Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Spinosaurus]

I can't really think of any good reason why anyone would think Joker is bad right now outside of not having an immediate easy kill confirm or some sort of instant gratification factor.

This character plays kinda lame, and I like that a lot.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

As a side note, I think YL has a slight advantage against him.

I think you're right, but YL has to play pretty aggressively. Zoning vs Joker is pretty dangerous, it only takes a few Rebel Guard counters to get Arsene out and it lasts quite a while.

I think he puts most zoning oriented characters in the dumpster tbh, Samus, Belmonts, etc. Unless the zoning character has access to an aggressive playstyle and preferably a good throw, it's hard to deny him access to arsene.

 

[Lore]

I can't really think of any good reason why anyone would think Joker is bad right now outside of not having an immediate easy kill confirm or some sort of instant gratification factor.

This character plays kinda lame, and I like that a lot.

Isn't the lack of good kill confirms a solid reason to at least not call him great? Top/high tier in this game seems to be full of characters who have less trouble getting kills.

I'm not saying he's bad, but a lack of kill setups is a bit rough in Ultimate.

 

[Spinosaurus]

Isn't the lack of good kill confirms a solid reason to at least not call him great? Top/high tier in this game seems to be full of characters who have less trouble getting kills.

I'm not saying he's bad, but a lack of kill setups is a bit rough in Ultimate.

I was implying he doesn't have easy, right off the bat ones, not that he doesn't have any good confirms at all.

Reminds me a whole lot of what people said about Wolf at first, he "can't kill".

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

You can get by without confirms look at Wolf. If he has them we still need time to find them. His fair one looks like I could lead to things just off the top of my head. Though he may have to rely on Aresen for on stage killing more often than not the fact he can charge it fairly fast with Rebel's Guard probably won't make that an issue more than it is one.

As far as zoners go, you may just need to bite the bullet and zone anyways. He's going to get his persona atleast once a stock barring and low percentage gimp so trying to purposely not zone to prevent it from happening will probably only be a detriment to your character. It will really just depend on how strong his persona makes him overall in that particular matchup.

 

[Lore]

I was implying he doesn't have easy, right off the bat ones, not that he doesn't have any good confirms at all.

Reminds me a whole lot of what people said about Wolf at first, he "can't kill".

Fair, thanks for the clarification.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Am I missing something? Joker does have kill confirms. First hit fair is easy to hit and goes into a lot of stuff, especially in Arsene form where he gets up smash to kill.

 

[ZephyrZ]

The more of Joker I see, the less I think "poor damage wracking" is really a serious issue for him. Sure a lot of his attacks don't get a ton on hit, but a ton of them lead into natural follow ups. I ain't no lab monkey but it didn't take me a day to figure that out. Basically all of his landing aerials lead into follow ups at low percents. D-tilt and U-tilt have great knock back angles for follow ups. He has not just one but two combo throws, which can apparently be linked into from an aerial. Not to mention the U-air loops people are figuring out which can wrack up meaty percentage.

I'm going to wait before I make a prediction of "this guy is high tier / low tier" if I ever make one at all but I think we can safely say "no combos" isn't a legitimate flaw for him.

 

[Rizen]

M2K made a Joker explanation video.

As far as zoners go, you may just need to bite the bullet and zone anyways. He's going to get his persona atleast once a stock barring and low percentage gimp so trying to purposely not zone to prevent it from happening will probably only be a detriment to your character. It will really just depend on how strong his persona makes him overall in that particular matchup.

RG isn't that bad for zoners. It has 33f endlag and is extremely risky to throw out. Counters like Revenge and RG aren't good deterrents for projectile zoning; they just mean you can't be brain dead about it. There's a lot of counterplay to counters.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Not sure anyone has noticed, but Pound 2019 is now one and roaring. Not many upsets have occurred, but here is what it is occurred so far:

Pipp 2-1 JeBB
Mystearica (He played in SSB4, but not sure if he plays her in Ultimate) 2-1 Seagull Joe

 

[blackghost]

.

