Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Terotrous]

Honestly, while I think Ult is probably more balanced than 4, it's a boring, homogeneous kind of balance, IMO. Rather than trying to buff and nerf individual kits from 4, they largely just gave everyone across the roster some of the same tools (3F jumpsquat, low landing lag on everything) and called it a day. Many mid tier characters actually had a lot of their more interesting tools nerfed to offset the buffs they got to jumpsquat and landing lag and IMO it leaves the game with a roster where I feel about half the cast just feels generic.

To use Yoshi as an example, yes, he benefits from faster jumpsquat and less landing lag. However, he took 3 significant nerfs to his kit.
- Dash attack is way worse now, it doesn't go nearly as far and also no longer goes through the opponent
- Jab is slower and has less followups
- The bounce you get from UpB is now so extreme that it prevents short hop eggs from being used for mobility the same way they were in 4.

These 3 tools basically comprised like 80% of Yoshi's neutral in the previous game (the other 20% was Nair, which remains good). Sure, now you have landing bair into stuff and dthrow Uair, but he feels like a much more generic character and thus I don't really like playing him anymore. I was sort of leaning towards Samus initially because I feel with Samus they actually did buff the parts of her kit that matter (Charge Shot, Fair, Grabs all got better), though now Joker is out and he also feels kind of interesting so I might go with him instead. Generally though, I would rather have a less balanced game where the cast feels unique than a very balanced game where everyone feels the same.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I haven't really studied Joker, how does his non-Arsene recovery compare to Belmont's? I assume it's better, but could someone give some specific examples?

It is in fact better despite still being tether-reliant, mostly due to his better air speed and midair jump IMO. The tether itself has a ludicrous range, you can latch on to the Battlefield ledge from just off-camera. That said, I've been gimped at embarrassingly low percents by getting hit while still tethered -- his first tether use comes with a small midair hop to keep him in place a bit, but subsequent uses of the move don't do this until you land again, so...yeah. I'm led to believe he can use midair gun dodges to also assist, although last time I tried I just killed myself so IDK what's up with that.

Also, has has already been said, his tether doesn't have a lot of horizontal range. It's primarily a vertical recovery.

 

[Terotrous]

Joker's recovery is clearly still pretty bad. The fact that he pretty much always has to go low makes it very predictable, it's very easy to go out there and hit him. The main use of the tether having extreme range is that it allows him to be more aggressive than you'd think offstage since he can make it back from almost anywhere.

 

[MH-Jin]

In reference to Sheik, she was already low mid tier imo. With a neutral like Sheik and her frame data, it's basically impossible for her to be low tier. It's just her matchups can be quite lengthy, mentally exhausting and really relies on the player being skilled with her in all areas of gameplay.

The 3.0.0 buffs were quite significant for Sheik though. The fair range increase/fix helps her neutral so much in terms of spacing and walling out and also allows for combos that were previously impossible due to the lower blindspot on the move. Also she had immense difficulty with hitting short characters with a shff, now this is less of a problem and fair alone makes the mu against Pikachu/Pichu better. It also let's her landing with a fair as a landing option, much more reliable as well, since the lower hitbox is now active as she's right above ground

The increase to the dtilt tipper hitbox let's you be more lenient in terms of spacing, especially since this is a game where everyone can do tilts out of a dash and have faster movement speed. It's now easier for Sheik to kill around 90 with tipper dtilt to usmash. Also she has easier access to tipper dtilt to uair as a true combo kill at higher percents (especially on platforms)

Void mentioned in a video previously, due to slower needle charge there will be less needle play/charge, particularly when Sheik would knock characters off stage. With the increased charge speed there will be more needle usage. This is great, combined with needles not being nerfed on shield, with the less charge time, needles can be used more freely and often in neutral and on landing. This will also give Sheik quicker/more frequent access to setups such as fh needles to bfish, landing needles into smash attacks and using aerial needles to gimp/stage spike.

Overall I would say the buffs helped her a lot. She may have not got a damage buff, but it's mainly her consistency in neutral and kill setups that gained the most improvement. It lets her players have better control of the neutral game with her fair and needles still being amazing. With her being able to control gameplay, she can win neutral easier and lead into a kill setup/edgeguard situation.

She's at least top of mid tier/low high tier imo.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Honestly, while I think Ult is probably more balanced than 4, it's a boring, homogeneous kind of balance, IMO. Rather than trying to buff and nerf individual kits from 4, they largely just gave everyone across the roster some of the same tools (3F jumpsquat, low landing lag on everything) and called it a day. Many mid tier characters actually had a lot of their more interesting tools nerfed to offset the buffs they got to jumpsquat and landing lag and IMO it leaves the game with a roster where I feel about half the cast just feels generic.

To use Yoshi as an example, yes, he benefits from faster jumpsquat and less landing lag. However, he took 3 significant nerfs to his kit.
- Dash attack is way worse now, it doesn't go nearly as far and also no longer goes through the opponent
- Jab is slower and has less followups
- The bounce you get from UpB is now so extreme that it prevents short hop eggs from being used for mobility the same way they were in 4.

These 3 tools basically comprised like 80% of Yoshi's neutral in the previous game (the other 20% was Nair, which remains good). Sure, now you have landing bair into stuff and dthrow Uair, but he feels like a much more generic character and thus I don't really like playing him anymore. I was sort of leaning towards Samus initially because I feel with Samus they actually did buff the parts of her kit that matter (Charge Shot, Fair, Grabs all got better), though now Joker is out and he also feels kind of interesting so I might go with him instead. Generally though, I would rather have a less balanced game where the cast feels unique than a very balanced game where everyone feels the same.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed that they've homgenized a lot of the cast. Jumpsquats, pummel damage, landing lag, and damage given from tilts and jabs (for the most part) are all pretty similar across the cast now.

 

[meleebrawler]

Honestly, while I think Ult is probably more balanced than 4, it's a boring, homogeneous kind of balance, IMO. Rather than trying to buff and nerf individual kits from 4, they largely just gave everyone across the roster some of the same tools (3F jumpsquat, low landing lag on everything) and called it a day. Many mid tier characters actually had a lot of their more interesting tools nerfed to offset the buffs they got to jumpsquat and landing lag and IMO it leaves the game with a roster where I feel about half the cast just feels generic.

To use Yoshi as an example, yes, he benefits from faster jumpsquat and less landing lag. However, he took 3 significant nerfs to his kit.
- Dash attack is way worse now, it doesn't go nearly as far and also no longer goes through the opponent
- Jab is slower and has less followups
- The bounce you get from UpB is now so extreme that it prevents short hop eggs from being used for mobility the same way they were in 4.

