Wolfs getting mega nerfed in 3.0

[Yawshi]

Lol I will still play him though

 

[USAnyan]

Is there anything that even explicitly needs nerfing besides that down smash and maybe some blaster lag?Because besides that I don’t think he like desperately needs that much

 

[Deleted member]

That blaster is annoying af

 

[Deleted member]

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[CrusherMania1592]

Nerfing characters isn't making this game any better

 

[Sean²]

Is there anything that even explicitly needs nerfing besides that down smash and maybe some blaster lag?Because besides that I don’t think he like desperately needs that much

Dsmash shouldn’t be nerfed because it compliments the rule of 3s with the spacies. Fox has a strong usmash, Falco has a strong fsmash, Wolf has a strong dsmash. The only thing that makes it anywhere near over the top is that it can hit underneath the ledge sometimes.

Same with back air, as it also follows the same rule of 3. It only becomes lethal at high-ish percents and you still have to get a read. Fair to Bair is not a true confirm all the time, it’s just a lot of people try to attack or don’t do anything instead of trying to avoid it. It’s pretty easy to get blindsided by that move if you’re near the ledge.

Idgaf about laser. They can make it do 0 knockback if they want. Or even reduce the range by half or something. It’s really not a massive concern for me.

Other than laser, the only thing that people on twitter and reddit seem to want is for him to have lag added to his A moves. Which I think is idiotic. I would rather them lower his damage output than slow down an exciting character.

Here’s a take, he probably needs a buff to his jab to make it actually useful. They can make him do less damage or obliterate blaster or w/e IDC, just make his jab not useless.

 

[USAnyan]

Dsmash shouldn’t be nerfed because it compliments the rule of 3s with the spacies. Fox has a strong usmash, Falco has a strong fsmash, Wolf has a strong dsmash. The only thing that makes it anywhere near over the top is that it can hit underneath the ledge sometimes.

Same with back air, as it also follows the same rule of 3. It only becomes lethal at high-ish percents and you still have to get a read. Fair to Bair is not a true confirm all the time, it’s just a lot of people try to attack or don’t do anything instead of trying to avoid it. It’s pretty easy to get blindsided by that move if you’re near the ledge.

Idgaf about laser. They can make it do 0 knockback if they want. Or even reduce the range by half or something. It’s really not a massive concern for me.

Other than laser, the only thing that people on twitter and reddit seem to want is for him to have lag added to his A moves. Which I think is idiotic. I would rather them lower his damage output than slow down an exciting character.

Here’s a take, he probably needs a buff to his jab to make it actually useful. They can make him do less damage or obliterate blaster or w/e IDC, just make his jab not useless.

Not sure about the other stuff,(nor do I 100% care since those aren’t the big parts tbh). but I more so mention down smash because of it’s speed,range, and safety,without sacrifice to to it’s amazing power. seriously this move is SPAMMABLE, fight an online wolf and you’ll see.

I personally would just prefer at least a bigger enough window for a character with a slower ledge attack to hit him without him having enough time to shield-keep it’s quick start up and power, idc.

 

[Sean²]

It really isn’t spammable though. He can get punished for it on shield if you miss the tipper hitbox. Maybe online it’s harder to punish or something, idk. I don’t get a lot of Wolf mirror matches online, but when I do dsmash isn’t my biggest worry, it’s forgetting that sweet spot back air hits so hard, and dealing with laser in a way that doesn’t revolve into both of us reflecting our lasers back at each other. If I get dsmashed in the middle of the stage, that’s my fault, not the character’s.

But dsmash is a better option when your opponent is already at disadvantage, not something to throw out in neutral unless you try to go for a read on a roll-in or get a good parry, or something of that nature. The fact that it can 2-frame and hit under the ledge a lot of the time is where I can understand the complaints, since the tipper kills at like 50 at ledge. It wouldn’t bother me too much if that went away, as long as ftilt still exists in its current form.

