Official Character Competitive Impressions - Tourneys, Tiers, Theories, Tactics

[Kofu]

Limit Break Blade Beam is transcendent.

Ah, gotcha. That I can believe.

Also, his DSmash and FSmash seem to have rather good IASA frames.

 

[Browny]

This makes me wonder on the subject of throws and grabs, who has the worst overall in terms of usefulness? Little Macs seem pretty bad, they don't combo into anything and have poor range, for such a ground dominate character he should get some sort of kill confirm into his up b or something to compensate . Like with M2, I don't care about weight, but I want him to hit super hard and move fast to compensate . I don't care about Macs recovery, but his ground game should be stellar including his grab and throw game to make up for it.

Have really non-threatening throws doing low damage and having no follow ups. I think...

 

[FSLink]

This is what I think too and is what makes his throws make sense. If they dont want to overtune it to be KO throws, the throws allow him to charge a very important part of his moveset.

That said, the throw game still sucks in a game where the majority of the cast gets tons of free damage from throws and the top tiers get absolutely disgusting punishes from them. Clouds throws are just simply bottom tier compared to that even when they serve their purpose of charging limit break.

Someone has to have the worst throws and clouds arent looking too good right now.

On a similar note, his mediocre recovery makes much more sense when keeping in mind Limit Break. Yeah, it's obvious that Limit Break upB increases his recovery quite a bit, but it also serves in balancing his Limit Break since unlike say Mac's KO meter mechanic...Limit Break only depletes when a Limit Break special is used or if Cloud dies.

Throwing Cloud off the ledge to force him to use his Limit Break on his upB will be very important in matchups.

 

[Konneh]

Have really non-threatening throws doing low damage and having no follow ups. I think...

Just to be thorough, do have followups in a customs on meta.

To my knowledge, loses his good followups really early, and at high% all his throws seem to just be about positioning the opponent offstage. Still a really good character, though!

 

[IsmaR]

Samus gets down throw that leads into follow ups at low percents (and mid on heavies/fast fallers).

Marcina have follow ups in customs on, and also have a kill throw.

 

[Pazx]

If the only redeeming quality of your throw game is that it puts the enemy far away from you but isnt a KO throw, then its not a redeeming quality.

Combo throw, tech chase, 50:50 or KO throw otherwise its in the bin for your throw game.

There are very few if any characters in the entirety of Smash as a franchise that do not benefit from having their opponent either above them or offstage. Positional throws are good.

Cloud is absolutely no exception to the above, uair + down b, need I say more?

If, for some reason, we pretend that positional advantages aren't important then the unfortunate "worst throws" title would go to whoever gets the least damage from their throws, and that is Marth. Yoshi's also a candidate, especially when you consider how bad his actual grab is.

 

[Kofu]

If 10% for all throws with a rather quick 3% pummel is low damage, then sure.

 

[Y2Kay]

These mewtwo buffs guys

oh yeah, I'm really diggin it ~

 

[Zean]

So this pretty much confirms G&W-Sheik will be unbanned now.

 

[Y2Kay]

How can "no kill setups" be a weakness this early?

Don't those have to be labbed by the community?

 

[PKBeam]

How can "no kill setups" be a weakness this early?

Don't those have to be labbed by the community?

If no kill setups are known, then the character is treated as having no kill setups until said setups are found. It's not necessarily an eternal weakness but it is a weakness in today's metagame.

 

[outfoxd]

If no kill setups are known, then the character is treated as having no kill setups until said setups are found. It's not necessarily an eternal weakness but it is a weakness in today's metagame.

Its one of the things keeping DH way down. Although its exacerbated in the fact he can't even kill off a punish or read half the time.

 

[Xeze]

Have really non-threatening throws doing low damage and having no follow ups. I think...

Samus can down throw into either u-air or f-air. She can also bait the airdodge after the throw and fire a Carge Shot.

 

[Thinkaman]

A recurring theme I'd like to talk about here, I guess:

People are good at anything binary. People are bad at nuance, magnitude, context, and perspective.

