Lag was high on one end or the other in pretty much every single match, but Gold_TSG and I duked it out tonight.
@SAHunterMech
I'll admit Samus is in a better spot than I thought she was. I still don't like her, and I don't think the fallspeed is an improvement, but with her improved aerials and zair it's like moving sideways [I will still state that 3.5 was strictly worse than 3.3, but this one has fixed much of what made 3.5 Samus so bad]. I say this because when I fought Gold_TSG, many of the combos were primarily grounded, some of which were ones I recognized from doing myself in 3.3, so I don't know how much her aerial combo game changed (uair's angle change gave her new vertical combos, but she lost some old horizontal ones that often led back to the ground and for more damage - while uair could lead off the top, I don't know if that's actually better than just a bunch more damage for a safe, easy dtilt KO later on). Her fallspeed does allow her to go for off-the-top screw attack KOs, but I avoid a few and SDI'd out of one, so I'm not sure how useful that is.
Also, I think dtilt was a bit underused by Gold_TSG, based on how broken it is, but I won't tell him how to play her (there were a few times where you dsmashed my shield and I think you could've applied more pressure/hit me with dtilt or rapid dtilting, since dtilt is amazing). May have also just been lag.
Ness didn't impress me, but there was a ton of lag, and Gold_TSG said he couldn't show me what Ness could do.
GnW's combos seem really dependent on not DIing certain ways, and his recovery still feels weak (probably the only character in the game where I can hit him sideways on FD, he's got his jump, and doesn't make it back). If sausage did not clank this issue would be alleviated. My own ZSS did impress me though - I had no idea her fsmash was that ridiculously powerful. And for the record, I did pull off dsmash -> dsmash -> second hit of fair, so if that's not supposed to happen at any percent, someone maybe fix that... So thanks Kien for those KB nerfs, you were right, her smashes were stupid strong.
Squirtle still wasn't very impressive. A lot of stuff I fell for was MU inexperience (can't use reflector while he's in withdraw). Gold_TSG's Squirtle was fine, but a lot of stuff was like "Oh Squirtle can do that!?" and then punishing when I saw it coming the second time.
DK would care about lasers more if lag wasn't messing up my lasering in a variety of ways. I did take on like 20% at once with them, but then lag let me get zero-death combo'd because my positioning was off. Thanks lag.
Still need to play a strong Peach - never did face Longbottom.
Thanks to Aero and Gamez for the matches as well. It's good to be back.