Balanced Brawl Version 2 Release

[JOE!]

why is like nobody ever on the chat anymore?

 

[A2ZOMG]

I'm actually on the chat all day, but I only check it during specific hours.

 

[JOE!]

on another note, i think wolf may actually be a slight cut above the rest here....


off the top of my head I dont see anyone who outright beats him now without shenanigans, his nigh-impossible to (now) gimp recovery, and just overall movement and buffs...

 

[A2ZOMG]

Kirby is pretty good vs Wolf actually. Those grab combos he has are pretty good, and Wolf still has to respect Kirby's D-air offstage which can hit Wolf out of his recovery.

I don't think Wolf destroys anyone though, so while I think he's probably the best in the game, the entire cast should be able to do okay against him for the most part.

 

[JOE!]

....you know he can Down B out of the grab comboes, right?


or better yet, shine through jump cancel, then reset the spacing...

 

[MadMel]

I need help!!
Totally new to this.
Anyways - I've downloaded the PAL version, added it to to my SD card, put the SD card in my wii, turn it on, went to SSBB etc etc.
However, when I go to the stage builder, it loads as normal (before anyone asks, all custom stages have been deleted). I press every button, loaded the game and plugged in the SD card a different intervals, but nothing works.
Is it just because it's the PAL version, or is something wrong with my SD card?
Any info would help =D

 

[FinalDoomGuy]

I need help!!
Totally new to this.
Anyways - I've downloaded the PAL version, added it to to my SD card, put the SD card in my wii, turn it on, went to SSBB etc etc.
However, when I go to the stage builder, it loads as normal (before anyone asks, all custom stages have been deleted). I press every button, loaded the game and plugged in the SD card a different intervals, but nothing works.
Is it just because it's the PAL version, or is something wrong with my SD card?
Any info would help =D

PAL has a different method for starting it.

You need to use Riivolution which is done by going into the SD card menu in the Wii menu. A pop up will come up, say yes, and then Riivolution will come up. Go to Install (Which installs a shortcut to it on the Wii Menu) and then Play, and there you are.

 

[MadMel]

Madness!
TY very much. =D

Edit: Fascinating - got error #004 - will need to do some fiddling I guess

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Ganon vs Jigglypuff is reminiscent of the match-up in melee from what I've seen. Jigglypuff probably wins in both games, but it's fairly close. She has good gimps and can get small damage easily, but Ganon is just so ridiculous at killing her and due to her nature is always in position to do so that she has to play really carefully. The match-up is pretty crazy-fun in any case; both sides have to play so differently, and each side has a lot of opportunity.

 

[MadMel]

Madness!
TY very much. =D

Edit: Fascinating - got error #004 - will need to do some fiddling I guess

Just checked - I have version 4.3E... F*cksticks.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Ganon vs Jiggs is MUCH better for Ganon in Melee because Ganon actually has the tools to wall her approach (L-canceled F-air and B-air which have MORE RANGE in Melee) AND combos her into kill moves really easily due to a better grab and a better D-throw in that game. Ganon's recovery is also better in Melee.

Without the ability to throw out low level F-airs and B-airs with as much safety, Jiggs pretty much has her way with Ganon provided she understands to stay above Ganon's F-tilt and wzkick range. Jiggs still gimps Ganon extremely easily in Brawl, but Ganon doesn't really have the tools to get momentum on her the way he did in Melee. His strong throws including Flame Choke certainly can help him occasionally, but it is much harder for Ganon to get a grab in this game.

 

[Pandanda]

Hey there, I'm a PAL player who's just recently tried getting BBrawl to work. Unfortunately, I've updated my Wii's loader to 4.3 and upon reading this thread, I've found out that Bannerbomb and Riivolution don't work with the latest update. Is there a work-around to this yet, or an alternate program to use in place of Bannerbomb/Riivolution?

 

[G.D.]

Is it possible to play BBrawl with a pirated "back-up," usb-mounted version of the game? Or am I simply gonna have to go out and buy a retail version (again)?

Also: Why has no one been in balancedbrawl.net's chat lately? ...Or for that matter, even in this thread? It's surprisingly hard to find someone willing to play this elsewhere.

 

[libertyernie]

Is it possible to play BBrawl with a pirated "back-up," usb-mounted version of the game? Or am I simply gonna have to go out and buy a retail version (again)?

Does your loader program support Ocarina codes? If so, it should work.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Is it possible to play BBrawl with a pirated "back-up," usb-mounted version of the game? Or am I simply gonna have to go out and buy a retail version (again)?

Also: Why has no one been in balancedbrawl.net's chat lately? ...Or for that matter, even in this thread? It's surprisingly hard to find someone willing to play this elsewhere.

I know it's possible to make work with non-official copies of Brawl, but we don't officially support those. This is not for ethical reasons; it's because we wouldn't be able to handle the technical support, and neither of us have experience with that.

So, it should be possible for you to get it working if you can load large (over 255 line) Ocarina files. Use the gekko version as a base, not Riivolution. Different loaders have different capabilities in that regard.

 

[G.D.]

Hm, well, I switched to a different backup-loader--one which supposedly supported Ocarina codes--and that seems to have done the trick. Thanks!

...Now if only I could find more people to play this version against. V:

 

[A2ZOMG]

I'm pretty desperate to find people to play BBrawl with as well. Hopefully I can recruit an irl friend to support this within a few days.

