Bowser general discussion thread.

[Crulex Crystallite]

Except in certain mu's (so far) it's appearing that we can't kill enemies in 4 hits, but STILL get combod for 90%.

The reduced size and increased speed helps alleviate this I feel. I'll need some long play sessions to give a better answer, but in theory and from what I've played so far, it's not as easy to approach a competent bowser.

A few matchups (speed rushdown characters with easy grabs) we'll still have problems with, but we do have more tools and stat weights to deal with it better.

As far as not killing in 4 hits? I'll miss it, but I don't feel half gimped half overpowered in this incarnation of Bowser.

 

[Crulex Crystallite]

Also: Koopa Claw back throw is so fun now.

 

[Abeebo]

I'm getting the sense that Bowser will have more emphasis on sideB back throw-to-edge guard this time around. The KB reductions in his moveset is showing to keep the enemy closer than before, assuming to take advantage of the general speed increase and more specifically side B speed increase. It just feels easier to pull off.

 

[REInstalleD]

Yeah, Koopa Claw is going to be an even better mix-up tool now that it's much harder to spot doge on reaction (and losing the armor is negligible as grounded claw sucked anyway). It's true that some of the KB angles are more horizontal and combo-ing might be a bit harder, but given bowser's increased speed we'll have to wait and see exactly how much this affects his follow-ups.

Another thing to take into consideration is the changes to the rest of the class. Yeah, maybe bowser's small size reduction won't make up for his nair losing combo-breaker potency, but looking at a lot of the changes (e.g. sheik and c.f. throws), bowser may simply have an easier time getting out of chain grab/tech chase situations based on the small nerfs done to these characters. Plus, more speed means he should be at least a little harder to grab, which will be great.

One thing I'm not sure about is how the speed and armor of his smashes will impact gameplay. I know I've seen a bit of debate on these forums about how viable his f-smash is, but personally I think it was mostly unusable while up-smash and down-smash were mostly for platform tech chases and reads respectively.

So What do you guys think? Is the slight increase in speed enough to make these smashes viable in more situations or are they still too slow? Will the armor and armor scaling make a difference or will his f-smash be forever relegated to the realm of mindgames and disrespect?

 

[Zigludo]

The only smash that's going to be significantly helped by this silly new armor system is dsmash, since you'll be able to fully charge it while a Lucas or Ness is prepping PKT2 under the stage and then just super armor through their attack. Otherwise I see it as mostly useless

 

[Frost | Odds]

I really just don't like the new Dash Attack. Everything else is gravy though. Overall feels smooth and fast like I can actually approach if I wanted to approach.

The new dash attack actually throws me off pretty consistently too. It's a good move, but not nearly as good as it was - and the ending timing is a bit awkward to adjust to.

 

[Chaos_Blasta]

From more playing it's obvious the most impacting changes are Bowser's new walk speed/acceleration and dash, it helps loads when spacing yourself and moving around the stage (The improved walk really lets you be way more precise). Furthermore, the new Koopa Klaw activating sooner is pretty cool and hella helpful when pressuring your opponent. However, I think it would be innacurate to say this changes Bowser's usual play-style; Against fast characters, you still have to be patient and punish your opponent's bad approaches because Bowser's options when approaching are still relatively the same, although this is harder without certain armors (DA and Koopa Klaw namely)

1) A very intentional shift in playstyle. Overall, the playstyle direction is to be more mobile and defensive while giving him more tools to react more and read less.

Why, though? that was always the great allure of Bowser: punish hard or get punished hard. I'm not convinced that intentionally nerfing a character's punish game on successful reads is a good design choice, isn't that kind of the point of Smash in general?

We'll see how things go, though! I'll continue to be a Bowser main despite how often I may continue to disagree with the PMBR's decisions, as some may remember when 3.0 launched, lol.

 

[steelguttey]

whats good homies. the olimar matchup thread is doing bowser this week! come on down and tell us what you know about the matchup!

 

[Zigludo]

The new dash attack actually throws me off pretty consistently too. It's a good move, but not nearly as good as it was - and the ending timing is a bit awkward to adjust to.

It's not good -at all- unless the opponent DI's it incorrectly, which is going to be almost never against competent players. The situations where you can hit with dash attack are not the same situations where you can hit with utilt which is the only move you can pick to punish DI out and away.

I mean, dash attack still exists. It can tack on another 12% to the end of a punish. It just doesn't qualify as something I would call a 'good' move any more. I actually feel that way about a lot of the 3.6 changes to Bowser's punish game, it's much less reliable, which means that against knowledgeable opponents it doesn't exist, seeing as he lacks viable mixup options.

 

[Candypants]

In total i'd say we've lost more options that we've gained.

Time to practice up-b oos.

 

[Jacob29]

Are you telling me you weren't doing 10 a day and saying 10 "Hail Koopa King"s too?

 

[Filosafer]

Are you telling me you weren't doing 10 a day and saying 10 "Hail Koopa King"s too?

More like 10 hours a day.

 

[Crulex Crystallite]

if you successfully hit with the second jab for the knockback, it can lead to dash attack > bbjump or regular aerial mixups. It's not as big but it's still good for lifting opponents up.

Bowser still suffers from that one thing I hate: opponent at 0%? soak dmg until they're higher :kappa:

Also, sad that down smash can't contend recoveries without being charged. Recovering spacies won't get hit by down smash unless you charge it. ugg.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Why, though? that was always the great allure of Bowser: punish hard or get punished hard. I'm not convinced that intentionally nerfing a character's punish game on successful reads is a good design choice, isn't that kind of the point of Smash in general?

