ZMan Presents: Info on Knockback and Damage Reduction in Brawl

[ZMan]

I'm sure most of you know that if you spam attacks you'll get knockback and damage reduction. However, I decided to take a more of an in-depth look at this feature in Brawl. The info I found was kind of surprising.

NOTE: Tests were done with Lucas Fsmashing Mario on FD.

First off, Lucas's Fsmash does 15% and decent knockback fresh. I kept on hitting Mario with the Fsmash. Everytime I hit Mario i killed him. That way I could see how far he goes when at zer percent. Everytime I hit Mario with the Fsmash, the percent went down by 1% and he didn't go as far as the Fsmash did when fresh. It stopped reducing at 9%. I decided to kill Lucas and when he came back his fsmash came out fresh. I killed Lucas once more to get his fsmash fresh. I decided to whiff five fsmashes before hitting Mario again. To my surprise, the Fsmash that hit Mario came out fresh even after I whiffed five fsmashes. I killed both characters to reset their attacks and percent. I put up Mario's sheild and hit that with the Fsmash. I put it down and hit Mario with the Fsmash once more. Hitting a shield counts as a miss so when I hit him again it came out fresh.

For one more test I went to Luigi's Mansion. I hit the pillars with Lucas's fsmash five time before hitting Mario again. The fsmash was weakend

If you don't feel like reading that here's everything I found out in a list format.

• The reduction takes place right away after the first hit of an attack.
• The damage reduced by 1-2%
• The knockback decreses as if 1-2% was taken away
• Whiffing attacks doesn't reduce the original knockback and percent
• Samething when hitting a shield
• Hitting anything like the pillars on Luigi's Mansion or the statues on Castle Siege reduce knockback and percent
• Hitting something DOES NOT automaticcly put the attack at the original percent and knockback
• Transforming/Death refreshes all of your attacks
• The move has to "recharage" to get it back at the original %

Discuss.

 

[Snail]

I think this is pretty common knowledge o.o Good job finding out though, I guess? :/

 

[Morrigan]

Yep, damage decay and knockback only happens when the attack is landed successfully on the enemy (not shield) and when hitting stage parts (walls, pillars, etc).

Nice info, it may help new people.

 

[Saltix]

hmm. didn't know about the stage parts. Fox/Falco can see some usage out of this :]

 

[ph00tbag]

The bit about hitting pillars in Luigi's Mansion is really helpful. I've been hoping to chart out the equations for damage and knocback decay for a while, and I was wondering how to induce decay for a while.

 

[AlexX]

Would anyone know how much, if any, difference there is when moves go stale in Brawl in comparison to Melee?

I was informed stale moves weaken the attack more in Brawl than it did Melee, but I don't know for sure since I haven't played Melee in some time...

 

[keeper]

Does hitting waddle dees or countering an attack with an attack make the attack become stale?

 

[Morrigan]

Would anyone know how much, if any, difference there is when moves go stale in Brawl in comparison to Melee?

I was informed stale moves weaken the attack more in Brawl than it did Melee, but I don't know for sure since I haven't played Melee in some time...

Yeah, Brawl's punishment is alot greater than Melee's.

 

[flash7]

In melee I believe there was only a drop in damage done, but knockback stayed the same (relative to damage). So spamming moves wouldnt hurt your chances of knocking opponents off the stage.

 

[ZMan]

@keeper: Hitting a Waddle Dee/Doo counts as a hit.

@AlexX: Damage decreased after sometime, but knockback stayed to same in Melee.

 

[Dav657]

Yeah, Brawl's punishment is alot greater than Melee's.

Don't you mean less? In brawl i can make a mistake and easily not get punished for it. In melee making a mistake would get you comboed.

 

[Kitamerby]

Would hitting a projectile that cancels out after being hit count towards decay, such as an uncharged charge shot/aura sphere?
How about hitting one that explodes once hit (such as a missile)?

 

[Morrigan]

Don't you mean less? In brawl i can make a mistake and easily not get punished for it. In melee making a mistake would get you comboed.

I meant the "punishment" you receive from Sakurai the game for using stale moves.

 

[fkacyan]

I spam nair and bair like a... spammer... in Melee with Peach and see no reduction in knockback at all.

Brawl sucks.

 

[ZMan]

@Thiocyanide: More like you just suck at Brawl. Oh zing!

 

[Vyse]

Nicely done. I knew most of it, but reading it all in a well explained manner like this was very good.

Spoiler

EDIT: Melee Rules, Brawl sucks...Bombsoldier is cool.

