"Gold" character listing and discussion

[Veril]

removed until complete changelist is released...

 

[JCaesar]

I was going to argue that even though Kirby might be a bit overnerfed, he's still better than a good portion of the cast, but looking over the list, I realize there are hardly any mediocre characters left. It's really hard to sort out a tier list in my head apart from a few of the tops.

Balancing success? *pats everyone on back*

 

[MK26]

just out of curiosity, who do we consider 'on top'?

and on the subject of kirby, though im no authority on the subject, i always found him to be average or better, but slowly dropping as time went on...iunno, maybe we should appease m2k? lol plz dont hurt me

as for the climbers, we should just get rid of nana, either figuratively or literally. **** would save us sooooo much trouble...

EDIT: oh god...if the jiggz board is saying they > kirby, i know there's a problem.

 

[JCaesar]

Jiggs is most definitely > Kirby right now...

Who would I put on top right now? In no particular order, Jiggs, Falco, MK, ZSS, Peach, Snake, Wolf, Diddy, and Lucario are all contenders for top tier imo.

 

[MK26]

Jiggs is most definitely > Kirby right now...

Who would I put on top right now? In no particular order, Jiggs, Falco, MK, ZSS, Peach, Snake, Wolf, Diddy, and Lucario are all contenders for top tier imo.

1)

2) Can you imagine the backlash that would occur if our first tier list had those 3 on top? or anywhere near top?

 

[Plum]

Would it be any better if those characters were nerfed to hell?

I would rather play a game with MK on top than a game with him in the bottom. People might complain that "lol B+ fails because MK and Snake are still high on the tier list" and that is totally ignorant on their part. It doesn't matter where they are on the tier list; what does matter is where the rest of the tier list is to them. The only legit complaints should come from the lower tiers being too far away from the high tiers, and right now I don't think that's the case.

B+ kept most of what makes those characters good. MK still has the best recovery in the game, fast and long range attacks, and disgusting gimps. Snake is still a defensive powerhouse, who forces a situation where his options > yours. Diddy still snatches momentum and runs away with it with nanners and his practically autocombo moveset. I would argue that B+ looks better for keeping that. Those characters are good for a reason, we just gave other characters a reason to stand out.

 

[MK26]

hmmm...i suppose that as long as they're not far and away the best, it's all good, right? but why should we leave them up top if all ~37 beneath them got shuffled around?

 

[JCaesar]

The goal is not to make a specific character the best. No character "deserves" to be top tier over any other. We're just going for the best balance that we can achieve with the tools and knowledge that we have. Whoever happens to be on top ... is on top. There is no deeper meaning. All that matters is that everyone has a fair chance to compete.

 

[Veril]

MK isn't on the top and every time someone says that I punch a kitten in its adorable face. Looks at nair... ;_;

His inability to KO is a serious weakness now, as is the increased ease of DI on most of his moves. The nair nerf REALLY took him out of top-tier contention... Try going MK against a good Lucario... its painful.

Jiggs is most definitely > Kirby right now...

Who would I put on top right now? In no particular order, Jiggs, Falco, MK, ZSS, Peach, Snake, Wolf, Diddy, and Lucario are all contenders for top tier imo.

Jiggs would be #1 simply due to the bair size increase. Since that's not staying I'd put her high, but not in the top 5. That list needs more Pikachu. He's easily top 5. Little rodent is an adorable killing machine.


As to Kirby. I would argue that he's been overnerfed.

 

[MK26]

yay ^_^

return the nair buff plz?

/hopeful

 

[Revven]

I'd rather just see Nair become multi-hit instead, the "one hit" doesn't really do anything and it clearly didn't work for the past three games... then again Kirby already has a lot of multi-hit moves and the Nair as a result would still be worse to use because of its short range.

Just food for thought.

