The Wobbling Ban: What You Need To Know

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about Ice Climbers’ place within Super Smash Bros. Melee. After Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez’s meteoric rise to 11th place on the 2017 SSBMRank and a similar climb from Bananas this year to 19th, Ice Climbers have rarely in Melee’s history been more prominent in the metagame. But with this prominence comes community discussion. Here’s what you need to know about the current wobbling ban discussion.

Nobody really knows how this new wobbling ban debate came about. For those not in the know, wobbling is an infinite combo that Ice Climbers can use to take a stock off a single grab. It’s the most devastating punish in the game and has been controversial as far back as the MLG era in 2006, where ChuDat would use it all along the MLG circuit.

Throughout 2007-2013, tournaments were back and forth as to whether wobbling would be banned. In 2007, while Pound 2 had wobbling banned, FC Diamond had wobbling legal. In 2009, wobbling was illegal at Epita Smash Arena 3 and Revival of Melee 2 while legal at Mango Juice and Genesis. In 2011, The Big House banned wobbling while it was legal at Revival of Melee 4 and Genesis 2 the same year. It’s a myth that wobbling was banned by consensus until 2013, although there is some truth in that 2013 was a year of change for wobbling.

Wobbling was legal at Kings of Cali 2, NorCal Regionals and Zenith in 2013, as well as EVO, of course. EVO 2013 certainly put wobbling into the spotlight, as Wobbles, for whom the technique is named, used it to defeat multiple gods on his way to 2nd, the best placement for Ice Climbers at a major since ChuDat at Pound 2. From this point on, the only major tournament to continue to ban wobbling was The Big House, which banned it until The Big House 5 in 2015.

Discussion of a wobbling ban is not new at all. In fact, it’s probably one of the oldest in Melee that’s still a divisive issue. What’s the difference now?

First a quick summary of the arguments. On the pro-ban side:

• Wobbling hurts viewership
• Wobbling is the only true infinite in the game; every other punish involves DI and Smash DI
• Wobbling takes a whole stock and is easily doable even by very new players
• Wobbling dominates low levels of the game due to its ease of use
• Ice Climbers players make tons of upsets due to the strength of wobbling
• Ice Climbers players can do well without wobbling, as Jeremy “Fly Amanita” Westfahl did years ago
• Handoffs are an effective stand-in for wobbling and don’t significantly cripple the character

On the anti-ban side:

• There is no evidence that wobbling hurts viewership, and even if it did, Ice Climbers are not a common enough character that wobbling would be the sole cause
• Many strategies are broken at low levels, like wobbling, but players learn to adapt to them as they play more and become more skilled at the game
• While wobbling is a devastating punish, getting a wobble going at high levels is very difficult and requires an intimate knowledge of many setups
• Upsets happen with many different characters, not just Ice Climbers, and those that do happen could be explained by matchup inexperience as opposed to the power of wobbling
• Some Ice Climbers players will probably quit or otherwise feel unwelcome or targeted if wobbling is banned
• Ice Climbers are unviable even with wobbling, and removing wobbling would make them not worth playing
• Handoffs are completely up to chance unless the ICs player is near a ledge, which increases the variance of Ice Climbers matches

What constitutes a wobble isn’t 100% defined just yet. In Washington, a wobble was defined as 8 pummels, while in Texas, a wobble was defined as either 4 tilts or two blizzards per grab. MD/VA’s Facebook poll included a litany of options, including limits on the number of pummels, limits on percent, a limit of one wobble per game, and interestingly, a memory card hack that patches out wobbling but affects grab break mechanics universally. Enforcement could potentially be an issue in offstream sets or sets involving players from different regions with different definitions for a wobble.

So far, a number of states have banned wobbling, either for a trial period or permanently. Washington has decided on a trial wobbling ban from March 1st until July 1st. Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, Kentucky, Connecticut and Alabama have all banned wobbling as well, but permanently. Tennessee has a ban in some parts of the state, but not others. The most notable bans yet are those in Maryland/Virginia (aka MD/VA) and Texas. Both MD/VA and Texas have high level Ice Climbers players in addition to being very large and strong scenes. As for Canada, Alberta and British Columbia have elected to ban wobbling as well. Get On My Level 2019 in Canada will be the first major North American tournament to ban wobbling this tme around. Among other major regions, SoCal recently had a poll which, despite meeting a majority of players, didn’t meet the 55% threshold that the vote required to ban wobbling.

