What Happened To Bayonetta? - Why NO ONE Plays Her Anymore | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 

People praise Bayo for being such a "faithful adaptation" of her source material, but I don't remember the ethos of her games being "struggle to kill anything".

Bayonetta was the most excited I’ve ever been for a character so her legacy is kind of frustrating here. The level my friends and I play at is not particularly high and I find myself generally incapable of closing out stocks when playing her anymore. It’s really a bummer since she’s one of my all time favorite characters and I’m simply not good enough to really play her well in ultimate

My biggest problem with her is how impossible it is to kill with her on a casual level of skill

The story of Bayonetta really shows how hard balancing combos are in platform fighters.

Could you imagine if every character had more landing lag based off of how many aerials they used while airborne?

As a Bayonetta main, I've been waiting for this episode. Her unpopularity is part of what drew her to me. Something about the idea of an incredible power locked only to those with the skill and patience enough to master her, who would then be rewarded with one of the most powerful characters in the game made my skin tingle. I knew I had to become the few who could wield her forbidden power. The other part? She's hot. Duh.

Does anyone here thinks that "Combo Character" Is a valid fighting game archetype? I would love to hear opinions about it :D just for fun.

Not gonna lie the beginning of ultimate was rough, but I stuck with her because I just adored her playstyle. The buffs throughout the years definitely helped and I feel like she's in a good spot.

As someone who plays a lot of Bayo, my guess for why not too many people play her is a mix of her being highly nerfed grom smash wii u/3ds, which caused all of the top players who played her because it was optimal to drop her in ultimate. That mostly applies to top players and more specifically players who came to ultimate from the previous smash game. More common reasons are her extremely difficult combo game, which takes a bit to a) get used to and b) to actually manage to use effectively (her hidden triple jump that is required for some combos is like the perfect example for this) and the fact that she's from an adult game title that hasn't sold like incredibly leads to not many people having much familiarity with her, though for thous that do will appreciate the 100% accurate moveset that she for some reason has.

Bayonetta's biggest nerf was the shift to Ultimate's engine. Smash 4 had really close blast zones, allowing her combos to carry people to them. Ultimate blast zones are further from the stage, so her combos don't carry people to them anymore. You mentioned the changes to rage and air mobility that reduces her kill power and interrupts her combos. Smash 4 was a game that Bayonetta broke by applying pressure to the right places, and Ultimate has strengthened those places to the point that Bayonetta can hardly do anything to it.

Truthfully, bayonetta is one of my best characters. It took me some time to really understand her combo game, but ultimately i use her more for fun but think ive gotten good with her. She takes a while to get used to and requires patience when learning her play style (at least from my experience)

I definitely think they went overboard with the nerf stick. But she's still fun to play and hype when you do see her

The thing that ticks me off most about Bayonetta's situation is they absolutely gutted her in Ultimate, then went right back to their old tactic of making DLC characters insanely busted in the 2nd fighter pass. Not quite to Smash 4 Bayonetta level but the likes of Aegis, Steve and Kazuya show no effort to keep them balanced. Steve invalidates any character with a poor recovery and has to put in minimal effort to pull of ridiculous combos and kill confirms while Kazuya has some of the most broken moves in the game locked only behind the player's ability to do the inputs, and then his rage drive on top of all that so just in case you're actually winning he gets a handicap.

1 year later and now there are 7 bayos in top 128 at port priority 8. (3rd behind rob and snake both with 9)

They even decided to nerf her taunts… WHY DID THEY NERF HER TAUNTS???

I hate how whiny the smash community was about Bayonetta in smash 4. And then playing her in front of Sakurai, essentially whining in front of him about her.

