We Samus mains are in trouble.

[redtest7]

Everyone is saying that Samus is going to be the worst character in ultimate, her rolls are better but all her combo game is gone. What are you guys gonna do? Are you going to try to stick with Samus or change to another character? I'm planning on staying at least for the first month or so with her to see if any good tech/combos can be discovered with her. Like I found by playing the ultimate demo that upair will true combo into up b at low percents.

 

[IsmaR]

We've discovered plenty of things that don't look abysmal about the character and we are in fact not worried because of a few youtube videos/early impressions from non-Samus players.

Even if she isn't looking good at first, it won't be anything we haven't gone through over the past few games. The game balance isn't set in stone, nor should we treat it as such.

 

[redtest7]

That is true, but what have we found? I have been looking around for a while and couldn't really find anything too great so far.

 

[DDRC]

Have samus mains ever been out of trouble

 

[MistahNoodle]

I'm cautiously optimistic about Samus. Although I've seen a lot of negativity around her kit, no one has actually explored what she could do.

A lot of people that are doing commentary are not Samus mains and don't necessarily know the ins and outs of her, and are also trying to play/judge her based on her Smash 4 iteration.

Recently I saw ESAM made a video to correct his previous impressions of characters and he says he had a little more hope for Samus now.

She may turn out to not be strong, but at this current time we don't have all the facts regarding her.

 

[redtest7]

I'm cautiously optimistic about Samus. Although I've seen a lot of negativity around her kit, no one has actually explored what she could do.

A lot of people that are doing commentary are not Samus mains and don't necessarily know the ins and outs of her, and are also trying to play/judge her based on her Smash 4 iteration.

Recently I saw ESAM made a video to correct his previous impressions of characters and he says he had a little more hope for Samus now.

She may turn out to not be strong, but at this current time we don't have all the facts regarding her.

Well, I'm saying that because I played her in the demo, she seems to be able to kill earlier but she has the trouble getting the percent she needs. This might have been because I was playing her the way I played Samus in smash 4. But even when I tried to do different things, she just didn't seem as great. But your point about how the people making vids on Samus don't play her makes a lot of sense. From what I have played with her (only like 3 games so things I say might be wrong) the things she has in smash 4 aren't there. There will be new things discovered obviously but I don't know if those will be enough to make her great.

 

[IsmaR]

That is true, but what have we found? I have been looking around for a while and couldn't really find anything too great so far.

https://pastebin.com/vwePg2GJ

A few things that have me personally hopeful

• Dash attack flat out kills much earlier than people are giving it credit for
• Her aerials have much more utility with the substantial landing lag reductions/FAF across the board, namely F-air.
• D-air has more potential now that grounded spikes can't be tech'd. You can easily follow up with up air and up B as seen here.
• Charge Shot does a gross amount of damage in 1v1. This coupled with air charging and charge cancelling will make it much more impactful.
• Her other projectiles are also made better, between improved FAF for missiles (which no longer restrict her mobility in the air), and the delay for Supers making it so you can chase in after them/cover opponents shielding it with grabs now. They're not Melee missiles, by they're much better than Smash 4.

I tried her in the demo as well. I liked how she felt movement wise. Perfect shielding requiring exact timing now made it seem like shield breaks will happen much more often (CS practically breaks one on its own), and I was catching people's air dodges with F-air/U-air much more consistently, which you can easily force with missiles/CS off stage unless they have a very long distance/safe recovery (K. Rool, Villager/Isabelle, Zelda) or a way to nullify projectiles (Belmonts and Ridley can whip through CS, reflectors exist, etc.). Grab animation is faster, and grabs led to about the same follow ups (down throw being consistent) but kill much earlier.

