Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[BlazGreen]

Update and English patch notes are out.

Nintendo Support: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Update Ver. 11.0.0 - Fighter Adjustments

en-americas-support.nintendo.com

 

[Aaron1997]

Looks like this is the "Lets nerf some top tiers" patch. Pikachu untouched though

 

[NotLiquid]

Palutena seems to be the biggest one hit by this patch, though it still doesn't seem that big.

Min Min's FSmash laser having weaker knockback is a peculiar change since I can't imagine it'll actually affect getting early kills too much.

Pichu quality-of-life buffs ahoy. They also seem to want Byleth to break shields more now I suppose.

Wario and ZSS nerfs?

I can't tell whether "Falling in place" refers to drag downs or hitting opponents with a tripping attack. I think it's the former?

EDIT: Take back what I said earlier; Wario seems like the biggest loser here. On top of a much worsened up tilt, this patch may have killed Wario's late up tilt waft confirms outright and also made full waft confirms much harder. This seems pretty big.

 

[StrangeKitten]

THEY NERFED WAFT.

BLESSED PATCH

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I can't tell whether "Falling in place" refers to drag downs or hitting opponents with a tripping attack. I think it's the former?

There's a footnote at the very bottom that says "Falling in place means when the fighter gets hit with a certain attack and falls down to the ground slowly in that spot." So...crumple, I guess? File that under "I didn't even know this was different among characters."

My initial, casual, low-effort impression of Pyra/Mythra is that their recovery feels weirdly limited. Not necessarily bad, but limited in the sense that it's been pretty easy for me to overestimate how deep I can go offstage without suiciding. I feel like ledgetrapping will be the way to go with this character.

 

[PK Gaming]

The Wario nerfs were awful

It's bad enough they absolutely killed Waft, but they actively made him less fun to use. You didn't need to gut U-tilt strings

 

[Gleam]

Ganondorf

Up Special

Reduced vulnerability after hitting an opponent.

Oh my god...did they finally fix rockcrocking?

 

[DougEfresh]

THEY NERFED WAFT.

BLESSED PATCH

And a nerf to 's arsene counter as well as 's standing grab (both of which were pretty dumb). There wasn't much to this patch overall, but at least on paper, I definitely think this was a solid one as well!

Edit: Pichu's nerfs from 3.1.0 basically getting reversed, for those who care, is pretty neat too.

 

[Goodstyle_4]

Wario is done competitively at a consistently high level.

Max Waft will almost never combo off utilt now.
Dair half waft is completely gone.
Half waft being 8 frames in general severely hurts its utility. Expect people to start dropping half waft combos. Move is almost twice as slow. Insane nerf. Max Waft is 12 frames now, it is not worth the charge.

We got nothing to compensate for these nerfs. I'm fine with nerfing the waft if it meant getting other stuff, but we're still left with a character with poor neutral and low range normals. Nightmare scenario.

 

[zeldasmash]

Woah, Ganondorf is much faster out of landing an Up B. You can act out of his animation a whole lot earlier.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Looks like this is the "Lets nerf some top tiers" patch. Pikachu untouched though

I kind of expected this would be the patch to nerf top tiers. Shulk and Pikachu managed to avoid nerfs though, and a few others.

Edit: Pichu's nerfs from 3.1.0 basically getting reversed, for those who care, is pretty neat too.

Not near it. F-tilt still nerfed, f-smash still nerfed, several moves still have more self-damage. These buffs are nice but Pichu is still pretty far from where he was back before 3.1.0. Still, the buffs help him so that's cool. As someone who likes watching Pichu I approve of these buffs.

Based on just reading the patch notes and not seeing the exact numbers or the changes in practice I don't think these changes will be too meta-changing but they nerfed some of the better characters and buffed some of the non-top tiers, so that's cool, I suppose. Also, we got a new (top tier?) character added to the game, so that's something.

