I’ve kinda drifted away from the community in the last few months as my life has gotten busier, so I’m reading these patch notes with a sense of detachment and not really getting worked up over them.
That said, I don’t think I’m interested in playing Jago anymore.
Blow-by-blow:
Light Windkick is now -4 on block (was -2).
Doesn’t matter. Move is still safe, opponent always could take offensive turn back on block at risk of eating a DP. A couple extra frames allows the opponent to check with a juicier button, and that’s more-or-less it.
Heavy Windkick is now -11 on block (was -7)
See, I always assumed that every character had a 7-frame medium button that was up to the task of picking up the punish on a blocked heavy wind kick, and even if I’m not wrong about that, I’m actually all for this going from 1-frame punish to comfortably (or even hilariously) punishable, because I generally appreciate it when players at lower skill levels can participate in the same interactions as the top players. This change is good for the game, and if there were characters who couldn’t pick up the punish here before then 1) I wish I’d known before so I could abuse it; and 2) it’s good to know they’ll (hopefully?) be able to now.
Double Roundhouse is now +2 on block (was +3)
Probably doesn’t matter. There’s a fair bit of pushback on double roundhouse, so this might lead to scrambles where opponents with faster normals outside of Jago’s stMP range could challenge Jago’s frame advantage a little more easily, but for the most part +2 is still pretty firmly Jago’s turn.
Neck Cutter now hits on frame 22 (was 19) and has a slight range reduction
It’s hard to say how many openings are going to be lost in practice by giving opponents those extra three frames to register the tell of a neck cutter. I would guess that it won’t be that many offline, but also I think this gives online players a fighting chance to react to the move (effectively 16 frames online is a very difficult window), so this could be healthy for online play. The range reduction probably matters more, but we don’t know how much range the move is losing yet.
Philosophically I don’t mind this nerf. I think of Jago as a character who cares about enforcing patience and punishing impatience, who wins by frustrating opponents with a solid safe game and prolonged offensive turns. A frame trapper with solid defense, not a mixup character. He has neck cutter to open degenerately patient players, but I think the character wants most of his conversions to come from catching people not blocking at all than from forcing opponents to guess the correct way to block. Making neck cutter more reactable pushes him further in this direction.
Endokuken damage reduced by 20% [This will lower Jago’s life swing during instinct and his 1-chance damage a little.]
Big Endokuken damage reduced by 20%
Sure. I thought meter gain reductions were by far the most obvious change to make to endokuken, but this might end up mattering.
I’m curious to see if there really is a happy medium with Jago’s unbreakable lifegain juggles where Jago players are happy to sink the meter into it, but opponents are also think it’s reasonable to get hit by and don’t get super salty over it. If IG keeps pushing downward on this (that is, if IG really feels Jago is sitting on top of the heap after 3.7), then maybe we’ll find out.
Shadow Windkick is now -1 on block (was +1)
Most of the time opponents are going to want that juicy shadow counter, but shadow wind kick can be a reasonable thing to randomly throw out at midscreen against meterless opponents, so I guess this isn’t completely irrelevant.
If the changes stopped here, I’d probably be annoyed that IG are mostly nerfing Jago by way of little convenience nicks and scratches that degrade the quality of life for Jago players but don’t measure up to noticeably easier matches for opponents.
Medium Windkick is now -6 on block
This is the only change that matters. It’s a huge nerf, and I don’t know how it affects Jago’s placement in tiers (top 5 seems optimistic). But Jago is a fundamentally different character now, hell KI is a different game now.
I think this marks the end of an era, that’s maybe been coming since the season 3 rebalance where characters like Wulf lost their unreactable midscreen mixups (which I expressed apprehension over back then) and harmless safe characters like Jago got fun new toys like fireball charging to play with. After the rebalance, characters like Jago and Fulgore emerged with powerful safe games, unchecked by the powerful unsafe games of season 2, and there was this slow realization that no, those characters were strong in season 2, they were just undeveloped by American players. I take this nerf as a confirmation that we’re now all the way playing at a different level of offensive potency – which is fine on its own terms, but I don’t think I want to play that game, or at least I don’t think I want to play as Jago in it.
With this change, Jago leans harder on normals to approach and control space. He safely (more than safely, really) threatens the range of his standing HP, and his movement is pretty average, so opponents should be able to hover outside of HP range and threaten his advance with pokes and play a credible whiff punish game, without worrying so much about having their repositioning checked by a wind kick. The expected lifeswing on a random wind kick is 0 if opponents spend 50% of their time blocking now, which gives them plenty of leeway to move within that range.
It’s not Street Fighter, but it’s closer to a Street Fighter meta than I really want out of KI. I enjoy special-driven interactions at the midscreen that represent credible threats to space. It gives KI a different flavour, one where we have a whiff punish game on the lip of the midrange and a much deeper pressure game within range of normals. If I thought IG were the sort of devs to cave to peer pressure, I’d suspect they were making this change to make the game more appealing to the wider FGC, players who never seem to want a break from normal-driven footsies and who someone like Keits would really want to finally appreciate the game he sinks so much of his life into. As it stands, I just don’t really get why they’d do this.
But like, if this is what they really want to do, then sure. Balancing a fighting game is immensely hard and complex and involves a lot of unpleasant sacrifices, and they are in far better a position to know what the game needs than I am. This is the one change I never wanted to see, but the IG combat design team are good dudes, and I harbor no animosity over this. (I might also want it to go on the record that I didn’t turn into a child and ■■■■ on the game for 6 months when the combat design of the game went against me, unlike the PaulB’s and Rico Suave’s of the world.)
Also I just started a masters, so I’m super busy now, and this might make it easier to detach and focus on that. And if I have the time to keep going with the game, I still have Riptor, whose wind kick and frame traps remain delightfully intact. (I also get access to a filthy mixup game that I never asked for, easier ways to get in at plus frames, more range on that wind kick as well as nasty backup options, …)
That said, some vindictive stuff:
- Doesn’t Fulgore also have a safe wind kick? I realize this risks move-to-move comparison-drawing, but Fulgore also has a similar frame trap game and comparable defense. The interactions are very similar as far as I can tell, even before you start thinking about fulgore’s credible zoning and amazing teleport vortex. (Sorry in advance for any future nerfs, Fulgore players.)
- A few comments I disagree with:
Jago … doesn’t really struggle at any range
Jago struggles outside of medium wind kick range. Proper zoners hose him at full screen (as they should), but also rushdown characters like Wulf often have the ability to sit and wait for a whiff punish on a wind kick from outside of midscreen, and then be upon Jago within an instant.
Making Windkick punishable is a big change for Jago, and it will require that Jago players approach opponents more thoughtfully than just throwing out medium or heavy windkicks.
I wish the devs wouldn’t lend credibility to the idea that a safe medium wind kick is thoughtless. It’s a ■■■■■■ thing to say, it denies the idea that there is thought and depth in a meta where the midrange is controlled with safe forward-moving checks. To me it’s among the most interesting interactions in fighting games. Others think it’s thoughtless because it drowns out the interactions that they want to be having, but that says more about their willingness to take the tools for what they are and see where they lead, than it says about whether the resulting interactions have any interesting structure.
Anyway, I can’t promise a lot of replies if this post catches attention, mostly because I can’t spend a lot of time on here during the week like I used to. I’ll eventually try to respond to anyone who doesn’t descend into ad hominem just because they think my views on the game are warped and wrong.
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