The thought process on balancing her was definitely more emotional than logical

Before premiere: I could be very wrong since I'm not well-versed in Bayo, but here's my take. Obviously, she's just a heavily nerfed version of her Smash 4 variant. (And in my humble opinion, that is the dumbest character to ever be put in a Smash game.) In order to... I guess "compensate"(?) for all the stupidly early kills she got in S4, she was just given almost no kill power in Ultimate outside of B-air and Smash Attacks. She can rack up damage for sure, but closing out that stock is an entirely different story if you can't land an Up Tilt to Back Air or hard read Smash Attack. It's not just that Ult Bayo is so much worse, but she's also significantly more difficult to play for noticeably less reward. Her combos, while flashy, take quite some practice in performing against players because you need to learn how to follow not just DI, but SDI, and you must adapt your combos within milliseconds. Also, Bayo just doesn't really have approach options against opponents who actually prepare for her burst moves (Side B), so finding that combo starter in the first place is really difficult, especially against zoners and fast characters. This actually was sort of a problem for her in Smash 4, but it's significantly more pronounced in this game. To top it off, there are noticeably better characters who can fulfill the "combo machine" role while not struggling to hit much of the roster or just getting more off one opening, like Fox, Mario, and Peach. At this point, it's more "Why pick Bayo when there are better options?" other than you like her or her moveset, and if you pick up Bayo, you need to commit a lot of time into the character to do well with her. After premiere: Pretty much, yeah. It's just so tiring to play her when the opponent consistently lives around 150% and higher, yet you have very little margin for error.

i like the way you incorporated the training mode modpack in the video, super smart way to show frame advantage

Despite being nerfed to the ground, I still love to play her. It's just endless fun to play as her since you can switch up your playstyle. Sure, you will most likely die first but at least you can go out with... *STYLE*

I love all your videos on smash. I've watched your other two channels but just understand too little about either game. Incredible content!

The strangest thing is that as the years go by, instead of disappearing completely, the Bayonettas are beginning to appear in tournaments, and they are beginning to have top players representing them such as daifuku in Japan, bloom4eva in Europe and lima in America. and many better players are beginning to consider him a top-level character because he has a non-existent disadvantage, he does a lot of damage, he has that robbery factor that characterizes his game, and his problem with killing has been solved with new kill confirms like up tilt > upair > backair Same with the downward tilt. side b> backair, etc., etc. As the meta advances, players begin to improve their edguard, giving Bayonetta another tool to eliminate stocks early in addition to her combos. making you enough 1 stock in 160 if you are watertight and the other 2 at 60 or less considers that the only thing Bayonetta fails to accomplish is defeating her few MU baddies, currently considered to be Mario, Sonic, and Pikachu. It is an interesting case to observe as the years of Ultimate progress as a character considered lower tier has been climbing to be considered top tier

Great series, keep it up!

Before Smash Ultimate was released, there was a Nintendo sponsored SSBU invitational featuring Squad Strike. Sakurai himself was in attendance. A few top players picked Bayonetta as one of their top three, and proceeded to show Sakurai directly how easy it was for them to string together a combo and kill off the top, with the crowd reacting in groans whenever it happened. Lo and behold, upon release it was incredibly difficult to kill off the top blast zone using her combos. That alone was a major nerf as it stopped her most infamous killing method, but she got the full nerf treatment other than that for safe measure. A few frames on Witch Time here, a smaller hitbox on some moves there. Perhaps it was just coincidental, but I still credit that invitational for taking out Bayo from Top Tier.

Been maining her for a solid 3 years now. And to be honest. Most other characters I used as secondaries felt easier and more rewarding than her. Nonetheless she's always more fun to me.

I almost never run into Bayos online, excited for the vid to drop

Love the vid as Always

Commenting before watching but I've never clicked a Vars III video so fast. I loved her in 4 but she was clearly overtuned and I expected I'd main her in Ult regardless but when Ult first came out I was dissapointed not because she was nerfed but because she felt clunky. I'm so happy that a combination of her getting some pretty solid buffs to be a working character, and me learning that Ult Bayo is an entirely different beast than 4 Bayo as far as combo routes and neutral ended up making me ADORE her again and she is my current main. Also shoutouts to Purity, Lima, Bloom4Eva, and TamaP Daifuku as really amazing resources of tournament footage and lab footage. I'm always trying to implement how they play into my game plan.

Loved the video, and love this series. I'd like to posit another circumstantial nerf towards Bayonetta too: the blast zones. On top of the distance of Bayonetta's special moves shortened, practically all the blast zones for each stage in Ultimate are much much further away than in Smash 4. This obviously prevented a lot of characters' ladder combos, and it definitely reduced the advantage Bayonetta got even from incomplete combos.

