Tier List Speculation

[Electric Tuba]

ETuba thats what i mean; bowser already has some of the best edgeguards in the game i just want to see better ways to set them up from neutral, ie higher base kb throws/attacks. Kill moves are another story, wasnt fsmashed nerfed or something like that?

I was agreeing with you/building off of your point, maybe should have made that more clear.

Are the vids up from w/e event where you and Odds played?

Here's losers finals from the most recent tournament they played, playlist is the tournament.
(For the record Azer apparently doesn't actually know what changed about Bowser...)

 

[Oracle]

Oracle your punish game is sub par imo, you do weird things for combos that don't lead back into dthrow lol
why upair bowser when you can just dthrow->dthrow->dthrow->aerial->if DI in/no DI, fair carry into edgeguard; else regrab->dthrow->aerial->edgeguard?
Also, if you have to double jump at bowser to get the up-air, he's high enough that his nair won't hit you if you just full hop at him, then FF, that will bait out the nair lol. Up air also has enough disjoint on the front to be safe even if he armors it lol. Are the vids up from w/e event where you and Odds played?

your face is subpar

my point stands tho, there are plenty of situations where you have to jump high at bowser for a juggle and he just nairs out for free, even if a few situations you can get around it it invalidates a lot of stuff. Definitely affects more characters than rob tho, and still doesn't work vs fast characters


I haven't played that bad at a tournament since sktar 3 lol, maybe my memories are lost in a flu induced haze but i remember getting naired out of combos that would work on pretty much every other character

 

[Zigludo]

maybe my memories are lost in a flu induced haze but i remember getting naired out of combos that would work on pretty much every other character

it's a frame 5 escape on the easiest character to combo in the game, so if you were getting hit by Bowser nair, they wouldn't be "combos" on any character at all

most characters' double jump is better at escaping than 3.6 nair. you must have an aneurysm when you play against Luigi Sonic or GnW

 

[Oracle]

GW's is obviously dumb, luigi's and sonic's don't have armor so you can just beat them out with disjoints, and they also don't have a full body hitbox like bowser's nair so you can space around them if you don't have a disjoint. Also, sonic's puts him in a pretty bad spot being super high in the air, where even being as floaty as ROB I can fall, reach the ground before him, and punish his vulnerable landing.

why do I have to defend the idea that an armored combo escape tool isn't good game design

 

[Ripple]

idea time:

Bowsers nair is now super withdraw HARDEN!

bowser now hides in his shell on frame 3 gaining heavy armor. no hitbox. 4 frames landing lag

 

[Electric Tuba]

idea time:

Bowsers nair is now super withdraw HARDEN!

bowser now hides in his shell on frame 3 gaining heavy armor. no hitbox. 4 frames landing lag

2 frames less landing lag than empty landing and the ability to ignore (then punish) practically every attack? Sign me up, then take me off when the next patch gets him nerfed to hell because of how broken that would be.

 

[DrinkingFood]

idea time:

Bowsers nair is now super withdraw HARDEN!

bowser now hides in his shell on frame 3 gaining heavy armor. no hitbox. 4 frames landing lag

That would be an interesting idea for a special. Dunno how it would play out. Basically an aerial shield tho, or maybe an aerial CC, idk

 

[Zigludo]

why do I have to defend the idea that an armored combo escape tool isn't good game design

because you're wrong

in the case of Bowser's nair it's a rather simple and intuitive solution to a problem presented by the inherent design of the character (big, heavy, slow double jump, perfect fallspeed for comboing, no aerial burst movement). It has very easy and effective read-based counterplay, if you read the nair Bowser is completely helpless ... It's fine the way it is. It was fine in 3.5. the only thing that was arguably a bit dumb was giving it 200 armor which let you armor through Giant Punch at 70% and stuff

also it's ****ing frame 5 now seriously, if you gave Bowser five frames to act you lost the right to call it a combo

 

[PlateProp]

No, bowser nair is pretty dumb

Armor outside of light is almost always super dumb, though the idea of it being tied to how long you charge bowser's smashes/ Ike Eruption is a good concept, I really wish they would have done that with squirtle's fsmash

 

[Electric Tuba]

There's nothing inherently wrong with armor.

Armor based on charge time is almost completely useless. Getting the armor requires you to stay in one place for several seconds while showing your opponent exactly what's going to happen. In Bowser's case, the armor from charging smash attacks for a while isn't useful outside of edgeguarding exceptionally linear recoveries (and even then there are better options).

