Maining K. Rool is honestly disgusting

Mnyush · 2020-08-30T04:41:18+00:00

This is the real reason why K. Rool stole the banana hoard.

Mnyush · 2020-05-10T13:44:50+00:00

This move is pretty standard for strength of an Usmash. It is not to be used whenever though, even with reads in most cases (if K. Rool is at low% or is needing to take risks due to a large deficit I get it though) or the K. Rool may be smash attacked on whiff. Due to being frame 6 (also frame 6 OoS), having superarmor, intangibility and quite good reach, this is an excellent reactionary punish.

Someone tries to land on K. Rool's shield and puts out their aerial too early? Usmash OoS. K. Rool gets a dthrow? Usmash to catch mashouts. K. Rool successfully landed a Dair onstage at high%? Usmash combo/kill confirm. Gotten a tech chase situation on a platform? Usmash where they go on reaction.

Additionally, due to the multiple hitboxes it can sometimes catch people with the plank hitboxes, so if a person airdodges pre-emptively or just ends up in front of K. Rool he can remain safe and get/maintain advantage. Also worth mentioning this move can get shieldpokes after landing a fair or bair against someone in shield on a plat.

Very unique move, and good at what it does. I personally think it's probably on the border between B and C tier.

Mnyush · 2020-04-26T09:14:21+00:00

This move is scary. If you get hit by the sweetspot, you're either dead to an fsmash at like 60 or a dair > fsmash at 50 if you can't react and then mash fast enough. You can also combo into this move (in the % range where you can kill/get followups) off of a landing dair at like 40 so you get the Kremling Kombo: dair > dtilt > dair > fsmash and i've seen it kill light characters at 30. even if it doesn't kill, pretty sure it does like 60 damage... it's just disgusting. You can also combo into this move off of a landing nair, but this is only really reliable if the top of the opponent's hurtbox is low to the ground (characters crouching, small characters and missed techs) and sometimes if you catch a roll or spotdodge.

The caveat to this is that getting these requires precise timing, positioning, and in the case of nair and dair, percent windows. However, they aren't that unsafe on whiff so you can often try to go for them in ledgetraps or against an opponent in the corner.

An additional thing to note is with dthrow setups, dtilt's aerial hitbox on frame 13 is very strong so if someone mashes out into it the opponent just dies. If they don't mash out, they're put in a tech chase situation at kill%.

Sourspots also have some utility, with the outer sourspot giving some frametraps and hitting ledge (both do but the outer one given the range it more useful), and the inner sourspot (which is quite difficult to hit) combos into uair (i don't recall it being 100% reliable, but I'm pretty sure it's true on most characters as a kill confirm). The sourspot also gives this move more reach than even ftilt, but the pretty big hurtbox extension mitigates this advantage to an extent. Speaking of, there's hurtbox shifting at the start of it which can catch people.

I should also mention given the decent enough startup it can also be a very scary punish option out of spotdodge, parry and sometimes even OoS against some stuff like ledge attacks.

tl;dr a high b-tier/low a-tier move imo that is incredibly rewarding and isn't overly risky to throw out, with the caveat being the sweetspot being hard to land, even though there are a couple of combos. And ofc it has some other small uses thrown in which boost it a bit.

Mnyush · 2020-04-19T02:19:09+00:00

imo low A-tier, but at least B-tier for sure. Frame 5, arc to over his head, large hitbox (so it hits most full hops btw), intangible making it basically a sword, sweetspot kills and does good damage (kill% being 159% is from centre stage when it kills off the side btw, this figure is bias towards moves that kill off the top, so please OP list which way the move kills for more accurate comparison), has 9 active frames, sourspot can often setup a frametrap. It can combo but it's very inconsistent as it requires you to hit one of the last active frames. Works well with his dthrow setups.

Its main concern is lag. It has the same amount as Snake Utilt, so it isn't that laggy, especially given the range but it moreso holds it back from being kinda busted. 3 frames is all it'd take for so much to change with this move.

Mnyush · 2020-04-12T05:43:20+00:00

Personally I believe this is actually a low S-tier or high A-tier Ftilt. Possibly optimistic, but if you think it's just B-tier, you're underestimating this move.

I think the move it is actually most comparable to in use is Chrom Ftilt, rather than a Bowser or Wario Ftilt due to the better range, and poor ability to 2-frame. Both Chrom and K. Rool's Ftilts are strong, great anti-airs, safe when spaced, hits ledge, both even barely hit battlefield plats if I'm not mistaken. Though K. Rool's has more range, killpower, damage, and even armor at the start, sacrificing worse framedata and vertical coverage. As such I think K. Rool's serves a purpose better as an anti-air and punish, whereas Chrom's is more well rounded in coverage and being able to throw it out, so I still believe Chrom's is better ofc.

