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Shameless plug for a video of a friend of mine, the best ROB in the UK who was won a multitude of things in Ultimate already. It's a video detailing some more advanced combos involving drag down upair, and can be viewed as an extension of the recent Beefy Smash Doods video on ROBs gyro combos.
It's most relevant for ROB players of course but is generally an excellent video and I think worth discussion as it highlights some unexplored areas of a character who is already making some waves.
I still believe Pit was a decent char in smash 4. Good anti airs, juggling, edgeguarding, and a good grab game. His moves weren’t really safe, so u had to play him like a weaker version of meta knight, but it was passable.
Earth got married (and worked on SSBU apparently) and disappeared from smash for a while and people forgot why.
I'm sorry, but that's legitimately the extent of my competitive impression here.
He's literally n-air: the character; n-air combos into up-tilt at low percents, itself at mid percents, and b-air and up-air at kill percents. This sounds hilariously trite, but it works, and it's silly.
he doesn't even need a rest of a moveset. I mean, he has one, d-tilt is cool and f-air is cool and whatever. But it's not like Cloud, who has to use all of his aerials to space around on a shield. No, with Ike, you just full hop around waiting for the right n-air spacing to open itself up, and sometimes dash around when your opponent is ready to punish you for jumping.
I don't know if he's top 5 or something like that, but watching MKLeo n-air 7 times in neutral *in a row* is reminiscent of Bayonetta Heel Slide from 4.
I'm sorry, but that's legitimately the extent of my competitive impression here.
He's literally n-air: the character; n-air combos into up-tilt at low percents, itself at mid percents, and b-air and up-air at kill percents. This sounds hilariously trite, but it works, and it's silly.
he doesn't even need a rest of a moveset. I mean, he has one, d-tilt is cool and f-air is cool and whatever. But it's not like Cloud, who has to use all of his aerials to space around on a shield. No, with Ike, you just full hop around waiting for the right n-air spacing to open itself up, and sometimes dash around when your opponent is ready to punish you for jumping.
I don't know if he's top 5 or something like that, but watching MKLeo n-air 7 times in neutral *in a row* is reminiscent of Bayonetta Heel Slide from 4.
As I said early on in this thread: might be the best Nair in the game. Safe on shield when spaced, good damage, good range, barely any landing lag, combos into damage and vertical or horizontal kills, can be used in a ladder combo on Battlefield to kill at like 40%, covers pretty much a whole platform, good edgeguarding pressure...
You could (almost) make a flowchart gameplan for Ike. Its only (almost) because against good players you do need to mix in Dtilt and tomahawk grabs... and both of those things can lead into Nair.
On the flipside, Ike still doesn't really have a good way to get out of juggle situations, only real "get off me" options are Aether OoS and Nair OoS, his dash dance is pretty lackluster, his recovery is improved but still not great, no real options for dealing with projectiles and he has a very predictable gameplan. His Nair is amazing but maaaan he's in trouble if that thing ever gets nerfed.
I'm sorry, but that's legitimately the extent of my competitive impression here.
He's literally n-air: the character; n-air combos into up-tilt at low percents, itself at mid percents, and b-air and up-air at kill percents. This sounds hilariously trite, but it works, and it's silly.
he doesn't even need a rest of a moveset. I mean, he has one, d-tilt is cool and f-air is cool and whatever. But it's not like Cloud, who has to use all of his aerials to space around on a shield. No, with Ike, you just full hop around waiting for the right n-air spacing to open itself up, and sometimes dash around when your opponent is ready to punish you for jumping.
I don't know if he's top 5 or something like that, but watching MKLeo n-air 7 times in neutral *in a row* is reminiscent of Bayonetta Heel Slide from 4.
I still believe Pit was a decent char in smash 4. Good anti airs, juggling, edgeguarding, and a good grab game. His moves weren’t really safe, so u had to play him like a weaker version of meta knight, but it was passable.
Earth got married (and worked on SSBU apparently) and disappeared from smash for a while and people forgot why.
I'm sorry, but that's legitimately the extent of my competitive impression here.
He's literally n-air: the character; n-air combos into up-tilt at low percents, itself at mid percents, and b-air and up-air at kill percents. This sounds hilariously trite, but it works, and it's silly.
he doesn't even need a rest of a moveset. I mean, he has one, d-tilt is cool and f-air is cool and whatever. But it's not like Cloud, who has to use all of his aerials to space around on a shield. No, with Ike, you just full hop around waiting for the right n-air spacing to open itself up, and sometimes dash around when your opponent is ready to punish you for jumping.
I don't know if he's top 5 or something like that, but watching MKLeo n-air 7 times in neutral *in a row* is reminiscent of Bayonetta Heel Slide from 4.
This is very well done. Great work. A few questions:
Do you feel each Link provide strengths against other characters?
Can maining 1 Link allows transferable skills to another?
