Why EVERYONE Plays: Cloud | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

hey guys welcome back I am very excited for today's episode of why everyone plays because as much as I wish he wasn't the reasons why he's used so much are self-evident and are also the reasons why he's my main though on the plus side I don't have to hold anything back since this is a why everyone plays so naturally the tone of this series is a lot more praising than why no one plays anyways let's go ahead and discuss the gradual yet significant rise of one of the most well-known DLC characters in Smash Cloud as brought up in the past the philosophy of balanced during the transition from Smash 4 to Ultimate was to shift the spotlight from the dominating characters and Elevate some lower tiered ones into more relevance previous low and mid tiers like Mr Game and Watch Roy Wario palutena shulk and Pac-Man were substantially buffed elevating them into the upper tiers with some of them reaching as far as top 10. meanwhile reigning high in top tiers were forced down the rankings through a series of nurse Mewtwo Marth Rosalina Chic core and Bayonetta and more have lost a lot of relevant power at least at the start of the game we're seeing our surgeons nowadays though courtesy of a mirror to busts a lot of them received one such character who also got this treatment was clogged ending his debut version firmly in the number two spot trailing behind Bayonetta unlike her though Klaus dominance during Smash 4 was more straightforward in that his prevalence was attributed less to having an unbeatable arsenal of tools ranging from conventional power to ridiculous Chiefs and more to a simple case of numbers simply put cloud was broken in Smash 4 by virtue of his overly generous well just about everything his ground in air Mobility was and still is very impressive I go so far as to say he's one of the few characters with the perfect balance in physics overall not really lacking in any particular field in the current landscape of ultimate it's not as remarkable anymore one with other DLC Fighters like bileth min-min sephiroth and the Aegis as well as the Belmonts coming into play but back then the only one with comparable non-projectile range decline was shulk and perhaps Ike who were far weaker and four than they are now among a series of other attributes that led to his Runway success one noteworthy trait that stood out about him was that he was a sword character who could force approaches almost unheard of back then prior to him the majority of Sword characters for all melee ranged combatants like Roy Marth ice shulk and so on more importantly the stories who also possess the same ability are not really considered Saudis in a practical sense like pit and dark pit or they were statistically very weak in a competitive setting to really pose much of a threat like Robin and Link through Cloud's limit charge and bladebeam he was effectively the only sword fighter who pressured his opponent into approaching him making it really easy to achieve his win condition of outspacing and punishing careless engages on top of that he had the Undisputed best mid-range neutral and Advantage State out of the entire cast given four slower pace of gameplay compared to Ultimate that worked to his Advantage letting him set the pace of a game to a speed that's more beneficial to him than it is to his opponent unsurprisingly and understandably Cloud was nerfed following ultimate's release his ludicrous hitbox is an effective range Rover tone down a bit most notably is neutral and upbear while other attacks either over two numbers level down in the same regard however unlike his rival Bayonetta who was completely gutted at the start the developer sought to reallocate some of that lost power budget into the more lackluster parts of his kit as opposed to doing away with it entirely his base special moves like bladebeam and climhazard were made more usable and given some quality of life improvements while his ground normals like Dash attack and up smash were granted more kill pressure to offset the loss of consistent Chao options through his Aerials but like other previous DLC fighters who got nerfed Cloud's presence in the early years of Smash was overshadowed by the rise of new high and top-rated contenders he was still viable All Things Considered but the shark decreased in overall power made a lot of players think he was mid-tier at best and at the time mid-tier wasn't viewed with as much respect as it is now Cloud didn't suffer as battlefall from Grace's peers but it was clear that he wasn't quite good enough to deal with the new territory of ultimate as consistently fortunately the devs were aware of this and on version 7.0 he received a much needed pick-me-up his aforementioned Dash attack enough smash became strong enough to kill a reliable percentages with the latter augmenting is already threatening at a shield game to now arguably one of the best additionally some special now snaps allege earlier just fast enough to be hard to reliably two frame and finally limit gauge could be charged manually a full second faster giving him access to more limits and an even bigger incentive to charge whenever he could so while you could no longer hold on to limit status in death you can get access to more and thus more uses of his versatile limit specials with these quality of life Buffs Cloud was brought back into competitive relevance nowhere near as dominant as he was back then but enough to consider him a genuine threat in the metagame what's interesting however is the main Drive behind claude's late blooming popularity bringing us to the first reason why so many are beginning to use them through a combination of being very easy to pick up due to a straightforward kit and a solid balance of power speed range and damage Claude was able to find gainful employment at being what I like to call The anti-anti Meta inadvertently rendering him a meta character but in a roundabout way let me explain an anti-medic character in the context of Smash is one who frequently causes trouble for a wide range of players in the competitive scene or top