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BBR Weekly Character Discussion #32: Samus

Xyro77

Unity Ruleset Committee Member
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Who is she better than?

:052:
Shes has advantages on bowser(bowser is low tier)/ike/ganon/link/yoshi/zelda. Goes even with jiggs/falcon and loses to lucas and mario.

"Both players are a book. Xyro just likes to insert pages of foreign editions of said copy in his book to make it harder, but the pages still mean the same thing. Play him long enough, memorize the book and you can consistently beat him. KJ, you don't even need Hooked on Phonics to read. Both players are that open when it comes to gameplay.") It's more than just predictable playstyle. It's open predictable playstyle. Xyro is just less predictable and his experience gives him better options.




I
AM
LEGEND


 

NO-IDea

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Shes has advantages on bowser(bowser is low tier)/ike/ganon/link/yoshi/zelda. Goes even with jiggs/falcon and loses to lucas and mario.







I
AM
LEGEND


Truth. I don't know how he did it, but Xyro is legendary. Even I cannot deny him of such status.
 

Poltergust

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Poltergust
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Shes has advantages on bowser(bowser is low tier)/ike/ganon/link/yoshi/zelda. Goes even with jiggs/falcon and loses to lucas and mario.
She goes even with Yoshi. EVEN.

Besides, I think that the question was referring to who she is better than tier-list wise.


:069:
 
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Anyway, I've been having a look at Samus's Ftilt in training mode for a little while, and there's another use for it that could just be practical, I would have to wait until someone else can confirm this however.

When angling ftilt down from a platform, there's a small hitbox below it, so this only works on tall characters, but the knockback is just enough at lower percentages to pop them up into a charge shot. I'm not really sure how DI will affect this though.
 

Dragonmaster_Omega

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Honestly KJ, you are going about this wrong. If NOID is being immature or vice/versa (talking to NOID here also), you shouldn't continue the argument. You guys need to be more mature than that. We are here to discuss Samus, not listen to your petty arguments over who is better or who knows what.
It is really making you guys look bad so I will be the one to suggest that if you insist on arguing like you are now, please take it to PM.
But remember, i still <3 you both =3

Samus is a character of a strategist imo. Sure, it doesn't take THAT much skill to be able to rack damage using missles or zair, but her main problem, killing, is where the smarter person wins. Once the opponent is at the kill %, given that it can be upwards to over 200%, Samus has to look for any kind of opportunity to get in that heavily needed kill WITHOUT getting racked damage on her and that is WAY easier said than done.
I won't go into MU's because imho, any MU is winnable if played right...unless of course it is something like D3 vs DK with infinite legal lol
 
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Okay I've removed all posts regarding the arguement that I do apologise for dearly.

Also my thoughts on kill setups are still bothering me, it seems that some testing is to be done. As of now, I have managed to pull off ftilt to charge shot at around 50% on CPU Snake, but when he gets too high, the ftilt knockback becomes to much and he simply airdodges the charge shot.
 

Hive

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Samus is probably one of the worst characters in this game shown mainly by her pure lack of representation on power rankings and the ankoku tournament rankings, she easily has heavily disadvantaged matchups against the vast majority of encounters she will see at tournament. Sure she might have advantages on ganon, ike, yoshi, bowser, ivysaur (but not pt), and zss imo but what really is the chances you will meet any of those characters in tournament? Her bad matchups are FAR more frequent and debilitating- I would even be willing to say that the entire s, a and b tiers should never lose to samus at high levels knowing the matchup, and unfortunately the community almost exclusively plays those tiers now. Xyro, last time I checked you were about 50th on the texas power rankings, and I don't mean this to be mean at all, we all know you are beast with samus. The point though is that being beast with samus just doesn't compare in terms of viability to being beast with other characters. No one is going to be consistently making prs with samus alone in larger competitive brawl communities. I don't think there is a stronger evidence of her clear disadvantage than this- even most low tiers have had better representation in the past. I would put her near last for sure but I suppose it doesn't really matter if she is last or just low tier in general, because even though we may claim she's "better" than a certain low tier what does that even mean? Anyone in that tier has almost no viability anyways, being ahead of ganondorf really doesn't show that much of a net change in potential.

