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

[~ Gheb ~]

If anything I'd compare Shulk to Brawl's Pokemon Trainer. Not a terrible character per se but you have to put like three characters worth of effort into him only to end up with a low-mid tier character. Looking at it from that angle I'd say Shulk is actually worse off than somebody like Jigglypuff or Zelda. If you decide to play these characters you at least have an idea what you get yourself into. The mismatch between effort and reward in Shulk's case on the other hand is probably the biggest in the game and that's what I suspect to be the real reason people don't play him. He's probably the least satisfying character to play.

 

[Sethlon]

Isn't Sethlon better than them both?

Not really. A good portion of my fanbase would likely defend me being the best to the death, but I'm not really that good at Smash4 yet. Still getting beat pretty bad at locals, heh.
I miiiight be a better Roy than ZeRo, but if it were so, it would be because ZeRo just hasn't spend as much time on the character. Even without it he'd probably get better results than me. Manny and NEO both are likely better than me overall, judging off of what I've seen from their Roy play and their overall skill at Smash4, seen in their other characters.

I think part of the reason ZeRo's Roy video turned out that way is because of Static Manny and his preferred play style. If he made a Sonic video based on Manny's advice, you'd probably hear a lot of similar things ("Sonic/Roy is a defensive character").

Yeah, an interesting thing about Roy is how diverse he can be played. Ask me / NEO / Manny for a rundown of his gameplan, and you'd probably get really different responses

 

[TriTails]

So I just thought of this recently, but when buffing/nerfing characters, I think no moves deserve to be made useless.

Why am I thinking of this? Because Luigi's D-tilt and Garbage Missile. Pre-patch 1.0.8, D-tilt was a decent move for setups, an airdodge bait can net a smash or even FJP. After the patch though, it's garbage. No uses since it's pretty much outshined by F-tilt, and F-tilt is bad.

And Garbage Missile. I wish everytime I press Side-B I would go flying farther and faster but oh hell. I just watched Boss vs False on YouTube and the fact you can just drop down and B-air Luigi is stupid. Name me other recoveries that are as open as that. Recovering high? Unless you're really high up you're not going to get much distance. Recover low? Unless you're not hitting full charge, kiss goodbye to your stock.

How to compensate for this? Jumpless Cyclone. Not as open or obvious as Missile, even if it leaves you hanging for like 40~ frames, you can be uber down below and make it back as long as you have your double jump. Missile? You're already getting spiked before you can even act.

No denying it. Green Missile is an abomination of a move.
1. Min. startup is 22 frames. Uncharged version has stupid sourspots that deals 6% and is unsafe on everything until mid high percents. Hillariously, the sourspots are located in the beginning and near the end of the move. Sweetspot that deals 9-10% is in the middle. Who the hell is going to work for that.

2. It's slower than a snail. Fully charging it does little. Still goes as slow as ****. Misfiring does little. Still goes fairly slow (Albeit, the surprise niche it has kinda make this hillarious). Do it uncharged, you might better off grabbing your controller, pummel three times and back throw.

3. Doesn't snap to the ledge. Why. Pikachu literally does the same thing, except he goes faster, spins, and has stubby arms. Lmao how did he snap again? That doesn't suffice? Bowser grabs the ledge when he's in his shell that takes forever for him to come out of, as shown in his Whirling Fortress's landing amination. Ike grabs the ledge when he's falling down with a sword on both of his hands. Ness and Lucas grab the ledge when they are spinning after getting shocked and exploded by a ****ing electric bolt.

4. It has the chance to stick your head to the wall... I don't care how irrelevant as this may be. This is an unecessary addition that punish you for recovering. Fox and Falco slam their heads on the wall with Side-B and apparently nothing happens. Ness and Lucas slam their heads on the wall with PKT2 and they can do it a second time.

5. Low reward. Uncharged, it does 10%. Seems okay, if it weren't for the fact the sweetspot is up there on the tree branch while the sourspots are everywhere. Fully charged, it does 21%... Oh, you're getting hit by this? I mean, seriously dude. Misfire? It can clutch kills at times but they somehow manage to nerf its chances (from 12.5% to 10%) to happen. One in a TENTH. It also doesn't go any faster than the fully charged version.

6. You hit a shield? You ****ing hang in the air before you fall (Fully charged, maybe doesn't. But the uncharged version definitely does. And PS-ing it guarantees the hang). And Luigi takes another year to get up.

7. You whiff? Last sentence on the above point.

8. You want distance? The fully charged version go to around 4/7th of FD IIRC, definitely not 3/4th of it. Misifiring doesn't increase it. Mediocre distance for like 70 frames of charging.

9. You have no protection from above. Get well soon after getting hit by the 1283789347th of spikes.

Why people doesn't edgeguard this more I have no clue... Misfire ain't an excuse. 21% damage ain't an excuse. I mean, if Luigi is uncharged Missiling far from the ledge, then yes, not much point. I fly right below the ledge and I still remember the memories of people not even wanting to deal with it.

And people say Rosalina's recovery is bad. This move's existence is beyond my comprehension. Sorry for the text, but I gotta let this out.

Ahhh. Cool. Let me rest for a bit. I'm kind of flabbergasted myself on how I manage to make a topic of 'no moves should be useless' changing to 'Green Missile is garbage'. Lmao, so much scars and tears over this move...

