How does Bowser fare against his opponents?
First off, any opponent who can create a speed disparity between Bowser and themselves has a good advantage. He is less weak to projectiles, but just as weak to dashdancing and horizontal spacial zoning using speed.
The use of projectiles is a bit more downplayed, but can create a difference in movement ability and shifts the match up more to a character by character basis instead of completely shutting down Bowser.
Fox, Sonic, Falcon, Marth, Sheik, and Ike come to mind as some difficult MUs.
I think it is worth noting that he is significantly better now against Falco due to his up-b's size and better shield game.
Vs. certain characters, Bowser can demolish them when edgeguarding. Ganon, Falcon, Falco, and Donkey Kong are examples.
His combos against the whole cast in general are ok and reliable and lead into good edge guarding options.
He can now beat Jigglypuff's dumb ass much better by being a beast and doing cool Bowser stuff.
Bowser's crouch armor actually defends him against any of Sonic's tilts, his jab combo, his down-b and side-b his dash attack and more.
For fox, it's his shine, his d-air, his jab combo, and his side b.
Same with ike's jab combo, the quick draw attack, and any hit of aether.
Shiek's ftilt, the second hit of her utilt, needles of course, jab combo, and lingering hits of b-air.
If used properly, I think his crouch armor turns fights in his favor, or at least evens them out. It's not like it limits his options too much either; he can move by crawling, albeit slowly, dtilt, up-b, or others of his faster attacks. I don't think he'll have as much of a problem with fast approaches in this iteration of the game.
Crouch armor doesnt turn fights into his favor. It is not that profound in order to make Bowser that much better. It is extremely situational and almost like a mobile crouch cancel that is not dependent on Bowser's percent.
There are great counters to his crouch armor like grabbing, dash dancing, and just hitting Bowser with a strong move like knee or stomp that can't be crouch cancelled well.
(05/16/2012 05:36 PM)DrinkingFood Wrote: [ -> ]Bowser's crouch armor actually defends him against Sonic's side-b
Does that include the jump out of spin?
(05/16/2012 07:10 PM)drpepper111 Wrote: [ -> ]Crouch armor doesnt turn fights into his favor. It is not that profound in order to make Bowser that much better. It is extremely situational and almost like a mobile crouch cancel that is not dependent on Bowser's percent.
There are great counters to his crouch armor like grabbing, dash dancing, and just hitting Bowser with a strong move like knee or stomp that can't be crouch cancelled well.
I think it's a huge factor for some matchups. It's significantly better than his cc because it doesn't allow ANY amount of flinching from attacks it absorbs. It's also a lot less situational if you use it a decent amount on characters who can't flinch him through light armor with a lot of their approaches (like ROB and Lucario). Also, of course you can give examples for falcon (knee and stomp) because falcon has no moves which can be usefully absorbed by his armor. Only the shockwave when his falcon kick hits the ground, some parts of his jab combo (the knee flinches him) and side-b. Giving one of bowser's potentially worst matchups is a pretty bad way to argue.
And you're right, he can be grabbed or be susceptible to dash dancing and the works. But he's LESS susceptible since he has more options while crouching than while shielded.
EDIT: Yes, Hyperception, it does. Not for Sonic's aerials though (Except perhaps his up aerial, I haven't tested for that).
Probably up air and both sourspot nairs
Not his nair, even sourspotted. It's weird, I know- I tend to think it not just knockback based as the final hit of Ike's jab combo won't flinch him through crouch armor, but plenty of weak sourspotted moves do...
Crouch armor is percentage based not KB based. There's a damage threshold that breaks the armor.
Of course. Sonic's nair does 13, 10, and 8, I think. The armor stops.... 7 or less? Somebody verify?
I think you're correct, but a developer would know for sure.
Also, to clarify, I think we should call it crawl armor.
Don't want to confuse crouch canceling and his crawl's super armor.
I vote crawmor.
I like to believe that one day we can talk about smash only in anagrams and portmanteaus.
One day, I'll even spell that correctly.
(05/17/2012 07:08 PM)Hyperception Wrote: [ -> ]I vote crawmor.
I like to believe that one day we can talk about smash only in anagrams and portmanteaus.
One day, I'll even spell that correctly.
Let's call it Worn Garlic Arm.
Just call it crawl armor.