 

[Yung Nikey]

As a wolf main since brawl I can honestly say I'm more than happy with this if it comes to it. Nerf away sakurai

 

[Qualudes]

Why are people hoping for Nerfs at this stage of the game? Wolf is strong, sure, but he has a great archetype and exploitable weaknesses. All of Wolf's smash attacks have a slow startup and nothing true combo's into them. Maybe his Dsmash is a little overtuned but it's not something I think is worthy of complaint. The only move I see as nerf-worthy is his Up-B. That move can randomly clip through the stage and kill at around 120 depending on the opponent. When I get a kill off of that jank I don't even feel like I accomplished anything, it's just bs.

I think hoping for nerfs is like hoping for an opioid addiction, and hoping for buffs is like hoping for a new screwdriver. One makes you feel better but leaves you empty and craving more at the first sign of adversity, and the other is a useful tool that can help you accomplish a task.

 

[IronChar]

I predict he'll get toned down in SOME moves...
but not crazy nerfed

because patch culture makes for pathetic players... and no matter how hard devs try they can't seem to balance just right.

 

[Bobert]

Hopefully if they do, it's just dash attack or something. That move is insanely good, especially against characters that can't deal with cross ups. There's no reason to nerf Blaster into garbage like Hadouken like some people are suggesting. I'd much rather they leave him alone though. He's not even close to being busted enough to be deserving of nerfs. His recovery is hot trash and he doesn't have any kill confirms like Fox nair to Up smash. It's all single hits and tech chases.

 

[Sean²]

That's what I generally try to tell people. He doesn't have any true kill confirms that actually have an everyday use. The "wolf can't kill" meme does have some substance to it. Some people think fair to bair is a true combo kill confirm, but they can airdodge before he can get the bair out no matter how early you buffer it. They usually only get hit if they try to throw out a weaker attack. He generally just has to outplay you, with just a tiny bit of cheese, versus some characters who can start fishing for their confirms at around 80-90.

No one likes to listen though. Even when I try to get on their side a bit and give them reasonable things to nerf over the things that make the character fun and interesting, I'm met with "nope, the only way is to add 68 frames of lag to all his normals and take away the gun entirely".

I will say though, Dthrow to offstage side B confirm is a really good way to teach new players the consequences of not using good DI though.

 

[ChrisMDB]

I'm sure he'll be nerfed in some way with how many whinos are in the Smash community after they grew up in Smash 4's patch culture. Hopefully Sakurai and co. will spare him similar to how K. Rool and Inkling were spared - by nerfing something inconsequential to appease the dummies and preserving the rest of the kit. Hopefully they just add some lag to his laser, or chip some damage off of it, rather than actually harming the character. I hate fighting good Wolfs as a Ridley main, but I understand that it's a combination of my personal shortcomings and a somewhat bad matchup that give me that outlook, not Wolf being OP.

 

[MERPIS]

Imo they'll nerf lucina/pichu before they touch wolf. But in the case that it happens I always have a pocket pikachu in the works~

 

[Qualudes]

I'm sure he'll be nerfed in some way with how many whinos are in the Smash community after they grew up in Smash 4's patch culture. Hopefully Sakurai and co. will spare him similar to how K. Rool and Inkling were spared - by nerfing something inconsequential to appease the dummies and preserving the rest of the kit. Hopefully they just add some lag to his laser, or chip some damage off of it, rather than actually harming the character. I hate fighting good Wolfs as a Ridley main, but I understand that it's a combination of my personal shortcomings and a somewhat bad matchup that give me that outlook, not Wolf being OP.

I think the "patch culture" of Smash 4 catches a bad rap because it was the first Smash game aside from PM that really had updates. Smash 4 shipped as an unbalanced nightmare and the gap between the middle of the pack and the top-tier characters was immense. True balance is impossible in a game with as deep a roster as Smash 4/Ultimate but bringing characters in-line is necessary if a game is going to have wide-spread appeal for the long term. I have said it already, but buffing characters is always preferable to nerfing them though. Sakurai has indicated that his team is paying attention to win/loss rates online so maybe we'll get weaker characters buffed instead of good characters nerfed because I do not think anyone is actually OP in this game.

