The Problem(s) With Zoners in Super Smash Bros.

[Music] zoners the archetypes centered around maintaining space between themselves and their opponent zoners created tension-filled clash between conflicting priorities and extension of combat to previously unreachable distances an iron-wheeled test of reflexes and strategy and people hate it yeah people really hate it however while zoners and the ensuing hatred they create are by no means unique to the smash this is the series world you learn it early son we are going to focus on the smash titles today particularly the newest one in previous videos like this i've gone more into general overviews of the archetype in question however because zoners are such a divisive playstyle across the board i thought it would be interesting to dive into some of the unique issues that these characters have run into in smash compared to other environments in other words the problems with zoners in super smash brothers let's do it [Music] real quick this video is sponsored by me more specifically my new second channel mockrocktalk it's gonna be the new home for more casual content that doesn't quite fit the main format of this channel think stuff like tier lists discussions unboxings reactions that sort of low pressure type of content should be fun also we've done heavyweights glass cannons and now zoners and if you'd like to vote on the next archetype i dive into a new poll is now live for all patrons youtube members or twitch subscribers see the description or pinned comment for links let's kick things off by briefly defining the term zoner as i'll be using it what's a zoner it's a character whose design emphasizes zoning now what's zoning well it's not just any form of defensive gameplay and i'd particularly like to distinguish between zoning and camping camping is a term that has its roots in first-person shooters and refers to rigidly sticking to a small portion of the map setting up camp if you will this exact definition hasn't fully transferred over to the platform fighter genre sticking originally to one spot is a lot harder to do here but the defensive and most importantly passive nature of the strategy has regardless of the distance a player moves they'll be considered camping in competitive smash if they're refusing to engage in direct combat and it's also something that any archetype is capable of doing zoning in contrast while often used in conjunction with camping is the active threatening of large amounts of space particularly horizontal space through the use of attacks how much space needs to be threatened before you can start calling it zoning that'll somewhat depend on you although the attacks that we'll be most widely agreed on are generally projectiles and exceptionally long-ranged melee attacks also tend to fall into the title you will also occasionally hear for example more standard sword fighters referred to as zoning as well or really anyone with a large hitbox again there is some ambiguity welcome to archetypes but they're on shakier ground and won't be the focus of this video as you might expect by this definition a major strength of the zoner archetype is the ability to present a threat to their opponent while not being threatened themselves i.e as a rule of thumb as owner becomes more favored as distance between the characters increases of course the ability to be dangerous while remaining safe is very powerful so we need to balance this power out by introducing weaknesses into other aspects of their kits let's turn to the street fighter series for a moment which largely originated the modern fighting game genre that so many other series draw from including smash and still works as a kind of template game street fighter features a character named dalsem whose long elastic limbs and variety of excellent projectiles make him a go-to long-ranged fighter in the series as in smash this is a massive strength of the character so he suffers from some crippling weaknesses to balance this out dulcim's health is very low his damage output is underwhelming and he crumples under pressure if an opponent is able to get in on him character design is obviously subjective and even someone like dawsom has his quartz like being able to hit his outstretched limbs which is actually somewhat uncommon for the archetype but i'd still personally consider modern dawsome to be a great benchmark for creating a zoner give them powerful long-range tools to rely on then introduce weaknesses that directly punish them for failing to successfully make the most of these tools it allows the zoner player to feel powerful while playing at optimal range and the same can be said for the opponent after they break through strong at a distance weak up close it's simple it's clean it's effective and it's surprisingly rare in smash the primary defensive mechanism in the series is your shield and an enormous factor in being able to relieve close quarters pressure is whether or not you have an effective attack out of your shield modern samus is as textbook as owner as you can get with a huge part of her game plan revolving around charge shot missiles bombs and her aerial tether this can be pretty