What Seperates Zelda From Every Other Character

[Angell]

"No Johns" a universal rule. It basically means you should stop complaining and just learn about what you are losing to. This rule applies to almost all complaints on the P:M boards. Two exceptions: OP characters and Zelda. Zelda could be the worst character in the game and she would still generate complaint threads. I'd like to discuss thoughts on this. (because I am sick of this ****)

But the scary part about these whiny complaints is that the PMDT listens to them why? Zelda was in a good place in 3.0.2! she was mid tier (arguably high-mid) and complaints that she was too campy got her nerfed. What if I want to "play chess" with my opponent?

And maybe this isn't even the complaints and the PMDT just thought she was too strong and she was too campy. Maybe the complaint threads and posts were retracted since the last time I looked. I could be totally wrong here. Feel free to express your opinion either way here because this is how it SEEMS and I would like to find out what actually happened IS.

 

[TimeSmash]

There were a couple things that 3.02 Zelda had that were a little much. While I loved the old mines, having three gave you CRAZY stage control. People still complain about Nayru's but it loss aerial intangibility and is less of a panic button move and you can literally shield the whole entire thing so dunno what that was about. Her kicks aren't even Melee and are just less good overall. While the removal of critical heels is somewhat understandable, the current kicks are just blegh. Crit kicks did kill really really early so I'll give them that. God forbid we have different playstyles that aren't super aggro all the time or have a non-spacy threaten the meta

 

[LupinX]

Zelda's an awesome character in 3.5 and she' still good. She is nowhere near broken but she may need a little tweaking in some areas (I'm looking at you Nayru's love xD). I haven't played 3.02 zelda but I see gameplays of them so I'm not sure whether this is true or not. 3.02 Din's fire x3 was kind of dumb in a sense that it kinda forced the opponent to approach, and plus her defence options are pretty good aka nayru, downsmash etc. It encouraged camping which is looked downed upon in the community. I also seen her f/bair kill pretty early.

 

[Vitriform]

From what I've seen of the Project M subreddit and various posts on Smashboards, Zelda still seems to get a lot of flak despite being nowhere near the best character. I don't think her matchups are that polarized in 3.5; none of her matchups feel worse than 35:65 or better than 65:35, and in my opinion, most are 50:50, 45:55, or 55:45.

I think a lot of the hate comes from the fact that Zelda, by her nature, is a character that thrives off of denying the opponent options. Zelda manipulates the movement of her opponent through careful zoning, safe pokes, and her strong OoS game, and then strikes only when the opponent is in an unfavorable position. Because the opponent is often in such poor standing when she finally manages to score punishes, the follow-ups for that punish may seem "free"; the opponent has so few options that escaping her combos becomes very difficult. What most of these people don't realize is that it takes a great deal of skill and awareness to recognize when such a punish is possible, and it takes considerable thought and planning to zone the opponent into these setups in the first place.

 

[4tlas]

The multiple mines and the supersweetspots were my favorite things about Zelda, and they both got removed. I think having 2 mines would've been fine, while 3 unreplaceable mines would've been bleh but maybe ok. I miss the aerial invuln on nayru's, but I don't have an opinion on whether it was a good design decision or not.

Zelda has 2 of the worst characteristics in a fighting game: slow movement and precise hitboxes (the other is a large hurtbox, hello Bowser). Due to her theme of wisdom and grace, this is reasonable and, along with her slow/powerful moves, should not be changed. So in order to bring her up to par with the cast, she needs to be given non-basic (aka jank) tools. This is what people complain about constantly. Teleport cancelling is weird. Dins is weird. Nayrus is weird. Also, players who get read often don't understand why, so they don't appreciate how well Zelda has to play to accomplish anything. She looks less cool because she's slow, and she looks less badass because she doesn't combo. How can such a lame character possibly take skill to play? So now we're jank, lame, AND unskilled.

I think Zelda was in the lower half of the cast in 3.02, and is even lower now. Fast placement of a sole Dins homogenized her matchups somewhat, but I think they overall got worse more than they got better. I honestly don't mind if Zelda is below average, as I enjoy the skill it takes to play her. At least she isn't anywhere near unviable. I just wish everyone would stop ******** all the time.

Like yes, I hate the camera too. Yes, I know that shouldn't have been a sweetspot lightning kick. Yes, I can combo fastfallers like a god. So can you. Would you rather I learn to play Fox? Or Marth? Those aren't more annoying than Zelda?

