Taunt to Detonate Din's Fire?

[Reidlos Toof]

I'm a bit new to the P:M scene, or rather I haven't been around since the very early days, so please forgive me if this has been discussed ad nauseum. Having to transform to detonate Din's Fire early feels extremely clunky, and far too punishing for failure to be viable in anything other than extremely favorable situations given that you then have to transform back into Zelda afterwards, making the total down time for the technique extremely long.

A more viable option, as well as more visibly and competitively fitting, might be to make her side taunt (the fireball one) detonate all currently active Din's Fires. This would keep some level of weakness inherent in the move, as the taunt is decently long and quite punishable, without making it as excessive as it currently is. If the Din's only exploded when the fire in her taunt actually appeared, this would also keep the move from being exploitable through edge cancelled taunting.

Let me know what you all think.

EDIT: Another conceivable option that might also make Zelda a bit more interesting in general would be to change her Down B to a contextual move, where if you simply press down B and release B, she starts to shift, but if you hold B she goes into the transform animation, triggering the Din's Fires, but when she comes out she stays Zelda. This could go the same for Sheik, and would create some interesting mind games. I don't know the viability of this from a coding standpoint, but thought it was worth mentioning.

 

[Angell]

I completely support this!

 

[ECHOnce]

It depends on the version of PM you're using. Transform is long, but only because Wii's can't load character files (load Sheik) very quickly; the PMBR wanted quick transformations for reasons similar to this. If emulated via a computer (with more power than a Wii), it's about as long as the average taunt.

If it were to be attached to a taunt, however, I would be pretty strongly against it being attached to the side-taunt. Sure, visually it seems fitting, but the side-taunt also has a hitbox that mimics that of the smaller dins; it can act as a fourth din. It's not plausible to use in most situations, but it definitely helps to limit opponents options in edge-guards with din traps and stuff (1:15 and 2:40 are good examples). Making it trigger the other dins would still let us get make traps, but would give them way more options to escape, and would kill how effectively we could follow-up into combos (in the likely case that we don't have a large din setup for a kill like in the examples, and need to N-air/LK/U-air to get the kill afterwards). Taunts would be an effective means of letting Zelda trigger them quickly on all platforms, including those with slower transforms, but hopefully it would get assigned to either the up- or down-taunt. If it were to be assigned to side-taunt (simply for visual effect though...no real other reason), it would preferably detonate them towards the end of the animation.

 

[Reidlos Toof]

I don't have any experience with playing on the PC, and to be fair that isn't where most competitive or even most casual play happens.

As for removing the viability of her taunt for setups into Din's, that seems like a very situational and highly unsafe/impractical application of the taunt for most competitive play. It can catch unknowing players unaware, but as soon as they learn the hitbox and matchup in general I am pretty sure it would become obsolete. Downsmash sends them at much a similar angle while coming out much faster, much further away from her at a better position for punishing recovery, and leaves her far less vulnerable.

Visual understanding of why something does what it does should not be underestimated. Simply placing the detonation on one of her other taunts begds the question "why the heck did they do that? it makes no sense" and turns people off. Placing the detonation of Din's Fire on the taunt that creates fire makes sense conceptually as well as mechanically. It gives opposing players a specific window to pay attention to; when she creates the fire, the Din's Fire explodes, giving the opposing player a window to punish. That is very important in a competitive environment.

 

[ECHOnce]

I don't have any experience with playing on the PC, and to be fair that isn't where most competitive or even most casual play happens.

As for removing the viability of her taunt for setups into Din's, that seems like a very situational and highly unsafe/impractical application of the taunt for most competitive play. It can catch unknowing players unaware, but as soon as they learn the hitbox and matchup in general I am pretty sure it would become obsolete. Downsmash sends them at much a similar angle while coming out much faster, much further away from her at a better position for punishing recovery, and leaves her far less vulnerable.

Visual understanding of why something does what it does should not be underestimated. Simply placing the detonation on one of her other taunts begds the question "why the heck did they do that? it makes no sense" and turns people off. Placing the detonation of Din's Fire on the taunt that creates fire makes sense conceptually as well as mechanically. It gives opposing players a specific window to pay attention to; when she creates the fire, the Din's Fire explodes, giving the opposing player a window to punish. That is very important in a competitive environment.

That's true. I don't either, I was just pointing out that short transformations were the original intention aha.

