Whiff Natural Disaster is made to be dashed-grabbed.
100% agree. Iām pretty far up in this thread advocating that very position - 48% (even assuming itāll be nerfed down to this) unbreakable damage is fantastic and will always have its uses, even and perhaps especially at high level play.
My comment about getting more out of an instinct was more in relation to the comment that annihilation is āfreeā, in that it costs apparently nothing. A full bar of instinct is never āfreeā, and even factoring in breakers, the very best instincts in this games routinely do far better than 48% damage. Given some of the crazy juggle shenanigans into cashout of which Shago is capable in instinct, Iāve no doubt that he is very much in that category.
Annihilation will certainly always have its uses, but I maintain that a Shago properly using dark tether will in the long run be the far greater threat.
yes but the question is will you ever see his real instinct at high level in tournaments? All of his juggles except projectiles are breakable.
I dont know but i dont really like that i dont see anyone use his real instinct
Listing everyoneās DP in the game to pile on is kind of misleading. The idea that, but for annihilation, people would be free to whiff DPs all over the place is not correct. You are guaranteed at least 20% and likely much more if you wife a DP against anyone, regardless of circumstances. And after all, what good would the move be if it couldnāt punish at least something that each character does? You donāt need to adapt to Shago in any way to know that you are taking a big risk throwing out a naked DP in the game.
The other pretty clear line that is being illuminated by this thread is the differences in the previed value of instinct. I am in the āintermediateā tier at best - I sometimes fail to use my instinct meter, but I recognize that this is a huge fault in my game. Itās pretty clear that at lower competitive levels people are not really using their instinct to the fullest and therefore perceive itās value as less than 48% damage. The higher tier guys are placing a much higher value on it and are therefore less likely to say annihilation is worth the cost.
sorry but at 48% at your scnd lifebar you simply can not throw out a dp or counter break orā¦
And even Jago can not get 20% guaranteed of a blocked dp (with 2 meters you can or shadow command throw does it too)
Eyerthing else has a chance of being broken.
But it seems to be your mission to lay words in my mouth. I just showed that the move is extremely good in a lot of situations. And to get to your point - i dont care if i take below 20% guaranteed if the opponent punishes correctly but i do care about 48% guaranteed cause you know on top of that i can do the nearly same guaranteed stuff on ablocked unsafe move like every other char with Shago.
If you dont see the threat of a full instinct bar to your own gameplan than i dont know what to say. Its a common tactic in fg to sit on a threat just to cripple the opponents options.
Yes maybe his instinct is crazy good but as long as its breakable its not guaranteed. It seems you underestimate the guaranteed part - that is really really appealing to a lot of players.
All the juggles are breakable, but they are also all pure guess breaks unless he decides to do something with a ton of start-up like his stagger overhead. The DP juggles give basically no feedback on which they are, and it isnāt (and has never been) possible to react to individual manual hits. Since the opponent is airborne and has no restrictions on what manuals to use, youāre looking at a steady succession of pure guess breaks. As original TJ combo and S1 Jago proved quite admirably, that it not a tenable situation for a defender.
As to whether or not weāll see high level Shago in tournament, no idea. But if there do wind up being any out there, Iām pretty confidant that theyāll have uses for both dark tether AND annihilation. I think that both aspects of his instinct have their place.
yes i never denied that its only guess breakable (for now maybe he will get a indicator). I just said its not guaranteed.
Just say you are at a tournament would you sacrifice the guaranteed damage for possible more damage?
And it even gets more interesting if you take the danger 15% into account. So at about 65% on the second life bar your suddenly at 17% health in a hard knockdown situation where the next hit is game over. It will be hard to justify not using the annihilation if you get a chance to land it as a punish.
Im not saying you are wrong - just that i fear that we wont see his full instinct potential that often just because of how good annihilation is.
And just as a sidenote - i love unbreakable damage but it should not overshadow a in theory cool instinct mechanic. Imo its not a good design decision.
Depends on the character and the situation. Certain characters live by resets after all, which are by definition a gamble predicated on squeezing out a bit (or a lot) of extra damage. Players go for resets even in lockout situations with some regularity, so making a guess based on getting some later damage is not at all uncommon. Setup enders and hard knockdowns instead of juggles operate under the same basic premise - Iām giving up some amount of extra damage that I could be getting right now, because I expect to use my favorable oki situation to simply open you up again.
We wonāt know until Shago actually hits the tournament circuit, but I really do think youāll see dark tether used and used well. Guaranteed damage is definitely nice, particularly in this game, but if the mixup is good enough players will often give up that guarantee in order to keep the vortex going. And Shago can get really, really good damage off those dark tether juggles and cashout.