 

[G13_Flux]

There were a couple things that 3.02 Zelda had that were a little much. While I loved the old mines, having three gave you CRAZY stage control. People still complain about Nayru's but it loss aerial intangibility and is less of a panic button move and you can literally shield the whole entire thing so dunno what that was about. Her kicks aren't even Melee and are just less good overall. While the removal of critical heels is somewhat understandable, the current kicks are just blegh. Crit kicks did kill really really early so I'll give them that. God forbid we have different playstyles that aren't super aggro all the time or have a non-spacy threaten the meta

The current kicks are definitely not "bleh." she bassically has two knees that come out on frames 8 and 5 (fair and bair, respectively). the flub also combos into the sweetspot, and they are terribly easy to land. these kicks give her a reward OOS at a range and speed that no other character has. her grab disjoint is about the 4th best overall in the game, with her shield grab being close to, if not the most ranged in the game due to her high traction (a developer explained this in another thread awhile ago). when considering she also has a frame 6 up b that lets her escape to platforms and across the stage, her OOS is quite nuts, and pretty rewarding due to these attributes. aside from OOS, she has plenty of ways to combo into kicks, and can easily get long distance perfect wavelands after using them from a short hop. she can also squeeze two out in one SH if she wants to mix it up. im pretty sure they did do a bit more damage in melee, but the difference is relatively marginal considering the other tools in her kit now that compliment the kicks so well. if youre not thrilled with this iteration of zelda, thats fine, i respect your opinion, but i dont think the quality of these kicks is really up for debate considering how effective they are.

in terms of everyone else talking about the mines, as much as having three was cool, its true that that gives a bit to much stage control, but at the same time they were terribly not useful in neutral. they were way too polarizing. the current version comes out much quicker and travels farther quicker. 3.02s version made MUs where the opponent had a very high mobility (CF, fox, sonic, ZSS, etc.) pretty rough. it polarizes them a bit less to now have one thats a bit quicker and not quite as devastating once your opponent gets put in a bad position outside neutral. i think they are on track with the right concept atm, although i do believe that something could be done about the way the fireballs detonate to make that explosion hit feel cleaner and easier to hit with. im interested to see what they do to her in 3.6, if anything at all.

 

[otheusrex]

I definitely get tons of unwarranted salt on netplay. I can be losing for games and games and suddenly I land a hit and make some good reads landing a decent string and people will rage quit. As if it's fine for marth to get dthrow fair fair dair kills at 0 percent but if Zelda gets a combo on them then suddenly PM is broken and not worth playing anymore. Today, I was actually playing another marth today who was beating me consistently, but i knocked him down creating a tech read situation, i read his roll into me three times and punished with nayrus love 3 times in a row and then he rage quits and has the nerve to act indignant and say "that's just spamming," as if that's even a thing. It really pissed me off the arrogance of it all, when i could have done the same punish with any character with any move that hits low.

I've always wondered what it is about Zelda that sticks out to people. Either people only have qualms with very specific things about her that they can explain, or their criticsms are simple frustrations half-baked into comments like 'she's op'. These types of people seem to be egoists who are good enough to have garnished a few smash victories but put way too much stock in their and other's worthiness based on smash bros. And when arguing with those types of people, not even arguing but sincere inquiring as to their reasoning being zelda hate, at the mere suggestion of questioning their opinion they tend to fall back on "really?" or "just... wow..." "dude, you don't get it" rather than attempt a convincing argument. Thus, from the true Zelda haters, I've never been able to garner much info that wasn't based on my own speculations. How anyone can take simple sentence retorts like 'really?" seriously these days is beyond me. For someone who has admittedly a constant stream of conciousness like me, it's just... beyond

LAZY!​

An assault on the American Blue Collar sentiment that hard work-

But,
I digress

From what little i have to speculate on, I would venture to say that there's something about the way can shut down poor approaches that is taxing for many people. On a different note, I suspect for some people, their perceptions of 'good players' are literally made up of absorbed replays top players moving around the stage quickly with advanced movement. Like, literally that stupidly simplistic. So when they see a zelda not moving around much but getting success anyways, it doesn't compute with their first impression of what good smash play is. I was having a particularly bad day dealing with my tech performance in lag one day, so I was concentrating hard on not freaking out but staying focused on what my opponent was doing. It jsut wasn't working out for me trying to position myself quickly so I had to really try hard to read farther in advance and understand what my opponent was doing and look for openings. I was happy that i was making break throughs in my concentration and success that day, but after snatching some well earned successes, my opponent degraded into ******** about what a terrible player I was and that he'd only been playing for a year and already had 90% L canceling success. This explained why he seemed to make a point during the results screens of making me wait for him to press start and scrolling down on the results screen. And yes, he literally (and I actually use that term correctly, btw) he LITERALLY equated skilled smash play with l canceling rates. I tried harder than I should have to explain that as a floaty with poor air speed, shffling aerials isn't really an essential strategy, but he said Zelda was unsmashlike then if L canceling wasn't important for her like it is for other characters....
Long story over, the point is, I know for this one person, smash bros means zipping around stage constantly making approaches that require a bunch of buttons pressed correctly within a small time frame, and that any character or player who doesn't or can't do that doesn't deserve to win.
Another idea... Zelda seems easy because a successful Zelda makes play look deceptively simple.
Another idea... Zelda is a girl and even for a girl in a fighting game, an especially homosexual type of magnet character. Yeah, as new generations come in kids are getting more and more comfortable with progressive attitudes towards these things and the smash community is genuinely fairly cool, but I still think there's a lot of gender norm type beliefs lurking hidden and unchallenged in the back of people's minds that still influences people's attitudes. Peach, Zelda, jigglypuff, and even ZSS despite being ok cause she's fast and therefore cool don't really draw that many new players with the smash community, which let's be honest, is made up mostly of straight males.
Finally, just word of mouth and simple ignorance. I think there are many mechanics in PM on par or greater than what zelda has that can be just a suspect but aren't simply because people don't realize, or because they're playing favorites with characters and what they're cool with letting characters have.

