Ice Climbers META Thread : suggestions and discussion go here

[leekslap]

Pretty much copying teluoborg's Ganon thread. "I've seen several suggestions and discusion about (Ice Climbers) but, it's not clean". I think he said something like that lol :

ICE CLIMBERS META THREAD

See? It even has big epic fanart.
This thread has two uses:
- suggest changes and buffs that will make them awesome
- discuss their strengths, weaknesses and their place in the metagame

The way I see it an underthought change or buff can make them broken and a safe change or buff will barely improve them at all. 3.0 Ice Climbers is like Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, simply put by JonTron : " - you can't change the game mechanics and still keep THE OLD LEVEL DESIGNS!!! " except instead of game mechanics its the Melee Wobbling Infinite and the Brawl hand off chain grabs and instead of old level design its anything that's not those 2 OP techs so its really not like it at all. Some of Ice Climbers weaknesses aren't going to be fixed because then they will be broken so, choose very wisely on your changes.

3.5 Ice Climbers players' wishlist

Tweaks :
- Sopo side b snaps to ledges
- slightly increase down b range
Big Changes :
- neutral b can clank with projectiles/attacks
- up b can be canceled if Popo is still on the ground and Nana can act out of it
- some way to cancel down b
- waveland iceblock/neutral b
- Mario style fair
- better Nana AI (duh)

 

[Drugfreechu]

The Ice Climbers should be able to grab the ledge during their side B. That would improve their recovery, at least.

 

[leekslap]

The Ice Climbers should be able to grab the ledge during their side B. That would improve their recovery, at least.

That's a pretty good idea but I didn't think of it because I never use Ice Climbers... Why did I make this THREAD?!

 

[Meme]

• Being able to interrupt Nana out of her solo up-b animation so it syncs if she's within Popo's Range.
• The return of Melee's ice block floatyness
• (somewhat already mentioned) better solo side b, I can't ask it auto snaps but at least the height required for ledge snapping is less.

 

[RideTheLine]

Pretty much copying teluoborg's Ganon thread. "I've seen several suggestions and discusion about (Ice Climbers) but, it's not clean". I think he said something like that lol :

ICE CLIMBERS META THREAD

See? It even has big epic fanart.
This thread has two uses:
- suggest changes and buffs that will make them awesome
- discuss their strengths, weaknesses and their place in the metagame

The way I see it an underthought change or buff can make them broken and a safe change or buff will barely improve them at all. 3.0 Ice Climbers is like Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts, simply put by JonTron : " - you can't change the game mechanics and still keep THE OLD LEVEL DESIGNS!!! " except instead of game mechanics its the Melee Wobbling Infinite and the Brawl hand off chain grabs and instead of old level design its anything that's not those 2 OP techs so its really not like it at all. By taking those things away in the sake of "balance", the PMBR has condemned the Ice Climbers to low tier forever. Some of Ice Climbers weaknesses aren't going to be fixed because then they will be broken so, choose very wisely on your changes.

3.5 Ice Climbers players' wishlist

Tweaks :
- side b snaps to ledges easier
- ice blocks are floaty like Melee maybe floatier
- increase down b range
- faster dair
Big Changes :
- neutral b auto cancels and can clank with projectiles/attacks
- up b can be canceled if Popo is still on the ground and Nana can act out of it
- some way to cancel down b
- waveland iceblock/neutral b
- Mario style fair
- better Nana AI (duh)

What do you mean by "mario style fair?"

My personal votes go largely to recovery buffs. Snapping to the ledge out of Squall almost sounds like too much to me, as a synched Squall can recover from nearly anywhere with enough mashing. I'd like some more height out of a solo Squall. And the up-B should be easier to synch, like, if Nana is anywhere in the "box" around Popo, and you press up-B, she should Belay with you. Watching two solo Belays convert into two dead Climbers hurts my feelings.

Auto-cancelling Ice Blocks sound OP. I've always wanted the ability to fire them a bit faster, but Spacie-esque auto-cancels would allow them to be spammed so much, and the approach option of SH-B-wavedash-smash/Blizzard/grab doesn't need that.

 

[leekslap]

What do you mean by "mario style fair?"