Keep in mind that in season one tournament players did one chance breaks into shadow cashouts all the time. They wanted as much guaranteed damage with as little break risk as possible. Annihilation gives them exactly that which is why I think itāll be much more popular in tournaments than his actual instinct.
By an absolute stroke of luck, I knocked a friend out of Annhilation with Aganosā shadow payload assault and netted the win. My friend was all like, āno way!ā 
Ahhh, good old opposite day. Nobody told me!
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The āniceā thing about Annihilation is that if it does end up being way too overwhelming, itās easy to tweak. Lower damage is really all you have to do.
But I also think itās a cool idea to let it rock for a bit and see. Shago getting good risk-free damage on occasion probably balances nicely against his difficulty staying at plus frames in pressure. His juggles do nice damage (if youāre willing to spend all your meter), but without meter he really sucks at opening you up, I think. You just gotta hope people are sleeping on the overhead.
Hey Iām just speaking on the way I approach the character lmao
Iām use to playing Ken and Ryu from 3rd Strike so I have what I like to call DP-Eyes. I can see exactly what my opponent wants to do and my fingers just do what I know will hit them in that moment. They dash forward to closely DP!! They Jump, DP!! They do an Unsafe move without hit confirming off a normal, DP!!!
With Thunder itās similar, if they dash forward, HUGS!! If they jump at me I front dash or back dash depending on what works then comes the HUGS!!! If they do an unsafe move and miss, or whiff and I know the frame data of that move then here comes HUGS!!! So naked S.CotE works real well, but trapping opponents with it is hard for me, especially since ticking into S.CotE is very very particular.
As for Kan-Ra you just HK into S.Clutch and you gottāem. You can Literally S.Clutch someone landing from a jump if they werenāt holding up. You can super-dash j.HP and it ticks right into S.Clutch. You can Make your Clutch Land after condition or punishing or making a way for it. Whereas Thunder you need hardcore in the moment reads to effectively use S.CotE.
Itās just the way I play tho.
Butā¦ you just hold up during the freeze and it never worksā¦
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Shadow COTE isnāt what you want to use to tick throw with Thunder. HP->heavy COTE. Or any of the others reallyā¦his normal command grabs are pretty slow, so all of them are pretty tickable.
So this move is why Shago doesnāt have a wall splat ender. Imagine. Wall splat into annihilation. Thanks IG for your great balancing.
It still wouldnāt have worked. Stagger is a grab-able state like wallsplat and Annihilation doesnāt hit it.
actually he has pretty good footsies, a good safe vortex with a bit of meter and shadow meter is a common ressource.
But maybe other characters get a similar move as a way to implement universal unbreakable damage - who knows.
Right now i dont like that he is the only one that gets unbreakable damage working as intended.
Sure others have unbreakable damage too but it seems some of them werent intended like scarab loop, cinder bomb loop n stuff.
And im pretty sure that Shago has a lot of unbreakable stuff with his fireballs too.
The praised two way interaction just does not go hand in hand with annihilation and i bet the complaints will rise as soon as everyone gets access to Shago.
Itās pretty common but Shago actually builds quite a bit less meter than similar characters; his fireballs seem to do, like, 1/5th the meter build of Jagoās fireballs, for instance. I mean, itās KI so he will get access to meter eventually of course, but I think his meter build is way below average.
His footsies areā¦ okay, but he has no 2-hit normals for easy confirms, so he either has to whiff punish a button, or else commit to being -5 on block (light slide), or -3 with a gap (overhead). His overhead is basically the same as medium wind kick if that was interruptible in block strings, so itās not terrible but also not super amazing. Xbox is down right now so I canāt log in to test how easy it is to 1-button confirm into specials with Shago.
Maybe, but Fulgore has a much more potent version of the same move IMO; costs all his meter but it does 32% unbreakable and sets up a gross mixup into 40% more (and punishes way, way more stuff), so on average Iād say hitting someone with beam does more than 48% (and no worse than 32% unbreakable; you can even be combo broken on your mixup and still get close to mid 40s because the damage on your mixup pre-break will probably be about 10-12%). Do you think beam breaks the two way interaction philosophy too much? To me, itās just a very high damage move for a big cost. Thunder has a 0 frame grab that does 23% (plus more with followups) unbreakable for only 1 meter, which is half of what annihilation is and it also punishes more things and is not reactable. I dunno.
Iām always willing to admit when Iām wrong (ask me again in 3 months what I think and Iāll give you an honest answer), but I just donāt really see this move being a real problem for intelligent players in a game as potent as KI. Scrubs might complain but they complain about everything, so Iām not sure thatās a big deal.
Iāve recorded clips for my āHow to Avoid Annihilationā video last night. Iām hoping to have it on YouTube in the next two days.
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