ThreeSided
Smash Ace
Suit Piece Metagame Discussion
Returning to these forums after several months away, I was disappointed to find that appeal to ZSS as a competitive character has continued to drop, and was further yet despondent in the realization that the ZSS metagame has gone almost completely stale, producing no new strategies, ATs, or move intel whatsoever. So I kept wondering: What can we do about this? What are we missing? After reading some of the recent conversation in the general discussion thread, it hit me: Suit pieces.
Bear with me here. This is a portion of our metagame that is often overlooked and even thrown away: Many people throw away one, two, or all three of their armor pieces at the beginning of a match. Now I know what you're thinking: We've gone over this many times before. And we have, but hardly at all in depth. Every conversation started on the topic hardly lasts long at all, ending up as a tips-and-tricks thread which almost always ends on the note of "It's a double edged sword, it's good stuff to know, if you can't keep control, throw them away". In reality, it's not too hard to regain control if you do it right. I think there is a lot more to learn about this tricky and unique aspect of our character, and considering the inertia currently inherent to our characters metagame, we should really be looking into the complexities of this poorly explored frontier. I would not be at all surprised if we could make this an offensive thing, and make combos using suit pieces. This is NOT a tip thread, but a metagame development thread, where I want us to explore different aspects of this amazing feature. Below, I will be discussing some intel about suit pieces, and will point out certain ideas that I want you to keep in mind in hopes that it will spark your interest in the subject and cause you to think up new strategies yourselves. But this is only the beginning of getting your mind working: I will be asking questions; questions which I would like us to find the answers to. Some involve character intel, meaning you'll just have to turn on brawl and experiment with some move, and others will just make you think about it, and maybe try some stuff out. Either way, they should help boost the growth of this seemingly (and hopefully) large yet unexplored portion of Zero Suit Samus's potential. To organize it, I will list the questions out after each section. By answering these, I really hope to spring some life into this character. I will put any accurate answers we find under the question. Feel free to suggest additions to the list.
Basics
The basics are basically what we all already know: You should not be throwing Suit Pieces (SPs) willy-nilly, and hoping they hit. As you'll read later, it's not that hard to deal with pieces being thrown right at you if you know what you are doing. In actuality, it is often a game of stage control, which I believe, as you will read later, has the potential to turn offensive. There's the obvious stuff, like not throwing all of your pieces at once or throwing some off, throw them up/down rather than straight forward, etc, but it gets much more complicated than that, and much more useful. Nothing much else to say here. I'm not going to bother to put a questions list for this one.
The Suit Pieces
When a SP has not been thrown/dropped by a character, it is INACTIVE. Inactive Suit Pieces, or ISPs, have absolutely no effect on their surroundings or each other. When a piece is dropped or thrown, however, it becomes ACTIVE. An Active Suit Piece, or ASP, has a very high priority hitbox around it, which does good damage and has a lot of KB. SPs can be made into ASPs by either you or your opponent. Pro-Active Suit Pieces (PASPs) are ISPs converted into an ASP by you, whereas Con-Active Suit Pieces (CASPs) were converted by your opponent. When a PASP and a CASP collide in any way (up, down, side, etc) they cease any movement they were doing and drop to the floor. However, they remain ASPs of their respective types, and therefore still have hitboxes until they finish bouncing, at which point they revert back to ISPs.
When an ASP hits an opponent in any way,
Each SP has a sort of "timer" on it that goes up to twenty-two seconds. This timer begins as soon as the match begins, and pauses when the SP is picked up or turned into an ASP, and then continues to run its timer when it reverts back to an ISP. Once the timer reaches nineteen seconds, the pieces begin to flash. These pieces are called "Faded" pieces. When converted to ASPs (call it a FASP? Or is that just taking it too far? =P), faded pieces do less damage, and have less knock back. At twenty-two seconds, the ISPs disappear.
Questions
What happens when ASPs collide with other projectiles? Do they bounce away, or drop? Do they stay active as they bounce on the ground, or turn into ISPs?
Which moves of ours cancel with the CASPs? (List not finished - I just put in the ones I know)
Uair
1st Jab
Ftilt
Utilt
Which of our moves only pause?
Usmash
What about cancels with the attacks of other characters?
Pauses of moves of other characters?
Do the SPs get weaker the longer they've been fading? If so, by how much?
Defensiveness/keeping control/IT'S NOT THAT RISKY PEOPLE.