Edit: Charging to get armor is cool, and flavor-ish, and I wish it was helpful, but it just doesn't work.

 

[AuraMaudeGone]

I made a handful of suggestions in this thread. They're okay I guess.
I'm gonna say once people adapt this this new Bowser we could see some better results in the coming months.

 

[PlateProp]

There's nothing inherently wrong with armor.

Armor based on charge time is almost completely useless. Getting the armor requires you to stay in one place for several seconds while showing your opponent exactly what's going to happen. In Bowser's case, the armor from charging smash attacks for a while isn't useful outside of edgeguarding exceptionally linear recoveries (and even then there are better options).

Edit: Charging to get armor is cool, and flavor-ish, and I wish it was helpful, but it just doesn't work.

There are actually a couple problems with armor above light armor. And charging to get armor is a very good idea for bowser, but you have to remember that this is the first patch it's been implemented in on a character that has basically been extremely polarized since his inclusion. It's not going to be perfect right out the gate, but with tweaks and testing it could be a really great addtion to his character.

Back to problems with armor above light. Probably the first and biggest issue is that medium and heavy armored moves are extremely hard to balance. You cant have them being too fast/big because they're easily abused to just ignore whatever it is your opponent is doing, but on the flip side you cant have them be too slow/small because then they're nigh useless. Bowser has examples of both of these problems in 3.5 dash attack and fsmash respectively. Light armored moves mitigate this because they generally break at decent percents while not losing all utility (Squirtle's withdraw is the perfect example, as it stops working after 50ish% to moves that have good kb, but retains the main use of being able to go through projectiles).

The second issue is that these armors are somewhat unintuitive to play against. The lack of bowser mains everywhere means that people get very little if any exposure to the armor system in pm (unless they happen to have a squirtle player nearby). Armors above light usually take a long time to break, especially in Bowser's case since he's so heavy, meaning that he could basically just nair out of things/tear through stuff almost for free.

The third issue is that heavier armors just make things extremely polarizing. They're more of a band-aid that covers the issues bowser has instead of actually addressing them and fixing them at the core. The armor charge system is a great way to implement the heavier armors without having the moves be extremely dumb, but it will just take time to figure the proper armor to charge ratios for each move.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Armor is not inherently problematic - and the counterplay is identical to that of any other move with which you don't want to trade - simply bait it out and enjoy your free punish during the endlag.

It can be unintuitive to play against, but so are many things in this game, such as ROB's goddamn airdashes.

When used on any given move, it tends to polarize that move to be good against rushdown and bad against camping/grabs - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's appropriate for that move's visual affordances and actual function. Bowser, given his pseudo-grappler archetype and turtley visual design, should be strong against rushdown, and armor is a great means of achieving that. While it's been overused in previous designs, I think most of the current complaints can be fixed by people simply gitting gud. I hope it's not too rude to mention that pretty much nobody outside of my region (outside of Umbreon, Bec, Strong Bad, and a couple others now) has actual meaningful matchup experience against a Bowser player who understands how to use the character - and they were all doing just fine once they figured out how Bowser operates. Try adapting before complaining about a frame 5 combo breaker on the most combo-friendly character in the game who has only 1 DJ and an awful aerial upB.

All that being said, if by some miracle Bowser ends up needing nerfs in a future patch, I'm all for further reducing the armor on nair. It's not broken, but it is unintuitive, and I still think Bowser should be a more grounded character.

 

[Electric Tuba]

I have a hard time seeing how charged armor will ever be that useful. It has an inherent problem with having to use a slow attack (smash), then charge it to make it even slower.
One solution is to make the armor gain rate extremely fast, but then why not just give the attack more armor and not make Bowser jump through hoops?
Another solution could be to make Bowser's smashes faster, especially forward smash. Down smash is reasonably quick with a hitbox as early as frame 11 and easy CC opportunities, but the other two are not so quick and useful.

While nair can be and has been a very good combo escape tool, you can't forget that Bowser is massive and the heaviest character in the game. He gets annihilated by combo-heavy characters and can be straight up 0-deathed by some characters even with nair as an escape.

