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Make Your Move 21: The Moveset Design Contest | Top Fifty Is Up! Next Contest Approaches...

WeirdChillFever

Smash Hero
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Jun 10, 2014
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Somewhere Out There
What do you call a Link set by Muno? Linkling Splatoon
The Link of The Wild set has been commented on in the past by others and I know not even Muno is waiting for comments on this set, but slap Breath of the Wild on something and I'm more convinced fo read, although my next comment will probably be for mUNO (aka Paper Mario: Color Splash aka Cards Against The Humanity That Made The Originals So Good)

That said, Link is as experimental as some Breath of the Wild runs and not always to great effect. While the base set stands on its own as a slightly unorthodox, yet workable core, it's a bland set.

Changing weapons for Dash Attack for example is a cool mechanic, if not for the fact it feels gimmicky and is executed in only one move. While Robin's similar mechanic covers the same variety of moves, it's only affected by specials and ties into his main mechanic.

The Perfect Shield summoning Daruk is a nice touch, but one that feels a bit overtuned. One second of stun is powerful and it doesn't come back in the set enough that would justify this powerful mechanic as anything more than an afterthought in the quest for more Champion's Abilities.
Similar one-off abilities are the climbing and the Rods' gimmicks. I can't really judge if the Rods' mechanics is supposed to be a core to his playstyle or a fun move, this set would've been better with a playstyle section.
Something that does elevate itself above the gimmick-for-the-sake-of-one is the Revali's Gale Jump. Tying into multiple aerials, his poor disadvantage state and one of his specials, it's a nice ability that feels natural.

For the rest, this set is like Breath of the Wild, in that I'm struggling to find a specific playstyle that would tie the mechanics and gimmicks of this set together into a cohesive gameplan. The Hylian trample shield being featured in some key inputs, to the point where his ground game is quite awkward to go on the offensive with, make me lean towards a defensive baiting playstyle, with some strong buttons that can overwhelm an opponent that approaches. If this is intended, good job, but to me it feels like that playstyle is a happy coincidence from a lot of uncohesive mechanics

Harry Potter and The Promise Of The Orb (Dark Matter by Bionichute Bionichute )
Dark Matter was an odd read for me.
In the beginning we're treated with the Orb move, a cool passive that takes the first input in the set. A promising move, one that we'd sure to see the applications of throughout the set as said in the move's description. A solid opening to a literally promising set.
Except, I didn't find any reference to this in the rest of the set (except Up Special) with the normals being dedicated to fun sword moves. Each input is a great move in itself, with Matter taking us on a cool spin on the swordfighter set.

Some other highlights include the Forward Aerial, a cool variation on your classic Marth sloshyslash and the potentially brutal Neutral Air and overall, each input brings character and flair to the set. Sure, the ground game is self-contained, but we're getting the application of the orb move later, right? The blindspot management, the combos, the moves that turn out to be dark and maliciously clever when backed with a few bad boys.

Instead, I was treated with more of the same. Good spins on classic swordfighting moves, some good characterisation with glimpses of the true Matter being revealed in powerful moves but..unlike Zero or Magolor, it lacked that crucial True Form, the Soul. The mechanic, the playstyle that would stick together these various tools into a sense of direction.

Basically, I kept waiting for something to tie all these seperate moves together and while Neutral Air and Forward Air come close to being more than self-contained tools, I kept waiting for the Promise of the Orb.
 
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Professor Lexicovermis

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Oct 27, 2015
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1. f3 e5
2. g4?? Qh4#
8/10


Nightmare is a pretty interesting set, one with an interpretation of the character that I can't say I've seen before, that of a brilliant strategist who quite literally serves as a chessmaster on the battlefield. It could be argued this interpretation, as well as the focus on chess as a gameplay motif, is a bit odd for Nightmare, but to be perfectly honest, the anemic characterization he gets in the games all but forced you to choose one of a few vagueries to build on. And I feel you made a very wise choice! Nightmare focuses very much on playing the field and mastering the art of the hard read, basically leaning hard into the chessmaster motif. I really like the concept, myself! It's really neat to see the myriad ways he has to subtly (and not-so-subtly) manipulate the field to make his job (reading the foe's actions) a little bit easier. Played well, he's a truly, well, nightmarish opponent thanks to having a variety of powerful moves that flourish thanks to his good reads; played poorly, he's likely to put himself in check before long, though it's not as if he's ENTIRELY helpless without his precious reads. Fun fact: I previewed this set in early stages, and originally, his FS was his main mechanic, placed on the Tacky Star gimmick! I personally think that the current solution works better, so good eye on changing it up. I don't have much to say in the way of critique, sadly, but I really enjoyed this set; good work, Smady!

Join The Nintendo Fun Club Today, Mac!
7/10

'Tis I, Rouxls Kaard, Duke of Puzzles, here to offer mine revieaux of the wretched worms- I mean, Heroes of Darkness, Kris, Susie, and Ralsei! Immediately, this sete provideth an interesting conceit: another twist upon the time-testedeth Team Set. The Team Set is a puzzle with a most vaste number of solutions, as evidenced by the richeth historie of MYM. The texte doth describe the intricacies of this team fairly well, though I am left with a few queries. Perhaps a little more elaboration on the Knight and Prince's behavior when not under their leader's tyrannical command? 'Twould be much appreciated to know, for example, which attacks they prefer to use under certain circumstances. ACT is a perfectly serviceable Special, though I must warn you that Flatter and Fluster don'tst necessarily cooperate with the character of every possible opponent. Whilst I have no qualms with this, as the effectes are quite clearly magick in nature, this sort of thing will likely draw the ire of other revieauxers. DOUBLE HEAL striketh me as... somewhat poorly? It seemeth to me that it would quickly prove pointless in duels against particularly aggressive foes, as 'tis unlikely that Kris is at healthy percentages if their allies are highly battered. I should also note that the Revive Mint seemeth... difficult to use. Two seconds of lag is quite a long time! Though, given the reward Kris standeth to gaine, I suppose the lag is faire. The remayndere of the set is fairly straightforward and simple to understand; I fear I have little to offer on it other than commendation on your clarity. My only lament is that there is very little detail. Every attack after the Specials suffers from very anemic writing, unfortunately. Perhaps you couldst grant these moves greater clout by abandoning brevity and offering more elaboration upon topics such as their typical uses, how Kris could utilize them in accord with their allies... there is ample enough subject matter to warrant each move being at LEASTE two paragraphs, rather than a mere one. My final complainte lies within the Back Aerial... for whatst purpose doth it break the consistency of shield bashes granting Kris invulnerability? There appeareth to be no rhyme nor reason for this decision, and I felt it rather odd to suddenly break such an establish rouxl in the endgame. 'Tis not enough to sour me on the work as a whole, but it is rather baffling. In conclusion, I deem this set rather good. 'Twould benefite from more elaboration upon its non-Specials, but 'tis solid enough. I hope to see more sets representative of the inhabitants of my world in the future. ...ah, but I would be remiss if I neglected to mention a rather embarrassing failure on my behalf. Upon my original reading, I took great umbrage with Kris' sword throw. The move explaineth that the sword wouldst be inaccessible until reclaimed, and nary a single attack explainedeth what it did with the sword gone! I was quite baffled and upset at this realization, but then I re-read the sword throw. I was... rather embarrassed to discover that Kris cannot actually attack without their sword, thus meaning that the moves had no fringe case to explaine. Obviously, no points have been docked for my own failure at literacy.
 
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WeirdChillFever

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Jun 10, 2014
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Uno Mario by MunoMario (Paper Mario by Munomario777 Munomario777 )

Did I go through the trouble of reading this set and writing this comment just for that pun? Absolutely. Did I enjoy the set? Absolutely.
Muno's trademark wit is combined with the source material of Paper Mario and what happens is a loveletter to both. Muno's visual style, already present in Breath of the Wild Link, elevates itself to a new height, all to really bring the vibrant world of Paper Mario to life with all kinds of visual aids. These visual aids don't just aid the reader in understanding the animations, because the animations are already more than understandable in their written form, but also bring charm for the sake of doing so, breaking up the set by sprinkling the main gimmick throughout in little intermezzos.

The set itself is clear and strategic and even customizable! The player chooses Paper Mario's playstyle by picking partners, buffs and mechanics with Battle Cards, which brings a new layer to the moveset. (You can even add a literal layer by copying Paper Mario!)
The set finds a nice balance between bringing Paper Mario to life and making it work as a Smash moveset, with partners not overtaking *every move* but being rightfully restricted to these Battle Cards and throws.
The Battle Cards, as set-wide mechanic, are referenced plenty throughout, with Muno tattling about them with each moves that unlocks its potential and the playstyle section even hands you a few recommended decks.

Maybe Kooper is a bit undertuned compared to the others and some go above and beyond to affect the entire playstyle moreso than the others, but even in the balancing department everything went really well overall. There wasn't an option that really stood out as either mediocre or broken.
 
D

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The 5k/10k Challenge - Submission Time!

After a thread of 96 movesets, we got a tonne of 5k and 10k submissions! As you may recall, early in MYM21 I put out a challenge to make sets that were under 10k or 5k words, and that I would put all those who made such a set into a lottery. The winner of that lottery would then choose a character for me to make into a moveset next Make Your Move.

There were a surprising amount of qualifiers! In fact, there are so many, and so many new users, I'm going to have to ask anyone interested to do me a favour. Please PM me on Smash Boards or message me on Discord your qualifying moveset(s) if you'd like to take part in the lottery. This will help weed out anyone who isn't interested. You don't need to say what characters you'll pick yet, don't worry about that just yet.

The winner of the lottery will be announced sometime before MYM22 starts. For the record, Mr. Kamoshida was the winner of the first lottery I did in MYM20, so I'm a man of my word! There is another set I picked from a lottery around the same time and yes, that character will be making an appearance in MYM21. Thank you to everyone for taking part!
 

Davidk92

Smash Cadet
Joined
Aug 28, 2016
Messages
49
The 5k/10k Challenge - Submission Time!

After a thread of 96 movesets, we got a tonne of 5k and 10k submissions! As you may recall, early in MYM21 I put out a challenge to make sets that were under 10k or 5k words, and that I would put all those who made such a set into a lottery. The winner of that lottery would then choose a character for me to make into a moveset next Make Your Move.

There were a surprising amount of qualifiers! In fact, there are so many, and so many new users, I'm going to have to ask anyone interested to do me a favour. Please PM me on Smash Boards or message me on Discord your qualifying moveset(s) if you'd like to take part in the lottery. This will help weed out anyone who isn't interested. You don't need to say what characters you'll pick yet, don't worry about that just yet.

The winner of the lottery will be announced sometime before MYM22 starts. For the record, Mr. Kamoshida was the winner of the first lottery I did in MYM20, so I'm a man of my word! There is another set I picked from a lottery around the same time and yes, that character will be making an appearance in MYM21. Thank you to everyone for taking part!
Would Mother Brain count? It's 4009 words (less if you discount the additional flavour stuff), but I didn't actually make it FOR the 5k contest.
 
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ForwardArrow

Smash Ace
Joined
Aug 17, 2011
Messages
503
Kris, Ralsei, and Susie
This set wasn't really my thing, but I can at least see some of what people like about it. For having three characters out at once, with two controlled by AI, the set does a half decent job of balancing them. Kris is fairly weak on his own, and Ralsei and Susie have limited movepools in an attempt to make three characters not too overwhelming for opponents, while if their AI gets cheesed it is possible to revive them, albeit at a high percent. Having all Kris' damage be shared to the other party members means actually getting Ralsei and Susie out of the way is a fair bit easier than it could be. Kris' use of the shield to nullify attacks comes across as a bit more important when he's also using it to protect Ralsei or Susie from damage, giving those moves a bit more depth than meets the eye.

While its a decent idea for how to balance things, I'm still not a big fan of the approach. I know I'm usually pretty positive towards minion sets, but those usually have to dedicate quite a bit of time to having a bunch of desynced hitboxes out at once and are dealing with stamina bars that are much easier to deplete than it is to KO a character outright. KRS gets two durable and competent allies from the start of the match, and depending on how the AI feels like acting at the moment you can get some absurd amounts of pressure or extremely strong combos going that far exceed what a character is supposed to be able to do by default, and I don't think there's really enough weakness in Kris' own kit nor are Ralsei/Susie incompetent enough to justify him getting them for free at the start of a match. You know how Ice Climbers are basically perfectly fine even though Solo Popo is garbage? I know these three are easier to split up, but you can straight up revive them and desyncing their hitboxes is easier than it is for the Ice Climbers. I could be more convinced on the balance perhaps, if I had a better idea of how Ralsei and Susie's AI worked, but the set mostly just throws the bare minimum it needs to tell you about that.

The other problem is just aside from the shield, I don't really like much about the way the team dynamic actually plays. So many moves are given just one line to explain themselves and no further substance or idea of how they fit into the actual gameplan, and it leaves the set feeling very shallow and underdeveloped. I don't need crazy move interactions between the teammates, but I'd like to know a bit more about the applications of moves than "this is a slash it deals X damage and knockback". Maybe giving some specifics on where certain shield attacks best synergize with covering what Susie or Ralsei are doing at any given time would help, or the kinds of combo opportunities provided by the set's faster attacks in the context of the other two being there. The set as is just is kind of vapid and devoid of substance with how little it gives on the potential applications of certain moves, and while there's certainly room to interpret it favorably, the set often gives so little to these moves you can't even really interpret anything all that interesting out of it even if you go out of your way to do so.

As a final note, I heavily disapprove of how ACT is used in the set. If you want to argue the debuffs are flavored as magic, I get it. But the final boss of the game doesn't allow you to use ACT on him due to him not exactly being phased by the kind of whimsical things Kris is doing, and I'm of the belief the use of the magic animation is just so Toby Fox didn't have to animate more things in this already "big for one man" project. Given that, Ridley and Ganondorf have no reason to be any more affected by ACT than the King, and frankly I could easily see more serious protagonists like the Belmonts or Samus be completely unphased. Its bad characterization to just assume the opponents will respond to this in X way, and would look especially silly were Deltarune's final boss actually put into the game with them. I know this is a "nitpick", but I strongly take issue with messing with the opponent's characterization in a moveset if you can help it.

Percy
I think I've addressed in the chat that I really don't enjoy the set's animation choices, with Percy performing so many of her moves by mistake. I get the idea, you want to portray this character as non-malicious despite her threatening appearance, but it would have likely gone over much better if she just did most of what she did in the set on purpose and then had taunts/victory poses showing her as non-malicious. For the record, I did ask someone outside the community on if these kinds of accidental animations made sense, they said no, so this isn't just some weird internal mindset of MYM, nevermind that a lot of people here nowadays don't really care about MYM's old standards in that regard anyway. Accidental attacks might be a "subjective" thing, but I don't think its unreasonable for me to say people would look at this kind of animation and just find it jarring. Also even by "making a mistake" standards, accidentally throwing a book is pretty out there, I find it extremely hard to believe an outright toss of a book would ever be anything other than purposeful. Also the set's density of accidental attacks is high enough that Percy's combos would look like a string of extremely competent mistakes, to the point even by clumsy cartoon character standards it just comes across as outright ridiculous to watch play out.

There is more to address than animations of course, but to be blunt I'm not really sold on the character's playstyle either. Percy's mechanic of developing sweetspots on her set through research is interesting, even if I have concerns with how it'd play out in any sort of setting with more than one opponent. It either doesn't make a whole lot of sense flavor-wise for her to have researched opponent's weakspots for one enemy and uses them on another, or the sweetspots are different for every opponent which is incredibly hard to convey visually and the set never gives an answer. Nevermind that flavor-wise Percy researching her opponent to more effectively use attacks she's using by accident doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but whatever. My problem is the actual execution of this meter, because having it passively go up by fighting and contact means it will go up passively in any match without any effort on Percy's part, so it may as well just be that her sweetspots get better the longer the stock goes on. I'd really appreciate it if the meter had any more substance to developing it than that, there isn't really much of a particular playstyle Percy can adapt too to suddenly get a lot of research done and develop her sweetspots, which makes the mechanic play out in a pretty boring way.

