Data Bowser's Moveset Data & Discussion

[MrEh]

Whoa, did you guys know that Whirling Fortress no longer has Frame 1-5 invulnerability in this game? I was totally kept in the dark about this. With a frame 6 hitbox, it's still a good OoS move - faster than any other move Bowser can perform on the ground, especially with the fact that it's an up special. However, I'm still quite depressed to have found about Bowser no longer having one of, if not THE greatest OoS moves in Smash.

I maintain that it's still one of the greatest OoS moves even without the invincibility.

That speaks volumes for how amazing it was WITH it.

 

[EarthenPillar]

Supposably the Invul on Fortress was removed to compensate never sliding off-stage now, ahublyuddyblyuddyhur~

 

[Hitman JT]

Really could've used that start-up invulnerability because of how stupid roll-dodging is in this game. But Bowser isn't allowed to have too many nice things. :/

 

[Jerodak]

that was one of the reasons why i was tempted to quit bowser during the first 2 months of the game. it was extremely agitating having to actually wait my turn to punish moves. i was too used to just having the "you hit my shield, idiot" option(s) in brawl. both upb, side b and grabbing (to an extent) got nerfed, so bowser has to punish in ways that are a bit weird than what i was used to.

Yeah, it's quite irritating when someone is using some poorly spaced multi-hitting move on my shield and I just have to sit there and take it. It also doesn't help that the hitbox on fortress is so specific and can easily miss unless they are literally right on top of you. Then the issue is further compounded by the seemingly increased difficulty of actually performing the up-b. I still end up getting short hops out of shield sometimes when I'm trying to get the fortress, it ruins a lot of my punishes and sometimes it results in me taking big chunks of damage that I wouldn't have otherwise. But hey, maybe some of these issue may get brought to attention and fixed, perhaps the missing I-frames were unintentional. I think that Mewtwo DLC drops soon, maybe it'll come with a much needed balance/glitch fix patch; cross your fingers!

Supposably the Invul on Fortress was removed to compensate never sliding off-stage now, ahublyuddyblyuddyhur~

But not sliding off of ledges is a nerf... Do you have a source for this? I'd really like to see it if possible.

@ Zapp Branniglenn The main issue with dash slam is that you're easier to cheese stock with it, and it's very unsatisfying to use, even the default side b is better, at least it has power.

Well...don't even need Dash Slash/Slam to go under Smashville.

...please tell me I'm not late >_>

Spoiler

Troot Laet

 

[S_B]

that was one of the reasons why i was tempted to quit bowser during the first 2 months of the game. it was extremely agitating having to actually wait my turn to punish moves. i was too used to just having the "you hit my shield, idiot" option(s) in brawl. both upb, side b and grabbing (to an extent) got nerfed, so bowser has to punish in ways that are a bit weird than what i was used to.

I wish they had just removed grab armor on REGULAR grabs and let command grabs retain the armor...

Klaw got nerfed in range already and the lack of grab armor just makes it that much worse.

It still baffles me that they changed the way it suicided because it was already to the point where no one should ever get grabbed by it offstage, ever, unless they were literally asleep while recovering, as ANY aerial is 100% guaranteed to beat it...

 

[Duck SMASH!]

I wish they had just removed grab armor on REGULAR grabs and let command grabs retain the armor...

Klaw got nerfed in range already and the lack of grab armor just makes it that much worse.

It still baffles me that they changed the way it suicided because it was already to the point where no one should ever get grabbed by it offstage, ever, unless they were literally asleep while recovering, as ANY aerial is 100% guaranteed to beat it...

I'd rather Diddy kong NOT have armor on his monkey flip, thank you very much... D:

 

[Karsticles]

I'd rather Diddy kong NOT have armor on his monkey flip, thank you very much... D:

Isn't that a hit grab, not a command grab?

 

[Jerodak]

Isn't that a hit grab, not a command grab?

It's a real grab, you can't shield it.

 

[B!squick]

I swear, it's like they think only actual babies or alcoholics play Smash with how much lag they put on... well, everything for some characters.

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Apparently Bowser has partial invincibility on Uair starting on Frame 3 and lasting until the end of the hitbox (9-13). Does anybody know precisely what's invulnerable? I'd wager it's just his head, but I'm going to test and see for myself. I didn't know about this property. I've been neglecting to challenge opponents above me with it.

 

[Zigsta]

Apparently Bowser has partial invincibility on Uair starting on Frame 3 and lasting until the end of the hitbox (9-13). Does anybody know precisely what's invulnerable? I'd wager it's just his head, but I'm going to test and see for myself. I didn't know about this property. I've been neglecting to challenge opponents above me with it.

That seems odd to me. Where did you find this information?