 

[duxx]

YESS NO MORE WAFT STRINGS

 

[Rizen]

Looks like this is the "Lets nerf some top tiers" patch. Pikachu untouched though

What a shock! G&W too.

Goodbye rock crocking.

I'll tell you as a player, she's going to be SCARY. DAir/Dsmash were already plenty powerful. Side special having less vulnerability removes its big weakness that keeps players from spamming it. Buffing up special might let it bounce opponents off the ground for more followups or even KOs.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Loving the Pichu nerf reversion (really it only needed the f-tilt nerf and maybe the hurtbox increase) and the Byleth buffs. Up B oos also might now be a far better oos for Ganondorf, remedying his poor oos at least somewhat.

 

[meleebrawler]

Everyone is talking about Dark Dive, but what about Falcon Dive? Is the Captain's speed boost comparable?

 

[KirbySquad101]

Testing out some of the frame data nerfs; changes I'm finding so far:

Dash Attack: FAF 38 -> 41
Forward Air: 7 frames of landing lag -> 9
Eiha: FAF 50 -> 53
Tetrakarn (Whiffed): FAF 54 -> 57
Neutral Air: 6 frames of landing lag -> 8
Boost Kick: frame 4 -> 6
Wario Waft (Max Charge): frame 9 -> 12
Wario Waft (Level 3): frame 5 -> 8

Didn't test out UTilt nerfs, but the Waft changes on their own already look huge. Eiha and Palu dash attack nerfs also seem pretty noteworthy as well.

Boost Kick nerf feels really random tbh lol.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Eiha and Tetrakarn aren't moves you should spam as Joker anyway. Hopefully these nerfs teach scrubs that these are situationally good moves. Gun and aerials are what you spam as Joker.

 

[meleebrawler]

Palutena seems to be the biggest one hit by this patch, though it still doesn't seem that big.

Min Min's FSmash laser having weaker knockback is a peculiar change since I can't imagine it'll actually affect getting early kills too much.

Pichu quality-of-life buffs ahoy. They also seem to want Byleth to break shields more now I suppose.

Wario and ZSS nerfs?

I can't tell whether "Falling in place" refers to drag downs or hitting opponents with a tripping attack. I think it's the former?

EDIT: Take back what I said earlier; Wario seems like the biggest loser here. On top of a much worsened up tilt, this patch may have killed Wario's late up tilt waft confirms outright and also made full waft confirms much harder. This seems pretty big.

Weaker lasers mean the positional advantage Min-Min gets from them on stage is not as big, and makes it harder to dislodge ledge defenders. Curious about cutting fsmash hold time though, was it longer than others? Does it mean she can't build up as much power from it? I suppose that change was made to make on-stage edgeguarding less flexible.

 

[SKX31]

Min Min's FSmash laser having weaker knockback is a peculiar change since I can't imagine it'll actually affect getting early kills too much.

Weaker lasers mean the positional advantage Min-Min gets from them on stage is not as big, and makes it harder to dislodge ledge defenders. Curious about cutting fsmash hold time though, was it longer than others? Does it mean she can't build up as much power from it? I suppose that change was made to make on-stage edgeguarding less flexible.

I do wonder what the air dodge change's about as well. If it's a nerf she's going to wind up relying on N-Air more, and honestly, that's possibly a nerf in itself since people will from now on know what to expect in disadvantage situations.

Boost Kick nerf feels really random tbh lol.

That one sounds like it was done to make it a bit more risky to use (whether using it from a bury or an up-air string). I could be wrong, though.

 

[Rizen]

gets the raw deal again after watching characters like Ness, Sonic and Cloud get buffs

Testing out some of the frame data nerfs; changes I'm finding so far:

Dash Attack: FAF 38 -> 41
Forward Air: 7 frames of landing lag -> 9
Eiha: FAF 50 -> 53
Tetrakarn (Whiffed): FAF 54 -> 57
Neutral Air: 6 frames of landing lag -> 8
Boost Kick: frame 4 -> 6
Wario Waft (Max Charge): frame 9 -> 12
Wario Waft (Level 3): frame 5 -> 8

Didn't test out UTilt nerfs, but the Waft changes on their own already look huge. Eiha and Palu dash attack nerfs also seem pretty noteworthy as well.

