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Smash Bros Is hero broken?

Threads relating to the Super Smash Bros series.

thePlinko

What’s the character limit on this? Aksnfiskwjfjsk
ZD Legend
All over the internet people seem to be in high debate over whether or not hero should be banned. I’ve seen people say things like (and I’m paraphrasing here): “hero has got to be the worst designed fighting game character ever” and “alright we get it sakurai, we’ll stop complaining about swords only having counters for their down b.”

Well I’ve decided I’d put in my two cents.

Is hero broken? Short answer is no. Long answer is no, because of a multitude of reasons.

Yeah he has like 4 different moves that can do a good 40% in one hit, but his interface is so clunky that you’re only gonna be able to pull it off once per match at most. It’s not like this is a new thing either, there are plenty of characters that can do the same thing.

His randomness is definitely a factor, but it’s not like he’s the first fighting game character ever to rely on RNG to make his kit work, hell he ain’t even the first smash character to rely on RNG in his kit. But for the sake of fairness I’ll look at each random aspect of hero.

1. Critical hits
This part doesn’t seem to be that much of an issue with most people, and I can see why. For those who don’t know, hero’s F-smash has about a 10% chance of doing slightly more damage and knockback, something that doesn’t exactly change the tide of battle.

2.hocus Pocus
This is another one people don’t seem to have a problem with, mainly because it’s a move that you have to consciously the decision to use, and nobody ever does. The moves effects range from really good to really bad, with the best being completely refilling the MP bar, and the worst being killing yourself. I’d rather they didn’t remove hocus Pocus but I’m not exactly defending it to the grave either.

3. Move selection.
I’m 90% sure that the only people who dislike this are people who can’t read. Four moves are pulled from a list of about 20 and displayed on a menu. The player can select a move or cancel the menu by shielding. A good player can scroll through different menus about once a second. How is this broken? If anything it’s a hindrance to the player because of how clunky it is. I will admit that there is one argument against this in competitive that I will agree with, and that’s the language barrier. But even then it’s not very hard to memorize the different symbols and what they do so I wouldn’t call that exactly ban worthy. Also calling this completely random is a lie. Yeah the moves you can choose are random, but you still have to choose them. It’s not like it immediately performs a random action when chosen.

4.whack/thwack
People who complain about this one really irk me. The moves both have a random chance to instantly KO. It can technically kill at 0%, but it is a 1% chance. The higher percent the opponent is the easier it will kill. You are almost never going to kill with this, much less at 0%. The percentage that you’re reasonably going to kill with this is around 80%, which is already a very easy percent to kill at normally. Not to mention it’s incredibly easy to miss.

So overall hero’s random factor really isn’t that big of a deal. Apparently there are people who think RNG is bad in every fighting game ever, but in that case they really shouldn’t be playing very many fighting games, especially not their holy GameCube game. RNG has been a major part of the game since 64, and the vast majority of it was introduced in melee.

I’m not just talking about character specific RNG either, there are multiple instances of it effecting the entire match. For instance starting location is random, as is what idle stance and when.

But say it’s just character specific RNG that gets you banned. Then half the roster should be gone. Melee alone introduced 3 separate characters that had RNG (Peach, Bowser, and Mr.Game and Watch) and added new moves to two characters with RNG (Mario and Luigi). For some reason, when somebody uses Luigi’s 1/10 chance to do 60% damage or when someone pulls of Mr.Game and Watch’s 1/9 chance to KO at 10% the crowd cheers yet whenever a hero player makes the conscious decision to use a set up of moves that allow him to do 30% or maybe kill at 60% the crowd boos!

Hero is definitely not overpowered. He’s good for sure, but he’s A solid B-tier, A-tier at best.
 
My take on the whole Hero situation is that he's fine from a balance perspective, if a little on the strong side, but his word based move selection for his down B makes having him in international tournaments a nightmare. If something can't read the words in the language the game is being played on, they're at a disadvantage. So I think we may see him banned in some international tournaments if only for the language barrier, not due to the randomness associated with his kit. People will continue to complain about his balance, like they did for Bayonetta in Smash 4, but he won't be banned for balance reasons, just like she wasn't in that earlier game.
 

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