KirbyKaze
Smash Legend
I don't know you aside from saying hello to you at APEX 2012 and complimenting your name on the boards. That said, I'm gonna take a wild guess and assume you adopted HBox's style plus your own... I don't want to say "flaws" so I'm gonna say "flavour".Implying that we need to have it
Since adopting HBox with a twist as your mode of piloting hot air balloons, have you become a tournament threat player? No? Then I think you need to revise your stance on that. I understand your comment was likely a joke, and this wall of text is likely not warranted. Understand I'm not addressing you specifically at this point but rather the whole idea that Puff is a 4 move character who recycles the same strategy to win. I think this is a serious misconception that needs to be fixed. And I certainly don't want this to spread to new players because I think mindsets that promote stagnation is one of the biggest barriers to character growth.
Anyway, enough of that. I'll get to the point.
Puff is solid but misunderstood IMO. I feel Puff affords room for creativity in really unique ways because of how her options are always retained in her base form of movement (drifting in the air). She takes like 3-5 frames to move a whole character body in the air. That's so ridiculous (imagine being able to WD a body length in 5 frames but you're able to action however you please during the whole procedure; it's similar to that). This trait affords her the ability to effectively maneuver while still retaining almost all her important moves, some major threats, and the means to adjust the type of hit she's doing it (fast fall, drift in another direction, DJ to stall or maneuver, DJ momentum shifts [DJ momentum is different when combined with an attack], a huge airdodge [buffs triangle jumping], and probably more stuff I've forgotten).
She has so much room for a really complex and sophisticated timing & spacing game with her attacks & positioning. She literally has options in quantity and to a degree that no other character does in terms of how she can position herself. So many things I try in experimentation with this character I still have yet to see some of the average level Puffs try (no, this is not me stating my Puff is better; just that I think some of my ideas are good and I feel Puffs still follow a formula). On top of this, she constantly exerts a ton of threat because of rest, which also skews her risk-reward game in a really slanted way (similar to ICs). But because rest is more versatile than synced grab, it's a totally different beast (can be set up by way more moves) and there's no free pass by killing a computer. This creates a really dynamic character and I feel everyone's trying to bring the game to a halt despite how volatile she can be and how strong she is when she's making stuff happen.
I don't want new players to overlook all these ridiculous things by attempting to follow a style that possesses both mindset restrictions and a level of patience that I simply do not think most players possess. I honestly do not think there will be another HBox for a very long time. Only M2K and Armada can play a style like that among the top players IMO and maintain the composure needed for it to work.
I require a disclaimer for this type of post. Make no mistake; there's nothing wrong with borrowing ideas or using a pro's style to form the foundation of yours. But this is getting ridiculous. It's 2013 and yet I swear every time someone asks for help the response is, "Bair more, be more patient." This is not the only way to play this character and I don't even think it's optimal all the time. Even HBox is experimenting way more than ever because of the people he can't beat; are we still subscribing to the 2010 metagame guide? Are we really gonna tell people to fish for more u-tilt despite the advancements in shield game? Call me crazy but I think we need to visit Professor Oak and hit the lab. Because Puff (sans the Puffs that have always been good) are still not putting in work.
Disagree, but largely because of how she's played. Consistency is hard when your plan doesn't rely on your consistency so much as the opponent's and I know for fact that, from playing all your beaches, there remain too many styles that revolve around the risk-reward games of shield grab and other bullcrap like that. Maybe nobody respects me because I'm not top level - it's certainly something I've toyed with. But I still feel that people subscribe to shielding as a way around things that are designed to counter it, like Fox and Falco's shield pressure.Yeah, Puff is easier to be consistent with.
I dislike saying things like this because it kind of defeats the purpose of the big wall of text I posted a few minutes ago. But I think we need to step away from the shield. Puff's shield isn't good anymore except vs characters who deal with 'swing' hits (Sheik's ground game, Marth as a whole), if the opponent lacks a reliable throw KO (Fox once u-throw no longer links to u-air, Pikachu, Mario) or as a last resort to avoid a hit. Otherwise I think movement (which sometimes needs to be preemptive) and other forms of evasion are the way to go.