These 3 tools basically comprised like 80% of Yoshi's neutral in the previous game (the other 20% was Nair, which remains good). Sure, now you have landing bair into stuff and dthrow Uair, but he feels like a much more generic character and thus I don't really like playing him anymore. I was sort of leaning towards Samus initially because I feel with Samus they actually did buff the parts of her kit that matter (Charge Shot, Fair, Grabs all got better), though now Joker is out and he also feels kind of interesting so I might go with him instead. Generally though, I would rather have a less balanced game where the cast feels unique than a very balanced game where everyone feels the same.

Playing characters that rely on a small handful of amazing tools along with mediocre/situational everything else may be ''interesting'' to play for some people, but it's certainly much less interesting to watch and hard to argue such characters are well-designed. It also lets the rare characters who do have strong movesets all-round march all over them. I for one preferred Brawl Yoshi to Smash 4 even if the former was technically worse. It certainly wasn't because he was unable to jump out of shield. Arbitrary limitations to make characters ''unique'' are almost never appreciated (stamina for Trainer, higher jumpsquat for large fighters), because only masochists get a kick out of being abused by others being able to do things that they simply can't with little to make up for it.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

It's true that the cast is more homogenous in some ways, but I'd rather characters were defined by their unique strengths than unique weaknesses. Not being able to jump out of your shield isn't a cool defining feature, it just makes it suck to play Yoshi. His shield as it is now is a way cooler adaptation of that idea.

What I think sucks is that like, ever new character has to have a counter. Surely there are more interesting down-b ideas out there.

 

[Kiligar]

Extremely high level gameplay from Mii Brawler. One of the best brawlers we got, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People, or WDBTHTGP for short, displays the effectiveness of his Mii brawler set, which uses Suplex for the damage output and ZSS to make up for recovery. A truly brilliant set, Mii Brawler is much higher in the meta than most estimate. I say he’s a better Mario, from my opinion.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Extremely high level gameplay from Mii Brawler. One of the best brawlers we got, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People, or WDBTHTGP for short, displays the effectiveness of his Mii brawler set, which uses Suplex for the damage output and ZSS to make up for recovery. A truly brilliant set, Mii Brawler is much higher in the meta than most estimate. I say he’s a better Mario, from my opinion.

If he wasn't slow, he might be about as good (or better) than Mario but he's too slow and his recovery (while not horrible) still isn't great. His endlag on a lot of his moves seems to be kind of bad as well. Still not a horrible character.

 

[meleebrawler]

It's true that the cast is more homogenous in some ways, but I'd rather characters were defined by their unique strengths than unique weaknesses. Not being able to jump out of your shield isn't a cool defining feature, it just makes it suck to play Yoshi. His shield as it is now is a way cooler adaptation of that idea.

What I think sucks is that like, ever new character has to have a counter. Surely there are more interesting down-b ideas out there.

Really, counters are just one of the big categories down specials tend to occupy. The others being reflectors/absorbers, (charged) projectiles and the odd physical move. Only characters with out-there mechanics like Olimar's Pikmin and Trainer's team get something really unique designed to work with them.

At least the counters introduced here can do stuff other than just bounce damage back.

 

[Kiligar]

If he wasn't slow, he might be about as good (or better) than Mario but he's too slow and his recovery (while not horrible) still isn't great. His endlag on a lot of his moves seems to be kind of bad as well. Still not a horrible character.

Mii Brawler is not slow. He’s much faster than Mario in nearly every way. He’s 23rd in the game in run Speed, just behind Inkling and Lucina. He has the 4th fastest fast fall Speed in the game. His air speed is 1.15, which is not far behind Mario’s 1.208. His recovery with the right set up is just as good as Mario’s vertically, while much better horizontally. Explosive side kick and ZSS Down B are the move sets that come to mind. He has very little endlag on all his aerials bar his Dair. His smash attacks are laggy, true, but are extremely powerful, particularly his forward smash which can kill at 65 on middleweights near ledge. These are some of the reasons why I think Mii Brawler might be better than Mario.

 

[Frihetsanka]

These are some of the reasons why I think Mii Brawler might be better than Mario.

From what I've gathered, Mii Brawler would be a pretty decent character if Brawler had some more/better kill options. Right now the best seems to be backair and then... Not all that much? I'm not really sure how they could fix this at this point, though. They should reduce the endlag for Brawler's smashes, I suppose.

 

[Terotrous]

Playing characters that rely on a small handful of amazing tools along with mediocre/situational everything else may be ''interesting'' to play for some people, but it's certainly much less interesting to watch and hard to argue such characters are well-designed.

I definitely don't agree with the underlined part. I think that's actually a great way to design a game since it makes every character feel unique, you just can't have a bunch of characters who are good at everything and thus overshadow the others. IMO, Street Fighter 4 is a game I'd probably describe as "most characters have a handful of things that are great and most other things are serviceable" and to me that's one of the best spectator games of all time. If you compare, say, Marvel 3, which is a super homogenized game where every viable character ToDs you from any hit, I'd way rather watch SF4.

In ult, like 90% of every match is just spacing short hop aerials against each other, regardless of the characters involved. Sometimes people shield and then punish with short hop nair. Occasionally there's a grab. Obviously this is a bit oversimplified but I've been watching way less Ult compared to 4 simply because most matches that aren't between the tippy top players just aren't really that interesting.

It's true that the cast is more homogenous in some ways, but I'd rather characters were defined by their unique strengths than unique weaknesses. Not being able to jump out of your shield isn't a cool defining feature, it just makes it suck to play Yoshi. His shield as it is now is a way cooler adaptation of that idea.

I sort of half agree with this. While I wasn't a fan of Yoshi's old shield, I feel like being unable to jump out of shield could maybe be reasonable if Yoshi's grab had been in its current, good iteration. Then at least he'd still have a somewhat threatening OOS option, though he would be uniquely vulnerable to cross ups.

If we look at other characters, though, I think that their weaknesses are often a big part of the character. Look at the Belmonts for example. Their recovery is really poor, which balances out their strong projectile game in an interesting way. Or if we look at a character like Sheik, she's super fast and has good neutral but struggles to kill. I don't really think these are bad designs, the problem arises when you have characters with comparable strengths who lack those weaknesses, but I'd generally be more in favour of nerfing them to be more in line with the others than bringing everyone up to that level, because when you have a whole cast of characters who are good at everything and have no weaknesses basically everyone plays the same.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

I sort of half agree with this. While I wasn't a fan of Yoshi's old shield, I feel like being unable to jump out of shield could maybe be reasonable if Yoshi's grab had been in its current, good iteration. Then at least he'd still have a somewhat threatening OOS option, though he would be uniquely vulnerable to cross ups.

