Totally gonna go backwards through this.
Regarding DK and DI, etc.
As far as what @
DrinkingFood
said in some form of example, just look for spots that you could do something to change the situation.
This is Smash.
There are more options when you're GETTING HIT in this game than there are when you're HITTING OTHERS in other games. There's basically ALWAYS something you can do about it.
Random things would be to aim 'against' Links momentum, getting some distance might start a chain of him needing 'more' momentum to keep going, allowing you greater windows to escape. Ping-pong style distance spread making things harder on him.
Or just aim to DI in a way that you can B-Air or Air-Dodge out, which there were options there.
Your experimenting of it will be more beneficial than him or anyone pointing things out though.
As @
NWRL
pointed out about other things, even the quote that he quoted about buffs to characters, there's nothing more disheartening to new players in the community, than short-sighted analysis of the 'state' of something in a game. That same thing applies to the fact that there's nothing more dysfunctional to healthy play among good players than it.
That's not to say these characters wouldn't be a lot cooler and benefit greatly from things, and not to say things won't be different in future versions of PM, but complaining about what exists is ridiculous.
See; later in this post.
@
NWRL
should also gets smart-person-of-the-last-few-pages badge in general really.
@
mimgrim
could get one too for that last topic.
Link stuff.
Comparing Link to TL is terrible, just don't.
@
Apollo Ali
made a point about Link's bomb tossing speed that might make sense of it.
In Melee, it was as band-aid as it gets. It was Link's only fast-ish option AT ALL. Let alone OOS or how it could be used both aerial and grounded and in any direction.
His keep-out game and counter-approach game was mediocre, or bad beyond reason in some cases, and this option was his only 'fast' move.
He only NEEDED a fast move to begin with because the rest was mediocre at best, and he only ever USED the fast move because he really didn't have any other choice.
Link in PM gravitates to keep-out and counter-approach game for a reason. It's GOOD. His fast-bomb-out-of-pressure isn't something he needs to resort to. Not in the sense that he always needed to do it, but it's niche and still makes a difference, but it's not the ONLY factor in play when it comes to how him and his opponent play around Link-is-in-pressure situations.
Why? Because the rest of him is functional.
This kind of thing is perfectly fit for a character like Link.
He doesn't benefit from a fast bomb-like move the way Peach needs Turnips to close gaps because she wants to maneuver at the opponent.
He doesn't benefit from them the way someone mobile using it for conversions would the way TL would.
That kind of ties into the way @
Lunchables described, but left it on the short-sighted end again regarding Link.
This stuff is not a core of his game-plan, and doesn't fit there. This is simple enough.
The things that go 'wrong' with someone like Link is when those counter-approach and zoning-out options are ALSO a lot more than that.
If his bombs converted to things VERY easily, while being such a non-committing counter-approach option, we'd have THE problem. Just as the previous things that created THE problem were before.
If his rang converted to major things, as a tool for controlling space that could almost always be used and be beneficial, same thing (see previous patches)
If his Z-air converted to major things, while taking space as a solid preemptive counter-approach and interaction-control tool, same thing (see previous patches)
If his Grab converted to major things, while being a one of the most difficult tools to counter-play around and contain during approach attempts being a huge Grab that went through aerials and shields, same thing (see previous patches)
These were changed for a reason.
The proper direction was taken with things like his Z-Air. It used to be a poke-away tool, then it was a free-kill tool, now it's a tool with its intended function WHICH MEANS it has all the neutral-control and properties of a disjointed aerial/etc move, while STILL being functional toward getting conversions.
We want Link to have conversions. He has them.
We want Link to get kills off them. He can do that.
We DO NOT want Link to get those off of things that already function as a core of his game, because getting conversions into kills off single hits out of neutral and long combos and mobility and chase-down is NOT a core of his game.
If someone can understand what I said on the last page about turning the Macro-Game into a Micro-Game, then you'll know EXACTLY where Link sits, why, and why whatever happens to him turns out the way it does.