Boost Kick nerf feels really random tbh lol.

was easily one of the best characters in the game and boost kick was one of the best KO moves. F4 BK, faster than many characters can jab, was ridiculous. It's still a great move but this hurts ZSS quite a bit. OoS went from amazing to very good and she can't BK to follow up paralyzer and bury as fast.

 

[NotLiquid]

Weaker lasers mean the positional advantage Min-Min gets from them on stage is not as big, and makes it harder to dislodge ledge defenders. Curious about cutting fsmash hold time though, was it longer than others? Does it mean she can't build up as much power from it? I suppose that change was made to make on-stage edgeguarding less flexible.

Her new shortened FSmash is uniquely different from other characters. She has to commit to an FSmash about two whole seconds sooner compared to the rest of the cast.

It won't really affect too much in practice I think, just means you aren't going to hold onto a Ramram FSmash charge while waiting for the entirety of an opponent's recovery. A nerf targeted towards mashers basically.

 

[ZephyrZ]

Mythra's uses are really obvious but my first impression of Pyra is that she'a going to be a bit better at defensive play. Holding centerstage and ledgetrapping are areas where mobility isn't quite as important, but increase range and power will make notable differences.

I think comparing these two too much to Squirtle/Zard will be a bit of a trap since they're completely different archetypes. Remember that between Squirt and Zard, Charizard is actually the faster of the two. Squirtle amd Mythra are completely different archetypes from eachother, and so are Charizard and Pyra. There are still comparisons to be made, just be mindful not to equate them.

That would kind of run counter to the notion of Mythra having better frame data on everything, wouldn't it? I think it's more likely that the move has a worse hitbox than it appears, or at least has trouble connecting properly if not close enough. Meanwhile Pyra can just barely graze someone at the tip of her nair and they still take a full hit; remember, the other thing Pyra has over Mythra is range.

It doesn't neccesarily go against the design philosophy - a character with good frame data can still have small weak points where they're not as safe. And it seems I was right - Mythra's got just enough landing lag on a landing Nair to keep her from spamming it.

 

[duxx]

At least none of my mains got nerfed this patch lol

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Not every stronger-but-slower semiclone needs to do twice as much damage as the weaker-but-faster character. Different fighters get balanced in different ways.

Bruh...
Maybe it's because he's one of the worst characters in the game and can take any buff he can get his hands on...
You ever thought about that...



But anyway...

Yeah.
This is a good patch...

 

[The_Bookworm]

Some fairly notable changes this patch, particularly to the top tiers.


For the buffs:
They both have less endlag after hitting opponents after up B, which helps out against anti-check teching attempts.
A good bunch of its attacks got less recoil damage. This includes forward smash, forward air, forward throw, Skull Bash, and Agility.
Recoil damage on forward tilt, down smash, back air, down air, Thunder Jolt, and Thunder remains unadjusted.
In addition to this, the sweetspot of neutral air (aka the start of the move) now has Pichu's ears be intangible, making the move slightly safer to throw out.
Overall nice buffs to make Pichu's risk vs reward slightly less skewed.
Gordo Toss got a nice buff. It has received less endlag, now has a greater chance of sticking to the walls, and Gordos reflected by the opponent can now be reflected back at a greater speed. Since Gordo Toss is a big part of Dedede's gameplan, any adjustment to it is nice.
Byleth got some nice adjustments. They made down smash and down air even stronger, as if it they weren't already strong enough. Down air deals even more shield damage, which I guess it's cool?
The more significant changes to it his side B and up B. Sweetspotted side B now has more shieldstun, making it more safe, and the aerial version has more endlag, also making it more safe. Up B got less startup, which is pretty nice. The footstool version of the move now has more knockback. This is a smart change since on stage, using the footstool version puts the opponent so close to the ground, it allows the opponent to put Byleth in a bad spot.
Relatively modest changes, but nice ones regardless.


