Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[The_Bookworm]

Personally I thought we had well established that Mega Man was a very good character. Great kill confirms, good recovery, excellent zoning game, great damage output, amazing OOS options with Metal Blade, (and now it's been shown they can do a Metal Blade in front, although it's quite difficult.), good top representatives with Kameme and yeti, and being #25 on the OrionStats 2020 TTS, even with results being a bit more difficult to examine since offline tournaments were put on hold.

I am curious what inspired your very pessimistic take on a character that is generally regarded as a very good high tier character, and your reasoning on the matter.

Mega Man is pretty good, but he kinda fell off a bit this year, even prior to the switch to online. His main representatives hasn't really done too much lately, and Kameme was actually using more and more Wario in tournaments than Mega Man. At the same time, characters like Sonic, Cloud, Young Link, Ness, and Samus have rose in metagame presence since then, when Mega Man kinda stagnated.

Again, he is still pretty good, but the competition gets even more fierce as time goes on, especially after all the crazy stuff mid tiers have been getting at 7.0 and 8.0.

 

[PK Gaming]

So... Thinkaman was right about K.Rool's Side B buff fundamentally changing his character.

https://t.co/pm3tNuRBLz

— Sxips (@sxips) August 17, 2020

He's still Not Great, but his Side B straight up has to be respected now. I'd even go as far as to say that K. Rool (and Kirby as well) have legitimately kuso tools at their disposal now. Obviously this is online so take this with a grain of salt, but... yeah, not looking forward to fighting that ******* going forward

 

[Frihetsanka]

So... Thinkaman was right about K.Rool's Side B buff fundamentally changing his character.

https://t.co/pm3tNuRBLz

— Sxips (@sxips) August 17, 2020

He's still Not Great, but his Side B straight up has to be respected now. I'd even go as far as to say that K. Rool (and Kirby as well) have legitimately kuso tools at their disposal now. Obviously this is online so take this with a grain of salt, but... yeah, not looking forward to fighting that ******* going forward

I fail to see how that's related to his side-B having more armor. All of that he could've done prior to 8.0.0, except for back throw killing. Which reminds me, mental note: His back throw is scary now.

 

[KirbySquad101]

While the clip doesn't show the real prowess King K. Rool's Crownerang, what CAN show its prowess is a little bit of math:

King K. Rool's Crownerang when returning deals 7% damage; before 8.0.0, K. Rool's armor threshold during this attack was 6%. In other words, literally EVERY reflector in the game, even one's with a 1x multiplier like G&W's Oil Panic or Pit's Upperdash Arm could turn it against K. Rool and put him in a bad spot.

But since patch 8.0.0, that threshold doubled from a 6% to a whooping 12%; this means that if you actually WANT to break King. K Rool out of his armor, you need to have a multiplier of at least 1.71428 (doesn't divide evenly) on your reflector. And you'd be surprised of how much that actually narrows it down.

For reference, here's a list of all the reflectors in the game, their multipliers, and the amount of damage they deal off of a reflect Crownerang, from smallest to largest:

: Oil Panic (1x) (7%)
: Upperdash Arm (1x) (7%)
: Reflector (1.2x) (8.4%)
: Naryu's Love (1.25x) (8.75%)
: Reflector (1.4x) (9.8%)
: Confusion (1.4x) (9.8%)
: Reflect Barrier (1.4x) (9.8%)
: Cape (1.5x) (10.5%)
: Reflector (1.5x) (10.5%)
: Bounce (1.5x) (10.5%)
: Inhale (1.5x) (10.5%)
: Forward Smash (1.5x) (10.5%)
: Echo Reflector (1.5x) (10.5%)
: Arm Rotor (1.5x) (10.5%)
: Guardian Orbitars (1.5x) (10.5%)
: Super Sheet (1.6x) (11.2%)
: Makarakarn (1.6x) (11.2%)
: Reversal Slash (1.8x) (12.6%)
: Up Smash (1.8x) (12.6%)
: Forward Smash (2x) (14%)

That makes THREE characters that actually have an exclusive way to deal with Crownerang (one of which isn't even practical in the slightest). It even laughs in the face of Joker's monstrous Arsene reflect. I mean, you're still taking the damage, but how much of that matters when you're living up to +150% in most situations to begin with?

