Brawl+ 5.0 RC1 Tactical Discussion Thread

[thesage]

Y the hell is getting footstooled during ur dj a problem with Yoshi. Just dj airdodge. It works with Ness....

 

[Plum]

But characters shouldn't have hard-ish counters (65-35) while others are only have to worry about having a couple of 55-45s.

Sure, they could technically be both balanced, but it's not fair to say "Oh, well yeah. You main ____, you NEED a secondary. But Metaknight? Nah, he's fine. Solo him."

Note: Metaknight was used as a stereotypical overpowered character with no counters because I'm lazy. I haven't played as/against him enough in 5.0+ to say much.

Oh noes! A fighting game that has ~40 characters who all have varying strengths and weaknesses as well as physics and movesets also have characters who have better matchups than others!

._.

So what if it isn't fair? Who said you had to main somebody like Ness, Link, Bowser, or even DDD in my case who have some clear hard counters? You play the character you want, and if that means you have to pick up a secondary while others may not then oh well. Tiers will always exist, and you can't remove the hard counters in the game without (more than likely) breaking other matchups. It's how fighting games work. Viable does not mean a cast of 6-4 and 4-6's. Viable is a character who is a threatening force in enough matchups to actually be worth picking up, whether as a main, secondary, tertiary, or fourthdary (aimed at Kaiser :V).

 

[GHNeko]

But characters shouldn't have hard-ish counters (65-35) while others are only have to worry about having a couple of 55-45s.

Sure, they could technically be both balanced, but it's not fair to say "Oh, well yeah. You main ____, you NEED a secondary. But Metaknight? Nah, he's fine. Solo him."

Note: Metaknight was used as a stereotypical overpowered character with no counters because I'm lazy. I haven't played as/against him enough in 5.0+ to say much.

errr...You dont NEED to pick up a secondary anymore. You can generally overcome counters by simply being better and knowing your stages.

All these match ups and counters we speak of are before stages are taken into considerations.

 

[Mattnumbers]

Everyone having even matchups with everyone else doesn't make the game boring, it's just that the only real way to possibly MAKE them all even is to make them the same, which is boring. Have you EVER thought "Man, I hate this matchup, It's way too evenly balanced"? I sincerely doubt it.

And from now on:

"counter" means 70:30
"soft counter" means 60:40
"hard counter" means 80-20

Not saying forever, just for this argument so people don't get confused.

Personally, I think soft counters are fine simply because they are mostly impossible to remove without dumbing down the game. Counters, on the other hand, SHOULD NOT EXIST. We have a chance to make a game where you can pick any character and have the same chance of winning.

Saying "just pick a secondary" only lessens the luck factor, whereas removing counters removes the problem being there to begin with. Unless we want Brawl+ to be a game where every character has the same amount of counters and counters the same amount as everyone else, where every match the person who picks their character second automatically gets a huge advantage (since being able to play every character would be a valued skill in such a game), there are no good reasons that counters should exist besides it being impossible to remove them for some reason.

 

[Shadic]

Y the hell is getting footstooled during ur dj a problem with Yoshi. Just dj airdodge. It works with Ness....

Because people were talking about it a while ago and I was curious about what happened with it? Christ.

Oh noes! A fighting game that has ~40 characters who all have varying strengths and weaknesses as well as physics and movesets also have characters who have better matchups than others!

Yeah, except that wasn't at all what I was talking about. Stop being a ****.

So what if it isn't fair?

Because this is supposed to be a competitive game in which people regularly bet money on.

Who said you had to main somebody like Ness, Link, Bowser, or even DDD in my case who have some clear hard counters?

Brawl+ is supposed to make all characters playable. Preferably equally as playable, as far as current competetive metagame shows. They can't be equal if you're looking at some 80-20 matches.

Viable does not mean a cast of 6-4 and 4-6's. Viable is a character who is a threatening force in enough matchups to actually be worth picking up, whether as a main, secondary, tertiary, or fourthdary (aimed at Kaiser :V).

How about "Viable for maining," then? There's no point in putting most of your attention in one character if in 1/3rd of their matches, they get dominated.

Just because want characters to be equally close to viable doesn't meant we want every character to be the same. I'm still not sure on how people make that connection, other than just to be obnoxious.

Edit:

errr...You dont NEED to pick up a secondary anymore. You can generally overcome counters by simply being better and knowing your stages.

