Tier List Speculation

[tasteless gentleman]

3.5 Bowser was the most aggravating and frustrating character I've played against in a fighting game, and I've played against vortex characters in SF4. He needed to be redesigned. 3.6 Bowser sucks and that sucks for Bowser mains but going back to 3.5 is something that shouldn't happen.

I also feel like the character allowed weaker players to beat out stronger players due to the ridiculous matchup knowledge required to compete against him. Our local Bowser who was getting top 3 at every weekly in 3.5 isn't even breaking top 8 since the patch, and it's not because of the Bowser nerfs, because he would play Sonic/Falco as well.

I dont like this opinion and here is why, Every big name bowser player has switched to a different character (odds, american bowser, eletric tuba, Me (but i dont clain to be big name, but locally more or less)) because bowser LOST all of his options to be viable (not just armour, but range, power, follow ups, size, trajectory) and they started losing to players who they would three stock in 3.5. The reason we are not as good is because we had to pick up a different character (be it a new character or a different version of bowser all together) after spending 100s of hours on a 2.5 to 3.5 (basically the same kit, minus a few armour tweaks). The only people who should hold an opinion are people with alot of bowser experience (playing as or against) Because everyone else says "hes not bad, hes just different" Or "hes jank, im offended he can still walk because i was not patient enough to beat him" which is not the case... His buffs were overshadowed by nerfs and some buffs were arguably nerfs anyway (size, trajectories, ect) Its 3.5 pit all over again. If You take away something, you have to give something to balance the scales (20% speed increase is not enough to make up for armour loss AND 25% less power AND a bad trajectory angle

 

[Apollo Ali]

I still think the truly ideal solution is to make characters capable of winning neutral more often have to do so.

If character a wins neutral 8 out of 10 times, make them have to win neutral 7 to 10 times to land a kill (even counting proper tech reads and do mixups as a potential win). Then, let character b, who really only wins neutral 2 out of 10 times only need to win it 2 to 4 times to land the kill (same restrictions). Not counting gimps on recovery or anything like that.

Just a general idea I had while sweeping floors tonight /shrug

This was a big reason why I liked playing DDD, though he kills by gimps and not outright kill power and I think that's okay. That's why I'm so salty over this patch! They nerfed the neutral tools of a character who should have to win neutral less. why.

 

[NWRL]

I can only imagine that the players who hold opinions such as this are literally incapable of forcing themselves to to wait for Bowser to attack first and then whiff punish Bowser.



One could argue that the weaker player is the player who can't dedicate himself to the several-minutes'-worth of study that Bowser's armor system demanded in order to be countered by dashing away, rolling, or hitting the Z button...

seriously the character was not a complicated matchup. I could give any character in the game a two minute primer on playing against the dreaded 3.5 Bowser:

1) don't try to trade with his dashattack or nair or smash attacks, he will win the trade
2) DI all of his moves in front of him and slightly down, except for when he tries to kill you with fair (behind him and up), combo you with utilt (behind him and down), and klaw bthrow (in front of him and up)
3)his only oos option that beats grab is upB which is highly commital and only safe at the ledge. it loses to a well-spaced aerial on shield, shield pressure followed by dashing away, and shield pressure followed by shield. he can nair oos, which loses to all the same things, but also loses to grab during startup unlike upB
4) just grab him, seriously, his rolls and spotdodge lose to grab
5) he has decent horizontal recovery and a deep sweetspot, so instead of trying to edgeguard him from onstage go ahead and gimp him or hit him with spikes/meteors.
6) his edgeguards are unabashedly overpowered. once you're sufficiently far offstage, you're basically dead, especially if you don't have a horizontal burst movement option because he'll just downB your recovery on reaction, or klaw bthrow you after hogging ledge. (Note: this is the only truly "polarizing" aspect of Bowser's design and it was basically left unaddressed in 3.6 because.... reasons)

just showing the players in my local scene the basic counterplay to his tools was enough to swing most people's opinions on Bowser. you honestly just sound like you couldn't control the impulse to go in with attacks in neutral instead of playing a bit more patiently

I had no issues beating our local Bowser in 3.5, I play Ike so I just grabbed him and tossed him around until kill percents, I am glad that my character has some of the best grabs in the game. Not every character has that luxury.

