Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Minordeth]

The_Bookworm - Marth’s sweetspots have only had priority over sour spots in three cases:

Melee’s Uair and Dair, and Brawl’s Usmash.

Other than those three, sour spots have always had priority.

Edit: a nice Marth buff would be slight increases to hitlag/hitstun on DB - much like Roy’s DED. It would allow for easier timing for DBF4 tippers regardless of DB1 spacing.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Doc SNIP

This image sums it up:

Spoiler: Pic

You can buff his mobility and still keep his design/identity in-tact.
Yeah, giving him ZSS tier air mobility is too much (As awesome as it would be), but a general speed boost works.

Also, Super Sheet is fine as is.
It's great for momentum shifts from B-Reverse landings and mix-ups that Mario's simply can't perform.

EDIT:
Case and point:

I love b-reverse cape too much pic.twitter.com/AH8aEXrOX8

— AQG Pandemic (@AqgPandemic) June 12, 2020

 

[PK Bash]

Make his sourspots a bit stronger, and his sweetspot to once again take priority over his sourspots. His sword feels like a wet noodle right now ( got his revenge). These changes alone will be a big boon to Marth (and honestly all he needs).

Here's a fun one.
Anyone know how the damage compares between Lucina's forward air and Marth's tippered equivalent?
Marth's tipper does 1% more.
1%.

This is not uncommon. Across most of their useful moves - back air (11.8% Lucina/12.5% Marth), neutral air (8.5% / 9.5%) and forward tilt (11% / 12%), Marth's tipper is barely doing any more than Lucina's sword. Meanwhile, his sourspots are often significantly weaker. In the four moves I've mentioned so far, Marth's sourspot ranges from 1% to 2.8% weaker.
It's not all like this - their dolphin slashes are totally identical (no tipper on this move) and Marth's tipper forward smash is a fair bit stronger if you get it, and if someone really wanted to, they could probably argue his up air being good (I'm not going to) albeit for some different reasons than why Lucina's is. In general though, the difference makes Marth look pretty dire.

While his sourspots do nothing for him the way they are and he would be a much better character with some number adjustments on them, people are still not going to bother with Marth over Lucina unless some of the latter's numbers are changed as well. (or they buff tippers....)

To be clear, I'm not suggesting they nerf all the Lucina moves I've mentioned, but knocking down some damage values on a couple of key moves ever so slightly will make Marth so much more appealing even before you buff his sourspots.

So yes, buff Marth, but I'd also argue nerf Lucina very slightly at the same time. She'd still be very competent, and suddenly people might actually use Marth again. Some of you may not like the idea of nerfing Lucina, but the alternative is making tippers stupid. And I feel like the whole point of people suggesting Marth buffs is to make him an option over Lucina.

I'm keen to see Marth viable because, the way he currently is, he's actually pretty cool and has some creative stuff. Adjust some sourspot numbers, fix dancing blade, maybe sneak a tiny bit more hitstun on tipper nair 1 or up air for his confirms into strong tippers (getting tippers raw kinda hard in this game with the whiplash movement everyone has) and yeah, cool character.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

I'm hoping they fix Dedede's f-smash so the spike hitbox actually combos into the sweetspot.

Also i hope they give Zard his short hop autocancel Fair back, or they reduce it's landing lag. That move feels terrible to use right now.

i'd like parry to be better against projectiles as well but im not really sure how they would do that.

-1: Agreed.

-2: SHAC Fair would fix most of major drawbacks, likely turning into the best character... and I'm okay with this.

-3: Simply give them next to no lag.

 

[DunnoBro]

So can you clarify how you'd want Wario's recovery nerfed?
You have some interesting ideas about adjustments for Snake, though I don't think cypher is as much of a necessity to get altered as nikita. I totally accept that a ton of characters have really strong tools of some kind that tend to invalidate large portions of the cast (in the tiers below them especially), but nikita really just seems too free of an edgeguard option for Snake. I know his aerial mobility is lacking so he can't really go out there himself to edgeguard well that often outside of mix ups and hard reads, but I think nikita can be toned down a bit without it getting hit too hard either.

Oh damn I totally missed this.

Is it an increased timer on Bike or something else? Either way, even if a change doesn't directly nerf waft, something that allows him to use it as easily as he can should be nerfed. You could reduce his air speed and/or acceleration so he has a harder time camping you out to build it up, though so far there really haven't been any notable changes to characters' base attributes in the patches we've gotten if I'm not mistaken, especially as it pertains to mobility. I do think the simplest way is some type of direct nerf to waft so it's a bit less apt to just straight up cheese people so easily; whether that's a KB reduction or a mild increase in start up frames. If I could just make it to 60 or 80% before I start worrying about waft and its combos destroying my stocks rather than 0-40%, that would be great.

Air speed/acc nerf isn't really gonna work. Too much of his kit was designed with air speed in mind. That's asking for a total rework of the character.

And you could definitely just nerf waft. But like, that's his character. Waft is the entire reason to use him.

And honestly, even ignoring waft, Bike is ridiculous. It has VERY little risk involved in using it. Kind of like Snake's cypher, he just uses it to go super high to avoid edgeguards/ledge traps and has a flowchart for reversals while landing.

The timer on bike is so meaningless they even use it for ledge traps when they have time. Which may have been intentional, but then other aspects of his recovery should be nerfed further. (Upb even less distance?)

I definitely don't want hard nerfs to high or top tiers btw, but wario waft and nikita are examples of tools that these characters have that are just straight up ridiculous in how effective they are for what they're used for. Another example I can think of that fits this bill Imo is ZSS boost kick: it's an OOS option that's insanely fast and its kill power is absolutely bonkers on most characters and still kills quite early on even the heavier characters in this game. Her mobility is unbelievably good with tons of great options for fast, safe pressure and imo, Idt the nerf to flip kick grounded bury in patch 7.0 was significant enough to really lessen the jank she can pull with her up b (unrelated to this buffs/nerfs discussion and this may be a hot take, but I think ZSS is quite possibly the best character in Ultimate because of some of the things I just mentioned).

