Character Competitive Impressions

[Megamang]

Wait, people are still complaining about Villager ledgestalling?



QFT.

Villager ledgestalling is beatable. It's not even good. Most of the cast has easy options against it. If your opponent is banking on that, just counterpick one of the dozen characters who can trivially snipe him off the ledge. Pick pikachu and press B a lot. Pick Little Mac and sit there and Dsmash all day. This is not some unbeatable superstrategy that needs extra consideration and bans. This is a weak strategy that beats people who don't know how to fight it. That's all there is to it.

Hey guys, here's how you handle villager ledgestalling from a community perspective. Spend an hour learning what options your character and other common characters have to beat it, then whenever you see it at a local, go up to the player fighting it after round one and tell them what to do. The community gets better, the problem is generally resolved, and people aren't total scrubs.

The last tournament I attended had coaching banned, and I never thought i'd see campager in person so I never told my buddy about it... he lost his first pools match horrifically and was pretty bummed. That kinda thing is bad for the community I guess, but so is any other way that people get **** on at their first competitive attempt.

 

[webbedspace]

For those who weren't aware, noted Stall Villager main Capt. Awesum (the bête noire of Smash Attack 6) defeated Sheik (Vinnie) in Winner's Finals of Smash Attack 7. Fortunately(?) said Sheik managed to scratch through both sets of Grands.

Notably, it looked like the biggest obstacle faced by Vinnie wasn't necessarily EBT + TC, but TC + Pushy Lloid guaranteeing onscreen space for f-air harassment. In the second set Vinnie changed his tag to "LGL PLZ", but how many times did Awesum grab the ledge consecutively? Plenty of times the balloons gave him enough cover (more psychological pressure than actual defense, I feel) to just climb up and lay out a Lloid, kind of invalidating the point of LGLs IMHO.

 

[Shaya]

That villager also virtually crushed (it was 2-1, Castle Siege ensured a time out by how they were playing) MikeKirby while keeping in and around the ledge the entire time of the first and third matches. An adapting Villager is adapting. Mindless planking is easy to beat. I'm sure everyone agrees with that one. Can their opponents do more? Probably, vocal players could still be all caught up with how fearful ledge camping was in Brawl to deal with because of risk/reward.

 

[DunnoBro]

Within just about 30 seconds in the 2nd match he grabbed the ledge like 12 times, obviously a LGL would fix some issues there if there are some.

Vinnie actually had a lot of tools he could've been using but wasn't, so I wouldn't say it was an actual problem in that matchup.

For those that desire a LGL, I propose they form a list of characters simply incapable of challenging the ledge stall consistently. There's plenty of talk about how to deal with it, but most are situation/character specific so I doubt EVERYONE can deal with it. If the list gets large enough, the proposition of a LGL should be more acceptable.

 

[Asdioh]

LGL is a worthless idea, if the custom is truly a problem then ban it, otherwise just deal with it. LGL will only make things worse. I thought this at least was known.

 

[DunnoBro]

LGL is a worthless idea, if the custom is truly a problem then ban it, otherwise just deal with it. LGL will only make things worse. I thought this at least was known.

Care to explain how penalizing villager for going over the LGL and thus being forced to approach would only make things worse?

Regardless, the "can't deal with it" list could apply to a theoretical ban of the move, too. But that's way harder and likely completely unnecessary.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

This is late but I have tournament wins on Dabuz, 6WX, Vinne, denti and more if you wanna count high level players too.

Are these wins recent?

 

[ZarroTsu]

Can we discuss general 'adapting' in the character meta? It seems to me that every time someone says something about a character being unbeatable, an actual player of said character says "nah", and then spectators all conga-line with the person saying it's unbeatable.

In a post-hoohah meta, I'm willing to bet every strategy in the game is beatable by at least one character, and I wonder if this is simply becoming a risk to maining single characters. Moreover, less popular characters being the solution to the strategy means fewer people actually figure out how to adapt... Leading to the conga-line of unbeatable spouters (who tbh have probably never played smash competitively. Neither have I, frankly, but I at least think about things instead of follow the flow-chart we call a tier list \/\/).

 

[DunnoBro]

While a necessity for secondaries is not inherently bad, the fact that in some matchups it could largely remove player skill as a factor should be avoided if at all feasibly possible.

