Bayonetta (SSBU): Difference between revisions

Bayonetta is currently ranked 26th out of 82 characters on the current tier list, placing her in A- tier. This is a big drop from her placement in ''Smash 4'' where she was considered to be the best character in the game. Bayonetta's main strength is her unique, powerful combo game. Her special attacks, [[Witch Twist]] and [[After Burner Kick]], allow her to reliably combo and inflict heavy damage on opponents, sometimes dragging them into the top or side blast zones, which can lead to early KOs with aerial follow-ups such as up aerial, forward aerial, or neutral aerial. Bayonetta especially excels at quickly chipping damage away from her opponents and sneakily KOing them with her powerful special attacks. All of her tilt attacks confirm into multiple follow-ups at early percentages, giving her one of the best damage racking games of any character. Furthermore, despite her combos being susceptible to SDI, the large hitboxes on most of her aerials or special attacks, as well as their effective hitstun make it easy for her to overcome it. She also possesses [[Bullet Arts]], an extension on any of her attacks which enable her to shoot from her hand or foot guns. [[Bullet Climax]] is a solid neutral special, as its high damage output and hitstun make it easy for her to rack-up damage offstage and edgeguard. With its fast charge and cancellation, Bayonetta can perform several mixups and even KO her opponents via a combo extension into fully charged Bullet Climax, on-stage or offstage. Furthermore, Bayonetta possesses a plethora of defensive options, the most effective being [[Witch Time]] and [[Bat Within]]. A successful activation of Witch Time at low percents can open an opportunity for a combo, while an activation at high percents can often confirm into a KO, with all of her smash attacks having very high knockback. Bat Within, a frame 1 airdodge, allows her to burst into a flock of bats and move away into the direction that her player chooses, sometimes allowing her to reverse disadvantage and punish her opponent. It is often used to escape semi-true combos, juggles, and even kill confirms. Her special attacks also give her a long, flexible, and mostly safe recovery, further enhanced by her ability to wall jump and cling. Her edgeguarding abilities are phenomenal as well, with a powerful meteor-attack in down smash being able to KO opponents at the ledge, as well as her flexible aerial game providing her with an aggressive offstage game.

However, Bayonetta has many notable weaknesses. Her frame data is below-average, with almost all of her attacks coming out on frame 9 or later, and most of them also have high ending lag. On top of that, her attacks deal rather low shield damage or pressure, making them unsafe on shield. She also has a rather poor ground game, which is essential for her to start her combos. She often has to rely on [[Heel Slide]], up tilt, or down tilt, all of which are unsafe on shield and mostly require precision and carelessness from the opponent during neutral to be able to land. Her special attacks being the centerpiece of her combo game, they would sometimes give her a self-inflicted disadvantage state. They plague her with more landing lag the more she uses them while in the air during a single combo and can render her immobile for up to 50 frames. This makes her vulnerable to a heavy punish if she is carelessly utilizing her special attacks. Witch Time, despite being useful to confirm into combos or KOs, is burdened with 8 frames of startup and 67 frames of ending lag, the most of any counter. This makes it rather difficult to activate and riskier to use out of disadvantage. Players need to utilize the counter wisely, because on top of having awful frame data, it starts to decay after consecutive use, making it unreliable for an extended period of time, and also rather useless when it is needed most. Furthermore, despite having powerful combo confirms and KO options, Bayonetta sometimes struggles taking stocks at higher percents, as her best KO options, particularly back-air, jab, and her smash attacks, are difficult to land clean hits with due to their poor frame data. Bayonetta has to rely on mixups, reads and edgeguards most of the time to take stocks. Finally, despite her amazing defensive options, Bayonetta is a lightweight with a tall frame and hurtbox, and coupled with her risky ground and special attacks, it makes her relatively easier to punish, combo and KO than most other characters.  

The general consensus on Bayonetta was negative during the early metagame, with most players lamenting the overwhelming amount of nerfs she received in the transition to ''Ultimate''. However, Bayonetta would go on to receive significant buffs from game updates that would help her tournament results improve, particularly during the pandemic and post-pandemic metagame. In turn, these results would also greatly improve her perception in the community. Thanks to the efforts of players such as {{Sm|Lima}}, {{Sm|Bloom4Eva}} and {{Sm|TamaPDaifuku}}, she continues to see success in the current metagame, and continues to have a large playerbase.

To counter her many unique strengths, Bayonetta has very noticeable flaws. Most notably, while she can quickly rack up damage with her combos, she has very few reliable KO options until around 150%, with her only real kill options before this being her smash attacks, back air, and down air. Even then, these options are relatively mediocre; Bayonetta's smash attacks are slow, often get cancelled out by other moves and have spots with no hitbox; her back air has slow start-up and a relatively small sweetspot hitbox; and her down air is a laggy move that only KOs if it hits the opponent with certain hitboxes or while they're grounded. Even at percentages higher than 150%, her KO options are unreliable, extremely punishable if whiffed or only KO at very high percentages, for example her forward throw and dash attack. Thus to mitigate her raw kill potential, many players aim to earn stocks through successful edgeguards using her fearsome aerial prowess, or more situationally through the use of hard reads using Witch Time.

