I know this post is rather late, but I feel that this is worth posting nonetheless.
I have read many posts that refer to Bowser’s armor as unintuitive to deal with, yet the articulation for explaining why people felt that way is lacking. By addressing a few key points that two people have made, I hope to remedy this lack of articulation, and in turn explain why the implementation of armor (for certain moves) is problematic (or at the very least explain why it is bad design).
I will try my best to keep this post as short, simple and informative as possible. First, the following needs to be understood:
Movement in a fighting game is a necessary component for allowing the use of certain fundamental skills in neutral. The range of a character’s attacks combined with their movement abilities allows that character to threaten a given space at a given time (without throwing out a hitbox). An opponent’s goal during this time (the neutral) is to discern how the opponent is threatening them and to intercept that threat, whether that is to go in and mount an offense, or to counterattack their opponent’s offense, etc.
This aspect of PM (fighting games in general) prevents an opponent from just rushing in and mounting an offense (mainly seen at higher levels). However, currently there are tools that exist in PM that I refer to as “tools that ignore the neutral game.” Such tools are a problem by having significantly limiting counterplay (as in the option’s counterplay restricts the opponent’s options too heavily) and sometimes is further problematic by also being too strong (as in the properties of the option has a significantly skewed risk/reward).
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.
No. The difference is that the armor ignores certain aspects of “fundamentals” (explained in the previous section) that is prevalent in the neutral game whereas Marth shield grabbing does not. In terms of optimal play, when a player attacks an opponent, they will attempt to do so with proper spacing so that they cannot be punished. In the Marth situation, a player can space an attack (Roy’s down tilt for example) to hit Marth, and if Marth shields, then the player (playing Roy for example) cannot be punished by Marth’s shield grabbing and the player (playing Roy) may even be able to press offensively due to the shield’s restrictions.
In the Bowser situation (Bowser’s dash attack as the example), spacing an attack is futile, because no matter how the nonprojectile attack (Roy’s down tilt for example) was spaced (given that it was a direct attack used to stop the opponent from advancing that was also not a whiff punish), the armor is going to go through the attack and hit the opponent (generally speaking). The dash attack also has a large amount of leeway (meaning that timing is even less important) due to having armor throughout the entire startup and even during the first few active frames.
The problem here is that normally, proper fundamentals are what prevent the opponent from being able to just rush in and press buttons. Thus, an opponent has to respect the other player’s ability to utilize movement (mainly dashdancing and wavedashing in Melee and PM) to properly mount an effective offense. However due to the nature of the armor attacks’ implementation, large amounts of offensive option (utilizing proper fundamentals) becomes too risky, which is very restrictive since that is one of the main aspects of the neutral game. This makes the optimal counterplay against such a character to be either just grabbing and/or camping, which is not only severely limiting and not fun, but is also unintuitive (since intuitively, properly spaced attacks win during the neutral game).
Furthermore, normally (as in other traditional fighting games) such armor attacks (that have no cost or execution requirement) have large amounts of startup and are significantly punishable on block. They are designed like this, so that it can only be consistently effective as a “read” to punish well read attacks and not function as a normal attack that also beats large amounts of offensive options. Since Bowser’s dash attack is unreactable (active frame 10), it functions like a normal dash attack in neutral with the bonus of also punishing nonprojectile attacks at any point (regardless of timing given that contact was to be made), whether used as a read or on reaction. Such an attack covers too many options for a single button that requires basic execution and has no cost.
Because of the lack of articulation, certain armor attacks have just been seen as “unintuitive.” Now it should be relatively clear as to why it is, and why such implementation is problematic (design wise).
In short: In Smash (and other fighting games in general) certain fundamental skills are what differentiates high level play from low level play. To allow a character to ignore these aspects of the game, (through the implementation of certain armor properties on certain options) regardless of how bad the character is, is bad game design.
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.
Although it is true that armor is not inherently problematic, the counterplay is not identical to that of any other move with which you don’t want to trade with (if by trading you mean an attack clashing with another attack and getting beaten or both attacks hitting each other at the same time). Moves that you don’t want to trade with can be beaten by not only whiff punishing, but by countering them before they come out (which can’t be done against certain armor attacks). Furthermore moves that you don’t want to trade with are usually significantly slow (both in startup and endlag) and/or significantly lack range/mobility especially when they are already lacking in execution and cost.
Since this particular point was made specifically about nair where the armor is only active during the active frames of the attack, only some of my previous point applies here.
While it's been overused in previous designs, I think most of the current complaints can be fixed by people simply gitting gud.
I disagree with this. Bowser currently is not a good character (which most people seem to more or less be in agreement with), and people lack the MU experience, so it’s true that players being better at the MU will allow them to beat Bowser more reliably in his current build. However, the arguments (and/or complaints) being made about Bowser’s armor implementation is about the design itself as opposed to Bowser’s balance.
Bowser, given his pseudo-grappler archetype and turtley visual design, should be strong against rushdown, and armor is a great means of achieving that.
Although one could imagine Bowser’s visual design being a good indicator of “x” game design, good game design should come first, and the current armor implementation on Bowser being the way it is, is not a good means of achieving that (good game design matching visual design). As previously mentioned by many others, Bowser suffers greatly from rushdown currently, even with his armor design, and in previous iterations the armor design (which was more prevalent) was significantly criticized by many, including you.
Armor is not what Bowser needs. A good design would make him far more functional, less polarizing, intuitive to fight against, while being fun to play as and play against.