The frustrating part was limiting myself to basically only grabbing, because if I mistimed a whiff punish, he could just Koopa klaw through my attack and then get a ridiculous punish which could lead to death, that doesn't even include stuff like guaranteed upthrow to fair which kills super early. I'm not gonna get into edgeguards since you already admitted that they're busted.

I think what turned my opinion on Bowser from a neutral to a negative one was watching our regions best Falco player losing to our Bowser simply because he picked Bowser, that matchup is a joke.

 

[steelguttey]

Because that's how it was in Melee

ah, the bcuz melee meme strikes again!

 

[tasteless gentleman]

I had no issues beating our local Bowser in 3.5, I play Ike so I just grabbed him and tossed him around until kill percents, I am glad that my character has some of the best grabs in the game. Not every character has that luxury.

The frustrating part was limiting myself to basically only grabbing, because if I mistimed a whiff punish, he could just Koopa klaw through my attack and then get a ridiculous punish which could lead to death, that doesn't even include stuff like guaranteed upthrow to fair which kills super early. I'm not gonna get into edgeguards since you already admitted that they're busted.

I think what turned my opinion on Bowser from a neutral to a negative one was watching our regions best Falco player losing to our Bowser simply because he picked Bowser, that matchup is a joke.

Its a bad match up, but its doable if falco didnt get grabbed and camped laser approaches. And free up throw into fair.... are you talking about falcon... *sarcasm*

But seriously the falco match up is pretty good for falco now if your patient, and if you had no trouble with bowser, why do you think he deserved more nerfs than buffs (1:5 i believe)

 

[JOE!]

Anyone else think it would've been cooler if PM just went the way they did with brawl characters but for all the cast?

Edit:

Semi tangent/rant, but to me it seems that the biggest rifts in the PM community are its ties to melee. "Becuz Maylay" types of changes, trying to keep melee tops the same while other characters alter wildly/they have questionable aspects already, keeping characters that have years of development in with a cast that have only had a little over a year in some cases if you don't include patches to them skewing perception. I dunno, I feel like it could have been really cool if the team went balls out and made say "PM Falco" as opposed to "Melee Falco, in PM".

 

[tasteless gentleman]

I had no issues beating our local Bowser in 3.5, I play Ike so I just grabbed him and tossed him around until kill percents, I am glad that my character has some of the best grabs in the game. Not every character has that luxury.

The frustrating part was limiting myself to basically only grabbing, because if I mistimed a whiff punish, he could just Koopa klaw through my attack and then get a ridiculous punish which could lead to death, that doesn't even include stuff like guaranteed upthrow to fair which kills super early. I'm not gonna get into edgeguards since you already admitted that they're busted.

I think what turned my opinion on Bowser from a neutral to a negative one was watching our regions best Falco player losing to our Bowser simply because he picked Bowser, that matchup is a joke.

Actually more importantly, have you seen bowser MU spread in 3.5? Have you seen it in 3.6? Its like... melee bowser level almost

 

[The_NZA]

I'm curious if I'm an exception here, but a lot of the complaints people are lobbying aren't resonating strongly with me. It seems like there are a set of arguments about PM 3.6 that are conveying negativity, and are all presuming to come from the same side, but are actually distinct in which camps they are coming from.

My camp is as follows: I think a lot of problematic designs that were addressed in 3.6 and 3.5 were good decisions, WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS. Ness's PKfire, Zelda changes, Yoshi having a ton of strong recovery options, Luigi's cyclone sending him to the moon, the toning down of Roy's recovery, Lucario's recovery changes, aura charges--you name it, are all examples of successful changes. Some things that were removed were unnecessarily removing strengths off of characters that need core strengths over the rest of the cast (DDD's dair, Ivy's bair, Bowser, Squirtles' squirtle stuff, Yoshi's dair, IMO Lucario's ASC should IASA at 6 not 8, but whatever). Some design stuff exists that I still have a problem with (GnW's animations, landing hitboxes, upb-> jump design, and Wario's bite > waft).

Overall, Project M 3.6 does a wonderful job balancing at the top, and IMO is the best balanced and most enjoyable smash game for the top half of the cast.

This sentence summarizes the camp I'm in.

Barring some adjustments they could still make to Lucario and Wario, I really enjoy the metagame between the top 20ish characters in the game and I think they are designed fairly well. Sheik seems unfun and kind of boring to play as, and that might be a problem, but that's the extent of it.

