i have a childhood memory of playing melee with my friends on my bday, i picked yoshi and bodied everyone with spamming side b then my one friend picked DK and bodied me spamming down b good times.
Leffen, Rishi, and others have talked about this: Basically DK competes with Marth for both of his archetypes in Melee so he is just outclassed, where as in PM they gave him his own niche in the archetype and made him more extreme. Marth is a psuedo grappler/half grappler. His throws are very strong in certain matchups, he has great range, disjoints edgegaurding, juggles, and movement. In exchange for higher startup and end lag and an ok recovery, and not having a top tier approach. DK is closer to full grappler that has pretty good range, edgegaurding, juggles, and damage, and decent movement. In exchange for higher startup and end lag, being combo food, a bad recovery, and a terrible time approaching in neutral. Yeah DK has unique stuff like Cargo throw that are fun, but pretty much any playstyle that will work at higher level with DK is just better executed with Marth along with Marths greater options on top of that. PM DK got hella buffed. He got disjoints that aren't as good as Marths but are still large. His recovery got buffed to be way better horizontally, (compared to Marths which is better vertically), his edgegaurds got better to compete with Marths with side b being a true spike and fair being way faster. His movement was also improved to again not be as good as Marth but definitely better. So it would seem like DK is still just worse Marth with a Falcon Stomp and slightly better grab game right? Maybe he's not totally dependent on grab now but it's still his main goal? But then they sped up his frame data and gave him one of the best approach options in the game. All of a sudden he's more of a glass cannon than Marth. Now he does a lot of the same things Marth does, but has a better time approaching with his insane dash attack and better tilts, and an amazing cqc boxing game that Marth lacks in exchange for his being more combo food. His still in a lot of the same archetypes ad Marth, arguably more than before. But now he's got his own niche that gives you a reason to pick him over Marth because he has strengths Marth doesn't in exchange for higher risk of death for messing up.
Framedata screwing characters over really makes me wish they at least gave fatties more hitstun on hit (like at least 50% more on slower attacks) so that they could go to town on the enemy once they manage to actually hit them. Instead, they are homogenized. Also stop giving them terrible recoveries, high weight doesn't mean much when you get easily comboed and die the moment there's no ground below you. It's a terrible balancing tool in general (e.g. vBrawl Olimar, 4's Cloud, Little Mac in general).
@Anothen Blue Recoveries as a method of balance is perfectly fine. If you want to have a character to survive for a long time vertically but die easily horizontally, give them a bad recovery. That forces them to DI in more and eat more combos. Now I don't think it should be taken as far as some have been to try to balance overly ridiculous kits (Little Mac, no limit Cloud) but having really strong or even oppressive options while having a mediocre/exploitable recovery is in some of the best designs as well (Most of the Melee viable characters). The much bigger factor is the frame data. Melee just didn't have a modifier for hitstun specifically. It wasn't added until Ult (and they actually made it originally just to make jabs work properly lol). They were obviously against having seperate hitstun for a long time because even smash 4 didn't have it. Instead they just shaved off startup and end lag until some of the bad moves were useable up until Ult, and obviously through in some disjoints and armor along the way. If you want to see what you idea looks like in practice though: Kazuya from ult. Many of his attacks have been modified to do extra hitstun, from 6 to 10 extra frames on average, all the way up to 17 extra frames on one attack. It does make him an insane combo machine while keeping him a slow hard hitting high end lag heavy character. It's arguable whether his design is actually good for the game of too distinct from the rest of the cast so as to be overly polarizing. I would be curious to see what would happen if we went the other way and had heavies take less hitstun. Some kind of modifier that made it so super heavies took like 10% less histun from every attack. Idk whether that would be enough but something like that could be interesting to see. Especially in Melee style engine with more hitstun this would make a much larger difference.
@@Saskaruto16 bad recovery in context of fatties is a problem because they are at the greatest risk of dying early without even needing to get KO'd thanks to essentially having no recovery (Ganon got lucky at least). It nullifies whatever advantage their weight has. It makes more sense on explosive characters who aren't meant to have better survivability than others though there comes a point where recovery becomes irrelevant (vBrawl Olimar had none, but he was top tier anyway). As it is, it clashes with the concept of a powerhouse. Kazuya isn't quite there for me, but it's a good start. I don't think lower hitstun would help most of them without fixing framedata first (what good does recovering from hitstun do when you'll eat another attack before you can actually retaliate?), but I feel like certain zoners like Min Min should take extra hitstun. If you fail to zone, you should suffer for it.
