Escape from chain grabs.

[metho]

Chain grabbing is dog as.

My solution to escape from a chain grab is to allow button mashes from being grabbed the first time to be carried over to the next grab. You will escape!!!

 

[Orngeblu]

Chain grabbing is dog as.

My solution to escape from a chain grab is to allow button mashes from being grabbed the first time to be carried over to the next grab. You will escape!!!

Yeah, I had the same idea.

 

[Big-Cat]

A basic thing would be to replace mashing with a proper timing of grabbing at the same time so that both players are at a stale mate. Another thing to consider would be making most throws to where you cannot grab the opponent in the middle of hitstun.

 

[Snakeyes]

I kinda like Smash's grab/tech-chasing mixups. Two things that could reduce the effectiveness of chaingrabs while keeping them a viable tactic at low damage percent would be to give throws a slightly stronger knockback (relative to Melee) and prorate their hitstun after say, three successive grabs in a single combo. For example;

Player 1 grabs Player 2.

Grab 1 = Full hitstun. P1 is rewarded for landing a grab with damage and an opportunity for a follow up.

*P2 doesn't DI properly and gets grabbed again*

Grab 2 = Full hitstun. P1 is rewarded for correctly reading P2's DI attempt with more damage and another opportunity to follow up.

*P2 gets grabbed again*

Grab 3 = Full hitstun. See above.

*P2 gets grabbed again*

Grab 4 = Proration starts to kick in and cuts the hitstun down to 66%. P1 is still rewarded for landing the grab but the game is now helping P2's recovery in order to prevent a 0-death chaingrab. Note that after the 4th grab, P1 has only done about 21-28% of damage to P2, which is roughly equivalent to 3 tilt attacks or two well-placed aerials.

*P2 gets grabbed for the fifth time*

Grab 5 = The hitstun is now cut down to 44%. At this point, P2 is thrown so far away and recovers so quickly that only the fastest falling characters coupled with the worst DI decision would get grabbed again without having a chance to jump away or counterattack. The total damage from the combo is now 28-35%.

*P2 gets grabbed for the sixth time*

Grab 6 = Hitstun down to 30%. The only way for P1 to follow up on the grab is an aerial juggle. This whole grab sequence has done about 35-41% of damage depending on the amount of pummels. The stronger throw knockback also ensures that a character over 40% will end up too far to get grabbed again, regardless of proration. It also means that throws would become borderline useless to set up a juggle/finisher at 60% and beyond.

This relatively simple tweak to throw hitstun and knockback would accomplish three things;

1. The throw/DI/tech-chase is still a viable tactic at low % and does a decent amount of damage.
2. There is little incentive to rely on chaingrabs beyond 25% (4 grabs); it's not only harder keep the combo going, but better damage options become available (tilts, juggles, etc...).
3. Makes it harder to KO with stuff like Up Throw > tipper or Up Throw > Rest.

All without adding complicated new mechanics that players need to worry about.

 

[Sleek Media]

You could fix it just by having hitstun stale the same way that damage and knockback do.

 

[Qlaw]

You could fix it just by having hitstun stale the same way that damage and knockback do.

this. i want this

 

[TheReflexWonder]

But if hitstun scales the same way, suddenly what may have been the optimal option no longer becomes useful for what doesn't seem like a good reason. If I can hit you with Falco's B-Air five times in a row, or if I manage to grab your predictable landing and throw you for it multiple times, why should I get punished for the opponent's being predictable?

I don't think there's a good way to differentiate chaingrabs/locks and good old-fashioned optimal choices. Ideally, if chaingrabs are a serious issue, then the physics of the throws just wouldn't allow for it with the opponent being completely helpless. Tech chase opportunties, like Dedede D-Throw against non-chaingrabbable opponents, would be the best way to compromise, I feel.

