Editorial: A Smashing Debate, Part 5 (Finale)

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February 2016. The last batch of Smash DLC was released to the public including the latest Fire Emblem protagonist, Corrin, and everyone’s favorite Umbra Witch, Bayonetta – or is she everyone’s “favorite” Umbra Witch? Well, we’re here again in the Smashing Debate to discuss it!

Earlier this year, Spanish community leader Greward announced to the world that Spain would be banning Bayonetta, however, Smash España (the Spanish community hub) has not given an official statement. Time has only made this debate grown even more intense.

Today we brought Greward to give his personal opinion on this matter. But first as always, a warning and disclaimer.

WARNING​

Excessive use of salt can give a bad taste to your meals – and to your opinions too! So we recommend not using it and keeping a healthy diet and a likeable attitude in such a delicate discussion.

DISCLAIMER​

The following article does not reflect the opinion of Smashboards, the Back Room, or the Spanish community as a whole. The special guest is here to give his PERSONAL opinion and he’s not here to speak on behalf of Spain.

The Issue​

Ever since the release of the last batch of DLC, many tier lists have reflected the Bayo Effect, with the Umbra Witch dethroning the Sheikah. Many people say that she’s "even more broken than Brawl Meta Knight," while others say that she is not broken at all. A separation in opinions is tangible, and we are here to discuss it.

The Perspectives​

Pro-Ban: Her Up-B comes out on frame 4 which is too fast, and her Dive Kick is unpunishable; she has many good options and she can do amazing, difficult-to-DI zero-to-death combos (02D), or just rack up a lot of damage.

Pro-Choice: Many of her other moves are punishable, and her specials can be DI’d away from with the correct input. With patience, knowledge, and the correct tools, any character in Smash 4 can be defeated, including Bayonetta.

Our Opinions
Greward​

I know with all certainty that Bayonetta is by far, the best character in the game and that she is more troublesome than any other character in the Smash saga.

Most Anti-Ban arguments are based on her not having as many high-level results as other characters in America, but I think that the reason behind that is because top level players simply don’t want to play her; they know she is too broken to play, and that if they do everyone would have to; essentially killing the game. They are probably waiting for some patch that fixes things before drastic measures have to be taken.

Personally I’m Pro-Ban, even though it hurts me. I enjoy playing against superior characters, and winning against a Bayonetta is something that the public loves. Unfortunately, for the sake of our game, she has to disappear.

Hangman​

Bayonetta had instantly become a polarizing entity in the Smash 4 community. Her plethora of combos, kill confirms, 02Ds, and individual tools make her a dynamic force never before seen among the cast. While many people feel she may be too powerful and deserves banning, the often-cited case of her similarity to Brawl Meta Knight is brought up too frequently. I feel that treating them as the same is simply absurd.

Without discussing too much of what made Meta Knight an unrelenting force in Brawl, it is worth noting that he had tools that abused most of the mechanics available within the game and was able to utilize them in a seamless way that caused the metagame to develop completely around his presence.

Bayonetta does not have the same impact on Smash 4’s current metagame and in my opinion never will live up to the precedent set by Meta Knight. Bayonetta has a unique style of play that holds a strong resemblance to more traditional fighting games. In a genre where 02Ds, mix-up heavy movesets, poorly balanced unique mechanics, and distinct differences in viability are nothing new, Bayonetta appears on par for the course rather than the exception to the rule for Smash Bros.

Now, what does this mean for Smash 4? In my opinion, players should be studying information on Bayonetta the same way that traditional fighting game players have to study up on characters that they will play against in order to know how to counter what’s going to be brought up to the arena.

As the information is steadily becoming available and being spread, it moves the duty of knowing exactly what makes Bayonetta a tour de force in the current metagame to the players and commentators.Those who can bring her to a top level of play should be respected for their play rather than lambasted for playing her the way she is designed to be played.

Diosdi​

Bayonetta is not even close to the worst balance example of balancing in the saga. Meta Knight in Brawl could do three UpAirs in a row; he could do a whole lap through Temple without touching the ground. Fox in Melee could do four UpAirs in a row and had almost no negative match ups. Bayonetta’s 02D combos are circumstantial and can be DI’d with proper timing and knowledge.

If we never banned Meta Knight or Fox or Pikachu at their apex, why would we do it to Bayonetta? Banning a character is taking away from a player its main. We can't do it without alienating people that play the game.

People say that Bayonetta is toxic, but bans are toxic.

If we banned Fox in Melee, how many people would lose their main just because some people don’t want to learn a MU? It sounds illogical and unfair. Bayonetta has shown tremendous popularity in tournaments in the last month or two, and a lot of people would be left without a main character if she were banned.