It’s not certain what this will mean for Ice Climbers players. We could see a return to the pre-documentary era of Melee, where any individual tournament could have wobbling banned. We could see a total ban on wobbling, or we could even see a scaling back of wobbling bans. Given the speed at which this development has occurred, it’s anyone’s guess as to where it will go. Players such as Tyler “Sharkz” Bass from North Carolina have expressed that they feel that taking a step back from Melee is the right approach given a wobbling ban, because they don’t feel that they should have to play what feels like a new character. On the other hand, perhaps some new players will emerge who wouldn’t have played Melee otherwise due to the threat of wobbling.

One thing is clear: this isn’t the last we’re going to hear of wobbling.

Editor’s Note: What’s your opinion on wobbling? Let me know in the comments!

 

I am personally on the side that the ban of Wobbling will pretty much will neuter the character in competitive play. ICs barely show up competitive play anymore, especially due to a lot of their top players being inactive (Fly, Wobbles, and Dizz) or switched to someone else (Nintendude). Handoffs, while flashy and can be devastating, is not guaranteed, getting rid of a lot of the reward on an already high-risk character (gives the opponent more opportunities to separate them). Fly managed without wobbling, but IC counterplay has greatly improved since his prime.

It does bring some good to ban it as well. Melee needs all the viewership it needs to compete with the titan that is Ultimate. It is frustrating to deal with at times as well.

Right now, banning wobbling does seem to not be too bad, but we must be prepared to practically not see the character anymore after the ban.

 

Snaking was given its own category in F-Zero GX speedrunning because it made obsolete a whole slew of other techniques while only requiring you to strafe back and forth to pick up obscene amounts of speed. Banning wobbling would, in effect, open the door for ICs players to explore the intricacies of their character and the highly skillful ICs-specific techniques that are made sub-optimal by the existence of wobbling. People are under the impression that Wobbling is the whole character even though ICs still have 0-deaths and infinites off of grab-- only requiring more skill than tapping A. Handoffs can be an infinite with the correct setup and execution.

 

I personally consider that wobbling is holding the ICs back, if the ones who play them only focus on wobbling, the ICs meta won't develop, since there is probably much more stuff they have, but hasn't been discovered yet because remember, ICs players only focus on wobbling.

Oh, you lost nana? Good luck winning without knowing to do anything more than wobbling

 

I am honestly surprised the wobbling was banned I have heard talk about it but it just seemed like an idea people were throwing around but I never thought tournaments would actually go through with it (i actually am in bc one of the places it was banned)

I am personally against the ban mainly because of how I feel about banning characters I will explain why

also, I know that I am saying character throughout the whole thing but the same thing applies to wobbling because let's be honest banning wobbling is the same as banning ices

first of all, I don't think that viewership or how much people don't like watching a character is a good argument for banning because how much a character is fun to watch is completely subjective and banning a character that isn't overpowered people will just complain about the next thing they don't like to watch and then the next and then the next until the only character left if Kirby

in order for a character in my eyes to be considered overpowered they have they have to centralize the metagame around them so basically the character that is so overpowered that it shifts the metagame to revolve around them completely lets use Brawl for example (and yes I think Brawl meta knight should have been banned) the entire brawl metagame revolved around meta knight, meta knight itself and what characters can it even have a chance of beating it if a character has a bad matchup against meta knight they are not good that it is when a character does that is when they should be banned do not apply to this the entire metagame doesn't revolve around the character that does badly against ice climbers like are higher in the tier list than ice climbers agreed worst matchup and the entire tier list doesn't revolve around ice climbers its worst matchups aren't the best characters in the game and its best matchups aren't completely useless because of ice climbers

look one thing i will despite how annoying they can be they do have counterplay, maybe my idea of how a character should be banned is too restrictive, but to be honest the main reson that i am against it is that this could set a dangerous precedent for smash ultimate if there is a character like smash 4 bayonetta in ultimate than people will start saying but melee banned ice climbers for harmful ul to viewers so we should ban xxxxx character too

I know my opinion doesn't really matter because I am not apart of the Melee community but I thought I would share how felt on this subject

 

"Ice Climbers and all of their moves should be legal."

-Me, a biased Ice Climbers guy who has never been in a tourney

 

I personally consider that wobbling is holding the ICs back, if the ones who play them only focus on wobbling, the ICs meta won't develop, since there is probably much more stuff they have, but hasn't been discovered yet because remember, ICs players only focus on wobbling.

Oh, you lost nana? Good luck winning without knowing to do anything more than wobbling

Except there really isn't anything else to develop that top ICs players already uses. The only thing is handoffs, but it is undeveloped because it is simply a much worse version of wobbling.

 

My thoughts on this.

I stand very much on the, never ban unless said tech or character is a threat to viewership/entrance or they are provable to be SSS tier. Meta knight in brawl is the obvious example.

Bayonetta might have fit into the viewership entrance problem but I was still in the anti ban camp with her..

