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For real, my biggest gripe with Ganon's Down-B is the fact almost any projectile just straight up stops him mid way. It has 0 priority or any armor, but truthfully, Ganon's biggest down fall was the fact he was a "clone" character in Melee and never got a proper development.
Have you ever seen the hitbox on his down B? its utterly tiny. Thats why it loses to basically everything. Ive even been grabbed out of down B by normal grabs, not even tethers. The move is just straight up bad lol. If the hitbox actually covered the size of the animation, itd probably be pretty decent, but since it loses to so much stuff, it ultimately ends up being extremely risky for mediocre reward.
@@eragon78 I say they should make it able to absorb one hit (Like Ryu and Ken down B) and make the hitbox a little bigger. It probably won't happen, but it would be nice
Yeah, I know it's been said, but the fzero character, black falcon I think, is PERFECT for Ganons moveset, and then please nintendo needs to Fix Ganon :((
@@mouldybluelemon He can be punished so easily. Once he chooses either up- or side-b he hard commits and any stray hit will kill him. Allowing him to have more recovery mix ups is a good balance idea in my opinion.
@@Cinndragon i do but shoto is not a playstyle its just the name of the karate they pratice. Only ryu, ken and akuma are shoto cause they pratice that martial arts its not playstyle. I dont want people to be misled
I do kind of wish Ganondorf was just more like the warlock/sorcerer he actually is canon wise, rather than being the weird Falcon/Ike mashup he currently plays as.
For the Ganon float ability I saw a mod where it basically just gave him peaches float ability with some dark magic effects and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I don’t get why he hasn’t already gotten it. Having a float would probably also allow sweats to come up with some goofy ledge guarding combos
This is from Project M, and yeah, the float is fantastic. Favorite thing is to jump towards opponent threateningly, float just before reaching them and watch them throw up a defensive option, then finishing coming down a moment later. It's great, and really adds a different flavor to the character.
Not sure how I feel about Ganon with float mechanics. On the one hang, yeah it would absolutely help with recovering and stuff, but Ganon with float cancels sounds ridiculous when his aerials are already really good. Maybe it would still be balanced because his aerials aren't that fast and obviously he's still in disadvantage if he gets hit, but I don't know.
@@KrazyKyle-ij9vb In PM, it's not a Peach Float, as you can't do any cancels with it. That's because it's actually his neutral B. Think of it like more like a stance change button, that stalls him in the air and ONLY let's him hover (he starts descending after 1 second) left/right or double jump from
What hurts is that they had a REALLY good custom move for Ganondorf in smash 4, where his down B was given a sloped trajectory on the ground and did a slight jump, and more crucially, let him still move mostly-horizantally midair. It let him bypass low to the ground moves, it gave him shockingly good recovery, AND it was much faster than the default Wizard's Foot, at the cost of some power. Why they never implemented that into Smash Ultimate, I have no idea. Maybe part of it was the blowback on some custom moves, but judging by Nintendo's balance decisions, they probably just wanted to fuck over heavyweights some more :/
Thing is, they did actually incorporate some ideas of Smash 4 Custom moves into the base ultimate moves. For example, they gave DK the Super armor on his side B which previously had been a custom. I can't fathom why they wouldn't give some form of recovery utility to Wizards Foot.
One of the failings of Smash Ultimate, I feel, is having a mechanic they dropped from the last game (Custom specials) and a perfect, relatively low effort way to socket those in (Echoes) and not doing it. I get that custom specials are awkward for competitive, and hard to balance... but that's what echoes could have been for. Picking up some of the more interesting custom specials and loading them onto echoes of existing characters and do a few extra small tweaks to balance/blend into those specials better. Especially given the existence of echoes like Dark Samus and Daisy, which have literally no practical difference.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 its still baffling how Peach and Daisy used to have different properties to their Turnips, but they patched it up so Daisy became just a glorified Peach skin
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 I am of the opinion that Dark Samus as an echo is one of the laziest decisions they made with Ultimate. There are already 2 moves that already exist in the game that can just be slapped on to Dark Samus Chrom up-B style, and you better represent Dark Samus and make her unique. Incineroar up-B represents her dive-bomb from MP2, and Sonic down-B represents her boost ball from MP2. Zero effort, world of difference. Dark Samus has enough potential for an almost entirely different moveset imo, but if there's going to be no effort Dark Samus can at least have the no effort solution.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Netherrealm Studios has been doing special move customization in Mortal Kombat for some years now and it works just fine. Nintendo just doesn't like having any overt complexity. Because "wehhh its too much for teh kidz"
For the Ganon float, I think it would be cool if you could do his spinning float taunt in the air! It actually does already take him off the floor (you can spam it on the floor of mute city for example) so it would be cool to make that taunt actually useful and give him a mix-up
Ganon has a float in project M. Good mixup tool, recovery stall/mixup and tech chase extender. He’d also lose altitude the longer you held float You could down B from a top corner, jump ,float, down B, jump, up B in some scenarios at project M retained Ganon’s recovered jump feature. It’s also an approach tool as you could B reverse It at the ledge and do a call out or do neutral air 1, L cancel, grab/jab and go from there. Granted PM is wayyyyy more technically creative and honestly the best competitive form of smash in my eyes. People would still find a way to incorporate It.
It's crazy that Ganondorf's been stuck with a Shoehorned toolset that he's had for over Twenty Years, and it wasn't until 2018 that Ganondorf finally gets to have a sword. But he still can't float, and still doesn't have a projectile. He needs a complete redesign, and a justifiable one with Breath Of The Wild counterpart to give him fresh air without making him a fundies character.
God a TOTK version of Ganondorf would be fucking sick. He could be similar to Link with his bow and sword, but his club and spear gives him unique moves of his own. He'd still be slow of course, but just having projectiles, sword range, and Gloom as a potential DoT would help soooo much. There's a lot of "dead" moves in Ganon's current moveset that can easily be replaced, too. (Replace his smash attacks with that big Oni club and you could probably make all the old animations fit, as well.) More importantly, something like a Flurry Rush (I'm guessing in a practical sense, it'd function like Witch Time) would be real interesting on a heavyweight (in contrast to Bayo being a combo character). It'd be an indirect counter to projectiles; instead of being a straight reflector, it helps him gap close, and at higher percents would help land his more impractical attacks.
Donkey Kong is in a great spot in my opinion, fun to use, isnt carried by a single move like ding dong in smash 4, and is actually competitively viable as shown by players like chunkykong and hikaru.
Ehhh, he's still kinda carried by grab. He still has ding dong, and its still one of his absolute most important tool. If you actually watch top DKs, probably like 60-70% of their kills come from Ding Dong still. Its not quite as broken as it was in Smash 4, but its still there. Plus, he's also less viable than he was in smash 4. In smash 4 he was an uppper-mid, boarderline high tier. In this game he's like, solid mid tier.
Im a k rool main When we talk about reworks, i'll always 100% say give k rool the abilty to hold his own krown like an item. This would single handedly make k rool a much more viable character, plus I think a heavy with item play would be awesome af
@@Wario_B eh, I played k rool for a while His recovery is fair tbh And besides if you wanna cancel up b you can do some ledge shenanigans and combo it into up air
@@Zx30 the krown pick up lag is genuinely not that bad, you can even do some cool tech with it such as krown sliding. Besides, if you know what you’re doing, you can just cancel the endlag anyways with a move such as nair I agree with the up b change tho, making it like duck hunts or Olimar would be WILD
I already said it in another video and will say it again. Problem is Sakurai likes to arbitrarily give them weaknesses, as well as adding character and whatnot that really renders the heavy’s weight useless, like Kazuya’s whole TOD being way easier on Heavies and making their one big strength not as useful while also making their weaknesses bigger.
As long as heavyweights are big and slow (combo food), their weight advantage ultimately doesn't matter, and their ACTUAL endurance in a match would be worse than lightweights. In fact, weight is arguably one of the least important traits in the game, if Kazuya weighed as much as Mewtwo he'd still be top tier. Being able to recover from disadvantage states, and have safe ways to get back on stage ultimately do WAY more for your ability to stay alive than how much knockback you get. Sure, you might die at a lower percent, but I'm willing to bet if you looked at the actual TIME spent alive per match, heavyweights would be the worst by a wide margin.
@@Lardo137 Well, weight does matter in some cases. For example, Snake being heavy is a VERY big deal for him. This is because Snake often goes for trade situations. Him generally being much heavier than anyone he is fighting means that trading is generally in his favor, especially combined with his pretty solid kill power. He can easily rack up damage on you without worrying too much about taking damage from trades, and he will usually kill first. If snake was a midweight, he'd be significantly worse. Ridley is another character where weight matters, but for him its actually the opposite problem. Ridley is way too light for his size. This means that a lot of combos work rediculously long on him due to his massive size, but he doesnt have the weight to really survive them. So he ends up dying super early to a lot of true combos that usually dont work on other characters. This is bad for ridley cuz aside from being combo food, his disadvantage actually isnt all that bad. He has a pretty solid recovery, 3 jumps, good moves to swat you away, and his nair sweeps from under him helping him land. So he actually can get back to neutral reasonably well, but his size making him combo food and means that he often dies way too early since he doesnt have the weight to survive deadly combos. Weight matters more when you actually have a decent disadvantage. A character like pikachu being bowser weight would be utterly broken since its so hard to get percent on him, and you're not really going to gimp him. However, double ganondorf's weight and virtually nothing changes because 90% of his deaths are him getting gimped or blendered in a combo anyways.
@@eragon78 Another spot where weight matters, is recovery. Heavy characters have a much smaller window to return to the stage if bumped off, and the majority of them have laughable recoveries compared to any other class. Contributing to them getting killed off long before any other character despite supposedly having higher endurance. But I also concur with Spiny Bro that they're often given extra weaknesses or countering characters, ever since melee I'd say.
I like how Hopcat has traversed the decline in Smash popularity by finding this niche theme of Smash philosophy, looking into deep topics and forging a dissertation on them
Great video. By the way Min Min having a reflector is actually a reference to her special ability in Arms. If she dodges backwards on the ground or any direction in the air she knocks away the opponents Arms. Nobody really plays Arms, so it makes sense why nobody seems to know this. Yes I'm one of the nobodies who enjoys playing Min Min. So sue me.