And this isn't even taking into account the number of jump-ins/dash-ins that are negated by the move now (aside from superheavies how many practical landing aerials do you know that deal more than 11% damage, let alone 12%?)

The fact that most of the cast no longer has an easy answer to one of Rool's primary zoning/neutral options gives him SO much breathing room in a ton of match-ups, doubly so against characters who want to get in his face like Mario, Fox, Wolf, G&W, Falco, Pit, etc. The character's still got issues, but he's gotten so much better at - put simply - being King K. Rool now, which means playing hard to get for someone so big and slow.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

That makes THREE characters that actually have an exclusive way to deal with Crownerang (one of which isn't even practical in the slightest). It even laughs in the face of Joker's monstrous Arsene reflect. I mean, you're still taking the damage, but how much of that matters when you're living up to +150% in most situations to begin with?

I think that as players continue to improve, K. Rool's recovery is going to kind of have the Brawl Snake trajectory where once you're off stage past a certain percent you're mostly just buying time/taking a bunch of additional damage to get back on the stage.

K. Rool's recovery is legitimately kind of exploitable. I know this isn't a hot take but I think the degree to which you can mess with him is often glossed over a bit when we have discussions about him.

He lives to 150% but I've taken him from 50-120 and even eventually taken stocks just by repeatedly going out and hitting him during his Up-B and I don't even play a character who is particularly good offstage. I don't want to make it seem like I'm saying he's a garbage character because his recovery is exploitable, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that taking additional damage is still a thing he largely will want to avoid because being offstage in many matchups should mean he's using his "life bar" as a recovery currency.

 

[Nah]

I'd even go as far as to say that K. Rool (and Kirby as well) have legitimately kuso tools at their disposal now.

What is a "kuso tool"?

 

[Firox]

I think that as players continue to improve, K. Rool's recovery is going to kind of have the Brawl Snake trajectory where once you're off stage past a certain percent you're mostly just buying time/taking a bunch of additional damage to get back on the stage.

K. Rool's recovery is legitimately kind of exploitable. I know this isn't a hot take but I think the degree to which you can mess with him is often glossed over a bit when we have discussions about him.

He lives to 150% but I've taken him from 50-120 and even eventually taken stocks just by repeatedly going out and hitting him during his Up-B and I don't even play a character who is particularly good offstage. I don't want to make it seem like I'm saying he's a garbage character because his recovery is exploitable, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that taking additional damage is still a thing he largely will want to avoid because being offstage in many matchups should mean he's using his "life bar" as a recovery currency.

I can vouch for how exploitable Krool's recovery is, especially for Greninja. Krool's up B is super linear vertically which makes it easy to predict and spike with Substitute angled down (on the last stock) or knock off the top angled up (at high percent) regardless of the propeller's massive hitbox. Also, Krool is basically helpless from the side when recovering making it easy to stage spike when he tries to come up directly below the ledge. Add in the fact that Greninja's Fair can power through crown's heavy armor, the matchup just really isn't good for Krool.

 

[B_Burg]

Personally I thought we had well established that Mega Man was a very good character. Great kill confirms, good recovery, excellent zoning game, great damage output, amazing OOS options with Metal Blade, (and now it's been shown they can do a Metal Blade in front, although it's quite difficult.), good top representatives with Kameme and yeti, and being #25 on the OrionStats 2020 TTS, even with results being a bit more difficult to examine since offline tournaments were put on hold.

I am curious what inspired your very pessimistic take on a character that is generally regarded as a very good high tier character, and your reasoning on the matter.

I don't know when either of these things in particular were established, but I feel like I must be missing something.

That said I do agree that Megaman is still pretty good overall, but as has been said, I think he's just had kind of a slow/quiet year. It doesn't help that people assumed he would be great in tournaments now that so many were going online, but I think that was mostly just people theory crafting that Megaman was going to be better online than he really is in practice.

