Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[BSP]

Joe is right about Sonic. His only major flaw is his lack of reliable ko moves. He could rack damage fine in vBrawl, so I don't see the major impact the minor buffs have (besides making the damage buildup faster, but he still struggles to ko). Like the dair buff, I don't see how that solves Sonic's main problems. More damage and KB is good, but Dair is rarely landed anyway, it's near pointless.

I know there's more than one way to fix a character. So besides the possible frame change (which most likely won't happen), maybe one of Sonic's throws could be a ko-ing throw? Someone mentioned a Dair spike, that would really help. Did you guys make any headway with Sonic?

 

[bleyva]

Joe is right about Sonic. His only major flaw is his lack of reliable ko moves. He could rack damage fine in vBrawl, so I don't see the major impact the minor buffs have (besides making the damage buildup faster, but he still struggles to ko). Like the dair buff, I don't see how that solves Sonic's main problems. More damage and KB is good, but Dair is rarely landed anyway, it's near pointless.

I know there's more than one way to fix a character. So besides the possible frame change (which most likely won't happen), maybe one of Sonic's throws could be a ko-ing throw? Someone mentioned a Dair spike, that would really help. Did you guys make any headway with Sonic?

i recall people arguing that sonic's b-throw should KO, not sure if anything ever came of that.

 

[JOE!]

Possibly making either his Bair more deadly or a KO throw that only KO's near edges would be just dandy for sonic methinks...

 

[CarVac]

I was showing a friend BBrawl, and he was Marth and I was Ganon. (He is good with Marth, I am not good with Ganon). I was able to beat him (something impossible in normal Brawl), simply because on occasion I would flame choke>dtilt>fsmash and kill him.
If that can be considered balanced play (as in I was competing), then Ganon was a success in my case.

I also tried playing as Sonic. I got him (he was Marth again) up to 200% and finally killed him at 226%. He just has some serious issues killing. Though he has Fsmash and Bair, and I connected with them at high percents, they didn't have the kill power needed even when I did manage to hit with them. I ended up making my kill with an upthrow (not a strong throw) on Jungle Japes (which has a high ceiling). That is what I call a problem. I was 2-stocked that game.

My Ganon was competitive because I was able to get a few hits in each stock, which was enough to win. However, Sonic was unable to kill (One lucky kill I got was an upsmash semi-spike) even when hitting with his strongest moves. I say that fsmash and bair should be stronger (because they weren't strong enough when I did hit with them).

 

[camzy]

I was showing a friend BBrawl, and he was Marth and I was Ganon. (He is good with Marth, I am not good with Ganon). I was able to beat him (something impossible in normal Brawl), simply because on occasion I would flame choke>dtilt>fsmash and kill him.
If that can be considered balanced play (as in I was competing), then Ganon was a success in my case.

I also tried playing as Sonic. I got him (he was Marth again) up to 200% and finally killed him at 226%. He just has some serious issues killing. Though he has Fsmash and Bair, and I connected with them at high percents, they didn't have the kill power needed even when I did manage to hit with them. I ended up making my kill with an upthrow (not a strong throw) on Jungle Japes (which has a high ceiling). That is what I call a problem. I was 2-stocked that game.

My Ganon was competitive because I was able to get a few hits in each stock, which was enough to win. However, Sonic was unable to kill (One lucky kill I got was an upsmash semi-spike) even when hitting with his strongest moves. I say that fsmash and bair should be stronger (because they weren't strong enough when I did hit with them).

I was a pretty good Ganon even back in vBrawl and now with the buffs he's got, Ganon's effectively one of my mains. I think they've done a great job with him.

Sonic is imo the worst character in BBrawl. He was already low tier to begin with and his minor buffs do him little to no good especially against characters who have all been buffed. Killing with sonic is almost impossible unless you land an FSmash or BAir. His BAir also has startup lag which makes it even harder to hit with. None of his other moves will kill reliably beyond 100%. Every character should have at least 3 moves that can kill at 100+% and 1 or 2 that are safe-ish. Sonic needs to get a killer throw or reliable knockback on his USmash.

