The "Official" SSBM Thread

[H-F_Blade]

If you can manage to separate the two, an up throw into rest should kill them depending on the stage or at least prevent them from helping the other out. Use Jiggly’s superior air mobility + attacks to keep one of them off the stage when they get knocked off. She can go out really far and still make it back.

[G.O.T]

The falco is a very good spammer so I already know that strategy. And he is alos one of the best team savers I ever met. He’s simple to beat if you get him to stop spamming.

[System_1]

Practice sleeping fox/falco off of Samus’ grab without hitting Samus. If you can do that consistently you bridge the teir gap pretty fast.

[jugoso]

Don’t know if this is the right place to post, but…

New SSBM matches from Ryuuko Tour 2007 at ryuuko.cl

[Giza]

Wobbling: The kink in our community

What the hell wobbling is banned at half the major tournaments?

Wobbling has been a tricking and controversial tactic in our community lately. For every major tournament that allows it there is another major tournament that bans it. This cut in our community is no even a regional issue like other differences in high level game set up, such as Japans two levels set up. Wobbling has been controversial nearly everywhere around the United States for smash tournaments and other events. Is it banned or isnt it? It changes from tournament to tournament in the same area and it causes metagame to get confusing and change too much. This has become an issue because other fighting game communities are looking down on our inability to get together and make a decision, and a well thought out decision, on this issue.

For all the new players, and potential future players, it would probably be best for me to explain what wobbling is. Wobbling is an Ice climbers infinite that is performed by grabbing and having Nana use to forward or down tilt at a certain time after Popos holding jab. This makes it so the opponent is stuck in a grab getting hit repetitively with no chance to escape unless the performer messes up on his execution on timing the tilt after the holding jab. Sounds a bit unfair, right? Well we will get into that later.

There have been many changes in the Smash community lately. We have begun to be accepted by the other fighting game communities as a serious competitive game community. However as soon as we started to bond with our fellow fighting communities we already start to face a problem because we have this glaring kink in our community over whether or not wobbling should or shouldnt be banned. Of course the other fighting game communities, which are much more organized when it comes to concepts like this, have begun to look down on us because of our stumbling over what we should do about the wobbling issue.

Before I go on any farther I would like to state right away that I am going to be defending keeping wobbling as a variable tactic in all major tournaments for the time being and I am going to explain it right here in the easiest way I can. I think that tactics should be banned unless the community has proof that it is totally broken. The point is wobbling has been known for more than 3 years now and its been applied to competitive metagame for a least one year now. However, we still do not see loads of Ice Climbers entering tournaments. We still do not see wobbling Ice Climbers winning major tournaments over and over and over. The playing field was not switched to an Ice Climbers game. I feel that I can safety say that wobbling does not break the game because of this.

You can throw the idea of Evo South at me with Wobbles the Pheonix taking home the victory, but what about what happened in Evo East? Obviously the game does not get totally shaken down to the point were beating the Ice Climbers as any other character becomes impossible. It is not like wobbling Ice Climbers always win their matches. Yes it gives Ice Climbers more of an edge than they had before but it still hasnt put them in a position were they have caused a tournament to just be beasted over by the wobbling tactic.

Now allow me to fight off a lot of the anti-wobbles arguments with some quotes from a wonderful competitive gamer and game designer, David Sirlin.
The follow two quotes are from [Playing to Win, Part 2: Mailbag](http://www.sirlin.net/archive/playing-to-win-paPlaying to Win, Part 2: Mailbagt-2-mailbag/);

“But I really have a tactic that wins every time! Tower rushing in Warcraft 3 [or camping in Unreal Tournament, or whatever else]. It’s not that I’m a scrub, but the game is more fun when I don’t use that tactic and when I play against others who also don’t use it.”

In this case I am using the point with wobbling. Recently I have been told by my local tournaments that we werent allowing wobbles because it made the game less fun.

Bad news for you. You are a scrub. You can’t e-mail me and claim not to be a scrub, yet exemplify the only pre-requisite! (Well you can, but please don’t.) What’s worse is that the tactics stated are always tactics I know for a fact not to be “too good.” Does tower rushing win every Warcraft 3 tournament? No. Are all the best Unreal Tournament players hardcore campers (players who sit in one spot on the map)? No. Then what are you complaining about? Learn the counter to the strategy. If there is no counter (there is a 99.9% that there is, but you don’t know about it), then enter some tournaments, win them all and prove it. If you manage to do that, then fine, you’ve exposed the game as a degenerate one that you should probably no longer play. Otherwise, expand your horizons and learn more about the game. I suppose you could continue to play your homemade version of the game against other scrubs, but I think you’d be missing out.

