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Miles "Tails" Prower (A pun on the term miles per hour! Clever!)
-Dang it! I was going to do some comment commentary!
-I've been saying since I don't know how long that I need to get a Phoenix Wright game. CONVINCE ME, SIR.
-Woah, woah, woah. Wait a minute.
He is trained under Manfred Von Karma, who has a
under Manfred Von Karma
Manfred Von
Manfred
MANFRED?!?!? That's like, someone took man and fred and just made it into a name!
-Hehe, **** Gumshoe.
-Hehe, Larry Butz.
-Old school stat section? Hmm, this better have something important and relevant to his playstyle in it!
-..........But it did not! The nickname "Edgey" was cute, though. :3
-You're free to do that now(WARY)
-You should get it. They're really good games with a good story.
-lol, that name made me lol.
-****
-(H)
-Hmm...maybe I'll do that next moveset.
-:3
-Hey, a mechanic that's not confusing as all bananas! <3
-Kay Faraday? That's a silly name. Hey, guys! I'm gonna be Kay For-A-Day! Not as bad as Manfred. :|
-"....helping those out who are not good at thinking...." You know, I think you can just say......that special word.....for people......who are......special.
-My period count: 82
-Ok let me get serious for a moment. I'm actually very impressed about how incredibly well you state things like key details and such. It isn't the most unique or fanciest writing style, but hey, it gets the job done! (Especially for those who are not good at thinking.....)
-(H)
-Inoerite?
-Stupid? ********?...I don't mean this in a mean way mods.(WARY)
-lulz
-Thanks dude!
The rest of the "-"
You keep on getting better and better, Twilt. Fitting an attorney into smash is obviously not that easy, but bringing his job into the fray as well? Definitely an accomplishment. I can't say I was a fan of the assistants, but I can imagine myself actually using Miles EFFECTIVELY in Brawl, objections and all, which is tough to say considering most MYM sets are quite intricate, but I suppose it's because you explain things so perfectly.~
Edgeworth is actually a fairly user friendly set for a character who has to rely on an awkward KO mechanic – Kay’s Usmash makes it so he doesn’t have to remember where the foe did everything, and even then it’s not like it’s hard that hard to remember as he can use his nair/dtilt where the foe used any aerial/ground based attack. I’m ignoring having to actually manually figure out the mechanic as part of learning him, what with how it’s the same for each character every time.
The main thing that separates Edgeworth from the rest of the convulted KO mechanic though is that he has a plethora of generic attacks which he can actually use to *gasp* defend himself. While this would normally come off as very lazy and random, the fact that he has more inputs then a regular character with his smashes which are actually relevant help to make up for it. . .Or rather he would if it wasn’t for his lack of throws and Franziska wasn’t just more generic attacks. If Franziska/throws were relevant, I could see this being one of my favorite sets, though even then the nair/dtilt/pummel are part of the relevant attack set. Gumshoe/Kay are spot on, of course. . .Kay’s dsmash isn’t a clone of the fsmash what with her being left behind as a trap instead of charging forward, and the up smash is apparently part of the magic syndrome of the Phoenix Wright universe, so yeah. I actually like the fact that the assistants are killable, btw, seeing you’ll never be left without one and Gumshoe’s dsmash would be very awkward if he wasn’t attackable. Oh, and I actually don’t think the lag times are that terrible what Gumshoe’s usmash/Franziska’s dsmash as disablers and the fact he has, y’know, actual attacks. Such a rarity nowadays.
As far as relevant stuff you could experiment with more, I feel the attack disabling of the Side/Down Special had more potential to be manipulated, though it’s still certainly relevant as is. You can disable tilts in order to encourage the foe to use smashes/grabs or visa versa for the appropriate evidence, or just disable mass ground attacks to make them use aerials. The only real problem is you rather downplay this as just a way to simply disable good moves of the opponent and don’t emphasize how it goes with his main gameplan, and the playstyle summary suffers in general from this (Though it is much better then your previous ones). The other main thing I wish there was more emphasis on was the Side Special/Grab – they both have the same animation, yes, but if they predict wrong and shield the grab expecting the Side Special they, y’know, get grabbed. Good stuff.
A good set all in all. Could definitely be improved, but what it has potential to be improved to is really epicness, and it’s certainly not bad at all as is. Though I’m afraid I’m going to have to rate it 0 stars because of the part where Franziska waggles his whip around in the usmash.
EDIT: Just make Gumshoe only able to take a certain amount of damage before he suffers some lag and the foe steals a piece of evidence from him while using the dsmash. Say, 25 or 30? Seeing you removed the health of the partners. . .
Anyway, thanks man! I'm actually surprised that you did like him. As for Franziska/grabs, I probably could have done a better job, but nothing was coming to me during the time. Thanks for the comment dude! Oh, and I edited Gumshoe's down smash for your liking.(CHEW)
EDIT: I'm sorry Smady, but Warlord made me(WARY). For what it's worth, I like your set, and agree with the comments on the writing style. I read your set, and liked it though.(A)
Weezing: Looks like you ninja'd me to posting my moveset. Probably for the best, considering mine would have been overshadowed by yours had I posted mine first. The playstyle is similar to Scarmiglione's, in that he spreads gas throughout the stage. It's funny how I seem to have the same ideas for a character right before someone posts a set of him. Good thing too, you're execution is better than what I would have done. No real complaints, but the writing style is kind of hard to follow, and it gets a bit detail heavy. Not much else to say; it's a good set, but not as good as Wiz & Kupa.
Yeah, I have gotten a few comments about the connections to Scarmiglione - what character are you talking about, exactly? Would be interesting to see yet more fun playing in the gas. Also, I'm glad someone is seeing the Neutral Air connection to Wiz and Kupa - Weezing is actually the deformed result of Wiz and Kupa in a post-apocalyptic MYM8 where Wiz has posted no comments for two weeks strai--
Weezing may look like a character unconcerned with damage at a glance – everything just re-positions his mechanic (Gas), after all, outside the occasional tackle. However; he constantly creates the gas just by existing, and much of the gas he creates is the level 2 flinching gas so he’s actually able to defend himself. While it doesn’t stick out that long, it’s long enough for him to actually pull off his moves which seem to be impractically laggy at a glance. While all of the attacks may look to just be over 9000 ways of doing the same thing, some of the attacks are specifically for spreading the gas while others are for actually putting it out in an area where Weezing can attack/space it around himself properly for defense. I really am surprised with how these similar attacks came out with their own unique uses.
Weezing’s grab-game and Explosion are the most delicious parts of the set, hands down. Fitting that it’s the part where you actually take advantage of all your hard work, no? Using the gas as an expansion to your range is brilliant and really the main thing that ties the set together.
I do have to agree that the writing is very disorienting and makes you have to slog through this moveset, but I still came out with a full understanding of the moveset afterwards and am impressed with how much Junahu managed to misinterpret that I assumed without much difficulty by actually, y’know, paying even the slightest amount of attention. The playstyle summary in particular is very helpful as it’s much better written then the rest of the set, and helps you to awaken to how good of a moveset Weezing is. The match-ups are a big improvement from your last, though while Forretress’ is accurate I think you should’ve gone into what Forretress can do to resist, mainly his Pinecos and how Rollouot still allows him to make his spikes relevant.
Overall my only real qualm with the set is the writing, which only got in my way to read the set at all rather then distorting my vision of the actual concepts/playstyle, thus it’s rather irrelevant. Better then Kaiser certainly, who is a perfectly fine set in his own right.
I'm really glad that at least one of the more prominent MYMers took a shine to Weezing - I do feel he's head-and-shoulders past Von Kaiser, totally eclipsing any flow work I've done before. I kind of wanted to just show off what I was capable of with my new understanding of playstyle, which I wasn't sure I got across [but I think I did] through the all-encompassing gas, but while still making Weezing perfectly viable as a character.
The only real downside is that he can't reliably KO without Explosion - in the least, that isn't difficult, so Weezing doesn't have the primitive pros / cons playstyle that I've been hanging onto. But, yeah, thanks a lot for the comment, MW - really good one and actually very fun and educational.
@]Weezing: I have a few qualms with the writing in Weezing; I already mentioned to you earlier about some really long sentences that just leave me really confused after I'm done reading them. Better punctuation and sentence division could fix that, though. The fractions to measure time instead of decimals kind of threw me off at first, but they're workable.
I kind of wish you had some visuals to go with a lot of your attacks; describing Weezing's orientation before he started every move got confusing for me, since he doesn't have the most conventional body type. You started off a lot of moves the same way (Weezing inhales, etc.), which made a lot of attacks sort of run together in my mind. I also found the gas itself a little bit confusing; maybe I missed it somewhere, but I wasn't really sure how long the gas lasted on most moves. Also, you associated colors with each type of gas at the start of the moveset, it would've been a little helpful to carry that on through the rest of it to keep each type straight.
I feel like I'm being too negative; but those are generally all of my complaints. The writing slowed me down a lot, but there were some good concepts in there. I like the idea of spreading gas all over the stage; it's the essence of Weezing. Explosion is a neat concept, and I like the Up Special. The idea behind the Grab is pretty cool-sounding as well.
Overall, it wasn't my favorite moveset (seemed pretty rushed), but you obviously put some effort into it, Smady. After all, this is the first time you've posted more than one moveset in a contest (in a while?). I look forward to whatever else comes from you this contest.
This is the first time I've posted more than one moveset a contest, ever.
MYM3 was Vivi, MYM4 was Yamazaki, MYM5 was Raiden, MYM6 was Von Kaiser and MYM7 was Gambit [Silver posted that one]. Really, Wiz and Kupa doesn't count for more than 0.75x the leaning backward side into the screen towards the enemy of a moveset, so my next one should prove most important.
I'm sad to see that you had problems with the writing; a recurring problem that I asked Wrk to look into in his comment. Glad you liked the concepts, though and had no problems in that area. Thanks, FF.
Weezing is a cool moveset. Having the ability to passively create hitboxes and then move them around with your actual attacks is innovative and clever, and he has still has a selection of actual melee attacks to defend himself without his "traps".
Explosion has an awesome concept behind it, but I'm not entirely sold on the execution. Couldn't I just shield when I see the startup lag...oh wait, I can Warlock Punch twice before the attack actually has a hitbox out, I think I'll just walk over to him and casually smack him, or even just use a projectile so I don't even have to risk being hit by it. Granted, having gas that can deal flinching knockback alleviates it to an extent, but when Explosion doesn't even KO will 120% for such a slow move, Weezing has to be a stage-control master for a really long time with pitiffully damaging hitboxes. Yeah, you said Axel has to worry about his neutral special making explosion worrysome? If Axel PURPOSELY lingers in anything less than level 4 gas for the entire duration of Lightning Barrier, he would still be 20% lower than Explosion's KO percent. If an opponent actually tries to run away or fight Weezing it will take him EVEN LONGER to be in KO range.
Ok, back to the positive. The playstyle section is well-written and Weezing has some genuine thought behind how to balance him. The matchups were also good and I agree with their ratios, even though I hate ratios. (wary).
So basically, I really like the main concept behind the set, but the super-duper KO move makes the set feel like it would be kinda tedious to play in a real match. Perhaps bringing down the startup lag and making the explosions deal some good shield damage could fix it.
I did actually go back and fix the Explosion to hit even through shields, so Weezing is once again viable. The only way to avoid it now is if you a) keep Weezing out of the gas [impossibly, but you could super pressure him out of forming gassy areas] and b) staying out of the gas, yet I feel I expressed in the moveset how hard that would be. The whole a) thing is why characters like Hariyama have an easy time on Weezing.
Well, I really didn't feel like reading Weezing at all to be honest, but Smady persuaded me to.
Weezing
First off, I love the concept. The whole idea is very clever and interesting. Despite looking a little rushed, it was well thought out as a whole. I can't blame you for that though, you did this in about one night, right?
I felt the best parts of the moveset were the Playstyle Section and the Grabs. While lengthy, the Playstyle Section answered many of my questions on how Weezing works. The fogginess in some of the more important moves like Side Special and core aspects like Recovery were cleared.
The grabs were delicious, literally food for thought. Imagine if a present Brawl Character had a grab game as beastly and innovative as Weezing, and how it would change the metagame? I also loved how it worked perfectly hand-in-hand with the gas mechanic. I probably would've liked two different throws though (one up/down, one left/right possibly?) to spice things up a bit.
Now, a couple small problems arose in my mind with this: -The seconds of lag: It's not that bad, but sometimes it did make me think that moves were longer/shorter than what it actually is. Saying ".5 seconds of start-up" seems way longer than it truly is in-game, y'know?
-The color of the gases: They weren't very differing other than White. I would've added something like an Orange for it to be easier to distinguish.
Not as important as other things, but eh, they did bother me a bit.
[And the Part I seriously don't feel like doing...]
Also, apparantly a lot of people have a few (or more) problems with the writing (which you, Smady, wanted me to check out). I really don't wanna do this, but Smady wanted me to :/
I'll make it quick.
This is ONE sentence, when it should be WAY more. I did have a problem trying to understand these huge sentences. Many made me read them twice before I could actually grasp the meaning. It's ironic that the sentence starts with "simply," when the writing really wasn't.
The problem could've been fixed with simpler, not as lengthy sentences that only need one or two commas, none if possible. While 10 sentences in one little paragraph isn't necessary, there should be a balance of around 3-5 for average paragraphs.
Well, those were my thoughts on the moveset. Great, GREAT ideas, but a bit foggy with the writing. Reading Weezing to me was like opening an overly-wrapped present on Christmas morning. I had to get through some of the wrapper (weird writing and that "Uh... Wut?" feeling you get when introduced to new ideas) but inside was a great gem worth my time.
Another great comment, Wrk. It makes me very happy to see that at least two people agreed on liking the grab game - I had a general idea, but really pulled that one out while writing and, as with a lot of my favourite movesetting, it worked out the best of all. Particularly, it would be interesting to see how that throw would work out - it really goes a long way in making Weezing more viable. Also love the book-ending of grabs combined with the neutral special, feels almost novel-like.
But yeah, I'll take what you said to mind and thanks for the comment. Specifically, thanks for the grammar part - which isn't actually all that bad.
EDIT: I'm sorry Smady, but Warlord made me(WARY). For what it's worth, I like your set, and agree with the comments on the writing style. I read your set, and liked it though.(A)
Dark Bowser is the final boss of Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. His origins come from the Dark Star, which the non dark Bowser inhaled. Inside Bowser, the Dark Star copied much of Bowser’s DNA and what-not, and upon being forced out of his body had more then enough DNA to completely copy his form. Of course, Bowser’s body is just the base – the Dark Star adds all of it’s own power into the mix. As far as Dark Bowser’s actual personality, there’s not a whole lot to say, him being entirely emotionless and serious, bent on destroying the world. While he does find his enemies pathetic and weak, he’s not the type to gloat over it and laugh evily. He simply wonders how it could even be possible for anyone to be stupid enough to even THINK of resisting him.
Dark Bowser points forward with one hand with as much lag as Bowser’s ftilt to make a shadowy cage materialize a Battlefield Platform in front of him. The cage is 1.5 Battlefield Platforms wide and 1.35 Ganondorfs tall. After the cage is created, it gets hoisted up into the air 2.5 Ganondorfs by the chain above it. The cage is completely solid, so anybody inside the cage is incapable of escaping. The cage cannot materialize even partially off-stage.
For foes to get out of the cage, they have to attack the bars on either side, which have 60 stamina each. Once part of the cage is broken, the whole thing dematerializes. . .Which is good, as Dark Bowser can’t create additional cages when one is already on the field. Whiffing this is very bad, but it’s very easy to hit with if the foe ever intends of coming through that space to approach you.
★SPECIALS★
NEUTRAL SPECIAL – EXHALE
Dark Bowser exhales out a dark cloud as big as himself rather then the usual fire breath you’d expect. This takes 0.3 seconds, but Dark Bowser can only have one cloud out at a time.
Any foes that come into contact with a Dark Cloud get trapped inside it, and must button mash for a standard grab escape, though Dark Clouds automatically vanish after 8 seconds. Foes take 1% per every half a second they’re in a Dark Cloud.
DOWN SPECIAL – INHALE
Dark Bowser laglessly starts to inhale, which causes a suction effect towards him half as strong as Dedede’s inhale across the entire stage in front of him. Dark Bowser can angle this at any angle he pleases in front of himself. Foes aren’t really what you’re trying to move around with this, rather Dark Clouds you’ve exhaled – you can move them around as fast as a dashing Captain Falcon with this (Though it’s slowed down to Ganon’s dash speed if the cloud contains a foe). If a foe comes into contact with Dark Bowser’s mouth during this move, they’re sucked up and spit out forward automatically for 12% and knockback that kills at 155%.
If you already have out a Dark cloud, then Exhale essentially becomes a clone of this move, except that the wind effect pushes foes and Dark Clouds away rather then towards you, giving you full control over your Dark Clouds. You can move the clouds through the bars of your cages, allowing you to hit foes from the outside and delay their escape.
UP SPECIAL – DEATHBALL
Dark Bowser tucks into his shell and curls up into a spiked ball of doom, then starts rapidly spinning around as he rises up into the air off the top blast zone (No, he obviously doesn’t kill himself). He goes up at the speed of Sonic’s dash, dealing 10% and average set knockback to anyone along the way. .2 seconds after he goes off the top blast zone, he comes back down at the same speed above wherever the nearest foe is (If there is a foe on the stage however, it ignores all foes off-stage). Upon contact with anyone as he goes down, Dark Bowser spikes the foe for 16% and bounces up 2.5 Ganondorfs, coming out of his spiked ball of doom and regaining his recovery.
This essentially means the foe –has- to come off stage to gimp you to finish you off, as your recovery is perfect if they’re on the stage. Granted, Dark Bowser is pretty easy to gimp, just dodge him as he comes down. . .Thankfully, Dark Bowser can cancel out of his descent much like Dedede can in his Up Special. Unlike Dedede, though, Dark Bowser doesn’t go into helpless, just being unable to use his recovery until he hits solid ground again. You can’t cancel the move until you’re within 2 Ganondorfs above the foe, though, so don’t think you can just immediately cancel it for a perfect recovery.
Aside from this being a rather strange recovery, Dark Bowser can also use this to get on top of the cage after it’s hoisted the foe up into the air, which he is otherwise incapable of doing with his poor jumps.
SIDE SPECIAL – DARK MINIONS
Dark Bowser lifts a massive ball of dark minions above his head that look like they’re having an orgy of some sort over .4 seconds, then throws the gigantic ball of doom forwards. The giant clusterfuck of minions is 4x the size of a party ball and entirely solid. This deals no damage on contact, simply being a way to push foes back. . .
The ball travels 2 Battlefield Platforms forward a bit slower then Ganon’s dash before the giant ball of minions starts falling apart into a miniature army. Many of the minions fall off into the background/foreground and off the stage to their deaths, though the ones that do survive the orgy stay on the stage as usable minions. You’ll get 7 minions out of the deal – 1 Bob-Omb, 3 Koopas, and 3 Goombas. You cannot use this move again until all of the surviving minions are dead.
Goombas and Koopas function like their SSE enemy counterparts while Bob-Ombs function like the item. However; if a foe tries to pick up a Bob-omb or a Koopa who has retreated into his shell, they’ll instantly explode/pop back out of their shell. Goombas/Koopas have 25 stamina, and jumping on them doesn’t kill them/make them immediately retreat into their shells – though it does 10 damage to them. Once a Koopa loses all his stamina, he retreats into his shell for 5 seconds before coming back out with 11 more stamina. Knock Koopas off-stage to finish them.
This move can be used to push foes back into range of where you can make the cage materialize, as well as give them a bunch of minions they can’t run from once they’re trapped inside the cage, making it harder to escape. Notably, you can trap Bob-Ombs in Dark Clouds, and Bob-Ombs are small enough to fit between the bars of your cage. . .
★STANDARDS★
NEUTRAL ATTACK – SMACK DOWN
Dark Bowser rapidly smacks forwards, alternating the hands he does so with. This attack is one of his weakest, dealing only 3% per punch and flinching with only average range, but it’s as fast as the infinite neutral A combos of Captain Falcon and such. Like said combos, this is very hard to escape from against walls.
FORWARD TILT – CLASH
Dark Bowser performs Bowser’s ftilt, albeit it’s a good deal weaker, dealing only 7% and very weak set knockback. . .But enough hitstun for you to easily infinite the foe with this until you knock them off the stage. Strangely, the foe can use any attack to come out of this “hitstun”. This means the only way for the foe to get out of this early is to try to fight back against Dark Bowser, but this move has awkwardly high priority that beats out all other moves with jointed priority. However; if it does clash with a foe, they’ll be knocked back 1.75 Battlefield Platforms – not enough for you to follow up with the move again. . .But positioning them perfectly for your grab, as they’ll be right in the middle of the cage as it materializes. If you try to infinite a foe against a wall with this, they’ll bounce off said wall.
UP TILT – WIND-UP PUNCH
Dark Bowser performs Bowser’s basic punch from Bowser’s inside Story, winding up before punching forwards at a slightly upward angle. This move surprisingly is quick to start up with .15 seconds of starting lag, dealing 8% for some good anti-air against foes who want to just jump over where you can make your cage materialize. The ending lag is pretty bad, though.
But what about campy/defensive foes who don’t want to approach the area you can make your cage at all and are perfectly content to sit on their rear ends? While you could approach them traditionally, there’s no need when Up Special is a perfect approach, taking you right to them near instantly. . .But then you’re –too- close to grab them. You can’t knock them back with ftilt – they’ll be cowering at the edge of the stage. So instead, you retreat back again the necessary distance, which is where this move comes in. Connecting with the Wind-Up Punch simply deals hitstun to the foe, however the force of the punch causes Dark Bowser to slide backwards 2.25 Battlefield Platforms, making the positioning just right for his grab. This also covers up the ending lag of the move very well.
DOWN TILT – STOMP
Rather then doing a truly blatant Warlordian stomp, Dark Bowser turns to face the screen and throws a temper tantrum, stomping about angrily. This is an awkward laggy move that lasts .8 seconds that deals 10% and vertical knockback that kills at 145%, though it has an earth shaking effect that gives it half a Battlefield Platform of range on either side.
So what purpose does this move serve? Glad you asked. . .After using your Up Special to get on top of a cage you’ve created, if you use this move to stomp down on it the earth shaking effects you cause will be on the entire floor of the cage. Aside from simply being another way to hurt foes inside the cage while being untouchable, you can take advantage of the vertical knockback on this to knock foes into Dark Clouds.
In addition, if you do this in any position other then the direct center of the cage, the cage will tilt in that direction, further based off how far to that side of the cage you stomped. This causes the terrain inside the cage to be sloped, and on slopes Dark Koopas will always tuck into their shells and slide forward as if thrown.
DASHING ATTACK – WHIRLING FORTRESS
Dark Bowser performs Bowser’s grounded Up Special, but is forced to go forwards for the entire duration of the move. As if it wasn’t obvious enough with how simplistic and irrelevant this move looks at a glance, it has an interaction with some other moves in the set later on – wait for the nair.
★SMASHES★
FORWARD SMASH – FIRE BREATH
Dark Bowser breathes a long stream of flame over .65 seconds 2.5 Battlefield Platforms wide as tall as Wario. The flame does 15-26 hits of 1% and flinching that push the foe ever so slightly backward and downward, but when combined enable the foe to DI out of this at point blank while only taking 15% (Uncharged) - which isn’t much considering the flames linger on for 4 seconds, and using fsmash again during this time just has Dark Bowser quickly cough up some smoke for 5% and flinching.