With this I also sit on anti-ban. I hate the easy to do argument. Tons of these were on brawl and no one batted an eye when D3 did standing infinite’s on most of the cast.

 

Tons of these were on brawl and no one batted an eye when D3 did standing infinite’s on most of the cast.

Standing Dedede chaingrab, as far as I can tell, is banned in Brawl.

The thing is that only DK gets chaingrabbed to death with Dedede standing still, and only a handful of characters gets chaingrabbed to death when Dedede moves slightly forward after the throw.

Just want to correct this little misconception.

 

People are under the impression that Wobbling is the whole character even though ICs still have 0-deaths and infinites off of grab-- only requiring more skill than tapping A. Handoffs can be an infinite with the correct setup and execution.

It is only an infinite if you guess correctly. Handoffs are a series of 50/50s. This would normally not be a problem... except it is ICs, a character that loses their mains strengths if Nana is defeated, effectively giving them high risk. Wobbling being banned will only give the opponent more opportunities to capitalize on that weakness and shut down the character.

 

I'm glad to live in one of the permaban states. Wobbling should've never been legalized in the first place.

 

Really, I think it's hypocritical of Melee to ban any technique. Wobbling may be a for-sure stock and be broken for competitive play, but it's important to keep in mind that Melee as a competitive system is built off Melee being broken. The game was never meant to be balanced for this kind of, and level of play.

Also: Similar to the Jiggs ban, banning wobbling would effectively remove ICs from any tournament. We only have an 11-character meta in Melee, so anything to nerf or buff one character is incredibly impacting to the game, especially removing a whole 11th of the game (at competitive levels)\

 

If the community cannot decide a unanimous decision, the game will die. Plan and simple.

One of the leading factors to the fall of Brawl was due to the community having a split on banning Meta Knight and using different rulesets. It is why so many people mocked Spain for banning vanilla Bayonetta.

History is repeating itself with Melee. But Melee's time to shine has been way past due. It technically should have ended in 2008.

 

I know a few players that have generally poor fundamentals but excel at finding the wobble. Like, these players just don't do well without it, and it shows whenever they pick a different character.

Even so, wobbling is not an overcentralizing technique. The metagame does not revolve around ICs. Entire stage lists do not revolve around ICs. Any criterion one could try to use to ban wobbling collapses in the face of tournament results. Throughout the entire history of Melee, ICs just doesn't win at the pinnacle of competitive play. The closest ICs have gotten would probably be Wobbles at EVO 2013 (2nd place, but well deserved after beating numerous Melee "Gods" in order to get to grand finals), or perhaps ChuDat in the MLG days before Brawl was released. By no means does this character run rampant in competitive play like some kind of plague.

On the other hand, Metaknight, who was and still is a highly controversial character in Brawl, is probably the closest we will ever get to seeing an insanely dominant character not get completely banned by the community. Metaknight required multiple character-specific rules to keep him not beyond the scope of reason (infinite cape glitch ban, scrooging ban, ledge grab limits [let's be real, he was the biggest culprit of ledge abuse by a wide margin and the least susceptible to counterplay if any at all]) and he was still deemed far and away the best character. The entire stage list began to revolve around Metaknight as stages were turned off because they were deemed too powerful of a counterpick stage for Metaknight (RC, Halberd, Delfino, multiple others). The available roster of characters that could combat Metaknight dwindled as the metagame progressed. His frame data was insane, he reigned supreme at countless tournaments and filled top 8s to the brim, and eventually only certain outliers of their respective characters (Ally's Snake, DEHF's Falco, Nietono and Brood's Olimar, ADHD's Diddy Kong, some ICs mains) ever had OK results against Metaknight. Towards the end of Brawl's lifespan (with the onset of Smash 4 around the corner), most tournament matches at the forefront of competitive play became MK vs. MK or MK vs. X.

Ice Climbers' wobbling technique does not come close to MK's level of overcentralization. ICs has multiple losing match ups against the top tiers even with wobbling. My point is this: if MK didn't get banned despite all the evidence for a ban, it is boggling to me that wobbling is being seriously considered ban-worthy.

I'll be frank: players need to get good. History has shown that fundamentals prevail against ICs. They are an inherently vulnerable character due to the nature of their design. I can't count how many times I've seen the character get dominated by good spacing. A single move can desync this character and subsequently move them multiple spots down the tier list during gameplay.

#antiban

 

Really, I think it's hypocritical of Melee to ban any technique. Wobbling may be a for-sure stock and be broken for competitive play, but it's important to keep in mind that Melee as a competitive system is built off Melee being broken. The game was never meant to be balanced for this kind of, and level of play.

