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How To Responsibly Buff Banjo

QuantumEntanglement

Smash Rookie
Joined
Apr 27, 2016
Messages
12
I think I can say with relative confidence that Banjo and Kazooie have received a mixed reaction since release. While there are certainly players who use them in competitive play, Tearbear and Utopian Ray perhaps most consistently in the West, Banjo definitely didn't receive the player representation that Joker and Terry have since release.

While that could be attributed to a limited fanbase or difficulty curve, it is my opinion that Banjo is the most underwhelming of the DLC characters so far. So, as a thought experiment, let's collectively explore how they could be buffed in an upcoming patch were it to happen, the goal being to make BK more of a gatekeeper for top tier than being top tier themselves.

Potential buff ideas (per move):

Grab - This would be crucial for Banjo mains. Banjo's grab range is pitiful, doesn't even extend to the end of his hands. Give him a above-average grab range. Just sayin', G&W has a longer grab.

Up-Throw - This could really benefit from having an actual true combo at low percent. Up-Air and Nair are not even that good as followups when they are actually true, let alone when they aren't.

Egg Firing (Neutral B) - Remove the damage reduction per bounce on the ground. 6% is small enough as-is for something so central to his game plan, and staling makes it even more pitiful.

Breegull Blaster (Held Neutral B) - This move would be obnoxious without the damage reduction, so I'd recommend reducing the number of frames in the animations at either end. Pulling out Kazooie takes 28 frames, cancelling takes 11, so a significant reduction in either (especially the cancel) would be really good. That or a reduction in the speed of the turnaround animation.

Wonderwing (Side B) - How do we buff this move without making it broken? If they don't want to add feathers, which I get, then making it less unsafe would be best. A reduction in startup frames would be amazing, say, 3 frames (15 instead of 18), that way it would be harder to react to but still allow players to stuff out Wonderwing with proper prediction. Leave the end lag alone, some characters will need an option left to punish it.

Grenade Egg (Down B) - This move is already pretty fantastic and central to Banjo's gameplan. The main thing I can think of would be to allow 2 onscreen simultaneously like Snake's, but that might make him busted.

Neutral-Air - Needs a landing lag reduction HARD. I can get around the weird way it pops the opponent to the opposite side of Banjo, but 16 frames of landing lag on a Nair is atrocious. Also really needs a damage buff, you can only get 10% if completely unstale and get all the hits, so your net reward for dragdowns is like 6% if you're lucky.

Up-Air - This move is great in terms of range and speed, and utterly awful in terms of damage and comboability. Give it one or the other. At 10-12% damage it'd be pretty decent, but if you kept the damage at 8% and made more followups possible that'd be arguably better.

Forward-Air - Already good, but can be fixed with 3 words: Late Spike Hitbox. Banjo could really use a spike aerial, and this one makes the most sense.

Down Tilt - Extend the hitbox a little lower. It's a fantastic 2 frame option, but a bigger hitbox would make it consistent on the entire cast. Could also shave a couple frames off the startup.

Up Tilt - NEEDS a hitbox adjustment. Should be the same as Snake's, so extend it a little further forwards and allow it to hit crouching shorties.

Most of the other moves I feel are in a pretty good place, those are just some quick ideas I had.

Do you agree? Does Banjo need buffs? Would these buffs in particular be too much or too little? If you have any additions or criticisms, post away!
 
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Koopaul

Smash Champion
Joined
Oct 29, 2013
Messages
2,336
Smash patch updates only adjust frame data and hitbox sizes. They can't really change how the move works. So they wouldn't make an update that allows Banjo to pull out more than one Grenade Egg. I don't think his Special moves need too many changes. I absolutely agree about buffing grab range and reducing landing lag of Neutral Air. And just making certain hitboxes slightly bigger would do wonders.
 

DougEfresh

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 23, 2020
Messages
212
I'm a banjo main, so I'll give my thoughts on how to buff him (and to answer your question, yes, I do think they're deserved for Banjo).

Firstly, I completely agree with a buff to his grab range, and if they were to only pick one buff to give Banjo, this would be it. He gets decent reward off of his throws, so improving his grab would be a fantastic way for him to be just a little more aggressive overall. Like you, I'd also like some reduction on the lag of wonderwing (either start up or end lag), but this is probably the least likely change he would be given, so I'm not holding my breath.

For his aerials, I don't mind that his fair doesn't spike, I just want it to be a bit faster. Instead of f15, make it a f11 or f12 move he can use more frequently for spacing in neutral without nearly as much risk of getting stuffed out before the fair becomes active. I'd also like a start up frame reduction on nair (f10 -> f7/8) to make it a better get off me tool, although the landing lag reduction would certainly be good as well.