What Joker starts off with is a character who...

1.) Has a severe lack of killing power.
2.) Weak damage racking.
3.) Pitiful projectile.
4.) Poor edgeguarding and offstage tools.
5.) Weak combos that don't amount to the high level of percentages Joker needs to get people up.
6.) Because of the lack of killing power, is more easily killed in his base form before he can rightfully get opponents up to kill percentage himself.
7.) His need for Persona essentially requires him to take risky moves such as counters and damage.

I do think Persona Joker does get overhyped but I think one can argue that Persona Joker is a decent character. I don't think the same can be said for Base Joker and when you're forced to play as a relatively vulnerable character for at least half a stock or half a match, that severely handicaps the character imo.

i main bayo and mess around with sheik joker does not have a severe killing problem. is he ganon? lol no. but he has kill confirms and strong smashes and air attacks that can be landed and have good frame data. he has kill moves in the form of bair,fsmash, upsmah, fair, and dair (arsene).
(that also dont clank with everything) ... excuse me dont know where that came from.

2. "weak damage" uumm what? he has a dot damage projectile, strong combo game, and a combo throw.
3. his projectile does its job. plus getting hit with a side b often leads to other combos or even worse second side b. damage is damage. as for his gun no he's not samus but its annoying and it has mobility uses.
4. this is just wrong. someone else can explain why or you can watch joker on youtube either or.
5. see 4.
6. this premise is based n something that isn't true. joker can activate Arsene multiple times per stock (roughly twice imo) the reason joker isnt getting that yet is because people arent using his down b in basic form yet. the persona is actually very easy to get out.
7. his counter isnt really risky. to puni**** you need to commit with a move with good FAF that isnt multihit, use a grab which for most characters nets no followups. Addiotnally if you hit his counter you have to step back to avoid his counter pushback effect. he desnt "need" his persona to be effective in the way cloud needs his limit for better recovery. its more like icing on the cake.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Not sure anyone has noticed, but Pound 2019 is now one and roaring. Not many upsets have occurred, but here is what it is occurred so far:

Pipp 2-1 JeBB
Mystearica (He played in SSB4, but not sure if he plays her in Ultimate) 2-1 Seagull Joe

I wish they would update the bracket more frequently.
Also shouldn't we open a new topic for Pound, similar to how we handled Prime Saga?

 

[Game7a1]

Also shouldn't we open a new topic for Pound, similar to how we handled Prime Saga?

I would provide a link to that, but it's waiting to be approved.
EDIT: Here it is, but it's not in the right section?

 

[Lavani]

Joker has plenty of kill confirms at reasonable percents, even without Arsene. Dragdown uair>smashes, fair1>smashes, apparently jab>smashes going by SolidSense's post though I haven't seen that one in use yet. With Arsene you get sideB>aerials, dair>usmash/aerials, and probably even more. All of these can kill depending on stage position if he catches you around 70~100%, which players like Leffen are already reaching with a grab combo and a stray Eiha. Bair kills at reasonable percents even without Arsene and is quick to start, quick to end, and has single digit landing lag, so he has a safe kill option he can just fish for outside of that too.

Fair's a really cool move for edgeguarding, especially with Arsene active. Lots of frontal reach, decent active frames, high base knockback. With Arsene active you basically just die regardless of percent if it hits you offstage.

Rebel's Guard is lowkey one of the more interesting perks about him to me. Compared to other counters, Focus Attack, etc. it has the advantages of more potential active frames, being able to soak multiple hits, and having a quicker counterattack than anything else. Combined with stalling Joker midair, it can be used more like an air shield to survive edgeguard attempts in situations where other characters' options are either "get hit and die" or "airdodge and die". Combined with Eiha to cover himself, Gun to alter his trajectory, and both upB variants actually having surprisingly good distance, his recovery options actually seem pretty great. Getting Arsene faster is cool, too.