Her kill move percents are of course abysmal, but even more than that her kill setups I think are far more of a problem than the kill percents alone. Almost all of her kill moves lack comparable abilities to other characters' kill moves either in their ability to land or in the amount of risk they put samus in in order to land.
Bair and utilt (though a good ledge guard ko move) are pretty predictable, dtilt and her fsmash are decent and probably the best kill setups but they are hard to land on an opponent that knows you are going for a kill move and its hard to get air heavy characters in range to use them. Furthermore the risk of punishment for failed attempts is very strong too since if she doesn't land them she will almost certainly get slapped hard. The net effect of having such terribad kill moves and kill percents is that it essentially means that the ratio of samus' dmg outputs to amount of dmg she can take needs to be higher than almost all characters. This alone makes matchups like snake vs samus impractacle, bc she basically needs to rack up 150% before she can attempt ko moves that will put her in even more risk (1 hit from snake = about an entire combo of samuses) in the time that snake can get up about half of that and then use some of the best kill moves in the game. Its discouraging how many matchups end up coming down to you are doing better than your opponent in terms of percent you are able to dish out but they win anyways. Discouraging... and sad that the metagame revolves so much now around character based advantages that have little to do with skill.

Along these lines I'd also say that her ability to rack up damage isn't all that good... sure if she's up close she has some really kwl combos that rack up dmg very well, and this is the kind of playstyle ppl will make videos about and what most ppl will see as samus. But I don't think this is a fair representation of a typical tournament match. Samus' missile spams and zair spams and even ledge game don't have all that great dmg outputs, and unfortunately for most tournament matchups this is what samus' game is going to have to revolve around because she can't risk approaches against a lot of characters. Characters like ddd, falco, marth, wario and snake for example she can't risk barely any approaches since the dmg received is most likely much larger than any you will probably dish out. So in reasonably even matchups, yea, I'll admit her dmg output is good because she can attempt some lvl of close range, but for a lot of matchups her dmg output is bad because she has to play a strictly spacing game in order to compete.

Without going into it too much I also would say she has significant disadvantages in her grab game (especially in the amount of options out of it), air speed, move priority, and close range options too. Some areas I think she does well in though are her recovery (above average but still abusable by some characters), ledge game, spacing, and a slight surprise factor against ppl who haven't played her before... none of these reconcile her vast weaknesses though and high level mks for example are going to beat her even if they've never seen samus before. Also most of these advantages can be destroyed by stage cping (yoshi's island becoming a more prominent starter for example is hell to her ledge game). Samus is just a bad bad character. Some of you guys are doing exceptionally well with samus atm and I've got to say give yourself some respect! :D Its not that she's secretly middle or high low tier, its that you guys are doing amazing with one of the worst characters in the game.
 

Throwback

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I agree with void & hive at the same time if that's possible.

I feel that the vast majority of players will never play or understand her well enough to make her anything other than complete garbage, but imo she has the tools to wreck faces in the hands of a prodigy, unlike many of the other low-tiers (bowser is low-tier).
 

Xyro77

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I agree with void & hive at the same time if that's possible.

I feel that the vast majority of players will never play or understand her well enough to make her anything other than complete garbage, but imo she has the tools to wreck faces in the hands of a prodigy, unlike many of the other low-tiers (bowser is low-tier).
I think Noid and Hive are wrong on that issue BIG TIME.

Its NOT that players cant play her right, its just that its not possible to do what you WANT to do because of how brawl works(lack of shield/hit stun and infinite airdodging).


She(along with alot of LTs) also starts off at a auto disadvantage because of the rule sets that 99% of the TOs use. They put a ledge grab limit on ALL characters. They ALLOW infinites till 300%(which is death). They dont ban metaknight........ect. So right off the bat, things are not good.

Samus cannot stay grounded or even come close to focusing on ground combat(to think other wise is stupid). Jab/f-tilt/dtilt are all moves that are so slow that people can literally shield and then attack you. Ive hit people with jab/ftilt at low to mid percents and they just hit me back. All of this is because brawl has no shield/hit stun. All of this is due to brawls ****ty system.

Staying in the air is the way to go but even then it has HUGE holes. The moment samus goes up in the air you already know the things she can do(zair/missle/aerial attack) depending on her distance from you. Her projectiles are slow so being pelted by them like u would with falco is not gonna happen. Her Zair is great and all but once u have seen it enough u learn the timing of it and simply shield like u would the rest of her stuff. NONE of her aerial attacks do much of anything(danger wise or damage wise) to the foe unless they DONT shield or their shield is already a bit weak so that it shield pokes.

