Make Your Move 24: Moveset Design Contest — Congrats to our Top 50! This contest is officially Dead™, tune in March 10 for our next installment!

[bubbyboytoo]

BUT IF WE ARE SETTING IN THE JAMCON, AS THIS SET IS IN THE JAMCON,
THEN WE HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH EACH OTHER,
AND THE GAME DESIGN OF SAKURAI CLEANSES US FROM ALL SIN.

 

[Slavic]

You built these weapons to destroy us. Why?

Because you are afraid of our gifts. Because we are different. Humanity has always feared that which is different, but I am here to tell you, to tell the world...

…You're right to fear us.

We are the future. We are the ones who inherit this earth and anyone who stands in our way will suffer the same fate as these men you see before you.

Today was meant to be a display of your power.



Instead I give you a glimpse of the devastation my race can unleash upon yours.

Let this be a warning to the world and to my mutant brothers and sisters out there, I say this.

No more hiding. No more suffering.

You have lived in the shadows of shame and fear for too long. Come out. Join me. Fight together in a brotherhood of our kind, a new tomorrow that starts today.​

 

[ForwardArrow]

Belzeb
​

In a distant star system, 6 planets all spin around a sun, locked in the same orbit, and each orbitted by a strange moon. The light these moons cast causes as an adverse effect on the creatures of these worlds, a poison known as moonsickness. Each moon causes a different sickness, the moon of Kawmuit causing a sickness that creates gluttonous behavior. The truth behind each sickness, however, is that each sickness is caused by a mechanical demon of sorts, a being comprised of nanotechnology that slowly bends the inhabitants of each world to its will. Belzeb is one such demon, the one responsible for gluttony moonsickness, and the influence dominating the lives of the froglike people of Kawmuit.

Belzeb is one of the main villains of a series my old pal Majora's been working on, The Lucerifa Saga. A creature that's grown dominant over the island of Dakknia and caused the minds of its inhabitants to be dominated by their gluttonous urges, it operates with one goal in mind: to spread. The rest of the world's inhabitants have all moved into a singular massive underwater structure connected to several smaller islands known as the Unifier, a location Belzeb uses an alien invasion to opportunistically break into, attempting to corrupt both the people and machines inside with his influence. He's ultimately driven back as the unifier's defenses are bolstered by a "virtue", or an immunity to his disease and influence, forcing him to contend with the attacking alien force and ultimately back off... for now. He seems to be working with his five brothers on the other worlds, and if they can provide him with another opportunity, he will have yet another chance to infect the Unifier and bring the entirety of the world of Kawmuit under his influence.

As a note, Belzeb is also the first time in the series the full scale of what moonsickness is capable of causing is shown. Earlier on, it definitely causes those infected to display supernatural abilities, such as superhuman strength that allows them to cheat death and even growing new limbs and body parts. But Belzeb shows what happens when you have a large group of deeply infected people when the protagonists end up trapped in one of his labs, and one of Belzeb's avatars manifests, a massive mechanical pig made of wires that seems to be able to move through and manipulate the very world around them by twisting it into part of itself. In that way, it could be said that he has a good deal of influence over his home series as well, the first real sign of how dire things are going to get in his first encounter... as well as a sign of how far the leading man Lennicht has come in his second outing when he actually manages to force Belzeb of all people into retreat.

Also to clarify, this is my entry for the influence JamCon, in case the highlights didn't make it obvious. Remind me never to try to make a set this long while constrained by work and side activities with friends that cannot have their time moved ever again.

Spoiler: Trivia

In The Anima Project, the first series Majora worked on, one of the antagonist groups working under Knight had the naming scheme of "Adjective" + member of the Zodiac. This resulted in the incredibly goofy sounding combination of Damp Pig for one of them, which was used for a slug monster that was... funny enough, infected by Knight's disease and turned into a gluttonous abomination. And Belzeb is a pig monster that exerts his influence over a planet of people that mostly live in the water. The creation of a SECOND Damp Pig is just proof that time is a flat circle.

Stats and Appearence
​

"The form which grew from the wires was horrible in shape, a towering specter of metal and malice with an awful, flat face which contained little more than a massive entusked maw and assorted holes in its hollow head which it seemed to breathe through."

Belzeb's face is pretty much as described, flat and full of "breathing" holes in its head with an entusked maw, that face is on a body made entirely of mechanical wires, humanoid in shape. Its hands extend into sharp claws and its feet are distinctly hoofed like a pig's. In terms of size, "towering" is an accurate statement, Belzeb is a full head taller than Ganondorf and quite a bit wider to boot. That huge size and his durable, metallic composition comes with the kind of impressive weight you'd expect to match, specifically 138, 3 units heavier than Bowser. Similar to his fellow Gluttony enthusiast Gawain, however, he's far faster than you'd expect in terms of movement, dissolving his body into a mass of wires to rush across the stage at a dash speed of 2.25, just slightly slower than Mewtwo for 10th in the game. His lumbering walk speed is extremely slow though, barely faster than Kazuya's, so you're picking between either very fast or very slow movement. Belzeb's air speed is decidedly less impressive, a sub-par 0.94 on par with Simon and Richter, while falling just a bit faster than Ridley at 1.79, getting him out of the air fairly quickly. Both of Belzeb's jumps are honestly pretty respectable, but his first one is more impressive than his second. Curiously, not only does Belzeb's dash give him a lower profile, he actually has quite a low crouch and crawl as part of his wirey mass sinks into the ground, and he has a wall cling which has him embed his wires into the stage. All in all, Belzeb's stats absolutely give him a superheavy profile, but one that's more capable of weaving around attacks than you might expect, although expect to get combo'd hard when the opponent actually does manage to hit you.

Specials ​

Neutral Special - Gluttony Moonsickness
Belzeb's maw stretches open as a cloud of dull red dust erupts from it, extending out over an impressive range of 1.35 battlefield platforms before the red dust fades away. On contact with the cloud, the opponent takes 5% and a long flinch, and on top of that this move comes out shockingly early at Frame 6. The end lag is a bit punishable if you whiff though and means the long flinch only leads to a pretty small frame advantage, but this is a move that is designed to be VERY easy to hit. Aside from the effects we're going to get to as the nanites Belzeb just unleashed infect the opponent's body, this move IS nice as a cheap enabler to get frame advantage over the foe with its disgusting range and speed combination, though its combos are a bit limited especially at longer ranges. Still, Belzeb has a few faster attacks that combo out of this, and that's something the foe will have to keep in mind gives him an advantage a lot of smash heavies don't get with such an efficient combo starter. This move's hitstun is reduced to putting the foe at frame neutral when this move is staled at all, but slowly increases back to a more sizeable frame advantage the further back any instances of Gluttony Moonsickness are in your stale move queue. This prevents you from infiniting with this and also encourages you not to spam it too much despite its excellent combo starter properties.

As you might expect from the character's description and the title of this move, that's not the only thing this attack does, as the opponent is infected with Belzeb's signature moonsickness! Once the foe is infected, faint red and grey dust emits from their character model, indicating Belzeb's gluttonous influence has taken hold. This sends the foe into a spiral of gluttonous impulses, a powerful desire to consume in all senses of the word that only gets stronger the more influence Belzeb has over the foe as his nanites worm their way into the foe's body and mind. We'll get to how that influences the effect later on, but at a baseline, the first thing foes will notice is they're taking 1% every 4 seconds, which is... actually kind of a pitiful rate of poison damage, the kind of thing you could easily ignore on the face of it. But something to keep in mind with Gluttony Moonsickness is it does not go away on its own, this is a status effect that's going to stick with the opponent for the rest of their stock unless they figure out the trick to curing it.

The other effect this has activates when the opponent is not able to sate their hunger, specifically by whiffing entirely with any attack. Every time the opponent whiffs an attack, it increases the damage interval at which opponents take a hit of 1%, to once every 3 seconds, then 2 seconds, then 1.5 seconds, then 1 second, then 0.75 seconds, then every 0.66 seconds, and finally maxes out in power at once every 0.5 seconds. Once the opponent is taking damage every 1 second, they also take 1.5% every time they whiff an attack, increasing in power to 3% when its at 0.75 seconds, 4.5% at 0.66 seconds, and 6% at 0.5 second intervals, which is an absolutely brutal amount of passive damage for the opponent to deal with. If that wasn't enough incentive for you to get the foe to whiff attacks with this, a good chunk of Belzeb's attacks are stronger on opponents at higher levels of Moonsickness, as his power grows stronger over a foe suffering more from his influence. For reference going forward, the stages of moonsickness infection will be referred to as Stage 1(the 4 second damage interval) to Stage 8(0.5 second damage interval, 6% damage on a whiffed attack). It should also be noted that as the stages progress, the foe's physical condition begins to degrade, with patches of their skin becoming bloody(or otherwise messed up in the case of a character without blood). And at Stage 6 and higher, the flesh around the opponent's throat in particularly will get visibly messed up, the skin usually peeling off in the case of characters its applicable to. This also distorts their voicelines, at Stage 6 its a more mild distortion but by Stage 8 their voice is a twisted, heavily distorted and barely comprehensible remnant of what it once was.

This is all very scary on what is effectively a permanent status effect, but opponents will lose a stage of their moonsickness for every hit they DO land on Belzeb, sating their gluttony for damage. This means Belzeb needs to starve the opponent of hits on him, which is a bit awkward considering he's a big slow heavyweight who the opponent can combo quite hard if they actually get the opportunity. Fortunately,
Belzeb does have his fair share of tricks to mess with the opponent's ability to actually hit him, as his amorphous wire body lends to some surprisingly useful evasion tricks on many of his moves. Belzeb does also have other ways to accelerate moonsickness on the foe if they're not so eager to attack him except at the safest possible opportunity, putting some additional pressure on the opponent to take a few risks if they want to actually escape their moonsickness, but if Belzeb dodges/shields/counteracts right it may only plunge them deeper into their disease. It should be noted that multi-hits all count as one attack, as do multiple hits of a Jab. Projectiles will not sate a character's gluttony for violence in the same way melee combat will, but missing with one will still count, serving as a bit of a soft incentive to approach. Also given the foe's not hitting Belzeb most of the time if they're recovering, knocking the foe far off stage is a free way to build up moonsickness, especially if you can edgeguard.

That said, there is some risk you take with infecting the foe with moonsickness. Specifically, if a foe goes below Stage 1, they'll no longer be suffering negative effects of moonsickness at all unless they start whiffing attacks again. Each attack they hit from this point on builds up their resistance by one stage so they can afford to whiff one more hit... up until they hit a resistance level of 5 after connecting 5 hits on Belzeb below the minimum threshold. At this point, the swarm of nanomachines around the foe turn blue, an indication that you're about to be turned into bacon. This absolves them of the status effect completely and in fact gives them a terrifyingly powerful boon, in the form of a "Virtue", a weaponized immunity to moonsickness that also allows them to tear through Belzeb and his constructs like they're at an all you can eat barbecue picnic. Specifically, it multiplies the foe's damage to Belzeb by 1.5x, and if the foe's attack would deal more than about a platform's worth of knockback to Belzeb, it has a 1.3x multiplier to its knockback. On top of the boost the damage multiplier already gives. All of Belzeb's constructs take THREE times the damage from opponent's attacks and will be roasted the second the opponent so much as sneezes on them. This buff lasts 15 seconds and to put it bluntly if the opponent gets a Virtue you are probably going to die, especially considering they're immune to any moonsickness effects during that entire time.

So while this move is a pretty potent combo starter, and on top of that puts the opponent in a state where they have a potentially permanent status effect that's constantly draining their health and making Belzeb's offensive even worse, there's a real risk to infecting foes with moonsickness. If they manage to capitalize on how easy Belzeb is to combo shortly after the initial infection, or manage to overall take and hold an advantage in the match for a long time, Belzeb will find himself having to deal with a Virtue powered foe, something he is poorly equipped to fight. Its not impossible to pull things back after a foe gets a Virtue, but it will frequently result in the end of your stock and some additional pain at the start of your next one if it goes badly enough. With all that said, Belzeb's kit is designed around making building up moonsickness both quite possible and worth your time, especially when the move that activates it is so good even without considering the status effect it offers. Just keep in mind that the consequences of failure will be dire.

If you land this move on a foe that's already moonsick, this will increase the activity of the nanomachines on their body briefly, as they buzz around the foe and flicker to a brighter red. For the next 5 seconds, any attacks the foes whiff will send them TWO stages of moonsickness deeper, and some of Belzeb's abilities to increase the foe's moonsickness aggressively are also amplified. This can make it worth comboing Neutral Special into itself even if this will only leave the foe at frame neutral as opposed to opening up some of the stronger strings NSpecial offers with just one use, and also just serves as an extra incentive to throw this attack out even when the opponent's already moonsick.

Side Special - Devour
Belzeb's torso opens up into a wide hole, as wires spill out of it, grasping for nearby opponents. This is a command grab that comes out on Frame 18, but Belzeb's torso opens up on Frame 7, and this attack has a rather dangerous property to it. The middle of Belzeb's body is completely invulnerable during this, in fact attack hitting any part of him other than his head or his hooves and lower legs will be nullified as projectiles are absorbed into the hole and jointed attacks become caught in it. This makes this move useful for avoiding a foe's melee attacks except for ones targeted at specific parts of Belzeb's body, and he certainly has ways to dodge around attacks aimed at his head or hooves. The wires lashing out has respectable but not overly impressive range, definitely exceeding the reach of Bowser's Side Special due to being a disjointed hitbox but not reaching quite as far as your average sword user's FSmash.

If the wires ensnare an opponent, Belzeb will drag them into the hole in his torso and devour the opponent, afflicting them with a level of moonsickness if they're already afflicted with it from Neutral Special as the foe takes 5%. From here, Belzeb gains access to what is basically a cargo throw, able to briefly carry the opponent around inside him with his full movement accessible, while an attack in any direction will have Belzeb's wire mass unfurl and launch the opponent in the chosen direction for a subsequent 8% and knockback that KOs at 155%. Note that downward angled knockback out of this will be cut by half, and the escape difficulty is a fair bit lower than DK's Cargo Throw, so its a bit hard to score easy cheese kills with this move, though if you land it in the air its certainly possible.

While repositioning foes is certainly handy, its not the only benefit you get out of this move if the opponent is moonsick, as Belzeb is able to absorb more from them the more they've succumbed to the temptation of gluttony. If the foe is at Stage 1-3 moonsickness before being devoured, the holes in Belzeb's face will begin to emit a red glow as energy is drained from the foe, applying a minor buff that will last the next 8 seconds. Specifically, it reduces all hitstun Belzeb takes by a small amount, cutting out 10% of the frames at Stage 1 Moonsickness up to 20% of the frames at Stage 3. This means on top of the extra stage of moonsickness the foe gets from being consumed and possibly 1-2 on top of that from whiffing an attack on the hole in Belzeb's torso, it becomes harder for foes to chain attacks together on the heavyweight Belzeb and undo their moonsickness afterwards, making this move great for pushing your foe along the path to gluttonous madness. Not being as easily combo'd is a generally helpful feature for the durability of a superheavy like Belzeb as well, one that's particularly nice when you factor in that he has a couple nice combo breaker tools to make non-true combos against him less effective than you'd hope.

Consuming a foe at Stage 4-8 moonsickness gives Belzeb an additional benefit on top of the hitstun reduction, one you can notice by the fact that the red glow now permeates from inside his wires in addition to his head. The brightness of the glow at each particular piece of Belzeb's body indicates the strength of the buff, for reference. The red glow on Belzeb's body indicates an increase in Belzeb's speed, as his dash speed increases to 2.5 if he consumes a foe at Stage 4 moonsickness. That puts him at just below Captain Falcon for 3rd best dash speed in the game, and it only improves further at higher levels of moonsickness. Stage 5 increases it to a 2.7 dash speed, Stage 6 increases it to a 2.85 dash speed and also increases the hitstun resistance to 25%. Stage 7 buffs Belzeb up to a 3.1 dash speed and Stage 8 buffs him to a horrifying 3.45 dash speed, making him nearly as fast as SONIC and blazing past the rest of the cast by a sizeable margin. His air speed also improves to a flat 1 at Stage 4, 1.06 at Stage 5, 1.13 at Stage 6, 1.2 at Stage 7, and 1.28 at Stage 8.

The extra movement helps Belzeb for a few reasons. For one, improving his dash speed improves his ability to zip out of the way of attacks by dance dashing or weaving in and out with aerials, letting you rack up yet more misses to keep the opponent moonsick. The movement speed also improves Belzeb's highly lackluster combo game to be... tolerable, at least. If nothing else it makes his offensive pressure pretty horrific when he turns into one of the absolute most mobile characters in the game to go along with all his power and surprisingly decent fast options like Neutral Special. And on top of that, it just makes this move easier to kill and reposition foes with. If you want to put a foe near a blast zone when you use this attack, zipping over to the end of the stage at nearly Sonic's dash speed with the foe stuck in your wirey mass before going off stage with high air speed is a pretty good way to get that KO percentage much, much lower, and makes this an attack opponents definitely have to fear at higher percents for more reasons than just the buff. All in all, Belzeb's movement buff turns the Devour into not just a scarily potent kill move at high moonsickness stages, but also lets him serve as a powerhouse of offensive pressure afterwards.

This move also interacts with virtues in a less pleasant but still helpful way. Consuming a foe with a virtue is clearly not healthy for Belzeb as the blue light of their body can be seen crackling through Belzeb, his body straining to purge the virtue from the opponent. And he succeeds, still dealing the foe 5% and removing the virtue buff, resetting the opponent back to their pre-moonsickness status! But this comes at a price. The opponent will escape Belzeb's grip at frame neutral, and Belzeb unfortunately gets pretty messed up from consuming something that burns away at him on contact, taking 15% in the ordeal. This puts Belzeb down 10% and gives him zero frame advantage on an attack that, while good at countering other attacks, is still a Frame 17 move so its not exactly reliable. That said, you can use this to reset the horrible disadvantage of a foe a virtue buff for a comparatively minor buff, and this move's defensive properties can be helpful if the foe is getting overaggressive with their virtue buff.

Down Special - The Squalor of Dakknia
Belzeb lets out an eerie howl, as in front of him, a Dakna stumbles onto the stage. The hollow shell of a frog man has absolutely no skin left on its face below its eyes and huge jagged teeth is, suffice to say, an unpleasant sight to witness, not helped by its limp, almost zombie-like movements. Dakna shamble around at Kazuya's walk speed, patrolling back and forth around where they were summoned in an area of about a battlefield platform, rather mindless in their movements. Dakna are not solid objects and opponents can just run by them as though they weren't there, and projectiles will pierce through their bodies with a... slightly disturbing gooey sound effect as they do, but it does slow projectiles down as they go through the Dakna for a moment. This means they're a bit weak as anti-projectile shields go, but they do give Belzeb more time to get out of the way and force the opponent to take a stack of moonsickness, giving Belzeb another helpful aid against projectile characters trying to box him out. The Dakna are built like a slightly taller version of Wario due to actually having decently sized legs, and only have 20 stamina before they pop like a gore-y water balloon. Dakna also take knockback like Wario at 30%, making them a bit hard to knock around.

Belzeb can have up to two Dakna out on stage at once, and they're reasonably safe to create if you get space with an FAF of 42, That said, this move is a bit limited in one regard. Belzeb does not have an unlimited supply of Dakna, he needs to wait for moonsickness to spread between them to get more, which happens every 8 seconds of the match, and he starts with one in stock. Belzeb can have up to 3 Dakna in reserve at any given time, indicated next to his percentage meter with a bunch of little red-eyed frog icons. If Belzeb has no Dakna around, his howl will not be answered with any of them, just leaving Belzeb open and wasting time. If you have two Dakna out, this will instead automatically use the held version of this move with one Dakna out, which we'll get to in a moment.

If an opponent comes within a range comparable to Mario's Forward Smash of a Dakna, it will open its mouth as wires worm out of it and dig into the opponent with a shockingly small start lag of 4 frames, making this a very hard move to avoid once the foe gets close to a Dakna. If it whiffs though, it has 60 frames of end lag to reel the wires back into its mouth, and if they do hit a foe... it won't even flinch them, the wires just digging into their body and dealing a passive 2% per second for the next 6 seconds. That said, the wires will stay embedded in the foe's body for a hideously massive range, capable of staying embedded in a foe in a circle around the Dakna with a radius nearing half the width of Battlefield. This means its pretty hard to avoid the damage over time effect unless the foe kills the Dakna, but 12% over 6 seconds isn't exactly the most threatening thing in the world for a frail minion that doesn't really do much else.

If the Dakna's wires stay embedded in a foe for the full 6 seconds, however, the Dakna will proceed to take their pound of flesh from the opponent, the wires tensing in place and then ripping out a huge chunk of gore from the opponent's body. This deals the foe 21% and diagonal mostly upwards knockback that KOs at 85%. This means the opponent CANNOT ignore a Dakna unless they're confident they'll casually exit its range in those 6 seconds, lest the Dakna hit them with the equivalent of a heavyweight Smash attack. If two Dakna both embed their wires in a foe, they will both tear chunks of flesh out of the foe at the same time, linked up with when the first Dakna would do it. The doubled up ripping and tearing of flesh deals a horrifying 35% and knockback that KOs at 40%, and while its a bit easier for the foe to escape one of their ranges or eliminate one of the two Dakna to prevent this from happening, it absolutely gives the foe a strong incentive to swat away Belzeb's minions. For the record this hit can be dodged or shielded, but the shield damage is quite heavy and Belzeb can capitalize on either a shield or a dodge with a big hit of his own for a massive punish.

Melee attacks landed on Dakna don't count as hits or whiffs for the sake of Gluttony moonsickness, the pathetic zombified frogs not serving as a proper meal for the opponent's bloodlust. That said, killing one outright will remove one stage of moonsickness... but keep in mind using a projectile on one will flat out count as a miss for the purposes of moonsickness unless said projectile also hits Belzeb. In essence, opponents CAN kill Dakna to stave off moonsickness, but at a very inefficient rate. And if Belzeb interrupts the foe's attacks to kill a Dakna, the opponents attack being denied will count as a whiff as it usually would and build up the foe's moonsickness. With Belzeb's high mobility its easy for him to jump in on a foe trying to kill a Dakna, and this only gets more potent if Belzeb's buffed it up by consuming a high moonsickness opponent.

Belzeb has another way to deny the opponent the pleasure of satisfying their hunger, and that's if you use either held Side Special if you have one Dakna out, or any form of Side Special if you have 2. The Dakna will then pulsate for a moment, taking 25 frames before its body bursts open into a Bowser-sized blob of wires that attempt to ensnare the foe. If they succeed, the foe gets stunned in place by the wires for 45 frames, Belzeb free to act at approximately 25 frames of advantage. Given the aforementioned high mobility, as well as his high power, a Dakna exploding on a foe can be downright devastating for them, even if the 8% damage is not much to talk about compared to the potential of ripping the foe's organs out. This also applies a level of moonsickness to the foe if the foe is afflicted with it, or two levels of it if the foe has more active nanomachines on them. If a Dakna detonation denies the foe a hit as well, you can potentially be looking at 4 stages of moonsickness in one go on top of a somewhat potent stun, which is a devastating disadvantage to saddle the opponent with. If you have two Dakna out, tapping the button will detonate the closer Dakna, will holding it will detonate the further Dakna.

There's a third use for your Dakna, one that is activated by grabbing them with your Side Special. Devouring a Dakna will cause it to be mashed into a paste of bloody wires in Belzeb's body, the bloody wires appearing along his limbs, covering more of them the more Dakna Belzeb has devoured. He can eat a maximum of 3 Dakna, and eating Dakna provides him a different buff than eating opponents. Specifically, it actually adds more wires to his attacks by taking the Dakna's wires into himself, improving many of Belzeb's attacks. In the case of Side Special, it upgrades the range of it as a bloody segment of wire extends out further than usual, increasing the range by 1/3rd its usual amount for each devoured Dakna, doubling it if Belzeb has eaten all 3. Neutral Special is not affected by devoured Dakna, nor is Down Special. Dakna Belzeb has eaten do not count to his Dakna count on stage, but they do use up the supply he has to build up over the stock, so you have to choose carefully between using them as on stage minions or as a buff.

Bloody wires have unlimited duration as a buff, but the opponent CAN get rid of a stack of bloody wires on Belzeb by inflicting the same amount of damage to Belzeb it would take to kill a frog. Specifically, 20%. This basically forces foe's to get aggressive, or else deal with Belzeb's own amplified attacking tools... and the additional pressure on the foe to combo Belzeb can force them into riskier bets just to get rid of the bloody wires. Or they could make their own moonsickness worse by whiffing, leaving Belzeb with both an amplified offense and a foe made far more susceptible to his abilities.

As a final interaction this move has, if you bring a foe by a Dakna with Side Special, the Dakna will reach its wires inside Belzeb's body and hook them into the foe. This gives Belzeb a tool to drag the opponent right into the threat of a Dakna ripping out their organs later, and then dumping them right back out in a position where going after the Dakna will be rather difficult. On top of eating Dakna to power himself up, their existence on the stage makes Side Special set up into some very high pressure scenarios for the opponent to get Belzeb off them to escape or kill the Dakna. Which, again, can lead to the foe making mistakes and racking up more misses, and gaining more moonsickness. Its all part of Belzeb's many plans to send the foe into a gluttonous downward spiral... but just keep in mind if you totally screw that up and your opponent gets a virtue, they'll be able to render the Dakna extremely ineffectual by killing them in one hit from pretty much anything.

Up Special - Rising Tide
Belzeb heats the metal in his claws before doing a rising claw slash, in a motion similar to Dolphin Slash that deals 4 hits of 3% and small upwards knockback at the end. It goes up about as high as that move before going into helpless, but has 9 frames of start lag instead of 5 to make it less effective out of shield, and also makes it actually a pretty underwhelming recovery overall. Belzeb may have some advantages a lot of Smash heavies don't, but he a recovery problem that a lot of them share, and that means despite his massive weight stat he can be killed a bit earlier than you'd hope. This is another reason its probably worth going for moonsickness as its not like Belzeb's some extremely durable tank if he doesn't go for moonsickness.

This move, at the very least, gets a LOT better if you have bloody wires. Specifically, if you have one set of bloody wires, Belzeb gains the ability to use his Up Special twice in the air before going into helpless, which takes his recovery from mediocre to quite good. Up Special's first use does have enough end lag you can't really do fancy ladder combos off it as you're only at the smallest frame advantage over the foe with it, but if you use Up Special immediately out of the first one, you can combo the second Up Special right out of it, which can get kills off the top battlefield platform once you get to a decently high percent(the knockback on this move is really small and barely scales), but is otherwise a VERY risky prospect. Rather, you'd be using this to pursue a foe higher into the air or just have a generally easier time recovering... which can be a bit difficult considering you lose the bloody wire buff by taking damage. This is another reason for the foe to try and take away Belzeb's bloody wire buffs, he actually does need them to amplify his durability once he reaches higher percents. On the offensive side, this lets you stay in the air and pursue the foe longer, letting Belzeb wreck havoc on foes with potentially oppressive aerials like his Fair and Uair.

Another follow up unlocks for this move at 2 sets of bloody wires, but its usefulness is pretty conditional. After the two initial rising slashes, one with each claw, Belzeb instead just has his entire upper torso burst into a huge mass of wires, reaching up in an area about the size of Bowser above his head. This deals 16% and upwards knockback that, if you started the combo from the ground on Final Destination, will kill at about 90%, and can kill earlier than that in the air. Thing is, this last hit is pretty telegraphed, and the foe absolutely has time to dodge out of the way in time before you activate it, and if you do whiff the punishment is probably going to be just brutal. Which barring an organ rip threatening the foe, you're probably going to whiff it, so you'll only want to use this folllow up if the organ rip is about to happen. Otherwise, you're probably going to want to hold off until you have 3 sets of bloody wires.

If you do, you can hold the input for up to 30 frames for a timing fakeout, and the range is extended to about 1.4x its normal size if you hold the charge. If you landed the first Up Special on a foe higher up on a platform or in the air, the ability to pull this fakeout off gives you the chance to go for some SERIOUSLY early kills, conditionally flat out at 0% if you're doing this on a tri-plat stage. Of course, the risk you're taking is quite high, as not only do you have to land Up Special(which is punishable if you whiff, which can result in you losing your bloody wire buildup), you have to successfully mindgame your opponent into getting hit by this final hit, and if you whiff, you're in helpless very high in the air. You're likely to get punished very, very badly if you screw this up, losing your moonsickness advantage and likely a couple of your built up bloody wires. This is a very high risk manuever with a reward that's absolutely worth it if you pull it off, but its very much a personal playstyle decision if this is what you want to use 3 bloody wire stacks for over less risky strategies.

Smashes​

Forward Smash - Avatar Formation
Belzeb's body shudders as wires form out of the ground around him, forming over the 54 frame startup of this move into a massive avatar. The being is a horribly mutated mechanical boar, with four red eyes and a maw filled with several rows of teeth and tusks. Eerie whispers erupt from the creature as it forms, as wide as a battlefield platform centered on Belzeb, and tall enough to touch the bottom of said platform. It then lets out a scream as it charges forward, dealing 28%-39% and knockback that KOs at 55%-20% as it charges forward a full battlefield platform. The end lag is quite punishable too, but not as extreme as incredibly predictable start lag. This attack has some obviously gargantuan range and coverage to go with its power, being a heavyweight smash brought up to its logical extreme. Belzeb is left in his original position after the attack ends as the boar avatar separates from his body.

The nice thing about the boar avatar, which gradually covers more and more of Belzeb's body over the move? It counts as a whiff to hit it, because the boar avatar is totally invincible, eventually covering Belzeb's entire body in said totally invulnerable form over the first 25 frames of the attack. It stops low to the ground attacks first, but takes a bit to form high enough to block high hitting moves, meaning this move is not effective at neutralizing aerials. Nevermind that the start lag is so high the foe can probably dodge or shield and punish this even IF they land a hit, making this a risky move to commit to as a defensive option except against laggier KO moves. But when you do nullify a slow Down Smash with this, the power on this attack is just unholy and worth the startup.

There's two things that make this attack easier to use, the first of which being moonsickness. If the foe hits the avatar's body while moonsick, they'll be stuck in hitlag for an extra 2.5 frames(rounded down as you can't have half a frame) per stage of moonsickness they're experiencing. Remember how I said this could only nullify slow and punishable attacks and counter appropriately? Yeah, no, on a moonsick foe you can absolutely start punishing medium end lag and even some quick attacks with this the more the foe is suffering from their gluttony. Bloody wires cut the move's impracticality in another way, causing the avatar to form faster and defend earlier against mid and upper targeted attacks and also come out to attack faster, lowering the start lag by 5 frames for each set of bloody wires Belzeb has. Coming out on Frame 39 is not too impressive, but when you factor in how many attacks it can intercept at that point especially on a particularly moonsick opponent, this move can get EXTREMELY scary to deal with depending on how far Belzeb has been stacking the deck in his favor.

Dakna are another useful aid to this attack, primarily by forcing the foe to dodge or shield their flesh ripping. Sure, even then it requires a pretty good read on the foe, but this gives you another, even scarier and giant sized hitbox for the foe to worry about at the same time as the Dakna trying to rip the foe's flesh out. Its also worth noting that with the move's massive range, it can certainly be used to just pose a big threat to an opponent trying to pop one of your Dakna, possibly even covering up a particularly close Dakna due to the sheer massive size of the boar avatar, as they become hidden inside the avatar as well if they're in contact with it, the boar briefly absorbing any Dakna on contact into it before dropping them off where they were originally.

At the end of the boar's attack, it sinks into the ground, leaving writhing wires occupying the ground it charged along. This creates a battlefield width patch of terrain covered in writhing wires that deal a passive 4% per second to opponents standing on them, slows the foe's movement speed to half, increases their jumpsquat lag by 4 frames, and most terrifyingly applies a level of moonsickness to foes for each second they spend on that terrain as long as they're already moonsick. This patch of wires only lasts for 4-8 seconds based on charge before fading away, but it does give a consolation prize if the attack whiffs, as the opponent really does not want to stand on. This is especially true if the foe has a doubled up moonsickness infection with a second Neutral Special hit, because then they take both the damage and the moonsickness stage every half second instead of every second. The extra jumpsquat frames and slowed movement also makes it harder to combo Belzeb on this terrain, meaning punishing him out of a Forward Smash not interrupted during the start lag is going to be less impressive than you'd think at first, particularly if the foe starts taking all that moonsickness back from simply standing on the ground.

Wirey ground adds an extra layer of stage control to Belzeb's game, providing another thing for him to just dump opponents on top of with Side Special even if its short lifespan can make that difficult. It can make it that much harder to sever one's connections with a Dakna attempting to devour their organs, and also make chaining together hits on them more difficult like it does with Belzeb. There's a lot of little benefits to this move that make it worth throwing out from time to time if you can stomach taking a hit or two in retaliation if it screws up. Just keep in mind that even with all the benefits to soften how badly you'll be punished if you whiff, this is still a MASSIVELY laggy move that is horribly predictable, and needs to be used at the right moment if you want to take advantage of all its upsides.

Just to warn you though, if the opponent has a virtue, the avatar flat out becomes part of Belzeb's hurtbox, damage and knockback from hitting it being transferred to Belzeb's body during the start lag and interrupting him out of the attack. This strips the move of all its protection and only gives it utility as a long range and high power threat. There's times when its still useful even if the foe has a virtue, but they are fa fewer and further between than if a foe didn't have one.

Down Smash - A Cancer Upon The Earth
The wires in Belzeb's body disassemble as they flow into the ground below Belzeb, merging into the earth. A few frames later, the head of Belzeb's avatar form from the Forward Smash erupts out of the ground, snapping its unsettling jaws shut on the opponent, dealing 21%-29% and upwards knockback that KOs at 95%-55%. The head is about as big as Belzeb's entire body, only a fair bit wider and shorter, and after it erupts out of the earth Belzeb's body reforms for some hefty end lag. Like Forward Smash, this attack is very slow to come out, the hitbox active on Frame 35, but Belzeb disappearing into the earth protects him for most of the start lag, becoming invincible on Frame 13, but considering that his body is descending into the earth this can get his head and upper torso out of the way of high hitting hitboxes and aerials on a much earlier frame than that. Think of it as a reverse FSmash in that regard, this move is better for dodge and punishing an opponent's aerials, but doesn't get you out of the way nearly as quickly of low hitting attacks. Given the actual hit comes out a fair bit faster than FSmash and dodging out of the way of aerials is more consistently relevant than dodging low hits, this is the attack you'll be able to pull out to trick opponents a lot more consistently than said move. In exchange, this move's power, while formidable, is a fair bit lower, and it lacks the ability to threaten a massive swath of the stage at once like FSmash does. This is a very punishable move if you mispredict it too, given both the huge start lag and end lag, so be aware of that.

You can angle this move forward and backward to have Belzeb erupt out of the ground either half a battlefield platform in front of or behind his original position, giving this attack some additional coverage, though Belzeb cannot erupt out past a ledge, so it is limited in that regard especially on smaller platforms. If you want to get a bit fancier however, you can press B during this move's startup to have Belzeb erupt out of the ground underneath a Dakna, or a half platform to the left or right of it, always picking a Dakna with the closest proximity to a foe. If a Dakna is in the air, Belzeb will appear from the ground below it, or the closest ground possible if there is none. This will even let Belzeb teleport from one platform to another if his Dakna are placed elsewhere, giving Belzeb the ability to come in and attack a foe trying to kill his minions from anywhere on the stage. This can go a long way in terms of threatening a foe's attempts to kill his Dakna, and let's Belzeb threaten the opponent's attempt to dodge a Dakna ripping their organs out from anywhere on the stage! And while its not getting the most mileage out of this attack, using this move to retreat close to a Dakna in case of emergency is an acceptable way to save face. Maybe you could even eat the Dakna afterwards to bolster your next assault?

Bloody wires improve this move a good deal by adding extra hits to it, as bloody wires briefly erupt out of the ground in waves once if the Belzeb had a single Dakna's worth of bloody wires, twice if he had two, and three times if he had three. These wires bursting out of the ground only deal 4% and a flinch, but the wire wave covers the entire territory that could be covered by any angling of this attack. and even with one wire wave, the opponent has the bare minimum window to react to Belzeb's larger hit if they get hit by it. If you have two Dakna consumed, the two wire waves will combo into each other and then the main hit, making this attack effectively start guarunteeing a hit on grounded foes on Frame 14, where the first wire wave of the 2 hit version comes out. A frame 14 attack that kills under 100% is pretty formidable, and if you have 3 Dakna consumed the first wire wave happens on frame 10, and considering this attack covers well over a platform of range this is the kind of horrifying stuff that is EXACTLY why you need to get rid of Belzeb's bloody wire supply. The wire waves come out low enough along the ground they can even shield poke, and as a multi-hit its pretty effective against dodges. The best way to evade this effect, ironically, becomes to go for a jump to get over this move, and it forces foes to go for aerial approaches that are usually the worst way to counter this move since it covers the ground in such an oppressive fashion. Its still far from an unbeatable technique as if you land your aerials close enough to the ground you can still interrupt this move, and the shield poke does require just enough shield damage that if you don't hit with the first hit you won't be poking the foe with the latter two, though it will leave the foe with a very heavily damaged shield. While this can come across as a very oppressive technique, the lag involved means its perfectly beatable if Belzeb is just spamming it, but its absolutely a reason to pressure Belzeb off a triple bloody wire setup.

All bloody wire hits will happen around a Dakna instead of around Belzeb if he choose to use this move to transport himself near a Dakna. If you wanted a move that's horrifyingly efficient at interrupting a foe's shot at killing one of your Dakna, being able to use this from anywhere on the stage on Frame 14 or, god forbid, Frame 10, and being able to teleport to a Dakna makes dealing with this move even more frustrating when Belzeb has a large supply of bloody wires to work with. Best thing to do at that point is approach the Dakna or Belzeb from the air and time your attacks right, and focus on using the end lag of this attack as your time to get rid of the Dakna or get Belzeb off the ground to give you some breathing room. That said, this move is probably the single biggest incentive in Belzeb's set for opponents to go on the aggressive and remove bloody wires when they can, and given the cooldown between getting access to a new Dakna and the lag of eating one there's basically always going to be time for opponents to punish you if you're trying to set this up. But this move as a potential reward is the kind of thing that means an opponent CANNOT afford to ignore Belzeb building up bloody wires and forces them to get aggressive, which is where you counter their assault and punish.

Frame 10 is just a little too slow to combo out of Neutral Special, just FYI. This move is meant to be extremely strong but not THAT strong.

Up Smash - Glutton Festival
Belzeb turns to face the sky as his body bursts open into a tree of wirey branches, extending as high as Palutena's Up Smash into the air but the branches spreading out MUCH wider, with the base being a bit wider than Belzeb but the branches covering an area nearly twice the size of Bowser. Alarmingly, this attack is NOT slow like his other smashes despite this massive reach, coming out on Frame 16, but the power isn't really THAT impressive, dealing rapid hits of 2% to opponents that are in the branches before a final hit of 5%, with the final hit dealing upward knockback at a slight diagonal based on the side of the tree they were in contact with. The total damage is 17%-24%, and the knockback will KO at 170%-125%, so its not all that powerful a KO move compared to Belzeb's other options. That said, considering the sheer range on this move and the fact that its not even slow, its still a very effective move despite the less than impressive kill potential.

There's quite a few caveats to this move that make it a fair bit... stranger than the comparable Palutena Down Smash, but the first thing that you have to be warned about using this move is it is nothing like FSmash and DSmash. The entire tree and its branches are part of your hurtbox, and if the opponent hits them while this move is coming out and early in the end lag as the tree begins to disintegrate, you will take the damage and knockback of their attack. That makes using this move to pressure an aerial foe a genuine risk you have to weigh, that giant range is absolutely capable of coming back to bite you if you misuse it. That said, there's an upside to keep in mind with this move. At the top of the branches, and angled 40 degrees to the left and right of it are three boar heads similar to the head of the pig in Forward Smash, bearing their teeth and eyes glowing ominously as they bite down, acting as sweetspots to this move. The boar heads deal 22%-31% and knockback that KOs at 85%-40% at the angle they were pointed, which is horrifying power for a move with this kind of range that comes out on Frame 16. That said, these boar heads are not nearly as big as the one in FSmash, and given their positioning it can be challenging to threaten opponents with them, especially because if foes are just a little further past them they can instead punish you for extending out into this massive tree.

There's ways to get more mileage out of these pig heads, one of which is using this attack out of your dash! As ridiculous as it sounds, its easier to line up the pig heads when your high movement speed can put them into place, especially when its buffed up after devouring an opponent on high levels of moonsickness. This is also easier to pull off by using the Up Smash so the pig heads are positioned in a place the opponents would really like to get to. Block off a high recovery or an attempt to return to the ground with them, put the pig heads in the path of an opponent trying to either reach or escape from a crucial Dakna, or use them to keep opponents in range of the Jab's extra function(a move we'll get to in a moment). The tree's massive size offers a lot of stage control in general if you know when to throw it out, it can combo out of some higher vertical knockback attacks when they launch the foe far enough to trap them in its branches but not so far they go past the tree entirely.

Bloody wires shore up this moves weaknesses a bit, as the tree of wires becomes partially made of bloody wires the more of them you've accumulated. It cover the upper central part of the branches with 1 set of bloody wires, adds the "trunk" of the wire tree at 2 sets of bloody wires, and finally just covers the entirety of it with 3 sets of bloody wires. The parts of the tree made of bloody wires are NOT hurtboxes for Belzeb, up to the point of making the entire move intangible except for the pig heads with 3 sets of bloody wires. This makes the sourspot of this move a lot more potent when you don't have to worry abotu the opponent hitting you back on it, and if the opponent is aiming for the pig heads... they better hope they don't miss, given their power.

