What would you like to see changed to Doc to make him viable?

[Eight_SixtyFour]

Kirby's dair autocancels and nobody really worries about it that much

Personally I think making him fall faster than mario while retaining all his SH aerial abilities/end lag would be nice.
upair definitely needs more hitstun, that move gets me punished half the time when they're at low %.

This doesn't help. He becomes combo food and can't pressure with his aerials (except bair) as effectively because he has less time to throw them out.

Eh, it might need more hitstun but after figuring out how to get double up air combos (not strings) consistently, I think an airspeed buff would be more important.

 

[DPKdebator]

The Doc has always been a character I felt needed a little love, since trying to make him "slow and stronger" than Mario ended up making him too slow and not powerful enough. Here I'll list what would be ideal for him, but they're only ideas and will almost certainly never be implemented:
Increase walking speed to 1.0 and dashing speed to 1.4
Tornado gains much more vertical height at the expense of some horizontal movement
Attack damage does not follow a set algorithm and is changed (mostly buffed)
Neutral attack: 3%-2%-5%
Forward tilt: 9.5%
Up tilt: 7%
Down tilt: 8% on foot, 9% on body
Dash attack: 10% clean, 7.5% late
Forward smash: Fire- 21%/21.5%/20% and arm- 19%/17%/17% (upwards/forwards/downwards)
Up smash: 18%
Down smash: 17% front, 19% back
Neutral aerial: 6.7% clean, 12% late
Forward aerial: 12% early, 17% clean, 9% late
Back aerial: 13% clean, 9% late
Down aerial: 2.1% loop hits, 5% last hit, 4% landing
Pummel: 4.2%
Forward throw: 10%
Back throw: 15% throw, 10% collateral
Up throw: 8.3%
Floor attack: 8.1% front and back, 5.6% trip
Megavitamins: 8% early, 6% late
Super Sheet: 10%
Super Jump Punch: 15% clean, 8% late
Dr. Tornado: 2.3% looping hits, 6% last hit
Doctor Finale: 5% bigger Megavitamin, 4% smaller Megavitamin

What do you guys think? Is it too idealistic, or is it just right?

 

[Capt. Tin]

I'd prefer the more horizontal tornado over a more vertical one. A vertical tornado is really easy to intercept and it just harms his already terrible horizontal recovery.

Forward Smash and Super Jump punch are already both ridiculous in damage as is. Both of them are fine with damage, especially the Jump Punch with how insane it's frame data and hitboxes are.

I have no idea why you gave down smash so much extra damage. It's not necessary for it to do that much damage considering it's speed.

Doc doesn't need to do more damage. What he needs is more speed. More damage doesn't matter when you can be outspeeded by more than half the cast.

 

[GerudoKong]

Maybe this is asking for too much, but removing sourspots from Fair (like it is in melee) would be an awesome buff.

 

[Capt. Tin]

Maybe this is asking for too much, but removing sourspots from Fair (like it is in melee) would be an awesome buff.

That's not really a big issue for me. I find it really difficult to actually land either of the sourspots.

 

[FireJuun]

I'd like to see his tornado to be easier to mash. Right now it requires far too much precision, and if you miss the final mash offstage (when he flexes his arms), then you likely just suicided. Also, that bug where he goes through people should be addressed.

The recurring theme of what he lacks had often been speed and recovery, and I honestly think his kit should borrow more ques from Bowser than Mario (since he has zero ability to rush down). For this reason, I'd like to see his run/aerial speed boosted, if even slightly.

Also... imagine if he had Bowser's ability to not flinch light attacks up to a certain percent. Would that help bolster his approach game? (In game, perhaps he's chomping down on those little pills mid-battle).

 

[DPKdebator]

I'd prefer the more horizontal tornado over a more vertical one. A vertical tornado is really easy to intercept and it just harms his already terrible horizontal recovery.

Forward Smash and Super Jump punch are already both ridiculous in damage as is. Both of them are fine with damage, especially the Jump Punch with how insane it's frame data and hitboxes are.