My personal votes go largely to recovery buffs. Snapping to the ledge out of Squall almost sounds like too much to me, as a synched Squall can recover from nearly anywhere with enough mashing. I'd like some more height out of a solo Squall. And the up-B should be easier to synch, like, if Nana is anywhere in the "box" around Popo, and you press up-B, she should Belay with you. Watching two solo Belays convert into two dead Climbers hurts my feelings.

Auto-cancelling Ice Blocks sound OP. I've always wanted the ability to fire them a bit faster, but Spacie-esque auto-cancels would allow them to be spammed so much, and the approach option of SH-B-wavedash-smash/Blizzard/grab doesn't need that.

Mario's fair has a small meteor hitbox at the very tip, but anywhere else in the hitbox is a very strong and relatively fast kill move. Ice Climbers would be similar but it would not have a meteor and would be weaker but slightly faster. It's more similar to Ganon's fair now that I think about it. Dair would now be a Falco style meteor so they can still spike. Ice Climber's new strength has to be teamwork instead of broken zero to death combos so they need better setups and more desyncs.

 

[RideTheLine]

Mario's fair has a small meteor hitbox at the very tip, but anywhere else in the hitbox is a very strong and relatively fast kill move. Ice Climbers would be similar but it would not have a meteor and would be weaker but slightly faster. It's more similar to Ganon's fair now that I think about it. Dair would now be a Falco style meteor so they can still spike. Ice Climber's new strength has to be teamwork instead of broken zero to death combos so they need better setups and more desyncs.

They already have a good fair, the spike hitbox on it is essential for dthrow-fair, one of their best kill options. The Falco dair doesn't make any sense to me, that's just unnecessary. An extremely reliable spike would be a nightmare when you can put out two hitboxes at once with it. They don't need any more kill options, they already have plenty of KO power.

 

[Hylian]

Floaty melee ice blocks are worse than the fast dropping brawl ice blocks by a large margin. The fast falling ice blocks are much better for edge guarding and various other scenarios, while the floaty melee blocks are only better for blocking something right in front of you, which can be circumvented in various ways otherwise.

 

[RideTheLine]

Floaty melee ice blocks are worse than the fast dropping brawl ice blocks by a large margin. The fast falling ice blocks are much better for edge guarding and various other scenarios, while the floaty melee blocks are only better for blocking something right in front of you, which can be circumvented in various ways otherwise.

Thank you. I hate the blocks in Melee, but these ones are so good for just throwing everywhere.

 

[Ringbearer]

As pretty unanimously agreed, recovery game is the ICs crushing disadvantage. Right now, if you hit popo during synched squall, he enters special fall, and drops out of it to his grave. Nothing you can do.

Nana will often kill herself to save you or kill you when you try to save her, and if some grabs a ledge in between the two ICs grabbing the ledge during a tether belay, the bottom IC will just fall to its death instead of shooting up over them both, like in melee.

I like their stage game overall. Lots of fun desynch options, most of which enable them to stay very mobile. Ice blocks should be a little more powerful against other projectiles, and I wish blizzards would beat out a few projectiles too, but obviously their walling power can't be too intense.

I miss the light shield from melee, which allowed you to keep nana's shield bigger than yours, and it also gave you more control over how much you slid back when your shield was hit. I think the shield di global changes in 3.5 might help with this though.

I also wish that solo squall had slightly more... something to keep it from being so easily crouch cancelled.

Changes I'd love to see:
-Squall latching on to edge. (The move has such low priority that it still wouldnt be that safe, but itd be way safer than currently)
-Nana always joining your popo recovery as long as she's in the box.
-stronger ice blocks and/or blizzard in terms of priority.
-more reliable grab to fair tech chases. With a massive cast, weight/damage contingent timing on this combo is pretty lame. Not too reliable, but having this one tech chase to rely on out of grab would be all their grab game really needs.
-obviously itd be nice to have ways to keep nana closer. Heavier weight seems cheap though. Better AI would help a bit. But just stronger priority on defensive projectiles and better hitstun on solo squall would be more than enough to play defensively and offensively with their desynchs. Anything beyond that should require some risk.

but that's just me.

Oh. Bear climbers, ftw.

 

[Drigonaut]

I've recently picked up ice climbers and seem to have great success playing with them, especially coming in as a falcon main. A few things that i would like to see changed are:
-Squall grabbing ledge earlier during its end frames, but not in the middle of its animation.
-Nana AI just being overall better. I liked when nana stays on stage like a bro to protect ledge for you, but coming to save you helps too on occasion.
-Nana desynch blizzard to start up sooner to make up for its lack of range.