aggravating to try and break through and after you accomplish this are you sure about that fast damaging up specials are an incredibly valuable asset because they can be done without having to first take the time to drop your shield and with screwattack at only 6 frames of startup among the fastest in the game samus simply doesn't crumple under pressure like you might expect she's joined by the belmont's equally snappy uppercut along with toonlink's spin attack only slightly edging out his adult counterpart's monstrous frame 7 kill move as well as hero's whoosh the other major factor in relieving shield pressure is a fast aerial as you can likewise jump without having to lower your shield first this means that tools like villager's frame three neutral air or snakes down air which comes out just as fast and does 20 are also very good at kicking your opponent right back out to restart the zoning game while out of shield options are a major consideration for close quarters proficiency we also of course need to look at a character's general melee tools and once again zoners are not lacking them in the way you might expect rob has two fantastic versatile projectiles that he leans on heavily and simultaneously has one of the best close quarters attacks in the game his downtilt is absurdly fast virtually impossible to punish and does this lucas has a downtilt which is just as fast and combos into his kill moves link's neutral air is one of the most notoriously safe and spammable attacks in the entire game snake has some of the overall best boxing tools in the entire game even min min who's arguably the series most extreme example of a zoner despite lacking a true projectile has multiple excellent tools in close range now this isn't really a balanced discussion i'm not saying that these decisions automatically make all these characters overpowered and we should also make some distinctions between different subsets of the archetype equating a very pure zoner like simon with a hybrid character like link with a trap character like snake isn't always going to perfectly line up overall though while the archetype is intentionally designed to be frustrating on some level there are design decisions here that go beyond the amount of frustration necessary to make zoners function keep in mind that these aren't the kinds of tools that everyone has access to in any archetype so for a hefty chunk of that allotment to go to zoners of all characters the playstyle supposedly centered around maintaining distance is a bit odd this is even more true since shields are already harder to pressure than a lot of other fighting games defense systems so their reward for closing distance is already somewhat reduced smash allows a lot of options out of your shield and also lacks concepts like strict high and low blocking and particularly extended block strings in the newer titles because attacks that are genuinely positive on block that is allow you to act before the blocking player essentially don't exist and most of the exceptions are projectiles with how fast pacemash plays out gaps are usually going to be closed at some point so there's only so helpless you can realistically design characters to be up close but i'd still consider some of these tools to be overkill of course people with some experience playing with or against smash owners may recognize that i'm oversimplifying things a bit and you can find counter examples to most of what i've said sephiroth does genuinely struggle with close range pressure as do isabel or ivysaur there are also characters like the belmonts who despite having their saving grace uppercut still have clearly been designed to be weak at point blank otherwise with sluggish frame data and some extremely low damage sour spots i'd say that the main takeaway here is that there's not much of a trend towards any particular aspect of a zoner's close quarters tools now in theory this isn't really something i have an issue with after all the roster of smash is massive at this point and there's no mandate that developers have to rigidly conform to an archetype's template or anything wrong with diverse designs in practice however we do see a few key weaknesses repeated across zoners so it's hard to give this concept too much weight the first weakness i'd say is fairly universal for them to suffer from is a poor disadvantage state for those unfamiliar disadvantage state is when your opponent has successfully knocked you into an unfavorable position on the stage and how good a character's disadvantaged state is refers to how comfortably they can return to neutral ground after this happens some of the biggest factors to look for here would be high air mobility multiple jumps versatile burst movement options in the air large safe encompassing hitboxes that can cover landings and a small body size while these kinds of attributes aren't completely absent from zoners they're pretty sparse and escape tools in particular tend to be either very underwhelming or tied to some kind of resource like hiro's mana the limited use of sephiroth's one wing form or banjo-kazooie's depleting feathers there are always going to be some exceptions