How I would tweak Zetterburn to be better designed/more balanced#1090

Currently I think Zetterburn is a little overtuned and overly rewarded for things other characters have to work way harder for. He’s not mad broken or anything but it’s very frustrating to fight him when taking into account all of his brutal strengths and undermined weaknesses. Here’s what I would personally change:

UP B

Landing Lag
15 > 36

(This recovery tool is shockingly strict to punish onstage because of how lagless it is, even when ledgehogged)

DAIR

Shield Safety
-3 > -6 Sweet
-4 > -7 Sour

Damage
12 > 10 Sweet
10 > 8 Sour

Top hitbox size shrunk

(So he can’t throw caution to the wind and mash this on shield with shine, and actually has to space it properly or cross up. I consider this the most important change on this post as given that Zetterburn is the introductory character of R2, he should not teach new players to land on shields with reckless abandon. No other character can get away with it with as much and as easily as him, and coupled with his aerial movement stats and the sheer SIZE of this attack, he can cover an alarming amount of space all while forcing the opponent heavily onto the backfoot, even from neutral)

FAIR

Shield Safety
-2 > -5 Sweet
-6 > -10 Sour

Knockback Angle
45 > 70 Sour

OR

Knockback Growth
0.44 > 0.60 Sour

(Same idea as Dair but after seeing what happened to Sandstorm at EVO the latter change felt right in my eyes as you should not be able to loop Fair into itself for kills)

DOWN B

Only usable once per airtime, this does not refresh when getting hit.

Slightly reduced horizontal speed during flip.

(His recovery is not linear enough for his archetype and ease of use onstage so this is a measure to make his alleged weakness more concrete)

MISC

Grabbing Zetter removes all fire puddles and extinguishes you.

(This is how Absa’s cloud works, which is also a stage hazard spawned by a special to facilitate offense, deny an area, and doesn’t require a lot of time to set up)

Using I-frames to get rid of a fire puddle will get rid of all the fire in that puddle instead of just the tufts of flames touched.

(A nice QoL change that makes sense imo)

If you have any suggestions or objections to these changes feel free to reply so we can discuss

agree with all of these changes except for down b, i think the landing lag nerf to up b will do a lot more than you think.

All he needs is a recovery nerf thats it

i would nerf his fireball. not because its too strong, but the fact that zetters in mid level even try to camp with fireball even though he is such a strong rush down char, makes me wanna nerf it xD

Somehow not a single mention of Uair or UStrong that combo into themselves on DI + SSDI out.

And his recovery is fine, open any tournament and count how many times Zetter gets ledgehogged vs blastzoned. It’s nowhere as strong.

Also a single DownB per airtime would be completely unintuitive and unfair, because nearly every other character has a forward moving SideB that are refreshable and the only once per airtime recovery resources are Reina’s chair and Kragg’s pillar which make sense for a physical object.

Giving increased recovery on UStrong wouldn’t be a bad idea, and for Down B maybe it still could be used multiple times in the air but it doesn’t refresh your dj

I despise this character, but these changes would make him awful. he should have his recovery nerfed significantly and have his options that arent approaching touched on. he should be encouraged to take risks in your face. his shield pressure and offense isn’t a problem, it’s that he has absolutely no tradeoffs for those things. he lives longer than most characters while being better in neutral and advantage.

More recovery on uspecial would probably be enough to make him less frustrating. He’s so insanely good ON stage that making his recovery easier to capitalize on seems to be the way to go. That and the dair change. I like the idea of making it stricter somehow. It’s really easy to get away with even as someone who never plays him.

I do believe Zetter is too strong right now. But theses changes are awful. I would just nerf his down air. And maybe, maybe, slightly increase his landing lag on up b, but I’m not even sure about that.

after giving it more thought (and fighting some very annoying zetters) i think nerfing downair seem like a good choice.
i also think the char needs to either do way less damage, have less kill power or become lighter. Any of those work or a mix, but the work he has to do to get damage and a kill vs how long he survives is just a bad joke. especially since most of his combos and kill confirms are pretty easy. In general i wish we would see more nerfs for pure numbers rather than going balistic and nerfing movement or crippeling certain moves. just making a char die earlier and kill later can already do wonders without changing his gameplay.
regarding his recovery i think he either needs more end lag or it needs to be shorter. but currently it covers way too much space so he can always do the high/low mixup when there is a platform which is super safe because of little end lag.

zetterburn up special having no lag is criminal

Fireball’s range should be decreased because they increased its speed without accounting for it the additional range gotten, turning him into a camper character.