Other than these, I think Ice climbers are great. grab game and tech chasing game is excellent IMO with how good their wavedash is currently. Perhaps having an ice block that can clank with moves would be nice, but would probably be borderline too good when you can throw out two at once

 

[TheGravyTrain]

I think there is 2 key ways that P:M Ice Climbers could go.

A) Make Nana better and better at bypassing "separation combos", thus making Nana survive more
B) Make Nana not as essential, meaning Popo can still do decent damage, recover, and kill, just more difficult.

Let me elaborate. (I really want option B...)

The difference between with-Nana punish game and without was pretty far in Melee. This was ok because while it was easy to separate them, if you didn't they could do serious damage off of one grab. In P:M, they decided that they didn't want wobbling or Brawl handoffs (I agree), but the only compensation was a couple more desyncs and I slightly better Nana. The problem this creates is they weren't high tier in melee, but their with-Nana punish game got severely nerfed. This nerf would be fine if it wasn't so easy to separate them (which is what option A addresses). Desync walls can safely chip away with damage if used correctly, so the wobbling nerf isn't that bad. The problem lies with when Nana dies. You can't keep chipping away with desync walls and get similar damage output without losing Nana, which means their damage output becomes abysmal.

Rather than trying to deal with the implications of making Nana be able to break through separation combos (namely the difficulty in implementing that without giving her a Nayrus love combo breaker...), I think there is a better solution: buff sopo significantly. In other words, make losing Nana not a huge deal when it comes to damage output, securing kills, or recovery. Instead, Nana's only major contribution is making the neutral game much more manageable. So we would get handoffs back, ice climbers normals would be buffed so SoPo can combo and kill more effectively (along with squall ledge grab being easier), desync combos would be more deadly because their normals are buffed, and losing Nana wouldn't be the end of the world for you.

What do you think? Essentially (since that was a lot of rambling...), make Popo have a decent combo game by himself. Nana would help with the neutral game and recovery, but Popo can hold his own without her.

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

First, improve their neatral. Everything else comes afterword.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

I disagree. I think their punish game, specifically without nana, makes a much bigger difference.

 

[Drigonaut]

nah man they're good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4w6rxPPHOY
Here's a vid of my ICY's climbing the tier ladder

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

Game one, you never got to approach. Eh one of the things I think makes IC suck. They can't approach, at all.

 

[Hylian]

Game one, you never got to approach. Eh one of the things I think makes IC suck. They can't approach, at all.

IC's have some of the best approach options in the game.

Desynch Ice Blockb -> Anything
Decynch Blizzard -> Anything
Wavedash -> Anything
Dash attack
Nair
Rar Bair/WD bair
Waveland mix-ups

...

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

IC's have some of the best approach options in the game.

Desynch Ice Blockb -> Anything
Decynch Blizzard -> Anything
Wavedash -> Anything
Dash attack
Nair
Rar Bair/WD bair
Waveland mix-ups

...

... Like if those options are considered even CLOSE, to the best options, you must not be including like half the dam game. Mewtwo, fox, falco, wolf, lucas, diddy and plenty others have a better, if not superior approach game.

 

[Hylian]

You severely underestimate the power of desynch approaches. Others having strong approaches doesn't mean that IC's approaches aren't effective against those and other characters. Ic's can deal with things like shadowball -> teleport hover nair better than almost any character, can approach spacies fine, can do more with items than diddy can(banana desynchs are op), can grab lucas out of pretty much all of his approach options(take hit, grab with secondary climber) save fair which can be mitigated in other ways...

Dealing with IC's approaching with alternating SH desynched IB is very hard for many characters, reacting to WD-> Jab -> dsmash/grab is very hard for many characters, the same logic of wolf being good at approaching(approaching behind a slow projectile) applies to desynch ice blocks, IC's are the SAFEST character in the game on shield framewise while desynched(yes, safer than spacies).

I've played against the best PM players in the world with IC's and have had no trouble approaching, IC's neutral game is one of the best.