I have no idea why you gave down smash so much extra damage. It's not necessary for it to do that much damage considering it's speed.

Doc doesn't need to do more damage. What he needs is more speed. More damage doesn't matter when you can be outspeeded by more than half the cast.

I would agree with you that Doc being a little faster is more of a priority than being able to deal more damage. I believe that he does need a little boost in damage though, because relative to Mario, he only packs 12% more punch. The percentages I outlined in my previous post are probably a bit ridiculous, but it would be nice to have stronger pills and a tad more damage on a few moves like the D-air.

 

[Eight_SixtyFour]

I'd like to see his tornado to be easier to mash. Right now it requires far too much precision, and if you miss the final mash offstage (when he flexes his arms), then you likely just suicided. Also, that bug where he goes through people should be addressed.

The recurring theme of what he lacks had often been speed and recovery, and I honestly think his kit should borrow more ques from Bowser than Mario (since he has zero ability to rush down). For this reason, I'd like to see his run/aerial speed boosted, if even slightly.

Also... imagine if he had Bowser's ability to not flinch light attacks up to a certain percent. Would that help bolster his approach game? (In game, perhaps he's chomping down on those little pills mid-battle).

Honestly, after what you found out about Down-B's mashing pattern, I've been able to get it more consistently. And compared to the other smash games, Doc's Down-B doesn't require that much precision to get max height. Luigi's Cyclone, on the other hand, is hard...

I don't think an armor mechanic would help him that much. It encourages bad habits which can be worked around by your opponents.

Maybe this is asking for too much, but removing sourspots from Fair (like it is in melee) would be an awesome buff.

Doc had a sourspot in Melee. Just sayin'. Also, Fair is not that important of a move outside of killing (which it does well) and it's kind of hard to land the sourspots.


Also, damage buffs, while nice, would not resolve issues with punishment. It would just up the reward for getting the hit.

 

[Chuatan]

I'd prefer the more horizontal tornado over a more vertical one. A vertical tornado is really easy to intercept and it just harms his already terrible horizontal recovery.

Forward Smash and Super Jump punch are already both ridiculous in damage as is. Both of them are fine with damage, especially the Jump Punch with how insane it's frame data and hitboxes are.

I have no idea why you gave down smash so much extra damage. It's not necessary for it to do that much damage considering it's speed.

Doc doesn't need to do more damage. What he needs is more speed. More damage doesn't matter when you can be outspeeded by more than half the cast.

Yeah. It's the speed that really holds him back if anything. Being the 4th slowest character in the game really hinders Doc's capabilities offensively. His combo potential is limited, his punish game is limited, and his tools are less safe (especially pill).

If Doc ever gets the Mewtwo 1.1.5 treatment, oh man...

It's scary to even think what such a buff would do to the character.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Might as post an update to what I would like to see for Dr. Mario:

• Walk Speed: Increase 0.902 < 1.060
• Dash Speed: Increase 1.312 < 1.455
  
• Air Speed: Increase 0.943 < 1.000
  
• Air Deceleration 0.01 < 0.0226
• Fsmash (All Angles): Replaces sour spot hit-boxes with new sweet spot hit-boxes.
  
• Nair (Sour Spot/Early): Increase Base Dmg 5.6 < 6.5
• Nair (Sweet Spot/Late): Increase Base Dmg 8.96 < 10.5
  
• Nair: Auto Cancel Window Increased (1-2, 34>) < (1-2, 29)
• Fair: Replaces sour spot hit-boxes with new sweet spot hit-boxes.
• Fair: Auto Cancel Window Increased (1-2, 43>) < (1-2, 37>)
  
• Dair: Landing Lag Decreased 21 < 14
• Dair: Auto Cancel Window Increased (1-5, 45>) < (1-5, 30>)
• Megavitamins: Base Dmg 5.6 < 6.4 (Vitamins don't reduce in damage, AKA Base Dmg 6.4 through frames 17-69)
• Dr. Tornado (Grounded & Aerial): (Tweak the hit-boxes so the opponent doesn't fall &/ or fly out of the move during the first hit & second to fifth hits. If needed, increase the Rehit rate 6 < 8)
  
• Dr. Tornado (Grounded & Aerial - 5th/Final Hit): Increase Base Dmg 3.36 < 5.00 & Reduce Knockback Growth 130 < 126

Just for Fun:

• Fair, 2nd/back hit of Dsmash, Sweetspot Nair, Sweetspot Super Jump Punch & 5th/Final Hit of Dr. Tornado will receive an electric effect to the opponent on hit.

