~SPONSOR~ Get 20% OFF + Free Shipping on your order with my promo code "VARS20" at mnscpd.com/Vars

Electric Wind God Fist... - is frame 8 - has intangiblity for the entirety of the startup - is 100% completely unpunishable on shield - has 24 frames of end-lag (on-par with most tilts), making it decently unpunishable on whiff - is *+46* on hit - is a pseudo-out of shield option - is a combo starter - is a combo extender - can be combo'd into - confirms into kill moves - apparently combos up to and beyond 300% for some reason - combos into every single one of Kazuya's moves - is not sugarcoated This move is better than most characters

You know Kazuya has a few exploitable weaknesses, like his inability to land, weakness to zoning... *Lands EWGF once* Never mind

Tekken Kazuya’s best move is also EWGF. It’s almost identical to Smash’s, but they gave it a key weakness by letting you crouch under it, giving you a free punish. It’s something I wish Smash Kazuya had instead of balancing it with “hard input = move you’ll never see”

"Just don't get hit" Sonic mains: my time has come

As a Tekken player, I was very impressed with his transition to Smash

Ryu and Ken: Weak SpongeBob Terry Bogard: Angry SpongeBob Kazuya: Buff SpongeBob

“A fight is about who's left standing. Nothing else.”- Kazuya Mishima at the top of a volcano

I'd argue electric is more than just Kazuya's best move, but just the objective best move in the game. Not a single member of this cast would pass up an invincible unreactable combo-starter approach option that doesn't replace any of their normal moves.

Can you make “Why Nobody Plays Banjo-Kazooie” next?

Kazuya has been notorious for throwing people off of cliffs for longer than Smash has existed. Smash is a game where the primary goal is to throw people off of cliffs, and people wonder why Kazuya is so formidable in this setting?

I think the biggest issue with him is the insane intangibility on his moves, especially ewgf. Would be much more reasonable to approach him if he didn't just ignore you landing hits on him.

This feels more like a "Why Kazuya is OP" then "Why everyone plays" ngl. Altough everything you said in the video were facts we can all agree on

The constant invulnerability is the part of this character that really stings. Heavyweights have them more often than usual - hell, KRool has belly armor on almost as many moves as Kazuya has invulnerability. The problem is that super/heavy armor is not only weaker than invulnerability, it *has a limit*. If Kazuya's invulnerability had a limit like this, then he would be a lot more balanced. Bowser has invulnerability on his arm in his ftilt, but that just makes that move a dedicated spacing tool. Kazuya's kit makes him look like he's a heavyweight the size of Pikachu whenever he attacks

Just one remark: as a Ganon main, I hate that gates of hell is a guaranteed kill at ledge with 40% or so…

I think an interesting character to look over for nobody plays is Meta Knight. He’s one of those characters that seems amazing on paper, and while he’s not bad by any means, isn’t all too great in practice.

I also hate how you can be winning each stock and he just grabs you and you die because of his comeback mechanic. I’ve played games where I’m dominating each stock but he gets his rage drive and I die at 70 I re spawn and kill him rinse and repeat until last stock.

I think Kazuya is cool and I don't hate his combo game. It might be fun if it had a little more variation but ultimately I think the main issue is just how hard it is to challenge ewgf. If I could punish kazuya for spamming it then I'd probably be fine with the character.

14:19 I feel like a lot of people don’t know, or forget this fact, but Sakurai stated that he was purposefully overtuned because he was so weak during development.

I hate both Kazuya and Steve because of one simple thing: Their mechanics rewrite the rules of the game. Steve exists as a character who's play style rewards avoiding combat. Kazuya is a character who's mechanics disregard smash bros fundamentals, such as challenging and true combos changing with percentage I'll admit Kazuya is absolutely amazing to watch matches of, but that doesn't change the fact that he and Steve are toxic towards the health of the game

I went to a local recently and half the players including me played kazuya

Bro you are insane. Three top tier channels with great analysis, your work ethic is crazy.