I'm putting this out there first because it is essentially the biggest controversy and limiting factor of the Suit Piece Game (Hereby dubbed SPG). The common phrase used is "double edged sword", expressing that SPG can be easily turned against you if you don't know what you're doing, or even then, when you do know what you're doing (though obviously not as likely).
The first step to keeping control is not to rush things. If you throw all the pieces straight forward at once, then you've lost all control over your pieces unless you can rush over there before your opponent gets to them. Try to control the stage in such a way that you keep control of your pieces. Throwing pieces up or down over a pile of pieces can be effective. One idea that I had: We like to keep our pieces fresh by throwing them around, right? But that can be dangerous, because they can fall into your opponents hands. But if we throw them up, then we're good! ZSS can jump very high, one of if not the highest in the game, and even if she's not the highest jumper, she definitely gets up there the fastest. If we take it upon ourselves to learn the timing of a falling up-thrown SP, then we can easily jump up and get it when we feel like it... or not, and have stage control, which I'll get into in the next section. "But Triangle Man, you'd be putting yourself above them, in the perfect juggling position!" You'd want to grab it higher up, using your superior jump height and climb speed to get at it where they can’t reach you. "But then they'll just get you as you come down! Juggle city!" Fend them off. "With what!? The only move we have that reaches below us is Dair, and that sucks! So punishable!" Actually, in this situation, we are perfectly equipped with an amazing move with high priority, great range, and amazing disjointedness, that reaches below us and has a great knock-back to clear them away. "lolwut." It's called DOWN THROW. Most people will actually stay away from below you, expecting this. But if they don't, then don't throw down right away. If you do and they shield it, you're screwed. Treat it as a really disjointed Dair: Wait until you're right above them, then Dair away. If they shield, DI appropriately and Bair them in the face or shield for shield pressure. "Fine. But what if they come at you from the side as you land, or with aerials in the air?" As you land, you can drop or down throw to make that sexy wall of priority we all know and love, and DI behind it. Follow that up with a Uair if you want to discourage an aerial assault, but I wouldn't bother, because if they try to come at you from above, well... you just put yourself above a Zamus, dude. =P You can also Bair/Dair if that doesn't work. Keep in mind that there's a good chance that landing one of these moves will lead them into the bouncing SP. If they come at you from the side in the air, or even from above (I don't know how, just putting it out there just in case), you can either throw the piece at them, or Z-drop into an aerial. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's when you press Z to drop an item, and then immediately do an aerial, which in turn causes you to pick up the item again. It's basically doing aerials while holding items. You can also do this with an air-dodge. You happy? "No." Shut the **** up. Anyway, that's just an idea of mine. I'd like to hear what else you guys have to say about keeping your pieces together, so I'll make that a question!
One thing I notice is how scared people are of the opponent using their SPs against them when they do lose control. Honestly, it's usually not much of a threat. If there's any issue, it's that some of them get smart and throw your pieces away. That's the real reason you don't want them to get your pieces. But if they get a hold and decide they want to hit you back with them, then don't sweat it. They almost always just throw them straight back, one way or another, and the thing about straight-throwing the suit pieces is that as long as you keep your distance, they're only really deadly or even detrimental if you're using unnecessary attacks, or if you have the habit of rolling/spot dodging and jumping when they have your pieces. Otherwise, they can easily be shielded. You just need to try your best to keep your distance so you have time to react, not roll around so much or jump, and limit your other actions such as attacking to a minimum to limit the amount of time you are left open to being hit. You can also catch them when thrown. This can be hard standing still, and doing it with an aerial or an air-dodge can set you up for being hit by another one during landing lag. However, you can also catch a SP with a DA, right out of the air. If you can do it safely, then go ahead, but here's the real kicker: Our 1 frame neutral jab cancels with the suit pieces. This is in fact much more effective than shielding and DA catching, because it is essentially lag free, and the SP actually drops in front of you instead of bouncing away like it does on your shield. So if they throw, just hold A. If you don't want to shield but want the piece a bit further away for whatever reason, you can also cancel with Ftilt fairly easily. Utilt can take care of those from above, but it's hard to time. Uair is easier, but again, if they have more pieces, it might not be smart to be in the air. Usmash makes it very easy to get the pieces from the air, but it doesn't cancel, so all the extra lag makes this an unrecommended option. Remember that if you have a SP, then you can throw it and cancel them out! But remember that they remain ASPs after a collision like that, so it will make a little wall there for both of you. That dividing line can be dangerous. Always throw it hard in that situation, because you want to make "your half" of the stage larger, to give you more control. I don't know yet if Dtilt cancels with a SP, but if it does, then that would be perfect for removing "your opponent's side" of the wall from the equation as they bounce. You can try to attack through the wall too. I believe that side-b only pauses for the piece, and that makes it stay out longer, so that'd be good, other than the increased in frames for the move, which could make it punishable. If Fsmash cancels, that'd be hilarious, honestly. Fsmash with no ending lag? Fun! If you get caught in the air when your opponent has a piece and you're about to land, you can risk the air-dodge to shield that often fails, or you can try to cancel it with a meaty Nair. If you have a piece in hand too, though, dropping it