Being beatable is not a get-out-of-jail free card.

 

[meleebrawler]

The problem with patches: why bother putting in the time and effort to learn how to beat particular strategies
when you can just complain long and hard enough until the tools that made those strategies good get nerfed
and subsequently make the strategies no longer a threat?

 

[DunnoBro]

The problem with patches: why bother putting in the time and effort to learn how to beat particular strategies
when you can just complain long and hard enough until the tools that made those strategies good get nerfed
and subsequently make the strategies no longer a threat?

It isn't guaranteed customs will be nerfed, though it is likely considering Nintendo's involvement with EVO.

That is another thing though, nipping something like this with outlier rules instead of expressing irrefutably it needs to be patched and possibly just not getting an overall healthier move due to lack of complaints/exposure is a worry too.

 

[Trifroze]

You could also try my suggestion I posted over a month ago. Villager is repeatedly grabbing the ledge. Go directly next to the ledge. When you see Villager start up Explosive Balloon Trip, start charging dsmash. Release just as Villager grabs ledge (this is super easy to do on reaction if you are even decent as a smash player). You'll stage spike Villager and deal more than double the damage to Villager than you'll take from the balloons; you can do this all day and will win every time. This works with almost every character; a few like Ganon and Falcon have dsmashes that hit too high on their bodies and have to rely on other moves (dtilts and dairs with some semblance of timing are also easy money). There are many character specific options that are even better, but if you can't be bothered to investigate, my simple suggestion is enough to make you never lose to this.

Custom Villager ledgestalling is only a problem in the sense that it's a problem for the person using it as it will prevent that person from winning any games against knowledgeable opponents. Literally the only reason anyone has ever lost to this is not knowing the easy things to do to crush this very inferior tactic. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone with every discussion on this topic as people talk about how it's so unhealthy for the game, but is it really unhealthy for the game that there's some element in it that frustrates people who simply don't know what to do? Are we at the point as a community where we expect all players to have zero knowledge and decide what is and isn't okay based on that? I know there's a limit to the attitude of "get better scrub", but it feels like people aren't even trying to beat this tactic and are instead resorting to johning about it on smashboards as a primary line of defense.

I just... don't even know what to do with this at this point.

You won't be charging up any dsmashes when there's a trip sapling directly under you while you're being bombarded with lloyds and pellets and all your projectiles are being pocketed. At which point did everyone start ignoring 3/4 of what makes this strat so good? Exploding balloons are hardly a problem and we all know this, it's the rest of Villager's customs and moves in conjunction with it that makes his ledgestalling so difficult to deal with.

A player who isn't just a test dummy will think and actually do things and he certainly won't brainlessly let you charge up moves on the ledge. He'll either time his stalling properly and shoot you off, cover himself with lloyd / trip sapling / both, or explode the balloons earlier so that only you take damage. The only ways to beat him are to retain the percent lead forcing him to approach, outcamp him (good luck with that one though) or have a dangerous enough offstage game to take his stock in one move, although even that is risky and requires a mistake on Villager's part.

 

[GeneralLedge]

when you can just complain long and hard enough until the tools that made those strategies good get nerfed

I was blissfully unaware that the smash community was run by crybabies.

From what I'm aware, all updates that took place in the patch had no baring on character strategies or playstyles. Rather, it brought these strategies down to the same level as every other character in the game. I'd really rather a game with 53 viable characters and many more strategies between them than a game with 2 viable characters and 2 strategies between them.

This is Smash Brothers, not Dive Kick.

 

[RaptorTEC]

Are these wins recent?

Not that it matters but yes. Dabuz and 6wx are less than a month old too. Just had to say something if you're going to claim Yoshis haven't done anything better than take a game off a top player but lose the set anyway. False information is false lol

 

[Smooth Criminal]

You won't be charging up any dsmashes when there's a trip sapling directly under you while you're being bombarded with lloyds and pellets and all your projectiles are being pocketed. At which point did everyone start ignoring 3/4 of what makes this strat so good? Exploding balloons are hardly a problem and we all know this, it's the rest of Villager's customs and moves in conjunction with it that makes his ledgestalling so difficult to deal with.

