Tier List Speculation

[Deleted member]

marth does end up better than ike, but not by much overall. the issue with marth players isnt his movement, but rather that marthritis is very real in PM. it makes sense to focus on melee marth because melee marth is hard top tier and puts up way better results, PM marth is much less potent because he doesnt have double everyone elses range and the stages are way larger and the cast has more versatile recoveries and a handful of atrocious MUs and upthrow isn't a OHKO on half the relevant cast. it's not the players, its the character.

 

[Frost | Odds]

I strongly disagree with Marth being stronger than Ike in PM's environment. The level of commitment on QD is extremely overrated due to the number of options Ike has from it; he has zero marthritis, and his recovery makes him functionally much harder for most characters to kill than any of the 'heavies' other than D3.

 

[FreeGamer]

I'm pretty sure I've heard this idea thrown around for improving Kirby, but I'll bring it up again because I think it sounds really promising. What if Kirby's inhale/copy abilities were massively overhauled to encourage actually copying other characters abilities like in his actual games? The time it takes while the opponent is in kirby's (stomach? Lol) would be decreased significantly to remove kirbycides but allow enough time to essentially only either copy an ability or spit the opponent out. To compensate for this, Kirby would receive the opponents best special move rather than simply their neutral B. For example, swallowing Jigglypuff would give Kirby rest, Ike quick draw, game and watch upB, etc. Is this idea realistic? I know it could be difficult from a coding standpoint, but if it were feasible, would the community be interested in this type of redesign for Kirby?

As much as I hate the idea of removing Kirbycide, having a Shine would be an absolute godsend against Fox. All we need to do is lock a few PMDT members in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, and they'll have it ready by the time 4.0 is out. :D

 

[_Chrome]

As much as I hate the idea of removing Kirbycide, having a Shine would be an absolute godsend against Fox. All we need to do is lock a few PMDT members in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, and they'll have it ready by the time 4.0 is out. :D

Imagine Kirby with Falco's shine... That would be ridiculous! :D

 

[Rawkobo]

So in the middle of studying for an exam I have tomorrow, I made a tier list.

S tier is ordered, everything else is listed as alphabetical because taking time to order them would distract me too much from studying at the moment.

Few preliminary things:

1) I will make an ordered version of this list eventually.
2) In the process of making the ordered list, some of these characters may switch tiers a little.
3) The premise is that all characters in this list are viable to at least dual main with another character, with the need steadily decreasing as the list goes from bottom to top.

 

[_Chrome]

So in the middle of studying for an exam I have tomorrow, I made a tier list.

S tier is ordered, everything else is listed as alphabetical because taking time to order them would distract me too much from studying at the moment.

Few preliminary things:

1) I will make an ordered version of this list eventually.
2) In the process of making the ordered list, some of these characters may switch tiers a little.
3) The premise is that all characters in this list are viable to at least dual main with another character, with the need steadily decreasing as the list goes from bottom to top.

Interesting concept. I'd like to offer more than just this tiny comment but I'm pretty tired and it looks pretty good so I'll head off to bed. However, I don't think I agree woth the placement of Mewtwo or (tentatively) Jigglypuff. Good luck on that exam, dude.

 

[Rawkobo]

Interesting concept. I'd like to offer more than just this tiny comment but I'm pretty tired and it looks pretty good so I'll head off to bed. However, I don't think I agree woth the placement of Mewtwo or (tentatively) Jigglypuff. Good luck on that exam, dude.

I'll bite.

Mewtwo would probably be a bit more near the upper end of B if I went out of my way to order it now. The closest switch he'd have atm would be with Wario, but I keep feeling like Wario is better-placed in the metagame.

I'm convinced there isn't actually a blatant, flatout bottom tier which is why C is as big as it is, but I'm still not exactly convinced to bump Jiggs up several levels higher when I feel like, in the context of who plays her, she fills her niche.