I'm thinking that Lucario in the next version could probably use more help. As of the recent BBR discussion of Lucario, Pierce made some good points as to why Lucario is an underwhelming character. He has good walls, is fairly hard to pin down, and can play a reasonably decent keep away game, but he has trouble pressuring his opponent and is very easily option limited safely due to his relatively slow options and poor shieldgrab, and getting edgeguarded easily puts a limit on his survivability (which alone isn't unreasonable, but he needs more ways to create good openings). His F-air isn't a good enough move to establish solid zoning against most characters either. What I think Lucario could use in the next release is a D-tilt that more consistently sets up a combo opportunity, and slightly buffing his throws or pummel should be considered as well. It's worthwhile to know that characters can shieldgrab Lucario out of the first hit of F-tilt as well, which is BAD against DDD, so that could be a point of fixing.

I now think Ganondorf goes even with Lucario at worst, in fact I'm almost ready to say Ganon outright wins. Although he has to approach, RCO lag no longer hinders him on the ledge which gives him a DEVASTATING edgeguard game against Lucario where if he forces him to land on stage with Up-B (which will happen when Ganondorf lands his F-tilt in the right situations), he basically gets a free Smash (Ganon keep in mind can ledgehop laglessly with his midair jump and an airdodge). Lucario's camping doesn't really stop Ganon from closing distance, and his short shieldgrab means there is a little more level of safety for Ganon to approach in general. While Lucario's walls are still good, Ganon has some faster attacks that can break walls very easily in this game. Ganon just has some problems challenging Lucario directly in the air and he's not the best character at safely option limiting Lucario's dodges and other things, which can still get him punished fairly hard in general since he's still easy to gimp.

 

[Mario Orchestra]

Why does this download say "please insert multi volume disk" when I try to extract the folder? I can't extract it now. All other folders extract fine. What the heck is wrong with this folder?

 

[Pyre]

Very cool, I'll definitely have to try this one out.

Only problem I had was with "Breakout" behind the video. Gahr.

 

[deepseadiva]

That song is great!

 

[Mario Orchestra]

They have new songs added to BalancedBrawl in the download?

 

[Pyre]

It was more of a fear that it was the Miley Cyrus version of "Breakout".

 

[libertyernie]

Balanced Brawl doesn't come with any music. People just like to put unrelated songs on YouTube videos.

 

[Mario Orchestra]

Why does balanced brawl give me this multi volume disk error when trying to extract the folder? It says I must insert it into the disk on the computer before I can proceed.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I don't know; that's bizarre and should not happen. I'm unfamiliar with that error in general, and it's probably an issue with your computer. What OS are you running?

 

[Mario Orchestra]

Windows 7. Can you please download it and see what happens?

 

[Supreme Dirt]

I downloaded it fine. Maybe it corrupted during download? Try redownloading it.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Well that isn't really necessary anymore, since he actually came to me on AIM and was patient enough to let me fileshare it to him. He wanted to use it as a homebrew app or something, which I don't really know much about, but I'm pretty sure he got the necessary files.

 

[Shade²]

Alright! Long time no see...

I was finally able to get a clean Brawl dump on my hard drive, and everythings works fine without hacks, and also with the File Replacement code 2.1 (some stages crash though, like the Fire Emblem one). I used a Hex-editor to understand how was created an Ocarina file, then added succesfully the File replacement code in the BalancedBrawlv2 release gct. That's where I am now stuck... I try to load the game via my favorite USB loader (Reminder: I own an original, I do not encourage piracy in ANY ways, but my Wii lens is out of use, and for information I use µloader), but it doesn't even boot... Before I was "able" to get a green screen, but now it doesn't get out of the loading DVD image and freezes. Maybe there is another way of doing it... Let say, when are the files from the SD loaded by Riivolution: before or after the gct file? If they are loaded after, then a double-gct should work.

If it doesn't work, then I'll stay with my half-completed BBrawl and enjoy it, until I get another Wii (I've seen hack-cleaned Wiis detected to have been hacked, and sent back to there owners without further fixing).

I'll try the double-gct and post result afterward, but now is the time to go to bed...

EDIT: does the File replacement code 2.1 for PAL detects shortcuts to a folder like a folder? Let's say, I include a shortcut to RSBP/pfmenu2 in the RSBP/pf folder... will it load the pfmenu2?

 

[Mario Orchestra]

This app that he gave me has no code folders. If anyone can please fix the download that would be appreciated. All that I have is private and data folders.

 

[ぱみゅ]

This app that he gave me has no code folders. If anyone can please fix the download that would be appreciated. All that I have is private and data folders.

Probably because it's not an app.
If you load the game via Stack Smash (the one in the Download Instructions) you should have no problem.
And the data folder contains the main .gct used to load the game.

 

[Mario Orchestra]

But can I use it with existing data on an SD card? I don't want to use it with an empty one because I do not have one of those.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Personally I think you're complicating things by not following the instructions on the BBrawl site...but you can do either two things. Study the structure of your other Brawl apps and copy one of them and replace the files that need to be replaced with analogous ones from BBrawl 2, or just back up your SD card contents on your computer and go with the easy route...

Eh since I don't have anything better to do, I am pretty confident that I can come up with a tier list for this game.

AA
Wolf
Falco
Pikachu
Peach
Zelda+Sheik

A
Squirtle
Olimar
G&W
ROB
Marth
Snake
Fox
Metaknight
Mario
Diddy
Sheik
Luigi
Pokemon Trainer (overall)

B
Yoshi
Ness
Pit
Link
Samus
King Dedede
Jigglypuff
ZSS
Donkey Kong
Toon Link
Ike
Captain Falcon
Sonic
Wario
Charizard
Zelda
Ice Climbers

C
Kirby
Ganondorf
Ivysaur
Lucas
Lucario
Bowser

For the most part most of the characters in this game are good and you would need the best of top ranked players to start showing where characters unfavorable matchups make them too hard to use in tournament. Anyone in the A tier and above is fairly secure for tournament and is liable to win under a skilled player.