Moderate start up and end lag reductions on both his projectiles would also be great to help him maintain some mobility while firing egg shots or spawning a rear egg to cover space and wall out (f10 and f13 are just too slow of start ups for rear eggs and egg shots respectively being able to effectively wall out opponents to allow banjo to find his openings and get in effectively and this makes him more prone to rushdown characters too).

There are a few other changes I'd personally like to see, but arguably are not as essential for him as these other buffs I've just listed. For example, I'd like a kill power buff on up smash and potentially have it do more shield damage. It's fast at f9 and with rage it's quite solid at killing, but without rage, usmash feels a bit lacking to kill so I would buff its base damage/KB values to help with that. It's also Banjo's only legitimate OOS option, so giving better reward for using it would be great so I could rely a little less on having to use shield grabs and ftilt/dtilt OOS to punish unsafe approaches on shield just to keep up smash fresh enough to kill well at high percents.

Lastly, a small start-up lag reduction to dtilt would be great. Make it f9 instead of f12, and now you have two fast and reliable disjointed moves to help space out opponents while you're grounded.

So, with these buffs, Banjo & Kazooie would have both their aerial and ground game improved by making key moves like fair, nair and dtilt faster and increasing his grab range. Now he can also use his projectiles more effectively to cover space against the opponent and, by reducing their end lags, providing him the time and mobility to react to how the opponent will react to getting around rear eggs and egg shots and punish accordingly.

All these adjustments would probably help Banjo & Kazooie more clearly show the versatile game plan and playstyle they need to have to succeed by making cqc faster and/or stronger, and thusly, better reward for actually going in more aggressively and we can finally put an end to such a large portion of the fanbase writing the duo off as "lame", "campy" and "underwhelming".
 

Super Toaster

Smash Cadet
Joined
Apr 22, 2020
Messages
33
I don't feel Banjo is super weak in my experience, but all of your buffs sound nice.

I think of all the changes you suggested these would be the ones that would really help get Banjo on the map:
-Better grab
-UpThrow allowing for more follow up
-Lag reduction on Nair and blaster
 

DougEfresh

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 23, 2020
Messages
212
I don't feel Banjo is super weak in my experience, but all of your buffs sound nice.

I think of all the changes you suggested these would be the ones that would really help get Banjo on the map:
-Better grab
-UpThrow allowing for more follow up
-Lag reduction on Nair and blaster
Not the OP, but buffing his grab range is definitely a must for Banjo if you ask me. Nair being better both in start up frame data and its landing lag would be very nice as well. I'm still kind of adamant about making fair a little bit faster too (even f13 would be sufficient rather than f15; just think rushdown characters with better overall mobility and buttons can stuff him out a bit too easily when trying to use the move as it is currently). Uthrow though, Idk. Would it be nice to get actual combos off of it? Sure, but I think he's got more pressing issues elsewhere in his moveset.

I would also like to see a total frame reduction with grenade egg, since there's a 34f window to punish Banjo for using it (44 total frames with a 10f spawn), which makes him very susceptible to rushdowns as well and even just getting punished by a good chunk of options that the rest of the cast has. Don't make him fox or Mario, just make his buttons a smidge faster to not get so overwhelmed by the more aggressive characters in the game (I'd like to see a base Knockback increase on up smash as well, I find myself having a hard time killing with the move without rage and its shield pressure and end lag are also quite bad for now).

Overall, I definitely agree with you that he's not a weak character, it's just that Banjo needs some minor fdata buffs and the increased grab range to create enough of a QoL improvement for the duo to finally shine and develop a spot in the meta.
 

Super Toaster

Smash Cadet
Joined
Apr 22, 2020
Messages
33
Uthrow though, Idk. Would it be nice to get actual combos off of it? Sure, but I think he's got more pressing issues elsewhere in his moveset.
It doesn't have to be up throw I guess. I just meant that having a good basic combo would put him on the map.
 

DougEfresh

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 23, 2020
Messages
212
It doesn't have to be up throw I guess. I just meant that having a good basic combo would put him on the map.
Yea I reckon it would be nice to have more diverse combos outside of his bnb's with grenegg. BB to utilt is also good, but doing ladder combos is kinda hard to get consistently Imo. Having some more vertical combos from uthrow could be pretty cool, even if they're short and sweet because of Banjo's low jump height.

