Nathan Richardson
Smash Ace
I know this was in character discussion but has essentially dried up over there from what I can see. Here's the elephant in the room as far as zard lovers go. His awful advantage state and no real way to get kills that doesn't rely on reads. If this doesn't feel right feel free to move or lock this but as previously stated the discussion under character conversation pretty much dried up.
Here's my ideas to make zard more viable in a competitive standpoint:
Here's my ideas to make zard more viable in a competitive standpoint:
- Give charizard a proper fastfall. Zard is among the worst fastfallers in the game (last I checked 48th out of 50th but i'm sure that's seriously out of date little help on that front?) fastfalling is among one of the most basic things a character needs so they can mix an opponent up and land properly. Zard doesn't have this.
- Give one of zard's moves shield-breaking capabilities. Let's face it, a lot of other characters are much better at smashing shields than zard (i'm looking at you Bowser and Marth) basic strategies when facing zard is 'spam shield and rolls and he's cake' because zard fails so hard when someone shields him he needs a way around it other than that awful grab move that extends his hurtbox.
- Better air speed. Nothing makes an opponent laugh their butts off than a SDing zard who accidentally did flare blitz instead of rock smash. This is because zard's air speed is notoriously awful (and considering he's supposed to be able to FLY it shouldn't be) his jump height is fairly subpar but it's his vertical air speed that hurts him more than anything else, it's also part of the reason why his advantage state is so awful despite having an ok ground dash speed.
- Better traction. I heard off the competitive forum that zard's traction is the second worst in the cast. This makes his OoS options severely limited. If his traction was better his OoS game would be phenomenal.
- Fix that damn side special! The biggest chink in zard's armor is flare blitz, it has bad starting lag, travels way too far if you're on stage and if it's jablocked you're screwed! There's also the problem that due to it's distance you'd accidentally SD if you aren't careful. This has happened to me due to online lag! This is one of the biggest reasons flare blitz is replaced the second custom moves are chosen.
- Give zard's flamethrower longer range. Yeah I know i'm going to get gripes about this but zard's flamethrower is way too versatile to have such a piddly range. It's amazing, can cancel out various projectiles and does great when it comes to shield pressure. However the longer it's held the shorter it's range gets. Having a longer range will seriously help zard out against long-range zoners.