Getting Rid of FD in Competitive Sm4sh

Oh hey there.

Let's see if the lazy me will come and never finish this blog kek. Anyway, for #WBAT there was a topic that says to talk about what the meta would look like it you get ban a stage from competitive play. I've decided to talk about banning Final Destination (FD) in Sm4sh from competitive play.

This intro sounds like an intro to an essay kek

Well anyway, this will be a bunch of theorizing stuff so that's nice wee. Here we go.

(Studio :honeybee: roke so I used PicsArt woop)

Edit

Gosh dangit guys I'm not saying that FD should actually be banned. This is like a theoretical question thing like what if this happened kind of thing. Actually read the post smh, I mentioned that this blog topic was for WBAT. Now onto your scheduled show.

What I'll be talking about

- Effects on banning the stage

- Characters that benefit from the ban

- Characters that don’t benefit from the ban

- How it will shape the meta

(Originally for WBAT, I wanted to make a shit post of why smash 5 is the best casual game but I'm bad at shit posts so lol. Idk if Boku or someone will try to make one instead of me)

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Effects on Banning the Stage

So by banning this stage, you get rid of the flat stage that we all know and love. This ban will also affect Omega stages cause it'll be weird if you can go to them but not FD.

Platform Shenanigans

A major effect this ban will do is that there will be no stages that will have no platforms other than the middle transformation of Town and City. This means that characters that are good on platforms don’t need to worry about going to a stage with no platforms, and characters that excel at no platform stages (FD) will get hindered a bit. I’ll be covering the characters who benefit or don’t benefit from it in a later section.

Another point about having a stage with no platforms is that certain characters’ approach game will be better or worse. For example, projectile characters can use FD to try to limit the opponent’s approach options since the stage is flat and doesn’t have any other resources, such as platforms. Since this stage is banned, projectile characters need to find a way to cover even more options since platforms can assist the opponent in approaching.

(I didn’t mention camping in that section woops. Then again, there are some characters that can camp without projectiles like Sonic and maybe Cloud)

Another small thing related to platforms is that moves that edge cancel (QA kek, some of the teleport up specials, Diddy side b, etc.) are more useful since all the stages now have platforms. Though it isn’t impossible to edge cancel on FD’s edges, but if you screw it up, you’re dead. So having platforms is a safer way to get edge cancels since if you fail it, you’ll land with some lag but won’t die from it.

More platform stuff yay. Platforms sometimes interrupt certain combos, such as footstool combos because the platform accidentally gets in the way. There’s other combos like fair strings that kinda get interrupted by platforms and work better on FD. Since FD is banned, it’s going to be a bit harder to pull off footstool combos on the stages that have platforms.

(Actually what the heck, platforms don't interrupt fair combos. I mean if you do hit the opponent to a platform, you need to tech chase them on the platform but stages like Smashville are more useful lol. Idk what I was doing while writing that section)

(Thunder for Pika is also wack with platforms, but idk if other characters get wack stuff from platforms so that’s why this isn’t a paragraph)

Gosh dangit platforms, stop being so relevant in this meta lol. Hopefully this is the last thing. So with the stage that has no platforms gone, it’s possible for some characters to circle camp or just camp using stages with platforms more often. This will pretty much lead to more slower paced matches with all of this camping meh.

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Blast Zone Data

Finally some not platform related effects wee. FD surprisingly has the same top blast zone size as Dreamland and Smashville, while having a bigger blast zone than Town and City but smaller than Battlefield’s top blast zone. FD has bigger side blast zones than Town and City and Smashville (how are you supposed to write that part grammatically correct lol), and has slightly smaller side blast zones than Dreamland and Battlefield.

People who say Dreamland has small blast zones are wrong twiggered

Instead of clumping all of my images, I’ll just talk a bit more. So from the explanation above (or the visual I’m going to put in a sec), FD has slightly bigger side blast zones compared to Town and Smashville, but smaller side blast zones compared to Dreamland and Battlefield. FD also has the same top blastzone as Dreamland and Smashville, while having slightly bigger top blast zones than Town but having a smaller top blast zone than Battlefield.

(Wait did I just repeat myself? I think I did REEE)

This was totally a plan to put my visual as soon as possible while having some text in front of it kek

(Pic from here )

Jokes aside, with FD gone, the stage that has average blast zones will be gone and there’s pretty much going to be two small blast zoned stages and two big stages. The second best stage to go if you want an average sized stage is probably Dreamland, except that stage is somewhat wonkey.