Her combos are circumstantial and can be DI’d out of properly, her neutral game is simply bad and relies on her variations of Side-B to start combos, her jab is one of the slowest in the game, and finally, her kill moves are predictable.

Banning a character just because people know how to play is not a measure for the sake of the game. It is a john.

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So what do you think? Is Bayo THAT good? Should she be banned? Let us know!

Author's Note: So this marks the end of our Smashing Debate series. I would like to give a special thanks to all of our collaborators: Nova, One Hit Smash, Hangman, OneSmash, and this debate's special guest, Greward. Please be sure to follow all of them on Twitter.

 

I v0t3 4 h3r n0t 2 b b4nn3d...in my view she's a fun character to play with and to fight against... at times when I lose against her makes me wana train more idk motivation...try again.ftw..xP

 

And if you look at the statistics I just linked, you will see that the vast majority of players use other characters.

...Okay.

I was just arguing against your points regarding overpowered characters, I'm not saying that she actually is overpowered. (I am heavily leaning towards the "broken" side, though, for reasons I outlined in my first post in this thread.)

Yeah most people might not use fox, but most people placing high in tournament and getting into top 8 are.

 

You can't defend Bayo by quoting tier list data for a character that's only been out 3 months. Comparing Bayo to Melee Fox, who is an extremely difficult character to master and still isn't broken, is also foolish.

She isn't unbeatable but she plain takes the fun out of Sm4sh and if she isn't banned, we will see the Sm4sh tournament scene taken over by Bayo players.

Any noob can pick up Sm4sh Bayo and within a week, they will know everything they need to know to destroy more experienced players in tournament. This will eventually force veterans to drop the game or pick up Bayo. Those who are able to defeat Bayos with other characters will play a very boring, campy game that nobody wants to play, or even watch, for very long. In the end, even those people will be beat by the Bayos who adapt to their campy playstyle...

I honestly feel that Bayo is a character that rewards lazy, uninspired players. The people who defend her know that she's broken but if she's banned, they won't be able to win. This is because their wins have been coming from the character, instead of their own skill.

Banning toxic characters = banning toxic players.

 

I feel like the character is kind of cheap in a way. But I do feel like there is a lot of counterplay to her, and that some characters does really well against her. And I don't think that you should ban her, wait a while and see how the meta progresses and if she happens to be overwhelmingly good, then maybe consider it.

I've heard about some people say that you should pretty much only run up shield and punish unsafe approaches, since her grabs are so bad. And that you should camp her all day if you have a projectile character.

And I don't think punishing WT is that hard. I punished a lot of dumb WTs when I played against a Bayo in my region. A lot of the times Bayos seems to like to land with a WT from the air, and I just waited and punished with an U-smash. And I never got hit or the Bat Within.

Also did people see Esam's new vid about SDI'ing Up-B so that it won't KO. Apparently there are only some characters with high gravity that are screwed by the Up-B > U-air stuff but all other characters can get out. Just mash the f*ck out of your control stick and you'll probably live. If this becomes a thing it'll really change the meta as Bayo players will have to mix up their combos more in order for them to work, and 0 > Death combos will more rare as people will SDI and live.

I kind of feel like the character is kind of badly designed being such polarized character. If ever a patch happened, I'd like to see her get slight nerf on her combos, making them more SDI-able, but in compensation get slightly better grab and neutral game.

 

Bayonetta is good for Smash 4 in the same way that Fox was good for Melee. Fox is the best (frames will be frames, options will be options) and this fact has spawned huge shifts in the meta time and time again among the mains of every other character. "How do I beat a good Fox player?" is the question that has made every character in Melee viable in some shape or form. I believe that with the right mindset (and with the fact that Bayonetta has a terrible neutral game if viewed from the correct point of view) Smash 4's meta can allow for Bayonetta to become a character that is not feared nor scorned, simply one that is viewed as a challenge.

Note: BY the "correct point of view", I mean that Bayo may have a lot of approach options, but only two of them are decent, thus making her neutral game heavily counterable.

 

Bayonetta is good for Smash 4 in the same way that Fox was good for Melee. Fox is the best (frames will be frames, options will be options) and this fact has spawned huge shifts in the meta time and time again among the mains of every other character. "How do I beat a good Fox player?" is the question that has made every character in Melee viable in some shape or form. I believe that with the right mindset (and with the fact that Bayonetta has a terrible neutral game if viewed from the correct point of view) Smash 4's meta can allow for Bayonetta to become a character that is not feared nor scorned, simply one that is viewed as a challenge.

Note: BY the "correct point of view", I mean that Bayo may have a lot of approach options, but only two of them are decent, thus making her neutral game heavily counterable.