 

[meleebrawler]

So I just thought of this recently, but when buffing/nerfing characters, I think no moves deserve to be made useless.

Why am I thinking of this? Because Luigi's D-tilt and Garbage Missile. Pre-patch 1.0.8, D-tilt was a decent move for setups, an airdodge bait can net a smash or even FJP. After the patch though, it's garbage. No uses since it's pretty much outshined by F-tilt, and F-tilt is bad.

And Garbage Missile. I wish everytime I press Side-B I would go flying farther and faster but oh hell. I just watched Boss vs False on YouTube and the fact you can just drop down and B-air Luigi is stupid. Name me other recoveries that are as open as that. Recovering high? Unless you're really high up you're not going to get much distance. Recover low? Unless you're not hitting full charge, kiss goodbye to your stock.

How to compensate for this? Jumpless Cyclone. Not as open or obvious as Missile, even if it leaves you hanging for like 40~ frames, you can be uber down below and make it back as long as you have your double jump. Missile? You're already getting spiked before you can even act.

No denying it. Green Missile is an abomination of a move.
1. Min. startup is 22 frames. Uncharged version has stupid sourspots that deals 6% and is unsafe on everything until mid high percents. Hillariously, the sourspots are located in the beginning and near the end of the move. Sweetspot that deals 9-10% is in the middle. Who the hell is going to work for that.

2. It's slower than a snail. Fully charging it does little. Still goes as slow as ****. Misfiring does little. Still goes fairly slow (Albeit, the surprise niche it has kinda make this hillarious). Do it uncharged, you might better off grabbing your controller, pummel three times and back throw.

3. Doesn't snap to the ledge. Why. Pikachu literally does the same thing, except he goes faster, spins, and has stubby arms. Lmao how did he snap again? That doesn't suffice? Bowser grabs the ledge when he's in his shell that takes forever for him to come out of, as shown in his Whirling Fortress's landing amination. Ike grabs the ledge when he's falling down with a sword on both of his hands. Ness and Lucas grab the ledge when they are spinning after getting shocked and exploded by a ****ing electric bolt.

4. It has the chance to stick your head to the wall... I don't care how irrelevant as this may be. This is an unecessary addition that punish you for recovering. Fox and Falco slam their heads on the wall with Side-B and apparently nothing happens. Ness and Lucas slam their heads on the wall with PKT2 and they can do it a second time.

5. Low reward. Uncharged, it does 10%. Seems okay, if it weren't for the fact the sweetspot is up there on the tree branch while the sourspots are everywhere. Fully charged, it does 21%... Oh, you're getting hit by this? I mean, seriously dude. Misfire? It can clutch kills at times but they somehow manage to nerf its chances (from 12.5% to 10%) to happen. One in a TENTH. It also doesn't go any faster than the fully charged version.

6. You hit a shield? You ****ing hang in the air before you fall (Fully charged, maybe doesn't. But the uncharged version definitely does. And PS-ing it guarantees the hang). And Luigi takes another year to get up.

7. You whiff? Last sentence on the above point.

8. You want distance? The fully charged version go to around 4/7th of FD IIRC, definitely not 3/4th of it. Misifiring doesn't increase it. Mediocre distance for like 70 frames of charging.

9. You have no protection from above. Get well soon after getting hit by the 1283789347th of spikes.

Why people doesn't edgeguard this more I have no clue... Misfire ain't an excuse. 21% damage ain't an excuse. I mean, if Luigi is uncharged Missiling far from the ledge, then yes, not much point. I fly right below the ledge and I still remember the memories of people not even wanting to deal with it.

And people say Rosalina's recovery is bad. This move's existence is beyond my comprehension. Sorry for the text, but I gotta let this out.

Ahhh. Cool. Let me rest for a bit. I'm kind of flabbergasted myself on how I manage to make a topic of 'no moves should be useless' changing to 'Green Missile is garbage'. Lmao, so much scars and tears over this move...

Because it's Luigi, and anything he tries that's completely distinct from his brother Mario (besides his new dthrow and fair, but even those have some similarities) is almost guaranteed to fail spectacularly. See: dash attack. He HATES rushing headfirst into a fight.

 

[Blobface]

Since we're on the topic of Shulk, his aerials have a different FAF than their autocancel window, and I really don't get this. You can just N-air right before you hit the ground anyway, so why don't they just autocancel at their FAF?

 

[Mazdamaxsti]

Name me other recoveries that are as open as that.

Easily.

Kirby's up-b has 23 frames of startup, doesn't snap to the ledge on the way up, and no hitbox above. This means they have about 45 FREE FRAMES to come and hit me. Not only that, if I don't get the perfect ledge snap, I can be killed with a d-smash at 70%. Marth tipper f-smash? Miss the sweetspot by a couple of frames and I die at 40% easy as that. This means, to get the sweetspot, I have to drop down low AKA easiest up-b to dropzone. Only use up-b when you have to, all kirbys follow this rule now.

Fox, when forced to up-b, almost has a guarunteed death because the amount of frames it takes to start, AND the fire hitbox saving characters like sheik from death after the spike. Not only that, but you can b-air, f-air, anything that reaches further than the fire hitbox to basically destroy his up-b. This is made worse because he is a supreme fastfaller.

Duck Hunt. Do I have to say anything? Slow and no hitbox. If a Duck Hunt gets HIT OFFSTAGE he dies. At least Little Mac has a counter and a hitbox.