 

[MK26]

hmmm...multi-hit nair could work...give it a high total damage output but make it all but impossible to get every hit in (ex by spacing out the hitboxes)

(lol, this is the longest meaningful kirby+ discussion ive had in forever)

and personally, i think we should try to make a promise to the public once Gold1 comes out - no more nerfs. what i mean by that is, making gold a baseline for all future changes. assure the public that no matter what (barring a coding error or the like, of course), not a single character-specific change will be reversed and not one character will get nerfed overall. not a 'net nerf' (ie tradeoff), but no nerfs, period. it'd be a testament to the faith we have in out balancing efforts and a promise that just because a character is top-tier doesnt put him down on a blacklist somewhere. If a someone is or several someones are too good, we should strive to bring the rest up to their level, despite the fact that the reverse is probably easier.

or am i being too idealistic here? thoughts?

 

[[TSON]]

Wait, we're keeping the egg-wall-stall/huge-recovery-on-Yoshi's-Island-and-WarioWare-and-SSE-Jungle on Yoshi? >.>

EDIT: And I really do think that TL's aura spike should at least get changed to something less...strange.

 

[Thunderhorse+]

EDIT: And I really do think that TL's aura spike should at least get changed to something less...strange.

How about no effect? You know, like how it originally was?

Though it has very little to do with balance, it is one of the dumbest decisions I've seen come out of B+. Besides, we now have Project M for Young Link dair fangasms. Isn't it time to just chuck this away now?

Yoshi Egg stall is most likely not going away though. Not like I support it and not like it's an intentional buff, but people can't seem to find a way to remove it by undoing the buff in its entirety.

Not to mention it seems like this is one of those side effects that everyone seems to like. Despite it being an infinite stall, there are ways to counter it. It just happens to be really dumb.

 

[ThatGuyYouMightKnow]

Gonna joooohhnnnn. (Also Thunderhorse, I think that change was for Ivy's weakness. Watch yo mouth foo >:3)

Diddy recovery fix is EXACTLY what I've been proposing for ages now, funny how I get ignored like that. :<

Wtf is wrong with Marth?

 

[Thunderhorse+]

The fire spike was changed to an aura spike for Ivysaur's benefit, but the fire spike/elemental spike was to fangasm all over the place by attempting to replicate Young Link's dair. If it looked fine I wouldn't care, but aura spike just looks silly and we can leave the Young Link dair **** to Project M now.

 

[leafgreen386]

and personally, i think we should try to make a promise to the public once Gold1 comes out - no more nerfs. what i mean by that is, making gold a baseline for all future changes. assure the public that no matter what (barring a coding error or the like, of course), not a single character-specific change will be reversed and not one character will get nerfed overall. not a 'net nerf' (ie tradeoff), but no nerfs, period. it'd be a testament to the faith we have in out balancing efforts and a promise that just because a character is top-tier doesnt put him down on a blacklist somewhere. If a someone is or several someones are too good, we should strive to bring the rest up to their level, despite the fact that the reverse is probably easier.

or am i being too idealistic here? thoughts?

I think that's a dangerous thing to say, particularly in the case of infinites and such. Tiny buffs and nerfs will be the easiest way possible to make the minimum change necessary to a character to bring them in line, which is really what we're gonna want to do to make it balanced. When the game goes gold, there should be no more major changes... ever.

As for yoshi's egg... lemme take a look at it. There's gotta be something that lets it retain its purpose without being an infinite stall...

Oh, and for TL... may as well throw a little anecdote to the discussion. This is something like how the conversation went when a TL player saw the aura spike in gameplay for the first time:

Him: "Woah! What was that?"
Me: "Oh, toon link spike has aura element now."
Him: "Why?"
Me: "Dunno. To look cool?"
Him: "Oh... does it do anything?"
Me: "Nah. It doesn't get the aura bonus. I think they were gonna make it fire, but didn't because of the pokemon weaknesses."
Him: "Oh, ok." Then a few moments later: "...it does look kinda badass."