pac-man in particular breaks this rule pretty hard along with frankly most owner rules he's a top tier for a reason but the pattern generally holds up this ties somewhat back into our dolsom example specifically his low health whereas street fighter has variable health bars smash has variable weights for characters and while there's no real trend in weight for zoners a bad disadvantage state does mean it's easier to rack up damage on a character which results in an earlier overall stock loss this is a sensible enough weakness especially when you consider that zoners tend to have very good neutral games so one of their other major game states is suffering is compensation however i don't necessarily think it's the ideal one to have the archetype lean into zoners use the playstyle meant to aggravate their opponent which can create an interesting transition from tension to catharsis oh no if the zoner is significantly disadvantaged in close quarters combat then that catharsis arrives as soon as the opponent successfully navigates into position they've now completed the signature trial the match-up would be expected to create altering their spacing against resistance and have achieved a victory by putting themselves in the favored position if the zoner isn't penalized for failing to maintain space however then this no longer applies and a lot of that interesting relationship is replaced with a far more cookie cutter brawl up close the match-up was unique and now it's not replacing poor close quarters with a poor disadvantage state pushes the victory back until after the zoner is actually hit where it's now a trait they share with other archetypes and is fundamentally just an exaggerated version of how most matchups work the other main weakness i'd say zoners often suffer from is difficulty approaching or closing gaps of their own accord usually through some combination of poor mobility and a lack of good approaching attacks there are relatively few truly speedy zoners in particular and the ones that do exist are also the ones that tend to have blindingly obvious character specific weaknesses see banjo-kazooie's horrendous jump height or sephiroth's extremely low durability this is somewhat necessary because platform fighters allow all characters to retreat just as fast as they can approach as well as providing multiple escape paths to mix up so keep away strategies would become extremely oppressive if all zoners were lightning quick but it does mean that most members of the archetype are forced to rely heavily on spamming their zoning tools while conceptually this is fine even expected in smash these tend to be on the simpler end of the design spectrum there are some exceptions of course see hero's command menu pac-man's bonus fruit or how luma functions but generally speaking characters neither have a lot of different zoning tools nor zoning tools with particularly complex trajectories or effects that's not to say they're ineffective quite the opposite but it does mean that the interactions the zoner creates will tend to be very simplistic and repetitive especially since the smash series already doesn't typically have very wide move pools for characters with that said it takes two sides to create an interaction so if the zoner's opponent has some interesting ways to engage with that behavior this will probably be less of an issue you'll often see zoners described in terms like uninteractive or refusing to play the game and fundamentally this isn't really true every zoning tool used does mark the start of an interaction whatever they choose to do will always create a multitude of ways for their opponent to respond however it's exactly what responses are available to their opponent which will define the feel of the game returning to our street fighter template a quick browse through the roster's move list reveals a lot of thought put into how each character is going to be dealing with projectiles how the various dive kicks in the game work which characters can shove through with armor teleports reflectors there's a clear sense that the strength and functionality of every single character's relationship with projectiles has been carefully considered in a way that's consistent with the needs and expectations of their play style which can also be applied to many other fighting games smash has a lot of these same characteristics the game is no stranger to reflectors or armor of its own but the way they're applied to the roster is much more haphazard you absolutely do find moves which directly or incidentally interact with zoning tools but they're far from universal and while some of this may come from the aforementioned shallow move pools which would potentially make reserving an attack for projectile interactions on every single character overly restrictive or the fact that everyone is a guest character with some amount of a pre-existing move pool already in place i don't think these fully account for some of the more egregious examples out there ganondorf as an infamous test case is part of an archetype that desperately needs ways to deal with zoning and has the power to do this canonically and yet he spent a few