke, basically he was originally going to be the tallest character due to the fact he is the most realistic human character and so essentially that bigger Snake would have needed bigger hitboxes and larger weight.

Of course its just a theory but it would be pausable considering other errors/glitches in the game.

On Link's arrows its an eye for an eye. Everyone can gimp me, well I can gimp everyone. (and I suck offstage)

So should we go on discussing? Next?

i still dont get that, Falcon is a human, yet normal-size ish...

anywho, are we not still on Yoshi?

 

[The_Altrox]

Why nerf Link's arrows? They give the player the feeling that the charcter he's using is good.