Play to Win... to an extent

I'm going to start off by saying sure, a win is a win, and I won't be able to argue against the tournaments rules, but there are certain limits to which I find this being abused. Wins generally are from one person taking all of the opponent's stocks, but they can also be from timing out the opponent. I think that this method should actually result in some sort of punishment instead of reward for being able to evade your opponent so long. This is a game that we play, and no one wants to watch someone float around the stage avoiding conflict for 6 minutes. It just isn't fun. It's also very unfair. Certain characters are actually able to completely avoid the opponent for extremely long amounts of time. Imagine a Wario, Mewtwo, or Villager, who is able to just entirely avoid coming into contact with a Little Mac. By camping you take away the fun of the game and don't even prove any skill. It is not skillful to win by timing out opponents in most cases. Because of how safe some options are like rolling, people can just waste 6 minutes of other peoples time. This rant was partially brought about by Dabuz, who plays only to win. I saw him play Wario, and completely avoid contatct for about two to three minutes, until his Waft was charged, then go into the fight with an unfair advantage. Then after he got the stock, he just waited around until he won. Sure, he did win, but did he earn it? I argue no. This is just a severe level of trolling, and I don't think our tournaments should reward it. IN tournaments, there should be some limit to time, but not reward someone for taking their opponent to that time limit. They should just both receive a loss if they can't find a winner in the time, or be forced to do sudden death. If we completely remove the time limit, tournaments could run extremely long, and I think that itself calls for a reason to have some time limit with more fair end of game procedures. These are just my thoughts, because I come from another competitive  game, that has completely terrible end of time limit procedures for events other than nationals. What do you think would be fair?

Thoughts on the Bayonetta Drama

As many of you in the community already know, Bayonetta is causing a ton of drama. She is almost without a doubt the best character in the game, and is currently polarizing the community. Many if not most of the community knows she needs to be nerfed and want her to be. But in the mean time, what are we supposed to do with this overpowered character? Some are pushing strong for a ban. Most people hate playing against  Bayonetta  and she causes drama in small scenes where there isn't high level competition. Others are pushing for a more rational approach, learning the match up. Behind this is Zero and Dabuz, who have been pushing hard to learn everything the can about Bayonetta to try and deal with her. They say that people should do their best to try and defeat the beast with knowledge. Many are learning the best ways to escape her combos, best ways to punish her, and character specific punishes. I am completely in favor of this approach. There is actually no reason to  Bayonetta from competitive scenes. She is good, and she has odd mechanics, but she is able to be defeated. I would go as far to say that the majority of the community is overreacting to  Bayonetta  and that she isn't nearly as good as people think she is once they learn more things about her. Her combos are 50/50 options at many points, and that gives you quite a few times to escape. Bayonetta has an absurdly large character model, making her an easy target, which when combined with her weight is deadly for her. She is very light and dies quickly because of it. Her recovery is contestable. If she has to side special, you can easily punish her. After being up in the air, Bayonetta has a 43 frame window of landing lag, meaning she gives you time to almost completely charge a smash attack. Now, she is difficult to play against, but if you play safely, you can easily defeat Bayonetta. That's just my two cents, but I hope that more people start realizing that she is able to be defeated.

The Importance of Hand Health

Your hands let you do lots of things. Obviously your hands are the only reason you can play Smash Bros. However, not much is done to protect our hands. Many of us play multiple hours a day, working the same few muscles to exhaustion when we play using a game cube controller. These controllers weren't meant or designed to be used multiple hours a day for years on end. They will cause severe harm to your hands, it is just a matter of when. Now, as depressing as that may seem, you can help prevent any damage. Let me make it clear, this is preventative, as in it will make sure it won't happen, and once it does happen, you're out of luck. So you may be wondering, why aren't we all doing preventative hand exercises? I think we all should. I do lots of hand stretching every day, and there are many links on sites like Youtube that show you things you should be doing to ensure your hands stay healthy.

This topic is getting a lot of debate recently, especially in the Melee community. One of the best players, PPMD, had to resign because he has injured his hands over years of playing. This is bound to happen to many of the top players after years of abuse without people taking preventative measures. So, if you're here to start, I suggest you go look up videos from the gaming doctor on hand exercise. These are simple and help strengthen your core muscles in your hands you use frequently. Another tip, make sure your hands are warm when you play. Cold hands can cause injuries so make sure you are in a warm room. Second, for those in the sma4sh community, consider switching to the Wii U Pro Controller. The controller is more ergonomic, meaning better designed for your hands. Lastly, take a few minute break every hour. maybe just 5 minutes or so. After playing a lot of games in a row you could cause stress, just let your hands rest at least for 5 minutes, and maybe run your hands under warm water to promote blood flow.