I think most people aren't going to be surprised when I say Wolf is the best overall since he's well rounded in damage per hit, KO potential, and survivability. Don't get me wrong though, alone he's not going to render most of the cast unviable since usually his matchups should be no more than 55/45 in his favor since intelligent powershielding can get him punished, and his juggles and edgeguard don't **** anyone really hard.

If someone else is going to be a matchup offender however, this is where I get to Falco. Falco's playstyle is more specialized, and his survivability and to a lesser extent his ability to KO is less secure. However more characters are going to have problems dealing with a laser and SideB camping Falco due to how hard it is to punish significantly. Wolf however is a character that should have the advantage vs Falco, as well as Fox, as they both have good ways of punishing Falco for committing to his strategy, while he can't kill them quite as easily. Marth vs Falco isn't much different either, and ROB should be eager to try this matchup again with his new throw game being a significant threat to Falco's survivability.

Pikachu is a character who benefits more from hard matchups becoming easier. He is immune to counterpicking for the most part, and one of his biggest problems is solved by giving him a new fairly easy KO setup. A well played Pikachu doesn't have any insurmountable obstables, although G&W will still be an annoying matchup for him.

Peach is in a similar situation to Pikachu, but at any rate she's a solid character with above average damage output, a good recovery, good approach, and good edgeguarding. She's fairly difficult to stop from dictating the match due to her solid zoning options and she can punish a mistake hard. Marth can still make her life somewhat miserable, although he has to tread much more carefully in this matchup.

Zelda and Sheik together have all the tools you could want in a character. Sheik is one of the most reliable damage dealers by far with some of the most ridiculous punish and vertical spacing options in the game, and an intimidating closeup game, and alone would be a pretty solid character for tournament. Zelda has some of the safest KO moves in the game and plays keep-away well, and with a slightly improved recovery, new approach and poke tools, the duo supports each other well and is a threat at all times.

Anyhow moving to the next tier, with characters who generally should be watched out for as well.

Olimar is pretty much the same and now beats Metaknight like he was kinda designed to, and his iffy matchup against Snake is clearly better for him now. He doesn't make it to the AA tier since Peach and Falco are there to stop him, although his matchup against Wolf is probably fine for him. Marth and Mario however are hard matchups in his own tier that he has to watch out for, especially the latter who is a significantly buffed character who already was pretty good in that matchup.

G&W is an overall good character with high damage output and good KO options and edgeguards. He's a little slower than the other characters in the AA tier, Marth is not in his favor, and Wolf now probably wins slightly. His ability to stay competent on the stage list is his main asset.

Only two things hold back ROB, and it's a bad shield and a bad ledge getup, which unfortunately is pretty significant. He has to maintain momentum in his matches, but now has the tools to feasibly contain it. And most of his bad matchups became more manageable, while now ROB is a great character at scoring a KO when it's time to. ROB is good at getting grabs, and now with one of the better grab games, he's a force to be reckoned with. G&W is still a very hard matchup for ROB however, as he gains momentum against ROB very well, and can make it hard for ROB to get momentum back.

Marth is still a great character, but he must be more careful about his F-air zoning, which does less damage and knockback, and as a result is not quite as safe and rewarding. The removal of RCO lag however is a pretty good thing for him against Metaknight. Although he has a lot of good matchups, he has to be careful on the new stage list which can give him some problems. Metaknight still should be a problem for Marth fundamentally and Sheik in this game is probably a hard matchup for Marth as well.

Snake's biggest assets are still brokenly fast tilts with huge range, and making them weaker automatically gives Snake some problems as now he must compete with a cast who can kill him at respectable percents and juggle him more efficiently than the other way around, so some matchups like Sheik, Marth, Mario, Ness, Link, and Samus are all much harder for him. That isn't to say his tilts aren't broken anymore, and his explosives still have to be respected by all characters as option limiters, which alone leaves him no unwinnable matchups. Making Snake's Jab combo a reliable spotdodge punisher is great news for Snake. Consistently punishing a spotdodge for 14 damage is great especially against someone like Falco.

Fox doesn't live very long and doesn't have very good pokes, but he can camp well and punish a mistake hard. His new Jab combo isn't impressive, but it's a nice safe option to consider for option limiting against dodges. ROB and Luigi however are harder matchups for him now, and I believe Ganondorf is also quite competent against Fox, if not necessarily advantaged.

Metaknight as I understand him is now disadvantaged to Wolf, Falco, Olimar, and Snake, all matchups that everyone needs to be competent in. He's still definitely a great character, but pulling a win if he loses the lead can become tough if he has to wait til 160-170 or beyond to reliably KO against the majority of the cast.

Mario is slightly disadvantaged against G&W, Marth, and Metaknight, and ROB is likely to be a difficult matchup for him as well. He's overall however a good character with some great KO moves and spacers, and some technical but solid closeup options, but if he needs to maintain a lead, getting it in the first place can be difficult due to his low damage per hit. Of course scoring the first KO with relative ease can sometimes relieve that problem. Fundamentally it still can be hard to do when Mario has relatively weak forward options and when his fireballs by design don't usually start true combos. He does pretty well against Wolf, Peach, and Pikachu though.

Diddy is more or less the same, and it's not necessarily to his benefit. Banana locks are less powerful and his KO power is still on the low end. All in all nobody should be surprised he's good, but his game isn't outstandingly powerful enough to pull him to the next tier, and should he lose control of his Bananas, there are a number of matchups where it is more costly for him.

