What Seperates Zelda From Every Other Character

[Downdraft]

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.

lol, but you're the only veteran that's regularly been dropping wisdom lately.

 

[LupinX]

when you DI zelda's nair, should it be away diagonally up or down?

 

[4tlas]

when you DI zelda's nair, should it be away diagonally up or down?

The direction Zelda's nair will send you is not only constantly changing throughout the move, but also heavily influenced by the Zelda player's movement. When playing against a Zelda, I try to use my knowledge of the move combined with my observation of her movement to determine where it will send me, then DI it up and in that direction for positional advantage. Some characters may want to DI down to get a tech opportunity or to fall out of Zelda's followup zone (since she falls so slowly). I prefer to DI up when playing as Zelda because I would like to get as far away as possible while still being onstage. As Sheik I DI horizontally or straight down, depending on whether I'm at combo or kill percents, respectively.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I DI to change the location I end up so that I am neither directly beside her or directly above her. This means vaguely up-ish for floaties and vaguely down-ish for heavier characters.

 

[BlackMamba]

What I can't make sense of is the fact that people complain so much about 3.5 Zelda when 1) she's not at all high tier and 2) she got nerfed overall in this patch. Will it always be 'omg I hate Zelda' when melee monsters run around and destroy the rest of the cast? Lmao

 

[4tlas]

To get back on topic: why do people feel frustrated at Zelda in particular? Let's hear some ideas!

My first thought is something I mentioned above: Zelda functions off of reads rather than technical ability. To the inexperienced (so, non-Zelda players), tech looks impressive. Tech looks worthy of power. If your opponent beats you through tech, they clearly outplayed you. Reads/mindgames are not only indistinguishable from pure luck, but readable players are inherently bad at seeing and understanding the game flow. It is difficult for the read player to see why they were read, and thus they do not appreciate the Zelda player's skill in performing that read.

I also find that there is, as with any community, some amount of elitism in Smash. Some people think that tech skill is holy, flashy combos are our lord and savior, and suboptimal strategies are sinful. No matter how well I do, I am not a "good player" because I can't consistently waveshine people to death. If I play any of my secondaries people can see I don't wavedash or l-cancel, and then I am forever a fraud that can only play because "Zelda/Sheik's stupid". My Roy is terrible because I don't play like Sethlon. At the end of the day, if I can beat you with only ftilt, dtilt, sideb, and downb, it doesn't matter how terrible I am. Just ignore the haters and whoop their asses.

 

[LupinX]

To get back on topic: why do people feel frustrated at Zelda in particular? Let's hear some ideas!

My first thought is something I mentioned above: Zelda functions off of reads rather than technical ability. To the inexperienced (so, non-Zelda players), tech looks impressive. Tech looks worthy of power. If your opponent beats you through tech, they clearly outplayed you. Reads/mindgames are not only indistinguishable from pure luck, but readable players are inherently bad at seeing and understanding the game flow. It is difficult for the read player to see why they were read, and thus they do not appreciate the Zelda player's skill in performing that read.

I also find that there is, as with any community, some amount of elitism in Smash. Some people think that tech skill is holy, flashy combos are our lord and savior, and suboptimal strategies are sinful. No matter how well I do, I am not a "good player" because I can't consistently waveshine people to death. If I play any of my secondaries people can see I don't wavedash or l-cancel, and then I am forever a fraud that can only play because "Zelda/Sheik's stupid". My Roy is terrible because I don't play like Sethlon. At the end of the day, if I can beat you with only ftilt, dtilt, sideb, and downb, it doesn't matter how terrible I am. Just ignore the haters and whoop their *****.

This in a nutshell. Not all characters should be hyper aggressive and or flashy. Any type of character should be played differently. That's what PM is successfully achieving. It's just alot of people aren't used to playing out of their comfort zone/ learning foreign matchups

 

[Deleted member]

What I can't make sense of is the fact that people complain so much about 3.5 Zelda when 1) she's not at all high tier and 2) she got nerfed overall in this patch. Will it always be 'omg I hate Zelda' when melee monsters run around and destroy the rest of the cast? Lmao

well, yeah probably. zelda has a lot of stuff that people don't like to play against. you can rationalize it all day, but that's just how other people are going to feel about it and that's all there is to it. people don't like being camped, having a character that they can't combo, and really strong moves with no real downside that all force the opponent to play very carefully. accept it as a part of playing the character imo

 

[LupinX]

Zelda dies so darn fast and moreso in lower %'ge. And when she gets punished, she gets punished hard. It's just people gotta be more consistent in their punish game lol

 

[trusty]

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 *****ing 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.

Awesome. Thank you! I definitely agree with the ingrained sexism stuff. Somehow I get loads of ish for maining Zelda in PM and using ZSS as my 2 in brawl...which is just ignorant

 

[4tlas]

Awesome. Thank you! I definitely agree with the ingrained sexism stuff. Somehow I get loads of ish for maining Zelda in PM and using ZSS as my 2 in brawl...which is just ignorant

Your profile says you're in MA. I go to SG regularly, and despite the fact that this thread is about people hating on Zelda players, I don't actually get much flak from these people. You should come!

 

[trusty]

Your profile says you're in MA. I go to SG regularly, and despite the fact that this thread is about people hating on Zelda players, I don't actually get much flak from these people. You should come!

That would be awesome! I'm from MA but went to school and played 100% of my competitive matches in Vermont, upstage NY and Maine