Curious to hear your impressions when you get up later. I'll probably take a little nap soon and get some more done in the meantime.

 

[DrinkingFood]

@Lunchables @Umbreon What about a path-based double jump for ROB? Not sure what it's actually called. The kind of jump multi jump/DJC characters get. Dipping during double jump/remaining in place, preventing him from getting height too quickly, could reduce ROB's ability to cheese his way out of tight juggles with double jump->boost. The problem was reduced with the fall speed change but it doesn't seem like by very much, the number of times he can jump out is still high enough to be fairly frustrating. Doesn't necessarily need a DJC with it (Boost stuff is basically that anyway) tho it would be cool. Doesn't fix all his problems, but it drastically reduces a major one I'd say. Thoughts?

 

[tasteless gentleman]

hes really strong tho

not any stronger than ike or roy and their smashes are even faster. Maybe ill just make an individual thread of what i think should happen to fatties so they are not so susceptible to combos.

Like I said, you can direct message me if you have a problem. Nobody wants to read you popping off on me.

Here's how this all looks from my perspective. I mention Tink has polarizing matchups. You sarcastically ask me whether or not I think polarizing matchups are a problem. I explain myself, again on the topic of Tink since that was what I was originally talking about and you seemed to inquiring about the same topic.

You then ask me if free matchups are not a problem. This is basically the same question as before. I go into more detail, again, still talking about Tink since that appeared to be the subject of the discussion. You call him cancer, then say he's not the problem, then say his AGT shenanigans are out of control. It's all very confusing. Especially since the post I was replying to wasn't the one where you suggested Bowser/fatty buffs. Whatever.

I'm not going to respond to this anymore. It's ridiculous. You come across as someone who's trying to call me out or something and make your real intentions unclear. Giving Bowser buffs would be great. I'm all for it. Everyone is. Stop bringing it up every single page. Geez. Everyone knows Bowser sucks.

Edit: @mimgrim AGT in neutral doesn't really serve that much purpose, you're right. It first requires him having a bomb pulled, which takes set-up. Plus, there are other options he should be using in neutral besides relying on bombs. I think his recovery would be bottom five in the game for sure if it isn't already down there with the loss of AGT; he'd have to do bomb jumps which just seem like taking the auto industry and putting it back to East Germany's. It's really... cringeworthy.

Edit 2: Oh yeah, and fire arrows suck o.O. If Tink ever gets nerfs, he should get that move buffed or changed to better fill in weaknesses he would have.

I'm not calling you out or popping off on you about anything, you just simply kept saying that i was trying to nerf toon link and i wasnt, dont respond back, we are obviously confused about what the other is saying.

 

[NinthWonder]

I see Samus and R.O.B. as in the top ten. They have good tools to use to threaten space, good CC and projectile game, reliable combo game, all that fun stuff.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

Interesting concept. I'd like to offer more than just this tiny comment but I'm pretty tired and it looks pretty good so I'll head off to bed. However, I don't think I agree woth the placement of Mewtwo or (tentatively) Jigglypuff. Good luck on that exam, dude.

Lucario? Reasoning please as i dont think hes got the tools to be S-tier, he has aura and artificial combos... but I dont know i dont feel like hes on the same level as lucario...or diddy...or rob.... he feels more like a B-tier to me

 

[Deleted member]

@Lunchables @Umbreon What about a path-based double jump for ROB? Not sure what it's actually called. The kind of jump multi jump/DJC characters get. Dipping during double jump/remaining in place, preventing him from getting height too quickly, could reduce ROB's ability to cheese his way out of tight juggles with double jump->boost. The problem was reduced with the fall speed change but it doesn't seem like by very much, the number of times he can jump out is still high enough to be fairly frustrating. Doesn't necessarily need a DJC with it (Boost stuff is basically that anyway) tho it would be cool. Doesn't fix all his problems, but it drastically reduces a major one I'd say. Thoughts?