Overall, Doc really isn't as bad as what people think, he just needs some fine tweaking to help him excel his strengths to the maximum potential.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

You guys are doing too many unnecessary changes. Doc Mario just needs TWO to make him viable

• Pill FAF 53 --> 40 (or lower)
• Increase the height of Up-B and increase the damage of the sour spot

Done. He doesn't need the speed buffs, his threat range has been made much better, and now he can countercamp, approach effectively, gimp even better, and control the board muuuch better. The recovery buff is just a nice improvement to round him up even more as well.

 

[sjb.dario]

You guys are doing too many unnecessary changes. Doc Mario just needs TWO to make him viable

• Pill FAF 53 --> 40 (or lower)
• Increase the height of Up-B and increase the damage of the sour spot

Done. He doesn't need the speed buffs, his threat range has been made much better, and now he can countercamp, approach effectively, gimp even better, and control the board muuuch better. The recovery buff is just a nice improvement to round him up even more as well.

I agree with this notion.

If doc just gets two big buffs, he's honestly going to become a force to be reckoned with. However, I would also sneak in a weight increase, as well.

 

[Eight_SixtyFour]

If you want to make him a zoner, you'd have to reduce the FAF so that short hop pills are fairly safe. Even then, how will these projectiles be more useful against sword characters like Marth/Lucina? They can throw out aerials to nullify projectiles.

I honestly think he should get mobility buffs and some zoning buffs. This will mitigate his issues against characters with safe (or mostly safe) disjoints. But he really doesn't need a lot of tweaks. Just a few fundamental fixes.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

If you want to make him a zoner, you'd have to reduce the FAF so that short hop pills are fairly safe. Even then, how will these projectiles be more useful against sword characters like Marth/Lucina? They can throw out aerials to nullify projectiles.

I honestly think he should get mobility buffs and some zoning buffs. This will mitigate his issues against characters with safe (or mostly safe) disjoints. But he really doesn't need a lot of tweaks. Just a few fundamental fixes.

Are they gonna nullify every projectile that comes out? Are they gonna be able to predict my rhythm?

And then there's the problem with naming him a zoned. Yes, he'll be able to zone, but that won't be his main game plan because he CQC you too, so that means he's a all-rounder (a true all-rounder that can do everything properly). Also, your issues are extremely specific to one character, and is not talking about harsher MUs, like sonic, sheik, rosa, etc... better pills helps us handle this, since we'll be able to set the initiative and force them to make a action. Mobility buffs would be good, but if we don't buff the pills, we still end up with a worse Mario that has all his struggles with little make-ups.

 

[Eight_SixtyFour]

Are they gonna nullify every projectile that comes out? Are they gonna be able to predict my rhythm?

And then there's the problem with naming him a zoned. Yes, he'll be able to zone, but that won't be his main game plan because he CQC you too, so that means he's a all-rounder (a true all-rounder that can do everything properly). Also, your issues are extremely specific to one character, and is not talking about harsher MUs, like sonic, sheik, rosa, etc... better pills helps us handle this, since we'll be able to set the initiative and force them to make a action. Mobility buffs would be good, but if we don't buff the pills, we still end up with a worse Mario that has all his struggles with little make-ups.

He may not become a zoner, strictly speaking, but the idea of frustrating opponents with projectiles and then capitalizing off of mistakes will make him more of a zoner then Mario. I understand the idea of buffing pills. Make them better -> opponent gets frustrated and tries to go in -> gets comboed or punished for doing so. It may make some matchups a bit easier, particularly against zoners or heavies, but I don't think these are his hardest matchups. If you had something like Fast Pills but better, then this strategy would be a bit more viable.

