Hey, it's Reflex here. It's been a long and bumpy road, both as a Wario main and a PMBR developer. It's had its highs and lows, with a lot of thinking and some heads butting along the way. As most players will attest to, Wario's 2.1 design did not hold up to the test of time -- He is almost universally considered to be in the bottom 5 characters, and he is not even that popular to use as a "fun but mediocre" character. We (the PMBR) did our best to figure out what was lacking, as well as what design changes would make the character more enjoyable to play, both as and against him. Wario in 2.5 retains his general feel as a "weave and confound" type of character while having a much better flow between moves, and being better-equipped to "create" mistakes against your opponent. The new Wario gives you a much greater sense of control and more reliance on your own ability, rather than your opponent's matchup (in)experience. The result is something that we hope you're going to enjoy, both as a user and an opponent (I know I do!).

Upon Wario’s initial release, the PMBR was redefining Wario with the goal of creating a novel concept: a crafty mix-up character that paid homage to the well-established and much-loved Wario Land series. While we largely succeeded in adding flavor and setting the groundwork for a dynamic playstyle that matches his wiles, there were several apparent gameplay issues that we’ve been working on addressing for the upcoming release of Demo 2.5.

Unfortunately, many of the mix-ups we were trying to build into Wario ended up falling more into the category of “gimmicks” -- for the purpose of the discussion here, I will define a gimmick as a tactic that becomes less reliable as your opponent becomes more used to it, one which often has limited flexibility or depth. Such gimmicks may make a character appear strong upon initial release, but with time and experience the character starts to lag behind others. Conversely, a true mix-up will maintain viability for the duration of the metagame. With these tweaks, we are confident that Wario has become a more fluid, rewarding character that is more than capable of accomplishing his dirty work no matter how many times your opponent has fought him.

The changes to his grabs are undoubtedly his greatest gains. To start, Chomp (Neutral-Special) now retains Wario's excellent horizontal aerial mobility, creating many more opportunities to get inside and requiring the opponent to think twice about how to defend against Wario's approach. This gives him greater offensive and defensive capabilities by helping to alleviate Wario's weakness to crouch canceling and giving him a powerful new option to catch certain attacks.

Also, while Wario was blessed with a great non-command grab range, the rewards for landing any of his grabs were few; with the exception of fastfaller-specific combos, none of Wario's throws allowed for much follow-up pressure. In order to help, we've changed many of his throws to give him greater rewards for landing a grab. The throw from Chomp now has less ending lag and lower knockback, so mixing up its forward and reverse throws can yield true follow-ups. No DI allows for a weak aerial follow-up, such as F-Air, while incorrect DI can lead to much more, including a regrab, U-Air, F-Smash, footstool, or even a smelly Waft! As for his normal throws, we’ve increased the damage of his tech-chase D-Throw to 12%, decreased its startup time, and slightly reduced its cooldown. To compliment it, we’ve totally reworked his F-Throw; it now looks and functions similarly to his Wario Land enemy throw, and is chargeable by holding Attack. The charged form of this throw acts much like his previous F-Throw, so no functionality is lost, and the uncharged F-Throw is a fast, weak toss that functions as a mix-up with D-Throw; DIing behind Wario to avoid D-Throw follow-ups allows for true combos out of F-Throw, and DIing away from Wario in anticipation of F-Throw allows some true combos out of D-Throw, making Wario's grab game a dangerous threat at lower percents.


One of Wario’s central mix-ups was supposed to revolve around Shoulder Bash and Dash Grab -- Shoulder Bash had terrible end lag when hitting shields, but if Wario could pressure the opponent into mistakenly shielding a Dash Grab, he’d get a reward. One of the first issues was that Dash Grab, though similar in appearance to Shoulder Bash, would only go a fixed distance which was too close for short range and stopped before the full length of the actual Shoulder Bash it was imitating. To fix this, the Dash Grab now continues running forwards until you release A/Z, at which point it transitions into the actual grabbing animation. The shortest distance is capable of grabbing a foe nearly directly in front of Wario, and the longest distance matches the longest Shoulder Bash length, allowing for flexible use that can be applied without giving away your ploy. Another issue with this mix-up was the ineffectiveness of Shoulder Bash outside of tech chase opportunities, so some tweaks have done a great deal to make it a more useful option in general. Most importantly, the grounded version can now clank with enemy attacks and projectiles, preventing it from losing to most grounded offensive moves. Since the strength of Shoulder Bash increases as it travels, you’ll be able to clank with, and even override, stronger attacks the farther you travel. Finally, his Shoulder Charge Squat Cancel is more attractive now as it travels further, is interruptible sooner, and has low knockback armor protecting it, creating an interesting new option for tech-chasing and getting through the opponent's defense.

