Sorabotics, I agree with your statement. If he can't hit you from across the stage then he has not much point standing on top of his kage bushin anyways, and players could stop doing thatand actually try to get near. Please don't nerf Naruto too much though.

Agreed. Naruto, when played in an offensive manner, is really really fun to play.

Personally I just want to nerf his camping game (and shuriken stun + honestly kinda s*** dash attack lol)

Everyone knows Im all about that camp game, but Naruto really should not be that kind of character.

Nerfing Naruto is defensible because he's not fun to fight against. He's not cheap, he's not OP, but he encourages very boring play. I think we all play this game because we want to have fun, and it's clear that most of us dislike playing against Naurto. and nobody likes fighting it.

It's unfortunate that this is an issue though. Naruto feels so fluid; it's great! I wish more people appreciated him for that. Perhaps if the devs rebalanced him to encouraged players to develop a flashier, movement-based Naruto, people would enjoy playing against him (and maybe even as him) more. In that sense, things like nerfing s-, d-, and n-specs may make sense.

Yes, I'm arguing for this on the basis of "fun" instead of competitive merit, and that's a tricky thing to argue because "fun" is so arbitrary. But I contend that this is a valid argument because we all (I hope) play SSF2 because it's "fun", and only want to make it "more fun". I think nerfs in this sense would do so for everybody. Naruto would be less irritating to fight, and Naruto players would be encouraged to play with a flashier aspect of the character.

Fun is important. I like you.

Why is it that some Narutos clones can't be broken by any attack? His clones should have the least priority.

First, they can be killed with medium strength attacks. Second, priority is still borked, complaining will do nothing.

I've tried playing Naruto without clones and being aggressive. While it is fun, his reach is so short. They were intending clones to be the thing that gets people up close to you or for extending combos, which is all the more apparent after doing so. I would like clones to take some form of skill to use, because the people that are primarily being complained about are the ones who literally don't even have a neutral button, and instead utilize all the specials instead.
I would like either cooldowns OR something similar to Lucario in Project M, but you get clones and thus more access to your moveset by utilizing clones efficiently instead of spamming, thus encouraging a more aggressive playstyle. Basically, you start the match, you have 1 side/down/neutral, shown by some sort of visual cue. Cause damage, you get more side/down/neutral specials. You get side/down/neutral specials, you can extend your combos to cause more damage and, get more side/down/neutral specials. Chakra exists in the Naruto world, might as well make use of it.

Of course this is just my idea to make him less campy, which honestly isn't even that annoying to deal with as it is annoying that it works in the first place.

I just don't see how the solution to "X has really stupid matchups against some characters by walling with his clones until time runs out or he kills with Rasengan" is "let's just nerf everything" without compensation. This game is so well balanced there's really no place for huge nerfs like that. Maybe if you gave Naruto something big in compensation it would be OK (recovery is much longer, dair slides a lot farther and general aerial buffs, clones buffed), but I just think that kicking Naruto down to K-tier won't fix things. Although Naruto is a versatile character who can play close-range, nerfing his zoning game that much will just make him a bad character.

What I would support with Naruto is something like the following:
* Dspec travels faster and hits towards Naruto
* Clone mine stuns for slightly longer but priority is drastically reduced
* Rasengan now powers up improved versions of his specials, being a long recovery (up-B), kill move (side-B), and a meteor in the air and added super armor on the grounded version (down-B).

While I don't mean to say that the above is what should happen (I just sorta made it up as I went along, it's not really specific suggestions more as an idea of what might happen), I think the focus should be on tweaking Naruto's clones to be more offensive and replacing Rasengan so that Naruto doesn't have as much of an incentive to camp so he can charge it, similarly to how Snake was changed from Brawl to PM and made the transition from a defensive character to an offensive one.

Naruto needs huge nerfs. That is truely undeniable. This isnt just necessarily a case of Naruto being OP (which he kind of is) this is also an issue of him being seriously unfun in general.

Imagine all those potential new players that try out online and keep encountering spammy a** narutos everywhere. This game gets a lot of stigma for having anime characters as it is, and when one of those characters happens to be one of the most played and the absolute most annoying character in the game, it WILL alienate potential players.

He's just straight up unfun to fight, and this is probably the main reason Naruto is more or less absent at high levels of play - not lack of being viable, but on sheer principle to just not pick the character. It should say something that the only respected Naruto player right now doesn't use clones barely at all.


But, clone spam and shuriken are not the only problem with Naruto's tool set. Up close, he has probably the most bull dash attack in the game, on top of utilt auto combo starters, and a kill move that is fast and safer THAN HIS JAB. (dtilt) This kind of jankiness in his playstyle needs to be nerfed.


