Cinder Season 3 Changes

Fair point. I think the reason was that the risk reward wasn’t fair with that move.

Oh yeah, another question: does that extra blockstun on medium trailblazer actually make a difference? People can still jab/dp punish it, right?

It’s still jabbable. I’m not too sure how much of a difference it makes though. I’m hoping it’s safe enough to avoid getting DP’d in the face by Jago.

It makes the window for mashing something in between the hits smaller. If you can fit a jab in there you can definitely fit a DP, but the timing will be a bit more strict to do so.

On that topic I’m curious about why Shadow Trail-blazer can get beat out by a light punch or a move that was later than mine?

I wonder because unlike normal flash which can change direction, thus making a reasonable excuse for it’s lower priority over pretty much everything else.

Shadow Trail-blazer may go through projectiles but Jagos could go much further, and some cases unless you string it with a fired-up inferno it doesn’t go very far at all.

It doesn’t have the normal versions versatility and doesn’t go any further or change directions or anything, so why can a light jab beat it?

Yeah, now that is a valid question. I remember another thread on this forum explaining priority, and one user explained it as thus:

light < medium < heavy < special < shadow and any airborne moves have a -1 on their priority.

To which Keits pretty much confirmed that’s about how it goes.

So with that as the pecking order for priority, a shadow trialblazer, even with a -1 penalty for being an airborne (technically) move, it should still greatly outprioritize a light jab by a great deal. At worst, this move shouldn’t lose out to anything less than a heavy.

My guess is it’s all due to hitbox placement, which renders priority meaningless in this circumstance. If you’ve ever gone to training and looked at the actual attack box on Shadow Trialblazer and look at where Cinder’s vulnerable box is overlayed on top, it makes sense from that standpoint, but it throws the priority system out the window at that point. That to me seems a little ridiculous, especially when Glacius’ cold shoulder move by comparison is built on the same principle, but so much better and stronger.

A good point but now I wanna know why the heck they did that in the first place? you’d figured with a lack of versatility and distance Shadow Trailblazer could at least have a priority over a light jab.

Now if someone got their attack out first and whacked me that’s fine, but when I do my shadow trail-blazer to get in passed a projectile and they tap me out with a light punch, that’s just ridiculous.

I was honestly hoping IG would adjust that in season3 in some way like: have it follow the priority system, or make it travel further. One or the other really.

if what you said is true it sounds like this was an over-sight or a bug, cause if it was done on purpose I can’t help but question why. Cause hardly anything about it justifies it’s lack of priority when it doesn’t have the versatility of normal trailblazer.

Well, I found that old thread, and I found that I missed a few unread posts made to it.

From what I read and Keits confirmed, Trailblazer and Shadow Trailblazer are the only specials in the game that have their priority overwritten to be beaten out by a jab.

All versions of Trailblazer are jab level priority, but because ALL versions of Trailblazer are airborne, they all suffer a negative penalty, making them even less priority to jabs, and thus so easily beaten. Basically, when two attack boxes (red solid boxes) touch each other, the game performs a check on which attack has priority over the other. If the priority is equal, a trade occurs, and one being victor over the other in all other instances. So a jab hitbox hits the Trailblazer attack box, at this point it’s like saying 2>1 with 2 being the jab and trailblazer being the 1, playing out the result.

At this point, the hitbox argument I made earlier is now invalidated, but things make sense again. The new problem that arises is, why can’t you give it the amount of priority it at least needs to beat out a jab? I could stand losing to a medium or heavy, but a jab?

I don’t believe it’ll break the game, and the block stun inflicted by trailblazer isn’t enough to keep them from jabbing you in between the trailblazer and afterburner, that’s more of a punishment window where you are in between recovery and startup. It just feels a little bit like when a light move is enough to register a counter hit against a special, maybe it hits a little too light?

I’m open to discussion as to why this is as it is. Personally, I think if it can be beaten by mindlessly mashing lights, maybe it needs to be elevated a tad, if not a lot. With as fast as Jago’s crouching medium is, it’s still not hard to beat it out even with a slower startup move.

Re: fired up DP, it makes sense it’s punishable. At -6 it is the safest invincible DP in the game though, so if your opponent waits until the ground to punish you, you will a) only get hit by a light attack combo starter, which starts the combo with more KV and less damage, and b) sometimes be out of range for those light attacks so it’s still functionally safe.

I can’t speak for IG’s motivations for changing it, but for me, Cinder gets a lot off of it on hit and you have to be really, really on the ball to stop it; KI is super fast-paced and I guess it was proving too difficult, even for good players, to keep up with it. Jabbing someone out of the air for 2% damage isn’t a good enough punish for an invincible combo starter. If you’re even just slightly late on your punish, you get hit.

I used to be in the same boat as you guys, I used to think guys should just get good and punish it (more than half the cast can punish it grounded for a full combo, though you usually need meter and the timing varies), but the more I watch good players play the match, and the more I try to focus on punishing it myself in matches, the more I realize it’s probably a bit too hard for the reward Cinder gets. And I really, really dislike safe reversals that are combo starters, so I like the change.

Re: extra block frames on MK trailblazer, it’s a good change for Cinder. From the tip of MK trailblazer range right now, you can stuff jabs with follow-up attacks because the TB hits so meaty. This will soften that range and make MK TB even more useful, as people have to respect your followups a bit more now. Also, mashing jab on reaction to MK TB is pretty dang tough in actual matches, especially since the timing on when you can mash jab varies depending on how the TB hits you, and (again) KI is a fast-paced game that is not very cut and dry. I mean, you see pro players block MK TB (which is -11 with no follow-up) and get thrown, very often, even right now. This makes Cinder’s best whiff punishing move even better as an approach and makes those surprise TBs more effective.

You will always be able to invincible attack through the followups though. It is never a block string and the extra frames won’t save him from Jago DP.

@Ironflame and @Ironflame

I’m not bothered by normal trailblazer being stuffed with the jab. Being able to change direction sounds understandable in my opinion and I can find so many different ways to deal with my opponent.

I’m bothered that Shadow Trailblazer, which isn’t as versatile, has no after-burner, and lacks range when done raw. I wanna know why is it so weak on the priority list? why did they make it so low on priority? I can get how it is, being an air attack and all, but what is the point having this weakness?

here’s our draw-backs to it:
1-lacks versatility of normal trailblazer, you cannot change directions with it.

2-Does not go any further than normal trailblazer, you’d figured in not having normal trailblazer’s versatility it would at least be better at covering distances.

the only upside is it can go through projectiles, but guess what other moves can run right through projectiles and go the distance? Orchid’s firecat, Jago’s Wind-kick, Fulgore’s Blade charge to name a few. a great number of the cast have shadow moves for getting in that are so much more effective than Cinder’s shadow trailblazer, whether it’d be distance or priority. Cinder’s shadow trailblazer has none of hese, which is pretty I feel is pretty iffy since the trailblazers are his main form of mobility.

Sure you can cancel into it with fired-up inferno but that’s if your lucky, but against some match-ups this can be tricky. especially since certain members of the cast have great keep-away tools to keep you at bay.

I apologize if I came off kind of ranty there, didn’t mean for it to sound like that.

have some unreleased S3 footage of some Cinder gameplay in this video