It's hard for people to simultaneously understand that:

• The game can be fine without additional changes.
• The game can be improved with additional changes.

• That someone has to be the best/worst characters.
• That the gap between them can always be smaller.

• That bad characters can beat good characters.
• That good characters do statistically have a meaningful advantage over bad characters.

• The game is fine with Sheik and ZSS existing as they are.
• The game's statistical balance would improve if literally any character in the top half of the roster were nerfed, even if they were nerfed all the way to 50th percentile or beyond. (As long as they overshoot to a degree less than their previous deviation.)

• The game would probably be improved if Zelda, Jigglypuff, Duck Hunt, ect. were buffed.
• Improvements to other weak characters still improves the game's balance.

Let me lay out the philosophies with which a developer could address an overpowered character like Meta Knight:

1. To actively reward the players who pushed Meta Knight to the limit, Meta Knight is buffed.
2. To passively reward the players who pushed Meta Knight to the limit, Meta Knight is unchanged from his dominant state.
3. To improve the game while disrupting the meta-game the absolute least, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he is still unquestionably the best character, but by a smaller margin.
4. To improve the game while prioritizing minimal disruption to the meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he is equal in power to the second-best character.
5. To improve the game with limited concern towards disrupting the meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he remains firmly a top/high tier, but is no longer the best character. (However, he still performs above this thanks to already having the most advanced meta.)
6. To improve the game above all other considerations but fearing over-correction, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he remains above average but no more. (However, he still performs above this thanks to already having the most advanced meta.)
   
7. To improve the game above all other considerations, Meta Knight is nerfed so that he is perfectly fair on average, and is the dead center of the tier list. (However, he still performs above this thanks to already having the most advanced meta.)
8. To improve the game and slightly correct the short-term meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes slightly below average, yet his superior meta-game head-start keeps him performing at an average level. (or higher)
9. To improve the game and slightly correct the long-term meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes significantly below average. This gives many other characters "their turn" to be better, just like Meta Knight had "his turn." However, Meta Knight is still better than some characters, and no character beats him as badly as he previously beat them.
10. To improve the game and completely correct the long-term meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes the worst character in the game, yet not as bad now as he was good before. This gives all other characters "their turn" to be better, just like Meta Knight had "his turn." Yet, the advantages they enjoy are not as big as the advantages Meta Knight enjoyed previously.
11. To proportionally penalize the players who over-developed an overpowered character to gain an "unfair" or "easy" advantage, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes the worst character in the game, and is exactly as bad now as he was good before. This gives all other characters "their turn" to be better, just like Meta Knight had "his turn", and the advantages they enjoy are precisely as big as the advantages Meta Knight enjoyed previously.
12. To karmic penalize the players who over-developed an overpowered character to gain an "unfair" or "easy" advantage, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes the worst character in the game, and is even worse now as he was good before. This gives all other characters "their turn" to be better, just like Meta Knight had "his turn", and the advantages they enjoy are even bigger than the advantages Meta Knight enjoyed previously.

Many people fixate on arguing on if we should do #2, #3, or #4, and then get horrified when developers have the audacity to do #5. But believe me, there are Twitch chats full of people thirsty for #12.

What the most fair? Well, it depends on your frame of reference:

• Mechanical fairness? #7 makes the matchups perfectly fair.
• Current results fairness? #8 will offer the most equal results.
• Historical results fairness? #11 will fully balance out past inequalities.
• Minimizing impact of future imbalances? #12 will most actively discourage players from exploiting character imbalances in the future.

You might notice that no frame of reference can label true "fairness" to options above #7. There is no getting around this.

If I'm a teacher who is biased towards giving my female students 10 points higher for the same work as male students, I don't get to say "Well, yeah okay, you're right and that's unfair. But what if I only gave them say, 5 more points? That'd be okay and fair, right?"

If Meta Knight has an average matchup ratio of 60:40, it's an improvement to tune that down to 55:45, but it sure as hell isn't "fair." Fair is 50:50. This isn't hard.