Then there comes the arguement of "If you remove his jank stuff then he wont be viable" The solution to this is NOT to let him keep the jank. This is an issue with his moveset as a whole, and he would honestly need buffs in other areas to compensate. Then there's the resulting argument that "buffing moves just because others are nerf is not good balancing." This is true, but I'm not thinking about a small set of his movelist, but his entire character. This is a character that needs a lot of nerfs, but would also need buffs in place to keep him viable.


I probably talk more about nerfing Naruto than anyone, but I dont want him nerfed into the ground. Instead, I want him to not be the black sheep of an otherwise excellent cast. I want him to be a character that should be fun to use, fun to fight, and fun to watch, which is the whole point of a good game isnt it?

Exactly, which is why I think removing the parts of his moveset that make people rage while keeping the fun parts (yes there are fun parts) like his fun grab game, waveland, edgeguard game, and interesting combo game (although against fast-fallers it is a bit like Lloyd was, because you can just do dash attack -> utilt x20 -> Rasengan and kill). You can adapt Naruto without nerfing him too much.

Rasengan would be super cool if it wasn't a charge move. For example, one might remove Rasenshuriken entirely, make Rasengan a single press move that has him extend his hand with blue aura like he currently does and creates what equates to a mid-charge Rasengan orb if it connects. With these simples changes the move would instantly become more elegant, more fun, more original and less prone to encourage camping. Not to mention that of all characters, Naruto does not need a projectile that KOs.

Also, this is just an idea, but theory smash is fun so lets go at it anyway. What would you all think if Naruto's side B was changed so that the clone was summoned directy at its current max throwing range instead of being thrown like a regular projectile? Perhaps the summon distance could be adjusted manually in a manner similar to that of grounded down B. I feel like this would let Naruto keep the fun aspect of having a projectile that knocks people towards him while forcing him to be more precise with it and giving the opponent more "safe zones" that Naruto has to think of different ways to cover.

These two changes alone would make Naruto way more fun to play against, and even more fun to play in my opinion. Thoughts?

Swiggity Swag, whats in the bag? - an irrelevent Fedora balance sheet brought to you by DrPepper(R)

Buffs

Jab -
Maximum time between hits decreased
Uair -
Sour uair knockback increased, damage increase to 7%
Neutral B -
Higher charges have larger starting hitboxes (before the move makes contact the energy ball is larger depending on how charged the move is, although it doesnt exceed twice the size of uncharged rasengan)
Side B -
Aerial version gives Naruto some vertical height on first throw
Down B -
Grounded Down B has slightly more kill power
Up B -
Clone mine gets a few more frames of stun
Grounded Up B startup slightly sped up.


Nerfs

Mechanics -
2.5 second cooldown applied to all clone specials. This is universal - using 1 clone special prevents to use of any other clone special until the cool down time is over. An animation will play showing Naruto attempting the special, but he will fail. The uppercut portion of Up B is not affected
Dtilt -
Knockback is reduced, and start up has 2 more frames of lag
Utilt -
Slightly more effected by DI, and has a slightly higher knockback scaling rate
Hitbox behind Naruto is a sourspot, knockback more horizontally outward
Dash Attack -
Hitbox doesn’t comeout until the kick.
Neutral B -
Stun removed on Shuriken. Hallelujah.
Down B -
Moderate Endlag increase
Up B -
Clone mine will not stun while it is falling, only when it is laying on the ground. Further more, trying to place a clone mine while one is already placed will fail, but this will not effect the clone cooldown time in these cases. Also, stun frames on a shielded target will be reduced by 50%
Grounded Up B does not drop a clone mine.


Stat changes

Walk speed slightly increased
Backwards crawl speed decreased
Roll distance decreased



The next 3 pages will be dedicated to telling me how wrong I am by upset Naruto mains.

Is a 75 frame cooldown really necessary? It just seems like you take a character with a good but not great close-range game but one that was set apart by a great zoning game, take away the zoning game, and you have a bad character.

If by great zoning game you mean broken zoning game.
And Naruto is really good up close if youre competant
This list of suggestions is meant to put more emphasis on an aggressive naruto while removing the ability to camp. Autocombos with utilt/dashattack are made a bit harder to perform (taking the auto out of combo essentially) Clones would be used less to camp out like they do now and more strategically to apply pressure and continue combos. Clones should not be a tool to camp out an opponent, they should instead be tools to enhance his offensive game.

Like why would you want that annoying little brat to keep his ridiculous zoning game anyways? It just isnt healthy for the game in general, in my experience people that actually like Naruto like he is now usually main Naruto in the first place.

Naruto is simply unfun to fight and unfun to watch, with the exception of people who dont abuse his camping potential, which is EXTREMELY seldom and is more or less a self imposed handicap. Naruto takes crutch character to an extreme.

Naruto shouldn't be keeping people out, he should be trying to get in.