My favorite puddle suggestion I've seen#160

https://x.com/Petcson/status/2085872920107094482

To quote the post, “This isn’t a well thought out thought but an idea I had for both puddle and absa cloud would be that people use hitboxes to move the items around. In this case let’s say lox low fairs the puddle. They would form back into a droplet and Skip across the stage and reform puddle. / If knocked off stage then it would be knocked off stage and it would be interactive for both parties. Same thing with abscess cloud. I want to be able to hit that so it poops out and then reforms sort of like if you hit a balloon it would be blasted away but then stopped quick”

I replied to this post adding on to the case I see for it, but to reiterate - orcane would be able to punish them by popping puddle when they attack them but that could be baited and parried and would be a way for the opponent to at least force the orcane to use the puddle. It could be balanced around how far each hit moves it. I’d imagine visually hitting it would make it just slide with a little splash effect until it gets to the edge and becomes a droplet. Let Orcane hit it too and that would actually increase the character’s skill expression and allow for a lot of new stuff (esp with weak dtilt). Plus if it becomes a droplet projectile as it goes off the edge that’s something that the opponent can use to edgeguard Orcane and disencentivizes putting puddle on the edge of the stage or onplats (currently its best position) bc that’s where it’s easiest to deal with.

The biggest point against this I can see is it might make it too easy to get rid of and cripple Orcane, which of course has been the issue that has caused puddle to have had no counterplay thus far. But, if it needs counterplay, this brings it in line with other gimmicks like La Reina chair and allows for numbers to directly tweak its strength in how far each move sends it, as well if it should scale with damage or knockback of the move or not and how much (I would make it send just far enough for most spaced moves to not be suscepitble to a counter bubble pop directly after so the Orcance would have to time a pop predictively with the move that’s hitting puddle). This would add new counterplay, keep counterplay to that counterplay, and add new offensive dynamics for both Orcane and his opponent.

However this dynamic would be broken by moves that hit low enough with disjoint (like Clairen and Slade dtilt, Clairen fsmash) which could make Orcane struggle even more into what he already struggles the most into (grounded disjoints). Maybe this could be combined with other suggestions of landing on it to push it instead (as opposed to others suggesting landing on it should disable it), or maybe for something with more frames of punishable commitment that would also feel more in line contextually with pushing it, wavedashing on top of it (though these would remove a lot of the offensive possibilities attacking it would offer to Orcane but honestly he does not need those). If this was gone with I think it should push the puddle a distance that would mean they are still on top of the puddle after the wavedash, so if they were to wavedash parry it would parry a pop but if it wasn’t popped immediately it could still be popped right after to punish the parry attempt. And for one last caveat, pushing the puddle with wavedash would make characters with low mobility (who already struggle into Orcane) be less able to take advantage of this and characters with high mobility (who Orcane already struggles into) be more able to. Then there’s Etalus on ice but I think that one thing breaking the interaction is fine.

If I’m honest, I feel like puddle not having direct counterplay has been intentional this whole time. Orcane is meant to be a character with some hard to learn aspects but overall forgiving to play, it’s the core of his identity and for many the appeal of playing him, and keeping that in tact is why puddle has lasted how it has for all these years. Saying I think it should be channged in any way would be disengenuous. The issue now is that that forgiveness is able to be abused, which has been ok and a feature so far and doesn’t even compare to lame strategies like Puff ledge stalling in Melee or Steve walls in ultimate. A few months ago if you showed someone a clip of Orcane camping with fair and teleport on fire capital, they’d either say that’s lame, fire capital sucks, or its a skill issue on the opponent’s part (MAYBE they’d say up b should have more endlag). The move has been fine, it hasn’t actually broken anything and its far from defining the meta right now, it really seems to me like it should just be left alone

I feel like the real reason Orcane’s don’t use puddle in an interesting way at top level is because of all the risks associated with it (that have mostly been added to make it less annoying at lower level). The droplet projectile is reactable enough to parry so its always a risk, popping bubbles without being absolutely confident you’re confirming into it opens you up to hard parry stun (plus has always been inconsistent and the risk of them falling out means you get reversaled), and giving up your get out of jail free card is another risk of its own. As much as we want good play to be about strong offense and and not leaving anything on the table, mitigating risks will always be more important, and would take an amount of benefit to outweigh that that I don’t think can be given to puddle. Therefore I think, rather than trying to force players to take on that risk against their will (and lets be real, the best ones are going to find ways around that that are probably going to involve a lot of camping with droplet away from the opponent), the best way to incentivize players to use puddle more are to make it less risky (which of course isn’t going to help with the two opposing hate campaigns going)