A player who isn't just a test dummy will think and actually do things and he certainly won't brainlessly let you charge up moves on the ledge. He'll either time his stalling properly and shoot you off, cover himself with lloyd / trip sapling / both, or explode the balloons earlier so that only you take damage. The only ways to beat him are to retain the percent lead forcing him to approach, outcamp him (good luck with that one though) or have a dangerous enough offstage game to take his stock in one move, although even that is risky and requires a mistake on Villager's part.

Part of this strat requires the Villager to actually be on stage for a time; specifically, the trip sapling.

Guess who's vulnerable when this happens? I'll give you a hint: It's the lameass trying to do this in the first place.

Smooth Criminal

 

[DunnoBro]

It is pretty ridiculous that if you miss your chance to prevent a proper trip sapling planting (which can be pretty hard for many characters) you have to wait another 16 seconds to try again.

I mean, even in default villager is pretty good about baiting you to try punishing their regrabs.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

I think Smash 4 players need to learn patience and wait for openings, especially in a game where ledge regrabs aren't so polarizing as to keep the game completely non-interactive (looking at you, Brawl).

And if that means trading with the Villager's stupid **** in all of this, well...

Smooth Criminal

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Not that it matters but yes. Dabuz and 6wx are less than a month old too. Just had to say something if you're going to claim Yoshis haven't done anything better than take a game off a top player but lose the set anyway. False information is false lol

I said it's the most notable achievement I could think of ... that's not a false claim -.-

 

[Seagull Joe]

Seagull lives in MD/VA right?
I'm not 100% aware of any Yoshi mains there nor do I see any in the xanadu results, so I'm genuinely curious who he's playing against to think Yoshi beats Sonic. Especially since he's getting 1st-3rd at the events there and not showing any signs of losing to a Yoshi to keep him out of top 5 at these tournaments.

There are no 's in my region that I've lost to. I have played Raptor and lost game 3 via timeout on Delfino lol. When chooses to camp and not overcommit it can be bad for who has to get in. just sucks at landing. I think wins like 55-45. It's not a largely difficult matchup, but it feels like has a slight advantage.

 

[Sinister Slush]

Dang, you let him time you out on a stage that has vastly changed with it's blastzones during movement that favor Sonic more than Yoshi. Along with Delfino being one of the worst movement stages for camping compared to like Wuhu and Skyloft due to blastzones being smaller and raw smashes from Sonic killing earlier than Yoshi's.

Man it'd really help if Raptor posted his vids or results, his last post was like March lol
Cause otherwise what most Yoshi mains just went off of is "we ACTUALLY play the game instead of keyboard warriors while getting 4th-17th place and taking a game off top players in our scene" >me dren slice etc.

I just pretty much click any threads keitaro posts in the results sub-forum and usually don't see Raptor in em or just 13th or so place.

 

[Dabuz]

Sadly none of the results in our region except tournies Keitaro goes to are posted anymore .-.

 

[Kofu]

That villager also virtually crushed (it was 2-1, Castle Siege ensured a time out by how they were playing) MikeKirby while keeping in and around the ledge the entire time of the first and third matches. An adapting Villager is adapting. Mindless planking is easy to beat. I'm sure everyone agrees with that one. Can their opponents do more? Probably, vocal players could still be all caught up with how fearful ledge camping was in Brawl to deal with because of risk/reward.

While I'm not necessarily defending the Villager's play (I haven't seen the matches and I don't approve of ledge camping), Kirby is a pretty hard MU for Villager thanks to Kirby's low landing lag, short stature, strong grabs, and multiple jumps. Focusing on the ledge is probably the safest way to deal with him for Villager.

Casual reminder that Kirby has Meteor Stone, though, which plows through balloons and only requires timing to hit Villager as he regabs the ledge.

 

[RaptorTEC]

Dang, you let him time you out on a stage that has vastly changed with it's blastzones during movement that favor Sonic more than Yoshi. Along with Delfino being one of the worst movement stages for camping compared to like Wuhu and Skyloft due to blastzones being smaller and raw smashes from Sonic killing earlier than Yoshi's.

Man it'd really help if Raptor posted his vids or results, his last post was like March lol
Cause otherwise what most Yoshi mains just went off of is "we ACTUALLY play the game instead of keyboard warriors while getting 4th-17th place and taking a game off top players in our scene" >me dren slice etc.