At the same time, though, I don't find a character with zero-deaths that are safe to attempt and relatively easy to execute, linear gameplay, Witch Time, and things such as that to be particularly constructive to the meta.

 

For Crying out loud you forgot to call her what she should go by at this point: THE UMBRA *****

 

You get the idea

 

Yeah most people might not use fox, but most people placing high in tournament and getting into top 8 are.

Not really. Other characters perform well too.

Okay, let me set this straight. There is NOTHING WRONG with Fox in melee. Yes, he is the best character in the game! SOMEBODY has to be in the #1 spot, believe it or not! Fox is that character, and it turns out that he is also a very interesting character in competitive play, and it is really, really hard to learn how to make use of the things that he has that make him better than other characters. Also, he is #1 by a relatively small margin.

 

She needs a NERF but she ain't even broken.

Especially considering she doesn't rank head and shoulders above every character


Remember, she gets ****ed by characters with projectiles like and Cloud is much stronger than her IMO

True. I always bet on cloud when they match up on observation mode.

 

I've definately heard people complaining about bayonetta say shes worse than metaknight

Metaknight is one of the few chars I'm okay with lol.

 

You know, this reminds me...
KuroganeHammer said that late side-b and second up-b are unDIable, and yet evidence towards the contrary (for 2nd up-b at least) lies before our very eyes.

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!

DI =/= SDI

 

You can't defend Bayo by quoting tier list data for a character that's only been out 3 months. Comparing Bayo to Melee Fox, who is an extremely difficult character to master and still isn't broken, is also foolish.

She isn't unbeatable but she plain takes the fun out of Sm4sh and if she isn't banned, we will see the Sm4sh tournament scene taken over by Bayo players.

Any noob can pick up Sm4sh Bayo and within a week, they will know everything they need to know to destroy more experienced players in tournament. This will eventually force veterans to drop the game or pick up Bayo. Those who are able to defeat Bayos with other characters will play a very boring, campy game that nobody wants to play, or even watch, for very long. In the end, even those people will be beat by the Bayos who adapt to their campy playstyle...

I honestly feel that Bayo is a character that rewards lazy, uninspired players. The people who defend her know that she's broken but if she's banned, they won't be able to win. This is because their wins have been coming from the character, instead of their own skill.

Banning toxic characters = banning toxic players.

I don't care who you are.

I don't care what you're saying any more.

But attacking the people who play a character, regardless of why they're playing her, is the problem.

Bayo will destroy this community, but its not because of the fault of her or her players.

It's because of people who can't accept a loss, even debatably cheap ones, with grace.

If you lose, you lose. If you win, you win. Accept both with good sportsmanship. Regardless of the circumstances. If you don't accept it with some sort of dignity you will destroy the community.

Whether Bayo is or should be banned or not is irrelevant. Stop insulting the players. Stop calling them toxic for playing the game. Because THAT is what's toxic.

And THAT is why the other FGCs are laughing at us.

 

Unless the competitive community has suddenly learned that "adapting" is a thing, then by all means ban her. It's what you did with customs, right? Much easier to just outright remove anything that could threaten the status quo.

 

can we stop acting like she is winning everything?
MIchigan regional zero bayo in top 16
GGSS monthly zero bayonetta in top 12
texas showdown zero bayonetta in top 14
TGC 7 one bayonetta (aerolink) 3rd
GGWP Netherlands top 16 one bayonetta Badr placed 2
Avalon one bayonetta placed 13th
Frostbite 0 bayonetta in top 16
TGC 6 no bayonetta placed top 16
hope X bayonetta placed 3rd Space thing
this isnt every tournament that has happened but results are the most important thing. i did ignore locals because locals aren't high level most of the time and regionals and monthlies give better indication of a characters because many players train and attend only those events. if others want to look up results please do but dont base your opinion on this character being OP from an editorial from what he deems "healthy" for the game. if you say she is overpowering the meta, going to kill smash 4, is (LOL) pay2win. the burden is on you to prove that and what happens on forglory to you personally isnt sufficient. you need results that mirror this:

brawl clash of titans IV 5 MK in top 12
WHOBO 9 mk in top 12
she isn't anywhere near as overpowered as MK was in brawl anyone comparing the two is ridiculous.
looking at this editorial he talks about her "plethora" of kill confirms ye lists none, he talks about her 02d but beefy smash doos has a video demonstrating that to zero 2 death an opponent who is DI'ing correctly it requires a series of 50 50 guesses and a 33 66 guess as well. and if you DI the divekick correctly she has a hard time confirming.
and my personal favorite arguemt: the pros are too "honorbound" to use such cheap character. Has anyone seen an interview or statement from a pro that supports that? I Remember how many players weren't too "honorbound" to play shiek and diddy prepatch.
But regarless saying she's far and away the best charatcer when she has no results is one of the reasons FGC looks at this community and laughs. Calling a character the best because she has combos is also a laughable statement. really think this charatcer will justcontinue to be hated for no reason her pacing on the tier list (like pikachu) will eventually be called into question becuase her results dont match the fear of the public.