Also: Similar to the Jiggs ban, banning wobbling would effectively remove ICs from any tournament. We only have an 11-character meta in Melee, so anything to nerf or buff one character is incredibly impacting to the game, especially removing a whole 11th of the game (at competitive levels)\

This is a really bad take. Melee isn't broken--not even close. For all of the unintended stuff found in the game, it still manages to be very mechnically balanced. Melee's techs don't heavily favor certain types of play over others. Wobbling disrupts this system balance by forcing the opponent to play extremely cautiously and heavily rewarding the ICs for fishing for grabs. It's centralizing.

 

I played melee competitively like a decade ago. Brawl was meh, I missed the PM boat (boy does that make me sad) but i got way into smash 4, and then back into the competitive scene. at a small local none of the smash 4 brahs showed up, just me and a melee guy who refused to touch smash 4, so I thought I'd try dipping my toes back into melee. I let him know I haven't put in time for years so give me a little bit to warm up my hands, nope. Immediately wobbles me. Wobbles every stock off of me for 6 consecutive games while I try to get a handle on marth's spacing and get a feel for good wavedashing and L-cancelling, and it just put a bad taste in my mouth. It was just friendlies and if we had a melee tourney it wouldn't have been for a pot, it's not like he needed to warm up his wobble powers, he was just being a ****. Which is fine, but it put such a bad taste in my mouth that it really soured me on a return to competitive melee - back when I used to play it wasn't a thing yet. (or hadn't reached WI? I dunno) So on the one hand, I understand that it's really tough to close down viable options, and a non unified opinion in the community is what kills a game competitively. (See: Metaknight in brawl) And EVO dropped it so it's a rough time for the community to split in half on anything.

But if we compare it to other similar moves - let's say rest, first off, if you whiff rest, you are gonna die almost for sure, but you are definitely going to take a very heavy punish. Iceys don't really suffer from anywhere near as huge a risk, even on whiff.

Rest can kill super early on some characters, especially depending on how it's set up, but does it ever just flat kill from zero off a single move/combo starter that's relatively reliable? I know, wobbling isn't totally true until 15% or whatever, but the point still stands - You get grabbed, you die. Not even rest results in this all the time.

It's super frustrating. If a jiggs has is doing a stylish WOP to rest SD/kill combo it's badass, even if you are the victim. If a marth hops out and does sideB/sideB/tilted down sideB and spikes me, it's badass. If a cpn' falcon hops out and lands a falcon punch far off stage, it's super badass - even if you are the victim you have to get a giggle out of that level of disrespect/blatant disregard for risk.

Icys don't risk this by fishing for a grab. they are just fishing for a grab, but unlike other characters who can tech chase your landing and regrab, but that's some reactive work, rather than just... a rhythm.

So obviously I don't play melee competitively anymore, and I do friendlies pretty rarely, so my opinion isn't super valid, but I will say it soured my re entry, and i can see it souring new entries that bleed over from shared venue ultimate tourneys - and I think it's super great for both scenes that melee and ultimate have had so much permeability. I'm not a fan of wobbling, it makes the game not fun and frustrating when you are subjected to it. When I see it in a stream, I find another stream or just close it and move onto something else, because the whole match will be like that.

If there were to be a compromise, I think the frustration and viewership issues could be addressed by just agreeing that if a wobble begins, the icy lets go and you plunge your stock off - then at least you don't have to sit there for 30 seconds and just watch it happen to you. Arguably that's not fun to see either, "why did that guy kill himself?" etc, but the game would get back to the action much faster.


But either way, I do think the community as a whole needs to stop weighing in and instead find a way for TOs in each state to communicate and put together a real plan of action, some kind of polling for national sentiment - because I'd rather see melee survive with wobbling than die without it, and I think that's what is most important here.

 

You can actively as a player disable the infinite by killing Nana. That alone makes it different then other infinites.

Something like DDD's infinite in brawl is way worse because you cant stop it, its always present during a match.

IC's are not. It can be disabled.

Players can actively beat it/get rid of it, which to me makes it NOT BAN WORTHY.

 

Nobody really knows how this new wobbling ban debate came about.

But we do. Someone in the state of Tennessee lied about the entire state banning it while it was only one weekly that had banned it. The thought of an entire state banning it pressured other states into banning it, (Or even giving it a Trial of Banning). I think the way the wobbling ban was brought back into the rule set discussion was/is completely lacking in morals considering not only it's morals but also that it reduces a character to 50/50 guesses on where Nana throws (or slightly higher if you're lucky enough to get a grab near the edge)

 

I don't think wobbling should be banned, as others have said they aren't a legitimate meta threat at the top level, if maybe tournaments wanted to ban wobbling at arcadians and low level locals that wouldn't be a terrible idea, but regardless it isn't the end all be all of the meta, at least at this point in time so there isn't good enough reasoning to ban it. Also considering the fact that even with it being legal they still generally lose to or go close to even with the top 8 characters on the tier list says enough, plus to be quite honest no character should have their best move banned when even with it they still have very close and potentially even losing mus against characters like young link, samus, ganondorf, and even the argued worst character in the game zelda, it doesn't logically make sense and imo the ban should be lifted asap as it is not properly justified.