Yeah... totally cosmetic change, so just poll the TL players and see if they like it and if not, toss it. If yes, keep it. Has zero effect on balance either way.

edit: What's with the nazi censors here? You can't type badass without the whole word getting censored? Really?

 

[Veril]

or am i being too idealistic here? thoughts?

Loop combos and infinite stalls that meet my criterion for infinite/near infinite will still be removed if they are discovered. This shouldn't be necessary seeing as we're removing the last of the one's I know of (IDC, perfect planking, and the infinite CG on Zard). Yoshi's egg-stall is an obvious tactic that can be dealt with via soft-ban (definitely a needed ban for doubles, arguably not necessary for singles), and it isn't exactly that hard to deal with. Its definitely nowhere near as effective as conventional planking.

When Gold1 is released that's the end of nerfs that don't address infinites. Its also the end of buffs until 6 months of playtesting have elapsed. These last changes should leave us with an incredibly balanced cast. :D


ON KIRBY: Allied also wants the nair nerf back. I don't understand why it was removed. Kirby's primary means of KOing were really hit hard by the throw nerfs + f-smash getting toned down. I personally feel that the nair should have KOing power equivalent to Pikachu's. But... I haven't seen a compelling argument that Kirby "needs" this buff.

ON TL: I agree with Leaf, the public should decide whether to keep the cosmetic dair change.

 

[GHNeko]

Samus's inability to IASA out of a bomb jump is saddening. Couldn't you have avoided removing the IASA ability by attaching a hitbox to Fair's landing animation and having it launch like GaW bair or something? She loses a good pressure game because of it.


As for Mario, lower SDI potential on the Dair would be real nice. Really nice. That or tinkering with the move to suck opponents in.

 

[goodoldganon]

I was gonna post you guys should open it to the TL public about aura spike but I was beaten to it. Every cosmetic change has some party poopers who hate it, even sensible ones like Ganondorf's F-air. Just open it up to a public vote. It's a PR boost and frankly a totally unimportant change to waste more time on.

On the note of a Diddy recovery fix I can't help but be skeptical, especially because I think besides for Wolf JCeaser's top list is very solid. Diddy is held back by how unreliable that recovery is. It's finicky and straight up terrible. Any fix to make it even somewhat more reliable is a massive buff to the character that straight up doesn't need it. Am I alone in thinking that if we go about making Diddy's recovery not stupid he is gonna need some sort of a change to balance him back out?

EDIT: I also agree with Neko's write up on Samus loosing the bomb pressure game.

EDIT2: I know this is dumb but I'd love it if Ike had a 'I fight for my friends' taunt. Totally irrelevant and unimportant, but it's like been my dream since Brawl+ started.

 

[Veril]

The Samus bomb fix was the cleanest one available and had more support than my alternate limited iasa suggestion. Changing fair would be silly, Samus's fair is fine and altering it would have numerous unintended effects on her string/combo game. The iasa removed wasn't for bomb-jumping btw ;p

Diddy's recovery fix IS happening. Its a change with a ton of public and b-room support. Voting has already been done on both these issues.

/Samus, diddy discussion.

As to the cosmetic changes, yeah... now all I need to do is figure out how to have one of those public polls.

 

[VietGeek]

Marth: >.<

So yeah...I'm guessing this means we haven't reached a conclusion. From what I've read and observed, I can only assume that we have cornered ourselves on this situation.

I suppose we might as well talk more about this here where these posts will be forever documented (or at least until The Great Purge of 2012 for lulz). School isn't making the IRC any more convenient I suppose.

 

[GHNeko]

For Mario, would a small direct buff to one of his key weaknesses ever be considered?

 

[Veril]

For Mario, would a small direct buff to one of his key weaknesses ever be considered?

No. Only dair is being considered.

So yeah...I'm guessing this means we haven't reached a conclusion. From what I've read and observed, I can only assume that we have cornered ourselves on this situation.