 

If the world voted for K.Rool this wouldn't even be a problem lol.
(Only about .02mg of Sodium in this post)

 

can we stop acting like she is winning everything?

Can we stop acting like that actually matters?

she isn't anywhere near as overpowered as MK was in brawl anyone comparing the two is ridiculous.

Right, it's more like Ice Climbers with their zero-deaths and infinites – the main difference being that Bayonetta's are easier to go for, and she can't be handicapped by losing Nana.

and my personal favorite arguemt: the pros are too "honorbound" to use such cheap character. Has anyone seen an interview or statement from a pro that supports that?

I think ZeRo said that in his video IIRC?

I Remember how many players weren't too "honorbound" to play shiek and diddy prepatch.

I also remember how they didn't have zero-deaths like Bayonetta's.

But regarless saying she's far and away the best charatcer when she has no results is one of the reasons FGC looks at this community and laughs. Calling a character the best because she has combos is also a laughable statement.

We're not (or at least, I'm not; dunno about everyone else). A character can be broken without being the best in the game; such as having relatively easy-to-execute zero-deaths with little risk if you miss and high reward if you succeed.

 

Characters are much more than combos, but I digress.

People have this idea that as soon as Bayo touches you, you die. A whole bunch of 0 to deaths off anything. That's completely false. Bayo gets discussed fairly often on the competitive impressions thread, and a lot of stuff is better understood.

One is her damage output and zero to deaths. There was a user who took a few matches (from 9B I believe) and averaged out Bayo's damage output off a hit or witch time that leads into a combo. It was found that Bayo combos do about 20-25% each, on average. That's a far cry from "omg 0 to death everyone all the time with inescapable combos".

There's been further developments into figuring out how to escape all these combos. Beefy Smash Doods has a Bayo video showing how to DI common Bayo combos. It was made extraordinarily clear that 0 to deaths require a series of 50/50 or sometimes 66/33 reads. This is the reason that Bayo is averaging 20% a combo. There's also been further developments into SDI. If you SDI her second up-b upwards, there's very little or nothing she could do to combo you, and this takes away one of her most common kill confirm.

Another thing that was discussed by a particular user on the competitive impressions thread was the concept of oppression vs explosion. Pre-patch Sheik was definitely better than Bayo. That's because Sheik was oppressive, she dominated neutral. However, you always felt like you were in the game even when you couldn't land a hit in because you normally deal more damage than Sheik and could kill her earlier. She was oppressive in the neutral. Bayo is an explosive character. She is not oppressive at all, but a single mistake and you get blown up, or at least you feel like you do. That's why there is so much more hate to Bayo (a worse character) than pre-patch Sheik; a single mistake makes you feel like you lost. Think back to pre-patch Luigi, he was hated a lot even though he wasn't the best. This is further exasperated by the fact that most people like telling themselves that DI never works.

Bayonetta is still the best character, but please, stop thinking that she is 02D: The Character. She isn't. At all. She's a character with a tame neutral, great disadvantage, and the potential to kill really, really early with a series of reads or specific conditions.

I can totally understand why she's considered broken, but I'm proud to say that she requires far more skill and knowledge than Brawl Meta Knight. Just playing as her does not grant you free wins at all. You need to understand every matchup to perform the combos and read DI. Even if she excels in deadly combos, she kinda sucks at everything else like zoning her opponents and playing defensive. I honestly don't mind Bayonetta at all. I think people that main her like Pink Fresh, Saj, and 9B should deserve a bit more respect. They put a lot of time in what combos work or not. I don't think Bayonetta deserves that much hate, in fact no character should be hated just for being overused or brain-dead. A character is a character. All of them deserve appreciation. Well, except for Rosalina.

 

Ahh, Bayonetta, Bayonetta... Causing so much drama, and so much acquisition of "this player has no skill." Let's break it down.
Bayonetta, from my very little experience, is more of an air based fighter compared to a ground based fighter. Her aerials are quite interesting compared to other characters, and she's able to rack up that one zero percent combo... However, this is easily avoidable if you either read what's gonna happen, or simply DI'ing out of it. She isn't really broken in this case, but this does make her quite the powerhouse.
As for counterpicks, a simple Cloud can cause a massive challenge to her with the basic full hop fair lead-in to god knows what. Along with the fact that Bayo can't stand projectiles, there are many viable counterpicks... But it all really depends on player skill ceilings and whatnot.

 

Can we stop acting like that actually matters?