Absolutely love this format of video! I know it probably isn’t the best growth and algorithm wise but I really do like it when you post these more historical/analytical videos, I hope this one does well so we see more in the future!!
Honestly, for Ganon and Charizard specifically among heavies, we could take a page out of the book of other fighting games, and make the move that rockets forward _projectile invincible,_ making it so they completely ignore most zoning tools while traveling (that aren't explosions like Snake's C4 going off, or just really long normals like Sephiroth's sword). That way, the heavy doesn't get any particular benefit (or, in doubles, detriment) for smacking the projectile, besides just not getting hurt by it.
Everyone forgets about Charizard. Another thing I noticed is that heavies with their big hurt boxes and slow attacks is that they can be interipted by the smallest quick hits like Pikachu's jab for example. Giving no chance to actually do anything. Bowser has his tough guy mechanic which helps. Which I think more heavies need to an extent.
In Hyrule Warriors, Ganondorf can throw his spear as a projectile and THEN teleport to that spear. I think that giving him a projectile that allowed him to do that in the game would go a long way to making him more viable.
It is not even an HW thing, is a mive he had aa far back as the very first Ganon boss fight, when he used a trident instead of a sword(wich make me slightly salty that Chadnondorf has a polearm but is not a trident). Hyrule Warrior in general really got Ganondorf right with both movesets. It is a living trstament to how many missed oppurtinities there are with Smash ganondorf.
What I would like for Ganon would be for him to have the Warlock Dropkick (one of the custom special moves in Smash 4, the one that goes sideways instead of down) as his default. It was such a great option not only for recovery and mix ups but also for approaching.
I think people are sleeping on him. He's definitely in top 35. (Tho I'd personally put Bowser in top 30 cuz he's so good) If only he was smaller, he'd obviously be in top 15.
What can we learn from Incineroar and Bowser, the best TRUE heavyweights? (Kazuya is a class traitor, clearly.) 1) Heavyweights need more damage. This may sound unintuitive, but characters like Ganondorf, despite "hitting hard," don't actually do that much damage due to their lack of reliable combos, and their true "big hits" being too slow and unreliable for practical use. Incineroar does massive damage with revenge and has actual reliable combos and command grabs, while Bowser's fire breath genuinely does crazy damage and his faster moves (like up-b or fair) are no slouches either. 2) Heavyweights need better and more flexible recovery. Just having better recovery means they can actually TAKE ADVANTAGE of their weight instead of being gimped to death match after match. Kragg from RoA is a good example of a character with a unique recovery move that gives him a lot of options offstage. 3) Heavyweights need to be straight up faster. They don't have to be as fast as Fox or Sheik, obviously, but they can have a move or two (or more) that serves as a defensive option, combo starter, and so on and so forth. Like Bowser's fast command grab, or up-b. 4) Please for the love of god stop giving heavyweights a bunch of useless gimmick moves THAT AREN'T EVEN GOOD. Shit like Min Min or Kazuya get some insanely powerful "gimmick" mechanics which are also obscenely powerful, while Ridley gets a joke of a down-b and Ganondorf gets his kneecaps broken. Who the fuck cares if Ike can oneshot anyone if he stands still for 5 seconds, when that never happens even in a casual game?? Heavyweights are already punished enough, they don't need basically-empty move slots on top of it. Ridley has damage and speed, but is gimped by bad recovery and disadvantage state. Ike has good damage, but they actually nerfed his effective damage by weakening his combo starter nair. And Ganondorf sucks at literally everything.
Honestly bowser right now is probably the most balanced heavy; he pretty much doesn’t have any gimmicks, his recovery is pretty good, and he actually has some armor. As a bowser main, though, I’d replace his fire breath for something else actually useful (and maybe his side b too, it’s not super useful most of the time)
Here's my personal hot take - If you buff a character, and they are still not better than the best character (Steve/Kazuya) then it's fair game - Kazuya is stronger, better, faster, and has better close range in just about every way than Gannon, there is absolutely NO reason why Gannon also has "worse" recovery as well: - Kazuya can jump out of Side B & Up B > Give that to Gannon. - Kazuya has invincibility on half his moves > Give that to Gannon - Kazuya has the best reflector in the game > I love your reflector Down B idea > - Kazuya has one of the best projectiles in the game > Give Gannon's Jab like a Zelda OOT thunderbolt that's as weak as Falco's laser or something - Kazuya Up-B is a kill move on all sides > Gannon's Up-B grab box should be the same size or at least kill twice as early - Kazuya has a bull**** comeback mechanic > Let's give Gannon something like that too (Like after 100% his grab range doubles or something IDK) - Kazuya has kill throws that send at negative 20 degree angles > Give Gannon at least 1 kill throw When you think about all the buffs you would need to give Gannon just to be "somewhat" as good as Kazuya is now (Who is Tourney Legal) it's baffeling how anyone wins with Gannon at all the way he is -
His laser is not one of the best projectiles in the game at all. And his reflector might be very powerful, but it's too impractical to use in an actual match in most situations.
I feel like what most heavies need is: A: Better get-off-me/OOS options. (Donkey Kong and Ganondorf especially) B: Better recoveries, since the whole point of heavies is that they live for a very long time and are hard to kill. (Again, Donkey and Ganondorf especially.) C: Better grab/kill throws, since heavies are meant to be Grapplers at heart. (Ganondorf and Ridley) D: Have some forms of intangiblity or damage-based armor on a few of their attacks. Not to an extreme like Kazuya, but something more like Bowser on his tilts and Smash Attacks.
I think good recoveries is the biggest one overall. Heavies can live with some of the other downsides, the main problem they experience is that their main on-paper advantage, their durability, is usually invalidated because of how vulnerable most are offstage. The fact that living to 150% isn't unreasonable barely matters when you die at 60% to an edgeguard anyways. You know there's a problem when lightweights like pikachu can consistently live longer than heavies, just because you actually have to kill them, instead of just killing them off a throw at ledge at arbitrary %
@@GrayRenzo No, I don’t want them to be broken. I just want them to have options that are useful for them in combat and have a fighting chance against other fighters, and not just get smothered, camped out, and one-tapped off-stage whole game. I mean, look at Incineroar. He’s got everything a Heavy needs, and he’s really well-designed. Good out-of-shield options/get-off-me tools (Nair, Up B and Neutral B) Recovery Mix-Ups (Side and Up B) Ways to counter projectiles that forces opponents to approach (Revenge) Amazing grab game (and a strong, versatile command grab.) Amazing and powerful normals that all serve their purpose. And yet he’s still balanced out by the fact that he has poor mobility, lack of disjoints and a weak neutral game. He’s literally THE perfect heavy.
i think giving them super armour against weak projectile spam to allow for an uninterrupted approach at the cost of still taking the damage as they come at you would make them better in competitive and more fun in casual, as nobody likes projectile spam in casual anyway and the mental image of bowser just walking through a fire flower to deck you in the face also sounds kinda cool. maybe also giving them general super armour during certain ground attacks could also work, especially when combined with a decent GTFO option, where you can likewise trade taking damage for utility.
Another idea for buffing Ganondorf would be allowing Wizard's Foot to be angled so you can get all the custom move variants from Sm4sh and make it harder to see which angle he's coming in.
Yeah that's not quite true anyways, there have been some Bowsers in Top 8's at Majors, KirbyKid's K Rool did it once, Skyjays Incin also did it multiple times, Hikaru's DK got 3rd in a major, ... That was just an exaggerated saying by Hop
I main a lot of heavies and the way you described what it’s like to main them is spot-on! Sakurai was too busy making Pyra/Mythra’s boobs jiggle to give some of the heavy fighters a buff!
What you need to do now is get someone to mod the heaviest with your proposed changes to see what would actually work. I'd love to see you and Poppt or Zach play with mods
I like the heavies in Rivals of Aether where they give the heavies special broken mechanics like Etalus's Ice physics and ability to get armor or Hodan's water boosting moves when he holds down or his up smash that spikes at any percent and whose hitbox is the size of the moon. Nothing Kazuya level, but these characters have enough threats to put people in a position where they can't just mash and get away with it.
long time competitor here. I enjoyed this--good job with your idea. Thematically this game is sumo wrestling. It just doesn't make sense when the heavies get KO'd early. Heavies should have the best recoveries that are the hardest to challenge to assist and make iconic their weight class. Heavies should possess an attack that has TKO power at early %. and at this point its experimental. The two above points are baseline. Something I think that is missing is a way to respond to shield pressure with either a counter or something to do out of shield. Ganondorf Neutral A-Thunder Punch, having a reflect element to it would solve a lot of problems. Also a Hold B ability for Warlock Punch to send out a homing reflectable projectile would be helpful
I personally think stuff like cloud limit and hero's various buffs are a better solution than an anti projectile move. The kind of thing that makes campers not want to leave you alone or else you'll get a power up and be more annoying. That's how revenge functions for the most part as well. Also you sorta bring up something in the beginning that I feel is true in general and not just for heavies in smash and thats that a lot of games are a lot more fun when you and your opponents aren't very good. I'm a sweat in pretty much every game I play. I love the process of delving deep into a game and trying to get good. The process of improvement feels amazing but often times the reward of "being good" is more of a punishment and the game just isn't that enjoyable anymore.
I feel that with chess. I never studied openings at all and just play for fun, but having gotten to 1400 rapid now half my opponents play super boring or just liquidate me with a 15 move rehearsed sequence and it isn't very fun
Agree. The main thing I've gotten out of being kinda okay in Smash is the reward of being miserable online and nobody wanting to play with me casually, and Smash Ultimate is an utter failure in terms of "other" stuff to do, I've actually been playing 3DS Smash 4 more recently, entirely because I have a friend that likes Smash Run.