IMO 3.6 was a failure of an opportunity to buff the people in the middle, lower mid, and bottom to have better matchup spreads and traits that are competitive with the top 20ish characters. Bowser, Charizard, DDD, DK, Ivy, Jiggs, Kirby, Link, Mewtwo(idk?), GnW, Ness, Olimar(idk?), Pikachu, Snake, Yoshi, Zelda could all use slight adjustments or Ganon 3.5 level adjustments and buffs to have less polarizing matchups.

If those were done, the next version of PM would have minimal complaints for me.

the biggest rifts in the PM community are its ties to melee. "Becuz Maylay" types of changes, trying to keep melee tops the same while other characters alter wildly/they have questionable aspects already

This IMO is not the problem. At this point, I don't think Fox, Falco, Shiek, Peach, or Marth are detriments to the success of PM as a game. I honestly feel the biggest failure of PM 3.6 is the missed opportunity to now buff the bottom to integrate well with these other characters. Plenty of characters offer incredibly entertaining matches against any and all of these characters listed above, not limited to Roy, Diddy, Rob, Sonic, Pit, Toon Link, Wolf, Lucario, Ike, Wario, etc.

Nerfing, then buffing, repeatedly in a cycle, each time being less extreme until you hit a healthy middle is not a sign of repeated failure. It is the arduous process required to produce success. We won't ever have a 3.02 again and we need to stop being afraid of that possibility if we want to do right by this game.

 

[steelguttey]

Olimar(idk?)

lots of oli players think he got nerfed because the jetpack sucks but really, its one of the best buffs hes gotten in a while, not because its a realy recovery (which is nice) but because he can now have less than 4 pikmin which is ****ing HUGE. he probably has 6-7 bad matchups total and nothing too bad (ivy def got better) and everything else is even or better, mostly even. hes high mid rn

side b is still stupid and rng is still there so thats kinda bad but still this is an overall nice patch for oli

 

[Boiko]

lots of oli players think he got nerfed because the jetpack sucks but really, its one of the best buffs hes gotten in a while, not because its a realy recovery (which is nice) but because he can now have less than 4 pikmin which is ****ing HUGE. he probably has 6-7 bad matchups total and nothing too bad (ivy def got better) and everything else is even or better, mostly even. hes high mid rn

side b is still stupid and rng is still there so thats kinda bad but still this is an overall nice patch for oli

I'm not saying you're wrong. But having only 6-7 bad match ups is usually not indicative of high mid.

 

[JOE!]

I
This IMO is not the problem. At this point, I don't think Fox, Falco, Shiek, Peach, or Marth are detriments to the success of PM as a game. I honestly feel the biggest failure of PM 3.6 is the missed opportunity to now buff the bottom to integrate well with these other characters. Plenty of characters offer incredibly entertaining matches against any and all of these characters listed above, not limited to Roy, Rob, Sonic, Pit, Toon Link, Wolf, Lucario, Ike, Wario, etc.

At this point no, but I wasn't talking 3.6 but more a "general" approach to the game. Characters like jiggs or even DK are held back by "becus maylay" I feel, as well as random instances of questionable things being grandfathered in that would've never been designed by the PMDT. It just feels strange at times to look at change logs and see "Link had X throws altered to match Melee", and then "Lucas got XYZ new things and is essentially an original PM character compared to Brawl".

 

[steelguttey]

the way i see it, the fact i have so little good matchups (like 6 MAYBE) and the other 33 are all even is pretty high mid. tier lists are hard tho

 

[The_NZA]

Anyone else think it would've been cooler if PM just went the way they did with brawl characters but for all the cast?

Edit:

Semi tangent/rant, but to me it seems that the biggest rifts in the PM community are its ties to melee. "Becuz Maylay" types of changes, trying to keep melee tops the same while other characters alter wildly/they have questionable aspects already, keeping characters that have years of development in with a cast that have only had a little over a year in some cases if you don't include patches to them skewing perception. I dunno, I feel like it could have been really cool if the team went balls out and made say "PM Falco" as opposed to "Melee Falco, in PM".

I'm not saying you're wrong. But having only 6-7 bad match ups is usually not indicative of high mid.

Really? 6-7 bad matchups sounds quintessentially upper mid to me if they aren't too bad. Roy probably has that and he's considered pretty upper mid-high.