 

[4tlas]

I really hear you on the "lcancel and zipping around" stuff. I'm not a competitive person but I play with the competitive scene because I'm just too good to play with casuals anymore. I really am a casual, essentially. I don't bother wavedashing, lcancelling, wavebouncing, or even using y to jump or the cstick for aerials. I don't practice and I don't even have my own setup. It actually took me awhile to get used to shield grabbing because I learned all the other Smash games without it. That's not even tech!

When I lose to good players, they comment on how I should have picked better options. I tell them that those require tech skill I actually don't have, so I actually play entirely off of reads; I inform them how much of a noob I am, and I point out my 0% lcancel stat and the fact that I don't wavedash. Suddenly I am a filthy casual, but I'm still a cool person (and the TO) so eventually they drop it. Then when I win, its all because Zelda is stupid. So much salt! Eventually they admit that I played well too, but they will still forever mention that Zelda is stupid. And when I win again...gah.

I have also heard the gay Zelda/Peach stereotype from other players. I've even heard some actual discrimination on a personal level from other players. I don't think that affects all the Zelda hate though.

Edit: And any move can sound good when you put it like that, Flux. I think you're overstating the strengths of Lightning Kick. Just being on Zelda's body significantly weakens the move. Furthermore, we are saying it is meh in comparison to 3.0 and prior kick, which was both fun and effective. It is most certainly debatable as to which is more effective.

 

[LupinX]

I used to dislike Zelda in the beginning (training partner is a Zelda main ), but learnt to respect her and go in when the time is right for the punish. It also helped me become a patient player, now I have little to no problem bringing Zelda, even campy characters, to time if given the opportunity

 

[Downdraft]

3.02 Din's was fine. The stage control aided her movement along with 3.02 teledashes and aerial Nayru's invulnerability. Her ability to approach and force approaches was shattered in 3.5. In a game that actually stresses strong movement options and speed, she has neither. Unlike most other characters, Zelda is heavily reliant on her special attacks since many of her other attacks are timing or spacing dependent with either punishable startup or endlag.

As for combos, U-smash is the only reliable combo starter at a high level. D-throw, F-throw, and F-tilt are easily DI'd to avoid getting comboed and a skilled player that's knowledgeable about the matchup will make Zelda work hard for her 1 Din's setups. She isn't allowed to have anything good.

I was informed that Melee kicks' power was the same for 4 frames unlike PM where not landing F-air on frame 8 or B-air on frame 5 results in kicks that don't kill until much higher percentages.
Also, Captain Falcon can knee opponents across the stage and has the mobility to follow DI more easily.

For the people that complain about Nayru's love, just ask them one word: shine?
Falco used to get dumb stuff off of shine, and Fox can still waveshine you off the stage into a shinespike or U-smash.
It's a much quicker reflector than Nayru's love too. Then there's the fact that Fox, Wolf, and Falco are just far better characters. They have other good tools to complement their great reflectors.

I never really thought about the sexuality perspective. While it may have some merit, I'm not sure that's a significant factor in many people's negative perception of the character and her players. The PMDT doesn't give us good answers. They may explain how moves were redesigned, but they don't sufficiently explain what motivated those redesigns.

 

[LupinX]

For the people that complain about Nayru's love, just ask them one word: shine?
Falco used to get dumb stuff off of shine, and Fox can still waveshine you off the stage into a shinespike or U-smash.
It's a much quicker reflector than Nayru's love too. Then there's the fact that Fox, Wolf, and Falco are just far better characters. They have other good tools to complement their great reflectors.

The only thing I don't like about Nayru's love in 3.5 is that it's pretty deceiving as in there's a lingering reflect hitbox even after the move finishes. That's pretty much my only concern

Shine is dumb... very dumb... and still is dumb. I wish it had less stun.

 

[Downdraft]

The only thing I don't like about Nayru's love in 3.5 is that it's pretty deceiving as in there's a lingering reflect hitbox even after the move finishes. That's pretty much my only concern

Shine is dumb... very dumb... and still is dumb. I wish it had less stun.

What's also deceiving is its range. Zelda players are safer not using the move when an opponent is above or below them since the top and bottom of the diamond aren't covered by the attack's hitboxes. What's also deceptive is the perception that the move is still great.

 

[otheusrex]

^ yeah bingo. I mean, any move that has some hitboxes will be functional to a degree, but aerial nayrus was absolutely crippled in its utility. it's clear when it was changed they were only addressing the fighting against her perspective.

 

[G13_Flux]

if anything her ability to approach and force approaches now is better. like i already said, dins fire comes out quicker now and goes farther on the initial minimum distance release. people also cant just clank out the hitboxes so easily thanks to the detonation. this forces an opponent to either respect the space that zelda has declare and allow her to advance forward, or theyre forced to make a quick approach and deal with the possible return hit. i think its more dynamic personally. before, the dins did an exceptional job at reducing an opponents options, and quickly converting to combos and kills from edge guards and on stage shenanigans, but their use in neutral was definitely not as good due to the higher start up and shorter distance on start up, and stagnant position (the dins didnt return). many of her normals have been improved as well, like the startup on naryus and utilt.