@Fug :D Sheiks only disjoint is needles, her actual hitboxes are not disjointed more than average. Her arms and legs are long and slender and her frame data is extremely fast which makes it difficult to actually hit her limbs when they quickly extend with a hitbox, but there is a hurtbox in their the whole time. Melee is the only game she can be played as a grappler in. But even then her fast speed, burst threats, and projectile greatly distance her from the grappler archetype. Overall she more so has a kit that let's her be a jack of all trades, it's just that her throws are particularly strong against the spacies and Falcon who she can tech chase, herself and others she can chain grab, and Marth who she gets free combos and kill confirms on. If you see Sheik in PM where her grab is nerfed slightly, or in matchups like Peach or Puff where grab is a lot less rewarding, you'll see that she has more ways to play than just a grappler. If you look at the best Sheiks like Plup for instance, even though he uses a fair bit of grab for tech chases, you wouldn't really consider him a grappler style player because he's using a lot more movement to apply pressure and bait the opponent, he just has to use the grab to get past CC so he can go for other options. At most you could consider this a half grappler, but again because of her multitude of other options I wouldn't even call her that.
oofff did him dirty on his recovery.... he defs has one of the nastiest recoveries. you cant bring up his recovery without looking at the full picture, DK being as heavy as he is will rarely need to recover from low, not to mention his weight will make him actionable out of hitstun sooner than most, while also not being knocked back as far, this all meaning that opponents do not have as much time to setup an edgeguard. Most hits that would require the rest of the cast to double jump, up-B will require DK to simply double jump or often just drift back to grab edge, leaving his jump and up-B as mix up / timing delays etc. Also the way he grabs edge is from far away and low profile, while also having an invincible up-B (I-frames while on ground or aerial 3-6) with high base and scaling knockback, basically meaning he has a unique and devastating mix up of jumping to ledge, or if the opponent tries to attack his jump to ledge having a massive, invincible shine-esque attack that as designed to flip opponents behind him aka offstage (or stage spike). Also quick note, while he does get combo'd he does too combo having 0-death potential on basically everyone. Even combos jiggly decently. His cargo up-throw up air as a kill confirm is a menace, might kill at higher percent than fox but is much more reliable, being able to confirm on yoshi and peach at 140% ish and no smash-di for opponents. Finallly, his neutral is super solid. trust me i guess
A piece of feedback, I think you repeat a lot of the same things, this video could easily be 30% shorter. Good video otherwise, and I'm glad the PM devs took care to not completely remove the characters' weaknesses.
I personally think spinning kong should’ve been moved to side special, and that donkey Kong should’ve gotten a new up special like blast barrel, and not just the barrel cannon, that launches dk straight up and not putting him into free fall, that way dk can have a way to recover vertically and horizontally.
I was one of those Melee DK players back in the day. The character was always SUPER underestimated and if you don't have the patience to learn him properly, you would conclude that he was a bad character. I always did rather well with Melee DK even if it was hard at times. But that only shows how skilled I was as a player. I even made top 8 a bunch of times
Lol 0:39 shout out to all us barely Viable Falcon mains, really do feel like that sometimes. If you don't enjoy suffering just play Fox, Marth, Falco, Puff, or Sheik.
@@coldtea7 idk if he would love it. Imagine someone willfully editing a game that you made yourself LOL. But I do think there is ideas he stole and put in Smash. Squad strike, some pm alt skins, Dk's Dash Attack, Ikes blue flame, nerfing the amount of pikmin olimar could have, ect
@@joshuadarrell5226 aMSa made Yoshi go up like 10 spots on the tier list, people have learned that Yoshi isn’t a extinct dinosaur of a character (that last part probably Doesn’t make sense)
@@PlaZma372 you not wrong but lowkey I think he's even better than what amsa has accomplished, i see hella potential in the character with the in air CC and his wacky moves. He has an incredibly high skill ceiling that I personally don't think is reached. Amsa raw as a mf tho no lie.
