I love questionnaires.
2. Do you then believe that MetaKnight is a BROKEN character? And what constitutes a BROKEN character?
MK is broken without the Ledge Grab rule. With it, you're just limiting how broken he is for 50 grabs.
A Broken character is one in which it becomes play said character or go home. The question is whether it really is play MK or die, or if the community is just making it seem like that.
3. If and only if your answer to 2 was YES, besides MKs ability to stall and run the timer, due to planking, air camping, scrooging and the like, what makes MetaKnight, the character itself, BROKEN in actual combat (moveset, defensively, offensively)?
2 frame uair
5 frame dsmash as a viable kill move
invincible upB on startup
lol tornado
transcendent priority on his attacks.
near inability to gimp while being the king of gimps...
forward roll is better than lucario.
all that makes him really really good. Broken? Maybe not... unless combined with the stuff that you already excluded.
4. Can planking, air camping, or scrooging all be done effectively by atleast one other character character (character must be able to do atleast one of the techniques effectively, not all)?
apparently Marth, Pit, Pikachu, and G&W can plank
Pit can aircamp, but getting hit out of upB into failure kinda hinders that to an extent.
I think that any character that can go under FD relatively easily can scroog.
However, because MK can do all of that, he run can your patience to the ground by taking a life, then planking, then air camping, then scrooging, etc. Of course, if you keep your cool, you might be able to do something about it... maybe... I do know that cooler heads see things with better judgment.
7. What means more in upper levels of play, the skill of the player, or the character itself, assuming the matchup isnt extremely in either characters favor (assume no worse the 60:40)?
Player skill tends to mean more than character, however, if a player isn't too skilled against a certain character, that can change the overall result, no?
2. Ally and Diddy placed in the top3 out of 200, in one of the biggest brawl tournies to date, and they didnt need to play MK to do it. Same goes for logic, placing 7th in that same tournament.
3.
(a) Agreed, his up-air, may be the best up-air in the game. One or two best moves in a moveset, dont make a character broken thought to be fair.
(b)Zelda has a 4 frame downsmash that is a decent kill move, due to its power and low angle. Wolf has a 6 frame downsmash that sends at a higher angle and still kills 20% earlier then mks downsmash without DI. With DI on both moves, it may reach closer to killing 40% earlier, since DI wont help you much for wolf. ICs downsmash is 7 frames and does 40% if sweetspotted.
(c)MKS up-b is not instantly invincible, but it does have invincibilty frames in it. Mario and Marth have instant invincibility on there Up-b. G&W also has invincibility on his up-b. I think sonic may have invincibility to. Donkey Kongs Punch has Armor frames on it and it can kill from the middle of final d much earlier then mks shuttleloop.
(d)Tornado in my mind is overrated. Dont get me wrong, its a good move, but very over rated. The problem is, everyone want to beat the tornado. When you see G&W come at with you with his turtle, do you try to beat it, or do you sheild and react after based on his aerial DI. Tornado is the same. ALmost every character can beat nado with some move on the ground, and they all can beat it, if the attack from the top. And it does have 30 frames of punishment, which is sorta low for what it can do, but its still half a second. The whole top tier and alot of the high tier can pretty much get around it fairly well, either by beating it to the bunch or catching mk on the retreat. Plus if you smash di out, mk better prepare to be punished.
(e) Trancended priority is also overrated. It stops mk from clashing. Clashing, benefits characters with range and speed, which he has both. If you were to clash with him, chances are, he would be in the advantage, since he would either outrange you or have a quicker move, or both. So a clash would reset you both to neutral stance and he would be in the advantage on most of the cast, since the opponent would be stuck in the defensive, allowing mk to escape or sheild pressure. If you were to be offensive after the clash, chances are he would beat you to the punch on an attack or be to far for you to reach him, before he reached you. Also, clashing allows characters to attack projectiles and makes it easier for them to get in against spammy opponents. He is not the only character with trancended priority either, diddys side-b kick has it, falcos lasers have it, and marths dancing blade (hits frame 4) has it just to name a few.
(f) He is a good gimper and is hard to gimp. Hard to gimp isnt that rare. Try gimping jiggly or pikachu, both are rather hard to gimp, near impossible. It doesnt take away from the fact that MK is still light. Honestly a large portion of the cast are not that easy to gimp. Which leads me to my next point, being a good gimper isnt the be all and end all in this game. At the top level, a lot of non MK players dont get gimped. Snakes like ally get back often. Same goes for a smart diddy kong. Even smart olimars dont find there characters gimpability there characters biggest weakness. The ledge magnets and overall floatyness of the game, make it very easy to get back for a large degree of the cast.
(g) Mk has the best foward roll in game. It doesn't make him broken. Lucario is a hell of a lot of spots lower then MK and he has a rather good roll.
4. As long as the tactics of planking, air camp, scrooging and the like are allowed, any character wont need 3 of em to run the timer. They will only need one to run the timer. If pit scrooges under the stage and lets say ur the ICs, chances are your never gonna kill him and he can easily run the timer. Same goes for someone like jigglypuff just hovering in the corner of smashville and only returning to land on the platform or the edge for a second. The tactics disserve banning because they are so easily accessible by the cast and b/c
they are used for stalling purposes
7. In the higher tiers most of mks matchups are around 55:45 or 60:40 (mind you not all). So the skill of a player should be able to over come those odds, since they are not ridiculous.
