Why were C tiers nerfed?

[tasteless gentleman]

I can name a few characters who honestly were not even that good, but as a member of the bowser community, we all discussed and bowser was GUTTED.

I would like to hear the developers stand point on this because to my knowledge, bowser was not even a B tier.

He had no approach game (still doesn't, its worse in fact because he cant dash attack through projectiles)

His koopa klaw got a 20% speed boost (at the cost of 25% power, no armor, less movement when used and some weird trajectory)

He got a size nerf (yes, nerf. He lost range, weight, punish ability, and follow up potential, for what? he still gets combed to hell and back)

His smash attacks have weird trajectories and are weaker in general (for what? a speed boost? If i'm using a down smash, im planning on hitting you, a speed boost doesn't help that)

Those are the big nerfs I remember off the top of my head, probably more, but I am already ready to quit from the salt of losing to players I would 2-3 stock in 3.5.

His flame got bigger (cool at least he got something)


I get it, his armour was "toxic" but he needed it to survive and taking it away without properly filling the void is bad and his power was crushing but that was his perk for being slow (l cancels are even slow, spot dodges are slow, air speed is slow, everything is slow but wave lands)

So from the bowser community (yes see it in the bowser discussion forum), What exactly is the plan for bowser? Why destroy someone not even amazing (he has crippling match ups in 3.5 and 3.6 added to the list) I'm not asking him to be top 15 again but at least make him viable and fun to use again.

And don't say "this belongs in character discussion", developers obviously don't check bowser's thread and I would like an actual answer

 

[Narpas_sword]

refer to this locked thread:

http://smashboards.com/threads/stop-needing-bad-characters.409658/

also the last 3-4 pages of the tier list discussion has a bunch of bowser talk.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

I would also like to know if any of the devs actually play bowser to know how bad that made him

 

[MegaMissingno]

Bowser was poorly designed and way too reliant on his armor. He even had a move that had armor, grab, and attack all in one, that's like combining rock, paper, and scissors all in one. Bad design. Several of these changes were actually pitched by top Bowser players who wanted a redesign. Armor got toned down to make him less gimmicky, but then other things got buffed so that he shouldn't have to rely on armor so much anymore.

It'll take some time to adjust your playstyle to get used to the revamp, and maybe more buffs are still needed, but from a design perspective this was a necessary step in the right direction.

 

[Leafeon]

Have you considered that it might have been a design decision instead of a balance decision? That was the goal of 3.5, so we'll be probably be working on balance later.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

Do you play bowser? are you aware the trade offs were unbalanced? They took away power, movement and armor for a "speed buff".

Let me run the numbers of 2 attacks with you

koopa klaw gain 20% more speed
Koopa klaw lost 25% power, 100% armour, 100% sliding movement and 15% range (and I cant tell you how bad the trajectory is)

down smash gained 40% speed (counting all start up and ending lag)
Down smash lost 33% power (11% damage if all attacks hit which in theory sounds balanced until you look at how much speed was actually gained which was very little, tack on the armour loss and the unfollowable trajectory... its bad)

Finally lets look at 6% less size and weight for you guessed it, 15% more dash speed on an already slow character, in that "buff" bowser lost range, weight, and follow up potential... If you play bowser, you understand he got gutted and nothing was given to fill the void, but even if you look at the numbers, he clearly got nerfed.

Hes not a different character anymore, he just got so bad that people who never play him, they cant recognize him

 

[tasteless gentleman]

leafeon, are you a Dev? and I understand the design decision, but instead of stripping the bones clean, you could have left something for the bowser community to work with... anything, literally anything

 

[Narpas_sword]

Don't double post bud. Use the edit button.

All this has been covered in tier list discussion recently too, you're not bringing anything new to the table.

 

[tasteless gentleman]

double post was accident, and if its nothing new, cant you repost an answer that was given to it? or was there just no answer acknowledged

 

[Narpas_sword]

Discussion of bowser starts here:

http://smashboards.com/threads/tier-list-speculation.331666/page-834

Answer given to character nerfs was in that locked topic i linked.

 

[MegaMissingno]

As I said, maybe more buffs are still needed. The changes were made from a design perspective, and it's hard to simultaneously get both design and balance right in just one patch.