Character Competitive Impressions

[bc1910]

You might as well not even bothered to post. Lmfao

Kind of summarising your entire post history there

 

[AlMoStLeGeNdArY]

Being in the air is naturally a disadvantage, but the difference between G&W and those aerial based characters is also having a ground game, or disgustingly safe/ strong/ high damage aerials (or sheik fair)

Yeah that's true. Game & watch has high damage aerials. I would think retreating nairs would be hard to punish. I still don't think his ground game is a total loss though it could be a lot better. But I get your points.

Kind of summarising your entire post history there

Cool story bro.

 

[Kofu]

You might as well not even bothered to post. Lmfao

@ Kofu I think there's only 9 characters with better air speed than g&w. Which isn't really 1/4 just bring a stickler here. But I definitely think he's an air based character. Judgement not as good as rest. But I think the ability to flip a coin and eat a stock is pretty good.

Yeah, only 9 have better air speed but about 4 more are comparable. Judge is a cool move but it's like... frame 15 or something? The hitboxes on it seem to linger though, which is nice (I could be wrong on this, the data dump indicates that it's only out for 2 frames but it definitely seems longer. He wants his opponent in the air but typically has to start on the ground.

@#HBC | Bunzy I don't think an aerial approach character is "wide open". There's a couple of strong air based characters in this game. His moveset doesn't seem that unsafe to me. But I'll need to look into it more.

None of his aerials autocancel so if he short hops he's going to incur at least 12 frames of lag. FAir's strong hit is frustratingly unsafe on hit until 30% or so and I think DAir might be similar. If FAir was buffed to 13% it would go a long way to solving his problems I think.

His kit in general has very low lag after the hitboxes but since most/all of them linger you can just shield it early on and he has no counterplay to that.

 

[Djent]

Yeah sorry but Gdubs is bad for reasons I shouldn't have to and am not gonna bother to explain. The short version being landing lag on everything, no combos and one kill move, and I shouldn't even have had to say that.

GimR has achieved more consistency than Songun or any other G&W and you know it. Coming 4th in a 170 man tourney that wasn't even stacked means nothing next to consistent results in MD/VA. And it's only because GimR is good.

As I said, Gdubs sucks.

-Every tourney in Japan is stacked, far more stacked than Xanadu where maybe 2/3 players are national caliber.
-He recently finished 9th at another stacked tourney (that I posted results for in this thread).
-You're kind of dumb.
-Etc. etc.

 

[bc1910]

@ Djent You may be right, I think I may have got my results mixed up.

I'd love to stoop to your level and hurl an insult like "dumb" back at you because you have a different opinion to me, but I'm not going to. Kind of surprised to see that sort of silly language from you in a perfectly civil discussion, but whatever, it is what it is. You should probably reflect on that though.

I still believe GimR is carrying the character.

 

[FullMoon]

What's with the unnecessary aggressiveness over a character that may or may not be low/bottom tier?

G&W is one of those characters that rarely gets any sort of exposure and so it's hard to say much about him, just like say WFT or Jigglypuff or Falco since those characters are noticeably lagging behind because so few people are putting effort into advancing their meta. I particularly think G&W is low tier maybe not bottom 5 but not much higher than that. I only played one in recent memory and I saw a lot of issues with him from the get go.

Still, you guys are being needlessly confrontational with each other for no real reason so yeah can that please stop?

 

[Shaya]

but are you saying that Captain Falcon and Luigi are also hard to quantify but more consistent and thus higher tier?

I believe they're super strong, but I have faith in the meta exploiting weaknesses to overcome them, even if they feel overwhelming right now (I think both basically crap on a majority of the cast while having more challenges against the best; Ness is in a similar boat in my mind).

G&W is pretty good imo.

G&W has been fun for me for a while, however I found playing him in a customs environment too unbearable; his strong mobility and neutral game is competitive with almost the entire vanilla cast, imo. Perhaps if I went back to practicing G&W in ProjectM I'd bring the right play style and mindset that gave most success back. But as you later pointed out, it has a lot to do with him having a functional ground game that makes him feasibly stronger (in terms of option spread) than his brawl incarnation.

However his lack of reliable safety on shield, coupled with the extremely light weight in a game full of applicable kill throws or set ups into kills, when he has no real early kill options himself just make things an uphill battle vs everything.

However, two things
1. Short hop air dodge; his is very good. He can jump or down air after it only, but it's incredibly low to the ground and his weaving during it due to his great aerial mobility is likely unique to him. Easy to buffer instant actions on landing from it.