Now, ideally we would all be doing these every day. I do, as do many others, but people forget. I suggest that we make this a ritual in our community. That we take this seriously, and be as healthy as we can to promote the longevity of our game. Thank you for reading and please take care of yourself. Your career might end if you don't, but this injury will follow you the rest of your life. Typing, writing, and other things become extremely difficult after you have a hand injury, so please have your priorities straight.

Character Analysis - Mewtwo - Patch 1.1.5

So, everyone is talking about Mewtwo, and I mean everyone. After Abadango's performance at Pound with his Mewtwo, the secret is out. People are beginning to learn just how amazing M2 is after his buffs. This character was in melee, and regarded as one of the worst in the game. He didn't return to brawl or Smash 4 until later he was released as a downloadable character. He immediately sucked, and has received numerous buffs over the past few patches. Now that 1.1.5 is out, he has become a force to reckon with. Most notably, M2 now has an infinite combo, one that isn't hard to perform either. This was given to him by a movement speed increase which now allows him to footstool someone and then perform a down special and disable them. While being an insane combo, it is also an amazing kill option, as you are able to charge a smash attack and get a kill guaranteed from a foostool, or from a neutral air. So these obviously are amazing for Mewtwo, and are something that you need to learn to do if you plan on playing the character.

Mewtwo plays a sort of campy neutral game. He is able to sit charging shadow ball and wait for an approach and can punish. His combo game is insane. Down tilt is a fast move that combos into lots of things. His forward air is only 6 frames and is extremely powerful and deadly. Mewtwo has lots of range, and because of this he has multiple hit boxes on his moves. Manipulation of these hitboxes makes different things combo very will together. Up tilt can combo into an up smash at kill percents. However, his most important tool is his neutral air. Neutral air is an amazing move that can combo into ridiculous things. The best being a footstool to down special, but even into things like a grab or down tilt.

Overall, Mewtwo has gotten much better than where he started, but still has obvious flaws. He is still a glass cannon, a large hit box, and can struggle to approach safely. Where these things aren't that bad, they do make me think he is a high tier character and not a top tier.

How fair of a mechanic is rage

So many of you who play Smash 4 know of the rage mechanic, and for those of you that don't I will explain it here briefly. Pretty much, as you take more damage, you will begin to deal more damage and knock back. This begins at roughly 35% and increases until you are 150%. Eventually, with rage you deal significantly more knock back once you are maxed out at 150% with rage. Rage is a mechanic exclusive to Smash 4, not being a part of any game before it. Some people don't really get affected by rage, but certain characters are very easily able to abuse it. Characters that are heavy usually get to abuse their rage well, as they can live to high percents most stocks, and generally are already able to deal high knock back. To me, the character that best abuses rage is my favorite, Ryu. Ryu is a fairly beefy guy, he sits in the mid teens in the weight rankings, and besides Captain Falcon, he is one of the most mobile of the heavy weights. Ryu as many of you know, has a tendency to live very long due to his ability to recover from lots of places, and take damage without taking knock back from his Focus Attack. This means that on many stocks, Ryu will get to abuse rage, and abuse it he does. Ryu's aerials all become extremely easy kill moves, along with most of his smash attacks. His true input Shoryuken, when he has max rage, can kill at almost 50%. Ryu, and many other characters with rage, become absolute monstrous threats when they get rage. Now, both characters eventually get rage, so there doesn't seem to be much wrong with it at first glance. However, there are many things that are flawed about the design of the mechanic. Think about this situation. You are a Sheik, playing against me, a Ryu. Sheik generally has no problem racking up damage, but struggles greatly getting kills. Ryu, is going to be able to get a kill as soon as he gets Sheik to the right percent. Now, in this hypothetical, but very possible, situation, Ryu can kill sheik much earlier than Sheik can kill Ryu. This will mean the first stock can go to Ryu, and he is sitting at aroudnm 110%. Now Sheik, struggling to kill reliably, will need to rack up another 40% of damage probably before she tries to kill. However, she can't afford to be touched. Ryu just needs to land a single hit, and continue his combo with his uptilts, down tilts, and nairs, to bring sheik to roughly 45%. A solid combo, but now, Sheik at 45% is alraedy at kill percent. She has to now finish this stock without getting touched. If she loses the neutral twice after losing the first stock, she gets two stocked. Rage makes situations like this very common. Characters that can kill early and live long really abuse this mechanic. In my opinion, the design of this mechanic is backwards. If you lose the first stock, you now lost your rage, making it harder to kill, and gave your opponent rage, making it easier for them to kill. This mechanic promotes games to be run away with after the first stock and it is something that I am still unsure if I like or not. Obviously, I like the mechanic because my character can abuse it, but I don't think the mechanic is good for Smash 4, and if very unfair. There are multiple stocks to give people multiple opportunities to come back and win, but rage severely limits your chances at making comebacks.