 

[Corgian]

Apparently Bowser has partial invincibility on Uair starting on Frame 3 and lasting until the end of the hitbox (9-13). Does anybody know precisely what's invulnerable? I'd wager it's just his head, but I'm going to test and see for myself. I didn't know about this property. I've been neglecting to challenge opponents above me with it.

I know that his head is severely disjointed. So much so that with proper timing you can challenge both Link and Rosalina's Dairs with it, and come out unscathed (that being said unless you're super confident with that timing, never do it.)

 

[Jerodak]

I know that his head is severely disjointed. So much so that with proper timing you can challenge both Link and Rosalina's Dairs with it, and come out unscathed (that being said unless you're super confident with that timing, never do it.)

I can confirm this, Bowser's head is more or less intangible during his up air. You can even hit little mac out of his counter without taking a hit if you're spacing properly. With a few exceptions, any part of Bowser's body that he attacks with becomes intangible for the duration of the active frames. Also, I have challenged, and beat, Link's Dair a few times also. I think it's a good thing to learn because it gives Bowser another option for pressuring Link in the air. As for Rosalina, I've never tried to challenge her Dair, but I've found it generally better to just move to the side and hit her with a Bair instead. This can work on Link too, but sometimes I feel like the hitbox on his Dair is deceptively wide, it's almost like he has two Nairs.

 

[Corgian]

I can confirm this, Bowser's head is more or less intangible during his up air. You can even hit little mac out of his counter without taking a hit if you're spacing properly. With a few exceptions, any part of Bowser's body that he attacks with becomes intangible for the duration of the active frames. Also, I have challenged, and beat, Link's Dair a few times also. I think it's a good thing to learn because it gives Bowser another option for pressuring Link in the air. As for Rosalina, I've never tried to challenge her Dair, but I've found it generally better to just move to the side and hit her with a Bair instead. This can work on Link too, but sometimes I feel like the hitbox on his Dair is deceptively wide, it's almost like he has two Nairs.

Yeah, learning the timing is key. That being said, very few scenes have Link players in them, so it's hard to actually learn this timing. Despite all the Links on For Glory, your timing gets thrown off due to the condition of online play. Lag frames mess with execution and many things involving precise timing get lost thanks to it.

 

[MrEh]

That seems odd to me. Where did you find this information?

It's in the frame data dump that Thinkaman posted awhile back.

It's not too surprising though. So many moves have partial invincibility in this game.

 

[Jerodak]

Yeah, learning the timing is key. That being said, very few scenes have Link players in them, so it's hard to actually learn this timing. Despite all the Links on For Glory, your timing gets thrown off due to the condition of online play. Lag frames mess with execution and many things involving precise timing get lost thanks to it.

That's true, but Bowser's up air can win in some other situations as well, like vs Little Mac using counter while trying to land, I've hit a Mac out of his counter without taking damage before. It might work on other counters as well, and I imagine we could also challenge a few other Dairs. Also, let's not forget that the hitbox starts in front of Bowser, so upair can also be used on someone in front of you, as long as they aren't too low.

 

[Zigsta]

Interesting. My upair timing must be awful because I've never beaten a dair with it. I'll have to play around with it more.

 

[Corgian]

Another great thing that can be done with Up-Air that I've seen some better Bowsers do is use after an air dodge. We often forget that Up-Air is a kill move, but it is a pretty damn good one.

That's true, but Bowser's up air can win in some other situations as well, like vs Little Mac using counter while trying to land, I've hit a Mac out of his counter without taking damage before. It might work on other counters as well, and I imagine we could also challenge a few other Dairs. Also, let's not forget that the hitbox starts in front of Bowser, so upair can also be used on someone in front of you, as long as they aren't too low.

Ooo, I'll have to try that. That being said, if a character likes to get those counters in, Up-Smash nullifies every counter except Shulk's. Since Bowser has invincibility on his Up-Smash, it tends to just eat counters.

 

[MrEh]

Bowser's Usmash doesn't have invincibility.

Interesting. My upair timing must be awful because I've never beaten a dair with it. I'll have to play around with it more.

Depends on the Dair honestly. Uair still isn't ideal for beating stuff because it doesn't linger that long. Nor is it really all that big.

If you're confident in your timing, then go for it. I wouldn't try it against stuff like Link's Dair though. That will trade AT BEST. Hell, I can't react to yolo Link Dairs even if I tried.

 

[S_B]

I'd rather Diddy kong NOT have armor on his monkey flip, thank you very much... D:

Well, me neither, but monkey flip takes a LOT longer to come out and Diddy has to touch the person in order for it to connect, meaning that it already has more opportunity to be knocked away.

I think it was more of a nerf to klaw than it was to monkey flip, though klaw's other nerfs certainly don't help, either...

