Can Etalus get some love, please?#282
He is suposed to be a glass cannon, I get that, but after more than 3 nerfs to what has always been a contender for worst recovery in the game, this character is starting to feel like a traditional plat fighter heavy in how his cons outweight the pros. Far from a bad character, but oddly underwhelming in some aspects.
This is his current situation:
Not only he gets edgeguarded for free now(even more than before), but he also gets comboed, juggled and techchassed very easily. Everybody can explode in whatever way they prefer. Of course, he can also edgeguard most of the cast quite well, but it just doesn’t feel proportional when you compare him to other characters. Zetter can do everything well AND get to recover with one or two mixups. Galvan also has an oppresive advantage and you guys made it better, witch I’m not complaning, but it makes it harder for me to see the vision. Forsburn got a new special pummel! Whille Etalus’ doesn’t even force oponents to deal with the ice hallo when they land. I mean, some characters can land with an aerial and still have time to parry the thingafter the landing lag.
On top of that, as some have mentioned already, his grab got murked with the universal changes, but it was already below average anyway. He doesn’t even benefit much with the grab range reduction as the attacker because of how ASS his jab is(more on that in a bit)
I quite enjoy the indirect buff to his shield breaking potential via the universal shield changes, but even then, it seems like you don’t want to commit to making him especiallized at breaking shields, witch would be a very fun and unique trate in the cast. The buff to neutral special is apreciated, but… it’s a frame 64 move, guys, anybody getting hit by it genuinely deserved to get cliped in the first place.
With this in mind, here are some suggestions on how to make his design a little bit more well rounded:
First of all, yes, he has amazing aerials. Yes, I would gladly have them be a little bit worse in orther to make him better overall. If anything, nerfing them would make them less centralizig, witch is always nice. Bair could have less range and have one active frame removed. It coud also have the kb angle tweeked to make the confirms into Fair tighter.
Now for the buffs.
- Have jab 1 come out faster (frame 5 istead of frame 6) and make his head imune to grabs during active frames. The fact that he is the only character that uses his head to do jab 1 makes the move a lot worse for shield pressure that one would expect. Even wth the garb nerfs, he can still get grabbed from far away if he decides to keep pressure on shield after a spaced Fair. Making it faster would hopefully allow him to escape some techchasses by catching people over extending or with bad timing/reactions.
- Make his forearms invincible during active frames of up tilt. The move is bad on shield if the opponets knows not to buffer the grab or just wave dash out of shield, wich is fine, but at least allow the slow character to properly anti air without trading or outright losing the interaction with people landing on him with an aerial.
- Make down b deal significant shield damage. The move is already very easy to intercept or parry on reaction, allowing people to also shield it for free feels very excesive. Plus, it justfeels wrong to have the move that’s clearly inspired by Bowser bomb to not break shields.
- Make so ice shards boost the shield damage of his strongs! More incentive to going for armor is always nice. Currently, most people would rather place more ice or gimp their oponents in the time it takes to get armor.
- Make armor keep his regular fallspeed or make the modifier tamer. He already gets comboed for free anyway, he doesn’t need to always lose armor the moment he loses neutral.
- Make ice hallo activate faster. It shouldn’t be a guaranteed freeze every time the oponent lands, but defensive options outside of shield and spotdodges shouldn’t be so effective at avoiding the interaction altogether.
annnnd that’s about it.
I have no expectetion for all of these changes to be implemented, but I whole-heartedly believe that they would make the character move unique and more well-rounded without getting rid of his intended weaknesses and counterplay options. No, he shouldn’t be a broken top tier.
I just hope this comes across somehow. If anything, I hope it creates a fun discussion, preferibly without someone being annoying about how floorhuging is destroying the game or whatever.
I agree with most of the changes actually, however in order for the down b to do heavy shield damage, it has to have the weakness of having a lot of end lag, which currently has 32 frames (the same as an average smash attack) and that’s not enough time to punish if you read it but don’t want to time the parry.