Honestly, I could still forgive it if the end result had a bit more substance to it, but the change to every move feels pretty much the same, with the exception of Up and Down Smash. Those are decent, I actually do quite like the idea of a trap that explodes more powerfully if you hit the right part of it, but everything else is really samey, a sizeable boost to damage and knockback with nothing else. It'd be nice if some of these sweetspots played off the poison damage to get more effective, such as the poison which isn't really used all that much(damage over time, by itself and without some other context, doesn't really add much to a moveset) or possibly having one of these sweetspots be better for combos as opposed to all of them just KOing better. Doesn't Percy want to keep the opponent closer to her to get more research? The grab game is pretty barren and frankly I see nothing it adds to the set other than the absolute bare minimum for a grab game, and that plus the animations left a really bad taste in my mouth after finishing that section.

Lastly, the set is mostly not awful about detail, but it could really, really use more information on how much certain things fill the research gauge. For all we know it could fill up in one Jab or could fill so slowly a whole stock will go by and she'll only be at 10% research by the end of it. This is kind of important to give at least a little more context on.
 
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WeirdChillFever

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Firmly Grasp It, The Character (Percy by Professor Lexicovermis Professor Lexicovermis )
Percy has already been commented on, so instead of adding my own full-blown comment, I'm going to simply add to the things already said.
Percy is a fun set. A fun characterisation in general that adds to the "Actually Nice Monster" idea with a knack for science. This is translated in the set and while some attacks are quite *reaching*, like the confused Up Tilt, an accidental vibe here and there doesn't hurt and is actually really nice. Some slaps could be more repurposed to be more like an attack, like Back Air being Percy falling over *because* she tries to windmill into an opponent, but it didn't really bother me.

The playstyle of a DoT summoner is nice, and the mechanic of moving around the mushrooms is rewarding enough to play around with, fits the character and is a unique twist on the normally stationary trapper.

If the set would stop there, it'd be a solid set with a cool premise and sweet, albeit aggresively implemented, characterisation. However, the set adds the Research Gauge, which is a pretty useless mechanic imo.
First of all, the requirement of a meter fill is quite unspectacular, since almost everything charges it, there's little strategic value for it. Percy players play the same as other character's. The goal is still hitting the opponent.
Secondly, its effects are simply buffs. None of the moves get their uses altered or changed, attacks simply get buffed,
Finally, flavor-wise it's not deep enough to justify it,
Simply said, It doesn't actually add anything except another rather unsubtle way of characterising the character.
It doesn't really subtract from the set either, as aside from creating a relatively useless Side B, it's mostly an harmless extra and the Mushroom DoT trapping is a good mechanic on its own enough to carry the set without a meter so it's not like I missed anything from the set.

Overall, Percy is a fun set with a few specials and mechanics that work well to together to create a decent trapping set with cool, albeit occasionally overboard characterisation.

Really, all you gotta do is change three animations or so or alter the descriptions to at least put less emphasis on the fact Percy didn't actually mean to hurt the opponent and you're good. Up Tilt can be a regular swat that way, and Back Air can be a windmill attack dome by a slightly clumsy character. Attacks like Forward Air and Down Air are perfect examples of moves that make use of the character's inexperience at both fighting and inhabiting a body on general and I liked attacks like Forward Smash that are Percy being excited. Even more outlandish ones like Forward Throw are fun once in a while, but Back Throw and Up Tilt took it too far imo.

Depending on how voting works exactly, I might vote for this since the base set itself is good
 

UserShadow7989

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
314
Aurelia Midam ForwardArrow ForwardArrow

A fun, simple core concept is usually the best basis for a set, and Aurelia here has a great one: a super powered, customizable projectile. The use of dust crystals throughout the set give players a ton of fun tools they can use when they can't quite land their big hit, but there's nothing quite as satisfying as sending the foe flying over the horizon with a blow that makes your teeth itch just watching it.

Her Semblance plays off of this quite nicely, letting her repeated hits hammer away at her foe to break down their defenses and hit even harder. "Hit harder" isn't the most interesting concept on its own, but the conditions around getting it and the applications (creating a weak point on the opponent or their shield to punish the latter and set up the former) work nicely with her heavy-hitting, high commitment playstyle.

The varied effects of the crystals on moves give each a niche while also being consistent to each type, keeping them intuitive, and gives Aurelia a few impressively hard-hitting options aside from just the big and shiny one. It gives players a taste of what the Neutral Special offers in customization and potency for a fraction of the price, and keeps her from becoming flow-chart-ish or suffering older MYM sets' weakness in having only a single kill option.

I was at something of a loss as to what could be improved, aside from some proof-reading (the Jab in particular is missing a few words here and there, mixing up a few for others, and sometimes repeating or misspelling them, and it could probably use a double space between some of the paragraphs to break it up). This is likely owing a bit to the sheer size of the set and the time crunch to put it together, and only sticks out to me given the set's length (don't need anything tripping up people as they read it). I'll note the locations in a spoiler for convenience's sake at the end of the comment.

The animations feel appropriate to Aurelia and the series she's based on, giving her a heavy but still visually impressive and flowing quality to her attacks. I've already made clear how much I adore the character and her design in private, so I'll note it here for posterity how well crafted I feel she is. I'm also a big fan of her quotes and the small flavor details throughout, such as her glee at KOing with her Down Aerial or her lack of patience for certain pests in her Pummel.

I am a little confused on the animation for the Neutral Aerial and how the first gunshots combo into the second, given the first is above and the second below; I assume the gun is still rotating as she fires, so the hitboxes rotate? That or the mentions of top and bottom are mixed up, and the bottom holds them so she hits them with the top as she falls. Other than that, I'm a major fan of her air game, Up and especially Down Aerials in specific seeming like a lot of fun, though I wonder if the Down Aerial's crystal variants might be a bit too strong (albeit the trade-offs make it hard for me to say).

Overall, well done!

Jab paragraph 4, sentence 2, "the first hit deal 3%"; 'deal' should be 'dealing'.

Jab paragraph 7, 2nd to last sentence, "Neither of these hits are likely to hit a shield unless you for some reason you use this entire combo just for the cannonball at the end or something."; one 'you' too many.

Jab paragraph 8, sentence 2, ", but which much large range as the flares extend out way further than Captain Falcon's fist." should be 'but with much larger range'.

Jab paragraph 9, sentence 1, "Pressing B before this will invest a dust crystal to invest it to upgrade the rapid jab," cut 'to invest'.

Jab paragraph 9, sentence 2, "Fire will buff the damage to about 1.4x that of Captain Falcon's jab, which considering the range on this move is just nuts, and gets even better if the opponent is shattered." between the second and third comma should be a few more commas as-is. It's better written as 'which is just nuts when you consider the range on this move'. I've not been touching on missing commas since their absence is easily ignored, it's just that this instance sticks out as awkwardly written.

Forward Tilt paragraph 1, sentence 1 "Two of the cannons detach from Aurelia's main gun detach as she points them forwards and fires," remove the second 'detach'.

Up Tilt paragraph 2, sentence 5, "(technically 22% with freshness bonus, but whose counting)" who's.

Dash Attack paragraph 1, sentence 5 "at which point its punishable on hit." should be "it's not"

Up Smash paragraph 1, sentence 1 & 2 "The first two shots deal 2.5% and the last two shots deal 5% uncharged, adding up to 15%. All in all it adds up to 15%," just a bit of redundancy, cut the former 'adding up to 15%'.

Down Smash paragraph 2, sentence 5 "This moves a fixed four small cracks on shields, halfway up from and below the center on the front and back of the shield." moves should be makes?

Neutral Aerial paragraph 2, sentence 2 "The gun barrels up close will perform the former, but the two gun shots will do the later as the second hit does weak knockback that sets up perfectly for Fairs will having low end lag." 'later' should be 'latter', not sure what the 'will' at the end there is supposed to be; 'due to'?

Forward Throw, paragraph 1, sentence 3 "This sends them sliding 4 units away on the final hit and puts Aurelia at minor frame advantage at that, so spacing throws go its pretty strong." 'as far as' between 'so' and 'spacing'? comma after 'go' if so.

Up Throw, paragraph 2, sentence 4 "If the move uses an earth crystal, it will spray shards of earth on the ground that not hit the foe, not at first." first 'not' should be 'don't' or 'won't'.

Up Throw, paragraph 3, sentence 2 "Because Aurelia flew up higher, it takes her longer to land, meaning you can influence this move considerably furhter left and right." further
 

ForwardArrow

Smash Ace
Joined
Aug 17, 2011
Messages
503
Thanks for the comment US! I went through and fixed the typos you pointed out, and made a small note about the rock shards in Neutral Special to make it a bit more clear how they work if Aurelia fires them into a floor or wall. Hopefully that's better now and glad to see you liked it.
 

WeirdChillFever

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My First Impression Of This Set Is Good (Guzma by Katapultar Katapultar )
This set is indeed under 5k words, and making a set that short is indeed a challenge, but most of my problems with the set stem from that brevity.
The set tries several gimmicks, each with too little word count dedicated to it to make it really fleshed out.
For simple moves like First Impression, it works, but for specials like Liquidation's aquaplaning and Razor Shell's soaking, the low word count makes it's hard to grasp the idea. (Making a second or third impression more important and admittedly I didn't read it thoroughly enough to grasp all of it at once)

I would love to see this set as a regular set, because ths mechanics aren't bad at all, just underexplained. For example, I'm quite fond of the double grab game as a way to capitalise on the isopod-nature of Golisopod and First Impression is definitely an idea charming enough to expand it for a bigger set, same with the slippery water, although it'd need to be on more moves than just Up Special
 

Slavic

Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars
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taco bell, probablyn't
FrozenRoy FrozenRoy 's long awaited sequel to MYM14's Croagunk, one of the first movesets I read in MYM, Toxicroak delivers better than its poisonous predecessor. Toxicroak is fascinating immediately given the mobility options it has to start with; giving the frog Pokemon a good crawl with a unique crouch jump is very fun, balanced by the bad crouch height Toxicroak has, and feels like the kind of movement kit that a sneaky assassin would have in Smash (I'd love a crouch jump on a character now in Smash, thanks). Toxicroak, for the most part, has a very aggressive close range gameplan. The poison is both potent enough to justify Toxicroak using resources to poison the opponent while also giving enough reward to approach Toxicroak (eliminating their poison) to play into Toxicroak's overall playstyle. A lot of Toxicroak's individual inputs do a really good job at incorporating this playstyle that places the risk vs. reward on the foe instead of the player, which rightfully means Toxicroak players have to be good at the character for the poison to be any use. Some of the inputs in the standards, like the FTilt Venoshock or the FAir Drain Punch, almost cross the line into Pokemon Syndrome with random effects on those attacks, but the effects they have play so well into the playstyle that the only bad part of the move choices is the input. I actually really like Drain Punch FAir as a move, giving Toxicroak the option to heal himself as well as the opponent, and honestly the fact that Dry Skin ability is utilized multiple times throughout the set without seeming tacky is genuinely impressive.

There are some issues I have with the set, however. Toxicroak's poison gets very powerful with Croak's buff, though Froy is already aware of this and has mentioned changing it so this is nothing new. FTilt, Venoshock, also seems excessively powerful with it being able to pretty easily pull off 18% damage with just slightly above average starting lag. I think part of the problem on this is that foes who are poisoned, no matter what level of poison they have, take the entire boost. If foes who were poisoned had scaling damage so only foes who are sustaining full poison got the double, I think the move would seem much less oppressive. The poison refresh on some of the moves is useful, but I personally think the refresh on Croak is insane. Toxicroak has pretty good mobility and can most likely find a spot in the stage to perform a full screen refresh on all poisoned opponents. On top of the buffs that Toxicroak gets from the move already, giving him stronger poison and a poison effect from being grabbed AND the ability to switch into Sucker Punch if foes get too close, this move becomes devastatingly powerful. I think an AoE refresh would work better, and would give Toxicroak the option of taking a hit to refresh poison with Croak or counter the foes with Sucker Punch.

There's a lot to like in this set with a unique take on poisoning the foe and how they get un-poisoned. The moves in general follow a great gameplan of both approaching the foe while also forcing foes to approach Toxicroak, a fun balance that often only has one side seen in sets. Moves like Revenge are well translated into Smash while still being fun and unique and not falling victim too hard to Pokemon Sydrome. However, there are definitely issues with the balance of some of the moves and the poison as a whole, which Froy is already aware of. Spots of the set have confusing wording regarding the poison which is added vs. refreshed vs, ticked, and it can be just a bit hard to follow for me in those spots. The grab game has a few interactions with Toxicroak's puddles, though nothing that wasn't really seen before or profound, and Belch is a pretty fun concept for a throw even if I question Toxicroak's mouth integrity after chewing on Bowser, but the grabs and a handful of the standards fall a bit flat compared to some of the really cool moves in the set. This having been said, I enjoyed the set quite a bit, and is definitely in voting range, likely WV+ to RV as is. Also definitely better than Croagunk.
 

UserShadow7989

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
314
Poliwag FrozenRoy FrozenRoy

Well, here's a long time favorite Pokemon of mine! Oddly enough, though, I don't think I've ever used it on my team. Makes me want to go back and rectify that.

Anywho, Poliwag gets good milage out of only 5500-ish words, and in particular demonstrating some interesting soft and hard interactions between its Belly Drum counter/buff and the water left behind by Hydro Pump, respectively- buffing a category of moves with the former with a uniform damage increase and granting case by case benefits/buffs to certain water inputs with the latter. I've always leaned more towards the former for the sake of being easier for a player to figure out and work off of, but the latter can lead to some spectacularly interesting combinations, and tying them to a simple condition keeps them from being too oddball in Poliwag's case.

I feel Poliwag makes for a good read for people interested in joining MYM or polishing up their sets for those reasons; it succinctly demonstrates different types of interactions, and how to properly tie them to practical uses like protecting Poliwag from punishment during its ending lag, or increasing the range of its attacks. It also shows how moves play into each other organically, Bubble creating some nice slow-moving projectiles that can cover the otherwise not too nimble Poliwag on approach or when using its more vulnerable attacks.

That said, while it does its job and makes good use of its central concepts, Poliwag loses some steam at the Aerials and Throws sections. They're all perfectly serviceable inputs and have their own proper niches, even giving him a defined way of playing in the air, but most of them didn't really stand out to me beyond that. Down Aerial and Back Throw are probably my favorites of the lot, with the others having nice interplay for mix-ups, or catching the opponent in your setup, but not tying into the core as much. They're good, just not as attention-grabbing as what came before them.

Poliwag is a set that does more with less, and is a prime example of how to follow that design philosophy. It's a light read worth everyone's time to look over.



Bounty Hunter KafkaKomedy KafkaKomedy

An interesting character choice from an interesting game! I'm assuming 'grid' refers to a Training Stage Unit (one of the boxes made of a 5x5 grid of smaller boxes, roughly Kirby-sized, 3.2 Units wide = 1 Battlefield platform)? Make sure to define a measurement term such as this for the first mention of it in the set. Another good reference point for reach in this case is the Belmont whip covers almost exactly 4 Units.

