Criteria for a Main

[KingK]

Im not a noob...
i just joined smashboards late =\

LOL I was talking about the second post in the thread, made by n00b. Go back a couple pages.

 

[¯\_S.(ツ).L.I.D._/¯]

Wario has bad recovery. Pit doesn't have a meteor smash on an aerial but it sounds like the guy for you.

 

[Snail]

Wario has bad recovery. Pit doesn't have a meteor smash on an aerial but it sounds like the guy for you.

Lol @ Wario having bad recovery. Seriously dude >_>

 

[marth marth marth]

i'd say you peach or toon link

 

[wBNeji]

LOL I was talking about the second post in the thread, made by n00b. Go back a couple pages.

oh. lmao my fault.
If you have wifi, i will be more than happy to show you just what ZSS can do.

 

[Excellence]

Your criteria is ridiculous, you're basically looking for a top tier character and in doing so you're looking at the popular choices. Because of this, you won't find a character that fits the criteria without contradicting at least one. In my opinion, you should choose Zelda/Shiek. One makes up for what the other lacks in the things you listed, so you should be happy with using her.

 

[KingK]

Your criteria is ridiculous, you're basically looking for a top tier character and in doing so you're looking at the popular choices. Because of this, you won't find a character that fits the criteria without contradicting at least one. In my opinion, you should choose Zelda/Shiek. One makes up for what the other lacks in the things you listed, so you should be happy with using her.

I would say, based on the multitude of other responses I've gotten, that you're wrong.

 

[Taiki]

Based on the multitude of responses, we're not helping very much. I suggest narrowing your main choice down to like 5 based on the responses here and then make a poll on it.

 

[KingK]

I already have narrowed it down to 5.

I dunno about the poll though, don't see why that would help any. I'll probably just focus on those 5 and pick out of those.

 

[wBNeji]

Well why dont you try the 5 out? Test them out for like...5 matches each with a random lvl 9 cpu. No items D:

 

[Taiki]

Why not just try to learn them all one at a time. It's always good to have backups for any matchup. Counterpicking is always a good idea in an tournament situation, and the more chars you can adequately use the more option you have.

 

[KingK]

What I'm thinking is I'll just main each one, one week at a time.

So for a week I'll choose one, practice with that character, think like I'm maining just that character.

Then the next week, I'll move on to the next one, and so on until I've done all 5. At the end I would hope that there would be one (or perhaps two) that I liked most, and that's who I'll stick with.

 

[BlueTerrorist]

What's the point of even having a main? Me personally, I always switch up characters all the time instead of staying with one for a million matches. Who says not having a main won't win you tourneys . I'm just can't main anybody due to me switching from character to character way too much.

The point is, don't stress out for not having a main. I'm sure that if you do some experimenting and research on your own, your bound to find someone who fits your taste. Or, you could just use random and own everybody with every character lol .

 

[RedSnowman]

Dk

From what everybody has said and your list... I'd have to say the closest you are ever going to get is Diddy Kong. Not extremely popular but kinda high on the tier list.... he has a lot of depth. Between using his bananas and flying off stage to harass people and edge guard I think he would be the most fulfilling to you. He has a meteor and all of his air moves have good priority so if you play him right you can overcome anyone. He will have his hard matchups where he is out prioritized or projectiled... but a smart player can really do a lot with him.

 

[Mmac]

I think you should also give Yoshi a Try King. He also fits in the criteria really well. Just remember to turn Tap Jump off though...

Also Samus gets Infinited by Dedede

 

[Aminar]

Well, I've had Brawl for a while - since March - and I've played around a fair amount with pretty much every character. Yet, somehow, I still just haven't been able to decide on one particular character to main. Now, this is by no means an uncommon problem - I've seen many people posting with a similar dilemma. Most of them have given a list of characters they like, or simply told people to tell them who to main.

I'm not going to do that with this post. Not exactly. I'm going to list 5 criteria I have for a character that I want to main, and I'd like people to tell me which characters they feel meet the criteria.

For anybody thinking about posting something along the lines of "just play whoever you have the most fun with," I would like to respond ahead of time: I know. I've already given a lot of thought to which characters I like most. I've already sat down and tried to figure out which characters fall into my 5 criteria. I just thought it'd be interesting and perhaps enlightening to see what others thought, and see how their conclusions differ from mine.