 

[EarthenPillar]

That's true, but Bowser's up air can win in some other situations as well, like vs Little Mac using counter while trying to land, I've hit a Mac out of his counter without taking damage before. It might work on other counters as well, and I imagine we could also challenge a few other Dairs. Also, let's not forget that the hitbox starts in front of Bowser, so upair can also be used on someone in front of you, as long as they aren't too low.

This is really a good find. Up until now, I've only been using Uair to tackle certain things, pikachu/luigi's sideB, or really short characters with short Dairs like WiiFit. The knowledge of it being intangible will definitely be challenged!

 

[Corgian]

Bowser's Usmash doesn't have invincibility.

Riiight, it has what Jerodak called Shellguard. Regardless, whatever it is, it does eat counters. I have confirmed this in many matches.

 

[MrEh]

No one's doubting that it exists or beats counters. We've known it exists and does just that for a long time.

http://smashboards.com/threads/info-about-the-shellguard-in-up-smash.378815/#post-18030204

There's just a difference between invincibility and autoguard. There's a reason why it still loses to Greninja and ZSS Dairs.

 

[Corgian]

No one's doubting that it exists or beats counters. We've known it exists and does just that for a long time.

http://smashboards.com/threads/info-about-the-shellguard-in-up-smash.378815/#post-18030204

There's just a difference between invincibility and autoguard. There's a reason why it still loses to Greninja and ZSS Dairs.

Oh! So that's what its called. This was a new concept to me, so that's why I was unaware of what it was. Thanks for the resource, @ MrEh

 

[MrEh]

It's honestly pretty understandable. Autoguard is rarely seen even in regular fighting games.

The only characters I even remember off the top of my head that had autoguard was Kyo and Maxima from KoF. Oh, and I guess Bang from Blazblue.

It boggles my mind how the dev team would even include such an obscure fighting game mechanic into the game. On Bowser of all things.

 

[Zigsta]

No one's doubting that it exists or beats counters. We've known it exists and does just that for a long time.

http://smashboards.com/threads/info-about-the-shellguard-in-up-smash.378815/#post-18030204

There's just a difference between invincibility and autoguard. There's a reason why it still loses to Greninja and ZSS Dairs.

I've never tried using upsmash on a Zamus dair, but I beat Greninja's dair pretty regularly. :o

 

[MrEh]

Is Greninja not just jumping off?

It always happens to me. I autoguard his Dair; he jumps off and my Usmash whiffs.


In ZSS's case, the 2nd hit of her Dair makes it hard to autoguard through it. Since as soon as she lands, the 2nd hit of her Dair often hits your underside. -_-

 

[Zigsta]

Is Greninja not just jumping off?

It always happens to me. I autoguard his Dair; he jumps off and my Usmash whiffs.

Does the Greninja need to input a jump upon connecting with dair, or does it automatically jump upon hit? I thought it was the latter.

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Speaking of shellguard, I always wondered if the data dump's mention of partial invincibility was referring to that all this time. Oh, and here's a link to it. We should really just have a link once per page in a thread like this. The pastebin states that Usmash's partial invincibility starts at frame 14 (2 frames before first hitbox) and ends at frame 28 (5 frames after the initial attack is finished, but before Bowser lands at 37. That seems pretty consistent with your shellguard findings of the move.

Speaking of the pastebin, it's got plenty of mistakes and missing information. If you perused Bowser's data alone, you'd find one glaring error. The active grab frame for flying slam is mixed up between its ground and aerial versions. The grounded version is supposed to be frame 8 while aerial is 17. Several characters are also missing their "transition to (aerial move) landing state". These are essentially the autocancel windows. Bowser has his, allowing me to complain about how Uair can't short hop auto cancel. But if it could, it would retire Nair as a juggling move.

I always felt like Dair had shellguard as well. If you dair'ed non transcendent projectiles traveling upward (all I can think of are Pit arrows) you should pass through because of its amazing hitbox alone. But I feel like Bowser could armor through an up smash with Dair. Once again, the pastebin is claiming partial invincibility.

 

[MrEh]

The partial invincibility in the frame data probably refers to Bowser's shell. It doesn't refer to the shellguard property, since that and true invincibility are not listed in the frame data dump.

It's possible that it coincides exactly with the autoguard, but it always felt that the autoguard kicked in more than a few frames after a charge release. Most likely slower than the partial invincibility.

And yeah, we know that the Klaw numbers are mixed up. It's just that no one bothered to change it in the dump.

Does the Greninja need to input a jump upon connecting with dair, or does it automatically jump upon hit? I thought it was the latter.

It should happen automatically.

Maybe I'm just unlucky all the time. Heh.

 

[Zigsta]

It should happen automatically.

Maybe I'm just unlucky all the time. Heh.

