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The ice climbers being the character that can counter many touch of death characters while theoretically being one themselves is funny

Fighting someone like Luigi or Kazuya is so frustrating to deal with on both players' ends because on one hand, the person does NOT want to get grabbed or electric'd respectively and either take a lot of damage or die and on the other hand, the person playing said character is gonna get camped out because of their counterplay.

I'd say I agree that TOD's are bad design, but I don't think Sakurai really intended the characters to have them. They're more so found by the players, not put there by the devs. Except Kazuya. I don't know what Sakurai was thinking when he designed Kazuya.

They remind me of the (pre wobbling banned) Melee Icies counterplay; «dont’t get grabbed». Which is true and certaintly doable, but also so super polarizing

Watching Luigi twist someone into a pretzel is always fun but having it actually happen to you makes you wonder why it's even a thing.

Sakurai has mentioned that a core philosophy in his char design is that he wants the player using the character to feel like they are cheating, when playing them. So from that viewpoint, Kazuyas character design is a smashing success

The issue is lack of counterplay. Once they land that one move your controller may as well be unplugged.

As other people said, traditional fighting games have almost no zero to death or infinites. The only time they exist is either in older games or if you have "multiple lives" (tag fighters) and, even then, are typically resource restricted or conditional. DBFZ requires you to have and spend pretty much all of your resources to touch of death, for example. No, despite what Smash players think, this is *not* how fighting games play. Most of them now focus on a strong combo into a very stressful knockdown situation, but that knockdown/oki _rarely_ leads to extreme damage unless the defender chooses something *very* risky and is called out (a blocked reversal in 2D, a bad tech option into a trap in Tekken). The scaling from the tools that open people up or lack of combo routes at all if its a throw simply prevent that from happening. It's kind of annoying constantly hearing people compare zero-to-deaths to fighting games, because it just indicates they don't know what they're talking about when it comes to modern ones. We're not playing kusoge like Fist of the North Star anymore.

saying 90% of rounds in traditional fighting games are ended by 0-deaths is pretty inaccurate. its very rare, especially in modern fighting games to be able to kill off the first touch, and when it does happen it's usually in very specific circumstances that aren't especially realistic

As someone who mainly plays traditional fgs: what? No, rounds don't usually end in touch of death sequences, or situations that might as well as be tod sequences due to lack of interactivity. Sure, I can see that sometimes you get steamrolled if you don't know how to block your opponent's offense, but that's not a touch of death, and it really only happens at lower levels. That's just getting pressured and not defending properly.

Cause why not just be able to instantly kill your opponent from anywhere? Why need to win neutral more than once

Yo there is no way you regularly play normal fighting games. ToD is pretty rare. Even in GG:Strive, known for it's high damage, characters typically need multiple nuetral wins before the round in won. Matches in Tekken are almost never decided by the first touch. Ridiculous.

I think it's demoralizing to have a character in a game like Smash to have a guaranteed death combo. It's why I find these characters, notably Kazuya and Mario, so boring to watch; going for the same ladder combo or the same ewgf combo for the entirety of different sets. Admittedly it works, but it's not interesting nor fun to play against.

Kazuya comain here, I personally think the reason why many hate fighting touch of death characters is the simple factor that accounts toward their ability to be always capable of forcing their opponent to not approach due to their threat bubble being so focused on just getting that one move.

