Character Competitive Impressions

[Smooth Criminal]

To land a good read?

Just about any of D3's Smash attacks are better for hard reads. No, scratch that: ALL of them, including the hefty, not-so quicker picker upper, the f-smash. Hell, I'd take lobbing a YOLO Gordo at somebody over trying to land a hard read with Jet Hammer.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Luco]

Something interesting to think about though, is how much percentage does jet hammer do charged and how much KB when charged? Because in the rare circumstance you break someone's shield, it's good to know which moves do most percent if they're at low percents, and which ones do most KB if they're at mid---> high percents.

It's why PK Flash is slightly useful. Breaking someone's shield at 0%, we should go for a fully charged Pk Flash on them instead of PKT2 because although PKT2 has more KB, PK Flash has more percent damage. :o

 

[spiderfreak1011]

Captain Falcon's Dtilt might be able to punish spot-dodges and its range might be good as well, but I don't know how well it covers the ground. It could work more against a person overshooting the ledge or someone trying to "fall" onto the ledge, but it might not work on someone recovering low. Now I'm wondering about his Ftilt as well. I might want to look this up at the Captain Falcon boards.

This also leads to Fox's Ftilt... Fox could just Jab, short hop a Nair or Bair, or Dash Attack.

Felt like bringing this up, i remember Fox's D-tilt being said to have a sweetspot on the tip, that launches the opponent upward rather than horizontally, to better follow up for combos. Just felt like saying that.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Something interesting to think about though, is how much percentage does jet hammer do charged and how much KB when charged? Because in the rare circumstance you hit someone, it's good to know which moves do most percent if they're at low percents, and which ones do most KB if they're at mid---> high percents.

It does do damage, all the way up to about 38% worth if you charge it. It probably KOs at a pretty low percent too (duh). The tradeoff isn't worth it though. As Lavani, uh, amended, this move comes out on frame 27. You know what I could be doing with those 27 frames? Mixing it up with D3's better, more efficient options that also KO at reasonably early percents or set up for edgeguards. This move just isn't in the same grade as **** like Waft, Rest, Eruption, or the like.

It's why PK Flash is slightly useful. Breaking someone's shield at 0%, we should go for a fully charged Pk Flash on them instead of PKT2 because although PKT2 has more KB, PK Flash has more percent damage. :o

PK Flash has a little more utility because it's a projectile. You stand a better chance at trading or offsetting somebody's follow-up if you botch it. Jet Hammer doesn't have that kinda luxury. You swing, and you miss.

Not to mention, 0% shield breaks? Who are you wrecking down there, Luco? looool

Smooth Criminal

 

[Luco]

It does do damage, all the way up to about 38% worth if you charge it. It probably KOs at a pretty low percent too (duh). The tradeoff isn't worth it though. As Lavani, uh, amended, this move comes out on frame 27. You know what I could be doing with those 27 frames? Mixing it up with D3's better, more efficient options that also KO at reasonably early percents or set up for edgeguards. This move just isn't in the same grade as **** like Waft, Rest, Eruption, or the like.



PK Flash has a little more utility because it's a projectile. You stand a better chance at trading or offsetting somebody's follow-up if you botch it. Jet Hammer doesn't have that kinda luxury.

Smooth Criminal

OH MY GOODNESS WHOOPS I meant to say "In the rare circumstance you break someone's shield" hahahaha, derppppppp!

Sorry sorry, I'll go edit that in now. XD

EDIT: Actually it's someone that broke MY shield at 0%! Donkey Kong has me worried when he can break shields in time before you can ask whether K.K. is a reference to Koji Kondo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlwNYUYxwx4&t=17m53s

 

[Smooth Criminal]

GET WRECKED YOU LITTLE

And to coincide with your edit:

It's still better to charge up a f-smash and bring the gavel down when you break a shield. Unless you wanna go for style points while somebody's seeing stars, then go for it, sure.

Smooth Criminal

 

[FimPhym]

I have spent time trying to get jet hammer working in real matches. Here's the situation for you guys:

On the surface, it's strictly outclassed by other moves. Forward smash has more knock back and KOs earlier (even at full charge where jet hammer does more raw damage). Dash attack is a mobile heavy punish for situations where you can get those. It seems to be more awkward to land than dash attack, which would be a slow powerful forward smash on anyone else, and less reward than his forward smash.