3 for example.

 

[Lavani]

Since we're on the topic of Shulk, his aerials have a different FAF than their autocancel window, and I really don't get this. You can just N-air right before you hit the ground anyway, so why don't they just autocancel at their FAF?

You could say the same for airdodges, Palutena's uair, Roy's fair, Ness' PK Fire...the list goes on. Forcing the player to perform another action to avoid standard landing lag limits the flexibility of those moves in landing situations.

 

[AnEventHorizon]

Since we're on the topic of Shulk, his aerials have a different FAF than their autocancel window, and I really don't get this. You can just N-air right before you hit the ground anyway, so why don't they just autocancel at their FAF?

Nair is still 12 frames of landing lag, and there are other aerials with different/earlier FAFs than their autocancel window. Such as Roy's fair (Autocancel >33, FAF of 30) - you can jump out of SH fair with tight timing, but if you dont you get to eat the full landing lag.

Also, Ganondorf's fair (Autocancel 1-6,>55, FAF of 45). Which is why you can side or down special out of it, or eat the sweet 23 frames of landing lag, since it wont autocancel even from a double jump. As Lavani said, it's still forcing you to do another attack - throwing out that flame choke might not be safe.

Additionally, the FAFs are long enough for some of Shulk's moves (like bair) that you still can't nair out of them from a short hop. Full jump/short hop fair or coming out of airdodge is where nair landing is most useful.

 

[LightLV]

Are we really going to continue this..?

They moderate it pretty well on for Glory. That, and the chances of being backstabbed is high... Which in turn becomes a part of the metagame.

For Glory is a quick match mode. They're not going to bog it down with a counterpick system or RNG selected stages.

How inherently competitive something is doesn't really matter to those playing it. Competitive Mario Kart exists. Competitive Mario Party exists. You can dump on it all you want, they're just going to tell you to **** off like you do when your typical troll comes in and explains why you shouldn't be playing Smash at all.

The fact that you think WFT is an upgrade of Samus shows how little you know about FFAs. WFT is much lighter, and WFT lacks a tether, an actual good thing to have in FFAs, and plenty of throw combos. Unlike somebody like Mario or Sheik, Samus can attempt her combos safely because she can steal people away from a range and inherently keep some distance. Funnily enough this is similar to how ZSS functions in FFAs, although she's light and lacks a powerful projectile. You're arguing about a subject you clearly don't understand.

Whatever. No amount of anything is going to convince anyone that any form of For Glory or FFA is a respectable platform for competitive play. If you and your friends think it's fun, that's fine, but you should stop pretending that it deserves the same respects as community-regulated rulesets that are designed to keep matches as objective as possible in respect to player skill.

They can tell me to **** off, but nobody really cares, because nobody takes them serious anyway.


And on the topic of ZeRo and his guides, people need to understand that ZeRo does not play bad characters, he plays Sheik. He's probably not going to be spot-on with his character videos because, well, why does he need to be?

At the end of basically every video he can say "OR, you could just play Sheik" and be right about 98% of the time

 

[Ffamran]

Easily.

Kirby's up-b has 23 frames of startup, doesn't snap to the ledge on the way up, and no hitbox above. This means they have about 45 FREE FRAMES to come and hit me. Not only that, if I don't get the perfect ledge snap, I can be killed with a d-smash at 70%. Marth tipper f-smash? Miss the sweetspot by a couple of frames and I die at 40% easy as that. This means, to get the sweetspot, I have to drop down low AKA easiest up-b to dropzone. Only use up-b when you have to, all kirbys follow this rule now.

Fox, when forced to up-b, almost has a guarunteed death because the amount of frames it takes to start, AND the fire hitbox saving characters like sheik from death after the spike. Not only that, but you can b-air, f-air, anything that reaches further than the fire hitbox to basically destroy his up-b. This is made worse because he is a supreme fastfaller.

Duck Hunt. Do I have to say anything? Slow and no hitbox. If a Duck Hunt gets HIT OFFSTAGE he dies. At least Little Mac has a counter and a hitbox.

3 for example.

If you name Fox's Fire Fox, you'll have to name Falco's Fire Bird, an inferior Fire Fox in every way - this even includes ledge sweet-spotting where Fox can almost Lucas and Roy ledge sweet-spot going vertical, but Falco can't. Add Falco Phantasm to the list too; no end hitbox means Falco is free as a bird for getting murdered. I might add Captain Falcon's Falcon Dive solely because for whatever reason, he's animated so one arm looks like it's doing an uppercut, but it's not an actual uppercut, so it's just a hurtbox extension. This explains why if you have a move that can clip through the stage or if for whatever reason Captain Falcon's arm clips into the stage, he gets hit. You better sweet-spot that ledge if you want to live. This makes me wonder why Falcon Strike even exists as a custom... You could slap the hitbox from Falcon Strike onto Falcon Dive and the only horrible and game-breaking thing would happen is that Falcon Dive went from really exploitable to exploitable. Seriously, what's the point of animating an uppercut when it's not even being used?