Bowser still punishes, and gets punished, just as hard. Harder, in many cases. The punishes were just made a bit less braindead to pull off - and dash attack no longer ruins every other character's everything.

The trick is making his smashes better/faster enough that they're actually useful in real games against awake opponents, while still being able to have them feel ridiculously powerful and somehow simultaneously balanced. I think the PMDT succeeded very well in this regard with usmash and dsmash; though I'm as confused as anyone about the fsmash nerf. When I was campaigning for Bowser changes, the single most important one I wanted was a strong fsmash that would actually be a central component to his gameplay - allowing Bowser players to feel strong and to be richly rewarded for hard reads with a move that's faster and more powerful than it had any right to be. The current fsmash is ... not that.

I've got more to say, but will be back later

@ Zigludo you're absolutely right that dash attack was nerfed extremely hard. It is still a useful move, though, albeit for somewhat different reasons than before. It's no longer a combo starter on spacies, and it no longer armors through basically everything. That said, it still comes out very fast, has extreme range, armor on frame 1, and is more than capable of pushing opponents offstage and setting up an edgeguard situation. Think of it as a final 'shove' now, rather than a launcher.

 

[Zigludo]

Bowser still punishes, and gets punished, just as hard.

Sorry, but no. I mean, yeah, he gets punished just as hard as before - as a matter of fact he gets punished even harder, because the 6% size reduction hardly makes a difference at all, whereas there are tons and tons of edge cases where nair would have saved you in 3.5 and it doesn't in 3.6 due to coming out two frames later and being lowered a class (Falcon uair knee anyone?)

The crux of the assertion that "Bowser's punishes are sometimes better in 3.6 than in 3.5" is based on the perceived notion that he has received meaningful buffs to several of his moves, namely:

SideB
FTilt
Usmash

But... I honestly believe that anyone who believes that those moves are better for punishing now, than they were in the past, honestly has not done enough research. His greatest struggle now is that he loses severely to neutral DI or proper DI at 0%-20%.

Dash attack is a move that comes out on frame 10, so if you use cstick dash attack you can go from crouching to delivering an armored hitbox in 11 frames, or 183.3 ms which is less than the reaction time of 99.9% of the human population and thus cannot be shielded on reaction by players of non-superhuman ability(and probably 99.999% of people who haven't rebound shield to a non-shoulder button or removed the springs, lol). This is a bit of a side note, but I never understood why so many Bowser players were convinced that dashattack cannot be used as an approach. It's unreactable, it's a hitbox, it beats spacing hitboxes thanks to armor... looks like an approach to me. It's unsafe on shield, yeah, but not all approaches are safe on shield. Even the new ftilt isn't safe on shield, jab2 isn't safe on shield, etc etc etc. Really the only moves that Bowser can land on shield with any degree of safety are fully spaced jab or dtilt, and fully spaced fair or landing uair, or the grounded upB ONLY IF you can get to a ledge before they smack you with an oos option. So, compared to Bowser's relatively sparse approach options, dash attack is by no means awful. Not only that but you can combo into it with uthrow and klaw fthrow against fastfallers (even in 3.6 with the ****ty klaw) Sorry for that wall of text about just dash attack

Let's say you land a dash attack in 3.5, against Fox, at 0. If you're on FD, he can either choose to DI out in the hopes of eventually reaching the edge of the stage, and he'll just keep getting hit by dashattack until that point. Then he gets hit with a tipper fair, is sent pretty deep offstage and he's at 38% - 58% depending on how many dash attacks he took until he got to that point. If at any point he decides NOT to DI, then he is deciding to get hit by utilt, klaw, regrab instead, all of which have their own ugly flowcharts.

It wasn't quite as easy for Bowser on stages with platforms but you could always go to either FoD Yoshi's Wario FD or GHZ because your opponent just cannot ban all of Bowser's good stages and (3.5) Bowser has like six good stages against fastfallers. I even liked going to PS2 because putting them onto a platform means you secure guaranteed followups from utilt tech chasing (removed in 3.6 because the utilt has a flub hitbox that has an unusable knockback angle, and it's impossible to hit enemies above you with the strong hitbox. yay.) the Fox player (or Falco, or Wolf, or Falcon) could choose where he wanted to be sent, but he really had to struggle to get out of the punishes, because there were lots and lots of situations where every DI option led to additional followups. I can say that in a game vs a fastfaller, landing a dash attack, sideB, or grab/jab>grab at 0% usually gave me a punish from %40-70 regardless of what my opponent did unless I PERSONALLY ****ed up and dropped the punish.

These punishes were NOT totally uninteractive (unless they were on FD but FD isn't a great stage for Bowser anyway.) because the enemy could choose which punish he gets hit by which means he can angle for whatever he thinks the least optimal punish is by Bowser if he knows the matchup. What was good about them was the fact that, even with good DI by the enemy fastfaller, these punishes were still potent. That's the definition of a good punish: not dependent on the enemy ****ing up. Reliable. Consistent.

but now, try landing a dash attack against Fox at 0%. You will find that if they have good DI, or even no DI at all, you can't land any followup whatsoever. If they DI in, you can then land one jab. And that's all. So now, instead of a move that leads to at least 40% and an edgeguard with GOOD DI, we have a move that leads to, at best, a jab with the worst possible DI. That's 19% and then a 50/50 situation instead of an edgeguard. That is a massive nerf. That is a hugeass ****ing giga nerf, and I can't believe people can look at that and go "Eh, it's just a little worse I guess."

