True, and it's actually better than rolling. Thanks for the precision.

What do you mean by HCB motions?

Half-Circle-Back. FGC term. I've been using this technique as well with my controller to get better movement with Falcon, it is SUPER fluid on a controller.

Okay.

So, for those of you who weren't there, I just got my worst-ever placing in a tournament, at 17th place. After nearly losing to someone for 25th and then losing to Bowler, I've decided that I am going to officially drop Samus as my main, and go play a high tier character. Samus is complete garbage, and trying to use her at a high level of play is a complete waste of time unless you're name starts with "S" and ends with "ekanor". Just thought I'd let you guys know.

brb picking up Samus and renaming myself to Sjenesk Plequekanor.

Git Gud my friend.

Kinda lame to drop a character just cause of bad tourney result(s). Whenever I play in tournies (I only played like 3-4 lol), I don't let lackluster results bug me much, although I only got 1 real lackluster result. I haven't dropped Wario at all, but I do know that he's not that viable in tourney settings unless they specifically cater to him. If you drop a character cause of poor results, then it's clear that you're more focused on "gettin gud" than actually having fun.

Playing a good character is fun. That's reason enough to change.

If you wanted fun then you could've played another character for all this time. If you have been discouraged to use Samus anymore then something tells me you've been struggling more than having fun.

For me, the most important thing is to pick a character that fits your playstyle and meshes with your strengths and weaknesses well. Look at aMSa in Melee: he does amazingly with an awful character because his playstyle fits Yoshi perfectly: extremely high skill cap, relies on tricky movement a lot, good punishes, and aggressive. This game is balanced enough that you can succeed with any character: while obviously Wario players have a tougher time winning tournaments than Lloyd players, both are well within the realm of possibility and it's more about player skill and player-character compatibility than it is in the other Smash games where there's half of the roster that just isn't playable in tournament.

As Luigi puts it, "Bingo, ohohoho!" I stopped having fun with Samus because I realized it was no fun to lose to lower-level players anymore. Seriously anyone can pick up a character like Marth, Lloyd, or Zelda and Samus just has too difficult of a time dealing with them. Pretty much the only reason why she isn't completely garbage at this point is because of a game-breaking glitch.

I think you're going too far with saying that Samus has too much trouble with the Swords and Legs of this game, maybe you simply don't have the proper playstyle to beat those characters. Maybe, you're just being outplayed?

Considering that Samus was designed specifically as a zoning character, but her missiles and bombs can be cancelled out without trading by 99% of the cast... She has some real issues. Her only methods of dealing with sword users are her grapple beam and her charge shot, because everything else is just too slow or gets cancelled out. Against a high-level sword, Samus has no other options for getting in close without getting punished for it.

The problem is that there are a great deal of players out there that cannot deal with her due to either matchup inexperience or playing as one of the few characters that Samus can counter. There are simply a lot of strategies that Samus commonly uses that are really easy to counter, but just aren't for some reason. If there were more players at the level of Kyoz and Lunary, her flaws would become a LOT more apparent. As soon as someone learns to predict and properly dodge the zair and follow up grab, as well as learn how to consistently powershield, she becomes a lot less relevant.

Also, for the record, Samus' skill ceiling is not much higher than several high/top tiers' skill floors.

Samus certainly has issues, but I think you're overexaggerating. She has a down-tilt with good range, a great zair, a good pivot dash-grab, missiles which although not great are useful to cover aerial approaches and jumps and for punishing baited approaches, a fabulous ftilt, a decent aerial kit, Bombs which are great for punishing approaches, a Charge Shot which cannot be outprioritized and when combined with glitches can either OHKO or give you several shots to get a KO with, and a recovery that is not super easy to edgeguard even as a swordsman. She obviously has problems, but it isn't like she loses all the high-tier MU's 35-65 or 30-70.

Samus isn't that great. But you have to find your own style to allow you to out beat everyone else. In lag she's really bad as she's easily one of the most punishable characters in the game.

BTW Code just so you know her fully charge shot can be out prioritized. I've seen Marth do it alot. When i first started playing SSF2 Samus, I noticed everyone was nearly Aniti-samus ready. With abilities allowing them to REDIRECT or BLOCK her ranging attacks. Now this is cool and all if Samus had some good h2h combat in this game. But if you get close and you're not a really predicting type of player. You're f***.