3.4 Eyedol

He does have a reversal. Back teleport. It’s super slow…but it’s invincible at least.

Back teleport in the corner… uh huh.

Well you said a reversal. You never said where on the screen. Least he has a reversal.

Okay but lets just take all of it to its conclusion.

IF you reversal back teleport it won’t hit, it doesn’t stop your opponent from chasing you and its evne more punishable on whiff now than before. So literally any player worth their salt could not only OS it with a good meaty, but they could then chase after it and either get a full punish or push Eyedol directly to the corner where he’ll get merc’d. It does not fix the situation, so I don’t think its really worth mentioning. Im sorry that I had to take the time to fully explain what the purpose of a reversal would be, but you seemed to wanted to troll with something that would not be an answer.

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Well then there’s nothing more to say then.

Well if you want to have an actual discussion about the actual character and not offer snarky responses that jokingly deal with the topic at hand then sure we can still talk about it and reasons for and against, but lets actually seriously talk and think and come to real conclusions about the game.

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As Aganos player, I can really appreciate a good reversal (since Aganos has very situational ones).

Eyedol has qcb p on warrior, so is covered. Also he can access to it during instinct, and he is always on warrior once instinct fades. This means he can do this reversal around 2/3 of the time approx.

On mage, teleport is the reversal. It’s very situational, but it’s a reversal. And considering how good he is controlling the mid-long range, having a meterless reversal, albeit bad, it’s enough reason to respect him at least a bit during his wake up.

My point is that Mage should struggle (as he does) on wake up.

My problems with Eyedol (and I could live with them) are:
Mage qcf p ender deals poor damage and gives poor meter. Buff damage or meter, currently it’s worthless
The nerf to mage j.mp and mage j.hp was maybe to much. Not asking going back to the previous version, but something between.

My only real issue it’s shadow lighting being breakabke after fullscreen qcf lp combos during mage

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I think its silly for one form to be a liability and one form to be the one you want to be in, Even if some matches are “easier” when you are in Mage overall you’d just want the character to be in Warrior all the time. Also the teleport may be a reversal but its so bad, there is no reason anyone should ever get hit by it. Its not even situational its just bad.

I do agree the changes to J.hp and j.mp could use some change back to the original version, its hard to purposefully create the space you need. I also feel like b+mp is far less useful that it used to be almost ot the point of omission in my gameplay. There may be some spots where I am missing it.

What I would say is in general I think mage needs a slight retuning at this point to better balance it against warrior and make both forms fun. As I see it right now you want Warrior PIPs mage Pips are pretty whatever and usually don’t add enough extra to really make you care that you have them. One thing that could be interesting is to make it so that you can power up yoru mage Shadow moves in various ways with pips as well but it would need some look into it.

As I see it right now in terms of mixups and offensive pressure Eyedol is a pretty middle of the Road character in KI terms and that is fine, but I’d like to have a bit more dirt. J.hp used to be his dirt but it was a bit too brainless so it’d be interesting to see some other changes to bring him more in line with the top class characters, right now I’d say he probably is around Hisako level, which is still strong don’t get me wrong but I’d like to see either some stuff brought back in line for “strong” eyedol or add something to give the character a bit more dimension.

Some things I think are cool with Eyedol that Im not sure people do

Meaty St.lk into st.mp or grab/command grab (st.lp canceled into command grab is also interesting though it won’t generally beat mashing)
Stomp Ender -> qcf+hp whiff lp, meaty qcb+lp can setup a meaty fireball on quick rise, you are close enough that it loses to reversals but its nice to pin them in place and then you can use that to escape or go for a low or a grab mixup.

Command Grab -> Command Grab, walk back st.hk xx light shoulder rush: Fairly safe on block works like an SFV shimmy from further than most grabs.

Anyone got any other interesting tech they use?

One thing FengShui pointed out recently in another thread which I’ve found to be an extremely useful discovery is that shadow lightning is fully invulnerable after the freeze until the first active frame, only having one vulnerable frame in total when it comes out and thus being a fairly useful DP (will beat all but meaties and frame perfect attacks).

That was this thread, its, having one vulnerable startup frame is actually somewhat detrimental, but it does work in some situations.

Well, having one vulnerable startup frame is somewhat detrimental if it’s supposed to be a DP, but this move isn’t supposed to be a DP at all. In fact I bet if you told the devs this, they’d change it in a future patch to be fully hittable.

So I’d say being invincible to everything except its first frame is really, really strong.

If you’ve ever been hit by Sadira shadow recluse on wakeup (4+0, not invincible) then you know the value of a move that beats everything except 1st frame meaties. Also, if you have to do a 1st frame meaty on a character, almost always your mixups are limited to just frame traps, which are much easier to defend against. You can’t go for that cheeky overhead as often, because it won’t be a first frame meaty. It also means Eyedol gets out of pressure for free if you ever leave a gap of more than 1 frame between your attacks, which happens pretty often during “tricky” pressure.