So he's very slow (because bowser outrun zelda and jigglypuff making him the 3rd slowest character) Has laggy attacks and can be hit very often Shines (frame 1) destroys him He's a large target His recovery is bad His shield can be grabbed easily And His shield is small for his size Blasters, marth sword will be a challenge for dk Mid teir But it dosent mean he isnt viable He's strong and powerful Lots of knockback Good offence and defence moves 4 to 3 meteor smashes 2nd vest survival only beaten by bowser Can chain grab Back air is decent Dk Punch kills early Good range (above average to slightly above average) C/Mid teir is a decent teir But we all know he should be buffed in melee
Take DK's strengths and weaknesses and learn what he can and cannot do. His recovery is horrible. Yup! Will die easily. But being combo food is like the spacies. They get juggled to death just the same. Bad hit stun recovery and also being fast fallers. Cool.. DK can still do it. I agree that he can. He seems in the right spot in tier list. Unless there is some stuff I do not know. He has great combo game. But I still think the recovery is his worst thing. Juggle is bad too. But if he had better recovery. He would survive a bit better as well.
![Twenty One Pilots - “The Line” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/E2Rj2gQAyPA/mqdefault.jpg)
DK is literally the most underrated character in Melee IMO. I have to agree with Aden Whitelaw on this one.
Thanks!
He's not High Tier but he's DEFINITELY mid tier at worst.
But we all know hes bettwr than link.
You too young link
This aged like fine wine
i have a childhood memory of playing melee with my friends on my bday, i picked yoshi and bodied everyone with spamming side b then my one friend picked DK and bodied me spamming down b good times.
Everyone who played Multi-Man Melee remembers Down B.
Leffen, Rishi, and others have talked about this: Basically DK competes with Marth for both of his archetypes in Melee so he is just outclassed, where as in PM they gave him his own niche in the archetype and made him more extreme.
Marth is a psuedo grappler/half grappler. His throws are very strong in certain matchups, he has great range, disjoints edgegaurding, juggles, and movement. In exchange for higher startup and end lag and an ok recovery, and not having a top tier approach.
DK is closer to full grappler that has pretty good range, edgegaurding, juggles, and damage, and decent movement. In exchange for higher startup and end lag, being combo food, a bad recovery, and a terrible time approaching in neutral.
Yeah DK has unique stuff like Cargo throw that are fun, but pretty much any playstyle that will work at higher level with DK is just better executed with Marth along with Marths greater options on top of that.
PM DK got hella buffed. He got disjoints that aren't as good as Marths but are still large. His recovery got buffed to be way better horizontally, (compared to Marths which is better vertically), his edgegaurds got better to compete with Marths with side b being a true spike and fair being way faster. His movement was also improved to again not be as good as Marth but definitely better.
So it would seem like DK is still just worse Marth with a Falcon Stomp and slightly better grab game right? Maybe he's not totally dependent on grab now but it's still his main goal?
But then they sped up his frame data and gave him one of the best approach options in the game. All of a sudden he's more of a glass cannon than Marth.
Now he does a lot of the same things Marth does, but has a better time approaching with his insane dash attack and better tilts, and an amazing cqc boxing game that Marth lacks in exchange for his being more combo food.
His still in a lot of the same archetypes ad Marth, arguably more than before. But now he's got his own niche that gives you a reason to pick him over Marth because he has strengths Marth doesn't in exchange for higher risk of death for messing up.
Framedata screwing characters over really makes me wish they at least gave fatties more hitstun on hit (like at least 50% more on slower attacks) so that they could go to town on the enemy once they manage to actually hit them. Instead, they are homogenized.
Also stop giving them terrible recoveries, high weight doesn't mean much when you get easily comboed and die the moment there's no ground below you. It's a terrible balancing tool in general (e.g. vBrawl Olimar, 4's Cloud, Little Mac in general).
@Anothen Blue
Recoveries as a method of balance is perfectly fine. If you want to have a character to survive for a long time vertically but die easily horizontally, give them a bad recovery. That forces them to DI in more and eat more combos.
Now I don't think it should be taken as far as some have been to try to balance overly ridiculous kits (Little Mac, no limit Cloud) but having really strong or even oppressive options while having a mediocre/exploitable recovery is in some of the best designs as well (Most of the Melee viable characters).
The much bigger factor is the frame data.
Melee just didn't have a modifier for hitstun specifically. It wasn't added until Ult (and they actually made it originally just to make jabs work properly lol).
They were obviously against having seperate hitstun for a long time because even smash 4 didn't have it. Instead they just shaved off startup and end lag until some of the bad moves were useable up until Ult, and obviously through in some disjoints and armor along the way.