This move serves a purpose when you take into account that you can angle it. Angling it diagonally upwards makes the move a great anti-air option, preventing foes from simply jumping over the area where you can make your cage materialize. Furthermore, if they –are- stupid enough to do it anyway, the flames push them into the range where they can be caught in said cage. The move’s zoning properties are only amplified when you take into account that you can move the flames around like your Dark Cloud by inhaling/exhaling and the fact that the fire can go through the bars of your cage.
UP SMASH – DARK THWOMP
Dark Bowser points upward at an angle, causing a completely solid Dark Thwomp around 1.35x as large as he is to materialize in front of him over .45 seconds. As he charges the smash. After being created, the Thwomp rises up 1.35 Ganondorfs into the air over 2 seconds. Once set-up, the Thwomp instantly crashes down the moment a foe walks underneath him at Sonic’s dash speed, dealing 25% and pitfalling foes before he has to rise up again. The Thwomp lasts 30-45 seconds.
The moment you bring a single pixel of your body underneath the Thwomp he crashes down, so it’s fairly easy to bait him into entering his lag as he raises up into the air again. How do you hit with this properly? While pushing the foe back with ftilt is an excellent option, trapping a foe with him in the cage doesn’t work, as there won’t be enough room for him to get up high enough. No, what you do is you make the cage materialize as he’s floating up in the air so he’s on top of the cage, thus he gets hoisted up with it. While he won’t be able to hit any foes inside the cage, he causes the earth shaking and cage tilting effects from your dtilt, only twice as powerful. If you stomp after the Thwomp slams down, if the foe jumped they’ll just be hit by the second earth shaking effect from your dtilt when they inevitably come down.
Because letting a Thwomp be on top of a cage doesn’t have enough benefits, once the cage inevitably is destroyed the Thwomp will still be much higher in the air then normal, meaning when he crashes down he’ll deal 40% and a pitfall effect that’s 1.5x as hard to escape.
Inputting usmash when a Dark Thwomp already exists has Dark Bowser point to the Thwomp and roar out an order of some sort – this causes the Thwomp to constantly pound down regardless of whether a foe is under him or not. Bad for actually squashing foes, yes, but good for when the Thwomp is on top of a cage. Inputting usmash again has him behave normally again.
DOWN SMASH – DARK BLAST
Dark Bowser lifts his hands skyward and begins charging up a massive dark blast with lag that makes even Warlock Punch cringe, having 1.5X as much starting lag as said move. Once the projectile is actually launched somehow, it’s thrice the size of a Party Ball, moves at Ganon’s dashing speed, and homes towards the nearest foe. Going to hide behind something won’t save you – the dark projectile can go through all matter of solid objects, including your cage. Furthermore, the dark blast will destroy your cage as it goes through it, meaning this can actually KO a foe inside the cage, them not just bouncing about from the knockback. This deals 25-46% with knockback that kills at 120-85%. If the blast doesn’t hit a foe after 5 seconds, it explodes, increasing its’ hitbox to the size of a Smart Bomb. You –can- hurt yourself with this attack. . .
So obviously, you want to use this on caged foes so they can’t just casually interrupt the start-up lag. If you just casually trap a foe in the cage, though, they can get out quickly enough to dodge it quite comfortably (The projectile takes a long time to turn). You’ll need to trap the foe in a Dark Cloud within the cage to hit with this, and/or impede their escape with your minions.
★AERIALS★
NEUTRAL AERIAL – CLIMB
Dark Bowser performs his air-dodge, leaning into the background, but comes out of it with an aerial grab. If he grabs a foe successfully, he’ll footstool them for 8%, propelling himself up 1.2 Ganondorfs. In a situation where the foe has come off-stage to try to gimp your recovery and you’re in close quarters aerial combat, the mere fact that you have this move makes mindlessly spamming air dodge as you go back to the stage much easier, as if they try to punish your vulnerable frames you can throw in one of these to turn the tables on them.
But Dark Bowser isn’t necessairily trying to just grab onto a foe, though. . .He can also grab onto the backside of his cage. He’s entirely invulnerable here, even from background hitting attacks due to the bars blocking him, and can stay here as long as he wants until the cage is destroyed. Dark Bowser can move back and forth from here with the control stick, able to climb around to the sides of the cage as well as into the foreground. Climbing around on the front side of the cage can be used to block the view of the action going on inside it.
If Dark Bowser presses A while clinging onto the front or back of the cage, he’ll bend the bars apart with his strength to make a gap wide enough for him to come in, go into the cage, then quickly bend them back, invulnerable as he does so. This allows him to enter the cage to more directly pressure the foe alongside his minions, most obviously via his jab and fsmash. If Dark Bowser uses nair while inside the cage, he’ll cling onto the front of the cage and automatically bends the bars to get out/bend them back once he’s out.
If you press A while Dark Bowser is clinging to the sides of the cage, he’ll start pushing forward/pulling back to swing the cage to and fro. This has similar properties to tilting the cage, but if you do this long enough you can potentially make the cage go entirely sideways, altering the gravity in the cage to make everything fall to one side, it taking 4 seconds of this to get that far. If you do this long enough you can even potentially start swinging around full circle, though that takes 8 seconds. You’ll mainly want to do this to try to force the foe away from a side of the cage they’ve almost broken.
Remember that dashing attack that was a clone of Bowser’s up B? Well, if he’s sliding along the floor of the cage inside his shell and a Dark Thwomp smashes down onto the roof of the cage, Dark Bowser will be shot up a Ganondorf into the air, still being a hitbox and picking up a slight bit of momentum. If the foe does jump to avoid the Thwomp’s earth shaking attack, you can meet them in the air with the dashing attack.
BACK AERIAL – IMPALE
Dark Bowser performs Bowser’s bair (Though the landing lag is much more generous), but the move has a grab hitbox as he impales foes on his spikes and deals 7%. Dark Bowser can still move around normally with a foe impaled on his shell, them having to escape like a regular grab. While carrying a passenger, this move becomes Bowser’s regular bair – including the terrible landing lag with Bowser falling onto his back if whiffed. . .Which crushes the foe against the floor for 12% and releases them from the grab.
So. . .The foe managed to bait you into making your cage without them in it. Your stupidity is impressive. While you could use your Up Special to get up to it when the foe is under it and then destroy it to make another one, there’s always the much more practical possibility of grabbing them with this move, then using your Up Special to get on top of the cage (You’ll just come back down where you leaped up) and your nair to enter the cage. Bam, they’re in the cage. From there, you can proceed to the nearest exit whenever convenient or just have a cage match.
FORWARD AERIAL – SWING
Dark Bowser swings his shell around in the air very quickly with poor range, dealing only 6% and weak knockback. This turns Dark Bowser around, but does little else. . .Why would you want to turn around? Because you have a foe impaled on your back from the bair you’re using as a meat shield against another foe in a team/FFA setting.
As far as 1v1 goes, if you hold down the input Dark Bowser won’t do the regular fair and will only do it once you let go. If you hold it down for .3 seconds or longer, though, Dark Bowser swings forward with no lag whatsoever, and because he swings so fast he flings any foe impaled on his back forwards with knockback that kills at 150%. This can be used to more directly force foes into Dark Clouds and the move in general is a decent spacer.
The move shines all the more in a team setting, though, as when the main victim is sent flying forwards they’re a hitbox to other foes that deals 15% and knockback that kills at 120%. Furthermore, the foe’s hitstun is only brief enough so they can’t attack you the moment they’re sent flying. . .If they were button mashing to try to escape your grab, they’ll probably do some random attack that they’ll hit the ally you flung them at with due to not having enough time to react.
UP AERIAL – CLING
Dark Bowser reaches up above himself for a upward grab with .3 seconds of lag. If he grabs anyone, he’ll cling onto their feet, causing his and the foe’s fall speeds to be combined until they touch ground or you press A again to let go, you being superarmored until then. This is essentially your last resort to take the foe down with you after you’ve failed to use a footstool like move to kick off them to recover.
Relax, the move has a much more important use then borrowing from SANDMAN of all people. . .You know how while you can’t move through solid objects, if your attacks have long enough range you can still attack through the solid objects to hit foes on the other side? This is one of those attacks, but it’s actually emphasized with Dark Bowser’s hands turning all shadowy when he reaches through something solid – he can easily reach through the bottom of a cage with this. If he grabs someone inside the cage from the outside of it, he’ll constantly weigh them down, preventing them from jumping – Dark Thwomps appreciate this immensely. In addition, if the cage tilts (Probably from said Dark Thwomp pounding on the far side of the cage), then Dark Bowser will slide towards the side of the cage that was tilted, dragging the foe along with him. If it’s not tilted very far this just slows down the foe’s movement when they walk away, but if tilted far enough they’ll struggle significantly to go uphill.
DOWN AERIAL – DARK PLUNGE
Dark Bowser tucks in his feet as his falling speed turns into a mere .5/10 for .3 seconds of starting lag, then does a stall then fall downwards, going down as fast as Sonic’s run. Dark Bowser can hold A to stay floating in mid-air for up to .7 extra seconds before the plunge, useful to try to fake the foe out when you –need- to stomp them to recover.
Contact with a foe shoots Dark Bowser up 1.5X as far as he fell at Captain Falcon’s dash speed, while knocking the foe downwards with a meteor smash half as far as Dark Bowser fell. The damage dealt is 8% x the amount of Ganondorfs he fell.
When your cage gets destroyed but you had a Dark Thwomp on top of it, you can go jump on the Thwomp as the cage crashes to get high up into the air and get in position for a powerful dair. Camp if necessary to make the foe approach, then when they come to bait the Thwomp into his dark plunge, plunge down yourself to where they’ll retreat. Considering they have to back away from the Thwomp to avoid him, you have a decent shot of stomping down in the correct spot – use the stalling properties of the move to hit the foe when they’re not dodging. If done correctly, you’ve gotten around 30% on the foe, and if you miss the move’s ending lag is brief anyway.
★PLAYSTYLE★
Encaging the Victim
As if it wasn’t obvious enough, Dark Bowser heavily relies on trapping the foe in a cage. While he is capable of KOing without it, it’s the main way he racks up the damage. Considering catching nothing in your cage is a pain, though, you’ll generally want to go out of your way to ensure you snatch them up with it and not just casually throw the move out. Dark Bowser generally prefers to force ground approaches with an upward angled fsmash to do this and set up a Dark Thwomp while they’re coming over. If they manage to get past the range you can make your cage materialize and up in your face, you can use your ftilt, bair/fair combo at low percents or Side Special to repel them. You do generally very much want a hoard of minions in the cage with the foe, so you may –want- to let them come to you so you can repel them with said move.
Dark Bowser isn’t a blatant camper in this phase that automatically assumes his foe is going to approach him, though. If they’re playing the same game as him, he’ll be the one to get off his *** and move (Though usually only after his minions are out). His Up Special is the perfect approach, and from there he can either repel the foe into his grab range or repel himself if they have their back to the edge via utilt.
Encaging the Victim – Plan B
If you botch your summoning of the cage, then you’ve still got options. Against offensive people, why not take advantage of the cage as an aerial sniping position? Use downward angled fsmashes and Dark Clouds, then exhale/inhale to move all of it around at the foe to pester them. They’ll have little choice but to not come up to your perch anyway, which means they’ll have minimal time to escape from a bair/nair combo before you take them into a cage.
As far as defensive foes go, while you can breathe fire/summon Dark Clouds fine from inside the cage, it’s awkward to actually blow it towards foes from inside the cage, so you’ll have to come out and expose yourself. Don’t try to beat true campers at their own game – just skip immediately to forcing them into your territory via the bair/nair combo.
Torturing Prisoners
Your main variety in options comes with how to toy with the foe once you do get them in the cage. Assuming a Dark Thwomp is on top of the cage, your uair and dtilt are excellent options to force the foe to be hit by some sort of quake without ever exposing yourself, and you can always camp at them from the outside with fsmash/Dark Clouds. Dark Clouds are mainly good as an aerial trap to encourage foes to stay grounded for earthshaking effects – hitting with one is a bonus. . .Though if you capture a Bob-Omb in a Dark Cloud it can be the main attraction. Either way it’s a win/win situation.
If you’re tired of keeping yourself perfectly out of harm’s way, though, you’re more then welcome to fight the foe personally by going into the cage with nair, where your jab can be very threatening. To get them against the walls of the cage in order to use the jab, you can spam your ftilt to back them into it. The other move you should be looking at in a cage match is fsmash. Fsmash gives foes next to no breathing room at all, meaning they have to focus on fighting you instead of getting out of the cage in order to interrupt it. Not like Dark Bowser cares about damage when he has a perfect recovery anyway. If you don’t have a Dark Cloud inside the cage/don’t have time to make one, you can use your body as a substitute for an aerial trap with your dashing attack when inside the cage. When the cage falls, you can continue the damage racking by camping on top of your Dark Thwomp in the sky. When the foe approaches to make the Thwomp come down, you can dair down where they’ll dodge for a tech chase of sorts.
Ending their misery
After you have the necessary damage, KOing is fairly easy. Essentially, you just repeat everything you’ve been doing up until now with the cage, but take extra care to make sure everything is set up the moment the cage materializes, preferably with a foe in a Dark Cloud in everything – or at least with a Dark Cloud floating in the cage as an aerial trap. From there, you just throw in the dsmash and you’ve more likely then not got a KO. If all of the set-up proves too troublesome and/or they just keep getting out too quickly, though, you can simply trap the foe in a Dark Cloud and blow them off a blast zone from the safety of the stage. While you’ll need more damage to do this, once you’ve got it it’s very much safe. Bob-Ombs KO the earliest, but are very predictable just throwing them casually. You mainly want to use them on foes you manage to stun/capture in a Dark Cloud or push a Bob-Omb in a Dark Cloud at the foe so the Bob-Omb doesn’t blow up if you miss.
Dark Bowser isn’t limited to comebacks just when he whiffs summoning his cage, though. When he has a lot of damage, he can go to camp in his cage to get as much damage before he dies or turning an enemy gimp around when they come to finish him off for good. Holding in the dair just a bit longer then the foe would expect, faking the foe out with mass air dodges to land an nair, or just getting a suicide KO with the bair all work. . .As well as the most unexpected thing of at all – not bothering to cancel the Up B.
Summary
Because Dark Bowser enjoys the potential of early kills with turning around gimping attempts of foes and the fact that Dark Bowser’s damage only really matters if he has enough to be sent completely off the blast zone with one attack, Dark Bowser prefers going offensive when he can and just shrugging off damage. Of course, he can also use this to his advantage to just tank forever and ever by playing conservatively – he’s more then capable of winning a match by stalling once he’s got a stock lead. While his playstyle revolves around his cage, exactly how he’s going to play is very reactionary to his opponent – he plays the opposite of however his foe plays.
And that’s the main moveset. You may stop reading here if un-smashness of any kind gives you nightmares.
★DARK STAR POWER★
If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that Dark Bowser excels in team settings with his various ways to lock foes out of the fight. . .While this was very much designed for team settings, it’s not so much designed for 2v2s as it is 3v1s. When 3 people are pit on a team against Dark Bowser, he glows with an aura of dark power on the selection screen – it means you’ve triggered his boss moveset. His actual moves stay entirely the same, him just receiving a plethora of buffs. Below, all the upgrades to his moveset are listed.
★ Dark Bowser’s weight is upgraded to stupidly high levels – he’s 3X as heavy he normally is, making him have a 30/10 weight.
★ Dark Bowser takes 75% of the hitstun he normally would, and if Dark Bowser gets hit while already in hitstun that attack’s hitstun will be half the regular hitstun. If he gets hit during that hitstun, he only takes 25% of the hitstun from that attack, and no hitstun whatsoever if he gets hit from any attack while in that hitstun.
★ Dark Bowser is immune to flinching (Don’t interpret that as him having super armor please) until he reaches 100% damage.
★ Dark Bowser takes no hitstun from throws/grab releases and escapes grabs twice as quickly as a regular character rather then being outright immune to grabs like giant bosses. This means foes with important grab-games are still able to use them but prevents foes from infiniting him with grabs.
★ If Dark Bowser’s Neutral Special is input while he is in hitstun, he’ll attack through the hitstun and exhale winds that affects everyone within half a Battlefield Platform of him, pushing them back slightly less then a Battlefield Platform near instantly. Dark Bowser can only do this once every 20 seconds. Again, this serves to prevent infinites/get you some breathing room when you’re being gang banged, but the cooldown for it is pretty long, so it can’t be the sole thing you rely on. Dark Bowser cannot escape grabs with this.
★ The stamina of the bars in Dark Bowser’s cage is more then doubled to 150 stamina.
★ A significantly larger amounts of minions will actually survive the orgy that is your Side Special and stick around to help you – 15 total. 6 Goombas, 6 Koopas, 3 Bob-Ombs.
★ The lag on Dark Bowser’s dsmash is cut in half, making it 25% faster then Warlock Punch.
★ Dark Bowser can have out 3 Dark Clouds at a time, and they’re all formed in the same time frame it normally takes Dark Bowser to make a single cloud.
★ It is thrice as difficult to escape Dark Bowser’s bair grab.
★ Dark Bowser can have 2 Dark Thwomps out at a time and they last 45-60 seconds – they pound down in place by default in Dark Bowser’s boss moveset. Inputting usmash when 2 Dark Thwomps are already created changes the way both Thwomps behave. If you time when you create your second Thwomp correctly, you can make them alternate pounding down. . .If both of them are on top of a cage together, the foe will have severely limited time in which they can safely stand on the floor of the cage. If you get on the cage and stomp alongside these Thwomps at precise times, you can make the floor constantly shaking. This –could- infinite foes, but if the top of the cage gets a non-stop earthshaking effect for more then 5 seconds it will get shatter, freeing all trapped inside.
★BOSS PLAYSTYLE★
Dark Bowser –cannot- deal with 3 competent offensive foes pressuring him at once and has to do everything in his order to keep them at bay – he has no more fast moves then he normally does, and his hitstun resistance only goes so far. It prevents infinites, yes, but foes are still perfectly capable of breathing down your neck. Your only real option in situations like these is your Neutral Special as GTFO, but you can only use it so often and thus it can’t be relied on.
To prevent being gang banged, you have to separate the foes so you can fight them individually. The moves you’re going to have to use to go about this are your Dark Clouds, your bair, and most importantly the cage. It’s hard to –not- catch somebody in the cage, what’s difficult is not capturing all 3 foes in the cage in which you’ll have to fight them all at once anyway. . .But that’s just as well. You can just use the bair/nair combo to throw somebody out of the cage then come back in, or you can just camp them from the outside of the cage, primarily by stomping on top of the cage alongside your Thwomps. While this combination is insanely powerful, it’s much harder to properly set up with 3 foes breathing down your neck.
Dark Bowser’s bair in general is a wondrous move that he’ll be using a lot as a boss, using a foe as a meat shield against the others. The main victim has superarmor so they won’t be knocked off your spikes by the attacks of the others, and the 2 remaining foes will generally be hesitant to attack their ally, whom you can constantly keep shoving in their face by keeping your back to the foe with fair or using your dashing attack to use the victim as a shield from aerial attacks. Assuming foes care remotely about their allies, you’ll generally have time to set-up the stuff you need to and get a lot more breathing room. While attacks from foes that hit the victim on your back will still get through to you, grabs won’t – the victim doesn’t have anti-grab armor, making this an excellent answer to grab *****s whom Dark Bowser hates. While foes can free their ally from your spikes in this way, the person who freed the victim has a choice – they can either keep themselves and the victim in stun or throw their ally. Fun times. This is still ignoring how your fair can hurl the foe off of your back as a human projectile – considering they’ll be button mashing like a madman to get back into the action with the 3x grab duration of the bair.
While you always want to be going out of your way to keep the foes separated and trapped in something or other simply so you can beat up on foes individually, you want at least 1 of them trapped in a Dark Cloud on-stage/the cage at all times, particularly at high percentages. Why? So long as somebody is on the stage, your recovery is perfect, as your Up Special prioritizes coming down on foes on the stage. Indeed, Dark Bowser enjoys having more foes to fight him in some ways. In addition to this making Dark Bowser nearly immortal, this allows Dark Bowser to pursue foes off-stage for gimp kills due to there being a trapped foe on-stage he can use to recover. One of his favorite ways of doing this is to use his uair to actually gimp – but releasing his grip on the foe at the last second and using his Up Special.
Indeed, gimps are Dark Bowser’s main ways of KOs, and he gets foes out there by trapping them in Dark Clouds and blowing them as far off-stage as possible before impeding their recovery personally. Dark Bowser’s dsmash is a beastly kill method when there’s only one foe left, but at that point you’ve already won the match anyway. If there’s so much as one foe free, they –will- prioritize interrupting your dsmash before it goes up and they –will- succeed. The dsmash’s main use is as a grand slam when all three foes are trapped – preferably inside the cage so you can hit them all at once.
If you’ve made it this far, this is an excellent place to stop and take a break. You don’t have to remember any of Dark Bowser’s moves beyond this point.
★POWER SOURCE★
If Dark Bowser survives to 400% (Very much possible – a good Dark Bowser player is more then capable of this), his stomach gurgles as Dark Fawful’s high pitched voice can be heard from inside him. Dark Bowser turns to face the screen and looks down at his stomach as it gurgles, becoming invulnerable and healing 10% for every .1 seconds that go by until he is completely healed. Unfortunately Dark Bowser has no way of damaging himself to trigger this himself outside of throwing a Bob-Omb at his feet, which would kill him at such a stupidly high percentage. He can do so inside a cage so he survives, but it’s very difficult to trap all 3 foes at once without it – much less at around 380% or so.
Why does he need to trap them? If Dark Bowser’s stomach is hit by any attack that does 10% or more during the healing, he coughs up Dark Fawful who is in a shadow bug like state from having merged with the Dark Star.
Dark Fawful is between the size of a Pokeball and Kirby, and has a paltry 30 stamina. If he dies, Dark Bowser instantly keels over and dies in a stamina esque fashion, losing a stock. Dark Fawful flees from all foes with Pikachu’s dashing speed and 2/10 jumps, opting to just go towards Dark Bowser and stay near him if he gets surrounded. Dark Fawful can be sucked up by Dark Clouds and is small enough to fit through the bars of a cage like a Bob-Omb, which is the main way you can keep him alive if you decide to play with him out for whatever reason.
Dark Bowser’s Down Special changes when Dark Fawful is out – after .3 seconds of starting lag during which he is invincible, the screen zooms in on Dark Bowser as he enlarges to his giant status and inhales forcefully, inhaling everybody on the screen and sucking them up into his belly, as well as Dark Fawful. This makes the battle continue inside Dark Bowser. . .
Dark Bowser cannot suck up characters larger then himself in his gigantic state – which is generally only other characters made gigantic. Outside them, only Valozarg and Onix qualify. In the event a character is too big to suck up, Dark Bowser shrinks back down after failing to suck them up and the battle continues between Dark Bowser and any of the characters he did not suck up until it’s conclusion. Assuming Dark Bowser wins, then the fight continues as we see what happened to the characters.
★DARK BOWSER’S INSIDE STORY★
After the cutscene from Dark Bowser sucking foes up with his Down Special, the game transitions to a stage Dark Bowser as the characters fall down into some sort of stomach area (Which has a darker palette then the one shown in the screenshot), seemingly haven shrunk. The stage is a walk-off 1.5X the width of Final Destination’s main platform, and the stage is 5 Ganodorfs tall.