However, there is a very rare situation where jet hammer is great! It will come up maybe one in a thousand games though and naturally requires a mistake of sorts. There are occasional situations where a character will be falling towards the ground in helpless state. For example, maybe Robin tried to recover high over you, and hit you away with the El Wind blades but you baited it out and didn't get hit. Maybe someone tries to combo you with an up b aerial follow up and flubs. Maybe some other rare situation I can't think of because damn is it rare.

So great, everyone loves a helpless opponent. You can't forward or down smash their landing - they can drift left or right too much. You have a guaranteed dash attack, but that's 'only' really powerful. The optimal punish here is to start charging jet hammer and then waddle back and forth tracking their landing or which edge they want to grab and then destroy them!

This is relevant basically never, and probably useless to everyone here. The idea though is that no matter how good or bad your character is, it's worth really spending time thinking and testing to see what tiny use you can get out of every move, even if they're situational. I promise anything you discover will be more fruitful than my trip into jet hammer tech.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Fim.

:v

You get an "A" for effort, though. I'll keep this little tidbit in mind. We'll call it...JET TECH!!

Smooth Criminal

 

[Vurky]

Maybe because she's a goddess who kills you with the power of light instead of an annoying monkey who kills you with a disrespectful football hike and a double jointed leg

I find myself much more okay with Palutena being top tier than Diddy. Weird.

Get on my level, Diddy.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Get on my level, Diddy.

yo those down throw up airs will never get old.......

 

[TriTails]

I used Dedede once on 3DS Classic (Because challenges), and his hammer is pretty cool. Then I got to Master & Crazy Hand (Unless I'm not really feeling it, I always go to the Master Core, unless the intensity is really low), taunted every time he changes form because I have nothing else to do anyway (And his taunts are pretty cool), beat Master Shadow, and started beating on the Core, then charged up a Jet Hammer, unleashed a fully charged one and he eats it so hard :D.

That aside, I honestly has never seen anyone has guts to actually use the move. Most D3s I have seen are all pretty much Gordo Throws, D-tilts along with jabs, and maybe some FF N-airs (That thing is fast), and smashes. Nope, no Jet Hammers. I think it could've been better if that hammer can actually be stockpiled rather than a Hammer swinging move that hurts you if you overcharge it. Though, obviously with some power nerfs, you don't want D3 charging his hammer then unleashes it in your face with some ridiculous power that it's not even funny.

Still, Jet Hammer is probably one of his most useless move. I mean, yeah, it's powerful, but its usefulness is pretty questionable when you got dat F-smash. But hey, like @ FimPhym mentioned, you can punish landing with it.... now that is definitely some good thing. You want them to be helpless though.

Oh yeah, on the comment on the D-tilt, it's fun meteoring someone on the ground with Link's D-tilt. Yeah, done it a few times, and it was hillarious. They should be like 'WTF is this guy doing?'. Lol. Is there any D-tilts that can meteor like Link can?

And some of my more useless comment, Ganon's D-tilt is too strong to be real.

 

[Luco]

That's a good point, actually. Like we know that some characters were based more around 1v1s and others (WFT lawl) for free for alls, but many heavies I've noticed seem like they would be better in multi-man battles. I suspect DDD's jet hammer was probably meant for boss battles and large free for alls when no-one's noticing him

Oh that reminds me, some things Sakurai said in a recent interview seem to indicate he'll be working on the game (balance) in future, though perhaps not always to the competitive standard (I expect some feedback will be taken from here though). I'll pull up the evidence later but I caught it in a game magazine where an interview was conducted with him discussing game balance, clones and stages and stuff. It's pretty cool.

 

[Pazx]

You just described zss because she has a lot of moves that are not easy to punish but her punishable moves are super punishable if whiffed.

Rosalina also fits my description. The thing is none of these characters are as good as Diddy so I'm happy with them climbing the tiers.

What is Fox's Dtilt used for? Same with Captain Falcon's Dtilt.

Also, Triple D's Dtilt is ludicrous. The range it covers and its hitbox is both funny and pretty good.