I really don't think these tools are abnormally potent compared to other characters. It's just most of those have them balanced out.

PKThunder, Bowling Ball, Trick Shot, etc all have similarly low committment/high reward edgeguard dynamics. But they're mostly balanced out.

I will say Nikita probably should send at a higher angle(Indirectly nerfing the kill potential). Like Duck Hunt's Trick Shot. It shouldn't endlessly set up into it's own edgeguards.

My main issue with flip kick is ledge scenarios. I feel like if nothing else, if she used it to recover, she can't use it again until she takes a regular ledge option. (Like how yoshi doesn't get egg height back) Because it's just crazy dumb for anti-ledge traps. I feel like you should be rewarded for forcing her to burn it.

 

[DougEfresh]

DunnoBro to clarify, I was never actually suggesting to nerf Wario air speed or acceleration. I added it as an alternative way to nerf waft more indirectly simply because I was unclear on how exactly you wanted his recovery nerfed instead and to what extent.

Also, I even said in my original post that you quoted last night that I don't want waft to be totally gutted, I realize it's integral to his character as it's his win condition. I just think his ability to not interact and reliably build it up to full waft at least once to twice each match could really be problematic for the meta in the long term, and a minor tone-down to waft really won't ruin Wario as a character since his mobility and combo game are attributes that would still remain very strong for him while waft remains potent enough but you don't have to potentially kiss your stock or the game goodbye at 30% anymore.

I can agree that Snake nikita is a somewhat lower priority nerf because of his lesser presence in the meta more recently, though if they ever were to tone him down at all, nikita is what I'd look at more than just about anything else in his kit.

Maybe I've grown too accustomed to wifi ZSS's the last few months and have ended up getting flip jump buried more than I should be as a result (and I'm no Nairo when it comes to mashing even though I don't suck at it either), but I still think boost kick can pretty reliably kill from a bury starting at around 90-100%...which given how fantastic her other tools like I mentioned before, could arguably be a bit too much. But I can get behind any type of change to make flip jump/kick a little less busted, that may very well solve much of any significant issues people might have when fighting ZSS.

If you disagree with any or all of this, that's fine. It's just how I see things and what I would do to slightly adjust some top tiers while keeping their character identity and essence well intact and I wanted to clarify my position(s) on the topic.

 

[L9999]

To be clear, I'm not suggesting they nerf all the Lucina moves I've mentioned, but knocking down some damage values on a couple of key moves ever so slightly will make Marth so much more appealing even before you buff his sourspots.

So yes, buff Marth, but I'd also argue nerf Lucina very slightly at the same time. She'd still be very competent, and suddenly people might actually use Marth again. Some of you may not like the idea of nerfing Lucina, but the alternative is making tippers stupid. And I feel like the whole point of people suggesting Marth buffs is to make him an option over Lucina.

I'm keen to see Marth viable because, the way he currently is, he's actually pretty cool and has some creative stuff. Adjust some sourspot numbers, fix dancing blade, maybe sneak a tiny bit more hitstun on tipper nair 1 or up air for his confirms into strong tippers (getting tippers raw kinda hard in this game with the whiplash movement everyone has) and yeah, cool character.

The alternative is making Marth a good character, shocking I know. Good step is to un-nerf his Side B. Having more control over the timing made it a vital part of the character, but they just had to gut the move completely. You could also alter his throws to launch the opponent not as far away to make the opponent be forced to take a panic option, like how they were in Brawl and Melee.

 

[DunnoBro]

DunnoBro to clarify, I was never actually suggesting to nerf Wario air speed or acceleration. I added it as an alternative way to nerf waft more indirectly simply because I was unclear on how exactly you wanted his recovery nerfed instead and to what extent.

Also, I even said in my original post that you quoted last night that I don't want waft to be totally gutted, I realize it's integral to his character as it's his win condition. I just think his ability to not interact and reliably build it up to full waft at least once to twice each match could really be problematic for the meta in the long term, and a minor tone-down to waft really won't ruin Wario as a character since his mobility and combo game are attributes that would still remain very strong for him while waft remains potent enough but you don't have to potentially kiss your stock or the game goodbye at 30% anymore.

I can agree that Snake nikita is a somewhat lower priority nerf because of his lesser presence in the meta more recently, though if they ever were to tone him down at all, nikita is what I'd look at more than just about anything else in his kit.

Maybe I've grown too accustomed to wifi ZSS's the last few months and have ended up getting flip jump buried more than I should be as a result (and I'm no Nairo when it comes to mashing even though I don't suck at it either), but I still think boost kick can pretty reliably kill from a bury starting at around 90-100%...which given how fantastic her other tools like I mentioned before, could arguably be a bit too much. But I can get behind any type of change to make flip jump/kick a little less busted, that may very well solve much of any significant issues people might have when fighting ZSS.

If you disagree with any or all of this, that's fine. It's just how I see things and what I would do to slightly adjust some top tiers while keeping their character identity and essence well intact and I wanted to clarify my position(s) on the topic.

I getcha. The 'rinse and repeat' effect of Nikita in some matchups is just unfun and unfair. If it'll kill raw, it can be fine. But when it just keeps setting up for itself until they die it's clearly polarizing. I'd still like it to see it used as a low-committal 'finisher' or guaranteed damage, but like Trick Shot i feel it shouldn't endlessly set up for itself. Vs PK Thunder if you just let it hit you with your jump, you'll often be fine. Nikita will just go again. Trick shot also hits you really high up so it becomes progressively easier to dodge the can, even though it also might kill you if it catches you again higher up.