this type of material is generally one of the few things zach and i disagree on, so i wont speak for him. in my humble opinion, if the entire dev team is okay with a character, that character is either underpowered or super ****ing boring. personally, i like that rob has a few aspects that are fringe borderline because it makes the character feel potent and interesting and fun to play. ive started to come to the philosophy that other characters could use barely defensible characteristics as well- we already have a few, like sheiks fair autocancel window, falco lasers, zss bair, ganons dthrow, and GAW up b. in an environment where every character has tools that are ubiquotously powerful, i do not believe these things are problematic, rather they become problematic as competing strategies are nerfed out of the game. i believe that the nerfs going into 3.5 were too harsh, and that the game has become too lean and less fun because of it. i also think that with character tools being predominantly situational, the game has become overly MU heavy. like it or not, powerful tools go a long way to helping a player/character pull out the unlikely win in the face of adversity (ie the opponent is better than you or has the MU advantage). i do not believe that most characters can do this in the current version, and that people tend to switch to characters that can (fox diddy metaknight come to mind). personally, i think the dev team should raise the power level of the cast on the whole to match the falco zss sheik tier, predominantly by buffing conversion tools on underwhelming characters so that they also FEEL more potent and fun to play. in that regard, robs attributes with respect to his boost might be questionable, but i would not change it. however, i want you to keep in mind that this is just my opinion and does not reflect the dev team on the whole.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

this type of material is generally one of the few things zach and i disagree on, so i wont speak for him. in my humble opinion, if the entire dev team is okay with a character, that character is either underpowered or super ****ing boring. personally, i like that rob has a few aspects that are fringe borderline because it makes the character feel potent and interesting and fun to play. ive started to come to the philosophy that other characters could use barely defensible characteristics as well- we already have a few, like sheiks fair autocancel window, falco lasers, zss bair, ganons dthrow, and GAW up b. in an environment where every character has tools that are ubiquotously powerful, i do not believe these things are problematic, rather they become problematic as competing strategies are nerfed out of the game. i believe that the nerfs going into 3.5 were too harsh, and that the game has become too lean and less fun because of it. i also think that with character tools being predominantly situational, the game has become overly MU heavy. like it or not, powerful tools go a long way to helping a player/character pull out the unlikely win in the face of adversity (ie the opponent is better than you or has the MU advantage). i do not believe that most characters can do this in the current version, and that people tend to switch to characters that can (fox diddy metaknight come to mind). personally, i think the dev team should raise the power level of the cast on the whole to match the falco zss sheik tier, predominantly by buffing conversion tools on underwhelming characters so that they also FEEL more potent and fun to play. in that regard, robs attributes with respect to his boost might be questionable, but i would not change it. however, i want you to keep in mind that this is just my opinion and does not reflect the dev team on the whole.

That was the best post i have read in like 20 pages, how many devs share your opinion because i think you have the original PM vision spot on. Its not that S-tier is too power, its that everyone else is too underwhelming or boring or ignored. (Ice climbers, yoshi, DK has not really changed, Marth's marthritus problem). I think as a fan made game, that PM can add new tools in the realm of the characters original game while helping the character become more viable or fun. (wario, bowser, lucario, lucas, samus, ect)

I will say this and i hate to say it but after playing brawl minus, i kinda think they have a more balanced cast (everyones stronger but the MU spread is even aside from jiggly puff) and thats not a lash at pm, but im more saying, PM seems too worried about making things too wild that they in turn make things too tame except the original melee 8. Does this make sense?

 

[nimigoha]

I don't really know how you can compare the balance of Brawl- to that of any other tournament game. It's commonly stated that tiers don't matter when the players aren't particularly advanced, and without seeing an analogue of tournament results of top Brawl/Melee/PM players in Brawl-, there's no way to know that people just aren't optimizing.

