Okay, I've lurked on this thread enough and heard absolutely nothing but whining and complaining about ZSS.
She is really, really good.
Her combo game is absurdly amazing. Her movement and offstage edge guards are top notch. Dtilt hit confirms into kills at relevant %s. Utilt is a godly frame 3 mixup option for shield pressure and HITS BEHIND HER, starting combos off of disrespect to her cross-up shield pokes. Her uair semi-spikes and she can go SUPER DUPER deep for offensive off-stage edge guards because her down-b cancelled 2nd jump into rising up-b recovery CAN RECOVER FROM THE BOTTOM BLAST ZONE OF FOD. Down-b divekick platform cancel and full aerial control on her down-b jump means that it's hard to punish ZSS even after you get her above you-- she can just slip right past you or even hit you on the way down and start her own combo thanks to her dair goomba stomp. Bair is amazing and can be safely spammed infinitely on all shields except Marth's and D3's if spaced correctly until it inevitably shield pokes them. Nair is intangible and uair covers multiple platform tech options, making uthrow onto platform a really good option. Her blaster TRAVELS THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF PS2 HOLY **** WHY and can force opponents into shield.
And let me just go a little bit into the pandora's box of mixup options that ZSS has for her recovery.
First off, she has the ability to recover high, something that she didn't have in 3.02. This is a godsend. down-b cancel 2nd jump with rising up-b and air dodge. Boom. Don't even have to deal with the tether situation if you don't want to. Drift downwards and mixup to safety and you already have a recovery that's better than DK's. She also has dair for the risky business recovery. There have been many times where I double jump dair onto edge guarding opponents in order to augment my recovery. Situational, but the option is there. On any of the stages that have non-trivial walls, you can down-b into the wall and wall jump uair to swat people off of your ledge. Same thing on tether reel in. Forced reel in fade away down-b into wall, wall jump, uair or bair. Mix up your timing with multiple wall jumps. OR JUST DOWN-B INTO THEM AND FLIPSTOOL. The timing is very tight, but if they're sleeping on the ledge, you can just fade away and literally jump over them while they wait for your forced reel in (Which will never come).
Look at all of the options that I just listed. And they're all offensive options, too. ZSS has one of the most threatening recoveries in the game and people who are sleeping for even a little bit will get punished for flubbing the edge guard. On a stage like Distant Planet, it is tough to edge guard her. Not to mention that she controls so much space and can go so deep offstage on her own terms due to the sheer vertical distance of her recovery that she can bait opponents lower and lower offstage and simply out-recover them.
But all I hear in this thread is whining about how bad her throws are. Who cares if you can't follow up on them. If you have a throw that can put opponents on platforms, you have a pretty good throw. AND you have one of the scarier dash dance games in the cast? AND you have a projectile that travels full stage and forces shield or jump? AND you have a god-like platform movement game with down-b cancels and her slick, sliiiiick wavedash? AND you can chase people vertically so crazy because you essentially have 3 jumps?
Dude, don't listen to this guy who's complaining about ZSS. She's straight OP. Gets bodied by spacies, sure (still trying to figure out that matchup myself), but she's one of the most high-octane fighters in the entire cast. And from personal experience, everyone I play who tries to edge guard me gets punished if they don't mix it up. And people who do nothing but sleep and hold onto ledge are the first ones to taste that tasty, tasty recovery mixup game.
If anything, they should nerf ZSS's recovery next patch. And that isn't sarcastic in any way, shape, or form. People are maaaad underutilizing her because they are still mourning over run-cancelled blaster.
- Jason Waterfalls
No one ever said zss doesn't have strengths, the argument is that, while she has some really good strengths, her weaknesses outweigh them. Anyway, some corrections: Yes she has insane movement, yes uptilt is pretty good (though it is risky because it loses hard to CC and shield. Her upair doesn't quite semispike (She doesn't have a tipman), it has the same backwards hitbox as falcon. Yeah, she can recoveeer from the bottom of FoD, and so can a lot of characters including luigi. Her frame 40 blaster fully charged blaster can travel all of PS2, but fully charged blaster is pretty bad (Link's fully charged arrow can go farther, but it's bad). Uncharged is decent, but it's kind of lame to use.
She DID have the option to recover high in 3.02, there was just no real reason to. However, since her up-b's ledge detection is huge, you have to be really close to ledge vertically, or far from it horizontally. Because of that, it's can lose to a lot of characters' ledgehop biar on reaction to the up-b lag frames. Can you tether drop down-b? (EDIT: You can't
) if so, that would actually change things... Either way, her recovery has 50-50s on stages with walls, but if you aren't close to stage, it has none on stages without walls. I'd rather have her recovery (and other up-b tethers) be redesigned a bit. ZSS didn't get hit as hard, but ivy and oli are so free to edgeguard it hurts.
