Brawl - More balanced than Melee? Lie or truth?

[The Halloween Captain]

You really NEVER want to deal with an edgeguarding Pikachu.
1. - His Nair can kill
2. - He can go farther off the cliff than you and still recover
3. - he can jump off the cliff, second jump onto land, and then thunder early into the second jump, causing a thunderbolt that passes off the ledge, which enables him to thunder you while you are forced to recover. At least when you are above and off the cliff you have a second to evaluate your options.

 

[Yuna]

You really NEVER want to deal with an edgeguarding Pikachu.

O RLY?

1. - His Nair can kill

Horrible. An aerial that requires less than 150% to KO! Unheard of, I know!

2. - He can go farther off the cliff than you and still recover

So can one zillion people. Also, he cannot do that to all characters. Also, many characters have a better recovery than him.

3. - he can jump off the cliff, second jump onto land, and then thunder early into the second jump, causing a thunderbolt that passes off the ledge, which enables him to thunder you while you are forced to recover. At least when you are above and off the cliff you have a second to evaluate your options.

What kind of players would just randomly air control into Thunder? It's slow enough to not surprise you and the game's so floaty you can just, you know, not air control into it and then Up B once it's cleared and still survive or just airdodge it if it's far enough off the edge and then Up B. There's a ton better edgeguards than friggin' Thunder.

What you just said basically applies to a lot of other characters with a lot of other moves... only they o it better. So what you really should be saying is "You don't want to get edgeguarded by anyone."

Also, since when does DI:ing out of Pikachu's Dsmash mean randomly DI:ing far off the edge, anyway? Also semi-spikes can be DI:ing.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

Yuna, I get the impression you really do not understand Pikachu's Nair. The first hit of Pika's Nair is actually one of his BEST kill moves because it is powerful and takes advantage of the fact that your opponent is off the edge.

Many characters have great recoveries. Pikachu is second only to Peach (and R.O.B., depending on how you count him) among the non-fliers. Did you know that he can go underneath the practice stage in the online Brawl Waiting, and reach the opposite ledge without dying?

The previous poster believed that DI'ing into a semispike would save him from being thunderbolted. I was simply correcting that error of judgement. However, there are much better edgeguards, such as Pika's Nair.

DI'ing does not mean randomly doing it of a ledge. However, the ends of stages are where Pika's chaingrab often sends opponent immediately before Pika ends the combo with Dsmash. From what I've seen of DI'ing opponents, Pika's Dsmash seems to have the unusual quality of hitting you downwards and to the sides if DI'd out of.

 

[Yuna]

Yuna, I get the impression you really do not understand Pikachu's Nair. The first hit of Pika's Nair is actually one of his BEST kill moves because it is powerful and takes advantage of the fact that your opponent is off the edge.

And the question is this: And this matters how?

A lot of characters have good moves to edgeguard with. Pikachu's Nair isn't really that strong and what different does it make if it hits you while you're off the stage or not? In Brawl, unless it's a Meteor Smash, Semi-spike or a move that KO's early, it doesn't matter if you're off the stage when you get hit (unless you're right by the kill zone) since the magical technique known as DI will save you.

You speak as if Pikachu's edgeguarding is to be feared more than the average character's. It's really not that great. There are far better edgeguarders. Smart people will try to avoid getting edgeguarded by anyone, however, so this is moot.

You don't really want to be edgeguarded by anyone because at worst, it adds to your damage percentage, making it easier to KO you outright.

Many characters have great recoveries. Pikachu is second only to Peach (and R.O.B., depending on how you count him) among the non-fliers. Did you know that he can go underneath the practice stage in the online Brawl Waiting, and reach the opposite ledge without dying?

O RLY? Jigglypuff disagrees. Luigi's new and improved recovery disagrees. Pikachu's recovery is quite predictable and slow (because it's not like Side B can be used instantly if you want to use it for good recovery). Snake disagrees. R.O.B. disagrees.

The previous poster believed that DI'ing into a semispike would save him from being thunderbolted. I was simply correcting that error of judgement. However, there are much better edgeguards, such as Pika's Nair.

What error? DI:ing out of it does reduce the risk of getting hit by Thunder. Now, it might not be the best thing to do...

DI'ing does not mean randomly doing it of a ledge. However, the ends of stages are where Pika's chaingrab often sends opponent immediately before Pika ends the combo with Dsmash. From what I've seen of DI'ing opponents, Pika's Dsmash seems to have the unusual quality of hitting you downwards and to the sides if DI'd out of.

