I don’t play TJ combo, but I see that he’s not one of the high ranking characters anymore after one of his main tools got nerfed, his roll. I think that maybe during his instinct he should have physical invincibility on it like he used to. This will make the player think on if they should spend the instinct to get in on their opponent, or if they want to hold it for when they are in combo or wait for his revive. I say this because I rarely see TJ’s pop it and I thought this would be a good idea on to maybe make them want to pop it more.
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Not a bad idea.
Tj should turn into launch Tj when he pops instinct. Invincible roll, projectile that hits behind him, 6 autodouble autobarrage that he can enter and leave freely, no trails on his recapture, better frames on his backfist, and safe counter breakers off powerlines.
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I Agree, TJ needs something. lets see what the developers can come up with.
I think the OP’s idea is great. You guys are right though, TJ players rarely pop Instinct unless they’re for sure are going to win the match, so at that point it’s just for styling…
There needs to be something that forces TJ players to either decide to use Instinct for a better advantage in winning or save it for revive.
Right now it seems as if using Instinct during the match isn’t really good unless you want those few frames of invincibility and are guaranteed to rebuild Instinct again later in the match.
Agreed. Anything that would really give players pause as to whether to use instinct in match or save it for revive, without being OP (obviously) would be good for him. Invincible roll is a great idea. Would that be enough to tip the scales for TJ players though?
TJ already shouldn’t be saving his instinct for Last Breath. I don’t think he needs to have a buff to encourage people to stop making poor strategic decisions - people should just stop making poor strategic decisions.
Characters shouldn’t get buffs because people are playing them in obviously sub-optimal ways. That way lies madness.
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By that logic,Fulgore’s hype beam should be buffed to oblivion. Kappa. I agree. But currently a slight buff to Tj’s instinct won’t be too bad.
For my money, TJ’s instinct (without ever using last breath) is a top 5 instinct in the game. He’s almost unstoppable in instinct, and tons of unsafe stuff is now safe (light tremor, command grab very hard to punish via jumping, etc).
If TJ players continue to use it poorly, I think that’s on them, not the game.
In all my years of fighting games, TJ’s instinct is one of the biggest puzzles I’ve ever seen. It is so clearly good on both paper and in practice, and yet people refuse to use it, even two years later. If this type of thing was in a SF game, you’d see Tokido abusing it at the first major tournament.
Giving him back strike invincible roll with virtually zero recovery at lightning speed is going to be a disaster when (if?) TJ players start to play him more optimally.
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But why won’t it be too bad? What is wrong with an instinct that makes a full screen armored rush punch functionally plus on block? That makes all normal strings frame traps, that makes nearly all of the character’s specials safe or plus? What is the downside to an instinct like that, and why is it not already strong enough?
It boggles my mind that this conversation keeps needing to be had. There is nothing wrong or weak with TJ’s instinct, full stop. It is ripe to be used and abused in disgusting ways, if only people would get out of their own way and stop trying to save it for Last Breath.
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I’ve heard people say that actually removing last breath from the game might be a buff for TJ, because people would finally realize how silly they’ve been saving it this whole time. I think they might actually be right.
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Ya’ll continue to say his instinct is better than last breath but even when I fight TJ’s that actually do use their instinct they never get anything crazy off of it. I just block an wait it out. If they open me up I just break since he’s the easiest character in the game to break. Yolo shadow counter also stops TJs in instinct pretty hard. I never feel like his instinct is that big of a threat despite knowing what it’s capable of. Yet as soon as he starts getting back up from last breath I get a sense of dread.
Everyone here is making me want to play TJ once I am done with a character I am learning.
Top 5 instincts IMO, no particular order
-Tj
-Eyedol
-Sadira
-Jago
-Raam/Wulf
Yolo shadow counter stops raw tremor, raw powerline, and tick command grabs?
And why are you scared of last breath if you aren’t scared of TJ’s instinct? Last breath is a strictly worse version of TJ’s instinct; half the time, has to deal with a mixup/catch you first, and can only survive one hit.
I dunno, maybe this is a troll because of the “easiest character in the game to break” line. My detection is off today.
Of course it doesn’t stop raw tremor and powerline. But it stops whatever they do after it. Because TJ’s know they’re plus now they’ll just throw out a normal and always get caught. If they went for command grab well you weren’t going to react to super speed command grab anyway, and holding up against instinct TJ is a bad idea so yeah, just shadow counter. Works like 90% of the time.
I’m not scared of TJ’s instinct because I have never lost to TJ’s instinct. But I’ve lost to full health bar comebacks from last breath TJ’s plenty of times.
And how is TJ not the easiest character to break? He only has three auto doubles with very distinct animations, if he does autobarrage he’s locked into it so you just pick a specific double and wait for it, backfist linker lets you see your character’s hit animation on the first hit which tells you what strength it is before the second hit even comes out, tremor recapture has the trails along with a gigantic break window (seriously why is it so big?) The only things he has that aren’t easily broken are knee and uppercut linkers, and uppercut linker just leads to the obvious recapture break or you wait for the flip out to break.
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I thought the roll before was still throw able? And didn’t it have like 30 frames of recovery like it doe snow?
Also how much percentage wise does his instinct give TJ anyway? Actually nevermind. It seems to be around a 24% speed buff.
Meh. I’m still of the mindset that if you’re not afraid of TJ’s normal instinct activation, then you have absolutely no reason to be afraid of Last Breath. It is demonstrably worse in every way, and gets you a free setup or time to run away depending on your character.
TJ’s instinct pressure can be shadow countered, true, but so can Wulf’s feral cancel pressure, or a lot of what Jago does in instinct. Both are still pretty scary instincts by my lights, and TJ has options within his strings to blow that up if he knows you want to shadow counter. If you can reliably come away unscathed from an instinct that offers continually safe high/low/command grab mixups, then more power to you - but I consider that kind of continual pressure to be pretty strong in general.
TJ is the hardest character to break in the game. It probably isn’t even close.
This doesn’t matter. Medium auto doubles are comfortably reactable as long as you know what you’re looking for, and having two sets of animations doesn’t change things much. Auto doubles aren’t about whether or not your opponent is capable of reacting, they’re about whether your opponent is brave enough to react.
If he does barrage you lock out on the second hit because you thought you’d break those one of those auto doubles you say are so easy to break.
Barrage is a better counter breaker: most of the upside if he reads your breaker attempt, but not only is he not immediately eating a punish if he’s wrong, but the worst that could happen is a return to neutral via a successful combo breaker. Because barrage is such a strong option in the auto double game and guess-breaking manuals and linkers is generally not strong enough to warrant counter breaking, pretty much the only real reason TJ has to go for counter breakers is on tremor recaps. Barrage is the best combo trait in the game.
Who cares? Does he have a linker that has unreactable light and medium versions? Yes? Then his linkers are fine.
I imagine shoot toss would probably be too good amidst TJ’s neutral dominance and excellent mixups if it went straight into a grounded combo – especially with TJ being the hardest character to break in the game an’ all. But instead of just dealing some fixed amount of damage and being done, they let TJ convert shoot toss into the grounded combo system via a tremor counter breaker test. It also gives TJ a compelling reason to think about counter breaking something, which is good because it’s not great for a character to completely ignore a core mechanic.
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Why because of auto barrage?