Bayonetta is subject to several other weaknesses: unlike most other fighters, her Smash attacks can only be held for 60 frames instead of 120 ([[Mega Man (SSBU)|Mega Man]], [[Ness (SSBU)|Ness]], [[Olimar (SSBU)|Olimar]], and [[Villager (SSBU)|Villager]] also share this weakness); her Witch Time becomes less effective with every use, even when it isn't triggered by an attack; and Bayonetta's combos themselves, while arguably her strongest asset, are still ineffective against good [[Smash directional influence|SDI]]. Additionally, Bayonetta suffers from having potentially some of the highest landing lag in the game, as her landing lag increases based on how many specials she has used in the air. As a result, she can be immobile upon landing for up to 50 frames. Though she has ways to get around this - for example, using Witch Time to cancel her landing lag, landing with an aerial to force the opponent away, or retreating to a ledge – these are ultimately situational, and a whiffed combo can lead to a big punish.

Bayonetta was unanimously considered to be the best character in ''SSB4'' due to her many extreme advantages, including her ability to KO opponents at virtually any percentage with successful [[ladder combo]]s, the best disadvantage-breaking move in the game with [[Witch Time]], great KO potential outside of her ladder combos thanks to Witch Time and her smash attacks, and an excellent recovery. Even after having received significant [[nerf]]s in game updates, her advantages remained intact, causing players to label her as "[[broken]]", and many matches involving her became controversial. This included the ''Ultimate'' tournament [[Super Smash Bros. Invitational 2018]], where top professional player {{Sm|MkLeo}} pulled off 2 ladder KOs in front of [[Masahiro Sakurai]] using Bayonetta. Due to these factors, Bayonetta was initially nerfed drastically in her transition to ''Ultimate'', though game updates have provided her with substantial buffs to compensate, and the shifts to the metagame have proven benefitial for her to some degree. Despite this, Bayonetta has still been noticeably nerfed overall from ''SSB4''.

Bayonetta's already poor frame data, her major weakness in ''SSB4'', has been worsened further from the previous game. Her most reliable combo starters have been weakened, with her up tilt, down tilt, and forward aerial all having more ending lag; the latter was affected the most significantly, with the first hit no longer allowing for follow-ups other than the next hits of the move and forcing her to lands with the second hit. [[Witch Twist]] has more startup and grants less distance, reducing its effectiveness as a combo starter, [[out of shield]] option, follow-up from other moves, and recovery option. Adding to this, all of Bayonetta's special moves have received nerfs that make them more risky and punishable: [[Bullet Climax]]'s charge takes longer to cancel and can no longer be held indefinitely, [[Heel Slide]] and [[After Burner Kick]]'s followup hits can no longer be used if they hit a shield, Witch Twist is slower and can no longer grab ledges, and Witch Time slows down opponents for much shorter amounts of time except at very high percentages, alongside having noticeably more startup and ending lag; the lattermost move's changes, in particular, have made Witch Time go from the uncontested best counter in ''SSB4'' to much more in-line with the rest of the cast.

In spite of this, Bayonetta has also received a few noteworthy buffs. All of her dodges have been sped up relative to the rest of the cast, no longer being among the slowest in the game, while still having the ability to trigger Bat Within during their startup. Downwards After Burner Kick is now a reliable combo starter once again due to it launching grounded opponents at a higher, more suitable angle for followups, and Witch Twist is harder to [[SDI]] out of due to the lower [[hitlag]] on each hit. Witch Time can slow down opponents from much farther distances upon a successful counterattack, has a longer counter window, and changes a projectile's ownership to her. Although [[grab]]s have been overall nerfed across the cast, all of Bayonetta's grabs have slightly increased range, which combined with her throws not losing their utility, improves her grab game despite their higher ending lag. Her [[neutral attack]] combo's finisher and dash attack have both increased knockback (the former now being one of the strongest neutral attacks in the game, and the strongest among lightweights), and the latter has more range and reduced ending lag, improving the move as a burst or KO option. Bayonetta's most inconsistent moves have also been notably improved; both hits of her up tilt will always connect reliably due to the first hit using set knockback, her smash attacks now have transcendent priority on aerial opponents, most notably addressing the low priority of the moves, Witch Twist has a lower SDI multiplier, and her Witch Time has higher slowdown scaling, noticeably increasing its slowdown duration at high percentages when the move is stale.   