Right, it's more like Ice Climbers with their zero-deaths and infinites – the main difference being that Bayonetta's are easier to go for, and she can't be handicapped by losing Nana.

I think ZeRo said that in his video IIRC?

I also remember how they didn't have zero-deaths like Bayonetta's.

We're not (or at least, I'm not; dunno about everyone else). A character can be broken without being the best in the game; such as having relatively easy-to-execute zero-deaths with little risk if you miss and high reward if you succeed.

zero said he didn't have fun with her. amd he claims to only use characters he has fun with. comparing bao to IC is interesting but when IC grbbed you you died unless they messed up. bayo you can DI or SDI or airdodge out. some charatcers such as mario, greninja,cloud, ryu, and others can throw a move or special out and kill her as a reversal.
how can a character be "broken" and not be the best in the game? thats something only this community would even say.

 

I don't think she cares. She's bad and she wants everyone to know XD
No in all seriousness I think that bayo is bad when the player decides to abuse her. Then again she does make it easy for anyone to main and dominate.
She is OP but only when you think that you cannot win the match. I won a game with LITTLE MAC! i used his speed to punish her most of her side Bs and every missed Up B meant an Up B for me.
Any missed downward side b was punished. (this wasn't on game btw lol)

 

zero said he didn't have fun with her. amd he claims to only use characters he has fun with.

I see – perhaps the honor aspect of it is why he doesn't find it fun? Idk tho.

comparing bao to IC is interesting but when IC grbbed you you died unless they messed up. bayo you can DI or SDI or airdodge out. some charatcers such as mario, greninja,cloud, ryu, and others can throw a move or special out and kill her as a reversal.

But the risk / reward is heavily weighted in Bayonetta's favor. If she misses, there's no major punishment. If she succeeds (which can be tough to prevent her from doing), then your stock is gone.

how can a character be "broken" and not be the best in the game? thats something only this community would even say.

Overpoweredness is only one way of breaking a game, or being detrimental to it. For example, if a character had some system where the winner of a match was completely randomized, then that would break the game on a fundamental level – skill would no longer be a factor in deciding the winner. This is of course an extreme example, but you see the point. With Bayonetta, I fear that she will slow matches to a crawl, which is detrimental to the game.

 

Personally, I haven't had any problems fighting Bayonetta, but I also haven't been to a tournament yet and only found bad ones on For Glory. I still think they need to fix Witch Time though.

 

I see – perhaps the honor aspect of it is why he doesn't find it fun? Idk tho.

But the risk / reward is heavily weighted in Bayonetta's favor. If she misses, there's no major punishment. If she succeeds (which can be tough to prevent her from doing), then your stock is gone.

Overpoweredness is only one way of breaking a game, or being detrimental to it. For example, if a character had some system where the winner of a match was completely randomized, then that would break the game on a fundamental level – skill would no longer be a factor in deciding the winner. This is of course an extreme example, but you see the point. With Bayonetta, I fear that she will slow matches to a crawl, which is detrimental to the game.

Thank you. Someone who understands that a character doesn't have to be overpowered to be broken. Honestly, since I was talking about Melee Fox earlier, I'll say this: if I had to ban one character from Melee tournaments, it wouldn't even be fox. It would probably be ice climbers, because they are arguably the most broken character in the game, even though not as overall powerful as Fox.

 

Thank you. Someone who understands that a character doesn't have to be overpowered to be broken. Honestly, since I was talking about Melee Fox earlier, I'll say this: if I had to ban one character from Melee tournaments, it wouldn't even be fox. It would probably be ice climbers, because they are arguably the most broken character in the game, even though not as overall powerful as Fox.

At that point, you're being arbitrary though. You can't base a ban off a subjective metric. Otherwise, literally anything can be considered ban-worthy if someone grumbles about it enough. It's true that often Ice Climbers matches are gimmicky and lead to some bored viewers, but so does projectile spamming in most fighting games. That ABSOLUTELY does not mean you should be BANNING projectiles though.

That's really the biggest problem with this. The biggest arguments for banning aren't based on overwhelming tourney results that have completely destroyed the meta, they're based on people being sour because they view Bayonetta as "too easy". That's not a reasonable thing to start banning for though, because then we might as well just ban Jigglypuff from Melee because some people don't like watching Hungrybox matches and consider Rest too easy of a punish kill.

 

If I may add can we really call a character overpowered when she hasn't won a national? Brawl meta knight had plenty of examples to be banned one tournament I believe KTAR 6 had 5 out of the top 8 all using meta knight. Meta knight won the most in brawls tourney span etc. I can see this being more of a camparison to the ice climbers. But the problem is there are FEW limited ways to break Bayo's combos. They are there. Ice climbers literally is just on the Ice Climbers player messing up. Not only that but other than their dominating shut down way to take stocks their neutral like Bayo's is and was awful. Also like Bayo though they have to have a set up to their zero to death. I can understand us not wanting to see brawl ice climbers vs brawl meta knight again. But we have to wait and see and act accordingly.
In my opinion.