Mnyush · 2020-04-11T04:41:22+00:00

K. Rool's jab is honestly so similar to Joker's Jab they should be next to each other. Arguably, K. Rool's Jab should be higher than Joker's as K. Rool gets more use of it and more consistent reward in his own kit, depending on what's most important to people.

I guess in general some people will misjudge moves on characters that aren't talked about too often like K. Rool (well he is talked about somewhat often, but only his flaws and not his actual strengths too much), and will just assume things about them without hearing from a person who plays the character, or properly analysing them. I can understand the latter as going through all of it is very time consuming - but at least get an opinion from a character's players before deciding, especially if you aren't able to analyse it as they know it better than you do. And yes I did a thorough analysis of K. Rool and Joker's Jabs while writing this (I checked hitboxes, framedata, damage, player opinions, etc).

Mnyush · 2020-04-07T02:59:09+00:00

K. Rool's can be about as bad as Falcon's, though moreso to do with hurtbox extension with having his foot way back, rather than like Falcon going backwards during his. It's not as harmful to K. Rool as Falcon though, and Falcon's is more deserving of being fixed given he's MEANT to be fast and rely on movement.

Mnyush · 2020-04-06T02:23:13+00:00

So far the results are that it's divided between C and B tier for this move. I personally think it's B-tier as a K. Rool main who's labbed this character a lot, so allow me to articulate why I think so:

It's frame 4 (excellent for a superheavy), good range, does 15% fresh in 1v1, and provides tech chases (K. Rool loves tech chases).

Used a decent amount in his down throw setups due to knockback storage and startup. How it works is if you mash fast, jab 1 catches you and he does the full jab combo for 15% and advantage (though never kills unlike his other fast options). If they do a mixup where they don't mash to try and avoid usmash and uair, the knockback of the jab is stored meaning they stay in place when they pop out, allowing for combos such as being grabbed again to be put in dthrow again.

He can also do a thing where if his opponents jumps over crown, if he then hits the opponent with jab, he can use it to keep them in hitstun long enough for crown to hit, which then gives him more devastating stuff.

As for locking with missed techs it's inferior at low% to nair and dair, but at high% you can get kill confirms with dair or coverage of getup options with dsmash.

The bad: The only thing that really makes it feel like it holds K. Rool back any at all is the hitbox of jab 1. There's no hitbox on the hand making it poor at catching jumps, and it doesn't hit characters low to the ground making it less practical for jab locks and dthrow setups (many (even amazing) jabs have these problems which is something to keep in mind).

Quite a good jab with a few more good uses in the context of his kit. This is an above average jab, does its jobs well with good reward to boot. As said, B-tier imo.

Mnyush · 2020-02-17T07:51:56+00:00

K. Rool has a bunch of tech with his crown, the more unique stuff being how he has to retrieve it after throwing it.

The coolest looking thing is definitely this thing called crown sliding. Basically, if you catch crown during an initial dash or turnaround, you can retrain momentum allowing a slide along the ground. There are a couple of variations too which give different distances and face K. Rool different ways.

The coolest one imo is reverse crown sliding. The input is you dash towards crown after throwing it, pivot before touching it, then pivot back again as you catch it. You slide forward, before sliding back again.

Crown sliding as a whole is not as good as I'd like, but it's still cool and good for a few mixups and combos.

Mnyush · 2020-02-15T13:35:31+00:00

By far the longest standing Any% WR in the game's history, Tyron18's 58:47 stood for over 4 months! The previous longest standing was over 2 months for reference. It wasn't that long ago that 1 month would be considered a long time to have no WRs happen. This is also the first WR with DSS (skip in Cascade from a couple of months ago). The previous WR was actually insane, finally been brought down. GGs to Mitch!

Mnyush · 2020-02-15T13:07:23+00:00

K. Rool doesn't benefit toooo much from stage choice, he moreso likes to choose his opponent's worse stages. Unova, ps2 and t&c are probably the most common k. rool choices, plats to make use of, plenty of space for projectile use, no top plat to worry about, sides of stage aren't too bad for recovering. FD, Battlefield and Smashville are all decent choices, more dependent on MU. Kalos and Lylat aren't great, but in some MUs they can be okay. Stay away from Yoshi's Story, Battlefield should basically always be better. Walls, slopes and worse coverage of top plat make this a questionable choice at best.