Until people start to understand it, Falcon's dtilt might be the best semi-spike in the game. That angle is almost purely horizontal. It's a shame the move is a tiny bit slow, and with recoveries improving throughout the cast a semi-spike isn't that useful. Probably not the worst spacing tool, because if you eat it you're offstage low, but I think Falcon has better options.

 

[TriTails]

Until people start to understand it, Falcon's dtilt might be the best semi-spike in the game. That angle is almost purely horizontal. It's a shame the move is a tiny bit slow, and with recoveries improving throughout the cast a semi-spike isn't that useful. Probably not the worst spacing tool, because if you eat it you're offstage low, but I think Falcon has better options.

Ganon's F-tilt? If you are talking on-stage, dat move semi-spikes so hard.

Gimping with it...... I'm not sure myself. I don't think he can reach the ledge with it.

But hey...... Falcon's D-tilt sets up an off-stage FALCON PAWNCH! according to someone on GFAQs. Never tried it, but is there any Falcons that have gained success with this? Maybe?

 

[meleebrawler]

Lots of Dtilts do some interesting things in comparison to Ftilts (which are probably used more because pivoting).

Junior's lick catches spot doges. Charizard's low headbutt sort of creates a tech chase.
G&W's has a windbox that can mess with recoveries. Palutena's is her only semi-safe tilt.
Bowser's can do big damage at low percents.

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

I saw earlier someone said that shulk's dtilt is quicj.....it's not it's one of tge slower ones in the game at 10 frames. Shulk having quick attacks is a misnomer. His jab is 5 frames which is slower than a lot of habs and some dtilts. Shulk moves are some of the slowest in tge game.

 

[Kofu]

Oh yeah, on the comment on the D-tilt, it's fun meteoring someone on the ground with Link's D-tilt. Yeah, done it a few times, and it was hillarious. They should be like 'WTF is this guy doing?'. Lol. Is there any D-tilts that can meteor like Link can?

Zelda's does. I know Ike's did in Brawl and I don't think that's changed.

DTilts in general tend to be long-ranged, quick pokes, although the general buffs to jabs means that there's often overlap between the uses of the two and sometimes FTilt. Outside of poking, they can also act as setup moves because a lot of them send people vertically. Knowing when to use DTilt over another move can be very helpful. They also hit low to the ground, which is important when you're fighting a short character as a tall one.

 

[Vengeance_NS]

Who does better vs sheik, Yoshi or wario???

 

[Terotrous]

Palutena is definitely sick with customs on, but on the other hand Kinuski is pretty much the best player in Finland even without them, so it's hard to tell whether it's him or the character being too good with customs yet (her dthrow to uair in lightweight mode is guaranteed and kills at %s much lower than Diddy's equivalent).

Nah, there's no way you can look at that and tell me that character isn't completely godlike, just look at the speed, mobility, recovery, and power. She's basically Sonic + Diddy put together, with none of their downsides.

Honestly, as hilarious as this carnage is, this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me wary of customs. I honestly don't think there's any way like half the cast can deal with this, even Diddy looks helplessly outclassed against her. She probably goes 9-1 vs like half the characters in the game, who can't catch her at all if she wants to avoid them. Yes, Lightweight has a timer, but the cooldown is very short and you can still use Super Speed during that time to stay very safe (to say nothing of the fact that a glitch allows you to be Lightweight permanently). There's also obviously no way that you're keeping her out for even a second with how mobile she is, so anyone who relies on any kind of zoning is totally screwed, and her reward on hit is far higher than anyone else.


We'll see what happens when this comes stateside, but I think there's a very good chance Palutena with customs is MK-level broken. Super Speed and Lightweight are both "99th percentile" moves like Shuttle Loop and Mach Tornado were, and most characters don't gain access to anything anywhere near that useful.

 

[Smog Frog]

Nah, there's no way you can look at that and tell me that character isn't completely godlike, just look at the speed, mobility, recovery, and power. She's basically Sonic + Diddy put together, with none of their downsides.