As for ZSS, I really don't know. I definitely feel flip kick is the enabler for boost kick. It's definitely worse on wifi since it's already in that 'barely reactable' territory which then becomes 'not reactable at all' on wifi.

It's actually obnoxious how many 'barely reactable' but powerful options there are in this game. Essentially any power option around frame 20~ falls into this category.

Homing Attack, c4 Detonation, Flip kick, PK Fire, Ganon Upsmash, etc.

These become obnoxiously spammable on wifi. But I also think offline they're perfectly balanced and add dynamic and interesting flowcharts. Really, more of an issue with the wifi service i feel.

 

[DougEfresh]

I getcha. The 'rinse and repeat' effect of Nikita in some matchups is just unfun and unfair. If it'll kill raw, it can be fine. But when it just keeps setting up for itself until they die it's clearly polarizing. I'd still like it to see it used as a low-committal 'finisher' or guaranteed damage, but like Trick Shot i feel it shouldn't endlessly set up for itself. Vs PK Thunder if you just let it hit you with your jump, you'll often be fine. Nikita will just go again. Trick shot also hits you really high up so it becomes progressively easier to dodge the can, even though it also might kill you if it catches you again higher up.

As for ZSS, I really don't know. I definitely feel flip kick is the enabler for boost kick. It's definitely worse on wifi since it's already in that 'barely reactable' territory which then becomes 'not reactable at all' on wifi.

It's actually obnoxious how many 'barely reactable' but powerful options there are in this game. Essentially any power option around frame 20~ falls into this category.

Homing Attack, c4 Detonation, Flip kick, PK Fire, Ganon Upsmash, etc.

These become obnoxiously spammable on wifi. But I also think offline they're perfectly balanced and add dynamic and interesting flowcharts. Really, more of an issue with the wifi service i feel.

I can pretty much agree with all of this. I think you're spot on in articulating that nikita is able to have a constant presence for pressure off-stage no matter what recovery mix ups you try to use, as that's really what it is about the move that could conceivably toned down. If it killed outright like you said, that's probably just fine.

As far as ZSS, I also think you're probably right about it being predominantly wifi causing flip kick to be more problematic, although I do think it's insanely good as a move altogether. Regardless, I'm with you about the annoyance of having so many powerful options that are usually rather fast and quite safe. One can only hope that characters in the lower tiers will be buffed to the point where most can have genuine chances against high/top tiers at higher levels of play after these last several patches we'll get over the next 2 years or so.

 

[Rizen]

sorry for the lack of caps, i've been having wrist problems again.

all this nerf talk and no one's mentioned rob? rob may not have anything extremely broken like flip kick or waft but he has everything great. great cqc boxing game with dtilt, projectile zoning, offstage recovering that stalls in the air and no free falling, gimping with an aerial smash in rotor arms and a burying combo throw.
however, i don't think anyone needs to be nerfed. the game is well balanced without anyone being too oppressive. having said that i wouldn't complain if a few overtuned tools like waft were nerfed.

i do think several characters need buffs, one of which is ganon. the problem is he's much better, probably upper mid tier, on wifi. i can see why they've avoided buffing him for so long after these last months of wifi tournaments.
a lot of the other characters already got buffs so i don't expect much. they are functional but underwhelming but someone has to be low tier. it's hard to buff them further without making them a pain on wifi with too op of an option.

 

[DougEfresh]

sorry for the lack of caps, i've been having wrist problems again.

all this nerf talk and no one's mentioned rob? rob may not have anything extremely broken like flip kick or waft but he has everything great. great cqc boxing game with dtilt, projectile zoning, offstage recovering that stalls in the air and no free falling, gimping with an aerial smash in rotor arms and a burying combo throw.
however, i don't think anyone needs to be nerfed. the game is well balanced without anyone being too oppressive. having said that i wouldn't complain if a few overtuned tools like waft were nerfed.

i do think several characters need buffs, one of which is ganon. the problem is he's much better, probably upper mid tier, on wifi. i can see why they've avoided buffing him for so long after these last months of wifi tournaments.
a lot of the other characters already got buffs so i don't expect much. they are functional but underwhelming but someone has to be low tier. it's hard to buff them further without making them a pain on wifi with too op of an option.

Yea it's a bit difficult to say what direction they'll go in for changes this time around. Given that 7.0 might as well have been the "wifi character buffs" patch, I wouldn't be surprised to see that be the case again to a lesser extent. Ganon could very well be next up for some buffs, especially since many other heavies (except for poor ) have been given slight fdata buffs and/or QoL improvements to make them feel a bit better without going too far the other way. But yeah, besides the specific, arguably overtuned tools I and others have mentioned recently, I'm all for no nerfs as well.

I also think a lot of the mid tiers in general could use minor fdata and/or kill power buffs on certain moves in their kits to make them feel just a bit better, while other moves just don't work as they should. With the longer gaps between DLC characters in this second wave, maybe the dev team will be able to collect more extensive data to use for their buff/nerf decisions even though inevitably there will still be a handful of characters left behind (especially with a roster this large). Either way, I'd definitely welcome any and all changes that would add to character diversity in the meta, even if they are still relatively uncommon compared to the typical high and top tier picks we've gotten accustomed to seeing in competitive play.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

all this nerf talk and no one's mentioned rob?

In terms of character changes, this is what I would want to see:

Outside of this, slight nerfs to other top tiers like

 

[DJ3DS]

Personally I'm not of the opinion ROB needs a straight nerf, though I can also appreciate that there are elements of his kit that are frustrating. I still think his counterplay is evolving and his matchup spread is worse than other top tier contenders.

This said, if I wanted to tone down his more egregious aspects without gutting the character for ROB mains (like myself), I'd probably do the following:

- Increase downtilts endlag, but also increase its hitstun correspondingly so that it is less mashable on shield but retains the same reward on hit.

