Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Minix0]

Have to rescind some of my previous statements regarding Ridley.

The change to his Wing Blitz move is indeed a nerf. A very minor nerf, but it's a nerf. And when you include the "Flurry Attack neutralized" change, that's two nerfs for Ridley...

...I'm not sure they know what to do with this character anymore. Everyone's getting better and better, and all they can do is find the weirdest things on him to tweak. He may not be bad, but that's what's so frustrating: He's sooo close to being better than Mid Tier, and it feels like Ridley mains are being toyed with. >_<

Nerfing an extremely situational punish by making it a little less consistent and maybe slightly changing jab is not going to hurt him in the slightest. Ridley has been buffed multiple times and has had many good patches. He's fine lol.

 

[KakuCP9]

I want to see a visualization on the Sonic uair fix; the details is that they added a fourth, small hitbox to hit 2 (Identical to the others) covering a slightly new area. It's hard to visualize exactly where, or guess how much this particular bit of extra coverage addresses the previous drops compared to smash 4.

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Looking at the new hixbox, opponents that would normally fall out of the move now get tagged by the new body hitbox which enables him to do falling uair conversions much easier.
Also it kinda hit me, but now Sonic players of all levels have incentive to do something other than hit and run until the end of time since now they have simple and effective returns for winning neutral rather than deal with the soul crushing inconsistency of uair. Granted there will still be nutjobs willing to time people out on wifi, but at least it gives players who don't want to play like that options and that makes it a good change in my book.

 

[Wigglerman]

Edit: The video isn't working so here's the clip. https://clips.twitch.tv/FilthyMistyHamPraiseIt

RIP

 

[Thinkaman]

Steve probably hates...

has both the mobility and range to embarass Steve and never let him farm, and can probably do various shield monado bullcrap to Steve's nonsense. Speed or Jump recovery should be manageably safe.
they just never stop coming for him, and smother him. They also possess the best physics for evading Steve's CQC combos should he get a reversal. Airspeed and floatiness prevents them from ever being trapped in a Steve ledgeguard situation.
as stated. She can recover high, she can recovery low. (Tether) She is fast, outranges him, and is just overall strong.
can counter-camp Steve decently and prefers recovering high anyway.
can do a lot with a few seconds--more than Steve--while disrupting Steve's farm. Accel and Bounce are big threats to Steve, and Steve has neither the mobility nor reflector to deal with Hero's toolset. Zoom also bypasses ledgeguarding.
How are you gonna fight Min Min with zero mobility???

Other characters like might have the mobility and oppressive toolset to give Steve a headache and a half, but their physics and recovery options do allow Steve the potential for doing nasty things back to them, should he find a reversal.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Steve probably hates...

has both the mobility and range to embarass Steve and never let him farm, and can probably do various shield monado bullcrap to Steve's nonsense. Speed or Jump recovery should be manageably safe.
they just never stop coming for him, and smother him. They also possess the best physics for evading Steve's CQC combos should he get a reversal. Airspeed and floatiness prevents them from ever being trapped in a Steve ledgeguard situation.
as stated. She can recover high, she can recovery low. (Tether) She is fast, outranges him, and is just overall strong.
can counter-camp Steve decently and prefers recovering high anyway.
can do a lot with a few seconds--more than Steve--while disrupting Steve's farm. Accel and Bounce are big threats to Steve, and Steve has neither the mobility nor reflector to deal with Hero's toolset. Zoom also bypasses ledgeguarding.
How are you gonna fight Min Min with zero mobility???

Other characters like might have the mobility and oppressive toolset to give Steve a headache and a half, but their physics and recovery options do allow Steve the potential for doing nasty things back to them, should he find a reversal.

I would also put as possibly suspect as well

likely counter camps Steve just by charging limit and. Like Cloud can also overwhelm Steve up close with superior mobility and range. But yeah Steve can also do pretty nasty things to Could too if he gets the reversal, especially if he forces Cloud offstage without limit.


May lack mobility himself can has a suspect recovery in the MU. But as stated befire Falco has everything else to go e Steve a migraine.
Blaster can easily distrupt mining. His disjoint reflector can shut down so many of Steve's options, and once Falco manages to get Steve trapped in his combo/vortex game . I do not know how Steve can possibly hope to escape due to his awful mobility .

 

[meleebrawler]

Steve probably hates...

has both the mobility and range to embarass Steve and never let him farm, and can probably do various shield monado bullcrap to Steve's nonsense.
they just never stop coming for him, and smother him. Yet unlike say Fox, their physics don't expose them to Steve's CQC combos should he get a reversal.
as stated. She can recover high, she can recovery low. (Tether) She is fast, outranges him, and is just overall strong.
can counter-camp him decently and prefers recovering high anyway.
can do a lot with a few seconds--more than Steve--while disrupting Steve's farm. Accel and Bounce are big threats to Steve, and Steve has neither the mobility nor reflector to deal with Hero's toolset.
How are you gonna fight Min Min with zero mobility???

