Balanced Brawl Standard Release

Lokee said:

Lucario- Can Walljump or Wallcling out of Up B (limit once)

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He could do that in vBrawl too

Some of those new changes sound great. Particularly Link's recovery and Falcon Kick (although I still think it should never cancel into another Falcon Kick... but atleast the voice sample doesn't repeat). I still think some of the super armor implementations are a bit much, and are relatively large game changers, but eh, sounds like most don't agree.

The next release is already going to be standard, though? :O I expected 1 or 2 more beta releases.

Out of curiosity, what MU does gaurenteed stabbing on a good Bair fix for Zard?

let me think...

i can imagine it's great against DDD, snake, ike, and ROB...

sounds very tasty. you could have tried shield damage with fair tip hitboxes as well. i'd absolutely love giving charizard a not absolutely ****ty tech roll but i can imagine how awkward it is; i suppose that'll have to wait until we have a more effective/efficient way to change/create animations. you could try replacing his backward missed tech roll with his normal successful tech roll.

On Charizard: The heavy armor on his flying animation is a surprisingly cool idea. I rarely found myself WILLING to go into flight mode, since I knew anything as simple as Wolf's shot could screw me up. Fly is tricky to aim sometimes, but it hasn't really been much of a concern when he's in flight mode. So I just want to say this was a great idea!

I'm not sure how much a shield-stabbing b-air will help, but it does sound interesting. Definitely something to give a try. Hopefully, it won't devolve into something like Ivysaur's situation, where she can essentially rush you facing backwards.

Don't play ZSS, but I do play around with Zelda and Sheik every now and then. My primary complaint about Zelda has always been her recovery. I may just need more practice with Farore's Wind. Her ice element Naryu's Love feels... weird. It kind of works against human players, not so much against the CPU. Another of Zelda's problems is that she really, really hates being juggled. Her d-air is a weak meteor that usually can't gouge people off the ground, and Naryu's Love is iffy. Farore's Wind is handy, but most human opponents can eventually figure out just how much of a parlor trick it is, accurately predicting where you will teleport and punish accordingly.

Sonic's d-tilt. Weird. Fun. I rarely used it until this new change. It seems to put opponents in an uncomfortable position, and it's good as a 'get away from me!' move. Does this change help Sonic with a certain matchup?

Someone suggested super armor on one of Sonic's spindash attacks. That might be useful. I know the super armor on Spin Charge has saved my *** a few times. It seems to work somewhat for Yoshi's Egg roll, so it may be an interesting idea to toy with.

@Mit's wariness over Super Armor:

lets take a look at what characters/moves got SA:

Bowser's Fsmash (does he have relentless too in this version? havent downloaded yet). This is stupidly useful for bowser as it is another means to give him breathing room other than the frtress, and thats his biggest concern: being juggled/pressured to death

Yoshi's Egg Roll doesnt change much, but it does make his matchup with Falco and other campers neutral again as he now has a more solid approach than the predictable Bair.

Ganondorf....needs all the help he can get

Ike is in a similar situation to the 3 mentioned above, but at the same time I dont think SA is enough to just call him "fixed"...

Bowser the Relentless is a gimmick. He is not a part of any mainstream release.

I suggested this a while ago, but Farore's Wind should have a burst of wind on startup and reapparance.

Is this official or just another demo?

A beta. Feedback will be loved forever.

Looks good, cant wait to test it.

Im curious though what was the point of increasing the damage and tweaking the KB of Ganon's Up B. Is it just for making it do more damage without it being overpowered?

I love many of the changes made in this release.

Nayru's love is amazing. This really helps zelda to approach opponents which has always been one of her greatest weaknesses. Sliding grab and sliding upsmash are incredible. The added momentum is also a huge buff to zelda's recovery. The only problem I have with it is that you can only jab or tilt in the direction you are facing. I think that you should be able to jab or tilt in either direction which would enable better followups.