I didn't just put up a new thread for that or anything O.o

 

[goodoldganon]

I'm totally fine and frankly back a recovery fix to all three odd ball and picky recoveries. (or four if we include Lucario) all I wanted to ask/address is if you guys felt Diddy would need a trade off or anything for a recovery buff. I promised myself I wouldn't post in these topics since I said I wouldn't discuss characters without more/some tourney experience but that kinda stood out to me. *Shrugs* I'll drop it though.

 

[JCaesar]

I think besides for Wolf JCeaser's top list is very solid.

You clearly haven't played my Wolf

 

[Veril]

Lucario has no real problem with his recovery at a high level. Lucas's is extremely fickle, and should be fixed imo (I used to know Lucas's recovery extremely well but the PKT2 SDs really turned me off to him as a character, I'm fairly certain most if not all Lucas mains would agree). Ness's PKT2 doesn't have quite the same problem as Lucas's due to it being shorter and better behaved.

Diddy's recovery can KO him in ridiculous and stupid ways, as I witnessed when AlphaZealot SDed after landing ON THE F***ING STAGE during some friendlies we played!

You clearly haven't played my Wolf

Your Wolf is a jerk.


Clarification: a character's cosmetic changes have no real impact as to whether they are "gold", since cosmetic changes can be safely made without altering balance.

 

[MK26]

I think that's a dangerous thing to say, particularly in the case of infinites and such. Tiny buffs and nerfs will be the easiest way possible to make the minimum change necessary to a character to bring them in line, which is really what we're gonna want to do to make it balanced. When the game goes gold, there should be no more major changes... ever.

edit: What's with the nazi censors here? You can't type badass without the whole word getting censored? Really?

well, thats why i said "barring coding errors and the like"...i think infinites go under coding errors.

and kickass isnt censored

When Gold1 is released that's the end of nerfs that don't address infinites. Its also the end of buffs until 6 months of playtesting have elapsed. These last changes should leave us with an incredibly balanced cast. :D


ON KIRBY: Allied also wants the nair nerf back. I don't understand why it was removed. Kirby's primary means of KOing were really hit hard by the throw nerfs + f-smash getting toned down. I personally feel that the nair should have KOing power equivalent to Pikachu's. But... I haven't seen a compelling argument that Kirby "needs" this buff.

good, thats what i wanted to hear. i was gonna say allowing a caveat for mitigating buffs we added after the 6 months, but if there arent any plans for changes after that, then...yeah.

and putting some real ko power behind the nair wasnt needed at all, but it was incredibly fun. it was still kinda useless onstage, but it made a great (if risky) edgeguard/gimp tool. being able to go straight through recovery moves was both a blessing and a curse - if you were out of position and needed to fastfall it, you risked suiciding due to its ridiculously long winddown...but if you could get the hits to trade, you would always be in a better position than your opponent

and as an aside, i remember always wanting a damage buff.

On the note of a Diddy recovery fix I can't help but be skeptical, especially because I think besides for Wolf JCeaser's top list is very solid. Diddy is held back by how unreliable that recovery is. It's finicky and straight up terrible. Any fix to make it even somewhat more reliable is a massive buff to the character that straight up doesn't need it. Am I alone in thinking that if we go about making Diddy's recovery not stupid he is gonna need some sort of a change to balance him back out?

EDIT: I also agree with Neko's write up on Samus loosing the bomb pressure game.

EDIT2: I know this is dumb but I'd love it if Ike had a 'I fight for my friends' taunt. Totally irrelevant and unimportant, but it's like been my dream since Brawl+ started.

well, i think diddy's recovery goes beyond 'poor' and into 'just dumb' territory...sending him into helpless earlier in the animation makes sense.

i like the idea of adding a landing hitbox to samus' fair and removing some of the iasa nerf...but if its already been voted on, meh.

also, +1 i fight for my friends taunt. if not b+, then b- at least

 

[[TSON]]

Why don't you give Lucas 3 frames of both-sided ledgegrab on PK2 wallbounce? That would fix the }:< bounces.