People are arguing that you should. And the question is "How much better." I can beat any newbie in a 90-10 matchup, but that doesn't mean the matchup isn't screwed. (Hypothetical, AFAIK)

 

[Plum]

Everyone having even matchups with everyone else doesn't make the game boring, it's just that the only real way to possibly MAKE them all even is to make them the same, which is boring. Have you EVER thought "Man, I hate this matchup, It's way too evenly balanced"? I sincerely doubt it.

And from now on:

"counter" means 70:30
"soft counter" means 60:40
"hard counter" means 80-20

Not saying forever, just for this argument so people don't get confused.

Personally, I think soft counters are fine simply because they are mostly impossible to remove without dumbing down the game. Counters, on the other hand, SHOULD NOT EXIST. We have a chance to make a game where you can pick any character and have the same chance of winning.

Saying "just pick a secondary" only lessens the luck factor, whereas removing counters removes the problem being there to begin with. Unless we want Brawl+ to be a game where every character has the same amount of counters and counters the same amount as everyone else, where every match the person who picks their character second automatically gets a huge advantage (since being able to play every character would be a valued skill in such a game), there are no good reasons that counters should exist besides it being impossible to remove them for some reason.

A sincere question.
What would you do if the WBR buffed up Ness or Lucas so that they 4-6 or even with G&W, and all of the sudden it was discovered through absolute top level play that Ness or Lucas (whichever you choose to use in the example) suddenly went 7-3 against MK?
Now lets add the complexity of balancing a game. Let's assume that what was done for Ness/Lucas was the BARE minimum needed to go at least 4-6 with G&W. So there is virtually no way tone down these buffs without allowing G&W to be able to easily counter them.
There comes another option, tone down G&W's advantages over Ness/Lucas so their buffs don't need to be so extreme. But now we get another problem, G&W's already counter matchups become hard counters with these new nerfs. Uh oh, can't have that happen. Either we don't do this, or we start a nerf party on Snake and Marth.
Then there's the lovely option of buffing MK do deal with this new 3-7 matchup. Uh oh, we buffed MK to make these matchups even, and now he gains new 7-3 matchups against Link and Marth. Looks like we need to buff them to avoid MK countering them. Uh oh... (you get the point...)

What would you do?

Obviously that is a very far fetched question, but it kind of has to be to make a point.
Counters will always exist, and trying to fix them is more trouble than its worth because the cast is far too unique to make it even possible while preserving the character. :V

 

[Mattnumbers]

So basically your saying "It might not work"

I disagree (well, I can't really say it 100% will work, but I'm fairly sure)
I find it hard to believe that there is absolutely NO WAY to remove all the 70:30 matchups in the game without screwing it up, or at least remove 95% of them.


Also, as to your question, I would probably revise both the characters until a happy medium was found.

 

[SymphonicSage12]

his point was that that happy medium will NEVER be found with the method you are suggesting.

 

[Mattnumbers]

his point was that that happy medium will NEVER be found with the method you are suggesting.

Except I never even proposed an actual method?

There aren't all that many counters anyways, and a character usually counters multiple characters for the same reason; thus if you nerf them a certain way it will help every character that is countered by it.

 

[MK26]

But Matt...Im fairly sure weve gotten rid of most of the counters anyways...

 

[SymphonicSage12]

Sorry, that's just what I'm getting from this; don't shoot the messenger, man. :V

 

[thesage]

Shouldn't we at least discuss matchups/characters for some time before decidng on soldi ratios?

 

[Plum]

Except I never even proposed an actual method?

There aren't all that many counters anyways, and a character usually counters multiple characters for the same reason; thus if you nerf them a certain way it will help every character that is countered by it.

I'm just saying, its so highly unrealistic.
You can nerf G&W's walling techniques so he doesn't dominate many characters. But then there's the problem that you just nerfed what gives G&W at least a chance against his hard counters. So now you have to fix more characters. To remove G&W's now even worse counters you have to change them too. Nerf what makes Snake counter G&W so well. Let's say you weaken grenades and his stupidly good kill power on G&W (especially with no Bucket Braking) so G&W will stand more of a chance in that matchup. Now you just made Snake even worse in his hard counters like Olimar and ROB. Let's branch this one off to Olimar. Nerf what makes Olimar **** Snake so hard, and now Luigi dominates him even further. Nerf Luigi, now he's dominated further by Marth. Nerf Marth... and etc. etc. etc.

I just fail to see how there is a happy medium in such a diverse cast.

 

[CloneHat]

I really don't care about matchups as long as they're not virtually un-winnable.