If you want to see what you idea looks like in practice though: Kazuya from ult. Many of his attacks have been modified to do extra hitstun, from 6 to 10 extra frames on average, all the way up to 17 extra frames on one attack.
It does make him an insane combo machine while keeping him a slow hard hitting high end lag heavy character. It's arguable whether his design is actually good for the game of too distinct from the rest of the cast so as to be overly polarizing.
I would be curious to see what would happen if we went the other way and had heavies take less hitstun. Some kind of modifier that made it so super heavies took like 10% less histun from every attack. Idk whether that would be enough but something like that could be interesting to see. Especially in Melee style engine with more hitstun this would make a much larger difference.
@@Saskaruto16 bad recovery in context of fatties is a problem because they are at the greatest risk of dying early without even needing to get KO'd thanks to essentially having no recovery (Ganon got lucky at least). It nullifies whatever advantage their weight has. It makes more sense on explosive characters who aren't meant to have better survivability than others though there comes a point where recovery becomes irrelevant (vBrawl Olimar had none, but he was top tier anyway). As it is, it clashes with the concept of a powerhouse.
Kazuya isn't quite there for me, but it's a good start.
I don't think lower hitstun would help most of them without fixing framedata first (what good does recovering from hitstun do when you'll eat another attack before you can actually retaliate?), but I feel like certain zoners like Min Min should take extra hitstun. If you fail to zone, you should suffer for it.
Isn't Sheik also a grappler with disjoints?
@Fug :D Sheiks only disjoint is needles, her actual hitboxes are not disjointed more than average. Her arms and legs are long and slender and her frame data is extremely fast which makes it difficult to actually hit her limbs when they quickly extend with a hitbox, but there is a hurtbox in their the whole time.
Melee is the only game she can be played as a grappler in. But even then her fast speed, burst threats, and projectile greatly distance her from the grappler archetype. Overall she more so has a kit that let's her be a jack of all trades, it's just that her throws are particularly strong against the spacies and Falcon who she can tech chase, herself and others she can chain grab, and Marth who she gets free combos and kill confirms on.
If you see Sheik in PM where her grab is nerfed slightly, or in matchups like Peach or Puff where grab is a lot less rewarding, you'll see that she has more ways to play than just a grappler.
If you look at the best Sheiks like Plup for instance, even though he uses a fair bit of grab for tech chases, you wouldn't really consider him a grappler style player because he's using a lot more movement to apply pressure and bait the opponent, he just has to use the grab to get past CC so he can go for other options. At most you could consider this a half grappler, but again because of her multitude of other options I wouldn't even call her that.
oofff did him dirty on his recovery.... he defs has one of the nastiest recoveries. you cant bring up his recovery without looking at the full picture, DK being as heavy as he is will rarely need to recover from low, not to mention his weight will make him actionable out of hitstun sooner than most, while also not being knocked back as far, this all meaning that opponents do not have as much time to setup an edgeguard. Most hits that would require the rest of the cast to double jump, up-B will require DK to simply double jump or often just drift back to grab edge, leaving his jump and up-B as mix up / timing delays etc. Also the way he grabs edge is from far away and low profile, while also having an invincible up-B (I-frames while on ground or aerial 3-6) with high base and scaling knockback, basically meaning he has a unique and devastating mix up of jumping to ledge, or if the opponent tries to attack his jump to ledge having a massive, invincible shine-esque attack that as designed to flip opponents behind him aka offstage (or stage spike).
Also quick note, while he does get combo'd he does too combo having 0-death potential on basically everyone. Even combos jiggly decently. His cargo up-throw up air as a kill confirm is a menace, might kill at higher percent than fox but is much more reliable, being able to confirm on yoshi and peach at 140% ish and no smash-di for opponents.
Finallly, his neutral is super solid. trust me i guess
From Donkey to DANKey
7:27 Dk looks like he is offering Mario as a sacrifice to the monkey god.
He was
A piece of feedback, I think you repeat a lot of the same things, this video could easily be 30% shorter. Good video otherwise, and I'm glad the PM devs took care to not completely remove the characters' weaknesses.
I personally think spinning kong should’ve been moved to side special, and that donkey Kong should’ve gotten a new up special like blast barrel, and not just the barrel cannon, that launches dk straight up and not putting him into free fall, that way dk can have a way to recover vertically and horizontally.