decades at this point completely out of luck while i just finished saying that smash gives characters a lot of the same anti-zoning tools as other games i do want to highlight one tool in particular that the series seems surprisingly reluctant to employ moves which are invincible specifically against projectiles giving a move this property can potentially be quite an elegant way to make zoning matchups at mid-range more interesting and mind-game heavy without needing to worry about the insane power boost that comes from just slapping protection from everything on it ganondorf's special move wizard's foot would be the poster child for where to implement this property if it was a property smash was willing to implement at least one reasonable way to compensate for his lack of other anti-projectile moves and even more significantly his horrendous mobility the normally intense movement of the series can itself be a great tool for getting around zoning but this isn't exactly egalitarian in fact because mobility tends to be a major factor in tearless placement for many reasons this creates something of our rich get richer scenario yet one more inherent advantage the fast characters have over their sluggish counterparts now to the series credit its characters kits have gotten better about this over time newcomers have increasingly come equipped with moves that have utility against projectiles and a lot of the already existing ones have had additional utility added to them like ness's psi magnet gaining a hitbox or mr game and watch's bucket gaining the ability to reflect physical projectiles instead of working purely on energy based ones a lot of the new heavyweights have had their projectile relationships more thought out we've seen additional reflectors that don't take up a special move slot steve can create some interesting projectile standoffs with his blocks there are some good steps here but smash as a series is still heavily influenced by the design of its legacy characters and in this respect projectile interactions still feel like a haphazard afterthought in many instances for these characters and what's still a reasonable portion of the newer roster they're left exclusively with smash's generic defensive tools to handle projectiles primarily the very simplistic shield this shield can't be put up immediately out of a dash gets worn down quickly by powerful projectiles and perfect shields which can avoid this degradation have been made continuously less effective against zoning over time compare melee shield which could reflect all projectiles across all characters with a properly timed button press to brawl and smash 4 which took this ability away to ultimate which initiates perfect shielding at the moment you drop your shield instead of raise it i like this change as a whole it adds another dimension to melee combat and makes it harder to get a perfect shield by accident but the fact that you need to be preemptively shielding makes grounded interactions against zoners just that extra bit more limited platform fighters that spun off from smash tend to lean more into the counter zoning end of things with rivals of ether giving everyone's generic parry the ability to reflect projectiles slap city maintaining a perfect shield upon pressing the button that actually restores shield health a more minor but still relevant consequence for throwing projectiles mindlessly and the upcoming rushdown revolts improved gap closing tools significantly reducing projectile's impact on the neutral game as well as letting you advance while holding up your shield more powerful interesting options against projectiles can often allow the developers to introduce more powerful interesting projectiles as well returning one last time to street fighter on the other hand it also has fairly limited generic options which still do have a large role to play despite all the character specific tools and also has a lot of relatively simple projectiles however the interactions they create tend to be more intricate and fundamental to the gameplay than smashes depleting shields you can find a lot of interesting projectile interactions across fighting games but a channel called corey gaming has already covered street fighter's fireball game in particular better than i can in what might honestly be my favorite video on youtube so i'd recommend checking that out if you're interested in some of the finer details finding it years ago was what got me re-interested in the series and this video takes a few cues from it when held up against examples like these it's hard not to see zoning interactions among the smash roster as somewhat shallow an arsenal of extremely simple and effective tools with generally limited and underwhelming counterplay once again balance is a different discussion but in terms of design the shortcomings are starting to pile on at this point also keep in mind up until now i've been speaking as if both players are in the same room when we move into the world of online play things get considerably worse so for obvious non-demonetization triggering reasons online play has become even more of an integral aspect of super smash bros over