Edit: Should make this into its own thread on the Zard boards...?
So I figure this is the best spot for me to make a post like this, and I really hope I don't get bawled out for this but I'd like to throw out my current thoughts on PM Charizard as he stands right now. Most of the Zard Skype chat guys are already aware of my stance on this so it probably won't come as much of a surprise to you guys but I figure I might as well have it documented and all that.
I wanna get this out there right now and say that Charizard as a character doesn't need much in the vein of changes, but rather just a few various touch ups(and downs, perhaps) to make him feel and play as effectively as he should be. Keep it in mind aight?
Perhaps this can serve as feedback,
perhaps as potential ideas for future updates? That'd be cool to see, but for now I guess saying what I want to say is good enough. Let's get it started!
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So first off I want to talk about Charizard's grounded UpB. With a couple of frames of invincibility and some decent knockback it is a reasonably effective OOS option to get opponents off you. It has limited outwards range but that's all fine and good, just means it takes a bit more thinking to use it. However, the way it functions right now there are a two very evident problems that are kinda not making it a PERFECTLY functioning move...:
1.
It is crouch cancellable: I'm sure anyone who uses Zard's UpB as a defensive option understands that this move can be crouch cancelled. The effect of this move includes a decent chunk of knockback at a low 30-40 degree angle. In most cases, it's enough to get the opponent far enough away from you so you have time to land after using it. When this move is crouch cancelled, though, the opponent slides against the floor at a much shallower level of knockback in a knocked down state. Depending on the situation the opponent can have enough time to get up and deliver a devastating punish before the recovery time has finished.
This puts the user of the move in a compromising position when considering defensive options, especially against characters who may be holding the down directional for a large proportion of time during their pressure game(Fox and Peach come to mind as vague examples). If the opponent doesn't have to respect this option as a result then it severely diminishes the utility of the move. Considering other characters who have 'get off me' grounded UpBs like Mario, Link, Samus, Diddy, etc., this problem does not appear to be present. To help bring this move in Zard's arsenal up to par,
I would like to see an adjusting of the move's knockback and trajectory in a way so it is not as easily crouch cancelled, but not in a way that it becomes more of a kill move than it already is(for non-crouch cancelling opponents).
2.
There is very little overlap between invincibility time and hitbox time, but no other redeeming qualities: According to Charizard's frame data, grounded UpB is invincible from frames 1 to 4, and the damaging hitboxes begin on frame 4 as well. Looking at the frame data of other characters with invincible UpBs the invincibility is pretty much all around as non-lenient as Charizard's, so I would say this is par for the course. However, where other characters with 'get off me' grounded UpBs are concerned, these moves generally come with either a supermassive XL hitbox(Mario, Samus, Marth, Snake, etc.) or the ability to reduce the impact of the imminent punishments should the move not succeed(Bowser, Toon Link, Game and Watch, Snake again, etc.).
Charizard's UpB unfortunately does not come with either of the two luxuries stated above, and this is periodically reflected in gameplay, with opponents trading with or flat out beating the move if timed improperly even in the slightest as a result. The move also appears to have a much larger amount of hangtime than most UpBs that launch the user into the air, allowing opponents to set up punishes on Charizard that much more easily. Even with a decently sized grab and a nice OOS option in Nair, as a large character it can be difficult in certain situations to alleviate the tremendous amounts of pressure that appear to becoming very prevalent in the evolving metagame.
I'm not saying that the move needs super amounts of buffs,
but it would help if the move's properties were improved a slight bit to make it a good deal more threatening as an out of shield option while still retaining the high risk associated with the move. It appears that there could be one of two ways to achieve this end:
- the hitbox of grounded UpB becomes slightly larger
- the invincibility time of grounded UpB bleeds over a little more into the active frames of the move.