Luigi is a great character at first glance seemingly taking after Mario for the better, but that's not the entire story. Improved Dash attack is a great move for reacting to a dodge and for edgetrapping anything that isn't a ledge attack. Fireball buff is not just effective, but opens up a lot of room for creativity, giving him new edgeguard, combo, and approach options. He really still only has trouble actually legitimately setting up a kill in some matchups, and he rarely gimps or offstage KOs, so his game sometimes lacks the exact offensive tool he wants for the situation at hand.

The Pokemon Trainer in general is a good character, but suffers from bad recoveries, good camping, and Charizard and Ivysaur having some matchups that fundamentally give them problems. Squirtle alone is great, probably beats Falco (gets in, KOs and gimps more easily). Charizard is useful, not really because he has good matchups (he outright loses to Ganon lol), but because of his weight and the potential to punish a mistake extremely hard with him. Ivysaur is okay but still pretty easy to gimp, and that can cost the PT if it gets out of hand.

The next tier honestly isn't that much different in terms of character viability, but is separated from the previous one in that the characters have fewer particularly good matchups against the characters above them.

Yoshi is the star of this tier, and with his surprise factor, he could probably pull out a win in tournament, since most of his matchups in general got better for the most part. A lot of people still don't punish Egg Roll consistently, and the ability for it to break through some pokes and projectiles for a good hit makes it quite useful. Buffed D-smash is AMAZING for Yoshi and is what really makes him a new threat, with the ability to now actually kill things reasonably. Extra shield damage on aerials is kinda gimmicky. His approach still isn't exactly good, but his buffs do help prevent his opponent from fundamentally shieldcamping him.

Ness's better shield poking is obviously a good thing now that basically people have to chase after him to avoid letting him have his way offensively, but he still has zoning issues so Marth and G&W still aren't exactly fun or easy for him. And Peach iirc is supposed to be pretty troublesome for him as well. He has a decent shot against Falco and Wolf though.

Pit is a pretty good character, but he's still a little slow and Metaknight and Marth obviously are going to make him remember that even though he has a more powerful F-tilt and Dash attack to try to play with when zoning. Mario and Luigi are also going to make him suffer a bit when they get in with better closeup games. He's good against Pikachu though as I recall.

Link is still limited up close and easily juggled and edgeguarded, and he also has the problem of having a mediocre throw game which makes his grab not very threatening and risky to do in various matchups. However his new found KO power means making a mistake can cost his opponent dearly, and what is especially good for Link is the relative safety he has on a number of his new and improved KO options. His recovery while still not particularly good I should say is significantly better now that landing on stage is safer as well as getting slightly more distance. Buffed arrows are versatile in everything Link does. All in all while I think a lot of the upper tier characters, particularly Sheik still can make it hard for him to get control, I could definitely see a skilled Link main like KirinBlaze winning a BBrawl tournament.

Samus in a lot of ways works like Link, with less less destructive force on midrange spacers, but more ways to stay elusive and more consistent control up close should the fight come to that location. Despite this, Samus's matchups aren't too different from Link's, and most of the same characters give them trouble, but I give the nod to Link as I perceive him to be better against Wolf and Pikachu, while Samus I believe would have a better chance against Peach and ROB.

King Dedede is a specialty character. If Smash has a grappler, he embodies that concept pretty closely with its advantages and disadvantages. He wants to get close and grab you. He doesn't have a real approach besides sliding shield, but at the very least his grabs do much damage and provided he can land them enough, he can score KOs this way. Falco and Fox are still nasty to this character fundamentally, as well as Olimar, although Olimar does need to worry a little more about getting edgeguarded if he gets grabbed in this matchup. Samus now is a real threat to DDD as well, able to outspace him easily and threaten him with a KO from charge shot when DDD is forced offstage. Besides that his matchups against most of the cast are probably fine for him, and overall he's a more viable character due to other characters losing abuses on him.

Jigglypuff I don't see as having very many really hard matchups. Maybe G&W, Snake, and Ike in this game? This character is pretty flexible and has great spacing, and contrary to her appearance, she's quite capable of punishing a mistake pretty hard. The potential to bring a game to timeout better than most of the cast deserves a nod as well.

To be fair I have very little experience with ZSS. I do think that however that if there is anything going for her, it is the lack of experience most players have playing against her. Improving some of her bad moves well...is a good thing. And she can give some characters a hard time when she gets momentum. At the moment I believe she could do well in a BBrawl tournament, but the ability to neutralize most of her options with shield (due to her limited poke and grab options) may eventually hold her back.

Donkey Kong is pretty average in BBrawl. I would probably go so far to say he's one of the most "balanced" characters in terms of strengths and weaknesses in a sense, as opposed to "well rounded". He has some good tools, including some powerful poke and spacing options and some big punishers that kill obscenely early. He's a momentum oriented character and that's pretty much going to be his draw to fame. He will however have some problems fundamentally when you go to how he's a pretty weak character at punishing forward effectively (like Mario), and then he is one of the most easily comboed and edgetrapped characters in the game. While he does have a lot going for him offensively, he's still an exploitable character fundamentally. Mario gives this character a good deal of trouble as well as Olimar.

Toon Link is okay but doesn't stand out too much anymore. He used to have above average KO power, and while his KO power still is quite good, his damage per hit is still well below average. Outside of a decent matchup with G&W on neutrals, I can't see this character standing out in any other matchups. Partly because it's difficult for him to actually set up his kills safely, and because his throws aren't a really huge threat either.

Ike can get by, but still for the most part will run into walls against conservative playstyles. He does now at least have a real vertical spacing game and ways to juggle and edgeguard with some semblance of reliability, although his weak throw game is still a letdown. Characters like Snake, Falco, and ROB are still uphill by design for Ike, although he can now have more to do against characters like G&W and Marth.

