The first trailer for PM 3.6 was just released, and out of curiosity (and the not-so-well-hidden hope that some PMDT member might stumble upon this thread and test some of the ideas we'll share in it), I'd like to know what changes you would expect, or hope for, when it comes to Ivysaur in 3.6
Experience has shown me that I was pretty bad at predicting the direction the game was going to take, so here are my predictions, all based on the very unlikely probability that 3.6 is just a more balanced 3.5 :
Design stuff :
-fsmash collision box fix : move to the ledge and do an fsmash as Ivysaur towards the edge. You get pushed back, and your vines slide as a mytical forcefield prevents you from shooting Ivysaur's body past the invisible borders of the stage. Now do the same thing with Marth. Your boots suddenly learn how to free themselves from the harsh tyranny of gravity, and you are able to step on thin air while your sword valiantly slashes through the skies. I want to valiantly slash through the skies with Ivysaur as well... And the animation is much better suited for that kind of behavior anyway.
-An alternate costume with accessories : Charizard and Mewtwo have their armors, Squirtle has his glasses, Pikachu and Jigglypuff have a bunch of fun accessories, Lucario is way too serious for that ****. So Ivysaur should get her own hats/glasses/thug chains.
-That kinda applies to 3.5 in general and not just Ivysaur, but the sleeping mechanism is kinda stupid : you are supposed to mash out of it, but you can cancel the waking up animation. So if you mash, you'll end up inputting a random move like an upB and that's much, much more punitive than going through a 15 frames long wake up animation. The flower is kinda stupid as well, you have to mash to make it go away but you still have control over your character so mashing isn't really an option.
-Fixing crawling : it's a problem that comes from Brawl. Crawling (forward or backwards) does not have the same speed whether you are facing right, or left. It stops some ATs like crawl dashing from being integrated into the metagame and that's always been kinda sad to me, as a Brawl Luigi main. I'd love PM to finally tackle this issue if it is even possible.
-Give Ivysaur her gatling combo back ! In your attempt to normalize dacuses, you only took options away from Ivysaur, since her dash attack hits on frame 4, after the new dacus window ends. It was a fun tool to use against abusive CC and fast fallers.
-If you're going to keep the tether recovery... Either remove the bump during Ivysaur's upB, or make her detect ledges after that bump. Right now, it is possible to hit the ledge with your upB without snapping it if you upB right below the vertical limit of the detection box, and I know it has been extremely counter intuitive to me when I first started playing Ivysaur.
-Seriously why do tether grabs only grab grounded opponents ? They already have a downside in their ridiculous end lag, do they need more ? It was justified in 3.02 because else the chain grabs would have been all over the place, but I doubt it is justified now thanks to her new uthrow.
Balance things : (most of those have already been talked about so I'm keeping it short for the most part)
-3.5 Ivy was kinda designed as a defensive character, but something went wrong there because if you watch any of Sothe or JZ's footage, you'll see that this is not what the optimal way of playing that character turned out to be. Machiavelli's the only top Ivy who still plays her that way and judging from Aftershock, it didn't have as much success as JZ's aggressive style. So you'll need to either buff her defensive abilities so that it ends up becoming the optimal way of playing the character, or do a 180 and make her an aggressive character by design instead of by accident. Personally, I find aggressive Ivysaur more interesting to play, having played 3.02 when she was indeed a very defensive character, to the point where she was often called non-interactive. I know that as far as I'm concerned, I'd love you to go for the 180, even if it comes at the price of some of our defensive capabilities.
If you are going with the defensive Ivysaur, here are what changes I'd make : a different usmash that would act as a fast anti air like Marth's utilt. That would allow Ivy to stop incoming obvious approaches, and give her a much needed oos option. And possibly the old smash razor leaf to deal with dash dance camping.
If you're going with the aggressive Ivy, here are what changes I'd make : a faster fair. She just needs to be slightly less telegraphed but other than that she's pretty much set imo.
-upB has a ton of lag for how bad it is at killing stuff. There needs to be more of an incentive to use it, match the reward with the risk taken, or the other way around.
-Tether recoveries are kind of braindead. I'd rather have a bad recovery with options than a good one with none.