Meta knight is the same thing. He has a kajillion TRUE ToD routes that require really good sdi because he can just follow it. If his neutral wasn't so linear and shit he'd be insane

hi, fighting game veteran here, fighting games are not infested by touch of deaths (TOD) like at all. The only fighting games that have TODs are normally tag or anime games. Tekken is not that at all, played Tekken for over a decade and ive never been hit by a TOD, been in top ranks for both Tag 2, 7, and 8. Normally your vids are well researched but hearing not only the game i mainly play but just a blatant uninformed take on fighting games as a whole has disappointed me. TODs are not common in fighting games, they never have been. side note, this is not to say TODs don't exists, they do in Tekken. the main problem with using Tekken as an example is nearly always TODs always have more to do with side wall combos, wall to wall, or triple wall break combos. To also give the benefit of the doubt there has been standing TODs or janky wall TODs from previous games but its still far from common. i think it comes down to the amount of interactions you need to win in order get a stock/round, its a lot safer to go for something that will lead to a big combo or TOD in smash vs most other fighting games. This comes down too the moves that lead to more damaging combos are a lot more risky to do. some games this doesnt apply, normally being tag fighters and anime games, which typically have other ways to get out of combos. only posting cause it annoyed me hearing things that just arent true about not only Tekken but most fighting games. still love the video and both your channels

The explanation of ToD characters only needing to get the play right once instead of consistently through the whole match reminds me of why many competitive Splatoon players dislike Turf War as a mode. In Turf, one team can dominate for 90% of the match, but if the other team manages to get control just once, in the final seconds of the game, they win anyways. In both situations the issue people have is the need to only win once, rather than to have to continually outplay your opponent. It's the same reason competitive games usually play best of at 3 or more rather than just one game.

people hate campers, but they often forget that the camper is more often than not , forced to camp . in this game, most characters can either rank up the damage super fast or outright kill you if you approach , or they dont have the necessary frame data or moveset to play a more aggressive playstyle.

Touch of deaths arent super common in most traditional fighting games, especially not tekken

to me the biggest issue with touch of death characters is the fact that di and sdi are much weaker than they were in melee. fox has infinites and 0-death combos but they aren't all the same button combinations with the same timing simply because the opponent can heavily shift their position while getting hit. this is not the case in the newer games

I got touch of death’d by Luigi at my first local tournament 🫠

I think Peach is in a funny position in this category, because she has insane advantage state combos that might go toe-to-toe with the likes of kazuya and steve, while still needing to be acutely aware of spacing, safety and positioning to get these confirms. Peach does conditioning rather than fishing for combo starters. I like watching her because her touch of death combos actually feel earned and are kept in check by difficulty, and I will usually root for a Peach in a match.

How to beat TOD characters (WORKS 100% NO GLITCH): --Start match --Perform miracle to get stock lead --Camp for 8 minutes ---You win!

Totally agree. It's all risk/reward ratio. When a character and/or move feels unfair it's usually because the risk/reward is unabalanced. Touch of Death characters are throwing out very safe, easy, options but are being rewarded as if they landed Ganon's wizard punch.

Meta Knight flying under the radar as usual

Coming as a Tekken player, seeing smashers mald over Kazuya is mad funny lmao. He's the only reason I'd even consider playing Smash

your comments about touch of deaths in tekken and other fighting games are mostly inaccurate. there are next to no practical tods in modern tekken games, or any modern fighting game for that matter. most of the time you see a tod will be in a tag fighter like dragon ball fighterz or skullgirls due to the nature of having to kill multiple characters. the tekken clip you showed at 9:45 isn't even a tod, kazuya was able to escape after he hit the floor (and thats if you actually get hit by that jin launcher). tekken and most other fgs are about stray hits and combos, not very different from smash. the only difference is there is no DI or way to get out of the combo until its over (barring combo breakers in games like mk1 for example). 90% of rounds being touch of deaths is incredibly inaccurate.

I think a few of the occasions you mentioned weren’t tod’s Lucario f-smash is more akin to Roy’s side b then a touch of death Using someone else’s banana is to conditional to be a tod Same with Mario up air strings

We do have a name for this archetype. It's called Luigi. Luigi is green Luigi. Kazuya is FGC Luigi. Ice Climbers is 2 Luigis.