I don’t understand why you don’t view Kazuya as a heavy; he just seems good. The problem with smash is broken Hurt boxes. If you have a larger character model you have a higher risk of getting hit by sloppy hurtboxes that don’t appear to actually hit anything
Hell kaz is easy to combo and hits like a heavy, tho his ToD stuff is wack Tho to be fair, cuzof 1v1 dmg bonus in ult, many chars hit like heavies now...
@@HELLRAISER02 Kazuya is what happens when you actually take the heavy archetype and make them a top tier. heavies should never be top tiers in a game like smash, because then theyer utter cancer to fight. The only way to let them be good while also having a terrible disadvantage is to super heavily overtune their advantage state and/or kill power. Aka, kazuya. Kazuya's disadvantage is still trash, while his neutral is very meh. But because he kills you in legit 1-2 neutral wins, it barely matters. He's literally the heavy archetype taken to its extreme. Heavies are the most interesting and fun imo when theyre just good enough to be viable, but not particularly amazing either. Low-high tier at like, absolute best. Anything better and the character just becomes extremely annoying to fight against. A character like bowser does basically the same stuff as Kazuya, he just requires much better reads and neutral play to actually get it done because he's a much worse character. But thats also what makes it so exciting to watch a bowser player. You know that when someone who is playing bowser is destroying top level players, its because they're outplaying the hell out of them. Thats what MAKES them fun and interesting. That excitement goes away when you make them a top tier where they have insanely broken options to win which heavily compensates for their extreme flaws. So yea, Heavies SHOULD be viable, but they should never be GOOD. Good heavies are a nightmare to fight. Any better and they lose their charm that so many people enjoy about them.
@@eragon78 saying an entire archetype cant be top tier just because you think thatd make em less exciting is a worthless sentiment, get outta here with that I dont even like Kazs ToDs but archetypes should be allowed to flourish
@@HELLRAISER02 The point is that heavies lose their charm once they're ACTUALLY good because it becomes unfun to fight against. Instead of a match where you have to outplay your opponent to get the few reads you need to really destroy them, instead it becomes a match of waiting for your opponent to make a single mistake and completely destroy them. Im not saying it CANT exist, im saying that its extremely unfun when it DOES happen. A character like kazuya exemplifies that. He isnt fun to fight because he just kills you every time you make a small mistake. Worse heavies ARE fun to fight because you dont instantly die off a single mistake, and its a lot harder for them to actually get the hard reads needed to kill. For a heavy to win, they have to outplay better characters. Thats what makes them interesting. If theyre top tiers, then they dont really have to outplay you as much as just wait for you to mess up and win, or for you to never mess up and then you win. Again, its the same idea as what Ding dong and Koop-Ha did in smash 4. They were extremely unfun to fight against. Very few people actually enjoy that stuff. The archetype is at its best when its viable but not top tier. When its actually good, it loses all its charm. Thats my point. Heaviest being the underdogs are WHY theyre so enjoyable and fun. Make them actually top tier, and all that charm goes away and theyre just annoying.
@@eragon78 Youre trying to use YOUR own ideas of what fun is to justify why heavies shouldnt be top tier, now that might be your opinion But if you REALLY wanna sell an argument on why they shouldnt be top tier then you should think of something more objective than a 'fun to fight' argument as you used, because if we used it, then every top tier is fun and not fun to fight
I really relate to what you said about Incineroar. I’ve *really* started playing Smash Bros a lot with Ultimate and Incineroar was my first main and imo, he is one of the best choices as a first main. In the beginning, because he was a heavy and with his down b e.g. it was super fun and easy to get great damage as Incineroar and kill early. After a year or so, I started to face better opponents, where I first encountered all the weaknesses of heavies with the bad recovery, slow movement speed and just being bullied, but I still felt like I could have a chance against better opponents as I started to learn more about Incineroar, because of certain counters to the typical strategies against Incineroar (like the ones you mentioned in your video) and therefore he isn’t a great character in particular, but imo an amazing first character with great usage in your early competitive stages.
you reached a ceiling before reaching the characters peak and place the wrong blame. look at skyjay, u think hes in his early stages?? your genuinely probably coping because in early competitive heavies stomp scrubs. the moment u had to earn ur wins you blame the character
For Ganon, Forward Smash should be a reflector. This would be a reference to the games of ping pong in a lot of his and Phantom Ganon boss fights. Getting rid of free fall on side-b and up-b would be very nice too.
imo a couple more moves with high range would benefit them a lot without making them insane, like lucina's up and back air on ganon would be dope but definetly not broken
I’d like to point out: Rivals of Aether does heavies REALLY WELL. The devs understand their weaknesses, and have built the heavies to be fun from your first time with them all the way into competitive.
@@andrewle4989 Hard to say exactly, but probably around an 8? I would want to see her grabs/throws first, if she has any good out-of-shield options, etc. But hopefully she’s in Rivals 2 and we see some of that!
One other well-designed heavy is Etalus, from Rivals of Aether. He is the average casual menace character with super armor moves that are really slow and strong, but has the ability to increase his movement speed by placing ice on the stage, and using dash attack to move quickly and easily across the map. He can also use neutral special to give himself armor that lessens his knockback for a short time, and has a projectile that can be freely used as a recovery mixup that works very well to cover his very linear up special. He also still has noticeable weaknesses, like slow start-up on a majority of his moves, which makes all of them a very big commitment and his short, slow, linear recovery.
the reasons I like ROB and Ridley fall into a lot of those categories yoiu mentioned for Incineroar (especially recovery), but neither have all of the things mentioned (like counter to combo characters)
In addition to being able to mix up his recovery by taking out the fall mechanic from his Side-B, I feel like Ganondorf needs super-armor when using both the Side- and Up-B in the air just so he doesnt get knocked back while trying to pull them off. Maybe limit the super-armor for the Up-B to until he reaches the peak of his ascent (mainly so he can still get spiked or air-countered so his recovery isn't utterly busted).
I always liked the idea that the heavier you get the more your range should be increased or your movement options should be more creative. I like sylvanos from rival of aether because his range makes up for his weaknesses and can allow him to duke it out with the faster characters. or the idea of a float buffing gannon's recovery and attack options would make him WAY cooler and stronger. Ideas like that can push heavies forward. I think ultimate bowser is kind of like the ideal, although cheesy he certainly is viable and a good character. admittedly it is a VERY fine line, and it isn't easy, but I think it is a step in the right direction. If i'm honest though, Ganon needs to be reworked from the ground up, him being a Cpt F clone is disgraceful, I say take from his hyrule warriors version.
Ganon’s nair is actually his fastest out of shield option at frame 10, which is not fantastic but much faster than dark dive, which is not active until frame 14. Great video and agree with most of the points you make.
a reflector definitely makes sense for ganondorf, especially with THIS ganondorf and really with him the biggest issue is that he's been a clone of captain falcon for 4 games straight with only this recent one actually changing things up for the better. the moves i think need to be changed would absolutely be warlock punch and his up special. for neutral special because those moves are not only much more fitting for falcon but there's also better options for attacks. with the float we already have a pretty good idea of what that can look like with black adam in multiversus so that could be a good baseline to work with and for neutral special i think having some sort of slow moving projectile could work really well especially if he has a reflector
I think heavies like captain falcon and yoshi were most balanced in melee because of defensive techs like amsah techs, crouch cancels, and wavedashing as a movement option
Falcon and Yoshi dont really fit into that heavy archetype even though their actual weight stat is pretty high. Theyre more rushdown brawlers than they are heavies.
@@eragon78 As a Yoshi main, there's no way he's a rush down brawler. He's not fast enough to catch any of the top tiers. At a high level he plays more like a tank, hence aMSa timing out Hbox repeatedly. Yoshi is all about taking a hit and counter-hitting, more like K. Rool in Ultimate. And it's fair to say Falcon is most often played as a rush-down brawler. But Wizzrobe plays differently, and he's probably the best falcon player who's ever lived. He makes you realize the character can actually play defensive and heavy.
In melee, Ganon and Falcon's side-b could actually "side-step" projectiles at certain frames because of the 3D aspect of the game. I wish that happened in this game more, it would help his approaches towards projectile characters. I’d also like to say Rivals of Aether seemed to solve the heavy problem. Characters like Kragg and Sylvanos can move well and combo thanks to the hitfall mechanic. Smash needs a mechanical technique that gives heavies a way to escape combos and stay on top of opponents while providing counterplay.
I feel like the best way to make some characters like Kirby played more is to make them more hype, then people would play them even if they are bad because they want that juicy combo in to spike or hammer or something.
Potential Hot take + lukewarm take: I think _all heavies should have a decent combo game_ and at least one strong defensive option (Revenge, a reflector, a really good projectile). This allows them to remain combo food and fun to fight against, but also able to fight back and legitimately demand your respect.
@@AubergineMans because these mf character have some much kill power giving them combo game would be deadly look at kazuya bro you don't want that kind of thing with different character
If you want to see how a Ganondorf float could be balanced, check out Project +/ M's Ganon. His warlock punch is replaced with a reflect, and if do this midair Ganondorf can float horizontally! It's an amazing mixup tool on stage and it significantly helps him recover
great video. interesting that the current UltRank tier list has Bowser at 50/82 and Incineroar at 64/82. I definitely see Incineroar moving up in future.
Also there's some heavies that are just not enjoyable when overtuned. Case and point: KAZUYA. He's a heavyweight in terms of properties but is so one-sided some people want him gone from smash. And yes, he's fundamentally a heavyweight in terms of neutral gameplay. Btw, the best heavyweight is not Incineroar, it's Bowser because he's fast and has good defensive tools.
I main King Dedede and he works fine for me on Online. My rank is 12 Million and I am in elite smash. The problem I have with lighter weight characters is that It takes to long to KO. Plus the lag interrupts combo. With Dedede I just need 4 well placed hits and you already at 100.
I felt like king k rool could’ve had more representation in this video. Another heavy with the attempt to be balanced. Good recovery, good counter/reflect, super armor belly, and projectiles. Definitely my favorite heavy.