If kazuya didn’t have invincibility on his electric he would still be pretty damn good but not stupid broken. It would mean that his main combo tool is punishable, out spaceable and therefore forcing kazuya players to weigh risk before throwing the input out, therefore somewhat validating the amount of damage he can do in one combo. I also think they could’ve tuned his damage and move properties down a bit so that it’s a lot more work getting kill confirms. I feel like the ability to rack up tons of damage in kazuya’s kit wouldnt be toooooo bad if kazuya was designed to get that high damage combo then work for a kill confirm or another dmg combo then into some sort of confirm instead of being mostly centralised around his TOD potential. This is just my opinion tho, and I’m just some no name local player… all this being said I’m also a tekken lover and am super biased towards this character. Go riddles!!!

IMO Kazuya would be fine if his individual moves did less damage. His typical move does like 15%. His execution requirements end up not being as severe as they should be because he only has to hit you with like 6-8 moves before you’re at kill percent if even that. Kazuya dropping a combo early means you still took like 50%. The fact that electric does 18% on top of everything else is just too much.

What’s really weird to me is that Tekken is one of the few fighting games without any fully invincible moves (aside from Akuma who brought his invincibility over from Street Fighter). I don’t know why he got two really good intangible moves in Smash.

BC HES COOL OK?!

I love fighting Kazuya feels like a boss battle everytime

"Kazuya Mishima, wins!" Also I'm disappointed that you didn't add Kirsch as one the soundtracks. It slaps.

This is the same situation as Akuma from Street Fighter being in Tekken 7, they implemented not only the character but the original games mechanics like fireballs, invincible dp's, 2D style jumps/arial movement, EX moves and supers. And who would've thought that would make Akuma broken compared to the normal Tekken characters.

Can you do why no one plays lil mac next! I think while peanut has been taking off he is still so under represented and such a unique grounded play style! Love the series ❤❤❤❤

Weird Title because Kazuya is a pretty niche character but I do get its to keep consistency with the series. His presence outside of high/top level play is fairy low and even at top level play, there are a handful of legitimate Kazuya mains. Personally, I love Kazuya. Hes very different from the entire cast in play style and is extremely authentic to Tekken. There so many times Im like, hey its just like Kazuya in Tekken. He also causes a lot of salt from players and spectators which is a plus. I do agree that while he is polarizing with crazy strengths and exploitable weaknesses, the odds are stacked in his favor. Even trying to keep distance and win the poke war is tricky even with a character that has great pokes. Overall, really solid video. The fact that you mange 2 other channels is really impressive.

I'd say that removing some of the invincibility on Kazuya's Electrics like the invincibility on the lower half of his body would be a decent way of nerfing him without ruining him. Also, despite having the strongest reflector in the game, it's also the riskiest one since you have to actively anticipate when the projectile comes out and move toward the projectile. Plus, it's a ground-only move so reflecting in the air is impossible.

The fact that his recovery is as good as it is really adds insult to injury...

I already had some Tekken experience due to me liking all sorts of stuff, and when Kazuya was added it was pretty amusing to watch the whole smash comm attempt to figure out how he works for the first few weeks Lol. I remember trying Kaz out for a bit day 1 and thinking, "Wow, this is really cool actually! It definitely feels like tekken in smash." then going online and everyone's like "What the hell *is* this character?!" Anyways, was fun. Another great Vid Vars, have an amazing day everyone!

Why does everyone play Kazuya Mishima? *Simple, he's Kazuya Mishima* And as for me, he was my most wanted character so

6:35 that is literally the most regressive smash gameplay I have ever seen, with neither player capable of approaching.

Removing his disjoints would go a LONG way to making him more fair

Phenomenal write up, excellent video, brilliantly succinct! Youre a blessing man

This video was well put together. Very accurate and thoroughly explained from an objective viewpoint. Great work as always.

Knock back or damage reduction on his kill moves would help increase the amount of interactions he needs to take a stock without effecting his play style. Removing intangibility/super armor would ruin him as they’re there to compensate for his moves being slow to start up

love this series keep it up!

The only way to balance him is to give him less damage output and turn down the knockback. Taking away his invulnerability literally kills him and he can no longer interact

I play him because he is a Mashima, he is a Tekken, he has many moves, and he has the ultimate voice lines.

Every time I see Kazuya I think about the time when Sakurai said that he was surprisingly weak in development and was buffed(possibly to where he is now). I wonder if THAT Kazuya might have been a more bearable character, or just a face amongst the crowd of Smash characters.