The universal changes to gameplay mechanics are a mixed bag for Bayonetta overall. The ability to [[dash cancel]] into any move improves her grounded game, though this is somewhat counterbalanced by their rather slow startup and her notable grounded moves losing some of their combo utility. The streamlined [[jump#jump timing|jumpsquats]] and reductions to landing lag are mostly detrimental to her; they slightly benefit Bayonetta's combo game as long as her aerials are not extended with Bullet Arts, but unlike most other characters, Bayonetta suffers higher landing lag when she lands with aerials that are extended with Bullet Arts. This, combined with other characters gaining either safer aerials, improved combo routes from them, or lower landing lag, has allowed them to more easily keep up with Bayonetta. On the other hand, the changes to [[air dodge]] mechanics have benefitted her overall; although Bayonetta has the third shortest distance of any directional air dodge (tied with {{SSBU|Steve}}) she still benefits from their reintroduction since her special moves don't cause helplessness when used in the air, and it allows her to slightly extend her recovery provided she is not able to reach the edge on time, plus the increased lag on all kinds of air dodges and their limit to one per airtime (unless hitstun is sustained) has further improved her edgeguarding ability, despite her worse aerial game

Overall, Bayonetta's biggest strengths from ''SSB4'' that were deemed "overpowered" have all been severely toned down or even removed altogether, as her combos require slightly more precision to pull off, have less KO potential and leave her more vulnerable, and Witch Time is a less powerful option to place the opponent at a disadvantage. She is also plagued with further defined weaknesses, possessing much more significant KOing issues, a worse disadvantage state and overall survivability (both from her weaker recovery and endurance) and a slightly slower moveset. Although some of her moves have received various improvements and/or quality of life, none of her buffs are able to properly compensate for the comparatively much larger impact her abundance of nerfs have brought up. The universal changes pronounce both the good and bad aspects of her attributes, but much like her direct buffs, this fails to address her severe direct nerfs. However, she still retains several of her main strengths from the previous game, most notably her strong combo game and edgeguarding ability. Many of Bayonetta's improvements have been given to her through game updates, improving on her most underwhelming aspects or alleviating the severity of her nerfs. These changes now give Bayonetta a higher learning curve, and render her much less effective than her previous ''SSB4'' counterpart; however, optimizations to her metagame and the retention of her strengths have allowed Bayonetta to remain an effective character.

*{{Sm|Bloom4Eva|UK}} - The best Bayonetta player of all-time and one of the best players in Europe in the post-online metagame. He has won several large European events, most notably {{Trn|VCA 2022}}, {{Trn|GLORY 3}}, and {{Trn|Invasion: April 2023}}.

*{{Sm|Lima|USA}} - The second-best Bayonetta player in the world. Although he has been playing Bayonetta since the early metagame, his best results came about in the post-online metagame, notably placing 3rd at the major {{Trn|Rise 'N Grind 2023}} and 5th at the supermajor {{Trn|Collision 2023}}.

*{{Sm|TamaPDaifuku|Japan}} - The best Bayonetta player in Japan. He has wins over several of Japan's best players, including {{Sm|acola}}, {{Sm|Miya|p=Honshu}}, and {{Sm|Tea}}. He has also placed highly at several events, including 2nd at {{Trn|DELTA 7}} and 17th at both the major {{Trn|UltCore}} and the supermajor {{Trn|DELTA 5}}.

However, Bayonetta would go on to receive many buffs that made her strongest options more consistent in updates {{SSBU|3.1.0}} and {{SSBU|8.0.0}} which would eventually lead to a positive shift in players' perceptions of Bayonetta. With Bayonetta players adapting remarkably to the changing meta and with balance patches having lended Bayonetta significant buffs, a slow but notable increase in her representation would emerge: during the [[COVID-19|COVID-19 pandemic]], {{Sm|Bloom4Eva}} used her to place highly at major online tournaments. Following the return of offline tournaments, Bayonetta continued to see impressive results thanks to players such as Bloom4Eva, {{Sm|Lima}} and {{Sm|TamaPDaifuku}}. This led to an exceptional shift in her perception, and most players reevaluated the character and ranked her as a mid-tier at least, and as such she was ranked 45th on the first tier list as an upper-mid tier. Following the first tier list, Bayonetta's popularity and success grew even more and her players continue to achieve consistently strong results in tournaments. Thanks to her improved representation and results, she is now widely ranked as a high-tier, with some players even ranking her as a top-tier. Bayonetta would see a massive boost on the second and current tier list where she is ranked 26th as a high-tier, the greatest improvement of any character from the first to second tier list. Overall, while Bayonetta is still widely considered to be a shell of her ''Smash 4'' self, she is also considered to be substantially stronger than she was in the early metagame.

*There is an inconsistency in Bayonetta's smash attack animations where the wicked weaves retain the blue and silver pendants even if she is wearing her ''Bayonetta'' costume where the wicked weaves should have red and gold pendants.