 

[Aaron1997]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Big glitch discovered. Parrying Projectiles doesn't work like its suppose to

 

[The_Bookworm]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Big glitch discovered. Parrying Projectiles doesn't work like its suppose to

I don't really see people parry projectiles that often, so I don't think this will affect the meta too much.

However, this seems like a really annoying inconsistency with the game, which I would like to see fixed.

 

[StrangeKitten]

A recovery buff is still needed in order to make K Rool an actually good character. To be clear, I don't mean buffing the distance it travels, because it's very good on that front. The problem is that it's slow and lacks a hitbox outside of the propeller. It could be a very good recovery if they sped it up and/or gave it some armor. I know it might seem silly at first glance to buff a far-traveling recovery on such a heavy character, but I honestly think he needs it. K Rool's recovery is honestly one of the most exploitable in the entire game right now, I think mainly because it travels so slowly. If it was faster, he'd probably still take some hits while recovering, but would make it to ledge quickly after. As it is now, it's easy for K Rool to just get stuck in a loop of constantly getting hit. Every character other than probably Little Mac can keep bairing it (I mean, I'm sure Mac can, I'd just be worried he'd screw himself over in the process and die). Certain projectiles are especially horrible for K Rool - I'll never forget watching a set where a (pre-buffs) K Rool player was doing great against one of the best Peach players, until he had to recover. Turnip city, to the point it invalidated K Rool's weight, and man, being heavy counts for a lot less when you're taking 60+ from projectiles because your recovery is so sluggish. It ain't just Turnips that can do it, either. Bombs, Metal Blade, and Thunder Jolt all come to mind.

 

[meleebrawler]

'Tis plain to see the Baron K. Roolenstein battle is not fresh in many people's minds, in which the Propellerpack is nothing more than an impractical liability. It has always been sluggish and left him open for damage.

 

[TennisBall]

I don't know when either of these things in particular were established, but I feel like I must be missing something.

That said I do agree that Megaman is still pretty good overall, but as has been said, I think he's just had kind of a slow/quiet year. It doesn't help that people assumed he would be great in tournaments now that so many were going online, but I think that was mostly just people theory crafting that Megaman was going to be better online than he really is in practice.

Metal Blade/Z-Drop Metal Blade into Up Tilt is a pretty reliable kill confirm at top level with how many ways you can link into it and generally he has a very strong zoning game and I would classify keeping your opponent out for long periods of time as great damage output, there are twitter combos with metal blade but seeing as how they aren't particularly noticeable in competitive play I'll put them aside for now.

Mega Man is pretty good, but he kinda fell off a bit this year, even prior to the switch to online. His main representatives hasn't really done too much lately, and Kameme was actually using more and more Wario in tournaments than Mega Man. At the same time, characters like Sonic, Cloud, Young Link, Ness, and Samus have rose in metagame presence since then, when Mega Man kinda stagnated.

Again, he is still pretty good, but the competition gets even more fierce as time goes on, especially after all the crazy stuff mid tiers have been getting at 7.0 and 8.0.

It was quite refreshing to hear a reasonable explanation for a take I would rarely see, I'll have to keep them in mind.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Mega Man is a fantastic character! He can keep pelleting for so long, which gets further backed up by Leaf Shield and Metal Blade. He walls opponents out very effectively, and with a pretty heavy weight value and solid recovery, he can tack on a lot of extra credit before losing his stock. He has solid kill moves, solid kill confirms, and solid kill power. I'm sure my frame of reference is somewhat limited because I don't play the character, nor do I watch much competitive play of him. But he seems really good imo

 

[G-Guy]

Just let K. Rool cancel upB with an aerial or air dodge and we are good to go...

 

[Swamp Sensei]

I dunno, I think K.Rool's recovery is fine.

It's not the best, but I think the weaknesses are intentional and give very deliberate counter play.

 

[blackghost]

Cosmos won another tournament with solo Corrin, beating Samsora, 2thiccnicc, and Kola twice, all without dropping a set. Cosmos has been doing well with Corrin lately, it may only be online tournaments but Corrin's viability is looking very promising.

