Adjustments to Wall Splat into Embrace Setup

Characters Mira
1

I can’t be the first to say this needs to be adjusted, can I? This setup seems like such a glaring imbalance that needs to be addressed. In case you’ve been living under Aganos, Mira can combo a wall splat ender into a guaranteed Embrace command grab. The health regained is equal to the amount regained that she gets for an Embrace in neutral, which is equal to that of a level 4 Embrace ender.

Let’s look at the numbers. For these, I only did heavy autodoubles and light linkers (off of a light Reaping opener)…

Level 4 enders:
Embrace: 25% damage, maximum health regained (enough for 2 heavy, 1 medium Blood Magic moves).
Wall splat into Embrace: 33% damage, also maximum health regained.

On the other end of the spectrum (one light autodouble)…

Level 1 enders:
Embrace: 11% damage, enough health regained for 1 medium Blood Magic move.
Wall splat into Embrace: 11% damage, still maximum health regained.

It doesn’t make sense to me at all that she reaps the full benefit of a level 4 Embrace ender for any level of wall splat, in addition to getting equal or more damage than the corresponding Embrace ender. The difference in damage only gets worse if she uses heavy linkers, which now have less risk behind them, since she’s guaranteed maximum health regain after the big white life cashout.

This is like early S2 Spinal who got resources and/or unbreakable meter steal and/or decent damage off of the same ender, or any of Thunder’s enders in S2 (not including Sammamish, which was worthless). It was pretty clear that at the beginning of S3 there was a point to get rid of these “dual purpose” enders. I’d say one exception that remains is when Jago does a fireball ender into healing while in Instinct, but I feel that one is fairly reasonable.

What does Mira give up by doing this? By doing Embrace after the wall splat, does she forgo some really good reset potential that could be better than the maximum life gain that she receives? For a character with this much offense, I don’t think so. Is her corner carry so terrible that it’s a just reward for actually getting your opponent to the corner? Not likely.

Ideally, I think she should be able to do Embrace off of a wall splat, but with the health regain scaled somehow, just like how the damage is scaled for other wall splat > command grab setups. Right now, I feel it’s a pretty braindead setup where going for the health regain is always the best option, effectively defeating the purpose of having a separate, low damage “resource” ender in the first place.

2

You don’t wallsplat into command grab for the damage you do it for the utility, for example a hard knockdown setup with Hisako or with Thunder. The fact that it requires her to put the opponent in the corner means I think it’s fine.

2 Likes
3

Lol how does having a corner specific setup that’s better than the resource ender defeat the purpose of the resource ender?

I mean, come on, you need to have your opponent in the corner for this setup. Cornering your opponent really isn’t your best option with Mira. Her main source of oki setups revolves around left/right mixups with mist and air dash. She needs to lose access to this, and/or risk cornering herself in order to be able to use the wallsplat ender. That, by itself, is trade off enough for having a better resource setup when she corners her opponent.

Couple that with the fact that the wallsplat ender really isn’t all that damaging when compared to her damage enders, and I see absolutely no reason to complain. Sorry.

2 Likes
4

“Utility” implies that there are several options that you may consider going for after the wall splat. For Hisako and Thunder that’s true, you might go for guaranteed (scaled) damage into HKD or a reset off of a neutral jump/overhead/etc. In Mira’s case, the maximum life regain is just too good to pass up for anything else. Additionally, (unlike Hisako… correct me if I’m worng) the command grab will reach even from the maximum range at which you get a wall splat.

Doing left/right mixups is far from her only offensive capability that is really good. She has high/low mixups with the same startup animations that is practically unpunishable. She also has a forward-moving special that’s plus on block that can be combined with staggered projectiles to create some nasty frame-trap pressure.

I also don’t buy that being put in the corner is really a concern for this character. She has a invulnerable mist form into air dash that can quickly get her out. She also has an unpunishable exchange opener/linker that allows her to decide which side she’s on. That costs grey life, but guess what… it doesn’t matter because she gets maximum life regain after that one-chance break wall splat.

