Eten

I stopped playing my resto druid a while ago but it was pretty fun to balance HoTs on you and teammates while rolling out CC and being uncatchable. I don't know how it changed since then. Although it was cool that you could be virtually unkillable and could lead mindless objective-ignoring alliance all over the place, it was amazing when I partnered up with my SL/SL lock buddy and MS warrior in BGs. It was a combination of CC, damage, healing, and survivability all in one because as a druid you can rotate your CC while maintaining massive healing through HoTs and never have to strain your mana with direct heals. There were so many options and contingency options... You know like how any warrior in a BG with heals can be a serious force of power, but to also have a SL/Sl lock around that can go against 3 other casters solo while never running out of steam? It was then ridiculous, we had more than enough CC to watch each other's backs. It was almost our goal to purposefully make the other players feel bad as we, without communication, would alternate off fears and cyclones and roots on two players as we killed and kited and healed through the other three. Then again, that was also around the time that Disc priests become so survivable that I watched a troll priest casually wand a lone warrior to death at the farm AB node ending with full health and mana without saying a word. Poor alliance, they just never understood how much of a difference there was when our Horde pugs would have players that wouldn't just heal, but also even dispel deathcoil off of their teammates even while we're farming the kills out of the spawn points. My goal was always to make a 5v5 team of a warrior, warlock, priest, hunter, and druid to show off just how effective a mobile, flexible, and CC heavy endurance team would succeed, but I never managed to find a talented hunter for that.

It's Luigi for me. Feels overlooked though. Anyway, short hop double aerial any two aerials, crazy IASA frames on up-angled Fsmash, very fast moves all around, priority, KO power, etc. No real weakness. Also misfire and up-B wildcards are fun.

How much flak do I get saying I like version 2 over version 3. Of course some(maybe a lot) of it has to do with lowering it to 128kbps. All I can say is that having variation in the drums is an improvement...

What. You're a freak. Everyone else loves this style of game and could play it forever. Sooooooo bleah.

I heard it was supposed to appeal to a FFA PvP crowd with real player driven PvP, and I liked the idea of the low-fantasy Conan setting(it predates high-fantasy LotR and thus all LotR fantasy eventual spin-offs), so I started following it but I'm still very reserved on the game. Oh btw I don't believe Bar fights are in and it's XBOX360 release is still simply slated for "future date" I've heard good things of its launch(stable, smooth performance, quite a great mostly bug-free launch), I hear good things about it's graphics(given that you have the computer system to run it, also scales very well, but starts looking not nearly as pretty), I hear good things about its combat(engaging step up from auto-attack, very fun!), I hear good things about it's use of lore and it's maturity(simply plays as a more adult game with more realistic dialogue and it really uses the Conan lore very well). I don't hear good things about some other, very important, aspects. Some say that the game has a very poor (over)use of instances- it has "hard" Zones that all have loading screens in between them(compared to World of Warcrafts "soft" zoning, which makes them seamlessly connected), in addition, there may be multiple instances of the same outdoor zone running, the server automatically generates additional copies once one instance fills up. That is to say, once so many people fill up one zone, another copy of that zone will be created for the next people that go into that zone, and so on. I could deal with hard zoning if the zones themselves are very large(which they may be), but when as many as 9 copies of a zone are running at a time(the number of characters in one instance has to be capped pretty low to reach that many instances)- it really starts to break that important "FFA PvP" immersion and defeats the purpose of having a game be an "MMO"(I can play other games for free on 32 man servers if I wanted that kind of experience). It also deals with minigame PvP, aka Battlegrounds like in WoW, which creates a feeling of revulsion for some people. In addition, the much hyped "Massive siege warfare" over in-game guild-owned locations was recently revealed to be only 48 vs. 48, which is a far cry shorter than the impression of hundreds fighting that they were initially saying. So overall, the game loses a lot of appeal in both large scale PvP and MMO immersiveness. A few people have described Age of Conan feeling like "a great single player game with some multiplayer elements" over feeling like an actual MMO, and as such, will probably really enjoy playing the month they get with the game purchase but are doubting that they'd really keep playing and paying $15 a month for it. At the moment, I'll keep waiting patiently for any more developments on the game- it's theme and the concepts they originally had for it really appealed to me, so I got my eye on it to see if it is really something I want to dive into or not.