Here are the 5 criteria, listed (more or less) in order of importance:

1. I don't want to play an overplayed character. I mean this in two senses; I don't want to play a character that is very popular among Brawl players in general, but I also don't want to play a character that is very popular on the tournament scene (i.e. you see at least a handful at every single tourny), among more serious Brawl players, even if that character isn't generally speaking a really popular character. Ideally the character would not be obviously overpowered (in the top 5-7 or so); I want to play a character that has the potential to be good (high mid / upper tier) but that isn't super dominant already.
Diddy
2. I want to play a character that can reasonably expect to compete (and hopefully win) in almost any matchup. Ideally I never want to feel like a particular matchup is impossible, particularly because of something like a chain grab or gimp that the opponent can pull off without much trouble. Obviously this is within reason; every character has some bad matchups (that will be true as long as Meta Knight is in the game), but I want to play a character that can expect to compete with the vast majority of the cast; not every matchup needs to be good, but there shouldn't be any impossible ones.
Diddy
3. I want to play a character with solid (doesn't have to be amazing) recovery and a good off-stage game. This is a personal preference, because I really hate feeling confined to the stage; I like edgehogging, chasing off the edge, and fighting in the air. As such I'd rather not play a character that is easily edgehogged or gimped, or that has particularly bad horizontal or vertical recovery.
Diddy
4. I want to play a character that has some depth to their metagame. I like having character-specific advanced techniques that I can work on and hope to eventually master. That doesn't mean they have to be AT heavy (though I wouldn't mind if they were), but there should be a fair amount of subtle things to master. Depth is the important word here.
Diddies bananas
5. This is by no means make-or-break, but I like characters with at least one or two moves that spike and / or sweetspot. I really like the challenge of trying to kill somebody with a well timed meteor smash that spikes them to their death or a perfectly sweetspotted attack that rockets them off into the distance.
Diddy has a few



Okay, that's it. I'll add any more criteria if I think of any good ones, but I think those should be sufficient.

Also, if you wouldn't mind, could you list which characters you eliminate as you go through each criteria? I think it'd be interesting.



P.S. If this is just totally the wrong kind of post for the Tactics forum, then by all means move it to the General Discussion. I know it's kind of bad form, but I purposefully posted here because the General forum tends to have less intelligent discussion.

In Short, Diddy. He's everything you want in a monkeybasket of pwn.

 

[PK-ow!]

I think you should also give Yoshi a Try King. He also fits in the criteria really well. Just remember to turn Tap Jump off though...

Also Samus gets Infinited by Dedede

No she doesn't. I fought Dedede just yesterday. . . you actually escape earlier thanks to floatiness.

Yoshi, Jiggs, and Diddy. I think you should try them all. It's likely that, among these three, you won't be able to stand two of them - when two characters are similar in some ways but have just slightly different physics, it makes you unable to like both.

So see how they feel.

 

[lax guy5]

Well, I've had Brawl for a while - since March - and I've played around a fair amount with pretty much every character. Yet, somehow, I still just haven't been able to decide on one particular character to main. Now, this is by no means an uncommon problem - I've seen many people posting with a similar dilemma. Most of them have given a list of characters they like, or simply told people to tell them who to main.

I'm not going to do that with this post. Not exactly. I'm going to list 5 criteria I have for a character that I want to main, and I'd like people to tell me which characters they feel meet the criteria.

For anybody thinking about posting something along the lines of "just play whoever you have the most fun with," I would like to respond ahead of time: I know. I've already given a lot of thought to which characters I like most. I've already sat down and tried to figure out which characters fall into my 5 criteria. I just thought it'd be interesting and perhaps enlightening to see what others thought, and see how their conclusions differ from mine.



Here are the 5 criteria, listed (more or less) in order of importance:

1. I don't want to play an overplayed character. I mean this in two senses; I don't want to play a character that is very popular among Brawl players in general, but I also don't want to play a character that is very popular on the tournament scene (i.e. you see at least a handful at every single tourny), among more serious Brawl players, even if that character isn't generally speaking a really popular character. Ideally the character would not be obviously overpowered (in the top 5-7 or so); I want to play a character that has the potential to be good (high mid / upper tier) but that isn't super dominant already.

