Ultimate Nintendo... please, little mac needs a buff

[Kadaj]

i dont play little mac anymore in smash ultimate personally, but im gonna be honest here... he needs a buff major bad. theres too many issues using him, and i will detail all the problems he suffers that im aware of below...

#1 horrid recovery this is almost immediately obvious when you use him; you get knocked off the map, try to get back up and this is absolutely the most infuriating thing when using little mac. Even moderately off the map and he doesnt even need to get air combo'd or death spiked to lose one stock. This is practically ruinous for anyone who plays online, and honestly, its even bad solo

#2 punching bag nuetral B Another one thats easily risky, though not as terrible as the above. You can never even charge this 50% or all it takes is to get grabbed to be cancelled out entirely. Useless in multiplayer unless you get a lucky shield break on the other person. The only time this probably hits apart from that is any incidence of AI stupidity... seriously, its too easy for even a non expert like me to avoid this. I just jump over him or dodge behind him and boom, free hit... nothing to it at all

#3 trash hitzones and near zero aerials no idea how the heck you keep people off the cliff with him either because none of his hitzones are good for this. His aerial attacks also have very minimal reach. And why would you aerial with him off the cliff when its going to end up being suicide anyways? Youre just going to end up with a -1 for another -1 on both sides which just ties together... and if you end up getting pummeled bad even a couple times you obviously cant afford this evened exchange so to speak...

These problems are why i stopped running little mac in ultimate like forever ago. Ive tried a number of different characters and ended up a proud sephiroth and byleth main even though i rarely play online. Regardless, its not hard for me to see why little mac needs to get buffed. I really dont know why people called him OP some time ago with all of these easily exploitable disadvantages he has... you dont have to work nearly as hard as you normally would to beat him because of his garbage jumping power and terrible recovery. Seriously, you can sit at the cliff and he just hopelessly falls to his death. And he has no reliable hitzones to make up for these weaknesses (or much of anything to cover them tbh). Nintendo, please buff him. Hes too underpowered and its glaringly obvious... please

 

[RedWhaley14]

Honestly, the issues you highlighted aren’t the worst aspects of his design. On paper, they don’t seem as glaring as they are, but in practice, they are absolutely detrimental to Mac and make him a predictable, linear fighter with one less plane of movement sacrificed for a ground game with only a few highlights and several weak points. And that’s not what makes him so awful competitively either.

The WORST part about Mac isn’t his abysmal recovery (IMO it’s not even the worst in the game, because Ganondorf exists) or his impractical aerials and Neutral B. It’s not his subpar range or how junk his moves are on shield.

The worst part about Mac is that up close, he’s so dang good. He’s an absolute menace for most characters and he downright breaks every Smash convention that’s been set in place previously. He’s a terror and an annoyance to fight and many people would rather not deal with him.

So why is this his hugest weakness? It seems almost as if that would be a gargantuan strength for most characters.

Well, that’s because he’s just so scary and annoying for most people to fight against. And if you don’t want to deal with his scary options, what do you do?

You camp him out.

And when you camp him (whether it be by zoning him out with projectiles, running away the whole match, or platform camping him by never touching the ground), there’s almost nothing he can do to counteract it.

He’s helpless against it, which makes playing the lame game and taking it slow the best strategy. It’s not fun for spectators or the players, and it’s unfortunate because the concept of Little Mac is actually a decent one. Though his design is just overall too polarizing for that of a game like Smash Ultimate’s, which means that buffing him without compensating other places would just make him broken and unfun to fight.

In order to fix him, he needs the duration and range of his aerials increased. They can do minute damage, whatever. He needs to be able to deal with platform camping and he needs usable aerials in a game focused on aerial combat, and in turn, he should have his ground game more normalized. It can be stronger than typical, but remove the armor on his Smash Attacks and instead make Utilt and Dtilt better like it was in Smash 4.

All in all he’s a polarizing character with many pros and many cons to his design and always leaves one side or the other feeling frustrated. He’s absolutely begging to be redesigned because he’s very contested in the community and someone seeing that they’re fighting against Little Mac usually leads to an immediate groan as it’s either a frustrating scary battle in Little Mac’s favor or a slow and tedious match that heavily benefits the camper. He’s not the worst character in the game (IMO it’s Ganon) but if the opponent knows what to do against you, he might as well be.

(This is all coming from a Pac-Man main who can zone him out forever with moves that force him to jump and can zone him for hours btw lol.)

 

[Kadaj]

Honestly, the issues you highlighted aren’t the worst aspects of his design. On paper, they don’t seem as glaring as they are, but in practice, they are absolutely detrimental to Mac and make him a predictable, linear fighter with one less plane of movement sacrificed for a ground game with only a few highlights and several weak points. And that’s not what makes him so awful competitively either.

The WORST part about Mac isn’t his abysmal recovery (IMO it’s not even the worst in the game, because Ganondorf exists) or his impractical aerials and Neutral B. It’s not his subpar range or how junk his moves are on shield.

The worst part about Mac is that up close, he’s so dang good. He’s an absolute menace for most characters and he downright breaks every Smash convention that’s been set in place previously. He’s a terror and an annoyance to fight and many people would rather not deal with him.