Your content is some of my favorite to watch on RU-vid

Bayonetta is one of my favorite games and I don't care if she's considered bad, I think she's fun to play. She feels almost like playing bayonetta on a 2D plane, it's crazy

Played Bayonetta since Smash 4 all the way into Ultimate. Early day Bayo was so rough I remember, the amount of times her moves just flat out didn't work properly were so frustrating. Glad after some buffs she became a lot better rounded from where she used to be, but I do agree she suffers at times where she either gets insanely hard to execute reads that can just murder stocks on unsuspecting players or struggle to kill past absurd percents. The one buff I was hoping for before patches ended was just giving up air a little more percent to work with. With rage not being as prevalent as it was in Smash 4 I think her 7.5% up air is just not cutting it in the situations forward air won't connect at that high of percent. But otherwise despite her flaws I'm really happy I stuck with her to the end, despite everyone else in my region who insisted they would still play her in Ult dropped her day 1 LOL.

Bayo is one of the funnest characters to play in the game but one of the most frustrating characters to play against because of how one sided her advantage state is. I love learning her combos in this game and can decimate people if they don’t know the matchup but yeah she’s really got some issues in this game. Especially things like her forward smash that has a big blind spot on short characters up close and how sometimes you’ll accidentally get bats within off stage and it will just kill you.

Love the series man.

This is a great video, which is really rare to find when Bayo is the topic. Almost every other video about her doesn’t capture what actually made her so good in 4, and boils down her negative perception in Ultimate to her playerbase being babies that she’s not broken. You blew my expectations out of the water though, and you really did study up and learn your stuff. If every video you make is as well done as this one, then keep at it man

I would love to see an episode centered around meta knight since the character is imo atleast a bit underrated and underused and it would fit especially with aba's crazy tournaments run

Bayonetta is stylish as hell regardless of tier. She's one of the most fun to play as once you understand her basics.

The only real changes they need to make is 1. Make it so enemies under witch time do not have hitboxes on their attacks. If I witch time you, that’s ur fuckup. You shouldn’t get a get out of jail free card bc of a lingering hitbox. 2. Lower (or outright remove) the stupid fucking endlag scaling on her aerials. In smash 4 it made sense but in ultimate it just punishes the player for landing combos. 3. Make her up air knock back angle sharpen upward as the enemy % scales. So it can be a combo tool at low % but a kill move at high % so she actually has a kill move that isn’t her god awful back air

In keeping with the panic nerf syndrome, let’s add pichu to the why no one plays list!

one of the things that was evident with how smash over its different games was the fact it had a heavy focus on party game aspect, but because of things and not thinking how far some things get extended to like with metaknight and bayo, it basicly created situations that the momment that person managed to figure out that 1 win state it just destroyed the fun of the game even on a casual sense. with ultimate it actually feels like theres a attempt of thinking the upper limits of each character which is why there hasnt bin a outright stupid amount of unbalanced things with the only one that comes to mind is soras Nair 1-2 land resets

I blame MK Leo at the Smash Conventional before the game came out and how people boo’d him for using her in front of Sakurai, she was basically untouched besides having more landing lag and frame data tweaked and side b no longer going pass shields. Then they nerffed so hard after that, if she wasn’t in the roster for the event she would have still been strong in ultimate with her up air being able to kill like it use to.

As a Bayonetta main, I just wish she had a combo throw (up throw relies on reads). As a combo character, you’d expect her to have a combo throw, but nope. The best she can get off a throw is a 50/50 and even then the reward isn’t very good. And not having a combo throw means that sharking is way harder for her to deal with since all her aerials are pretty unsafe on shield. Really her only redeeming qualities are damage output and edge guarding, but even then her damage output on paper is different than in practice because SDI is a thing and other characters can just do the edge guarding job better.

Hello, Ridley main here, and I would love an episode on him sometime. Altho the reason why no one plays him is pretty obvious (he big), it would still be great to get a comprehensive list of his strengths and weaknesses :)

her combos should at least kill at high percents. it is stupid that i can bring someone to the upper blast zone at 120% and an up air won't ever kill literally because it doesnt even send upwards.

There's often a trend with rebalance efforts over-correcting when nerfing overpowered characters.