I really enjoy your content Vars. That being said, I couldn't agree less with most of your takes here. Lol My main issue with your argument here was how broadly you defined TODs. You essentially applied TODs as an issue to any character with a strong combo game developed by the meta. That creates a lot of issues in my mind. 1. Those characters combos (like Mario or Peach) were not necessarily desinged to be as strong as they are. Instead, their combo game was developed over time by the community. So it's not the designers that you're attacking, it's actually the work of the community literally getting good that you're commenting about and speaking negatively about. 2. Smash has ALWAYS had TODs that occur. The special thing about chars like Bayonetta or Kazuya, is that they are inescapable and really accessible from any percentage. Melee has tons of TODs and they are won through mix-ups and deep meta knowledge in combos. That's skill. Kazuya combos are a little different since they are actually inescapable many times. But if you're not making that distinction, then You're talking about something that has almost always existed in every form of smash which is the game that defined this genre, so how can you say that the existence of these combos take away from the genres design, when they've always been a part of it since Smash 64. 3. Last one. As someone who's always played traditional fighting games and Smash, i thought your comparison was really off. Most FGC games do not end in TODs. I missed a couple of Tekkens, but at least back in 6 or Tag Tournament 2, Tekken was never like that. Lol The only games I can think of that would devolve like that are older games with no patches that were broken. Marvel 2 being the most notable in my mind. Often, those games had characters with strats that had infinites off of some setup or something like that. Marvel 3 had a meta like that as well. That being said, usually those characters were far and few in between and they would range from being top tier, to not even mattering. If that character was really good, they dominated the meta and that's what the game became about. If not, then it didn't matter. In Ultimate, the true TOD characters are top 20...top 30 ish and below. That's not really a huge deal compared to most games. This was just a really strange take to me man. I'd also recommend checking out some other "broken" fighting games like CVS2 or something like that. They're REALLY fun. And their meta is defined by how good people got at exploiting the system mechanics, but it actually led to deeper growth and depth in the games! Hopefully, we'll continue to see Ultimate evolve as well just like Melee has.

5:04 Correction, Kazuya doesn't need to follow their di, there is tech called dash option select that allows you to exploit auto turn to always get the right direction meaning di mixups aren't possible if the kazuya does this.

Setting aside the TOD thing for traditional FGs, which is inaccurate, you've completely forgotten that corner play in traditional 2D fighting games is a HUGE part of the game. Street Fighter 6 right now is emphasizing it more than they ever have before in the series with wall splats & stuns off of drive impact attacks. This means sometimes you might go for stage carry combos over raw damage. You might use lower damage combos or riskier options to escape the corner or side swap and put opponent in the corner. Many combos only work in the corner. Some work better NOT in the corner. Some wall bounce combos don't work unless you're away from the corner because you have more time before the opponent bounces back towards you to recover from your attack than you do if you're right next to the opponent. Some combos (often fireball combos) only work mid screen or only work in the corner because of the way pushback works on attacks. Positioning is incredibly important. Perhaps not QUITE as important, but it's a big factor in the game. The latest Mortal Kombat doesn't use it, but Mortal Kombat and Injustice had stage interactive objects that could extend combos or simply do different things. Tekken's biggest combos often rely on wall knocking someone against a wall and breaking the wall is another aspect. The wall break mechanic is why Mishima Dojo has breakable walls. The game has area transition combo extensions. Getting away from a wall is important and rolling / side stepping to keep your back away from them can be key. Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter both feature 'ring outs' as round win options with Virtua Fighter 1 releasing 6 years before Smash 64, and Soul Edge (precursor to Soul Calibur) releasing 4 years before Smash 64. There is a lot I could go over specifically about TOD characters, especially Luigi, but I figured I'd just point out the traditional fighting game argument you have is pretty telling of your inexperience in that genre. ---- Some games (like KOF) a touch of death requires massive amounts of resources and are limited to maybe being achievable 1x in a match with KOF offsetting that by having 3 separate characters (effectively making a TOD more of a TO 1/3rd). Older games with TODs tend to be unintended, like Marvel vs Capcom or Street Fighter Alpha 3 or Street Fighter 2(SF2 TODs tend to only work from randomized stuns that can't be relied on and situational gimmick setups more for combo videos than actually being practical)

