Pokemon Trainer in Balanced Brawl

[Steeler]

Balanced Brawl is a hack project that aims to rebalance Brawl by improving the worst to average characters and slightly nerfing the very best, while adding more stage viability and removing infinites and lockdowns (including inescapable grab releases). The project is currently in its beta version, with the first official release to come as soon as next week.

Below are PT's changes:

Pokemon Trainer

a. Squirtle

-More knockback on Water Gun (0) -> (20)

This change makes this move quite interesting, but Squirtle is mostly still the same.

b. Ivysaur

-More damage on down smash (8%) -> (9%)
-More knockback on down smash (80/40) -> (80/60)
-Much more damage on back aerial (2% and 3%) -> (4% and 5%)
-Much more damage on down aerial (8% or 10%) -> (14% or 16%)
-Less damage on Bullet Seed startup hit, making it harder to SDI (4%) -> (2%)
-Vine Whip that does not target the ledge now has more ending lag and does not enable the helpless fall state

Ivysaur was seen by most Pokemon Trainer players as the weak point on the team. Hopefully this should be different now. His buffed attacks should let his natural spacing and zoning game really shine, and the change to Vine Whip should make gimping him a lot trickier, though still possible with careful timing. The Bullet Seed change just makes a good trick of his a little more practical.

c. Charizard

-More damage on forward smash second hit (17%) -> (19%)
-More knockback on forward smash second hit (98/40) -> (105/28)
-More knockback on down smash (80/40) -> (90/40)
-More damage on non-knockback part of forward aerial (2%) -> (4%)
-More knockback on back aerial (130/30) -> (130/45)
-More knockback on glide attack (85/65) -> (100/80)

Charizard is still Charizard; he grounds the team with his excellent survivability and high KO power. He just has a small set of buffs that make him better at being Charizard by rounding out his moveset's strengths.

Overall, Pokemon Trainer has been designed as a team. We deliberately decided against changing any of his unique mechanics and instead built him to flourish within that framework. If this makes you feel down, just remember. If you don't believe in yourself and your Pokemon, you'll never be a champ again!

As you can see, Ivysaur's spacing is now much more effective with the Bair buff, Bullet Seed is slightly scarier, and Ivysaur is not quite as easy to gimp (still fairly gimpable though). Dair is also an even nicer edgeguard move. Something to note is that Ivysaur's Vine Whip has additional afterlag now to prevent Ivysaur from being able to use it repeatedly in the air to "fly" higher. This afterlag translates to grounded Vine Whip, so now Ivy will sit there doing nothing for about half a second.

Squirtle is mostly unchanged but a buffed Water Gun is MUCH more helpful than most would think. Aside from this change, it is very unlikely that Squirtle recieves any specific buffs, although Squirtle very much appreciates not dying whenever he gets grabbed by certain characters.

Finally, Charizard's changes are aimed at making him a more effective killer, although most of the buffed moves are fairly trivial or situational. The main difference is that Bair and Fair are both scarier edgeguards or straight up killers, which Charizard appreciates.

The one thing you should take away from this is that Ivysaur is not a bad character anymore. I think Ivysaur could even be better than Charizard in bbrawl, but time will tell. Overall, the team works together more cohesively than before.

So here we will discuss how PT's matchups have changed. Here is a quickie look at how various characters have been changed (or not changed):

I'll have a section here for videos of bbPT in action, I should get some stuff recorded later today, actually.

Here is the NTSC version of the codes so you can try this out for yourself!


Download .gct, .txt, and cliff note pictures here!


PAL codeset can be found here. It is missing a code or two though.

In order to run the .gct file (which is the code file), you will need a modern version of Gecko OS (such as 1.9.1) and the gameconfig.txt file on the root of your SD card. Both of these are generally available and easy to find. You will also need some way to launch Gecko OS which, by SWF rules, we are forbidden to supply support on. Future, final releases will be executable on unhacked Wiis.

 

[Zschalix]

Good stuff. To say the least, the ivy changes make me feel like this character is much more complete...

I'm guessing improvements to other characters will keep pokemon trainer extremely difficult to use without learning all three pokemon very well (in contrast to simply playing squirtle or 'zard in B+), so i think the new feel fits very well, though im not a great player and therefore can't judge how viable PT now is.

And no joke, the water gun buff is actually really cool.

 

[anax4aero]

Nice, but I wouldn´t mind some sort of change to make switching Pokemon more viable, considering fatigue is still there.