Captain Falcon is a difficult character to use, so I could be underrating him a little. On the other hand Falcon still gets a headache when it's time to kill someone, since he still needs to trick someone or edgeguard/juggle at fairly high damage to get the KOs he needs. The Falcon Kick cancel does a wonderful job of giving Falcon something to do to get out of juggles and to increase his mobility. This character does however have really high damage potential either through his powerful followups after U-throw, shenanigans with Falcon Kick and Up-B, and Jab followups. It will take a Falcon user who can make the necessary reads for kills to truly make this character shine.

Sonic does kinda low damage and doesn't kill you very early, nor is he really able to land his kill moves easily. This is compensated for by the fact he's hard to pin down and has a solid recovery, which helps him extend his life. Aside from the improved D-tilt to make him less useless, his Spring edgeguard is fairly matchup specific in terms of effectiveness, although his improved D-air is pretty legit. Characters who can set up fairly easy KOs on him are a problem for him. Mario for example would probably be harder for Sonic to deal with than Luigi.

Eh Wario, nerfing his F-smash is a pretty big deal for him, as the move besides not killing as early well doesn't shield push as much anymore, which means it's less safe. Honestly though I could just be overstating how much he got nerfed, since he really should overall be fine with his spacing game which is infamous for being good in timeouts. I do think however he is a little limited when it comes to edgeguards, and Falco still beats him very solidly, and probably moreso with no chaingrab to threaten him anymore. He does better against Marth, DDD, and Snake, but everyone else is now much more able to take him on, which might be why I am not impressed with him.

Zelda really shouldn't be played alone. She barely has enough to scrape by with with an F-tilt poke, Naryu's love movement, and a fast dash attack to make up for a slow grab, although she has an easier time against DDD, Mario, the Ice Climbers, maybe a few other random characters.

The Ice Climbers are probably better than I give them credit for at the moment, although I will still berate them for having a below average recovery and generally becoming very iffy when separated. Maybe an amazing Ice Climber main can however prove that they are more than just a gimmick reliant on chaingrabs, and then we will see that the power buffs provided to these two characters are in fact something to be afraid of.

In the next tier, the characters I mention I believe have several clearly stupid matchups that will get in the way of them otherwise being viable characters.

Kirby can't really do much against G&W and Marth. He can't really stop them from controlling him, especially when being juggled or edgeguarded. King DDD is probably also worse for this character, with his new extra damage off of throw being a big deal for Kirby, while also not being pleasant for Kirby to recover against.

Ganondorf is quite bad against Peach, Mario, Jigglypuff, and the Ice Climbers, who all have a way of being very hard for Ganon to hit with his most important moves, and for the most part these characters also can do well gimping him.

Lucas has some big trouble against G&W and Marth, kinda the same way like Kirby. Sheik also really really messes this character up, being able to get in on him easily and gimp him very effectively, leaving him very few chances to do much of anything.

Lucario loses pretty badly to DDD. Not getting chaingrabbed anymore is great but he still isn't coming back very easily once he's edgeguarded, and he can't really poke DDD with any real safety for the most part. Besides that there are honestly a lot of characters he's not very good against since he really just doesn't have very good pokes, and he has a bad grab. He just has some walls here and there and can punish you hard if he lives long enough for Aura to do its work.

Bowser is overall the worst character in this game. Honestly I can't say for sure if he has any favorable matchups. He definitely has some bad matchups wherever you look. Olimar is still nasty to him. Link takes him down quite easily in this game. Ganondorf and Kirby win against this character. In this game, being so easily juggled, and having a recovery and ledge getup as horrible as Bowser's is something unaffordable. Especially unafforable for a character whose strengths are mainly on the ground, Bowser is a character who really cannot afford to take as many hits as his character design requests.

 

[Steeler]

that's a good post. i disagree with some stuff but i appreciate all the analysis. having done a tier thing for bbrawl months ago, i know how much work it is to look at each character. well done.

idea

ability to have horizontal control over where bowser goes with the bowser bomb (as he rises)?

 

[A2ZOMG]

Quick random thing that just occurred to me: Make Pit's SideB have transcendent priority. This will mainly give him a realistic option against the Tornado without negatively affecting anything related to balance. It won't change the fact that every character can easily punish it if he doesn't use it intelligently.

I got lazy on elaborating on the characters that I thought were in the lowest tier.

Kirby anyhow has standard spacing, some damage off throws, and he can edgeguard predictable recoveries pretty well. Otherwise he's pretty gimmicky, doesn't have very good approaches, and doesn't get out of juggles/edgeguards that well. Now that ROB actually can threaten Kirby with his throws, Kirby now loses that matchup as well, which imo was Kirby's favor in vBrawl.

All of Ganon's stuff is mainly anti-this or that for obscene damage. Most importantly his F-tilt and Wizkick are pretty much anti-horizontal zoning, which is the dominant form of zoning in this game. The reason why he loses badly against the characters I mentioned is well, those characters can get out of that range where he likes to anti-horizontal zone. His anti-air is still generally slow and limited, so that will hold him back in those matchups. Against the Ice Climbers however it boils down to Ganon just really losing all of his practical options when going up against Desynched Ice Blocks, which he essentially can't shut down with a simple wizkick or F-tilt (wizkick startup gets interrupted and F-tilt well, I don't think I have to explain).

