There's a ton of potential major winners from this patch from the sounds of things; I would like to throw my hat in the ring myself and advocate that
might've been among the biggest of winners. Or rather, his buffs might have the biggest
impact on our current meta.
FSmash connecting better is a nice QoL change, though as far as QoL changes go, it's minimal in its impact; FSmash's problem was moreso that it was high in both start-up and endlag, which made it major high risk/high reward type attack. It's a move that's rarely used, but in the case that it is used, the change will definitely help in its consistency.
The bigger meat and potatoes in my opinion comes from his four changes; to start off with the smaller stuff, Climhazzard have its ledge grab time cut down by four frames may not seem that big, but its impact can easily be best demonstrated in this clip:
In other words, the amount of leeway he gives the opponent to 2-frame is much less disproportionately bad relative to the cast, and much more in line with... say, a teleport ledge grab. Beyond having a recovery that went little distance, even if he could make it back to the ledge, you not only had to worry about what ledge trapping your opponent had planned, but also if you could live long enough at the ledge to experience it. In the grand scheme, this is probably the least impactful of his "big buffs", but an important one nonetheless.
Dash attack and up smash - on the other hand - is where things start to get interesting. Up smash getting a 3 frame reduction on its start-up gives Cloud another decent (although situational) OoS that's not just Climhazzard; more importantly, however, the move was already massive in its range, both horizontal and vertically. Having a 3 frame reduction on such an attack now pits it at a generous total 45 frame duration (the exact same as Kirby's USmash funny enough), and with coverage as good as it, your opponent now has to be wary of three things: Its immense coverage, its relatively short duration, and thanks to the buff I'll be going into next, it's actually, like, SCARY powerful now. It won't incite the same levels of fear as something as noncommittal as
's USmash, but such a powerful combination of attributes (on someone so fast no less) will condition your opponent to play around it enough that it could potentially play towards Cloud's advantage.
Dash attack and up smash getting knockback buffs, however, are crucial to alleviating one of Cloud's most problematic hurdles: While he had a very solid neutral thanks to a powerful combination of speed, range, damage output, and good defensive options, the advantage he would get off of such a strong neutral would quickly diminish as the opponent's percentage would increase. In other words, Cloud REALLY struggled to take stocks off the opponent at percents below 120%; if he wasn't relying on his (probably badly staled) back aerial to deliver the finishing blow, he needed a Limit Cross Slash to bail him out, which in of itself, came with his own drawbacks. His other KO moves suffered either from having below-average knockback (FTilt, DSmash), being hard to land (DAir) or just being very slow and situational (FSmash, Finishing Touch). Dash attack and USmash, however, give Cloud some of the best burst options he suffered hard from: Both attacks have great coverage, are disjointed, (in the case of dash attack) can 2-frame, have respectable start-up, have strong enough KO power that doesn't force Cloud to over-rely on his BAir or FTilt for taking stocks, and most importantly, are mapped to one of the most agile characters in the game. They come with their own drawbacks, but that's negligible when considering the two big things to come from this: 1. Cloud actually has kill power outside of a few selective options, and 2. The opponent has to be wary of it, and play around it.
A faster Limit Charge, to me, is the cherry-on-top that helps accentuate this positives further: Having a faster Limit Charge grants Cloud access to his kill options WAY earlier, provides him with more opportunities to recovery via Limit Climhazzard, lets Cloud benefit far more from deciding not to go for a risky edgeguard, and on top of everything else, forces a much greater incentive to approach by the opponent. Every time Cloud starts charging now, he's going to be getting way more meter off of it then he ever has even when he has to cancel it prematurely. When the opponent's in disadvantage, he'll gain way more. When the opponent is Star KO'd he almost gets a full bar from that. Limit Charge Cloud can be a neutral monster and was also one of the only times he was actually threatening at high percents (before the other buffs anyway); opponents are incentivized far more to make the first move, because the more they wait, the more they're losing for it.
was already a character who had a good handful of even-to-winning match-ups against top/high tier threats like
and
, and had a handful of decent results (I think he was ranked #28 on OrionStats previously?). With these buffs, there's a huge chance he can skyrocket even further, and I'm fairly optimistic about where he's headed, despite some of his glaring weaknesses being left in tact (poor grab game being the most blaring one). However, when I say his buffs could have the biggest impact out of any character buffed, I don't just mean character buffs, but the effect of said buffs on competitive players.
To put it simply, Cloud players, for the most part, are very excited about these changes, and there's quite a bit of Buster Swords being drawn once again, not just from the players who decided to stick with him till the end, but from those that initially left him behind. Mr. R has expressed interest in picking him up as a secondary, Cheeks has gone back to using him again, YOC is planning on dropping Joker for Cloud, and even Tweek has been giving him another shot at locals, and while he won't most likely have staying power there (especially when Tweek is currently using
), it's interesting seeing just how much hope has been rejuvenated in the playerbase, especially about a character who's negativity surrounding him rivaled that of
. Sparg0 in particular - who has been pretty vocal about his opinions towards Cloud - has been far more positive about the character ever since the buffs, and has even admitted to believing that he's a high tier now.
Even if Cloud's buffs don't turn out to be the best on a technical level, I can honestly see him getting the biggest rise in results out of any winner this patch.
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Major good stuff to Jesuischoq for almost winning a C Tier event as
. From what I've seen, Kirby has had the biggest success out of any buffed character from patch 6.0.0 (besides
, although that's moreso because he was already a fairly decent character before the buffs), which is especially funny because he usually ends up ranked the worst out of all six buffed characters (MKLeo's on the right track putting him above
, though).
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EDIT: Just as I speak highly of him, Sparg0 already wins a C Tier using solo Cloud:
https://smash.gg/tournament/get-in-...ents/ultimate-singles/brackets/714932/1156095
Even better, he only dropped 2 games his entire run.