the last year and it's bad it's really bad take a quick pause in the action in the northeast region between seth and i snacks and let you guys know during this viewing you might see a little bit of a slowdown or buffering but do not worry the players aren't seeing that that's not affecting them and that will not affect the vods afterwards of course now there are a lot of elements i could rip into about nintendo's online services the horribly out of touch ranked mode a once free service now charging an annual fee with no significant increase in the value of the service offered their server infrastructure being so old that it has functions to check whether it's running windows 98 yes this is a real thing but the one i want to really focus on is the continued reliance on delay-based netcode the modern netcode standard to aspire to in fighting games is a system called rollback which allows you to act near instantly on your console with your opponent's console attempting to predict your next action and rolling back that prediction as soon as it learns that it was wrong rollback netcode still isn't a perfect solution nothing really could be but it towers above the far simpler to implement delay based method which records your input sends it to your opponent's console and then once both of your consoles actually know what the input was performs it on them as you might expect from the name this requires introducing delay on your end and in ultimate's case it's a lot at least 5 extra frames at 60 frames per second in absolutely pristine conditions which you often won't actually get especially since the switch doesn't even include a built-in ethernet port when combined with the already pretty high six frames of input delay just coming from your own console that's at least 11 frames between the time you press a button and the time it comes out on your screen more than a sixth of a second and while that may sound small to people inexperienced with the genre it matters a lot in reality you're watching a video about zoners not netcode but the reason i'm talking about it is because it has a disproportionate benefit to ranged play again for obvious reasons smash players have had plenty of time and reason to talk about the impact of online play in the last year and you'll hear a lot of complaints about how much worse essentially everyone's character gets online there's a bit more to these complaints though as while it's true that every character will feel worse with leggier and less reliable inputs and their peak abilities will be lowered statistically only half of the roster is going to perform worse in an online setting while everyone's peak abilities will go down half of those peaks will go down less than the rest and these will be the beneficiaries of the environment with a strong case to be made that a lot of them are going to be zoners one major impact that delayed inputs have is a reduced ability to perform tight combos which often require you to make a series of precise inputs and quickly track where your opponent has been launched zoners don't generally rely on extended combos to get their damage and projectiles almost always either don't start combos or do start combos with relatively simple follow-ups so online inputs don't have a big impact on them delay-based netcode also makes mistakes in spacing and action more common especially because it can also cause inputs to be dropped entirely in unstable connections and because zoners are less incentivized to take risky approaches they'll tend to be less impacted by this as well alongside having a longer punish range if the opponent does mess up possibly the most significant impact that bad delay based netcode has on zoners though is the increased range where projectiles become unreactable this may or may not be news to you but the vast vast majority of attacks that competitive players throw out in smash are completely impossible to react to even offline humans react to sound faster than visuals but even then for an average person it takes about 10 frames to do this peach's frame 2 jab you can't react to it her frame 8 down tilt you can't react to it her frame 15 forward smash you might think that's possible but tack on the extra six frames it takes for the reaction input to come out and consider the fact that the attack doesn't even make noise instantly and no if you have anywhere near normal reflexes then you cannot react to peach's forward smash try it for yourself most successful shields you see are from people anticipating an attack in advance you know what you can react to though you can react here too and here but at some point we start slipping into unreactable territory which is where a zoner's threat bubble is at its most dangerous now let's head back online and generously assume that we're playing a pristine match with the minimum of five added frames of delay here's how far a charge shot travels in 5 frames this move's unreactable range is now significantly bigger and therefore poses a significantly bigger threat we obviously see similar results with other projectiles and this is a big part of the reason that ultimate's netcode is so disproportionately biased