Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[Thinkaman]

so GW's bair tip still does 1% but acts like 2% on shields?

edit: same question regarding marth's fair.

Well, G&W bair tip was nerfed from 3% to 2%, but you have the right idea. Those attack are the same as they used to be on shields.

i need to try out jiggs' dthrow before i make any judgment calls on her. if it is what i think it is, then she might be a middle of the pack character now.

It's nice, but it doesn't combo or frame trap or anything. It's not in the same league as R.O.B. d-throw, which is good.

 

[ぱみゅ]

If I'm not wrong, Jigg's dthrow put opponents on her up-back (that's what I saw on some playtest I had against CPUs, so I can be wrong), if that, then it's bad agaist MK...

Also, I'm really amazed how CPU's randomness makes them addapt to the new changes, CPUZelda Nayru's dash spam is odd, and CPU FalconKick followups are... meh...

 

[Steeler]

nice update to the site.

 

[Thinkaman]

First impression tier lists? Pretty please?

 

[Lokee]

First impression tier lists? Pretty please?

You know the better balanced you create. The harder and harder it will be for people to make tier lists.

Id say mostly everyone is at a good place but what you guys need is a few major tourneys to see where characters stand better and how they handle or abuse the changes implemented

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Yeah, we're well aware of that effect. I personally believe we're near the limit of balance we can achieve without wide-scale data (as in major tournaments), but seeing other people attempt to make lists serves as a sanity check of sorts.

Internally, the gears are grinding smoothly; things are really coming together!

 

[NovaRyumaru]

Here's a question i've been forgetting to ask. Does Balanced brawl support stage hacks? Such as replacement textures/particle effects on FD?

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Not explicitly in the sense that it doesn't include any such hacks, but for most stages, you can include your new .pac file for the stage alongside Bbrawl with no issues (just move it into the file; for Castle Siege you'll have to overwrite already existing files, but it won't cause problems). Note that gameplay changes are made to the .pac files for Spear Pillar Dialga, Corneria, and Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1 so texture hacks to those specific three stages will need to be ported to native Bbrawl .pac files. Failure to do so will result in your version of those particular stages having incorrect blast zones and other such things; at that point, you would not be playing true Balanced Brawl. Of course, file replacement is on in Bbrawl so no need to go fetch the code.

Character texture hacks are the same way except there are no conflicts at all like the three stage cases. If you import textures for Zelda, Sheik, Squirtle, Ivysaur, or Charizard, you will have to overwrite existing costume files, but they contain no gameplay changes so don't worry about overwriting them. On that note, there is no gameplay disadvantage in Bbrawl to including textures for those characters like in standard Brawl so knock yourself out on that. Just be sure, with all files you run alongside Bbrawl, that they are carefully made to introduce no gameplay changes and are purely ascetic. One of the prides of Balanced Brawl is that it's designed to make standardization easy; introducing gameplay changes in an attempt to use texture hacks would be... unfortunate.

 

[NovaRyumaru]

Not explicitly in the sense that it doesn't include any such hacks, but for most stages, you can include your new .pac file for the stage alongside Bbrawl with no issues (just move it into the file; for Castle Siege you'll have to overwrite already existing files, but it won't cause problems). Note that gameplay changes are made to the .pac files for Spear Pillar Dialga, Corneria, and Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1 so texture hacks to those specific three stages will need to be ported to native Bbrawl .pac files. Failure to do so will result in your version of those particular stages having incorrect blast zones and other such things; at that point, you would not be playing true Balanced Brawl. Of course, file replacement is on in Bbrawl so no need to go fetch the code.

Character texture hacks are the same way except there are no conflicts at all like the three stage cases. If you import textures for Zelda, Sheik, Squirtle, Ivysaur, or Charizard, you will have to overwrite existing costume files, but they contain no gameplay changes so don't worry about overwriting them. On that note, there is no gameplay disadvantage in Bbrawl to including textures for those characters like in standard Brawl so knock yourself out on that. Just be sure, with all files you run alongside Bbrawl, that they are carefully made to introduce no gameplay changes and are purely ascetic. One of the prides of Balanced Brawl is that it's designed to make standardization easy; introducing gameplay changes in an attempt to use texture hacks would be... unfortunate.