If we look at other characters, though, I think that their weaknesses are often a big part of the character. Look at the Belmonts for example. Their recovery is really poor, which balances out their strong projectile game in an interesting way. Or if we look at a character like Sheik, she's super fast and has good neutral but struggles to kill. I don't really think these are bad designs, the problem arises when you have characters with comparable strengths who lack those weaknesses, but I'd generally be more in favour of nerfing them to be more in line with the others than bringing everyone up to that level, because when you have a whole cast of characters who are good at everything and have no weaknesses basically everyone plays the same.

I didn't say I don't want characters to have weaknesses. Not everyone can be good at everything. What I don't want is for a character to be heavily disadvantaged in some way that is just worse than everyone else in a global sense for flavor reasons. If they are, I want it to provide something interesting in the way of gameplay.

Take Ness' recovery for example: this is clearly overall a weakness. But that weakness comes with a very polarizing strength (killing people at 30 with PKT2 lol) that creates cool, tense gameplay moments and a risk to challenging him offstage. ****ty jumpsquat and bad shields aren't interesting, they're just making a character feel worse to play, which isn't fun for either player.

A variant on Yoshi's bad shield might have been like, hey, he can't jump out of shield, but attacking his shield causes pieces of the shield to break off that can damage you if you attack it from bad angles. Or he can't jump out of shield, but instead of airdodging, he goes into his egg in the air when you hit R. Or maybe his rolls have a hitbox. Something that makes his shield unique, and not just uniquely bad, but in the sense that it has its' own rules.

I mean Makoto in SF is a great example of this. Her walk speed is god awful, but her dashes are really good and her burst damage is absurd on top of her command grab. Her restricted base movement means that she can't play a traditional SF ground game all that well. Instead she is locked into fixed distances that both she and her opponent need to work around on the ground. It's not just a weakness, it's a dynamic created by a weakness. That's good design. "You take longer to jump" and "You can't jump out of your shield" aren't.

 

[Terotrous]

I didn't say I don't want characters to have weaknesses. What I don't want is for a character to be disadvantaged in some way that is just worse than everyone else in a global sense for flavor reasons. If they are, I want it to provide something interesting in the way of gameplay.

Take Ness' recovery for example: this is clearly overall a weakness. But that weakness comes with a very polarizing strength (killing people at 30 with PKT2 lol) that creates cool, tense gameplay moments and a risk to challenging him offstage. ****ty jumpsquat and bad shields aren't interesting, they're just making a character feel worse to play, which isn't fun for either player.

Sure, I think it's clear that it's a matter of degree. For example, I don't think Little Mac's design of "he's strong on the ground, but literally can't go into the air at all" can work. It's simply way too polarizing, it's always going to result in gameplay where characters just avoid playing the game with him and just exploit that massive weakness. You can probably make a similar argument about characters with completely stupid jumpsquats, like 7-9F. That's simply too much of a handicap for a platform fighter. Actually, of all the changes, the normalization of jumpsquats is the one I take the least issue with. I think you can make a decent case that it just makes the game feel more responsive overall, which is a reasonable QoL improvement. What I don't like so much is lowering landing lag across the board and making grounded buttons worse on many characters.

Also, on Ness, I think his recovery is one of the "best" in the sense that it's so unique. I like how it's a pretty great edgeguarding tool itself in this game, but it is also easily edgeguarded by much of the cast. I also like other creative recoveries like Link bombing himself to get back onstage. I'd like to see more tools like that.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Sure, I think it's clear that it's a matter of degree. For example, I don't think Little Mac's design of "he's strong on the ground, but literally can't go into the air at all" can work. It's simply way too polarizing, it's always going to result in gameplay where characters just avoid playing the game with him and just exploit that massive weakness. You can probably make a similar argument about characters with completely stupid jumpsquats, like 7-9F. That's simply too much of a handicap for a platform fighter. Actually, of all the changes, the normalization of jumpsquats is the one I take the least issue with. I think you can make a decent case that it just makes the game feel more responsive overall, which is a reasonable QoL improvement. What I don't like so much is lowering landing lag across the board and making grounded buttons worse on many characters.

Also, on Ness, I think his recovery is one of the "best" in the sense that it's so unique. I like how it's a pretty great edgeguarding tool itself in this game, but it is also easily edgeguarded by much of the cast. I also like other creative recoveries like Link bombing himself to get back onstage. I'd like to see more tools like that.

On this we agree. Ness' recovery and recoveries like it are great. I want to see more of that and less teleporting, fewer Inkling and Rosalina long jump recoveries (you could probably put Pit and Arsene in this category too). One or two characters with that as a strength is fine, but it's becoming too ubiquitous.

 

[Thinkaman]

Hey, could you cite all this? I don't doubt you or anything — I've seen enough well-spoken posts from you (including the box theory) to be comfortable with taking you at your word. I just think that your sources would be interesting reading.

What do you want sources on? Frankly the post was an overindulgence of time on my part (I need to get back to work), but here's directions to point in:

• SSBW has VOD numbers.
• Most of the Brawl numbers comes from being a player of that era; the higher level stuff you could confirm by digging into top 64s of results on the wiki. Ditto for Melee. I recalled vaguely specific numbers because I tracked them for some discussions in David Sirlin's community.
• Source Gaming has documented almost all translated columns and interviews from Sakurai concerning Smash's development.
• Data on other fighting games (and other genres) mostly comes from hanging out in those communities and talking to interesting people at GDC. Riot is notoriously talkative/open on both forums and in-person, and really this is common in the west for most companies. (Maybe not Blizzard)
• Board games being more balanced is anecdotal but I'd bet 100:1 odds. It's just obviously self-evident, and the cause is clear too--there exist far greater interest for playtesting on both sides of the table, and audience expectations are higher.

You say non-echoes, but shouldn't Ken, Chrom, and Lucina still be considered due to their difference (and the fact Lucina seems to have a ton more usage than Marth)?

When I said non-echoes, I meant that I was counting them as a single combined character. Or, to be more accurate, I was excluding specifically Dark Pit and Ryu from the list of underused characters. If you want to include them, or just Ryu, be my guest.

Honestly, while I think Ult is probably more balanced than 4, it's a boring, homogeneous kind of balance, IMO.

I disagress with this take. We heard similar sentiment from a small minority in 4 after Brawl, and ditto from Melee to Brawl.

I've definitely had to sit through 2008-era rants about how Pichu and Mewtwo and Roy were the paragons of uniqueness, and that the Brawl additions like Snake, Sonic, ROB, PT, and Olimar were shallow gimmick characters. Press X to doubt.