 

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There’s been a lot of discussion recently about Ice Climbers’ place within Super Smash Bros. Melee. After Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez’s meteoric rise to 11th place on the 2017 SSBMRank and a similar climb from Bananas this year to 19th, Ice Climbers have rarely in Melee’s history been more prominent in the metagame. But with this prominence comes community discussion. Here’s what you need to know about the current wobbling ban discussion.

Nobody really knows how this new wobbling ban debate came about. For those not in the know, wobbling is an infinite combo that Ice Climbers can use to take a stock off a single grab. It’s the most devastating punish in the game and has been controversial as far back as the MLG era in 2006, where ChuDat would use it all along the MLG circuit.

Throughout 2007-2013, tournaments were back and forth as to whether wobbling would be banned. In 2007, while Pound 2 had wobbling banned, FC Diamond had wobbling legal. In 2009, wobbling was illegal at Epita Smash Arena 3 and Revival of Melee 2 while legal at Mango Juice and Genesis. In 2011, The Big House banned wobbling while it was legal at Revival of Melee 4 and Genesis 2 the same year. It’s a myth that wobbling was banned by consensus until 2013, although there is some truth in that 2013 was a year of change for wobbling.

Wobbling was legal at Kings of Cali 2, NorCal Regionals and Zenith in 2013, as well as EVO, of course. EVO 2013 certainly put wobbling into the spotlight, as Wobbles, for whom the technique is named, used it to defeat multiple gods on his way to 2nd, the best placement for Ice Climbers at a major since ChuDat at Pound 2. From this point on, the only major tournament to continue to ban wobbling was The Big House, which banned it until The Big House 5 in 2015.

Discussion of a wobbling ban is not new at all. In fact, it’s probably one of the oldest in Melee that’s still a divisive issue. What’s the difference now?

First a quick summary of the arguments. On the pro-ban side:

• Wobbling hurts viewership
• Wobbling is the only true infinite in the game; every other punish involves DI and Smash DI
• Wobbling takes a whole stock and is easily doable even by very new players
• Wobbling dominates low levels of the game due to its ease of use
• Ice Climbers players make tons of upsets due to the strength of wobbling
• Ice Climbers players can do well without wobbling, as Jeremy “Fly Amanita” Westfahl did years ago
• Handoffs are an effective stand-in for wobbling and don’t significantly cripple the character

On the anti-ban side:

• There is no evidence that wobbling hurts viewership, and even if it did, Ice Climbers are not a common enough character that wobbling would be the sole cause
• Many strategies are broken at low levels, like wobbling, but players learn to adapt to them as they play more and become more skilled at the game
• While wobbling is a devastating punish, getting a wobble going at high levels is very difficult and requires an intimate knowledge of many setups
• Upsets happen with many different characters, not just Ice Climbers, and those that do happen could be explained by matchup inexperience as opposed to the power of wobbling
• Some Ice Climbers players will probably quit or otherwise feel unwelcome or targeted if wobbling is banned
• Ice Climbers are unviable even with wobbling, and removing wobbling would make them not worth playing
• Handoffs are completely up to chance unless the ICs player is near a ledge, which increases the variance of Ice Climbers matches

What constitutes a wobble isn’t 100% defined just yet. In Washington, a wobble was defined as 8 pummels, while in Texas, a wobble was defined as either 4 tilts or two blizzards per grab. MD/VA’s Facebook poll included a litany of options, including limits on the number of pummels, limits on percent, a limit of one wobble per game, and interestingly, a memory card hack that patches out wobbling but affects grab break mechanics universally. Enforcement could potentially be an issue in offstream sets or sets involving players from different regions with different definitions for a wobble.

So far, a number of states have banned wobbling, either for a trial period or permanently. Washington has decided on a trial wobbling ban from March 1st until July 1st. Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, Kentucky, Connecticut and Alabama have all banned wobbling as well, but permanently. Tennessee has a ban in some parts of the state, but not others. The most notable bans yet are those in Maryland/Virginia (aka MD/VA) and Texas. Both MD/VA and Texas have high level Ice Climbers players in addition to being very large and strong scenes. As for Canada, Alberta and British Columbia have elected to ban wobbling as well. Get On My Level 2019 in Canada will be the first major North American tournament to ban wobbling this tme around. Among other major regions, SoCal recently had a poll which, despite meeting a majority of players, didn’t meet the 55% threshold that the vote required to ban wobbling.