Now, most game developers don't give a crap about our precious meta-game or our precious historical results. Real talk: These are all just abstract concepts pinned to the wall of our kool kid's klubhouse. The fact that a bunch of people play Meta Knight (because he's overpowered) is not really of emotional concern to the developers. They neither care about preserving that status quo (for some strange reason) nor artificially penalizing it (for some strange reason). This is because they are adults.

So all most game developers care about is mechanical fairness, aka #7. But they don't go down to #7, and almost exclusively nerf stuff in the #6 philosophy. This is because the risk-reward of overshooting is skewed; bigger changes are exponentially more likely to ruin something unexpectedly. So there's a lot of incentive to play it safe.

Smash's patch philosophy has been even more conservative than that, and has stuck to the number #5 range when they see fit to address things at all. Which makes it hard for players to simultaneously appreciate that:

• The patches have had a big impact on improving the game's balance.
• The patches are significantly more conservative and less disruptive than the patches for virtually any other modern competitive game.

There are lots of games that follow the #9, #10, or #11 philosophies, and routinely flip the best and worst characters. Smash is not even adjacent to this way of thinking.




Let's take a moment to preemptively shoot down the two biggest fallacies regarding patch balance:

"Balance might get worse if you nerf one top character but leave the others."

Yes, this is absolutely possibly true. You might nerf a benevolent dictator like Melee Fox, and leave the other top tiers to run train over the rest of the tier list unopposed. But it is just as likely (actually more so, mathematically) that the random top tier we are talking about nerfing is a tyrant like Melee Sheik, who is specifically suppressing low-tiers.

Yes, many characters in Smash 4 are worse against ZSS or some other top character than Sheik. But I guarantee you that Sheik claims the highest number of worst matchups in the game, and that any reduction in Sheik's dominance would benefit more characters than it would hurt. It's possibly but quite unusual for this not to be the case with any random top tier in a game.

"They should just buff the bad characters rather than nerf the good ones!"

Oh sweet Jesus, please take the wheel.

Remember how we talked about how developers are rightfully afraid of changing stuff, and unexpected things happening? Well, it turns out that it's harder to buff 50 characters just to avoid nerfing 1 or 2 and hurting someone's feelings.

Because real talk, that's all this is: Feelings. It mathematically makes no difference if they make the good characters worse or the bad characters better, though the paths they choose to do so by can affect things like game length and option breadth. If you were a completely logical agent, you wouldn't give one flip if your offense was cut in half or the enemy's defense was doubled. It's the same. This isn't hard.

Yeah, people are emotional and illogical, but the moment we accept that (unavoidable) fact, we can't help but forget what we were arguing about in the first place. Do you see why Nintendo doesn't do patch notes?

Alternatively, once you lock yourself into a nonsense ideology of "ONLY BUFFS!" and do 50 buffs in the palce of every nerf, what are the odds of at least one of those buffs overshooting? Which of course means repeating the entire circus over again, for infinity. We call this Power Creep, and it has killed many a game in past eras where developers didn't know better.

Furthermore, WTF does this keep coming up? Smash's hyper conservative patch philosophy leads to us having 10x as many buffs as nerfs anyway. Sheik and ZSS aren't even being nerfed. How is this a thing that is talked about?


In conclusion, everyone should chill out about patches, experiment with Cloud, and main Bowser. Carry on.

 

[wpwood]

These Palutena buffs g- I mean I'll seem them in February . Still waiting on FAF data though, that's really want she needs most.

Cloud's nice, but really easy to edge guard. I killed someone in the ditto using only 3 nairs; having only the limit version of up b snap isn't that great. Clouds need to learn to space their up B's to snap at the end of the move to avoid getting gimped as best as possible. I haven't tested it yet, but I wonder if reflect on Palutena could hurt him like it does Mac. If a cloud gets up a stock I would love to see some offstage up b spike gimmics for style. So if a Ness is doing up b I wonder if Cloud could Up B spike him out of it, for style points. When I see I'm not going to make it back but I hit the opponent for a failed edge guard I'll just spike them with me.