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

Out of context. I'm not saying they can't deal with approaches or asking how IC can deal with approaches. I was comparing their approach game to the other characters in the cast. Since you're trying to say, "they have one of the best." Which sounds like you are overestimating a character you main. Their approach game, as I have said, is not on par with Mewtwo, fox, falco, wolf, diddy and plenty of other top/ high tier characters. Also about wolf.. That blaster is transcendent(?) can be placed at different heights and wave landed so it isn't so comparable to a ice block.

Your last statement really holds no weight, and is almost humorous because, you have no videos. Like how, how, have you played tons of top players and the BEST PLAYERS, but yet, there are 0 videos of you doing so? Sounds fraudulent. The ones of newer players is meaningless. You say all things like others have, but you guys have no videos to back your words. All talk right there.

If you happen to be near good/notable players, you should ask to get a game on the stream/recording setup. I'd love to see that there is a way for some of these characters characters like the PM IC to succeed, but I ain't seen much.

 

[Hylian]

Out of context. I'm not saying they can't deal with approaches or asking how IC can deal with approaches. I was comparing their approach game to the other characters in the cast. Since you're trying to say, "they have one of the best." Which sounds like you are overestimating a character you main. Their approach game, as I have said, is not on par with Mewtwo, fox, falco, wolf, diddy and plenty of other top/ high tier characters. Also about wolf.. That blaster is transcendent(?) can be placed at different heights and wave landed so it isn't so comparable to a ice block.

Your last statement really holds no weight, and is almost humorous because, you have no videos. Like how, how, have you played tons of top players and the BEST PLAYERS, but yet, there are 0 videos of you doing so? Sounds fraudulent. The ones of newer players is meaningless. You say all things like others have, but you guys have no videos to back your words. All talk right there.

If you happen to be near good/notable players, you should ask to get a game on the stream/recording setup. I'd love to see that there is a way for some of these characters characters like the PM IC to succeed, but I ain't seen much.

And I explained how their approach options are just as good as those characters? Even if it's not as good as all the ones you listed having the 6th-7th best approach options would still be considered one of the best considering the amount of characters in the game. Wolfs blaster is not transcendent...you can clank with it. The method of approach with wolf blaster and desynch iceblock is very similar, not sure how it isn't comparable considering we are talking about approaches and not comparing the moves in a vacuum. You can also cancel ice block landing and the actual hit of the hammer combo's very well.

I've played tons of top players because you know..I go to tournaments and play them? I'm sorry I don't drag people to recording set-ups to play matches with me. I've played most of the top pm/melee/brawl players as I've been going to tournaments for a very long time. I do have videos on my youtube of myself playing strongbad/metroid who are very notable in the pm scene, though I can't show most of my videos because they are used for playtesting purposes in the PMDT. The fact that you think I'm overestimating IC's is hilarious, considering I've said multiple times I think they are the worst character in the game, and have an extensive history with the character in the other games.

Ic's had a great neutral in melee, a ridiculous netural in brawl, and with the combinations of desynchs from both games in PM they again have a great neutral game. I'm really not sure how you think they have a bad neutral game(which you've just answered by saying other characters have a good neutral game?) when they have the safest shield pressure in the game, extreme burst movement, notable disjoint on their hitboxes, and more options in neutral due to desynching than any other character? You can't even safely GRAB Ic's in neutral, which is something no other character has the advantage of.

 

[Miryafa]

I think it'd be nice if they were changed so that their character page would be accurate.
1. "much care has been put into staying true to their roots as the most devastating grapplers in smash"
Not enough. Based on what I've seen, Ness's (for example) are better, both for the setups they give him and their kill potential. Granted, I don't know what chain grabs are available.

2. "Nana isn’t helpless on her own anymore either - without Popo she’s capable of recovering by herself"
Not really. Solo Up-B is only slightly less pathetic-looking than Jigglypuff trying to recover with her Up-B. I wish Nana used Side-B to recover instead (with the button-mashing effect, so that she could rise up and get on the stage).

On a side note:

Your last statement really holds no weight, and is almost humorous because, you have no videos. Like how, how, have you played tons of top players and the BEST PLAYERS, but yet, there are 0 videos of you doing so?

Yeah, there are videos. Just google Hylian melee, or Hylian PM and a ton of videos of him come up.

 

[Floati]

Honestly, I feel as though Icies only need slight changes (mentioned by others already):
1. Better Nana AI (obviously)
2. Nana's solo recovery canceled when you input your side/up B
3. Ice block projectile clank