Degenerate Strategies in SSB

hello ‘tis twobands here to post for tw

I’m still going to be trying my hardest for the rest of this event, then I’m definitely going to take a big break from blogging.

Also gonna prioritize making featured blogs instead of latest feed ones

i want some mf points

Introduction

Degeneracy is a term that is thrown around quite a lot (though it has been more or less replaced with “toxic” in recent years). I’d like to take a look at what degeneracy actually is, why it’s bad, as well as some of the more serious examples of it throughout Smash.

A strategy or character can be defined as degenerate if they either by or severely dumb-down a fundamental aspect of the game. If a character has a very simple neutral, punish game, disadvantage, etc, they can be considered degenerate. This is actually far more common than it sounds, and has affected every Smash game.

A character being good commonly gets them mistaken for being degenerate. Using the definition presented, we can avoid this pretty dumb misconception.

Why Degeneracy hurts Smash

Degenerate tactics plague Smash by reducing the gap between two players of differing skill levels. If I practice holding stage and optimal punishes/mixups as Brawl Marth for twenty hours, I still might have a worse punish game than an Ice Climbers player that knows the chaingrab. Sure, Icies have to learn the chaingrab on different characters and stages, but that’s incredibly basic execution— they still don’t have to make any decisions at all about the punish they’re going to go for.

Degeneracy, though not the same as being good (as stated), gets much worse when the degenerate strategy is good. Again, Brawl Icies are a great example. In a game with minimal punish game, these little eskimos have the hardest punish in any Smash game. The strategy is degenerate, but the viability of the strategy makes the character extremely prominent in competitive Brawl, which severely hinders the game (Brawl had a million other problems though lol).

Misdemeanors

This section is for the smaller examples of degeneracy. They don’t *severely* hinder the game, though the characters mentioned in this section are universally considered annoying.

64 Pikachu

One of the defining aspects of 64 is how fast the game plays. Games go by lightning fast due to the extremely weak recoveries that allow for low % edgeguards, as well as the high hitstun and lack of DI, which allows for extremely long and inescapable combos. This sounds fine at first glance— everyone just takes turns bodying each other. Project M 3.6, baby, right?

Not really. Everyone has a bad recovery EXCEPT for the rat in the hat. Quick attack remains an extremely versatile recovery move that let’s Pikachu rise up from the depths whenever he pleases, and this allows him to completely ignore getting edgeguarded. There is little counterplay to quick attack, which makes it quite degenerate when Pikachu can b-throw you to set up a gimp at 20%, then recover comfortably with percent in the triple digits.

Ultimate Luigi

This motherfucker is annoying af. Ideally, a character should be designed so that they have various options in neutral that are fun to play with and against— once they win neutral, they should have something resembling a combo tree, plus some decent options to edgeguard or ledgetrap.

Luigi has a pretty neat grab tho!!

His neutral is very reliant on fishing for his 0-Death, and having such a streamlined objective in neutral (as well as a very basic punish game at certain % windows), makes him pretty degenerate. His entirely gameplan is centered around landing a grab. At higher levels of play, landing a grab is still difficult to set up. This makes Luigi’s basic af punish game a somewhat mild example of degeneracy, because he still has to effectively set up that punish game.

S4 DK/Bowser

These guys are funny.

They move around in neutral and use auto-cancel aerials, then when they see their opponent’s haha bubble they take a bite into the Z button.

This might seem as tame as Luigi’s case, but it most definitely is not.

For starters, shielding in Smash 4 was much more common. Run up > shield is basically a meme, because shielding was such a reliable way of landing a punish (shielding wasn’t a big commitment at all). Bowser and DKs neutral revolved around punishing opponents for shielding in a game where shielding was very strong, and this makes them more threatening characters than Ult Luigi.

Rage in Smash 4 made these heavy playstyles very degenerate, too. The nature of your character allowed you to live until extremely high percents, and this amplified their win condition a ton. By LOSING they were able to fish for a kill confirm at 50% and kill you. Again, a basic neutral and basic punish game add up to a basic character.

Prepatch S4 Diddy Kong

This bubbe had a *super* basic neutral. Banana shield was a very reliable and flowchart-y way to play. Throwing moves on shield became very unsafe, because Diddy would just banana oos into hoo-hah.

This only made his neutral somewhat basic, though. He didn’t necessarily ignore a certain aspect of the game, which makes this example not very damning. Diddy still had intricate ledgetraps, recovery, etc. Banana shield was only degenerate because it forced the opponent to

Felony Charges

Felony charges of degeneracy are meant for characters that severely hurt the game by mostly or entirely ignoring an aspect of the game. These are just more severe examples than the previous ones given.

