Combo Breakers Risk vs. Reward

I use Heavy ADs to bait for counter breakers all the time and I’m sometimes hesitant to break them because others occasionally do the same. Is this not a viable threat or too unsafe to affect the mind game at high-level?

It’s absolutely viable. Player preference is the only thing that keeps players from doing the same. It’s a pure guess as to whether or not the opponent will break or let it rock, and many higher level players dislike that level of ambiguity. They often tend to prefer more “stable” or “sure” offensive options. But the tactic itself is sound, even if a touch risky in terms of breakability. And if the defender locks out, you have all the time to confirm into big damage.

The reward is there to throw out heavy doubles - the only question is whether players are willing to accept the risk of using them.

Bring back season 1 damage output or buff damage output. The low damage output of s3 (except Mira, Tusk, and Raam in instinct) makes guess breaking a thing because the risk of losing a great deal of health isn’t really there.

So you want the damage lowered?

I want it buffed. Chars like sadira and sabrewulf (and orchid to some extent) have become MUCH less scary because of the lowered damage output.

Much less? I’d argue that. But I don’t really feel like it.

I almost forgot they decreased everyone’s damage at the beginning of the season. Maybe they should revert it back

I know I wouldn’t guess break sabrewulf knowing he could kill me off of one lockout in one combo (with meter) and not a bunch of resets. Fights wouldn’t last as long too cause the damage was higher.

Did they ever tell us why they did this anyways?

Because Wulf was functionally unbreakable in instinct, and getting killed by a nigh-unbreakable single combo tends to piss people off.

In general, damage was lowered for heavy mixup characters. The idea is that characters who are super good at opening people up (Shadow Jago, Sadira, Wulf, etc) probably shouldn’t also be hitting like trucks. I think it’s a generally sound design philosophy, though there’s certainly room for further tweaking.

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Damage output lowered for every character when s3 dropped. Characters who are super good at opening people up shouldn’t be hitting like trucks (I agree), but there has to be more risk/punishment associated with guess breaking. High damage output was apart of the punishment for guess breaking and might be worth considering to some degree as a solution.

What happens if some people like guess breaking? And don’t want it to change?

There is risk and punishment associated with guess breaking. If you guess wrong early against a goodly chunk of the cast, you’re guaranteed to eat 40-50+% damage meterless. There are certain characters who have a more difficult time building up good damage, but KI characters in general hurt if you’re willing to use heavies and aren’t dedicated to an early ender.

Is there room to tweak certain damage rates across the cast? Of course - Jago probably hits too hard, Sadira probably hits too lightly now, and any number of combinations in between. But from a mechanics standpoint, for nearly the entire cast there are very good punish options for people mashing out guesses in the middle of your combo. And most of them have nothing to do with counter breakers.

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