Good, so I'm not crazy! I think you may just be unlucky, my friend. I upsmash Greninja dairs consistently, and the Greninja main is always really shocked the first couple tries it happens.

 

[MrEh]

Looking back on it, it's probably my bad reflexes. I punish stuff really slowly because of that. I'm guessing Greninja is jumping off the Usmash autoguard after the hitbox is fully extended.

That makes sense when I think about it. I'll test it later to make sure though.

 

[Jerodak]

@ MrEh
As far as certain dairs "Winning" against upsmash, it depends on how deep they are inside the shell when taking the hit, you want them to be a low enough to actually get part of their body inside of the shell. otherwise they'll just hit the larger autoguard without touching the actual hitbox and you'll take a hit as they continue on the way down, or in the case of Greninja, he'll just bounce off. I'm quite sure the autoguard is active before the hitbox starts up, because you can actually do an Upsmash OOS on peach right after the last hit of a Dair, and the autoguard will nullify her nair if she tries to stuff an option with it on the way down. As long as the opponent isn't at the very edge of the attack, especially with something disjointed, the upsmash should win. But if you'd rather maintain as much distance as possible, you could use uptilt.

 

[MrEh]

Yeah I figured it just had to do with the autoguard box extending far enough for Greninja to jump off. Since we do know that the autoguard box is larger than the hitbox of the move itself. (I understand why it was programmed like this, but it doesn't make it any less annoying.)

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Just tested in training mode. In Smash Bros. there's a familiar circle effect when making contact with an invincible target. Whether you're attacking a shield or when your opponent is invulnerable upon respawn. I had Lucario charge an aura sphere on a platform above and in front of bowser (high aura to create a larger sphere) and the shellguard was extremely prominent as he attacked. The aura sphere charge multi hit hitting Bowser several times before he landed from the moves hop. What's different between hitting this and a shield is the absence of hitlag. It's really just the same as hitting a recently respawned target.

I know Bowser is not the only character with autoguard. Palutena has it on her dash attack and Bair, which incorporate her shield. Autoguard can also explain the phenomenon where Link's hylian shield blocks projectiles, but the differences are obviously that it only works on projectiles, and Link has a visible flinch animation when guarding against such attacks. Palutena and Bowser do not.

And to correct what I said earlier. Dair has no shell guard. That would be absurd. Uair testing was no surprise either. Bowser's entire head hurtbox is intangible. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[S_B]

It's also worth noting that, during the frame of autoguard, any and EVERY attack that hits Bowser's shell will not hit Bowser.

You can test this by spawning 4 explosive crates in training and upsmashing them all at once: Bowser will remain unscratched, unlike when you down+b them and Bowser will take 150% damage and then die.

Yeah, it doesn't have much practical application in game, but during that one frame, multiple attacks can in fact be shrugged off, so long as they hit Bowser's shell.

 

[Zigsta]

OK, I finally saw Bowser's upair partial invincibility in action last night. If Samus is bombing as she falls to try and mix up her landing, you can upair through the bomb without much worry. With the right timing, the bomb blows up in Bowser's face and does no damage as your upair comes out. Usually I go for pivot/dash grabs to cover Samus's landings or even dash attack/upair to remain grounded and get a string going--since once you get an aerial string on Samus, it's pretty easy to maintain your momentum--but upair is a nice mixup.

Also, at 0%, forward throw offstage>fair>fair is guaranteed to kill Samus. It's gross.

 

[Jerodak]

OK, I finally saw Bowser's upair partial invincibility in action last night. If Samus is bombing as she falls to try and mix up her landing, you can upair through the bomb without much worry. With the right timing, the bomb blows up in Bowser's face and does no damage as your upair comes out. Usually I go for pivot/dash grabs to cover Samus's landings or even dash attack/upair to remain grounded and get a string going--since once you get an aerial string on Samus, it's pretty easy to maintain your momentum--but upair is a nice mixup.

Also, at 0%, forward throw offstage>fair>fair is guaranteed to kill Samus. It's gross.

I think that if Samus is using down B in the air near you very often then going for the Up air is generally a good idea because she's actually stuck in the morph ball for a bit and can only drift around until she returns to normal. So if you pick up on that habit then you can actually get some easy hits.

 

[Corgian]

Also, at 0%, forward throw offstage>fair>fair is guaranteed to kill Samus. It's gross.

On what stage? Lylat? Duck Hunt? Or is she just unable to recover from it?

 

[Zigsta]

@ J Jerodak I like using upair as a mixup because upair has more cooldown on it than upsmash, grab, fair, or bair. I typically use it as a mixup or a finisher because I always try to get strings on Samus since she's really susceptible to sustained aerial pressure.

@ Corgian it works on any stage! Samus's recovery is so limited that she can't make it back after two offstage fairs.