On the Subject of Freshness

[Hyrus]

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I know several members of the board have brought up the subject of keeping KO moves fresh before, but only recently have I seen the light in just how important it is to be patient and prioritize moves. Freshness, you might say, has changed my life.

So I said to myself, "F***, how can I play a role in spreading freshness?" I thought it was about time I bust out the brush and get to work.

I needed an image to try and convey just how important it is to squeeze every grab pummel (each pummel restores your attacks) to keep that minty freshness going longer and stronger. This was the first idea I came up with.

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I'd go with wild cherry.

Swing and a miss.

That's the problem with the creative process. Sometimes you just fudge an idea - literally. People might look at that and think that Ganon has doody pants or something. His run animation doesn't help his cause.

So I thought I needed something with a higher contrast.

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Anger won't make it fill any faster.

Ah, here we go. So not only do we convey the importance of freshness, we also call out the importance of patience, no matter who's strange house you happen to be in.

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(God. >_<)

 

[Ray_Kalm]

Pummeling your opponent effects stale-move negation..?

 

[hyperstation]

Pummeling your opponent effects stale-move negation..?

Well, the OP suggests that, but I'm not sure if it's true. Say you land 5 DAirs at the beginning of a stock and stale out that move. Does it go fresh again if you connect with 15 other moves before you DAir again? If so, the OP's suggestion of pummeling to restore freshness is valid. I'm honestly not sure though, because I thought that moves stale out and stay stale until you loose that stock and respawn...

Pummeling is hardly the issue of the thread, though. If freshness can be restored by using other moves, this is great news, but I'm skeptical. If freshness can be restored, what determines how quickly it's restored? Percentage given? Time? Number of moves landed?

 

[TP]

This is how staleness works. The game keeps track of the last 9 moves you hit with. Each pummel counts as one, I believe. If a move is on the list, especially the more recent part of the list, it will have less damage and knockback. The more it is on the list, the weaker it is. I also hear that once you have used a move once in a stock, it can't quite reach 100% again even after it is off the list of the 9 most recent moves.

Since Ganon hits so hard no matter what, this is not that big a deal for us, really. Perhaps a stale Dair can combo better than a fresh one. Also, we all know that Dash Attack needs to be fresh if we want those sweet kill %s. Besides that, pummel whenever you grab and don't worry about it.

 

[Hyrus]

but I'm skeptical. If freshness can be restored, what determines how quickly it's restored? Percentage given? Time? Number of moves landed?

With the exception of pummels, a single attack counts as one restoration of Diminishing Returns. With Bowser, you can hit people for any amount of damage with his fire breath, but only one "channel" of the effect can restore a DR, regardless for how long you hit an opponent. So whether a move hits once or 6 times, it only counts as one incriment of change since it is a single attack input.

Moves can be diminished about 9 times and get down to around 40% of their original KO and Dmg power. For one increment of diminishment, it takes 2 or 3 hits with anything else to bring it back to 100% (but it refreshes faster if it's severely diminished). Environmental stuff (baloons on Smashville, pillars on the Metal Gear stage, Wario's Bike, I "think" clanging projectiles) trigger the exchange of DR and refreshing attacks. I'm not sure if a shielded attack is affected by DR.

Using any move, even if it's completely stale, will restore all of your other moves by one increment.

Grab pummeling several times before a throw is a great way to restore your KO power, since every pummel is counted as a different input (unlike jab combos). Some characters pummel quickly (Falcon), while others pummel slowly (Ganon). The slower pummeler doesn't refresh attacks as well. Characters like Falco can spam their laser quickly (and risk free, practically) to restore his attack's power again from across the stage.

Since Ganon hits so hard no matter what, this is not that big a deal for us, really.

I think it's a huge deal. D-Tilt (fresh) can kill well out of a Side-B, but for most of us it's usually diminished. U-Air can kill pretty well too, but again, it's usually diminished. Without a projectile, slow pummels and slow attacks, it's hard for Ganon to spam anything to refresh his KO moves. It doesn't help he has little approach options and has been gimped out of a Neutral B and U-Tilt again.

Edit: Fun fact: Diminishing Returns was originally suppose to prevent a move from being spammed. In Brawl, though, it appears to encourage it.

 

[hyperstation]

Hyrus, thank you. Fantastic clarification. I always knew that spamming moves stale them and avoiding the use of moves will refresh them in some capacity, but I never knew the specifics and certainly had no idea how well pummel could be spammed for this purpose. I will be pummeling away to my heart's content from now on. This is truly great news. Great post. Great drawings.

 

[A2ZOMG]

One reason why Ganon sucks is because he's one of the worst characters in the game at working around diminishing returns.

His grab attack not only is very weak, it's also very slow, and Ganondorf sucks at getting grabs. Ganon as he is currently has a lot of trouble landing a lot of different attacks on his opponent consistently if they are playing defensively.

You need to land attacks 10 times to refresh other attacks from what I've heard. It's really hard for Ganondorf to do that in a single stock from what I've seen. Keeping one of Ganondorf's better attacks fresh is also difficult because usually he needs those attacks to stay safe and deal damage to his opponent.

In a lot of ways, he suffers from ROB's problem of being unable to score KOs easily. He has a lot of attacks that are ABLE to KO, but it's very hard to land them at the right time. ROB like Ganon has a weak and slow grab attack and doesn't have any KO moves that are particularly easy to save and use when it's time to get a KO. The difference with ROB is however he has VERY good grab range, meaning he can viably get off quite a few grab attacks on a single stock.

But yeah, good read Hyrus.

 

[-Mars-]

I try to just pre-determine which moves I will be using for damage-racking and which moves I will be saving for the KO.

Of course I use dairs and uairs a lot in my game. I actually try to limit the number of dtilts I use and replace them with jabs.........but dtilt is just too good as a poke.

Fsmash is always fresh, but I would recomend saving Dash attack for kill percentages. I also save my ftilt for 100+, unless i'm close to the edge and can set up an edgeguard.

 

[TP]

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and retract my previous statement. 'Twas wrong. I personally always save my dash attack. This works well both because it is a good kill move and because they can't predict its speed if you only use it rarely.

Oh, and I always keep my Warlock Punch completely fresh.