The Return of Aerial Bowser

[shockfrost]

I'm back. And with me comes my Aerial Bowser strategy. Revamped, polished, ready for another run.

In all Super Mario Bros. games, the Koopas have been jumping, and they're at their worst when they're in the air. Nothing is more annoying than a koopa jumping all around, being unpredictable. In Super Mario Bros, Koopa would jump up into you spitting fire and pitching hammers, and you basically had to run under him.

In Super Mario Bros. 3, the Koopa kids got very difficult when aggravated, jumping all over the place. Boom Booms got their hardest when they grew wings. And bowser picked up an airship for a mobile aid.

Yes, koopas in the sky have always been BAD MOJO.

So let's get modern.

In Smash Bros, Bowser is a heavy character, and sluggish. He doesn't dodge or block particularly well, and his movement along the ground is pretty atrocious. He's got his weight going for him, but he's basically a big target.

Turtling Bowser (block/grab, crouch buffering) is a low tier character.

But the key to making Bowser shine... is taking him to the sky.

PHILOSOPHY

Bowser is already ahead in the weight department, but behind in the tactics department. He's got plenty of hitpower, and if you rotate attacks, pretty much any blow will score you 10-15%. That's quite a lot, relatively. He also packs a pretty big wallop - his smashes can KO at low percentages.

But Bowser has serious issues with his ground game. His attacks are on the stubby side, meaning your enemy has to be pretty close to land them. His block isn't all that useful - his body is too large and he's tapped by low hits really often. His throw is underpowered, both damage and distance. His dodge is laggy and embarrassing. And his roll is pathetic - actually a much shorter roll distance than the average character.

In short, he's not very well equipped for fistfights, because he doesn't have the range, or the speed, or the defense. All he's got is a big stack of power, and without one of the other 3, he's in nothing but painsville.

This is where most players say, "Bowser is good for NOTHING."

But he DOES have a major talent set.

Bowser kicks hard when he jumps. Not that he has any grand killer air moves, but it's like a blossoming flower - all of a sudden, Bowser has tactical OPTIONS, and reasonable capability...

Jumping at an enemy is sort of a suicide tactic, like ramming 2 cars together. Bowser can move relatively quickly in the air, and has an average jump. Since Bowser's ground speed was pathetic, and his defense was lackluster, and his offense was going to waste, I chose to move him into a place where there was no defense to be had - the skies.

Boy did I crack open a walnut.

CORE AERIAL BOWSER
Bowser attacks and escapes through the air. The worst situation you can be in, is grounded and getting beat on by someone who knows what they are doing, getting comboed to death. This situation is Bowser's downfall - getting kick comboed by Fox, on the end of Link's sword or Sheik's flashy attacks - there's no time for defense, no room to attack. You are a big TARGET.

If you get airborne, the playing field levels - Bowser can make the first move. If you hit, your opponent buzzes away and you can give chase or take it as it is - you aren't getting run by comboes. Mathematically, if Bowser trades hits with an enemy, one to one, he will end up winning - his weight, power, and overall brutishness will give you an edge every time.

But Bowser gets finessed. If Bowser's attacks are blocked/grabbed or dodged/rolled, or he is pelted at, or comboed to death, the scale falls apart and Bowser loses.

For this scheme, your best bet is to be in the air - most air hits are strong slams, not comboes. Even if you get a lower percent of the collisions due to weaker priority (And Bowser has some decent aerial priority - not great, but workable plus some), colliding beats getting run.

So how do you handle the player who block/grabs you? The one who jumps up after you? The one who runs away?

It's all here. :cool:

BASIC METAGAME

Bowser's aerial metagame is about ten times stronger than his ground one. His air dodge is LONG, really long, and quite maneuverable. He has several moves that turn his whole body into an attack, making it hard to avoid. He can screw-combo in the air and has great horizontal motion adjust with his spin move AND his air dodge. His FWD-A is fast, near instantaneous. He can trap timing and outprioritize with his Hip Drop. He can disrupt enemy flow with the Fire Breath. And best of all, he can grab and throw from the air, with the Koopa Klaw.

ON THE ASSAULT
Double jump and sail in at your enemy from various angles.

IF your enemy is grounded and unhurt, use FWD+A, DOWN+A, NEUTRAL A, and NEUTRAL B (Flame) to rack up damage.