Upon the characters landing in the stage, Dark Fawful enlarges massively. His main body is .8x the size of a Smart Bomb Blast, which is the only part of his body which has a hurtbox. His three paper thin legs are all as tall as Ganondorf. His arms are the width of a Battlefield platform when fully stretched out, though his idle pose has the arms bent link in the picture. His hands are the size of Wario. As Dark Fawful enlarges into this form, he has to expose his power source in order to do so – the Dark Star, which is Bowser’s size. It comes out of his body, but is still attached to him via the tentacle seen in the picture, hovering up near the top blast zone.
The Special Move button controls the Dark Star while the standard attack button controls Dark Fawful, and you can have them both attack at once regardless of whether the other is in lag (Neither take hitstun/knockback/are grabble, like SSE bosses). Attempting to move will move only Dark Fawful at Ganon’s dash speed, but the Dark Star is linked to him anyway so it also moves the Dark Star around. Several of the Dark Star’s moves have it come off of the link attaching itself to Dark Fawful, having automatic movement for the Star based off the attack. After performing any of the Dark Star’s attacks, it will come back to it’s idle position and re-attach itself to Dark Fawful, moving at Pikachu’s dashing speed. The Dark Star rarely suffers any lag outside of this.
Dark Fawful has 150 stamina while the Dark Star has 100 – paltry sums for SSE bosses, mind you. If the Dark Star dies, Dark Bowser hurls the characters back up onto the stage and dies in a stamina esque fashion, losing a stock. If Dark Fawful dies, play continues as normal, but you are now able to move around the Dark Star when not attacking. The Dark Star has infinite free flight with Pikachu’s dash speed, but cannot hover higher then 3 Ganondorfs off the ground. Because of the Dark Star not having to fly back to Dark Fawful at the end of its’ attacks and being weakened with him dead, the Dark Star gains 0.35 seconds of ending lag to all of its’ attacks where it normally goes back to re-connect itself to Dark Fawful.
If a foe is KOd, they will not respawn regardless of if they have more stocks left. If all foes die, the battle continues outside Dark Bowser with him having been completely healed, and all foes who died with stocks still left only respawning then. A battle inside Dark Bowser always causes a large change in the tide of battle, either in Dark Bowser’s favor or against it. Any damage Dark Fawful and the Dark Star accumulated will still be on them if Dark Bowser sucks up foes again during the match, regardless of if it was a separate stock or not.
The top blast zone in the Dark Bowser stage does not KO foes – it simply has Dark Bowser cough them up once everybody has either respawned/gone off the top blast zone with them not losing a stock/taking extra damage. This means “vertical KOs” are only the way to go when the Dark Star is in danger to get foes the hell away from your core.
NEUTRAL A – GRAB
Dark Fawful reaches out to both sides and grabs with both of his hands over .2 seconds. If you hold down the input, you can move Dark Fawful’s arms up and down with the control stick before he reaches out to grab. Pressing left and right angles the way Fawful will reach out at. This allows you to grab anyone within a Battlefield Platform of you, but due to you having to angle/move both of your arms at once it’s very rare you’ll be able to grab foes with both of your hands.
Once a foe is grabbed, inputting Neutral A with Dark Fawful has him squeeze any foes he has grabbed for a pummel of average speed for 3%, while inputting Side A/Up A has him throw any foes he has grabbed in said direction for 10% and knockback that kills at 100%, 70% with the “uthrow”.
Dark Fawful’s grab is thrice as hard to escape as a normal one, but ungrabbed foes can help their grabbed allies escape by attacking Dark Fawful’s hands. However much damage their attack did decreases the amount of power the grab has left by that percentage. If it’s enough to entirely free them from the grab, though, Dark Fawful’s hand will be forced open and the foe will take the damage/knockback of their ally’s attack, so they have to be sure not to overdo it.
While Dark Fawful has foes grabbed, pressing up and down has him raise his hands up and down, which can be useful to avoid attacks of foes. However; Dark Fawful is capable of reaching up high enough to take grabbed foes off the top blast zone – the main vertical KO method you’ll be using. He can only moves his arms at Ganon’s walking speed, though. . .
NEUTRAL B – STARBURST
The Dark Star disjoints itself from the tentacle connecting itself to Dark Fawful, and you then gain control of it’s vertical movement (You can still move dark Fawful left and right – he can’t jump anyway). Upon a second press of B or after 2 seconds pass, the Dark Star lets out a starburst of minature dark stars on either side of itself that travel across the entire stage at Pikachu’s dash speed on either side of it. This does 15% and knockback that kills at 80%. This has .3 seconds of start-up lag and is fairly easy to avoid/difficult to hit more then one foe with. . .It’s mainly useful against foes Dark Fawful has grabbed.
DOWN B – POWER SURGE
If Dark Fawful is dead, the Dark Star launches a single dark orb projectile the size of a Pokeball downward that does 5% and flinching over .2 seconds. If he’s alive, the Dark Star channels the projectile through the tentacle connecting it to Dark Fawful. Holding down this move for more then half a second will have the Dark Star continue to do this until further notice, him able to make one of these orbs every .2 seconds.
Once the orbs go into Dark Fawful, they proceed to go through his arms to reach his hands, which will glow with a dark aura of power. This doesn’t do anything until Dark Fawful either uses his pummel, which uses up all of the Dark Orbs in his hands and increases the damage the pummel does by 2% per orb, or uses another attack. . .
DOWN A – INGRAIN
Dark Fawful ingrains his hands into the ground with .25 seconds of lag. If you just use this move without using any moves in advance, Dark Fawful grabs up some chunks of ground and throws them at the foe nearest to his hands, which deal 10% and knockback that kills at 120%. If a foe was grabbed (Dark Fawful can still use Down A normally with a grabbed foe), that foe is pitfalled into the ground for 15%.
If Dark Fawful had any Dark Orbs in his hands, they will be implanted into the ground wherever Dark Fawful reached down, becoming a trap. When the trap is walked over, it causes an explosion that’s Wario sized with a single dark orb, but gets 1.2x bigger with every orb inside it. The damage is 5% X the amount of orbs that were buried. The knockback kills at 160%, but is decreased by 10% for every Dark Orb ingrained.
Dark Fawful’s arms can be angled much like with his grab at the start of the move so you can choose where to place the orbs. If the Dark Star is stall channeling Dark Orbs into you, you can hold this move down to continue to put Dark Orbs into the ground.
Because Dark Fawful brings down his hands at the same spot, simply placing one further back in the background as in the picture, there is also a trap in the background, so attempting to roll past the trap will fail.
SIDE A – CHASE
Dark Fawful withdraws his legs and arms into his body over .35 seconds. The Dark Star disjoints itself from the tentacle connecting itself to Dark Fawful if it wasn’t already. Dark Fawful then proceeds to move towards the left at Ganon’s dashing speed as the stage turns into a scroller, scrolling at the same speed Dark Fawful moves. Contact with Dark Fawful does 30% and knockback to the left that KOs at 80% - he’s not invulnerable, but you can only hit him with projectiles/disjointed attacks without getting out-prioritized during this time.
Assuming you’re not Ganondorf in which case you already lost the moment you made your character selection, Dark Fawful is fairly easy to avoid – it’s the Dark Star’s job to prevent foes from getting away, whom can move about with free flight like it can when Dark Fawful is dead during this attack.
But Dark Fawful may not be your ultimate goal of what you want to hit with – you may very well want to use this to force the foe to run towards a trap ingrained by Dark Fawful’s down A. To do this, you’ll want to place the Dark Star just barely off the ground and spam Neutral B to make a wall of sorts to prevent them from being able to casually jump over it.
While you can go post ingrained Dark Orb traps, the chase lasts 10 seconds before Dark Fawful makes a complete loop around Dark Bowser’s stomach and the chase ends, which means you’ll be back where you started with the trap. Dark Fawful has 2 seconds of end lag after finishing a chase.
SIDE B – DARK RUSH
The Dark Star disconnects itself from Dark Fawful and rushes off the left side of the screen at Sonic’s dash speed, then comes back in from the left going towards the right, going just as fast. The Dark Star deals 20% and knockback that kills at 90% in this state. When the Dark Star goes back to reconnect itself to Dark Fawful after the move, it moves at Ganon’s 0.75x Ganon’s dashing speed due to being tired from the rush. If Dark Fawful is dead/in his Side A Chase, then the Dark Star has .85 seconds of ending lag.
This is mainly used when Dark Fawful is chasing foes. . .Specifically when the foe comes to a trap of mass Dark Orbs buried into the ground that they have to jump over. Your goal should either be to swoop across the ground when they have to land from jumping or to do it a good bit before the trap so that the foe has to jump over you and has to land on the trap.
While the foe could just jump over the trap then dodge through you, if you press B again during the brief period where the Dark Star is off-screen, he’ll swoop through the background, hitting people who attempt to dodge/roll past him. Either way, this still is far from the easiest of attacks to dodge with the Dark Star’s speed.
UP B – REGENERATE
The Dark Star pulsates with dark power and heals Dark Fawful of 4 stamina over .2 seconds. This input can be held down to keep healing him, and if held down for over half a second will have the Dark Star constantly keep healing Dark Fawful until it is given another order.
If Dark Fawful is dead/chasing foes with Side A, the Dark Star can move around while healing. Yes, the Dark Star can revive Dark Fawful, but the Dark Star has to keep up this move for 2 seconds in order to do so, at which point Dark Fawful revives with 40 stamina.
If Dark Fawful is running low on health but isn’t dead, you may want to send him off to chase foes to make him nigh invulnerable and focus on healing him as the Dark Star during that time. Just make sure you don’t do this when the Dark Star itself is low on health, as it is incapable of healing itself and is much more vulnerable when it can only hover 3 Ganondorfs off the ground.
Z – DARKNESS BEAM
The Dark Star disconnects itself from Dark Fawful if necessary, then goes to the center of the top of the screen, out of reach of most characters. After half a second of charging energy, the Dark Star lets out a massive beam of dark energy in a cone-like shape. This cone covers the vast majority of the stage, the only safe spots being the far corners of the stage. The beam keeps up for 6 seconds and does 60 hits of 1% and flinching over that time. . .Once the attack is over, the Dark Star has no actual ending lag, but cannot use any other attacks for 1.5 seconds and cannot use this attack again for 12 seconds.
The main penalty of this move is that Dark Fawful is vulnerable to this attack and he’s too big to be able to move his entire hurtbox into the safe areas at the side of the stage. You’re still perfectly able to play as Dark Fawful during this, though, and you will very much want him in one of the safe zones despite it providing him no safety – he’s more then capable of blocking off one of them, grabbing foes who come into his territory and throwing them into the beam.
But what about the other side of the battlefield Dark Fawful doesn’t block off? Why, you simply bury a mass of Dark Orbs on that side before you start the move, of course. If set-up properly, the foe will have nowhere to run when you start up this move.
If Dark Fawful is almost dead, then you should focus on having him bury masses of Dark Orbs on –both- sides of the battlefield, so you won’t need him to block off one of the sides for when you use this attack. Besides, if he is indeed almost dead, then it’s not like he’ll be taking the full 60 damage anyway.
★FINAL SMASHES★
DEVOUR
If Dark Bowser is using his regular moveset, then the final smash has him become giant and suck up foes like when he reaches 400% in his boss moveset. It lasts until the foes are KOd/go off the top blast zone to be spit out or the Dark Star is KOd like normal. Dark Bowser does not get healed in any way by this Final Smash.
However, if things go badly for the Dark Bowser player, he can use a move exclusive to the final smash – Dark Fawful’s Up A. In said move, Dark Fawful quickly lets out a horrible screech that reaches all around him with a hitbox twice the size of a smart bomb, dealing set knockback that sends foes off the top blast zone. Indeed, the Dark Bowser player can easily get foes out of his stomach if things go badly.
It should be noted that in item matches where Final Smashes are applicable, Dark Bowser’s Dark clouds can suck up items that aren’t bigger then the Dark Clouds (The vast majority of them). Only if they are the size of a Bob-omb or smaller, though, can they fit through the bars like one.
If the only foes on-stage are ones bigger then Dark Bowser normally that have been made giant/Valozarg/Onix, then this final smash becomes a generic Falcon Paunch of doom that deals 60% and knockback that kills a regular character at 90%. . .But those of course aren’t regular characters.
If Dark Bowser is using his boss moveset and gets the smash ball, he activates a different final smash – the only attack from his boss fight not used in the main moveset. He takes out a massive meteor and throws it upwards off the top of the screen, then spits up a large fireball at the meteor before it comes down. This all happens very quickly and Dark Bowser is invulnerable during it.
The fireball seems to of split the meteor into mass little pieces, all flaming, causing them to rain down in a similar fashion to PK Starstorm. The meteors are much more numerous then the projectiles in PK Starstorm, with roughly 20 of them raining down in random places on the stage every 2 seconds.. Only 10 of them fall on-stage though, the other 5 or so go off the sides of the stage to serve as gimping tools – all meteors deal 10% and a meteor smash on contact. Hiding in Dark Bowser’s cage won’t keep you safe, as if a meteor lands on the roof of the cage it causes an earthshaking effect with identical power to Dark Bowser’s dtilt. The meteors fall at the rate of Captain Falcon’s dash.
5 out of every 20 meteors that fall are much larger then the normal ones – these deal 20% and spike foes rather then meteor smashing them and have earth shaking effects as powerful as Dark Thwomps when landing on top of a cage. More importantly, though, if they hit a foe that’s grounded they pin the foe against the ground with their girth in a grab hitbox thrice as difficult to escape as a regular one. As we all know, Dark Bowser loves locking foes out of the fight in 3v1. . .
DARK ILLUSIONS
Yes, items are capable of spawning inside Dark Bowser if items are turned on. If you’re inside of Dark Bowser from his regular Final Smash, though, Smash Balls won’t spawn inside of him. As far as using items in general goes, Dark Fawful can grab items with his Neutral A, though the Dark Star is the main one capable of breaking Smash Balls. If Dark Fawful somehow does manage to break one, the Dark Star still gets the Final Smash anyway. The Dark Star can get Smash Balls on demand with the Darkness Beam, but by doing so gives foes 1.5 seconds to knock it out of itself before it is allowed to use it. Dark Fawful must defend the Dark Star during this time.
The Dark Star’s Final Smash is taken from its’ solo battle rather then the final one alongside Dark Fawful. Upon activation, the Dark Star vanishes, then comes from the left side of the screen going to the right, moving as slowly as Ganon’s walk. Contact with the Dark Star deals 20% and a nasty 2 seconds of hitstun. Every other second, the Dark Star alternates between being visible and invisible, making it harder to keep track of where the Dark Star is.
Still sounds very basic, yes? Well, you can speed up your movement by rapidly pressing B and slow it down by rapidly pressing Z. Obviously the main time to do this is when you’re invisible so the foe has no idea as to where you are.
Still not enough? There isn’t just one innocent Dark Star going by – there’s a grand total of 4 Dark Stars, each of which comes in 1 second after the previous Dark Star came in. While the altitudes they come in at are random, they’re never more then 3 Ganondorfs off the ground and are always spaced at least one Stage Builder Block apart.
Doesn’t sound like it can kill? Well, without Dark Fawful, it can’t, but you’re still perfectly capable of controlling him during the Final Smash. The obvious thing to do is to just use Side A to have Dark Fawful start chasing foes, as foes will be stunned long enough Dark Fawful to catch up to and finish them. If you’re looking for damage, though, Dark Fawful is still highly useful, as he can grab foes and change the elevation he holds them at so they can hit by all 4 of the Dark Stars – the Dark Stars won’t knock them out of the grab.
This keeps going on for 15 seconds before the real Dark Star comes in from the top blast zone and reconnects itself to Dark Fawful.
★MATCH-UPS★
DARK BOWSER VS KING DEDEDE – 37.5/62.5, DEDEDE’S FAVOR
We’ll cut right to the chase and instantly address the King’s chain grab of death that is the bane of all heavyweight male antagonists everywhere. While Dark Bowser isn’t chain grabbed as terribly as the true Koopa King, it’s still pretty bad, around as bad as D3’s chain grab on Ganondorf. Dark Bowser can put a Dark Cloud behind himself/summon his minions so that any chain grabs won’t go long without being interrupted, though, and he has plenty of time to do this.
Dedede can just hover in the air spamming bair to break the bars at lightning speed once he’s caged, ignoring earth shaking effects in the process. An aerial Dark Cloud at the side of the cage can prevent this. . .On one side. If you do this as Dedede is about to break the bars on one side, though, this can be enough to make him want to go attack the bars on the other side instead though. Just make sure you don’t go inside the cage with him. . .He’ll kill all the minions outside and pressure you so you can’t escape until the Dark Thwomp expires, then infinite you against the wall, stalling for the win.
While Dark Bowser gets the damage much easier, he’ll struggle to finish off the behemoth of a penguin king with a recovery of gods, his recovery making blowing him off-stage in a Dark Cloud almost entirely unviable. Once Dedede gets the damage, he can easily score vertical KOs with his dsmash and broken utilt. . .But if he needed to get the damage to kill, this would be a fairly even match-up. Indeed, Dedede has the match-up because of the brokenness that is his bair wall of pain, and Dedede can go exceptionally far off-stage and still make it back – a trait that he will abuse to the fullest in order to make to force Dark Bowser to come down far off-stage with his recovery.
DARK BOWSER VS MARIO AND LUIGI – 80/20, DARK BOWSER’S FAVOR
Once Dark Bowser separates the bros, they’re never getting back together ever again, period, as Dark Bowser will lock one of them in a cage and beat the other brother into the ground, as the bros are garbage tier on their own. Not only will the remaining brother be hard pressed to resist, it’ll be forever before the other brother escapes what with how pathetically weak they are solo. The Bros. can put up a fight if they simple avoid becoming far enough apart for Dark Bowser to lock only one of them in a cage, but he has many tools to do this, most obviously his Dark Cloud and bair which temporarily lock one of the bros. out of the fight in and of themselves.
The Bros. thankfully have good aerial approaches they can use to reach Dark Bowser which also function as decent recoveries, both horizontal and vertical. Unfortunately, Dark Bowser’s fsmash angled upward is a pretty blatant counter to these approaches. . .If they can bait Dark Bowser into an fsmash then retreat and approach again, they can get to him, but that’s about it. If they by some miracle manage to get him to close range, they can competently fight Dark Bowser like any heavyweight with their comboing ability – you could even argue that the ball is in their court. However, as soon as Dark Bowser gets in a single ftilt to repel one of the bros, it’s over and Dark Bowser’s reign of terror resumes as usual.
While the majority of the Bros. Moves are useless as approaches due to them separating the bros, the Bros. have a single saving grace in Fire Bros. which enables them to camp back at Dark Bowser. Dark Bowser can just casually use his Up Special to approach them, certainly, but Luigi can just charge Hammer Slam while Mario stands in front of him ready to dodge Dark Bowser as he slams down so Luigi doesn’t get interrupted. From there, Mario can just casually make a small fireball and they can launch it immediately at Dark Bowser for a decent hit. At the start of the match this won’t knock Dark Bowser back far enough to put him in range to capture the bros in the cage, enabling them to use their comboing game on him. Hell, they can even just continue to camp at Dark Bowser in this manner, and if you frustrate him enough he may decide to just cage you both at once, at which point you can fight Dark Bowser like a regular character. If Dark Bowser comes into the cage with nair to try to grab one of you with bair then leave the cage again, then you can just continue to pressure him with combos better then ever what with the enclosed space of the cage. . .Though he’s very much capable of getting one of you in a Dark Cloud from the outside –then- doing that.
What? Isn’t this how you remembered the ending of Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story? It’s the same as all the other Mario games. Bowser ***** the princess and takes over the world, Mario takes a blood bath.
DARK BOWSER VS DOPPELORI – 75/25, DARK BOWSER’S FAVOR
Doppelori vastly prefers approaching from the ground, so you won’t need to convince her to not approach from the air with fsmash. She’s likely to try to pester you with projectiles as she approaches – mainly so you’ll be in hitstun when she goes past the part of the stage where you can summon your precious cage. Of course, you’re far from helpless and can fight back with fsmash simply aimed directly forwards so she’ll be spending a long time approaching you, and she –hates- wasting time. Once she does get to you, you can just repel her with ftilt. . .Or she can be kind enough to repel you into your grab range. Indeed, Doppelori is rather lost for what to do here, as her approaching range is the range Dark Bowser can make his cage materialize. Doppelori has to go out of her way to try to bait Dark Bowser into whiffing the cage summoning, which is very time consuming, especially if Dark Bowser knows what she’s trying to do/is just aiming to stall for a Smash Ball.
Even if Dark Bowser does whiff his cage summoning and loses the majority of his leverage, Dark Bowser can just retreat inside the cage and camp from there. While Doppelori’s Up Special can lure out campers hiding –behind- walls, Dark Bowser’s cage protects him from above, nullifying the lightning from Doppelori’s Up Special. While Dark Bowser will struggle to do that much damage to Doppelori, he’s more then capable of stalling against her inside the cage for his Smash Ball, occasionally poking at Doppelori. Doppelori is even kind enough to destroy your cage ASAP so you can make a new one to trap her inside of instead.
Once Dark Bowser gets his Smash Ball, Doppelori has to fight a foe that again she can’t repel – Dark Fawful and the Dark Star take no form of knockback. She’ll be camping them for the most part, using her movement speed to stay far away from the cumbersome Dark Fawful. . .Dark Fawful will have plenty of time to bury lots of Dark Orbs into the ground, because of this, racking up massive damage on Doppelori or perhaps a KO if there are enough Dark Orbs buried in one of the traps.
Outside his Final Smash, Dark Bowser primairily KOs Doppelori by blowing her off-stage in a Dark Cloud once he has the damage he needs, as this ignores her weight and capitalizes on her bad recovery, unlike his dsmash which takes a considerable amount of damage to KO Doppelori. Very favorable match-up for Dark Bowser.
DARK BOWSER VS WEEZING – 40/60, WEEZING’S FAVOR
Dark Bowser cannot blow Weezing’s gas for whatever reason, and the gas is more then capable of going through the bars of his cage. While Weezing is more then content to ignore Dark Bowser, he generally likes to move around a lot to spread his gas, so he’ll eventually come over your way (Using his floatiness to approach over your cage materialization range). You can take advantage of this time to make a Dark Thwomp/Dark Cloud if you wish, but it’s best to just immediately approach him with Up B then space yourself with utilt – using ftilt to repel him instead isn’t an option, as his attacks are almost entirely disjointed and you’ll be helping him spread his gas as you knock him across the stage, and if he has out any level 2 gas it’ll interrupt you anyway. Using your bair/nair combo force him into an already made cage isn’t an option – you’ll be taking constant damage with the source of the gas stuck to you, and you’ll be helping him spread it all the more. Not smart. Utilt is really the only option to get the correct spacing beyond just doing a casual approach – and a casual approach is more than telegraphed enough for Weezing to know to get up into the air to avoid your cage. While utilt is indeed a very good option, it makes you quite predictable.