 

[4tlas]

Teleshort is less flexible than teledash. Fast placement of Dins is great but she can't place them near her, so it is difficult to use them defensively and near impossible to use offensively because your opponent can clank them without being afraid of a punish from Zelda. Removal of the invuln on aerial Nayru's weakens that as an approach option.

Buffs she got to her approach include better wavelands, and I think thats it. They're still the worst in the game, I think?

 

[Deleted member]

it's perfectly fine to ignore people that complain about 3.5 zelda

 

[otheusrex]

many of her normals have been improved as well, like the startup on naryus and utilt.

For the record nayrus is one of her specials and not a normal. Also, increasing the startup of nayrus (even on the grounded one that still has invincibility) is debateable whether that's an improvement, since it has less active frames of invincibility now. On the aerial version where the invincibility was removed, speeding up the hitboxes to 8 instead from 13 seems like an improvement at first glance, but is actually only a half-way consolation for it not having an effective start up of 5 anymore. Before, you would use aerial nayrus to escape or slip through an opponent's defenses with the invincibility on frame 5 and then net them with the hitboxes. Now, she is completely unprotected during the aerial start up, trying to hit someone with what's either a frame 8 gtfo move that doesn't cover her from above or below, or a frame 8 aerial that stalls her movement requiring her to start the move even closer than she she needed to in 3.02.

Her uptilt was also nerfed; it wasn't improved

 

[Sardonyx]

What I said might get me in trouble so I'll be nice.

 

[G13_Flux]

For the record nayrus is one of her specials and not a normal. Also, increasing the startup of nayrus (even on the grounded one that still has invincibility) is debateable whether that's an improvement, since it has less active frames of invincibility now. On the aerial version where the invincibility was removed, speeding up the hitboxes to 8 instead from 13 seems like an improvement at first glance, but is actually only a half-way consolation for it not having an effective start up of 5 anymore. Before, you would use aerial nayrus to escape or slip through an opponent's defenses with the invincibility on frame 5 and then net them with the hitboxes. Now, she is completely unprotected during the aerial start up, trying to hit someone with what's either a frame 8 gtfo move that doesn't cover her from above or below, or a frame 8 aerial that stalls her movement requiring her to start the move even closer than she she needed to in 3.02.

Her uptilt was also nerfed; it wasn't improved

utilt got a pretty significant damage buff, with the KB compensated to keep its combo ability the same. sure the late hit was made to start earlier, but since you could just turn around to get the initial, stronger hit, its pretty marginal. i dont really see how thats an overall nerf. dtilt was also given a damage increase pretty significantly, which gives you a kind of strong reset option for grounded opponents, and a good poke on the edge. and the invincibility wasnt touched for a grounded naryus. the aerial one, yes, but the grounded one simply got its startup reduced by 3 frames, which is most certainly a buff since now she has a quicker panic option. the grounded one needs to be focused around being a "panic" move, since thats really the only time youd ever use it. while the aerial one can serve as a panic option too, i think the fact that its startup was decreased is more significant for offensive situations. if youre using the aerial version, youre likely not going to be in such a panic that the invincibility is more important the speed of the hitboxes coming out. yes, above and below defense is weaker now, but honestly she has far better tools to deal with people above her, and even before it wasnt neccesarily that great of an option for people below you, considering the endlag, stall properties, and how punishable it was if baited out. the aerial version is debateable, ill agree with that. its probably a bit of a nerf overall. but the grounded version is most certainly better and im not convinced that utilt was tweaked for the worse.

Teleshort is less flexible than teledash. Fast placement of Dins is great but she can't place them near her, so it is difficult to use them defensively and near impossible to use offensively because your opponent can clank them without being afraid of a punish from Zelda. Removal of the invuln on aerial Nayru's weakens that as an approach option.

Buffs she got to her approach include better wavelands, and I think thats it. They're still the worst in the game, I think?

they do have to worry about attempting to clank it , because now you can detonate it, and zelda CAN get follow ups from that. before, the endlag was much higher, and zelda could easily get punished in neutral for using it. now, its quicker. the fact that it cant be placed as close to you is mitigated by the fact that the dins can return to you. this change definitely improved zeldas neutral game with the dins, since theyre actually an option. if you were getting dins out before in neutral against characters that werent as slow as ganon, then they probably werent as competent. fast characters would punish the heck out her. that ability is decreased now and she has a safer time getting them out, which is the important part, since she can still control the space close to and in front of her very well.

as to the overall utility of this dins compared to the last, i think the last one get zelda way more kills and edge guards, but as far as a neutral tool, i believe this version is much better.

her wavelands are not the worst in the game. she has one of the shorter wavedashes, but its not the shortest, and having a longer wavedash on the ground doesnt necessarily mean you get better wavelands anyways.

