Ziodyne 21
Smash Lord
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2016
- Messages
- 1,681
@meleebrawler
You mention f-smash as a neutral tool against short hop and shield--but f-smashes in general aren't used for this. smashes have lots of endlag, so usually when you're f-smashing or up-smashing in neutral you're calling out a habit. If a committal smash is one of your main answers to short hop* and one of your main ways to pressure shield, then you're in deep trouble as a character.
Quick example: ZSS in the Fox matchup has a hard time punishing Fox for jumping, since Fox lands so fast. ZSS players deal with this by calling out the Fox's jumping habits and up-smashing. You can see Marss and Nairo do this against Light all the time. But ZSS' up-smash is a very committal move, so as soon as Light catches on, Marss and Light start losing stocks to Fox just waiting for the up-smash and punishing. Some mindgames and back-and-forth are involved here, but the advantage nevertheless clearly belongs to Fox: it's less commitment for Fox to wait than it is for ZSS to up-smash.
And something similar applies to Byleth vs. shields. The burden of spacing isn't on the shielder; it's on Byleth. If you use a lance f-smash against someone as Byleth, you have to space it so that you can't just get punished OOS. Since Byleth has lower mobility, and there are so many ways to transition into a shield (walk, run, dash, land, spotdodge, etc), the advantage should be the shielder's.
This isn't an open-and-shut case of shields dismantling Byleth though; obviously Byleth can grab, or poke with d-tilt, or something else, but it looks like an advantage all the same.
*note here on Byleth vs. short hop: f-air is very good against short hops anyway, you don't even need angled f-smash. You should not be short hopping against Byleth at max spear range. It seems really counterintuitive. Does Byleth have a way to force you to jump at that range? Fear of taking shield damage because Amyr could break your shield doesn't seem compelling enough.
Yeah, I've acknowledged that the ledge is a powerful position for Byleth. Seems like one of the game's best ledgetrappers, just like Piranha Plant. I thought that this discussion so far had been entirely in the context of Byleth's neutral. Following the comment chain back to my original post, I said: "Zoning with what? ... Reactable neutral moves on a character with nearly game-worst mobility? Wow, that is really bad."
It's neutral where I think that Byleth's design should shine, but where it seems to fall apart the hardest based on the current footage.
Just for reference, S4 Corrin Pin was extremely overtuned and almost zero-commitment against some characters like Mario, who couldn't consistently punish the kick. That's the kind of move this design would need to really come together, imo.
Okay this may sound kinda sacrlige consdiering Smash 4 had Bayo and Cloud and whatnot.
But Corrin's S4 pin was not just overtuned, it was a borderline broken move, only kept from being completely ridiculous by the below-average mobility of Corrin him/herself. It was basically kinda like ZSS's flip-jump of this game. generally Non-comittal, could be used to escape disavantage situations with much of the cast not being able to punish it. and it killed early when it connects.
Yea it could be somewhat easy to guard against in neutral yes but it was safe and non comittal as long as you dont get predictable with it you could get easy punishes.
It was not just Mario and similar short-ranged characters. Most Corrin MU's hinged on how well the character could "deal" with Pin. If you used Ness, well then TS
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