 

[Binary Clone]

Really? 6-7 bad matchups sounds quintessentially upper mid to me if they aren't too bad. Roy probably has that and he's considered pretty upper mid.

I think it really depends on what those matchups are, though. I think Roy is probably closer to high tier, despite some difficult MUs. Some of his more difficult matchups are characters like DDD and Luigi.

If, on the otherhand, you have even or winning matchups against the entire cast except for Marth, Fox, and Falcon, then the character is necessarily lower tier than someone who has more losing matchups, but those losing MU's are D3, Bowser, ICs, and Olimar, just because those characters are less common and have less presence in and influence on the meta.

It's kind of a quality over quantity type of thing that needs to be considered in cases like this. Roy having good spacies MUs is much more important than him sometimes having trouble with floaties.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

I'm curious if I'm an exception here, but a lot of the complaints people are lobbying aren't resonating strongly with me. It seems like there are a set of arguments about PM 3.6 that are conveying negativity, and are all presuming to come from the same side, but are actually distinct in which camps they are coming from.

My camp is as follows: I think a lot of problematic designs that were addressed in 3.6 and 3.5 were good decisions, WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS. Ness's PKfire, Zelda changes, Yoshi having a ton of strong recovery options, Luigi's cyclone sending him to the moon, the toning down of Roy's recovery, Lucario's recovery changes, aura charges--you name it, are all examples of successful changes. Some things that were removed were unnecessarily removing strengths off of characters that need core strengths over the rest of the cast (DDD's dair, Ivy's bair, Bowser, Squirtles' squirtle stuff, Yoshi's dair, IMO Lucario's ASC should IASA at 6 not 8, but whatever). Some design stuff exists that I still have a problem with (GnW's animations, landing hitboxes, upb-> jump design, and Wario's bite > waft).

Overall, Project M 3.6 does a wonderful job balancing at the top, and IMO is the best balanced and most enjoyable smash game for the top half of the cast.

This sentence summarizes the camp I'm in.

Barring some adjustments they could still make to Lucario and Wario, I really enjoy the metagame between the top 20ish characters in the game and I think they are designed fairly well. Sheik seems unfun and kind of boring to play as, and that might be a problem, but that's the extent of it.

IMO 3.6 was a failure of an opportunity to buff the people in the middle, lower mid, and bottom to have better matchup spreads and traits that are competitive with the top 20ish characters. Bowser, Charizard, DDD, DK, Ivy, Jiggs, Kirby, Link, Mewtwo(idk?), GnW, Ness, Olimar(idk?), Pikachu, Snake, Yoshi, Zelda could all use slight adjustments or Ganon 3.5 level adjustments and buffs to have less polarizing matchups.

If those were done, the next version of PM would have minimal complaints for me.




This IMO is not the problem. At this point, I don't think Fox, Falco, Shiek, Peach, or Marth are detriments to the success of PM as a game. I honestly feel the biggest failure of PM 3.6 is the missed opportunity to now buff the bottom to integrate well with these other characters. Plenty of characters offer incredibly entertaining matches against any and all of these characters listed above, not limited to Roy, Rob, Sonic, Pit, Toon Link, Wolf, Lucario, Ike, Wario, etc.

Nerfing, then buffing, repeatedly in a cycle, each time being less extreme until you hit a healthy middle is not a sign of repeated failure. It is the arduous process required to produce success. We won't ever have a 3.02 again and we need to stop being afraid of that possibility if we want to do right by this game.

This is the best and most well thought out answer i have encountered summarizing 3.6. I will reference this for the rest of the 3.6 era instead of "my pm main sucks now" lol

 

[Boiko]

Binary Clone basically hit the nail on the head. What's important to consider is the relevance of said losing/winning match ups. When you have more losing match ups, it's more likely that they'll become relevant more often (obviously, lol).

Six-seven match ups is not a lot at all though. That would mean he beats or goes even with 33 characters. That's an insane spread, no matter what the relevance of his MUs are.

 

[steelguttey]

yea see the problem is that olimar has the bad mu's of fox, ivy, falco, tink, marth and ike and good matchups of ganon, bowser and every low tier that everyone else beats i cant think of them rn

oli's best attribute is that he goes even with ****ing everyone rn and its so weird because of the whole high risk high reward thing he has goin on. the small yellow buff made his matchups against disjoints so much better, marth isnt even that bad now, 6-4 at best. i think the only thing left for oli is rng and getting a zair then he'll be perfect.