It definitely isn't the safest of options and is highly situational, but it's still an option nonetheless and should remain. Taking options away has never been a good thing. Down-smash and other moves do hit about the same, but the speed and KB differ, and drastically so at higher %s. Side-taunt is probably her only weak lingering hitbox move, which will not only stay out, but knock them away at about the same distance at any given %, at least with much more predictable change (in the few split second instances you have to plan the trap setup). It's also often only used when the opponents options are limited to approaching and getting hit, or attacking out of range (and getting stuck in move endlag too long to punish Zelda), so it's fairly safe as long as you evaluate the situation beforehand. From ledge it's almost always safe, if you have dins above the ledge, and can also be used if they've already initiated a recovery that you feel you'd be safe countering with side-taunt (there was a good example where a Zelda...I think it was Alene...side-taunted a Sonic Neutral-B to get back on stage, but idk which combo vid I saw it in lol). It's pretty situational as you said, but considering how much of the game revolves around edge guarding, I feel potential scenarios in which side-taunt becomes a viable option come up enough to be considered useful.

Good point, I guess I didn't think about this too much. But even so, Up-taunt could pass off as a sort of signal to trigger something. If side-taunt were still to be used, hopefully it would trigger near the end as I suggested earlier.

 

[Tohfoo]

I definitely like the idea of detonation with side taunt, but I think being able to detonate Din's in the air with down-B is incredibly useful, so I don't want them to change the detonation method. If they added side taunt as another way to detonate Din's, I wouldn't mind, but that would probably be too silly.

 

[ECHOnce]

That's another thing to consider - taunts can't be used in the air. And now that I think about it, even if the transform detonation was intended to be shorter, keeping longer transformation detonations means that it takes better timing/reads. It adds another layer of depth to using dins, so that those who don't really understand the Zelda MU can't just slap their "cheap/OP" label over it as easily aha.

 

[Garde Noir]

That's another thing to consider - taunts can't be used in the air. And now that I think about it, even if the transform detonation was intended to be shorter, keeping longer transformation detonations means that it takes better timing/reads. It adds another layer of depth to using dins, so that those who don't really understand the Zelda MU can't just slap their "cheap/OP" label over it as easily aha.

but that's their problem. Zelda is still walled hard by Link, and can be bodied pretty easily by Falco if you aren't used to the matchup. You never see a Zelda win a tourney, yet she's the one being called OP

 

[ECHOnce]

but that's their problem. Zelda is still walled hard by Link, and can be bodied pretty easily by Falco if you aren't used to the matchup. You never see a Zelda win a tourney, yet she's the one being called OP

That doesn't necessarily mean she needs buffs or nerfs; she's being called OP at a lower-level of play than at major tournies. And our lack of Zelda wins could just be the players not using her on the same level as other players do; we have far fewer years of experience with our character than top tier mains have. Doesn't a good majority of the cast suffers from a lack of tournament wins outside of top tiers from Melee/Brawl? It's a bit too early in the meta to be calling for buffs/nerfs over tourney results for characters that were changed as much as Zelda in PM imo.

Concerning Link...well, even in a balanced game, every non-broken character is probably going to have some good and some bad MUs right?

 

[Garde Noir]

That doesn't necessarily mean she needs buffs or nerfs; she's being called OP at a lower-level of play than at major tournies. And our lack of Zelda wins could just be the players not using her on the same level as other players do; we have far fewer years of experience with our character than top tier mains have. Doesn't a good majority of the cast suffers from a lack of tournament wins outside of top tiers from Melee/Brawl? It's a bit too early in the meta to be calling for buffs/nerfs over tourney results for characters that were changed as much as Zelda in PM imo.

Concerning Link...well, even in a balanced game, every non-broken character is probably going to have some good and some bad MUs right?

I'm agreeing with you, even if it doesn't sound like it. I'm giving logical proof to those lower players (talking as though I'm not one) that she isn't OP at all. She's good-- especially in the right hands, but not OP

 

[Praxis]

Two things.

A: Is it possible that the PMBR tied detonations to down-B to encourage proficiency with both characters? Nintendo tried to force character switching by punishing lack of switching in Brawl (with Pokemon trainer), and it was very bad. But adding a reward for switching (detonation, chance of hitting opponent) is a great way to do so.

If PMBR was going for encouraging switching, they did it perfectly and the taunt suggestion undermines this.


B: Wait a minute. Re: the PC load times discussion...are you saying that if I ran P:M off of a USB drive as opposed to the disc, it would improve transform times? That seems like a huge deal as it means the setup you are playing on can have a different game. I also wonder how Nintendo keeps that from affecting replays in Brawl.

 

[Praxis]

That doesn't necessarily mean she needs buffs or nerfs; she's being called OP at a lower-level of play than at major tournies. And our lack of Zelda wins could just be the players not using her on the same level as other players do; we have far fewer years of experience with our character than top tier mains have. Doesn't a good majority of the cast suffers from a lack of tournament wins outside of top tiers from Melee/Brawl? It's a bit too early in the meta to be calling for buffs/nerfs over tourney results for characters that were changed as much as Zelda in PM imo.