The times Snake tries to fly beyond Steve's reach is when he does his own jury-rigging of the stage with explosives. He can camp, but he doesn't get any stronger from it unlike Steve, and he doesn't really fire fast enough to prevent defences from being raised. And when Steve wants to approach, he can just make a bridge of blocks over grenade-littered ground, and those same blocks can easily disrupt Snake's dash attack burst movement.

While Bounce does negate a lot of Steve's strongest tools, Hero is ultimately burning a resource that can't be replenished as easily if he tries to respond in kind to Steve's mining. Sadly for him he doesn't have a frame-data boosting spell, because it is really easy for Steve to punish almost any missed move.

You'd be surprised at how easy it is to slip a minecart over extending arms, or stop them with blocks. Also her recovery is one Steve is very good at exploiting.

You have a point about Yoshi being very well-equipped to smother Steve, but I'm not so convinced about Jigglypuff. Sure she isn't easy to combo, but she doesn't have an edge in range, and he doesn't really need to do a lot of damage to kill her with things like bair or usmash with even moderately powered equipment. In fact, these traits can make threatening mutually assured destruction with point-blank TNT pressure plates surprisingly effective, the weight difference skewing these trades in Steve's favour if the threat doesn't get Jigglypuff to back off and let him mine.

Speking of equipment, I know gold is supposed to be weak and fast, but does that necessarily mean weak knockback? Gold fsmash seems to kill much easier than wood fsmash in my experience.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Was messing around on FD in training mode and it seems like I get almost nothing from mining. Is this a glitch? Anyone know what's causing it?

 

[meleebrawler]

Was messing around on FD in training mode and it seems like I get almost nothing from mining. Is this a glitch? Anyone know what's causing it?

You sure you didn't break your mining tool without realizing it? That severely impairs your mining speed as he is forced to do it barehanded.

 

[Thinkaman]

Speking of equipment, I know gold is supposed to be weak and fast, but does that necessarily mean weak knockback? Gold fsmash seems to kill much easier than wood fsmash in my experience.

Should be indentical to wood based on the data I saw.


u-smash is also hilarious against dair and TNT alike. Highly recommend.

 

[StrangeKitten]

You sure you didn't break your mining tool without realizing it? That severely impairs your mining speed as he is forced to do it barehanded.

I seem to have a shovel here. If this is barehanded, it doesn't look like it. And this was right after LRA+ to reset:
https://i.imgur.com/4YCSbbH.mp4

And then when I go to the crafting table, it's unresponsive. If I can craft a better tool, it doesn't seem to want to let me:
https://i.imgur.com/x1ZYXpL.mp4

Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Rocketjay8]

Should be indentical to wood based on the data I saw.


u-smash is also hilarious against dair and TNT alike. Highly recommend.

's megawatt and Dragon get blocked by the crafting table, but the Ram Ram goes through it. Ram Ram also gets through minecart as well. I do think that Ram Ram is going to be a problem for Steve since he can't really avoid it very well thanks to his low jumps and his below average mobility.

 

[NotLiquid]

An odd quirk in the Min Min matchup is that Steve's crafting table blocks Min Min's arms. That makes Min Min's Megawatt kind of weak in the matchup, but because the crafting table is treated as an actual hitbox, Min Min can still fire her laser if she hits it with the Dragon arm. This also applies to regular blocks obviously. Supposedly, hitting blocks doesn't stale Min Min's attacks either, so she has no real compunction in eschewing a lot of spam tactics.

Ramram is also uniquely annoying for Steve to deal with. Steve's jump is so mediocre that he's extremely susceptible to being wrapped up in its arc. From my experience it also messes with his minecart, and both it and Dragon are good at setting off his TNT. He has a huge advantage if he can get Min Min off stage but he's largely hamstrung whenever that's not the case.

I want to be generous and say it's even at best for Steve but this feels like an MU where his quirks are so unique to a fault against the more distinct specialists among the cast. I'm unsure about committing to anything regarding this character for now though.

EDIT: Damn I been ninja'd on basically the same talking points lol

 

[Thinkaman]

Yeah, I ordinarily neglect Ramram with my mediocre Min Min, but against Steve I ended up sticking with it by default. Double dragon is nice when the crafting table is not in the way, though; Steve dislikes those lasers quite a lot. I am finding that range is more mean to Steve than speed.

I suspect suffers against him. Not for recovery reasons--people stopping Mac's recovery is nothing new. But Mac is all about suffocating people with his normals, and Steve's frame data and weasely microspacing is always threatening to slip a hit in. And with Mac's fall speed, Steve can turn a stray hit into a punishing string.

Mac doesn't have much in the way of counter-tricks to deal with Steve's stuff. He's probably the most impotent figure in the game against TNT, doesn't have a great answer for minecart, and has to get in grab range to threaten. Side-b is normally Mac's trump card against bullcrap he can't deal with, but Steve's small hurtbox and microspacing makes it a big pain. (contrast with say, Mega Man, who Mac can hit in the face all day) And trying to get a read on a specific move to counter with a smash? Against Steve? Forget about it.

Just about the only trick Mac has is that many of Steve's neutral options are weak hitboxes that could be vulnerable to Straight Lunge armor. A pretty weak silver lining, to be honest.


is also not a fan. Somewhat jugglable, and with a lack of mobility AND zero projectiles that lets Steve set up more than any other opponent in the game.

