Dear PMBR:
3.0 Bowser is terrible in several aspects.
First off, i would like to start with: why did Bowser have to get such degrading, humilliating nerfs? Wasn't the general concensus that Bowser was a low tier, or that atleast he wasn't very good in competitive, high-level play in the first place? Why does the PMBR, or whoever was in charge of Bowser's design, feel it's proper to change the mechanics and gameplay of a character that dedicated players have spent more than a year and a half using?
Worst change of them all: Fortress hogging. I've heard arguments that it was too easy, or that it was spammed too much that certain players, or that it should require some level of finesse, but nothing has convinced me of why such a basic, integral mechanic to bowser's gameplay had to be changed to be harder for Bowser mains, to the point in where one actually has increased time to get the ledge due to the slight speed drops needed near the ledge to be able to snap it. I don't think "Needs some finesse" applies in comparison ot techniques like moonwalking, l cancelling or wavedashing when the punishment for getting it wrong is completely losing a stock.
Then, a little less important but still disheartening, are Bair and Nair's nerfs. Bair lost a lot of utility both onstage and offstage due to the much larger IASA frames, to the point in where it's not really viable to use it onstage anymore since you need to always l-cancel it, and offstage because the timing to get out a bair and still get back onstage is ridiculously strict, not to mention that it hardly covers the things it did before this way. Nair having reduced knockback is quite annoying, as it makes most early-percent combos much harder to execute due to the reduced hitstun the opponent suffers.
For ending notes, I also heard that Up B didn't lose its invencibility frames, but the reduced hitboxes on grounded Whirling Fortress really seems to affects the kind of attacks that bowser can get through on its very startup. Particularly, and to give an example, something i do often is Up B into Spacies' own Up Bs while they recover, then ledgegrab jump bair, which was always safe due to up b's previous mechanics. Now, it seems it always trades the hit, which is quite frustrating. And although Fair got a change that was positive for Bowser, it seems pretty redundant given how Bowser's Fair was already a very solid move, so a power increase/decrease balance seemed hardly neccesary.
In conclusion, I think that virtually every Bowser change does nothing to genuinely balance Bowser, and instead, It is of my belief that these particular changes help in no way but to slap dedicated bowser players in the face. If one wishes to reduce this post to a nutshell and just call it "salt", then so be it. I'm not gonna drop Bowser anytime soon, but i sure would like to see some of those changes reverted. A single voice doesn't count for much, i suppose, but i want to express these opinions.
Best regards:
-Jorge
P.S: #BuffBowser