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Characters that Benefit from the Ban

I’m not exactly sure how I would cover this but I suppose I’ll talk about 3 characters brief as possible on why the ban on FD will benefit/won’t benefit them.

Bayo

Oh boy, everyone likes Bayo because she’s overpowered right? So what if we just remove her worst stage kek. She doesn’t need to worry about going to FD and get punished easily when she gets a lot of lag from using a bunch of special moves. Her eh neutral doesn’t get shut down by projectile s since now Bayo can go to stages with platforms and use them to approach better. Speaking of platforms, Bayo can use them to camp using her specials a lot easier.

Overall, Bayo’s worst stage is gone, now put away your pitchforks and learn how to SDI like ESAM – wait this blog isn’t saying git gud against the Bayo MU? Oh, sorry, this is a theorizing blog anyway. Bayo’s worst stage is gone and now she can reliably use platforms to help her land better after she uses a bunch of specials and such.

ZSS

ZSS is really scary on stages with platforms, so FD isn’t a great place for her to go, meaning that this ban is beneficial to her. One thing that this ban helps her is that ZSS doesn’t need to approach without platforms with her eh neutral. This problem isn’t that huge compared to Bayo since ZSS actually has good movement. Another benefit for ZSS is that getting her ladder combos are a lot easier since she can go to stages that have a platform. You know what happens when she gets her ladder combos, you ded, but that’s going to happen more often cause FD is gone kek. Finally, a bit minor but since she has stages with platforms, she can edge cancel using Flip Jump more often. This will help her land a bit better, even though she doesn’t have the hardest time landing.

Pikachu

I could make a main biased joke but eh, I won’t do it this time

I personally think that FD is Pika’s worst stage cause he can’t QA cancel that much. Yes that isn’t the only reason why; Pika also has an eh approach game other than QA so platforms kinda help him. Pika does have some benefits on this stage like easier footstool combos, easier camping, T-jolt wraps around the stage a bit more, etc. However, Pika has other stages that he can go to and those stages help Pika more than FD does.

(Now that I think about it, getting rid of FD doesn’t benefit Pika that much :^\ )

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Character that Don’t Benefit from the Ban

Obviously, some characters will get benefits from the ban while other characters will possibly lose a good stage for them. I’ll now be covering some characters that don’t benefit at all from the ban of FD.

DIddy Kong

FD is Diddy’s second best stage after Town mainly because he can outplay the opponent in neutral easily. He also can semi run away and force approaches if he has a lead. If FD is banned, Diddy can’t rely on this stage if he wants to out neutral the opponent easily. Since most people will ban Town if it isn’t their character’s best stage, Diddy needs to go to his 3rd best stage, which is either tri-plads or Smashville, which both of them are decent at best unlike the dominance he has at Town or FD.

Sheik

Sheik is also in a similar boat as Diddy where FD is the place to try to play an outplay the opponent in neutral. She also can camp a bit easier than Diddy on this stage with Needles and her better mobility. WIth the stage gone, she can’t completely wall out the opponent since they can use platforms and such to try to approach her differently. This ban isn’t as bad compared to Diddy since she’s good on both Town and Smashville but still affecters her pretty bad.

Grapplers (DK and Bowser)

I’m just going to group these two here cause they’re pretty similar characters. Both of them benefit from the opponent having limited approach options on FD, and since it’s gone, they don’t dominate the ground. They need to deal with characters platform camping and have less off of grab since you can’t grab opponents on platforms. Well... unless you’re Bowser and have a command grab. It really doesn’t solve the problem that since FD is gone, they’re going to have a harder time dominating the ground and getting grabs.

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How it Will Shape the Meta

With the only stage that has no platforms being gone, this will benefit characters that have strong platform usage such as ZSS and Pikachu and it won’t benefit characters who want to go up against characters who want to play a winning neutral a lot game like Sheik and DIddy.

Something to note is that Bayo’s worst stage is gone while DIddy and Sheik’s better stage is gone. It kinda opens the gap between the possibly 2nd best character and Bayo by a bit more, making her probably harder to prove that she’s not first.

*looks at Epic*

I won’t say Bayo is at the broken status now (though she was never broken in the first place stop complaining guys smh) just because one of her worst stages is gone. You can kinda do something on tri-plads I think since that’s probably her 2nd worst stage.

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Now that I think about it, banning this stage doesn’t really change the meta that much lol. Eh, maybe it was my bad explanations oh well...

Well if you did read this wack as heck blog for #WBAT, thanks. I rlly don’t care if I don’t get through the first round cause I can still make wiki entries kek. Oh well, hope you enjoyed, and I’ll see you wherever the next blog I post will be. Bye.