Normally Incineroar copes with campy characters with an unique caveat--he can just Revenge all the bullcrap you are throwing at him, so that when he finally makes it over there, all that damage will end up on your plate. But Steve... isn't throwing stuff at you. Except possibly Minecart, which is a grab that Incineroar can't Revenge at all! And if he DOES Revenge a bit of magma block, flint fire, or sword swing--those are pretty puny Revenges, particularly for the risk of countering such moves.

Like Mac, Incineroar is annoyed by TNT, but at least is better equipped to jump over it in some way. (And I think COULD Revenge it, if the plate is adjacent...) But at least he can recover high.


Finally, . his recovery is toast, but like Mac that train sort of already left the station. His problem is that like Incineroar, he can't stop Steve's setup due to his speed and lack of projectile. Anvil also threatens his signature uair he relies on so much, and it's hard to read the defensive options or landings that Ganon often depends on versus a character who... doesn't follow the rules. And of course, he's so juggleable.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

The change to his Wing Blitz move is indeed a nerf. A very minor nerf, but it's a nerf. And when you include the "Flurry Attack neutralized" change, that's two nerfs for Ridley...

Here's the full story:

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...I'm not sure they know what to do with this character anymore. Everyone's getting better and better, and all they can do is find the weirdest things on him to tweak. He may not be bad, but that's what's so frustrating: He's sooo close to being better than Mid Tier, and it feels like Ridley mains are being toyed with. >_<

I can't imagine that's fun.

At least you didn't end up like us mains who just accepted our character as forgotten, low tier trash...

 

[KirbySquad101]

Dabuz and Maister have entered The Box: Juice Box 16 with Dabuz going solo Steve and Maister switching between Steve and G&W; in particular, Dabuz is already in top 8 Loser's Side with solo Steve: https://smash.gg/tournament/the-box-juice-box-16/event/ultimate-singles/brackets/870136/1392847

Link to the tourney stream: https://www.twitch.tv/hungrybox
Link to Dabuz's stream (to see Dabuz playing Steve): https://www.twitch.tv/dabuz
Link to Maister's stream (to potentially see Maister play Steve): https://www.twitch.tv/maistergnw

 

[StrangeKitten]

Dabuz and Maister have entered The Box: Juice Box 16 with Dabuz going solo Steve and Maister switching between Steve and G&W; in particular, Dabuz is already in top 8 Loser's Side with solo Steve: https://smash.gg/tournament/the-box-juice-box-16/event/ultimate-singles/brackets/870136/1392847

Link to the tourney stream: https://www.twitch.tv/hungrybox
Link to Dabuz's stream (to see Dabuz playing Steve): https://www.twitch.tv/dabuz

I hope Dabuz continues to play Steve. Steve is such a Dabuz character

 

[Ryu Myuutsu]

They also fixed the projectile parry glitch:

I never knew this was a thing. Is this fix something that only matters mostly against parried point blank projectiles? Or will I also be able to act faster when parrying at mid-long range?

 

[meleebrawler]

Have to rescind some of my previous statements regarding Ridley.

The change to his Wing Blitz move is indeed a nerf. A very minor nerf, but it's a nerf. And when you include the "Flurry Attack neutralized" change, that's two nerfs for Ridley...

...I'm not sure they know what to do with this character anymore. Everyone's getting better and better, and all they can do is find the weirdest things on him to tweak. He may not be bad, but that's what's so frustrating: He's sooo close to being better than Mid Tier, and it feels like Ridley mains are being toyed with. >_<

Hot take; if a character is "merely" mid-tier, does that not mean, in the eyes of developers at least, that the character is in fact perfectly balanced?

Update 4.0.0 was the big one for him, and since then he has not demonstrated to be lacking in what he sets out to do, mainly being a glass cannon heavyweight who sacrifices a bit raw power and moreso survivability in exchange for unparralleled versatility in his approach and advantage state, compared to his peers. All offence and no defence outside of a long, sturdy tail, just like he is in Metroid.

I said it before and I'll say it again, devs don't balance based on tiers, they do so when they feel the characters are over-or-underachieving at their stated design goal. Arguing otherwise just makes it come across as simply wanting a character be stronger or weaker for the sake of being so.

 

[Idon]

I never knew this was a thing. Is this fix something that only matters mostly against parried point blank projectiles? Or will I also be able to act faster when parrying at mid-long range?

Any instance of parrying a projectile, it's gonna be helpful.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Ridley is indeed a very solid midtier. I wouldn't be against buffs for him, but if he never gets any more buffs, he's at least in a pretty good spot

 

[SwagGuy99]

Elegant was playing as both and Steve on stream and after a few hours, Elegant thinks Luigi probably beats Steve pretty hard. I'll be honest, I actually can see that being the case. While he can set up blocks and use minecaft to make approaching slightly more difficult for Luigi, I overall think the fact that Steve is forced to collect resources while also walling Luigi out, while also trying to level up his own tools means that his potential to wall Luigi out isn't as good in practice as it is on paper. He can't exactly do all of that at once. And I think that this, on top of Steve's poor options to force Luigi out of his zone when Luigi is able to approach, will present Steve a lot of trouble. Also, Luigi has solid frame data and a decent jump height so I don't think dealing with blocks onstage should be a huge issue for him in general. I think Steve's gameplan against Luigi will mostly be Steve attempting to force Luigi offstage into a ledgetrap scenario, as I think onstage as the matchup doesn't seem to favor Steve.