Let's look at sideB. In 3.5, against perfect DI from fastfallers, it could still lead into a dash attack, which would then lead into the aforementioned 40+% and edgeguard situation. As of 3.6, with perfect DI, it leads into literally nothing. Fox techs before you can dash attack him. If he has empty DI, you can get the dash attack. If he has empty DI or DI out, he gets away. If he DI's that dash attack in, you can then get another dash attack, but you only get the flub hitbox, and he gets away after that... in fact, if he's quick on his feet he might be able to tech in place and punish you. If he DI's IN, you can regrab. But then he's definitely going to have time to DI out your uthrow perfectly, so enjoy your dash attack... so, on FD

3.5: SideB gets at least 45% and an edgeguard / techchase situation.
3.6: 15% only with good DI, 27% with no DI whatsoever, 41% and a reset to neutral if he DI's as poorly as he possibly can

A note about sideB fthrow: The amount it takes for the opponent to be thrown (and thus, the amount of time that your opponent has to choose proper DI) is 26 frames, or at least 466 ms+ 16 ms for every frame you miss on the sped-up throw input. Roughly half a second. That's within the reaction time of 95% of the population, and if I had to guess, probably 99% of the people who play this game. That means that, while it is indeed more difficult to react to, it is still not unreactable, and attentive opponents who know the matchup will still be able to respond appropriately most of the time, on reaction.

Another note about sideB is the reduced damage (hence reduced hitstun) and later IASA frames. basically, the opponent will be in hitstun for 3 or 4 fewer frames, and Bowser is not able to act until 5 frames later, which means 8 frames worth of punishes that used to be obtainable that no longer are.

basically, the only reliable KO setup we have against fastfallers (by which I mean, a setup which will connect regardless of DI) is uthrow > fair, since they can't DI away from the fair in time. unfortunately fair was hit with the nerf bat - against Fox, uthrow fair does less knockback in 3.6 than in 3.5 if performed at any % higher than 20%. so, if you're trying to kill Fox with uthrow > fair at 10%, you're in luck - it got buffed! otherwise, enjoy the nerf and enjoy Fox living longer. we also have utilt > uair. good ****ing luck landing strong hit of utilt, if you whiff you die and comboing into it is much more difficult now thanks to the nerfed late hit.

other notes on top of all that ****:

-uair is worse at killing fox at % lower than 95%, at which point the old uair would kill anyway unless he was standing onstage with a higher ceiling than FD. this only describes a very small portion of uair kills, as most of them will not only take place in midair, but will also occur on stages with ceilings around that of FD. unless you counterpick fox to DL64 I guess. Long story short is: uair is worse at killing Fox in most situations, worse at killing everyone else in basically every situation

-we lost 8 frames of advantage against Fox on dthrow since it isn't weight dependent any more lol, so it's actually more difficult to dthrow > tech chase > dsmash against fox than it was previously... but hey, it's 2 frames faster against cfalc. lol

-neither utilt nor usmash can cover platform techs on ps2 since we're smaller and the hitboxes on usmash got spread lower. you are forced to make a read now.

- dsmash is much worse against fastfallers, it does 4% less, never sets up for bowser bomb > jc > combos, and furthermore if they know how to SDI they can always choose which direction they get set in. my practice partner is already 95% consistent with invalidating my dsmash edgeguards by falling into them, DI'ing down, and SDI'ing such that he gets sent across stage to the other ledge. Also it never kills. Cfalc can live the dsmash at 150% on FD, that's pretty sad.

-upB is no longer as safe at low% since its base knockback was reduced. this also makes it worse at killing Fox. 3.5 upB kills Fox at 125% on FD with neutral DI. 3.6 upB kills him at 135%, so it's probably a similar situation with all the other characters since most die to upB earlier than Fox. maybe not Falcon though, due to his weight

-enjoy dying to uair > knee, shine > shine > upB, and Fox uthrow > bair. nair will never save you from those moves at kill% nowadays. they are all now just as disgustingly free as they were in Melee.


these matchups are ****kkkkkkedddddddddd. i see absolutely no upside to the Falcon matchup now, it's got to be like 80:20 or something stupid like that. he can just permanently spam aerials at you and if he stays out of upB oos range you are done for, and he barely gets punished for slipping up. flame cancel sucks against Falcon because it requires you to jump into the air and be a helpless palooka for at least 20 frames, enjoy your nair>grab to the face.

Odds, I know you want the new dsmash to be good. But it's not, it's lame and bad and unless you charge it up it even has less armor than before. I know you want the new klaw to be good but the IASA nerf is absolutely killer and reduces the utility of the fthrow dramatically. It removes 0% punishes from fastfaller matchups. You can say something like "Well, Bowser isn't *worse* now, he just has to focus more on tech chasing now." But the fact is that a Bowser tech chase is WORSE THAN THE COMBOS FROM 3.5. Those were good, and Bowser techchase is just 'meh' unless you have them up against a ledge and can dsmash them.... actually I take that back because in 3.6 dsmash even is just meh.

Please god revert the changes to this character, especially the dash attack, sideB angle and IASA, utilt, nair, and the character's size. I can live with the heavy nerfs to the uair. I can live with the heavy nerfs to fair, maybe they both killed to early. I can live with the dair nerf.

I know there are buffs that I haven't addressed here. You can take the ftilt buffs back, I don't really want it. That move is sort of a like a slightly worse fair or awful jab anyway. Dsmash starts up faster, so does usmash. But can you honestly say that you use those moves in neutral very often, with no setup whatsoever? I've never felt the 3 or 4 frames make a difference there. The dash speed buff is kinda nice, but I don't need it. Dashdancing to avoid an attack was almost always a bad idea in 3.5, and it remains a bad idea in almost all situations in 3.6 because 1.3 is still slow as hell and Bowser is still a fatass who needs to move twice as far as, say, Fox or Falcon does in order to actually avoid a sweeping hitbox. Flame cancel buff is nice but god knows it doesn't significantly change neutral against people who are fast enough to hop over it or punish the aerial 'startup'.