right before you land to make a little shield to DI behind is effective, and possible hold A as you land to protect the upper half of your body. If you ever find your opponent in the air with a SP, you could try to punish by throwing your own, but they’d likely throw theirs back. You might want to consider glide tossing up at the right moment to limit their aerial movement, and then hyphen Usmash as you come under them. If they try to throw the piece down at us (they’re learning!), the Usmash Neutralizes it, and doesn’t cancel, so they are likely to get hit. This comes with the risk, however, of them DIing to the opposite side from which you came, and punishing your extended-frame Usmash from the side. But it it does land, then they’re up in the air without a piece, and likely vulnerable to a Uair juggle. If you can do all of this, then you should be good. But if you do get hit, then for the love of god, TECH. And I mean tech UP, not tech ROLL. If you end up on the floor, you're bound to get hit rolling up or even just standing up. ROLLING IS ALWAYS BAD. Don't force yourself into that. If you end up holding on to the edge, that's the hardest one. Rolling on is stupid, of course, and standing up can be dangerous. Get up attack would probably be fine, but I'd like someone to check that out for me. Just hold A so you can cancel any pieces that are thrown afterwards. Ledge hopping is very dangerous if they predict it, but otherwise, it's too fast to react to. Theoretically speaking, drop down to rising Nair sounds very safe, and then you can try to land in one of the ways mentioned before. Same with the jump-get-up. In both cases, you could try to land with a Nair to cancel any other pieces they may have. If you're on the edge, and they throw a piece, it might be smart to drop down and re-grab, since the SPs can hit you on the edge. If you want it, you can drop down and hop up and do a Uair to catch/cancel it. If you really want to do something flashy, though possibly risky, you can ledge-hop to flip-stool the SP.
Regaining control is about as simple as blocking or canceling suit pieces thrown at you, and gathering others that missed/you were able to swipe away. Also realize that at times the best way to regain control is to be aggressive and actually attack the *******.
Questions
What other techniques are really good for keeping control of your suit pieces?
What other techniques are really good for surviving a swap in control?
What other techniques are really good for regaining control?
Stage Control and General Suit Piece Management
Of the three aspects of our SPG that I believe can be greatly evolved, I think this one is the most plausible and important. It is commonly known that the number one way to utilize your SPs is for stage control. Much like Snake uses his grenades to limit his opponent's options, throwing SPs up or down makes what are essentially "danger zones", which discourage passage. One of the biggest reasons that Snake has been so successful as a character is because of his versatile stage control abilities, particularly his grenades. Snake's grenades and our SPs are very much the same thing, in that they are items which have a "timer" on them (grenades have timed explosions, and SPs have both the fade timer and a time they remain ASPs), are great for stage control, and can be thrown for good effect. We both have many options as to how to use our items for stage control (direct throw/shield-drop/up-throw/counter, direct throw/down-throw/up-throw/z-drop), and also both have a good way of preventing them from being used effectively against us (he has grenade stripping, we have 1st jab + other canceling moves and superior jumping ability), and can time our throws to our great advantage (cooking grenades, timing up-throws). But there are some key differences that change things a lot, for the better and the worse. Unlike grenades, SPs do not have a large blast radius. However, when "active", the hitbox of the ASP lasts longer than that of the grenade, allowing for a prolonged "danger" effect. Whereas snake can only have two grenades out at a time, we have all three of our SPs at once if we want, and can reuse them consistently, but unlike his grenades, we can't create new ones once they disappear. Snake has to be careful with his own thrown grenades, because they can hurt him too. We only have to worry about that if the opponent gets a hold on them, and it's actually not that hard to deal with. Grenades always have the same KB relative to percent, but our SPs have lower KB when they start fading. This can be both a good and bad thing, which we'll get more into later. Ours have a constant hitbox that does more than 1 damage when it connects, and with horizontal KB to get them off stage, working our gimping abilities. His have to explode to do KB, and it's vertical, which actually works better for him too, since snake doesn't really gimp, but is good with star KOs. As they get close to the end of their timer, snake has to stay away from them, or risk getting hurt himself, so in a sense limits his own ability to move about the stage (though of course a good snake would try to place grenades where they wouldn't hinder him as much), but with our SPs, we can move around them as much as we want, even when they are active, as long as they are PASPs. However, once grenades finish exploding, Snake doesn't have to worry about them any more. Our ability to work around our ASPs comes with the responsibility of keeping them out of the control of your opponent once their hitbox disappears. My point of making these comparisons and contrasts is to show you that much like snake, we have potential to make a very strong stage control game that could very well move us up on the tier list, but also show you that we can't just compare them too closely and say "Oh, well the grenades have this and the SPs don't" and just move on, because the SPs themselves have advantages the grenades don't. It's not that the SPs don't work as a stage control game as well as Snake's grenades, it's just that they work differently and therefore would have to be used differently for stage control, but I do believe we can get the same or at least a similar advantage from our pieces if we use them right. This is what I want us to explore, because I really think this could be utilized greatly to our advantage. I'll start us off with a few of my ideas. I know people are flawed, and I kind of came up with these fairly quickly, so if you see any flaws, feel free to explain them and place your own input.