Mira’s health has been deemed to be a pretty ■■■■ good resource, considering that Embrace was chosen to do 0 damage in all cases (they could’ve chosen to have it do a little bit). Yet, if you’re remotely close to the corner, you get to completely bypass that massive damage penalty for maximum resource gain, regardless of how much white life you’ve built up on your opponent. For any other character (including ones that have less offensive options and have a harder time in the corner), anywhere on screen, you’re only getting max resource gain if you’ve put in enough risk in-combo to build up a level 4 ender.

I mean, would it be unreasonable if the amount of life she got for this setup was reduced through a scaling factor? If she could only get max health if she spent the meter on a Shadow Embrace?

5

I’m with the OP on this one, simply because there’s no reason to not do wall splat into Embrace in that situation unless you really, really wanna go for that big damage cashout.

For the sake of player’s choice it should be:

Embrace ender - no damage but good life regain
Wall splat into Embrace - some damage and mediocre life regain
Damage ender - good damage but no life regain

All of those depend on the ender level, of course.

6

Actually, I haven’t seen all that much Mira solid gameplay, and from what I’ve seen I can recall a few situations in which the player went for embrace after the wall bounce and I wouldn’t have considered that the best plan. Unless you actually have a solid amount of life to regain, there are much better options than the command grab, and this should be obvious when we’re talking about a command grab that does no damage whatsoever and isn’t a hard KD.

Also, you need to take into consideration that unlike every other character who uses resources to get stronger and have a better game plan, strictly in that sense, Mira is using her life as a resource. Not only that, but the only way she has of regaining her resource that isn’t breakable is through her command grabs, which unlike aganos’ chunks, cinder’s fired up mechanic or hisako’s wrath are still dependant on landing a hit on the opponent.

She needs to have some sort of edge on that regard (and she does, precisely by having linkers that give her resources, and by having an ender that allows her to land her command grab for full resource gain regardless of ender level, so she doesn’t need to risk getting broken just to get the resource).

A chunkless aganos doesn’t die. An aganos with no life left doesn’t lose the ability to use his specials. And the same for the remaining characters with special resources.

Mira not only risks losing a whole life Guage without ever filling up her instinct meter, but she also is the character that has the least potential of actually making a comeback when near dead, because she simply doesn’t have a way to use her resource and refill it properly without exhausting it. When at 15% or less life, you just know that you’re either well on your way to winning or unless your opponent really ■■■■■ up, he just needs to let you kill yourself, otherwise you’ll need to play too conservatively to actually have a chance at an actual comeback.

TLDR: Mira’s life isn’t just a resource, like for every other character with a specific resource. It’s her life Guage. On top of that, she has no way of recovering it without landing actual hits on the opponent, unlike most other chars with resources.

And I ask you this: you say “would it be unfair if she had the command grab scaled?”. I ask is it really unfair like it is now? Is it broken or too good? Still kinda soon to tell IMO, but I’d be heavily inclined to say no, it isn’t broken or OP. So why should it be changed? ^^’

1 Like
7

You’re correct @LeoFerreis, Hisako’s command grab after wall splat is not guaranteed - there are plenty of possible spacings that will cause a wall splat but be well out of range for a guaranteed influence afterwards.

I’d say the command grab life regen should be scaled just on the principle that all other command grabs are heavily scaled after wall splats. They are scaled because they are unavoidable, and that makes a lot of sense to me. Without that scaling, wall splat into command grab is virtually always going to be your best option when in the corner. Mira’s grab does no damage (because the life regen is just that good), so what gets scaled should be the life regen.

I’m all for Mira getting huge amounts of life back when she lands a command grab in neutral, or when she uses a meter for shadow embrace. Getting it for free after every wall bounce strikes me as not particularly interesting, and in contradiction to the general philosophy of risk vs reward. Guaranteed things in KI do less - I don’t necessarily see why Mira alone should be able to avoid this “rule”. Embrace shouldn’t give nothing after a wall splat, but it probably shouldn’t give a huge amount of life back either. There needs to be a reason IMO for a Mira player to actually use her embrace ender when she isn’t mid-screen - there is currently no reason to ever do so.