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The next thing I'm concerned about is the way Charizard's Utilt functions. As it stands, it's a move that has more vertical reach than Usmash and is pretty cool for mid-combo strings. Not bad, but the problem is it has almost no utility in the neutral game due to the fact that it has a very low amount of disjoint. I'm sure all of the Zard players and PMBR members are aware of this one already, but there is a hurtbox in that 'bone' looking thing in the middle of Charizard's wing and absolutely nowhere else. As a result his Jab and Usmash have really neat disjoints to work with. Utilt, however, does not, as the animation has Charizard pushing the middles of his wings upwards in a spike shape, thereby putting the hurtboxes in his wings at the top.
Normally, I wouldn't care about something like this as most moves that have a character flinging a limb at their opponent is inevitably going to have a hurtbox in it, but the way Utilt works currently makes it disfunctional as a move. When Charizard is shoving his wings into the air, the hitbox does not materialize until they have reached their peak, meaning that there is a meaningless point of time where Charizard is stretching hurtboxes out and about with nothing happening. Think of it as if you threw a punch at someone, but that punch wasn't capable of hurting your opponent until you had your arm fully outstretched. That's what Charizard's Utilt is right now, in essence, and it really hurts.
As a result of this, I believe that the utility of Utilt needs to be reassessed.
It needs to be made more useful in a way that it can help Charizard play his neutral spacing game, instead of just being a situational combo-continuer. To this end, I believe that one of two adjustments could be made to the move so that it can be just a slight bit more useable:
- for this one move, the wing bone hurtbox is moved to be a significant amount lower or is made to be invincible(this might be overkill)
- the hitbox of the move starts earlier, right when Charizard begins to push his wings into the air.
I would also suggest that the hitbox become narrower horizontally just to stay in line with the animation but that's not too important.
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Alright, so let's talk about Nair.
It's a move that all Charizard players affectionately hold close to their heart, so as a result, it's hard for me to make the call on whether or not this move should get the hammer without being biased one way or the other. There is one part of the move that has somewhat bugged me, though, and it's that, when I make an attempt to hit someone with the starting frames of Nair - that is, Zard's 9 o' clock position(facing right) - in the neutral game and I miss, my focus shifts to what I should do next to defend myself from punishment, and then my tail swings all the way back around and hits the opponent at that 9 o' clock position anyway before I can realize it. I understand that this move is very good for edgeguards and the like because of this, the tail returning to the starting position should be something I use in my strategies, and, well, Charizard isn't a terribly GREAT character,
but if Nair absolutely has to be toned down in some way, this should be the focus of attention for sure, while leaving the rest of the move's properties untouched.
When I visualize Nair, I feel that
it should start at the 9 o' clock position with the same frame data like it always has. From that point, moving counterclockwise, the tail should keep going until it reaches the 7 o' clock position and stop there. A fast, whipping motion could be used as the animation to supplement this, and it doesn't necessarily need to meteor smash or anything like that, of course.
With the hitbox starting the way it currently does and ending just a bit earlier than it does now, it still allows Charizard to play a large amount of his neutral game onstage, while still having the tools to stick his tail through ledges and edgeguard effectively, but all the while not giving it the overbearing presence that makes it so... overbearingly present.
And as I said, I'm not a hundred percent sure if this move even needs to be canned, since as we know Charizard isn't the greatest of characters, but if it really needs to be, I think this would be a cool way to handle it, for sure.
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I would also mention the problem where
Charizard cannot get through soft platforms if he uses a midair jump and does not complete the animation of that jump entirely, but this has been publicly noted by the PMBR as a universal problem for all characters with more than one midair jump and will be addressed in the next update, so I guess I don't really need to rant about how much it screws with his ability to get down to the floor in neutral play. Figure I should at least give it a footnote though.
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And that's pretty much all I wanted to touch base on. From playing this character since 2.0, I really am glad to see how Charizard is essentially complete as a character, in the way he only really needs minor touch ups here and there to solidify that status. It seems that a good deal of characters in this game are in the same boat in this case, so I want to thank the PMBR for their dedicated work, and hope for only the best in the upcoming updates(whenever those are). I hope that my insight and feedback can help further that end, but in the end I'm just glad to get this off my chest. I've been meaning to gab about it for a while, heh heh...