Then lots of unique traits were removed from Brawl going to 4. Beyond the transforming characters + the unique kits of Snake and ICs, we lost chaingrabs, grab releases, glide tossing, DACUS, and plenty of extreme cases of normal character tools like Falco Laser, Olimar grab, MK Shuttle Loop, double Banana, ect. I have had (a very small number of) people insist to me that these were just and good mechanics, and that the Smash 4 additions of Rosalina, Shulk, Bowser Jr, Little Mac, Mega Man, Pac-Man, ect. were shallow gimmick characters. Excuse me while I mash X.

Now we have (not to pick on you) a small number of people insisting that things like bad jumpsquats are the mark of true uniqueness, and that new additions like Inkling, Simon, and PP are shallow gimmick characters. At this point I'm not addressing your complaints directly anymore, but man, this argument is a rerun of a boring show at this point, and I struggle to take it seriously. (And my X button is worn out.)

Your complaint was more about pre-existing characters, but I still find it lacking. The inability to jump out of shield is just lame. Stamina was lame. Special-fall from random side-specials that didn't need it was lame. Kills based on BKG rage were lame. And long jumpsquats, ultimately, were lame. They were a big ball-and-chain around the viable options of characters, especially in Brawl (Snake is the exception that proves the rule) where it was more pronounced.

If you recall, this was a big debate in one of the Smash 4 topics. It had been observed the jumpsquat corrolated to tier position more than any other single character attriubute. I was cautiously skeptical against changing it, arguing that I was by default hesitant on any change or trend towards homogonizing the cast. But this is not a sacred cow--a unique trait that infringes upon the use of a character's other unique options is functionally equivalent to homogonization.

How unique is Kirby in Melee? Trick question, Kirby isn't in Melee. If a tree falls in the woods, but it goes 0:10 against the top tiers, good luck finding the log.

At the end of the day, there are a small number of unique traits I miss that I see no clear demand for their removal. Ganon SH dair from Brawl, or DH SH dair from 4. Some of the Arcthunder combos from 4. Certain ICs techniques. Old Squirtle turnaround animation. Rock Smash and a variety of the better customs. The previous Mechakoopa behavior. Original Wolf f-smash. Ganon's old u-smash and f-smash. I think you could make a decent argument for DACUS or gliding, even if I wouldn't agree with either. And yes, I'd put Yoshi's cool dash attack from 4 on my list.

But in every one of those cases, the additional actualization of each character's unique playstyle by simple virtue of additional robustness in a healthier environment has given us more gameplay, more expression of their uniqueness, and more application of their tools in varied settings. Brawl Ganon was obstensibly more unique than Smash Ultimate Ganon, or even his true successor who happens to be an orange cat. But this uniqueness was only on paper--in gameplay dynamics the uniqueness rarely played itself out, and in true practice Brawl Ganon barely counted as a character in the game at all. Whether in a friendly or in bracket, Ultimate Sword Ganon and Ultimate Cat Ganon are more unique just by virtue of showing up.

As stated, I am very far on the anti-homogonizing side. But even I feel that Smash plays it very safe in this regard, with a clearly expressed preference (in gameplay and Sakurai interviews) for protecting uniqueness at all cost--even when that leaves us with things like Little Mac's side-b. It took over a decade to finally get rid of some bad traits like no-Yoshi-shield-jump or bad jumpsquats, and the patches are even more conservative.


But honestly, despite this wall-of-text-I-didn't-have-time-to-write, your head is in the right place and I wish way more people cared about opposing homogonization in game content.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Re: Homogenization, I think the key thing is ensuring that everyone has, at a basic level, the same fundamental tools to work with. I'm thinking of games like BlazBlue (or the rest of ArcSys's fighting game lineup, really) where the entire cast reliably has an antiair, a sweep, an overhead, a burst, a cancel, etc. The exact properties of these things, like startup, recovery, damage, combo potential, and so forth all vary, but it's a given that, for example, if the enemy is jumping in at you, 2C is a decent counter-option. (Or whatever the input is.)

It's not a perfect 1:1 because Smash simply operates on a different level, but I'd argue that things like jumpsquat frames fall under this umbrella of "fundamental mechanics."

 

[Sean²]

I definitely don't agree with the underlined part. I think that's actually a great way to design a game since it makes every character feel unique, you just can't have a bunch of characters who are good at everything and thus overshadow the others. IMO, Street Fighter 4 is a game I'd probably describe as "most characters have a handful of things that are great and most other things are serviceable" and to me that's one of the best spectator games of all time. If you compare, say, Marvel 3, which is a super homogenized game where every viable character ToDs you from any hit, I'd way rather watch SF4.

In ult, like 90% of every match is just spacing short hop aerials against each other, regardless of the characters involved. Sometimes people shield and then punish with short hop nair. Occasionally there's a grab. Obviously this is a bit oversimplified but I've been watching way less Ult compared to 4 simply because most matches that aren't between the tippy top players just aren't really that interesting.



I sort of half agree with this. While I wasn't a fan of Yoshi's old shield, I feel like being unable to jump out of shield could maybe be reasonable if Yoshi's grab had been in its current, good iteration. Then at least he'd still have a somewhat threatening OOS option, though he would be uniquely vulnerable to cross ups.

If we look at other characters, though, I think that their weaknesses are often a big part of the character. Look at the Belmonts for example. Their recovery is really poor, which balances out their strong projectile game in an interesting way. Or if we look at a character like Sheik, she's super fast and has good neutral but struggles to kill. I don't really think these are bad designs, the problem arises when you have characters with comparable strengths who lack those weaknesses, but I'd generally be more in favour of nerfing them to be more in line with the others than bringing everyone up to that level, because when you have a whole cast of characters who are good at everything and have no weaknesses basically everyone plays the same.

Spectator meta is an entire different ballgame. Trading off cool, flashy combos and strings between fast, hard hitting characters will almost always outweigh methodical footsies between mid-tier heroes for a majority of spectators. As long as one or two characters don't completely overpower the meta and appear in nearly every set, the mid-tier hero doesn't have much of a place to cause upsets. They usually just end up either boring or depressing the crowd when they pop up. I'll use your Belmont example. They can be super fun to watch at a high level. Until they run into a player of similar or better skill, using a character with a top 5 recovery. Then you see gimp after gimp, dying at super low percents, sometimes getting 3 stocked. That just makes you feel bad for the player when it happens.