Not a lash at Brawl-, but it just seems like a game where every character has ridiculous tools that let them ZTD every other character so it's just "who got the first hit". Sorry if that's an oversimplification, but that's a different kind of balance, as the offensive tools the characters have far outweigh the defensive tools, meaning there's far less counterplay.

I personally think that the whole "PM is less fun without the oppressiveness found in previous versions" idea is full of confirmation bias, where people initially were unhappy with 3.5 nerfs (like me with Lucas) and as time went on and more people voiced their displeasure everyone sorta bandwagoned. "The nerfs were too much" can absolutely be applied to several characters but I think previous versions were very like Brawl-.

I see PM as striving for balance in trying to keep offensive options in check. 3.5 brought in a lot of characters, and added Shield DI, 3.6 normalized rolls...

Like yeah maybe cool stuff like Full QAC and Telehover and no-hitlag Magnet got lost in the process, but if the emphasis on offensive options is too strong, it does end up becoming "who got hit first, if you did well too bad".

I'd rather have a PM where there were less oppressive options in neutral and more ways to reset to neutral than one with touch-of-death.

 

[Deleted member]

i absolutely cannot talk about other dev team members, and i would not want to speak for others anyway. however, i can tell you that it started out as project melee as an attempt to re-create melee on a different engine. the design goals seem to have had two major turning points during the development process- the first when the project shifted away from recreating melee and making the project more of a stand alone game. the second happened going into 3.5 with the trimming the fat blogpost from this time last year. the truth is, it would be overwhelmingly easy to just recreate melee at this point. different dev team members have joined at different parts of the project, and each person has this unspoken ideal version in his or her mind's eye. the development process is much more about what we want to do with the game, not whether we can actually do it. this is simply not an easy question to answer.

 

[Life]

Speaking of recreating Melee... Any news on the one-frame air physics delay? That, stick map changes, and the placebo effect are big reasons the game feels different from Melee for some people.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

I don't really know how you can compare the balance of Brawl- to that of any other tournament game. It's commonly stated that tiers don't matter when the players aren't particularly advanced, and without seeing an analogue of tournament results of top Brawl/Melee/PM players in Brawl-, there's no way to know that people just aren't optimizing.

Not a lash at Brawl-, but it just seems like a game where every character has ridiculous tools that let them ZTD every other character so it's just "who got the first hit". Sorry if that's an oversimplification, but that's a different kind of balance, as the offensive tools the characters have far outweigh the defensive tools, meaning there's far less counterplay.

I personally think that the whole "PM is less fun without the oppressiveness found in previous versions" idea is full of confirmation bias, where people initially were unhappy with 3.5 nerfs (like me with Lucas) and as time went on and more people voiced their displeasure everyone sorta bandwagoned. "The nerfs were too much" can absolutely be applied to several characters but I think previous versions were very like Brawl-.

I see PM as striving for balance in trying to keep offensive options in check. 3.5 brought in a lot of characters, and added Shield DI, 3.6 normalized rolls...

Like yeah maybe cool stuff like Full QAC and Telehover and no-hitlag Magnet got lost in the process, but if the emphasis on offensive options is too strong, it does end up becoming "who got hit first, if you did well too bad".

I'd rather have a PM where there were less oppressive options in neutral and more ways to reset to neutral than one with touch-of-death.

Oh i absolutely was not trying to compare the two outside of a fairly even MU spread, Brawl minus is the weirdest thing ever but MU spread wise according to a few sites, were relatively even.
And I never knew that @Umbreon but i am glad you cleared that up but I am glad you all went in the direction of a stand alone game instead of a melee clone essentially.

 

[Phan7om]

For example, swallowing Jigglypuff would give Kirby rest

OK I usually dont post here cuz reasons, but Kirby having rest, as good as it sounds, isnt that great. Kirby would rest her, Puff would die, go to Kirby, rest him, Kirby dies, Kirby comes back without a power, cant punish as hard. Id take Pound over any of Puff's other specials any day.