Looking at Project M, they balanced heavies by giving them 1 pretty unique movement form that game them some burst potential, like Ike’s side B which was jump cancellable and Gabon’s float. I feel like giving heavies a movement ability like this makes them infinitely better and it showed because Ike was pretty strong in pM if I remember right
i think the coolest way to fix gannondorf is to get rid of his nuetral B, give his volcano kick super armor to effectively replace warlock punch (wouldn't be usable in the air sadly) and make his flame choke like alolan whip, usable once but doesn't put you into freefall. his replacement nuetral special would be the energy ball he uses in some of the zelda games you'd charge it up similar to greninja's water shuriken (unable to hold a charge), you could change the type to be the powerful onehit version that could be reflected back or a weaker multihit version that that can't be hit back (the type would be changed by a specific input before throwing it) and of course, you would be able to stop in midair to float while charging. this makes gannondorf more like is in game fights while also having a way to deal with people that are camping.
I think the big issue is that the philosophy behind heavies in Smash is always going to make them worse in competitive. The idea behind heavies is that they can take more hits, which means they don’t get launched as far. In exchange, they have bad recoveries. But in competitive environments that strength of not being launched far can become a great weakness, because if you are not being launched far then that means your opponent can follow up one attack with another. This means that heavies, who don’t fly far when hit and have large hit boxes, end up as combo food. I think the best way to deal with this is to give heavies better defensive options. You mentioned Incineroar’s revenge, which does this well, and my favorite heavy, King K. Rool, also has a solid counter/reflect option.
I think heavies are bad in 1v1 but if you did 2v2 or 3v3 suddenly they become interesting in competitive, like, they can tank projectiles and whatever for the team to allow for setups or force a dodge that would be super punitive if not made to enable a fast light character to start a combo
I had a cool idea for ganon's up b where he could grab someone midair and flip around, so he can not be put in disadvantage for hitting the up b. So instead of just spamming up b hoping to get back on the ledge, you could grab your opponent and flip them, putting them in disadvatage while ganon safely recovers back on stage.
One thing I had thought of to simultaneously improve the recovery, approach(I don't know how good it is now, balance as necessary) and canonical faithfulness if Ganondorf would be replacing his neutral special with Dead Man's Volley. It would be a short ranged projectile and not too strong at first, but attacks could reflect it to increase its power. You could only have one out at once, and using it while out would make Ganon attempt to reflect it (this would not reflect any other projectile but his and other Ganondorfs' Volleys). The move would also make Ganon Float in midair slightly while using it, allowing for some mixups when recovering. The projectile would deal very little shield damage, but would keep you trapped inside your shield for a short time by constantly hitting you, the trade-off for this being that a parry reflects the projectile with great power. It would be an energy based projectile, meaning characters like Game&Watch and Ness could chose between reflecting and absorbing it.
Honestly wizard foot getting armor would honestly probably be better than a re/deflector. It would help with minor projectiles and also save him from losing trades with Bayonetta heel slide. Also up b is not Gannon's fastest OoS it's nair, then up air. Gannon side B not having special fall would probably be pretty good though honestly or making a quarter circle input for his down B to work like bayo ABK to help recover
I think the best way to balance a heavy is to give them either bad mobility or frame data but not both. Heavies also don’t need to have huge frames it’s weird that smash bros has those three attributes tied together. Likewise heavies don’t necessarily need huge damage and kill power they could just have one of the two strengths
as someone who has never played smash bros here is my solution to the problem: make a fridge a usable item. the characters take a fridge and throw it to their opponents. that should fix just about everything. make sure it is a fridge not an oven, ovens will ruin everything.
Something I'd love to see them add to make Ganon more viable is some moves that reflect the Blight Ganons in Breath of the Wild. Similar to how Byleth pulls out different weapons for different attacks to represent the three Lords of her game. For example, a super-fast dash attack that stuns if it hits (Thunderblight), a tornado-based Up-B (Windblight), a flaming projectile that's slow but does big damage (Fireblight) or a long-reaching Side B that punishes campers (Waterblight). As a heavy, Ganon may always be doomed to be really slow, but having stuff like this might really help him and be a really fun callback! Love your videos as always Hop, it's nice to sit down with them over lunch!
You had me at the tf2 heavy. Smash plus tf2 is an underrated combo. Also I used to actually pretend that the up throw up buff didn’t exist and just play bowser without it. Just to make it more interesting. Kind of like how I won’t use roy in ultimate and instead use chrom, or how I won’t use jarate, scorch shot, (meh okay I’ll use it more than likely over the jarate) the wrangler plus rescue ranger all the time, or the vax. Because these things get boring to use with how effective they are. ALSO I HAVE NEVER USED THE DIAMOND BACK AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL This video was very well done, and smash plus tf2… you’ve earned my sub
Just look at Bowser's toolkit. One of the fastest ground speeds and fast air speed. Armor on basically every single move he could ask for, with various moves just not hitstunning him at all. Good reach. TWO incredible frame 6 reactions, one that scoops, provides mobility, and can shield poke itself, one that starts killing around 100. Weight and fall speed make him REGULARLY live to 160+ if his recovery isn't stopped. Everything kills. Everything. Tilts, smashes, random aerials. Can put 50-60% on an opponent from a single scuffed neutral interaction. Has a shield cracker, a few ways to vary landings, aerial command grab. Recovery is actually *just* maneuverable and varied enough to not be spike food. All of this. Upper mid tier, because heavy.
i think a good solution would be to lower aerial and ground traction of heavies and giving them quick airdodges so they have high level movement options for ganondorf his neutral b could be switched to the lightning balls which charges and maxes at 3 before releasing
I would give heavies more moves with armor percent, or give them better-flushed moves set since Ganondorf doesn't even have a proper anti-air with his Up-tilt which, comes in handy in very niche moments. Most likely a combination of the two with at least better get-off-me tools to use when at a disadvantage so, you can mix up if you're going to push a button or not. That's just my opinion on the matter though and, someone else can have a better idea than me.
rivals of aether does heavies really well with them needing to enable their movement and having MASSIVE hitboxes. Etalus basically turns into basically heavy luigi with a giant projectiles and the ability to apply super armor if you can get ice on the ground and sylvanis gets bigger hitboxes if they get grass and flowers on the ground. Letting the heavies get rid of their main weaknesses if you can set it up.
What's weird is that heavies in smash fan games are actually really good sometimes, like how DK was top tier in super smash flash 2 and project M (he's not top tier in those anymore but He's still high tier on project+). There's also other fighting games where there's at least one top tier heavy.
It'd be so cool if you could taunt in the air with Ganondorf and he would float in the air there which would activate another jump Once while in the air.
Just give Ganondorf some of his custom moves from Smash 4: First, Wizard's Dropkick. It goes over many projectiles, and it has a more sideway angle when used in the air, which fixes his approach and his recovery. And second, Dark Vault, but give it an hitbox on the first jump. It would fix his out of shield, and improve his recovery a bit more.
For real, my biggest gripe with Ganon's Down-B is the fact almost any projectile just straight up stops him mid way. It has 0 priority or any armor, but truthfully, Ganon's biggest down fall was the fact he was a "clone" character in Melee and never got a proper development.
Have you ever seen the hitbox on his down B? its utterly tiny. Thats why it loses to basically everything.
Ive even been grabbed out of down B by normal grabs, not even tethers. The move is just straight up bad lol. If the hitbox actually covered the size of the animation, itd probably be pretty decent, but since it loses to so much stuff, it ultimately ends up being extremely risky for mediocre reward.
@@eragon78 I say they should make it able to absorb one hit (Like Ryu and Ken down B) and make the hitbox a little bigger. It probably won't happen, but it would be nice
@@eragon78also it slows down if it ever hits anything and got that lag so its a Ridley gambit to even use a lot of the time
Ganon all the way
Yeah, I know it's been said, but the fzero character, black falcon I think, is PERFECT for Ganons moveset, and then please nintendo needs to Fix Ganon :((
I wish you could Side B into Up B and Up B into Side B, off stage. Instantly Ganondorf would have a recovery. And it wouldn't be the worst.
Same with Ike
Next smash game I hope gannon gets a teleport recovery
Turning Ganon into Bayo
@@mouldybluelemon He can be punished so easily. Once he chooses either up- or side-b he hard commits and any stray hit will kill him. Allowing him to have more recovery mix ups is a good balance idea in my opinion.
No
The problem is that if heavies get too good you get kazuya and you dont want more kazuya
the thing with kazuya is that he isnt JUST a heavy
hes also a shoto
and dlc
@@Cinndragon Best and by far most consistens 0 to deaths. Luigi isnt as consistent as him ive heard people say hes as good eith combos as kazuya
@@Cinndragonhes not a shoto. Terry is not a shoto maybe play other games other than smash
@@ONIGIRIKINGU you get my point
@@Cinndragon i do but shoto is not a playstyle its just the name of the karate they pratice. Only ryu, ken and akuma are shoto cause they pratice that martial arts its not playstyle. I dont want people to be misled
I do kind of wish Ganondorf was just more like the warlock/sorcerer he actually is canon wise, rather than being the weird Falcon/Ike mashup he currently plays as.
Shows how crazy good skyjay is
Yea incin online is bullshit tho
Skyjay is my favorite player by far
hes cold but incin is acc viable u dont consistently get top 8 at majors with a low tier
@@randompianist8359unless your name is Peanut XD
@@randompianist8359 you can nairo won with gannon vs light
For the Ganon float ability I saw a mod where it basically just gave him peaches float ability with some dark magic effects and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I don’t get why he hasn’t already gotten it. Having a float would probably also allow sweats to come up with some goofy ledge guarding combos
I agree it also gave him some extra combo options.
This is from Project M, and yeah, the float is fantastic. Favorite thing is to jump towards opponent threateningly, float just before reaching them and watch them throw up a defensive option, then finishing coming down a moment later. It's great, and really adds a different flavor to the character.
Not sure how I feel about Ganon with float mechanics. On the one hang, yeah it would absolutely help with recovering and stuff, but Ganon with float cancels sounds ridiculous when his aerials are already really good. Maybe it would still be balanced because his aerials aren't that fast and obviously he's still in disadvantage if he gets hit, but I don't know.