When Weezing is in the cage, though, he’s pretty screwed. He can only spread his gas around the insides of the cage and send it ever so slightly outside the cage, and the bars of his cage are immune to the damage from Weezing’s gas. This leaves Weezing to just mindlessly hurl his body at the bars with his dashing attack if he ever wants to get out. Thankfully for Weezing, it’s not hell for him inside the cage what with how he’s immune to earth shaking effects from his levitation, and the other minions die without Weezing touching them from Weezing’s gas. Dark Bowser will struggle to damage rack Weezing as much as he’d like inside the cage because of this, and going inside the cage to fight Weezing is likely to just get Dark Bowser chain-grabbed to death with the tight space and all the gas Weezing will have. Dark Bowser’s size helps in creating more gas when Weezing throws him, and he doesn’t need to be at a low percentage when there’s a wall there to chain-grab him against. Getting in a cage fight with Weezing is a terrible terrible idea.
What Dark Bowser –can- do against a caged Weezing is use his dsmash. Yes, if Weezing spams his dashing attack the entire time he can just barely escape in time, but that’s assuming a minion doesn’t interrupt him, and his gas is very slow working at killing them off. Still, this mainly just gives Dark Bowser a good KO option, and as a damage racking method is very tedious. The move will also most likely get stale by the time Dark Bowser needs to KO, and gimping Weezing in a Dark Cloud isn’t an option with his excellent horizontal recovery.
Once Weezing gets out of a cage, there’ll be a large chunk of random gas floating up in the air he can’t use. . .Right? Hardly. If he escaped the cage, he can just fall down to the rest of his gas, leaving a trail behind him to connect the gas up in the air. The next time Dark Bowser encages him, Weezing can explode in absolute safety from Dark Bowser as his cage works against him. . .Assuming no minions are around anyway. If there aren’t, Dark Bowser can still come into the cage to interrupt Weezing personally, but then he’s placing himself in danger of being chain grabbed to death by Weezing. Dark Bowser can opt to use his dsmash instead to not have to come into the cage to interrupt Weezing, but even if he performs his dsmash in time rarely will it make it up in time to interrupt Weezing. Sure, it’ll hit him, but not before Explosion hits Dark Bowser, meaning Weezing will win on the last stock. If Dark Bowser forces Weezing out of the cage with dsmash and Weezing can’t make a trail to connect the gas due to being blasted too far away, he can always just use his grab to suck the gas down to the ground where he can use it.
While Weezing is superior to Bowser in damage racking, he struggles for the KO. While the threat of an explosion in a cage can lead to more damage racking by baiting Dark Bowser into the cage, rarely will it actually go off, and when it does Dark Bowser will usually have already gotten inside the cage and thus not be killed by it. However; Weezing is more then capable of getting the damage he needs to force Dark Bowser off-stage and thus have to use his recovery, and Weezing is more then capable of going far enough off-stage so that Dark Bowser can’t DI back to the stage due to his high fall speed while Weezing casually floats back. Weezing will need a lot of damage to do this, certainly, but he’s more then capable of attaining it. Considering Dark Bowser doesn’t need nearly as much, though, he’s far from locked out of the running. Very heated match-up.
DARK BOWSER VS AXEL GEAR – 65/35, DARK BOWSER’S FAVOR
Axel Gear prefers fighting in close quarters combat what with his Neutral Special sending down lightning at either side of the field and boxing in the stage, so he naturally prefers it that Dark Bowser makes the stage even smaller. . .Or rather, he would, if Dark Bowser would come into the cage and fight him head on instead of attacking him from the outside. While Axel can get out of the cage fairly quickly, he’ll be left with minimal fuel upon doing so if he’s in a big hurry, making him easier to immediately re-trap in the cage.
Axel Gear’s main time to shine is the start of the match, as Dark Bowser struggles to get Axel into the cage the first time, what with Axel not minding approaching from the air one bit. If Dark Bowser waits for Axel to approach, he’ll have time to get on extra fuel units to his bar as well with usmash, making it all the easier to approach. While Axel’s traps are useless when he’s caged, they can help Axel to stay on top of Dark Bowser for a considerable time before being repelled by utilt as he approaches him for some good damage. Again, Dark Bowser’s ftilt is useless due to Axel’s largely disjointed priority, meaning he has to look to his utilt. . .Which is actually a good response to Axel’s largely aerial based approach.
While Axel will have the lead to start, Dark Bowser will far more likely then not surpass him as the first encaging leads to more and more. However; finishing off Axel is insanely painful for Dark Bowser due to him focusing on horizontal KOs as much as Axel does, which his Lightning Barrier prevents. When it finally goes down, Axel will have far more then enough time to set it up again before Dark Bowser can encage him and use his dsmash. Even if Axel happens to already be caged, he’ll easily box the stage in in-time unless minions are there to glomp him to death. While Dark Bowser is more then capable of trapping Axel in a Dark Cloud before he can re-summon his barriers, he’ll have to have enough damage on Axel to blow him all the way off the blast zone with his stellar recovery.
While Axel’s damage will rack up to stupidly high levels upon him bringing him more Lightning Barriers after the first, he’ll be able to bring up Dark Bowser’s percentage to a respectable sum alongside it. Once Dark Bowser is in kill range and the Lightning Barriers go down, it’s a race for the KO move. . .But Dark Bowser will have much more freedom in his range of KO moves then Axel Gear, what with how Axel will have enough damage to die to nearly anything. Still, Axel’s recovery will enable him to go far enough off-stage and still make it back to gimp Dark Bowser for his moves which still aren’t ready to kill.
Dark Bowser does have one method of getting KOs with Lightning Barriers up – he can get Axel on his back with bair, get on top of the cage/a Dark Thwomp on top of said cage, make a Dark Cloud, use fair to throw Axel into the cloud, then blow him off the top blast zone. While this requires obscene amounts of damage for Axel to not escape, the percentage will be reached around the time Dark Bowser reaches a killable percentage. . .What makes it not tilt the match more in Dark Bowser’s favor is the fact Dark Bowser has to come into close quarters combat with Axel to land the bair, which means he’ll take a lot of damage himself in the process.
The main thing that makes this match a truly favorable one for Dark Bowser, though, is the timer. Axel will always have more damage, and considering Axel himself stalls the match a lot to prolong his death with his Lightning Barrier the timer will definitely be a factor in the match. Granted, Axel can use stalling against Dark Bowser if he manages to get into the lead, but it’s absolute torture for either side to actually obtain a stock lead in this match-up.
DARK BOWSER VS SCARMIGLIONE – 42.5/57.5, SCARMIGLIONE’S FAVOR
Scarmiglione is perfectly content to let you wail on him for 5000 years inside the cage so he can reach the magical percentage of 125% to attain his true form, never even once thinking of attacking the bars to escape. The problem for Scarmiglione is that Dark Bowser’s dsmash will more likely then not murder him before he can reach the percentage, what with how he’s a lightweight with no recovery, though the fact it adds 25% to his percentage means Scarmiglione only really needs to reach 100%. Minions only really Scarmiglione rack his damage – in particular Bob-Ombs, who Scarmiglione can pick up to hurt himself in complete safety inside the cage. Scarmiglione can generally avoid being locked inside a cage instantly, getting –some- damage on himself, and if Dark Bowser is stupid enough to help him reach the percentage Scarmiglione can very well reach the percentage before Dark Bowser’s dsmash kills him.
Thus, Dark Bowser is not going to use his cage and is going to go for gimp kills by blowing Scarmiglione off-stage in a Dark Cloud to deal minimal damage as he attempts to kill him. . .But because Scarmiglione won’t have that much damage, he’ll escape from the Dark Cloud rather quickly, meaning he’ll be able to make it back to the stage even with his poor recovery. As Scarmiglione’s percentage racks up, though, this will become much more threatening to Scarmiglione.
Because Dark Bowser doesn’t want to attack Scarmiglione, he can use his minions as a good distraction to rack up his own damage. Dark Bowser can pressure Scarmiglione so he can’t set up easily, yes, but this requires him to keep hitting Scarmiglione with his fast attacks which have no KO potential. Dark Bowser pressures himself by pressuring Scarmiglione, really. None of what Dark Bowser can set up will help him, so all Dark Bowser can really do is destroy whatever Scarmiglione creates until Scarmiglione gets to a feasible percentage for a Dark Cloud to kill him.
While Dark Bowser is capable of scoring the KO early on, it’s more likely Scarmiglione will attain his true form, and his true form is indeed threatening. Damaging Scarmiglione from outside the cage doesn’t work – his poison gas will make the damage you deal minimal and his grab can hit you on the outside of the cage while he’s on the inside, which throws your dsmash entirely out the window. Going inside the cage to fight Scarmiglione is better, but is still an even fight what with how much of a beast Scarmiglione is and his Poison Gas constantly tipping the scale ever so slightly towards his favor.
Thankfully, Scarmiglione’s recovery is still bad. While his healing will keep him at a low percentage, you’re now free to actually attack him, thus you’re actually capable of getting him to a reasonable percentage to blow him far enough off-stage in a Dark Cloud that he can’t make it back. Still, Scarmiglione has a much easier time getting damage and his KO options are just as good if not better. Scarmiglione’s true form against Dark Bowser is roughly 70/30 his favor, but there’s only a 60/40 chance that he gets to use this form at all, thus resulting in a fairly tight win for Scarmiglione.
DARK BOWSER, CAIRNE VS NURSE JOY, STRIKE MAN – 65/35, DARK BOWSER/CAIRNE’S FAVOR
Strike Man will struggle to save Joy when he’s trapped in a cage, Dark Cloud, or impaled on Dark Bowser’s back, eliminating a large part of their durability. Strike Man will still be around for a long time from Joy’s healing, of course, much less with Joy giving Strike Man weight buffs. The duo will mainly prefer to play catch to power up Strike Man’s projectiles, and Strike Man lives as long as Joy lives, which means Joy is the main target for the heavyweights. Joy’s buffing of Strike Man serves more then to keep him alive and power him up – it serves as buffs she can later reuse to keep the tubbies strapped to a bed long enough to finish them off.
So whom do Joy and Strike Man target? Cairne will be begging for you to attack him while he has Reincarnation up, but then once it goes down he’ll just sit in a cage by himself, stomping the floor of the cage down to make an absolutely horrific arena that Dark Bowser can bring foes to with his bair/nair combo. Healing hardly matters in a 2 on 1 in an enclosed arena with a massive slope for Cairne to abuse – your damage will go through the roof in seconds. Nevermind how Cairne is completely safe inside the cage and can wait until his Reincarnation cools down with the others able to do little to nothing about it.
Thus, Dark Bowser is the target. Joy is tasked with all the killing what with how she can kill at 0% if she can amass enough buffs and how her KO “mechanic” ignores the weight of the enemy behemoths. She’ll need to get enough buffs/damage (More likely the former) in order to give Dark Bowser zero chance to escape, as his Up Special will just take him back to Cairne on the stage. Indeed, Cairne and Dark Bowser are nearly immortal when paired together. As far as dealing with Joy/Strike Man playing catch, Dark Bowser can just use his fsmash casually to interrupt it from a range, possibly even hitting both of his foes in the process.
So ultimately Strike Man/Joy’s viable options just boil down to Joy spamming buffs and Strike Man repelling foes when necessary, the primary purpose of the buffing being so Joy can write it down on her clipboard and apply the buffs to Dark Bowser to kill him with usmash. While this is all they can really do, it’s surprisingly viable. . .Just so long as Dark Bowser doesn’t keep them separated so Joy can’t buff him. This is where the actual buffs on Strike Man come in handy, which he can use to get Dark Bowser the hell away and resume the buff spamming with Joy. This is much more difficult for Strike Man to do early in the match when Cairne is there to help with Reincarnation backing him, though. . .
★BOSS MATCH-UPS★
DARK BOWSER VS MARIO, LUIGI, BOWSER – 62.5/37.5, DARK BOWSER’S FAVOR
This is the actual Brawl Mario and Luigi, and because they are not completely and utterly incompetent on their own the fight is considerably more interesting. . .Fittingly, though, Bowser is the main problem for Dark Bowser, as he’s the only one with any form of power and can break out of the cage a lot faster then either of the bros. This means Dark Bowser will be attempting to try to lock the bros out of the fight to take Bowser out first. . .This is generally done by getting Bowser in the cage which he can easily escape, but Dark Bowser isn’t going to just sit outside the cage and camp him. Hardly. He’s going to come into the cage to fight him head on so he doesn’t have time to focus on breaking the bars. Dark Bowser pretty blatantly outclashes Bowser in a cage match with his range and larger quantity of fast moves – especially with how Bowser’s fast moves beg to clash with Dark Bowser’s ftilt.
Of course you’re not going to be able to **** Bowser what with the bros helping him get out of the cage. If you disable one of them in a Dark Cloud beforehand, ensure it’s Luigi, as he is much more capable of getting high enough to damage the bars. You’ll probably have to do this a second time before Bowser is ready for the kill. . .and if you have 2 Dark Thwomps on top of the cage it’s highly unlikely he’ll escape in time to avoid a dsmash, though you’ll have to lock in Mario and Luigi too so they don’t interrupt you. If you play decently, you can finish off Bowser a little bit after you lose your first stock, or perhaps not losing a single stock if you manage to consistently make it back to the stage unless all 3 of your foes are available and come off-stage after you. . .Even if they do, with their bad recoveries and the fact there’s so many of them it’s unlikely you won’t be able to footstool –somebody- to recover.
So. Mario and Luigi with 3 stocks vs Dark Bowser about to lose his 1st stock or already having lost it. Things are significantly more hopeful for the bros if Bowser managed to kill Dark Bowser once, as it’s very unlikely that can kill Dark Bowser before 400% which means they have to fight Dark Fawful/the Dark Star. They –are- capable of damage racking you decently in a cage match, so you’ll mostly be damaging them from the outside of your cage. Unfortunately for them they struggle to break out of the cage a good bit even together, so they’re pretty easy to finish.
As far as how the bros fare against Dark Fawful and the Dark Star, the fact that Bowser’s dead really weighs them down here more then anywhere else – Dark Fawful can potentially grab them both and there won’t be anybody there to save them. Luigi’s recovery again makes him superior to Mario in that he can get more hits on the high up Dark Star, though it’s best to just generally focus Dark Fawful anyway due to how much easier it is to hit the Dark Star when he’s dead and how helpless it is without him. The Bros. mainly just don’t have much of an answer to Dark Fawful burying some dark orbs on one side of the screen and then the Dark Star firing the Darkness beam, but if they manage to avoid Dark Fawful’s grabs and finish briefly and finish him off as the Darkness Beam deals massive damage, they can win.
DARK BOWSER VS ROCKET GRUNT, ARBOK, WEEZING – 57.5/42.5, DARK BOWSER’S FAVOR
Weezing is still as annoying as ever, and while he can’t KO he racks Dark Bowser’s damage like a beast while Dark Bowser can’t do that much in return. Weezing doesn’t give a damn about Dark Bowser’s extra Dark Thwomp, and “disabling him” via bair/a cage only helps him spread gas. Your only real answer to be able to ignore Weezing is to put him in a Dark Cloud so he stays still.
But there’s more then just Weezing for Dark Bowser to worry about – the grunt set-up stuff mainly with Grimer while Weezing sets up gas of his own. While Dark Bowser would normally be able to stop them, that’s where Arbok comes in, who’ll pressure Dark Bowser to all hell to give his partners the time to set up everything they need. This isn’t as terrible as it sounds – Dark Bowser can easily escape the poison of the Grunt’s mechanic once it’s set up by just casually using his Up Special, but Weezing is still very much so a legitimate threat and will really bring up Dark Bowser’s damage.
Seeing you can’t really do that much to Weezing anyway, your main focus should be Arbok, after all, he’s the easiest to attack what with him coming up in your face and all. Without Arbok, the group also struggles to KO significantly and will just have to damage rack you enough to fight Dark Fawful/the Dark Star – which Weezing is capable of doing. . .
But he’s not so much capable of fighting Dark Fawful/the Dark Star, and neither are any of the Grunt’s Pokemon. While Weezing can rack up good damage over time, he doesn’t have that time, as Dark Fawful will bury some Dark Orb traps and either iniate a chase or have the Dark Star start up the Darkness beam. While Weezing is immune to the traps due to floating, this will kill off the Grunt very quickly – unless he uses Zubat whom is also immune or uses his Houndour to destroy the traps. Still, none of the Grunt’s Pokemon can do much in return to Dark Fawful and the Dark Star what with them being immune to his mechanic. Even without the trap, though, Dark Fawful and the Dark Star can pretty easily finish off Weezing – what with how slow he is, Dark Fawful’s Side A Chase accompanied by some pressure from the Dark Star will easily finish him.
This is assuming Arbok is dead, though, and he’s not going down without a fight with his good recovery and can help largely in KOing Dark Bowser. . .Although Arbok can’t KO as well as I’ve been crediting him up to this point, as the fact Dark Bowser escapes grabs twice as quickly makes Arbok’s fthrow a big tougher of a sell. Arbok can help the group get a decent lead before he dies, but they’ll struggle to kill off the Dark Star significantly without him. The fact that they have a lot of attempts though can help, and the Grunt can just focus on surviving with his Zubat inside Dark Bowser if necessary to help out Weezing.
I actually had the pleasure of previewing Dark Bowser before the main moveset was even done – at which point, I knew this set was good. What’s most surprising is how MW was able to stuff so much more into the rest of the movesets, mostly that boss one and the match-ups which almost constitute their own title with how entertaining, accurate and insightful they are.
The only negatives are pretty negligible – he’s a real marathon to read, with a typo here or there, but it’s entertaining – you even snuck a couple of real doozies into your writing. Your Ganondorf quip especially got a big laugh out of me. It’s not like your writing style particularly drags or anything either – along with your subtle, but wise use of pictures where necessary, Dark Bowser is a breeze. What a pathetic bunch of nitpicks they were.
The cage, being mentioned first, plays a most crucial role in all of Dark Bowser’s moveset – you create many a way to get inside the cage otherwise as Bowser, alongside the foe [mostly those aerials] and it’s handled with extreme care. Bowser has enough options that he can readily pressure or simply force his opponents into his cage. This in itself is remarkable, that you were able to force this kind of mechanic into actually being viable, let alone that it’s pure brilliance when you combine the down smash, up air, climbing and all of the shenanigans involving the thwomp, minions and cage fighting. Oh yeah, and the dark clouds.
What’s more unbelievable is that, throughout, you substantiate every input by Dark Bowser insofar that every projectile or summon is important in ironing out possible weaknesses, despite all filling totally different roles and still remaining perfectly viable for Smash. Aside from that, the entire moveset – including the second part, which I’ll come to soon – is practically pixel-to-pixel perfect for the character and a match, besides the climbing and thwomp or minions, plays out similarly to how it would in the RPG game.
I also just love your boss moveset – it’s like an entire Valozarg itself alone and the way you balance it is quite masterful, while still retaining what is Dark Bowser in essence. As is later backed up by your match-ups, there is a real strategy to playing as or against this boss and I’ve really not seen this kind of just pure awesome level of interconnectivity between a normal boss moveset and a normal character moveset before. It is very impressive that you were able to balance it out to a point, while, as always, sticking true to the source without losing your mind with how large and expansive it all is.
With Dark Fawful and the Dark Star, I felt you relied a little more on the source than the preceding, but it’s still pretty golden – especially for a boss moveset. What particularly got my notice was that buried trap, side A and Dark Star attack combination that truly seems deadly, along with that darkness beam and everything else, merging into a truly monstrous boss. Along with the buffed Dark Bowser beforehand, it goes as far as to turn any bosses attempted before in MYM or Brawl into a joke, as, as I suppose would be expected after your various super bosses in story modes, you can so easily get just completely wrecked.
I did also like how you handled the whole interaction between Fawful and Dark Bowser around the 400% marker, again being extremely true to character while, at the same time, showing real restraint in being able to make Dark Bowser vulnerable for this one moment as the enemy attacks and probably triggers the next stage. Again, very balanced, but this boss is definitely difficult – a delectable difficulty it is indeed and subtlety is presented in spades in coaxing the opponent into your true boss fight.
Your match-ups are just so great; I want to talk about them all on their own. First of all, thank you so much for the ones concerning Weezing – not that he’s performing well in them, but your understanding of the character is pretty frigging good considering he came out yesterday. Both in his normal and triple match-up, he’s used graciously, as is every character that crosses over. Along with the greatly-written playstyle and moveset itself, Dark Bowser is given a lot of decent explanation in how he exactly works, to the point that you’re very well adapted to him by journey’s end. And what a great journey it is – I’ve barely scratched the surface with this comment, but Dark Bowser is pure genius.
Dark Bowser is easily Warlord's most ambitious set to date, what with it having to be balanced for 2 completley different environments without any move replacements and having to work with a unique core mechanic on top of that. And good lord does it pay off!
I mean, first you have that epic cage move to start us off, and then throughout the set you introduce more and more ways to interact with it and get foes into it, and the entire time the set never tripped over itself. While most moves had an extra mechanic in true Warlord fashion, they all felt intuitive, natural, and relevant. Just the sheer fact that Dark Bowser has to initiate his "grab" from mid-range instead of traditional close-range grabs completley changes the way he plays, not that his playstyle wasn't already unique; it feels very much like your own Morton Koopa Jr how he changes his playstyle based on the opponent's own strategy, but Dark Bowser doesn't need any move-alteration mechanics to do so. Granted, he's probably a bit overpowered because of that, but you know, lolbalance.
The boss moveset was greatly designed, mainly because he was able to handle 3 players through simple core property changes and no complete move remakes. Oh wait, then he gets a second "form" which has a full boss moveset with unique mechancis and more move interactions like a normal moveset, whee.
Matchups were awesome and were actually pretty proffessional. They felt like they could be in an actual MYM World Forums, lol. Though they still have those evil demonic ratios
So yeah, if you couldn't tell from my non-stop praise, I love this guy. Quite possible my favorite MYM8 set so far, and I'd place it among my all-time favorite Warlordian sets.
@Dark Bowser: Pretty big set you have here! I scrolled down some to see why it was so long and noted that a third of it was for the boss moveset and a third was matchups. I don't really read matchups anyway, but I'll give the cool-looking Inside Story a look later.
Anyway, Dark Bowser's main moveset is good stuff. The Up Special is pretty cool on its own, and all of them work pretty well with the cage. Oh, the cage! I somehow forgot about it. The concept of setting up a little cage match is pretty cool. It's kind of like a torture chamber too. (Reminds me of Marik from Yu-Gi-Oh! for some reason.) Most of his attacks interact well with the cage, and some of them are pretty cool on their own as well. The interactions involving the Back Aerial seem a little too situational (since it's as apparently as easy to escape from as a grab), but eh.
Overall, it's a well-made moveset with a pretty big scope, but you pull it off as usual. Keep up the good work!
DARK KUPA
Who didn't call that grab? Seriously. Anyways, Dark Bowser starts off at a perfect rate...the usual Inhales, punches, and suggestive material (I lol'd at the minion orgy). He seems like a fairly simple character, with an (awesome) element of spacing mixed in...then, we reach the drop-off that is the aerials.
This is the drop-off point where we see all the beauty the set has to offer. The interactions between multiple moves and the cage (especially the D-Tilt/D-Air esque moves, and dark Thwomp) are genius. The playstyle ties the set together in a perfect package; not only does it meld several potential simple playstyles together, it does so in a way that's perfectly in-character. I feel like I'm playing along in BiS as I read the set. Especially as I delve into the boss moveset.