Again, I disagree. I think the difference between the two videos isn't how well the one using a more shield based strategy(there is very little difference between a meta-knight fair out of shield and a diddy kong bair out of shield), but how the other character, which is the winner in both cases, actually, is able to reliably space attacks on the shield-camper. Notice how when Azen starts improving on the second half to win more, he doesn't actually use all that much more shield-camping, but instead better spacing/pressure on the shield. Mind you, I don't mean old-school shield pressure aka melee shield stun to prevent out of shield retaliation, exactly, because shield stun is so much smaller now, I mean "weakening the shield safely with spacing until a possible shield poke". Shield camping is arguably a very easy thing to do, and it's far from worthless, but it can't win you games against pros. Azen, you know!

I disagree. There are still shield pokes, shield pressure, spacing attacks on shields, and grabbing people who shield. As fast as shields can go up and down in this game, playing solely defensively either by running away or by shield camping doesn't mean you will win. Here in this video You can see here the switch-off between shielding, sometimes it's useful and opens up options for punishment, and other times it doesn't. In fact, you can cover 3 instances of shield use in the first 10 seconds, yet Diddy is the one who gets worked while the first thing he attempts is shield camping and using options out of shield. Arguably, Diddy makes better use of his shield through the whole match than Luigi does, and occasionally punishes luigi with different things out of shield, yet luigi wins. It goes to show that brawl is too complex to simply let shield-camping and defensive play be enough to win. Also, I like plugging in good Luigi's whenever I can.

I love dtilt, maybe two dtilt, then an utilt KO. It feels so sneaky. Usually I can turn around in the split second before the utilt, which times/lands it much better. Utilt, Uair, Fair, Bair are all extremely good killers, Zelda is one of the few characters who can consistently KO below 100%. Actually, I think she fights for some of the best KO power in the game. Fsmash, Usmash, Dsmash would all kill too, if it wasn't for DI on fsmash and diminishing knockback on the frequency of which you use Usmash and Dsmash. Ftilt, too, can KO, just at slightly higher % than the rest. The dair spike can spike targets without a sweetspot, just because a spike is a spike and spikes send people traveling in the worst direction possible, but the dair on water maps is the best place to safely set up and exploit the insane spiking power of the dair. Sending people through the water on delfino to their death at 35% is evil. Zelda's weakness is that she has little to no solid approach options(consists mostly of mindgames and the slow basic approach options), and that she's easy to KO, and has few combos. Technically, she isn't "floaty". She's lightweight, but has in-the-middle fall speed. Of course, there is just one little advantage to Zelda's weight- she's the first of the characters who are "too light" to be chain grabbed by Dedede. It makes her a nice Dedede counter(Dedede is very easy to fair/bair sweetspot too). She also has a decent short-hop, you can shorthop bair out of shield and with perfect timing just barely manage to sweetspot the top of Olimar... it's better to not risk it and go for that only on larger targets, of course. Or if you don't sweetspot on a rising bair/fair shorthop, go into Nayru's as you land! Anyway, she's an EXTREMELY powerful character, without a doubt, and actually quite easy to pick up. Just play defensive, spam the Din's Fire and force them to approach, then brutally punish people with your defensive options. If things get sticky, like, say, you're against a patient and careful Lucas/Ness or G&W who will just down-B absorb your Din's Fire and punish you with sufficient approaches, fall back to sheik who actually CAN play the approach game. =P

Beat Ibanezninja 1-3.

Man, I would SO main viewtiful Joe. man.

Dark Samus or SA-X might have worked, or possibly fusion suit Samus. It just would have been nice, I guess.

