AI Fulgore with shadow bond has a problem

The shadow bond buff is stronger on Fulgore than other characters due to the threat of devastation beam, normally you need to be super careful when Fulgore is at full meter, but when he can do devastation beam with half meter he can keep you pinned constantly in fear of it.
In addition Fulgore can do follow-ups to his devastation beam if he has 7 pips of meter: Beam into teleport into shadow DP for guaranteed cash out (The AI actually did this to me).
At 10 pips he can even confirm Devastation beam into a second Devastation beam for luls.

A quick example of how hard this can be to deal with compared to other characters with shadow bond

I would honestly rather fight Gargos, (in his current pub.beta state), than a level 3 shadow bond Fulgore.
The threat of 50% guaranteed damage from full screen for only 7 pips of meter is just way too much.

A simple solution would be to change the shadow bond buff so shadow moves still require you have the normal amount of meter but simply refunds half the cost (so they can’t do a shadow move with only half a bar)
Or perhaps there can simply be an exception for non-standard shadow moves, (devastation beam, demonic despair), so that they still use their normal amount.

I like the buff that allows me to do infinite beams.

I tried that vs gargos. Got bopped for my troubles.

Well, the buffs are supposed to be a problem. Best to equip yourself to deal with them with your own buffs. :wink:

Exemplar guardian> devastation beam.

Does it only take one parry to avoid the whole beam?

I’m not sure. I don’t think. I think one parry can avoid 2-3 hits. So in essence, 4-5 parries to stop a full beam I believe. Might be less. I’d have to test that. Which wouldn’t be easy. If the exemplar guardian in it’s current form stays for online then there will probably be complaints.

Like more then the mode probably thought it would. I mean the ability to parry combo breakers? Yikes, that’s pretty huge. No other guardian allows that. Granted wouldn’t be so easy, but when done…oh boy look out. One could make their offense super predictable then…BAM! parry combo breakers.

It didn’t tell me what buffs Fulgore had on this mission tho :cry:
And the point is that there isn’t any real way to deal with this, armour wont prevent the damage, and the beam hits several times anyways. Don’t forget the startup on hype beam is pretty fast an it’s not exactly reactable, all you can do is put on a dragon skin buff in case you get his so the damage is reduced to 30% from 50%

You can react to the freeze if you play patiently. Or just sit back and wait for it then parry it.

But when Fulgore can use it most of the time so you will always play patiently, and he will get more overall meter from you playing patiently because his reactor wont slow down from getting hit. Even if you get the upper hand early on you need to prevent him from using instinct on his first life bar or else he will start the next around with meter.

Well you kinda have to play with it. Plus it’s the AI. Won’t be spamming it that quickly.

It was when I played, it did 5 hype beams that match, I should grab the replay if I can.

Only 5? Oh that’s nothing then. AI aganos spams shadow ruin a bunch.

“only” 5 is 200%-250% of my life if they land

I wana see this replay.

Upload speed isn’t great right now, this is all I’ve got for you. It’s a different fight with the similar problem. Tell me if this is spamming.

Seems fine to me. But what were you doing before the beam came out?

I think I was trying to punish the eye laser with a endokuken, a bit late I know. This was on challenging difficulty so I was a bit lax.

Fair enough. But still I a little bit of patience probably would have netted you the win. Granted the AI can be salt inducing when it knows how to beat you easily.

Watching the problem case again(not the clip I uploaded) I think this Fulgore also had concentration (the one that refils meter over time). It was hard to tell considdering how Fulgore’s meter works but; his spin speed seemed a lot higher than normal at the start of the fight. So I think I’ll stick to using that clip I uploaded as an example until I get a better example for this thread.