Apparently Haste went from 18% to 10% damage, not that much but the move already sucks

Alpharad had the idea that I really like for Haste and I quote "What if you can cancel Haste, like Turbo Mode once" or something like that. I find that Idea pretty neat and makes sense since Haste in FF1 allows more hits and could be translated in SSF2 as a way to combo easier by allowing "Haste-cancel"

OK.
OK.
Woah, woah, woah.
SSF2 Devs!
Making Haste into a more distant move to avoid Turbo Mode exploiting? That makes sense.
Making Haste into a faster move to not last as long? Definitely makes sense, albeit I thought the duration it currently lasted was fine.
But just straight-up nerfing Haste? By 8%?
Nooooo, why would you do that

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Black Mage already has an almost-guaranteed 0-to-death with just that first buff there. (Haste -> sweetspot D-air -> haste -> f-throw at ledge) and that mashing mechanic just make it more guaranteed.

Watched a few other matches and guess what? I found another nerf!

D-Throw
Initial Poison Application damage reduced 10% - 4%
Actual Poison DoT damage reduced(?) 11% - 10%
It is also a single hit now

I think Alpharad-Senpai is to blame for those nerfs though, if you watch his streams you'll know a few things;
1. He likes/mains BM
2. He likes Turbo Mode
3. He likes to perform the "BM Turbo Mode Infinite"

Guess what the infinite involves? Yep, D-Throw and Haste

If any Devs were actually watching like what he and somebody in the chat said (and most likely true since he was promised an early try at an early build of Beta and he did post in twitter that he played Beta before us), they might have nerfed BM because of the infinite.

I think BM won in the Smash Con streams just as much as Yoshi was picked in the Smash Con streams...

So here are my version of buffs:
+Haste has a slightly shorter 0.9b grabbox with the additional Beta grabbox combined
~Grabbing with the "line grabbox" will make BM do the Beta Haste attack dealing 10%
~Grabbing with the "Beta grabbox" will make BM do the 0.9b Haste attack dealing 18%
+Haste can be cancelled into a Jump or an Aerial anytime during the Haste attacking animation
-Whiffed Haste leaves you helpless

+D-Throw Poison Application is now two hits (from 1) and deals 2% then 4% damage
+Poison DoT now deals total of 12% damage from 10% (also applies to Oddish and other ways to apply Poison)
-BM has a slower Grab animation

+Stop charges faster and is released Faster

Haste needs nerfs like Beta stat. It's soooooo good. Right now, if you Haste, against some characters you cover shield, spot dodge, roll, any attack except superfast ones, and it shuts down so many characters. It also makes tech-chasing stupidly easy. The poison was also stupid, because it did so much damage that just one or two hits from it (and combos off of each one) put you at kill percent without any real work by BM.

Its really not as broken as you make it out to be, but it was a little dumb

8% for beta haste is p s*** tho, imo for something thats now way harder to land you get way less reward for it as well

Poison really needed a 5% nerf because getting like 25 confirmed off of a grab without any follow up is just dumb no matter which way you put it

Also Haste never shut down characters, im actually laughing that you would say something like that really, BM always put himself at some sort of risk whenever using it, if he misses it he low key just dies at 80

Poison only deals 11% for the DoT, Haste sucks already, and I don't see stop being useful in most situations

BM is pretty low tier actually, he's just broken in Turbo mode, y'know a SPECIAL brawl. Haste is just as bad as Flowmotion in 0.9b and BM can't really even use it to recover

He isnt low tier when he beats more than half of the cast and only loses to like 6 characters

And is like the best onstage edgeguarder

BM is a weird character as far as tier placements, because the things that make him beat characters aren't the same as other characters: he's slow and can be overwhelmed in neutral just like plenty of low-tiers, but against some characters his punish game is just unreal.

Haste is still s*** in Beta. The range AND power are nerfed greatly and went from decent to 0.9b Sora tier.



^^^this list IMO makes it less spammable and more useful in the way that Haste was in FF1

Now that I think about it, Stop, Haste, and Warp are 3 of the most useful supportive Black Magic in FF1. Haste for buffing your party, Stop for preventing the enemy, and Warp for escaping those dungeons.

Might as well replace Haste with something like "Temper" if we were to give BM a more "balanced" Side-B...

