Smash The Hero banning discussion (competitive Smash Bros.)

I admit, I don't really follow competitive Smash stuff, but if Hero has only just been introduced and there's already controversy about whether or not he should be banned, then I think he should be banned. People get better at characters the more experience they have with them. Hero has been available for such a short amount of time, and yet there's already talk about how unfair he is. It's going to be a disaster when people master Hero. But, again, this is from someone who can barely qualify as an amateur player.

 

Joker and Piranha Plant were pretty close to OP when they came out, and consequently got nerfed. Hero may be a HECKIN CRAP EXPLOSIVE TON stronger, but remember, nerfs exist and I am 50% sure he will be nerfed into the ninth layer of "F-Rank" once Nintendo realizes what they've created. If we do ban him, he may eventually get nerfed and people can un-ban him if necessary.
I saw someone say "just dodge", but that's unfair. We don't have to "just dodge" for Mario, we don't have to "just dodge" for Simon, we don't have to "just dodge" for Dedede, why do it for Hero?
I really hope this doesn't become another Brawl Meta Knight problem. The last thing I want is a character so broken they can beat literally anything.
Also, the MP meter as it stands could be the only thing standing in the way of Hero and literally anything, so if they ramp up the cost of spells and make MP really hard to regenerate that could be a suitable nerf, because he would nearly never have any MP to use spells on and would have way too much lag room where most of his moveset is locked away, forcing Hero mains to play much more defensively so he isn't stuck in a bad position while really low on MP. Remove some of the OHKO moves of course. Then we nerf the basic sword so the MP recovery is even worse and maybe that will be nerfed enough.

 

I am no competitive master, but I have seen what he can do and I believe that we should hold off on banning him for a while longer, for a few main reasons.

1. It would be the first character ban across the board in Smash history, as far as I am aware, which would set a precedent for future bans, which may go out of hand or result in Smogon-esque tier systems further down the line, which I find would not work well for the Smash community.
2. It's too early to have discovered counterplay. At the start, everyone thought King K. Cool would be broken, but he ended up being one of the worst heavy characters in the game competitively, despite super armor, powerful attacks, and two decent projectiles. I'm not saying Hero will be the same, but we haven't discovered where his biggest weaknesses lie.
3. The Down Special, while powerful and crazy with RNG, also takes a while to use, and can be messed up if you rush it. Competitive players have to rely on quick thinking and reflexes, and the legal stages are all small enough that unless you are edge guarding, you will almost never get to use Down Special. This plus the fact that it isn't one command per move, and the user has to pay attention to the option chosen and their opponent, and it makes a busted move much more manageable. Except Accelerate. Ban that.
4. Smash 4 Bayonetta and Brawl Meta Knight were worse in their prime. They weren't banned, so Hero shouldn't either, unless we are redefining what 'broken' means.

I do agree however, that Hero has a lot of good moves, and that there are several things that should be nerfed slightly, such as the frequency and potency of critical hits, MP regeneration upon landing attacks (passive rate is fine IMO), and either the power of his Smash Attacks or the power and range of fully charged Side Special. I think this would make him a high mid tier level character, as opposed to the low top tier that I think he is now.

For now, let's wait and see how the metagame shifts, what rises to counter Hero, and only ban Hero if only it, its counters, and counters to those counters dominate: in other words, if it defines the meta.

 

Pardon me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Brawl Meta was banned, wasn’t he?

 

I get what you mean with the heavyweight point, but that's not what I was trying to say. I meant that there hasn't been enough time to learn how to master the character and the matchup against the character, and thus should not be banned until we know for certain that it is unhealthy for the meta. In other words, don't be hasty in making a decision.

I would disagree with the point that he is not built for competitive play. It's not like you Spam one button and instantly win. I disagree with the spirit/item thing because it is not an accurate comparison. Spirits buff offense and defense stats and occasionally give special boosts to movement or an immunity. Hero is just as frail as any other character, and has some moves more powerful than others. The only thing even upsetting people is the variety in his special moves, which are, in fact, moves, with startup and end lag, the ability to dodge or shield, and even have a limit to how much they can be used. He does look like a fighting game character to me, and while powerful, doesn't deserve to be banned based on a single week of prevalence.

Finally, 70% is a HUGE exaggeration. He has two functions based on RNG. Critical hits, which while I believe should be nerfed, don't make the character broken or uncompetitive, and the Down Special options, which are able to be countered and chosen between. In many ways, the down special is like the Monado Arts, except randomly selected options. Not uncompetitive any more than low accuracy moves in Pokémon, or chances to inflict status conditions.

 

I haven’t really been keeping up with smash ultimate that much, but I just watched hero’s announcement thing and I just wanted to say his down special is ridiculously strong. I mean, a nuke that takes up half the stage? Who thought that would be balanced? The whole rng thing might be a bit broken in my casual player eyes since you could just keep resetting the list of spells until you got what you wanted. Idk, I guess I’m complaining since I won’t be able to get the dlc with hero.

(and this has nothing to do with hero but are we not gonna talk about sakurai using 2 controllers at a time?)

 

Alright, so here's my two cents on why Hero should NOT be banned, or at least not yet -

The main factor calling to him being banned is the RNG aspect, and it'd be kinda stupid for me to say that Hero isn't heavily RNG-based between Down B as a move and the crit Smash attacks. People who do say that these two things break Hero are kind of ignoring his biggest flaws. Although some of them are good, a lot of his normals are very lacking in a lot of areas, and he doesn't do very well against rushdown, although I think his specials could end up helping with that to an extent. I don't feel like he's an overpowered character, but that's kind of against the point.