A good way to balance kazuya imo is increasing ewgf endlag. That not only will prevent him to spam it that much in neutral to challenge your attacks (meaning they have to at least risk his neck a bit more to win neutral and use this move), but also will give actual counterplay to his tod combos Currently the counterplay to ewgf (if you take away the fact that the kazuya player maybe mess up during the combo) is mixing your di so he needs to guess correctly in order to continue the combo. However, ewgf has very low endlag so kazuya has enough time to dash and cover every di so there is no real escape of the combo. More endlag will at least force the kazuya to read the di since if he dashes the combo turns untrue

Man I’m gonna be honest I’ve been bingeing all of your videos. Your content is really dope.

Lol so Sakurai just made a bunch of broken characters and then dipped out lmao.

Dash upsmash covers all DI out of electric. Autoturn around makes the upsmash hit regardless of DI. Also, I keep hearing that he has a bad disadvantage and recovery but I really dont see it. I've seen more wario stocks taken from edgeguards than kazuya stocks.

I think it would be nice to see a why no one plays in Incineroar after Skyjay’s run at Collision

I think he has way too much power and too many goodies. He doesn't need a 100% trip or reflector and his recovery range is insane. I play Peach and found that you can hit him with a turnip while he's virtually offscreen and he can still fly back. He also has 30 frames of intangibility on roll getup - the highest in the game, and a privilege he shares with every DLC character except Joker and Sephiroth. Why? He's supposed to be big and bulky, why is his roll getup better than Pichu and G&W? (In the rock-paper-scissors of ledge play, why do DLC characters have an objectively stronger rock?) His comeback mechanic is much more resilient than most comebacks, as well. Remove or heavily nerf the reflector, make trip a 50% chance, lower the knockback growth on up smash and up special and/or change their launch angles to be more outwards, and make him lose rage drive after whiffing the grab or taking 10% less damage. Personally, I'd like him and Min Min to get banned alongside Steve. It's okay for characters to have weaknesses and they didn't give that aspect enough thought with the DLC. This is a bit meta, but Kazuya's presence has also had the side effect of making Terry look reasonable when Terry also has insane DLC privilege power.

ah yes, kazuya from smash.

I still think Kazuya is overtuned, but since're not getting balance patches anymore, it's a matter of adapting, I guess.

Watching kazuya play, I thought it seemed pretty fair as he has to go in but i didn't know he has *that* much intangibiity. I kind of understand why people want him banned now

“Kazuya has the most moves of any character” Kirby playing all-star mode:

The problem with Kazuya isn’t the fact that he can kill at 50% with rage driver. It’s the fact that he has a reflect AND a stage wide laser… on a heavy combo brawler who has passive super armor

Not to mention a slightly weaker bowsers tough guy super armor, really good recovery, and a good projectile. I’d really love one more balance patch to tone down kazuya and Steve just a little.

I think the two things that could balance Kazuya fairly without outright killing him would be dropping his weight and eliminating the insane push back from EWGF when hitting a shield. Sure its still an insanely good move but can be punished now if miss timed, and the drop in weight would make scenarios like that riskier for him sooner

The intangibility is bs because he doesn't get that in his own game but as a tekken player i adore the amount of love that was put into him in smash. He should definitely be nerfed but all the legacy moves he has is incredible to watch as a fan of tekken.

Agree with most of this, but using kazuya's reflector on reaction is just not feasible against most projectiles.

The main reason why i play Kazuya is because i like characters that output high damage but requires actual timing and skill to play ,and because my friend fucking hates playing against Kazuya 😂

I’ve been WAITING for this video nglll

also why does he have like 2 jumps and a side special to recover. He has like 0 weakness, hate watching him play lol

Tekken is really hard to translate into smash I think, but I would find it interesting to compare it to the design of another platform fighter, and most notably heiachi Mishima in PlayStation all star battle Royal (remember that game? It was cool). I don't remember a thing about it, and the two games are very, VERY different, but it may be still interesting to see a Mishima outside of his... Gosh knows the hell is that stuff he seems to continue to pull out

One balance idea is making the EWGF stun more proportional to your opponents percentage so it isn't as broken untill higher percentages

It's so funny how Kazuya is just better than the shotos in nearly every way to the point where I question if the team even tried ryu before giving kazuya this kit

for me as a casual the most fun element about him is his backstep. it makes spacing soo much easier for me. when playing with other characters i always try to backstep, remember they can't do it and go back to kazuya.