If you suspect your enemy will jump at you, use NEUTRAL A, UP+B, DOWN+B, and NEUTRAL B as effective or air dodge to the ground, and counter/jump.

If your opponent is going to Block and throw you, use FWD+B to grab him instead.

If your opponent is going to try to counterattack, use DOWN+B to correct your timing and outprioritize.

If your opponent is seriously wounded, use FWD+A or FWD+B, then BACK, to thrash your enemy or pitch him out.

If your enemy runs under you, use BACK+B to turn and slice/grab him.

If your enemy is rolling around, shorten the hop and use NEUTRAL+B to roast him.

Avoid performing BACK+A unless the enemy is seriously hurt. L-Cancel if necessary.
--
Sadly you can't always be on the attack, or in the air. If you're getting beat on, try ...

Pulling away from the enemy to reduce the combo.

UP+B if you are grounded. Your opponent pings away on the first hit, then slide yourself a good distance away.

NEUTRAL+A or DOWN+B if in the air. These are good for disrupting enemy rhythms.

Hop backwards and use NEUTRAL B in the air. This causes the firebreath to condense and makes it really hard to dig through - it will shut down most enemy attacks for at least a moment.

--
When grounded, with an enemy closing in,

JUMP to attack!

Or if the enemy is very wounded, SMASH them away.

If the enemy is not hurt, smack them with DOWN+A and the dashing A attack.

Chase after enemies you've knocked airborne and hit them with FWD+A or FWD+B in air. If they recover use UP+B or NEUTRAL A.
--
To finish an enemy off..

Charge a FWD+A smash and time the release.

Use an UP+A smash, then follow up with a tilt Up+A - you are not as vulnerable as you look.

Use an UP+B on an enemy that is right on top of you. They will fly right out of the stage.

Jump at an enemy and smack them with FWD+A as they jump to counterattack.

Or jump at them and hit them with FWD+B as they block, then push BACK to chuck them right out of the arena.

Most enemies can be 'finished off' around 80%. You need to start trying to take them out at this percent level to be most effective.
--

I'll wait awhile for the topic to gather comments and questions and post some advanced Bowserdom.

[pictish freak]

Sorry. Decadent One beat ya to it, and a whole lot more, in his guide... it shouldnt be too hard to find.

Nothing much to contribute here, but if you're interested in bowser his guide is a must read.

find it here also:

http://qwester.supersheep.org

[shockfrost]

*Reads entire article*

*swats the guy with 2 fingers*

Thank you, I knew this already. You can go now. ((Old man style))


(Fire breath is much more useful than it is made out to be in the guide IMO, especially if you hop backward first)

There's not much I should add to that, except personal emphasis on staying airborne... He's got the philosophy the same way I do.

I'll finish up on the updated Mewtwo guide, then.
http://www.smashboards.com/images/smilies/pow.gif Shockfrost http://www.smashboards.com/images/smilies/pow.gif

[Gekigarion]

Even if Decadent One beat him to it, that's still some commendable observations for someone who evidently didn't know of DO's guide.

Maybe we have a Decadent Two here on our hands :D

[Decadent One]

My guide is currently undergoing a revamp, due to new strats and techniques.
A section on the Fire Breath will be added.

The main thing I'd say about your guide is it's a tad simplistic, and you vastly underrate his ground game.
Between his tilts, his smashes, wavesmashes, the 'Fortress and CC'ing, his ground game is great.

His air game becomes all the more dangerous with Lcancelled fairs leading into tilts setting up for smashes.

His air game can't funtion alone. It need's the back up from his ground game to really kick ***.

[MagnuM]