Honestly, as hilarious as this carnage is, this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me wary of customs. I honestly don't think there's any way like half the cast can deal with this, even Diddy looks helplessly outclassed against her. She probably goes 9-1 vs like half the characters in the game, who can't catch her at all if she wants to avoid them. Yes, Lightweight has a timer, but the cooldown is very short and you can still use Super Speed during that time to stay very safe (to say nothing of the fact that a glitch allows you to be Lightweight permanently). There's also obviously no way that you're keeping her out for even a second with how mobile she is, so anyone who relies on any kind of zoning is totally screwed, and her reward on hit is far higher than anyone else.


We'll see what happens when this comes stateside, but I think there's a very good chance Palutena with customs is MK-level broken. Super Speed and Lightweight are both "99th percentile" moves like Shuttle Loop and Mach Tornado were, and most characters don't gain access to anything anywhere near that useful.

unlike MK, she's only dominant in the air

 

[Terotrous]

unlike MK, she's only dominant in the air

Not really. Superspeed gives her a spindash-like hitbox that links into smash attacks, and her jab and dash attack are both also very good moves. Also, obviously her grab combos into everything.

 

[David Viran]

You should go play a cpu level 9 palentuna with super speed on a walk off stage. It's pretty funny how many times they kill themselves.

 

[Smog Frog]

Not really. Superspeed gives her a spindash-like hitbox that links into smash attacks, and her jab and dash attack are both also very good moves. Also, obviously her grab combos into everything.

well if it becomes an issue we can always enact a ban on superspeed/lightweight, but i personally think its manageable.

 

[A2ZOMG]

On Peach...

I think that in a vacuum her tools are great, even with the patch changes that fixed some of her empowering glitches. KO power, fast/autocancelable aerials with decent range, and floats? That sounds like a great package.

But her matchup chart is hard to swallow. She struggles against Sheik and Diddy more than most characters. Sheik can f-air her way past Peach's float onstage and edgeguard through Peach's slow float with her lingering b-air. Peach can recover low to snap to the ledge and prevent this, but it's still not easy (Sheik can drop down f-air or ledgetrump b-air in response to this). Diddy is arguably even worse. Against day-1 Diddys, Peach does pretty well, because Diddy has a hard time grabbing Peach out of her float aerials. But more experienced Diddys will wall her out with large up-airs and f-airs. There isn't much Peach can do against this; almost all of her options are shut down by Diddy's short hop aerials. She doesn't have good enough ground mobility to just eschew float in favor of fighting him on the ground, either, and she'll start to get grabbed if she shields too much.

Now, it's true that Diddy and Sheik are strong, so many characters other than Peach have bad matchups against them, but High and Top Tiers usually don't struggle against both, or not quite as much as Peach does. A few examples: ZSS does well against Sheik despite doing poorly against Diddy, Pikachu beats or goes even with Diddy and probably ties with Sheik, Yoshi loses to Sheik quite badly but doesn't struggle that much with Diddy (maybe a slight loss, I think; there are tools for both characters here), and Megaman vs. Sheik seems like it's in Sheik's favor but Megaman vs. Diddy is probably closer to even.

Peach does unusually poorly against these two characters. She does do pretty well against Pikachu; that's probably her best Top Tier MU, and she has some other good MUs further down the board (ZSS and Rosalina, for example), but in my mind, struggling in arguably the two most important matchups right now doesn't bode well for the character's Top/High Tier status. She's a good character, though, definitely upper half of the cast.

Peach has a deceptively bad ground game. She doesn't run fast, and her tilts and her F-smash are actually pretty poor as pokes (she has a good Jab, but out of many characters she's probably hurt among the most from losing legitimate Jab cancels). That I believe is her biggest unsaid weakness. This makes shielding and general defensive play against her actually a lot safer than one might initially guess, even factoring she has a fairly good low% throw game.

I'm sure you're aware how much I promote item tossing as the best attack in the game, although Peach's Turnip pull nerfs are not exactly trivial. Furthermore outside of pretty good edgeguard applications and the usual item drop shenanigans in neutral, I don't feel she gets a lot of reward from regular Turnips. Yes you can combo with Turnips but it often requires very situational positioning to be applicable, unlike say, Metal Blades.

 

[Terotrous]

You should go play a cpu level 9 palentuna with super speed on a walk off stage. It's pretty funny how many times they kill themselves.

Lol, Kinuski was doing it just as much, it just didn't matter because Palutena doesn't even need those stocks.