Each character has strengths and weaknesses. It's what makes them DIFFERENT.

There is only ever a problem if a character can shut another down completely with barely any effort (like SHDL on Ganon). Otherwise, you can always work around your problems.

 

[Doval]

Even if it's impossible to bring down all bad matchups to 60:40, having an exceedingly low number of 70:30 match-ups per character is almost as good. When a character only has one or two 30:70 bad match-ups, the probability that the opponent knows how to use the specific counter(s) is low. And if no character has multiple 70:30 good match-ups, then the probability that whatever counters your main will also counter your secondary also go way down. That's still arguably more balanced than the level of balance many well-loved and still-played fighters achieve.

The important thing is that we won't have characters that are "the solution" to a large number of match-ups.

 

[Mattnumbers]

I'm no G&W expert, but I would think that one of the reasons that characters are good against G&W in the first place if because they can get around his walling. Thus, making his walling worse wouldn't affect those matchups much. Plus, he would be getting compensation buffs anyways, so the matchup will actually probably improve for him as well.

And, as Doval said, even if we can't get rid of every counter matchup we should try to remove as many as possible.

EDIT:

Also, concerning G&W and the inevitable argument about how making his walling power worse ruins his character:

First of all, it's a fairly well known fact that G&W is a shallow character. I feel he could easily stay unique (for one thing his character design in itself is unique) and not be such a huge wall of priority and range. Just because he was good at those things originally does not mean they are fair or balanced. He is one of the biggest problem characters on the countering side in my opinion, and it's because his main strength, in itself, makes him counter many characters.
If you nerf this strength and make him better in other places, you end up with his good matchups getting worse, and, due to his bad matchups being there because a character could get around the wall, his bad matchups are improved through the buffs he receives as compensation.
I really can't see it being impossible to make G&W a unique character without him being such a wall.

 

[Plum]

I'm no G&W expert, but I would think that one of the reasons that characters are good against G&W in the first place if because they can get around his walling. Thus, making his walling worse wouldn't affect those matchups much. Plus, he would be getting compensation buffs anyways, so the matchup will actually probably improve for him as well.

And, as Doval said, even if we can't get rid of every counter matchup we should try to remove as many as possible.

So its forcing a change in playstyle on G&W.
G&W has always been a walling character since vBrawl.
You can compensate him and turn him into his Melee self (combo **** grabs, Fair and Dtilt, a Nair capable of killing [though not the Chute... that takes things too far]) but that isn't what Brawl G&W is supposed to be like... Other than increasing his combo options I fail to see how you can really compensate G&W due to the nature of his character... The WBR could probably come up with things I would never think of, but I would hate to see a character forced into a different playstyle because his current, well established playstyle after well over a year of metagame development is effective against many characters.

Besides, isn't a goal of B+ to make it almost necessary to have secondaries to have the best chances of winning? Forcing every character into soft counters and even matchups just doesn't make sense to me. You just make the counterpick system less important when you go about that.

You can turn G&W into a more aggressively rewarding character, and in turn lessen the potency of his defensive walling ability. That's basically just converting him to fit the B+ formula that awards aggressive play. Turn him into a glass cannon character, sure. It could work as far as balance goes. But why can't G&W just be left alone? He can wall out plenty of characters, but plenty of characters can get past his walls perfectly fine. He has a big amount of even, 6-4, and 7-3 matchups that can handle him perfectly well. B+ is about the counterpick system, even more so than any other Smash game (IMO at least :V) so why is it a problem for G&W to fit in the counterpick system so well on both spectrum's of it? He hard counters a portion, soft counters a portion, goes even with a portion, gets soft countered by a portion, and hard counters by a portion.

 

[jokey665]

If G&W got the chute nair back I would never play another character in B+. Comboing into chute is more fun than comboing into rest.

 

[Mattnumbers]

Our character CP system isn't even a real strategy system; it's just one where one person gets an advantage in getting to pick second.

Stage CPing is legitimate because it requires strategy since you can ban certain stages.

And first of all read my edit if you didn't, second, a moveset that produces large amounts of counters needs to be fixed reguardless of how much that moveset is ingrained into the character.

Not to mention I've heard YOU specifically saying that G&W is shallow and should get buffs in exchange for things such as a bair nerf. This is just taking that a stage further.

 

[Plum]

Our character CP system isn't even a real strategy system; it's just one where one person gets an advantage in getting to pick second.

