Tier List Speculation

[CORY]

that's interesting (and i think we're falling down the rabbit hole of "cool ****, but not tier list discussion..." sadly), but fast fallers would probably hit the ground and tech before he'd be able to react to anything, which kinda makes for a sad time...

 

[DrinkingFood]

Well if you adjusted the base knockback upwards some and raised the release point, he could probably very easily get a nair off.
Also once you've got a grab game that isn't centered around a stupid dthrow, you can afford to, idk, make his upthrow better so he can handle FFer's well too.

 

[Boardwalk]

am i the only one salty about ganons short hop side b having easy followups because you get bounced too high to tech? or am i just a scrub?

 

[DMG]

Ganon's Uthrow is already good on a lot of FF's. It's been buffed from Melee

 

[CORY]

uthrow already handles the fastest fallers with a chain grab, but that's kinda what we were talking about getting away from, anyway?

though, ff-ers are already such a polarizing class that it's hard to make stuff like half of the cast's uthrows not chain them, while also being useful for everyone else...

 

[CORY]

am i the only one salty about ganons short hop side b having easy followups because you get bounced too high to tech? or am i just a scrub?

screw the rules, i'll double post because stuff happened in between my first post and this:

it's all fall speed dependent. all 3 spacies are unjabbable. then there's a group that's only jabbable, then some who can also be grabbed, etc... etc...

you're falcon, and he can only be jabbed. if ganon jabs you out of aerial flame choke, he tends to forgo his other options for it and has to reset the situation, as opposed to using it as a tech chase option and hoping for more damage from, say, dtilt into a combo or a grounded flame choke into a read situation.

and considering it has about 20 frames of startup (jump squat + the actual startup before a move comes out) and really, more like 30 frames of realistic startup, since he has to lunge forward, it's not something that can just be thrown out easily. the ganon has to get a good read through either conditioning or you being predictable, otherwise a non committing opponent can literally just react to it by rolling behind, then running up and punishing.

the worst guaranteed followup ganon can get is like.... uair on jiggly because she's airborne for so long. a lot of the cast can avoid everything that isn't jab (which isn't guaranteed at around ganon fallspeed) with just proper di away from him, forcing him to have to hard read to get anything else from it.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Chain grabs are okay to a certain extent, especially upthrow CGs which are super easy to escape onto platforms due to generally higher release points. But I don't think his upthrow CG lasts very long, which is where his dthrow comes into play (i think it can start CGing FFers around the time uthrow can't), but if his dthrow is no longer a candidate at all for CGs with that hypothetical change, improvements to uthrow to compensate for FFer MUs might be in order, and the result will be inherently less stupid on semi FFers due to the dthrow change, less stupid on FFers due to both the nature of uthrow release point and non-CG and rework to dthrow, while also allowing him to be buffed to increase the frequency with which he lands the grabs outside of the CGs.

Also @ CORY Ganon can get better follow-upa from aerial side-b than uair. Such as grab dthrow uair on floaties at low percents lol. Or jab->DACUS on floaties at mid-hi percents.

 

[Boardwalk]

am i the only one salty about ganons short hop side b having easy followups because you get bounced too high to tech? or am i just a scrub?

screw the rules, i'll double post because stuff happened in between my first post and this:

it's all fall speed dependent. all 3 spacies are unjabbable. then there's a group that's only jabbable, then some who can also be grabbed, etc... etc...

you're falcon, and he can only be jabbed. if ganon jabs you out of aerial flame choke, he tends to forgo his other options for it and has to reset the situation, as opposed to using it as a tech chase option and hoping for more damage from, say, dtilt into a combo or a grounded flame choke into a read situation.

and considering it has about 20 frames of startup (jump squat + the actual startup before a move comes out) and really, more like 30 frames of realistic startup, since he has to lunge forward, it's not something that can just be thrown out easily. the ganon has to get a good read through either conditioning or you being predictable, otherwise a non committing opponent can literally just react to it by rolling behind, then running up and punishing.

the worst guaranteed followup ganon can get is like.... uair on jiggly because she's airborne for so long. a lot of the cast can avoid everything that isn't jab (which isn't guaranteed at around ganon fallspeed) with just proper di away from him, forcing him to have to hard read to get anything else from it.

i dont think its op but it is annoying. rolling behind will dodge the attack but makes it hard to punish. my friends always play super defensively so i end up getting gabbed a lot. command grabs just make me salty i guess.

