Gold's Proposed Cloud Changes

Gold's Proposed Cloud Changes (from a Cloud main's perspective)

- Increase damage taken required to fully charge Limit to 125% (from 100%)

Limit is infamous for making Cloud a “better, sword wielding Little Mac” especially because he can Charge it and gains just as much Limit for getting hit as Little Mac does for his KO Punch meter. Cloud will need to get hit more often if he wants to make a comeback.

- Increase the minimum time spent in Limit Charge to 30 frames (up from 3 with shield/roll/grab/special button and 6 with attacks)

Limit Charge is almost entirely non-committal. Even though attacking directly out of Limit is underutilized, the fact that Cloud basically gets a Melee run cancel could be overbearing if used properly (as a side note, R.O.B. also has this exact tech with Gyro; Sheik and Donkey Kong can do something like this with their neutral specials, but they have charge cancel animations which aren’t instant). If Cloud wants to charge Limit, he should have to commit at least a little bit to doing so instead of being allowed to fake it. To offset this change, pressing the special button to cancel the charge will only have a 4-frame delay in the air instead of 8, and he will gain charge from frame 1 instead of frame 6.

- Decrease damage on the fixed KB hits of Cross Slash by 1% (for a reduced total damage of 17% from 19%)

Currently deals too much damage for a frame 10 move that you can hit confirm. This makes Cross Slash slightly less useful as the obvious punish option.

- Decrease damage on each hit of Limit Cross Slash by 1% (for a reduced total damage of 21% from 26%)

Self-explanatory. This doesn’t affect the reliability of linking the first four hits and doesn’t harm the last hit’s knockback too harshly, but you will still need to rack up about 15-20% more damage (rough estimate using Ruben’s calculator versus various characters with and without rage) for it to kill reliably from the middle of the stage. This also has the side effect of making it slightly less safe on shield.

- Decrease base knockback on the side Climhazzard descending hitbox to 100 (from 130)

This hitbox deals far more knockback than you would think. The high base knockback is to blame for ludicrously early kills off-stage. It’s toned down significantly so Cloud won’t be killing as often with this hitbox alone.

! Swap forward and down aerial meteor hitboxes (forward aerial meteor does 1% more damage with better knockback scaling and down aerial meteor does 1% less damage with worse scaling; forward aerial retains increased hitlag modifier)

Cloud’s forward aerial doesn’t get much use as a spike since down aerial is 7 frames faster and stronger at higher percents. Landing forward aerial should at the very least be more rewarding than down aerial, which already has far more utility.

+ Fix the untechable bug (pretty sure it’s a bug) on Cloud’s Climhazzard

If he tumbles from a hit near the peak of his regular Climhazzard (taking 80 or more KB), he is unable to tech, unless he gets the 30% reeling animation at 100% damage or higher. He should be allowed to tech, as no other move seems to have this weakness.