This isn't melee minus. ><"
One cool idea for Roy was for all of the tips of his moves to do more shield damage than the average move. This gives him a very interesting style in this patch, especially when you consider that if he ever breaks a shield he has a **** neutral B to punish them with. =3
For people who ask "what's the point of this," it actually helps the Roy user when he transcends back to melee. He'll be much more adpet at using the tip of Roy's sword in general, especially on the opponent's shield. This helps their overall spacing game and stops them from being grabbed as easily.
Of course there's the CC problem to address as well. Maybe even more grab range to help combat it? lol
Anyway, I've been thinking about stages for a while, and I've concluded that before we can go fixing them, we need to set up a definition as to what a good competitive stage is. Let's take a look at the six undisputed "competitive" stages.
Final Destination
Dreamland 64
Battlefield
Pokemon Stadium
Fountain of Dreams
Yoshi's Island
Let's take a look at some characteristics.
Symmetry - These stages try to avoid giving an advantage to being on one side of the map compared to the other side.
Lack of External Factors - These stages try to keep the fight between characters. While you can take advantage of certain aspects of the stage, you don't usually want the stage to literally "fight" against you, even if it goes by a pattern and is predictable.
Exeptions include Randall and Shy Guys on Yoshi's Island, the rising and lowering of platforms on Fountain of Dreams, Whispy on Dreamland, and stage changes on Pokemon Stadium.
Notice the bias against randall, whispy, PS transformations, and FoD in general. XD
Platform(s) and a single stage - Most of these stages have platforms, and all of them have a single "stage" that is lower than the platforms and cannot be passed through like platforms, from top or bottom.
The only exception is Final Destination, which has no platforms.
Some people are actually really biased against FD for this reason as well.
Other aspects of potentially competitive stages
Asymmetry - While an asymmetrical stage may provide more reward for being in a certain area on a stage, does this necessarily make it uncompetitive? I personally feel that it only truly degenerates gameplay if it makes matches exceptionally campy.
A good example would be a lava-less Brinstar - has no symmetry in the slightest. Two platforms that aren't on level, and even the third platform is slightly to the left. Don't even get me talking about the stage itself. However, the small stage itself discourages camping, as well as the uneven ground and the two hurtboxes that absorb projectiles on the side. You can also have a strategic advantage by breaking the middle. This may potentially reduce the match to campfests... but the amount of characters that truly get messed up by this is minimal.
Compare this to Corneria, where the asymmetry makes it a big camping stage since the fin and gun areas provide enough cover so that you only have to continuously guard against one option, while the size of the stage makes such options fairly predictable. They also promote "cave of life" strategies, that will be discussed later. =3
Passable Stages - Some stages can be passed through from bottom to top, but not from top to bottom. So basically a semi-platform. Stages that utilize a semi-platform instead of an actual stage do not have walls to ride up against, making edguarding easier, teching impossible off-stage, and sweetspotting from below harder. In return, your opponent also has to cover more options since you can recover through the stage. It isn't uncompetitive, per se, but something to look into.
Stages that utilize this include Brinstar, Kongo Jungle 64, Mute City, and Rainbow Cruise.
Walls - Anything that Fox can infinitely shine you on. Usually this is bad because it gives Fox players more of an advantage, and really promote cave of life strategies. Surprisingly, Corneria's walls don't allow infinite shining, but boost fox in other manners, such as his second taunt. <3 Usually considered uncompetitive because it gives an advantage to certain characters, but I think if we use the "corneria angle" for walls we should be fine.
Walls can be found on certain parts of Rainbow Cruise, Pokefloats, Pokemon Stadium transformations(fire and rock), Onett, Hyrule, Brinstar Depths, Fourside, and Princess Peaches Castle.
Cave of Life - An area of the stage in which you rely on your main defense the ability to bounce off the stage or tech it. Not sure if it is uncompetitive, since it technically is a type of "skill," but that's for us to discuss and determine.
Popular stages for this include Hyrule, Princess Peaches Castle, Rock + Fire Transformations for Pokemon Stadium, Corneria, and certain parts of Pokefloats.
More to come, tired of typing this up.