 

[Minix0]

I never knew this was a thing. Is this fix something that only matters mostly against parried point blank projectiles? Or will I also be able to act faster when parrying at mid-long range?

Either way its an exciting and well needed change. How good it ends up being is up in the air.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I note that when people here are talking about who Steve beats and who Steve loses to, Steve mostly seems to beat bottom 10 characters and loses to a lot of mid tiers, high tiers, and top tiers. That's not a good sign for Steve's viability. It's still very early, and people are finding gimmicky kill options and such, but so far it's mostly been in training room or in friendlies. Will Steve players be able to pull them off in tournaments, or is Steve going to end up in the lower half of the tier list? His atrocious mobility and poor range combined with a lack of a projectile game make him seem like he's going to struggle in the long run.

 

[SKX31]

Okay, let's break these balance changes down:

-: The AI and recovery changes could be big, we'll have to wait to see, and every other change is welcomed.

-: Aura's buff seems to notably matter if you can even live to higher percents, not much I add there.
However, a faster jab, D-Smash, and Extreme Speed recovery might speak better numbers for him...

TBH, never saw why he was low tier at all.

-: Oh boy, you Jr. mains have something to look forward to.
Better side-b armor, strong kill moves, a faster D-Smash, and a slightly better Up-B for recovering and confirming...

IMO, the winner of the patch.

-: Most of the knockback buffs are on sparingly used moves, so I can see these not leading to much in the long run.
But hey, less start-up on Up-Smash and better hitbox range for Uppercut is always nice.


-: Fixing his inconsistencies are good, no problems there.
I would totally be down for buffing his normals and having him play more traditionally if they addressed his lame/camping areas like Spin Dash invincibility and such.
But they didn't do that...
So, that pretty much speaks for itself...

- : This character had so much going against them receiving any improvements:


*High tier offline.
*Infamously annoying online.
*Lacked any noticeable internal problems.
*Top tier online.
*Relatively simple to pick up and play.


Yet with some luck of the dice roll, he actually got some help...
Why...

Ness was already good at killing and racking up damage.
All his buffed moves had viable, defined uses in his kit, and they didn't address any problematic flaws or fix anything that needed to be fixed...

I really wonder what the balance team was thinking...


Everyone else's changes are "whatever" to me.
Although it did feel like a slap in the face for , he would have appreciated fixes to Nair linking issues and non-clankable properties for his smash attacks + Wizard Foot.


This patch was the equivalent to Shrek The Third...
Not terrible on its own, but coming after the last entry which was so overwhelming good, it left a lot to be desired.

Honestly, the changes to Ness (and perhaps Sonic) felt a lot like they were targeted towards the Wi-Fi Warrior / casual side of things. I did bring up the possibility in the newcomer thread (especially since Sakurai outright said the dev team would take the Elite Smash results into account when balancing). It's possible that Ness had bad quickplay win % since he's light - and while he has a number of safe moves, he's vurnerable to disjoints and non-energy based projectiles (which are kind of common online). Meanwhile, Ganondorf benefits from DORIYAHs hitting more often in Elite Smash than offline. Etc.

As I said there, I honestly am not sure at all if it's the right choice. Yes, Smash was originally intended to be a party game and most of Smash's user base play the game like that. And it would be unwise to abandon them (also, a lot of pros started out in that group). But oh boy are there a lot of potential problems. Aside from the fact that basing the balance changes on a mode that's infamously laggy and prone to misses runs the risk of leaving safe / big moves unchanged:

• The Quickplay / Elite Smash character data is hidden away by Nintendo and not widely accessed. Sure, that data is not a good barometer of a character's strengths... but if we knew that Ness had a low win % and Ganondorf a higher than usual win % in Quickplay we could at least consider the results as a possible reason.
• Related to the above, Sakurai's revealed back in Jaunary 2019 (just as 2.0 was about to drop) that K. Rool wasn't overly dominant in Quickplay / Elite Smash (which is the only glimpse into the character data we've gotten AFAIK). The information shared by Sakurai raises another problem though - Ganondorf's Elite Smash win % by Jaunary 2019 was only 47,9%. We have no idea if the 2.0 buffs to him were just enough to push him closer to 50 % (but if it did, then... yeah). I'm not that willing to include the 3.1. reliability buff because that was a running theme in 3.1.
• Aside from the disconnect between Nintendo and the competitive scene at large, there's also the issue of pidgeonholing for the sake of letting a character have a niché. "You're no Air Fighter, Mac!" is the most obvious case, but when Ganondorf's kept the "Power >>> Agility" trade off for 3 straight games... yeah I'm willing to say that that's intentional. It's okay to have characters focus on something, but as with any game the pidgeonholing runs the risk of having the character being endlessly exploited or too powerful with little inbetween room. And basing results on online might wind up reinforcing the pidgeonholing.
• And on the casual side of things, the buffs to Ness / Sonic were not compensated by nerfs to stuff that might trip casuals up routinely or might be toxic to them (PK Fire, Spin Dash's invincibility). There's no real disincentive to stop playing the same old toxic style. Which begs the question if Sakurai and co. see those as problematic enough.