Off the bat, I'd recommend you give some visual indicator of someone being marked. Knowing he's landed the Mark will help keep BH from accidentally wasting it or trying to apply it again when it's already there, and it adds to the pressure on his opponents if they know it's on. This would also help hypothetical players trying him out to know what it does. Make sure to note whether knockback is increased with damage buff, since 1.5x damage is a big buff to knockback by association.

I like the ways he can bait shield and play off of it in general; scoring a free buff, poking below, chipping away at the foe, etc. He feels very much as you describe in his playstyle section, fighting carefully to exploit weaknesses and avoid being put on the backfoot.

That said, his inputs get a bit bland past the specials; they don't need to be especially flashy, indeed they've already got some neat visuals here and there. When working with simple moves, one way to add depth is to consider attack strings, how well they play into other inputs, etc. If an input doesn't seem to work well into any other (either for combo, cross up, etc) or fill a niche not covered by others, it might need some small added quality or tweak to it.

Talking about how it gels with the set's core concepts (in this case how useful they are with Mark, or poking the foe behind their shield) is a good option, and I see some of the inputs doing that already. Down Throw creating a situation where Bounty Hunter's reach gives him a very strong edge is an example of what I'd like to see more of. Forward Smash (though a bit extreme on the balance side of things) is another, working off of all the shield bait, and Down Smash providing openings and contributing to his stage control options.

I wish I could offer something better to work with than just "more", but I feel that's the crux of the matter for how to improve upon Bounty Hunter. It feels like there could stand to be one other twist or aspect to the set's core, or a little touch of something else on the other inputs, possibly both. There's nothing wrong with what Bounty Hunter has now that really needs fixed aside from the touches I mentioned regarding his Neutral Special.

As a side note, priority is in almost every case connected to an input's damage. I only saw a mention of it in Up Smash and it wasn't really misused in the way it was mentioned that I can tell, but saying that for postery's sake is something I'm compelled to do given how old MYM really did not grasp that.
 
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WeirdChillFever

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The Bee's Knees (Honey Witch Eleanor by U UserShadow7989 )
or "I heard this set was pretty sweet, so I popped by to see what the buzz was all about!"

No really, I've heard a lot of the witches already and seeing you talk about it in the Discord definitely peaked my interest, and when it appeared on my reading list of MYM21 Canon, I rushed to finally check it out and it didn't disappoint.

In fact, the simple-but-sweet-but-also-deep-and-complicated interaction between the Honey and the Swarm is the best set core I've read thus far. The Honey sticks throughout the set and the Swarm is a good blend between simple obstacle, minion and controllable disjoint. The concept is easy to grasp. The Swarm is a source of damage and it's up to Eleanor to control it and manipulate the AI with the Honey.
On the other hand, the concept is also hard to master, but it always feels like you can master it, which is a big feat since we're talking about a mostly AI-controlled mechanic here.
Mostly everything is covered with just a few moves. For direct control, there's Up Special and the Glue Orb. For brief recalibrations, there's Honey puddles, and Eleanor's staff. There wasn't a degree in minion control I "missed", so to speak.

The Side Special is a nice buffing move and making Honey universally applicable through one move means it doesn't clutter up the rest of the set, although if I read it correctly, the charge is knocked out of Ellie if she's hit? I assume it works similar to Samus's Charge Shot where she loses the charge if she's hit during the charge, instead of losing a fully charged and stored Side Special upon being hit.

While the Specials shine in providing the needed options, the melee toes the line with both fun and enriching mechanics, like the Forward Tilt, Forward Smash, Up Smash, and Down Smash (combining the quintessential delete button with a Smash is a good solution and it doesn't detract from the Smash), but also some options provided by the normals that range from harmless yet unneccesary (Up Tilt's extra swarm, Back Air's multikick, Down Smash's suction) to being a bit cluttery and detracting from the golden core set (Neutral Air's projectile dash, Forward Air's projectile)

While the extra options are nice and most of them either add significantly to Eleanor's mechanic or are harmless in their simplicity, the times it oversteps that line can make the set a bit grating to read and be a bit too much sweetness.

That said, the times when it does nail the line is when the set has its best interactions. Two Smashes directly spreading its effect to the Honey Puddles is really good for stage control and both Forward Tilt and Forward Smash capitalise off of the reflect Eleanor has.

All around, definitely a recipe for succes, but it occasionally goes overboard with the flavors in my taste

Xenolance Chroncles X (Xaldin by FrozenRoy FrozenRoy )
Xaldin is good obviously. The concept is golden and I'd be honestly shocked if such a concept wouldn't turn out to wield a set as good as Xaldin, especially in the hands of a veteran as FrozenRoy
While I make it seem like the set was destined to be a home-run, I still want to adress the craftmanship that went in it, such as by praising the balance of a seemingly destined-to-OP mechanic. Moves that can only be disjointed when performed with two lances at once are sprinkled throughout exactly enough to not give Xaldin a free hitbox at all times, but also not so common that Xaldin ever feels like a Solo Popo.

Furthermore, not every move needs to bring a new interaction, and each new interaction present actually adds something. Sometimes the best interaction is simply "Disjointed Lances can/can't pull off the move", making special occassions like the Down Tilt projectile or the Up B even bigger treats, as well as helping the balance by not always giving your set an option for each occasion.

The fact that Froy makes this level of decision-making look natural, simply innate to the mechanic chosen, is a big hint towards his craftmanship and experience as setmaker, and it what makes Xaldin such a good read.

That said, the balance of the set makes or breaks by something....not specifically mentioned in the set and that is the range of the spears! If these badboys are all Ganondorf-sized, that screws with the balance of the entire set. It'd make Xaldin's poking game infuriating and even a mediocre managing of the spears would be oppresive. The fact that such a thing is seemingly missing has my eyebrows (and iconic sideburns) raised because it is dealbreaking on a set that already seems terrifying in the hands of someone capable, let alone a strategy master

Della Duck: Lets It Go (Idella The Frost Witch by U UserShadow7989 )

In a lot of ways, Idella is comparable to Eleanor, both being staff-wielding mages that exchange mobility and traditional fighting power with the status effect of their choosing.
The main flaw of the set imo, stems from where the comparison between the two stops. Whereas Eleonora has the Swarm as a stellar written minion, with several layers of control and synergy with most relevant moves, the Golem is a less big part of Idella's gameplan.

In exchange, while Ellie's moves sometimes felt too much, all of Idella's moves synergize exactly right with the rest of her kit.
The frosting state is a great mechanic on its own, and is properly balanced and stuff

In order to get a possible Super Vote, I can't tell you what to do. Somehow, you got it exactly right with the Swarm and if the Golem can prove to be a similar X-Factor, that unique spark and synergy that made my mind explode in just two moves with Ellie, you're golden with Idella Menzel.
 
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FrozenRoy

Smash Lord
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The Reading and Editing Period has been extended until March 18th! Voting and Reading Period will end at the end of March 31st! You got plenty of time now, folks!
 

MasterWarlord

Smash Champion
Joined
Aug 24, 2008
Messages
2,911
ULRICH HETFIELD

This set was advertised as the frontrunner that was most obviously my style, and it delivers with very direct minion/trap interactions with the puddle and blood puppet. The primary core I felt was the ftilt and the smashes that more made up the core of his game, as the first few moves were more of the set-up for the payoff, really. You made the minion's simplistic pattern of chasing for 4 seconds before sitting in place and firing as a turret for 4 seconds work surprisingly well for how basic and predictable that is. Ulrich often just benefits from the minion dying by stupidly killing itself off the ledge, so they can't attack its HP to hurt Ulrich. The set-ups get pretty elaborate with delaying and playing off of projectiles that go through the blood puppet at X point, particularly with that great fthrow.

I was personally already questioning the balance a bit of having a minion that hurts you when the foe attacks it. Yes, it offers tons of versatility to his set-ups, but you have to get there in the first place. If this set wasn't as aware as it was about that with offering lots of alternative options to get projectiles into your puppet and play off of it in the ways that it is, this set wouldn't be nearly as well designed as it is. You really do have a mountain to overcome here, and you do a good job of justifying the downsides of the blood puppet. Obviously you can just make the foe take the damage from the blood puppet anyway, but that's not a guarantee.

The grab-game was probably my favorite part of the set when all is said and done. Ulrich always want to play around with the space close to his puppet to get the various set-ups he wants and have the puppet be able to help him in neutral, so it's pretty reasonable for him to find some time to pump blood to use for later. The fthrow is still my favorite with the potential for delayed explosions when used on the puppet/pumped blood, but the dthrow provides a lot of utility, with the wings making it so the puppet can't be casually killed off-stage to get rid of the problem when it's bound to the foe, and the cannon boosting the bullet hell aspect. The bthrow's effect is pretty important too when you're going to find yourself doing pumping the puppet so often to help better defend yourself, without going through the lengthier cargo fthrow animation. The uthrow, as simple as it is by letting him directly leech off the puppet, is very needed to help heal the piles of damage he will have inevitably taken from the blood puppet's existence.

Overall, quite the enjoyable set. The last section with the aerials failed to grab me as much, most particularly with the nair that basically says his melee is bad and he needs a better catch all move for that and the uair which is basically a kill move, which he doesn't seem to be lacking in. I wasn't sold on his other aerials being that bad to begin with, and the bair and dair were pretty well designed and used well with the Up Special. His melee game when he's not being pulled along by the Up Special isn't interesting, but it's fairly important the guy isn't helpless without set-up context. Not exactly the biggest crime you could've committed.
 
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WeirdChillFever

Smash Hero
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Somewhere Out There
Elpizo by FrozenRoy FrozenRoy
Elpizo is an ambitious set. Creating a set where each move has a possible upgrade is not just a slouch at face value, where creating all these effects and making them all unique and interesting is a very high-risk effort.
At a deeper level, another threat arises: Opportunity cost. With the upgrades ending as Elpizo dies, there's only so many moves Elpizo can buff and with twenty-something distinct possibilities, there's a lot to choose.

And with the buffs being quite specific, it's quite hard to strategize around. Players will often be more left wondering "wish O upgraded that", rather than creating situations where the buffs can work best, since one can't anticipate needing a roll-prevention tool (except by going on For Glory I guess)

While Froy's setmaking ability cannot be doubted, I think the concept is interesting, but not interesting enough to jump through all those hoops for. Still, Froy jumped through all these hoops and jumped the hurdles quite skillfully, which is again a testament to his ability.

Even though the concept is flawed, Froy did an amazing job handling it, since despite all the pitfalls inherit to it, it was still a great read.
 

ForwardArrow

Smash Ace
Joined
Aug 17, 2011
Messages
503
Omega
The Jim Jims The Jim Jims I apologize that neither I nor it seems anyone else have given this set commentary, as its pretty impressive for a first effort. Omega's disadvantage state is absolutely awful and unlike Ganondorf, you don't really give him the power to make up for it in his advantage state, rather a set of rather unique specials. The big one that stuck out to me for this is the Small Shield, as while I'm not usually a fan of limited "per stock" options having it as something of a get out of jail free card to compensate for his weaknesses is pretty cool, allowing Omega to get back to his solid neutral/advantage state if something goes wrong. You do have to be smart with when and how you use them, and you've written out in decent detail how all these moves cover each other's weaknesses. As far as other individual moves go, I'm actually a fan of Dair, it strikes me as a pretty skill intensive move that makes the process of just landing as Omega interesting, and that's not really a subject I even see covered in a lot of movesets.

My primary issue with this set is actually the Specials, 4 of which(counting Shield Special) are gated behind a "limited per stock" ammo mechanic. Omega has 3 separate ammo banks which clutter the UI, and if he runs out of any of the ammo sources he straight up cannot use those moves for the rest of the stock. Inkling and Robin, the main characters in the game who can "run out of ammo", are both capable of getting their ammo back at some point later in a stock, its not really very satisfying to just never have any chance to refuel. I mean even in Omega's home game, he can obviously scavenge more ammo or guns if he runs out, in Smash he just doesn't have that. This also slightly bothers me because the wall and explosives are honestly not even very strong moves on their own merits, especially not the wall. For how much its advertised as the set's core, it has very flimsy stamina and provides the extremely weak reward of "the high ground" for the resources invested in it. I'm not even really convinced by Omega's set that being on the high ground benefits him that much, if anything it might set him up to get juggled. The SCAR by comparison just seems weirdly frustrating to play against, basically just locking the foe down as long as you unload on them. The Small Shield is the only time I was actually convinced on the set doing per stock limited ammo banks, and it strikes me as especially baffling on the wall when its so weak.

Regardless, you're actually pretty good at designing melee combat, and I would encourage you to try again after this set. I'm a bit stingy with my votes and honestly I think a set like this with better specials is something I could ever give that kind of support too, which is very impressive for how early in your career you are.

Girimehkala
If you're going to call him the elephant, than so am I, makes this job a bit easier. Anyway, elephant here has a great Neutral Special in Beast Eye, a hard option to commit too that allows him to counteract his slowness by attacking twice at once, which is a downright incredible advantage. The amount of factors holding Beast Eye back prevent this mechanic from feeling nearly as overbearing as a lot of multi-attacking sets have in the past, though even beyond that you play things very carefully with not giving the elephant good combo options, to prevent him from just sentencing foes to a casual 0 to Death in Ultimate's combo-heavy engine. The set's melee in general feels pretty competently designed, the potential combinations the aerials make with Up Special all being interesting and the standards and smashes providing a number of satisfying ways to play off Beast Eye's capabilities. Honestly some of my favorite bits come in Up Special, Dair, and Dash Attack where the particular movement abilities of these attacks set up the ability to use a second attack at once from a unique positioning that attack could never have before. In spite of how incompetent he is as a "comboer", the Elephant actually feels quite viable overall while not actually being especially overpowered, which is impressive given he has a pretty different gameplan from most characters in the game.

My issue with the elephant comes from, and I know this sounds ridiculously nitpicky, how his power is distributed rather than how strong he is overall. 60 frames of lag to activate Beast Eye is genuinely pretty hard to activate and I feel there's a lot of matches where the Elephant will just never even get one off to ever become a competent threat. The reason I say he's probably still a competitive threat despite that is the absolutely ludicrous ledge game the elephant has, capped off by a really strong recovery, the extremely powerful counter wall, and the hands. The combination of the wall and hands locks down the opponent very hard into a situation that it feels like they'll never really come back from realistically if they're near a ledge, and it feels like with these tools if the foe gets pushed to a ledge they may as well just die. The combination of poison breath and Up Smash into what is basically an instant kill also feels like a bit much to me, it feels just a bit too easy for the elephant to cheese early kills with that. I'm also not really sure I agree with the principle behind the throws that create "alternatives to damage percent" with the weight loss and rage increase, at that point why not just give the elephant more options to deal damage?

If I were to make particular suggestions that I think should be looked at above all else, I think the wall's range absolutely needs to be nerfed, as fun as the option you described with it in FSmash sounds, there's a reason projectiles that strong and with that much range don't exist without more setup than the elephant has to do for that in Smash. It'd also make the ledge situation a fair bit less overbearing to deal with. If the wall, instant kills, and hands lose power though, I think the elephant should absolutely get some put back into Beast Eye, making it more practical to use in any given match. Cutting its lag by a considerable amount once his cheesier tools are weakened would make the set more interesting in my eyes, as it puts more focus on fully utilizing the powerful "combine two attacks" options the set has available without just a single one of them meaning the end for an opponent at 0%.

For the record, in spite of my complaints, I think the set is worth voting as is, and I'm very glad you made it. Its not everyday people who have been around for a long time make sets with experimental balance, and the Elephant pushing the extremes of slow and heavy is good ground to cover for future sets.