 

[JOE!]

like I said, just give sonic 1 reliable KO move (say, past 150% you are in danger) and he's set.

 

[Steeler]

idk

if you are going to get everyone to a certain equal status (or try to), then homogenizing is way more likely to occur than if you just buff characters to be competitive.

 

[Hyrus]

if you are going to get everyone to a certain equal status (or try to), then homogenizing is way more likely to occur than if you just buff characters to be competitive.

Cutting the end lag of Ganon's jab, adding startup to Metaknight's aerials, or increasing KBG on a few of Sonic's moves aren't, suddenly, going to make those characters identical to each other. It is going to help even those character's matchups when they face different figher archetypes.

 

[Beren Zaiga]

Is it possible to load this data onto an SD card via a printer port? My printer has an SD card slot, so I was wondering if I could use that.

 

[BSP]

Yes, that's how i did it.

Seriously, looking at how everyone else was buffed, Sonic is probably worse here than Vbrawl.

 

[Lokee]

IMO Sonic isnt that bad at all, actually he reminds me of how Mario was in vBrawl. Pretty good in many areas (unpredictabiliy, chasing/folowups, approaching, damage racking) but all that is hampered by the insane amount of % that characters have to be to become killed.

Only having 2 (if you can call them) kill moves Bair/Fsmash that are both sluggish and even when landed are considerably weak for such subpar startup. In many matchups this is what ultimately gets Sonic down Lucario in particularlly due to the Aura effect, and in certain others where the character's are more suvivable with powerful kill moves or better kill options altogether. Chars. that come to mind with this are Snake, Samus and even Ganondorf to an extent and some others that can kill Sonic at pretty low percents while Sonic has to get them about 3 times more damage to Possibly land a KO (exaggeration?).

Bringing up was was previously mentioned in this thread. Lets give Sonic a combination of buffs
Make Sonic's kill moves a bit better with more Killing Power (Fsmash, Bair, ect.)
Give Sonic a reliable finisher for emergency situations (High% B Throw Kill)
Give Sonic a reliable Kill setup (Nair setup)

I am in agreement that Sonic should NOT be killing really early at all. However he takes it to a frustrating level and I like to see either more:
Kill Power/Setups OR Unrival Damage Racking
Id perfer the former as the latter would not change the Lucario match.

Leading to my next points. It seems to me that there is a system that need to be established with certain characters. So I made a looping model of how KO moves should balanced itself within the character.

The Slower the KO moves the Harder they should hit.
The Harder the KO moves hit the Harder the Damage Racking.
The Easier the Damage Racking the Softer their KO moves hit.
The Softer the KO moves hit the better Setups or Speed it should have.
The better Setups or Speed the KO moves has the Slower it should be.

Its mainly Black and White and even a flawed model and obviously is something that shoulnt be set in stone, especially since it doesnt include other factors such as characters uniqueness or the general properties of the Kill moves itself but I hope you get the point and feel free to express opinion.

 

[Steeler]

Cutting the end lag of Ganon's jab, adding startup to Metaknight's aerials, or increasing KBG on a few of Sonic's moves aren't, suddenly, going to make those characters identical to each other. It is going to help even those character's matchups when they face different figher archetypes.

yes, but for the most part, changes like that aren't going to make characters high tier status. to be high tier in this game, all characters require certain qualities.

i personally don't care too much for how important "uniqueness" is, but clearly the developers do. and i find that this goal and the goal of making all characters high tier are at odds.

 

[Lokee]

yes, but for the most part, changes like that aren't going to make characters high tier status. to be high tier in this game, all characters require certain qualities.

i personally don't care too much for how important "uniqueness" is, but clearly the developers do. and i find that this goal and the goal of making all characters high tier are at odds.