Jigglypuff's new downthrow is what it should have been from the beginning. It now hits low enough for followups.

Link's new recovery is good, but I don't like the fact that you have to use the hookshot immediately after the upb ends. I think that makes it too predictable. It would be better if the hookshot could be used at any time after the spin attack ends.

Did you change Kirby Naru's Love as well?

From my impressions while talking with you, Thinkaman...

Sheik: Rapid Jab cancel is just far too good. Even the AI can abuse it perfectly.
Zelda: Now has the absolute best Reflect in the game since she can chase the projectile afterward.
Lucario: This really helps the D3 and Falco matchup. Thanks!

Back to Chrono Trigger!

...after this one last thing.

Being a Wolf fanatic I would love Wolf's bonus to be bounce cancelling. Just make the cancel start when he has no momentum. This really helps him score the kill while staying in-character.

Thinkaman said:

I tweaked DK, found the issue you mentioned on the outer hitbox. I think I bought him an extra frame or two, it's still not much.

I toned Zelda's buff down a tiny bit, might be 75% of what it was. Like most changes I did it in increments, and at one point it just "clicked" and felt less jarring.

I also tweaked Zelda's d-tilt to have a consistant 4f advantage--it cannot be chained. (by 1 frame)

For Shiek, I tried removing the cancel on jab3 and makign the cooldown on jab1 and 2 (for non jab followups) half the original values. Looks promising.

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When do we get to have updated builds like these? :O

Are you updating the download link on a consistent basis, or are all of these changes you've been making on this page for the next release candidate?

I would like to have the Standard Balanced Brawl version without the item bug. Is that possible? Do you happen to know which code causes item bugs?

snakes side B should do more knock back and break shields!

MorpheusVGX said:

I would like to have the Standard Balanced Brawl version without the item bug. Is that possible? Do you happen to know which code causes item bugs?

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Actually with the new systems in place on the beta and test verisons its all fixed. I think the cause of the glitches where the frame speed modifier codes but the new system uses PACs so its all good. A little more to download but its worth it considering the benefits like transformation time speeds and the rest

Fuujin said:

I'll also try giving my feedback for Zelda one more time, though likely to go disregarded.
There's no time better than now to ask about this than now.
All the stuff you gave her is neat and all but she doesn't really need most of it.
She has D tilt that knocks the enemy above her and now the reappearing hitbox on Farore's wind..
Basically shes a once trick pony now, all the can do is knock opponents above her and U smash or U tilt and (U air now)
The whole freezing affect is nice and being able to cancel it with a jump is helpful.
But the Ice effect along with the flower on jab(which is too small to do more than 1 damage before the enemy shakes it off) aren't really necessary.
A MAJOR buff she could use is making Din's fire a non horrible projectile.
Yes I know she can fill GnW's bucket and heal Ness/Lucas in doubles but those sound like poor excuses just not to give her a buff she really could use.
About the whole low level play thing, if were really trying to balance it out for noobs(aka low level players)
Then get rid of Falco's Blaster and GnW's turtle while you're at it.
With a decent projectile Zelda could actually force an approach and use her defensive options (F smash, old Nayru's Love, D smash) to keep the enemy away.
Sure she would be a campy character and people would complain about it but considering the fact that shes one of the slowest easiest characters to kill it would balance her out.
Look at Pit and Falco, both can camp well and both have a better up close game and MUCH better chance of recovering safely than Zelda does,
Just saying a speed up on dins fire is a lot less radical than giving Jigglypuff items or significantly boosting someones recovery.

Speaking of her horrible recovery Brawl- seems to have fixed here(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr5bDX4Cjxc#t=0m15s) and this model of Zelda wasn't even complete. She doesn't even have to fly upwards out of it just being able to move in a direction after using it would help.
She's clearly much worse than wolf and he got his recovery literally doubled <_<.
That would REALLY help in the several match ups.