Concerning Link...well, even in a balanced game, every non-broken character is probably going to have some good and some bad MUs right?

Literally every character in PM is being called OP. I main Diddy. Diddy doesn't place. I have had streamers talking about how broken my character is while I was playing against Mario and Mewtwo (both of whom arguably beat Diddy).

It's disheartening, but P:M has caused a culture of "if I complain enough they'll nerf the character I don't like playing against" mentality rather than Melee and Brawl's "it's not broken, learn the matchup" mentality.

 

[Reidlos Toof]

Two things.

A: Is it possible that the PMBR tied detonations to down-B to encourage proficiency with both characters? Nintendo tried to force character switching by punishing lack of switching in Brawl (with Pokemon trainer), and it was very bad. But adding a reward for switching (detonation, chance of hitting opponent) is a great way to do so.

If PMBR was going for encouraging switching, they did it perfectly and the taunt suggestion undermines this.


B: Wait a minute. Re: the PC load times discussion...are you saying that if I ran P:M off of a USB drive as opposed to the disc, it would improve transform times? That seems like a huge deal as it means the setup you are playing on can have a different game. I also wonder how Nintendo keeps that from affecting replays in Brawl.

If they did add that to encourage transforming and playing both characters, then I definitely don't agree with that. That means that Zelda's kit is intentionally diminished if you just focus on her and don't learn Sheik.

As to the USB loading, I have no idea if it is faster to transform if your game is loaded from USB. I think it is more reliant on the processing power of the wii as compared to a PC. I'd like to see if the transform loads faster on a Wii U as opposed to a Wii as well.

I have personally played on Wiis where transform takes as little as half a second, or as long as 2 seconds. This has not really affected me as I play Zelda solo, but honestly if the PMBR can't figure out a way to normalize transform I think that they need to remove it entirely. Random move times based on setup are NOT a good thing.

 

[Lil Puddin]

Now that you mention it, why didn't they add taunt detonation? It doesn't have to be instant, so campers can still have a moment to react. So it'd be like transforming without the need to, and hopefully only 40% to 60% of the time it takes to detonate. I think the side taunt would be pretty awesome since it is a tiny din. Sure it gives Zelda 4 dins, but if Zelda can hit you with that taunt, you deserve to get hit... lol

Removing the hitbox wouldn't devastate her. The down taunt is a good second option because it's like she's waving BYE BYE, BABY! BOOM BOOM!

 

[Angell]

Now that you mention it, why didn't they add taunt detonation? It doesn't have to be instant, so campers can still have a moment to react. So it'd be like transforming without the need to, and hopefully only 40% to 60% of the time it takes to detonate. I think the side taunt would be pretty awesome since it is a tiny din. Sure it gives Zelda 4 dins, but if Zelda can hit you with that taunt, you deserve to get hit... lol

Removing the hitbox wouldn't devastate her. The down taunt is a good second option because it's like she's waving BYE BYE, BABY! BOOM BOOM!

I agree, down taunt might be better.

 

[WhiteLightnin]

Two things.

A: Is it possible that the PMBR tied detonations to down-B to encourage proficiency with both characters? Nintendo tried to force character switching by punishing lack of switching in Brawl (with Pokemon trainer), and it was very bad. But adding a reward for switching (detonation, chance of hitting opponent) is a great way to do so.

If PMBR was going for encouraging switching, they did it perfectly and the taunt suggestion undermines this.


B: Wait a minute. Re: the PC load times discussion...are you saying that if I ran P:M off of a USB drive as opposed to the disc, it would improve transform times? That seems like a huge deal as it means the setup you are playing on can have a different game. I also wonder how Nintendo keeps that from affecting replays in Brawl.

Hi Praxis. It's not only possible, it is reality that down-B detonations were put in exactly for the reason of trying to encourage more Shielda play (also because it's a neat mechanic lol). As for the loading time discussion, no using a USB drive on your Wii would not change the loading times because it is specifically the hardware (Wii) that is causing the slower loading times. However, if you were play PM on netplay with your computer you would see a substantial decrease in the loading time.

 

[Lil Puddin]

Hi Praxis. It's not only possible, it is reality that down-B detonations were put in exactly for the reason of trying to encourage more Shielda play (also because it's a neat mechanic lol). As for the loading time discussion, no using a USB drive on your Wii would not change the loading times because it is specifically the hardware (Wii) that is causing the slower loading times. However, if you were play PM on netplay with your computer you would see a substantial decrease in the loading time.

No offense, but forcing people to switch just to fully utilize Zelda's dins is quite unfair and poorly thought out. I really hope that's not the case... Zelda's higher gameplay requires exceptional timing and din control.