This is a radically different matchup in 3.6 and it's radically worse. The few corner cases in which you manage to dashdance out of the way of a drill or stuff an approach with your faster-by-two-whole-frames ftilt or tech chase someone with a dsmash for a whopping 16% and reset to neutral DO NOT make up for these sweeping across-the-board nerfs to his punish game, not even close. The size reduction is also a significant nerf - the only thing it aids Bowser with is being caught in combos and strings, but it's not like he's Rob or Samus now. He's just exactly the same as Melee Bowser, the laughingstock of Melee who everyone used as a punching bag when they were bored because he was hilariously easy to combo. Give me my reach back, please, I liked being able to space jabs from outside of Falcon's oos range but now I can't.

I know that this post has become a massive pain in the ass to read because of how long it is, but I just couldn't stop writing it. I would have rather made like a ten minute video detailing the implications of each change but unfortunately I lack the technical know-how to do so.


Please, for the love of God, change him back. I can't stand playing this character any more.

EDIT: Also who the hell had the bright idea of changing his fsmash to be identical to Melee? That sucks.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Sorry, but no. I mean, yeah, he gets punished just as hard as before - as a matter of fact he gets punished even harder, because the 6% size reduction hardly makes a difference at all, whereas there are tons and tons of edge cases where nair would have saved you in 3.5 and it doesn't in 3.6 due to coming out two frames later and being lowered a class (Falcon uair knee anyone?)

The crux of the assertion that "Bowser's punishes are sometimes better in 3.6 than in 3.5" is based on the perceived notion that he has received meaningful buffs to several of his moves, namely:

SideB
FTilt
Usmash

But... I honestly believe that anyone who believes that those moves are better for punishing now, than they were in the past, honestly has not done enough research.

If you're ever hitting a side b in 3.5, it's because your opponent is terrible. 3.6 side B is better because it actually exists.

This is a bit of a side note, but I never understood why so many Bowser players were convinced that dashattack cannot be used as an approach. It's unreactable, it's a hitbox, it beats spacing hitboxes thanks to armor... looks like an approach to me.

Because if you're at a range where you can hit dash attack, you don't need to 'approach'. You're already in.

Even the new ftilt isn't safe on shield, jab2 isn't safe on shield, etc etc etc. Really the only moves that Bowser can land on shield with any degree of safety are fully spaced jab or dtilt, and fully spaced fair or landing uair, or the grounded upB ONLY IF you can get to a ledge before they smack you with an oos option.

Or crossup nair. Or flame cancel. Or side b.

Let's say you land a dash attack in 3.5, against Fox, at 0. If you're on FD, he can either choose to DI out in the hopes of eventually reaching the edge of the stage, and he'll just keep getting hit by dashattack until that point. Then he gets hit with a tipper fair, is sent pretty deep offstage and he's at 38% - 58% depending on how many dash attacks he took until he got to that point. If at any point he decides NOT to DI, then he is deciding to get hit by utilt, klaw, regrab instead, all of which have their own ugly flowcharts.

It wasn't quite as easy for Bowser on stages with platforms but you could always go to either FoD Yoshi's Wario FD or GHZ because your opponent just cannot ban all of Bowser's good stages and (3.5) Bowser has like six good stages against fastfallers. I even liked going to PS2 because putting them onto a platform means you secure guaranteed followups from uair tech chasing (removed in 3.6 because the uair has a flub hitbox that has an unusable knockback angle, and it's impossible to hit enemies above you with the strong hitbox. yay.) the Fox player (or Falco, or Wolf, or Falcon) could choose where he wanted to be sent, but he really had to struggle to get out of the punishes, because there were lots and lots of situations where every DI option led to additional followups. I can say that in a game vs a fastfaller, landing a dash attack, sideB, or grab/jab>grab at 0% usually gave me a punish from %40-70 regardless of what my opponent did unless I PERSONALLY ****ed up and dropped the punish.

. Yep.

These punishes were NOT totally uninteractive

False. Utilt.

(unless they were on FD but FD isn't a great stage for Bowser anyway.) because the enemy could choose which punish he gets hit by which means he can angle for whatever he thinks the least optimal punish is by Bowser if he knows the matchup. What was good about them was the fact that, even with good DI by the enemy fastfaller, these punishes were still potent. That's the definition of a good punish: not dependent on the enemy ****ing up. Reliable. Consistent.

Braindead.

but now, try landing a dash attack against Fox at 0%

Why in God's name would you do that?

You will find that if they have good DI, or even no DI at all, you can't land any followup whatsoever. If they DI in, you can then land one jab. And that's all. So now, instead of a move that leads to at least 40% and an edgeguard with GOOD DI, we have a move that leads to, at best, a jab with the worst possible DI. That's 19% and then a 50/50 situation instead of an edgeguard. That is a massive nerf. That is a hugeass ****ing giga nerf, and I can't believe people can look at that and go "Eh, it's just a little worse I guess."

It's much worse at launching fastfallers, because that's no longer one of its roles. The niche it fills now is different, albeit smaller. 3.5 dash attack was dumb as hell.