Lucas suffers from generally poor setup options. While he has the tools to put pressure and space when necessary, it all leads to nothing, and generally he can't safely punish a spotdodge extremely hard. While he has some strong KO moves, he needs shenanigans to score a kill, most of which are unable to cover roll-aways very effectively. His grab is also pretty mediocre, and the reward doesn't justify its risk. His recovery can be good, but it is also retardedly hard to pull off a proper Zap Jump. And then when you get to the characters who don't care about his spacing game (nobody worries about Lucas's pressure game because it usually leads to nothing), he basically has nothing left to defeat you with.

I believe Ganondorf for example actually beats Lucario in this game. Lucario's walls are slow and Ganon has tools with which he can react to those walls and punish hard. Intelligently covering the forward roll generally puts the risk reward in Ganondorf's favor, and he also has an extremely lethal ability to edgehog, ledgehop airdodge, and punish the landing lag of Lucario's Up-B with a forward smash. Mario now also beats Lucario solidly, leaving fairly few openings with good B-air, fireball, and D-air spacing, and now being able to kill Lucario respectably early with a Jab canceled D-smash or B-throw means Lucario doesn't have nearly as easy of a time abusing Aura against Mario. Lucario's best matchup is probably Lucas, who has trouble really punishing Lucario's dodges hard, and also doesn't have the best options for punishing Lucario's recovery either.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

So, some stuff....

First of all, if Angel Ring had transcendent priority, it would echo through a lot more match-ups than just the MK match-up (Tornado isn't that big of a deal in Bbrawl, by design, anyway). Not being able to clash with stuff is generally pretty scary for most characters, and spreading around more transcendent priority is something I'd be loathe to do.

Anyway, to go down your list... I'm going to avoid saying too much of "I agree with X placement" or the contrary, though I'll do it a little, but I'll instead focus on the reasonings one way or another.

With Wolf, some of his problems are being a bit glossed over. Wolf's moveset is pretty high commitment, and the way a lot of his moves, well, move him has a way of endangering him. For instance, the way he throws himself forward during his jab combo can make going for that super fast damage and interrupt a riskier prospect than for many characters in a way frame data just doesn't communicate. There's also the fact that his projectile is Lucas Pk Fire like in terms of being able to tack on nice damage from medium range but not really being an effective zoning move at all in the vast majority of match-ups. I do feel pretty good about Wolf being a quality character in Bbrawl (I'm especially proud of his reformed nair), but I think it's easy to overrate him.

I will say that Falco is definitely less polarizing than before with his new dthrow. It's also interesting to think how Falco deals with a really broad stage list like Bbrawl pushes for. I suspect it's not actually that bad for Falco, but it's a thought. Overall Falco is interesting. In a sense he's nerfed since he didn't really get buffs but has a clearly overall worse dthrow (though it's still a pretty great dthrow). On the other hand, a lot of the stupid stuff against him is gone (see especially: Pikachu), and his often unspoken weakness to ledge stalling is a non-factor now.

Pikachu comments are reasonable enough, no comment on placement.

Peach is hard to play. This isn't a terribly useful comment I suppose, but I'm throwing it out there. I agree with her being probably near the top of Bbrawl if pushed though.

Zelda & Sheik comments are reasonable enough. Internal testing suggested that using both as a team was maybe slightly overpowered, but we had little option but to "ship" like this in order to throw a bone to the people who absolutely insist on using one or the other alone which is nearly unavoidably massively crippling in a game in which Zelda is non-horrible.

Olimar took so much effort for a character who barely got changed, funny about that. Commentary is reasonable enough, no real comment on placement.

G&W is awesome, otherwise no comment.

Yeah, his grab game was the missing piece of the puzzle for R.O.B.; I'm happy with how he turned out.

While not as flagrant as in Bbrawl version 1 in which Marth was obviously top tier (oops!), I still think Marth remains very scary via indirect buffing. That is, the overall changes in the game's balance work naturally in Marth's favor even if the direct changes do not. I think most of the cast just kinda doesn't like fighting Marth still so a more balanced game in which more characters are in play only helps this guy.

Snake comments are reasonable enough, no comment on placement.

Fox is pretty terrifying if played by a fast enough player; most internal testing put him above Wolf and very high. He's not really designed for poke wars in any case; on the offense, he's more of a "right in your face" kinda guy who is ridiculously good at that but has already lost if he is trying to outpoke you. Luckily, he has all the mobility he needs.

Meta Knight comments are reasonable enough, no comment on placement.

Mario is fun now. I don't really have anything useful to say about him at the moment.

Diddy Kong comments are reasonable enough, no comment on placement.

With Luigi, I would point out that his overall style of mobility isn't really that favorable, and his range is really bad. That's the main thing that holds Luigi back from being ridiculous with things like his massive KO power and amazing attack speed. I'm not so much disagreeing with what you said as adding that Luigi's main issue in most match-ups is getting inside and getting going, and yeah, the big idea with Fireball buff was to be flexible enough to make that less of a nightmare in worst case scenario matchups.

PT's learning curve is really high, but I'm very confident he's quite solid. Overall a really complex character though; divining his real match-ups is ridiculous.

Yoshi is really goofy, but I'm pretty confident he works. No real comment beyond that.

No real comment on Ness.

Pit is really versatile but never really made a splash in standard Brawl though good Pit players made themselves threats. I don't think much has changed for him overall, but it doesn't really make him easy to predict.

Link is really fun now, and what I for some reason didn't expect (but should have) is that aerial Spin Attack low to the ground is legitimately useful for offensive purposes in this version. I never thought Link was given much of a fair shake in standard Brawl so I'm pretty optimistic about what he can do in this game.

Samus is a balance nightmare and also pretty different from Link. I'm pretty happy with how she turned out, but I can't overstate enough how hard this character is to fit into the overall balanced game due to how polarizing she would have been in standard Brawl if she weren't so flat out bad.