My friend use to main Kazuya and I hated playing against his Kaz so much Usually he plays Ken or Ryu, which I liked playing against since even though he was a lot better then me, I felt good even when I lost since I learned what to do against their combos and fight them Against Kaz though I always felt like I was hitting my head against the wall since the only thing that worked against him was Gun spamming and having no fun. Even if his Kaz was worse then his Ken or Ryu I hated it since I felt like I had to make myself have no fun to win instead of having a fair fight where we each have to win multiple interactions to kill. EWGF is just that oppressive

As a Ridley Main, touch of death combos are incredibly frustrating to go up against due to how big and slow of a target he is. Then I realize that he also has an incredibly simple touch of death in landing an off stage Space Pirate Rush that drags the opponent way past their recovery capabilities. Then I realize that it's an incredibly niche trick that still requires followup to confirm the kill on most fighters and landing an off-stage SPR tends to require a hard read and leaves you crazy vulnerable if it fails, so it's less of a touch of death and more of a death or glory maneuver.

I love these videos so much. I dont follow the smash ultimate competitive scene at all. Its crazy to see characters that were Never used months ago be dominant.

Nah bro. That rob Gluto did on Tweek and most recently, Kola damn near made me wanna go on strike

Nintendo: Nah bro Diddy with an infinite/0-death not okay Also Nintendo: Icies and Luigi

It's hard to say that the meta resolves around these characters, given how few actually show up in top level play. Most of the combos you mentioed are not 0 to death, and are just kill setups based on percent.

Theoretically this is where L canceling should come in. As much as people believe it's needlessly obtuse tech it would actually decrease the frequency of true zero to death combos by adding extra inputs needed to hit at the perfect timing. Yes people can grind out a rhythm but now to counter it all you need to do is throw off their rhythm with di or sdi

Every Luigi main ever: Just dont get grabbed 🤷‍♂️

one other thing I will say is that in most traditional fighters, they tend to be at least 2 touch games save for certain matchups, like nagoryuki vs. chipp in guilty gear strive where you have one of the highest damaging characters vs. one of the least durable characters in the game fighting each other, think of it like ganon puff in smash 4 where ganon could kill puff in a combo but puff had so much mobility that she could make it hard for ganon to get a hit to start that kill combo but outside of that for the most part, you need at least 2-3 combos to actually get a kill, even if you're doing the most optimal combo in a situation and touch of death combos tend to also take a high amount of skill to setup and a big error on the opponent's part, as well as the perfect situation to land, so they're a lot more appreciated I feel because of how much more effort goes into them, like I know people that have been playing for longer than I've been alive who still have yet to hit a touch of death combo

Luigi was already kinda like that in 4 too he could land a 80-90% combo from a single grab and then could kill you with his true shoryuken

I think... you dont play traditional fighting games very much based on how you describe them lol

Oh my god you are LITERALLY describing the modern Yu-Gi-Oh! meta

Iv mained luigi forever, im always gonna play him cuz i love luigi but i dont love the ease of playing him. But i will say that theres soooo many ways to hit freestyle combos that are true which i love

While I agree that ToD characters shouldn’t have their 0 to-death combos, I feel they are rather balanced for how frustrating their combos are. Kazuya for example, has by far the best advantage state in the entire game as he can get 80-a kill with any grab/electric. However, Kazuya infamously has the worst disadvantage state, a very exploitable recovery, awful approaching, and a mediocre neutral. These were things that nobody on Kazuya’s release put into account, as everyone only focused on his stupid broken combos. This is why he has gone from ban-worthy to not even top 10. As for Luigi, he is much more consistent (really not saying much though) than Kazuya but is not as strong as Kazuya. In my opinion, I believe that ToD characters are either so hard (Peach, Ice Climbers) or incredibly inconsistent (Luigi, Kazuya) which makes them not gamebreaking.

