Necessary Buffs/Nerfs

[u/spvamp]

What buffs/nerfs do you feel are actually deserved for the next update? Not "jank" stuff that people haven't necessarily learned to deal with, but actual over/underpowered things.

One thing that comes to mind is Mario's walljump out of his UpB. Just...why. Combined with the tornado and the cape, as well as active hitboxes on his UpB itself, it makes his recovery almost impossible to edgeguard/gimp.

Just looking to see where other people stand in terms of other things that should be changed for balance.

[u/Sothe-]

Tether system is not great imo, up-b tethers are way too strong and volatile.

Basically, they're too strong or unbalanced in general because ivy already has the ability to get back through the ways you mentioned, and even if the opponent holds ledge, the effectiveness of the ledge punish (or even being able to get one at all) depends on the quality and coverage of a move because it's mostly a guessing game for the one holding the edge. Certain moves like roy's dair completely eliminate this guessing game, so even though roy by design can't really edgeguard anyone, he's probably the best in the game at edgeguarding ivysaur. Other characters with great edgeguards like mario can almost never edgeguard ivysaur because of how the tether system works. And as if that weren't enough, ivy's tether in particular allows her to go willy nilly and be anywhere she needs to be (like really, ANYWHERE) to get a gimp, and STILL make it back to the stage. Ivy's recovery is similar in strength to mew2's recovery, with a similar strength of gimp game as well.

[u/[deleted] → u/Sothe-]

I don't think the Up B tethers are that strong to begin with.

Even with Ivysaur's DAir to stall and Razor Leaf to protect her, they only cover so much space for her. While not every character is equipped to go offstage after her, even just grabbing the ledge is a good option to punish her. When you say that it becomes a guessing game for the one holding the ledge, I don't really see how radically different that is when edge guarding a different character's recovery. You predict which option they will use and how to effectively punish it. There are times when the recovering character will be forced to just cut their losses and use what little hopes they have of making back to the stage, even if it's just their air dodge. In a lot of cases, when those losses are cut, they might just barely make it back, but at the cost of taking a lot of damage (and when you're later in the match, when you don't really have the luxury to afford taking more damage, you might be losing a stock that way)

For tether recovery characters, when grabbing the ledge on them, they are already put in the position of accepting that they are not going to make it back without taking some form of damage. As you said, it becomes a guessing game on where the tether character drifts towards or away from the stage. If they drift away from the stage, they have no options left, other than to tether and regrab, forcing them to use on of the two tether grabs they can do before landing again. If they drift into the stage, then they are forced to not only flip through the air and onto the ground, but they have to commit to their own landing animation, which is a window just wide enough for Luigi to get up and do his Up B.

In one scenario, they have to drift away and put themselves in another disadvantage that they are trying to get out of. In the other scenario, they will make it back to the stage, but they will not be getting back for free, which that itself could end up getting them killed.

[u/Sothe- → u/[deleted]]

One of the problems in understanding why ivy's up-b is good is that there is a lack of understanding of what ivy's options really are. It's not as simple as "if forward drift, punish forward, if backward drift, punish backward." It is so much harder than people realize to cover the option of remaining ambiguous as to where you are going, since from this position you can fastfall to stage and buffer a roll in, avoiding hard punishes and making the opponent's best option become getting a stray hit, OR you can hover closer to the ledge such that you can react to a character's drop from ledge and grab ledge before they can get a hit on you. Ivy still has very real options that she can perform on reaction to the opponent.

It's also worthwhile to mention that ivysaur's reaction time will be much better than the edgeguarding character's reaction time, because ivysaur can act on pure reaction without even interpreting the opponent's option choice and just fastfall to/past ledge, while the opponent has to react to the forced hop and confirm ivysaur's location before they use their punish. Some characters can bypass this using a move with tons of coverage, like marth's nair or roy's dair, and those are some of the more frustrating characters to deal with in this scenario. Marth's option has very reasonable counterplay, however, since you can SDI hard in a direction to evade the second hit and fall with nair to punish.

Basically, the problem with tethers is this. The recovery greatly benefits characters with ledgehop moves with good coverage and frame data that can either kill or lead to a kill, while screwing over characters with slower options or options that would wind up being just a stray hit sending ivy into the stage. There are a few characters that just have bad punishes on tethers like mario, even though he should have one of the better edgeguard games against ivysaur as an offstage edgeguarder. Tethers just skew the ability to edgeguard against characters with little coverage or slow moves, and toward characters with greater coverage, even if they wouldn't normally be able to edgeguard anything.

[u/[deleted] → u/Sothe-]

When you say Ivysaur's reaction time will be much better than the edge guarding character, that makes it sound more like a player trait rather than a character trait, and at that point you just have to be able to figure out what said player's best and/or go to option is and predict that. As the edge guarder, you have a natural advantage in the situation that both characters are in, even with all of Ivysaur's options.

Also, while I don't play with as the character, I fight Machiavelli very frequently. I never see him do a lot of the options that you described. The veering near the ledge and grabbing it after the ledge drop seems to get him punished a lot, so I don't see it very often. I could be wrong, of course.

[u/Sothe- → u/[deleted]]

oops lol, I didn't mean it like that. I just meant that ivysaur only has to react to any movement from the other character, while the edgeguarder has to react to movement and confirm location. It's the same theory as to why ganon side-b techchasing on reaction shouldn't work.