Let's look at sideB. In 3.5, against perfect DI from fastfallers, it could still lead into a dash attack, which would then lead into the aforementioned 40+% and edgeguard situation. As of 3.6, with perfect DI, it leads into literally nothing. Fox techs before you can dash attack him. If he has empty DI, you can get the dash attack. If he has empty DI or DI out, he gets away. If he DI's that dash attack in, you can then get another dash attack, but you only get the flub hitbox, and he gets away after that... in fact, if he's quick on his feet he might be able to tech in place and punish you. If he DI's IN, you can regrab. But then he's definitely going to have time to DI out your uthrow perfectly, so enjoy your dash attack... so, on FD

3.5: SideB gets at least 45% and an edgeguard / techchase situation.
3.6: 15% only with good DI, 27% with no DI whatsoever, 41% and a reset to neutral if he DI's as poorly as he possibly can

It's an air grab with a 12 frame startup and an additional attached long range hitbox. I think the followups could stand to be a bit more consistent, but effectively Klaw right now trades consistency of following up on the move for consistency landing it in the first place. It's much, much, much easier to land Klaws, now - including in situations where they'll end up with your opponent offstage and therefore dead.

A note about sideB fthrow: The amount it takes for the opponent to be thrown (and thus, the amount of time that your opponent has to choose proper DI) is 26 frames, or at least 466 ms+ 16 ms for every frame you miss on the sped-up throw input. Roughly half a second. That's within the reaction time of 95% of the population, and if I had to guess, probably 99% of the people who play this game. That means that, while it is indeed more difficult to react to, it is still not unreactable, and attentive opponents who know the matchup will still be able to respond appropriately most of the time, on reaction.

Yep, I still have no sympathy for anyone who can't consistently DI the Klaw fthrow. Fortunately, the bthrow is a pretty vicious DI mixup in many situations.

basically, the only reliable KO setup we have against fastfallers (by which I mean, a setup which will connect regardless of DI) is uthrow > fair, since they can't DI away from the fair in time. unfortunately fair was hit with the nerf bat - against Fox, uthrow fair does less knockback in 3.6 than in 3.5 if performed at any % higher than 20%. so, if you're trying to kill Fox with uthrow > fair at 10%, you're in luck - it got buffed! otherwise, enjoy the nerf and enjoy Fox living longer. we also have utilt > uair. good ****ing luck landing strong hit of utilt, if you whiff you die and comboing into it is much more difficult now thanks to the nerfed late hit.

Many or most characters' most reliable kill setups are their throws.

-uair is worse at killing fox at % lower than 95%, at which point the old uair would kill anyway unless he was standing onstage with a higher ceiling than FD. this only describes a very small portion of uair kills, as most of them will not only take place in midair, but will also occur on stages with ceilings around that of FD. unless you counterpick fox to DL64 I guess. Long story short is: uair is worse at killing Fox in most situations, worse at killing everyone else in basically every situation

The % where it's worse at killing will vary pretty dramatically with height at which you hit the uair.

-neither utilt nor usmash can cover platform techs on ps2 since we're smaller and the hitboxes on usmash got spread lower. you are forced to make a read now.

Use an aerial if you want a more reliable hit.

- dsmash is much worse against fastfallers, it does 4% less, never sets up for bowser bomb > jc > combos, and furthermore if they know how to SDI they can always choose which direction they get set in. my practice partner is already 95% consistent with invalidating my dsmash edgeguards by falling into them, DI'ing down, and SDI'ing such that he gets sent across stage to the other ledge. Also it never kills. Cfalc can live the dsmash at 150% on FD, that's pretty sad.

1. Don't edgeguard with dsmash, please.
2. It's much faster - so calling it 'worse' because of reduced destructive power is wildly disingenuous. Though, it kinda bugs me how it tends to clank unfavorably with things.

These matchups are ****kkkkkkedddddddddd. i see absolutely no upside to the Falcon matchup now, it's got to be like 80:20 or something stupid like that. he can just permanently spam aerials at you and if he stays out of upB oos range you are done for, and he barely gets punished for slipping up. flame cancel sucks against Falcon because it requires you to jump into the air and be a helpless palooka for at least 20 frames, enjoy your nair>grab to the face.

Don't flame cancel against falcon.

Odds, I know you want the new dsmash to be good. But it's not, it's lame and bad and unless you charge it up it even has less armor than before. I know you want the new klaw to be good but the IASA nerf is absolutely killer and reduces the utility of the fthrow dramatically. It removes 0% punishes from fastfaller matchups. You can say something like "Well, Bowser isn't *worse* now, he just has to focus more on tech chasing now." But the fact is that a Bowser tech chase is WORSE THAN THE COMBOS FROM 3.5. Those were good, and Bowser techchase is just 'meh' unless you have them up against a ledge and can dsmash them.... actually I take that back because in 3.6 dsmash even is just meh.

I think the new dsmash could use some tweaking, but you're sounding like a Fox player right now.

I know there are buffs that I haven't addressed here. You can take the ftilt buffs back, I don't really want it. That move is sort of a like a slightly worse fair or awful jab anyway. Dsmash starts up faster, so does usmash. But can you honestly say that you use those moves in neutral very often, with no setup whatsoever? I've never felt the 3 or 4 frames make a difference there.

The faster startup makes them much more useful for tech chasing and option coverage while opponent is staggered. Usmash in particular is, for many tech chasing purposes, functionally a better/more forgiving Charizard dsmash.

The dash speed buff is kinda nice, but I don't need it. Dashdancing to avoid an attack was almost always a bad idea in 3.5,

Uh, no.

and it remains a bad idea in almost all situations in 3.6 because 1.3 is still slow as hell and Bowser is still a fatass who needs to move twice as far as, say, Fox or Falcon does in order to actually avoid a sweeping hitbox.