Stage CPing is legitimate because it requires strategy since you can ban certain stages.

And first of all read my edit if you didn't, second, a moveset that produces large amounts of counters needs to be fixed reguardless of how much that moveset is ingrained into the character.

Not to mention I've heard YOU specifically saying that G&W is shallow and should get buffs in exchange for things such as a bair nerf. This is just taking that a stage further.

I know fully well that G&W is shallow, but what I was suggesting was increasing his options to fit his established character. Totally changing his character on the other hand to something more of a glass cannon is completely different.

Why does a moveset need to be changed, no matter how many counters it produces? Especially when that moveset is proven to be balanced in the overall scale of things?
Removing G&W's unique role in the counterpick system is just further watering down the character CP system, and when you remove even more counters you make it practically insignificant. That just seems like a total waste of a potentially excellent thing.

 

[GHNeko]

Also, its impossible to make 50-50 or even 60-40 across the roster when we have so many different stages in the game. <_<

 

[Mattnumbers]

Stages actually have a good CP system that lets you ban stages that your character is particularly bad in. Also I don't beleive that any stages (with the exception of RC and maybe one or two others) actually have the potential to sway a matchup to counter level.

Calling G&W roll in the CP system a good thing is stupid, as counters are a negative thing as I have shown in previous posts, and that's all it does; make a larger amount of counters based off of a shallow repetitive playstyle.

 

[GHNeko]

There are certain characters though that have more than one stage that boosts their advantage.

Example: Snake. He does well on both BF AND SV.

For characters that have more than one good stage, the best you can do is ban the stage that helps them the most or hurts you the most.

And yes, there are infact stages that can sway match ups to counter status.

 

[Plum]

Stages actually have a good CP system that lets you ban stages that your character is particularly bad in. Also I don't beleive that any stages (with the exception of RC and maybe one or two others) actually have the potential to sway a matchup to counter level.

Calling G&W roll in the CP system a good thing is stupid, as counters are a negative thing as I have shown in previous posts, and that's all it does; make a larger amount of counters based off of a shallow repetitive playstyle.

There are plenty of matchups that are stage dependent.
Falco and Diddy on Final Destination for a lot of matchups for instance.
Stages like Brinstar can also greatly sway matchups for characters like Wario.

 

[Mattnumbers]

First of all, you get to ban stages.

Second, if this becomes an actual problem we can just up the amount of stages you can ban.

 

[WheelOfFish]

G&W will always be a sub-impossible match-up for Ness and Lucas. No matter what changes.

But I'm in full support of giving him depth and also making him more challenging to use.

In fact, I could say this about a lot of characters. Including Peach, but I don't know of any ATs we could give her until prop hacks come along...

 

[Mattnumbers]

G&W will always be an uphill matchup for them due to bucket, but I could see them being only 60:40.

Lucas has already taken a step in that direction with his Zair.

Also, one of the main things you could nerf for that matchup would be Bucket, it really hurts both of them.

You could even just nerf it's power so that its more of a supplementary damage move instead of a huge KO move he gets because he gimped you (Lucas's PKT can fill up an entire bucket iirc, it might have been 2/3 of one)

 

[WheelOfFish]

I don't think the bucket should be nerfed for only two match-ups though.

In other news, I think that DK might be one of the best MK counters. I think the match-up is 55-45 or 60-40 his favor. MK has a hard time killing him, and his horizontal recovery makes gimping him hard without a spike. DK can outrange MK for the most part, and keep up pretty decently speed-wise now that MK is overall more punishable. Killing is no problem at all either, since MK is fairly light.

 

[Doval]

You can turn G&W into a more aggressively rewarding character, and in turn lessen the potency of his defensive walling ability. That's basically just converting him to fit the B+ formula that awards aggressive play. Turn him into a glass cannon character, sure. It could work as far as balance goes. But why can't G&W just be left alone? He can wall out plenty of characters, but plenty of characters can get past his walls perfectly fine. He has a big amount of even, 6-4, and 7-3 matchups that can handle him perfectly well. B+ is about the counterpick system, even more so than any other Smash game (IMO at least :V) so why is it a problem for G&W to fit in the counterpick system so well on both spectrum's of it? He hard counters a portion, soft counters a portion, goes even with a portion, gets soft countered by a portion, and hard counters by a portion.

The short answer (in my opinion) is once again, that hard counters are just plain bad. Again, competitive play should be a measure of skill first and foremost. Hard counters allow a player that is noticeably less skilled than the opponent beat out the opponent.