It’s not certain what this will mean for Ice Climbers players. We could see a return to the pre-documentary era of Melee, where any individual tournament could have wobbling banned. We could see a total ban on wobbling, or we could even see a scaling back of wobbling bans. Given the speed at which this development has occurred, it’s anyone’s guess as to where it will go. Players such as Tyler “Sharkz” Bass from North Carolina have expressed that they feel that taking a step back from Melee is the right approach given a wobbling ban, because they don’t feel that they should have to play what feels like a new character. On the other hand, perhaps some new players will emerge who wouldn’t have played Melee otherwise due to the threat of wobbling.

One thing is clear: this isn’t the last we’re going to hear of wobbling.

Editor’s Note: What’s your opinion on wobbling? Let me know in the comments!

I think wobbling is broken even though I main ic's at the top level ics are hardly an issue while at lower levels can be frustrating but I don't main ics for wobbling i main the rag tag team for the technical ceiling and underrepresented overly technical ics player who doesn't even need to wobble
Thus I am split on this issue and abstain until veiwership does die and community desperately needs revival

 

Is it that hard to not play a character normaly without resorting to tricks?

 

Nah that's how I like to play

Is it that hard to not play a character normaly without resorting to tricks?

 

Can we please ban Fox’s reflector while we are at it? It can kill characters at 0%, so unfair.

Let’s ban chaingrabs too. Those are lame.

Marth has too much range. Let’s just ban him outright.

Falco laser camping is lame. Let’s ban it.

Falcon has broken air wobble combos. BAN HIM!

Oh yeah and let’s ban Peach down b. It is silly that the character gets rewarded with luck based gameplay.

WHO IS WITH ME?!

 

Standing Dedede chaingrab, as far as I can tell, is banned in Brawl.

The thing is that only DK gets chaingrabbed to death with Dedede standing still, and only a handful of characters gets chaingrabbed to death when Dedede moves slightly forward after the throw.

Just want to correct this little misconception.

I went to a lot of tournaments that had it unbanned, he can do it on a ton of the cast with a pivot regrab.

Hard tech to do but with it he could do a standing infinite on Lucario if done right. He might move slightly but yeah he still had it. Marth had a pummel regrab on some characters.

Tons of characters could infinite wario, Peach had a hard one but it was possible.

Brawl had a lot of dumb stuff in it even if I liked the game a lot.

I don’t like the idea of banning due to feeling lame unless attendance and viewership is a huge issue. I personally can’t stand Fox in Melee but there is no way Melee Vets would support that even if he had an over 30% usage at top level for placing with pro players when the bayo ban was being discussed.

 

Can we please ban Fox’s reflector while we are at it? It can kill characters at 0%, so unfair.

Let’s ban chaingrabs too. Those are lame.

Marth has too much range. Let’s just ban him outright.

Falco laser camping is lame. Let’s ban it.

Falcon has broken air wobble combos. BAN HIM!

Oh yeah and let’s ban Peach down b. It is silly that the character gets rewarded with luck based gameplay.

WHO IS WITH ME?!

psst while were at it lets ban melee everyone will play stamina mode as masterhand

 

psst while were at it lets ban melee everyone will play stamina mode as masterhand

That would be an interesting side event.

 

Plan and simple.

 

Oh nooooooooo

 

MD/VA’s Facebook poll included a litany of options, including limits on the number of pummels, limits on percent, a limit of one wobble per game, and interestingly, a memory card hack that patches out wobbling but affects grab break mechanics universally.

Hey, for the record, MDVA is currently using a 3-pummel limit to ban wobbling. Every tournament in the region that bans wobbling uses this definition.
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/SSBM/comments/aug2fu/

 

if wobbling gets banned then lets ban fox's shine combos

 

"You're wobbling! Try and keep your balance!" -Wii Fit Trainer

 

"You're wobbling! Try and keep your balance!" -Wii Fit Trainer

no you

 

I am honestly surprised the wobbling was banned I have heard talk about it but it just seemed like an idea people were throwing around but I never thought tournaments would actually go through with it (i actually am in bc one of the places it was banned)