Clearly aiming lower would perserve character uniqueness.
I mean imagine if this Project were aiming to make everyone vBrawl Metaknight Status frankly I cant imagine there would be any distinguishing character quality left besides appearance since everyone would have transcedent hitboxes, be super fast, great recovery, and have amazing Kill options and setups and movesets in general. At this point it would truly be a "META" game

Low A tier-B tier characters are better for balancing purposes. Nearly all of them are Good and all of them have weaknesses. Balance no? Otherwise we would have to expand Team Disjoint to Game Disjoint.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Also a faster jab for Ganon would mean a possible Outta Shield Option which Ganon being a Defensive character desparatly needs. Imagine if Ganondorf had Bowser's Fortress or DDD's Grab one though scary

 

[uhmuzing]

I remember thinking of a few ideas for Ganondorf in class before the break, but I lost the paper I wrote 'em on. :O

 

[Eldiran]

yes, but for the most part, changes like that aren't going to make characters high tier status. to be high tier in this game, all characters require certain qualities.

i personally don't care too much for how important "uniqueness" is, but clearly the developers do. and i find that this goal and the goal of making all characters high tier are at odds.

I think a bigger problem for making all characters high tier is the desire to keep BBrawl similar to vBrawl. After all, switching from one to the other should be easy. Timing changes that affect fundamental parts of gameplay (Ganon being able to use his jab when he normally wouldn't) are to be avoided. At least, that's my biggest hangup with doing things like that. I want to be able to play vBrawl and be good at it after I play BBrawl for a very long time.

Anyway, an idea to throw onto the Ganon pile is possibly increasing the shield damage/push of Ganon's nair or jab. Those two are his quickest moves, and if it could be made bad to block them, Ganon might have a chance to at least eventually punish defensive play. (Honestly I'd guess a nair buff might be more effective, considering the mobility and range it has over jab.)

That said, I should hypocritcally point out that we might want to avoid obsessing over Ganon. He's gotten plenty of talk, whereas I'm sure others are in need of attention.

 

[BSP]

Give Sonic a reliable Kill setup (Nair setup)

I am in agreement that Sonic should NOT be killing really early at all. However he takes it to a frustrating level and I like to see either more:
Kill Power/Setups OR Unrival Damage Racking
Id perfer the former as the latter would not change the Lucario match.

Nair could work, but it's priority is so low, it's not even funny.

Making Sonic's b throw a worse version of Ness' could work. Maybe make it kill at about 150%?

 

[Mit]

A mild, useful fix that could be applied to Sonic that isn't quite as blatant as a sped-up kill move or a kill throw, would be to simply lower the maximum angle on Sonic's bthrow, and perhaps make it kill at halfway-decent percents at the edge of stages.

This would allow him to get his opponent offstage more often, really putting some characters with less-than-great recoveries in trouble, and allowing him to try and mindgame for a gimp or kill move when they get back on stage.

We already had this discussion in a lot of depth a while back, though, which is probably why many people aren't joining in. Sonic's old news for now

 

[IrohDW]

Those aren't fractions; they're just two numbers separated by a slash. The first number is knockback growth (which varies hitbox by hitbox on Sonic's nair so we represented it as X to save space), and the second number is base knockback (which is 20d for all hits in standard Brawl and 40d for all hits in Balanced Brawl).

So it means that at all percentages with all hitboxes, Sonic's nair hits them further away.

---

Anyway, a fun experiment was successful. I tried putting all of Zelda & Sheik's files on the SD card with file replacement active, and the result was that transformation time was radically lowered (my unscientific estimate for my typical disc reader Wii is triple speed on the sparkly in-between character section which is the part where the game is actually loading). Since it's SD reading, this should be fairly disc reader independent too so slow disc reader Wiis are no longer a factor for Zelda & Sheik. I bet the same thing would work with the Pokemon Trainer too; expect much cleaner transformation mechanics in the next version just owing to this.

Where can I get those files? I'd really like to try this out now instead of waiting for the next release.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

They're around. There's a topic somewhere here in the workshop with all non-cutscene files in Brawl.

Anyway, I think you guys make a fairly fundamental mistake in assuming that characters with large strengths and large weaknesses are inherently worse than characters who are strong in all significant areas. Snake would seem to be a completely contradicting example to that claim, but then I see denial of his massive weaknesses (such as the fact that the only character with worse mobility than Snake is Ganondorf)... Then there's Wario who has range/priority so bad that it's not just a weakness; it's just laughable. He's also fine.

