I'm pretty new to Smash 4, only been playing for about a month, but I'm actually struggling to understand how Charizard isn't really good.
Are there some fundamental tools that I don't understand that are making me feel this way? It seems to me like he has:
- A great Jab Chain
- Above average ground movement speed, which paired with his weight and damage seems really good. I want to call his run fast, but I'm not sure of the flying animation is tricking me into thinking it's faster than it is.
- People call him slow, but I feel like his movement and attack startups are all average or faster speed. I can't find anything slow about him aside from his normal falling speed.
- Super high kill potential off of reads using his smashes, with the weight to let you guess wrong a few times on those reads, plus they have great range.
- Rock Smash which seems like a great move to condition the opponent to respect you
- Flare Blitz which seems like it has the strongest kill potential for a move of it's range and speed.
- Short Hop Neutral Air seems like a really good safe approach that covers a lot of angles and is active for a long time
- Up B seems like it has the speed, killing power, and usefulness out of shield that ZSS's Up B has, and that gets a ton of mileage. I think Char's jabs combo into it at later percents too, right?
- Great speed and range on his tilts
- At least average range grab and dash grab
- His offstage game seems good to me, F Air has a lot more range than it looks like, and D Air spikes super well.
- Edgeguarding seems strong to me too, D Smash has a huge hitbox and hits below the ledge, Rock Smash means you can try and condition them not to attack you while landing.
- It seems like he has an abnormally fast recovery out of his run animation? Like you can let go of run and do jabs or a down smash almost as fast as if you did a dash attack. Not sure if this is normal for more characters than him, but I know the other characters I play have way longer run recoveries.
I guess the weaknesses I see are:
- Not amazing Recovery, but it doesn't seem terrible since at least his Up B has a hitbox the whole way through
- Not a lot of combos out of throws
- Not a lot of true combos in general
- Not the greatest air to air game, but I feel like if a character is bullying you in that department, you at least have Rock Smash to make them respect you more
- Bad mobility on his double (and triple) jump
I'm not trying to say I'm right about all of these things, they're just my observations and I would love to know which of these are wrong, or if I'm putting too much weight in these aspects when there are other aspects that make characters strong at a higher level of play. Like I said, I'm still pretty new. Would love any feedback.
You are absolutely correct. The people who disagree are just those who are either too afraid to disagree with the general consensus, or know nothing about Charizard and therefore can only rely on the general consensus for their judgment of this character. I would also like to mention that he can score a KO at a reasonable % far easier than any other character to my knowledge, due to the sheer number of moves he can use to KO at around 120% or below, such as:
- Going for a hard read with Flare Blitz, or simply throw it out unexpectedly while they are dashing towards you or rolling away from you at high % for a KO. Flare Blitz is ridiculously easy to hit with as long as you don't spam it like most Charizard players do for some unknown reasons.
- Dthrow at the edge of the stage at about 120% (easy to do by dash grabbing someone as they climb up from the ledge, or shieldgrabbing someone as they do their ledge get up attack). If a character has a kill throw, that automatically makes it
INCREDIBLY easy for them to score a KO, since all it takes to perform a kill throw is a grab, and grabs are significantly easier to land in this game than strong aerial attacks or smash attacks, which often require a hard read to land, especially since grabs go through shields
and can be used out of a shield. And unlike in Melee, there is generally not enough hitstun in this game for characters to be able to hit someone with a safe and easy-to-land combo starter and then combo someone into a KO aerial attack, making kill throws even more valuable in this game.
- Punishing a roll with Dsmash
- Gimping with Fair, Dair, or even Nair (see
this video)
- Gimping with a move as safe as
Flamethrower against specific characters like R.O.B., Little Mac, Diddy Kong (if he tries to recover with Up B), Villager (if they try to recover with Up B), Ness and Yoshi.
- Usmash
I know that some characters such as Bowser, Ganondorf, King Dedede and Ike have moves that have much higher knockback than any of Charizard's moves, but I'll note here that when I say Charizard KOs far more easily than any other character, I am talking about the combination of the knockback on Charizard's moves with the ease of actually landing those moves against a competent opponent in a 1-on-1. Moves like Bowser's Fsmash are incredibly difficult to hit a good player with.