I'll start by saying that Dark Bowser's boss moveset is >>> Valozarg. In my opinion, you took what made fighting Valozarg 1 vs. 3 appealing, and expanded on it. Your knowledge of the source material was really brought out here as well. I'm not even kidding, it's like you worked part of an SM into the main game. In my opinion, Dark Bowser easily outclasses anything you made in MYM7. He has just as much originality and un-Smashness, but in a readable, intuitive way that a good set should strive for.
WEEZING
Now here's a real Smady set. Weezing seems, unlike DB, to stay entirely within Smash's boundaries. As an individual who sees the benefits of both sides of the fence, and enjoys making sets of both types, I can appreciate what you've done there. Weezing's KO method reminds me a bit of C4s...but much more relevant, and much more overpowering, depending on how much gas he has out, and when he decides to detonate. The various gas levels added a nice, manageable level of complexity to the set, and uses of these types throughout the set are enough to keep me interested the whole way through. I read Weezing after Dark Bowser, so its concise, friendly nature was a breath of fresh air. One of your better sets, for sure.
Weezing: OK, I've stalled more than enough on making this comment. But FIRST...
You already know how monstrous I think the writing style is here (including the various typos in the intro that outright contradicted the set itself), and everyone else
[except BKupa]
had trouble too, so I'll try not to complain TOO much about it.
To generalise, you're conquering the stage with gas, which is a good, simple concept. You have a breath in/breath out rythmn to the attacks which generally keeps Weezing from immediately dousing the whole stage in gas, but at the same time giving him a few options of what to do with the gas. I admire that, though
like Houndoom spreading his flames
it all sounds too easy to achieve.
That could just be because you didn't really specify the volumes of gas that were being emitted, which is brain frazzling frustrating, especially when you include specific lag times on everything (So I know how long the move takes, but not what it achieves... great 9_9).
There are other bizarre examples of you mixing relative and specific details. For example, you say he floats like 1.15x Lucas. The 1.15 is useless here, since you didn't give us any specific value to multiply it into. And the "Lucas" is useless here, since you tell us to multiply it by a specific decimal value (what is 1.15 times Lucas?). And even after all that, float is determined by fallspeed anyway, so 1.15x Lucas would be LESS floaty. Yes, call it a nitpick, but it shows the dangers of mixing detail styles. You can't be specific only half the time and generalise everything else, because the details won't mesh together and neither one will be worth anything.
Labelling the gas levels 1,2 3 and 4 was misleading. You had the base gas which is in almost every move and even comes out when not attacking. Then you had a number of equal derivitave gasses, all better than level 1, but all relatively equal to one another, and all rarely used. I found this labelling to be arbitrary and detracting from the set. Level 4 gas could easily have been called "Toxic Gas" (so called because of its effect), for example.
"fumblefeet" gas for level 3 and "Ammonia" gas for level 2 perhaps? At least they'd have names that reflect what they do
I'm not sure what Level 3 gas is for, other than being a fail version of level 2 gas.
And one more nitpick. while the grab is quite fun, it doesn't seem to be worth using, other than as a tool for bringing the gas together (which is counterproductive anyway, since you can't compound different gasses. And that in itself is kind of wierd, since these are GASSES, and not oils). Grabbing the foe essentially just gives them the poison damage they would have gotten just standing in your gas anyway.
¬_¬ Sorry for such a wierd negative comment, I'm nitpicking for the sake of having something to talk about, since when you get down to it, the concept behind everything here is flawless.
I assume Weezing represents your "epiphany" on flow you had recently. While it is close to the ideal form of "flow" as I understand it, there is still one problem. You're bouncing flow off of a third party entity (the gas), which makes the attacks only relevant to one another via the gas rather than flowing directly into one another. A similar point could be levelled at Dark Bowser, whose attacks flow, but mostly just via his cage, a third party entity. Ideally, flow should work directly between moves, with each one creating the situation in which another could feasibly be used
Weezing is not a heavyweight. In fact, he's the exact opposite. How else do you think a bag of gas can float? Magic?
Dark Bowser:
I've seriously been waiting for an age for a MW set I could love unconditionally. There's all the delicious little tricks in the writing/pacing that I love. And of course, the sublime delivery of DB's core playstyle, trickling (or rather pouring) new applications and uses with each subsequent attack.
And no attack suddenly becomes useless if you try to use it outside of DB's main playstyle. That alone made me respect this set x9000
I really got the feeling you loved making this. The enthusiasm in the writing was palatable.
Smady's love for DB is not unfounded, it really is a genuine marvel. Even attacks like the N-air, which I would normally complain about for their convoluted connection to the main mechanic, make perfect sense.
But I have to complain about something, otherwise it's not really a comment.
For the Doppelori matchup, the cage doesn't really scare her all that much, since one of the uses of Up-Special was to escape from specific situations like that (she teleports upwards to start). Since she can teleport out of the cage and rain down lighting in the same attack, Dopps can punish DB's grab even if she gets caught. And again by token of her Up-Special, she can enter the cage with DB, if he tries to camp inside (though that's probably the worst idea ever, since Doppelori hates being up close like that anyway). But it's still a matchup in favour of DB really.
Hidden commentary! Why do I hide it? Makes the page easier to scroll, or something. Mostly I just like the look of text on black, I s'pose.
I'd make some sarcastic cracks about trivial details (like boring attack names - Swing and Cling made me chuckle, actually) but you have been a bit grumpy lately, and what with my not being an MYMer anymore, I reckon it'd be a bad idea all around.
So, serious commentary.
I feel like this is a bit of a dream set for you. It's the chance to pay tribute to one of your mains, bring out the whole checklist of Warlordian staples, and still tackle a whole new kind of playstyle. I really do like the almost Luigified-clone aspect that occasionally comes into play in this set - it makes it feel that much more REAL.
What you did very, very well was splitting the set up into two chunks. You've got the "actual" set for people who like in-smash more, and you've got the boss moveset for everyone else - and neither one is forced down the reader's throat. You're learning, man! This way, everybody wins, and a whole nasty altercation gets avoided.
Going onto a different tangent, you don't need me to tell you how awesome this playstyle is. Trap your opponent in a cage, then TORTURE them? That's fantastic, and there's something about the off-the-cuff way you present it that shows that you've starting rethinking the way you write your movesets. It doesn't feel like you're showing off. It feels like you've struck gold with a hell of an idea and are happy to share it. Of course, you don't care about this whole "presentation" thing...
The only thing I didn't like too much was the sort of unintuitive FTilt, where if you clash (nice implementation of one of JOE's "unused mechanics", by the way), the opponent automatically gets knocked back into prime position for caging. Having the game so mechanically lead you into the next part of his game feels a bit like Sandman's hitstun comboing, in that it's reductive of player influence.
I'm going to mention here also that you've totally mastered the move interaction. The problem with move interactions is that sometimes they wind up being little more than overcreativity spread over two inputs instead of just one (Grunt is a bit guilty of that at times, but when you have THAT many interactions, a few are bound to glare) - but here it's always implemented in a natural, logical way. When the dash attack comes back into play, it makes sense. That's a hell of a thing.
I'll level with you, I only read the main moveset myself. It's a big read and I got the gist of the rest from a skim - I see plenty to admire in the basics alone.
I never can resist a Warlord set. Well, except the Komodo Bros. :embarrass
Now here's a real Smady set. Weezing seems, unlike DB, to stay entirely within Smash's boundaries. As an individual who sees the benefits of both sides of the fence, and enjoys making sets of both types, I can appreciate what you've done there. Weezing's KO method reminds me a bit of C4s...but much more relevant, and much more overpowering, depending on how much gas he has out, and when he decides to detonate. The various gas levels added a nice, manageable level of complexity to the set, and uses of these types throughout the set are enough to keep me interested the whole way through. I read Weezing after Dark Bowser, so its concise, friendly nature was a breath of fresh air. One of your better sets, for sure.
Thanks for the comment. For the life of me, I can't figure out who "C4" is.
I think what inspired me with the Weezing mechanic is that particular item that spreads gas out everywhere when thrown [memory is a let down today, it seems] and also kind of Wiz and Kupa's neutral special. What I had originally planned was simply masking the opponent behind the fog after spreading it, but then I was hit with a bit of an epiphany about how I could simply constantly damage with it and make use of passive hitboxes.
OK, I've stalled more than enough on making this comment. But FIRST...
You already know how monstrous I think the writing style is here (including the various typos in the intro that outright contradicted the set itself), and everyone else
[except BKupa]
had trouble too, so I'll try not to complain TOO much about it.
To generalise, you're conquering the stage with gas, which is a good, simple concept. You have a breath in/breath out rythmn to the attacks which generally keeps Weezing from immediately dousing the whole stage in gas, but at the same time giving him a few options of what to do with the gas. I admire that, though
like Houndoom spreading his flames
it all sounds too easy to achieve.
That could just be because you didn't really specify the volumes of gas that were being emitted, which is brain frazzling frustrating, especially when you include specific lag times on everything (So I know how long the move takes, but not what it achieves... great 9_9).
There are other bizarre examples of you mixing relative and specific details. For example, you say he floats like 1.15x Lucas. The 1.15 is useless here, since you didn't give us any specific value to multiply it into. And the "Lucas" is useless here, since you tell us to multiply it by a specific decimal value (what is 1.15 times Lucas?). And even after all that, float is determined by fallspeed anyway, so 1.15x Lucas would be LESS floaty. Yes, call it a nitpick, but it shows the dangers of mixing detail styles. You can't be specific only half the time and generalise everything else, because the details won't mesh together and neither one will be worth anything.
Labelling the gas levels 1,2 3 and 4 was misleading. You had the base gas which is in almost every move and even comes out when not attacking. Then you had a number of equal derivitave gasses, all better than level 1, but all relatively equal to one another, and all rarely used. I found this labelling to be arbitrary and detracting from the set. Level 4 gas could easily have been called "Toxic Gas" (so called because of its effect), for example.
"fumblefeet" gas for level 3 and "Ammonia" gas for level 2 perhaps? At least they'd have names that reflect what they do
I'm not sure what Level 3 gas is for, other than being a fail version of level 2 gas.
And one more nitpick. while the grab is quite fun, it doesn't seem to be worth using, other than as a tool for bringing the gas together (which is counterproductive anyway, since you can't compound different gasses. And that in itself is kind of wierd, since these are GASSES, and not oils). Grabbing the foe essentially just gives them the poison damage they would have gotten just standing in your gas anyway.
¬_¬ Sorry for such a wierd negative comment, I'm nitpicking for the sake of having something to talk about, since when you get down to it, the concept behind everything here is flawless.
I assume Weezing represents your "epiphany" on flow you had recently. While it is close to the ideal form of "flow" as I understand it, there is still one problem. You're bouncing flow off of a third party entity (the gas), which makes the attacks only relevant to one another via the gas rather than flowing directly into one another. A similar point could be levelled at Dark Bowser, whose attacks flow, but mostly just via his cage, a third party entity. Ideally, flow should work directly between moves, with each one creating the situation in which another could feasibly be used
Weezing is not a heavyweight. In fact, he's the exact opposite. How else do you think a bag of gas can float? Magic?
You do actually make a few good points here: the weight of Weezing is incorrect as he in fact weighs 20.9lbs and it hardly matters that much anyway if he is a lightweight, as it simply means he can spread his gas around more with his awesome recovery. I may yet go back and change that, but again, it isn't really important in terms of his Smash appearance. Honestly, I see why you had problems with some of the grammar and how you could have misconstrued it, but purely going by common sense, I wouldn't think you'd get quite that confused. In some areas that you describe, such as where exactly Weezing spreads the gas using his body, I figured it would be fairly obvious that it's all the area directly around him - like a snail's trail of (GOO).
You do have a point about the naming of gas - the levels are pretty meaningless when level three gas has practically the same use as level two gas, except in tripping rather than flinching. The "fumblefeet" gas was mainly created to represent smoke, being one of Weezing's main moves to draw influence from, in his small move pool and guaranteed tripping > flinching as far as I'm concerned.
The grab game is useful - you can constantly cause toxic damage that can cause upward of 20% damage, not withstanding the after-effect and then tag the enemy with the throw. Pulling in all of your gas is an option, but you can also just pull in the gas right next to you if you stop. It also functions as another way to simply pull in your gas so it's all clumped together in one handy spot to Explode away, if you don't want to grab your opponent. Which, if you do after just pulling in the gas rather than sucking it all up - preferable as it's stronger on close-range enemies, you can then use their trail along with the clump of gas to really surrounded the main platform area in gas.
Yeah, I realise I used a mechanic to link all of my moves together - it does make a lot of sense for Weezing, though. Also, happy that you found the concept "flawless." Thanks a lot for the comment.
Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention, I just recently updated the "Smady's Ratings" down there in my signature to also rate movesets in the same star ranking, which is something you will see nowhere else! Check out the link, is what I'm saying.
Decoy Octopus is a member of FOXHOUND, being an impersonation and mimicry expert. He is mexican in descent, but can alter his voice to match who he is impersonating, and is very fluent in a dozen languages. Little is known about his personality, other than the fact that he believes he becomes a person rather than an impersonation. At some time in his life he trimmed his ears, nose, cheek bones, and hair line in order to more easily recreate a person's physical attributes.
When Decoy Octopus is unlocked, he does not show up on the select screen. Rather, he is selected by holding the grab button when selecting a character. Once the match starts, you start the match as the character you chose like normal. If you hold the shield button and the special button down together for 3 or more seconds, then the character will push a button on their waist, cloaking them for a fraction of a second, being uncloaked as Decoy Octopus. This will give him the following short moveset and stats:
Stats
Traction 8/10
Speed 6.5/10
Size 6/10
Weight 5.5/10
Jump 5/10
Fall Speed 5/10
Power 1/10
Pretty pitiful, right? Well, Octopus is the only member of FOXHOUND whose sepcialty isnt combat, so he usually leaves fights to his teammates. As for how he'll survive on his own, he can impersonate people, remember?
Attacks
Jab - Blood Extraction
Octopus will remove a syringe (good luck pronouncing that when you audio comment this Warlord) from his overcoat pocket and hold it in his right hand at the first press of this input, taking .3 seconds to pull out. Pressing Jab again will have Octopus stab forward with the syringe towards his foe. If he lands this grab hitbox, a quick animation of Octopus drawing blood from his foe is shown, followed by him pushing the foe away and pocketing the syringe, the foe taking 4% from the ordeal. If Octopus lands this attack after he's already drawn blood from teh foe, he'll simply stab the foe with it and retract it back quickly, dealing 4%.
Grab & Pummel - Fabrication
Octopus's grab is a fairly simple reach forward with similar range to Snake's. His Pummel has him pull the foe up by the collar, making the grab 1.2x harder to escape from, followed by ripping a piece of cloth or fur (depends on the character) off the character and pocketing it. He then puts the foe back onto teh ground. After taking a piece of cloth/fur already, his pummel is a generic smack dealing 2%. While Octopus has no real throws, pressing forward onteh control stick when the foe is grabbed will have him push the foe away from him a ways, dealing 5%.
Neutral Air - Pluck
Octopus will reel back his arm as you press the input, giving you .4 seconds to input any direction for him to aim his arm in. If no direction is given Octopus will simply do the attack straight forward. He will quickly throw his arm forward and reel it back in plucking motion, dealing 2% and flinch. If the attack hits the foe on the upper half of their hurtbox, however, then Octopus will actually pluck one of the foe's hairs, quickly bagging it and placing it in his pocket. There is little to no ending lag on this attack.
Specials
Down Special - Voice Recognition
In a quick animation, Octopus will pull a tape recorder out of his overcoat pocket and throw it 3 stage builder blocks forward. The foe cannot be hit by this tape recorder nor can they pick it up. Octopus, however, can pick up the tape recorder and throw it like an item, or press down and the attack button to pocket it, turning it off as he does so. If the opponent uses an attack that involves a voice clip of any kind within 5 stage builder blocks of the recorder, it will pick it up, with the indicator of it doing so being a small red flash from it.
Side Special - I Remember Faces...
Octopus will make a pose as if he was contemplating something for 3 seconds. If any foe is within 5 stage builder blocks in front of Octopus and facing him, then he will make a mental note of how they look (signified by him snapping his figners and cancelling out of the pose). Cancelling the pose early is a matter of pressing the special button again.
Up Special - Uninterested
Octopus will fold his arms and look away, seeming underwhelmed by his current situation. This pose gives Octopus super armor and lasts for 3 seconds(also cancellable by pressing the special button). Why would a simple pose that gives you super armor be effective as a special? Because this immobility and pose will lure the foe towards you, allowing you to cancel into a Side Special or record a voice clip (since folding your arms conveniently conceals your tape recorder if you are carrying it).
Neutral Special - Master of Disguise
This is where the plan comes together (A-Team reference FTW). Octopus will apply the samples he has taken from his opponent one at a time by taking them out of his pocket (injecting himself with his foe's blood, producing a putting on a mask/wig, attuning his voice to teh recording, etc). Each of these takes .4 seconds apiece. Thankfully you dont need all 5 things to apply at one time. You can apply as many as you have that you havent applied. Each piece of the foe's appearance has a different effect that Octopus copies:
The foe's blood copies all of their ground moves and grab game, the foe's clothing copies their body appearance and their stats, the foe's hair copies their aerials, the foe's voice copies their specials, and the foe's face doesnt give an extra effect beyond the cosmetic change until the full disguise is complete.
If all 5 piece's of his disguise are in place, specifically the face, then an extra effect will take place. Whenever Octopus or the opponent he is impersonating is KOed, then the one that wasnt KOed will dissapear quickly. Then, both Octopus and the foe will respawn at the same time (The character who wasnt KOed keeps their same damage), with whether Octopus is on the left or the right being decided by whoever is controlling Octopus. This allows for massive mindgames. He also has mastered his foe's moves through watching them intentively, having all moves dealing 3% more damage per hit. His equipment also has a sort of durability as well, giving him super armor to attacks dealing less than 8%.
Another thing to note is that a foe that does not have one of the elements Octopus needs for a disguise will not need to be taken in order to create the disguise, their effects on him taking place once the full costume is complete. For example, Kirby wears no clothes and has no hair. Thus Octopus just needs to copy his face, voice, and blood, with his stats and aerials being copied as soon as the other 3 are applied.
If you decide to remove all of your current disguise, you just hold the special and buttons for 3 seconds, just like getting rid of your random outfit.
Decoy Octopus has no taunts or final smash on his own, simply taking his foe's once he has at least 3 parts of his disguise on him.
Playstyle
Decoy Octopus is, in a nutshell, an unsmash TAC with way less setup. That added with the fact that he starts every match as any character makes him predictable and unpredictable at the same time, in all the right ways. Maybe you just abuse your main and swap to Octopus when youre ahead in stock, or maybe you chose a character that can set up for Octopus's copying. All these things decide when you decide to become Decoy Octopus himself, if at all. The oddity of his random form is that you dont have to ever become Octopus during the match. Master of Disguise through-and-through indeed. If you do decide to becoem Octopus, you'd better hope the character you became can avoid being punished severely as you hold the special and shield buttons. Octopus himself has an upper hand on TAC in the fact that he copies whole sections of moves as well as their appearance, and in any order he wishes. Copy a foe's specials and stats to start setting up their mechanic enough to preoccupy them as you finish your disguise. Strap on a face, wig, and some clothes to copy the foe's appearance exactly, allowing you to confuse AI characters and minions. use the foe's great speed against them, chasing them down with a tape recorder in hand. A multitude of mixing and matching options are available, with you not neccesarily needing the full disguise to mess around with your foe. However, a full disguise will give Octopus an extreme mindgame advantage every time he or his foe is KOed. Slipping from one disguise to another is really how Decoy Octopus does his business, and business has never been better.
I may as well make a comment on a moveset eventually, eh?
Let's just start this out by saying that I've never, EVER liked a set that goes about copying opponents' moves. This goes for TAC, Ditto, Smeargle, all of them. Octopus, is the only version of this overused concept that I might actually like/play as. Granted, it's completely impractical and kinda ridiculous, but I could actually see cloaking yourself as the opponent instead of just pulling out all of their attacks from hammerspace. It's easier to visualize.
Now, the main thing I dislike about Octopus is your way of bringing him into the smash scene. Okay, so holding the shield button while selecting random is an ingenious way of not letting the foe know what you're up to, but I'd like to be able to hold shield while choosing -anyone-, and not let fate decide the game for me.
GW swapped this up. Now you can hold the grab button to have Octopus appear as anyone.
Even after the match begins, Octopus starts off on the wrong foot. I'm not going to stand still for three seconds before I can get my mini moveset. (Even then, it wouldn't work... say you're playing as Kirby, he's just going to keep sucking foes in during those three seconds. Although, it would be amusing if Octo-Kirby transformed to his true form with the foe inside him.)
Your method of stealing aerials in the air, grounded attacks on the ground, grabs with the grab, it speeds up the process incredibly while still adding a degree of challenge. I'd like it if the attacks did more damage, though, so you could beat them up before transforming and kill the foe with their own attacks. When all is said and done, though, this is easily the most enjoyable set of yours I've read. Although you still have a few spelling errors thrown in there, ("teh"? "TEH"??) you've certainly polished up your writing style since Venom. Although this isn't technically a moveset, it's a good use of three hours. Well done, Goldy.
I'm going to have to go with Agi on this one - this is just a bit of fun and not a moveset, really: not only does it lack the moves, it also lacks any real sense of playstyle. It is quite enjoyable, though. I do like how you mysteriously select random and take what you get - as with the whole respawning point mindgames thing, though, this really doesn't help Decoy Octopus out. Now that you changed it so that Decoy Octopus can be anyone, I still don't see exactly the benefit of the moveset - DO is still weaker than any other character, or any viable character. There's still lots broken.
The bigger problem is that Decoy Octopus doesn't really benefit from the change and lacks any real way to defend himself or attack, so he'll probably be at a massive disadvantage if he ever actually gets to transform into his opponent. At which point, the opponent probably has a better grasp of the character they chose. What Decoy Octopus mostly boils down to is a possible fun little cameo by the character that serves as little than a fun diversion from the main cast, but whom is wholly not viable due to how underpowered and under-utilised his attacks are. Seriously, two-percent-damage is worthless and overall, DO is about as painfully weak as Bob-Omb.
Still, as said, it's an entertaining, short project that you did in a few hours and the idea of stealing parts of your opponent is fun. It's just, not really a moveset, not really a boss, kind of a mode - but who would want to screw themselves over? There's not much to do when you accomplish what you set out to do, meaning much of what DO does is negligible as the opponent will just beat him over the head, with any kind of offensive.
Decoy Octopus: The concept of a true master of disguise (sneakily selected at the beginning of the match) is really cool, however, I don't think I'm really getting the point. I sort of missed out on TAC, so maybe I'm missing it here, too.
Decoy Octopus's moves are pretty cool, the fact that you only need to do each thing once is nice. I have a few little nitpicks: pressing A twice to use the Jab seems kind of pointless, and the Up Special is pretty lame. Those aren't really hugely big deals (well, except maybe for the Up Special). When you get everything together and complete the disguise, though...you just get to play as your opponent's character, essentially? Why not just pick that character in the first place? I also don't see the "massive mindgame" potential, as you'll find out which one is which after you both respawn as soon as someone moves.
I don't really see the practicality here, but Decoy Octopus still gets cool points for being cool. expect more clever efforts from you in the future, GW.
After seeing all the nice little changes made to Decoy Octopus, I see that he does have a neat little use now. It's like breaking into the Fourth Wall of Smash Bros. I approve!
Dark Booze.....He's just a clone of regular Boozer. He has teh same Up B, forward A, and back A air. And he is...just a palette swap of Boozer. Why shuld he get his own moveset? And I don't drink........