 

[JOE!]

the funny thing about the MU web is the prevalence of secondaries/multi-mains in PM. Sure you go even/beat 3/4 of the cast, but you never know if somebody can whip out that remaining 1/4 against you specifically for your MU/whatever.

 

[steelguttey]

and really, who doesnt play marth

 

[Boiko]

the funny thing about the MU web is the prevalence of secondaries/multi-mains in PM. Sure you go even/beat 3/4 of the cast, but you never know if somebody can whip out that remaining 1/4 against you specifically for your MU/whatever.

And then they never know if you can answer back.

Last time I played Junebug he said, "I think a Bo5 set between us would come down to a counter picking war." I didn't beat him with Samus, but I came very close. I counter picked him to WW and he switched to Ganondorf so I switched to Ness. Then he CP'd to Smashville and I stayed Ness but he switched to Diddy.

It's just one big circle, and I think that it's pretty awesome.

 

[The_NZA]

And then they never know if you can answer back.

Last time I played Junebug he said, "I think a Bo5 set between us would come down to a counter picking war." I didn't beat him with Samus, but I came very close. I counter picked him to WW and he switched to Ganondorf so I switched to Ness. Then he CP'd to Smashville and I stayed Ness but he switched to Diddy.

It's just one big circle, and I think that it's pretty awesome.

The cool thing is, those matchups probably aren't even that dramatically bad in any direction. Ness v. Diddy is probs slightly in diddy's favor, Ness v. Ganon is probs slightly in Ness's favor, Samus v. Diddy and Samus v. Ganon are who knows.

Now, if he had a pocket Samus, that would be a different story :D. I HATE Ness v. Samus.

 

[Boiko]

The cool thing is, those matchups probably aren't even that dramatically bad in any direction. Ness v. Diddy is probs slightly in diddy's favor, Ness v. Ganon is probs slightly in Ness's favor, Samus v. Diddy and Samus v. Ganon are who knows.

Now, if he had a pocket Samus, that would be a different story :D. I HATE Ness v. Samus.

Yeah, Samus beats Diddy and can have a hard time with Ganon, but nothing is unwinnable for either side, so yeah, it is super cool!

The entire Ness Skype group has been complaining about the Samus MU lately and I've just been like, idk I kind of like it.

 

[TheoryofSmaug]

I'm curious if I'm an exception here, but a lot of the complaints people are lobbying aren't resonating strongly with me. It seems like there are a set of arguments about PM 3.6 that are conveying negativity, and are all presuming to come from the same side, but are actually distinct in which camps they are coming from.

My camp is as follows: I think a lot of problematic designs that were addressed in 3.6 and 3.5 were good decisions, WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS. Ness's PKfire, Zelda changes, Yoshi having a ton of strong recovery options, Luigi's cyclone sending him to the moon, the toning down of Roy's recovery, Lucario's recovery changes, aura charges--you name it, are all examples of successful changes. Some things that were removed were unnecessarily removing strengths off of characters that need core strengths over the rest of the cast (DDD's dair, Ivy's bair, Bowser, Squirtles' squirtle stuff, Yoshi's dair, IMO Lucario's ASC should IASA at 6 not 8, but whatever). Some design stuff exists that I still have a problem with (GnW's animations, landing hitboxes, upb-> jump design, and Wario's bite > waft).

Overall, Project M 3.6 does a wonderful job balancing at the top, and IMO is the best balanced and most enjoyable smash game for the top half of the cast.

This sentence summarizes the camp I'm in.

Barring some adjustments they could still make to Lucario and Wario, I really enjoy the metagame between the top 20ish characters in the game and I think they are designed fairly well. Sheik seems unfun and kind of boring to play as, and that might be a problem, but that's the extent of it.

IMO 3.6 was a failure of an opportunity to buff the people in the middle, lower mid, and bottom to have better matchup spreads and traits that are competitive with the top 20ish characters. Bowser, Charizard, DDD, DK, Ivy, Jiggs, Kirby, Link, Mewtwo(idk?), GnW, Ness, Olimar(idk?), Pikachu, Snake, Yoshi, Zelda could all use slight adjustments or Ganon 3.5 level adjustments and buffs to have less polarizing matchups.

If those were done, the next version of PM would have minimal complaints for me.