Thank you, now will need to mess around with my Final Destination texture to get it working.

 

[Fuujin]

Thanks for the feedback. Ganon d-tilt is unchanged, but that could possibly be implemented thansk to the tools in PSA. It's an extremely good idea!

For experiments sake, I made a version of Zelda with 3x faster Din's Fire and zero cooldown. It's so glitchy looking and overdone, except that it is indeed still useless! That's right, this Zelda can spam Din's Fire every 22 frames, so fast that she doesn't even lose vertical height in the air, and it's STILL of no help to approaching or forcing an approach. The CPUs are even still able to hit me, although they do seem to like rolling into the spam a lot...

Out of curiosity, what does everyone think of Jigglypuff? Where does she stand?

Well I dunno what you can do for her without changing her play style.
She's a defensive character without the options of someone like Marth or Snake.
She only does decently when someone with a mediocre approach is trying to rush her.
If you can't get her to force the opponents to approach then you'll have to stick with the new Nayru's love or give her some other sort of approach.
Sped up Din's would help her with MK and Marth because they can just spam aerials and she has zero options against them.
Maybe throw out the sped up Din's for the Zeldas to try out and see what they think?

 

[NovaRyumaru]

Out of curiosity, what does everyone think of Jigglypuff? Where does she stand?

I like her still, but she could use a couple changes, namely angle changes on her d-throw and maybe a moderate buff to Rest's power.

The ideal angle imo for her d-throw would put them behind her JUST in range of her u-tilt for ground juggling/ground-to-air setup similar to Rob's d-throw putting them at nearly a perfect range to spam u-tilt a couple times before whacking 'em away.

 

[JOE!]

Hey thinka, what did those game designers think of balanced brawl?

 

[Thinkaman]

I like her still, but she could use a couple changes, namely angle changes on her d-throw and maybe a moderate buff to Rest's power.

The ideal angle imo for her d-throw would put them behind her JUST in range of her u-tilt for ground juggling/ground-to-air setup similar to Rob's d-throw putting them at nearly a perfect range to spam u-tilt a couple times before whacking 'em away.

The angle change on d-throw is already decently powerful, and improving it towards a ROB level would start to have polarized results. It would be easy to make it better a decent amount such that it destroys Ike and Ganondorf but actually allows Marth and MK to counter-attack! (They cannot currently.) If we made it good enough to prevent that (which would include reducing the cooldown), it would actually cross a threshold where Jigglypuff could freely rest people out of it... Not a good direction.

We tested a slightly stronger rest in the very beginning test phases of this project--I didn't like it then and I don't like it now. It's just too polarized in the wrong way: The enemies Jigglypuff is far more likely to land rest on are the ones she doesn't need help with. Jigglypuff's struggle is with ranged characters that keep her aerial approaches out.

This is one of the reasons Mystery Gift actually works out. In matchups where Jigglypuff can get in against opponents, it's never worth it to waste time getting an item when you could be chasing. But against say Marth, after you land a hit on him that sends him off-stage it's better to grab an item than just try to approach him again.

Sped up Din's would help her with MK and Marth because they can just spam aerials and she has zero options against them.

No, it really doesn't. I'm not theory crafting here, I'm saying that this totally broken version of Din's Fire I made STILL doesn't help her. Even one Din's Fire every 22 frames is not a threat to them in any way. Even CPUs can still get through it and hit me! Zelda's options are not simply improved by having even more defensive bias.

Maybe throw out the sped up Din's for the Zeldas to try out and see what they think?

I'm not sure you got what I was saying--this is not a legit version. It's very visually glitchy, the animation is awful, it's incredibly jarring, Zelda can stall indefinitely by spamming side-b, it's spammy and annoying without being actually helpful in any way--it's the concentrated essence of everything anyone has ever complained about in Brawl. (Except that instead of being Meta Knight and awesome, she's Zelda and still sucks.)

I was actually considering putting up a video of this for April Fool's Day--it's that bad. (I decided against it since it would confuse people.)

On the bright side, the Nayru's Love approach change is looking like it's going to work out.

Hey thinka, what did those game designers think of balanced brawl?

At GDC? The impressions were all positive, especially on Jet Hammer's change and Mystery Gift. I had one guy who really liked the Zelda changes. BRB, dinner.

