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Work In Progress The Bowser Discord Compilation Thread

UltimaLuminaire

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Preface

The Bowser Discord has been going strong for some time now. This thread's goal will be to compile the information and discussion from the Discord so that people can view it at leisure here in the forum. Three topics will be the focus of the thread OP: Joint Match Up (JMU), Metagame, and Resources

Work in progress. Will update later.


JMU

JMU Bowser Leaderboard - The best wifi warriors.

Charizard :4charizard:



Corrin :4corrinf:


Doctor Mario :4drmario:

JMU 5/25/17


Donkey Kong :4dk:

JMU 4/3/17

Ganondorf :4ganondorf:



placeholder

Luigi :4luigi:

JMU 5/13/17


Mii Brawler :4miibrawl:

JMU 4/10/17

Sheik :4sheik:



Zelda :4zelda:

JMU 6/24/17


Metagame

General Information

On what it means to be a high/top tier and the stages of Sm4sh as a game.
"The high/top tiers don't necessarily have tools that shut down traditional fighting game mechanisms. Instead, what they all have in common is a tool(s) that help win the neutral hard. Sheik needles, Pikachu quick attack, Ryu combo + KO power.

It helps to break our game down into: The Neutral, Off-Stage, Checkmate

When in Neutral, players fight for control of the stage. Sheik's needles used to be an overwhelming example of a character that could control a lot of the stage with little effort. Now it's just a good example.

Off-stage (or Disadvantage) is where you want your opponents sent. It is a game into itself as you try to use your knowledge of your character's ground trap + edge guard abilities against your opponent's recovery options/habits. This is where characters that lack significant tools in the neutral, like Falco, can start to make up for that big difference.

Checkmate is just landing the KO, whether it's through a 50/50, kill confirm, or a string of traps leading into a ledge trump -> KO move. Ryu can bypass Off-Stage and take you directly to Checkmate. He's probably the only one that can do this across a massive % range.

What you see as 'shutting down' conventional fighting game tactics and identifiers is really just the bulk of Smash's variables muddling the bigger picture."

On mind-set.
"It's not about approaching Cloud (or whoever, but we'll stick with him as an example). It's about figuring out what Cloud is looking for when you get close.

Ask yourself: Do they like to instant dash attack/DTilt burst option? Do they like to sit and charge Limit longer, even though you've stopped near them? Do they Blade Beam? Do they like to short hop out of Limit Charge to cover space?

The opening moments of the match should rarely be you going 'HAIL MARY' on a Cloud, but trying to gain information on what they want out of their Limit pressure game.

You already know his range, you know his combos, and you know his movement options."

@Cassius. adds:
"You have to stop your opponent from doing whatever they want to do.
As long as you know their ranges and what they can effectively do at specific ranges, all it takes is figuring out player-player things."

UThrow Notes

On rage.


From Discord user, Event51: "... in the back of your head, you should be looking at your opponent's percent and subtracting 3.5% for every 25% that Bowser has over 50%"
"A better rule of thumb is to know that at about 80% it's 10% less, and at 150% it's 20% less"

On regrabbing fast fallers.


@KingKong_ad has discovered that it is possible, around 35%, to get a vicious regrab string. Grab -> UThrow -> drift FAir -> dash Grab -> UThrow -> NAir -> dj ??? -> Profit. Testing shows that inward and no DI leads to an optimal string. DI away allows them to mash jump to get out, but you can immediate FTilt on landing before they can jump (dash grab being just a few frames too slow). If they air dodge into the ground, they get dash grabbed.

Fox, for instance, could not jump or air dodge in time to avoid the regrab without DI away, and that was stuffed by Bowser's FTilt upon Bowser landing.

More to add as KingKong labs this out w/ all the fast fallers.

On reverse FAir -> BAir follow-up (The @bushaheen ).
"You want to be looking for a rising reverse FAir hit after the UThrow. You'll know you have the timing right if you hit with the upper half of Bowser as you begin to shift your momentum back. The opponent can DI away, but the true combo will catch them as they are flying in hit-stun. You can be slightly off, requiring you to BAir higher in your double jump, but it won't register as a true combo. They won't be able to air dodge in time, though, if done properly."