I know this has been a bit of a rant, but I hope I got my point across.

 

[Frihetsanka]

It surprises me a bit that people are objecting so strongly to the Sonic and Ness buffs. Neither Sonic nor Ness were considered even top 20 prior to this patch, them getting some buffs that make their weaker tools better probably isn't going to make either of them top 10 or anything. Characters like Joker and Pikachu and Palutena are still better, and I doubt Ness will even be top 20 after this patch (perhaps Sonic is, I don't know how significant his buffs were and he was pretty good pre-patch anyway).

It's kind of funny to me that they buffed Shulk though. Granted, probably not of a net buff given that Shield Art was nerfed, but still, he was already such a beast. They kind of buffed Pikachu too, although projectile parrying may hurt him more than it benefits him, since we can now more easily punish Thunder Jolt approaches.

 

[Wunderwaft]

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People are already discovering more applications with the TNT and crafting table. As more of these applications get discovered and labbed I can see Steve being a much trickier opponent to fight against. This is a character with a very high skill ceiling, it'll take maybe a year for Steve to reach a state closer to being optimized.


Oh and here's an extra lol

Spoiler

There was a problem fetching the tweet

 

[SKX31]

It surprises me a bit that people are objecting so strongly to the Sonic and Ness buffs. Neither Sonic nor Ness were considered even top 20 prior to this patch, them getting some buffs that make their weaker tools better probably isn't going to make either of them top 10 or anything. Characters like Joker and Pikachu and Palutena are still better, and I doubt Ness will even be top 20 after this patch (perhaps Sonic is, I don't know how significant his buffs were and he was pretty good pre-patch anyway).

It's kind of funny to me that they buffed Shulk though. Granted, probably not of a net buff given that Shield Art was nerfed, but still, he was already such a beast. They kind of buffed Pikachu too, although projectile parrying may hurt him more than it benefits him, since we can now more easily punish Thunder Jolt approaches.

A lot of people (me included) object strongly because Ness / Sonic were already considered Top 30ish. There's not as much of a percieved need to buff them as lets say Doc, Isabelle or Plant. And personally, that's what irks me about those buffs - sure they might not go up to Top 10 / 15, but that time could've been spent on someone else.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

There was a problem fetching the tweet

People are already discovering more applications with the TNT and crafting table. As more of these applications get discovered and labbed I can see Steve being a much trickier opponent to fight against. This is a character with a very high skill ceiling, it'll take maybe a year for Steve to reach a state closer to being optimized.


Oh and here's an extra lol

Spoiler

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"Is Steve the new ?"

 

[meleebrawler]

If Ness in his previous state had 50 characters better than him in 1v1 than 20, would it be OK to buff him then?

 

[SwagGuy99]

Starting to think Steve might be comparable to a weird combination of and .

He has the amazing setups and confirms of Smash 4 Pac-Man, and the trapping and ledgetrapping game of Isabelle, but there's something I think he's lacking (that they both have to an extent) that will probably harm him a lot vs rushdown characters and characters who can fight him from long or mid range and can deal with blocks: a good neutral.

Outside of minecart, I'm not really sure exactly sure what his options in neutral are supposed to be. I feel a lot of characters should just be able to either rush him down right at the start of a match. I can also see a handful of characters being able to outcamp him as well and force him to approach, something I don't think his kit leaves him too prepared to do either. I also think his resource gathering mechanic doesn't help either since he needs time to gather materials which means that rushing him down at the start of a match is even more heavily incentivized than it would be otherwise.

Also, it might be worth discussing but Izaw made a tweet saying he believes Steve to be the worst character in the game, but later deleted it once it picked up traction on Twitter and a lot of people disagreed. While I don't think Steve is nearly that bad, I think his lack of ability to deal with pressure as well as his lack of neutral options may mean he falls into a similar position to the Belmonts. He might not be great, but some characters probably won't be able to do much of anything against him.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

I can imagine being a nightmare for Steve just because every pokemon has something that Steve hates.

has the mobility that Steve doesn't have whether it's on the ground or in the air. His range may be awful but that doesn't matter as Steve can't stop him from coming and going when he pleases so Squirtle can just use Hit-and-run tactics to get the win.

as previously stated Steve doesn't really have an answer to projectiles that can be spammed and razor leaf is a projectile that goes through obstacles, which Steve doesn't like. Ivysaur also has the range and kill power necessary to take Steve out. This is probably one of Ivysaur's best matchups.

hoo boy, better kill power, better ground mobility, better CQC range, flamethrower and fly beat out block shenanigans, do I really need to explain any further? Granted Steve does have a better matchup here than against all of PT's other pokemon since Charizard prefers CQC which is Steve's specialty. Thing is Charizard simply lasts and lasts while smacking Steve away off a stray hit. Steve doesn't have that luxury forcing Steve to whip out the crafting table or get nailed.