 

[Magus420]

Zelda
I played around a bit with Nayru's the other day, and probably the "best" fix I came up with for it was to have the outside 4 hitboxes have the ground only flag, while having windboxes on the outside with the air only flag (either 2 larger ones or 4 in the same locations as the ground hitboxes), and the center hitbox with the ground+air flag.

This has it so it still pulls aerial opponents towards the center of the move to then be hit, while not hitting and triggering living projectiles like bombs/nades before they get reflected. A side effect of the windboxes on those types of projectiles is that they can get a significant speed boost when reflected, but at the cost of some damage and range against aerial opponents.

There's normally 5 hitboxes lined up horizontally, with 4 on the outside and one in the center ontop of Zelda. I think the 'part' that actually reflects is probably just Zelda herself (hurtboxes), and I'm guessing RA-Bit[17]=true makes it so they reflect when hit kind of like when you're wearing a franklin badge or something. There doesn't seem to be a separate reflective collision from what I could tell.

In the vB version, the outer 4 hitboxes would hit against only ground, and only the center was ground+air. This had it completely whiff against someone coming from the air unless they were right ontop of you, and so it was changed so that all 5 hitboxes were ground+air to be effective against people in the air as well as fixing the hitboxes so that they pull in towards Zelda (I think the rear ones actually pushed them away and out of the move by default). Since the outer hitboxes could now hit things in the air, it could also hit projectiles before they get reflected around the middle of the move's duration.


Luigi
I also played a good amount of Luigi and noticed that the hitstun change messed up a few things I fine tuned and balanced around tumble thresholds and such.

His d-air meteor hit has extremely little growth and caused tumble early so that it becomes DIable and techable early on. IIRC it began knocking down around 20-25 or so. It now doesn't tumble until 100+ and allows some pretty dumb untechable/DIable combos into n-air/weak n-air, the latter of which can set up a grounded up-b on FFers and aerial up-b on everyone else at kill percents which along with the silly d-air reset vertical combos is exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to avoid when I made the change. Increasing the BKB on the meteor hit from 63->67 makes it start being techable/DIable at low damage like it was before.

F-throw off a grab at 0% now doesn't tumble until the 3rd throw, so instead of getting a single quick regrab for the purpose of baiting favorable DI on the next throw (DIing u-throw away sets set up a combo, and DIing f-throw in can set up a regrab or possible combo), they can't actually DI another f-throw anyway and ends up being an actual mini non-DIable CG on some/most characters. Increasing the BKB from 32->37 makes the throw tumble and be DIable earlier on like it was before.

Jab 1's KB was tweaked to be nerfed just enough for jab->up-b to not be an actual combo, while preserving his jab->d-tilt/u-tilt/d-smash to keep his jab mixup game from previous versions and vBrawl fresh and not centered mostly around only jab->grab. Increasing the KBG stat for the set KB from 94->97 brings back the small window on most characters to do these with good timing (you can't buffer them) and positioning.

 

[MK26]

Good ****.

Wow. Good ****, Magus.

 

[The Cape]

JCaesar's wolf is a jerk V.V

What about giving Ness and Lucas back autosnap on upB? Or autosnap during wall smash or something?

Or have wall smash lead into tumble with taking damage and increasing growth?

 

[VietGeek]

It would be great if my memory were better, but hey guys thanks for bringing up Wolf.

Why did Wolf's B-Air ALR increase from vBrawl? It was 9 frames in vBrawl, but now it's 10. What's the point behind this? What does it serve to do other than make the animation look awkward?

 

[The Cape]

It makes the move punishable. Thing is, the move autocancelled on something absurd like frame 18 and needed more landing lag badly.