 

[Tien2500]

Not sure why they really had to really remove jab locks/infinites. If two players wanted to play without jab locks and grab releases they could always just not do them. The buff to Ivy's bair would seem to be pretty useful.

 

[TheREALShadowChaos]

I think that I'll stay by B+.
Balanced Brawl seems so bad to me.... Why would you want to conserve that Brawl feeling? I don't understand.

 

[Asa]

They did it so you wouldn't have to learn a totally new game

 

[kackamee]

I think that I'll stay by B+.
Balanced Brawl seems so bad to me.... Why would you want to conserve that Brawl feeling? I don't understand.

Oh...I unno...maybe cuz...well...some people...actually may like brawl.

 

[TheREALShadowChaos]

Oh...I unno...maybe cuz...well...some people...actually may like brawl.

That's obvious but I can't imagine why someone would like the Brawlfeeling over the Melee feeling....

That they don't have to learn a different game sounds reasonable though.... Though that's never really an issue with me.

 

[hichez50]

Chairzards metagame seems to me that it will change. Because charizard becaame the zelda of the pokemon trainer.

 

[SuSa]

That's obvious but I can't imagine why someone would like the Brawlfeeling over the Melee feeling....

That they don't have to learn a different game sounds reasonable though.... Though that's never really an issue with me.

That's obvious but some people may like Brawl over Melee. amazing, isn't it?

 

[Tien2500]

I think that I'll stay by B+.
Balanced Brawl seems so bad to me.... Why would you want to conserve that Brawl feeling? I don't understand.

Not to start a Melee vs Brawl thing but I prefer Brawl.

 

[Zigsta]

Chairzards metagame seems to me that it will change. Because charizard becaame the zelda of the pokemon trainer.

Wait...is that a good thing? XD

 

[TheREALShadowChaos]

That's obvious but some people may like Brawl over Melee. amazing, isn't it?

Truly amazing. I suppose we'll have to do years of scientific research on this matter before we'll even be able to understand it in the slightest.

Lol also you probably don't understand what I said.

 

[Vermy]

I'm loving Balanced Brawl. Ivy's infinite aerial vinewhip buff means we can gimp METAKNIGHT OFFSTAGE.
Also means we can stall in teams so our partner can save us =D
Bair is actually useful when spammed dude to moar %, and dsmash isnt horrible. =D

Water gun is more ****-tastic. Lol @ everyone recovering

Zard kills things more.

What's not to lurve?

Balanced Brawl is great. It has a few kinks to work out, but they've kicked off incredibly well.

 

[Nokon]

this looks interesting o.o

but why remove the chainies? some of them aren't that hard to avoid.

 

[Bomber7]

Nice job Steeler

 

[TheREALShadowChaos]

Ivysaurs Bair needs to be as long as FD and get increased damage and knockback.

 

[Wii4Mii 99]

Yeah, Charizard's D-smash looked like it should've had more knockback than what it originally had.

Now all it needs is DK's Down-B's range...I mean, they're basically the same thing.

 

[Ghetto Fabulous]

i just hope people making this are taking into account comboing, we dont want initial knockback to be too large cause then ivysaur will have no combos, not that ivy has any now

 

[Ryusuta]

Yoshi's aerial side B restores double-jump? That's... interesting. Yoshi's recovery didn't really need help anyway, but I'd be interested in seeing the stall tactics with this.

 

[Ghetto Fabulous]

also, i dont understand the ganon changes at all

and why doesnt fox need to be changed?

 

[Steeler]

you can't stall with yoshi's egg roll, he stays in the egg for far too long and falls further than his double jump can recover

part of the reason why fox isn't buffed is because of zeton. his fox is ****ing good. lol but basically fox has lost some horrendous matchups so they are waiting to see how he does in a new metagame where he doesn't get 80-20 countered by anyone.

fox is really underrated by everyone.

 

[anax4aero]

The ganon changes are easily the most confusing. I think they're making him able to trip like Falcon and giving him more power, but the rest I haven't understood.

I still think Pokemon Change should be improved somehow. Maybe adding knockback similar to Pit's WoI so that changing doesn't involve getting pummeled by a charged smash attack.

 

[Steeler]

they could just make it so that you can switch during respawn invincibility like zelda/sheik do. that way you aren't giving pt switch anything different or abnormal, just a feature from another switching move.

but one of the creators is highly opposed to buffing switching or stamina at all so :\

 

[Ryusuta]

also, i dont understand the ganon changes at all

and why doesnt fox need to be changed?

Because changes to other characters make him a lot more viable now. The Pikachu 0-death is gone, so his worst counter is out the window. The character itself doesn't need any changes.