Can't say she won't be looked at as bottom half of the cast early on, but I don't think she's worse off than Smash 4 just because of losing Dash Attack combos.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Game is still not out, everything is just speculation. IsmaR points out a lot of things to look forward to. Looking through the posted list I'm damn happy soft hits of up-air provoke tumble. That's very relevant.
Let's see how the hit-boxes and hurt-boxes work out, those things you just can't see on your first 10, 20 or even 100 matches because it's all relative and angles are important.
Smash4 Samus could indeed combo really well but suffered from tiny hitboxes attached to a very prominent hurtbox - and that was felt every single game.
The tier list is "relative" to other cast members.
If Bayo's and Cloud's hitboxes reduced in size, and Samus' got a boost the average interaction in favor of Samus goes up quite a bit. You only start to get a feel for this after many, many matches.
I made the "Samus designed to fail" video, so trust me, I've been there. Let's play the game before despair.

 

[redtest7]

https://pastebin.com/vwePg2GJ

A few things that have me personally hopeful

• 
  
  • Dash attack flat out kills much earlier than people are giving it credit for
  
  
  • Her aerials have much more utility with the substantial landing lag reductions/FAF across the board, namely F-air.
  
  
  • D-air has more potential now that grounded spikes can't be tech'd. You can easily follow up with up air and up B as seen here.
  
  
  • Charge Shot does a gross amount of damage in 1v1. This coupled with air charging and charge cancelling will make it much more impactful.
  
  
  • Her other projectiles are also made better, between improved FAF for missiles (which no longer restrict her mobility in the air), and the delay for Supers making it so you can chase in after them/cover opponents shielding it with grabs now. They're not Melee missiles, by they're much better than Smash 4.

I tried her in the demo as well. I liked how she felt movement wise. Perfect shielding requiring exact timing now made it seem like shield breaks will happen much more often (CS practically breaks one on its own), and I was catching people's air dodges with F-air/U-air much more consistently, which you can easily force with missiles/CS off stage unless they have a very long distance/safe recovery (K. Rool, Villager/Isabelle, Zelda) or a way to nullify projectiles (Belmonts and Ridley can whip through CS, reflectors exist, etc.). Grab animation is faster, and grabs led to about the same follow ups (down throw being consistent) but kill much earlier.

Can't say she won't be looked at as bottom half of the cast early on, but I don't think she's worse off than Smash 4 just because of losing Dash Attack combos.

She has a lot of things that got buffed, but so did everyone else. I'm mainly talking about frames here, but her frames did increase a lot. But everyone got better frames so many people would be able to just use a move that comes out before Samus moves and then go back into neutral or whatever the dynamics are going to be. That is just speculation tho, I haven't seen anything to prove that right. But yea she is better then smash 4 Samus. I just don't think she will get into like mid mid tier unless the patches do something crazy to her. But that's the life of a Samus main I guess. Also, the bot spamming charge then canceling is really funny

Game is still not out, everything is just speculation. IsmaR points out a lot of things to look forward to. Looking through the posted list I'm damn happy soft hits of up-air provoke tumble. That's very relevant.
Let's see how the hit-boxes and hurt-boxes work out, those things you just can't see on your first 10, 20 or even 100 matches because it's all relative and angles are important.
Smash4 Samus could indeed combo really well but suffered from tiny hitboxes attached to a very prominent hurtbox - and that was felt every single game.
The tier list is "relative" to other cast members.
If Bayo's and Cloud's hitboxes reduced in size, and Samus' got a boost the average interaction in favor of Samus goes up quite a bit. You only start to get a feel for this after many, many matches.
I made the "Samus designed to fail" video, so trust me, I've been there. Let's play the game before despair.

That's a very good point, if the hitboxes are bigger then they should be she might be top tier xD. But in seriousness tho, the hitboxes do make a huge difference and I didn't really think about that. Plus some of her moves could have a lot hurtbox shifting which could make some moves better or worse. I haven't seen anything about the hurtboxes being bad tho. But yea this thread
is making me feel better about how Samus will be.