 

[Veril]

Zelda
I played around a bit with Nayru's the other day, and probably the "best" fix I came up with for it was to have the outside 4 hitboxes have the ground only flag, while having windboxes on the outside with the air only flag (either 2 larger ones or 4 in the same locations as the ground hitboxes), and the center hitbox with the ground+air flag.

This has it so it still pulls aerial opponents towards the center of the move to then be hit, while not hitting and triggering living projectiles like bombs/nades before they get reflected. A side effect of the windboxes on those types of projectiles is that they can get a significant speed boost when reflected, but at the cost of some damage and range against aerial opponents.

This sounds great, good **** Magus...

Now we need to get a new Zelda.pac with this change implemented and make it available for testing. Any takers?

 

[goodoldganon]

My hacking skills leave...well...everything to be desired but I always have humans to test with (DI and the like) so I can give you guys testing. Just send me a PM if you want me to test this or any PAC. This is my homepage so I check it a lot.

 

[Veril]

some conclusions

Decided against altering Lucas or Ness recoveries. The pkt2 SDs that genuinely are due to the lack of autosweetspotting can be avoided. You have to hit the lip directly for these to occur, if you hit right below the lip on the slope (assuming you are coming from at all below the stage). Both of these recoveries can autocancel, both characters have zapjumps (Ness's being slightly superior imo, but Lucas having the hax wavezap). Lucas has a tether. They both can stall with psi-m...

Diddy has none of these things. His recovery falls into its own special category of fail. As I have witnessed, you can even land above the lip onstage and fall to your death from using it. Its incredibly punishable when used in the way that won't randomly cause you to SD. Diddy needs to use this to recover, he doesn't have the options Lucas/Ness/Lucario do. It isn't just a weakness, its a fatal flaw in his character right now.

Ivysaur and Pit both have amazingly good projectiles, but amazing to the point where it is necessary? I'm really not convinced.

Yoshi's DJC float glitch has got to go. I don't think that should require to much of an argument. Its one of the stupidest looking things in the game, completely unintentional, an infinite stall technique with no risk and little skill needed. Yeah, that needs to die.

My hacking skills leave...well...everything to be desired but I always have humans to test with (DI and the like) so I can give you guys testing. Just send me a PM if you want me to test this or any PAC. This is my homepage so I check it a lot.

Everyone involved in the project should playtest this stuff (especially altered characters) to make sure there are no glitches and everything works as intended.

 

[[TSON]]

Its one of the stupidest looking things in the game

Can't say I agree there. It's cute. :3

But yes it must be killed. I'd argue the egg-wall-stall should as well for its dumb recovery buff on WarioWare, SSE Jungle, and Yoshi's Island. And don't get me started on the PS2 stall. It's inward far enough where the foe can't get to you unless they're a multijumper, and even then, they risk not being able to recover if hit. But Yoshi can easily get back up if the main practices. It's rather dumb.

And Ness's PK2 I know is still quite good and doesn't need tweaking but I do suggest that you at least try tweaking Lucas because that is basically my main turnoff from using him over Ness at this point. I'd really like to disassociate myself with the big, vulnerable group of Ness mains as well... :I

 

[Veril]

Lucas's recovery is really good. I spent a while working with PKT2 and, like with Lucario, practice can easily overcome any problems with SDs. He also has a zap-jump, magnet pull, a stall, and a tether O.o

I don't think Lucario/Ness/Lucas need any recovery buff. At first I wasn't sure about Lucas, but I'm having way less trouble with it in 6.0 than 5.0. Just don't target the ledge directly, hit below the lip, land above and autocancel the move, or use one of his ridiculous recovery ATs. I kinda like that Lucas has the most technically demanding recovery...



On the Egg-wall-stall... I'm neutral. It seems like it could be dealt with via a soft-ban, on the other hand, I'd rather not have tactics that require that in the first place. I have no ideas as to how to fix it without really nerfing his recovery.

 

[Shell]

I agree about ness and lucas. You might consider including a fixed version of FD without the top-tier ledge in your final release, though.