 

[HotelSoapy!]

I'd just tune the blaster down. Doesn't it do 10% each hit? Make it do 3% instead.

 

[Qualudes]

I'd just tune the blaster down. Doesn't it do 10% each hit? Make it do 3% instead.

3%?! The blaster scales down over distance. Pre-Stale it will do 10% up close (16% if you hit both the gun and projectile hitbox) and it diminishes over distance to 6-7%. Once it's staled it will do around 5% up close and 3-4% at range. Making it do 3% is just making it a slower version of Falco's which is completely insane. An argument can be made to have it do 7-8% up close pre-stale, but anything more than that is just gutting Wolf's best neutral tool.

 

[MERPIS]

I'd just tune the blaster down. Doesn't it do 10% each hit? Make it do 3% instead.

Apparently you dont know a thing about balance

 

[HotelSoapy!]

Apparently you dont know a thing about balance

I don't know much about the blaster no but you could be nicer about it. Apparently you know a thing about being a jerk...

I think it's way better than Luigis fireball though. Maybe they should just buff that. That would be fine.

 

[Sean²]

I think the "patch culture" of Smash 4 catches a bad rap because it was the first Smash game aside from PM that really had updates. Smash 4 shipped as an unbalanced nightmare and the gap between the middle of the pack and the top-tier characters was immense. True balance is impossible in a game with as deep a roster as Smash 4/Ultimate but bringing characters in-line is necessary if a game is going to have wide-spread appeal for the long term. I have said it already, but buffing characters is always preferable to nerfing them though. Sakurai has indicated that his team is paying attention to win/loss rates online so maybe we'll get weaker characters buffed instead of good characters nerfed because I do not think anyone is actually OP in this game.

Best thing about this game? Sakurai has removed himself from the balance team entirely. He used to have the final say in anything involving game balance for the older games. Either someone else makes the final decisions, or he is finally trusting his team to do it right.

The man works way harder than he needs to, but if you look into the interview that was released when he talked about the W/L rates, you can tell he is not that knowledgeable when it comes to balance. He was baffled that Peach had a 4% higher winrate than Daisy, but didn't take into account that Peach might just be more popular with better players than Daisy was at the time.

 

[Michele]

A thread created about Wolf being nerfed, without proof? I'm surprised this thread is even alive...

 

[Sean²]

You shouldn't be surprised. It gets talked about all the time, mostly without context.

 

[Jaro235]

Honestly, I hope he doesn’t get nerfed at all. That is not going to make anything better and Wolf mains will just complain about how the character does not work anymore. Just buff the characters that really need it. No one in this game needs to be nerfed.

 

[Chris.H]

Mains:

Characters I Can Play:

#PLANTGANG:


Like This You Wont

 

[Sean²]

Honestly, I hope he doesn’t get nerfed at all. That is not going to make anything better and Wolf mains will just complain about how the character does not work anymore. Just buff the characters that really need it. No one in this game needs to be nerfed.

My experiences against Pichu combos kind of make me want him nerfed, lol. But that's mostly because he's so frustrating to hit. Not in the sense to ruin the character. I could see him just doing some more self-damage on some of his attacks. Get hit with one utilt and I feel like I can just put my controller down for like 15 seconds while he has his fun.

But then again, if I had to choose between nerfing Pichu or buffing some of these bad characters, I'd take the buffs. What I'd do for the Belmonts' recoveries to be even a little bit better.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

Don't know much about what is making Wolf very good, but his mobility definitely wasn't handled the way that I was thinking. In Brawl, his walking was tied with Sheik, and yet Ultimate made him walk slower, being tied with Yoshi instead. And the insults turn worse when you realize that Wolf is not as heavy as he once was.

Sure, appearance changes can be a factor (Wolf is now based more on his Star Fox Zero look, instead of his Star Fox Assault look), but I would've expected Wolf to be more mobile than this. Heck, Peach can easily outrun Wolf now, which was never the case in Brawl.