It doesn't matter if they don't nullify every projectile. They have options to do so without putting themselves at risk. Power shielding is also a valid option. Then what? We still have to go in. I forgot to mention Rosa and Sonic, but better pills won't do much against them either. They generally want to play lame as well and are pretty good at doing so. I'd rather be able to punish these characters via grabs or hits more consistently and I think buffing his mobility will help him more than buffing his projectiles.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

He may not become a zoner, strhictly speaking, but the idea of frustrating opponents with projectiles and then capitalizing off of mistakes will make him more of a zoner then Mario. I understand the idea of buffing pills. Make them better -> opponent gets frustrated and tries to go in -> gets comboed or punished for doing so. It may make some matchups a bit easier, particularly against zoners or heavies, but I don't think these are his hardest matchups. If you had something like Fast Pills but better, then this strategy would be a bit more viable.

It doesn't matter if they don't nullify every projectile. They have options to do so without putting themselves at risk. Power shielding is also a valid option. Then what? We still have to go in. I forgot to mention Rosa and Sonic, but better pills won't do much against them either. They generally want to play lame as well and are pretty good at doing so. I'd rather be able to punish these characters via grabs or hits more consistently and I think buffing his mobility will help him more than buffing his projectiles.

disjoints and projectiles generally are sonic's greatest weakness weakness; better pills (depends on the degree) will make him move. Rosa struggles with luma removal and advantage states. we have that, but we struggle with neutral. Pills will help (if the endlag is reduced sufficiently).

falco's lasers in brawl were easily power-shielded, but they still forced people to come to him. Same principle can apply to us. the reason being they're disadvantaged still when PSing, since they can't doing anything and they're at risk of potentially missing a PS and gaining %.

 

[Eight_SixtyFour]

Falco's lasers couldn't be challenged and were oppressive. You had to power-shield them or, in certain cases, crawl. And then if you got in, you risked getting chain-grabbed. You'd have to make Pills pretty stupid, either in terms of frame data, durability or both, to force opponents to come to you.

Sonic can just wait. Rosa, even if she is baited to use her Down-B, can still run away from Doc. Even without out Luma, there's no reason for Rosa to come to you. If pills were incredibly dumb, then it might be a different story, but I don't think it's the right buff for Doc.

 

[Baby_Sneak]

It depends on the degree of how much you buff pills, and it doesn't have to be ridiculously good. Just good enough to be respected.

Though, there's nothing wrong with ridiculously good pills :<)

 

[Ih8heels]

Make him a tank again by increasing his weight to near Ganon's level & remove the stupid sour spots on his air haymaker. It's practically suicide missing such a flawed move with it not even dishing out significant damage unless at a certain hitbox?

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

Improving Dr. Mario's overall mobility would be a good start. I've gotten down that Dr. Mario's running speed is multiplied by 0.83, and his air speed is multiplied by 0.81, but just yesterday I've found out that his walking speed is actually multiplied by 0.83, instead of 0.82. And while you can't change the multipliers, you can alter Dr. Mario's in-game values instead.

What I did is increase Dr. Mario's walk speed, run speed, air speed, and air acceleration values to 1.08x their normal levels. That results in the following values...

Walk speed: 1.1 * 1.08 * 0.83 = 0.98604
Run speed: 1.6 * 1.08 * 0.83 = 1.43424
Air speed: 1.15 * 1.08 * 0.81 = 1.00602
Air acceleration: 0.07 * 1.08 * 0.82 = 0.061992

 

[Heracr055]

1) Give Doc a weight increase to justify his poor ground speed and jumping height. I'm not sure what weight value I'd assign
2) For Doc Tornado, I've had it where foes are launched in the opposite direction of where it would make sense for them to go. For example, if you're edgeguarding with Tornado, you have to angle the control stick towards the stage to launch them away from the stage. It would make sense for them to launch foes in the direction based on what side of Doc they were on.
3) Bonus one: It'd be nice if Super Sheet could stall downward momentum and carry Doc forward once, like regular Mario and his Cape.