Um, yeah, if you DI out of it and then DI the hits wrong.

 

[EvolveOrDie]

Still this topic goes on...
So Yuna why do you keep attacking people when they try to be helpful?
Also Halloween Captain do you think that the balance issues of brawl, not those related to melee, just in general seriously affect the ability for competitive play. Anybody can answer that question because I wonder about the effect of this overall because the more I read the less it seems to matter.

 

[Yuna]

Still this topic goes on...
So Yuna why do you keep attacking people when they try to be helpful?
Also Halloween Captain do you think that the balance issues of brawl, not those related to melee, just in general seriously affect the ability for competitive play. Anybody can answer that question because I wonder about the effect of this overall because the more I read the less it seems to matter.

Trying to be helpful =/= Being helpful

Spreading misinformation = Bad.

 

[Blistering Speed]

I think we've long ago established Brawl is less balanced then Melee. I have MK as a secondary in tournament, do you know why? Because I virtually have to and it doesn't take long to learn to be decent with him. If you have experience with Smash already, then all MK is is spacing and watching your opponent, which by now to me is almost second nature. And yet I know I can spend 10x this amount of time on my other two secondaries, IC and Yoshi and they will never be as good as my MK. This was true in Melee also, but I never had to pick up Falco to be competitive.

CF vs MK is the worst matchup in the history of forever. In Melee, atleast Pichu had a CG on Fox!

 

[ShadowLink84]

You really NEVER want to deal with an edgeguarding Pikachu.

Ever face an edge guarding ROB, Sonic, 20+ characters?
You don't want otbe edge guarded period.

Y
1. - His Nair can kill

SO can many other attacks
ven then the Nair is not terribly great because of DI. It isn't as if he can just leap out and continue following up with another Nair because his recovery is somewhat limited to a certain degree.

Y
2. - He can go farther off the cliff than you and still recover

So can many otehr characters.

Y
3. - he can jump off the cliff, second jump onto land, and then thunder early into the second jump, causing a thunderbolt that passes off the ledge, which enables him to thunder you while you are forced to recover. At least when you are above and off the cliff you have a second to evaluate your options.

Ew you mentioned thunder which is highly overrated.
Good move but not the best for edge guarding considering it can be dodged quite easily.

Dsmash is ALWAYS best ot DI out of, it only semispikes if you screw up your DI.

Which would you prefer? 19% or 9% damage? Would you like to be able to counter attack or not?

 

[Dark Sonic]

By the way. If you are near the ledge with Pikachu between you and the ledge (like Halloween Captain is describing), then an easy way to not get semi spiked by the down smash is to simply SDI the first hit towards the stage, and DI the second hit (yes, you will have to take both hits), towards the stage as well. You get semi spiked towards the middle of the stage...which isn't bad at all.

 

[TehBo49]

To clear up things on Pikachu's nair: it kills Mario off the edge at ~80%. Add about 10% more for heavy characters.

 

[Yuna]

To clear up things on Pikachu's nair: it kills Mario off the edge at ~80%. Add about 10% more for heavy characters.

Do you mean 80% before it hits? And also, DI, instant airdodging and 2nd jumping.

 

[TehBo49]

Yeah, before it hits. It has to be sweetspotted though. I said around 80% because of variances in DI. Airdodging can be argued for any character & isn't viable for characters with lesser recoveries.

I just wanted to say that nair is actually better than you guys seem to be giving it credit for.

 

[Timodes]

Brawl is unbalanced. Characters like Olimar and Falco get absolute control and just dominate everyone outside of Marth/Toon Link/few others. Falcos new lasers make it so you opponent stays on the ground, within grab range or far enough away so he cant get tippered/grabbed. His new shine helps with this too. You can chain grab with his down grab too.

Olimar is just ****ing nasty. He can camp like a ***** and spam Pikmin or just **** you with Fair to Dair combos. His grab range is also ridiculous. It's like Marth and Peach had a baby while doing drugs. HE'S JUST THAT CRAZY.

I'm not even going to talk about Marth because well all know how gay he is.

Okey, Everyone has their own opinion, but can't stand THIS!
First of, you can't even judge the game compared to Melee, BRAWL IS IT'S OWN GAME!
Brawl shouldn't be a update of Melee, then it would just bee Melee with improved graphics and more characters.

When Nintendo makes sequels they always have something new in mind.
You can't compare a sequel with the original, so really is Brawl more like a sequel to the 64 version, so in a logical thought Brawl would be more balanced because it's like the original.
And why would they make a more unbalanced sequel sequel, that's just stupid.