- decrease base knockback on side b, but buff its startup, which removes many of the most egregious zero to deaths (seriously, Google gyro double tossing and be thankful that none of the top American robs are using it too frequently) whilst making it a slightly better reflector and high damage combo finisher

These two alone remove I think the two most annoying aspects of the character without gutting him for his players. I think you could also just straight nerf them whilst buffing other aspects of the character:

- Fair is unsafe on hit at low percents, and does not actually KO until very high percents

- ROBs grab range is actually abysmal

- F-Tilt needs some rework to be worth using over D-Tilt right now. I'm not saying make it back into its Brawl iteration (where it outranged Marths F-Smash) but I think some range buff to make it a good whiff punish and spacing move would be nice.

I guess I'd just like a rework more than a straight nerf. I can appreciate there are a couple of aspects of ROB that can be frustrating but I think you can tweak those so that the moves are still useful without having the same cheese factor they do currently.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Personally I'm not of the opinion ROB needs a straight nerf, though I can also appreciate that there are elements of his kit that are frustrating. I still think his counterplay is evolving and his matchup spread is worse than other top tier contenders.

This said, if I wanted to tone down his more egregious aspects without gutting the character for ROB mains (like myself), I'd probably do the following:

- Increase downtilts endlag, but also increase its hitstun correspondingly so that it is less mashable on shield but retains the same reward on hit.

- decrease base knockback on side b, but buff its startup, which removes many of the most egregious zero to deaths (seriously, Google gyro double tossing and be thankful that none of the top American robs are using it too frequently) whilst making it a slightly better reflector and high damage combo finisher

These two alone remove I think the two most annoying aspects of the character without gutting him for his players. I think you could also just straight nerf them whilst buffing other aspects of the character:

- Fair is unsafe on hit at low percents, and does not actually KO until very high percents

- ROBs grab range is actually abysmal

- F-Tilt needs some rework to be worth using over D-Tilt right now. I'm not saying make it back into its Brawl iteration (where it outranged Marths F-Smash) but I think some range buff to make it a good whiff punish and spacing move would be nice.

I guess I'd just like a rework more than a straight nerf. I can appreciate there are a couple of aspects of ROB that can be frustrating but I think you can tweak those so that the moves are still useful without having the same cheese factor they do currently.

Huh. I am actually pretty fine with these changes.
Removing some of the most powerful/annoying aspects of the character, while fixing some inconsistent stuff.
It is still an overall slight net nerf, but it is fine, especially considering that R.O.B. is one of the most devastating characters in the current meta.



Btw, Naifu Wars 12 is going on right now, and Fatality is taking names in a scale I haven't seen from him in a very long time.

Notable names include defeating 8BitMan 2-1, Ravenking 2-1, BestNess 2-0, Middy 2-0, and his crowning achievement: defeating MkLeo 3-0.

He is currently fighting Maister in winner's finals. He is getting at least 3rd in the event, which is really good considering that he hasn't been placing that well ever since the end of PGR v1.

 

[DunnoBro]

ROB in general is just obnoxious to determine how much fuel he has left. I'm really mad they actually did the work to show how much fuel he had, but not take into account how small the meter is or how often it's blocked by his arms even. Especially when you also have to watch out for his laser and gyro charges.

I'm leaning towards the idea he also needs a recovery nerf, but it's hard to know for sure when it's already so ambiguous how good his recovery ACTUALLY is.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Ultimate Naifu Wars 12

1st: Maister
2nd: Sonix
3rd: Fatality
4th: Riddles
5th: MkLeo
5th: Sharp
7th: Lui$
7th: Middy
9th: Grayson
9th: BestNess
9th: ApolloKage
9th: tAngelt
13th: Yez
13th: Raffi-X
13th: Jerry
13th: LeoN
17th: SKITTLES!!
17th: Ned
17th: The6Master
17th: Skew
17th: WebbJP
17th: holopup
17th: PIKAPIZZA07
17th: Epic_Gabriel
25th: TonyZTank
25th: Benny&TheJets
25th: Cosmos
25th: RobinGG
25th: Bestia
25th: Smalleft
25th: Rickles
25th: Ravenking

 

[SwagGuy99]

Like I've been doing for the past few tournaments that have had results posted here, I put the character representation for Top 32 in a tier list form using the data from the above post:

It's worth noting the lack of both and compared to the last few big wifi tournaments and the lack of a single dominating character this time around compared to the last few large wifi tournaments.

Another interesting thing is the amount of players in Top 32. I never got the impression Ike was that great on wifi and his results at the larger online tournaments have felt pretty absent, but he's the second most represented character in the Top 32.

Finally, it's worth noting the total absence of and who all (despite being widely being regarded as some of the best characters on wifi) failed to make an appearance in Top 32.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Zelda isn't good on Wi-Fi.Not sure where people get this idea even.

 

[Djmarcus44]

Gunner players have been doing well on WiFi in other tournaments. Recently Shortbloom beat Salem and Mr. E, and Hybrid took Marss to game 5 (Marss uses Snake and Captain Falcon online). The Gunner discord has also been on an 8 crew battle win streak against some good character discords.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Fight for Rights

1st: Dabuz
2nd: 8BitMan
3rd: Sharp
4th: ESAM
5th: Wasabi
5th: Myran
7th: Mage
7th: Benny&TheJets
9th: Stretch
9th: Wildfire
9th: Fatality
9th: LingLing (DQ'ed at top 32)
13th: Uncivil ninja
13th: RAT
13th: Bankai
13th: Nidas


While not nearly as big as Ultimate Naifu Wars 12, this was a nice online charity event.

Sharp was taking names during this tourney.
Despite being mainly a Sheik player (one of very few notable dedicated Sheik players in the world), he flexed his character variety by defeating Myran 3-1 with Wolf and ESAM 3-1 with Joker.

 

[TCT~Phantom]

Hot take of the day: Yoshi is still overrated in this game and it is Sm4sh all over again for him.