So why is this his hugest weakness? It seems almost as if that would be a gargantuan strength for most characters.

Well, that’s because he’s just so scary and annoying for most people to fight against. And if you don’t want to deal with his scary options, what do you do?

You camp him out.

And when you camp him (whether it be by zoning him out with projectiles, running away the whole match, or platform camping him by never touching the ground), there’s almost nothing he can do to counteract it.

He’s helpless against it, which makes playing the lame game and taking it slow the best strategy. It’s not fun for spectators or the players, and it’s unfortunate because the concept of Little Mac is actually a decent one. Though his design is just overall too polarizing for that of a game like Smash Ultimate’s, which means that buffing him without compensating other places would just make him broken and unfun to fight.

In order to fix him, he needs the duration and range of his aerials increased. They can do minute damage, whatever. He needs to be able to deal with platform camping and he needs usable aerials in a game focused on aerial combat, and in turn, he should have his ground game more normalized. It can be stronger than typical, but remove the armor on his Smash Attacks and instead make Utilt and Dtilt better like it was in Smash 4.

All in all he’s a polarizing character with many pros and many cons to his design and always leaves one side or the other feeling frustrated. He’s absolutely begging to be redesigned because he’s very contested in the community and someone seeing that they’re fighting against Little Mac usually leads to an immediate groan as it’s either a frustrating scary battle in Little Mac’s favor or a slow and tedious match that heavily benefits the camper. He’s not the worst character in the game (IMO it’s Ganon) but if the opponent knows what to do against you, he might as well be.

(This is all coming from a Pac-Man main who can zone him out forever with moves that force him to jump and can zone him for hours btw lol.)

This is why hes bad--all you do is range him and throw him off the cliff. And imo gannondorf comes second worst recovery but worse mobility, hes just slower tbh. and yes, hes good up close but ONLY up close. Not going to adapt well to even moderate range attacks.

Also little mac causes way less trouble for me than some others. I absolutely hate mega man. Bad looks, bullcrap range spam and thank god sephiroth and zelda are here because i just flunk him with these two. Not fighting him with anyone else. Link can also be annoying but this one is worst, hate him. Dont really like him either so wouldnt troll with him for this reason. If im gonna troll i would pick zelda or something tbh

 

[RedWhaley14]

This is why hes bad--all you do is range him and throw him off the cliff. And imo gannondorf comes second worst recovery but worse mobility, hes just slower tbh. and yes, hes good up close but ONLY up close. Not going to adapt well to even moderate range attacks.

Also little mac causes way less trouble for me than some others. I absolutely hate mega man. Bad looks, bullcrap range spam and thank god sephiroth and zelda are here because i just flunk him with these two. Not fighting him with anyone else. Link can also be annoying but this one is worst, hate him. Dont really like him either so wouldnt troll with him for this reason. If im gonna troll i would pick zelda or something tbh

Lol I get why you dislike those characters a lot. As a Pac-Man main, they also give a ton of trouble too because they completely outzone me and I feel like I have to put in much more effort to beat them than they do to beat me. Link in particular has that Neutral Aerial that goes through my Hydrant and fruits, lasts forever, and has almost no lag and he also can spam Boomerang and throw down Bomb for a free gimp. He loves Usmash and Spin Attack out of shield and even though they’re pretty predictable, I still get hit by em >~<

I don’t mind Mega Man too much even though he can play really obnoxious

My least favorite characters are Mario, Min Min, Zelda, Palu, and Link. They aren’t my worst matchups to play against but I just find them unenjoyable to fight and at least Little Mac is a relaxing fight on my end lol.

 

[Kadaj]

Lol I get why you dislike those characters a lot. As a Pac-Man main, they also give a ton of trouble too because they completely outzone me and I feel like I have to put in much more effort to beat them than they do to beat me. Link in particular has that Neutral Aerial that goes through my Hydrant and fruits, lasts forever, and has almost no lag and he also can spam Boomerang and throw down Bomb for a free gimp. He loves Usmash and Spin Attack out of shield and even though they’re pretty predictable, I still get hit by em >~<

I don’t mind Mega Man too much even though he can play really obnoxious

My least favorite characters are Mario, Min Min, Zelda, Palu, and Link. They aren’t my worst matchups to play against but I just find them unenjoyable to fight and at least Little Mac is a relaxing fight on my end lol.

Not to mention that annoying shield link has, its really stupid =P fortunately sephiroth's nuetral and some of hero's specials bypass it completely (any ranged attacks that explode in other words). I imagine hes even worse to fight for anyone who uses snake, i dont think the explosions from his projectiles are strong enough to ignore this dumb shield but i could be wrong since i dont play him. At least i can try to counter bait with sephiroth here. Mega man is just stupid range spamming and easily worst, while whenever the game randomly selects little mac for the AI i just sit there laughing every time.... mega man im more like get that garbage out of here lol

I only know of some of the online troubles since i dont play online in this game often, but ive seen enough other people do it that i know how much junk like this blows. Back to little mac though, if i ever get around to buying it i might get a little mac amiibo for a troll fest since the AI on the amiibo is so ridiculous it can turn trash into a monstrosity (giga mac spirit and then super armor or 3x fist attack up would be nasty), might share how that goes if i get ti this lol