Edit: I also think Puff's, Link's, and Ness' neutral Bs shouldnt have changed to side Bs (going from 64 > Melee), but they did. It would be nice to see those come back for Kirby.

Edit 2: Also, I really do not think it is intuitive to just give Kirby each character's "best special". One, because for some characters their best special is subjective. Two, design differences issues. For example, Falco's shine wouldnt be as effective given Kirby's jump height unless they changed Kirby's version of Falco's shine KB to compensate which takes extra work, when they could not do anything and let him keep lasers.

Edit 3: Ninja'd from below.

 

[Doctor Aids]

OK I usually dont post here cuz reasons, but Kirby having rest, as good as it sounds, isnt that great. Kirby would rest her, Puff would die, go to Kirby, rest him, Kirby dies, Kirby comes back without a power, cant punish as hard. Id take Pound over any of Puff's other specials any day.

I feel like this reply outlines one of the main issues with the idea. People are saying that they would want Kirby to take the "best" ability, but really it's situational. Someone else said they would want Falco's shine, but if I was playing the MU I would want lasers. So you'd either have to screw some people over and force them to take what others deem the best ability or make Kirby able to have access to every single special a character has, which is either impossible or would take so much work that I feel sick even thinking about it. The idea of the swallow rework is nice, but if it ever were to happen, they would be better off keeping it to just neutral specials, unless they found a way to give Kirby any ability.

 

[Life]

A better choice would be to give Kirby's version of swallowed specials extra utility that their originals don't.

Falco laser already has this because Kirby can SHDL and Falco can't. Maybe remove the distance decay on Kirby-Fox lasers? Keep the old dash cancel that ZSS laser used to have? (I know it was kept in in previous patches due to taking a lot of effort to remove, is it still there?) Make ROB laser charge faster? Make Wolf laser transcendent? (I really have lasers on the brain.) 20XX hack pack included a bonus easter egg toggle where you could make Samus fire a slow-moving Charge Shot with B+Z, maybe give Kirby something like that?

Probably not those specific changes, but basically make Copy abilities fill holes in Kirby's matchup spread. What's Kirby's worst matchup?--then find a way to make Copy fill holes to make the matchups better.

 

[DrinkingFood]

this type of material is generally one of the few things zach and i disagree on, so i wont speak for him. in my humble opinion, if the entire dev team is okay with a character, that character is either underpowered or super ****ing boring. personally, i like that rob has a few aspects that are fringe borderline because it makes the character feel potent and interesting and fun to play. ive started to come to the philosophy that other characters could use barely defensible characteristics as well- we already have a few, like sheiks fair autocancel window, falco lasers, zss bair, ganons dthrow, and GAW up b. in an environment where every character has tools that are ubiquotously powerful, i do not believe these things are problematic, rather they become problematic as competing strategies are nerfed out of the game. i believe that the nerfs going into 3.5 were too harsh, and that the game has become too lean and less fun because of it. i also think that with character tools being predominantly situational, the game has become overly MU heavy. like it or not, powerful tools go a long way to helping a player/character pull out the unlikely win in the face of adversity (ie the opponent is better than you or has the MU advantage). i do not believe that most characters can do this in the current version, and that people tend to switch to characters that can (fox diddy metaknight come to mind). personally, i think the dev team should raise the power level of the cast on the whole to match the falco zss sheik tier, predominantly by buffing conversion tools on underwhelming characters so that they also FEEL more potent and fun to play. in that regard, robs attributes with respect to his boost might be questionable, but i would not change it. however, i want you to keep in mind that this is just my opinion and does not reflect the dev team on the whole.

well the goal in mind isn't so much to nerf ROB or bring down his power level or w/e. The goal is to deal with just the problem that is a lot of characters being unable to punish him, both creating a problem for characters that can't and being a draining/unfun to play against. Not every character just win neutral over and over again against him, putting them in the really frustrating position of having to make bets against his superb punishment avoidance game in order to hope to put out enough damage per conversion. Granted it has further effects than just reducing the number of scenarios where he can jump out of a combo, but those aren't anything we can't deal with using the other tools ROB has. ROB has tons of barely-defensible things, airdashes by themself honestly, recovery ability, CC options, gimping ability, dthrow. I don't expect that giving him a path-based DJ makes people stop complaining entirely, but I do want them to feel rewarded when they at least get one up on ROB by having an adequate punish rather than 2-3 hits into positional advantage almost every time.

