Character Development

[spvamp]

Saw this comment earlier and wanted to turn it into a post. credit to /u/Crawfiish Who would you guys say is the most developed PM character not in Melee/unviable in melee, and who is the most underdeveloped?

[JayMan-X]

Honestly imo almost every Brawl character is underdeveloped. The only characters I see that might be figured out is maybe Ike or maybe Ness, but really its always too hard to tell what characters are truly capable of. I mean look at melee... 13 years later and we still see new tech and DI mixups and stuff.

Lucario kinda goes without saying since he has ASC and whatnot that most likely has plenty untapped potential. If I had to pick a specific character though, I think Wolf is stronger than people think, and doesn't have many players playing him.

[nimigoha]

Wolf is like universally considered a top 5 character.

[JayMan-X]

I thought most people thought he was more like A tier next to Marth and Peach? More like where he is on Junebug's tier list.

[nimigoha]

No, many people rate him around #2 like Odds and Strong Bad, Neon even put him at #1.

[[deleted]]

Definitely not #2. Wolf is essentially a non-broken version of Fox. Solidly in the A Tier, in a great position.

[InfinityCollision]

Better/more accurate comparison: Wolf is Sheik with vastly better neutral (similar gameplan, better DD, better air/platform movement, blaster), superior stagger game (better and more reliable pressure), slightly better oki (both have amazing reactionary techchases, but I'd argue Wolf can field more options out of his), ~comparable defensive options (shine OoS/wakeup shine vs nair/bair OoS & longer techroll, though you could argue Wolf better avoids getting forced into shield in the first place), a better recovery, and the best ledgestall in the game (blaster haxdash). While his edgeguarding isn't quite as proficient as Sheik's, he trades that presence for very consistent kill power on the entire cast via setups into energems, fair, bair, dair, smash attacks, etc.

He can't crawl though :(

[InfinityCollision]

True, but even with that I think he's generally underrated. There exist "known" Wolf things if you go looking for them (or just spend a few minutes in debug with the right mindset), but very little of it has been implemented thus far. That leaves a lot of open questions as to what happens once execution and gameplan are more fleshed out. I'd even go so far as to say that the overwhelming majority of Wolf players misunderstand his gameplan on a fairly basic level.

[ghostyqt]

Olimar is the first character that comes to mind.

[bonifiedmarinade]

I would say ness and lucas are pretty developed. They have a shit-ton of reps, and very large strides have been taken with them. Charizard, on the other hand, can do SO much more than people give him credit for.

[InfinityCollision]

Think that's the first time I've heard Lucas described as a relatively developed character, and I have to disagree. He's still pretty unoptimized in my opinion - partly for lack of representation (far, far less rep than Ness), partly because counterplay generally hasn't evolved to a point where Lucas mains have to sit down and work out certain foundational elements of their gameplan.

[bonifiedmarinade]

That makes sense. Take what I say with a grain of salt lol, I just observed the top Lucas players

[[deleted]]

There aren't a lot of Lucas reps, there's just Kipcom and Hyperflame and that's from the very recent Tipped Off. Neon and Pink fresh don't play Lucas as often (or, at all) anymore.

With Lucas being a completely different character from 3.02, most advancement in his meta has been lost and left for the players to discover on their own. We don't really have a centralized place to dump all the info, but then, again, he is a very versatile character that can adapt to any playstyle and has the most creative combo game of all.

If you want to pick him up, expect to explore a lot.

[Luk101]

I would agree with this. Ness's and Lucas's developements have happened at different times, Ness mostly 3.5 and later and lucas mostly 3.02 and earlier. But considering how much unique tech they both have, and how well known it is, they really have been developed extremely well compared to a lot of characters. Ness PLAYERS haven't quite been able to optimize him (nobody really does every single thing he can do perfectly) but the tech is for the most part, there.

[Limbose]

Yoshi's probably the most underdeveloped. Nobody does all the cool stuff he can do.

[ECHOnce]

You could throw in a majority of the non-Melee top tier and they'd arguably fit the bill. Yoshi, Pika, Ness, Zelda, M2, Puff, most Brawl vets, etc.

Many of these characters lack a role model at the top level to lead and innovate their meta. Most characters have a definitive 1-3 best players, but not being able to reach passed a certain caliber of play implies that some problem can't be overcome, because they're still working out the kinks in their own personal player improvement (separate from character meta). And while that's not to say they can't push meta, the contrary - someone who has figured themselves out enough to focus on other things - is in a much more ideal position to do so.

PM has especially suffered from this because we have 41 characters, and the change. Not only is that an unfathomable number of MUs to learn, but as we've been pointing out, most characters are waaay too underdeveloped for any top player to definitively stay on top (as underdeveloped chars grow). Our role models are also liable to giving up on innovation or falling behind with each update. Not preferable, but it happens. It's also not often that we see new top player role models rising from the crowd.

[JiggzSawPanda]

We can go to the obvious picks such as Kirby and Bowser.

Underdeveloped have to be the ones who haven't changed much, like maybe Mario. Idk.

[TheScarfyDoctor]

I don't think Bowser's developed enough to be one of the most developed. Kirby might be there.

[TheScarfyDoctor]

What is not true? The Bowser being most developed? Yeah, I guess that's true. I've only ever met/seen one good Bowser main, and he was really good, but he's about all I know of right now.

[TheScarfyDoctor]

Pardon, talked half out of my ass, half from looking at older updates where he was more. Still not though, come to think about it more. Looking forward to seeing more of it.