 

[Bones0]

This is completely unrelated, but I've always thought it'd be a cool idea to have ledge grab invincibility decrease by 1 frame per grab to prevent planking. As far as chain grabs go, they're fine as long as they're actually difficulty and allow for DI mixups like in Melee. Marth can chaingrab spacies 0-30% on FD, but even M2K, God of the Chain Grab, drops them all the time.

 

[Vkrm]

He almost never drops them. He's known for how consistent he is. I think CGing in melee isn't really that big a deal. Shiek's d-throw CG is the only one I could really support being nerfed. After a certain % there better things you could be doing because of how diverse melee combos are. Can't talk about brawl, I don't play that trash.

 

[Life]

If a chaingrab lasts a long time, that just means the throw's KBG is set too low. Crank it a bit and the problem goes away.

I think smallish chaingrabs (maybe 30% on a true combo [3-4 throws]) are perfectly fine for the game. It's just a less flashy combo, and provides variety in a matchup as percents increase (maybe a character is a chaingrabbing monster on your character at low percents so you want to avoid the grab then, but they don't have any kill throws so you don't mind being grabbed even at like 150% so you shield more and worry about something else instead).

 

[Arcansi]

If I can hit you with Falco's B-Air five times in a row, or if I manage to grab your predictable landing and throw you for it multiple times, why should I get punished for the opponent's being predictable?

Moves already stale in this way, just for damage and knockback.

So I'm not sure nintendo cares.

EDIT: Also, if the optimal choice gets you punished for choosing it, it's not the optimal choice.

 

[TL?]

The real problems that need to be fixed that lead to brawl's chain grabs are:

1) No/Weak nontumble DI

2) Stale moves

The lack of nontumble DI is pretty self explanatory. This makes chaingrabs fairly static, you can see a clear difference with the chaingrabs that are in melee. The stale moves mechanic is a huge problem that doesn't get talked about enough. Using the same move over an over results in it giving less knockback directly and indirectly because it causes less damage too which results in less knockback from the % system. This mechanic conflicts heavily with the % system. As you take more damage, you get knocked back furthur. But if you keep using the same move, the net result of staling knockback decrease and the % system increase is just a small increase. The staling move system is very counterintuitive. It does not promote variety at all, infact it probably promotes more monotony through all the chain grabs it enables.

 

[Vkrm]

With or without cg's brawl still has major problems. Take it back to melee sakurai, that's when smash was at it's best.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

When watching melee and brawl videos, the one thing that jumps out at me is that melee's "combo" game seems pretty similar to brawl's, with a few major differences:

1. Ledge snap mechanics make it much easier to continue strings in melee when you knock someone off the stage. You can punish a recovery and continue the string, in brawl they tend to just snap to ledges, which halts the string.

2. Global gravity makes tech situations more common in melee, which allows for more tech chasing.

While there is definitely more straight combo action in melee (i.e., up throw to a brief string of aerials) that doesn't even account for half of the "combo" game in melee, and honestly you could have brawl's airdodge and hitstun mechanics+melees ledge mechanics, gravity, and landing detection and you'd have a much healthier, skill-based string game without many of the abuse cases we see in melee (jigg's uthrow->rest, sheik uthrow chaingrabs, and so on).

IMO.

 

[-LzR-]

Chaingrabs aren't really problematic as long as certain conditions have to be met. For example Wario and Pikachu have great chaingrabs, but have to be started at certain % to do any real damage, Falco has to grab at low %, Dededes damage depends a lot from the location of the grab, Icies require both of the climbers to be present and not being in lag to prevent mashing out and so on. Sure stuff like D3 chaingrab on DK is not very cool, but if those cases cannot be avoided without changing the game a lot, I guess it can't be helped. One thing they could do is some kind of a "grab breaking" input. Like when you press a certain button or combination when grabbed, it will immediately break the grab and stun both players for a second, but at the cost of 10% for you. This way infinites will no longer be a problem, but you'd have to make a sacrifice. Though doubt we'll be seeing anything like that, but I think it would solve almost all the problems.

