I have to get this off my chest --
There are two warring factions on these boards: Brawl lovers, Brawl haters. The Brawl haters are the people who were allegedly good at Melee. The Brawl lovers are *******.
I want to turn my attention to the haters --
Do you realize that Melee was not about technical ability? If you watch world-class matches, you'd discover that it was about mindgames! In many videos (such as MLG or OC2) you see two of the best players go head to head. Count how many times a tactical wavedash is used. You see a lot more of every other tactic. Did you even know that Falco's wavedash was one of the most useless in the game?
You put so much emphasis on WD'ing but in the end you could never call yourself a good player for having such a reliance on it. Top-end competetive players like Azen and Ken and even M2K (who HATES Brawl) didn't use it as THE alternative to moving, they used it as a part of their arsenal.
I'll admit, I was sad to see wavedashing kicked out. I liked using it. I was just starting to use waveshining when Brawl came out. Yet...I didn't want to see Brawl fail. I filled the void by playing the game against my friends and computers. To put it short, instead of condemning the game, I adapted to it.
On another note, I just like to say that the game is too young to say it has no combos. Saying it has no advanced tactics is hard to argue (since hundreds of people are deconstructing the physics just to see the "next wavedash"). Yet since this is happening, nobody is really looking for combos. They just assume, since the transition was so great, that Brawl has no combos.
It's not that Brawl doesn't have any. That is a lie. Brawl just doesn't have any of MELEE'S combos. Make sense? Waveshining is gone, pillaring is gone, but does that give you the right to assume that Brawl ain't got nothing?
And if you loved L-cancelling THAT much, just find characters that have no lag upon landing attacks. Some examples include glide-attacks. They have NO LAG, and Metaknight's is the best since his shuttle loop will throw you into a glide. Also, in my gradual efforts to deconstruct characters, I've found that two out of five of Wolf's aerials have NO LAG upon landing (his Bair and Uair). Marth can shorthop aerials and land as they end -- yes, essentially, letting him combo in to things like tilts or smashes. ROB can go double-fair into down smash, something that not even the DI of a level 9 can save. Sheik can chain tilts into almost any other attack she has. Metaknight's Fair approach can only be countered by characters with a high double jump (Squirtle, Toon Link). Sonic has some of the lowest distanced throws evar. Hyphen-smashing is godly with Fox.
These are all examples of combos and tactics. Don't even get me started on ZSS, or tether-hogging. Yes, it's a downgrade from Melee in terms of being able to cancel every aerial and being able to move efficiently, but does that make Brawl suck? Does that mean Brawl has no combos and no advanced tactics? Does that mean that Brawl offers nothing new to the table?
NO!
So why don't you just try and get better at the game? Right now, almost everyone who has Brawl sucks at it. I understand you don't want to go through the same gradual rigorous process -- remember when you were bad at Melee? You probably got frustrated because the game was too fast during your 64->Melee transition. I can understand why you think Brawl is a terrible piece of ****. But it's not Brawl that is the problem. I mean this with as much respect as possible.
TL;DR version:
-most people are overemphasizing the removal of wavedashing; it's not as key as you think
-combos are in the game, it's just people are looking for the-next-advanced-tactic and not for combos
-you and I are bad at the game, just like we were when Melee came out...remember those days?
-Brawl is a downgrade in terms of applicable global tactics, but it does offer lots of new goods to the table to make it not strictly worse in competetive play
Brawl only sucks because people think it sucks. That's my complaint about this game.