I don't mean to call out Puffs or name-call or say you all just fish for mistakes. But I still feel this is a problem.
Okay so now some strategic things.
A general thought I remember having while watching Sheridan vs Bieber. One of you did a good job of landing a bunch of dairs but never comboed it into u-smash. In general I feel that Puffs struggle with what to do once they've hit a move they could potentially do something really good with. After hitting a lot of spaced, low bairs or forcing Sheridan to recover below the edge I never saw anything done that hits below the stage (d-tilt, dair, probably more stuff) in favour of additional bairs and spaced fairs.
I also feel there's a disconnect between what moves are good and what moves do. More specifically, I feel people pick moves based on what's normally good without taking into consideration that the move they're picking isn't appropriate (and why) and something else would work better. A big example is with edgeguarding; I feel moves like dair are overlooked when people are recovering below the lip of the stage in favour of bair or onstage fair. This is in spite of dair hitting below the stage before you land with it. I feel this, and issues like this, need to be explored more because I feel Puffs often get nothing because of move selection after going through the effort of forcing the opponent into a terrible position. Heck, I think d-tilt is sometimes often because it just 'fits' the situation. F-tilt can be a solid surprise knockdown move and the low KB used to prevent the opponent from edgecanceling so you can tech chase with an aerial. Consider your moveset's lesser used options, especially fast moves or ones with evasive properties. You'll be surprised at what works.
I also think that dair > u-smash on FFers should be explored as a possible way to set up rest. I'm finding that pounding them out of firefoxes when they're going through me but above the level (deny the tech) is a pretty strong play if I'm not sure how to set up the aerial chain. Uairing them is good for similar reasons so long as they don't hit the platform before I can continue comboing them (which means some creativity on how you do the aerial is required). Using their recovery to set up a way to rest combo them is a strong play that needs to be explored more; it's so easy to checkmate characters when they have no jump and you have an invulnerable launcher to hit on them.
More edgeguard stuff, but now aggressive edgeguarding: I'm finding that hitting with the last few hits of dair on an offstage opponent often combos into DJ fair with stupid ease. But what's great is that it also affords me the time to not DJ fair and simply recover in a lot of cases, so if I know they'll need to recover with a lagging up+B or they're simply hoggable I can also just do that (very useful vs Ganon, Sheik, Falcon). Because of this, I've stopped using nair as my opening in a lot of edgeguard situations on certain recoveries simply because the end of dair leads to easy plays that go lethal very frequently.
On opponents recovering above you and the stage (at low percent), I find that grabbing the edge and pounding upwards is a strong play. It DI traps them (and often denies them recovery of their DJ) into something nasty (falling uair, then space your bair to create a chain) with frightening consistency. A lot of characters do not have something that can outprioritize it and their answer is to airdodge. In a lot of instances this usually just means you fall and uair them out of their air-dodge landing lag though and then continue from there or rest them off the knockdown (something to note: if they can land after an air-dodge, you sometimes can't pound upwards and have to do it horizontally to ensure the hit on their landing lag or you might be just too high).
This last one's a gimmick but after a FJ fair (or bair, I suppose, but I've only really used this after fair so far) that knocks the opponent down, I find FF dair reset a reasonably strong play sometimes. You can kind of 'track' their direction based on how the multi-hit connects on them. If they go up, I often take that as a cue to just instantly prepare to dash JC grab because they're probably gonna land on their feet. Otherwise just pay attention for which side they're biased towards and there's your roll direction. Beware of getup attacks, but you can accommodate those easily enough if you're willing to sacrifice the rest's positioning and take your favourite aerial instead. This is also a good way to set up u-tilt, but at the percents you'd knock them down it's probably a strong play to SHFFL a low uair if you want to combo (and if you're committing to waiting on the ground, rest is a stronger play anyway and makes more sense off the reset).