 

[Vkrm]

Who honestly considers jigg's u throw rest a serious problem? They call it the spacey killer when it should be called the scrubby di killer.

 

[Big-Cat]

The real problems that need to be fixed that lead to brawl's chain grabs are:

1) No/Weak nontumble DI

2) Stale moves

The lack of nontumble DI is pretty self explanatory. This makes chaingrabs fairly static, you can see a clear difference with the chaingrabs that are in melee. The stale moves mechanic is a huge problem that doesn't get talked about enough. Using the same move over an over results in it giving less knockback directly and indirectly because it causes less damage too which results in less knockback from the % system. This mechanic conflicts heavily with the % system. As you take more damage, you get knocked back furthur. But if you keep using the same move, the net result of staling knockback decrease and the % system increase is just a small increase. The staling move system is very counterintuitive. It does not promote variety at all, infact it probably promotes more monotony through all the chain grabs it enables.

I agree, stale moves is very much one of the many elephants in the room. Either they take it out, or replace it with a damage scaling system that doesn't affect knockback.

 

[Twinkles]

Who honestly considers jigg's u throw rest a serious problem? They call it the spacey killer when it should be called the scrubby di killer.

I agree. Jab reset -> rest is much, much worse.

 

[-LzR-]

I agree. Kills against bad people who can't tech in Melee where you basically cannot **** it up is worse.

Fixed and stuff.

 

[Twinkles]

K maybe I'm biased.

I just don't like how it works against every char. at every percent and is an easy kill every time someone decides not to tech because i feel like i should at least be able to choose what poison i get when i choose to tech or not-tech rather than getting killed by doing one or the other.

 

[Vkrm]

Are you complaining about how easy it is for jiggs to kill with rest? Rest sucks, she gets a kill, then dies to her opponents the moment they return as long as they di properly. Brawl has way more broken things than jab reset to rest.

 

[-LzR-]

In Brawl almost everything can be avoided with a proper read, DI or teching or whatever there is. In Melee basically all of the top7 is "broken" which balances them out to create a competitively amazing game. It's just a shame that a hightier character like Falcon actually sucks because of Melees horrible balance.

 

[Vkrm]

Everything in melee is avoidable as well if you read them. It's kind of in all fighting games, if you know what they're going to do you can punish. It's certainly not unique to brawl. Once you get grabbed by ICs or d3, no amount of reads will save you. I think there are more unnwinable scenarios in brawl. If you consider melee horribly balanced, what do you have to say about the banning of metaknight?

 

[-LzR-]

I am proban when it comes to metaknight. Leave him out and Brawl has 3 times the viable characters compared to Melee. Melee is amazing as it is, but a bit more characters wouldn't hurt.

 

[Vkrm]

There are more characters in brawl in general so that could deff be true. I don't really play brawl in a competitive setting so I can't really confirm or deny it having a better balance, without mk. With mk however, there's no way it's more balanced. Also I think you're not giving melee enough credit, there's more then 7 viable characters for sure.

 

[-LzR-]

Tell me who are these more than 7 characters then. I don't see many characters being able to get past the spacies.

 

[Vkrm]

Fox, Falco, marth, shiek, peach, jigglypuff, ice climbers, captain falcon, Doc, and Gannon. These are the the characters that do well at a high level

Dk, yoshi, young link, Mario, luigi, link, samus, pikachu, and GnW.
These characters I consider good, you can win with them. A lot of them have even or better MU's with the high tier.

Everybody else is kind of bad.

 

[Gene]

When watching melee and brawl videos, the one thing that jumps out at me is that melee's "combo" game seems pretty similar to brawl's, with a few major differences:

1. Ledge snap mechanics make it much easier to continue strings in melee when you knock someone off the stage. You can punish a recovery and continue the string, in brawl they tend to just snap to ledges, which halts the string.

