Hi ___________,
You’re right, I was not the one directly responsible for the changes made to Charizard. However, as a member of the PMDT and one of the primary playtester for the character, I have more privileged insight than most people.
Contrary to how it may feel, the glide angles were untouched from 3.02 to 3.5 (max upward angle of 50, max downwards of -60). This retention from 3.02 is actually inconsistent with the modifications made to Pit’s and MK’s glides, whose max upward angles were both changed from 70/80 to 45, respectively.
The inability to angle glide upward upon starting it may be due to the forced starting animation, which was necessary to eliminate glide braking. Charizard’s glide previously overrode any momentum he had before starting it, which lead to a mechanic that PMDT members have dubbed “glide braking” (similar to G&W’s bucket braking) in which Charizard can SDI attacks downward at high %s to force a missed tech animation while sliding off the stage – this puts Charizard out of hitstun from the attack and allows him to immediately glide, which negated his momentum and allowed him to survive attacks while recovering to the stage (granted, without any jumps but still the ability to up+B). Such an ability was blatantly out of line with the PMDT’s general stance on weakening recoveries, particularly on a character who is so heavy and difficult to knock offstage to begin with. After attempting to fix the issue several times, none of which were met with success, glide was eventually given the starting animation that is currently in 3.5, which factors into account Charizard’s current momentum when initiating glide rather than completely negating it like previous iterations. Although the starting animation does also add commitment on glide start-up, this added commitment is in line with the changes to MK’s and Pit’s glide, with the former having a max glide duration of 80 frames and the inability to return to a glide state after its first aerial usage while the latter now expends all but 1 jump and has IASA frames delayed by 3 frames; it is regrettable that such a drastic change had to be made to Charizard’s glide and that it alters the timing for glair follow-ups, but it was necessary to remove glide braking and this change is consistent with the overall theme of adding commitment to all glides. (For what it’s worth, it’s still possible to wavebounce glide start, but it has a less noticeable effect compared to before.)
The other noticeable change made to Charizard’s glide is the new turnaround animation upon canceling it. Although there was a consensus to standardize and add commitment to the three glides, the PMDT still wanted them to be unique from each other – hence why only MK has a glide timer and Pit’s glide only reduces him to 1 jump instead of taking away all of his jumps. Along the same lines, Charizard’s glide is the only glide that can be reversed upon glide end. Rather than eliminating this unique trait, this trait was retained but an animation was added to make the turnaround more visually consistent – Charizard’s previous ability to immediately face the opposite direction in the air upon ending a move without going into the Z-axis was jarring compared to other actions that cause the user to turn around (Jigglypuff’s, Kirby’s, MKs, and D3’s double-jump turnarounds, for example). As you may have noticed though, this turnaround animation does alter some timings for glide end turnaround tricks; for what it’s worth, I didn’t feel too strongly about this change one way or the other but there were those in the PMDT who felt that the lack of a turnaround animation looked unprofessional and visually jarring.
I hope this answer is satisfactory for you and the other Charizard mains on the Skype group. I tried to be open and address your inquiries, but if you have other questions, please let me know what else I can do.
)and the new glide just feels dreadful to me, the inability to control yourself immediately just means you're so much more predictable and very hard to get back on the stage from below it. I feel like both my mained characters got nerfed really hard, zelda was possibly deserved but no way charizard deserved all this.