Speaking of combos, we’ve been working on boosting his combo game, enabling him to be better suited to creating openings, rather than being forced to wait for them. Wario now maintains more horizontal momentum from his run when he jumps, giving him a small boost to SHFFL options. His F-Air is now more of a dedicated comboing tool, with a higher angle and shorter duration. The shorter duration allows you to SH F-Air waveland, SH F-Air DJ -> aerial attack, etc. Although it’s harder to do a simple F-Air -> F-Air gimp, all of his aerials now have better offstage synergy, allowing for more dynamic edgeguarding. N-Air’s lingering hit is now a weak semi-spike, and the overall duration of N-Air has been reduced to expand its offstage options. Another result of a faster F-Air and N-Air is that footstool opportunities from late hits are more prevalent, so creative players have an interesting new tool to extend their combos or gimp unsuspecting opponents. Lastly, D-Tilt’s knockback and angle were adjusted to make this a more reliable combo starter. Waft now goes into Fall instead of Special Fall and has stronger vertical KB on the ascent, allowing players to use it as a safe means of finishing a combo offstage and to land an early KO off the top in conjunction with U-Air juggles. This also allows for the ability to improve his recovery, giving players the option to use it as a substantial, relatively safe means of recovery in exchange for raw KO potential.

We’ve made a few other tweaks to his moveset to polish it up or to add some bite to otherwise-lacking attacks. F-Tilt had its hitboxes trimmed down to better match the animation, had its knockback more focused into the tip, and now has a larger initial rear-back dodge that can be extended by holding A/Z. Doing this will continue winding up his punch -- this does not increase the strength of the attack, but it can prolong the natural dodge built into the move’s startup, potentially throwing off your opponent's timing. Using the move and getting the most reward now requires more thought and better spacing. B-Air's sweetspot has a slight increase in damage and knockback, the sourspot has more active frames to better match the animation, and its hitlag has been adjusted to make it a little safer on shield, making the move more forgiving to use effectively. Finally, the multi-hits on Up-B and Up-Smash now link more reliably, patching up an unfortunate quirk and helping these attacks to function as intended.

These steps go a long way in making this burly brawler's moveset a much more cohesive package. With nastier mix-ups, a stronger approach game, and refined edgeguarding options for the greed in all of us, this new-and-improved Wario is a real gas. He'll keep opponents guessing and take his players farther than ever before.

Hey guys, it’s metroid again! This time, “that Ike guy” is going to talk about one of the most hotly debated characters from Demo 2.1 – Ike.

Without a doubt, Ike has achieved more tournament success than any of the other Brawl newcomers in Project M; with tournament wins across the nation, a 2nd place finish out of 106 at FC Legacy, and a 1st place finish at The Big House 2, Ike has become renowned as a notable threat in tournament play. However, these results raise a huge question – what’s the source of Ike’s success? Do people simply lack match-up experience or does Ike’s design have to be addressed? Although it’s certainly a mix of both, there are some aspects of Ike’s design that have raised legitimate concerns. These concerns have been addressed in Demo 2.5.

New Sweetspot System
In Demo 2.1, one of the complaints was that Ike’s gameplay was too shallow; it seemed like there was little reason to space attacks to get the sweetspots because his sweetspotted attacks weren't that much better compared to his tipped attacks. In Demo 2.5, Ike has a new sweetspot system for all of his sword attacks. While the tipped attacks remain mostly the same, the non-tipped attacks have been broken down into "blade," "hilt," and "arm" hitboxes. The hilt hitboxes do slightly more damage and knockback, while the blade and arm hitboxes both do slightly less damage and knockback. However, "all of his sword attacks" really does mean just that - this new system now also applies to his smashes and a few other attacks, such as Utilt, that previously did the same damage and knockback regardless of spacing.

With this new system comes the burning question – what about hitlag? In Demo 2.1, Ike’s sword attacks had very little hitlag, even on shields. This made Ike’s attacks extremely hard to punish on block, since the opponent would be put into shield stun and Ike would have less cooldown on his attacks compared to other characters. Not to worry though, because this mechanic has been changed in Demo 2.5. The hitlag for his hitboxes is increased, with the hilt sweetspot having the most hitlag. Depending on the attack and Ike's spacing, this change makes it much easier to punish him for hitting an opponent's shield. With these tweaks, Ike’s spacing game now requires more precision on the user’s part in order to take him to his fullest potential!

