But is it really the same? Pillaring put Falco right there in the face of the opponent, an easily punishable spot. It was a powerful approach that would get you screwed if you messed up. Part of that mess up came from missing the L-cancel.
And when they got good at the game and stopped missing L-cancels (seriously, what kind of Falco misses L-cancels during a pillar?)
It
still wasn't OP even after it was made litterally unpunishable (as in, there was nothing you could do that could straight up beat the pillar, you
had to retreat in some fashion and
then punish Falco
if he continued trying to do the pillar after you retreated.)
Well that L-cancel is done for you now, so that leaves less margin for error = Less margin for punishment = More powerful approach with no upgrade to defense to retain the old balance.
That old balance was not balanced. Characters need to have
some approaches that are safe on block, and this is just giving more characters more of those. You do realize that most of these approaches are punishable if
whiffed right? So the counter to someone who constantly tries to approach with them is to simply dash out of range (and dash back in now that DD is back)
But even then, let's forget the L-cancel and just focus on positioning. We've already covered the positional risk of Pillaring.
What positional risk? Falco is in his best position while Pillaring. As long as he doesn't mess up, it is unpunishable with a very large reward if any part of the pillar connects.
But what risk is there with a retreating Bair? Like, for example, DK's retreating Bair.
It's already almost completely safe and the shieldstun will just make it safer.
So? How about if he straight up
misses the bair? Then he's left wide open as a result of his
failed approach. Did you know that
Ganondorf had approaches that were safe on block thanks to shieldstun in melee? A move being safe on block does not make it OP.
I just fear that other Bairs will follow this low-risk path and they'll outshine any good, smart new approaches that come from it.
Umm...they definitely won't, shielding as a whole will just be a little bit nerfed (which is exactly what we want). You'll still have to develop smarter approaches, as simple approaches often have simple counters (even Marth's shffl'd fair approach had counters. And it had only 7 frames of lag!)
I'm still worried about retreating Bairs since they weren't anywhere near as prevalent in Melee as they are in Brawl, but I guess we'll tackle that if and when it becomes an issue.
Jigglypuff.
That is all.