So, if nerfs are in the picture at all, I would rather see characters have their existing weaknesses nerfed harder than their strengths, unless a primary strength is a super good recovery, or primary weakness is low damage output and kill power. Melee is cool to watch because there's really only 1 meta character that has a good recovery. Whenever that character isn't involved, stocks fly off the board. Everyone else's recovery is bad or exploitable. Edgeguarding is a good tactic and is encouraged, but not the super deep/inching the blastzone edgeguarding like we have in Ultimate. So if so many recoveries are still going to remain good in Ultimate, you either need to make what sucks better, or take whatever glaring weakness any of the best characters have and make it worse. E.g. I'd love for Pichu to take more self damage over him losing his damage output or combos. This would still make him a top tier, but make him slightly more reasonable to deal with. And it wouldn't bore spectators since he can still do the flashy stuff. He might just damage himself into kill percent, though. And you could take this same thought and press it upon other characters as well. The Belmonts kind of suck against anyone who can gimp them. You have a choice between either buffing their recovery to make them a more well-rounded zoner archetype, or leaving their recovery as as is and making their onstage presence a bit more oppressive. (not counting a character like Little Mac because that's to the point of being just too much in one direction). Which would be more interesting in the long run?

I didn't like Smash 4. No, it wasn't very homogenized - because it wasn't well-balanced. I do, however, like Melee. You may say Melee wasn't 'well-balanced' either. See previous paragraph for the counter-argument. It was balanced, maybe not in terms of character strength, but nearly all of the meta, 1v1 characters had their own, unique strengths, and some unique attributes that could be either a strength or weakness depending on the matchup, but nearly all had that one glaring weakness that everyone else shared. To have great balance incurs a certain degree of homogenization. Especially in a game with a near record-setting roster count.

The universal 3-frame jumpsquat and added shieldstun nerfing shield grabs are what cause SH aerials to be so good. Yes, it can get samey and a bit boring to watch considering how many characters net so much profit from landing a single Nair. But some characters, like Bowser, desperately needed it. I'm hesitant to call added shieldstun a nerf...because if you call the right read on someone and they have to shield a heavy attack, they shouldn't get away or turn the tables on you for free. Similar how to holding block in traditional fighters will still damage you if they keep hitting your block. I think what they need to add to balance out the big jumpsquat buff is (drumroll) make recoveries suck again. All these up Bs that go a mile into the stratosphere and autosnap from a ballpark away need to be dusted, hitbox or not. Some of them could easily be halved in distance and still not be as bad as Dr. Mario's. So many of these post-Brawl recoveries are so good that pressing your advantage and edgeguarding them is disadvantageous to just waiting on the stage and trying to intercept them either hoping they don't snap or trying to 2-frame them.

 

[Roguewolf]

I feel like the way ultimate charachters feel is vastly improved compared to four. Four had this syndrome of having a formulaic approach to fights ultimate has a more dynamic feel with a lot more ways to approach a situation the way that top tiers in four had more ways to approach a situation.

For lack of a better example lets look at bowser in the transition of 4 to ultimate in four bowser had the heavy complex of not having enough reward for being combo food so they buffed him with a throw combo and that was one of his only ways to be a threat a very formulaic approach to fighting.

Now we look at ultimate bowser they took away the throw combo and instead gave him a plethora of other tools to make him good making him faster and flow better and feel like the kit he was given was finally realized and works. Does he have problems sure the flaws that were inherent designs not things that feel bad just to feel bad.

This happened to a huge variety of charachters transitioning from 4 to ultimate. I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't think that ultimate takes away uniqueness from charachters it just makes what there telling should be and finds a way for them to feel less linear and more like everything works to further their kit(usually there are obvious exceptions) and the weaknesses they have are related to their archetype or charachter feeling.

 

[ProfessorVincent]

No one plays a character just for one reason so there's no reason to be flippant about it.

That being said, I'll humor you here; Inkling's recovery is notorious for having an extremely generous ledge snap distance. This means Inkling's up B is one of the few recoveries that's almost impossible to two-frame. Only a few characters have the privilege to hit low enough to contest it, perhaps most notably Palutena. People also get janked by up B's startup hitbox far more often than they like to admit, so going down to edgeguard them is a risky proposition in and of itself.

On the other hand, Inkling's up B is linear and unprotected. It loses to basically all lingering Aerials as well as specials such as Nikita and PK thunder. Even PK freeze/flash can be threatening if you suck like me.

Against some characters it is a super strong recovery, against others it's easily exploitable.

I also don't get why people say the character is boring. Flavor-wise I think it brilliantly represents the source material. It also requires some thought with ink management and in regards to killing. Moreover, her linear/small hitboxes (outside of bair, praise bair) require precision, as does dashing under moves (especially dashing under stuff like wolf's lasers). Finally, splat bombs afford flexible option coverage, pressure, and edgeguarding.

Imo, inkling is one of the more interesting top tiers. Especially compared to Wolf, Pichu, Palu, and, obviously, Lucina.

 

[Arthur97]

What do you want sources on? Frankly the post was an overindulgence of time on my part (I need to get back to work), but here's directions to point in:

• SSBW has VOD numbers.
• Most of the Brawl numbers comes from being a player of that era; the higher level stuff you could confirm by digging into top 64s of results on the wiki. Ditto for Melee. I recalled vaguely specific numbers because I tracked them for some discussions in David Sirlin's community.
• Source Gaming has documented almost all translated columns and interviews from Sakurai concerning Smash's development.
• Data on other fighting games (and other genres) mostly comes from hanging out in those communities and talking to interesting people at GDC. Riot is notoriously talkative/open on both forums and in-person, and really this is common in the west for most companies. (Maybe not Blizzard)
• Board games being more balanced is anecdotal but I'd bet 100:1 odds. It's just obviously self-evident, and the cause is clear too--there exist far greater interest for playtesting on both sides of the table, and audience expectations are higher.

When I said non-echoes, I meant that I was counting them as a single combined character. Or, to be more accurate, I was excluding specifically Dark Pit and Ryu from the list of underused characters. If you want to include them, or just Ryu, be my guest.



I disagress with this take. We heard similar sentiment from a small minority in 4 after Brawl, and ditto from Melee to Brawl.

I've definitely had to sit through 2008-era rants about how Pichu and Mewtwo and Roy were the paragons of uniqueness, and that the Brawl additions like Snake, Sonic, ROB, PT, and Olimar were shallow gimmick characters. Press X to doubt.

Then lots of unique traits were removed from Brawl going to 4. Beyond the transforming characters + the unique kits of Snake and ICs, we lost chaingrabs, grab releases, glide tossing, DACUS, and plenty of extreme cases of normal character tools like Falco Laser, Olimar grab, MK Shuttle Loop, double Banana, ect. I have had (a very small number of) people insist to me that these were just and good mechanics, and that the Smash 4 additions of Rosalina, Shulk, Bowser Jr, Little Mac, Mega Man, Pac-Man, ect. were shallow gimmick characters. Excuse me while I mash X.

Now we have (not to pick on you) a small number of people insisting that things like bad jumpsquats are the mark of true uniqueness, and that new additions like Inkling, Simon, and PP are shallow gimmick characters. At this point I'm not addressing your complaints directly anymore, but man, this argument is a rerun of a boring show at this point, and I struggle to take it seriously. (And my X button is worn out.)