tiers one of the early examples of this was Game and Watch not the best character by most people standards but he's exceptionally good at shutting down a lot of meta relevant characters like Rob Ness Roy uh Fox Bowser snake Maybe can throw in Captain Falcon you get the idea other examples of antimatter Fighters are Pac-Man Olimar Sonic Luigi Mega Man to name a few I wouldn't exactly say they're anti-meta on the basis of being gimmicky but they're not very straightforward to go up against and a lot of popular ones especially in the west are very confrontational up close and personal right now the title of anti-meta King goes to Steve for reasons I don't think I need to repeat whether by coincidence or intent Cloud just so happens to have a favorable or at worst a decent matchup against those characters he beats Pac-Man he destroys Olimar he can handle Sonic a lot more comfortably than 90 the roster he beats Luigi and he's one of the few characters who's plus one into Steve personally I think it's more of a 0.5 and lightest Steve having just as many ways to screw over Cloud as Cloud to Steve but only if he can close that Gap I digress though case in point cloud is really good at shutting down the characters who shut down other characters thus making him anti-anti meta and thus making him meta he's a very popular secondary choice for this reason easy to pick up and understand and can Brute Force his way through a lot of gimmicks granted he's not the only one sephron has also been fielded by players but the difference is that Claude is more well-rounded while sephron pushes further into extremes he has just enough effective range to completely distance himself from his opponent without compromising anywhere else every other sword in the game has a vulnerability that can be exploited in some way for example Lucina and Martha have roughly the same coverage as cloud and Superior Frame data across the board but their AirSpeed and gravity are noticeably worse than clubs more so when he is limit furthermore they're exclusively melee forcing them to approach every time which is exactly what a lot of antimatter's want another example Roy and Mithra excel in close quarters combat despite being sorties but it's somewhat canceled out by them having to fight very aggressively even if they're equipped with the right speed and Mobility to do so and just like Martin Lucina they're exclusively melee they have no choice but to approach sword use of the projectile game like Robin have the inverse problem Robin's able to play very defensively using arcfire and charging Thunder to play just like a zoner but their Mobility is so abysmal to where they're unable to switch gears and pressure up close as easily clouds Rush down in camping game doesn't swing as far as Boy and Robin respectively but it doesn't have to it's just enough to pose a threat and that's what matters another aspect of his popularity stems from his overall safety cloud is one of the safest characters in the game for a multitude of reasons the most apparent one is his rage despite getting nerfed in several areas his massive disjoints can invalidate so many characters entire kits when spaced correctly his amazing air Mobility also lets him close the gap on you with approaching Aerials and if you do manage to block against them they're still safe on Shield to where most characters can punish them regardless nothing in his kit exemplifies this more than his trademark back here one of the few attacks in the game that can be accurately described as a when in doubt move with a frame 11 startup it's reasonably fast thus 13 base damage covers the entire backside of him with generous verticality for that kind of reach it's -3 on Shield meaning the only thing that can punish a perfect Landing back here is a frame 3 upbeat even if Cloud doesn't land perfectly some Fighters simply don't have an out of Shield option that extends far enough to strike back same before there as well it's not as safe as back here but some characters just don't have the speed and or range punish him for hitting their Shield a common way to bouncy character in Smash Bros is that if they're able to dish it out they usually can't take it glass cannons like Fox Sheik and Pichu can overwhelm you with damage Combos and speed but you can just as easily burn their stock away with a few exchanges of your own it stands to reason that if Cloud can insert all this pressure and get away with it he's probably not good at taking pressure himself quite the opposite he's one of the best at dealing with pressure at least on stage against close range Fighters he has two fantastic out of Shield moves climb Hazard which offers virtually no KO potential in his base form but does a ton of damage and is the serviceable get off me tool whenever an up smash which kills deceptively early against long-range Fighters he may not have the best projectile game but what he does have is limit often putting more pressure on his opponent than the other way around because once he activates it he can abuse his incredible speed to rush them down that's not to say cloud can escape pressure as effectively as the likes of zss or Game and Watch but he has the wherewithal to prevent being thrown in those situations in the first place a luxury that's absent with the most of the cast people frequently say the easiest way to beat him is to exploit his bad recovery and whilst recovery is certainly not great it's not as egregious as crumbs or Dr Mario's not by a long shot once again though there aren't that many characters who can realistically challenge us on stage pressure in a contest of Mobility there are only a handful who are faster than him but they typically lose in another department such as range or they have no way to break loose defenses in the contest of range anyone with a longer reach than him gets outpaced in Frame data or mobility in a contest of power he can rack up damage almost as easily as a heavyweight a fresh cross slash does like 24 back here to 16 percent further to 16 to 17 upbeat does 19 is basically shocked with bus drawer the reason I keep emphasizing clot safety and balance is because it