Rintaro/Kyouma
I don't think you need me to tell you what's wrong with this set, its pretty obvious from a quick glance. As cool as the concepts provided in the Specials are, the set puts in a pretty minimal amount into playing off them, and its not like enough detail is put in for it to be interesting melee on its own right. This was a 5k word set made for a character I don't think you were very convinced on the set potential of, but basically it meant I can't vote for this set despite it having my favorite concepts of any set you posted this contest.

That said, its a cool basis. The basic blaster pistol has a pretty fun effect if fully charged, not being a true stun but allowing Rintaro to put a lot of pressure on the opponent, sometimes in ways a normal stun of that length couldn't. It becomes a lot scarier when you consider that you can potentially make this shot recur via the ability to recur projectiles from an earlier point in time by storing them in the microwave and then going back in time to when those projectiles are out. The set also messes with the idea of a breakable weapon you can reset back to normal with this, which I thought was a very cool idea even if it wasn't used much. Honestly, given this guy's esoteric collection of gadgets, you probably could have done more with that than just the one breakable glowstick. My biggest problem with the set's core honestly is just, aside from it not being used well, the time travel mechanic is insanely underpowered. Having to commit to it for so much time to get a relatively minor effect on the actual match that only exists for some, admittedly situationally strong, interactions. If I had to make a suggestion, I'd allow Rintaro to attack while the move is charging and still have it get interrupted if he gets hit, a second button press activating the time travel. It'd make it a lot more viable to do things like fix the glowstick and get a good number of projectiles time traveling.

In any case, its cool stuff and I kinda hope the ideas here come back in another set. On a final note, the characterization of this guy who proclaims himself to be a god of technology when he's making these goofy, underwhelming inventions is pretty funny, the quotes serve to make this set more entertaining to read. Should we actually call him Rintaro Okabe or Hououin Kyouma? The set refers to him as the later but we're currently calling him the former into set list.

Misko
Of your non-Kilton sets, this is the one I ended up enjoying the most. The set's core concept of spreading fire to things being pretty much universally good is actually something I enjoy a lot, I know a lot of times when sets mess with fire in a similar way they kind of bog it down in "this is okay to set on fire, this isn't" and it makes the set feel a lot clunkier and less fun. Here, you want your torch on fire, you want your food on fire because that cooks it, you want your sword on fire when that mechanic kicks in, and even sometimes you want the fire to hit your barrels. Not all the time, mind you, the barrels are the one factor where actually controlling the fire matters, but that's good because having at least something to not want it spreading for means there's some strategy to the fire beyond "how do I spread this". If that sounds contradictory with the first point, its partially fine because you can always just not use the barrel if you don't want to worry about the risk it provides and its one element of many you can concern yourself with. I think one of my favorite things to do with the fire is combining it with the breakable spear you can get from the chest to try to land both a flaming and breaking spear on the opponent for a super powerful hitbox. The set gives Misko a surprising amount of options for "hard to set up but really strong payoff" scenarios, like the one with the arrow on Bair, that I happen to enjoy a lot while never reaching the point the whole set feels impractical.

I definitely have my complaints with the set, while it has some options to allow you to style on foes very hard and a centralizing core with the fire, the set kind of branches off in a ton of different directions. The torch, the chest items, whether you want your fire sword on or off, the lanterns, the bomb barrels that you specifically want to move around with the non-flammable spear, these things are generally decent material. I think juggling all of them at once is something the set is not equipped for, the torch in particular feels like something that should not have been trapped to only three moves to make Misko more predictable if he wants to chain hits with it, but not as hilariously predictable as he is right now when basically everything he does with the torch is the exact same. Doesn't give it much depth to its use too. There's also the arrow, which has a very cool application on Bair, but it feels a bit random to have a specific item that only gets its payoff on Bair for playstyle relevance. Its not handled as badly as I make it sound give you can just throw it, but it feels pretty bizarre. I'm not too fond of the obscuring smoke in general, for reasons I think I might've said in chat with Nabbit, it basically just makes a guessing game and takes out the foe's ability to play against you properly, even if its made a lot less annoying by its short duration.

At this point I'm just nitpicking, but I figure I'll talk about the treasure chest since some of the problems are easily fixable. The spear and arrow are pretty good, and I'm fine with the food items as another fire-based reward, but the apple and bird drumstick are absolute garbage as treasure chest rewards go. Needing to commit to two slashes to get 3% out of the bird drumstick is a comical amount of commitment for such a small heal, and the apple heals either 0.2% or 1,2%, which is such a laughable amount of healing it may as well not happen. I also kinda wish it just came from being hit by fire rather than a certain number of flame sword hits to flow a bit better with the set's other options, and for that matter, I think the treasure chest could afford to not be random chance based. I get the idea behind it flavor-wise, but it would be a lot less annoying to get screwed over by getting apples over the more interesting spear or arrow if you could just charge the move X amount to choose you result instead.

Still, this is a pretty fun read and I found it surprisingly never feels like all the nitpicks I've mentioned ever really break anything, they're just that. Nitpicks preventing the set from being deeper or as fun as it could be. It shows you clearly have a good idea of how to make interesting sets by now, just that there's work to be done on ironing out individual flaws.

Kamoshida
With a general decline in the amount of minions I've seen this contest, Kamoshida's take on them is really refreshing and good. The set starts out with a core concept of a rebounding projectile, slaves to play volleyball with your projectiles to keep them in play, and a spectacular finisher on Up Special where you launch all of them in an incredibly powerful state back onto the stage to create mass pandemonium. What really sold me on it though was the demons, with every single one of them having a good mechanic for influencing Kamoshida's projectile game. From the many targets the Pyro Jacks create, the kelpie's ability to store and redirect projectiles, the unique contribution of Andras' "time bomb"-like effect to your bullet hell and minion buffs, the Archangel's Vajra Blast walls, and Eligor's double targets and highly threatening presence all each provide a valuable, unique contribution that I feel minion sets that provide several minions often fail to do. Its a really strong core that makes a genre I often find myself getting bored of(projectile redirection) manage to feel fresh and enjoyable to read.

Honestly, the execution from that point on is one I rarely held issue with. Kamoshida plays off his volleyball and minions in very satisfying ways, definently getting into some very wacky interactions but they never feel too impractical or like they don't serve the set by adding an appopriate amount of depth. I think my actual favorite move might be the Up Throw of all things, because its a really exciting way to use all the volleyballs you have left on stage and seems like visually it would be exceptionally satisfying to pull off. Also really enjoyed the Forward Tilt's contributions to the projectile game, the Down Throw's ability to use all your projectile-related stuff on the foe, basically all the Smashes, Nair's ability to hook onto things to further your air game, there's a shocking number of standout moves in this set and they all honestly flow together pretty well. The set has a decent few options to remain practical too, so its not always delving into crazy things on every move and stays just grounded enough for all the fun its having. I even really like the characterization, fully showcasing how much of an abusive monster Kamoshida is on his minions and with some fun writing relating to his status as a teacher/coach. You probably specifically intended those goofy physics comments for me and I did enjoy them. If I were to complain about one thing, the set might be a bit overtuned right now given how many projectiles the set can have out at once based on setups that don't seem THAT hard at times, but it doesn't really feel downright unfair. Fantastic set, definitely up there with Ulrich for one of my favorites in the contest.

Copy X
An old man named Rool once said that MYM likes its versatility as variations on a theme. That old man is dead now, but he's right, I'm in MYM, and I do like variations on a theme for my versatility. Copy X makes the very smart decision as a weapon switch set to push the entire set towards a specific playstyle of projectile spam and pressure, but switching weapons allows him to take different angles on how he approaches that. This is the kind of thing I need to make a weapon switch not feel like its just creating a set where the options ultimately don't flow together, but the set's projectiles definently are easier to have multiples of out at a time if you're cycling through your options, and a lot of moves set up into or out of projectiles of another type better than their own. Its all simple stuff, sure, but with this as a basis the amount of options the set has stops being needless fluff and actually starts being proper depth, and the set delivers and impressive level of projectile-based play while not actually manipulating said projectiles much.

There were complaints leveled against the set's melee and non-weapon switch moves, and for the most part I don't find myself agreeing with them. The presence of Side Special as a scary presense out of any melee move and the slower projectiles setting up combos mean a lot of these simpler moves are honestly fine as they are, contributing plenty to the playstyle in spite of their simplicity. I will say that while the melee works fine, I do think the two more lackluster throws could've been developed a bit more than they were, they're fine as basic options but I think they stick out as not as good as the rest of the set. I'll also be honest, I don't think it quite makes the top tier of vote for the simple reason that no individual function this set had made me go "oh wow, that's really cool/has tons of depth" because of how basic the approach is. And that's fine, but it just means that I can't muster quite as much enthusiasm for it as I can some of the top tier sets, but this is a very solid moveset that everyone should read.
 
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Slavic

Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars
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Himiko is the first Katapultar Katapultar set I've read this contest that really screams Kat and it's a very good set. The set covers a girth of options for the player within, like, every move, and the clear love for the character shines all the way through to the very important Dio matchup at the bottom of the set. The use of Toga's Quirk is radical; only copying the physical moves and limiting the special usage keeps her from being too mirror-matchy even while literally mirroring the opponent which I really like. It's a smart solution to allowing her to keep her own kit intact while also giving her access to the foe's whole set, working well with the 'sudden burst' playstyle she works around. The mechanic for how long she can stay is well balanced, allowing her to very easily build up her timer while also requiring her to play the game to gain it. It's weird to spend like an entire paragraph just ranting about the first move in the set, but the way Toga gains access to all of the foe's minions and constructions is a great emulation of the distrust that she is known for forming among people, and is, again, well balanced as she has to stop attacking the foe to mess up their setup while still benefiting from it. The dynamic tear for foes and Toga regarding buffs and power levels is a great concept too because it puts that choice in both players' hands and it's rare to get a mechanic like that where it really is double-edged in a good way.

While the main star of the specials is Transform, her Up Special "I'm Toga" has such insane depth for an Up Special that it deserves special mention as well, with multiple choices for Toga to make throughout the move along with the command grab that make the move act like the World's Best Falcon Dive. The Up Special has a whole mechanic with the blood splatter refreshing her queue, which on 99% of sets would be a horrible place to put that mechanic, but because Toga has so many mobility options from this move she can pull it off about from anywhere. The tether and the knife attacks are pretty simple when compared to the previous moves, but this it works great; the tether does its two jobs very simply and well, allowing it draw blood and keep Toga facing the opponent at all times, and the knives are great for drawing blood quickly and safely. It's a great set of specials for a character who wouldn't seem to have that much potential at face value. While normally just having a weak standard game as a balance to whatever mechanic (in this case collecting blood and racking damage for Transform) is a boring way of balance since it just makes a character weaker for the sake of a few moves, Toga has the privilege of using Transform to get much better standards when she needs them, and when she doesn't need those stronger moves she can go back to her own kit to work on drawing blood and the like. Down Smash is one of the cooler Smashes I've seen and I'm pretty sure the only one I've seen that comes out before charging which is very cool. Even within the Grab Game her Down Throw essentially just becomes another Grab Game, and it's just so impressively built as a set that the few short moves don't even feel bad because they lend themselves to giving the reader a little break.

As much as I love the set, I do still have a few issues with it. First, and probably my biggest, is that Chu Chu gets weirdly complicated at one point for, I think, little payoff. Right after the GIF of Tsu and Toga, it talks about essentially pinning the foe with Himiko's needles (which I do like), but has the weird visual of Himiko curving the move which I think is one of the few totally unnecessary choices in the set. The big reward for landing these hits is slamming foes against the surfaces of stages, which is primarily why she has the ability to curve the attack because walls are pretty rare around stages. It's a weird effect that doesn't flow with the rest of the set in terms of both style and function, I think, with Himiko having cooler ways of putting foes into positions. A Corrin-style pin could be something fun with this move, allowing perhaps blood to be drawn through the needles without having to worry about the tether breaking or anything similar. Despite this, the rest of the set really does shine in inspiration and design. There's a clear amount of love for the set and character and it's a very fun read, and the links throughout the set to things like Stale Move Negation are very welcomed. Definitely one of the better sets I've read this contest!

Chalis by @Smash Daddy is not only the closest to a poison set Smady has posted this contest but one that's full of a lot of cool interactions. Interactions on their own in a set by a leader isn't the most standout thing, but Chalis is in a unique spot where her interactions largely revolve around her mobility and sudden approaches and escapes. This makes for a cool style of set where the setup, especially revolving around the Portal, mostly provides Chalis the ability to force the opponent to make and give sudden reads on many of Chalis' attacks. This is a fun advantage that still feels balanced, as foes and Chalis will both have to make reads and if Chalis is careless she can get hit on a bad approach by a fair number of moves and waste the foe's Delusion. I've always wanted to do an Up Special like the Portal, I think the ability to use a lingering teleporting hitbox to affect fighters, minions, and constructs is very fun and has a lot of potential. Chalis has a lot in her kit to play off of it, allowing her to pull it across the stage, angle it, throw projectiles or entire attacks through them to surprise the foe. The set carries a lot of this style of gameplay, including allowing Chalis to leap from mines produced from her Down Smash into Portals and back through them if they're moving.

This leads to one of my big two problems with the set; the flow. While the interactions on Chalis are very enjoyable, a handful of times they start to feel a bit rigid and kind of clash with me as a reader. A good example of this is the Up Smash. The burning heart (hearty pyre is a great pun btw) is an interesting move but the fact that it's a slow moving projectile that just sort of hangs around for a while to work as both an end to a Portal and to extend Delusion's effect makes it feel just sort of dropped into the set without really playing into the mobility in a unique way. The Dark Mines are kind of tacky but it's still fun and fitting for her to pounce on them to Junkrat launch her through her portals, whereas the heart's just sort of there. This also leads into the second problem I have with the set which is Delusion. I mentioned this in the Discord already, but I have a similar problem with Chalis that I had with Toxicroak, and that's the damage from NSpec is very good without requiring her to get in close to actively fight the opponent. It's not as egregious here, as Chalis' set is built around spacing the foe while Toxicroak's is about getting in close, but Chalis also has the ability to refresh and extend it with Firecracker. In general, the damage that Chalis can deal passively with her perfume, combined with her very strong mobility and spacing options, might make her a bit unfun to play against, but as I mentioned earlier the fact that Chalis relies more on reads makes it a bit more balanced. All in all I do enjoy this set quite a bit, even if I think it has some balance and flow issues, and this is definitely within range of a RV at least from me at the moment.
 
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WeirdChillFever

Smash Hero
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Paper Mario 4 (Paper Witch Mint by U UserShadow7989 )
Paper Witch is once again a witch set, with a main mechanic which every single normal interacts with in their own way. While you might by now know my personal opinion on this toolbox kind of movesetting, I felt like it actually worked on Paper Witch Mint. It felt engaging this time, and each move activated my imagination on how I'd use it on the scrolls and logs to send them all over the screen to trap opponents (making it the 32-pencil box version of Xaldin, im a way?)

One question about the scrolls though. The set says they replicate a move of your choosing, but how does that work animation-wise? Does a Paper Paper Witch Mint appear to copy the move? Does the scroll fold itself into a copy of Mint? Does the scroll fold in the weapon used?
I'm a bit confused how that worked, which kinda hampered my ability to really let myself dive deep into the set and have Paper Witch dance in my mind with what's otherwise every crafting kid's dream crafting tool kit.
 