And then, Melee has been out there for 7 years, Brawl haven't even been out for a year, not even a month for the Europeans, you've had more time to check out Melee's balance, take Yoshi for example, he really SUCKED in Melee, in Brawl his Bair has improved so as his techniques and UpB,you even make a small jump with upB, like a weaker recovery, that's balance.

Then is Brawl online so you can challenge players that were spammers in Melee, but you didn't know about them because Melee wasn't online.

And to you ArtH, you are a bad player if you can't avoid spammers.

Give Brawl some time, if you can't then you go make love to your Melee, i don't care.

 

[Grunt]

You can't compare a sequel with the original, so really is Brawl more like a sequel to the 64 version, so in a logical thought Brawl would be more balanced because it's like the original.
And why would they make a more unbalanced sequel sequel, that's just stupid.

You're ********.
64 is more broken than Melee.
not to mention it has 2x as much hitstun as Melee and hardly any DI out of a hit. you could also kill at really low %'s.
Brawl is completely opposite, and none of them are balanced well.

 

[TehBo49]

Okey, Everyone has their own opinion, but can't stand THIS!
First of, you can't even judge the game compared to Melee, BRAWL IS IT'S OWN GAME!
Brawl shouldn't be a update of Melee, then it would just bee Melee with improved graphics and more characters.

Brawl is the sequel to Melee with very similar game mechanics & functions. So yeah, we can compare them.

When Nintendo makes sequels they always have something new in mind.
You can't compare a sequel with the original, so really is Brawl more like a sequel to the 64 version, so in a logical thought Brawl would be more balanced because it's like the original.
And why would they make a more unbalanced sequel sequel, that's just stupid.

First of all, SSB64 is much more different than Brawl. Second of all, if you say you can't compare Brawl to Melee, why are you comparing it to 64?

And then, Melee has been out there for 7 years, Brawl haven't even been out for a year, not even a month for the Europeans, you've had more time to check out Melee's balance, take Yoshi for example, he really SUCKED in Melee, in Brawl his Bair has improved so as his techniques and UpB,you even make a small jump with upB, like a weaker recovery, that's balance.

Melee had far fewer players at its beginning than Brawl did. And anyways, many of the advanced techs in Melee were discovered early on.

Just because some characters were improved doesn't make the game balanced. Yoshi still sucks even though he was buffed & while Marth was nerfed (somewhat) he is still very good.

Then is Brawl online so you can challenge players that were spammers in Melee, but you didn't know about them because Melee wasn't online.

What does this have to do with anything? Brawl has spammers everywhere whereas good Melee players were much less apt to spam.

And to you ArtH, you are a bad player if you can't avoid spammers.

Play against a campy Falco/Toon Link/Pikachu/etc. & then say that.

Give Brawl some time, if you can't then you go make love to your Melee, i don't care.

Unless some huge universal AT is discovered soon that evens the playing field, Brawl will still be less balanced than Melee.

 

[Corigames]

I'm sick of people saying that we need to give Brawl more time.

 

[motsalogeL]

Okey, Everyone has their own opinion, but can't stand THIS!
First of, you can't even judge the game compared to Melee, BRAWL IS IT'S OWN GAME!
Brawl shouldn't be a update of Melee, then it would just bee Melee with improved graphics and more characters.

When Nintendo makes sequels they always have something new in mind.
You can't compare a sequel with the original, so really is Brawl more like a sequel to the 64 version, so in a logical thought Brawl would be more balanced because it's like the original.
And why would they make a more unbalanced sequel sequel, that's just stupid.

And then, Melee has been out there for 7 years, Brawl haven't even been out for a year, not even a month for the Europeans, you've had more time to check out Melee's balance, take Yoshi for example, he really SUCKED in Melee, in Brawl his Bair has improved so as his techniques and UpB,you even make a small jump with upB, like a weaker recovery, that's balance.

Then is Brawl online so you can challenge players that were spammers in Melee, but you didn't know about them because Melee wasn't online.

And to you ArtH, you are a bad player if you can't avoid spammers.

Give Brawl some time, if you can't then you go make love to your Melee, i don't care.

 

[Dark Sonic]

10char

 

[Fawriel]

Yoshi was nerfed.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Yoshi was nerfed.

>___>

Lies.

HE GOT BUFFED.

Smooth Criminal

 

[The Halloween Captain]

How was Yoshi nerfed?

Brawl is not melee. It will never be melee. It will never be like melee.