This move also has a follow up that causes an orange eye to appear on each of the pig heads that scans the air around them for a nearby opponent. How far these eyes can scan depends on how moonsick the foe is, covering a radius about 0.7x Bowser's width from the heads, and increasing how far they can track foes by 0.15x Bowser's width for each level of moonsickness they have. A pig head that detects a foe in its radius will twist and contort the tree to lurch in that direction, dealing the same hitbox it initially had a second time. If multiple foes come within the radius of different pig heads, the tree will stretch to accomidate both lurches. The tree remains part of Belzeb's hurtbox while doing this so this is a VERY risky manuever you can be interrupted out of, especially since it has more start lag than the initial attack, but this does allow you to hit foes that dodged the initial hit instead of hitting Belzeb out of it. Its also very threatening to opponnets currently worried about an organ rip from a Dakna, or one who have already blown their air dodge on that, and while risky you can follow up some moves with knockback that have no right to be followed up on with this even if its not a guarunteed hit, since there's a bit of a window where you can choose to activate the follow up so you can mess with the foe's timing for an a counterhit. Despite this move seeming counterintuitive to your playstyle in that it makes you MORE vulnerable to attack, this is actually a way to trick an opponent into whiffing and compounding their own moonsickness, attack a bit earlier or later than the foe was expecting and either their attack gets interrupted or they whiff it and get devoured by a boar, and if they survive they're dealing with an extra stage of moonsickness.

Standards​

Down Tilt - Ripping Glutton
Belzeb's low to the ground wires formed from a crouch spin together into a drill and lunge forward through the air, dealing 3 hits of 3% and low upward diagonal knockback. This is an actual combo move in Belzeb's set, going into Nair easily, and coming out on Frame 7 its pretty fast as well. You can combo this out of Neutral Special and into Nair for some respectable damage, serving as one of the better NSpecial combo options you have available. The end lag as Belzeb descends back into the ground and returns to the mess of wires he is in his crouch is not particularly high, but this move does have notable weaknesses. The range is decent, but it comes from Belzeb moving forward during the move, so in terms of reach in neutral this move will get beaten out by anything disjointed pretty casually, and can sometimes send you smacking into closer ranged attacks from the opponent as well. Its also worth mentioning that because this attack jumps off the ground, this will basically never shield poke, which takes away some of the use it would have as a more traditional DTilt, and it costs Belzeb his impressively low profile on the ground to throw it out.

But that's just the thing about this attack, it takes Belzeb off the ground, which means low hitting attacks will miss him. This is actually pretty big for Belzeb, as his low crouch is excellent for getting under attacks, and now down tilt lets him go over attacks aimed low at him. Attacks that cover a big arc in front of the opponent tend to also be slower than this move, so you can just use its speed to beat them out. This makes it an excellent way to starve opponents to build up gluttony moonsickness, as with the right predictions this can beat out most things the opponent could throw Belzeb's way in neutral. Of course, its not necessarily great against more defensive options and an opponent predicting which direction Belzeb is coming from with their neutral options and countering it is still a perfectly real possibility, but this gives some real meat to Belzeb's game of weaving around the opponent's defensive options.

Each set of bloody wires on this move bumps the damage by 1.5% on one of the hits starting from the last hit and going backwards, which isn't a massive boost to this move's potency but the extra damage counts for something. If you have enough sets of bloody wires though, you can use Down Smash to shield poke where this move would fail, which gives this some additional passive benefit to Belzeb having bloody wires on top of making this move into a stronger combo starter/extender.

Dash Attack - Boar Gore
A smaller version of Belzeb's avatar form from FSmash, but with oversized tusks, rises out of the mass of wires and swings its head upward as it attempts to gore the opponent on its tusks. Hitting with the boar's head deals 14% and upward knockback that KOs at 165%, while hitting with the tusks causes a freeze for impact before wires and gore burst out of the opponent's body, dealing them 19% and diagonal knockback that KOs at 90%. This is a very slow dash attack, coming out on Frame 24, and has a lot of end lag as Belzeb's body reforms from the boar after using it. You're largely going to use this move as a hard punish/read on opponents who you dodge/shield properly. On the plus side, Belzeb will actually slide past opponents who dodge or shield this, his wirey mass sliding under the shield as a bit of an unconventional property to this dash attack, leaving him behind the foe during the end lag and a bit harder to punish, though he's not going to slide super far so the foe will probably at least get a Bair off. In short, this is a laggy attack you use for hard reads and one you won't get punished for as hard as some characters, but the high lag definitely makes it an easy dash attack to play around if the opponent knows its coming. As an aside, the mobility component of this attack makes it an excellent choice for following up a Dakna exploding to wrap a foe in wires.

Similarly to FSmash, the start lag of this attack is cut by a little bit for each set of bloody wires Belzeb has, decreasing the start lag by 2 frames each, basically turning it into a bit better of a punisher move. The scarier buff, however, is that the explosion of wires and gore out of the opponent becomes stronger as Belzeb's moonsickness achieves a greater level of influence over the foe. The damage increases by 2% per stage, with the knockback increasing a bit as well, meaning this move deals 27% and kills at 60% at Stage 4 moonsickness... and deals 35% and kills at 25% at max moonsickness. Similarly to Down Smash being a reason the opponent will have to get aggressive and try to remove your bloody wire buffs, this move serves as a reason to get the opponent to try to keep their moonsickness at acceptable levels because this move's power on an especially moonsick opponent is kind of horrific. Also while the movement of this move stops at a ledge, the tusks start JUST low enough to 2-frame opponents, which can make this an interesting ledgeguard option, albeit the tusk hitbox will not cover higher recoveries and is only going to hit the ledge for a single frame.

For obvious reasons, buffing this attack up by devouring an opponent can have pretty fantastic results. A Dash Attack of this potency coming out of near Sonic's dash speed is pretty terrifying. One reason why is that Belzeb will go zipping by the opponent when you whiff it, making the move surprisingly hard to punish if you don't stop at a ledge. Speaking of ledges, this also just lets you charge to a ledge while the foe's recovering at horrifying speeds to 2 frame them with the tusks, which will probably just kill the foe when you land it. If you want to make this move hard to punish, good positioning is key as opponents can still punish you just fine if their back is near is a ledge, but you have plenty of helpful stage control tools between your wire patches, Dakna, and Devour's ability to carry your opponent to any particularly convenient location on the stage.

Jab - All Seeing Eye
In the middle of Belzeb's torso, a single orange eye emits a glow, illuminating a small circular spot in front of Belzeb. If the opponent is standing in that circular radius, they will be impaled with wires in a hit that deals 6% and long hitlag for both Belzeb and the opponent, before spacing them away with spacing knockback comparable to Ganondorf's Jab. This move comes out on Frame 5, only has a single hit, and generally has pretty low reward for landing it on top of lackluster range for a character Belzeb's size, making it a pretty poor Jab overall. At the very least, Down Tilt can kind of fill its niche as a fast, all-purpose type of move, and it will at least do its job as fast spacer when the foe is particularly close to you.

If you want to get full mileage out of this move, you need to use it on an opponent in the midst of the start lag of an attack. There is a bit of reason they'd actually throw out a move with more middling lag at close range too, as slower attacks tend to have a bit more coverage and with how wonky Belzeb can sometimes be to actually hit and start a combo, sometimes going for that slightly riskier option is one of the best ways to make sure the attack actually connects. Belzeb's Jab, of course, is a counter to that line of thinking, and can punish close range, overaggressive foes in neutral as the eye will detect a vulnerability left open by the foe going for an attack if this hits them during their start lag. This will cause it to stab several wires into more vulnerable parts of the foe, dealing some minor spacing knockback and enough stun to put Belzeb at a decent 12 frame advantage. This advantage increases by 3 frames for every stage of moonsickness the foe is suffering from, up to an imposing 36 frames of advantage if the foe is at max moonsickness.

There's a few moves to combo off this with, a bloody wire souped up Down Smash being one of the best ones at low moonsickness, but Down Tilt and Forward Tilt work just fine if you don't have that available. The real prize becomes available at Stage 4 moonsickness, and earlier with some bloody wires to help out, where you can combo this move into Dash Attack. Given how potent Dash Attack becomes at higher moonsickness levels, I should not need to tell you why going for a particularly risky close range offensive to avoid Belzeb dodging it suddenly becomes VERY dangerous. You're basically comboing into a move that will kill at like 60% at the bare minimum and at high moonsickness levels the kinds of cheese kills you can get off this are downright hilarious. Of course this requires a foe to be playing especially risky with their melee for this to happen, but going for safer melee attacks can often backfire as Belzeb's body twists around the foe's attempts to hit him, so that's just a tradeoff the opponent is going to have to choose to deal with. This leaves Jab as not a particularly potent aggressive move, but the defensive neutral purpose it serves is very scary despite being niche.

If you want to use the move on the offensive, consider utilizing the held version of this move, which unlocks when you have bloody wires, which seep out of Belzeb's body and form into an eye at head-level with Belzeb above the ground. The eye will observe foes in an area about Bowser's width beneath itself, which considering Belzeb's height is a pretty big area, and after 1 second of observation will stab out with a single bloody wire from its pupil that deals the foe 7% and a flinch. Afterwards, the eye will vanish and the bloody wires used to make it will flow back into Belzeb's body, but while its out he does lose access to the bonuses those wires provide. This isn't a particularly scary hitbox on its own merits, but it is totally disjointed from Belzeb's lag, and the fact that you can have 3 of them on stage with optimal bloody wire setups is... certainly oppressive. Opponents CAN destroy the eye by dealing it 15%, but it sates their gluttony even less than a Dakna to do this, only being kind enough to not count as a whiff if the opponent attacks it and giving no other benefits. Fighting Belzeb with an eye nearby is a nightmare, as not only do you have to worry about if your attacks will even hit Belzeb, but also the extra pressure the eye provides means Belzeb can set up his laggier options more easily and makes just playing defensive until you get an opening much more difficult. Especially when you consider after the eye attacks, Belzeb gets access to all his bloody wire benefits he got from taking it out again.

The eye will also stab its wire into opponents knocked past it with an attack as it watches them fly by, the wire stab still adding 7% but also mildly boosting the knockback of the attack launching the foe. The eye can actually aim above itself by about half a Ganondorf height in addition to below itself to let it catch some higher knockback moves. This means knocking a foe past an eye can either tack on some extra damage as some bonus reward to your high knockback attacks, or let them kill a bit earlier. The eye will return to Belzeb after doing this. Setting out an eye has the same FAF as setting out a Dakna, and you can reabsorb an eye into Belzeb's body by holding A right next to it, only taking to an FAF of 25 to reabsorb.

If there's a Dakna within the reach of this attack's melee version and you hold A, Belzeb will instead apply the eye to the Dakna's body. allowing the Dakna to apply some additional pressure to the opponent by allowing the bloody wire to lash out from them at the same reach it would from a regular eye(Belzeb's height and Bowser's width around them). The attack can be interrupted by putting the Dakna into hitstun, however, and will not activate while a Dakna is grabbed. The Dakna's minor mobility isn't a huge range buff to the eye, mind you, but that's not the only reason you're giving the Dakna an extra eye. Sticking an eye to a Dakna also means when it flinches the foe, Belzeb could potentially pop in with Down Smash to follow it up on a consistent basis, which is a pretty potent addition to Down Smash's abilities.

No, the fun comes when you press A + B, or hold A when all your bloody wires are out and an eye is on a Dakna. The eye will widen as the Dakna's body twitches, and if the opponent attacks the Dakna in a window from Frames 4-24 of this move's activation, a wire will stab into the opponent's body to stun them, and Belzeb will vanish into the floor in a similar manor to Down Smash before appearing behind the foe and slashing at their neck(or upper back if they don't have one) to deal them 10% and combo starter low diagonal knockback. Of course, there's a long wind down window for both Belzeb and the Dakna if you don't predict this counter correctly, as the Dakna goes limp and Belzeb just kinda stays in his pose prepared to plunge into the ground to no result. This is yet another option to make Dakna more difficult to deal with, one that requires a hearty setup commitment and will punish you with losing both a Dakna and a set of bloody wires if the Dakna ends up destroyed while the eye is attached. But the benefits, such as making a Dakna into a more effective meat shield for Belzeb, letting Belzeb get his combo game started from across the stage if the opponent messes up with their attempt to kill the Dakna, and encouraging foes to use their throws rather than regular attacks to deal with them. Which... considering the extra lag they're going to have to deal with to throw the Dakna out of the way really is less than ideal, and is more likely to push the foe towards either trying to bait out the eye's attack so it goes back to Belzeb, or just running away from the Dakna and possibly accepting they'll have to dodge or shield the organ rip. The foe has a lot of ways to get around this newfound counterattack, but if you put it on a Dakna at the right time it can make the chances of the organ rip landing a LOT higher, or allow you to punish the foe in other ways for their mistakes.

Forward Tilt - Vile Spectre
Belzeb's lower body dissolves into a mass of nanotech, as he rears his upper body back, before slashing forward in a long reaching slice with his claw. This move actually has some pretty formidable reach, and deals 14% and mostly horizontal knockback that KOs at 135%. It doesn't really combo into anything even at low percents, but at mid percents you could follow up on this with your Dash Attack by abusing your high dash speed, a manuever that becomes harder to avoid the faster Belzeb's dash is you can certainly mix in Jab/DTilt and even other FTilts out of dash to mess with the opponent's dodge timing. This attack does come out on Frame 14, making it a very slow FTilt that almost the entire cast can outspeed. That said, the reach is pretty good as Belzeb's arm extends out, and he actaully swipes it low enough to the ground that it can hit some surprising low lying enemies, though the claw is tall enough it'll never shield poke. This is by no means a true combo out of DTilt or Neutral Special, but you can at least mix up into it out of those moves if you're feeling a bit brave.

The real highlight of this move, however, is how much work it does in getting your hurtbox out of the lien of fire. Belzeb moving back during the start lag acts as a somewhat more dramatic version of Captain Falcon's FSmash letting him move out of the way of some attacks, and on top of that Belzeb's entire lower body becomes intangible during this attack, a fact that remains even a bit into the end lag to make it a little harder to punish. This is, like Down Tilt, one of your best moves for dodging opponents attacks and increasing their moonsickness, and while it lacks the combo potential of that move it offers a meatier hit and a scarier potential follow up in Dash Attack. Its definitely slower than Down Tilt though, so its a lot less effective of a neutral tool for fighting a foe that's not playing aggressive. It is worth noting this avoids more low-mid hitting attacks and the step back as opposed to a step forward before the attack makes it dodge a number of moves that DTilt wouldn't, making this a great alternative way to sidestep and punish with Belzeb's attacks.

Bloody wires, like with DTilt, mostly just gives this move a minor power boost, adding +2% for each set of bloody wires. This isn't a lot, but it does make this move that beats out so many attacks in melee combat into a pretty scary KO move on its own, and lets it do the rush-in Dash Attack strategies at earlier percents than it otherwise would.

Up Tilt - Glutton's Razor
Belzeb slashes a claw in a wide arc over his head, facing towards the sky. As the claw moves through the air, it heats up rapidly, glowing wide hot at the end of its arc. This comes out on Frame 11 and the slightly slower movement of the claw through the air than average makes it one of the slower and more punishable Up Tilts in the game, but Belzeb's arm has some impressive reach to make up for it. On the subject of power, that depends on how much the claw has heated up. At the start of the move, it deals 9% and upward knockback that's enough to serve as an acceptable but underwhelming launcher, and combos into Nair until medium percents. At the middle of the arc, the upwards knockback is increased to have some actual kill potential around 170% and the damage increases to 12%, and at the end of the arc when the claw is white hot, it deals 16% and upwards knockback that KOs at 110%. While it does require a bit specific positioning, this is one of Belzeb's faster, easier to throw out KO tools in the latter half of the arc and is great if a foe's been sticking around on high moonsickness for a while playing defensive, as lining up a hit with this is not especially high risk or complicated. It does at least require a little finesse, however.

In terms of how this plays with Belzeb's other moves, this lacks the evasive properties of Belzeb's FTilt and Down Tilt, so if you want a way to dip out of the way of aerial attacks and retaliate you're going to need to rely on the slower Down Smash for that. That said, Down Smash is a strong enough move it doesn't really need THAT much help, at least, and Up Tilt at least is filling the niche of a simple, fast anti-air. The more launcher oriented knockback lets this combo into USmash for a bit... and while the back hit might seem pretty lackluster at first blush, there's some small percentage ranges where the weaker back hits of this move actually can outright combo into a pig head, making the usually weaker part of this move into a tool to get some surprise kills! Just keep in mind its at pretty specific damage ranges that vary from character to character on top of requiring hitting with a specific part of the move, so this is a combo you're going to need to spend a bit of time mastering to use propertly.

This move gets among the smallest benefits from bloody wires in the set of just a minor extension to the reach of Belzeb's claws, but the range increase becomes decently noteworthy at 2 or 3 devoured Dakna, giving this move that bit of extra reach and safety.

Aerials​

Neutral Aerial - Abomination
Belzeb's body dissolves into a writhing mass of wires and flails in the air for a multi-hit that deals 5 hits of 1% followed by a final hit of 4% and decent spacing diagonal knockback. This is not a high reward move to land due to iffy end lag as Belzeb reforms and lackluster combo potential, but that's not why you're going for this move. Its because it comes out on Frame 3. That, and it turns Belzeb's body into a smaller, more circular shape that can sometimes allow you to avoid aerials from above and below, and the multi-hit can let you drag opponents around a little bit before you launch them, giving a bit of control over the opponent's spacing. The landing lag on this move isn't great as Belzeb needs just as long to reform as he would in the air without launching the opponent away, so you're going to be at a minor frame disadvantage if you use this to drag the foe into the ground. For the record, this can sometimes combo into Neutral Special at low percents, which is a handy tool even if the foe will probably be too far spaced away for you to combo further than that even if NSpecial isn't staled. It does give more of a real reward for landing this move at low percentages, at least.

The reason this move is so important to Belzeb is not because of its on hit reward, and its not THAT great an offensive tool even ignoring that given the short range. No, this move is basically your combo breaker, and for that purpose, coming out on Frame 3, shrinking your hurtbox, and covering all sides of Belzeb makes it very good at its job. Belzeb really needs something to get out of combos when the foe is moonsick, less they cure themselves of the sickness temporarily or even outright acquire a virtue, and this move means that non-true combos are easier for Belzeb to intercept than they would be for a lot of heavyweights. The short range can be a problem, meaning this move isn't perfect at its job, but it will at least make the opponent have to work a little harder for any non-true combos on Belzeb. And if you managed to devour a foe to reduce the hitstun you take from attacks, the foe will be left with fewer viable true combos and more options you can just interrupt with this attack.

Bloody wires and moonsickness help shore up this move's weaknesses in different ways. Bloody wires has those bloody wires become extensions past the normal length of the flailing wire mass of this move, increasing the size of the hitbox dramatically and the bloody parts of the wires outright serve as a disjoint. This makes the move much easier to use as an offensive pressure tool, even if its lack of combo potential makes it less formidable than it otherwise would be. After all, you can still use it to win neutral and weave around the attacks of foes to build up their moonsickness. It also turns this move from a good combo interruption tool into a downright insane one as the range becomes actually very formidable at 3 stacks and pretty decent even at one, because outranging this attack with your combo aerials/specials is no longer something that's going to be happening a lot for the opponent. The iffy end lag and lackluster reward remains, so while it becomes more of an all purpose Nair with bloody wires it doesn't become infallible.

The damage of the final hit is increased by 1% per stage of moonsickness on the opponent, and the knockback scales up slightly, while actually being shifted to a somewhat more horizontal angle. This gives the move a better damage payoff once the foe's at higher levels of moonsickness while still comboing into Neutral Special for a bit, and once you get to Stage 5-8 this starts actually becoming kind of a KO move? It kills at the ledge at 140%, which is very late for Belzeb's kit, but considering all the passive damage moonsickness does and the possibility of using it offstage to KO earlier its not a terrible option. By Stage 8 it kills at the ledge at 100% and even from center stage around 145%, which is kind of scary for a move that comes out on Frame 3. The short range is still a weakness, but if you get bloody wires AND high moonsickness levels on the opponent, Nair goes from "just a combo escape" to such more than that, and frankly the sheer threat of being able to KO foes back if they mess up a combo can make it a much more worthwhile combo breaker that gets inside the foe's head just by existing.

Forward Aerial - Fleshripper
Belzeb sprouts a second pair of even larger, clawed arms out of his back before slashing forward four times, slashing first with a smaller claw and then with the larger claw on the opposite side from the smaller claw. Each hit with the smaller claws deals 12% and mostly horizontal knockback that KOs from the ledge at 130%, while the larger claw hits deal 16% and slightly more diagonalknockback that KOs from the ledge at 95%. The smaller claws hit higher up while the larger claws hit lower down, giving this move very impressive vertical coverage in front of Belzeb even if the hits won't combo together except like, at 0% on some heavies. The larger claws deal a lot of shield push so you're not going to be chaining together enough damage to break a shield in one go off this move, but the landing lag isn't too bad if you land in the midst of this move as Belzeb's extra arms retract back into his back almost instantly.

The fact that this move has FOUR hits means its basically impossible to spot dodge, and the big reach of the larger claws makes it rather difficult to even directional air dodge around, especially when factoring in that Belzeb can move through the air at the same time. If Belzeb is buffed in movement speed from devouring a high moonsickness foe, that also helps. The high shield damage and shieldstun/push on the second arm hits, as well as the fact the landing lag isn't too bad, makes this a perfectly decent move against shields too, so this is a very hard move to play defensively against. The downside, of course, is the start lag, as while the ending lag on this move isn't terrible, it does take about 16 frames to come out, making it reactable and the best way to react to this is by hitting Belzeb outright.

Belzeb usually is focused on weaving around enemy attacks, but if you force opponents entirely into a dodge and punish pattern, you're not going to be escalating their moonsickness much. This move, however, is kind of difficult to play dodge and punish with, encouraging opponents to stand their ground and fight against Belzeb's onslaught for once, because dodging this move is difficult and shielding it wrecks havoc on shields and will put the foe in nothing resembling an advantage state for the damage they took. If you have some bloody wires on hand this move is also a pretty nice incentive to stay in the air with Up Special, as it really does give Belzeb a sort of dominant, oppressive feeling aerial presense that the extended airtime a second Up Special allows for only magnifies.

Bloody wires form into second sets of claws on the same hands that extend out beyond the first, effectively a second set of longer fingers jutting out of the same hand in terms of visual. This extends the reach of the move a bit for each set of bloody wires, letting it serve its role of beating out defensive options even more effectively as it becomes harder to roll away or retreat from, boxing opponents into a corner. The extra range also makes the move a little bit safer, not enough that it nullifies the effectiveness of aggressive strategies against it all THAT much but at least makes it a more casual attack to just throw out and use its oppressive anti-defensive qualities against opponents. This is a formidable aerial, but don't forget that the high start lag and duration means you're quite liable to be punished for using it if the foe knows when to strike through it.

Down Aerial - Tendrils from the Sky
Belzeb's lower half dissolves into a mass of wires before shooting down beneath him. This attack extends about Ganondorf's height below Belzeb by default, and the wire mass deals 11% and high diagonal knockback that KOs at 185% on the way down, with the tip of the wire mass being a sweetspot that deals 15% and a potent spike on par with ROB's Dair. This move can be angled left or right to angle it by 25 degrees to either side, which also angles the knockback of both hits a bit further to the left or right. This gives this move access to the rare benefit of downward knockback with some small horizontal angling to it, letting you kill onstage with this move with that small sweetspot where most characters would never get the chance. That all assumes you land this move though, it does have 17 frames of start lag and you have to hit with a small sweetspot at the end of the move's reach to do it.

Bloody wires increase this move's reach by 0.4x Ganondorf's height per set of them, giving this move an increasingly formidable range the more of them you have, though it does move the sweetspot further down away from Belzeb's body as a consequence. At the very least, the part of the hitbox made up of bloody wires deals an increased 14% and knockback that KOs at 155%. That said, this move does passively benefit from bloody wires to land its sweetspot, because you can stay in the air longer thanks to having a second use of Up Special as long as you have at least one stack of bloody wires. Being able to stay up in the air and basically having a third jump makes it much easier to line up surprise kills with an angled Dair.

This move's utility is expanded upon if the wires latch onto the ground, immediately pulling Belzeb down to the ground over the course of 10 frames, and leaving him without much real end lag once he gets to the ground. If you have an opponent off you, this move can let you suddenly escape the air, going right back to the ground after getting the foe off you with Nair for example. Since most longer combo strings don't occur on the ground itself, and Belzeb suffers from a bit of lackluster base air speed as well as generally having stronger aerials than standards, having a trick like this to escape the air is pretty helpful, and its a lot safer than your average stall then fall when you're close enough to the ground to use it. Keep in mind with no bloody wires though, the reach you have to escape the air is a bit limited, which can be a real problem using this move to escape the air when Belzeb is operating at a disadvantage.

The tethering to the ground is a bit limited as far as an aerial escape goes, but it carries important offensive utility as well. Specifically, when Belzeb latches onto the ground, you can buffer a grounded input, and Belzeb will carry that input out when he lands with reduced start lag! It only cuts off about 10 frames of start lag at most and the amount depends on the attack a bit. The Forward Smash and Up Smash will already be in the process of forming by the time he lands, so those moves lose the maximum amount of start lag, whereas for Down Smash it will only shave off a couple frames as Belzeb still needs to merge into the ground upon landing, and for Forward Tilt Belzeb needs to do a backwards motion for it so that move also only is sped up by a couple frames.

This has a lot of powerful applications, as the shifting of wires on Belzeb's body as he descends doesn't telegraph which attack he's going to use much until he actually lands. If the opponent attempts to attack Belzeb once he reaches the ground, they might find Belzeb has already prepared an attack to weave around whatever option they threw out, or in some cases even intercept it with Jab to horrifying results. If the foe tries to shield? Well you can just go for a grab or even Side Special, which does get a pretty big lag cut out of this on top of being a command grab. If the foe tries to dodge or roll? Down Smash will do the trick just fine for dealing with those, and with enough bloody wires your Forward Smash can even start covering enemy dodges/rolls out of this, the mere presense of which can encourage the foe to go for a more offensive approach. Which, of course, just leads to more moonsickness, and if the opponent doesn't plan which attack they want to use correctly they may end up taking a smash attack to the face regardless!

The sudden repositioning does also have a final piece of utility, it lets you line up the pig heads on your Up Smash to kill a foe with the burst movement, particularly helped by being able to buffer the Up Smash to decrease its lag. It is a bit risky as you have to worry about the foe knocking you out of the tree once it comes out, but this can make for some sudden kills from truly bizarre angles and rather low percents, once you've practiced labbing the right positions you'd need to pull the Dair into Up Smash chains off.

Up Aerial - Devouring Boar
Belzeb's body dips slightly in the air as it splits in half suddenly, the wires reforming his body into a massive, open boar's jaw which proceeds to jolt back upward the same distance it moved down and slam shut on the foe, dealing 18% and upwards knockback that kills at 125%, albeit it will usually kill a fair bit earlier due to being aimed at foes high in the air. This move comes out on Frame 19, making it easily the slowest Uair in the game, but its also among the most powerful and the splitting of Belzeb's body and ducking downward gives this aerial the "built-in dodge" properties of some of Belzeb's other moves, making it a great way to bait the opponent into a whiff. Belzeb also reforms surprisingly quickly out of this so the end lag isn't super painful, making this serve a dual purpose as a pretty decent dodge and potent aerial threat.

In terms of downsides outside of the start lag, this move is not particularly of protecting Belzeb from lower reaching characters aiming to combo him, that's a task Nair is better suited for. That said, Nair's slightly awkward end lag and short range compared to this move and Belzeb's lower variety of attacks that abuse his amorphous nature in the air means Belzeb's ability to weave around enemy attacks is certainly worse up here, especially considering Uair's equipped with some pretty predictable lag. That said, this move makes up for its faults by being really good with Up Special as soon as you have any bloody wires, dragging the foe up into the air and leaving you with the chance to either go for the safer Nair or a Uair most opponents will struggle to respond to from that position. Considering how early this can kill out of Up Special especially if USpecial was already used high in the air or off a high platform, this is definitely Belzeb's scariest kill option as far as his amorphous "dodge"-like moves offer that doesn't come with an obscene amoutn of lag like FSmash. Its also worth mentioning that this move works well with Fair, as the best defensive option against that move is an upward air dodge... something that can run into problems with this move when you factor in the very punishable end lag of an upwards air dodge.

Speaking of being a scary kill move, bloody wires adds more bloody fangs inside Belzeb's mouth, increasing this move's damage by 2% each, until the last one adds 3%, making this a Uair that deals 25% and kills at 85% before we factor in how much earlier it can kill due to being high in the air. Between a further ascension with extra Up Special hits, the extended reach of Nair, and Uair's raw power, opponents hit by Belzeb's Up Special at high bloody wire counts have a LOT to fear if they don't dodge properly.

Back Aerial - Writhing and Burning
Belzeb's legs dissolve into a mass of flailing wires as he swings them backward, dealing 3 hits of 2% and a final hit of 4% with diagonal knockback that KOs at 180% at the ledge, so its not really a great KO move. That said, given the low base of the knockback, this is Belzeb's aerial of choice if he wants to chain an aerial into itself, which is helped by the fact that unlike Fair, Dair, and Uair, this is actually a pretty fast move to give Belzeb access to another one to go along with Nair. This one even good range to it, but coming out on Frame 9 its not nearly as quick as Nair, nor does it have its omni-directional properties for combo escapes. This move has slightly longe reach than Belzeb's legs normally would have, which given his height gives this move respectable range.

Belzeb's legs become intangible as they turn into a writhing mass on Frame 6 of this move, which isn't particularly comprehensive evasion compared to a lot of Belzeb's other options, but it does allow Belzeb to beat out attacks that would normally be faster than this move in neutral. Combined with Uair's evasive properties, this makes the overall frame data of Belzeb's non-Nair options less painful to deal with than it looks like just observing the numbers, but the fact that this is only useful on foes behind him and as such won't combo into much of anything limits the utility of this move for Belzeb's combo game. Its an independantly good damage racker and neutral tool that's not as rewarding as it would be on a forward input.. unless you land and turn around on the ground, in which case it can actually go into DTilt or Neutral Special, which makes this move just that little bit scarier against foes trying to cross up Belzeb. He has eyes everywhere, you know. It is also probably Belzeb's best aerial for spacing foes towards a particular part of the stage, keeping foes from escaping the organ ripping potential of a Dakna for example or getting to the optimal ranges to make use of Dash Attack.

Bloody wires improve this move's zoning properties by extending the range, and actually add a small amount of damage to the first 3 hits, 1% to the first hit with one bloody wire, while buffing the second hit with a second bloody wire and the third hit with a third. This makes the move's self-sufficient racking that little bit more potent, increasing the range makes it that much easier to drag opponents where you need them to be with this move, or catch out opponents above the ground to drag into Belzeb's grounded combo options.

Grab Game​

Grab - Glutton's Grip
Belzeb reaches forward with his right arm in a decently long ranged grab for one with melee reach. Its nothing amazing, but it helps when Belzeb's ability to shield poke is very conditional, and Belzeb's throws are honestly pretty good so it contributes to an overall strong grab game. He grabs the opponent by the throat and hoists them over the ground in a similar fashion to Ganondorf's Side Special, a move made all the more intimidating by the fact that with Belzeb's sheer size, he can easily lift any character in Smash off the ground in his grip. Bowser, Ganondorf, and Ridley all look almost puny in his grip, let alone the smaller characters in smash, as Belzeb's bizarre face seems to focus in on that foe. Note that the timer for the Dakna to perform an organ rip will tick down while foe is grabbed, making the grab alongside Side Special one of the best ways to set that up.

If there's one unfortunate thing for Belzeb about his grab, its that his dash grab does NOT come out fast, Belzeb taking a moment to form his upper torso before grabbing, giving it good range but unfortunate lag for this kind of move.

Pummel - Constriction
Belzeb crushes his hand on the opponent's throat, making a somewhat alarming cracking sound in a mid speed pummel that deals 2%. Given some of Belzeb's moves like Down Smash are attacks you'll want to throw out frequently when you have a lot of bloody wires, and the Neutral Special specifically needs to be out of your stale move queue to get its full benefits, unstaling moves is a bit more beneficial to Belzeb than your average character. Its all the more reason opponents can't get too comfortable behind a shield as they could end up giving Belzeb one of his best combo tools back if they do.

Forward Throw - Tenderizer
Belzeb sinks his claw through the opponent's chest, before ripping backward in a manner that leaves some of the opponent's internal organs on the outside of their body in a very unpleasant looking animation. This deals a nice 12%, increased by 1% per stage of moonsickness the opponent is experiencing as Belzeb is more successfully able to mash up and tear their insides, and horizontal knockback on a low angle that won't kill until around 220% at base. This is a solid spacer throw if you're not interested in doing anything else with it, getting the foe out of Belzeb's face and possibly tossing the foe past some lingering eyes or into your Dakna so they can hook their wires into the opponent and get some fresh meat for themselves.

The opponents organs spilling out on this move actually makes them a bit more enticing to Dakna, who will leap into the air up to a Ganondorf height to land their one attack on the opponent, and will also leap to the side up to 0.65 platform widths to get close to the opponent to do so. While there are risks to putting a Dakna right in the opponent's face as they can easily just get rid of them with 1 or 2 attacks after they recover, that all assumes you have not prepared for that. You can explode a Dakna on the opponent with good prediction, counter if the Dakna already has a Jab eye prepared on it, or attack the foe from below with Down Smash. What this also does is basically make this move extra good at throwing the foe through all your constructs, even if it can't quite measure up to Side Special in that regard due to the free movement of a cargo throw. The low angle, after all, makes it quite suited to tossing the foe past your monitoring eyes.

The ripped out organs on the opponent also stick around like that for 1.5 seconds, which is a pretty small window to capitalize on given the moves spacing oriented high base low scaling knockback. That said, during that time, the opponent will take 1.2x as much damage from Belzeb's attacks, which also serves the bonus purpose of amplifying the KO potential of moves like Dash Attack(which is admittedly more worthwhile at low moonsickness levels) or Forward Tilt, though it can also amplify the couple hits of a DTilt combo. Belzeb's high dash speed DOES let him charge in and convert off this until pretty high percents, and while it is a riskier move to convert off as its absolutely not a true combo, the amplified reward and Belzeb's ability to weave around the opponents attacks with his amorphous form. Down Smashing in under a nearby Dakna is also a potentially powerful way to convert off this move, amplifying DSmash's potent KO power even more.

The power of this effect is increased to up to a 1.35x damage multiplier if the foe is afflicted with moonsickness, making the KO moves you convert off with this even more potent. But it will stop being as effective at setting up for that stuff at higher percents now, as the knockback scaling improves a good bit. On the plus side, that means this move can start killing at the ledge around 120% at high moonsickness levels, in particular killing at the ledge at 95% at max moonsickness, giving Belzeb access to an Incineroar BThrow-esque kill move! This rounds out the functions of FThrow, an all around powerful spacer with some added utility in setting up your minions, amplifying the damage of your next assault, and even some late kills from time to time. A useful, versatile throw for sure.

Back Throw - Unworthy Meal
Belzeb's arm distorts into wires and engulfs the opponent, pulling them into his body, before a giant pig's head erupts out of his back and vomits them out behind him. There are some unsettling crunching sounds inside Belzeb's body, seems they're getting pretty messed up in there. This deals a couple hits of 1% while the foe is inside Belzeb, followed by a hit of 10% upon being spit out that totals this move to 14% and knockback that KOs at the ledge at 130%, making this Belzeb's primary KO throw. The angle is a fair bit higher than FThrow's and it has no other special properties, so it loses out to that move a bit in utility, but it does deal a bit of extra damage on hit, and the KO power is MUCH easier to access as it doesn't require the foe to be at nearly as high of levels of moonsickness.

If you want this move to keep up with higher moonsick stage FThrows, bloody wires will improve this move similar to how moonsickness does the FThrow. The grinding sound on the opponent once they're inside gets more intense, it sounds like Belzeb is making the foe into ground pork in there at the maximum of 3 stacks of bloody wires. The foe is then ejected out of the pig's mouth, but each set of bloody wires increases the damage this throw deals by 2.5%, maxing out at a 21.5% damage throw that KOs at the ledge at 85%, which is downright obscene. This throw is yet another reason the opponent wants to go on the offensive against Belzeb despite his amorphous dodging abilities, because if they don't, he will end up with a kill throw that outclasses even the mighty Incineroar BThrow. Meanwhile, if the foe gets too aggressive but misplaces their aggression, Belzeb can build up a super strong kill throw at that end if it gets bad enough too, one with a bit less power but some extra bonuses on top of that.

What makes this move extra potent is that if you make decent progress both on building up bloody wires AND on getting opponents to whiff you, which can happen if you're outplaying the foe hard enough, this move's knockback potential gets even scarier. Not directly, but rather because the fact that this throw offers a DI mixup on opponents with FThrow, so if they try to reduce the knockback of this move by DIing forward and end up getting FThrow instead, they're going to die even earlier. This also increases both BThrow and FThrow's potency if you have both of them beefed up just a bit from moonsickness and bloody wires, giving Belzeb some of the best KO potential out of a grab as long as he's playing well. Just uh, there is a bit of risk putting the foe inside your body if they ended up with a virtue, and you'll take 4% using this move if you use it when the foe has one. Its not nearly as dangerous as using Side Special on a virtuous foe, but its also not going to get rid of the virtue anytime soon.

Down Throw - Return to Slumber
Ominously whispering the move's name, Belzeb grabs the foe's neck with both hands and snaps it at 90 degree angle, causing the foe to spit up a small amount of blood and fall into untechable prone while taking 11%. This means that Belzeb lacks a true combo throw, as Up Throw isn't useful for that either, but proning the foe does set you up to chase their getups pretty well. Fair, Bair, FTilt, and DTilt are all good options to pursue a foe coming out prone, and on a back roll you can even punish them with Dash Attack potentially, which is a very scary threat if the foe is particularly moonsick. Its not a guarunteed combo by any stretch, but it can go into some fairly potent attacks to make up for its flaws in that regard.

If Belzeb has bloody wires, they'll be seen reinforcing his arms as he snaps the foe's neck, causing him to snap it to a 120 degree, 150 degree, or flat out twisting it around 180 degrees at a full 3 stacks of bloody wires, and the amount of blood or similar substances the opponent will vomit increases with each level until it leaks down their entire back before they fall into prone at maxed bloody wires. This increases the damage by 3% per stack, and also causes opponents to take an extra 1, 2, and 4 frames respectively to perform each get up move, allowing you to actually guaruntee DTilt out of this attack and making it much easier to pull off reads on the foe. At this point, it might be best if the foe just rolls behind you every time, as that JUST gives Belzeb the choice between DTilt and Bair, considering Dash Attack is pretty easy to pull off out of this once the foe has enough bloody wires if they decide to roll backwards...

Up Throw - Gaze of the Moon
Belzeb tosses the foe above him for the kind of moderate knockback that's hard to really combo into your aerials all that easily, before firing up a small, dense blob of red nanites out of his entusked maw. The throw itself deals 8%(and is buffed to deal 2% more with each set of bloody wires Belzeb has, the only change this move has with more) and set upwards knockback that doesn't really put the foe in line to easily follow up with UTilt directly, and a bit too much end lag to go for Up Smash. That said, what the foe will have to contend with at the peak of their knockback is that blob of red nanites. Upon reaching the opponent or the peak of its travel, it will explode into an orange eye shape and a big, circular field of nanomachines that deals a passive 2% per second to opponents in it. The actual projectile itself deals 8% and a long flinch that will easily combo into Up Smash.

These nanomachines are the moonsickness afflicting nanites of Neutral Special, however, and if the foe gets hit by the blob while they're not moonsick, they do get afflicted by the effect. The opponent IS going to avoid the blob 90% of the time however, because its not a guarunteed hit out of this move by any means and they can easily move out of the way of this projectile. And they should, because if they do happen to get hit by it while moonsick, they get an alarming 3 stages of moonsickness applied off this one blob of nanites, its pretty dense after all! If they have enhanced moonsickness, they'll get 4 stages instead. The nanite field will remain in the air covering a circular area about 3x Bowser's size for 4 seconds before disappearing, and every 2 seconds the opponents in it, they actually gain a stage of moonsickness, increased to every second if the foe is dealing with accelerated moonsickness from a second Neutral Special.

There are a few uses for this move, the first of which comes from the fact that it throws a projectile the foe is forced to dodge around. This move might not guaruntee into Up Tilt by any stretch, but it does allow you to position yourself move easily to follow the foe's movement with Up Tilt especially with Belzeb's ground speed, making it easier to get the exact hitbox you want. This means setting up a hit into the pig heads of Up Smash with Up Tilt is a more feasible possibility. You could also go for a Fair or Uair on the opponent's predictable movement, and with the projectile to factor in it makes those moves that little bit harder to respond to properly.

That said, its not a guaruntee you'll get much extra mileage out of the nanite projectile, so instead you could try focusing on just keeping the foe in that field to build up their moonsickness to higher levels, a fitting punishment for being so defensive and not engaging with their gluttonous desires. Bair is a fantastic tool for keeping the foe in a nanite field, but Up Smash is also pretty potent as you can block their escape paths, and its particularly useful if you can put a pig head right where they were trying to leave. Belzeb's other constructs, such as Dakna and eyes, can also keep the foe on their toes about leaving the nanite field, or you can stack them both up in the same place to give the opponent some very strong pressure to get the hell out of there, which Belzeb can follow in pursuit. This has the least guarunteed payoff of your throws, for sure, but this is also among the best ways to get an overly defensive foe moonsick, and gives Belzeb an even greater degree of domination over the stage.