I feel like most people arguing for Hero's ban say that he should be banned for being uncompetitive because of the RNG elements. I don't entirely disagree with that, but I feel like people could be looking at this better. Not every Smash Attack is gonna be a crit, and not every Down B is gonna pull Magic Burst. Magic Burst specifically has only a 1% chance of being pulled so I doubt it'll be reliable, but the crits have a 12.5% chance of happening, so let's focus on those.

I feel like crits are something people just need to respect more. Much like how Meta Knight dash attack can lead to death at 12%, and much like Luigi grab can lead to death at 0%, Hero smash attacks can lead to death at 20% or whatever percent it is. I'm not trying to argue that Luigi or Meta Knight are well-designed characters, just that they're not banworthy. Top-level Pokémon players do this as well: they assume that every crucial High Jump Kick they use will miss, every Scald used against them will burn, and every Dark Pulse against them will flinch. They always keep their head in the game and think of alternatives in case the worst happens, and although Smash is different, my point is that we should just change our mindsets for this.

On top of this, I don't feel like we should be talking about a ban less than a week into this. I think that the biggest comparison for me is with Meta Knight. On top of the "killing at an extremely low percent" aspect, people were calling for Meta Knight to be banned a week into Smash Ultimate. This is because a Meta Knight labber named Glacey had shown all of the interesting changes that Meta Knight had gotten in Ultimate before the game even came out thanks to the early copies from Mexico, between things like a changed Up Air and a Neutral B that's actually a viable kill option off the side. Had we banned Meta Knight, we may have never known him for the Mid Tier that we know him for now. People would have stopped playing him at a high level because of the ban altogether, leaving the character completely unexplored until some inevitable nerf would have come around that allowed him back into the scene and he ended up being bottom tier. There were a lot of people actively against banning Meta Knight then just as there are now in this case.

A final thing I want to note that doesn't really apply to the rest of my argument is that banning a character really should be a last resort if they completely ruin the competitive game and make many otherwise decent characters unviable, which isn't the case here. There are many people out there who were dying for a Dragon Quest representative in Smash, there are many people out there who absolutely love Hero's gameplay design, and there are many people who haven't had a character click with them like Hero. If people like any of those want to get into competitive Smash, then that's a big turnoff for anyone who wants to join the scene.

Say what you will about whether or not you like the character, but I do not think Hero should be banned. If he ends up being a big issue after all then we can address that later, but for the reasons I've stated I don't think that will be necessary.

 

I'm going to go down all of these segment-by-segment...

It's not the same but it's similar enough to the point where it can easly be applied here. In those first few sentences you can replace "crit" with "Meta Knight Dash Attack" or "Luigi Grab" and it still applies there. You are in a good position, then you get hit by one move and everything can spiral downhill from there. Only difference is that you can practice with Meta Knight Dash Attack or Luigi Grab and get consistent with both, as well as both being much better moves on their own.

I don't feel like this is aimed at me so I'm going to skip over this part, but if it is...

Spoiler: Don't click if this wasn't aimed at me

I never mentioned either of those. People who say Judge Hammer or Turnip or Misfire are all on the same level of Hero are straight-up wrong, but I've never mentioned that.

We don't know if top level players would even do this. I know I just said not to compare these two, the difference here is that it's whether or not they use one move as opposed to the entire character, Game and Watch players never go for the raw Judge Hammer to try and fish for the 9 unless it's completely safe to do so, like out of a Nair. Elegant never goes for a Misfire unless he knows that standard Green Missile will still hit anyways. It's pretty rare for a top player to make a risk like that. Would Hocus Pocus change this? I don't know, which is why I said it's worth testing. If it proves to be an issue we can ban it.

A big part of my last post was saying that there are ways to play around all of his moves. I'm not going to reiterate that, but as a quick tl;dr, you can avoid his Smash Attacks just as you would avoid any kill option from any character that relies on early kills out of combos.

That's a big if though. If he kills the game, then sure, we can ban him. But we shouldn't be so quick to do so.

Same thing as the last part- that's a big "if." If he proves to be a huge issue, we can ban him, never said that was off the table. But there are a lot of characters that are uncompetitive in a different way in this game...Luigi 0-to-deaths still exist, Meta Knight ladders and bridges still exist, Mario ladders still exist, Wario waft setups are much easier to do than in Smash 4 since Wario is a stronger character overall, Peach and Ice Climbers both have many many 0-to-deaths off of many moves in their kits, and Hero has crits. There are moves that start all of those, and those are just things that each player has to respect. This is a point that I feel like you kind of avoided in this post as a whole, and it's pretty important here.

 

I will admit that playing Hero is very annoying. Playing against Hero pretty much turns into a game of chance. Critical hits are obnoxious and they happen way too frequently (I always see them at least once per game), has projectiles that kill way too early, amazing shield break material if you know what spells to use, and if your opponent is exceptionally lucky he can potentially kill you at 0% without you being able to retaliate against it in any way. Not to mention that you can get MP back at a breakneck pace so it's not like using the MP constantly is really hurting him.

There is no way to combat luck at all.

Though I say no to banning Hero. Why? Only because he hasn't been released for long and people thought King K Rool was busted at first, but he ended up being a low-tier character in a lot of peoples eyes. I say we give it 2-4 weeks and if Hero is still viewed the way he is now with all the negative reception then we should go ahead and ban him for now.

 

Exactly my point. Soon enough, people will find exploits against the character, and will see if it's enough to determine if he's broken or not. Plus, there's always patches that can nerf the character, considering that the game is still in its early life. I'm sure we're not gonna get another Brawl Meta Knight or Smash 4 Bayonetta.