Minor stuff:
They once again increased the amount of time it takes for Diddy to pull out another banana after throwing one. I don't really see the point of this change considering that the infinite was already removed. I don't see this doing anything.
They made Mii Gunner's forward smash have more range. Thanks, I guess?
His down smash now has slightly more range.
His counter now has better multi-hit consistency. I have seen a few strange instances of his counter acting weird, so I guess this should help out in that regard.

They have all received the "Matched the vulnerability with other fighters when falling in place." change. Seems like the obligatory universal change of the patch, but it seems so minor.


Now the nerfs:
Neutral air now has more landing lag and Boost Kick has more startup. Nair by itself without landing is -2 on shield, so I don't really see how 2 more frames is going to affect things too much (frame 9 landing lag is still fast). Boost Kick going from frame 4 to frame 6 is a bit more notable, but I think it is still going to be a solid OoS option.
ZSS have gone off of this patch pretty easy.
Wario got a HUGE nerf this patch. Up tilt's hitbox doesn't linger quite as much. I don't really know how significant this change is, but I personally don't think it affects things too much. The Waft nerf, however, is more significant. Waft now has more startup for both half-charge and full-waft, which pretty much neuters a lot of the traditional combos into Waft. Up air still combos into it, but up tilt no longer does.
Wario still has some highly damaging combos to his name, but he can no longer cheat off his stocks anymore. While all of this does kinda suck for Wario players, the Waft comeback factor is such a degenerate thing to deal with, and he can still KO early off of a hard read.
I personally don't see Wario being top tier anymore, but I still think he is a pretty good character, at least right now. Definitely the biggest loser of the patch.
Palutena got a few nerfs. Dash attack got quite a bit more endlag (FAF 38 -> 41). It makes the move slightly more risky to throw out, but considering that the move is already -21 on shield, I don't really see this changing too much. Similar to ZSS, forward air got two more frames of landing lag. Fair by itself without landing is -3 (pre-patch). I could see some niche scenarios play out differently, but I don't think this changes too much.
Palutena now has less grab range. Since I don't have the Switch with me right now, I can't really tell how significant this change is. This could be fairly significant depending on how much it is nerfed, but I will have the folks here tell me about it.
Overall, Palutena also got off relatively easy. Not as easy as ZSS, but she is still very much chilling up there.
Joker's counter (Arsene) has more endlag. Smart change considering how ridiculous the counter is when landed, so increasing the risk of using it is nice. I would've preferred if they instead nerfed Tetrakarn's hitbox size instead. But overall not very significant.
Eiha has received more endlag (FAF 50 -> 53). Again, smart change to give Joker players more risk in throwing out such an annoying projectile. The move pre-patch is -27. For the most part, shielding it would result in a punish, but at close-to-max range, some characters have difficulty punishing it. It should be slightly easier to do so. The list of characters that could punish it at max range should still be short.
Again, not too significant changes. Similar to ZSS and Palu, he has gone off easy.
Min Min's forward smash has received two changes: she cannot charge it for as long as other forward smashes, and the Dragon's lasers deal less knockback. Again, I don't really how this really affects the character. Most Min Min players don't even use max charge forward smashes.



But overall, this balance change was far more significant than I expected. Pichu and Byleth is looking a bit better, although I don't really see either tier placement changing too much.
The top tiers have received a few adjustments, but for the most part, they are still very much chilling among the best.
Wario is the exception, as he definitely took a big blow this patch. We will see how his meta shakes up from there.

I kind of expected this would be the patch to nerf top tiers. Shulk and Pikachu managed to avoid nerfs though, and a few others.

I don't think and especially were performing that well in tournaments to warrant nerfs, and online has put in the backburner for now.
I am honestly more surprised that characters like did not get any nerfs.