Now this is pretty much what I have been saying throughout this whole post. That wobbling does not win every tournament; in fact it doesnt even win 25% of tournaments. So how can anyone in the community even begin to say its broken?

I think it is about time we start learning from the other fighting game communities and stop trying to ban everything that causes a little bit of discomfort until we are actually have proof that it is indeed broken and makes the game unplayable in a balanced setting. I think its time we wobbles out this kink in our community and unban wobbling from all major tournaments.

Following is quoted from Smashboards;

I don’t understand why the sheer presence of a broken tactic in one character must be banned. I mean, progressively, smash has gone through several stages in its general (I hate using this word) metagame as each overpowering tactic was found. Sheik used to be top tier with her chain throw and whatnot in older tier lists, but then we discovered the power of the waveshine and how overwhelming a technical Fox could be. As such, we’ve had several people change their mains to a space animal, learn a space animal, etc. Would it be so much to say that: “ICs are broken now, just like Fox go learn how to play them.” People didn’t mind making the transition to Fox, why should ICs (or a character that counters ICs - more on that below) be any different? Is it that we’re lazy and have grown attached to the tier list or it the principle of the infinite? The moral belief that no combo should be guaranteed. After all… it’s very often posted that there are no “true combos” in smash and that improvisation is key. So is it that wobbling breaks that no-true-combo mindset that makes it dirty? Or it is the fact that it’s “cheap”?

Overwhelmingly, it’s the former. From what I gather, it’s the presence of an unbeatable combo that makes it horrible. And to some degree, I agree with this; I’m a little torn on the issue. Yes, the ICs have an unbeatable combo at their disposal that is completely indestructable when pulled off correctly. Short of pausing the game to throw off rhythm, which isn’t allowed, there’s nothing you can really do about a wobble within the game’s limitations.

However, what I would like to know, most importantly of all, is whether or not the wobble actually goes as far as to hurt the smash metagame in general. Let me elaborate.

The overwhelming damage of Sheik’s chain grab alone is more than enough to make 90% of all low tiers useless. It has been said that if Sheik was removed from the game that nearly all low tiers would be more viable because that’s one less matchup. So in that sense, Sheik is actually very constricting as a character because a properly executed chain throw is, for all intents and purposes, a 90-135 damage grab on quite a bit of the cast. It’s not a 0-death like wobbling, but then consider her other options and her solid edgeguarding. It’s more like a 0-90% or so with an edgeguard opportunity.

Sheik is not banned, however, despite her harm to the viability of quite a bit of the cast, because despite all this (on top of being the closest thing we have to a Marth counter) she is not dubbed broken. Because she only does even versus the top tiers on the whole.

The Ice Climbers are apparently different. On the whole, they only do slightly less than even versus the top tier. Less than even? How so? Fox and ICs are even, Falco vs ICs are even in some players’ books and minor advantage in others but as a whole the matchup is by and large considered even (most) or ever so slightly imbalanced (some). Versus Sheik they are the only true Sheik counter in the game with a decent advantage and versus Peach/Marth (and the mid tier Samus) they do poorly.

Or do they?

A great deal of why the Ice Climbers’ Wobbling is hated is my belief that it hasn’t been allowed to be fully integrated. When I say that, we haven’t taken a look at the matchups that ICs are traditionally poor and taken into consideration what wobbling changes. There’s still, I feel, a great preconceived notion that Samus and (moreso) Peach should eviscerate Ice Climbers but with the wobble available do they? Have we looked at these matchups from that persepective. Let’s analyze Marth. If he F-smashes too close, the ICs grab him and he dies with no effective rebuttal. He simply dies. The matchup begins to look less disadvantageous (although still difficult). But what about Peach and Samus? More importantly, is it even possible to analyze these without overestimating or even underestimating the wobble?