2. I want to play a character that can reasonably expect to compete (and hopefully win) in almost any matchup. Ideally I never want to feel like a particular matchup is impossible, particularly because of something like a chain grab or gimp that the opponent can pull off without much trouble. Obviously this is within reason; every character has some bad matchups (that will be true as long as Meta Knight is in the game), but I want to play a character that can expect to compete with the vast majority of the cast; not every matchup needs to be good, but there shouldn't be any impossible ones.

3. I want to play a character with solid (doesn't have to be amazing) recovery and a good off-stage game. This is a personal preference, because I really hate feeling confined to the stage; I like edgehogging, chasing off the edge, and fighting in the air. As such I'd rather not play a character that is easily edgehogged or gimped, or that has particularly bad horizontal or vertical recovery.

4. I want to play a character that has some depth to their metagame. I like having character-specific advanced techniques that I can work on and hope to eventually master. That doesn't mean they have to be AT heavy (though I wouldn't mind if they were), but there should be a fair amount of subtle things to master. Depth is the important word here.

5. This is by no means make-or-break, but I like characters with at least one or two moves that spike and / or sweetspot. I really like the challenge of trying to kill somebody with a well timed meteor smash that spikes them to their death or a perfectly sweetspotted attack that rockets them off into the distance.




Okay, that's it. I'll add any more criteria if I think of any good ones, but I think those should be sufficient.

Also, if you wouldn't mind, could you list which characters you eliminate as you go through each criteria? I think it'd be interesting.



P.S. If this is just totally the wrong kind of post for the Tactics forum, then by all means move it to the General Discussion. I know it's kind of bad form, but I purposefully posted here because the General forum tends to have less intelligent discussion.

1: Not Meta-Knight

2: Not Meta-Knight

3: Not Meta-Knight

4: Not Meta-Knight

5: Not Meta-Knight

 

[Roager]

1: Not Meta-Knight

2: Not Meta-Knight

3: Not Meta-Knight

4: Not Meta-Knight

5: Not Meta-Knight

Actually MK fits #2 and #3 exactly. He has few, if any, bad matchups. Offstage and recovery is what makes MK useful. (read: broken)

But, yeah, the message is right. Don't main MK.

I suggest Fox, Diddy, ZSS, or DK. Perhaps Yoshi. I don't know enough about him, but I'll trust Mmac. If those were your five, awesome.

Perhaps Ike. He has FOUR (B, Up-B, D-air, D-tilt) spikes, and, if played well, is pretty tough to beat. Except for MK or Sonic. But just counterpick for them, I guess. His recovery isn't great, though. Metagame-wise, IASA frames are really useful, moreso for him, since his lag is far greater than most others.

Also, try Falcon. He's a lot of fun. Doesn't really fit all your criteria, but try him anyway. His offstage game is okay, and his recovery is lots better than melee. Metagame... Tough to tell. Most Falcon mains don't do a lot of work on it. But, he does have a few Impossibles. But, if you get good with him, most characters have a fair chance at losing. He has two spikes. And, as we know, he's hardly popular.

 

[_eXp_]

try diddy or wario

 

[A6M Zero]

I MUST suggest Fox.

1. A very underplayed and underestimated character.

2. Fox has every tool he needs to get the job done and nothing extra. He has good damage racking combos, and a strong finishing game with his Usmash, bair, and sometimes his side and down smashes.

3. Fox has good jumps, a solid recovery and is very very solid when it comes to his shinespikes and spiking with drill (which takes a bit of a flare). Backair and great for controlling the edge and he's fast enough he can get to a ledgehog quick. His rising fair give him an even better recovery and is a great offensive and countering weapon.

4. There's a big difference between playing Fox "right" and playing Fox "well". The modus operandi of Fox's game for the most part is simple, but doing it well is not. Fox has his own AT's too, such as shine hovering or jump-cancelled shines, new tricks with his illusion are being discovered and Fox has a lot of depth in his combos alone.

5. Shinespike and drill both kill, the firefox and bair will both bounce people off the bottom of the stage to their deaths.

Overall, Fox has what he needs to win a match and nothing more, he doesn't have range, he doesn't have popularity, but he's got the goods.

 

[Hipocrisy]

Wario, Marth, Falco.

 

[Eyada]

No she doesn't. I fought Dedede just yesterday. . . you actually escape earlier thanks to floatiness.

Dedede's moving Chain Grab isn't an Infinite against Samus; however, he has a standing Infinite against her that uses the same moves (Grab and D-Throw.)

See this thread for more information.