 

[Ussi]

I've been playing around with Ike's eruption must say I like what I came up with. I used Ike's eruption like Marth's dolphin slash to get out of combos. Two cons is that you can still be grabbed and that you take damage but a pro is that you can charge it. Since it can't be used OoS, it doesn't find toooo many uses like DS

2ndly it's a very threathning frame trap on the ledge since they can't get away with attacking you and can't grab from there. Regrabing the ledge is risky since eruption can reach below the stage. However people like MK, Kirby, very manuvearable recoveries can get past it. I'd say it's still possible to get hit but they avoid it best.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I don't think anyone is going to have a complete tier list for quite some time. Or maybe that is just me.

I think Yoshi is worth keeping an eye on, as I think he has a lot going for him.

Marth not being able to kill with tipper F-air really balances him extremely well. Like lol it kills at 180% or something. Either way I don't think he's top tier anymore due to how much this decreases his overall power. He's obviously solid, just he's going to have to work a fair bit harder (pun not intended) to get kills.

As for G&W, he's probably around where Marth is. Not really a super dominating contender, but a good one overall, but I think he and Marth should get some fun new tricks to expand their less popular options a bit.

I don't know crap about the Ice Climbers, since nobody ever uses them.

Ganondorf doesn't seem to be the worst character anymore. He's still mediocre though, and still loses fundamentally to campy characters, and getting gimped easily is always going to hinder him a lot. I think at this point however he's competitively workable, if only barely so.

Bowser is bad, probably worse than Ganondorf honestly. They both are easily shut down characters, but Ganon is getting a lot more options to help him out, and is able to destroy people much faster with superior edgeguarding and a better aerial game in general.

Haven't tested Ike yet, but I am still skeptical of this character.

Someone needs to test Pikachu. Skull Bash canceling I think is hilariously useful, since it will force people to shield, but you can cancel it with shieldgrabbing. He's probably better than G&W and Marth overall with those random little buffs he's getting and those little nerfs that they got.

Ness is probably better than Lucas. Extra shield damage makes his pressure and poke game more threatening, and he's still better at scoring the kill reliably by a pretty significant margin. I don't think either character is super dominating, but Ness is probably fine where he is right now.

Zelda with the Naryu's love change sounds ridiculous. Might be necessary though, when I get back to it, I'll see how it works out.

Mario is appropriately balanced from my experience, I think Mario represents a pretty good standard for other characters to base themselves off of.

tbh though, I think most of the characters are done pretty well, and that's probably going to make tier list creation difficult.

 

[JOE!]

Quick question...again:

if i take off the data on my SD card, (making it blank), could i then just download the current link onto it and still have all the stuff? Because the last time i asked this I got the nswer "replace conflicting files", which i have no idea which ones conflict, etc XD

 

[Thinkaman]

I don't think anyone is going to have a complete tier list for quite some time. Or maybe that is just me.

I mean, this is the ideal response. Thanks for the thoughts.

 

[Thinkaman]

Quick question...again:

if i take off the data on my SD card, (making it blank), could i then just download the current link onto it and still have all the stuff? Because the last time i asked this I got the nswer "replace conflicting files", which i have no idea which ones conflict, etc XD

Double post to say:

If you dump all the contents of the latest test bundle (bbrawl2rc2.zip) to a blank SD card, that's all you need.

 

[JOE!]

ah, sweet

 

[Nakihito]

Marth not being able to kill with tipper F-air really balances him extremely well. Like lol it kills at 180% or something. Either way I don't think he's top tier anymore due to how much this decreases his overall power. He's obviously solid, just he's going to have to work a fair bit harder (pun not intended) to get kills.

...

Haven't tested Ike yet, but I am still skeptical of this character.

Marth only really uses tipper fairs to kill from way off stage or after just loosing a stock. Its usually decayed to the point that it generally won't kill unless he gets a tipper relatively far offstage and the other person doesn't DI correctly. Even then, its possible to DI it so that you get launched at a nearly 80 degree angle.

I can't think of any BBrawl bonus that would fit Marth. Adding elements to Dancing Blade is kind of silly and really does not provide the same type of benefit that other bonuses provide. Being biased as a Marth main, I'd like to have his fair back to vBrawl damage or knockback, but if this is too polarizing then I'd understand.