Even if his neutral isn't oppressive, I don't see it being flawed between his movement, attack speed, sideB, and general reach (if Joker doesn't have enough reach, I don't even wanna know how bad Mario, Inkling, the Pikas, etc. have it - he doesn't have a sword, don't compare him to a sword character). Worst case, he still has everything he needs to compete.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Am I missing something? Joker does have kill confirms. First hit fair is easy to hit and goes into a lot of stuff, especially in Arsene form where he gets up smash to kill.

How dare you use actual evidence in internet arguments.

We don't appreciate you scholarly types around these parts.

 

[Shaya]

Rebel's guard seems to be an effort by developers to bridge the "scary" gap between proper use of parrying and otherwise - generally a lot more generous with timing (including being able to use it mid air), but promotes timing the release appropriately and leans towards needing to read your opponent's sequences more so than just "react". And like a shield it can be held for a very long time.
Due to said flexbility, same thing applies to you as an opponent and learning to respect/deal with defense or neutral beyond the basics of 'I just press the button and it's fine".
Witch Time probably had a similar intention in S4 of "making people think more", they just massively overshot it's power.

Could very well consider putting serious effort into Joker just for down-b.
If you're already a "parry god", those skills could translate into heavy reward from a lot of Arsene up-time.
If you're weak in that area, you may find a more steady (and recognisable) inclination of skill in that department than you would just through regular character parrying, which would hopefully/likely translate back to your character of choice.

 

[Gleam]

The best thing I can say about Base Joker is that, thanks to the way Rebel's Guard works, he may very well be one of the most difficult characters to Zone. I still stand by what I said, Base Joker is a vulnerably weak character who's negatives I believe outweigh his positives. But thanks to Down B, he can effectively turn zoners against them as he soaks up say 20% damage (on an empty bar) and gets a nice buff via Arsene thanks to it.

Therefore, I can only imagine how annoying it would be for any projectile heavy character like the Belmonts. This is a character that, unless you want him to get Arsene early, you are going to have to kind of go up there and fight him, he isn't going to let you create distance and zone him out.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Diddy seems about the most buffed character in this patch.. how we think about that?

 

[The_Bookworm]

6-0 and a handshake. Btw, not sure why they put Joker in the thumbnail for ESAM considering that he was on screen for 2 minutes at most.

Diddy seems about the most buffed character in this patch.. how we think about that?

He got some decent buffs in the patch, but he far from the most buffed character in the patch.

 

[Arthur97]

6-0 and a handshake. Btw, not sure why they put Joker in the thumbnail for ESAM considering that he was on screen for 2 minutes at most.


He got some decent buffs in the patch, but he far from the most buffed character in the patch.

Because Joker is new and "exciting." Clickbait perhaps.

 

[DelugeFGC]

I'm starting to change my mind on Joker, but I'm still having a hard time placing him past mid tier.

FAir has a lot of promise for a poke move, you can be degenerate-grade defensive in neutral with it in CQC and still end up pretty safe unless it's a MU against big disjointed hitboxes or projectiles. BAir is weird, the move doesn't seem to work like you'd think it would and there's some interesting stuff you can do with it. I don't like UAir, I don't think it hits consistently enough. DAir is actually quite good, it's probably my favorite aerial of his. NAir has a great hitbox for defense use, but it's so laggy.. his tilts all seem cool, I love that he has that Cloud DTilt especially.

I still cannot, however, factor in this movement tech in any kind of.. meaningful way. I can do it, but none of the options I have available out of it make it seem worth doing.

My biggest issue with him is building %, because with Arsene out, he has too much knockback to combo consistently, WITHOUT him, he can combo but does meh damage. WITHOUT Arsene, it also becomes very hard to kill. I will say a HUGE factor of my opinion changing was how fast you can get Arsene out, the Rebellion meter isn't hard to fill.

Jokers biggest issues:

Lack of range / small hitboxes compared to other characters 'in the same vein' as him.

Combo food to a certain extent because of his size, but not heavy enough to live long enough to make it not an issue.