Is Footstooling overpowered?

One thing that has generally been considered disrespectful, or in lots of cases just accidental, in Smash 4 has been footstooling. Footstools are where you jump on your opponents head, and it gives you another jump almost in the air, while your opponent experiences some stun from the animation. If you footstool your opponent when you're both in the air, your opponent will be pushed down, and this is a great way that you can make people unable to recover off the stage. However, if you footstool someone above the stage and they fall into the stage, they will go into a state where they are unable to tech against the ground when they hit the stage. This is what is most overpowered about footstools, as they are generally safe to perform, and can lead into some of the most powerful combos in the game. When you make your opponent hit the ground in an "untechable" state, they are very vulnerable. You can create a situation often known as a Jab lock or Jab reset. Both of these refer to the same thing, were your opponent hit the ground, did not perform a tech, and was hit by a move that would not send them moving. These moves include jabs, forward tilts, some special moves, but vary from character to character. Once you perform a Jab reset, the opponent's character will perform a slow, neutral get up, where they just stand up slowly and are very vulnerable to attacks. At high percents you could begin to charge a smash attack and wait for them to stand up into it, or you could prepare for a another combo. This is obviously very powerful when performed correctly and the worst thing is you can't do anything about it once you get footstooled. If you are footstooled you are completely helpless to your opponent, the only tool you can use is trying to directional influence far enough away from your opponent as you free fall to the ground. This limits player interaction which is the main thing that Smash is all about. Limited player interaction leads stupid combos, that are able to kill someone from zero. However, this isn't the only thing that is stupid about footstooling. Some characters, such as Mewtwo and Peach, have infinite combos off of landing a footstool on someone who is standing on the stage. If someone is standing on the stage while footstooled, their character takes some stun from the animation, but usually not enough to do anything since the character who jumped on them is launched high above them. However these two characters- and I'm sure more that I don't know of- are able to perform something known as jump canceling, where they can stop their upward momentum by performing certain actions. These lead to insanely autopilot combos. These combos are coimpletely inescapable. Not even DI will help you survive these, and your only hope for survival is your opponent messing up their infinite combo. These are very bad for the game as as time progresses they are only going to get more and more deadly, and easier for people to perform. Eventually the meta will be all about landing some combo that can lead into a footstool. I think that this could be circumnavigated by removing some or most of the hit stun that comes from being footstooled. This wouldn't make them any less powerful off the stage where they are a viable option, but would get rid of over powered combos that these footstools can lead into. Maybe footstooling could use a nerf before the final version of the game is decided on.

Pound 2016 Discussion

This past weekend we had a large national tournament that had all the forms of smash represented. Pound 2016 was an awesome tournament to watch, with tons of variety among Smash 4 and Melee. Most of you who follow smash 4 have heard about what happened at pound. We had our fourth unique character win a major here in the US. Previously, only Sheik, Zero Suit Samus, and Diddy Kong have won a major national event. Now, Mewtwo joins them. Abadango, an amazing Japanese player, won with Mewtwo, finishing 3-0 in Grand Finals. This was something that was very unexpected, but I will talk about that more in my next post. The more interesting thing that happened is with the rest of the placings. The best player, TSM Zero, wasn't able to come to pound, this gave a lot of other really good players a chance to compete. Ally ended up getting second for Wii U singles, beating Marss. Marss performed extremely well for himself, probably one of his best performances ever, and none the less it was just after his main character Zero Suit Samus was nerfed significantly. He played very well the entire day, making it all the way to losers finals, just a few games away from getting a chance to compete against Abadango a second time for grand finals. Something that wasn't so impressive for Zero Suit Samus was Nairo's placing in the tournament. Nairo performed very poorly for himself, largely being considered the second best in the game yet only getting 49th at pound. He used Zero Suit not very well, not nearly as well as he could before the nerf, and then sometimes he switched to Cloud, which he was fairly inexperienced with. One thing that I loved about the tournament was watching Abadango play. Never before have we been able to see such a high level player play Mewtwo so expertly. The character was largely believed to be one of the bottom 10 characters in the game upon his release, and through balancing of the game he has found himself to now be considered one of the top ten characters in the game. Abadango really brought this to our attention in a "in your face" sort of way. No one was prepared for the Mewtwo match up for their character, and no one really knew exactly what he wanted to do in any situation which made the games very hard for other people to quickly learn. Overall, this tournament wasn't run the best according to many of the players in the tournament, but it was a great one to watch with generally good commentator all around. Hopefully we will get the videos uploaded to Youtube soon because there are so many other games I want to watch still.