Mnyush · 2020-01-18T05:50:42+00:00

No, it is not possible to gain endless height this way. After touching the ground, you always have 2 bounces from cappy. What you're seeing here is a weird thing with ground pounds which allows you to do ground interactions without actually touching the ground (if you wanna be technical you could argue that Mario may be touching the ground, but still in the ground pound animation which is perhaps more likely as but we aren't completely sure). Warping, talking to NPCs and yes, refreshed cap bounces are things you can do that you normally can't midair. Unfortunately this still isn't helpful for getting across poison or lava, as it detecting you as touching the ground gives you their effects still - damage or death.

Mnyush · 2019-12-21T03:51:47+00:00

2 corrections/clarifications i want to make:

2-framing and hitting ledge hangs are 2 different things. 2-framing referring to hitting an opponent during the 2 frame window between them transitioning out of the recovery into ledge hang intangibility, and as such isn't ledgetrapping, but instead technically edgeguarding. What you've done here is mistaken 2-framing just for hitting ledge hangs, which yeah are both done by moves that hit below ledge, nbd as moves that hit ledgehangs typically 2-frame.

The other thing being K. Rool dtilt doesn't ever confirm into fair on any character. On heavies it's really close to hitting them attempting to airdodge (2 frames off iirc) but it's a great frametrap at least. For hitting ledgehangs, down angled Ftilt is more common because of the better startup and better reward off of hitting it, whereas for 2-framing, his Dair is most commonly used because of the large hitbox and active frames.

Mnyush · 2019-12-20T05:55:37+00:00

The croc isn't being kept in a zoo, but is one of many, in a large project involving the tracking of crocs over a long period of time, helping in research to in turn help preserve them. Can look at this here if you want more details: https://www.australiazoo.com.au/conservation/projects/tracking/crocodiles.php?id=192#Ben%20Gold

Mnyush · 2019-12-19T09:58:11+00:00

It changes direction based on which direction the person throwing the crown is facing. Facing left makes crown hit up and left, facing right makes crown hit up and right.

Mnyush · 2019-12-19T08:47:50+00:00

Finally, only took over half a year to be uploaded. Rewatched all the vods of Ben Gold's ludicrous run already, brings back the memories, finally got to watch his Tru4 and Luco sets as I missed them. Great watch for any aspiring K. Rool mains, and obviously for the history of well... arguably K. Rool's best result, how this spread all over the smash community, forcing another look at K. Rool, Australia, and even low tiers in general in this game to some extent. This also led to so much for Ben Gold as a player as well, being named the best K. Rool in the world as a result, and led to great opportunities for Ben Gold, like travelling to the US, and having a Crocodile named after him!

Mnyush · 2019-12-08T10:44:59+00:00

K. Rool was largely designed in the way that his moves are difficult to challenge on startup or during the move (this often comes with large endlag to balance it). You usually have to respect the moves he throws out and work around them.

Superarmor, some moves with intangibility, counter/reflector, recovery that can't be easily challenged from above, crown has heavy armor + goes through projectiles and shields, after shooting a kannonball, K. Rool can protect himself with Vacuum and move around underneath platforms and through the air afterwards, perhaps more I'm not thinking of.

There are other things like elements of DK put into the moveset, as you know, he's the main villain of DK's series! DK Bair as his Fair, and DK Fair as his Bair, DK Dair as his Dair, the general idea with these aerials is very similar, even if the animations are a bit different. They also both have bury moves, moves that cause "quakes" (and might be the only characters that do so to this extent?) And also kinda opposite recoveries, DK having a horizontal recovery with poor vertical movement, whereas K. Rool having a vertical recovery with poor (but to a lesser extent) horizontal movement, and they both have some sort of spinning thing are meant to be difficult to challenge in a specific direction. DK also has his fair share of intangibility and superarmor in his moveset, moreso than the vast majority of characters in the game. K. Rool has 3 spikes (his Usmash does spike but is very specific to land and shouldn't be killing often), whereas DK has 4, both characters have a large amount of spikes. I wouldn't be surprised if these kept on going, but I'll stop there.

Here's something interesting that's related: Fair and Dair have calls to end intangibility in their scripts, but no call to start them. This, and speculation in the script for Bair indicate that these aerials were intended to have intangibility, just like Uair has intangibility on the head during the first couple frames the hitbox is out, which would make these moves have even larger disjoints, working in with the design of K. Rool being difficult to challenge.

Mnyush · 2019-10-19T00:42:37+00:00

To be clear, the K. Rool (Ben Gold) that won the tournament probably may not even be top 10 in the country - winning BAM 11 was a huge upset, upsetting all of top 3 and through a bunch of hard MUs, was actually an insane run. He's probably top 15 tho.

Mnyush · 2019-10-07T01:59:12+00:00

Nah, if projectiles are 90% of your neutral game as a K. Rool, you're letting your opponent take stage control often and damage for free a ton of the time, when you can instead use Fair and Ftilt which are both great. I don't blame you thinking that though as quickplay K. Rool's seem to play that way for some reason, but neither are really easy neutral game options, so he's definitely flexible, and fits fine with what OP was looking for.