 

At that point, you're being arbitrary though. You can't base a ban off a subjective metric. Otherwise, literally anything can be considered ban-worthy if someone grumbles about it enough. It's true that often Ice Climbers matches are gimmicky and lead to some bored viewers, but so does projectile spamming in most fighting games. That ABSOLUTELY does not mean you should be BANNING projectiles though.

That's really the biggest problem with this. The biggest arguments for banning aren't based on overwhelming tourney results that have completely destroyed the meta, they're based on people being sour because they view Bayonetta as "too easy". That's not a reasonable thing to start banning for though, because then we might as well just ban Jigglypuff from Melee because some people don't like watching Hungrybox matches and consider Rest too easy of a punish kill.

Objective facts about Bayonetta:

• She has several zero-to-death combos, thus disrupting the basic flow of Smash (the idea that players must build percent in order to KO).
• Said combos are difficult to escape from, which not only makes it much easier for Bayonetta than for her opponent, but also makes this a problem at lower levels of play (say, locals).
• They also have little-to-no risk for a very high reward: Bayonetta takes a stock at low percents if she succeeds (which is very likely), and just falls to the ground and resets the situation if she fails. Bayonetta does something relatively easy and gets a big payoff, while her opponent must work much harder for no real reward (other than preventing the KO).
• The primary way to beat Bayonetta is to camp her out, which A) many characters are not easily able to do, and B) slows matches to a crawl – like how Spear Pillar slows them to a crawl by encouraging circle camping.

This is not true of other characters. There is a clear detrimental effect on the game, so a ban is not unjustified.



Also, unlike Rest, Bayonetta's combos do not have four seconds of ending lag.

 

Objective facts about Bayonetta:

• She has several zero-to-death combos, thus disrupting the basic flow of Smash (the idea that players must build percent in order to KO).
• Said combos are difficult to escape from, which not only makes it much easier for Bayonetta than for her opponent, but also makes this a problem at lower levels of play (say, locals).
• They also have little-to-no risk for a very high reward: Bayonetta takes a stock at low percents if she succeeds (which is very likely), and just falls to the ground and resets the situation if she fails. Bayonetta does something relatively easy and gets a big payoff, while her opponent must work much harder for no real reward (other than preventing the KO).
• The primary way to beat Bayonetta is to camp her out, which A) many characters are not easily able to do, and B) slows matches to a crawl – like how Spear Pillar slows them to a crawl by encouraging circle camping.

This is not true of other characters. There is a clear detrimental effect on the game, so a ban is not unjustified.



Also, unlike Rest, Bayonetta's combos do not have four seconds of ending lag.

So, just bullet point per bullet point.

1. No one is arguing that these aren't powerful, but several character still have guaranteed kill setups at low percentages or actually 02D's against specific matchups. While it is definitely a good reason why she's considered so powerful, this isn't so antithetical to the game's design that she's the only one in the game with anything like that. She's merely the best at it.

2. Said combos, it turns out, are actually pretty easy to escape from. Esam posted a video that pretty much proved you can survive them 100% with just about any character as long as you're not like... Fox... in which case it becomes a 50-50. Only 7 characters have trouble doing the upward SDI trick, and 2 of them are final smash transformations.

3. Little risk is not the same as no risk. If Bayonetta misses the approach, her neutral is VERY punishable. This is DEFINITELY a gameplay shift for some people that are used to playing a high tier that can just steamroll other characters with rushdown, but learning to adapt is part of the game. People focus on the strengths here, but completely ignore the big drawbacks, because they're just so worried about her big two tools (02D and Witch Time) being so strong.

4. Camping's not necessary. I can't find it at the moment, but a Ryu took down a Bayo recently just simply by focusing on strong punishes and getting his combos in when he got those punishes. This REALLY isn't as hard as people are making it out to be.

Like. No one's arguing that Bayonetta is not RIDICULOUSLY strong and that she's not one of the, if not the, most accesible top tier characters, but the problem here is that NONE of that warrants a ban. Bayonetta flat out doesn't have the record to warrant a ban yet. These are not things that should be done on a knee jerk alarmist basis. I cannot think of a single character that's been permanently banned from a fighting game (meaning it wasn't eventually overturned because the ban was realized to be excessive) that has a record that's not at least three times as dominant as Bayonetta's. Until Bayonetta ACTUALLY starts winning a couple of majors and is the majority of the top 8, she is not controlling the meta nearly as much as people claim she is.

