I disagree with how 3.5 approached balance.

[4tlas]

Shine grab is way better than double shine.

You mean shining then grabbing is even better than shining twice? So Fox has the ability to hit you anyway if you shield the first shine, but he also has a mixup to counter that with a grab?

 

[_A1]

People get more mileage out of shine grab than double shine. PPMD punishes shields harder than Westballz.

 

[JOE!]

I think what we should be looking at here is if the shield pressure spacies can perform is inherently even a bad thing. Like, maybe go over a sort of checklist here:

1. Are there other characters that can pressure or punish shields even remotely as well? IE: are the spacies sort of unique in how they are able to just go ham on a shield?
2. How many characters can reliably punish a spacie for attacking shield?
3. Is their shield pressure only "bad" in relation to how they control the neutral with their incredible projectiles and/or movement? IE: if they had only one aspect or the other, would it be as "talked about"?

IIRC, only a few characters have reliable OoS options against them when they start to bear down on your defense that isnt a predictable shield roll.

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

uh did you see that post magnus made? I think shines aren't as safe as everyone wants to believe. Its still god like, don't get me wrong.

 

[nessmaster1]

First off, let me just say that I'm trying to start a civil conversation here. I'm not trolling, I'm not hating, and I hope I don't get any dumb fanboys who just say "shuddup 3.5 is gr8 tho!" without actually addressing points I'm talking about. And by and large, I do agree: 3.5 is great. There's a lot to like about it, like great map reskins, new character skins, all-star mode (albeit unstable right now), etc. are all really cool things that I love having.

And generally speaking, balance among members of the cast came a lot closer to being achieved. The PMBR addressed characters (Mewtwo, Lucas, Diddy, Pit) and overall issues (generally good recoveries, ledge stalling) that really needed it. However, I really feel they went overboard with the nerf hammer, nerfing things that needed it, as well as things that didn't.

Dedede was widely considered to be just plain bad, but he got nerfed instead of buffed? Why was Jigglypuff virtually unchanged when she was one of the worst? Why did Ice Climbers get nerfs when they were also considered one of the worst? Who was dominating tournaments with Yoshi to justify nerfing him? And nerfing his recovery? Was he not already gimpable enough as soon as he lost his double jump? (I really felt that he was in a good place already.) Was Kirby's down-B such a problem as to warrant nerfing? These are just a few examples.

When I look at the changelog, the overwhelming majority of characters' changes are nerfs rather than buffs (yes, there are some buffs, but they are much less common). But despite some particular changes that were very questionable, in terms of the big picture, I believe that there needed to be a lot more buffs to go with the nerfs. And so I get to the main point of this thread...

I think balance should be achieved by toning down exceptionally strong characters and then bringing weak characters up to parity--not by essentially nerfing everyone and everything. The benefit of meeting in the middle with nerfs and buffs means that you don't have be as extreme when going in either direction, so the changes don't feel as extreme. I feel there's a bigger margin for error when only going one way or the other.

Dev blogposts gave me a lot of hope about the upcoming version's vision, but now I'm not sure what that vision of the PMBR was supposed to be at all, in light of actually seeing these changes.

Another thing on the same vein as this is that I'm really not liking how many times the patch notes said "...to match Melee [insert character name here] or just "...to match Melee." The PMBR has gone on record to state that Project M wasn't supposed to be a Melee-ification of Brawl, so it's very concerning the number of times things were matched to Melee (for seemingly no particular reason).

It'd be nice to hear the PMBR's rationale behind each character's changes, especially the more questionable ones (I was actually hoping to see this in the changelog ala League of Legends style), and why in general, nerfing was chosen so much more than buffing.

So what do you guys think about balance in this patch? Are there any other changes you found particularly questionable?

You sir are my hero. I agree with everything you said.

 

[Mean Green]

what's up with people reviving dead threads