Tbh I still play Bayonetta a lot because of her games but also because she has one of the most stylish move sets in the game.

imo in the transition from sm4sh to ultimate, bayonetta got treated like kirby did in the transition from 64 to melee. meanwhile cloud got treated like how pikachu did from 64 to melee, he’s still great but he only has a few players, I think. and then there’s corrin *loud flatline sounds*

2:02 theres no conspiracy about it, this was definitely the reason and mkleo knew exactly what he was doing by playing bayo on a stage with one of the lowest ceilings in the game

I wished they would just wait on buffs and nerfs in general. Really think about how long it took to discover Falco and especially Puff in Melee. It's possible that Bayo would have had a fall from grace in 4 if the players were given time to find the weaknesses and master the match up with their character. I guess I'm just personally salty Pichu got nerfed so early on where players weren't given enough time to just get good at Smash Ultimate. Ganon was considered strong early on due to his massive hit-boxes and players just not knowing timing. The developers really need to chill with nerfs outside of obvious glitches and oversights, slight buffs here and there to certain characters is fine to me, especially if it's making a move work/combo like they initially intended.

Simple: SHE'S VERY BAD. Why is she so bad? Well, they nerfed almost everyone of her moves because Mr. Sakurai saw a degenerate OTK from her on the Beta. Her moves in general have much more endlag making her combos less reliable (In general it was the opposite for the cast), her damage rackup potential in general is much lower but that doesn't allow more combos due to the endlag, the baloon knockback hurt her a lot, bats within can now cause an SD, her counter now is very weak instead of busted and her kill power is now next to nonexistant, being overly reliant on hard reads to close stocks but without having the mixup potential to force 50|50s that good glass cannons like Sheik, Fox, Game&Watch and Pikachu have.

Bayonetta is such a slick and cool looking character and such a broken and poorly thought out design. The idea of an air combo based character that drags you up to the top is kind of fundamentally bad. Either like 4 you can kill people at absurd precents by just doing your basic gameplan, or like in ultimate it just doesn't work well and is terrible. Witch time was another thing that really easily swung between being comically broken and kinda useless. I do think if they were going to ruin her broken tools they could have made the rest of her kit a bit less awful, but oh well.

In hindsight, her original announcement was a bit of a warning: she was designed to be as accurate as possible to how she controlled in the game she's named after. The problem is that Bayonetta is a game where you have to annihilate your opponents as fast as possible and the player characters are designed to compliment this. Smash 4 gave you moves intended for a stylish PVE game where you constantly tackle multiple enemies at the same time in a PVP centric game where most characters had their movesets altered to fit on a platformer fighter

Another banger video as always Vars! If you take requests/suggestions for characters to cover I feel like an episode on Link would be interesting. Much like other characters you've covered he's a good character but gets next to no results which confuses me. The main thing I can think of is that Young Link exists but there has to be more to that.

I know this is an old video lol but I hope IF (most likely not) we get another Smash game I hope they add her Bayo 3 costume, and a villan or even Jeaunne as a character (Jeaunne as an echo fighter).

Me personally I would love, LOVE if her Smash attacks didn't clank with the dust bunnies floating in the air in front of my opponent. Like, I know they're super laggy and not a great option, but 50% of the time when I can line one up, I clank and my opponent just rocks my shit when I'm still recovering.

I am having a blast with her.Her combo game and witchcraft magic makes her strong but swift.

Bayonetta is a character that is hard to master properly. You have to know the effects of all her moves and apply it in matches. I know that from experience, she's my main since I started Ultimate. She must be changed in order to be played and enjoyed by many. But the changes I think about could revive a flame that was extinguished and should stay like that. Here's what I'm thinking for the said changes: - A burry effect on her Down Smash - A spike effect on her Forward Air 3, just on the angle of her foot With only those TWO changes, she will be back in top tier again, and maybe causing another revolution against her while Palutena's meta is still growing further and further. Aaah... people.