The idea behind this is that we would start our games much like Snakes play all the time: Use stage control to not only do damage, but force mistakes to punish. The number one way to do this would be to throw your SPs up. When suit pieces are up in the air, they function similarly to one of Snake's shield-dropped grenades: A hit box will appear in the spot you initiated the stage-control mechanism in a matter of seconds. Same concept: Stage control. But another difference is that they won't have a chance to throw them back until the hitbox reaches them, which takes time and effort to do correctly without getting hurt, and if you keep the pressure up, that most likely won't happen. Glide tossing up would be an amazing thing here, allowing you to throw one piece up where you want, and glide over to where another is coming back down. It would make a good mind game to glide-toss a piece up, and then jump into the air, grab one on its way down that the opponent was keeping track of so it wouldn’t hit them, and then throw it down at them, or throw it down somewhere else to throw them off. Similarly, if you don't like where one of your pieces is in the air, or maybe you need another piece to use, just jump up and get it. Yes, this again. In theory, it's pretty safe if you know what you're doing. Down throw makes an amazing Dair. The problem is often what happens if your other pieces are on the ground when this happens. Your opponent could go right for them. This is why you constantly want your pieces in the air! I imagine sort of a stage-wide SP juggling operation. You would utilize your superior jumping ability and glide tossing to juggle your SPs all around the field as stage control, jumping up and grabbing pieces you’d like to re-position elsewhere or throw, maybe mind gaming the opponent with this on a regular basis, and in between these actions fighting your opponent that is in constant annoyance and danger of falling hunks of metal armor. Maybe even throw some flip-stools in there every blue moon when you need to move across the stage quickly but don’t have a piece in hand.
SP strategies would probably vary with stages and characters. For example, the technique I just described above would probably work best on final destination, because jumping up to grab a piece would not result in ZSS landing on a platform where she would be vulnerable, and pieces would come straight to the ground where they are needed, but the technique would be very annoying to keep up on battlefield because of all the platforms, for the converse reasons. I imagine this working very well against snake, setting off his grenades and mines, as well as punishing and destroying many of his other attempts at stage control. As we move into bad characters for this strategy, irony ensues, because the strategy that works so well on FD would probably not work so well against Falco at all because of the reflector, and most of all, the lasers that aren’t going to be stopped by SPs, destroying the defensive aspect of our strategy. But this is why we need to work on this! I imagine dozens of variations of strategies that work from stage to stage and character to character, and that’s something we should really work on. Are you starting to understand why I find this so exciting?
I want you now to start thinking about different characters, and different stages. Experiment in practice mode. Try stuff involving reflectors, move canceling, maybe even other projectiles. Even take a look at other character's item games, like peach, Diddy Kong, and Snake. Remember, this is a discussion thread, not a lesson thread: I'm just trying to get your minds going. Look for things I may not have mention yet: I haven't brought out JCT's (Jump-Canceled-Throws) at all yet. What could we do with those? I hope by now I've helped you realize how unexplored this section of her metagame really is, and I want you to start exploring yourself. That's it for this section. Take a peek at the question!
Questions
What other strategies for large-scale stage control can you think of? What stages/characters would they be good on?
What other strategies for smasll-scale stage control can you think of? What stages/characters would they be good on?