Loving the Pichu nerf reversion (really it only needed the f-tilt nerf and maybe the hurtbox increase) and the Byleth buffs. Up B oos also might now be a far better oos for Ganondorf, remedying his poor oos at least somewhat.

The Ganon up B buff is for tech-checking and that alone. It is still only a ok OoS option at best, since it is still frame 14 with an awkward hitbox to land.

 

[Flon]

From my testing so far it seems like the late hit of Wario's up-tilt went from being active from frames 11-19 to 11-15. It's actually surprisingly awkward to intentionally get the late hit now.

 

[The_Bookworm]

I got some further inspections:

Up B change is far more significant than I expected.

Tech Checking still exists btw, but it's WAY more situational now, in many cases literally impossible, and even in the cases where it is possible, you generally have to use something fast or you'll miss assuming an airdodge or whatever. I'm so happy.

— Griffin Miller (@FatalityFalcon) March 5, 2021

This fixes one of both character's biggest issues they had since Melee. It does kinda suck that Ganondorf still dives backwards so far in comparison to the SSB4 version of the move, but it should regardless help him a lot as well.
ESAM thinks very highly of Falcon now, as he thinks he may be as high as top tier now. While I am not sure if we can immediately jump the top tier train, this is still a very significant change for both characters.


Thankfully upon further testing, I don't think the Wario nerfs isn't quite as severe as I initially thought.
The conventional conversion of up tilt to Waft may be gone now, but the character still has many ways of converting and setting up to Waft. It is, of course, not as easy as up tilt -> Waft, but they still exist.
Conversely, the up tilt change is more significant than I expected, as the move can be a bit awkward to land now. Combos from up tilt is still very well possible and very damaging, but linking up tilts into itself, as well as anti-airing with the move, is much more awkward to do now.
I don't think he is top 5 anymore, but I think he is still very potent in the meta. I actually like this change overall, since comeback combos into Waft is such a degenerate strategy to deal with, limiting a few of the braindead easy ways to pull it off without outright removing it is a smart way of approaching this.


As for (sadly no Mythra stock icon yet), she seems very exciting. As I anticipated, the two possesses their own glaring weaknesses, but the two covers eachother's weaknesses exceptionally well, leading to such a fresh dynamic. Overall pretty positive on the character competitive wise so far.

 

[Djmarcus44]

The_Bookworm The fsmash buff for Gunner got rid of the blind spot right in front of Gunner. It's a good quality of life buff. With Palutena's grab nerf, Gunner has the best standing grab in the game without question.

 

[zumaddy]

Byleth buffs and Palutena nerfs, blessed patch. I've been complaining about Byleth's Dair for centuries

 

[DrCoeloCephalo]

THEY NERFED WAFT.

BLESSED PATCH

Nerfing a move that has no easy visual meter or cues, requiring a ton of game sense to rely on, a combo in DAir to Waft that is situational from requiring rage and/or high percentages, a combo you could already mash out of without it being buffered with sweetspot UTilt to Waft and UAir hitbox being as tight as it is making it hard to fastfall or land with all on a character with no range, no approach tools like they used to have, no more projectile options like they used to have and an overall very high skill ceiling that only a handful of players reliably won with the character.

Glad I don't play Smash Ultimate as much as I used to.

into Waft is such a degenerate strategy to deal with, limiting a few of the braindead easy ways to pull it off without outright removing it is a smart way of approaching this.

Comboing into Waft was never that easy unless you landed the soutlrspot of UTilt, which wasn't that easy. Calling it braindead is extremely out of line.

 

[Kokiden]

They actually nerfed Joker. Wow. Lame.

Bayo remains as bad as always. Sigh.

Just played around with Pyra/Mythra. Not feeling them. My initial impressions aren't good, but it's still very early. Good for Xeno fans I guess.

 

[DougEfresh]

Just got finished playing some pyra and mythra dittos, and here are some general first impressions:

- I seem to feel much more natural with compared to mythra, which is actually the opposite of how I thought it would be. The slower movement speed really doesn't matter so much when everything just hits like a truck, and it makes her a blast to play.