Corrin is hardly a brand new character that we've never seen before: She was top 13 in Smash 4, and she's looking good again in this game. Also, keep in mind that Corrin got massively buffed in 8.0.0, probably the most buffed character in all of Ultimate's lifespan if I were to make an estimate. Corrin also got other players before Cosmos picked her up and people have been playing her for themselves.

this is just fundamentally not true. corrin is essentially based on previous usage a brand new character with a main that has experience using her. Character x existing in smash 4 doesnt mean they now have that same exist in smash ultimate. no smash 4 top tier is even close to what they were in ultimate in terms of gameplay or gameplay. zss is probably the closest overall but still a very different character. Corrin players have a mjor head start on corrin counter play. but lets wait before we start putting corrin in toptier status.

 

[Damned1]

As for the K. Rool: i don't think his recovery is the problem. Sure, it's exploitable... but so are many others and there is some limited counterplay (protip: you can move slightly away from the stage if the opponent jumps down to catch them with your hitbox). The only POSSIBLE changes for UpB i would like to see (they ain't adding the ability to airdodge out of it. I wish i was wrong tho) are giving us more speed on it and control over the direction it's going (is it possible tho?) and MAYBE reverting the 2.0 nerf (this was the only one that actually made a difference. A small difference, but still a difference).


More importantly, i would like to see some end lag reduction, mainly on UpSmash (71 frames total is way, way of an overkill for the kind of move it is, even 61 would be IMO a little too laggy. Heck, even Down Smash lasts "only" 63 frames), but also UpAir (but not by much, we dont want it to be an unlimited jump) and maybe - yes, i will say it - Crown (but a very, very small buff, probably a few frames cut, if any ).

Spoiler

Also buff FSmash, this move is just sad, even for the type of attack it is.

I have written it already, but here it goes again: K. rool is now almost completely fix'd. His kit works properly for the most part (except FSmash...), so now it's only about actual "buffs" as oppose to "fixes".

EDIT: i completely forgot when talking Crown endlag: reduce the lag on Pickup animation too, or make it cancelable (if possible).

 

[SwagGuy99]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Big glitch discovered. Parrying Projectiles doesn't work like its suppose to

Luigi's z-air is also affected by this.

Luigi's point-blank ZAir is -3 and should be -6 on parry. But outside of training mode, it's -1 on parry.

— 🏳️‍🌈Hitbox Enthusiast Zeck🏳️‍🌈 (@Zeckemyro) August 18, 2020

 

[Frihetsanka]

this is just fundamentally not true. corrin is essentially based on previous usage a brand new character with a main that has experience using her. Character x existing in smash 4 doesnt mean they now have that same exist in smash ultimate. no smash 4 top tier is even close to what they were in ultimate in terms of gameplay or gameplay. zss is probably the closest overall but still a very different character. Corrin players have a mjor head start on corrin counter play. but lets wait before we start putting corrin in toptier status.

Eh, yeah, I don't think she's top tier? I think she's high tier. Top 20, maybe top 25 if you're feeling a bit pessimistic. We actually can look at her tools though and compared them to Smash 4, and also try to figure out how she'd fit the meta, and while she does have some losing MUs it doesn't seem terrible. In regards to characters changing from 4, that's true, but you should look at the actual changes to try to figure out how much they've changed. Corrin has gotten a bunch of good buffs over the course of Ultimate, and she had a good kit to begin with (I don't think she was quite as bad as people thought prior to 8.0.0, probably in the bottom 20 range).

But top tier? No, that does seem a bit unlikely. I don't think she's top 15, much less top 10. We should also keep in mind that the overall power level has been more flattened: The best are not as good as in 4, the worst are not as bad.

 

[MAIZ_ANONIMO]

I legitimately am not able to comprehend why people think Corrin is mid tier (Or even STILL low tier for some reason?) 8.0 Really did make them jump from arguably bottom 15 (Or even 10) to a high tier (Top 25 most likely, but you could make an argument for Top 20 and I'd still believe you). Pre-patch Corrin's weaknesses were in their bad mobility, god-awful recovery and lack of kill power (They essentially gutted them from Smash 4 and took away everything that made them Top 15 in that game).