I also agree that Bowser's Air Game > Bowser's Ground Game. But whenever I take to the air to attack with Bowser, I always shffle (short hop, fast fall, l-cancel), with the attack coming inbetween the fast fall and the l-cancel. I think this works extremely well with Aerial Back + A, even more so for edge guarding. Thats why I disagree with you that Aerial Back + A shouldn't be used all that often, I use it more often than Aerial Forward + A! If you hit a shffled Aerial Back + A just right, you'll hear a special, more harsh sounding smash, and your opponent's trajectory will be similar to a Shiek Forward + A aerial. Aerial Forward + A I also find very powerful and fast. Certain moves like Forward + B (Koopa Klaw) can only make sense from the air. If you look at it's angle, it swipes in a diagonal. So, if your opponent likes to shield block your aerial attacks, you can always try grabbing him. I also disagree with overuse of the Down + B, because Bowser takes so long to get off his ***, if you miss the move, you're in for some pain. I've also found some useful combo's with Bowser. If you Forward + B your opponent and grab them, then press Forward to shoulder check them, it pops your opponent straight up for what I like to call the snout smash (Up + A) Usually, your opponent will jump as soon as they are popped up, so if you double jump with Bowser, you'll be perfectly set up for a Up + A (which to my understanding, is the 2nd most powerful aerial in the game). You can also try this doing an up throw. I find that Bowser's throws, while relatively weak, set up perfectly for Aerial Foward + A's or Back + A's. In my Smash version, version 1.1, if you press and hold B the second Bowser's feet touch the ground from a jump, Bowser will do instant fire breath, without having to breathe in. I find this very effective for a quick 20% or so. I use Up + B to get out of bad situations fast, or for attacks. If you hit it at the beginning animation, it can be used as a KO move. It also can be performed out of a shield, which proves to be quite useful. Smashes I tend to avoid, unless it's for edge guarding because of the high priority. But if I were to smash in a it'd be either Up + A or Down + A. Tilts are better, and all Bowser's tilts seem to be quite effective and useful.

I'm not saying that Bowser is not a disadvantaged character. His drawbacks do overpower his strengths. I think the only thing that makes rational sense as to why he is low tier is that he is a fundamentally flawed character that was somehow overlooked by the developers during the testing process (lack of approiate weight for his size, lack of range, lack of speed, lack of power and damage in moves for his size, etc.) There are some matches which are near impossible to win because of these disadvantages (Shiek vs. Bowser, Marth vs. Bowser, etc).

But I would never consider him a useless player. I find that Bowser is good against Fox players, because of Fox's weight (combos). When I play Bowser, I usually play as him for fun, to humiliate other players if I win as him, or to do middle to lower tier matches (e.g. Bowser vs. Mewtwo). I like the character and his moveset and I've found a lot of useful moves/combos with him. As an avid Bowser player, I've invested many hours into play time and practice with him to find out his hidden powers, and he is my 2nd most played character in the game, next to Marth where I spend the bulk on my time in practice for competitive matches. Bowser can in no way compete with the upper teir compeitively, but he does have a lot of abilities to handle the middle teir and lower. I've found that he has a lot of strengths to counter some of his drawbacks such as a very good aerial game, a decent aerial wavedash, good priority in smashes, the ability to grab out of the air, easy to l-cancel his moves, good resistance to blows, good tilts, decent recovery, etc. I do not agree that he is the absolute worst character in the game, but I guess he can be a candidate when you add everything up.

Great Aerial Bowser guide shockfrost!

[shockfrost]

My guide is currently undergoing a revamp, due to new strats and techniques.
A section on the Fire Breath will be added.

The main thing I'd say about your guide is it's a tad simplistic, and you vastly underrate his ground game.
Between his tilts, his smashes, wavesmashes, the 'Fortress and CC'ing, his ground game is great.

His air game becomes all the more dangerous with Lcancelled fairs leading into tilts setting up for smashes.

His air game can't funtion alone. It need's the back up from his ground game to really kick ***.

--DecadentOne--



This is true, Bowser's grounded power is very awesome. But I play in a pretty high-intensity environment, where metagame is greater than everything. You're sort of counting on enemies that won't run you with a combo and won't break out of your own.

I don't bother with wavedashing. I figured out how to do it, marveled at the dumb sound, and decided it was too much strain on a very small facet of the game. FAR too much depends on how you set yourself up to worry about wisping across the screen in a puff of smoke - in fact, once an opponent has closed within 5 Bowser lengths of you, you're at the reaction point, and anything to make you go faster before this point is wasted. From 4 Bowser lengths, Samus can nail you with a fully charged shot, you can be grabbed, jumped, ducked, countered, or blocked. After that moment, you can outspeed an enemy, he can get inside the edge of your firebreath, etc.

I do tend to make my guides very simple, because rather than detail every facet of the jewel-sided game, I want people to TRY a new style and find most of the rest on their own, based on the outlying philosophy. And the philosophy behind my game is, "Bowser's defenses and subtleties suck. You need to beat heads with the enemy. Since you can do nothing but beat heads when you take to the air, you should take to the air to learn how to handle Bowser."