Final Smash - To the Abyss​

Belzeb lets out a howl as the entire stage's ground becomes covered in writhing wires, attempting to grab opponents and drag them down. If Belzeb succeeds at this, the opponent is plunged into the earth and dragged into a strange, watery abyss, dominated by the sight of a massive sprawling structure. Covered in twisting glass tubes, this is the unifier, the home of the uncorrupted inhabitants of Kawmuit... but its gone dark. No light remains in it. And then, the inside shatters open to reveal a horrific sight: dozens of pig heads merged together on a massive, twisted body of wires, flying out towards the terrified opponents trapped in the water. It slams into them with massive force, dealing 44% and upwards knockback that KOs at 50%, as the monster breaches the surface and screams to the sky. The moon is shown eerily hanging above, pulsing ominously as the Final Smash ends.

 

[Kholdstare]

"Ack, ack, ack....."

 

[bubbyboytoo]

And that's a wrap! JamCon 3 has officially concluded; with a grand total of seven sets, this is tied for our most productive JamCon to date! Good hustle, everyone. Let's see who this prompt influenced you all into making:

• Jesse Faden by GolisoPower , a psychic agent hunting down ordinary objects turned into legendary relics by paranormal events!
• Jackie Chan by Rychu , one of the most recognizable action movie stars on the planet!
• Enya Geil by U UserShadow7989 , the driving force behind the infamous DIO's rise to power!
• Dogma by bubbyboytoo (hey, that's me), the physical manifestation of a vulnerable mother's fall into fanaticism and the trauma it inflicted on her son!
• Magneto by Slavic , the metal-bending leader with a magnetic personality that rallies superpowered mutants shunned by society to fight for his cause!
• Belzeb by ForwardArrow , the nano-demon lord of a sinister moon that turns all who gaze upon it mad with gluttony!
• Green Goblin by Kholdstare , a brilliant scientist turned into a homicidal supervillain by pressure from his government contractors!

From this moment on, voting is open- you've got two weeks to read these sets and decide which of them is your favorite, nominating a winner alongside your comments. They'll close on midnight at the end of September 26th; no timer for this one, but that hopefully shouldn't matter as much since you've got quite a while to do this. Happy reading, all!

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Jackie Chan (copypasted from chat

Very entertaining set with a lot of heart, I wasn't expecting the level of prop usage it had (but I definitely approve of random props appearing for Jackie Chan to use, like in his B-air and D-tilt, they give the attacks more flavour and it's very fitting to his character). His Neutral Special and Up Special were fun, I'm glad you're continuing to use items coming off Law, and Up Special giving Jackie Chan a heavy battering item is a fun idea I'd like to explore myself. This is also the rare set to make use of the prone state, with some moves that put Jackie Chan in prone but the ability to attack out of prone really fast if you're in the drunken state. I do wonder if some of those prone-inducing moves would leave Jackie Chan very punishable if he whiffs them and doesn't have drunken state. It'd be really fun if Jackie Chan had some unique get-up attacks, maybe an A and B variant. I'd imagine he has such moves from his movies, but given the circumstances this set was made under I can understand not including any.

Spoiler: Magneto

It’s neat to get a set for (a variation of) your favourite fictional character! Magneto is a fine entry with modest ideas, one I believe has untapped potential - I could see the bullet magnetism and scrap metal getting used more to make a number of the moves more exciting, particularly the Smashes (though I think F-Smash and U-Smash are fine enough) and throws.

Magneto’s method of magnetizing foes is neat; the ranger limiter on his Down Special feels refreshingly fair, and the knife recall mix-ups on F-tilt and U-tilt were enjoyable. I do wonder if the orbiting bullets are too potent: they should probably be disabled while Magneto is shield, dodging or taking hitstun. Perhaps foes could beat them out with a decent attack, or they deal almost no shield stun as Magneto does have a number of strong shield options. It could also be worth exploring combos the orbiting bullet opens up, as U-throw’s combo with D-tilt was neat to see. I especially enjoyed the attack names, some of them sounding like lines I assume Magneto spoke in the films.

Other thoughts. Perhaps magnetized foes could get pushed or pulled around into optimal Smash range while Magneto is charging a Smash: U-Smash could pull them in, F-Smash to roughly max range. But it IS interesting that Magneto doesn’t do the typical push/pull stuff you’d expect from a set based around magnetism (Like Tager from Blazblue or Walter White), and I have to wonder whether that was intentional flavour-wise. As for the Aerials, the compulsory usage of metal can be a bit detrimental to their basic usage, particularly metal F-air where it potentially increases his duration and hurts his combo potential. You could easily get around this by having to hold A to use metal variations of his aerials, as Magneto already has mix-ups like the ones baked into his Neutral and Side Specials.

JAMCOM NOMINATION

Spoiler: Belzeb

Of all the sets I’ve read recently, Belzeb encapsulates the term “Feast or famine” the most fittingly - both figuratively and literally! When I first read the set I thought there would be food items involved, like the second coming of the Grandmatriachs (would have been fitting given we got Cookie Scouts this contest, and talk about more Cookie Clicker sets!), but incorporating gluttony as landing attacks on Belzeb was surprising and a fitting way to incorporate it. The “feast or famine” aspect kicks in with making moonsickness worsen when the foe whiffs an attack, potentially building up insane damage and forcing them to be careful how they attack, but if they land enough hits they’ll acquire a buff that will absolutely destroy Belzeb - it’s rare to see a set with an attack that can backfire as a negative mechanic! Side Special’s bloody wire buff works well with this mechanic too, needing the foe to deal you a little damage to get rid of the buff.

You said the set was inspired by Fairy Knight Gawain, and it definitely shows: a super heavyweight with a high dashing speed, Side Special command grab, side throws you can mix up to DI and a set that forces the foe to play aggressively. I found the F-throw/B-throw DI mix-up more interesting here, as Belzeb has the tools in his set to make both those throws really powerful through a different method for each.

As far as the moveset goes, I found most of the moves neat, and compared to many Jamcons the set feels complete in its current form! Some notable moves include N-air, a very effective combo-breaker that can turn into a potential KO move with enough moonsickness, D-air for mix-ups, D-tilt for evading low attack that would normally work against crouches, the Jab channeling Baobhan, and the F-Smash and D-Smash sort of channeling Primordial Darkness. Up Special did feel a little “underwhelming” move and flavour-wise, me wondering whether Belzeb could have done something more grand with his powerset like do a wire tether or the like, but it’s perfect enough as a weaker recovery that gives Belzeb incentive to go for the risky moonsickness to rack up damage on the foe quickly. I aaalso wonder if F-throw dealing extra damage per stage of moonsickness is a necessary buff due to moonsickness damage being very potent as-is, maybe a little “redundant”, but it’s such a small thing it doesn’t count against the set.

While I’d love to see Fu and do hope you pick him up again (maybe you’ll get more ideas for him in time), Belzeb is honestly a great set in general and stands among the pinnacle of Jamcon sets for the time being, alongside Gareth. I know this must have been hard to make, but it was definitely worthwhile and has a very strong chance of earning my Jamcon nomination.

Spoiler: Green Goblin

It’s funny that we got 2 iconic Marvel villains from specific (non-MCU) movie incarnations this Jamcon. It’s surprising and pretty awesome that literally every attack in the set is accompanied by a GIF (reminds me of Richard from MYM5), and this gives me a good idea of how you approached this set.

Slow-falling is pretty experimental, it’s fun to see you pushing the boundaries of setmaking this way. For future sets, you could emulate this mechanic by playing around with fastfall speed percent increase (Link and Joker have a 90% fastfall speed increase compared to the usual 60% of most fighters), or even give the character a slowfall option by holding the control stick upwards so they can hang in the air for longer to better perform their U-air. Maybe the character’s fall speed could gradually decrease as they slowfall?

Goblin glider taking up the aerials is equally experimental, with clear inspiration from Vulture (Mysterio next?) in being able to program flight paths. This is definitely the most potent concept of the set, I could see fun happening with Goblin comboing off the low/dragging knockback of his F-air, D-air and B-air. I even think there’s room for playing around with the pumpkin bomb, like placing it on the glider as an aerial trap (even if you’re riding on it?), maybe carrying the bomb around with you when its timer is ticking down? (could work with the counter, though it would be weird) I almost wish Goblin had physical aerials that didn’t rely on the glider, maybe hold A to recall/use the glider when using an aerial, even if they were takes on his grounded attacks. That way goblin could do aerial shenanigans while catching his bomb more effectively, but then that would ruin all of his attacks having GIFs to them. I do wonder if some of his KO percents are low, mostly his F-Smash when it’s described as a slow move, but they are from the middle of the stage and Goblin wasn’t designed as a raw power fighter.

Also, Goblin’s Final Smash is one of the most bizarre (and hilarious, in a way) I’ve seen in recent times, breaking the fourth wall with a game mechanic.

Spoiler: Jesse Faden

Jesse’s concepts didn’t quite grab me like Red and Jinako - but she does have potential! This comes from Side Special, which I think would be neat if it could utilize the various props in Jesse’s set. If the F-Smash forklift didn’t explode, it could stay out for a second as a prop Jesse could throw around! Or you could use the power box from U-Smash, maybe grab one of your Neutral Special projectiles. One idea I brought up for a potential Aerodactyl set was having the attacking props linger for longer if they connect with an enemy, giving Jesse the time to grab hold of the prop with Side Special. Of course, there is U-tilt, which is a wild choice for a Standard attack and does have interaction with Side Special - I appreciate you taking inspiration from the random flight aspect of Diddy Kong’s Up Special, as that move is ripe for MYM exploitation.

Down Special does seem a little redundant when shielding exists, and a little unfun to play as and against when it’s presumably easy to punish frontal hits with the chunks or Dash Attack, presumably needing to grab Jesse or hit her from behind or vertically. It reminds me a little of Cortex and Captain Qwark, who iirc had shield Down Specials that let them attack, but Jesse is at least limited to what she can do offensively. Perhaps the shield could be a wall-based Special that Jesse can move to her current location if she uses Down Special again? Like, maybe projectiles can slip through gaps in the wall, so it doesn’t disrupt Neutral and Side Special plays. Dash Attack could work the same if you hit the wall, so no worries there. This could also let Jesse play around with the chunks in more fun ways if she has access to her entire moveset, like a hard interaction if you knock or levitate the foe into the wall? It’s the kind of idea that could give Jesse a bit more of a hook.

On a smaller note, F-air being a +5 on block does seem a little powerful, mostly because I’m not sure whether there are any aerials or regular attacks (or at least ones that are easy enough to land) that actually give the fighter a plus on block - even something like a -5 would likely be safe on block, especially with spacing. I also think D-air being a stall-then-fall that only has a hitbox when you land is cool and unique! I also like its synergy with Up Special. It could stand to be a lot more powerful and rewarding if it’ll only hit in a specific situation AND denies Jesse a way to hit below her in midair (leaving her more susceptible to being juggled) - it could have quicker start-up, and either more power or be a strong combo starter. And that +5 thing I was talking about with F-air? It would be absolutely justified on D-air, I could see it leading to a free grab if foes don’t just hit Jesse out of the air given she has no hitbox until she lands. It’s the kind of idea that could make a set more compelling if it was played off.

Spoiler: Dogma

While not as conceptually wild as the Cookie Scouts, Dogma IS a wild character choice! Like Green Goblin, I feel this is a Jamcon set that set out with a simple purpose and succeeded in it. In this case, Dogma being a basic zoner whose set is of service to the character. Concept-wise, I’m fond of the Neutral Special’s static aura, it feels unique and something that would be awesome to play around as the focus of a moveset. The beam itself reminds me of the instant death beams from Helltaker, the ones that kill you if your willpower drops to 0. The set’s implementation of the mechanic, spamming several NSpecs to expose your opponent to the aura for as long as possible and using it to pressure into other projectiles, is respectable enough.

Spoiler: Enya Geil

Enya is a nicely-designed set: an aggressive combo character who actually gets bad at comboing foes at higher percents, justified in an in-character way in her F-tilt. This is where her Neutral Special works especially nicely with her set, and honestly it doesn’t feel overpowered with the move’s starting lag and the limited timespan of Justice on top of needing to land a hit. NSpec’s infinite range counter properties work well with Enya’s various constructs too. It might be a tad oppressive for how easily it can be set up and how easily Enya can rush foes down, but still feels well-balanced. Compared to FYM and Honchkrow, Enya’s Smashes and Standards feel more enticing and playing off her core mechanics better, with fun stuff like dragging foes into an U-Smash fence with Neutral Special and the zombie baby fog trap. On top of being the second character to exploit zombie babies (first being Romero), it’s interesting that Enya’s D-Smash functions as more of a “trap” than an actual move, because that’s what Hol Horse’s D-Smash was like and you brought him up in this set.

While not bad by any means, I wonder if there’s room to spice up Enya’s grab game. Having come off reading an FA set, perhaps Enya could have some throws that inflict brief status effects on the opponent? With her brutal throwing animations, she could easily be justified in using her scissors to make a bigger puncture wound on the foe than usual, perhaps increasing Justice’s influence over them! This could take the form of the wound lasting for longer than usual, Justice’s pull being stronger (so you can combo better from higher-scaling knockback) or maybe even increase the knockback scaling of your attacks so something simple enough like B-air can KO better. And while it might be tacky, maybe Enya could have the zombie baby or child latch onto the foe’s back, artificially increasing their weight or knockback resistance (as if they were at a lower percent) so she can rack up combos against foes at higher percents. This is still a very good set though, with all the animation and character I’d want from this character without factoring in extras like taunts or the Final Smash. And she’s your best jamcon entry so far imo, which is something to be proud of!

 

[wizfoot]

BOOTUP SEQUENCE READY...

FIRMWARE
LATEST VERSION (2112.08.06)

CALIBRATION...
EXPIRED
NEW CALIBRATION REQUIRED

BEGINNING CALIBRATION...

AUDIO OK
VIDEO OK
MECHANICS OK

STATUS UPDATE:

MACHINE ID: V1
STATUS: APPROACHING FINAL DESTINATION
CURRENT OBJECTIVE: FIND A SMASH INVITATION

HUMANITY IS DEAD.
BLOOD IS FUEL.
SMASH IS FULL.

V1

(minor profanity warning, smile)​

 

[GolisoPower]

Everybody Gangsta 'Til Peppa Pig Joins The Donner Party (MY VOTE!)
Belzeb by ForwardArrow

The moment you brought up your next set cashing in on the blood and gore, you could say I was "hungry" to find out. And BOI, I am happy you got this out! Right out the gate, this gives me Primordial Darkness vibes, which is saying a lot because Primordial Darkness left such an impression on me last contest.

Starting off with the Specials, the effect of moonsickness, as mentioned by others, is the perfect way to represent the sin of gluttony, heavily trying to goad the opponent into being aggressive in order to develop temperance and gain the virtue state. If I were facing an opponent who did that, I'd willingly let him kill me while only landing a few hits in. He'd just be as scary to play against as he is scary to picture in my head. The way it factors into his other moves is also a fun little touch that REALLY brings it all together. Side Special is a really fun command grab and definitely makes me think of the monster from Carrion if it was a mechanical nanotech pig. Furthermore...one fear: a Bowser-sized Ivysaur with near Sonic-level speed. Granted, you need to be damn well committed to setting up to all that moonsickness to get that Acceleratle-trumping movement, but again, I'd just nope the unholy feck out. And then we have the Daknas, good GOD the Daknas. Having to worry about a giant gluttonous robot-pig who can eat away at your health with moonsickness and develop speed faster than Hero with Acceleratle is bad enough, but then you have to deal with grotesque frog-men that shield him and rips out some flesh of the opponent for crazy burst damage. I know you did your damnedest to balance this bacon-bot out, but I can practically feel the god complex forming in Belzeb mains already. I can understand some concerns about his Up Special being boring, although the image does seem rather pleasing. I haven't finished the story he came from (I started it a few days ago), but honestly, I imagine him turning into a mist of nanomachines and wisping around before forming at another location seconds later if the animation of his F-tilt are anything to go by. Something to consider when you want to make major edits after the JamCon is over. The blood wires gained from devouring Daknas is a really fun idea and seems to offer some sort of layer of complexity, and giving him some sort of reinforcement to his attacks really adds to the amount of scheiße he needs to set up to optimize him.

Moving onto the normals, good LORDY, you delivered on the violence aspect this time around. These Smashes are by far some of the most unique I've ever seen, and this is coming from the dude who gave Magnus a multi-target Autoreticle for his Side Smash. The idea of Down Smash being aimable in front or behind is absolutely beau'iful, and the ability to leave behind D.o.T. wires on top of the raw power in not just that, but Side Smash as well, gives Belzeb an additional level of stage control. Though there is one concerning detail: "This creates a battlefield width patch"...I think you meant a "battlefield platform-width" patch. Unless you forgot to add that detail while writing this up, I'm kind of concerned for the balance of such a move, as this would practically be inescapable. Moving on to Up Smash, the animation's really fun to envision, and the fact that it grows heads as sweet spots sounds like it gives her some amazing spacing potential. Not to mention, the lock-on follow-up having different power based on moonsickness is also a scary prospect to keep in mind. In the chat you guessed that Pride would be the least useful moonsickness in the world of the story. Honestly, I think you've got a powerful effect of a Pride moonsickness right here, and that's making people do hubristic and suicidal actions with abilities and characters like this!

The Jab, meanwhile, I really want to highlight: the idea of the attack being a searchbox that only triggers if anyone's inside is something I've explored a few times in my MYM career, but the way this is executed and with how closely tied this is to the rest of the kit really puts a smile on my face. And what happens when you max it out, Ay Dios Mio, this is also extremely terrifying in the best way possible! The flavors of these animations really live up to your promise of added blood and gore you brought up in chat, and the animalistic and brutish nature of each attack is just Mortal Kombat-levels of beautiful. You really knocked this out the damn park, my guy. I'll read the others because I might run into something that really catches my eye, but I think I might've ruined the JamCon for myself just by reading this, lol! You deserve a victory feast for this already and the JamCon isn't even over yet! Just, ah, make sure you're not moonsick, though, you don't wanna come off as a lunatic.

Again, amazing work!

If I Were To Grade, I'd Give This "Project A"
Jackie Chan by Rychu

An embodiment of his whole legacy, this set for Jackie Chan is absolutely gorgeous! Let's go into detail as to why:

The improvised combat Jackie is known for is extremely prevalent here, from how Neutral Special summons an item to how you can use a ladder to your advantage, it's completely faithful to who he is as an actor and as his wide range of characters! The Ladder especially stood out because of how versatile it is. From the amount of protection you have with its armor to the attacks you have while carrying it, to how high it gets, the ladder is a swiss army knife here and I love it. The Drunken Master Down Special is also a nice take on the drunken boxing style, giving him added range to his grab, reduced endlag for increased offense, and reduced hitstun from getting hit. It really seems like the perfect way to cover his weaknesses while staying true to his character and it makes a whole lot of sense! Furthermore, the idea of slipping through the ladder using Side Special gives him a unique method of countering attacks that I don't think we've seen in Smash before.

Moving onto the normals, having an F-tilt do 11 total hits sounds pretty hilarious by itself, but the fact that some of his normals do multiple hits of damage really plays into a combo-heavy gameplan and the idea of Dash attack tripping opponents also plays into the aggressive playstyle really well, though I have some concerns about this move while it's in Drunken Master mode. I know it doesn't last long, but a Dash attack that's lower endlag than normal, trips opponents, and has a hurtbox really low to the ground sounds like there'll be some cheese where you constantly trip your opponent before killing them at higher percentages. It just feels like there'll be some scummy moments to be had here, but I like the concept.

The pole attacks, U-tilt and D-air, really stick out to me: the U-tilt for its strategic synergy with the Ladder and its upwards range seems to really have a way with blocking a lot of ledge options and evading certain attacks, too. As for D-air, the image in my head is just as fun as the GIF you've provided, and really stands out as a different stall-and-fall than what I'm usually used to. But in a good way, the way you executed it is sublime.

Reading through this was, funnily enough, like watching one of Jackie Chan's movies in a good way. From its flavors to its unique characteristics to its synergy, you really feel like you're learning how to play as Jackie Chan while reading it, even though he's not in Smash! Nice job, Rychu!

A Sweet Serving of Justice, Just Like Grandma Used To Make
Enya Geil by U UserShadow7989

So we finally have a Jojo set for this contest, and it's a great one, lemme tell ya!

Let's start with Enya's Neutral Special. The way it works sounds extremely devious thanks to the "stop hitting yourself" effect. It would be devious to make Ganondorf Warlock Punch himself, or force Passionlip to turn herself into a cube or, ironically enough, to turn Belzeb's moonsickness against him! Not only is that really fun, but the fact that you can trick people with a "fake teleport" or leave people guessing with the fog makes Enya basically sound like one of the most infuriating characters to play against in a good way. And the integration of the zombies is also a fun way to continue her combos, that lunge attack is really going to do some people in. Overall, they make for a very gaslighty playstyle that's basically "I don't play to win, I play to make others lose" the character.

The attacks themselves are absolutely faithful in the sense that Enya shouldn't be underestimated just because she's an old lady. In fact, I'd say this makes her even more dangerous, Stand notwithstanding. I love the way she uses the scissors in tandem with her Stand abilities, especially with Side Smash. The way you have different move options based on the angle also gives Enya an amazing method of mixing up your opponents and crossing them up from behind, and the damage is anything but modest! Though there is a discrepancy here: it says Villager's Fishing Rod in Down Smash, not Isabelle's. The former doesn't have anything like that. I also find it hilarious that Enya uses an attack that basically makes me think of Diavolo at the Colosseum (Up Smash). I think you may have an idea of what I'm talking about, too.

The grab game sounds satisfying from an animation standpoint (so visceral and gory), as well as a battle standpoint. And Down throw being reversible allows Enya some amazing pressure, allowing her to put opponents between a rock and a hard place almost easily. The Up throw sounds really terrifying and sounds extremely useful since you're basically making a platform to use to your advantage. Sounds like it could really shake things up at the right moment.

So overall, misty scissor gramma is one hell of a fun set that I finally managed to get a comment out for. All I have left is Dogma, Magneto, and Green Goblin, and I hope to get those out before the deadline.

Sunday Church Over Zoom
Dogma by bubbyboytoo

Dogma, compared to the previous three sets was much easier for me to read (Maybe because I wasted all that brainpower on Belzeb lol), and it's also a character that seems really unique even in the context of The Binding of Isaac.

The way a lot of the projectiles work, ranging from Neutral Special having a timed attack in its immediate vicinity with the light pillar to the laser changing aim in an instant with the joystick to the flurry of feathers, it seems to add a sort of "bullet-hell" aspect that I get from the BoI, and furthermore seems to have a very interesting approach to the whole projectile playstyle. I think making Dogma similar to Yoshi and Jigglypuff is a really good idea considering everything that a Dogma main has to bounce between to deal his damage. The way they interweave so seamlessly together gives Dogma an amazing means of covering his bases and dealing damage from any distance.

The deal with his normals taking advantage of his "TV" and "angel" traits and combining them into this "televangelist propaganda" monster is practically sublime. The way he morphs into his attacks and takes advantage of his alternate forms gives Dogma a very uncanny valley feel in a good way. As for their purpose as attacks, they really seem to drive home how much combo potential he has. The speedy wheel attacks from his ophanim form, the ridiculous disjoints from his Smash attacks, they seem to really add onto the playstyle and complement one another seamlessly. Going back to my statement in the last paragraph about the YoshiPuff situation, giving him a tether grab really makes it much easier for Dogma to recover in a great way.

This set seems to not only replicate the creepiness of Binding of Isaac, but also makes him feel like an all-powerful boss, just like with Primordial Darkness in a way. Truly this set is blessed. If I had to pick a Bible verse to describe this, it would be this:

Psalm 128:2 "When you eat the fruit of the labor of your hands, you will be happy and it will be well with you."

A "First Class" Mutation
Magneto by Slavic

I've only seen a few of the X-Men movies, but I haven't been aware of Magneto until a few years afterward (I was a barely-cognizant toddler at that point), and for the years after, I've developed a sort of appreciation for the mutant as a villain.

Let's start with the gun, which seems to be a lot more integral to the set than the entirety of Joker's kit is to his gun. I love how you basically give Magneto a means to prime an opponent with the bullet and mess with their positioning. Not only that, but the way you can redirect the bullet with his mind powers is really fun to think of as well. Then again, I never exactly saw Magneto as a man who uses a firearm, but hey, what do I know? Come to think of it, that's kind of something he and Jesse have in common, lol. The Down Special is basically a weaponized Rosalina Down Special, I'm glad other niche Specials are being explored this time around! In a sense it makes me think of Oro's Tengu Stone from Street Fighter 5. I like how it also gives some offensive incentive with Down Special plucking the bullet out of them by force. The Side Special sounds really scary too, giving him the means to crumple opponents with a projectile? Now that sounds really scary.

Moving onto the non-Specials, the picture of Magneto packing heat in Side Smash sounds ridiculously hilarious to vision, and it looks just amazing in the GIF you've provided. I mean, damn, I thought I was reading Magneto, not Robocop. The conditions needed to maximize your damage output are very tight and unforgiving, but I'd see myself using this a whole lot. As for other facets of his kit, the F-tilt and U-tilt sound especially fun to use, and they're not too much of a projectile for foes to reflect back at him, so that should give Magneto some great pressure on some characters with reflectors. The grabs seem really fun, I knew there was iron in the blood and that Magneto himself had manipulated the iron in people's blood at some point, but with B-throw, you just affirmed that knowledge in the best way possible. Everything here seems to give Magneto a pretty good mid-range game and also gives him some amazing offensive potential here.

Slavic, I can say without a doubt that things didn't go south to the pole, but rather north to the pole. Insert clever pun related to magnetism that I apparently can't think of here. Anyways, good job!

Whatchu Mean, Kermit, It Is Easy Being Green!
Green Goblin by Kholdstare

Going from Benny, this is certainly more simple, but sometimes that's a good thing, mainly because of how much Green Goblin accomplishes without any minions.

Firstly, let's start with the glider. It's a really unique way of recovery and aerial domination, mainly because of how flexible you can make its flight path. The idea of an Up Special guided by Shield Special, as well as a Glide Aerial, sounds like a very intricately powerful system that basically makes the crux of this entire set, and I legitimately want to have a character that uses similar mechanics. (God, let the final DLC character be Reimu I swear) Anyways, the Pumpkin Bombs sound like a fun, if only for how much more you can do with them than Snake's Grenades, and that's just with the base Pumpkin Bombs. The Bat Pumpkin Grenades, on the other hand, seems extremely good for pressure from all sides, and the fact that they can follow the glider while it's using Shield Special gives it a really fun means of capping off an air combo. The Sleep Gas is really interesting, being a move that slows opponents down but douse them with enough of it, you actually put them to sleep. Really gives you a level of dedication when you want the best possible outcome.

The Glide Attack is a really fun take that takes advantage of the Green Goblin's means of achieving aerial dominance. This makes me think you could rack up damage with Glide Attack before following up with Neutral Air or Forward Air depending on your opponent's damage percentage. Gives him some amazing ladder combo potential, making it easy to kill someone at the top of the screen. A lot of the other attacks Green Goblin has seemed to feel really satisfying to land, just like with the GIFs you've provided. Maybe it's because of the GIFs you've provided, all things considered. The F-Smash sounds especially deadly and seems to give him some offensive potential that brings Roy to mind, in a good way, especially since the sweet spot is so powerful. I love how U-throw damage scales based on foe's weight. Shin Godzilla is definitely feeling the full brunt of the assault, that's for damn sure. The Final Smash also sounds extremely unique, playing with stocks all around. Absolutely love it.

Overall, the Green Goblin seems like the perfect balance between complex and simple which really makes it stand out this JamCon. A great homage to a great incarnation of the character.

 

[wizfoot]

-snip-

...Oy vey, it's at this exact moment that I realized that I accidentally made a set very similar to ForwardArrow's... I had to do a few double-takes to make sure that I wasn't reading a comment on mine.

 

[bubbyboytoo]

Spoiler: Jesse Faden

Initial impressions, I'd probably appreciate this set a lot more if I'd ever played Control (or heard of it, really); as it stands it's a little underwhelming at first glance, being a set for basically Normal Human with Gun and Fancy Powers. NSpec having multiple different modes from holding the button is a fun take on the basic shoot-gun special, and good foresight having Charge mode charge by rapid-pressing instead of being held itself, haha! SSpec is also interesting for being a reflector that can take a ground chunk if there's no projectiles to grab, good way to help its utility against melee fighters. Up is a surprisingly fun take on the 'levitate yourself' idea as well, and DSpec interacting with your Dash Attack is a cool idea too!

Like always the frame data and combo stuff just goes totally over my head, but I can at least appreciate the novel ideas you've sprinkled throughout the rest of the set. Things like UTilt being a wacky random projectile and F/BAir pushing you in that direction are immediately-obvious gimmicks that anyone could notice and utilize without falling into overly-complex MYM-tier hidden interactions. (Aside from possibly Back Throw being able to catch others' projectiles, but you know, throws.) It's a fun take on a slower, sluggier fighter that hits hard, using the things around her to deal damage instead of sheer force. Nothing groundbreaking, but a pleasant little romp!

Spoiler: Jackie Chan

A straightforward and pleasing melee set with plenty of prop shenanigans thrown in, with some fun tricks among his kit like moving around during Down Smash's charge. The only thing I can think of in terms of constructive criticism, really, is a few missing edge-case details on the Specials; namely, Neutral Special's secondary kick doesn't have any described effect when hitting an actual opponent; obviously I can see you're intending it to be used primarily as a reflector and interact with the projectile, but using it near a foe while your prop is somewhere else should probably have some kind of effect on them! Side Special could also bear to specify how it works in midair- I assume he'd perform the dropkick in midair without the runup and forced prone after, but yeah.

Spoiler: Green Goblin

You do a lot to incoporate the glider into this- not sure how much I like locking the Aerials behind it, but I can respect it given the "Collection of References" route you went for with this one, and the option to temporarily summon it after your jumps in exchange for a bit of lag helps. Not really sure what to say otherwise but I gotta make that comment to nominate the winner- perfectly serviceable set that I'm sure a different kind of person would enjoy a lot more, but I neither engage in Superhero Content or watch movies so it's basically a "hm. okay" overall. Impressive work for a JamCon to watch through the movie and get gifs from it, though!

Spoiler: Magneto

Seriously impressive for four days of work! This is basically everything you'd expect from someone with the ability to manipulate metal; the bullet he can manipulate, embedding metal into foes to manipulate them, following metal scraps you can use to power up your other attacks. It all fits together in a just absolutely lovely way; I haven't read Enya or Belzeb yet but I'm seriously considering giving Magneto my nomination. We'll see! This is a REALLY short comment but there's really not much more for me to say, just an absolutely solid set through-and-through.

Spoiler: Enya Geil

Interesting concept, having all your moves scale too far to combo off of normally but a mechanic that can reel foes in so you can continue laying down the pain. In typical US fashion this set's full of complicated interweaving of ideas and playstyle that I can't really keep straight in my head to be perfectly honest, but you get good mileage out of the fog and illusions overall. The zombies kinda came out of nowhere, I figure that's an extension of her ability to puppet people through injuries with the hole thing? Can't really say I'm a fan of it, couldn't tell you why but I can't fault you for including one of her canon abilities. Like Green Goblin, a perfectly serviceable set that would be a lot more appealing to people more familiar with the source material.

Spoiler: Belzeb

Once again this is a commendably long and complex set for the amount of time you had to work on it, so kudos for that first and foremost. Moonsickness is a fascinating mechanic, worsening by whiffing hits and cured by landing hits on its applier, but I can't help but think that'd be a 100/0 matchup for people like me, haha. Admittedly my own bias against minions makes me :( at Down Special, but bloody wires are an interesting enough mechanic that it's probably okay. The rest of it is pretty cool, big shifts in his amorphous body to make it easier or harder to hit him alongside his deadly attacks with bloody wires making him overall hit harder and be harder to hit. Not entirely sure about how involved Jab is either but that's just MYM, really. Not 100% my cup of tea, which I suppose was to be expected from a heavyweight villain, but objectively definitely has the right stuff.

With all that said and done, my JamCon 3 nomination goes to Magneto. Nice work, y'all!

 

[UserShadow7989]

Jesse Faden GolisoPower

One thing right away that I enjoy about Jesse Faden is it touches on a lot of points MYM has avoided for some time. I like the idea of a flexible fighter that can adjust how they play to act as a soft counter to any other opponent. It's a playstyle that's fallen by the wayside due to a lot of older attempts being unfocused or muddled and being something that would shine when given something to contrast against- something hard to convey in a theoretical moveset without going point by point over match-ups. I normally worry about weapon swap sets with lots of weapons, but the set does a good job of mentioning at least one weapon that works well out of, into, or in some sort of combination with each input.

Balance is my weakest point, so I'm not much help in advising there. The two things that made me raise an eyebrow are the Down Special shield health and Forward Smash blast radius, though the former locking out most of your other inputs while it's up is a very notable weakness to have and prevents dumb camping with it. The latter sounds like a pretty big AoE, but it is a pretty slow move at least. By contrast, I love Back/Up Throw, the former for transitioning strategically into Side Special and the latter for letting you whip out one of the pistol forms without having to wait as a potential side reward to landing your grab. Forward Aerial -> Fast Fall Back Aerial is a fun mental image and a mean trick.

I feel there could stand to be a little more detail, not on the crunch or the applications of the moves- I found picturing Jesse's gameplay quite satisfying once I had a good mental image- but of the animations. Winding up, swinging, and recovering are the ways I tend to think about animations, and mentioning sound or small details like a trail of light being left behind by a sword swing or colored glows can draw in some details.

As someone not familiar with Control, and who admittedly has difficulty focusing on reading due to distractions and poor attention span (so take this with a grain of salt), it'd be a big help just to add a few more touches to make the image stick. Several attacks do this well- smashes, forward and up tilt, basically every input with a prop adds enough to paint a good picture of how exactly it gets used to bust some heads, so it's not a huge or overarching problem, and limited writing time can definitely cause descriptions to get thin (I'm impressed by the quality you and everyone's been putting out each Jamcon). Down Aerial is one spot where the issue shows up, since there's not really an animation description to go with all the (well-written) crunchy bits- she just plummets. It's especially notable since Back Aerial dedicates a quick line to the animation and that's all it takes to picture that move.




Jackie Chan Rychu

This set really delivers on what you'd want out of Jackie Chan appearing in a Smash-like fighting game. I love the visuals the set provides, and how it'd look in practice with stuff like Ladder Up Smash -> Up Special, kipping up with the Down Special buff or slipping through the ladder back and forth with the Side Special and flowing back into his quick attacks, the Jab combo having a sick animation and the ability to turn mid-combo, and so on. Back Aerial in particular is a hoot, and it's clear you put a great deal of effort in to showcase how a character sans super powers can be incredibly interesting. It makes me want to see the set tackling 100 man melee mode or the like and taking down swaths of enemies.

To hit a nitpick/point of concern early into this comment: Side Special mentions the ladder is a solid wall once standing on the stage, should probably be said in Down Special. The Forward Aerial mention of the ladder concerns me a bit, though- it implies the ladder remains a solid barrier once in the air, and it's stated in a later move that Jackie is meant to be very good at the ledge guard game, so this seems intentional. This could be almost too nasty as a ledge guard option or otherwise cause some issues by pinning people between it and solid terrain, but it IS also not too durable, so I'm not sure about the balance of it. Take that with a grain of salt, as balance is my weak point.

Moving on, it's pretty interesting that Jackie has a few ways to put himself in prone, and that the Drunken Master buff lets him get back up so quickly or even start an attack from that position- letting him low profile some stuff and generally adding to his maneuverability options as he can roll to his feet as burst movement on top of every other crazy thing he does. All of the movement effects work to give him a sort of defensive tinge to his attacks, letting him slide back and forth out of harm's way or make sudden blows that he flows backwards from. It feels fairly accurate given how often Jackie's characters are responding to aggression rather than actively starting fights, all while dealing with being surrounded.

The inputs have good synergy and stand alone usefulness while remaining brief- Up Tilt being useful behind Jackie's ladder and an excellent aerial combo starter on top of its own uses for getting airborne safely and the coverage provided comes to mind. I kind of wish there was a little more meat on some of them, but I'm at a loss to what to add; Up Aerial for example is very, very short, but it does everything it really needs to and more would be over-complicating things. It's a short set that feels fairly whole, selling itself on what it's meant to be.

I apologize I wasn't able to offer much constructive advice, but it's an excellent set that's yet more proof you don't need a half-a-novel blockbuster to impress, and I love it for that. Now I want to see Jackie take on Soda Popinski...



Dogma bubbyboytoo

Dogma may well be my favorite set from you yet! An interesting take on a zoner character, Dogma sidesteps a decent number of the follies that Smash's examples stumble into. Instead of having a few incredibly potent projectiles, Dogma has more of a swiss army knife collection of varied options, all with their own counters and uses. Not content to sit at range and camp, Dogma's projectiles and movement options end up working to start of finish combos, aid Dogma in approaching, scoring preliminary hits against foes as they approach, and limiting opponents' defensive options when they get to melee. Dogma does not have a nigh-impenetrable defense, and does actually struggle a bit once they get in close (something Smash's zoners don't suffer from), without either of its advantage or disadvantage states being too severe or too minor.

Dogma feels incredibly well-planned, with a number of smart touches. The directional inputs sharing some purposes but with different strengths and weaknesses across input sections like Up Tilt/Up Smash's different takes on anti-air and Down Tilt/Down Smash both possessing a pseudo-dodge benefit make playing Dogma more intuitive. Giving them a second jump/z-air tether/Down Aerial's slight bump to altitude to compensate for Up Special not being a recovery move and poor air statistics is simple but clever, as is Side Special's slight recoil in the air, and the weakness this presents despite that (as you mentioned in the playstyle section, getting hit won't refresh your second jump!). Many inputs account for corner uses while not getting long in the tooth, such as noting Up Special's helpfulness against opponents with constructs/minions ala many MYM sets.

The projectiles aren't the only moves that are wonderfully diverse; Dogma's meat and potatoes inputs (I usually say 'melee' for this but ranged moves are as much the order of the day as the melee options), each having something interesting to them both visually and mechanically without ever feeling overstuffed or there for the sake of it. The effects of transitioning to NAir from Dash Attack and/or dropping down and quickly jumping again to get a momentum boost are really cool interactions. On top of that, the set takes time to describe the practical uses of inputs, giving a clear vision of how Dogma looks in play.

If I had to point to anything, the grab game is a bit basic, but it's perfectly functional and avoids redundancy or filler, so that's hardly a bad point (nor exclusive to Dogma; most grab games in the Jamcons tend to be bare as the final section people fill, and this one's fine). This is an excellent submission and is definitely getting a vote from me come contest's end.



Magneto Slavic

A premier Marvel villain takes the stage! Magneto gets plenty out of his various mechanics and quirks, such as orbiting bullets, scrap metal, and magnetized opponents. The way he can use scrap for offense and defense feels like a far superior version of what I toyed with using Marin's bubbles way back when, and the sheer oppressiveness he can bring to bear against magnetized opponents with his Down Special, Up Special, and Grab is nothing to sneeze at. The animations are fantastic, having brutal effect on foes with only a few gestures from Magneto himself. It really feels like how playing Magneto should, someone who can command absolute respect from those around him.

Ftilt/Utilt are cool melee attacks that provide secondary means of accessing Magneto's magnetism powers, and being able to yank the foe closer after a hit as a lesser version of Down Special's effects on them is a nice side benefit (and Dtilt's variant with pulling the foe down is pretty cool), but is Magneto then without his corresponding tilt until he retrieves the knife? What about FFA scenarios or when fighting a MYM minion set where he's got an opponent nearby and wants to use the tilt but the knife'd foe is in range for the pull back? The latter I feel would be fixable by making the returning knife a hitbox that does light damage/knockback as it passes through them to add a slight twist and make up for lack of access to the proper hitbox in that situation.

An easier solution would be he can still access the tilt normally, but can hold the input to retrieve the knife if the situation is right. A minor twist that'd be mutually exclusive with that is to have the retrieval effect override the actual tilt as normal, and buff the tilts to make them a bit more potent with that being an intentional limiter (can't spam the move after one successful hit) and downside (creating a hole in his melee/short-range game when he already struggles a bit in close quarters).

I spent as much time talking about that as I did because I actually don't have a lot else to pick at here; the aerials and throws are solid, and the whole set feels fully realized. It's a mechanically solid set for an interesting character that sells said character well. This is an excellent entry from you, Slavic, and I'm again impressed by what people have put out in such a short time frame.

(Nitpick: FThrow says "At 0% this move can kill around 165% from the ledge!" and you could probably just cut the first two words of that to make it make sense.)



Belzeb ForwardArrow

You said trying to make a set as ambitious as Belzeb in a strict time window with other things going on was a mistake, and I can definitely see how trying to fit this much set in that little time was a major stress factor. It certainly paid off, mind, but don't be sacrificing your health for movesets friend!

There's not one, but two, sometimes three variables to consider for each input in terms of buffing Belzeb's attacks: the buffs from devouring your own minions, the buff to speed from devouring a Moonsickness-striken foe, and sometimes a buff against a currently Moonsickened foe in specific on a move-by-move basis, the latter two scaling with how much you worsen the victim's condition. The set has plenty of rewards for these various accomplishments, the bare bones moves being big but risky and specialized and getting safer and more potent the better you're doing. That's not even counting some of the oddball effects in the set like Jab's eye construct, adding more and more potential rewards for taking control of the match that help you keep it.