 

[Arthur97]

Wow, saw some messages of people insisting that they have great mobility because of minecart, up special, blocks, and "wavebouncing." I just...how can that be seen as awesome mobility? Minecarting everywhere will get predictable, his up special can certainly be hit out of, and block just aren't the powerhouse people thought they might be. Not to mention the literally terrible mobility stats.

 

[SwagGuy99]

Wow, saw some messages of people insisting that they have great mobility because of minecart, up special, blocks, and "wavebouncing." I just...how can that be seen as awesome mobility? Minecarting everywhere will get predictable, his up special can certainly be hit out of, and block just aren't the powerhouse people thought they might be. Not to mention the literally terrible mobility stats.

He has solid ways to mix up his movement, but you're right, they will get predictable and his actual attributes being extremely poor I think means that his movement isn't too good, even with ways to mix it up.

To put it in perspective:

• Tied with for the 75th fastest walk speed (0.85)
  • This makes him faster than () and
• 76th fastest run speed (1.45)
  • Faster than and
• He has the slowest initial dash in the entire game (1.45)
• 79th fastest air speed (0.86)
  • Only faster than (just Popo) and
• Tied for 67th fastest max air acceleration (0.05)
  • He's faster than and ()
• His air friction (which is kind of his traction, but for the air) is tied for 60th best in the game (0.0075)
• His fall speed is the 62nd highest (1.42)
  • His fast fall speed is a 60% increase from his fall speed like most of the cast
• His gravity is tied with and to be the 77th fastest in the game.
  • The only characters who have gravity lower than his are and .
• His weight is tied with and for 51st best (0.92)
  • This makes him a lower middleweight, the lighest DLC character so far
• His short hop height is the worst in the entire game (10.0)
• His full hop height is the 81st highest (16.5)
  • It's only better than , who at least has the benefits of having multiple midair jumps which Steve doesn't
• His midair jump heightis the 80th highest (22.5)
  • This puts him only ahead of and who have multiple midair jumps which (again), Steve doesn't have
• His grounded traction is currently unknown, or at least I can't find it anywhere.

 

[Wunderwaft]

I can imagine being a nightmare for Steve just because every pokemon has something that Steve hates.

has the mobility that Steve doesn't have whether it's on the ground or in the air. His range may be awful but that doesn't matter as Steve can't stop him from coming and going when he pleases so Squirtle can just use Hit-and-run tactics to get the win.

as previously stated Steve doesn't really have an answer to projectiles that can be spammed and razor leaf is a projectile that goes through obstacles, which Steve doesn't like. Ivysaur also has the range and kill power necessary to take Steve out. This is probably one of Ivysaur's best matchups.

hoo boy, better kill power, better ground mobility, better CQC range, flamethrower and fly beat out block shenanigans, do I really need to explain any further? Granted Steve does have a better matchup here than against all of PT's other pokemon since Charizard prefers CQC which is Steve's specialty. Thing is Charizard simply lasts and lasts while smacking Steve away off a stray hit. Steve doesn't have that luxury forcing Steve to whip out the crafting table or get nailed.

Ivy's razor leaf doesn't go through Steve's blocks. Likewise if Squirtle attempts to use withdraw while there's a block Squirtle will bounce to the other side.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

I think the general idea is that Steve's really good CQC frame data was supposed to help him with the fast-shoter ranged rudhdown type characters ie because on papere Steve does has the frame data to contest them up close and Lt get the reversal and start some craxy stuff if he can find that one opening up close vs them. The problem is how is he going to handle characters that can play the hit and run game basically keeping Steve from doing anything he wants

 

[MrGameguycolor]

A lot of people (me included) object strongly because Ness / Sonic were already considered Top 30ish. There's not as much of a percieved need to buff them as lets say Doc, Isabelle or Plant. And personally, that's what irks me about those buffs - sure they might not go up to Top 10 / 15, but that time could've been spent on someone else.



"Is Steve the new ?"

It's not surprising someone would take the criticism from Ness & Sonic's buffs out of context.

Some people just don't understand the effects of what a few misguided buffs can lead to in the meta.

 

[FruitLoop]

Honestly Steve's mobility is TRASH, there's no beating around the bush behind it. But I feel like a lot of people forget about the fact that eventhough you can rush down steve to prevent him from setting up, at higher levels of play in the future i feel like it might be HARDER for the opponent rather than steve. Steve has blocks that specifically are designed to limit your mobility and attempt hitting the block or going around it means that Steve can use his remaining blocks to constantly limit YOUR mobility while he's able to go wherever he wants. Mix that with the tech where steve can place tnt on a block to mine it meaning that he doesnt even need to land ON THE GROUND to mine AND the fact that if the opponent gets close to steve on top of TNT steve can freely Down-Smash the TNT then buffer an airdodge after down-smash to grant him safety from the explosion while giving himself a humongous "kills at 70" hitbox if the opponent gets to close means that Steve can do practically whatever he wants to play keepaway as he gets optimized. This of course isn't including minecart as both an approach option and a command grab projectile for zoning.