Yoshi results are still middling at best. Nair is crazy good and DJArmor is awesome, but your grab game is abysmal and you just lose to shield hard. I know there are still people who say Yoshi is a sleeper character, but people said that all through Sm4sh and he ended up...bottom of mid tier? I think it is irresponsible to put him above mid tier in this game.

 

[Funbot28]

Not to derail the discussion too much, but are there any hints as to when the next big batch (ie: Arms patch) is gonna come? its been a long ass time since the last one and some characters need some love lol. No bias here.

 

[TCT~Phantom]

Not to derail the discussion too much, but are there any hints as to when the next big batch (ie: Arms patch) is gonna come? its been a long ass time since the last one and some characters need some love lol. No bias here.

I am guessing the 29th due to 7/11 ads.

My dream patch changes.
: 0 to death deleted.
: Hoo boy, Up Air buffed to Sm4sh release, movement speed increased, general range increases, less lag on Dragon Lunge, Up B comes out faster, please help
:Waft charges slower
: Back Air and Dash Attack weaker
:Fire comes out slower
:Fix command menu so language barriers do not impact it, add images to it.
:Air Speed and Movement speed increased
:Up tilt hitbox increased
: Tipper damage output increased across the board
: Shields fixed to avoid shield poking
: Fix their hitboxes

 

[The_Bookworm]

Hot take of the day: Yoshi is still overrated in this game and it is Sm4sh all over again for him.

Yoshi results are still middling at best. Nair is crazy good and DJArmor is awesome, but your grab game is abysmal and you just lose to shield hard. I know there are still people who say Yoshi is a sleeper character, but people said that all through Sm4sh and he ended up...bottom of mid tier? I think it is irresponsible to put him above mid tier in this game.

Yoshi still does very well in tourneys, with players like Suarez, Meme, and Ron still do very well with the character.
It is not amazing results, and other characters in the high tier like Sonic, Cloud, YLink, and Samus have exceeded him in results right now, but he is still doing pretty well. It is not a SSB4 Yoshi situation quite yet.

: Hoo boy, Up Air buffed to Sm4sh release, movement speed increased, general range increases, less lag on Dragon Lunge, Up B comes out faster, please help

While some changes are spot on, such as increase movement speed and less lag on Dragon Lunge, you are also listing some changes that are relatively unnecessary.
Corrin doesn't need more range (except for maybe on nair), up B is alright in its current state, and the current version of up air is actually better than its SSB4 version.

: Tipper damage output increased across the board

Again, this is not the change Marth needs. Tippers by itself is pretty good. The issue is landing the tippers.
His sourspots is also needlessly weak right now, as that is his main nerf from SSB4.

: Shields fixed to avoid shield poking

They already did that in patch 7.0.

 

[Lacrimosa]

Well, it's only 14 days left until the DLC.
Gotta look at it from that perspective.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Fight for Rights: West Coast

1st: Big D
2nd: Lui$
3rd: VoiD
4th: BestNess
5th: MFA
5th: Nicko
7th: MVD
7th: Jae Pea
9th: BassMage
9th: Grayson
9th: Shoe
9th: Rival

While no where near as big as the East Coast version yesterday, it is still notable.

Well, it's only 14 days left until the DLC.
Gotta look at it from that perspective.

Yep.
Going to be busy with the Pokemon Sword DLC tomorrow as well to keep me company.

 

[DougEfresh]

https://youtu.be/I9XGO5xm-Ls

https://youtu.be/ZWQvvhh_KwE

So this is a pretty interesting, albeit tricky and precise, new tech that shows a lot of initial promise for diversifying Banjo's combo game and kill options once mastered. I'll let the videos speak for themselves, since they break it down very well already, but I thought I'd share them here to spark a discussion since there hasn't been a whole lot for topics to talk about lately.

EDIT: Also not sure if this will somehow get patched out and it's still very early to see exactly how much utility there will be, but we in the Banjocord think that it brings a lot of benefit to Banjo without making him busted, so we'll have to wait and see.

 

[The_Bookworm]

https://youtu.be/I9XGO5xm-Ls

https://youtu.be/ZWQvvhh_KwE

So this is a pretty interesting, albeit tricky and precise, new tech that shows a lot of initial promise for diversifying Banjo's combo game and kill options once mastered. I'll let the videos speak for themselves, since they break it down very well already, but I thought I'd share them here to spark a discussion since there hasn't been a whole lot for topics to talk about lately.

EDIT: Also not sure if this will somehow get patched out and it's still very early to see exactly how much utility there will be, but we in the Banjocord think that it brings a lot of benefit to Banjo without making him busted, but we'll have to wait and see.

It seems situationally useful. It seems especially helpful against those unaware of this tech, as it will juke them up, and you can get a kill combo after it.

However, you are still making a big risk of even entering into Breegull Blaster in mid-air.
This tech also doesn't seem to have too many applications from faraway, as after a double shot, it will take time before Banjo can fire another double shot.
And in point blank situations, it seems like this easily loses to characters with decently fast OoS options.
This tech might as well not exist against Game & Watch.

This can, however, make the Ganondorf matchup be an even bigger nightmare than it already is. Not only they will have a harder time getting in with double blaster, but Ganondorf's slow buttons can make it hard for him to punish the tech.

 

[DougEfresh]

It seems situationally useful. It seems especially helpful against those unaware of this tech, as it will juke them up, and you can get a kill combo after it.

However, you are still making a big risk of even entering into Breegull Blaster in mid-air.
This tech also doesn't seem to have too many applications from faraway, as after a double shot, it will take time before Banjo can fire another double shot.
And in point blank situations, it seems like this easily loses to characters with decently fast OoS options.
This tech might as well not exist against Game & Watch.