@@KrazyKyle-ij9vb yea, the stomp with the float is so fun tho
@@KrazyKyle-ij9vb In PM, it's not a Peach Float, as you can't do any cancels with it. That's because it's actually his neutral B. Think of it like more like a stance change button, that stalls him in the air and ONLY let's him hover (he starts descending after 1 second) left/right or double jump from
What hurts is that they had a REALLY good custom move for Ganondorf in smash 4, where his down B was given a sloped trajectory on the ground and did a slight jump, and more crucially, let him still move mostly-horizantally midair. It let him bypass low to the ground moves, it gave him shockingly good recovery, AND it was much faster than the default Wizard's Foot, at the cost of some power.
Why they never implemented that into Smash Ultimate, I have no idea. Maybe part of it was the blowback on some custom moves, but judging by Nintendo's balance decisions, they probably just wanted to fuck over heavyweights some more :/
Thing is, they did actually incorporate some ideas of Smash 4 Custom moves into the base ultimate moves. For example, they gave DK the Super armor on his side B which previously had been a custom. I can't fathom why they wouldn't give some form of recovery utility to Wizards Foot.
One of the failings of Smash Ultimate, I feel, is having a mechanic they dropped from the last game (Custom specials) and a perfect, relatively low effort way to socket those in (Echoes) and not doing it.
I get that custom specials are awkward for competitive, and hard to balance... but that's what echoes could have been for. Picking up some of the more interesting custom specials and loading them onto echoes of existing characters and do a few extra small tweaks to balance/blend into those specials better.
Especially given the existence of echoes like Dark Samus and Daisy, which have literally no practical difference.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 its still baffling how Peach and Daisy used to have different properties to their Turnips, but they patched it up so Daisy became just a glorified Peach skin
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 I am of the opinion that Dark Samus as an echo is one of the laziest decisions they made with Ultimate. There are already 2 moves that already exist in the game that can just be slapped on to Dark Samus Chrom up-B style, and you better represent Dark Samus and make her unique. Incineroar up-B represents her dive-bomb from MP2, and Sonic down-B represents her boost ball from MP2. Zero effort, world of difference.
Dark Samus has enough potential for an almost entirely different moveset imo, but if there's going to be no effort Dark Samus can at least have the no effort solution.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Netherrealm Studios has been doing special move customization in Mortal Kombat for some years now and it works just fine. Nintendo just doesn't like having any overt complexity. Because "wehhh its too much for teh kidz"
For the Ganon float, I think it would be cool if you could do his spinning float taunt in the air! It actually does already take him off the floor (you can spam it on the floor of mute city for example) so it would be cool to make that taunt actually useful and give him a mix-up
Nice idea, but the problem is that you couldn't use this in Elite Smash (expect you make his taunt similar to Kirbys taunt-mechanics)
@@logchampsnomnom3195 I doubt they would give him the kirby treatment, not even luigi's down taunt got a pass despise how iconic it was
Ganon has a float in project M. Good mixup tool, recovery stall/mixup and tech chase extender. He’d also lose altitude the longer you held float
You could down B from a top corner, jump ,float, down B, jump, up B in some scenarios at project M retained Ganon’s recovered jump feature.
It’s also an approach tool as you could B reverse It at the ledge and do a call out or do neutral air 1, L cancel, grab/jab and go from there.
Granted PM is wayyyyy more technically creative and honestly the best competitive form of smash in my eyes. People would still find a way to incorporate It.
@@logchampsnomnom3195 To be fair, I would love it if you could taunt online in the next Smash game.
@@logchampsnomnom3195 I forgot you couldn't taunt online and that reminds me how much Nintendo sucks sometimes.
Shoutout to my fellow Dedede mains, feels like they made that character bad on purpose
Yeah it sucks
He was cool in Brawl. :(
Penguin enjoyer since 2021,its just SO much fun if you know what you are doing. 😊
cope harder man, keep blaming ur character and crying
I bet you said this and play top tier characters 💀
It's crazy that Ganondorf's been stuck with a Shoehorned toolset that he's had for over Twenty Years, and it wasn't until 2018 that Ganondorf finally gets to have a sword. But he still can't float, and still doesn't have a projectile. He needs a complete redesign, and a justifiable one with Breath Of The Wild counterpart to give him fresh air without making him a fundies character.
God a TOTK version of Ganondorf would be fucking sick. He could be similar to Link with his bow and sword, but his club and spear gives him unique moves of his own. He'd still be slow of course, but just having projectiles, sword range, and Gloom as a potential DoT would help soooo much. There's a lot of "dead" moves in Ganon's current moveset that can easily be replaced, too. (Replace his smash attacks with that big Oni club and you could probably make all the old animations fit, as well.)
More importantly, something like a Flurry Rush (I'm guessing in a practical sense, it'd function like Witch Time) would be real interesting on a heavyweight (in contrast to Bayo being a combo character). It'd be an indirect counter to projectiles; instead of being a straight reflector, it helps him gap close, and at higher percents would help land his more impractical attacks.
@@Lardo137 He REALLY needs that.
Donkey Kong is in a great spot in my opinion, fun to use, isnt carried by a single move like ding dong in smash 4, and is actually competitively viable as shown by players like chunkykong and hikaru.
Ehhh, he's still kinda carried by grab. He still has ding dong, and its still one of his absolute most important tool. If you actually watch top DKs, probably like 60-70% of their kills come from Ding Dong still.
Its not quite as broken as it was in Smash 4, but its still there. Plus, he's also less viable than he was in smash 4. In smash 4 he was an uppper-mid, boarderline high tier. In this game he's like, solid mid tier.
so hikaru is good at chess and smash bros then, this guy is a GOD
Im a k rool main
When we talk about reworks, i'll always 100% say give k rool the abilty to hold his own krown like an item.
This would single handedly make k rool a much more viable character, plus I think a heavy with item play would be awesome af
And make his up b cancelable
@@Wario_B eh, I played k rool for a while
His recovery is fair tbh
And besides if you wanna cancel up b you can do some ledge shenanigans and combo it into up air
Agreed. Also, i suggest these changes.
- make up b cancelable like up b duck hunt
- REMOVE THE CROWN PICK UP LAG
@@Zx30 the krown pick up lag is genuinely not that bad, you can even do some cool tech with it such as krown sliding. Besides, if you know what you’re doing, you can just cancel the endlag anyways with a move such as nair
I agree with the up b change tho, making it like duck hunts or Olimar would be WILD
I am also k rool main and play pretty high the funny thing is just that heavies are a challenge
I already said it in another video and will say it again.
Problem is Sakurai likes to arbitrarily give them weaknesses, as well as adding character and whatnot that really renders the heavy’s weight useless, like Kazuya’s whole TOD being way easier on Heavies and making their one big strength not as useful while also making their weaknesses bigger.
As long as heavyweights are big and slow (combo food), their weight advantage ultimately doesn't matter, and their ACTUAL endurance in a match would be worse than lightweights. In fact, weight is arguably one of the least important traits in the game, if Kazuya weighed as much as Mewtwo he'd still be top tier.
Being able to recover from disadvantage states, and have safe ways to get back on stage ultimately do WAY more for your ability to stay alive than how much knockback you get. Sure, you might die at a lower percent, but I'm willing to bet if you looked at the actual TIME spent alive per match, heavyweights would be the worst by a wide margin.
what other video?
@@Lardo137 Well, weight does matter in some cases. For example, Snake being heavy is a VERY big deal for him. This is because Snake often goes for trade situations. Him generally being much heavier than anyone he is fighting means that trading is generally in his favor, especially combined with his pretty solid kill power. He can easily rack up damage on you without worrying too much about taking damage from trades, and he will usually kill first.
If snake was a midweight, he'd be significantly worse.
Ridley is another character where weight matters, but for him its actually the opposite problem. Ridley is way too light for his size. This means that a lot of combos work rediculously long on him due to his massive size, but he doesnt have the weight to really survive them. So he ends up dying super early to a lot of true combos that usually dont work on other characters. This is bad for ridley cuz aside from being combo food, his disadvantage actually isnt all that bad. He has a pretty solid recovery, 3 jumps, good moves to swat you away, and his nair sweeps from under him helping him land. So he actually can get back to neutral reasonably well, but his size making him combo food and means that he often dies way too early since he doesnt have the weight to survive deadly combos.
Weight matters more when you actually have a decent disadvantage. A character like pikachu being bowser weight would be utterly broken since its so hard to get percent on him, and you're not really going to gimp him. However, double ganondorf's weight and virtually nothing changes because 90% of his deaths are him getting gimped or blendered in a combo anyways.
@@eragon78 Excellent points. I don't really have much to add, it's a great breakdown.
@@eragon78 Another spot where weight matters, is recovery. Heavy characters have a much smaller window to return to the stage if bumped off, and the majority of them have laughable recoveries compared to any other class. Contributing to them getting killed off long before any other character despite supposedly having higher endurance. But I also concur with Spiny Bro that they're often given extra weaknesses or countering characters, ever since melee I'd say.
I like how Hopcat has traversed the decline in Smash popularity by finding this niche theme of Smash philosophy, looking into deep topics and forging a dissertation on them
Great video. By the way Min Min having a reflector is actually a reference to her special ability in Arms. If she dodges backwards on the ground or any direction in the air she knocks away the opponents Arms. Nobody really plays Arms, so it makes sense why nobody seems to know this. Yes I'm one of the nobodies who enjoys playing Min Min. So sue me.
Ganon has been reflecting projectiles for decades, well before Arms was even conceptualized.
@@adammika6472 Definitely. He should be reworked.
Absolutely love this format of video! I know it probably isn’t the best growth and algorithm wise but I really do like it when you post these more historical/analytical videos, I hope this one does well so we see more in the future!!
Honestly, for Ganon and Charizard specifically among heavies, we could take a page out of the book of other fighting games, and make the move that rockets forward _projectile invincible,_ making it so they completely ignore most zoning tools while traveling (that aren't explosions like Snake's C4 going off, or just really long normals like Sephiroth's sword). That way, the heavy doesn't get any particular benefit (or, in doubles, detriment) for smacking the projectile, besides just not getting hurt by it.