The ganon changes are easily the most confusing. I think they're making him able to trip like Falcon and giving him more power, but the rest I haven't understood.

I thought Ganon would be broken with his changes, but they really are just about right.

but one of the creators is highly opposed to buffing switching or stamina at all so :\

On the one hand, I can't help but want to slam his head into a door until he realizes that NO ONE thinks the stamina system is a good idea, and EVERYONE wants it gone.

On the other hand, it's nice that Ivysaur is no longer the victim of idiot gimps, so it eases the blow a little.

 

[Steeler]

actually i think ganondorf is still a fairly ****ty character since all they buffed was what he can do once he's hitting you. otherwise he still gets brickwalled by tons of characters, is full of punishable moves, and has little range. unfortunately that would require some pretty drastic changes and bbrawl has to stay fairly true to the original. i do agree with the direction they took with ganondorf (ie he has a lot of "tricks", and his already good tech chasing got better, he's not just a standard heavyweight like bowser or dk) but it's difficult to make him an actually viable character that way, for reasons i stated. he still gets ***** by disjoints like gw, mk, marth. the plus side is that one good mindgame could lead to a ****load of damage for ganondorf.

on the plus side his wiz kick can now kick through most projectiles with its improved priority when its fresh. seeing wiz kick go right through flamethrower is just...amazing.

 

[Fearmy]

they could just make it so that you can switch during respawn invincibility like zelda/sheik do. that way you aren't giving pt switch anything different or abnormal, just a feature from another switching move.

but one of the creators is highly opposed to buffing switching or stamina at all so :\

the creator wanted PT to remain a team. And if they changed the switching, then they might be promoting to using one pokemon only, and seeing us PT mains, anyone who would use only one pokemon would be a discrace to us.

 

[Retro Gaming]

There are two ideas that come to my mind in changing the switch system:

1) Make it so that you must switch Pokemon when you come down from the platform. It can be either the Pokemon that's next in the rotation or the Pokemon that is two places forward in the rotation (Simply, the same Pokemon can't come out right after being KO'd). Apply similar properties to Down Special, but then remove stamina.

2) Make it so that, when one of your Pokemon is knocked out, it becomes unusable. So if Ivysaur gets knocked out and you switch as Squirtle, you go straight to Charizard. There's a lot of unknowns in this plan (What happens if its more than a three stock game/You run out of usable Pokemon in a timed match?) but it's already programmed into the game. Also, remove stamina and make it so you can choose which way to switch (The next Pokemon or the next next Pokemon?) as well as which Pokemon goes to the platform after death. If you want to see it in action, just go to event match 5 and kill off one of your Pokemon then try switching a few times.

Basically, both options are the exact same thing, but the second one is far more restrictive. In my opinion, though, it would make the game far more interesting and you would need to switch more intelligently. Actually, I don't think either of these options would work within the context of BBrawl because it changes PT too much, and the second one is probably even worse of a system than what we have now, but I think it would be really interesting to play around with just for fun.

 

[Charizard92]

Or, just modify stamina to be more forgiving, Like based off connected attacks instead of time (this was one of Retro's original Ideas, so THIS DID NOT COME OUT OF THE BLUE!)

 

[Ryusuta]

I think that's what they're talking about doing, now. I think that would be a fair approach, as well (although I think there's too much emphasis on the idea that "PT is a team," it's about going along to get along).

 

[Charizard92]

My Idea for PT is to allow him to be viable alone (with the Match ups where only one Pokemon isn't at a disadvantage, a serious side effect of the unforgiving fatigue), yet allow him to be a team (which Sakurai intended). Of course, SOME system has to be implemented (Note Zelda/Shiek in Melee), so a move based fatigue will likely work.

 

[Retro Gaming]

although I think there's too much emphasis on the idea that "PT is a team," it's about going along to get along

Well, based on how the Pokemon games actually work, the current team structure is off. You are forced to use all of your Pokemon versus the other character, which I think is both strange and unfair.

In the Pokemon games, the whole point of the game is to diversify your team enough so that when one of your Pokemon becomes a problem in that match-up, you can switch out to something better and basically "nullify" every bad match-up. If your team isn't diversified enough, only then should switching not be able to help you.

What I take this to be in Brawl is that you should be able to play (In a "whole-team" set up) as only two Pokemon and completely nullify the problematic match-up of your choice. Of course, if you need to nullify more than one, then your team isn't diverse enough and you should have a problem.

This is difficult in practice, though, because you would need to balance PT (as a whole) to go about even with every other member of the cast, which in my opinion would require the rest of the meta game without PT to be as balanced as possible first, then make corresponding changes to PT.