That’s why you find setups that give a meaty mix-up option.

I mean, sure. You can find dirty setups that are also first frame meaties.

But 99% of the playerbase doesn’t use them or care to find them. And during the scrambles that often happen during fast-paced KI matches, being 1 frame off on your setup or meaty is not exactly atypical.

Things like dirty jumping crossups are, almost by necessity, not 1st frame meaties as well. So it only applies to certain types of grounded offense in general.

Basically just trying to say that even if you have an encyclopedia of super amazing meaty mixups, this Eyedol reversal is still very good, because stuff happens in practice and 1f gaps will find their way into your offense.

I know. That’s what practice is for. But many don’t bother with it. Oh well…their loss not mine.

Well I would say that having ONLY the first frame be hit-able makes it seem like it was meant to be a reversal “super” of sorts and that its either a balancing tool or a mistake that its not hit-able. I could be wrong but it definitely seems like an Odd choice. And of course moves that are fast can at times take the place of reversals, for easy other game reference you can see uses of Dudleys DPs in USF4, they were fast had fairly large hitboxes and if traded led to good damage, it was a nice application of the DP idea without the invincibility

As for what the move is supposed to be I honestly don’t know what the move is supposed to be. It can be broken in combos (apparently I haven’t test it enough) It doesn’t really do great damage for a shadow move. Its biggest use seems to be as a pseudo reversal, an Anti-Air and an Anti-Projectile. So its sort of a weird does a ton of stuff move, so maybe it should, could, was supposed to be a real reversal?

As an aside something that has 4 frames of startup doesn’t only lose to first frame meaties, it loses to meaties on frames 1,2,3,4 which to me seems like an even bigger liability because properly timed “cheeky” overheads can still be a mixup and beat her out of her flip kick.

Yes, but when what you want to do is escape pressure after blocking things that leave you + you may actually only have a 1 or 2 frame gap to get out making things tough to time on your side but there side is just the continuation of the pressure string they have been doing. If there are bigger gaps then Eyedol has decently fast jabs into safe confirms and other options to attempt escapes. At least personally my problem is less wakeup defense (though god knows there are dirty setups there) and more the repeated pressure string defense that suffuses KI.

I will say that removing the 1 frame of vulnerability may make it too strong against the dirty wakeup setups in KI, though there are definitely safe jumps and safe meaties against moves with 9 frames of startup (unless Im misunderstanding the data)

He honestly got a bit too over nerfed.

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Yeah, I’m with you on this. I just have to work too hard now against the usual suspects (the shotos) to make the character enjoyable. Really hoping Infil has some cool stuff in his guide - I rely on those a lot because I’m just a reasonable player.

Some tips:

  • Pips are incredibly important for both bodies. As Mage, I would convert every combo into a pip at all times (I would one-chance into launcher ender -> pip, or convert zoning into pips only). As warrior, represent command grab decently often, force them to want to jump, then frame trap them with amazing plus-on-block normals like cr.MP.

  • Uses for warrior pips: run canceling overhead is seriously plus on block (somewhere in the +6 range), and run canceling heavy shoulder is also plus, so you get free ins from almost anywhere. From close range his overhead is not especially useful, but frame traps and throws will do great.

  • Uses for mage pips: stomp strike is an incredibly underrated special. The heavy version is +3 on block (!), does massive amounts of chip, and you can fish for it from long range by canceling after st.HK repeatedly. The only way out is to shadow counter or reversal, but if you do medium stomp instead, shadow counters won’t work. Stomp strike when pip-charged does twice as much chip and is even better on block (frame data says +5, I will run more tests but this looks about right). A heavy pip-charged stomp strike does roughly 4% chip and can be fished for from half-screen with st.HP or st.HK cancels. If they block two of these, you’ve basically hit them with a free fierce attack - it’s roughly the same amount of chip as blocking Cinder shadow fission. Best part about this is if you randomly switch to warrior stance after heavy stomp strike is blocked, you are now +3 at close range in warrior body, so you can start doing stuff.

If they are trying to get wise to your stomps, just cancel into meteor instead, which acts basically like an assist. They have to hit you really early to stop the meteor from coming out, otherwise they will hit you, then get hit by the meteor, and you can one-chance into launcher ender into teleport for a warrior pip. They might randomly get hit by the meteor because it’s overhead, and if they try to block it, then you are massively plus and you can either run away and zone, or take some free chip with heavy stomp strike (pip charged or not).

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The change between forms takes 6 frames and is fully invulnerable (changing to Mage actually makes you entirely incorporeal with no collision box) so you would actually be at -3 just the above scenario. However you would have a free freeze frame and a DP.

Not sure how helpful you’ll find this but unlike Spinal and a few others, Eyedol can’t cancel the remaining active frames when he run cancels,and thus the formula for them is just recovery+advantage-10.

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