Zoning isn't good without Arsene, matter of fact it's near worthless without him outside of the gun movement tech (if that's even useful at all?)

He can't consistently kill without Arsene, and he can't consistently combo to build % with him.

His recovery is more vulnerable than people seem to realize.

Rebellion, while not hard to max out / fill, does require risks to capitalize on.



If someone can work through at least SOME of these issues and/or he gets the right buffs, I could see him ONE DAY ending up in high tier. Call it, B tier, low high tier. He does NOT have that 'day 1 swag' needed for me to concede to him being a candidate for the upper echelons of high tier, god forbid top tier.. but I do feel I was wrong.

 

[NairWizard]

apparently jab>smashes going by SolidSense's post though I haven't seen that one in use yet

the jabs are for resets in the given combo

 

[bc1910]

Joker is a hybrid of Sheik and Greninja with a Limit Break.

Where I feel people are going wrong is trying to play Joker's neutral like Sheik; this doesn't work, he doesn't have the frame data for it. His neutral is far more effective using a movement heavy, bait and punish Greninja style. He doesn't have the raw frame data of Sheik to smother opponents with hitboxes. His advantage state, on the other hand, plays out a lot like Sheik's only with Arsene sometimes giving him Greninja Fair level power on most of his aerials.

Joker has a lot of what you want in a strong character; good damage racking and combo game, good aerials, a decent recovery, fast moves in general, great movement speed, good edgeguarding and a very powerful clutch in Arsene. He, like Greninja, has a pretty bad OoS game but, also like Greninja, he has the movement specs to avoid attacks very effectively and doesn't rely on shielding. My biggest gripe with the character is his disappointing initial dash, it's more like Fox or Falcon's than Sheik's or Greninja's. This hurts his otherwise stellar movement specs.

Killing isn't as much of an issue once you get used to the character. He has plenty of confirms with Fair 1, Bair is really fast for its range and power, all his smashes are good and so is his edgeguarding. Arsene turns almost every aerial into a safe kill move and beefs up his tilts nicely. Ftilt in general is a really underrated move, it's basically Wolf's with more disjoint.

Arsene Bair in particular is disgusting; frame 7, massive hitbox, kills early, autocancels in a short hop, does about 19(!) damage. There are small windows with Arsene where he gets a hoo hah with Uthrow Uair, by the way.

I think he's really strong overall, just not that easy to play. High tier material at worst.

 

[Fenriraga]

Remember when people thought Wolf couldn't kill to save his life?

I'm not about to say Joker is in that same boat entirely, but there's no way in hell frame data/a kit like his puts him anywhere lower than mid tier at the worst.

 

[Nate1080]

I feel like people are really trying to play Joker like a sword character, based on comments stating a lack of range being a negative for him and the fact that he uses a dagger.

If what I said is true, I feel as though its the wrong approach to Joker and I can understand why he might not feel good to people. He doesn’t even feel or, based on the reveal trailer look, like a sword character. He should be played as a rush down combo kind of character imo, something like Fox, Inkling, Falcon, etc. In the lenses of that kind of character, his range isn’t even bad and might even look pretty decent considering he just happens to have a disjoint in the form of a dagger.

 

[Krysco]

As I've said before, Joker has frame data similar to that of sword wielding characters despite only having a dagger. I tested this on training the day I got him and while I didn't write it down, I recall a frame 5~ jab, frame 8~ for all 3 tilts, typical 12-16~ range for the smash attacks and I remember uair being his fastest aerial around frame 5~. This is just factoring in startup as that's the easiest thing to find out in training. It's a similar case to Young and Toon Link where they have shorter swords than the likes of Marth yet they still have poor frame data compared to those who use their fists like Mario. Joker doesn't have the frame data to suffocate others like Sheik nor does he have the range to consistently keep others out like Marth.

Honestly, the way people are looking at Joker reminds me of how people looked at Roy in Smash 4 and some still do in Ultimate, calling him a poor Marth and should be played like Falcon when there is a middle ground. I'm sure Joker has his own middle ground and doesn't have to be played exactly like Sheik or Greninja or a sword character.