If so, can 1 type of Link that gets countered, allows another link to counter that counter? (lol)
No one's complaining that Ike is good, and in fact Ike is likely not even good enough to get that kind of hate; people are just complaining that it's so silly that his entire gameplan is n-air. It's just as silly to watch as it was to watch Bowser grab people over and over in smash 4.
For those curious, Ike is incentivized to use nair a LOT. This is because of the following changes:
Hitbox reduction of bair. Tougher to hit raw. Easier to hit nair->bair instead
Vastly reduced the power of fair. Raw fair no longer kills, even at 130+%. Barely more reach than nair
Dtilt has less reach, being outranged by Mario's dtilt
Jab has much less reach. Not really much of a move to use unless you have to
Very poor grab range, use only when needed (dash grab is mediocre at least instead of bad, and pivot grab is decent)
Other buffed moves such as utilt and ftilt, while great, are situational instead of bread and butter attacks. They are good when needed.
Uair is greatly buffed, and easily links into nair.
Nair has more range, speed, and little landing lag.
They buffed nair by making it faster, more range/disjoint, and comboing into the rest of Ike's kit. Nair is still punishable on parry and it can get shield grabbed or hit by frame 3-6 aerials if it hits high, so I don't think it's a broken move. It is still incredibly good and Ike won't really function well anymore if it's nerfed. It's just overused since they nerfed a lot of Ike's other moves. Grab and dtilt are mixups to keep opponents guessing.
Ike should still use a lot of his kit, though the buffs and nerfs forced Ike's nair to be the most used move by far. As Ike's meta develops, people will learn to utilize more of his kit, as well as optimize nair on platforms even better than now.
I thought Salem should've used his remote bombs a little better. But MkLeo is sooo good!
I felt bad for Zero since it looked like he was choking from pressure and started making mistakes and getting gimped as cloud when he could've avoided many of them. He, himself, in his own stream said it wasn't Cloud but his mistakes that costed him. To be honest, I am not really sure if that is entirely true. Cloud in Zero's hands looked like a Chrom today where he was doing really well on stage until he started getting gimped and shielded constantly. What are your thoughts?
Edit: He lost, but Peach is definitely a tough one for Link, I feel. Always seems to be right outside Link's hitboxes. And that twitch chat is toxic af lol
I don't buy the claim that it's not all n-air. I mean, even 1.0.1 smash 4 Diddy used moves other than grab -> d-throw -> up-air (ZeRo said in a post-Apex interview that his strategy was to de-prioritize the grab and focus on other options).
"all n-air" doesn't mean 100% n-air and only n-air. It's a yomi-based game so you'll obviously use other moves sometimes, but n-air is about as centralizing for Ike as a move can be to a character's kit.
I find it amusing that all the Fire Emblem characters have good Nairs. They always had good Nairs, but Ultimate's general low landing lag and universal frame 3 jump really help on top of whatever changes the FE characters received for their Nairs. Ike and Robin stand out with Robin being able to use Levin Sword with Nair and Ike's Nair was given a new animation where I feel like it's a reverse of what happened to Cloud's Nair in addition to frame data changes like it being faster on startup and the lower damage for its clean hit allowing it to combo because of the lower resulting knockback. Corrin's Nair is the only one I'm not really sure about.
On the subject of the animation for Cloud's and Ike's Nairs. As recently noted, Ultimate Cloud bends his arm bringing the Buster Sword back and up more, thus, shortening its range from below and in front of him. Probably behind or overall too if he is bringing the Buster Sword closer to his body. The pose he does is the same for both games, so his hurtbox is probably the same.
Clouds nair is a case of using animations to reduce hitbox size. The hitboxes are actually identical to Smash 4 but the difference is entirely in how he holds his sword. Cloud's such an alpha he bends his arm in ultimate thus reducing the range. Huh. (f13 on both images) pic.twitter.com/8oVZhO8nEO
Ike's Nair in the previous two games involved him swinging Ragnell around him in crouch position. So, good, almost 360 degree coverage and his hurtbox is in the center. Ultimate Ike's Nair has lean forward and swing Ragnell sort of like if it he was doing a tilted Spin Attack, but without the spin or as much of an aggressive spin. His hurtbox is probably larger at certain points of Nair since his left arm is outstretched for most of the move and his legs hang instead of being tucked in, but it's not as centered now. The most notable difference is that during the front hit of Nair, Ike's legs are behind Ragnell whereas with his old Nair, Ragnell overlaps his legs around at 180 degrees, in front of Ike. This doesn't happen until Ragnell is almost at 270 degrees, below Ike, in Ultimate.
For the back hit of Ultimate Nair, Ike's legs hang in place allowing them to stay behind Ragnell. Similarly, his legs and general hurtbox are behind Ragnell for his old Nair as Ike swings Ragnell far away enough from his body. His legs are more exposed when Ragnell is below him in Ultimate, but they're away from Ragnell for the the front and back hits of Nair rather than only for the back hit like in the previous games.