Does anyone have the BKB or KBG of limit up b or know what %s it will kill at? Also does the initial hit do more knock back than a latter hit? I was doing friendlies, online, and I did up throw up b and killed him. I don't know if he didn't press air dodge, game didn't register his input, or if it is a true combo at that specific %. Even if he could air dodge you could just bait it out, but I don't think it'll kill till a bit higher %.

Something I think clouds should do is charge limit to where it's slightly below full; that way they have access to their B moves a little longer without using the limit break version that will be needed for recovery, and they can use blade beam for pressure without throwing away a limit charge. Limits are centered around his play, but living is usually better than damage.

 

[Amadeus9]

So here's some stuff i haven't heard anyone talk about with regards to cloud

The movement bonus you gain in limit breaker is sexy as ****.

you actually gain combos and set ups with it, that aren't tied to 60 frame recovery moves

The issue with finishing touch is that by the time u get it, unless ur way behind, when you are going to use it, it is huge overkill and u lose the sexy movement bonus

heres some stuff i found, only works with limit breaker movement bonus:

falling uair is a kill confirm on sheik from 75% to about 80%. falling uair > uair. then starting around that point, and going up to about 100%, falling uair combos to limit broken upb which kills easily.

Basically all of mid percent the bonus speed u gain allows u to 5050 kill confirm on dthrow. dthrow > fair gets the spike hitbox amd beats everything except airdodge, and the airdodge can be read with a lightning fast dair.

Theres actually all kinds of combos you can do with falling uair (which is safe on block) if you have limit breaker active. uair > bair, uair > nair...

Falling uair in general seems like a really good option in neutral. The move just... it feels like ZSS'S nair to me. The move combos to utilt at 0%... sheik gets 0-50'd by uair utilt utilt utilt uair.

IMO with the kill confirm of utilt or falling uair to upb, its pretty much pointless to use limit breaker for any other special unless you have a really strong read for down b. Especially considering the movement buff u gain from limit breaker, like damn that **** is good. Its like mini lightweight.

Without limit breaker theres like no reason to use any of his specials, they are honestly not that great, but clouds normals tho...

Just some stuff to think about. It's way too early to write this fighter off

 

[Banette]

Also I hope Smash 5 is literally all anime swordsmen.

Inb4 Super Slash Brothers...

More on topic, I'm happy with Lucas' buffs, but fear that they will not serve to make him any less one-dimensional: his gameplan revolved already around ensuring those grabs, and with grab being an even better option now, there seems to be little reason not to 'tunnel vision'. Ah well, a clear strategy makes a character that much easier to balance; so little flexibility must lead to polarizing matchups in my mind, so I'm hesitant to call Lucas a true high tier for now.

 

[Mr. ShinyUmbreon]

Inb4 Super Slash Brothers...

More on topic, I'm happy with Lucas' buffs, but fear that they will not serve to make him any less one-dimensional: his gameplan revolved already around ensuring those grabs, and with grab being an even better option now, there seems to be little reason not to 'tunnel vision'. Ah well, a clear strategy makes a character that much easier to balance; so little flexibility must lead to polarizing matchups in my mind, so I'm hesitant to call Lucas a true high tier for now.

Lucas is kind of... strange to say at the least. (Just like Mother 3)
I have a question, why would you use Lucas over Ness? What does he have that gives him an edge over the other?
It seems that Lucas has a very rewarding grab, but so does ness. Ness's throws also have more killing power.

 

[wedl!!]

You'd use him over Ness for that weird reason that he's a totally different character with a totally different playstyle.

 

[wpwood]

At least DLC is over and there's no more wondering about who the characters are going to be. So we have, what, 57 or 58 characters, and we haven't even fully discussed the original 50 or 51 characters. February is gonna be a fun month for this thread.