-Seriously whatever you do, make sure it fixes the god damned Marth matchup. The rest of Ivy's matchup spread is pretty well balanced but oh god the Marth matchup. (Fox as well but contrarily to Marth who seems to be completely untouchable, I'm kind of expecting Fox nerfs since everybody is complaining about him already)
Experience has shown me that I was pretty bad at predicting the direction the game was going to take, so here are my predictions, all based on the very unlikely probability that 3.6 is just a more balanced 3.5 :
Design stuff :
-fsmash collision box fix : move to the ledge and do an fsmash as Ivysaur towards the edge. You get pushed back, and your vines slide as a mytical forcefield prevents you from shooting Ivysaur's body past the invisible borders of the stage. Now do the same thing with Marth. Your boots suddenly learn how to free themselves from the harsh tyranny of gravity, and you are able to step on thin air while your sword valiantly slashes through the skies. I want to valiantly slash through the skies with Ivysaur as well... And the animation is much better suited for that kind of behavior anyway.
-An alternate costume with accessories : Charizard and Mewtwo have their armors, Squirtle has his glasses, Pikachu and Jigglypuff have a bunch of fun accessories, Lucario is way too serious for that ****. So Ivysaur should get her own hats/glasses/thug chains.
-That kinda applies to 3.5 in general and not just Ivysaur, but the sleeping mechanism is kinda stupid : you are supposed to mash out of it, but you can cancel the waking up animation. So if you mash, you'll end up inputting a random move like an upB and that's much, much more punitive than going through a 15 frames long wake up animation. The flower is kinda stupid as well, you have to mash to make it go away but you still have control over your character so mashing isn't really an option.
-Fixing crawling : it's a problem that comes from Brawl. Crawling (forward or backwards) does not have the same speed whether you are facing right, or left. It stops some ATs like crawl dashing from being integrated into the metagame and that's always been kinda sad to me, as a Brawl Luigi main. I'd love PM to finally tackle this issue if it is even possible.
-Give Ivysaur her gatling combo back ! In your attempt to normalize dacuses, you only took options away from Ivysaur, since her dash attack hits on frame 4, after the new dacus window ends. It was a fun tool to use against abusive CC and fast fallers.
-If you're going to keep the tether recovery... Either remove the bump during Ivysaur's upB, or make her detect ledges after that bump. Right now, it is possible to hit the ledge with your upB without snapping it if you upB right below the vertical limit of the detection box, and I know it has been extremely counter intuitive to me when I first started playing Ivysaur.
-Seriously why do tether grabs only grab grounded opponents ? They already have a downside in their ridiculous end lag, do they need more ? It was justified in 3.02 because else the chain grabs would have been all over the place, but I doubt it is justified now thanks to her new uthrow.
Balance things : (most of those have already been talked about so I'm keeping it short for the most part)
-3.5 Ivy was kinda designed as a defensive character, but something went wrong there because if you watch any of Sothe or JZ's footage, you'll see that this is not what the optimal way of playing that character turned out to be. Machiavelli's the only top Ivy who still plays her that way and judging from Aftershock, it didn't have as much success as JZ's aggressive style. So you'll need to either buff her defensive abilities so that it ends up becoming the optimal way of playing the character, or do a 180 and make her an aggressive character by design instead of by accident. Personally, I find aggressive Ivysaur more interesting to play, having played 3.02 when she was indeed a very defensive character, to the point where she was often called non-interactive. I know that as far as I'm concerned, I'd love you to go for the 180, even if it comes at the price of some of our defensive capabilities.
If you are going with the defensive Ivysaur, here are what changes I'd make : a different usmash that would act as a fast anti air like Marth's utilt. That would allow Ivy to stop incoming obvious approaches, and give her a much needed oos option. And possibly the old smash razor leaf to deal with dash dance camping.
If you're going with the aggressive Ivy, here are what changes I'd make : a faster fair. She just needs to be slightly less telegraphed but other than that she's pretty much set imo.
-upB has a ton of lag for how bad it is at killing stuff. There needs to be more of an incentive to use it, match the reward with the risk taken, or the other way around.
-Tether recoveries are kind of braindead. I'd rather have a bad recovery with options than a good one with none.
-Seriously whatever you do, make sure it fixes the god damned Marth matchup. The rest of Ivy's matchup spread is pretty well balanced but oh god the Marth matchup. (Fox as well but contrarily to Marth who seems to be completely untouchable, I'm kind of expecting Fox nerfs since everybody is complaining about him already)
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