That being said, Samus is still an excellent choice. Just be sure to secondary someone who can handle MK and Dedede if you choose to use her. She can hold her own against everyone else.

 

[Popertop]

I would suggest Wario.
His ugliness (personally I think he's adorable) turns off a lot of people right off the bat.
I mean c'mon, he has f-flab poking out of his sides!

He has devastating aerial game, mainly based off his Dair.
His aerial movement is also among the best in the game.

He has some devastating kill moves in Fsmash, Waft, Uair and Ftilt.
It's very interesting to fit waft into mixup games where if the opponent guesses wrong he's dead.

His recovery is amazing. He can actually gimp some characters by hitting them with aerials and then hitting them with the bike.

 

[iggy204]

pit choose pit

 

[M@v]

My two suggestions are my 2 mains, fox and lucario


Fox- Hes likely to be mid tier. Hes quite underplayed. Be warned, it takes practice to be good with him. But he is one of those characters, if mastered, is a really tough opponents. He can hold his own against a lot of the higher characters. Only problem is there are a couple charcters than can chain him bigtime and infinite him. Be ready to have a counterpick for them.

Lucario- He isnt OVERplayed, but he isnt UNDERplayed either. In terms of tiers hes right around wario probably. Lucario has one VERY nice thing: He matches up QUITE nicely against most of the higher characters. Hes an OK snake fighter, but an AMAZING MK fighter. G&W can cause him problems though.

 

[GoForkUrself]

I'd say ToonLink fits that description. Underplayed, dangerous but rewarding spike, great AT's, good recovery and off the edge game, fun edgehog with tether, and also doesn't have any impossible matchups. And the character has potential to be upper mid or high tier for bonus points.

 

[Griffard]

just reading your thing, i first thought of wario, all but the last one. TL fits also

 

[PKSkyler]

Samus, Diddy...or if you wanna be awesome...

NESS

except reason 2 kinda nullifys ness. He has some bad match ups that tilt the odds wayyy for the other player.

 

[Griffard]

Ness has numerous impossible matchups
even though I love him!

 

[PKSkyler]

Ness has numerous impossible matchups
even though I love him!

which is why I had to pick up snake as a secondary.....

 

[Deathcarter]

Pokemon Trainer is your man.

1. I don't want to play an overplayed character. I mean this in two senses; I don't want to play a character that is very popular among Brawl players in general, but I also don't want to play a character that is very popular on the tournament scene (i.e. you see at least a handful at every single tourny), among more serious Brawl players, even if that character isn't generally speaking a really popular character. Ideally the character would not be obviously overpowered (in the top 5-7 or so); I want to play a character that has the potential to be good (high mid / upper tier) but that isn't super dominant already.

Pokemon Trainer fits this EASILY.

2. I want to play a character that can reasonably expect to compete (and hopefully win) in almost any matchup. Ideally I never want to feel like a particular matchup is impossible, particularly because of something like a chain grab or gimp that the opponent can pull off without much trouble. Obviously this is within reason; every character has some bad matchups (that will be true as long as Meta Knight is in the game), but I want to play a character that can expect to compete with the vast majority of the cast; not every matchup needs to be good, but there shouldn't be any impossible ones.

Charizard and Ivasaur have almost entirely winnable matchups across between the two of them. The situation for the most part is:

1. One at least has a neutral or advantage against the opposing character and the other one is at a neutral, slight disadvantage, or a decent disadvantage.
2. One of the two at least has a slight disadvantage against the opposing character.
3. Squirtle has the best matchup (Star Fox characters for example)
4. Meta Knight

3. I want to play a character with solid (doesn't have to be amazing) recovery and a good off-stage game. This is a personal preference, because I really hate feeling confined to the stage; I like edgehogging, chasing off the edge, and fighting in the air. As such I'd rather not play a character that is easily edgehogged or gimped, or that has particularly bad horizontal or vertical recovery.

This applies to Charizard mostly as he is the only one with both a decent recovery (both vertical and horizontal) and good edgeguarding.

4. I want to play a character that has some depth to their metagame. I like having character-specific advanced techniques that I can work on and hope to eventually master. That doesn't mean they have to be AT heavy (though I wouldn't mind if they were), but there should be a fair amount of subtle things to master. Depth is the important word here.