I think it’s that we actually don’t know how powerful the wobble truly is that prevents us from making an educated decision on the matter. How often have we been told, those of us that wobble, that without using it we would’ve surely lost against Marth, Peach, whoever. I think that’s part of the problem. These generally accepted counters, like all the characters in the game, fall to this tactic. It’s effectively a 0-death and one of the few true ones in the game that isn’t ridiculously situational. So how much do Peach and Marth and the others really counter a good wobbling Ice Climber? How even are these matches in actuality? How often have we said, “I used to be destroyed by Peach’s d-smash and turnips but now I’ve started wobbling and it’s a lot easier.” The number is staggering.

Sadly, I don’t think it’s just the Ice Climbers that’s missing out on this. It’s everyone. Wobbling probably was the only way the tier lists were every going to be rewritten and now it’s vanishing in professional circles. It’s not anyone’s fault, as many of us know that ICs were quite good before the wobble (what other mid tier boasts a good matchup on Sheik and goes even at worst versus the spacies?), but having said that… it’s still sad to see the only way the tiers were ever going to change, possibly the last real chance for a big shift in the overall makeup of players, just dying out with no real chance.

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Numbers probably wont listen to you

Honestly as an IC mainer in the UK. No one complains about the Wobbles exept the Falco scrubs which like to use Dash attacks and full Hops and also rolls. Are you a scrub, keep going on abut the Infinite and you might as well be.

1. You HAVE to grab with nana in place
2. A person which makes a 7frame opening for an IceClimbers needs to change tactics
3. You cannot ban this move because its cheap and broken i will give you an example of what i mean

Fox: Shine is Broken and Cheap cause you can ill someone at 0 if they are a complete fool or they give you a decent frame opening. It also makes infinites. you can also combo someone to death with the shine

Peach: Downsmash is Broken and Cheap cause it hits both sides, hits 5times at max, does normal smash damage each hit, Its a Pseadospike. It crushes shields, cannot be spotdodged and you cant roll towards her to dodge and counter. It also has very little lag

Falco: SHL is cheap and broken because when you land you cancel all lag, its a great Approach and a great camping attack. You can probably camp someone to100% with lasers then give them duh duh DUH a Bair

Marth: Fsmash is broken…hell it, all his moves are broken. He has got RANGE MELEE attacks. Smashes which totally annihilate people at 60%. Startup time is minimal. All his **** airs connect into each other. All his air moves have nearly No Startup time. Broken and Cheap

Shiek: Her Dthrow is broken although because im from the UK…who cares =P. As far as i have heard, you can 0-death people with a Dthrow…never seen myself but cant be helped

And your complaining when IC’s get a broken and cheap technique when fox has had a cheap technique for a LONG TIME and no one has banned it unless they are SCRUBS

Must I highlight it for you?

SCRUBS

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Fox’s waveshine was powerful but it didn’t rewrite who was tournament calibur and who wasn’t. I think that’s what the fear is in wobbles. Although I refuse to believe that ICs would destroy the world by wobbling everyone but ICs thus forcing everyone to use ICs. They still have their many flaws, infinites or not, and I do have proof on that last claim.

Captain Falcon.

Why Falcon? Because he’s even versus Ice Climbers despite how they can infinite him a million times over without a synched grab. Falco uses his shield stun to simply lock ICs in shield and run away after his aerials or soars past with n-airs or d-airs or whatever aerial that are well beyond reach of any shield grab tricks. Pivoted f-smashes out of dash dance wrecks approaches (unless you’re also pivoting ice blocks then this can be extremely tricky and even when you are it’s still tricky) and Falcon is literally one of the two characters that can compete speed-wise on the ground with the IC’s high pressure ground game. But then those infinites and easy edgeguards kick in, which gives punishing mistakes and predictions a lot more power to the Ice Climbers.

So if a character like Falcon, who is absolutely combo susceptible to ICs, can make an even matchup by taking advantage of the ICs’ bad air game, dependancy on grabs to win and his ground mobility that matches pace with the ICs’, I don’t see why every matchup would suddenly spell doom. If Falcon can find answers, I’d be shocked to hear that the stronger characters cannot do so too.