2. Full hop aerials: fair and bair auto cancel at these heights yet no one (BAR ME, GRR) ever plays around with their full hop. His full hop is about the height and duration of a lot of characters short hops and he can fair and bair the tops of shields and land and be *safe* against most. This allows him a degree of walling I have not seen implemented yet. To top it off people trying to adjust around it allow for the mix up of sh ad.
Full hop retreating fair actually beats most character's frontal facing aerial tools, including sheik's fair; and *shock and horror* Yoshi's. The hitbox for it is largely vertical spacing prone than people believe it to be (hyuk hyuk hyuk, like Marth's forward air); if you're slightly above them, the box will always win.
With rising full hop back air you can be safe while retreating if earlier hits tap the upper corners of their shields. Any zealous actions from the opponent will likely get them hit and you can maintain distance just outside their shield range to do so.

 

[Djent]

@ Shaya were there any MUs (customs on) that seemed particularly bad? Early kill set-ups with customs on makes me think /, and I can see being a problem too (lack of kill setups + AA Dark Fists to threaten FH aerial approach).

You should probably reflect on that though.

Still, you guys are being needlessly confrontational with each other for no real reason so yeah can that please stop?

 

[FullMoon]

Custom Greninja is probably a nightmare for G&W because of Shifting Shuriken. Up-Smash already kills him at around 78%, having a guaranteed kill setup out of a projectile against a fast character like Greninja can't bode well for him.

 

[Shaya]

Too many characters get some sort of crap that enhances their camp/walling game and nullifies the neutral/footsies G&W tries to focus on.
Fox for example goes from a match up possibly even to practically unwinnable because all he's going to do is run away from you and laser and you'll never be able to capitalize on this. If you bucket it from even max distance, Fox gets a running up smash. Ledge cancelling is the only way, but any player will figure that one out pretty quickly. Giving up all stage positioning to him when that's what he wants to do to his opponents means he has no applicable game plan.
Speed Chef is the feasible solution but he's losing nearly all of his unique aerial traps with it and loses the attrition war vs everyone.
Villager goes from a match up I believe was in game and watch's favour to feasibly unwinnable; he doesn't have answers to giant lloyd or trip sapling. In customs off, game and watch will abuse trees and bucket silly lloyds for 2 stacks and will **** villager off stage (best character in the game for it). He's never getting that opportunity with customs in mind.
Donkey Kong? Yeah fancy trying to consistently beat kong cyclone or trap him when it was already a difficult match up due to his range. Wind Punch can kill him from a mile away at like 70%.
Rosa who G&W can wall to some extent in optimal positioning no longer has to give two ****s about his priority and his retreating mix ups can be too easily hit or hard punished if read.

etc etc etc etc.

 

[Djent]

OK, so it sounds like there are MUs that are as bad as vs. / when customs are on. Since my position is based in the idea that doesn't lose anything that badly, I'll have to concede that he's probably not above Brawl viability in a customs meta.

 

[meleebrawler]

Too many characters get some sort of crap that enhances their camp/walling game and nullifies the neutral/footsies G&W tries to focus on.
Fox for example goes from a match up possibly even to practically unwinnable because all he's going to do is run away from you and laser and you'll never be able to capitalize on this. If you bucket it from even max distance, Fox gets a running up smash. Ledge cancelling is the only way, but any player will figure that one out pretty quickly. Giving up all stage positioning to him when that's what he wants to do to his opponents means he has no applicable game plan.
Speed Chef is the feasible solution but he's losing nearly all of his unique aerial traps with it and loses the attrition war vs everyone.
Villager goes from a match up I believe was in game and watch's favour to feasibly unwinnable; he doesn't have answers to giant lloyd or trip sapling. In customs off, game and watch will abuse trees and bucket silly lloyds for 2 stacks and will **** villager off stage (best character in the game for it). He's never getting that opportunity with customs in mind.
Donkey Kong? Yeah fancy trying to consistently beat kong cyclone or trap him when it was already a difficult match up due to his range. Wind Punch can kill him from a mile away at like 70%.
Rosa who G&W can wall to some extent in optimal positioning no longer has to give two ****s about his priority and his retreating mix ups can be too easily hit or hard punished if read.

etc etc etc etc.

Efficient Panic is the answer to all projectiles that can be followed up on.

 

[LiteralGrill]

So what if I told you all Mii Swordfighter has a way to basically guarantee every time got you off stage you were guaranteed to get punished severely if not killed? Yeah, just figured out Mii Swordfighter might have the most frightening edgeguarding game to the point where tons of characters can NOT recover, or will always take a meaty hit when doing so. Seriously, he might be one of the scariest edguarders in the game now. Am SO angry for missing this before, as it's going to make a LOT of matchups turn heavily in his favor.