An enigma(?) I have noticed in Brawl is the plethora of character specific ATs, which have been most commonly discovered in the higher tiers (where they have been searched for). I can't help but wonder if the ATs were intentional, as well as if they exist for low-tier characters as well. If the pattern persists, then low tier characters must have their ATs discovered before a final analysis on balance can be made.

 

[Zankoku]

No ATs are intentional unless they're obviously programmed into the game. Most of them are just the direct results of physics (Yoshi's wavedash... thing..) (or in the case of Brawl, true glitches. lolz ISJR) or input detection (stutter step, mortar-slide/boost usmash) causing different behavior, and the developers didn't really feel like it actually hurt the game so they left it in.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

How was Yoshi nerfed?

No DJC, for starters. That was pretty important to Yoshi's game.

As for the rest, well...

>___> I'll let the other people get back at you.

Smooth Criminal

 

[∫unk]

I think we can safely say Brawl is less balanced, but has a larger cast makes for a larger "mid-tier" to potentially win a tournament, but as of right now the top tier is more dominant than melee's top tier.

Even if melee is more balanced, it's old as hell and people either suck at it and want the slower game or they're just tired of melee (happens after 8 years... no matter how glorious the game is).

 

[Fawriel]

Well, Yoshi got weaker in a bunch of ways.

In a meta kinda way, just look at his tier ranking. He's bargained as one of the worst characters in the game. In the latest Melee tier list I saw (which was pretty old, I admit), he was something along the lines of ninth from last place. He fell, so it could be considered a nerf.

In terms of fighting capabilities, he lost the ability to effectively combo, KO and gimp, which he definitely had in Melee if used properly.

In terms of direct comparison of moves, his smashes all got nerfed badly, so was his fair, dair, and possibly nair. All that for a small increase in recovery (and keep in mind that his double-jump has fewer superweight frames now), slightly improved b moves and a tiny bit of range added to some moves.
And no DJC, yes.

 

[JigglyZelda003]

Yoshi lost the airdodge jump which i think is better than the egg hop anyway. Oh Fawriel does Yoshi's Fair still spike all the time or is there more timing to it, cause tried it a few times when someones in the air and its like sometimes it spikes and sometimes it doesn't.

 

[GI Josh]

Brawl is the sequel to Melee with very similar game mechanics & functions. So yeah, we can compare them.



First of all, SSB64 is much more different than Brawl. Second of all, if you say you can't compare Brawl to Melee, why are you comparing it to 64?



Melee had far fewer players at its beginning than Brawl did. And anyways, many of the advanced techs in Melee were discovered early on.

Just because some characters were improved doesn't make the game balanced. Yoshi still sucks even though he was buffed & while Marth was nerfed (somewhat) he is still very good.



What does this have to do with anything? Brawl has spammers everywhere whereas good Melee players were much less apt to spam.



Play against a campy Falco/Toon Link/Pikachu/etc. & then say that.



Unless some huge universal AT is discovered soon that evens the playing field, Brawl will still be less balanced than Melee.

Ha ha... owned

 

[Fawriel]

Yoshi lost the airdodge jump which i think is better than the egg hop anyway. Oh Fawriel does Yoshi's Fair still spike all the time or is there more timing to it, cause tried it a few times when someones in the air and its like sometimes it spikes and sometimes it doesn't.

It only meteors if you are above your opponent when it hits.

 

[JigglyZelda003]

@ halloween cptn
ty for your input on some things pikachu can do for edgeguarding. although i have yet to fight a good pikachu yet its good to know these things anyway.

 

[Yuna]

I think we can safely say Brawl is less balanced, but has a larger cast makes for a larger "mid-tier" to potentially win a tournament, but as of right now the top tier is more dominant than melee's top tier.

Even if melee is more balanced, it's old as hell and people either suck at it and want the slower game or they're just tired of melee (happens after 8 years... no matter how glorious the game is).

No, no, no, no. There's a larger mid-tier to do well against each other, but as the metagame stands at the moment, the Mid Tier have a smaller chance of winning tournaments than Melee's Mid Tier.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

No, no, no, no. There's a larger mid-tier to do well against each other, but as the metagame stands at the moment, the Mid Tier have a smaller chance of winning tournaments than Melee's Mid Tier.

Smaller chance, or less popularity?

Nice (but creepy) new avitar, Yuna!