ForwardArrow

Smash Ace
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Aug 17, 2011
Messages
503
Aatrox
You've at one point said you thought this was your weakest set this contest, but this being your worst is a pretty good sign for your overall quality. Aatrox runs off a trifecta of buffs, Deathbringer Stance, Blood Thirst/Price, and World Ender(and the associated blood well mechanic), and all three of them are at least kind of interesting to use. You can in some cases stack the results of these for some massively powerful results if you can get all your mechanics to align properly, and doing so certainly feels satisfying, juggling the self-damage and cooldown timers properly to pull out some pretty terrifying moves. The set follows it up with some solid melee, using Neutral Special for a sort of "delayed" Dancing Blade to work the rest of your set into and occasionally combo into itself and a wide variety of moves that are designed with paying out(IE Dash Attack/FThrow) or building up(IE Down Smash) the mechanics. While it rarely gets into especially impressive territory, its if nothing else a set that feels like it would be satisfying to play well.

Aatrox's biggest flaw, unfortunately, is a big component of its core in World Ender. For the record, I don't hate World Ender, the idea of the blood well revival mechanic is certainly a neat upside. That said, an absurd amount of Aatrox's power is locked in World Ender, between him having Deathbringer Stance on every move and it basically being the main way you get Blood Well bonuses going at all. This becomes a pretty extreme seesaw when you consider this move may as well be Aatrox's entire recovery, and he has a 12 second cooldown window when its down when his only recovery move is something better dedicated to being a microspacer. Does this feel approrpriate as a downside to reviving with it? Yeah, I thought that part of the dynamic was cool. But Aatrox could really use something else to recover when its just on cooldown rather than outright denied, he could even lose it on reincarnation and/or have it delay his chance to go into World Ender but as is Aatrox is just going to get destroyed when its on cooldown.

Point is, its a decent set despite being nothing revolutionary, but it would really be nice if World Ender was not something he needs so drastically that even it going on cooldown is enough for him to frequently get wrecked. As far as this kind of risky buff mechanic goes, I think Necalli did it quite a bit better, so while I'd say this is worth people's time to read, Necalli is a better time investment if you haven't checked it out yet.

Hollow Knight
Its been a while since you've made a set and you admittedly could've come back on a worse note than Hollow Knight. Its a very basic meter based set, with satisfyingly powerful results for cashing in on a full meter in the specials so if nothing else it actually feels worth building up, and the set has solid presentation and animations. Ironically though, I think the set ended up going overboard on giving payoff, with attacks expending meter frequently capable of dealing in excess of 50% with low KO percentages, or, more terrifyingly, outright healing 40%. Its not like the Knight is terribly weak or starved for KO options when its down(FSmash strikes me as pretty extreme in terms of power for a small lightweight like this character), and the meter fills reasonably fast so its not that hard to pull off the big, full meter versions if you just save up a little. The set also doesn't really provide as much substance to gathering meter as I'd like, you could at least make him have to weigh between more damaging options and less effective but more effective for power building ones, the set not really having to make any strategic decisions around the meter except what to spend it on. The set could also really afford to spend more time talking about how attacks work together beyond just the absolute basics and how much meter it builds, ultimately leading to a set I find hard to envision the actual playstyle of, and what is there isn't the most inspiring. Its a nice looking set at least, so I can at least say in terms of feeling satisfying to read and utilizing the series' fairly strong animation-style, you've done well enough.

Simirror
Simirror's core actually feels really inspired, I can actually see why you thought it was your best when you posted it. Simirror's duplicate is really well designed, serving as a very intuitive feeling way to, pretty simply, just throw out two hitboxes at once. It of course has the problem of having a second hurtbox out as well, actually feeling very fair, and I did think it was an interesting idea to mess with using it on the foe as was explored in Down Throw. While the attack animations the set has do at least feel neat with having Simirror multiplying his body from multiple points to attack, I was on the whole a little disappointed by the way it was used. You don't really make an attack that feels specialized to dealing with two foes at once, or one that feels especially interesting with the foe between two copies of the hitbox. I mean, yeah Simirror can get some mileage out of the attacks you gave him for this, but I'd sort of hope for a more specialized kit to play off the advantages of splitting up your hitboxes and hurtboxes like this because it offers a ton of potential for interesting melee and projectile options.

Speaking of projectile options, the main idea Simirror has is reflecting projectiles back and forth between the two copies. This is, for what its worth, actually cool as a basis and I think it'd be a fine starting point even if I would like more out of the melee. There's a really big problem with this, and its the fact that Simirror straight up does not have his own projectiles. Instead, you're going to have to rely on the ones the foe gives you for the myriad of reflector moves the set has. It strikes me as kind of silly and redundant to have so many reflectors, and as an aside some of them leave Simirror in a move's duration for way too long to ever serve as a reasonable tilt, begging to be punished by a foe using their non-projectile options with their 45 frame or full second durations. While I don't like how ridiculously hard long lasting reflectors shut down projectiles, I know Fox's reflector exists as a precedent for it in Smash but I never considered Fox's reflector a remotely fair way to handle projectiles and at least he only has it on one input. That said, with how hilariously punishable you've made a large portion of his melee game just to counter projectiles, I'm pretty sure even the most projectile heavy characters in Smash and modern MYM can shrug off losing access to their projectiles to just punish Simirror when in neutral he can barely use his tilts at all. The reflectors are just really not handled well at all, but above all else it would be the first step to allowing Simirror to coherently use the options you gave him to give him his own projectile to reflect back and forth. As is, this is a set with a genuinely great concept squandered by not flowing into it and some incredibly wonky uses of reflectors.

Rime
Okay for the record, the feeling is mutual in regards to Aurelia with enjoying the character and story you made here for Rime quite a bit, and it was fun to work on their dynamic together. Working on this was a blast US, haven't had this much fun with MYM stuff in quite a while and it was actually pretty important to reinvigorating my interest in the contest on a whole lately.

And you know what? I'm not sure how well people will be able to take my stance on this set seriously based on that first bit, but I actually do think this is your best and I really enjoy the way this set plays out. While the friction manipulation is a cool way to mess with your attack patterns, I do think the set's real value lies in the bomb. A timed explosive you can select the on-explosion effect of is decently fun on its own, but you absolutely did not waste the opportunity and made sure to do so much more than that with it. Rime allows for a huge variety of options with the bomb, from applying additional effects like a fire trail or (very temporary) projectile redirection to it, which makes the moves more dedicated to moving it around suddenly a lot more interesting. Its surprising just how many cool setups you can make come out of this one explosive, and you provide some other tools to play off it beyond just the incredible customization options like Down Smash. It makes the moves based around positioning the bomb, stuff I wouldn't normally be too invested in, actually pretty interesting when this one explosive has so much variety to its potential uses.

The set never really loses track of what makes it interesting, with the bomb and juggling it around being the primary focus, but that doesn't mean it doesn't branch out in some interesting ways. Utilizing the friction as a sort of pseudo-weapon switch and hitbox spreader is fun enough, I like the idea of changing it around during your jab to create some pretty varied combo strings or using your semblance setups to spread your Down Smash and then mess with the result using the bomb. While the melee isn't anything that totally took me by surprise, its plenty competent when you factor in the solidly designed aerials and Side Special, giving her some decent ways to play off her friction effects even without always considering the bomb even if that is where the set really comes together. If I had to make a complaint, I guess the melee is not as impressive as some of the top sets and rarely steps above filling the function of "keep her viable while all the fun stuff comes from the bomb". That and a few of the throw effects feel a bit hard to utilize outside of an FFA, but its not a huge deal to me as they still work fine in 1v1 for what they're trying to do and aren't lacking playstyle relevance. Very good work here US, I'm definitely glad to see a set this solid posted alongside my own.
 
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WeirdChillFever

Smash Hero
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Jun 10, 2014
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Going for the gold (Kamoshida by @Smash Daddy)

It's impressive how many genres this set threads on at once. Not only is Kamoshida a projectile-set, there's also minions and even some stage control with Down Smash's Grape Juice Cup (And a bunch of different elements being introduced with one-off moves as well)
That said, it doesn't feel like there's a split between those different playstyles since they flow together naturally into one big pandemonium of bullying and abusive stage control.

The formatting in this set is a bit overwhelming, in the sense that I already felt satisfied with the mechanics present after the Smashes, if not outright stuffed. with Down Smash especially overflowing with seemingly superficial extras like the traction wine or the Christ blood FLUDD.
The moves after that seem to keep the amount of extras down, slowly simmering out.
The core was great though. Flinging around minions is always fun.

Some stray thoughts:
-Back Throw might be too powerful?
-I liked the made-up weapons, they work well as replacements for the Asmodeus boss fight and they inhabit a specific niche in the set as ball slinger and projectile usurping trident respectively
-Balance-wise, it might be a bit heavy on the bullet hell side, but since it seems to be specific set-ups being emphasised it's more for style rather than practical
-Flavor-wise, it's great. The writing is witty and fitting for a grotesque tyran like Kamo

Cross-Copy (Copy X)
After the mechanical maniacs I've read over the past few days, Copy X is a breath of fresh air. Instead of relying on normals to spruce up a set into oblivion, Copy X keeps it simple with a simple premise: The boy's got projectiles and he's not afraid to use them.
This is referenced nicely multiple times in the set, with normals interacting with them in more traditional Smash terms such as applying more pressure, fishing for a Samus-esque shieldbreak or comboing off of the hitstun they give. The same goes for the Nova-move.

The Navi-like tips throughout the set work in making the playstyle come to life, although flavor-wise it could be more diverse instead of going for the "This could work, maybe?" route most of the time. It didn't bother me, but if you're going to be unsubtle about what would be good applications, outright saying things work would work just as well, perhaps?

The set poses a nice balance between Buster-moves and regular moves, with only a few moves interacting with the main mechanic which keeps it meaningful.
So fresh, in fact, that the moves where the elemental stuff does come into play sometimes come off as underwhelming, with the variations being mostly based on the lag/strenght scale. Dash Attack and Forward Throw already go in deeper, but it'd make more sense to differentiate on the more conventional inputs such as Forward Smash (especially since Kamoshida and other sets I've read outright ignore the "Smash" part and treats them as "Specials I Can Only Use On The Ground" instead and maybe I got used to that)
 
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D

Deleted member

Guest
Dead Hand was a character I was very pleased to see, and not just because of all the MYM in-jokes, though I’ll never get over inflating just like a balloon and planting a wet smacker on foes. This set gets one thing right immediately in its characterisation and tone, juggling the serious or gorey aspects of Dead Hand but not going too far. The limited use of bile and blood is a good place to stop. The powers you give to Dead Hand are also logical and don’t push him to do anything notably tacky. Not to say you don’t create some really creative moves here, the highlight for me being the down smash where Dead Hand summons Thing. Makes too much sense and is probably my favourite move!

There are a few balance issues I want to bring up. The Dead Arm grab game has a very powerful pitfall, and the regular pitfall is already as strong as K. Rool’s. The more powerful version utilizing both arms should also be much weaker, just because Dead Hand can potentially be right next to the foe as the dead arms are disjointed. If not outright too powerful, it just concerns me because a stun this powerful somewhat invalidates the other throws, K. Rool’s own set suffers a little from this once foes get above 125% or so and utilt is a kill confirm. I’d state both are a lot weaker than they are, I’d suggest making the stronger version as good as K. Rool’s and the regular one a good deal weaker.

If you wanted to expand on this throw, you could talk about what moves can confirm out of a pitfall, for example K. Rool’s utilt is the go-to for its hitbox that hits all the way from below (sweetspot) to above (sourspot). His ftilt is a riskier, stronger option he can angled down to hit buried or generally small foes or angled up to hit foes jumping out of it early, or jump and uair to hit them above, or usmash for the same result. Even if the moves are later in the set, this would go a long ways to helping improve this specific move.

I wasn’t sure about the fsmash’s effect on grabs; I’d much rather the foe simply had reduced traction from being covered in the slime. Increasing grab difficulty is simply inherently not fun for an opposing player. Reduced traction would make foes slide into your dead arms, so it’s in a way more helpful to Dead Hand’s game plan. The same would go for the dthrow in Dead Hand’s actual grab game where the effect comes up again. Dead Hand’s grab game that isn’t the dead arms is probably the weakest part of the set too, I was not a big fan of the fthrow’s gas effect or the animation of the bthrow, though the dead arm grab game is cool enough it’s not a big deal breaker.

When you already have the dead arm grab, I was not sure about the fair and usmash being grabs. I’d personally make those exclusively be shadow platform effects (the fair activating when in the air above a shadow platform) and make them into more traditional attacks when not under those circumstances. The usmash is cool enough to tweak into a Bayonetta usmash type-deal then, but the fair I think could really do with being a more traditional fair like Bowser or Charizard’s given the animation, Dead Hand is so fat he wants an all-around coverage move as fair if he can help it. If you do reduce the strength of the pitfalls in the set, this is pretty justified and really would help to reset the scales of the balance here. Not asking for a totally new move mind you, just to tweak the animation the hands do so Dead Hand has better aerial defences. Nair is actually pretty good in this regard but it isn’t quite enough.

Finally I’d just make some good old number crunch changes to a few parts of the specials. Screamer is a very fun move balance-wise utilizing the stale move queue, but it’s incorrect to state it has “no start up lag.” It has to at least have 1 frame, though admittedly that’s something of a nitpick. Still I’d just say it has 1-2 frames of start up. The down special just seems to have too long of a duration at 8 seconds, I’d make it much lower than that to avoid potential quasi-stalling, or even add a cooldown to the move. I would also remove the ability to control arms underground; I’d make it more like Inkling’s dash dance than a fortress-style move, more like how Screamer is balanced where it’s strong in short bursts. I was not a big fan of the camera shenanigans either, if only because it’s a fairly irrelevant thread in Dead Hand’s playstyle and might be quite annoying to play against.

That’s a lot to take in, and while I do have a laundry list of balance complaints, if you read them you’ll notice besides the fair and if you wanted to rework some of his regular grab game, nothing is all that integral to the set. That is because I actually did really enjoy much of the core set and thought it had a lot of good ideas; the way dead arms work is very thoughtful, the shadow arm interactions are really fun and the playstyle is nicely overwhelming when it’s not too extreme. That’s why I wanted to give an in-depth comment on what does push it into the extreme side as this playstyle does have to strike a delicate balance and there’s no shame that you made a few mistakes along the way. I’d still vote the set as is and it could climb decently high taking my feedback on board! I also have to say I love the extras in this set and that it does feel like an evolution of your style.
 

Ultomato

Smash Master
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Okay, time for my first MYM comment, I guess...

Weavile by PeridotGX PeridotGX
Firstly I wanna say that Weavile is one of my favourite Pokemon and it's a real shame his pokeball was removed. I played a shifter during my last DnD session and when picking a "fast animal", I accidentially said Weavile and my DM allowed it.
So I may be a bit biased towards this mon, but I'll try to be constructive.

The playstyle you describe for him reminds me strongly of his Pokken playstyle. Rush in for high-risk-high-reward combo's, or play carefully on chip damage.

The first issue I came across was very similar to the main issue of my Fawful set, namely the neutral B, hail. You specifically say there is no cap in how long you can charge it, meaning you can throw people off the stage, run away and charge (and apperently Weavile runs really fast so you have plenty of time to charge). No cap to the charge alongside Weaviles ability to run away with ease and sit on the other side of the stage to charge it can easily net a skilled player 10 seconds of charge time, meaning you get 5 seconds of a cloud the size of half a stage on ground level (it's pretty big) that deals damage through shield meaning that fighting Weavile means you get 15,5% of hard to avoid damage every time you try to get back onto the stage. The cloud doesn't seem to be very high, so jumping out of it may be an option, but a very predictable one.

False Swipe, the side-B, has balancing issues as well. You don't specify how long an opponent is stunned but if it's as long as with a broken shield and the move goes as fast and as far as Fox-illusion, you've created... actually just a faster Splat-Roller, which sounds amazingly overpowered.