 

[meleebrawler]

If you name Fox's Fire Fox, you'll have to name Falco's Fire Bird, an inferior Fire Fox in every way - this even includes ledge sweet-spotting where Fox can almost Lucas and Roy ledge sweet-spot going vertical, but Falco can't. Add Falco Phantasm to the list too; no end hitbox means Falco is free as a bird for getting murdered. I might add Captain Falcon's Falcon Dive solely because for whatever reason, he's animated so one arm looks like it's doing an uppercut, but it's not an actual uppercut, so it's just a hurtbox extension. This explains why if you have a move that can clip through the stage or if for whatever reason Captain Falcon's arm clips into the stage, he gets hit. You better sweet-spot that ledge if you want to live. This makes me wonder why Falcon Strike even exists as a custom... You could slap the hitbox from Falcon Strike onto Falcon Dive and the only horrible and game-breaking thing would happen is that Falcon Dive went from really exploitable to exploitable. Seriously, what's the point of animating an uppercut when it's not even being used?

Well, there's ONE thing Fire Bird has over Fire Fox... the inertia it carries can help Falco go under some stages.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

How important would you guys say secondary and pocket characters are at a high level? Will players be able to figure their bad MUs well enough and execute their character's game plan well enough to make up for the opposing statistics? Or will a backup character be a mandatory part in the meta? I personally think it might be slightly in latter because of the difficulty in properly balancing the cast and this would reek some 70:30 MUs (like D3:sheik and bowser:sheik), but I think the former will not disappear in the slightest being that overcoming a bad MUs isn't just strictly outreading your opponent, making less mistakes (though it does help to not make much) and in general outplaying your opponent, but completing your character's, or player goals (put fox in the air above you, or put Make Jacob shield). Having a secondary is heavily beneficial to your play and battling the statistics against your main, but I kinda see it as a luxury than a mandatory thing ( of course, if you're playing samus or something, it's best to pocket a high tier or switch places between the two characters, making samus the secondary and the high tier the main).

 

[LancerStaff]

Whatever. No amount of anything is going to convince anyone that any form of For Glory or FFA is a respectable platform for competitive play. If you and your friends think it's fun, that's fine, but you should stop pretending that it deserves the same respects as community-regulated rulesets that are designed to keep matches as objective as possible in respect to player skill.

They can tell me to **** off, but nobody really cares, because nobody takes them serious anyway.

The people actually making the game clearly think so, though. At the very minimum they think of it as equal to 1v1s...

This is really just proof of how out of touch the competitive community is with the rest of the fanbase.

 

[Ffamran]

Well, there's ONE thing Fire Bird has over Fire Fox... the inertia it carries can help Falco go under some stages.

And if you screw up, Falco could go under the stage, get caught, and die. Or if you use it to avoid an edgeguard, you could undershoot and die. The game telling us that is cool; it tells us that you can B-reverse it. What's not cool? The game telling us that because of inertia, it moves slower than Fire Fox... And that's it. They tell us just that and going off of what people experience with Fire Bird and contrasting it with Fire Fox, Fire Bird has absolutely no tangible benefits or differences with Fire Fox. You cannot say that for any other derived moves.

The differences between the Links's Spin Attacks matter and benefit them: Link's acts as a kill tool at the cost of vertical lift while Toon Link's multi-hits makes it a difficult to challenge and it is a better vertical recovery than Link's. Captain Falcon's Falcon Dive is a better command grab at startup and for pure damage while Ganondorf's Dark Dive's uppercut can be used for recovery coverage and at times, I'd say the multi-hitting nature and its weaker knockback makes it more difficult to time a tech, Marth's Dolphin Slash is a better stage spike tool because of how fast it is and because of that startup and its I-frames, it's also a good interrupt move to Roy's Blazer being a better combo finisher and kill tool along with having more flexible angling, Mario's Super Jump Punch is better for combo finishes to Dr. Mario's SJP kill to Luigi's SJP punish and hell, even gimping with the sour-spot if someone is really that caught off guard, Dr. Mario's Doctor Tornado is a horizontal kill to Luigi's Luigi Cyclone vertical, and you can even say this for Sheik and Zelda's Up Specials being similar, but different enough that there's meaningful reasons for them existing or being different; Sheik can use Vanish for air dodge punishes off of D-throw setups versus Zelda's ability to setup Farore's Wind, so a punish versus a finisher. Fire Fox vs. Fire Bird? Nothing.

Fire Wolf and technically, Twisting Fox do everything Fire Bird does, but better. What exactly does Fire Bird do? Outside of recovering, it's a multi-hit that doesn't connect properly unless you hit high enough. Use it ground level and people are bound to fall out for whatever reason. As a recovery, Fire Wolf trumps it by launching at half the startup while being a well-connecting multi-hit. Twisting Fox ramps this up by killing. If we talk about Fast Fire Bird and Distant Fire Bird, you also have Distant Fire Bird getting trumped or equaled by Fire Fox, Twisting Fox, and Flying Fox for recovery distance - maybe even Fire Wolf too. The fact all the other ones launch at least 10 frames sooner - Distant Fire Bird launches at frame 52 -, travel faster, and even kill makes it look even crappier. Fast Fire Bird is the only one with redeeming qualities since it's actually a different, but similar move. Sheer speed at frame 13, faster travel speed, and having momentum boosting Falco's travel distance all at the cost of hitting once for 2%, not killing ever, some slight distance lost, and 8 more frames of landing lag, 19 to 28, making it close to most characters' 30? Sign me up! Fast Fire Bird should have been Falco's default Up Special if they didn't want to make Fire Bird more like Fire Wolf. The stupid thing is that Fire Bird has been like this since Melee; always worse than Fire Fox and later, Fire Wolf, for no reason other it's a multi-hit, so it'll be different from Fox's, but Wolf usurped that, so... It's just there for the sake of being there and bad for no reason. If you want the whole, "don't want to alienate fans", which I think is a load of crap true or not, then this is the worst example of not changing a move because the developers "didn't want to alienate fans". Yes, let's not change a **** move because fans are more comfortable with a **** recovery. That hurts characters in any and all settings.