I am personally against the ban mainly because of how I feel about banning characters I will explain why

also, I know that I am saying character throughout the whole thing but the same thing applies to wobbling because let's be honest banning wobbling is the same as banning ices

first of all, I don't think that viewership or how much people don't like watching a character is a good argument for banning because how much a character is fun to watch is completely subjective and banning a character that isn't overpowered people will just complain about the next thing they don't like to watch and then the next and then the next until the only character left if Kirby

in order for a character in my eyes to be considered overpowered they have they have to centralize the metagame around them so basically the character that is so overpowered that it shifts the metagame to revolve around them completely lets use Brawl for example (and yes I think Brawl meta knight should have been banned) the entire brawl metagame revolved around meta knight, meta knight itself and what characters can it even have a chance of beating it if a character has a bad matchup against meta knight they are not good that it is when a character does that is when they should be banned do not apply to this the entire metagame doesn't revolve around the character that does badly against ice climbers like are higher in the tier list than ice climbers agreed worst matchup and the entire tier list doesn't revolve around ice climbers its worst matchups aren't the best characters in the game and its best matchups aren't completely useless because of ice climbers

look one thing i will despite how annoying they can be they do have counterplay, maybe my idea of how a character should be banned is too restrictive, but to be honest the main reson that i am against it is that this could set a dangerous precedent for smash ultimate if there is a character like smash 4 bayonetta in ultimate than people will start saying but melee banned ice climbers for harmful ul to viewers so we should ban xxxxx character too

I know my opinion doesn't really matter because I am not apart of the Melee community but I thought I would share how felt on this subject

The Meta Knight example was spot on... wow.

 

Wobbling is not nice.

 

wobbling is bully me

 

wobbling is bully me

there there, it's ok. we'll get through this together!

 

I don't get why Wobbling wasn't banned before. It was never a good technique and was just a lazy way of winning a match.

 

about the

• There is no evidence that wobbling hurts viewership, and even if it did, Ice Climbers are not a common enough character that wobbling would be the sole cause

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"

also wobbling ****in sucks to play against at a low level of play. the first time i got wobbled in tournament I got 3 stocked low percent and got wobbled 3/4 stocks, i went peach game 2(i usually play falcon) and it went to last stock high percent. the guy who i was playing against was nice and obviously better than me at the time but the fact was that if he didn't have wobbling our games would be much closer, i honestly think i could have won that set without wobbling. all of this is personal preference and experience so take it with a grain of salt. also the grime associated with wobbling honestly makes ICs players some of the most hated in the entire game. I think that people are most toxic/bullying to wobblers compared to any other general group.

the only times i genuinely dont like to watch top level melee is when wobbling is happening, not only because it's mindsplittingly boring but people who get upset easily by ICs like m2k and mango are super fun to watch while they get elim'd in like losers r2 of top64 because they got grabbed.

also about fox shine combos, its incredibly hard to get a kill from anywhere on the stage unless you have insane tech skill. obviously you can shinespike at early %s but that would only be a situation where the person getting spiked is already in pretty heavy disadvantage.

tldr the falcon main with bad neutral wants wobbling to be banned, big whoop

 

View attachment 196173

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about Ice Climbers’ place within Super Smash Bros. Melee. After Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez’s meteoric rise to 11th place on the 2017 SSBMRank and a similar climb from Bananas this year to 19th, Ice Climbers have rarely in Melee’s history been more prominent in the metagame. But with this prominence comes community discussion. Here’s what you need to know about the current wobbling ban discussion.

Nobody really knows how this new wobbling ban debate came about. For those not in the know, wobbling is an infinite combo that Ice Climbers can use to take a stock off a single grab. It’s the most devastating punish in the game and has been controversial as far back as the MLG era in 2006, where ChuDat would use it all along the MLG circuit.

Throughout 2007-2013, tournaments were back and forth as to whether wobbling would be banned. In 2007, while Pound 2 had wobbling banned, FC Diamond had wobbling legal. In 2009, wobbling was illegal at Epita Smash Arena 3 and Revival of Melee 2 while legal at Mango Juice and Genesis. In 2011, The Big House banned wobbling while it was legal at Revival of Melee 4 and Genesis 2 the same year. It’s a myth that wobbling was banned by consensus until 2013, although there is some truth in that 2013 was a year of change for wobbling.

Wobbling was legal at Kings of Cali 2, NorCal Regionals and Zenith in 2013, as well as EVO, of course. EVO 2013 certainly put wobbling into the spotlight, as Wobbles, for whom the technique is named, used it to defeat multiple gods on his way to 2nd, the best placement for Ice Climbers at a major since ChuDat at Pound 2. From this point on, the only major tournament to continue to ban wobbling was The Big House, which banned it until The Big House 5 in 2015.

Discussion of a wobbling ban is not new at all. In fact, it’s probably one of the oldest in Melee that’s still a divisive issue. What’s the difference now?