 

[TTTTTsd]

I swear everytime someone makes a video about footsies, neutral, zoning or any fundamental aspect of the game you can bet on your mothers grave the hero-king will make an appearance.

Is he now the poster boy for fighting game fundamentals of this series?

He is, IMO, the character that rewards it the most (tippers are genuinely a very good incentive to learn how to space and play in the neutral). No matter how good/bad Marth is, this is always true. To me, anyways.

 

[Asdioh]

Nah, there's no way you can look at that and tell me that character isn't completely godlike, just look at the speed, mobility, recovery, and power. She's basically Sonic + Diddy put together, with none of their downsides.

Well, Superspeed and Lightweight both have cooldowns. I know Lightweight can be activated permanently, but eh that's a glitch that will probably be patched out, assuming Nintendo knows about it.
The other downside is that Lightweight literally makes her light weight. I don't know exactly how light, but yeah.

 

[mimgrim]

Well, Superspeed and Lightweight both have cooldowns. I know Lightweight can be activated permanently, but eh that's a glitch that will probably be patched out, assuming Nintendo knows about it.
The other downside is that Lightweight literally makes her light weight. I don't know exactly how light, but yeah.

Lightweigt doesn't actually make her lighter. It only increases the KB (and damage I think?) she receives and it isn't that big of a difference to really matter. Also Super Speed and Lightweight can cover each others cooldowns if done correctly.

And your welcome for that glitch :^)

 

[spiderfreak1011]

Well, Superspeed and Lightweight both have cooldowns. I know Lightweight can be activated permanently, but eh that's a glitch that will probably be patched out, assuming Nintendo knows about it.
The other downside is that Lightweight literally makes her light weight. I don't know exactly how light, but yeah.

It can be activated permanently? O_o That sounds like a pretty useful glitch, lol. Could you tell me how? : P

 

[mimgrim]

It can be activated permanently? O_o That sounds like a pretty useful glitch, lol. Could you tell me how? : P

http://smashboards.com/threads/staying-in-the-lightwieght-state-indefenitely.376880/

It's situational and requires you to have good stage control though.

 

[Asdioh]

Lightweigt doesn't actually make her lighter. It only increases the KB (and damage I think?) she receives and it isn't that big of a difference to really matter. Also Super Speed and Lightweight can cover each others cooldowns if done correctly.

Yeah I just tested it. It doesn't make any difference with bob-ombs, pretty weird. Doesn't increasing the knockback she takes just make her harder to combo, especially when combined with increased airspeed? ._.

 

[Nabbitnator]

Is it possible to give palutena either light weight or super speed? She would still be terrible to deal with

 

[NairWizard]

Customs Palutena is indeed quite strong. I do think that she's top 5, but I don't think that she's MK-level. I think there is much exaggeration tossed around when custom moves are discussed; I am guilty of this as much as anyone, but when it gets down to it I hope we can put our subjective perspectives aside and focus on the objective reality of characters' strengths and weaknesses.

On one hand, I think that @ Thinkaman underrates Palutena (and customs Ike, but that is a topic for another day). I'm always surprised by his placement of her, even though he plays Palutena. In part, I think that may be confirmation bias since he has been such a strong proponent for custom moves, and it's easy to fit the evidence to the theory of best characters getting worse and middling characters getting better (not to call you out, Thinkaman, but your Rosalina and Diddy theory when each was respectively considered best in the game is an example of this, though in the case of Diddy I think that you are correct in saying that he stands to gain little to nothing from customs).

On the other hand, I think I may have overrated her at first because I was too focused on her strengths. After actually playing her against people who knew what they were doing, I became more aware of her faults:

• Her grab is laggy. Even if you use it out of Super Speed, it has something like 40 to 50 frames of lag on whiff (just an estimate; I haven't checked the data). That's a lot of lag. Sure, she may kill earlier than Diddy with d-throw to up-air, but the greater rewards is mitigated by greater risk.
• She has no close range game. Her jab is frame 8, and her tilts are not usable in close-quarters situations. Her grab is also often not usable. Jab is a great, fast, disjointed move, but Palutena with someone like Pikachu or Sheik pressuring her from up close doesn't have many options but to run away.
• She's tall and light. She's almost as tall as Ganondorf. You want to compare to Diddy? He is short and close to midweight. He also has a crawl and a decent d-tilt out of that crawl. Short characters like Pikachu or crouching Sheik will not care about most of Palutena's attacks.
• You can block Explosive Flame by shielding most of the hits and then rolling out of the last one. The move isn't great except for edgeguarding when Lightweight is on; because of that, it's better than Autoreticule, but only by a little.