Everyone forgets about Charizard.
Another thing I noticed is that heavies with their big hurt boxes and slow attacks is that they can be interipted by the smallest quick hits like Pikachu's jab for example. Giving no chance to actually do anything. Bowser has his tough guy mechanic which helps. Which I think more heavies need to an extent.
In Hyrule Warriors, Ganondorf can throw his spear as a projectile and THEN teleport to that spear. I think that giving him a projectile that allowed him to do that in the game would go a long way to making him more viable.
It is not even an HW thing, is a mive he had aa far back as the very first Ganon boss fight, when he used a trident instead of a sword(wich make me slightly salty that Chadnondorf has a polearm but is not a trident).
Hyrule Warrior in general really got Ganondorf right with both movesets. It is a living trstament to how many missed oppurtinities there are with Smash ganondorf.
The problem is that Sakurai has gotten this weird idea that being big is in itself an advantage when it really isn't
What I would like for Ganon would be for him to have the Warlock Dropkick (one of the custom special moves in Smash 4, the one that goes sideways instead of down) as his default. It was such a great option not only for recovery and mix ups but also for approaching.
For the down b ganon change, mockrock presented a pretty cool and similar idea, projectile intangiblility, being able to go through projectiles.
I love how tf2 heavy comes back when scrolling through TH-cam
I hope the Ganondorf in the next Smash game will be totk Ganondorf and his down B becomes the flurry rush that he possesses in totk.
I hope so too. TOTK version looks more badass.
Heavies are always bad
Bowser: Not sure if you know who I am…
I think people are sleeping on him. He's definitely in top 35. (Tho I'd personally put Bowser in top 30 cuz he's so good) If only he was smaller, he'd obviously be in top 15.
What can we learn from Incineroar and Bowser, the best TRUE heavyweights? (Kazuya is a class traitor, clearly.)
1) Heavyweights need more damage. This may sound unintuitive, but characters like Ganondorf, despite "hitting hard," don't actually do that much damage due to their lack of reliable combos, and their true "big hits" being too slow and unreliable for practical use. Incineroar does massive damage with revenge and has actual reliable combos and command grabs, while Bowser's fire breath genuinely does crazy damage and his faster moves (like up-b or fair) are no slouches either.
2) Heavyweights need better and more flexible recovery. Just having better recovery means they can actually TAKE ADVANTAGE of their weight instead of being gimped to death match after match. Kragg from RoA is a good example of a character with a unique recovery move that gives him a lot of options offstage.
3) Heavyweights need to be straight up faster. They don't have to be as fast as Fox or Sheik, obviously, but they can have a move or two (or more) that serves as a defensive option, combo starter, and so on and so forth. Like Bowser's fast command grab, or up-b.
4) Please for the love of god stop giving heavyweights a bunch of useless gimmick moves THAT AREN'T EVEN GOOD. Shit like Min Min or Kazuya get some insanely powerful "gimmick" mechanics which are also obscenely powerful, while Ridley gets a joke of a down-b and Ganondorf gets his kneecaps broken. Who the fuck cares if Ike can oneshot anyone if he stands still for 5 seconds, when that never happens even in a casual game?? Heavyweights are already punished enough, they don't need basically-empty move slots on top of it.
Ridley has damage and speed, but is gimped by bad recovery and disadvantage state. Ike has good damage, but they actually nerfed his effective damage by weakening his combo starter nair. And Ganondorf sucks at literally everything.
Honestly bowser right now is probably the most balanced heavy; he pretty much doesn’t have any gimmicks, his recovery is pretty good, and he actually has some armor. As a bowser main, though, I’d replace his fire breath for something else actually useful (and maybe his side b too, it’s not super useful most of the time)
Here's my personal hot take - If you buff a character, and they are still not better than the best character (Steve/Kazuya) then it's fair game -
Kazuya is stronger, better, faster, and has better close range in just about every way than Gannon, there is absolutely NO reason why Gannon also has "worse" recovery as well:
- Kazuya can jump out of Side B & Up B > Give that to Gannon.
- Kazuya has invincibility on half his moves > Give that to Gannon
- Kazuya has the best reflector in the game > I love your reflector Down B idea >
- Kazuya has one of the best projectiles in the game > Give Gannon's Jab like a Zelda OOT thunderbolt that's as weak as Falco's laser or something
- Kazuya Up-B is a kill move on all sides > Gannon's Up-B grab box should be the same size or at least kill twice as early
- Kazuya has a bull**** comeback mechanic > Let's give Gannon something like that too (Like after 100% his grab range doubles or something IDK)
- Kazuya has kill throws that send at negative 20 degree angles > Give Gannon at least 1 kill throw
When you think about all the buffs you would need to give Gannon just to be "somewhat" as good as Kazuya is now (Who is Tourney Legal) it's baffeling how anyone wins with Gannon at all the way he is -
Power creep makes for lame experiences. I prefer to nerf everyone.
His laser is not one of the best projectiles in the game at all. And his reflector might be very powerful, but it's too impractical to use in an actual match in most situations.
I feel like what most heavies need is:
A: Better get-off-me/OOS options. (Donkey Kong and Ganondorf especially)
B: Better recoveries, since the whole point of heavies is that they live for a very long time and are hard to kill. (Again, Donkey and Ganondorf especially.)
C: Better grab/kill throws, since heavies are meant to be Grapplers at heart. (Ganondorf and Ridley)
D: Have some forms of intangiblity or damage-based armor on a few of their attacks. Not to an extreme like Kazuya, but something more like Bowser on his tilts and Smash Attacks.
I think good recoveries is the biggest one overall.
Heavies can live with some of the other downsides, the main problem they experience is that their main on-paper advantage, their durability, is usually invalidated because of how vulnerable most are offstage.
The fact that living to 150% isn't unreasonable barely matters when you die at 60% to an edgeguard anyways. You know there's a problem when lightweights like pikachu can consistently live longer than heavies, just because you actually have to kill them, instead of just killing them off a throw at ledge at arbitrary %
You want to make heavies broken don't you ?
@@GrayRenzo No, I don’t want them to be broken. I just want them to have options that are useful for them in combat and have a fighting chance against other fighters, and not just get smothered, camped out, and one-tapped off-stage whole game.
I mean, look at Incineroar. He’s got everything a Heavy needs, and he’s really well-designed.
Good out-of-shield options/get-off-me tools (Nair, Up B and Neutral B)
Recovery Mix-Ups (Side and Up B)
Ways to counter projectiles that forces opponents to approach (Revenge)
Amazing grab game (and a strong, versatile command grab.)
Amazing and powerful normals that all serve their purpose.
And yet he’s still balanced out by the fact that he has poor mobility, lack of disjoints and a weak neutral game. He’s literally THE perfect heavy.
i think giving them super armour against weak projectile spam to allow for an uninterrupted approach at the cost of still taking the damage as they come at you would make them better in competitive and more fun in casual, as nobody likes projectile spam in casual anyway and the mental image of bowser just walking through a fire flower to deck you in the face also sounds kinda cool.
maybe also giving them general super armour during certain ground attacks could also work, especially when combined with a decent GTFO option, where you can likewise trade taking damage for utility.
Another idea for buffing Ganondorf would be allowing Wizard's Foot to be angled so you can get all the custom move variants from Sm4sh and make it harder to see which angle he's coming in.
1:38 I believe Chunky Kong got 7th at Momocon recently
Yeah that's not quite true anyways, there have been some Bowsers in Top 8's at Majors, KirbyKid's K Rool did it once, Skyjays Incin also did it multiple times, Hikaru's DK got 3rd in a major, ... That was just an exaggerated saying by Hop
I main a lot of heavies and the way you described what it’s like to main them is spot-on! Sakurai was too busy making Pyra/Mythra’s boobs jiggle to give some of the heavy fighters a buff!
💀
What you need to do now is get someone to mod the heaviest with your proposed changes to see what would actually work. I'd love to see you and Poppt or Zach play with mods
I honestly respect heavy characters, I sometimes get owned by some of them, no matter which main I use
I like the heavies in Rivals of Aether where they give the heavies special broken mechanics like Etalus's Ice physics and ability to get armor or Hodan's water boosting moves when he holds down or his up smash that spikes at any percent and whose hitbox is the size of the moon. Nothing Kazuya level, but these characters have enough threats to put people in a position where they can't just mash and get away with it.
"Heavies, we love them" Meanwhile Ridley just vibing in the background with a weight lower than Samus
“Heavies are always bad”
Bowser: 👁️👄👁️
The old voice of Cogger in Little Z's and Poppt1's match gives me life ! Nice video as always Hopcat, keep it up my guy !
long time competitor here. I enjoyed this--good job with your idea. Thematically this game is sumo wrestling. It just doesn't make sense when the heavies get KO'd early.
Heavies should have the best recoveries that are the hardest to challenge to assist and make iconic their weight class.
Heavies should possess an attack that has TKO power at early %.
and at this point its experimental. The two above points are baseline. Something I think that is missing is a way to respond to shield pressure with either a counter or something to do out of shield.
Ganondorf
Neutral A-Thunder Punch, having a reflect element to it would solve a lot of problems.
Also a Hold B ability for Warlock Punch to send out a homing reflectable projectile would be helpful
I personally think stuff like cloud limit and hero's various buffs are a better solution than an anti projectile move. The kind of thing that makes campers not want to leave you alone or else you'll get a power up and be more annoying. That's how revenge functions for the most part as well.
Also you sorta bring up something in the beginning that I feel is true in general and not just for heavies in smash and thats that a lot of games are a lot more fun when you and your opponents aren't very good. I'm a sweat in pretty much every game I play. I love the process of delving deep into a game and trying to get good. The process of improvement feels amazing but often times the reward of "being good" is more of a punishment and the game just isn't that enjoyable anymore.
I feel that with chess. I never studied openings at all and just play for fun, but having gotten to 1400 rapid now half my opponents play super boring or just liquidate me with a 15 move rehearsed sequence and it isn't very fun
This could be an alternative that some heavies could have, and it’s pretty obvious and kinda how grapplers are handled in traditional fighting games.