 

[LupinX]

Zelda in 3.5 has a good neutral game imo. She also has good edgeguards and peculiar combos (looking at you whitecrow lol). She is pretty much close to balanced right now.

 

[otheusrex]

the aerial one, yes, but the grounded one simply got its startup reduced by 3 frames, which is most certainly a buff since now she has a quicker panic option.

but it's not a quicker panic option. It used to function on frame 5, now it functions at frame 8

 

[Downdraft]

Zelda in 3.5 has a good neutral game imo. She also has good edgeguards and peculiar combos (looking at you whitecrow lol). She is pretty much close to balanced right now.

Balanced? A few of her matchups just got significantly harder. Her approach and defensive options were severely nerfed along with cuts to her damage output and kill power. 3.02 Zelda didn't come close to winning any major tournament and only one person represented her at a high level for the entirety of 3.02. The Fox matchup got harder, and while a few matchups that were seemingly unwinnable are closer now thanks to 3.5 nerfs, she still struggles mightily against competent Mewtwos, Samuses, and other characters. @ otheusrex has pointed out that 3.5 Zelda wasn't really designed. IIRC, he explained that there were two camps regarding her development: the camp that sought a redesign and the camp that sought to buff her existing moveset to increase her viability. Well, 3.5 Zelda doesn't get much separation from Zelda's downsides since many of her positives in previous builds were nerfed without adequate compensation. Her moveset also isn't that different from official Zeldas.

What makes you think she has a good neutral game? Her ability to bait and punish was handicapped. Din's is not as effective at forcing approaches or discouraging camping. Farore's cancelling is good for recovering and the rarely used ledge cancelled teleport mindgames and kills, but it's not great as a movement option. The detrimental effects of Nayru's changes have been explained countless times and pretty easy to see just by watching footage. Her combo game is limited to U-smash at a high level since F-throw and D-throw are easy to DI. F-tilt can be DI-d, and it's her second best combo starter. That leaves U-smash, which while a good move doesn't allow for much variety when your combo game centers around it. I'd like it she had other reliable combo starters or extenders.

Having good edgeguards is nothing special. Edgeguarding and edgehogging are staples of Project M and Melee.

In my opinion, a balanced character is one that the meta does not revolve around. Characters like Brawl Meta Knight and 3.5 Fox are examples of characters that aren't balanced. Secondly, balanced characters should have a few matchups that are at best 40:60 to encourage the player to main a second character or push themselves even harder to get better with their main. Aside from those, most of a balanced character's matchups should be about even. If these conditions are satisfied, then tiers wouldn't have as much power since each character having a balanced matchup spread should encourage exploration of all characters.

Zelda currently has numerous disadvantages matchups and few if any advantageous matchups versus other popular Project M characters; she is not built for high-level success, and ideally in a game with 41 characters, everyone would have their own unique options to enjoy high-level success, but Project M isn't close to that. To be fair though, has any Smash game or mod come close to achieving such balance?

 

[4tlas]

I used old Dins against fast characters pretty well. The fast placement is better offensively, but I enjoyed using them defensively. One trick I used was to jump backwards while placing it, then punishing their approach into it with a response.

I agree that Zelda is close to balanced in the sense that she has weaknesses and strengths, but both can be played around. She also has uses for her whole moveset, which is nice. However, I definitely think she is low tier.

I don't even think how good she is matters to this discussion all that much. The question is: why do people complain about Zelda regardless of her power level?

 

[G13_Flux]

but it's not a quicker panic option. It used to function on frame 5, now it functions at frame 8

i dont think thats the case. unless the change log is wrong. based on the 3.5 changelist, the grounded naryus love was reduced in startup by 3 frames. thats it. indicating its only a buff. unfortunately i cant find any frame data now on 3.02 zelda to confirm that the changelist could be wrong, but i highly doubt it is to begin with. i think youre getting the previous aerial versions intangibility mixed up with the grounded version.

http://projectmgame.com/en/news/project-m-3-5-changelist

Balanced? A few of her matchups just got significantly harder. Her approach and defensive options were severely nerfed along with cuts to her damage output and kill power. 3.02 Zelda didn't come close to winning any major tournament and only one person represented her at a high level for the entirety of 3.02. The Fox matchup got harder, and while a few matchups that were seemingly unwinnable are closer now thanks to 3.5 nerfs, she still struggles mightily against competent Mewtwos, Samuses, and other characters. @ otheusrex has pointed out that 3.5 Zelda wasn't really designed. IIRC, he explained that there were two camps regarding her development: the camp that sought a redesign and the camp that sought to buff her existing moveset to increase her viability. Well, 3.5 Zelda doesn't get much separation from Zelda's downsides since many of her positives in previous builds were nerfed without adequate compensation. Her moveset also isn't that different from official Zeldas.

What makes you think she has a good neutral game? Her ability to bait and punish was handicapped. Din's is not as effective at forcing approaches or discouraging camping. Farore's cancelling is good for recovering and the rarely used ledge cancelled teleport mindgames and kills, but it's not great as a movement option. The detrimental effects of Nayru's changes have been explained countless times and pretty easy to see just by watching footage. Her combo game is limited to U-smash at a high level since F-throw and D-throw are easy to DI. F-tilt can be DI-d, and it's her second best combo starter. That leaves U-smash, which while a good move doesn't allow for much variety when your combo game centers around it. I'd like it she had other reliable combo starters or extenders.