The intangibility is always the most annoying thing to get cheesed by. Because he only has two moves out of *30+* that have full-body intangibility, a lot of the times a move goes through him is just because he happened to use a move that had i-frames right where he needed there to be i-frames. But I don’t know if I’m downplaying or if I’m just having a skill issue or something, but I always found it difficult to intentionally abuse the i-frames on the moves that don’t have full-body intangibility. Dragon Uppercut and Tombstone Crusher are the only two moves I can ever reliably abuse the i-frames with. Either way though: I can accept EWGF combos, but the i-frames is just complete BS (even as a Kazuya main, I never feel like I truly won whenever I just completely ignore a hit).

We could start with limiting the sheer number of moves that have intangibility. See how he performs after, and we'll come back to the discussion a few tournaments down the line

Funny how this video came out at the exact same time (to the minute) as the King trailer from Tekken 8

I think it'd be funny if Kazuya had unbreakable armour on some of his moves rather than intangibly and during those frames he took 2x or 3x damage. I think that would raise the risk factor of trading with a move without taking his insane potential away. It would still be up to the Kazuya player to not drop the combo, but if they did they just took some big damage for screwing it up or for throwing out the moves too much.

3 things i can think of are like making his weight to 109-110 since he needs to be heavy. another thing would be that push back that EWGF does on shield. and make if EWGF WHIFFS he cant just do another one he has to wait a bit, if it lands then its just the normal EWGF we are used to.

The way i would balance kazuya would be the cloud approach. Just make his recovery bad. It's too good for what he can do offensively. Ganon might actually be mid tier if he had kazuya's double jump and up b.

Kazuya Mishima is Kazuya Mishima. It wouldn't be fair to take away his strength because that's literally ripped from Tekken itself. Which is kinda funny in a way. In Tekken 7 for example, Kaz is usually considered B tier. In Smash, he's considered S tier (going by the official rank). Kaz finally found a place where he's on top and there's no Jin, Akuma or Heihachi in sight. 😂

3:34 Thanks for calling them Shotos and Terry, separating them.

Tbh it's sorta fitting for a proper fighting game character to dominate smash bros lol

I really feel like the best balance factor they could implement is adding staling on his full body intangibility frames. The window on a move should stale the more its being thrown out in neutral. Connect or not. It should be treated like spot-dodging mechanic wise. Only smart and patient kaz players should be using those attacks via hard reads to mow through their attacks and get that big damage conversion.

I think a simple balance to Kazuya to make it easier to challenge him in neutral/disadvantage without removing his top tier status would be to remove some of the intangibility on his moves, specifically some of his more commonly used tilts like b tilt, df tilt 1, db tilt, and u tilt 1. Force Kazuya to use moves like ub tilt for anti airs or f tilt/crouching db tilt for longer ranged pokes. Unfortunately, you kinda can’t remove intangibility on electric or any other input moves without significantly nerfing him imo

As a Kazuya main, I was waiting for this

Another fun fact about EWGF, like in Tekken its + on shield in this game, but its dependent on weight. The heavier the guarding character, the more - it'll be, being up to -1 on shield. This doesn't even matter because you can simply do it again. I think the most advantage kazuya can get is +7.

Imagine if smash players had to deal with Marduk. They'd quit the game in a week

If updates were a thing, I think there would be tons of ways to balance kazuya without making him trash. Like making it so you can only use one electric per combo or giving him bigger hit scaling or giving him less crazy knock back as couple of examples.

if nintendo does another balance patch to fix steve then I really hope they dont gut the dlc only small nerfs and more buffs to the mid low and bottom tiers

1:14 That attack was so strong, the screen went black to save our eyes.

As much as I like kazuya, I'll definitely agree with others that ewgf is too spammable. And so annoying to go up against

Yeah, now that you've mention it; he's still not strong enough.

I think the real problem is just fundamentally with his game plan, if he gets taken to 90% from neutral, he’s still even as long as he can hit 1 electric in the same stock. Even if they just made electric less safe and stupid to punish, the character would be way better to play against.