 

[Banette]

Lucas is kind of... strange to say at the least. (Just like Mother 3)
I have a question, why would you use Lucas over Ness? What does he have that gives him an edge over the other?
It seems that Lucas has a very rewarding grab, but so does ness. Ness's throws also have more killing power.

Most players agree that Lucas and Ness are entirely different in forms of gameplay - surely they have similar physiques and good options out of grabs, but the way these options are accessed (=neutral) are entirely different. I'm sure you're familiar with Ness - I guess most would consider him an 'honest' character: his N-air a fast out-of-shield option, low knockback on several fast moves for combos... Although Ness' specials suggest otherwise, he could probably be argued to be a CQC character.

On to Lucas, his gameplan in this game seems to be pretty much just spamming F-air, F-special, and Z-airs... Intelligently. Lucas' moveset is designed around spacing, keeping the opponent out with (pre-emptive) space coverage - and getting in a grab or two for the true damage racking if the opportunity is there. All in all Lucas' playstyle my be more comparable to that of Lucario or something than to Ness': Lucas and Ness may have similar specials, but their variations, as well as their normals, serve entirely different purposes.

Hope that clears things up :o

 

[TriTails]

Yooo...
http://smashboards.com/threads/1-1-3-patch-notes-discussion.425922/page-6#post-20604385
http://smashboards.com/threads/1-1-3-patch-notes-discussion.425922/page-7#post-20604433

Mewtwo's running and walking speed has been increased.

Rejoice.

Not tested by me. Thank Bowserboy3 for the videos.

 

[wedl!!]

If you look at this from the perspective that the game is balanced around the Japanese scene the buffs to Kirby, Lucas, Shulk and Bowser make sense.

Mewtwo was already mid tier in the Ring of Fire and he got huge changes. Absolutely flabbergasted.

Robin's buffs are nice for an already good character. Makes their already good neutral better. Also, his Dair is like... usable now probably.

 

[Y2Kay]

Yooo...
http://smashboards.com/threads/1-1-3-patch-notes-discussion.425922/page-6#post-20604385
http://smashboards.com/threads/1-1-3-patch-notes-discussion.425922/page-7#post-20604433

Mewtwo's running and walking speed has been increased.

Rejoice.

Not tested by me. Thank Bowserboy3 for the videos.

Oh my god. Mewtwo has really hit the lottery in this patch. I don't think he might even be bottom 10 anymore

Rejoice, Mewtwo Mains!

I'm playing mah boy with some new passion!

boyz

 

[Amadeus9]

Limit breaker has literally no downside, you get buffed movement and gain combos and setups plus u gain the mind game that ur opponent has to respect the threat of down b at all times, so they cant over commit on you. nasty

 

[bc1910]

Strengths that Lucas has over Ness?

• More dynamic, damaging combo game. Not that Dthrow Fair Fair Fair from Ness isn't exhilarating, but Lucas has some nice strings involving grabs and aerials that allow him to rack damage quicker at various percents.
• Better combo throw. Self explanatory. Dthrow gives him massive frame advantage and combos until kill percent, unlike Ness' Dthrow which is very overrated and won't combo against anyone who knows how to DI past like, 40%.
• Better spacing game thanks largely to Zair.
• Significantly better zoning thanks to PK Fire.
• Better kill throws in some scenarios. If Ness is near a ledge and facing it, Lucas' Uthrow and Fthrow are better for killing than Ness' Bthrow.

They are actually pretty different characters. Ness was better, probably still is, but Lucas has some advantages that make him worth using.

 

[Nobie]

A recurring theme I'd like to talk about here, I guess:

People are good at anything binary. People are bad at nuance, magnitude, context, and perspective.

It's hard for people to simultaneously understand that:

• The game can be fine without additional changes.
• The game can be improved with additional changes.

• That someone has to be the best/worst characters.
• That the gap between them can always be smaller.

• That bad characters can beat good characters.
• That good characters do statistically have a meaningful advantage over bad characters.