 

[Sean²]

Don't know much about what is making Wolf very good, but his mobility definitely wasn't handled the way that I was thinking. In Brawl, his walking was tied with Sheik, and yet Ultimate made him walk slower, being tied with Yoshi instead. And the insults turn worse when you realize that Wolf is not as heavy as he once was.

Sure, appearance changes can be a factor (Wolf is now based more on his Star Fox Zero look, instead of his Star Fox Assault look), but I would've expected Wolf to be more mobile than this. Heck, Peach can easily outrun Wolf now, which was never the case in Brawl.

His initial dash speed is pretty fast though, so in turn, his foxtrot is faster than his dash. It's still easy to speed around the stage using that, along with his air mobility.

 

[Predatoria]

The only thing I'd really think needs a nerfing about Wolf is to make it such that his blaster projectile interacts with other projectiles and can be blocked by other projectiles, rather than just phasing through everything. In my opinion, that almost feels more like a gameplay bug or unintentional oversight on the developers ends than a true nerf, and it'd allow Wolf's projectile to be interacted with and countered much like all the others can be in-game.

 

[Sean²]

Pretty sure it's intentional. It's a transcendent hitbox similar to Limit Blade Beam and PK Freeze, so it can't really clank with anything, it will always trade. Falco's used to be this way as well (or may even still be, I don't remember)

 

[Firox]

The only thing I'd really think needs a nerfing about Wolf is to make it such that his blaster projectile interacts with other projectiles and can be blocked by other projectiles, rather than just phasing through everything. In my opinion, that almost feels more like a gameplay bug or unintentional oversight on the developers ends than a true nerf, and it'd allow Wolf's projectile to be interacted with and countered much like all the others can be in-game.

To be honest, I would rather that it block other projectiles instead of just trading all the time. I find it kind of annoying to keep getting hit with stuff like blade beam when I could usually just swat it out of the air with a well-timed attack. Personally, a change like that wouldn't feel like a nerf to me. I gotta say though, with the RAMPANT use of Wolf in all the most recent tournaments (MKLeo, Tweek and so many others have taken him up) I really am starting to get worried that Sakurai is going to give him the "Lucille-edition" nerf bat. I'm talking Bayonetta levels of neutering. Wolf definitely doesn't deserved anything too drastic but when it comes to balancing, Sakurai is like a baby cobra: He doesn't know when to stop pumping the venom. He likes to overcompensate and utterly crush characters that get perceived as too strong. I guess the one ray of hope is that Wolf's frame data is so good across the board that I don't think they could hurt him too much on a fundamental level. Fingers crossed.

 

[Gamer Cube]

I don't think Wolf needs to be nerfed too much, but I might turn down some of the damage output of some of his moves by 3 or 4%, My friend mains him and I just go from 0 to 60 in a couple hits. I would do the same with Peach. They both have balanced moves, but their damage output is a little much.

 

[Sean²]

To be honest, I would rather that it block other projectiles instead of just trading all the time. I find it kind of annoying to keep getting hit with stuff like blade beam when I could usually just swat it out of the air with a well-timed attack. Personally, a change like that wouldn't feel like a nerf to me. I gotta say though, with the RAMPANT use of Wolf in all the most recent tournaments (MKLeo, Tweek and so many others have taken him up) I really am starting to get worried that Sakurai is going to give him the "Lucille-edition" nerf bat. I'm talking Bayonetta levels of neutering. Wolf definitely doesn't deserved anything too drastic but when it comes to balancing, Sakurai is like a baby cobra: He doesn't know when to stop pumping the venom. He likes to overcompensate and utterly crush characters that get perceived as too strong. I guess the one ray of hope is that Wolf's frame data is so good across the board that I don't think they could hurt him too much on a fundamental level. Fingers crossed.

Sakurai said he isn't taking part in balancing in Ultimate. He stated he left it up to his team in an interview, so I guess take that at face value. And they aren't paying attention to tournament play, except for maybe their own "casual" tournaments. They're mainly focusing on Elite Smash for balancing. Hard to say if that's better or worse.