I also think we’re overlooking the matchups where wobbles actually changes things. Usually if a grab is presented to the ICs on the space animals, it usually ends with a chain throw. Why? Because the chain throw is easier to setup and also results in death barring human error on reading the DI. It’s not nearly as situational as wobbles and, really, is there any difference between 90% and 150% when you’re F-smashing Falco out of a grab? The same applies to Sheik only you get to use a prettier chain throw. In fact, the only matchups Wobbles changes are the ones where you can’t 0-death someone with a chain throw, which are the characters claimed to counter the ICs like Marth, Peach and Samus (and a bunch of lower used characters like, oh, Mario, Doc, Jiggs, etc).

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And unlike what some of those posts said out 0% to death, characters actually need to be from 20-30% (depending on character) for it to start because before that you can mash out of it. So… not game breaking… therefore should not be banned.

[AQUA-PURA]

i have a question about link, when you use his claw-shot sometimes he drops off, once he touches the wall, and this SOMETIMES happens when i’m far from the wall. i want to know when/why it happens because i use this alot

[System_1]

wobbling: just don’t get grabbed. >_> I know it sounds retarded and impossible, but its the truth, unless you’re a very slow/laggy characters you can avoid grabs very easily with spacing, lcanceling and just learning how your character can move about the stage. If you’re keeping a constant pressure on the IC how can they land a grab?

Is wobbling broken? no. Is it very effective? yes which is often seen as broken.

[maximuspita]

Wobbling

Im also against wobbling, to me wobbling is all about killing the IC before they grab you once and then riding that one stock victory home. It isn’t hard to do on a platform stage. FD might be a problem. But the IC also promotes a larger character variety to counter the IC’s alone which many people arent comfortable with. Well, to each his own.

[Seany_Boy]

Wobbling doesn’t break the game, but it breaks DI. Which imo is enough to ban it. Once you are in it, there is no way out, and there is nothing else that exists like this in the game.

Usually, even boring strategies like camping in unreal, or whatever else you have add depth to a game. Wobbling adds no depth to the game, and only removes the depth that DI adds.

You can apply the counter argument that it will make us improve our game play, but the only thing that would improve is our ability to avoid grabs. That’s fine and all, but we are playing against IC, we should already be trying to avoid the grabs. So what’s the point?

The only thing I see wobbling doing is giving short cuts to players who don’t want to learn the mind games of DI and combos in this game.

[System_1]

Wobbling doesn’t break the game, but it breaks DI. Which imo is enough to ban it. Once you are in it, there is no way out, and there is nothing else that exists like this in the game.

Usually, even boring strategies like camping in unreal, or whatever else you have add depth to a game. Wobbling adds no depth to the game, and only removes the depth that DI adds.

You can apply the counter argument that it will make us improve our game play, but the only thing that would improve is our ability to avoid grabs. That’s fine and all, but we are playing against IC, we should already be trying to avoid the grabs. So what’s the point?

The only thing I see wobbling doing is giving short cuts to players who don’t want to learn the mind games of DI and combos in this game.

Hmm, Wobbling is not the only thing that breaks DI, it is also broken by waveshine infinites. Once you are caught in them, you can’t get out either. Then why are these generally accepted while Wobbling gets so much hate?

Then you say that boring tactics usually add depth to a game, while Wobbling doesn’t, and takes away the depth that is DI… My answer to this is: depending on the situation, DI either adds or doesn’t add depth to the game.

In some cases DI will truly add depth (where you will have to guess your opponent’s DI, or think about the best move possible according to a certain DI), while in others it will only be a futile thing that will test your reflexes (i.e. during a chaingrab… he goes left, I grab left… he goes to the right, I grab right)

Finally, you say that Wobbling is a shortcut for players who don’t really want to learn stuff like DI and combos… but you shouldn’t forget that due to their character design, the ICs are arguably the hardest characters to learn in SSBM. And an IC player will not be good if he doesn’t learn how to DI himself.

IMO the only reason why people hate Wobbling is because that it is easy to perform manually. Truly if it was a complex button combination (ala Infinite waveshine) there wouldn’t be any gripe against it.

[Seany_Boy]

Waveshining doesn’t break DI, you can CC, hold towards or away from it.

As far as chain grabs are concerned, most stages don’t lead well for them. Any stage with platforms will give you a chance to escape. At the same time you can also change your position on the stage while being chain grabbed, this way when the grab is over you are in a better position for yourself, such as in the middle of the stage or at the ledge. Another point is that most chain grabs don’t guarantee a kill, unlike a wobble.