 

[ECHOnce]

No offense, but forcing people to switch just to fully utilize Zelda's dins is quite unfair and poorly thought out. I really hope that's not the case... Zelda's higher gameplay requires exceptional timing and din control.

It's not unfair or poorly thought out. By the time you are playing Zelda at a high level, you would have tried making use of all of her options to the fullest, as most better players do. And chances are, you will have ventured to explore Shielda. If there is an option you have access to, use it to the fullest. If you instead choose to limit yourself by not using all that's available to you, then go ahead.

Attaching Din explosion is just a means of encouraging such at low-mid level play. The real only detriment to being Sheik, even if you aren't good with her yet (who is conveniently one of the easiest characters to pickup), is that you have to wait to transform again. Take 5-10min learning Sheik's moveset until you know how to do a basic combo to hit them back away (Jabs into Tilts into F-air/U-air/N-air...), and then you'd have more than enough time to transform back to Zelda. Problem solved.

Even then...you'd only have to deal with this being a bad situation if your Dins explosion failed to kill your opponent; it's really only worth triggering explosions if the hit is pretty much guaranteed. Past that, you should probably only use it in a situation in which it'll either kill, or hit them far away for you to more safely recover (if they were edge guarding you). In the former, you'll have plenty of time to transform back while they respawn. If they didn't die but got hit, you can still transform. If they didn't die and didn't get hit, they were already in killing range...knock them far away/kill them and transform. In the latter, complete the recovery with Up-B, hit them away, and transform. If you really just can't play Sheik, run past then across the stage, double jump, and transform that way.

Transform > Taunt for because (1) it can be used in the air, allowing for better mobility and this safer usage. (2) It can be acted out of almost immediately now while grounded; in the air, your action comes out even faster. On the ground, come out shielding or D-smashing as Sheik. As Zelda, come out shielding, Nayru's, D-Smashing, or U-Smashing. In the air, B-air/N-air or air-dodge as Sheik, and as Zelda, Nayru's or LK/N-air or air-dodge. Unlike with taunt, those attacks/defenses out of transform's invincibility gives you some really safe options. (3) Taunting leaves you trapped in a long, vulnerable animation without any such defenses. It's begging to be hit.

Using taunts to transform would be a neat option, but if you're putting down transform as a worse one, you're sort of wrong. It's way more flexible; you should just learn to survive as Sheik for a good 10 seconds at most to transform back. Sheiks have already been doing that for years to recover with Zelda and then transform back.

(Sorz for attacking if it comes off in that way; just defending Transform as a Din explosion triggering option preemptively before someone suggests replacing that part of it's function with taunts outright; I realize you didn't say such, but the discussion may have headed that way. This discussion should be on whether taunts would be viable as an additional option, rather than a replacement. It'd be a huge nerf otherwise.)

 

[Lil Puddin]

You can still have both. Transform is as long as the taunt and you can't do anything mid -taunt or mid-trasformation. It would be another option for those of us who stick to one side. If I do change it is usually by accident a la online delay or so I can exclusively play as Sheik for matchup purposes.

But yeah, another option that doesn't screw up my Zelda's momentum would be nice. On the count of I have to fight for space just to change back. :C

 

[WhiteLightnin]

No offense, but forcing people to switch just to fully utilize Zelda's dins is quite unfair and poorly thought out. I really hope that's not the case... Zelda's higher gameplay requires exceptional timing and din control.

That mechanic wasn't even around until 3.02. Plus considering it allows Zelda to attack someone way off stage for almost a guaranteed kill if it hits, it makes sense to have it be a high risk, high reward sort of deal. I could see plenty of people being absolutely enraged over a mechanic where she could just detonate those huge Din's without any sort of risk factor. I know many people that have enough problems with Din's as it is. Let's not add more fuel to the fire , lol. As you mentioned it could work to potentially have both, but just because it works as a potential effective tactic to Sheik I don't think makes it poor design. I suppose it really just depends how you look at it. To some, they believe Zelda & Sheik are meant to be played together but that it just didn't work out in Melee. From that standpoint, you could see it as a great design choice. I can see from the other side too as you mentioned that it doesn't seem quite right if you only want to play Zelda. Personally, I'm really glad that we got such a cool idea (Din's detonation) to begin with.

 

[Rizner]

Just sayin -- if this were to happen it should be down taunt. You wave while exploding dins to send them off with a nice goodbye.

Also it would have to start a little late (similar to samus transform) so it can't just be taunt cancelled (see Kirby taunt cancel to lose a power if you aren't sure what I mean)

 

[WhiteCrow]

Also it would have to start a little late (similar to samus transform) so it can't just be taunt cancelled (see Kirby taunt cancel to lose a power if you aren't sure what I mean)

What're you talking about? Taunt cancelled forced explosions without having to transform sounds amazing haha.