Your complaint was more about pre-existing characters, but I still find it lacking. The inability to jump out of shield is just lame. Stamina was lame. Special-fall from random side-specials that didn't need it was lame. Kills based on BKG rage were lame. And long jumpsquats, ultimately, were lame. They were a big ball-and-chain around the viable options of characters, especially in Brawl (Snake is the exception that proves the rule) where it was more pronounced.

If you recall, this was a big debate in one of the Smash 4 topics. It had been observed the jumpsquat corrolated to tier position more than any other single character attriubute. I was cautiously skeptical against changing it, arguing that I was by default hesitant on any change or trend towards homogonizing the cast. But this is not a sacred cow--a unique trait that infringes upon the use of a character's other unique options is functionally equivalent to homogonization.

How unique is Kirby in Melee? Trick question, Kirby isn't in Melee. If a tree falls in the woods, but it goes 0:10 against the top tiers, good luck finding the log.

At the end of the day, there are a small number of unique traits I miss that I see no clear demand for their removal. Ganon SH dair from Brawl, or DH SH dair from 4. Some of the Arcthunder combos from 4. Certain ICs techniques. Old Squirtle turnaround animation. Rock Smash and a variety of the better customs. The previous Mechakoopa behavior. Original Wolf f-smash. Ganon's old u-smash and f-smash. I think you could make a decent argument for DACUS or gliding, even if I wouldn't agree with either. And yes, I'd put Yoshi's cool dash attack from 4 on my list.

But in every one of those cases, the additional actualization of each character's unique playstyle by simple virtue of additional robustness in a healthier environment has given us more gameplay, more expression of their uniqueness, and more application of their tools in varied settings. Brawl Ganon was obstensibly more unique than Smash Ultimate Ganon, or even his true successor who happens to be an orange cat. But this uniqueness was only on paper--in gameplay dynamics the uniqueness rarely played itself out, and in true practice Brawl Ganon barely counted as a character in the game at all. Whether in a friendly or in bracket, Ultimate Sword Ganon and Ultimate Cat Ganon are more unique just by virtue of showing up.

As stated, I am very far on the anti-homogonizing side. But even I feel that Smash plays it very safe in this regard, with a clearly expressed preference (in gameplay and Sakurai interviews) for protecting uniqueness at all cost--even when that leaves us with things like Little Mac's side-b. It took over a decade to finally get rid of some bad traits like no-Yoshi-shield-jump or bad jumpsquats, and the patches are even more conservative.


But honestly, despite this wall-of-text-I-didn't-have-time-to-write, your head is in the right place and I wish way more people cared about opposing homogonization in game content.

Well, yes, but if they are different gameplay wise, it's not really accurate to count them as the same. Specifically the three I mentioned.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Minor update here. Fatality talks about picking up Joker, his performance and mentality on Pound, and a few other things.

For those who don't feel like watching the video (though I do recommend watching it):

1. He noted that while he did relatively well in Pound doubles, he did not do so well in Pound singles (eliminated at 97th place). He had quite a bit going on during this time, and his mentality wasn't really on point.
2. He is planning on picking up Joker for serious play. It is not because he needs a character to supplement his Falcon, but it is because he just really likes Joker's design, mobility, combos, and overall gameplan.
3. He really likes the 3.0.0. universal nerf to projectiles on shield damage, as it helps Falcon handle with projectile characters better.

 

[Rizen]

Minor update here. Fatality talks about picking up Joker, his performance and mentality on Pound, and a few other things.

For those who don't feel like watching the video (though I do recommend watching it):

1. He noted that while he did relatively well in Pound doubles, he did not do so well in Pound singles (eliminated at 97th place). He had quite a bit going on during this time, and his mentality wasn't really on point.
2. He is planning on picking up Joker for serious play. It is not because he needs a character to supplement his Falcon, but it is because he just really likes Joker's design, mobility, combos, and overall gameplan.
3. He really likes the 3.0.0. universal nerf to projectiles on shield damage, as it helps Falcon handle with projectile characters better.

It's easy to say the projectile nerf was good when your main has no projectiles, lol. Giving parries more of an advantage was good; you deserve to be rewarded for more effort. The shield pressure nerf however was poorly done and hurt characters who didn't need nerfs the most ( or anyone who actually relied on projectiles for shield damage). aside from the parrying change didn't get his blaster nerfed at all because he never broke shields with it so his gameplan is the same. Like someone said, the changes seemed more aimed at bringing the game to the developers' preferred state rather than balancing characters.

 

[Terotrous]

Now we have (not to pick on you) a small number of people insisting that things like bad jumpsquats are the mark of true uniqueness

It's worth noting that in a follow-up post I mentioned that I'm not really against the standardization of jumpsquats. I agree that this arbitrarily gates many characters and just from a control standpoint having too much jumpsquat just feels bad. My biggest complaint is more about giving everyone nonexistent landing lag on all their moves and nerfing grounded or utility options from characters who didn't need those changes, which causes the game to feel overly focused around short hop aerials. I mean, maybe the thought process was "the good characters already tend to work like this anyway", but I don't think it was so polarizing that this was the only way to achieve balance.

Your complaint was more about pre-existing characters, but I still find it lacking. The inability to jump out of shield is just lame. Stamina was lame. Special-fall from random side-specials that didn't need it was lame.

I didn't really like any of these either. I actually support PT becoming 3 separate characters, rather than one character that can switch. Arguably the switching is more unique but I think this is kind of a Little Mac situation where in order to make switching relevant, you would have to saddle the characters with such extreme drawbacks that they would cease to be fun to play. At least if the characters are separate they gain an additional moveslot, which obviously grants additional possibilities for differentiation. And obviously, Zelda going into helpless from SideB was the worst thing ever. That's one point for Ultimate for sure.

At the end of the day, there are a small number of unique traits I miss that I see no clear demand for their removal.

I would add jab cancels to this list. Characters like Mewtwo and Palutena in 4 can cancel the first hit of their jabs to grabs or other things, all of which are gone in Ult. Maybe they felt Parry to Jab would be too strong if these were still in the game, but I think it'd have been an interesting option.

I'd love for Pichu to take more self damage over him losing his damage output or combos. This would still make him a top tier, but make him slightly more reasonable to deal with.

This would probably be my preferred choice too, but it'd probably have to come with some kind of nerf to Pikachu as well or everyone would just jump over to him. Maybe Pika could lose some kill power, I'm not sure why a character who is so fast and small and has such good recovery hits quite that hard, it just seems like they sort of missed something in the balance department there.

I also don't get why people say the character is boring. Flavor-wise I think it brilliantly represents the source material. It also requires some thought with ink management and in regards to killing.