This IMO is not the problem. At this point, I don't think Fox, Falco, Shiek, Peach, or Marth are detriments to the success of PM as a game. I honestly feel the biggest failure of PM 3.6 is the missed opportunity to now buff the bottom to integrate well with these other characters. Plenty of characters offer incredibly entertaining matches against any and all of these characters listed above, not limited to Roy, Diddy, Rob, Sonic, Pit, Toon Link, Wolf, Lucario, Ike, Wario, etc.

Nerfing, then buffing, repeatedly in a cycle, each time being less extreme until you hit a healthy middle is not a sign of repeated failure. It is the arduous process required to produce success. We won't ever have a 3.02 again and we need to stop being afraid of that possibility if we want to do right by this game.

So much this, I don't usually agree with what you have to say. But the way you put this is brilliant and hits the nail right on the head. For the top 20-25 characters, 3.6 feels amazing and super well balanced. But some of the rest of the cast got ****ed up bad. And it is sooo stupid that the some of the worst characters in the game got nerfed further in 3.6.

Right now I'm really irritated with the game and have not had the obsession to play it simply because my favorite character, my old main Bowser, feels like crap right now, and he is crap. Not only is he the worst character in the game right now (yes worse than Puff), he also feels crappy to play as. My training partners DI and SDI is nuts, and with 3.6 Bowser, while it is harder to win neutral in 3.6 (The dash dance buff is far overshadowed by the DA nerf, I am not saying that 3.5 DA was cool though, just that it was the only way for Bowser to win neutral.) so, harder to win neutral and now there is no punish game whatsoever. Side B is faster but if you get it, there are no follow ups, none of Bowsers moves link into each other, he gets nothing off of Grabs, and he has no kill moves, and his gimping ability was severely nerfed.

Right now I don't even want to play my favorite video game ever because if I want a chance to win or even play well, I have to play a character I don't enjoy. Hell I might as well just go play melee.

 

[Zigludo]

The frustrating part was limiting myself to basically only grabbing, because if I mistimed a whiff punish, he could just Koopa klaw through my attack and then get a ridiculous punish which could lead to death,

3.5 Koopa Klaw never lead into any combos on Ike ever, as long as you DI the Klaw properly, which, in the situation you described, would give you

16 frames grab startup
3 or so frames of hitlag from whatever unsafe move of yours that Bowser armored through
19 additional frames before the Klaw throw

which means you had a whopping 38 frames (633 ms) to DI away and slightly downward which would prevent Bowser's combo from continuing. you are, in essence, complaining about something that never would have existed if you had taken the aforementioned several-minute's-worth of getting to understand how the character works.

the more you know

also I'm convinced that Falco into Bowser was Falco's worst matchup in any game ever, but I don't think there's another particularly wrong with that. I think spacies are allowed to have one or two unwinnable matchups lol. maybe your Falco player should have learned a secondary

 

[TheoryofSmaug]

3.5 Koopa Klaw never lead into any combos on Ike ever, as long as you DI the Klaw properly, which, in the situation you described, would give you

16 frames grab startup
3 or so frames of hitlag from whatever unsafe move of yours that Bowser armored through
19 additional frames before the Klaw throw

which means you had a whopping 38 frames (633 ms) to DI away and slightly downward which would prevent Bowser's combo from continuing. you are, in essence, complaining about something that never would have existed if you had taken the aforementioned several-minute's-worth of getting to understand how the character works.

the more you know

also I'm convinced that Falco into Bowser was Falco's worst matchup in any game ever, but I don't think there's another particularly wrong with that. I think spacies are allowed to have one or two unwinnable matchups lol. maybe your Falco player should have learned a secondary

I wasn't trying to say 3.5 KK worked, just pointing out that 3.6 Klaw doesn't. And yeah, in 3.5 Bowser destroyed Falco, but in 3.6 I think Falco wins the match up. Bowser has no punish game on fast fallers.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

3.5 Koopa Klaw never lead into any combos on Ike ever, as long as you DI the Klaw properly, which, in the situation you described, would give you

16 frames grab startup
3 or so frames of hitlag from whatever unsafe move of yours that Bowser armored through
19 additional frames before the Klaw throw

which means you had a whopping 38 frames (633 ms) to DI away and slightly downward which would prevent Bowser's combo from continuing. you are, in essence, complaining about something that never would have existed if you had taken the aforementioned several-minute's-worth of getting to understand how the character works.