 

[Hippieslayer]

God forbid I make a joke about Sheik's damage output or Axel is gonna hunt me down again.

I believe you mean false statement and its good it got called out.

 

[Browny]

I just want to see footage of how joker players deal with high level snake or wolf players. I wouldn't put a single one of his moves anywhere near the best in their class and he can't rely on being a jack of all trades when other characters are extremely oppressive and will just outlive, outcamp, outdamage and outrange you which both of those characters do.

If you want to hang with the viable crowd in this game, you have to be good at multiple things, you cant just rely on being busted in one aspect (Ganon, Luigi etc). I see below average KO options, average recovery, below average weight, below average combos, average edgeguarding... There is simply nothing that he does, than 10+ characters don't do better. I mean seriously, people are getting hyped about throw combos into one aerial that does like 15% and im here looking at Pichu who does 38% or so completely for free or Ike who does 20%+ off every single nair conversion, completely safely no matter the %.

A character with Jokers lack of KO potential, zoning capability and weight is going to have to make up for it with either a lot of range or 40%+ combos and he's pretty short on both aspects. That's not saying hes a 'bad' character, but when people are comparing him to the likes of sheik or shulk as proof of where he is good... yeah you might want to up the bar on what it takes to be 'good' in this game.

-Edit for anyone who just saw Samsora wipe the floor with Esam 10-1 just then, that's kind of my point. Pika might be pretty good with his speed, evasiveness and combos. Except when he comes up against a character is just so much better in all other aspects that it just murders them and makes pika look mid tier. If you want to be viable in this game, you have to be really good at multiple things, because the current top tiers are all very good at just about everything, you need to exceed them in more than one area to win.

 

[Siledh]

People who feel Rebek's Guard and Revenge work well against zoners ignore the fact it gives us free damage. Sure, it helps them too, but when I am building up more and more damage and you whiff your Revenge attack or I avoid Arsene with my boomerang, who cares.

 

[Dream Cancel]

He hasn't been out for more than a few days and we're trying to place him into a tier. For better or for worse, let's not. MUs are more important and what determines tier placement anyways.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

People who feel Rebek's Guard and Revenge work well against zoners ignore the fact it gives us free damage. Sure, it helps them too, but when I am building up more and more damage and you whiff your Revenge attack or I avoid Arsene with my boomerang, who cares.

Well think of it as adding to the risk/reward factor for both you and your opponent in those MU's. If you are confident that you can zone them out well enough to still beat out , or even deny them the potential advantage and reward they can get on you from it. Them nobody can stop ya.

 

[Y2Kay]

Not sure anyone has noticed, but Pound 2019 is now one and roaring. Not many upsets have occurred, but here is what it is occurred so far:

Pipp 2-1 JeBB
Mystearica (He played in SSB4, but not sure if he plays her in Ultimate) 2-1 Seagull Joe

Pipp is arguably Tennessee’s strongest smash player. He mains Snake. He’s a good friend of mine.

 

[PK Gaming]

What Joker starts off with is a character who...

1.) Has a severe lack of killing power.
2.) Weak damage racking.
3.) Pitiful projectile.
4.) Poor edgeguarding and offstage tools.
5.) Weak combos that don't amount to the high level of percentages Joker needs to get people up.
6.) Because of the lack of killing power, is more easily killed in his base form before he can rightfully get opponents up to kill percentage himself.
7.) His need for Persona essentially requires him to take risky moves such as counters and damage.

I do think Persona Joker does get overhyped but I think one can argue that Persona Joker is a decent character. I don't think the same can be said for Base Joker and when you're forced to play as a relatively vulnerable character for at least half a stock or half a match, that severely handicaps the character imo.