First a quick summary of the arguments. On the pro-ban side:

• Wobbling hurts viewership
• Wobbling is the only true infinite in the game; every other punish involves DI and Smash DI
• Wobbling takes a whole stock and is easily doable even by very new players
• Wobbling dominates low levels of the game due to its ease of use
• Ice Climbers players make tons of upsets due to the strength of wobbling
• Ice Climbers players can do well without wobbling, as Jeremy “Fly Amanita” Westfahl did years ago
• Handoffs are an effective stand-in for wobbling and don’t significantly cripple the character

On the anti-ban side:

• There is no evidence that wobbling hurts viewership, and even if it did, Ice Climbers are not a common enough character that wobbling would be the sole cause
• Many strategies are broken at low levels, like wobbling, but players learn to adapt to them as they play more and become more skilled at the game
• While wobbling is a devastating punish, getting a wobble going at high levels is very difficult and requires an intimate knowledge of many setups
• Upsets happen with many different characters, not just Ice Climbers, and those that do happen could be explained by matchup inexperience as opposed to the power of wobbling
• Some Ice Climbers players will probably quit or otherwise feel unwelcome or targeted if wobbling is banned
• Ice Climbers are unviable even with wobbling, and removing wobbling would make them not worth playing
• Handoffs are completely up to chance unless the ICs player is near a ledge, which increases the variance of Ice Climbers matches

What constitutes a wobble isn’t 100% defined just yet. In Washington, a wobble was defined as 8 pummels, while in Texas, a wobble was defined as either 4 tilts or two blizzards per grab. MD/VA’s Facebook poll included a litany of options, including limits on the number of pummels, limits on percent, a limit of one wobble per game, and interestingly, a memory card hack that patches out wobbling but affects grab break mechanics universally. Enforcement could potentially be an issue in offstream sets or sets involving players from different regions with different definitions for a wobble.

So far, a number of states have banned wobbling, either for a trial period or permanently. Washington has decided on a trial wobbling ban from March 1st until July 1st. Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, Kentucky, Connecticut and Alabama have all banned wobbling as well, but permanently. Tennessee has a ban in some parts of the state, but not others. The most notable bans yet are those in Maryland/Virginia (aka MD/VA) and Texas. Both MD/VA and Texas have high level Ice Climbers players in addition to being very large and strong scenes. As for Canada, Alberta and British Columbia have elected to ban wobbling as well. Get On My Level 2019 in Canada will be the first major North American tournament to ban wobbling this tme around. Among other major regions, SoCal recently had a poll which, despite meeting a majority of players, didn’t meet the 55% threshold that the vote required to ban wobbling.

It’s not certain what this will mean for Ice Climbers players. We could see a return to the pre-documentary era of Melee, where any individual tournament could have wobbling banned. We could see a total ban on wobbling, or we could even see a scaling back of wobbling bans. Given the speed at which this development has occurred, it’s anyone’s guess as to where it will go. Players such as Tyler “Sharkz” Bass from North Carolina have expressed that they feel that taking a step back from Melee is the right approach given a wobbling ban, because they don’t feel that they should have to play what feels like a new character. On the other hand, perhaps some new players will emerge who wouldn’t have played Melee otherwise due to the threat of wobbling.

One thing is clear: this isn’t the last we’re going to hear of wobbling.

Editor’s Note: What’s your opinion on wobbling? Let me know in the comments!

I personally think it’s fine it’s just that not enough ice climbers player to constitute a ban

 

...never thought I'd see the day... a "ban this" debate in MELEE, OF ALL SMASH GAMES, and here i thought they had everything firmly established.

it's one thing to bring up things like Brawl Meta Knight, and the constant top MK results sort of justified the debate... but if the majority of the community is going up in arms about something that's been around for YEARS, I think something's changed in the community.

this goes for the Puff debate, too... outside of HBox, there's not really anyone else who's brought her to that high a level, playing a passive bait-and-punish tactic in a near totally aggressive rushdown world... so perhaps the debate aught to be about the new generation of players who are a bit less tolerant of sink-or-swim learning.

I mean, honestly, Melee was a game made well before their time. the only reason it's still around is because its fans had to passion to keep it relevant in competition. Compare that to games of this day and age, where all you had to do was cry and whine in mass amounts and the devs will put a Band-aid patch out whatever "broken" trick there is, and there's bound to be a LOT of lower level players who are very quick to cause a scene to take advantage of the PR pressure and make everyone else look bad. the worst part about these players is that there's not really much hard data to really prove their point most of the time, they and several friends in their scene got bodied by this trick, and want it gone.

now personally, I don't invest much time into Melee because I don't think I can go anywhere near that fast or precise without driving myself utterly bonkers in training (I mean, I'm struggling with certain tech in Ultimate due to the timing of the Right stick in particular). but in the end, considering that Wobbling NOT infallible in higher levels of play (as several folks have already pointed out). I think what needs to be done is there should be training sessions and/or general guidelines on how to combat these fighters in tournament.

Ice Climbers are lethal when together, but find a way to separate them and the odds shift greatly in your favor, but not completely (as folks like Fly demonstrated).