Belzeb can indeed snowball, though it's limited by Moonsickness resetting as the foe loses their stock and the minion buff being hard to gain and fast to vanish with damage. Though not as intentionally extreme in balance as Primordial Darkness, Belzeb cuts an intimidating figure between his reach, power, and the surprising speed he has in certain places. One balance complaint I have is on Up Throw; the size of the nanite field sounds insane, and might need to be toned down for that effect.

There's some layers to it all, too. I remember that you mentioned being interested in the concept of a set that shifts its hurtbox around significantly in the past, that old Chaos 0 set from way back when and Helix from ARMS coming up in related conversations, and I feel Belzeb is a good execution on that concept with a mechanic that benefits him the more he can bait foes into missing their attacks. The way his amorphous body twists and slinks about makes for some interesting visuals, some attacks having the way his body moves be a major benefit, while others have it be a colossal drawback that is covered by having more and more buffs up.

Each move goes over the practical applications of the move and how it can be used in relation to each other, but there's an extra layer in that the moves and their buffs also indirectly benefit each other sometimes as well. Belzeb's additional Up Special uses pairs well with Down Aerial's extending reach, letting him get higher and then return quickly to the ground from higher up, for example.

My main concern with this set was how well it functions without getting the snowball rolling or when in disadvantage (or heaven forbid when the opponent has a Virtue buff from your mechanic backfiring), but I feel it manages it well. Belzeb does still have some very useful moves; his smashes still function as needed, his minions are weak but force the foe to play around them, DTilt, Dash Attack, NAir are still solid options, the Smashes are still potentially deadly, and Neutral Special can get the ball rolling again with time. His disadvantage state is severe, but far from insurmountable, and he has plenty of interesting things available to the player even before the buff-specific effects come online.

The balance in general is a bit extreme, though not to the level of something like Primordial Darkness from last contest, and I'm not sure how it shakes out in the end. If I were being a bit more critical and looking for something to complain about, I do feel the set could do a little more to bait and punish besides the hitbox shifting and intangibility, though stuff like Dash Attack give it some creative applications of that trick, and I don't want to suggest super armor when this guy's already kinda rough to hit around. I'm at a bit of a loss as to what else can be done for that, so I suppose that complaint falls short too. Excellent job, FA; this is a fairly glowing recommendation of Majora's work if I've ever seen one!



Green Goblin Kholdstare

Rounding off the block is the Green Goblin, a cool choice that borrows a bit from Kupa's Vulture set to create a very interesting air game that can simultaneously support your melee-oriented ground game thanks to the ability to program his glider as an autonomous construct. The core is solid and controlling the glider feels like a fun time, and it's a shame that the set doesn't quite build on it for the rest of it.

The standards and smashes all have their uses and despite the former being fairly simple punches and kicks, there's a kinetic energy to how they're delivered that make them sound satisfying to use. There's not much to them, but like with Jackie Chan, they do what they need to. I do feel however that laying out one or two combo strings or just highlighting a little more about how well they work with each other would've been nice; Up Tilt and Down Tilt both do well by making mention of chaining well into the air game and being a safer but lesser reward for landing the sleeping gas, respectively, but a little more with Jab/FTilt/Dash Attack in that vein would've been appreciated. They're simple, but it feels like that's a consequence of the character and not necessarily to the set's detriment.

The weakest section for me was the throws, barring a neat quirk in Up Throw that I wish was expanded upon a bit more. One's a KO throw, one's an aerial combo starter, one sets up chases/ground combos and works well with spacers, and one's a damage throw (though I feel all the throws do potentially too much damage). Up Throw calling in your Glider as a break in its pattern before immediately resuming its pattern from that point with Goblin transitioning to riding atop it is a nice touch that ties it into Goblin's core gimmick, setting up some fun aerial hijinks.

Forward Throw I feel the animation for would be a nice side benefit to use in combination with the Pumpkin Bombs or so the glider can get closer to the blast zone/into position as it lets him hold the foe in place longer, which would be worth mentioning on top of its existence as an excellent reference. Back Throw and Down Throw, though, would probably benefit from a list of good options to use out of them.

To close this out on a positive note after picking nits for a few paragraphs, this set does well to convey the feel of playing William Dafoe Green Goblin and sounds like a hoot in general. My complaints are small, make no mistake, and I'm happy to see the character get a set with this much love in it. Excellent work, Khold!



Having read all the Jamcon sets, I feel my nomination has to go to Belzeb by ForwardArrow. It feels like a whole set that matches the theme closely and is the most multi-facetted of the Jamcon entries in what it does, while just being a dang impressive output for a set made in only 4 days. It's just that good to stand out from this crowd. Good work everyone!

 

[BKupa666]

GREEN GOBLIN:
Here's a Spider-Man villain I toyed with the idea of making at some point down the road, potentially after No Way Home drops, so needless to say, my heart leapt when I saw you'd brought him into this Jam-Con's mix. For the most part, I'd say Goblin lives up to my personal hype, and not just because of its nods to my past sinister works. I remember sharing two years ago that Vulture's earliest concepts involved him attaching and reattaching from his wingsuit, which would fly around independently, and a few people at the time commented that the idea would be better suited for Goblin. Imagine my pleasant surprise to learn that, probably by complete coincidence, you'd successfully pulled off just that.

There are synergies with his flight and remote control option but by comparison, Goblin comes off as comparatively restrained in some places and freer in others. Unique to his own kit, Goblin's flight path wears off after being fully used once, but he can move right into free flight within an excellent implementation of the Steve "block boundary" paradigm. Even with his five-second timer, Goblin would come off as frustrating as hell to deal with on stages like Palutena's Temple, but as though MYM has ever concerned itself with those sort of outliers lmao. A minor note in the stats section specifically, I don't see how Goblin being an "8" for size makes him comparable to Greninja, or how K. Rool-tier ground movement renders him comparable to Sheik.

Beyond his base controls, I like a handful of the complementary functions among his bread-and-butter attacks. It took me a quick reread and some thought to come around on Down Special counter, but its ability to redirect projectiles — not mentioned, but of key importance when foes can throw Pumpkin Bombs back at Gobby — is a handy utility. Meanwhile, sleep gas functions as its own different pseudo-counter, not invalidating hitboxes themselves but slowing down most close-range attacks to the point where their user stays in the gas for the requisite 45 frames to fall asleep (an underutilized state in MYM to boot). The ability to transfer flight paths to the razor bats is a nice supplement to piloting the glider itself around (both at once could lead to some nutty setups), and Goblin's contrast in ranged options from his Neutral Special bombs vs. his glide attack ones provides for strong mix-up potential.

Moving into his standard melee attacks, I like how movement options are incorporated into aerials, in terms of Goblin's own trajectory with N-Air, his foe's with B-Air and his glider's with the potential remote D-Air bombing runs. The frame (dis)advantage in terms of how, and out of what state, he uses his aerials introduces some nice additional depth, too. There could have been even further territory to explore in terms of how Goblin's slow-fall could influence his ground-to-air combos — perhaps targeting where specifically he uses an aerial to influence landing lag/auto-cancel frames such that he can proceed right into a certain standard or Smash — though that you put out all that's already there within Jam-Con's confines already is impressive in and of itself.

There's some wonkiness in terms of KO percentage, where moves that only kill at 148% (F-Smash) are described as potent...I fully get not freaking MYM readers out from a balance standpoint, but when comparatively(?) committal moves like Bowser and Ganondorf F-Smash can finish off middleweights at less than half that (63%), a numbers revisit might be in order. Otherwise, the balance of Goblin's melee feels well-rounded with simpler melee attacks that work well around his central mechanics, with a few nice surprises (like D-Smash) in the mix for flavor. In that respect, he's the sort of set I'd aspire to make if I were less obsessive in terms of months-long writing processes, heh. Gobby himself might be "OUT," but he's sure to end up a safe inclusion around the upper half of my vote list. Great work!

MORSHU:
It's great to see you taking another stab at MYM after Shadow, and I'm pleased to say Morshu is a definite step up. At a high level, he reflects a solid understanding of both frame data and distinct functions different attacks can have within a moveset (i.e. combo starter, kill option at the ledge). The centerpiece type moves themselves also have nice intractability, with the Spinner standing out as a clear highlight, what with Morshu's options for planting flame or bomb traps atop it. The transfer of its Twilight Princess mechanics into Smash's engine is pulled off nicely, giving Morshu a means for using grounded attacks while briefly in motion or midair, and its versatility in letting him alter bomb throw trajectories or rope tosses is hard to overstate.

In terms of other areas I enjoyed, though at first brush I thought 10 HP was a bit flimsy for Morshu's lamps, they do create a fun layer of counterplay, where foes can easily destroy them to get rid of the potential floaty effect at the cost of giving Morshu a ready-made patch of oil to set alight. Morshu also has an appealing trend of vulnerability or risk-reward throughout a handful of his attacks, like spinner rope spins leaving him with more end lag should foes escape, or a detaching dash attack leaving him on his behind so he can't continually hurl balls off the ledge at victims.

On the critique side, I believe Morshu has some inconsistencies with rope that leave me unsure on its balance in practice. As Up Special indicates players can typically get off 15-20 spins before opponents mash out, my napkin math suggests it takes foes in the ballpark of four to five seconds to mash free (factoring in frame data per spin and the faster spin speeds accessed after a certain time). That's a matter of number crunching, but when the ability to escape is key for Morshu's risk-reward motif and to keep him from just casually carrying foes offstage for effortless KOs, it ought to be addressed if/when you do revisions.

Beyond that, I didn't see any limit specified in F-Air for how far Morshu can run in midair (or at what speed), appearing to give him potential limitless horizontal recovery if not interrupted. I can't tell whether B-Air and U-Air have damage omitted on purpose or no, but in either case would recommend at least a token bit of percentage so as to not leave Morshu totally hamstrung from those angles. And on a lesser note, there's a few areas where further interaction could be explored if you felt compelled. In specific, I didn't see mention of whether Morshu can elevate his spinner by roping an item (i.e. a lamp or bomb), but it'd give him a good way to let him access that movement option for the platform without a foe being in the immediate vicinity. Perhaps D-Tilt beanstalks as a wall also could serve as a means for rebounding spinners to prolong them or refresh their speed?

In short, Morshu is an amusing read, a number of high points in among a handful of areas for further growth, and a good portrayal of the character, funny and with meme references without being a literal walking YouTube Poop. Excited to see what comes next from you!

 

[Kholdstare]

GREEN GOBLIN:
Here's a Spider-Man villain I toyed with the idea of making at some point down the road, potentially after No Way Home drops, so needless to say, my heart leapt when I saw you'd brought him into this Jam-Con's mix. For the most part, I'd say Goblin lives up to my personal hype, and not just because of its nods to my past sinister works. I remember sharing two years ago that Vulture's earliest concepts involved him attaching and reattaching from his wingsuit, which would fly around independently, and a few people at the time commented that the idea would be better suited for Goblin. Imagine my pleasant surprise to learn that, probably by complete coincidence, you'd successfully pulled off just that.

There are synergies with his flight and remote control option but by comparison, Goblin comes off as comparatively restrained in some places and freer in others. Unique to his own kit, Goblin's flight path wears off after being fully used once, but he can move right into free flight within an excellent implementation of the Steve "block boundary" paradigm. Even with his five-second timer, Goblin would come off as frustrating as hell to deal with on stages like Palutena's Temple, but as though MYM has ever concerned itself with those sort of outliers lmao. A minor note in the stats section specifically, I don't see how Goblin being an "8" for size makes him comparable to Greninja, or how K. Rool-tier ground movement renders him comparable to Sheik.

Beyond his base controls, I like a handful of the complementary functions among his bread-and-butter attacks. It took me a quick reread and some thought to come around on Down Special counter, but its ability to redirect projectiles — not mentioned, but of key importance when foes can throw Pumpkin Bombs back at Gobby — is a handy utility. Meanwhile, sleep gas functions as its own different pseudo-counter, not invalidating hitboxes themselves but slowing down most close-range attacks to the point where their user stays in the gas for the requisite 45 frames to fall asleep (an underutilized state in MYM to boot). The ability to transfer flight paths to the razor bats is a nice supplement to piloting the glider itself around (both at once could lead to some nutty setups), and Goblin's contrast in ranged options from his Neutral Special bombs vs. his glide attack ones provides for strong mix-up potential.

Moving into his standard melee attacks, I like how movement options are incorporated into aerials, in terms of Goblin's own trajectory with N-Air, his foe's with B-Air and his glider's with the potential remote D-Air bombing runs. The frame (dis)advantage in terms of how, and out of what state, he uses his aerials introduces some nice additional depth, too. There could have been even further territory to explore in terms of how Goblin's slow-fall could influence his ground-to-air combos — perhaps targeting where specifically he uses an aerial to influence landing lag/auto-cancel frames such that he can proceed right into a certain standard or Smash — though that you put out all that's already there within Jam-Con's confines already is impressive in and of itself.

There's some wonkiness in terms of KO percentage, where moves that only kill at 148% (F-Smash) are described as potent...I fully get not freaking MYM readers out from a balance standpoint, but when comparatively(?) committal moves like Bowser and Ganondorf F-Smash can finish off middleweights at less than half that (63%), a numbers revisit might be in order. Otherwise, the balance of Goblin's melee feels well-rounded with simpler melee attacks that work well around his central mechanics, with a few nice surprises (like D-Smash) in the mix for flavor. In that respect, he's the sort of set I'd aspire to make if I were less obsessive in terms of months-long writing processes, heh. Gobby himself might be "OUT," but he's sure to end up a safe inclusion around the upper half of my vote list. Great work!

I'm happy you liked the character choice, it was definitely you I was thinking of when I concepted it. You really influenced it, heh. Especially with the presentation/playstyle references to Vulture and your other sets. I'm glad it comes off as similar but very different, that was definitely the goal. The free flight conundrum is defintiely something I want to properly figure out, I think Junahu's Arche set was the first to properly tackle it. You can't really properly do it without analyzing every stage though like you said, and I had no time to do that. As for the size being 8 but also Greninja, Greninja stands as tall as 8/10ths of two grids and two grids is about the top of the height chart in Ultimate so that's what I was referenceing. For the other stats, I looked up the stats on Kurogane Hammer and eyeballed where on the list the character came in and just kind of tried to put a number ranking to it. That's the inherent problem with X/10 stats though, not everyone has the same idea of what they should be. As for the Sheik thing that's probably a typo due to rushing for JamCon as I change my ideas up a lot and it got leftover from an earlier idea.
Down Special counter I'm glad you came around to! It's both a nice reference and like you said very important with the projectile aspect - I wanted to give Goblin a bunch of ways to deal with projectiles so he could force fist fights. Sleep gas I'm really unsure on the balancing but I figured the 45 frames would be a good place to start. I didn't pull up Jigglypuff's frames on Sing (and also didn't pull up data on other moves which hurt me in something I'm about to respond to) but I just took a stab at it. Mixups were definitely what I was thinking of and trying to make a varied and sporadic neutral game with a lot of options for Goblin to fight how he wanted to. I'm glad you like the ground game linking into aerials, those were really fun to write, especially how the glider's remote attacks can play into it with the DAir like you said. I envisioned Gobby as a ground-to-air fighter kind of like Pit but very different. There is definitely room to expand the air game though because he has a lit of cool tools at his disposal that all are radically different than each other rather than forming a singular identity, and slowfall definitely plays into it. The point you make about auto cancel is really good, and I often forget about those to be honest!
KO percentages and frame data do need to be revised. I was in kind of a rush and just contrived the KO percentages but I was basing them off of Pumpkin Bomb and I now realize that I based that off of regular grenade KO percentages rather than actual melee KO percentages so he came off unintentionally weak. I wasn't even thinking about it, I got kind of tunnel visioned due to JamCon time limit. So yeah he can definitely use a buff in power to make him feel actually scary. I'm glad you like the form of the melee though, and yeah that DSmash was really fun to make a reference to even though it was like the second-to-last move I wrote! I'm really happy you liked him so much, thanks for the read and comment BKupa666 !

 

[Rychu]

Doing away with the document for now so I can comment on Jamcon stuff and get more posts in the thread! I think what I'll end up doing from here on out is copypasting my thread comments into my document for ease of access.

JESSE FADEN
by GolisoPower

Control is one of those games I started and just never got around to finishing. It's on the list.

Jesse has some fun ideas here - I especially like the idea of a Monado-style projectile which is a fun way of getting all the attacks into one input rather than spacing the different forms of the Service weapon to different inputs. Honestly, that's a good way to approach an FPS character too, so thanks for that little nugget of inspiration! There's a lot of fun little interactions in the set (which is fitting for the game based on what I played of it), the Shield and Dash attack being a really nice little set-up payoff situation and the B-Throw using objects near you to increase the damage and knockback of attacks is super fun too. Kinda surprised there's no interaction between Shield and Launch, as that seems like a natural fit for that kind of attack combo. Given the nature of the game she's from I'm pleased with the amount of "pick stuff up and bash the opponent" moves here, though I think my favorite little effect comes from the Down Special cleansing the stage of traps which, as you said, is a niche use of the attack but one that could feasibly make or break certain match-ups. I love little attention to detail stuff like that!


Jesse is a fun little set that's not without its problems - for one, I noticed a couple of sentences simply drop off before the thought is completed for a few attacks. The ideas aren't entirely new or especially innovative here but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a neat and fun little set that I enjoyed reading, though I'm not sure how high it'll place on my vote list - rest assured that it's competing for a spot somewhere though!

by bubbyboytoo

Bullet hell characters are a soft spot for me - as a Belmont main I literally spend my time doing nothing but throwing projectiles so this kind of set appeals to me as a player more than anything. I love the idea of the static aura - a character who fills the screen with projectiles to force opponents into specific places or who makes them interact on his level by just taking a hit is a very fun idea. Not sure if its an intentional choice or a happy coincidence because of the way the move in the game works, but a static aura that damages folks who stay in it for too long is as they stay within it is such a character-rich addition given who the character is. Projectiles are obviously incredibly strong in any fighter but I think the set does a good job balancing as even though Dogma can seemingly rack up damage like crazy the knockback is typically so bad he can't kill until late, so I think he balances out pretty nicely. The gameplan for Dogma is straightforward without too many wrinkles - as you say in the playstyle section, chuck projectiles out and see what happens, though I think the hints of clever zone control is what pushes Dogma out of the "it works" to the "it good" category for me. Nice work here, bubby!

by Slavic

Choosing the Fassbender Magneto is an interesting choice right off the bat - I understand he's probably the most easily referenced without doing too many deep dives into comics or wikis, but Magneto will pretty much always be the version from Marvel vs Capcom 3 for me. Not that I'll let that bias affect my view of the set!

While Magneto just whipping out a Glock is hilarious it's a really clever and (given the version) character-rich solution to the problem of wanting to have Magneto mess with his foes magnetically. For a set made in such a short time, I think you get a lot of mileage out of his powerset - the way the bullets work to enhance certain attacks is very fun, though I think there's definitely more that could have been done with the scrap metal he creates - not to say it doesn't come into play at all, obviously, I think where they're used works just fine. Magneto being a character with a hefty amount of shield pressure works very well both for how he's set up in the set and for the character in general - again, as like I mentioned with Dogma, it's a nice take on the influence theme of this Jamcon that Magneto forces foes to fight on his level or suffer the consequences.

Magneto's an impressive set for one that was made in such a short amount of time and I can tell he's a character you really like - there's definitely a lot of justice done for him in this set! Excellent work - he's in the going for my nomination, though I'll have to read the remaining 3 sets before I make that decision.

 

[Smady]

Hey Wizfoot! This may be your first set I have read and commented on, and I was excited to see your set style. When your first set is Chaos, that's always going to pique my interest as far as a character choice, V1 is a similarly exciting pick.

First of all, I would add air speed and fall speed in future sets and info for jumps. What you have is good; these are just simple additions to cover all the necessary statistical data for the set. The gimmick of the set is quite simple. I think a potential avenue to give it more depth is some kind of overhealing mechanic or another way to use this healing to go on the offensive and buff your own attacks. The gimmick may be in character, but it is a relatively passive and unimpactful mechanic.

The set is a good base overall, and the general ideas are decent. However, there is definitely much room for improvement, particularly in how you express the moves. For example, when you describe, say, a punch, you don't say how the punch is performed. There are many different ways to punch or even fire a gun that distinguishes them from similar attacks. What kind of motion, energy, or feeling was put into the attack by the character? It would elevate your moves a lot to go into more depth on what they look like and what makes them distinctive attacks.

That would be the most pressing issue for the set, though I think another problem is that the overall playstyle simply needs a bit more of a hook to it. I like the idea of healing with his own attacks, but this is far too passive to really be the basis for the whole set. His other central gimmick of using the coins is fun but only comes up once in the set as a direct interaction. If you look up Rufus from last MYM, it also had a coin flip move but did them in a bit more of an exciting way. Most of the attacks here honestly don't have that much synergy. They aren't bad, but there needs to be a bit more connecting them, on top of some more description of how they compare to other moves. You do a good job comparing their function to existing moves, which is important too, but there needs to be more effort.

The damage seems reasonable as far as the set balance, but the KO percents seem markedly too low. KOing in the mid-high 100s of percent is pretty weak by Smash Ultimate standards, and even the smashes are pretty weak with no DI. I would lower all the KO percents by quite a bit and look to some other recent sets for the sorts of numbers you may want. It's about as easy of a change to make or adjust to in future sets. My ballpark would be to just lower the KO percents for everything here.

The character comes across okay in this set, but as the gimmicks are very passive, you don't get a considerable feel for him in the moves. The presentation of the set around it with many useful links (though embedding them would be better if possible) is the best part. He does not have the strongest personality in the set.

I did have fun reading and analysing the set, and I'm looking forward to both your past and future additions. This is not the most complex comment, but I feel like that's not really what you need at the moment as much as some general pointers. Feel free to ask me for any further thoughts or elaborations and you're always welcome to ask for any assistance in the chat you may need in writing your sets!

 

[Janx_uwu]

Lamp oil? Rope? Bombs? This shopkeeper has it all. Give a hand (and your rubies) to...
MORSHU!

Morshu made his first appearance in 1993's Link: The Faces of Evil as...a shopkeeper. A shopkeeper with two cutscenes and nothing else to work with. But dang it, that won't stop me
from honing my set-making skills on one of the most underrated Zelda characters of all time.

Anyways, the game was bad. Very bad. The cutscenes, for their voice acting, weird scaling, and jarring animation, took a place in meme culture in the mid 2000's with the glorious world of YouTube Poops. While this meme format died out very long ago, Morshu specifically has appeared in recent meme culture, seperate from both the rest of the Faces of Evil cast and YTPs. Through memes such as Morshu beatbox, 60 FPS Morshu, Morshu In Real Life, and RTX Morshu, not to mention interweaving between those memes, our favorite Zelda shopkeeper has managed to find relevancy once again! So, it's the perfect time to make a Morshu set. (Keep in mind, the meme will probably be dead long before this set is finished. But it's whatever, I still love the guy).






Stats



The legendary shopkeeper stands tall, retaining the height of King K. Rool and about as wide as Dedede. He has a weight of 120, between Ganondorf and Dedede. He has two standard jumps, with a rather abysmal jump height of 26 (the same as Little Mac and the Shotos). However his fall speed is pretty decent, clocking in at 1.65 for a normal fall (same as Ganondorf), 2.608 fastfall (just like DK). Morshu's initial dash is pretty good, clocking in at 1.76 (comparable to Duck Hunt). His constant run, however, is quite bad, at 1.40 (about the same as Belmonts). Morshu has a pretty cumbersome air speed of 0.924 (same as Link).

Morshu is a pretty slow guy, ranking in the superheavy class. While this is in part due to his observable size, it's also done to compensate for his heavy item usage and strong attacks. (A sharp counter to Shadow, who possessed all of Sonic's stats).
Morshu also has no "gimmick" i.e. an overarching mechanic of his character that determines how he will play. I couldn't think of any that would fit Morshu. But don't worry, I still have some out-of-the-box ideas for his moveset that I'm sure will peak your interest.

(Height comparison above-not completely to scale.)
Special Moves


Neutral B: Lamp Oil?
Morshu pulls a very magical-looking lamp from his vest. Morshu has no need for three wishes-as he is quite content and happy with his humble shopkeeping life-so instead, he starts to turn a knob on the lamp for as long as the player holds down the B button. When they let go, Morshu will take 11 frames to place the lamp on the ground at his feet before he can act again. Around the stationary lamp, there will be a yellow, transparent light. The size of this light depends on how long B was held down for. Immediately let go for an extremely small one, the size of Kirby. But, hold it down medium ways, and it's about as big as Piranha Plant's Poison Cloud-a move that shares some similarities with Lamp Oil. And, at max charge, the light becomes 1.5X larger than that!

So, what does this light do? Glad you asked. When touching a light (any size), the opponent suffers 2% DPS. More interestingly, however, their gravity will decrease! Why? Well, heat rises, and as I said before, this lamp is magical. To give you an idea of how much gravity is decreased, an affected Fox now has similar gravity to Sheik, and Bowser Jr now has similar gravity to Lucario (goes down about .08 units). It also lowers their fall speed by a bit. ZSS' fall speed is now comparable to Ike's, meaning the value goes down by about .05 units. (As you can imagine, Jigglypuff is now practically a helium balloon if she wasn't before). Both effects last while the character is in the light and for about 120 frames after they leave it. Morshu can use these nerfs to his advantage by launching them up with one of his attacks, then jumping up and trying to cover them with an Up B while they are desperately trying to fall back to the ground. Morshu may also use this to try and extend some non-true strings.

Only one lamp may be placed at a time. This is to keep Morhsu from lighting up the stage like his banger deals at his shop in Korodai
Another limitation on this move-no matter the size, lamps will only stay around for 12 seconds-afterwards, they will despawn. Afterwards, Morshu may place another one. The lamps have a fairly small hitbox and 10 HP, so a character with a long-ranged projectile or disjoint can take out a fully-charged lamp from afar! Immediately after, though, Morshu can start charging his next one.

What happens when the lamp is destroyed is quite interesting. See, it busts open, and what else could come out but LAMP OIL?! The oil pours onto the floor, in a small, colorless puddle. It will stay there until it is tripped on, and becomes invisible after being active for 100 frames (like how Snake's C4 stops blinking red after a short moment). There are two ways it can despawn, however: either Morshu does another Neutral B, or-more interestingly-it is set on fire by an attack or item with fire properties. Flames will shoot up from the oil puddle in a dramatic fashion (about 5 frames after it is hit), with the initial hitbox going up about a Villager high. Said initial hitbox does 12% and will kill at 120%, sending straight up-so watch out! However, after this initial hitbox that lasts for 5 frames, it will simply burn the ground, inflicting 3 DPS of burning damage. After 4 seconds, the fire will slowly start to despawn, taking 40 frames to die down into but a small flame (that still has a very tiny hurtbox) before dying out completely.

Now, here's where it gets interesting-Morshu can set the lamp oil ablaze with his own bombs! This means he can set up a risky trap using these two attacks.


If you want a more direct way to activate the lamp oil, simply charge up the Neutral B, let go of B, and immediately press it again. Morshu will, instead of placing the lamp, spill the oil out onto the floor.

Morshu can even place a lamp onto the Spinner (more on that very soon) for some light (or oil slick) on the go!



Side B: Spinner?

While the Spinner is the only special move with an item Morshu isn't associated with, it is a rather obscure Zelda item and only appeared in one game-so it fits Morshu quite well. The Spinner is a really cool and unique item that made its first and only mainline appearance in Twilight Princess.

Upon activation, Morshu will pull a Spinner out of his vest (seriously, how much room does that thing have?) and places it on the ground before hopping on it himself, not unlike a skateboard. A keen eye will be able to spot that Morshu has a fancy M etched onto the base-seemingly his branding (this is also visible on many other items of his, like the lamp. It takes about 15 frames to start moving forward at Piranha Plant's walk speed. It will gradually get slower as it reaches its max distance of ¾ of Battlefield.

The Spinner acts as less of a "Wario Bike" and more of a "rolling crate" if you get what I mean. When Wario rides on his bike, the player controls the bike, not Wario, until they jump off. However, Morshu will actually act independently from the Spinner-only exception being that, by pressing X or Y, it will jump at the height of Snake's full hop. Morshu can attack, shield, move around, and do any other action while on the spinner, and he can even activate a jump while a move is active (though he cannot do the same for dismounting). The spinner itself isn't very fast, only travels ¾ of Battlefield, but it does have a pretty strong hitbox on the side. It does 15% and launches at a low angle, and will kill at 130%. Now, if Morshu wants to dismount his ride, he can simply make it jump, and press X/Y again while the spinner is in midair. Morshu can also dismount without jumping, by shielding and pressing B. In both situations, the Spinner will continue to move forward. You'll want to get off at some point before it stops-because once it does, it will remain until Morshu hops off. It can still jump in this state, but Morshu is left wide open while he is on, as the Spinner will lose its hitbox, so it's best to dismount before you become an easy target. After 2 seconds of being idle with no one on top, the Spinner will despawn.

The spinner provides Morshu with ample opportunities to throw his projectiles and add pressure to the opponent (as if he didn't already have enough pressuring tools-we'll get onto those very shortly). The Spinner does ample shield damage as well, and can even break a shield at half health, so most opponents should either run away or jump over the Spinner. However, Morshu can read this and jump with the Spinner and possibly catch them with an Up Smash! Or, if they jump out of range, Morshu can jump, dismount jump, and up b!

If you are in the air with the Spinner-either by activating the move in the air, or falling off stage because you have no more room-you'll fall at Samus' normal fall speed. The hitbox of the Spinner becomes larger, encompassing the entire item instead of just the sides. It also becomes stronger-now sending at a high angle that kills at 100% on Mario at the ledge. It, however, does not have a spike hitbox, like many falling attacks do. While in the air, Morshu only has to press X or Y once to dismount, so you should be safe if you want to edgeguard with Spinner.

When using Spinner on the side of a wall, the side will attach and begin to climb up 1.3X faster than the grounded speed.. Morshu can still dismount during this time, and this does not take away from the Spinner's overall travel distance. This can be somewhat difficult to get from above given how fast the Spinner falls, but if you can activate the move right on the wall, you'll start moving with the climb rather than a fall.

Items can also be set on the Spinner, such as lamps and bombs. This is especially helpful for trying to break opponents' shields or have lamps on the go. Morshu has some incredible pressure when he mixes Spinner with his other special moves.

The spinner does count as a projectile, which means it can be reflected, though as you'd expect, it cannot be absorbed. Being reflected or hitting walls or opponents resets it's speed and distance-so it will start going faster and travel another 3/4 of Battlefield, though now in the opposite direction. This is notable for multiple reasons. For one, enemies who reflect the Spinner will send it back to Morshu, meaning if he tries to set it up right next to an opponent with a reflector, there's a very good chance he'll get hit by the Spinner itself. But because it would bounce right off of Morshu, in that scenario, everyone involved would go flying (though it would not stack in damage, unlike, say, if two Foxes reflected a projectile between each other). Also, it gives Morshu an interesting option during doubles-let's say Morshu and Sonic are fighting Luigi and Ridley. If Morshu is locked in a 1v1 with the latter, he can hit Ridley with the Spinner, which is then sent in Luigi's direction-Morshu can then load it up with bombs or a lamp in order to help out his teammate while taking on the other opponent. This property of the move also makes for some hectic moments in free-for-all battles.

Oh, and Spinner has some special attributes with certain moves-I'll go over those when we get to said moves.




Up B: Rope?
Morshu reaches into his vest. In his most powerful special, starting on frame 13, Morshu pulls out a rope and swings it-and when attaching to an opponent or the ledge, the rope will lasso itself around said person or ledge. Depending on your location, the move-and its functionality-changes.

Similarly to how Byleth works, Morshu's rope will turn into a tether recovery move when at certain locations around the ledge. The range of this recovery can be compared to Min Min's, From there it's your average recovery tether move.

For the recovery part of the move, the Rope will grab the ledge when in about this range from the ledge.

When not in the designated recovery zone (or actively targeting the ledge with the left stick), Morshu's rope will change. The range is heavily decreased, now possessing the range of Corrin's forward smash times 1.5 the length. This functions as a sort of hit-grab, meaning it can be shielded. The rope can be tossed in 8 directions. It now comes out on frame 24, which is ten frames slower than his recovery variant of the move.

When hit with the rope, the opponent will be lasso'd, and Morshu will pull them in with a grin. And, once they have been pulled in almost all the way, Morshu will grip his end of the rope tightly. Ever played that Mario Party 1v3 game, with the Bowser costume? Get ready for some PTSD, my friend. Because by spinning the control stick around and around clockwise, and Morshu will begin swinging the opponent above his head! Continue spinning the stick, and Morshu will keep swinging the opponent faster until they are traveling at ludicrous speeds. Each spin of Morshu's opponent will do about 1% or slightly higher (by "slightly", I'm talking decimals here). Realistically, Morshu can get in 15-20 spins before the opponent breaks free by mashing, and they will be sent literally nowhere, standing right in front of Morhsu. However, this does not put either player at an advantage, rather keeping them even in terms of who has the frame advantage. If they do manage to break out, Morshu will look angered a bit scared, jumping back and raising his hands in the air.

The average amount of damage you'll get from the swinging itself is about 15-18%. However, the release will do no damage, contrary to what you might think.

So, how do you prevent this from happening? Simple. While spinning the opponent, press A or B to let them go! They will fly off forward, and the faster they were spun, the further they will go. A really slow spinning speed will set up your opponent in a tech situation at most percentages, and a really fast spinning speed will kill at high percentages near the ledge. After letting go, Morshu has 21 frames of endlag, which can be bad if your opponent mashes out before you can let them go.

A note-similarly to Wario World, when Morshu is swinging at max speed, the opponent can (but doesn't have to) let go of the left stick, and Morshu will continue swinging. Also like WW, Morshu can move around once he is at max speed, with the left stick. It's not very fast, about the speed of Snake's walk speed. He can go off stage during this time, and attempt to cheese his opponent with a stage spike, a la DK Cargo Throw. However, the move has considerable endlag after throwing, and unlike the only-aerial version, Morhsu's walk-off throw doesn't stop him in the air, so it may be a challenge getting back to stage. Especially if your opponent techs the throw and tries to spike you on your way back up.

It takes less than a second for the low speed swing, 1 seconds later nets you a medium speed swing, and max speed is activated 3 seconds after starting the move. A low speed swing has a white trail behind the swinging opponent to indicate the speed, a medium speed one is yellow, and a max speed one is red.

Another special characteristic of this move is that, once the rope has been swung for a few turns, it will get a hitbox that increases in power with each turn, until it has reached max speed. A low-speed hitbox hardly sends opponents anywhere and does 1.2% (this is excluding the 1v1 damage multiplier). Since the rope is so slow at this point, most characters will actually get a frame advantage on Morshu during this time, and can hit him out of the attack. But, a medium speed swing will do 5% and launch opponents. Still not very far at all, but enough to guarantee they won't get a punishment on Morshu. A max speed swing does 11.6% and high knockback that will kill at ledge at 140%. This can be used against Pikmin, Ice Climbers, doubles opponents, or simply a way to cause havoc during a FFA.

Now, I know what you're thinking-but what happens if you use it in the air? Well, Morshu can still pull in opponents from 8 directions, albeit in a slightly slower way than if he were doing it on the ground. However, in the air he will stall for the duration of the move. If Morshu doesn't grab an opponent, he will enter freefall and not be able to activate any more moves. If he catches the opponent, you must start spinning the stick again. As if you do, Morshu will start flipping in the air. How he manages this is a mystery-there's possibly a lot more going on behind that winning smile.

The opponent will swing around as well, in a circular motion. Morshu will start flipping faster and faster, and the opponent will start swinging faster and faster, given that the player has spun their left stick enough times. When you want to release with the A or B button, you'll want to pay attention to where the opponent is in relation to Morshu to know where they will fly.
-If they are being swung downward and in front of Morshu, they will be flung downwards upon release, in a meteor move fashion.
-If they are being swung forward and are above Morshu, they will be flung backwards.
-If they are being swung up and behind Morshu, they will be flung straight up.
-If they are being swung backwards and below Morhsu, they will be flung backwards.
However, this version of the move needs lots of room to work. If the opponent is in proximity of the stage when the aerial rope swing is activated, the move will fail as they hit the floor of the stage while being swung around. From there the opponent will enter a tech situation. Same goes for the side of the stage. Another way the move can fail is like the grounded one, where, if the opponent mashes out, they will break free of the rope.

The aerial version, as I said, doesn't come out as fast as the grounded version, and it's also not as strong in terms of percents (on average, you'll get about 11-12%, due to the speed of the aerial spins being less than the grounded ones, however against a badly or no mashing opponent you can do much better in percents).

At ledge, grounded rope max spin kills at 120%, pretty good given how much damage it does. However, the aerial version (forward swing) kills at 135% at ledge, very much a weaker version of the grounded variant. The upwards-sending swing kills at 150%, and the backward sending swing kills (at ledge) at 155%.

All in all, Morshu's rope is an incredibly versatile tool and is going to be your "Elite Smash" move, if you will. Against inexperienced players who don't know to shield, it will be a cakewalk to lasso them, but against more seasoned players, you will have to set up traps with your other specials or simply catch them in the air. It can act as both a damage building and killing tool. The aerial version can be used to spike, stage spike, or just simply send your opponent into a tech situation. It's a pretty unique move for Smash but extremely simple to understand once you've got a controller in your hands.

The rope can also pick up items. Simply grab an item like you would an opponent, and you can do one of two things: hold B to spin the item like a fighter, and press nothing to grab the item. Items don't work too differently from fighters when spun-and once thrown, they are thrown like a normal item, not like a fighter. It can still hit opponents, though, which can be used in 1v1 matches against characters like Link or ROB who have holdable items. The items, when hitting an opponent during a max spin, does 1.1X as much damage as if it were thrown normally. When you hit an opponent with an item in your rope, it is pretty similar to hitting them with a fighter in your rope-though depending on the item, it may do more or less damage/knockback, or have a different outcome altogether. Hitting your opponent with a capsule will have it break open on them-especially useful if it happens to be an explosive one. If something like that happens, Morshu will have a surprised face, then quickly retract the rope. If you hit your opponent with something weak, like Link's remote bomb, it won't do much. However, if you use a baseball bat, it will be much more effective. And if you use a soccer ball-which literally gets stronger with more momentum-hoo boy, let's just say they won't want to come back to Morshu's shop anytime soon. Not even for healing potions to repair the pain.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for-the Spinner interaction. Well, actually, there's two of them!

First of all-remember how the Spinner acts as a projectile? Well, that means the Spinner can be picked up, spun, and tossed by the rope! It's certainly up there as one of the heaviest items Morshu can spin. Just like any other item, it will deal 1.1X as much damage as it's normal side hitbox (16.5%). You can use the rope to throw the Spinner offstage, where it will fall to its doom, delivering a strong spike to anyone unfortunate enough to get hit on its way down.

Here's the second interaction. Let's say Morshu is standing on the Spinner, and grabs Mario with rope, and begins spinning him around. Morshu and the Spinner will start to slowly rotate. As Morshu spins Mario faster, he will start to rotate faster, until they reach max speed, and all three entities (Morshu, Mario, Spinner) become a blur of a tornado! In this state, they all become a very strong hitbox, dealing 15% (without 1v1 multiplier) to outside opponents, killing at 86% at the ledge. The spinner can still move in this state (if it has any distance left, that is), and it can also jump.

Now, if Morshu tries to jump while spinning his opponent-or the Spinner falls offstage-the tornado will start to slowly hover upwards (at the speed of Ice Climbers' side B), due to the faster-than-normal spinning of the rope! The hitbox is still active while hovering. This doesn't necessarily have a "max distance", but rather, it will fall as normal whenever Morhsu lets go of his opponent. Though, if you were to leave the ground as soon as the tornado phase was entered, and let go of the opponent at the last possible second, you could probably hover for about 3 seconds (assuming your opponent is at a decent percentage and can't just mash out immediately). And yes, this can also be done with items, giving the player even more freedom of movement with the spinner.

Now, when Morshu does let go of his opponent during this state (either they mash out or he throws them), he will sit down on top of the Spinner and hold the side of his head, looking quite dizzy (which is also made apparent by the rubies with wings that can be seen flying around Morshu's head). He picks himself back up, and can act after 60 frames-this is why you definitely don't want opponents to mash out for the tornado version of the move.

Down B: Bombs?
Morshu pulls out the camera-facing side of his vest with that respective hand, and reaches into said vest with his other hand. After rummaging around for a little bit, he smiles greedily as he pulls out a fairly standard-looking Zelda bomb. It takes 43 frames to pull, which is a bit longer than your average bomb pull. After pulling, it functions like any other item in the game. It can be Z-dropped and thrown in four different directions. These bombs do anywhere from 6-9% damage (nice), making them pretty average among the other bombs. Once you have pulled a bomb, you can throw it with the C-stick or the left stick and A button together. The bomb functions more like Young Link's bomb-it can be Z-dropped and remain un-exploded and will blow up on contact with an opponent or after being thrown rather than dropped-but it has a shorter fuse and only counts as one hitbox, not multiple.

Unlike the Links, pressing Down B again won't throw his bomb forward normally. Instead, Morshu will reach his non-bomb hand into the furthest-from-camera side of his vest, where he pulls out another Morshu-branded bomb. Smiling even more greedily than before, he will begin to juggle the bombs in a comical sort of way. He can still move around and jump in this state. When holding the two bombs, he can throw both of them, one after another. However, due to the nature of Ultimate and how Z-drops and Z-grabbing works, Morshu is unable to immediately Z-drop the second bomb, and he must wait until the first is out of his Z-grabbing range. He also cannot do any fancy Z-drop moves when holding both.

