3.6 Patch Notes

Other fighters get nerfed and Mira stays roughly the same? Alright alright alright…

I was spot on with her vampire mist nerf. Can’t wait to try her out tomorrow. I feel this pd change will really benefit her!

Also new characters?! Say what. Nice. Hope to see a brand new fighter. I like the idea of Kilgore but he’s inspired by Fulgore, love to see someone new and original.

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PD changes are awesome. Nice adjustments for some characters as well.
Kilgore is the talking point though, along with the other 2 new character slots. Heading over to the subforum for some discussion about playstyle and what certain moves will do.
I will say that if Tuesdays are the reveal days, then I’m gonna guess that we get a Guardian on the 3rd, followed by skin packs for the next two weeks and Kilgore playable on 24th. Sorta aligns with how the previous characters came towards the end of the month.
And if these characters are not part of season 3, and there’s no confirmation of season 4 (at this point, it seems less likely because that character roster would be up to 37 with a full season), is this going to be the new method of releasing characters and content? I’m not opposed to it, but the seasons were a nice package to own everything at once.

The main thing was the meter gain on block for inferno. He could build like a full bar off of holding it

I guess I was never paying enough attention to the meter when that happened. Sounds like an appropriate change, then.

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Rral quick, what is Flame Stream? I’m guessing that’s still Inferno, right?

So I hope them 3 character are not all we are getting especially when Killgore could of been a Costume instead of a character because its just another Fulgore which seem to be bigger and badder. 3 character’s seem like a cop out when we went from 9 in Season 1 then 9 in Season 2 then 8 is Season 3 going from 8 to 3 just sound really bad we pretty much know the hole 3 character roster now Killgore,Sword Guy, Guest Character Most likely Joanna Dark because she is the most Requested.

These are bonus characters as far as I can tell, and are not a part of any single season.

Well then that is ok im fine with that as long as that actually is the case

I THINK this nerf for JAGO must STOP!! Every time ON EVERY patch, update Jago’s abilitys cut one by one. Relax @IronGalaxy

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Good day everyone,

I was very disappointed to read, that Fulgore got another “nerf” on the shadow meter.

When the fight begins, Fulgore starts with a very big disadvantage, which can be countered only if the player uses very aggressive strategy gameplay.
Full scaled assault is not always the way to go, not with every opponent. I was quite fine with it, as Fulgore could pull a lot of damage with the projectiles, but that’s gone now.

What is also not clear to me, is why must Fulgore be punished for Teleporting, while Spinal can spam it?
Although Spinal combo mechs are quite similar to Fulgore (i.e. extra hit on the end of the combo), I find Spinal a lot more resourceful when it comes to shadow attacks.

Don’t get me wrong, I do play with Fulgore aggressively and he’s my main char, but those slight imbalances always made me wonder.

Both teleports are unsafe unless you spend a resource–for fulgore, the pip and the extra spin speed for a cancel from fireball, and for spinal either a skull or a full bar to cancel into a followup.

Fulgore does not lose a pip when he teleports, he loses a great amount of rotational speed on the reactor.
Aside from that, Spinal gathers skulls quite easily, while Fulgore needs a lot of effort to make the reactor spin faster again.

My point is,
For Spinal, skulls are easy to come by and do not affect the shadow moves/meter
For Fulgore, the rotational speed is critical for the shadow meter. One needs 4 pips, not 1, to use a shadow move. By the time you get 4 pips, the opponent has a full shadow meter bar --most of the times at least.

I’m referring to the pip he spends to pip cancel from a fireball. I’m aware of how the mechanics work for the characters I play. I would definitely disagree that spinal is able to use skulls more freely than fulgore uses his pips, considering spending skulls is more crucial to spinal’s gameplan, he can hold a maximum of 5, and he has to hit the opponent or spend a bar from a safe distance to actually get skulls at all. Fulgore builds meter passively for pressuring the opponent, and even at his lowest spin speed, he IS still building meter.

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Also if Spinal teleports he is putting himself next to you (or a tiny bit further than next to you) due to his teleports being character relative, whereas Fulgore’s screen relative teleports can be used to move freely around the screen.

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omg!! seriously?! That’s all they did for Kan-Ra?! this doesn’t change the fact his combo blowout rate builds faster than others receiving little reward, is easily breakable, and is still easily punishable!! geeze my forum posts felt like they were for nothing!

I’m just gonna leave this here…

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This is a surprisingly big update. Even with the surveys and the thumbnail leak, it’s surprising to see three characters just suddenly becoming a thing like this, outside of a new season announcement and all. Kilgore looks cool, and it’s great to see yet more ongoing support to the game. :slight_smile:

I may’ve missed it, but do the new characters cost money? If so, how much? (I well-and-truly got my money’s worth from season 3, I’ll be the last person to riot if I have to pay for a new wave of content.)

An aside: I never did comment on the combo breaker change, so I guess I’ll say some things now that it’s in place and my thoughts are less useful, because whatever.