I found what my first video is about. I have zero idea how I missed this for so long, but I found a beastly ledgeguarding option, his standard side b.

Now if the opponent doesn't have to cry in fear of your Bair and Dair (and maybe standard up b's spike) you just gave them even MORE reason to sit and be VERY afraid off stage.

With proper timing if you side b near the ledge, instead of sweet spotting the ledge you'll spin a whole bunch of times THEN grab the ledge, staying in the same place in the air. This means you're leaving out a VERY long lasting hitbox that can send people behind and away from you off stage, which can set up into Bair and Dair while GIVING YOU YOUR JUMP BACK IF IT HITS!

Now if this wasn't nice enough, there are several different timings on this. One will just put out the hitbox for a tiny bit and then sweetspot the ledge, one will hover near the ledge before popping you back onto the stage, and the last will put you significantly under the ledge before sticky hands bring you back to grab. Did I mention it can still register to hit both below AND above the stage for all of these versions?

Basically a simple TLDR, you can cover every single option at the ledge while putting out a strong killing hitbbox that can also combo into death moves at low percents. Even f the opponent is at low percents so long as you get them offstage you can set up a mind game and trap with this, if they recover high they're punished, if they recover low to try and avoid it you just hold a tiny bit longer and get they hit in. It's SUCH an amazing tool that abuses how the ledges work in this game (1 frame is available before people grab the ledge, and this keeps the hitbox out so there's no way to miss the window) and I feel like an absolute moron for missing it this long. It also seems to beat out a lot of the recovery moves I've tested thus far, even those with hitboxes so you can use it to eat them out as well.

Able to basically make it so once you are offstage you are doomed, Mii Swordfighter. ADVANCING THE META!!!

 

[meleebrawler]

1. Short hop air dodge; his is very good. He can jump or down air after it only, but it's incredibly low to the ground and his weaving during it due to his great aerial mobility is likely unique to him. Easy to buffer instant actions on landing from it.

There are other characters that benefit a lot from SHADs, whether it's because they have strong air games and mobilty or just
have bad rolls. Characters like Samus, Yoshi, Jigglypuff, Mewtwo, maybe Wario? Basically as long as you have decent air mobility and don't fall too fast you can get mileage out of them.

 

[Browny]

I'll just ban FD and recover onto a platform then, thx 4 the warning.

 

[FullMoon]

Efficient Panic is the answer to all projectiles that can be followed up on.

Except Greninja's shuriken because he doesn't play by the rules /o/

 

[Nu~]

Or you know, every fruit and hydrant lol

 

[Kofu]

Or you know, every fruit and hydrant lol

You can actually bucket Dire Hydrant. But otherwise yes.

 

[Nu~]

You can actually bucket Dire Hydrant. But otherwise yes.

More reason to not use that niche custom lol.

 

[LiteralGrill]

I'll just ban FD and recover onto a platform then, thx 4 the warning.

Go ahead and recover high, if you'd like to risk the Bair, Fair, or Up; air :')

That's the beauty of this, once people get it down the opponent needs recovery high, and even then this can get them depending on the stage. It puts them in such a nice spot for Swordfighter. The only characters I was really having an issue with were those that got spats of invinsibility hidden in their recoveries, need to work those out still.

 

[David Viran]

So what if I told you all Mii Swordfighter has a way to basically guarantee every time got you off stage you were guaranteed to get punished severely if not killed? Yeah, just figured out Mii Swordfighter might have the most frightening edgeguarding game to the point where tons of characters can NOT recover, or will always take a meaty hit when doing so. Seriously, he might be one of the scariest edguarders in the game now. Am SO angry for missing this before, as it's going to make a LOT of matchups turn heavily in his favor.

Does this work on characters that can stall grabbing the ledge very well?

 

[Moderate skill]

Does this work on characters that can stall grabbing the ledge very well?

Well, no. You can just stay away for a bit and then ledge trump. If you're feeling lucky you could try to capitalize on SF's awkward recovery once he's off the ledge. Aerial Assault also has pretty bad hitboxes above swordfighter, at least compared to the larger ones below him.
I never really looked at the delayed ledge-snapping of AA as a positive but I guess I should reconsider.

 

[LiteralGrill]

Does this work on characters that can stall grabbing the ledge very well?