This can, however, make the Ganondorf matchup be an even bigger nightmare than it already is. Not only they will have a harder time getting in with double blaster, but Ganondorf's slow buttons can make it hard for him to punish the tech.

Yea like I said, it's still early and the only true way to test its viability (offline tournaments) won't be available for a while. The first egg shot combos into the first shot of Breegull Blaster though, so as long as your spacing is good and you have the timing down, it's still very possible to just cancel it into an fsmash or WW. We already determined that a frame-perfect TAC is +30, which is a pretty decent window of frame advantage. There may be other factors like character weight, fall speed, gravity, etc that affect its usage and like you said, it's probably ill-advised against G&W. It looks pretty versatile in what can be used to follow up after the tech as well, and it could also end up being useful for conditioning and mix ups. Only time will tell to what extent this is used though, of course.

 

[SwagGuy99]

sorry for the lack of caps, i've been having wrist problems again.

all this nerf talk and no one's mentioned rob? rob may not have anything extremely broken like flip kick or waft but he has everything great. great cqc boxing game with dtilt, projectile zoning, offstage recovering that stalls in the air and no free falling, gimping with an aerial smash in rotor arms and a burying combo throw.
however, i don't think anyone needs to be nerfed. the game is well balanced without anyone being too oppressive. having said that i wouldn't complain if a few overtuned tools like waft were nerfed.

i do think several characters need buffs, one of which is ganon. the problem is he's much better, probably upper mid tier, on wifi. i can see why they've avoided buffing him for so long after these last months of wifi tournaments.
a lot of the other characters already got buffs so i don't expect much. they are functional but underwhelming but someone has to be low tier. it's hard to buff them further without making them a pain on wifi with too op of an option.

This thing about nerfing is that he has had similar trends in the last two Smash games where towards the beginning of the game, people think he's Top or High Tier because counterplay hasn't been properly developed and because he's a relatively simple character that has simple but effective tools. But as time goes on, he falls off, falling into the lower high tier/mid tier area. He received no balance changes in Brawl and only a few minimal ones in Smash 4 but he fell off in both games.

While I don't think will fall off as hard as or did, I'm it's likely it could end up happening to him again in this game. for a two reasons.

• His current matchup spread already kind of puts his top tier status in Ultimate in question. He loses a higher percentage of matchups than maybe any Top Tier in any Smash game and I feel like a lot of his slightly winning and even matchups could end up as losing or even ones as time goes on. and are two that I can see shifting into their favor in the future. It also hasn't helped that some characters who may have struggled against ROB more in the earlier patches have gotten buffed while some of his Top Tier losing matchups weren't nerfed enough to affect the MU that much.
  • and have become much harder for him due to their buffed kill power (as well as Cloud's buffed Limit and recovery).
  • and can land kill confirms they were granted in the patches fairly easily on ROB due to his large size.
  • and received several QoL changes that just make their lives slightly easier in the matchup.
  • and can keep ROB in disadvantage for much longer and can set up more reliable ways to kill ROB than they could in some of the earliest patches of Ultimate thanks to the many buffs they've received.
  • and 's nerfs barely affected the ROB matchup at all.
• ROB's disadvantage being poor naturally means players will get better at exploiting it over time. We saw it with and near the beginning of Ult, we've seen it a bit with and (not as much though due to them being a much more well rounded characters than DK or Ganon) and I think we'll see a bit of it with ROB once offline tournaments start again on a wider scale, but probably not to the extent we saw with the other two.

 

[$.A.F.]

This thing about nerfing is that he has had similar trends in the last two Smash games where towards the beginning of the game, people think he's Top or High Tier because counterplay hasn't been properly developed and because he's a relatively simple character that has simple but effective tools. But as time goes on, he falls off, falling into the lower high tier/mid tier area. He received no balance changes in Brawl and only a few minimal ones in Smash 4 but he fell off in both games.

While I don't think will fall off as hard as or did, I'm it's likely it could end up happening to him again in this game. for a two reasons.

• His current matchup spread already kind of puts his top tier status in Ultimate in question. He loses a higher percentage of matchups than maybe any Top Tier in any Smash game and I feel like a lot of his slightly winning and even matchups could end up as losing or even ones as time goes on. and are two that I can see shifting into their favor in the future. It also hasn't helped that some characters who may have struggled against ROB more in the earlier patches have gotten buffed while some of his Top Tier losing matchups weren't nerfed enough to affect the MU that much.
  • and have become much harder for him due to their buffed kill power (as well as Cloud's buffed Limit and recovery).
  • and can land kill confirms they were granted in the patches fairly easily on ROB due to his large size.
  • and received several QoL changes that just make their lives slightly easier in the matchup.
  • and can keep ROB in disadvantage for much longer and can set up more reliable ways to kill ROB than they could in some of the earliest patches of Ultimate thanks to the many buffs they've received.
  • and 's nerfs barely affected the ROB matchup at all.
• ROB's disadvantage being poor naturally means players will get better at exploiting it over time. We saw it with and near the beginning of Ult, we've seen it a bit with and (not as much though due to them being a much more well rounded characters than DK or Ganon) and I think we'll see a bit of it with ROB once offline tournaments start again on a wider scale, but probably not to the extent we saw with the other two.

While I don’t think he’s nerf worthy, I’d have to disagree. In theory this is sound reasoning, as time goes on, ROB’s disadvantage will become more exploited and he’ll start to fall. In theory. However in practice, it’s quite the opposite, in every iteration of the OrionStats he’s only gone up. From 13th, to 9th, to hovering around 1st, ROB has only gotten better not worse with age.

 

[DougEfresh]

While I don’t think he’s nerf worthy, I’d have to disagree. In theory this is sound reasoning, as time goes on, ROB’s disadvantage will become more exploited and he’ll start to fall. In theory. However in practice, it’s quite the opposite, in every iteration of the OrionStats he’s only gone up. From 13th, to 9th, to hovering around 1st, ROB has only gotten better not worse with age.