Agree.
The main thing I've gotten out of being kinda okay in Smash is the reward of being miserable online and nobody wanting to play with me casually, and Smash Ultimate is an utter failure in terms of "other" stuff to do, I've actually been playing 3DS Smash 4 more recently, entirely because I have a friend that likes Smash Run.
I love how “the commentators” are Jackson and zack and Jordan are fighting 😂
You are so right. Heavies should have hyper armor on every hit in their kit.
I don’t understand why you don’t view Kazuya as a heavy; he just seems good. The problem with smash is broken Hurt boxes. If you have a larger character model you have a higher risk of getting hit by sloppy hurtboxes that don’t appear to actually hit anything
Hell kaz is easy to combo and hits like a heavy, tho his ToD stuff is wack
Tho to be fair, cuzof 1v1 dmg bonus in ult, many chars hit like heavies now...
@@HELLRAISER02 Kazuya is what happens when you actually take the heavy archetype and make them a top tier.
heavies should never be top tiers in a game like smash, because then theyer utter cancer to fight. The only way to let them be good while also having a terrible disadvantage is to super heavily overtune their advantage state and/or kill power. Aka, kazuya.
Kazuya's disadvantage is still trash, while his neutral is very meh. But because he kills you in legit 1-2 neutral wins, it barely matters. He's literally the heavy archetype taken to its extreme.
Heavies are the most interesting and fun imo when theyre just good enough to be viable, but not particularly amazing either. Low-high tier at like, absolute best. Anything better and the character just becomes extremely annoying to fight against.
A character like bowser does basically the same stuff as Kazuya, he just requires much better reads and neutral play to actually get it done because he's a much worse character. But thats also what makes it so exciting to watch a bowser player. You know that when someone who is playing bowser is destroying top level players, its because they're outplaying the hell out of them. Thats what MAKES them fun and interesting. That excitement goes away when you make them a top tier where they have insanely broken options to win which heavily compensates for their extreme flaws.
So yea, Heavies SHOULD be viable, but they should never be GOOD. Good heavies are a nightmare to fight. Any better and they lose their charm that so many people enjoy about them.
@@eragon78 saying an entire archetype cant be top tier just because you think thatd make em less exciting is a worthless sentiment, get outta here with that
I dont even like Kazs ToDs but archetypes should be allowed to flourish
@@HELLRAISER02 The point is that heavies lose their charm once they're ACTUALLY good because it becomes unfun to fight against.
Instead of a match where you have to outplay your opponent to get the few reads you need to really destroy them, instead it becomes a match of waiting for your opponent to make a single mistake and completely destroy them.
Im not saying it CANT exist, im saying that its extremely unfun when it DOES happen. A character like kazuya exemplifies that. He isnt fun to fight because he just kills you every time you make a small mistake. Worse heavies ARE fun to fight because you dont instantly die off a single mistake, and its a lot harder for them to actually get the hard reads needed to kill.
For a heavy to win, they have to outplay better characters. Thats what makes them interesting. If theyre top tiers, then they dont really have to outplay you as much as just wait for you to mess up and win, or for you to never mess up and then you win.
Again, its the same idea as what Ding dong and Koop-Ha did in smash 4. They were extremely unfun to fight against. Very few people actually enjoy that stuff.
The archetype is at its best when its viable but not top tier. When its actually good, it loses all its charm. Thats my point. Heaviest being the underdogs are WHY theyre so enjoyable and fun. Make them actually top tier, and all that charm goes away and theyre just annoying.
@@eragon78 Youre trying to use YOUR own ideas of what fun is to justify why heavies shouldnt be top tier, now that might be your opinion
But if you REALLY wanna sell an argument on why they shouldnt be top tier then you should think of something more objective than a 'fun to fight' argument as you used, because if we used it, then every top tier is fun and not fun to fight
They should try having an official tournament with spirits. Imagine Bowser with King Boo
I want to see hopcat longform content about smash ngl, a whole 45 minute breakdown video on characters and concepts would be so good to watch at work
Shoutout to Skyjay with Incineroar and Hero with Bowser, it's so fun watching those two push their characters as far as they have
and to a lesser extent ChunkyKong and Hikaru with DK. Both those players have top 8d majors with DK. In fact, ChunkyKong JUST got top 8 at Momocon.
I really relate to what you said about Incineroar. I’ve *really* started playing Smash Bros a lot with Ultimate and Incineroar was my first main and imo, he is one of the best choices as a first main. In the beginning, because he was a heavy and with his down b e.g. it was super fun and easy to get great damage as Incineroar and kill early. After a year or so, I started to face better opponents, where I first encountered all the weaknesses of heavies with the bad recovery, slow movement speed and just being bullied, but I still felt like I could have a chance against better opponents as I started to learn more about Incineroar, because of certain counters to the typical strategies against Incineroar (like the ones you mentioned in your video) and therefore he isn’t a great character in particular, but imo an amazing first character with great usage in your early competitive stages.
you reached a ceiling before reaching the characters peak and place the wrong blame. look at skyjay, u think hes in his early stages?? your genuinely probably coping because in early competitive heavies stomp scrubs. the moment u had to earn ur wins you blame the character
@@rockyino99 who hurt you?
For Ganon, Forward Smash should be a reflector. This would be a reference to the games of ping pong in a lot of his and Phantom Ganon boss fights.
Getting rid of free fall on side-b and up-b would be very nice too.
An annylitacl like video is so cool to see from hop, would love to see more of this form of content
imo a couple more moves with high range would benefit them a lot without making them insane, like lucina's up and back air on ganon would be dope but definetly not broken
I’d like to point out: Rivals of Aether does heavies REALLY WELL. The devs understand their weaknesses, and have built the heavies to be fun from your first time with them all the way into competitive.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how broken would elliana be in smash?
@@andrewle4989 Hard to say exactly, but probably around an 8? I would want to see her grabs/throws first, if she has any good out-of-shield options, etc. But hopefully she’s in Rivals 2 and we see some of that!
I hate that beetle dude with a PASSION. People just use him to camp and throw stones at their opponent...
@@SheHulk-jg2jc at least you're not fighting the "beetle dude" mains that are comboing you into oblivion with a rock-juggling act.
One other well-designed heavy is Etalus, from Rivals of Aether.
He is the average casual menace character with super armor moves that are really slow and strong, but has the ability to increase his movement speed by placing ice on the stage, and using dash attack to move quickly and easily across the map. He can also use neutral special to give himself armor that lessens his knockback for a short time, and has a projectile that can be freely used as a recovery mixup that works very well to cover his very linear up special.
He also still has noticeable weaknesses, like slow start-up on a majority of his moves, which makes all of them a very big commitment and his short, slow, linear recovery.
Really enjoying these videos. It's funny you're making this looking at skyjay's results though lol
the reasons I like ROB and Ridley fall into a lot of those categories yoiu mentioned for Incineroar (especially recovery), but neither have all of the things mentioned (like counter to combo characters)
As a casual player who uses heavies a lot, (including ganondorf) it was interesting to find out they're considered really bad in competitive
Found that one out when I got 0-3-ed by a really good Lucina.
As a ganon enjoyer I really just wish he had a usable neutral special and up-tilt but all of your suggestions are great
In addition to being able to mix up his recovery by taking out the fall mechanic from his Side-B, I feel like Ganondorf needs super-armor when using both the Side- and Up-B in the air just so he doesnt get knocked back while trying to pull them off. Maybe limit the super-armor for the Up-B to until he reaches the peak of his ascent (mainly so he can still get spiked or air-countered so his recovery isn't utterly busted).
I always liked the idea that the heavier you get the more your range should be increased or your movement options should be more creative. I like sylvanos from rival of aether because his range makes up for his weaknesses and can allow him to duke it out with the faster characters. or the idea of a float buffing gannon's recovery and attack options would make him WAY cooler and stronger. Ideas like that can push heavies forward. I think ultimate bowser is kind of like the ideal, although cheesy he certainly is viable and a good character. admittedly it is a VERY fine line, and it isn't easy, but I think it is a step in the right direction. If i'm honest though, Ganon needs to be reworked from the ground up, him being a Cpt F clone is disgraceful, I say take from his hyrule warriors version.
Remember when everyone thought krool would be top tier? Ah good times
Ganon’s nair is actually his fastest out of shield option at frame 10, which is not fantastic but much faster than dark dive, which is not active until frame 14. Great video and agree with most of the points you make.
a reflector definitely makes sense for ganondorf, especially with THIS ganondorf and really with him the biggest issue is that he's been a clone of captain falcon for 4 games straight with only this recent one actually changing things up for the better. the moves i think need to be changed would absolutely be warlock punch and his up special. for neutral special because those moves are not only much more fitting for falcon but there's also better options for attacks. with the float we already have a pretty good idea of what that can look like with black adam in multiversus so that could be a good baseline to work with and for neutral special i think having some sort of slow moving projectile could work really well especially if he has a reflector
I think heavies like captain falcon and yoshi were most balanced in melee because of defensive techs like amsah techs, crouch cancels, and wavedashing as a movement option
Falcon and Yoshi dont really fit into that heavy archetype even though their actual weight stat is pretty high. Theyre more rushdown brawlers than they are heavies.
@@eragon78 As a Yoshi main, there's no way he's a rush down brawler. He's not fast enough to catch any of the top tiers. At a high level he plays more like a tank, hence aMSa timing out Hbox repeatedly. Yoshi is all about taking a hit and counter-hitting, more like K. Rool in Ultimate.
And it's fair to say Falcon is most often played as a rush-down brawler. But Wizzrobe plays differently, and he's probably the best falcon player who's ever lived. He makes you realize the character can actually play defensive and heavy.
Heavy weights are kind of in a way the bottom feeders of what is the Mariana Trench of smash tier lists
In melee, Ganon and Falcon's side-b could actually "side-step" projectiles at certain frames because of the 3D aspect of the game. I wish that happened in this game more, it would help his approaches towards projectile characters.