Edit: Ok, maybe the D-Throw nerf was needed, but they should raise the full DoT damage by like 2% so it can deal 12% in total and 16% with the application but in 0.9b, it takes 4x as long to deal 3x the damage of some grabs

14% is amazing damage to get from any throw, let alone a combo/techchase throw. Haste is a ranged command grab. It will only be bad if it is easy to react to and Black Mage has no tools to encourage opponents to shield at the distance at which it hits. Seeing as neither of those things are true - at least as far as I can tell - I really think you're worried for nothing, man.

BM in FF1 and most FF mages is a Glass Cannon

What if instead of replacing the "cannon" of Glass Cannon with a "Fire Hose" and replace "Glass" with "A**" to make the current "A** Fire Hose" BM currently is, why not just make him more Glass as a Nerf.

Decrease weight and Jump Height?

And if Haste is doing like 2 hits, why not replace it with "Saber" and be a single hit instead if we're trying to make Haste do WAYYY less hits instead of allowing BM (and allies in FF1) to do DOUBLE the amount of hits

Or, we could make BM deal more damage using physical attacks and less with spells and make him the opposite of a Black Mage, heck we could just make him a freakin RED MAGE!



What if Kirby no longer can absorb/copy others' N-Specs? I mean, it's still a command grab, you can set up combos and deal decent damage by spitting the opponent out, and you can still Kirbycide. You can no longer copy other NSpecs, sure but it doesn't matter it's still a good move right?

Inhale has lots of problems Haste doesn't (startup is worse, harder to do out of dashes and stuff, usually telegraphed), and it'd still be amazing without copying. Haste is just strictly better for most matchups, where Kirby doesn't even want to steal nspec.

I don't understand the rationale behind totally redoing a moveset cuz canon. BM is really interesting and unique the way he is, so just make his stupid stuff a bit less stupid and give him a little to compensate and he's fine.

So, I'm extremely late to the party, but I just managed to watch Day 0/1 of Smash Con, and this is most of what I got. I'll also mention some things about the Haste discussion that's running here.

Also, feel free to correct me if any of these notes are wrong.

-UpB has landing lag, a universal fix that will certainly hurt BM's recovery variety, since going for the ledge is extremely risky and landing on stage in 0.9b is probably the safest way to come back.

-DSmash is still bad. A 10% attack that can't kill or be followed up. His charged incarnation is bad too.

-Dash Attack has no Super Armor. A change which is completely understandable, although I would like if they added a mechanic like the one on Ryu's Focus Attack in Smash (Block 1 hit only)

-Much faster throws in general, including Haste. This is a good thing since it can catch your opponent off-guard.

-NAir is weaker overall. Again, something completely understandable, the move still has it's protection around BM so it's not like it's irrelevant.

-DownB has no hitbox while charging, but now it kills on his charged up version. This is something that had to be done, the lingering hitbox in DownB was ridiculous against characters with no disjoints, and a buff to the charge is always welcome.

-!Charged USmash is now stronger. It killed a Pac-Man at 91% in BF. This is a welcome addition since right now, Firaga's kill power is pathetic.

-Haste kills. More on this later.

-DTilt sends in an angle similar to Jiggs' DSmash. This flows perfectly with BM's kit and it gives DTilt a pretty useful niche over FTilt.

-!Charged FSmash does 30% now, but from what I heard, it was nerfed, which is completely understandable since a 30% Thundaga is bonkers.

-BAir, DAir, FSmash, USmash, NeutralB and FTilt seems to be the exact same, the only thing that could have changed is FSmash having a little bit more KB.

-DThrow deals less damage. This had to be changed, 9b's DThrow is way too strong.

-UAir: I'm not sure about this one at all, but it seems like it's again the incarnation that only hits once instead of multiple times? I'll edit this if someone can confirm it or if I can catch it in Day 2.

Overall, most of these changes are completely understandable. I feel like they did an splendid job on balancing out BM's "jank" without making the character extremely underwhelming.

Now, about Haste: It's dumb. 0.9b's Haste is dumb af, and I'm extremely glad they changed it for a much more interesting move, since it flows well with some of his other changes, like Meteor being a scary projectile that your opponent would probably want to shield, leaving the opportunity to catch him with Haste. Beta's edition of the move also kills, which makes the risk/reward ratio pretty balanced overall.

And no, BM is not a glass cannon, not even in FF1. The character is based around his movepool having a variety of options to deal with the opponents, either by deleting the weaker ones with his AoE spells, or by giving them some debuffs. He was fragile, but he was not the "powerhouse", that was the Monk. The character takes more the concept of the slow mage, that has a lot of resources going for him and many options to create havoc, but it's not precisely the main damage source, or the most defensive of the group.