I think Inkling is actually not a bad design, but I think running out of ink should be a more serious problem. As it stands you have quite a lot and it's not hard at all to find a moment to refill it, so you can't really take advantage of it too much. Olimar has the same problem where even if you kill his pikmin he can just pull out more in half a second so who cares. It's probably not a coincidence that both of these characters with irrelevant penalty states are really strong.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Why are people acting as if Smash was never about spamming safe pokes/options that lead to confirms and stage control?

Stop. Please just stop.

The weaker characters were always those that commit more for less reward. Those that have less spammable stuff.

Such is the meta for any and all platform fighters. Ults balance comes from stronger universal options. Which is honestly a better way to go about it in a platform fighter. Which is why parry STILL needs more buffs btw.

"But muh unique characters and meta"

Shhhhh. Silence.

Listen.....it does not work. Mobility is just too important. Being able to just throw stuff out is too important.

Also stop pretending you play the game because of rich nuetral or blah blah.

You play because Nintendo. Brawl proved it.

You know I'm right.

 

[The_Bookworm]

It's easy to say the projectile nerf was good when your main has no projectiles, lol. Giving parries more of an advantage was good; you deserve to be rewarded for more effort. The shield pressure nerf however was poorly done and hurt characters who didn't need nerfs the most ( or anyone who actually relied on projectiles for shield damage). aside from the parrying change didn't get his blaster nerfed at all because he never broke shields with it so his gameplan is the same. Like someone said, the changes seemed more aimed at bringing the game to the developers' preferred state rather than balancing characters.

The shield projectile nerf didn't really seem to do too much to the victims of the nerf fortunately. Seems like players of the nerfed victims seems to be continuing playing like nothing has happened.

They are just going to be a little less obnoxious to face now, especially in online play.

 

[Rizen]

I think Inkling is actually not a bad design, but I think running out of ink should be a more serious problem. As it stands you have quite a lot and it's not hard at all to find a moment to refill it, so you can't really take advantage of it too much. Olimar has the same problem where even if you kill his pikmin he can just pull out more in half a second so who cares. It's probably not a coincidence that both of these characters with irrelevant penalty states are really strong.

I agree with this. Pikmin are by far the most spammable projectile in the game because pikmin pluck lasts only 8 frames and pikmin throw 24 frames. That is absurdly fast. YL's bow lasts 37 f uncharged. Inkling and Olimar could stand to be more penalized for losing Ink/Pikmin.

The shield projectile nerf didn't really seem to do too much to the victims of the nerf fortunately. Seems like players of the nerfed victims seems to be continuing playing like nothing has happened.

They are just going to be a little less obnoxious to face now, especially in online play.

That's a good point; I forgot about online play.

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

Why are people acting as if Smash was never about spamming safe pokes/options that lead to confirms and stage control?

Stop. Please just stop.

The weaker characters were always those that commit more for less reward. Those that have less spammable stuff.

Such is the meta for any and all platform fighters. Ults balance comes from stronger universal options. Which is honestly a better way to go about it in a platform fighter. Which is why parry STILL needs more buffs btw.

"But muh unique characters and meta"

Shhhhh. Silence.

Listen.....it does not work. Mobility is just too important. Being able to just throw stuff out is too important.

Also stop pretending you play the game because of rich nuetral or blah blah.

You play because Nintendo. Brawl proved it.

You know I'm right.

Interesting what would you buff of parry? More advantage frames?more easy to perform them? I say this because it seems that the dev team agrees but I think they don't want to make big changes to the mechanics of the game.

 

[Kiligar]

A day or two ago I posted a bit about Pit’s strengths and what he is capable of. A short video from Ruku visually explains it. This character is way underrated, and I think with enough optimization of his moveset, particularly arrow combos, could have him one day be a top tier. Might sound far fetched now, but there are several cases of characters who first went under the radar before they slowly rose to prominence as their strengths were discovered. Pit could never reach that level, but it’s just surprising how overlooked this character is despite his many strengths.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

I think another factor to talk about when discussing homogenuity and how "bad" it is, is are we focused on the character or the player?

I just think about the 3D fighters. Each character has a ton of moves, and are built, thanks to their toolset and the mechanics of the games (particularly the last part), to be "complete." I remember playing pokken tournament, and not having a character crisis at all. Usually, I like to play everyone in every game (though I never really played 3D fighters much. Sonic the Fighters, Pokken, and Tenkaichi 3 are the only fighters I played in 3D), but I played Sceptile first out of all the characters and I couldn't switch off of him. Must've been having to learn a bunch of mechanics with him and having the need to actually use lab time.

Anyway, 3D fighters are all close-up fighters (besides a handful), and though there are differences (grappling, mix-ups, etc), most differences can be hard to see. Heihachi from tekken, for example, had a weakness of having bad low attacks to break defense. Having characters that play somewhat the same makes me look at the players and how they do stuff more.

I'm saying homogenization doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can put more focus onto the player, since we all know we skip matches because we hate watching a particular character, when we could be missing opportunity to see what that player does with that character. Too caught up in the tool and not the craftsman.

Someone mentioned SF4 being a great game for spectators, since the characters have great strengths and recognizable weaknesses. It's funny, because I was thinking about why I would find some matches not fun to watch in smash (in S4, it would be the fox, or someone). It dawned on me that SF4 characters were simple; they made their goals easy to recognize (dhalsim was slow and had long limbs for distance, dudley and boxer/balrog were boxers and loved getting close, Seth was an android and had everything, etc). It made it easy to understand what the struggle was.

Then I get to Rose and I don't know what her goals are, so I don't care to watch Luffy. Or I don't care to watch Sakura much when I don't know her, and the only bit of information I got on her was crazy cross-ups and high damage. C Viper existed, and was known for her high execution requirement, so instantly more attractive.

In smash, it can be harder to see. Fox in ultimate, for me, isn't fun to watch. He's supposed to be a close-range fighter yes, but where are his crazy strings? what makes him scary up close? It seems he does a bunch of individual hits, and then somewhere lands a smash attack and kills.

Pichu can do endless strings. I notice that, and think about the combo tree pichu possess, and I think about how pichu mains would express themselves through that combo tree. Same with Peach or someone else.

But if everyone had more similar tools, but had a plethora of those tools, I don't care much about the character; as they're more like tools now. I care more about the person operating the tools. Idk.

Also, Looking at a character for their specific strengths could also be problematic. Pac-man is the mix-up character of smash, period I think, but just watching Tea to see what bag of tricks he'll pull out against his next opponent could make me miss his interesting take on operating in the neutral. Or his defensive capabilites.

Just watching Mkleo play lucina to see how he keeps his opponents at a certain space while playing neutral could make me miss how he scrambles and gets out of "improv" situations. Or how he plays neutral up-close against brawlers.