I have no problem with players needing to spend 5 minutes playing Bowser/looking it up on smashboards to find the following:
-Smashes have armor
-Dash attack has armor
-Nair has armor
-His CC is strong
-Bowser Bomb has armor on the way down and at the VERY beginning of the jump

This means:
Shield beats all of these armored attacks, don't wildly throw out attacks at Bowser. Dash attack is incredibly punishable. All smash attacks require you to be almost literally on top of Bowser or are very easily avoided because they're so slow (looking at you forward smash). Bowser's only armored approaches are dash attack (unbelievably unsafe) and jump at you nair (this is just a bad and strange idea).
Most important: if you run at Bowser, ESPECIALLY with an attack, Bowser will have an opportunity to use armor or CC>whatever.

Now we know how to play against bowser's armor, and it took two minutes for me to write and less for you all to read. Share amongst your friends.


One last thought: What's the difference between Bowser using dash attack to beat your approach and Marth shield grabbing your approach? The only difference is that Bowser takes damage and somehow that makes it better and more polarizing than Marth not taking damage.

 

[CyberZixx]

the difference is any character can shield grab where the armored DA is unique to the bowser match up so players don't expect it. Way more intuitive that way.

 

[PlateProp]

Pls talk to me more like I don't understand armor, not like Squirtle mains ***** enough at people as is when they say withdraw has super armor kappa

I honestly just think that armor above light is stupid and should be flat out removed, but having it tied to how long you charge something is a good tradeoff. Light Armor does everything you guys want (Still able to use it to break free from stuff on nair, especially since Bowser is heavy as ****), but without lasting to absurd percents against some characters that dont really have the tools to break through it unless Bowser is at those absurd percents.

And like I said, this is the first time it's been implemented. It will take time to work out. Though I would just prefer Bowser to be redesigned/retooled (Oddsplssavebooser) so that he doesnt need the ridiculous amount of armor he has to keep up (even though he really doesnt) with other characters, and rather just has good moves.

 

[DrinkingFood]

your face is subpar

 

[4tlas]

Any logic you could use to support bowser having the combo breaker nair could also be used to support zelda's 3.02 nB, which, for those of you blessed enough to have never played against 3.02 zelda, was intangible and auto-canceled. Some characters just couldn't combo zelda, period, whereas other onese like roy/marth/falcon could just play as if the nair weren't there, which further pushed zelda into the 'polarized' category.

1) Aerial neutral B had a few frames of invulnerability and a decent window for cancel, making it very good as an approach. As a combo stuffer, only the few frames of invulnerability did anything to save her since you wouldn't be landing with it mid-combo.
2) Comboing Zelda worked similarly to comboing Luigi, where you need to do a series of strings and juggles. This is not inherently bad.
3) Much like all combo stuffers (since they are aerials/specials), Nayru's had a lot of endlag and didn't cover much space (still does). Jump near your opponent and force them to use the combo breaker, then attack.
4) While Love Jumping, Diamond Diving, b-reversing, and other such techniques allowed Zelda to mix up her combo breaker, it still didn't remove all risk. She was in an even worse position than before if she picked the wrong option, which is also not a bad thing.

I agree that these combo breaker tools are very similar to Nayrus, and thus arguments for one support the other. The big difference between Nayrus and other combo breakers was the ability to do weird momentum glitches with it, which have been for the most part removed.

 

[DrinkingFood]

bowser's nair doesn't autocancel
bowser's nair can't suddenly shift momentum in 1 of 4 directions
bowser's nair doesn't have disjoint
bowser's nair isn't on a floaty that also has frame 6 (?) kill moves that punish you for spacing around the naryu's nair
bowser still takes damage if you trade with nair
bowser's nair armor can be broken

all the ways it's different from nayru's, in an easy to digest format, @ Oracle

@ 4tlas lmao don't ever suggest that Nayru's was anything short of the most ridiculous combo breaker PM has ever had

 

[Ariyo]

my thoughts on bowser

 

[Draco_The]

How the **** is the concept around (any level of) armor stupid. Armor is basically a WAY worse invincibility since its invincibility is only partial (you can still grab the character), the character still gets damaged and it stops working at some %.

There isn't anything bad around a character that uses armor as one of his/her main traits either. I don't see anyone complaining about Aganos in Killer Instinct, or about other unique characters in other games like Dhalsim in Street Fighter.

Sometimes I feel like you guys want every character to be Mario or something like that.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

bowser's nair doesn't autocancel
bowser's nair can't suddenly shift momentum in 1 of 4 directions
bowser's nair doesn't have disjoint
bowser's nair isn't on a floaty that also has frame 6 (?) kill moves that punish you for spacing around the naryu's nair
bowser still takes damage if you trade with nair
bowser's nair armor can be broken

all the ways it's different from nayru's, in an easy to digest format, @ Oracle

@ 4tlas lmao don't ever suggest that Nayru's was anything short of the most ridiculous combo breaker PM has ever had

My thoughts on everyone complaining about nair....