This is all very accurate, so far things have only gotten better for ROB in Ultimate. I just want to say though, that we're still only a year and a half into this game and with his rise to meta super-stardom being a bit more recent, it's not unfeasible that it might still take several more months, if not even years, to develop possible counterplay to rob and exploit his disadvantage more (and this is true for any other character; I think may be a character who falls off kinda hard, at least in tier lists, once players are more patient and develop counterplay to his time-out shenanigans). We gotta see what happens once offline tournaments are happening more regularly again though, so you might still be right.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

This thing about nerfing is that he has had similar trends in the last two Smash games where towards the beginning of the game, people think he's Top or High Tier because counterplay hasn't been properly developed and because he's a relatively simple character that has simple but effective tools. But as time goes on, he falls off, falling into the lower high tier/mid tier area. He received no balance changes in Brawl and only a few minimal ones in Smash 4 but he fell off in both games.

While I don't think will fall off as hard as or did, I'm it's likely it could end up happening to him again in this game. for a two reasons.

• His current matchup spread already kind of puts his top tier status in Ultimate in question. He loses a higher percentage of matchups than maybe any Top Tier in any Smash game and I feel like a lot of his slightly winning and even matchups could end up as losing or even ones as time goes on. and are two that I can see shifting into their favor in the future. It also hasn't helped that some characters who may have struggled against ROB more in the earlier patches have gotten buffed while some of his Top Tier losing matchups weren't nerfed enough to affect the MU that much.
  • and have become much harder for him due to their buffed kill power (as well as Cloud's buffed Limit and recovery).
  • and can land kill confirms they were granted in the patches fairly easily on ROB due to his large size.
  • and received several QoL changes that just make their lives slightly easier in the matchup.
  • and can keep ROB in disadvantage for much longer and can set up more reliable ways to kill ROB than they could in some of the earliest patches of Ultimate thanks to the many buffs they've received.
  • and 's nerfs barely affected the ROB matchup at all.
• ROB's disadvantage being poor naturally means players will get better at exploiting it over time. We saw it with and near the beginning of Ult, we've seen it a bit with and (not as much though due to them being a much more well rounded characters than DK or Ganon) and I think we'll see a bit of it with ROB once offline tournaments start again on a wider scale, but probably not to the extent we saw with the other two.

Most Luigi mains have become less optimistic over the R.O.B MU over time.
Elegant put it as -1 in his latest LuigiU chart

Yeah in Theory R.O.B is combo food However a good R.O.B can make it nightmare for Luigi to get even close enough to start his combo shenanniganfs between this strong projectiles and very big hitboxes in his normals. Plus R.O.B edgeuards Luigi hard as well.

Rob's down b spike hitbox lasts for 7 frames...that's still crazy

 

[KakuCP9]

Even accounting for Wifi, R.O.B is a character who has a legitimately oppressive positive state off of stuff like dtilt and gyro and unlike shotos, has little qualms about fighting at long range. That alone makes the character top class and even then, his up- b gives him a salvageable negative state where he'll propel himself to areas hard to reach and letting him drift somewhere safe. His actual weaknesses would be that his OOS options (without gyro) kinda suck and unlike Greninja, he can't full- hop 9ft into the air so he's vulnerable to shield pressure and he has a handful of blind spots in neutral due his 40f short hop making hard to challenge certain aerial approaches without overextending (which is why the rats are an actual bad matchup for him). Yet in spite of this, he has tools to brute force his way through matchups since he's extremely flexible in how he can convert stray hits into damage while having respectable footsies and zoning. I think he's got top tier potential like Game and Watch inspite of his weaknesses and don't think getting "figured out" or "bad disadvantage" is going stop him. Shame he gets memed on by Bayo.

 

[KirbySquad101]

Not calling anyone out, but what I'm having a hard time understanding is why people are so quick to pull the "just learn the counterplay" card to downplay the success of characters like or (and now that I think about it, also or ), but also decide the same can't be said about characters like (i.e. basically anyone usually considered top tier). Are people calling out Flip Jump properly? Are people calling out Quick Attack approaches well? Are people learning to parry against Shulk's massive, but slow hitboxes? Are people getting the timing of breaking through runaway Palu BAir spam down to a tee? Well, we saw in Dabuz and Wizzy's set a while back that the latter wasn't exactly the case. How do we know these characters aren't susceptible to falling off in the future and it's something that's only exclusive to handful of certain fighters? Nothing is ever set in stone, after all: Only just recently has Sonic started to become widespread in his success (and no, I'm not referring to just online).

In the case of Mr. Game and Watch and Pac-Man, I can kind of understand the argument seeing as no one is close to being as successful as Maister or Tea (and even then, Maister's still willing to money-match anyone/fight anyone online with his character), but R.O.B. has THREE Top 50 players and to be frank, so many mid/high level players that naming them all would take up far too much time. Coming across a good R.O.B. to get a feel of the match-up is about as hard to come by as it is to come by a player on Twitter who thinks Smash Ultimate's Online is trash.

And since we've already talked enough about how oppressive his advantage state is, I want to go a bit further: Does R.O.B. lose as many MUs as we let on and/or lose them as hard as we think we do? We've seen high level R.O.B. players go up against their supposedly worst match-ups like and , but we've always seen these players either come out on top or at the very least, keep it very close. I'm not suggesting R.O.B. has no losing MUs, but are these match-ups actually terrible or are they just polarizing most cases?

I'm not questioning the top tier status of anyone that I mentioned here, but I do feel that there is a bit of an unfair treatment going on with certain characters and whatnot.

 

[Arthur97]

Also, just because R.O.B. fell off in the other games, doesn't mean the same thing must happen again. Especially when the trends are showing so much success. Whatever the case, things seem different this time, and I don't think it should be taken for granted that he'll fall off the same way. Especially as he keeps upending how he should be doing on paper.