There are still some combos in brawl and melee had more combos, referring to each in an extreme like "brawl has no combos" and "melee was dependent solely on 0 to death combos" isn't important, cause neither of those specifics are relevant to my point. The only thing that is relevant is that brawl easily has less and lower damage combos than melee did, and has less focus on them. I've also read smashboards, and Gimpy's stuff comes off as really shallow and not much else.

I don't think I'm getting the argument against competitive brawl. Is it the lack of "technical skill"? Yeah I agree you don't need to be as fast on the buttons this time around, but that doesn't reduce the complexity. Or is it the argument that Brawl won't make it because its defensive options are too great and you can camp to great effectiveness? This is becoming a tired argument- brawl in the hands of two amazing players isn't nearly as much of a defensive, spam, camp fest as you guys make it out to be. Yeah, you have to approach when someone can outcamp you with projectiles. But it's still so dynamic that saying Brawl is going to get boring or turn into only a camp fest is wrong. You can still take characters like luigi, who can hardly go around outcamping people, and has no disjointed hitboxes, aka no marth sword, and you can approach the best of the defensive, campy projectile spammers out there just fine. It just takes knowledge of what you can do vs. all those different characters, and the patience and consistency to make it past the spam. Basically, it's simply easier to learn how to take one defensive character and force everybody else to approach than it is to take one character and learn how to approach vs. 35 other characters, but that doesn't mean camping dominates brawl. Or is it something else about Brawl? Lack of 0 to death combos? Hitstun is clearly lowered in brawl and there aren't the same sort of comboes we saw before in melee, but I disagree on the opinion that they are necessary for brawl to succeed competitively. Brawl, instead, does allow the constant spacing and mindgaming game to repeatedly get in hits, racking up % to a KO. That spacing and mindgaming game almost makes brawl more complicated than melee was, because it involves more "reading your opponent" than simply mastering the execution of a 0 to death combo that works universally against players. As long as the fact remains that somebody who is better is going to win more than somebody who is worse, and that the game is fun to play, people will have interest in playing brawl competitively.

I thought it was hilarious. GJ Atmuh. Lag actually during a match has little to do with nintendo now. Maybe they could have written a better code for it before release, I don't know. But actual online matches are completely between two people and there is nothing that nintendo is doing that's making it slow. It's usually either distance between you and other person on the internet(it just takes too much time for the data to travel to them) or it has to do with the conenction actually in your home(like too much upload speed is being used as you're sharing your connection with family members while you're trying to play, or there is some sort of interference with the wireless signal). If it makes you feel any better, I've also got a red connection w/ Critical Hit and found it hard to play, so it might not be you.

And I can't play my match until Imagery plays his, so I'm just an extension of this.

Brawl is WAAAY more balanced than Melee was. It just is. But tiers are made by what's winning tournaments, so it's got more to do w/ players and winning metagame than actual character strength. If Luigi had a huge player base and everyone was developing his metagame and pros took him to tournaments and were winning every single time, he'd be top tier. That's it, that's all tiers are. Still I gotta say, Brawl is way more balanced than melee ever was.

I had 2 stock left when I beat G-T's I.C. in the tournament! No really though, I got owned. =P

K, who do I go up against next?

I beat Hypersonic 3-0.

I can agree with removing random elements for the same reasons, but "standardize" things based on what? Is something like Final Destination inherently more "standard" than Luigi's Mansion? No! A stage like Luigi's mansion is just another part of the game. Someone who's good at Brawl is someone who would win both at Final Destination AND Luigi's Mansion. Cutting out Luigi's Mansion for some silly reason like the one listed is simply an artificial restructuring of Brawl based on what YOU arbitrarily think is a test of skill and what isn't. Those stages with more interesting course elements are still completely fair stages for competitive play. They just involve a larger factor of stage manipulation than simpler stages. Even the stages that have some minor random elements, as long as those things give warning and are avoidable, which is the majority of them, it does not create the same issues as the randomness of items do.

That is no reason to ban a stage.

