IC Wobbling Ban
This is going to be talking about the current ban on Wobbling since I just came back to the community more competitively and these rules didn't exist before.

Nearly every tournament has been banning wobbling recently, it seems like a big community decision but no where written up / agreed to my knowledge.

I come from a fighting game background, nearly every game I have played there is something deemed as cheap, unfair, broken, etc but as a purist I always believe that a game should be untouched unless something is clearly a problem.

In Street Fighter 2 Turbo

Akuma was hard banned because of his air fireball that would create unbeatable situations.

O Sagat was soft banned meaning tournaments can choose to ban him or not, due to his defence game being insanely strong and invalidates most of the characters (similar to metaknight argument).
There was a point where T Hawk was considered because if he touches you once the whole round is over (close to the wobbling argument).

In Guilty Gear

Eddie was never banned in guilty gear 2/AC, he is clearly top tier and he has an unblockable ON BLOCK, you can imagine how much of a noob stomper was strategy was, let alone top players. The catch is you can escape it if have enough meter to use an escape move out of block / you know how to use FD (shield) and basically parry out of it



Now lets get to Melee Ice Climbers

The arguments so far from what I read up to Ban Wobbling:


- "Wobbling is Broken"

The term "broken" which is widely used across the melee community for Wobbling. The term broken in the FGC generally means that it's a really good move/mechanic, but a lot of negativity also spreads around this word because its used as a trigger word to describe things people don't like, similar to the word "cheap".


- Degenerate https://youtu.be/HNUHA8035qQ?t=240

1) Bypasses the Punish Game (Comboing, edgeguarding, etc)
2) Removes all defensive counterplay (Di, teching, recovering, etc)

I do agree with these arguments, Wobbling clearly does do this but does that make it "broken" or "degenerate" is up to the community. IMO more like a very strong punish that is very easy to execute.


- Makes it easy for players to get far in bracket / pools

I do agree with this as well and a lot of new players / intermediate players get destroyed by wobbling ICs, but is this because its broken or a case of not knowing the matchup?
At a more high level of melee I feel when someone has lost to IC its just a matter of getting outplayed and usually I've not heard complaints from the top players regarding their losses to wobbling.


- Ice Climbers players will get better without wobbling

I agree/disagree with this. There has been no huge results with Ice Climbers since the banning but there obviously has been some attempt to find new tech / improve. A lot of pro ice climber mains honestly just quit with the wobbling ban.

- Defensive play is massively favored against Ice Climbers

I feel like defensive play is definitely the way to play against ice climbers, going in more often can definitely lead to more grab scenarios for ice climbers and they don't have the best options to approach. This is obviously not the favoured way in the community to play smash.


- Makes Melee better to watch as a spectator

1) Less upsets, brackets usually being swung hugely by ice climber players.

True, this definitely was happening for a period of time in competitive melee

2) More exciting tournament matches

3) Nearly everytime someone got wobbled at a major the crowd / twitch chat would just rant or complain.

- People just straight up hate wobbling / getting wobbled

Its rough yeah, a lot of peoples losses are from wobbling IC's and I get it, a lot of people just hate it generally.
It's hard to see in my eyes as a competitive player because I've never had issues with it and actually enjoy playing against IC with wobbling.
If majority people just don't like it its very understandable why its banned.


Now I want to share the positives of wobbling being legal

- Makes IC way more viable / Results

Right now I think its true to say that this has hugely hindered the results of ice climbers worldwide, and the worst part of this imo was that the character has never won a major and the only closest moment was Wobbles where he got destroyed by Mango in the grand finals of Evo.

Ice climbers without wobbling is way worse punish game wise unless proven otherwise, the character struggles very hard in netural in a lot of matchups and doesn't have as good hitboxes as other characters.
Essentially banning wobbling is nearly the same as banning ice climbers as a character overall.


- Creates a whole new matchup dynamic

IC is a very unique character, the matchup in general requires very good patience, movement, precision and timings.
These are things that take a lot of matchup experience, understand of the game and practice.
They play unique to any character even without wobbling, but with wobbling legal the need for precision is way higher which makes them a scary character at all levels of smash due to crouch / shield / trading play being a much bigger factor.


- Nana's AI

Nana existing makes it really cool imo, and having to focus on Nana just as much as Popo (because of the huge threat of damage, neutral game and wobbling advantage)
Nana having terrible AI is actually what makes IC more bearable overall

1) her inputs come out a few frames later makes her more vulnerable
2) once shes desynced away from Popo shes basically useless outside of random smashes
3) her recovery is pathetic
4) when saving Nana its nearly always terrible


- Some matchups are incredibly hard, nothing is unwinnable.

My personal opinion is from a competitive fighting game background I find it confusing why wobbling is banned as it doesn't really destroy the game fundamentally at the highest level, results aren't hugely swayed when it truly matters in most cases.
If we compare it to brawl which didn't ban the really brutal parts such as metaknight, ice climbers and olimar. Brawl definitely had a lot of hatred for similar reasons but top players would again just learn to accept, adapt and overcome these character hurdles. This is the similar approach I see in most FGC games.

Overall I feel like wobbling was banned due to mass community choice of not liking the character overall due to the one "broken" combo, and if this isn't going to change then wobbling will stay banned.

- Fuzzyness