ZeRo's video breakdown of Pokemon Trainer is a good thing put everyone on a similar level in terms of what we know about the characters in Ultimate. If you're interested in PT, then you've probably already watched it, but here it is:
I'm not gonna just restate everything ZeRo said in his video. Let's just go over what I think are the most important things he highlighted. I'll also be throwing in some information from Dabuz' analysis doc which you can read here: https://twitter.com/DabuzSenpai/status/1017909627252609024
Squirtle
General impression: Good, but unlike Brawl, Squirtle does not seem overwhelmingly better than the other two. (He also lost shell sliding ;-; ) This doesn't actually say much about Squirtle, so much as how much better Ivysaur and Charizard are. His primary weakness still seems to be a lack of range. He's still the frame data master of the three, for sure.
Ftilt is the kind of spammable normal where just doing it once or multiple times is a good mixup.
When I heard dtilt became a single hit, I was worried it might be too similar to ftilt, but it seems to have enough different applications from ftilt that this won't be the case. It has more range, does quite a bit of damage, and has a different knockback angle.
For uptilt to hit grounded opponents, you'll have to be inside their model, which is a big deal-ish since uptilt seems to be Squirtle's only grounded normal that sets up combos. Though with new dash-cancelling mechanics, this will at least be easier to do.
Upsmash covers the entirety of the Battlefield platform. This will most likely still be Squirtle's best smash attack. His other Smash attacks seem just OK. Fsmash seems to have good range at least.
Upthrow is a combo throw that seems like it can lead into all of Squirtle's aerials. Bthrow replaces dthrow as Squirtle's kill throw, but Squirtle no longer has the strongest throw of the three like in Brawl.
Squirtle's aerials remain his primary tools. In Brawl, his fair and bair were sort of the same move. In Ultimate, bair is a multihit now. Since bair lasts awhile and has a horizontal knockback angle, it will be good for edgeguarding. Though, with just an average recovery, Squirtle won't be able to go as deep as, say, Pikachu can with his similar bair.
Nair is ~frame 4 and hits all around Squirtle, so nair out-of-shield will be good.
Upair hitbox has a decent arc that reaches slightly behind Squirtle which is neat.
Water Gun is good, and does as expected.
Withdraw is thankfully better than it was in Brawl. It won't lead to anything, but it's at least safe on hit and burst movement is good in general. It does the same animation on shield as it does on hit, making it not as hard punishable on shield as it would be otherwise.
Ivysaur
General impression: I want to cry Ivysaur looks so much better. Faster movement speed, a real jab, a good projectile, a combo throw, and amazing aerials. Between the good, quick disjoints and Razor Leaf, Ivysaur should be able to bring the game to the pace she wants and deal with those pesky, patient swordies that Squirtle might not want to deal with.
Having a quick, disjointed jab with a finisher is great. Let alone in addition to now being able to cancel dash into a jab.
Dash attack seems like a good dash attack and will accomplish normal dash attack things. Considering Ivysaur is more of a zoner, it's good she still has a decent burst option.
Upsmash is still randomly, absurdly strong and I love it. (It better still be the strongest in the final build...) All of Ivy's Smashes seem pretty much the same as Brawl.
Ivysaur's bair will raise your children and pay for your retirement. But yeah this move is amazing. You can mixup going for both hits or fastfall to just get one hit. However, unlike in Brawl, you can't full hop double bair.
Nair seems like a good combo tool and doesn't have a landing hitbox. Nair->move AND nair-drag-down->move both seem neat. AND good for cross-ups.
Upair is still a great kill move, fair has a good angle for juggling, decent power and auto-cancels out of shorthop, and dair is now a decent spike that gives Ivy a little aerial stall.
ZeRo goes into detail on how Razor Leaf works. It can be angled slightly, and the distance can be adjusted. I agree with him in thinking that bair and Razor Leaf will be a good foundation for Ivysaur's neutral. It seems like a good projectile for disupting opponents who prefer to play more passively.
Bullet Seed now has a finishing hit. This means it should be safe on hit now, but you're getting less potential damage from it. According to ZeRo, it does still have invincibility on startup.
Vine Whip can be angled, and doesn't put Ivy in freefall, but it seems...glitchy. Right now, it does not snap to the ledge at positions it seems like it should, so I suspect it will be better in the final release. At the very least, it's now a safer kill move to throw out since it doesn't put Ivy into freefall.
Ivysaur's upthrow and dthrow both seem good for setting up more hits. Dthrow->nair hits on DI-in, and dthrow->bair hits regardless of DI. Bthrow is a kill throw like Squirtle's, but, again, not the strongest throw among the three.