As for Ike, he still has the same problems as before, except now he doesn't suicide when he buffers a jab and gets pushed off stage. He still lacks a way to juggle, edge guard, and get past projectiles.

I still believe that the super armor on Eruption is pretty useless. You have to commit 19 frames before you get your super armor which means that its not a good OoS because you need another 7 or so frames to drop the shield. You'd only really be able to use it OoS if you were fsmashed by someone like Ike or Bowser (even that is assuming horrible spacing by your opponent). Those super armor frames would be more useful on Aether as I suggested here.

All-in-all, I'd put Ike around the bottom of a tier list and Marth in the top five or something.

 

[Linkshot]

The Super Armor is there until you release, iirc. Not "starting 19 frames in".

 

[Thinkaman]

Ike's SH nairs are legitimately important and beneficial.

 

[JOE!]

so uh, yeah...anyone wanna do some matches? got it working

 

[Ussi]

I'm game for some wifi BBrawl, i believe my FC is there in my info..

 

[Fuujin]

I just tested her Nayru's out with Tesh.
It is great on the ground and at first it's hard to get by but it has one pretty bad weakness.
It's garbage against an aerial opponent.
It helps her recovery but I'm not seeing how its gonna help her on Peach, MK and Marth, GnW.
Peach can float above her and her D air eats through it or she can float right above the ground and her n air tears through it.
MKs F air tears through it also, never tried Marth or GnW but I'm sure his would do the same.
the move hardly nicks anyone whether shes on the ground or in the air as long as the opponent is in the air.
It is nice that she get's some fast movement and nice recovery but I fear it would be pretty useless against a few characters who just wait for her to use it.

 

[Fuujin]

I'm also down to play if anyone is up for it.
I've only played one with a good connection in this version.

 

[Ussi]

I'll play with whoever adds me first, I'm adding both you and JOE

Edit: Need you FC lol do PM me it if you do not wish to reveal it

Edit 2: joe beat you to it

 

[Thinkaman]

Hey guys, if you want convenient chatting for matchmaking test out the chat on www.balancedbrawl.net on the left tab.

 

[G.D.]

I don't know crap about the Ice Climbers, since nobody ever uses them.

I've said this once before in this thread and I'll say it again. I'm finding them to be... nerfed. Very nerfed. Easily bottom ~25%, maybe even bottom tier. A friend of mine (who these days is pretty much the only person I can test this stuff with) owns me in vBrawl whenever he uses IC, largely because he is a god of timing their chainthrows. That's not all that makes his IC deadly, but it's the reason I groan whenever he picks them. In BBrawl, by severely nerfing their already virtually-impossible chainthrow (with which even pros seem to have difficulty mastering), their glass cannon has basically been stolen and replaced with a little toy replica which still makes a nice "boom" sound, but is just as breakable as ever, if not more so.

Leagues of characters have better gimping options against IC--pretty much the only big nerf to gimping I've seen is chainthrows, which was rarely a problem with them specifically. This makes Nana--the glass--all that more fragile.

Yes, a lot of their advantageous matches have been evened out somewhat (mainly Ganon, but also the likes of Bowser and to some extent Ike), but who they had problems to begin with (aside from the two EVERYONE had problems with) they still have problems with now.

Despite their nerf of chainthrowing, and the nerf of Nana-gimping from some characters, they haven't had much to compensate. The boost to Dair isn't really a buff; it's at best a reason to every once in a great while use that as an offensive tactic instead of just a momentum-canceler. Meanwhile, pretty much everyone who was around their general placement (and that's WITH the better chainthrows) is getting a multitide of buffs.

Even the new public-test changes I have yet to test against them sufficiently would seem to pose problems. I'm finding that a large amount of the cancel-able moves, primarily Keek and now Nayru's Love, make it much easier for those characters to separate the ICs and then go after Nana...

...I'm not suggesting the changes are bad overall. Really, IC in some instances had the ability to go from 0% to KOing percents in a virtually-inescapable combo, and most of the changes that ended up hurting them are good decisions overall. But in general I don't think their unique style of play has not been considered much, and I think that's something which could be worked on...

