[Nair is] cancellable from frame 2 onwards making it totally useful for redirection and catching a FF.
Could you elaborate on what you mean?
and he has bubble, adding a spike dair would be ******** and unnecessary.
That's true, it would be kind of redundant for it to spike. I still like the idea of it being similar to Fox's drill however. I think it would help his current problem of struggling to do much vs. CC spam. You mentioned that it couldn't be CCed, but that's not true. Any move (excluding ones with grab properties) can be CCed. Dair may sometimes seems like it stops CCCs, but I don't think you can land on top of CCing opponents with it and be safe. You can zone with a FH dair, but even with it preventing them from CCCing, the opponent was still able to rely on his CC relatively risk free. CCC is crouch cancel counter btw.
It's pretty silly to say that he has no horizontal combos when you can withdraw > nair / fair / dair > dtilt / ftilt > withdraw restart. Withdraw is his best tech chase and it starts combos. It's also super effective as an aerial tech chase, and SH > withdraw > cancel makes for zippy horizontal repositioning. If you can't move around horizontally with squirtle, you are doing it wrong. especially with platform stages
I completely agree with everything you said. I should have been more clear, but I was more thinking along the lines of aerial combos when I mentioned horizontal limitations. For instance, Marth has a simple, yet elegant combo game because the opponent is constantly concerned with DIing away or towards based on which move they expect. He may combo with fair or uair, and the opponent has to DI away for fair (to avoid being Ken comboed) or to either side for uair (which will often mean DIing to the center when they are near the ledge). He also has dair and up-B as two potential finishers which require the opponent to DI appropriately in a similar fashion. If they combo DI and Marth up-Bs, they are going to die a lot earlier. If they DI up and in for an up-B, a dair finisher may send them past the ledge when they could have DIed in further.
The reason I explain this is because I feel like at the moment, Squirtle only has a single dimension to this combo game. He can only really hit up when opponents are airborne around FH height. So if you have a Peach float in front of you and she whiffs a fair or does something that has punishable lag, Squirtle doesn't have many options. He can fair to knock Peach away, or he can uair to combo into a second uair (maybe a third or fourth if there are plats nearby to land on in between hits). With these options, Peach will always DI in because they know fair won't kill them (at least not near center stage or at most percentages). So what I would like to see with nair is to make it a reverse sex kick like I explained, and that way a Squirtle can FH at the exposed Peach player and hit with nair. If Peach DIs inward in anticipation of an attack, Squirtle's early (weak) nair would combo into another move. If she DIs away, late (strong) nair will have some serious KB to threaten a KO. If she DIs up, a uair would make her DI have no effect, and would allow another move to followup. The best part about all these mixups is that weak nair or uair restart the whole process. If I catch them with a weak nair when they are DIing in, they still have to be actively be DIing. I could do another weak nair to combo them even further off stage, or maybe I will predict their DI away and late nair for a KO now that they are closer to the ledge. Or maybe I can uair knowing they will DI away and up-B them off the top. Or maybe... You get the idea.
seriously, i think the best possible thing for squirtle would be to keep him as is, add 1% of damage to every move, and change aqua jet to an a input. his dash attack isn't very useful, but when the hell do you dash with squirtle?
side-b > a = aqua jet, side-b > b = cancel.
Squirtle doesn't SH dair like falco/fox, and doesn't nair like everyone else. he plays completely differently than typical melee characters, and the only real problem i have with him is doing a disgusting 13 hit combo and realizing you've only done 63% damage and SD'ed trying to get the kill.
Adding 1% to every move won't do anything at all significant. The way I gauge damage buffs/nerfs is "would I notice if percents weren't displayed at the bottom?" I highly doubt anyone would be able to play 2-3 matches and tell the difference between the current Squirtle and Squirtle + 1% on all moves. I'm not opposed to buffing his damage output, but that alone will not fix what makes him a below average character. Hell, I'm not familiar with how handicap works in P:M, if at all, but try playing some matches with the smallest handicap advantage possible and you'll probably agree that it doesn't really fix anything. It's the equivalent of giving a extra 15-minute break per day to an employee who wants a promotion.
I don't mind AJ as it is. It make sense to me to use up-B out of withdraw when I'm recovering the same way I would up-B if I weren't withdrawing. It'd also feel very weird trying to aim the AJ with A + Control Stick when I've been aiming recoveries with B + Control Stick for a decade.
I dash with Squirtle all the time. I'm not sure what it is with Squirtle players and not using his dash. I think his dash/run speed could use a slight buff (not too much because SSing should still be faster), but even as it is now I use it constantly to maintain a good spacing from my opponent. Maybe try it out next time you play to see when you can use it to do simple dodges. Even if you do think his dash is useless, that's all the more reason to give him a useful DA. Then he would have a reason to use it. lol
I would like to see Squirtle get new options out of withdraw - specifically, side-B out of withdraw.
Currently, up-B out of withdraw, Aqua jet, is an extra recovery mixup with a bit of killing power at close range. I'd like to see the same thing apply to side-b out of withdraw. What I'm envisioning is a horizontal aqua jet. This could be useful in any number of mixups, a good way to instantly change direction, and it would give us a much-needed way to quickly escape from accidental suicides by jumping out in withdraw. No matter how much I practice, I can't seem to withdraw cancel with neutral B fast enough to actually get back to the stage unless I specifically anticipate hurling myself out into the void. Being able to quickly side-b back into safety would be lovely. It would put you into special-fall, of course. On the ground, it could let you quickly punish a roll, or speed up your approach for a short distance.
I don't think Squirtle really needs any more options. He is designed as a pretty flexible character, both in his movement, and in his attacks. The problem is that some of those options just don't work right, so he is left choosing between an awful, flimsy option and a decent, solid one. And then his one solid option becomes less good than it should be because the opponent can expect it constantly.
If you find yourself dying from Withdraw, just really pay attention to whether or not you will hit the opponent, and you can react with plenty of time to cancel the Withdraw and recover. You can even press B to cancel it right when you expect to hit your opponent. If you hit them, the input does nothing, but if you don't, then you've cancelled asap and are able to recover quickly.
Squirtle is already really good at tech chasing, covering rolls, and the problems with his approach are certainly not related to his speed. Try incorporating more SSing and WDing. Just make sure to be patient so as not to telegraph your approach. A lot of Squirtle players seem to want to just force a SS approach on the first try (or even worse, Withdraw), but sometimes you have to start the SS and see how your opponent reacted to your dash away before committing to going in. If it looks like they are ready, you just have to DD out of your SS and try to punish any lazy attacks they might have thrown out. Rinse and repeat. It's obviously not this systematic, but that's the general approach I use, and it has served me well. I have had no real problems approaching a variety of players.
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