Moreover, a character that hard counters a large amount of the characters is frankly unacceptable. It becomes a go-to character. You learn how to use him halfway decently and you're ensured against a certain number of characters without knowing the match-up as intimately as you'd have to if it were a 60:40 match. Even if he has an equal number of hard counters, these can be bypassed by having a secondary. If the secondary in itself hard counters another significant portion of the cast, the problem is compounded further.

Finally - and I mean no offense by this - it seems to me that you're greatly overestimating the magnitude of the change that would be required to balance out G&W. It's possible to make his priority not as all-encompassing while leaving his playstyle mostly intact. Slight decreases to hitbox sizes can do wonders. You'll simply a smaller amount of leeway with which to execute the strategy. No defense should be absolute, and ideally the workaround against your walling should not be "use another character" if you're the lesser player.

I would also like to point out that the WBR has been pretty generous in providing compensation to characters that get nerfed. Snake's f-tilt and up-tilt went from "ludicrously disjointed" to "quite disjointed" and got faster IASA on d-tilt and JC on f-air. The JC f-air is a pretty big deal and it's not like his tilts stopped being high priority. Just not absolute priority. Their application is more or less unchanged, but they can't be used as carelessly. Likewise the WBR felt Falcon's knee had become so good that his gameplay revolved entirely around comboing into knee for early KOs, so it was nerfed. Yet even post-nerf it continues to be powerful, and he got a much stronger Up B as compensation. The general trend has been reducing overpowered aspects to more acceptable levels, and increasing the number of options the character has to compensate.

 

[Yeroc]

My short answer is this: hard counters may be undesirable, and we as a team will in the long run be looking to smooth out as many as we can, but you're going to have to get used to the idea that there might end up being some that we just plain can't fix without messing something else up. Learning to play a variety of characters is a skill that competitively-minded players who are more interested in doing well than playing a particular character will strive to perfect. I'm not personally one of those people. I play just a handful of characters that fit my particular style. But if you want to win, you'll do what it takes, if that means learning 20 characters well enough to use them in tourney.

 

[Plum]

The short answer (in my opinion) is once again, that hard counters are just plain bad. Again, competitive play should be a measure of skill first and foremost. Hard counters allow a player that is noticeably less skilled than the opponent beat out the opponent.

Moreover, a character that hard counters a large amount of the characters is frankly unacceptable. It becomes a go-to character. You learn how to use him halfway decently and you're ensured against a certain number of characters without knowing the match-up as intimately as you'd have to if it were a 60:40 match. Even if he has an equal number of hard counters, these can be bypassed by having a secondary. If the secondary in itself hard counters another significant portion of the cast, the problem is compounded further.

Finally - and I mean no offense by this - it seems to me that you're greatly overestimating the magnitude of the change that would be required to balance out G&W. It's possible to make his priority not as all-encompassing while leaving his playstyle mostly intact. Slight decreases to hitbox sizes can do wonders. You'll simply a smaller amount of leeway with which to execute the strategy. No defense should be absolute, and ideally the workaround against your walling should not be "use another character" if you're the lesser player.

I would also like to point out that the WBR has been pretty generous in providing compensation to characters that get nerfed. Snake's f-tilt and up-tilt went from "ludicrously disjointed" to "quite disjointed" and got faster IASA on d-tilt and JC on f-air. The JC f-air is a pretty big deal and it's not like his tilts stopped being high priority. Just not absolute priority. Their application is more or less unchanged, but they can't be used as carelessly. Likewise the WBR felt Falcon's knee had become so good that his gameplay revolved entirely around comboing into knee for early KOs, so it was nerfed. Yet even post-nerf it continues to be powerful, and he got a much stronger Up B as compensation.

Can I just say that none of this talk can actually be applied to B+, at least yet?
Going by Matt's numbers, in which 7-3 is a hard counter, G&W is currently considered to hard counter 6 characters in vBrawl. About 1/7 of the cast in vBrawl.

Luigi - 70/30
Zelda - 70/30
Ness - 70/30
Lucas - 75/25
Captain Falcon - 80/20
Jigglypuff - 80/20

But you can't really use that to apply anything here, because these characters have gained so much more than G&W. G&W is a wall, but look at what these characters can do when they get in thanks to B+. His defense is NOT absolute by any means, Snake or Olimar easily take the best defense in the game over G&W. So it isn't like they cannot get inside of him, it WILL happen, and G&W takes about 1/3 to even 1/2 his stock when he gets punished. That has to be worth something in these matchups, and their new numbers have yet to be determined.