8

I think it’s pretty clear that, 100% of the time, wall splat into embrace is the best option if the match is close and you have a heavy opener’s amount of blood damage on you (or more).

Whether the devs think that is too degenerate is up to them, but I think there is literally 0 reason to do anything different if you are playing for the long term. She can already do one chance into shadow embrace for the maximum health regen from anywhere on the screen, but at least this costs her shadow meter and it means she doesn’t get to spend it on shadow bats.

It does seem a bit at odds with their design for other characters, as well. Hisako’s wall splat into influence was scaled, because it was high damage, a hard knockdown and let her refill wrath. This doesn’t seem too different to me. But it’s up to them.

It’s possible she “needs” this, because curing health is too hard otherwise… I dunno. I don’t think so, but I dunno. If you cut the scaling in half after a wall splat for all command grabs, I think she’s still a fantastic character and it means that sometimes you will want to spend the meter on shadow embrace ender during the combo to guarantee the health regen.

Cutting the regen in half after wall splat also means you have to manage your blood health a bit more, which is the “fun” part of Mira. You might not always need to spend the meter if you’ve only done two blood openers, since the post-wall splat grab will be enough to recover. If you’ve gone a little crazy, though, you’ll have to decide if you want to spend the meter, or just get back some of your health with no meter cost. If you make it less than half of what the regen currently is, that’s probably too much.

It’s also worth noting that she gets a meaty after command grab, so her offense doesn’t end when she does this.

9

My stance on this is is that because her best moves all “cost life,” it can’t be made TOO difficult to get it back. As others have stated, and in line with this quote, if you are mid-screen it’s a lot harder to get the full benefit of Embrace; having the opponent in the corner gives you some options in this regard, because yes, you can go for the wallsplat to get bigger damage and THEN go for Embrace, but it’s situational (because of needing proximity to the wall).

I don’t see it being any different than TJ going for a wallsplat into his command grab → recapture (pretty sure he can still do that, right?) or Kan Ra going for a wallsplat and then setting up traps. If Aganos gets you in the corner, should he not be able to wallsplat you and then set up a wall behind him (assuming he has a chunk), or chunk up?

I guess the way I look at it is that Mira has the most critical special resource in the game because it’s also her health; other characters may be making things a little more difficult for themselves if they’re not keeping their special resource stocked, but she is literally the only character (with Aganos the closest) who actively decreases the amount the opponent needs to do to hit her. I think she recovers the correct amount in that requirement-specific setup.

2 Likes
10

Yes, TJ can still do this. But the damage is heavily scaled after the splat. I don’t think anyone is saying Mira shouldn’t be able to do wall splat->embrace, just that it makes no sense that she gets full health back as if she landed it in neutral. She didn’t. That grab is guaranteed max life regen, off any wall splat situation whatsoever. That’s not “neutral”, so why is it rewarded as if it is? If the ender system is about tradeoffs, then let there actually be tradeoffs between viable options.

It’s the same beef I have with Kim’s ~0 damage firecracker ender - for an ender to be viable and create an interesting dynamic of choice, there has to actually be some reason to go for it. The argument can at least be made that firecracker ender is “worth” it’s negligible damage relative to her other ender options because of the resource it provides - can that argument honestly be made about Mira’s other enders when she’s near the wall? There are precious few scenarios when it’s not in Mira’s interest to go for wall splat->embrace, because what she gets off it (ok damage, max life regen, meaty setup afterwards) is just too good relative her other options.

I’d buy it a bit more if Mira had issues getting to the corner, but she really doesn’t. You fight Mira where she wants to fight you, by and large. Her mobility and escape options are too strong to “force” her to be somewhere she doesn’t want to be.