 

[LancerStaff]

And if you screw up, Falco could go under the stage, get caught, and die. Or if you use it to avoid an edgeguard, you could undershoot and die. The game telling us that is cool; it tells us that you can B-reverse it. What's not cool? The game telling us that because of inertia, it moves slower than Fire Fox... And that's it. They tell us just that and going off of what people experience with Fire Bird and contrasting it with Fire Fox, Fire Bird has absolutely no tangible benefits or differences with Fire Fox. You cannot say that for any other derived moves.

Ehhhh... Dark Pit's arrows and Ftilt are both pretty bad compared to the defaults. And that's most of his differences right there. Unless you count killing decently in Sudden Death for the former (only after the damage buff BTW) and easy to avoid lock setups for the later... Yeah. At least Electroshock is different and still good and the Final Smashes have a clear trade-off. Roy has a few, like his Bair which has less active frames even before you get into how it won't AC out of a SH due to his mechanics. Oh, and his Final Smash is terrible for no apparent reason.

I imagine they factor in the worse recovery when balancing Falco... (Well, I'll say it I guess.) Falco just didn't end up good in 1v1s like Fox did is all.

 

[MARTH_IS_BAE]

My opinion of worst recoveries, from worst to less awful:










This might seem out of place, but I haven't missed the two frame punish in a long time. Plus, at this point, there aren't that many bad recoveries that stand out as bottom ten, the closest were Mega Man, Falco, and Luigi. Oh, and DK. But that up b has such a weird hitbox, it's harder than it looks to gimp him.


Might as well do best recoveries while I'm at it.












Sorry .

 

[LancerStaff]

My opinion of worst recoveries, from worst to less awful:








Marth is my bae, but I'm willing to admit this.

This might seem out of place, but I haven't missed the two frame punish in a long time. Plus, at this point, there aren't that many bad recoveries that stand out as bottom ten, the closest were Mega Man and Falco.

Marth's recovery isn't bad by any definition besides just comparing Uspecials or something. Palutena needs to make use of ledge mechanics to avoid the two-frame window but other then that I'd say it's fine. Megaman's seems pretty good to me... Heck, Falco's not too bad either.

If you're going to have DH, you should have Olimar as well. So I'd put Bowser and then probably Shulk to fill the gaps.

 

[MARTH_IS_BAE]

Marth's recovery isn't bad by any definition besides just comparing Uspecials or something. Palutena needs to make use of ledge mechanics to avoid the two-frame window but other then that I'd say it's fine. Megaman's seems pretty good to me... Heck, Falco's not too bad either.

If you're going to have DH, you should have Olimar as well. So I'd put Bowser and then probably Shulk to fill the gaps.

Yeah I'll edit Bowser for Marth. Marth's still ain't good.
Olimar has enough safe mix ups I wouldn't call him bottom ten and definitely wouldn't compare to DHD, who is just awful at recovering.

 

[Ffamran]

Ehhhh... Dark Pit's arrows and Ftilt are both pretty bad compared to the defaults. And that's most of his differences right there. Unless you count killing decently in Sudden Death for the former (only after the damage buff BTW) and easy to avoid lock setups for the later... Yeah. At least Electroshock is different and still good and the Final Smashes have a clear trade-off. Roy has a few, like his Bair which has less active frames even before you get into how it won't AC out of a SH due to his mechanics. Oh, and his Final Smash is terrible for no apparent reason.

I imagine they factor in the worse recovery when balancing Falco... (Well, I'll say it I guess.) Falco just didn't end up good in 1v1s like Fox did is all.

I said derived moves which Dark Pit's Ftilt isn't... I really don't know why that's different just like how they decided to change Pit's rapid jab, but not Dark Pit's. It's like they can't decide if Dark Pit should be different from Pit or almost identical. At least you can say that Silver Bow doing more damage while Palutena's Arrow having more control has some bearing on their gameplay other than something like Falco's Burst Blaster just plain sucks compared to Fox's default. With normals, there's a point where moves will overlap or be worse or better in whatever situation, but Specials are just that: they're special and shouldn't be strictly worse or strictly better than another character's.

 

[Blobface]

I just don't get why Shulk's aerials have such absurdly bad autocancel windows. F-air is the only one that autocancels before frame 78. This is made worse because those aerials sans N-air all have FAF of about 60 or lower, giving them almost a 20 frame difference between their FAF and autocancel.

I know people harp on Shulk's frame data a lot, and there might be some balance angle I'm not thinking of here, but I just don't get why his autocancel windows are so much worse than his FAF's.

 

[LightLV]

The people actually making the game clearly think so, though. At the very minimum they think of it as equal to 1v1s...

This is really just proof of how out of touch the competitive community is with the rest of the fanbase.

The amount of certainty you give your argument just for the sake of giving some merit to Smash's terrible balancing issues is just...it's stupid. I dont know how else to say it, really. I'm sorry.

