His point on League always being updated is interesting. Smash 4 got its first patch for the 3DS yesterday. I wonder how often it'll happen. I wonder if people will end up being upset that it's happening over time. The wonder about Melee is that a meta-game was created. There was no intent for that to happen. Sakurai wanted Smash to be a party game, not a fighting game. That's what makes Smash so fascinating to me. To digress a bit - that's part of the reason I love Smash. It's been a part of my life since I was, like, five years old. I remember playing Smash 64 with my brother in our cramped apartment. When we played a 99 minute match against Donkey Kong and Captain Falcon. We were a team - me Link, him Pikachu. Fast-forward two years later to Melee. I'm only 7 years old. Wasn't allowed to have a GameCube till my birthday. Which meant I had to make, gasp, friends. I did, with a ridiculous amount of luck, and a common love for Mario. We would go to David's house as a group of four, all playing Melee till our parents would pick us up. We did that for 7 years, and became the closest of friends in the process. Brawl came out when I was 14 years old. My high-school (and half of College) experience is capitalized by the game. The midnight launch when I won our local tournament as Link, the filthy low-tier scrub. Playing well into the night, unlocking all but two characters the first day we had the game. Skipping prom to throw a party at my place that had Brawl as the corner-piece. When we all went our separate ways after-graduating, one thing kept us united - Smash. Three times a year - Thanksgiving, Winter, and Spring Break - when we're all in Colorado at the same time, the group comes by my place. Chips are poured into bowls, drinks are poured into cups, controllers are readied, and Smash is played. For two years now, that beat hasn't been missed. This Friday, that tradition will continue with Smash 4. I guess I'm just saying I'm freaking out about this launch for a reason. Smash is a celebration of my closest friendships. It's saved me from wanting to jump off of the nearest mountain in Boulder because of Smash Club - meaning it continues to be the reason I'm making friends. It's amazing to me that a game about an electric mouse headbutting a pink blob with red shoes can inspire such a visceral reaction in me. I'm excited to see the meta-game continue to be built in this Friday's release. And if any of ya'll got a Wii U, let me know. Let's settle it in Smash.
Jigglypuff FTW! If you could master her sleep move, Rest, you could dominate. In college, I decimated anyone playing a big character. I once Rest'd all 3 opponents at once. My finest moment. Add her staple punch and ridiculous recovery, and she's a great char. Then they nerfed her in Brawl. :(
That could give you a bit, but I seldom needed it. Her recovery is so absurd, you can almost always recover, unless instantly knocked out, even without "Rising Pound." According to supersmashbros.wikia.com it's also useful for setting up Rest. I never did that either. I usually just dodged repeatedly until I landed on top of someone, and mashed it. Actually, I didn't often, because it pissed people off so they got out their Sheik or Fox main and wiped the floor with me. -_-
Yeah it was very good for setting up combos, the range was hilarious. I got this from r/dataisbeautiful, where some of the commenters made the point that a significant part of these rankings (especially Jigglypuff) comes from just a few people. I remember about 6-7 years ago Jigglypuff was considered mediocre, and then someone started maining her and placing really high in tournaments so they finally bumped her up. Not sure if that really says a lot about how powerful the character itself is. The competitive scene has never been that big.
Jigglypuff is a viable character now, but she's not as dominant as she used to be. The guy who mained her switched to Fox and Falco after he started being usurped as the best jiggs player. These days he's the definitive number one player, while the usurper is a tentative number five. People are learning how to avoid rest better, so jigglypuff's competitive potential is waning a bit. I find it fascinating how much the rankings depend on individual innovators. Some characters that have amazing depth never get developed because on the surface they're crap. The best example of this is the Ice Climbers. The tech skill for those characters is so different from all the other characters that they were underrated for a long time, until one or two players figured them out. And they still haven't been perfected. The top ranking IC player today got to that rank without using their best technique: an infinite grab that's inescapable. They still have untapped potential Maybe a better example of this is Yoshi. The Yoshi meta basically didn't exist until this year when some japanese guy comes out of nowhere and starts taking games off the top 5 players using this character that used to be F tier. Some of that was probably lack of experience against a strange character, but it's still crazy that Yoshi can be viable in that way.
There's definitely something to be said for letting players dissect and figure out the game before it gets patched. Something a lot of e-sports could do with a little more of. As for Ken, he just recently returned to the scene. He went inactive for about 5 years, but came back in 2012. Hasn't been doing nearly as well as he used to though. After 5 years the metagame kind of left him behind. He made it onto the 2013 power rankings, though only barely at spot 100. Recently he was given a sponsorship by Team Liquid so he's been getting a lot more high-level practice, and he even finished 21st at MLG this year, outstripping a lot of people who outranked him on the 2013 list. It'll be interesting to see how far he goes. Everybody loves a good comeback story.