Meta Knight 2.6 impressions

[DMG]

That's not possible. If you use Down B from the air, you lose the ability to jump and use B moves. You only keep your jumps if you Down B from the ground to start with.

 

[Player -0]

That's not possible. If you use Down B from the air, you lose the ability to jump and use B moves. You only keep your jumps if you Down B from the ground to start with.

Really? I thought I had done a down b earlier and was still able to jump from it, I'll check again really quick.
Edit: Just checked, it seems that you do lose the jumps, idk what happened earlier then.

 

[DMG]

Yeah man. It sucks but it makes sense, because there would literally be no reason not to do that for recovering and would make him extremely versatile. This game doesn't need anymore safe and variable recoveries.

 

[Rarik]

ignore this

 

[Paradoxium]

[\quote]EDIT: AND SOME MORE RANTING. I've been testing out Nado and am I the only one who thinks its kinda stupid? All you MK mains are ****ting on his awesome recovery, but are in awe of this ****ty tornado. What's going on? The SDI out of it is SUPER easy and it is crouch cancelable up to like 65%. CCShine beasts through it.[/quote]

Preach it!

 

[Juushichi]

I think when people mention his recovery, with up-B in particular, they should note that if you get hit during any particular part of it (even trading), he loses all of his jumps and can only use his B-moves again.

 

[DMG]

good point

SO DON'T **** UP RECOVERING WITH MK MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[EpixAura]

I love the hell out of P:M MK. Seriously, I don't know where to start.

His Nair is probably the best Nair in the game, or at least pretty close. It's so versatile in what it can do, and does just about every one of these things perfectly. It's an approach, and OoS option, a tech chase option, a gimp move, a combo finisher, and sometimes even a kill move. It feels like Pikachu's Nair except better in every way imaginable. Of course, his short hop complements it perfectly.

His grab game is just so much fun. I don't know exactly why, but MK's grab animation feels so sleek, fast, and all around great. All of his throws seem useful and have their own purpose. His Dsmash is also several layers of spectacular. covering several options if used to tech chase, and being a great finisher. Sometimes I just throw it out there randomly predicting rolls. In the right situations, it's incredibly hard to punish and covers so many things.

Then there's the gimps. Oh, lawdie, the gimps. MK can safely run offstage and attempt gimps impossible for 90% of the cast, and get back onstage without worry. Nair forms an almost poetic wall of death that blocks any attempt at getting to the ledge. Seriously, it's effin' beautiful. If you can predict how the opponent is going to recover, you can stop them. Its pretty much as simple as that. Even if the attempt fails, MK often finds himself receiving 'consolation prizes,' getting a little free damage on the opponent as they climb back on stage if you pick the right recovery for the given situation.

His recovery is very dynamic given that every single one of his specials acts as a recovery. Of course his multiple jumps help this. Basically, literally everything about him feels like it has a use without having it's purpose clearly defined for specific situations. He's just such a spectacularly versatile character.

He has his fair share of weaknesses though (lightweight, awkward fall speed, incredibly long endlag on his aerials while in the air, no reliable kill setups from my experience), but that's kind of a requirement. This is easily the most well designed and fun character I've seen so far.

 

[AbstractLogic]

Adding to the edge guard game, if you time jump with Bairs, you can do a brutal wall of pain offstage and drill rush to get back.

 

[Overswarm]

MK's pretty bad and doesn't flow well, which I found surprising especially after all of Ivysaur's improvements for his flow. It's possible MK could get much better over time with a lot of effort put into him, but I doubt it. His u-air isn't good for his jump height and has to be telegraphed, his dair is wonky and unusuable off stage in its entirety (why is it that long exactly?) , his vertical recovery makes his ability to go off stage and edgeguard pretty difficult. He has some fun stuff out of grabs and he has speed, but there's no real reason to play MK other than to be someone new.

I find it delicious that you had to nerf Brawl MK to that he didn't beat up the Melee characters too bad. While I was hoping for a unique design for Metaknight that made him feel more like a Melee character, the design in this feels very much like a mid-tier Brawl character. He even combos and edgeguards like one.

Also the over-b is entirely useless. I feel like changing that move came from the discussion of "how do we make his recovery not so good" rather than "what can we do to make this move fit MK".