Jack Spicer is the diabolical, self-proclaimed "Prince of Darkness" and the main antagonist in the earlier seasons of Xiaolin Showdown. Although he mostly gives the impression of being a wannabe supervillain and a spoiled mama's boy, he is a technological genius and creates armies of sophisticated "Jackbots" from his evil lair/basement. He plots with the ghostly Heylin witch Wuya in order to locate or steal the mystical Shen Gong Wu and use them to take over the world. In later seasons of the show, more powerful and capable villains take over the role of main antagonist, while Jack remains a thorn in the side of the good guys. When he's not being a bumbling fool and/or a cowardly crybaby, Jack is known for charging into battle himself (armed with Shen Gong Wu and legions of Jackbots) and even showing his "good side" every once and a while.
In Smash Bros., Jack is totally inept at combat for the most part. In his weak, regular form, he'll want to concentrate on gathering parts in order to create robots to do his dirty work for him. However, with the help of a certain Shen Gong Wu, Jack might actually stand a chance in battle on his own....
- Stats -
Size-Medium
Still just your run-of-the-mill angsty teenager, Jack's only about as tall as Pit.
Weight-Light
Jack weighs about as much as Mario. He doesn't work out much; too busy with scheming.
Walk Speed-Average
Jack tip-toes around, so as to not attract attention to himself.
Dash Speed-Average
Jack runs about as fast as Mario.
Jump-Above Average
While his first jump is pretty ordinary, Jack utilizes the helipack strapped to his back in order to perform a massive second jump, a little better than Yoshi's in height and control.
Fall Speed-Average
Jack falls at a pretty regular speed, not too quickly or slowly.
Air Speed-Average
Jack is pretty mobile in the air.
Traction-Average
Not gamebreaking, or anything.
Jack can crawl in a cowering fashion, similar to Luigi. And while he can't glide, wall jump, or wall cling, Jack can "wall walk" thanks to his Shen Gong Wu, the Jet Bootsu (which happen to look like his regular shoes)!
If you press the Control Stick towards a wall while in contact with it in the air, Jack will immediately stick his feet to it and automatically start walking up the wall, no matter the incline! Neat, huh? You can use your midair jump to detach from the wall at anytime.
- Special Moves -
Neutral B-Build-a-Bot
This is Jack's most important move, and one in which he utilizes his expertise in robotics. It will allow you to build your very own Jackbot! Here's a rundown of the mechanic:
In order to build up his own mechanized squadron to fight for him, Jack needs to attack an opponent with his other moves (detailed in full later). Hitting a foe and causing damage will cause a Robot Part to fly out of them, similar to the Dragoon pieces. These Parts take the form of either a generic cog or spring and can only be picked up by Jack (all he needs to do is make contact with them). Robot Parts can also be knocked out of Jack, one at a time, when he gets hit by a powerful attack (they fade away after a few seconds). As Jack collects Parts, a small counter located by his damage percentage and character portrait will keep track of how many he currently possesses.
When you have collected enough Parts, pressing B will cause Jack to turn away from the screen briefly while appearing to fiddle with something. Half a second later, a Jackbot will materialize in the air next to Jack! This will deplete a portion of your total Parts, and the model of the Jackbot manufactured depends on how many Parts you use in creating it:
When you press B, Jack will automatically build the model that requires the maximum amount of Parts, if you have that many Parts available. Jack can hold a maximum of 20 Parts at a time. For example, if you have 15 Parts, pressing B will produce a Laser Jackbot, and pressing B immediately after that will produce a Bladed Jackbot. Jack can have a maximum of three Jackbots following him around at a time. Each Jackbot is roughly around the size of Ivysaur and hovers in the air about a Kirby height off the ground. If you have three Jackbots, one will hover slightly ahead of Jack, one will hover slightly behind him, and one will hover sort of beside him. When Jack jumps, they jump with him, and when he crouches, they lower themselves to the ground as well. They're like his bodyguards, the way they surround him! They don't take knockback, but they do each have 25 HP, and when those depleted, the Jackbot will explode. When a Jackbot explodes, it'll leave behind at least one Part. Also, when Jack gets KOed, the Jackbots are destroyed as well.Jack is capable of commanding his Jackbots to attack, but first, let's see what each kind does:
Default Jackbot: Pictured above; there's nothing really special about it. When commanded to attack, it will quickly charge forward the distance of half a platform and ram any foes in the way for 8% damage and medium knockback. This model is cheap to manufacture and will do a decent job of doing damage to foes.
Bladed Jackbot: This model looks pretty much like the default model, except for the large circular saw built into its bottom half. When commanded to attack, it will also charge forward half a platform and extend its saw. The saw hits foes rapidly multiple times before sending them flying diagonally for a total of 14% damage and above average knockback. Bladed Jackbots obviously pack a bit more punch than the Default ones for an slight increase in cost.
Laser Jackbot: This particular variation is equipped with a laser gatling gun that'll deal lots of damage to foes! When commanded to attack, it'll rapidly fire a round of laser shots straight ahead that cover a distance of a platform and hit multiple times before sending the foe flying, deal a maximum of 20% damage and high knockback. It should be noted that this attack lasts slightly longer than that of the other Jackbots. It might take longer to assemble this monster, but it's well worth it!
Whew, that was a doozy. It's worth it to know exactly how Jack will be racking up most of hs KOs, however. Exactly how Jack commands his Jackbots will be explained in a bit, and don't forget that attacking foes with the Jackbots produces Parts as well, so you can keep production running smoothly!
Side B-Sphere of Yun
When you input Side B, Jack quickly whips out the powerful Shen Gong Wu known as the Sphere of Yun. Following a brief period of lag comparable to the time it takes for Samus to launch a Super Missile, any non-shielding/dodging foe within a platform's length in front of Jack will become trapped inside a strange ball! (If there is more than one opponent in front of Jack, this move will only hit the closest one.) There's also a brief period of cooldown directly after the attack. If this move connects in midair, the ball will fall at the falling speed of the character trapped inside. Captive foes don't have any room to move around inside their little spheres; they can only try to button mash their way out to disperse the sphere. The sphere lasts about 5 seconds if they opponent doesn't fight their way out for some reason. While he has a foe trapped, Jack Spicer is free to attack the sphere. This won't cause the sphere to budge, but the foe can still be damaged, and as such, Parts will still appear for him to collect! Take advantage of this opportunity to score some free damage and Parts. Jack can't use the Sphere of Yun while he already has a foe captive.
Oh, one more thing! In Xiaolin Showdown, the Sphere of Yun gave its holder his prisoner's power for as long as they were trapped inside. As a little Easter Egg, while Jack has a foe captive, his Side B is replaced with their Side B! Jack will approximate the attack as best he can. Go ahead and rub it in your foe's face!
Down B-Ring of the Nine Dragons
This nifty Shen Gong Wu allows the user to split into a maximum of 9 different versions of himself, each with a different aspect of his personality. Jack used this Shen Gong Wu on several occasions, though when you're as lacking in common sense as he is, it's generally not a good idea to split up what's left. Anyway, Jack pulls off a primarily defensive maneuver when he uses the Ring. When activated, Jack will flash, then quickly and magically split into two seemingly identical versions of himself, one in the background and one in the foreground of where he previously was. For a duration as long as Marth's Counter, any foe's attack on Jack will miss, and the two separate Jacks will retaliate by either punching or kicking the foe together, doing 1.1x the damage and knockback of the original attack. In addition, since technically there's two Jacks hitting the foe, you'll get two Robot Parts for pulling this off successfully! What's more, if you double tap B quickly at the start of the move, Jack will replicate himself an additional time, so that when you counter a foe's move, they'll get hit for 1.2x damage with three Jacks and you'll get three Robot Parts!
Keep in mind though that when you replicate yourself, there are still a couple of frames of vulnerability at the start and end of the move (more so if you replicate twice) and as with all counter moves, you're still not immune to grabs.
Up B-Monkey Staff
The Monkey Staff gives its holder the speed, strength, and agility of a fierce monkey, as well as an attractive coat of fur and a nifty tail. The longer the wielder holds it, however, the more he loses his mind to the monkey's instincts. For whatever reason, this Shen Gong Wu is a favorite of Jack Spicer's. Using this move will transform Jack into a monkey, giving him a brand new set of moves and increasing his fighting ability immensely!
When you input Up B, Jack will quickly hold up the Monkey Staff and flash gold, all in a split second (briefly stopping his momentum in midair). Jack is now Monkey Jack! He heralds this new transformation by doing a quick, massive somersault covers a vertical and horizontal distance similar to Marth's Dolphin Slash, though not as quickly and more controllable. Jack also damages foes that come into contact with him similar to Samus' Screw Attack, dealing a maximum of 12% damage and little knockback.
As stated earlier, Monkey Jack has his own moveset (follow the link below) and his own pros and cons, so if you don't want to turn into Monkey Jack, you'll have to rely on Normal Jack's other methods of recovery, including his helipack and Jet Bootsu. Also, since Monkey Jack doesn't like robots, all your Jackbots will be destroyed when you transform, and you won't produce Parts every time you hit an opponent.
Without his robots, Jack is pretty weak and vulnerable. He can't really rely on his physical strength to do much hurting, so he resorts to other methods. For his jab, Jack quickly whips out a blowtorch, fires it up, and begins waving it around frantically in front of himself. While it has rather short range, the torch will do 3% damage per hit and flinching knockback.
Huh, there's another use? Great! If Jack happens to have a Jackbot in front of him (and he will if he has any at all), using this attack will heal it! The Jackbot will recover 2 HP per "hit". Unfortunately, with a Jackbot in the way, Jack won't be able to hit his opponents, so use this attack when you've got some breathing room to make some repairs and keep your minions strong (even if you can't really tell how much damage your minions have taken).
Forward Tilt-You Don't Know Jack
For this attack, Jack pulls a wire out of the ground that has a sparking industrial plug on the end of it. Dangerous! Jack thrusts the live wire forward with very little start and end lag. Foes that come into contact with it take 6% damage and low knockback. While this attack isn't very strong and doesn't have much more range than the jab, it's pretty quick and packs a little punch, so use it in a tight spot.
Like the jab, this move also has a function relating to the Jackbots. If you use this attack on a Jackbot , you'll give it a super charge, increasing the damage of its next attack by 5%! So if you've got a moment, it wouldn't hurt to juice up your leading Jackbot.
Up Tilt-Jack It Up
Jack attempts...some sort of martial art move here, and as you can see, it's not too impressive. Jack strikes this pose and deals 5% damage to foes directly above him and a little bit behind him, with low knockback.
This attack also commands Jack's lead Jackbot to attack! The attacks of each Jackbot were detailed above. Now you're covered on all sides! So I guess that explains the pose...he's showing off his robot? If only there was a way to switch your lead Jackbot around....
Down Tilt-Jack is...off
When he's alone, Jack quickly falls onto his stomach and cries while flailing his arms and legs helplessly. Kind of like Xianghua from Soul Calibur, you know? This seems to be more of an act of submission, though. Since he's all spread out, Jack covers a bit more range than in his other standard attacks, dealing 4% damage and tripping foes.
Remember how Jackbots drop to the ground when Jack crouches? Well, this attack does sort of the same thing; while Jack flails around like a baby, the grounded Jackbots rotate in a quick circle around Jack. If he's got three Jackbots, the one in front of him will move to his side, the one at his side will move to his back, etc. If he's got two, they'll switch places. The moving Jackbots will do 8% damage and medium knockback on both sides of Jack. This'll put your preferred Jackbot up first, so you can have the appropriate one for your Up Tilt, or maybe just so you can heal it a little with your Jab. Manage your robots wisely!
Dash Attack-Lumbering Jack
By himself, Jack can only manage a weak, two-handed push, like Peach's Dash Attack. Jack's version only does 4% damage and low knockback, though. However, Jack can enlist the help of his Jackbots for this attack! Any Jackbots present will move in front of him so that he can push them into the foe! This attack does 7% damage and medium knockback with one Jackbot. However, any additional Jackbots will make a sort of Jackbot train and increase the range, knockback, and damage of the attack (7% damage per Jackbot)! Smart one, that Jack Spicer.
- Smash Attacks -
Forward Smash-Weak Wrench/Strike Command
Jack's Smashes must be awesome, right? Everyone's Smashes are awesome! Well...Jack's a special case. Jack takes out an ordinary wrench and swings it once for all of his Smashes. Yup. For his Forward Smash, he quickly swipes his wrench horizontally for 8% damage and low knockback. It's practically a Tilt!
As you might have guessed (or not), the true function for this attack (and all of Jack's Smashes) is to command the Jackbots. Yep, all of them. At the same time! Inputting a Forward Smash will cause all available Jackbots to group together in front of Jack and release each of their attacks straight ahead at the same time! As you can imagine, this can cause a lot of damage to foes! When two or more Default or Bladed Jackbots strike an enemy, their damage and knockback will be combined. When Laser Jackbots are involved, the same sort of thing happens, except that since the Laser attack lasts longer and reaches farther, foes can be held in place while being pummeled by Default and/or Bladed Jackbot attacks, and then get blown away by the Laser. Keep in mind the ranges of each Jackbot's attack! You can cause massive damage with these Smashes; all your hard work pays off here!
Up Smash-Lame Wrench/Anti-Air Command
Jack does an upward swipe with his wrench, doing 8% damage and low upward knockback. Though as you may suspect, there's more to this move.
This attack is quite similar to the Forward Smash, with the obvious exception being that the Jackbots' attacks are aimed straight upward. Also, the attacks are launched from a Jackbot's default position, that is, hovering off the ground and either behind, beside, or in front of Jack (though slightly spread out a bit more for a wider range). Keep in mind how many Jackbots you have and where their attacks will hit when using the Up Smash command.
Down Smash-Doomsday
And now for something a little different! When Jack uses this move on his own, he'll do a boring low-angled swipe with his wrench for 8% damage and low knockback. However, if he has any Jackbots, they'll spread out a little to reveal that Jack now has a little device in his hand with a big red button on it. It's a Self-Destruct Button! You can't charge this attack; as soon as you input Down Smash, Jack will pull out the button and press it. Any of Jack's Jackbots will immediately fall to the ground where they are and explode! Each explosion does 20% damage and high diagonal upward knockback. Luckily, Jack takes cover in the background, so he's not hurt. Unfortunately, he's left with no robots after he uses this move. However, each Jackbot will leave behind 2 Robot Parts so that Jack has a little head start while rebuilding.
- Aerial Attacks -
Neutral Aerial-Wheeeee
On his own, Jack is about as formidable in the air as he is on the ground (in other words, not really). For his Neutral Aerial, Jack does a little twirl in the air while sticking his leg out, doing 5% damage and rather low horizontal knockback on all sides. However, if he's got Jackbots, they'll position themselves around Jack so that he kicks each of them away about a platform's length before returning to their original positions. If he's got one Jackbot, he'll kick it forward. If he has two, he'll kick one forward and then the other backwards. If he has three, he'll kick one forwards, then one backwards, and finish up by kicking the last one forward again. The model doesn't matter; each Jackbot does 8% damage and medium knockback upon contact with a foe.
Forward Aerial-Action!
Among other hobbies, Jack has been known to dabble in filmmaking and directing (even in the middle of a battle). When he uses this move, Jack pulls out a clapperboard like the one pictured above and...claps it in front of himself while saying "Action!". This move is rather quick (like Marth's Forward Aerial) and the hitbox is a little bigger than it looks. It does 8% damage and medium horizontal knockback. Not bad for a midair attack.
The fun doesn't stop there if Jack has Jackbots, though. If he has any, the Jackbots will simultaneously arrange themselves in a vertical formation directly in front of Jack (stacked one on top of the other) and perform each of their own attacks! The lead Jackbot takes the middle, directly in front of Jack, while the others will stay above or below that one. If you use this move with a wall of three Jackbots, you'll have a pretty formidable approach that your opponents will have a hard time avoiding.
Back Aerial-Yay!
For this move, Jack throws his legs up behind his body with a giddy expression on his face, sort of like he's posing for a jumping picture. It's a pretty weak kick that deals 6% damage and low diagonal upwards knockback, though like Forward Aerial, it's rather quick.
Also similarly to his Forward Aerial, this attack commands any of Jack's Jackbots to get in formation behind him and perform their default attacks opposite the direction that Jack's facing! As with the previous attack, the more Jackbots you have, the more dangerous this attack will be.
Up Aerial-Hmmm...
Jack whips out his wrench and pokes it upward, dealing a measly 6% damage and low vertical knockback. Like most of Jack's aerials, at least it comes out rather quickly. If Jack has at least one Jackbot with him, it will simultaneously move to right above his position and perform a sort of headbutt, dealing 10% damage and above average knockback.
Down Aerial-Ha!
Jack does a quick midair stomp with one foot, dealing 6% damage and low downwards knockback. It doesn't spike, but if Jack has at least one Jackbot, it'll move right under him and fire up its thrusters! If your opponent gets knocked into the sweetspot on the bottom of the Jackbot, they will take 9% damage and will get spiked. Try mixing this attack up with the Forward Aerial while you're in the air!
- Grab/Throws -
Grab-A Little Help
Jack's grab is pretty ordinary when he's by himself. However, if Jack has at least one Jackbot, when he attempts to grab, the Jackbot will move forward the distance of Link's Clawshot and push anyone in front of him into grabbing range! Handy!
Pummel-Monkey Wrench
Jack smacks foes upside the head with his wrench for 2% per hit in a pretty ordinary pummel. Every other hit will also produce a Robot Part.
Forward Throw-Techno Mob
If Jack's on his own, he'll simply kick the foe to the ground in front of him for 5% damage. If any Jackbots are present, they'll follow up by rushing at the opponent at the same time for an additional 5%, 10%, or 15% damage, depending on how many there are. This'll knock the opponent away a good distance, and produce a Robot Part too! There's strength in numbers!
Backward Throw-Robo Ram
Jack swings the opponent behind him and gives them a swift kick in the rear, dealing 5% damage and knocking them into the air a little bit. From here, any Jackbots present will pitch in one by one with a very quick tackle dealing 3% damage, with the last one knocking the foe away with above average knockback. Each of these hits will produce a Robot Part, so you'll do less damage but gain more parts if you use this over the Forward Throw.
Up Throw-Mecha Mosh
This throw is similar to the Back Throw, except Jack kicks the foe straight upwards for 5% damage, and any Jackbots present follow up with a headbutt that does 3% damage, juggling the foe in the air and dropping Robot Parts. You won't be KOing any foes with this, but at least the Robot Parts will come to you easier!
Down Throw-Scrap Heap
On his own, Jack simply trips the opponent with a kick that'll do 4% damage. If any Jackbots are present, Jack will then leap into the background as they dogpile onto the grounded foe, doing either 5%, 10%, or 15% more damage and launching the enemy straight up into the air with above average knockback. Like the Forward Throw, this'll only produce one Robot Part, but you've got more vertical KO potential with this throw than the Up Throw.
Final Smash-Jackbot Armada
Jack has grabbed the Smash Ball! It's time to set this diabolical plan in motion! *cue excessive evil laughter*
When Jack activates his Final Smash, he'll yell his signature phrase, "Jackbots, attack!" Jackbots will suddenly swarm from both sides of the screen in large numbers and begin attacking anything and everything in their way as they move across the battlefield. All the models are present; Default and Bladed Jackbots will be continuous hitboxes doing their default damage and knockback every time they come into contact with a foe an Laser Jackbots will continuously fire their lasers. This mechanical mayhem will continue for seven seconds before all the Jackbots leave the screen. But that's not all! At any point during this seven seconds, you can press B one more time to make Jack pull out the Self-Destruct Button and detonate all Jackbots on the spot! They'll each do the same damage and knockback as a Jackbot would in the Down Smash. There's bound to be lots of explosions and at least a couple of KOs!
- Playstyle -
So, you've chosen Jack Spicer, evil boy genius! Interesting. Hopefully you got from the moveset that Jack on his own is pretty weak and that he needs Jackbots in order to do damage and KO (well, aside from Monkey Jack, but we'll save that for his playstyle section). To start off the match, you're on your own. Weak. Helpless! Your opponent might see this and try to go after you. What do you do? For one thing, know that Jack's pretty nimble and can run away (that's what Jack would do). But if you choose to fight, you have some other options. Forward Tilt is a surprisingly fast option on the ground; it'll get a foe off of you briefly and net you a Robot Part. Your Jab can also put the foe in a precarious spot as well if they let themselves get caught. Dash Attack can also be thrown out unexpectedly, but you might get punished by a shielding foe. Aerial-wise, Forward Air and Back Air are very quick and more reliable than Up Air and Down Air for scoring hits on the foe. Don't forget your handy Specials! The Sphere of Yun and Ring of the Nine Dragons are perfect for this phase of the battle. When you get the opportunity, use the Sphere to trap your foe and score free hits using your Jab and Forward Tilt. You should be able to get at least 3 Parts doing this. If you're in a position to be more defensive, use the Ring to counter an opponent's move when they least expect it. If you use it once successfully, that's already 2-3 Parts! Don't get too counter-happy, though.
So now you've got parts; what are you waiting for? Build a Jackbot! It's a better idea to start building your Jackbots early than waiting to build a better model. Once you've got at least one 'bot, more of your attacks will become useful, you'll be able to go on the offensive more, and it'll be easier to nab Parts. See, it gets easier to fight with Jack as the fight goes on. Once you've got a Jackbot, Up Tilt becomes one of your better attacking options since it uses the Jackbot's attack and covers you on all sides. If you've got a foe trying to roll behind you, you can use Down Tilt to nab them. All of your aerials now haev a bit more oomph to them as well. Don't be afraid to use a Throw or two when you get the chance; they're designed to nab you free Parts and damage and work better with Jackbots. Don't forget that you can maintain your Jackbots with your Jab and Forward Tilt; you'll make them stronger and last longer. Keep up the offense and keep collecting those Parts and you'll be rewarded for your patience. Remember, you can hold up to 20 at a time, so always try to keep your reserves up for when your Jackbots might bite the dust.
At this point, you've probably got a full squadron of three Jackbots by now and you've done significant damage to your foe. It's probably time to KO now, isn't it? The Up and Forward Smashes are obvious choices for wailing on your opponents; a full power Forward Smash is just brutal and Up Smash is sure to punish foes who think they can take you on from above. Down Smash is a risky maneuver; it's pretty powerful but comes at a cost. If your opponent manages to shield or dodge it, all your work is wasted and you're at a disadvantage again. It might be fun to trap your foe in an unexpected Sphere of Yun and blow up all your robots right next to them as soon as they fight their way out of it. Diabolical, no? Don't forget about your Aerials; Forward Air and Back Air are now walls of robots and make for pretty good approaches, especially if you're loaded with the high-powered models. The other Aerials are more situational, but can covers spots the other Aerials can't hit.
Basically, Jack starts off in a tough spot at the beginning of the match, weak and helpless, but if you play smart and defensively, you'll build your offense and become nearly unstoppable later on. Hard work brings great rewards!
- Extras -
Up Taunt-Jack lets loose an unnecessarily loud evil laugh. Pretty annoying if spammed.
Side Taunt-Jack lets loose a flurry of girly slaps before getting tired and giving up. This is an attack that does 1% damage and flinching knockback, but...don't ever use it.
Down Taunt-Jack points his finger forward and says, "You got Jacked!"