towards them you already weren't going to react to most close quarters attacks even offline so that dynamic stays more intact whereas the dynamic behind zoning tools changes a lot now i'm by no means saying that they're the only gameplay element affected for example rolls and jumps become harder to react to and we also have to account for perfect shielding melee attacks which is made universally harder by the increased delay although actually the exact same thing applies to projectiles or ledge scenarios which are often based on reacting to an opponent's get-up option a reaction that doesn't always work with online input delay come to think of it though projectiles are some of the safest and most effective ledge trap tools that exist huh problems chosen for this video were cherry-picked from a larger list and i'm aware that there are other aspects that i haven't touched on i could talk about the inadequate training mode for example which makes trying to practice most zoning interactions without first installing mods virtually impossible or that the competitive stage list ultimate ended up with has relatively few small stages making it easier for zoners to set up at their ideal ranges i hope the points i did choose to dive into have been enough to paint a reasonable picture of the archetype's shortcomings though super smash brothers create zoners with often haphazard designs gives other characters largely inadequate and uninteresting tools to deal with them and regularly throws them into an absolutely critical environment where these issues are even further exacerbated can you really blame so many people for disliking them as said earlier i'm aware that anti-zoner sentiments are by no means unique to smash but the series does seem to put less thought into the archetype's implications than a lot of its contemporaries and with these characters now taking up a significant portion of the roster this can be seen as a pretty glaring issue now of course every single one of these characters even the most disliked ones have dedicated fans who absolutely adore how they play and the question of whether it's okay to design a character knowing that it's gonna piss off a lot of your player base is an interesting one that i don't have a definitive answer for some elements of this video may also stem from the fact that smash wasn't primarily designed as a competitive fighting game which it absolutely did not need to be although at this point there's clearly at least a decent amount of consideration being paid to that side of the game and i don't think move sets that work well for competitive and casual environments are mutually exclusive in fact because projectiles are notoriously difficult for new players to deal with welcome to the real world and smash's casual side is often centered around items which themselves are frequently projectiles and even projectiles that generate more projectiles designing more around this could be beneficial to both sides of the game that casual aspect may very well be why ultimate doesn't have rollback netcode for the record as the team did look at it when starting development but decided that there would be too many side effects this likely wasn't referring so much to two player itemless battles as the more elements you need to keep track of the harder rollback becomes to implement then again if they thought the priority was high enough they probably could have implemented two versions of netcode depending on the format of the match and things like these definitely are sticking points for the game but at the end of the day i and many others still do find it a compelling enough game to be worth toughing them out there have always been high points among smash's owners as well as after all the game's creator did come from a traditional fighting game background and it shines through in elements like respect for the classic projectile jump in anti-air triangle that a lot of the series zoner designs at least nod to i personally hope that the series continues to lean more into these kinds of aspects and that it starts catching up to the technological direction its peers are moving in but for the moment i've been mock rock and these have been at least some of the problems with zoners in super smash brothers and the fact that i've played a lot of slow characters who have trouble dealing with them has absolutely nothing to do with thanks for watching everyone and hey if you liked it why not leave a like a reminder that my second channel is now live under mock rock talk and be sure to let me know your thoughts on zoners like subscribe the usual you can find me on twitter mr mockrock twitch mockrocktwitch oneword and for content polls including the next archetype to analyze early video access and more these are available through patreon youtube membership or twitch subscription later people 75 meters a stage that debuted all the way back in brawl and has managed to hold on to its uniquely sour reputation ever since an impressive feat in a series which there is one archetype that truly lives or dies on this principle far more than any other the frail vulnerable yet cataclysmically powerful glass cannon