Also, Ivysaur is a girl. This is the universal head canon that everyone must follow~
Charizard
General impression: https://youtu.be/C8yC02d7UZY?t=10m44s
Charizard has received some quality of life changes among a few nerfs, but is otherwise kind of the same as he was in Smash 4. He is still the strongest and heaviest, and has the best recovery of the three in terms of sheer distance. All in all, Charizard has an even better advantage state, an even worse disadvantage, and is the king of sheer survivability and power between the three.
Let me just get the bad changes out of the way:
Fair no longer autocancels from a shorthop (I think this has a good chance changing in the final release, to be honest).
Nair STILL autocancels, despite ZeRo saying the opposite. You can see it in this video. Virum also says that nair still autocancels.
Fly has less knockback. This was one of my favorite moves in Smash 4 because it was so silly, so I'm sad. ;-;
Flare Blitzs has a longer stun animation after it hits.
Charizard obviously lost Rock Smash (though switching to Squirtle is a good mixup in disadvantage too haha)
Dthrow seems to lead to guaranteed hits less reliably against DI away based on footage, and I've seen a few people state this as well. However, Virum says he was still able to land his dthrow combos even against DI away, so I'm not sure.
And those quality of life changes I mentioned!
Bair has decreased startup and no longer goes into the z-axis. HOO BOI
Fly's "hitboxes are fixed" according to Dabuz, which I assume means that it links better. I've heard conflicting reports on this, though.
Upsmash now reliably links even from behind.
Flare Blitz deals more damage and is much stronger.
His ledge hanging animation isn't horrible now!
Charizard seems to put his head to the side into the z-axis during certain animations, so his hurtbox doesn't stick out.
I broke it down this way since outside of these changes that I've found people mention, Charizard seems more or less similar to his Smash 4 incarnation. I'd recommend reading Virum's breakdown of Charizard as he does a better job explaining him in Ultimate than I ever could.
Also, Zard Walk is intact.
Switching
First, just to list off the properties of switching:
Intangible starting frame 1, and the animation lasts ~38 frames
I don't know the exact numbers, but if you spam the switch, it will cease granting invincibility. However, it will eventually refresh itself even without losing a stock.
But here is where we can get into some interesting theory discussion. With switching now being so seamless, and all three Pokemon looking pretty good, the obvious question to ask is, well, when do I switch?
Here's some quick, surface-level applications that we could all probably think of... Switch to Charizard to recover. Switch to Squirtle to escape disadvantage. Switching to escape your opponent's combo percents. Switching as a pseudo-airdodge/spotdodge that doesn't use up your actual roll/airdodge/spotdodge invincibility.
With each Pokemon having more pronounced strengths, switching can be used to focus on each character's strengths, and lessen their weaknesses. Charizard's disadvantage is suddenly a lot less worse since he can switch to Squirtle! Instead, you can just focus on abusing Charizard's advantage state when you want to, without necessarily needing to worry about his poor disadvantage.
On a similar note, since switching actually refreshes ledge invincibility, you can recover as Charizard, and (possibly) easily switch to Squirtle in order to not have to worry about actually getting off the ledge as Charizard.
I'm sure there's tons of applications of this sort of moment-to-moment switching, but what about more long-term decisions in a match? Basically, how do you decide which Mon you're using most of the time?
Sticking closer to one Mon if you get counterpicked to a poor stage for the other(s) comes to mind quickly. As does leaning towards one Mon for certain character match-ups.
Besides how Charizard might do against other Smash 4 veterans, it's obviously really hard to talk match-ups at this point, but, in general, I think it might go something like this on the extremely bare bones surface:
Squirtle for other similarly fast characters and projectile zoners. His air speed and great frame data are his selling points.
Ivysaur for characters with many disjoints and other ranged normals, and slower characters who have trouble getting through bair and Razor Leaf. Bair seems like one of those moves that is like... A character needs a good answer to it to deal with Ivysaur.
Charizard for characters with particularly poor disadvantage states. This could mean, like, landing against uptilt/upsmash or recovering offstage against Flamethrower. Or against characters where you'd want the most ground speed possible.
Another one is leaning towards a certain Mon(s) for player matchups. As I alluded to earlier, Ivysaur will have a better time dealing with more passive players than the other two, but maybe you realize your opponent is good at breaking this zone, so you can just stick to Squirtle more. Or perhaps you notice that your opponent just seems to actually struggle against Charizard for some reason. Then stick with Charizard! In a set, it might be a good idea to just see how they react against all three. It's like testing secondaries across matches, but you can do it mid-match!