Anyways I still think bowser got nerfed (in gameplay and on paper) but aside from that, i have to play super lame to win (certain options just are not good anymore and therefore must be avoided).
Mainly i dont like how lame fire breath is, It does damage and stop approaches and i like that, but i have seen my opponents get stuck in fire for 5-7 seconds and to me... that is very boring, Do this 1 time every stock, that is almost 30 seconds of them just hanging around in fire.... Plus The best i can tell them if they ask how to beat it is "dont get hit" or "DI better" or "try singing through the fire and the flames". Its lame.

Also, why does bowsers Fsmash do 36% but kills way later than other characters AND requires way more committment AND is unsafe on shield (albeit it almost breaks, but it doesn't)

Why is bowsers range worse for follow ups AND his trajectory worse for follow ups? (see how something gets nerfed twice?)

Why is 20% boost in speed justifiable to take away 25% power, 100% armour, worse trajectory, and less range with the move?

If it doesn't make sense, then why make it so?

The nair armour reduction made sense, but "If you take away, you must compensate"
Same with dash attack, the reduction made sense on paper but game play wise, it makes approaching even harder and there was No real compensation. (like if you take away 1 level of armour. there should be 3% more damage, more KB, OR more speed. (or some kind of niche))

Thats all I am saying, think of it like a scales and balance. Unless the character is S tier, then MAYBE give them only a nerf and a small one at that....

 

[Boiko]

I think we all get it. Bowser is bad.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

I think we all get it. Bowser is bad.

Right but for some reason people keep saying he was not actually nerfed, just changed

 

[Boiko]

Right but for some reason people keep saying he was not actually nerfed, just changed

Yes, well, to be fair, that's the speculation part of tier list speculation.

But I believe that most have come around now to agree that he's a high risk: low reward character, which doesn't make much sense. I think we can move onto a different discussion is all I'm saying.

For example: How about Peach? Llod and Bladewise in WF and GF of the PM side event at Smashcon. Although there wasn't too much competition outside of Junebug.

 

[Idostuff]

Right but for some reason people keep saying he was not actually nerfed, just changed

That's cuz most most ppl don't read this thread, or stay super informed about stuff like this. They just see a bowser doing well on stream, or get beat by one at their local (like in my town) bc they don't know the mu, and then cry nerf.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

That's cuz most most ppl don't read this thread, or stay super informed about stuff like this. They just see a bowser doing well on stream, or get beat by one at their local (like in my town) bc they don't know the mu, and then cry nerf.

And thats my issue, because THOSE people get MY character nerfed just because they dont take 5 minutes to look at the character. I beat the same idiots i always beat because they STILL dont know the match up, Yet the people who knew the match up and did well (maybe even beat me) just beat me harder or i have to play in such a salt producing way to win.

Odds already said it, but ill clarify that flame breath is an absolute salt producer. For every second they hang out out in the fire and the flames, i see them visibly get frustrated and im just like "if i dont flame breath you like this, youll get in and grab me and win" and if i dont hit the nair button then ill get comboed and they will win.

Bowser doesnt need more nerfs, just he needs to be retooled and stop getting these weird salt producing bandaids (although a few of his tools could have stayed so i could use them instead of replacing them with flames)

And back onto peach, i still think peach is awesome, granted the only peach i really play is hanky panky

 

[Sardonyx]

I'd say Peach is in a perfect spot right now(I main the hell out of her), though I know a lot of people don't agree with the RNG factor she has.

If I were to change how her turnips work, I'd make stitch face like S4 stitch face so it's not such an incredibly overwhelming tool to have to deal with.

As for beam sword, I'd say she really doesn't need it to be good, so it's better to just have it taken away tbh. Bombs can be incredibly stupid and I personally throw it offstage whenever I get one because I find it unfair. The people I play with don't mind Saturn actually and find him fun, but slightly less shield damage would be good during Peach's shield pressure moments.

I personally think dsmash is fine as is since it's incredibly easy to get out of, but if I were to change anything to appease others, I'd make total damage down to 35%, make the first hit 1-2 more % and the rest of the hits have reduced damage but compensated KB so it still hits as hard.

 

[eideeiit]

How about Peach? Llod and Bladewise in WF and GF of the PM side event at Smashcon. Although there wasn't too much competition outside of Junebug.