Offensive Suit Piece Play
Though it's not quite as huge, there is an offensive aspect of the SPG. Pieces obviously make good weapons, but as I stated earlier and most of us already know, directly throwing pieces isn't always the best thing to do. Especially if we really get into this, good players will quickly learn to shield and even cancel pieces thrown at them, and then once they learn how good we are at getting them back, they'll probably learn to just throw them off, which will really do us no good. The two concepts that fall under the category of offensive Suit Piece Game are Suit Piece Support and Suit Piece Combos.
SP support is something we're all fairly familiar with. After all but one of our pieces disappears, we begin fighting generally normally. While fighting normally, we use one or sometimes even two pieces to support us, whether it be for some small-scale stage control, or as a high-priority projectile for punishing. Small-scale stage control is like SH Z-drop to make that sexy priority wall to camp behind, or just to put on a bit more pressure. It can be nice to throw a piece up too, but without other pieces around also falling, it can be fairly easy for the opponent to move the fight elsewhere, so it may not be the best idea. For small scale stage control, it's usually just best to throw or drop a piece down to put on the pressure. Punishing is more aggressive, and very useful. This can be done at any time you have a SP with you, whether you are still controlling the stage or not. SPd travel fast when thrown, which is very useful for punishing at a distance, but as usual, we want to keep in control, so it is important to only punish with a straight throw when you are sure you will hit. Rolling is the easiest action to punish. From a distance, you can chuck a SP as soon as you see them start to roll, and it will usually hit them during their vulnerable state as the roll ends. Spot dodges work too, but are a bit harder, so you might want to be a bit closer. Landing lag is also very easy to punish, which is why jumping is so dangerous. You can throw as you see them start to land, but if they have a second jump, then they might mind-game you into throwing your beloved piece off the stage or into their control (which if they are smart should be the same thing). You can also punish moves your opponent uses, and with the cancel in mind, you might even be able to cancel their moves for defensive purposes and counter. We'd need to find out which moves of our opponent's cancel, and the when they use that move, if there's time, a toss (or even glide-toss if they're further away) to jab, tilt, or maybe even Dsmash would be a new and useful way of punishing. I often see SPs being used for gimping. I do it myself, but unless it's really going to get you an early stock, if anything I've said in this long-*** novel is worth anything, it's not worth using the piece. If you can do it while saving the piece, then by all means, do it. Just don't get yourself killed. The pieces, if they're as good as I've claimed I believe they could be, are not worth wasting when we have so many other gimping tools at our disposal.
This next part is kind of an all or nothing, in that we'll either find nothing or close to nothing, or we'll find some really cool and useful stuff. This would likely come even later in the match, when we have one or maybe yet still even two pieces left, at least one of which is faded, and the opponent is on a fresh stock. I imagine combos involving the SPs working: Something like throwing one up, and in the right position, jumping, throwing down to hit the opponent, Dair to shoot them up into the piece coming back down. Situational, but it would works. With a faded piece, we could probably combo a soft throw into a DA>Utilt for some juggle time. Maybe jump over our opponent and drop a SP as we start to go over them, and then FFBair as the piece hits them on the other side into us. Stuff like that. Maybe some even more complicated stuff. I haven't looked into this one a whole lot. Again, experiment!
Questions
What are some other ways to use SPs for defensive support?
What are some other ways to use SPs for offensive support (punishing)?
Can opponent character's moves that cancel or pause against a PASP be punished during the cancel/pause? Which moves, and from what distances?
What are some SP combos that work? Do they require a faded piece? What percents do they work on?
That's about it. It took me about three days to type all of this, so I hope it doesn't go to waste. Really think this stuff through. I'm telling you that this is a goldmine of Metagame substance, and we shouldn't be ignoring it any longer. ZSS may just become an item character, and this could easily shoot her up the tier list if it works. Again, and for the last time, this is a discussion thread, so add to it! I am not going to stand here and preach as if I know everything about this, because I don't, but I do believe that there is a lot to be learned and found here. We just have to keep exploring. Have fun!
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EDIT:
Nefarious B brought up the good point of camping. I'm going to stick camping strat ideas down here now too. Depending o how many pieces are involved, camping should be used at different times. Basically, you should probably only be only doing a particular camping technique if the amount of necessary pieces are all the pieces that are available. For example, Nef's idea below requires one piece, and while he's doing that, if there is another piece available, the opponent can ruin the camping or just make it much harder back using that pieces. Of course, this is just what makes sense to me right now. If you can find exceptions, then by all means mention them!