 

[Mattnumbers]

The thing is, most of these characters were buffed in area's that don't really affect the reason they suffer so much against Game and Watch. Lucas's Zair change is the only thing I can think of that has done that. Sure the characters got better, but they will still fail against G&W for the same reasons as in vBrawl.

Also, don't the kirby mains use "Just pick G&W to fight kirby" every time we suggest nerfing Kirby? I though G&W was a Kirby counter.

 

[Doval]

@Plum: You may be right about G&W's current status. I don't know; I'm actually not very familiar with him. Your questions/assertions seemed pretty rhetorical in nature. I was merely trying to give some reasoning as to why changes would be justified if a character had multiple hard counters, be it G&W or anyone else. Forgive me if I'm way off base here.

 

[Mattnumbers]

Yeah....really this argument isn't about G&W, it's about any counters in the game.

If it turns out that G&W doesn't counter anyone any more then it won't be a problem in the first place.

 

[thesage]

Why don't we wait for the metagame to develop a bit?

How do you guys feel about mk now?

 

[Plum]

The thing is, most of these characters were buffed in area's that don't really affect the reason they suffer so much against Game and Watch. Lucas's Zair change is the only thing I can think of that has done that. Sure the characters got better, but they will still fail against G&W for the same reasons as in vBrawl.

Also, don't the kirby mains use "Just pick G&W to fight kirby" every time we suggest nerfing Kirby? I though G&W was a Kirby counter.

Kirby is a 6-4 matchup in vBrawl, its either still a 6-4 in B+ or perhaps a 55-45 seeing Kirby's taking to hitstun. It would really be a lack of familiarity with the matchup to say he hard counters.

The characters may be walled as effectively, but the point is what you can do when you get inside.

Take the Wario vs Marth matchup for example. vBrawl Wario's hardest matchup and Marth can range camp Wario just as well in B+ as in vBrawl. But that matchup has definitely gotten better for Wario because of how effectively he punishes when he gets inside Marth's range. Or even Ganon as a character in general. A lot of his matchups have probably improved significantly because of how effectively he can punish.

Now the characters G&W hard countered in vBrawl can't do Ganon punishing, but its practically at that level on G&W's light frame. Where as Ganon might nail you for 40-50% with some good reads costing a normal character a third of their stock, you can punish G&W for about 30% and have a third (or more depending on how well you kill) of his stock gone because you got in just once.
G&W can keep walling you but he can't kill unless you make a huge mistake. G&W will have a freakish damage output on you, but as long as you can avoid his obvious kill moves and play smart offstage you live so much later than him that it can play a big role in the match.
I think you underestimate just how important having a much greater life expectancy can be, as well as how a normal level of punishment is scaled to a world of pain on him.

 

[Shadic]

How do you guys feel about mk now?

He's still a bit spammy and easy to play, but he's nowhere as bad as he used to be.

Granted, I played him after not playing MK for quite a while and still won, but my friend was out of practice.

 

[ThatGuyYouMightKnow]

Guys Lucario sucks, so can he get buffed please?

hmrhmrhmrhmrmhrmh

 

[Andarel]

Guys Lucario sucks, so can he get buffed please?

hmrhmrhmrhmrmhrmh

I spent a disproportionately large amount of time trying to figure out how to pronounce that versus reading your actual comment.

Also, Lucario clearly needs more buffs. Reduce BKB on utilt, speed up his pummel, or increase Usmash/Fsmash size pl0x.



Regardless, Snake's tilt nerfs were huge as they went from barely/unpunishable to moderately punishable. JC fair kicks ***, but I don't see it helping with most matchups...

Hard counters are going to happen. Each character has rough strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes one characters' strengths just happen to align perfectly with another characters' weaknesses. Marth, MK, and G&W are good examples because they all have strengths that fit very well into some game mechanics (high range/priority/spacing abilities, extreme speed/priority, disjointed range/priority <-- Priority is the big deal a lot of the time, as we all know) and are a massive pain in the *** for certain characters to get around. But nerfing those strengths warps their playstyle heavily...so do we go for it? I hope not, at least not without a huge amount of thought. Especially with testing builds once in a blue moon now.

 

[WheelOfFish]

Uhhhhh... Lucario doesn't need buffs. He's got range, decent speed, okay power, a projectile, good juggling abilities and one of the best recoveries in the game right now.