Tamarsamar

As hilarious as this is, Robin's grab range is still awfully pathetic, and they have better followups out of down-throw if you do land a grab (particularly at higher percents).

Does this count as a vote for Lucario? Charizard, of my mains, is easily the most underrated, so I'd love discussion in those parts.

Lovely, yet another clone character!

You're given plenty of tome users to fight those with, though. Ricken in particular had this role made especially explicit for him during his introduction. You don't see many pegasus units until the dreaded Valm arc, either, by which point you can basically have as many bow users as you want (though lance users would be preferable).

^ This. All it does is artificially increase the difficulty of the game. Quite frankly, not only would I like growth rates to be visible, but ideally I would also like for them to be fixed as well.

In all seriousness: Wigglytuff would be a darn legit inclusion.

Depends. I mean, clearly, per proc (which is an important consideration with Hoshido and Flamboyant), Aether will do the most out of any of those--kind of hard to top a free extra Luna hit. But presumably you want to know which skill independently provides the biggest boost in damage output, which is where proc rates start to factor in. Stuff is situational but my gut says to just give it to Aether anyway, even with the Skill/2 proc rate, since it is a double-attack with a Luna effect.

Anybody notice that, as of LoLK, Touhou now has at least two hyper-aggressive women obsessed with purification?

TBH jab-cancel-into-jab combos are the jankiest thing about this game and I would not at all mind if the lot of them were done away with.

Last I checked, above SA.

Does he still have this combo? I can't help but notice that this video is from February . . . Good information about Dedede in general in your post, though!

The king of cheese, literally none of his specials have any respect to them whatsoever (though Super Dedede Jump can be canceled out of respect). His Inhale when compared to Kirby's is specialized for "Kirbycide"-styled KOs. Jet Hammer is a charge attack that damages Dedede himself after a while. Gordo Throw boldly bets that you won't knock that thing back in his face. Fun fact about the Dedede matchup that a surprisingly large number of players let themselves get beaten not knowing, by the way: the Gordo will auto-reflect when hit with almost any attack. If the Dedede player recognizes that their opponent does not know that, they will exploit every last drop out of that to easily camp out their opponent. Everything else about Dedede is basically your standard large heavy powerhouse with a couple of meteors, though unlike someone like Bowser, his hammer gives him a surprising amount of good spacing options. His jab in particular is actually pretty good and needs to be respected, and his up-air can score some surprisingly early KOs if you aren't careful. His dash attack and down-tilt also have lots of range with hitboxes that last forever. Just in general, don't get caught off-guard in front of him. It will hurt. How I see the Dedede Daio matchup with my characters: Yoshi: My roflcopter goes dairdairdairdairdair. Having a large hurtbox is a massive liability against Yoshi especially, and Yoshi being able to score quick-and-easy cross-ups with Dash Attack doesn't help Dedede's case one bit. Simply tap A when you see the Gordo animation start when you're nearby in the air for instant punish. Your eggs are a vastly superior zoning tool, anyway. Don't try to score cheesy off-stage KOs, as that is the one area Dedede excels in better than you; if customs are allowed, equip Lick instead. If you fight him legitimately, it shouldn't even be a contest. (Side note: I'd also put the Kirby/Dedede matchup in Kirby's favor under similar conditions.) Charizard: Charizard and King Dedede decided to get together and make a cheap knockoff of Bowser and Donkey Kong's "clash of the titans" matchup. Anyway, this applies in general with Charizard, but don't go offstage against Dedede if you can help it unless he's recovering low and you're absolutely sure you can intercept Super Dedede Jump with bair or dair. On stage, fair is a good tool as usual, and uair can KO if you've racked up enough damage, but in general Dedede beats you in the aerial game, so in general do not try to contest him should he go for an aerial approach; wait for him to land--shield and up-tilt are your friends here. On the ground, Flamethrower spacing beats Gordo spacing (and even hammer spacing when fresh), Dedede will have a hard time landing KOs with his power moves if you intercept them with Rock Smash, and if he's sloppy with his Super Dedede Jump recovery, that is a free punish with Flare Blitz. Overall, this matchup is comparatively much more even, and largely comes down to each player's knowledge of both characters (much like, again, most matchups in this game). Robin: All the projectiles in the world against a massive target. Intercepting Gordo Throw with Thoron is particularly amusing, but most of the time you'll be shielding those; maybe batting those back with bronze sword if you have the time. With careful spacing you can rack up quite a bit of damage safely, but then comes the sticky matter of actually landing the KO. Your grab range is pitiful compared to his, yet leads into some of your most potent KO setups. In that sense, it really comes down to which player can catch the other off-guard first. Mii Swordfighter: My roflcopter goes ChakramChakramChakramChakramfsmash Dedede has a hard time dealing with short-hopped Gale Strike spam, and once he's in the air you can juggle him with your faster aerials. If he goes for a power attack, reading with Blade Counter should cost him as much as the stock! Though Dedede has a range comparable to Shulk's, he doesn't have nearly the mobility that made that threatening in that particular matchup, and I would be much more comfortable bringing my Mii in against a Dedede than I would against a Shulk. (Finally, it's "Dedede," as in, the Latin pronunciation of that sequence of letters.)