Squirtle is somewhat difficult to control and he has the most ATs of the three. He is pretty aerial and has a one frame jab which is a staple in all good Squirtles' aresonals. Ivasaur is ALL about spacing. Bullet Seed is just awesome, but is somewhat difficult to implement on the opponent. He is also the only one of the three who can turtle camp. Charizard has good ground speed, a few spacing moves, quite a few hard hitting moves, a decent approach, a good way to build up damage, a GODLY grab range, and a grab release game.

The thing is however, mastering all three pokes which is the true challenge for aspiring PT mainers.

5. This is by no means make-or-break, but I like characters with at least one or two moves that spike and / or sweetspot. I really like the challenge of trying to kill somebody with a well timed meteor smash that spikes them to their death or a perfectly sweetspotted attack that rockets them off into the distance.

Ivasaur has hard to hit with kill moves and a spike IIRC. Charizard has a spike and a few sweetspottable moves (fair, bair, nair, rock smash if you want maximum impact, and ftilt)

 

[Steeler]

the above post wins

just adding on things to that post here...

here's the thing with poke trainer:

he has an insane learning curve. if you want a main that is both fun and will challenge your skill and determination, pt fits that the best. pokemon trainer is INSANELY DEEP. you have no idea. there is so much strategy to pt in every single match you play, you always have to be thinking ahead.

squirtle's various shellshift ATs are terrific for mindgames, and are awesome at getting squirtle kills. just don't be predictable.

ivysaur really doesn't have any ATs, he's pretty straightforward. same with charizard, aside from maybe some gliding stuff.

charizard has a sweetspot on every attack that involves his tail, and it's a pretty strong sweetspot too.

in addition, as the above poster pointed out, pt has no impossible matchups. squirtle himself has a few impossible matchups but that's it. ivysaur and charizard really lack anything of the sort.

both squirtle and charizard have great off stage games, charizard moreso because of his third jump. one of the best gimpers in the game.

thing is...ivysaur is really easy to gimp. :\ just something you have to get around. save your second jump, get as close to the edge as possible, razor leaf a lot to keep them away from the edge, or knock them off it.

zard's spike is great. :] squirtle's dair is a semi spike, it's perhaps even more effective than zard's dair. ivy has a spike in dair, but it's really hard to hit with because they have to be right under the bulb and the spike frames are just right at the beginning of the move. otherwise they'll be launched at about a 45 degree angle upwards.

also charizard versus metaknight is actually about neutral. zard has a lot of ways of disrupting mk's tornado and drill rush...and zard can grab mk out of his glide attack. so all three of mk's specials are somewhat neutralized. zard also kills mk at nice, low percents. rock smash and flamethrower both **** mk when used well. just don't let mk get you in the air because you are vulnerable to strings of attacks.

 

[Toby.]

It's interesting to read the posts of people advocating their main as the best for the criteria. It's cool how so many people see the same things in what are vastly different characters. Or maybe we all just want another convert to our respective boards.

Pokemon trainer fits your criteria, but he is very difficult to learn. If you take up the trainer, you are already maining three seperate fighters before even thinking about secondaries. This splits your time up A LOT and can make practice very difficult to do effectively.

That having been said, I clearly chose pokemon trainer, so you can see that I thought that it was worth it. He is a tremendously varied character with very destinct strengths and weaknesses. You aren't going to have lots of easy wins with the trainer, but at the same time there aren't a whole bunch of impossible match ups either. The complexity of PT makes using him very rewarding.

But really, you criteria fits a whole bunch of characters. I don't want to try to sway you towards any particular one.

Good luck...

 

[KingK]

Thanks for all the responses, especially the in depth ones. You've helped me narrow it down somewhat but have also led me to consider some characters I wouldn't have otherwise.

At this point, like I said, I'm just gonna try out one character at a time, each for about a week. Once I'm done, I'll think back and I think there will probably be one or two that stand out as the ones I enjoyed playing exclusively the most.

 

[GoForkUrself]

I named ToonLink, but I hardly use him(which is saying a lot given I use over half the cast frequently in casuals). I did at one time try to learn him, but I wanted an easier character to use. Also I use big Link more than Toon Link for some reason.
My mains are Metaknight, DDD, Snake, Marth, and G&W in that order. Obviously none of those characters fit his description :D
Since I use so many characters, it made sense naturally that my best characters are also the best characters in the game. After those 5 there is a lot of variety. Like I could argue Ganon or Ness as my 6th best(they are definitely my faves).