But now, that 8.0.0 has arrived, it's clear to see that the arguments of Corrin being mid tier or worse fall almost completely apart (Hell, even in 4.0.0, their recovery was buffed, and as well as f-smash connecting more consistently and reliably with almost every update). Corrin's kill power isn't as strong as in Smash 4, but saying that they can't kill, when they have setups into tipper pin, neutral B and bair is simply ludicrous. Do they still have a bad mobility? Of course, but does it eclipse their areas of strength (Those being a brutal advantage state, solid mixup game, one of the best approach tools in the game, an excellent, above-average length disjoint, and excellent frame data)? No, it does not.

By the way Frihetsanka , great post. i agree.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Lockhart Series

1st: Sparg0
2nd: Maister
3rd: T3 DOM
4th: Mr. E
5th: BestNess
5th: Sharp (latter three he used in pools)
7th: Sonix
7th: Epic_Gabriel
9th: Sinji
9th: SKITTLES!!
9th: TheMightyDialga
9th: MkLeo
13th: Smallleft
13th: SHADIC
13th: Ravenking
13th: ShinyMark


Amazing performance from T3 DOM, narrowly defeating Sparg0, MkLeo, and Sharp to achieve his high placement.

Sparg0 also had an amazing run. After losing very early in bracket to T3 DOM, he went on a loser's bracket rampage, beating Lui$, The6Master, ShinyMark, and MkLeo, only to get to top 8. Once in top 8, he beat Sonix, BestNess, Mr. E, T3 DOM, and then Maister twice to win the whole tournament.

 

[|RK|]

I don't really see people parry projectiles that often, so I don't think this will affect the meta too much.

However, this seems like a really annoying inconsistency with the game, which I would like to see fixed.

It's actually massive for the meta, though. Why do you think people don't parry projectiles?

There's so much pressure that gets destroyed with parrying being implemented properly. Chars like Pikachu and Mario won't be able to just toss out neutral b and run up. You get extra frames to move in.

This is the biggest thing I've seen about the game in actual months - why would you parry if moves get SAFER? There's so much more you can get away with.

As someone playing a char that struggles to get in, this is maybe the biggest possible oversight. Incredible...

 

[Arthur97]

Until it gets fixed. Maybe. They still haven't fixed Terry.

 

[B_Burg]

Metal Blade/Z-Drop Metal Blade into Up Tilt is a pretty reliable kill confirm at top level with how many ways you can link into it and generally he has a very strong zoning game and I would classify keeping your opponent out for long periods of time as great damage output, there are twitter combos with metal blade but seeing as how they aren't particularly noticeable in competitive play I'll put them aside for now.

For now I think I'm going to have to agree to disagree as far as the ko confirm point is concerned, but this is an interesting interpretation of damage output I hadn't fully considered before.

I still don't know that I would agree that his damage output is great or even really good, but I appreciate the different perspective. It's something that I want to pay attention for in higher level gameplay going forward and see if my opinion sways on it, so thank you for the explanation.

 

[Emblem Lord]

It's actually massive for the meta, though. Why do you think people don't parry projectiles?

There's so much pressure that gets destroyed with parrying being implemented properly. Chars like Pikachu and Mario won't be able to just toss out neutral b and run up. You get extra frames to move in.

This is the biggest thing I've seen about the game in actual months - why would you parry if moves get SAFER? There's so much more you can get away with.

As someone playing a char that struggles to get in, this is maybe the biggest possible oversight. Incredible...

I have decided to not even touch the game until it gets fixed.

The game is BUILT around parry.

That is the reason so much offense is so abusive and safe. Parry is meant to check it.

But Parry doesn't function correctly.

Unacceptable.

 

[whitesnake]

As for the K. Rool: i don't think his recovery is the problem. Sure, it's exploitable... but so are many others and there is some limited counterplay (protip: you can move slightly away from the stage if the opponent jumps down to catch them with your hitbox). The only POSSIBLE changes for UpB i would like to see (they ain't adding the ability to airdodge out of it. I wish i was wrong tho) are giving us more speed on it and control over the direction it's going (is it possible tho?) and MAYBE reverting the 2.0 nerf (this was the only one that actually made a difference. A small difference, but still a difference).