 

[CORY]

Chain grabs are okay to a certain extent, especially upthrow CGs which are super easy to escape onto platforms due to generally higher release points. But I don't think his upthrow CG lasts very long, which is where his dthrow comes into play (i think it can start CGing FFers around the time uthrow can't), but if his dthrow is no longer a candidate at all for CGs with that hypothetical change, improvements to uthrow to compensate for FFer MUs might be in order, and the result will be inherently less stupid on semi FFers due to the dthrow change, less stupid on FFers due to both the nature of uthrow release point and non-CG and rework to dthrow, while also allowing him to be buffed to increase the frequency with which he lands the grabs outside of the CGs.

Also @ CORY Ganon can get better follow-upa from aerial side-b than uair. Such as grab dthrow uair on floaties at low percents lol. Or jab->DACUS on floaties at mid-hi percents.

oh, i know you can get guaranteed grabs on a lot of people (i actually have a list that i'm fine tuning of all the guaranteed followups possible on the cast), that was just poor phrasing. i meant it more as "this is the longest start up punish you can get" (technically, wizkick on jiggs/m2/zelda, but i think m2 can maybe teleport out before he gets hit? i'll have to test it in debug, since he can float really far away from you...).

and i agree with cg's. short of doing something like smash4 or more like a tfg, with the "no grabbing during hit/shield stun" clauses, there's pretty much always going to be an instance where something is going to chain grab someone. ganon's dthrow chain is super dumb, but it's not metagame devolving, necessarily, because he can't get grabs super easily (which i think you're also saying?).

all in all, yeah, i agree with your sentiments on the chain grabs and how to work around or fix them.

 

[Foo]

Honestly, in order for character diversity, it almost have to have dumb things sometimes. Otherwise you characters who are meh or an all a round character. Those are great, but that's not diversity if that's all you have. I get there have been broken moves/characters so we try and inform people when we smell a hint, but I feel its getting excessive and whiny. At some point you have to accept that a solid character is going to have solid moves that are frustrating to deal with. Again, it doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards getting rid of too good of moves, but you also just need to stop letting the pmdt hold your hand and remove the things that are frustrating. /rant

No. nonononono. No. NO. Nononono. NOOO.

This isn't about move strength. It's fine for characters to have moves that are stronger than others. For instance, Falcon's dair is a hell of a lot better than his downsmash. That's not what we are talking about. What we are talking about is animations that don't match the hitboxes, hurtboxes and frames. That is just terrible design plain and simple. Nothing about that adds diversity, it just adds frustration and bull****.

This isn't even about game and watch's moves, it's about hit animations. It's dumb to not have what the character is doing be visiable.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

No. nonononono. No. NO. Nononono. NOOO.

This isn't about move strength. It's fine for characters to have moves that are stronger than others. For instance, Falcon's dair is a hell of a lot better than his downsmash. That's not what we are talking about. What we are talking about is animations that don't match the hitboxes, hurtboxes and frames. That is just terrible design plain and simple. Nothing about that adds diversity, it just adds frustration and bull****.

This isn't even about game and watch's moves, it's about hit animations. It's dumb to not have what the character is doing be visiable.

Sorry, that post actually wasn't in response to you. I totally am in agreement with you on the animation thing (that's why I brought it up after seeing it brawl box). That post was in response to person directly above my post complaining about G&W being good...

 

[Binary Clone]

Speaking of chaingrabs, is it just me or does Ness have a guaranteed dthrow chaingrab on Roy from 0 until ~50%? And if it works on Roy, it probably works on Falcon, too. And then after that dthrow guarantees an aerial until after bair kill percent.