The upB I loved. The concept is original, it's gimpable but not too vulnerable and you remembered to put in a way to prevent people from waiting in the charge-state too long, showing me you knew exactly what problems this move might have when you were creating it.

The down-B, taunt, poses another issue. You say it's "more strict than other counters" and that you have to hit him "exactly when he uses it" to activate it. Does this mean frame perfect? Because that makes the move unusable for 99% of players. The effect of the "counter" are questionable as well. Yes, you can punish quite quickly since you can cancel taunts in Ultimate, but some characters rely way more on their specials for their playstyle than others. A Samus hit by this move will be in complete panic for 5 seconds while Ike will barely even notice it.
Conceptually I love it. Interpreting Taunt as a counter is right out of Pokken without copying the actual properties of the move, but I don't think this move would see any use outside of gimping bad players, which is very situational.

The Smash attacks were very straight forward and not very original. You also didn't mention any knockback values so I don't really know what purpose the smash attacks have. The throws weren't described at all and most of the tilts and aerials are very stale. I'd also like to know what these "high percents" are at which the F-tilt freezes.

The dash attack though. I love that. The effect of stealing items. While that can be broken in casual play, most gimmicky moves are, so I don't mind that. In competitive play, it's very situational as well, but not so much that it's useless. Just a generic dash-attack that gives him a clear advantage in certain matchups.

Overall, I love Weavile conceptually.
The execution, however, leaves much to be desired.

Man, I feel like a **** now...

p.s. I'd like to point out a mistake you made. Lucario counters with Double Team, Greninja with Substitute.
 

WeirdChillFever

Smash Hero
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Jun 10, 2014
Messages
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Somewhere Out There
Revving up the motorcycle while I throw up onto the blade hidden in my flesh (Dead Hand by Kholdstare Kholdstare )
Dead Hand is a disgusting set that I luckily read today instead of yesterday, as I was quite nauseous then.
Now, the bile is part of a great flavor (Well, not really but you get it) that ties into Dead Hand's presence as a terrifying pile of sludge.

This flavor is what carries the melee. While the moves are a bit awkward due to his body frame, the flavor and unique animations is what gives it cohesion and uniqueness.

The mechanic with the shadow platform is fun and delightfully sadist and ties well into the theme of abnormal moves that fit Dead Hand exactly for that reason.
Like Smady though, I have some balance complaints. The set tries some interesting approaches to balancing, though I believe a more conventional way of balancing would work best here.

For example, the Screech move is balanced by only being usable when it's not stale, when there's plenty of less clunky ways to balance, such as charge, cooldown, the move not having unlimited range or even start-up.
Even then, the move interrupting all moves, instead of just attacks can get incredibly silly regardless, possibly with recovering.

Similarily, the Up B chooses to forego the classic timer, instead opting to give this move unlimited deploy time and choosing to let Dead Hand be hit by his own trap.

In return, you can buff his normals to be less clunky for his big frame
 

Slavic

Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars
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Jun 5, 2013
Messages
758
Location
taco bell, probablyn't
Xaldin by FrozenRoy FrozenRoy has quickly become one of my favorite sets I've read, which is pretty impressive given how simple and intuitive a lot of the set is. The premise of Xaldin is cool right off the bat, being a big heavyweight bruiser who can move terrifyingly fast through the air and dominate the stage with his lances. Of course, Froy can only get so much credit for Xaldin being an inherently cool character, but he pulls of the set well. Xaldin is essentially Rosalina with four Lumas, but done in a way that makes the placement feel as fun to decide as it is important. Dragoon Reign is a great recovery because spreading Lindworm's lances all over the stage clashes with quite a few of Xaldin's grounded moves, which I would argue is a good thing for this set. It means Xaldin does have to think about the placement rather than just throwing lances as far apart as possible, and the reward of being able to recover from the opposite side of the stage is balanced by hurting a lot of Xaldin's combo abilities. I'm glad this set keeps the same amount of lances in Xaldin's literal hands, allowing moves to not need to change based on his mechanic because that would become a slog to get through. The Shield Special Lindworm is one of the better Shield Specials I've seen (not that there's a ton of competition) but it gives the perfect amount of tradeoff, leaving Xaldin weak to grabs and shield pressure but allowing him to attack while shielded. It's pretty neato.

While the wind powers themselves only come up a few times in the set, they're used very well with Zephyr being a great addition to Xaldin's range-based playstyle. Zephyr also has a lot of cool directional influences which lend themselves to setting up combos better than most controllable projectiles because Xaldin can command his distant lances to do the followups. Wind Shield is a fun idea for a "counter", block a hit and separate from the opponent for the counter activation and then gain some cool options including a great mobility effect for the next use of the move. It's unique but never ends up feeling tacky or clunky. Xaldin's DTilt wind attack is a fun combo starter, given that it just straight up brings foes to Xaldin which makes it much easier for him to approach if he's spending a lot of focus on commanding and positioning his spears. Xaldin's ground game is actually very sound, with simple options on his jab and effective combo-starters on UTilt and DTilt. I'm a little worried, however, about the Dash Attack interfering too much with Xaldin's setup.

As for things I have an issue with, primarily most of it are the few inputs I think are actually underdeveloped, which are the BThrow and some of the Aerials. Xaldin's Aerials, I feel like, should be where he's the strongest, but a lot of his more interesting moves are the grounded ones. There's definitely gems in the aerial game as well, but I don't think it stands out enough to really make Xaldin feel like this airwalking giant as much as it maybe could. That being said, very few of the moves actually feel underdeveloped aside from those. This is because almost all of them have more depth than just "do this attack but also other lances do this attack." Instead, the set starts with cool concepts for moves without factoring in Xaldin's setup lances, and then adds that on afterwards. It makes every move feel briefer in a good way while also keeping the moves from feeling too formulaic like a lot of mechanics do. All in all, this is a really great set despite getting a bit thin in some areas.
 

Kholdstare

Nightmare Weaver
Joined
Oct 10, 2008
Messages
1,441
Thank you for the comment, Smady. Tone was an important aspect I consciously paid attention to throughout the writing process not only because of how the tone of the previous Dead Hand moveset was handled but also because I wanted to pay homage to various undead tropes from my favorite media and Dead Hand as an enemy was such a memorable part of Ocarina of Time because of its tone, not because of its difficulty or gameplay mechanics. I’m happy you caught the Addams Family reference, that show was a huge chunk of my childhood (not just because my last name is Adams).

Down Throw was a directly inspired by King K. Rool whom I considered having the strongest grab game in Ultimate during exploratory design of the moveset, so I definitely see the power creep. The strength of the shadow arms came out of my thought process being that they’re very situational and the strength of the grab game overall was me justifying it being the central playstyle incentive, but now that I think about it, they’re not that hard to pull off. I’ll take their power down a few notches. Good catch. Your knowledge of your main definitely shows, so I appreciate the examples of how moves interact with each other even in a non-MYM moveset. Soft interactions are something I’m trying to improve on working into my writing and reading comprehension, which is a huge part of understanding (not just reading) a set.

I will admit that the increased grab difficulty was a contrived effect to reiterate the moveset’s focus on grabs. I didn’t even think of a sliding effect, that’s a really nice idea! I’ll work on that. As for the non-arm grab game, the existence of it was a necessary evil. If this was the old days I could write off not having a non-arm grab game (and thus tying the grab game to a special input rather than Z) I could get away with it but I wanted Dead Hand to have a normal grab game as well, at the very least if it doesn’t have access to Neutral Special somehow. I agree that it’s weak, though, so I’ll try to find ways to make it more interesting or relevant to its gameplan. Bad Breath came about as a reference to general horror grossness of Dead Hand being an undead cannibal and through an attention to a possibility of having multiple foes which is a subtheme of references in the shadow zone’s effects, and I thought the idea of a throw that affects foes beyond the one grabbed would be kind of interesting. The stumbling was more or less altered knockback, but I don’t like it in retrospect and will revamp it. Back Throw was a reference to zombies overpowering humans with their mindless strength and the tug of war struggle against it, and specifically the Jockey from Left 4 Dead 2 who rides on survivors’ backs and controls them, but I worry it’s too weird for a throw.

I think I’m going to change FAir into a version I had for it previously where the hand just smacks down on the foe rather than grabs them. The reason I can’t give the aerials a shadow version, however, is that the Dead Hand is disconnected from the platform and the shadows only happen when it’s touching. The arms in the aerials are also coming from the underside of Dead Hand’s physical body (where the feet would be) and I hinted at through the moveset that Dead Hand grows arms out of the grounds as extensions of its own self because they are: think of them as roots sticking out, branching out from the body of this horrific monster. Imagine the arms as running under the ground. When Dead Hand jumps, it severs its arms leaving bloody stumps that quickly regenerate, and sometimes it severs them on purpose while still on the ground, such as the Thing smash you like. His aerial game is pretty weak which I think was a subconscious decision given its strong ground game and zombies not being that good in the air, but I prefer characters with stronger aerials than ground moves, so I’ll work on that.

You’re spot-on with the numbers on Specials, I don't think they will impact the playstyle too much by adjusting the numbers. The camera shenanigans was my way of experimenting with “stealth” in a moveset that didn’t result in KOing yourself like Sandslash does but it’s so minor of a thing that has more potential for harm than good that I’ll take it out. Thanks so much for the detailed comment, I agree with basically all of it, and I’m pleased that you enjoyed it! Once I get home from work I’ll work on those changes and hopefully improve the set.

Thank you for your comment and reading the set as well,
WCF! The flavor was a big driving force behind Dead Hand as much as the idea of the dead arm. It is a good thing you didn’t read it when you were sick, as it is quite gross. Screech’s balancing issues are indeed very awkward given the nature of it (and stunning). I was partially inspired by Golisopod’s First Impression, and the reasoning behind the staleness is that a jump-scare only works when the victim isn’t expecting it and just spamming it will not do anything for you, but if there’s a way I can balance it well through traditional means I’d be happy to take that route. I’ll consider my options. Up Special too is a move that is make-or-break when it comes to balance, and after Anub’arak I’m very keen about keeping moves from being overpowered. The normals being a bit awkward for its frame is intended, giving into its abnormal and horrifying aesthetic but I do agree they could flow a little more smoothly. I appreciate the feedback, and I’ll see what I can improve on!
 

UserShadow7989

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
314
Aromage Rosemary Katapultar Katapultar

Oh hey, a member of one of my favorite YGO archetypes! Sorry it took me so long to get to commenting and reading this set when I'd meant to so long ago; this is long overdue!

Her mechanic is a beautiful implementation of her card effect, creating openings for herself and punching through her opponent's defenses when she has the edge, as well as generating a one-shot flinch effect that can be used to her advantage (though sometimes being a double-edged sword, again like her card effect).

I tend to worry about built-in healing in sets given it can get brutal when the fighter has any notable breathing room to use it (such as when an opponent has been launched off stage and/or has tried and failed to recover before dropping into the pit below). Rosemary in particular has some strong options both offensively and in terms of self-healing, though with some big drawbacks or potential consequences on each. That said, those on a new stock will have a decent lead on her that she'll suffer from dealing with if they did any respectable amount of damage to her before being KOed, so that doesn't seem to be a massive issue.

I think the set balances out fine thanks to the strengths requiring the player to take risks or work around the drawbacks to really capitalize on. The Neutral Special is a big example of this; potent projectile that can wind up healing the foe or leaving Rosemary ripe for punishment. She can rush in to capitalize on the healing, but the lag and her low speed makes it harder to do. She can shield break the foe and set up for a strong KO move, but her projectile is staled by then if she used it for the shield break, and her own mechanic can flinch the opponent out of the shield stun state. She can try to camp a bit with it, but opponents can perfect shield it to reap the benefits with none of the punishment.

It makes Rosemary's moves very fascinating to consider, but it also feels like a lot to track and consider that I have to imagine that playing as her would require a lot of mental dexterity. This set is beautifully strange and complex but also kind of overwhelming just to read. This is also part of why it's very hard to pin down anything I can recommend in terms of balance or changes, since it's hard to say how she'd shake out in practice without seeing it, and any detail could make or break her balance.

That said, a few possible issues: the Down Special mentions Rosemary can tap the input to place the flowers 'elsewhere' but doesn't elaborate where 'elsewhere' is. It also doesn't mention what happens when you use it in the air after 19 frames (which is kind of a tight window); might be best to trim the former out and remove the frame limit? Up Smash immobilizing Rosemary for its duration is heavily implied, and could use an explicit mention.

Down Smash does crazy damage due to its multiple hits (2.1~3% * _16_ is 33.6~48% before freshness bonus); you could stand to cut the hits down to 12 (25.2~36%, still amazing but not totally insane) with the gap being between hits 6 and 7. Down Aerial's damage is also a little much. No hard fixes, just some minor adjustments. Overall, good job, Kat!


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Guzma Katapultar Katapultar

As with most 5k and below sets, ya boi Guzma is short and sweet, though perhaps a bit short even by that metric. His specials provide a core with the soaked status and First Impression, while the rest of his set provides a simple yet competent melee game with some power behind it. The core bits interact indirectly, working down the opponent's shield and getting FI un-staled for another use, providing water to give Golisopod extra mobility and range for some inputs, etc.

That said, the set manages to be a bit bare. It doesn't do anything exceptionally stand out with any of its central working parts, and while the rest of the inputs do their best by connecting to these parts and explaining their more technical uses, Guzma doesn't do much that's daring, aside from some neat uses of Golisopod's two sets of arms in the grab game and some animations. That said, when accounting the self-imposed limitation to word count, there's a surprising amount of detail in how his otherwise simple inputs can be applied. Guzma is a light read and worth sitting down with for the time invested.
 
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Ultomato

Smash Master
Joined
Dec 31, 2018
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SW 1995 0060 1138
I gotta get those other 9 comments out of the way...

Jergingha by Bionichute Bionichute

First of, I'd like to compliment you on putting Jergingha's model in the training stage grid for size-comparison. I know other sets probably do this as well, but not all of them by far and I think this is a great way to get across how the character would look in the actual game.

Now before I get into the moveset itself, please know that the writing of this set was actually really good. All moves were described in adequate detail and compared to existing moves in ways to make it easier to understand the moves, without comming off as though they were copied. Most moves also go into detail on how they interact with other characters which shows you know what you're doing. My commentary mostly focusses on the negatives, though (that's what commentary is for) and the mistakes and oversights I found in some of the descriptions feel very out of place in this decent writing style and often create problems large enough to be worth mentioning.

A very major issue that I had immediately after reading this set is his airgame. You mentioned he can float like Peach, "because it looks cool", claiming it doesn't affect his playstyle too much. However, he does have two very fast aerials, one of which is described as being a combo tool and as having an insane upwards range. On top of that, he has a spiking Dair with hyper armor. Now, there's nothing wrong with giving a character amazing aerials, but using these out of this glossed over floating ability, with an amazing recovery (of which you forgot to note the power of the starting hitbox) to top it of can potentially be broken. Will it be? I don't know, because at no point do you go into how his aerials interact with his float.

I actually quite like his neutral special, but for it specifically, I have some complaints about the writing. Firstly, it's looooooong.... (but hey, that's MYM apperently). However the more substantial itch I have comes from the littler things. For example, you mention every projectile absorbed by the asteroid adds 1,5% damage and that it caps at 5 absorbed projectiles and 25% added...... how? Also, in the paragraph where you describe ways for opponents to take advantage of the move you explain properties you apperently forgot to add earlier, making it very annoying to read. You do something similar with the grab, where you explain properties of his grab in his Downthrow description. On a final note, the words "on a final note" appearing halfway through a moves description is just a kick in the face!