"Use tilt stick + claw grip if your fingers aren't fast enough. This will enable you to quickly pivot into the rising reverse FAir much more easily. You can adjust yourself for both Pro/Gamecube and Gamepad controllers."

Positioning Notes


On what Scramble Situations mean.
From Cassius:
"Oh. A really short answer is that scrambles basically occur when no one has established neutral yet. It's kind of a bad term but if you're not aware of what position you're in in neutral and it hasn't been established (offense/defense), weird **** begins to happen
So, in that phase, whether neutral hasn't been established or has been lost as a result of losing positioning or the ceasing of an attacking action

...usually it's due to the fact that either neutral or a clear offensive/defensive position (specifically pressing advantage/disadvantage) hasn't been established or has just been lost so the two-four players are fighting for it again
Generally scrambles can happen to anyone, but the best players tend to either perform well in them or prevent them from happening altogether through "solid" neutral

It's usually split second occurrences that can either put you in an extremely (dis)advantageous position as a result or have something even stranger happen"

On 0% shield break.


Optimal string would be to go for a 25% DTilt. If they trip, dash grab -> 9% UThrow -> 18-24% NAir. Follow up with double jump NAir if you want. Big damage.
J Jerodak also points out that you can attempt to jump over reverse Klaw Bowsercide if your percent is close enough.

On Ganon and Falcon ledge guard.
@Zapp Branniglenn posts:
"Testing the merits of purposely getting grabbed by Falcon and Ganon Up B for a stage tech then double jump FAir. It's 100% consistent. Just grab the ledge early so I-frames run out and they can't avoid running into Bowser. Get the stage tech (it's easy and possible next to a stage's wall only because their Up B launch has no hitlag), and double jump into FAir for the kill.
If you miss the stage tech and get launched out there, it won't kill Bowser unless he has around 120% damage. Past that, double jump and Fortress won't reach the ledge. You also have to eat 13% damage from Ganon and 17% from Captain Falcon, but I'd say it's worth it for the guaranteed kill."

On ADC as a landing option from up high


On Spacing Angled F-Tilt vs Shield


Tilt Stick and Controller Grip Notes


What Bowser can do w/ tilt stick.
Bowser gains:
  • Instant UTilt while crawling or walking without risk of USmash.
  • SH rising UAir without risk of USmash.
  • Instant DTilt while walking.
  • Down + diagonal tilt stick for easy jab cancel
  • No aerial momentum bleed; easier to maneuver NAir w/ aerial diagonal tilt stick
  • w/ Claw Grip, easier to pull off difficult combos, like the reverse FAir -> BAir follow-up.

Resouces

@Big Sean :4bowser: Compiled UThrow -> Reverse FAir -> BAir Spreadsheet
@KingKong_ad :4bowser: Updated UThrow Kill Confirm Spreadsheet


Older, but still useful, Uthrow Kill Confirm Spreadsheet by 1PokeMaster

Tough Guy Spreadsheet

Public Bowser Discord Event Calendar
 
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Koskinator

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Well heres the best part from the ganon vs bowser crew battle lol


1st Bowser is BotanicSage followed by Dregoon followed by Emperor followed by the one and only best bowser on planet earth @LordMix
 

Jerodak

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So @KingKong_ad and I were in the lab yesterday and we looked at a few things that seem promising, but as always I recommend that everyone does their own testing. The first thing I want to share are some roll traps we looked at. The first was jab to down tilt, I've used this plenty of times in practice matches vs a friend of mine that mains Mario and it worked really well on him but I wanted to give it another look just to be sure. We tested this by spacing a jab on shield then rolling as soon as the jab hit, if you do this properly they will get caught by the down tilt. I doubt this is anything new per say, but I still like to test things like this anyway so we can be sure of the reliability or at least have a proof of concept. The next one is a bit more interesting, Ftilt on shield to dtilt doesn't sounds like a great roll trap on paper, but it actually worked surprisingly well because it seems to be a decent shield break set-up when done properly. The way it worked is Kingkong would ftilt on shield, then I would roll as soon as possible, then he would down tilt as soon as he could, at first this led to the dtilt being perfect shielded, but when he delayed the dtilt slightly, it actually broke the shield. Now, the main downside to this is that since there isn't a window where you can aim for someone's shield without them perfect shielding without them simply being able to just roll or spotdodge to safety, you will need to look out for the double roll here, but it could still be a useful mix-up.