With DDD, I feel his good poking game is something that should always be stated as a part of how his overall character design works. Yeah, he is kinda the smash spin on the grappler style. Otherwise no comment on this character.

Jigglypuff is kinda underexplored even in standard Brawl. It's very hard to say much about her.

There is so little reason no one understands ZSS match-ups even today, but it is what it is. She's an all around solid character with a really bad grab; it's always interesting to see how that goes when pushed.

DK is really easy to underrate. What you have to remember is that this guy hits like a truck, and he has a really, really good bair for basically every purpose as well as really practical super armor that makes him really scary to attack with a fully charged Giant Punch ready on a risk-reward scale (if he guesses right and armors through your attack with that, you lose way more than you ever could have gained by hitting him). In standard Brawl tournament play this character has actually done quite well until DDD inevitably puts a little rain on his parade; if Bbrawl were more widely played, I have always kinda expected him to really take off.

Toon Link used to have above average KO power? That's news to me. The Toon Link I always was dealing with was all around pretty great other than mediocre KO potential. IMO improved fsmash is kinda an unsung hero here, but Toon Link is kinda like Pit in standard Brawl in the sense that he has a ton going for him but never really made much of a splash even though a few players showed he really did work. It's hard to say too much about him like that.

Ike is really scary, but I don't really feel like getting into Ike right now.

Captain Falcon is his own beast and really totally reformed from standard Brawl. He's one of the hardest guys to place for me just because of how different he is.

With Sonic, his damage output isn't really bad (it's kinda average; a lot of his random moves do surprisingly much % damage), and his low KO power is somewhat offset but how easy it is for him to be constantly sneaking in those low reward low damage moves (such as dash attack). He is, of course, one of those extreme characters.

Wario in the end is changed very little by most measures. You can take that as a good thing or a bad thing I guess.

ICs are such a silly character. In some crazy hypothetical sense they're one of the best characters, but ICs have always been a low player base character with very large and unique weaknesses to offset their natural large advantages. Dunno what else to say.

In my experience, a big mistake a lot of Kirby players make is literally never using Stone which is seriously not only a good move but a really important one to Kirby. A Kirby player who is willing to use it as a predictive juggle escape is way harder to fight. I'm also not sure gimmicky is a fair way to describe him. Most of his moveset consists of fairly basic moves that are very functional but not quite stand-out, and having a super powerful fsmash is more of a simple tool than a gimmick. He's not really flashy in any way, but to me, Kirby seems pretty functional. Powers are also fun and another thing some Kirby players, for some reason I don't understand and completely to their own detriment, literally never use.

I would remind you that Ice Blocks do very, very low damage so if ICs are getting spammy with them, utilt wind from Ganon is actually a reasonable damage trade. He also practically insta-kills Nana if he gets a chance, and if he can force ICs to jump, he's in a very powerful position. It's generally not especially hard for Ganon to hit Mario or Jigglypuff in general; I just don't agree with that assessment at all. As per Peach, that match-up is clearly annoying for Ganon, but she does find it quite hard to avoid leaving him those little holes to make himself a huge threat and won't be able to actually get away with just turnip camping so much as she can make the match very, very slow.

Lucas has really high damage output for the kind of character he is which makes a lot of his moveset largely ends of themselves. His grab is IMO pretty good, but as a tether it's just used in fundamentally different ways than normal grabs. His dsmash is basically the best anti-spotdodge move you will find, and if that's not fast enough for a situation, he could just use his high damage jab. I don't really see Lucas losing to spotdodging in any way; if anything, so strongly countering spotdodges is one of Lucas's strengths. I'm not really sure you understand Lucas very well to be honest.

You make it sound like Lucario, who hasn't changed much, is a fundamentally bad character. The evidence from standard Brawl puts the guy as respectable, and the overall changes to other characters which raise the bar for KO moves and indirectly hurt Aura I feel are compensated by all the small Lucario buffs. Or maybe you're just saying a former high tier who is probably not overly moved is the new lower bar? I don't really see him as low but dunno maybe, but I definitely thing it would be a stretch to paint him as bad in any real sense.

Bowser has his issues, but he also has a lot of strengths. I'll just disclose that Thinkaman and I had really funny Bowser conversations internally. My consistent position was that he was really bad in standard Brawl but was being improved a lot. His consistent position was that Bowser wasn't quite that bad in standard Brawl but was in a bad position in Bbrawl. I think what you see on this Bowser is overall somewhat of a compromise wherein he's buffed more than I would have probably done on my own but maintains very clear weaknesses. The only real resolution would be more play, but that is proving difficult.

That full response was time consuming, but I'm doing what I can by making myself accessible here. I think we can't do much more in terms of marketing (we did make the awesome website, all the demonstration videos, the few random small game news articles) and kinda get depressed at how we failed to catch on, but I'll definitely be around if anyone can get some traction on this and get some more play.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Lucas is good at punishing spot dodges. His n-air almost always punishes a side-step. If he rapid jabs at you, you're likely getting it punished.