I dunno. He feels like he has a lot of different pieces mashed together that don't quite fit right.

 

[Strong Badam]

I'm of the opinion that MK is easily top 8 in the game, and we only have to wait around for a good player to pick him up to see him do work in tournament. His speed and disjoint is just too potent to ignore, and his dthrow techchasing works on a lot of good characters. His recovery is also still well above average, I'm not really sure where these impressions that his recovery sucks are coming from.

 

[Overswarm]

I'm of the opinion that MK is easily top 8 in the game, and we only have to wait around for a good player to pick him up to see him do work in tournament. His speed and disjoint is just too potent to ignore, and his dthrow techchasing works on a lot of good characters. His recovery is also still well above average, I'm not really sure where these impressions that his recovery sucks are coming from.

His recovery would be good on another character, it just doesn't mesh well with his character, which is where most of his problems come. Just not designed with the "whole piece" in mind, seems like each move was made individually and then put together.

He's a small guy with a disjointed hitbox with multiple jumps; edgeguarding should be a breeze and is built into his character design at its core... except his edgeguarding is mediocre. Due to his vertical recovery being so poor and his height gaining from jumps being so poor, he can't edgeguard off stage very well. If he tries to, he puts himself in a very poor position if the slightest thing goes wrong.

His disjointed hitbox and speed are huge strong points that not every other character has and you'd expect MK to be somewhere between Marth and Fox in terms of his personal advantages. In reality, the disjointed hitbox is extremely small due to its size and most of his combos have to come from a grab, not an attack. The exception of which being his dair, which requires a light character whose previous advantages were listed as "disjointed" and "speed" to literally propel themselves at their opponent in a straight line from above them. It's one of the worst approaches any character can have in a game like Smash because it is predictable and easily punishable. It can't even be used off stage!

So you've got a light character with a disjointed hitbox that has to be really close to really do damage, that has multiple jumps but can't edgeguard off stage particularly well (it's not super awful, but not really good) because of his poor vertical recovery in both jumps and recovery moves.

MK will be mid-tier at best. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have a character that focuses primarily around grabs, but it doesn't fit with MKs design. Brawl MK was designed well, he was just too good. PM MK just has pieces that don't fit together well.

 

[tripwire]

If O Swarm is right then the PMBR will address these issues eventually. In the mean time lets enjoy our only new character...(plz Samus)

 

[Shell]

Dash dancing and JC grab were powerful additions to his game when combined with his high dash speed. This is balanced by the fact that his throws do not usually net him many direct combo follow-ups with proper DI at mid+ percents, instead offering positional advantage or tech-chasing.

You are correct that Dair is a situational approach at best -- it instead functions best as a combo extender in a similar vein to Wolf's Nair, drag them back to the ground and keep going.. except MK's dair has enough KB that it can launch into direct aerial follow-ups.

His best approach from a safety perspective would probably be Nair, as it has the best advantage vs. shield and can lead into other horizontal follow-ups based upon percent and DI. As far as launchers go, though, inner D-tilt, running U-smash vs. faster fallers, Dash Attack hit 1 for mid-fallers, ending of hit 2 for some floatier characters, possibly late FF'd Uair serve you better. Some of these options can be mixed into the neutral game occasionally, and some come from a read on d-throw tech-chase, so if that's what you meant by needing to use grab to start combos then I could see your point.

I agree that Brawl MK had a decent design -- for Brawl. I believe it's been mentioned a few times now that we did start with a more-or-less direct port of Brawl MK into the Melee environment and his offstage game especially was just not compatible with any semblance of Melee standards. Did we overnerf it, or just change it too much? It's certainly possible. We're not perfect.

However, I encourage you to play the character as he is and discover what he is capable of rather than dwelling too long on what you think he should be capable of.

 

[Juushichi]

I don't consider myself to be even close to a great player of this game, but this was something that I immediately noticed when I started playing against conscious people of the character. One of my favorite training partners, for example, Shenanagans (Pika player) complained a lot about the implications of his grab game... and by that I mean dthrow. Dthrow is good... I mean, really really good. Not broken by any means, but his speed and foxtrot... hell his walk allow him to cover a lot of things even if you have bad reactions.