Being able to hold two bombs at once is pretty potent, and it lets Morhsu set up traps and combos. It's pretty good for pressuring your opponent's shield as well. For example, Morshu can Z-drop one bomb next to the ledge and throw the other into the air, to cover multiple recovery options. He can Z-drop one at roll distance of the ledge, and throw one up where the opponent would jump. He can pull both and use them as a hitbox for his shield. Heck, he can even Z-drop both next to his opponent's shield, and charge up a forward smash to break their shield if the opponent isn't paying attention. He can throw one bomb at his opponent to pop them up into the air, throw another to shoot them up even higher, and then hit them with an up air to finish the combo. He can do that same combo, but instead finish with an Up B. Using the Spinner, Morshu can possibly break an opponent's full shield if he does the setup correctly-two bombs, Spinner, z-drop both (one after another) onto the spinner, and watch the world burn.

Morshu can also throw his bombs using his rope! It works pretty similarly to how he would swing/throw around a bob-omb with rope, however it's much weaker obviously, since it's Morshu's bomb. Unlike normal gameplay, he cannot pick up two bombs at once with the rope.

However, you must be wary when holding two bombs. If they explode while Morshu is holding them, Morshu will take twice the amount of damage that he would from a single bomb exploding in his hand. He also becomes stunned for a moment, with black ashes in his face from the explosion-wearing the same surprised face as before-shaking his head violently to clear the smoke. This takes a toll of 30 frames, however it can be cancelled while Morshu is shaking his head (which takes up the back half of the animation).



Standard Attacks


Jab: You Want It?

Morshu is many things, but above all else, he is a shopkeeper. And what would a shopkeeper be without trying to sell his wares? That's where Jab comes in. For the first part of the attack-which comes out on frame 4-Morshu will lean into his opponents and point at them, saying "You want it?" This locks them in for the second hit, where he pulls a ruby out of his pocket and says "It's yours, my friend," as he shows the gem off to his opponent, rather forcefully. He then slides the ruby back into his pocket. For the final part of the attack, he backhands his opponent, as if showing off some merchandise to a customer, saying "as long as you have enough rubies." (he won't say the voice clips every time-just every once in a while).


The three jabs inflict a grand total of 9%, with an endlag of 24 frames on the last hit. It sends the opponent at a pretty low angle, making it good at mid-percents for tech situations-in which
Morshu can follow up with bomb or Spinner setups. If his positioning is right, Morshu can even cover multiple tech options with his Rope.

The jab also has a flurry variant. After hitting the second attack, continuously mashing the A button will cause Morshu to beatbox! He'll zoom in and out of his opponent as he does this. When it ends, Morshu will open up his fists in front of the enemy's face, with a surprised look on his face. His palms actually explode, as if there were bombs there-causing the opponent to go flying. This is 16% stronger than the 1-2-3 variant, however, the angle of this attack is much worse than the 1-2-3 variant, sending at a mediocre medium angle that most rapid jabs would. Thanks to the explosive finisher, it does kill, but not until 140% at the ledge. The endlag on this move is also worse than the 1-2-3 variant, a staggering 38 frames.

Forward Tilt: Mole Mitts?

A pair of mole mitts from the Minish Cap instantly appear on Morshu's hands when he activates the move. He then swipes forward with one (frame 11), then, if the attack button is pressed again, he'll take another 9 frames to swipe with his other hand. The first hit has base damage of 7%, and the second, 8.6%. If you are hit by the tip of the first hit, you'll be launched decently far, Mario being killed at 120% at the ledge. But, if you get the inside hit of the first swipe, you'll be locked in for the second hit (unless your damage is ridiculously high), which kills much earlier at 100%, no matter which part of its hitbox connects.

If only the first hit was activated, Morshu will place the mitts back in his vest, giving the move an endlag of 21 frames. If both hits were activated but neither connected, Morshu will scowl and put them back in his vest just like before, giving this variation an endlag 5 frames higher than the one-hit variant. If they are both activated and connected, it will still have 26 frames of endlag as with missing it, but now Morshu possesses a smile that could light up the night sky of Korodai while he puts them in his vest.



Down Tilt: Magic Beans?

Morshu again reaches into one of his many vest pockets, and pulls out some beans. He then immediately tosses them forwards, on the ground in front of him (about one training room block away from Morshu). This part of the move is actually a hitbox, with the seeds counting as a projectile-though it is very weak (0.8%, hardly sends the opponent anywhere), this actually works in Morshu's favor, as he can lock his opponent into the next hit. It's also worth mentioning that the seeds are active on frame 10, and will not despawn until it hits the ground.

Once the beans have hit the ground, after ~6 frames, a beanstalk will shoot up at the speed of Sonic's dash. It's one Mega Man tall and as wide as a PK Fire (the second part, not the part with the projectile). As for the appearance, think of it as a miniature version of Minish Cap's beanstalk.

During the "shoot-up" part of the move, the beanstalk acts as a hitbox. It's pretty strong too, dealing 11%, sending straight up and killing around 125% on Mario. After the Beanstalk reaches max height, the hitbox deactivates, but the beanstalk doesn't go away-leaving us with a small barrier on the stage. It can be attacked and defeated (has health of 12%), but defeating it will simply kill the beanstalk and make it despawn similar to Villager's tree.

Effectively, Magic Beans puts a wall between Morshu and his opponent, allowing him to take his time and set up traps with his specials. He could also use the beans part of the move to gimp opponents offstage, which is almost never optimal, but it would be pretty based if you landed it.

Now, the beanstalk only lasts for 5 seconds before despawning, so trying to defeat it before then is a lost cause. Morshu cannot pick it up with his rope while it is active-however, another Morshu can pick up the seeds if he gets an incredibly well timed rope-though there isn't much point to do so since they won't do very much damage at all. Morshu can stil use his beans while a stalk is active, though the new beans will not grow into anything, instead just being a very weak short range projectile that's practically useless (but again, very funny if you do manage to pull something off with it). Also, remember how earlier, I said that Spinner bounces off of enemies and walls, resetting its speed and distance? The stalk allows Morshu to pull this off whenever he wishes. In this way, Morshu can have a pretty effective ledgetrap by setting up a beanstalk at roll distance, setting up a Spinner at getup distance, and staying within jumping distance, ready to throw out a fair or bair. It also just allows for the Spinner to be active for longer, keeping the pressure on or giving Morshu many more movement options-which, given his slow speed, is sure to help him out quite a bit.



Up Tilt: Top of the Morshu to you!

Morshu smiles brightly and grabs the brim of his fedora with his finger and thumb, and tilts it up as if introducing himself. This hat has a hitbox, beginning on frame 6, when Morshu lifts it up. This isn't very strong, but does a perfect job at popping the opponent straight up into the air for further attacks. Possible follow ups include up tilt, up air, nair, and up b. All combo potential ends at 65%-but it never becomes a kill move until at ridiculously high percentages. It has 20 total frames, but is only active 6-9 (nice), so its main downside is that it does not linger very long. It doesn't do very much damage, either (5%).

Now, I'm sure you're wondering-what on earth is under Morshu's hat? Well, as you may have guessed, a bald patch. But, every time Morshu performs an up tilt, a ruby will appear, resting perfectly on Morshu's head, as if it were there the whole match! Morshu pogs in delight before reaching up, grabbing it, and putting it in his vest pocket.



Dash Attack: Ball and Chain?

(Twilight Princess has a lot of weird stuff. This won't be the last time you see an item from it…)
In a swift motion while running, Morshu takes a large iron ball and chain out of his vest (what's that thing made of, anyways?!) before tossing it out, still holding onto the end of the chain, which is wrapped around his right fist tightly. The ball lunges forward at the length of Ike's forward tilt, but Morshu doesn't just throw it-it pulls him with it! Morshu holds onto the chain as he flies forward after the ball. The ball eventually hits the ground, and not long after, so does Morshu. He pulls the ball back with his chain and inserts it back into his vest. Where did Morshu get all this extra strength, anyway?

The ball first becomes active as soon as it leaves Morshu's grasp, on frame 27-making it one of the longest startups for a dash attack. The reward is immense-during the entire time it is active, the ball deals a staggering 17% and kills Mario at 70% at the ledge. The hitbox continues for 15 frames before Morshu and the ball fall onto the ground. Morshu then takes 24 frames of endlag before he can act again. The ball does quite a bit of shield damage as well. Speaking of shields, if Morshu uses the move right next to an opponent's shield, the ball will pass through, but Morshu will not, leaving him wide open for a punish.

Like some of his other moves, Morshu's ball and chain has a very unique attribute. The moment that the ball goes as far as the chain lets it, there will be a metallic sound effect-followed by Morshu taking flight. If the player presses the attack button when this sound effect plays, the chain will break! This causes the ball to drop to the ground and start rolling steadily until it rolls offstage-from there it drops like a rock, similarly to Morshu's spinner. In this rolling state, the ball has a fairly strong hitbox that deals 8% and decent knockback, but not any that will kill. What's interesting though, is when it is falling, it has a similar effect as Morshu's spinner-though it does not have the same properties. It is an everlasting spike hitbox that kills at around 50% (unless you have a really good recovery-then it will kill at 60%). It falls at the speed of Jigglypuff's fast fall. With this in mind, Morshu can have it so that the ball is offstage while the move is active, and then detach it, so that the ball falls slightly forward and down offstage. If Morshu activates the move so that it ends with the ball falling offstage, but does not disconnect the chain, the ball will wrap around the edge and fall back onto the ledge before he pulls it back, with slightly less power than the dash attack that had just occurred-but still quite strong given it can two-frame opponents.

But what happens to Morshu when the chain breaks? Well, he trips (what is this, Brawl? Lmao funny creative not overused joke lol) and takes 4%. This gives a bit of risk-reward to letting go of the ball-if you do, you'll leave yourself open to getting techchased by the opponent, granted that they avoided the ball. However, if they shield it, they will not be able to act in time to react to your tech option (unless you roll in).

Also, if used on the Spinner, this will give a bit of a speed boost to said Spinner given that it's being pulled forward by the ball and chain. (Yes, I know this doesn't make logical sense given Morshu would be off the ground and unable to pull the Spinner forward, but this is a game in which everyday people can kill gods with plants, so I don't care). It's speed would be momentarily increased from Plant's walk speed to Incineroar's run speed, though this would only last for about three quarters of a second before the ball drops onto the floor, which stops the Spinner completely.

So as you can see, the ball and chain is a pretty unique dash attack, but is still very similar to moves like K. Rool's or King Dedede's dash attacks. It's slow, but the payoff is immense, and it's great for catching your grounded opponents off guard. Morshu himself benefits greatly from a move like this, as he can set up his traps to force his opponent into an opening where he can use the move.





Grab Game


Grab: Magnetic Gloves?

Morshu grins, quickly grabs a Magnetic Glove (from Oracle of Seasons) out of his vest, and puts it on as he pushes his hand forward.In an instant, a magnetic field is visible in a radius similar, but a bit shorter than, Pac-Man's grab with the blue thingie. It is first active on frame 10, and if an opponent is caught by it, Morshu will instantly pull them in-his magnetic glove disappeared, he now has a different glove on-the Gauntlets from Ocarina of Time. He holds the opponent by their chest, as if twisting the neck of their shirt in his fist, like a bully stealing lunch money (not that Morshu would ever commit such a crime), the opponent being eye level with Morshu. He holds a tough-but not angry-expression, and plants his feet shoulder-width apart to summon the strength needed to lift his opponent.. For his pummel, he uses his other hand to backhand the opponent as if showing off valuable merchandise in a very, very passive-aggressive manner. (The other hand is ungloved btw.) Pummel does above-average damage.



Back Throw: Switch Hook?

Morshu leans back and then puts all of his might into throwing the opponent forwards. It deceptively seems like a forward throw at first-until Morshu quickly pulls a Switch Hook (Oracle of Ages) out from his vest and holds it in front of him, firing-and catching the opponent midair! Morshu mischievously smiles as he trades places with the opponent-as he appears where they once were, This throw sends at a potentially deadly low angle like Kazuya's command input throw. Even if the opponent has a good recovery and can make it back just fine, Morshu has more than enough time to set up an edgeguard or ledgetrap in the meantime. It deals 10% damage. The switch of Morshu and his opponent's places can have some very specific uses in free for alls or doubles, but generally it's just there to be more faithful to the item's original use, that being to switch Link and something else's place.







Forward Throw: Ringing Up

Morshu pulls on his opponent's arm before quickly letting go with a flick of the wrists-causing them to spin in place. This is so Morshu can set up for the next part of this attack. He pulls out a cash register, holds it towards his opponents, and presses a button on it-a kaching noise is made as the bottom drawer of the register (containing rubies of varying sizes and colors, which can be seen in the game's camera mode but not during the actual fight in normal conditions) opens up and nails the opponent, sending them flying at a much higher angle than his back throw but being easier to kill with-midweight characters grabbed at 95% at ledge likely won't see the light of day if Morshu decides to use this move. After using it, Morshu actually grabs a rubie and almost hands it to his opponent-but by that time they have gone flying, leaving Morshu saddened by the lack of business that had been done.





Up Throw: Taking Out The Trash
Morshu pulls a huge trash bag out of his vest and stuffs the opponent in it from head to toe, as a deluxe trash can appears, not unlike one you could find outside of a fast food joint. Morshu tosses in the opponent and top of the can shuts loudly and sharply-and after a very short moment, the can explodes and the person shoots upwards. This isn't a kill throw, and since Morshu doesn't have a ton of great juggling options, this is mostly just to get his opponent out of his neatly-combed hair for a bit so he can set up traps with specials. He can follow up with up-air at low percents, though.





Down Throw: Clearance

Morshu pins the opponent on the ground with his foot and makes a disgruntled face as he pulls something out of his vest: a bunch of Zelda items in a box marked CLEARANCE. Visible from the top is a clock from the original game, the Lens of Truth from Majora's Mask, a Mario mask (also from Majora's Mask), and...a piece of the Triforce?!?! Regardless of how Morshu got his hands on some of these items, he lifts the box of them with great force before dropping it onto his opponent, causing a few things to fly out (like the Pegasus Boots or a Cuckoo Egg). This deals 9% and pops the foe up at a near perfect position and angle for Up B, fair, RAR bair, and bomb setups, and maybe some other things I'm forgetting to mention. Anyways, this is Morshu's main combo tool, which stops working around 65% on most characters-though it is possible to kill confirm on heavyweights with down throw -> Up B around 100%.



Smash Attacks


Forward Smash: Giant's Knife?

"Wait, don't you mean the Biggoron Sword?"
No. No I do not.

Morshu speedily pulls the Giant's Knife from Ocarina of Time, holds it with two hands, and raises it high above his head. The first frame he can release is on 26-and he proceeds to slam the sword down and forward like a large hammer, with a hitbox active from 27-30 (when it hits the ground). Speaking of which, after 30, a faint clank sound can be heard, so remember that. Anyways, the move, like DORIYAH or something of that nature-is slow but has great range both above and in front of Morshu. It does 21% and will kill around 70% on midweights from center stage. Morshu can't act again for a good while, but if fully spaced this move is safe on most characters' shields. Missing the move will result in a faint clank noise that gets louder with each miss. After three misses, almost all of the sword will break off!-all but a small portion near the handle. The broken-off part will fall to the ground without a hitbox and despawn shortly thereafter. Now, this doesn't make Morshu defenseless-quite the contrary, as you can still use the Giant's Knife! Albeit a much quicker, much shorter-ranged, overall more concise version of the full-sized version.

Instead of wielding it with two hands and slamming the Giant's Knife to the ground, Morshu swings forward with ease, looking quite relieved after being freed from the large blade. He brings the blade to his left side with his right hand and swings forward with great speed, the first active hit on frame 8, and an endlag of 22 frames. This speedy smash attack is safe on shields of characters without a 3-frame OOS option. It kills around 130% at ledge. It can also be spammed. However, it should be noted that this move is on a heavily trap-based zoner-so it is difficult to land a hit with this compared to the full-size attack, which can catch opponents who are recovering high for fear of a spinner slamming them down to the bottom blast zone, or hitting opponents from on top of a spinner, like a knight on his trusty steed. The shorter knife is more suited for low-percent tech chases or desperate kills when just can't seem to land a finishing move. It's in general just really fast, one of his fastest moves in fact.

Giant's Knife regains full size when Morhsu loses a stock.

Up Smash: Dominion Rod?

Morshu pulls the Dominion Rod from Twilight Princess out of his vest and lifts it high above his head. On frame 18, he strikes down-and a statue lifts out of the ground, just like the one seen in the video. Said statue, after rising fully, lifts its axe into the air. This means the move has three parts in total-the initial strike with the Rod, the rise of the statue, and the rise of the axe-these do a total of 23% if all connect. It is difficult to get your opponent with the first hit though-they have to be very close to you, like a lower-to-the-ground version of Marth or Lucina's up smashes. The statue is quite tall, and with the axe's help, it can even reach the top platform of Battlefield! However, it will take until frame 38 for that to happen. The statue also has a lot of hitstun on the second part, which, during battles with more than 2 players, gives those above a chance to get out of the way before the axe rises. The statue will stick around for one second more, acting as a momentary barrier and platform. After all of that, the statue will crumble and fall to the ground-though this is purely for looks and the rubble can't actually hurt people or be interacted with. Morshu himself looks quite proud of his achievement before it does crumble, though-claiming the power to command a nonliving being with the simple tap of a rod must be quite exhilarating. Once it falls, Morshu longingly (and inaudibly) sighs and places the Rod back in his vest.

The statue's ability to act as a rising platform for a short moment gives it some clever interactions with the Spinner-one setup that especially disrespectful Morshu mains go for is setting up a Spinner near the ledge while an opponent is recovering and Up Smash right in front of the Spinner, so that now a giant projectile threatens to spike your opponent who cannot roll to get away from it.





Down Smash: Don Gero's Mask?

Morshu reaches into his pocket (what a nice change of pace from the usual "Morshu reaches into his vest!") and pulls out Don Gero's Mask from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. He puts it on, and at once, two members of the Frog Choir appear, at either side of the shopkeeper. Morshu swings a conductor's baton, causing the frogs to croak elegantly and loudly-so loud, in fact, that their visible sound waves attack nearby fighters! The attack takes about 24 frames to start up, and leaves Morshu vulnerable for 40. If the opponent is hit with the baton-which means they were too close to get hit by the sound waves-they will receive minimal damage and knockback. This does not hit them into the sound waves, as neither part of the attack lasts for very long. The sound waves do about 16% and kill around 100% at ledge.

Charging this smash attack does not actually increase the power. Similarly to Snake's Up Smash, charging instead increases the range of this attack, spawning a new frog to the left and right of the ones that previously appeared. Each frog is added after 13 frames of charging, increasing the range by about one Kirby, and there is a maximum of four frogs on either side-making the attack range slightly longer than a Battlefield platform. Ideally, you'll use the incredible range of this move to your advantage, covering a ton of ledge getup options, multiple normal getup options, and just generally keeping your distance while laying on the pressure-which won't be too hard as, when fully spaced and at least charged to the point of having three frogs on either side, this move is safe on shield. The main downside of this move is the time it takes to charge to a decent level. Other than that, it's a great move that you can use to secure kills from a long range or set up opponents for a techchase with the baton at any percent.


Aerial Attacks


Forward Air: Hover Boots?

Morshu faces directly in front of him and-unlike the Iron Boots, has the Hover Boots automatically equipped-and runs forward on air, causing small golden circles to appear below his feet. Morshu will run forward for as long as the player holds the A button. After the button is released, Morshu brings his leg back and proceeds to kick forward with great force, an attack that hits fairly high (about as high as Morshu). If we use the moment that the A button is released and Morshu starts to prepare the kick as a starting point, then the move is active on frame 12 and until frame 14. Afterward, Morshu rears back from the kick with an accomplished smile, taking about 17 more frames to regain control.

After the move has finished (including endlag), the yellow platform that Morshu created will stick around for another 60 frames before disappearing-they act much like a thin platform, one that you can stand and act on. This can be used for actual strategies (such as Z-dropping a bomb on the platform over where your opponent will recover, or canceling a ground action into an aerial one when the platform disappears), or just taunting your opponent immediately after taking their stock with the kick. Speaking of which, that kick is pretty darn good, dealing 10% and killing at 120% from the ledge-which may not sound like much, but this is an aerial move that's meant for catching opponents far offstage, so getting kills shouldn't be too difficult as long as you position yourself correctly. If you miss, though, you're in for a beating-your opponent can jump over you and stand on the platform to deliver a strong attack and knock you into the blast zone if you're close enough. Hover Boots is a powerful risk-reward move in that sense-that is, if you use the full version.

However, there is another way to use the move, and it's the way it will probably be used most often by amateur Morshu players who don't go for galaxy-brain Hover Boots setups. More experienced Morshu's will also use it, but to a somewhat lesser extent. This is the end of the move as previously described, just without the windup/golden platform part, Morshu rises/falls as he would during a normal aerial, and the move does 2% less damage. It has a landing lag of 17 frames. This variation of the move is moreso used in normal aerials, and it's pretty quick, so it's good to use in short combos or strings, generally from Morshu's bomb(s). You can actually pull off a really sick bomb-fair-bomb-fair-Up B combo, possibly killing if your positioning is perfect, though this requires a lot of precise Z-drops and generally isn't worth it over more reliable Morshu combos. If Sakurai ever puts Morshu in Smash and he somehow has the exact moveset I gave him, and you pull off this combo, I will send you a cookie through the mail.




Down Air: Iron Boots?

Morshu reaches down to his boots he is currently wearing while pulling up his knees for easier access, and at the same time, uses his other hand to reach into his vest. Almost simultaneously, he takes off his normal boots and swaps them out for the Iron Boots from Ocarina of Time. (During this animation, for just a frame or so, you can spot Morshu's socks, green and decorated with red rubie designs). After the Iron Boots are on, Morshu stomps down with all of his might, bringing his elbows back and closing his fists as he does to strengthen his stance, as well as sucking in his chest-or at least, attempting to do so. It is first active on frame 20, slow but powerful as the move deals 17.5% damage in total. It's only active for a couple of frames.

As for its potential as a spiking move-if a midweight opponent is hanging on the ledge of Battlefield (without invincibility of course), then the move should kill around 45%. Sends straight down as most spikes would. It will break a ½ shield or smaller, though, so it's good for pressure. Morshu's legs are invincible during this move's duration-or, most of the duration. Because if Morshu is still in the air after the spike, he'll take off iron boots and put his normal ones back, causing the move to be about 75 frames in total. The landing lag is about 25 frames with the iron boots on and 10 with them off-though there isn't any animation for swapping boots on the ground, he just automatically has the normal boots on.



Neutral Air: Rubies?

So, first off, credit where credit is due-this move's inspiration comes from a nearly ten-year-old YouTube video by YTPguy17-which also happened to be a Morshu moveset. However, this MYM moveset is repurposing the neutral B as a nair and changing some of the properties.

While airborne, Morshu faces the screen and opens his hands-sort of like the "Bombs?" pog-like expression. On frame 12 of the move, Rubies shoots out of him from 8 directions, dealing 7% apiece. While this move takes a bit compared to other body-covering quick nairs such as Sephiroth's or Corrin's, this one has more range than either, but with landing lag leaning more towards Corrin's 10 frames of landing lag. This is certainly one of Morshu's simpler moves, which is why I don't have much to say about it. The main utilization for this move will come through getting quick combos by landing with it and then following up with an uncharged fair or another nair. This is also really good for mixups-Morshu can wait for an airdodge and grab the opponent with his rope, or if he's feeling more confident about a certain option, he can charge up a down or forward smash. This move is also safe on shield if spaced.


Back Air: Picto Box?

Morshu turns around in the air as he pulls a Picto Box from Wind Waker out of his vest. On frame 14, Morshu takes a photo with the flash on-which will stun any opponents within the (admittedly short) range. The amount of time they are stunned is dependent on their percent and which part of the flash hits them (the closer they are to the camera and the higher the percent, the longer the stun lasts). The landing lag is pretty sizable, so Morshu has to be sure he'll get a good shot in before he uses the move. There's a lot of applications for such a unique back air, like using it on a recovering (or edgeguarding) opponent and footstooling them (and possibly following up with Iron Boots). It can also be used to extend some of his combos or do a quick kill confirm by pitcot box-ing a forward throw or forward tilt. The move also does a token 8%, as to not leave Morshu completely defenseless in terms of damage from his backside.





Up Air: Gust Jar?

Moves that propel you in the opposite direction of the attack is nothing new to Smash, however it's never been done with an up air-which is what Gust Jar is. Morshu reaches into his vest and pulls out a Gust Jar from Minish Cap. Holding it upwards, as if offering it to the heavens, a white gust of wind shoots out-not unlike the one you can see blow out of the Gust Bellows item in Smash. The windbox is much stronger than the most obviously comparable move-Mega Man's up air-however, unlike that move, it doesn't have a hit box and it has a much harder time KO'ing opponents. And the projectile doesn't stay out nearly as long as that move's. The gust (which, I should also note, is larger than Mega Man's) comes out on frame 13, and causes Morshu to be shot down-which surprises him. The falling part of this move has about the speed as Morshu's own fastfall, while the gust part of the move has the same speed as Mega Man's up air. It also does 6% in total if all the hits connect.

The main utilization of this move comes in the form of pushing your opponents into the air over and over again, forcing them to either land unsafely with something like a stall-and-fall (a la Sonic dair), or retreating to ledge, where Morhsu has lots of options. You can also propel bombs and even the Spinner upwards-I'll leave your imagination up to the kind of crazy setups that can entail.

FINAL SMASH!!!

After attacking with a very large ruby, Morshu activates a cutscene like the video above-except when they say "richer", the focus shifts back to the opponent, who is hit with a barrage of multicolored rubies! Also there are just more Morshu variants in general.


Playstyle


Morshu's Really Great Shopkeeper Playstyle! (Is that a good title? Do they all have to be puns or whatever?)

Morshu's slow, and he's a big body. However, thanks to his unique specials and normals, Morshu has enough tools to be a mesmerizing bait-and-punish character! He wheels and deals the competition, offering them the most tantalizing deals before punishing them hard with hidden fees. As long as you can keep your opponent at bay long enough to set up your traps, you're good to go!



Costumes

Spoiler: Multiple Images

Note-RTX Morshu is an alt.

Stage

Thanks so much for reading!!!

CHANGELOG
9/23/21: Simple grammar and formatting fixes. Broken images might be fixed now? Items can now be used to activate the spinner tornado. Picto box and Gust Jar (bair and uair respectively) now do damage. In the intro, damn has been replaced with dang.
9/25/21: Spinner now bounces off of enemies and walls as it would if reflected-down tilt's updated description reflects this as well as Side B's. Down B has a more detailed description for its properties as a projectile. It takes less time to get to the various levels of Morshu's rope swing now, and the paragraph detailing how long each spin took was cut-I found it a headache and not necessary in the grand scheme of things. Neutral B edits are probably next.​

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: V1

Another interesting character, I remember FA bringing up this game for its coin mechanic! V1 is a neat sort of glass cannon, with extreme speed but frailness that’s a great way to implement how easily he dies. While I do think Smady’s idea of using blood to “overheal” beyond just healing is neat, say you get bonuses for healing yourself while at 0% (Link’s F-Smash has projectile properties while you’re at 0%, for instance), I don’t mind the blood just healing V1 if that’s all it does in-game, and it feels reasonable on a featherweight. The healing amount might be a bit much, maybe drop it to 1/3rd or ¼ the amount healed, but that you can only heal from melee attacks helps to balance it.

I do think V1’s “dash” mechanic is overpowered, for essentially being a roll you can attack from and not having the dash distance or frame data detailed. How far foes V1 travel? On what frames is V1 invincible? How much end lag does V1 have? Does V1 use Dash Attack while “dashing” along the ground, or can it use its tilts? It feels like something V1 would use a ton in neutral, just for being able to approach and attack with invincibility. If V1 must have invincibility and the ability to attack from it, I’d tack on a big chunk of end lag, or just make it so V1 can’t attack from it.

Neutral Special also feels powerful - a frame 11 projectile that homes in on targets and kills roughly as early as Samus’s Charge Shot! Sorry for bringing up low KO percents like this when you already brought them down at Smady’s request, something I approve of from what I glanced of this set earlier (something like 170-150% would be reasonable for a projectile? Especially when KO percents in this set are from the centre of the stage). For this projectile, I’d suggest detailing how fast it flies, even saying it flies slowly or quickly - if the flied coin flies fast, it’s easy to hit with and makes the move more overpowered, but if it’s slow it gives foes the chance to dodge the coin. You could add in other details too - you could make it so the coins deal barely any shield damage/stun so they’re super unsafe on block, which would be justified given their low damage output. I would also ramp up the coin flip’s starting lag to frame 10-12 or so; for reference, Palutena’s Autoreticle, the closest comparison to this Neutral Special, comes out on frame 24.

Up Special is actually pretty interesting, being weight-dependent! It wouldn’t make THAT big of a gameplay difference either. Down Special is neat as a move that launches you: feels like something you could use as a recovery, but given it’s kill percent I imagine V1 would die to it at like 70%. Perhaps the knockback stops scaling for V1 at like 50%, before it gets lethal? I also think the move has a ton of starting lag and doesn’t feel rewarding to land for its established reach and kill percent, even if the self-inflicted knockback means it’s obviously safe on block. Maybe decrease the starting lag (frame 20?) or make it instantly break shields for something really juicy - even both! How a move interacts with enemy shields can help make it extra spicy, as moves like Ryu’s F-tilt and Marth’s (fully-charged) Neutral Special deal massive shield damage, if not outright break them in one hit.

Jab-wise, I appreciate you balancing its reflecting properties (obviously based on UltraKill’s game mechanics), giving players a tight window to reflect. I’d be fine with the window being extended to like frames 5-11, as for the record Ness’s F-Smash reflects projectiles between frames 18-30 despite its bat hitbox being active between frames 21-22. Also I’d be fine with the reflected projectile dealing 1.5x as much damage rather than less, unless this was intentional - either a game mechanic from UltraKill, or the projectile flies half as fast and is meant to be used as potential cover for V1’s approach. Frame data-wise, it’s pretty interesting that V1’s attacks start out slow but end quickly.

U-Smash is a neat-sounding move - an U-Smash that can damage you if it hits close enough is genuinely awesome! This could lead into awesome stuff like launching yourself up with an opponent to follow up with your air game, but as with Down Special it feels like V1 would usually die before his opponent, or at least end up higher than them. As I’ve mentioned before in Spike, I’d love some more details: how fast does the projectile travel? And how big is it? I imagine it’s slow-moving given you mention the core detonates after 5 seconds. If it moved slowly enough, I could see V1 doing tricks like knocking a foe into the core to kill them really early. Oh, and what if V1 could use his Up Special to pull the projectile towards him? The move’s lag feels justified for what feels like a vertical projectile, but as-is being damaged and launched by your own projectile feels too punishing in a situation where landing a laggy move directly above you would normally be rewarding. What if the move dealt more damage if it hits early? And have the “explosion” itself be a sourspot so V1 doesn’t take as much damage if he’s caught in it. The U-Smash gimmick is also neat, very “MYM’ian” (you’ll understand if you stick with us for long enough!), if out-of-nowhere because it wasn’t established in V1’s Neutral Special or Tilts that his un-ricocheted coins actually stick around.

Onto D-Smash, this move has a LOT of lag for something that doesn’t kill particularly early. How high does V1 jump? Which direction are the nailguns fired? Given it's a D-Smash, I’m assuming the projectiles are fired in an upside-down V-shape. It’s a vague move that could really benefit with added detail to justify its odd numbers. It could be a powerful shield-breaker like Sephiroth’s D-Smash, leave the nails behind as a brief trap or just have its lag cut right down.

N-air I’m picturing as similar to Ganondorf’s N-air, but killing at 102% from centre stage is rather insane when it’s fast for a V1 move AND can be used off-stage - I would bring the percent down to some 160%, or at least say it can kill at like 110% near the ledge. D-air’s animation is very vague, Smady did say the set’s animations could use more detail, as it’s hard to visualize exactly what kind of animation V1 would perform when he “slams down.” Does he slam down with his fist? His feet? This move sounds like it’s a stall-then-fall, the speed and distance of such would be good to know. The move has a stated kill percent, but also states it buries opponents when V1 hits the ground, so I”m assuming it launches them if it finishes the move in midair? The size, speed and distance the F-air projectiles travel would also be good to know, because it’s a curious attack with a ton of starting lag for an aerial. On that note, it sounds like V1’s grab would have a good deal of range to it because it uses the whiplash, but has similar frame data to a regular grab. Finally, V1’s throws have low kill power, B-throw states it’s a good kill throw at higher percents (That’s usually 130% near the ledge), but I’d be fine with V1 not having great KO throws if grabbing is not a strong point of his game.

On a different note, V1’s Canon Abilities entry states that it can propel itself with its shotgun, but doesn’t do this much in Smash. I assume this was meant to be replicated in Side Special, but it’s hard to tell because that move damages V1. As Smady said, V1 doesn’t seem to have much established character in his set (I get the impression he can talk, thanks to that one quote in his set), but I”m not sure whether it’s because he has any to begin with, given his game revolves around killing enemies. In any case, as with Spike, I feel that V1 could do with more detail in some of his more important moves, and have a Special that’s a “hook” for the rest of the set to play off of, but I appreciate you adding in pictures detailing the range of V1’s Specials to cover some of those detail aspects. It’s something you could write down too, and you might get a feel for it if you check on other people’s sets. This was still an enjoyable set though - keep up the good work, looking forward to the CoD guy!

Spoiler: Morshu

As someone who read your Shadow set last contest, I can happily say that Morshu is a huge improvement! The Specials were all great, with Up Special in particular being creative - this use of a rope seems obvious in Smash, but it’s not used as much as you’d expect, and I appreciate techs and knockdowns (and RARs) being mentioned where they are in this set. Some of my critique matches Kupa’s: 3-5 seconds to reach min-max speed with the rope feels like a long time in the fast-paced nature of Smash (should be brought down to roughly 1 second to reach max speed), though I can understand using a longer time for realism and so the player has ample time to pick between different spinning timings. Up Special claims to be hit grab that foes can block against like Terry’s Buster Wolf, but “All in all, Morshu's rope is an incredibly versatile tool and is going to be your "Elite Smash" move, if you will. Against inexperienced players who don't know to shield,” implies that it goes through shields, which I honestly don’t mind given how much starting lag the move has. F-air is also very potent with currently no limit on how far Morshu can run through the air (I do like the concept though!). I imagine you’re in the middle of editing all these, anyway.

Both of Neutral Special’s effects are fun, but I wonder if they could be utilized in the set more - it’s largely the spinner and the rope that get talked about after the Specials. As far as I know, the bomb is the only move Morshu can use to set oil patches on fire. The lamp’s gravity reduction could be used to star KO or juggle more easily, perhaps mention these in U-Smash and U-tilt? With Morshu’s emphasis on props and items, I even think you’d be justified in letting the lamp affect his bombs and spinner so they fall slower, which could be used to turn bombs and the falling spinner into aerial traps. Finally, it would be fun if Morshu could carry the lamp around as a throwing item so he can reposition it more easily or place it high in the air. While Morshu already has bombs as throwing items, the lamp could just deal barely any hitstun and not travel very fast, making it easy for opponents to catch. On the subject of Down Special, that’s a move I like - a more potent version of Link’s bombs, at the risk of blowing in your face if you hold the bombs for too long when fishing for an opportunity! One thing though: the way the bombs are described makes it unclear that they explode on hit when they deal damage, that would be good to clear up, and it’s not specifically stated how long until the bombs go off on their own - I’m assuming it’s the same as Young/Toon Link’s Down Special.

Jab is a neat little move flavour-wise - referencing Morshu’s hand gestures, while also having a meme variant! The latter does feel fitting for a character whose presence largely comes down to memes, and the set’s approach of limiting it to one move (aside from Final Smash?) feels like the right way to do Morshu. D-tilt is a pretty MYM’y move with being a trap - does using the move again despawn the old beanstalk and create a new one? Or does having a beanstalk out prevent Morshu from using D-tilt until it disappears? I almost wonder if there’s room to expand upon the beanstalk - say, hard interactions like being able to set the beanstalk on fire, maybe even bounce your items off the beanstalk? It does feel like a move that you’d put on a Special or a Smash.

F-throw is a bit powerful at KO”ing near the ledge at 95% - iirc, Incineroar’s B-throw (the strongest throw in Smash Ultimate I believe) doesn’t KO that early, and Morshu already has items and some good power on his hands with moves like F-tilt and D-tilt, so 120-130% feels more reasonable. His throwing animations are fittingly quirky, D-throw in particular being the funniest of the bunch.

Onto the next section, F-Smash’s sword-breaking gimmick is actually cool! This feels like a fun drawback to make a Smash more powerful than usual, getting a nerfed version for the rest of your stock if you whiff it, while still having both versions be useful and acknowledging the various tech chase scenarios Morshu can land. It also feels fitting flavour-wise, in a way: like the sword is defective and Morshu didn’t know about it, he’s just a simple shopkeeper after all. Onto the Aerials, F-air is of couse the highlight here, and U-air is neat for being able to blow your stuff upwards. Elaborating on the possibilities would be even better, but it’s still nice as-is.

All and all, Morshu was definitely nice and holds a lot of promise for your career! He’s definitely a different character from Shadow, he requires more creativity to pull off but you pulled a good amount of character from him - fun stuff throughout the set like proud animation on U-Smash, pulling out bombs greedily and being surprisd if the foe escapes his rope swing. I’m not sure how long Morshu took, you did preview his Up Special to us before MYM24 iirc, but given you have MHA set plans I’d sure love for you to throw out more if you can.

 

[ForwardArrow]

Jesse Faden
I'll just be up front and say I'm not particularly big on this set, though I at least see what UserShadow's talking about when he says this is meant to be a more "adaptable" character who is designed to change their style to fight different opponents. Those kinds of generalist sets tend to be harder to talk about in a compelling way than a set with a more focused playstyle, and also to some degree I feel like putting adaptability into a more unorthodox base playstyle is just more interesting in the first place. But I'd say the bigger thing about this set is that I don't think it has much of a core to work with in the end. The Neutral Special shots end up feeling like 3 kinda similar KO projectiles, and two peashooters where one is obviously better than the other. 0.2% per shot, even if its on a 3 frame interval, adds up to 4% per second, which is abysmally weak for something Jesse has to outright commit time and effort to constantly use. Grip fires 4 times per second for 3% and actually flinches compared to Spin, and on top of that is faster to take out and put away. The contrast in quality there is downright ridiculous. It also ends up in a situation where Jesse's individual projectiles don't really get paid off much except as the occasional finisher after one of her combos, which isn't a bad place to use them necessarily but I feel like the set didn't get as much out of this as you'd hope.

The Side Special also kind of runs into issues for a different reason, its a move that only gets much relevance against characters with projectiles or in conjunction with Up Tilt. I like that she can create ammo to play with for Side Special with a move in her set, don't get me wrong, but most of what this move is talked about is as a reflector to toss back opponent's projectiles or to reflect your own projectile after the opponent reflected it back, when there really aren't a lot of other reflectors in the game to make that happen. The set talks about the latter a decent bit when its an interaction that will come up in about 10% of matchups, and pretty rarely within them. Down Special's wall and Up Special's float are perfectly fine mechanics, but aside from using Down Special as a barricade for Dash Attack which I actually thought was kind of cool there's little the set does to play off those moves, and there isn't a lot each of these inputs does for each other. Up Tilt ends up feeling more like a special than NSpecial or DSpecial because the set refers to it more to offer setups off and it actually adds something meaningful to use with Side Special... and to be fair, I'm good with that move, its just disappointing the core mechanics aren't utilized as well. That said, I actually think the randomized trajectory is good as it kinda makes Jesse have to work and adapt to its movement rather than grabbing it automatically, while not adding a big element of RNG to the set, which makes playing around with it a lot more compelling than it otherwise would be.

I've basically said I don't find the way the standards/aerials/smashes/throws play off the Specials particularly compelling for the most part, but that's partially because the Specials don't really give a lot to work with. Its kinda hard for me to praise those moves for that reason, and unfortunately, Down Smash outright runs into a pet peeve of mine. Being able to instantly cleanse all status effects from Jesse no matter what is the kind of thing that is... probably not breaking anything in actual Smash, sure, but eliminating all status effects is DEVASTATING in a lot of MYM vs MYM matchups. I don't insist every set be designed for that, and we've run into problems before making sets to specifically fight other MYM sets, but I think its kind of a shame that Jesse would just autowin matchups against opponents who heavily rely on status effects, because not only is this the side effect of a decent attack that shuts down everything, the attack's pretty fast. Frame 14 might not be fast compared to a lot of tilts and aerials but its still outside the reactable window and as such not THAT hard a move to use in Neutral, and if you get ANY space from the opponent you can just cleanse every status effect they threw on. For the record, I'm not opposed to characters interacting with enemy status effects, it'd actually be an on brand and somewhat unique thing for this set to do, but it adds little to the set other than just making certain matchups slightly easier and destroying a lot of MYM sets as is, as opposed to it being higher effort to purge status effects and making the set have interesting play against status effect characters.

I recognize I've been very harsh on this set and I feel a little guilty doing so, especially after the extremely high praise you've given Belzeb. I actually think from a numbers/frame data standpoint aside from a few mistakes this set is a lot better than your earlier efforts and there are certainly ideas here that could make for a cool set. I just don't think it plays out well in the end due to a rather weak core and not taking strong advantage of even what it does have.