Then you're spacing badly.

Punishing FFS got much more difficult, but it's much too early to say that they can't be consistently killed off of punishes; nor that those punishes can't be started as or more regularly than 3.5. It's possible, but for now, you're neglecting a few super important changes to the anti-FF punish game.

1. Spacies' new inability to DI the klaw fthrow behind bowser. If you want to throw him towards the edge of the stage, that's where he goes
2. Fair increased BKB much better for comboing
3. Smash charge armor (see: u/dsmash) beats a lot of aerial and grounded approaches
4. Dash attack still a reliable combo finisher/offstage shove. Like Klaw, it's tough to DI this behind Bowser now, so you don't have Ganon's problem of giving opponents free stage position with your longest ranged move
5. Klaw's increased speed means it's much easier to grab people out of the air for combo use, or to use in tech chases
6. Nair (ie, bowser's BnB) still tends to start tech chases. Bowser is better at tech chasing now.

hugs and kisses

 

[Shockbound]

Could somebody explain how flame damage works? I'm trying to compile a comprehensive list of the damage values granted to G&W's bucket for every absorbable move in the game and I have not been able to find a reliable way to set up damage values for Bowser's Fire Breath due to trajectory randomization. The new bucket in 3.6 scales with the exact damage value of whatever it absorbs (down to the decimal and including stale move negation) so I need to know when and where all of the damage values of Fire Breath appear.

To my understanding, the distance that the flame travels is a factor in the damage inflicted by the move. The amount of charge (built up over time) that Bowser has for Fire Breath might also be a factor as far as damage is concerned but I'm not entirely sure about that; it might just have an effect on the distance that it travels, which then consequently influences damage. What I know is that the largest damage value that I've seen from a single hit of this move so far is 3%, which was attained by being hit at the maximum range from the first of the 5 mandatory embers while being at 0% to avoid dealing with non-displayed decimal values.

I haven't found a way to get flames to travel at a consistent distance yet, either. The closest thing to consistent that I've been able to get was to down-angle the flames into the floor so that they would at least travel in a straight line, but even then the distance they travel varies for some reason. In any case, this move has been proving very difficult to document accurately.

If you know something, please provide any knowledge that you may have about the frame data of this move. It would be extremely enlightening to know something along the lines of "the damage of an ember changes by X after every Y amount of frames that it has existed for."

 

[cmart]

It increases by 1 (1-2-3). Not at home so I can't quote the exact frames, you can find them yourself by opening his pac file in OpenSA2 and navigating to the flame hitboxes in the article tab. If not I'll grab them for you either tonight or tomorrow.

 

[Shockbound]

That would be greatly appreciated. I've never used OpenSA2 before and when I tried launching it, everything was greyed out and I wasn't allowed to use the dropdown menu to select a file to load (there's probably an easy fix for this, I couldn't find a guide to walk me through the setup). I figured out how to dump the contents of FitKoopa.pac into a .txt file and tried to find something of use in there, but the only relevant thing I could find was a section about "SpecialN" that had a whole bunch of numbers that I don't understand the meaning of.

Anyways, thanks for your help with this.

 

[Crulex Crystallite]

After spam playing Bowser against varying opponents, I have to say Odds is correct. It's just going to take some time to get used to, but he's definitely better than he was in 3.5.

The only trick is trying to use flame more often for interesting ledge tumbles and interrupts (like falco's laser). It works really well on some characters' positioning.

 

[Osmosis124]

How do you recommend playing the new 3.6 bowser because my old ways aren't working.
Also can someone tell me the benefit of grounded side b only being slightly faster?

 

[Crulex Crystallite]

How do you recommend playing the new 3.6 bowser because my old ways aren't working.
Also can someone tell me the benefit of grounded side b only being slightly faster?

From what I've been doing, it's your job to throw out safe hit boxes and use your increased speeds to force your opponent to do something stupid. Bowser is still big enough to make him not easy to approach while being fast enough that YOU can approach successfully.

-Nair still wins most trades
-K Klaw is more reliable on shield while fast falling, like in melee (through platforms as well)
-K Klaw also has a more horizontal hit box and is faster, less punishable
-Fortress is more reliable for edge and out of shield
-Charged up smash on some recovering opponents off stage situationally useful (because of the landing hitbox as well as bowser being super armored)
-ftilt faster
- Flame longer, more useful creative uses like lower shield, pushing off ledges and edge of platforms, can channel longer close range before it diminishes

The only bad part is you're not as much of a tank, so you just have to relearn your movement options and space better. His approach game is better by far and is no longer a heaven or hell character. (get punished or punish)

Work on things like wavelanding, single jabs and pivot grabbing, dash grabs, abusing your bbjumps and disjointed hitboxes like bairs, etc. The increased speed increases his meta potential for sure.

Because he's got some interesting utility like big hit boxes and a command grab, stringing fundamentals and tech together can lead to some pretty solid dmg and combos.

Edited for accuracy

 

[cmart]

That would be greatly appreciated. I've never used OpenSA2 before and when I tried launching it, everything was greyed out and I wasn't allowed to use the dropdown menu to select a file to load (there's probably an easy fix for this, I couldn't find a guide to walk me through the setup). I figured out how to dump the contents of FitKoopa.pac into a .txt file and tried to find something of use in there, but the only relevant thing I could find was a section about "SpecialN" that had a whole bunch of numbers that I don't understand the meaning of.

Anyways, thanks for your help with this.

Okay it's 8 frame intervals. So 8 at 1 dmg, 8 at 2 dmg, 8 at 3 dmg. Then the hitboxes terminate. Also the distance the flames travel begins diminishing immediately I'm pretty sure, so even the second flame won't go as far as the first, etc. If you have any other questions, ask and I'll see if I can help.