Nair covers things really well, bair, etc... but when it came to chasing characters off stage it was kinda hard. Fair basically tickles people offstage and unless you're like falco or soemthing, w/e. Nair is good if you're ledgejumping with it, bair takes a while to come out, but air fsmash is pretty good when it hits... but then you spend a bunch of time trying to come back to the stage. God forbid you get hit or trade with anything when you're out there though, since just about every B move he has removes your jumps once he takes any damage. And once you're without a jump, his recovery is actually not that good considering the lack of durability/safety that all of them have.

Onstage, you've got a lot of pretty decent space controllers on the ground. Ftilt is amazing and serves every utility that a traditional rekka move would, dtilt pretty much what you would expect from something similar to Marth dtilt. Utilt.. meh. And fair can jump over low grounded moves. The transition from his grounded to air game (and vice versa) is awkward at best though unless you chose to use the almost overly disjointed bundle of active frames he has, in nair.

A lot of the other stuff, OS kinda outlined. I get the biggest sense of... incompleteness when it comes his game as soon as I transition off of his amazing ground game. I think it's perfectly acceptable to change some attributes so it's not overwhelming, but a lot of stuff he does just seems to lack cohesiveness and I think all of his specials in particular are basically shifting onto the right/a good direction, but need a fair amount of fine tuning.

As for his ability goes... I think he's a good character. His speed is amazing for mixups and pressure, his weight/fall speed is awkward enough (kinda like a reverse Samus) that he doesn't eat FFer or even psuedo FFer combos, but he just seems to be lacking that definitive oomph and polish that a truly great character has. Of course this is just day what... 4-5 conjecture, but I feel like I have a good intuition about this build.

 

[tripwire]

I've only played MK once so far but i already plan on learning him in and out. I will detail my opinions on him with in a few days.

 

[SmashCentralOfficial]

His Nair is probably the best Nair in the game, or at least pretty close. It's so versatile in what it can do, and does just about every one of these things perfectly. It's an approach, and OoS option, a tech chase option, a gimp move, a combo finisher, and sometimes even a kill move.

His grab game is just so much fun. I don't know exactly why, but MK's grab animation feels so sleek, fast, and all around great. All of his throws seem useful and have their own purpose. His Dsmash is also several layers of spectacular. covering several options if used to tech chase, and being a great finisher. Sometimes I just throw it out there randomly predicting rolls. In the right situations, it's incredibly hard to punish and covers so many things.

I absolutely agree with you here. His N-Air is amazing as an approach, killmove, edgeguard, etc. It comes out pretty fast and has weak hitboxes as well as strong ones for offstage and killing out of shield. It's just his recovery and edgeguard game that are really lacking.

Also the over-b is entirely useless. I feel like changing that move came from the discussion of "how do we make his recovery not so good" rather than "what can we do to make this move fit MK".

If Side-B was an instant glide like Pit's, his recovery would be exponentially better.

edgeguarding should be a breeze and is built into his character design at its core... except his edgeguarding is mediocre. Due to his vertical recovery being so poor and his height gaining from jumps being so poor, he can't edgeguard off stage very well. If he tries to, he puts himself in a very poor position if the slightest thing goes wrong.

So you've got a light character with a disjointed hitbox that has to be really close to really do damage, that has multiple jumps but can't edgeguard off stage particularly well (it's not super awful, but not really good) because of his poor vertical recovery in both jumps and recovery moves.

This. After they tweak some of MK's moves, specifically his Side-B and Down-Air, I think he could be High or Top Tier.

The main problem I have with MK is I can't figure out a way to Cancel out of his D-Air and continuing comboing off stage like they did in the trailer. Whenever I use D-Air off stage I fall to my death (when making contact with the opponent). I've tried jumping out, hitting L, hitting A, etc.

Anyone know anything about this?

 

[BTmoney]

Yes that's the thing I was too lazy to do, but Vigilante knows exactly the steps for that. I can invite you into the skype group of brainiacs if you want, my skype is james.madway

i appreciate it =], after messing around a bit more I just bought a new wii on ebay, console only was only $38. I wanted a back up wii anyway since mine is hacked beyond all repair lmao

I've spent like $75 on PM lmao since I've started playing it. Free game my ass.