Weaknesses like Ganondorf and Sonic have are not inherently unbalancable while the ones Snake and Wario have are somehow okay. It's just a matter of the specific balance in question. Also, for that matter, in Balanced Brawl Meta Knight does not really have a better overall KO game than Sonic. So why the one directional focus?

The claims about Sonic's quality are bizarre in any case. Sonic was not that bad in the first place, and he got significant buffs. Any other character in the game would kill for his dash attack now, among other things. Claims that he got worse seem just silly (Really now? Even if his relative tier position dropped [plausible], his overall viability just obviously went up), and claims that he's similar to standard Brawl Mario (who was worse than Sonic in the first place...) don't really seem very convincing.

 

[camzy]

The claims about Sonic's quality are bizarre in any case. Sonic was not that bad in the first place, and he got significant buffs. Any other character in the game would kill for his dash attack now, among other things. Claims that he got worse seem just silly (Really now? Even if his relative tier position dropped [plausible], his overall viability just obviously went up), and claims that he's similar to standard Brawl Mario (who was worse than Sonic in the first place...) don't really seem very convincing.

I've got to disagree with you there. Sonic still lacks a viable kill move. Most of his buffs were for relatively minor moves (DAir and DTilt). His spring spike is a great addition, but he still needs a stronger more conventional killing move. BThrow is the obvious choice, but you could also improve his BAir by giving it less startup lag. Even some super heavyweights (Dedede, DK and Snake) have BAirs which not only deal more damage but come out faster without startup lag.

 

[SaltyKracka]

AA, you seem to be rather mistaken. Sonic is VASTLY overrated in vBrawl. He realistically belongs in bottom tier. The reason that most people don't seem to realize that is that some Sonic mains, who happened to be very good, mindgamed the **** out of their opponents to win some minor tournaments.

 

[bobson]

A lot of people mistake theory for practice and, in theory, Sonic is complete trash. And yet, in practice, people have been placing with him since the beginning of the game and are still succeeding in that.

 

[Lokee]

Its clear what Sonic needs so lets move the discussion along shall we. I think we should talk a bit about several chars. who were in relatively good standing in vbrawl but either nerfed or buffed slighty. Take your Pick.


Jab 1 inner hit knockback (100/0) -> (0/30)
Dash attack sweetspot angle (50) -> (30)
Forward tilt angled up knockback (100/10) -> (100/30)
Forward tilt angled straight knockback (100/10) -> (100/30), angle (-) -> (40)
Forward tilt angled down knockback (100/10) -> (100/15), angle (-) -> (15)
Down cargo throw knockback (26/65) -> (10/80)
Aerial Head Butt sourspot knockback (40/15) -> (40/35), angle (70) -> (20)
Hand Slap damage (14%) -> (15%)
Grab release animation sped up 1.2x (as releaser)


Forward smash damage (19%) -> (17%)
Up aerial damage (17%) -> (15%)
Down throw speed halved on frame 33


Up throw damage (10%) -> (11%)
Copy damage (6%) -> (10%)
Stone damage (18%) -> (20%)
Egg Lay damage (7%) -> (14%)
Nayru's Love initial hit damage (1%) -> (2%), angle (10) -> (170)
Nayru's Love repeating hits angle (10) -> (170)
Nayru's Love final hit angle (-) -> (90)
Shield Breaker angle (-) -> (25)
Chef pan damage (5%) -> (6%), knockback (30/60) -> (115/80), angle (10) -> (90)


Forward throw knockback (110/45) -> (10/80)
Up throw damage (10%) -> (11%), knockback (45/90) -> (45/100)
Down throw knockback (38/60) -> (1/79), angle (80) -> (95)

 

[A2ZOMG]

Donkey Kong is a balanced character who can poke and rack massive damage, albeit being easily comboed and edgeguarded and having slightly underwhelming frame data.

Wario is also balanced, and if anything, he's probably better off in BBrawl in a game where he no longer gets infinited or **** comboed into kill moves. He probably doesn't need to be changed for the most part.