I don't think the competitive community is out of touch with anything, im sure we know how small of a percentage we are. I'm nearly positive Sakurai himself is, though, if the extreme desperation of his balancing decisions simply to avoid a 2% label are anything to go by. What YOU'RE expressing though is really closer to delusion.

My opinion of worst recoveries, from worst to less awful:










This might seem out of place, but I haven't missed the two frame punish in a long time. Plus, at this point, there aren't that many bad recoveries that stand out as bottom ten, the closest were Mega Man, Falco, and Luigi. Oh, and DK. But that up b has such a weird hitbox, it's harder than it looks to gimp him.

You're lumping Marth and Palu in a recovery group with Falcon, Roy and Ness????? They can nearly recover instantaneously from the fallzone...

 

[Nobie]

I think I figured out why Mewtwo's Teleport is so weird in the way you sometimes SD from it.

Most of the time, the Teleport SDs come from soon after you hit your second jump or your side B. The thing is that Teleport carries horizontal momentum from Mewtwo's jump, so this interacts with ledges/walls in odd ways. If you can slow your momentum down before jumping, or wait for the jump to complete so that you can hold back and slow yourself down, then teleport becomes a lot more predictable.

 

[MARTH_IS_BAE]

The amount of certainty you give your argument just for the sake of giving some merit to Smash's terrible balancing issues is just...it's stupid. I dont know how else to say it, really. I'm sorry.


You're lumping Marth and Palu in a recovery group with Falcon, Roy and Ness?????

Marth's recovery is not good. People seem scared to edge guard him because it's fast and has a hitbox, but from my perspective a recovery that might be tied for most linear, I mean, I don't care how many disjointed aerials he has because I know where he is going to use up b, and I know I can time a stage spike, regular spike, or two frame punish easily. Why is this such an absurd notion, to have him bottom 15? I did edit him out of bottom 10, but it's not much a crime because I would have trouble thinking of 15 recoveries that are worse than Marth's. And obviously I am lumping Lucina in with him.

Palutena's recovery is also just not good. She lacks any good coverage options, and for some reason people don't believe anyone when they say the two frame punish isn't hard to time. Good lord, Palu's hurtbox is huge when she ledge snaps, and the startup on her recovery is like the perfect time cue to use a move and catch her. It might not be bottom ten, but as is the case with Marth, I would be hard pressed to find 15 worse recoveries.

People should understand that there aren't that many bad recoveries in this game, and if a few aspects of a recovery are bad enough that the recovery as a whole could be considered kind of bad, it is probably bottom 20. But there is a hard line between recoveries that greatly affect a character competitively, and recoveries that don't. I would say Marth and Palutena fall above that line (Palutena barely, people will get better at edge guarding her), but many characters here don't.

 

[Darktundra]

I just don't get why Shulk's aerials have such absurdly bad autocancel windows. F-air is the only one that autocancels before frame 78. This is made worse because those aerials sans N-air all have FAF of about 60 or lower, giving them almost a 20 frame difference between their FAF and autocancel.

I know people harp on Shulk's frame data a lot, and there might be some balance angle I'm not thinking of here, but I just don't get why his autocancel windows are so much worse than his FAF's.[/QUOTE/]
The frame data is not what makes a character. Shulk may not have the greatest numbers but even without monado arts he can AC nair [his fastest aerial] and have +2 frame advantage just by jabbing with poor spacing. Well spaced AC nair can be followed by a D-tilt.

 

[MachoCheeze]

Guys please stop arguing with someone named MARTH_IS_BAE

They might as well be called MARTH_IS_BAIT at this point.

 

[Man Li Gi]

Guys please stop arguing with someone named MARTH_IS_BAE

They might as well be called MARTH_IS_BAIT at this point.

Umm, his actual name is Radical Larry 2.0.

 

[TTTTTsd]

I would say Ganon and Roy have a harder time recovering than Doc, same with Falcon potentially. Doc's recovery is NOT good at all but he has ways to stop people from challenging it totally for free. Roy on the other hand has to be really smart and he also HAS to recover low a lot of the time, Ganon's just big and his low airspeed can inhibit him from throwing out as much aerials as he wants to protect him (although Uair works good once or twice, you have to be careful about doing that!). I'd put Doc around Ness level, maybe a bit lower. Ness can be scary to challenge if you're not proactive because of Up+B launch, Doc has something like that with his Up+B and Down+B as well. Doc's recovery is nowhere near amazing and he has to put in work, but I think he has more options than Ganon, Roy, and Falcon IMO (oh and Mac too but, like, duh). Not a very big accolade but, hey.

I'm also not even aware if Bowser's recovery is that bad. He gets pretty good distance and I guess it's potentially susceptible to windbox/pushing stuff but the magnetic hands syndrome always seems to prevent consistency with stuff like this. Dunno. I still think our edgeguard game is going to be mostly static like this going forward because of the options the recovering characters have, what with airdodging, nice ledge snaps, no edgehogging (THIS IS THE PRIMARY REASON EVERYONE BUT MAC CAN RECOVER). It's really hard to force positioning outside of very hard conditioning I find. The most I think we'll see is harder off-stage reads and more brave offstage mixups. I could be wrong about all of this but bleh.