I hate to indulge in dump culture but you got literally every single one of your points wrong. Let's break it down

1) He has kill setups via Fair1 and edgeguarding. "Severe" lack of killing is an overstatement
2) His unoptimized throw combos already do great damage so this is completely off base
3) Eiha is a decent spacing tool. Eigaon is a top class projectile, and his gun is decent/underutilized
4) (Down) Gun is an absurdly effective edgeguarding tool
5) See #2
6) KO ability = / = survival ability
7) You can build Arsene up passively on your first stock; you don't need to go out of your way to get him (unless you want)

You need to wait until you have a better understanding of the character before attempting to make an assessment this detailed.

EDIT: I feel the big problem with Joker currently is that he suffers mightily against short characters because his moves just do not hit. That and the lack of a safe normal he can just throw out to pressure his opponent.

 

[sedrf]

Well really the main problem seeing from other players seem to be his hitboxes and having greninja syndrome when it comes to oos options.
Which probably comes from the dev team probably trying to make him as "honest" as possible

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Well really the main problem seeing from other players seem to be his hitboxes and having greninja syndrome when it comes to oos options.
Which probably comes from the dev team probably trying to make him as "honest" as possible

I really think the Ultimate dev team seem to be concerned about making post-release DLC characters "too good" giving both PP and Joker clear..well limitatioms for lack of a bettet word. I guess the fear unleashing something Smash 4 Bayo and Cloud to dominate the meta and get the same backlash

 

[Gleam]

1) He has kill setups via Fair1 and edgeguarding. "Severe" lack of killing is an overstatement

I'm sorry but with exception to the usage of Arsene, there is not one kill confirm Joker has in his base form. Someone show me evidence that Base Joker has any kill confirms when the most he can combo is at about 100% and needs to get opponents up to around 120-180% (depending on the move) to get them into kill percentage.

A kill confirm means that Joker can true combo into some move and get a legitimate kill out of it. This may be very much true for Arsene, but someone name me a single kill confirm that Base Joker has? You people keep mentioning that Joker actually has kill confirms and I honestly don't know if you just mean Arsene or not because I haven't seen jack from Base Joker.

Palutena, assuming it wasn't changed in the patch (didn't really check) had a kill confirm via Down-Throw to Fair. You could literally true combo that up to as high as 250% and it pretty much killed at around 150%. Base Joker doesn't have one thing to his name that would account for a kill confirm. In fact, Base Joker's killing power is so weak that actually has more killing power in the majority of his moves. A character who is notorious for having weak killing power.

I mean Base Joker might have one against a really light character like Jigglypuff or Pichu, but he certain isn't comboing Lucina to death without Arsene.

2) His unoptimized throw combos already do great damage so this is completely off base

None of Base Joker's combos work past 100% In fact I don't know if any of them go past 80%. He's got a few true combos at low percent such as:
Down-Throw+Nair/Fair and Uair. It takes some good timing but he can do Fastfall Nair+D-tilt. Utilt can be comboed into a few moves up until around 50%. These are not good damages but the thing is, that sense of "damage lacking" may very come from the fact that Base Joker has such poor killing power.

If Joker could kill like any normal character, 100-120%, that might make the build up of the combo damage seem reasonable. But that's no the case, chances are until you get Arsene, you won't be killing until around 150-180%, his base attacks just weren't designed for having killing power and thus the damage he does seems insignificant compared to the percentages he usually needs to get people at.

It was already brought up but thanks to increase in knockback thanks to Arsene, it's now much harder to consistently land combos with it. It's like you gain one thing and lose another. I said that Arsene probably has kill confirms but I'm not sure if that's true. Is there anything Persona Joker can combo that goes into a kill confirm? I ask that mostly of genuine curiosity.

3) Eiha is a decent spacing tool. Eigaon is a top class projectile, and his gun is decent/underutilized

Sorry to say but I don't see much use in his gun beyond very select points. Get a bit of chip damage, do a little bit of spacing. It's basically a much worse Fox Blaster and it desperately needs either damage increase or hitstun...aka what Persona gives it. Eiha is honestly a much better projectile that does allow for some spacing, but is also heavily laggy and easily canceled by a lot of regular attacks. I don't know if I can say Eigaon is a top class projectile but being the buffed up version of Eiha, it's certainly more useful.