  • It buffs heavy (and medium) auto doubles, that much is clear. Usually combos get to something like level 2 on manuals alone, the PD from which is negligible enough to where keeping half of it around isn’t going to be very noticeable. An auto double probably puts you on level 3 or 4 track, where the PD remaining from a combo breaker could actually matter. That’s not to mention that reaction break attempts are far and away the best break attempts to go for, so this in a way helps to directly compensate an option for breakers that are most likely to happen when that option is used.
  • Whether this lengthens combos in any substantial way is really hard to say, because combo game is complex. I suspect it mostly doesn’t, but it’ll make smart players more likely to run heavy auto doubles in mid-to-high-KV situations where they might otherwise be tempted to end early because they haven’t seen a lockout and don’t want to hand their opponent a mostly free late break chance.
  • I think the change will almost certainly further minimize the relevance of counter breakers. I saw some back-and-forth on this in the discussion thread, with some people thinking that the de-emphasis on counter breakers in the moment is compensated for by the increased length of combos, but I don’t think it’ll play out that way. Whilst I think counter breakers are fine and I like some of the things this change does for other aspects of the game, I would’ve liked to see a change that reinvigorated the mechanic rather than one that de-emphasized it.
  • I don’t like the message behind the change. People want their notably potent KI neutral to count for more…in a game where breakers play a key role in making such a potent neutral possible? Eh. I take some solace in the sense that the change doesn’t really do that in much of a meaningful way, because it doesn’t help a neutral-focused one-chance playstyle one bit. It’s an average damage buff for people who are willing to fully explore the combo system to find it, and then also work the post-breaker neutral to milk it. Still, though, I don’t think a pattern of lessening KI’s most iconic mechanic shows confidence in the overall experiment, even if I’ve generally ended up liking these breaker changes in practice.

Overall I think I’m for these changes after a lot of reflection. I’ll have to play with them in place before I know for sure of course, and there are downsides that I think could be better, but mostly it’ll be exciting to see more auto doubles in competitive play.

Anyway, onward to specific bullet-points.

NEW FEATURE! You can now choose Survival vs AI or Shadows without owning a Shadow. This is a great way to earn SP!

YES :astonished:

wrt the Jago changes:

Shadow Endokuken damage reduced by ~25% [This change will lower Jago’s unbreakable damage a bit, and lower the total life swing in Jago’s favor when using Instinct Endokuken Juggles.]

Shadow endokuken is where I would’ve liked IG to focus in the first place when bringing down Jago’s damage. The reason the unbreakable was good was because the PD off the shadow endokuken usually put on a level or two before the shadow DP cashout. I still want to see the enders revisited, though.

This might be the death knell for the two-meter unbreakable, which is a shame because I always enjoyed working towards it and I think it could be an interesting part of Jago’s gameplan if meter gain were reworked to make it something you need to work towards more actively, but it’s hard to be upset about it now when it’s already out of my system to some extent.

Shadow Endokuken is now -6 on block at point blank range (was -4) [Shadow Endokuken is no longer safe on block at very close ranges.]

I fully endorse this change.

The 2nd fireball thrown automatically during Instinct mode has had its meter gain reduced by 50% [Jago’s meter gain was still just a bit high. This change should hopefully be in the final step in bringing his meter gain to where we want it.]

I still think meter gain should go down further. Jago doesn’t need a notable amount of passive meter gain, and this is one area where the character could be toned down without fundamentally changing his gameplay. Hell, with punishable shadow endokuken Jago is now going to have more meter to spread around the neutral game, although granted this change in particular will probably meet its more immediate goal of affecting how much he can sink into lifegain in instinct.

Overall though I don’t see much in here to get bothered about as a Jago main, but I also don’t see anything that’ll really satisfy anyone who has a seething hatred of top-tier Jago. (Regardless of how much they celebrate punishable shadow endokuken now.)

[quote]Fulgore:

  • Instinct mode reworked[/quote]

The rework seems cool. It’s an opportunity for Fulgore to run some really technical, albeit potentially really scary stuff. Pips enable a lot of setplay, but they also enable a lot of “27 steps ahead” thinking that I think will give strong players a higher skill ceiling in which to play, which could make tournaments more interesting.

I’ve never really been a fan of Fulgore’s reworked meter mechanic. Fulgore always seemed like a character who was built around his original mechanic: he gets to be a Jago-style shoto wind kick frame-trapper, and a zoner, and has these strong setplay options off a knockdown, that all seem intended to be balanced by the trade-off between running the those gameplans at any given moment and taking a break to build pips; and he has ways of creating space and the like that seem designed to facilitate finding pockets in which to sneak a charge in. Since season 2 it seems like IG has been slowly dismantling the tools which once supported that original mechanic. I know there are a few good reasons why the change was made, but it’s still always seemed to me like Fulgore’s moveset is geared towards a mechanic that no longer exists.

I guess it didn’t help that I never got a feel for the new meter mechanic, and maybe part of that is because of what the notes describe: Fulgore just has a bad meter situation until instinct and then has plenty of meter. I’m not sure if that’s wholly true, but I don’t think I’ve seen a lot of discussion about counterbalancing Fulgore’s offensive options with meter-building concerns. Maybe now that instinct doesn’t change the meter gain situation we’ll see more Fulgores running strategies that are obviously about the reactor gauge, and, importantly, people will talk more about how it factors into a match.

I don’t think this change will make me come fully around on the season 2 meter mechanic, but it might help.

I’m still not sure why people think that short combo > one chance > knockdown > setplay > repeat is neutral-focused…

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interesting kan ra buff lol never expected him to get buffed

You know, me neither. I guess it ups your reliance on neutral (and setplay, definitely setplay) to make up the damage from being so combo-deficient, but eh.