Someone needs to test Pikachu. Skull Bash canceling I think is hilariously useful, since it will force people to shield, but you can cancel it with shieldgrabbing. He's probably better than G&W and Marth overall with those random little buffs he's getting and those little nerfs that they got.

Actually, I'm finding that bonus of his to be rather useless... considering his skull bash from ground is virtually never a good tactic, even if you've managed to deceive your opponent into thinking you're planning to cancel it.

It's neat, but really, really not very useful... except against the characters who Pikachu already has an easy time with. (You know, the big ones and several of the fast-falling ones who he can easily dthrow>usmash.)

Ness is probably better than Lucas. Extra shield damage makes his pressure and poke game more threatening, and he's still better at scoring the kill reliably by a pretty significant margin. I don't think either character is super dominating, but Ness is probably fine where he is right now.

I think that depends, somewhat. BB Ness is better against campers, and BB Lucas is better against pressure. Lucas's boosts, while subtle, make his combos crazy powerful and in some cases easier to pull off, especially those which involve his jab... and his quick priority attacks were already pretty good at countering pressure-players to begin with. Of course, Ness's buffed "sparkles" speak for themselves.

Dedede's hammer momentum would feel a little better if it weren't so much on an uncharged swing.

I'm going to have to agree with this. I think there should be a (more significant) difference in how far it pushes you from uncharged to fully charged.

Double jump canceling out of the spacies' side+B still feels kind of awkward conceptually.

After a couple matches, it felt quite natural to me. It also allows Fox to more easily approach the sorts of opponents who his Blaster can't easily bait without getting punished (Falco and Sonic to name a couple). It generally doesn't help recovery, which I believe was the point; I think that was a good aspect of it. Despite Star Fox's comparatively poor recovery, it fits into their playstyle well and isn't something that should be buffed (except on those **** lips, which thankfully has been fixed... mostly... friggin' Lylat Cruise).

We're really looking for feedback on Sheik, Zelda, ZSS (stun jab version). We also want general opinions on Peach, Yoshi, Toon Link, Samus, Pit, Kirby, Ness, and Sonic specifically, though anything you want to contribute about any character is beneficial.

Of those, Kirbeh and to a lesser extent Samoose are the only ones I play to some extent. I haven't played either against as many human opponents as I like... but I'm here solely in support of BB, so I might as well try to explain what I think so far.

I've already expressed my opinions on Kirby: he's average and balanced with no real flaws and no real bonuses (save Kirbycide, which is virtually impossible to pull off on most characters when you need it). I don't think he really needs any changes at this point; if anything, his Stone and Copies needed to be buffed a bit, but that has already been done.

I think at this point, any possible changes to his moveset would be either forced or merely for show. He has a semi-reasonably response for just about everything that should be answered, and all the same, no problems that make him broken against anyone in particular (at least, now that Ganon's wizkick hits through inhale and grabs).

...There's really only one tiny problem. One minuscule problem. Nair's ending lag, if it doesn't hit the ground, is way too friggin' long. That's not something which needs fixing, but it can be incredibly annoying when you're trying to grab someone while standing near the ledge (especially on Spear Pillar... with its new, high bottom blast zone).

Likewise, I don't see any glaring problems with Samus at this point. She has answers and lacks issues. Her knockback is there in proper amounts now. If anything, her bombs may be a bit too powerful given her defensive style of play... although that's also part of the reason she's a strong contender now. So. Yeah.

Sonic's spring spike was and is absolutely genius. Ness and TL seem to be in good places, but, I'm not as familiar with them as I should be for that comment to bear much weight. I have yet to test Pit, ZSS, or Zelda/Shiek to much extent in light of the most recent changes... although from what little I have, Zelda's changed changed Nayru's Love is wonderful and amazing and lovely.


...

I'm going to keep asking this sort of question, but: Where are people--you, reading this message, posting in this thread--playing and testing Balanced Brawl? I'm really dying to get more human opponents for this, if not just because it's better than every other version of Brawl I've ever played, then because better feedback can result from more human opponents (i.e., more than that one friend of mine) of various skill levels and play styles.

Hey guys, if you want convenient chatting for matchmaking test out the chat on www.balancedbrawl.net on the left tab.

EDIT: Okay, well, awesome.