More importantly, i would like to see some end lag reduction, mainly on UpSmash (71 frames total is way, way of an overkill for the kind of move it is, even 61 would be IMO a little too laggy. Heck, even Down Smash lasts "only" 63 frames), but also UpAir (but not by much, we dont want it to be an unlimited jump) and maybe - yes, i will say it - Crown (but a very, very small buff, probably a few frames cut, if any ).

Spoiler

Also buff FSmash, this move is just sad, even for the type of attack it is.

I have written it already, but here it goes again: K. rool is now almost completely fix'd. His kit works properly for the most part (except FSmash...), so now it's only about actual "buffs" as oppose to "fixes".

EDIT: i completely forgot when talking Crown endlag: reduce the lag on Pickup animation too, or make it cancelable (if possible).

agreed on fsmash! Think it needs to be both faster and stronger. Ftilt is such a solid move I’d say 9 of 10 times it makes sense to throw the tilt over smash... wish that ratio were more even

 

[Frihetsanka]

Corrin's kill power isn't as strong as in Smash 4[...]

Unless I'm missing something I'd say it's stronger in general.

After losing very early in bracket to T3 DOM, he went on a loser's bracket rampage, beating Lui$

SHADIC actually sent Lui$ to losers. Solid run from SHADIC, winning vs Lui$ in winners and Vermillion in losers, losing to Sharp and Mr. E.

 

[The_Bookworm]

SHADIC actually sent Lui$ to losers.

I know. I said that Sparg0 beat Lui$ as part of his insane loser's bracket run.
Lui$ lost to SHADIC in winner's and then to Sparg0 in loser's.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I know. I said that Sparg0 beat Lui$ as part of his insane loser's bracket run.
Lui$ lost to SHADIC in winner's and then to Sparg0 in loser's.

I wasn't contradicting you, just pointing out that it was a very good win for SHADIC.

 

[TennisBall]

I'm very intrigued by T3 DOM. You probably knew this, but he is probably the best Belmont main in the world after Riddles dropped the character and has some very decent placings offline such as 33rd at Kongo Saga, 49th at Shine, and having wins on Elegant, Lumbre, Charliedaking, and MuteAce. Despite his character picking, I hadn't seen him on WiFi tournaments until about a week ago.

He's made quite the splash in the past two weeks or so, in addition to his 3rd at Lockhart series that Bookworm mentioned, he also very recently got 1st at Mega Smash Mondays Online 16, out of 608 entrants and beating Tyrant, ChunkyKong, and Ravenking, and 13th at the GOML Fundraiser Tournament out of 2,056 entrants and while not getting too many major wins aside from DKWill, the incredible placement in of itself more than makes up for this fact.
He seems to have just poofed into previlence, and I wonder how much further he can go in an online meta like this.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

"Nay" vote from me re: buffing K. Rool's recovery.

I think if your character lives that late, having a recovery with good travel and a bit of "spike insurance" is good enough.

Again, I don't think K. Rool is a hopeless character and though his recovery is exploitable, I'd rather any changes to him come to his fundamental problem matchups.

What Ultimate has shown me is that heavy characters with large frames are probably just unhealthy for a competitive meta. Don't misunderstand me, this isn't a personal attack on folks who like the heavies. I just feel like having a large frame is such an enormous disadvantage that your advantages need to be overwhelmingly silly in order to even have a chance at winning matches against a top tier character piloted by a skilled player.

When I watch DKWill or Leon or whatever I just watch them get juggled for 30-40 seconds and then land a DK Up-B near the ledge at 60% and take a stock and then it's back to trying to escape disadvantage for another solid minute or whatever. Maybe they get a random shieldbreak or spike or whatever.