Granted, I still think a bit of a boost to his consistency with killing would be quite practical as an overall way to buff him. A slightly better air game by taking a couple frames off fair + nair start up (like I mentioned before) and making grenegg less punishable to use would be a great way to allow BK to be more aggressive and get some solid reward from going in more often imo, and he could contend more with big swordies like Lucina or Shulk as well as more aggressive characters like Fox, Chrom/Roy, etc.

Maybe patch 8.0 coming up will still be too recent for Sakurai and the dev team to seriously look at Banjo & Kazooie and consider giving them buffs, though I do hope somewhere down the line that they do get at least some improvements/fixes before all is said and done. They're so close to being able to rise up to greatness right now, but I feel like there's just a few things that hold them back from getting that first big breakout performance to finally gain some respect and recognition from the community.
 

Cap'n Jack

Smash Lord
Joined
Apr 23, 2015
Messages
1,345
Do you all use grenegg in the air? I usually don’t have a problem popping them off and worry about getting punished
 

DougEfresh

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 23, 2020
Messages
212
Do you all use grenegg in the air? I usually don’t have a problem popping them off and worry about getting punished
It can be good, but several characters are able to anti-air you with a utilt or uair pretty consistently even if you are good with your neutral game and grenegg mix ups. The animation pose you're in during the grenegg's spawning can leave you vulnerable (especially when used in the air), and I sure as hell ain't wanting to put myself above someone like Fox or ZSS as Banjo.

There's been quite a buzz in the Banjo cord over the last 24 hours about a new tech and confirm that looks very promising, but at least reducing the total frames of grenegg would be a very nice QoL improvement that Banjo can afford getting without things becoming problematic. I also stand by the other proposed buffs I made in an above post.
 

Cap'n Jack

Smash Lord
Joined
Apr 23, 2015
Messages
1,345
If you do it high enough it typically isn’t too bad for me at least. It could just be the level of play of my opponents not capitalizing enough. However, it is funny you mention Fox. I had a match up with a Fox the other day and got destroyed. Even when I lose I typically get my opponents to their final stock, but I barely managed to get one stock on this Fox player.
 

DougEfresh

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Mar 23, 2020
Messages
212
If you do it high enough it typically isn’t too bad for me at least. It could just be the level of play of my opponents not capitalizing enough. However, it is funny you mention Fox. I had a match up with a Fox the other day and got destroyed. Even when I lose I typically get my opponents to their final stock, but I barely managed to get one stock on this Fox player.
Yea I think it does have to do with largely playing low(er) level players. Outside of wifi making it harder to react, there's no reason a Fox shouldn't be up air juggling you and ledge trapping the hell out of Banjo. I fell into that trap as well for a while, thinking that a lot of Banjo's tactics in disadvantage or otherwise are better than they actually are. You may not always get directly punished by using a grenegg from high enough above stage, but what that does do is give your opponent more time to wait and react to what you're trying to do to land. Grenegg and egg shots are crucial to Banjo's gameplan, don't get me wrong, but being less reliant on the projectiles due to how reactable and telegraphed those options can be by giving him a slightly faster air-to-air and ground game to use more aggression would be a great way to improve the duo as a character without taking away any of his core weaknesses to the point it becomes an issue for everyone else. Just my two cents, though.
 
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MrGameguycolor

Smash Lord
Joined
Apr 16, 2015
Messages
1,240
Location
Somewhere in this Universe
NNID
MrGameguycolor
Switch FC
7681-9716-5789
Attributes

Initial Dash speed increased (1.68 → 1.8)

Air speed increased (0.92 → 0.97)


Jab

Hit 1 and 2 startup decreased (frame 4 → 3)

Hit 1 endlag decreased (FAF 27 → 24)

Hit 2 endlag decreased (FAF 24 → 22)

Rapid hit damage increased (0.4% → 0.6%)


Forward Tilt

Tipper knockback increased (82 KBG → 92)


Up Tilt

Now has a new sourspot hitbox under Banjo’s legs (10% → 7%)

Can now hit buried opponents without taking priority over the sweetspot.


Down Tilt

3rd hitbox damage increased (6% → 7%)


Up Smash

Endlag decreased (FAF 65 → 60)


Up throw

Endlag decreased (FAF 39 → 34 )


Neutral Air

Final hit knockback (68 KBG → 84)


Down Air

Hitbox now stretches up to the backpack.

Endlag decreased (FAF 56 → 50 )

Landing Lag decreased (27 frames → 22 )


Side Special | Wonderwing
Safe on hit at low percent’s.
 
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