The wording issues come into quetion once more with his Down special, where you litterally say every tentacle has one move, before moving on to explain the several moves each tentacle can use. Another numerical oversight is that you say the tentacles only attack once every 3,5 seconds, so how can the lightning gun "spam out" anyone?
The more substantial problem with this move, however, is that you don't specify how long a tentacle stays in play. Does he have it indefinitely until someone destroys it? If so, what's stopping people from having one out at all times? Taking the start of the game, situations where opponents are off stage or up high, and neutral situations against slower or melee characters, there is no reason not to have a tentacle out at literally every moment and that in combination with a very powerfull moveset and the earlier mentioned floating shenanigans make this move simply nonsensical.
Having said that, I love this move conceptually. It's unique and allows you to incorporate all of Jergingha's forms into his moveset, as well as Ohrowchee, whome I love.

Something I don't quite understand is how you managed to make a jab confusing. Firstly, before I mention anything else: No! A jab shouldn't kill at 100%. Now with that out of the way, you say the second hit only combo's into the third hit at high percents... even though people typically get launched further at higher percents? Then you go on to say the third hit of the jab is used "on its own" at low percents, which... what?

His tilts all being ranged can be seen as broken, but I don't think that matters as much. They seem like cool, good, non-game-breaking moves, with one major uncertainty: while you thoroughly describe the size of the explosions, the actual range of the shots in the Up-tilt and the missiles in the Down-tilt isn't specified, while this number could make the difference between these moves being bad or broken.

The smash attacks are well made, really feeling like they're from W101 and with the slow-but-powerfull style of the largest character in the game. But you never specified wether or not the "slam" of his down-smash hits into the explosion. If so, this attack would deal 34% with a lingering hitbox, which is inexuseable, no matter how much start/end-lag there is.

The added Spirits and classic-mode run are looking really friggin good. I agree, way too few people care about Wonderfull 101. Laambo and Gimme are some of my favourite characters from any game and seeing them get some love in this set really brought a smile to my face.

Overall I found this moveset to be very good at first. Jergingha is a very unique heavy character that despite his insane power seems to be well balanced and you describe every aspect of every move in depth. However, the sheer abundance of tiny mistakes add up to much more of a problem than I'd like to admit. While 90% of the looooooong text you've written is really well made, almost every move contained some small mistake that could potentially change the functioning of the move entirely if interpreted the wrong way. Because of this, I can't allow myself to be all that positive about this moveset, which is a shame, because I'd love to play as this version of Jergingha.

p.s. You really like the words "As one might expect", don't you?
 

ForwardArrow

Smash Ace
Joined
Aug 17, 2011
Messages
503
Black Knight
I know this contest and last contest have not really been the best for your opinion of your own setmaking abilities, so its probably not going to help that I really was not a fan of this set. So I will probably just leave it at commenting this set given I don't think I'd be able to say all that much constructive about Jergingha or Wario Deluxe, and you don't seem to like Dark Matter. With that out of the way, Black Knight has an okay core. There are a lot of projectile manipulation sets out there and the idea of juggling around a projectile to keep making it stronger is nothing new, Emolga and Jeice did that as far back as MYM9. Black Knight is smart enough to at least leave out the nonsense you'd find in those old sets though, just focusing on reflecting the ball to increase the damage and knockback it deals. He has a construct to redirect it, a drawbridge to dramatically bump up its power at the cost of losing its ability to reflect, and the ability to draw in and save the damage you've built up from reflecting it. While this is pretty standard compared to other projectile manipulation sets, I can at least see where the Black Knight's unique appeal comes in, wanting to reflect a projectile as many times as possible to get use out of it due to its nature rather than just trying to aim it into the foe in a bunch of different ways.

The problem is that the set just picks one thing its going to do and never moves on. Basically every move past the specials is a basic hitbox that you don't really give much explanation to beyond just the basic statistics of the move, the actual hitbox is not made important to the set beyond the fact that the attack has one. The real purpose of each move is to reflect Black Knight's orbs and, past a point, it just comes across as superfluous. If Black Knight sees a ball coming towards him, he shouldn't need more than 2-3 options specifically dedicated to reflecting it, an angled FTilt/Fair can probably do the entire job of getting it where he wants it to go. Given the grab game reflecting it doesn't even have that, all you're left with saying there is that Black Knight can knock people into his projectiles, which yeah, of course it can, any attack can do that. I want to know why this move is particularly good for that, I want it to sometimes allow Black Knight to do something beyond just knocking a foe at a projectile. It honestly leaves the set feeling shallow and devoid of much substance when the actual melee isn't given substance beyond basically doing the bare minimum of existing. To give some basic suggestions, maybe sliding way forward to scoop up electro balls over a big area for a dash attack, absorbing electro balls during smash charge to power up your smashes for doing a bunch of successful reflections, that sort of thing would give the set more depth than it currently has. As is, the melee is shallow and the pinball playstyle repeats itself too much to stay interesting, and I don't think it would hold up that well in actual Smash compared to a well-designed melee game.

For the record, I don't think this set is all bad, the reason its gotten recognition over your other sets is focus, its very aware of what its core concept is and continues to play off it. If you want a set that appeals to me, I just want both focus AND variety, where you have a core concept but you're willing to do more than one thing with it. I'd say this is why I liked Genis a lot more than your modern works, it was mostly just focused on the minions but kept providing new ways to use them, rather than just doing the same "knock X in Y direction" thing Black Knight does over and over. That or just spending a bit more time on your melee hitboxes, specializing them and adding interesting qualities like more strategy to landing the hitbox at all or the powerful parts of it, or perhaps ways to trade with it through enemy hitboxes, either of those would be what I'd want for a set like Black Knight to go from mediocre to actually interesting for me. And I know you can do it, you've done it before, but you might need to rethink your approach a bit to get there.

Fark
I've talked about seesaw balance before with the elephant and Aatrox, and Fark is honestly a more extreme example of it than either of those sets by a wide margin. While specifically getting power off timing windows of a counter is an interesting concept, the blue window of Fark's parry is straight up insanity to ever actually land. Landing a 2 frame window of a counter when counters are already kind of awkward to pull off is absolutely ridiculous, you are almost never going to actually predict the opponent down to a 2 frame window. The fact that you feel the need to stale the heal is absurd to me, that implies you're going to be able to tell the opponent's hitboxes so well you'll be able to heal off them several times in a short period, which is never going to happen. Yellow is a very weak result for a counter on paper, and red is outright terrible to get as it makes you lose some of your highly important super meter. Given you were so specific with the blue counter, I actually really do want to know what the ratio of red to yellow is, as hitting on the red part of the counter is possibly just as bad as hitting Fark during the end lag given the loss of meter and the fact that you take full damage.

I know I just spent a lot of time on the Neutral Special, but the specifics of how it works right now are extremely important to the set's balance and I can't really get a remotely clear picture on it right now. This is because Fark's super form is just badly designed right now. While the power boost and weight boost feel reasonable, Fark's ability to infinitely spam his Up Special and smash attacks in super form isn't. Getting what frequently feel like better than fully charged Samus Neutral B's attached to smash Fark uses and literal infinite Bayonetta ladder combos is absolute insanity and I really don't think in the face of those super strong projectiles for pressure and Fark's infinite aerial mobility that opponents will be able to defend against it. This basically means Fark's balance is going to live and die by the ratio of the yellow to red counter, because if its easy for him to regularly get yellow counters off a normal stock will build enough spark for him to go regularly into 5-6 seconds of super form, which should probably be enough to just end the stock if you use it competently. If red counters are coming up with any consistency, Fark is going to struggle very, very hard to get super form. And frankly, on his own merits Fark is garbage. Needing to half charge his smashes and sacrifice spark to activate those big projectiles makes them predictable and unimpressive, and the most he can really do is attempt to cheese foes to their deaths with how good his recovery is. If he uses it at the wrong time, he is a character with bad recovery and low power saddled with Jigglypuff recovery and nothing to make up for it.

There feels like there was an attempt to make "middle" cases with the smash projectiles at least being usable outside of super form as well as the ability to repeat Up Specials. The problem is just that when it also buffs power and every form of mobility Fark has and cuts back all possible balancing measures the Smashes and Up Special had, all his power is located in this one form, and his matches are going to be determined entirely on the back of it 90% of the time. This creates a very linear and boring playstyle for a character who doesn't exactly present concepts on his other moves to convince me it would ever be anything else, feeling like it would be very bland even as a Smash set looking at things outside of the ridiculously big slide between failure and success.

Revali
You know, for what its worth, I do appreciate that you are at least aware of how badly a projectile character like this wants to be able to get around reflectors. I'm not sure a rush in melee attack is the best solution to that problem that says it "goes through reflectors", but I appreciate Revali having any counters to that. With that said, I don't usually like to rag on sets for being boring, but its kind of an impossible issue for me to avoid with Revali. The set's every move feels like its doing one of two things, knocking foes to a distance that bomb arrows are appropriate or just being an alternate projectile. This honestly just feels really shallow and dull to play, not feeling like it has the kind of actual variety a smash character would normally. The set fails to even have variety in its numbers, it feels like every other KO move kills at 100% and if not within about 20% of that number, spreading out the kill percentages really would not be a bad idea and it serves to, unfortunately, make this set even more monotonous in terms of how it plays and how it reads. Having variety in kill percents would give more reason to try out other moves and do things other than just combo into the bomb arrows. As a final note, Forward Tilt seems comically broken, I assume "instant" start up isn't literal frame 1 start up as that doesn't feel like a fair assumption, but the attack sounds like it fires at a rate similar to Fox's lasers from how you describe it, which is completely unfair on a projectile that deals over 3% and a flinch. Once your projectile flinches, it needs to have real lag associated.

It is clear you put in effort into trying to translate as many of his animations and in source material as directly as possible. Its not something I can't respect a bit, but a set like this would be a lot more interesting if you were willing to take a few more deviations like you did with the Up Special. Being this literal ultimately leads to a set that's just not as interesting to play as it comes out to nothing more than an extremely basic projectile character who can't play close range.
 
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WeirdChillFever

Smash Hero
Joined
Jun 10, 2014
Messages
6,593
Location
Somewhere Out There
The True Paper Witch (Kammy Koopa)
I was pleasantly surprised by Kammy Koopa, since I half-expected it to be a joke set when I started reading it. I was instead welcomed by a Paper Mario-spin on minion sets. Easy to grasp, fun to look deeper into with some mechanics of its own.

Warping around minions, storing them in yellow data blocks isn't something we see a lot of minion sets and the set also upholds traditions such as the upgrades and both work well.

Since I'm contractually obliged to make one paper pun, I gotta say it sometimes fell flat due to the lack of depth (hah, that's two!)
Warping around minions and swapping them is in potential a cool mindgame, but an opponent isn't really obliged to treat a Piranha Plant differently from a Spiny, avoiding is the trick for both.

Furthermore, the upgrades in the throws could be a bit deeper-layered than the buffs present here. Buffing speed and buffing size both get the same effect of buffing effective range, and buffing size and attack power both upkeep the damage output.

Comment-omment-omment (Necalli)

It's fun how many different kind of sets Froy can make, and Necalli shows he can take a deep dive into several of Smash's underrated mechanics. Necalli on itself is not a deep set on the outside. There's your brawler that can stance-switch/buff himself with a meter.

However, even the simple moves are made deep. Not because of adding an extra input or making it complicated, but simply by describing. Shield pressure, shield damage, footsies, shield push, reaction from opponents and reading those and punishing accordingly all come by in this set, which makes Necalli a Street Fighter character translated to the new enviroment of Smash in a cool way.

In how far this translation is literal is the question of this set. To what extent is Necalli a description of his incarnation (Aztec joke!) in Street Fighter and to which extent has Froy adapted it and added to it to make a set suit for Smash? Reading Necalli to me felt more like a how-to-play-Necalli guide for the former game, and did little to remind me of the mechanics unique to Smash. Sure, he has a weakness in his back which is added to by a forward hitting Down Smash and a laggy bair, but I simply suspect the detailed deep-dive into the mechanics to be mostly inspired from his Street Fighter incarnation, where shield pressure and extending prone states is the status-quo.

In the inputs that seem to be unique to Smash, the set seems to divert from its descriptory, how-to-play-guide style and go back to adding elements to add depth with the Down Smash earthquake interactions, instead of upkeeping the mechanically detailed descriptions of the Street Fighter inputs, most prevalent in Dash Attack and Up Tilt. These interactions are nice, but really distracted from the galaxy brain brawler established.

I really liked Necalli and I would love to see another brawler set from you, but Necalli as a Smash moveset was unconvincing for me
 
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Slavic

Ask not the sparrow how the eagle soars
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Jun 5, 2013
Messages
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taco bell, probablyn't
Darmuk Syreus by KafkaKomedy KafkaKomedy is the most I've interacted with Homestuck in years, and this is way better than that last interaction. To start off with, Darmuk is a set which relies on a weapon switch mechanic, a style of set which is very hit or miss in MYM. Darmuk's take is very different from most weapon switch sets that I've either read or written; rather than the troll having a massive list of like six different movesets, each weapon that Darmuk pulls out only changes a handful of moves. Additionally, Darmuk's way of weapon management is fun and unique too, and it makes the weapon switching feel like it would have the synergy to pull off the smaller changes the weapons offer. The weapons themselves are intuitive so that after using a weapon for one attack it's clear what that weapon will do for most attacks, and because they are only on specific inputs it keeps this from ever feeling too formulaic, another problem weapon switching sets often have. Outside of the weapon-switching, the moves are fairly simple but thought out, so it's clear through this set that you understand Smash as more than just a set of animations (unlike me).

This does lead me into the other big problem with weapon-switching sets and that's depth vs. length/width. Very often weapon-switching sets have their moves depth boiled down to the ability to make the move into another. This might sound like nonsense, but I think Xaldin, for instance, is a great example of how to give the underlying moves depth and interest before applying additional effects on them, something that I think Darmuk could use. The weapon moves are good, but the moves that they replace tend to be less anything the more weapons can replace them. I also don't believe the set ever talks about broken weapons refreshing? I can assume they have either a stock-limit or a timer, but those two would change how the set works pretty drastically so I would try and find a place to put that in (or just tell me if it's already in). Finally, and this is more a subjective thing from person to person, I'm just unsure about arbitrary input replacements. I do understand why each weapon replaces the moves that it does, but it would be nice if the weapons had consistent inputs they replaced, like the FSmash. I really like the Tape Deck as a construct, I think the effects are just tacky enough to feel really in character for a Homestuck set without crossing the line. I wish that it was referenced more throughout the set, I personally can't think of how but it just feels like it's there at the moment.

I do not think Darmuk is a bad set, it was a set which is fun to read and very obviously has a great writing style which stirs demons deep within me that I thought I drowned already. It reminds me a lot of some of my earlier sets but with much better knowledge of Smash. The main problem I have with the set is just the depth of the moves, but that's just a generic phrase that's put on like every newcomer set comment. The set does what it tries to do without making any massive failings, and that might sound like a sarcastic compliment. Darmuk also never feels too much like an OC in a negative way, he has personality throughout the set through the moves, and he never either feels completely flat or too overbearing, which are easy traps to fall into with OCs (though not so much as of late). All said, this is a pretty solid first contest set, unless there's a lot of sets I want to vote for, I can see giving a WV at least to Darmuk.