As for her throws, upair can put people on platfroms at specific %s, but literally every character in the game can do that with their throws, and almost all of them can do it better than zss. The main problem I have with the throws isn't that they are bad, it's that they don't work properly. Her upthrow can be DI'd into by heavies at low %s so they can hit you out of it, and it doesn't send them anywhere or lead to any follow ups unless they don't do the single correct DI for all of ZSS throws. What I'd want, is for her Dthrow to actually work as a tech chase throw, and for her upthrow to be a positional throw (by making it similar to marth upthrow.)
Finally, no, I have not been underutilized her because of not having DC blaster. I have been in the lab for 3.5 ZSS constantly, trying to figure out everything she can do? A few weeks after 3.5, I gave up on that ever coming back.
I would post all of her major weakneeses, but I've already done that and it's a really really long post that I don't want to write again.
But but but
Muh throws don't auto combo like the rest of my moveset!
Muh blaster now only forces a defensive mix-up instead of requiring straight avoidance!
Muh longest reaching move can be CC'd if I don't space it well!
Muh multi hits can be SDI'd out of if I don't use them in the right scenario!
Muh recovery is predictable if my opponent reads me!
-ZSS players 2015
*My throws don't function as intended
*My blaster isn't fun to use anymore
*My frame 30 move can be CC'd on the sweetspot at basically every %, and the middle hit still rarely connects to the sweetspot (like it's supposed to) regardless of cc.
*My multihits can be escaped without even using SDI
*My recovery has a 50 frame animation with 30 frames of endlag when somebody holds ledge and does nothing else.
So tired of this crap. Why am I not allowed to have an nonpositive opinion on my character without mocked and strawmanned to death. There has been maybe 4-5 times where someone has actually addressed a point I made, and the other 99% has just been inventing new opinions to attack.
Here's the complaints I have about ZSS.
-3.5 made her playstyle much less fun.
- Her dthrow is supposed to be a tech chase throw, but it's not unless they are fast fallers, or low% semi fast fallers, or 0% semi floaties.
-All her other throws send them away. Just far enough for them not to combo, but not enough to be good positional throws.
- Her upsmash and fair, while working better than 3.02, still don't work. Even without SDI, people regularly just fall out of them. Also, up-bs hitbox seems to not work sometimes for some reason.
- The vast majority of her kit loses to holding down (even downsmash).
- Most of the time, edgeguarding her recvoery is brainless.
- She relies too much on spaced bair.
- Her nair's forward range
Now, none of these have anything to do with vaibility, it's just about how the character works. I also hold the opinion that she is on the bottom half of the tier list, but that may change. I thought she was upper mid for a while until I started playing people who exploited her recovery fairly well, and CC'd all my friggin moves lol. Her best option to beat cc is grab, but that's a weaker conversion than jab.
She has a lot more weaknesses than what I listed above, but, believe it or not, I'm completely fine with her having weaknesses. She should have poor damage values, she should have mediocre at best throws, she should have really slow and laggy long ranged moves, she should struggle to kill and etc.
What I would like to see changed on ZSS:
- Make upsmash connect better, and stop up-b from going directly through people sometimes.
- Up-b tether reworks. I think the way they work right now it kinda dumb, and I doubt many people disagree. Ztethers were a big problem, but up-b tethers weren't so much. Getting an extra tether cling only helps zss, but only on walled stages. I am not sure there will be a medium between "really hard to punish" and "unbelievably easy" with tehc urrent mechanic, but if there was someway to put a hitbox on ledge when they grapple it, that could lead to good up-b tether mechanics.
- Increase nair range, revert damage to 10 from 12.
- Upthrow made kinda like marth upthrow or m2 upthrow or something. Just sends them up high, but doesn't combo ever. (Not a kill throw until like 230%)
- Dthrow Made more like kirby or d3 dthrow, so it actually tech chases, but it doesn't have direct follow ups unless they are floaty and DI in or something.
- Fthrow and bthrow, maybe more kbg or slightly lower angle, but probably not needed
- Down-b No longer refreshes after being hit. Getting all these buffs without taking something away would make her a little too good, and this is a dumb thing I wouldn't mind leaving. It lets her constantly jump out of juggles and makes her impossible to gimp from far off stage.