• The game is fine with Sheik and ZSS existing as they are.
• The game's statistical balance would improve if literally any character in the top half of the roster were nerfed, even if they were nerfed all the way to 50th percentile or beyond. (As long as they overshoot to a degree less than their previous deviation.)

• The game would probably be improved if Zelda, Jigglypuff, Duck Hunt, ect. were buffed.
• Improvements to other weak characters still improves the game's balance.

Let me lay out the philosophies with which a developer could address an overpowered character like Meta Knight:

1. To actively reward the players who pushed Meta Knight to the limit, Meta Knight is buffed.
2. To passively reward the players who pushed Meta Knight to the limit, Meta Knight is unchanged from his dominant state.
3. To improve the game while disrupting the meta-game the absolute least, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he is still unquestionably the best character, but by a smaller margin.
4. To improve the game while prioritizing minimal disruption to the meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he is equal in power to the second-best character.
5. To improve the game with limited concern towards disrupting the meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he remains firmly a top/high tier, but is no longer the best character. (However, he still performs above this thanks to already having the most advanced meta.)
6. To improve the game above all other considerations but fearing over-correction, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he remains above average but no more. (However, he still performs above this thanks to already having the most advanced meta.)
   
7. To improve the game above all other considerations, Meta Knight is nerfed so that he is perfectly fair on average, and is the dead center of the tier list. (However, he still performs above this thanks to already having the most advanced meta.)
8. To improve the game and slightly correct the short-term meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes slightly below average, yet his superior meta-game head-start keeps him performing at an average level. (or higher)
9. To improve the game and slightly correct the long-term meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes significantly below average. This gives many other characters "their turn" to be better, just like Meta Knight had "his turn." However, Meta Knight is still better than some characters, and no character beats him as badly as he previously beat them.
10. To improve the game and completely correct the long-term meta-game, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes the worst character in the game, yet not as bad now as he was good before. This gives all other characters "their turn" to be better, just like Meta Knight had "his turn." Yet, the advantages they enjoy are not as big as the advantages Meta Knight enjoyed previously.
11. To proportionally penalize the players who over-developed an overpowered character to gain an "unfair" or "easy" advantage, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes the worst character in the game, and is exactly as bad now as he was good before. This gives all other characters "their turn" to be better, just like Meta Knight had "his turn", and the advantages they enjoy are precisely as big as the advantages Meta Knight enjoyed previously.
12. To karmic penalize the players who over-developed an overpowered character to gain an "unfair" or "easy" advantage, Meta Knight is nerfed such that he becomes the worst character in the game, and is even worse now as he was good before. This gives all other characters "their turn" to be better, just like Meta Knight had "his turn", and the advantages they enjoy are even bigger than the advantages Meta Knight enjoyed previously.

Many people fixate on arguing on if we should do #2, #3, or #4, and then get horrified when developers have the audacity to do #5. But believe me, there are Twitch chats full of people thirsty for #12.

What the most fair? Well, it depends on your frame of reference:

• Mechanical fairness? #7 makes the matchups perfectly fair.
• Current results fairness? #8 will offer the most equal results.
• Historical results fairness? #11 will fully balance out past inequalities.
• Minimizing impact of future imbalances? #12 will most actively discourage players from exploiting character imbalances in the future.

You might notice that no frame of reference can label true "fairness" to options above #7. There is no getting around this.

If I'm a teacher who is biased towards giving my female students 10 points higher for the same work as male students, I don't get to say "Well, yeah okay, you're right and that's unfair. But what if I only gave them say, 5 more points? That'd be okay and fair, right?"

If Meta Knight has an average matchup ratio of 60:40, it's an improvement to tune that down to 55:45, but it sure as hell isn't "fair." Fair is 50:50. This isn't hard.

Now, most game developers don't give a crap about our precious meta-game or our precious historical results. Real talk: These are all just abstract concepts pinned to the wall of our kool kid's klubhouse. The fact that a bunch of people play Meta Knight (because he's overpowered) is not really of emotional concern to the developers. They neither care about preserving that status quo (for some strange reason) nor artificially penalizing it (for some strange reason). This is because they are adults.