Jackie Chan
Real people sets are always kind of hard, so trying to make one on such short notice is kind of bold as is. But I'd actually say Jackie Chan's a pretty impressive one, despite a couple complaints I'll get out of the way first. The set doesn't really have a ton of "MYM flow" to it, as while there are a few neat interactions I don't think the set really expands on "core concepts" it offers all that strongly. The drunken master stuff to allow you to cancel out of prone states to continue combos is cool, and there's a bit of play around the ladder with certain attacks which I like, and I like the Prop NSpecial as a fun little self-contained thing, but the set is mostly concerned with wacky hit and run melee that lets Jackie Chan weave in and out of the opponents range moreso than any of these individual moves. That's fine, but it does make it harder for me to enjoy than a more "core focus" driven set. I'd also say the stall then fall Bair was a very bizarre choice that doesn't feel natural in animation or input placement, sticking out as a random move in the set that feels like it'd both play and feel pretty bad.

But honestly, aside from that, the set's pretty solidly enjoyable. The melee moves tend to have lots of little nuances to them that add depth to their application, and it feels like there's a surprising amount to master here in getting the most out of each of Jackie's individual techniques. The gifs and enthusiasm for the character help sell these attacks and animations all the more, and it makes for an enjoyable and easy read to get through. And when the ladder is used as something to weave around and the benefits of drunkeness provide for some powerful combo extensions, it IS cool to see and adds some real depth and playstyle flow to the set in changing punishable options to incredibly versatile ones. It definitely feels with a lot of these attacks like Jackie has tons of room to mess with the opponents head and fight them in a way they don't expect and struggle to counter, which feels very fitting to the man's style. Its an enjoyable love letter to such an influential actor, and even if its not made exactly to my taste I find myself respecting the set quite a bit.

Magneto
I'm kind of surprised you went for such a high profile character and one you enjoy so much for a JamCon, but I'm really not one to talk when I wrote like 20,000 words for it. With all that said, Magneto is a set that starts off very strong. Putting bullets in the foe to make them vulnerable to your magnetism, as well as all the ways you can manipulate the bullets, is actually very cool and gives the set a lot to work off as it goes along. I definitely like the idea of building up scrap by ripping it out of the opponent to use on Magneto's other moves as a reward for magnetizing a foe with a bullet in them, and the set actually presents some strong ideas even as you go later in. There's a LOT of fun combo potential with the knife and combined with all the bullet setups it gives Magneto some real versatility in how he messes with the foe and lines up his big Smash attacks when I actually think about it. Up Smash certainly is a move that's pretty simplistic on the surface, but at least Magneto has a lot of stuff to get the opponent to get hit by it or the higher power coin toss. I kinda wish I recognized that earlier, but the set doesn't really talk about using Magneto's bullet or knife setups to pull off this big move as much as I wish it did.

When it comes down to it though, the set does feel a bit incomplete despite its strong use of magnetism in a lot of places. The aerials certainly provide a payoff to the scrap buildup earlier in the set, but I can't help but find it a little... underwhelming? Maybe because after all the effort you go through it just results in some bigger, stronger, and outright slower hitboxes when I guess I was hoping for a bit more out of all the scrap flying around Magneto. While I like the application of the Up Smash I mentioned, the Smashes don't make use of the bullet/scrap/magnetism stuff at ALL on their own, which feels like a bit of a waste given those inputs tend to be the best place to put flashy applications for that stuff. Similarly, for a magnetic manipulator, who you'd think could have a lot of fun on its grab game, Magneto kinda just does more minimal/basic stuff that I can't help but feel isn't everything I was hoping for. None of this stuff breaks the set, but it doesn't feel like everything it could be either.

Which is mostly a shame because I think conceptually this is my favorite JamCon set this time around, and its not like the execution is a wash. The tilts and aerials are pretty solid moves and there's places the Smashes and Grab Game are still fun. The animations are great and show a good deal of Magneto's emotional instability and... I'd call it ego but its a bit more complicated than that. Its a noticeably more ambitious entry than Lyn was and a lot better designed than Tumble, I just think this set would've benefited from a longer, more in-depth design period is all. I still think you did a good job and should be proud of making a set like this on such short notice, though.

Enya Geil
I was most impressed by Honchkrow of the JamCon sets I read last time, and Enya kind of keeps the trend going by being my favorite of the JamCon sets this time around. I liked Magneto's tilts and Enya has the pretty cool idea of basically making them into a mechanic, one that the set plays into in some interesting ways. Enya's combos start falling apart at higher percents without heavy move staling, which can be tricky to actually make work given you need to hit with a move to stale it, but the Neutral Special and zombies basically serve as a contextual way to fix that. I kinda like that she DOES actually have combo moves in there that work even without that stuff to give her some potential REAL scary combos if she gets those off at the right time in conjunction with NSpecial and the zombies, but those moves are ones you have to work for a bit more.

Some extra nuance is added by Down Special, a move that feels like a pretty compelling "mindgame" in that there's only so many options Enya can throw out in it and there is still a clear indication SOMETHING is going on there, but you still have all the tools you need to mess up an unprepared foe. Its like the appeal of making invisible or concealed setups in old contests except actually not dumb, something also done by Mysterio last contest but I feel this leans more into the "invisible traps" type of that set. I particularly like how the zombie baby uses it, and the Forward Smash to disguise how she comes out of it. I like Up Special a bit less by comparison as I think it lets Enya go invisible just a bit too frequently for my liking, which is one of the main things that stuck out to me as something I actually didn't like about the set, but its not especially egregious or a deal breaker.

Enya's melee feels just a bit more nuanced and unconventional than Honchkrows, a set where I liked the melee but a lot of the appeal of it definitely came down to "you can just cancel out of this move's bad end lag with your berries". Enya has a bit more going on than that as, like I mentioned, there's a couple layers to how her moves can play off NSpecial or the zombies between bad combo moves being turned into good ones and good combo moves being turned into excellent ones. I'd say the set stays pretty strong in that regard until the grab game, which isn't the most exciting but I feel like a lot of JamCon sets phone in the grab game a little due to time constraints so its not really a strike against this set in particular. (I mean even for Belzeb, a set I put a ludicrous amount of time and energy into for the period I had, I felt the grab game is pretty clearly the weakest section). And like Magneto and Jackie Chan, the set has exceptional character stuff, Enya's absolutely unhinged personality on full display with some delightfully cruel and unstable animations, as well as clever uses of Justice's power. Even when the set's going into some slightly duller moves towards the end the characterization carries it for me, and a little bit of fall off towards the end is still more consistent than the other sets of this batch IMO. You did quite well on this one US.

Dogma
This set definitely continues the trend of "basically every Bubby set since Whisper underwent some revisions and refinements has honestly been pretty solid at what it sets out to do." The static orbs around Dogma's projectiles building up to a powerful death ray is a cool mechanic that, combined with Dogma's other unique-feeling projectiles allows him to create a very distinctive kind of "bullet hell" for opponents to weave around. It feels like a very direct attempt to replicate the feel of this boss in Isaac and I'd say it succeeds at it, plus the interplay between the large waves of feathers, more delayed Up Special projectile, static buildup, and the concentrated beam you want to trap the opponent in with Down Special is all pretty cool stuff.

I'll be honest, I'm left at a bit of a loss as to what to say with this set, because after the specials I mostly just came out of it feeling it was fine. There's some fun animations in here and a few unique bits like the mobility options with the angelic wheel form, but the less ambitious concepts compared to Cookie Scouts and the lack of the same level of nuance you'd get to the melee moves that you could find in a more high production Bubby set like Calliope/Polterkitty makes it hard for me to get all that hyped up over it. Its a case where I came out of the set liking what it did but wanting more, but not feeling I really have a lot of particularly valuable criticism to add. It does address my criticism that Cookie Scouts felt a bit all over the place in terms of focus though, so I guess what I'd be looking for out of a JamCon entry from you(or entry in general) is some kind of middle ground in terms of complexity between the two sets or going to either end of the spectrum and developing the nuance of the melee and how it works with the specials in more depth. Wish I had more to add, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with Dogma and I think you can call it a job well done, especially considering how it fits your sensibilities on complexity while still having a bit of MYM-style fun to it.

Green Goblin
As someone who was a huge fan of Vulture, I'm a bit drawn to Green Goblin for following in that set's footsteps. Programming the glider to use his aerials feels like it'd open up a lot of fun tools for Green Goblin as the glider bombards the foe, drags them around, and stabs at them, providing an additional layer of pressure to the Goblin's game. It IS a bit wonky as detaching Goblins aerials from his body can result in the glider being much harder to use to its fullest potential and leave the Green Goblin awkwardly helpless in the air without it. I do like the addition of the pumpkin bombs ability to have a programmed flight similar to the glider's own and the slowfall letting the Green Goblin get even more mileage out of his glider attacks while he's riding it, that's all fun stuff.

I feel like past the cool concepts with how the glider works, most of Green Goblin's fun factor comes from how directly it translates his animations from the movie. This feels similar to Jackie Chan's appeal... except I don't feel Green Goblin ends up with nearly as much to work with. Jackie Chan is a martial artist with a strong knowledge of everything the human body is capable of and as such has a ton of interesting animations and moves to draw from, Green Goblin kinda just punches and kicks people in a fashion that its hard to add much nuance to. While it leaves the set very faithful to the movie, it fails to really build on the concepts introduced with the glider, and ends up more of a showcase of how much fun Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin is than a particularly strong moveset on its own right. It also comes with some really wonky numbers, the goblin bomb feels absurd killing at 70% from anywhere on the stage no matter what while stuff that's described as having very impressive knockback later in the set kills at like 180% or so, making them better than every other kill move in his set to a kind of obscene degree. I also really don't think the skeleton disintegration to kill from anywhere on the stage is entirely necessary, if I'm being honest. There's a place for animations where the foe dies from where they are on stage but I feel like the bombs in this set are close enough to regular bombs in practice that just having them explode for high knockback is enough to get the point across of what they're supposed to be.

For what its worth this set was clearly written as a vehicle for the Green Goblin's personality first and foremost, and it handles that very well, its just a bit of a shame that the interesting conceptual side of the moveset ends up not really going the places I wish it did. Still a fun addition Khold, I did enjoy reading it despite my criticisms.

Enya Geil is my JamCon 3 Nominee.

 

[n88]

Syndrome
The robot stuff here is meaty, but does feel mostly pretty manageable to control; the programming inputs are intuitive enough. This feels like a very old-school MYM set in that it's loaded with traps and projectiles and minions (well, minion) that are all interacting with each other to create a big, weird web. Wasn't sure if that kind of thing would still be in vogue given MYM's more pragmatic bent these days. Definitely feels like conceptually this would've always tracked in MYM, this is just a more well thought-out and technically detailed realization of that sort of thing. (Well, I'm pretty sure it's more well thought-out vis-a-vis balance: I confess I've never had an outstanding grasp on the numbers in Smash, so I'll just trust you on that stuff)

In practice, I'm not sure I'd actually be able to play him competently, but I have trouble with anything more complicated than Ganondorf, so I might not be the best measuring stick.

The rest of this is just notes I took as I was reading versus being a terribly focused commentary; probably comes off nitpicky, but I did enjoy the set. Apologies if some of the questions/gripes are things I missed or misunderstood - had to double back for context at a few points and sometimes it took me a bit to find what I was looking for. Lots going on with this one.

• The tap Neutral Special feels a little extra, and personally I'm not a fan of something that technical/fiddly on a Neutral Special. I wonder if it wouldn't be more intuitive to swap Neutral and Down Specials here. They're both a bit Down Special-y. The balloon-firing-mid-other-attacks-mechanic feels a little easier to manage on a plain NSpec input (to me anyway).
• "Worth noting, when re-summoning his cannon, Syndrome cannot fire more balloons than currently are onstage or stuck to a foe, regardless of their size." So the first time he summons a cannon, he can launch up to five before the cannon disappears. On subsequent summons, he can double his number of balloons at best. When does that reset back to being able to get five - on his next stock, or when there are no more balloons left? I think the latter sounds more intuitive.
• "During its retraction, the leg also will grab in the direction Syndrome is facing, whipping around to snatch to the opposite side if need be." does this mean that the tentacle fully spins around, or just the claw bit? Like, A or B? (Yes I know, I am artiste). I think B makes more sense, but I read it like A initially.
  
• I had a slightly hard time visualizing Back Throw from the description - it kinda sounds like it's throwing foes forward, and also it suggests that the tentacle is starting in different places based on where it caught the foe; but my impression from the grab description was that the captured enemy was always brought to the same position (in front of Syndrome... or where Syndrome would be if he's jetted off somewhere else while the tentacle is withdrawing).
• I like the dash attack canceling if used off a ledge - don't think that really needs to be a hold/tap difference, personally. Really dig the dash attack as a point of characterization.
• F-Smash and D-Tilt are particularly MYM-y moves. F-Smash arguably to the point of pushing normal control scheme stuff a little bit, but obviously YMMV on that. It does feel a little inconsistent with the set's internal logic that Syndrome doesn't affect the robot with F-Smash unless he's canceled out of the charge.
• Feels weird for Forward Air to vary based on tap/smash when so many moves in the set vary based on tap/hold.

 

[bubbyboytoo]

JamCon 3: "The Influence" - The Results Are In!

1st: Belzeb - 3 votes (Katapultar, GolisoPower, UserShadow)
2nd: Magneto - 1 vote (bubbyboytoo)
2nd: Enya Geil - 1 vote (ForwardArrow)
Participation medal (0 votes): Jesse Faden, Jackie Chan, Dogma, Green Goblin

And so, congratulations to ForwardArrow for running away with the win this time around. That means you're in charge of next month's JamCon, so we're looking forward to what you've got in store!

 

[Kholdstare]

Whatchu Mean, Kermit, It Is Easy Being Green!
Green Goblin by Kholdstare

Going from Benny, this is certainly more simple, but sometimes that's a good thing, mainly because of how much Green Goblin accomplishes without any minions.

Firstly, let's start with the glider. It's a really unique way of recovery and aerial domination, mainly because of how flexible you can make its flight path. The idea of an Up Special guided by Shield Special, as well as a Glide Aerial, sounds like a very intricately powerful system that basically makes the crux of this entire set, and I legitimately want to have a character that uses similar mechanics. (God, let the final DLC character be Reimu I swear) Anyways, the Pumpkin Bombs sound like a fun, if only for how much more you can do with them than Snake's Grenades, and that's just with the base Pumpkin Bombs. The Bat Pumpkin Grenades, on the other hand, seems extremely good for pressure from all sides, and the fact that they can follow the glider while it's using Shield Special gives it a really fun means of capping off an air combo. The Sleep Gas is really interesting, being a move that slows opponents down but douse them with enough of it, you actually put them to sleep. Really gives you a level of dedication when you want the best possible outcome.

The Glide Attack is a really fun take that takes advantage of the Green Goblin's means of achieving aerial dominance. This makes me think you could rack up damage with Glide Attack before following up with Neutral Air or Forward Air depending on your opponent's damage percentage. Gives him some amazing ladder combo potential, making it easy to kill someone at the top of the screen. A lot of the other attacks Green Goblin has seemed to feel really satisfying to land, just like with the GIFs you've provided. Maybe it's because of the GIFs you've provided, all things considered. The F-Smash sounds especially deadly and seems to give him some offensive potential that brings Roy to mind, in a good way, especially since the sweet spot is so powerful. I love how U-throw damage scales based on foe's weight. Shin Godzilla is definitely feeling the full brunt of the assault, that's for damn sure. The Final Smash also sounds extremely unique, playing with stocks all around. Absolutely love it.

Overall, the Green Goblin seems like the perfect balance between complex and simple which really makes it stand out this JamCon. A great homage to a great incarnation of the character.

Yep, it was much less ambitious and simpler than Benny. A lot of the time I want to push myself to try to work in extra inputs but I didn't feel the need to do it with Goblin beyond shield special, so it was refreshing. I'm glad you like the glider, it's probably the centerpiece of Goblin's toolkit so I wanted to make it so. Reimu as the DLC character would be awesome, and I'm happy you were inspired! The Pumpkin Bombs were very much inspired by Snake's grenades, to the point I based their KO percents directly off of the grenades, making them weaker when not on sweetspot and stronger when on sweetspot. The Bat Grenades were indeed intended to be pressure tools as well, nice catch. Sleep Gas turned into a fun reference to a neat interaction with his projectiles.

Ladder potential is a nice catch, the aerial juggling/bombing game was definitely something I had in mind when writing them. I wanted Goblin to feel like the Red Baron of sorts, swooping around the stage lobbing explosives and bullet fire at the opponent. The GIFs do really carry the set, as the moveset was built to just reference them. Images go a long way in helping someone remember your set. OhI didn't even consider Shin Godzilla, that's amazing and a funny visual, I'm glad it caps because if it didn't and just kept scaling with weight Shin Godzilla would be crippled. Thank you for reading and the comment, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Green Goblin Kholdstare

Rounding off the block is the Green Goblin, a cool choice that borrows a bit from Kupa's Vulture set to create a very interesting air game that can simultaneously support your melee-oriented ground game thanks to the ability to program his glider as an autonomous construct. The core is solid and controlling the glider feels like a fun time, and it's a shame that the set doesn't quite build on it for the rest of it.

The standards and smashes all have their uses and despite the former being fairly simple punches and kicks, there's a kinetic energy to how they're delivered that make them sound satisfying to use. There's not much to them, but like with Jackie Chan, they do what they need to. I do feel however that laying out one or two combo strings or just highlighting a little more about how well they work with each other would've been nice; Up Tilt and Down Tilt both do well by making mention of chaining well into the air game and being a safer but lesser reward for landing the sleeping gas, respectively, but a little more with Jab/FTilt/Dash Attack in that vein would've been appreciated. They're simple, but it feels like that's a consequence of the character and not necessarily to the set's detriment.

The weakest section for me was the throws, barring a neat quirk in Up Throw that I wish was expanded upon a bit more. One's a KO throw, one's an aerial combo starter, one sets up chases/ground combos and works well with spacers, and one's a damage throw (though I feel all the throws do potentially too much damage). Up Throw calling in your Glider as a break in its pattern before immediately resuming its pattern from that point with Goblin transitioning to riding atop it is a nice touch that ties it into Goblin's core gimmick, setting up some fun aerial hijinks.

Forward Throw I feel the animation for would be a nice side benefit to use in combination with the Pumpkin Bombs or so the glider can get closer to the blast zone/into position as it lets him hold the foe in place longer, which would be worth mentioning on top of its existence as an excellent reference. Back Throw and Down Throw, though, would probably benefit from a list of good options to use out of them.

To close this out on a positive note after picking nits for a few paragraphs, this set does well to convey the feel of playing William Dafoe Green Goblin and sounds like a hoot in general. My complaints are small, make no mistake, and I'm happy to see the character get a set with this much love in it. Excellent work, Khold!

Vulture was a big inspiration, much like how Huntress was inspired by Blight. The glider control being fun was something I wanted to evoke because sometimes a character's kit being very enjoyable to play makes up for their other shortcomings just by the beat-by-beat mechanical enjoyment other than dominating a foe. The kinetic feel of the melee I'm glad you liked because you can definitely feel it in the movie itself - the Spider-Man films were always very motion-centric and Dafoe mentioned in an interview that the Goblin role required a lot of wire stuntwork. The final Goblin vs. Spidey fight is one of the best fights in superhero movie history just because of how much you can feel the blows. I should have laid out more playstyle lines for sure, being a jamcon and it being more of a topdown than bottom-up set hurt this. Thank you for the suggestions, I'll see if I can improve them when I get around to edits! Throws should definitely be better for sure, Goblin is intended to be somewhat of a grappler so they could be beefed up for better quality. That's a good suggestion for the throws as well, thanks for catching that! I'm glad you liked the set and don't worry about the complaints, I take everything into consideration and nothing ruffles my feathers anymore. Gotten pretty mellow in my years hehe. Thank you for commenting and reading!

Green Goblin
As someone who was a huge fan of Vulture, I'm a bit drawn to Green Goblin for following in that set's footsteps. Programming the glider to use his aerials feels like it'd open up a lot of fun tools for Green Goblin as the glider bombards the foe, drags them around, and stabs at them, providing an additional layer of pressure to the Goblin's game. It IS a bit wonky as detaching Goblins aerials from his body can result in the glider being much harder to use to its fullest potential and leave the Green Goblin awkwardly helpless in the air without it. I do like the addition of the pumpkin bombs ability to have a programmed flight similar to the glider's own and the slowfall letting the Green Goblin get even more mileage out of his glider attacks while he's riding it, that's all fun stuff.

I feel like past the cool concepts with how the glider works, most of Green Goblin's fun factor comes from how directly it translates his animations from the movie. This feels similar to Jackie Chan's appeal... except I don't feel Green Goblin ends up with nearly as much to work with. Jackie Chan is a martial artist with a strong knowledge of everything the human body is capable of and as such has a ton of interesting animations and moves to draw from, Green Goblin kinda just punches and kicks people in a fashion that its hard to add much nuance to. While it leaves the set very faithful to the movie, it fails to really build on the concepts introduced with the glider, and ends up more of a showcase of how much fun Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin is than a particularly strong moveset on its own right. It also comes with some really wonky numbers, the goblin bomb feels absurd killing at 70% from anywhere on the stage no matter what while stuff that's described as having very impressive knockback later in the set kills at like 180% or so, making them better than every other kill move in his set to a kind of obscene degree. I also really don't think the skeleton disintegration to kill from anywhere on the stage is entirely necessary, if I'm being honest. There's a place for animations where the foe dies from where they are on stage but I feel like the bombs in this set are close enough to regular bombs in practice that just having them explode for high knockback is enough to get the point across of what they're supposed to be.

For what its worth this set was clearly written as a vehicle for the Green Goblin's personality first and foremost, and it handles that very well, its just a bit of a shame that the interesting conceptual side of the moveset ends up not really going the places I wish it did. Still a fun addition Khold, I did enjoy reading it despite my criticisms.

The glider programming was a great fun bit to think of, the only thing holding me back was my intent on making it all movie references, I think I could definitely get away with making some of the moves non-movie references if I rework this set. It is admittedly wonky, hehe. I'm glad you like the slowfall and glider attacks, Froy's comment about slowfall was perfect for me to work into an aerial-based character so soon. You're right about the movie references, the GIFs were basically carrying the set in terms of inspiration - it took me forever to figure out how USmash and DSmash would reference the movie - and Jackie Chan was a set that genuinely made me laugh and smile because of the references. Goblin does have much less to work with for sure, being only one movie to go off of (at least until Christmas!) It is really hard to add nuance to the set when it is just references, the programming the glider/bats was the closest thing I could get. The set was just a love letter for Dafoe Goblin for sure.

The numbers and kill percentages do hurt the set I think. If you didn't notice with this and Benny, I actually struggle with this aspect the most. I write up everything before them, and add them in last, which ends up making the kill percents all over the place. Damage I think I've got down well because I have a general idea in my head of what balanced damage looks like, but KO percentages are way trickier, so I will see if I can look at the KO Calculator and try to find some actual decent numbers for it. The skeleton KO I think I can just omit, as it doesn't need to be that much of a direct reference. Good catch! I will say though that the sweetspot on the Pumpkin Bomb was actually referencing Jigglypuff's Rest, in that the hitbox is so small the foe has to basically be on top of it to get hit by it and I tried to make it harder to land by giving it a 3 second timer on detonation - that's 3 Falcon Punch startups long, so the only feasible way to get the KO is to put the foe to sleep at a high damage percent. Or at least that was my intent, so I don't think I communicated it clear enough, so thanks for pointing that out.

Thank you for reading and commenting, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Don't sweat about the crit, like I said in the US comment reply I take all crit with stride (when I'm not in a depressive spiral at least lol) and appreciate it. You make great points I agree with, and yeah you nailed it when you said it was a vehicle for Green Goblin's personality.

 

[Katapultar]

"I must become as strong as Utakata. Because if I can..."

 

[ForwardArrow]

Ladies and gentlemen, its time for:

Jam Con 4
​

As a mini-competition that takes place over 4 days or 96 hours, sets posted for the JamCon will be expected to be completed over the allotted time period, and follow the JamCon's theme. The JamCon kicks off now, and ends at 1 AM Monday 10/11 EST, or just a bit over 96 hours from now to be precise. Anyone regardless of prior experience can participate, and joint sets are allowed. Once closed, anyone who comments each set in the JamCon may vote on their favorite by clearly indicating it somewhere in that comment block. Comments should be substantial and more than a single line(nothing super in-depth is necessary, just giving more than a single thought would be nice, and obviously more detailed comments are great). You will have two weeks after the posting period ends to vote, or until 10/25 at 1 AM EST. To give a quick rundown of the rules:


The winner of the JamCon will be able to choose the next month's JamCon's theme. Good luck everyone, and have fun with it!
Once a JamCon entry has been posted, major edits won't be allowed until the winner has been cast. Minor edits, like spelling, grammar, formatting, number crunching, and etc. are allowed. Basically no major changes to the playstyle.
No matter what gimmick you're using, it still has to fit the requirements of being able to be voted on for the Top 50.
You can still edit your moveset after the JamCon is over if you're not satisfied with how it will do for the Top 50.
This whole thing works by the honor system; the intent is to make a set in three/four/however many days in the spirit of the JamCon, but we're not gonna rules lawyer you if you pick up something you'd barely started on earlier for it. Heck, you could have a finished set kicking around that just happens to fit the theme for some reason and only you and God would know.
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask. I'll put subsequent answers here if it seems prudent to.

The October JamCon theme is:

BRAIN​

You're free to be as literal or liberal as you want with this, as long as it's within reason, even if it's a bit of a stretch. In fact, I'm going to encourage a particular type of stretching in a couple ways, but for now, to give some clear examples of how this could apply.

- If a character is directly tied to brains some way through appearance or dialogue, that will work. For example, Andross loudly announces "Only I have the brains to rule lylat" and turns into a giant brain, so obviously, he'd fit this just fine.

- A character known for their intellect or genius plans would fit. Makuta Teridax from earlier this contest is an example as a long-term schemer with tons of backup plans, he might not physically have a very large brain, but spiritually he sure does.

- Similarly, if a character is an absolute fool, an imbecile, and idiot of the highest caliber, their brain is exceptional in the opposite way, and would be perfectly viable to make a set for. Tristan Taylor from Yugioh is an obvious example of this, if you want a recent set.

- A character who prides themselves on their intellect, whether or not they're ACTUALLY smart or stupid, would fall under this category. Berdly from Deltarune would easily fall under this theme.

- Similarly, a character who THINKS they're a master schemer but instead just redirects their plans in insane ways with no rhyme or reason would also qualify.

- If a character is a being that eats or messes with brains, such as the horrific MYM11 interpretation of the Fruity Yummy Mummy, I mean I'd allow it. Similarly, if a character controls brain eating beings like Lucio Fulci or George A. Romero, that would also fit the theme of this JamCon.

- The specific way I encourage you to stretch is if you are attempting a moveset for a character who might not themselves have a strong intelligence based theme or lack thereof, but rather the MOVESETTER is stretching their brain to the fullest and attempting an absolutely mad concept that they are violently shoehorning into Smash at any cost. Tumble is a decent example of that from this contest, basically forcing everyone to play Mario Party against their will by forcing the mechanics to work in Smash, even if it doesn't fit the theme directly I'd fully endorse people to make a "big brain" moveset they'd had sitting on the backburner but weren't quite willing to take the risks involved on since "god knows if this could ever possibly work". I do expect it to be certifiably insane even by MYM standards though, if you think Pac-Man fruit or Kazuya's complex inputs are enough to qualify as the pre-requisite level of crazy for this I expect more from you.

Anyway, with that out of the way, you all go nuts. If you have any questions, want to show off your progress, or test and see if your concept/character is fitting enough for the theme, feel free to ask me about it at any time! I look forward to seeing what you make.

 

[bubbyboytoo]

wow it's set! jamcon! so cool! sugoi
this one's definitely kind of a stretch on the theme?? but its ok i think
(art source)

 

[GolisoPower]

The laboratory was serene as the unlikely trio walked along the hallways, evading wreckage and electrified puddles along the way. The place had been in ruins for a few years by now, though rumblings have been heard that there were some inner workings behind it all, almost as though the whole thing was a facade.

“So...” asked Trafalgar Law. “...you mind telling me why we’re here?”

Law turned his head towards whom he begrudgingly called his companion, a short, purple-haired young woman with a bandana covering her face and adorning a large overcoat that nearly touched the floor.

“Oh, nothing too special,” said Lucrezia with a casual wave of her hand. “Just to find a little something that’ll get me more power. As in, power over that pig robot we ran into.”

“Lucrezia, you’re a mole situated in the League of Villains, a group with three scientists. If you're looking for power, why don’t you just visit them?”

“Yeah, I know, but do you know how much of a %$&#ing pain it is to work with Babyhands? Furthermore, the Mads are too much of a goddamn headache to work with and if Babyhands finds out I’ve been working with the Matchstick Geek, he wouldn’t let me hear the end of it.”

Law would’ve countered, but reserved his judgments.

“Alright, I guess that makes sense,” he sighed. “Though I wonder what she’s here for, just curious.”

He motioned to the horned mountain of an Amazonian woman that matched the good doctor and towered over the young mafia boss, her black dress flowing with each step she took. Heterochromatic pink and green eyes looked down at the two as her blonde hair brushed against her back from her turning her head.

“Oh, Barghie is just our resident musclehead of the team,” snarked Lucrezia, no doubt sporting a grin under her bandanna. “If there’s something neither of us could overcome, she’s our woman for the job.”

“Do not paint my position in such a deceptive light, Lucrezia,” corrected Barghest as the grip on her Galatine tightened. “I am here to ensure that you do not try anything funny.”

The Boss of the Şarpe Veninos could only let out a gremlin-like laugh at the Black Dog’s accusation.

“You really don’t know me or this world’s history, do you,” she sneered. “I’m the leader of the damn mafia. Doing anything funny sooner or later is my damn forte! So you can try to kill me right now! Oh, wait! You can’t! I’m the only girl capable of navigating this place effectively! So sowwy to cwush da widdwe puppy’s dweams!”

The next thing Lucrezia knew, she was being hoisted up by the neck to meet with Barghest’s angry eyes. What was worse is that her mocking smirk never left her face under the bandanna.

“I will tear out your tongue before you spit any more venom, you vile little snake,” Barghest growled as she brought her sword to Lucrezia’s neck.

“Try it, maneater, you won’t!”

“Alright, alright, let’s not get too violent with one another,” chided Law as he raised his hands up. “We know what we’re here for, and it would be best if we worked together. Got it?”

Barghest glared down at the Captain of the Heart Pirates for a bit before she sighed in disappointment and unceremoniously dropped Lucrezia, who stuck a perfect landing in spite of the rather scant amount of height from where she was lifted.

A few seconds after, they turned the corner and found a man in a lab coat curled into a fetal position and crying his eyes out.

“Hmm? Lucrezia, I thought you said this was abandoned,” said Law.

“I-I thought so too,” she responded, her snake-like eyes widened in shock. “I vouched that the place was left to rot, I checked literally everywhere I could go!”

Law slowly approached the man before kneeling down to face him.

“Hey...hey are you alright,” Law asked, getting the man’s attention.

What this stranger did next shocked the three of them.

“NO! GET AWAY,” he shouted fearfully as he scrambled away along the ground. “YOU’RE POSSESSED BY THAT THING, ARE YOU! BACK OFF, MONSTER! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

And with that, he bolted off in fear, screaming like a madman and leaving them in a stupor.

“Aw...you scared him off, Barghie,” Lucrezia snarked. Though surprisingly, the Fairy Knight didn’t fire back. In fact, she had a hand to her chin, lost in thought.

“‘Possessed,’” she drawled. “What made him think we were possessed? What manner of spirit could cause such panic?”

Her concentration was broken by a distant, alien roar that echoed throughout the facility. Barghest ran in the direction of the sound and brought Galatine down on a large lockdown door, turning it into a steaming red-hot sludge and revealing a dimly-lit hallway with several doors. Her two companions close behind and now worried, they followed Barghest as they looked around, their bodies only slightly trembling from nervousness that betrayed their steeled appearances.

“That sound just now came from somewhere in this hallway,” Barghest deduced. “I say we search every room until we find the source.”

“Don’t gotta tell me twice, Barghie,” said Lucrezia, uncharacteristically lacking her playfully smug air.

The three began attempting to pry open doors to find the source of the voice. Lucrezia, however, noticed a door with a small puddle of blood trickling from the bottom like a tumor in puddle form at an accelerated rate.

She went to the door on the right side of the hall and seeped her poison magic into the hinges before throwing them off, revealing nothing but darkness. She felt the wall inside for a light switch until she found it and revealed what lied inside the room.

The prolonged scream that escaped from Lucrezia upon what was revealed to her was akin to an eagle being brutally tortured to near-death by a branding iron as she fell on her rear and started to let loose tears of fear. Law and Barghest bolted to her to check on her before they too saw what was inside.

“Holy crap...”

“Lord have mercy...”

What was inside the room was what could be simply described as a traumatizing orgy of bisection, mutilation, and raw violence. Over a hundred corpses were either splayed along the blood-caked walls, hanging from the tall ceiling by both a strange webbing and their own entrails, or barely recognizable as scarlet blobs with splayed limbs. The varied and gruesome methods of death were evident as well. Some were missing their skin. Others appeared to have swelled up from something until their bodies burst. Others still were littered in tangerine-sized holes in their body. Those were but a few of the many indescribably horrific ends of these people, but what they all had in common with were the eternally frozen faces of fear and pain, as well as several massive chunks of their bodies that seemed to be ripped out by bites. Needless to say, Lucrezia’s reaction was understandable.

Speaking of the poor girl, without even realizing it a chunky stream of a disgusting brown erupted from her mouth like an acidic geyser as her pained wretches pierced the air. Law knelt down to carry the poor girl to a nearby trash can to throw up the rest of whatever food she had eaten throughout the entire day before joining Barghest in exploring the room.

“There is no remorse or hesitation in these kills,” said a clearly-chilled Barghest, still recovering from the shock of this display as she pushed a flayed corpse aside. "They weren't even given peace...nobody should be subjected to such horrific fates."

“Judging by the coagulation of the blood and the color of the flesh...I’d say these people were killed a few hours ago,” said Law as he examined the half-eaten corpse of a man whose brains were sloughing out of a hole in the side of his head. “Whoever did this to these people must’ve been the same one that one guy was talking about.”

“Oh god, this is the most horrific thing I’ve ever seen,” squeaked Lucrezia, her trauma surprisingly evident in her watering eyes as she stumbled back to her companions and wiping the leftover stomach acid from her face. “Not even Cosmic Witch Abigail would be this sadistic with her victims! M-maybe this was a mistake, I think we should head back!”

“No,” barked Barghest. “You brought us here for something and I’ll be damned if we return empty-handed! Understood?”

“Y-yes, ma’am!”

Barghest saw the teary-eyed, fearful look in Lucrezia’s eyes before she herself let out a sigh and knelt down to eye level, her face now akin to a wife warmly attempting to cheer up her depressed husband.

“Look,” the Fairy Knight said, her voice now more gentle. “I’ve always hated the thought of siding with you, and I’m sure you feel the same. But right now none of this matters. There’s no changing the fact that we’re currently on the same side. Though I hate you specifically, I acknowledge how strong you are and know you to be greater than this. So, please...Poison Witch Lucrezia...stay strong for a few more minutes while we’re here. Understand?”

Lucrezia looked at Barghest, her eyes widened in surprise. This was arguably the most kind-hearted she had ever seen from the dog fairy, and it...oddly made her feel better.

“I-I hate you too, Barghest,” she responded as she wiped her eyes to dry them. “You’re so stuck-up, you always try to ruin my fun, and your goody-two-shoes act kind of makes me sick. I dunno if I could ever get along with you...but then again, everything about you reminds me of a certain wolf girl from back home...so goddammit, if you don’t know how to pick a girl back up when she’s down!”

Lucrezia wrapped her arms around the Fairy Knight, careful not to get her poison on her body.

“Thanks,” the mafia boss said. “I really needed that.”

“...don’t get used to it,” said Barghest, the soft tone of her voice and her gentle smile betraying her words as she returned her kind gesture.

Lucrezia opened her eyes, now comforted, and saw a single red tentacle slowly slithering down from the shadows like a bald, bloodied worm, attempting to snag one of them.

“Say...can you do me a favor and duck your head for a moment? Call it a thank you for the confidence boost.”

Barghest, although confused, obliged by her request before Lucrezia leaped over her and formed a blade of poison that severed the tentacle like a hot knife through butter, eliciting a pained roar from above their heads as the separated limb writhed in agony before melting down and becoming one with the ocean of blood around it.

Law looked up to see several glowing green eyes from the ceiling and placed one hand on Kikoku.

“Room!”

A dome of ethereal white energy exploded around the trio and the eyes before they hopped back to give space. What fell down was another blob of bright red flesh that hit the ground with a wet splat. Tendrils began to erupt from its body, eyes, and mouths forming at places where it should not form as it examined its potential prey.

Regardless of who the people around it were, it looked very hungry and they looked very tasty.

 

[UserShadow7989]

He missed Toma.

The friendly faces who had stumbled across him while searching for the network were a nice enough bunch, and he could respect the more thoughtful members of their number, enjoying the odd conversation when they had the time to sit down and converse. Unfortunately, the goings on around them demanded their attention (and for good reason, he learned) and left him a bit wanting for companionship, as well as ensuring that their search for his operator would be delayed.

He could only play games against himself so often before the repetition started to eat at him, and the only opponent available was... well, she tried. In fact, she tried very hard when he realized he could easily bribe her attention with the mention of food, but that could only do so much, and he was only so willing to dip into his wallet. There were always more busting jobs available, but he couldn't commit himself to the more rewarding (and more dangerous) jobs without his operator having his back.

Thankfully, Asagao seemed to have inexpensive tastes when it came to snacks, and so he was able to spend some time introducing her to the game he loved. As she set a pawn into his back rank, he even managed a proud smile-

"King me!"

...KingMan.EXE pinched his brow. He missed Toma.

[Jamcon 4 entry! Not my best work, but it turned out to be a solid enough set I hope. Hope you enjoy, everyone!]

 

[wizfoot]

Fire.​

Fire is the element of power. It is the only element that can be generated by the user on its own. Air cannot be used in a vacuum, earth cannot be used without solid ground, and water cannot be used in the desert. But fire is able to be generated. Maybe that's why it's so powerful.

Fire is the element of life. It is powered by breath; not by movement. It is the element that is most similar to humanity itself; it has both the ability to destroy and create, to ruin civilization and make civilization thrive.

Mario can create fireballs. Charizard can breathe fire. Pyra, in a sense, is a blade of fire. But none of them have harnessed the truth of fire. The power and weaknesses of fire, its bringing of both life and death, its honor and its shame.

No.

Only one has.

And that person is the Crown Prince, the Fire Lord...

ZUKO


*not a submission for the JamCon. Sorry to disappoint.​

 

[Katapultar]

"What's happening?

Who are these people?

No... I know who this is.

That's me. And this is... me!?

In high school, I got hooked on Smash Ultimate, and after playing as Sora all night, I was running late for school, so I rushed out onto the street...

That wasn't a dream! Those were memories from my previous life!


Catarina Claes!? No way... that can't be. Super Smash Bros Utimate. The hero, Sora, is a Keyblade wielder who possess light magic. And then there's Catarina Claes. She's Cloud's fiancee, and the villainess. Catarina attacks Sora in a rage foe getting into Smash Ultimate, but ends up getting attacked by Cloud instead and dies. Having murdered his own fiancee, Cloud breaks up with Sora and leaves Smash.

This is the world of Smash Ultimate.

And that means...

I'm on the path to doom!"

​

 

[Rychu]

"Oh, most delicious morsel, perceive my appreciation of your unique gifts: Your brow―exquisite in its simple symmetry―is shapely, hinting at the delicacies contained therein. It is merely the wrapping, a fragile package concealing tangy treasure. Snuggled close, warm and moist beneath pale bone, fatty coils of succulent gray meat quiver to be plucked, to be exposed for the appreciation of all, before inevitable, ardent consumption… Ah, that hits the spot."

this is a jamcon entry btw​

 

[ForwardArrow]

With that, the final JamCon of MYM24 comes to a close. You now have two weeks to comment each of the sets and vote on your favorite, indicated clearly in your post. The contenders are:

• Kureiji Ollie, from the heavily brain associated zombie species. She might not be a big brain eater herself, but she has some impressive academic smarts to make up for it and fit the theme quite nicely despite that!
• The Creature, a fleshy abomination known for being quite a bit smarter than you'd expect from a blob of flesh, and known to eat the brains and memories of humans it encounters.
• KingMan.EXE, a being whose entire existence revolves around the highly brain intensive game of Chess.
• Catarina, a woman both known for her talented political skill which is really just being nice to people but shhhhh but also known for some bouts of... almost absolute density.
• And finally Nihiloor, who came committed to the theme so hard he came with mind powers and a pet brain that eats other brains, which you have to respect at least on some level.

Thanks for your great contributions everyone, and looking forward to reading them all!

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: The Creature

Creature is a strong set from you with what I thought were a solid set of Specials. While I do think that mind control-based moves are best justified when the user has traps or delayed hitboxes (like Shadow Flare style time bombs) or even counters to lure the foe into, honestly? This might be my favourite method of balancing mind control in recent memory. It doesn’t last too long, finishes with upwards knockback so you can’t cheese foes off-stage… and actually teleports Creature to the foe’s location, so you can’t walk the foe too far off the stage or you’ll die. It also works surprisingly well with Creature’s playstyle, as an actual method for it to get into the air aside from being knocked away or using Stage 2 Side Special.

Neutral Special feels good as a “spammable and effective, but not too strong” a move as Creature’s primary means of racking up Biomass, and Side Special and Down Special’s effects all feel good. Stage 2 Side Special feels like a very effective attack that can aid Creature’s recovery and just bolster its offensive. Stage 3 Side Special does feel very powerful for coming out on frame 5 and unleashing a barrage of projectiles that can pull enemies in, and these projectiles are presumably very fast. Something like frame 13-15 would feel more reasonable to me, as how fast a projectile travels can matter quite a bit on balance.