I just pretty much click any threads keitaro posts in the results sub-forum and usually don't see Raptor in em or just 13th or so place.

I'm really good in that stage and I abused safe sharking with threat of Dair for the last minute or so to get the time out. The mu is in Yoshis favor, Slush. 55-45. Also, I dislike the new Smashboards which I why I'm barely on but if you link me to the right thread I'll post some vids.

 

[Sinister Slush]

You've posted in the vid thread before, but it's here

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Why would a Villager with half a brain ever get hit by Meteor Stone? He can still steer his recovery and stall with Forward-B...

 

[DunnoBro]

Why would a Villager with half a brain ever get hit by Meteor Stone? He can still steer his recovery and stall with Forward-B...

Seems like since kirby has the freedom to hover over the ledge waiting for the inevitable regrab that he can get the timing down pretty consistently.

I know firsthand custom kirby's do that to any character they ledge trumped that couldn't recover high. Don't see villager's lack of vulnerability being much different.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

When he goes up post-explosion, he can still steer himself, too. Assuming there's a stage with a lip, he can go both in front of the lip or behind it, and he can choose not to grab the ledge in the first place, both while on balloon and post-explosion. If Kirby plans on being above Villager in a way that allows him to land a Meteor Stone, he risks getting blown up or avoided outright. The horizontal range on the balloons is bigger than the stone.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

When he goes up post-explosion, he can still steer himself, too. Assuming there's a stage with a lip, he can go both in front of the lip or behind it, and he can choose not to grab the ledge in the first place, both while on balloon and post-explosion. If Kirby plans on being above Villager in a way that allows him to land a Meteor Stone, he risks getting blown up or avoided outright. The horizontal range on the balloons is bigger than the stone.

Does it blow and cancel meteor stone after start-up is done?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Does it blow and cancel meteor stone after start-up is done?

No, not to my knowledge.

This really comes down to "you can't steer during Meteor Stone's start-up, while you can steer Villager Up-B at any point."

 

[Megamang]

Then you cancel the stone, grab the ledge, and play it out from there?


Can you hit someone when they are starting to snap to the ledge? I think I remember hearing there is a frame of vulnerability, but I have personally never made this work.

 

[meleebrawler]

Then you cancel the stone, grab the ledge, and play it out from there?


Can you hit someone when they are starting to snap to the ledge? I think I remember hearing there is a frame of vulnerability, but I have personally never made this work.

Speculation, but...

Do you think Lucas's dsmash (if it's the same as Brawl) could one of the best at abusing that frame?

 

[Unknownkid]

Meteor Stone take much longer to cancel out unless you hit something. If you do it at Ledge Height, it is an instant death. Anyways, you can use Meteor Stone on the edge without going off stage and hit the opponent. It requires timing. But it is doable. Mikekirby perform this once on CaptAwesum.

Speculation, but...

Do you think Lucas's dsmash (if it's the same as Brawl) could one of the best at abusing that frame?

Lucas/ Custom Ness might be the perfect counter to Ledgestalling Villager. Especially the fact, you can absorb the balloons and use PK Thunder (Lucas Custom) to attack the balloons.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Speculation, but...

Do you think Lucas's dsmash (if it's the same as Brawl) could one of the best at abusing that frame?

No, it's likely pretty bad. The attack only hits for a couple frames between the individual attacks, so there are huge gaps.

Meteor Stone take much longer to cancel out unless you hit something. If you do it at Ledge Height, it is an instant death. Anyways, you can use Meteor Stone on the edge without going off stage and hit the opponent. It requires timing. But it is doable. Mikekirby perform this once on CaptAwesum.

Lucas/ Custom Ness might be the perfect counter to Ledgestalling Villager. Especially the fact, you can absorb the balloons and use PK Thunder (Lucas Custom) to attack the balloons.

If the situation where you hit someone at the ledge like that, Villager could just move past the ledge on reaction, purposefully get hit, tech the ground, and get a free punish.

Villager's Pocket Plus destroys Ness's recovery, and he can use it to protect himself, too. That's significant cause for concern.

 

[Hippieslayer]

Damn Dunnobro was hot yesterday, like the only DHD I've seen who seems to be doing all that stuff which zigzag allows for tapping into DHD's true potential, sure he doesnt always pull it off, but that stuff is hard to pull off, if he keeps at it I feel like he'll eventually destroy.