 

So, just bullet point per bullet point.

1. No one is arguing that these aren't powerful, but several character still have guaranteed kill setups at low percentages or actually 02D's against specific matchups. While it is definitely a good reason why she's considered so powerful, this isn't so antithetical to the game's design that she's the only one in the game with anything like that. She's merely the best at it.

Any specific examples?

2. Said combos, it turns out, are actually pretty easy to escape from. Esam posted a video that pretty much proved you can survive them 100% with just about any character as long as you're not like... Fox... in which case it becomes a 50-50. Only 7 characters have trouble doing the upward SDI trick, and 2 of them are final smash transformations.

But SDI seems quite tricky to do, at least for lower-level players. Too new of a development to say for sure though.

Also, doesn't she have combos that this doesn't apply to (i.e. that don't revolve around Witch Twist)?

3. Little risk is not the same as no risk. If Bayonetta misses the approach, her neutral is VERY punishable. This is DEFINITELY a gameplay shift for some people that are used to playing a high tier that can just steamroll other characters with rushdown, but learning to adapt is part of the game. People focus on the strengths here, but completely ignore the big drawbacks, because they're just so worried about her big two tools (02D and Witch Time) being so strong.

I don't find her neutral particularly punishable, but then again I'm not an expert. Still, her combos themselves are extremely safe. If she misses the combo starter (uspec / sspec), she gets off rather scot-free, maybe she'll get grabbed or something. And if the foe escapes the actual combo, they're probably air-dodging and unable to immediately punish. She's not gonna get KO'd at low percents for it, whereas she does often get the kill at low percents if she succeeds.

4. Camping's not necessary. I can't find it at the moment, but a Ryu took down a Bayo recently just simply by focusing on strong punishes and getting his combos in when he got those punishes. This REALLY isn't as hard as people are making it out to be.

But there is also a big risk to playing that way: getting zero-deathed. If you don't want to get zero-deathed, the optimal strategy is to play the game slowly and carefully, because if you make one mistake during your attempted approach, Bayo can WT you or combo you to death.

Like. No one's arguing that Bayonetta is not RIDICULOUSLY strong and that she's not one of the, if not the, most accesible top tier characters, but the problem here is that NONE of that warrants a ban. Bayonetta flat out doesn't have the record to warrant a ban yet. These are not things that should be done on a knee jerk alarmist basis. I cannot think of a single character that's been permanently banned from a fighting game (meaning it wasn't eventually overturned because the ban was realized to be excessive) that has a record that's not at least three times as dominant as Bayonetta's. Until Bayonetta ACTUALLY starts winning a couple of majors and is the majority of the top 8, she is not controlling the meta nearly as much as people claim she is.

While I do agree that we shouldn't be too trigger-happy with this... read my previous posts about how overpoweredness is not the only reason to ban a character.

 

I'm so glad that escaping Bayonetta's 02D is as easy as breaking my thumbstick and giving myself carpal tunnel.
/s

 

At that point, you're being arbitrary though. You can't base a ban off a subjective metric. Otherwise, literally anything can be considered ban-worthy if someone grumbles about it enough. It's true that often Ice Climbers matches are gimmicky and lead to some bored viewers, but so does projectile spamming in most fighting games. That ABSOLUTELY does not mean you should be BANNING projectiles though.

That's really the biggest problem with this. The biggest arguments for banning aren't based on overwhelming tourney results that have completely destroyed the meta, they're based on people being sour because they view Bayonetta as "too easy". That's not a reasonable thing to start banning for though, because then we might as well just ban Jigglypuff from Melee because some people don't like watching Hungrybox matches and consider Rest too easy of a punish kill.

Who is "the best character in the game" is also subjective, isn't it? I never said IC's should be banned (they shouldn't be) but they have the most reason to be banned despite not being the best character in the game. In fact, I think a wobbling ban might be good. Toph and Scar had the right idea, ban it except for top 64. Anyway, you can talk all day about "arbitrary" and "opinions" and things like that, but a ban could and should occur if there is an overall community agreement on it.

 

Not really. Other characters perform well too.

Okay, let me set this straight. There is NOTHING WRONG with Fox in melee. Yes, he is the best character in the game! SOMEBODY has to be in the #1 spot, believe it or not! Fox is that character, and it turns out that he is also a very interesting character in competitive play, and it is really, really hard to learn how to make use of the things that he has that make him better than other characters. Also, he is #1 by a relatively small margin.