- By contrast, mythra truly does feel like sheik with a sword. I enjoy the speed and lightning buster a fair bit, but I'll need to lab her out more for combos and strings to make her feel more rewarding to play as. Right now, it's rather frustrating trying to close out stocks, though that will probably remain a relative weakness for her anyway.

- Pyra side b appears to be much better than I thought it would be at first glance. The way it lingers for a bit seems very nice as an edgeguarding tool, especially against those with limited recoveries. It also seems like a decent tech chasing move, can force opponents to hold shield, and maybe some potential for follow ups or set ups since you can still move in toward the opponent while your sword is out and maybe get something after the final hit of the move and you get it back.

- Both of their launch angles and move animations on aerials strike me as very strange and it was a bit difficult to grasp how to DI things properly. Bair sends up, and so does fair to a large extent. Up air and down air have more typical animations and the former has an expected upward launch angle, but dair is still hard to tell whether you're getting spiked or sent up imo.

These two seem very interesting and I'll be looking forward to seeing how they progress. I'm not sure how seriously I'll play the duo in the long term, but they're more fun than I expected with potential for some cool set ups and gameplay. I'll likely at least be experimenting with them more for the time being.

 

[StrangeKitten]

Nerfing a move that has no easy visual meter or cues, requiring a ton of game sense to rely on, a combo in DAir to Waft that is situational from requiring rage and/or high percentages, a combo you could already mash out of without it being buffered with sweetspot UTilt to Waft and UAir hitbox being as tight as it is making it hard to fastfall or land with all on a character with no range, no approach tools like they used to have, no more projectile options like they used to have and an overall very high skill ceiling that only a handful of players reliably won with the character.

Glad I don't play Smash Ultimate as much as I used to.

From the perspective of someone who only rarely plays as Wario, and more often plays against him, he's been one of my more dreaded characters to face. While he does have an eh neutral, he makes up for it with his fast airspeed, robust combo game, and heavy weight in combination with a very good recovery. You ain't killing Wario any time soon, which pretty much guarantees him at least one Waft per game, if not two. Wario also had loads of true setups into Waft, a move that kills ridiculously early. Also no, it wasn't just a handful of players winning reliably with the character. He was one of, if not the most-picked character among top competitors. For as much as people complain about Pika and Joker, before quarantine forced us into online, you typically only saw ESAM and kinda Captain L for Pika, and MkLeo and Zackray doing well with Joker. Meanwhile Wario had Kameme, Abadango, Tweek, Glutonny, and kinda Mata-door. I've also heard Wario was picked very often in Japan prior to things being mostly online. Do you only play online? Because if so, Wario is a character who gets hurt a lot by online, but is a menace offline. If it seemed like only a handful of players played him, that speaks more to Ultimate's diversity and less to Wario not being that good.

 

[Aaron1997]

THEY SHADOW BUFF WII FIT'S HEADER

9 FRAMES > 4 FRAMES OF LANDING LAG

IDK WHY BUT WII STAY WINNING LOL pic.twitter.com/DXDqOyy4H2

— 🦔 • ODG | Ace★ (@AceStarThe3rd) March 5, 2021

Huge shadow Buff to Wii Fit's Side-B

つまりこういうことですね pic.twitter.com/FPXMVH8iKb

— しゅれん (@beni_ssb) March 5, 2021

これやばいだろ… pic.twitter.com/76bIpahG2h

— イシ (@ishiniki_0805) March 5, 2021

 

[PK Gaming]

Mythra is insane, good God.

Just hands down, the best advantage state in the game. They gave a speedy rushdown fighter a freaking sword and called it a day. She juggles you for days and can follow up on literally any stray hit. Down Tilt to Uair confirms until like 150 and it can even kill some characters. And while her moves are piss weak, she'll hit you like 20x before you even get a hit in and eventually KO off a read or edgeguard. Or even by switching to Pyra and getting a clean hit off, since she hits like a truck.