I REALLY REALLY think that Steve being slow might actually be more of a downfall early-steve meta rather than late-steve meta unlike a lot of the other slow c haracter downfalls. Him having lackluster range seems more to be an issue alongside the mobility when it comes to advantage similar to Dr. Mario except Steve has even BETTER frame data and just 0 lag and access to blocks and dirt cancelling making it easier for him to cover multiple options and just deal an insane amount of damage with solid option select ALONGSIDE amazing ledge trapping/edge guarding supposedly.

Also I feel like another issue with Steve so far that will probably get addressed is his recovery. He DEFINITELY can get hit out of elytra and minecart without issues but I feel like since hes so new people are too afraid of messing up their elytra recoveries so they use it at linear distances while people aren't utilizing steve's upair and nair for getting out of offstage situations like Dabuz has done. Steve actually does a good job recoverying even low or going back from the farthest depths of the stage thanks to the ability to hold down elytra RIGHT after recovering up to boost his recovery alongside his elytra cancelling tech by pressing shield nearby the ledge repeatedly giving him intense magnet hands as well. Steve does have an issue recoverying after he accidentally buffers airdodge (especially without iron since iirc its possible to recover back by restoring jumps with minecart) since not even the elytra techs are enough especially since steve jumps quite low but honestly a lot of characters can't recover off of airdodge sds.

Either way I still think Steve will be a VERY solid high tier and could very much prove himself to be a top tier depending on how problematic his mobility becomes later on even if I feel like it'll be less of an issue. And honestly I feel like we categorize too many matchups as losing for Steve just because they can run around in circles around steve with safe moves like they can vs a lot of meta irrelevant slow characters and while this may be true for a few matchups I feel like Steve's mu spread might be a lot better than we're giving credit for once block camping gets optimized in neutral more (especially if steve ends up being an anti-zoner/setup trap character).

 

[Thinkaman]

It surprises me a bit that people are objecting so strongly to the Sonic and Ness buffs. Neither Sonic nor Ness were considered even top 20 prior to this patch, them getting some buffs that make their weaker tools better probably isn't going to make either of them top 10 or anything. Characters like Joker and Pikachu and Palutena are still better, and I doubt Ness will even be top 20 after this patch (perhaps Sonic is, I don't know how significant his buffs were and he was pretty good pre-patch anyway).

Important life lesson: There will always be people who want to complain.

Complaining is easy. Complaining gives a jolt of self-importance. Complaining maintains a self-illusion of intelligence, competence, and insight.

This is how you can have them make super uncontroversial decisions like making multi-hits work better on 30 characters, and get people on twitter unironically characterizing this as a "Pikachu buff."

This is how you can have one of the game's most broken characters fixed (ICs), and all anyone can talk about is Ness PK Flash and u-throw being buffed. Remember my chart of OrionRank vs. Lifetime smash.gg usage? The 4 (not already patched this year) remaining overall worst non-Mii characters were all buffed. 4 for 4! It would be so simple to just, talk about those things. But discussing how ICs might perform now that they are unchained doesn't give that Karen-style ego-rush of pretending Ness or Sonic is a top 10 character and that the devs are idiots.

You have people criticizing the buffs for ignoring online play in one tweet, and in the next for being based on Elite Smash.

Spoiler: The Not-So-Secret History of the Sonic and Ness Buffs

People are acting like this is a grand mystery. It really isn't.

Suppose Ness and Sonic have god-awful win-rates at low levels--so bad that you want to do something about it.

But wait, Ness and Sonic... are good characters. Maybe not top 20, but definitely top 30. There are multiple top 100 players of these characters, so we don't want to affect top level play. What do you do? What buffs would mostly affect low level players?

Well, the absolute first thing you look at is dash attack; dash attack is universally the most used move among weak players. This is good, because neither Ness or Sonic have super important dash attacks.

Next you look at specials; low level players love spamming specials. Unfortunately, this doesn't work for these characters. Except for PK Flash, their specials are all too important at all levels of play. Buff PK Flash and move on.

Finally, you look at smashes. Sadly this isn't productive either--we can't buff Sonic f-smash, and can't touch Ness's at all. Apparently the devs felt it was safe to buff Sonic u-smash, but otherwise this is a dead end.

Throws are normally what you buff to affect mid-range and above players, but Ness has an inverted case. He has 3 of the best throws in the game, and then one that pales in comparison and is almost exclusively used by casual players. (Even against floaty characters, surely one of his other options offers superior positioning in a given situation.) So, sure. We can buff u-throw and Gackt & BestNess will probably never use it.

There aren't many options left. Aerials? All of Sonic's are relevant to high-level play, and we're already fixing Sonic uair regardless of buffing him. Obviously Ness fair, nair, bair, and uair are 110% off the table. I guess we can buff Ness dair a bit? It can be less awkwardly slow without hurting anything.

We're now literally out of moves besides tilts, since we're obviously not buffing jab. Both f-tilts are already where they should be, and we're not messing with the can of worms that is Ness d-tilt. At this point is seems the balance team settled on small changes to u-tilt, broke for lunch, and went back to the nightmare of balancing Steve.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Here's Gackt vs. KEN:

Count how many times they use/land the buffed moves. Across the entire set, there's 1 Ness utilt and a panic dash attack each, none of which lead into any followup. It's almost as if the balance team watched this exact match to decide which moves not to buff.

