Keep Dedede's chasing infinites
Ban Dedede's Standing Grab Infinite.
To me it comes under the stalling clause. Really.
It has the POTENTIAL for stalling, but employ a ceiling and that's gone.
It should be banned mario, luigi, samus, dk and bowser already take a lot of time and effort to use competitively and i think this severely limits those character's potential.
So... we should just randomly ban things to edit match-ups. OK, lets ban Falco's SHL and SHDL so we can make his **** match-ups reasonable....
The infinite should not be allowed. There isn't any real reason to debate this.
- It stalls matches.
Only if you don't employ a reasonable ceiling.
- It takes complete control away from the opposing player.
So? It's the same with all 0-death combos, that's the definition of combo.
- It is extremely low risk, extremely high reward
So?
The competitive mindset is to achieve the best result for the least possible effort.
Just because it's low risk high reward doesn't make it warrant a ban.
- Unlike Ice Climbers, King Dedede has no requirements to achieve the infinite
That's not a ban criteria.
- It takes a single grab per stock to win, with the best grab range in the game (excluding tethers)
Again, so?
A legal technique doesn't "distort match-ups, it defines them.
You could say that Ganondorf's tipman distorts his match-ups just as easily because it has the same net effect, a better match-up then would be possible without it.
There really isn't any competitive benefit for keeping it. At all. Removing it would increase the likely hood of use for six other characters, and it wouldn't make King Dedede any less of a beast then he already is. Many tournaments I attend are already removing it, or already have.
But is 6 characters enough to warrant a ban? Especially when most are rarely played.
The central ban criteria is:
1. Enforceable
2. Discrete
3. Warranted
Generally "warranted" comes down to over-centralization, and as of right now, I don't see any evidence that the DDD chaingrab overcentralizes the metagame enough to be warranted.
Also this game is supposed to be fun. Being grabbed by Dedede for a couple minutes isnt very fun. Stalling wasnt fun but it could be considered an effective way to win. Like MK hits the opponent once and then runs away for the whole match.
"Fun" is not a ban criteria.