Now there's a lot missing from my vagueness. A lot of it's in your guide. EXAMPLE - I don't go into depth about how a skilled Marth player can keep you on the edge of his sword. Against such a player, going to the air will likely just get you wounded. And turtling is no great success here either. In fact in this situation, it's the Fire Breath that becomes your great weapon - properly timed, it can rack up damage well. You stay low, roll away a lot, plant hits, breathe fire, and spin him out/land a smash/hop and nail him when you can. It's still a slick slope to climb, though.

One of the big tricks to the firebreath is that people feel unsafe using it, because it's well known if you hold Firebreath, you're going to get hit. There's never a Firebreath situation where you 'own' the enemy and take no damage yourself, unlike most moves.

You breathe fire, you deal some damage, you get tagged. 1, 2, 3.

The first trick is, this isn't really a bad thing with Bowser. Done properly, you can get 10-16% on a good FBreath. That's a big chunk of damage, especially in trade for a single aerial from your enemy. You should always keep blowing fire, even when you know they're about to hit you. You'll often keep burning them, even as they inch into your head. And when you DO get hit, you'll have done all the more damage. Letting go just gives your enemy a free shot - IF YOU ARE CONTACTING, burn 'till it hurts, that's the first rule. The tradeoff is almost ALWAYS to your advantage until your opponent reaches about 90% damage.

The second trick is, that damage never goes DOWN. Every puff of flame is 1%. You can abuse that move until the cows come home. (with breather time in between blast series, of course) It will make your opponent wary - he will hang out on your edge, then come dashing in. This just begs to be smashed or block/grabbed. (Normally abusing a move causes damage %s to drop. Every good Bowser player knows to broadly rotate his moves, getting in 4 to 6 different hit types if possible before repeating, so to maximize all damage)

Spamming flame is a good way to turn your move damage back up too.

The problem is, that downward angle makes it pretty easy to hop the flames and come after the stagnant Bowser. If you don't catch them in the flames, it becomes not a trade-off game, but a game of whack-the-Bowser.

But if you hop first, the fire comes from above and descends onto them. You'll always get around 5% even when they get out fast, it's harder to get over, and you'll usually get about 12-15% which is what you wanted in the first place!

Hopping backwards is even better - if they dash at you or jump at you, they come up short - this stretches the reach of your firebreath and makes it a bit harder to get to you. A nasty trick.

You should mix Firebreath in with your other moves so it isn't predictable, or it will be openly reversed upon you: You will do no damage and get hurt as they stay above the flames. And quite often when you are healthy, their retaliation won't send you anywhere when they thump you after a good burn-down, so you should probably follow up with a Whirling Fortress which will splash them out and let you maneuver to a better position.

The trick to perfect Firebreath is ALWAYS catching your opponent in the flames. You should be satisfied if you get 5% damage from a Firebreath. If you get less, you blew too late to catch them at the tip. If your enemy jumps it or stands outside, waiting for your flames to die down, you blew too early.

It's important to make your opponent wary of jumping at you by slamming him with well-timed Up Smashes whenever he does it - this will reduce him to hopping at the last moment -- and the hop-back Firebreath will catch him. (OR the hop-back FAir/DownB will slam him as he keeps dashing. Heh. Once he decides to keep running, bait and counter accordingly.)

I personally commemorate Firebreath as a really good way to rack up damage, especially against Marth and Roy since they don't have a really good retaliation to a perfect firebreath except to shield and wait it out. And if you can get them flinching their shield that often, the fight is in the bag.

It is not so useful against lightweights, but they're not the type of enemy who needs that extra damage now, is they? ;)

[choknater]

Well yeah, I read it... err skimmed it. One thing: You rely a bit much on the Bowser Bomb's priority and you don't seem to take into account that it is waaay too slow. Yes, I know you know this, but it's slow to the point that it should nearly never be used unless after a low altitude juggling attack or a throw. And it should certainly not be used in the air.

I'd say that its best use is for edge-guarding. If you Bowser Bomb near the edge and grab the ledge, the recovery is instant. And Bowser's butt will reach pretty low before you see his arm grab the ledge so you should count on a hit. The only thing is that it pops them upwards, which isn't a good way to hit them for an edgeguard. But it is an excellent killing move and hits for over 15% of damage, and if you don't hit, it's an edge-hog. Good strat.