Victory Pose 1 -Jack continuously lets loose more evil laughter, stopping every few seconds to catch his breath. Pretty annoying if you don't exit the result screen fast enough.
Victory Pose 2 -Carrying a large brown sack presumably full of Shen Gong Wu, Jack fires up his helipack and flies off the screen.
Victory Pose 3 -With a Jackbot hovering by his side, Jack leans on it with one hand, looking very smug.
Loss Pose-Looking a bit disheveled and sporting a black eye, Jack disdainfully claps while frowning at the winner.
Character Entrance-
Jack tunnels onto the stage from a hole in the ground in the Tunnel Armadillo Shen Gong Wu. Then he shouts, "Gong Yi Tanpai!!!" (that means "GO!")
Costumes -Jack's outfit comes in Black (default), Dark Red, Dark Yellow, Dark Blue, Dark Green, Brown, and White. He also has an interesting alternate costume:
Series Symbol-
The yin-yang, a prominent Chinese symbol used frequently in Xiaolin Showdown.
Kirby Hat-Kirby will sport Jack's red hair and goggles and be able to summon a Jackbot of a random type when you press B! He can only summon one Jackbot, however, and the only way to attack with it is to press B again.
Jack basically stole mah mechanic. and only a day before I was gonna post my set!?!
My thunder has been stolen. I... I'm going to cry in a corner now while I re-write my playstyle.
Jack Spicer was a great read. Clearly there was a lot of effort put into the set, as you've got images, some pretty cool ideas, and 2 movesets. While it's not saying much, I really like it. (especially the side special. Actually, your side specials are always awesome, just like Jynx's)
Honestly, I believe that Gale is actually a wierd bird thing and Armor Master will be the final Smash. And no, Badgermole is not a yu gi oh card it is from Avatar : Last Airbender. Though I might not do Badgermole cause I might do another Yu Gi Oh moveset
It seems like I'm not gong to be able to finish my ketchup catchup immediately and it'll make it easier for me if I comment on a couple sets as I go along. That, and you need moar comments.
At first glance, Jack seems like a fairly customary minion character. On a closer look though, his Jackbots seem more like an extension of his hitbox and hurtbox since they follow him everywhere, and he actually has some offensive capabilities. His obligatory ways of interacting with the Jackbots are actually attacks on their own, if weak ones, though that might make them tacked on effects, and he has the monkey form if he really needs to give up the Jackbots. (The monkey form honestly doesn't always seem worth 2% damage a second, though he's not supposed to be worth it without his Jackbots anyway... I'm just saying this because you say he's viable alone.) He still goes through the setup phase and all, but he's still not that generic of a minion character at all.
Jack seems to use an awful lot of props, especially in his basic moves, but this might be a case like Nurse Joy when he would just be unworkable without them. It's just something you might want to steer clear of.
Jack fortunately doesn't have nearly as much, to put it bluntly, filler as Jynx and Clay, but it's still something you could work on. The most blatant instance of filler is the Down Special, which is basically a random counter that makes Robot Parts in the vein of Marth or Ike. Most of Monkey Jack isn't awfully relevant to regular Jack but that's intentional since you say you're supposed to choose between the two. Monkey Jack isn't particularly relevant to Monkey Jack itself either, which is sort of weird when you're presenting him as a completely alternate character... I'd rather you framed him as an extension of regular Jack.
Overall, Jack isn't at all bad and is probably your best, so nice job, man.
Jack basically stole mah mechanic. and only a day before I was gonna post my set!?!
My thunder has been stolen. I... I'm going to cry in a corner now while I re-write my playstyle.
Cool, my first audio comment! I appreciate your input, MW. I'm glad you remember how I was plotting this stuff two years ago. I agree that having Robot Parts come out of people when Jack hits them is kind of random, but I think it's simple enough and doesn't detract much from actual fighting. Glad you still like the concept, though. I'm also glad there was even a little improvement in that darned playstyle section. Monkey Jack's Neutral Special is kind of random too, but I wanted to fit it somewhere and he needed a new Neutral Special. Glad you liked the attack names too. Thanks again!
Jack Spicer was a great read. Clearly there was a lot of effort put into the set, as you've got images, some pretty cool ideas, and 2 movesets. While it's not saying much, I really like it. (especially the side special. Actually, your side specials are always awesome, just like Jynx's)
Thanks for the comment, Wiz! I'll try to work on that "filler" problem I always have. Also, I'll be honest, the Down Special was the last special move that I came up with, but I feel that it's relevant and helpful to Jack. I wasn't sure how to present Monkey Jack in the moveset; maybe I should've just added his moveset to the end of Jack's. Comment much appreciated, Wiz.
The Secret Apprentice was the son of a Jedi Knight hunted down by Darth Vader in the wake of Order 66. Massively powerful in the Force, Darth Vader trained him up as his own apprentice as a check against the Emperor so that Vader could later overthrow him.
His abilities in the Force are varied and powerful, and he has mastered three different types of Lightsaber combat, utilizing the unusual and dangerous Shien grip on his lightsaber, where he holds it in the reverse position behind him. He served as an assassin, killing dangerous surviving Jedi, and defeated enemies with sudden strikes and bursts of power.
Stats
Size: 6/10
He's about the size of an average human, around the same build as Captain Falcon.
Weight: 4/10
He's got a pretty thin frame and light armor, but it's mostly muscle mass.
Jumps: 9/10
With the Force enhancing his mobility, he has a good first jump and the second best second jump in the game, only beat out by Yoshi.
Speed: 8/10
He's pretty light on his feet, being an assassin at all. Comprable to Sheik. He also move very fast in the air, slightly slower than Wario.
Power: 7/10
The Apprentice really has a sort of nova strength, where he'll burst with huge amounts of power, followed by relative weaker moves. He's still above average in power at all times though.
Special Mechanic
Right below The Secret Apprentice's name and damage meter there's a little Force Meter. Yes, it's an automatically recharging ammo bank, so sue me. Anyways, this meter is bright blue when he can use the Force, but as he uses it for attacks it drains away based on the attack he's using it for. If he is completely out of energy, he can't use any of his attacks that rely on the Force.
In order to recharge, he simply has to avoid using any moves that use the Force, and it'll build itself back up automatically, filling up in just four seconds. However, after he uses a Force attack, the meter won't move up for another two seconds. This means that it's less effective to use the Force until he completely builds up his charge.
Also, if he uses a move that requires more of the Force than he has available to channel, he can still perform it. However, his Force Meter fills back up with a yellow color. He has to recharge the yellow amount first before he gets any Force energy back and can start using moves involving the Force.
Now that we've got that nasty, nasty business out of the way, let's get into the meat of what you came in for, the moveset!
Specials
Neutral Special : Force Push
The Apprentice throws both of his hands forward and releases a burst of Force energy in a wave in front of him. This blast of energy fills up a space about twice the size of a flamethrower attack, knocking foes away for 7% damage at a slightly upwards angle with good starting knockback, but low knockback growth. Using this move exhausts 20% of the Force Meter.
If this move is done in the air, The Secret Apprentice stalls in the air for the attack, hanging for about a third of a second, and angles it down, great for knocking foes down offstage or onto the ground.
You can charge up this attack by holding down the B Button, in which case the Secret Apprentice holds his hands to his right side, building up Force energy in a ball like he's some sort of anime character. He can charge this for up to a second, in which case the blast becomes much fiercer, dealing 14% damage and dealing very good knockback. Using it this way uses up 35% of the Force Meter.
Side Special : Force Lightning
The most iconic Dark Side power is a staple for the Secret Apprentice. He fires out an arc of lightning from his fingertips, automatically homing in on any enemies within two battlefield platforms of him. He can hit up to three foes at once with this attack.
Enemies caught in the lightning take 8% damage second they are struck by the lightning, and they flinch every half a second they are caught in it, making it a delicious move to lock foes down with, although opponents will be able to break through it with an attack at some point.
It costs 25% Force energy to start this attack, and then another 25% for every second you hold it out, so you can hold it out for up to three seconds at best, and even the slowest of opponents can hit you out of it before then. It still has almost no start up lag and just noticeable end lag though, making it a beautifully reliable option.
This move can also be used in the air, and the Apprentice hovers in place while using it as an aerial attack.
Up Special : Force Cannonball
The Apprentice fills his body with the Force, the launches himself upwards. Visually and mechanically it's very similar to Fox and Falco's recoveries in direction, lag, and range. The Apprentice however doesn't surround himself with fire, instead he covers himself in a bubble of Force energy. Enemies near him get knocked away slightly, and when he reaches the peak of his movement it bursts in a bubble of Force energy that deals 7% damage and moderate knockback that won't KO.
This can't really be used as an approach due to the lag and knockback, but it knocks foes away and puts both characters in a relatively neutral position, which is a place the Apprentice loves to be in. Using this move uses up 15% of your Force energy though, so remember that he doesn't have a recovery without it, but his second jump is good enough to cover for that.
Down Special : Parry Shots
The Force allows both Jedi and Sith to predict attacks with clairvoyant reflexes and bounce even projectiles away with their lightsaber. With the lag of Marth's counter, the Secret Apprentice holds his lightsaber in a defensive position for as long as the input is held. Any projectile attack from any direction will get deflected away, but at a slightly random angle; it won't necessarily fly back to the opponent.
Melee attacks from the front will also be blocked, as he deflects the attack and steps back, leaving both characters in a frame neutral position. The Secret Apprentice has fast lightsaber attacks though, so he can often get the first strike. This move isn't as effective as most other counters or shields though, as it's slower to start, but can be useful for dealing with projectile spam or if your shield is wearing down.
This doesn't use up Force energy, and the Secret Apprentice can use it even if he's out of Force power, but while he uses it he cannot regain Force energy for up to two seconds after he ends the move. You can get a good defense out of this, but it's hard to leverage it into regaining momentum.
Special Smashes
Forward Special Smash : Lightning Shield
Yes, the Secret Apprentice has Special Smashes as well. These are inputted by smashing the control stick while pressing the B Button, like with Samus's Super Missile. Only the Up Special Smash may be used in the air however.
The Lightning Shield is a beautiful combination of offense and defense. With a fair bit of starting lag, about comparable to Snake's Forward Smash, the Secret Apprentice throws his hands forward, creating a gleaming shield of lightning in front of him. The shield only covers him from the front, but any attacks against him will repulse the foe away and deal 5% damage.
At this point the move starts charging, but the shield remains out. You can charge it for a similar time to most smashes, but as with the Down Special, enemies can roll behind you and attack you from behind when you're vulnerable. When released, the shield will collapse into a lightning attack, dealing 9-22% damage to anyone within a battlefield platform of the shield in front of him, with knockback that can KO starting around 140%.
But that's not all! The shield also charges the Secret Apprentice's lightsaber with lightning, increasing the damage and base knocback of his lightsaber moves for five seconds, perfect for following up after exhausting your Force energy.
And exhaust it you will, using the Lightning Shield takes up a whopping 40% of your Force Energy.
Up Special Smash : Force Repulse
The Secret Apprentice freezes in place for one of the slowest, but most devastating attacks in the game. Be he in the air or on the ground, he curls up slightly in a ball in midair, forming a visible shell of Force energy around him. Once in this position, the Secret Apprentice has super armor and can't be broken out by any attack that does less than 10% damage.
When released, he bursts out, and the power of the Force explodes in the radius of a Smart Bomb around him, dealing 28-42% damage in one go, with obscene knockback. At the same time, this move eats up 65% of your Force energy, so don't use it too quickly. It's also fairly predictable so opponents will usually try to get out of the way. This can be good for trying to take out recovering opponents offstage, as it can be used in the air, but it also has one last weakness, when done in the air, this counts as a recovery move, and leaves him helpless afterwards. Used right, it's a devestating attack though.
Down Special Smash : Force Lift
The Secret Apprentice fills his arms with Force energy, and then pushes against the ground, creating a wave of Force energy that deals 11-19% damage, with set knockback upwards, about the height of the Secret Apprentice's first jump.
The Secret Apprentice has a great air game, and this is the perfect way to move into it. Using this move also only eats up 20% of your Force energy, even charged, making it a fairly easy to use move. It's not a move that follows up as well with the rest of his Force moves though, so it's better for switching into lightsaber combat for a prolonged period.
Grab and Throws
Grab : Force Grip
Force Grip is the iconic ability from the Force Unleashed, allowing the Secret Apprentice to grab anything, from a stormtrooper to a star destroyer, and throw it with extreme prejudice. Hold down the Z button, and the Secret Apprentice will slowly stretch out his left arm, telekinetically grabbing anyone within a battlefield platform in front of him . He can lift up to three opponents or objects at once with this attack. Starting Force Grip exhausts him of 15% of his Force energy.
Foes can attempt to button mash to escape, eating up more of his Force energy as he tries to contain them. The higher their damage, the harder it is to escape. At low-mid percentages, button mashing can escape the grip, even before the meter is drained. If the Secret Apprentice's Force energy hits zero, he can no longer hold the foe(s), and they are simply released.
While holding down Z, he can drag foes across the stage with the control stick, moving them at about the speed of Ganondorf's dash. No, you can't physically drag foes offscreen with this, but you can throw them off right after, making this a very dangerous move on stages with walk off edges.
When you release the Z button, they're tossed away in the direction you point the control stick, with force relative to their damage. It has a good rate of knockback growth, but poor starting knockback, making it a real killer at high percentages.
Attack Button : Impale
By pressing the A button with an opponent grabbed, the Secret Apprentice throws his lightsaber into the foe, dealing a ridiculous 12% damage and sticking it in them, the blade jutting out from their back. He can't pull it back out until he ends the grab though, so it flies back towards him. He can't use lightsaber attacks until it's back in his hands though, and can't use this attack multiple time either.
Neutral Special : Force Push
If the Secret Apprentice uses push while holding an opponent, they'll be thrown with more force, but at the cost of Force energy and the ability to throw them in any direction. The Secret Apprentice fires a blast of Force energy, exhausting him of 20% of his Force meter, but it pushes the foe directly away from him, dealing damage and knockback equal to that of Force Push, regardless of where the opponent is. It can be a great kill move or just a move to get opponents away from you.
Side Special : Lightning Bomb
This one is especially useful for grabbing items with. The Secret Apprentice fires his sith lightning into the foe or item he's grabbed, draining him of 25% of his Force meter, and dealing 5% damage. Whatever he's grabbed now crackles with electricity. When he throws it, once it impacts something, the lightning explodes in a blast similar in size to a Bob-Omb going off, dealing 12% damage and high knockback to anything it hits, but only 8% damage and hitstun to enemies caught by it.
Turn a foe's own items into weapons, or charge up enemies and throw them at each other for extra damage. How fun!
Down Special : Force Choke
Use the Down Special for the Secret Apprentice to choke grabbed foes. This uses up 10% of the Force meter a second, but deals 10% damage a second as well, making it pretty good for damage building. Most of the time enemies will be able to break out quickly though, especially since you're using up even more of your own Force power.
Standards
Jab : Shien Saber Flurry
The Sith Apprentice has an interesting jab, it's two attacks in one. If you rapidly tap the A button, he'll perform a quick, three hit slash, one sideways swipe from the right, followed by a vertical strike and a final spinning slash. They do 4%, 3%, and 7% damage respectively, with the final hit having moderate knockback attached to it.
However, if you tap the A button again during the end lag of the first slash, he'll instead step forward, spinning around for two more slashes of 4% each. Press the A button during the end lag again, and he'll deal a final hit, jumping forward with an ovehead slash dealing 9% damage. If you press the A button before that point though, he'll do the slash from his jab again.
The second form is not a true combo, but it does great damage and constantly approaches with the attacks. You can also cancel them out early, faking to go with either one.
Dash Attack : Circling Slash
The Secret Apprentice rolls forward for this attack, moving into the background, and rolls to turn the other direction, slashing at opponents with a spinning strike. His saber deals 9% damage and fair knockback on contact.
This attack is especially dangerous out of a pivot, so he can effectively roll backwards as well to hit opponents from ahead or behind, and move around attacks. The move has more lag on both ends than most rolls though, making it not as good for escaping attacks, but with good prediction combines offense and defense quite nicely.
Forward Tilt : Saber Stab
Using the hilt of the lightsaber, the Secret Apprentice knocks any opponents right next to him away with a fast blunt blow, dealing 4% and some hitstun. It has practically no range, worse than some characters' grabs, but it makes up for it by being very quick. The Secret Apprentice then turns the blade around and stabs forward, impaling foes in front of him on the saber, leaning forward to get the maximum range out of it.
The impaling move deals 13% damage and reliably KOs horizontally, but it's pretty slow unless you managed to whack someone with saber, who then will have a hard time getting out of the way of the stab. This move has a lot of ending lag though, just to warn you.
Down Tilt : Sprinting Slice
Crouching down, the Secret Apprentice looks similar to a sprinter getting ready to run. When using the Down Tilt, he suddenly runs forward a battlefield platform for a short distance, covering the space in a moment, slashing at a low angle. It has moderate start up lag comprable to Mario's FSmash, and deals 11% damage and spikes opponents into the ground, who then bounce up, but not high enough to be KO'd. Timed well, this can edgeguard and spike opponents as well.
Up Tilt : Double Blade
The Secret Apprentice walks forward three steps, spinning his lightsaber on his left side then his right, each slash dealing 7% damage and knockback that prevents both from hitting, but doesn't KO until very high percentages. It covers a large range, both for air and ground, making it a great defensive maneuver as well as offensive, but it has a very long duration and a noticeable period of end lag, so crafty enemies may capitalize on your vulnerability after this attack.
Smashes
Forward Smash : Sith Saber Slam
The Secret Apprentice dashes forward a short length, raises his lightsaber over his head, and then slams it down in front of him, similar to Ike's Forward Smash. The lightsaber deals 21-34% damage and a lot of knockback, knocking foes away even at low percentages, but it doesn't KO until the low hundreds.
This attack is fairly laggy on both ends, if not quite as laggy as Ike's, but can be improved by tapping the Side Special while using this attack. If you do, The Sith Apprentice with blast lightning into his saber, making it create a shockwave when it hits the ground that hits everyone around for another 9-16% damage, increasing the knockback even further. This costs 25% of your Force meter though, as usual.
Either way, this can be a great finishing move, as it's range is great, and hits at a very wide angle.
Up Smash : Sith Saber Swing
The Sith Apprentice slashes over his head in a way similar to Link's Up Smash, but he only swipes a single time. His saber deals 18-25% damage, with excellent knockback, and similar lag to Link's Up Smash, with just slightly more ending lag.
If you input your Up Special while performing this move though, the Sith Apprentice will instead throw his lightsaber out in a wide arc, homing in on any foes. It deals the same amount of damage, but with slightly less knockback. This uses up 15% of the Force meter to do.
The Secret Apprentice can't use any of his lightsaber attacks until his lightsaber returns to him, but blasting a foe with lightning immediately after throwing your saber can help ensure that the blade hits home.
Down Smash : Sith Saber Slice
The Secret Apprentice reels back for a few moments, then does a spinning slash, spinning a full circle, hitting in front of him twice and behind him once. Each slice deals 6-11% damage, and has a long period of freeze frames similar to Pikachu's Down Smash, which makes it fairly easy to DI out of it. It has good knockback, but opponents can usually control it with Smash DI though.
If you use your Down Special at the end of the attack though, he will instead blow the enemy away with the final spin of his sword using Force Push, giving it an extra blast of knockback away from him, making it much harder to DI out of and letting you kill at good percentage. This uses up 20% of your Force meter though.
Aerials
Neutral Aerial : Juyo Style
Juyo is the most aggressive of all lightsaber styles, and one that permeates the Secret Apprentice's fighting style. This works sort of as an aerial jab combo; the Sith Apprentice hovers in midair while using this move, and slashes for each time you tap the A button. He deals a horizontal slash, then a vertical one, then finally two diagonal slashes. Each slash deals 5% damage, but it's pretty easy to DI out of, so you'll probably not want to finish the entire attack, instead moving into another move. The final slash also has a bunch of ending lag, so you don't want to be vulnerable after that.
This is a great follow up out of your Down Special Smash, but it doesn't directly combo from it.
Down Aerial : Diving Slam
Yes, it's a stall then fall. The Secret Apprentice stalls in the air, raising his lightsaber above his head, and then he slams it overhead similarly to his Forward Smash, falling down while holding it perfectly in front of him, similar to the ending part of Ike' Aether.
The lightsaber deals 10% damage the entire time, and spikes opponents, dealing 15% damage if it knocks them into the ground, and releases a shockwave that pushes anyone near either the Secret Apprentice or the opponent hit by him away.
It's another excellent follow up from either the Juyo combo or directly from Force Lift.
Back Aerial : Backflip Slash
The Secret Apprentice kicks out in front of him for no damage, leaning backwards, and then, using the force, jumps backwards, swinging his lightsaber in an arc above, behind, and even below him for 11% damage, backflipping away. This move is a little slow and somewhat predictable, but hits a wide area and often, opponents won't be able to react in time, especially in the air.
This isn't a good move to approach grounded foes with though, as it has absolutely atrocious landing lag, as the Secret Apprentice basically deals a German Suplex to himself. It's fantastic for an aerial approach though, as the Secret Apprentice moves backwards about a battlefield platform in length. This move has fairly atrocious ending lag though, so you'll want to make sure you hit with it.
Forward Aerial : Falling Slash
The Secret Apprentice leans forward and falls slightly faster, moving in the direction he faces. He then slashes for another attack, dealing 11% damage with good knockback. This still has a good bit of ending lag, but it can function as a competent anti-ground and anti-air move, but doesn't have the same kind of range as the back aerial. It's got a long duration though, so he has a big blind spot behind him for the duration of the attack.
Up Aerial : Sith Punt
No, it's not a random flipkick. The Secret Apprentice actually looks up and reaches out with his off-hand to grab any opponent above him. If he does, he somersaults in midair so that they're below him, and then kicks off of them, dealing 9% damage and footstooling the foe. It's got a poor amount of range, but it's great against foes who can get above the Secret Apprentice and putting them below him where he likes them.
Final Smash
The Force Unleashed : Star Destroyer Crash
The Secret Apprentice has the power of the Smash Ball. It's time to show these fools what the Force is capable of. Anyone who's played this game knows what's about to happen. The Secret Apprentice raises his hands into the air, and a Star Destroyer floats into the background. It suddenly buckles, and begins to fall towards the stage, you control the direction it falls with the control stick. It does obscene damage and knockback when it hits the stage, a certain KO under any reasonable circumstances. You did just drop a mile-long spaceship on them, and it's pretty difficult to miss with. Definitely a great Final Smash.
Playstyle
The Secret Apprentice is a very powerful character. He's got some crazy good Force moves and a bunch of lightsaber attacks, all of which seem pretty useful. He has a bunch of KO moves, and can even gimp foes as good as anyone with Force Grip at his disposal. How does all of this flow into a coherent set though?
Use The Force
One thing that is very important to the Secret Apprentice's playstyle is knocking foes away and locking them down. His moves that use the Force are some of the best attacks for locking foes down in the game; with Force Lightning, Force Push, and Force Repulse he can pretty much lock anyone out from attacking him. Of course, relying on those moves is going to exhaust him of Force power pretty quickly.
Because Force Power doesn't regnerate for two seconds after you use a Force move, you have to commit to lightsaber attacks for a while if you want to recharge your Force meter. For that reason, it's usually most effective to use up most of your Force energy in a single shot, then go into melee range after that.