 

[Thinkaman]

I missed one person in the chat while I was reading that post, but at the very least I should be there at all times now.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

The chat doesn't seem to work for me. It ends up just being a white space, and disabling adblock plus for BBrawl.net doesn't change it.

 

[G.D.]

I'm having some trouble with the chat too; it appears simply as a white box no matter what I seem to do. If it helps at all, I'm using Firefox v3.6.

 

[Thinkaman]

I see, me and AA are having the same problem in Firefox, but I primarily use Chrome. I works in IE, I can confirm.

Will investigate.

Edit: Try right-clicking the white box, and hitting This Frame -> Reload Frame

 

[Fuujin]

The chat doesn't seem to work for me. It ends up just being a white space, and disabling adblock plus for BBrawl.net doesn't change it.

I had the problem too, I just right clicked and went to "This Frame > Reload Frame" and it worked.
I'm on a Mac so i dunno if it'll work for everyone.

 

[JOE!]

so yeah, from my lulzy matches ive learned the following:

Bowser Fsmash rocks

Yoshi eggroll rocks, and essentially makes him be able to do to Mk what he used to do with the nado, none of the bat's moves do enough damage in 1 hit to stop the egg XD

Ike's eruption at the edge is silly. that is all.

 

[Ussi]

Those were some fun matches JOE! XD from 1am to 4am gosh i'm tired now...

feedback on Ike:
Anyways, eruption is great at intimidating and frame trapping and just hitting those people who plan to rush their attack. Other than that i didn't use it too much outside the ledge. JOE started avoiding obvious attempts of eruption so its not broken or even easy to get kills with it. However if someone is charging a smash i can charge eruption in front of them and eat it.

I can't seem to get into the nair IASA thing... >_> then again fair is my favorite aerial for Ike... I tried to do some run of nairs & quickdraw > nair but just can't find the right time to use nair.. i'm too used to fast falling my nairs

Bowser's fsmash hits through Ike's counter, well Ike's counter comes out, Bowser eats it with SA then hits Ike with the strong part of his fsmash and kills me.... gah i was so mad at that

Feedback on Pikachu:
Skullbash to shield/air dodge is pathetic it got me punished more often than me getting anything good from it.

Random:
Jiggly can rest me at 50% and i survive and make it down to Ike fsmash her before her cooldown is done.... (Lower the cooldown on rest!)

I rode the wind with eruption... most epic wind boomerang fail ever

 

[JOE!]

yeah, that was stupid....wait, why wasnt rest buffed?!

anywho, feedback on yoshi:

He still has a bit of trouble killing, but other than that Id put him very high on the "tier list", he just has alot of survivability and damage racking options when it's not 4am and im tired....lol

Another odd note, specifically about Yoshi vs Ike: apparently Ike's hurtbox doesnt respond well to Yoshi's tongue, as I'd Egg lay/grab, the tongue will actually touch Ike...but nothing would happen to him o_O

Wolf: Still solid, as I said, but i think the increased KB on his aerials messed with his juggle game just a bit...

Edit @ ussi's Edit:

yeah, Ike seems to just destroy link in this...

 

[Ussi]

Yoshi does have trouble killing, but his kill moves (downsmash and uair) at least kill at 110%s so I have to actually be trying to avoid them otherwise i die. Ike vs Yoshi also deals with the fact Ike can outrange Yoshi's kill moves too

Edit: Ike vs Link

Link still can gimp with his arrows, one hit with them and Ike is in a tough spot. But that eruption really is useful against Link in hitting him out of his recovery.. and absorbing all hits while riding the wind... I think it just needs to be played around with more, cause Link can do some nasty stuff, i just think wifi lag gets in the way with such a technical character like Link.

 

[JOE!]

true, but yoshi has the mobilty edge, and eggs.

and didnt you notice that about the tongue at all? especially...i think it was like 5th to last match on PS1, i kept hitting you with the tongue and NOTHING happened o_O

 

[Ussi]

I did notice that.. i was like "wow i'm not getting grabbed o_O... I think i'll go along with it..." either its wifi being stupid or something cause i remember yoshi's tongue has a tipper hitbox too

edit: Yoshi may have AIR mobility and eggs but neither of those two give him kills.