Yet they almost completely nerfed Wario's mobility with his new dair, they removed his ridiculously awesome forward smash for something that isn't nearly as good. There was some other changes to Wario that didn't make sense when you consider how they super buffed lucario.
edit: And why do they hate Samus and kirby? Having the originals should have been top priority.
And I say possibly because of the Bubble attack. Teching may change it but it still sets up for some incredibly cheesy gameplay.
On Wario:
The general idea behind Dair is to use it to KO with a Fart/sweetspot Uair. It's good on shields too because you can bounce off their shield and add more pressure by using another move like Uair or Nair. This is a whole different metagame from Brawl and thus, expecting Wario to play the
exact same is a little ridiculous.
You can also use the Dair to force a tech situation should your opponent be in the right KB threshold to go into tumble. Wario thrives off of techchases to a degree.
Fsmash has the same KB, duration, and all that as Brawl Fsmash. It is merely an aesthetic change to differentiate the move from Side B which is now a much more canon shoulder charge.
He's not really "ruined", just harder to play. If you want to approach with him, you should really be using Nair over Dair. Nair is leagues better in most situations and sets up a lot of Wario's shenanigans.
But hey, if you're dissatisfied with him, in the upcoming update he's getting some beneficial adjustments. Maybe not to you're liking but they're beneficial all the same.
On Lucario:
The general concept behind the character is to bring a "traditional fighting game" style into Smash. It's well known in Demo 2.1 he's pretty safe and non-committal to a lot of stuff (often giving him free Side B grabs for damage and etc.) In 2.5, he's receiving tons of tweaks across his move set to make him more committal and a lot of his stuff making more sense and requiring actual thought.
It's a new system on only one character, of course it's going to be hard to balance. But it really makes the character fun to play and unique. Maybe frustrating because you don't understand how it works (and that's understandable) but people seem to like it.
And aerial Side B (the grab) is
not an auto-death offstage. You can meteor cancel it easily, I suggest you try mashing Up B (depending on your character) to see what I mean. The only one that is a "guaranteed" KO (depending on your % of course!) is the Super version of aerial Side B, which is a spike (a spike is a move that cannot be meteor canceled).
Lucario's meant to have a lot of reward for being offensive but have poor defenses (easily shield poked by having a generally terrible shield, awful spotdodge, he has terrible reach on most of his moves, terrible grab reach etc.) In testing before putting him out there to the public, he didn't seem overly "broken" and in some ways, he's not. Spacies can still beat him and he still has very obvious weaknesses.
There's a really old video that explains how Lucario works, I suppose I could link it again but this is like... a whole year ago so some things are obviously different.
Here
On Bubble:
As I'm told, Bubble has natural KB that will push you back. So a follow-up from a trip isn't always going to be 100% guaranteed, especially if you tech it. It's not a very good move on shields either so... it's pretty balanced. Bubble would be like... the least of your worries. I'd be more afraid of the multiple movement options Squirtle has.
But even then, Squirtle is very light, has poor reach (excluding Bubble), and has a fairly gimpable recovery (don't let the video fool you, it's just meant to highlight what's different, not show the potency or whatever).
I assure you Squirtle will be fine, in the end. And if he does turn out to be like super broken somehow, there will be adjustments made to him accordingly where it makes sense and it won't drastically change the character. That's kinda why these are called demos rather than just version numbers, nothing's really final.
Me and my friend want to check this out, how do you get this latest version?
We don't have Project M so neither of us really know what to do.
Oh, and is there an Ike vid to show what's changed with him? I hear that he and Mario are problematic.
Unfortunately, there are no videos of the other characters that have already been implemented/included into the previous demos. We're a very small... collective team of individuals with only like one to two video editors so pumping out videos isn't really a priority nor is it really possible when we still have to primarily work on the game.
The latest public version is Demo 2.1, which can be found on
here in the Downloads section. Follow the instructions on that page and you should be okay. Demo 2.5 is still in the works so Ivysaur and Squirtle are
not playable for the public yet.
Mario? Problematic? Nahh. He's just really, really good now because the best of Doc's moves and the best of Mario's Melee moves got thrown onto him. He still has the same general weaknesses he's always had, he's just better, probably above Mid-tier now (if based on Melee's tier list, seeing as there's no P:M tier list to speak of).
Oh, I should mention, we do have a
Facebook group if that's your sort of thing, Like the page and tell your friends.