Being 7th heaviest is cool but being a HUGE character and 2nd floatiest in the game is NOT good. Good DI or not, the chances are you will still be combo-ed by a good deal of moves.




As said before, samus sucking is LESS on us than it is on the way the game is made/played(rules). Of course we can all use some improvement(that never stops no matter who u main) but to say "we just cant play her right" is completely ********.
 

Hive

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wait... what exactly are you disagreeing with in my response "big time" about? :( To my knowledge most of what you said I completely agree with...
-her ground game totally sucks (easy to break her combos, easy to predict, easy to outprioritize, and easy to punish)
-tournament rules are hard to her metagame bc they favor rules that are detrimental to samus reasonably being able to use skill to win a matchup (infinites, metaknight, lame cps, ledge grab limits (Oh well I hate abusing ledge camping but still..))
-For an air character she's not really that good in the air, and even her projectile spamming doesn't stack up to other characters...

I never said people didn't know how to play samus well, on the contrary by now I think we know exactly what her potential is capable of. SAMUS IS ****ED. More than this, and I know you've noticed this, the brawl metagame is not really that good for determining skill- All of what? 4-5 characters are consistently viable? Most matches at high levels are won heavily influenced by character advantage, and the community still favors rules that restrict comparison of skill between players. There is a mentality that characters can be balanced in the metagame by having a mix of 100% advantages against some characters and 100% disadvantages against others instead of trying to balance out the matchups. People don't care that DDDs or ICs have unmanageable advantages over 7+ characters from abusing one tactic if they still have 3+ really bad disadvantages against the top characters, even though it basically makes DDDs metagame come down to more of what matchups they are lucky enough to hit in a tournament. Players have steered around decision theory- actions should be made on the basis of whether the benefits of doing it in relation to the costs produce the highest value over alternatives (ease of implementation, effect on metagame, community feelings, etc...), for other criteria.

Like I said though, and I think it is a mix of her current character model AND like you said the ruleset/way people play, Samus is just a really bad character for a lot of reasons. And its going to be very hard for her to compete in tournament setting.

edited*
 

Xyro77

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wait... what exactly are you disagreeing with in my response "big time" about? :( To my knowledge most of what you said I completely agree with...
-her ground game totally sucks (easy to combo out of, easy to predict, easy to outprioritize, and easy to punish)
-tournament rules are hard to her metagame bc they favor rules that are detrimental to samus reasonably being able to use skill to win a matchup (infinites, metaknight, lame cps, ledge grab limits (Oh well I hate abusing ledge camping but still..))
-For an air character she's not really that good in the air, and even her projectile spamming doesn't stack up to other characters...

I never said people didn't know how to play samus well, on the contrary by now I think we know exactly what her potential is capable of. SAMUS IS ****ED. More than this, and I know you've noticed this, the brawl metagame is not really that good for determining skill, all of what? 4-5 characters are consistently viable? Most matches at high levels are won strictly by character advantage, and the community still favors rules that restrict any comparison of skill between players. Because the community likes to favor this mentality that characters can be balanced in the metagame by having a mix of 100% advantages against some characters and 100% disadvantages against others instead of trying to balance out the matchups. People don't care that DDDs or ICs have unmanageable advantages over 5+ characters from abusing one tactic if they still have 3+ really dumb disadvantages against the top characters, even though it basically makes DDDs metagame come down to nothing but what matchups they are lucky enough to hit in a tournament. Players have steered around the economic rule of decision making long ago- actions should be made on the basis of whether the benefits of doing it outweigh the costs (ease of implementation, effect on metagame, community feelings, etc...), for completely arbitrary categorization of ideas of overcentralization and creationist and origanalist. So instead players don't try to make the game the best they can, they just try to solve the really big **** ups that make gameplay revolve around 1 or 2 characters. Some players will even admit infinites on those characters are bad for gameplay but will actually use the idea that it doesn't mess up the game 'enough' to warrant banning.

Like I said though, and I think it is a mix of her current character model AND like you said the ruleset/way people play, Samus is just a really bad character for a lot of reasons. And its going to be very hard for her to compete in tournament setting.

ok yea i agree with all of this. we are on the same page.
 

-Mars-

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Why on earth did KillerJawz say that Samus is worse than Zelda?

LOL.
 
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