Those are not small weaknesses. Diddy only has his recovery--literally nothing else is bad or average about the character; all of his aerials autocancel except d-air and n-air. I do think that she's on par with Diddy in a customs environment only because most characters gain some tools against Diddy (better recoveries down the board leads to better edgeguarding tools down the board as well). But above him by a tier or something? That's a hard sell.

So in short, while you should be aware that Palutena can do a lot with customs on (with great mobility, mixups, recovery/escapes, and KO power), you should also be cautious of tunnel-visioning to what she can do and leaving out what she can't, which is what I was doing until recently.

 

[spiderfreak1011]

Is it possible to give palutena either light weight or super speed? She would still be terrible to deal with

I think she can have both on at the same time, or just one or the other, given they're 2 customs for different specials.

 

[Asdioh]

Actually, Diddy's D-air does autocancel. For some reason.


But yeah customs Palutena doesn't give me the "she's so OP" impression. You just have to play safe and smart when you know that lightweight and super speed are options she can pull out suddenly. Shielding is your friend! Spotdodging or using a quick attack when you predict a grab are also your friends!

 

[thehard]

Kirby's Hammer is underrated yo

 

[Terotrous]

Well, Superspeed and Lightweight both have cooldowns. I know Lightweight can be activated permanently, but eh that's a glitch that will probably be patched out, assuming Nintendo knows about it.
The other downside is that Lightweight literally makes her light weight. I don't know exactly how light, but yeah.

It's not really a big disadvantage, she's so evasive that it's almost impossible to hit her with very strong attacks, and her kill power is so high that she kills you early, too.

Her grab is laggy. Even if you use it out of Super Speed, it has something like 40 to 50 frames of lag on whiff (just an estimate; I haven't checked the data). That's a lot of lag. Sure, she may kill earlier than Diddy with d-throw to up-air, but the greater rewards is mitigated by greater risk.

I'm pretty sure it's not quite that slow. That's like tether grab speed.

She has no close range game. Her jab is frame 8, and her tilts are not usable in close-quarters situations. Her grab is also often not usable. Jab is a great, fast, disjointed move, but Palutena with someone like Pikachu or Sheik pressuring her from up close doesn't have many options but to run away.

She almost doesn't need one. Yes, her grab is slow and can be spot dodged, but she has run up upsmash to discourage you from doing that, the two of them combine to make a super nasty mixup for anyone she comes in on. SH Nair or whatever is always available as a safer poke if you need it.

She's tall and light. She's almost as tall as Ganondorf.

Height honestly isn't that big a deal. It didn't stop Rosalina from being godlike. Being wide is generally the problem, and she's not.

You can block Explosive Flame by shielding most of the hits and then rolling out of the last one. The move isn't great except for edgeguarding when Lightweight is on; because of that, it's better than Autoreticule, but only by a little.

It's not a ludicrously amazing move but it still does its job. It's still better than many other projectiles.

Those are not small weaknesses. Diddy only has his recovery--literally nothing else is bad or average about the character; all of his aerials autocancel except d-air and n-air. I do think that she's on par with Diddy in a customs environment only because most characters gain some tools against Diddy (better recoveries down the board leads to better edgeguarding tools down the board as well). But above him by a tier or something? That's a hard sell.

I wouldn't really call most of those weaknesses at all, they're just "areas where she's maybe not the absolute best in the game". Considering she has the best mobility, the best recovery, and among the best kill power, I think you can tolerate them.

So in short, while you should be aware that Palutena can do a lot with customs on (with great mobility, mixups, recovery/escapes, and KO power), you should also be cautious of tunnel-visioning to what she can do and leaving out what she can't, which is what I was doing until recently.

We'll see. I'm not calling for a ban yet, but what I see there looks REALLY strong. I might be wrong about it, but I have a pretty good track record with this stuff (I nailed Dr. Doom in MvsC3 as being top tier from day 1, also Markman and Stream in Divekick and Fat Princess in PSAS, among others).