I love this character so much, she really suits my playstyle... i'm young (15) so i have a fast reaction time and can easily react to di/sdi. I love her movement and neutral (conditioning people to shield and then getting free grabs) and after getting those grabs i can read their jump and kill them no matter the percent... if i catch someone's jump I can carry them to the side blast zone... and even if they miraculously live... they have no jump, and i can edge guard them till they die

I tend to play random characters because I get bored from playing just one, and I get excited when I get bayo because landing one if her combos that actually lead to death is super satisfying to me

I still main Bayonetta, given I’ve never played her in Smash 4. I didn’t even know about the Bayonetta games until ultimate came out, so I have no concept of who she was in her release. Personally I hate the lag, and yea she still needs buffs but she is, in my opinion, ridiculously fun to play because of her high skill ceiling. Dedicated players will know how to use her defensively when lag gets in the way and how to use her offensively when opponents are vulnerable. Her hidden capabilities, like triple jump and witch strike, are what make her so unique as a fighter. I’m definitely carrying her to local matches.

As one of the few bayo mains out there, whenever I play bayo it scares my friends because of her combos that I spent hours mastering on the different characters to perform her combos on. The problem is her transferring from smash 4 to ultimate

I still think something went wrong during the kill power's nerf process... like... they seemed to be so scared of complaints that now she basically can't kill without combos

Her buffs in the game were certainly welcome and being able to combo fair into rapid jab made her kill power way better, but her aerials are embarrassingly bad compared to everyone elses, fair nair and up air all have so little kill power that if you arent right next to the blast zone it just doesnt kill until like 300%. Its even worse when you realise her strongest aerial kill move in any direction is her dair, dair is more likely to kill off the top than her up air ffs because of dairs ass hitbox sending upwards, and you can actually combo into it with single hit witch twist which is hilarious

With post brawl meta knight, ultimate bayonetta being given a much less consistent combo game, and cloud's sword being shrunk coming into ultimate, it seems the smash team doesn't realize it's more fun for a top tier character to be adjusted closer to the line, like removing a bit of cheesy combo potential in exchange for getting a bit more consistency on non-combo kills, which they did do eventually by buffing bayonetta's jab at least, and leave them as a good character than it is to just completely take out the things that made them good and take away the fun of the people that liked the character by pretty much shattering their character, duct taping together what's left, and pretending nothing happened.

I don’t know if others would agree, but Bayonetta always felt clunky to use for me. A high combo character with below average frame data always felt weird to me. Also the bullet arts either being useless or amazing was strange to me. That’s why I don’t use the character, but if I had to guess why others don’t I would say PTSD.

Cloud limited charge buff was just a revert to how it was in Wii U launch of cloud.

Bayonetta got hit hard with the nerfs in Smash Bros Ultimate in comparison to other characters in SSBU. Also, Bayonetta hasn't/isn't a variable character in the SSBU competitive scene since December 2018.

I haven't played this game in years, but I do love Bayonetta. I wish I could get a full Bayonetta game/crossover with Dante. "Bayonetta May Cry 7, Dante's Inferno".

Funny I just started recently learning how to play with her, she was very difficult for me to play at first but now I'm having so much fun with her! She's a great character!

she doesn't have any strengths that other characters (shiek, joker and Zss) can do whatever she can do better and with less effort.

Alabama with 5 top Bayo players: I have no idea what you’re talking about

Pikachu and Fox seem to be the only smash vets (Which I'd define as fighters introduced in 64 or melee) who have always been consistently great.

I can't get over how much you sound like Edvasian. strange hearing him talk about bayo hahah

Bayo is a character you find fun until you even begin to touch characters. Having to KO at relevant percentages, consistent combos, decent neutral, low-commitment options that don't require you to break your fingers every round, and not being a featherweight are all big advantages that other characters have. And that's only scratching the surface. The fact that there are mechanics specifically catered to Bayo that nerfs only her e.g. higher counter decay and increased aerial landing lag, playing her literally puts you at an innate disadvantage that no other characters have to face. I've put a lot of hours into her, arguably my most played in Ultimate but basically untouched in Sm4sh. I can say with certainty that she's not worth learning unless you religiously play the game. I can play Robin and Marth casually and still get better results and the game feels more fair towards me anyhow.

When you play someone who knows the matchup and knows how to counterpick her it becomes very frustrating. She is kind of a high risk mid reward kind of girl.

I think it's difficult to balance a character like Bayonetta. If they'd overtune her even a little bit, she can turn the game into a 1 player beat-them-all with her ladders. But if you nerf her combos to the point that they're not reliable, there's no point in playing her. To be honest I think she's pretty good as she is right now. I just wish Witch Time was a bit better, it was way too OP in Smash 4 but in ultimate it's just borderline useless.