I wouldn't say that his d-smash is really good at punishing the spot-dodge. If he's punishing the spot-dodge, he is only hitting with the third hit of d-smash. That right there is not going to kill until stuff like f-tilt kills. It generally just stales one of his best punish moves. Speaking of punish moves. I would REALLY like to see the SDI factor on the first hit of his u-smash set to 0. Honestly, the move becomes easier to SDI out of at kill percents. When Lucas should be using it as kill move. It's really just more comparable to something like Ivy's N-B. Ivy's N-b is mistakenly a "great move" when it's easily SDI'd and punished. This is sort of like Lucas U-smash where it's mistaken for a great punishing killed, but it can be SDI'd and punished... on hit...
The thing is Lucas just as bad set-ups for killing. (I really dislike the new changes to d-air TBH. It completely throws off my vBrawl game getting used to... but I guess it's for the better. Getting a nearly guaranteed 40 @ around 40 is stupid and Lucas should not be relying on the jab-lock combo for damage racking, but instead killing)

I still support Lucas having a buffed u-air for KBG. If you talk to anyone I played before, they will tell you that I use Lucas u-air as great kill move. It's Lucas' most reliable form of kill move and is only held back by it's later kill percents and not working well on heavy-weights. (IDC what you say Thinkaman, it's as important for killing with Lucas as it is for Ness and should be >:U)

 

[A2ZOMG]

Lucas is good at punishing spot dodges. His n-air almost always punishes a side-step. If he rapid jabs at you, you're likely getting it punished.

Never said Lucas couldn't punish a spotdodge, but the damage from that isn't very impressive. Lucas's Jab certainly can punish a spotdodge, but he can't punish spotdodge with Jab1 very easily because his autojab is extremely slow. And you already covered why D-smash has issues.

Take how I would punish a spotdodge with Mario. With Mario, I can wait with his autoJab, hit confirm Jab2, and then decide how I will Jab cancel into another option. With Lucas, while his options certainly can do the job of getting the spotdodge, it just usually isn't going to be a significant punish.

And then going back to matchups, one of the things that I'm most worried about is how he deals with Sheik, who is pretty much designed to win against this character. She outcamps him, or she breaks his spacing very easily, outpressures, and can gimp him very easily. Without better setup options (and a better U-air for KOs), I don't see how this character can really threaten Sheik enough to make the matchup manageable.


and yes AA, I am implying that Lucario was mediocre in standard Brawl and nobody, not even I knew it until recently. Pierce has posts that I'm basically paraphrasing from these days. Maybe you saw?

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=10840843&postcount=15
http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=10901016&postcount=139

this quote is important:

Lucario has 5 main options: Roll, Wall, Fair, Grab, Aura Sphere.

Using proper option limiters, an opponent can reduce 2 of those options completely (grab and roll), they can space to be able to react to an approach (Roll and Fair), they can dodge Aura Sphere on Reaction. That leaves Walling, which prevents the Lucario from taking damage. Now Lucario is saved from being a terrible character, because his walls are REALLY GOOD, and his roll is a great escape. Furthermore, Aura Sphere is a great mix-up (hitting SHs with Aura Sphere is so satisfying) and since the projectile "forces an approach" (but not really), you have a strong level of defensive gameplay here. Since it's hard to approach Lucario on the ground for most characters, he's fortunate to have his Fair, which is an amazing anti-air, and even though it loses to attacks a lot, it's fast enough to get the jump on people, if you will. Though Dair can be SDIed, it's still a great punish tool.

I don't have much else to say about the character. Point is he's pretty linear and loses a lot of options when you avoid his small shieldgrab and make him unable to forward roll safely. While Ganon actually is pretty bad at fundamentally doing that (as a Ganon user, basically you're just going to bait into retreat D-air a lot after approaching Lucario and Dash Attack/Wizkick if you know you can counter-hit him), he beats Lucario since he destroys Lucario's options of F-air and Walling, and when he destroys those options with F-tilt, Lucario is open to be edgeguarded and killed STUPIDLY early. Actually it's not just the F-smash edgeguard that destroys Lucario. Virtually everything Ganon has is more than cappable of killing Lucario offstage stupidly early, especially his improved F-air, which can legitimately frametrap airdodges.

I think the solution for Lucario however is extremely simple. I believe Lucario has some good combos, but he doesn't start them very safely due to his generally weak approach. So you make his D-tilt a better combo starter and then one of his best poke options will actually give Lucario some much needed offensive power. Buffing his throws is something worth considering as well.


Another thing that should be noted is that the Tornado is actually still able to do good damage. It's just more complicated. You have to be facing backwards while running into your opponent with it. In this way the Tornado hits properly combo into each other. And it's still something Pit can't punish very feasibly in one of his hard matchups. While making Angel Ring transcendent does eliminate clashes which can be kinda annoying, the move is still meant to punish, not to be spammed due to its commitment. I almost never clash with it in most of my matches. Either he hits me, or I space to hit his hand, which gets him punished. Who do you think would get dominated by transcendent Angel Ring? Luigi comes the closest perhaps to having real issues with it due to his low traction and needing to space his F-smash pretty precisely to punish Angel Ring, but he's actually extremely good against Pit in the first place being hard for Pit to stop from approaching and having a lot of Jab combos. I would like you to elaborate on what kind of negative impacts Angel Ring could cause.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

And then going back to matchups, one of the things that I'm most worried about is how he deals with Sheik, who is pretty much designed to win against this character. She outcamps him, or she breaks his spacing very easily, outpressures, and can gimp him very easily. Without better setup options (and a better U-air for KOs), I don't see how this character can really threaten Sheik enough to make the matchup manageable.

It's a bad MU TBH. That and add the fact that Lucas can't really camp Zelda that much (that nayru's still makes me rage) anymore and she can get the kill pretty well out of a single d-tilt (if what Thinkaman told me is true, then it always combos into d-smash).

 

[JOE!]

Bowser's problem now is that he honestly cant rack damage as safely as he used to in vBrawl (due to grab release shenannigans), and now that everyone and their mom has useful damage -racking and better KO options, his damage buffs, while good, simply do not close the gap between how well he could dish and take damage.

In BBrawl Bowser is more like a glass musket than a glass cannon, if ou catch my drift.