2. Global gravity makes tech situations more common in melee, which allows for more tech chasing.

While there is definitely more straight combo action in melee (i.e., up throw to a brief string of aerials) that doesn't even account for half of the "combo" game in melee, and honestly you could have brawl's airdodge and hitstun mechanics+melees ledge mechanics, gravity, and landing detection and you'd have a much healthier, skill-based string game without many of the abuse cases we see in melee (jigg's uthrow->rest, sheik uthrow chaingrabs, and so on).

IMO.

I agree with your opinion.

 

[Vkrm]

You shouldn't, he doesn't know anything about melee.

 

[Twinkles]

Are you complaining about how easy it is for jiggs to kill with rest? Rest sucks, she gets a kill, then dies to her opponents the moment they return as long as they di properly. Brawl has way more broken things than jab reset to rest.

I wasn't even comparing to Brawl in the first place.

Rest really does not suck and is a good reason why Jiggs is near top tier because with Rest comes fear of Rest, which prevents a lot of people from just going in and ****** Jiggs. It seems dumb to me that she can jab reset -> rest any character at any percent, but no other character has such a jab setup that is completely guaranteed.

If Jiggs hits with a rest and has anywhere under 40%, there's a very good chance she'll survive anything a character that is spawning can do (they still need to take the time to die and to spawn). Whiffed rest is obviously a different story.

@LzR I wouldn't exactly say Falcon sucks. At all. In fact, what the hell are you talking about?

 

[Vkrm]

Now I thought jigg's jab pops up the floaties and stands them up directly with no get animation at the higher %'s.

Falcon sucks in brawl, in melee he's pree gud. Kind of. Well, he's okay.

 

[Twinkles]

Actually, I'm also not sure if jab-reset works on floaties at all. Puff usually just doesn't rest floaties in general.

Don't really care about falcon in brawl.

falcon in melee is amazingly fun and hangs pretty well with the rest of top/high tier, so I'd say he's pretty durn good

 

[-LzR-]

Of course jab reset works on floaties. It works on anyone. Jab doesn't have knockback either way.
Falcon is basically like G&W in Brawl. He is just fine, but he just doesn't win so he is kinda bad.

 

[Twinkles]

Well, I am a Falcon main, and I know Falcon's jab won't get that reset in every situation imaginable.

So understand that I have good reason not to fully understand Jiggs's jab

I kind of agree with that sentiment. Falcon has great perfomances here and there, but never that national or even regional cincher. Pretty sure the last tournament close to a national that Falcon won was something in 2005 because Isai actually tried lol

 

[Vkrm]

Hey, can't you SDI the jabs at any percent?


Lolnontubledibrawlyoucrazy

 

[Twinkles]

Not jiggs'

 

[-LzR-]

Hey, can't you SDI the jabs at any percent?


Lolnontubledibrawlyoucrazy

What does this have to do with nontumble DI?
And yes you can SDI them as you receive hitlag. Shame it's useless in Melee as the rest or whatever they do will hit them anyways because you can't SDI much in a single jab. In Brawl jablocks the SDI can really **** things up and you end up getting like 1 jab and then a followup, just like in Melee.

 

[nessokman]

i want chain grabbing removed in ssb4 to level the playing field.Then brawl fans can complain about chain grabbing like melee fans do about wavedashing

 

[Wobbly Headed Bob]

I suggested this in another thread, but I think that if Smash 4 has core Melee mechanics (like it should), then hitstun canceling mechanics (like universal Brawl's) should apply after the 3rd repetition of a throw in a chaingrab.

It is essentially keeping a throw counter and debilitating chaingrabs while still leaving leverage for mindgames like in Brawl.

There should never be any chaingrabs like in Brawl period though.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

In that case, people would just throw Jab -> Grab into the mix and bypass the counter.

Pit has a lot of F-Throw x2/3 stuff. Pikachu has the F-Throw -> D-Throw stuff on, like, Dedede. Where do you draw the line?