EDIT: corrected a word, punishment extension should have been punishment avoidance

I will say this and i hate to say it but after playing brawl minus, i kinda think they have a more balanced cast (everyones stronger but the MU spread is even aside from jiggly puff)

also, people only say this because the devs ****ing advertise brawl- as "So broken it's balanced" which is utter garbage and nobody will ever know for sure because nobody plays that game at high level lmao

 

[Phan7om]

Life
Then you get a character without many (or any) bad matchups after landing a simple setup such as Utilt > Inhale, FF Uair > Inhale, Dair > Inhale, etc. on top of all of the mixups, movement reads, tech reads/reactions, or shield reads/reactions that can catch people.

In order to balance that you would have to make his normal tool kit even worse than it is now (imo), then most of Kirby's "power/viability" would be on how well he can use the power. Doesnt seem like much fun to play, play against, or to watch Kirby not have much in certain matchups except for the copy ability,especially in matchups where the copy ability sucks like Puff, or if the ability encourages camping since your moveset sucks like Falco, Sheik, Mario, etc.

 

[Deleted member]

@Lunchables

Do not tag me in this thread ever again

the tier list speculation thread has harmed me in ways I'll never be able to explain to a therapist

 

[DrinkingFood]

Do not tag me in this thread ever again

the tier list speculation thread has harmed me in ways I'll never be able to explain to a therapist

i dunno
therapists can be pretty understanding

 

[ilysm]

That's one of those things that would doubtless require a ton of work but would be hella awesome. Inhale -> input the directional special move you want to copy.

But we can't get ahead of ourselves. Remember why Kirby doesn't have shadow ball; it would have been a massive pain in the *** to code. The devs are already working pretty hard considering the almost stupid amount of content in this game, not to mention how difficult it would be to balance Kirby with a shine in the current meta. So anyway.

 

[KinGly]

http://m.imgur.com/OuqnAsX

So Junebug posted his tier list on r/ssbpm. Figured I'd link it here since it's worth discussing.

 

[42rockjock]

The only thing I disagree about Junebug's tier list is Zard being in C tier. Other than that it's fine.

 

[FreeGamer]

I can't help but question if Marth and Sheik are really that good. :/

 

[Rawkobo]

I can't help but question if Marth and Sheik are really that good. :/

Important thing to note about June's tier list: it's based off of neutral games.

 

[Nausicaa]

Cool stuff, questions about this though.

raise the power level of the cast on the whole to match the falco zss sheik tier, predominantly by buffing conversion tools on underwhelming characters so that they also FEEL more potent and fun to play.

When I read this, I immediately tried to understand what this means but it kind of could mean a few things and I don't get it.
What exactly are you talking about regarding conversion tools on underwhelming characters? It seems like punish games off conversion tools is generally a strong suit of a lot of 'weakish' characters.
Ness, DK, Zard, etc, it seems like MOST of what they are good at doing is leading into hard punishes out of neutral. The majority of what they struggle with is things like NOT getting hit out of neutral. Same goes for most slow characters, and the niche few like ICs or whatever.
Some characters are strong withOUT much for good conversion tools. Samus, Peach, etc. They're solid (literally I guess ha) and often that's the game people would enjoy. An Oli or TL might be able to convert, but it's the controlling-of-neutral to GET conversions that could be appealing. (SOMEBODY out there loves Melee YL vs Puff matches...)

