So I have a question or two for you regarding her. I've been playing with her some lately (no customs, unfortunately) and I can't help but shake the feeling that her moves don't deal quite enough damage. FAir, DAir, FTilt, and possibly DTilt/UTilt could all use a damage buff of about 1-2%. FAir I'm not totally sold on, since it is such a quick move, but FTilt definitely needs it. The reward on hit is just so awful. In most cases you're lucky to get 6% out of it. That's 6% for a laggy and punishable tilt. DTilt and UTilt are similar but their damage is slightly more respectable. I'd honestly buff both the sweetspot and sourspot of her FTilt by 1% if I could.
The other observation is that her aerials don't flow like they feel like they should. FAir, BAir, UAir, and DAir all have her finish the animation and then just sit there for about 10 frames (approximation, I really don't know the numbers here). Their recovery time just feels greater to me than it should. I can kind of understand BAir and UAir, since they do good damage/kill, but FAir and DAir kind of baffle me. She can't get two FAirs from a low jump when it seems to me like she should.
Anyway, my question is how you feel these improvements would impact her customs-on game. Without customs a lot of her moves just seem kind of "there" but customs help them flow better.
So Palutena has a bunch of weird moves that have weird properties. She is basically a terrible character with a layer of useful gimmicks on all of her moves.
Jab has absurd jab cancels (grab can usually only be avoided by double jump, f3 aerials, or landing hitboxes) and a great finishing hitbox, but is one of the slowest jabs in the game.
Dash Attack
beats everything in the game and does nontrivial extra shield damage.
F-tilt is genrously disjointed, beats spot-dodges, and does
extremely disproportionate shield damage--but is a frame 17 move that does 6%...
U-tilt also beats spot dodges and does lots of shield damage, but has situational coverage and low reward as well.
D-tilt is, as far as I can tell, total trash and one of the worse moves in the game, with literally no point.
F-smash is powerful, can cover ledges with the lower wing-tip, and has a potent windbox that provides safety. D-smash is similar.
U-smash obviously has the beam, which is great for punish people out of d-throw, ledge jumps, or platforms.
Nair is pretty bad air-to-air, but like the tilts beats spot-dodges and shields very hard. It's a fantastic platform harassment tool, and a decent speed/reward ration for followup. Beats airdodges, if you can follow them.
Fair auto-cancels on frame 24 and has (iirc) only 9 frames of landing lag. That is Diddy/Sheik/Luigi level numbers. Used properly, it's safe on shields. (And it does extra shield damage) Yet it's a frame 9 move that does only 7%.
Bair also does extra shield damage, and also has the same unique property as dash attack that makes it
beat everything. It also SH ACs, though nowhere near as generously as fair. This is Palutena's only move that has simply good numbers all around--a great move with the gimmick as a bonus.
Uair is complete cheese, it outprioritizes almost everything and kills off the top really well. Since you can do it while jumping, it carries people up with you before the final hit, so they die sooner. The lower the ceiling, the more pronounced this benefit is. (Hello, Halberd!) Uair allows interrupts before AC.
Dair is an awful move in almost every way. It only does 9%, it can't spike grounded opponents, the knockback is very mediocre, and it doesn't even SH AC. And yet... at frame 10 it's one of the absolute fastest spikes in the game--one of the one ones that exceeds human reaction time.
Her grabs aren't bad, her throws do respectable damage + okay knockback, and her d-throw followup potential is close to Diddy's.
To be honest, I wouldn't touch Palutena much, given the option. Most of what I would change on her is quality-of-life changes I would make on almost everyone applicable:
- Usmash duration increased a couple of frames to match the graphic.
- Uair AC time moved up very slightly, to allow FH AC. (I'd make almost every aerial in the game FH AC.)
- Uair IASA time moved up to AC time. (I'd do this on every applicable aerial in the game except Shulks'.)
- Dair AC time moved up significantly, to allow SH AC. (I'd do this on most the dair spikes in the game, starting with Ganon.)
- Allow Up-smash out of Super Speed without requiring a jump-cancel. (I'd also do this to shields, like it was in Brawl.)
- While Super Speed is on cooldown, side-b inputs are registered as neutral-b instead of nothing. (This makes it very simple to wavebounce AR or EF out of Super Speed.)
You could probably increment random damage values on Palutena, or any random character, without hurting the game. But I'm not convinced it is necessary, and would want to see what the impact of these (beneficial) quality-of-life changes would be first.