 

[Frost | Odds]

From what I've been doing, it's your job to throw out safe hit boxes and use your increased speeds to force your opponent to do something stupid. Bowser is still big enough to make him not easy to approach while being fast enough that YOU can approach successfully.

-Nair still wins most trades
-K Klaw is more reliable on shield while fast falling, like in melee (through platforms as well)
-K Klaw also has a more horizontal hit box and is faster, less punishable
-Fortress is more reliable for edge and out of shield
-Charged up smash on some recovering opponents off stage useful (because of the landing hitbox as well as bowser being super armored)
-ftilt faster
-dtilt and jabs slightly faster
-L cancel lag time slightly faster as a result of reduced size
- Flame longer, more useful creative uses like lower shield, pushing off ledges and edge of platforms, can channel longer close range before it diminishes

The only bad part is you're not as much of a tank, so you just have to relearn your movement options and space better. His approach game is better by far and is no longer a heaven or hell character. (get punished or punish)

Work on things like wavelanding, single jabs and pivot grabbing, dash grabs, abusing your bbjumps and disjointed hitboxes like bairs, etc. The increased speed increases his meta potential for sure.

Because he's got some interesting utility like big hit boxes and a command grab, stringing fundamentals and tech together can lead to some pretty solid dmg and combos.

You're right on most points, and I like the optimistic, problem-solving spirit of your post; but I've got a couple corrections.

1. It's no easier to fortresshog than before, nor is it any stronger on shield.
2. There's almost always a better edgeguard available to you than usmash. It will often be bair, if you're onstage waiting for opponent to attempt sweetspot.
3. Neither dtilt nor jab is faster.
4. None of Bowser's aerials' landing lag have changed; size has nothing to do with it.

 

[Crulex Crystallite]

You're right on most points, and I like the optimistic, problem-solving spirit of your post; but I've got a couple corrections.

1. It's no easier to fortresshog than before, nor is it any stronger on shield.
2. There's almost always a better edgeguard available to you than usmash. It will often be bair, if you're onstage waiting for opponent to attempt sweetspot.
3. Neither dtilt nor jab is faster.
4. None of Bowser's aerials' landing lag have changed; size has nothing to do with it.

1. Indirectly I feel like fortress is just because of the smaller size. It's not a huge difference, but it feels like using it as a mix up is safer.

2. I meant to say that it's an interesting option due to the super armor when it's fully charged (as you can't get that armor from just down smashing anymore) and it also lifts you up, but honestly I use run off fairs and nairs for kills all day . Situational uses. If you can time it right, the hitbox of certain characters up b's won't hit you and you're covering decent area.

3. Really? Maybe I'm just delusional. The increased movement is probably tricking me, but since I can move around faster I don't feel as "stuck in the ground" as I did in 3.5

4. Once again, probably just the speed differences throwing me off.

 

[Chaos_Blasta]

I've played a lot more, so..

I really don't mind Bowser's power being taken away from some of his attacks, such as Fsmash, Ftilt, Utilt, Up B.. I think there is no discussion that Bowser was stupidly strong in a lot of ways and at least that eases things down somewhat; It doesn't impact him as a character because this can already be covered up in so many ways, although I personally think it's a bit lame.

It's mostly 2 changes that I've really noticed hurt Bowser or at least completely remove the several ways he had to punish after reads: The smashes and the Side B. I believe it was mentioned earlier that only bad players got caught on a side B in < 3.5, and I totally disagree, because it was great if you predicted some sort of approach with an attack and tanked the hit with the Side B/Smash armor to get your punish going. Smashes are very unviable in these scenarios, as you won't realistically get past light armor on a punish like that (And the IASA/startup lag improvements still don't make them fast enough to punish opponents without them reacting before that).

Due to not having these options, you gotta be way, WAY more mobile with Bowser now, abusing his wavelanding shenanigans on stages with platforms way more now and generally only putting out attacks when you know it's pretty safe; Bowser can't really stand his ground very effectively now.

New Uair and Fair are actually pretty good. Uair more so, cause it's so damn easy to chain them now that it has a lower base, higher growth, and Fair keeps you closer to your opponent when it matters.

Some things are really lame though like Ftilt's new hitbox that never seems to hit anything when you want it to or Dsmash's new angle as I mentioned earlier. Also, I'm pretty sure they nerfed his grab range, I've tried grabbing from many points in where I was sure I would previously get a grab but it continuously failed. Perhaps cause of the size change?

 

[Frost | Odds]

After having more time to play with the changes, I think Bowser is now actually at the very bottom of the 3.6b tier list - which isn't as bad as it sounds. I think his MUs are significantly less polarized, so if (hopefully when) some major buffs roll out, they won't make people straight up quit PM because of the salt.

 

[Filosafer]

That's awful. 3.6b -> 3.6 isn't a balance update, it's just a fix for any bugs/glitches found (Like Toon Link's Fsmash and the instant ledge grab). And if characters like ZSS are any basis to go by, downgrades one update doesn't mean an upgrade the next.

That being said, current bowser is only because maylay, yet I don't hate it. I don't agree he's at the BOTTOM of the tier list, rather he's probably just out of top 15. He has too many sourspots right now, but being able to RAR KK offstage to edgeguard and NOT die is pretty cool. Also his Dsmash angle is something I don't understand the hate for. It kills earlier, and it'll send offstage, or in a prime punish spot if they DI in. I like it. The lesser armour on his smashes means it's harder to edgeguard with them, which is ok. I only really used that armour for PKT2, which just requires some finesse to do now.