Pretty darn sure it would yes, just timing right when they go back down and fling em away. Need to test this on Villager a bit more, could be reaaaaaaly useful in a certain annoying customs matchup. What makes it work well against folks who just hold off a while is you can either wait to ump off, or recover lower/higher to deal with them if they do try to make it and manage to get past you.

 

[David Viran]

Pretty darn sure it would yes, just timing right when they go back down and fling em away. Need to test this on Villager a bit more, could be reaaaaaaly useful in a certain annoying customs matchup. What makes it work well against folks who just hold off a while is you can either wait to ump off, or recover lower/higher to deal with them if they do try to make it and manage to get past you.

What about a tether recovery? Like you can't really know when to hold off because they reel in too fast.

 

[Lavani]

So what if I told you all Mii Swordfighter has a way to basically guarantee every time got you off stage you were guaranteed to get punished severely if not killed? Yeah, just figured out Mii Swordfighter might have the most frightening edgeguarding game to the point where tons of characters can NOT recover, or will always take a meaty hit when doing so. Seriously, he might be one of the scariest edguarders in the game now. Am SO angry for missing this before, as it's going to make a LOT of matchups turn heavily in his favor.

Just an FYI, you can hold down to prevent ledgegrabbing. Takes all the guesswork out of timings and lets you snap when you want to by simply letting the control stick back to neutral.

 

[Makorel]

If I'm understanding and doing this right in the 5 minutes since I've known about it this isn't like normal edge guarding. You don't actually want to intercept recoveries with AA, in fact it seems to lose to things with hurt and grab boxes, you want to wait until the opponent has already grabbed the edge, then run off and immediately side B. If they try to get off quickly the ledge invulnerability turns off and they get hit and if they linger then that's at least a trump.

 

[LiteralGrill]

What about a tether recovery? Like you can't really know when to hold off because they reel in too fast.

That one is tougher, you might be able to do the lower variation to catch some teathers, I'll have to test how far you can really go before you're dooming your recovery. At worst you can get the ledge with invinsibility and know they have nowhere to go but up.

If I'm understanding and doing this right in the 5 minutes since I've known about it this isn't like normal edge guarding. You don't actually want to intercept recoveries with AA, in fact it seems to lose to things with hurt and grab boxes, you want to wait until the opponent has already grabbed the edge, then run off and immediately side B. If they try to get off quickly the ledge invulnerability turns off and they get hit and if they linger then that's at least a trump.

On some recoveries you could probably manage to head out there before if you wanted as if done right it will send them in a trajectory down and behind you. Basically for when you know someone has no choice and is coming in low.

 

[|RK|]

So I'm sitting here trying to figure out the game plan of particular characters. See, I know that the devs didn't just do things randomly, and I assume that playing the character around what the devs aimed for will probably show more cohesive results. Certain characters are easy: Sheik is meant to be crazy with combos, Lucario is meant to be a risk/reward/comeback character... but others are harder.

Like Marth - I distinctly remember a picture of the day talking about how they increased the power of shield breaker since no one used it, and it does that pretty effectively now. But did the devs intend for it to be a large part of his gameplan? Particularly with the power of his tippers? Samus was at one point supposed to be the strongest in the game, but she doesn't seem very cohesive... like, she has good weight, a decent air game and anti-air game, but not so much a strong ground game, what with less ability to cover space in front of her. Thoughts, anyone?

 

[Makorel]

On some recoveries you could probably manage to head out there before if you wanted as if done right it will send them in a trajectory down and behind you. Basically for when you know someone has no choice and is coming in low.

Well either way the thing I was doing has stopped working (or maybe it only worked for Mario?). For the life of me I can't seem to edgeguard Ganondorf with AA. I think I'll wait for someone who knows what they're doing to make a video about it.

 

[Atomsk_92]

Atomsk and Vex both were strong D3 mains who chose to never infinite their opponents

Yeah no. There was a large period of time where i was stupid and wouldn't learn match ups because I felt my thought process would just figure them out over time. Because of this I had no idea how to fight DK for a very long time until Punishment Divine explained how to do it to me. Because of my ignorance and failure to learn as a player, there were I believe 2 instances where I infinited the **** outta Will.

 

[Shaya]

@ Atomsk_92 Out of how many?
And which non-Will DKs/Samus/Mario/Luigi did you ever infinite? You definitely were a dedede not known for evil~

 

[Man Li Gi]

Kind of summarising your entire post history there

-You're kind of dumb.
-Etc. etc.