 

[Thinkaman]

Whoa, WTF am I reading? I leave for a day and everyone is freaking out about Palutena?

Palutena doesn't have 9-1 matchups, that's asinine. I'm super-optimistic about Palutena, but in my customs-on tier list I ranked her at #11. And for the record, I think I've played Palutena the most of the cast.

Super Speed and Lightweight are amazing, but she is still a numerically poor character underneath with one of the slowest movesets in the game:
jab - f7
ftilt - f17
utilt - f10
dtilt - f14
fsmash - f18
usmash - f18
dsmash - f17

Her aerials and grabs are also a bit on the slow side. Meanwhile, her tilts and smashes are all extremely unsafe.

Her damages are trash on tilts and decidedly mediocre on everything else.

Diddy or Sheik, she ain't.


Palutena's core moveset only gets by having unique gimmicks on every move. Her slow, meh-damage jab has the best jab-cancel in the game. Her lackluster tilts all beat spot-dodges and do noteworthy shield damage. Fsmash and dsmash have cute windboxes, while usmash has that range. Dash attack and bair have invincibility during active frames to win all clashes and beat projectiles. Fair has super-low landing lag and a generous AC window to boot. Her dair has crappy damage, range, knockback, cooldown, and can't auto-cancelled, but it is an abnormally fast spike.

All of these tricks are neat, but have to always be viewed in the lens that they are layered on top of fundamentally mediocre moves.


Spamming Super Speed is not an instant win, as good as it is. You can still block the dash attack or spot-dodge the grab. Projectiles are still a problem for its approach angle, and force Palutena to abort. The cooldown on Super Speed is 5 seconds (the move itself lasts about 0.4-1.2 seconds in most cases), which is enough time to do capitalize.

Lightweight is really good but overrated. It lasts 12 seconds, during which she takes 1.1x damage and knockback. Then she has 6 seconds of penalty, where she is super slow but takes normal damage and has normal jump height; this speed penalty ruins her precious throw-followup game, and reduces both the safety and threat of her BnB aerials. Finally, there is a further 6 seconds before she can use Lightweight again.

The infinite Lightweight glitch is SUPER overrated, very situational in practice. Since when is it plausible to say, in the middle of a match: "Yo man, it cool if I jump up on this platform, land, and do this ~30-frame animation?" And you want to commit to doing this every 9-12 seconds?!? This just isn't how Smash Bros. works, mate. I do the glitch whenever I can, but it's legitimately hard to find time to do it. It's certainly a handy (if stupid) trick that will find situational use on Smashville, Duck Hunt, and after KOs, but it's by no means a game-changer.

Finally, Super Speed does have good synergy with Lightweight. They don't stack per se, but having that one use of Super Speed during Lightweight's penalty time is quite nice. Just keep in mind: It's only one--better not waste it.

It's not really a big disadvantage, she's so evasive that it's almost impossible to hit her with very strong attacks, and her kill power is so high that she kills you early, too.

I wouldn't really call most of those weaknesses at all, they're just "areas where she's maybe not the absolute best in the game". Considering she has the best mobility, the best recovery, and among the best kill power, I think you can tolerate them.

Are we talking about... Palutena still?

Palutena's kill power is decidedly mediocre except for uair. Fsmash and usmash (sweetspots only for both) are okay for their speed, but do require hard reads.

I'm pretty sure it's not quite that slow. That's like tether grab speed.

Actually that's about normal grab animation, but you're right--Palutena's grab isn't as slow as tether.

It is, however, indeed slower than most characters. (Both standing and dash)

SH Nair or whatever is always available as a safer poke if you need it.

????? SH Nair? Safe? Huh?

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Kirby's Hammer is underrated yo

its been talked about to great extent somewhere 50+ pages ago.
we were just determining moves that require hard reads just are not as usefull. but kirby's custom hammer is alot better and i remember reading a great write up on it.

 

[InfinityCollision]

Customs Palutena is definitely not another MK. SS and LW are really good, yeah, but they only just manage to cover the holes in her game if her opponent doesn't know the matchup. Otherwise they're powerful options, but far from bulletproof.

The idea that she 9-1s half the cast is a joke.