 

[Shell]

There is no secret way to cancel Dair in the air, sorry. Forward-Dair is like the easiest move to ledge cancel in the game, though, if that's any concession.

 

[DMG]

Whatever you saw before MK came out, may be what I got in the bugged Riivolution build. In the original download (for Riivolution), MK was bugged in numerous ways and one of them was that you could cancel Dair and still live. Only regular Dair, not angled. I was pretty happy about it, it felt really solid. Then I downloaded the fixed version and now he drops to his death every time. I've heard just about every argument under the sun from people who want to defend how that move works and I just can't accept it.

MK got some problems imo. MK in a few ways is like Sheik: you will get your ass handed to you by CC if you don't primarily grab at lower %'s. Nearly every move under the sun for him has issues with CC. The tilts, tornado, all the aerials, he just hates it. He normally kind of blows at launching people because, well look at his vertical moves. Trying to land Utilt in neutral probably isn't worth the effort and spacing and the stoppage of your momentum, Uair is hard to land as the initial blow, Uthrow is not gonna cut it, so it's down to Usmash. Actually a decent try for getting it out of a Dthrow, dunno how CC or SDI is gonna affect it though. And just to be clear, there's a difference between starting a launch and being able to maintain it. This character is beyond equipped to keep people in the air once they get there. But it's not easy to get the initial launch please don't say Dair approach is perfect I'm gonna let you believe that if you want.

His Dthrow and the setups that follow are single handedly the strongest aspect of the character. All the praise for Nair or Dair or x move, you're missing it. This character is meant to Dthrow you and get you into a cruddy position and try to abuse it. He's not meant to SH aerial at people for the initial approach. You will have a much easier time almost bypassing 80% of his options in neutral and go for the Dthrow. The exception? If you actually wall them out with your range or if they want to blatantly go above you. Feel free to shuttle loop combo Honda mcsuperdeath them in that case. You may not have as much fun by playing him that way, but I assure you that kind of brutal efficiency is better and stronger than flailing with worse options.

 

[ScaryPixel]

I've been messing around with MK since his release. Played him a bunch in friendlies at a tournament yesterday and I found a few things that I really like, but also found some that I don't.

What I Like

• His Dash Dance game is insane. This is easily one of my favorite aspects of P:M MK.
• Dimensional Cape is very useful and fun to use (also my other favorite aspect of P:M MK). Good idea allowing aerials after leaving cape but removing his jumps. It's a great finisher move, and a great recovery tool when you're out of jumps.
• His fair & bair are really good. Fair staples combos together really well and it's a great spacing tool. Bair is great for edge guarding and it's kill potential makes it much more valuable than brawl bair.
• Dair is fun lol It's a great approach and escape tool. I also really like platform cancelling with it then throwing out bair/nair when someone tries chasing.
• His tilts are really good. Dtilt is very useful at early percentages, ftilt is great for combo & grab set ups.
• Nado isn't brawl nado but at least it doesn't suck lol Useful for recovering, and hard yet satisfying to kill with.
• New drill is really useful. Dmbrandon would be pleased lololol. What I really like doing with it right now is chaining a combo with it into a ledge grab, then pop-up nair if someone is too close.

What I Don't Like

• His throws. Dthrow is fine, good for combos at least. Uthrow has decent set up for mach nado or shuttle loop finishes, but it takes forever before it can kill someone. Fthrow and Bthrow are kinda garbage to me, I never see a useful situation to pick fthrow/bthrow over dthrow/uthrow. It would be nice if MK's bthrow worked like Sheik's where you could punish bad DI with something sweet like bair.
• He feels cool onstage, but the moment I jump offstage with him, it feels like I'm wrestling to stay afloat in water while tied down to rocks. Nair drops you like a brick if you use it off stage, bair feels like the only decent option off stage, everything else just doesn't help you edge guard at all.
• He's vertically challenged when trying to recover. I haven't tried DC>Air Dodge yet but I think it might be his best chance at coming back from down below.
• Shuttle Loop should be able to grab the edge backwards honestly. I see no reason that it shouldn't, it would solve MK's lack of edge guarding options, and it would reduce the amount of self-inflicted injuries caused by shuttle looping too close facing the ledge. >_>

 

[ScaryPixel]

oops doublepost

 

[Naughty Pixel]

I really like MK, but the two moves that i see no place in my game are his side B and down air. down air is very cool but seems incredibly niche. i love his tech chases, his ground speed is sweet. also a lot of his moves lend to his grab game i've converted uair, dash attack, and dtilt into grabs on several occasions. there's a bounty of swag to be found within his moveset in a melee environment!