Headcanon: Rosalina manipulates her personal gravity on a whim.

Charizard

So I was thinking about one particular character in Awakening and this thread came to mind . . . Does Virion exist for any reason other than to get owned? Repeatedly?

Esam is right about a couple of things, though: 50+ of the characters are viable (a good chunk of which are clearly "underdeveloped" in the tournament scene), and the pronunciation of "Dedede".

Anything that gets people thinking outside the box is a good thing in my opinion. That being said I suspect our list might be slightly more applicable to us, if only because we made it. Esam's list is valid in Esam's meta (especially dat Pikachu placement), SF's list is valid in SF's meta, etc. Simply because of the nature of the beast, though, I don't think anybody's list is going to reach any kind of ultimate truth, especially not any time soon. And at any rate the power levels between the "tiers" isn't even remotely as disparate as in previous Smash titles, arguably even 64 and its 12-character roster.

Likewise, I can see what people like about IV and VI, but I just can't subject myself to that again in the same lifetime, especially if VI's ATB is supposed to be faster. And actually, I don't mind you defending those games--what I largely took issue with was when people claimed their problems with the battle system was that it was too slow, of all things! And that even seems to be a popular opinion! I literally can't even!

You did say that it "prompts faster actions" and encourages you to "think on your feet more." What was meant to be implicit in my reply was "why not play an Action RPG then?" Which is precisely why, in my opinion, it is a terrible battle system--this being the opinion that started this whole discussion in the first place. Maybe I like having all the time in the world to think about and make my choices! Maybe that's why I'm playing this genre in the first place! Maybe I just want something I can put down real quick to do something else and then seamlessly pick up right where I left off. Why does my menu scrolling need weight to it? That's not even supposed to be the important part! Just, ugh.

I was replying to Jedi; I totally agree with you on this one. This is why I think FFX is one of the best in terms of execution. It has all of the dynamics of variable party member turn frequencies with none of the stress over lost time.

You and I have vastly different opinions of an Action RPG done right. Final Fantasy at its core was not built to be an Action RPG (apart from the XIII titles, and even then that's arguable). Tales of [symphonia] was.

Still kinda weird that you can't use the 16-bit mystery mushrooms in the SMW skin . . . or the 8-bit ones in the SMB3 skin, for that matter.

What I would most frequently end up doing as because you can set the timer to pause in submenus, I would basically hide in the Items menu until I figured out what I wanted to do. Still, it's a system that makes me feel like any time spent not selecting an action is wasted potential, and that drove me insane. Of course, I did have to slow it down too just to ensure that I didn't get eaten for breakfast by bosses. But anybody saying that the ATB was too slow of all things is incredibly condescending. Look. Can we all just agree that it was poorly designed (especially when compared to something like Chrono Trigger) and leave it at that?

I don't see a problem with shields beating attacks, because grabs beat shields. The problem is that attacks need to beat grabs more easily (when I bring out my rock on Charizard I don't care how early you input your grab you *should* get interrupted).

Quoting because it's still mostly relevant and I do not want to waste energy ranting again.