Kirby...he's really linear and has significant trouble killing safely or approaching, and I really don't know what can really be done for this character...even though Stone Edgeguarding buff is kinda helpful.

Pikachu has the problem where he can't score a kill reliably at all, almost like Sonic, except his N-air is a fair bit more useful for KOs, so probably a small buff to that move will be enough.

Oh yeah Sonic, Sonic is really pathetic. I mean he literally has no fast attack that even kills at high percents (besides U-air, which is very unreliable by virtue of requiring a setup near the blastzone).

 

[hyperhopper]

Jab 1 inner hit knockback (100/0) -> (0/30)
Dash attack sweetspot angle (50) -> (30)
Forward tilt angled up knockback (100/10) -> (100/30)
Forward tilt angled straight knockback (100/10) -> (100/30), angle (-) -> (40)
Forward tilt angled down knockback (100/10) -> (100/15), angle (-) -> (15)
Down cargo throw knockback (26/65) -> (10/80)
Aerial Head Butt sourspot knockback (40/15) -> (40/35), angle (70) -> (20)

what do the numbers (XX/XX) in the parenthesis actually mean? i would like to be able to not be clueless in comversations like these

 

[A2ZOMG]

They mean (growth/base)

Attacks with 0 growth have set knockback obviously.

The other complicated part about knockback is how damage dealt in a single hit is directly related to knockback...damage and knockback relation scales linearly. I remember Thinkaman saying something like two attacks that do the same knockback and one has twice as much damage, the one with twice as much damage sends the opponent twice as far.

 

[Steeler]

(such as the fact that the only character with worse mobility than Snake is Ganondorf)

i disagree. snake is more mobile than ivysaur, dedede, olimar and perhaps even characters like kirby and ice climbers on the virtue of his DACUS alone.

his DACUS is really, really good.

anyway snake and wario's strengths cover their weaknesses perfectly. snake's zoning game is so good that he doesn't even have to move much to do it. wario is so mobile that his range doesn't even hurt him that much, and he gets stronger the longer he runs away. i think this is now the case with link (he's not as good as those characters though) but ganondorf and falcon still need work.

 

[hyperhopper]

what is the formula? like if growth is 100, is that 100 growth for every 1 percent? how much is 1, how far does 1, 10, 50 , 100 send you?

 

[JOE!]

AA, what is your opinion on snake's weight, or letting Yoshi do something OoS?

 

[Steeler]

imo if it doesn't get in the way of reasonable balance then it's fine.

 

[LordshadowRagnarok]

When is the next version of BBrawl to be expected? We're in that 4-6month window mentioned in the OP

 

[BSP]

Sorry to go back to Sonic, but I just had some matches online with him.

As we know, his damage racking game is solid, he doesn't need help there. When he gets the opponent to about 130% (and it really doesn't take too long), that's when the spring becomes very useful. My opponent would always be expecting the spring when he got to high damage, so I could predict his dodges/etc. and punish him for it. I like Sonic's dthrow as well. It's really hard to tech, and is almost a garunteed follow up onstage, and a spring or gimp offstage.

Dair still didn't really help much in terms of knockback, but the 2% more is a nice little bonus.

The spring complements Sonic damage racking well. If the opponent makes a mistake at mid to high damage, they're done for. The only problem is that it doesn't work on great recoveries, at it doesn't work on Snake unless the 7% super armor on cypher was changed. It helps against D3, DK, and bowser a lot. (and that's who he has trouble killing in Vbrawl.)

I didn't get to do any of Sonic's bad vbrawl matchups (Lucario, Marth), so I don't know about those.

...Sonic does look really bad on paper

 

[Mit]

It helps against D3, DK, and bowser a lot.

Actually, if playing against a good opponent, they really shouldn't be spring gimped unless they make some monumental mistakes.

IIRC, all three of their recoveries outprioritize the spring and cancel it out. All they have to do is make sure they're using their recovery before you try and spring them and they're safe. Or if they have quick uair moves (DK), they can use those to cancel out the spring as well.