 

[DMG]

Roy, Lucas, Diddy, MK, etc all fit a similar profile of weights and FF speeds. The CG on any character probably lasts longer if they DI away, but they might avoid a followup if you get to the edge and have no room to dash/run for a followup. I remember Awestin having CG's against Oracle and Sethlon back before 3.5 at least

Captain Falcon may not be CG'd as easily, or as early as those characters. Heavier characters like Falcon tend to give the throwing character more lag: I don't remember if Ness Dthrow is one of those throws but my gut says yes, and if so then Falcon would likely hit the ground and be able to tech before early CG's would happen. My gut would say maybe past 50% would be the threshold for him??? Idk, Ness Dthrow I think has been nerfed or changed also between patches so it's hard for me to remember totally

 

[PlateProp]

Can we get it so that Squirtle's tech roll isint ass anymore

Srsly, like erryone has a better roll than him, it makes no sense

 

[JOE!]

Whats with throws and weight again? Doesn't weight only matter for the animation (IE: if you are heavier than who you're throwing it animates faster, and vice versa) and only fall speed is used for throw knockback?

 

[shairn]

Can we get it so that Squirtle's tech roll isint *** anymore

Srsly, like erryone has a better roll than him, it makes no sense

Well someone has to have the worst tech roll.

 

[Strong Badam]

the thrower's weight is not relevant to the throw's animation speed.
not all throws take weight into account for speed. easy to test by throwing bowser then jiggs.

 

[hamyojo]

Can we get it so that Squirtle's tech roll isint *** anymore

Srsly, like erryone has a better roll than him, it makes no sense

He's small AF. It honestly makes a lot of sense for him to have a bad tech. Think about how broken it'd be if he had a Shiek tech AND was crazy small. If anyone should have the worst tech, it's Squirtle.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Knockback is also the same regardless of fall speed. Knockback is just an arbitrary number that determines hitstun and launch speed (based on percentage and weight [except in the case of throws it's always treated as 100 wweight]). Launch speed is applied to launch angle, and their final trajectory is determined by that speed which decays at a set rate per frame (universal I forget number) while they are dragged down by gravity+terminal velocity (commonly referred to together as fall speed)

 

[jtm94]

Ganon's CG isn't why downthrow is problematic. Being chaingrabbed isn't as bad as being downthrown into KO move. It's like playing against ICs where you get grabbed and die at earlier %s than any other grab KOs. It does not make Ganon the best in the game, but it is still stupid by design standards. Ganon is not that bad where he needs a CG on everyone. Link and Toon Link have absolutely terrible grabs, but their grabs and single throw into whatever got taken away? That's not really the best argument.

Also his jab leads into DACUS. SideB>jab>DACUS is GOATlike.

If I hear that GnW's UpB is frame 1 again as a testament to him being broken... He doesn't move until frame 8 and the hibox is inside of him so negatively disjointed. In order for bair to be frame safe on shield(which I don't even think is possible now) you have to activate it perfectly on shield then UpB with the UpB close enough to hit their shield so they can't act, but sometimes I'm not close enough so I get grab armored or just grabbed out of the UpB animation. I actually think you can SDI the bair on shield to move the shield away to safely grab him, but that's probably too advanced for those that don't even DI upthrow/uair/UpB.

 

[Juushichi]

Toon Link's upthrow is really really good though, guys. Same as Link's.

I remember when I taught one of our up-and-coming GnW's how to both punish GnW's recovery at the ledge and also how to do it from a neutral state as well... it was a pretty good time. Dtilt is lame, but it doesn't stop 45 degree jumpins which most of the cast has. There are plenty of things that GnW has, but idk... as someone who played the character for so long (and I don't play him much anymore) maybe I'm immune to a lot of the jank.

Or maybe I've gotten my Up-B hit by Rest/Ike Utilt/other things enough times because it doesn't have any invincibility that I think people just need to get better. I would once again like to express that this character doesn't like people who DD and people who retreat away from him.