Plus that character switch to DHD vs Avg Joe was mad smart. It was final destination, like the best DHD stage, and even if he had lost it would've meant Avg Joe would've needed to switch mindsets completely 3 times making it really hard for him to read the bro, if he had gone Ganon on that Stage I feel like Avg Joe might just've been able to figure his Ganon out.

 

[Unknownkid]

No, it's likely pretty bad. The attack only hits for a couple frames between the individual attacks, so there are huge gaps.



If the situation where you hit someone at the ledge like that, Villager could just move past the ledge on reaction, purposefully get hit, tech the ground, and get a free punish.

Villager's Pocket Plus destroys Ness's recovery, and he can use it to protect himself, too. That's significant cause for concern.

Meh... if you say so. I am beginning to think that Stone is the better, safe choice than Meteor Stone in this matchup anyways. Meteor Stone - Pocket Custom Villager like ADHD
Stone - Crafty Custom Villager like CaptAwesum.

Then Lucas is the ideal counter unless you have another rebuttal point.

 

[Luco]

I knew for a long time that Pocket Plus would be the key to our demise. Yay me.

Villager can control exploding balloons in such a way that we shouldn't be healing from it... Like, ever. I tested it a while ago with an Aussie Villager main, and because we don't have an active hitbox on Magnet, we can't force the balloons to explode. Even Lucas + Lucas' magnet custom don't work because their hitbox only applies when PSI Magnet ends, so we just explode balloons on ourselves. On the plus side, if Dair is the same/similar to Brawl, then it'll probably be one of the best Dairs in the game and a SH Dair over the sapling and offstage might be an awesome way to pressure villager. Not sure.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Can we discuss general 'adapting' in the character meta? It seems to me that every time someone says something about a character being unbeatable, an actual player of said character says "nah", and then spectators all conga-line with the person saying it's unbeatable.

In a post-hoohah meta, I'm willing to bet every strategy in the game is beatable by at least one character, and I wonder if this is simply becoming a risk to maining single characters. Moreover, less popular characters being the solution to the strategy means fewer people actually figure out how to adapt... Leading to the conga-line of unbeatable spouters (who tbh have probably never played smash competitively. Neither have I, frankly, but I at least think about things instead of follow the flow-chart we call a tier list \/\/).

Hmmm, certain chars being able to counter certain "broken" strategies due to their unique movesets and attributes?

SMELLS LIKE METAGAME TO ME!!!!

 

[meleebrawler]

I knew for a long time that Pocket Plus would be the key to our demise. Yay me.

Villager can control exploding balloons in such a way that we shouldn't be healing from it... Like, ever. I tested it a while ago with an Aussie Villager main, and because we don't have an active hitbox on Magnet, we can't force the balloons to explode. Even Lucas + Lucas' magnet custom don't work because their hitbox only applies when PSI Magnet ends, so we just explode balloons on ourselves. On the plus side, if Dair is the same/similar to Brawl, then it'll probably be one of the best Dairs in the game and a SH Dair over the sapling and offstage might be an awesome way to pressure villager. Not sure.

I dunno... Pac-man's dair is similar (minus the meteor) and isn't too impressive. Dunno if the PK blast disjoints will make it better though.

 

[Woohoo982]

Well,it depens on whether Villager can pocket Oil Panic. If he can Villager's going up to SS tier.

the PK disjoints might not hurt too much unless he's got the balloons,in which case pop em and that stock is RIP.

G&W's dair has a meteor sweetspot and if you get it villager's basically done.

Fire hydrant is code for RIP when your in the air(especially Dire Hydrant)

 

[ZarroTsu]

Hmmm, certain chars being able to counter certain "broken" strategies due to their unique movesets and attributes?

SMELLS LIKE METAGAME TO ME!!!!

I can't tell whether you agree or disagree, or if you're being condescending or not.

More to point, my original post went half-tangent since I was in a rush when I wrote it, but I really think there needs to be a general adaptability discussion. My previous post went tangent regarding changing characters, but I think what could be examined is changing how the player plays around the opponent's "unbeatable" strategy. Or possibly less "what", more "how", and much "why".

Although that might not really belong here, per-sey, since this is a character meta thread and not necessarily a player meta thread. \/\/