 

[Rizen]

I would say Ganon and Roy have a harder time recovering than Doc,

Ganon I can see but Roy has really good air speed. That alone boosts him over Ganon and Doc in terms of recovery imo.

 

[TTTTTsd]

Ganon I can see but Roy has really good air speed. That alone boosts him over Ganon and Doc in terms of recovery imo.

My problem with Roy is that he doesn't have anything to prevent you from challenging him (without putting himself in a precarious position. I guess Fair could work if you're careful) and no real way to stall. Airspeed be damned but walk-off > counter absolutely kills his recovery 80% of the time from Emblems, and hitting Blazer isn't too bad.

I just don't think he has anything that makes me not want to challenge it and his fall speed really hinders his mixup capabilities when recovering (which is probably my biggest factor in calling it bad)

 

[Rizen]

My problem with Roy is that he doesn't have anything to prevent you from challenging him (without putting himself in a precarious position. I guess Fair could work if you're careful) and no real way to stall. Airspeed be damned but walk-off > counter absolutely kills his recovery 80% of the time from Emblems, and hitting Blazer isn't too bad.

I just don't think he has anything that makes me not want to challenge it and his fall speed really hinders his mixup capabilities when recovering (which is probably my biggest factor in calling it bad)

I agree Roy's recovery is bad. I don't think it's as bad as Ganon's or Doc's though.

 

[Thinkaman]

Quick Note: No more callouts. There are lots of places on the internet to bash people, and this isn't one of them.

Since we're on the topic of Shulk, his aerials have a different FAF than their autocancel window, and I really don't get this. You can just N-air right before you hit the ground anyway, so why don't they just autocancel at their FAF?

Starting a nair only lowers your landing lag to the nair landing lag value; you can't hit the nair initial AC window.

I used to be very opposed to any AC after FAF, but I have changed that position. I think it's a counter-intuitive but fascinating situation to consider, which emphasizes the value of double jump and specials.

There are a few moves like this clearly by design: LM nair, Toon Link fair, Roy fair, and Shulk everything-but-nair. They allow a sense of burst mobility/action that is rather unique (the word "flowing" comes to mind), and an appropriate niche of mastery for them.

Sure, we could make them better with bigger AC windows, but this is true for every aerial in the game, and they are not the first AC windows I'd improve given the chance.

 

[meleebrawler]

My problem with Roy is that he doesn't have anything to prevent you from challenging him (without putting himself in a precarious position. I guess Fair could work if you're careful) and no real way to stall. Airspeed be damned but walk-off > counter absolutely kills his recovery 80% of the time from Emblems, and hitting Blazer isn't too bad.

I just don't think he has anything that makes me not want to challenge it and his fall speed really hinders his mixup capabilities when recovering (which is probably my biggest factor in calling it bad)

Well the game helpfully reminds you he can counter.

 

[Thinkaman]

Also, I forgot Swordfighter fair. No idea how; no one ever forgets that character.

Edit: And Diddy nair, but that's a much easier character to overlook.

Edit2: Man, forgot about Ryu (nair/fair) and Ike nair. Dang, I'm not on the ball today.

 

[AnEventHorizon]

I just don't get why Shulk's aerials have such absurdly bad autocancel windows. F-air is the only one that autocancels before frame 78. This is made worse because those aerials sans N-air all have FAF of about 60 or lower, giving them almost a 20 frame difference between their FAF and autocancel.

I know people harp on Shulk's frame data a lot, and there might be some balance angle I'm not thinking of here, but I just don't get why his autocancel windows are so much worse than his FAF's.

Shulk in his vanilla form has incredibly high jump height, #10 in the game. This is only increased during the Jump art - the autocancels being high often prevent Shulk from being able to fully chase people in jump across the stage while refreshing his jumps. Landing causes a pause because of the long AC windows. But if you're offstage and using up your jumps, the shorter FAF allows you to do attack without holding you back.

Ive caught someone with a back air on one end of the stage, sent them to the other side and been prevented from fully chasing because I clipped the top platform of battlefield on the way over and ate the full 21 frames of landing lag before (the autocancel windows are long enough that youll incur landing lag after you can visually see Shulk put the Monado back on his back).

That's my idea of why, anyway. The AC windows account for Jump Shulk's increased air time, and to prevent quick jump refreshes during chases.

 

[MARTH_IS_BAE]

I would say Ganon and Roy have a harder time recovering than Doc, same with Falcon potentially. Doc's recovery is NOT good at all but he has ways to stop people from challenging it totally for free. Roy on the other hand has to be really smart and he also HAS to recover low a lot of the time, Ganon's just big and his low airspeed can inhibit him from throwing out as much aerials as he wants to protect him (although Uair works good once or twice, you have to be careful about doing that!). I'd put Doc around Ness level, maybe a bit lower. Ness can be scary to challenge if you're not proactive because of Up+B launch, Doc has something like that with his Up+B and Down+B as well. Doc's recovery is nowhere near amazing and he has to put in work, but I think he has more options than Ganon, Roy, and Falcon IMO (oh and Mac too but, like, duh). Not a very big accolade but, hey.

My rationale for Ganon was that a mistimed gimp would lead to
A) Ganoncide
B) Getting grabbed by up b
It's distance is surprisingly good, but he can't weave during up b, so.