 

[Electric Tuba]

Down smash doesn't kill earlier. It killed very early off the top and set up for up air before that, and now it does neither of those things. The annoying part, though, is that it's very hard to know which direction they're going to go (in front or behind) as they can DI to go either direction. That also makes it pretty much useless in edgeguarding, since they'll just send themselves back on stage.

 

[G13_Flux]

I think they should make up b invincibility start on frame 3 in exchange for a better standard grab. Maybe frame 7 or 8, and more range. As much as the koopa claw is better now, its still kind of risky in neutral. Bowser needs a better conversion tool from neutral that also can reliably deal with crouch canceling.

 

[GDP]

I think they should make up b invincibility start on frame 3 in exchange for a better standard grab. Maybe frame 7 or 8, and more range.

At a glance this strikes me as a serious nerf. Having a 1 frame move from shield is pretty good in a lot of cases, those first two frames make a big difference.

 

[Zigludo]

Also his Dsmash angle is something I don't understand the hate for. It kills earlier,

heck naw. it kills way later now

as for 'but the new dsmash sends offstage!' that's cool and all but so did dsmash > bb jc fair which doesn't exist any more

 

[G13_Flux]

At a glance this strikes me as a serious nerf. Having a 1 frame move from shield is pretty good in a lot of cases, those first two frames make a big difference.

is it really though? i mean yes, he wont have a 1 frame up b OOS (technically 2 frame OOS because of jumpsquat), but 3 frames is still extremely quick. its not like bowser is GW either, where adding start up to his up b is going to hinder his safety on shield. He doesnt really pressure shields through tight frame data and quick, successive hits. his up b would still be able to get him out of shine pressure, and would not take any of his fundamental operations, techniques, or strategies away. It would allow you, however, to enhance his grab a bit, and provide you with an additional OOS option. This stems from the fact that i believe having a more normal grab game (as opposed to a frame 9 grab with literally no disjoint), is way too powerful if you leave up b as is. if ha bit of up bs extreme potency is sacrificed, it adds a more thoughtful dynamic that goes into deciding your OOS moves. having two different options for varying purposes and uses provides him with a lot more flexibility than having just one option thats a bit more powerful either of the other two on their own. Additionally, like I said before, this will provide him with a method of more effectively dealing with CCing, and garnering better punishes out of neutral (his throws can set up tech chases, provide combos, and give positional advantage). I think this is a fair trade off that leads to a more versatile game and character. its another tweak that would de-polarize bowser, but still allow him to have his strengths and unique aspects.

I just really think that a 9 frame grab with no range (at least, no meaningful range that sticks out past his body; dont be fooled by the numbers on the stats page) just holds him back from having tools to compete with a lot of the rest of the cast on a more even field. even despite the fact that koopa klaw is buffed, theyre different applications, and i dont believe that having the current koopa klaw, along with the grab tweak im suggesting would be over powered, or wouldnt inspire a creative game.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Man I really, really, extremely wanted to be optimistic and believe that bowser was still good. I was wrong. As much as it pains me, zigludo was right. Bowser is trash right now. I'm done with him unless/until he's fixed. I still think 3.6 is the start of a better design direction, but as toxic as some of his 3.5 elements were, he NEEDED those to survive. He's gotten nothing by way of compensation, so I'm pretty comfortable saying that bowser is by far the worst char in 3.6b.

I'm really frustrated that pretty much all my suggestions for nerfs were taken but I was 100pct ignored re: buffs. I hope that pmdt eventually comes around and allows a viable non-toxic bowser in their game. :/

 

[Zigludo]

@ Frost | Odds I hate to be the one to say "I told you so." I wish Bowser was still good, but I don't think I'm going to be playing this character in tournament for the next 9 months or however long it is until 4.0. Not unless I'm convinced that the opponent has absolutely zero matchup experience.

 

[SushiKiller]

welp who are u going to play now

 

[Frost | Odds]

Prolly ganon/yoshi until bowser sucks less or I'm no longer salty about it

 

[SushiKiller]

Yoshi that would be interesting

 

[Filosafer]

heck naw. it kills way later now

Down smash doesn't kill earlier.

What are you talking about? dsmash improved in every way. Starts 3 frames earlier, IASA 8 frames earlier, BKB 40 -> 50, KBG 140 -> 168. Damage was reduced by 4 on the final hit, so I guess not in EVERY way. But I'm getting kills ~30% earlier with it. Plus:
They DI in? BB fair. DI out? They're offstage. They're better off NOT DIing, and if upthrowing with Charizard has shown me anything, people don't seem to be able to figure that out.

That being said, I'm not defending changes to bowser. It was mostly a sidegrade that homogenized him with the rest of the cast. He's not the worst, he still has options. It's just that, yet again, it's a completely different Bowser that has to be learned. But repeatedly calling his key elements in 3.5 "toxic" is the reason why PMDT made him the way he is now. Because when the current highest ranking Bowser player calls all Bowser's top moves "toxic", the PMDT takes it seriously and revamps it. You can't complain now Odds. You're being childish when they changed what you wanted, but not the WAY you wanted. Leave him for the next generation.

 

[Zigludo]

He's not being childish. they implemented almost all of the proposed nerfs and like none of the buffs, which is basically a way of not implementing the changes he asked for at all.

it's like if you went to a fast food restaurant, paid your money, and they just refused to give you what you ordered. like you wanted a Big Mac but they just gave you a little cup of coffee creamer instead

also lol @ dsmash supposedly killing earlier, I suggest you test that theory in training