I’d also like to say Rivals of Aether seemed to solve the heavy problem. Characters like Kragg and Sylvanos can move well and combo thanks to the hitfall mechanic. Smash needs a mechanical technique that gives heavies a way to escape combos and stay on top of opponents while providing counterplay.
I just wanted to comment on how good your recent videos have been these are the exact videos i love to watch
I feel like the best way to make some characters like Kirby played more is to make them more hype, then people would play them even if they are bad because they want that juicy combo in to spike or hammer or something.
Potential Hot take + lukewarm take: I think _all heavies should have a decent combo game_ and at least one strong defensive option (Revenge, a reflector, a really good projectile). This allows them to remain combo food and fun to fight against, but also able to fight back and legitimately demand your respect.
You want heavies to be able to not only combo you free and also killing you at 60 for fun ? No that sound unbalanced
@@GrayRenzoWhere is the free in "decent combo game"
@@AubergineMans because these mf character have some much kill power giving them combo game would be deadly look at kazuya bro you don't want that kind of thing with different character
@@GrayRenzo Kazuya doesn't have a decent combo game. His entire character is built on having an exceptional combo game.
@@AubergineMans yeah but you got my point a decent combo game with an heavy weight would be op
Command grabs ruin heavies, I want to throw a brick everytime an insinaroar uses side b and I wait for the 32 year move
If you want to see how a Ganondorf float could be balanced, check out Project +/ M's Ganon. His warlock punch is replaced with a reflect, and if do this midair Ganondorf can float horizontally! It's an amazing mixup tool on stage and it significantly helps him recover
great video. interesting that the current UltRank tier list has Bowser at 50/82 and Incineroar at 64/82. I definitely see Incineroar moving up in future.
Also there's some heavies that are just not enjoyable when overtuned. Case and point: KAZUYA. He's a heavyweight in terms of properties but is so one-sided some people want him gone from smash. And yes, he's fundamentally a heavyweight in terms of neutral gameplay. Btw, the best heavyweight is not Incineroar, it's Bowser because he's fast and has good defensive tools.
Awesome video! You have some really good insights in how casual and competitive play operate in a delicate balance
Ridley could be a great heavy if he was just heavy
I main King Dedede and he works fine for me on Online. My rank is 12 Million and I am in elite smash. The problem I have with lighter weight characters is that It takes to long to KO. Plus the lag interrupts combo. With Dedede I just need 4 well placed hits and you already at 100.
I felt like king k rool could’ve had more representation in this video. Another heavy with the attempt to be balanced. Good recovery, good counter/reflect, super armor belly, and projectiles. Definitely my favorite heavy.
12:30 was a great combo idea! Unlucky it didn’t work out but the spark was there
Ganon with a shine that air stalls for longer would be a great dead man’s volley for anything thrown at him and also funny as hell
Looking at Project M, they balanced heavies by giving them 1 pretty unique movement form that game them some burst potential, like Ike’s side B which was jump cancellable and Gabon’s float. I feel like giving heavies a movement ability like this makes them infinitely better and it showed because Ike was pretty strong in pM if I remember right
i think the coolest way to fix gannondorf is to get rid of his nuetral B, give his volcano kick super armor to effectively replace warlock punch (wouldn't be usable in the air sadly) and make his flame choke like alolan whip, usable once but doesn't put you into freefall. his replacement nuetral special would be the energy ball he uses in some of the zelda games you'd charge it up similar to greninja's water shuriken (unable to hold a charge), you could change the type to be the powerful onehit version that could be reflected back or a weaker multihit version that that can't be hit back (the type would be changed by a specific input before throwing it) and of course, you would be able to stop in midair to float while charging. this makes gannondorf more like is in game fights while also having a way to deal with people that are camping.
I think the big issue is that the philosophy behind heavies in Smash is always going to make them worse in competitive. The idea behind heavies is that they can take more hits, which means they don’t get launched as far. In exchange, they have bad recoveries. But in competitive environments that strength of not being launched far can become a great weakness, because if you are not being launched far then that means your opponent can follow up one attack with another. This means that heavies, who don’t fly far when hit and have large hit boxes, end up as combo food. I think the best way to deal with this is to give heavies better defensive options. You mentioned Incineroar’s revenge, which does this well, and my favorite heavy, King K. Rool, also has a solid counter/reflect option.
I think heavies are bad in 1v1 but if you did 2v2 or 3v3 suddenly they become interesting in competitive, like, they can tank projectiles and whatever for the team to allow for setups or force a dodge that would be super punitive if not made to enable a fast light character to start a combo
I had a cool idea for ganon's up b where he could grab someone midair and flip around, so he can not be put in disadvantage for hitting the up b. So instead of just spamming up b hoping to get back on the ledge, you could grab your opponent and flip them, putting them in disadvatage while ganon safely recovers back on stage.
One thing I had thought of to simultaneously improve the recovery, approach(I don't know how good it is now, balance as necessary) and canonical faithfulness if Ganondorf would be replacing his neutral special with Dead Man's Volley. It would be a short ranged projectile and not too strong at first, but attacks could reflect it to increase its power. You could only have one out at once, and using it while out would make Ganon attempt to reflect it (this would not reflect any other projectile but his and other Ganondorfs' Volleys). The move would also make Ganon Float in midair slightly while using it, allowing for some mixups when recovering. The projectile would deal very little shield damage, but would keep you trapped inside your shield for a short time by constantly hitting you, the trade-off for this being that a parry reflects the projectile with great power. It would be an energy based projectile, meaning characters like Game&Watch and Ness could chose between reflecting and absorbing it.
Honestly wizard foot getting armor would honestly probably be better than a re/deflector. It would help with minor projectiles and also save him from losing trades with Bayonetta heel slide. Also up b is not Gannon's fastest OoS it's nair, then up air. Gannon side B not having special fall would probably be pretty good though honestly or making a quarter circle input for his down B to work like bayo ABK to help recover
yo i love the idea of giving ganon a float
I think the best way to balance a heavy is to give them either bad mobility or frame data but not both. Heavies also don’t need to have huge frames it’s weird that smash bros has those three attributes tied together. Likewise heavies don’t necessarily need huge damage and kill power they could just have one of the two strengths
as someone who has never played smash bros here is my solution to the problem:
make a fridge a usable item.
the characters take a fridge and throw it to their opponents.
that should fix just about everything.
make sure it is a fridge not an oven, ovens will ruin everything.
Playing Incineroar is so much fun! He’s just a big silly cat that hits hard and I love it
Something I'd love to see them add to make Ganon more viable is some moves that reflect the Blight Ganons in Breath of the Wild. Similar to how Byleth pulls out different weapons for different attacks to represent the three Lords of her game.
For example, a super-fast dash attack that stuns if it hits (Thunderblight), a tornado-based Up-B (Windblight), a flaming projectile that's slow but does big damage (Fireblight) or a long-reaching Side B that punishes campers (Waterblight). As a heavy, Ganon may always be doomed to be really slow, but having stuff like this might really help him and be a really fun callback!
Love your videos as always Hop, it's nice to sit down with them over lunch!
You had me at the tf2 heavy. Smash plus tf2 is an underrated combo.
Also I used to actually pretend that the up throw up buff didn’t exist and just play bowser without it. Just to make it more interesting.
Kind of like how I won’t use roy in ultimate and instead use chrom, or how I won’t use jarate, scorch shot, (meh okay I’ll use it more than likely over the jarate) the wrangler plus rescue ranger all the time, or the vax. Because these things get boring to use with how effective they are. ALSO I HAVE NEVER USED THE DIAMOND BACK AND PROBABLY NEVER WILL
This video was very well done, and smash plus tf2… you’ve earned my sub
Just look at Bowser's toolkit.
One of the fastest ground speeds and fast air speed. Armor on basically every single move he could ask for, with various moves just not hitstunning him at all. Good reach.
TWO incredible frame 6 reactions, one that scoops, provides mobility, and can shield poke itself, one that starts killing around 100.
Weight and fall speed make him REGULARLY live to 160+ if his recovery isn't stopped.
Everything kills. Everything. Tilts, smashes, random aerials.
Can put 50-60% on an opponent from a single scuffed neutral interaction.
Has a shield cracker, a few ways to vary landings, aerial command grab.
Recovery is actually *just* maneuverable and varied enough to not be spike food.
All of this.
Upper mid tier, because heavy.
Being heavy is good, but he's just too BIG.
i think a good solution would be to lower aerial and ground traction of heavies and giving them quick airdodges so they have high level movement options
for ganondorf his neutral b could be switched to the lightning balls which charges and maxes at 3 before releasing
I would give heavies more moves with armor percent, or give them better-flushed moves set since Ganondorf doesn't even have a proper anti-air with his Up-tilt which, comes in handy in very niche moments. Most likely a combination of the two with at least better get-off-me tools to use when at a disadvantage so, you can mix up if you're going to push a button or not. That's just my opinion on the matter though and, someone else can have a better idea than me.
rivals of aether does heavies really well with them needing to enable their movement and having MASSIVE hitboxes. Etalus basically turns into basically heavy luigi with a giant projectiles and the ability to apply super armor if you can get ice on the ground and sylvanis gets bigger hitboxes if they get grass and flowers on the ground. Letting the heavies get rid of their main weaknesses if you can set it up.
As a Dedede side main who attends my weekly locals. Preach man, preach!
What's weird is that heavies in smash fan games are actually really good sometimes, like how DK was top tier in super smash flash 2 and project M (he's not top tier in those anymore but He's still high tier on project+). There's also other fighting games where there's at least one top tier heavy.
It'd be so cool if you could taunt in the air with Ganondorf and he would float in the air there which would activate another jump Once while in the air.
Good video, you’ve come a long way as a content creator
Just give Ganondorf some of his custom moves from Smash 4: First, Wizard's Dropkick. It goes over many projectiles, and it has a more sideway angle when used in the air, which fixes his approach and his recovery. And second, Dark Vault, but give it an hitbox on the first jump. It would fix his out of shield, and improve his recovery a bit more.
I think Smash Remix does heavies pretty well. Bowser is actually really good, especially his recovery.
I really like these analysis type videos. Throughout the whole video, I did not think of clicking off.