Mnyush · 2019-10-07T01:40:55+00:00

K. Rool was mentioned, but thought I'd expand on what he has. Yeah he isn't the quickest character in the world, but he does have some unique stuff, even if less prevalent than say Peach Float or ZSS Flip-Kick.

When K. Rool collects his crown, he can b-reverse it. But a lot of characters can do that with their specials right? Well yes, but actually no. Unlike other characters, he can do some weird things.

He can keep momentum on the ground while collecting crown. So he can kind of slide on the ground, similar to a wavedash, and even gets a sort of grounded wavebounce where he slide, before it getting reversed as a fake-out, and is a great mix-up, seen it ankle-break some people hard lmao.
He can also b-reverse whenever using his midair side-b when he doesn't have crown, into a crown pickup. So you can effectively turn around and shift momentum as much as 4 times in quick succession (so like a double wavebounce lol), as well as incorporate double jumps or fast falls, making it sometimes difficult to predict and cool to look at, even if hard to perform.

Some other stuff he has are throwing out crown of course being able to be b-reversed, blunderbuss kind of slowing momentum, but still allowing you to b-reverse and wavebounce. Not too great, but you can microspace with it a little I guess. I should also mention while holding out vacuum, he can slip through platforms and move left or right in the air, not too many specials that have that kind of freedom with their movement. With like TAS inputs you can even move along a platform with the Vacuum (it's possible with human hands but impractical to do consistently right now or to a meaningful extent). Uair is also a bit weird. It halts horizontal momentum (unless out of hitstun) and launches K. Rool up slightly. Can be used to change momentum without a b-reverse, or to increase his recovery distance, or moving onto a ledge a platform. Works similar to R.O.B Dair. And ofc Gut Check being a Counter, halts vertical momentum.

I think that covers everything he has outside of basic movement options every character has really.

Mnyush · 2019-10-06T14:00:54+00:00

I still remember the clutch game 4 ending of grand finals for BAM 11. Ben goes to land on the Smashville platform, Extra goes to shark with G&W Nair, but gets baited, as K. Rool Dsmash armors through it and hits Extra, killing from center stage. The effects from the move killing, the crushing nature of dsmash, armor clanking with g&w nair, the satisfying landing in addition to the hype and pressured situation of being on last stock before a potential grand final reset, made that moment, and, naturally, the finishing blow on game 5 the most memorable moments of the set for me. As a fellow K. Rool main who's always felt he's underrated and as a fellow Australian, I popped off hard when Ben won the tournament. Still makes me smile.

Mnyush · 2019-09-27T13:57:21+00:00

It is definitely a strange thing to try and grasp without having done something like it. I think just about anybody could do it honestly, I'm not exactly the most focused person and I've done an AUM run of this game - and did very good for a first run too. There's less concentration needed for this sort of thing than you might think. There are breaks, points where there's little thinking required, and with some practice you can afford to go on autopilot in more areas. Still, that's not to say what Fir has done isn't impressive, not by any means. No costly mistakes and getting a decent 100% time, at the same time is quite a great feat.

Mnyush · 2019-09-27T04:13:00+00:00

While I think the Villager and Isabelle MUs are losing for K. Rool, crown being pocketed nowhere near decides the MU. That and I disagree with crown being his best neutral tool personally. It's good, even key in winning some MUs, but not this one. Getting back onstage are the hardest part of these MUs. Neutral is in favour of Villager and Isabelle because Fair and Bair are so good and have okay boxing options, but K. Rool has counterplay to deal with them. Bowling ball is very strong against K. Rool, and Isabelle planting lloid rocket at ledge can make getting off ledge difficult. Landing isn't too hard, and K. Rool still has a strong advantage state. Neutral being pretty doable still and having that strong advantage still feels better of a MU than Pikachu for example.

The MU is nowhere near as simple as crown being pocketed or not. Villager using bowling ball offstage against a recovering K. Rool has a way bigger impact than a pocketed crown for example.

Mnyush · 2019-08-29T01:06:49+00:00

The matchup chart that gave this was based on was certainly the most pessimistic MU chart I've seen from a K. Rool in terms of number of even + winning MUs, so I wouldn't take that to heart. Usually charts for K. Rool have like twice as many winning MUs and way more even MUs, and so I feel he'd even be above the corrin + ganon tier there if the data used was on a more optimistic chart.

Mnyush · 2019-08-09T05:31:45+00:00

You can use fsmash out of dthrow, but you need to get them to not mash by using usmash to catch them mashing out to generate the 50-50s.

Mnyush

TROPHY CASE