Channel: MockRock

Views: 389,696

Keywords: Smash Ultimate, Review, alpharad, Nintendo, little z, super smash bros ultimate, smash bros ultimate, tier list, nintendo direct, esam, hungrybox, ssbu, alpharad deluxe, Nintendo Switch, Gameplay, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Meme, Memes, nairo, nairomk, mkleo, marss, hbox, hbox smash ultimate, nairo smash ultimate, nintendo memes, nintendo, smash ultimate tier list, smash ultimate tournament, street fighter v, animal crossing, metroid, samus, metroid dread, e3, fighting game, fighting games

Id: Qq4uMQ1yXYo

Length: 27min 56sec (1676 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/specialCan3]

Really good video! I thought this was going to be about why zoners in Smash are weak, but it ended up being more about why they’re strong, and how there aren’t that many anti-zoning tools in Smash. Also on how online nerfs them far less than non-zoners.

I really like his suggestion about adding projectile-invulnerable moves, and making Ganon’s down B one of them.

[u/[deleted]]

MockRock is great

[u/Earthboundplayer]

People downvoting without even watching. It's a great vid. Very well articulated and fair.

[u/HootNHollering]

Two things that stuck out in this video.

1. His consistent reference to SFV giving consideration for how every character interacts with fireballs is interesting. Because from what I recall a sizable portion of the playerbase are a little annoyed that almost every character in SFV has a direct, clean answer that can sometimes invalidate even thinking about putting out fireballs if both players are competent. Because a fair few can use their dedicated anti-fireball option on reaction to one from fairly far range and get huge damage, or at least an advantaged state, from reacting to a fireball. Sometimes even from almost full-screen in cases like Laura with her EX elbow. Which might be a bit too far in the other direction depending who you ask, and SFV may not be the picturesque example of how to address zoning. That said, give Ganondorf projectile invincibility on Wizard's Foot I did not realize how badly we needed that mechanic in this game and how perfectly it works here.

2. E L E V E N F R A M E S of input lag minimum when playing online.

[u/Legitimate__Username]

Why are y'all downvoting this, MockRock makes great analyses and his Smash archetype series has been really insightful. Definitely worth giving a watch.

[u/Severe-Operation-347]

MockRock always makes quality Smash content.

[u/Gearkeeper-8a]

Lol first smash were "zoners" are good and we have endless complains about how smash needs more anti-zoning, you know what its the best anti-zoning too that traditional fighters have doesnt have? Mobility.

You can escape of proyectiles in this game, double jump, hell you dont even get chip damage by shielding agaisnt them.

In traditional fighters you cant do that, and is the reason strong anti zoning tools other that mobility exist.

And the reason fighting true zoners in smash is more miserable that other games is because smash doesnt have a health bar, the timer is 7 minutes and the game lacks true corners.

All of this means that you cant pressure your opponent like in traditional fighting games, the zoners will run the clock for 7 minutes, and most proyectiles will annoy you by sending you far away before killing you combined all of this combined of course will drain your mental fortitude unless you are good with your patient play and/or movement.

Or you can pick anti "zoning"characters like palutena or hero.

[u/Yandomort]

-Every time Street Fighter got brought up, I wanted to hear him talk about airdodges, double jumps, platforms, spot dodges, total control over your drift, being able to totally switch your trajectory mid-air, fastfalling, roll ins, catching item projectiles with an aerial, extreme low profiling (for some characters), negating the projectile entirely while mid-air with your nine foot long disjointed sword (for some characters) and all the other baked in tools that Smash characters have to deal with zoning that are much less common in most fighting games. It makes more sense to have dedicated character specific anti-projectile options when your only option otherwise is to block, neutral jump or jump in.

-Smash zoners are definitely a mixed bag, but a lot of the zoners he mentioned can be some of the most interesting characters to watch competitively: Samus, Snake, ROB, Villager, Hero, Link, etc.

-He said the video isn't about balance, but used Ganon as the biggest example of a character who has limited options against zoners, which is kind of the whole point? Zoners are supposed to beat grapplers, grapplers aren't supposed to have good options against projectiles, and Ganon is both an incredibly polarized grappler and the worst character in the game. He's probably in the running for the weakest character in the whole series.

-Agree that Ultimate's netcode is very very bad

-Its true that zoners having overpowered recoveries negates what makes their archetype compelling, but that's true of every character type in the game besides grapplers (who seem to usually be exploitable offstage.) Recoveries are much too good in Ultimate, across the board.

-Calling a zoner frustrating to play against isn't really a criticism. Zoners (and fighting games in general) are supposed to piss you off. Its essential to the experience.

No one would want to play a fighting game without a scummy, controversial top tier that isn't all that fun to play against. If Hbox had retired instead of Armada, and the meta for two years was all Fox Falco and Marth, Melee would be getting 1/3 the numbers on Twitch.

You don't want characters with turn-the-game-off levels of heat, like Brawl Metaknight or Smash 4 Bayo and Sonic, but Ultimate isn't even close to being there.

[u/lifetake]

A very well made video, but I definitely disagree with a few bits of points from him. I think something he overlooked heavily is the difference in game that Smash and Traditional fighters are. Smash has such a difference in mobility that the ways for how things are dealt with are completely different.

Then while claiming to not be talking about balance he very much was. And all his points would make you think zoners are busted in smash. But if you looked at basically any pros tier list you’d learn zoners aren’t top tier (except minmin in some) and this is because he definitely missed on their weaknesses.