Approach, Repeat
When going into melee range, you'll notice that a lot of the Secret Apprentice's moves are punishable, and a lot have to do with approaching. Most of his moves deal a good bit of base knockback though, so he can't really get into close range and stay there. Instead, he continually wants to knock the foe away to run at them again with his moves. His aerials are all good approaching options, as well as most of his tilts.
On the ground, he has an especially tricky approach game with his jab and dash attack. Opponents who tend to rush back at you will get skewered if you rapid tap your jab, while you can rush up quickly against opponents who try to get away, and switch between either one on the fly. The dash attack is also useful after a pivot, covering the Secret Apprentice's fairly vulnerable back.
He's strongest in melee after getting immediate support from his Force attacks. The lightning shield not only knocks opponents away with hitstun to boot, it also supercharges his lightsaber to do more damage and knokcback. Since it only increases the base knockback with moves, it's not as helpful for getting KOs, and it kills some of his jab combos, but it also makes his style of constantly approaching even better.
Similarly, Force Lift is a good finisher when you're moving to lightsaber combat as it puts them right in range of almost every one of your aerials. It's great for following up, and so satisfying to slam them back down with a diving slam.
Death From Above
The Secret Apprentice's air game is especially important in both melee and ranged combat. All of his Force powers cause him to hover in the air. This makes him much harder to get to, as his Force moves generally have a huge range. This is especially good for Force Lightning, which allows him to drain his power away into foes quickly and efficiently as long as they're in range.
Further, all of his aerials are wonderful anti-air moves, letting him cover ground or hit wide areas at once. His Up Aerial has the added advantage of knocking foes back under him for more abuse from moves like Force Push or Diving Slam. Along with that, since so many of his ground moves have high base knockback, chasing with a Fair or reversed Bair is natural for the Secret Apprentice.
You can also do some great gimping with his aerials, although it's less gimping and more just plain high knockback aerial attacks. Force Push is angled down, which makes it great for knocking foes away, and even under certain stages if you time it right. Force Repulse similarly can make it very dangerous for foes to reach the stage, but at the cost of making you very vulnerable at the end of the attack. Time it wisely, and you can effectively finish off a foe returning to the stage.
Get A Grip
This heavy control game only gets stronger though when you factor in the potential of Force Grip. Beyond the obvious applications for gimping, it can also be used to move opponents in for other attacks. Move them away, then throw them back towards you for a smash, or toss them up for you to chase in the air. It's also great for crowd control; you can grab up to three foes at once, knock enemies into each other, and turn a foe into a deadly bomb to toss into other enemies. Even in a one-on-one match, opponents who use traps or items can have the tables turned as you turn their valuable props into deadly traps.
Every Man For Himself
The Secret Apprentice excels in a free for all setting. With Force Grip, Lightning, and Repulse, he has moves that can clear everyone at once. With Lightning Shield and Parry Shots, he can create a strong defensive game that makes everyone just want to steer clear of him and focus on other targets, and he can knock individual opponents away and lock them down in saber combat, repeated pushing them away from the other players. It's a strategy that can also work well in doubles matches as well, but he isn't as effective there as he can't as directly help his ally, and is more easily overwhelmed when he's targeted by two people at once.
Putting It All Together
The Secret Apprentice is both a hunter and a slaughterer, able to take out waves of minions at once, and then hunt down a single big target with extreme prejudice. Lay down attacks from above, using your excellent jumps and speed combined with big attacks to lock foes out. Continuously knock them away, then chase them down with your lightsaber, moving yourself and the foe around the stage as you attempt to follow up their movements.
Don't just limit yourself to 'Force mode' and 'lightsaber mode' though. Chase opponents who run away from your force attacks down, or surprise foes with a sudden Push when they expect you to limit yourself to your saber. You can combine your Force moves and your lightsaber moves in your smashes. Strong attacks alone, with the addition of the Force in the attacks you can bypass their weaknesses and make them fantastic KO moves or threats.
The thrown lightsaber is an especially good threat to distant foes, and you can chase your lightsaber towards the enemy in hopes of hitting them after your lightsaber comes back, whether they avoid it or not. Even at close range, it can be a sudden surprise, and by locking a foe down with grip or lightning you can ensure it hits as well.
Keep knocking enemies away, and use your wide array of techniques to follow up on whatever a foe may have. The Secret Apprentice is able to adjust to all sorts of styles of opponents. Slow heavy hitters will face his faster attacks, while projectile characters will have to struggle through his ability to parry and create a lightning shield. Kill approaches with your Force powers, and force them with your lightsaber throw. You can force the opponents hand, then beat them with your own strategy, no matter how they react to yours.
Match-Ups
VS Jack Spicer : 65/35 Advantage
The big advantage that the Secret Apprentice has against Jack Spicer is that he can completely wreck the Jackbots without exerting too much effort. A full blast of lightning at full Force will leave them all with only one HP, and a charged up Force Repulse can take them all out at once.
Even more devastating than destroying them though is that with Force Grip, the Secret Apprentice can just casually move them out of the way, leaving Jack with a relatively stripped down movepool.
Jack Spicer also doesn't have many good approaching options, and is going to have a hard time getting gears out of the Secret Apprentice when he's constantly approaching. He'll mostly rely on his Side Special and Down Special to try to get gears out. The Down Special is actually a fairly good counter to a fair number of the Secret Apprentice's approaching options, since so many of them require him to commit to the attack from a fair distance away.
Jack can also use his Jackbots as suicide drones, blowing them up with his Down Smash when the Secret Apprentice tries to dispatch them. Still though, the ball is constantly in the Apprentice's court, as Jack just can't get the momentum he needs.
In Monkey form, he can fight the Secret Apprentice on a more equal playing field. He keeps his counter abilities, while gaining approaching options that allow him to better attack the Secret Apprentice if he knocks him away. The constant damage ticker makes him much more vulnerable though, and moves like Force Grip and Force Push will quickly become very dangerous kill moves.
Jack Spicer really can't get a break in this fight, and the Secret Apprentice will slowly but surely play a heavy handed game of pressure that prevents him from getting much of his goals accomplished.
VS Weezing: 40/60 Disadvantage
The Secret Apprentice has a lot of moves that knock foes around a lot, even at low percentages. That's all fine and dandy for Weezing, since it just helps him spread his gas out even more. The fact that the Secret Apprentice constantly has to chase foes is a real, tangible disadvantage in this fight, as even if he doesn't get a single attack off, he's dealing damage.
Weezing also has great, if predictable recovery, making gimping him a difficult battle. Using Force Push or Force Repulse will usually end up starving him of Force power, while his melee attacks will be more useful at it. Even then though, Weezing is pretty heavy, and can just head on back under most circumstances. If you manage to knock him under the stage with a Force Push facing the stage though, he's more or less a goner.
Finally, Weezing's level 2 gas makes his approach game suddenly much weaker, so that once he's out of Force points, there's not much he can do. Your best bet would be to try to throw your lightsaber before Weezing can explode, but that requires some very good timing and precision.
The Secret Apprentice's only real saving grace in this match-up is that he is one of a few characters who can actually kill Weezing offstage. If Weezing can avoid that though, and plays defensively, he can fairly safely get a victory in this fight.
Final Comments
I've been having some trouble lately getting to work on sets; essays, finals, parents, illness, and just plain ennui. However, I really managed to enjoy making this set, a true one-dayer. I came up with the idea at 12:30 last night when I couldn't sleep, wrote up the ideas for most of the moves, and put it all together after I woke up, on and off between my sister's graduation party.
I like this set, and I had a lot of fun making this one, the most fun I've had in a while actually. I've also got the momentum I've been looking for a while. Don't worry though, recently posted sets. You have not been forgotten, and I shall comment you.
I really found myself getting into Jack Spicer. A summons character who uses the summons as upgrades to his attacks rather than some NPC enemy he has to babysit is a great concept, and all of the ways he used them were easy to understand and functional while providing a good variety of ways to attack. I don't mind the props as a guy who builds robots to defend himself makes sense to use a wrench, and some of the others actually had a gameplay purpose like the jab and Ftilt. I also kinda like his method for getting parts since it allows him to concentrate more on the fighting part and not on getting parts to get to the fighting. I feel like some of the moves may be overpowered such as FSmash when you consider the unholy amounts of damage you can rack up with even a single lazerbot, but that's only on 1 or 2 moves. Monkey Jack felt underwhelming and TBH I felt it downplayed the awesomeness of his main moveset, but thankfully the main moveset is the one I focus on.
After reading crazy stuff like Dark Bowser, Jack Spicer was a nice trip on the "in-smash" side of MYMing. Good work Filip.
I have one large problem with this set: I feel like if I were to play as Dark Bowser, I would have no room to be creative. Seriously, I feel that anyone playing as this character would do the following every single time they played:
1. Get opponent in cage as quickly as possible.
2. Wail on said cage.
3. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until victory.
I mean, sure, you could try to control the arena with Dark Clouds and whatnot, but that playstyle is clearly inferior, as several of his moves become nearly unusable (Down Smash, maybe Ftilit? [I couldn't tell, it was worded a bit strangely]). Trapping my enemies in cages and then torturing them would be a blast the first time I did it, but it would wear down very quickly because it isn't very... entertaining. I wouldn't feel like I'm doing anything impressive as Dark Bowser, because I would be doing the same thing over and over again.
Let's look at Mario, for example. From my experience, Mario plays as a gimp character. Two of his unique moves, FLUDD and the Cape, make excellent gimping tools, and he gets the majority of his kills through these. (Mario mains, if I'm wrong, feel free to slam me.) Mario's gimp tools are, essentially, Dark Bowser's cage. Now, the difference between these two are how they would be/are used. With Mario, I get a rush from trying to predict just when to Cape my opponent to his death, or how to alter his trajectory with FLUDD so I can spike him to his death. With Dark Bowser's cage, I put my foe in a box, hit them through the box (they can't hit me, ha ha!), and finish them with a Dark Blast or something.
I'm rambling now. Basically, my point is that while yes, Smash characters are built with a concept in mind, the concept still allows for a lot of flexibility. Yes, I know that MYM sets aren't supposed to be like real Smash characters, but I find it kinda ironic that in a creativity contest the sets which allow the least amount of player options are the most highly praised. But not really, because MYM is about the creator, not the player. Plus, Dark Bowser does allow some room for flexibility.
That said, I love the 3v1 concept. He'd be an absolute blast to play as in this case. The aerial game is also pleasently original.
tldr: I'm not a huge fan of Dark Bowser because I feel like I'm forced into using the Cage move.
I have a feeling I shouldn't attempt reviews this far past my bed time.
I can see what you mean regarding Dark Bowser. Once his opponent's in the cage his opponent is basically at his mercy to do as he pleases and there will probably be a few "best" ways of him to take advantage of it. However, he has a lot of different ways to try to get opponents in the cage, such as blocking their approaches and distracting them with minions, and he needs a specific spacing for the cage to actually catch the opponent, so step 1 of his plan isn't quite so simple. I think of it as Zangief from Street Fighter, his ultimate goal is to get that Spinning Piledriver, but he has to work with multiple ways of trying to get in close to land it. When he does get them in the cage, they still have to actively dodge DB's attacks as they break free, so there's still plenty of player interaction.
I think what Zook meant was that he'd feel limited to only using the cage if he were playing DB. The set offers no other strategy that doesnt use the cage, but offers methods of putting foe in the cage...which is very restrictive to the player as when the cage cannot be used, what else can DB do?
I can't say how much I hate the use of the word "delicious" as a positive adjective. DELICIOUS? It's not a food!
So, about this Secret Apprentice character... it strikes me that this is your moveset style distilled down to its basic components and doing away with what's not there. It's a one-day set.
See, here's my issue: the playstyle doesn't really amount to much. You've got a long, entertaining playstyle section, but when it's so subdivided, it's difficult to fuse all the concepts in a way that goes far beyond "adaptable spacer". The playstyle draws mostly on the ammo bank, and those are really hard to get excited about when they're a centerpiece of a moveset - Axel pulled it off by making his more of an afterthought, a balance thing, so to speak.
Now that the stuff that I don't like is out of the way, let me say that it's a very enjoyable set to read, maybe because you enjoyed writing it. That kind of thing usually gets communicated to the reader in one way or another. And there's no question that this is how the character should pan out, and probably the best any force-based Brawler could ever turn out to be. I mean, don't get me wrong - it's a good set - but I'm judging here by meanie standards, and meanie on the top of his game. Maybe that's my mistake, since I know these things get harder when you're going through a slump.
As a last note, your organization is usually top notch! What happened here? This looks like an... HR SET (SHOCK)
Oh wow, A FlyinFilipino moveset! How marvellous: and I actually remember you talking about Xaolin Showdown at one point or another. It’s a shame, though, that Jack Spicer didn’t really grab me as I would have loved it to – at best, it’s simply alright.
I do like the mechanic somewhat – creating the robots that circle around you and entirely change your regular attacks. You do invent some neat interactions involving the positioning of the robots and how Jack’s moves begin to link in with them the more are out, but I am not a fan of mechanics reliant on hitting your opponent to gain resources. The ‘parts’ being collected like stickers or CDs in Brawl strikes me as fairly unimaginative and actually hitting your opponent is difficult enough with how crappy Jack is at hitting his opponent – you have that side special, but that strikes me as a somewhat cheap way to get over that big hurdle.
Also, I really didn’t enjoy Monkey Jack at all. That part of the moveset was both really dull to read and didn’t really seem to belong with Spicer’s other moveset at all, completely cutting off both collection of parts and the benefits of his mid-air jumps. That playstyle was particularly weak, but this is, as has been said, is part of a MYM4 moveset, so it’s forgivable if an extra moveset is lacking. Mostly, I really detest that you would make this the up special – it’s a little too far for an Easter egg and would be better placed in the extras as like a taunt. I appreciate the effort put in, though.
Back to regular Jack, I’m also going to be negative about how exactly you use the robots. For one thing, you’re a little vague on a few important details: which way each robot is facing, how they respond to end lag, how they interact with Jack when in the air [to a degree] and you also have some skewed numbers. That explosion, as an example, dealing 20% damage a possibly three ways, combined with that side special is pretty abominable. I felt a similar way about the prospect of three laser bots, which wouldn’t be difficult to get with that grab to spam parts out of the opponent – but it is both vague how exactly the grab is helped out by the robot, and how three laser robots react [position-wise] to the neutral special. It may be kind of nitpicky, but I felt this was a recurring problem.
One thing I did like was your use of images where appropriate – it does add to the whole MYM4 feeling of nostalgia that has made it comparable to Miles Edgeworth. The downside is that I felt the moveset suffered from a lot of the problems very common in that period: over-use of props, little editing, balance issues and though ME certainly has his fair share with his random briefcase of doom, it’s unfortunately far worse here what with the wrench, Jackbots, some of the props in Monkey Jack, the self-destruct button and most of all the “parts” constantly flooding out of opponents. So I can’t say, like Warlord, that this moveset doesn’t seem like a MYM4 set, because to me it obviously has been made with that contest as a marker. So the organisation really just cements that.
Your playstyle just doesn’t link the moves together well enough. They seem to react mainly based on that already unfavourable mechanic, which isn’t exactly the most flowing of all as it relies on you hitting your opponent, which is covered sparingly by the side special... but that’s it. So the flowchart here is pretty much: use side special [opponents can get out of the way], use one of your worse attacks to get parts, hope to God this worked then build Jackbots and hope you can win from there. So really, Jack is screwed when up against long-range or pressure characters, as they totally interrupt his massively sensitive and exact set-up. Sorry to be so prudish, but it’s not a great playstyle.
You know, I really hate that I can’t like this moveset, but it’s unashamedly lower than the current standards and doesn’t bring any twists to some very old concepts, while still suffering from old problems. It’s far from the worst of the contest, but I have tried to stop myself from further nitpicking it to pieces. I just very much hope you come back with more movesets, FF, because I do like them and you’re one of the people I’ve always missed when you went AWOL for a few contests. If this set is a sign that you’re back, it gets my full acclaim anyway. However, you’re blatantly very rusty.
Now we move onto The Secret Apprentice by Meanie. Entirely unrelated thought: I hate this character, quite a bit – in Soulcalibur IV, he ended up being a complete bitch in arcade mode and quite the cheap and spammy character online. This was made worse by how his inclusion was pretty much one big advertisement for The Force Unleashed.
The implementation of moves suitable from the game is well thought out for sure – you have the lightning, strangulation, force push and throw in there on key inputs that translate the character from the game well into smash. As a nitpick, I’m not sure if I like that he can grab up to three characters or just how much of a powerhouse he is in free-for-all, as he can function perfectly fine with, for example, just grabbing one enemy and using them as a projectile. It seems like in some areas like range or knockback, you do go a to the excess in making the Apprentice into a true monster on some moves and rely too heavily on what is a very basic mechanic that isn’t necessarily crafted perfectly to hold back some of the special smashes or force-reliant moves.
Ignoring that for a moment, though, it is a very flowing moveset that is clearly illustrated by a well-written playstyle. The aerial game coinciding with the force powers, as to mediate somewhat the powerful special smashes and force moves is quite clever – it prevents Apprentice from completely destroying enemies in the air after using his force powers to the up most on the ground. It’s clever, but not quite as scrumptious as Hariyama’s constant pressuring, due to relying on that rechargeable meter; approaching for the win is a lot smoother when it’s in the hands of the player.
That’s my one real problem with the moveset: you rely too heavily on balancing with the silly force health bar, which whilst functioning decently, isn’t perfect. I just feel like, even if accurate to the game and allowing to make Apprentice into a badass, it would be a lot more fun playstyle-wise if the player got a full reign on Apprentice’s moveset from the get-go and wasn’t held back at all, meaning he wouldn’t be able to do things like grab more than one person or have quite his reach. As a final note, I’d like to say I do once again enjoy the Weezing match-up – along with the playstyle section, both of them were well-written and I actually think, in hindsight, so were Hariyama’s.
It’s a good Apprentice moveset, but it had a lot more potential to be a really good approach-style, aggressive set if you hadn’t locked down some of the fun with that force meter and just dragged down some of the statistics around the better moves. I actually had a hard time adjusting to this being a one-day set due to the long descriptions and sensible, sectioned off playstyle, but it’s still not up to Hariyama, at least in my mind.
Edit: In hindsight, I really did make way too many assumptions with the playstyle here; it's very lacking. With that as the case, I'm deducting a star. Sorry, DM, but this was far below your set standards for MYM7 and obviously thrown together with smoke and mirrors in place of flow. Fool me once, shame on me, though.
The Apprentice: What's so secret about him? *shrug*
He seems like a pretty cool character, and that translates into his moveset. His Force moves seem like a blast to use and make a lot of sense. And lightsabers = automatic awesome.
First, I'd like to address the nasty, nasty business: the Force meter. Like Axel Gear's fuel mechanic, it just exists as a limit to his more powerful and useful moves. I'm sure that's the way it works in the actual game though, right? It's not very exciting; so yeah, I don't like it because it takes all the fun out of using the Force. I do acknowledge that it seems pretty necessary, though.
As I said before, his Specials are awesome. Force Push and Lightning are obvious. The Force Parry thing seems like it could be seen as a "generic" counter, but what Force user doesn't come with the ability to effortlessly deflect attacks? The Special Smashes are a nice touch to give him more of his signature abilities. I know you said Force Repulse was very slow, but you didn't mention exactly how slow it is. I can probably infer it, though, considering the move's power. Force Grip is another one of those things that you just have to have and is pulled off well, except for maybe some clumsy button inputs. (I wonder how a new player would figure those extra actions out?) Props for giving the Apprentice some basic, flashy lightsaber moves. As for the Smashes, they seemed a little clumsy as well with the extra inputs, but it's a nice touch. (Again, inputting the Special button during a Smash attack seems kind of unintuitive.) The Up Smash's description + the Force was a little fuzzy. Aerials seem pretty good too. Epic Final Smash!
Overall, The Secret Apprentice is a pretty good adaptation of a pretty cool character, especially considering this was a one-day set. Your friendly writing style worked well, too. It's solid all-around. Also, the Jack Spicer matchup seems pretty realistic. Nice job, darth meanie!
Oh wow, A FlyinFilipino moveset! How marvellous: and I actually remember you talking about Xaolin Showdown at one point or another. It’s a shame, though, that Jack Spicer didn’t really grab me as I would have loved it to – at best, it’s simply alright.
Thanks for the comment, Smash Daddy! Even if it is very critical.
Sorry you didn't like much, though. I agree that Jack has an uphill battle to fight to get moving; that's pretty much the way I intended it to be. Like you said, Side Special is there if you're good, but Down Special can also helps if you're more reactionary. I apologize for Monkey Jack; I know he's a pretty basic and straightforward moveset, so I siphoned it off into another post. As far as his relevance to Jack goes, he pretty much is just another option, or a backup plan. (Looking back, transformation through Up Special is pretty random; but back in the day I thought it was unique!)
About props: if you've ever seen Xiaolin Showdown, it's not exactly the most serious cartoon, and pulling things magically out of nowhere (especially Shen Gong Wu) is pretty commonplace, so I thought the use of some props was forgivable given the cartoony nature. I can't really maneuver around having Jackbots as they're integral to Jack's character, but I don't think a wrench is too out of place. Also, Monkey Jack didn't use any props aside from some of his Specials (right?).
Again, many thanks for the in-depth commentary and criticism; I'll try to take some of it to heart and improve on things for my future movesets. I'll probably never be one of the frontrunners of the contest, but this is just for fun anyway; improving the way I can bring others enjoyment can be a nice short-term goal.
Having played The Force Unleashed, I understand why you implemented his force mechanic, as it's pretty accurate to how it works in the game. I also liked seeing so many over the top force moves, as those are easily the best part of the game. We also need more aerial jab combos, those are awesome.
I'm kinda mixed on his playstyle. On one hand he tries to emulate Doppelori's "Hit and repel" style, and that is one of my favorite playstyle concepts ever. On the other hand, we have statements like:
When going into melee range, you'll notice that a lot of the Secret Apprentice's moves are punishable, and a lot have to do with approaching
Um, if he has to use a lot of punishable moves for approaching, then he's pretty screwed, as that's a large reason why Ganondorf has his unfortunate tier placement; approaching is almost all about safely getting into mid/close range. Sure, his force moves help out to an extent, but they're not persistant stage-control moves like Axel's projectiles, they're one-shot deals for moving the opponent temporarily into a worse position so the Apprentace can attempt an approach ONCE...and then he fails to do so or knocks the enemy too far for continued pressure, and has to wait for himself to refuel before attemping another.
If anything, he'd probably play really defensively, using all his extreme-ranged and shield-like force moves to camp and use his laggy lightsaber moves to punish mistakes, and the knockback of his saber places the enemy back at camping distance. Of course, this is very much like Dark Gaia, and I love Dark Gaia, but you know...it completley contradicts that nice big playstyle section you wrote for us. (smirk2).
It was a fun read, and has a lot of polish for a 1-day set (having my organization makes it BETTER Rool (wary)), but his playstyle kinda went the opposite direction of how you intended him to play, lulz.
...the negative parts of my comments have been longer than the postive parts lately! (horror)
Edit: Ok, why does the thread ALWAYS die whenever I post a comment? Come on, I know my avatar is a demonic wolf, but my bark is worse than my bite, really!
... and what exactly was the point of that post, MDA?
Reminder: check out Smady's Sundae Summary by clicking on its name there - remember to comment and like. Am beginning work on another moveset shortly, I'll update this post or make another if it progresses well.
