First Thoughts - Bayonetta

You've probably already heard a bunch about her, but Bayonetta seems amazing. Before the patch was released I wasn't that interested in her, but now that I have had time to play her and see her moves for myself, she is probably one of my favorite characters. Her base stats aren't great, she is a large target to hit, light, and rather slow. Her damage out put per move is low. But she combos beautifully. There are already combos for well over 50% . Like more combos that Ryu, the master of combos himself. Her bullet arts allow her to continue holding down the attack button after a move to fire guns that tack on extra percent, and are really dumb. They add up so quickly, allowing her to take an early lead. Her smash attacks are fairly disjointed and that is actually rather beneficial to her. she can usually smash and out reach some characters counters. She has an ability that activates when she is about to air dodge, or roll, or immediately after, that if she would be hit, she takes half the damage, no knock back, and instead appears behind the attacker and gets ready to punish them. This ability called, The Bat Within, is something that makes her really unique. This makes her air dodge and roll options a lot safer than any other character, and will help her live. She could potentially be clipped by a smash attack at 999% and then if timed right, Bat within would activate and percent her from taking knock back. Which if you ask me seems over powered, but we will see how useful it turns out. The other thing I want to talk about is her "counter". Her down special activates Witch time, if she is hit during the time frame she activates it, the attacker becomes slowed. During this time they move slower even from knock back, meaning you can link together many attacks for almost free. Down smash can lead into a forward smash. Combo all her specials onto the opponent. Whatever you feel like doing, it can probably work because it slows the opponent for quite a while. After using it multiple times, the time it slows people decreases, but still it is powerful. It can be used against characters with up specials that do damage when they are trying to recover to gimp them. This is going to be very useful in competitive play. Speaking of which, I see Bayonetta being very high ranked in competitive play. Her combos are actually ridiculous. She can true combo some characters into death from zero percent. And she was released yesterday... I can't wait to see where the meta game will take her. I know I am going to be playing her and testing her out.  Another interesting thing, her up special can be used multiple times in the air, allowing you to do things like this "Jump, Up special, Double jump, Up Special, Side Special" and have a very good recovery. Her side special resets when you hit an opponent, allowing you to combo it multiple times in the air, and if you fast fall before doing it, you shoot diagonally down instead of diagonally up, which can be used to mix up recovery, or link combos together. Overall, love the character, looks really good, and will be a competitor in the meta game.