Having good edgeguards is nothing special. Edgeguarding and edgehogging are staples of Project M and Melee.

In my opinion, a balanced character is one that the meta does not revolve around. Characters like Brawl Meta Knight and 3.5 Fox are examples of characters that aren't balanced. Secondly, balanced characters should have a few matchups that are at best 40:60 to encourage the player to main a second character or push themselves even harder to get better with their main. Aside from those, most of a balanced character's matchups should be about even. If these conditions are satisfied, then tiers wouldn't have as much power since each character having a balanced matchup spread should encourage exploration of all characters.

Zelda currently has numerous disadvantages matchups and few if any advantageous matchups versus other popular Project M characters; she is not built for high-level success, and ideally in a game with 41 characters, everyone would have their own unique options to enjoy high-level success, but Project M isn't close to that. To be fair though, has any Smash game or mod come close to achieving such balance?

her damage output wasnt decreased. the only things that got nerfed in that regards were the super sweetspots, which, if youre going to add up the frequency of ocurance in combos, are just finishers. overall, fair and bair got less damage, but more frequent combo options like dtilt and utilt got really big damage buffs that would easily compensate. also, her bair and fair are still insane kill options. i know there's things that people arent happy about with the current redesign of zelda, but she doesnt have a problem killing at all, so i feel that should not be part of the complaints when discussing her current viability.

im also still not quite getting why people are saying the old dins was better for approaching.. im sorry but i really dont get it. ive already explained how its faster, and goes farther much quicker at a more relevant range that characters typically camp in. and this time around you actually have counterplay for people trying to clank out the dins.

ftilt can be DIed out of, but the fact that the correct DI is opposite of the usual combo DI is extremely valuable as a mix up. also, you can ftilt mid combo, such as after a flub hit fair or bair, and the KB stacking produces an angle that they cant really DI out of. between utilt, dash attack, and ftilt, you should have no problems comboing whatsoever. her combo game is quite strong. as far as the throws, yes they can be DIed out of too, but you are set up for legitimate tech chases if they do. often times, you can still connect with the tip of a dash attack even if they DI away as well.

I will agree with you that some of her MUs just got more polarized, and the overall changes contributed to a lower placing most likely than 3.02. but as far as individual points, what i listed above were just a few things i didnt agree with. i do think zelda could use some tweaks to get her back on par with the rest, and her past effectiveness, but i dont think shes too far from it.

 

[Downdraft]

I used old Dins against fast characters pretty well. The fast placement is better offensively, but I enjoyed using them defensively. One trick I used was to jump backwards while placing it, then punishing their approach into it with a response.

I agree that Zelda is close to balanced in the sense that she has weaknesses and strengths, but both can be played around. She also has uses for her whole moveset, which is nice. However, I definitely think she is low tier.

I don't even think how good she is matters to this discussion all that much. The question is: why do people complain about Zelda regardless of her power level?

How many characters don't have strengths and weaknesses? Your wording is vague and when read for its literal meaning, describes most of the cast.

Low tier is not well balanced. In a well balanced game, tiers are irrelevant. All characters are equally successful.

How good she is may not be relevant to this thread, but it's been brought up, and the ignorance regarding how "good" some of her tools used to be is relevant since it played a large role in weakening Zelda in 3.5.

The complaints are largely irrational and underdeveloped.

 

[4tlas]

How many characters don't have strengths and weaknesses? Your wording is vague and when read for its literal meaning, describes most of the cast.

Low tier is not well balanced. In a well balanced game, tiers are irrelevant. All characters are equally successful.

How good she is may not be relevant to this thread, but it's been brought up, and the ignorance regarding how "good" some of her tools used to be is relevant since it played a large role in weakening Zelda in 3.5.

The complaints are largely irrational and underdeveloped.

I think I may be using the terminology differently from you here, so we will have to get into semantics. I apologize in advance, as most people despise arguing semantics.

When I refer to "balanced", it is in reference to the strengths and weaknesses of a character combining to create a power level, and thus game flow, that creates fun gameplay for both players. This means that there can be a) no optimal strategy across all scenarios, b) there is no useless option across all scenarios, c) there is no scenario in which the player has no viable option, and d) there is no scenario in which the opponent has no viable option.

I believe Zelda falls into this category except for a few scenarios, but I think those are more the fault of her opponents having too many good options rather than Zelda having too few. For the vast majority of the cast, Zelda plays with them in an appropriate manner. Reads and mindgames, aka decision making, determine the winner when playing as Zelda, rather than having the tech skill to perform an unbeatable strategy.

I think most of the cast does this as well, which is why it is so odd to hear Zelda get complaints. I think this is the heart of the issue. Rather than looking at how good she is, we should be looking at how her play patterns frustrate people, and why.