It's hard to tell right now if switching mid combo and continuing the combo is possible, so I avoided talking about that, but if anyone has any thoughts on that, by all means, discuss!
I'm not gonna just restate everything ZeRo said in his video. Let's just go over what I think are the most important things he highlighted. I'll also be throwing in some information from Dabuz' analysis doc which you can read here: https://twitter.com/DabuzSenpai/status/1017909627252609024
SquirtleGeneral impression: Good, but unlike Brawl, Squirtle does not seem overwhelmingly better than the other two. (He also lost shell sliding ;-; ) This doesn't actually say much about Squirtle, so much as how much better Ivysaur and Charizard are. His primary weakness still seems to be a lack of range. He's still the frame data master of the three, for sure.
Ftilt is the kind of spammable normal where just doing it once or multiple times is a good mixup.
When I heard dtilt became a single hit, I was worried it might be too similar to ftilt, but it seems to have enough different applications from ftilt that this won't be the case. It has more range, does quite a bit of damage, and has a different knockback angle.
For uptilt to hit grounded opponents, you'll have to be inside their model, which is a big deal-ish since uptilt seems to be Squirtle's only grounded normal that sets up combos. Though with new dash-cancelling mechanics, this will at least be easier to do.
Upsmash covers the entirety of the Battlefield platform. This will most likely still be Squirtle's best smash attack. His other Smash attacks seem just OK. Fsmash seems to have good range at least.
Upthrow is a combo throw that seems like it can lead into all of Squirtle's aerials. Bthrow replaces dthrow as Squirtle's kill throw, but Squirtle no longer has the strongest throw of the three like in Brawl.
Squirtle's aerials remain his primary tools. In Brawl, his fair and bair were sort of the same move. In Ultimate, bair is a multihit now. Since bair lasts awhile and has a horizontal knockback angle, it will be good for edgeguarding. Though, with just an average recovery, Squirtle won't be able to go as deep as, say, Pikachu can with his similar bair.
Nair is ~frame 4 and hits all around Squirtle, so nair out-of-shield will be good.
Upair hitbox has a decent arc that reaches slightly behind Squirtle which is neat.
Water Gun is good, and does as expected.
Withdraw is thankfully better than it was in Brawl. It won't lead to anything, but it's at least safe on hit and burst movement is good in general. It does the same animation on shield as it does on hit, making it not as hard punishable on shield as it would be otherwise.
IvysaurGeneral impression: I want to cry Ivysaur looks so much better. Faster movement speed, a real jab, a good projectile, a combo throw, and amazing aerials. Between the good, quick disjoints and Razor Leaf, Ivysaur should be able to bring the game to the pace she wants and deal with those pesky, patient swordies that Squirtle might not want to deal with.
Having a quick, disjointed jab with a finisher is great. Let alone in addition to now being able to cancel dash into a jab.
Dash attack seems like a good dash attack and will accomplish normal dash attack things. Considering Ivysaur is more of a zoner, it's good she still has a decent burst option.
Upsmash is still randomly, absurdly strong and I love it. (It better still be the strongest in the final build...) All of Ivy's Smashes seem pretty much the same as Brawl.
Ivysaur's bair will raise your children and pay for your retirement. But yeah this move is amazing. You can mixup going for both hits or fastfall to just get one hit. However, unlike in Brawl, you can't full hop double bair.
Nair seems like a good combo tool and doesn't have a landing hitbox. Nair->move AND nair-drag-down->move both seem neat. AND good for cross-ups.
Upair is still a great kill move, fair has a good angle for juggling, decent power and auto-cancels out of shorthop, and dair is now a decent spike that gives Ivy a little aerial stall.
ZeRo goes into detail on how Razor Leaf works. It can be angled slightly, and the distance can be adjusted. I agree with him in thinking that bair and Razor Leaf will be a good foundation for Ivysaur's neutral. It seems like a good projectile for disupting opponents who prefer to play more passively.
Bullet Seed now has a finishing hit. This means it should be safe on hit now, but you're getting less potential damage from it. According to ZeRo, it does still have invincibility on startup.
Vine Whip can be angled, and doesn't put Ivy in freefall, but it seems...glitchy. Right now, it does not snap to the ledge at positions it seems like it should, so I suspect it will be better in the final release. At the very least, it's now a safer kill move to throw out since it doesn't put Ivy into freefall.
Ivysaur's upthrow and dthrow both seem good for setting up more hits. Dthrow->nair hits on DI-in, and dthrow->bair hits regardless of DI. Bthrow is a kill throw like Squirtle's, but, again, not the strongest throw among the three.