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Fuujin said:

Not even that, sure its has lots of lag and characters like Jigglypuff have plenty of time to hit her but that's not the main problem.
If someone knows the Zelda match up well they can predict where shes gonna land and punish it, the ending lag is so horrendous Falcon can hop on the edge to make sure she cant sweet spot then jump up and reverse falcon punch it because she cant move for like 3 seconds after using it.

Shield damage wouldn't help Din's.
About 80% of the cast has an aerial that cancels it out on impact.

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The new Nayru's Love change gives Zelda an approach but it doesn't really fit her play style.
I'm not sure why you keep changing Nayru's Love, sure it may be one of less reliable reflectors in the game but out of all of her specials it's the least horrible. She's also going to have to over rely on it as her only decent move that now triples as her recovery and approach.
You seem to be avoiding Din's Fire as if it were the plague for some reason.
Giving a character as horrible as her a nice projectile wouldn't be polarizing.

Sheik while much better still needs something if her jab canceling is going to be removed.
Note that many of her advantageous match ups were based pretty much on the ability to tilt lock them to rack up damage.
Unlike Falco's chain grab she actually needed it to win some match ups or go around even with them(Fox, Falco, Wolf, DK and others) while many characters that she can't tilt lock in vbrawl are bad match ups for her(Snake, Marth, Peach, Luigi).

Din's Fire is not practical to change for a lot of reasons. I shall list them briefly.

-The move already kinda destroys bad players. I mean, let me put it this way. If I were to pick the best 3 moves in the game (standard Brawl) to destroy bad players, the rankings would go about like this...

1. Meta Knight Mach Tornado
2. Mr. Game & Watch turtle
3. Zelda Din's Fire

It's that effective against them; all three of these moves are loathed by low level players because they're ridiculous brick walls against them. Mach Tornado and turtle are actually just plain really good and nerfed for other reasons (turtle less than Mach Tornado of course). Din's Fire obviously loses some utility against better players, but buffing it would be somewhat irresponsible here.

2. Din's Fire is really good in teams. It's true; it creates tons of frame traps when used correctly in synchronization with a teammate, and it can charge G&W bucket or heal Ness or Lucas pretty efficiently.

3. The move is fairly rigid mechanically. This makes reasonable buffs of the move pretty hard to do. I mean, what can you really responsibly buff here? When it actually hits, the move already is one of the most damaging projectiles in the game and one of the few that can kill. Making the move transcendent priority would prevent clashing, but it also has a very large possibility of just making the move dumb for some characters to fight against. Speeding up the re-appearance to make it very hard to airdodge is kinda the same way; remember that we have all these characters who have to fight against Zelda; it's not just about her. Remember that we have very slow characters such as Ganondorf in this game. It's not that way right now, but I can easily imagine a game in which Ganondorf or Bowser or whoever have very few viable options to escape Din's Fire juggles and have 80-20 matchups against Zelda. I can also imagine a buffed Din's Fire would be of almost no help against high mobility characters like Sonic who, as far as I can tell, already do pretty well against Zelda.

Please, if you want to argue here, don't post some inane refutation like "we don't care about low level players!" and nothing else because it's how all of this comes together that makes buffing Din's Fire a bad idea; just answering one point you don't like is not an argument. I don't think there is a reasonable argument against all of this, and further I suspect it's for more emotional reasons a lot of people want to see a better Din's Fire. I mean, the move at first feels just amazing. Then you try to use it in 1v1 matches against good players and discover it's hard to get a lot out of it (though it's definitely far from useless). It makes sense why you want the move to be as good as it seems at first, but it's just not a good design direction.

As per Farore's Wind, it also seems better at first than it really is, but the move is about as good as it can be without really reworking it. You may notice that Balanced Brawl makes the actual hits of this thing pretty awesome, and the fairly mediocre movement pattern would really need total reworking to be significantly better. Zelda's recovery isn't the greatest I guess, but it's not horrible either because that Meta Knight cannot magically teleport to your location off-stage and insta-gimp you (same reason Ness's recovery isn't horrible; it takes time to get to you to gimp you even if your up special doesn't protect you at all once they actually get there). It's just not a good design direction.