 

[SpiderMad]

i appreciate it =], after messing around a bit more I just bought a new wii on ebay, console only was only $38. I wanted a back up wii anyway since mine is hacked beyond all repair lmao

I've spent like $75 on PM lmao since I've started playing it. Free game my ***.

Oh, I'll take your old one off your hands if you want bro

 

[NightShadow6]

If you use his downb while on the stage you still retain your jumps. Just can't air dodge at all.

 

[Juushichi]

Back throw is a very good positioning throw, I'll give it that much.

Fthrow is useless (but okay if it is) and uthrow is meh at best.

 

[SAX]

Mk is top 3 for sure lmao...

Anyone saying MK is bad obviously hasn't seen how MK should be played. Plup could beat anyone in this thread with mk hahaha. We'll be streaming in a couple of days (me, wizzy, and plup) and then you can make your opinions after you see how amazing and broken mk actually is, and also how he should be played.

 

[Bryonato]

sounds sick. stream link pls?

 

[SAX]

sounds sick. stream link pls?

Not 100% sure if it will be the same, but this is where we streamed last time.

Www.twitch.tv/smashstudios

 

[Burnsy]

Dair isn't that bad. Haters gonna hate, especially if they played Bralwl

 

[SpiderMad]

On the contrary, it's much better than my noob eyes can see for the moment

 

[Bryonato]

while I can see the gripe about it being a dive attack I absolutely love Dair.

 

[Naughty Pixel]

Tbh I'm starting too warm up too his dair

 

[Kink-Link5]

Dair is better from a design standpoint than his Brawl one (I won't reiterate why since I've said it like ten times in the last 4 days lol). It works in conjunction with his strong empty hop, quick snappy attacks, and various methods he has to delay attacks. A full hop late dair won't win you any tournament sets, but it is a great tool to throw people off that are getting use to the timing and responses to his other aerial attacks.

 

[PurDi]

I love using his dair as a cross up or a combo extender. Also it makes for some nice shenanigans when platform cancelled.

What're some bread'n'butter combo's yall have found? And how do you like to edgeguard? I'm find myself not going below the stage for gimps due to his lack of a good vertical recovery option (other than down b).

 

[Burnsy]

Sometimes I get people with d-throw> DC with instant c-stick forward as a follow up. Not sure if this is any good though. I am interested in other "instant DC cancel" combos.

 

[PurDi]

So, you're just doing dthrow -> dash attack? Am I reading that right?

I generally use dthrow -> USmash on DI in, and on DI away dthrow -> wd forward -> DSmash, Ftilt, dtilt or just techchase. Once I get em to a high enough percent is when I start sharking platforms with uair and nair into a juggle or some crazy plat combo with a bunch of dairs and fairs to keep pressure.

 

[Vickyboi]

DC=Dimensional Cape (I guess?)

 

[MegaGuy]

Guys, Up B OoS tho. Super safe with platforms, but not really on FD obviously. Plus at lower %s it seems to combo into glide attack, but maybe there's some DI to get out of that.

I think this was said somewhere before, but Nado is really good against Sonic. It's a great edgeguard in general, but it really seems to **** him up even more so.

Lastly ,speaking of edgeguards, I've had great success punishing on-stage recoveries with full-charge DC. Dimensional Cape is one of my favorite things about P:M MK, it's got so much utility!

 

[Burnsy]

So, you're just doing dthrow -> dash attack? Am I reading that right?

Actually no, I was talking about when you Dimension Cape and then cancel it as soon as possible with c-stick. MK gets a notable boost forward or backward depending on the direction you tapped the cstick, and it's pretty fast. I have used it to combo out of dthrows with no DI or DI in when I do it with cstick towards them. I know the PMBR has mentioned that when used this way, DC has some combo applications. I was wondering if anyone has discovered any others.

There are a lot of other things about Dimension Cape that seem like they could prove useful. It's definitely one of my favorite moves in the game.