While we were testing the ftilt on shield, I decided to see if Shiek could just f-air out of shield to punish the ftilt, and it's no surprise that she can. However, if you space a down-angled ftilt on her shield, even if she does a max range F-air, it will whiff and can be punished. This was probably the biggest find because it means we might possibly have a way to create a little frametrap mix-up on Sheik, and likely on other characters by extension. I did test dash grab oos in this situation, it seems like you can just spot dodge if you know it's coming, or possibly do a second ftilt (Keep in mind the wind-back on ftilt happens in about 2 frames and lasts for 10.) Next up, we found a good way to edgeguard Ness. When he's forced to up b, simply airdodge through him to avoid the frames where the projectile will just go through you, then boby block the projectile as he tries to turn it around and hit himself. This will of course lead to an easy gimp every time, and is pretty hilarious to watch. I'm not a ness main, so I don't know if it's possible for Ness to do some funky trick to avoid this, but I did try mixing up the direction of the projectile and that at the very least didn't work. Just be careful with your position or you might get PKT2'd. The last thing I'll share is something you can do at low percent shield breaks, we found what seems to be an optimal punish. What you want to do is space tipper fire breath to deal about 10-12% Then push them a little bit towards the ledge if you feel like you have the time, then charge fsmash. Unfortunately this sitll doesn't K.O at 0%, at least not on F/D, but it did K.O at 5. KingKong found that doing a full hop and angling the fire up seemed to give the best result for getting the max damage out of the tipper. If I missed anything, hopefully KingKong will fill in the gaps, and I'm available to answer questions.


Anyway, this was an impromptu lab, so we probably didn't test everything as efficiently as possible, but I think those are some decent finds for now, the rest of the stuff was mainly just things to help KingKong in some of his match-ups, like we looked briefly at jab -> Fsmash and why that's a valid option. It works because people will often spotdodge when they are afraid of the jab to grab, and forward smash just naturally blows up preemptive spot dodging. It's actually why I really like fighting spot dodgers a lot, because they unwittingly leave themselves MORE vulnerable by enabling an even bigger punish.(edited)


Of course, the mix-up doesn't stop there, the next thing to think about is what to do against characters that can mash out moves, depending on the character, Dtilt, Ftilt, and Bowser bomb should work just fine.


Incidently, down tilt, and occasionally Bowser Bomb can also cover spot dodge as well, making them double threats, we tested this with R.O.B primarily

Oh, also, some characters can mash out of tipper jab 1 to jab 2 if they have early enough I-frames or armor frames. However, you should generally just be able to hold shield to block and get a huge punish, or possibly just duck them with F-tilt. Maybe Bowser bomb will duck them too, it's possible with the big wind back in the animation.
 

UltimaLuminaire

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J Jerodak Oh yea, I had already updated the OP with your youtube video demonstrating the 0% shield break -> kill set-up.
 

J2_

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Hi! I'm looking to get an invite to the Discord to learn more about the character. If you could send me an invite or drop me a link, AFW | J2 is my username. Thanks!
 

Duck SMASH!

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I'm bumping this because it's full of really useful information and I don't know if it's already in the discord's resource channel.

Great job guys :)
 

UltimaLuminaire

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Yes, this thread is in the #resources channel via a link to Jerodak's post describing his findings with KingKong.

EDIT: Updated the OP

Added
  • @Big Sean Provided an UThrow -> Reverse FAir -> BAir spreadsheet. What a guy.
  • JMU Donkey Kong Discussion and Crew concluded. I've compiled the relevant MU info on pastebin.
 
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