Down Special’s Stage 1 invisibility is nice, and having invincibility on the first half your attacks doesn’t feel too overpowered when the ability runs on a meter. I like Stage 2’s keratin spikes for tacking on extra damage (like with Stage 2 Side Special), and I appreciate them being brought up in later melee attacks like Jab - playing off your moves’ Specials and bases is something I wanted to see, and you’re delivering more on that so great job. I do wonder if Stage 3’s tough guy armour is underpowered for the amount of work needed to reach Stage 3 Biomass: if I recall correctly, tough guy wears down as the user takes damage, unless it doesn’t do so in this set, but for what it’s worth it does give Creature a much-needed damage cut when Stage 3 makes it bigger and easier to combo. I like that this set is conscious of which Side Specials and Down Specials belong to each stage and match together - Stage 1 Side Special’s lag works well with Down Special’s invisibility, Stage 2’s spikes work well with the Side Special ram, and I guess Stage 3 projectile barrage could work with tough guy by giving you a degree of armour against aerials that would punish you during your long duration. The fact that you can deposit Biomasses to regain access to your old moves is nice too. I did wonder whether Creature should be able to have access to its older stage moves, just have the player hold B for a moment (15 to 30 frames for stages 2 and 3?), as you could do fun mix-ups like use Side Special’s stage 2 ram if foes were expecting to block the stage 1 webbing, but the way it’s structured is perfectly fine.

Some notes on the regular moves:

-Dash Attack is a tad odd for Stage 2’s version being stronger than Stage 3, and kind of makes me think that Stage 2 Creature is the best version in conjunction with its Side Special and Down Specials. Actually, slightly upping Creature’s KO percents on its more kill-based moves as it reaches higher stages could be a nice little reward, because remember Stage 3 does make Creature as big as Bowser and quite easy to combo, compared to Stage 2 and Stage 1. Kupa and Smady will tell you that size matters a lot in Smash, that being a big character is perhaps the worst trait a character can have in Smash.
-F-tilt being a command grab feels a bit strong for its range and frame 8 start-up. Maybe it’s only a command grab right up-close. Creature has its Neutral Special for a ranged command grab anyway.
-D-tilt is kind of a neat move.
-F-Smash feels a bit too fast for frame 16, mostly because the move is stated to be slow but satisfying to land in its write-up, and has solid range to boot. But I do think that is a great use of Creature’s invisibility, because having a ranged hitbox makes you unlikely to miss.
-D-Smash feels inspired by Belzeb’s hurtbox-shifting, which makes sense given how much you loved that set and how it inspired Creature (they both have similar character flavours, too).
-I wonder if N-air’s hitbox KOs a bit early at 148% - or at least compared to F-tilt which KOs around the 300s, and can’t be used in the air unlike your aerials - and it seems like Creature can hit with its aerials with relative ease thanks to its “jumping” mechanic.
-I really don’t think Creature should have no landing lag on its aerials. For instance, F-air is stated to be unsafe on block, but if you suffer no landing lag then it IS technically safe on block.
-I like the D-air’s variant from jump gimmick, having potentially absurd height in exchange for leaving it helpless.
-B-air makes good use of mentioning Specials and Biomass.

That you’re willing to outright experiment with jumping mechanics is admirable, and does make me think that it could be fun to experiment in tandem with giving that fighter unique out-of-shield options from their unique “jump.” For instance, using Up Special as a pseudo-jump while the “jump” button doesn’t take you into the air normally. Shin Godzilla’s jump mechanic was a bit of a miss to me as it denied him an important movement mechanic to avoid stuff like projectiles, but Creature’s feels better as the tendrils foes can hit while it is elevated don’t damage Creature. If anything, their 25HP could be a problem if Creature runs into a Samus with Charge Shot - that will break the tendrils in one hit and render Creature helpless, its only other option really to shield the hit or lower its hurtbox with D-Smash (or use invisibility invincibility). But all and all the Creature’s jump mechanic feels relatively feasible.

While I did nitpick Creature, I did enjoy him and I’d say he’s one of your strongest sets so far for having a nice base of Specials that are played upon to a degree, even if you ignored or didn’t implement the “jump” mechanics. Definitely a gradual improvement! And joining Belzeb as a inhuman character who can do terrifying things to the rest of the cast in the MYM24 story mode. Solid work Goliso, and if this is your last set this contest then I’m looking forward to seeing what you do next contest after the long round of reading the MYM24 line-up.

Spoiler: Kureiji Ollie

Kureiji is another simple and clean set from you, so I have no criticisms on what Kureiji was going for. Neutral Special is a fun little move: the teleport aspect is an interesting way of balancing out the gravestone swing’s potency, and I could see there being cases of Kureiji using her combo game or F-tilt or especially D-tilt with its semi-spike to herd opponents into the gravestone to teleport into them, or at least using its presence as a threat. I like Side Special using Kureiji’s dash momentum to increase its range, and its high knockback to “balance” out its status effect so she can’t just combo too easily from it. I’m not too sure on increasing the foe’s starting lag - maybe it would be better to reduce their knockback for Kureiji’s survivability - but the effect doesn’t last that long anyway and Kureiji already has her fair share of weaknesses as a fighter. It could be fun if your bite effects could stack like up to 2 times, giving Kureiji a limited time to capitalise on them, maybe even add a new effect if two are stacked like decreasing the foe’s weight a little, but that’s an idea for the future at least.

Up Special is actually fun for its unique command grab you can combo from, because of the fact that you can’t grab them again too soon due to the grab cooldown. Down Special is kind of funny, but also refreshingly short and simple as a “stance change” move you’d expect from old MYM. When I glanced at this move, I thought Kureiji could throw her arm around and do skeleton tricks to perform her arm-based attacks from different parts of the stage to combo (I thought this would have worked neatly with her Neutral Special when reading that move), but forgoing that to make Kureiji a projectile-less, combo/melee-orientated character is perfectly respectable. Also, D-air has an interesting quirk that brings a bit of Science Team to mind; I could see there being situations where you use the multi-hits to wear a foe’s shield down and get in a shield poke to land the split kick if their shield was weakened enough. In fact, this is a surprisingly fun take on dragging hitboxes and might be my favourite move in the set! Landing hitboxes feel like something that would be fun to experiment with more.

In any case, nice job this one! Your Jamcon sets are always amusing to read, with fun, quirky character picks and taking the time to do a few extras. And while I’m not really familiar with them outside of MYM, I am glad you made another VTuber and look forward to seeing your expanding collection of them set-wise.

Spoiler: Nihiloor

I think I can safely say that Nihiloor is THE FA love letter this Jamcon, being the most literal interpretation of the ‘Brain’ theme like Tumble was with ‘Chance Time,’ and if I remember correctly FA plays Dungeons and Dragons.

Side Special is immediately a cool start to the set, a slow command grab that absolutely demolishes shields and can potentially score a shield break while the foe is being grabbed! This is a neat enough base that could be played upon with moves that bait shielding. It’s also interesting that Nihiloor effectively has to land this move or get his Devourer to plant a tadpole in the foe if he wants to revive them on death, and they are useful for setting up into his slower moves like F-tilt, F-air as well as covering him with other slow attacks like Smashes. A new Devourer bursting out of the foe and dealing them massive hitstun if they kill the current one is unique, and you do have to go through the trouble of implanting a tadpole to get it. It does feel a bit unfun though, because chances are the Devourer will be sticking close to Nihiloor and taking damage with him, inevitably punishing the foe where they shouldn’t be. I would probably add a delay to the hitbox, make it so the new Devourer’s burst can be shielded or dodged, effectively acting as a “time bomb” Nihiloor could exploit with a Side Special or Smash.

Up Special I like in conjunction with the Luma-style Devourer! That is, Nihiloon can leave the fight for a moment and have the Devourer attack in its place. I like Neutral Special’s reference image, and the stun works fine for landing command grab, but I do wonder if 15 seconds to regain full power is too slow when the move is relatively laggy in spite of its funky hitbox.

The main Special I’m not convinced of is Down Special. Or rather, I think the effect is redundant in Nihiloor’s kit (Neutral Special can already restrain foes for Side Special), but does have potential given the… ungodly flavour of the move. Using your Intellect Devourer to defend yourself as you set up the rift’s position? That’s a cool use of a Luma-style minion! Personally, I think Down Special should be an absurdly powerful but slow hitbox that plays off Side Special’s deadly effect against shields and ability to trigger shield breaks. One thought is that the rift has a “suction” in a certain area beneath or around it, and if the foe stays in that area for several seconds (time the shield break stalls for) they’re pulled in and assaulted by whatever is inside the rift before being spat out for damage and knockback that’ll KO super early. But the foe could ward off the timer by shielding among staying outside of the range, the former could help Nihiloor land his slow command grab. I’m not sure if this move is based off anything in DnD or whether it has to follow any rules, but a move that seems to call up a god would be justified in being very powerful.

F-Smash is fine as a move you can punish a shield break from. It does feel extremely powerful though: 24 frames is actually 3 frames faster than Kazuya’s Devil Blaster, the move hits a few times and covers a wide area, and KOs about as early as you’d expect a close/mid-ranged Smash to. I could also see it KO’ing a lot earlier if the foe was off-stage. I would tone down the range a good deal, and maybe even make it unsafe on block - that’d give foes an incentive to shield from a range where you could punish shielding with your Side Special. You could even have the 3 beams hit at ground level so you can wear down a foe’s shield! Maybe the beams could be fired on a downwards angle so they can shield poke? In fact, shield-poking is something that would be cool to incorporate in this set (I see no reason why D-tilt couldn’t accomplish this), because when you land a Side Special it will take longer for the foe’s shield to recover, and thus the window to shield poke them will be longer. Maybe F-Smash could even have a sweetspot at close-range or max range, something that hits super hard and is what you’ll use to score a shield break if you do that with Side Special. Maybe at close range the beam deals more damage due to piercing through the foe’s chest?

Minor nitpick: 90% is fairly powerful for an U-throw when it can KO from anywhere on the stage and earlier on platforms. If I remember correctly, Mewtwo and Charizard have among the strongest U-throws in Smash, and they KO from around 120%.

Nihiloor is an intriguing character with good “heavyweight” uses of Luma. While I enjoyed Jackie Chan more, I still liked Nihiloor and think his set has solid potential if you were willing to invest time in it, during the editing period after the submission deadline in 3 weeks’ time. Nice job Rychu!

JAMCON NOMINATION:

Spoiler: KingMan.EXE

KingMan.EXE is another “solid” addition to go with Roxanne, Honchkrow, Hopper and Fruity Yummy Mummy, and I prefer him slightly to those sets for it. While I’d say most of those sets had marginally stronger concepts, I do think KingMan had a stronger melee game all around, perhaps the best among your Jamcons. Moves like D-tilt, U-tilt, F-air and D-air that have enough relevancy with his minions, and his entire grab game was solid in a slightly unexpected way (when you said you liked KingMan’s grab game, I thought it was going to involve hard interactions with his chess pieces!). U-throw was unexpectedly creative and something I liked as what is essentially a vertical “cargo” throw where you can pick your knockback and potentially get reads off the foe’s DI! It’s a little extra appealing to me, because I have my fair share of U-throws that put the thrower in the air with their opponent. Also, if foes come into being grabbed expecting to DI U-throw, does that mean you could play off their reaction to have them DI unfavourably for KingMan’s F-throw and B-throw? For instance, maybe make the latter KO earlier near the ledge? Or F-throw keep the foe closer for follow-ups.

F-Smash is also an ‘odd’ but unique charge and store you can apply for your next Smash, kind of reminds me of Iguana’s charge-and-store Smashes. I was a bit confused on F-Smash’s follow-up being usable in the air at first - but it feels like something you could play off in fun ways on a future set, using Smashes first to strengthen a fighter’s air game.

It would be a crime not to talk about KingMan without going into his Specials! Though a simple enough minion set, I appreciate all the touches you made to prevent them from being overpowered. This includes making the Pawn’s attack deal low shield stun (but still solid shield damage) so you can’t easily lock the foe in, Rook’s solid nature not being too absurd when there are situations it can lose its solid nature to prevent cheese, and Knight’s hitbox being cleverly structured to condition foes into passing behind it to approach KingMan, where they can be intercepted. But above all, I rather liked the “control area” that prevents pieces from operating outside of a certain area from KingMan. So unlike other minions sets, he can’t really use his pieces to camp or have them cover his recovery when he’s too far off-stage for his pieces to operate (outside of using Up Special). It’s the kind of control measure I’d like to see being implemented in minion sets in general for balance.

Spoiler: Zuko

Having started and finished watching Avatar just a month ago (before it got taken off Netflix on September the 30th), Zuko is a hype character choice, and it’s great that all of his moves minus his throws (for understandable reasons) have GIFs attached to them. It might not be entirely appropriate to have GIFs on the throws if they have nothing to do with the attack’s animation, but the temptation to show off cool GIFs is understandable.

Giving Zuko a stance-changing move to switch between swords and firebending for his Standards and Smashes is unexpected, but does make a fair bit of sense for his character when the alternative is giving them different sets. Or doing an Aang in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl and only giving him fire-bending. As far as melee goes, Zuko is an improvement over your previous sets for talking a bit more about the purpose of the melee attacks: what they can combo into and whether they’re good kill moves and so on. It’s also good that you’ve elaborated on stats more. It’s a gradual improvement, so good job there!

There is some wonky frame data on the first parts of the set, but everything in the sword moveset and after that is fine. I’ll go by the specifics here:

-Neutral Special has fairly slow start-up for what seems to be a conventional projectile. Something like frame 15-18 (the latter similar to Mario’s Fireball) would be more reasonable. For its current start-up of 37, it would definitely be justified dealing a lot of hitstun to start combos, or being good against shields, but I’m not sure if that’s what you were going for.

-Frame 40 is extremely slow for a recovery, would be the 3rd slowest in Smash after Lucario and Dedede’s, and 2 seconds is a long time to commit to a recovery. For a recovery with no hitbox, the start-up should be instant and not take long for Zuko to reach his destination - recoveries with no hitboxes and that move on fixed angles tend to be very exploitable in Smash. Something like heavy armour or a token hitbox would help; even something that can be used as a finisher, like Mario’s Up Special if you wanted that.

-DD Jab is rather powerful, a frame 4 hitbox that stays out until frame 10 and recovers on frame 16. For reference, Roy’s Jab comes out on frame 5, is not active for as long and recovers on frame 23. With its lingering hitbox, Zuko’s jab would make a decent anti-approach option, though he already has his Side Special for that. I’d say the Jab should be slower in start-up, roughly frame 7-8 like Ganondorf or Palutena’s Jabs.

-DD F-tilt should probably recover later at around frame 32.

-F-Smash feels like a Marth or Samus esque F-Smash - fast on frame 10, but unsafe if it whiffs.

-Frame 14 isn’t too slow for DD D-Smash - something like frame 20 would be more accurate.

Characters Organized by Move Startup

docs.google.com

Characters Organized by FAF

docs.google.com

Frame data can be tricky to get right. I’d recommend keeping the above google doc links close to you - the first one lists the starting lag on each character’s move, while the second one lists their FAF (first actionable frame, when they can act after using a move) minus Specials. Both docs were compiled by Almand. If you’ve got a move in mind that’s comparable to an existing smash move and want to compare its frame data, you can use the list. It’s also a good reference to how fast or slow a certain type of move can be. Hope those links help you!

While Zuko is an improvement, I did personally prefer V1 and even Spike for presenting what I thought were more interesting concepts. It’s commendable that you took it upon yourself to make extra inputs (especially with the GIFs), just that sets with 2 attacks in 1 generally need to be justified in having extra inputs to feel compelling (not that the concept or execution are bad here, though), with Zuko being a pretty simple set ideas-wise. But anyway, nice work here - I’m hoping that others will hop on to read this set too, especially the likes of Froy, Slavic and Rychu as I know they’ve all watched Avatar as well.

Spoiler: Bubble Witch Marin (set is below this post)

I never expected a Marin remake so suddenly, but it’s well-due: it’s been exactly 10 contents since the original, and a lot of content has been out (mostly by you), so you have a lot more to work with for attack inspiration. It’s kind of like a 10th anniversary celebration, huh?

Marin is… a surprisingly melee-orientated character for a fighter with a weak melee! Or rather, melee-orientated for a character from a franchise with a lot of focus on MYM’ian stuff like projectiles and constructs. But while Marin’s concepts are tame yet risky, primarily the Lift Bubble that lets Marin move “freely” through the air and use grounded moves while airborne, the set is always conscious of that and manages to balance each move very well, so that Marin can never do anything truly absurd without risk to it. She doesn’t have any moves that deal particularly strong upwards knockback, has mostly slow start-up that’s assisted by the Neutral Special bubbles, needs good positioning with her spikes like D-air and neat D-throw, and has to be particularly careful when using the Lift Bubble offensively because it’s tied into her recovery. I also like that the Lift Bubble extends her “hurtbox,” that’s another neat drawback from you coming straight off KingMan. I would say that Pegasus and even the likes of Fruity Yummy Mummy had more compelling concepts, but Marin’s strength lies in her airtight execution, and I can definitely respect and understand sticking close to the original Marin’s established “powerset” and making her defensive-orientated. Heck, the new Marin even has the same Specials as the original! (but updated and tuned differently, of course)

This set also had some strong animations, another trait in common with the original: the crawling animation in the stats, Neutral Special’s attack description (and the translucent material/magic from the staff in different attacks, a nice, consistent animation detail), Side Special’s exaggerated swing that’s fitting as her “finisher” against bosses, Up Special’s relaxed animation, and the throws and pummel. Funny enough, my vision for a Marin 0.2 was creating bubbles based off the other witches’ powers, like an ice bubble or ribbon bubble to swing between bubbles, but mentioning the other witches having a hand in assisting with the creation of some of Marin’s attacks is a neat touch. Speaking of other witches, it’s funny how Marin’s set contrasts with Dahlia’s in some ways, and I’m sure it was intended: Marin has slow start-up on her attacks, Dahlia has quick start-up, and both of them have similar Up Specials and grabs. And funny enough, Marin seems to fight at close-quarters (oddly strange for her) while Dahlia uses minions.

While I don’t think Marin is going to take the silver medal a second time, she’s still a very solid set and shows that you don’t need to get super ambitious with the ideas to remake an accomplished character, and comes at a great time in MYM’s history. Maybe one day Lizard will get a remake? (though Iguana could technically be considered a Lizard remake) Great job here; I’m looking forward to when you can make the time and inspiration to throw out the full intro!

 

[UserShadow7989]

"I'll... think of something clever to say here later. F-for now, please enjoy this new set! Once you're done reading the Jamcon entries, at least."

o O o O o

 

[UserShadow7989]

Kureiji Ollie bubbyboytoo

I was concerned at first that Neutral Special would give her infinite recovery, but with her low weight and a designated and signposted 'respawn' point she has to buy herself space to set up it shouldn't be an issue. Conceptually, Neutral Special is a great move- I love the idea of putting down a predetermined teleport point and having a neat attack attached to coming out of it in exchange for committing both the time to set up and locking in that point until you've used it.

A more pressing issue (the only one I can take with the whole set really) is that the Side Special debuff (and the Down Special self-debuff) might be a bit numerically overkill, the former notably against slow but strong heavyweight types. A few frames make a huge difference, and the debuff would be a bit lopsided in usefulness because of it. I'd recommend a smaller multiplier, with a minimum frame change of 2 or so and a maximum change of... 10? I'd ask someone more familiar with frame data than myself for the exact numbers. Down Special's case is less of an issue since it can be assumed Ollie's frame data is balanced around it to work as intended.

More positively, I do love the concept of these two moves. Side Special is a reward attached to a combo ender that adds a decision to your combo chains that isn't connected to making reads or doing the math on what does more damage at a given point in the stock, adding in an option that lets you make future combos easier to start/keep going by hampering their frame data and therefore their get-off-me options. Down Special is a stance switch that trades speed for reach on certain inputs, which is a useful and interesting exchange for such a combo-heavy character, and the individual moves often have more to them than that.

The bread and butter moves feel well-thought out, with a few evergreen options purposefully tucked into moves that are unaffected by Down Special to ensure Ollie still has necessary tools to escape bad situations or do what she needs to do. Sourspots are used not just as weaknesses or blindspots for some moves, but instead to make moves more multi-purpose, such as Forward Smash (which plays nice into Down Special's stance changing option and circumvents an issue that Marth has with his desirable sweetspots being too hard to space properly, Ollie having the ability to manipulate those hitboxes to improve ease of use).

The aerial section appealed to me for being an interesting weakness for Ollie; the moves themselves aren't bad, but are under-tuned compared to her ground game in conjunction with her poorer air stats, giving her something interesting to do in the air while not undercutting it as a legitimate hurdle for her. I do wonder if the throws could've been made a touch more interesting, the section being serviceable if very basic, but there's nothing explicitly wrong with any of the set here as-is beyond the above numerical concerns. It's the sort of consistently solid set with an interesting core that I've come to expect from you, bubby; excellent work!


The Creature GolisoPower

There's been a decent few sets over the course of Make Your Move that have had quirks limiting their mobility, and even a few forays into the idea this contest, including your Shin Godzilla and Torgo's Gamera. I've always been leery about it given how game-changing it can be, especially having limited ability to enter the air voluntarily, but The Creature has potentially the best take on it I've seen so far with its ability to produce tentacle tethers to traverse platforms and stick to the side of the stage or odd vantage points to make use of your aerials (with its careful stipulations to make sure nobody's going to stick to the underside of a stage indefinitely).

Moving on to the other central mechanic, The Creature sliding between three different 'forms' is fairly well done. Allowing it to keep its mobility allows its high mass form to be a reward with its weight, especially late game when damage has gone up, while subverting the early game combo fodder downside heavyweights face (unless you're really stomping the foe in which case it's a nice balancing factor to prevent you from snowballing too much). The ability to slim down after is appreciated for when the larger size would be a hindrance, or for when you want to access tools that change depending on stage like Side Special and Down Special.

Speaking of which, giving The Creature effectively 4 extra Special Moves is pretty ambitious for a Jamcon set, and I have to say I like the pattern that The Creature and Ollie have set in that regard. It even dips its toes into more rarely touched genres (one of which has actually seen a set make use of it this contest): mind control. Up Special is a fairly brilliant application of it, as making The Creature teleport itself to the victim's position as part of the recovery prevents most of the cheese strats you could use such an ability for. It even serves as a way to follow the foe into the air in the case of opponents who can camp from above, bypassing one of the major issues its lack of jumps would normally cause.

Down Special's options include an invisibility effect paired with some very early i-frames and tied to a meter, making it a great way to get the drop on opponents horror movie style. The way the offensive and defensive options between Side and Down Special is great, lending to each form having its own feel. Form 1 using trickery and surprise to obtain what it needs to grow, 2 using its balance of speed and strength to sling itself around with sharpened points both dissuading attacks and enhancing its own body blows, and 3 abusing its excessive mass to unleash hell on the stage while powering through attacks through sheer toughness and ablative meat.

The three stages have an effect on a decent few moves, either directly changing the hitbox up like Dash Attack, Down Smash, and Back Aerial, or just combining well with the different specials available to different stages. I would've liked to see a bit more interplay between the standards and (non-UThrow) throws in the set, but Up Throw and the Aerials are happy to pick up the slack.

More than making up for it is how visually and mechanically interesting each input is on its own merits. FTilt, FSmash, and Up Throw are stand outs in that regard, and the entirety of the Aerials section makes the most of the mechanics as a through-line to make it especially interesting (DAir and BAir specifically are highlights for me in this set). The throws might be the only section that's a bit weak, but they do what they need to and have their own niches, on top of Up Throw playing nicely into the mechanic and the animations being as top notch as the rest.

I actually don't have a lot I can criticize here beyond maybe number balance that I'm not qualified to comment on (there might be a little too much healing going on for The Creature among its moves paired with Stage 3 giving it some mean Tough Guy + armor, and there might be odd balance between the three stages, but I can't be sure). This is an amazing set even before accounting for the time constraints on making it. All in all, a solid set!

 

[GolisoPower]

This Is Thriller Night
Kureiji Ollie by bubbyboytoo

Damn, our second Hololive set in MYM! Now I haven't read Calli's yet, but I'd say that this is the better one of the two to start reading. Also because, well, this is JamCon, so...

Anyways, I like the way Neutral Special works, giving her a sort of "anchor recovery" like with my Chosen Undead set's Bonfire from last contest, but the way this works here seems to give her some better potential in terms of offense thanks to that attack. I love how you can detach your arm to increase your range, it seems to give her much better spacing potential than Marth, and puts her on par with the likes of Corrin and maybe even the Belmonts! The way Side Special works definitely gives Ollie a means to assert dominance over even faster characters like Sonic and Captain Falcon. It would certainly give her potential in terms of catching opponents who attempt to strike you while you're moving, and perhaps could leave them open to Arm Stance Side Smash! Speaking of which, I honestly never noticed that there was a sword through her head. Really good idea to use that in some of her attacks. Up Special having a Sephiroth-style hitbox to it with the center-most part being the most powerful is a unique detail, though that's mainly because she's ripping her head off with the sword attached to do it. I honestly feel like this is a great Up Special for ladder combos, mainly because she brings enemies upwards with her if the head part hits, potentially making for some flashy kill confirms.

Also, Ollie has a lot of pep and energy in her animations, and most certainly takes advantage of her undead physiology to fight, ranging from detaching her arm to detaching her head with a cutsie flair you'd expect from a comedian idol. It's interesting how Z-air is locked behind the Arm Stance, though: if there ever was a time where I'd try my hand at a Yoshimitsu set, this would definitely serve as inspiration. I'd also would probably max out my volume when playing her just to hear her beautiful screams. (Sr Pelo really messed up my sense of humor lol)

I'd say this debut set for Ollie in MYM-Live is overall solid! Akasupa-worthy material, my friend!

Deadass Discovered A New Dimension To Play Chess In
KingMan.exe by U UserShadow7989

I will say this upfront: I'm absolute cowschet at chess. That being said, this is a lot to unpack in a good way and I can understand why Kat nominated this set. It took me a while to read because there was so much to do with the Chess Pieces, but I managed to do it!

The pieces feel distinct from one another for good reason, and the way they interact with one another is also really fun. The Pawn is your basic jack-of-all-trades piece that is all about attacking anybody who's too close to it and using stage control. The Knights are your more aggressive units with their hopping and are often used to stop direct approaches and generate a shockwave that King Man can use to set up for good kill confirms, whether it uses his pieces or not. And lastly, the Rook is the most defensive unit and is best for defending him from incoming attacks. All those put together, you have a nice army at your Beck & Call to play whatever-D chess you want with your opponent.

Even outside the Specials, your tilts are just as important to your pieces! Your ability to detonate your Rook with Side Smash sounds like a great high-risk high-reward tactic that pays off if you manage to land it! I also love how F-tilt also pushes Chess Pieces around without interrupting their attacks to really increase King Man's pressure game on the opponent! Though, this does make me concerned that you could knock a Knight into your opponent, then knock a Rook to the ledge to use that Side Smash blast for a cheap edge-blocking kill. I would not want to play against that, just saying.

But even without the minions, King Man seems to stand out quite well on his own, too: he has that regal feel to him and has just as much bite as he does bark, with a powerful projectile Side Smash and a Down throw bury that show's he's not hesitant on getting his hands dirty. Down Smash breaking shields doesn't sound so scary by itself, but with how many Chess Pieces you may have out on the stage beating your opponent up on all sides, it sounds downright horrifying when it comes to pressure.

You've got this whole JamCon in a solid "check", my friend. We only need a few days until we find out if it becomes a checkmate. Nice play!

It's Like Falling In Love (NOMINATION ENDING ACHIEVED!)
Catarina Claes by Katapultar

So lemme just get this out of the way: just learning that this set got posted made me want to binge Season 2. As for the set itself...if I thought KingMan.exe was mind-chuggingly complex, here comes Catarina to blow it out the water!

The Earth Bump Special may be pathetic on the surface, fittingly so for an airhead like Catarina, but beneath that sad microhill is a scary set-up attack. I mean, sure, you need to charge the special to actually reap the benefits, but hey, y'all've got your harem to back you up, so it's no big deal. Speaking of which, your rogue's gallery of friends/lovers that you can summon on your side is really deep and...I guess we could call it complex, there's a lot to feel at the moment, and it's all positive thus far. Also, that pumpkin, tho: this is more versatile than Peach's turnips, and you can already do so much with that, too! Z-dropping alongside harem member magic is gonna be a lot to bounce around, in all honesty. DSpec is really damn powerful when at full stacks, and the conditions needed to trigger certain effects give it a layer of versatility that should be appreciated.

The fact that you can summon other characters for your other attacks is also fun to think about and makes me think about how I could implement it in my own sets. I love how Side Smash works, in addition to how it has a different attack based on the angle. It almost reminds me of Peach’s Side Smash in a way. N-air changing based on whether or not you have the pumpkin really reinforces the point I made earlier about it being better than Peach’s turnips. And for the last of my highlights, D-air and Jab. The fact that they’re different based on which friend you call is interesting, and I love the different applications of all of them based on elements.

I’d say you’ve avoided a Doom Flag here, Kat! Nice work! Depending on how Nihiloor turns out, you might receive the “Nomination Ending”!

Nihiloor Fhtagn...Nihiloor Fhtagn...
Nihiloor by Rychu

And now we come to what I think might be our first Dungeons & Dragons set in MYM! Unless, of course, somebody made Mordenkainen beforehand or something. Anyway…

I like how the Intellect Devourer is Nihiloor’s own take on Rosalina’s Luma mechanic that has its own set of Specials to deal with, unlike with Luma who’s only used for a select few Specials. It really takes Rosalina’s playstyle and gives it a more nightmarish twist, especially when using Neutral Special. An attack that both damages the opponent and their shield and slows down the latter’s regeneration? Good lordy, it’s already got more shield break potential than most heavy-hitters in Ultimate, and that’s saying something! Next up is Mind Blast, which is...well, even if it’s brief, you’re never gonna jump over this guy, just sayin’. Sure it takes a while until it gets back to full strength and gains the range you provide in the image, but this is concerning to me, as an opponent could be too distracted by the Intellect Devourer attacking them just enough for Nihiloor to cheese its way to using Neutral Special at full strength again. Not to mention, the fact that it stuns grounded opponents and forces them to tumble if in the air sounds like it might be a tad annoying to fight against, even if they aren’t as strong as other means, but don’t even get me started on Down Special: I know it’s bound to Steve’s building boundaries, but now you have to deal with Hunger of Hadar and an Intellect Devourer while Nihiloor patiently waits until Neutral Special is at full strength again. These are some amazing ideas for the Specials and I love them, don’t get me wrong, but the way they work together in tandem is...well, how do I put it? Nightmare-inducing to go up against?

But going into the rest of the set, this is actually really easy to soak in after two sets that require brains with more wrinkles than prunes to read, yet it gives me enough detail to know how effective it is on the battlefield. The way it moves and how it fights sounds almost alien and has just enough physical strikes to make the magic parts not too oversaturated in the set. Down Smash and F-air both really stand out to me animation-wise, as it really plays up the ties to Hadar that Nihiloor has more than anything. Speaking of the latter move, I just kind of realized how similar the Creature is to a Gibbering Mouther. Huh.

Out of everything, this set ties with Ollie as a set that’s easy to digest yet has a concise and fun kit to work with. The concerns I have with the Specials working together for cheap tactics prevent this set from being a total Nat-20, but it more than makes up for it with its nightmarish flavor, its unique spin on a Luma-style minion, and its terrifying shield pressure potential with Side Special.

 

[ForwardArrow]

The final JamCon's nomination/comment deadline has been extended to November 7th.

This is because as most people are working on their final sets, I'd rather free up everyone's schedules a bit for that purpose. Its also a jumping off point for people who want to get commenting for voting period, so I think having it end as editing/voting begins works well. Best of luck everyone!

 

[Slavic]

There're awful, terrible things in this world, I know that now...

​

…But there're a lot of things worth protecting too!​

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Madoka Kaname

At last, all 5 Madoka characters have movesets! I wasn’t expecting this less orthodox take on Madoka, feeling like a mix between her (technically non-existent) time as a magical girl plus her experiences throughout the Madoka anime and the Rebellion movie. I love the use of the series’ abstract imagery in the set, especially to represent Madoka’s friends (like they’re not necessarily real) and for Madoka’s Aerials. Madoka’s MP mechanic works particularly well for her characterization, letting you represent both the cutesy and dark aspects of her character (series). The animations are also really well done and have some nice details to them, like darker imagery of Unstable U-air and D-air contrasting Madoka’s cutesy posing.

Repeatedly landing a counter is an interesting way of going about an “upgrade” mechanic, and the trade-off design of Madoka’s set means she is never too weak or too strong outside of her well-deserved Ultimate Form. Having to land a counter 10 times in one stock to reach Ultimate form might be unfeasible outside of countering predictable projectiles, but if necessary you could always adjust it to have Madoka go Unstable after getting 3 or 4 MP and going Ultimate with 6 or 8. The melee is well-designed with MP in mind; Madoka’s 0MP tilts are strongest and don’t lead into her Aerials easily, but said Aerials aren’t very strong at 0MP, whereas at Safe and Unstable levels it reverses to tilts being weak but potential combo-starters into Madoka’s stronger Aerials. Speaking of Aerials, they were my favourite part of the set, and not just for their great animations and imagery: N-air was particularly fun, F-air is interesting for its arcing hitbox and D-air as a quick multi-hit. Even B-air has good mix-up with F-air as a shield-damager, and U-air’s usefulness changing with MP levels. Just for the record, N-air’s lingering hitboxes do vanish when Madoka lands (like any other Aerial hitbox), right?

I do think Kyoko’s Down Special counter is rather powerful at lower MP levels, a 3 second counter hitbox that doesn’t stop Madoka from moving or attacking if I’m understanding it correctly. Even with 45 frames of start-up and Madoka having poor Aerials at 0 MP, it’s still incredibly powerful and Madoka has little reason not to use it if she has the time for it. She can edgeguard offensive recoveries with absurd ease (more so than Sora intercepting Sephiroth’s recovery with his counter), or cover her own recovery which is weaker and more vulnerable at 0 MP - which is more than fine, actually, Madoka would need to commit to starting Kyoko’s counter anyway so she’d lose some altitude. I would probably reduce the duration of Kyoko’s counter - or maybe it only works on the ground and during Madoka’s Up Special, maybe it gets disabled during Madoka’s attacks. Alternatively, what if Kyoko could be hit during her start-up, just like how your friends can be hit out of their tilts? That would actually synergize well with Madoka’s essential Neutral Special counter, so she could mix up the two with their different timings - foes expecting to interrupt Kyoko’s start-up might end up getting Neutral Special countered instead.

Madoka has an interesting grab game, and I appreciate the cake song scene for that extra characterization and surrealism, but it does feel like one of the weaker sections in her set and a tad wonky. The aesthetics behind Madoka’s pummel make it faster at 0MP or with Ultimate Form, so it’s less feasible to say, get a 4-fruit F-throw to keep the foe at close-range to lead into a powerful unstable F-air (though you could do the same set-up to lead into a powerful D-tilt at 0MP). Maybe if the foe escapes the grab your fruit progress is saved? Then again, the grab is pretty unsafe if it doesn’t hit. B-throw-wise, I could see that leading into Madoka’s Side Special in favourable situations, that could be worth mentioning as it's an interesting throw. U-throw doesn’t seem too rewarding with extra fruits aside from damage - perhaps, in a similar vein to Enya’s U-throw, putting fruits on the cake could keep it out as a very short-lived platform? That would benefit Madoka’s U-air from any MP, and still have the ability to mix up an U-Smash for its duration or U-tilt at lower MP.

Also, while I rarely bring up Final Smashes in comments, I do think Madoka’s Final Smash is very underpowered, being weaker than most Final Smashes until you reach 10MP, and you only get 1MP after using it. Maybe it should increase Madoka’s MP by 5? I do like Final Smashes that are tied to or benefit from the user’s mechanics, though.

While I prefer Mami of the two magical girls, Madoka isn’t too far behind and is definitely one of your best sets! Like Mami, Madoka is a very elegant set and one you should be proud of no matter what. Also, props for taking the time to do a stage and boss write-up! Those are pretty rare these days, any sincere boss write-up is a real treasure.

 

[Slavic]

Spoiler: Syndrome

Syndrome by BKupa666 is a set I’ve needed to read for QUITE some time now, considering we’re at the end of the contest and remains one of the hypest choices of this run for me personally. And Syndrome doesn’t disappoint! Syndrome has a massive minion in the Omnidroid, the big selling point in the set, and manages to keep it from being either too weak or too broken. The entire concept of Syndrome’s set revolves around the Omnidroid and allowing the foe to program something to counter themselves. Of course, that also provides rich counterplay, asking the opponent if they can manage to program the Omnidroid in a way they can abuse, just like in The Incredibles? It’s a fun take on AI to keep it context sensitive and true to the source material.

I also like that even though Syndrome is a highly mobile fighter in the air, he doesn’t necessarily become this crazy combo character once he leaves the stage. His ground game and aerial game are both serviceable but deliberately designed to need Omnidroid to pull off big combos. It’s a nice way to highlight weaknesses while solo when compared to characters like Ice Climbers or Shigaraki, where Syndrome can technically do everything he needs to do but misses the anchor point for his setups, pressure, stage control, etc.

Really the only major sticking point for me with Syndrome is the Parrot Drone. It feels a bit awkward to just tack onto the Omnidroid move and while I do understand its place in the set, I feel like it’s counterintuitive to what makes Syndrome cool. Syndrome can program his Omnidroid just like the opponent, requiring him to perform specific actions that can put him in danger while still keeping the robot a threat to foes. Having a beacon that can just command the Omnidroid where to go takes away that gameplay from both Syndrome and the foe, negating any effort they might have to steer clear of it. Again, this is obviously the point of the move, I just think it’s a detail that could be removed to keep the spirit of the Omnidroid alive (but also it’s not my set, so I can’t tell you what the spirit of it is, of course).

A few balancing things do stick out, the biggest (literally) being Syndrome’s grab. It’s impractically large and slow, and it does work out in the end more thanks to Zero-Point Energy giving Syndrome a slightly more standard grab. The actual Omnidroid itself seems fine I think? A big, polarizing minion is always hard to picture and while the Omnidroid is only decently hard to take out (I’m under the assumption it can’t grab ledges?) the foe still has to contend with Syndrome who has decent weight and great aerial movement. It might be a little overwhelming, especially with the fact that Syndrome is still a threat without the Omnidroid. I don’t have any concrete ideas to fix this but would at least like to mention it.

Regardless, Syndrome is a set that lived up to his hype. This was an excellent take on an AI that sounds more reliable and functional than most MYM sets. The set is delightfully filled with references and feels incredibly in-character for Buddy.

Spoiler: The Huntress

The Huntress by Kholdstare is yet another of these early sets I’m overdue on reading (basically every set at this point) and after reading through Syndrome she made a nice pallet cleanser (get it???). The Huntress isn’t exactly a short set but is front-loaded, with the meat of the attacks described in only a few sweet paragraphs. Props to building on ideas from another MYMer directly, we’re always grabbing inspiration from each other but it’s nice to use and alter the specific individual mechanics like the pallets or totems.

For the most part, Huntress is a fun take on a heavyweight swordy, in fact very similar to how I’d imagine someone like Hector from Fire Emblem playing in Smash assuming he went on a murderous rampage. While I appreciate the length of the later moves as someone catching up on dozens of sets, I do think the melee game could be fleshed out more. My favorite section ends up actually being the Smash attacks, I really love the different mechanics they have and the way they can lend to some unique mindgames.

The area I’m least convinced about are the pallets themselves, a shame as they’re the part of the set that was built upon old ideas. The pallets are rarely a benefit to the Huntress and more just a bonus mechanic that other players can choose to engage with. Personally, I’d take some creative liberties and allow the Huntress to use the pallets to wall off and trap players rather than the other way around. She does have a few options for dealing with the pallets that can give her an advantage such as utilizing her hatchets and Up Special but ultimately I don’t even know if it’s worth it for opponents to engage with her mechanics.

For a more simple set there’s some very fun ideas with the Huntress, having a lot of neat ways to trap and trick the opponent in her Specials and Smashes. However, she does suffer from a lack of detail, especially relating to the gameplay applications of her later melee game. I’d also want to see more investment on the grab game as the set does go out of its way to mention it being one of her strongest moves. FInally, the pallets don’t make as good a core as I think the set thinks they do, even if it’s an interesting way to connect with another author’s work. Still, Huntress is not a bad set by any means, just one who could be expanded on.

Spoiler: Naganadel

Naganadel by WeirdChillFever was a set I initially wasn’t sold on, mostly due to my own personal thoughts on how Naganadel would play. That said, I shifted my thinking and Naganadel has grown on me more as a set. I’ve always viewed that line exclusively as superglue bottles, so the syringe aspect took me some time to swallow. Once I did, Naganadel was a very pleasant set! It’s kind of surprising Naganadel was only around 7k words, it didn’t feel particularly short by any means and a lot of the attacks are well fleshed out even through the melee game.

This is a very fun way of resource management, not necessarily harder or easier than someone like Inkling but a more interactive management. I love the idea that Naganadel can both inject and extract poison from the opponent (something I might keep in mind if I ever get around to Injection Fairy Lily). The way that many attacks actually become stronger once Naganadel is out of poison but lose their range / utility is very fun and changes the motivation and method of toxic management. That said, neither Sludge Bomb nor Dragon Rush mention what happens should Naganadel’s tank be empty, especially notable as one of those is responsible for recovering.