the more you know

also I'm convinced that Falco into Bowser was Falco's worst matchup in any game ever, but I don't think there's another particularly wrong with that. I think spacies are allowed to have one or two unwinnable matchups lol. maybe your Falco player should have learned a secondary

I think that match up depended on DI alot, if you Di KK correctly, the best follow up is a dash grab at low percent BUT if you DI wrong or not at all, its a 0 to death combo... it doesnt work anymore so sharing it wont hurt, KK into KK into KK into upsmash into forward air into edgeguard... Of course this doesnt work anymore and could be done with almost any character on a spacy (just different moves) but it was much faster with bowser, takes maybe 5-10 seconds if you shorten all the KK animations and a total of 5 attacks into an edge gaurd... but meh it seemed balanced since it was DI depending


EDIT somehow this is replied to the Ike player, im refering to falco and spacies not ike

 

[Bazkip]

That's what we are discussing, the feasibility of moves to be used in competitive play; discussing anything else, as in "the likelihood of killing assuming it hits" is really insignificant if it's that much harder to land. There's more pre-requisites to landing bowser's fsmash (that is, more difficult pre-requisites, being usually a hard read on a recovery/approach spacing) than most other moves, it's on the extreme end of the scale, it's a relevant reducio ad absurdum; but to say that falcon's knee and ganon's everything are on the same location the scale and falcon's knee is "on a fast character with combos" is still not accurate. Ganon's kill moves have way more coverage and utility all for the same cost, whereas falcon's knee is more likely to be restricted to being a combo finisher. Being a combo finisher has more pre-requisites, such as ending neutral with a tool that starts the combo, extending the combo to kill percent/location, and connecting the set-up into the finisher; it's reliant on both ending neutral in a certain way AND certain kinds of DI lining up; falcon has enough DI mix-ups/tools to make this feasible a lot of the time, but not ALWAYS. Meanwhile ganon only has to end neutral in order for his kill moves to actually kill, because his neutral consists of kill moves.

The upside of being able to land them easier out of neutral doesn't change the fact that Falcon's neutral is miles ahead of Ganon's. Due to Falcon winning neutral far more frequently than Ganon he still gets more opportunities even with counterplay, and his reward is higher. Are we seriously arguing this?

Because that's how it was in Melee

I know but that made zero sense in Melee. Why would we revert it back to a garbage move. It's also now another case of hitboxes not matching the animation, which we've already discussed previously as being bad design.

 

[Rᴏb]

Has anyone been able to rationalize why Dedede's dair got nerfed yet?

 

[Narelex]

Has anyone been able to rationalize why Dedede's dair got nerfed yet?

Because one of the core concepts of Smash, is that being above your opponent in the air is a bad thing. (Usually) Pretty much the entire cast have good up-airs to reward this fact and D3 flipped it on its head by having such a potent disjointed Dair.

I don't agree with the change personally and I don't enjoy not compensating the character in other ways.

 

[steelguttey]

that was his shtick, tho. being above an opponent is a good thing and i think it was a cool, well designed mechanic because of d3's decently long jump squat and bad air speed

 

[tasteless gentleman]

Because one of the core concepts of Smash, is that being above your opponent in the air is a bad thing. Pretty much the entire cast have good up-airs to reward this fact and D3 flipped it on its head by having such a potent disjointed Dair.

I agree with the change personally but I don't agree with not compensating the character in other ways.

Wario, iveysaur, bowser, alot of the cast has some good options honestly and i agree, taking something away without giving something back is a good way to make more players drop pm (my local scene dropped it after 3.6 released)

 

[Narelex]

Wario, iveysaur, bowser, alot of the cast has some good options honestly and i agree, taking something away without giving something back is a good way to make more players drop pm (my local scene dropped it after 3.6 released)

Most characters that have an option that works below them though usually have a decent startup or they have to commit heavily to a move.

that was his shtick, tho. being above an opponent is a good thing and i think it was a cool, well designed mechanic because of d3's decently long jump squat and bad air speed

I wrote I agreed with the change when I meant I disagreed. (edited original post) Whoops.

I thought it was an interesting move but my point could be a reason why they decided it needed to be changed.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

Most characters that have an option that works below them though usually have a decent startup or they have to commit heavily to a move.



I wrote I agreed with the change when I meant I disagreed. (edited original post) Whoops.