Also, I would like to express that Ivy is still a pretty good character. We had a local who placed ~7-13 with some 5th placings here and there damn near ready to drop the character from 3.02 -> 3.5. Won his first tournament on Saturday.

His road to finals: Fox -> Falcon -> ICies (Fumbles) -> Sheik (Drephen) -> Link (Mascot) -> ICies (Fumbles again).

 

[jtm94]

GnW max horizontal distance is a pain. I can get it really good to the left, but I suck at the right. Coincidentally I am also worse at using the c-stick to input the direction of UpB to the right as well so I suck more on the left side of the stage.

I'm used to playing against Umbreon's Ike and Sheik. The only time GnW recovers against him is when he lets me. Sheik bair beats GnW UpB no trade.... it hurts.

 

[Frost | Odds]

He's small AF. It honestly makes a lot of sense for him to have a bad tech. Think about how broken it'd be if he had a Shiek tech AND was crazy small. [hahahaha, can you imagine?] If anyone should have the worst tech, it's Squirtle Fox.

FTFY. Jesus.

And yeah, Ivy is pretty alright still. Played around with her a bit more, she remains pretty degenerate even without the idiocy she used to be able to pull at the ledge.

 

[PlateProp]

He's small AF. It honestly makes a lot of sense for him to have a bad tech. Think about how broken it'd be if he had a Shiek tech AND was crazy small. If anyone should have the worst tech, it's Squirtle.

I was gonna point to Fax, but odds beat me to it.

 

[TreK]

Also, I would like to express that Ivy is still a pretty good character. We had a local who placed ~7-13 with some 5th placings here and there damn near ready to drop the character from 3.02 -> 3.5. Won his first tournament on Saturday.

His road to finals: Fox -> Falcon -> ICies (Fumbles) -> Sheik (Drephen) -> Link (Mascot) -> ICies (Fumbles again).

I want the vids so bad lol

 

[KingDozie]

I still think sonic is really good in the right hands at least.

 

[steelguttey]

(+2) 60:40 || Olimar?

yea olimar sucks now but nothing really changed with that matchup, oli still wins it lol

i can just chuck pikmin at you and wait for you to either approach or die lol

its like 40:60 in olimar's favor and probably olimar's only good matchup rn

sorry im taking half of your goodm atchups away

 

[howbadisbad]

Im surprised people are complaining about upb and dtilt instead of the bucket

Should make gdubbs bucket dispense salt/ the tears of children

 

[TTTTTsd]

I really don't mind Game and Watch's hitboxes, I feel like they're emblematic of his character as a whole. You have a game full of 3D fighters that animate smoothly and then there's this janky 2D LCD screen man invading and being all wonky, and it only sort of makes sense that everything he has would work in absolutely stupid ways.

I just think it has a charm to it, even if it's not designed "well" or proper, and I kind of value that.

I also like watching people play him sooo probably bias.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Fox's tech rolls aren't that long though, they're average in length. Falco's are pretty long tho

 

[PlateProp]

Squirtle's tech roll isint bad because of length, it's bad because of how damn slow it is.

 

[Deleted member]

I'm used to playing against Umbreon's Ike and Sheik. The only time GnW recovers against him is when he lets me. Sheik bair beats GnW UpB no trade.... it hurts.

sometimes i let you back so i can needle you more

<3

 

[robosteven]

Im surprised people are complaining about upb and dtilt instead of the bucket

Should make gdubbs bucket dispense salt/ the tears of children

why would I complain about the bucket

bucket doesn't eat Pikmin

or swords

 

[hamyojo]

Fox's tech roll is standard. He's ever so slightly on the small size, but it's not a huge deal. Squirtle, on the other hand, can freaking duck grabs, and is way lighter so he'll be in tech situations way less often. Falcon's tech roll really isn't super awful, but it seems worse because he's big. We don't need the reverse for Squirtle. Giving Fox a bad tech wouldn't fix him, that's a super narrow-minded way to think of the game.