There are a lot of Wolf players online but most of them are pretty bad. They spam laser till you get close to kill percent then try to fish for smashes. I guess it works on some people (especially if they lag), but not against decent players, even online. If they only focus on online play, I think Wolf should be fairly safe from getting destroyed to the point he's unusable. Did you remember the patch notes from 2.0? No one got hit that hard. Burying sucks a bit more but that doesn't stop Inkling from netting half their kills off roller - which also had its hitbox nerfed. Goes to show how effective their nerfs were. Then you have the KKR junk which hasn't really effected him at all, it mostly just reduced the time he could hold down Blunderbuss, which honestly didn't do anything but create ledge stall scenarios when it was in its original form. Then you have the couple 0-death removals, etc. Unless they add an ungodly amount of endlag to all of Wolf's aerials, or shorten his up B distance by half, it's going to be difficult to ruin the character.

With the amount of people picking up Pichu and actually learning his nutty combos, I can see him getting nerfed before Wolf. Using their methodology though, I could see Ganondorf getting hit harder than Wolf, given the sheer amount of Ganondorf players online. I'm sure some people still run face first into his smashes, even in Elite.

 

[Gamer Cube]

Sakurai said he isn't taking part in balancing in Ultimate. He stated he left it up to his team in an interview, so I guess take that at face value. And they aren't paying attention to tournament play, except for maybe their own "casual" tournaments. They're mainly focusing on Elite Smash for balancing. Hard to say if that's better or worse.

There are a lot of Wolf players online but most of them are pretty bad. They spam laser till you get close to kill percent then try to fish for smashes. I guess it works on some people (especially if they lag), but not against decent players, even online. If they only focus on online play, I think Wolf should be fairly safe from getting destroyed to the point he's unusable. Did you remember the patch notes from 2.0? No one got hit that hard. Burying sucks a bit more but that doesn't stop Inkling from netting half their kills off roller - which also had its hitbox nerfed. Goes to show how effective their nerfs were. Then you have the KKR junk which hasn't really effected him at all, it mostly just reduced the time he could hold down Blunderbuss, which honestly didn't do anything but create ledge stall scenarios when it was in its original form. Then you have the couple 0-death removals, etc. Unless they add an ungodly amount of endlag to all of Wolf's aerials, or shorten his up B distance by half, it's going to be difficult to ruin the character.

With the amount of people picking up Pichu and actually learning his nutty combos, I can see him getting nerfed before Wolf. Using their methodology though, I could see Ganondorf getting hit harder than Wolf, given the sheer amount of Ganondorf players online. I'm sure some people still run face first into his smashes, even in Elite.

Holy heck I just saw you post on another thread within 3 minutes of this post. How fast do you type, man?

 

[Sean²]

Holy heck I just saw you post on another thread within 3 minutes of this post. How fast do you type, man?

Yes.

 

[Firox]

Sakurai said he isn't taking part in balancing in Ultimate. He stated he left it up to his team in an interview, so I guess take that at face value. And they aren't paying attention to tournament play, except for maybe their own "casual" tournaments. They're mainly focusing on Elite Smash for balancing. Hard to say if that's better or worse.

There are a lot of Wolf players online but most of them are pretty bad. They spam laser till you get close to kill percent then try to fish for smashes. I guess it works on some people (especially if they lag), but not against decent players, even online. If they only focus on online play, I think Wolf should be fairly safe from getting destroyed to the point he's unusable. Did you remember the patch notes from 2.0? No one got hit that hard. Burying sucks a bit more but that doesn't stop Inkling from netting half their kills off roller - which also had its hitbox nerfed. Goes to show how effective their nerfs were. Then you have the KKR junk which hasn't really effected him at all, it mostly just reduced the time he could hold down Blunderbuss, which honestly didn't do anything but create ledge stall scenarios when it was in its original form. Then you have the couple 0-death removals, etc. Unless they add an ungodly amount of endlag to all of Wolf's aerials, or shorten his up B distance by half, it's going to be difficult to ruin the character.