So you are telling me it’s less fun to fight kazuya/luigi/etc than something like steve/sonic/g&w? The most dominant characters in the game, who happen to be camping characters?

As a UMvC3 player, first time?

Lucario a touch of death character? Perhaps I'm biased because I used to main Lucario in Smash 4 & early Ultimate, but I'm not aware of any setups that can take a stock from 0%. Taking a stock with his forward smash at 30% is absurd yes, but you gotta remember Lucario has to be at high% to do that, smash attacks are kind of slow so the Lucario needs a hard read to hit it. Used to shock me, but in Ultimate, so many characters have ways to kill off of 30% on the opponent, that Lucario's forward smash just doesn't seem as impressive anymore, and it just kinda comes across as risking everything for a read, and if you miss that read, you are dead. I'd be more concerned with aura sphere charge into back air shenanigans, but again, it's Lucario, you mess up at high%, you die. Again, could be my Lucario bias showing because in Smash 4 I often lasted until high%s (160-190%) as long as you avoid rage shenanigans, regularly getting max aura (often leading to 2 stocks). In Ultimate, I'm lucky to make it past 100% with how many early kill confirms the whole roster has. With other characters I didn't notice it that much, but since Lucario is all about mentally pressuring the opponent when he is high%, it's kinda hard to not notice when he never gets to the % to ever make the opponent worry. In Ultimate, usually the opposite happens where people just underestimate his lower aura %s, so I take more stocks at low to mid aura stocks now. The difference between how Lucario feels between smash 4 and Ultimate is so massive I swear. That vent out of the way. Yeah, touch of death characters kinda suck, but depending on how they are done, I can enjoy touch of death stuff. Like if it's something incredibly hard/rare to do, then I can get down with it. For now, the only touch of death characters I have is Ridley cheesing opponents out in various ways (which feels fine because the opponent is the one 0 to deathing him with 1-2 combos due to him being such massive combo food and light for his size), and Sephiroth because I am addicted to down smash into Giga Flare because the down smash feels kinda telegraphed before he even starts the animation because of his positioning/movement, so a decent opponent will generally see it coming. Also these two characters generally are focused on playing the game normally the majority of the time, because of how unreliable the 0 to deaths are, but they do exist. Honorable mention to Meta Knight. Which is a 30% to death. If he misses that specific window, you know he ain't killing the opponent until something like 170%+ unless he's fighting a character with poor recovery, or he gets a really hard random read. Also the two most consistent good players I play against are: - A Pikachu main that has been playing since 64, and actually took all the advice I gave him to heart, and on top of that went to tournaments. If he catches me off-gaurd, he just needs 1 combo. If I'm paying attention, he only needs 2-3 combos on me with most characters. - A Bayonetta main. Some characters fall out of Bayo's combos, but the ones that can't fall out of those combos.... Yeah she can still 0 to death just fine in Ultimate. Though it feels really random, like anytime I bring Mii Gunner or Ike out, it's 0 to death constantly. Yet my more common picks like Sephiroth, Meta Knight will fall out often. For some unknowable reason my Ridley gets out of the combos, which blows my mind because I'm used to everything working on him due to his sheer size (but ya know, he'll die on the second combo, so it doesn't really matter). I just do not understand Bayo combos at all (but at least I can do well in the bayo ditto against the bayo main. I keep forgetting that I can't hold down b during her combos though.) So yeah, I definitely understand why people get annoyed with 0 to deaths. Kinda just feels like you're skipping a lot of the game, especially if the combo starter is kinda gimmicky and/or extremely hard to avoid.

I think there's an even worse design: Touch of death, time out edition, from the 2 S+ characters Steve and Sonic. Is not only easy to excecute (Hit then run), but in general will also waste your time with painful boredom due to camping many times.