 

[robosteven]

why don't we just bring everyone up to Fox level

oh wait

 

[Frost | Odds]

Giving Fox a bad tech wouldn't fix him, that's a super narrow-minded way to think of the game.

Insult noted.

Rather than respond in kind, though, I'll note that:

1. Any substantial nerf to Fox's actually problematic aspects (endless shield pressure, neutral game that's almost by definition better than everyone else's due to lasers, ridiculous nair, easy kills at 0%, free kills from uthrow against floaties at around 60%, etcetera) would have pretty much every Melee main howling bloody murder
2. A nerf to Fox's tech roll would not change his gameplay at all, but would allow characters who currently have extreme difficulty punishing him (such as ZSS, Tink, and others) to actually have a hope in hell of challenging him.
3. It certainly wouldn't make Fox underpowered.

Sure, it's probably not a complete solution, but sneering at the mere mention of the idea like that is pretty childish and unproductive. I don't see a single downside, frankly.

 

[hamyojo]

Insult noted.

Rather than respond in kind, though, I'll note that:

1. Any substantial nerf to Fox's actually problematic aspects (endless shield pressure, neutral game that's almost by definition better than everyone else's due to lasers, ridiculous nair, easy kills at 0%, free kills from uthrow against floaties at around 60%, etcetera) would have pretty much every Melee main howling bloody murder
2. A nerf to Fox's tech roll would not change his gameplay at all, but would allow characters who currently have extreme difficulty punishing him (such as ZSS, Tink, and others) to actually have a hope in hell of challenging him.
3. It certainly wouldn't make Fox underpowered.

Sure, it's probably not a complete solution, but sneering at the mere mention of the idea like that is pretty childish and unproductive. I don't see a single downside, frankly.

It was just so knee-jerk for you and Plate to see "here's how we can nerf this character" and think "oh oh oh lets nerf fox because fox"

Everyone knows Fox is the best, but reaching in to a pool of various nerfs you can give a character and pulling out a random one like "tech roll" isn't how to fix PM at all.
Honestly it would be a good change in terms of balance, but what frustrated me so much is that it was just kinda out of context. Not every balance discussion should be based around how to bring Fox down and every other character up. That's why I said narrow-minded.

 

[didds]

The downside is that in theory, a bad tech roll shouldn't matter for a character like fox anyway. You just stated his real issues in your first point, so the change would be wasted energy that some people would see and go "well anythings better than nothing" and others would say "but shine, usmash, fox stuff still? This mu is still hard as hell"

His overwhelming neutral and stupid punish game are too deeply built into the character, though that's what needs to be toned down if people actually expect a reasonable change with how fox performs.

It seems to me that someone just has to be unhappy. Either we accept that fox is the king so we don't lose our melee fox mains, or we make healthy changes and hope that the fox mains are reasonable enough to accept them (which should be fine as long as everyone else is reasonable too and doesn't act like douche nuggets).

edit: for @ Frost | Odds

 

[PsionicSabreur]

Landing lag on Fox's up-b sounds particularly appealing because it removes up-b -> uair, even if technically his recovery isn't too good.

 

[ThegreatVaporeon1]

Why are people complaining about Luigi's recovery? Nothing has changed about it aside from down b rising higher because of simultaneous button presses. You can still easily gimp him offstage with a well timed aerial, and he'll have a lot of trouble getting back. Wait for his down b, hit him, and watch him fall. Punish the side b which he has to commit too for half a second. It's not difficult; I mean i can understand misfire being somewhat of an issue, but even that can be predictable if Luigi is far off from the stage. Even if he does misfire, you can stop it where its at with any hitbox.
Him grabbing ledge with side b has been the case since 2.5 (probably even before), so i don't see the issue here since it never was an issue before.
Down b rise only goes vertically so just throw out an aerial and its ggs.

Honestly I don't see the problem here. His recovery is decent now because of everyones recovery being nerfed, but it's still easily taken care of. Don't be afraid to go offstage.

This is in reply to some of the comments I saw about it in the previous pages.