 

[Crystanium]

Going by what SmashWiki says for Samus, she's only received three nerfs and has been buffed everywhere else. Her dash attack not leading into combos is considered a nerf, but having kill potential makes it a buff, too. So technically, Samus has only two nerfs.

 

[Downshift]

Doesn't UpAir have more endlag now, or less hitstun, or something that prevents falling UpAir from also being a combo starter?

 

[NintenEdgyMan]

My best friend is a Samus main and he plays them because he loves Metroid, so there will definitely still be players even if Samus ends up being bad.

The reason why people think she's bad is because all the players in Smash 4 played her because of camping and dash attack. Despite losing her most important combo, roll is better, the terrifying charge shot is way better, and they still have combos.

Overall, people say they are bad because they are different, not because she sucks.

 

[redtest7]

My best friend is a Samus main and he plays them because he loves Metroid, so there will definitely still be players even if Samus ends up being bad.

The reason why people think she's bad is because all the players in Smash 4 played her because of camping and dash attack. Despite losing her most important combo, roll is better, the terrifying charge shot is way better, and they still have combos.

Overall, people say they are bad because they are different, not because she sucks.

her role is still horrible tho, its not good xD

 

[Diem]

While there's always room to worry, given these early impressions and Samus's track record, the early impressions aren't always correct. Here's a fun one from shortly after Smash 3DS was released:

I don't know who made that one, though. Could've been anyone, so it's not something to consider very seriously, but it goes to show how early impressions and the final analysis can be very different.

Though perhaps a more apt comparison is this tier list co-created by ZeRo using the Japanese 3DS game before it came out in NA:

This one was pretty close to what everyone determined later on, but it still shows some miscalculations, even from the guy who would eventually be the best player in the world. So again, these early impressions aren't gospel.

Could Samus still be poor compared to the rest of the roster? Absolutely. But we won't know for sure until people get the game and take characters to the lab to see what their full potential is.

 

[Downshift]

her role is still horrible tho, its not good xD

What's her role?

 

[redtest7]

What's her role?

im sorry i meant to type roll*

 

[Aetheri]

I think a very important thing to keep in mind...

Ultimate is not the same game as Smash 4! The game has different mechanics that will change the way a lot of characters will play. Airdodge changes, parry punishes, attacks out of dash, utilization of ground mobility, etc.

Not enough people have had enough time to play the game to really discover things about each character in the game. We still don't know everyone's "thing" in this game. Some characters of course haven't had much in terms of changes so it's easier to find their bread and butters. Samus had a lot of changes in the game (both positive and negative) so we just need time to lab the character to figure out what her thing will be in this game.

 

[Rocketjay8]

Game is still not out, everything is just speculation. IsmaR points out a lot of things to look forward to. Looking through the posted list I'm damn happy soft hits of up-air provoke tumble. That's very relevant.
Let's see how the hit-boxes and hurt-boxes work out, those things you just can't see on your first 10, 20 or even 100 matches because it's all relative and angles are important.
Smash4 Samus could indeed combo really well but suffered from tiny hitboxes attached to a very prominent hurtbox - and that was felt every single game.
The tier list is "relative" to other cast members.
If Bayo's and Cloud's hitboxes reduced in size, and Samus' got a boost the average interaction in favor of Samus goes up quite a bit. You only start to get a feel for this after many, many matches.
I made the "Samus designed to fail" video, so trust me, I've been there. Let's play the game before despair.

Can you please give me a link to this video?

 

[Grambles]

I don't think there's anything to worry about, even if she is underwhelming at launch. She still has her kit more or less the same. With a few tweaks, she'll probably end up something similar to how she is in the final S4 patch. The devs will likely notice her not performing well in the elite battles if she sucks as much as people are claiming

 

[zblaqk]

Her projectile game will be strictly better due to the the shield mechanics, not being able to perfect shield her missiles anymore is really great.