There are other ways that characters can be fun and/or improved and/or both at once. Not all characters are appealing due to touch-of-deaths and hard conversions, because that isn't appealing to everyone.

When I read that part, it really seemed like it's something that could be done at the character select screen.
Wanna play a game where everything is great at converting into whatever else? Pick Mario, Sheik, Ness, and Roy!

I'm not sure a game that is centralized this way is the game most people want to play. Just as a game centralized on uninteractive neutrals with old Sonic/Mewtwo/etc isn't a game most people want to play. This is Smash, PM is the 'playerS' game, and it can be much more broad than that.

I'm more curious as to what you meant though, because I might be TOTALLY missing the mark here.
For one, I don't know who you consider underwhelming etc to begin with. DK, Ness, Zard, etc mentioned, but I guess Ivy is all punish game and lacks a bit of raw-conversion stuff... I really don't know who you're talking about that needs MORE/BETTER conversion tools. haha
Kirby is 'good' in some ways at something. Can this not be seen, worked with, and made functional enough to keep up with someone like Fox without bringing other elements of Smash into Kirby's core game, and without polarizing or making Kirby a nightmare in other ways?

Edit: I guess a tl;dr of this is, counter-approach stuff might seem somewhat boring in some ways, or just walling-out type of play. Some characters like Samus/Kirby/Dedede/Peach/Zelda can all 'function' in the game somehow. Some better than others, but these characters are the OPPOSITE of conversions-the-game.
We have CF and Snake and DK for that...
I like some different mental play, whether it's that counter-approach thing or other.

if the entire dev team is okay with a character, that character is either underpowered or super ****ing boring. personally, i like that rob has a few aspects that are fringe borderline because it makes the character feel potent and interesting and fun to play. ive started to come to the philosophy that other characters could use barely defensible characteristics as well- we already have a few

This sounds like it's more of an 'exceptional' thing, which is good.
If there's not much hissing over Wolf and Wario and Lucas, given they're some of the most stable-by-patch characters from day-1, then that's pretty sweet. If there's a bit of hissing over them, and yet they've STILL stayed this stable throughout it, then that's even more awesome.
Kudos PM devs of the past.

 

[Deleted member]

im not reading all that. try again in 25 words or less. small words.

 

[Nausicaa]

Regarding what to buff (conversions) on the 'lower end' of the cast.

Ness, DK, Zard, etc, it seems like MOST of what they are good at doing is leading into hard punishes out of neutral. (Conversions)

But I might be missing the mark here, I really don't know who you're talking about that needs MORE/BETTER conversion tools. What do you mean by that exactly? I don't think I get it.

snipped it up

Simple words are not my forte. XD

Counting to 25 isn't either.

 

[Deleted member]

i want to buff the conversions of characters like link and ike in a way that is slight but helps round out their losing MUs a bit. i want to make overly linear characters like ddd dk bowser be more dynamic so they have more than zero counterplay in the face of adversity. i want to do very slight but global buffs to characters like kirby that dont really have any issues and end up underwhelming anyway. i want to tone down characters with exceptional option coverage like fox and mk, although very slightly and much less than other people. i want to take good characters like falco and sheik and maybe clean them up slightly in a way that isnt really a buff or nerf. and then i want to start calling characters done and close them off from further modifying sans unforeseen special circumstances.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

I will start posting the following daily:

"I agree with everything Umbreon said."

I advise everyone else to do the same

\thread

 

[Nausicaa]

Sounds like 'basically' what everyone is looking for.
Cool.
I guess your original comment about targeting buffing conversion tools was just a super vague reference to 1 element of it, and the emphasis was on it being 'the first step'
Makes sense.

 

[Deleted member]

I will start posting the following daily:

"I agree with everything Umbreon said."