As far as I know Peach has a great MU on Diddy, so I wouldn't say that she is any better than previously thought.

I personally think she's worse than in Melee due to the new item mechanics allowing for still undeveloped counterplay and stuff but good nevertheless and in a good spot balancewise.

 

[JOE!]

Item pull on Peach just seems tacky to me, like Turnips arent bar / are pretty good on their own, why does she get to pull swords/bombs/etc other than "cus melee"?

I'd rather take away the item pulls, give her Fsmash the ability to choose which one to do via Angle, and a few other QoL stuff here and there.

 

[rosutookami]

I have always thought Peach was a very balanced character. I could see taking away items and maybe nerfing stitch face, though.

 

[Chevy]

Items are fun.

 

[Cis]

I don't think Peach really needs any nerfs right now, but that's just the opinion of someone who doesn't play Peach so I dunno. I never felt like the RNG was that big of a deal, but I definitely can see the logic in wanting to tone it down.

 

[JOE!]

It wouldnt really be a nerf anyways since the item pulls happen so rarely to begin with. If anything, it technically gives better odds of stitches

 

[rosutookami]

Beam sword ends games and friendships.

 

[Life]

One of the reasons for having at least one super-powerful item pull is to reduce other characters' ability to camp Peach. The longer the match takes, the more opportunities she'll have to pull stitch on you--whereas going aggro on Peach reduces the possibility of this happening (although you still have to be careful because she has another equalizer in the form of dsmash).

I wouldn't be against changing it to something like "every twentieth (pick a number if you don't like 20) turnip is a stitchface or item pull" to support this role that the stitchface/bobomb/etc. have, and then rebalancing those pulls accordingly. It isn't a huge problem as it is, though.

I've thought Peach was underrated in PM for a long time, but I've never been sure how much so.

 

[Manaconda]

I think I'm experiencing this because I used to play against almost the exact same people sometimes 2 to 4 hours a day often several times a week so they know how to deal with them, but the counterplay is real noticeable. They are definitely less effective but I've found ways to make them work when I'm like, a dress length from my opponent. I still think her item game could use some compensation.

They move through the air pretty slowly and are easy to react to, and she has some of the worst frame data on her throws compared to any other item generating character. She's also too slow to punish catch --> AGT away on her turnips, even against other characters with bad throws like Marth. Maybe if turnips moved through the air faster or something like that?

I really don't like the item mechanics in this game. The 'how-to-deal-with-items' meta is definitely not yet caught up. I can even grab Diddy's nuts out if the air to recover with. That shouldn't happen.

I wouldn't care about the randy items being less common or nerfed or removed completely, she'd be a bit less fun but it's pretty stupid to suddenly pull out a sword that outranges Marth or an object Fox can explode in your hand using a laser.

Otherwise the only two moves I think should be slightly buffed are Toad and Peach Bomber for the amount of commitment each requires, but those were gimmicky moves in Melee anyways and I don't see changes happening to them. I don't think they're amazing but I think they're fine considering she never used them in Melee and even if they were better, none of her MUs would improve fundamentally.

Also if you do land a hit offstage, turnips sometimes hit people towards the stage instead of away. Never happened in Melee. The dead Peach boards are definitely complaining about that.

Edit: Super late and irrelevant edit but I changed my mind on some things.

 

[JOE!]

1) Get rid of items form Turnip pull

2) Buff her item toss stats

3) Make aerial down b be a really laggy version of turnip pull where she can summon a basic turnip just because wtf empty input

4) Toad's Spray causes poison flowers

 

[InfinityCollision]

It wouldnt really be a nerf anyways since the item pulls happen so rarely to begin with. If anything, it technically gives better odds of stitches

Not necessarily. Those probabilities have to be redistributed somewhere, but who's to say that the PMDT would put any or all of it into stitch pulls? They could just as easily put it all into NQ turnips if they wanted.

I've never had a problem with Peach's item pulls. Brawl beam swords are arguably too good across the cast (wtfhitboxes), but that's something you can fix without removing her ability to pull one entirely.

Better throw frame data and some better means to deal with runaway/camping tactics though? Hell yeah, sign me up.

 

[Manaconda]

Plucking a turnip in the air would completely change how she recovers. The point of her recovery is that she can get near the stage easily but it's a bit harder to actually land on stage with her floatiness and mediocre ledge options. It's already very good, letting her pluck a turnip in the air makes it even easier to get back. She'd be even harder to edgeguard than Puff.