Oh of course I'm not trying to change the stages for the ocremix tournament. Heck if the tournament was something like "Big Blue only, Items set on high, all turned off except for gooey bombs, only DK, 4 person free for all" I'd still be interested. Or the inverse of that. =P I'm talking about what stages should be banned or not in general relevance to future brawl tournaments played everywhere. It'll be sad to see perfectly reasonable stages get a common ban because of not-so-solid reasons.

I tell you what. If King Dedede ends up autokilling everybody on stages with-out ledges, then there is a problem. But I don't think that'll actually be happening. KD3 can't chain grab certain characters just on weight, and even a couple of those he can chain grab on weight have other escapes. Not to mention if there are no platforms or anything other stage elements which can help prevent getting caught in a chain grab or interrupt one when it happens.

I enjoy playing competitively. I'm actually referring to the stages for competitive play. Wario ware maybe fun sometimes, but if I'm playing competitively I don't ever want to be playing it. Losing a real important match because of a random invincibility just sucks. But I strongly do not think the same goes for say, Norfair. Stage manipulation is just that, stage manipulation. A good player would be one who knows a stage well too, and is able to handle the hazards and even use them to their own advantage. In the usual naming of things "neutral" stages(which are obvious, Battlefield, Final Destination, Smashville, Lylat cruise for sure, Pokemon stadium I also being very likely) are neutral for their simplicity and consistency. Out of those bunch whichever one gets randomly selected, it really isn't likely to dramatically change the outcome. For stages like "no ledges" screwing a tether recovery guy(think right side of Frigate Orpheon at the start) is almost the exact definition of the second grouping- a counterpick.

Luigi's mansion is destroyable. It just turns into a final destination once it's broken down. There is nothing unfair about that. For norfair, All lava is w/ warning and predictable, the wave and jets can even be shielded, there is nothing about small platforms that defines them as unfair. Spear pillar has absolutely excessive hazards with little warning, in addition to the ceiling-tech happy tunnel, I'm in agreement. In port town, there are guaranteed safe zones from cars at every stop, there is visual warning of approaching cars. Total complete agreement about wario ware. New pork city is huge, agreement. In Summit you can't grab ledge but that shouldn't define it for a ban(there is nothing to say that a stage has to have ledges), and the fish can be reliably avoided. There is no single element in summit that clearly defines it for a ban, despite it being a really screwy course. In skyworld, be better at screwing other people over than they are to you! No element involved that should make it a ban. After stalling in a random brawl from 2 people for a minute as zelda on 75m, it has the same effect as being huge, agreement. Mario Bros. is a mess of problems, too many to list them all. HANENBOW IS INCREDIBLY NON-HORRIBLE, STOP GETTING CONFUSED BY BRIGHT COLORS AND LEARN THE STAGE. Temple is huge. Onett has wimpy knockback cars with warning, and there is nothing inherently unfair about no ledges. Finally, both Rainbow Cruise and Brinstar were counterpickable in the melee competitive scene, absolutely no reason for them to be banned now. I don't like to arbitrarily define what's unfair/fair. For the sake of competition, random elements like items and wario ware can be removed. The same goes for stalling on huge courses or any course w/ a circular path. Rumble Falls and Mushroomy Kingdom have issues where they change the game into a forced scrolling platformer, and a poor one at that. However that doesn't mean that everything that is random has to be removed. There is a clear difference between the lava waves in norfair to having a bob-omb drop in your face while you perform a smash move or getting only 10% health recovery instead of invincibility in the wario ware stage(even if you complete the mini-games, the reward is random and there is a dramatic difference between each reward). Oh, and I'm fine w/ any ruleset. I'm speaking about this in terms of the overall picture for Brawl and the attitude towards stages. A variety is good here, but a lot of stages get disliked for extremely arbitrary reasons.(Hanenbow being the perfect example- 0 random elements, nothing which deals damage, it's a series of variable slope platforms, and yet you got at-muh liking it to be banned because it's "horrible")