I was one of those Melee DK players back in the day. The character was always SUPER underestimated and if you don't have the patience to learn him properly, you would conclude that he was a bad character. I always did rather well with Melee DK even if it was hard at times. But that only shows how skilled I was as a player. I even made top 8 a bunch of times
Project M/Plus is still beating Melee and Ultimate tbh
Lol 0:39 shout out to all us barely Viable Falcon mains, really do feel like that sometimes. If you don't enjoy suffering just play Fox, Marth, Falco, Puff, or Sheik.
Funny how Project M predicted DK getting the roll attack in Smash 4.
Not really “predicting” as the roll attack should’ve always been an attack
i am surpirsed you did not talk about gannon as one of the heavy weights
You can also really tell how much Sakurai took from PM ideas and put them into Ultimate DK
Lol I have video idea in the future that goes over this exact thing
@@coldtea7 idk if he would love it. Imagine someone willfully editing a game that you made yourself LOL. But I do think there is ideas he stole and put in Smash. Squad strike, some pm alt skins, Dk's Dash Attack, Ikes blue flame, nerfing the amount of pikmin olimar could have, ect
sheesh bro the yt grind never stops o7
Konkey Dong is the most underrated character in melee, change my mind.
Mewtwo or samus
Yoshi
Semi agree tho
@@joshuadarrell5226 aMSa made Yoshi go up like 10 spots on the tier list, people have learned that Yoshi isn’t a extinct dinosaur of a character (that last part probably Doesn’t make sense)
@@PlaZma372 you not wrong but lowkey I think he's even better than what amsa has accomplished, i see hella potential in the character with the in air CC and his wacky moves. He has an incredibly high skill ceiling that I personally don't think is reached. Amsa raw as a mf tho no lie.
Everyone saying DK is the most underrated character; I actually think it’s Doc.
I think its Young Link and Mewtwo
@@iamnotmessy123 young link is pretty good but yeah mewtwo is so underrated
i swear every time you upload a video i get hyped
Banger
Do you know where I could watch videos on how to get good at project + and melee?
comment for the alggy
Y’all stay lit with the De Blob music I appreciate that 🔥
Is this a reupload? I could've sworn I already saw this vid.
If you waited one more day before releasing this, you would've had this video on Thunderz's birthday.
Melee donkey kong isn't that bad in my opinion
Marths shield also doesn't cover him fully
His production quality do be slowly rising tho
Even tho dk is bad he’s so much fun to play
In PM he feels a lot more actualized. I love PM Kong
Gotta love that De Blob music
So many bangers on there
One thing is that you for sure used the transition sounds a little too much. Other than that very solid video!
I didn’t think so
ThunderReignz put DK on his back
fax
Can you do Roy or ganon next
Mmm… m o n k e.
Hmmmmm did you expect a donkey to not being bellow average
Melee dk is actually so fun
So he's very slow (because bowser outrun zelda and jigglypuff making him the 3rd slowest character)
Has laggy attacks and can be hit very often
Shines (frame 1) destroys him
He's a large target
His recovery is bad
His shield can be grabbed easily
And His shield is small for his size
Blasters, marth sword will be a challenge for dk
Mid teir
But it dosent mean he isnt viable
He's strong and powerful
Lots of knockback
Good offence and defence moves
4 to 3 meteor smashes
2nd vest survival only beaten by bowser
Can chain grab
Back air is decent
Dk Punch kills early
Good range (above average to slightly above average)
C/Mid teir is a decent teir
But we all know he should be buffed in melee
DK is the best DK Main here 🙌
Take DK's strengths and weaknesses and learn what he can and cannot do. His recovery is horrible. Yup! Will die easily. But being combo food is like the spacies. They get juggled to death just the same. Bad hit stun recovery and also being fast fallers. Cool.. DK can still do it. I agree that he can. He seems in the right spot in tier list. Unless there is some stuff I do not know. He has great combo game. But I still think the recovery is his worst thing. Juggle is bad too. But if he had better recovery. He would survive a bit better as well.
*DONG*
This videos kinda outdated now that Donkey Kongs are winning majors and beating players in the top 100
Yeah, this video definitely aged poorly well😅
dk was literally buffed cus strong bad got wrecked in melee lmao. hes fine in melee until high level thats pretty viable yall are just trash