I was there. In the days of Smash 4. Having to fight Bayonetta in bracket every single week. She wasn't very hard to pick up and become decent with, so she was fairly popular. That character was anxiety incarnate. One mistake, just ONE mistake, could mean your stock was gone, from ANY percent, at any point of the game. Any time you threw out an attack it was a huge risk because of witch time. In neutral, in disadvantage, hell even in advantage state, you could very suddenly just have the tables turned on you and you die. You had to pretty much always respect her and treasure any damage you got on her. Imagine Kazuya except the combos are far more flexible and true, and with way more mobility, and that was basically Bayo in Smash 4. She was so hated that there was a huge amount of toxicity in the community surrounding her coming from both Bayo haters and Bayo mains, that was only growing and growing. Basically what I'm getting to is: Her nerfs were incredibly justified. Especially so the toxicity surrounding her would die down cause it was getting out of hand at the end of Smash 4's life. But hey, now that she's really hard to play and still is viable, she's actually a really cool character now, and I love that they didn't just gut her and call it a day.

the block button happened to her, any time I encounter a Bayo online it's like a flowchart, they do side b, I block and punish, rinse and repeat and they never change.

Video idea: why no one plays metaknight

Can you do a video about the spacies like falco or fox

Literally the only other Bayonetta player I’ve met in person was Jellocup. He’s really great, but I don’t think he’s playing much anymore aside from doubles.

1:47 our Life Is suffering but i Will never not play Ganondorf :) 2:05 that has the worst shit happened in Ult,Green Greens up blastzone being incredibly small is something i would have taken in account balancing Bayo 9:00 they Should have reduced this after some patch of balancing, i agree with you saying this Nerf was overkill but alas Sakurai loves us too much but alas certain characters have to be stuck in Melee

I’ve never had a problem being able to smash kill with bayonetta, she’s virtually my main so I use her quite often 😅

Imo I think her frame data should of at least been around 5-6 instead of 7-9. Witch time should of been a bit faster as well and she would of been better off imo

To put it in terms for the people who actually played bayonetta, her smash appearance in 4 is her gameplay in bayonetta one and her appearance in ultimate is what it looks like in 2 but she no longer has umbran climax to compensate.

I been playing bayo since ultimate came out. People sleep on her becuz of her history, its sad to see that I see no other bayos online

In my locals it's the complete opposite we have like 4 good bayos and we don't have anyone like lima or bloom to encourage it either

I love this series. I think a video on jigglypuff would be interesting but that might just be me.

10:38 When the flying fuck did R.O.B. become a top 5 character? Man, I've apparently missed a lot in the past year or two.

Video Idea: Why Everyone Plays Hero

I play Bayonetta because I love her games, and her Smash move set is pretty faithful to the games.

« She might not be as bad as people initially thought after the nerf » That made me think of Marss and ZSS He made the joke « ZSS Sucks « because people started saying that in the beginning of ultimate because of the nerfs from smash 4. But Marss still thought she was good and so stilled played her. And of course you know how good he did with her. Unfortunately after the 11.0.0. Her best combos tools nair, and boost kick got nerfed making her actually pretty bad. And so know when Marss says she sux. I actually don’t think he is joking anymore.

me : "why no one play" oh remember me vars on lol, *start the video and hear the voice* me : "WAIT A MINUTE !"

She got hit so hard with the nerf stick

11 months after this video was posted but I don't play smash much anymore, since it doesnt get updates so nothing interesting is really in store. I only liked playing bayo as her combos just feel so satisfying and right. Other characters just feel less fluent in combos, especially compared to bayo.

Kind of a hot take: I wish all characters were LIKE sm4sh bayo rather than her getting nerfed to their level. I feel like sm4sh and ultimate have extremely restrictive moveset design which is why bayo was, and still is, such an interesting character

I almost cry

I love how Sakurai’s choice for fixing how broken Bayonetta was on Sm4sh was to just keep her the exact same except nothing kills anymore

There’s an inside joke in Georgia smash that I’m the only straight bayo player anymore

Back then she still wielded the Left Eye of the world. Sometime before Smash Ultimate's release, she lost the Left Eye.