So all most game developers care about is mechanical fairness, aka #7. But they don't go down to #7, and almost exclusively nerf stuff in the #6 philosophy. This is because the risk-reward of overshooting is skewed; bigger changes are exponentially more likely to ruin something unexpectedly. So there's a lot of incentive to play it safe.

Smash's patch philosophy has been even more conservative than that, and has stuck to the number #5 range when they see fit to address things at all. Which makes it hard for players to simultaneously appreciate that:

• The patches have had a big impact on improving the game's balance.
• The patches are significantly more conservative and less disruptive than the patches for virtually any other modern competitive game.

There are lots of games that follow the #9, #10, or #11 philosophies, and routinely flip the best and worst characters. Smash is not even adjacent to this way of thinking.




Let's take a moment to preemptively shoot down the two biggest fallacies regarding patch balance:

"Balance might get worse if you nerf one top character but leave the others."

Yes, this is absolutely possibly true. You might nerf a benevolent dictator like Melee Fox, and leave the other top tiers to run train over the rest of the tier list unopposed. But it is just as likely (actually more so, mathematically) that the random top tier we are talking about nerfing is a tyrant like Melee Sheik, who is specifically suppressing low-tiers.

Yes, many characters in Smash 4 are worse against ZSS or some other top character than Sheik. But I guarantee you that Sheik claims the highest number of worst matchups in the game, and that any reduction in Sheik's dominance would benefit more characters than it would hurt. It's possibly but quite unusual for this not to be the case with any random top tier in a game.

"They should just buff the bad characters rather than nerf the good ones!"

Oh sweet Jesus, please take the wheel.

Remember how we talked about how developers are rightfully afraid of changing stuff, and unexpected things happening? Well, it turns out that it's harder to buff 50 characters just to avoid nerfing 1 or 2 and hurting someone's feelings.

Because real talk, that's all this is: Feelings. It mathematically makes no difference if they make the good characters worse or the bad characters better, though the paths they choose to do so by can affect things like game length and option breadth. If you were a completely logical agent, you wouldn't give one flip if your offense was cut in half or the enemy's defense was doubled. It's the same. This isn't hard.

Yeah, people are emotional and illogical, but the moment we accept that (unavoidable) fact, we can't help but forget what we were arguing about in the first place. Do you see why Nintendo doesn't do patch notes?

Alternatively, once you lock yourself into a nonsense ideology of "ONLY BUFFS!" and do 50 buffs in the palce of every nerf, what are the odds of at least one of those buffs overshooting? Which of course means repeating the entire circus over again, for infinity. We call this Power Creep, and it has killed many a game in past eras where developers didn't know better.

Furthermore, WTF does this keep coming up? Smash's hyper conservative patch philosophy leads to us having 10x as many buffs as nerfs anyway. Sheik and ZSS aren't even being nerfed. How is this a thing that is talked about?


In conclusion, everyone should chill out about patches, experiment with Cloud, and main Bowser. Carry on.

One thing that's become increasingly clear to me, and is now crystal clear with this patch, is that the Smash team highly values keeping its characters' gameplay identities, and that pretty much all buffs and nerfs are in line with this.

Why did Mewtwo get buffs on everything BUT weight and hurtbox size, INCLUDING the ever-rare movement speed buffs? It's because Mewtwo is supposed to be a glass cannon, and adding weight detracts from that concept. In contrast, shorter landing lag, higher walk and run speeds, and better/stronger hitboxes enhance his glass cannon identity.

What were Mewtwo's primary weaknesses other than being light and a huge target? It was that rushdown characters could get in his face. Now, Mewtwo can better out maneuver them, can lay on pressure better due to better frame data, threaten to kill in more situations, all while using those same movement specs to also play a better defensive game, outrunning and outspacing opponents.

HOWEVER, if the opponent STILL gets past Mewtwo's defenses, Mewtwo's still going to get reamed. They've just made it a bit harder and scarier to do so.