I advise everyone else to do the same

\thread

the other ike players made a thread for the proposed changes actually. its a good example of what we should be going for imo

 

[Player -0]

Umbreon the people's champ?

I think this should be done very carefully though. Although the way the PMDT has been doing changes it looks like that won't be a problem.

 

[Soft Serve]

Diddy shouldn't keep his jump if he gets hit out of side b.

 

[FreeGamer]

Kirby is 'good' in some ways at something. Can this not be seen, worked with, and made functional enough to keep up with someone like Fox without bringing other elements of Smash into Kirby's core game, and without polarizing or making Kirby a nightmare in other ways?

Making his mobility not-trash makes the most sense. If you buff his already-great normals/specials and build him around a handful of OP moves, you end up with a ball of polarizing cheese like he was in 3.02. Dash Attack and his crouch shenanigans aren't enough to make up for how overall slow he is, nor should he be sent down the path of degeneracy.

Also, #Umbreon2016

 

[InfinityCollision]

InfinityCollision

Thanks for the information. I'll keep that in mind. You mention movement as being one of his issues. I can understand air speed, but does it have anything to with DD or his short wavedash?

Wouldn't necessarily call it an issue, just part of the puzzle. Air speed certainly plays a prominent role in that given the general trajectory considerations I discussed, but his run speed does play a part. So do things like his jump height and fall speed, and all of this is fits with his rather average endlag/landing lag data sans OHC.

Quick tangent to illustrate my point: Marth's fthrow and Mewtwo's dthrow are very similar moves. Same trajectory and knockback, comparable release points, different damage and endlag (Marth's is also weight-dependent). Even if you made them identical, they'd get differing mileage out of the move in any given situation because of differences in their physics and movesets. Marth has those early-mid percent chaingrabs and DI traps because of his mobility and range, while Mewtwo's reward would vary heavily based on the discrepancies in speed and commitment on his various movement options (in particular dash, wavedash, and teleport) relative to the endlag incurred and hitstun inflicted.

I don't really know how you can compare the balance of Brawl- to that of any other tournament game. It's commonly stated that tiers don't matter when the players aren't particularly advanced, and without seeing an analogue of tournament results of top Brawl/Melee/PM players in Brawl-, there's no way to know that people just aren't optimizing.

Not a lash at Brawl-, but it just seems like a game where every character has ridiculous tools that let them ZTD every other character so it's just "who got the first hit". Sorry if that's an oversimplification, but that's a different kind of balance, as the offensive tools the characters have far outweigh the defensive tools, meaning there's far less counterplay.

I personally think that the whole "PM is less fun without the oppressiveness found in previous versions" idea is full of confirmation bias, where people initially were unhappy with 3.5 nerfs (like me with Lucas) and as time went on and more people voiced their displeasure everyone sorta bandwagoned. "The nerfs were too much" can absolutely be applied to several characters but I think previous versions were very like Brawl-.

I see PM as striving for balance in trying to keep offensive options in check. 3.5 brought in a lot of characters, and added Shield DI, 3.6 normalized rolls...

Like yeah maybe cool stuff like Full QAC and Telehover and no-hitlag Magnet got lost in the process, but if the emphasis on offensive options is too strong, it does end up becoming "who got hit first, if you did well too bad".

I'd rather have a PM where there were less oppressive options in neutral and more ways to reset to neutral than one with touch-of-death.

There are many facets to this, many directions that things could go in the future. It's entirely possible to buff much of the cast to varying degrees while avoiding past flaws and also staying true to their designs, if that is the desired direction for the next step in PM's development. I suspect that simply refining characters in a manner that is also consistent with their core nature will be sufficient to iron out many of the remaining issues in the game. Some of that constitutes nerfs, some buffs, but the end result in the player's hands would/could be a tighter, more cohesive design, one that is ultimately more satisfying to play on the whole. If the PMDT wants to explore the idea of (carefully, subtly) manipulating power levels on a cast-wide scale after that, so be it.