 

[★Star★]

Well since I've been a Doc main for a really long time, in my oppinion he's already tourney viable. some of you ask why? simple:

1) He already has solid combo game at early %
2) Decent neutral which is rather a bit different than Mario.
3) For late % (arround 80-100%) he has 2 solid ways of killing the classic DThrow-FAir 50/50 and the DThrow to Frame Trap FSmash which is another 50/50 (for those who don't know this frame trap in order to pull it off you need to bait an air dodge)
4) His recovery overrall is meh I gotta admit this, but if you lab correctly you'll get in the hang on getting back on stage with DownB recovery boost.

The only thing that is holding Doc is just his recovery options, that's really it in my oppinion.

and Heracr055 I agree with you in a way to give Doc's Super Sheet to stall him in the air, but then again that implies making him more like Mario, but that's just me tho.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

 

[Dripple]

Maby if Doc had better jumps, more speed, and a move that pushes people back at the cost of his strength that would be nice. Oh wait that's . And not

 

[Ih8heels]

you mean to tell me that

Not only is way heavier than the Doc but has a better recovery to boot? & has more range. ****head SaKKKurai is super biased.

 

[Lola Luftnagle]

Just an honest-to-goodness improvement to his ground and air speed will go a long way.

• Aerial speed significantly increased so the doc has 's air speed
• Faster dash and walking speed, say, on par with
• Reduce landing lag on f-air by 10 frames. By the way, I'd give a similar change to his own f-air but we'll go over that another day
• Maybe make the last hit of d-air meteor smash to complement the auto-link angle the preceding hits have
• Dr. Tornado needs the height that gets with his cyclone

End transmission...

 

[Eight_SixtyFour]

Maby if Doc had better jumps, more speed, and a move that pushes people back at the cost of his strength that would be nice. Oh wait that's . And not

No thanks, I like my all purpose spinning top that's much faster than FLUDD and much more deadly against both high and low recoveries.


Guys, don't complicate this. Better run speed and high jumps for sure. This will make his design much less undertuned.

 

[MERPIS]

I would give him the same recovery as mario, make his down throw launch at a lower angle, remove fairs sour spot, and remove 8 frames of endlag/landlag from fair.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

You guys are doing too many unnecessary changes. Doc Mario just needs TWO to make him viable

• Pill FAF 53 --> 40 (or lower)
• Increase the height of Up-B and increase the damage of the sour spot

Done. He doesn't need the speed buffs, his threat range has been made much better, and now he can countercamp, approach effectively, gimp even better, and control the board muuuch better. The recovery buff is just a nice improvement to round him up even more as well.

Fun fact: Both Mario and Doc's Neutral specials have a 1.15 multiplier listed in their code, making the moves overall 15% slower.
Remove that code and their frame data changes:

-Vanilla Sm4sh Neutral B: hitbox active 17-20, FAF 53


-No Multipler Neutral B: hitbox active 15-18, FAF 46


Playing without the multiplier felt pretty good, though I image it would be annoying for the opponent to deal with.

 

[Eight_SixtyFour]

I would give him the same recovery as mario, make his down throw launch at a lower angle, remove fairs sour spot, and remove 8 frames of endlag/landlag from fair.

Aside from improving his recovery (which is still vague), these are not the right kind of buffs. Who cares about hitting people with fair? It's not that useful of a move for Doc or Mario. It's also not that hard to hit the sweetspot with either character.

Fun fact: Both Mario and Doc's Neutral specials have a 1.15 multiplier listed in their code, making the moves overall 15% slower.
Remove that code and their frame data changes:

-Vanilla Sm4sh Neutral B: hitbox active 17-20, FAF 53


-No Multipler Neutral B: hitbox active 15-18, FAF 46


Playing without the multiplier felt pretty good, though I image it would be annoying for the opponent to deal with.

Huh, that sucks. Removing it would make Mario/Doc harder to deal with and make it easier for them to get grabs.