Obviously The Mountain by MasterWarlord MasterWarlord is a remake of a set I only vaguely remember from a few contests back, but everyone in chat seems to agree that this is better than the original. I remember Atlantis much more than Mountain, and I definitely prefer the ghost use here than a million years ago when that was posted. Just leaving your body to improve your mobility while doubling your hurtbox is cool, but even cooler is the ability to continue using A Move when this is performed. It's a much more interesting recovery than some sort of giant leap, and the balancing on the move itself is even interesting. For being a command-grab body slam, Mountain Slam is actually a really cool move thanks to the mechanics of Mountain's ghost, but really the star is Mountain being able to suplex his own body into opponents. As someone who loves boulders in sets, there's not THAT many things that can be done with them, but Mountain really pulls it off. The lava actually feels relevant for Up Smash of all things, given that Mountain can pull off a very powerful Smash with an already existing boulder. Outside of the spooky ghost, I personally think that the Smashes outshine the Specials pretty heavily, all of them are fun and pretty unique with their interactions. Without having any tacky ghost-specific effects they all use the ghost Mountain very intuitively.

The standards past the Smashes are mixed; there's some very cool aspects with moves like FAir and DTilt's interactions with stage, but then a lot of them "just" feel like big meaty hits from Mountain. This isn't horrible, but does feel like it could have made use with some of the superfluous parts of the set like the lava or the blood from later on. The jab is another great example of the move in the set; just having an infinite jab that can break projectiles isn't much of anything on its own, but it ties in with the USpec well enough to make it a cool and useful move. It's definitely something that I would have liked to see applied to more of the moves, but at the very least they fill their purposes well enough. I know the blood effect on FThrow has been a point of contention for some readers, but I like it a lot. Maybe it's been changed heavily since writing, but the intangibility is something that the ghost very much appreciates. Not effecting the Mountain's actual body shouldn't be an issue since the now invincible ghost Mountain should make the effort to bother protecting its body. All the throws end up being about this enjoyable, though none get as cool as Blood Bind in my opinion, and they make for a very strong end to the set.

The Lava is mandatory as the most direct method of terraforming for a Warlord set, but I'm still not entirely sold on it. I can appreciate the decision to not make the lava an overbearing threat to opponents once it's hardened on the ground, but I think it's way too heavily balanced in the opposite direction. A lot of the uses of lava can be replicated or replaced entirely by Mountain's ghost form, which is outright stated in some moves. Plus, because the NSpec takes a pretty long time to come out it's going to be an irritating setup to do even factoring in ghost form being able to double the effectiveness. Most times it seems there would be better options, including just charging the move to use for the fun UThrow. Down Special is also underwhelming compared to SSpec and USpec, almost to the point I feel like one of Mountain's Smashes should be swapped out for it. The Earthquake is cool, but really only has profound use with the hardened lava which I'm already iffy about. Aerially, the move is basically a stronger, slower DAir, which is fine because of how ghost works, but I think any of the Smashes could honestly fit this input better. While I think there are a handful of areas in the Mountain that are pretty weak or unnecessary, I actually like this set a lot outside of them. The ghost form is one of my more favorite recoveries this contest, alongside Chalis, and never disappears in the set. My biggest problems with the set are just the not great impact of the hardened lava and the just okay DSpec. There's much more cool and spooky in this set than bad, and Mountain is very votable for me.
 
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Ultomato

Smash Master
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Dec 31, 2018
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Tallon IV
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SW 1995 0060 1138
I promised to upload this comment some 7 hours ago but then I ended up actually paying attention to my Organic Chemistry lecture so I kinda forgot about it all.

Nabbit by WeirdChillFever WeirdChillFever

Nabbit is a character I never really cared for. That is, until I watched Alpharad's playthrough of NSMBUD for Switch and saw JoSniffy perform the most skillfull Nabbit techniques I'd ever seen.

So full of memey interest, I started reading this moveset and boy, was it a treat. For me, a bitter 20 year old who likes to focus on the negatives to feel better about myself, reading this set had an interesting dynamic. Time and time again, I'd find some oversight or mistake, rub my hands together with my evil grin, ready to complain said move into the ground, only to find the solution to said mistake a paragraph later, explained in greater detail and regarding more possible flaws than I had even seen in the first place.

One of the few moves where this wasn't present is immediately one of the most gamebreaking tho. With his side-B, when he catches an opponent, he drifts upwards "untill the opponent mashes out". How hard do they have to mash and, more importantly, what if they don't? Does it kill off the top? Does Nabbit die too?

A minor complaint I had was about the order in which things were written. For example, the Side-B mentions "The treasure chest", without further explaination, which isn't discussed until his down-B. It also infuriates me that his playstyle description is at the bottom of the page, but that's a stylistic choice, I guess.
I also found it rather funny that the item-grabbing mechanics of his neutral-B took so long to explain, while the people-grabbing was explained in what felt like a bit of an afterthought, albeit a well written afterthought.

Something else I don't quite like is that the dust-mechanic is first explained in the Side-B and never really after that, expecting readers to know what dust does when they reach the tilts. I did, but a little paragraph quickly explaining dust would have been appreciated.

A specific standard I would like to talk about that perfectly illustrates the biggest source of awkwardness throughout the set is his Up-tilt. You thouroughly explain an expressive animation for Nabbit, even detailing the emotion he's supposed to emit during it, making it feel as if the move takes a year, before saying "this move is rather fast". I know that the ammount of time taken to explain an animation isn't equivalent to the length of the animation itself, but I came across this type of description quite a few times and while I love these descriptions themselves, they just feel a bit... strange.

I would like to compliment you on the fact that you made a whole moveset, completely unique, just using the sack. That's impressive. In terms of the actual moveset, I'd say this is very solid. In terms of writing: I love your style, only the order of things and the narrative rythm can be very confusing at times.


Sidenote: Nabbit F-smash is my favourite move in MYM so far.
Also: kerfuffle?
 

ForwardArrow

Smash Ace
Joined
Aug 17, 2011
Messages
503
Blados
Okay I am extremely late to the party on Blados, but I do actually think this set is pretty good even if it hasn't really received the reception you hoped. The specials in this set are all pretty strong, with the momentum portal providing some interesting variety to the usual portal network structure as a simple momentum booster that you can choose to switch to a proper portal later. The core of the set is Shadow Shield and the set is designed pretty conscious of having a ring of projectiles circling you, with the melee being clearly designed around it and some fairly cool options to utilize it existing with Up Smash and Psy Grenade. You can even potentially desync the projectile orbit outright to combo off it or just use it as a pressure tool, Moves like Jab and Nair are serviceable melee with a surprising amount of depth. Its probably kind of hard to see what's keeping this set from getting all that high on a lot of vote lists given if it is flawed, its in none of the things we usually talk about, having functional melee, flow, decent concepts, and a good variety of potential setups.

Where Blados falls off a bit is definitely in the details, and its not terribly easy stuff to fix is the problem. The smashes, individually, are a bunch of cool moves, but the actual melee properties of them play second fiddle to the interactions. Jab actually feels like the kind of move that is more appropriate input-wise on a smash, but with Forward Smash already taken up by the ability to throw the shadow shield as a projectile its weirdly thrown into the Jab input, and combined with Forward Tilt being a weird projectile it makes Blados' grounded melee feel a lot clunkier. I also feel that while Blados' melee is good in the context of the shadow shield, it honestly feels kind of like just that a lot of the time, a move that functions better with projectiles orbiting you and not really all that interesting on its own merits. You obviously do need functional moves like that, but I don't think I ever looked at a move in Blados' set and went "oh wow, this is the payoff to having shadow shield up I was hoping for". Probably the best move for that was actually Up Smash, which mind you I do like quite a bit, but the explanation for how exactly it works with portals still feels kind of vague and hard to follow so while it SOUNDS exciting, the fact that I can't fully picture it in my head drags it down.

I also never really got a sense of the set's actual focus beyond "here's things that are good with Shadow Shield". Blados seems like he can do some perfectly fine combo stuff and, while his camping is limited, he can at least abuse projectiles for normal projectile things, but I don't really get a sense of flow to his actions outside of Shadow Shield. The Psy Grenades are played off very little, as is the desynced Shadow Shield on Down Special, and the Down Smash introduces multiple flashy concepts worthy of a special at once and the rest of the set doesn't really talk about them much. There's some amount of obvious implications to them that are, certainly, pretty fun and would probably give Blados some very versatile comboing potential inspite of his relative slowness. But the set never really hits a point of balance between its projectile interaction side and melee side where either feels like they're as interesting as they could be, and that's a shame. On top of that, the characterization here is unfortunately kind of weak. Nightmare, and especially Chalis and Kamoshida, have very distinct and entertaining personalities to their set, while Blados has at most a bit of basic edge to him and a deep voice reminiscent of Ganondorf, but he doesn't really feel like he ever earns the kind of presense in his set that the king of evil does. I don't really dock points if characterization isn't interesting, its more just a bonus, but that's certainly going to prevent people from getting very enthusiastic about it.

In spite of my complaints, this is more me saying why Blados isn't exactly rolling in SVs right now. Its a very competent moveset that's not particularly easy to dislike, and I'd actually say its a bit underrated. There genuinely are a number of fun options in here that would probably be a blast to mess around with.

Okumura
I was a bit less fond of this set than I wanted to be on release because of the original Up Throw and Down Throw, but those have been editted out in exchange for vastly more interesting versions. I can now fully embrace this set's good qualities, and they're very impressive. As far as minion sets go, the minions themselves are actually pretty tame, one who just kind of gets stuck in the ground to be used as a projectile when you get the change and a big one who will happily abuse the smaller one for fun and profit. They more exist as compliments to Okumura's projectile options, which can get pretty insane. Between the Forward Smash chart laser, Up Smash's ability to carry other projectiles around, the anti-gravity panels, and all the various ways you can abuse the burgers, Okumura has a lot of projectile pressure he can put on foes, and the thing is a lot of it is very unique. The chart laser provides a very cool aiming mechanism to hit foes with it, and the burgers create a rather unique kind of pressure where on paper, they'd just heal the foe, but you can exact a massive toll on the opponent once they've eaten a burger when you get a grab in, taking Okumura's grab from a moderate threat to a terrifying one as the foe wracks up more and more debt. Its very interesting stuff and while the set could've maybe emphasized a bit more Okumura's options to pressure the foe towards a grab, the end result feels very well made.

This isn't to say Okumura's melee isn't interesting, because it is. With Up Throw and Down Throw changed for the better, they make the mid-range based pressure game Okumura plays a pretty exciting one. He's not totally deprived of options up close, mind you, but there's a very clear optimal point you want the opponent at his few close range options feel like a decently versatile set of tools to get the opponent to that point. Its impressive how much you got out of this big hoverchair for melee to make him actually feel like a competent and non-broken fighter. Particularly want to mention Up Aerial, I don't think I've actually seen something that allow you to latch onto foes during lingering hitboxes to follow them up like that before and its so good I'm definitely going to steal it for myself at some point. To cap the set off is some damn good characterization and writing, Okumura having a lot of fun quotes he can use during a match, but they aren't spammed so much it'd outright annoy people. This set really digs deep with the evil businessman/capitalist archetype and the way he interacts with the foe/workers/executives just gets downright hilariously morbid. Even beyond the goofiness of it, you get a real sense for how ambitious this character is in his playstyle, albeit hiding behind all these gadgets he's too much of a coward to ever fight at close range. I'm very fond of this one, its your best set this contest and one of my favorites this time around in general.
 
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FrozenRoy

Smash Lord
Joined
Apr 26, 2007
Messages
1,266
Location
Las Vegas, Nevada
Switch FC
SW-1325-2408-7513
Lexaeus Change Log

- Side Special now specifies he can only have one pillar out at a time. Rocks do not count as pillar, so you can make a pillar while they are flying out.

- Neutral Aerial erroniously stated it was faster than Cloud's NAir and not slower.

- Final Smash now actually lists a duration.

- Down Aerial's animation and hitbox has been clarified.

- Various typos fixed.

- Up Special's rehit rate has been increased so that it isn't so hilariously slow it won't keep people in it.

- Back Aerial has been replaced entirely, the new one should better allow Lexaeus to access his power some and adds to his ledge game as well.
 
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FrozenRoy

Smash Lord
Joined
Apr 26, 2007
Messages
1,266
Location
Las Vegas, Nevada
Switch FC
SW-1325-2408-7513
Poliwag Change Log:

- Poliwag's Belly Drum now deals damage (8%) when countering foes, has significantly reduced ending lag, reflects projectiles when countering from the front and has a longer duration.

- Up Aerial now kills at 120%, making it a more rewarding kill aerial.

- Down Aerial now kills at 140%, making it another viable killing move in Poliwag's notable aerial game.

- Dash Attack now kills at 132%, from 152%, and added a sentence explaining kill confirms in more detail with the move.

- Forward Smash now kills at 120% from 130% as a small general power boost.

- Up Smash now kills at 140% to make it still be exactly between F-Smash and D-Smash, a buff from 145%.

- Poliwag's Forward Throw has been buffed to kill at 175% instead of 190%, making his kill throw slightly better.
 

Professor Lexicovermis

Smash Journeyman
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Oct 27, 2015
Messages
273
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Pop Star
Honey, You've Got A Big Storm Comin'
9/10
Eleanor is yet another solid entry in UserShadow's very enjoyable Witch "franchise", and my personal favorite Witch yet! Her flavor is altogether fantastic, painting a vivid picture of her as a character; this is always a matter of great importance with OCs, and you never disappoint in that department, US. Beyond the flash, Eleanor has some straightforward, but remarkably deep mechanics with her Swarm and Honey. The constantly pursuing Swarm, on top of Eleanor's variety of unusual projectiles and ways to manipulate them, gives her a feeling of busyness that's very fitting for a bee-themed character; she also avoids feeling cluttered despite this, which is no easy feat! Every move has a niche and interactions are logical and intuitive. I don't really have anything negative to say here; excellent work!
 

UserShadow7989

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Aug 13, 2007
Messages
314
The Black Knight Bionichute Bionichute

Interesting choice of character, with a pretty fun core in bouncing his projectile around in a number of different ways and getting a better pay off the more he manages to bounce it. While I feel he can be a bit bland at times given some moves are mostly interesting for bouncing it another manner, how those moves handle it is fun. It could use a little more to it, which is something I've felt a few times reading different sets this contest (and have been given as advice as well).

Best I can think of would either be to adjust how the projectile works (like slowing down as it nears the end of its duration, with bouncing it bringing it back up to speed as a result of resetting its duration) or having some inputs change how it moves (such as making it bounce across the ground in arcs), though those would take some rewrites to really make the most of (especially the latter).

The Black Knight is an impressive set for the material you had to work with, and has a visually distinctive flair to its animations that would be a joy to see in action. I'd say it's a pretty nice piece of work.



Sylvia JamietheAuraUser JamietheAuraUser

Speaking of interesting and visual flair, Sylvia stands out as making the most of the fundamental mechanics of Smash's engine to form an interesting playstyle, packing a lot of character into each animation that made it mostly easy to envision. Mostly. While I'm at a loss for any better suggestions I could provide, feeling the set is whole and remains both cohesive with itself and filled out perfectly, I will note you could stand to break up some of the larger paragraphs some. It's a big set, but some of the walls of text make it more intimidating to read than it actually is.

I hate to leave off a comment with generic praise or generic criticism that isn't helpful, but I very much love what you've done with the set, and I can't wait to see what you produce next contest.



Chalis @Smash Daddy

On the subject of making inputs past the core a little to reliant on said core for its interesting properties, I feel Chalis actually avoids that nicely due to how the moves connect to her portals, shadowy secondary hitboxes, delusion, and other elements: movement, positioning, and variable projectile options give each move individual depth before the core is connected to them, and really shine after it's taken in account.

Where Sylvia forgoes a core gimmick set in favor of building on fundamentals, Chalis has a lot of interactions and tricks on her inputs without feeling like it's too much or it doesn't fit with the rest of the set. I consider her a great example of how to handle multiple moving parts.
 
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