 

[DJ3DS]

is probably not going to fall off in the same way that did. That comparison is giving far too much credit to and not enough to .

In Smash 4, ROB wasn't terrible, but he lacked options in a lot of ways. His aerial game was worse; don't forget that N-Air used to be frame 18 (now 14), and his ground game was substantially worse. His grab game was arguably better (Thanks to Up Throw being much stronger back then, and Down Throw giving reasonably early kill confirms) but by and large the character felt a lot of the time like he was fishing for lots of stray hits before eventually landing a grab confirm. These stray hits weren't easy to land on a good player, and landing a grab with that grab range was harder than it sounds. Conversely, most of the high and top tier characters didn't need to win neutral too often because of how much they could do to him in advantage. He got away with zoning and cheesy grabs for a time, but then his lack of options got exposed and he dropped.

Ultimate ROB is not the same thing. This character has a breadth of options he never had previously, and might be the biggest beneficiary of the universal mechanical changes. ROB would not have dropped off as much in 4 if:

- He could pressure shields with that down tilt out of a run
- Airdodging his projectiles offstage actually meant something
- He had options leading to a techchase at almost any percent coming off of a frame 3 down tilt
- His Side B was a functional move, with true combos leading into it that can result in kills at obscenely low percents
- His worst matchups were less common instead of making up the majority of top 8s.

That's not to say I think counterplay won't be developed - though I understand KirbySquad101 being concerned that it may be being thrown around too freely. The most immediate example is dealing with gyro, and most players being bad at it. Time and time again I see players leave it on the ground, get hit trying to pick it up, and (worst of all) actively choosing to position themselves between ROB and the gyro. See MattyG VS Grayson at Frostbite 2020 for an example of a set where someone actually counterplays it really well most of the time with correctly timed airdodge pickups and practically removes it from the game most of the time. Tweek is another player who comes to mind as dealing with it really well, though his is more to do with excellent awareness and Chomp usage as Wario. But counterplay alone cannot change the reality that ROB is a significantly more functional and dangerous character this time round.

Finally, a note on matchups: as a ROB player I think he has a ton of matchups where he can noticeably struggle in neutral and/or disadvantage, but he can "cheese them back", for lack of a better word. Think spacies, Chroy, Mario - they all have tools that ROB can really struggle with...but he can also do his best impression of Melee Puff and kill them at 0 somehow. The losing matchups which I think lack this volatility are the following:



Most notably these are all pretty uncommon except for Palu, who gets the brunt of the frustration for it. For the record I haven't included in matchups where I think ROB noticeably struggles; they're annoying for sure and they punish over-reliance on item play but I don't think they're all that bad and they're also uncommon too.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Ladies and gentlemen, it is finally happening.

 

[Rizen]

Not calling anyone out, but what I'm having a hard time understanding is why people are so quick to pull the "just learn the counterplay" card to downplay the success of characters like or (and now that I think about it, also or ), but also decide the same can't be said about characters like (i.e. basically anyone usually considered top tier). Are people calling out Flip Jump properly? Are people calling out Quick Attack approaches well? Are people learning to parry against Shulk's massive, but slow hitboxes? Are people getting the timing of breaking through runaway Palu BAir spam down to a tee? Well, we saw in Dabuz and Wizzy's set a while back that the latter wasn't exactly the case. How do we know these characters aren't susceptible to falling off in the future? Nothing is ever set in stone, after all: Only just recently has Sonic started to become widespread in his success (and no, I'm not referring to just online).

In the case of Mr. Game and Watch and Pac-Man, I can kind of understand the argument seeing as no one is close to being as successful as Maister or Tea (and even then, Maister's still willing to money-match anyone/fight anyone online with his character), but R.O.B. has THREE Top 50 players and to be frank, so many mid/high level players that naming them all would take up far too much time. Coming across a good R.O.B. to get a feel of the match-up is about as hard to come by as it is to come by a player on Twitter who thinks Smash Ultimate's Online is trash.

And since we've already talked enough about how oppressive his advantage state is, I want to go a bit further: Does R.O.B. lose as many MUs as we let on and/or lose them as hard as we think we do? We've seen high level R.O.B. players go up against their supposedly worst match-ups like and , but we've always seen these players either come out on top or at the very least, keep it very close. I'm not suggesting R.O.B. has no losing MUs, but are these match-ups actually terrible or are they just polarizing most cases?

I'm not questioning the top tier status of anyone that I mentioned here, but I do feel that there is a bit of an unfair treatment going on with certain characters and whatnot.

people should always talk about counterplay before nerfs with any character. i was one of the few talking about cp when joker first rose in popularity. i admit the nerfs he got did balance the game but nerfs shouldn't be a go to option but rather saved for when a character is clearly dominating tournaments, like how palutena showed up multiple times in most top 8s.

it's very easy to build up a character in our heads to top tier status. a top 2 player in my region mains ike and when i asked him where he thought ike falls on the tier list he said "top tier, unironically". i've had a lot of trouble vs ike because he's a bad mu for both yl and link. but rather than ask for nerfs i picked up wolf. some characters are going to have bad mus and counterpicking is a huge part of this game. sometimes you need to increase your scope of characters. i do think ike's high tier and leo couldn't have won a super major if he was bad but he's clearly not dominating tournaments, not top tier and doesn't need nerfs. counterplay and counterpicking are underused in determining what characters are dominate. nerfs should be used sparingly, which is what the developers do.

 

[The_Bookworm]

The Captain's Quarter's 2

1st: MkLeo
2nd: Epic_Gabriel
3rd: Sharp
4th: Yez
5th: Rickles
5th: Ray Kalm
7th: Hungrybox
7th: Linku

Relatively small online tourney, but it is cool to see MkLeo's Greninja make a return.