The best tip I can give is work your way in to Cinder’s close range, because sitting at the range where he can throw pyrobombs at you free of worry means your letting him get away with that. It’s one thing if he wants to guerilla style run and stick, it’s another if you decide you’d rather sit in a corner and just take it.
I learned in an online with Raven is Raw that he’s patient enough to just sit at long distance and is content with throwing them at you all day, which is fine. I found that basically forcing that early pressure on him to reduce his ability to zone almost renders pyrobomb useless. If he scores a hard knockdown, then it can come back into play at almost any range.
However, Cinder’s game is built around him being able to attach three pyrobombs at most to, as a reward for a carefully considered toss, as these are not normal projectiles with a straight travel but have a curve and a gravity to them, and for being able to train an opponent to fear your close range enough to simply sit there and let you tag them. It’s like you said, you could dodge some but probably not all, or as a tool for wakeup setups.
Simply changing it to one pyrobomb means he gets a lot less of blockstun on block, lower juggle height, less overall damage, and everything that’s balanced around those properties right now. This will affect his juggles, his damage, and his best offensive trait cutting down some of his up close pressure. To compensate, you’d have to make his single pyrobomb hit bigger, harder, juggle higher, and inflict more blocktstun, and I’m pretty sure you’d rather have three smaller hitting pyrobombs that have to be carefully timed and thrown with a chance of dodging them rather than having to be hit by a bigger one with nearly the same effect that still allows Cinder’s design to work as intended.[quote=“ZDhome, post:60, topic:21629”]
Much like Jago used to be, I don’t think he is crazy broken, I just think some adjustments should be made. Take a little from his zoning and PD build.
bombs don’t chip, and do less damage. They are already VERY good set up tools that open up juggle combos, as well as being utilities in throws and OTG. They don’t need to also be used to cheese out the end of matches.
Low inferno hits 3 slow times, making it shadow counterable. It’s already unpunishable on block (afaik), and comes out crazy fast, so at least let a good player spend meter to punish it if they get a read on it.
“fan the flames” mechanic change: instead of resetting the time you’re burning by pressing a button that has been “burnt out”, you just add a decent chunk of extra PD to the current amount. This would mean that FAILURE to take back momentum with a burned button would still be a huge punish for cinder, but SUCESS would more often lead to you removing most of the PD. (Currently, success and a full combo will still leave you with a lot of PD to worry about.)
Insult all you want, but this is my thoughts, and I’m willing to bet cinder will get some change soon. Maybe not even a nerf, but some kind of balance change / rework of a mechanic. In a short while, I’m sure tons of people will be very good with him because valoraxe has shown his potential. But that “potential” is definitely too much.
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Allow me to be frank:
No. To everything.
Your whole response screams to me you don’t understand the matchup and how to deal with it at all.
-Pyrobombs chip damage is super tiny at best, but as it is a special it should chip. Inferno has no chip, but to counter balance, it builds its PD well, but no opponent willingly let’s you find windows to randomly throw out an inferno, you make it sound braindead when it’s not. Also, except for fired up and shadow pyrobombs, they do very small damage anyway. Seriously, compare their damage to an endokuken or to a number of projectiles in the game.
-Inferno is very punishable on block, ask Sabrewulf. Any time you do a non-fired up version, it hits with -2 on hit and -4 on block, and can not be auto doubled into, one of few openers you can’t do that with, and on block, Sabrewulf’s crouching normals can punish it, if he’s close enough. You have to spend meter to use it for a combo. It’s also slow startup, and easily telegraphed, so if the opponent has meter, prepare to eat a projectile invincible shadow opener.
-Why not just skip the middle man and just have a burnout ender no longer add flames and instead just add a huge chunk of PD instead? Cinder’s game has obvious weaknesses that are built around his fan the flames mechanic, being built the way it is now. Your change gives little to no reason to even respect the flames at all, so there’s no incentive to stop hitting buttons, which is the point of the burnout. This changes his pressure game greatly to where it’s hard to be effective.
If you really want that last change though, I tell you what, if the burnouts remain after a combo breaker as a tradeoff, let’s talk…
Most of this argument screams how little you know about Cinder, his matchups, or how to beat him.
Don’t count on it, there’s a reason Cinder has been untouched by the nerf bat or buff…thing (I have no physical euphemism for buffs) for all this time. He’s simply a well built character, and valoraxe is just so good with him, he makes the bad matchup like Gargos look easy. I’ve played Cinder enough to know that is his WORST matchup, and if Wheels never changed to Sabrewulf, I honestly believe he would have eventually worn down Valoraxe. It’s a difficult matchup.[quote=“ZDhome, post:60, topic:21629”]
And for the icing on the cake… if he had a bomb on you, or used an ender that allows him to continue the combo, you have so little CV on you, that he can continue into more damage, or ANOTHER round of burning your limbs.
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Bull. His recap has one of the worst KV penalties in the game, they are NOT all built equal.
Above Average? His fireballs do no damage unless detonated, they disappear if he gets hit, the arc he tosses them at makes them difficult to aim. You want above average zoning, try a character who can use his projectiles to force to block into a mixup into an unblockable projectile or can break your combo because he can delay them (Glacius), or can track and hold down your movements anywhere on screen and have good mixup and juggle power (Gargos), or can suspend you in air for looping command throws, combo recaps, and juggles (Kan Ra, Arbiter, Aria, Mira, Eagle).
I really want to take you seriously, but most of your complaints seem to boil down to how you don’t know to approach the matchup, and rather than improve on your weaknesses and lack of knowledge, you’re calling for a character to be changed to accommodate your shortcomings, and that’s no way to get better. If nothing else, try playing as him and understand how he has to fight and the struggles you have to go through to earn your damage. If you can see yourself pulling off the same high level stuff with minimal training and thought, then yeah, there’s something wrong, and then IG can deal with it. But just because a character you don’t like won a tournament in a way you didn’t like doesn’t mean he’s broken.
For a long time, I thought Hisako was broken, but I started to play as her and after some time of being committed to her, I realized she wasn’t broken at all, and the thought process behind using her is complex, and is more or less making your opponent afraid of you and forcing them into making mistakes by taking risks they normally wouldn’t. I also didn’t like that the counter as a special could overcome shadow moves, but I plan my game around it now.
Also, Valoraxe lost to Storm at CEO, and I remember one cringeworthy moment when he shadow countered a hit of ORZ rekka, and Storm used a wrath cancel to catch him. I saw that before it ever happened. Cinder’s not perfect, but a good player makes the worst matchups look so easy, it’s like he has no weaknesses. So instead of a knee jerk reaction of calling for nerfs, how about trying to get know the character a little before rushing to such a huge judgement.