Yes fox is the best character in the same way that bayonetta is the best character. But even though other characters place well, most of them are fox. Also if there's nothing wrong with melee fox, then why isn't there anything wrong with smash 4 bayonetaa

 

if there's nothing wrong with melee fox, then why isn't there anything wrong with smash 4 bayonetaa

Apples and oranges.
Fox is the best in most situations, but he has counters and has an equally high skill ceiling to go with his dominance.
If a Fox main wins, it's because of his skill and his ability to read and react to the situation at hand, all in a game that runs roughly 1.25 to 1.5 times faster than Sm4sh.

 

Apples and oranges.
Fox is the best in most situations, but he has counters and has an equally high skill ceiling to go with his dominance.
If a Fox main wins, it's because of his skill and his ability to read and react to the situation at hand, all in a game that runs roughly 1.25 to 1.5 times faster than Sm4sh.

Skill ceilings mean nothing. It is assumed a player playing the best character will play the character with the skill needed to play. What matters in whether a character will be overwhelming enough to warrant a ban is how much that character can actually do.

Also, Fox has far less counters than Bayonetta does. There are essentially TWO MUs that are considered unfavorable for fox in Melee. And those are essentially 45-55 MUs or a 40-60 at worst. Bayonetta still has ACTUAL hard matchups and can be simply outspaced by a player that is willing to play even a slightly more conservative and slow playstyle. People that play against Fox don't have that luxury.

So, no. It's pretty much Apples to Apples at best.

 

Skill ceilings mean nothing. It is assumed a player playing the best character will play the character with the skill needed to play.

Stopped reading right there.
There's a difference between someone like you or me playing Melee as Fox and someone like Mango or M2K playing Fox.
Besides that, the mechanics of Melee further raise the ceiling, and thus the skill it takes to play him.
What's so hard about chaining Bayonetta's EZ-bake, flowchart 02D combos that require none of the mechanical acrobatics of wavedashing or L-canceling? The only aspect of her that takes even a modicum of skill is the sort of half-circle input to angle her aerial side-b downward.

They're two vastly different characters, in two vastly different versions of Smash. So you're right, it's not apples and oranges; It's apples and orangutans.

 

Stopped reading right there.
There's a difference between someone like you or me playing Melee as Fox and someone like Mango or M2K playing Fox.
Besides that, the mechanics of Melee further raise the ceiling, and thus the skill it takes to play him.
What's so hard about chaining Bayonetta's EZ-bake, flowchart 02D combos that require none of the mechanical acrobatics of wavedashing or L-canceling? The only aspect of her that takes even a modicum of skill is the sort of half-circle input to angle her aerial side-b downward.

They're two vastly different characters, in two vastly different versions of Smash. So you're right, it's not apples and oranges; It's apples and orangutans.

Cool. Bans aren't about whether YOU can use the character to their full extent, they're about national level play. Local tourneys have ALWAYS been allowed to run whatever set they want. When people are talking about bans, they're talking about national level.

So, yeah. Skill floor DOES NOT matter for this debate.

 

Given that there is a patch due this month (1.1.6) I think it would be best to pick this debate back up after the update lands

 

Cool. Bans aren't about whether YOU can use the character to their full extent, they're about national level play. Local tourneys have ALWAYS been allowed to run whatever set they want. When people are talking about bans, they're talking about national level.

So, yeah. Skill floor DOES NOT matter for this debate.

If the Bayonetta player requires little skill to get a zero-to-death combo, and if the player who is battling against Bayonetta requires significantly more skill to escape the combo, then there is a large imbalance. Namely, the less-skilled player can win. SDI is much more demanding, both reaction-time-wise and physical-exertion-wise, than Bayonetta's combos are, and Bayonetta's combos have an extremely high reward with not nearly enough risk.

Skill floor certainly does matter, because low-level tournaments exist and are very important to the scene's growth. At low-level tournaments, you will likely see that Bayonetta domination (because at lower skill levels, it is much easier to reach the skill floor for playing Bayonetta than to reach the one for countering her), so she may be banned at a lower level of play – and rightfully so. If new players do not experience Bayonetta at locals (due to the ban), then at their first tournaments, they will not be able to deal with Bayonetta, thus leading to domination at high-level tourneys outside of the upper echelons, which will either result in a ban or – if other people share your "only top players matter" mindset – just stifle growth in the community.

TL;DR Skill floors do matter because low-level tourneys matter.

 

ZeRo is right. Instead of being salty about the character you should all try learning about the match-up.

 

Apples and oranges.
Fox is the best in most situations, but he has counters and has an equally high skill ceiling to go with his dominance.
If a Fox main wins, it's because of his skill and his ability to read and react to the situation at hand, all in a game that runs roughly 1.25 to 1.5 times faster than Sm4sh.

And if he doesn't then whats the use of playing Fox, Falco, Meta knight, all those top tier characters, the only way things will work is if you know how to play the character and it is possible, that's why I'd pick Corrin Way more than Bayo.