As for balance with regards to equally successful characters, it won't happen. It would not only take a ridiculous amount of iteration, along with playtesting, to even get CLOSE to perfect balance, it would probably require some of the game mechanics to allow finer precision, which just complicates players' understanding of the game. For example, damage values may need to go to the hundredths place to truly even out the characters.

In this sense, I agree that Zelda is "not balanced", as I would say she is low tier. To be fair, however, is she really that much worse than any of the mid tiers that she can't at least play with them? When everyone can say "people place my character low, but I think they're mid-high", even Zelda players, wouldn't you say that means that most of the cast is in a good spot? And I'm not talking about tiers, even. If some people see the weaknesses and others see the strengths, doesn't that mean that some level of ebb and flow exist in their play? It would be better if everyone saw both, of course, but I don't expect everyone to be so observant, especially since perspective and experience play huge roles in these opinions.

So, do we agree that people complain about Zelda because they're misinformed? I'm pretty sure we can agree on that. So the question becomes "WHY are they misinformed?", and to that I don't know the answer. Suggestions?

 

[InfinityCollision]

3.02 Din's was fine.

Ehh... yes and no. Could a less drastic change have sufficed? Perhaps, but I suspect the PMDT is not of a mind to retread that ground even if it was warranted. While I am sympathetic, they hold all the cards.

The upside, such as it may be, is that even with its current flaws 3.5 Din's is one of the most conceptually interesting tools in the game (imo obviously). The potential layers and sequences of interplay are fascinating, and I'd like to see it refined to build upon and expand that potential. Hell, I'd like to see more characters with such options. It may be small consolation for an (unfairly) unpopular and (temporarily?) underbalanced character, but it's one of the only changes in character design (disregarding balance for a moment) in 3.5 that I look at and say "hey, this could be really cool."

 

[LupinX]

I'm seeing some mixed emotions regarding Zelda's balance between 3.02 and 3.5. What do you think Zelda should have to be good, but at the same time balanced?

 

[otheusrex]

New dins is interesting, and getting it out on the field is defintiely easier than it's ever been, but the reward for doing so is also less. That's how in a way people can say that her dins don't help with her approach as much. the fastest dins, which is the one you're going for if you're pressed for time and need to just get something out, is not very rewarding actually because how far away you'll be from it with how little kb it does, you'll rarely confirm hits off of them, this goes double for the returning wisp which does extremely little for you off of a manual detonation. The dins mines are horrible at controlling space on the battlefield compared to 3.02s in several ways: the mines are small and you can stay with your face partly inside the gfx and not get hit by them, the explosion sizes both in the manual and timed out are piddly with the manual detonation being only a fraction bigger than the actual mine such that you are 80% of the time better off just not committing yourself to be in an animation while they run into a mine that they were going to hit anyways if the manual detonation would hit them, as I said before the reward for landing the mine is not useful until kills percents in which case they aren't as crucial anymore anyways, the big mines, though more rewarding and useful at pretty much everything not only take more time to use in neutral (thereby not solving the issue 3.02 mines had before) but the maneuverability on casting them is such that they'll never be placed near the center stage where she wants to control space but always off stage, and finally there's only 1 of them.

Also, I'm not confusing aerial and grounded invincibility. though I mainly am focusing on aerial nayrus and demonstrating how its actually slower than it was before. Sure, the aerial hitboxes used to come out on frame 13 now they come out on frame 8 but with invincibility before, the effective startup of it was actually frame 5. Now there's no invincibility, leaving the first part of the move to give you some sort of useful function as an attack or defensive move back on frame 8. So it is, in fact slower. If they had sped the hitboxes on the aerial up to frame 5 it would have had the same timing at least, and in some situations perhaps a better attack option, while in others a worse one.

Grounded nayrus hitboxes being sped up to frame 9 may seem like a buff because its faster, but it sort of isn't a buff because that means you only have 5 active frames of invincibility rather than 8. the only thing it could really be said to be better at now is being marginally more safe on whiff since you have 3 frames less endlag, but on the entire duration of the move and situations where you're whiffing it or even hitting with it and returning to neutral, this is pretty theoretical. It does, however give you a shorter window to try to 'absorb' an opponent's attack with the invincible start up, which is a nerf.

 

[otheusrex]

@ otheusrex has pointed out that 3.5 Zelda wasn't really designed. IIRC, he explained that there were two camps regarding her development: the camp that sought a redesign and the camp that sought to buff her existing moveset to increase her viability.

Actually, the two camps were people who were fed up with zelda and wanted to completely overhall her design and people who wanted to preserve the design she's had for years. no one was calling for buffs for Zelda. The current 3.5 zelda was a compromise someone made between the two camps; they tweaked all her multihit moves to have less drastic sdi modifers, took out invincibility on nayrus, removed teledash to replace it with something more illusion like, changed her jab to its old brawl self, changed her grab to be normalized while keeping it slightly slower than normal grabs, and threw in a new dins mechanic to avoid having to deal with preserving old dins functional with nerfs that were proposed. These were the nerfs that were called for out of 'design' reasons, and partly what would satisfy the 'overhallers' but the build stopped there instead of continuing to redesign her other moves to make up for what she was losing. The easiest example is nayrus love. Without the invincibility, and with weaker followup options because of a lower kb angle, lower sdi modifiers, and half of the move sending behind her now, her combo game took a really big hit, but instead of making up for it by improving some of her other moves, they left them alone except to trim out the 'fat' that people who were only concerned with being able to fight zelda had.