Increased Commitment on Quick Draw
In Demo 2.1, Ike had very little commitment when using Quick Draw (QD). Except for 9 frames of QD startup, Ike could (1) manually QD attack, (2) automatically QD attack when the opponent is in range, or (3) jump out of QD on the first frame of QD travel.* Although it is technically only three options, Ike can do many things from jumping out of QD, including (4) jump-cancel grabbing, (5) jump-cancel USmashing, and (6) wavedashing; this list doesn’t even include the ability to turning around before jumping, which leads to the reverse of the above options! Wavedashing is a particularly powerful option because it allowed Ike to avoid any sort of commitment to using QD. Because of this, Ike can now only jump out of QD on frame 3 and after instead of frame 1, committing him to at least 2 frames of QD travel. While this doesn't sound like much, keep in mind that Ike moves at a high speed while using QD - the two frames of travel are about a third of a Battlefield platform. However, the extra commitment doesn’t nullify its utility; QD is still an extremely useful and unique tool in Ike’s arsenal, so anyone facing him should watch out for it!

Moveset Changes
In Demo 2.1, Ike’s moveset had a lot of things that seemed excessive – this included an enormous FAir, an up+B that was difficult to challenge, a great grab range, very high knockback on FSmash, and gigantic hitboxes on Eruption. Because of this, Ike has received a lot of miscellaneous changes to his moveset.
- Dash attack had a sizable range because the animation caused him to near teleport forward a character length or two as he swung. In Demo 2.5, the animation was touched up so he no longer warps during the swing, but does take a larger step forward at the start. As a result, he does not travel quite as far overall.
- DTilt only meteors at the hilt sweetspot, with the rest of the attack popping mostly upwards that can set both grounded and airborne targets up nicely for combos.
- FSmash is a bit weaker, and like his other smashes is now spacing dependent, which reduces the potency at the tip especially. If you can land the sweetspot on it, however, it is still slightly stronger than before.
- NAir has weaker knockback and a more horizontal trajectory on the ending portion of the move to remove knockback redundancy. In addition, because of the new sweetspot system, the tipped hit is even better for combos, and the late hit works well for combos even at high damages.
- FAir active frames now start slightly later and end slightly earlier.
- DAir spike on the hilt sweetspot sends at an angle instead of straight down to match other spike trajectories. Landing this sweetspot on grounded opponents makes it a little harder to combo with, but landing it on aerial opponents makes it harder for them to DI in and land on the stage.
- UThrow and DThrow have increased knockback growth. The knockback changes to DThrow make it more dynamic and good on floaty characters at high damage.
- BThrow and FThrow release the opponent slightly closer to Ike. FThrow starts off weaker and scales in knockback a bit faster. BThrow is also slightly harder to DI.
- QD is now capped to two walljumps before he touches the ground.
- Ike's weight has been lowered to his original weight in Brawl.
- Standing grab range has been slightly shortened.
- Aether (up+B) has decreased range and knockback armor has reduced active frames.
- Eruption has smaller hitboxes, super armor changed to knockback armor, armor has reduced active frames, and the flames are now blue!


So, with all of these changes, what new tools has Ike been given? For starters, Ike now has a slightly faster initial dash and slower run; this translates into more movement at the start of his dash and increased sliding distance from a jump cancel, which gives him better control over pivots. He is also able to enter into a run faster. In addition, Ike’s dash attack now has a large step in the start-up animation compared to warping right before the slash. Because of this change, Ike now has a sizable reverse boost grab (interrupt a dash attack with turnaround grab, no jump-cancel required) and dash-attack canceled USmash (interrupt a dash attack with an USmash, aka DACUS). While it may seem redundant to DACUS when you can JC USmash out of QD, DACUS’ing cuts out the time required to start QD and enter jump squat – that’s at least 9 frames! At certain percents, FThrow and BThrow both come close to true comboing into a DACUS, whereas reverse NAir to DACUS is a true combo. Happy DACUS’ing!

In conclusion, Ike has received a lot of changes since Demo 2.1. These tweaks, especially the commitment on QD, require some adjusting from Demo 2.1 to Demo 2.5 on the user’s part; we recognize that a lot of people have put considerable time into Ike (including me). However, they contribute to a much deeper and interesting character that takes more time commitment to succeed with. I’m extremely pleased with how he’s turned out and can’t wait to see you guys try him for yourselves!

*Note: All Demo 2.1 frame data references were taken from MonkUnit’s frame data thread.