ensures consistency clouds a very consistent character one of the most consistent in all of Smash there are very few situations where he doesn't have an option if any at all even against his more difficult matchups like Joker Greninja wolf and so on it's very winnable it's rare to see an ultimate considering how vast and varied the roster is by no means is cloud this impenetrable wall with no weaknesses but all those weaknesses can be diminished to the point of irrelevance by Switching gears and players are starting to notice this hence why they picked him up as a secondary or they're solomaining him he's very consistent and in this day and age consistency is in short supply on the subject of consistency that very aspect is what makes Cloud applicable to a lot of players Cloud's a fundamentals character meaning the extent in which you find success depends on how good you are as a player overall he doesn't have cheesy zero to death combos like Luigi he doesn't have a get at a jail free card like game and watches upbeat and no Cloud Hazard is not as broken as fire anyone who says otherwise is on copium he doesn't have any degenerate gimmicky play Styles either just straightforward fundamentals he is the perfect moveset and attributes to adapt to a situation one of my favorite instances of this was during the match between Cola and mudas as CEO 2021 I know this is very specific and anecdotally you can apply this to any other character but bear with me call us famous for his almost Reckless aggression he has one of if not the best Advantage state in the world the only one who can match him is arguably light if you can download your opponent's habits and panic options Cloud's their capacity increases dramatically but in this particular set Cola realized his tried and true Rush down was not the right call when facing mutes's Immaculate with punish game so he switched to Claude who can apply some semblance of Roy's regression but with the added safety cushion of spacing and save pressure it's one of the few moments where I saw Cola play safe but that's why he has Claude in his back pocket he knows that Roy has critical deficiencies that are near impossible for him to get around by better playering his opponent but Cloud can sure he only takes a mile with every inch versus Roy taking two miles but if it means losing only half a mile instead of 2 miles in the other direction it's a compromise that can make all the difference in a game where entire stats are decided by a single mistake claude's a good character perhaps not the flashiest but he doesn't need to be he gets results he's strong but more importantly forgiving enough to perform consistently in a pragmatic setting other characters like Sheik may have near lindabis potential in theory but in practice that's just not feasible on account of human error plot is a phenomenal combination of speed power range Frame data offense defense close range mid-range long range so on and so forth to reward a player based on how good they are no cheese just good old-fashioned gameplay this is gameplay attributes but just like other members of the roster circumstances played a big role in its development first the online era from 2020 to 2021 highlighted his generous much of her error leading to Cloud finding great success in online tournaments to this day this coinciding with bus to him in version 7.0 brought a ton of attention to cloud and when the offline error came back in full force we saw just how effective he was on a fundamental level second the rise of DLC namely Steve and Kazu are two characters that cloud performs decently well against the pro scene is beginning to realize that solo meaning is no longer a viable option few if any characters are versatile enough to contest the other 88 members of the roster without at least two or three bad matchups that's why nowadays you see so many top level players dapple in secondaries not just them but the regional and local scenes too everyone is picking up a secondary to do a Changi match of checks as well as antimatter threats like Fighters pass too Cloud offers a very good return on investment relative to the amount of time required like I said he's a fundies character if you have good fundies that's like 90 of what you need to play him well so yes outside circumstances did contribute to his rise to problem in recent years but he was able to maintain that attention through his design and while in my humble opinion I wish he got just a few more Buffs I'd be lying if I said he wasn't a very strong character smash ultimate's meta is undergoing a volatile shift in perspective goals and priorities the driving force behind most of the game's online discussion and discourse is how to take on its almost unsolvable roster in this kind of situation stability and consistency matter more than anything else and I can't think of anyone more consistent than Cloud that's one advantage he has over top tiers so that's about a lot to say for today just a reminder I may have been a little biased given that I'm a cloud main but I mean don't take my word for it just look at the stats Cloud routinely places in the top 10 most frequently used in the competitive scene that includes Majors Nationals and regionals so mid high and top level play anyways feel free to share your thoughts on cloud in the comments down below for now though if you enjoyed the video it would be awesome if you give it a like and subscribed consider following me on Twitter at barswam joining my Discord server and checking out my other why everyone plays episodes after this one till next time thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music] [Music]

Channel: Vars III

Views: 143,510

Keywords: smash, super smash bros, smash ultimate, super smash bros ultimate, vars smash bros, vars smash, smash bros ultimate, ssbu, ssbu cloud, ssb4 cloud, cloud, ffvii cloud, ff7 cloud, cloud smash ultimate, why everyone plays cloud, sparg0 cloud, kola cloud, cloud gameplay, weop cloud, cloud vs sephiroth, cloud ff7 remake, cloud strife, ssbu cloud guide, ssbu cloud montage

Id: _T2tk9R-PUQ

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2022