Zelda's down special is transform to Sheik, a great move. I'm not sure buffing it further is reasonable.

So, among Zelda's specials, Nayru's Love is the viable option, it was always a fairly poor special, and it generally is the logical point of attack on Zelda's moveset. I would remind people of how Zelda works and is already changed actually. All of her smashes have been buffed to maximum reasonable utility (which is a lot!). Jab and ftilt received a good chunk of work, and these builds also show a honed, refined dtilt. Utilt was already pretty great. Her aerials are mostly not very reasonable moves to buff because they mostly have the gimmick of "hits over a ridiculously small area but hits really hard", but we did buff the one not like that (nair) a bit for whatever it's worth. I would point out the suggestion of "make dair able to sweetspot grounded opponents" is something we have tested internally, and it is a very, very bad idea. Zelda's dair becomes basically a better version of Ganon's dair against grounded opponents; it combos into itself very well which would make Zelda's entire game "chain dairs against grounded opponents" and would make Zelda the best character in the game (it would be about like some of the builds that thankfully never escaped internal where Ganon's dtilt was an infinite combo into itself). Zelda's throws are basically guaranteed to never be that important due to her awful grab (I would rate Zelda's set of 3 grabs second worst in the game, only better than Zero Suit Samus's, and one of the only two so bad that grabbing in general loses viability as a tactic), but her back throw is buffed into a pretty viable kill throw regardless. So that leaves Zelda's "always going to suck" dash attack and Nayru's Love. Nayru's Love is the really sensible point here!

That list may also remind people that Zelda is already substantially buffed in Balanced Brawl, and I honestly simply do not believe she was ever as bad as a winner like Ganondorf in the first place. I also don't think her balance is fairly considered in a typical way due to her relationship with Sheik; she is a somewhat incomplete character by virtue of her design so if you stubbornly insist on never using that down special when you play as Zelda, you just have to expect sometimes things are going to be harder than with most characters. There is just no way around this, and the same thing applies to Sheik (though probably to a lesser extent since her only major game problem is that she has the worst set of KO moves in the game).

On the note of Sheik, I'm going to take a more careful look at her jab business and what is possible to do with it.

kyokoro_pamuyo said:

@Fuujin:
Do you remember that Z/S are supposed to be played as a team, right?

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Then why are they seperate on the tier list?
I understand this project wants but honestly all Zelda is to Sheik is a nice kill move. I wouldn't really call that team work it's just use Sheik 90% of the match then kill with Zelda and switch back.
People should also have a choice of which, if not both, they wish to use.

Thinkaman said:

Din's Fire is like Egg Toss: Buffing it is intrinsically going to make the character more defensive, and since both characters are already highly defensive, it's of no real help to bad matchups.

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But that's the thing, she needs to play defensively, she has pretty much no approach prior to the new Nayru's buff.
Against good players of any character (other than IC's and ironically Ness and Lucas.), she has very limited options with Din's Fire.
Basically it serves as a tool to possibly harass the opponent off stage and deal about 13 damage with one hit.

Against characters with enough speed they can zip past it and punish her due to the ending lag so it's no use on Sonic and with Fox you're practically asking to eat a U smash.
Any character not fast enough to get past it just has to Shield/Airdodge/Use an aerial to cancel it out, and yes this includes Ganondorf, it's practically useless on him too.
Then there are the characters who simply outcamp her.

I understand why you may not want to make Yoshi more defensive but it's Zelda were talking, Lightweight, Bigger than Yoshi, slower than Yoshi and much worse recovery than Yoshi.
A character built like this with that many problems deserves a nice projectile.

Din's fire is nothing like egg toss, egg toss is a really nice projectile, if din's fire was half as good as egg toss it would be fine.