But seriously, I haven't posted here in like forever due to some user unnamed roadwheel death not really knowing what they're saying, but then proceeds to argue, quite baffling it is. (irony is strong) Anyway, since we are talking about characters that got nerfed from game to game, but in the long run got buffed from their previous iteration, does this apply to as well? I mean, I just placed 5th in an online tourney (take that as you will) and have come to the conclusion that has a decent footsy game and has a great crouch. The main thing holding is the range and recovery. If, for some reason faces an opponent that can beat it's crouch and inevitably outranges it, then it's curtains. Granted, this is only my 2nd day with, so take that as you will.

 

[Atomsk_92]

@ Atomsk_92 Out of how many?
And which non-Will DKs/Samus/Mario/Luigi did you ever infinite? You definitely were a dedede not known for evil~

The real question is how many times was it legal? and i think will was the only person ever LOL Jk it was a few wolf players too

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Wasn't like those MUs were hard for D3 in Brawl anyways, infinites on those characters aside.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Shaya]

The real question is how many times was it legal? and i think will was the only person ever LOL Jk it was a few wolf players too

WHOBO, for sure. I don't think it was ever illegal at Apex or Genesis either. And heck, even the two SKTARs I went to I don't recall it being mentioned, I know Bum ran tournaments and had full support for having it illegal within the region, but past the era I'm not sure if it was maintained properly anywhere?

 

[Atomsk_92]

Wasn't like those MUs were hard for D3 in Brawl anyways, infinites on those characters aside.

Smooth Criminal

Dk vs DDD was even as **** without the cg infin

 

[Shaya]

Like Marth - I distinctly remember a picture of the day talking about how they increased the power of shield breaker since no one used it, and it does that pretty effectively now. But did the devs intend for it to be a large part of his gameplan? Particularly with the power of his tippers? Samus was at one point supposed to be the strongest in the game, but she doesn't seem very cohesive... like, she has good weight, a decent air game and anti-air game, but not so much a strong ground game, what with less ability to cover space in front of her. Thoughts, anyone?

Something something Wifi intentions / no one has 20 frame reaction speed, right?
Funny thing is that the move doesn't do better at breaking shields at all. It got buffed in having an extra after effect that adds like 20% more range to the move for a single frame (seeing as it's transcended priority this is a pretty huge thing), maybe upped the kill power on uncharged a little. The step forward Marth takes no longer is permanent (he steps back during the cooldown). So... yeah it is kinda this trump-card like move. That coupled with shields being locked for 4 frames more than Brawl means people are more prone to panicking and actually taking the hit on shield. I would say it's definitely better to use in this game by a lot, but it isn't something that can be bread and butter for dealing with high tier+ characters, it's still unsafe on shield within a certain range and characters can kill you for it. Although I'm sure everyone who's played wifi has experienced the full hop charging shieldbreaker spam from Lucina or Marths.

Post I made about using it:

Shieldbreaker can be a poke safer on shield than all of our aerials and can kill towards edges of the stage at 90%.
For the purpose of shield breaking it requires the shield read [so after some sort of action you see them take] and you take a timing usually around charge two, if someone is cornered, the move covers forward rolls, spot dodges, etc in a non-reactable way (release is 8 frames). A second charge likely won't be punished on shield either and breaks shields for everything but a full (or perfect shield).
It's a game changer you only need the first condition to put into your control (although it does require a second 'read').

Seeing as shields are so strong against Marth in general, I'm guessing shieldbreaker was definitely a consideration for his gameplan. "Well you lose to shields but you have something that's twice the range of everyone else that breaks them, giving you kills by 30%". Counter is also there for a huge gamechanger, while his base tools aren't as strong as prior games. So yeah, I'm sure there was some intent there.

A design intention doesn't always necessarily come through well. This is why usually extensive player tested is something done by most other developers at this stage, it's easy to miss things or see that an intended strength doesn't work out too well (or can be abusive). I've said this in the past but it really feels like Samus should be roofying everyone all the time with how her aerial chains start going. Unfortunately I think really out of place characters will likely never get the fixes they need to function, at least not any time soon.

 

[Radical Larry]

No. I stand by my statement. The list is bad.

What is bad about it? You can arrange the characters in any order in their respective tiers.

 

[wedl!!]

What is bad about it? You can arrange the characters in any order in their respective tiers.

well, that doesn't mean anything when a bunch of characters are in tiers they don't belong in (cough cough)

 

[Thinkaman]

My one big question out of the last several pages (besides "whoa, why is everyone suddenly so hostile?") is "Wait, how on earth does non-custom G&W kill anyone?" His KO potential seems nearly DHD-level.