I like how he was a character no one played before and now everyone plays him

11:52 I see what you did there 😂

These are always so well done 👍

Ness and Min Min also kill Seph instantly if they hit his Scintilla with fsmash or usmash (respectively). All a-button reflectors kill him at 0 if they hit his counter. Not sure if hitting Scintilla w/ fox/wolf reflector hitbox would do it too, but it's definitely not unique to Kazuya.

As a Kazuya main in Tekken, this highlight is spot on for Kazuya as a character. Great Job.

How did Sakurai and his balance team thought that having a character that can consistantly 0 to Death you in one combo was good game design?

Did I miss it, or did he not even mention the intangible command grab that kills early and can be used to trade stocks whenever he's ahead?

Never knew about the intangibility on EWGF, that's kind of an odd choice imo. In Tekken 7 the ewgf is safe on block, but can be both ducked and sidestepped, as well as every character in the game having at least 1 hyperarmor move (known as a Power Crush). Also since it is a 14 Frame move (if done perfectly), it will be beat by any move that is faster (notably most jabs are 10F). Here the only way to deal with it is to his for the Kazuya player to just miss it entirely.

So if you run into him online you might as well just turn your Switch off lol.

This video is so biased it's hilarious. In the Ouch vs Tea clip went does no one talk about how Ouch was spamming fair just as much? Why is it okay to mash safe, combo starting aerials but not okay to mash safe, combo starting grounded attacks?

Can I get a transcript of this :D . By far most anticipated by me, thanks for covering Kazuya for this series

no way bro is trying to sell smash players self hygiene products

Aw yes, gotta love the riddles gameplay while listening to a smash video essay

I think the #1 thing that people misunderstand about Kazuya are his combos. Can he 0-death in a single combo? Yes, it's more than possible, but if you know what you're doing against Kazuya, it's less than probable. People think that Kazuya can just do the same combo over and over against the entire cast, but that couldn't be further from the truth. If Kazuya could 0-death EVERY single interaction against EVERY single character, he would. The real problem is matchup knowledge. Many of the combos you see Kazuya player's performing are straight up un-true combos against most of the cast. Combos against characters like Fox are completely different from characters like Peach for example. The differences in weight, fall speed, air speed, and size can COMPLETELY change the way Kazuya combos. The Kazuya player needs to be aware of these individual attributes to perform a consistent combo, because the same combos that work against characters like Samus will simply FAIL against characters like Greninja. If the other player know's how to adapt to Kazuya's combo potential by taking advantage of their individual attributes like weight, fall speed and size, they can completely avoid combos that otherwise would've killed without the proper input. If you know how to take advantage of the DI arrow following an EWGF, you can completely avoid platform tech-chasing by DI-ing AWAY from the platform. On the other hand, you can take advantage of Kazuya's poor aireal maneuverability by DI-ing TOWARD a platform that's further away than he can Ferp's to, preventing Kazuya from following up with any true finishers using Ferp's tech. If a Kazuya player N-airs after about 60%-65% (depending on character weight) the attack will send players into a tumble state which allows them to tech-roll either in our out of the way of Kazuya's followups. Not to mention damage staled N-air, which has less hitstun and can allow players to act out of Kazuya's N-air for 0 true followups from Kazuya. Like I said, it's all about matchup knowledge. Practice against Kazuya in your own time so you can get used to the way he combos the characters you main. There IS counterplay, you just have to understand how Kazuya combos your character to unlock that counterplay. Just practice DI-ing EWGF and learn how to predict Kazuya's followups and you can toss him around like a rag-doll. Seeing the clip at 10:30 of Leo Vs Tea is a perfect example of poor counterplay on Leo's part. When Tea follow's up DGF with EWGF, Leo decided to DI INTO the platform which allowed Tea to true punish his tech-roll with a DGF>U-Smash. If Leo had DI'd AWAY from the platform, Tea's N-air would've spiked Leo where it would've been left to a 50/50 chance for either Tea to follow up with another tech-roll punish, or Leo to escape with his life. It's still not guaranteed that Leo would've survived, but at least there would've been a CHANCE to survive. When Leo DI'd INTO the platform, he basically gave Tea a free followup. If he had DI'd AWAY from the platform instead, there would've been a chance for him to survive. It just goes to show how matchup inexperience can completely change the tide of a battle. TL;DR, learn the matchup.