Homogenization can be a good thing when done right. It allows us to appreciate the player more rather than worry about the character he/she chooses.

 

[Rizen]

A day or two ago I posted a bit about Pit’s strengths and what he is capable of. A short video from Ruku visually explains it. This character is way underrated, and I think with enough optimization of his moveset, particularly arrow combos, could have him one day be a top tier. Might sound far fetched now, but there are several cases of characters who first went under the radar before they slowly rose to prominence as their strengths were discovered. Pit could never reach that level, but it’s just surprising how overlooked this character is despite his many strengths.

I agree the Pits are underrated and think they're upper mid tiers. Having said that, this video is comboing complete scrubs offstage. It doesn't speak to their competitive viability at all.

 

[Kiligar]

I agree the Pits are underrated and think they're upper mid tiers. Having said that, this video is comboing complete scrubs offstage. It doesn't speak to their competitive viability at all.

Yeah, it’s a montage and it’s a little flashy. Sometimes I talk to other Smash players and they don’t even know Pit has combos. I don’t want to post too many videos here but here’s a competitive analysis of Pit. Right now, he’s a solid mid tier, if not a low high tier. In comparison to other characters, I’d say he’s Mario level, it’s just that Mario has more players behind him. This analysis was done before the game was released, but is still very accurate. Pit may not be the best in the game, or even anywhere close, but he is not Little Mac tier as said by M2K. I just don’t want him to continue being overlooked.

 

[Y2Kay]

New York City has another local the size of a regional. First real strong performance from Joker.

I'm personally still not tooo impressed with him. To put it simply, Joker feels like a whack Greninja that occasionally turns into a fast Ganondorf. Fought one for the first time in bracket today, and it was pretty stressful being in a last hit scenario with Arsene. Still feels like a high tier to me, but a lot of top heads here feel adamant that he's top 10.

Xeno 158 (126 entrants)

1.)Mr E
2.)Jul
3.)Utopian Ray
4.)Zomba
5.) Dill
5.) Odyssey
7.) Venia
7.) Wraith
.
.
.
.
49th) Y2Kay >:]

 

[blackghost]

if your complaints about smash is lack of options and characters ding similar things then it may be time to recognize that the game may not be for you anymore, and it may be time to transition to other fighters (MK 11 just came out on switch harder than dbfz but not hard to learn). smash characters are not going to ever gain large pools of options. goes against the philosophy and design of smash.

ironically the characters with large option pools: are all DLC or third party and we have seen the community's response to dealing with those characters, and in reponse, the balance team effectively made players not have to deal with them. Characters in smash will have clear overlapping traits for the foreseeable future.

 

[PK Gaming]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed that they've homgenized a lot of the cast. Jumpsquats, pummel damage, landing lag, and damage given from tilts and jabs (for the most part) are all pretty similar across the cast now.

I know other people have responded to this sentiment, but I really want to respond to the bolded.

There is no universe where jump squats being normalized isn't objectively a good thing. Variable jump squats were a terrible concept that was implemented poorly; literally the smash equivalent of the "rich get richer, the poor get poorer"

It's depressing it took this long for the smash team to address it, but i'm grateful all the same

 

[Terotrous]

if your complaints about smash is lack of options and characters ding similar things then it may be time to recognize that the game may not be for you anymore, and it may be time to transition to other fighters (MK 11 just came out on switch harder than dbfz but not hard to learn). smash characters are not going to ever gain large pools of options. goes against the philosophy and design of smash.

I also play a fair number of other fighters, like BBTag and the new Power Rangers game, though Smash will always have a place since it's the most popular fighting game. No one is going to play Power Rangers at a party. Besides, I feel like this is something Smash 4 (and PM if we're counting that) did adequately well, Ult is just a bit of a step in the wrong direction.

ironically the characters with large option pools: are all DLC or third party and we have seen the community's response to dealing with those characters, and in reponse, the balance team effectively made players not have to deal with them. Characters in smash will have clear overlapping traits for the foreseeable future.

I've noticed this too, probably not a coincidence that I'm enjoying Joker.

 

[Nobie]

While I play and like projectile-heavy characters, I'm a-ok with all the nerfs to projectiles. At the end of the day, it means Mewtwo won't get shield poked as often due to being a big boy. One might say that this benefits big bodies in general. The changes overall don't negate the purpose of projectiles; they just make it so that characters can close the gap a little easier, or survive longer in neutral.

Speaking of Mewtwo, I think the Frame 5 jab is going to be a significant deal. They literally gave the character a new fastest move (previous was a tie between jab and dtilt at 6 frames). There are now going to be situations in the past where Mewtwo's best option was to just roll away or disengage that it maybe, MAYBE can now throw out a jab on. It's also pretty high-damage and safe in general, so being able to tack on like 14% a little more often can and will add up.

Re: balance and homogeneity talk, I honestly think that people just get comfortable with whichever game they fell in love with, and then it's hard to shake those biases. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it still boggles my mind that there are Brawl players who would rather accept being 0-to-death chain-grabbed by top tiers if it meant that their character could do Wacky Advanced Tech, than losing a few obscure tools and being better across the board.

And more generally, I'm concerned that we're once again as a community not teaching new players and viewers to appreciate even remotely defensive play. Viewers don't seem to understand that projectile characters aren't avoiding interactions, but rather just being where they need to be. I think there just needs to be an emphasis on making people realize how in-trouble projectile characters tend to be up close.

 

[OnyanRings]

I love Mii Brawler (You can beat people up as Jesus, come on.) but playing them is a bit of a nightmare.
I always manage to rack up a lot of damage but i can never seem to get that final blow and send my opponent flying into the stratosphere.

 

[Kiligar]

I love Mii Brawler (You can beat people up as Jesus, come on.) but playing them is a bit of a nightmare.
I always manage to rack up a lot of damage but i can never seem to get that final blow and send my opponent flying into the stratosphere.

It requires a bit of experience with him to get bettter at taking the stock. His smash attacks will get you the stock at 70% with one read. Bair is a kill option at higher percent, which is plausible as it’s easy to outdamage the opponent with Mii Brawler. He has combos, but since not too many people use him seriously no one knows about them. His U-smash is probably his weakest smash attack but at the same time it’s fast and doesn’t have too much end lag, which is unique compared to the other two. Edge guarding works too, between shotput, explosive side kick and ZSS Down Special, although the latter takes a lot of time to master. Once you do get a kill and are a stock ahead, you can Chromicide with axe kick, or if you run a Suplex set use that to. They can even be used to reset stocks when you’re behind in percent. He has potential, but just because he looks like a meme, doesn’t mean he lacks a skill curve. Mii Swordfighter on the other hand...