Ive practically made Riptor my main since she launched replacing my Sabrewulf. I tend to go back and forth on if I should have done that because in the time ive invested in her I could have gained more experience with Wulf as I find him to be a much better overall character.
All in all I think Killer Instinct is a very balanced game with characters that have strengths and weaknesses, good matchups and bad matchups. However in terms of Riptor I find she has far too many weaknesses. First off she doesn’t appear to have great normals. She has a few good knockdown options, but nothing great in terms of stopping people using frame traps a lot.
Then on top of that she doesnt have great anti-air either. Her best anti-air in my experience is her back dash tail. When hit, it works great, but hard to pull off when people are spamming the up button right in front of you.
Her flame carpet which is arguably her best attribute tends to be weak as well because its so easy to take it away from her. Seeing as how you much of the cast can easily just DP their way out of it, it will keep you on the defensive more often than not which keeps you from applying pressure. That isnt even mentioning how easy you can just jump out of the fir upon wakeup making it almost useless unless you predict their jumping and meet them in the air.
Another great attribute of hers is her mixups with her tail flip. Jumping over somebody with this move can really throw people off their guard, but it is one of the most yolo moves in the game.
I do feel she needs some kind of buff personally, but that is just my opinion. How do you all feel about her?
I can agree that she loses to the majority of the cast. A buff wouldnt hurt, it would make her a lot more viable, but i doubt they’ll make her any better…
I can confirm she is low tier
I think she’s missing something, but I don’t play her enough to put my finger on it.
I’ve had more luck with B+HP
As a riptor main I agree.
She is def low tier. Her normals suck and she relies on gimmicks to open you up. She’s only good against button mashers. Other than that, she’s really easy to punish in so many ways.
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Agreed. She has the giant hitbox of the old game without the projectile zoning ability. It makes it so she has no choice but to expose herself while trying to open you up.
I think if they would extend the range on a few of her normal, and overall increase the speed her normal come out at, that’d solve most of her problems (or at least the speed of her lights).
the gimmicks to open up opponents is the perfect summary of her right now. Not to say she can’t bring pressure, but almost everyone else has more reliable, less telegraphed pressure. Most of the time against Killers my combos start when they make a mistake, whereas playing Spinal, he can create his own openings when needed.
Kinda sucks, cuz she’s my fav T.T
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Many of her normal attacks already have great range and her speed is absolutely phenomenal mid-combo. I know how to read her attacks and I still get locked out fairly regularly. As for her “telegraphed” pressure, she often has up to 6 additional options when an opponent blocks to apply mix-ups, which is far more than most other characters (which generally have, you know, zero).
I don’t think she needs any speed adjustment on her auto-doubles, thus the specification of normal. And yes, her heavy kick normal have great range, but result in low damage poking unless you want to spend shadow meter or immediately use a heavy autodouble to start a combo. As far as block pressure, she does have many options, but all of them can be stuffed by quite a few other characters’ normals (Jago’s/Wulf’s normals are the bane of predator stance, and negate any of her tail flip options off blocked talon rake)
I’m not at all sure what you mean that she needs to use heavy doubles after a tail normal. Normals, just like her heavy tail normals, lead to an opener of your choice as well as any manual afterwards.
I’m not an amazing riptor, but I definitely know that any tail flip off of talon rake is a really bad idea at high level, opt mainly for medium flame into medium headbutt off a blocked rake. As for predator stance, only the extremely fast fingered will react faster than riptors light kick option, which is also +1 on block. Once they are conditioned to expect light kick, you can apply her other options off of predator while they block
Which normal has good range besides HK?
I don’t believe in tiers Only the skill level of players and how they use the tools their character has. Tiers discourage character diversity. Don’t let your troubles discourage you from playing Riptor.
Riptor indeed does have a big lack of defensive options but one thing I beleive you over-looked is Riptor is a character with incredible offensive capabilities. The thing about being Riptor is you HAVE to be AGGRESSIVE. But be smart while doing so.
Don’t ever let your opponent corner you, try to be unpredictable, keep your pressure going and corner your opponent.
You also have options that can allow you to cross up your opponent, and you have plenty of options for predator stance after knocking them down. Use this to your advantage and keep your foe guessing. Her mixups can allow for great pressure. Just make sure not get into the habit of using the same moves over and over because they will become easy to predict in time.
For Riptor, predictability=death. I hope this will help you some. As for wakeup, if you have Shadow meter use her shadow tail flip the moment your foe jumps on you. If you’re not cornered you can use back-HP as your anti-air or cleve-girl so long as the opponent isn’t right on top of you.
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It doesnt discourage me, i have around 1700 ranked matches as riptor. But lets be real her instinct is the worst in the game in my opinion (people like to say glacius instinct sucks but riptors is worse.), the extended range of the tail is good but still its too weak when compared to other instincts. Her combo trait is also the worst in the game, its not even use full on lockouts since the ender level wont go up. No backdash. Bad anti air etc.
She is still my main and probably will be at least till season 3 comes out but IMO she is the weakest character in the game, I win a lot with her especially lately thanks to the many many hours that I’ve played her. I started playing omen and levels him up till 50 its so much easier to win in ranked with him. Pretty sure if I play him half as many hours as riptor I will be much better, same with aganos that I also play and aria which I started now.
I have these characters level 50: Jago, Glacius, Hisako, Riptor, Omen, Aganos and sabrewulf.
Playing all those characters till 50 I noticed that compared to others riptor has too many bad matchups in my opinion.
With all the characters except for riptor I am pretty confident before the match starts (even with aganos and glacius) even if it is theoretically a bad matchup I’m not really “scared” of any character. With riptor I am confident agains wulf and hisako and combo, all the others make me pretty uncfortable before the match even starts even though I win more than 50% of my matches.
Those are her two most unsafe normal’s. Don’t use them all the time.
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Form my own experiences RIptor’s Instinct has benefited me well. And while yes her combo trait may not seem like much because it can be easy for that person to break. The thing is: You can use that weakness to advantage such as counter-breaking opponents.
Playing a character as often as ya like doesn’t really mean you’ve been able to fully use everything in the character’s arsenal for certain situations. For example: I have Cinder at level 50 but it took me 3 months after his release before I could truly learn to use what I can at my advantage and finally found something that could stick.
With Riptor it’s about offence and aggression and being smart while doing so. Just try to pick out your opponent’s habits and see what you can do. A character with alot of bad-match ups doesn’t make them weak. It just means you have to be more creative with how you deal with them. Because even that so called better match-up has weaknesses you can exploit.
Your very right when it comes to being aggressive, when every I play I try my hardest to push them into a corner then try to build shadow and mix between heavy and light combos.