What do they buff on Ganondorf? Not his walk speed, not his run speed, and they certainly wouldn't give him a quicker jab or whatever. No, they gave him better armor frames on Warlock Punch, armor frames on turnaround Warlock Punch, and better landing lag data. This is because Ganondorf is designed as a reads-based powerhouse. Warlock punch improved armor means being able to get reads in more situations where it would have failed otherwise, and better landing lag data means being punished less for unsuccessful reads. Ganondorf isn't suddenly a speedster, or a glass cannon, or a middle of the road guy with disproportionate power.

This is why you're probably not going to see Robin get faster, Jigglypuff get heavier, or Sheik suddenly have a butt ton of lag on more attacks.

 

[Zelder]

Cloud has two huge, Little Mac shaped problems: one, his recovery is so bad that he has to immediately start moving back towards the stage once he's in the air (sans Limit Break), making his recovery easy to track and gimp.

The other problem is that limit break is threatening, but you can just toss him backwards off the stage, forcing him to limit break upb to recover, wasting his limit break. I recognize that better Clouds will rapidly become aware of that, but it's worked pretty consistently for me so far.

He's very fun, but very exploitable.

 

[Superbat]

Wait is the mewtwo speed buff confirmed?

 

[Thinkaman]

Wait is the mewtwo speed buff confirmed?

It is. There is video in the patch thread.

 

[Konneh]

Limit breaker has literally no downside, you get buffed movement and gain combos and setups plus u gain the mind game that ur opponent has to respect the threat of down b at all times, so they cant over commit on you. nasty

Yes, it does; you lose the ability to spam neutral B without depleting your limit gauge. nitpick

 

[Thinkaman]

Yes, it does; you lose the ability to spam neutral B without depleting your limit gauge. nitpick

Yes, and I have a nagging suspicion that this will affect Cloud more than it does Little Mac.

 

[Iron Maw]

With how easy it is to build meter, I don't think you really need to prioritize holding on to all that much. Cloud have more leeway and flexibility with LB than that with my time with him. I've averagely maxed it like 3-4 times any most of my early matches.

 

[Amadeus9]

why would you be spamming a 60 frame recovery projectile

 

[Ffamran]

why would you be spamming a 60 frame recovery projectile

Because it's not 60 recovery. Its startup is 18 and total frames is 60, so thats 43 recovery frames which puts it close to Lucario's Aura Sphere and Ryu's Hadouken.

 

[Nobie]

In terms of the single biggest change to any character, I can't ignore Shulk's new Up Air. They cut 12 FRAMES OF LANDING LAG from that thing! 12! Here are the other characters getting like maybe 2 to 4, and Shulk's makes it go from one of the slowest in the game to pretty danged fast.

I'm not a Shulk player so I don't know just how much this will affect him, but it's like seeing a unicorn and not believing it's there even though it just walked up to and said, "Hey I'm a unicorn. How you doing?"

Edit: Re: post below

Whoops never mind carry on

 

[adom4]

In terms of the single biggest change to any character, I can't ignore Shulk's new Up Air. They cut 12 FRAMES OF LANDING LAG from that thing! 12! Here are the other characters getting like maybe 2 to 4, and Shulk's makes it go from one of the slowest in the game to pretty danged fast.

I'm not a Shulk player so I don't know just how much this will affect him, but it's like seeing a unicorn and not believing it's there even though it just walked up to and said, "Hey I'm a unicorn. How you doing?"

I think that's a typo, they only cut 2 frames off it.

 

[TDK]

Guys...


Bowser's Side-B is about twice as fast and the initial grab aoutocancels anywhere. and it's also extremely easy to control.


Bowser might be the best heavy at this point.

 

[Thinkaman]

Yeah, that was my fault. Fixed.

 

[adom4]

Guys...


Bowser's Side-B is about twice as fast and the initial grab aoutocancels anywhere. and it's also extremely easy to control.


Bowser might be the best heavy at this point.

Is it the grab itself or is it the slam?