 

[Deleted member]

no one was calling for buffs for Zelda.

thats not true. when i submitted my testing evaluation to the dev team, i attacked ryoko's build for many reasons but also suggested several buffs to compensate for removing ryokos abhorrent list of gimme-buffs coming in from melee in from the pre-demo 2.0 build. among these were a better dash, faster release on upthrow, and stronger regular sweetspot kicks, which we got, as well as more weight and a few other things we didnt get. but the buffs i suggested were in line with making better in a more lean environment in tandem with the rest of the cast.

i also have had no problem comboing for ~65% from 0 with my zelda on top players and i'm not even close to a dedicated zelda player, so even without nayrus setups i wouldnt write her off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeDUBhUqdwk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcVlMvJSOeM

 

[4tlas]

Nayru's was another tool in the neutral game, so I think you should be able to combo just fine without it. The problem is that you will be getting those conversions less often and in fewer types of scenarios.

I'm not sure what you mean by "attacked" and "abhorrent", and I am curious as to what you suggested for "a few other things". Would you care to elaborate, Umbreon?

 

[Magus420]

Grounded nayru's has overlapping invincibility with the start of the hitboxes and is non-clanking. Having 3 less frames to 'absorb' an attack with invincibility doesn't really matter much at all when the move will cut through any other attack anyway.

 

[otheusrex]

Yes that's true, and I don't really care about grounded nayrus changes either, but I was just pointing out that having the hitboxes sped up to 8 for grounded nayrus isn't obviously a buff as it was being suggested.

 

[Downdraft]

Actually, the two camps were people who were fed up with zelda and wanted to completely overhall her design and people who wanted to preserve the design she's had for years. no one was calling for buffs for Zelda. The current 3.5 zelda was a compromise someone made between the two camps; they tweaked all her multihit moves to have less drastic sdi modifers, took out invincibility on nayrus, removed teledash to replace it with something more illusion like, changed her jab to its old brawl self, changed her grab to be normalized while keeping it slightly slower than normal grabs, and threw in a new dins mechanic to avoid having to deal with preserving old dins functional with nerfs that were proposed. These were the nerfs that were called for out of 'design' reasons, and partly what would satisfy the 'overhallers' but the build stopped there instead of continuing to redesign her other moves to make up for what she was losing. The easiest example is nayrus love. Without the invincibility, and with weaker followup options because of a lower kb angle, lower sdi modifiers, and half of the move sending behind her now, her combo game took a really big hit, but instead of making up for it by improving some of her other moves, they left them alone except to trim out the 'fat' that people who were only concerned with being able to fight zelda had.

See, that's where I got mixed up? By preserve the design, you mean the one she's had since she was introduced into PM right? That makes more sense. However, 2.6b and 3.02 Zelda were not good enough to win a major tournament, so either they needed buffs or other characters needed nerfs to make them more manageable. A character that gets hard countered by characters that are either popular at high levels or represented by the very best will not enjoy success at a high level. I've asked this before, but what player level should the game be balanced around? Previous Zelda builds were great at low and mid-level play, and so are several other characters, but the people that haven't truly unlocked the potential of their characters or pushed themselves to their limits shouldn't be the primary focus of balancing.

 

[otheusrex]

I'd actually say prvious zelda builds were ok at high level play and that if she was weak in power, it had more to do with other characters being too strong. For fighting other people, Zelda has always been good because she punishes well. But regarding the skill level of the Zelda player, i think previous Zelda builds were actually harder for low-mid level players, yet more rewarding for the high level zelda players. While 3.5 zelda shifts some of the reward away from highest level zelda play and gives it to lower level zelda players.

 

[4tlas]

I'd actually say prvious zelda builds were ok at high level play and that if she was weak in power, it had more to do with other characters being too strong. For fighting other people, Zelda has always been good because she punishes well. But regarding the skill level of the Zelda player, i think previous Zelda builds were actually harder for low-mid level players, yet more rewarding for the high level zelda players. While 3.5 zelda shifts some of the reward away from highest level zelda play and gives it to lower level zelda players.

Why would you say that?

 

[otheusrex]

because dins was difficult to use to its full potential but a lot more rewarding as well, and because of crtical kicks.

 

[Downdraft]

@ otheusrex : You should have a line in your sig: "I am Nayru's disciple: a mortal of priceless wisdom. I enlighten all Zeldas. Let my word be heard. I will not be deterred!"

 

[otheusrex]

@ otheusrex : You should have a line in your sig: "I am Nayru's disciple: a mortal of priceless wisdom. I enlighten all Zeldas. Let my word be heard. I will not be deterred!"

Nayru's disciple would be Dwight, the Duchess of dins is Zhime, irish might be the phantom Farore, and I am merely an acolyte of the fourth goddess, Desire.