I am left wanting for more of the ‘adhesive’ aspect from Naganadel. Obviously its Poison-type is a big part of it ingame but the glue is what makes Naganadel such an interesting Ultra Beast. That said, there aren’t any glue attacks or abilities in Pokemon to reinforce this, so I understand there’s only so much that can be done. The throws tend to be a bit on the underdeveloped side and could focus a bit more on specific combos. Additionally, Forward Throw’s power doubling without any poison might actually be a bit on the strong side for a throw.

Naganadel is an interesting set and I believe our first Ultra Beast (don’t check me on it). Naganadel sticks to a specific aspect of its design with its syringe-like body and does a nice job at building upon that throughout the set. It doesn’t feel quite alien enough in my opinion for an Ultra Beast, though I really don’t know how to even go about fixing it, and details do fall away towards the end (and smh still no extras this far into the contest). A set I like but have a lot of nitpicks with, it’s still good work!

 

[WeirdChillFever]

Daisy, Her Father’s Green​

Introduction​

Daisy is a lonesome golem, appearing in the online MOBA League of Legends. Found by one of the Champions, Ivern, when she was deeply wounded, the Green Father gave her a new heart made from a river pebble. From this moment on, Daisy is Ivern’s trusted and life-long friend.

In League of Legends, Daisy is not a Champion of her own, but instead features as Ivern’s ultimate, which summons her as a temporarily controllable unit. In Smash Bros., she takes most of the abilities of Ivern and his closest allies, but combines his protective magic with impressive brawling capabilities and attacks inspired by the other golem-like Champions on the roster for a Jungler playstyle in Smash!

This set is made as a Secret Santa surprise for FrozenRoy. The character chosen is inspired by Zyra, a set that Roy made in MYM18 which featured another plant-based LoL-character. Hopefully I can do the series justice.

Stats​

Daisy is big. Her height is approximately the same as Donkey Kong’s and her weight matches K. Rool’s.

As a result, her jumps aren’t too high. They’re not Little Mac or Steve tier, and her ground jump is higher than her mid-air jump, but Daisy is not known for her mobility.

Well, there is one aspect in which Daisy has a high mobility: Fall speed. Daisy has the second highest fall speed in the game, tied with Little Mac, Dedede and Piranha Plant.

Her ground movement is not too shabby, but definitely on the slower side. Her walk speed matches that of King K. Rool, which is very much at the lower end of the cast, while her run speed matches that of Dedede’s, again putting her at place 75th out of 88.

Her air movement is only slightly better, with an air speed matching Diddy Kong’s, putting her at 70th out of all the cast.

My dear friends, we have a heavyweight on our hands.

Special Moves


Down B: Friend of the Forest​

Daisy crouches down and aims her right hand with her palm aimed towards the ground. She then twists her wrist to allow her golem energy to flow into the earth.

This energy creates a vine that acts as the boundary of a circular area called a grove. This grove is the size of a Battlefield platform. When the move is completed, which happens relatively quickly, the vine quickly glows before fading again to its regular dull color. When it glows, it deals 3% damage and light knockback. Groves cannot be created in the air. Daisy, as a Sentinel, has a larger connection to the earth than to the sky.

The initial 3% damage is, of course, not the main use of the move. Once the grove is completed, a monster appears in the grove as Daisy’s minion. Unlike most minions in Make Your Move, monsters will not leave the grove and will consider it as their camp. This is much like how monsters behave in the jungle of League of Legends. In fact, the behavior of the monsters in Smash is very similar to their behavior in League of Legends.

Like in that game, monsters only leave the grove when they are attacked. If they are attacked, the monster will target the nearest opponent who recently dealt damage to it. The grove’s placement still plays an important role though, since monsters will give up on chasing and attacking an opponent standing farther away than a Battlefield platform away from the edge of the grove.

Of great importance is the fact Daisy cannot deal damage to monsters, making the minion-play different from minions in other sets where minions are a double-edged sword. Since Daisy cannot attack monsters as part of her Friend of the Forest skill, they will not attack her either.

Once the grove is completed and the first monster has spawned, the vine slowly starts glowing again. This glow starts at the place Daisy created the grove, and spreads clockwise through the circular vine. Every time the vine completely glows and the first monster spawned from the grove is still alive, the next monster in the monster camp lineup is summoned. This happens until the full monster camp has been summoned.

Two types of monster camps can be created using a grove:

Raptor camps feature the quick and nimble Raptors. These monsters resemble birds, but without any feathers but with a beak to make up for the lack of flight. A raptor camp first summons a Crimson Raptor, before then summoning a regular raptor every 3 seconds. At maximum, one Crimson Raptors and five raptors can be on screen at the same time, making them excellent for overwhelming opponents.

A single raptor has 7.2% worth of HP, whereas the Crimson Raptor has 17.6% worth of HP. This makes them decently bulky and should make opponents conscious on which moves should be used to kill Raptors in one shot, lest Daisy defends her turf well and suddenly has five small birds and a big bird all out for blood.

For their attacks, Crimson Raptors fire a short-ranged (three gridsquares) fireball that deals 6.7% damage and low knockback. Crimson Raptors can fire these fireballs at decent speed, but it’s far from spamming. The fireballs travel quite slow to compensate for their relatively high damage.

Regular raptors don’t have the luxury of a ranged attack and simply peck the opponent to tackle them for a weak attack that deals 3% damage. Their attacks have the speed of Isabelle’s jab, which can quickly overwhelm opponents, especially when combined with their surprisingly rapid walk speed and ability to jump up two grid-squares, allowing them to continue the chase on the lower Battlefield platforms.

Raptors are ferocious little monsters though that don’t give up easily. With their high mobility they can and will chase an opponent and will not easily forget the opponent that has harmed them. Of course, that is, if they are provoked and not killed in one hit in the process.

Thing is, Raptors are pretty small and with conscious use of moves, can usually be killed off in one hit. What’s more, the five seconds between each spawn means that Raptors can be chipped off one by one. That is, a smart opponent will try that. A grove with all six raptors unharmed is a death sentence for any opponent triggering their Cucco-like rage.

In contrast, Krug camps feature the bulky and slow Krug monsters. These monsters resemble stone golems, except without arms or legs. They’re closest resemblance is the Pokémon Avalugg.

Krug camps consist of one large Ancient Krug summoned at the start, and one medium Krug summoned ten seconds later.. The Krugs are thus not as plentiful as Raptors at first glance, but appearances can be deceiving: Krugs split into two smaller Krugs when defeated.

The Ancient Krug splits into two regular Krugs when defeated, whereas regular Krugs split into two Mini-Krugs when defeated.

An Ancient Krug has 17.8% worth of HP, a regular Krug has 8.75% worth of HP and Mini Krugs have 1.05% worth of HP. The total camp thus has 42.55 HP worth of Krug to destroy. No small feat.

Luckily, as said before, the monsters don’t all spawn at once. The second Krug (worth approximately 11 HP), isn’t summoned until ten seconds after the Ancient Krug has appeared.

What’s more, the HP sponging capability of Krugs is balanced by its other stats, most notably its slow speed that hinders both its attack speed and regular speed. They’re also far from mobile, having no jump capabilities and easily forgetting an opponent, unlike the vengeful little Raptors.

To offset this lack of energy, Krugs are more powerful than Raptors. The Ancient Krug especially has a powerful, but predictable move in which they lift their body up like a prancing horse, before slamming down their body for a blazingly strong attack that deals 22% damage and high knockback.

Regular Krugs aren’t that strong though, only attacking by means of butting their head (body?) forward in a small lunge, which deals 6% damage and medium horizontal knockback.

Mini Krugs are even more pathetic in their power, only jumping up and down to hinder opponents with their stone body, dealing 3.9% damage.

The big bodies of the Krugs does mean that the hitboxes they do put out are far from small and can hit an unsuspecting opponent despite their lack of direct rage towards them.

The type of camp the grove creates is dependent on whether the input is smashed or simply pressed. Simply pressing the Down B command yields a Krug camp, whereas a Smashed Down B command yields a Raptor camp.

Once all monsters in a camp are defeated or ten seconds after the last monster is summoned, the final monster appears. For Krug camps, this monster is a Blue Sentinel.

For Raptor camps, this monster is a Red Brambleback.

They’re both strong. And they look a little like Dodongos



Once Daisy has claimed the grove, she receives a Crest based on which final monster she claimed the grove from. How to claim a grove I don’t know actually, this game is confusing.

Blue Sentinels give her the Crest of Insight. This basically means that Daisy’s attacks have less 10% start-up and end lag, as well as being faster in animation by 10%. Her overall speed is increased by 10% too.

Red Bramblebacks give the Crest of Cinders. Like the name implies, Daisy gains a burning red aura and her attacks now deal fire-based damage, increasing the damage of all attacks by 1.1% and giving Daisy super armor on the onset of each attack.

The crest buffs also change up parts of her moveset, though there is no particular pattern to which moves are altered by the power of her crests.

Crest buffs last for 12 seconds, but are lost when Daisy is KO’d. The Crest buff is shown on both Daisy’s UI, as well as being visually indicated by Daisy herself. Her forest-green glow in her eye starts glowing either blue or red, depending on the buff.

The grove disappears if the final monster is defeated. Much like Deep Breathing, creating the next grove immediately takes much longer than creating a grove when the move is not on cooldown. The move has a cooldown of 12 seconds.

Side B: Seismic Shard​

Daisy raises her right fist in the air before clawing opponents in front of her. This hitbox deals 8% damage and low knockback, but it’s not the main deal of the move. As Daisy reopens her palm, a slab of rock appears in her hand that she then throws forward in the swipe.

The rock is quite powerful, dealing 15% damage and high semispike knockback, along with high shield damage. In return, its range is quite small thanks to the slightly downward angle at which it is thrown, travelling a third of Battlefield and there is a decent bit of start-up lag as Daisy creates the slab in her palm.

Luckily, the first problem is easily solved, as the slab of rock bounces when it first lands and travels another two-thirds of its original range, like a stone skimming over water. It does lose a bit of damage after the bounce though, dealing 10% damage and medium horizontal knockback.

At last, it bounces another time, after which it deals 5% damage and low knockback.

The rock slightly loses speed throughout its travels, but like a rock skimming over water, the bounces happen quick and the slab doesn’t lose much speed overall. What the rock does lose is range and size: the rock travels only half of Battlefield total and with each bounce, rock shards fall off in the small shockwave the bounces cause. This shockwave is small, but adds an extra hitbox that deals 6% damage and low upwards knockback. The rock slab then bounces on with a smaller size.

This size difference is quite hefty. Along with the low angle the stone skims over the stage with, the rock becomes easier and easier to jump over so the projectile works best at mid-range. This is the range where the shield damage is at its strongest and the rock is at its strongest as well. This is also the range where it's easiest to punish Daisy for her throw though, so Daisy might need to use this more as a trapping move where she predicts the opponent moving into the midrange, rather than a move to use when the opponent is there and can run up to Daisy and punish.

An easy trap is to catch the opponent in between a grove and Daisy readying a rock throw. While the opponent can choose to focus on Daisy, it comes at the cost of the reward of the grove. Daisy, true friend of the forest, can thus force the opponent to make a choice. Either let go of the forest’s bounty, or pay the price.

If the opponent is hit when the rock first bounces, the sheer size of the rock and the shockwave it causes make for an impressive impact site and even the small rock shard at the end of the lifespan of the move is still a projectile that can be used to annoy those fighters that insist on outrunning Daisy.

Up B: Rootcaller​

On the ground, Daisy slams her right hand on the ground and creates a “shockwave” in the ground, sending two intertwining roots through the ground forward in a straight line. If these roots hit an opponent, they wrap themselves around the opponent and mushrooms and daisies grow on the root cage. The command grab deals 7% damage and acts like Minecart. Opponents can for example mash out to escape their rooting earlier. The range of this attack is quite hefty, having a range of 6.5 grid squares, or slightly less than half of Battlefield. Note that Daisy cannot act as the roots move forward. The roots move forward at the speed of Cloud’s Blade Beam.

After having caught an opponent, rather than being free to act, Daisy has two options. Pressing the control stick towards the opponent makes her use the roots as a pinball coaster, speeding towards the opponent in a rolled-up form. This maneuver dramatically boosts Daisy’s speed and allows her to cross the gap easily and deal 13% damage and medium diagonal knockback, which can be a combo starter at low percentages, but is more used to launch opponents off-stage at high percentages.

If she instead moves the control stick away from the opponent, she pounds both hands on the ground, which retracts the roots and sends the opponent flying back to Daisy. This is the combo option, which Daisy can use to keep the opponent close to her and her big hitboxes when the opponent doesn’t particularly want to.

If the Rootcaller reaches a grove, the Rootcaller stops moving and Daisy is free to press the control stick towards the grove to barrel towards it at high speed. This makes the grove a centerpiece of Daisy’s gameplan, and makes placement of the grove a delicate question. Daisy can win the King of the Hill fight by defending it in a place where the opponent can only reach it by going through her, but by placing the grove in an accessible area means Daisy gains stage control by being able to Rootcall towards it and giving her the aid of the opponent-unfriendly monsters. Since the Rootcaller cannot move through a grove, Daisy needs to take into account the potentially shortened range.

In the air, Daisy stretches out her right hand and shoots out a long and thick vine that’s adorned with daisies and that stretches out in a helix shape as the vine intertwines with itself at the speed of Byleth’s Up B.

If used in the air, the Rootcaller doesn’t sprout physical roots, the vines instead made from forest magic. This doesn’t drastically change the move, but it is a visual indicator that the roots aren’t as sturdy and don’t cancel out projectiles. The grounded version, on the other hand, sprouts thick roots that barge through mostly anything. The aerial version has the advantage of having transcended priority though.

As a recovery, it’s a slow and lingering tether recovery that is sure to catch a ledge, allowing Daisy to grapple incredibly quickly towards the ledge for a swift recovery. This follow-up even has the special property of dealing damage, as Daisy slide kicks towards the edge for a whopping 13% damage and high knockback. This means that Daisy, despite her large frame and at times low mobility, isn’t easily edgeguarded. In fact, the slide kick’s knockback makes it so that the opponent’s assault can come out as a pricey mistake after the move stage spikes.

Daisy can still grab an opponent directly with the aerial version, much like Byleth can with their Up B. In this case, Daisy still slide kicks towards them and can then use the move again to attempt to go for the ledge, much like Dark Dive. This attack deals 13.3% damage.

Unlike Byleth’s Up B and unlike the grounded version, this move can be angled in eight directions. This gives Daisy some form of flexibility in the air, and makes it so she can retaliate in disadvantage despite her typical big-body build and high fall speed. Of course, the Rootcaller’s hitbox is far from big enough to cover her entirely and has blindspots regardless of the angling.

What Rootcaller is better at than salvaging her disadvantage, is polishing her advantage state. Initiation is key in League of Legends: How and when to engage in a big brawl is elementary to playing well, especially for a tankish brute like Daisy (ignoring the fact Daisy is not a playable champion). Isolating a squishy mage means nothing if the mage can keep control of the match-up and unleash their arsenal on the bruiser, but a bruiser that can trap and initiate on a defense left wide-open can deal some serious damage.

Rootcaller gives Daisy similar initiative power to plan her engagements when the opponent will definitely not be fond of a rock golem speeding towards their personal space with super armor. Combined with the high hitstun on Daisy’s move and the capability to knock up any opponent with her passive Daisy Smash!, Rootcaller is key in making sure that all of Daisy’s brute capabilities are put to good use.

For example, Aerial Rootcaller can be used in tandem with a triggered Daisy Smash! or Seismic Shard to grab opponents after knocking them up. Daisy does have to jump up before performing this combo, since the grounded version of Rootcaller can’t be angled.

Besides starting Daisy’s oppressive advantage state, Rootcaller can also be used to extend engagements. If the opponent cannot find their way through the blindspots of the vines, Daisy can grab the opponent again to rush toward them and finish business. Do make sure to not overextend, obviously. Daisy is still a heavyweight which makes off-stage play kind of rocky.

Neutral B: Triggerseed​

Daisy smashes her hands together in a fist-bump motion, causing a protective layer of green to grow around her head. This protective layer isn’t just for show, it actually reduces the damage of every move that hits the bubbly substance and reduces knockback as a result of that. The shield doesn’t last forever though; after six seconds, the seed that acts as the shield’s core explodes, dealing 7% to any opponents close to her and 5% to Daisy herself. The former also get knocked back by the blast.

This protective layer can be charged, with more and more green growing in the bubble as a result. The more the move is charged, the more damage the move blocks and the more damage it deals, but the more damage Daisy takes at the end. The maximally charged version of the move deals 17% damage to the opponent, 12% damage to Daisy. The damage reduction ranges from 10% to 40% of a move’s total damage. The move also lasts shorter when charged though: lasting two seconds when charged.

Damage reduction is very potent on a tank, not just in League of Legends, but in Smash Bros. as well, allowing Daisy to soak up damage as well as knockback which really helps in disadvantage. Of course, the recoil at the end means that Daisy needs to predict how much damage she’ll take, which isn’t always easy. That said, the protection of the damage reduction and the explosion alike means Daisy can be a bit more aggressive without the usual heavyweight fear of needing to be in control or facing the risk of being clobbered in return. Knowing that the timer is ticking can cut many combos short, while the damage reduction in the meantime means that the combo won’t deal full damage.

The passive threat of the blast also helps in neutral, where Daisy has a leg-up over the opponent for having the threat of having a passive hitbox up her sleeve that triggers regardless of whether Daisy outspeeds the opponent in her frame data, which won’t happen a lot.

In advantage, Daisy can appreciate the blast’s knockback activating on a timer regardless of whether Daisy is performing a move or not. This takes the pressure off of Daisy’s classical slow-but-strong move to be the main kill moves at low percentages and makes Daisy’s combo game more potent.

Rootcaller especially works well with Triggerseed, as the Rootcaller can bring Daisy close to the opponent for Triggerseed to deal the finishing blow. Timing is crucial, so the combination isn’t a free kill at all times, but a pro Daisy can and will go for it in both the air and on the ground, considering it’s safer than going in in a kamikaze attempt.

Interestingly, Triggerseed can be passed onto monsters as well, in the same way a Gooey Bomb or Crash Bomber can. Since Daisy is a friend of the forest, the explosion cannot harm the monsters (but still harms opponents) so passing on the explosion has the benefits of removing the recoil entirely, at the expense of the monsters being usually confined to their grove and AI-controlled.

The Triggerseed does protect the monster it is applied to with the damage reduction shield, so it can be used as a last-ditch effort to protect a grove in a particularly brutal assault. Daisy can also choose to be more selfish and pass on the seed at the last possible second, so that she herself has the full benefit of the damage reduction without the bane of taking its recoil at the end.

Damage reduction on a monster helps in different ways depending on the monster. For Raptors, it makes them less liable to one-shots, limiting the amount of options of opponents to dispose of them quickly and making their high attack power a hassle to deal with for longer. It also obscures the exact amount needed to one-shot them, especially when Daisy charges the move, so that the exact amount of damage reduction remains obscured.

Krugs can simply be buffed to HP sponge extremes. Due to their lower speeds, it’s easier for opponents to disengage them and not risk being blown up.

Standard Attacks


Jab: Daisy Smash!​

First, Daisy slams with her left fist onto the ground, damaging opponents hit for 2.2% damage and also creating a small shockwave to ever so slightly extend the range of her punch. This shockwave deals 1.2% damage and merely deals a bit of hitstun.

The second part of this jab is a very similar move, except with Daisy’s right fist. The damage and knockback stays exactly the same as the first move, except the shockwave is slightly bigger and knocks opponents towards Daisy.

Thanks to Daisy’s large fists, the move has a good amount of range, even though her opponent is not her direct aim. The move has a similar range to Donkey Kong’s jab.

This all in preparation for the final blow. Daisy takes both of her fists and slams them onto the ground like a bear losing a boat race. Inspiring metaphor aside, the final slam deals 6.0% damage and medium horizontal knockback. Thanks to a small lunge Daisy does, the move even has a small range increase compared to the first two strikes.

Like most heavyweight jabs, Daisy trades speed and boxing capabilities for range and power. Unlike most heavyweights, Daisy has something to make the trade a bit more fair. The shockwave Daisy creates with the last strike causes a row of stone pillars to erupt from the ground one by one, appearing one-by-one much like the pillars of flame that occur with a fully charged Eruption. The stone pillars are slightly smaller than the flame pillars, although they can still hit an opponent standing on a lower Battlefield platform.

Like Eruption, the shockwave gains a two-grid square range boost on top of the decent range the move has thanks to Daisy’s large golem fists. Unlike Eruption, the shockwave doesn’t deal an extreme amount of damage, only dealing 5.3% damage and knocking opponents upwards.

Do not confuse the amount of range Daisy has with the shockwave with a genuine projectile. Taking three jabs just to get a two-grid square shockwave that deals 5% damage is not a valid strategy for zoning.

What is a valid strategy is using this jab at low percents to start a combo. If the opponent isn’t too damaged, the final punch actually combos into the shockwave it creates, allowing Daisy to follow-up on the opponent that just got knocked upwards or to trap the landing with a Rootcaller or an agitated monster.

Forward Tilt: Fist and Fissure​

Daisy is amazingly sweet, bless her river pebble golem soul,but she's not the most creative little lass around. For her Forward Tilt, Daisy simply does a quicker version of her final jab, slamming her fists down on the ground. This move deals 7.2% damage and medium diagonal knockback.

Unlike jab’s finisher though, Daisy stretches out her arms for this move, giving her a bit more range, while retaining the same relatively quick speed. What has changed though is the shockwave. Unlike the finisher’s shockwave, the shockwave created by Forward Tilt only creates one stone pillar at the epicenter of the punch, creating only a vertical range advantage.

The shockwave does retain its upwards knockback and low damage and knockback, which makes it a decent anti-air if used correctly and allowing Daisy to continue her combo in a way that an Up Tilt might be too strong for at higher percentages, such as a Triggerseed explosion or an aerial Rootcaller.

With a Crest in tow, using this move as an anti-air becomes more viable, since either the lag cut of the Crest of Insight or the armor from the Crest of Cinders can be used to make the main part of the move safer in order to capitalize more off of the shockwave part of the move.

Down Tilt: Grasping Roots​

Daisy kneels down and softly places the palm of her hand on the ground. This is a bit of a gentler move, which awkwardly enough also makes it Daisy’s slowest tilt. The start-up is worth it though, since this move causes nature to heal, even if just a little bit.

A small green root around the size of the weed in Villager’s Down Tilt appears in front of Daisy’s palm.

This root deals no damage, but instead first grabs opponents it touches, before quickly retreating under the ground and with it, burying the opponent it held. This deals 7.2% damage and buries the opponent.

The move has a deceptively big hitbox, but is still fickle in its range like most burying moves. This is because Daisy has all the tools available to make amazing use of the burying effect. Not only does she have minions that gladly attack an opponent in range, Daisy herself is a heavyweight with extremely strong options to kill the helpless opponent, such as Up Smash.

This specialized Down Tilt does mean that Daisy lacks the combo option that most traditional Down Tilts provide, although Forward Tilt’s shockwave and Up Tilt fill up the gap nicely with their upwards knockback and protective range. Daisy’s close quarters combat is not too great though, so mend the earth to your liking before the opponent initiates on you.

Even if the move is slow, Daisy has ways to make it not as committal as it may seem. The Crests can help boost the move’s safety, and Triggerseed can be used to make opponents wary of going in for the punish if the move is mistimed.

Up Tilt: Power Fist​

A simple punch, Daisy delivers an uppercut with her right fist much like K. Rool’s Up Tilt. This attack is quite sluggish, but has plenty of range in return, again like K. Rool’s Up Tilt, also dealing 10.4% damage and high knockback. It’s not Daisy’s main kill move, but when push come to shove it can be used to close out a stock.

Like Blitzcrank’s Power Fist skill, the skill Daisy’s is based on, Daisy’s Power Fist has a surprise up its sleeve. If the move connects, Daisy starts glowing brighter thanks to the energy inside her and can cancel Up Tilt and immediately perform another action.

If she has a Crest active, the Power Fist effect combines with her Crest effect by making the Crest effect 10% stronger on her next move. For the Crest of Insight, this means Daisy’s next move comes out another 10% faster and has 10% faster end lag, and for the Crest of Insight, this means the move has 10% longer Super Armor at the start and deals 10% more damage (this 10% is multiplicative, not a flat 10% damage.)

This means that Daisy’s combo game gets even more potent. Either the next move comes out faster, which is helpful when combined with the frame advantage she gains from cancelling her Up Tilt, or she gets more Super Armor, helping her bruising capabilities even more.

What’s more, Up Tilt is Daisy’s main combo move outside of this effect too, allowing her to get into the air by either a regular rising aerial, or by using an Aerial Up B to launch herself into the opponent.

Since groves can only be placed on the ground, getting an opponent into the air also plays into her role as monster protector. If the opponent is kept in the air, it cannot attack a monster and thus Daisy can use Up Tilt to allow another monster to spawn safely.

Dash Attack: Rolling Thunder​

Daisy jumps through the air and quickly rolls up in a ball, much like Airborne Assault, spinballing through the air with full force and dealing 12% damage and high diagonal knockback to anyone she hits, making for a decent kill option at 120%. If she lands, she bounces over the floor, with each bounce progressively decreasing the bounce height and bounce distance.

This attack is unpredictable, and can allow Daisy to jump over certain projectiles and very low-hitting moves. The height is not that high, but it can be used to jump over Thunder Jolts, for example.

Overall though, the moves start-up lag and ending lag make the move committal, though the momentum of the dash being carried into the jump makes it a decent move to hunt down opponents running away, like Jolt Haymaker.

With the Crest of Cinders, the Super Armor can even be used to jump through projectiles into the opponent’s face, and with the Crest of Insight, Daisy’s speed increase makes for a pretty fast boulder.
Smash Attacks

Smash Attacks

Forward Smash: Swirlseed​

Daisy pulls a small vine that has appeared in the ground, which reveals a Swirlseed that has been hidden in the ground. The Swirlseed is pretty small compared to Daisy, but that says more about Daisy than about the Swirlseed, which has the size of a Gordo minus the spikes.

While charging the move, Daisy keeps pulling the vine of the Swirlseed, which makes it spin in place like a tire. This is a multi-hit attack like Corrin’s Forward Smash charging animation, dealing 1.4% damage per hit in a continuous multihit that can easily be SDI’d.

After the Smash is released, the Swirlseed speeds forward…but is held back by Daisy still holding the vine it is attached to. The small range benefit of the initial sprint is not too big, but can surprise opponents nonetheless. The move has a total range of four gridsquares.

The move’s hitbox still consists of the Swirlseed spinning like a tire, dealing 3.4% damage in a four-hit multihit, before exploding in an forceful emission of purple spores, similar to Ivysaur’s Up Air and Down Air. This explosion deals 8% damage and medium diagonal knockback.

Luckily, even if it’s not the intended use of the Swirlseed, Daisy is pretty skillful with her new toy. While the Swirlseed is spinning, players can move the control stick forward and backward to move the Swirlseed around within its leashing distance. This makes those multi-hits easier to link, but also makes the hitstun and knockback of the multi-hits not as reliable if the Swirlseed is handled poorly.

Another quirk of the seed is that it sticks to walls and platforms. On your basic Battlefields, being able to crawl the Swirlseed around the platform isn’t too big of a boon with how punishable it is, but on stages with more complex terrain, the sticky properties of the seed are very welcome.

This ability also makes the Swirlseed a Bowling Ball-level threat at the ledge. Being able to move the seed around the ledge and even over the ledge makes for exciting possibilities when it comes to stage-spiking and ledge trapping.

The move changes a little with the Crest of Insight and the Crest of Cinders:
The Crest of Insight makes the moving of the Swirlseed much faster, allowing for micro-spacing with the move. A good example of this is the combination of Triggerseed. With the multi-hit of the Swirlseed, the opponent can quickly be brought towards Daisy and the impending Triggerseed blow.

The Crest of Cinders instead focuses on power and plays into the fire aesthetic as the Swirlseed now slightly grows in size while it moves, like the Hothead. Note that the seed only grows when it moves by Daisy’s hand. Still, the seed can grow up to the size of the default Hothead if it constantly moves. Better get Dash Dancing.

Up Smash: Smite​

Daisy stomps on the ground with her right foot, slightly losing her balance thanks to her stubby legs and the sumo wrestler-like way she performs the stomp. This stomp causes Daisy’s forest golem energy to forcefully erupt from the ground in the form of a thin but potent bout of lightning shooting upwards and lingering as long as Daisy holds her stomping position. The stream of lightning reaches high, like Palutena’s Up Smash, but is only as thin as Sora’s Thundaga. To compensate for that, the move lingers longer than Palutena’s Up Smash, but that in turn means higher end lag.

This move is very very strong, dealing 21.3% damage and high vertical knockback, killing at 80%, but is quite slow (though not as slow as Lucas’ Up Smash) and is one of Daisy’s most potent moves. Being able to scare aerial opponents with both Rootcaller and Smite means that Daisy can play a very good anti-aerial game, despite not being a hero in the skies herself.

The Up Smash also has a special interaction with the Grove, but I’ll figure that out later. Toodles!

Down Smash: Brushmaker​

Daisy jumps up and disappears into the ground in some weird magical arcane way. If any opponents are hit by this part of the move, it deals 3% damage with a small linking hit knocking them upward as Daisy is nowhere to be seen.

The screen immediately goes to the No Contes- no, don’t be silly. A small bush the size of a Battlefield platform appears in the spot Daisy disappeared from and Daisy immediately jumps out of this brush, dealing 12% damage and high diagonal knockback up to her apex, and 6% damage and medium semispike knockback to any opponents only caught by her landing. Daisy Smash! can make this landing be a bit safer, causing a shockwave around her that reaches everything the brush touches for 6% damage and upwards knockback.

It’s not a particularly fast attack, more akin to K. Rool’s two-part Up Smash in its flexibility, but Daisy does briefly disappear into the ground with it, so she’s not as vulnerable. The landing still hurts though, much like K. Rool’s belly flop. Like the croc’s shipwrecking move though, it’s effective at killing, killing at 100%.

The main use of this is not killing, but instead the Brush that remains in the spot Daisy jumped from. This Brush has the interesting property of obscuring anything or anyone standing in it, much like the 8-bit grass does on the Duck Hunt stage. Interestingly enough, Daisy herself too is obscured by the brush right after completing the move, allowing her to move unnoticed slightly to either the left or the right before exiting the brush.
The brush lasts for three seconds before disappearing.

Daisy herself might not be the best user of the brush. She’s quite big, and can’t really make use of the relatively small patchwork of bush presented with this move. The brush is only as high as the patch of grass on Duck Hunt, which doesn’t fully obscure Daisy.

Monsters however, are very comfortable in the brush, considering it part of their grove and thus extending the territory in which they feel comfortable hunting opponents, allowing Daisy to be a true friend of the forest by expanding their habitat, which in turn makes her a true foe of the poor soul trying to fight her.

The monsters too are rendered invisible by the brush, which means that their attacks and movement are much less telegraphed. A boon for both the Krug and his slow attacks and the Raptor and their blitzing speed.

Swirlseeds too, can make use of the fact they are not as visible in the fog of war of the forest.

Aerial Attacks


Neutral Air: Forest Sentinel​

Daisy concentrates the forest energy inside her and unleashes it by clapping her hands together in front of her as she faces the camera, like Greninja does.

This causes two stones to float away from Daisy’s body and float next to her, before being pulled back to her in a mystic display of gravity. These stones deal 11% and light upward knockback to any opponent hitting them.

The two stones are quite small, having the same size as a Hadoken, and don’t cover Daisy’s big body at all, but they do provide a disjointed hitbox that quickly moves two grid squares away from her and fall down or rise with her.

Another boon of the move is its relative speed, making it Daisy’s fastest move. This makes it an amazing get-away move for both close quarters as well as to harass opponents a bit farther away.

The move also lingers a bit and has low end lag. As mentioned before though, the satellite stones are small compared to Daisy and thus cover a very specific area, but if used right can be an amazing combo and walling tool.

The Crests change Daisy’s forest energy, and thus change this move.
The Crest of Insight concentrate the energy on speed, making the move a projectile aerial much like Villager. Daisy now claps her hands in front of her, which fires off a stone to the direction she’s facing. The stone still deals 11% damage, but the move halves its reach by only firing the stone in one direction, while only increasing the range of the projectile to three grid squares.

The Crest of Cinders meanwhile, goes all in on coverage. When Daisy claps her hands, four stones briefly fly away from her body, one in each direction. These stones still deal 11% damage (notwithstanding the innate Crest of Cinders buff), but their range is halved.

Forward Air: Thunderclap​

Daisy stretches out her arms and claps her hands together for a move similar to K. Rool’s forward tilt. What this means is that the move has quite the range to compensate for its relative sluggishness with its two-gridsquare range, as well as power as the move deals 14.8% damage but medium diagonal knockback.

As we know Daisy, a simple heavyweight move isn’t enough. Like her Forward Tilt or Jab, Daisy creates a shockwave with this move. Unlike Forward Tilt, the shockwave of Thunderclap is circular and based on the soundwaves as seen in Barbara the Bat’s Assist Trophy Role or Donkey Kong’s Konga Beat.

The shockwave has a 2 by 2 gridsquare radius starting from the hands coming together, dealing 6.2% damage.

All this range makes the move an excellent tool for keepaway and spacing, though with the bulk of the move’s hitbox coming together in the clap and it’s start-up lag it is not the greatest move to use up close.

If used at the right range, the move can be incredibly oppressive, especially when combined with the other ranged options Daisy has. Between Rootcaller, Seismic Shard and Forward Air, Daisy can be great at keepaway, only truly engaging up close if the opponent has made a mistake.

The range also helps to extend combos. Sometimes, Daisy uses a bit too much of her strength, so having a tool that can hit the opponent after accidentally dealing a bit too much knockback can help Daisy stay in the range of her opponent.

Back Air: Bone Plating​

Daisy swats back with her left arm for a relatively quick move that deals 9.8% damage and low knockback.

What you see is what you get with this move, but that doesn’t mean the move is bad. On the contrary, this is a great move for Daisy akin to Donkey Kong’s Back Air and one of her quicker and less committal moves to throw out.

This makes it a really good move to combine with Daisy’s strong close quarters burst potential. Triggerseed, Rootcaller or even Forward Tilt can all be used in conjunction with Back Air to get close to opponents and start soaking damage and dishing it out in return. Daisy’s air capabilities are not really fit to rely on this move though. She falls fast, moves slow and jumps low, so don’t just throw it out. If you do, look for the bare necessities and try to aim for a Rootcaller after the Back Air for some highly deserved air speed.

Up Air: Noxious Trap​

Daisy has the firm belief that if you help nature, nature helps you in return. It’s why the mushrooms on her head don’t bother her much. They’re quite clever creatures, and while they don’t contribute anything to the fight aside from this one move, the move they do use is pretty great.

For her Up Air, Daisy stretches out in order to make herself as tall as possible. Since she isn’t all too flexible, this does absolutely nothing. Luckily, the mushrooms are here to help as they release a cloud of spores in an explosion similar to Ivysaur’s Up Air, dealing 6% damage and light upwards knockback.

The mushrooms’ relative low strength when compared to Daisy herself makes this a very flexible and quick move that can be used to combo into itself, Rootcaller, and if Daisy jumps after performing the move, a Neutral Air or Back Air. What’s more, the combo of Up Air into Triggerseed explosion is almost guaranteed, making it a potent way to kill off the top.

Down Air: Ground Slam​

And welcome to the jam. In a fun and classic heavyweight move, Daisy turns into a boulder by tucking in her arms and legs and falls down like the brick she is in a classic stall-and-fall. Falling down, she deals 15.4% and high diagonal knockback. The move does not spike.

This move has all the classic ingredients of a stall-and-fall. Powerful, but slow as molasses and thus punishable. Daisy and her big weight make the boons stronger with high knockback and make the cons not as visible because, once again, Daisy’s weight causes a shockwave once she lands as the stone pillars from her Forward Tilt return.

Of course, it wouldn’t be MYM if it wasn’t somehow convoluted, so the shockwave isn’t constant in every situation: The higher the height Daisy fell from, the bigger the shockwave. For every two-and-a-half grid squares she is above solid ground, a stone pillar is added to each side of the shockwave. Each stone pillar is one grid square wide and two grid squares tall. The maximum number of stone pillars summonable on each side of Daisy is four.

A stone pillar deals 7.2% damage and medium upwards knockback.

A Daisy recovering high can thus enact inane stage control, but it might be tough to get high enough to blast the stage to smithereens: Daisy’s jumps aren’t too high and her Up B is a tether recovery. If she manages to catch an opponent, she can pull herself up towards the opponent and then come crashing down without needing to be too accurate.

At lower heights though, the ending lag typical to a stall-and-fall might not be completely assuaged by the shockwave and the move remains punishable.

Grab Game


Grab: Nature’s Grasp​

Daisy clasps her hands together and simply grabs the opponent. Daisy’s grab has great range and is pretty quick as well, in order for Daisy to have an option that works up close and personal if she has successfully approached the opponent.

For her pummel, she clenches her fist, which summons thorns that coil around the opponent, dealing 2.6% damage. The pummel is pretty slow, because nature doesn’t rush and brambles don’t magically grow. It’s an adequate pummel still though thanks to its high damage.

Monsters will not attack or target an opponent if the opponent is grabbed. They slowly move back towards their grove and will forget about their personal vendetta against the opponent.

Forward Throw: Watch Out! Eep!​

Daisy jumps forward one-and-a-half grid square and forcefully slams the opponent into the ground upon her landing, like they are a hammer, dealing 13% damage and medium diagonally upwards knockback.

The move also damages any opponents in the way, but there’s a trick here. Daisy herself does not get credited for any kills or damage that the opponent’s body deals as it slams into the ground. This means that monsters can be damaged by the opponent as Daisy wields them as a weapon. Now, of course, Daisy doesn’t want to hurt the monster (hence the name of the throw), but it sure can be helpful to force an opponent to face the wrath of her forest friends.

Aside from this thus being a great tool to deal with disengaging opponents and pile on the damage, monsters can help in another way by extending Daisy’s jump. Normally, her jump isn’t too far, but Daisy will automatically jump to any monster within four grid squares. Again, she really tries not to hurt the monster. Think of it as an offering to the forest that’s gotten out of hand.

This extended jump distance can help in multiple ways. First, it obviously makes it easier to accidentally graze a monster to activate their targeting instinct. Otherwise, it can be used for spacing to get the opponent closer to the ledge. Note that Daisy always jumps forward, so any monsters behind Daisy will not trigger Daisy’s extra jumping capabilities.

Back Throw: Twisted Advance​

Daisy weakly throws the opponent backwards, before performing a spinning attack similar to Whirling Kong that damages the opponent with four punches that deal 2.2% each, before finishing with a right hook that deals 6.3% damage and heavy diagonal knockback.

This is a very strong throw, being adept at both damaging and killing, especially considering the fact Daisy whirls closer to the stage’s edge before delivering the killing blow. This throw, along with her other throws, are exactly what makes Daisy such a powerful foe up close. While her grab doesn’t win her any close quarters wins, Daisy’s grab is fast and ranged enough to work in a combo. Her throws then give her a plethora of options, including this veritable kill throw that kills at 100% at ledge.

Up Throw: Rampant Growth​

Daisy heaves the opponent over her head, much like DK’s Cargo Throw. Sadly for the opponent, the mushrooms on Daisy’s head are allergic to losers, and they quickly reject the opponent by unleashing an explosive spore blast, knocking them directly upwards and dealing 11.3% damage.

This move is quite a simple throw, dealing not too much knockback and thus serving as Daisy’s combo throw and thus combining excellently with Daisy’s vertical tools, such as Up Tilt at lower percentages and Up Air at higher percentages. If you dare to risk it, aerial Rootcaller and Smite can both be used to potentially devastating effect as well, although these options are a bit more risky.

Down Throw: Stranglethorn​

Daisy simply pins her opponent to the floor with one hand (yes, even superheavyweights, make it make sense) and holds her other hand to the ground, imbuing it with forest energy. The earth then accepts Daisy’s proposition, as roots similar to the one used in Down Tilt appear and drag the opponent into the earth with them. This deals 9.6% damage and buries the opponent.

The burying lasts longer than Down Tilt’s bury effect, but that comes at a price: Since monsters stop targeting a grabbed opponent, Daisy’s Down Throw cannot be used to let an angry Raptor have at it while the opponent is buried. Still, Daisy is a heavyweight with plenty of strong attacks to capitalize off of the buried opponent, even when monsters are a non-factor for this specific throw.

 

[UserShadow7989]

Lucrezia fumed as she sat in her temporary office. It wasn't the dingy conditions of the abandoned building that galled her; she'd hidden in worse places and dealt with being on-site to manage her 'employees'. It wasn't the flickering of the light next to here, though it was starting to get annoying. It wasn't even how tiny the screen she was watching moments ago was, not that it helped the strain on her eyes caused by the flickering lights.

It was the fact that her men had let her money slip through their fingers not once, but twice now. Tracking down the missing drop off wasn't hard, with how quickly a paper trial had built up and how... 'helpful' witnesses were around here when they learned her organization was the one asking questions, and soon enough they reported back in with a noisily struggling burlap sack in tow.

Instead, her ten-odd guards were busy pulling themselves together and looking pitiful, several very expensive imports had been destroyed, and not a cent of her money nor hair of the interlopers were anywhere to be found.

Lucrezia had already managed to exhaust her extensive vocabulary outlining exactly how thin the ice her men were skating on was before sending them back out for clues, and with nothing else to show for it, her mind kept replaying the sequence of events over and over to search for the hint that those three were anything more then bunglers, starting with the demand their interrogator had made.

"Okay, now's yous three are going to explain to me once more how exactly what you did wasn't stealing."


Three more morons have come to make their move! Happy Halloween, everyone!