I think smash should introduce something like combo scaleling or at least buff DI.

Yeah it's frustrating. But if you're talking about character design then Kazuya is the best there is. He comes from Tekken and he plays exactly like a Tekken character would doesn't he.

I usually really enjoy your videos and did somewhat enjoy this one too so don't take this as mindless hate. But this video felt EXTREMELY biased and just brushed over anything that went against the 'You die from 1 hit' mantra. Many of these characters DO have to read DI or change their combos at certain percent windows and calling some of these 2-hit confirms from an aerial or grab 'Touch of death' is just laughable as probably more than half the cast have a reliable 2-hit kill confirm like this at similar percents. You did make some great points and sometimes these characters ARE ridiculous and unescapable (especially Kaz) but that's way more rare than you make it out to be in this video. You even said yourself that Luigi players have to adjust their combos and kill-confirms based on opponent percent or position on stage but when the same thing applies to Fox it's totally fine? I get it, there are other issues with Luigi, Kaz, etc. that compound and make it ridiculous sometimes but this video came off as just saying these characters literally do no work, hit you once and one shot you no matter the situation, percent, spacing, DI reads, etc. Also, I play Tekken and I don't think the game is anywhere near as 'Get combo'd once and die' as you seem to think it is. It's VERY important to have good fundamentals, movement, poking, framedata knowledge, etc. Certain edge cases in specific situations can be like that depending on character choices, stages that can extend combos, back-turn combos, etc. but you almost never die from 80-100% off one big punish, rarely even die off two big punishes unless they're back-to-back against a high damage character using their absolute max damage punish. Even in that case, you gotta make a mistake big enough for them to get their slowest, biggest launcher on you and then do it again right away, that's on you. Anyway, hope this didn't come off too ranty as I always really enjoy your vids, this is the first one that irked me a little bit as it seemed extremely biased compared to your normal takes on archetypes and felt like you came at it with the conclusion and worked backwards to find ways to satisfy that conclusion rather than looking at the data first and coming to a conclusion based on that.

It's so incredibly depressing we'll never see a patch to tone down these Zero to Death combos.

Oh, but you must travel through those woods again and again... said a shadow at the window... and you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time... But the wolf... the wolf only needs enough luck to find you once.

What sidescroller fighters have that smash doesn't have is corner mechanics. Usually in the form of shielding, or the stage resets after a certain amount of damage, or something like that. Smash could have a glass wall so that you need to be bounced off twice per stock, but you can still fall.

Was that music at the beginning from "One Step From Eden"? I know that I have heard it, but I am not sure if I am mistaking it for something else.

I find it funny that me and a friend of mine were talking about a very similar topic, regarding combo scaling in DragonBall Fighterz, Gulity Gear Strive, And Undernight 2

When the best option for counterplay is not playing, that's a problem.

You're definitely right that 0-death combos are unhealthy in Smash Ultimate with how they're done. The only way they are healthy is when they are a web that require good execution and a narrow range that each option works based on the SDI, DI and percent. Melee Fox embodies that idea. In fact Melee often has that shown all over as Captain Falcon even has Dair into Falcon Punch at some points.

Awesome vid!

I honestly hate fighting Luigi, not because he has the zero to death, but if you want to win against him you have to play super lame otherwise you die instantly. I secondary Kirby and as soon as I swallow Luigi the match becomes a projectile spam fest. It's boring.

Now we Need a hit and run archetipe video

7:16 - "Icies get their hands on you, and you basically die." (Words from a true IC main.)