Her biggest drawback is that her recovery is ass, but even then, she's got insanely good aerial mobility so it's not that easy. Oh and Pyra is mostly on the weaker side due to how goddamn slow she is, but she does legitimately synergize with Mythra

Foresight is REALLY cheesy if i'm being honest, lol

 

[StrangeKitten]

Her biggest drawback is that her recovery is ass, but even then, she's got insanely good aerial mobility so it's not that easy.

So it'll be like Cloud and Chrom, where you expect their recovery to be really bad, but good air stats saves em.

 

[Thinkaman]

Previously on Dragonball Z:

(Orionrank data is literally a year old, but is still our freshest reality)

Surprised but not unhappy they nerfed ; he has been far and away the most overperformant character relative to his usage for this game's entire life--at one time, arguably 3 of the top 10 players used him in a majority of their sets. They must REALLY be targeting the tippy top of the player base to go after Wario. Then again ZSS is statistically comparable, and this is the second time she has been lightly chided.

Joker and Palu nerfs are appropriate, targetted, and lenient. Joker got to keep uair full intact, Palu got to keep her aerial BnB.

They were pretty generous to Pichu, who was still definitely an above-median character in his preexisting state.

Min Min nerfs didn't surprise me, after the hot results in Japan. However, they went after the noob killers--f-smash trapping and low-% dragon kill "Scholar's Mate" cheese. Tbqh that's what I would have done; dying at 0% to a b-throw shouldn't be thing off of one noob input.

DDD and Ganon/Falcon "buffs" really just seem like a high-impact QoL fix. Same with Mac. Very happy about all of it, but let's not call it more than what it is.

Byleth buffs are interesting, I want to see numbers and dynamics. I am not predicting much, but then again it's not like she needed much.

Edit: People continue talking about extremely-average-character Pikachu while ROB is burninating the countryside, both a year ago and still today. The real "winner" who escaped this patch's nerfing of his peers is our robot overlord.



Mythra/Pyra. Don't have anything to say that hasn't been said.

I'll just repeat that their recovery is, not bad, but definitely not great. Reminds me of PT's shared landing trouble. Mythra does have kill options, but it's definitely a struggle and switching to Pyra is not a slam dunk. (Though infintely more correct than switching to Zelda to kill.) Grabs being bad is also a commonality.

Swap is so fun. Ground swap can slide through people, a crossup spotdodge! So cute.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

are all low-key winners this patch. possibly too

They had some of their shared losing MU'S nerfed, and honestly I think Palu and Wario's nerfs are signfigant enough to drop them down in the tier list.

If were still denying they were top-tier material, they likely are going to be now

 

[Terotrous]

Just my two cents real quick since I haven't had time to test out the patch yet, but I feel like having very simplistic combos into Waft isn't healthy for the design of Wario as a character. When you can easily combo into a move like Waft, it makes the decision of how to use that tool very simple - you just hold waft until you hit the combo starter because you usually won't have to wait long for it. Now, with it only comboing in more obscure situations, you now have to decide between making a read and potentially wasting your waft, or waiting for an opportunity that may come too late. It's just a much more interesting design for the character IMO.

 

[Wunderwaft]

Well **** the Wario waft nerf finally came. I was hoping they would at least give him something to compensate, but alas the world isn't that fair. Also that up-tilt nerf is quiet disgusting, the move's utility is much worse now.

I still think Wario is good without waft though, he still has his combo routes (well, the ones that didn't rely heavily on up-tilt that is) and they didn't gut neutral-air which is his most neutral friendly move. Regardless, I don't see him as top tier anymore, having his kill confirms and his combo tools nerfed is still quite bad.

Can't say much about Steve's down smash change until I see a hitbox visualizer for myself. I personally don't think the change will be that big, and hopefully they don't change too much of this character going forward, Steve strikes a delicate balance where he can either be garbage or notoriously OP depending on how the team handles him.