Does he need buffs? It has nothing to do with projectiles or speed. There are other elements in play.
Make his F-Tilt slightly bigger or something?
It doesn't convert to major kills or combos, while still functioning as a counter-approach option that can be used both aggressively and defensively, that both parties can play around without being hindered by it due to it having enough counter-play from the other side, and fits into all areas from punishes to neutral without changing his core game-plan or the core game-plan of opponents against him the way things like a Rang-of-Free or Grab-from-Space or Bomb-like-Flash could.
Could work as random example of a way of making Link better without breaking things.
These add up.
But... does he need buffs? It has nothing to do with projectiles or speed. There are other elements in play.
To combo some things about Marth and Bowser and early comments from @
Warhawk
@
T
tasteless gentleman
and @
Player -0
Marth has never been a gate-keeper in Project M, to start. This has been a silly misconception since the dawn of PM and the way it still lingers today is absurd. As I mentioned in a massive rant about Melee-High Tiers and their position in PM not too long ago, TL and Samus are bigger gate-keepers than anyone, Marth isn't even close to them when getting characters off the ground and catching jumpers is a bigger factor than any DD game could be. If it isn't established yet that there's more to this game than swords and dashes than the best I can do is point to the last big discussions here about why Mario works at all in this game and hope things turn around eventually.
The other end of this on both a smaller scale time-wise and population-wise, is the silliness of Bowser from 3.0 to 3.5 to 3.6b to 3.6.
The 3.6b (NOT 3.6) patch was the best thing that ever happened to Bowser, very observable in every possible way. This was noted, discussed decently, but it disappeared just as quickly as the complaints about 'bad things happened' to Bowser as if the patch was a negative thing, and is apparently seen as a 'bad time' in PM's patch history for Bowser. PM didn't do anything 'wrong' in the patch, the DT didn't 'screw up' with Bowser, no mistakes were made no matter how you want to look at it or how people see it, because that simply doesn't make sense with what actually happened, what was actually HAPPENING as it happened.
You're all completely blind if you think that stuff was negative in any way. Everyone from @
Frost | Odds
switching to say Bowser was in a bad spot, as if the lack of strength as a character in PM was more important than the position he was as a character at all (not completely of course, but the focus shifted far too much in expressible form at the least), to people straight up calling Bowser out as needing major help in the light of him being ruined as poor decisions were made by the DT with patching him in 3.6b (which was not the case at all as I guess some see now where it has gone), to apparently some of the community even needing a post from @
cmart herself about why these things happened. If that message was just to clarify certain things whether for composure or explanation or anything OTHER than for the sake of it being nice to know what's behind the scenes, then that's just the community being exactly as the smart-badge of the week (NWRL and mimgrim) roughly pointed to recently, a bunch of ignorant children or drunk adolescence or blind and reacting.
With any of that, it doesn't really matter. Simply the fact that people could be frustrated or think PM did something 'wrong' with 3.6b Bowser with the things AT THE TIME they were in the game in 3.6b, is absolutely laughable and superfluous given how observable things clearly were the best they've ever been with the character. If you wanted to see this in a clean-slate kind of way, then you'll notice in hindsight that some see this, and at the time, some saw it, but throughout this whole time there was a lot of shifting and questioning done. It's pathetic to see this.
3.6b was the best state Bowser had ever been to-date. If you can't see that, you have no reason to be posting about complaints about characters. If you can see that, welcome to being the leaders of the community when it comes to fluency and comprehension. Lets hope others get on your page.
You're all scrubs.
In a good way.
It's easy, we got this.
Fun game, this life thing.
Fun context for it, this PM thing.
Edit: Also, I'd be really surprised if someone could come up with a better way to make CF a funner and more interesting character than what I said above.
I'm serious about that. lol
Edit: Fixed patch #
3.6 Bowser was the good Bowser, not 3.5 or 3.6b, hope it makes more sense now.
@
Frost | Odds
@
cmart @
TTTTTsd
@
T
tasteless gentleman
@
Player -0
and whoever else was discussing Bowser.