To be honnest wario only has touch of death combos at top level, even glutonny messes up often his combos as they're very inconsistent due to rage and weird angles

Now I want to ask about Puff because hitting like side B into fair into rest or just fair into rest can kill at like 30 or 40 percent. Same with her combo of putting you on a platform and using sing to up air rest you. Does that count as a touch of death or just a zero to death as you can tech or get up attack to avoid it

Luigi grabbed so that kazuya could electric

12:44 Gluto Popped off unleashing his inner kid 😂😂 I haven’t moved like that since I was like 10 😂😂

Another thing is in a lot of games like tekken your moves start dealing significantly less damage after just a few hits into the combo, in smash moves getting stale happens much slower

Luigi is also a polarizing character because yeah if he gets you he can steal a stock from you, but his recovery is also super easy to gimp

10:05 wow thats crazy they really need to add a stage with infinite space or something to fix that

I particularly agree with your point at the near-end of the video… I’ve always lacked the words to express this though I felt something similar, & I feel grateful that you found these words. Take care!

High level tekken is certainly not putting you though a meat grinder, defense and movement are too strong, but most importantly unlike smash opportunities for combos outside stray pokes are much less common. In fact its actually much much easier to get combos in pretty much any smash game than it is to consistently convert in any tekken game. Tekken is a game played in pokes and movement. Also very laughable when you said that there was a confined arena space in traditional fighters when you literally posted footage of an infinite stage.

I sort of disagree on Lucario being mentioned in this group as a potential example for TODs, mainly due to the risk in comparison to the other examples. Rather than forcing you to run all game, it's more of a time trial in a sense. Your normal gameplay goes as per usual until you take too long, which is what I think is the biggest thing that's missed. Lucario doesn't punish you for getting hit once; it punishes you for taking your time. Or even worse, getting camped by a lighter middleweight with okay-ish speed. It's not like Sonic who's straight up too fast, it isn't Mac who has a comeback on top of extreme power, it's a test on efficiency which I believe encourages utilizing universal skills JUST to meet that faster paced gameplay.

I like the background theme there.

i dont mind characters with high reward. Or... infinite reward. The problem is that its not in melee and pm where you can properly move ariund them

Smash has kinda been in a feature and speed creep death spiral since the back lash to brawl competitive. Its no wonder that the games look more and more like cutscenes now a days

Steves combo's just look so minecrafty and i love them

As an Icies main, it doesn't even matter if they zero to death you. Any interaction off of Blizzard or Up tilt can still lead to a ton of damage. They also tend to be characters that can usually escape Touch of Death characters due to there being two of them, meaning that some of the true combos can be escaped with the other climber. Even if Touch of Death characters don't zero to death KO you, their damage outputs are often still pretty insane off of limited interactions.

TODs are so annoying, especially kazuya, because its damn near impossible to evade combos.

I think 0-death is in a similar plan of gimping bad recovery characters or just edge guarding in general as you can also die at 0 from a good edge guard. 1 is just on stage vs off stage and both require skill in either execution+DI Reading or reading recovery habits+positioning.

One of the biggest reasons why Sonic is my favorite character because of BS like this. Am I part of the problem, no because of characters like Pikachu, Joker, and Kazuya. Whenever I hear people complain about why the meta is shifting towards this direction is simply because of these characters.

I can agree with some points, but it also feels as though you were scattered about which subject you were actually tackling: Touch of Death characters and early kills. I don't think you really separated them well in this instance and sort of lumped them into together as though they were the same level. Smash is a fundamentally a game where yoou can reasonably die early depending on the context of the situation. Kazuya combos and Lucario scoring a powered up Forward Smash at the ledge are incomparable. Polarization is something you'll find in Smash almost everywhere and what really sets it apart from most other fighters barring Samurai Showdown. I think early kills off something like a good read with a risky move(Lucurai Forward Smash at high Aura) is hype. I think consistent zero-to-deaths with minimal counterplay(Kazuya) is less hype, though in a world where we still had a few more balance patches, could still feasibly have a place.