Some of this could be addressed with better conveyance. I think Smash has a problem with visibility in general these days. Smash 64 and Melee are relatively "simple" games in that attacks do more or less what you expect them to do and thus conveyance isn't a huge problem. But as we buff more and more large characters with armor, buries, shield breaks, and the like, I start to wish stuff like DK's side-b in the air had an animation that matched its hitbox. This is an Ultimate-wide issue IMO and isn't just a heavy problem (I talked about Hero crit conveyance issues above, and stuff like pancaking and recovery animations making **** whiff are super annoying) but its' most noticeable with them because a successful hit means you die.

Like I would love to know at a glance without studying frame data when K. Rool can't be launched. I'd feel a lot better about him being buffed in various ways if there were more frequent visual reminders of his armor and all of that.

Sorry that this turned into a different topic, I just started thinking about it and wanted to get my thoughts down.

 

[Sinister Slush]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Big glitch discovered. Parrying Projectiles doesn't work like its suppose to

The biggest takeaway from this that irks me is that the supposed buff to parrying projectiles was back in 3.0.0/Joker patch.
How did we go 5 characters deep into this game and the devs never realized they implemented such a huge change for training mode only. Was honestly bewildered at the time but then after thinking for awhile with how S4 was handled and now Ult, I can't be surprised by the decision making of the devs anymore.

 

[Firox]

The biggest takeaway from this that irks me is that the supposed buff to parrying projectiles was back in 3.0.0/Joker patch.
How did we go 5 characters deep into this game and the devs never realized they implemented such a huge change for training mode only. Was honestly bewildered at the time but then after thinking for awhile with how S4 was handled and now Ult, I can't be surprised by the decision making of the devs anymore.

To be fair, it wasn't just the devs that missed the fact that the change was training mode only. The fact that WE'RE only now realizing this goes to show how little impact projectile parrying has had in the meta to begin with. I mean, in practice, how often would a competent player throw a projectile so close to their opponent that parry frames would cost them any significant damage? And how many frames was the buff in the first place? 2 extra frames or something?

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

To be fair, it wasn't just the devs that missed the fact that the change was training mode only. The fact that WE'RE only now realizing this goes to show how little impact projectile parrying has had in the meta to begin with. I mean, in practice, how often would a competent player throw a projectile so close to their opponent that parry frames would cost them any significant damage? And how many frames was the buff in the first place? 2 extra frames or something?

I'm in complete agreement. I think parrying projectiles is one of those things that seems intuitively like it'd be a big deal (and potentially it might be one day as players improve) but come on. It took us 5 major revisions to notice that this was even a problem.

I do think however that players could be even better about parrying and that we haven't really considered all of the possible ramifications.

Hot take: the gamecube controller makes people worse at parrying because of the play on the default shield button and people should probably stop using it.

 

[Sinister Slush]

People have generally used training mode to practice parry timings, so the first thing people do to try out any kind of labbing is usually to start up training mode not go into 1vs1. Hell the training pack mods is for TM as well.

It's not like people haven't been doing research or anything, was a oversight for players and I guess devs alike somehow despite them having the original code in their hands.

 

[whitesnake]

"Nay" vote from me re: buffing K. Rool's recovery.

I think if your character lives that late, having a recovery with good travel and a bit of "spike insurance" is good enough.

Again, I don't think K. Rool is a hopeless character and though his recovery is exploitable, I'd rather any changes to him come to his fundamental problem matchups.

What Ultimate has shown me is that heavy characters with large frames are probably just unhealthy for a competitive meta. Don't misunderstand me, this isn't a personal attack on folks who like the heavies. I just feel like having a large frame is such an enormous disadvantage that your advantages need to be overwhelmingly silly in order to even have a chance at winning matches against a top tier character piloted by a skilled player.

When I watch DKWill or Leon or whatever I just watch them get juggled for 30-40 seconds and then land a DK Up-B near the ledge at 60% and take a stock and then it's back to trying to escape disadvantage for another solid minute or whatever. Maybe they get a random shieldbreak or spike or whatever.