Brawl DK (on Yoshi’s Island)

If this mf has a lead, he starts playing the floor is lava with his invincible helicopter ledge gimmick

that was likely indecipherable

Brawl is known for being campy. The game is all about neutral in a game where movement is commital. You know what isn’t committal?

Planking.

Planking the ledge has affected Brawl and Melee, but it was effectively removed when characters lost the ability to refresh ledge invincibility. On Yoshi’s Island specifically, Donkey Kong could up-special from the ledge and on to the stage with complete invulnerability. Against any character with a better neutral than him, this was a go-to strat for him to completely by playing neutral. Donkey Kong just grabbed ledge a bunch, then spun across the stage when he felt like changing things up for a moment.

This style of planking allows you to skip… the entire match, so long as you have a lead.

Melee Puff

This shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Let’s look at an example of Jigglypuff planking. Back in 2019, Wizzrobe was on quite a hot win streak. He took a set off Hungrybox at GOML and placed 4th there, double eliminated Juan at Smash ‘N’ Splash 5 to take 1st, and got 2nd at Smash Summit 8. Things were looking extremely promising for Wizzy, and he had seemed to have found the answer when fighting against HBox.

In June, at CEO 2019, Hungrybox grabbed ledge 91 times during game three of his set versus Wizzrobe, and Juan won the set 3-2, sending Wizzy home at 2nd place.

Planking, here, allows a character to by playing neutral. Captain Falcon is notoriously weak at dealing with planking (Hax versus M2K’s Sheik makes this pretty transparent), and Hungrybox used planking when he had few other answers to how Wizzrobe was playing.

Before the ledge-grab limit, Puff still had one method of stalling that was banned. By repeatedly using pound offstage, she can run the clock down to zero while putting herself in a position that is nearly impossible to reach. This obviously got banned pretty quickly.

Brawl Ice Climbers

Brawl Icies are a prime example of degeneracy. Though desyncs have depth, Icies’ goal in neutral is entirely built around landing a grab. Once they land the grab, they have a single, very strong punish that has no defensive counterplay.

No matter how good an Ice Climbers player is, they force their opponent to camp in the air and on platforms. The existence of the character gets value, which is fuckin’ stupid game design and is the result of degeneracy plus viability.

In Melee, you can at least use tricky movement and pressure to avoid being wobbled. In Brawl, grounded movement is committal, and dropping shield after someone throws a move takes like -4 frames.

This character is for dummies.

Honorable Mentions

Here’s a handful of characters that could definitely have made these lists, plus some mechanics that promote degeneracy.

Not all of these characters/playstyles are degenerate— some border on degeneracy or are situationally degenerate. Others actually are degen but are similar enough to other examples that I couldn’t justify them getting their own section.

Brawl Yoshi

He just planks all day with eggs. He’s basically the same as Brawl DK on Yoshi’s, Melee Puff, and all the other haha ledge characters.

S4 Rage

Rage was fucking stupid in S4. *Losing* would give you such a massive reward by allowing you to kill at extremely low percents, which demanded less neutral wins to end a stock.

Melee Ice Climbers

Excluded because they’re pretty similar to Brawl Icies, just not as severe (though they were actually much more severe when wobbling first came out. There was no 300% limit on wobbling, and Icies players would just wobble to 999% for eight minutes. That didn’t last very long without a ban).

Brawl Meta Knight

Actually a really difficult character to play— he’s only ever degenerate if he planks or scrooges, otherwise he’s an extremely complex and fun character. I just didn’t want to talk about planking for the ninth time so he gets an HM instead of a legit inclusion in the blog.

Stalling/Scrooging

Might as well talk about these right now. Stalling is present and banned in most Smash games, and it is mostly the act of putting yourself in an uncontestable position. Scrooging, though, is only prominent in Brawl. Characters can glide underneath the stage to stall (especially on Smashville where they can safely land on the platform after scrooging). There’s also one custom sde-special for Luigi in Smash 4 that allows him to go underneath the stage, but that barely counts tbh.

Ultimate Ness

Extremely effective edgeguarding with down-smash (on some characters), though the rest of his character is pretty normal— doesn’t really make sense to put him alongside someone like Ult Luigi when he has to play neutral and disadvantage normally, plus ledgetrap normally if he misses the d-smash.

Conclusion

Okay conclusion blog ending

I’m really trying to get some more posts out for Twilight Wings. I have zero ideas though, and I mostly make these posts on a whim.

I really have had a lot of fun during this event, but I am absolutely going to chill on making posts once it ends.

#TwilightWings

#Macine