As for his left arm, it's positioned further out than in the previous games, but it's always behind where Ragnell is hitting.
Ike might hit further in front on him with Nair for Ultimate, but I think the animation change plays just as an important role. Specifically, how it positions his hurtbox to make it harder to contest Nair assuming the character you're using has something to outrange Ragnell much less reach any part of his hurtbox. Ike's Nair not only has good numbers, but it has a damn good animation.
It might be better to find footage of Ike gameplay and use YouTube's frame by frame viewer to compare the different animations for this part.
I don't buy the claim that it's not all n-air. I mean, even 1.0.1 smash 4 Diddy used moves other than grab -> d-throw -> up-air (ZeRo said in a post-Apex interview that his strategy was to de-prioritize the grab and focus on other options).
"all n-air" doesn't mean 100% n-air and only n-air. It's a yomi-based game so you'll obviously use other moves sometimes, but n-air is about as centralizing for Ike as a move can be to a character's kit.
Ike is just such a monster. He’s so fast and strong and his spacing with that giant sword is insane. You can’t count him out of a game at any point. I was really impressed with how Samsora played though and I love how Peach looks in this game. I was hoping he would pull it out because I really didn’t want a sword character to win this tournament
I hope they don’t nerf it into the ground because it’s not like it’s something that can’t be played around. I still think it’s way too early to nerf anything
Does anyone have a possible data on Ike's hitbox? (EDIT: see above post) I loved what Armada said on his stream: He thinks its still to early to tell whats good and bad. Theres 73 and counting characters in a game. Seeing something like Ike in top could be a huge surprise factor.
Ike should use all of his moves, it's just that due to the nerfs to fair (weak, below average landing lag buff from 18->14), it's not wise to use that move too much to space aerials. Likewise, bair's hitbox was reduced, making it tougher to hit players below, and even nearly parallel with Ike the move will miss up close.
That's why you see these moves used only occasionally. Ike has a use for all of his tilts, grabs, and aerials, but nair is his BnB spacing and combo tool, though he can use fair, bair, and reverse uair when the time calls for it in neutral, though they are clearly situational. In fact, the set winner was a carefully placed ftilt, and you can see how Leo adapted over the set by better placing his dtilt and keeping consistent use of grabs.
Like his fair, utilt was also nerfed in knockback due to a 2 damage decrease to be repurposed into an anti-air, which is why you see it used here and there (Leo probably could've used it a bit more, maybe not against peach though). I believe I saw Samsora survive a fresh utilt around 125% on PS2 easily.
Nair is not even broken on its own. It's frame 10, nerfed from 10/9 damage to 7.5/6, and is still able to be punished. It just has the best partner in his uair for consistent kills and bair for the DI mixup.
Ngl. I kinda want Luigi be able to recover with cyclone again even if it means he'll dumpster everyone's recovery again cause watching him try to come back on stage hurts.
I think both MuteAce and Samsora have done a fabulous job of showcasing just how deadly has become in this game. Right off the bat, Peach's landing lag buffs (particularly her N-Air) have shot her already good damage output into the mesosphere. Samsora consistently managed to take foes from 0 all the way to 50+ in a short amount of time and often could outright zero death them by F-Airing them in the drop zone after N-Air escorting them. But even more notable, it's quite clear that nerfs to air dodge have made Peach's advantage stat utterly horrifying for many characters. If you don't have top tier landing moves or multiple jumps, Peach's Up Air can keep you in juggle disadvantage forever. It was just nasty watching MuteAce put so much damage on ZeRo's Diddy just by keeping him in the air. With only 1 air dodge at your disposal until you land or are hit, Peach's juggle game game has become potent. But not nearly as potent as her edgeguarding game. Peach already edgeguarded exceptionally well in SSB4, but the pesky OP air dodge in that game often allowed her foes to skirt death more often than they should have. But now that's a thing of the past. If you have to recover low against Peach and don't have a danagerous reovery move at your beckoning or multiple jumps to help you get higher and into wave air dodge distance, you're pretty much at her mercy. N-Air, D-Air, F-Air, and Turnips are so lethal off stage now with your double jump being more precious than ever. Samsora and MuteAce were able to make so many of their opponents look utterly helpless offstage. Heck just watch Samsora's game against Dabuz to see the carnage that can be wrought. (Man 's Peach matchup in SSB4 already stunk and now it's even MORE brutal. It seems it either get 2+ Moniques asap or die in that matchup.)
All in all, between MuteAce and Samsora, Peach has put on a very strong showing today for Ultimate's early meta with the latter utterly wripping through losers and almost getting the bracket reset on MKLeo. So far Peach/Daisy are definitely proving themselves as potent (albiet still tough to utilize) tournament picks.