I thought it was an interesting move but my point could be a reason why they decided it needed to be changed.

wario, no risk high reward (escapes and out of range if he misses and cancellable)
bowser, no risk against an air borne opponent if it hits it kills off the top and if it misses the landing lag wont be significant enough for a punish from a falling character
iveysaur, no risk, stalls above, disjointed meteors

 

[Binary Clone]

wario, no risk high reward (escapes and out of range if he misses and cancellable)
bowser, no risk against an air borne opponent if it hits it kills off the top and if it misses the landing lag wont be significant enough for a punish from a falling character
iveysaur, no risk, stalls above, disjointed meteors

What are you talking about? Are you really saying they have good moves that they can use in the air above their opponents without heavy commitment, or any risk at all?

Wario's dair has something like 17 frames of l-cancelled lag, which is very much on the high end of landing lag, even if it doesn't seem like a lot. He commits heavily to a bit of startup and completely vertical movement, suffering substantial endlag if he whiffs. It's too safe on shield, perhaps, but to say "no risk" is completely false.

Saying Bowser Bomb's landing lag isn't significant enough for a punish is just laughable. As a descent option, it's absolutely awful. There is massive startup, easily reacted to. And then massive, massive ending lag that can be punished using a smash attack by practically any character.

Ivy also has decent options, but she's so floaty and her dair takes enough time that it's not too hard to juggle, and her dair has relatively little knockback when she descends on someone, frequently allowing punishes. Using dair as an approach is also pretty unsafe, since most characters can just pick an aerial to use OoS to punish that.

 

[Jonyc128]

Anyone know why Doc's fsmash is electric again in 3.6?
http://smashboards.com/threads/mario-hitboxes-and-frame-data-3-6.350701/

 

[4tlas]

wario, no risk high reward (escapes and out of range if he misses and cancellable)
bowser, no risk against an air borne opponent if it hits it kills off the top and if it misses the landing lag wont be significant enough for a punish from a falling character
iveysaur, no risk, stalls above, disjointed meteors

What moves are you thinking of here?

Wario dair can be spot dodged and punished, hell even a roll will probably punish it depending on how high up he was when using it. If he's doing it offstage just airdodge and at least you both die, plus we aren't talking about offstage.
Bowser has bowser bomb but that is easily punished unless its to the ledge, which is one of the few times I see it used because it is a good option. That has nothing to do with being above the opponent in neutral though, offstage is a different game.
Ivysaur is slow and the actual meteor is not disjointed. It also has quite a bit of endlag so once you miss you're screwed.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

What are you talking about? Are you really saying they have good moves that they can use in the air above their opponents without heavy commitment, or any risk at all?

Wario's dair has something like 17 frames of l-cancelled lag, which is very much on the high end of landing lag, even if it doesn't seem like a lot. He commits heavily to a bit of startup and completely vertical movement, suffering substantial endlag if he whiffs. It's too safe on shield, perhaps, but to say "no risk" is completely false.

Saying Bowser Bomb's landing lag isn't significant enough for a punish is just laughable. As a descent option, it's absolutely awful. There is massive startup, easily reacted to. And then massive, massive ending lag that can be punished using a smash attack by practically any character.

Ivy also has decent options, but she's so floaty and her dair takes enough time that it's not too hard to juggle, and her dair has relatively little knockback when she descends on someone, frequently allowing punishes. Using dair as an approach is also pretty unsafe, since most characters can just pick an aerial to use OoS to punish that.

Im saying that these options are good in the air vs. air scenerio when they would be used (both characters are in the air and player B is getting ready to try to juggle or hit player A)

I dont think you been hit by ivy's dair while it the air, it hurtles you into the ground.
Wario will be out of his dair before he lands so l cancel doesnt matter.
and bowser bomb is hard to avoid without air dodging if your right under him

 

[Soft Serve]

Because one of the core concepts of Smash, is that being above your opponent in the air is a bad thing.(Usually) Pretty much the entire cast have good up-airs to reward this fact and D3 flipped it on its head by having such a potent disjointed Dair.

I don't agree with the change personally and I don't enjoy not compensating the character in other ways.

Meanwhile

 

[Narelex]

Meanwhile

Usually, Bird doesn't care about our perceived notions of fairness.

 

[Jonyc128]

You guys remember 3.02 Mario dair? that was so stupid lol