If you wanna guard better without the hog, you can just down tilt, forward smash, forward aerial, whatever you wish.

And to your latest post mainly about wavedashing and firebreathing. His triangle jump/wavedash is pretty good for moving actually. His wavedash is deceptively fast and if you air dodge downwards at certain angles, he can even reach the ground at the height of his short jump.

And the flame breath: the wind up is slow, and it doesn't really do THAT much damage. One tip: I'd only use it right before it hits the ground because the wind up animation is cancelled and the flame comes out instantly.

That's all for now.

[GrabfestBowser]

First of all I just want to clarify though it says noob next to my name, I've used Bowser and only Bowser since this game came out. I own the first version, with the instant flame cancel, and yes, it is definitely as big a part of his offense as is listed above. I have read Decadent One's Bowser guide, I read it a couple weeks ago once I found out about smashboards, and to be honest I felt like I wrote it myself, with a few exceptions of course because everyone plays him differently. I'm not here to criticize anyone's methods because everyone plays him differently, but I want to put my two cents in really quick.
First of all I just got back from my first official tournament, the MLG tournament in Chicago, and I thought it was awesome. From what I was being told since I was a "noob" I was going to get slaughtered (according to M3D:D still love ya though). First of all we played on the second version, so I was without a good 20percent of my offense. That flame should NOT be underestimated... if you are good enough to catch someone running at you as you're falling and you fast fall right into it, it's a good 25percent damage on your opponent. Playing without it in the tournament kinda made me nervous but there wasn't much else I could do to remedy it. The tournament was really good though, in teams, my brother and I - he uses Link - took 7th out of 24 teams... we lost to Ken and Isai in the round robin AND in the winner's bracket, and then we lost to Snex and Prime's team of jiggly's in the round robin too. We were finally eliminated by Kadian and Joel's (I think) falco and sheik. In singles I tied for 17th, and went 5-1 in the round robin, only losing to Isai. I was beating sheik's, peaches, marths, falcons, everyone, though I must admit if I played any of the top 10 people who placed, at best I could only get them down to two stock... though I never got four stocked myself. And one more thing, I don't Lcancel at all yet, either, because I just learned about it a week or so ago and didn't have time to practice it. But either way that's not too bad, ending up 8 - 3. I will have Lcancelling down by FC if I can make it hopefully.
Anyway, I was going to email Decadent One my thoughts but i just didn't have the time, and after talking about it with KishSquared at the tourney - who DOES Lcancel with Bowser and showed me a thing or two... except I showed him how powerful that forward tilt is for edgeguarding! - he said I should post instead.
So pretty much when I read Decadent One's guide it was word for word how I fight except... I think that Bowser's grab and throw down - what I call THE PANCAKE - is actually his best grab when your opponent is under 80percent. An awful lot of my game is grabbing opponents, and Bowser's grab is HEAVILY underrated. There were multiple times in the tournament where I grabbed an opponent 4,5, or even 6 times in a row... all followed by another pancake. Most people tend to tech AWAY from you after a move like that, and nobody would think that Bowser's speed is good enough to catch them, but if you can learn the timing, as soon as you are done with the pancake you can run in that exact direction they will probably tech. As they tech away from you, if you do this correctly you will actually be running right over them, and as soon as they are not invincible anymore you can grab them and do it again, either across the level, or back the other way depending on the direction of their tech. If they tech back into you, you have to be quick enough to catch it. I usually automatically assume they will tech away, and then if I see them go into me, you can hit backwards quickly enough and it's an instant turnaround because it's just like dashdancing. Of course though, when someone is at a high percent, you want to put them in the air and set up that forward aerial or the air headbutt... what I call Bowser's third jump:D
The only other thing that I wanted to add was that my favorite levels to choose... and believe I did for sure in the tournament were Mushroom Kingdom 2 for obvious reasons - the Klaw! - and BOTH Donkey Kong levels, Japes, and Jungle. I like Japes a ton because you can do the fortress off of either the right or left ledge as a retreat tactic, and in my opinion any level where you have to jump a lot is great for him because of that forward aerial. Once someone puts you on using the forward aerial a lot you can abuse that Klaw like crazy, and ONLY throw backwards with it if someone is at a high percent. Anyway that's kinda it. If any of you wanna talk about him at all or you want to give me some input I'd LOVE it... I'm hoping to do a lot better at FC if I can make it, as I'm now kinda "the bowser guy." Hopefully I can still place pretty decent, but I'm sure a TON of people now know the distance of Bowser's tap A getup off a ledge when under a 100 percent, because I abuse that like CRAZY. When I play Snex, he just walks to the middle of the level and ALLOWS me to get up because he's just sick of it. Actually, that is what I do as soon as I kill someone, I run as far away as I can and hang off the ledge... it's much better than just having them kick your butt in the middle of the level while they are still invisible. To be honest I did that against Ken... he walked right to the edge and tried to hit me off, and I got up with his quick dodge get up off the ledge, and he recovered too quick and just beat me up all the way and across the level... hahahahah oh well. He would have done that anyway I'd like to think, BUT I did take two stock off of him! Moral victory? hahahaha. By the way all of this edge stuff only applies when under 100percent. Get in touch with me though, I'd love to talk Bowser... my AIM is DctrEvil17.
Luke... from Chicago