Amazing Ampharos said:

2. Din's Fire is really good in teams. It's true; it creates tons of frame traps when used correctly in synchronization with a teammate, and it can charge G&W bucket or heal Ness or Lucas pretty efficiently.

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It's not that amazing in doubles, maybe when teamed up with other projectiles but if the opponent knows to cancel it out with an aerial it shouldn't be that much of a threat.
Also keep in mind how Zelda is left open the entire time she's using it so it leave the opponent with an opportunity to attack her, and Zelda being light weight doesn't need excess damage.

Amazing Ampharos said:

3. The move is fairly rigid mechanically. This makes reasonable buffs of the move pretty hard to do. I mean, what can you really responsibly buff here? When it actually hits, the move already is one of the most damaging projectiles in the game and one of the few that can kill. Making the move transcendent priority would prevent clashing, but it also has a very large possibility of just making the move dumb for some characters to fight against. Speeding up the re-appearance to make it very hard to airdodge is kinda the same way; remember that we have all these characters who have to fight against Zelda; it's not just about her. Remember that we have very slow characters such as Ganondorf in this game. It's not that way right now, but I can easily imagine a game in which Ganondorf or Bowser or whoever have very few viable options to escape Din's Fire juggles and have 80-20 matchups against Zelda. I can also imagine a buffed Din's Fire would be of almost no help against high mobility characters like Sonic who, as far as I can tell, already do pretty well against Zelda.

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As the people who worked with Ganondorf I'd assume you should know if you can't hit with the move the damage and knockback don't matter much.
Like you said WHEN it actually hits, that's a very big "when" as it hardly ever happens on a good opponent.

I can tell you're looking at it the same way the creators of brawl did, on paper Din's Fire looks great but in reality it's bad. While it kills when it's fully charged, the tremendous lag it takes for it to get fully charged makes it so that won't be killing a good opponent who can airdodge. In fact the only landable (dunno if that's even a word) Din's is when its hardly charged, your opponent has plenty of time to see it coming if you attempt land a fully charged fireball.

I have no idea where you're getting your match up data from, Zelda has no where near 20-80 match ups on anyone, she has 60-40 on Bowser and 65-35 on Ganondorf. Sonic is near even with Zelda at worst 60-40 but she has much slower much worse match ups.

A speed up would be fine, as long not so fast that it can constantly juggle opponents without them having a chance to use an aerial to cancel it out.

Amazing Ampharos said:

Then you try to use it in 1v1 matches against good players and discover it's hard to get a lot out of it (though it's definitely far from useless). It makes sense why you want the move to be as good as it seems at first, but it's just not a good design direction.

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It really is useless on Peach, GnW, Yoshi, Luigi and basically any character floaty enough to use an aerial to cancel it without descending too far offstage.
I honestly think a speedup would help, as i mentioned several times before it would force the opponent to approach.
It's a very simple solution rather than tinkering with one of her few decent moves and adding things like flowers to her jab.

Amazing Ampharos said:

As per Farore's Wind, it also seems better at first than it really is, but the move is about as good as it can be without really reworking it. You may notice that Balanced Brawl makes the actual hits of this thing pretty awesome, and the fairly mediocre movement pattern would really need total reworking to be significantly better. Zelda's recovery isn't the greatest I guess, but it's not horrible either because that Meta Knight cannot magically teleport to your location off-stage and insta-gimp you (same reason Ness's recovery isn't horrible; it takes time to get to you to gimp you even if your up special doesn't protect you at all once they actually get there). It's just not a good design direction.

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Metaknight along with a few characters can actually get to her that can reach her fast enough to hit her before the teleport begins.
All he has to do is come out with his multiple jumps spamming D air or F air.
Yes the start up lag for that move really is that slow.


Chasing her off stage isn't even necessary, when shes far away enough just hop on the edge forcing her to teleport on stage then hop on and punish, repeat that a few times for some damage.


I'm just unsure if you know how bad she is, you're giving her a lot more credit than she deserves.