Also, Ivysaur is a girl. This is the universal head canon that everyone must follow~
CharizardGeneral impression: https://youtu.be/C8yC02d7UZY?t=10m44s
Charizard has received some quality of life changes among a few nerfs, but is otherwise kind of the same as he was in Smash 4. He is still the strongest and heaviest, and has the best recovery of the three in terms of sheer distance. All in all, Charizard has an even better advantage state, an even worse disadvantage, and is the king of sheer survivability and power between the three.
Let me just get the bad changes out of the way:
Fair no longer autocancels from a shorthop (I think this has a good chance changing in the final release, to be honest).
Nair STILL autocancels, despite ZeRo saying the opposite. You can see it in this video. Virum also says that nair still autocancels.
Fly has less knockback. This was one of my favorite moves in Smash 4 because it was so silly, so I'm sad. ;-;
Flare Blitzs has a longer stun animation after it hits.
Charizard obviously lost Rock Smash (though switching to Squirtle is a good mixup in disadvantage too haha)
Dthrow seems to lead to guaranteed hits less reliably against DI away based on footage, and I've seen a few people state this as well. However, Virum says he was still able to land his dthrow combos even against DI away, so I'm not sure.
And those quality of life changes I mentioned!
Bair has decreased startup and no longer goes into the z-axis. HOO BOI
Fly's "hitboxes are fixed" according to Dabuz, which I assume means that it links better. I've heard conflicting reports on this, though.
Upsmash now reliably links even from behind.
Flare Blitz deals more damage and is much stronger.
His ledge hanging animation isn't horrible now!
Charizard seems to put his head to the side into the z-axis during certain animations, so his hurtbox doesn't stick out.
I broke it down this way since outside of these changes that I've found people mention, Charizard seems more or less similar to his Smash 4 incarnation. I'd recommend reading Virum's breakdown of Charizard as he does a better job explaining him in Ultimate than I ever could.
Also, Zard Walk is intact.
SwitchingFirst, just to list off the properties of switching:
Intangible starting frame 1, and the animation lasts ~38 frames
I don't know the exact numbers, but if you spam the switch, it will cease granting invincibility. However, it will eventually refresh itself even without losing a stock.
But here is where we can get into some interesting theory discussion. With switching now being so seamless, and all three Pokemon looking pretty good, the obvious question to ask is, well, when do I switch?
Here's some quick, surface-level applications that we could all probably think of... Switch to Charizard to recover. Switch to Squirtle to escape disadvantage. Switching to escape your opponent's combo percents. Switching as a pseudo-airdodge/spotdodge that doesn't use up your actual roll/airdodge/spotdodge invincibility.
With each Pokemon having more pronounced strengths, switching can be used to focus on each character's strengths, and lessen their weaknesses. Charizard's disadvantage is suddenly a lot less worse since he can switch to Squirtle! Instead, you can just focus on abusing Charizard's advantage state when you want to, without necessarily needing to worry about his poor disadvantage.
On a similar note, since switching actually refreshes ledge invincibility, you can recover as Charizard, and (possibly) easily switch to Squirtle in order to not have to worry about actually getting off the ledge as Charizard.
I'm sure there's tons of applications of this sort of moment-to-moment switching, but what about more long-term decisions in a match? Basically, how do you decide which Mon you're using most of the time?
Sticking closer to one Mon if you get counterpicked to a poor stage for the other(s) comes to mind quickly. As does leaning towards one Mon for certain character match-ups.
Besides how Charizard might do against other Smash 4 veterans, it's obviously really hard to talk match-ups at this point, but, in general, I think it might go something like this on the extremely bare bones surface:
Squirtle for other similarly fast characters and projectile zoners. His air speed and great frame data are his selling points.
Ivysaur for characters with many disjoints and other ranged normals, and slower characters who have trouble getting through bair and Razor Leaf. Bair seems like one of those moves that is like... A character needs a good answer to it to deal with Ivysaur.
Charizard for characters with particularly poor disadvantage states. This could mean, like, landing against uptilt/upsmash or recovering offstage against Flamethrower. Or against characters where you'd want the most ground speed possible.
Another one is leaning towards a certain Mon(s) for player matchups. As I alluded to earlier, Ivysaur will have a better time dealing with more passive players than the other two, but maybe you realize your opponent is good at breaking this zone, so you can just stick to Squirtle more. Or perhaps you notice that your opponent just seems to actually struggle against Charizard for some reason. Then stick with Charizard! In a set, it might be a good idea to just see how they react against all three. It's like testing secondaries across matches, but you can do it mid-match!
It's hard to tell right now if switching mid combo and continuing the combo is possible, so I avoided talking about that, but if anyone has any thoughts on that, by all means, discuss!
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