 

[NovaRyumaru]

yoshi has one of the best spotdodges, and he even has a special roll from being hit while shielded (go the way you are hit from = short roll, away = double distance roll)

but the fact that his shield is impossible to poke doesnt mean he should have the laggiest shield, I propose that he either:

A) gets a faster shieldgrab, I mean, is there a reason he shouldnt now that he cannot Chain-grab?

B) more damaging eggs to just promote a longer ranged game than what he allready has, and provide a better reason to super-roll

C) just simply less lag on the shield all together

*shrug*

I like these changes, and again Yoshi's F-throw could use a lower angle imo, would make it a better setup for off-stage shenanigans. Perhaps a knockback reduction to his d-throw as well, would make it a great setup for juggling with u-tilt or following with an u-smash similar to ROB.

 

[BSP]

If sonic is facing away from you, a well spaced b air will knock all of them out of their recovery (unless D3 has the SA going). Or sonic could use his nair, since it received a buff as well. The point is that they gave Sonic a good option. It adds to his bait and punish game. Try fighting Sonic and see what I mean. You know the spring is coming, but sonic can change it up in an instant, and it might screw you.

Let me find more people to fight, and I'll give more feedback. Not many people play BB though.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Snake's DACUS is really not good. I mean, maybe I'm biased as a G&W main, but when I see a Snake using DACUS I just throw the turtle in front of me and take my free damage. It's just too unsafe for Snake to use DACUS as any sort of an approaching mobility option. It's also pretty bad as a non-combative mobility option because there's no mix-up in it. Like, when running at someone as Sonic, you could turn around or jump at any time, and that makes you more unpredictable. When using DACUS as Snake, your course is set. So really, that leaves it only good for running away along the ground. It does that well enough, but I'm not exactly concerned about it. I mean, Wizard's Foot can be used much the same way, a little worse at it but also better at approaching (since it actually beats some stuff out).

Snake's weight is not changing. Yoshi's shield mechanics are not changing. They're just bad things to change. Changing Snake's weight would cause literally every hit on Snake to have different dynamics. Changing Yoshi's shield in a positive way would cause the campiest character in the game to become significantly more campy. It seems like a bad idea.

We found in testing that Sonic's spring evolved into somewhat of an indirect threat. You wouldn't actually get gimps with it often at all, but the threat of it forced opponents to recover more predictably making it easier for Sonic to get free damage (or even gimp with other moves!) off-stage. Sonic has a great recovery and can afford to take big risks off-stage; definitely push your luck in that area to see rewards.

The actual knockback formulae are complicated with quite a few parameters, and I haven't actually fully worked them out (they are different for fixed knockback versus non-fixed knockback moves by the way). I suggest getting a rough feel for how much the numbers mean with a character you're familiar with and then going by feel on the other numbers to see how big the changes are.

No time to say more, sorry.

 

[BSP]

We found in testing that Sonic's spring evolved into somewhat of an indirect threat. You wouldn't actually get gimps with it often at all, but the threat of it forced opponents to recover more predictably making it easier for Sonic to get free damage (or even gimp with other moves!) off-stage. Sonic has a great recovery and can afford to take big risks off-stage; definitely push your luck in that area to see rewards.

.

That's what I wanted to say. I'm going to try to experiment with it and tell everyone what I come up with.

Does standard release have infinite replay on it?

The spring owns Falcon btw.

 

[JOE!]

Snake's weight is not changing. Yoshi's shield mechanics are not changing. They're just bad things to change. Changing Snake's weight would cause literally every hit on Snake to have different dynamics.

Yeah, he goes further at lower %s, thats about it...

Changing Yoshi's shield in a positive way would cause the campiest character in the game to become significantly more campy. It seems like a bad idea.

's response:

 

[Mit]

The spring owns Falcon btw.

Uair > spring

Also, agreed on not changing Snake's weight. It sounds like a good idea, but it isn't a good idea for a project trying to keep the original feel for characters. That'd be yet another thing to further discourage Snake mains from trying BBrawl.

 

[BSP]

Uair > spring

Sonic drops the spring where if Falcon doesn't dive, he can't make it back, he loses a stock. Sonic's d throw makes these positions possible. You slide pretty far at high damage.