Is wobbling still illegal I dont keep up with comp melee

To simply summarize TOD pros: Win = Happiness TOD cons: Lose = Rage = Depression

Really solid breakdown and argument. I'm inclined to agree with your assertion of how problematic it is; it reminds me of the aspects of Brawl Meta-Knight that made him so broken, namely the percentage of his attacks with transcendent priority. Many could argue that that in and of itself isn't necessarily problematic, but in similar fashion to TOD characters, the mere likelihood of that impacting gameplay and skewing in favor of certain characters, all while forcing a different playstyle from everybody else, is considered to be bad balance in the gameplay loop given the gameplay loop's emphasis on variety in attacks and answers that all have counters and fake-out opportunities, which is what adds to the loop's inherent excitement factor and replayability.

I think also a huge issue is that while ToDs are stupid to deal with, they still consume a part of the power budget of the character, making those characters more polarizing. Moves that are good for ToDs have to be worse in other situations. Actually, a video that explains what makes moves good for ToDs would be pretty cool. I personally think its low frame data and low knockback for the main damaging moves, good range for the setups and little to no start up lag and high knockback for the finishers, and as a compromise have relatively small hitboxes that make them risky to use at other situations where you don't have full control over your enemy, but if you have another take at the topic i would love to hear it.

As a Ridley main, it’s hard out here for a pimp.😅

C- CAPTAIN TOAD?!?!?

IF you have multiple stocks/characters/life bars you don't get to bitch about ToD characters. KOF/Marvel guy

I agree with your statement when you say that TOD characters should not have confirmed setups that kill in every percent and how (most) characters should have low percent->mid percent->high percent combos that don’t link to one another. For example, I main Mewtwo. He has falling N-air to Jab for low/mid percents and also rising confusion to forward air. As well as a few footstool disable setups. None of those combos link to one another and don’t result in a zero to death.

When since were most fgc's zero to deaths?I only know of that in skull girls and some other anime fighters.Those only happen in tekken 8 under specific circumstances

Lucario main here! This for the most part is a phenomenal video (as usual coming from you), and while I agree that Lucario has some characteristics of a TOD character, their Aura ability makes it far too polarizing to make then a true TOD character. They're only able to kill at 40% when they themselves are at around 130 or higher. It is kinda funny when Lucario players manage to pull one off.

I agree with almost all of this, except I don't really know why you used the Lucario clip at 12:14 as a prime example. For one, Lucario had to live to 146% to do that, which I'm pretty sure is a huge ask. Second, he hit Joker two separate times before the kill hit, joker had several chances to live there, not just one. Third, the kill move was Lucario's forward smash, which is relatively slow and committal. Fourth, he hit him right at the edge of the stage, which is meant to kill earlier, though I'll admit it probably could have killed from mid stage in that instance.

I like the video! My only gripe is I wouldn't describe Lucario as ToD. Aura is the thing that Lucario is built around - it is his niche. That potential is the reason why you would choose to use him, and he is balanced around that Aura. Not every high percent hit from Lucario is going to kill at 30% either, it's based on a ton of factors. I don't know if a rando-fsmash in the corner is fair to use as an example to say he's ToD. A ToD is typically a universal sequence that works on most characters, not a stray super powered hit. Bowser can also kill at 30% off a random fsmash at the ledge - I don't think I'd describe him as a ToD character in the same breath as Kazuya and Luigi.

one fun thing: in german Tod is the word for capital D Death or mister Grim Reaper. that touch of death is shortened to TOD is kinda fitting, at least for those who know a little german

Talk about Zombas rise to the Genesis champion

I think what needs to change mechanics wise is making sdi and di more powerful and more mixup heavy. Focusing less on making it so you can always di out on stuff like greninja dash attack, but rather making it so one has to predict where they'll be. I imagine combos can be made better in general to make up for it (more hitstun and such) while giving more defensive (or increasing defensive) options when you're actually in hitstun/getting combo'd, making it so there's always something you can do. Edit: I would also like a much larger focus on ground movement and tech chases in the mechanics of any potential future games. Edit 2: And add parry

No character should have a 0 to death. It's not good design. I love playing Luigi but I don't use ZTD because I feel it's dirty.