The IC are no harder to learn than any other character in the game. That’s all there is to it.

You’re right on the last part tho, most top players don’t like wobbling because it is easy. It sucks to see all your hard work and effort that you put into your game play, character, and strategy be useless and weak in comparison to a wobble.

[System_1]

Actually I wasn’t talking about regular waveshining, but the wall-based infinites. I might be wrong, but it is a guaranteed kill… unless the Fox screws up.

In the end, since Wobbling guarantees a kill at like 20%, it should be consired a very effective kill move, like a shinespike. Just like the shinespike, you can’t pull it off at all times.

Oh and I don’t understand why people say that it makes the game more boring. I love playing against the Ice Climbers, especially as Sheik (even though I main Peach). I like to fight on and off the platforms, trying to play mistake free… and with the IC player trying to get that grab in, I just love the tension that involves fighting them.

[maximuspita]

Ack, oops. I wrote my message wrong. I tried to type I was against wobbling ** being banned** but oh well. No more drunken posting

[Giza]

You’re right on the last part tho, most top players don’t like wobbling because it is easy. It sucks to see all your hard work and effort that you put into your game play, character, and strategy be useless and weak in comparison to a wobble.

Difficulty should not be the issue here. Nor should the lowering of depth after the grab has taken effect. The issue is, does wobbling take skill out of the game? Obviously it should not be banned if it does not remove the skill factor from the game. Anyone who has played as the Ice Climbers against a top player knows that it is not easy to plant a grab on them. I know I’m gonna sound very dumb by doing this (since so many people do) but I am going to compare shine spiking to wobbling. As we all know shinespiking is a situational move, usually set up for, that can work on every character (sometimes positions might be slightly different) but it has the chance of actually killing them if the shine connects at 0%. There is no way to DI out of a shine spike death if done in the correct position (for most characters). It is certain death. Wobbling is very very similar to this. It is a situational move that is usually set up for and it works on every characters (sometimes percentages might have to be different to start it), but if it connects at around 20-30%, it is certain death, but only if the player can keep up the rhyme of the attack (which is not too hard… though I cannot perform it myself).

No I probably made myself sound retarded there, but regardless I feel that the moves are quite similar. Other tactics that have been banned so far have been because they completely remove the skill from the game (freeze glitch and hyrule temple lol Fox lazer running) or are stall tactics, which are actually pretty much for the same reason (wobbling have the same stall rules as Jigglypuff’s rising pound). Obviously wobbling does not completely remove skill from the game, you cannot do everything at your own leisure after you get the grab off because the rhyme must be kept up and the grabs can be avoidable (which I agree you should of been avoiding anyway). Either way, even with the wobbling there I do not even believe Ice Climbers are the best character in the game so removing such a move seems completely pointless to me.

BTW, I am also for unbanning Peach’s Castle.

[System_1]

well this doesn’t sound retarded… I also feel that wobbling is like shine spiking

[Marty]

I’d argue that Wobbling is significantly easier than waveshining, but it could just be me.

I mean, you see plenty of matches where Foxes don’t bother to try and keep the waveshine going, and instrad go for a simple up-smash. But shmeh.

[Seany_Boy]

There is only one legal stage with a wall to use the infinite, and the wall is only on screen for like, 50 seconds maybe (poke stadium). It’s too situational to be compared.

A shine spike is a ledge guard. Ya, it kills at low percent, but every character has gimp kills. Ledge guarding and gimp ko’s is much different than no DI.

Food for thought: Most sheik players agree to NO chain grabbing during sheik dittos, they say it ruins the game.

[EmblemLord]

Forward speaks truth. Also you can wall tech the u-smash after a Fox infinites you if you DI towards the wall.

[System_1]

Food for thought: Most sheik players agree to NO chain grabbing during sheik dittos, they say it ruins the game.

lol only sheik dittoed for 1 match in tournaments, I switched to Peach after…

I counterpick Peach for Sheiks
And Sheik for Peaches…

>_> Peach v Sheik is an awesome matchup…

[System_1]

>_> IC aren’t winning tourneys though. Last tourney CHu won was pound2? and wobbling was banned evo east he didn’t even rank top 3 where wobbling was allowed.

wobbling is effective people are just to lazy to find ways around it. <_<