You're right about Doc, I admit I fell into the, "people won't challenge me placing Doc's recovery low, " thing, when in fact he does have decent mix ups so that I wouldn't call his recovery second worst. Roy, Falcon, Robin, Ganon, and DH are all contenders. I might even say Ness tbh, I think his recovery is utter trash and people need to quit denying it.

Not directed at you TTTTTsd , you're a good poster, but it's funny how even opinions that aren't unorthodox are argued because they come from me, and the basis for the argumentativeness is: I made myself a target because of poor word choice in describing Falcon's jab as mediocre, and the blatantly false statement that Falcon has no combos.

And because of that, a thread that already deeply rewards sheer immaturity, cheap humor and mean statements (especially the latter, why is it that mean comments get so many likes? It's just a consistent rule of Smashboards) thinks they can get away with it--and they do.

The fact of the matter is that this thread doesn't really discuss competitive viability. It's, "This person insulted my main', or, "I'm seventeen years old and I am going to prove how smart I am by disagreeing with everything for the sake of argument, and make myself look like an idiot instead."

It's why this thread is increasingly hard to digest. I can't remember the last time there was meaningful discussion, especially in the new thread, instead of, "Radical Larry uninstall (20 likes)," "you think this, lol you are an idiot (12 likes)."

I can admit my post on a Falcon sucked and I need to do my part, but it was honestly a hell of a better contribution even strewn with misinformation than any of the posts that come from people who never contribute anything to this thread, and there are a lot of you reading this right now, and they are probably the people who will get up in arms and be the first to be offended by this post.

 

[Thinkaman]

I doubled checked the data for FAF before AC moves. The only ones I overlooked besides the well-known Ganon and DK fair "bugs" are 3-frame differences on Sheik uair, Samus bair, and Roy dair. There's also a 1 frame difference on Link fair, which actually matters because his FH fair ACs one frame too late.

 

[Thinkaman]

And because of that, a thread that already deeply rewards sheer immaturity, cheap humor and mean statements (especially the latter, why is it that mean comments get so many likes? It's just a consistent rule of Smashboards) thinks they can get away with it--and they do.

The fact of the matter is that this thread doesn't really discuss competitive viability. It's, "This person insulted my main', or, "I'm seventeen years old and I am going to prove how smart I am by disagreeing with everything for the sake of argument, and make myself look like an idiot instead."

It's why this thread is increasingly hard to digest. I can't remember the last time there was meaningful discussion, especially in the new thread, instead of, "Radical Larry uninstall (20 likes)," "you think this, lol you are an idiot (12 likes)."

I can admit my post on a Falcon sucked and I need to do my part, but it was honestly a hell of a better contribution even strewn with misinformation than any of the posts that come from people who never contribute anything to this thread, and there are a lot of you reading this right now, and they are probably the people who will get up in arms and be the first to be offended by this post.

This is meta-enough to obligate a response, which I'm happy to do.

You're correct in identifying problematic vector in online discussion. (Beyond just this one.) It's a weird variant of mob mentality that isn't an indictment of any one individual, but a common aspect of humanity that we have to guard against whenever too many of us ******** assemble in one place. I've tried to bring down the Shaya's Holy Warhammer of +5 Might™ on much of this whenever it crops up, and will continue doing so in the future.

On the other hand, I do think you are conflating this issue to being bigger than it is. I was alarmed to see people "liking" posts bashing Larry a week or so ago, but people chiding those posts and asking others to cut it out got significantly more likes. So even before moderator warnings come into play, the true will of the community is clear.

Additionally, there was a pretty contentious debate recently on Doc's recovery. (All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.) A2ZOMG was alone, and while things got somewhat heated on both sides, I believe the thread as a whole managed to respect his controversial opinion and allow him room to articulate it.


Conflict is inherently difficult, and pursuit of the truth is inherently filled with conflict. No online forum is an ideal situation for resolving conflict, but we'll try the best we can. Many of us who have been around for some time know enough of the community from real life interactions to have a grounded perspective and more frequently adopt a Most Respectful Interpretation of what is said.

I would urge everyone to aim to both be a tad more polite and have a tad tougher skin. "Fault" is rarely actionable, and I personally only care about results, i.e. having a solid discussion.

But seriously, no more callouts.

 

[ARGHETH]

My rationale for Ganon was that a mistimed gimp would lead to
A) Ganoncide
B) Getting grabbed by up b
It's distance is surprisingly good, but he can't weave during up b, so.

I swear I've seen Ganon mains complaining about how literally any hurtboxes will stop Side-B.

You're right about Doc, I admit I fell into the, "people won't challenge me placing Doc's recovery low, " thing, when in fact he does have decent mix ups so that I wouldn't call his recovery second worst. Roy, Falcon, Robin, Ganon, and DH are all contenders. I might even say Ness tbh, I think his recovery is utter trash and people need to quit denying it.

Yeah, no. Robin's recovery is bad, but not second worst, considering Levin aerial, the spike, and it having a decent distance.

 

[adom4]

I swear I've seen Ganon mains complaining about how literally any hurtboxes will stop Side-B.

Yeah, no. Robin's recovery is bad, but not second worst, considering Levin aerial, the spike, and it having a decent distance.

Side-B has a weird grab box in the air, sometimes it beats a lot of moves it shouldn't so it's pretty scary to challenge it offstage.

 

[Mario766]

It's very hard to get grabbed by side-b if you time your attack correctly.

The grab box isn't at the hand, so if you swing for the hand you'll always beat it.