 

[Wildfire393]

It might be worth noting a couple of other things:

1) The last nine moves used are remembered. Knockback/damage is reduced for each time the used move appears in those nine moves.
2) Attacks with separate parts (many jabs, Meta's Forward Tilt, Snake's Forward Tilt) count each hit separately (I believe). Attacks that simply hit multiple times count as a single hit. (This one I know is correct. It can be easily seen with Sheik's Chain, which will continue to deal 3% normally and 5% with the electric tip until it is withdrawn, no matter how many times it hits). Attacks that have separate parts including a multi-hit will appear the same way (appearing as separate hits, with the multi-hit as as single one. So if you use Sheik's full Jab combo, it will appear in the stale moves queue as "First Hit Jab, Second Hit Jab, Repeating Jabs")
3) Hitting Waddle Dees or destructible items (such as Wario's Bike) counts as a Hit.

 

[Magus420]

In Melee there were also some moves that degraded similarly to Brawl's system with reduced damage and knockback, like Samus' missiles/charge shot and Sheik's needles/up-b. The vast majority just had reduced damage though.

 

[Felis]

I didnt know that hitting their sheild counted as a miss. Cool thanks for this!

-Felis

 

[Overswarm]

Something I've been curious about...

Sometimes it seems as if the first time you use a move is more powerful than any other time you use it, regardless of refreshing. I have no data to back this up, just many games where I'll use a nair early on, then use tons of other moves, then a nair really late in the game and it won't kill them... then I die and use a nair and they go flying at the speed of light. Just a thought.

 

[omegablackmage]

yeah, os, i was wondering the same thing. the last point he made on the list seems to reference this fact. Moves do seem to recharge to an extent, but maybe there is a "first" use to the move that cannot be achieved again on that stock through the use of other moves.

 

[ZMan]

Yeah. No matter how long you wait to use your move again, it'll never go back to full strength until you die or transform.

I wonder if your moves will refresh if you use your final smash. Hmm....

 

[Morrigan]

Yeah. No matter how long you wait to use your move again, it'll never go back to full strength until you die or transform.

I wonder if your moves will refresh if you use your final smash. Hmm....

I wonder that as well, but I dont think that characters that stay the same (ie. DK, Ice Climbers, Peach, Zelda/Sheik, ROB, etc) can get their moves refreshed. But what about the Landmasters, Samus/ZSS, Wario, Sonic, Bowser, etc?

 

[omegablackmage]

ok then here's a follow up question (or two):

if moves don't go back to their full strength, what percentage of the original knockback/percent can it reach through the use of other moves?

how many moves are needed to reach this point (i've heard nine are in the cache but im not sure if that was true or not)?

 

[Wayland]

@AlexX: Damage decreased after sometime, but knockback stayed to same in Melee.

I dunno about that. IIRC, if you use Roy's fully charged B a bunch of times, at some point, it will no longer be a 1HKO at zero from the center of FD at all percents. I'm pretty sure that there's reduction, but it's less than in brawl. Also, in Melee, far fewer characters had such excellent recoveries. There was Peach, Samus, Jiggs and Mewtwo. Nobody else had an INCREDIBLE RECOVERY compared to them.

Nobody noticed decay with M2, because nobody cared. It was Mewtwo. Jiggs recovery was pretty much infinite, but she was light as a feather, and floaty as one too, so she'd get KO'd at reasonable percents, often lower, and nobody whined.

Peach and Samus (And maybe Ganondorf and DK, but it's a big stretch) were the characters who knockback decay would have really effected with their stellar horizontal recoveries. However, DK was a low tier, and thus didn't see much play time outside of novelty, and a few dedicated mains. Ganondorf, Samus, and Peach were all much easier to KO vertically, and they did die vertically. Finally, top tier characters had overwhelmingly strong KO moves that could potentially kill far below normal KO percents, so they'd still be effective KO moves when decayed.

 

[ArcPoint]

I didn't know that hitting a shield didn't count towards move decay o.O

But I was wondering. If you come back from a stock, and use a powerful smash, and miss it, is it still considered fresh since it was a missed attack?

 

[Morrigan]

I didn't know that hitting a shield didn't count towards move decay o.O

But I was wondering. If you come back from a stock, and use a powerful smash, and miss it, is it still considered fresh since it was a missed attack?

If you miss it no.

But what about hitting characters when they're invincible (ie. coming from death/invincible frames)

 

[Magus420]

I dunno about that. IIRC, if you use Roy's fully charged B a bunch of times, at some point, it will no longer be a 1HKO at zero from the center of FD at all percents. I'm pretty sure that there's reduction, but it's less than in brawl.

Roy's neutral-B does not have a knockback reduction. It only does less damage when stale. Knockback is based on how much damage they have after the hit, so naturally if you're hitting them at 0% both times then the stale one that does less damage will result in less knockback. If they have enough damage before the stale hit so that both ending damage totals are the same though, then they will have the same knockback.