With the amount of people picking up Pichu and actually learning his nutty combos, I can see him getting nerfed before Wolf. Using their methodology though, I could see Ganondorf getting hit harder than Wolf, given the sheer amount of Ganondorf players online. I'm sure some people still run face first into his smashes, even in Elite.

Nice post. There's a lot of good info here I didn't know about. Good to know that they probably won't destroy wolf as bad as I thought.

 

[Predatoria]

An interesting thing to look at would be the past history of balancing patches in Smash 4 for a bit of pretext.

In Smash4, how strong were the various patches that balanced characters?

In Smash4, did it seem that characters that were topping the ladder in tourney play got nerfed? Was there a good correlation between tourney play and who saw buffs / nerfs?

If it's being left up to the Smash team to do the balancing (which it likely was left up to in Smash 4 as well), it's likely going to follow a similar type of cycle.

 

[Firox]

An interesting thing to look at would be the past history of balancing patches in Smash 4 for a bit of pretext.

In Smash4, how strong were the various patches that balanced characters?

In Smash4, did it seem that characters that were topping the ladder in tourney play got nerfed? Was there a good correlation between tourney play and who saw buffs / nerfs?

If it's being left up to the Smash team to do the balancing (which it likely was left up to in Smash 4 as well), it's likely going to follow a similar type of cycle.

So more Greninja nerfs? Feck those guys.

 

[Predatoria]

So more Greninja nerfs? Feck those guys.

Yeah I didn't really pay much attention during Smash 4 so I have no idea what Nintendo's nerf / buff balancing patches are like. I'm curious to hear more about what Smash 4's patches were like, which may grant some insight as to whether or not Wolf may end up on the chopping block in 3.0.

For example, in Smash 4 did Nintendo tend to nerf characters that were overly-represented in tournaments? Or were the nerfs seemingly "dartboard-like," or, random and had little to no correlation to what was going on in the competitive scene.

Also, in Smash 4, how strong were the nerfs and the buffs. Patch 2.0.0's balance adjustments were, in my opinion, changes that I never would've even noticed had the patch notes not been provided. These would constitute minor changes. If Smash 4 has a long patch history made up almost entirely of very minor character adjustments, one could expect this to carry over into Ultimate.

 

[Firox]

Yeah I didn't really pay much attention during Smash 4 so I have no idea what Nintendo's nerf / buff balancing patches are like. I'm curious to hear more about what Smash 4's patches were like, which may grant some insight as to whether or not Wolf may end up on the chopping block in 3.0.

For example, in Smash 4 did Nintendo tend to nerf characters that were overly-represented in tournaments? Or were the nerfs seemingly "dartboard-like," or, random and had little to no correlation to what was going on in the competitive scene.

No, that's the thing. In Smash 4, most of their balancing was complete bull**** with almost no rhyme or reason. Greninja started out with a glitch where he could actually shadow sneak out of his moves to negate endlag. For example, he could Dair into the ground, then shadow sneak to the side to punish a punish. It was cool, but admittedly unfair. They patched it out, then proceeded to nerf his damage...then did it again....then nerfed the knockback on some of his moves....then added some lag to other moves. The sad part was that he was NEVER considered high tier in Smash 4 at any stage other than MAYBE the very beginning yet they continued to bash him into the ground, hence the internet meme "Better nerf Greninja". It was like a run-on joke that with every patch, there was an obligatory Greninja nerf. Meanwhile, you had characters like Cloud and Bayo that went on to completely dominate the competitive scene with little to no meaningful nerfs at all (likely to promote the sale of their DLC). Several heavies even took nerfs despite never ranking more than low tier. Don't get me wrong, Smash 4 had the best initial balancing of any Smash that proceeded it, but as time when on, I couldn't really see a coherent rationale for how they chose who to buff or nerf. Ultimate is undoubtedly the best balanced so far, but as Sean^2 stated above, we don't really know for sure what kind of methodology they're going to use moving forward.