Some of this could be addressed with better conveyance. I think Smash has a problem with visibility in general these days. Smash 64 and Melee are relatively "simple" games in that attacks do more or less what you expect them to do and thus conveyance isn't a huge problem. But as we buff more and more large characters with armor, buries, shield breaks, and the like, I start to wish stuff like DK's side-b in the air had an animation that matched its hitbox. This is an Ultimate-wide issue IMO and isn't just a heavy problem (I talked about Hero crit conveyance issues above, and stuff like pancaking and recovery animations making **** whiff are super annoying) but its' most noticeable with them because a successful hit means you die.

Like I would love to know at a glance without studying frame data when K. Rool can't be launched. I'd feel a lot better about him being buffed in various ways if there were more frequent visual reminders of his armor and all of that.

Sorry that this turned into a different topic, I just started thinking about it and wanted to get my thoughts down.

Bit odd to have “this heavy should not be buffed” and “no heavy is competitively viable” in the same post

The heavies have huge hitboxes and need advantages to compensate. K fool’s recovery is very predictable and goes to the ledge 90% of the time

at minimum the heavies should be better at surviving than the smaller, lighter top tiers. You could let k rool literally fly at will & he would still be worse than pikachu, who at present has a better recovery in addition to smaller hotbox and better frame data

no smash game yet has produced a top tier heavy. Bring on the buffs!

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Bit odd to have “this heavy should not be buffed” and “no heavy is competitively viable” in the same post

It's a case-by-case scenario.

I do agree that K. Rool's recovery is fine enough. Although, I wouldn't hate being able to recover high every once and a while since Kopter takes forever to wind down and drop, along with having 30 frames of landing lag... (Also Tetrakarn is a big middle finger to Kopter)

But since is a hot topic, for now, I'll give my 2 cents on it.

In short: Krown Armor buffed him against almost everyone.
He can armor most fast moves, belly armor one-shots are basically gone (Outside of some MU's), and he can punish even harder with every other buff, most noticeably out of a grab. This character's design is now defined as a Punish Heavy Grappling Tank with part zoning capability.

Way better than in the base-game/2.0 when IMO he was a contender for one of the worst.
Now, I'd argue a solid mid-tier.
While he's not great and still has a few super bad MU's, he doesn't consistently struggle to the level of anymore.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Another tournament done, The Box: Juice Box #10. Some interesting notes:

Mew2King 9th place primarily with Mr. Game & Watch, beating players like Sharp and Enzo and taking a game off of Cosmos. Comos 3rd place, again with solo Corrin, losing to MkLeo and Tweek. The Tweek set was very interesting since he won a game and almost won game 3 as well, but ultimately he ended up 1-3 versus Tweek's Diddy Kong. Still, it seems like he's doing better versus Tweek's Diddy, especially compared to the FT10 they played some weeks ago. Perhaps the Aaron practice is paying off?

MkLeo had a dominant run, not dropping a single set and 3-0:ing both Cosmos in Winners Finals and Tweek in Grand Finals. MkLeo mostly played Byleth, although apparently he used some Cloud in top 64 and Wolf versus Ned in top 8 (and Wolf/Cloud once in pools).

Samsora out at 13th, which, given the tournament, seems a little disappointing. Then again, he was seeded 18th so I guess 13th isn't too bad. He lost to MiLe, the Yoshi, and Regi Shikimi, the Mr. Game & Watch. MiLe did out rank Samsora in the Wi-Fi ranking (#40 vs Samsora's #49), so I guess it's not too surprising.

After watching MkLeo's Byleth, I've come to the following conclusion: Byleth isn't a secret top 25 character or anything, MkLeo is just incredibly skilled and many people don't know the matchup. Remember early Smash Ultimate, when people thought Ike might be top tier because of MkLeo? Yeah, I suspect Byleth might be in a similar situation. Maybe I'll change my mind later, but I don't think she's even top 40 right now. MkLeo is very skilled though, and he can make -1 MUs look like winning MUs.

Tournament: https://smash.gg/tournament/the-box-juice-box-10/details

 

[StrangeKitten]

I don't think Byleth is all that good, either. While I wouldn't call them awful, I think they need some frame data and endlag buffs to be more on par with the rest of the cast. I feel like neutral B needs faster startup on the uncharged arrow, and side B has too much endlag. Trimming these by a few frames would make for a far better character