Worn garlic arm doesn't even make sense.
Crawmor is where it's at
While his edgeguarding is better that it was before by a longshot, the characters you mention in your OP, drpepper, these are still characters that are easily edgeguarded and/or gimped by most of the cast. That being said, I think he still demolishes a lot of the cast when edgeguarding anyway. The catch being that if you misread them while doing so you're pretty punishable, as usual.
I can weigh in on a couple matchups, don't really know how to evaluate spacie matchups as the people I play with have been trying to learn new characters mostly so I don't play against them much.
I mostly play with 4 Percent, who mains Wario and Dedede.
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Wario
Against Wario, his playstyle forces you to play a little like Melee Ganon. Wario doesn't have a projectile, so it's basically a baiting game, and he's better at it than Bowser. You'll find that sitting back and shuffling and fast doublejumping fairs much like Melee Ganon did with his fair will serve you well. You can swat Wario's stupid high priority shoulder bash away with it, but if you're too late you'll still trade with it.
Careful using upB OOS against Wario after he butt bombs, he'll just bounce off, you won't hit him with the upB and he'll chase you with his DI and punish you if you don't get to Fortress Hog out of it.
Early grabs should become dthrows to rack up damage (16%, that's a fuck ton for a throw), this should be the obvious choice against most of the cast unless you can chain throw them with uthrow. Speaking of which, avoid uthrow against Wario, because usually he can DI well out of the range of your JC Butt Bomb aerials.
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Dedede
This is a really hard matchup for Bowser imo. Dedede outranges Bowser and has more disjointed attacks with his big dumb hammer. Fair is going to be your punisher, as usual. It's going to be difficult to get in on Dedede. You can crawl armor through his pillows (Can't remember what they're called, the little dudes he throws. Dope called them pillows once, so we just call them pillows.) But then you're left a pretty easy target for Dedede's ftilt, probably your biggest problem in this matchup. It's just always going to get in on you and it's so safe for Dedede, Bowser can't get in fast enough to punish it. Same deal with Dedede's fsmash unless you spot dodge it.
All in all against Dedede, I personally haven't had much luck. If you can take him to smaller stages like Metal Cavern, you can kind of keep him overwhelmed so he never has a chance to situate as well as abuse fortress hogging because the stage is so tiny. But even still, it's not easy.
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Peach
Really difficult as well. She can pretty much do whatever she wants to Bowser. She can run away and pull turnips and there isn't really much you can do about it. Or she can get aggressive which we all know how that goes. Again, fair, fair, fair. Slap her during her floats. She's pretty easy to kill off the top with uair, and you can abuse the super armor on your dsmash when she approaches you from floating.
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Mario
Get fucked, Bowser. Nothing has changed in 25 years.
Fireballs really are difficult to get around, being that Bowser is so huge. Be prepared to fair and upB OOS a lot.
I think that It's funny because of the bowser demo video.
@ Mario
What does he have on Bowser aside from fireballs?
@ Everything else Apples posted
I don't see you mention bair hardly at all in your matchup analysis. Considering how absurdly powerful it is, the silly angle it sends at, how much priority it has, and how long it lasts, that seems odd.
In fact you mostly just mention fair and up B (oos or to the ledge) a lot. Bowser has a lot of good moves now, he's not limited to two or three like melee.
For aerials, the Super Armor on Nair is juicy. Needs some love too, as well as Dairs oddly large hitbox and priority. Bowser has a lot of things going for him, I don't think he'll have excessive trouble with anyone once all characters have figured out what they need to do against him and he's figured out how to deal with them.
Dair and Nair are situationally good. Fair is a better zoning move and has better versatility.
I can see DDD being difficult for Bowser. He can stop Bowser's approaches and grab his whiffs from afar. He can combo Bowser and edgeguard Bowser well with back airs or fair. Personally, I have no real issues with any DDDs I've played so far with Bowser, but I think its within the realm of possibility that Bowser have a hard time with that character.
F-air is good for zoning and keeping people out but when you're against people that can keep you at n-air is amazing if you learn to take advantage of the heavy armor.
D-air is good sometimes because if it's shielded it kills that shield to near breaking, or if it isn't fully charged, then the shield is gone and you get a free f-smash.
I think Bowser's worst match-up of all time is Link though.