From my personal perspective, I can’t help but think that Aganos is in trouble once S3 hits. As you already know, he’s going to be vulnerable to grounded heavy attacks from EVERY character. However, now with the revealed counters on certain specials from Tusk that hurts offensive-minded players (which is what Aganos is) and the energy shield + parrys while in instinct from the Arbiter, I can’t help but think that if Aganos wasn’t already bottom tier, he certainly is now.
I’d like your input as to why you may agree or disagree with me, based upon what we know of KI and it’s roster so far.
As with all characters, there are going to be certain matches where Aganos is going to struggle, but that is no different than right now. I’m incredibly pleased with how they are fixing armor so that a heavy normal can bypass it. Believe it or not, if Aganos got certain characters, like Sadira, in a corner, there was little she could do to get out.
In terms of Tusk’s “counters” they occur only on certain special moves and the time is incredibly strict. They don’t have full control as to when those counters will come, versus lets say Hisako who can bait a Counter at any time.
Aganos is getting several ways to maintain his chunks, especially during Instinct, and this is going to make him incredibly dangerous. I think once you get used to the changes, you’re going to find that he’s better than ever and despite the craziness of S3 characters, he’s still viable.
Also note, IF IG sees that he’s getting ground into powder, they aren’t above buffing him, if needs be.
I think we all fear for our mains in some shape or form when challenged by new characters, but at the end of the day, we won’t really know until we play the game.
I think Aganos has the footsies to deal with armor-ignoring normals. And you still need to strip his armor with follow-ups to get combos out of them, which probably won’t always work conveniently when he can endure potentially 4 (which must be non- heavy normal) hits before taking more hitstun. It’s a nerf to him, but I don’t think it’s that dramatic.
Regarding Tusk, I know his counter isn’t fully under that player’s control unless he/she’s mastered the timing, but what I worry most is the possibility that if it does hit, for example when Aganos tries to be his aggressive armored self and attack through Tusk’s own attack, which will likely happen often, Tusk will bypass the chunks and get a free combo off of Aganos - just like Hisako already does.
Now, granted we don’t know this is how it will work, since we haven’t actually seen this matchup yet. For all we know, it could just take a chunk still granting Aganos a counter-attack punish…
Still I’d hate it if there’s yet another character who can bypass chunks as easily as Hisako can, especially considering that Tusk is a long-reaching and slow, single-hitting character as far as I’ve seen.
Speculation is fun and all, but I want to wait until I actually get my hands on Season 3 to judge how the changes are going to affect Aganos. And I especially don’t want to make judgments based on IG’s demonstration of tools for Arbiter and Tusk.
Everything you said makes logical sense, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from fighting games, theory fighting is almost NEVER 100% accurate, more so when it happens before a characters out.
I think Aganos will be fine The only thing that got nerfed was his braindead “herp derp armor through everything” nonsense. If you have solid defense, I think Aganos is going to be a threat
I’m new to the forums but I’ll say that I’m at least familiar with playing Aganos and fighting game concepts in general, so I wanted to throw in my own two cents into this conversation.
Obviously I haven’t gotten to play S3 yet, but what worries me the most is the fact that opponents gain more meter when getting hit by him, and the fact that the downside of chunks (decreased movement speed) is still there even though everyone gained a good deal of ways to bypass or strip armor. The more meter gain I can understand, some people really did have a problem getting past his armor without meter, but it still isn’t fun to think about how much more people will be able to Shadow Counter and other things against him now. The biggest problem I have is that he still moves slow with chunks in him. Aganos has amazing footsies, but those strong normals he has become extremely difficult to use once he has more than 2 chunks. How is he going to be able to reliably avoid situations where the opponent will be able to whiff punish his fastest normals with their heavy moves? I know Aganos shouldn’t be in those tough situations if he has that much armor to begin with, but it happens sometimes and those moments will be even hard to deal with now. It’s going to be extremely hard to keep people off now that combo breakers don’t soft knockdown.
Once again, I understand this is all on the person playing him but you can never know what situations will come up and Aganos has an unnecessarily harder time dealing with it than in Season 2. If they just made him move a tiny bit faster when he has extra chunks then I’d be more than happy. I’m not asking for him to move at his normal speeds at all times, but just allow me to move somewhat faster to compensate for the ways for people to bypass chunks now in Season 3.
That was a reward for Aganos being able to endure the trains that Sadira and other characters could run on him since he’s slow and has a big body. I can’t tell you how difficult some of those matches are, like Shadow Jago for example. There’s been so many times where his divekick would cross me up when it would show him hitting me from the front because of the spacing. Stuff like that is infuriating to fight against so I feel like I worked hard for being able to not only get him to the corner, but also managing resources to trap him in there with me and still have enough to be able to survive an extra hit or two.
I don’t see how Tusk is an issue here. In fact, if armor didn’t get crushed by heavy attacks and Tusk didn’t have his deflect, he probably wouldn’t stand any chance against Aganos. His buttons are single-hit and slow to start up, seemingly very high in recovery, and his stronger buttons aren’t cancellable into specials to add a second hit. His Shadow moves are also slow between hits and he doesn’t otherwise have a projectile to control space in front of him.
On top of that, he’s too tall to crouch under Aganos’ standing HP. You would probably be able to win by just standing in place and pressing HP.
