Kenith
Overkill Sarcasm
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2013
- Messages
- 24,014
- NNID
- RipoffmanXKTG
- 3DS FC
- 4210-4224-9442
tl;dr Rukario ain't OP guysThe aura buff/nerf from stocks is far weaker than that from percents in Brawl, and it's actually an important balance factor to prevent "who dies first" from making matches too swingy. In an even match, both players damage each other at a roughly equal rate until both are at high percentage, and then eventually one of them lands a kill move. In matches involving Lucario, this is a doubly huge point; if Lucario got the first kill, he gets to eat away at the second stock with the power of high damage aura before going down, but if he was the first to go, he suddenly is not only playing from behind but doing so with the aura penalty of being at low damage. The stock mechanic is there to partially offset this, and it works both ways. It's actually far too small to truly offset it; stock leads either way in matches involving Lucario are always a substantially bigger deal than in other games. Of course, since taking damage is a natural part of the match flow, I don't see how Lucario's aura is in any way a reward for "being outplayed"; it actually is just a shift in the relative value of different kinds of leads (percent leads being less important, stock leads being more important) and a shift in Lucario's power level based on the progression of the match (his attacks are more potent late in stocks than early, though other character qualities like recovery or susceptibility to chaingrabs also tended to have this sort of effect).
Of course, depending on situation, high aura isn't always better; Lucario combos much better at low aura so even with the max aura penalty he's not really suffering when both sides are at very low damage, and while it wasn't true in Brawl, this could give him some kill set-ups if he dies first in smash 4 (use your low aura combo moves to lead into your weakened but still usable kill moves). What's certainly the case is that calling aura a comeback mechanic completely misses the nuance of how it works; the effect it has on the match is far more complicated than that, and at least in Brawl, it was very hard to do well in the Lucario match-up without understanding it on a real level. Given that aura is apparently even more powerful in smash 4, I'd really suggest everyone put in some thought about how they tend to play and what areas of their play are affected by aura. Even if you have no interest in using Lucario, it will help you when you run into him as an opponent, and being able to calculate your decisions based on complex risk-reward analysis is helpful across the board anyway.
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