Oh, and no prob, Jigglyzelda. One thing you will begin to notice as Brawl's metagame developes is a probable emergence of middle-tier characters who are currently not popular. The general feelings on smash boards lead me to believe that popularity of characters seems to be the dominant driving force of the metagame (which is why so much is known about Snake), and as the game grow older, less popular characters like Pikachu (my old melee main) will develope and do better in tournaments. I know a lot about how to use Pika (not so much about facing him), so feel free to ask me anything you need to know about the character.

Also, there is no way for me to prove what I think will occur, it is only a guess. By the same token, there is no way for you to know what will not occur, except with an educated guess. My guess comes from a vast knowledge of a middle-tier character. Yours will most likely come from extensive experience against high-tier characters. Who knows which one of us will be right?

 

[Yuna]

Smaller chance, or less popularity?

Nice (but creepy) new avitar, Yuna!

Oh, and no prob, Jiggzelda

I'm sorry, you must not have heard me the one jillion times when I said less popularity is inconsequential and carries no importance, at all.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

I'm sorry, you must not have heard me the one jillion times when I said less popularity is inconsequential and carries no importance, at all.

I believe quite the contrary - Popularity is a huge driving force in the early competitive scene of any metagame, while character ability is secondary. Often popularity and ability are similar, but do not always parallel eachother.

 

[Yuna]

I believe quite the contrary - Popularity is a huge driving force in the early competitive scene of any metagame, while character ability is secondary. Often popularity and ability are similar, but do not always parallel eachother.

I'm sorry, what? The metagame forms because of character ability. Character popularity just gives us more people exploring the same characters, making their metagames develop faster. If there's nothing to develop, there will be nothing to develop.

When I say that the Mid Tier of Brawl can compete against each other but not the Highs and Tops, what I say has absolutely nothing to do with character popularity. If a character is good enough to move out of Mid Tier into High or Top, they were never Mid Tier to begin with. We just had a misconception about said character. The rest of Mid Tier will still not be able to really compete against the Tops and Highs.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

Misconceptions form when a good character is unpopular for some reason. With 35 characters, people like to try to limit the field down to six or seven options, making the choice of mains simpler. Right now, we are still in the era of misconceptions concerning Brawl.

Fun fact - aren't most of Brawl's top characters primary color scheme either black or blue? I think, the only exception is D3. EDIT: and R.O.B.

 

[JigglyZelda003]

come to think of it they are which is kinda strange. oh but Yuna wasn't Fox put at the top of Melee over Falco despite Falco having some better matchups than Fox because he, falco, wasn't as popular? so does that show that popularity can slightly affect tier placement between characters in close proximity of each other on the tier list?

 

[Fletch]

come to think of it they are which is kinda strange. oh but Yuna wasn't Fox put at the top of Melee over Falco despite Falco having some better matchups than Fox because he, falco, wasn't as popular? so does that show that popularity can slightly affect tier placement between characters in close proximity of each other on the tier list?

Fox is ahead of Falco simply because he is a much better character. I think a lot of people (now that everyone knows how to deal with Falco better after the Falco craze) think hes about the 4th best (still top tier though).

 

[JigglyZelda003]

oh, oops i guess i was just heard wrong about why he was placed under Fox :/

 

[Yuna]

Misconceptions form when a good character is unpopular for some reason. With 35 characters, people like to try to limit the field down to six or seven options, making the choice of mains simpler. Right now, we are still in the era of misconceptions concerning Brawl.

No, that's not why we limit it like that. It's because we feel that there only are that many viable characters.

come to think of it they are which is kinda strange. oh but Yuna wasn't Fox put at the top of Melee over Falco despite Falco having some better matchups than Fox because he, falco, wasn't as popular? so does that show that popularity can slightly affect tier placement between characters in close proximity of each other on the tier list?

Fox was put above Falco because too many people voted for Fox to be over Falco for the 2006 tierlist. Many disagreed, but not enough. Even the SBR can be wrong. But it wasn't because of popularity, it was that more people (who were eligible to vote) thought Fox was the better character.

Now, in my discussions, I do not take responsibility for the actions of everyone. Yes, there will be idiots who think popularity matter. Well I don't. It has no place in this discussion. And no one places any weight behind it when it comes to game balance.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

So how did you pick your main, Yuna? Did you pick your favorite character? When everyone picks their favorite character, and a lot of people have the same favorite, that character becomes popular. It wasn't coincidence that the two most used characters in Brawl's metagame are also two of the coolest in the game.

EDIT:
There are two components to a videogame - the game code and the game player. Yuna, you like to focus on the game code, and assume players are logical. I like to focus on the players, and assume they are human in their reasoning.