That’s not true. If you have 4 chunks qnd I hit you with a heavy normal its an opener and I can continue the combo. You wont lose your chunks but I can do my combo. If what you say would be the case it would actually be worse then right now because now if I hit you with a heavy you lose a chunk and in your scenario he would get hit but not lose the chunk.
It’s my understanding that if you get hit by a heavy grounded normal, you won’t lose the chunk, but that you do get opened up for a combo - it’s basically what Hisako can already do pre-S3.
It’s interesting to think about, because that means more players will be using those heavy grounded normals to try to open him up, but Aganos players, knowing this, will be far more on the defensive or trying to use his faster attacks against them in order to interrupt them or his reach so they can’t touch him.
What bothers me about this is what has already been mentioned - the idea that with more chunks, the slower and more succeptible Aganos is to these grounded heavy normals. This means that if you have a lot of chunks (and with recycling, you’re going to have more than ever), you’re more than likely going to have to actually use them for walls and payload assault attacks rather than just armor (the latter of which is what a lot of newer Aganos players tend to do, and as a result of that, never fully understand what he is capable of), so you can maintain your speed and have more options while effectively trapping and scaring your opponent at th same time, which with the new update, will become easier due to faster frames on chunking and setting up walls. Actually, after typing up this paragraph, I realize that this aspect may not be so bad, unless you’re the kind of Aganos player who is dead-set on just using armor (which, IMO, is a bad Aganos player).
I definitely see the reasons to be afraid, especially with Arbiter & Tusk. Because of the long start up of Aganos’s moves, he will be much easier to land a deflect or parry on in comparison to the rest of the cast. Also, we saw just how effective the Carbine is at removing chunks. So maybe there will be a struggle, but Aganos has always been a struggle character and I’m not sure things will be quite as bad as we all think. And as others have said, IG will likely step in if things are too lopsided in match-ups like these.
Well, I know IG will step in if necessary, but if it gets to that point, Aganos players would still be in a bind for a month or more in the interim and popularity for him as a character will drop, well, like a rock. WIth the new season and PC release upon us, allowing for new players, I’m pretty certain that’s not what a lot of us Aganos fans want for our favorite character.
On the topic of extra chunks, I had quite persistent idea that what devs wants Aganos to do is to use his non-armor chunk abilities more. Like, a lot more. Starting with fortify/wall/club recovery buff and up to Aganos slowing down to the point that his faster buttons won’t work against some of the better heavies in the game in many cases while he sits on chunks. I fully expect to start looking into payload usage.
This all together may mean Aganos will have to zone people out hard, for what it’s worth. Although losing even some more damage on some reaching options and meter gain doesn’t fill me with confidence.
On the other hand, it almost seemed like Aganos’ best defence against her were breakers. And not just in corner tbh. Hopefully, Aganos will get some practical air control with out-of-instinct club opportunities at least.
Aganos mirror show us to play very different compared to other characters. I think Tusk falls in the same category.
You dont want chunks for armor in this fight. You want walls to threat a unsafe move or a whiff with ruin, and you want your peacemaker out in this match. I can see a peacemaker confirm into throwing it->stagger->ruin->big damage if a wall its placed
Tusk wants to make you scared to press buttons.
You want to make Tusk scared of pressing unsafe buttons, and most of them are
Now this is kind of in line with my Maya autothread but giving Aganos different autoanimations and speed them up could indeed make Aganos a tremendously stronger fighter as he is so easy to break today. esp when using heavy autos.
In terms of dealing with Sadira, Aganos already had some pretty good tech to put her in her place, such as jumping HP as well as Flick. Jumping HP has an incredible long reach and it can be pretty effective and keeping a Sadira down. If she is already in the air, Flick can nullify most of her web craziness and knock her back to the ground.
The best Aganos players make it almost impossible for Sadira to get in, and unfortunately for her, one of the only good ways to get into Aganos is from the air, as Shadow Recluse is the only viable option and she would have to be right next to him for that to work.
S3 changes will help her somewhat as she has good HP/HK poking tools, and Salticide is going to a TON of fun with Agano’s hitbox… but at the end of the day, Aganos is still going to be a scary match up.
I was thinking that with Season 3 that Aganos is going to have to take advantage of his zoning tools even more so now. With his thrown club causing stagger, I wonder if stuff like H/Shadow Payload Assault will be able to combo now, and same thing with standing H punch. If not, they’d have to be really meaty and almost impossible to escape without the use of meter. Or if you can stagger them, how many walls can you setup safely before they recover? Stuff like that is really fun to think about. With chunking up having a faster recovery, I wonder if back throw > chunk will be safe now.
Well, a lot of us have expressed our concerns as to why we think he might struggle, particularly in certain matchups. So, I’m curious - why do you think he’ll come out stronger? I’d like to hear about a few examples that support your stance.
He really didn’t get nerfed bad. Just the duration of Peacemaker respawn and Peacemaker attacks were reduced, but that might go hand in hand with the S3 Ender Changes.
Standing far HP does do stagger now and is -5 on block, so you can use this button with more confidence, and not worry about getting hit, depending on where you are. Faster Chunk Ups, Wall Summons are faster, Making Peacemakers from Walls are faster, You keep your Peacemaker until knocked down or blown out, AND you can Recycle!
Saving the planet and crushing foes all at once.
Aganos really loves the earth, and is smooth as a Rock when it comes to recycling.
The only thing that got nerfed was his braindead “herp derp armor through everything” nonsense. If you have solid defense, I think Aganos is going to be a threat