There's this concept called Copenhagen Ethics. You know how the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics dictates that you cannot observe something without affecting it? Well, Copenhagen Ethics is the idea that you cannot interact with a problem without becoming fully responsible for it. The idea that:

• If a person drags your unconscious body from a burning car, you can sue him if he breaks your leg in the process.
• If a doctor finds a person in public having a heart attack and tries to save him, it's her fault if the person dies.
• If you donate money to a charity, you are a greedy ******* because you didn't give more money.
• ...or give it to a better charity instead.
• ...or give it to a charity less connected to your cultural background.

Perfect is the enemy of good, and thus good is the enemy of perfect.

Now, the balance team of our children's video game is not philatrophy; they are not a doctor saving our lives. We paid money for this product, and continue to fund the fighter's pass. If we did not get balance changes, I'd personally feel upset. (In the same way that I'd feel upset if a game I paid for had serious bugs.)

But if you are actually claiming to be dissappointed with the balance work we've got, you are insane. As I posted earlier, in addition to an abundance of cast-wide QoL fixes, we saw 40 characters given balance passes this year. 40! In a pandemic with no data to go on! According to my combined broad tournament usage + OrionRank data, the 2020 buffs were extremely well-targeted to offline tournament-level play. The poorest non-Mii characters who did not receive buffs, aka the "most deserving" or "next in line" are Robin, Ridley, and Lucas. Orion had those 3 at #48, #46, and #44 pre-pandemic--miles from the bottom.

So lemme see if I've got this right:

• They spend 2020 buffing 31 characters according to high/top level play.
• They also nerf the 3 best top-level characters.
• We now get yet 4 more sets of buffs driven by top level play/requests.
• But they also buff 2 characters for low level play, in a way specifically designed to affect high level play as little as possible.

And this is bad? This is unfair?


But this shouldn't surprise spectators. Elements of the community were indignant that Nintendo would host an items-on tourney for casuals. While all the existing tourneys continued to exist, even thrived, and even got sponsorships by Nintendo, the existence of even one casual-friendly event caused more Gamer-Karen complaining on social media than if an existing competitive event had been canceled.

"When's White History Month???"



Edit: The galaxy brain option is clearly to complain about people complaining. Much better high, even more ego-appeasing. Join the dark side.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

So uh, Steve can reset his ledge invincibility through using blocks to plank and then use an attack. He has a similar strategy to and . Granted his use up materials so it is nerfed, but it costs very few resources to place dirt blocks.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

And you can do it with Up-B too.

I don't think this by itself makes Steve broken or anything, but this could be a problem that may get patched out.

 

[Thinkaman]

Wow, saw some messages of people insisting that they have great mobility because of minecart, up special, blocks, and "wavebouncing." I just...how can that be seen as awesome mobility? Minecarting everywhere will get predictable, his up special can certainly be hit out of, and block just aren't the powerhouse people thought they might be. Not to mention the literally terrible mobility stats.

Yeah, they are bonkers.

Minecart is pivotal to prevent others from camping Steve, but it's expensive and Steve will run out in any other situation he is trying to depend on it.

Anyone who refers to Steve's up-b as "great mobility" would be well-advised to actually play the game before tweeting about it.

So uh, Steve can reset his ledge invincibility through using blocks to plank and then use an attack. He has a similar strategy to and . Granted his use up materials so it is nerfed, but it costs very few resources to place dirt blocks.

In addition to burning through materials, the % of time that is spent invincible is nowhere close to that of planking. Steve is in a precarious position here, nothing like the safety of planking. It's an interesting mixup and could frusterate certain opponents (humans or characters), but doesn't seem sustainable.

And you can do it with Up-B too.

This on the other hand seems completely useless. Steve ends up 100% vulnerable to stage spikes during this, and has zero Villager-like freedom to reverse. The moment he begins the up-b, he is locked into to being fatally vulnerable at a specific point in space and time, with literally zero benefit to this escapade. (Maybe you could do it once as a surprise against an opponent with nontrivial stage setup.)

 

[Rocketjay8]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

So uh, Steve can reset his ledge invincibility through using blocks to plank and then use an attack. He has a similar strategy to and . Granted his use up materials so it is nerfed, but it costs very few resources to place dirt blocks.

There was a problem fetching the tweet

And you can do it with Up-B too.

I don't think this by itself makes Steve broken or anything, but this could be a problem that may get patched out.

Oh yeah, it's defiantly going to get patched out. Too much of a oversite to leave it. Probably not next patch, since they took their time patching Min Min's arm glitch.

EDIT:

But this shouldn't surprise spectators. Elements of the community were indignant that Nintendo would host an items-on tourney for casuals. While all the existing tourneys continued to exist, even thrived, and even got sponsorships by Nintendo, the existence of even one casual-friendly event caused more Gamer-Karen complaining on social media than if an existing competitive event had been canceled.

"When's White History Month???"

I love this post so much. I wish I could Like it twice.