 

[Ryu Myuutsu]

Don't mind that much the top players' early impressions. They are ironically one of the least reliable sources of information regarding competitive Smash; they get too excited or bummed out about something and end up speaking prematurely about how someone is going to fare, and sometimes even create personal tier lists that go obsolete some time after the game releases. I feel this is also because they compete with each other to get views and desperately remain relevant within the community.
There are other sources you can trust more in this regard who despite not being top players themselves are extremely knowledgeable and present their information in a very concise manner, like Beefy Smash and My Smash Corner. Have you ever sat through an entire video made by Zero? The guy doesn't do scripts and he clearly speaks off the top of his head, which makes him hard to pay attention to.

 

[Downshift]

Her projectile game will be strictly better due to the the shield mechanics, not being able to perfect shield her missiles anymore is really great.

Trying out the new perfect shield parrying is one of the first things I want to do in Ultimate. I just don't see how it's going to be much of a detriment unless you're timing is constantly off. It's supposed to increase the risk of getting hit if you time it wrong, but in previous games you'd still get hit if you wanted too long to bring your shield up trying to perfect shield.
So I don't see a difference due to the new mechanics.

What I do see making a difference is the thruster delay in the missiles. That should allow her time to dash behind her missiles and either follow up attack if the opponent got hit with the missile, or grab if they shielded it.
Samus looks like she'll be able to perform a lot more mix ups and I'm stoked for that.

 

[zblaqk]

Trying out the new perfect shield parrying is one of the first things I want to do in Ultimate. I just don't see how it's going to be much of a detriment unless you're timing is constantly off. It's supposed to increase the risk of getting hit if you time it wrong, but in previous games you'd still get hit if you wanted too long to bring your shield up trying to perfect shield.
So I don't see a difference due to the new mechanics.

Allows more shield pressure with projectiles, especially with a combination of super and homing missiles, as well as CS. Because of the staggered projectiles, you can catch the opponent parrying from the first projectile. It also makes them keep their shield up longer to time the release of shield

 

[Downshift]

Hmm, yeah I'd need to really try it. I'm imaging that I would hold shield for the first few projectiles, then parry the last one before jumping or rolling to try and go in.
You're definitely right that Samus could wreck that whole tactic by firing off a CS at the end though.

 

[redtest7]

Allows more shield pressure with projectiles, especially with a combination of super and homing missiles, as well as CS. Because of the staggered projectiles, you can catch the opponent parrying from the first projectile. It also makes them keep their shield up longer to time the release of shield

good point if they don't perfect shield or spot dodge/roll you can follow up with cs and shield break

 

[Izanagi97]

Have you ever sat through an entire video made by Zero? The guy doesn't do scripts and he clearly speaks off the top of his head, which makes him hard to pay attention to.

Yeah, I'd say they are less analysis videos and more just him uploading Twitch archives to Youtube. It's especially hard to focus when he keeps pausing and rewinding the video hes watching

 

[Bobthealligator]

Everyone is saying that Samus is going to be the worst character in ultimate, her rolls are better but all her combo game is gone. What are you guys gonna do? Are you going to try to stick with Samus or change to another character? I'm planning on staying at least for the first month or so with her to see if any good tech/combos can be discovered with her. Like I found by playing the ultimate demo that upair will true combo into up b at low percents.

She's not that bad. She's more of a zoner, granted but she can still combo.

 

[Downshift]

Just want to point out that in my time playing Dark/Samus thus far, I've gotten at least a dozen KOs off of dash attack. I'd say that's out of 50 3-stock matches.

I remember in the early days of Sm4sh when Samus' dash attack was just all... wrong. hitboxes were in funky places and it just didn't hit people right and was unreliable in neutral. The late patch to the game in 2016 finally fixed all that, and we still have those fixed hitboxes in Ultimate. Dash attack is still quick, lunges forward to beat out other dashes and moves, and can still hit reliably in neutral.

It just needs to be said.