But I'm not talking about Persona am I?

4) (Down) Gun is an absurdly effective edgeguarding tool

You mean the gun that has nearly no damage or hitstun? Sure that might work against Little Mac or Ganon but it's not going to do much against anyone with a decent recovery. You may mean Gun Special via Persona/Arsene and in that case, perhaps so. I make it very clear I'm talking about Base Joker, without the buffs he gets from Persona and I'm starting to question if anyone is actually getting that.

5

) See #2

Right back at ya.

6) KO ability = / = survival ability

It kind of does though. If Base Joker needs to get people up to 150% on many of his moves but dies at around 120%, that means he needs to put more effort in both landing hits and avoiding damage. Most character's don't have this problem. Even with his poor killing power can at least survive a good 150-180% thanks to combination of his weight and recovery. Character's usually have a balance of some sort between their killing power and the percentage they're usually killed at. Arsene seems to ultimately be what helps Joker balance out hat issue.

7) You can build Arsene up passively on your first stock; you don't need to go out of your way to get him (unless you want)

That sounds like an episode for trouble. Why would I want to build up something passively, unless you mean passively different than what I think. Do you mean like, do it via damage taken and not counter? There's only three ways to get that gauge up.

1.) Simply letting time go by, much like Cloud's limit, will raise the bar, but it's very slow and more likely the other two options are how you'll get it.

2.) Successfully landing counters which still does damage, but not by much. To get a full gauge from 0% will usually net you about 20% damage overall, not a bad trade perhaps.

3.) Taking damage will refill it as well. Here it takes about 60% damage to fill a gauge completely.

There's also a technical 4th one where once you have it, landing attacks (I don't know if any or if particularly powerful ones) will help keep it raised. The opposite is also true, taking damage depletes it.

I don't think anyone is denying that Persona Joker at least feels like a decent to good character but I have yet to see what makes Base Joker, who is arguably going to be in around at least half of the match unless you're really good at getting and keeping Arsene, into anything but a below average character.

It also hasn't been mentioned but Arsene also has another weakness and it's the same as Cloud's Limit. In that it has...well...a limit. Any character with good mobility and/or a decent projectile can effectively space, zone and keep out of Arsene's range.






I'd argue that all of these character's have either the mobility/and or projectile game to keep out Arsene's range and do chip damage to the gauge while even having good enough neutrals to deal with Joker even if he does get in.

Persona is a golden opportunity for Joker and once he misses a kill out on it, I say once again, Base Joker gets put into a distinctive disadvantage.

 

[Fenriraga]

People who feel Rebek's Guard and Revenge work well against zoners ignore the fact it gives us free damage. Sure, it helps them too, but when I am building up more and more damage and you whiff your Revenge attack or I avoid Arsene with my boomerang, who cares.

Honestly, in most cases the damage is miniscule enough that it doesn't matter. Joker gets much more off getting Arsene than someone does landing a projectile.

 

[DelugeFGC]

I feel like if a player, the right player, could just somehow bring all of Joker's BS together into a synergetic gameplan that works consistently, with possibly a few buffs from Nintendo in the future.. Joker could be a solid tournament results-getter, really. The more I use him the more I see it, you really just can't play him like.. anyone else. He's like a tribrid of three characters.

I think his biggest problem now is probably lack of range and a very poor / linear recovery.

 

[ZephyrZ]

Sigh. Are people still saying Joker's combos are bad? Well don't take it from me, let's hear what VoiD has to say.

And this was a very rough, Day 2 guide. As in, not everything here is fully optimized yet. Despite that this video already has Uair loops and kill confirms, even if it doesn't go super in depth on them.

If Joker's combos are "below average" I want to know what average is supposed to be.

 

[Idon]

Honestly, my main issue with Joker is his recovery. As much as you push Joker's meta to its absolute limit, you're not going to change the fact his only recovery option is finnicky, slow, and vulnerable while also being extremely linear at the same time.