[GrabfestBowser]

Since I only use Bowser and no other character, I just want to include one more thing that I forgot to mention... this might be obvious too, but I'm going to say it anyway. Pretty much at every moment of a battle I want my opponent to second guess himself. This kind of goes back to the whole section on the pancake I just wrote. Whenever I pancake someone, since they have to get off their back, I previous wrote above something along the lines of, "I usually start running in the direction of the tech that will move away from me." There are also times where someone will get up with A, doing an attack, and obviously that will hit me as I'm running over him. This is kinda the guessing game that I'm talking about, but with bowser it's all about making the opponent make the first move then reacting to it. It's this getup with A that prevents me from doing an infinite chain grab. When someone does get up with A, you have to jump twice, then fast fall right onto him with the Klaw. Basically whenever I pancake someone I'm ready to do both, and it's more or less a guessing game... you just have to put your opponent on a move and go with it. A lot of times also when you are towards an edge and there really isn't much room, you could pancake someone towards the edge, and in MOST cases, since there isn't room to tech further out, they will tech towards you, where you simply downsmash. Sorry for the double post, good luck to everyone.
Luke

[Arc of Arginum]

i will tell the programmers to make the computer analyze individual moves and counter them accordingly.this will make them uber-hard to near impossible to beat.this is really good. this will force player into countering counters ,fake-out set-ups,lagtime abuse, and split second timing and descision making.this also will force you to minimalize mistakes,lost opportunities,not making them pay for there mistakes fully,and to cut down on sub-consious/or conscious screwing in serious matches.combo all this with a actual combination system in this game and this game will be a perfect game of its style.multiplayer arcade-ish fighter.and yes this any other game can become a sport.all you need is some compitive persons in a contest(winner and loser) fighting to see who wants it the most. they are striving for a prize at the sacrificing of skill,time,self,condition,and hard work.thats what a sport is.these tournements are a sports arena and i respect there hardwork and abition.

[Qwester]

I think you posted that in the wrong thread.

[YOSHIDO]

thank u. My charcters are
1st Yoshi
2nd peahc and capton falcon. I always wanted to master bowser. But fox would just be to fast. But now i have something to do in smash. Now its actually possible to use him

[GrabfestBowser]

If any of you guys who use bowser have any videos of yourselves playing anybody online anywhere, I'd LOVE for you to send them to me so I can see who you guys fight. Drop me an IM or PM... my aim name is DctrEvil17... sorry I don't have any of myself. Thanks.
Luke

[djwang88]

I own the first version, with the instant flame cancel

Hmm? You mean, an aerial fire breath's lag is cancelled or something? Explain, please. I've never heard of this before.

[GrabfestBowser]

Yes you can flame cancel with bowser in the first version of the game. To try it, jump, and just before you hit the ground hit B. If you have the first version he will instantly be grinning and flame will be coming out. If you have the second version he will pull his head back, take a step forward, then do his thing. If you have the first version you can do it instead of teching - for the most part - or pretty much whenever you want. It's great for those people that hit you up in the air, and you DI away from them, then just as you hit the ground you flame cancel as they are running at you for the final blow... and you inflict another 15-20 percent damage. It also adds another weapon to his repertoire... instead of jumping and Klawing or swatting, you can now jump in front of someone and flame and get a bunch more damage in that way too. It annoys all those people who sidestep or even just plain old dodge away from you as you approach them (Especially all those Peaches out there who prefer to dodge as their only form of movement)
Luke