You guys have seen a match up chart for her right?



It's incomplete and possibly outdated but what was done of it is pretty accurate.


Though I supposed if you plan on keeping her as Sheik's kill move then she's fine the way she is.

Uh, I didn't say she had 80-20 matchups now. I said she would have them pretty fast if Din's Fire became really good. Slow characters can only handle Din's Fire because it's fairly easy to evade. If it weren't, what would they do? Also remember guys like Sonic are really buffed and the matchups are different now; I really don't think you understood much of what I was saying. Like when I mentioned the hitbox data, I mean making it hit harder is not a useful direction. Making a move hit harder is one way to buff a move. For Din's Fire, it isn't a good way to buff it. This is kinda the theme of that post; you didn't respond to what I said but to something that is vaguely similar to what I said when you ignore certain key words or interpret statements backwards. I can't really respond to your post because you didn't really respond to precisely what I was saying...

I can respond to the teams comment though. The key words were frame trap. So, Zelda is using Din's Fire and is about to hit the enemy. They have two fundamental choices. They can avoid it somehow (airdodge, smack it out of the air). Alternatively, they can allow themselves to be hit. If they do the second, Zelda wins. If they do the first, they are committed for an extended period. At this point, Zelda's teammate punishes their commitment. For instance, Zelda throws Din's Fire at enemy Donkey Kong. DK airdodges the Din's Fire. Zelda's teammate Mr. Game & Watch punishes the ending of DK's airdodge with fishbowl. DK had absolutely zero options to avoid that; his only choice was which character to be hit by. This comes up a lot Din's Fire is so good in teams if you work together properly. Zelda sits back while her ally takes the frontlines, and she does this a lot. If she gets under pressure, she just throws out usmashes and such while her ally saves her. Zelda is so good in teams period really.

Well! I finally got a chance to play BBrawl for real with real people for an extended period of time! I have some new feelings on the changes; basically I just have some more gut reactions to throw out. This is essentially the quick evaluations of someone at low- to mid-level play.

Captain Falcon, unsurprisingly, stands out the most in all the changes -- I really like the aerial-to-ground Falcon Kick. It feels pretty refined for the most part. The whole deal gives Falcon an enormous mobility boost that might possibly be a tad overkill. Either way, it's awesome. At the same time, it's very, very gamechanging, so I simultaneously love it and dislike it.

I personally think the setup would be best if you could cancel Falcon Kick only once. For example, instead of being able to do Air Falcon Kick -> Ground Falcon Kick -> Falcon Dive, you could only do Air Falcon Kick -> Ground Falcon Kick OR Ground Falcon Kick -> Falcon Dive.

As for Heavy Armor on Falcon Punch, it is also excellent. It gives Falcon Punch tremendous utility. (Compared to it's original iteration, at least.) I think I would prefer it to have less Heavy Armor, though -- it'd be nice if most smashes could stop the move, so it isn't thrown out too lightly. (In our low-level matches, it was used rather frequently, and often to great effect.)

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...I'd say that other than those two suggestions, I pretty much enjoyed every change made. The characters all are starting to shine as having lots of potential. Of course, there is the lurking feeling that BBrawl is straying quite far from vBrawl... and the huge amounts of super armor floating around sometimes makes certain battles feel like battles of attrition.

But overall, the changes are welcome and enjoyable. Particularly unblockable counters were well liked. Good work, guys!

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Various minor comments:
- Dedede's hammer momentum would feel a little better if it weren't so much on an uncharged swing.
- Did you guys change Ganon's Dtilt to hit normally against aerial opponents? If so, I approve.
- Double jump canceling out of the spacies' side+B still feels kind of awkward conceptually.

so GW's bair tip still does 1% but acts like 2% on shields?

edit: same question regarding marth's fair.

i need to try out jiggs' dthrow before i make any judgment calls on her. if it is what i think it is, then she might be a middle of the pack character now.