 

[Steeler]

Retro, my suggestion that PT be able to switch in respawn invincibility would basically allow you to nullify the problem match up of your choice. but only one match up, the other two would unavoidably be out for some period of time.

 

[Retro Gaming]

I put my support into Steeler's idea because it changes the game the least while allowing you to do the most.

But also, I support the get rid of stamina timer, that's just lame.

 

[Thinkaman]

i just hope people making this are taking into account comboing, we dont want initial knockback to be too large cause then ivysaur will have no combos, not that ivy has any now

Trust me, combo-ability, DI-ability, and SDI-ability of attacks is as considered as the more obvious things like damage and knockback.

Yoshi's aerial side B restores double-jump? That's... interesting. Yoshi's recovery didn't really need help anyway, but I'd be interested in seeing the stall tactics with this.

Egg Roll falls really, really far; the minimum time you must spend with it is huge. The real use for this chagne is the ability to Egg Brake.

and why doesnt fox need to be changed?

Fox was already a great character, but suffered from *THREE* almost unwinnable matchups due to certain moves exploiting his ultra-high personal gravity. This those all fixed, he is very deadly.

*good posts*

Thanks for your posts. We've talked a lot about Stamina, and are interested in looking at what is possible. I'm actually testing out shorter post-switch animations at the moment; not saying that is what we intend, but everything deserves to be looked at.

------------

I want to share a trick with Ivysaur's new up-b.

If you think that Ivysaur is safe off stage now, don't be fooled. If the opponent grabs the ledge exactly as your vine reaches for it, Ivysaur will still enter that "OH NO MY LIFE IS A FAILURE" animation and fall helpless to certain death.

However, you can throw your opponent off by INTENTIONALLY MISSING your up-b, by doing it away from the stage! If they grabbed the ledge prematurely then, wasting their invincibility, you can try to hit them off and then grab it as normal.

Of course, this still requires that you have the time and space to up-b three times... In other words, it's normally possible to recover, but Ivysaur is still disadvantaged off-stage.

 

[Charizard92]

I agree outright with Retro (and considering that PT is one of the more original cast, likely to return in the next smash, which allows for tweaking.). Obviously time is never a factor in the Pokemon games (unless you were poisoned and burned, then time IS an important factor), so having a time based fatigue system is silly (not to mention somewhat unforgiving).

The problem is "what is a more forgiving system?" Making Fatigue move based would allow for more flexibility (and is more forgiving), at a certain point. The question is when is it too forgiving (when you can just be one Pokemon period, the antithesis of PT himself), and when is it unforgiving?

This is a problem with all methods of fatigue, if you put in a system to make PT work as a team, when does a system become unforgiving (at this point 2 min tops- every attack you make), and when does it become too forgiving (8 minutes period, as this would allow a person to play as one Pokemon during an entire legal match).

Of course, not putting ANY system in is even worse, as demonstrated by Zelda (and Shiek) in Melee when only one character (Shiek) was used instead of using both Characters for the situation provided. Pokemon Trainer NEEDS to have a team orientation. Squirtle lacks KO moves and Ivysaur lacks damage racking moves. The two compliment each other and could potentially do much better than either of them alone. (Charizard has both, and could possibly survive solo if given the opportunity). A system that focuses on Team focus while not severely punishing going solo under critical situations is ideal, important, and apparently kind of hard to come by (Maybe an improvement on the timer system, or a move based system, I don't know).

As soon as somebody finds a good system, tell Nintendo about it.

 

[Ryusuta]

Pokemon Trainer NEEDS to have a team orientation.

...Not really, no.

 

[anax4aero]

the creator wanted PT to remain a team. And if they changed the switching, then they might be promoting to using one pokemon only, and seeing us PT mains, anyone who would use only one pokemon would be a discrace to us.

Actually, the ideas about improving Pokemon Change (at least from my perspective) are all designed in order to improve the team aspect of Pokemon Trainer. If they make it punishable to switch from one pokemon to the other in the middle of a match, then obviously people will keep using the same pokemon and suffer from fatigue.

If Pokemon Change receives the improvement we're talking about here, you can bet I'll be much more open to the idea of switching in the middle of a battle. And competitively, it can help us avoid terrible match-ups that may still exist in bBrawl.

 

[Steeler]

yes, pt needs to have a team orientation. it's ****ing pt.

 

[Ryusuta]

yes, pt needs to have a team orientation. it's ****ing pt.

Circular logic much?